#but also your screenshots have been slowly murdering me

[whataperfectwasteoftime]

Me when someone I don't know very well writes a good fic:

"Wow, this was great! I loved it!"

Me when a mutual does it:

[quodekash]

HELP I JUST LOOKED UP GUMPA'S ACTOR AND HE WAS BEAM IN MLC???

MY DAD IS BEAM???

IM LOSING MY MIND OVER IT

anyway on another note the gang's about to be caught by cops! ✨

oh. never mind sean drove past them. in no world will that have good results.

NO

YOK JUST GOT SHOT

WHY IS EVERYONE GETTING SHOT

AAAAAAAAAAA

i swear if they freaking kill yok im going to find gmmtv and destroy them

stop trying to be freaking heroic, okay, YOU ARE IMPORTANT

DAD HAS COME TO SAVE THE DAY

hes so stressed though

im so scared for yok rn

pls let him be okay

WHY IS THE THUMBNAIL FOR THE NEXT PART DAN'S FACE LOOKING INSANELY GUILTY??? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED???

episode 8 3/4 of the eclipse, anyone?

i swear that part of the series is just the infirmary interlude of the series

anyway im not watching the eclipse im watching not me

focus, egg. focus.

HELL YEAH, THANK FREAKING GOODNESS

THERE HE IS, OKAY NOW TELL ME: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED

force like the guy? force jiratchapong? cos if its just him then they're all good, they'll hug it out and be on their merry way.

if it's not him, then they're screwed

NO

WHAT THE HELL

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON

OH NO AND YOK IS CRYING

NOW IM CRYING

IM SO CONFUSED???

AAAAAAAAA

I WANT TO TEAR MY HAIR OUT

WHAT

NO

(and in amongst all this chaos, my brain is still thinking "kinky" because he said "finally you get to arrest me for real")

THIS IS EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSING

dfghj

ghrbdfgh

VHDBFHX

GRDNFHHJXGBJFHDB

PAIN

OH FLASHBACK, FINALLY, A FREAKING EXPLANATION

....

who the hell is this guy?

oh. so we just dont find out who the hell that guy was? is this information i was supposed to know already? i have no working memory, especially not when i probably previously encountered this guy in the early hours of the morning when my brain was shutting down, so i have no clue whats going on rn

im so confused that i cant cry anymore, but this is me internally

this wasnt supposed to happen to my boys

and yet they saved this plot for the side couple??? the side couple is supposed to be my main source of dopamine, but its getting a little difficult when they're arRESTING EACH OTHER

AND HES CRYING TOO

IDK WHAT'S GOING ON OR WHY HE DID WHATEVER IT IS THAT HE DID (or who the hell that guy was) BUT I STILL LOVE HIM AND HIS PRETTY EYELASHES AND I AM IN PAIN

TO DEFEAT

T H E H U N S

but who are you

...no

not even slightly

NOOOO MY DAD IS GETTING ARRESTED

what i dont get is why the only one who was actually properly handcuffed was the one in the wheelchair. why were the others all zip-tied. why wasnt yok also zip-tied. i have questions.

THERE'S AN ADULT VERSION OF YOUR TEACHER SAYING THEY'LL CALL YOUR PARENTS IF YOU KEEP MISBEHAVING???

i dont think its a mistake that the random old guy talks about his parents and then the very next frame is gumpa looking at him disappointedly.

he is dad.

its just a fact

oh !

hello there!

HELL YEAH (what a great screenshot that is)

he looks as confused as i feel

"you told me not to look for you if i wanted no regrets. i should have believed you then." NOOOOO

WHY WOULD YOU MURDER MY SOUL LIKE THAT

I SWEAR IM SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW

ill avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot. ill tear off the legs of every dragon i fight. with my face.

mm mm mm, it's the wings and the tails you really want. if it cant fly, it can't get away. a downed dragon is a dead dragon.

(yawn) alright, im off to bed. you should be too. tomorrow, we get to the big boys, slowly but surely making our way to the monstrous nightmare. but who'll have the honour of killing it?

it's gonna be me. it's my destiny, see?

(le gasp) your mom let you get a tattoo?

it's not a tattoo, its a birthmark!

okay, ive been stuck with you since birth, and that's never been there.

yes it has, you've just never seen me from the left side before!

every moment is the right moment to quote how to train your dragon

anyway that's the end of the episode. uh... that hurt.

[thegreymoon]

Judge Dee's Mystery

I feel sorry for him 🙁

The way things stand now, I don't think he killed her. It seems like he truly loved her.

But I was super wrong on the last case, I didn't get anything right, so I will just sit here quietly and wait for the plot to unfold before making any judgements.

***

So pretty, as always 💚

***

LMAO, "legal" 🤣🤣

She had a drinking contest with criminals.

***

I love the Esteemed Head 🤣🤣

He's all, "If your boss is competent and not corrupt, I will step back. However, if he's not, I'm going to continue keeping peace and order here."

***

How is he over 50? I would have given him 35 at most.

***

OK, I went and googled, he's actually 45 now, he must have been younger when they filmed this. My guess was off, but they also aged him up by some 15 years.

He is really not that much older than ZYW and here he is, playing his father's friend. Couldn't they have found an age-appropriate actor?

***

Well, he certainly turned abusive even if he didn't kill her. If it doesn't turn out that the maid (or whoever) was poisoning him, I will no longer be feeling sorry for him.

***

It is very beautiful for a cursed evil screen that drives people to murder.

***

For the collection of screenshots of his face 🧡

***

Gorgeousness 💚

A pity about the leprosy, though.

***

Oof, she is beautiful! Not at all what I expected.

The manor is in a state of disrepair, I expected the same from her.

***

Eh, I also thought she had a love affair with that crazy person from the start of the last episode, but this sister is up to no good, so I think there is definitely more to it than adultery.

The sister was probably in love with the same man and hates her now.

***

Oh, but you do know she was having affairs, do you?

***

Heh.

And here he is.

I doubt very much she was having an affair with him.

***

Yep. He was a stalker and I would bet money that the evil sister instigated him.

***

I bet that it is Yilian in these Xu Kai paintings and not the crazy sister.

***

Lies.

This case is slowly starting to come together for me, but of course, I could be dead wrong, just like the last time.

Xu Kai loved Yi Lian and painted her. Crazy sister was jealous and instigated Li Han. Li Han ended up doing hard labour in the quarry and later escaped to murder Xu Kai.

With that said, at this point, I think Yilian is not dead. Di Renjie remarked she looked "weird", and I am taking that to mean she is not decomposing? So, a type of faked death, like Juliet. But this is far-fetched and also ridiculous. I will be disappointed if they actually do this.

***

LMAO, I love him 🤣🤣

[lazymoogle]

To be honest, this is an old post from my drafts that I never published because I reverted my main character back to a female Au Ra. I considered redoing the screenshots, but now it's too late for that. I hope you enjoy the story and the screenshots nonetheless. 😄

Orinna visited a place which had a special meaning to her. She wanted to be alone, to think, to become clear about something, but even that was not granted - to be alone for a longer moment. There always happened something, she always ended up helping others.

For a unknown reason Estinien joined her, he wasn't really surprised to see her grieving, after all she had to carry a lot of weight on her chest, without being asked if she even wanted to. He coughed slightly, but the Warrior of Light didn't moved a muscle.

"What are you doing here? We've been searching almost everywhere for you." he kindly asked, and approached her.

"Who is 'We'? Who else is looking after me but you?" she replied, though it was more of a counter-question. It was obvious that something was upsetting her, that her voice sounded sad, shattered even.

"Zero, to be precise. She was worried because you disappeared without telling her where." he answered, paused for a moment. "That's not entirely true, Alisaie at least knew where you went."

"Well, because I told her, otherwise she would worry too much."

"You are here because of Zenos, aren't you?" he gripped his chin, pondering. Nothing escaped his attention.

Orinna exhaled a loud sigh. Since he "disappeared", she felt empty and abandoned. Yes, she had Zero and the others around her, but it wasn't quite the same. "You are a bright spark, huh? What betrayed me?" she blustered towards him, finally turning around to face him. Except for the snotty reply, her expression didn't change.

"You are here quite often actually, Alisaie told me that as well before I headed out to find you."

But now her facial expression changed. She slowly became furious.

"WHAT do you want from me!?"

"Zenos tried to kill you, didn't bat an eye, and you still grieve for him?"

Her hand flattened again, she looked away sadly, avoiding Estinien's gaze. "I was hoping there was more behind his actions. I wanted to turn him around to our side, making him realize how much he mattered to me, despite our differences."

The former Azure-Dragoon heaved a contemptuous sigh. "Like he felt anything but hatred. He followed you to the end of the world to duel til death part your ways. He searched for reasons and ways to provoke you each and every time. I'm almost sorry to say this, but he was a selfish motherfucker who got exactly the proper payback for his actions."

"When we first met here, he asked me to be his partner and stay by his side. Without even hesitating, I answered yes. I wanted to have a chance to know him better, to make sure he got back on the right track instead of wasting his own precious life. He didn't believe me and ultimately released Shinryu from his cage. One thing led to another..." she started to cry. "He grabbed his katana after I won, and exited himself out. At first, I felt nothing but relief. Until some days had passed, when everything seemed to be normal, I was really angry at him."

"And in the end he reappeared, more or less." Estinien answered meekly. "He didn't only expelled Elidibus, but also murdered his own father as punishment for wanting to use the Black Rose instead of fighting honorably. Zenos walked over dead bodies, no matter how close the people were to him."

She looked back to Estinien, still weepy in her face. "That's just the point! All he ever cared about was to reach me."

"Because he ...! Ugh, Ori! He grasped every possibility to become stronger than you. He would have killed you if he was capable in doing so. You almost died from the consequences of your last fight against him. Wake up, girl. He wasn't in love with you, not even in a friendly way. He intervened in the battle between the Endsinger and you out of pure self-interest."

"You just don't understand..." she answered him disappointedly.

"I get it very well, you loved him, but he didn't loved you."

Orinna was so heartbroken that she pushed Estinien aside. "You are outrageous! I hate you!" She ran away weeping.

[lilolilyr]

Tagged ages ago by I don't know who for Ao3 stats!

How many fandoms have you written for?

Uuh. Um. So many that it only barely fits in two screenshots even on my new bigger phone? XD

I'm on 517 fics btw, 526 counting stuff that's been posted on anon (you can find that number if you're member of a collection and click 'people' on said collection)

What's your favorite fic on your Ao3?

Would still have to be my Andromaquynh longfic In Your Stead <3 though I'm currently working on a Mirandy podfic project that might take its place! Still, not my own fic, but I already love the voice acting I get to do there :)

Have you posted elsewhere? If yes, which of those fics is your favorite?

Uhh most is cross-posted to Ao3 anyway? I think some ficlets on @floreleine might not be... (Btw if you haven't yet, watch Gunpowder Milkshake it's awesome!)

How many bookmarks do you have on Ao3?

1574 bookmarks! Lots of them probably on private tho, check out my account and tell me how many you see there, I'm too lazy to log off and in again xD I tend to bookmark as, well, actual page marker bookmarks as well as use it as a 'read later' function as well as marking fics I've already read and writing me notes on what I liked or didn't like about them or whether they might be triggering for me in ways not tagged, warning me to only re-read with with caution, that kind of thing... I also bookmark a lot of external works so I have them saved all in one place, bc while I have a livejournal and I think also ffnet account I don't rly use them and I wouldn't even know how to bookmark stuff there...

