#even though it's such a pivotal aspect of his relationship to tommy

[normalbrothers]

this is bc fic reasons so ignore but i'm going back and forth on arthur's post s6 characterization/state of mind/exact trajectory. as i've said often enough i don't think he's "fine" or "better" in the sense fandom seems to think - neither the drugs nor the alcohol were actually the reasons or the causes for his issues is, but a symptom (or else a way to deal with them, particularly the junk in order to alleviate his feelings of guilt and shame) and of course some of it exacerbated his behaviour. not using might afford him clarity of mind and the ability to self-reflect, but we are still talking about arthur here; during the show he is never really incentivized to actually do that (though hayden stagg's speech was getting at it, and it had some kind of effect on him) & yet throughout his confrontation with tommy at the office he's despairing, but also shows his gratitude, but all that is very much undercut with this persisting anger and resentment towards tommy and when they finally make a move to leave, he's *still* angry. i assume that after taking revenge in polly's name, he made peace with it all for the time being and the decision to die alongside tommy happened there, etc nothing new here

but i'm struggling with his reaction to tommy returning, for example: likely overjoyed, but tommy'll also probably have to dodge a fist coming his way hdhd, but it also goes far deeper than just that, etc

[starofroselight]

Title: Quackity's Elegy

Summary: Unfinished symphony this, musical aria that. Quackity has a funeral to attend and he needs a suit.

Tags: Introspection, Angst, Swearing, Blood Magic, Funerals, References to Drinking, Implied/Referenced Alcoholism, other implied relationships but there's not shipping unless you really want to read it that way.

AO3 link is in the reblogs since Tumblr is weird about having links in text.

Quackity shouldn't be here.

It's ruins of buildings huddled together like refugees in the streets of L'Manberg. None of the builds on the server have elegance or sophistication to them. Instead, they dare to mirror their creators. They are useful, realistic, basic, and overzealous. They lean and breathe on one another, sagging and smothering. They heave and cough as the hollow earth beneath them shudders.

All of L'Manberg sounds sick.

Is that what happens when a country is built on rotten foundation? Does it seize with sickness, does it fall like shallow breathing? Does it infect every aspect of the ground above until it can swallow it whole?

Fuck politics, Quackity thinks he should go into poetry. He entertains it briefly. Himself with a stupid beret and a feather in his hat, waxing lyrical to whoever would listen. Probably Karl. Even though he’s smiling, he can’t help but turn a nervous face upwards.

Wheezing, shuddering, the purple-tinted tower seems like they’re about to leap to life, bottle in hand, and insult his cardio routine.

Which he took great pride in, by the way.

But no, it's the apartment building Wilbur and Tommy had hidden on top of during the Festival. The one that sheltered their shadows as he pretended not to notice. Of course he saw them. It was impossible not to at the angle he was staring, his shades hiding his pupils trailing their every movement.

He'd expected them to step in when Technoblade was pressured. He'd heard stories of "The Blade", a nickname Tommy gave him. Instead he'd been blown back into the beams of the stage and given a crack in his back that hadn't stopped aching since. Despite orders, he didn't believe Techno would actually hurt a known defector to his side.

Then Quackity had seen his eyes.

He would have shuddered, but there was no one to play the bit off of. No way to make it funny. So he held it inside until he couldn't, or until it would be a wacky one-off.

No, he wasn't scared of Technoblade.

Anyway.

He doesn't have a suit that fits or isn't in tatters from a fucking explosion. No, Quackity lifts the first suit in the bunker he can find.

The bunker was a joke-type deal, the one mentioned only in passing as an extreme situation. It was a narrow section encased in basalt, avoiding the tunnel to Pogtopia.

Now Quackity finds himself wondering why Schlatt didn't go to it. Maybe he was in such a pathetic state he couldn't remember it. The alternative holds more dimensions than he's willing to give the dead president.

Wait, that's both of them.

"It's not looking so for good for Tubbo, is it?"

His voice carries the cadence of a joke, but there's no one to bounce it off of. Instead, it falls flat.

Quackity gets dressed in silence.

Wearing a dead man's clothes to his own funeral. There's an irony there. Or a good song title.

He thinks of how he'd left his guitar behind in Manberg when he'd joined Pogtopia. How he'd assumed it was safe, that the impact of war would hit harder than material positions.

