#i just love stuff that show the beginning phases of the apocalypse where everything is going to shit

[rockybloo]

The hardest part about dating a zombie mutant is making them behave so you both don't get killed by other humans that are unaware some zombies are actually friendly.

Destiny tries hard but Zeke tries harder and refuses to behave without some compensation in return.

For some short story context, Zeke is a mutant zombie who isn't quite alive but isn't quite dead either and Destiny is a human.

They are trying to survive in a post apocalypse world. It's kinda like an alternate timeline to my normal universe…but zombies happened at some point.

[alexis-vaughn]

💘 + Shane & Alexis

Headcanons meme dating edition from here

Long Post incoming!

where they first met and how

They first met in Highschool on a party where friends of Alex sneaked her in. She had heard a lot about him or watched him on the football field, but at that night they first met properly.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved

Alex fell head over heels for him but it took a few weeks of knowing each other until they first had a date. Feelings were involved for her from the start, while Shane developed them during their dating time and as he realized how attached she was, he backed off cause he got scared he couldn’t give it back to her the way she deserved it.

who fell for who first ( if applicable )

Alex for Shane

where their first date was and what it was like

They went to grab some Icecream at a lake and took a long walk until they jumped into the water laughing, knowing they weren’t allowed to swim there. Before some cops could approach them, they swam to the other side of the lake and ran away holding each other’s hands.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? )

Shane asked Alex out after he noticed her interest and he simply asked her if she wants to spend some time together after school (a Thursday to be concrete cause his football games were on Friday’s )

who proposes first

Didn’t happen yet but I’m very sure it will be Shane after their reunion, cause Alex is always too scared to be turnt down from him again so she leaves everything up to him: the first kiss, the first sex, the first “I love you” and of course the proposal. After he broke her heart in the past, she simply doesn’t dare to make a step again to not ruin it.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away

In Highschool they were very open about it cause Alex was so proud to be with him and Shane simply didn’t care about anyone’s opinion. After their reunion, they keep it more or less to themselves at first cause they don’t want anyone to intervene or talk about their connection since they want no attention drawn to them or know about their weakness. But many around them guess it, even if they don’t show it openly.

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? )

Since it will happen during the apocalypse, I guess it will be pretty simple, cause Alex isn’t the girl needing all the romantic shit to be convinced. Judging their short temper it could also happen during emotional sex when Shane simply says “marry me” cause he hopes she won’t say no when they are both highly emotional aroused. Alex would probably think he’s just making a joke and tease him for it but when they lay in each other’s arms in exhaustion she will probably ask him if he was serious before and he would say yes, then she would say yes too but then they wouldn’t talk about it for a while, making Alex think he forgot about it and not bring it up again. Shane would probably search for rings on a raid or find some at the CRM or craft something when they get Trixie back and then make it official with a knee fall.

if they adopt any pets together

Alex absolutely adores pets, especially cats and dogs but it’s probably very difficult to adopt pets in an apocalypse, so they rather enjoy to have stray cats or dogs around which get attached and maybe stay with them.

who’s more dominant

They both are, especially in fights and during sex, but Shane is actually the only person making it able for Alex to let her walls down and then she can get very subduing for him, if he allows it and she trusts him enough again.

where their first kiss was and what it was like

It was beneath the bleachers after Shane’s football training one day after their first date. They were talking about how they ran away last night, how much they enjoyed it and then Shane used the chance to kiss her with his hand on her chin to break their embarrassed silence. Alex said “We should do that again. You know, swimming. Spending time together.” but wasn’t able to look at him properly with her shy smile while he only responded “I’d like that. Do you want that?” And Alex nodded and said “I’d like that.” staring at him with her big brown eyes and somehow it was like a sign for Shane to kiss her so her insecurities about his interest stop. Alex hold onto his shirt and raised on her toes, feeling like a prom queen cause everyone around them was looking at them. She loved how he simply didn’t care about the talking around them, while she just felt endlessly proud that he was kissing her so openly. Since then she always loved the smell of his sports clothes and the dressing rooms cause it reminded her of this moment. It also was the beginning of her growing confidence after she felt invisible for such a long time.

if they have any matching couples stuff ( mugs? sweaters? pillowcases? )

Alex tried to give him matching keychains in the past, but back then it didn’t seem like he enjoyed these things and that’s why she stopped. Nowadays they both don’t need such things cause they consider their relationship as something sacred they wanna protect and keep to themselves so they don’t like these couple things. As long as they know they are together, no one else has to know and they rather show it each other with affection, not with things usual couples do.

how into pda they are

In Highschool they were very open about it cause it was connected with pride for both of them to let everyone know. Now they keep their affection to themselves, but since they both have a high sexual chemistry, it happens often enough that they have sex outside or in more or less risky situations where they could be caught. They like this kind of danger and wouldn’t be able to hold back anyways, but they aren’t openly holding hands or kissing each other in front of others.

who holds the umbrella when it rains

Shane cause he is taller

where their usual ‘date spot’ is ( if applicable )

In Highschool it was the lake where their first date was and the forest which had a kissing booth station on “the lovers rock” on a hill where you could watch the city. In the apocalypse everywhere is a possible date spot, but they usually prefer to be just at their house in front of a fireplace where they could be alone and together.

who’s more protective

Shane, because he still feels like he has to make something up for the past.

how long it is before they sleep together ( can be as in ‘had sex’ or as in ‘shared a bed’ )

They shared a bed pretty early after first meeting, cause whenever there was a party back then, most of the guests slept all in one house cause they got drunk or didn’t have a drivers license. Shane told Alex and her girls back then to take the bed of the boy who offered the house of his parents cause he didn’t want the girls to sleep on the floor and Alex didn’t notice that Shane stared at her from the floor the whole night while she slept safe and sound at the edge of the bed with four others girls next to her. The first sex happened a few weeks after they started dating in the back of Shane’s car.

if they argue about anything

They argue a lot cause they both are short tempered and stubborn. Somehow they need to let some steam off and know they can do it best with each other without the other taking it too personally and secretly they like the fire that often leads them into rough sex. Sometimes one of them goes too far and brings up old mistakes, but mostly it’s not very serious and more a habit.

who leaves more marks ( lipstick, hickeys, scratchmarks etc. )

Alex (she wants everyone to see he’s taken and likes to mark her territory), but just because Shane respects her too much and is too scared to do something wrong that he holds himself back. But if she tells him it’s okay, he would leave marks as well.

who steals whose clothes and how often

Alex steals Shane’s clothes cause hers are way too feminine and small 😂 but Shane would surely keep a Negligé or pantie from her to have her smell around 👀

how they cuddle ( spooning? facing each other? )

However they wish. Sometimes they playfully tackle each other and Alex curls herself together on his chest like a cat. Sometimes they just stare at each other in admiration or after a fight without saying a word and when they want to sleep, Shane either cradles her head under his chin or spoons her.

what their favourite nonsexual activity is

Alex likes to read to him when they cuddle on a rainy day but they also love to share a wine or whiskey in front of the fire place and talk about the past or how everyone in this world is stupid besides them. They laugh together a lot ♥︎ and of course they like swimming, like back then on their first date.

how long they stay mad at each other

Well, Alex was mad at him for years for leaving her, but after their reunion they don’t stay mad for longer than a day cause they are very conscious about the fact that they could die every day and don’t wanna separate in a fight. Never again.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are

They both like coffee “black like their soul” and often order it exactly with saying that simultaneously. But Alex learnt to craft tea from herbs in the wild and that’s why she has a favor for homemade herbal teas she forces Shane to try.

if they ever have any children together

Alex already has a daughter called Trixie and after finding her Shane loves her like his own. They probably always claimed that they don’t want children together especially in the apocalypse, but if they manage to settle down somewhere safe and Alex sees how lovely Shane is with Trixie, I guess she would bring it up one day. Or maybe Shane will because he’s jealous of not being the father and wants to experience how it feels, since he wants many things with Alex he never imagined before.

if they have any special pet names for each other

Alex calls him teasingly “asshole” a lot, but she also uses the word “babe” and “darling”. Shane uses “baby”, “sweetheart” or darling, but sometimes teases her with saying “princess” when she acts bossy around him.

if they ever split up and / or get back together

They split up after Highschool already so when they decide to be together again, they will definitely not go through that another time and stay together whatever it costs.

what their shared living space is like ( messy? clean? what kind of decor? )

They both are kinda messy when it comes to clothes, which often happens when they start jumping each other and leave trails of clothes everywhere. Decor is not really a thing in the apocalypse and they both don’t care about that much anyways after living on the road for so long. Alex is only very clean in the kitchen cause she leaves a mess when she crafts tea and doesn’t want it to interfere with the normal cooking supplies which are rare in the apocalypse.

what their first christmas / hanukkah / etc as a couple was like

Their first Christmas as a secret couple was in Alexandria. No one knew they are together, they were only known as the lone wolfs who didn’t attend the Christmas celebrations in the little chapel or the family dinners in their houses, so no one wondered that they stayed together in their house the whole day. They ate self made cookies from Carol, gossiped about how silly these Christmas celebrations were and in the end had a classic Christmas dinner, self made presents and cuddled in front of the chimney chatting about the past and Trixie until Alex read a Christmas story to him. After all they celebrated Christmas like a real family, exactly like everyone they gossiped about before.

what their names are in each other’s phones

Shane saved her under “Lex” while Alex saved him under “S the Ass” 👀 but they don’t have phones anymore in the apocalypse anyways.

if they have any ‘couple traditions’ ( buying a new mug for their collection every year? baking every friday evening? )

They always go on raids together and swim in the lake at night when everyone else is asleep. Also Shane watches Alex crafting her tea and makes fun of the mess she leaves behind. And whenever they find the time she reads to him before they go to sleep. There are no daily structures in the apocalypse, these traditions are more a habit they share as a couple.

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first

Shane waits for Alex to fall asleep cause he feels protective about her but Alex will always wake first to prepare breakfast or wake Shane by sexual favors, unless she is still too exhausted from the last night.

who’s the big spoon / little spoon

Shane is definitely the big spoon cause he wants to protect her and he’s way taller than Alex.

who hogs the bathroom

Alex because of her long hair which needs a lot of treatment. Before the apocalypse she collected perfumes and all kind of scented oils, make up, candles and body lotions, but now the bathroom is rather empty, besides Shane finds enough perfumes on raids to stock up her non existent collection 👀 she loved to spend hours in the bathroom in the past for her make up and long baths, but since the fall of the world that’s rarely possible.

who kills the spiders / takes them outside

Shane kills them and Alex would take them out cause she loves all kind of animals too much.

@wexarethewalkingxdead

[peterstanslizzie]

Reacting To: The Hollow (Season 2 Episode 6)

Episode Title: Dead End

Spoiler Warning: Kindly proceed if you’ve watched the episode already or don’t care about spoilers.

1. The episode begins on a somber note; Adam, Mira, Kai PLUS Reeve and Vanessa are standing next to Skeet’s burial. They’re obviously distressed by the sudden passing of their friend. Regardless of what we’ve just seen, I still think that the show is going to find a way to bring him back. 

2. As they make their way to the Jazz Club, Reeve tells Vanessa he still doesn’t trust the trio and the same goes for Adam. Reeve also believes that they’re still playing the game. 

3. Kai notices Adam wearing the skull key he had stolen from Jules’s chateau in episode 5 and points it out for everyone to hear, including Reeve and Vanessa. Reeve is suspicious of Adam collecting random objects without keeping them in the loop. Umm, they just got together as a group; Why would he think that Adam is withholding information from him especially after everything they’ve been through last episode? Reeve is always so hot-tempered; It’s really annoying. 

