#giant plot hole why is he gorgeous

[stoat-party]

Evaluating Which Details Pose Continuity Issues (yeah, it’s long, sorry)

I’m being relentlessly annoyed by (some) people mad at the show and by (some) people mad at people mad at the show, so let’s clear up where the issues are and aren’t so we’re not just talking over each other here.

Destroying the Strip

Obviously not a retcon. Retcons refer to previously-established events. Some people might have their own problems with it (I definitely saw it cited as evidence of a coordinated attack on New Vegas), but it presents no continuity problems.

2. What exactly is a vial?

I don’t think this changed ghoul lore. They can still go 200+ years without turning, or they can start turning as soon as they get ghoulified. There’s just a new plot element where they can stave off the effects of going feral for awhile if they take this mysterious drug - without the drug, the rules are still the same. The story was NOT clear on this, and it confused me, but if ghouls need drugs to stay sane, Oswald, Dean, Billy, etc. could not exist even if there’s a massive industry in vials of goop that’s never been mentioned before.

3. It took Vault-Tec decades to build all the vaults.

This is something I worried about because there couldn’t have been much time between the boardroom scene and the bombs falling (Janey doesn't age). But I think it makes sense if you assume the vaults were already built and they filled them with experiments afterward. It does leave the problem that some vaults were unfinished but Vault-Tec also dropped the bombs - why would they do that before finishing their vaults? It’s possible that they planned to drop them but got beat to the punch, or any number of other explanations. Clear retcon but not a huge plot hole.

4. House is worse than Caesar all of a sudden?

This one’s a private gripe of mine because House and Sinclair were not originally written to be Actual Sadists Who Hate Humanity. There’s also House’s mastermind prepper attitude toward the apocalypse, which doesn’t indicate that he had a hand in orchestrating it. While the change doesn’t conflict with the text as far as I know, it really changes the flavor of the game, but not as much as:

5. The Fall of Shady Sands

Let’s say that this happened after the first battle of Hoover Dam, so no continuity issues with their ability to win that. (That’s probably why they set it in 2277, so the NCR would have almost four years to recover before NV. As if Caesar wouldn’t have taken half of their land by then, even with his armies crushed, but ok fine he’s going through a divorce, he’s busy right now.)

But are you telling me that a country can lose a massive city containing much of its infrastructure, most of its central government, and ~5% of its population and still be trying to manifest destiny four years later with no mention of it?

Losing the Divide as a travel route almost crippled the NCR in the Mojave for awhile. Now, not only have they lost the Divide and their capital city, but one of their other biggest cities, the Boneyard, is abandoned and inhabited by an apparently-unaffiliated town. (Yeah, Los Angeles is big, but we don’t see any NCR or Followers despite three main characters traveling through it.) Even if there were still people there during New Vegas, how is the NCR still conducting a campaign in the east?

Also, who is Muldover and what’s her position? Why does she have raiders at her disposal? Is that really supposed to be what remains of the government? I get that some of this will be resolved later, but short of complete societal collapse, there’s no explanation.

We don’t see any of this in New Vegas. The president (who was in office in 2277) is still alive. No one mentions losing family in the explosion. Caesar, Ulysses, and House, along with the many other characters who complain about the NCR’s weakness and instability, don’t bring it up. People even mention the politicians in Shady Sands specifically. PEOPLE ARE MAKING JOKES ABOUT WANTING A NUCLEAR WINTER-

Now there’s a saving interpretation going around that “the fall of Shady Sands - 2277” refers to a metaphorical fall, and the explosion was later. I’ll accept this if I have to, but don’t pretend it’s not a strained reading. Every entry on the board is dated. Why would you date an amorphous event and not date the city exploding?

The explosion was nineteen years ago, and it had to be that early because Lucy and Norm don’t remember living there. (Not clear how old they are but probably in their early-mid 20’s.) The earliest you could place the event without it making no sense is late 2282, because with the time skips in DLC, the events of New Vegas are about a year long. Maybe you could put a gap between Lucy returning to the vault and the actual destruction, but not a five-year one. And if it was in 2282, Max would still be a teenager.

There are legitimate concerns here. Between House and the NCR, the show changes a lot about the main conflict of New Vegas. It’s not just side details.

Not telling you how to feel! Just don’t pretend nothing poses any problems and people are crazy for being concerned. I think the vibe right now is to dismiss me as a hater, but I hope you can see I’ve tried to make it all work. Continuity is really important in a multi-decade story, especially to writers.

I will be appeased by a respectful and thought-out New Vegas remake that preserves as much of the original continuity as possible and is also really good and costs $4. Thanks in advance Bethesda.

Edit:

6. Tatoes in the vaults

TATOES IN THE VAULTSSSS? THIS IS MASSIVE DISRESPECT TO THE LORE. EVERYTHING WE KNOW IS DESTROYED. UNFORGIVABLE.

(but yeah there shouldn’t be tatoes in a vault that hasn’t opened)(maybe norm and lucy had seeds in their pockets when they came back, sure)

[lady-knight-]

I’ve once supposed this: https://lady-knight-.tumblr.com/post/186046772388/how-the-little-mermaid-live-action-will-look

Now I’ve seen the remake of The Little mermaid? Spoilers! But movies are out earlier in Europe (wednesdays instead of fridays in France). Anyway...

I did not had access to any leaks, but based on how Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin remakes looked like, I ‘m starting to see a pattern…So, very probably:

-Scenery, special effects, musics and costumes will be gorgeous. Costumes will be more detailed and diversified.

(I picture Ariel in stuff like this as a mermaid. it will very likely preserve her modesty more).

- Scenery, special effects, musics were indeed  gorgeous (especially during “Under the Sea”), except that Scuttle’s rap was cringy and Eric’s castle prettier in the original.   Costumes on the other hand were not that spectacular and no new ones, Ariel has the same blue dress when she wore the pink princess dress, the town outfit, or the purple magic dress. 

It resembles, in color, the teal dress she have in parks and merchandising since tough.

 Sadly, she just have an organic bra (how?) not the elaborated bra I thought of.

-Eric and Ariel will likely met more than once, to avoid the scandal of “She change herself for a man-and she never actually spoke to him.” Eric will certainly don’t get she is a mermaid, if he just see her bust out of water.

-Wrong, they met once! Finally they go with “Screw it with the unrealistic love at first sight, we’ll play it straight”,  albeit Ariel has the time to overhear how much Eric have in common with her. Wish it was did for Aladdin and Jasmine as well.

-There will be new characters (Eric’s parents?) or ascended extras (Ariel’ s sisters?).

-I’m right, we see Eric’s mother! But the sisters, not much more, finally.

-Small details will be revealed (such as Eric’s kingdom name).

-We still have no idea how it is named. But we know what Eric was doing on a boat for his birthday (he’s back from a trip to Europe, and he’s an adventurer in contrast of his secluded king father).

-His palace will be more crowded. The dinner scene from the cartoon will turn into a reception scene.

-It’s more crowded, as there are the queen, servants in the kitchen, guards, and another maidservant in addition of Carlotta, who was renamed  Lashana. But the dinner scene was cut.

-We will notably learn how Ariel’s mother died.

-We do, but it’s vague, apparently an human killed her. Certainly a fisherman who thought she was a giant fish?

-Problems of of logic will be explained (for instance, merpeople ‘s alphabet is  very different form the human one, explaining why Ariel, who did not learn it, cannot write who she is to Eric once she is muted.)

-It's not explained out loud (nobody ask Ariel to write down her story in human world), but she can't write, period. It's implied when she gives a scale to Ursula  instead of signing her contract. Also and like in Once upon a time, she compares the fork to a mini trident instead of reacting like she never seen such an object before. 

-And others problems will be created. For instance, if Eric and Ariel saw and actually speak to each other before she is turned into an human, how on earth he does not recognize her face then?

-Ursula cast a spell on Ariel so she forgets the necessity to kiss Eric while on land, and Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle have to act secretly to bring them closer. Uh, why? That's the biggest new plot hole to me. Was it to justify that Ariel do not tries anything except during "Kiss the girl"?  Well, as a "true love kiss" is needed, of course Ariel could not just randomly forcibly kiss Eric, certain circumstances were needed. Plus it’s borderline cheating for Ursula.

-Sebastian, Scuttle,  Flounder, Flotsam and Jetsam will certainly be cameos. If not, they will be muted. Under the sea and Kiss the girl will be sung by others characters.

-The casting of  Jacob Tremblay and Awkwafina proves that Flounder and Scuttle will talk. I thought of a gender bender (because of Kaa example) but I wasn’t sure.

-Ok, I've already said I was wrong here...But I'm actually half wrong. Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle still talk (and sing) as speaking for a mute heroine is obsiously needed. But every other beast does not, including Flotsam and Jetsam (Ursula speak through a magical projection to Ariel in her grotto, to tempt her). Background animals are muted as well: "Under the sea" is sung by Ariel and Sebastian, and "Kiss the girl" by  Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle only.

-There will be a new song, very likely a Eric’s solo (like Her voice in Broadway.)

-He does! But I still prefer "Her voice" (don't ask). And a new Ariel solo.

-Ursula will certainly be afro- american (like in  Once upon a time.) Maybe, she look purple by CGI. And much prettier than the original. 

 -Ursula will not be played by an afro-american actress. Really? Until then, Lizzo was totally who I had in mind.

-Ok, wrong for her ethnicity. But she is purple and much prettier indeed.

-She will have a strong backstory and motivation. Either she will be Ariel’s aunt (it was considered in the cartoon), or suffer fantastic racism towards cecaelias (octopus mermaids).

-And she is Ariel's aunt, but the latter state that Ursula brought troubles between merfolks and humans. And? That's evasive. The reason why Ursula was banished remains a mystery.

- Maybe the same actress will play Vanessa.

-No! But she is still a white actress.

 It surprised me as I thought the habit to cast African-american actresses to play Ursula would be reused here. Plus, she looks misplaced: it's a west Indian kingdom, and Eric appearance is explained (not necessary according to me) by the fact he was adopted. Apart from him, a few sailors,  and a justified Jodi Benson cameo, everybody else have more or less Caribbean features.

-Ariel will be motivated by something else (like an immediate danger) , in addition of  Eric, to accept Ursula’s pact.

-No. Still, she hesitate more, and come very near to renounce to the pact with Ursula.

-Ursula won’t be giant.

-She will transform Flotsam and Jetsam instead.

-Ah! The stupidity of Maleficient and Jafar turning Diaval in a dragon and Iago in a sort of rock bird was not done here. Flotsam and Jetsam die the same way, and Ursula turn into a monster.

-Ariel will kill her, not Eric.

-She does! I should have took bets.

-Ariel and Eric will be emotionally very distant. When she’ll definitively gain legs, no twirl of love or kiss, just: “Ok, cool, what’s for dinner?”

-Much more attention, alchemy’s construction  and screen time will be put into a secondary couple, like for instance the one of Sir Grimsby and Carlotta (they are not a couple, but could become one in the remake if it keeps the same pattern).

I’m taking bets!

-Belle and the Beast and Aladdin and Jasmine being emotionally very distant was irritating. Fortunately Ariel and Eric seems more convincingly in love. Except, perhaps, when he see her as an human for the first time. It's  very short and fell flat (because it's a random fisherman and not him who finds Ariel as an human just after she transformed). When she definitively gain legs, no twirl of love, but they kiss. It was irritating as well to see more focus put on the story between the Genie and the maidservant. Fortunately, no beta couple here, not even  Sir Grimsby and Lashana.

-But, by the way…a mixed race Ariel go hand in hand with another possible prediction, that I had in mind since Aquaman came out:

-Triton will be younger, hotter, and played by an afro american or Maori actor, covered in tattoos and with dreadlocks in his hair. Basically, he will be Jason Momoa! Aquaman? Exactly.

Despite he’s a Maori and seems far from the shaved, blond, and white Arthur Curry, Momoa have  still bleached hair, and Aquaman had a beard in the 90′s, so…

Another possibility is that the story will be relocated in the Caribbeans islands.

-Ok: Triton is not that younger or sexier, with my due respect, have no tattoos nor dreadlocks, nor he's  Afro american or Maori. But he's Spanish still. 

And the story  relocated in the Caribbeans islands? Exactly! ! I should definitely  have took bets.

We complain, but we can’t say Disney never learn when it come to remakes. It’s not identical (notably because of the   Caribbeans settings). But not too different. It did not try to excuse the villain, nor avoided to play straight love at first sight because it’s not realistic and blah blah blah (I wish they realized this when Aladdin was remade). Ariel still change herself “for a man” (or not, she already was obsessed by human world before, remember?), it’s true love played straight, deal with it. A notable difference, is Ariel not only killing Ursula, but also tearing and breaking her necklace to get her voice back instead of Scuttle. Some regret the more proactive princesses of today, and the fact that the prince do not save the princess. The act of saving someone is seen as an act of true love...But I don’t mind,  as even if it is the princess who saves the guy, it’s still true love.

Eric was the damsel, but I don’t mind. 

[intothewickedwood]

Once Upon A Time In Wonderland Rewatch: 1x01 Down the Rabbit Hole

So my mum and I love this spin off and rewatch at least once every 2 years. If you haven’t given it a try yet, I can’t recommend it enough! It has complex romance, creative ideas, strong friendships, terrifying villains and a solid plot.  

One thing though is that some of the creatures scare me so much that I have to watch those parts with my eyes closed lol. It’s kinda thrilling though, not knowing when to close your eyes. It’s like riding a rollercoaster. It’s become part of the fun for my mum and I. But that’s just us. You might not find them remotely frightening.

Okay, here we go y’all! I’ll try to keep my thoughts free of spoilers for future episodes.

Alice’s house exterior is so gorgeous.

Holy bananas, how long has she been gone?!

Edwin is a freaking terrible father. Lock the damn doors! He should have someone watching her at all times if she leaves the house. Get a nanny or something! Don’t just let her continue running off to God knows where! She’s just a kid!

And the White Rabbit should probably know better than to lead her to that extremely dangerous place.  

Will!  

Emma nearly ran him over lol.

Ashley! Looks like she’s wearing a Granny’s apron. I guess she was a waitress there.

And Leroy! Cool!

So, I believe this is set some point around season 2. I guess it’s the same day the curse was broken, unless someone else was driving Emma’s car.

Holy cow! How’s granny gonna get that giant hole out the floor??

“I’m late! I’m late!”

That rabbit’s got pink eyes. Cool. I had a dwarf hamster with red eyes. Her name was Tango and her sister, Mango, tried to eat her so we had to separate them. Loved them both.

Alice!

I know how most peeps feel about the cgi in this show but it really doesn’t bother me. Sure it would be cooler if it looked more realistic but it’s the compelling story, dynamics and characters that capture me and allow me to easily look beyond that and suspend my disbelief.

This Lydgate guy istg! I wonder if this is before or after Jekyll killed his daughter, Mary. Oh, his name is Arthur and apparently it’s after she died. Maybe that’s why he’s so bitter.

Cyrus! So Charming.

Couldn’t he just walk out that bottle and drink that ‘drink me’ bottle to turn to his original size? Maybe there’s a magic barrier preventing him from leaving like the one keeping Alice Jones in her tower. And he’s be brought right back to it id someone rubbed it.

Poor Rabbit. I love this Alice as well but that’s a big difference between her and Alice Jones. This one’s more selfish but we get to see her character develop so that she becomes less so and I think that’s really cool!

She’s his master? But she didn’t rub the bottle, did she?

Alice: “I don’t wish for anything!” I wonder if she says that because she doesn’t want to accidentally wish for something. Could she even make a wish in the Victorian Realm?

The Land Without Magic doesn’t seem to be the only place without magic. The Victorian England Realm seems not to have any either. Baelfire could have easily ended up in that land but we know he doesn’t.

Oh snap! I somehow missed when he said she and Cyrus apparently travelled from world to world fighting pirates and swimming with mermaids. I guess all Alice’s like to travel. I wonder what realms she and Cyrus went to. Neverland to swim with mermaids and fight pirates?

She totally should have written a book.

Oh, I guess he did walk out of his bottle and drink the ‘drink me’ potion.

Ah gosh, it must be so painful for Alice to say all the things she went through and the love she felt for Cyrus weren’t real.

Betrayed by the sleep talking. My mum sleep talks and my dad sleepwalks. Please let me escape those genetics!

Anastasia!

The fight scenes are so cool!

Oh no!

She doesn’t write her surname, dammit. I want to know her surname so I can more easily distinguish the two Alices in my tags!  

Oh snap! He was gonna perform a lobotomy on her. Do they still do that? In Smallville Clark was awake when they tried to do it on him, I wonder if that’s actually a thing because it seems like it would be terrifying and hurt like hell. Oh, it’s seen as inhumane nowadays. Apparently they could be done while awake.

Maybe she wasn’t trying to lie to them. She seems to have convinced herself that Will wasn’t/isn’t real, so maybe she convinced herself everything else wasn’t real either.

“You know as well as I do, Alice, nothing’s impossible in Wonderland.” And that’s why it’s so awesome!

Girl can fight! Love this scene where she fights the asylum staff!  

I mean, I’m a pacifist in real life but I do love a good fictional fight scene.  

Dr. Lydgate’s face when he sees the White Rabbit talk.

Bouncy marshmallow!  

The mallow marsh is such a good, creative idea.  

I haven’t had marshmallows since I became a vegetarian 16 years ago. I’ve completely forgotten what they taste like and I am sad I’ll never get to know what’s so good about s’mores.

Damn. Would have loved it if Jefferson was in this show.

The dragonflies are dragons. Love it!

I love the Tulgey Woods scenes in the animated movie. So dark and mysterious.

Will: “I’m gonna die like a bloody s’more.” Lol. I love him.

She’s making s’mores! This show is off the rails and I love it.

Lol. He looks like a snowman.

I’m surprised they managed to get all of that off them. Maybe they ate it off.  

Oh wait, the Rabbit was lying?

The Tulgey Woods!  

This Jafar has to be the most terrifying villain in all of Ouat. Perhaps because he seems incapable of love.

Were Jafar and the Red Queen a thing? I can never tell.  

Jafar flying on the carpet like it’s a surfboard. Whoa, like, ride the waves, dude!

It must be more difficult to climb a tree with just socks on.

The cheshire cat! I’ve always loved the Cheshire cat. Such a mysterious character. I have to say, my favourite version might just be lesbian Cheshire Cat/Caterpillar from the musical, Alice by heart. It’s so good and she’s so gay. I highly recommend.

I love the way he speaks in riddles.

He straight up tried to eat her! And it seemed they used to he friends!

Will to the rescue! No one hurts his little sis!

I just freaking love the Tulgey Woods.

I wish Jefferson would just appear at his house. He made so many hats trying to get back to his daughter. Poor guy.

I wonder how he came upon his original hat and why it had magic it seems he couldn’t replicate.

She found Cyrus’ necklace!

Bless Will, he’s not leaving without her.

[crystalkleure]

sorta late to the party, but eyo? new pokémon game?? i’ve been holding off on buying it to see if it‘s better than swsh, but it looks sickkkk! how’re you liking it so far?

IT'S FUCKING AWESOME

Holy SHIT it's SO GOOD!!! For once I don't regret dumping $60 on a game at all!!