Then Wilbur had it go all to shit and he was out of a musical instrument.

It would be a while before he was going to sing again.

Schlatt's spare suits hang in a row.

Quackity picks up a red tie. It should be enough. It’s Schlatt’s funeral and he feels free. It’s Schlatt’s funeral and he feels sick. Both thoughts can exist at the same time.

Just like how the bunker feels both cramped and empty. Heavy and light. It's a modern miracle that Schlatt can still fuck up atmosphere from beyond the grave.

Quackity hadn't planned on getting drunk before Schlatt's funeral. He didn't even know where the good shit was—but he'd found it in the cabinets of the bunker. He takes two bottles and puts them on the counter.

He'll drink on the way over. Right now, there's more important business he has to attend to sober.

He takes the tie and shifts it in his hands. A personal token, an item favored by the player he wanted to masquerade as. He would have preferred a Schlatt Coin, but he doubted any of those still existed.

Using blood magic while drunk was how lots of idiots wound up a solitary death message and a crater with no explanation. His magic isn’t exactly a server secret. The methods, however, are. He’s smart enough to keep trade secrets to himself; if this world wants his power, they need to reward him first.

Eret had inquired many a time on his exact procedures, but Quackity was swift to turn the conversations to other matters. The King had plenty of matters to attend to besides their favorite pastime. He’s a man of many faces, after all. If it’s a goof, well, who feels threatened at a joke? Mixing jokes with politics and subterfuge was one of his most prized skills.

Meanwhile, BadBoyHalo hadn't been able to shut up about how cool it was. Even parroting imitations of the man's most insufferable quirks back to him weren't enough to discourage him. He'd even offered Quackity a secret in exchange: he wasn't a demon.

Quackity laughed and cursed Bad out with his own tongue.

No, the one person who came the closest to knowing was Sapnap. Sapnap, who stayed around after cabinet meetings to pick up George as the two berated each other. Sapnap, who had a similar craving for blood that he knew all too well. Sapnap, who was a warrior first and as hungry for power and attention as Quackity was.

It was Sapnap to whom Quackity admitted he needed the blood of the player he was going to imitate, and Sapnap who responded by giving him the gruesome fruits of his conflicts—bottles of all kinds of blood. It was Sapnap who promised not to tell, even though they both knew his big mouth would open eventually.

That was before Quackity caught himself. Before he took one good long look pointed out by a man who always smelled of cheap aftershave and booze, who was never right until he was.

Everyone assumed Schlatt was an idiot, and he was. But the bastard was perceptive.

"Sap-Nap? Dream's guard dog? You're gonna tell him all of your secrets?"

Just because Sapnap understood blood didn't make him trustworthy. He was Dream's friend first.

The same with George. George, always tired in the moments of greatest danger. George, whose sleepiness and luck went hand in hand to save him everywhere he went.

Quackity hadn't put the pieces together yet. He was operating as a Vice President with less than a fourth of the information and not a clue what Schlatt kept in his book. However, even he understood that Dream, seemingly unrelated to the entire conflict, was pivotal.

There was another, scarier fact to consider.

He'd been having nightmares.

If someone was in control of the sleeping state of the server, wouldn't it be. . . ?

:)

There's something else in the back of the bunker, underneath a table. Quackity notices it when one of his cuff-links drops to the floor, only to rest against it.

At the moment he didn't care where the book had gone.

It was a case. Initials written on it in Standard Galactic.

∴ ነ

"No fucking way."

Quackity had never learned how to read or write, that was for hardcore mages and they kept their secrets tighter than he kept his ass. But he knew Schlatt could read, and the person who taught him was—

If he had to guess who—

He opened the case.

A guitar.

"Wilbur."

Then it hits: he can sing. He can sing and play and make a mockery of Schlatt's funeral with Wilbur's guitar. He can't think of anything more funny. Quackity did love a good joke.

He's going to make this funeral the biggest joke of them all.

When he's done the Schlatt mask is one of his worst. Even the Dream mask—cracked, flawed, and only let him be a poor imitation of the man himself (or whatever Dream was)—is of better quality than this aberration.

Quackity takes a moment to catch his reflection in the mirror. Schlatt's face is distorted, looking back with Quackity's signature smile adorning it.