Plus as recommendations for others! I love the rec function, I've got 175 public recs at the moment, so check it out if you're looking for new reading material :)

...so all in all, my bookmarks are steadily growing xD

How many unread comments do you have?

253 🙈🙈🙈 I'm sorryy!!! In my defence there are always some where I'm like 'ill reply when the sequel's up' and then I never write that xD probably half are still unread bc of that... Rest is some I just love looking at, some so long I love getting them but I don't have the energy to respond in kind and feel like just replying 'thanks' would be cheap idk, and some recent ones just uhh laziness

(they're of course all read though!!! It's just the function called unread bc they're unanswered and I haven't marked them read without answering, I only do that for replies, but I have read every single one <3 thank you commenters I love you!)

Any subscriptions?

6 pages full of author and series subs from way back 2014-2016 🙈 I'm not doing it anymore and I'm Trying to get rid of them but it's so much work adsfghjkl (I still want to keep them somewhere so I click the series/a fic of the author and bookmark it with the tag 'subscription tag' to know I formerly had subscribed/would have subscribed if I still used that function - I just want to get rid of the email spam because that damn thing already completely murdered one email address, and I've switched my ao3 account to another email and that's slowly dying as well now lmfao and I Never check those emails I just check my bookmarks anyway so it's all very useless to me)

Any favorite tags?

I clicked favorite on a bunch of ship tags, whenever I was reading basically just that one ship and wanted it close on hand I added one and never removed them, they're McDanno, Milippa Prime, ClintCoulson, Ineffable Spouses and Andromaquynh

@poemsingreenink @glassbearclock @falyakonmp3 @incloudines @kla1991 @viharistenno @pers-books @xvnot15 @kaorimaxwell-blog @startrekgeorgiouery @danisnotmyname @lavendelhummel & any other mutuals and friends, feel free to do this if you want to, and you can also have a look at the other tagging memes I did lately, feel tagged in any you want to do!

Questions for easy copying: How many fandoms have you written for? What's your favorite fic on your Ao3? Have you posted elsewhere?If yes, which of those fics is your favorite? How many bookmarks do you have on Ao3? How many unread comments do you have? Any subscriptions? Any favorite tags?

[mod-ibuki]

“Gone.”

M-I: i accidentally deleted this request somehow so instead have a screenshot of the request LMAO also i love hajime so.. favoritism.

SUMMARY: Hajime with a gn!S/O who’s dead and only he can see them

PAIRING: Hajime/reader

GENRE: fluff, some comedy, a little bit of angst

First of all, he’s devastated over your death. Whether you were executed or murdered, he’ll be more prone to snapping at people after you die, especially Komaeda.

Hajime is more likely to stay in his cabin a little bit more, sometimes missing out on breakfast, due to how depressed he is. Nanami will try and get him out of his cabin, but it’ll only work a few times until he eventually stops responding.

He’s literally so depressed that not even Kamukura could compare, nor Saihara. Hajime doesn’t know how to deal with it either, so he’s just.. mad. Even though your death makes him cry to sleep every night, he still attempts to move on from you. From your death.

But he can’t.

Hajime was just sitting on his bed inside his cabin, this had become a daily routine of his after you passed away. No matter who tried to coax him into going outside, he’d just shut the door in their face and go back to laying down on his bed. He sighs, rolling around nonstop and his heart breaking everytime he remembers your dead body, and well.. just you in general.

Why? Why did you have to leave him? Why did it have to be you? He wouldn’t wish death upon anyone but.. couldn’t it be someone else..?

Hajime fights the urge to cry, grabbing a pillow and pulling it to his face, silently screaming into it. He was about to stand up, until he noticed something move in the corner of his eye. Might I mention, it was nighttime, around 11PM. Was someone with him? He pretended not to know he saw anything, and continued to stand up, going to the door.

Once he saw it move again, he stopped in his tracks, before swiftly turning around and trying to tackle whoever—or whatever it was, but it was useless, since he just fell onto the ground. Hajime groaned, rubbing his head and quickly standing up again, looking around. He saw something move around fast around him, and he kept moving his head towards where he thought it was.

He was about to tell himself that he was just imagining things, until the being was right in front of his face, waving a hand. “Hey there!” It smiled at him, and he yelped, falling backwards, causing landing on the floor once more. Hajime, in a panicked state, clumsily stood up and with wide eyes, locked eyes with the figure. It seemed to be floating, and it was transparent, and it kind of looked like—

Okay, he’s going crazy.

Hajime hesitated before slowly walking back to his bed, turning his back to that thing. His imagination was wild these days.. perhaps it’s because of the lack of people? He has been avoiding the people he’s trapped with on this island and maybe he just got used to their presence. Yeah, surely that’s it. His head is messing with him.

“Are you really ignoring me? Rude.” Oh. It was still there. Hajime didn’t bother looking its way this time because it wouldn’t be there. It would be gone because his imagina—

Nevermind, it’s not just his imagination. It had gone through his body and he stumbled forward, but caught himself before he could fall for the third time this day. He stood there for a moment, eyes glued to the ground. He probably wouldn’t ever admit it, but Hajime was scared. What the hell was that?!

He stayed there, before the floating figure spoke. “Eyes up here.” It dramatically sighed, and with shaky movements, looked up at it.

It was you.

Hajime’s jaw dropped, and you realized the situation. “Ohh.. I get it. You weren’t expecting me.” You face palmed, murmuring about how stupid you were for not warning him about your arrival. Then, you turned to a very shocked and confused Hajime. “That’s technically your fault, I dropped signs everywhere!” You pointed a finger to him.

You stopped pointing at him though, since it clearly freaked him out more. You get it, Hajime was seeing his dead partner in front of him, talking and floating, but was basically not real. Well, it didn’t seem real to him but he was slowly convincing himself it was. His first response to this very weird incident was, “what.”

When you explain everything to him, he doesn’t seem to be believing this. You sigh and tell him you don’t have the energy to try and convince him some more. Hajime does eventually come around and believe it though, takes about two [2] to three [3] days.

You, being proud of yourself for managing to convince a very stubborn Hajime, tell him that he can’t stay in his cabin for who knows how long. He protests but that dies when you politely threaten to disappear on him if he doesn’t.

It wouldn’t be hard to believe when I say people are very relieved to see Hajime more regularly. They understand that he was just grieving over his partner and won’t press him on it, they’ll just express how happy they are that he’s fine.

Sometimes he forgets that you’re dead and a ghost, so he accidentally talks to you in front of other people, and Hajime looks crazy when he does this. You had warned him earlier on that only he could see you, and it seemed he forgot about that. When this happens, you tell him that others cannot see you. Hajime gets embarrassed when this happens.

[mr-gallavich]

Analysis of Mickey Milkovich's Bedroom Part Three

HELLO HERE IS PART THREE SORRY ITS BEEN A BUSY FEW DAYS AHHHH

(Warning, mentions of the dreaded scene in 3x12)

ALSO YES PLEASE ADD THEM TO YOUR VAULT OF FICS BECAUSE THIS MAKES ME EMOTIONAL AS WELL AND I COULD MAKE WHOLE SEPERATE POSTS ELABORATING ON PHOTOGRAPHER MICKEY AND TAXIDERMIST IGGY

Also @tidalrace made an extremely good point and honestly yes, that is exactly what I think they wanted us to think with Mickey st first. The poor hygiene plus the violence plus the animal skulls plus the taxidermy plus the satan symbols: yes. I think they wanted us to think Mickey was or was going to become a serial killer/murderer.

But if we are thinking/theorizing within the canon universe and not irl then I think it was Mickey trying to come off as sketchy/edgy/badass thug. I think all of that was a manifestation of Mickey's inner suppressed emo boy.

So first up is here's a box on top of the wardrobe behind Ian:

Again, super blurry, but it says "Jump Boots". Jump boots are typical boot styles for people in the airforce... so I think Mickey had a similar idea to Ian. I think Mickey had a plan to escape T*rry by entering the airforce, but he was just barely 17 when he met Ian so he wasn't eligible yet. Then by the time he was 18 he had been in juvie twice, and then there was no way.

And actually I looked them up and they're Carolina Jump Boots, very popular among Paratroopers.

And this last one for this room isn't particularly a room analysis but I still want to add it in:

Top picture is Mickey's hand tattoo next to T*rry's, and the bottom picture is the poster in his room.

Obviously knuckle tattoos are a theme here and we know Mickey's are sort of iconic. There are a lot of people who headcanon Ian as bring in love with his hand tattoos and honestly I agree.

But what I want you to imagine today is many many years down the road, Mickey and Ian are raising their daughter, she's 16 now. And she's basically a mini Mickey, with the edgy clothing and spikey hair and the attitude and one day after a party with friends she comes home with a shitty knuckle tattoo done by one of her friends with a stick and poke and at first Mickey and Ian are upset. Mickey is a little proud at first but Ian kinda elbows him and mutters that she's only 16 and gonna have that for the rest of her life, and Mickey has to pretend to be upset while Ian scolds her and then she mutters under her breath "I just wanted a tattoo like dad's" and it's quiet for a moment and she says "I didn't think you would be angry"

And then Ian relaxes and he's like "no, I'm not angry. Here let's see them" and on her knuckles is "Fuck U-Up" just like her dad's and Mickey says "they look like shit but they're thing enough we can get them covered professionally".

And then I got screenshots from his room in season 3 so guess what's next 🤪

In the back of these screenshot is a walkie talkie. At this point Mickey and Iggy are both in their dads criminal business and I would be willing to bet money that what these are for.

It starts with Iggy and Mickey coming up with dumb code names for each other that they take very seriously and will get offended about if the other slips up/doesn't use them while on the walkies.

*Mickey handing Iggy a walkie before a job* "Remember we have code names for a reason. Fucking use them"

"You forget code names one time and then you get nagged for the rest of your life-"

Then it goes from just code names to code words then code saying and slowly they begin to develop this code language that only Iggy and Mickey understand and then they start to get ballsy about using it. Using it outside of walkies, using it in every day life, and then one day Iggy talks back to T*rry under his breath using the code words and Mickey's eyes near about pop out of his head and Iggy snaps to look at him, waiting for his brother to rat... but he doesn't. And now they use it all the time, from talking shit about people right in front of them (especially T*rry and his buddies) to "hey can you get some milk while you're at the store".

Mandy is really the only one who cares enough to catch on so one day when they're shootin' the shit in this secret code language Mandy corners them and is like "I know you're using some kind of code bullshit and you're going to teach me it or else" and Mickey and Iggy are like "or else what?" And Mandy is like "or else I won't make dinner for a week. You'll have to make it yourself-" and Mickey scoffs and is like "a week, that's it?" And that was the wrong thing to say cause Mandy crosses her arms and says "for a month" and they're quiet, contemplating it, and then Mandy says "two months-" and they're like "Alright alright" and now all three of them have this secret language they use.

Now for this next screenshot I have two thoughts. At first glance I thought this was a vintage speaker which sprouted its own series of headcanons but I think it's actually a tool box. Now, logically, this is probably for crime but also here's why I think he has a tool box just chilling in his room.

