#i would have written him off as a space filler until he appeared in the s5 opening

[plusultraetc]

after a full year of wondering I am putting this question out into the universe. does anyone know who this person is?? are we supposed to know???

[yougavemeyourheartyouknow]

On thin ice (Hockey player! Miguel O’Hara x Figure skater! Fem! Reader)

A/N: Not me already have written this part the day after I posted the first one 🤭. I wanna add titles to the chapters but idk what I’d have them be, probably lyrics from songs I like lol. Once again, apologies now for If Miguel is ooc and if the terminology and sports talk is wrong. If you’re experienced in either sport and wanted to lmk if I got something wrong. If you want to be added to the taglist lmk too.

(Y/N)- Your name, (L/N)- Last name.

No warnings, Just Miguel and you interacting lol. Idk if this is consider filler but it’s meant to get the ball rolling lol.

Word count: 1.3k

Series Masterlist

Chapter 2: Do you ever get that fear that you can’t shift the tide,

—

It’s been about a week since you’ve last ran into Miguel at the arena, surprisingly the figure skating team don’t run into the hockey team as much as you would think despite having to share a communal space on campus. Unfortunately, today was one of those days were you did run into them. You’ve arrived about 45 minutes early to practice, Logan nor coach Kavinsky were here yet. You were hoping to get some alone time on the ice before practice, but it had slipped your mind that today was Thursday, and on Thursdays the hockey team practiced before you rather then after like the rest of the week. As you dropped your gym back on the bench in the girl’s locker room, you were debating to whether you wanted to just wait at the arena till they were done, or walk back to your dorm. The only problem with the latter option is that the dorm buildings were all the way across campus, and by the time you finished the walk you’d have to turn around to walk back anyways.

So you stuck it up, and changed into your practice outfit, your skates in hand as you leave the locker room, deciding to keep your regular shoes on so you could at least get your stretching out of the way before your coach and partner came. You quickly went into one of the empty dance rooms that the arena had to do warm up stretches in, popping in your headphones to listen to your favorite song. After about 15 minutes you still had plenty of time before The Spiders got off the ice, you decided to just walk around the stadium. No destination in mind, just where ever your feet decided to carry you as your music continue to play in your ears. You can’t really say you were surprised to find yourself ending up in the main area with the ice rink, plopping yourself down in one of the front row seats as you let your brain go on autopilot.

You were too busy being lost in the music, you didn’t realize you were staring into space until you say a large tan hand appear in front of your face and began to snap its fingers, pulling you back into the moment.

“hellooo? Earth to ice princess.”

“Huh?” You shot up to sit straighter, blinking a bit as you take out your headphones, turning your head to look at the person who had just snapped you back into reality. “Look I know I’m attractive and all, but you don’t have to stare-“ Miguel begins, a cocky smirk on his face that you just wanted to smack off. One of his large hands going up to take off this helmet, his dark brown hair that was usually slicked back was now messy from the helmet, a thin coat of sweat covering his forehead. You cut him off, “ew, why would I be staring at you?” You question, your face slightly scrunched in distaste at the thought.

“You’ve been looking in my direction at the past 20 minutes.” He smirks as his teammates start to put away all their hockey equipment behind him, not paying attention to you both talk. You gave him a confused look before you realize why he might have been thinking that, “Oooooh-no-no I was just zoning out, I wasn’t staring at you on purpose.” You quickly explain, awkwardly scratching the back of your neck with your gloved hand, attempting to keep eye contact with the hockey player.

For a second, it looked like Miguel’s cocky exterior faltered, before coming back up. “Uh huh…sure.” He tone dripping with sarcasm as he drops his helmet onto a seat, then taking a seat next to you. His action caught you by surprise but you didn’t let it show, you also didn’t want to show the annoyance that filled your body from the taunting comment. “Why are you even here this early? Where is your little boyfriend?” He asked as turns his body towards you, resting the hand closest to you on his knee, his forearm that was further from you going to rest on his other knee. He was manspreading a bit, his eyes raking over your form slowly.

“Jesus why is it so warm in here all of a sudden? Usually I’m freezing my nonexistent balls off…” You thought as you shifted in your seat a bit, feeling the need to distract yourself, you start to change into your skates. “I wanted to get some time on the ice alone before practice but I forgot it was Thursday and- wait. Boyfriend?”

Miguel chuckled at your surprised reaction, turning his head away slightly, the hand that was resting on his knee came up to cover the smile that was creeping up on his face from your reaction. After a second or two he cleared his throat, his hand dropping back down to his knee as he turns to face you again with a neutral expression. “Yeah, your boyfriend, the one you skate with. What’s his name again? Lincoln? Liam?” Miguel knew his name, he just wanted to see if you’d correct him.

“Logan?”

Miguel tried his best not to scowl.

“Yeah, Logan-whatever-where’s he at?” He asked, he’s words come out annoyed and a bit rushed. “Well for one, he’s not my boyfriend, just my figure skating partner.” You start as you tilted your head to the side as you look at him, saying it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Now Miguel is trying his hardest not to let a huge shit eating grin spread across his lips. “And second, he’s probably on his way, he had a class today before practice-some science thing- I don’t know.” You shrugged your shoulders as you finish speaking.

Speaking of the devil, Logan and Coach Kavinsky appear through the front double door. “Ah! (Y/N), already here. Perfect! Let’s get straight into it.” She said with a smile as she seemingly ignore Miguel’s presence next to you, Logan stops next to you as you both took the guards off your skates, him shooting you a knowing look, his lips twitching up into small smirk as his eyes drift between you and Miguel. “I swear to God…if he brings this up later…” You start to think but a voice cut you off.

“Hey Cap!” One of the hockey players called out for Miguel’s attention, “We just finished packing up, you coming?” He asked as he skate to the edge of the rink, before getting out, a few of the other lingering players that were making sure all the equipment was all packed up doing the same. As soon as the other player was done speak to Miguel, he took off his helmet revealing (messy from the helmet and some sweat) light brown hair and brown eyes, his lower half of his face covered with a 5 o’ clock shadow and you noticed his nose was slightly croaked, probably him having broken it from a past game.

Miguel let out a heavy sigh, before turning towards the other player. “Yeah Parker, I’m going.” He grumbled as he brought his hand up to rub his face before giving you one more quick glance and getting up, leaving with the rest of who was left from his team, without another word. For some reason, that bothered you, causing your brows furrowed as your lips fall into a small frown.

“Rude…” you mumbled as you got up from your seat, Logan heard this and let out a small snort as he steps on to the ice. “Don’t overthink it (L/N), that’s just how he is.” Your partner tried to reassure you, you send him a small smile back and a quick nod of your head.

“Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t overthink it.” You repeat his words, as you went to enter the rink as well, but it was a bit too late for that, because you already were overthink it.

—

Taglist: @tayleighuh

[lune-hime]

Garden of Tulips (Levi/Reader) Tea Time # 2 ~ Shower Mishap

~Click me for more chapters~

“What did it look like?”

“Hmm?” Levi looked up from his place next to your sleeping form. “The titan that tried to snack on my darling granddaughter.” “Ugly as fuck.” “Aren’t they all?”

Levi recounts memories of the reader and their shared life together while she recovers from a serious injury.