4. Adam and Kai get to arguing with each other and thank goodness for Mira because she pulls them by their ear, which causes them to stop. She must have done that plenty of times when the three of them were a team back in the day. But they go back to bickering when they couldn’t decide on a path to take. This time, Kai is the one to stop them. We also find out some tidbits about Kai’s parents; Apparently they don’t seem to have a good relationship with one another. I wonder if they’re separated or divorced...

5. Reeve asks Vanessa (who seems out of it) to fly out to scout for locations but there’s no need for that because Mira discovers a random underground metro station behind the bushes. As they descend, Kai reminds Vanessa that he’s still mad at her for manipulating him last season. 

6. I’m glad Mira is around to keep the peace between Adam and Reeve. Their constant arguing is getting old real fast. They board a train and it immediately starts moving. But they’re not the only ones on this train because there is also a group of ghosts seated on the train as well and just like Jules, they’re French too lol. PS, I didn’t catch the ‘ghosted’ pun Kai made at first when he was talking to one of the ghosts. 

7. They look at the map of the metro and are unsure if the train will take them to the jazz club. Vanessa points to a headline of a newspaper one of the ghosts is reading that mentions about a train that had crashed at the end of a train line. By the way, can Mira read French? There are also photos of the victims and it turns out that the ghosts of the victims are in the same carriage as them. Creepy!

8. They then realize that these ghosts are there to relive the crash again, which means that the very train that they’re on will crash too. They run over to the driver (also a ghost) and pleads for him to stop the train but he isn’t able to do anything; I guess it’s because he’s a ghost lol.

9. Yet again, Adam and Reeve are arguing about which buttons to press to stop the train. Kai, who is extra sensitive to listening to people argue because of his parents’ history isn’t coping well during this time. Poor Kai! He must have been so traumatized. Adam, go get yo’ man, even if y’all are about to die. 

10. Vanessa tells Kai to fix the predicament they’re in but Kai is still hurt by the bad stuff she’s done to him. I’m glad Kai is calling her out and not sweeping those things under the rug. What she did was absolutely terrible. Anyways. with his powers of ‘engineering’ (I guess), he asks Adam to pull the lever to set off the braking system but Reeve starts to butt in. OMG REEVE! Kai asked Adam! UGHHHH! It’s not a competition. They accidentally break the lever and I am so mad. Mira does the best thing in the episode so far and that is locking them out of the train conductor’s room. Thank you Mira!

11. Kai breaks open the control panel, exposing the wires underneath but he’s not sure which ones to disconnect. Luckily, Vanessa realizes that the metro map isn’t a location map, it’s actually a map of the circuitry. With the basic knowledge of French she has, she tells Kai to disconnect the blue and green wire and the train manages to stop just before it could crash.

12. The doors open and the ghosts are free to leave the train at Montmartre station. But they’re ghosts?! They should be able to phase through objects, no?

13. I’m loving Mira in this episode! She is not taking any of Reeve or Adam’s BS! I agree, their constant fighting is so dumb and it’s not accomplishing anything. To be honest, the main problem here lies with Reeve. He is so stubborn but I  wonder what really happened that caused him to leave Adam and Mira in the first place.

14. They exit the station and immediately, they see the jazz club just opposite of them. The door opens and from the looks of it, another team is leaving the club. They explain to our protagonists that they don’t have their memories and they have their own set of powers. These people are probably in the same positions Adam. Kai, Mira and Vanessa, Reeve, Skeet were last season. 

15. However, the long hair girl (we find out later that her name is Nisha) quickly assumes that our main characters are the bad guys and she threatens to attack. Reeve, who is the most annoying person on this show so far makes the first move on the only guy on their team, Tyler. But he’s not down for the count because he strikes Reeve with a lightning bolt. So, we get this episode’s first fight scene.

16. Nisha also has fire powers like Kai and she proceeds to attack Kai and we get a fire on fire battle between the two. We also find out here that players can’t have the same powers within ‘The Hollow’, which is definitely not the case at this moment. Interesting! I didn’t know that. Hence, the digital world that they’re in now is very different to what the game was last season. 

17. The shaved-head girl, whose name is Iris I believe (from me checking the end credits) has the power to grow bigger. She tries to attack Mira but Reeve uses his telekinetic powers to stop her. Oh and on top of Tyler having lightning powers, he has the ability to summon hail too. So, he has weather powers a la Storm from the X-men, I’m assuming. He distracts Reeve with the hail, allowing Iris to break free from Reeve’s grip. 

18. She then confronts Adam and wants to fight him but Adam, with his chivalry, doesn’t believe in hitting girls. Well, Adam is gonna have to face the consequences because she grows into a giant and picks Adam up and she snatches the skull key from him. He really should’ve left that thing in his pocket. We see that this opposing team has stolen a gun-like weapon from Jules’s chateau and thinks that the key will activate the weapon. But Iris is shrinking and they decide to make their escape instead. 

19. Okay, so it seems to me that Vanessa had something to do with the game restarting and all of them being back in ‘The Hollow’ once again. With tears filling her eyes, she tries to tell them but the rest of the group were too busy focusing on getting to the club. Ughh, I want to know what she did! Maybe her eventual revelation will explain the glitch she had in her eye at the end of Season 1 after the game was over. And no wonder she acted weirdly when Reeve mentions about the glitch to her earlier in this episode. So, is Vanessa a glitch herself? Hmm....

20.  ‘Death’ is back! And he’s working as a bartender/mixologist behind the counter lol. However, Death doesn’t recognize them, just like how Akuma didn’t seem to remember them in episode 4 either . I guess resetting the game had something to do with it. They ask him about Weirdy and he tells them that Weirdy is going to be performing later tonight.

21. Benjamini, the short-stature bodybuilder-like Italian man from the carnival last season is also working at the club. The five of them sit around a table, waiting for the show to start and Vanessa tries to confess to them something about the weapon the other team has but she gets interrupted again! It would be best if these people actually listen to her! So, is her secret about the weapon and not about the glitch? Or is it both? I’m confused. After interrupting her, the others talk about the other team they just fought and what would happen to them if they were to win the game. 

22. Anyways, the show starts and Plague (from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) is on stage and he introduces Weirdy to everyone. Our heroes try to go over to him but they are blocked by Benjamin, Benjamini’s partner/brother?, also from season 1. Weirdy proceeds to play the piano and he starts to sing the song, ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. How appropriate, given his name. I’m actually digging this cover. It starts out similar to the actual song and then it turns a corner and we get a Jazz rendition of it. It’s pretty cool!

23. They do their best to capture Weirdy’s attention but the Benjamins are making sure his act doesn’t get interrupted. Reeve uses his powers to disable them and they manage to get to the front. Weirdy is really into his own performance but eventually, he notices the group and is really surprised to see them. He actually flat out tells them they don’t belong here and he thinks that they’re coding errors, despite telling their truth to him. He ends his song with a snap of his fingers, which opens a portal under them and they fall into it. 

24. They all teleport to the tip of a mountain, where the only thing supporting them is a weird looking platform. What’s with ‘The Hollow’ and it’s love of high altitudes? LOL. Anyways, they are all balancing the platform at different points and if anybody were to make even just a slight step, it would cause the entire platform to tip over. Why can’t Reeve use his powers to levitate everyone? Adam reminds everyone not to move, which is sound advice but guess who doesn’t like being told what to do? F*ckin’ Reeve. LIKE WILL HE EVER SHUT UP?!

25. For the 4th or 5th time this episode, these two argue on the platform. Kai calls out for Mira to stop them. And ironically, she’s in the centre of all of this...lol. I feel for Mira in the picture above; She’s either going to yell at them again or break down crying from all of the stress of them two arguing. And the episode stops here. Well, this was certainly an episode filled with argument after argument, wasn’t it? It annoyed me to no end. Check back with me tomorrow for when I upload my review of episode 7. Till then, have a great day everyone! Bye!

[capitainecorbeau]

K you know what I tried to write a steam review but it turned out way too long so here you go ! (the random italics/bold are here for readability, it’s LONG and I know wall of texts can be hard to digest)

I want to like this game, I really do. There was obviously a lot of love poured into it, and there ARE some stuff in it that are pretty cool and made me happy... but overall it just... not very good.

Buckle in, it's gonna be a long one. Also light spoiler warnings, I'll try to stay vague, but I am going to discuss some plot points. Also tw for mentions of mental illness and harmful tropes relating to it.

GAMEPLAY : this is, IMO, the worst part of the game. They tried to spruce up the ol' jRPG/tactical RPG formula, but the result dosn't work.

Reason 1 : The combat is extremly unsatisfying. Like, in every single rpg I've played, even the more lackluster ones, there was always a couple a ways to deal significantly more damage to the enemy. It could be a weakness/resistance system, critical hits, buffs, a gauge that when filled lets you unleash more powerful attacks, grouped attack, etc etc. Inkenfell doesn't really has that.

Ok so, when you time your attacks, there are three results : oops, when you mess up, nice and great. Except that great, the best you can get, feels like what bog-standard attacks do in other rpgs. There is no significant difference between nice and great. I ended up very quickly setting the timing on auto (every signle attack is "great") because it felt like they just added an extra tedious step to the usual menu-based combat. Also despite that, and skipping all fights save for the bosses, it STILL felt long and grueling.

There are attempts at more powerful damage but they all fall flat. Most buffs are single target, which I don't bother with because I could spend that turn attacking rather than applying a buff that most often a)makes little difference or b)wears off too quickly.

There are a couple attacks that deal effective damage against certain enemies but a)the difference is negligible b)one of those is against a type of enemies you barely ever fight against. There's also a "powerful" attack you can only do when your hp is below half ! It's less powerful than the single target spell you get at the very beginning of the game. All in all, it makes every thing long, grindy, and not very exciting.

Reason 2 : The utter lack of variety. Almost every single boss fight is exactly the same. Couple of phases, the boss attacks you and summons minions. SOMETIMES they also have status effects/debuffs. And that's it.The first couple bosses have this trick where their minions explose on death and deal bigger damage. But that quickly disappears. I can't really speak for the other battles because I skipped them but for what little I played it also felt very same-y. As for your characters, you have characters focusing on raw damage and other focusing on utility (healing, buffs, etc).

I basically benched every utility character because the general damage output is already low enough and the utility isn't really useful. Healing is fine, buffs would be fine if it didn't buff enemies caught in the range as well (I usually use them once at the start of the battle and then stop bothering). You can set traps if you want, and then tear your hair out as you watch the enemy repeatedly side-step them (though there are two character who can set traps, maybe you couyld make a strategy out of that). Most likely the trap will expire or you will kill the enemy before they step on it. You can steal items, but you find so many everywhere in game that if you don't use those skills you won't miss them. You can poison your enemies, for an amazing ONE DAMAGE A TURN. Or delay their turn, if you feel like eating two attacks in a row later. Nothing really feels worth it you know ?

It results in this long, drawn-out same-y battles where you just use the same couple of spells against the enemy, over and over until they die. Which, in terms of bosses, can take a very long time. My reaction to new phases was generally "are you kidding meeee ANOTHER one ?" which is not a good sign.