Growing up shit was breaking all the time. Either from testosterone fulled rage or never being replaced even far past their prime, things were breaking in the Milkovich house all the time. And it's not like they could afford to replace things like sinks or toilets or fridges, and sure they could steal things but it would be so much faster and easier for Mickey to just learn how to fix that shit himself.

So when Mickey is about 8 or 9 Iggy gets (steals) him some tools of his own and teaches Mickey the basics and that's it, Mickey is lost. He cannot stop fixing things. Every time something breaks he jumps to fix it, and when there's nothing to fix he'll take things apart just so he can put them back together again.

As Mickey gets older he gets more skill and more tools and in his preteens/early teens he starts building things. Putting things together crudely in an abandoned old building.

Stealing sketchbooks from walmart to fill with ideas of inventions and floor layouts for houses and toy designs and car designs, really anything he can create with his hands.

Hiding these sketchbooks under his mattress, jumping when he hears someone come home and leaping to shove it under the mattress (as carefully as he can to not rip the paper while still trying to be fast), his heart pounding out of his chest as he tries to act natural, feeling as though he's not breathing until at least 10 minutes later.

Next, from this screenshot:

I would like to point out this in the background:

Yes. That is the same taxidermied crocodile head from season 1... in a metal cage.

I could see this going two ways (one funny and one kinda sad):

1) it started as a really dumb joke, like Iggy saw it in someone's trash and brought it home for Mickey's "pet gator" and he never really expected Mickey to put the head in the cage but Mickey wanted to know if it would fit and it did but now he can't figure how to get it out so he just has a taxidermied alligator head in a cage in his bedroom.

2) Mickey had some sort of pet, a hamster or a rat or a ferret (I could 100% see him with a ferret) and while he was in juvy everyone sort of forgot he had it and then it died. It started to stink so Iggy was going to throw it out, cage and everything, but Mandy stopped him. That afternoon Mandy took the pet out of the cage, wrapped it up in a pillow case and put it in a shoe box and then dug a hole in the back yard to bury it. She knew Mickey would be upset when he got out, though he would never admit it, and so she leaves the cage in case he wants to get another one. But when he gets out and hears what happened, he is upset, but instead of getting another he decides he's not getting another pet until he leaves. He keeps the cage as a reminder as to why he can't have a pet. Mandy says it's depressing and tells him either to get another pet or get rid of the cage. He spots the gator head and a light bulb goes of. He puts the alligator head in the cage and is like "Happy?" And she just looks at him before saying something like "this isn't healthy Mickey, let go" and then walks out in a huff.

Now this one is so blurry you can probably not tell what it is but if you rewatch the scene (at your risk of your heart shriveling up in your chest) you will see those are string lights. Mickey has fairy lights in his bedroom, confirmed.

I can see Mickey being the kind of guy to have string lights lining his room or dangling from his bed frames. And whenever Ian tries to comment on them, like "Oh fairy lights aren't too gay but holding my hand is?" Mickey just tells him to fuck off, "You can get the fuck out of my room if you don't like it".

I think I got another part in me so I'll see yall in part 4

[incorrectnessduskwood]

A/N: Alright, here it is! Part two of the story I posted here (I guess I should come up with a title for it, huh?) There a few hundred words less than the other one but I liked the way it ended and I decided to go with it. I still have ideas to keep it going so let me know if you're interested in it. Hope y'all enjoy it!

Pairing: Jake x MC

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: spoilers for ep. 8 (still), a little jealous!Jake, and you can see some of my own theories there but nothing much

Falling asleep was never something that came easily to Jake; the constant fear and anxiety of being found were always in his head and every little noise outside of his room would startle him awake, no matter how long he had been sleeping. Even when things were relatively safe and he knew there wasn’t anyone after him, sleeping was something Jake rarely did. He would sleep as little as humanly possible and usually only when he couldn’t bear to be awake any longer.

So it was a pleasant surprise when he quickly fell asleep by MC’s side. She had asked him to lay with her so she wouldn’t be alone because she was afraid of having more nightmares and Jake could never deny MC anything if there was the possibility of saying yes. They laid side by side, MC resting her head on his arm, her own over his waist, one leg between his, and her face mostly hidden in his chest. Jake had threaded his fingers through her hair, heard her sigh and relax against him, and she was asleep within minutes. She looked like the most gorgeous person he had ever seen and he was more than content in watching her throughout the night, to just keep her safe.

Still, Jake’s eyelids got heavy half an hour in, his hand tiring and resting on MC’s shoulder just before he finally gave in and let himself fall asleep, not wanting to fight to stay awake one more night.

When he woke up, it was to the smell of coffee and food, two things Jake wasn’t used to. His heart beat fastly as he sat up, looking around the room with wide eyes until he spotted MC sitting on the table with a mug in her hands and her tablet in front of her, and he remembered her showing up there the last night. She only raised one questioning brow, taking a sip from her mug as Jake finally breathed out, allowing himself to relax, and laid back on the bed. He heard MC chuckle and he only waved her off, closing his eyes and placing his arm over them. The bed was soft and still warm and Jake wouldn’t say no to getting some more sleep, even if he felt more rested than he had ever felt in years; he also wanted to bask in the feeling of being relaxed for a while longer.

A few minutes had passed when he felt the bed weigh down by his side and Jake felt MC’s hand in his hair, so he moved his face until her hand cupped his cheek. He took his arm off his face to look at her, smiling when he noticed the soft blush that covered her cheeks and placing one of his hands on her knees, running his fingers in random patterns.

Neither of them said anything for a while and Jake was more than content to just watch her, to memorize the soft lines of her face, the way her hair fell over her eyes, making them slightly darker but all the more beautiful. Her presence still didn’t feel real and Jake was afraid of it all being a dream—even if he wasn’t creative enough to come up with all of that—so he would take all the chances of having the reassurance that she was indeed there, he would take all the touches she deemed him worthy of having, he would enjoy all the looks she would spare him; anything that would allow him to have her as close as possible. He’d be happy to just look at her from across the room, to just know she was there with him and that she was real and safe and—

“Jake?” MC’s voice broke through his concentration and he blinked a few times to focus on her face again, finding a smirk on her lips.

“I’m sorry, MC. You were saying?”

“I just asked if you were hungry,” she answered through chuckles. “I made breakfast with some of the stuff you had in the fridge. I’d guess you’re just as hungry as I was when I woke up.”

Jake smiled, nodding before sitting up again. “Starving, actually. Do I smell coffee, too?”

“Of course you do. What do you think I am, a savage?” she pointed at the coffee pot on the table she was sitting at. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take your coffee and I didn’t try and guess it either.”

MC stood up and offered him one of her hands. Jake took it and let himself be pulled up by her, finding it all the better when she didn’t let go of his hand and walked with him to the table. She sat at the chair she was before, grabbing her mug once again. Jake poured himself some coffee on another mug and slowly sipped it as he watched MC read something on her tablet, her brows furrowing as she went along whatever text she had open. She would sometimes write something on the piece of paper she had by her side, then she would stare at it as she tapped her pen on the table, her lips moving as she reread some sentence or tried to make sense of something.

Jake realized he could stare at her all day, just watch as she did nothing out of the ordinary but still looked like the most amazing person in the whole world. That was until his stomach growled and he realized he actually needed to eat something and that he should get back to work. MC smiled at him when he raised from the table and walked to the kitchen. She had managed to put together some eggs with what seemed melted cheese and tomatoes, and Jake would be lying if he said it didn’t smell amazing. He took the whole pan and a fork with him before walking to his computer and turning it on.

There were a bunch of notifications from the group chat, mostly everyone keeping each other up to speed about how they were doing and that they were okay. MC had answered for both of them without actually saying they were together, but it seemed to be good enough for the rest of the group; she never ceased to amaze him with how well she dealt with people and how quickly and strongly she had managed to earn the trust from the group. Not that it should surprise him so much when he was also between the ones that had started to trust her so easily.

He hadn’t gotten any notifications about his persecutors nor any news about the police. Apparently, they were still investigating Hanson’s house and trying to find anything because, unsurprisingly, everything was gone by the time the police had gotten there. Good thing Jessica thought of taking pictures of everything so they could at least have some kind of proof; Jake wouldn’t be surprised if the police tried to turn it around and blame it all on the group. He opened Thomas’s videocall to try and see if anything stood out, if he could better the image of the kidnapper’s physique or face or anything that could tell them who it was behind the mask.

Sadly, there wasn’t much he could; even his extensive knowledge couldn’t magically unblurry the whole video or get rid of the mask. There were a few things he could take from the writings and pictures on the walls—not everything because it moved too fast—and he could say for sure that the kidnapper was strong and quick. Thomas had a hard time holding him when he yelled for Jessica and the kidnapper ran almost as fast as the two of them. Even if Michael had kept up with taking care of his physique and trained, he still would have a hard time keeping up with Thomas and Jessica.

Staring at the better screenshot he had managed to take from the kidnapper, he called out, “MC? Could you do me a favour?”

There was no answer and Jake turned his head to look at her. MC seemed deeply concentrated on whatever she was writing on the paper, her hand moving quickly and her head moving from the tablet to the paper and back to the tablet. He quietly stood up and made his way to her side, looking over her shoulder at the paper. Her handwriting was messy and things didn’t seem to follow an order Jake knew about, so he had no idea what she was writing. On the tablet, however, she seemed to be going through some police reports and their discoveries from the cloud. The only thing that stood out to him was the name ‘Phil Hawkins’.

Jake sighed, sitting on the chair next to her and placing a hand on top of the paper she was writing. MC pushed his hand enough so she could finish writing whatever she was writing before raising her head to face him, placing the pen on the paper.

“Everything okay, Jake?”

“I called you and you didn’t answer, thought I could take a look at what you were doing.” She dropped her eyes to the tablet and seemed to realize Jake knew she was searching for something about Phil. “What are you looking for, MC?”

“I’m trying to find out what they arrested Phil for and if we have anything that could prove his innocence.” She hesitated for a few seconds, her eyes darting down to her tablet before focusing on him again. “And I actually wanna ask a favour from you. Could you give me access to Phil’s phone?”

“Why?” Jake heaved a heavy sigh out his mouth, pulling his hand closer to him and staring at her. “Why are you so worried about him?”

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, straightening her back before looking back to him. “He trusted me enough to call me for help, Jake. Not a lawyer or his sisters, me. We still don’t know for sure what his connection to Michael is or how much they actually knew each other back then, but I believe him.” MC sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I know you don’t like him and I truly appreciate the fact that you want to protect me, but there’s a reason why you trusted me to help find Hannah.” She turned fully to him, placing a hand over his, her eyes soft and caring. “But you also have to trust my intuition. We both know it’s been right when you weren’t and I truly believe Phil is innocent concerning Hannah and Amy.”

“But you don’t know the whole truth either, MC. How can you be so sure you can trust him and that you won’t be helping a murderer get out of jail?”

MC smiled sadly, her eyes dropping to their hands. “You know, a while ago, when we first started researching about the man without a face, Richy asked me to be careful and not to turn it into a bigger thing than it was and I told him that I’m looking for facts and not monsters, and I am. I won’t get Phil out of jail by my intuition only. I need proof for the police to actually let him go and for me to be right. But I also need to look for the proof, I need to go through everything I can to make sure I’m right and for my conscience to be clean about freeing him. And if we’re going for not knowing the whole truth about something or someone,” she raised her eyes to him and Jake had never seen her look so serious before, “I also don’t know the whole truth about you but that doesn’t stop me from trusting you, does it?”