!!WARNINGS!! - Violence, gore, smut, wholesome content ;)

So these little Tea Times were written as little filler-memory chapters to place in between the main story line.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Y/N.” Hange drawled. She clumsily attempted to sit cross legged along the dining hall bench, her legs not quite folding correctly. When she almost tipped over the side, Erwin used his quick reflexes to snag her by the arm and place her upright. You sloppily turned your head to give her as much undivided attention that your remaining active brain cells could muster.

“Please enlighten everyone on the shower story.” Her request brought a giddy smile to her lips. Levi immediately cast you a quizzical look, his gaze drowning in beer. Your face heated up like an oiled saucepan but thanks to the excessive drinking it made no difference to your already rosy complexion.

“But it might be too unprofessional for the Commander.” You shot a sassy look at Hange over Levi who was seated between the two of you. Alcohol was quite the bold word choice inducer as you definitely would not have phrased your sentence with so much gusto if you were sober.

“What in the fucking hell  kind of story is this?” Levi asked darkly, his pupils dilated so far they eclipsed their usual silver. There was a preciseness to his phrase despite it being slurred. Indeed, the only soul at the table who knew of your unintentional shower adventure was your former squad leader. Erwin chuckled softly and Mike quirked an eyebrow at you.

“We drink as friends tonight, Y/N. No one will get you in trouble for just telling a story-” Erwin began his explanation calmly but paused when he locked eyes with Levi’s burning glare. It took what was left of his composure to refrain himself from laughing at the tiny fireball across the table.

“But only tell it if you are comfortable doing so.” The commander flashed a dazzling smile before taking a hearty swig of his drink. The man may have been inebriated but he was still so much more put together than the rest of you. Well, with the exception of Mike of course.

“It’s not that bad, don’t worry about it Vivi.” You reassured the steaming man between giggles. You reached up to gingerly pat his cheek a couple times, his glare turning into an intensely childish pout that he would definitely deny later.

“So you’ll tell it?” Hange chittered, practically vibrating with excitement. You nodded lazily, swaying a bit but steadied by Levi’s secure arm around your waist.

“Okay so, it was during my first few months as a cadet-”

↞♞♘↠

You had come to terms with the fact that you were going to be tired on a daily basis. Since you had joined the cadets it was nonstop physical and tactical training that bored into the innermost parts of your brain and body, immersing you in a constant state of exhaustion. Your grandmother’s war stories about her painful life in the military were indeed accurate (well, yours were much less scandalous than hers); it’s no joke how far the organization pushes every limb, muscle, fiber, and atom within your being.

Which was why you couldn’t be happier that you had an hour of free time to shower after your training session before you had to meet your mentor. Plush towel hanging off your shoulder, you rounded the corner of one of the many hallways of the vast compound and practically skipped into the bathing area.

The steam from the showers was thick at first and obscured the space as you passed through the initial chamber to enter the main bathing area. The only element of the atmosphere that told you other cadets were occupying the room was their loud banter and laughter. Only, it wasn’t the feminine voices you were accustomed to hearing and you’re pretty sure you just heard Connie’s na-

“Y/N!?!?!” A voice shrieked, immediately scuttling to the side upon discovering your arrival. When your vision adjusted to the thick steam, your eyes widened in shock when you spotted Eren's very exposed form through the haze.

"Ohmygodohmygod, Eren I'm so sor-" You blabbed, immediately trying to look anywhere but the boy's nether regions. Before the split second it would have taken to cover your eyes, you were startled by an immense figure in your personal space. The shadow gave you zero time to shield yourself from the Michaelangelo’s David that was possibly the cockiest cadet on the premises.  

"Y/N, I didn't know you were so bold. Come to play?" Reiner cooed, smirk widening as he watched your face heat up to the scalding temperature of their showers. He made no effort to hide his manhood, as Eren did, and actually attempted to emphasize it by propping his leg up against one of the benches littered throughout the bath. You were frozen in embarrassment and as much as you wanted to punch him right in the spot he most yearned for you to gaze upon, you couldn't do it.

"Walls, Reiner do you have any shame?" You spat back, your muscles still seized up with your beyond awkward encounter.

"None if it comes to you, sweetheart." He chuckled confidently. Before you could quip back another response, a blur shouting your name dashed towards you and turned your vision black. The hands over your eyes became your sole protector from the copious amounts of naked men.

“I know you are dumb, but you really need to watch where you are going.” Jean scolded from behind you in a hushed tone. You let out the balloon of a breath you had been internalizing. If you hadn’t believed in angels before, Jean sure as hell was your angel now. He abruptly turned around and began waddling the two of you towards the entrance when you heard agile footsteps circling around you. Jean suddenly halted, the unexpected loss of movement sending you flailing.

“Hold up, Jean. Maybe she knew exactly where she was going.” Reiner purred. You felt Jean’s breath quicken against your ear and his grip on your temple tightened momentarily. You didn’t need to physically see Reiner’s face to picture the shit-eating smirk edging its way into his features.

“If you wanted me, Y/N, all you had to do was ask.”

The sound of wet feet against tile grew closer until you felt unwanted puffs of air leaving feather-light touches on your face. Jean suddenly flung you sideways like a cooked noodle, placing himself between you and Reiner and causing you to squeak in surprise.

“Fuck off Reiner. She doesn’t want to see your tiny dick.”  Jean spat back. A chorus of snickers resounded through the bathroom.

“She was trying hard just a moment ago to avoid the temptation.” Reiner huffed. His arrogance was like a tough stain that you couldn’t get out, no matter how hard you scrubbed.

“Sadly, I did see it and Jean’s right.” You groaned. Your best friend let out a snort followed by the laughter you could feel rumbling from his chest.

“You must not have gotten a good look at it then-”

"If you don't get out of our way, no one will get the minute pleasure of seeing your dick again." Jean sarcastically threatened.

"Please, Reiner, give it a rest." A soft voice pleaded to your right. You recognized it as a familiar cadet, one Jean had grown quite close to.

"Everyone else besides you is uncomfortable here." Marco's even tone was music to your reddened ears. There was a palpable silence of which you presumed was the soundtrack to an alpha male staring contest. Then, Reiner huffed and backed off seeing that the odds were against him.

"Fine, fine. You know you can always call on me Y/N." Reiner chided before sauntering back into the shower.

"The only call he'll be getting is from the infirmary." You grumbled under your breath.

“Can’t keep it in his pants for five minutes can he?” Jean scoffed lowly as he began leading you to the doorway.

“I mean he’s not wearing pants…” You mumbled, still trying to recover from the overwhelming shock and embarrassment. Jean stopped you at the entrance to the connecting hallway.

"When I let go, don't you dare look behind you." Jean warned, playfully swaying you back and forth.

"Okay just let me go!" You sputtered and swatted his arms before he released you.

You fixed your gaze on the tile walls and heaved a sigh of relief.

"Thanks Jean, I owe you one." You said, voice regaining its composure.

"Whatever, just buy me some food when we go into town next." He replied. You heard him turn around and begin padding back to the showers when you realized your shoulder was missing a fluffy presence. Your towel must have fallen off during your steamy showdown.

"Jean wait!!" You exclaimed. You turned around and in the waning of your flustered hysteria forgot you were technically still in the boy's bathroom. Both your and Jean's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

"Shit, Y/N what did I say???" Jean exclaimed, hands immediately flying to cover his crotch. You breathed a heavy exhale, feeling the flames scorching your cheeks once more.

"Dammit, I'm sorry! My towel fell-" You sputtered and cursed at yourself for letting the heat flood your brain cells too.