Reason 3 : The lack of juiciness and quality of life. Example : you can freely see enemy hp ! if you specifically go to the menu and hover over the enemy. Otherwise, it's hidden. Why ? Either make their hp easily and quickly visible, or keep it hidden ! When you factor in the fact that every attack has its own, sometimes awkward range, that you cannot walk on occupied tiles (apparently your allies will not deign step aside to let you through), the short walking range of the characters, AND the facts that many enemies love to pepper the battlefield with traps (high damage+lost turn), actually getting in a good position to hit the enemies can be rather tedious. Hitting the enemies doesn't feel satisfying. There aren't little things like shaking their sprites, shaking the screen, cool fx, satisfying sound effects, etc. Just the damage and a little "oops/nice/great". It's a little things, but it makes battles feel even more flat.

TL;DR : the fights are repetitive and unsatisfying, and none of the alternatives to "deal damage to enemy" feel interesting enough to explore.

STORY :  The story is... eh ? Well let's just say there are good things, bad things, and utterly confusing things.

Good : The characters are pretty endearing, for the most part. I'm not gonna be thinking about them for long after finishing the game, but they're nice, there were lots of funny quips and cute moments. That's mostly what kept me around despite the bad gameplay (and other issues I'll get to), I wanted to know what would happen to these people ! Also I loved that there are so many nonbinary characters !! With different presentations and pronouns !! AND who are all humans :D That made me really happy.

Bad : The pacing is bad. My god it's bad. Most of the first half of the game boils down to : we have to do x, but for that we have to go to y, but we can't so we have to ask w in z, and just when you think you can, finally, do x, another obstacle pops up and you have to go on the other side of the map to do something else. It really feels like you're making little to no progress, and it ended up being quite frustrating at times. The second half of the game is better, but sometimes, after an emotiolly intense moment, you would snap right back to "oh we have to go to q but there's a giant rock in the way !". Jarring. Also some scenes left me asking "wait that's it ? You're not gonna discuss things further ?" or "Why aren't the characters reacting to this ?". The story in itself was ok, but the pacing... yikes.

Also, this is more a personal gripe that anything, but... (spoilers warning) I really didn't like how the game handled trauma and ptsd. It fell into the ol' trope of "ptsd/delusions makes people dangerous and violent", and that's not really something I expected from a game that tries to be progressive about this stuff (The inclusion of content warnings is a very good thing !! more games should do that). And I'm not talking like "lashing out at people", no, we're talking kidnapping, assault, murder, potentially triggering the apocalypse. And like, the game deliberately puts these characters through some of the worst things that could happen to them, which made them very violent and dangerous as a result... I don't know, it feels pretty thoughtless and cruel. Not to mention that they then go down the "oh but it's not your fault it's the traumaaaaaa" which, ew, no. No, mental illness, ptsd, trauma etc don't make people inherently violent and dangerous. But when you harm people, it's serious, and you should make amends, regardless of what mental ilness(es) you may or may not have. I dunno, maybe it's just me but that whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.

Confusing  : There's a character who is handled very weirdly ??? Like, at the beginning of the game they're pretty present, they get an arc, join you and then... barely do anything ???? They almost never interact with the others, or react to what's going on ? There are scene where they went to the trouble to show their sprite (characters who don't contribute to the conversations usually don't appear), but they don't say or do anything ??? At most they make a quip about fighting and stuff but that's it ??? There was a scene when the group argues and a few characters go off on their own, and other follow them and comfort them. I thought, well, since they have a huge crush on the protagonist, they're gonna go and talk to her, right ? They're the only one who hasn't left yet. But nope ! They don't even react ! And yet they're one of the few characters who gets a song ???? I feels like they were added as an afterthought what It's a shame, they're pretty fun.

TL;DR The characters are endearing but one is handled weirdly, the pacing is bad and some plot points felt unsavory.

And finally, some random stuff. In general, the world feel very bare and empty. I'm not just talking about the very low number of npc, there's a plot reason for that, but there is almost no flavor text ?? At first I tried to check out everything, to learn more about this setting and the people in it, but the only things you can interact with are plot important. Makes the whole world rather flat, and that's a shame ! I would've liked to learn more !

One good thing though, is the inclusion of accessibility features like different options for the timing gameplay, displaying content warnings and stuff (though I've seen someone say the game wasn't friendly to photosensitive people , there is an option to reduce flashing lights but I dunno how good it is). That's very nice, and I hope more games will include those features !

So here's my giant wall of text on Ikenfell. I'm sad I didn't end up liking it more, but the game has quite a few issues (ESPECIALLy gameplay-wise). I hope the developers will take that as an opportunity to leanr, because I'm sure they can make good games ! There's some good stuff in there, some good ideas that would've just needed to be imlplemented better !

[hollywayblog]

How “The Umbrella Academy” Surprised Me

In many ways, good and bad.

This is a spoiler-free review of season one of The Umbrella Academy

I remember when The Umbrella Academy comics came out. It was 2007 and I was a broke thirteen-year-old living in suburban Australia (a cultural wasteland!) so I never actually read them, but as a rabidly obsessed My Chemical Romance/Gerard Way fan, I managed to fold The Umbrella Academy into my identity anyway. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but hey. Adolescents are powerful creatures.

As a distinguished almost-twenty-five-year-old (I’d like to acknowledge that I took a small break here to have an existential crisis) my walls are free of band posters and my eyes are no longer encircled with that thick black eyeliner that always managed to look three days old and slept in, but I still got kind of a thrill when I learned that The Umbrella Academy was being adapted into a Netflix show. It was something I had always assumed I would end up reading, back in the depths of my emo phase (which is probably more accurately defined as a My Chemical Romance phase) but then just kind of forgot about. So, great, I’m simultaneously being reminded that this thing exists, and freed of the nostalgic obligation to go seek out the comic and read it. As much as I love reading, comics have just never been my thing.

Then the trailer came out. Honestly, it kind of killed my enthusiasm. It just looked kind of generic. Apocalypse. Superpowers. Bold characters. Lots of action. My takeaway was a big ol’ “Meh.” Frankly, without my pre-existing attachment to Gerard Way and the very idea of The Umbrella Academy, I highly doubt I would have given it a chance - not because it looked inherently bad, but just because I’m a hard sell on the kind of show it appeared to be.

But it’s Gerard Way, man. I had to watch at least one episode.

The Umbrella Academy centres around the famous-yet-mysterious Hargreeves family. The seven children - six of whom have special powers - were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves, a cold and severe patriarch who didn’t even deign to name them. He made them into “The Umbrella Adademy,” a crime-fighting squad of tiny children who would later dissolve after a tragic incident. Now they’re grown up, and Dad’s dead. His spare and tense memorial is what brings the adult Umbrella Academy back together, and this is where the show kicks off.

We’re treated to a rather clumsy beginning; a gripping opening scene followed by an unimaginative montage. We get a glimpse of each of the Hargreeves’ regular lives, leading up to and including them learning of their father’s death. It’s a heavy-handed introductory roll-call, complete with on-screen name cards. It’s a baffling waste of time, considering we don’t learn anything in this montage that isn’t later reiterated through dialogue or behaviour. We don’t need to see Klaus leaving rehab to know he’s an addict. We don’t need to see Allison on the red carpet to know she’s a movie star. It dragged, even on a first watch not knowing that the whole thing would be ultimately pointless, and I’m surprised no one thought to cut it and let us go in cold with everyone arriving at the mansion for the memorial - an opening that would have both set the tone and let us get to know the characters much more naturally. Maybe it feels like I’m focusing too much on this, and that’s only because it gave me a bad first impression - and I want anyone who reacts the same way I did to stick with it. It really does get better.

The further we got from the montage the less gimmicky it felt, and I started to sense some sort of something that I liked about this show. Stylistically it was interesting, and there seemed to be an underlying depth; room for these characters to be more than brooding ex-vigilantes with daddy issues. I was intrigued enough by the end of episode one to keep watching, and was gratified as the series went on and truly delved into those depths. There was a memorable turning point for me around episode five, where Klaus (the wonderful Robert Sheehan) was given space in the runtime to visibly, viscerally feel the effects of something he had just been through. It sounds so obvious, and so simple, but it’s something that is frustratingly glossed over so often in fiction. You know. Fallout. Feelings.

It wasn’t just that moment, though. Prior episodes laid the groundwork, developing not just Klaus but all the Hargreeves. Each character feels real and grounded, each of them uniquely good, uniquely bad, uniquely damaged by their upbringing. It’s this last point I particularly appreciate, this subtle realism in the show’s execution of abused characters. We see how siblings growing up with the same parents does not necessarily mean they got the same childhood, endured the same abuse, or that their trauma will manifest in the same ways. And certainly, it’s important to see the different coping mechanisms each of them have developed. Furthermore, there is a lot more to each of these characters than just their trauma. There are seven distinct personalities going on, and I have to applaud the writers for this commitment to character. It was largely this that kept me hooked (I’m such a sucker for good characters), and to my own surprise very invested in the way things unfolded.

I love the tone, which found a cool rhythm after the pilot. The pacing was decent and the character development balanced well against the plot. I like the little quirks that remind you of the show’s comic book roots, like Pogo, the talking ape and Five, the grouchy old man in a teenager’s body.

Weirdly, I like the apocalypse stuff, which they managed to put their own spin on despite it being such a played-out trope at this point. I like that the show found small ways to go in unexpected directions, even if the overarching plot and big twists weren’t all that surprising. And most of all I love that in a world saturated with forgettable media, I woke up today still thinking about this show.

Even if not all of my thoughts were so generous.

See, for everything I love about this show, there are also quite a few things that rubbed me up the wrong way. I can’t list them all without going into spoilers, but I think it needs to be said that there are like, a fair few problematic elements in this show. I couldn’t help but notice that while women and people of colour are the minority in this cast, they also seem to cop the worst abuse. Only two of the Hargreeves siblings are female. One of them has no powers and the other’s power is influence (a non-physical power). Their “Mom” is literally a robot created for the sole purpose of caregiving; she dresses and acts like the epitome of a submissive 50s housewife. The Hargreeves sisters are also the ones most likely to be left out or ignored when it comes to making decisions, with one of them even literally losing her voice at one point (yikes!). Beyond that we have some truly disturbing imagery of violence being inflicted on women of colour almost exclusively by white men, and the fact that the only asian character is um… well, he’s literally dead. Before the show even starts.

Overall the problem is not just insufficient diversity, with white men taking up most of the screen time, dialogue and leadership actions, but the way that the few female and non-white characters are depicted.

These are all depictions that, in a vacuum, would be innocuous. I mean, just looking at the root of many of the show’s problems exemplifies that - the root being that all of these characters were white in the source material (uh, a problem in itself, obviously). It wasn’t a problem, for example, when Dead Ben was not the only Asian character but just another white Hargreeves sibling. And wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where you could race or gender-swap any character and have everything mean - or not mean - the same thing. But life is more complicated than that. Art is more complicated than that.

Honestly, I’m not sure if we should give props to the developers of The Umbrella Academy for diversifying their cast when the fact is they did so - and I say this gently - ignorantly and lazily. Race-swapping willy-nilly and leaving it at that ignores a lot of complex issues surrounding the nuances of portraying minorities in fiction, and leaves room for these kinds of harmful and hurtful tropes to carelessly manifest. So many storytellers don’t want to hear it, but let me tell you writer to writer that it does matter if the person being choked is white or black, male or female, trans or cis. It does matter who’s doing the choking. Camera angles matter. Dialogue matters. It’s all a language that conveys a message - about power and dominance and vulnerability in the real world. Because art doesn’t exist inside a vacuum, as inconvenient as that might be. Having the empathy to recognise that will actually make us better storytellers.