Jake didn’t have an answer to that and he couldn’t take looking at her eyes and seeing the hurt there. He knew she was right; he was, indeed, hiding things from her and, even if it was to protect her, it didn’t make it any less of a lie or an omission. How could he judge someone about hiding something when he was doing exactly the same, especially to her?

“Hey,” she placed a hand under his chin and raised his head so she could look at him. “I’m not saying it to make you feel bad. I’m sure you have your reasons to be hiding things from me, even if it’s just because of your hero complex, though it doesn’t make it any easier. But I also know everyone in the group is lying about something to me, too, just like you and Phil are. No one is one hundred percent honest all the time and I can’t force anyone to be. It just doesn’t stop me from wanting to help any of them or you. None of them have given me a bad enough reason not to try to help or to trust them. Even Lilly did her best to show she’s trustworthy. I don’t see any reason why it should be any different for Phil, especially if your only excuse is not liking him. As much of a flirt as he can be, it’s not enough for us to just let him rot in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, don’t you think?”

He sighed, nodding against her hand before turning his head to rest it on her palm, her thumb caressing his cheek. “Would you believe me if I said I’m actually feeling slightly guilty of going against proving Phil’s innocence, now?”

She chuckled, leaning in to kiss his forehead. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? Of course I believe you.” MC’s fingers trailed over his arm, leaving goosebumps in their trail, her eyes soft as she stared at him. “Will you give me access to Phil’s phone, then?”

“That’s not fair. You know I couldn’t deny you that, MC.”

“I know you can’t but it doesn’t mean I can’t ask nicely. Me proving Phil’s innocent isn’t about choosing between him and you, Jake. Believe me, Phil may be nice and flirty, but he’s not my type. I’d rather keep insisting on this stubborn hacker I know.”

Jake chuckled, placing his hand over MC’s and turning his head so he could kiss her palm. “If he’s as stubborn as you are, I’m sure you’ll have a hard time getting through him.”

“You have no idea.” MC smiled, tilting her head. “Will you do it?”

“Of course I will, on one condition.” She sighed and muttered something Jake couldn’t make out, though he was sure it was something sarcastic. “Promise you won’t put yourself in danger over this. Or in any more danger than you already are. Freeing Phil will never be more important than keeping you safe to me.”

“I promise. I mean, if we’re both careless, who the hell is going to make sure we’re not caught?” Jake laughed and shook his head at her. MC leaned closer to him, their foreheads touching, her other hand sliding up his arm until she placed it on his shoulder. “Jake?” He hummed, not being able to look anywhere but her eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

“Not if I kiss you first.”

But MC was faster in closing the distance between them and Jake got caught in how soft her lips felt under his and in how her hands moved to wrap around his neck and play with his hair. He moved one of his to MC’s waist and the other to her cheek, wanting to pull her as close as he physically could, wanting to share the same space with her, to keep her from moving away from him.

Sadly, his lungs didn’t seem to get the memo and they soon burned and forced him to part from her. When they broke apart, Jake panted a little, letting his forehead rest against hers and keeping his eyes closed. It took a few seconds before MC talked again, “You know, making out with me won’t rid you of hacking into Phil’s phone for me.”

Jake chuckled, opening his eyes to stare at MC, and he thought he had never felt as happy as he did at that moment.

[egelantier]

disco elysium

i fall into a proper gaming binge every half a year or so, and then forget that computers games exist altogether. my last bout of addiction was hades, a gorgeous roguelite about trying to get out of the underworld and dealing with family, bigger on the inside than it seemed outside. now i've spent a week headfirst into the beautiful madness of disco elysium, and i'm nowhere close to done. middle of the second playthrough, at least a couple more ahead, maybe three, maybe five - this kind of not closer to be done. finally, almost a decade later, there's a spiritual successor to planescape: torment, perfect, unique and compelling like nothing else. i'm head over heels in love.

(and a note: it's very much a game that can and should be played by non-gamers. it's a true click-and-pointer; the entirety of its action happens through dialogue. give it a try.)

in disco elysium, your character wakes up in an absolutely trashed hotel room, coming off a bender of epic proportions, fucked up beyond recognition, and fully amnesiac. it turns out you're visiting a (very much not) sunny town of revachol, a slowly decaying remnant of revolution and consequent war, and, well. you're a cop, and you're here to investigate a murder. namely, a murder of somebody whose dead body is still hanged in the backyard…

this is a horrendous mess, and you are a horrendous mess - bloated, amnesiac, confused, weird, pathetic, with a host of warring impulses and demands fighting for space in your head - but thankfully there's a pillar of stability and light in your dark world, waiting just downstairs: lieutenant kim katsuragi, your assigned partner from another station, a man with godlike sense of dignity and practically endless amount of quiet patience for your bullshit. together with him, you can investigate a crime, try to stop a small civil war, solve a couple of questions of the universe, and maybe, if you play your cards just once, dance a truly epic dance together in a shot-up church. there are also cryptids, karaoke, board games, collecting bottles for money, a mystery of a crashed police car, discovering your own feelings about the homo-sexual underground, and many, many other things.

(the gameplay: you have four sets of stats (intellect, sensitivity, physicality, interacting with objects) and, depending on how you distribute them, you play a wildly different character every time. there's no way to fail: your detective can be dumb as a bag of rocks but able to get by on intuition and muscle memory, or smart and horrible with people, or empathetic and weak, or - the combinations are endless. the game is conducted via a combination of red stat checks that you can do only once, and white checks that you can try, fail, up your stats and retry again. aside from a handful of cases, a lot of time it's easier - and funnier - to accept failures rather than try for a perfect go every time. you are a hot mess, after all. there are ten game days, a variety of sidequests and tasks, and almost endless variability in how you approach them. everything is connected, except for that one door.)

(there's also a political system, where you eventually pick up your political affiliation: a communist, a libertarian, a fascist, and a wishy-washy uncommitted liberal. the game has a lot of things to tell you about all your choices, most of them funny, some of them horrendous. there's no innocence here, and no way to weasel out of the consequences of your worldview; and you could also see that it was done by eastern europe people.)

and the thing is. the thing is, it's very much the kind of a game where you perform a field autopsy on a three days old corpse while a couple of preteen kids are watching avidly and offering their color commentary, and at some point you have to rummage in the corpse's mouth and feel its brain stem. a lot of very, very bad things happen or happened - to you, to the people around you, to the town around you, to the world around you. where in fallout you rolled into town with your stats jacked high and your blaster in hand, and solved ancient disputes and established peace, here the weight of the history is very, very heavy, and you're very, very small. you can't solve the decades of violence and war and trauma and colonization and poverty with the power of your save-scumming and pithy one liners, alas; but you can solve a murder. you can help a sweet and worried old woman. you can put your cheek to a kid's fuzzy plush toy, when offered. you can tell a person, gently, that their loved one is dead, and lie about how drunk they were when they did that. you can replace a taxidermied bird you broke. you can sit on the swing with your partner, waiting for the low tide, and whistle together - two birds on the wire…

it's the gentlest, kindest, sweetest, most hopeful game i've seen in the last decade. it's a goddamn manifesto to human spirit, and to how only - well, love - holds the world, always falling apart, together. a huge part of it is your relationship with kim, because believe me, whoever you are, most of your playthrough would be dedicated to chasing kim's approval and to winning his trust. but it also sneaks into all the cases, all the dialogues, all the little throwaway details. everybody is human; everybody is awful; everybody is holy, even you. oh, even you.

(there are storylines you can or can not discover. about why harry is such a mess - and it's awful and i loved how it was done, with empathy and grace and no judgement; about the state of the world, a bit of eldritch horror so throwaway and beautiful i would read entire volumes just about that; about the city of locusts; about a small girls' memory of playing in the reeds; about the scar of the revolution. suliram, ram, ram…)

(it's also brilliantly, awfully, absurdly, hysterically funny. Art Cop run alone makes me just about die. every failure is funnier than the other. you can be as weird as you want to - in fact, the game encourages you to be as weird as you want to be - and the world around will react accordingly, outperforming you in sheer absurdity. there's a war-and-peace sized amount of dialogue and description in the game, and it's written by some damn genius of pratchettian caliber.)

and, and and. honestly, the best way to get sucked into this game is not reviews, it's random quotes and screenshots, out -of-context spoilers - it's more or less impossible to resist. but please, oh please, give it a try.

>Someone's been walking around in your dreams lately, looking for something. Tidying up, rearranging. Storing away all the unrealized dreams, putting old pains in boxes. The worst nightmares have settled down for a while. A spot of light on the bedroom door after the dark. The fluttering of eyelids in the spring sun. A thought that arises, only to disappear again. And yet there's a pattern emerging…

>What if you didn’t lose your memory? What if something in Martinaise came and stored it all away. For you to slowly open one box at a time. So you can choose which parts to keep. Keep almost none of it. Only the flowers on the windowsill. Only the distant sound of a radio. Lose all the actors, the dark shadows, leave only the still lifes, the blissful distant wash of waves. If everybody knew -- you never did. She’ll be coming soon. That is all.

[szynkaaa]

I more or less watched The Boy!!! And by watching, I mean I skipped more or less through the jump scare parts because I cannot do horror movies at all. I haven’t watched one since 2015 and The Boy was like the first horror movie after five years

Full disclosure, the ONLY reason I started watching the movie was because someone posted a gif of Greta standing close to Brahms who was all sweaty and breathing heavily n I was like “oh shit who dat he hot” and here I am 

Can anyone explain the sandwich scene to me? So Greta was scared shitless and locked herself in her room, but why did Brahms make her favorite sandwich for her?

I did some digging for interviews and generally what people have been saying about the movie, took some screenshots from youtube to put my thoughts and musing together too! 

Can anyone explain the sandwich scene to me? So Greta was scared shitless and locked herself in her room, but why did Brahms make her favorite sandwich for her? 

So first of all, let’s start with a low resolution photo I found on IG of James Russell without mask:

which brings me to my first musing/thought/question? 

It’s all under the cut, very screenshot and text heavy, you can find more Brahms drawing at the bottom though  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So at the end of the movie, we are shown a Brahms with a broken mask and his face being burned, indicating that he was in fact in the fire.

I assumed first that the fire was created by the parents to fake their sons death and then he had to live hidden inside the walls? 

But I’ve also heard apparently it was Brahms who set the fire to fake his own death or maybe an eight years old kid really was trying to burn himself down?? 

My other theory is that his parents made the fire and tried to kill Brahms and it did burn him but he survived, and the parents didn’t wanna go to jail sooo to hide everything they made their son live in the walls

i mean the responsible thing would be to turn their kid in and have him treated and stuff;;; listened to a murder podcast about two cases where kids murdered enough kids and how they are doing now interesting read Brahms made me think of those two cases 

I also do not think that the previous nannies were killed. Like, c’mon. You’d report a person missing and sooner or later it would go back to the Heelshire mansion and if the body counts piles up? Can’t look good and I doubt that the Heelshire wants the police investigating them close up. 