"Ah! Y/N-" Marco appeared with your towel, only he was sporting his birthday suit as well. Oh, this could not get any worse. You were the embodiment of a beet, cheeks puffing in fear and eyes screwing shut.

"I have your towel, I was going to place it by the doorway but-um-here." Marco gently grabbed your hand and placed the towel in it. He laughed nervously and retreated back into the bath.

You turned back around to face opposite of the doorway and slumped your head into your hands exasperatedly.

"You good now?" Jean checked, slight annoyance evident in his tone.

"No." You whimpered in utter mortification.

“Reiner’s just a dick who thinks that everyone wants to see his own.” Jean said with a roll of his eyes.

"It was an accident, so don't worry. Plus this gives me prime blackmail material." He snickered. You shot him the middle finger over your shoulder.

“How am I going to face anyone in that room anymore?” You groaned sadly, the last three minutes of excitement playing on an endless loop within your mortified mind.

“Easy, if they bring it up just kick them on any part of their body you saw today.” Jean snickered.

“But I saw every-” You started to protest and then gasped in horror. Your humiliated expression deepened Jean’s smirk.

"We'll pretend it never happened. Now please, go to the proper bathroom before you play with the crazy lady. You stink."

↞↠

“Y/N? What’s wrong?” Hange asked, taking a break from poking at the titan’s dirtied toenail. When her apprentice approached the titan holding area she looked absolutely worn out.

“I have the extreme urge to scratch my eyes out.” You groaned, setting your bag of notes down and crouching in the grass next to her.

“Please don’t, today I need you to help me scratch Bean’s eye instead.”

↞♞♘↠

Levi’s grip threatened to shatter the glass pint as he brought it down onto the table with too much force.

“If we had been together when this happened I would have ripped off every one of their micro cadet penises.” He hissed, the alcohol turning into flames within his eyes.

There was a moment’s pause before the entire squad leader table erupted in laughter. The guffaw rattled the wood paneling and caused confused cadets to turn their heads in shock. Erwin accidentally snorted some of his beer and was now struggling with it coming out of his nose. Seeing the commander in such a state caused the same exact thing to happen to you, the burning of the alcohol hurt almost as much as your stomach did from hilarity. Mike kneed the table so hard that it sent his drink flying at Hange who moved out of the way to dodge it, only to smack into Levi’s chest. The action caused the two of them to double over and flip off the bench which only caused the rest of your table to create a larger cacophony.

Nights spent in cherished company like these were ones you held close to your heart.

[mable-stitchpunk]

So how would you rewrite the Fazbear Frights books if you were in charge?

Well, for starters I don’t think every Fazbear Fright story needs work. Here are the ones that I think do a good job in what they set out to do.  (Note that I don’t like all of these stories, so I’m not just picking the ones I like. I’m picking the ones that actually get the job done.) These are the Fazbear Frights stories that are perfectly fine:

Into the Pit, To Be Beautiful, Count the Ways, Fetch, Out of Stock, Room for One More, The New Kid, Coming Home, and Hide and Seek.

Why the others don’t work is typically one of these reasons:

1. They’re boring and feel like they’re there to fill space. 2. They don’t utilize animatronics that they could. 3. If they DO utilize animatronics, usually they’re either a hallucination or they appear once and then the rest of the story is humans talking. 4. Many times they’re just reskinned sections of story from the game, just done in a much more bland way. 5. Sometimes they’re blatantly copied horror stories seen in your typical “100 Ghost Stories to read in the Dark”. Usually done with little change beyond names and occasionally slapping in a Freddy namedrop.

I’d say the biggest problem is a lot of them don’t feel like FNAF stories. Forget the lore, they just don’t engage in the one thing that makes the games scary: the animatronics. They’re typically just long-winded descriptions of the life of the human protagonist and then a squeezed in horror trope at the end.

The stories feel rushed. Probably because they’re done with a conveyor belt mentality. Just get ‘em done and get ‘em sold. Put Freddy in the title and people will buy anything! In which case, why not buy a cheap ghost story book from a dollar bin?

Now here’s the tricky part... How would I change the stories? Well...

Lonely Freddy: Go all the way with it. Instead of having a bunch of filler and then a swapped body story, have a young man getting stalked by a small animatronic bear, only to reveal that it is the real Alec trying to get its body back. A better twist, more dramatic tension, and feels a little more original.

1:35AM: Have Ella be an actual threat. Instead of being just a hallucination as we hear about a woman’s woes, have her get closer every night, or have her get more broken, until Delilah finally tries to stand up to the doll. Only to have it reveal what it was really made to do. Or have it lure her into that (apparently random) vent only to reveal that it was trapping her there, or that it lured other- now deceased- people there, or to find the body of the spirit possessing it. Something!

Step Closer: Instead of ripping off Final Destination, why not have Foxy actually start hunting the brothers? Or maybe the older brother convinces the younger to stay overnight at the pizzeria with him- an overnight challenge- and then as Foxy comes to life and becomes aggressive, Pete and Chuck must work together to fight him off. Maybe Pete gets seriously injured and still loses that eye and arm in the process- still would be a payoff. Heck, or have it a toned down story where Foxy’s targeting Pete for his bullying and doesn’t back down until Chuck musters up the bravery to stand up for him.

Dance With Me: THIS ONE I have a great idea for. Instead of glasses where she sees a Ballora hallucination, Kasey gets a security bracelet stuck on her wrist that drawls a broken, crawling, spider-like Ballora to her. Perhaps with all her little Minireenas hanging on. Kasey must find a way to get it off. I’ll let you imagine how that turns out, because there’s a multitude of rewarding endings.

Bunny Call: Why not make it Music Man? Or better yet, instead of another guy in a rabbit suit, why can’t it just be a rabbit animatronic? Or perhaps numerous small rabbits popping up around the cabin?... No, forget it. This story was made for Music Man. He is terrifying and underutilized, and making a cymbal rabbit just because “killer wore a rabbit suit” is lame.

In The Flesh: First of all, rewrite the story so it doesn’t wander all over the place. Secondly, scrap the pregnancy thing- it’s not scary, just awkward- and have THIS be the story with hallucinations. Let him imagine he sees Springtrap around him. Have him do something about it that he may regret. Maybe to a friend, maybe to himself...

The Man in room 1280: Forget the build-up to the lame Stitchwraith twist, you have this man carrying Ennard inside of him and you show us what it would really look like to watch someone’s body decay. This is another case where reframing a scene from the game could’ve been disturbing enough to work.

Blackbird: As this is pretty much not a FNAF story, why not make Blackbird an actual animatronic that the main characters find while looking for props for their movie? Or, have them sneak into a burned down pizzeria to do filming and run amiss of a fried Chica? Heck, make it a dark comedy. Have the boys try to use this fried chicken as a prop in their movie, only for something to go terribly wrong. You don’t have to run fast, just faster than your friends!

The Real Jake: This is pretty much just some of FNAF 4′s bullet points rewritten to give Jake a backstory that, honestly, he didn’t need. They could’ve at least done something more with it! I couldn’t say how though with how bland it is.

And the thing is that while my ideas are not perfect, at least they relate more to FNAF. There are so many ways they could’ve gone by thinking about it, but they didn’t, because they didn’t put that much thought into them. They cut corners where they could and wracked up words counts when they had the chance. Even some of the stories that got the pass did this.