It's gorgeous, the gameplay is Extremely Different from every single other Pokemon game, it's sort of like combining a Standard Mainline Pokemon Game with the Pokemon Ranger games? It's like all purely in the overworld, you can even continue running around during battles [and WILL eat shit if you stand in the way of attacks]. Stealthily Sneaking Up On Wild Murderbeasts And Capturing Them Before They See You And Eat You is the primary focus bc you're playing as like a researcher, your primary goal is to Complete Pokedex [a giant folder full of research notes lol it's all paper]. You CAN die. Death is Literally Everywhere in this fucking game, People And Pokemon Literally Dying is like a recurring plot issue, and they don't dance around it at all. The Death Word Is Not A Dirty Word In This Game.

And, and this next bit is why it is Extra Impressive that I STILL recommend this game so Incredibly Highly...

Most of the boss fights are 90% in the overworld. The rampaging Pokemon are attacking YOU. You have to evade them and wait for specific tiny openings to be able to throw your own Pokemon out and actually Engage Them In Pokemon Battle. In other words, Dodging Brutal Bloody Death By Rabid Beast is absolutely crucial. There is a button you gotta press to tuck-and-roll to jump out of the way of attacks, "dodging" makes you invulnerable for a few seconds so the Death can just slip right past you. This is totally fine and even awesome, except...

My dodge mechanic does not work. At all. It is completely broken.

I have been playing this game ENTIRELY WITHOUT AN INCREDIBLY INTEGRAL PART OF IT BEING FUNCTIONAL. I have had to do all this shit WITHOUT ACTUALLY DODGING. I'm just having to sprint out of the fucking way, even in HIGHLY MOVEMENT-RESTRICTED SMALL AREAS THAT LEAVE VERY LITTLE ROOM FOR NON-INVULNERABLE MANEUVERING, because when I press the dodge button, I am not granted that momentary untouchable status. I am still locked into the "dodging" animation for a second though, which, ironically, pretty much GUARANTEES I get hit. Dodging actually gets me killed almost invariably, that's the suicide button for me.

It actually took me a long time to realize there was even something wrong with my game, I just thought I sucked ass at it and Must Be Dodging Wrong Somehow because the very first boss gave me an unreasonable amount of extreme trouble lol, it was making me so sad. It turns out I've been digging a fucking hole in a solid rock wall with a kitchen spoon without realizing I was supposed to have a sledgehammer, and then wondering why everyone else seemed to have such an easier time digging THEIR holes. All thought while I was, however, in fact, successfully digging that fucking hole in the fucking rock with that fucking spoon lmfao.

I actually had to completely break the game in order to progress at one point, FINALLY realizing right at the end of this situation that Maybe My Game Is A Little Broken And Something Is Wrong Actually lol. Like this is what finally tipped me off that maybe I'm not playing this video game the intended way. It's a spoiler, so I'll put it under a cut.

The third boss, Arcanine, is apparently EXTREMELY not supposed to be beatable without dodging. The Impending Boss Battle Warning NPC right before the fight is even very, very clear about this, she straight-up tells you there are attacks that WILL kill you if you are not in your invulnerable state for the moment they are happening.

What happens is, there are a few phases of Arcanine's Attacking YOU Stage, before you can throw your mons at him:

First, he just charges around the stage at you, in straight lines, with pauses in between each rush. It's pretty easy to get out of the way of that by just sprinting, that was fine.

Second, he might jump up into the air and slam down in the middle of the stage, creating a giant shockwave that will hit you if you are anywhere near the center. Again, pretty easy to just get out of the way of that because there is a Warning Pause right before it happens, so you know it's coming. The stage is shaped like a +, so I could just bolt to the far edge of one of the four bars and the shockwave would not reach me.

Third...is his You Will Die If You Don't Interrupt It attack. He moves into the far side of one of the bars of the +, and starts charging up. You have to hit him with your throwable objects ["balms"] like 5 times to interrupt his charging and stun him, allowing you to then throw out your Pokemon and properly battle him. After you deplete his health in battle, he's stunned for several seconds while he regains his HP for the next round, so your throwables have a Massive Amount Of Effect on him.

There's a bar at the top of the screen that you need to deplete in order to win the fight during the Noble Pokemon boss battles, and what makes the bar go down is hitting the boss with your throwables. Outside of that "regaining health" vulnerability window post-proper-battle, the throwables only chip away at the bar just a tiny little bit, they have very little effect.

Now, the problem with Arcanine is that, after you've won a Proper Pokemon Battle against him twice, and thus have presumably gotten the bar at the top of the screen down to its final segment, Arcanine has a Final Berserker Phase of Attacking YOU. He puts a Wall Of Fire in the center of the +, greatly reducing your mobility by confining you to whichever of the four corners you are standing in. He's GOING TO be able to hit you with his rush attacks like this, you really gotta be able to either dodge properly or have enough health that you can tank the hits until he moves into his "Charging Ultimate Move" attack phase again.

And the thing about his final Charged-Up Uber Attack is that he will ALWAYS move to the exact opposite side of the cross from the side you are trapped in, the massive fire barrier will always be between you, so you can only BARELY reach him with perfectly-aimed throwables to interrupt it. Your aim has to be really perfect. Probably much easier to do if your Switch is plugged into a big TV [mine was not, I've been in handheld mode only].

I actually don't know what happens if you successfully interrupt the charged attack under those conditions, because I had a problem here and was never able to do it. I would find "the sweet spot" where ONE of my throwables would make contact -- and, mind you, the boss is not moving at all while he is charging up -- and then none of my other throwables would hit, even though I threw them at the same exact spot at the same exact power and was definitely hitting Arcanine with them? No matter what I did, only that first balm made contact, which meant I was never able to interrupt that last move, which meant it killed me when he unleashed it. Always. Invariably. Because my health was already tanked due to my limited mobility coupled with being unable to dodge from before; I had already taken too many hits by that point.

So, in order to beat this boss, I had to just...never let him get to that final phase. I had to end the battle BEFORE that last uninterruptable, undodgeable Uber Attack, because that last attack was certain death for me.

So what I ended up doing was just pinging the bastard with low-effect throwables throughout the WHOLE match. I had to spam that shit CONTINUOUSLY, WHILE sprinting around out of the way of rush attacks and shockwaves. I always had to be facing the boss and aiming well enough to hit that bitch with my projectiles a million fucking times, because I had to chip the meter at the top of the screen All The Way Down BEFORE the final charged attack in the final phase started.

And I succeeded! I got the meter all the way down. It was empty. I had depleted a HUGE AMOUNT of that meter with only low-effect balms, because I could only battle Arcanine with my Pokemon twice at maximum under these conditions. That Meter Was Fucking Empty.

And the battle did not end.

I did NOT win upon emptying the fucking meter, as I should have. You are supposed to Instantly Win as soon as that bar is blank. Apparently, the devs did not expect anyone to be able to do this fight the way that I did, so it appears that there was no exit condition to the battle assigned to "what if you win via low-effect balm spam before the final phase even starts" in the code. There was like no win protocol programmed in for that I guess.

But I DID win, obviously, I ended that battle and have now moved on to the next part of the game [I'm currently in Wayward Cave].

I won when I died.

I wasn't able to end the fight before that final charged attack happened, so, of course, I just watched Very Grumpily as Arcanine killed me with it. And then the "You are fucking dead" cutscene [whatever it is, I actually still haven't seen it bc I've just been resetting the game when I can tell I'm fucked bc I'm impatient] didn't play. The "You've won the match and calmed Arcanine" cutscene played. And the fucking story progressed and everything was fine. When I fucking died to that last attack. THAT'S WHAT ENDED THE MATCH. ME DYING.

I'm going to guess that what happened there, in the code, was that the game handles the "end of the match" protocol in such a way that it checks the state of the meter to determine WHY the battle ended. If the "match has ended" flag gets triggered, the game FIRST checks "Is the meter empty?" to determine whether the battle has ended because you've won or lost, and if the meter is empty upon the match ending, then it assumes you must have won, because of course depleting the meter is supposed to be an instant win. It does not determine whether you've won or lost based on YOUR health unless the meter is not empty; it checks the state of your health AFTER it checks the meter. It makes sense, because it's assuming that if you're taking damage, you're not depleting the meter, because you're PROBABLY not pinging throwables at the boss while trying to dodge its attacks against you, you're probably throwing shit at it while it's stunned, and CAN'T attack you. So the game apparently assumes that you can't really fully deplete the meter during a part of the match where you CAN take damage and die.

So, that was an Incredibly Harrowing Bugged-Out Boss Fight lmfao, and it's hilarious now that I think I understand what happened. I would actually do it again, that was fun. It was like Ultra Hard Challenge Mode, having to do that shit without being able to dodge OR stop that last attack. Had a fucking "How I used time travel to beat FNAF Security Breach" moment, just waiting for the Giga Monties to start spawning in my Pokemon game now lol. I had to break fucking everything to win.

[iwaisa]

request. a fellow tadashi lover? hey there! could i ask if you could write tadashi(captain tadashi,,,man i love him) and his s/o who’s just insecure as to why tadashi is dating them when there is for example a new manager, and tadashi just shows her how much he loves her? (or them, however you feel most comfortable) nsfw if you wouldn’t mind,,, - anon

a/n. this was 😳😳 very eye opening nonnie,,, and uh- this is why it took me two days to write this 🙈🙈 n e ways i hope you like this and have a great day, angel ! 💘

► now playing...

- pairing. yamaguchi x female reader

- genre. nsfw ! (there is a plot don’t worry 😌)

- warnings. mentions of insecurities, swearing, protected sex

- word count. 2.5k+

she was gorgeous. sleek, long black hair that happened to frame her face perfectly, it seemed. a tall, petit frame that caught your eye no matter where she happened to be. giant, blue eyes, a funny coincidence. one of her parents must have blue eyes. either that, or she’s just an angel.

you sighed in discomfort as she sat next to you on the bench, greeting you with a small wave and a charming smile. even her mannerisms were perfect. you discussed what exactly needed to be completed today, running your finger down the paper on your clipboard. you watched as she stood up to make her way to the equipment room to begin setting up the net and scoreboard. she always happened to be on top of things, even you, where you were desperately clawing to reach her.

“hey f/n!” yamaguchi greeted as he sat next to you, pulling you into a side hug. “hey tadashi,” you mumbled half-mindedly as you tore your attention off the door the second-year manager had just gone through.

yamaguchi leaned forward, attempting to catch your gaze. he watched with nothing but love in his eyes as you brought your bottom lip in between your teeth, nervously chewing on the chapped skin. yamaguchi brought his thumb to your face, pulling your bottom lip out of your teeth. “don’t do that. as cute as it is, you’re gonna bite holes into your lip.”

your gaze softened as you looked at your boyfriend for the first time all day since this morning, your eyes raking over his perfect features. he was absolutely breathtaking, and you wondered what kind of prank he was pulling on you to be dating you.

“angel? you’ve been kinda spacey, is everything okay?” before you could open your mouth to respond, the other manager came back, holding her hands behind her back. “i set everything up, y/n-senpai!”

that was another thing - how polite she was. you cringed inwardly at the use of the honourific, and you attempted to ignore how her voice seemed to get higher now that your boyfriend is around.

“good job, yuna-chan,” you smiled, clapping your hands together before turning towards your boyfriend, “you’re all set.” yamaguchi gave you a quick kiss on the cheek before standing up to round the rest of the team together.

practice was particularly bad that day, as yuna found any chance to ogle at your boyfriend. any compliment towards him that attempted to leave your mouth was quickly interrupted by the second-year, and at one point you felt the need to leave the gymnasium to calm yourself down. of course, that didn’t go unnoticed by your boyfriend, who tried his absolute hardest to keep up his kind façade around the raven-haired girl.

in truth, she was just as annoying to him as she was to you - a feat yamaguchi has talked about behind closed doors with you many times. there were some days she acted simply like a kind-hearted girl who only wanted to help out, but other times it seemed as though she was planning to slowly break you down in order to get to yamaguchi. today however, it seemed as though she was succeeding.

practice had ended, and you were still wandering around the empty school, attempting to calm yourself by basking in the orange and yellow colours that coated the hallways of karasuno high school. of course, that ended fairly quickly as well, as you watched yuna bound towards you from down the hallway.

“y/n-senpai! practice just ended!” you simply gave a nod, crossing your arms over your chest as you talked to the girl. your scowl deepened as she talked your ear off, complimenting each of the players and stating how each of them have improved drastically since the beginning of the year. however, you noticed how her face seemed to grow red whenever she mentioned ‘yamaguchi-senpai.’ the straw that managed to break the camel's back, however, was a backhanded compliment she managed to hide by her sweet face.

“also, your school uniform makes you look so good! it makes you look far thinner as well.”

you gritted your teeth as you watched her bound away back from where she came, sighing in frustration as she finally left your vision. you crouched down, burying your head in your arms as her words repeated in your head.

“angel?” you snapped your head to the side in time to see your boyfriend crouch down next to you, a worried look etched onto his face. “let’s go back to my place, okay? maybe you could sleep over, you know, since it’s a friday?” his lips quirked into a mischievous smile, but you simply didn’t notice, as your mind was running with thoughts of yuna. you nodded as you took his hand to help you up, a noise of surprise leaving your throat as he dipped you towards the ground and gave you a peck on the lips. “i love you, angel.”

your heart warmed up at his gesture and his words, a smile finally making its way onto your lips, to which yamaguchi cheered that he finally made you show him your pretty smile.

“tadashi?” the olive-haired male hummed as he finished pulling his shirt over his head, not missing the way your eyes traveled to his glistening abs, a sign from his previous shower. you brought your lower lip back in between your teeth, nervously biting at the skin. you hesitated once more before finally letting your questions spill out.

“why are you with me? what’s so special about… me?”

yamaguchi snapped his head to lock eyes with you, his mouth hanging open in surprise. his eyes never left your face, and you quickly began growing uncomfortable. “what?” you muttered as he slowly made his way to where you were sat on his bed. he plucked your phone from your hands, shutting it off and setting it on his nightstand.

“what’s so special about you?” he murmured, sitting next to you, patting his lap for you to sit on. you were hesitant to swing your leg over his, awkwardly placed atop his thighs. his hands rested atop your bare skin, his thumbs drawing soft circles, causing your face to heat up.

“you’re absolutely gorgeous. not only that, but you’re the most kind-hearted, hilarious, most intelligent girl i’ve ever met. you’re my first love, and i’m absolutely in awe that i get to experience everything for the first time with the girl of my dreams. i love you, f/n.”

he smiled up at you, his eyes full of nothing but love as he stares back at the girl who has managed to steal his heart back in your first year of high school. yet, three years later, and he still wakes up each morning wondering what godly thing he did in his past life that gave him the opportunity to be able to wake up to your beautiful face at his door.

his fingers swiped the escaped tears off your cheeks, his heart warming at how you leaned into his touch. “so, so gorgeous,” he murmured as he used his fingers to pull your lips down to meet his, capturing you in a searing kiss. your hands moved to wrap around his neck, returning the kiss with just as much fervor, if not more. your fingers twirled his olive strands, and his fiddled with the hem of your skirt, your skin burning up at his touch.

his hands reached around to your ass, pulling you even closer to his chest. his fingers lingered, kneading the soft skin as he slipped his tongue into your mouth. you couldn’t help the moan that slipped out of your mouth as he rubbed his hands over your ass, kissing you hungrily.

“beautiful,” he mumbled once more, angling his head to nip at the skin of your neck, attacking it with lust-filled lovebites. you subconsciously began rocking your hips, the feeling of the outline of his hardened cock perfectly lining up with your cunt sending you reeling. his beautiful moans reverberated against your throat, the two of you moaning in unison as arousal pooled in both of your bellies.

“want you now,” he mumbled, his hands sliding up from your thigh to make its way towards your soaking cunt. you moaned in agreement, grabbing his hand and finally pressing it onto your clit, his fingers automatically rubbing circles into the sensitive bundle of nerves. “want you too, tadashi,” you moaned, causing his cock to twitch underneath his sweatpants, yearning for release from its confines.

your hand slipped from his neck, down his chest, until it reached the waistband of his sweats, desperately tugging them down along with his boxers until his leaking cock sprung up, thudding against his clothed stomach. he let out a breathy shudder as the cold air hit his cock, his fingers quickly moving to push your panties aside.

you leaned over to open the drawer of his nightstand, frantically pulling a condom out of the box he has hidden. yamaguchi pumped his length a few times, the feeling causing him to jump, his face growing pink as you giggled at his eagerness.

you watched as he slipped the rubber down his length, your middle and forefinger continuing to rub circles onto your clit as you prepped yourself, knowing the stretch would sting no matter how many times the two of you have done this.

as he finished ensuring the condom felt snug against his cock, you brought yourself onto your knees, your dripping cunt just inches away from his angry reddened tip. you buried your face into your boyfriend’s neck as his hands rested on your hips, slowly guiding yourself down onto his length, groaning as you circled your hips on his tip. the feeling of him finally filling you up was breathtaking, your whines mixed with his breathy moans being the only sounds in his bedroom. thank goodness, you thought, for his parents being away.

you were finally fully situated atop him, his tip barely kissing your cervix. his hands cradled your back as he continued pressing kisses onto your neck, smirking as he noticed all of the red marks he knew you would have fun covering up the next day. maybe it’s good you’ll have a hard time covering them, he thought. maybe now when yuna sees she’ll finally understand that he’s taken.

yamaguchi untucked the hem of your shirt from your skirt, prompting you to pull it over your head. once you did, his fingers made quick work of unbuckling your bra, letting a soft moan slip out of his lips as he watched your gorgeous breasts spill out of the cups.

he flung your shirt somewhere across his bedroom, quickly taking one of your hardened nipples into his mouth, his tongue circling the bud as his hands moved back to rest on your ass. his grip tightened, prompting you to bounce on his cock as his mouth moved from one breast to the other.

your moans got higher and louder as yamaguchi bounced you on his cock, his eyes watching as your own squeezed shut, the feeling of his veiny cock through the condom rubbing against your walls overwhelming you.

yamaguchi pulled your chin down by his pointer finger to slot his lips between yours once more, his tongue locking with yours. your hand slid down to pleasure your neglected clit, hurtling you closer to your high as his length continued sliding in and out of your cunt.

yamaguchi dug his heels into the bed, now taking complete control as he relentlessly pistoned his cock up into your cunt, pulling away from your lips to watch your expression grow even more fucked-out.

“tadashi, tadashi,” you repeated, the coil in your stomach unravelling embarrassingly quickly. yamaguchi’s hips sped up, attempting to chase his own high. his hands grabbed at any skin he could, his fingers borderline bruising your skin as he kneaded your ass.

“‘m close, angel,” he murmured, bringing you closer to his chest as he rested his reddened face against your collarbone. “me too, tadashi,” you drew out his name, drifting off into a whine as his cock hit that spongy spot inside of you, sending you reeling as your orgasm hit you.

your body shook against his as he continued thrusting up into you, desperately attempting to reach his release. it finally happened when he watched you lean back, palms resting against his bedsheets as you moved your hips in sync with his. he watched your breasts bounce with the force of your hips meeting his, which was the last thing he saw before his eyes squeezed shut, feeling his cock twitch inside you as he released thick ropes of his cum inside the condom.

a string of curses fell out of his mouth as he continued cumming, opening his eyes to see your fucked-out expression watching his own. “fuck, angel, you’re so so beautiful,” he sighed, his chest heaving as he attempted to catch his breath. “so perfect. so gorgeous. i love you,” he finished, sighing in contentment as his breathing finally slowed, his hands moving to grip your hips once more.

he was slow but careful in pulling you off his softening cock, laying you down onto his bed as he stood up to toss the condom into the bin and pull his boxers back on. he studied your exhausted figure as he reached into his closet to grab a cloth, walking back over to the bed.

he leaned over you as he cleaned you up, grabbing his sweatpants off the floor and pulling them over your exposed legs. once he was finished tossing the cloth into his hamper, he climbed underneath the covers, pulling you into his chest as he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead.