He tightened the knot around his neck like he was pulling taunt a noose.

He was going to get white girl wasted.

"Eat your heart out, old man."

He had a funeral to crash.

[gascon-en-exil]

But What If You Want to Come Out on Vers Bottom?: A “Coming Out on Top” Review (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

All that’s left now are the ten Brofinder dates. Because there’s so many of these and because they’re all fairly short with only a few variations in how they can go down I’m not going to be spending much time on each - just a quick overview of the stories as well as an evaluation of the inevitable sex. The quality does vary a fair bit, although it’s all subjective as to which are better depending on what kind of story you’re looking for as well as, in some cases, your kinks.

Jake

Comes with a fairly obvious death condition, a sequence in which Mark and Jake get to nerd out over The Legend of Zelda, and another in which Jake lectures Mark/the player on the virtues of polyamory. I’ve always been poly-friendly myself, and the lecture does lead into a - thoroughly random - train scenario, but to say it’s not how you’d logically expect this date to go down is a bit of an understatement. Jake never even takes his shirt off, so in place of a body hair toggle he gets one to dye his hair pink for whatever reason. It’s a shame too, because at the start of the date there’s some discussion over Jake’s weight and how he should be confident in his size and his unusually elaborate buffet eating strategies.

Tommy

Like Jake’s date Tommy’s rapidly goes to some unexpected places, but in his case those places entail getting kidnapped and forced to talk through the failures of the criminal justice system at gunpoint. There are more than a few chances to get a quick game over, some funnier than others, but if Mark survives to make it to Tommy’s place he’s greeted by a brief but hot round of sex with the one man in the cast whose dick size is talked up even more than Brad’s. In this case it may actually be warranted; the girth of that thing looks positively inhuman in the CGs, so, rejoice if you’re into that.

Frankie

This guy talks an outlandishly highbrow game that he very clearly can’t deliver on, and having a successful date with him requires Mark to be as aggressively honest as possible as a means of badgering Frankie into admitting to all his unsubtle deception. The man underneath them may just be a more pathetic prospect than Mark himself, but at least the player gets treated to as good a striptease as this game can deliver with its assets followed by sex on the beach...literally, not the cocktail. This date reserves inexplicably dirty names of that nature for gelato of all things.

Luke

The absurdity only continues to build as Mark is invited to “Streamflix and chill” by an Irish frat bro who doesn’t know what that term means because apparently this universe’s Netflix knockoff doesn’t exist in Ireland. It’s up to the player to smoothly guide Mark through a showing of an inspirational story about a narcoleptic rugby player to get to the grand prize of a chance to quietly blow Luke under the blankets when his housemates could walk in at any second (or provide off-the-cuff commentary on Brokeback Mountain, as it happens). There’s also a dream CG at the end featuring yet more sports roleplay sex, as if Brad’s route didn’t offer enough of that. My favorite part though is Luke complaining about American bars not serving alcohol past 2 AM, as I agree with him that it is utterly barbaric.

Cesar

As should be apparent, this is the one with cop sex. Mark gets caught up in a drug sting, and depending on how the player feels about Ian’s suggestion of bringing along ranch dressing (or rather, ranch dressing mix) to the supposed siesta the specific type of cop sex will either be a fairly standard round of Mark bottoming or one of the only finger-fucking sessions in the game. Either way Mark will be resisting arrest as well as sexually harassing a police officer following what was very obviously a setup targeting cruising gay men, but because this is an erotic dating sim and every man in it wants Mark’s ass let’s all withhold our reservations regarding the ethical ramifications of this entire scenario. I have no trouble doing so, although that’s mostly because cop sex does nothing for me. 

Terry

Well, color me surprised - if not terribly aroused - because at long last we have a twink. There seems to be a thinly-veiled pop culture reference here, to something like a younger Justin Bieber or one of those guys from One Direction, but as wild as this date ends up going I find it hangs together rather well even without working as an allusion to any specific celebrity. Mark finds himself billed as the winner of a date with a pop star, and hilarity ensues as he encounters screaming fangirls, a creepy stalker trying to get locks of Terry’s hair, and a karaoke contest in a dive bar where New Orleans gets name-dropped because this city is mentioned in so many songs and where Mark “rocks the hell out of” Schubert’s Ave Maria, somehow. The sex itself is a novelty, with the choice coming down to either Mark giving a rimjob while Terry performs autofellatio or Mark pounding some twink ass. A post-coital hair snipping for the stalker is optional.

