#choosing to believe they came up with a terrible nonsense plot and were like FUCK

[kneworder]

teen wolf is at its heart a show about teenagers turning into horrible monsters. their awareness of this fact alternates every other season. neatly sidestepped the constantly oneupping their villains until they have to fight god problem that so many teen dramas fell for by just doing the same thing every single season and getting away with it.

[m-y-fandoms]

COMMISSION: Kokichi Ouma x Female Reader - Love-Hate Relationship

Thank you to my patron/client! Kokichi is always fun to write

Summary: Kokichi starts to fall for the only person in the killing game who likes him. His best friend is always on his side and has true feelings for him both platonically and romantically, but will he ruin everything with his harsh words and lies?

Friends to Enemies back to Friends to Lovers LMAO - ANGST and FLUFF

Warnings: Vulgar Language, otherwise SFW - Admin Myah

Word Count: 5.1K words 

When it all began, people didn’t like Kokichi. (Y/N) found this little fact out quite quickly. It was quite obvious. He was loud, and obnoxious, and stubborn, and whiny, and a great many other negative adjectives one would use to describe, say… an elementary school student.

 But! … he was also a great many other amazingly fantastical things, such as cunning, intelligent, hilarious, perceptive, adorable. These were the things (Y/N) saw in him, these and a lot more endearing qualities, these things the others seemingly refused to see in him. Even the more intelligent and reasonable of her peers, such as the intuitive detective Shuichi Saihara or the studied anthropologist Korekiyo Shinguuji could admit Kokichi was intelligent, but not much else. (Y/N) didn’t understand it. She truly didn’t think Kokichi was all that awful. Why weren’t they seeing what she saw? From the moment they all arose, groggy and confused in that eerie gymnasium together she knew he would be something special, someone to watch. She had a gift for reading people like that: their souls, their intentions, their true talents.

 The two of them, in time, had even started to become friends where he had none, and she essentially became his only link to the rest of the students. It would often go something like this: 

 Kokichi would reveal something critical, something hidden or potentially deadly that they all must know.

Kokichi, being the stubborn ass that he was, would lie about the details, or the information altogether, switching facts around and embellishing the story with fictional bits and bites.

The other Ultimates would ignore him, call him a liar, engage in some petty squabble.

(Y/N) would vouch for the little lord of lying, and the group would reluctantly scrounge up enough good faith to believe the pair.

 In times like those, (Y/N) would often chastise the tiny tyrant, forever asking him why he couldn’t just play nice and help the group out of the kindness of his heart?

 There was always some nonsensical, facetious, nonchalant response.

 And without fail, the more outspoken students would try to talk some sense into (Y/N), asking her why she put up with him, why she even tried to get to know him, why she liked him.

 But it was no use, she was drawn to him, and there was no stopping or changing it. (Y/N) was always one to latch onto the people who piqued her interest, who plucked her heartstrings, be it romantically or platonically. She found herself enraptured by his mind at first, then his looks, then the way he spoke, and more specifically... the way he spoke to her. 

 Yes, despite what the others thought, she found herself always defending him, and then, she found herself falling for him.

 And he would never in his life admit it, but he was starting to fall for her, too. 

 When the killing game first started, the others thought of him as a brat, just a nuisance. They ignored him and at worst, they told him off like the annoying kid on the playground. Back then, she would still hang out with him, ignoring his teasing jabs or even jabbing back. He found himself surprised with her comebacks and playful insults at times. 

 She was always around, and would never abandon him, a fact he most definitely took advantage of, for when the first killing happened, when Rantaro was taken from them and the killing game transformed from a hypothetical danger into a very, very real one, people started doubting and turning on each other. At that moment, he also was transformed in their mind. He was no longer a brat, he was becoming a villain and potential threat. People were choosing sides, forming cliques, trios, duos, going solo, and so on. 

 And she was always on his side.

 When it came time for their terrified little class of ultimates to enter the trial grounds for the very first time, her podium was directly across from his, as if by fate. Kokichi didn’t believe too much in fate… but he didn’t mind getting a perfect view of her all trial long. He found out quickly that he may come to regret the placement, however, as it also gave her a perfect view of him, and she was no fool like the rest of them. She would watch his expressions, catch the smallest twitch of his lip or raise of his brow. Much like Shuichi, she was one of the only ones who could study his words and actions and weed out the lies… at least most of the time. She wasn’t afraid to call him out on it, and she knew the tone of his voice better than anyone else there. She was making it terribly difficult for him to confuse others, extend the trial, stir up some fun… and he liked that about her. Someone who could keep up with him was certainly not boring… and extremely attractive.

 Even with so many people against him, dismissing both his lies and truths, verbally attacking him, she would hear him out, and by the end of it all, the innocent got out alive. The thrilling and bone-chilling trial ended with a correct verdict. Without their teamwork, even with Shuichi’s genius, it may not have been so.

 With the first trial’s conclusion, Kokichi’d made up his mind to stop simply admiring her and actually get to enjoy that not-boring personality to the fullest. That’s the most he’d give her: that she wasn’t boring, unlike the rest of them. Grabbing her hand, he whisked her away to uncover the newest research labs that Monokuma’d allowed them access to. They inspected them all top to bottom, together as a team. They eventually would do this to every unlocked location in the academy, making short work of the campus while harassing each other, badgering and bantering, hurling insults the entire time. She was the only one he couldn’t exhaust. Just when he began to think it might be a tad bit more romantic to pull some punches for her sake, he discovered he didn’t have to. She’d punch back, and just as hard.

 In fact, he liked her so much, that when his poor classmates were subjected to the horrendous Insect Meet-and-Greet event, she was personally invited by Ouma himself, and not hauled over Gonta’s gentlemanly shoulders and carried, or worse, knocked the fuck out only to wake up surrounded by bugs.

 “How charming,” she teased, rolling her eyes as he stood in the frame of her dorm room’s door.

 “Yeah, you should feel pretty special! I wasted precious energy coming down here to ask you to come!” He exhaled loudly, far too proud of himself.

 “Well, as much as I’d love to be covered in roaches and piss myself when beetles attempt to crawl into every orifice on my body, I can’t. Again, love to, truly, but-”

 “Awwww! But we hang out every night! And you’re lying! You’re never busy you dirty, rotten, lying loser! Who else hangs out with you beside me?! What else do you have to do if it doesn’t involve me? Your life’s a yawn unless I plan your daily itinerary!” He huffed, crossing his arms with a small stomp of one foot. “Gosh, I hate liars!” He pouted.

 “Pout all you want, I’m not going to your bug fest. I hate bugs.”

 “Wait ‘til Gonta hears about your very controversial opinion!” Kokichi gasped, feigning absolute shock.

 “You wouldn’t...” her eyes widened, knowing instantly that she’d fucked up. He didn’t reply, but simply smirked, an evil, plotting, crooked grin creeping across his visage. She sighed deeply, head hanging in defeat.

 “Be my date?” He held out a hand, wiggling his fingers temptingly. Her head shot up, an uncomfortable, flustered warmth running through her cheeks and to the tips of her ears. He caught this immediately, as he caught most changes in the air, and his face twisted into an equally awkward expression for a split second before his brow furrowed and he snarled. “Hurry the fuck up, shithead! You know what I meant! Let’s go or I’m having Tarzan put your ass to sleep!” He spat, and she simply giggled, grabbing his hand before being pulled off.

 “Your date huh? I can’t think of anything I’d love more than some worms in my shoes.”

 ♡

 That morning when they awoke, Ryoma was gone, stolen away in what they assumed was either the night or the early morning. Kokichi was usually very much unfazed, desensitized to most shock and awe in life, but this time… it was different. He was upset, and visibly so, stomping around the crime scene like a child, brooding.

 It wasn’t the loss of a Ryoma, nor the gore and tragedy of the scene that had him so agitated, it was her reaction to it. (Y/N) wore her heart on her sleeve, and she wasn’t afraid to cry in front of others, so it was no surprise that she was in tears now. She’d cried over both Rantaro and Kaede’s deaths, but that was different. Kaede was a girl, and he didn’t care about (Y/N) enough back when Rantaro was killed to be jealous of her tears, but now… he was practically green.

 (Y/N) had actually been pretty close with Ryoma. Like she did with most people, she dug past Ryoma’s appearance and the story he wanted everyone to know, and what she found was a pretty amazing guy. She wasn’t as close to him as she was to Kokichi, but still…

 These weren’t tears of horror from seeing a dead body, or of witnessing a young person’s life cut short. They were tears of mourning the loss of a close friend, and Kokichi was positively boiling.

 By the time he’d managed to cool himself down while effectively hiding his meltdown from the rest of them, (Y/N) had wandered off to start the investigation and avenge her friend with Shuichi. Yeah no, that wasn’t going to happen. She was quickly swept away to start their own little search party. The two of them, the way it was supposed to be. Of course, he would never say all of these embarrassing thoughts aloud. He’d make up some stupid excuse for why she just had to come with him. But it wasn't personal, and he didn’t care about her.

 He didn’t

 He. Didn’t.

 Did he...?

 ♡

 When it came time for the second trial, Kokichi made sure to make fun of (Y/N), calling her a crybaby, mocking her “endless blubbering” and all the valuable time she wasted doing it. He tried desperately, now at war with his own heart and values, to convince himself she was nothing to him, that she was just another pea-brained opponent in this death game, that she was a source of entertainment at best, and nothing else.

 “Shut the fuck up, Miu, nobody wants to hear that gross shit! Cream your pants later!” (Y/N) spoke across the circle to the blonde exhibitionist with a scowl on her face. Miu, in response, shriveled and whined. Kokichi couldn’t help but crack a smile. That was one of the things he loved about (Y/N), how she put people in their place.

 What?! Shit, no! Not loved… I mean she was cool, but... not - his mind raced, trying to shake himself back to the place he wanted to be. Shit!

 The trial went on, and with every word she worsened the self-made conflict within him.

 “How could you say that Kaito?!” (Y/N) howled at the Ultimate Astronaut, who was taken aback by her anger. Kokichi, too, found himself taken aback. Kaito was the “good guy”, the macho action hero, the protagonist’s best friend. While many called Kaito names, dismissed his ridiculous ideas, and even told him he was plain stupid and wrong at times, no one ever truly challenged the trusted hero duo that was Shuichi and Kaito, and certainly not with such unbridled anger. “You must have no idea what it’s like to go through depression, to not see the point in living anymore! How dare you speak ill of Ryoma?! How dare you say he used to be your hero?!” She knew what it was like, those dark thoughts Ryoma must’ve been having for years.

 Kokichi watched her, like a spitfire, a firecracker. He forgot all about his decision to let her go, to stop interacting with her altogether after today, and couldn’t help being pulled in. They spent the rest of the trial working as they usually did: together, as a team. He spoke up more, and they teased each other, flirting harmlessly and carrying on.

 And the others were starting to notice…

 “Man, can’t you two save it for when you’re alone?! Damn! I can practically see you undressing each other with your eyes, bleh!” Miu gagged before letting out one of her infamous cackles. (Y/N)’s face ran hot, instinctively leaning back on her podium. Her bottom lip caught itself between her teeth, at a loss for words as she met Kokichi’s gaze.

 “Yeah right, as if! I’d love to be discussing with literally anyone else here but you guys all have the personality of dirty pond water…” Kokichi sighed defensively, looking at his nails as if Miu’s words meant nothing to him. 

 (Y/N) knew how he was, she knew harsh words and lies were his coping mechanism, but she couldn’t help the way her shoulders sunk.

 ♡

 Despite her hurting heart, when Kokichi - the shit-stirrer that he was - revealed Maki’s truth to the group after Kirumi’s execution, (Y/N) was the only one to throw herself between them, prying Maki’s hands from her best friend’s throat.

 “Fuck, now she’s out here tryna die for this asshole!” Miu crowed. “HA HA! They’re definitely fuckin’!” She held her stomach, practically in tears from her laughing fit.

“Shut up! Just shut up!” (Y/N) pushed past the crowd, tired of them, tired of the humiliation, tired of Kokichi, tired of all of it. She left the trial room, running all the way and not stopping until she was locked up in her room.

 After the public embarrassment and Kokichi’s heartless dismissal of their… complicated relationship, maybe….

Maybe now it was her turn to cut him off.

 ♡

Days passed and she refused to see him. She stayed locked up in her room at night and avoided him during the day, well... avoided him as best she could. Kokichi wasn’t one to be ignored if he didn’t want to be. He persisted, harassing and tracking her around, begging her to talk to him, to play, to prank others with him, to investigate the new research labs, but she simply pretended he wasn’t there. It hurt, it really hurt to shut him out, but to go on with him acting like she didn’t matter in public and then deciding she did in private hurt even worse. Her loyalty could only go so far. She wouldn’t allow him to mess with her heart any longer… or so she thought.

 ♡

Hours before the third trial was to commence, (Y/N) found herself outside of Korekiyo’s research lab when what looked like a walking corpse stumbled by. She cried out, running over to a dazed Kokichi, bumbling about light-headed and pale, with fresh blood running freely down his head.

 “Kokichi!” Her feelings be damned! She couldn’t just sit there and watch him suffer or worse. Who knew how much blood he’d already lost? Crazed with worry, she threw his arm over her shoulder, looking around frantically wondering why no one else had noticed him yet.

 The answer was simple: no one else cared. They probably had noticed and simply written him off. (Y/N) pouted, contemplating leaving him there… she was supposed to be mad at him.

 “Ohhhhh… gah! ...Damn you, Kokichi!” How did he keep doing this? How was he worming his evil little ass into her heart again and again?! She began dragging him down the stairs and toward the dorms. The investigation would have to wait.