Also, when the mom was like “He’s chosen you if you’ll have him” to Greta? Is it just me or the wording or does it sound like a marriage proposal/arrangement xD 

Brahms is a brat and he sees the people around him as his possession or to toy around. But I also do think that he has some abandonment issues but not in the sad tragic kind of way lmao. Even if he was the one controlling and manipulating his parents from behind-the-scene (quite literally I suppose?), he was still told as a kid to live in hiding and that no one can know he is alive. I don’t know much about the human brain, but I can imagine how damaging that must be to his mental growth and set him back in some way? We don’t know too much about his relationship with his parents - but I assume that he must have still loved them in his own twisted way. Can’t imagine that he would have been indifferent about his parents suicide. 

The scene before Greta manages to back out - first he uses the child voice to beg her to come back and promises he will be good. That’s his manipulating Greta, but when that doesn’t work and she tries harder to open the door, he becomes more desperate to keep her there and then completely loses his temper and threatens to kill Malcolm if she doesn’t return. I’m pretty sure homeboy would have killed him anyway. And then later when she returns and he is all heavy breathing and smelling her hair and then jumps up when she shouts Brahms? Idk I def think there is some sort of abandonment issue going on. 

I don’t think he is a child stuck in a man’s body or manchild or whatever. I think that he does know how to take care of himself - but he just chooses to manipulate people with the facade of a kid to do his bidding and cater to his needs. 

Anywhomst, but clearly Brahms is also a very manipulative and controlling person based, based on how the mother was reacting on the destroyed bedroom, she really seemed to be at the end of her wits and just breaking down with her “you promised you’d be good”. It was very heartbreaking to watch and also scary because it really makes you realize just how much power Brahms holds over them?? idk maybe it was just me.

Next point: the CGI mask  + the burns 

So according to some interviews with the director stated that at the first test streaming, people weren’t really scared of Brahms because he was too handsome so they had to slap a mask over his face. The face was done after everything was filmed. I’m thinking the face burns were also added post-production when they were adding the cgi mask. Otherwise, James would have needed to go through the makeup department for some wicked face burns and it would have been visible during the filming and test screening too? Which would imply that at first the fire was supposed to be just  a cover story that their son is dead and it was changed later

Observation/thoughts on Brahms Heelshire

Love how he stands there with his hands behind his back and then nods when Greta tells him to go under the cover

James Russell is 191cm tall. So like. Brahms is really fucking tall. But I notice that most of the time he stands with a slight hunch. Could be due to him crawling through the walls and crawling out of places that requires him to do a lot of crouching. His bed in his hideout made me really sad, I’ll get to it later. 

Since James didn’t get many lines in the ten minutes that he appeared, I do think that his eyes did all the acting. They stand out even more with the mask on, there is just this crazy look on it. I also noticed during my rewatch that he doesn’t seem to blink much or at all. 

Oh yeah, he also peeped on Greta and Malcolm making out on the bed and then cockblocked them. We been knowing that he made a Greta doll and very likely jerked off to it. We also been knowing that he very very very likely wanted to bone Greta at the goodnight kiss scene still waiting for the maskeless kiss scene gimme gimme. I also highly doubt that Brahms has much first-hand experience with kissing n stuff. High key thinking he was trying to do copy Malcolm and do what he observed lmao

When I first watched the scene, I assumed that the hole behind the mirror has always been and it’s just another one of the hidden passages Brahms to slip in and out, but now that I’m looking at the shape of the holes, it seems to me more like the mirror and brick wall were broken at the same time?? If that is the case holy shit boy is s t  r o n g. I mean, he also punched through the closet door like no big deal so really what have the parents been feeding him. 

I’m also leaning toward the fact that he ran there because Greta screamed loudly. I don’t think he was in the room as them when everything went down there, it seemed more like he heard the scream and had to nyoomed over and then punched a way through to get out of the wall. And then went on to attack Cole. He must have known that Greta wanted Cole gone, since that what she whispered to the doll before going to bed. 

Tbh, I fully expected him to murder Cole in his sleep, but Brahms wrote a warning message in blood to tell him to get out soooooo like. Cole you were warned and now you gotta live with the consequences ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Brahm’s sleeping corner

This scene was shown at the end after Greta and Malcolm escaped. We also see them briefly during the part where Greta and Malcolm are trying to find a way out and stumbled into Brahms’ hideout. I’m not sure why the rules are slapped on the walls. It seems to me that Brahms is very very very set on that the rules / routine should be followed. In the movie, he called Greta and suggested to her that she should follow the rules, to which she then started doing it.

I headcanon that that’s the routine that he grew up with as a kid and it’s just very very very very very hard to break out of it - not that he is trying to break the routine. 

I’m failing to find a good way to put my thoughts into words, but I guess the rules and routine is sort of his coping mechanism? 

I suppose if you had an OC that you ship Brahms with and want to change stuff around the house, the OC would have to very slowly introduce new rules and routines. Baby steps, yknow.

Brahms has a violin hanging there! Honestly I would be surprised if Brahms didn’t know how to play at least one instrument. The family also has an old ass piano/clavichord (?) and Brahms loves classical music soo yeah. Love me a boy who appreciates classical musical hehe

I suppose the egg boxes are there to soundproof the room more - maybe so he can play the violin? 

There’s also music sheets hung around his attics, it’s not clear on the screenshots but when you rewatch the scene and shove your face close to the screen. Some are hanging next to the violin and there are some taped on the wall next to his bed and porn too

nice to see he has a fridge and microwave, I was concerned that he wasn’t well fed and that leftovers might not be enough, but then again. Dude is 191 cm so clearly he has been drinking his milk

Didn’t take a screenshot of his vanity, but there is a crocodile magnet stuck to the mirror hehe. I do think that he shaves and stuff, otherwise his beard would be much longer??

We can see more music sheets stuck to a pillar on the right. 

Loving the christmas lights that he has hanging there above his bed. It’s cute. 

On the shelf he has a bunch of tupperware and empty bowls. Most of hte things are neatly organized. We can also see some books and a pen

There’s some sunlight streaming inside - I do hope that Brahmsy stays warm during winters.

Here we can see more of the food that he has there - there is also a sink but I didn’t snatch a screenshot of it. I think those are potatoes in the pot? Maybe he does know how to cook some basic stuff, I do wonder if he has a functioning kitchen up there. Probably not for fire safety reasons lol

Yall see that thing on the note sheet covered pillar? Ngl, that’s a whole ass aesthetic right there.

He got a few potted plants up there. Took a closer look at them and it seems like they were healthy. So he knows how to take care of plants, which is nice to know I suppose?

Yes, we all know what he was doing with the doll and what the tissue balled up tissue implies. However, has anyone noticed the size of the bed??? 

If you scroll up a bit to the screenshot of Greta seeing the doll, it looks t i n y. The make shift doll takes up more than half of the space. 

Yall. this breaks my heart. Dude is a beanstalk. I’m pretty sure the bed is from when he was a kid shoved by his parents to live inside the wall, does he have to sleep there in his adulthood too??? 

Even though Brahms strikes me as someone who probably doesn’t sleep much or during normal times, that bed must be so tiny for him. He must be sleeping with his knees bend and shit unable to stretch out :((( 

Brahms: is a psychopath that smashed the skull of a girl and very abusive tormented his parents and then Greta Me: omg he needs a bigger bed that poor thing :(((

Brahms’ DIY corner 

Ah yes, Brahm’s little DIY/creative corner. 

Homeboy got lot of animal traps, cages and taxidermies hanging around, pointing strongly toward that it’s a hobby of it? 

Also at the end where we see him fixing up the doll, we can get a better shot at his desk, and I gotta say the threads and stuff are all very nicely organized. Brahms’s table looks more organized than mine does lmao. 

So we know he is a crafty boy. Not sure how difficult taxidermy is but I imagine it does take a lot of time to learn? Well he had all the time in the world anyway.

So yeah, that’s a wrap. Congrats if you made it to the bottom of my incoherent thoughts and ramblings, have a bonus drawing of Brahms wearing different masks: 

[shrimpanalysis]

SIMON LAURENT ANALYSIS

Simon is mostly known infamously as the Villain of this season and a murderer to boot. He seems to be very insistent about his own opinions and beliefs. Going so far as to outright deny other peoples attempts at correcting him.

Due to this he is seen as narrowed-minded and egotistical, outwardly hating being wrong and giving people this intellectual leverage over him but internally rethinking all of his views. His inferiority complex I mean pride- is what I think to be one of the major factors that causes his character regression.

His pride (No, not the group of lions) is shown throughout the season by holding his ground. Most people interpret it as him being close minded at adamant to his own beliefs but I feel like the beliefs are only the basis to his inferiority.

An example, his own hatred towards Nulls. This can be quite a weak link to bring up as everyone in the Apex has this belief. However, the way he continuously reacts to them despite them showing humanity to him as compared to Grace who has gradually seen the other side of them and starts to understand and develop meaningful relationships with them-

Simon reacts negatively the nicer the nulls are to him.(Tuba’s death)

I interpret this as his own damaged pride, he hates being wrong and the more he is proven wrong the more angry he would get. This fear of being wrong could stem from past experiences of being the butt of arguments and made a fool out of it.

Him experiencing these feelings brings himself to adopt this mentality that other people are perceiving him as an idiot or a fool, causing him to try to justify his beliefs as much as he can in order to victimize himself into thinking that everyone is against him and he is the only one that is right to boost his self-esteem which causes him to adopt this narcissistic and manipulative persona to hide his own weaknesses.

(Simon looks away from Grace displaying emotion, he would be more susceptible to mirroring the reactions of his closest friend and he does not want to show weakness.)

Due to his narcissism, he also displays what the viewers might perceive to be a lack of empathy. He does not display much compassion and can be outright apathetic to other people's circumstances, Such as his dismissal to Hazel bringing along Tuba despite her looking clearly distressed when they said she couldn't bring her and completely ignores her feelings about the subject.

He perhaps reacts this way due to his own internalized hatred of himself and displaying compassion would be showing a less hardened in his eyes as he is perhaps taught from a young age that being sensitive or vulnerable is showing weakness and he does not want people to think less of him.

Him being unempathetic also stems from his ego and beliefs as he usually displays this attribute towards Nulls specifically throughout the show which is because if he was indeed wrong about Nulls, it could cause him to start questioning his own feelings about them which is something he does not want to think about as it conflicts with his own victim complex.

Due to him not wanting to be more exposed emotionally, he lashes out in anger. Anger at himself that he projects onto his relationships with others as he is unable to understand and handle his emotions effectively, this can be caused by not having a stable guardian like figure to help him through such issues.

Simon is also shown to outwardly control his anger by kicking and punching objects.

This is shown to be counter productive as it does not allow the person to understand where their anger is coming from and only prides a temporary outlet for his aggression.

His aggressive personality can also be shown in his interest with making war replicas/models.

This can be taken as him being someone who likes being in control and feels like conflict is the only way to progress which can be found in his own toxic relationship with grace where he tries to control her, not knowing that she is her own person which ties into his lack of empathy. This trait is especially shown almost at the end of the series where he commands the Apex like a leader and donning a military general like coat.

His inability to cope with his own emotions and expressing them outwardly to others is the main reason for his attachment issues.

His own paranoia and lack of trust in Grace by invading her memories when she doesn't tell him that Hazel is a Null which shows us how Grace knows his aggressiveness and acts very secretive around him as she predicts he is going to blow up when he finds out.