In shedding light on these issues, I am not dragging this show. I am not condemning it. And although it is problematic in itself, I’m not even saying it’s problematic to enjoy it. I’m pulling apart the lasagne, looking at the layers, poking and prodding at the individual ingredients and saying, “Hey, the chef probably should have known better than to put pineapple in here. Maybe let’s not do that next time.” I’m also saying, “When I get a mouthful with pineapple in it, I don’t enjoy that. It’s jarring and unpleasant. But it doesn’t ruin the whole meal for me.”

I’m getting better at allowing myself to dislike something on the basis of its shitty themes. To not have to justify myself when something is problematic in a way that just makes it too uncomfortable for me to watch. That wasn’t the case here. I won’t lie; the bad stuff was no afterthought for me. That kind of thing really gets to me. It does ruin a lot for me. But in this case, the show redeemed itself in other ways; mostly by just being a compelling story with characters I liked. I’m trying not to justify that too hard either.

So I liked The Umbrella Academy, and I hope it gets a second season. I also hope that the creators will listen to people like me who want to be able to enjoy their show even more and create more consciously in the future.

And please let Vanya be a lesbian.

The Umbrella Academy is out now on Netflix

Watch this show if you like: witty characters, iconic characters, complex characters, mysteries,  dark themes, superpowers, vigilantes, comics, dark humour, epic stories, shows about families, stylistic TV shows, ensemble casts, character dynamics, dramedies

Possible triggers (don’t read if you care about spoilers): suicide, child abuse, claustrophobia, addiction, violence, violence against women, violence against women of colour, death, torture, incest, self-harm, pregnancy/childbirth, kidnapping/abduction, blood, mental illness, medication/themes of medication necessity, blood, manipulation/gaslighting, homicide, forced captivity, guns, hospitalisation, medical procedures, needles, PTSD, prison rape reference (1).

Please feel free to message me if I failed to include a relevant trigger warning and I’ll include it.

[grigori77]

2018 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10.  BLACK PANTHER – remember back in 1998, when Marvel had their first real cinematic success with Blade?  It was a big deal on two fronts, not just because they’d finally made a (sort of) superhero movie to be proud of, but also because it was, technically, the first ever truly successful superhero movie starring a black protagonist (the less said about the atrocious Steel movie the better, I say).  I find it telling that it took them almost twenty years to repeat the exercise – there have been plenty of great black superheroes on-screen since Wesley Snipes rocked the fangs and black leather, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but they’ve always been in supporting roles to the main (so far universally WHITE) stars (the now-cancelled Luke Cage was a notable exception, but that’s on-demand TV on Netflix). All of this makes the latest feature to glide smoothly out of the MCU mould so significant – the standalone star vehicle for Civil War’s OTHER major new success story (after 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming), Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) of Wakanda, finally redresses the balance … and then some. Picking up pretty much RIGHT where the third Captain America film left off, we see T’Challa return to the secretive, highly-advanced African kingdom of Wakanda to officially take up his new role as king and fully accept the mantle of protector of his people that his role as the Black Panther entails. Needless to say, just as he’s finally brought peace and unity to his homeland, an old threat reappears in the form of thuggish arms dealer and fugitive-from-Wakandan-justice Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, gleefully returning to his blissful scenery-chewing Avengers: Age of Ultron role), leading T’Challa to travel to Busan, South Korea to bring him back for judgement, but this is merely a precursor to the arrival of the TRUE threat, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a mysterious former Special Forces assassin with a deeply personal agenda that threatens Wakanda’s future.  This marks the first major blockbuster feature for writer/director Ryan Coogler (co-penning the script with The People V. O.J. Simpson writer Joe Robert Cole), who won massive acclaim for his feature debut Fruitvale Station, but also has good form after sneaky little sleeper hit Rocky-saga spinoff Creed, so this progression ultimately just proves to be another one of those characteristic smart moves Marvel keeps making these days. Coogler’s command of the big budget, heavy-expectation material is certainly impressive, displaying impressive talent for spectacular action sequences (the Busan car chase is MAGNIFICENT, while the punishing fight sequences are as impressively staged and executed as anything we saw in the Captain America movies), wrangling the demanding visual effects work and getting the very best out of a top-notch ensemble cast of some of the finest black acting talent around.  Boseman brings more of that peerless class and charisma he showed in Civil War, but adds a humanising dose of self-doubt and vulnerability to the mix, making it even easier for us to invest in him, while Coogler’s regular collaborator, Jordan, is absolutely spell-binding, his ferociously focused, far-beyond-driven Killmonger proving to be one of the MCU’s most impressive villains to date, as well as its most sympathetic; Oscar darling Lupita Nyong’o is far more than a simple love interest as tough and resourceful Wakandan intelligence agent Nakia, The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira is a veritable force of nature as Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s elite all-female Special Forces, Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya muddies the waters as T’Challa’s straight-talking best friend W’Kabi, and powerhouse veteran actors Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and John Kani provide integrity and gravitas as, respectively, T’Challa’s mother Ramonda, Wakandan religious leader Zuri and T’Challa’s late father T’Chaka.  Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis have joked that they’re essentially the “Tolkien white guys” of the cast, but their presence is far from cosmetic – Freeman’s return as Civil War’s bureaucratic CIA agent Everett Ross is integral to the plot and also helps provide the audience with an accessible outsider’s POV into the unique and stunning land of Wakanda, while Serkis is clearly having the time of his life … and then there are the film’s TRUE scene-stealers – Letitia Wright is a brilliant bright ray of sunlight as T’Challa’s little sister Shuri, the curator of Wakanda’s massively advanced technology and OFFICIALLY the most intelligent person in the MCU, whose towering intellect is tempered by her cheeky sense of humour and sheer adorability, while Winston Duke is a towering presence throughout the film as M’Baku, the mighty chief of the reclusive Jabari mountain tribe, despite his relatively brief screen time, his larger-than-life performance making every appearance a joy.  This has been lauded as a true landmark film for its positive depiction of African culture and presentation of a whole raft of strong black role models, and it certainly feels like a major step forward both culturally and creatively – it’s so rewarding to see a positively-charged black intellectual property enjoying the almost ridiculous amount of success this film has so far enjoyed, both critically and financially, and it’s something I hope we see far more of in the future.  Like its predecessors, this is a fantastic superhero movie, but under the surface there are some very serious, challenging questions being asked and inherently powerful themes being addressed, making for a deeper, more intellectual film than we usually receive even from a big studio that’s grown so sophisticated as Marvel. That said, this IS another major hit for the MCU, and a further example of how consistently reliable they’ve become at delivering great cinema.  Very nearly the best of the Phase 3 standalone films (that honour still belongs to Captain America: Civil War), and it was certainly a spectacular kickoff for the year’s blockbusters.

9.  BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY – I’ve been waiting for this movie for YEARS.  Even before I knew this was actually going to happen I’d been hoping it would someday – Queen were my introduction to rock music, way back when I was wee, so they’ve been one of my very favourite bands FOREVER, and Freddie Mercury is one of my idols, the definition of sheer awesomeness and pure talent in music and an inspiration in life.  Needless to say I was RIDICULOUSLY excited once this finally lurched into view, and I’m so unbelievably happy it turned out to be a proper corker of a film, I could even tentatively consider it to be my new favourite musical biopic. Sure, it plays fast-and-loose with the historical facts, but remains true to the SPIRIT of the story, and you know what they say about biographical movies and their ilk: “if it’s a choice between the truth and the legend, print the legend.”  That’s a pretty good word to describe the man at the centre of this story – Queen frontman Freddie Mercury truly was a legend in his own lifetime, and watching the tale of his rise to fame alongside fellow musical geniuses Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon is a fascinating, intoxicating and deeply affecting experience, truthful or not, making the film an emotional rollercoaster from the humble beginnings with the formation of the band, through the trials and tribulations of life on the road and in the studio, the controversies of Mercury’s personal life and the volatile personal dynamics between the group themselves, to the astonishing, show-stopping climax of their near-mythic twenty-minute performance slot at 1985’s Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium.  Needless to say it takes a truly astounding performance to capture the man that I consider to be the greatest singer, showman and stage-performer of all time, but Mr Robot­ star Rami Malek was equal to the task, not so much embodying the role as genuinely channelling Mercury’s spirit, perfectly recreating his every movement, quirk and mannerism to perfection, right down to his famously precise, deliberate diction, and he even LOOKS a hell of a lot like Mercury.  Sure, he’s come under fire for merely lip-syncing when it comes to the music, but seriously, there’s no other way he could have done it – Freddie had the greatest singing voice of all time, there’s NO WAY anyone could possibly recreate it, so better he didn’t even try.  (Honestly, if he doesn’t get an Oscar for this there’s no justice in the world.)  Malek’s not the only master-mimic in the cast, either – the rest of the band are perfectly portrayed, too, by Gwilym Lee as May, X-Men: Apocalypse’s Ben Hardy as Taylor and Joe Mazzello (yup, that kid from Jurassic Park, now all grown up) as Deacon, while there are equally strong supporting turns from Sing Street’s Lucy Boynton as Mercury’s lover and lifelong friend Mary Austin, Aiden Gillen as the band’s first manager John Reid, Tom Hollander as their lawyer and eventual manager Jim “Miami” Beach, Allen Leech as the Freddie’s scheming, toxic personal manager Paul Prenter, and New Street Law star Ace Bhatti as his stoic but proud father, Bomi Bulsara.  This is an enthralling film from start to finish, and while those new to Queen will find plenty fo enjoy and entertain, this is an absolute JOY for fans and geeks who actually know their stuff, factual niggles notwithstanding; it’s also frequently laugh-out-loud HILARIOUS, the sparky, quick-fire script from The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour writer Anthony McCarten brimming with slick one-liners, splendid put-downs and precision-crafted character observation which perfectly captures the real life banter the band were famous for.  The film had a troubled production (original director Bryan Singer was replaced late in the shoot by Dexter Fletcher after clashes of personality and other difficulties) and has come in for plenty of stick, receiving mixed reviews from some quarters, but for me this is pretty close to a perfect film, chock-full of heart, emotional heft, laughter, fun and what was, for me, the best soundtrack of 2018, positively overflowing with some of the band’s very best material, making this one of the very best times I had at the cinema all year.  They were, indeed, the champions …