“(Y-Y/N)...?” Kokichi mumbled in his ditzy state. “Hoo hoo! I thought we weren’t talkin’?!” He nearly tumbled from her arms, weak and wobbly.

 “Oh, shut up, asshole!” (Y/N) growled, nearing the dormitory area and pulling him into her room.

 ♡

 “Man, that sucked!” Kokichi sat leaned against the glass of the sliding shower door in the small personal offshoot bathroom attached to her small dorm room. A cold washcloth sat covering his forehead, wetting the messy strands of his long bangs.

 “Tell me again why you didn’t just call for help once you realized how badly you were bleeding?” (Y/N) made small talk, wringing out the soiled rag she’d initially used to clean him off. He took a swig of some icy bottled water she’d provided and glowered, his bottom lip out in contemplation.

 “ ‘Cause I didn’t think anyone would come…” he spoke flatly, exhausted with the loss of blood and shittiness of it all. She froze, turning to him.

 “I’m sorry…” she sighed, replacing the washcloth on his head with some gauze that she started to gently wrap around the rather deep wound.

 “You should be! Hmpf!” He crossed his arms and she pulled on the gauze sharply, tightly constricting the oozing sore. “Shit!”

 “Don’t start, dickhead. You’re lucky I’m choosing to forgive you!” She chided. He shot her a dirty look, and for moments they sat in silence.

 “... For a moment I thought you hated me… like the rest of them,” he finally spoke up, any amount of silence torturous to his child-like psyche. She felt her heart sink.

 “... I could never.” She smiled softly, fighting off a nagging frown that threatened to present itself. Before he could make this even more awkward, she stood, taking control of the situation. “Okay, I’ll be right back, you stay right here. I don’t want you passing out again.” She took off, closing the bathroom door and sneaking away into the main room.

 Shuffling through her closet and by extension her Monokuma-provided wardrobe, she peeled off first her shirt then her uniform’s skirt, both now completely ruined by dark patches of Kokichi’s blood, her reward for carrying his sorry ass all the way here. Now in only her underwear, she reached for a replacement uniform and wandered over to her bedside table for her deodorant and some facial wipes. As she wiped the grime and sweat from the crevices of her oily face, the bathroom door slid open with an impatient force behind it.

 “I’m boooooooored-”

 “Ahh!” She screeched, rushing to cover herself up before she could even process what was happening, but the only things nearby were her comforter and intricate uniform.

 “Oh, God! Why are you naked?!” Kokichi hollered, his face turning beet red. (Y/N) pulled the comforter up and around her body, her uniform falling from the bed.

 “I told you to wait there!” Her cheeks felt engulfed in flames, the skin all over her body hot and her feathers effectively ruffled.

 “You didn’t say why! You didn’t say you were doing a strip show in here!” He retorted, covering his eyes with one arm, more for her to save face than out of his own desire.

 “Get out! Just get out!” She screamed, tears pricking her eyes.

 “But-!”

 “Now!!” Full of a genre of rage he almost never felt, he conceded, stomping out of her room without another word.

 (Y/N) fell to her bed, screaming into her pillow like nobody’s business. She felt ashamed, mortified, infuriated. Why, for once, couldn’t he just listen?! Her body was never something she was confident in or proud of, and now, to have him, the guy she had feelings for see her like that, and not only practically naked, but caught off guard… it was as more than she could handle.

 ♡

 The trial room was relatively quiet that afternoon. The usual suspects were chatting, defending themselves, accusing others. Shuichi was having a pretty smooth trial - a blessing in his eyes - with Kokichi not giving him an easier time than usual. When he did speak, it was his usual lies, with an underlying irritated tone, but he never spoke a word to (Y/N), and (Y/N) hardly spoke at all. After some time, someone addressed the elephant in the room… err, other than the murders, that is…

 “Soooo, uh…” Kaito, courageous as always, spoke out, “(Y/N), you awake over there? We could use some help to, you know, find the culprit so we don’t all bite it?” He was only somewhat gentle with his words, having already made up with her after the last trial’s argument, but anxious over the current situation. “Shuichi and I can’t handle this on our own! You usually have a lot to say!”

 “I resent that comment, Kaito, as I believe I help plenty, but yes,” Kiibo rolled his metallic eyes to the sky, ever focused on the current goal, “you do usually have more to say, (Y/N). We could really use another opinion here.”

 “Something wrong with (Y/N)?” Gonta, always concerned for his friends’ feelings inquired, brows furrowed in concern.

 “Hah!” Miu spat. “Of course something’s wrong! Haven't you noticed that little prick over there ain’t feedin’ us his bullshit nearly as much as neither?!” She pointed at Kokichi before placing a haughty hand on her hip. “He probably slipped her his little prick, and it was so tiny she was turned off for good! Probably can’t even speak, she’s so disappointed! Hella awkward!” She roared. Everyone exchanged the familiar looks of disgust or scorn that came after one of Miu’s outbursts, and as (Y/N) opened her mouth to defend them both, she was cut off.

 “More like the other way around!” Kokichi hurled Miu’s statements right back in her face, his knuckles crunching down on his podium with a vice-like grip. “After I saw her naked earlier, I was the one leaving with a softie!” He growled, his frustrations, self-loathing, and need to be in control and defend himself all culminating in these toxically destructive words.

 A few audible gasps were heard in the room, a few laughs from Monokuma and his remaining offspring, and the more mature students such as Maki and Shuichi simply sighing in exhaustion, wondering why they kept getting off track with useless information. (Y/N) felt her knees almost buckle.

 No. Not this time! She heard her mind shout at her heart, and she slammed her hands down on her podium, all embarrassment melting into pure rage.

“YOU- GOD!” An encore slam down onto the flat metal, “You FUCKING asshole! That’s not what happened you goddamn fucking LIAR, and you know it!” Her voice was hoarse with the force of it.

 “Uh oh! Struck a ner-” Miu began to speak.

 “You shut the fuck up!” (Y/N) pointed to the busty instigator before directing her venomous ire back at Kokichi, who refused to look her in the eyes. “I did everything to help you after your dumb ass fell through the fucking floor, and this is how I’m repaid?! I do everything with you and for you, and this is how you treat me?! Why do you always sit here and lie to these people about us?! Fucking shithead fucking-” she was struggling for words, holding back tears. “You tell them the truth, that I had your blood all over me from patching you up because no one else likes your sorry ass! Everyone else would’ve left you passed out on the floor or worse dead from blood loss or killed by the culprit who seems to be on a fucking spree!” She gestured wildly, talking with her hands. “You walked in on me changing my bloody clothes! It was your fault! Just like it’s your fault that you have one fr-” her voice broke, and she looked to her feet. “No friends. Fuck you… Shuichi just finish the fucking trial we all know who the culprit is.” She looked down the rest of the trial, saying nothing, hearing nothing, just a ringing in her ears.

 “This is reeeeeeal fuckin’ awkward and I hate it here,” Miu cooed, rubbing her hands together.

 ♡

 As soon as the trial was over, Kokichi, feeling the weight of his best friend’s words, searched high and low for her. The campus was huge with many places to hide, but he knew her well, and he knew her favorite spots. He checked the AV room, library, casino, her research lab, and her room first, then everywhere else, asking anyone he came across about her whereabouts.

“Dude you messed up, even by your standards,” Kaito demeaned with a righteous fist in the air.

“I think it’s completely reasonable that she would not want to speak with you,” Kiibo sighed.

“Kokichi, you probably really hurt her. Just let her be, that’s the right thing to do,” Shuichi offered guidance even to the worst of his peers any time he could.

“Why are you speaking to me?” Maki walked away.

♡

At long last, finding himself in the basement after wallowing around the school for a while, he opened the door to the AV room for some space and privacy, seeing as it was rarely used since Rantaro’s death. He gasped.

 “(Y/N)!” She turned from her position reading on the little couch, startled, and immediately turned back upon seeing the owner of the voice. He closed the door behind him, shuffling over with his tail between his legs. Quickly, before she could notice, he forced a rather convincing peppy voice. “The heck?! I already checked here!” She knew that. She’d been there earlier, and left when she heard he was making the rounds only to return later, but she didn’t say as much now. “Soooo? Whatcha readin’?” He grinned, plopping down on the floor beside her seated position on the couch. She didn’t respond, didn’t change her expression, and merely kept reading. “C’mon!!! Reading’s boring!!! Well,” he tapped his finger on his lip pensively “not always! But your taste in books is! Let’s at least go find some good shit to read together!” She had not the mental or physical energy, the want nor the need to banter with him. As far as she was concerned, this… whatever it was, was over. 

 Kokichi sighed, taking the hint to stop talking but not the hint to leave her the fuck alone. She would not physically kick him out, he knew this, and it seemed she wouldn’t do it verbally either. It was safer not to be alone, she rationalized in her mind… well, only if the group knew who was paired up and when, but he would never hurt her… physically. And she would never hurt him. And so, Kokichi resolved to sit there, just sit there and stare: at the ceiling, at her, at his thumbs. After the first thirty minutes he began to make pretend snow angels on the ground with his arms and legs flopping together and apart. He lapped around the room a few times, looked through the DVD options, sat with her on the couch, moved closer, then further, then closer, back and forth trying to get some reaction. Usually he could at least annoy someone into paying attention to him. Even negative attention was still attention. She was never like this with him. This was bad… he could feel his selfish little heart ache.

 An hour passed, and then another. She’d picked up a sketch pad she’d stored in the couch cushions, doodled, changed books, and now was reading again. He’d begun running his fingers up and down her thigh, making explosion and car noises when he hit her knee. And finally, he spoke.

 “You know, you’re super brave to be down here alone, you know... before I got here I mean… or at all really. Place is spooky… haunted since Rantaro got murked. No one comes down here but you. Surprised you’re down here… but I guess you always are.” He could feel the stone wall she’d put up between them. “You know, it kinda sucks, that we lost Rantaro…”

 “...and Ryoma, and Tenko, and Kirumi, Angie, Kiyo, Kaede…” she spoke up, irritated by his flippance. “Don’t forget them like they don’t matter.” He twiddled his thumbs in response.

 “At least you didn’t die…” he tapped on the back of the book you were reading, making the pages shake before her eyes.

 “Like you’d care if I did,” she replied without hesitation.

 “I woooooould,” he pulled at her sleeve like a toddler aching to be picked up.

 “I’m ugly. I’m fat and hideous and a turn off and just disgusting, right? So who cares if I die?” She spoke like she was reciting a grocery list: monotone, uninterested.

 “Well… I can still care about ugly people…” he batted his eyelashes innocently. The look she shot him told him she was not in the mode for jokes. “B-but, you’re not ugly! You’re way hotter than Maki or Miu or any other hag here! I just said all that stuff to catch Miu off guard! It was all a lie!” He was getting nervous now, sitting upright beside her on the couch.

 “That is not an apology,” she rebuked.

 “Aww come on, forgive me!” He collapsed, resting face down on her stomach and stretching his body out on the cushions behind him. “You’re my best friend…” His words were muffled, but she could make them out still. “You’re more than that…” her ears perked up, and she began to hear sniveling. Slowly, a wetness began to seep through her shirt onto her abdomen.

 Was he…?

 She placed a single hand on the back of his black locks and ran her fingers through the messy mop. The other placed the book on the floor then joined the other. For a few peaceful moments they sat silently while she stroked his scalp and played with the waves.

 “I’m sorry…” an apology came through his sniffles, but he would not lift his head up, never in a million years would someone see him cry genuine tears.

 “I can’t hear you,” she lied, something she learned from him. A devious smirk he could not see crossed her lips.

 “Yes you can!” Muffled frustration vibrated her tummy.

 “Well since I can’t hear you anyway this conversation is ov-”

 His head shot upward, a snarl crossing his red, moist, puffy face. He pulled his knees up, leaning forward with all his weight

And pressed his lips deeply into hers.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

A morbid thought hit me just now, how many romance sidequests do actually hold up? Like thinking on it I only love two of the six, and kinda like one. Over half of the romance sidequests have been duds! O__O

I don’t quite agree that they were all duds, but some of them were pretty bad, and others didn’t quite live up to expectations. Let me take a look-through: 

The Celestial Ball is probably my favorite overall, even to this day. It just holds up really well, and it doesn’t really have any problems that the other quests don’t have as well. (The recycled dialogue, for example.) I think the success of this one comes from the focus on the event, preparing and enjoying it with our friends. This one is the best TLSQ out of all of the others overall, but it’s not necessarily the best Dating TLSQ, if that makes any sense. Because it plays things more ambiguously. It stars Penny, but her inclusion makes sense for the character and the rest of the cast does get adequate screen-time. The only thing is that, once you’re at the Ball, you wind up spending most of the night with Penny except for one scene with your Love Interest. So it winds up feeling like you’re on a Date with Penny regardless of who you pick, but again, the lack of overt romantic themes make that easier to swallow. Andre being the Style Wizard is introduced here, and he comes up with three boss outfits. Not to mention, Rowan gets a bigger role, and their relationship with Ben comes into play. Bill x Rowan gets teasing, too! How could I not love this one?