Him finding this out himself causes even more hurt as he is hit with the realization the only person that he thinks that ever cares about him has betrayed him. He is alone now, a reminder of the time when Samantha left him behind.

And it angers him and forces him to project his sadness as vengeance against others such as manipulating grace and using her memories against her, causing her to be stuck in her own memories as Simon just walks away.

Put yourself in Simon's shoes, you are stuck in an unfamiliar environment,

no idea where to go and the only parental figure you trusted in this whole place was just using you for her own self interest and

your closest friend seems to be tip toeing around you.

You also feel like everyone is out to get you and that your flawed beliefs are wrong but it was the basis of keeping you sane throughout.

Not wanting to believe that any of these things happened to you, you disregard all emotion and lash out at others because you don't want to feel that any of these things are real.

It sounds like a fever dream doesn't it?

Congratulations, you are basically in denial.

I would say the beauty of Simon's portrayal in season three would definitely be the lack of context behind his actions. He is very easy to dismiss as a one sided evil character. (I don't deny it, he is one.) Due to this we don't really see him as a fleshed out individual and he feels like the Tom Riddle of the season.(slowly devolving into a villain.) His own deterioration into this ultimate descent to becoming a murderer and attempting to murder his childhood friend; the instances to solidify his own inferiority complex (the mentality of "Grace already perceives me as an evil character, what use is there to better myself when it's already too late?") Which is what I think to be the cause of his inevitable demise.

I doubt it is going to happen but I do wish that the next book will cover some parts of Simon's past. He isn't a redeemable character, and never has been. He is someone molded by his own upbringing that we do not see, the most integral parts of his development. Many people have made the comparison that Simon had just as many chances as Grace, if not more to redeem himself.

I feel like he does not need chances, he needs to build himself from the ground up and truly look deep into himself and figure out why is he acting this way. None of these chances provide him with that opportunity and this is where him and Grace deviate.

The train has improved Grace and supported much of her character development as shown in the series where he becomes more empathetic, more trusting and open to others such as Hazel and confronting her own demons in her own mind.

She also finally manages to stick up for herself after the emotional roller coaster Simon put her through.

Simon on the other hand, uses this opportunity on the train to cause much destruction and chaos. He has a disconnect with the plane of reality inside the train as opposed to real life and this stunts his development. In my opinion this would be due to the faults of the train and the limitations of the amount of people that it can help. Yes, some people get off the train and become better. People like Tulip, Jessie and Lake. But we don't really see the people that the system has failed. This is where Simon comes in, he is the very person that the train has failed and it shows how counter intuitive it is with the limited opportunities and the disregard for the different circumstances of the people in it, bundling them together.

I doubt Simon will be the first, or the last passenger to be ruined by the whole system. I do like how his character gives us an insight into something not many of us have thought of before that is; how can a train be designed to be so perfect that it can help every single person on board? It is impossible. Even Artificial Super Intelligence like One-One would have trouble doing so. Which can represent how people can only change if they want to, and if they genuinely don't they have to be stuck the feedback loop of hell.

_____________________________________________________________

Big thanks to my homeboy @useful-crew-too​ for supplying all of the screenshots for this analysis

[justmenoworries]

Fate: The Winx Saga - How Not To Reboot A Beloved Franchise

Okay, I think I speak for everyone here when I say: We saw this coming.

We saw this coming as soon as that godawful trailer dropped on youtube. But because I hate myself and because I wanted to give this pile of shit a chance, I watched it.

All of it.

It sucked and I won’t do it again.

The End.

....

Nah, I’m kidding.

Here’s why Fate: The Winx Saga sucked ass.

(Spoilers under the cut! Pfft, like anyone cares.)

The Story:

I suppose now you’ll expect me to tell you that F:TWS was a generic, boring slog-fest.

That it offered the most clichéd take on a Chosen One-story since Eragon and that it’s half-assed attempts to be scary through bringing in a zombie apocalypse made it even more painfully obvious just how hard the story was trying to be edgy and ‘’’’’’mature’’’’’’’’.

And, yeah, that’s pretty much how it went.

...Oh, I’m sorry, did you expect something fresh and surprising?

So did I when I watched this garbage.

The title says Winx, but honestly the story is more about Bloom than anyone else. At least they were faithful to the source material in one aspect, am I right fellow Winx-fans?

I hope you like Alfea, because you won’t be spending time anywhere else! Gone are the dozen colorful, unique worlds with their own eco-systems and culture.

Now we have The Otherworld, which is just earth, but with magic.

Oh yeah, and remember how each magic and non-magic users had their own, specialized schools to got to?

Cloud Tower, Alfea, Red Fountain?

Yeah, that’s all Alfea now.

Remember how Winx Club juggled great, charismatic villains and everyday teenage-drama in a way that made both seem interesting and neither obnoxious?

Fate fails miserably at that.

The subplot about the zombies- Oh, sorry, The Burned Ones ™  slowly invading Alfea couldn’t be more dry and uninteresting if it tried. You have hints of political intrigue in the background with the Solarians scheming and taking over in the end, but trust me when I say: You won’t care.

And since the character are either miserable, unlikable or both, you also won’t care about the teenage drama.

Because it’s every single teenage drama plot-line you’ve already seen in edgy reboots like Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, etc.

To add insult to injury, season 1 ends with the villains and antagonists taking over Alfea with Solaria’s help, as if anyone would be baited into a season 2 after you just dragged us through a worse version of The Walking Dead.

I would say this is what you watch to lull you to sleep, but all the incessant whining and belly-aching wouldn’t let you.

And because this is the ‘‘‘‘‘‘mature’‘‘‘‘‘ reboot, there will be no transformations and no bright colors. Just some nice effects for magic and that’s it.

Because, you know.

No one watched Winx Club for those, am I right? /s

And because in modern, edgy reboots women can never just be friends, the Winx Club start out hating each other, until suddenly they’re the best of friends in episode 4, Stella included.

Cool, huh?

The Characters:

I’ll get straight to the point: The main cast is horrible.

Not acting-wise, the actors are doing the best they can with the script, but the way they’re written...

God, the way they’re written.

For starters, Stella is a Karen now. In the very first episode she attempts to get Bloom killed, then runs away to cry into Sky’s shoulder rather than apologize.

Flora was replaced by a white character named Terra, who the writers probably thought would be received well solely because she’s awkward and makes a lot of Strawman-Feminist statements.

Techna got straight-up written out.

Musa was white-washed and is a Mind Fairy instead of a Music Fairy now, because her being the Fairy of Music wasn’t ‘‘‘‘mature’‘‘‘ enough for this reboot.

Bloom is a whiny, spoiled brat who is willing to endanger absolutely everyone around her to get what she wants. And in the end, the plot rewards her for it.

Aisha is the only Winx Club-member who remains likeable, but she’s firmly planted in the supporting character-role.

Most of the Specialists got written out too. No Timmy, no Helia, no Nabu, no Brandon.

Sky is still there, but he serves mainly as a boy toy for Stella and Bloom to fight over, because that needed to be a thing, I guess.

Riven was changed from Jerk with a Heart of Gold who learns to be better to just a one-note jerk who never changes and never learns. He’s also not with Musa in this story. Even though their romance was by far the most engaging one in the original series, aside from maybe Aisha and Nabu.

We get a new character named Dane, but he’s just there to be either a bully-victim or a side-character for others to take advantage of. Did I mention he’s the only black guy in the main cast? Yeah. There’s also this really asinine running gag that he might be gay, to tease a possible relationship with Riven, but nothing ever comes off it.

The teacher-characters are all pretty much the same: Duty-driven, want to protect the ones under their care, but end up alienating them by not being entirely honest with them because they think their students aren’t ready for The Truth, blah blah blah, moving on.

The villains don’t fare much better.

The Trix got fused into one single character named Beatrix (haha, get it?) and she’s just... The Worst. And not in a  good way. She’s obviously supposed to be the Charming Bad Girl-type but you’re more likely to laugh your ass off every time she opens her mouth than be intrigued. Whoever wrote her dialogue clearly has no idea how teenagers talk. She hooks up with Riven and Dane for no reason in particular and it’s heavily implied these three are going to be the new Trix. Which is...no. Just no.

The headmistress’ secretary gets killed off in the third episode and doesn’t do much in the first two, so I have nothing to say about him.

Rosalind is a worse, female Darth Sidious who is trying so hard to get Bloom to join the Dark Side and I guarantee you, you will not care. The story also tries to present her as something of a well-intentioned extremist, but forgets to actually let her have a point in her murders and genocides.

Hey, remember when Winx Club characters were different and unique?

The writers of this reboot clearly don’t.

The Aesthetic:

Hey kids!

You know what’s better than bright colors and nice, comforting palettes?

Slapping a dull grey filter on everything and calling it a day!

If I had to list all the reasons why Fate’s lack of style is so heartbreaking and disappointing, we’d be here all day.

So I’m just gonna show you a few screenshots from both the original series and the reboot and let that speak for itself.

The Original:

The Reboot:

Honestly, what do I even need to say?

The reboot sucked out everything that made Winx Club Winx Club and replaced it with “YA-novel palette #17247845453″.

Thanks, I hate it.

In Conclusion:

Fate: The Winx Saga could have been a new take on Winx Club’s story.

Maybe even introduced new concepts and characters tat could have been just as iconic as the original ones.

It chose to be every reboot ever instead, made everything grimdark and fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of “Gray Morality”.

Do yourself a favor and re-watch the original instead.

It’ll be a much better use of your time.

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: After 13 Years, Indie RPG Masterpiece Ruina is Finally Available in English

All screenshots of Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins taken by author

  This article was made possible through the invaluable contributions of translators Dink and bool, and further aided by context generously provided by writer, translator, and RPG Maker scene dweller Kastel (@kastelwrites). Sections from their answers were excerpted for this piece and edited for clarity and content.

  Last year, at the start of the pandemic, a lapsed member of the RPG Maker community known as Dink stumbled across a screenshot while trawling Japanese free game websites: a black obelisk standing in the midst of ruins. “This is going to make me sound like I've been huffing paint, but this image spoke to something quite visceral for me — like I'd been waiting to find this game. Something about the sepia tones, the light and shadows, the elegance of its very archetype. I knew I had to play it.” Dink had stumbled across Ruina: Haitou no Monogatari (Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins), one of the most acclaimed free RPGs ever made in Japan. Released in the antiquated RPG Maker 2000 engine in 2008 by developer Shoukichi Karekusa, it retains a strong cult following and has even been translated into Chinese. Yet unlike its RPG Maker siblings Yume Nikki and Ib, Ruina is practically unknown in English-speaking countries. Dink decided to change that.  “Once I realized that it had yet to be translated into English,” he said, “it was like I’d become possessed.”

  Ruina is unique. A role-playing game that takes direct influence from tabletop games and gamebooks, it boldly defies conventions established by classic console role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Rather than controlling the main character across a top-down map, the player slowly uncovers a hand-illustrated map of nodes. Survival in the dungeon requires the use of ropes, pickaxes, and oil for your lantern, resources that are all expendable. Your party members are valuable not only for their combat skills but for their out-of-combat abilities: thieving, sneaking, even swimming. Most of all, Ruina allows for choice and consequence, a phenomenon far more common in western RPGs than Japanese RPGs. Say you stumble across treasure in a dungeon, but are ambushed by thieves who want the treasure for themselves. Do you give the treasure to the thieves? Stand your ground? Or attack the thieves before they can do the same to you? Since your ability to save in the dungeon is heavily rationed, you may find yourself having to choose between restarting a save or living with the messy outcomes of your choices.