“i love you, angel. it’ll only ever be you. no one else, especially not yuna-chan, so you don’t need to worry about her. plus, she’s not my type,” he whispered into your ear as he brushed your hair back, his gaze locked lovingly onto your peaceful expression. you looked up at him through half-lidded eyes, your fingers moving towards the nape of his neck to play with his baby hairs once more.

“i love you too, tadashi. sorry i left practice today, she just… made me feel like i wasn’t deserving of your love. she also basically said that i looked fat in my uniform.”

yamaguchi’s body tensed, and you opened your eyes fully to see his gaze grow irritated. “you know, we only need one manager. i’m firing her on monday.” you let out a giggle at his firm words, your heart warming at his protective nature.

“that’s a good idea, captain.” he felt his face grow warm at the title, still not being used to it after months of receiving his jersey. “hush now. go to sleep. i love you,” he sighed, pressing another kiss to the crown of your head, his gaze softening as he watched you slowly drift off to sleep.

smut taglist. @otsut-writing​ @ash-writes-things​ @humanitysbiggestsimp​

[theonewiththefanfics]

Would You Be My Little Quarantine (one-shot)

Synopsis: As the mandatory quarantine hits, the Reader is stuck in a cabin in Utah with the boys from 5 Seconds of Summer. Turns out another person is stuck in a hotel nearby. Hijinx ensue as does romance. 

Pairing: Harry Styles x f!Reader

Genre: fluff pretty much just pure, teeth-rotting fluff.

Warnings: it’s my first time writing for Harry as I was never really part of the fandom, but damn does Watermelon Sugar do things to a person, so please be kind. This is defo not my best work, but I’m slowly getting back into the groove of things, so bare with me :D

Word count: 6061

        TikTok had become Y/N’s new obsession. She’d stayed away from it as long as she could, being a true Vine generation child, she felt loyalty to the deceased app. But one night, after a long recording session, she caved. And then stayed giggling on it until the early morning when the birds started to chirp… or until Calum had taken her phone and threatened to throw it in the jacuzzi if she didn’t go to bed. 

        The girl and the four guys from 5 Seconds of Summer had been renting a cabin in the middle of the Utah woods to help them escape the distractions of the city as they recorded their respective albums, and given how they were good friends, they decided to collaborate on a few songs, and it made sense to just chill together as well.

        Which had started off Y/N’s own TikTok series, having ‘borrowed’ the idea from the Irishman living with two girls.

        “Alright, gentlemen.” She slid inside her bathroom pulling the focus of her camera on the reflection in the mirror. “I live with four guys, and I have some things to say. Why do you always, and I mean ALWAYS, leave your socks around the house? The dirty ones. You know you could just throw them in the wash… there’s an idea.”

        “We do!” Calum yelled

        Y/N turned her face to the door and hollered, “Only after I’ve asked you to!”

        “Do not!” he countered.

        “Do too!” she exited the bathroom and into the hallway only to be met with the man standing there with his hands on his hips. “Then how.” Y/N pointed the camera towards the living area you could see from where the hallways overlooked the room. “Do you explain that?” And when she zoomed in, there, in a small pile laid two brown socks, all crumpled up and almost pushed underneath one of the three couches, as if someone was trying to hide them from sight.

        Calum stammered for a bit. “Those are NOT mine.”

        Y/N flipped the camera and looked at it like they do in the Office. “Help me,” she mouthed and finished the TikTok, pointing with her hand at him. “Ya disgustin’!”

        Just as maturely as she had reacted, so did Calum by crossing his arms and sticking his tongue out, but their little bickering about whose socks they were and whose job was it to put them in the dirty wash (they were Ashton’s, and it was his job), Luke poked Y/N’s side as he came out from his room. 

        “I know might seem weird, but is there any chance another person could join our quarantine group?”

        Y/N’s eyebrows rose. Sure, the house was giant, mostly because whatever production she was a part of on Broadway, after a successful season, she invited all of them there to get away from the bustle of New York and just chill. It was in the middle of the forest, encased by gorgeous mountains and at the side of a lake where they’d go jet skiing and cliff diving.

        “I thought people can’t visit one another?”

        “They can’t,” Luke confirmed. “That’s the point. The unfortunate soul just got stuck at a hotel not too far from here, and all the flights are cancelled. Two weeks of quarantine without symptoms have been concluded, but, knowing how impossible it’d be to get to London, when you know, as I said, there are no flights, I offered a place to stay.”

        “So,” Y/N dramatically rolled her head. “You already offered to stay before asking me?”

        “Well, I knew you’d say ‘yes’ because you’re a kind, generous, amazing, smart, talented, compassionate person and wouldn’t leave someone on the streets when you know you could help.”

        “Mhm, keep talking.” Y/N squinted her eyes and put her hands on her hips.

        “Incredible, best musician I’ve ever met, how you haven’t won all of Tony’s I’ve got no idea. Your acting skills are impeccable and the movie industry is missing out on a once in a lifetime kind of a talent by not castin-“

        “Alright stop.” Y/N busted out laughing. “As long as you promise I won’t wake up with an axe in my head, ‘s fine.” 

        “Promise.”

        “Good. Also, could you please get me three bottles of that wine I like?” Y/N hollered before skipping downstairs and to the kitchen where Ashton was brewing the tenth cup of coffee. “I have a deadline in two weeks and have literally no idea where to go with the story.” She referred to the second book of her series she was writing, and now with the lockdown going on, her literary agent was breathing down her neck, and it didn’t help she hadn’t written anything in like a month and didn’t remember half of the already exiting story.

        Luke lifted a brow and hissed through his teeth. “That bad?”

        “You have no idea,” she sighed and left for the living-room where she could harass the boys for their fries and procrastinate some more. 

***

        The few hours, while Luke was away, were quite uneventful. All of them sat around on the couch pit, wrote some music, lil bit of lyrics and Y/N almost cried seeing as her characters had decided to live their own life and not obey to her story.

        “Why do you have to be such an idiot,” she mumbled under her breath and furrowed her brows as she wrote herself into a new plot hole.

        Right as Y/N was about to delete the whole chapter, the door slammed open and she heard grunting. “We’re here!” Luke hollered, and the thought of wine made her giddy, making her leap over the edge of the couch, and rush to the front door only to stop dead in her tracks. 

        Y/N’s mouth hung open, not because of who the person joining their quarantine group was, but because of what the person was. “A fifth GUY?! You didn’t tell me it’d be a guy!”

        “I didn’t think it’d matter!” Luke yelled back.

        “There’s already four of you!” She pointed back to the living room hearing loads of ‘hey!’ being shouted back.

        “Would you leave him on the streets if you’d known he was a dude?”

        “No, of course not!” 

        “Why are we yelling?”

        “I don’t know!”

        “I mean, I can leave.” Harry Styles said pointing at the door, not really knowing what to do. He certainly hadn’t expected that sort of greeting. “But I do come bearing gifts.” He lifted a black bag where a clinking of glass could be heard.    

        “No,” she sighed.  “It’s fine... I just… I just miss the company of vaginas.”

        He raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Vaginas?”

        “People I can rant to. Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if you have a vagina, as long as we can have a good rant. Especially about the gross things like having all of your dirty socks thrown around the house.” She threw Luke a look that screamed ‘I know you pushed all of them under your bed, and it’s stinking up the whole place.’

        Harry shook his head. “Ya not gonna find me leaving my clothes like that. Besides, ‘s disgusting.”

        “No,” Luke whined, “come on, man! You’re supposed to be on our side!”

        “It’s two against four,” Harry snickered, throwing his hand around Y/N’s shoulder, who gave Luke a smug grin, and it made her mimic the same expression.

        “It’s evening out. Maybe you should actually invite some other people to quarantine with us. Say, Harry, is maybe Niall in need of a place to stay?”

        Luke rolled his eyes, and shook his head, going into the kitchen and placing the food bags he’d been holding. “I hate you so much.”

        Y/N’s smile just widened.         

        ***

        “Yes, I’m still stealing your series Irishman.” Y/N zoomed in on her face. “Because now…” she looked up at the ceiling in a manner ‘someone please save me’, “I’m living with FIVE dudes. Yes, FIVE. We have an addition. And if someone doesn’t come and kill me, I will kill them.”

        “We’re not that bad!” Michael hollered form out of frame, to which Y/N yelled back, “Yes the fuck you are! Boys are gross. You do realize you’re allowed to have more than one towel. Like you DON’T have to wipe your face with a towel that’s soaked up your ball juice.”

        “It’s economy.”

        “It’s disgusting! Also.” Y/N turned the camera to Harry who was climbing up the stairs with a cup of coffee in hand. “Say ‘Hi’ to gremlin number five. He’s stolen all of my nail polish.”

        He gave a cute wave with an adorable smile, muttering an unintelligible ‘Hello’ as his mouth was stuffed with a piece of bread and a very muffled ‘You don’t even use them.’

        “Yes, but that’s not the point. Anyway,” Y/N pointed the camera at herself. “Tune in for an update whenever, as long as I haven’t strangled anyone, and pray to the heavens you don’t see my face in the papers cause the next time you do, it’ll be my mugshot for a quintuple homicide.”

        “Is that a threat Y/L/N?” Harry smirked, as Y/N walked past him and took away his cup of coffee.

        “No, it’s a promise.” She threw him a wink, leaving the Brit with his mouth open at the woman’s audacity, as she stopped the recording of the TikTok.

        “That was my coffee!���

        “Not anymore!”

        He shook his head, turning back around and going to the kitchen, seeing Y/N perched on one of the stools, neck stretching over to where Ashton was watching a video on his phone, the black liquid in his cup now a creamy beige. Harry smiled. Maybe quarantine wasn’t going to be so bad.

***

        Y/N’s head popped from the side of the door, bringing all of their attention to her. “You guys need to record anything right now?”

        Luke shook his head, signifying the band was alright before turning to Harry who mimicked him, the tapping of his pen stopping. “Why?”

        “Just got a call from Laurence, he said something’s wrong with the ‘Candy Store’ audio from yesterday. Need to rerecord it and send it over. Something about a faulty export or whatever.”

        “ ‘S all yours.” Ashton motioned to the recording booth. “Oh, but can I be Heather Duke?”

        “And can I be Heather McNamara then?” Luke piped in.

        Y/N chuckled. “Not to burst your bubbles, but you do know you won’t be in the final version?”

        “No, but we could be in THIS version. It’d be for our private files. And it’d help you.”

        “That sounds so wrong.” She grimaced. “How would that help me?” Y/N plopped next to Harry on the floor. “You’re the biggest distractions I’ve ever met.”

        Luke scoffed. “How dare you! We offer you our services of being backup singers, and you… you’re such a meanie. You’re such a Heather Chandler!”

        “It’s 2020! If Leslie Odom Jr. can play Aaron Burr, then I can play one of the Heathers! Don’t be sexist, Y/N!”

        “I never said a dude can’t play a Heather, don’t put words in my mouth. I just said last time we tried to record anything together we ended up playing SIMS for like seven hours, but… come on you two divas, get your asses inside then. But I swear if Laurence or Kevin call because one of you whispered something dirty in the background of MY parts, I will strangle you in your sleep.”

        “How little trust do you have in us?”

        “Very,” Y/N deadpanned, showing the two men inside, leaving Calum, Harry and Michael to man the production table. “If you mess with anything, your asses will be grass.” She pointed at the three and all of them put their hands up in surrender. “ ‘S bad enough you ruined my single.”

        “It’s called giving it flavour,” Calum said through the microphone.

        Y/N just responded by sticking her tongue out.

        Michael lifted his fingers, counting down from five to one, giving her the cue to start.

        “Are we gonna have a problem?” Y/N cocked her head to the side, already immersed in the character of Heather Chandler. “You’ve got a bone to pick? You’ve come so far, why now are you pulling on my dick?”

        Harry swallowed hard. 

        “I’d normally slap your face off, and everyone here could watch,” she slightly motioned with her head to the audience behind the screen, a mockingly sweet smile on her lips. “But I’m feeling nice, here’s some advice, listen up biatch.”

        When her hips started moving from side to side to the rhythm of the song, Harry swore he’d never found someone being mean (even though it was mock mean) so hot.

        “I like,” Y/N raised her voice before dropping it. “Looking hot, buying stuff they cannot.”

        There was no sight of the sweet and bubbly girl Harry had met. This was Queen-B of Westerberg High in flesh. He was transfixed. 

“I like drinking hard, maxing dad’s credit card.”

She didn’t need anyone’s credit card to pay for her things, given how she was one of the top paid Broadway singers of their generation, and something in Harry skipped a beat at how confident she looked.

        “I like skipping gym, scaring her, screwing him,” Y/N rolled the ‘r’ deeply in her throat, and he had to collect himself before his thoughts went to an unsavoury place.

        “I like, killer clothes, kicking nerds in the nose!” With a smile, Y/N pointed at Luke who only rolled his eyes. “If you lack the balls, you can go play dolls, let yer mammy fix you a snack,” she emphasised the ‘K’ after having mockingly sung the bit before. “Or you could come smoke, pound some rum and coke, in ma Porche with the quarterback.”

        As weird as it was to have the two boys be her fellow Heathers, Y/N hated to admit it did help her. It reminded her more of what it was like to be on stage before the pandemic had started and the production had to be shut down. And she missed them. All her fellow actors just as much as she missed the rush of getting on stage and losing herself in the role and atmosphere. 

        “You can join the team –“

        “Or you can bitch and moan,” Y/N’s ‘Heathers’ sang in a nasally voice

        “You can live the dream.”

        “Or you can die alone.” 

        Harry snuck inside the recording booth, picking up a pair of headphones by the drum set.

        “You can fly with eagles,”

“Or if you’d prefer,”

        “Keep on testing me,”

        “And end up like her!”

        And that’s when Harry joined in, reciting the lines of both Veronica and Martha, and when he saw Y/N keeping a palm over her mouth as she tried to keep a mean face while inevitably hiding a smile. The whole of the song, despite how Ashton, Luke and Harry had tried to make Y/N break character (she came close a couple of times), the woman stayed on the line, not missing a beat, and especially enjoying the moment where she looked at Luke, who was about to hit the high note and screaming ‘shut up, Heather!’

        Harry couldn’t help the smile splitting apart his face. When Luke had first picked up his call, having known he and the gang were somewhere in the Utah region, he had thought he’d be living with just the guys, and when he found out it was actually Y/N Y/L/N renting the cabin, the girl he’d admired for so long for how brave and utterly unapologetic she was of being herself, Harry had just thought he’d gain a new friend, not have romantic feelings spring up.

        And all of it had happened in the span of two days, not even that much. He’d arrived the evening before, had met the woman, and now it was three PM on day two and was already in love. 

        It was an exhilarating and terrifying feeling all at once. Some studies said it takes men eight seconds to fall in love, which Harry now could pretty much confirm, while it takes women generally fifteen days to fall in love. And he could only hope Y/N might have some feelings for him as well, otherwise, he’d have to scold his heart for falling quickly once again. 

***

        It was the middle of the night, wind slamming against the windows when Harry got awoken by people talking behind his door. At first, he was ready to fight, thinking immediately that intruders had come into the house, but when he heard a ‘fuck off Michael’ and a ‘you fuck off, you’re gonna ruin this’, he understood everything was fine. And he was just about to lay back down on the soft pillows, but as the saying went – curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, so he threw off the covers and lightly went to the door, where a bleary Harry appeared on the stairs making Y/N and Michael whip their heads towards him and freeze on the spot. 

        “What are you two do-“ but he didn’t get to finish the question as the two co-conspirators shushed him.

        “You’re either in,” Y/N whispered harshly, “or out. Choose Styles.”

        A beat. “What kind of trouble’re we getting’ into?”

        The smile which spread on her face was nothing short of wicked. “Revenge,” Y/N hissed.

        “Be quieter than a mouse,” she whispered to him, and now the trio moved downstairs.

        “Who are we getting revenge on?” Harry spoke as quietly as he could, as they rounded the corner and exited the cabin through the back door. It was colder than he thought, seeing how the wind wasn’t warm at all, and he was grateful he’d fallen asleep in his favourite rainbow cardigan. How Y/N and Michael didn’t even shiver in their barely-there pyjamas he didn’t understand. 

        “See, Luke here thought it was a good idea to not heed my warning about not messing with my recording.”

        Harry’s eyebrows scrunched up. “He didn’t.” He knew Luke hadn’t, he was there the whole time and listened back to what they’d sung with everyone together.

        “No, but he did rename a different file with the same name I had for the 'Heathers'' recording, on MY computer, mind you. And well, let’s just say, it was not what anyone wanted to hear.”

        Harry had to swallow, as his mind went to unsavoury places, and as Y/N shimmied open the lock of the window to the studio bathroom part of the house, she looked over her shoulder to see his expression. It would seem, despite him being in ‘Dunkirk’ and having been confirmed to play Eric in the live-action ‘The Little Mermaid’ he wasn’t as good of an actor as he thought.

        “Get your mind out of the gutter,” she snickered and pulled herself inside the house through the window, Michael handing her a black duffle bag Harry hadn’t first noticed. “It was a conversation I had with my friends while we were all drunk. Some tea, some very personal tea was spilt, and so.” She unzipped the bag slowly and took out a whipped cream can. “I’m going to spill something else.”

        Canned cheese was one of the most disgusting things ever created by a human in Y/N’s opinion. So, squeezing nine cans worth of the stuff inside all of Luke’s socks, jean pockets and everywhere else possible was good enough revenge for her.

        “Why are we in the studio though?” Harry asked as the trio crept towards the bathroom door and peeked through the open sliver. It was pitch black. 

        “Because Luke teds to forget his favourite things here,” Michael explained and motioned for them to follow as he checked that the hallway was clear. It was go-time. 

        Together they all snuck back inside the recording studio, and much like Michael had said – Luke’s favourite jean jacket, a woollen jumper, three pairs of boots and shoes were all scattered around the place. He hadn’t even noticed it while they’d hung out there, but now Harry understood what Y/N was talking about while whining about the boys being messy.

        She uncapped the can and squeezed, the artificial smell of cheese wafting through the air, making her almost gag. “That’s for being a bad friend,” she muttered while filling up one shoe. “That’s for making bad jokes.” She filled up another. “And that’s for saying ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ is an overrated song.’

        It was hard for Harry to contain the giggles, as he uncapped his own can and started filling up wherever Y/N pointed to. Did he feel bad? Sure. But was it fun to feel like a teenager in a university dorm during a prank war? Abso-fucking-lutely. And it didn’t help that he was desperately falling in love with Y/N with every second they spent together. Like she could’ve asked him to hide Luke’s corpse, and he’d say he’d take the blame for the murder if it came to it.