The First Date TLSQ is much more steeped in romance. Not just in the sweet and wholesome moments, but also in the high school drama, alas. It was the quest to introduce cutting characters and it removed three of them, while only adding one in return. So it’s got that working against it. The whole premise of MC writing the note is just so damn silly. I can laugh at it, but it really doesn’t make sense, especially since half of the options aren’t even in their Potions class. Tonks and Charlie, for as much as I love them, really need to work on their social skills because guys, guys, guys. What were you thinking? Characters expressing sadness that you didn’t choose them is an interesting concept, I’m both relieved and a little disappointed that they never explored this more. The scene in the courtyard at night was nice enough to make everything else worth it, but the whole idea that MC’s love interest might not like them anymore is a bit hard to go along with. One final plus though, is that this quest has the best outfits to choose from, period. I know it’s subjective but damn, Andre really outdid himself this time.

Valentines Day I...oh boy. The culmination of so much I don’t like. This quest started the tradition of having all of the love interests needlessly confess to MC, taking up valuable time for a reveal that doesn’t matter if you don’t choose the character and makes things awkward...and also doesn’t matter if you do choose them because it removes all tension and  honestly? If the character is available, I already know they’re going to say yes. Penny acts like she’s drunk during the entire quest, and not in a charming way either. It really gets to the point of being out of character. And Gilderoy. Fucking. Lockhart. He is so annoying. Jam City got so caught up in featuring any canon character they could, that they never stopped to realize no one wanted to see this guy and watch him consume most of the screen time. He gets away with stealing MC’s story at the end, as well? Like, what? How? The Greenhouse scene is one of the most beautiful to be depicted thus far. It honestly makes the entire quest worth it...but it doesn’t save the quest, and I maintain that it comes out of nowhere. It’s a brilliant standalone scene...but it doesn’t make up for the final sin: Tulip is omitted for absolutely no given reason and as a major fan of hers, I am not happy about this. 

The Festival TLSQ: Better than First Date and Valentines I, but not as good as the Celestial Ball. The story is more fun, especially with the added feature of outside classes. I like the overall carnival feel of the event, but I kind of wish this game didn’t constantly centralize MC, Penny, and Merula. Especially in the dating quests, with the whole concept of the election. Why is MC on the ballot if they didn’t run? Why can they only vote for two of the potential love interests? I know it’s a personal thing and it really kind of started in Valentines, but Andre’s outfits appeal to me less and less as time goes on, and he’s making fewer of them. That being said, I much, much prefer the concept of a “Secret Admirer” to just having everyone confess to MC, and “I think about you gobs” still makes me laugh every time I hear it. Lockhart does show up again and his sequence absolutely frustrates me. Like, he doesn’t stay as long as he did the first time and we do get to kick his ass...but why would he even dare show his face again after the botched memory charm? Why is anyone even listening to him or letting him hog the spotlight? Why is he here? Damn it, just let me and my date play around with painting our faces! I whine, it’s true, but this one is still miles better than it’s predecessor. It adds new characters, quite a few of them, and it also stars Andre. He normally doesn’t get the spotlight, so these things really work to the quest’s favor. 

Valentines Day II: This one is far from being the best TLSQ we’ve ever had, but I actually do think that on the whole? It is the best Dating TLSQ we’ve had. It really captures the theme of falling in love, and the feeling of being a Valentines Day episode. The whole storyline about Pince and Filch? I really like that! The fairytale, storybook motif? It kinda really works! We once again have everyone outright confessing to MC, but I’m just gonna ignore it. The outfits look pretty damn good actually, but I am heartbroken that Luca can’t wear that skirt. Ah well, at least gals can wear the suit. The characters just work together well in this quest, there’s a sense of comradery in putting together the event and melting Pince’s frozen heart, right down to putting Filch in that hilarious outfit and dying Mrs. Norris pink. The whole plot being a reference to a rumor from the books is great. And yeah, MC’s date would have had absolutely no time to set up that whole set-piece in the library but what do I care? It was a really sweet moment. That’s just what works so well about this quest - it’s sweet. Between MC and their Date, between Filch and Pince...it was just a fun story to watch unfold, and at the end of it all, you get to celebrate with your love interest. 

Enchanted Kiss: This one had such a promising start. I love the whole concept of MC auditioning for a play, actually putting on a production, and being cast alongside their love interest to be the romantic leads. It’s not even a “dating” TLSQ technically since you don’t go on a date with your chosen character. But you get to choose them early on and ignore all of that confessing nonsense. You get to work toward putting on a play. You get to work toward saving it...but unfortunately, that’s when it all goes wrong. I’ve said my piece about why it was a terrible idea to make everything about MC, and that kind of infected the rest of the quest. There are no outfits for any of the dating options, nor does MC even get to choose between outfits this time. Little details like that combined with how quickly this one came out after the last one lead me to believe they were perhaps rushing to get it out and I don’t know why. They went to the trouble of coming up with that adorable animation for the enchanted kiss...and they couldn’t have put a lip kiss in it, at the very end? Come on Jam City, you know that’s what everyone really wants! It’s the same as how they tease the idea of MC and their Date saying “I love you” for the first time, but this doesn’t happen either. It just started so well and became very disappointing, but it was still fun overall. 

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Fated to Love You here reaffirming my long held conviction that no pure romance drama should be 20+ episodes.

This show is... really something. It is, in the fullest possible sense, A Lot. It starts out as an all-out screwball comedy wrapped around a troperiffic romance fluff plot. Wall to wall clichés, but not in a bad way; in a meta, self-aware, peak performance, finest Velveeta way. And if you’re not familiar with screwball comedy, think ‘light-hearted crack fic with slapstick and farce’. There is nothing believable or grounded about any aspect of it, it starts at Bonkers Level: Platinum and it only climbs higher as it goes on.

(On a side note, this results in the leading man being possibly the most memorable love interest in romcom history. His introduction scene is nothing short of batshit insane and you can't reliably predict how he will respond to anything. I have never seen a main character like this, he is all over the shop and utterly singular. Your first reaction to him is ‘wtf?’, your second and third reactions are ‘really?! this guy??’, your fourth reaction is ‘okay he do be mad hot tho’, your fifth and final reaction is ‘I cannot believe this performance exists, I have no idea what he is doing, but it is amazing.’

Appropriately(?) the actor who plays him is an uncanny Korean doppelgänger of Johnny Depp and- between the resemblance, the mannerisms, and the fearless total commitment to a bold as fuck acting choice with the very serious chops to back it up- I’m not convinced they aren’t half brothers separated at birth.

They do sabotage my happiness several times by starting to randomly style his (long, beautiful) hair very weird, fixing it right when the plot is rapidly circling the drain so he looks his hottest just as the show becomes briefly unwatchable, and then ruining him for the entire second half of the series by shearing it all off. WHY, my anguished cry goes up. Why do you do this?! Why does he have like seven hairstyles over the course of the show? Much later they even briefly give him that ubiquitous Kdrama Second Lead haircut with weirdly forward combed fringe in a solid straight line across the brow all the way back from the crown. It looks terrible on everyone and I hate it so much. This version was less bad than most but it is still bad. Anyway.)

So it’s an incredibly fun time to start but there are some problems with the tone and plot even in the first 9 episodes, including when the lovers start getting along really well right away and they’re both thoroughly decent people so there’s nothing keeping them from having a lovely time together making the best of the circumstances (forced/fake marriage). And, instead of introducing new conflict or advancing one of the dozen conflicts previously established and actually moving forward, there is a painfully contrived rehash of something they already dealt with which is then just never resolved. They make the hero leap to a conclusion his wife is nefarious after he’d already decided once that she isn’t (though it was completely reasonable for him to think she was- the fact that he decided to trust her so quickly just speaks to what kind of person he is), never try to find out more or talk to anyone about it, start pushing her away because of it, and have all this come to absolutely nothing. It only exists so he’ll stop being so incredibly nice to her and they won’t fall in love too fast.

You’d think they would have to eventually clear the air before the romance advances right? No. It wasn’t a real plot point, it was just a reset button to get them estranged and hostile again after they connect over their kindred spirits and we’ve spent a bunch of time showing how profoundly supportive and honourable our hero is. He’s being beautifully mature and selfless because he’s a really good dude (unusual for a romcom drama, right? for the main guy to be nice and considerate? to accept responsibility even if he doesn’t have to? Gun’s weird but he’s wonderful), but the writers need him to be cold and standoffish, so they just make him act like an unreasonable idiot for a while. He’s been thus far hugely proactive and direct and honest about everything, it’s one of his most prominent character traits, but suddenly he’s going to avoid confrontation in favour of being super passive aggressive?? Then the writers never solve it. Never! It just goes away. He got over it, I guess? He decided he doesn’t care if she’s a gold digger who deliberately trapped him? God forbid we have motivations that make sense and organic character drama, right? It's not like he didn't have totally valid reasons to be suspicious that could have led to legitimate conflict our heroine would struggle to vindicate herself from.

But anyway, apart from that kind of lazy bullshit, it’s a fine romance plot with extremely endearing characters who have great chemistry. They are fun and well-rounded and incredibly human despite all the silliness and OTT antics. Their relationship is hugely, hugely engaging and the dynamic is perfect, they really complement each other as characters and organically drive each other's arcs. There's the genuine depth and warmth and quiet pathos so often lacking from this kind of show. Things progress at a semi-reasonable pace. They work up to confessing their mutual feelings and get into some cute shenanigans before making out. It happens soon enough that you are not frustrated, but there's still plenty of build-up. Then- uh oh! We’re only 9 eps in and we have another 11 hours to fill with this fluffy plot!

Time for a bunch of absolute fucking nonsense. Time for our show, which has been so goofy and removed from reality it occasionally resembles a Monty Python skit, which has been so light it asks you to ignore the frankly incredibly fucked up implications of its premise for the sake of comedy (they were both drugged and proxy raped resulting in a pregnancy- the FL was a virgin prior to this and Gun had a girlfriend he wanted to propose to- and it was the FL’s family who did this to them: SUPER FUCKED UP), so farcical that it makes Some Like it Hot look like a gritty crime drama, that show to cover a bunch of serious heavy shit.

First, the rankest of melodrama. The families and the world all turn on our couple, but their love is true and will conquer all- UNTIL, he randomly collapses and gets convenient Soap Opera Amnesia. He’s forgotten their entire relationship and a series of coincidental pieces of misconstrued evidence, the machinations of his scheming ex girlfriend, the Soap Opera Doctor’s advice, and his closest confidants all going along with this conspire to make him believe (AGAIN) that his wife just wants his money.

This whole terrible episode is mercifully brief, but it just gets worse after his memory returns. This is where we get into the Noble Idiocy. The ‘pretend you don’t love them to “save them” from getting hurt by hurting them and making their important life decisions for them as if they don’t have a basic fucking right to decide that themselves’ kind. Which goes on for three FUCK years in the show. He wastes three years of their lives they could have spent together because he’s worried he might die young (in a terrible way) and doesn’t want to put her through that. And, of course, they inevitably get together later, so all he did was make it infinitely worse for her either way. To say nothing of how he thus couldn’t be there for her through the loss of their child. Possibly my most hated fucking trope of all time when done this way.

And, yep, you read that right. This show that has the single most batshit bonkers over the top slapstick I have ever seen in a kdrama, this show has a storyline where the fluffy romcom trope accidental pregnancy ends in massive trauma. Because she was standing around in the street after realising he does remember her (he continued to pretend he had amnesia after his memories came back, it’s all part of the stupid noble idiocy so I glossed over it) and gets hit by a car in the middle of their angst staring.

It is nearly Meet Joe Black levels of hilariously abrupt and incongruous.

so, blah blah, they lose their baby (there’s a very stupid whole thing about her telling everyone to save the baby instead of her- the baby is not far enough along for this to have been remotely viable. She is like 3 months pregnant. They all act like there’s a choice to be made between them and she’s mad at her husband for choosing to save her, but there was NO CHOICE. Either she lives or they both die! ffs I’m so irritated about this) and then he dumps her ~for her own good~~ because he loves her too much to make her go through losing him? So she loses him sooner?? right after their baby died???

Why do people in these stories always think being betrayed and abandoned for no reason and being incredibly angry at someone you love while also not getting to be with them is somehow less painful than making the best of your life together and then losing them against their will? ‘I will make her hate me and then she won’t be sad we broke up/I died!!!!’ is such a fucking galaxy brain take and I despise it with the heat of ten thousand suns. Fuck you, Spider-Man. You aren’t protecting anyone, the villains still know you love MJ and will still use her against you, you clod. Emotionally torturing the person you love is not going to make them not a target because the villains are not as fucking stupid as you two. Anyway.

Amnesia was right where I started fast-forwarding and skipping around (because I couldn’t bear it), but it only goes downhill from there. Maybe I would have toughed out more of the wretched middle part plot twist if they hadn’t cut all the hot guy’s hair off. If I’m going to watch total nonsense tedious melodrama, I need it to at least be pretty. I understand it was a Symbolic Haircut but damnit! Let me have this!

And it ultimately does the thing that kdramas seem obsessed with and which makes me want to claw out my own eyeballs with frustration. There’s a giant time skip, the female lead gets a personality transplant, all narrative momentum is lost, and the characters who eventually (at ENORMOUS length) get together permanently are essentially completely different characters with a completely different dynamic than the couple you were shipping for 90% of the story. It is so FUCKING unsatisfying and it is EVERYWHERE.

Not so much with this one because this one still had a lot of very romantic scenes late in the game, but most that do this, it’s also like all the romance is sucked out of the post-time skip episodes and the ending is a consolation prize instead of a triumphant culmination. Inevitably, the heroine abruptly cools off and is suddenly wary of the hero and wants this Important New Career she never mentioned until the penultimate episode but is now her one true life’s dream. What the apparently irresistible appeal is of these contrived separations and demure conclusions is I CANNOT FATHOM. I’m here for the fucking romance guys, you have not made Citizen Kane, please just indulge me with a big schmoopy finale.