Do I think the Fazbear Frights books will get better? No. Probably the next six or seven books have already been written and they’re of this same quality. Nobody has to give a little extra effort because they’ll sell regardless. It’s a mockery to writers who actually have to work for what they create, but I digress.  

TLDR: More animatronics, more effort, less borrowed ideas.

[mockinggold]

If you guys ever feel like your writing is bad, here’s the first chapter of my first ever fanfic

“"Tch- Like I would want to be around any of you extras," said Kacchan. He leaned farther in his chair and smirked.

"Aw c'mon Bakugou, we'll have a blast!" Kirishima smiled. "We'll go and get something good to eat and hang out like real bros. I'll get you dinner on me!"

Kacchan sat up straighter looking at Kirishima. He regained his composure and scoffed "Whatever. I'll go just to keep your sanity shitty hair, and so you all get off my ass about it." Kacchan glanced up at Kirishima. Kirishima nudged him on the shoulder and smiled.

"Yeah that's what I'm talking about!" Kirishima chuckled. "Hey Midoriya, who all else is coming?"

I look up at Kirishima and flipped up my fingers with each name I said. "Well," I started. "We've got you, me, Kacchan, Uraraka, Iida, Tsu, Sero, Tokoyami, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Ashido, Jirou... and I think that's it"

"What's with the listing of names?" I heard from behind. I turned around to see a tall, muscular, heterochromatic guy staring down at me. I was caught slightly off guard by this and I felt my checks get a little warm.

"Oh, uh, hey Todoroki-kun! I-um... we're just going to the mall after school today to hang out and uh, yeah. I mean it's nothing too exciting but you're welcome to come if you'd like to," I stammered, regaining my composure halfway through.

Todoroki smirked. "Add me to your count then," he said. "Class ends in 7 minutes. Seeing as Aizawa is asleep, I have some loose ends I need to tie up. I'll be outside the main entrance when you guys are ready. See you soon." Todoroki calmly walked towards the exit. As he passed me, he lightly brushed against my shoulder. I felt the ghost of his contact linger for a few seconds longer before I glance back to see the last of his red and white hair sweep out of the door.

I blushed a little wondering if his small touch was intentional or not. Todoroki has always been a huge mystery to me, and maybe that's what's drawn me to him for so long. After the sports festival, it's clear he's been trying to be more social with the class but that doesn't stop me from wanting to know more about him. Not only about his quirk, but about his character. What makes him laugh, cry, yell, smile. I want to know what keeps him awake, what makes him fall fast asleep. I want to know so badly-

"OI DEKU!" Kacchan shouted. I jumped from the yell. "Are you gonna stand there or are you coming with us?" I glance up at the clock. Did I really just think about Todoroki for 7 minutes? I shook my head and grabbed my notebook.

"I'm coming!" I shouted to no one in particular. I picked up my pace for a bit until I caught up to Uraraka. I walked next to her as she giggled a little. I cocked my head at looked at her waiting for an explanation.

"It's super obvious, yknow?" She giggled.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Your crush on Todoroki. You always stare off into space for a long time with a dumb smile whenever he is or has been around. It's adorable and you should definitely ask him on a date." She smiled.

I felt my face heat up a little. And then a lot. "What? Oh! I-I-I think you got it all wrong. I mean yeah I stare off and mutter sometimes but it's not because of Todoroki I mean yeah sometimes I think about Todoroki-I mean his quirks and how they work and stuff I do that for everyone I'm just saying that it's not like I think about him for hours on end I mean that would be ridiculous right?" I said painfully fast. Even I felt that that was over the top.

"I see," she smirked. "Well if that's how you'd like to treat it, then go ahead. Hang on I need to catch up with Iida." She started skipping ahead. She suddenly turned around and yelled back at me. "Keep in mind you never denied my statement!" She grinned and caught up to Iida.

I felt my face get red hot. I knew she knew she was right. But at the same time, it felt hopeless. It's obvious Yaoyorozu liked Todoroki and it was most likely that he liked her back. Who wouldn't like him. He's the sweetest, kindest, cutest, strongest, bravest-

My train of thought was cut off by running into a wall.

I managed to startle myself to the point of falling.

"That looked like it hurt." Todoroki chuckled. "You were almost out the door too." He reaches out his hand to me and smiled. He had the smile that you could look at and feel safe and warm for the rest of your days. A smile that could make a demon blush. His mismatched eyes stayed locked with mine, they twinkled like no other. Those blue and gray eyes could catch your attention from a mile away. I cut myself off from staring and smiled back. I reached out my hand to grab his. We grasped each other's wrists and he pulled me up in one swift motion.

"Thanks" I muttered trying to avoid eye contact. I felt like he could see straight through me and how flustered I was.

He glanced towards the exit and smirked. "Of course," he said. I smiled back at him, aware of the dust of light pink in my cheeks.”

This was the entire chapter

Honestly, this is embarrassing to post for me. I could go on for hours about how terrible this is.

- POV used terribly

- Just about every sentence beginning with a name or pronoun unless I was making a burst of conscious effort not to

- Capitalization of entire words

- starting the story in a time where it seemed as though the beginning half of the story hadn’t been explained

- recapping crucial information as background information from past

- unrealistic enter/exit of characters

- unrealistic dialogue

- emotionally 2-D characters and emotions

- set up for no growth

- appears rushed

- plot unclear

- mixing of tenses (I still do it on accident though I try not to)

- unnecessary filler (I do that still too but I’m working on it)

- unrealistic and choppy time passes

- no good plot information given aside from character love interest

That was only what I could come up with in three minutes without referencing the text. If I gave myself ten more minutes I could expand on that list a lot

Please don’t get discouraged when you feel as though you’re not improving !!! You are always improving and the best way to know that you’re improving is to NEVER delete anything you write. It’s good to look back on so you can see growth

The best way for you to improve is to read !!! Keep reading fan fictions or any novel that is well written because you will absorb that grammar and writing style and be able to use some of it for your own !!! Seeing well written things will expand your vocabulary, sentence structure, syntax, and diction. There are so many ways to write the same sentence and the more you read, the more you find. Reading does wonders for your writing

Also practice !!! Even if you don’t post it, do little warm ups for yourself where you write short 300-500 word scenes and try out different styles, descriptions, dialogue techniques, anything. You’ll get more comfortable with how you write and you’ll allow yourself to be able to try new things without getting discouraged easily !!!

If you see a certain writing style you like, try it out !!! There’s no shame in copying a writing style and messing with it to build your own with it. Unless you’re copying word for word, referencing writing styles is a great tool to find your own and to be able to help create your own. Do not try to turn yourself into another author, you may like someone’s writing style, but not like writing it and that’s okay

I’m not any New York bestseller, but if I can encourage at least one person to not give up and keep writing and keep improving, that’s enough. Even if you look at what I posted and think ‘that’s like my writing style’ that’s okay. That style is simply not for me but if that’s the style you like and the one you want to improve on, go for it !!! Writing is an amazing talent and I encourage everyone to keep doing it. Share your writing with me, I’d love to read it !!!

[chaoskirin]

The Seven Seas--Chapter Three

Fandom: Queen Genre: Sci-fi/Gen Rating: PG Chapter 3 Word Count: 1720

Freddie spent the next several hours (and hours and hours) pacing the barn and outlining a plan. For the sake of suspense, said plan will not be described here, although, wonderful readers, it might be described as amazing and daring! Filled with intricate precisiveness and wild creativity! Genius! And most importantly, incredibly unlikely to succeed!