        “Why did we have to sneak around the place like that?” he suddenly asked, brows furrowing in concentration as he squeezed the smelly contents inside the inside pocket of the jacket. “Why couldn’t we have just walked through the house?”

        “Because Luke always and I mean always comes to the studio at 3 AM,” Y/N stated. 

        Harry looked at the clock. It was 2:45 AM already. 

        “But before that, he goes into the kitchen, makes himself a double espresso, a sandwich and eats it before going into the storage where we keep all of the instruments, which is where he is in right now. Had we snuck through the normal way, he would’ve seen us and stopped this. And that just wouldn’t fly.”

       However, it was like Luke had a sixth sense as right at that moment the light flipped on, and like deer in headlights, the trio’s heads shot up and eyes widened.

        “What the fuck!” he whispered hand extended in the direction of the already six empty cans on the floor.

        Y/N snapped out of the adrenaline induced frozen state and shrugged. “I told you not to mess with the recording.” She put her finger back on the squeezable part. “And you. Didn’t. Listen.”

        The cheese squirted out with a splutter, and all of them stood still as the final bits dropped into Luke’s black boot. “And that’s payback.”

        With a sway in her hips, Y/N exited the room, leaving the three men to gawk after her. 

God was she a hurricane, Harry thought to himself. And he’d never been as happy to be caught right in the eye of it all.

***

        The next few days all of them spent lounging around the house, recording a few songs, most of them by Harry seeing as a huge wave of inspiration had hit him, making him write more than one love song. He even asked Y/N somewhat shyly if she could do some of the backing vocals, and he swore the song went from a 3 to a 100 the second he heard her voice weave his lyrics into a symphony. 

        By that point, they’d been quarantining for a week and a half together, and a heatwave was coming up. The cabin had both an inside and outside pool which they’d all had to learn how to maintain, seeing as no one could come and do it for them, and a jacuzzi tub on the terrace. As much as the boys tried to prove they knew how to keep the places clean, ultimately it was Y/N who saved all of them from chlorine poisoning and algae overgrowth. 

        So, it was right when she pulled out the pH indicator and said it was good for use when with a scream, Luke rushed forward Y/N, rugby tackling her by the waist and plunged both of them down to the water below. 

        “You asshole!” She splashed at him, laughing and choking out a bit of water as they resurfaced. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

        “That’s payback for the cheese.”

        She went silent for a second, but then shrugged. “Can’t say I didn’t deserve it. But you did deserve the cheese.”

        “So,” Luke extended his hand for a shake. “Do we call this even?”

        Harry exited the cabin right as both of them completely soaked to the bone jumped out onto the wood floor. He stopped mid-walk if only to control where his eyes went seeing as Y/N’s white shirt clung to her body and well… didn’t leave much for the imagination anymore.

        “Do I wanna know what happened here?” He raised a brow.

        “Retribution.”

        “Though I do gotta say, you have a funny way of getting revenge.” Y/N smirked at  Luke, making him squint down at the girl. 

        “What do you mean?”

        “I mean,” she drawled out, a mischievous smile on her lips, “that when I filled your clothes with the cheese, my stuff didn’t get stinky. And yet, from your end… I’m not the only one wet.”

        A beat passed.

        “God fucking damn it.”

        “Hey!” She pointed a finger at him. “We called a truce!”

        Luke waved her off. “Yeah yeah, whatever,” but Y/N grabbed Luke’s hand right before he went inside and squeezed it. 

“We good?”

        He sighed and smiled. “We good, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, gave Harry a quick ‘see ya later’ as well and disappeared through the glass doors. 

        Harry didn’t know what’d happened to him. He’d always been a helpless romantic, falling in love, and maybe a bit too hard at that, but this time, even without Y/N knowing about his feelings, his heart felt safe. 

        Sure, the side of her he’d seen was a complete headcase, and she had more energy than a bull with a red flag in front of it, but the utter love exuding from the woman, even while she complained about her four, well five counting him, housemates was palpable in the air. The way she hugged and made sure everyone had whatever they needed, the way she let them know if anyone needed to have a chat, she’d be there to listen, and the small little things of how she always knew what preferences they’d have for their pancakes or breakfast in general, made his heart melt. 

        “Luke’s a lucky guy.” Harry swallowed before saying that. As much as seeing Y/N be affectionate with everyone, him included, made him feel all fuzzy, a little jealousy monster did bubble up in his stomach when he saw her snuggled next to the lead vocalist of the band. He didn’t have any right to, but no matter how much he tried to repress the green beast, it still lurked somewhere deep in his heart.

        “Hm?” Y/N lifted her head where she’d been looking at the water as she squeezed it out of her shirt and up at Harry.

        He motioned with his chin to where Luke had disappeared. “He’s a lucky guy to have someone like you.”

        “Oh, we’re not together if that’s what you’re implying.”

        “I –“ he stammered. “I didn’t mean to offend y-“

        But Y/N waved him off. “You’re not the first nor probably the last person to say that. I get it. They asked me one time to surprise their fans at a concert in Connecticut, I think, and when their photographer sent over the pictures, I kinda saw what everyone kept saying, but I’ve never looked at any of them as more than a friend. Best friends, brothers maybe, but nothing more.”

        “How’d ya get so close?” Harry enquired, his chest feeling a bit lighter.

        Y/N huffed and plopped down to the ground, patting the place beside her which Harry took. “When I first went solo, right after being on ‘Beetlejuice’ I was fucking terrified. Didn’t really know anyone in the music industry like that. Being on Broadway’s different.” She shrugged. “And the award shows are different as well. Like with ‘Tony’s’ or ‘Oliver’ awards it’s you know – musical and theatre geeks. My people. But the first time I went to VMAs I almost shat myself.” She chuckled, and Harry did the same. “Didn’t know anyone at all, was petrified to even find my seat because someone told me I’d have to sit between Lady Gaga and Rihanna, and my heart was not ready for that. Ashton saw me at the edge of the carpet, creeping around the entrance and kinda…” Y/N bit her lip looking for the right words. “I dunno. They kinda took me under their wing, in a sense – if you need a friend in the industry, we’re here, that sort of thing. And ever since then, we’ve been best friends. Luke and I just got the closest because we got stuck in an elevator once for like eight hours once, and well, boredom and thinking you’re gonna die in a four by four-foot box brings people closer.”

        Harry almost choked. “Eight hours?”

        “Yep.” Y/N popped the ‘p’ and gave him a sarcastic smile. “It was like soooo much fun,” she said sarcastically.  “I totally didn’t think the elevator was about to drop from where we were up on like the sixtieth floor, and both of us were gonna get our bones smashed to pieces, and I only had two protein bars, and you know how I get without food,” she stated. He nodded.

        “Cranky.”

        “Exactly. But.” Y/N chuckled. “We didn’t die. Which’s great, not complaining, and I gained one of my all-time best friends.”

        “Well, I’m glad you didn’t die.” Harry gave her a warm smile and nudged her foot with his. “Wouldn’t have gotten the chance to meet you otherwise.”

        She nudged his foot back. “ ‘M glad I didn’t die either. And I gotta say – you’ve made this whole quarantine bearable. Sometimes it’s like fighting with four toddlers, and that’s always a futile battle. Happy to have another wrangler with me. Also an accessory to my crimes.”

        He inched his hand towards hers, and when Y/N didn’t pull away instead liked her pinkie with his, a warm feeling rushed through him.

        “Happy to be of help.”

***

It was two nights later or full two weeks since the six of them had been together when things took a turn. 

Y/N’d always been a light sleeper, especially when her life was mainly placed in New York, but now, living in the middle of nowhere, she’d been able to catch up on some sleep. That was when the sound of her door being opened made Y/N shot up in her bed, sheets clutched at her chest in a panic. “What? What’s wrong? What did Calum set on fire?”

        “Nothing.” Harry’s eyebrows scrunched up, but he decided not to ask. There was the morning for that. “This might seem weird, but could I uh could I possibly sleep in your room?”

        She blinked a couple of times, because her brain was still processing his words and if they were even English, but once they registered, Y/N nodded, pulling back her blanket and scooting over. “C’mere.”

        “Again, I’m sorr-“

        Y/N shushed him, as Harry climbed in the bed, placing the duvet underneath his arm and twisting to see her, as she mumbled, “less talk, more sleep.”

        He hummed in agreement. His eyes were heavy, in fact, they’d become heavy the instant his head had hit Y/N’s pillow, but it was like his heart, the same poor heart that’d had to deal with the newfound emotions for the whole time he’d been there, the same poor heart that didn’t know better and always gave itself away to the person it deemed to be worthy, no matter if in the end it ended up broken, took over the control of his eyes and mouth, and while slamming against Harry’s ribcage, he whispered his confession. 

        “I really like you… As more than a friend.”

        A second passed. He felt Y/N stir as she turned towards him, brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

        “I said…” He let out a shaky exhale. “I like you. I fell for you pretty much the second I entered the house and you threatened to throw me out because I was a guy. And then I fell for you when I saw you let loose in the studio. And then once more when I witnessed what your wrath entails.”

        Y/N chuckled. “Cheese.”

        “Yeah…” He let out a little laugh. “Cheese.”

        A gentle palm went to brush away the hair stuck to Y/N’s face and he swore he could just melt as she leaned into his touch. “And then I fell for you when you said yes to singing my song… when you sang the lyrics, I dedicated to you… and every second I fall for you even more… I just… I thought you should know…”

        “Well, I can only hope that you’ll take this as a compliment then, when I say I kinda like you too, Styles,” she mumbled snuggling deeper into her pillow. “Though I didn’t think I was your type.”

        “What’s my type then?” he mumbled back, letting his arms wrap around Y/N’s waist when she shuffled closer. Not only was he now fully in heaven because he was covered by the softest duvet in the world, head resting against a literal cloud, but also because his nostrils were invaded by the gentlest of smells, and the body against his was the warmest of comforts. 

        “Well, not girls like me.”

        “You mean talented, beyond funny and absolutely breath-taking?”

        “Introverted, house hermits who don’t wash their hair unless they have to go somewhere with a perchance of self-destructive behaviour. Unintentional that is.”

        Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “Would’ve never taken you for an introvert.”

        “Mmmh,” Y/N sighed, feeling his fingers skim her skin. “That’s because I’ve known those guys for years, and they’re like my brothers. Couldn’t be uncomfortable even if I tried with them. We’ve seen too much of each other. But I’m definitely an introvert. Almost had a panic attack the first time I had to make my own doctor’s appointment.”

        “You didn’t seem shy with me.”

        “That’s because for some weird reason I… I didn’t feel awkward around you. And I mean, you did bring wine.”

        She could feel Harry’s chest rumble as he laughed. “Well, I hope it helped with inspiration.”

        “Ugh, don’t remind me,” she huffed, but opened her bleary eyes and were met by Harry’s green already staring back. She couldn’t contain the giggle, and it only grew in power as he chuckled himself, making her bury her head in his chest.

        “What?”

        “Nothing,” she shook her head. “Just never thought I’d date someone from 1D.”

        “Are we below you or something?” There was no trace of malice and hurt in his voice. He knew Y/N wasn’t like that.

        “No, ‘s just my boy band phase was ‘Good Charlotte’, ‘Panic at the D!sco,’ ‘My Chem’ and the sort.”

        “So, you weren’t fainting while listening to ‘You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful’?” Harry mumbled in Y/N’s hair, sleep slowly overtaking him.

        She shook her head. “Sorry, no. Panties definitely weren’t dropping then.”

        “Are they now?”

        “According to ‘Watermelon Sugar’ you’re the one pulling all of ‘em off.”

        “Damn. Guess it’ll have to be my new challenge.”

        Y/N’s eyebrows scrunched up as she looked at him before promptly falling asleep. “Making my panties drop?”

        “Yep. But this time because of me, not Gerard Way.”

        “Bold of you to assume it was just Gerard Way. I’m a slut for all of those wizard dads.”

        By the time she slurred out the last sentence both of them had drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

***

        “They were right!” Harry shouted jumping up in the bed, startling Y/N awake once more as if something was breaking down on their heads with how urgently he jolted. “It does take women two weeks to fall in love and men 8 seconds.”

        A pillow met his face. “Fall back asleep.” 

        He leaned over her still horizontal form, a smug smile on his face. “Are you gonna make a TikTok about it?”

        “Probably ‘bout how I murdered the boyfriend I was with for three hours if he doesn’t let me sleep.”

        He didn’t argue. With a smile on his face, Harry drifted off once more. Who knew that getting stuck in a hotel somewhere in Utah would lead him to the love of his life? 

Tags (crossed out wouldn’t take): 

Forever tags: @lumelgy @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561​ @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @reblogger-not-a-blogger @m-a-t-91​ @dalilx​ @i-need-a-hero-i-need-a-loki @maladaptive-ninja-returns​ @averyrogers83​ @in-the-end-im-still-trash​ @gallifreyansass​ @dewy-biitch​ @avxgers​ @unlikelygalaxygiver​ @magicwithaknife​ @ollyoxenfrees​ @bnhvrdy​ @tvwhoresblog​ @celebsimagines​ @thatkindofgurl @sj-thefan @teenwolflover28 @lestersglitterglue​ @im-squished​

A/N: So... I know I’ve been gone for quite a while, but that’s because I have a job now (I’m trying to get a different one that actually would involve my degree, because this one is absolutely killing me), so please be understanding with the spare posting. I still love writing fics, and as evident, I’m kina branching out into other fandoms :D

There’s a lot of things going on in my life, so if you wanna follow me you can do that on Instagram @dinnusa or @read_with_dee or on my blog dinnusa.wordpress.com :) I also have a TikTok @dinmasters

P.S. feedback is always appreciated :)

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[dizzydennis]

My ideas for Sonic Riders 4!

Title:

Sonic Riders: Drift Dimension

I have a lot of ideas for a potential Sonic Riders sequel and I hope you can enjoy what I have to say. I am very passionate about the Sonic series and would love to see the Babylon Rogues again. I wrote a lot, but any comments or feedback would be wonderful! Check it out under this cut!

Story:

I would like the story mode to continue to split between Team Sonic and the Babylon Rogues. For the sake of making this cohesive, I will write out the narrative linearly.

Set a few years after King Doc’s tournament, Wave has convinced Jet to allow her to continue to investigate Babylon Garden even more under the promise that it would improve their Extreme Gears. The 3 Babylon Rogues go deep within the ruins of Babylon Garden by using their gravity modules (from Zero Gravity.) Wave is still worried about the black hole that could occur, but her calculations assure her that it won’t be a problem. However, while in the heart of this floating island, the gravity modules float into the rocky ruins and activate a bright light as Babylon Garden powers up.

Tails pilots the Tornado with Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy in tow. He detected the massive energy surge that cause Babylon Garden to light up. It seems like the garden is warping reality around it, but with their courage, they enter into the void.

It seems that Babylon Garden has teleported to another world. With their airship being grounded due to the warp, the Babylon Rogues hop onto their Extreme Gears to explore. Before long, they encounter a massive airship that completely dwarfs their own. Upon being captured, they learn that Jet’s father, Kaze, is the leader of this group known as the Babylon Legion. The Rogues have been reunited with their ancestors and family. Naturally, they’re overjoyed! Especially Jet who has been longing for his father for years.

Shortly after, Sonic and his friends encounter the airship and are reunited with the Babylon Rogues. Their fun meeting soon turns dire as the Babylon Legion surround and arrest Knuckles.

Later, Jet inquires about why they apprehended Knuckles. Kaze explains that years ago when they crash landed on Sonic’s planet, they had encountered a terrible Echidna Clan who were power hungry to conquer others. When the Babylon Legion refused to give their advance technology to the Echidna Clan, they were seen as enemies. When there were murmurs that the Echidna Clan had awakened a god of destruction, the Babylon Legion tried to get reactivate Babylon Garden to allow them to leave the planet.

Instead, Babylon Garden was stricken deep into the planet and the Babylon Legion was warped to parts unknown. Jet was baffled by what he heard, but he trusted his father. Upon meeting with Sonic and the others, they discuss what happened and that there were plenty of holes in Kaze’s story. Jet, upset that others would accuse his father, argues with them. However, there was one point that Storm brings up that cannot be ignored. How were Jet, Wave, and Storm on Sonic’s planet if the Babylon Legion were teleported to this planet?

They learn that when they were younger, Kaze had volunteered the three for an experiment to see if they could return, but in doing so, the 3 Babylon Rogues were stranded on their own with no real memory of what had happened.

The Babylon Rogues have to choose between siding with Team Sonic or the Babylon Legion, but they soon find out that Kaze intends to use his technology to convert Babylon Garden into Mecha Babylon. Having learned from the Echidna Clan, power needs to be met with power. Therefore, Kaze wants to teleport back to Sonic’s planet with Mecha Babylon being the ultimate weapon; a fortified island with weapons and a metal shell.

All the heroes band together to stop Kaze from reaching the inner ruins of Babylon Garden to allow it to teleport back to Sonic’s planet. During the climax, Kaze activates the portal only for Sonic and Jet to work together to knock him off of it. Torn between going with Sonic or staying with Kaze and the Babylon Legion, Jet ultimately decides that he must go back with Sonic. He claims that “The Babylon Legion had their chance,” as Sonic grabs his hand and the two dive into the portal.

Cut back to Sonic’s planet, Babylon Garden continues to float around the planet, perfectly reflecting Angel Island. Here, Knuckles and Storm reflect that the Echidna Clan and the Babylon Legion were a lot more similar than they were different. Wave notes that it isn’t one’s lineage that defines who they are, but what they do to better that lineage for future generations. Jet and Sonic use that as a means to claim that they’re the fastest as they race across Babylon Garden. Kaze’s words echo through Jet’s mind as he overtakes Sonic and the two ride off into the distance.

Stages:

Tundra Peaks / Frigid Avalanche – A snowbound stage high in the mountains that mixes canyons, rocky hillsides, and snow. The former stage features nice, mountain villages while the latter stage takes place with massive avalanches falling around the player.

Future Mall / Shopping Calamity – A futuristic city that leads into a massive shopping mall. Players would weave in and out of stores while making their way to a large building outside. The latter stage would be at night where a certain band of robots might be trying to get away with a robbery and chase.

Tubular Coastline / Hurricane Seaboard – A gorgeous beach that runs along side an advance city. You can choose to ride along the sand or take to the waves to get some boosts by performing tricks on the water. Be careful of the storm coming in the latter stage that alters the stage in a crazy way!

Thrill Park / Cursed Midway – A theme park with roller coasters, log flumes, and plenty of other rides. Be warned though, the haunted house gets a bit intense at night and changes the entire park!

Neon Woodland / Forest Illumination – A forest hidden within a valley that glows with luminous mushrooms and vines that glow as they are touched. This place really comes alive late at night when a rave party is going on!

Babylon Garden / Mecha Babylon – While not a remake of the original Sonic Riders track, this version would start on the outside of Babylon Garden as you go deep within the floating island. The mechanized version of this stage is far more dangerous with lasers and robots about; players would fire themselves across the island via giant turrets. Mecha Babylon would be the final boss fight against Kaze.

Dimension Hops / Nostalgia Trip – This is a bonus track where you hop between dimensional pockets of Metal City, Aquatic Capital, and Dolphin Resort. It’s a celebration of the Sonic Riders series. Nostalgia Trip sends players through Green Hill Zone (of course it’s here), Final Rush, and Sunset Heights. This one celebrates the Sonic series. These two tracks would not share music.