And if not that, it’s frequently that there’s been so many random mood swings and so much shitty behaviour by the end that the relationship doesn’t make sense and you don’t know why they even bother to get back together.

I’m not inherently against all misunderstandings (they are the bread and butter of low stakes romance let’s be real) or attempts at noble idiocy from misguided characters, but the duration and seriousness of the drama these generate needs to be in proportion to how ridiculous they are. If your entire plot can be solved by a thirty second conversation there is NO REASON not to have and the continuation of the misunderstanding is a result of someone just NOT SPEAKING UP when any functional human being would have spoken up seven times by now IT’S BAD.

Do little cliff-hangers, whatever, but don’t draaaaagg out silly misconceptions into Shakespearean tragedy, it’s just wearying. It makes me hate the characters for acting like emotionally constipated toddlers with terminal stupidity. If there is so little trust, so little understanding, and so little basic patience between these people, they probably shouldn’t be dating, so try fucking harder, writers. And noble idiocy that is more than an impulse they fairly quickly see the error of is just insulting. You are not helping the other person, you are being domineering and selfish. I have a whole complex about wasting time and seeing endless parades of characters flushing years down the toilet for literally no reason gives me hives. Especially when the whole issue is about time!

(And, btw, so much of the plot is about how desperately the family needs an heir and everyone still wanting them to have kids the second time they get together- while the ~dilemma used to keep them apart is a GENETIC DISEASE which could STRIKE AT ANY TIME. Do you SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WRITERS????? NO, I KNOW YOU DON’T. ommmmmmmmggggg that’s awful! So they’re just dooming more kids to Soap Opera Brain Disease? And maybe growing up without a father just as Gun did? And no one even considers suggesting adoption??? He never considers that he shouldn’t have biological children despite thinking he shouldn’t have a wife?)

ANYWAY. Please do watch the first nine episodes and the last three, it’s bananas. They are cute as fuck, Gun is The Best, and the tropey romance scenes are top quality. You don't get those things executed so well, it doesn't happen, so you need this in your life. The acting is of a calibre you never usually see in modern romcoms; these are people at the top of their game committing utterly and taking these characters completely seriously. In that way it is pure wish fulfilment for me as someone who loves romance and is almost always disappointed by popular romance media, and thus the show is incalculably special. But skip the middle. Just skip it. It's not worth the suffering. I find the tone whiplash honestly just this side of crass.

I’ve been thinking about it for over a week and I truly love the main characters so it did plenty right, but I just cannot with wedding the two things this show is trying to be together, especially when it goes so hard in two mutually exclusive directions. but also the Meet Joe Black sudden car accident device is not redeemable under any circumstances. Can we never do that again, please.

[lynxgriffin]

Led Zeppelin was right all along

It’s my FINAL PIECE of KH3 commentary! That’s right, I’ve finished the game! Commentary for me finishing it is under the cut!

Okay guys, this is it

It’s time to finish this sucker

It’s time for all of my feelings to get curbstomped and then cracked in half over a knee

Turns out I’ve caught a cold so this might be tougher to do

But I’m still going to do it

AWAY. WE. GOOOOO

And after beating this gummi boss again…

Ahhh there he is at last

The old fart

…So weird that it’s not Leonard Nimoy though

Xehanort: Let’s just try out this whole apocalypse thing and see how it goes

It’s rainin’ Heartless, hallelujah

LMAO there isn’t even an enemy counter, it’s just:

ENEMIES. YES, ALL OF THEM. ALL THE TIME. FOREVER

And I just blew up ten million Heartless with a train, THIS IS THE SHINIEST APOCALYPSE EVER

Ohh, once again, hate that tunnel

IT’S A TRAP

At least Aqua didn’t fall for that

Oh dang he’s got No Name there

NOOOO SUNSHINE BOY

Oh well now that’s cheating

FUKYEAH GOOFY

Donald’s fukkin pissed

Did Donald just Megaflare this bitch

ArE yoU kiDDinG mE

Oh great, one of you again

Aqua: Never mind, that is way damn too many Heartless

HE SCREAM, AGAIN

SORA PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER WE’RE STILL EARLY IN FINAL BATTLE MODE

Well that was five different layers of OH SHIT

Oh hey back at that chess metaphor HI AGAIN YOUNG ERAQUS

Wait the hell kind of chess move was that

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE SALT FLATS

ThE FINAL WORLD, HUH

Chirithy!!!!

Chirithy: So yeah you’ve kinda died a couple times previously just by being unconscious a lot

Sora: YEAH WELL time to get back to life

Sora: THERE’S PUZZLES IN HEAVEN, TOO??

THERE’S PUZZLES IN HEAVEN YUP, BETTER GET TO THAT

Ohhhh no the sparkly stars are KHUX Keykids, aren’t they :(((

Ugh it’s the little star soul stories that are getting to me :(

Sora bein’ a pal even to all the souls in heaven, gosh darn

OH SURE JUST KEEP THAT FROM THE AUDIENCE

OMG this soul is longing for his kismesis, what a nerd

“What a weird place” YEAH NO SHIT

Well it’s nice to see THESE Soras are having a great time

Perhaps this game was taking the idea of Sorabits a tad too literally

Also actually two quick questions here:

1) Why is Chirithy in heaven?

2) Sora were you instagramming from heaven??

Sora: So heaven’s been a trip and all but I’ve still got endgame to do, STAY COOL FUZZY FRIEND

Wait a bloop it sent him back in time too??

Insert 2001 Space Odyssey reference here

Oh now we’re in DIFFERENT heaven??

Okay yeah now I have no clue where we’re going from here

Man here I was expecting to fight all the Norts and instead it’s…Heartless…Grim Reaper

I’m starting to suspect this is not the real Jiminy

This is kind of a weird callback to KH1, innit

Yeah I was just wondering that myself

Oh hey Youngnort

See? Grim Reaper Heartless, I knew it

I gotta say that after Sora dying and going to KH heaven this is…kinda weirder coming afterwards

I’m kind of worried about where this is going

This is like Three Days of the Condor, I TRUST NO ONE

WE FINALLY GOT A TITLE CRAWL???

WHELP. ROUND TWO, I GUESS

Guys, let’s…let’s not do this again

You ever get a sense of deja vu

OHOHOHOOOOO THIS IS DIFFERENT

“WHO ARE YOU??” “I’M YOU BUT STRONGER”

Terra: I’ll kick every ass! I’ll kick your ass! I’LL KICK MY OWN ASS

Gad damn the bullshit never stops around here, does it

We’ve done this before but I DUN CARE since this is my favorite boss battle music

Meanwhile the Unreal Engine’s just huffing and puffing trying to keep up

:O!!! EPHEMER!!

WHATRE U DOIN IN A HEARTLESS TORNADO

And all the dead Keykids came to help!

Ohhhhhh myyyyyyyyy goooooooooooosh

HAHA SO THAT’S HOW THEY INTEGRATED THOSE PEOPLE THAT WON THE THING

Congrats Keykids, U ARE ATTACKS

That’s…that’s really sweet actually

That’s a whole lot of Unicornis and Vulpes in there

OMG I was so busy watching those names I didn’t even realize I was supposed to avoid dying

FINALLY CURAGA???

I dunno Lea that was already a pretty big bad

Aw darn they Norted Repliku

Or wait no Pastku?

Pastku you’re such a little shit

Lea: That wasn’t blundering! That was failing, WITH STYLE

HE LOOM

Unreal Engine: Please…help…I’m dying Squirtle

Oh hey FINALLY super powerful magic users like Yen Sid get involved!

And Moses parted the Heartless Sea

And hey finally got Starlight!

Well ain’t this a familiar setup

I miss Leonard Nimoy :(

Well I’m glad we get to save and shop before we all die horribly!

….Wait haven’t we all already died horribly??

FINALLY We get to fight some Norts!!

Took out Xigbar first

Yeah Xigbar I’m really not sure all that hoohah was worth it

Are we gonna do this for each one or do we have to pick and choose?

Oh well that takes care of Pastku so maybe not

SKIRT RIKU VS SKIRT RIKU

Oh that’s creepy actually

OH NO! Repliku :(((

Sora…you just gonna leave that…okay

So now we got some Neophytes to deal with

Well I was gonna go after Mar first but I guess Luxord is our opponent now

AW DAMN I hated this part from before!

Oh wait that wasn’t hard at all you just look behind those stupid cards

Luxord: Well it’s been fun, time to die

Why does everyone’s teeth look blue??

Really liking all these remixes of the old boss themes tho

Aaaaand down goes Mar

And what’s nice is partners have mostly worn down the last Nort present!

Larx is an asshole to the very end

Door puzzles ohhhh nooooooo

Well thank goodness we worked out that nonsense

Who to help first? REDHEAD SQUAD

If that’s Xion I’m going to be SO UPSET

At least we get to fight WITH Kairi even if not as her

Lea is SO ANGER

Ohhhhh BUUUUUURN

Oh well that ain’t good

XION NOOOOOOOOOO

Absolutely not, Xemnas!!

*throws hands in the air* OHHHHHHHH

HE KNOWS

Oh fuck you Xemnas HDU

Ohhhhh sheeeeeeet

THE BOY IS BACK

JUST STAB ME IN THE HEART WITH THE OTHER PROMISE, OKAY

Called out by Roxas daaaayum

Gah dammit not again! STOP DOING KAIRI DIRTY

GET READY FOR: TRIPLE KEYKIDS ASSKICKIN

Hot damn but it’s satisfying to beat the crap out of Saix with Sora, Roxas and Xion all at once while The Other Promise just blasts in the background

Lea: I’m not mad I’m just disappointed

Awww maaaaaan

OH GOSH SEASALT TRIO HUG

THEY’RE ALL TOGETHER AGAIN SOB SOB

Now to the Wayfinder family! Took out Vanyeetas first!

Sora: Hey WTF that’s my face you got

Yeah I gotta agree I don’t know which part of that was okay honestly

WHELP no time to think on it gotta take out Terranort

Since we got back Roxas and Xion can we finally get Terra back??

Sora: TERRA PLEASE STOP, IT’S TOO WEIRD

OHHHHHHH!! OH OH OH

That was metal as all hell

YAAAAAAY

WAYFINDER FAMILY IS HERE

Ohhhh gooooosh

Everyone’s together and I’m full of rainbows

MAN so we got…three Norts left, don’t we

Guess the only way out of this is up

What we’ve just been cloning No Name the whole time??

Okay, FOUR left, we gotta deal with Ansem, Xemnas and Youngnort first

Oh sheesh that was Youngnort dying, thought it was me for a second

Youngnort: Just one last piece of cryptic bullshit to leave you with! BYYYYEEEE

Aaaand that’s Ansem down

Ansem: Must…pontificate more…before…I die

Haha took out Xemnas with flying rocket punch nanobots

Xemnas: Regrets…I’ve had a few…

But then again, too few to mention?

Sora: Life is pain, Xemnas! Anyone who says otherwise is Norting you

Oh boy oh boy, all we have left now is…the old fart…

Oh this is gonna piss me off good, ain’t it

YUP, I’M PISSED

YOU DONE HER DIRTY AGAIN

Nomura do we need to sit you down as a group and learn you some things about NOT DOING THAT

That was…kind of a cool moment I guess?? BUT I’M STILL MAD

Oh shitcakes

The world to come is death from above I guess

Donald and Goofy just coming in like “Hey…what’d we miss?”

I’m honestly really glad they’re here tho, TRINITY ALLLLL THE WAY

The whole gang here together again IRONING OUT THE PLOT POINTS

Trophy here???

OH HEY WE’RE BACK HERE

A town of nothing but Norts

OH I forgot THESE WEIRDOS were in trailers somehow

The hell is happening anymore

An Organization so nice we fought ‘em twice!

The scary music is playing but I have no clue where to goooo

Well it took me five minutes just to find the dang guys before Thundaga finished them off

Oh really now!

ONE MORE TITLE CRAWL FOR Y’ALL

HE WAS AN ANGRY GOAT WHO SAW THE MOVIE INCEPTION ALL ALONG

SHEESH that was a nutty battle that took awhile

Well I think I won THAT battle anyway

Is this gonna be a THAT WASN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM or what

More callbacks!

This is the fight that never eeeeends, yes it goes on and on my frieeeends

OH that was fuckin weird but COOL

I LOVE THE TRINITY

EVERYONE ELSE AGAIN TOO

HAHA OH DAMN

EVEN ERAQUS GETS TO REAPPEAR

Yaaay my favorite terrible dad

That look from Eraqus OMG

Babbeh Eraqus so cute

Now YOU get the goofy apocalypse weapon, Sora!

More dad reconciliations sob

Oh gosh I’m so glad we get this before we end

ohhhh noooo

Oh no you know shit’s serious when you enter a blocked scene

DOES EVERYONE FINALLY GET TO GO HOME NOW

Man everything’s just so shiny now

A CHIRITHY FOUND A VEN

NEW OUTFITS FOR SEASALT GANG FINALLY

THE EXPANDED SEASALT GANG

YAAAY NAMINE BACK

LET HER LIVE HER LIFE NOW

MOTHAFOCKIN BEACH PARTY FOR EVERYONE YES

FOR REALLY EVERYONE FOR REAL??

Also dang sing us out Utada

*points and points* THAT? FINAL SHOT???