Somewhere around the five o'clock mark, Roger ordered a pizza which never arrived due to the rather remote location of the farm. He spent the next excruciating hour complaining about his insatiable hunger, until John raided the chicken coop and fried some eggs.

Brian was torn between being appalled and relieved. After all, the chickens ought to be allowed to keep their eggs... since they made them, after all. Roger asked Brian what he thought cakes were made of, so Brian swore off cakes for at least the next couple days, at least until he could scrub the vision of affronted chickens out of his mind.

John said "at least they aren't being vaporized," which was quite sobering and put everyone directly back on task.

It should be said that the appearance of aliens on earth had a rather profound effect on Brian, who, up until that point, only hoped aliens existed. Ever the pragmatist, though, he never believed earth would make contact with the various other denizens of the universe until far after he was dead and buried. After all, relative physics still reigned supreme as the dominating theory of everything in the universe. And with no way to travel faster than the speed of light, aliens simply couldn't reach it from wherever they made their home.

Except they had. And they'd dropped by like a very undesirable relative during Christmas celebrations--everyone wanted them gone, but they had to be appeased and placated first. Perhaps even force-fed copious alcohol until they passed out in a peaceful stupor, while the kids drew fake marker mustaches under their noses.

"Do you think," Brian said to John after the four of them split into two groups. "Do you think they'd let me question them about the stars? How they got here? Where they're from?"

John blinked slowly.

"It's not a stupid idea to ask!" Brian insisted. "Just because they want to raze the planet doesn't mean I have to stop learning. And if they really think I'll spill all their secrets then they must not want to destroy me very much. I can't tattle if I'm dead. Don't you think?"

"If I say yes, will you get back to work?" John asked, flicking the end of a soldering iron at him.

Brian grunted and went back to poring over the star map Glasses left behind. He vastly preferred absolutes, whereas Freddie's "plan" just happened to be chock full of conjecture and dumb luck and a good measure of stupidity. Absolute stupidity, which Brian supposed counted as an absolute, just not the kind he wanted. That made him nervous, and therefore talkative.

"It's just..." he said as he tried to figure out Denmark's location in relation to an earth star chart. Thankfully, he never left home without one, just in case. "They could have the secrets of the whole universe stowed away on that little ship of theirs."

"And if they did, and you end up dead?" John asked. "What would you do with them?"

"Well, I'd know."

John rolled his eyes. He'd set aside the soldering gun in favor of a welding torch, and so he was able to dramatically flip the black welding mask down over his eyes to signal the end of conversation. The git. Brian looked away as John ignited the flame.

"I don't even know if it's in the right bloody hemisphere," Brian muttered to himself, returning to the star map. He couldn't read the alien language scrawled out across it, plus it appeared the aliens preferred some odd derivation of base-8 math... which meant he couldn't even parse their coordinates. He was sure it made sense to them, but in the moment, it was infuriating.

That meant he had to manually study every sector of the alien map, then line it up to the earth map. If he could figure out the first sector, he might be able to proceed. The problem was parallax. After all, why would the aliens make a map meant to be viewed from earth?

Damn parallax. Why couldn't all the species in the galaxy just decide on a standard map!

Meanwhile, John got to build... Well. Brian wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't just another cat tree for Freddie's cats.  Freddie assured everyone this little bit of the plan was critical, though. And it was up to Brian to find the proper angle of whatever it was so he could--

Ah. Wait a minute.

I'm sure you're all very bored by now, and I wouldn't blame you. After all, this is just filler really, since one can't just go from aliens arriving to aliens being defeated. The point is, all the great writers in history somehow universally decided that a story can't be told without costing its readers vast amounts of time when they should be doing other things. Say, filling their washing machine with lemonade, or ironing their socks, or stacking teacups on a sleeping cat. Or watching egg whites dry as they drip down the siding of your irritating neighbor's house. Not that the author has ever done that.

In order to create suspense and drama, most writers masterfully fill their stories with plot dynamics. However, this plot is fairly cut and dry as far as stories go, and the author is not masterful in any sense of the word, so she's just decided to waste your time with this rather pointless filler text.

However, as you've been reading this, Brian May--brilliant scientist that he is--has been using his time with all the wisdom and efficiency one would expect from a future astrophysicist. As John continued to weld his rather confusing scaffolding, Brian chanced upon the exact miniscule plot detail he could utilize to make sense of the alien map. Thusly did he shout "Eureka!" ending this particular section of the story.

You're welcome.

---

"You can't just write a whole song in one day," Roger said.

"Well, I don't intend to. We have five days," Freddie returned, straightening a bit in his seat and looking down his nose in haughty confidence. Into the phone, he said "No, I won't hold. I'm Freddie-Fucking-Mercury--What do you mean who??"

The line went dead. Not because the other side had hung up on him, but because rats had chewed clean through the phone line again. Bother of all bothers. If only he had his cats here, the damnable rats wouldn't be such an issue!

"Roger, be a dear and chase the rats off again, would you?" Freddie asked. When cats weren't an option, Rogers did just fine, and as a bonus, they didn't leave rodent corpses on your pillow in the morning. At least Freddie hoped they didn't. He probably should have asked.

"Five days or no," Roger said, returning from his chase, "the pressure must be intense. I mean, if it's going to work, it has to be perfect, doesn't it? No room for error. And you have to trust not only yourself to remember the lyrics, but you also have to have absolute faith in your bass player, and your guitar player, and your drummer who's a bit of a flake."

"Just a bit?"

"Last I checked."

Freddie tut-tutted. "It'll work. Look, it's a short story, and the author always writes happy endings. What makes you think it won't work?"

"Well, I have to be disagreeable, don't I?" Roger asked, flopping down on the couch next to Freddie. "Let's see what you've got so far."

Freddie handed over the notepad.

After a dozen quiet minutes of earnest contemplation, Roger said, "All you've written is the title."

"The Seven Seas of Rhye," Freddie declared. "It's a good title! I was thinking a sort of... Bar song, I guess. Maybe a--"

Roger was shaking his head.

"Oh, what. We've been bleeding out all our creativity lately." Freddie stood, hands on his hips. "There's none left, is there? You're right. Five days to put together a song and get people here so they can bear witness to my amazing plan? It's not long enough. We'll just have to cancel! There shouldn't be consequences for that."

"There probably won't be," Roger agreed. "Just the annihilation of humanity, I guess. Nothing major."

Freddie pursed his lips. Yes, that was a problem. He'd have to power through. As always.

"Look," Roger said, pulling a comic book out of his back pocket. He always carried one, just in case. We've got aliens on earth.

"Rhye."

"Whatever. We've got aliens. Make it epic."

Freddie paged through the comic book. Although the cover seemed to hint at an epic space battle far into the future with high-tech space suits and murderous monsters, the inner pages had been replaced by porn. Porn Freddie didn't even particularly like. "Roger," he said, holding up the least scandalous image he could find.

"Well, you weren't supposed to open it." Roger at least had the wherewithal to appear sheepish as he snatched the magazine out of Freddie's grasp. "If it gets boring in the barn, do you think I'm going to want to read comics?"

"I'd hope that you'd be writing like we're supposed to be," Freddie said, curling his nose up as Roger tossed the magazine on the end table. "Not--"

He paused as inspiration struck, and a single phrase popped into his mind.

I Stand Before You Naked to the Eye.