SEGA Heroics / SEGA Darkness – Much like the other SEGA fan service stages in the series, this one instead separates the two stages between the heroes of SEGA’s rich history and the villains. Lots of fun to be had here!

Playable Characters:

Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles Tails Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Jet the Hawk, Wave the Swallow, Storm the Albatross, Amy Rose, Kaze the Hawk, Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, Cream the Rabbit, Blaze the Cat, Silver the Hedgehog, Vector the Crocodile, Dr. Eggman, NiGHTS, Kazuma Kiryu, Arle Nadja

Gameplay:

The gameplay would avoid the failings of Sonic Free Riders. Motion controls have been pushed since Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity and they’d be mostly dropped here. The game would implement the AIR system, but with the multiple routes with the gravity modules. Due to plot reasons, the gravity modules themselves can’t be used, so this mechanic would just be a movement of the Extreme Gears. Speed, Fly, and Power routes would still be available based on the characters and not the gears... and would hopefully be better balanced. The springs would be taken out as they were so painfully contextual in previous games. One thing from Sonic Free Riders would be certain items to change the course of the races including missiles, ink traps, and a few others. The grab mechanic to reach out to the left or right can be brought over too as it holds a lot of potential. Also, the vibrant visuals from Free Riders should be carried over! Moreover, the boost from the original game would be present. Lastly, the game would feel faster. Drifting, much like Team Sonic Racing would be emphasized more in this game.

Typical features would include the Story, Grand Prix, Battle Mode, Time Trials, Character Profiles, Gear Shop, Gear Gallery, Online Multiplayer, and Options. Let’s have alternate costumes for the characters too! Also, the Grand Prix mode would have character specific endings that would be simplistic, but still a treat and motivation to play through it with each character!

That’s basically it for my ideas. I know it’s just a pipe dream, but I would love for a Sonic Riders game to really get into the old stories and characterizations of the original two games, while adding some heart for the Babylon Rogues. It doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but rather just create a fun racing game that focuses on these amazing characters.

[fallingdarling]

Monday:

She’s started baking again. The other members of the Syndicate drop by sometimes to taste-test her recipes, and she shows them the progress she’s made in the construction of her underground city. They compliment the flower paths outside the city, the bridges and floating lanterns and the gorgeous high ceilings and furnishings within, the little subterranean forest and the waterfall, the decorations and details that make the cavernous space cozy. They see what she’s built and they praise her for it and it is exhilarating. She’s grown stronger day by day with the Syndicate in her corner; they pull her up to stand on equal footing with them, and when she expresses her concerns, they listen.

There are days, however, when she can’t bring herself to bake; on those days the heat of the furnace crawls uncomfortably against her skin and the knife block rattles in the corner with each item she sets down on the countertop. On those days she’ll climb. Buildings, mountains, trees—anything that’ll get her to a height where her lungs strain from lack of oxygen and the ringing in her head eases. She jumps, sometimes. They don’t know she does this. They don’t need to know; she’s strong enough to deal with that herself.

Yesterday was their leader’s birthday, and she’d left the party with leftover cake and cookies and brioche. Today is a good day; maybe she’ll share the cookies with Jack.

—

Tuesday:

He’s called the harbinger, the omen, the angel of death. Crows perform at his bidding and the great, lumbering bears of the north shake the ground as he directs them. He emerges from impossible battles with nary a scratch on his body. People across the earth have speculated that he’s a demon, or contracted with a demon, or one of the acolytes of the Blood God like the Blade. He likes to collect these epithets and rumors; when his crows perch on his shoulder to recount the news of the land or messages from his allies they update him on the tales they tell of the angel. They’re all wrong, in the end. Death herself graced him with her favor long ago to act as her representative on the mortal plane.

She’s been dormant recently; her absences had never affected him so strongly before, but ever since he’s entered this land, he’s felt weaker, more fragile. He watched his son destroy the country he founded with a haze across his vision, and then he killed his own son, and the act of it didn’t register until days later. Months fly by in a blur and the only person who can enforce any sort of focus is the Blade and so that simmering anger became his own and it fed into his own pain. There was something rotting in the land and it killed his son and he felt it his duty to purge it with the same TNT that destroyed his wings. He doesn’t regret it.

Today, he finds some measure of peace in building his training room. His son is back and everything is not-quite-broken and his body still aches.

—

Wednesday:

There are too many variables, too many uncertainties. He’s placed his fingerprints on too many projects and lives, and the guilt of his cooperation and his associations claws at his lungs. Dream, neutrality in the midst of war, Dream and his prison and the damned prison rules, Quackity, Las Nevadas. He doesn’t know what he considers his worst fuck-up: Tommy’s death, the torture he’d permitted in his collaboration with Las Nevadas, his betrayal of Ponk’s love and trust, or his inability to save anyone during the banquet.

The hotel stands as a testament to his failure to protect the youngest resident of the land. He plans detours around that plot whenever he travels between the bank and the prison; the little robot stationed by the hotel tells him the boy doesn’t come by anymore, and he knows automatons don’t feel emotions, but he grieves for it anyway. He sees his valentine walking along the wooden pathways and his heart aches to see the damage he had caused. He checks the prison’s security footage and he tells himself guilt has no place in his heart for what happened. He’s surprised the captain and the god and all the rest of the banquet victims still talk to him. But they do, and it gives him hope. His friends are back and free and even though one of them is trying to start a little scuffle with a god, today he’s having fun throwing weednip around and sliding down the pyramid with his closest friends.

The present’s a gift, and he intends on cherishing this moment.

—

Thursday:

He’s building a pub because Wilbur owes him a pint. He knows that man can’t be completely trusted, not now. Not since he died by his crossbow. But it feels good to be acknowledged as someone worth an apology, someone important. He has been abandoned and pushed aside and pushed into lava pits and into hell all within the span of a few months. No one cared. He hates it, he hates the way he’s been made irrelevant and a shadow of his friends’ stories. Even his plans for revenge had been inconsequential, unfruitful: the boy had lived and his accomplice had left him to brood in his own anger.

He’s held his grudges close to his heart and he’s let them fester and he won’t admit he’s tired of it all. If he lets go, then it all disappears and he’s really, truly dead, and if this is his afterlife, if all he can do is lag after the people he cares for, then it’s a fucking shit deal. So today, he’s continuing his work on the pub because he burned down his own home and because the hotel feels too sterile and empty, because he wants to have a space built with his own two hands where he can speak and someone will finally, finally listen. It’s not quite moving on. He’ll take it anyway.

—

Friday:

She tries to live by the code of kindness and reciprocity; that’s how she lived on the high seas of her youth, or so she suspects, based on the journal she found at the site of the shipwreck. Since the day she joined this land, she has made friends and found love and taken the young residents under her wing and vowed to fight against evil. She gives stacks of items to those who need them and she fixes up the holes in the road and offers therapy on difficult days.

The world isn’t as kind as she is. A country was erased from the map for grudges she still doesn’t understand, and no one will tell her the why discs, of all things, are so important. Two boys would have lost their lives to a monster she housed, had it not been for the money Tommy paid a mercenary for his aid. She mourned the loss of Tommy’s life as she fought to keep the hotel in his name, and when he requested therapy upon his resurrection, she was horrified at the effects of trauma he’d exhibited. The friends she’d tried to pull out of the Egg’s influence celebrated a young boy’s death and killed her son. And now this man has taken her friend’s turtle hostage for no reason she can comprehend.

She’s tired. She’s breaking; they’d presumed her kindness was a weakness and maybe it is. Today, she plans on destroying the red menace on the edge of her son’s land. It’s her turn.

—

Saturday:

He’s not sure how many sandstone blocks he’s carved out of the desert at this point, nor how many quartz chips and gold nuggets he’s pulled out of the Netherworld. The villagers know him by name and chat with him when he stops by to trade for emeralds and other goods. His hands bleed gold ichor from the opened blisters dotting his hands, and burns line the edges of his fingertips. Lately, his whole world is rushing by in colors of beige and yellow, green and white and blue. The color red started it, the scramble to build more and more—and it stopped it too, if only for a little while. Ponk asked him for permission to build on his land, told him it was a gift: a peace offering and an apology and a new beginning. It’s a silly build and it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the rest of his summer home, but it warmed his heart, to see the giant red refrigerator rising up from the top of the sand dunes for the first time. Ponk built it just for him. Quackity told him he was alone, and that he didn’t matter if he didn’t assert his powers like he did in the past, and he was wrong. Ponk stays, loves him for who he is now and not for the destruction he wrought.

He doesn’t know what to do now; his father destroyed the build for some grudge she holds against his friend, and he’s exhausted. He’s tired of being pulled into conflict. A vacation from all the tension occurring on his land would not be unwarranted, at this point—a few days, a week. It sounds relaxing—and he’ll do it, he’ll take a vacation, and he’ll tell Ponk that he’s in charge of the summer home later today. He has some packing to do.

—

Sunday:

He likes to splash around the pools and fountains in Las Nevadas when he has to visit. Sometimes he’ll climb up the needle and lean on the bannisters to feel the fresh air ruffling his hair and he thinks about jumping—the air turns hot and stale and the ground burbles up in orange and red—but his brother pulls him out of it, usually. Otherwise the place is boring. He’s not allowed in the gambling den or the club, so he hovers around the forests away from Las Nevadas when Wilbur and Quackity want to speak alone.

Today is one of those days. It’s fine by him; dealing with the two of them together makes him uncomfortable, with the way they push and pull him to their sides. The cigarette smoke lingering on their breaths remind him of the ravine, the explosions from the first war-second -Logstedshire-doomsday-nukes-prison. He’s escaped, for now. The air of the forest is crisp; he can spot flowers in the meadow ahead and he plucks them to form a careless bouquet. Alliums, lilies-of-the-valley, daisies; poppies and cornflowers and dandelions. He threads them together to form crowns and rings, places one on his head and cradles the rest to his chest to stash at home. It’s been a while since he’s made them; before he moved to this land he’d make them for his brother and his brother’s father, the dogs and cows and sheep around the farm. He feels like a child again and his lips twist at the bittersweetness. He’s found himself a bubble and soon Wilbur will barge his way in to speak of his loyalties and Dream and whatever the fuck he’s stormed up with Quackity, but for now, he’ll pick flowers and make chains and chains and chains that, for once, won’t drag him down.

—

  Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Fridays’ child is loving and giving.

Saturday’s child works hard for a living.

And the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

[catscraftsandcommentary]

thoughts on tiny!Steve/werewolf!Bucky shrunkyclunky AU

Because I’m too fucking lazy to actually type it into a proper fic and edit it and do all the fancy-ness that it would take to, y’know, make it a properly written story.

SO

Vaguely fantasy/colonial setting, somewhere with lots of forests. Steve lives in a small town called - of course - Brooklyn, with best friend Peggy (local beauty and hell on heels.) Also with various non-friends Rumlow (sheriff), Rumlow’s minions, Alexander Pierce (mayor/governor of the area), and various townsfolk. Who often don’t like Steve because he’s constantly poor, constantly sick, constantly fighting and/or preaching about how their normal behavior is terrible.

Peggy thinks he’s great. Rumlow, who wants Peggy, despises him.

So at some point, Steve does something to piss Rumlow off more than usual. For a while, I thought about “stopping Rumlow when he won’t take ‘no’ from a girl at the local tavern and Steve reads him the riot act/starts a fight with him (these are pretty much the same thing, lbr.) BUT, sudden better idea, Rumlow comes up with some new, ridiculous plot to get Peggy to change her mind about him (never gonna happen, bro), but Steve ruins it somehow.

Like Rumlow commissions something for Peggy (clothing? art? jewelry?), but then extorts the artist to get out of paying, and Steve, who is PISSED, tells Peggy, who refuses the gift very publicly AND calls Rumlow a thief, extortionist, etc.

Hell. On. Heels.

So Rumlow immediately blames all his problems on Steve, and sentences him to banishment, permanent, on penalty of death. If he’s not out of town by sunrise, Rumlow will be glad to skip the wait.

Except oh yeah, Rumlow and the bros are going hunting tomorrow, leaving at dawn, so they’ll have to check in that Steve’s gone - and that Peggy isn’t hiding him - before dawn, so, y’know, he might want to get moving. 

Cutscene to Peggy’s house, where she’s trying to talk Steve out of a suicidal second confrontation with Rumlow, or a more political confrontation through Pierce (who did, after all, appoint the bastard), or whatever other dumbass, noble idea he comes up with. She makes him pack a bag (or more likely, packs one for him), and tells him to go straight into the spooky old-growth forest a ways from town. Not the nice, civilized woods where Rumlow et al usually hunt, or along one of the roads to one of the other towns, but 

“You head straight into the heart of that forest, Steve, because so help me, that is the only way you’ll be safe from him. And if you see any wolves - hell, if you hear any wolves - you say that Margaret Elizabeth sent you with a message for Natalia of the White Wolf’s pack. And that message is pay your debt.”

And no, she does not explain any of that to Steve before she bundles him out of her house and on the path to the forest road.

Oh, did I mention that, according to general knowledge in this AU, magic isn’t real, except for maybe small good luck charms and similar. Which plenty of people still scoff at. So telling Steve to talk to wolves is...suspicious.

Second aside, a while back, Peggy saved Natalia from an angry mob, took her family’s home, let her recover in her own bed, and then accidentally fell in love with her. Oops. Before, of course, Natalia had to return to her own pack. Now they have a secret on-again, off-again romance. (I haven’t thought about WHY Peggy didn’t just run away with Natalia immediately, other than it wouldn’t work for my story. Shh.) And of course, Natalia promised to someday do the same for Peggy.

Cutscene to forest, next morning!

Bucky and his wolf buddies are out cruising the forest, as you do, when they sense a Disturbance In the Forest *cough force cough* and decide to check it out. Upon smelling some humans they’ve collectively termed “those fuckers,” they decide to fulfill the threat they issued at their last meeting and be done with the problem.

Namely, they gave Rumlow and his crew the same ultimatum that he’d given Steve, except that Rumlow had a history of terrorizing and killing everything (and everyone) in the forest, whereas Steve just wanted to protect people.

They herd the horses and hunting dogs to the edge of the forest near the town, leave the bodies in a pile, and are ready to continue on, except...there’s still one human somewhere in the forest. And these shitty scumbags had been following their trail. Time to figure out what’s up.

They reach the edge of a clearing, and all the wolves sort of melt out of the undergrowth at the edges, while Bucky, in his big fucking white wolf form walks out to the edge, transforms, and then stalks out in his best Murder Strut (TM).

And yes, this is “built like a brick shithouse” Bucky from Civil War, and yes, he is entirely naked, and still covered in blood, so Steve’s brain goes immediately offline.

Steve backs up until his back hits a large tree, waving a large knife at this seriously threatening (but hot) impossible fucking being, because werewolves do not exist. Right?

Right?!?

Bucky just casually pins Steve’s arms over his head, disarms Steve and tosses the knife away (without even looking where he tosses it, which Steve finds inexplicably really hot), and leans in to smell him.

Now, when Bucky reached the clearing, he recognized from the scent that this was a potential mate for him - and possibly a very strong mate too. Mates, in their world, are more “you are compatible with this person” than “this is the only person you can ever love EVER” and the strength of the potential bond can vary as well. (Just like some relationships are stronger than others.) But basically, Bucky realizes that whoever’s in the clearing, they could be good together. They could be goddamn AMAZING. And yeah, he wants to smell some more of that.

Steve is...more than a little overwhelmed by suddenly having a giant wolf turn into the hottest man he’s ever seen, who’s now pinning him to a tree and huffing him, but he does manage “Natalia.”

At which Bucky choke-grunts. The fuck?

“I have a message for Natalia. In the white wolf’s pack. From Peg-from Margaret Elizabeth.”

Vaguely grumpy at not getting to nose up his mate, but also very curious as to where this is going, (because how does this tiny gorgeous human know his second or her mate? Yes, Natalia is Bucky’s second-in-command), Bucky finally lifts his head. “I am the White Wolf, and I speak for Natalia. What is her message?”

Steve stares up the man towering over him and snarls, “Pay. Your. Debt.”

Bucky grins, slow and wicked. “Gladly. But not here.” He steps back, lowing Steve’s arms, and then...somehow, suddenly, Steve’s arms are around his shoulders, his legs are lifted around his waist, and Bucky is cradling Steve to his chest while telling his pack “bring his things.”

And then everyone is racing through the forest, faster than Steve has ever seen anyone move before and what the fuck did Peggy get him into?

After an hour or two of running (being carried) through the forest, Steve finally puts his head down on White Wolf’s shoulder, tucks his face into his neck, and tries to rest. He didn’t get any sleep, he spent the whole night hiking through dark, unfamiliar forest, he’s pretty sure he can stop worrying about Rumlow hunting him down - in the most literal sense, yikes - he’s tired.

Also, being carried is kind of soothing. There’s a rhythm to it. And wolfman smells nice. Mm...

Bucky is perfectly happy to have his newly-found mate fall asleep in his arms, and he’s very loathe to put him down once the pack reaches their den. (I still can’t decide what I want the den complex to look like. A castle? A big house? A fort? Maybe it’s a cave system that has been smoothed out and built into like hobbit holes. Or the Holds and Weyrs from Pern.)

But he finally decides to lay Steve down, feather-soft, into his own bed and tuck him in warmly. After all, Natalia vowed to repay Margaret in kind for what she’d done to help her, and part of that had been sharing her bed. There are guest rooms, but they’re so far away. This is closer. Warmer. More convenient. Better for his mate. And he’ll explain everything as soon as he wakes.

Steve does wake up and demand all the details EVER, as well as actually meeting Natalia and hearing how she knows Peggy (to make sure that this “white wolf” isn’t making shit up). Bucky gladly complies. Natalia is more salty about it, but she deals.

Then Bucky commences doting on his new mate. While trying not to come on too strong. Mostly failing. He...may have left out the bit about being able to smell that they’re mates. So he’s just trying to keep Steve interested enough in werewolf life/forest life to stay there and not, say, ask to go back to the human world (or back to his town even) since Rumlow and his men are dead.

Steve finds everything fascinating, and since Bucky always responds immediately to his cues - verbal and nonverbal! - he doesn’t have a problem being wooed. He might even, actually, like to be wooed a bit faster. Or more carnally. Not that he knows how to hint that.

Peggy eventually shows up sometime and is cute with Natalia, aka Natasha.

Steve slowly settles into life as the Kept Human Boy of the most badass werewolf alpha ever, who loves his tiny feral little mate and WILL tear your throat out if you even look at him funny.

[elizabeatrice]

The Simp, The Himbo, and The Bone Man (Chapter 65)

Let’s Talk About JSHK Manga #1

Warning: !!!Manga spoilers up to chapter 65!!! Duh.

Note: I don’t speak Japanese, and I’m using Nikko Scanlations’ translation of chapter 65. Props to them for translating so fast! There’s one mangacap from chapter 60 by Caim, and one from chapter 64 by Ropes of Fate. Ya know what, props to all JSHK fantranslators. Love y’all!

I’m proud of the title. Heheh.

Ok so I read chapter 65 and then proceeded to get thrown on board SS Confusion.

Before we begin I gotta say I’m loving the faces we got in chapter 65. Thanks, sensei.