WHERE’S THE BOY

What did you do to my son Nomura

LOOK IF YOU’RE GONNA POP HIM OUT LIKE THAT I AT LEAST WANT TO BE VALIDATED FOR MY THEORIES

THE CREDITS ARE ROLLING AND THERE’S STILL THINGS I FEEL LIKE I’M MISSING

Also just interjecting here but damn that endgame was so long IT FELT LIKE A WHOLE ‘NOTHER GAME

And now the pretty march music with the Super Longer Credits—I CAN’T BELIEVE DRAKE BELL WAS YOUNG ERAQUS

*points* WHY IS FURRY SQUAD VOICED HERE??

Well if nothing else gonna get me a kickass OST out of this

HERE we go, post credits stuff

Here’s the Furry Squad!

LUXU WAS XIGBAR WELL OKAY

What fresh bullshit is thiiiiiiis

OH HEY WE’D ALMOST FORGOTTEN ABOUT THEM

Hey where is Ava

Oh fuuuuuck yoooou Luxugbar

Whaaaaaaaat

THE BOY

SHIBUYA????????????

*throws hands in the air* I GOT NOTHIN FOLKS

I GOT ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN

THE END PAGE!!!! SURE AS HELL IS WHAT THAT IS

OKAY SO LIKE

PLEASE, HELP ME OUT HERE, SECRET ENDING

IS THE NEXT GAME JUST GONNA STRAIGHT UP BE VERUM REX?

NOPE THERE IS NOTHING MORE THAT’S JUST IT

WELL THAT WAS

A WHOLE DAMN LOT WASN’T IT

Nomura I am in fact going to die and go to your house and haunt it and push all of your things off shelves like a cat

ALL OF THE THINGS

OFF OF. YOUR SHELVES.

Okay so overall I did really enjoy the game but also I’m just ????

?????????

??????

Like my reaction is pretty much just

LATER NERDS THIS HAS BEEN LYNX SUFFERS THROUGH KINGDOM HEARTS 3

I HOPE YOU HAD FUN CAUSE I DID

I think I’m gonna go lie down now

[sieben9]

“save henry” impressions

I was warned, you know. Several people told me "you'll cry at that one", and since I know this show by now, I absolutely believed them.

Still insufficiently prepared!

There's a faint possibility that I walked around my home for a good five minutes, crying like a hungry baby, before I calmed down enough to sit down and write this. Happy tears, though, which is a nice change of pace after all the awfulness of "Think Lovely Thoughts". Also, I found the "get me a  baby!" line. It was everything I'd hoped for and then some.

More undignified wailing under the cut. Again. decidedly on the longer side.

Do you know that feeling when a piece of media has given you everything you'd hoped for in that story, everyone is safe and happy, and slowly getting over their various issues and you're deleriously happy, because yes, they made it! ...and then you realise there's still about a fifth of the book/comic/episode/movie left?

“I wanted to be a hero...”

Just leave me here to die, will ya?

Because if you don't, I recommend you rewatch this episode. It covers all the main points...

So, shockingly enough, this episode deals with parenthood in general, and motherhood specifically. And after Emma has been the leader in the search for Henry for most of the season, I'm really glad that this pivotal episode centred Regina's relationship with Henry, reminding us in no uncertain terms that she is his real mother, more than anyone else ever could be.

Did I mention that I cried? Because dear lord, did I cry.

Also, please stop locking this man up; I don't think his sanity deals well with it

Long story short: after the curse, Regina has everything she wanted, but it feels hollow. A talk with Archie later (thank you, I wasn't sure the show remembered that there was an actual therapist in town...), she decides to get a baby.

And it's love at first sight. Not an exaggeration. Look at that face. That baby never even had to lift a finger and she loves him already.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses, because Regina, properly brought up young lady that she was (well, "ish" on most of those, at any rate) has no clue how to care for a child and Henry wails almost constantly to the point where Regina thinks something is wrong with him. Not as in "he's weird", but as in "my child is sick, somebody help!" To make sure, she has Sidney find out who the birth mother is, and surprise! It's a girl who was found as a baby outside Storybrooke 18 years ago. And she tries to blame Gold for that. To be honest, it is a rather massive coincidence. I'd blame the shady man with the good suit, too.

By the way, much as this plot set out to finish off the few remaining bits of my heart, her rant here was hilarious, as was Gold's deadpan reaction, who (presumably) had no idea what she was talking about most of the time.

On a scale from 1 to "the ending of 2001, a space odyssey", how confused do you think this man is right now?

So, she decides to give Henry back, as to not endanger her revenge. ...yeah, that decision won't last the afternoon, I'm sure.

Meanwhile in the present day, Regina, Emma, and Snow find Pan by promising the Lost Boys a way home. It's a very sweet scene of Emma reaching out to these children, not "just" as a potential caretaker/mother figure, but very specifically as someone who's been where they are and found out that it really can get better. I feel like this was her answer to the "Lost Girl" episode. No, life isn't perfect, but it's so much better than it was. The family she found may not be what she imagined when she was a little girl, but she still has one, and she wants these children to have the same chance. It was a really good character scene, is what I'm saying.

Let me love you

Like I said, they find Pan, and Regina gets the other contender for "most terrifyingly badass declaration of parental love" on this show next to Rumple's screaming defiance in "The Return". (And no, I'm not going to choose. They're both awesome and scary, and that's my last word on this.) The fact that she apparently cannot regret any action that led her to Henry, even knowing that so many of her actions were reprehensible is... quite a powerful statement, to put it mildly.

I actually have some thoughts on the nature of regret here, but I also want to get done with this writeup sometime this decade, so maybe not right now. Short version: I think she does regret quite a lot, but when faced with the choice of bearing that regret or never having her son, she'd double down on the first one without as much as a second thought.

And then she rips Henry's heart out of Pan. Good. I hope it hurt.

They remember to grab the box on their way out -- good thing, too, I don't think Rumple would have liked to stay in a decaying and soon-to-be-dead Neverland -- and return to the ship, where Henry gets his heart back.

And I start crying again.

Back in the flashback for a moment, Regina is at the adoption agency (or whatever that is, I have no idea how adoption works), and ready to give Henry back, but she makes the mistake of, you know, being anywhere near him during the whole process. I was also deeply amused by the official who just happened to step outside for a moment when Regina looked like she had doubts. Very sneaky, but for a good cause, at least.

She keeps him, of course. No surprise.

Not only that, she makes herself forget what she knows about his birth mother, because she knows, she knows that she won't be able to raise him the way he deserves if she keeps worrying about the future. I mean... this is huge. She's had him for a couple of days at most, but she risks everything she's worked for (awful though it is, but that's a very different cup of marmelade) to make sure she can be a good mother to him.

Just... please support his head.

In the present day, there's happy times all around. Lost Boys get fed, Henry gets to hug his moms, Emma gets to hug her parents, Rumple gets out of the box and can finally reconcile with Neal.

Still crying, by the way. At this point, just assume that it was a constant background noise

Not only that, Neal says out loud what I was screaming at Pan last episode -- Rumple came back for him! Letting Bae go was the worst mistake of his life, and he never stopped regretting it. Huge big difference to Pan, there, thank you very much.

Even Regina and Tink get to share a sweet moment where Tink believes for juuuust long enough to activate the pixie dust.

But, of course, something has to go terribly wrong. Specifically: Pan isn't dead (of course not), and he tries to take Henry's heart again. (With a knife, no less, which is... darker than I'd have expected) And when that doesn't work (thanks, Regina), he tries to tear out Henry's shadow. I honestly don't know what his aim was there. Killing Henry was hardly going to help him, was it?

Rumple turns up to stop this nonsense, but apparently Pan can fucking body swap now!

Ah, screencaps...

I just... yeah. So now we have a pocket-Henry. Pocket-Henry in Pan's body, no less. And then Neal turns up and has a touching moment with his son or so he thinks, because everything is terrible now and why does nobody notice this?? (Yes, I know, Pan is a good actor and who goes to "body swap" as a first explanation? ...OK, yes, SciFi nerds, but never mind that.)

So, yeah. They're bringing a well-disguised and very alive Pan back to Storybrooke. There is no way that'll go wrong.

...::very long sigh::

Oh, one good thing, though: We’re finally getting out of the Neverland Light! Words cannot describe my relief.

Oh and finally an honourable mention to this little moment in the captain's quarters:

Not only was his "You raised him well" a good answer to the question Gold (somewhat indirectly) posed at the beginning -- will Regina be a good mother? -- but I also don't think Rumple is overly generous with compliments. There seems to be a weird sort of understanding between them in this moment, and I can't quite put it into words, but the closest I came is "We both made mistakes as parents, but at least we never stopped trying"

Which I think does count for something.

[theafrodeity]

Church Belles - Part 4

What a ridiculous place to have a beauty spot! Everything about her didn’t make sense but neither did the loud thumping in my chest every time I glanced at her. An afro comb was dangling from the wefts of her loosely coiled hair which had droplets of water from her shower, glinting as they caught the light from the fluorescent bulb above her. I prayed we wouldn’t lock eyes but if it were to happen, I wished it would last for an eternity. The kind of reluctance you felt before taking a shower on a cold evening, instantly disappearing as the warm water bounced off your skin, then keeping you hostage for an hour as you dreaded the assault of freezing air when you inevitably made your exit. Her eyes were so inviting, so generous. Her curls were so big that I could see her scalp and that beauty spot. She threw her head back, hit her desk and laughed till she snorted, the afro comb dangerously close to falling out of her hair. It made me furious to know that I wasn’t the object of her amusement. Instead it was fucking Sena! Sena who knew nothing about her, who had no idea that Carla liked to cock her head to the side whenever she didn’t believe a story. That she liked to take off her sandals and rub her feet together during difficult elective math tests. Clueless Sena, who had no respect for Catholicism but subscribed to whatever esoteric nonsense was in fashion each term. Sena lacked depth in my opinion yet she always seemed to captivate Carla with her schemes.

She was still talking in that obnoxious tone of hers, perhaps hatching another rule-breaking plot with my Carla. I had caught them sneaking food out of the dining hall earlier that evening but I couldn’t bring myself to give them yet another punishment. Carla was always good-natured about it and teased me for being such a stickler for the rules but I needed her to see another side of me. The kind that was fun and adventurous, not the uptight school prefect character who was always calling people out. The kind that was…in love with her! I looked around frantically to see if anyone had heard my thoughts. I didn’t even allow myself to think it. This is crazy. Looking back, I don’t know what drove me to rip out a page from my notebook and scribble down the word “Mrs. Jessica Jeho-Mensah” in cursive at that moment. Yet another thing that didn’t make any sense. Women didn’t marry other women! Especially ones that were on their way to joining the order of St. Francis.

“What are you busily writing?!” Carla asked leaning over my desk. Her supple breasts threatened to burst off the buttons of her night uniform as they strained against the edge of the table. But my eyes were immediately drawn to her vaselined cupid’s bow lips. Since lip balm had been outlawed at the school, students now resorted to slapping on wads of petroleum jelly on their lips to fight off the cracks inflicted by the dry Harmattan air. I imagined what hers would feel like against my much thinner wide lips. Instinctively, I ran my tongue over my lips suddenly feeling parched and self-conscious about their ashiness. How had I not seen her walking up to my desk? Before I could stop her, Carla snatched the piece of paper out of my hand.

I was seated at the teacher’s desk in the front of the class facing everyone else to make sure they didn’t get distracted during prep time. The desk sat atop a raised wooden structure resembling a stage of sorts. Behind me was a large piece of cardboard with the world DANGER scrawled in red, covering a bunch of tangled exposed electric wires which jutted out of the walls. It was as though the words were attempting to caution the class to stay silent, but were failing miserably. Perhaps a gallon of gasoline next to the wires would make the scene more intimidating and do the trick. Also hidden behind the cardboard were orange peels from students who were too lazy to put their rubbish in the trash bins behind the class. This was the dumpster fire of a scene in which I was about to be outed.  The devilish grin on Carla’s face began to wear off and transformed into bewilderment. Her eyes kept darting back and forth as she read the four words over and over again. Each passing second was torture.

“What is it? Is it apor[1]?” Sena’s squeaky inquisitive voice carried across the classroom.

“What else could it be? She’s writing names of talkatives.” Carla rolled her eyes in Sena’s direction. She twirled around to hand me back the piece of paper. My trembling hands had gotten cold and stiff from fear. Time stood still as she looked me dead in the eyes and…winked. “…and my name is on it.” That evoked a loud chuckle from Sena. “Oh, give us a break Jessica! Is mine there too?”

Mortified, I stood up abruptly and stormed out of the classroom, not waiting to hear Carla’s answer. Choosing instead to mask my embarrassment and fear with anger. This is so unlike me. If any one else heard about this I will be ruined, expelled with zero chance of becoming a nun and hiding away from these disgusting feelings. As I turned the corner to the dormitories, I could hear Carla’s footsteps behind me so I picked up the pace. Why on earth was she following me? Her footsteps were now in lockstep with mine so I turned around to confront her but she was already inches away and held me up against the old walls of St. Anne’s house, the crenulations digging into my back. We were no longer in earshot of the class; the only sounds were of crickets chirping and frogs croaking in the distance. “You weren’t going to leave without a kiss good night, were you?” she quipped, right before she planted a wet kiss on my lips. I thought my chest would explode from the sudden surge in my heart rate, rivaling the rhythm of atumpan[2] drums. Before I could regain my breath and compose myself from the shock, she was already skipping back to the classroom.

“Amina, don’t touch Sister Jessica’s things without asking!” Carla gently chastised her daughter, grabbing the little statue of the Virgin Mary from her tiny hands and planting it back on my impeccably organized desk. She smiled at me nervously and shuffled her feet. “She can already recognize a few words and counts up to a hundred.”

“Impressive! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I replied, offering back a reassuring smile and patting Amina on the head.