The basis of the song began to form around it. "Listen," Freddie said, handing Roger the phone, which was still not connected to anything. "First, I need you to take over securing the advertising to get us a proper audience. Make some calls. Get the people here. Can you do that?"

Roger nodded. "And?"

"Yes. Second, I need you to never, ever tell anyone that I got the idea for this song after looking at your raunchy porn."

Roger smiled. Narrowed his eyes. "Put I'm In Love With My Car on the B-Side to Bohemian Rhapsody and you've got yourself a deal."

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #209: The Resurrection Stone

July, 1981

“The Resurrection Stone: will it save the universe -- or destroy it?”

Well, the universe hasn’t been destroyed, at least circa the comics I read this morning. But it hasn’t really been saved either.

Still, pretty intriguing tagline. Pretty intriguing cover.

And written by J.M. DeMatteis. One of the Kraven’s Last Hunt guys. He doesn’t seem to do a lot of Avengers.

Let’s see how he do Earth’s Mightiest Team of Specifically This Four On the Cover.

We start with some silent intriguing intrigue as an alien ship crashes into Nevada and an alien crawls from the alien wreckage. Instead of distributing rings to people, he gets shot by a green guy who likes purple. I sure can’t think of several people that this applies to.

The shooter checks some possibly alien PDA but then beams up as the ship explodes.

How baffling.

Ok, J.M. DeMatteis. You have my interest.

So we start chapter one-

Chapter one? What is it with fill-ins and putting chapters in Avengers books. That three dooms one from a while back also did this.

Anyway, chapter one of this normal length Avengers adventure: “Love... and Death!”

So on specifically April 10th, 1981 2:17 PM (a fact which we must firmly ignore in these sliding timescale days), Beast has brought an old flame to Avengers Mansion to meet Wonder Man, Vision, and Scarlet Witch.

Presumably all of the other Avengers couldn’t make it. Or Beast didn’t want them meeting Vera.

Oh, and she’s not a new old flame.

Vera Cantor goes back to X-Men #19 in 1966. She knew him before he blue it! And she was the one who got away because mutant biz kept getting in the way.

But they had a chance meeting in a Soho bar and they’re giving it another shot!

I guess Beast is finally settling down from his wild party dating multiple women at a time days.

And y’know what? He and Vera are cute together.

Beast is exuberantly in love with her. He’s apparently been talking about nothing else for weeks.

Scarlet Witch: “Vision -- just look at the Beast’s eyes -- I’ve never seen them sparkle so. He must be in love.”

Beast is so excited he’s bouncing on the couch and jumping all over the place and bumping into Jarvis. Knocking the tea tray out of the butler’s hands.

Beast, pls. Reign in.

He does manage to catch the tray in his feet though. No spilling.

Its a bit weird that Jarvis is here to be bumped into. He’s supposed to have one of his days off to visit his mom and get some of that “near-mythical Yorkshire pudding.”

But he brushes off the question with concern over the bad impression all of this is giving the guest.

Vera doesn’t mind though. She’s used to his obstreperous (“noisy and difficult to control”) nature and finds how energetic he is to be part of why he’s so cute.

The blue fuzz surely does not hurt!

Oh. And then Vera takes a sip of the tea Jarvis brought and immediately keels over dead.

The butler did it??

Jarvis. You made it too strong!

No, no. Surely not. Jarvis would never make such an error or miss out on Yorkshire pudding.

“Jarvis” is actually... A SKRULL!

Beast wastes no time slamming the Skrull into the wall but said Skrull says ‘hey you want the woman to live again maybe keep your hands to yourself.’

And Beast backs off, sensing some truth in the Skrull’s tone.

The Skrull: “Ah -- that’s a bit more like it. Even in this vile atmosphere, I do so value my ability to breathe!”

By the by the by, this guy goes unnamed until 2008 in a Secret Invasion infobook but I’m not about that. His name is Jaddak.

Jaddak channels his inner-Darkseid and sits in the comfiest chair provocatively and begins on THE TALE OF THE RESURRECTION STONE!

Seems that millennia ago there was a space civilization in space that merged high science and high sorcery to bring an epoch of peace and plenitude to all then known worlds.

The epoch of peace and plentitude looks a lot like someone jammed Medieval knights and castles into rocket times.

Which I guess fits the whole union of science and magic thing.

And then the greatest scientist-wizard, Tus'Au, invented the Resurrection Stone and ruined everything.

The stone, as the name implied, could bring life back to the dead. And while that doesn’t seem too impressive by today’s standards where plot devices to resurrect the dead are so numerous (including just teleporting out of heaven) that it doesn’t bear counting, remember that this was an earlier, more innocent time. A filler time.

Everyone wanted this Resurrection Stone and a great war ignited that eventually ruined a thousand, thousand planets.

Amidst that nonsense, the stone itself was lost forever.

Until an Anthigorite archeologist named Krru, like, did some serious research. Around about 5,000 years worth of research. And thanks to all his book learning, he eventually found the stone.

Which was unfortunate because Jaddak had been stalking him this whole time, sure that he’d eventually find it.

He chased Krru over twelve solar systems, finally blasting him out of the sky over Earth. But when Jaddak searched Krru’s ship and checked the recorder-log, as we saw in the opening two pages, he learned that Krru had decided that the Resurrection Stone was inherently corruptive and should have remained lost.

You know an ancient magical stone is bad news when an archeologist goes ‘actually you don’t belong in a museum.’

So when Krru was shot down, as a last ditch effort, he broke the stone in two and sent both halves into Earth’s past so they’d be lost forever.

I have so many questions.

If they were sent to the past then they’d be in the present now unless destroyed in the past. That’s how time works.

Two, dick move, Krru. You think this thing is inherently corruptive and you drop it into Earth’s past, possibly altering the timeline? Fuck you.

But with the stones in the past forever inaccessible clearly, Jaddak decided, hey this should be the Avengers’ problem and not mine.

Jaddak: “I knew then that I needed... pawns. Powerful pawns.”

Wonder Man: “Pawns... as in -- Avengers. And that’s why you struck down an innocent woman?!”

Jaddak: “It seemed a splendid idea at the time!”

Pffffffft.

Ok, I know. I know. This is a terrible situation in-universe but also out of universe because they brought back Vera only to immediately stuff her into the fridge.

But this skrull going ‘look it seemed like a good idea at the time’ cracks me up.

Seemed like a good idea doesn’t cut the mustard with Wonder Man who just hauls off and punches Jaddak into the bookcase.

Vision even verbally pats him on the back for it.

Vision: “Well played, Simon. -- There was no need to listen to this madman's rantings any longer.”

But as the Avengers congregate to stomp on Jaddak’s head a few times, I presume, Beast stops them.

Cradling Vera’s body he says he’ll do anything to bring her back.

;__;

And that brings us to chapter two: “DOOM in the DARK AGES!”

Let me just get ahead of any hypothetical questions I wouldn’t even be able to hear until after the fact anyway. Tragically Doctor Doom does not show up.

Whoof, a lot of exposition at the beginning of chapter 2. Because a lot of stuff happened off-panel, between pages.

Real Jarvis had been contacted to make sure he’s okay. The four Avengers took a Quinjet to the Fantastic Four and told Reed Richards what’s going on. Reed went ‘sure I’ll lend you Doctor Doom’s time machine and send you to the coordinates a SKRULL gave you.’ And Jaddak went to go wait in his spaceship with Vera’s body.