8.  MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT – while Bond may remain king of the spy movie, and Jason Bourne still casts a long shadow from the darker post 9-11 age of harder, grittier espionage shenanigans, I’ve always been a BIG fan of the Mission: Impossible movies.  This love became strong indeed when JJ Abrams established a kind of unifying blueprint with the third film, and the series has gone from strength to strength since, reaching new, thrilling heights when Jack Reacher writer-director Christopher McQuarrie crafted the pretty much PERFECT Rogue Nation.  He’s the first filmmaker to return for a second gig in the big chair, but he’s a good fit – he and star Tom Cruise have already proven they work EXTREMELY well together, and McQuarrie really is one of the very best screenwriters working in Hollywood today (well respected across the board since his early days co-writing The Usual Suspects), an undeniable MASTER at both crafting consistently surprising, thoroughly involving and razor-sharp thriller plots and engineering truly JAW-DROPPING action sequences (adrenaline-fuelled chases, bruising fight scenes, intense shootouts and a breathless dash across the rooftops of London all culminate in this film’s standout sequence, a death-defying helicopter dogfight that took the prize as the year’s BEST action beat), as well as penning some wonderful, wry dialogue.  Anything beyond the very simplest synopsis would drop some criminal spoilers – I’ll simply say that Ethan Hunt is faced with his deadliest mission to date after a botched op leaves three plutonium cores in the hands of some very bad people, leading CIA honcho Erica Sloane (a typically sophisticated turn from Angela Bassett) to attach her pet assassin, August Walker (current big-screen Superman Henry Cavill), to the team to make sure it all runs smoothly – a prospect made trickier by the resurfacing of Rogue Nation’s cracking villain Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).  Tom Cruise is, of course an old hand at this sort of thing by now, but even so I don’t think he’s EVER been more impressive at the physical stuff, and he delivers equally well in the more dramatic moments, taking superspy Ethan Hunt to darker, more desperate extremes than ever before.  Cavill similarly impresses in what’s easily his meatiest role to date, initially coming across as a rough, brutal thug but revealing deeper layers of complexity and sophistication as the film progresses, while Rebecca Ferguson makes a welcome return from RN as slippery, sexy and very complex former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, and it’s great to see Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg back as series keystones Luther Stickell and Benji Dunn, who both get stuck into the action far more than in previous outings (Benji FINALLY gets to wear a mask!); Jeremy Renner’s absence this time could disappoint, but the balance is maintained because the effortlessly suave Alec Baldwin’s new IMF Secretary Alan Hunley gets a far more substantial role this time round, while Sean Harris tears things up with brutal relish as he expands on one of the series’ strongest villains – Lane is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a monstrous zealot with a deeply twisted but strangely relatable agenda, and method man Harris mesmerises in every scene.  McQuarrie has cut another gem here, definitely his best film to date and likewise the best in the franchise so far, and strong arguments could be made for him staying on for a third stint – this is the best shape Mission: Impossible has been in for some time, an essentially PERFECT textbook example of an action-packed spy thriller that constantly surprises and never disappoints, from the atmospheric opening to the unbearably tense climax, and if ever there was a film to threaten the supremacy of Bond, it’s this one.

7.  THE SHAPE OF WATER – one of the most important things you have to remember about my own personal mythology (by which I mean the mishmash of 40 years of influences, genre-love and pure and simple COOL SHIT that’s informed and moulded the geek I am today) is that when it comes to my fictional heroes, I have a tendency to fall in love with the monsters.  It’s a philosophy shared by one of my very favourite directors, Guillermo Del Toro, whose own love affair with the weird, the freakish and the outcast has informed so much of his spectacular work, particularly the Hellboy movies – the monster as a tragic hero, and also the women who love them despite their appearance or origins.  Del Toro’s latest feature returns to this fascinating and compelling trope in magnificent style, and the end result is his best work since what remains his VERY BEST film, 2007’s exquisite grown-up fairytale Pan’s Labyrinth.  Comparisons with that masterpiece are not only welcome but also fitting – TSOW is definitely cut from the same cloth, a frequently dream-like cinematic allegory that takes place in something resembling the real world, but is never quite part of it.  It’s a beautiful, lyrical, sensual and deeply seductive film, but there’s brooding darkness and bitter tragedy that counters the sweet, Del Toro’s rich and exotic script – co-authored with Hope Springs writer Vanessa Taylor – mining precious ore from the fairytale ideas but also deeply invested with his own overwhelming love for the Golden Age of cinema itself.  This makes for what must be his most deeply personal film to date, so it’s fitting that it finally won him his first, LONG OVERDUE Best Director Oscar. Happy Go-Lucky’s Sally Hawkins thoroughly deserves her Oscar nomination for her turn as Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning woman working in a top secret aerospace laboratory in Baltimore at the height of the Cold War, a sweet-natured dreamer who likes movies, music and her closeted artist neighbour Giles (the incomparable Richard Jenkins, delivering a performance of real sweetness and integrity). One night she discovers a new project in the facility, a strange, almost mythic amphibious humanoid (Del Toro regular Doug Jones) who has been captured for study and eventual vivisection to help create a means for men to survive in space.  In spite of his monstrous appearance and seemingly feral nature, Elisa feels a kinship to the creature, and as she begins to earn his trust she develops stronger feeling for him – feelings which are reciprocated.  So she hatches a plan to break him out and return him to the sea, enlisting the help of Giles, her only other real friend, fellow cleaner Zelda (The Help and Hidden Figures’ Octavia Spencer, as lovably prickly and sassy as ever), and sympathetic scientist (and secret Soviet agent) Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (a typically excellent and deeply complex performance from Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Stuhlbarg) to effect a desperate escape.  The biggest obstacle in their path, however, is Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), the man in charge of security on the project – the rest of the cast are uniformly excellent, but the true, unstoppable scene-stealer here is Shannon, giving us 2018’s BEST screen villain in a man so amorally repellent, brutally focused and downright TERRIFYING it’s absolutely impossible to take your eyes off him – who has a personal hatred for the creature and would love nothing more than to kill it himself. He’s the TRUE monster of the film, Jones’ creature proving to be a noble being who, despite his (admittedly rather bloody) animal instincts, has a kind and gentle soul that mirrors Elisa’s own, which makes the seemingly bizarre love story that unfolds so easy to accept and fulfilling to witness.  This is a film of aching beauty and immense emotional power, the bittersweet and ultimately tragic romance sweeping you up in its warm embrace, resulting in the year’s most powerful and compelling fantasy, very nearly the finest work of a writer/director at the height of his considerable powers, and EASILY justifying its much-deserved Best Picture Oscar.  Love the monster? Yes indeed …

6.  DEADPOOL 2 – just as his first standalone finally banished the memory of his shameful treatment in the first X-Men Origins film, Marvel’s Merc With a Mouth had a new frustration to contend with – Wolverine riding his coattails into the R-rated superhero scene and outdoing his newfound success with the critically acclaimed and, frankly, f£$%ing AWESOME Logan.  It’s a fresh balance for him to redress, and bless him, he’s done it within the first five minutes of his own very first sequel … then again, Deadpool’s always at his best when dealing with adversity.  There’s plenty of that here – 2016’s original was a spectacular film, a true game-changer for both Marvel and the genre itself, unleashing a genuinely bankable non-PC superhero on the unsuspecting masses (and, of course, all us proper loyal fans) and earning one of their biggest hits in the process.  A sequel was inevitable, but the first film was a VERY tough act to follow – thankfully everyone involved proved equal to the task, not least the star, Ryan Reynolds, who was BORN to play former special forces operative-turned invulnerable but hideously scarred mutant antihero Wade Wilson, returning with even greater enthusiasm for the material and sheer determination to do things JUST RIGHT.  Working with returning co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, he’s suitably upped the ante while staying true to the source and doing right by the fans – the script’s another blinder, a side-splitting rib-tickler liberally peppered with copious swearing, rampant sexual and toilet humour, genuinely inspired bizarreness (a grown man with baby balls!) and an unapologetically irreverent tone nonetheless complimented by a f£$%load of heart. Original director Tim Miller jumped ship early in development, but the perfect replacement was found in the form of David Leitch, co-director of the first John Wick movie, who preceded this with a truly magnificent solo debut on summer 2017’s standout actioner Atomic Blonde.  Leitch is a perfect fit, a former stuntman with innate flair for top-notch action who also has plenty of stylistic flair and strong talents for engaging storytelling and handling a cast of strong personalities.  Reynolds is certainly one of those, again letting rip with gleeful comic abandon as Deadpool fights to overcome personal tragedy by trying to become a bona fide X-Man, at which he of course fails SPECTACULARLY, winding up in a special prison for super-powered individuals and becoming the unlikely and definitely unwilling protector of teenage mutant Russell Collins, aka Firefist (Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s Julian Dennison), who’s been targeted for assassination by time-travelling future warrior Cable (Josh Brolin) because he’s destined to become a monstrous supervillain when he grows up.  Deciding to listen to his “better” angel, Wade puts together his own superhero team in order to defeat Cable and start his own future franchise … yup, this is as much a platform to set up X-Force, the Marvel X-Verse’s next big money-maker, as it is a Deadpool sequel, but the film plays along to full comic effect, and the results are funny, explosive, blood-soaked and a magnificently anarchic joy.  Brolin is every inch the Cable we deserve, a world-weary, battered and utterly single-minded force of nature, entirely lacking a sense of humour but still managing to drive some of the film’s most side-splitting moments, while Atlanta star Zazie Beets, originally something of an outsider choice, proves similarly perfect for the role of fan favourite Domino, a wise-cracking mutant arse-kicker whose ability to manipulate luck in order to get the better of any situation makes her a kind of super-ninja; Dennison, meanwhile, is just as impressive as he was in HFTWP, turning in a performance of such irreverent charm he frequently steals the film, and the return of Stefan Kapicic and Briana Hildebrand as stoic metal-man Colossus and the world’s moodiest teen superhero, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, mean that the original X-Men get another loving (if also slightly middle-fingery) nod too.  But once again, this really is Reynolds’ movie, and he’s clearly having just as much fun as before, helping to make this the same kind of gut-busting riot the first was with his trademark twinkle, self-deprecating charm and shit-eating grin.  He’s the heart and soul of another great big fist up the backside of superhero cinema, blasting tropes with scattergun abandon but hitting every target lined up against him, and like everything else he helps make this some of the most fun I had at the pictures all year.  I honestly couldn’t think of ANYTHING that could make me piss myself laughing more than this … the future of the franchise may be up in the air until the first X-Force movie gets its time in the spotlight, but Reynolds, Leitch, Reese and Wernick are all game to return, so there’s plenty of life in the un-killable old lady yet ...

5.  BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE – my Number One thriller of 2018 is a cult classic in the making and the best work yet from Drew Goddard, co-writer/director (with Joss Whedon) of Cabin in the Woods (one of the best horror movies ever made, in my opinion) and screenwriter of Cloverfield and The Martian.  It’s an intoxicating, engrossing and somewhat unsettling experience (but in a very good way indeed), a gripping, slippery and absolutely FIENDISH suspense thriller to rival the heady best of Hitchcock or Kubrick, and, as his first completely original, personal creation, Goddard’s best opportunity to show us JUST what he’s truly capable of.  Wrapped up in multi-layered mystery and deftly paying with timelines and perspective, it artfully unveils the stories of four disparate strangers who book a night’s stay at the El Royale, a “bi-state” hotel (located on the California/Nevada border) that was once grand but, by the film’s setting of 1969, has fallen on hard times.  Each has a secret, some of which are genuinely deadly, and before the night’s through they’ll all come to light as a fateful chain of events brings them all crashing together.  Giving away any more is to invite criminal spoilers – suffice to say that it’s an unforgettable film, fully-laden with ingenious twists and consistently wrong-footing the viewer right up to the stirring, thought-provoking ending.  The small but potent ensemble cast are, to a man, absolutely perfect – Jeff Bridges delivers one of the best performances of his already illustrious career as seemingly harmless Catholic priest Father Daniel Flynn, Widows’ Cynthia Erivo makes a truly stunning impression as down-on-her-luck soul singer Darlene Sweet, John Hamm is garrulously sleazy as shifty travelling salesman Seymour Sullivan, Dakota Johnson is surly but also VERY sexy (certainly MUCH MORE than she EVER was in the 50 Shades movies) as “dirty hippy” Emily, Lewis Pullman (set to explode as the co-star of the incoming Top Gun sequel) is fantastically twitchy as the hotel’s troubled concierge Miles, and Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim: Uprising) delivers a creepy, haunting turn as Emily’s fundamentally broken runaway sister Rose.  The film is thoroughly and entirely stolen, however, by the arrival in the second half of Goddard’s Cabin leading man Chris Hemsworth as earthy, charismatic and darkly, dangerously seductive Charles Manson-esque cult leader Billy Lee, Thor himself thoroughly mesmerising as he swaggers into the heart of the story (particularly in a masterful moment where he cavorts, snake-hipped, to the strains of Deep Purple’s Rush in the lead-up to a brutal execution).  This is thriller-cinema at its most inspired and insidious, a flawless genre gem that’s sure to be held in high regard by connoisseurs for years to come, and an ELECTRIFYING statement of intent by one of the best creative minds working in Hollywood today.  One of 2018’s biggest and best surprises, it’s a bona fide MUST-SEE …