    There’s something to Ruina that grounds it in the Japanese RPG tradition, rather than a straightforward riff on Wizardry or Might & Magic. Those earlier games gave you several choices as to building your party, but little in the way of story or character. Ruina is a far more curated experience. On starting the game, you’re offered four “backgrounds” that align you with certain other characters, just one year before Dragon Age: Origins would pull a similar trick. Rather than being given the full freedom to explore a sprawling world, your options are limited to navigating a single, contained dungeon. The characters available to be recruited into your party have defined personalities and quirks — some are already good friends of yours, others are insufferable, and still others have significant flaws that speak to the kind of person they are versus their gameplay function. These are NPCs out of the Baldur’s Gate school, given the illusion of life, rather than the team of personalized murderers you’d recruit in an Etrian Odyssey game.

  Very little else in the Japanese games scene is like Ruina. You could draw comparisons with games like Unlimited Saga and Scarlet Grace, representing the legacy of controversial SQUARE ENIX auteur Akitoshi Kawazu. You could similarly connect Ruina with Yasumi Matsuda’s experimental Crimson Shroud, which takes influence from tabletop to the point that it has the player rolling dice in-game. But Ruina is more accessible and polished than a Kawazu game, and far more fleshed out than Crimson Shroud. Even Etrian Odyssey, with its comparatively barebones story and characters, doesn’t quite compare. Ruina stands alone in the Japanese free games community, a legendary title that people respect but don’t fully understand how to replicate.

    A few days ago I reached out to Kastel, an academic, writer, and translator who is very familiar with Japan’s RPG Maker scene, about where Ruina fit in Japan’s wider field of indie games. “I know many people in the furige (free game) scene who love the game to death,” they said. “But they also found it to be a hard sell due to its unique, almost western take on the scene. The fact that the game is even this popular speaks to something.” Despite its crunchy mechanics and niche inspirations, the game is popular enough to have spawned light novels, an honor not unique to it (other RPG Maker games have accomplished the same) but certainly significant. Kastel drew a comparison between Ruina and Darkest Dungeon, another weird and uncompromising game that draws from both Japanese and western RPGs. “Ruina is sorta different from everything, but you also see dungeon crawlers get inspired by it,” they said. “Not all games take direct inspiration, but you can’t help but see a little bit of Ruina here and there.”

  So why did it take so long for anybody to translate Ruina? Dink isn’t the only person to try his hand at translating it into English; just last fall, another forum dweller placed an ad recruiting a translation team to tackle the game. The unfortunate reality is that translating text within the RPG Maker engine into English requires intensive and repetitive labor. “There’ve been tools developed by vgperson [a prominent translator of RPG Maker games] for RPG Maker 2000 and some other machine translation tools for newer games, but they all remain difficult to use for translators,” Kastel says. “The way games are scripted uses events inside the map and developers rarely name them. So not only do you need to edit it via the appropriate RPG Maker engine, but you also need to go through each event contextless unless the creator actually notes things down.” So, the enterprising Ruina translator doesn’t just need to translate all the text in the game into English. It isn’t even a question of whether or not to manually edit the game’s many pictures and custom menus into English by hand. It’s the sheer difficulty of navigating between thousands of (often poorly labeled) events and variables in the RPG Maker engine, ensuring not to introduce any new bugs or errors in the process, while also finding the time to do all of the above.

    Dink was assisted by a friend of his named bool, who played through the game alongside the translation process and gave invaluable advice and fixes. “Uncovering the mystery in the game's story sort of ran parallel with the translation of the game itself,” bool says. “As the story progressed, the characters would decipher and learn more about the lore of the eponymous ruins within the game, and as the translation progressed, the same held true for us. It really captivated me to be a part of this process, and I started to look forward to each new area that I could explore and each new morsel of the story I could understand.”

  Without bool’s efforts, it might have taken far longer to put together something workable. As it was, it took four exhausting months. “I worked long hours — 12+ hours a day, 6, sometimes 7 days a week on top of my day job — and very rarely used my free time on anything else,” Dink says. “I did manually input the text in RPG Maker 2000, which has raised some eyebrows because there are some very nice tools available for game translation that would have saved me a lot of time. However, a huge advantage of working directly in the editor is being able to see the game more or less as it appears to players. A Notepad file streamlines the basic translation process, but it also heavily obscures context, whereas the editor allows you to see what switches and variables are being used, what music is being played, and sometimes even helpful creator comments, all in the same relative order you'd experience it from within the game.” Dink had one more secret weapon up his sleeve: the experience of working with the RPG Maker engine as an adolescent. RPG Maker has a reputation of being a tool designed to churn out Dragon Quest clones with ease; but nobody knows the intense difficulty of forcing the engine to do something, anything, like a former RPG Maker developer does. 

    The English version of Ruina, as it currently exists, is a workable but inevitably compromised version of the game. Running the game requires installing the Japanese RTP pack of visual and audio resources for RPG Maker to function, along with the use of the EasyRPG player to provide English-language player name entry. There’s the matter of the custom menus, as well. Several of the menus have been replaced with functional English equivalents, but by Dink's own admission they could use an expert's attention to better compare to the original. Other pictures, such as place name displays, have yet to be replaced by English-language equivalents at all. And the strict character limits of RPG Maker 2000 led to some creative truncating when translating from Japanese to English, especially with item and skill descriptions.

  But the existence of an English-language Ruina, one that renders the whole game playable from beginning to end with a readable script, is a miracle. Speaking for myself, I started the long process of learning Japanese two years ago in part so that I could one day play this game, never expecting there might one day be an alternative. Others in the Japanese RPG Maker scene, knowing the brutal difficulty of translating a game made in the earlier engines, were shocked that a game of Ruina’s complexity and length was successfully translated at all.  Speaking for themselves, Dink and bool insist that their own story doesn’t matter much. What matters is the quality of the original game and the hard work developer Shoukichi Karekusa put into its creation. Anything else is an addendum, another version of the game that — while it cannot ever be the original — might at least make something resembling that original experience accessible to others.

    Frankly speaking, I think there’s something to that. The “true” version of Ruina will always exist in its original form, released for free by Karekusa in 2008. It stands as the defining work of a creator who sought to create a unique experience combining the appeal of console and tabletop roleplaying games, with no concessions to market sensibilities. A creator who not only released their baby on the internet for free, but insisted that a game like Ruina must always and ever be free. An austere monolith, it stands side by side with Yume Nikki, Ib, and even Cave Story as one of the great works to come out of Japan’s independent scene. Now any English speaker can pick up and play this new version of Ruina, and learn what that monolith is and where it leads to.

  You can download the English translation of Ruina here. For those who want to learn more about the Japanese RPG Maker scene, I recommend checking out Kastel’s page here.

  Are you a Ruina fan? Let us know in the comments! 

    Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he is not working through exercises in Wanikani, he sporadically contributes with a loose group of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at:@wendeego

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

By: Adam Wescott

[cosmicclownboy]

I haven’t written a complete fic in months I’m rusty and not the greatest so please be gentle with me :)

Day 1 of Malex week: meet ugly based a little off this.

[my old dealer is moving to be with his boyfriend, so he hooks me up with you and you refuse to sell to me because I cut in front of you in line one time YEARS ago and I’m not even sure that it was me. this is ridiculous]

Michael just wants to get fucking stoned. He wants to lay in his stuffy beaten truck blare the radio full pelt and forget the existence of everything human and alien. It's not too much to ask. It isn't. And yet the universe seems to get a hard-on for telling Michael Guerin no. His life is shaking a magic eight ball and getting the same result try next time. No, you can't have a foster family who loves you.No you can't go to college to become a renowned agricultural engineer because your foster parent took a hammer to your hand and your sister may or may not have murdered a group of girls. So yeah Michael wants to forget everything. And whilst sex or alcohol is just as appealing as a bag of weed his hands been seizing up again. So he quickly pings Eric.

Trust Eric to be in the fucking Bahama's. He didn't get a meetup time. Instead, he gets a screenshot picture of Eric with his boyfriend about to be blown in the bathtub grinning wide holding a peace sign. Great, he's doomed for a lousy night it seems. An hour later he gets another text from him.

Hope this isn't another sex pic and you can find someone in New Mexico who will give me what I need.

Ten minutes later he gets an address, a name and instructions.

Alex Manes.

He does all the instructions including knocking on the door in Morse code.It surprises him that he's outside a house.Usually meetups happen somewhere very different this seems to be very domestic.What he also doesn't expect is to find is a incredibly attractive beautiful dark haired man eye him up for two seconds hungrily and before he can even return the favour the door is slammed right back in his face. Oh god. What did he do? It's no secret to any inhabitants of Roswell that a drunk Michael tends to do questionable things. The last person he pissed off was because he drunkenly stripped off all his clothes and rode naked on a lawn tractor. But Max being Max helped settle it. He can't exactly walk into the Sheriff's office and ask bro to score him some pot. He'd end up back in a cell whilst Max quotes whatever literature he's found a new interest in.

"Trying to name drop Eric won't work. I don't help bus seat stealer’s".

Bus seat stealer?????  What is he in the fourth grade? "I don't remember stealing a bus seat"

"So you don't remember me getting up to pick up a toy for a crying child and stealing my seat all whilst smugly staring at my ass"

Crap he does remember that. He did spend a night or two thinking about that ass. The bisexual struggle was real.He knows from the hungry eyes he witnessed he could try to flirt his way out of it.And he knows he could apologise but he's tired he's driven for twenty minutes.Michael closes his eyes resting his head on the door his current salvation is pissed off.

"I don't have full motor function in my hand so I couldn’t hold onto the rail and I didn't want to end up on my ass. I hate the whole pity the disabled shtick so I didn't think to ask and there was a thunderstorm the day before"

"-and it fucks with the joints and muscles"

Bolts rattle for a minute before the door swings open and the man is ushering him in. And despite already being on thin ice he still watched the way Manes' jeans hugged his body.

There are a couple of things Michael could write on a list of certain things he would also never expect to find at a drug dealers house. He comes to find there are several things he needs to add to the list.

1.scented candles. 2.musical instruments 3.said drug dealer offering him a cup of tea before rolling up his pant leg and showing him his prosthetic leg 4.a connection he's never found before in any human other than Sanders

He leaves the place with two brownies and a phone number. And for the first time in a long time, Michael thinks the universe magic eight balled him a different answer. A better one.They text for two weeks and he learns very quickly that Alex is smart and witty and can stand toe to toe with him on a level that not even Max or Isobel can. The texts become shorter as his phone plan slaps him in the face with a reminder that he can't have the nice things he wants.He tells Alex thinking this is it.This good thing gone.But Alex just replies to text him a place instead to talk instead. 

They stare at the stars from his truck, it's strange how comfortable he feels sharing this with him. This is his safe place and maybe he wants to share that with this man.It’s been a week of feeling exposed in the best way possible.Waking up to Alex snoring and sleep talking was for sure a highlight.