Donovan

This man has some hang-ups, and I still can’t decide whether they’re hot or not. At first pass this date is a bite-sized deconstruction of what Dream Daddy could have been had it been interested in actually examining the kinds of relationships it claims to center around - Donovan is a literal father, divorced and new to the dating scene and clearly uncomfortable with many aspects of it up to and including the very sexualized concept of gay daddies. His attempts at flirting and blending in at a gay bar are awkwardly endearing, but as I suggested with Alex I think CooT wants to have it both ways by having Donovan opine about being treated like a daddy...when he looks the way he does and while he’s buying drinks for a guy more than ten years his junior. Even his attempt at more authentically bonding with Mark via an impromptu woodworking tutorial quickly pivots into innuendo and heavier flirting leading up to the inevitable sex scene (although the player should note that in order to get said sex scene you’ll have to know a little about what Donovan is teaching Mark as well as allow him to step away for a heart-to-heart with his teenage son). What follows is shower sex where Mark tops his bull of a date - so if you’re into big hairy bottoms and didn’t get enough from some of Amos’s options this is your story.

Oz and Pete

No Grindr analogue would be complete without a partnered relationship looking for one more, and in truth this date earns some major points for realistically capturing the mix of awkwardness and sensual chaos that comes from jumping in bed with an established couple. This includes crossed wires on who’s using the shared profile, a bit of informal relationship counseling, and the messy but inevitably uneven bonding Mark does with either Oz or Pete. There are two successful paths to this date according to which of them Mark spends more time with at the bar, with each of them building up to a particular type of fetish sex that the two of them haven’t discussed with one another until now. For Oz (on the left) that’s double penetration, while for Pete it’s cuckoldry with some bonus rimming and felching in the scene itself. This is admittedly one of the more physically demanding scenarios Mark can find himself in, especially if he favors Oz, but as I said it’s handled with a surprising amount of realism. Plus there’s a comment before the date that sort of handwaves Mark’s pre-sex stretching that goes along with an utterly ridiculous (mental) image, so I’ll let it slide.

Theo

This one is interesting, to say the least. Mark is paid to pose as Theo’s fiancé at his ten year high school reunion, as part of a ploy to show off how successful Theo has become and rub his former bullies’ noses in it. In addition to the usual wacky humor - and cameos from both Penny and Ian - this is a story with a fair bit of heart to it depending on how Mark deals with the situation. He can either play the perfect partner and earn Theo the recognition he craves...or he can go as absurd and over-the-top as possible but don’t try rickrolling the bullies because that’s a step too far, making a spectacle of himself and teaching Theo a valuable lesson about not caring about the opinions of the people who used to mock him. Provided the date’s a success in one form or another Theo will proffer the above Dom/sub scenario, and Mark can respond either by agreeing to be a sub (either in the comparatively vanilla sense if he was sensible at the reunion or as a pup if he went overboard with it) or by flipping the script and making Theo his sub for the evening. They could have done a lot more with the pup play considering it’s just the sub version with a collar and canine sound effects, but there’s already more logical bang for your buck going on in this date than in around half of the others.

Hugh and Jesse

This is...I can’t even....

Okay, whatever. It’s the last one. It’s not a date, properly speaking, but is accessed if Mark chooses to play with himself on the Brofinder menu. He gets high off some incredibly dubious weed given to him by Ian and proceeds to get intimately acquainted with his goldfish Slurpy in what is CooT’s second-heaviest icthyophilic moment (Google for #1, I already said back in Part 1 I’m not going there). If he calls for an ambulance he’ll be taken under the care of a pair of twin EMTs who make up for what they lack in professionalism with the kind of zany determination you’d expect with a setup like this. At that point it’s the player’s choice of a spit roast or a combo blowjob and rimjob. Adding to the overall disorienting effect of this “date” is the game experimenting with perspective and its visual assets in ways rarely seen elsewhere and that honestly don’t work very well. There’s only so much you can do with such, ahem, stiff portraits.