4.  AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR – is it possible there might be TOO MUCH coming out all at once in the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now?  What with THREE movies a year now becoming the norm, not to mention the ongoing saga of Agents of SHIELD and various other affiliated TV shows (it seems that Netflix are culling their Marvel shows but there’s still the likes of Runaways and the incoming Cloak & Dagger on other services, along with fresh, in-development stuff), could we be reaching saturation?  My head says … mmmmm … maybe … but my heart says HELL NO!  Not when those guys at Marvel have gotten so good at this job they could PROBABLY do it with their eyes closed.  That said, there were times in the run-up to this particular release that I couldn’t help wondering if, just maybe, they might have bitten off more than they could chew … thankfully, fraternal directing double act Antony and Joe Russo, putting in their THIRD MCU-helming gig after their enormous success on the second and third Captain America films, have pulled off one hell of a cinematic hat trick, presenting us with a third Avengers film that’s MORE than the equal of Joss Whedon’s offerings.  It’s also a painfully tricky film to properly review – the potential for spoilers is SO heavy I can’t say much of ANYTHING about the plot without giving away some MAJOR twists and turns (even if there’s surely hardly ANYONE who hasn’t already seen the film by now) – but I’ll try my best.  This is the film every die-hard fan has been waiting for, because the MCU’s Biggest Bad EVER, Thanos the Mad Titan (Josh Brolin), has finally come looking for those pesky Infinity Stones so he can Balance The Universe by killing half of its population and enslaving the rest, and the only ones standing in his way are the Avengers (both old and new) and the Guardians of the Galaxy, finally brought together after a decade and 18 movies.  Needless to say this is another precision-engineered product refined to near perfection, delivering on all the expected fronts – breathtaking visuals and environments, thrilling action, the now pre-requisite snarky, sassy sense of humour and TONS OF FEELS – but given the truly galactic scale of the adventure on offer this time the stakes have been raised to truly EPIC heights, so the rewards are as great as the potential pitfalls.  It’s not perfect – given the sheer size of the cast and the fact that there are THREE main storylines going on at once, it was INEVITABLE that some of our favourite characters would be handed frustratingly short shrift (or, in two notable cases, simply written out of the film altogether), while there are times when the mechanics of fate do seem to be getting stretched a little TOO far for credibility – but the niggles are largely overshadowed by the rich rewards of yet another MCU film done very well indeed. The cast (even those who drew the short straw on screen time) are all, as we’ve come to expect, excellent, the veterans – particularly Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Tony Stark), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/the Hulk), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Stephen Strange), Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Bradley Cooper (Rocket Racoon), and, of course, Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) – all falling back into their well-established roles and universally winning our hearts all over again, while two characters in particular, who have always been reduced to supporting duties until now, finally get to REALLY shine – Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, as the Vision and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, finally get to explore that comic-canon romance that was so prevalently teased in Civil War, with events lending their mutual character arcs particularly tragic resonance as the story progresses … and then there’s the new characters, interestingly this time ALL bad guys. The Children of Thanos (Gamora and Nebula’s adopted siblings, basically) are showcased throughout the action, although only two really make an impression here – Tom Vaughan-Lawlor is magnificently creepy as Ebony Maw, while Carrie Coon (and stuntwoman Monique Ganderton) is darkly sensual as Proxima Midnight … but of course the REAL new star here is Brolin, thoroughly inhabiting his motion capture role so Thanos GENUINELY lives up to his title as the greatest villain of the MCU, an unstoppable megalomaniac who’s nonetheless doing these monstrous things for what he perceives to be genuinely right and moral reasons, although he’s not above taking some deeply perverse pleasure from his most despicable actions. Finishing up with a painfully powerful climax that’s as shocking as it is audacious, this sets things up for an even more epic conclusion in 2019’s closer, and has already left even the most jaded viewers shell-shocked and baying for more, while the post-credits sting in particular had me drooling in anticipation for the long-awaited arrival of my own favourite Avenger, but in the meantime this is an immensely rewarding, massively entertaining and thoroughly exhausting cinematic adventure. Summer can’t come fast enough …

3.  UPGRADE – in a summer packed with sequels (many of them pretty damn awesome even so), it was a great pleasure my VERY FAVOURITE movie was something wholly original, an unaffiliated standalone that had nothing to follow or measure up to.  But Blumhouse’s best film of 2018 still had a lot riding on it – they’re a studio best known for creating bare-bones but effectively primal horror (even The Purge series is really more survival horror than dystopian thriller), so they’re not really known for branching out into science-fiction.  Going with one of their most trusted creative talents, then, was the kind of savvy move we’d expect from Jason Blum and co – Leigh Whannell is best known as the writer of the first three Saw movies (a fully-developed trilogy which I, along with several others, consider to be the series’ TRUE canon), the film phenomenon that truly kicked off the whole “torture porn” sub-genre, but he’s become one of Blumhouse’s most well-regarded writers thanks to his creation of Insidious, still one of their biggest earners.  Once again he wrote (and co-starred in) the first three films, even making his directorial debut on the third – admittedly that film wasn’t particularly spectacular, but there was nonetheless something about it, a real X-factor that definitely showed Whannell could do more than just write (and, act, of course).  Second time out he’s definitely made good on that potential promise – this is a proper f£$%ing masterpiece, not just the best thing I saw all summer but one of THE TOP movies of my cinematic year.  It’s also an interesting throwback to a once popular sci-fi trope that’s been overdue for a makeover – body horror, originally made popular by the cult-friendly likes of David Cronenberg and Paul Verhoeven, and the biggest influence on this film must to be the original Robocop.  Prometheus’ Logan Marshall-Green is an actor I’ve long considered to be criminally overlooked and underused, so I’m thrilled he finally found a role worthy of his underappreciated talents - Grey Trace, an unapologetically analogue blue-collar Joe living in an increasingly digital near future, a mechanic making his living restoring vintage muscle cars who doesn’t trust automated technology to run ANYTHING, so his life takes a particularly ironic turn when a tragic chain of events leads to his wife’s brutal murder while he’s left paralysed from the neck down.  Faced with a future dependent on computerised care-robots, he jumps at the chance offered by technological pioneer Eron Keen (Need For Speed’s Harrison Gilbertson), creator of a revolutionary biochip called STEM that, once implanted into his central nervous system, can help him regain COMPLETE control of his body, but in true body horror style things quickly take a dark and decidedly twisted turn.  STEM has a mind of its own (and a voice that only Trace can hear), and an agenda, convincing him to use newfound superhuman abilities to hunt down his wife’s killers and exact terrible, brutal vengeance upon them. There are really strong performances from the supporting cast – Gilbertson is great as a twitchy, socially awkward genius only capable of finding real connection with his technology, Get Out’s Bettie Gabriel is subtly brilliant as Detective Cortez, the cop doggedly pursuing Trace’s case and, eventually, him too, and there’s a cracking villainous turn from relative unknown Benedict Hardie as sadistic but charismatic cybernetically-enhanced contract killer Fisk – but this is very much Marhall-Green’s film; he’s an absolute revelation here, his effortlessly sympathetic hangdog demeanour dominating a fantastically nuanced and impressively physical performance that displays truly exceptional dramatic AND comedic talent.  Indeed, while it’s a VERY dark film, there’s a big streak of jet black humour shot right through it, Whannell amusing us in particularly uncomfortable ways whenever STEM takes control and wreaks appropriately inhuman havoc (it helps no end that voice-actor Simon Malden has basically turned STEM into a kind of sociopathic version of Big Hero 6’s Baymax, which is as hilariously twisted as it sounds), and he delivers in spades on the action front too, crafting the year’s most wince-inducing, downright SAVAGE fight sequences and a very exciting car chase. Altogether this is a simply astonishing achievement – at times weirdly beautiful in a scuzzy, decrepit kind of way, it’s visually arresting and fiendishly intelligent, but also, much as we’d expect from the creator of Saw and Hollywood’s PREMIER horror studio, dark, edgy and, at times, weirdly disturbing – in other words, it’s CLASSIC body horror.  Whannell is a talent I’ve been watching for a while now, and it’s SO GOOD to finally see him deliver on all that wonderful promise. Needless to say it was another runaway hit for Blumhouse, so there are already plans for a sequel, but for now I’m just happy to revel in the wonderful originality of what was the very peak of my cinematic summer …

2.  SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE – oh man, if ever there was a contender that could have ousted this year’s Number One, it’s this, it was SUCH a close-run thing.  Sure, with THREE major incarnations of Marvel’s most iconic superhero already hitting the big screen since the Millennium, we could AGAIN ask if we really need another Spider-Man “reboot”, but I must say his first ever blockbuster animated appearance leaves virtually all other versions in the dust – only Sam Raimi’s masterpiece second Spider-feature remains unbeaten, but I’ve certainly never seen another film that just totally GETS Stan Lee’s original web-slinger better than this one.  It’s directed by the motley but perfectly synced trio of Bob Perischetti (a veteran digital artist making his directorial debut here), Peter Ramsay (Rise of the Guardians) and Rodney Rothman (writer on 22 Jump Street), but the influence of producers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (creators of The Lego Movie) is writ large across the entire film (then again, Lord did co-write the script with Rothman) – it’s a magnificent, majestic feast for the eyes, ears and soul, visually arresting and overflowing with effervescent, geeky charm and a deep, fundamental LOVE for the source material in all its varied guises.  Taking its lead from the recent Marvel comics crossover event from which the film gets its name, it revolves around an unprecedented collision of various incarnations of Spider-Man from across the varying alternate versions of Earth across the Marvel Multiverse, brought together though the dastardly machinations of criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (a typically excellent vocal turn from Liev Schreiber) and his secret supercollider.  There are two, equally brilliant, “old school” takes on the original web-slinger Peter Parker on offer here – Chris Pine impresses in his early scenes as the “perfect” version, youthful, dashing and thoroughly brilliant but never ruining it by being smug or full of himself, but the story is dominated by New Girl’s Jake Johnson as a more world-weary and self-deprecating blue-collar version, who can still do the job just as well but has never really been as comfortable a fit, and he’s all the more endearing because he’s SUCH a lovable slacker underdog.  The main “hero” of the film, however, is Dope’s Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, a teenager who’s literally JUST acquired his powers but must learn FAST if he’s to become this universe’s new Spider-Man, and he’s a perfect lead for the film, unsure of himself and struggling to bring his newfound abilities to bear, but determined to find his footing all the same.  There are other brilliant takes on the core character here – Nicolas Cage’s wonderfully overblown monochrome Spider-Man Noir is an absolute hoot, as is anthropomorphised fan-favourite Spider-Ham (voiced by popular stand-up comic John Mulaney) – and a variety of interesting, skewed twists on classic Spider-Man villains (particularly Liv, a gender-bent take on Doctor Octopus played by Bad Moms’ Kathryn Hahn), but my favourite character in this is, tellingly, also my very favourite Marvel web-slinger PERIOD – Earth-65’s Spider-Woman, aka Gwen Stacy (more commonly known as Spider Gwen), an alternative version where SHE got bit by the radioactive arachnid instead of Peter, very faithfully brought to life by a perfectly cast Hailee Steinfeld.  It may sound overblown but this is about as close to perfect as a superhero movie can get – the script is an ASTONISHING piece of work, tight as a drum with everything lined up with clockwork precision, and instead of getting bogged down in exposition it turns the whole origin story trope into a brilliant running joke that keeps getting funnier each time a new character gets introduced; it’s also INSANELY inventive and a completely unique visual experience, specifically designed to look like old school comic book art brought to vivid but intriguingly stylised life, right down to the ingenious use of word-bubbles and textured printing dots that add to the pop art feel.  This is a truly SPECTACULAR film, a gloriously appointed thrill-ride with all the adventure, excitement, humour and bountiful, powerful, heartbreaking emotional heft you could ever want from a superhero movie – this is (sorry MCU) the VERY BEST film Marvel made in 2018, and maybe one of their very best EVER.  There’s already sequel talk in the air (no surprise there, of course), and I can’t wait to see where it goes.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me a Spider Gwen spinoff.  I’ll be good, I swear …