I wasn’t really surprised that we didn’t get to see hananene or akaoi this chapter. I mean, sensei just impaled my boy and last chapter was angst fest all around so naturally they’re gonna jump to comedy/something lighter in this one because … well, it’s JSHK.

Let’s get chronological.

The. Colored. Art. Is. So. Fricking. Gorgeous.

I love the whole thing with Kou worrying about his friends. Baby boy why you so wholesome can I hug him pLeAsE!

Yokoo and Satou are super cool as well! My baby Yokoo you outshine the morning sun, my son. It’s nice seeing more of them, caring about Kou no less. Gaaahhh the friendship fluff

Apparently this arc is going to delve into the whole ‘friends not telling each other things’. Exhibit A: Akane, Nene, and Aoi. Exhibit B: Satou and Yokoo and Kou.

Heck the tagline of this month’s colored art is ‘no one knows the real me’. Interesting development. I love me some friendship drama.

Yep. I’m loving where this chapter is going. Kou is feeling useless yet again. His brother is away who knows where, Akane is still lovesick insane, and Tsuchigomori won’t tell him the future. Not to mention that Hanako and Nene are missing. Kid’s literally on his own.

Until-

Ey yo Mitsuba how’re ya doin’? It’s very nice to see him caring about Kou, especially after what happened last arc.

And then the simp showed up. I love him.

(By the way isn’t his Raitejou still sealed? How is he conjuring those lightnings? Maybe he was just hitting that apparition with it?)

Finally! Kou meets his broadcasting club trio equivalent, and Natsuhiko meets his toilet trio equivalent. This is something I didn’t know I needed. Thank you sensei.

Now Natsuhiko’s definitely got something up his sleeve, from the way he seemed to prevent Mitsuba from telling Kou who he is (and most importantly, who he’s affiliated with).

Hm … Tsukasa wants No. 6, eh? Ohhh boy.

Mitsuba falling asleep right away lmaoooo. Look at these dumbasses.

And I can’t believe Kou fell for those ‘heroic stories’. Poor Hanako, his two best friends are (lovable) easily-tricked idiots hahaha. I mean, Kou is such a pure soul, bless him and his dog ears and tail. Thank you, sensei. You’ve fed us well.

Then … Bone Man. I actually call him Goat Man, but let’s just stick with Aoi’s lovely nickname (his name is Shinigami-san thoooo).

Interesting development. He be OP af man. The guy literally controls both life and death. Do NOT let that >60 year-old psycho child gets him.

I know it kinda seems like, oh, there’s the glaringly obvious answer to Nene’s lifespan problem. But as we know, there are prices to magic, and Bone Man doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to break the rules. I mean the dude wants to close off boundaries to keep the two shores completely separate, and is willing to sacrifice a girl to do it.

Yeeaaahhh … he’s a bit lawful evil imo, but we still don’t really know him yet, so. Eh.

Then Bone Man dropped this month’s bomb.

Did Nene, Akane, and Aoi just die? What freaking else can you call ‘body decaying, leaving the soul behind’ other than dying?

Not to mention not one (1) kannagi fell into the whole. TWO (2) kannagi fell into the whole, along with a dead boy and a soon-to-be-dead boy. Will that change the equation?

Speaking of dying, remember what Aoi said about No. 6? People who are about to die soon can hear No. 6′s flute? And Nene heard it?

Is this what ‘going to die in less than a year’ means for Nene? Thrown into a hole deep enough to the point of no return, a hole full of giant creepy bugs, her body decaying and leaving her soul behind, and thrown there by her own best friend no less?

This, this is wild.

But Hanako said in Misaki Stairs arc that nothing lives and nothing dies in the boundary. Is this an exception? Does the hole lead to a place outside the boundary? Is it a gate to the far shore (y’know, since there’s no returning from death unless No. 6 intervenes)?

And apparently Aoi falling there was ‘according to plan’? Hm … Aoi didn’t seem to know that the last time we saw her. She didn’t want Akane to drag her with him, remember? She could be lying, I guess. But Akane, Nene, and Hanako didn’t need to be sacrificed too. Maybe she was brainwashed not to care?

See, SS Confusion.

I know we all miss our monthly hananene, but be patient my friends! Sensei are working hard, and, well, this sort of thing comes with the whole monthly update format.

(Guys. Guys. Daydream arc is about 20 chapters long. Thats one year and eight months. It almost took two years to finish that arc. And seeing that this arc is a lot more plot driven than Daydream - which is more character driven imo - I’m kinda scared. Heh.)

Anyway! I enjoyed this chapter and all the dumbasseries featuring Natsuhiko, Kou, and Mitsuba. Really lifts the mood in this condition, ya know?

Feel free to discuss with me if you want to!

[shima-draws]

Okay listen I really really enjoyed The Wonderland/Birthday Wonderland a LOT but there’s definitely like. Huge chunks of stuff that are missing from the plot that I would have loved to see;; SPOILERS AHEAD BEWARE

First of all let me say that this movie definitely would have worked better as a TV series. Why? Because the world itself is MASSIVE. There’s so much worldbuilding shit going on that they only got to touch a little bit of each section, and left so many things open ended. And then there’s the fact of the plot itself that leaves a lot of holes behind and unanswered questions.

Rest is under the cut so ya’ll can avoid spoilers if you so desire:

What the fuck happened with the sweater contest? They make it out to be such an enormous, important part of the plot that literally ends the moment Akane hands the sweater over. We see her protectively guarding it the entire journey to the city, and yet it’s never even touched upon if the sweater wins the contest or not. What happened bruh?? I want to know if it won, a lot of unnecessary screentime went into the development and story of that sweater! Don’t leave me hanging!

“Our world is dying”, Hippocrates says, as the majority of the land is still thriving pretty okay from the looks of it. Aight. There’s lots of gorgeous visuals in this film that are made clear through the gift of water that they’re living--and apparently there isn’t even enough water to go around for humans to drink. At that point literally everything else would be dried up, right? There is literally a giant pond--GIANT! With koi fish right outside the city. They just gotta learn to distribute their water better;; it’s a shitty system tbh lmao I mean there’s plenty to go around. They just don’t bother to try spreading it evenly, which is why some places are flourishing while others are not. They really should have spent more time showing how people are suffering from this rather than showing the remaining gorgeous parts of the land--that would have made the impact of saving that world that much stronger, made the stakes so much higher. If Akane had seen how bad it really got without water, maybe that would have driven her character development earlier on, and made it more significant.

Akane’s change. It felt...really...anti-climatic. Or maybe just rushed. It was a sudden, minor sort of thing that when I realized I was like “Oh, okay, she’s already come to the conclusion that she can be strong on her own, but I wanted to see that?” They didn’t execute it super well. It feels like we’re missing an entire scene where Akane finally breaks through her fear to gain courage and make her own choices. There was definitely a bit of that right before she made her grand speech to Zangu, but there was nothing that prompted it. The whole movie is a coming of age story for her, building up until the moment where she has her great breakthrough and is able to be confident with herself. But...they don’t show that. We don’t get to see that moment. I don’t know why, because it’s the most important thing of the entire film? They really could have handled that better.

I really wish they touched more on Midori’s involvement;; she was so minor I almost didn’t catch the connection between her and the previous Goddess of the Green Wind. I like that Akane feels closer to her because of this, but we never really get anymore information than that. How did Midori end up in Wonderland so many years ago? Was she a reluctant hero type like Akane, or was she determined to save the world? Did she meet Hippocrates way back then, or was it a different alchemist that lead her on an adventure? Was something wrong with the prince at the time which required her presence in order to make sure the drop rain ceremony went well, just like Akane? I don’t know! I want to know!

The ending was SO abrupt and short. Literally right after Akane and Chii get back that’s it bam roll credits movie over! I’m like. Whiplashed by it. I wanted to see how they were affected by the journey (besides Chii immediately going to take a nap which fandjksad MOOD), and how they’ve changed from their adventures. We obviously see a huge change in Akane at the end, but how does this affect her life in her own world? Does she start treating her friends differently? Does she ever make up with the girl she abandoned in order to be in the popular group (which is another huge thing they never came back to). Is she more determined to do things now, to be confident? Is this a change her mother notices? At least show the impact of what they went through;;

Halfway through the movie we’re introduced to a London-type city that’s really...not so fun looking. Dark, gloomy, and depressing, with obvious signs of poverty, where everyone looks angry all the time. It’s a very very clear outlier in the colorful Wonderland. I’d love to have seen more history on this city...why is it so different from the rest of the world, and so dark? Why do all the people seem so unfriendly, when those outside of its walls are generous and kind? How did this city come to be? It’s such an enormous mystery that they never talk about, besides hinting that this was where the prince had ended up once before he became Zangu.

Speaking of the lovely prince. I know we got kicked in the face with his backstory (and that shit hurted, this poor baby who also kinda deserved it but not to THAT degree), but I would have liked to see even more. Maybe I’m biased because he became my favorite character the instant his identity was revealed, idk. (And, to me, he feels way more fleshed out and rounded as a character regarding his development than Akane does, which is another reason why I like him best.) But while we were given his motivations in becoming Zangu, the personality difference between Zangu and his regular princely self is IMMENSE. I really don’t think the prince would have ever committed such acts--he may be a little shit and have a lot of anger issues (which, valid, I mean his parents died and he suddenly has all these huge expectations on his shoulders and he’s. He’s just a kid man, that HAS to be traumatic) but I really don’t think he would ever strike against his own people or openly threaten them. Sure, he’s definitely shown to be prone to angry outbursts, and is fond of pushing everyone who cares about him away, but he’s not purposefully malicious. And as soon as Akane transforms him back, he calms down immediately and becomes immensely selfless and heroic. So: why the enormous change of heart? I think something that could be canon that they never really mentioned is that, when he was transformed into Zangu, he became sort of a puppet. A lifeless doll without any real empathy, and the only emotions he could feel were a burning anger and a desire for revenge to those that wronged him and made him feel pressured to perform the drop rain ceremony. Being trapped inside a body like that probably just made those feelings escalate, resulting in all of the crimes he committed and all of the people he hurt. (And maybe they did touch on this but I just don’t remember since my memory is garbage lol)

Going off of that, I know this is the type of story where we follow the hero characters, and as soon as Chii and Akane made it home that was it, we weren’t allowed another peek into the Wonderland. But...what if we were granted that opportunity? Could we have gotten the chance to see how things changed after they left? Perhaps the prince began a journey traveling to all of the towns and villages he terrorized, and apologizing to the people. Maybe Ron starts to train under Hippocrates just like Pipo. Maybe the rain washed away all of the sorrow in that lonely city, which caused people to start to change it and make it brighter. Change, change, change! I want to see proof of Akane’s help! 

Why the fuck did the other alchemist/sorcerer (I forget his name and there’s no info on him anywhere MDAKMASD I’ll update this when I find out later) do that to the prince?? That was SERIOUSLY fucked up. “Oh yeah, to punish this child for being naughty and angry after his parents died, which is actually perfectly reasonable, let’s turn him into a doll where he can’t MOVE OR SPEAK and let him sit there in absolute torture until I feel like setting him free again, instead of trying to find an alternative way to confront him about his anger issues”. Dude;; No wonder he was so fucking angry and bitter when Ron finally allowed him to speak again. I would be too! Trapping children in naughty doll prison is not the answer!

I’m trying to think of more but I think I covered most of it :’) If ya’ll have anything to add, please do!

Like, overall, the movie was GREAT. It would have been even better if they didn’t shove so much information into it that ended up becoming irrelevant later on. It felt as if they were trying to cram a TV series into a movie, trying to cover all of their bases but failing. There’s just so many things they left open-ended and unanswered;; and you know me, I’m a slut for lore like this so I want to know EVERYTHING. And I only got little bits and pieces of it. I really would kike to know if they just cut out large portions of the movie to fit the time limit and the budget;; because that would make a lot of sense, because it feels as if I was handed a puzzle without all the puzzle pieces.

[moonlightreal]

Winx Club season 8/7

In which I see many shipping possibilities.

7 Trapped on Prometia

When we left our heroines, only Stella and Flora hadn’t been grabbed by the robot arms.  They Cosmix up and leap into action to rescue their friends!

Orion watches the action from his ship, where he explains his evil plan (to himself, apparently).  The grabby arms are a gizmo he built to dig up rubies but once it has captured the Winx he can trade them to Valtor for the magic to reignite the planet’s star.  Orion is feeling some guilt though; he wishes he didn’t have to save the planet this way.  

More fairies versus grabbers action!

Then we go to Valtor’s asteroid.  The sorcerer laughs heartily as he watches the fight.  Obscurum cheerleads.  Valtor says once the Winx are out of the way no on will be left to stop him stealing all the light in the magic dimension. Uh, I’m pretty sure SOME other adventurer would step up… Obscurum gloats about his future as king of Lumenia.  

Valtor sends Obscurum falling through a portal onto bunnies.  Spike bunnies.  Spherical bunnies with spikes. First it was just a cave, then into an alligator’s mouth, now spike bunnies.  Valtor knows about some strange places.

Obscurum is assigned a mission: to go to Irridia and transform the rest of the lumens.  Valtor hands over his “darkener” which is that staff with the purple stone that Obscurum has had in previous episodes.  The jewel in the staff shows a shadowy monster face that roars at Obscurum.  Huh.  The minion starts to gloat again and Valtor just portals him to Irridia.

Irridia!  The lighthouse-tower-lumen-city!  Purple lumens float happily around. There’s Twinkle and Lumilla talking about how nobody trusts the Winx and it’s a shame.   Twinkle gives Lumilla a hair bow as a gift and they flutter around happily together.  I so ship these two.

Until… Lumilla gets turned into a staryummy!  Purple lumens are being transformed right and left!

Orion sees the lumen carnage from his ship.  He realizes Valtor has betrayed him!  Yeah, Valtor’s a villain…

Orion leaps into action!

Twinkle tries to save Lumilla, but the bow-wearing staryum is drawn into a portal with all the other newly transformed staryums.  Twinkle seems to be immune to the spell and hides while Obscurum pops into the scene.  Obscurum starts a gloat when Orion runs up to call him on breaking their deal.

They yell at each other then Obscurum summons a giant black hole to suck everything in.  Orion is left hanging on for dear life!

Back with the Winx Flora tries to awaken the local plants to help them, but it’s no good.  The rest of the poor Winx have been being waved around by this machine this whole time, but now it gets worse-- the machine is retracting underground, pulling its captives with it!  We’re in real trouble now!

Really great shot of Flora standing between two plants trying to revive them with her magic.  It still doesn’t work.

Stella comes over with a good idea. They can’t beat the machine separately, but maybe they can together.

Stella creates an orb of light and sends her magic into it, making a mini sun to shine on the plants. Flora adds her green magic to the mini sun and the plants wake up and blossom.  Exciting music plays as the plants grow bigger and reach out vines to grab the machine, finally freeing the Winx.  The girls are none the worse for wear and congratulate Stella and Flora on their teamwork.

But the machine is mad!  It comes rolling at the Winx!  Everybody else transform!

The girls mock the grabby arms as they fly around, getting the arms to hit each other.  Bloom and Aisha do a cool thing where they hold hands and spin around, and more cool music plays.  The machine is broken.

Then we meet to discuss.  The girls realize Orion sent them into a trap.  Musa says Riven was right about him.  But why would he do such a thing?

Poor Flora realizes the plants are suffering again without Stella’s mini-sun.  The girls decide to do a bigger version of the spell, using all their power.  “Supernova!” (is that their convergence spell?  Guess so.)  they make a bigger mini-sun and the plants blossom.  Flora is delight.  Musa is more interested in shaking some answers out of Orion…

...who we left hanging off a building as he tries to resist being dragged into a black hole!

The Winx came flying towards the lighthouse and the giant black hole parked over it… and stop to ask Twinkle what’s up!  She flew out to met them and at least gives the important data that lumens were transformed into staryummies.  And she points out the very visible giant black hole.  Musa’s first thought is that Orion did it-- despite the girls knowing obscurum uses black holes.  Boy, when Musa decides you’re a baddie she’ll believe anything bad about you!

Anyway Obscurum steps up (into midair) to take credit.  He tries to toss Twinkle into the portal but Musa flies up to save her.  Musa almost gets dragged in herself but Tecna tosses a “particle net” that blocks it until Bloom and Aisha shut down the portal.

Then the two of them grab Orion .

Stella and Flora go after Obscurum, but he portals away.

Cut to Orion’s ship, where he explains.  He regrets setting the Winx up, but he thought it was his only option to save Irridia.  Bloom snaps at him, “Betraying friends is never the right choice!”  And Orion sighs.

Tecna tries to soften things by saying the excavator was ingenious, and Orion is a good inventor.  He must be, because he’s invented a soda can that turns into a chair when you open it!  That’s pretty cute.  Twinkle is delight.

Orion says the excavator was for finding underground rubies, and Stella snaps that he also used it to trap them.  Orion apologizes again.

More Tec and Twinkle byplay as the chair turns back into a can, and Twinkle lands on a tray that wraps her up in wrapping paper with a bow.  I love this.

Orion says he’s on the Winx’s side for ultra-sure now, and “my lab is at your service.”  I want Tecna to do a happysquee here, but she doesn’t.  Winx are still skeptical.  Musa says, ‘and why should we trust you again?”

Orion stands up and does a friendship speech about how they need to work together to save not just Irridia but all the stars in the universe!  Go Orion!  

Tecna seems to accept this, she say they’re going to need all the help they can get.  Tec has a point. Twinkle plays with the inventions a little more then reminds everyone that they have to save Lumilla and the other lumens who were turned into staryums.  Bloom does a little hopeful speech.

It’s Tecna who puts it out there that they should give Orion another chance.  Musa and Aisha are still uncertain.  Stella says it’s fine by her.  Aisha decides Orion has finally learned his lesson, and Orion confirms that he has.  And then we go to…

...school?!  You’ve just been speechifying about saving all the stars in the universe, and whole populations of stars being turned into staryummies, and the planet Prometia is on a timer before its ecosystem conks out without any sunlight and you’re going back to school?!

Ok, then.

They’re late again, too.  The girls once again explain where they were in one sentence soundbites each.

Professor Wizgiz Scottishly says they’re “going over complex combination spells.”  “each fairy has an essential magical energy.  When yours is combined with another’s it can grow in powerful ways...’  just what the Winx were doing this episode!

Out the window, Stella notices that Knut and Kiko are painting the courtyard pink.  The ground, the benches, the hedges, pink.  Kiko complains.  Knut says, “How am I to know that ‘paint everything’ doesn’t mean paint everything?”

Stella and Flora walk over, after apparently the shortest class ever, to help.  They do a complex combination spell to turn the courtyard back to normal.  I’m not sure what this “painting the courtyard pink” was all about. Maybe we lost a line from the Italian that would’ve explained it.

Up in their room Stella says to Flora that they were good together today.  Flora suggests making a friendship flower to remind them of how much they care about each other.  They both use their magic on a flowerpot and two flowers come up, one pink and one yellow, twined around each other.  Stella suggests they name the flower Irridia to remind them of what happened there.  The flowers bloom bigger and they each have mixed pink and yellow petals.

This is super sweet.  And my brain immediately goes to, if you plucked that scene out of the episode it could be the heart of the most adorable Stella/Flora ship ever.  

But before we go, let’s check in with Valtor!  He’s tuned his magic TV to the “submarine star” which is called… Gorgo?  Gorgol?  Something that sounds like a giant monster or eldritch evil.  “It lights the oceans of Andros… and it’s our next target.’