So now the Avengers are in September 16, 1348, England. Prompting Vision to start giving a lecture on the bubonic plague.

Scarlet Witch: “Darling, please. Not now.”

Save it for the bedroom, Vizh.

The locals respond, understandably enough, with hostility to the people that just appeared in thin air dressed like clowns. They call the Avengers demons and unholy creatures and tell them to tell a wizard Devlunn to fuck off and that he can’t have any more of their dead.

Wanda decides that explaining time travel and superheroes from the FUTURE is more trouble than its worth. Instead, she plays along.

Scarlet Witch: “Devlunn? We are far greater than that upstart! He is a mere wind -- we are the storm!”

And then she fires off some of her bolts to cow the villagers so she can ask if anyone wants to take her to “this weakling Devlunn.”

See Wanda figured out based on the one comment that someone toying with the dead might be linked to the half of the Resurrection Stone they’re here to find. Or one would hope someone toying with the dead has a dumb magic reason for it!

One of the villagers does volunteer to take Wanda to Devlunn.

Villager: “I pray you four are as powerful as you appear -- for it will take great magicks indeed to best this lunatic child.”

Because, yup, Devlunn is a ten-year old child.

And yup, he has half of the Resurrection Stone.

He also has a big crowd of locals begging him to return their dead since they did promise to follow him and give him all that they own. Really, that’s a fair trade for some moldy old corpses, right?

Devlunn: “Why should I listen to you? When this talisman fell from the sky and whispered to me -- I knew then it could make me a god! And gods do as they please!”

Welp.

Beast: “No one should play god, Devlunn. -- Least of all obnoxious little boys! C’mon guys -- let’s get this over with!”

And Wonder Man punches the tower Devlunn is standing on and Vision SOLAR BEAMs it and a ten year old child falls off a tower.

And then he just stops in midair and floats.

Not sure why the Resurrection Stone also has flying powers. That seems beyond the scope of what it was designed to do.

That’s like if you had a scroll of fireball that also did your taxes.

Yes, that would be amazing. But the two things aren’t related things.

Anyway, Devlunn takes these four weirdos in stride.

Devlunn: “Ah -- so I’ve impressed you with my little trick! Good! For, you see, I know who you are! You are spirits from heaven to test me to see if I’m worthy of godhood -- to see if my talisman can do more than merely hold me on high like some wingless bird! You wish a show of strength -- a little play! And what you wish -- Devlunn-the-god shall grant!”

And then he sicks a horde of zombies on the fearless foursome.

The four realize the truth of Devlunn’s half of the Resurrection Stone. Because this is a cool magic artifact that conceptually splits in half instead of just physically or in terms of output or whatever.

Devlunn’s half gives life to the dead but only life without the spark of the soul. Aka, zombies.

Also, not very impressive zombies. They’re more pitiable than formidable. And Devlunn isn’t much of a necromancer.

The Avengers fight them. Well, except for Vision. Vision just lets them flail against him ineffectually.

Beast rushes through the pack of zombies, even grabbing one with his thighs to toss out of the way?, towards Devlunn and then takes the 1/2 Resurrection Stone like candy from a baby.

Revealing Devlunn to not be a great and powerful wizard but rather a very sad child.

Devlunn: “My stone give it to me! Give it back, I say! I was... nothing until it came to me! My family -- my friends -- all died! But the stone made me important! It gave me control over death! It made me safe! Please give it back! Please -- I want to be a god! I have to be a god!”

And then he collapses to the ground and starts crying while the Avengers are whisked away into the future by Reed.

So, that’s sad.

And I don’t imagine chapter three (“Rosenblatt’s Dance!”) is going to be any cheerier.

It’s now April 13, 1945. Dachau.

So. Yeah.

The Avengers blink into existence right in the middle of some Allied troops chasing some Nazis. And not being ones to miss a chance to go ape shit on some Nazis, Wonder Man goes ape shit on some Nazis.

Unlike the dark ages peeps, the Allied soldiers see some random people with superpowers wearing bright clothes and go ‘ah, superheroes’ and ask if they’re with the Invaders or the Liberty Legion.

Wonder Man: “Right. I’m... uh... Captain America.”

Phew. Timeline secure.

Anyway, they’re glad to see some superheroes because they’ve got a messy situation at Dachau. And its nothing that punching Nazis can fix.

So, yeah this is set at a concentration camp so its not going to be particularly happy.

The one who has the other half of the Resurrection Stone is a man named Rosenblatt. And this half of the stone also has half the power of the full stone. But in this case it returns the soul to a lifeless husk.

And Rosenblatt has used it to revive his dead wife and daughters and he’s joyfully dancing with their lifeless bodies while they beg him to let them go and free them of this existence.

It’d be really messed up if the usual superhero methods had to be applied here but thankfully the less employed but still common superhero empathy is in the quiver.

Beast approaches the guy and just talks to him.

Beast: “You have to set their souls free.”

Rosenblatt: “Are you the devil, come to take them? Well -- they’ve been in hell long enough. They’ll never be yours!”

Beast: “Look at them, my friend -- they will never be yours either. Not the way you knew them. The way you cherished them. Give me the jewel. P-please...”

And his words get through to the man who hands the half Resurrection Stone off to Beast.

And as before, the instant they have the stone, Reed yanks them forward in time.

Y’know. This only occurred to me on my second read. Maybe if Reed hadn’t instantly pulled them out of that time, it would have occurred to Beast ‘hey wait I have both halves now, I could combine them and bring this guy’s family back to life for real and not in some cursed half existence.’

Doesn’t really work with how the book goes, but it’s a thought.

And now for the thrilling conclusion: Chapter 4 The Cost!

April 10th, 1981, SPACE.

So we’re back in the then present.

A Quinjet flies into space, as Quinjets can apparently do, to meet with Jaddak’s spaceship. Jaddak contacts them over the space Zoom and tells Beast that he’ll have to teleport over alone with the Resurrection Stone.

The other Avengers think this is reeeeeaaally fishy and don’t really like the idea of letting Jaddak get the Resurrection Stone but they can’t tell Beast what to do. This is his weird fill-in issue quest and it has to be his decision.

So Beast teleports over alone. And finds himself in a chamber with a video screen. Skrull ain’t taking any chances.

He’s hidden behind an unbreachable wall. Through the video screen he tells Beast to deposit the stone in a portal which will send it over to the skrull who will test it for authenticity.

Then, he’ll use it to revive Vera. Swearsies.

Beast: “And why should I trust you?”

Jaddak: “Because I am a Skrull. Treacherous and savage as my people are -- we value honor more than life.”

Doubt.

Beast pauses to consider the power of the Resurrection Stone. Thinks about Devlunn and his zombies and Rosenblatt’s dance.

Beast: “Vera... I’m sorry. But this power is too much for any man to hold. I hope you can forgive me for what I’m about to do -- and I hope I can forgive myself!”

And then Beast slams the two halves of the Resurrection Stone together, KRUNCHing them into dust.

Jaddak: “Y-you crushed it! But that is... impossible! My plan was perfection! The vagaries of human love should have assured me victory!”

Wonder Man: “There are higher forms of love, Skrull -- but don’t strain your brain trying to figure out what they are!”

Because, yes, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, and Vision are also here now.

Vision intangibled onto the ship while Jaddak was distracted and used Jaddak’s own teleporters to bring the other two aboard.

As for that unbreachable wall?

Nah. Totally breachable. Wonder Man peels it open like nothing.