[scifihorroradventure]

IT (1990)

In the small town of Derry, Maine, an ancient evil makes its presence known, slaughtering multiple children. Recognizing the pattern, Mike (Tim Reid) calls his old childhood friends Bill (Richard Thomas), Ben (John Ritter), Beverly (Annette O'Toole), Richie (Harry Anderson), Eddie (Dennis Christopher), and Stanley (Richard Masur) and tells them that "it" has returned. Though glad to hear from him again, they are terrified of the memories that come flooding back to them, as together they all faced the same evil when they were children - A murderous clown known as Pennywise (Tim Curry). The group eventually conquered their fears and defeated the beast, sending it into a deep slumber, but their fears quickly resurface when faced with the prospect of dealing with Pennywise once again. Reuniting in Derry, the adult Losers Club prepare to defeat Pennywise once and for all, even as the clown preys upon every fear they've ever had...

A two part television adaptation of Stephen King's famous novel, It definitely has its heart in the right place, but is unfortunately besieged by a series of problems. One of the biggest of these becomes almost immediately apparent in the first few attack scenes involving the girl on the tricycle and the flashback with Georgie - The movie can't show anything. Each time Pennywise attacks anyone in this movie, he either only sticks around long enough to give them a quick scare, or the aftermath of his attack is never shown. As such, despite how fearsome the clown is supposed to be, he never really accomplishes anything, making him seem scary, yet ultimately ineffective at... anything, really. Yes, this was intended for television and not a theatrical release, thus they could not show carnage one might expect to see on the silver screen, but this was still a feature length film adaptation of a Stephen King novel intended for adults, and the movie fails to show a level of 'gore' one might expect to see on detective shows of the time like Columbo or Murder, She Wrote. Frankly, when Henry Bowers gets stabbed near the end of the movie, it's almost out of place in this otherwise non-violent film. It's almost enough to ask the question "If they couldn't do It justice, why bother?"

The second largest problem is that the adult sections of the film are massively uneventful and almost feel like filler. It takes forever for the adult Losers Club to finally reunite, and when they do they spend an incredible amount of time just sitting around, either worrying about Pennywise or remembering about when they used to worry about Pennywise as children but never actually doing anything, despite destroying Pennywise being the entire reason they returned to Derry! It’s also odd that, while understandable that they would be creeped out at the prospect of fighting Pennywise again (who wants to fight an evil alien demon clown twice?), no one brings up the train of thought “We beat him as kids, why should we be worried now?” There's also the head scratcher that they all came to destroy Pennywise once and for all but didn't actually bring anything to help get the job done (a fact that the movie brings up via Richie and then immediately ignores). Now, as children, this makes total sense - things like slingshots would be the only thing they have access to. But as adults? They should have been packing guns, hunting knives, swords, axes, machetes, bows and arrows, crossbows, or hell, even baseball bats! Instead, all they bring is Beverly's old slingshot and Eddie's inhaler. Literally over half of the Losers Club didn't even bring weapons of any kind. Aside from this, the movie also suffers from being unable to decide what to adapt and what to leave out from King's novel - The flashback sequences feel like they're being rushed so the film can return to modern day, while the modern day scenes feel like they're being rushed so the film can begin the next flashback. It's this odd rushing of scenes that result in several pivotal plot points like the kids realizing what Pennywise truly is, and even their ultimate (childhood) showdown with him in the sewers, being hurried to and then being done with before they've barely even begun. Meanwhile, sequences like Ben's family troubles, Bill and Mike messing around on Bill's old bicycle, and adult Ben watching a child being attacked by bullies (and not helping) are given ample screen time. Amazingly, despite the film being over three hours long, it feels incredibly rushed and disjointed.