“Hahaha, who are we kidding? Carla was terrible at math.” Sena chimed in, earning herself a sharp jab in the side from Carla’s elbow.

“I so was not.” They both erupted in a fit of giggles.

“Regardless, I’ll give her a simple test to make sure we’re placing her at the appropriate reading level and setting her up for success.” I interrupted their playful banter which was already starting to irritate me. I’m not sure why Carla had chosen to bring Sena along. Clearly, Sena didn’t have anything interesting going on in her life and was tagging along as always. Who could blame her? I would follow Carla anywhere in that short sleeveless yellow flowery sundress. It was ruched from the sweetheart neckline all the way down to the cinched waist, hugging her bosom like a corset. The bottom half of the dress was cut in a flare, swishing around her with each step. When she crossed her legs, it revealed the side of her smooth hairless thighs. I reminisced about straddling those thighs and gyrating against them until I came.

From the moment they had walked in, I had completely ignored Sena but she did not seem at all bothered by it. Sena was dressed in the most boring skirt suit I had ever seen, making my habit look like a party dress in comparison. “So what are you up to these days, Sena? It’s been a while.” I asked out of a mixture of politeness, pity and defeat.

“I’ve been working on a bunch of interesting projects but nothing close to the important work you must be doing here. I have to say; this is exactly what I pictured you’d be doing when we were in school.”

I was losing my patience with Sena’s pointless sarcasm sometimes. She seemed utterly incapable of saying anything of substance or conveying anything that would interest her audience. “I see.” I said unable to keep the iciness from my tone. “We’ll be commissioning a new building for the new Senior High School block in six weeks but we ran into some issues regarding ownership. Does your firm handle land disputes?” I enquired by way of desperate conversation. We already had well renowned lawyers in our congregation who were handling the case pro bono but I didn’t want Sena’s presence in my office to appear to have been completely useless.

“My department doesn’t handle those types of cases but I can definitely recommend someone.”

“Swell. On that note, let’s begin the test. Amina come with me.” The next hour was spent asking Amina questions in the next room which she answered with enthusiasm and beamed with delight when I praised her for getting them right. Her final score was a few points below the qualifying mark but I couldn’t bring myself to fail her. Carla might never speak to me again. Besides, Amina was extremely adorable and seemed eager to learn.

“How did she do?” Carla asked anxiously when we returned.

“She’s ready for kindergarten!” I announced. That triggered a high-pitched shriek and hug from Carla, almost knocking me off my feet. Impulsively I held her back tightly, her body warm, toned and familiar in my arms. I cleared my throat and stepped back when I saw Sena’s mischievous smile out of the corner of my eye. What was she, twelve?

“You should come over for dinner tomorrow night. Amina, do you want Sister Jessica to visit us at home?” Amina nodded bashfully and vanished behind her mother. Sena was grinning from ear to ear at this point.

“That would be lovely. Sena, I suppose you’d be joining us as well?”

“Oh no! I’m sure you both have a lot of, ahem…. catching up to do.” I instantly regretted asking and fantasized about slapping the smug look off her face. Perhaps I wasn’t being fair to Sena. She was smarter than I gave her credit for and was more attractive in the traditional sense than Carla & I, although I found that look boring. She and I also had a lot in common, both unmarried and without children.  It was as though the whole world had been playing a game of musical chairs, and Sena and I had been left standing after the music had stopped. Me, because I refused to play a game that dictated which chairs I was allowed to sit on. And Sena, because she never quite got the rules or had been more interested in the music than the point of the game. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the realization that Carla’s invitation had set a new comic in motion. The monotonous routine that had insulated me from the harsh outside world had been disrupted. The spark I’d always felt for Carla now reignited into a raging fire.

[1] A set of questions from a test/exam that hadn’t yet been conducted

[2] Akan talking drums

[itsbenedict]

OH RIGHT YEAH I FINISHED PERSONA 5 ON SUNDAY

first i’m gonna say stuff that isn’t spoilers, and then after i’m done with that i’ll put spoilers under a cut. (at least, plot spoilers- there’s going to be details on the game in general, so if you haven’t played it yet and want to go in blind, hurry and scroll past this)

It’s good. It’s really very very good and improves on previous Persona games in... I think every possible dimension, except for how in this one every single female social link is romanceable, including the adults, including your teacher, um, hey??? Don’t???

Using personas as shadows was a really good move- the masked shadow designs from Persona 3 really fit that game’s aesthetic and had a whole unified design language, but they were sort of out of place in Persona 4 and would have been very out of place in P5. It was a savvy move both from a saving-on-art perspective, and from an aesthetic perspective- they were free to pick and choose from their huge library of persona designs to populate the palaces with thematically appropriate bad dudes. And, of course, as a fan of the series, it was fun going up against personas I’d used in previous games as enemies, and applying that knowledge to get an edge in combat.

The social stats system, where you have to grind up smarts and courage and charm and stuff in order to unlock things? Still terrible. Still a huge drag on the pacing and the game would have been way better without it. Hated it. But, it was slightly better than in P4, because social link activities often give you points in your social stats in addition to s.link points, so you don’t always have to choose between one or the other. Not that having the system at all wasn’t still bullshit, but it was ameliorated by some smart design decisions.

Speaking of social links- every single link, this time around, provides mechanical bonuses as you rank up. It’s not just a matter of, okay, I get an extra level on personas of this arcana- investing in social links provides a huge array of quality-of-life improvements. Getting extra time in the day, unlocking special moves in combat, letting you rearrange your party on the fly, improving your stealth in dungeons... it’s not just your immediate party members who are empowered by s.links.

Your crew is constantly having conversations in a group chat on your phone, and it really does a lot to make you feel connected to them- you have whole-group interactions on a daily basis, without having to meet up in person or have plot contrivances to justify it. That little touch (I say “little”, but it’s a big undertaking in terms of volume of writing) did a lot to make me care about the team as a whole.

EVERY PART OF THE GAME IS STYLISH AS FUCK AND THE MUSIC IS GREAT AND IT LOOKS AMAZING AND I WAS CONSTANTLY SUPER PSYCHED ALL THE TIME, THE HYPE IN THAT AREA WAS NOT A LIE, THAT’S ALL I NEED TO SAY ON THE MATTER

In general, it kind of made a show of departing from previous Personas, while really sticking pretty close to the formula overall. The main improvements were in the dungeon-crawling stuff- fixed-layout palaces with loads of cool setpieces and puzzles, stealth mechanics that made sneaking up on enemies engaging (except when the dang hiding spots restricted your camera for absolutely no good reason, dammit, i can literally reach out and touch this shadow’s toe and i can’t lock onto it from here??? fuck off), and cool faux-platforming sections.

anyway, PLOT SPOILERS (spoilers: the plot is good):

So, dang. The big thing that bugged me about Persona 4′s plot was “hey, so, you could at any time just go to the police, show them that you can go into TVs, and explain using the easily demonstrated evidence that the killer is using the magic TV world to do murders”. It made zero sense- particularly because the protagonist was living with a senior police detective. The usual “oh, they’ll never believe us” angle is nonsense in the face of how you can totally prove it no problem. 

Persona 5 neatly sidesteps this by putting the protagonist on probation, and making the core group a bunch of Phantom Thieves, and oh shit yeah actually making the cops the bad guys- so of course you keep all this stuff secret and don’t just let the authorities sort it out. YOU WOULD GO TO JAIL. (In fact, you do go to jail, as the flashback framing device points out early on.)

And speaking of this framing device: holy shit the clever plan for how you get out of that situation is genius. When the protagonist gets shot directly in the head and the bad guy checks the head wound to confirm that he is in fact dead? That looks pretty damn final until you remember that hey, realistic fake people are totally a thing and have been substantially involved in the plot this whole time, and of course if the police believe you’re in a cell then there’ll be a cognitive duplicate of you in the police’s cognition. There were so many layers to that plan that, in retrospect, didn’t seem like unrealistically risky gambits. No shit, it worked perfectly! It was a really fucking clever plan!

I’ll be honest: I didn’t exactly see Akechi coming. At first I saw him coming- like, okay, who’s going to be the traitor? We know there’s a traitor- I wonder if it’s the guy who we know works for the police, and has been trying to capture us? It was way too obvious, and so- while I kept him as my first guess, in acknowledgment of that obviousness, I was ready to pounce on any alternative explanation. (My secondary hypothesis was that I hadn’t been betrayed at all, and that the cell was in the Metaverse and the whole thing was a fiendishly elaborate setup. So, in a way, I was double right? While being, in fact, completely wrong.)

I caught the pancakes thing, but I didn’t put two and two together with his explanation- I knew he had to already be a persona user because of it, but when he confessed “I’m actually already a persona user”, I didn’t think too closely about the timeframe he presented- his claim that it had been recently, during our Okumura Foods heist. Or- well, I sort of considered that, but wrote it off as “maybe he misheard “cakes” as “pancakes” the same way Ann originally misheard “pancakes” as “cakes”. His thing on TV where everyone was blaming the Phantom Thieves, but he was like “actually, I think it might be someone else” threw me off the scent entirely.

(i also suspected Mishima, at least until i got further into his social link and he became less of a disaster area)

The Igor twist fucking ruled super hard. I thought it was kind of eerie that they introduced “Shadows are Personas, and they talk like people do, and are alive” at the same time as “hey, let’s do fusion with GRUESOME EXECUTIONS”, and I did think “wow, this doesn’t sound like how Igor should sound at ALL, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to it.” That said- I get that it would have taxed the art budget, but they really should have phased out the guillotines and gone back to the tarot card stuff once Lavenza and real!Igor came back into play. It was weird that they had the open door, but put an invisible wall in front of it, too- like, I guess they planned to revamp the Velvet room after that twist, but ran out of time?

The final fight was kind of eh. Big marathon against a god with multiple limbs and a lot of health, and then he kills you but your social links give you strength and your persona turns into a bigger cooler persona (although  and you win the fight good. Kinda boilerplate Persona final boss there- but not as disappointing as I assumed the final boss was going to be, because with Igor I ♪ never saw it comiiiiiing ♪ and thought Shido was the big bad, which would’ve been kind of anticlimactic. The whole bone bridges full of angels situation in the leadup, though, was pretty damn rad.

Let’s see what else. Sojiro Sakura is best dad, Hifumi Togo is best girl, Morgana is best cat, Akechi’s little foot dance thingy after all-out attacks is more adorable than he deserves to be, and Becky Kawakami deserves a god damn vacation.

I’ll probs have more P5 opinions to say later?? It was a VERY VERY good game that I liked a lot, tenouttaten.

[silentauroriamthereal]

Every title I could think of was too long, too: Thoughts on series 4 (and 1-3). Johnlock, Mary, Queer baiting, plot holes, how human relationships work, and other things that made me use a lot of caps

All right, folks. It’s 4,500 words long, hahaha. I feel like I just gave birth. Read on, if you dare. 

I’ve started this post about five different times now. Sixth time’s the charm? 

Okay. I have to start with this: I am a Johnlock shipper. A diehard, it-comes-before-everything-else-for-me sort of shipper. That doesn’t give me that most objective of stances, but there it is. Counting my 8 pre-series 3 stories (303,923 words collectively) and my 5 post-series 4 stories (30,526 words collectively so far), I have now written a total, as of yesterday’s fic, of 1,557,772 words of fiction over exactly 70 stories. That means that 1,223,323 words of the fiction I’ve produced over the past three years has been series 3 fix-it fic. Because that’s when the show runners lost me.

It’s a super unpopular opinion. Or was then, at least! What I see, as a writer and a viewer both, is a pattern in both Moffat and Gatiss’ writing of starting off really strongly, then inevitably copping out and taking some kind of easy out that fails to fully resolve what came before it. It fails to realistically deal with the fall-out in terms of human relationships. I watched Doctor Who for awhile, though I was never a huge fan. On Doctor Who, nothing makes sense. The “science” is obviously not meant to be believable. Personally, I always prefer things set in real life with believable plots and storylines. Despite my beginnings in the Harry Potter world, universes that involve magic and similar elements are not usually my first choice. With a large exception for Tolkien’s entire universe. On Doctor Who, you’re not supposed to believe the plot, and that’s good, because it’s impossible to do so. However, when the human relationships also make no sense, I’m out. And they don’t. I was constantly seeing, particularly when Moffat took over as the main writer, things that didn’t make sense in Amy and Rory’s relationship. And the plots, nonsensical as they were, also never panned out, added up, had the impact they should have, and I generally got the feeling that they’d often not been planned through from the start.

I’ve had the same feeling about Sherlock at least since series 3. And in part, they’ve said it themselves. True, they’ve said that they had some things in mind all along, but they’ve also admitted that they didn’t have everything plotted out from the start. I don’t have an article reference for this, but I remember reading once that Gatiss said that they had not planned what to do with the baby after series 3, that they had written her in to amp up the drama for HLV. That says sloppy planning to me, because a baby is not exactly a goldfish. You can’t give it to a neighbour when it becomes inconvenient (though apparently John did little else in series 4). I maintain that it was a bad writing decision. My point, though, is that they didn’t make a plan as to what to do in the longer term. And every series resolution has had this same problem.

Series 1 ending: Sherlock and John have just silently agreed to die together rather than let Moriarty escape them. Sherlock shooting the bomb would take out the entire building, including the snipers above them.

Resolution: Moriarty gets a phone call, changes his mind, shuts down the snipers, and walks out unchallenged. There MAY have been a massive police search for the snipers and Moriarty, but it was never shown. They didn’t seem to think it was important. It was all onto the sexy naked lady. And there was no conversation between Sherlock and John about the fact that they nearly died, that they agreed to do it together, that they agree that the world cannot be compromised with terrorists like Moriarty on the loose. Normal people discuss things like that, major, potentially life-ending events. But they didn’t think it was important to show us any of that.