1.  A QUIET PLACE – the most unique and original film of 2018 was a true masterpiece of horror cinema and, for me, one of the best scary movies I’ve seen in A VERY LONG TIME INDEED. It’s a deceptively simply high-concept thriller built around a dynamite idea, one that writer/director/star John Krasinski (co-writing with up-and-coming creative duo Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) has mined for maximum effect … Krasinski (still probably best known for the US version of The Office but now also gaining fresh traction for killer Amazon Original series Jack Ryan) and his real life wife Emily Blunt are Lee and Evelyn Abbott, a mother and father who must protect their children and find a way to survive on an isolated farm in a world which has been decimated by an inexplicable invasion/infestation/whatever of mysterious and thoroughly lethal creatures that, while blind, use their incredibly sensitive hearing to hunt and kill ANYTHING that makes a sound.  As a result, the Abbotts have had to develop an intricately ordered lifestyle in order to gather, scavenge and rebuild while remaining completely silent, a discipline soon to be threatened by Evelyn’s very advanced pregnancy … there’s a truly fiendish level of genius to the way this film has been planned out and executed, the exquisitely thought-out mechanics of the Abbotts’ daily routines, survival methods and emergency procedures proving to be works of pure, unfettered genius – from communication through sign language and slow-dancing to music on shared headphones to walking on pathways created with heaped sand and painted spots to mark floorboards that don’t squeak, playing board games with soft fruit instead of plastic pieces and signalling danger with coloured light-bulbs – while the near total absence of spoken dialogue makes the use of sound and music essential and, here, almost revolutionary, with supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn becoming as important as the director himself, while composer Marco Beltrami delivers some of his finest work to date with a score of insidious subtlety and brazen power in equal measure.  The small but potent cast are all excellent – Blunt has rarely been better in a performance of impressive honesty and a lack of vanity comparable to her work on The Girl On the Train, affecting and compelling as a fierce lioness of a mother, while Krasinski radiates both strength and vulnerability as he fights tooth and nail to keep his family alive, regardless of his own survival, and their real-life chemistry is a genuine boon to their performances, bringing a winning warmth to their relationship; elsewhere, deaf actress Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) effortlessly captures our hearts as troubled, rebellious daughter Regan, delivering a performance of raw, heartbreaking honesty, while Suberbicon’s Noah Jupe impresses as awkward son Marcus, cripplingly unsure of himself and awfully scared of having to grow up in this terrifying new world.  There’s great power and heart in the family dynamic, which makes us even more invested in their survival as the screws tighten in what is a SERIOUSLY scary film, an exquisitely crafted exercise in sustained tension that deserves to be remembered alongside the true greats of horror cinema.  Krasinski displays a rare level of skill as a director, his grasp of atmosphere, pace and performance hinting at great things to come in the future, definitely making him one to watch – this is an astonishing film, a true gem I’m going to cherish for a long time to come.

[stargirl-ae]

Soundtrack of my Life (Teen Vogue)

I will be making up the ^Playlist of my Life inspired off the many people who have made them already on Teen Vogue’s YouTube channel, so let’s get started here. 

So, hello. My name is Anely and I had always hoped to breakout as a musician but we gotta think realistically here don’t we? This would be the play list of my life if life had actually worked out in my favor. 

Helena - My Chemical Romance: I was apart of that handful of people who really didn’t have an emo phase, this song is very special between me and a friend of mine. He and I have been friends since our freshmen year of high school and one day I had been courageous enough to talk to him cause I though he was a cute guys, anyways he actually thought that I was cute too, WHICH IS VERY RARE SINCE I LOOK LIKE A MUSHROOM. Eventually we starts hanging out and everything and we would skype couple times a week and we would listen to MCR and Disney music and yeah. We had planned to be Gerard and Helena for Halloween but it never came to be. Him and I are still friends and this song will always mean a lot to me. 

Bad - Michael Jackson: First of all, Rest in Peace Michael, we all still miss you so much. But this song takes me way back. In one of my old houses when me and my brother were little, we had these music channels and they would have music videos we could watch. And me and my little brother would watch the music video for Bad and we would act it out and do the choreography and it's a little funny to think about it now but yeah. We still do dance to that song. Plus, Michael’s outfit in that music video is literally so iconic. 

Remember Me - Miguel ft Natalia Lafourcade (Coco): Coco is such an amazing movie to begin with, and just saying to Disney, yes I’m talking to you, you guys need to make a Hispanic Disney princess, Elena of Avalor does not count. I will gladly voice her. Anyway, this song in the movie where it shows the flashback of Hector singing to Coco it makes me really sad but in a good way, because of the ending, which I will not spoil for those who haven't seen it. It's an amazing movie and the first time I saw it I cried … a lot. 

Machines - Crown the Empire: Crown the Empire was my little screamo band phase, and Machines is such a loud song and I really like the music video. I sing that song in the shower a lot. And plus I had the biggest crush on the vocalist at the time, Andy Leo. Yeah they were my middle school band. They always gotta little place in my heart. 

Hotel California - Eagles: Hotel California is a song that my dad had showed me my freshmen year of high school and honestly with the first time hearing it, my whole aspect behind songs having meaning really changed. And plus there’s a lot of conspiracies around that song being about a lot of dark stuff but the actual members of Eagles denied the theories, which I honestly don’t believe. Anyway, it’s a badass song, with the drums and the guitar solos. My favorite version of the song is when they performed in 1977 and it’s just a good oldie. 

Si Una Vez - Selena: Now, this song is amazing. And Selena is the queen of Tejano music, but this song at her last performance at the Houston Astrodome was an amazing thing. She put a lot of power into that performance and the lyrics in the song are very straightforward, saying not to play the one you love. Such a bop, and we miss this legend, 

Dime Mi Amor - Los Lonely Boys: This band has been involved in my life since I could remember, they make some badass music and the guitar in this song is amazing. I would love to see them live, but i’m pretty sure that they don’t tour anymore. If they do - they can take my money. 

You Should See Me In a Crown - Billie Eilish: Billie is such a bad bitch,and her voice is so beautiful voice, especially when she did her isolated vocals when she broke down her songs with Genius, and with this song it can be like one, two o clock in the morning and I’ll have my headphones going full blast with song and I’m just in my room feeling like a badass. If I had the chance, I would love tp collaborate with her and see what comes out of it. 

Enséñame A Olvidarte - Intocable: Intocable has been apart of my life for a very long time, like Los Lonely Boys and within the past year I have been more into Tejano music, i’m not exactly sure why but it’s happening. I had to use this song to translate this song completely from Spanish to English. Fun fact; Spanish is my first language, and I’m fluent in the language yet I passed the class with a B. But yeah the song is about a guy and he knows his ex girlfriend has found another man and he treats her so much better than he ever did and now he feels bad for not treating her like a queen.

If I Ain’t Got You - Alicia Keys: Her vocals, the piano, the freaking vibes this song gives out always got me feeling some type of way. Alicia Keys has to be one of the best female vocalist of like the early two thousands to now. Her voice can make you feel so many things, ya know? 

Sola - Jessie Reyez: I love the way this song is written, and Jessie Reyez, she really be out here writing bop after bop. She sings about all these girls being devoted to their significant other and she sings from her perspective that she is just a girl, who isn't perfect who won’t be glued to your side all day, everyday. She is always singing about the real ish out here. 

Sleepwalk - Johnny & Santo (La Bamba): This song reminds of when me nd my family had gone to florida one summer for vacation and it was raining a lot when we had gone and the song went perfectly with the thunder and grey skies. It also plays during the ending of La Bamba which is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a cool song since there is no vocals in it, it’s just Instrumental and the old 1950′s vibe from it makes me really happy. 

Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks: For the people who have seen the movie School of Rock, when Jack Black and Joan Cusack are at the bar and then that song comes on it’s pretty funny to me because Joan as the principle seems to be all preppy with her private school, next thing you know she’s sipping on beer and letting loose. Plus, Stevie Nicks is a bad bitch, and she reminds me a lot of American horror story since she popped in a couple times throughout Coven and a time in Apocalypse. I would love to see her in the studio. 

That’s it for the soundtrack of my life, very important songs to me. Hope everyone enjoyed. 

[velkynkarma]

Get to Know the Author

@bosstoaster has been tagging me all night :P

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

I’ve had the name ‘Karma’ for about 17 years now? I don’t even remember where it came from. The ‘Velkyn’ got added a little over 10 years ago when I decided I wanted to get back into fic writing. But I was still in that phase where you think you’re supposed to ‘grow out’ of fandoms and writing fanfiction, so I didn’t want any of my friends to know I was doing it. I was embarrassed. It was silly. I picked a different handle, VelkynKarma, which actually means ‘hidden Karma.’ Later I just liked the name and also got over my embarrassment for fic writing and just started using it everywhere.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

No matter what statistic you look at, Routine Maintenance wins across the board by a large margin. Parasite Knight only has 1 less subscription, though, so I guess it’s a fair contender on subs.

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

Same as my tumblr icon, it’s one of my OC’s, Morrigu Lovel. He is a little smartass and I love him.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

Oh for sure, there’s a few lovely readers that come back every time and always have something to say. I love you guys :) And a few others that don’t comment on every chapter or every work, but the comments they leave are always phenomenal and make my day.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Depends on my mood, and I don’t necessarily read the entire fic, just the paragraphs/scenes/chapters that really stick out to me. But yeah, I’ve got some favorites I return to a lot.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

Oh geez. This one’s hard to say since I watch stuff on AO3 and FF.net. A lot? I think a lot of those fics are dead now though.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Mmmm I don’t really have a tendency to stick to any particular series or AU for very long? I guess in terms of general themes I’ve done zombie AU’s the most, between Age of Heroes for Young Justice and Road Trip to End Times for Voltron...something about zombie apocalypse scenarios just fascinates me, especially since it can be done so many different ways.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

252 user subs, 444 work subs, 2039 bookmarks. I didn’t even know that until now, huh

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

There’s some character interactions that are such hot-button topics in the VLD fandom I’m cautious about approaching them because I don’t want to deal with people complaining or begging for things to get escalated. Like, I love Keith and Lance’s interactions in canon, but don’t have much fic centered around them because ship lashback is real.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Short fic. What is brevity even? I can’t do zines or commissions because I can’t figure out how to manage a damn word count.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Nope! I don’t write any ships at all. I just write platonic interaction. Though I guess I wouldn’t be adverse to a platonic ‘rarepair’ as long as I liked the characters’ interaction potential.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

So far, 25. 23 of those are Voltron, 1 is Young Justice, and 1 is Supernatural (experimenting with cross-posting on both of those last two, some fandoms are just hard to break into or not on certain sites).