Thanks for the preview, Valtor!

Ok, this episode… loved the friendship flower.  Loved the revelation that the staryummies are transformed lumens.  I hadn’t expected that, kudos to Rainbow for not telling us everything instantly.  Liked the spikebunnies.  Liked Orion’s inventions.

Kind of wish that Tecna and Orion had some interaction since they’re both inventors.  It seems like the writers didn’t even think of how much they’d have to talk about, how Tecna should be all over that gorgeous space-galleon, trying to learn everything she could about how rubies work with star cores… there could even be a semi-reasonable “Timmy gets jealous because Tec’s spending so much time with the space pirate” plot.  Not that I should be encouraging relationship drama plots, but we all know we’re gonna get them anyway!

The whiplash of cutting from adventure to school is… well, it’s nonsense, anyone advanced enough to be the only enemy Valtor is worried about should be advanced beyond school.  In previous seasons I assumed the Winx were just using Alfea as their base of operations, but now it’s clear that they are once again students… I think I can only explain this with time travel.  One of their jaunts with the stone of memories last season wrinkled time a little so everyone’s younger but the Winx still have all the skills and memories from their first time through.  Or something.

[pelikinesis]

just rewatched Trigun for the first time in probably 10 years or so?

Trigun is often extremely compelling, except when its writing becomes very bad, and by bad I mean dissatisfying in terms of internal logic.

production-wise, i get the sense that they blew the majority of the animation budget on the first two or so episodes, because they’re absolutely gorgeous, but in many of the later episodes they take a lot of shortcuts to the point where some scenes are basically slideshows.

writing-wise, there’s a number of really key moments that are intended to be emotional, but they’re so intent on discussing THEMES and making ON-BRAND CALLBACKS that characters start spouting dialogue in moments that are absolutely unfitting for the situations that were set-up, and a lot of the social issues in the later episodes is due to the fact that absolutely none of the main characters ever explain to anyone else, “Okay so there’s this guy named Knives, and he’s totally the reason why bad things happen around Vash”

and i’m not saying everything would be resolved because they’d be automatically believed, but everything Meryl and Vash say in lieu of that rightfully serve only to infuriate all the scared, misguided people precisely because they’re desperately asking for an explanation and instead they’re told some sanctimonious bullshit about how killing is bad, or so it sounds because it has not been explained to them that Vash is not who they think he is.

in hindsight, i mostly stuck around with this rewatch because of how good the first two episodes were, and the richness of the premise they promised. the idea of a pacifistic but extremely skilled gunman with a legendary reputation who is actually a dork IS interesting, especially when combined with the supporting cast. 

If someone pitched to me an RPG campaign idea set in some sci-fi wild west world where we’d be playing as insurance claims agents sent to make contact with an outlaw so fearsome he’s on the verge of being classified as a natural disaster or act of God, i’d tell them to sign me the fuck up. out of all the backgrounds for a supporting cast in this type of setting, that’s a very fresh one.

the way that all the drama in Vash’s backstory which took place aboard giant spaceships intended to colonize other planets effectively turns his past into that planet’s own Creation story in a way, and how this somewhat subtly casts himself and Knives as angels or demigods is actually way cooler to me now than i ever registered the first time I watched Trigun.

but i just don’t find that the whole Vash-Jesus-Job analogue exactly resonates. There’s no tension because Knives and the Gung-ho Guns are effectively all-powerful, and if they’d been even slightly more competent they’d have succeeded in their goals. But it’s also left completely unexplained why the most loyal of the Gung-ho Guns are loyal to the point of death to Knives, and at this point I’m actually just talking about Legato because the rest of them barely exist. but Legato, wow, what a hot mess of a plot device masquerading as a character. 

early on a question is raised: does Vash manage to get out of life-or-death scrapes with zero fatalities (though lots of property damage) due to dumb luck, or because he’s just that good? But the thing is, it’s never truly answered. Legato, in particular, is central to the least satisfying parts of the story. His powers are the most overtly supernatural and staggering in scope. It’s never explained why he has so little regard not only for the lives of other humans, but for his own life, allowing himself to be a total pawn to Knives despite probably being the most powerful character in the setting. Legato’s arc could have been used to help definitively answer the prior question, but it’s resolved in a different way that i’d call a swerve, but ultimately not a good swerve.

there are certain things i don’t mind not being explained, so long as the lack of information doesn’t turn into plot holes. So for example, i don’t really need to know what the Plants are. They’re humanoid and seemingly-sentient, and somehow provide all the resources humans need to survive on a desert planet. That’s fine. Not knowing how they work is fine. That mystery does not distract from the narrative’s comprehensibility.

But the show is very blatantly one wherein the fate of all humanity always falls on Vash’s shoulders, which is a bit too egoistic a story for my tastes--yet this wouldn’t be a problem if it were done well. i don’t think it is, though, not in its totality anyways.

Legato isn’t the only problem, he just happens to be the biggest problem. Legato isn’t so much a character as he is a plot device, a deus ex machina--not one that *resolves* the problems caused by the plot, but rather *creates* the problem that the plot requires so that the story arrives at the resolution the author wants.

Legato was the *facade* of an interesting character--an immensely powerful psychic with no regard for human life who also enjoyed eating sweets in his spare time. He can mind control hundreds if not thousands of people at once. Cool. Why can he do that, and what does he want? The answers to those two questions respectively are, (1) because shut up, that’s why, and (2) because he wants everything Knives wants because of reasons.

and that second part is infuriating, because in failing to address this, the writers miss an opportunity for exposition that would enrich not only Legato but also Knives as characters, at the same time. *how* did Knives convince Legato and also the saxophone guy to do his bidding loyally until death? Why is it that Legato is absolutely devoted to Knives, whereas Saxophone Guy shows some bitterness as they meet their ends to fulfill Knives’ plan? How has Knives secured their loyalty despite hating humans so much? See, those would have made for interesting moments, if they weren’t absolutely shunted off to the side in favor of varied scenes of Vash coughing up blood as he spouts his beliefs in a way that’s usually out-of-context for his audience.

Now, in other fighting superpower anime, i would normally expect a character such as Legato to be defeated once the protagonist figures out a weakness or limitation in his psychic powers and adopts a strategy to target that vulnerability. In a good fighting superpower anime, i might expect that a powerful psychic might have some vulnerability based on a psychological issue or two. that’s intuitive, and would not only be satisfying for the protagonist’s development to figure all that out, it would simultaneously provide an opportunity for deeper characterization of said psychic villain.

the swerve that instead Vash wins by losing, that is, by finally being forced into a situation where he has to (temporarily) violate his own moral code and shooting Legato dead was somewhat dramatic but only because of the buildup. Actually, one thing I unreservedly applaud Trigun about is the restraint they demonstrated in having Vash not even fire a gun for like the first five or six episodes which, in a 26~ episode show is quite an investment. It also spent even more time building  up like 24-25 episodes of Vash not killing anyone, and then suddenly he did. But that’s the only reason it was remotely dramatic. Legato was an enigma and and obstacle but ended up being an empty contrivance, which was disappointing.

in many early episodes, it was very clearly laid out what the villain and guest protagonists’ motives were and why they had them. the writer(s) clearly knew how to do that even within the span of a single mostly self-contained episode. and that makes the bundles of unanswered questions that Legato’s role in the story and also his existence altogether raise that much more grating on my suspension of disbelief.

As soon as Legato’s whole dilemma was resolved, i couldn’t really engage with the story anymore, save to watch the last few episodes for the sake of doing so, and also out of curiosity for where the writers were going with everything. but i was no longer invested in the characters, because at some point they started saying and doing things in a manner meant to tie a bow on the themes the writers had been harping on the whole series, but not in a way that demonstrated any internal consistency or believability as far as the characters themselves.

Vash and Meryl never tell anyone who Knives is because the writers need Vash to forever be a falsely-accused and persecuted Christ analogue. it’s so freaking transparent, and that’s one of a number of similarly unsatisfying elements to Trigun, and it’s a darned shame. because so much of the show is interesting and promising, but it doesn’t really have the follow-through. idk maybe the manga explains everything.

Finally, there’s no good reason why Knives didn’t just kill Meryl and Milly after Legato died. I’m not saying this because I wanted their characters dead or anything. I’m saying it because if Knives’ whole motivation is to hurt Vash, and if Knives thinks of humans like cockroaches, then why wouldn’t he kill Meryl and Milly not long after Vash breaks his own code against killing just to save them? Why not drive that final nail in the coffin just to spite Vash? 

All we know about Knives is that he’s Vash, but evil, he wants to wipe out humanity because he thinks they are inferior to them, and he wants to break Vash emotionally. Everything he does is motivated by spite towards Vash, and misanthropy, so killing Meryl and Milly while Vash is sulking over the abstract notion of taking a human life due to killing Legato would be the final insult to injury and would be 100% consistent with everything we know about Knives.

And this is why I couldn’t stay engaged with Trigun. Vash only adheres to his beliefs because the villains don’t do everything that’s within their power to break him. I’m not saying I wanted a grimdark downer ending. I’m saying that the only reason Trigun doesn’t have one is because the writers wanted a good ending, which clashed with everything they set up. Vash’s reaffirmation of his beliefs simply isn’t earned, not in my book, because the only reason they remain intact is because of either laziness or neglect on the part of Knives or the writers. 

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries: 4.08 - Crush

Commentary with Speed Weed (yes, that is actually his name), writer for the episode and Shernold Edwards, writer for the next episode

[As we see Duke burying Wade] SW: “This was the very first day of filming for this episode and I thought Eric just knocked this out of the park.” They really dug a hole in the ground for Eric to roll a dummy into. The location is near their production office in Chester.

Both commentators agree on the cuteness/adorableness of Emma Lahana as Jennifer.

SW talks about the deleted scene of Nathan and Audrey waking up together; it’s on the DVD, it’s also online. “Since 4.07 ended with them jumping into each other’s arms we wanted to open with that, but it got cut basically for length. Because of the big emotional scene at the end of the episode (which also takes places in Audrey’s apartment), we wanted to have space for that to breathe.” SE: “Don’t be upset about that though fans, because I try to throw in them making out wherever I possibly can.”

[As Duke is telling Jennifer in the Herald that he’s leaving town] SW: “I just love what Eric did here. He’s an actor who when you push his character to the edge he really performs well. We get him to this place where because he’s killed his brother he decides he should leave town, and I just love this moment of performance. And actors tell me that when you’re acting against someone who’s really solid it makes it all the more special, and to have Emma on the other side of it was great.”

[As Duke first sees the effects of the pressure Trouble in the road] SW: “We had originally scripted that the effects of this pressure Trouble were to be seen as an advancing sea-green wave. For a variety of reasons we decided not to do it that was but that mean production had to make all of these things implode because of the growing pressure .. and just hats off to the production team who created all these things with a pressure differential and got them to crush like that.” SE: “In case you haven’t figured it out already, Speed’s the science guy.” SE: “It’s true. I spend about 10 years writing science magazine articles for Discover Magazine, National Geographic, popular science.” And as this is the first commentary he’s ever done he just wants to take the opportunity to say “Speed Weed is my name; Weed is my family last name, and Speed is not my legal name but is a nickname my parents gave me the day I was born. I’ve had it my entire life and I’ve never used any other name.”

[As we see the decompression chamber that Duke and Jack put Vince and Dave into] SW: “So they built that. [*surprise from Shernold*] Our fantastic art department headed by Jennifer Stewart built that out of metal and wood and cardboard and it looks so good and so real. And they did it in a way that you can shoot the inside and the outside.” SE: “It looks really good! They even dirtied up the windows.” It was set up at a location called North West Cove, and is about 300 yards from the Grey Gull [the location in reality that is, not in the story].

[As we see Duke argue with Audrey and Nathan on their way to speak to Vince and Dave outside the compression chamber] SW: “This is one of my favourite scenes in this episode because I love it when you get your main characters hot at each other. And they are really hot here and they have reason to be. The challenge as we designed these epsiodes is to make sure that things are grounded and real and people have real emotional core as to why they feel the way they feel and argue the way they argue. By the way the light up there is phemnomenal. This scene was at sun set and the light was gorgeous.

They have a selection of questions soliticted via Twitter and pick one out of a hat; “I’d love to know the reactions of some of the actors when they learned what their characters were doing next.” SW: “This is a really good question, but the truth is the actors read the scripts when they get them; alone at their houses or in their trailers. And I would love to be a fly on the brain, if you will, to know what their first thoughts are. Because they are the people who inhabit these characters and it’s our job to make sure that we take them in interesting and suprising directions and yet ones that are also emotionally grounded. And we have actors that care about their characters and they push back on us if they don’t feel that what they’re doing is justified…. And they’re fiercely protective of their characters in a really great way. So I wish I could answer that first moment of what they feel like when they react.” And he talks about the process of shooting, about how for the 7 days they’re shooting one episode they will also be prepping the next one - and so that’s the point where actors get to talk to the writers and make any comments. “And more often than not it’s just a case of having a conversation and coming to an understanding. On this particular episode I don’t remember any reactions other than, ‘That’s great!’”

Another question from Twitter; “How long had William’s existence been plotted?” SW: “So, we had never imagined that whoever created the Troubles acted alone. So in a sense, William has been around for a very long time. I will say that the specificity of William came about in the very early stages of our designing season 4 (which would have been January 2013 when I first joined the show).

They both talk about the actor playing Aiden (lead on a Canadian show called The Listener that Shernold worked on) and what a good job he did and how he had no prep; they only got to talk to him once he was on set in costume already. And about what a great job the director for the episode did, how he is great at bringing out performances from the actors.

The horseshoe crabs with human eyes that Jennifer sees where built by the production team using a real horseshoe crab carapace (which curiously enough are all over the place in Maine but don’t exist in Nova Scotia, so they had to buy one from afar). And they painted human eyes on it and mounted it on a little remote control car.

Another Twitter question; “Since you were new to writing for Haven last season, what did it take to up to speed with the series?” SW: “This is my first genre show. Prior to writing for this, I wrote for police procedurals and political shows largely, and this is my first sci-fi/fantasy show and I have to say I’m so excited that this is the show I landed in on because if I’d landed on a zombie show or a vampire show or something like that, you have maybe five rules that you have to follow. This show tests you so hard as an intelligent human being because every week we reinvent the wheel. We invent the rules of the day. And so to answer the question, it took me a long time. And the writing staff here was incredibly welcoming to a guy who didn’t have a lot of genre experience. Honestly, in this room a lot of pitches start something like this; ‘Do you remember in the third reel of the second resident evil movie….?’ and I’m totally lost with that kind of thing. I look around the table and everyone else is nodding like they know exactly what’s going on and I have no clue whatsoever. But it’s such a warm and familial room… and I guess the nice thing is that you can make up your rules with every episode. So we were very specific with the pressure rules of this and we spent a long time on the paranoia rules of episode 4.09.”

SE: “What is Duke doing with that flip phone? You know he wants to press some buttons.” SW: “Duke only has like, steampunk phones.”

[As Duke and Nathan argue after talking with Jack] SW: “Oh here comes the punch, I’m so excited for this punch.” SE: “He is so good looking.” SW: “We have actors who largely do their own stunts. There!” SE: “Oooh that was good!” SW: “Yep. And so the way they do that is, they will shoot two versions of that. They will go full speed to the moment where the fist hits the face, and they freeze. And as they freeze, the AD calls make up and make up runs in and puts the blood on Duke’s fist and Nathan’s chin and they continue through the action. And then in post you marry it together so you have a full sweep of the fist going through.” SE: “How often do they forget to pull the punch though? Do they smack him for real?” SW: “Well, on that they were perfect. He moved his fist really fast, and stopped it immediately as he touched Lucas Bryant’s chin. They’re good at that..” [As Duke pulls up in the van with the deep sea diving equipment inside] SW: “There’s a moment here I wanted to shout out to about Eric Balfour’s physicality … Oh here it is, so I hope this ends up on the blooper reel; in one take, as Duke got out of this Dominion Diving van - we’re at the top of a giant hill in Lunenberg here - he forgot to put the parking brake on and the van started rolling downhill and honestly all of us thought that this van was going to go 200 feet vertically downhill and kill someone. And Eric Balfour god bless him, got in that van and stopped it in a way I don’t think any other actor could have.” SW: “OK so the suits; these are real, deep sea, pressure diving suits. They were provided to us by a deep sea salvage company near Halifax called Dominion Diving. It was part of our agreement that we got to use their van and show their name in the take. So for most of this, unless you can see the actor’s face, these are actually the Dominion Diving guys walking in their own suits. And they are really heavy suits because they’re meant to be used under water where they’re neutrally boyant, but on land … All I can tell you is Eric and Lucas spent the better part of a day in those suits and if they put them on for 10 minutes they were sweating like hell. And the same is true of Emily and god bless her because she did a great job and she had a baby just a few months before and she was totally game getting in these suits and doing all this stuff and it was very physically challenging.”

Another Twitter question; “Since it was the same day from one episode to the next (8 and 9) how much time is spent discussing the transition?” SE: “We have to plan that, we have  to make it realistic. And I thought it was particularly clever with these two episodes because there’s the drama of the shot going off in 8 and then rolled it back in 9 to see what actually happened… So yes, to answer the question we do plan - hopefully effectively - between transitions like this.” SW: “It is very tempting in these shows to not have a nighttime and a session of sleep pass. And there are differing opinions (both in this writers’ room and writers’ rooms in general) to not slow down the drama by having a day pass. One feeling is that you have to be true to reality; you can’t have a 26 hour daylight day. The other feeling is; most people don’t notice. And in the tension between those two; you get what you get. It’s a great question because it means that people are really paying attention.” [As Duke and Nathan get their helmets off] SW: “You can see here how sweaty these guys are and in this take they haven’t had the suits on for very long; they’re just super heavy. And those guys loved that. They had so much fun in those suits; it was such a departure for them.”

SE [About Duke]: He is /so/ good looking. I guess we know which team I’m on. Actually, I am neither waffle nor pancake, I am team Shuke because if Duke was real character there would be no competition. He would be like ‘Shernold, where’ve you been all my life?’ And I would be like, ‘I’m right here, what took you so long?’” SW: “Have you told Eric that?” SE: “It’s Duke. Not Eric. Eric and I have a friendship that’s based on professionalism and respect and fun. But if there was a Duke-Duke, like a /real/ Duke...” [As we see Jennifer inside the Rouge] SW: “Oh here it comes … this scene. Duke’s changed his mind. So as this is being shot [Duke kissing Jennifer] I’m sitting about where the kitchen is and this was really hot. I’ll just say it; it was hot. These two had a chemistry for sure.” SE: “And she is adorable.”