Series 2 ending: Sherlock is blackmailed into jumping off a nine-storey building in front of John. The collateral was the lives of John, Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson. He jumps and somehow survives. John is seen grieving fiercely. Moriarty is dead.

Resolution: John is never told that he would have died had Moriarty not forced Sherlock’s hand. (You can say things about the blog here, but I consider that only semi-canon and frequently inconsistent with the onscreen canon, so let’s just leave that out of this discussion.) The writers never thought it was important for John to know that: a) Sherlock had no choice. Not if he wanted John to live. John is still, in series 4, blaming Sherlock for his absence. b) He didn’t know that he was going to die if Sherlock didn’t do it, that there was a reason that Sherlock couldn’t tell him he was still alive. Sherlock’s silence was imperative for John’s safety, and Sherlock – as he has always done – put John’s safety above everything else. Literally everything. He didn’t even know for certain that he would survive the jump, but he took the chance because John’s life, and the lives of Mrs Hudson and Lestrade, mean that much to him. John still doesn’t know that, because the writers didn’t think it was important to include that. Not only that, they refused to even confirm that that was actually the definitive method by which Sherlock survived. Sloppy resolution, and disappointing.

Series 3 ending: Sherlock has just killed someone, for the sake of someone who shot him in the heart. Moriarty appears to be alive. John sends Sherlock off un-thanked and refusing to name his child after Sherlock, which considering all that Sherlock has done for him and his killer wife, is a bit low. Also there’s a baby on the way despite nothing pointing to the Watson/Morstan having an ice cube’s hope in hell of surviving. A marriage based on lies, John not even knowing his wife’s real name and preferring to keep it that way, the most reluctant, grudging take-back scene in history, and a piece of seriously inconsistent characterisation for a man who once got himself arrested for having punched someone for insulting Sherlock. Ugh.

Resolution: None whatsoever. The Watson/Morstan union is still on, though the Watson half is obviously very unhappy and actively looking to cheat (also completely inconsistent with his former characterisation). The Morstan part of the union (and believe me, we are coming back to this character with force in a bit) is apparently nothing like her former self, sugar-coated in the worst of ways and apparently still full unrepentant for absolutely everything, starting from any of her criminal past to having shot Sherlock, to having accepted his sacrifice in killing her blackmailer for her, to having lied her ass off to John from the very start, to pushing John aside to come between him and Sherlock, to making him stay at home with the baby while she goes in his place, all while “playfully” calling Sherlock a pig and comparing John to a dog. The baby is still there and still in the way. Moriarty is apparently still pursuing a posthumous attack scheme. What the ever-living fuck.

Why else they lost me in series 3: because, as I said, I’m a Johnlock shipper. I’ll admit without shame that I’m far more invested in this relationship than I am in the plots themselves. It’s nice when the plot is good. But if this central relationship isn’t working for me, then I don’t give three fucks what happens in the rest of the plot. For me, TST was really bad. I hated it. But TLD was vivisection, if I may. I was never expecting Johnlock to become canon – next point, hang on – but seeing John actively hating Sherlock and beating him half to death when he was already dying (that’s not exaggeration; that’s canon) – not even the hug could redeem that for me. I loved the hug. I would have loved it forty million times more if it hadn’t happened because John was crying about his dead killer wife. I would have loved it even more than that if he’d hugged back. For that reason alone, TFP was preferable for me, just because Sherlock and John were clearly a team again, friends again, happy to be in each other’s presence again. I LOVED that both Sherlock and Mycroft knew instantly, without a word of discussion, that there was no way in hell that Sherlock was ever going to even consider choosing Mycroft above John. John was less clear on that point, but the Holmes brothers both knew that this was concrete, unchanging law, which is completely consistent with literally everything Sherlock has done since TRF. I loved that this wasn’t even a question for him. We’ll get to the rest of the episode.

What I hated about series 3 was that John married someone who isn’t Sherlock. It’s that simple: people were squeeing about the stag night and the dancing behind closed curtains, but at the end of the day, JOHN MARRIED SOMEONE ELSE. This is so far beyond acceptable for me that I felt sick. I was dreading series 3 coming out for the very reason of John’s wedding to Mary Morstan. We hadn’t met Mary yet. I knew that Amanda Abbington, who I knew nothing about other than that she was Martin’s partner, had been cast. I had a friend at the time who argued that they had to cast someone that Martin had strong chemistry with to balance his chemistry with Benedict. I hated that, too. I hated having that chemistry that everyone loves so much challenged. And then HLV took a turn for the better: Mary was exposed as the terrible human being that she is. In a down side, she shot and very nearly killed Sherlock. But his love for John and concern for his safety and knowledge of Mary’s villainy pulled him through and they sat her on her ass and treated her as a client, a client and nothing more. I cheered. And then the writers wrote in a bizarre six-month gap, one in which John was clearly not living with Mary (“months of silence”), and then he made the inexplicable and completely out of character decision to take her back. My heart sank. “But the baby!” you rage-moo, and yes, precisely: the baby. If only there hadn’t been a baby. Personally, I think it’s a disservice to raise a child in a hostile atmosphere, but what do I know. So, I was massively unhappy with series 3, as my 1.2+ million words of ensuing fic might suggest.

One of the worst decisions the writers made, and this is all part, by the way, of my overarching point of how they didn’t make Johnlock canon, was the inclusion of the character of Mary Morstan. They have queer-baited and alternately straight-washed throughout these four series, but this was the ultimate straight-wash: having John ACTUALLY marry someone else. And for me personally, it was just weird seeing that person be Martin’s former actual partner. They had, in an ironic backfiring, zero chemistry onscreen. They had old boring married I-gave-up-and-let-go-ten-years-ago chemistry, and it still didn’t compete with Martin and Benedict’s amazing onscreen chemistry. So we had to watch this thing that they cooked up and shoved down our throats and were told to accept it and believe and love it and defend it. And I just didn’t do any of those things. I hated Mary from the moment she interrupted John’s super reluctant proposal. They wrote nothing that made me believe in their relationship, even had I wanted to forget everything they had already written pointing to a romantic relationship between Sherlock and John. Which I didn’t. They wrote that and sold me and thousands of other people on it, then introduced this third wheel. Amanda promised that Mary would never come between Sherlock and John, but perhaps she should consider shutting her trap and not acting like part of the official PR (not that they’re any better, and I’m still coming to that), because Mary did LITERALLY nothing but come between Sherlock and John.

She immediately inserted herself into their relationship. I blame this partly on Sherlock’s idiotic decision to see John immediately, no matter what he was doing. He assumed, and it frankly should have been a correct assumption, because he was the sun around which John revolved, that John would want to see him no matter what he was in the middle of doing. A bit of bad planning, but if Sherlock is somewhere on the autism spectrum, which people generally assume that he is, then social skills are not his strongest suit. He hadn’t seen the friend he spent two years enduring torture and living on the run to protect and he’d just gotten back. Of COURSE he wanted to see John as soon as possible. And of course John’s reaction was entirely understandable, and entirely predictable. What that scene didn’t need was Mary to further hack away at John’s feeling of insignificance by siding with Sherlock immediately, agreeing that she hated his awful moustache, and ignoring everything her semi-fiancé was going through and stating that she liked Sherlock, as if her opinion had ANY relevance at that point. She inserted herself as their mediator, when they would have gotten there soon enough once John’s temper cooled down. Her pushing at John probably only slowed him down, because John doesn’t respond to pushing. And maybe Mary meant to slow him down. I don’t know. Mary came between them in every way possible. By marrying John, by inserting herself into their duo and pushing John to the side, by fucking up absolutely everything in their lives with her undisclosed past, by shooting Sherlock in the heart rather than dealing with her blackmailer herself and accepting Sherlock’s help. By lying, lying, lying, lying, and more lying. Now there’s a child for them to look after. Now there’s the spectre of John’s failed attempt to love her between them. Her double-faced, lying presence threw off the balance of the show. Her abusive, gaslighting, manipulative behaviour was portrayed as cute and fun and somehow manages to gloss over the canonical reality that Mary was someone who killed people to earn money for herself, showed zero remorse for having done so, zero remorse for her inexplicable decision to try to kill the title character of the show while leaving her blackmailer alive, zero remorse for having attacked her own maid of honour, zero remorse for having lied to John from start to finish, zero gratitude to Sherlock for having saved her from Magnussen, zero remorse for having drugged Sherlock, zero remorse for having left John and the baby behind, zero remorse for having killed that flight attendant and whomever else, zero remorse for having fled John’s side to protect herself as soon as the shooting broke out, zero remorse for having abandoned her teammates without even checking to see if a rescue attempt was possible, leaving them to die or suffer six years of torture, zero remorse for FUCKING ANYTHING except having been caught in her lies. And then she left Sherlock a video telling him to kill himself or get himself killed as a “means to save John” (who wouldn’t have needed saving had he never met her lying ass in the first place!), with no means for John to see said video, and her method failed anyway because John was so racked with guilt over having wanted to or almost cheated on her that he had already made the fucked up choice to displace his guilt onto Sherlock, rendering him incapable of caring whether Sherlock lived or died, in the very worst of his inexplicably out of character actions.

And then the writers credited Mary for having somehow “created” the Holmes/Watson duo, as though they wouldn’t have become what they already were had Mary Fucking Morstan not told them to from one of her posthumous home videos. FUCK THAT SHIT. I have never hated a character as much as I hate Mary Morstan. Her presence on this show ruined it for me.

They could have saved it. They could have, I don’t know, kept her in character in series 4 as the completely terrible human being that she is, played it out to its natural conclusion – have her fake her death to reveal her as one of the nurses who was administering the memory altering drug, who passed Faith Smith’s note on to Eurus Holmes, as part of the whole Eurus/Moriarty/Mary axis of evil. Except that the first two of those people are clinically insane, and Mary is apparently just a quirky narcissist.

All this is to say how and why they lost me as of series 3. For the past three years, I’ve been reading meta (and writing a little, myself) about the romantic coding of the Sherlock/John relationship. It’s ALL there in the show. I never disagreed with that. Let me explain super clearly the ONLY place where I diverged from TJLC: Look, it’s diagram time, courtesy of my shitty Paint skills! 

Let me be super clear: I don’t think that anyone read anything wrong. I don’t blame anyone for having believed that they would make it canon. I’m just saying why I didn’t. We were given conflicting messages. The show said one thing, and the creators said something else – sometimes. I fully agree that they were deliberately misleading. It’s just that I’m a cynic, and I believed the times when they told us what turned out to be the truth. My gut believed it. It wasn’t just the ways in which they said they would never do it, it was how. I saw that that tweet screen cap is going around again, with the person who said they would die if Johnlock didn’t become canon in series 4 and Mark Gatiss responded with “RIP”. It was an incredibly insensitive tweet given that the attack in Orlando had just taken place the previous day. And it wasn’t the first comment of its nature that the writers have made. Mark talks in this video about how “moving” the scene of John taking Mary back is (start just before the 58-minute mark). (Side note: I mis-remembered this as Sue having made this remark, which I’ve said a few times now. Apologies!) It’s said on the Behind the Scenes video for TST that Sue cries every time she sees the Mary death scene. It’s things like this that make me wonder if they’ve been watching the show they actually made, because it really seems like they can’t see their own work accurately. What really put the nail in the coffin for me, though, was what Mark said at San Diego ComicCon last year. He said the following:

“He explicitly says he is not interested. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. I’m a gay man. This is not an issue. But we’ve explicitly said this is not going to happen – there is no game plan – no matter how much we lie about other things, that this show is going to culminate in Martin and Benedict going off into the sunset together. They are not going to do it. And if people want to write whatever they like and have a great time extrapolating that’s absolutely fine. But there is no hidden or exposed agenda. We’re not trying to fuck with people’s heads. Not trying to insult anybody or make any kind of issue out of it, there’s nothing there. It’s just our show and that’s what these characters are like.” (Here)

 He also said in the same article that they were not going to use their show as a platform for representation or other social issues. He said that doing so would ruin the show. These are his exact words:

“Don’t blame us for things that aren’t there. It is infuriating. We get pilloried for these things as if our show – we haven’t even made the thirteenth one yet – has to have the shoulders to bear every single issue and every single campaign point. You can’t do that. It’s our show, they’re our characters, they do what we want them to do, and we don’t have to represent absolutely everything in that ninety minutes. It’s impossible.  And it would kill it. It would be deadly to it.”

Yeah. He said that our seeing Johnlock in what they wrote was “infuriating”. It damned well shouldn’t have been, because they’re the ones who put it there!! I can only assume that it was a deliberate choice to then deny it and leave it out in what certainly felt like their final episode. It would have been SO EASY to put it in. With no “help” from that ridiculous, unnecessary Mary video, all they had to do was add something like Sherlock dropping a kiss on John’s forehead as he passed the baby over. That’s all it would have taken. That’s all anyone could have dreamed of, asked for, hoped for. No one was demanding explicit anal penetration in the sitting room with the married ones looking on from the front door. Just a simple little action like that would have said it all, and been enough to confirm the relationship they’ve written from the start. Or it could have been a quick exchange of dialogue in that montage at the end of TFP. John could have started doing something and Sherlock could have said, “John, you don’t have to do that.” John could have smiled into the camera/mirror and said, “Yes, I do. No flat that I live in is going to have a bison skull with no headphones!” And there we would have at least had explicit confirmation that John moved back in. I’ve always loathed parentlock, personally, but I’d have taken it. I’d have taken it and thanked them for at least just making the ship canon after all. And I’d have eaten every word of doubt about their intentions that I’d ever uttered, too.