Overall, the cast is serviceable. The kids do alright, in particular Jonathan Brandis and a young Seth Green as Bill and Richie, though Eddie (Adam Faraizl) and Stan (Ben Heller) never really get a chance to shine over the others at any point. Jarred Blancard as the young Henry Bowers does well, effectively portraying an incredibly nasty young man (though thanks to this being television, he never does anything too nasty). As far as the adult cast goes, they almost all have odd, even awkward introductions, such as Beverly being stuck in an abusive, 50 Shades-esque relationship, or Ben trying to turn his date on by discussing how fat he used to be as a child. Richard Thomas as Bill is a decent, if slightly bland lead, responsible for a couple meta Stephen King in-jokes which are funny at first but then just become annoying by the end. Despite having interesting characters, John Ritter and Annette O'Toole just feel kinda there as Ben and Beverly. Harry Anderson as Richie probably shows the most personality out of the adults, while Richard Masur as Stanley doesn't even get to do anything before he's killed off. Tim Reid's Mike seems like he's going to be a major player in the story, as he is responsible for recognizing that Pennywise has returned and summoning the rest of the Losers Club, but is injured and removed from the story not too long before the climax, while Dennis Christopher's Eddie is killed off almost as an afterthought. Ultimately, the actors are good, but none of them really have any interesting material to work with, resulting in most of the scenes being rather boring to watch.

Of course, the one thing this film is often remembered and praised for is Tim Curry's iconic performance as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. And honestly, this is one aspect where the film really does shine. As Pennywise, Curry exudes an air of utter menace and malice while also retaining plenty of clown-like playfulness. There are a few instances where he threatens to go overboard with the silliness (such as when he taunts adult Richie in the library), but they never cross the line. Pennywise's scenes are the only time where the movie actually starts to become creepy, but unfortunately he is never on screen long enough for the atmosphere to take full effect. And lastly, while the unveiling of Pennywise's true form was necessary for the climax of the story, it does suffer from a total lack of Tim Curry during the encounter, and while the Spider's design is decent, the puppet's movement is laughably stiff and it features amusingly large, Cookie Monster-like eyes that are focused on very clearly in a few shots. If only they had been able to find a way to work Curry into the monster's final scene, even just his voice. On the plus side, though, the effect of the shimmering light traveling through the sewers as Pennywise attacks and devours Belch is effectively unsettling, a rare case of keeping the monster off screen done right.

While the cast and crew give it their all, It ultimately falls short of what was required to bring Stephen King's novel to the big (or even small) screen, with director Tommy Lee Wallace and various members of the cast echoing these sentiments for a variety of reasons. While the film can be scary for younger viewers, it can be tedious and boring to older audiences, which would be bad enough if this were a regular length movie, but with the monstrous run time of 192 minutes (187 on the DVD), it can be a Herculean task to get through at times. Of course, one must watch this at least once if for no other reason than Tim Curry's amazing performance as Pennywise, but after that I can't honestly recommend watching this again for at least another twenty seven years.

Rating: ★★★

Cast: Tim Curry ... Pennywise the Dancing Clown Richard Thomas ... Bill Denbrough Jonathan Brandis ... Bill Denbrough (Age 12) Tim Reid ... Mike Hanlon Marlon Taylor ... Mike Hanlon (Age 12) Annette O'Toole ... Beverly Marsh Emily Perkins ... Beverly Marsh (Age 12) John Ritter ... Ben Hanscom Brandon Crane ... Ben Hanscom (Age 12) Harry Anderson ... Richie Tozier Seth Green ... Richie Tozier (Age 12) Dennis Christopher ... Eddie Kaspbrak Adam Faraizl ... Eddie Kaspbrak (Age 12) Richard Masur ... Stanley Uris Ben Heller ... Stanley Uris (Age 12) Michael Cole ... Henry Bowers Jarred Blancard ... Henry Bowers (Age 14) Olivia Hussey ... Audra Denbrough Tony Dakota ... Georgie Denbrough Chris Eastman ... Belch

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace. Producer: Mark Bacino (associate producer), Allen S. Epstein (executive producer), Jim Green (executive producer), and Matthew O'Connor (supervising producer). Writer: Tommy Lee Wallace (teleplay), Lawrence D. Cohen (teleplay), and Stephen King (original novel). Music: Richard Bellis. Special Effects: John Thomas (coordinator), John Deall (uncredited crew), Tony Lazarowich (uncredited assistant), Bob Comer (uncredited animatronics), Gene Warren Jr. (special visual effects supervisor: Fantasy II), David Emerson (uncredited optical camera), Michael Joyce (uncredited model shop supervisor), Bret Mixon (uncredited roto supervisor), and Tim Scannell (uncredited rotoscope artist and camera operator).