[As we see Audrey and Nathan in her apartment] SE: “I can’t say enough about how great these two are in this scene.The truth is our actors love - they’ve have fun with the suits and all that, but when they get to do what we call a two-hander and just play the emotion (especially something that’s built up over three seasons) and dig deep into how their characters feel about each other, I do think I’m not speaking out of turn when I say that this is one of their favourite things to do. And it seemed like this, they treated it like a short play, and they get to run it through without stopping. And I think that’s when we see them at their best.” SW: “There were lot of questions about this scene from the Twitterverse and someone asked a very smart question about how the actors prepped for that scene.” So this conversation where they are coming to the decision that maybe Audrey should shoot Nathan, is cut into three or four scenes in the edit, but on the day they shot it through all in one go. “And I really want to take my hat off to the director and to Emily and Lucas, because, we live in a world where supernatural things don’t happen …” SE: “That we know of.” SW: “... people don’t have to shoot their one true love in order to end supernatural Troubles. And yet for this scene to work, it has to be real and grounded, and you have to decide that the greater good and the best thing is that you have to kill your one true love. And they (the actors) knew that’s a tall order; it’s not easy. And they took this so seriously. And I was so affected watching this. And we didn’t do a huge amount of sizes because we knew we wanted to be close in this - by that I mean how close is the camera on the actors. If I remember correctly the director was thinking that they might want to break them up and shoot them bit by bit,” so that Emily could do multiple takes at the emotional level 1, then move to the next level for multiple takes, then stay at the final level for multiple takes, “but god bless her Emily decided to do the whole rise and the whole arc of it time after time, take after take. And I can’t really answer the question because when they were at home two days before this I don’t know how they prepared for it. But I do know that when they showed up on set that day they were ready. Both for the lovey-dovey scene at the beginning of the episode [which was shot directly before this] and for the awfulness of this scene at the end of the episode. The emotional difficulty of it.” SE: “And I would gues that these two - they’re such terrific friends too and their families are close everything - would pick up the phone and talk to each other about it, or that they would get on set and just be in the moment.”

[As Duke, Jennifer, Vince and Dave are talking at the bottom of the steps outside the Gull] SE: “Quick point of local interest; John Dunsworth who plays Dave, you can almost see it in that shot of Duke, his family owns like a hundred acres of coastal land right next to the Grey Gull. And at lunch on this day, he took me to his private dock and out on a boat ride around the cove and it was one of my most memorable experiences from my time up there I really enjoyed it.” SE: “He’s so much fun.”

[nerdsideofthemedia]

Should the term “Mary Sue” be retired?

The original. 

I didn’t have any intention of posting my non-RWBY, non-MHA blog posts here, but here’s this one seems to be becoming important with the rise of the claims that Arya Stark is a Mary Sue. So here it goes:

In my walks through Dan Olson’s twitter, I came across this:

Which got me thinking: is the term “Mary Sue” completely pointless?

Before I wonder about this question, let’s take a quick journey through time. In the 70s, Paula Smith noticed a character pattern among the Star Trek fanfic and created a parody to point this out, “A Trekkies’s Tale”, whose protagonist was called Mary Sue. During the following years, the “Mary Sue” wasn’t necessarily considered as something bad, instead it was considered as a phase every writer will go through as it was intimately associated with self-inserts and was only applied to fan-fictions1;2.

In recent years, the term has left the fanfic and began being applied to original fiction too, losing its meaning along the way and gaining a pretty negative connotation. In fact, nowadays, “Mary Sue” is such an extremely subjective term that even TV Tropes admits:

“TV Tropes doesn’t get to set what the term means, the best we can do is capture the way it is used.” 1

Hell, I’ve even come across with this subjectivity, as once I called Orihime from Bleach a Mary Sue, on youtube, and one person defended my use of it by explaining she was liked by everyone, which wasn’t the reason I considered a Mary Sue to begin with and consider that justification to be pretty dumb.

Why is being liked by everyone not a good parameter?

Have you ever read/watched a shonen? Most of the good guys are on good terms. Even when there is some animosity between a main character and another one, it’s usually because of the other, like Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, who dislikes Goku because he’s better than him, not because of anything egregious the latter did. In “My Hero Academia”, Bakugo hated Midoriya mostly because of pride and arrogance (they are now on good terms).  Yes, the Avengers may have not loved each other from the get-go, but, by the end of the film, they were ready to live happily ever after. And when the sequels even stop (they never will), they will end up being on good terms.

Another definition of what is a “Mary Sue” is it’s a character that is overpowered/great set of skills + tragic backstory, (sometimes even without the latter). So let’s take a look at:

Superman: an alien whose planet was destroyed, adopted by 2 humans, and has a set of skills that would make Goku turn… Well, he would probably just find it cool, but Vegeta’s head would explode for sure as he threw a temper tantrum. His powers include flying, super speed and strength (to the point of almost completely invulnerability), X-ray and heat vision.

Bruce Wayne: a poor (not literally) orphan who was raised by his butler and whose riches go beyond Taylor Swift’s wildest dreams, let alone poor (far more literal) little us. Thanks to it, he has access to technology that has little to no limitations, yet his money never ends.

Goku: an alien whose planet was destroyed, adopted by an old man who was killed by him in giant monkey-form. Not only he can fly, he is particularly powerful even for his people even though he’s a low-level specimen according to the planet’s hierarchic structure.

Ichigo: a guy who turns out to be part-Hollow, part-Shinigami, part-Vizard, part-who-the-hell-even-cares-anymore, even though some of them are pretty rare.

Harry Potter: an orphan raised by his aunt and her family, who all treat him badly, finds out he’s a wizard and finds out his parents have left him a mountain of gold (literally). Everyone either admires him or feels jealous as he is famous for “defeating” a particularly powerful wizard as a baby, without any damages besides a scar. He’s also part of a prophecy.

What about those self-inserts?

I guess we could still use the term as just a self-insert, but considering that most of the time we don’t know the writers, then we can only know their self-insertion if they tell us.

It also doesn’t justify its negative connotation. Writers are people, I presume, which means they have flaws. So why is a character based on oneself bad? Provided the writers are realistic and self-aware, those should be some of the most realistic characters. Now, I know there’s a trap in here, which is the tendency of favoring ourselves and make us just a bit (or a lot) more special than we actually are, but 1) this doesn’t necessarily happen to every self-insert; 2) that can happen whenever writers begin to favor a character for whatever reason, even if it wasn’t a self-insert, leading it to become more and more special or less flawed.

They’re the personification of perfection.

OK, except perfection seems to be kind of subjective, since what I like isn’t the same as everyone else’s. I mean I may like active characters and some may like passive characters. You may think perfection is pizza without pineapple, while I say “you are objectively wrong”.

Jokes asides, being different human beings, usually we end up writing “perfect” characters with our definition of it, which may not correspond to someone else’s.

For example, Bella Swan is called “Mary Sue” a lot for being perfect, but she’s deeply flawed. She’s co-dependent and suicidal. Edward Cullen is the one “Gary Stu” that actually stuck, yet he’s manipulative and a stalker. Yet, there is truth to the claim they are perfect, not to me, but to Stephanie Meyers as they are both idealizations to her, regardless of our opinions of them.

I suppose a character can be drop dead gorgeous, have all sorts of skills and being loved by everyone, but, eventually, he/she will make something that many will consider to be wrong. If that doesn’t happen, then there’s probability not a good conflict, which reveals that, maybe, the problem is in the story itself, not necessarily in the character.

Speaking of subjectivity in flaws and virtues…

“So why did you used to call Orihime a Mary Sue?”

Well, because I thought her flaws were inconsequential with Bleach begging me to sympathize with her for awful reasons and smart characters being really stupid, meaning causing unnecessary plot-hole or plot-contrivance for her. The few most glaring examples I recall (and I’ve read/watched Bleach at least half a century ago, so it’s possible there are a few lapses in my memory) being:

Her almost kissing Ichigo while he was unconscious. That scene is framed as if I am supposed to sympathize with her, instead of what it actually is: creepy as hell and also falls under almost sexual assault in many countries.

Her having an obsession for Ichigo to the point of only thanking him for coming for her in her mind, even though Rukia, Chad, Uryu and Renji were also there to save her. This again is framed as I’m supposed to empathize with her, instead of thinking she’s being narrow-minded and has an unhealthy obsession with Ichigo.

About others acting stupid: Uryu takes her to where Ichigo and Ulquiorra are fighting even though where they were before, Ichigo was losing cause he was holding back to avoid hurting her. Yes, the other place was bigger, but their powers were huge and Uryu taking Orihime should have been a stupid idea (and he’s supposed to be smart).

Not to mention, of course, she resurrects Ichigo by crying and yelling his name which was also major bullshit.

And yes, it’s time to talk about the gender-thing and to admit to my own prejudices despite being a woman, because Orihime isn’t the only character I know who has her flaws not being acknowledged or being perceived as good. Many male characters have all of those yet, I still don’t call them “Gary Stu” or any other male equivalent.

Sun Wukong from RWBY has pretty much all the same problems as Orihime: he stalks Blake for months yet faces no actual consequences. And his actions were framed in the show as “needed”, even though they weren’t since the entire Menagerie arc could be written without him with only minor changes. Creepy actions being framed as right and sympathetic – check.

He also abandons his team several times, which, again, was inconsequential (even if he confesses to being an awful leader in V6) and no way in hell a combat school would interrupt classes for an entire year. He’s completely oblivious of the Faunus struggle, though he’s a Faunus and goes to school in one of the most racist territories. And Blake goes from super paranoid to so relaxed she doesn’t even believe him when he says he saw a WF member wearing a mask for no apparent reason. If I had to guess it’s because if she kept being super paranoid, it would stand to reason she would be the one noticing Ilia spying all by herself, rendering him almost useless and without interrupting her talk to Ghira, which would have made Sun completely pointless. At some point, Orihime became all about Ichigo, Sun was always all about Blake (until V6).

Like I said, I have criticized Sun for being badly written, unnecessary and the contrivances his presence demanded, but I have never ever called a “Gary Stu”. Looking back, I think it’s a combination of a few reason:

I know “Mary Sue” is a term too subjective to be used without an explanation afterwards;

We just don’t tend to hold the same standards for male characters;

Even when we use them for male characters, it almost never sticks.

And I know I’m not the only one doing this.

Once, I came across an article that accused several characters of being a “Mary Sue”, including Orihime, but because she’s too perfect (are you sure about that?) and Sailor Moon, yet claimed Goku wasn’t one.  It’s particularly funny, because Sailor Moon is written to be more flawed than Goku (even if I much higher tolerance for Dragon Ball and DBZ to Sailor Moon).

Goku is an absent father and husband, yet his family never really holds that against him. His wife may complain about it a few times during the anime, but there’s no real strife between them and Gohan never holds it against him either. He gives Cell a senzu bean so that he and Gohan can have a fair fight, even though the entire world is at stake. It still is mostly inconsequential, until Gohan’s arrogance gets in the way.

Meanwhile, Sailor Moon is stupid, coward and petty many times, and it’s clear the writers knew it because they acknowledge those flaws within the show. She is mocked because of them, and her lack of resilience even leads to the death of one of the Sailors in a season finale, if I remember correctly (admittedly, I watched it 5 centuries ago, so I might be wrong). Yes, I know they come back from the death.

This is not an argument that Goku should be called a “Mary Sue/Gary Stu”, rather that the term is heavily gendered. It’s much more applied to female characters and even when used for a male one, it almost never sticks. Even in the example I gave, Edward Cullen, which was successfully labeled as “Gary Stu”, still feels like it was gendered-motivated. Not because of his own, obviously, but for the target audience’s: the majority girls and women. So there we notice another double-standard: the sex of the target audience also affects the claims to “Sueness”.

Ultimately, I have to agree with Dan, with the term “Mary Sue” being too subjective to actually have any validity and is deeply rooted in sexism. Explaining why a character doesn’t work for us  and why we think they’re badly written is far more productive. Let’s keep in mind, we aren’t supposed to like every character writers make, even the ones who are meant to be likable and relatable.

Note: Yes, I watched Overly Sarcastic Productions’ video on the subject. While I like Red’s take, I’d say almost no character in original fiction fits the mold. That in itself wouldn’t be the problem, but the fact that it will remain extremely subjective, I still find the term to be counter-productive, heavily gendered and it needs to die.

1 – https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

2 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

[ask-anyone-from-the-tick]

Bellow the cut are my spoilery thoughts after watching season 2 of the Tick

I’m kind of glad Dot turned out to have a super power because being the only hero with no powers is sort of Arthur’s whole thing. I also like that she didn’t outshine Overkill and just step over him, but still looks up to him a bit and appreciates his approval. They feel like equals, and he’s still an awkward turtle socially.

THEY WERE SO CUDDLY AND AWKWARD ON THE COUCH, Overkill is def the kind of guy who can’t move if there’s a pet on his lap. He’s so soft I can’t...

I LOVE that we get to see more of Joan and her relationship to her family, she’s awesome and I love and support her. She’s just doing her best, and I hope those lobster babies come to visit.

Superian and Larry’s relationship continues to baffle me just a bit. Larry seems to just be a willing servant to cater to his whims I guess. I kinda hoped they were more buddy buddy than that. Apparently it makes Superian feel better to toss him way up and catch him lawl

The way Hobbs reacted when Tick broke the arm wrestling machine thing makes me wonder if Tick is actually the strongest superhero in the world, maybe second only to Superian ??? Or at least the strongest ever registered with AEGIS.

I really, REALLY like Sage. He’s fantastic. He’s also really attractive, is it just me? DAT VOICE THO. [take me on a wild nipple ride! jk omg I’m sorry]

That twin woman who was impressed with Arthur’s nerdy organization came off as REALLY OBVIOUSLY flirting with him, and his reaction was to just shrug it off like he wasn’t in to her, even though she was gorgeous, and Tick immediately picked up on it that she was flirting and got DEFENSIVE AS HELL like she was taking Arthur away and I just-- that’s pretty gay guys. That’s really... wow. And then she comes back and continues to hit on Arthur and he never once acts like he’s in to her, I don’t... I don’t know what to say but if Arthur suddenly starts pining over her in season 3 out of no where I’m gonna kms [not because he’s not gay but because it’s pretty clear he’s not interested in this woman. Don’t establish this and then force romance after we’ve seen there’s none.] Also when Arthur was picking out fancy clothes Tick had REALLY specific fashion descriptions and opinions on what looked good on him. He was like enjoying Arthur modeling clothes ajdlfdjas

Someone needs to draw Overkill being lovingly rescued by dolphins STAT

I honestly, unironically, think Edgelord’s entire look is cool and he’s very handsome. I think he looks like if Johnny Depp and Adam Driver had a baby.

SUPERIAN FEARS THE TUMBLRS. We’re his kryptonite. 

Dangerboat... plane... whatever he is, kinda deserved a little more attention toward the last half of the season. The episode centered around him was the most emotional and it brought everyone together more, I really dug that. It made me cry. ALSO WE STAN MICHAEL, HE WAS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD. I’m so proud of Arthur for seeing Dangerboat more as a person and making an effort to connect to him as a friend. <3 good job Arthur-- at the same time--

I HATE they way Arthur acted like Dot has a specific thing she should or shouldn’t be that was out of character. It’s like the writers wanted the female character to undergo some sort of oppression to rise up against, some form of misogyny from her male family member that she had to point out. You shouldn’t have to tear down a good character because he’s male, to make the female look good. If misogyny was gonna come out of Arthur, let it come out another way other than “this isn’t want you’re supposed to do” like mother fucker, she’s been taking care of you your whole life, she’s done martial arts training, she’s a paramedic, she is way more qualified than you. He’s the last person to talk that way to anyone and it’s pissing me the fuck off. He’s the one struggling with mental illness and no phyical ability to fight anyone, it makes no sense.

Arthur’s actor Griffin Newman, he just does such a fantastic job. The whole undercover scene was so perfectly on pitch, like... just the right level of second hand embarrassment and pride came outta me. He was so close to  blowing it because he’s an anxious person by nature, but he pulled it off and came off more as just an awkward criminal with tons of money that was just believably nerdy. I loved it, it was so funny. Please give him all the awards. And that scene where Tick is on one side of Lint, way too close to her, and Arthur is on the other, and they just work her forking nerves was so hysterical. I died. I think they need to play up that comedic chemistry more often because Tick and Arthur bounce off each other really well when they’re not busy trying to solve serious problems. 

Ok so the whole human furniture thing caught my eye immediately. The pose we are first introduced to is an infamaously disturbing pose by a real life serial killer who ate people and posed their bodies in weird positions and used them for sex and I forget what else. Anyway I tried to brush that off as coincidence, but then later on Dot and Overkill go to where they think this Duke guy’s lair is, and his house looks exactly like John Podesta’s house that had a statue of that EXACT same serial killer’s victim in that pose, and podesta’s walls were covered in creepy pedo art of little girls and drowning women. And the walls of Duke’s lair were covered in creepy human furniture art. I mean there are all kinds of parodies this season that are in your face, but I don’t think anyone who didn’t follow pizzagate carefully would catch this one.

Speaking of parodies OMFG I lost it when Superian reenacted that Superman scene where he’s like “Can you read my mind?” as he’s dragging the screaming guy across the night sky. 

Ugh, I’m so sad that Tick and Arthur don’t get to keep those precious baby lobsters, and where did they get all the cute toys?? I wanna think Joan picked those up for them. Kawaii lobster voice: “Joaaan!” Tick is such a good dad...  A family can be a giant Tick man, a moth boy, a hobo, a mimaw, and a bunch of singing lobsters. "SHE'S THE MOTHER OF OUR CHILDREN!" Tick drinks respect woman lobster mom juice.

I think I don’t know what to make of the reverse Green Goblin twist going on with Ms. Lint. The creepy voice is telling her to become a hero I guess, but not really? I think the joke is we think it’s telling her to be a hero, but really it’s teaching her to be a  better villain LMAO

I’m glad kevin has a power and he was welcomed to come help even before said power was revealed.-- woah wait where tf is Karamozov?? I gotta tweet his actor he loves this show and he wasn’t in this season ???

I don’t blame Dot for being upset they want to defrost The Terror, but at the same time due process is a thing. I don’t know how that would work in a society full of super powers though. Because the moment you defrost him he’s going to find a way to escape. He’s the oldest, and the worst super villain of all time. This is why I’m ok with the death penalty and killing villains lol

I was expecting Walter to be some sort of MK Ultra sleeper agent, but the plot twist was, that’s what Overkill would become I guess. And Lobstercules. OH BTW I think she’s voiced by the same actress who played Captain Liberty in the old Tick sitcom! “Walter isn’t Walter? My feet don’t feel so good.” Aw Tick

Ty Rathbone drinks respect mothers juice.

Acting agent commander doctor agent Hobbs, honestly I suspected he was the main villain like the moment he was headed toward Lobstercules because something about the lighting and the camera work seemed to telegraph that.

I bet the reason Ty Rathbone feeds his black hole heart monster mice, is because it requires frequent blood sacrifice and that's the smallest sacrifice he can think of that he can quickly just put in there and placate it and go on with his day. I don’t know if he’ll be season 3′s villain or if it’s the aliens that just came back to reclaim Superian. 

Which btw, I called that shit from season 1 episode 1. Superian showed up crash landing inside Big Bismuth which is the only thing that could trap him. He was a prisoner, probably because he did some bad shit, and he told Arthur he helps humanity because he just wants to be a good person. Like he wasn’t one before and now he wants to try to be one.

I want to talk about these, nearly involuntary dance parties Overkill rewards himself with... but I uh... I still can’t compute that that’s actual canon. That that’s a thing Overkill and Dangerboat enjoy together and he... he can’t seem to control himself when the music plays... And also that Dot AND Overkill both know how to floss dance... I just... wow...

Oh and that hug with Overkill made me an emotional mess, he just... he really needed that, thank you Dot.

This concludes my rant and ramble.