I don’t blame anyone for believing. Because they could have done it, and they should have. They should have. And you have every right to feel angry and hurt and cheated that they didn’t. Shame on you, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Shame on you for the queer-baiting. Shame on you for leading us on. Shame on you for the lazy writing, the sloppy resolutions, the vast array of plot holes and loose threads.

I promised I would also comment on this last episode specifically, so here it is. Don’t hate me for this, but I have to say that, plot holes and lack of Johnlock aside, I liked TFP better than either TST or TLD. You know why? Because Sherlock and John were a team again, and that’s what I live for. John didn’t actively hate Sherlock. He wasn’t an OOC asshole to him the entire time. He didn’t hurt him, physically or emotionally. They were clearly and wonderfully working together from the very start. I loved his exchange with Mycroft at the end of the scene at Mycroft’s (weird, scary) house, the whole “someone gave him the idea that you would only tell the truth if you were basically wetting yourself” and that that person was John, and his candour in telling Mycroft that. I loved that. And what I liked the most about the episode was how, when Sherlock was forced to make a decision between John and Mycroft, both the Holmes brothers knew without one shred of doubt that there was no way that Sherlock would ever, ever, ever choose Mycroft over John. It was unquestioned. In TLD, there was a hug at the end, yeah. But I also had to endure the beating scene, and Mary throughout. The best thing about this series is that Mary is dead. That’s the best thing I can say. Because the rest was a disaster.

The straight-washing with all of the unnecessary Irene inserts. Lady Smallwood and Mycroft, though at least there was a ray of hope for you Mystrade shippers out there at the end. The Molly scene was BRUTAL. And fuck them for what they did with her character, too. LET HER MOVE ON. And behave like a grown woman, too. Ugh. Poor Molly. The plot holes. THE PLOT HOLES. Better people than me have already written lengthy posts outlining them all and this one is already more than long enough, so I won’t detail them all. The Garridebs massacre. That was cruel. I found all of the references pointing to Mycroft as a closet cross-dresser amusing. Taking after Uncle Rudy, indeed, plus the whole Lady Bracknell thing. I actually laughed out loud at that, whereas I didn’t laugh at anything in TST or TLD at all, ever. I think I watched them both with clenched fists. As I said earlier, I frankly don’t really care about the plots, this one included, though I rolled my eyes massively at the thought that Eurus was behind Moriarty. Sigh. I did like Sherlock’s growth and compassion, and I really liked him taking the time to reach out to her through the violin. I like that they put a woman in Sherlock’s life who was important to him as something other than a failed love interest. The violin conversation at the end was beautiful. The Redbeard stuff was utterly horrifying. Insert more ranting about the associated nonsensical, plot-hole-y stuff here. I think I’m starting to run out of steam, lol. I just want to go and write fiction now. I’ve been writing this post for hours and I could say a lot more, but… I think that’s enough.

Bottom line: you weren’t wrong to believe. I didn’t, but I don’t blame you for it. These writers have done the show and its characters and its audience a massive disservice. For me, Mary was the worst thing they inflicted on this show and on the ship, but it wasn’t beyond hope, EVEN in spite of everything else they did to ruin this relationship in the first two episodes of the series. I can’t help but wonder if they denied it out of sheer spite in response to the fan pressure to make it canon, but that would be blaming the victim. I just wonder how spiteful they have to be. I genuinely think that they don’t see this as having been a malicious action, or that they’ve ever considered that what they’ve done qualifies as queer baiting. Obviously it is, but I genuinely wonder about their intentions. I don’t know, but at this point, all that matters is what they actually did.

I’m emotionally exhausted by all of this, but relieved that the series is over, because I was frankly dreading it, apparently for good reasons. At least I know now what I’ll be busy fixing for the next three years, or possibly forever if they never make another series. Mission: accepted. And now my watch begins. As I said the other day, this is why we here in this fandom exist: because the canon will end someday, and after that, their world belongs to us.

[harrisonkitteridge-blog]

The Lying Detective: I’m Actively Hate-watching Now

SPOILERS FOLLOW

I didn’t like the first episode of the new season of Sherlock, but I sincerely hoped having the risible nonsense of the Mary Watson/AGRA storyline tied up would free things up a bit. I think the Culverton Smith case might have delivered, but they went all in on the “I’m so beset by grief I’m hallucinating my dead spouse” gambit. Really? In what we keep being told is “clever” television? Grief is about absence, about a space that can’t be filled, about feeling trapped and asphyxiated by it. But we were never actually shown Mary and John’s relationship, so all the emotional heavy lifting is being done retroactively, and it’s heavy-handed, saccharine, out-of-character claptrap. John being with Rosie, struggling to parent alone would have had me in floods, but Moftiss always chooses exposition when there isn’t a gun being pulled or a joke being cracked. There is something about genuine, non-sensational emotion that seems to make them uncomfortable; it always has to be book-ended by effacing humour. As much as I dislike the “I see dead people” shortcut to exploring grief, I understand that it probably worked for most of the viewing audience, but Moftiss could have at least allowed some of those moments sink in. They just had to cut off the opening scene in the therapist’s office with police sirens and helicopters in service to a gag about Sherlock’s penchant for grand entrances.

Twists>Action>Jokes>>>>>>>>Characters.

The “Culverton Smith is a serial killer case” was serviceable (in spite of the horrible pun they worked in), and I liked Toby Jones’s performance, but they oversold him as a villain, and it didn’t really live up to the hype. There was too much extemporizing – all that soliloquizing in the boardroom had me staring off into space after a while. Giving Toby Jones all the scenery in Greater London to chew isn’t the same as making his character “evil”. There being no victims was a huge omission, in my opinion. You have to see what they’ve done, whom they’ve hurt or none of it really matters. Them erasing all of Smith’s victims sits really poorly with me, and it goes back to the heart of my problem with the direction of the show – the people don’t matter. Not really. Nevertheless, the story held my interest, and (before the twist at the end) I actually quite liked Sherlock’s interaction with Culverton’s “daughter” (even though it was a bit drawn out).

The middle episode of each season tends to be the weakest, and The Lying Detective was definitely one of the better offerings, and I loved Mrs. Hudson deducing Sherlock, her recognising that he’s not a “cold reasoning machine”. So why am I actively hate-watching?

That third act…

Gurl…

Where to begin?

“I killed his wife.”

No you didn’t, Sherlock. Stop making everything about you. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the potential source of the guilt – he thinks he should have seen it coming and is gutted that he didn’t. That feeling that there’s something incongruous about his reaction stems from Moftiss’s story being driven solely by plot. The entire premise of The Lying Detective is that, even off his head on drugs, Sherlock can predict other people’s behaviour a fortnight out. So why the Norbury deduction, then? You didn’t have to be a genius to see that de-escalation was the only play. So, is Moftiss’s Sherlock clever or isn’t he? It depends on what direction they want to take the plot. They play up his intellect for style when it suits them and ignore it when it gets in the way of having a trigger pulled. If he’d given it all he had, used the full power of his mind and still failed, Mary had still died, that twinge of the ego and John’s irrational feeling of betrayal would have been more warranted. All the stubbled, Byronic theatrics would have been earned. He would have been replaying everything in his mind to see what he missed. But he didn’t miss anything. He just acted like a not very clever arrogant cock.

I’ve made it pretty clear that I think the Mary Watson/AGRA storyline was a steaming pile. I didn’t like or believe her character. The character is head-spinningly inconsistent because they keep shoving her around in the plot and not reconciling the conflicts that arise. Nevertheless, I’m sickened by how ill-used she’s been. If The Six Thatchers didn’t already demonstrate it, Mary’s story was all in service to ramping up the man-emo quotient – to get John and Sherlock to gnash their teeth and rend their garments. The loving spouse, smiling beatifically and giving emotional advice from beyond the veil – that’s where they decided to take the BAMF assassin. They can take that nonsense straight back to the vomitorium where they sourced it. But that’s not really my biggest problem with the narrative.

“The only way to save John is to make him save you.”

As, Moftiss has written it, the entire construct of the Sherlock-John-Mary relationship is organised around John being an object – there to be manipulated. Mary couldn’t advise Sherlock to treat John like an adult and be patient and do the unsexy, heavy lifting of being a best mate. That would mean treating John like a person, not a series of buttons to push. Do you know what works with most non-personality disordered people who have “trust issues”? Persistence. But that’s not flashy enough, though, is it? Telling a drug addict who has a history of reckless behaviour that might reasonably be classified as self-harm to put himself in terrible danger to spur John into action is something a psychopath would suggest. That is Moftiss’s vision of the loving spouse whose spectre is haunting John. Except I honestly don’t think they even see the deeply disturbed psychology they’ve conjured. In their minds, Mary has been completely rehabilitated, and her egging Sherlock into self-harm is noble, just like shooting and nearly killing him somehow was. Are mature adults who’ve actually been in relationships or who’ve just interacted with other human beings for any length of time really meant to be taking any of this seriously? And then there’s the notion that someone as warped as Mary had much to teach John about being a good man – that her vision of him was somehow superior to what he already is. John Watson isn’t perfect, but this idea that he needed Mary to improve him and get him up to scratch is not only unsupported by everything that’s come before but relies on the grotesque stereotype that every man is a bumbling dumb fuck who needs a “good woman” to straighten him out. Disgusting. Moftiss have constructed a reality in which a person who is willing to shoot and kill people to hide her past ill deeds has a superior moral compass to someone who inappropriately texted a woman he met on a bus. All the brutal violence Mary did to the eponymous hero of the show is inconsequential, but John flirting via text is of great importance. It’s no wonder the story is careening out of control. The things that should matter don’t.

The return of Irene Adler.

A few months ago, in an Instagram post, I theorised that Sherlolly was the ship Moftiss would most likely go for (there was never going to be Johnlock). I knew an attractive woman was always going to be their play, so, barring a newcomer, I assumed it would be Molly. Irene Adler would be next in line. Sherlolly just seemed like the likeliest outcome given Molly helping Sherlock fake his death and the way she came out of her shell and started calling him on his bullshit. But I underestimated just how much Moftiss esteem flash over substance. I do not like the handling of Irene Adler in any of the recent incarnations of Sherlock Holmes and will continue to argue until there is no breath left in me that: Irene Adler is not Delilah to Sherlock Holmes’s Samson! In the original Arthur Conan Doyle story, A Scandal in Bohemia, she beats him while keeping all of her clothes on and by outstrategising him, not by distracting him and drugging him. Not-quite-dead Mary cackling, “I bet you saved her! The posh boy loves the dominatrix!” made me want to rage puke. The whole point of Irene Adler, what makes her “The Woman”, is that she doesn’t need anyone, least of all Sherlock Holmes to White Knight for her. She handles her business better than he ever could.

Moving on.

I can’t believe they actually had a middle-aged adult tell another middle-aged adult: “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being.“ Our relationships (romantic and otherwise) should enrich and improve our lives, but this notion that we’re all hobbled and shambling through life and need to be repaired by our “soulmates” has got to stop. It’s why so many people can’t have healthy romantic relationships grounded in reality – they’ve set their significant others (and themselves) unmeetable, fairy tale standards, and their disappointment and ensuing resentment are foregone conclusions.

Take it all straight back to the vomitorium.

Miss me?

No, Jim. I don’t. Whenever a show circles back to the vanquished supervillain, Fonzie is prepping his water skis.

The secret brother is really a secret sister whose name is The East Wind, and she’s completely unhinged and may be Moriarty or is at least connected to him, and there’s some weird psychosexual element between her and her brother who doesn’t seem to know what she looks like, and…

GTFOH AND GTFOH FOREVER!

Once Mary Watson said “It’s a skip code”, a preposterous story became virtually inevitable, so I’m not surprised Sherlock has descended into near pantomime. The real reason I’m pre-emptively upset about the finale is because I know Eurus’s mental illness will be treated solely as a plot driver. Moftiss will only scratch the surface of the pain, the fear, the feelings of failure, the societally enforced shame, the hopelessness that a family goes through when one of them is diagnosed with a mental illness serious enough to require long-term institutionalisation. Really think about what it means to be related to someone who is criminally insane and how much good drama lives there. There will be helicopters and gunfights and fisticuffs, maybe even abseiling, in the finale, but virtually no real examination of the damage done by the emotional claymore mine that went off, kept going off and is still going off in the Holmes family after Eurus was diagnosed. And Eurus herself? Maybe they’ll show her as a child strangling a cat or hurting Redbeard (if they even pay her that much attention outside of letting her gorge herself on the scenery), but she’ll be a caricature, a monster with no inner life. How do I know they’ll do this? Because they spent this entire episode using visual and auditory hallucinations – signs of extreme mental disturbance and distress that require urgent psychiatric intervention – as shorthand for “I’m grieving the death of my spouse”. They couldn’t show John alone, struggling with a newborn, suffering through the feelings of abandonment and intense isolation that underpin grief because it’s too ordinary.

Everyone has been pointing out all the call-backs to previous episodes and what they mean. Here’s my go at it: I predict that John’s grief and psychiatric issues are now magically fixed, just like his limp and his PTSD. Moftiss told us from the very beginning that Sherlock was shallow and emotionally incoherent. But:

I’ll hate-watch the finale just for the sake of completion and as source material for the inevitable rant.

Moftiss…

Ugh…

Thank goodness for the palate cleanser of Elementary…