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

Oh boy. In progress? I wanna say 3. Notes? A lot, lot more.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I jot down notes! Or email myself ideas if I’m at work/out and about. Or speak them into a little portable digital tape recorder I keep next to my bed, if it’s the middle of the night and I have an idea, but lack dexterity to type.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Not in a long, looong time.

16. How did you discover AO3?

Through TVTropes. Every time I finished a new series I’d swing by to read tropes pages and see if there were any decent fic recs. At first they all went to Fanfiction.net or livejournal but, over time, this ‘Archive’ thing kept showing up. I made an account to lurk or subscribe to things but didn’t actually start posting to it until at least a year later.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Moderately well known in the platonic corner of it probably assuming people know bosstoaster and I are not actually the same person lol but probably not well known outside of that. Once upon a time I was a Big Name in the One Piece fandom, but after the timeskip I fell out of the fandom and lost my pirate king throne. That’s okay, it was fun while it lasted.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

No but you all are too kind

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

In terms of ‘official’ authors, Brandon Sanderson is everything I ever aspire to be as a writer, and I take a lot of inspiration from that. For fic? My buddy BlackFriar was super helpful during the Young Justice era. More recently in the VLD fandom, @maychorian was big for just...getting me to stay in the fandom at all? One of her fics got me hooked and I stuck around, and then felt compelled to write, instead of just drifting off to the next interesting thing. And the Think Tank ( @bosstoaster @butteredonions @ashinan @mumblefox ) have all been huge for getting me to keep writing, between writing sprints and interesting discussions and a lot of encouragement, so that’s been huge for me this past year.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

At the risk of sounding like that one video...just do it. It’s scary to put yourself out there, but just do it. You learn by doing. You also learn by absorbing new things around you, so read a lot and try new stuff; you never know when something completely random or a personal experience might actually add a lot to your story. And finally, write for you, first. Write the stories you want to see. Writing for comments/bookmarks/reblogs only goes so far. It means your motivation is reliant solely on people liking your work, which means you start writing for other people and not for yourself...and if reception is lackluster, it can kill your ability to finish a project, which hurts your practice at follow-through. It’s a slippery slope and starts to make the whole thing a lot less fun and a lot more of a chore. Write things you want to read, and if you feel like sharing them after, other people might like them too, but it’s important that you like it, first.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Has to be plotted completely. If I try to wing it I meander or get hung up on trying to keep track of details. Turns into total garbage.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

A few times, sure. Happens to everyone. Most often, it’s people begging, demanding, or insinuating that my platonic fics should include a ship, especially if the fic focuses on the interactions of two specific characters. Those are very frustrating because I’m always upfront about the fic being friendship only, and there are usually a million other ship fics already out there. Leave my platonic fic alone! I usually ignore the comments, or just politely remind people it’s friendship only and will remain that way. In one bewildering instance in a different fandom I had somebody who had been thoroughly enjoying the fic up until the climactic battle, whereupon they were furious at how it was resolved, and took great pains to tell me just what they thought. That one stung. I had to sit on it for a few days before I worked up the nerve to respond, and chatted with a few friends over it too. In the end I realized that it was more comparable to a fan really enjoying a canon work but being mad about a sudden twist that just didn’t seem right to them. It happens. I thanked them for reading, explained that I disagreed with their comments but did hear them, and thanked them for their time. Best I could do.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

I am straight-up incapable of romance, period. Even so far as to slide into ‘fake’ romance (I once got prompted for fake marriage/dating and literally couldn’t envision how to do it? It’s just so foreign to me). Or flirting. I can’t even identify flirting IRL. Basically anything in that general area of writing is completely out of my league. I can write intense scenes that are intimate in non-romantic, non-sexual ways, but those are really difficult for me to do too and I’m constantly second-guessing myself in case it’s maybe too much.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

If I told you I’d have to kill you. But no, srsly, I don’t like to share ideas in progress until it’s almost done, just in case. Sometimes I share and then immediately lose interest, but I’ve already raised peoples’ hopes, and that’s just a dick move.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I’ll have outlines, or sometimes need to plan around prompts. I don’t usually do series, so I never really need to plan too far ahead though. Sometimes if I’m plotting a crossover/AU I’ll obtain the source material and read/watch/play it to start gathering notes for that fic while working on a different fic, so that by the time I’m done writing the current story, the AU’s skeleton is plotted out and I have a place to slot in all the characters.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

No. I’ve gotten better habits since working with the Think Tank but I still tend to be more of a ‘burst’ writer (no activity for days or weeks, and then suddenly word vomiting 100K in a month).

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

By a HUGE margin

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

Oooh, that’s a toss-up between Phantasmagoria and Prince of Memory. The former because I love writing horror and it’s an idea I’d wanted to tackle for a while. The latter because it was a personal writing challenge to myself that I honestly wasn’t sure was going to go over all that well, but the response was stunning, and I was quietly surprised.

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

Caged Bird, from a different fandom. I make it a personal rule to never delete stories that I’ve posted, but ooh man, I wanted to get rid of this one really bad. I was happy when LJ gutted it. I actually don’t have any real dislike for any of my Voltron stuff.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Still writing because I’d die if I stopped. Like a shark. But with writing.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

That flash of inspiration, when you get an idea and suddenly it’s building itself almost too fast for you to keep up. Dialogue. Action sequences.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Getting started. Titles. Editing. Research. Any particularly emotional moment.

33. Why do you write?

Because fandoms are fun but I have so many questions after. “What if X happened? What if Y was a factor? Why not Z?” I try to hunt down answers to these questions in fandoms and if the fic isn’t already written, I write it. Also to challenge myself to do things that haven’t been done in the fandom yet, or to tackle things I haven’t tried yet.

I think everyone’s been tagged already so...feel free to play if you want, I guess!

[chrisrobbins2012]

Time to be honest on future of X-men

it’s time for fans of x-men films weither it is original cast,first class/apocalypse cast,and even deadpool films to get real on what future means for x-emn following merger.

1-Dark Phoenix and new mutants will be released.

dark phoenix is getting reased in theaters before merger is final.now i will make bold prediction.it would not shock me if fox pushed it back to june to take where gambit was usposet o be relased and we know gambit is dead now.offically it could be said fox believe x-men should be summer film.unoffically disney may have asked them to push it back after captain marvel has been released if as rumored Simon Kinberg brought in fox version of skrulls.with new mutants there remains possibilty of it being sent to hulu or home video though odds are higher it will be in theaters though if venom does well for sony in october fox may push it to october 2019 if as rumored the reshoots for new mutants adds more horror to film

2-Gambit dead and so may be X-force

august and gambit still doesn’t have director.it defently is dead.and people are being in denial about X-force. Drew Goddard who is attacked as writer/director of X-force was quoted when deadpool 2 was released back in may as having not even started writing the script for X-force.I find it unlikely X-force will be written and before the camers before merger is complete.while yes i can not say 100% X-force will not be made but i find it unlikely especilly since both fans of x-men films and haters of x-men films expect post merger for x-men and deadpool to be transfered over to marvel studios.

3-time to get real on Deadpool

the idea that deadpool films will continue as is at marvel studios or that ryan reynolds will play the mcu deadpool is being naive at best.the idea of Kevin Feige based on his time running marvel studios laughs at idea of him producing sequels to other studios films or using anyone from previous studios version.and there is idea of deadpoo films if people ever actuly bothered to watch actual films connections to X-Men films.deadpool and deadpool 2 uses same mansion as in X2 and last stand and uses footage of last stand of jet taking off.first deadpool has hanger consent with basement level of x-men films.deadpool films have x-men as established team and mutants being around for years.and in deadpool 2 has cameo of xavier,cyclops,storm,beast,and quicksiver.so idea of them saying deadpool films always was really in mcu is idiot.

let’s move on to reynolds some says yeah entire xmcu will be rebooted but reynolds is still going to play deadpool.this is idiotcy.when has feige ever brought on actor from other studio to play role in mcu.answer he hasn’t.deadpool will be pg-13 in mcu.but people go but iger said.what iger actuly said he is open to r rated as long as they let audence know it would be coming not that deadpool will defently be r rated.iger mya be on his way out too of disney and plus feige the one who actuly runs marvel studios is on record as saying no r rating and no darkness in MCU.deadpool will be used in mcu without a doudt.and what people tend to forget or ignore reynolds had a lot of power ind eadpool films.he was producer of both and was uspose to be producer on x-force.he also got writing credit on Deadpool 2.Reynolds will have none of that in MCU.the film divison of MCU is Feige’s tightly run ship

4-Time to get into reality of what X-Men will be in MCU

first off let’s really pay attention to film i find god awful Spider-Man Homecoming to give us idea on what feige would do to x-men.

first off everyone who has worked in films is out the door.Lauren Shueler Donner may end up getting meangless executive producer credit on MCU X-Men films just like AVi Arad gets on MCU full Spider-Man films,and i expect her to also keep getting credit on legion and the gifted for tv but it will really be a in name only credit with a small monetary compression.Simon Kinberg may end up going to lucasfilms and could work on other films and tv shows on new disney/Fox

what some also need to grasp is first mutants have to be introduced into mcu and if feige really has the plans for films maped out till 2024 it will be awhile before x-men and their conror in films agina fter dark phoenix and new mutants.

now just as feige took away much of problems peter parker faced to turn him into tony stark fanboy and one who spouts pop culture expect vasily different X-men.expect a x-men without mutant allegary.now to be fair fox post days of future past has been making mutants more accepted in films but this will be non-esistent.In MCU.darkness and serinasness will be in short supply.Feige has always choosen a one size fit all and focus more on humor and making everything fun.yeah you will get colorful outfits In MCU X-men from begining but you will lose stuff that made X-Men Unique

what else does MCU X-Men be informed by from mcu SPider-man?

X-Men In MCU will likely not have villains and storylines that fox used.

feige unlikely to touch Dark Phoenix,Days of future past,and wolverine japanese saga.

feige will quickly bring in his version of wolverine as first chance he gets.it wouldn’t be shock if wolverine is introuduced before x-men.i also dodut there would even be origin of X-men.

the MCU X-Men villains are more likely to be mr sinister,only major one xmcu didn’t use,and alien threats along with any poential MCU phase threats.

MCU SPider-man also show Feige wants to avoid using relationships other studios did.also note mcu hulk with since feige has been running things completly betty ross has disappeared without a trace or mention.

Xavier/Magneto relationship defently won’t be in mcu.in event magneto is used i see magneto as being in mcu equilvent of original comics version a mainly evil villain without any depth or motivation.

people need to get serious about jean grey.marvel in comics had her gone for years.instead of cyclops/jean we could see cyclops/Emma Frost in MCU which is relationship from comics nto onscreen and would also allow feige not to use Cyclop/jean/wolverine love triangle

let’s be frank mcu fans will cheer anything feige does with X-Men.and immedetly declare any casting better than any of xmcu.minute a mcu wolverine is cast they will declare him better than hugh jackman and will say now we have good wolverine.same thing happened with spider-man