"You aren't what I expected" "How so?" He can't help but laugh. He really doesn't see it. "Your like the kindest drug dealer I've ever met. Eric is an asshole" This time Alex throws his head back laughing before slowly brushing a curl behind his ear. "Eric is definitely an asshole sending a stranger to his exes house for weed is a new one"

Wait a second.

"You're not a drug dealer are you?"

Alex shakes his head. He's doesn't know whether to kill Eric or thank him.

"Can I borrow your phone? there's a picture I really would like to send him but first, we've got to find a bathtub".

[aqvarius]

With people comparing Namba and Matsunaga (both older, both have an ex which feels redundant plot wise, and having moments of being laid back but also stern), which of the two do you think is the better?(Though I'm not sure if rmd will go beyond the 2nd epilogue since all the backlash from LC and we'll probably never see any more character development from each guy)

hmmmMMMM okay so i still have thoughts about the future of rmd (which i’m still working on slowly to try and get all my Thoughts in order) pending for another ask BUT i actually still haven’t read namba’s adversaries so i feel like i can maybe make a decent comparison without namba having too much advantage

so matsunaga and namba are REALLY similar. the sad thing is that matsunaga’s history with his ex should tie into the plot but it really doesn’t (or rather the link between ex and the plot comes out of literally nowhere) unless you’ve read all the right heart scenes (i’m just presuming this, it might also come out of nowhere even if you’ve read all the heart scenes and also i don’t know which ones exactly bc i didn’t wanna spend any hearts on this route lol). 

CUT FOR BIG SPOILERS

i do actually think that matsunaga’s route had more potential to weave in some more complex themes but ultimately ended up being a bit more basic(?) in terms of its core message. while yes, it is groundbreaking for voltage for them to write a bi love interest, i felt the way they tackled sexuality in this route wasn’t the most thoughtful. i mean, for the patient to basically go nuts (honestly don’t even remember his name bc this route made so little impact on me and i didn’t enjoy it enough to save screenshots lol) and murder his ex because he chose to preserve his public image as a celebrity and date a woman just felt like (1) not the most thoughtful character construction for a non-straight character and (2) just a way to (dare i say tokenistically) shoehorn in matsunaga’s sexuality without making it a genuinely impactful part of his personality and the development of his relationship with the mc. 

for one, i have to reiterate that it really did come out of nowhere. most of the route focussed on matsunaga’s health issues (frankly unnecessary imo). for me it felt like the health issue thing was a way for matsunaga’s backstory (particularly in relation to kasumi) to be written in, and then the thing with his ex was the way for his character to relate somewhat to a seemingly unrelated case (the actual medical/patient case aspect of the route), but they honestly threw that in so last minute and it was such a passing thing as well? like i feel like matsunaga’s route and his character were developed more from the whole downplaying his health issues thing than his sexuality. however, because the climax of the route was about the patient going berserk, they kind of were like let’s diffuse this situation with a dramatic reveal about matsunaga’s sexuality and that GENUINELY felt like all that was used for. like all of the “getting closer” moments were related to his health issues or hanging out the pomeranian lol. 

also honestly the ways in which both the patient and the female patient dealt with the singer’s death was exactly the same (i.e. wanting to die bc what’s the point in living if he’s no longer there) so i didn’t really see the point of there being two of them aside from setting up for a more dramatic ~gasp the singer was bi~ moment which in itself was just a setup for a more dramatic ~gasp matsunaga is bi~ moment right at the end. i also felt like they could have addressed the idea of fear of social discrimination in a more nuanced and thoughtful way? essentially i wasn’t a fan of the whole “he was afraid of being in a publicly gay relationship with me so i killed him bc he broke up with me to be with a woman” thing. and in my opinion, matsunaga contributed NOTHING to that entire theme aside from just saying “i had a boyfriend and we broke up for the same reasons except i didn’t become a murderer” which like........ you could have used this opportunity to actually explore the pain and difficulty of needing to hide your relationship because of social taboo or being discarded because your partner chose public image over you rather than just write this character off as a vengeful gay ex vs the good bi guy (matsunaga who just accepts injustices like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ que sera sera). i thought it would have been a stronger and more sophisticated story had they either focussed on either one theme or the other in this one route (health/life expectancy issues vs sexuality) instead of kind of having both be treated a little half-heartedly. the feeling i got was that the first step to getting closer (and i say this laughingly bc honestly the distance between them even after 30 chapters is GAPING) was the pomeranian and then the topic that gave their relationship a little more depth than “we’re just hanging out with your dog” was the revelation of his health issues. 

also the idea that people live on through your memories of them felt a little like... overdone/simple? or that it was lacking a more sophisticated engagement with the idea of death, legacy and memories. i’ve read school life shoujo manga that deals with that theme in a more interesting way. so for me, it felt a little ingenuine that it was treated by as a perspective or way of thinking about death that was like a mindblowing new way to look at life ahead, especially since the characters involved are in their 20s, not early teens. 

so anyway i think that matsunaga has potentially a deeper character? namba has more or less ‘healed’ or at least learnt to cope with his issues enough that you wouldn’t know anything is up but it’s clear that matsunaga still has a lot of personal issues to work through, so there was genuine potential to overcome some of that boss-subordinate power imbalance through having genuine connection between just humans or to develop him as a character whose prioritisation of others is maybe a flaw. i just think that they crammed so many things in that none of it really got addressed or developed properly lol.  

i will say that i find matsunaga is way less fun than namba? namba is more of a “my pace” kind of guy - he’s more random/eccentric which i enjoy. matsunaga’s persona is more just like a regular nice guy? you would NEVER find matsunaga just on the street in costume pretending to be a fortune teller for no reason but to give you random love advice? 

but on that same note, i definitely feel less chemistry between matsunaga and his mc compared to namba. maybe this is just bc i only read matsunaga’s normal ending in which she confesses and asks him out and he literally SAYS NO AND IT ENDS WITH HER GETTING REJECTED (and i’m p sure they still aren’t together even in the happy ending or the epilogue), but the whole time i feel like there was only ever a parent-child relationship between them. i never felt like matsunaga treated her any different than how he treats literally anyone else in the EICU. i actually think he treats kasumi the best out of everyone, including his mc. the weird thing is that rmd actually had way more time and potential - i mean they literally SET THE TWO CHARACTERS UP IN AN EXPLICITLY ROMANTIC CONTEXT and there was still NEGATIVE amounts of romantic chemistry??? HOW? namba and his mc literally were in a boss-subordinate dynamic the entire time and they still had more chemistry and genuine interpersonal connection without it feeling like the mc is a small pet vying for her owner’s attention the entire time while also somehow simultaneously trying to mother him? i’m not kidding when i say that namba and his mc are more fun in 10 chapters than matsunaga and his mc are in THIRTY.  

ALSO namba’s (consistent lol) berating of his mc makes sense with his character and the context and is justified every time because his mc is a thoughtless noob (but one with potential that he sees his old self in). on the other hand, matsunaga has one moment when he scolds his mc for... some reason... but because she’s supposed to be this superstar student, she doesn’t really make the mistakes that allow her those learning opportunities. and then matsunaga basically just lets her do whatever she wants re: dealing with patients.  

oh and also the plot of namba’s route is better. 

in short, matsunaga’s route had potential but i feel like the missed potential and the lack of thoughtfulness in cramming in too many themes and not making the most of them are huge negative factors. namba has a more fun character, there is SO much more romantic chemistry between him and his mc, the plot is better and more interesting and has a twist without it feeling forced, namba’s comments about his age/their age gap make more sense for his character, his sprite is more attractive (lmaoooo), the relationship development is more organic, even the moments of rejection feel both more earned and heartbreaking. tl;dr: namba wins

ALSO sorry it took me so long to reply!! i’m still half in and out of tumblr 

[add-to-inventory]

Gav played: Hitman (2016)

The game: Hitman by IO Interactive

Score: I liked it rescored after further play: I loved it

With stealth games I always feel the need to say “well it’s not Dishonored.” It sure isn’t, but so few games are of that caliber.

You play as Agent 47, an assassin fulfilling contracts in a wide range of intricate settings. Most of them are glamorous, and the overall tone is very James Bond. Like, “my favorite mission involves taking down leaders of a spy ring at a Parisian fashion show” kind of glamor.

{Screenshot: or taking revenge on a rock star who got away with murder at an extravagant Bangkok hotel.}

The game’s biggest strength is that it is rich with possibilities. You can, if you like, follow through any of several suggested plans (called Opportunities), which are often themed and creative, or find your own lowercase-o opportunities to complete the mission. There are boring weapons, but also exploding golf balls! You can throw a crystal ball at an evil banker’s head, or serve expired tomato sauce in the lunch of a bioweapon designer so you can get him alone in a bathroom! Disguise yourself as a waiter, or soldier, or the yoga instructor slowly shifting a lesson to the edge of the deck so you can push a lawyer who specializes in acquitting gang members off the mountain!

There are lots of things to experiment with hidden around, and a very extensive in-game achievements system to both provide clues to and unlock more options to play with. It’s been several weeks since I technically finished the storyline, and I’m still having fun trying new things. I was disappointed to realize that the one thing I knew about this game before starting it (’you can assassinate people dressed in a plush flamingo costume”) is actually in Hitman 2, but oh well, there’s still plenty of clever surprises.

I prefer the depth of story in other games in the assassin subgenre, like the Dishonored and Assassin’s Creed series. Hitman still scores well with me: it has a funny and stylish approach, and I enjoy the amount of thought put into each mission. I do want to play 2 & 3 in the future!

What’s the game’s biggest weakness? I think I can sum it up by saying it caters too much to dudebros. Obviously a lot of video games do, especially swaggery adventure games, but I’m still going to criticize it because I have standards here at Add to Inventory. Agent 47 does not have a personality. Just...none. He is a blank mystery. Considering that the connective tissue between missions is a plot about his background, I really think I should have some sense of the character I’m spending hours controlling. Instead, there are a lot of empty signifiers of “coolness” and heterosexual appeal. 47′s handler, Diana Burnwood--who I have a clear liking of, with her humor-tinted voice regularly popping up--has a crush on him, and women npcs regularly remark that he looks good. Men among 47′s adversaries sometimes make threatening sexual remarks, and that’s homophobia, baby! I have no interest in whether it might be realistic, this is an over-the-top action movie of a game, and more people like those than homophobes.

Also, my least favorite map (an apricot farm being used as a militia base in Colorado) made me listen to two guys arguing about Donald Trump.

Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles are smooth and helpful, letting me latch on to overheard details as well as foreground dialogue. They don’t identify the speaker, which would be better for d/Deaf players. (I can hear and recognize voices most of the time, and followed along with no trouble.) The text is slightly smaller than I prefer, but an overall good experience.

Try it if you like: James Bond, you really want the modern parts of Assassin’s Creed to slap as hard as the historical parts, the invisibility afforded by wearing a uniform, morally disinterested protagonists, high replay value, extremely interactable and influenceable environments, being empowered to and rewarded for experimenting.

Update: After more replaying of missions, my enjoyment of this game has grown, and I’ve bumped it up to “I love it.” There’s just...a lot more texture, humor, and inventiveness to discover than I had realized when I first reviewed the game, and I find the developers’ dedication to making each map a fully realized and alive world, with mini stories playing out and surprises smartly integrated. I really want to play the sequels now!