Jaddak tries to use Vera’s dead body as a hostage but Scarlet Witch blasts the gun apart in his hands with a SQUAKK.

So there may be a bird that used to be a gun loose on the ship.

And that just leaves one thing to take care of.

Beast jumps at Jaddak and starts slamming him around.

Scarlet Witch protests that Beast is going to kill Jaddak but Wonder Man tells her that Beast has to left off some steam.

Wonder Man: “He has to vent some steam or he’ll really snap! Besides you know Hank as well as I do -- that Skrull will get some much-needed lumps -- but that’s all!”

Beast: “Yeah. That’s our Beastie. A hero to the end. Can’t even bring myself to play the old ‘eye for an eye’ game. Not that it would do me one stinking bit of good. I’ve lost her -- forever.”

AND THEN AN EPILOGUE. Later that day at the Baxter Building.

Reed has been involved between panels this whole story and now he gets exposition exposited to him to fill in the gaps and in return he’s going to exposit too.

Wonder Man explains that he, Wanda, and Vision always intended to destroy the Resurrection Stone if Beast went through with the deal with Jaddak. Not that they thought he would. Knowing Hank McCoy and all.

But its a subversion of the ‘this is something he must do himself’ trope. Where they left the decision in Beast’s hands but also planned to go over his head if he made the wrong decision and put the scary power of phoenix down in the hands of the Skrulls.

Gotta keep your friends honest or something.

So now Reed has news. Weird news about Vera.

The poison that Jaddak used was super rare, so rare that Jaddak didn’t even know how it worked. He just had to be a murder hipster and goofed up.

Its actually a slow-acting poison that takes days to fully kill someone so Vera is technically only mostly dead. She could theoretically be cured one day.

So Reed has thrown her into a suspended animation tube and hopes to come up with an antidote eventually (which he doesn’t but Vera ends up cured anyway in Defenders #105 about a year later in another story by J.M. DeMatteis).

What is it about weird filler stories and having someone end up in a freezer tube to be maybe cured later?

Reed Richards: I know it’s not much of a chance, Beast -- but at least there’s hope.”

Beast: “There’s hope -- !”

Follow @essential-avengers​ because one day I’ll be up to date on that blog and it’ll have Essential Avengers stuff and no miscellaneous reblogs of other stuff. Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe? Also like and reblog if you like to reblog.

[charmingturkeysandwich]

I Could Use a Love Song (2/22): where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases

Pairing: Emma Swan/Killian Jones (AU) Words: 3k(ish) Rating: T for this chapter, I’d say. (M overall) Chapter Summary: The band’s first day with their new roadie gets off to a shaky start.

Read on AO3.

---

Having grown used to shitty sleeping situations through foster homes, homelessness, couch surfing, and now touring, Emma awoke the next morning refreshed and ready to fight.

Yep, fight. Because the prior evening she’d been exhausted and hovering in that weird stage of drunk where you’re basically pre-hungover, and life had thrown a hot roadie at her. Except it wasn’t life that had done that. It was David. David who in the year of our lord 2019 most fucking certainly had a cell phone and could have shot her a text that a stranger was going to crash her quiet night alone.

Not that Killian crashed in any sense beyond sleep. They were seemingly both out before even the first song had finished playing through her speakers and he was still eyes-closed and breathing steady now that Emma was crawling over the seat and out the door, dead set on properly raging about the ridiculousness of this decision in addition to the lack of communication that shouldn’t exist among people who literally write words for a fucking living.

Seriously. How hard is it to send a text? Don’t wanna do your dirty work yourself, you can just tell Siri to piss of your bandmate on your behalf.

A little warning might have been nice. But she got none. So they weren’t getting any either.

“Rise and shine, motherfuckers!” Emma squawked as she flung open the door to David and Mary Margaret’s bedroom (they knew she had a copy of it, so really they should have thought twice before giving her no warning that she was going to have to deal with some weird ass alternate universe, very fuckable Captain Hook every single day for the foreseeable future. And pay him.

“Emma!” Mary Margaret gasped, yanking the comforter over what was probably her bare chest, but Emma didn’t bother to even glance at her. Accomplice in lack-of-communication, probably… but David was her object of fury.

Speaking of… “What the hell are you doing?!” he shouted, more confused than angry at her intrusion.

“I have a leather-jacket-wearing bone to pick with you, sir.”

“Aw, shit. You met Liam’s brother then?”

“Met him, slept with him, you know, the basic first steps in an employer-employee relationship.”

“Emma! You had sex with Killian?!” Mary Margaret sounded positively scandalized, which made sense for her own personality in addition to the fact that Emma hadn’t slept with anyone in … well it would probably be measured in years and not months, so. It would have been a shock if it were true.

“No, mom, but he slept in the van with me, which is my happy place. Not a place for strays.”

David stood up from the bed, raking his fingers through his hair in what looked like frustration or perhaps the pain of a hangover headache (good).

“We’re all strays, Emma. Can’t you be a little more accepting?”

“Can’t you be a little more with the warning?! You’re lucking I didn’t punch him when he approached me in a dark fucking alley, David.” Which was true. After much of the shit she suffered in her younger years, she didn’t take a chance or give anyone the benefit of the doubt if they seemed to have ill intentions.

He paused, daring blankly at her before taking a swig of the water next to their little bed. Light was just barely filtering through their curtains, so it was still early. No rush to hit the road quite yet, still time to get breakfast and drink their weights in coffee.

Usually the mornings were more pleasant than this.

Usually it was just the five of them in a diner, and usually she was listening to their post-gig stories, not sharing much of her own.

“Where did you leave him, then? Or did you already fire him?”

“Now, David, how could I fire someone I never even hired?! You remember we voted that we didn’t have the money to add staff.”

At that, Mary Margaret perked up, her back straightening as her mascara-smudged face scrunched in guilt. “That one is actually on me. We were on FaceTime with Killian and he’s just so… he’s in a bad place, Emma, and he needs money and people and we couldn’t just let him… “

“Go to the pound with the other strays? Fine. I get it. He doesn’t seem like the worst person in the world. But, like, give a girl a heads-up? And to answer your question, David, I left him soundly asleep in the van. I’m not a goddamn monster.”

Emma stormed out with no real destination in mind, just a deep craving for coffee and a bear claw and space from any other living human who might attempt to converse with her when she needed a minute to wallow in her semi-justified rage.

-

Of all the people to find her, of fucking course it was Killian.

Known him 12 hours or less and he was already the biggest pain in her ass.

“Swan, fancy seeing you here!” His voice was bright despite the wrinkles in this clothes and the hair that was no longer ‘artfully mussed,’ but more… hurricane-ravaged.

“Why are you so chipper?” is all she croaked back in response.

“Well I’ve already had an unpleasant encounter with Brother Dave and figured I would try to make this one a little less fraught with tension and don’t get any ideas about Emma you wanker.” Killian plopped down across from her, already clutching a coffee from somewhere that definitely was not the diner she’d wandered into and been sulking at for at least 2 hours.

“Why would he yell at you? And why are you calling him brother? And… just why?”

“Apologies, Swan, I assumed you’d had enough coffee and sugar to cope with me by now. I was warned of that. You see, apparently I was supposed to just go ‘sleep on a bench in a park’ or something to that effect and then not introduce myself to you or the rest of the crew until morning. Silly me. So David, who appears to think of himself as your father but who was best friends with my brother, proceeded to lecture me about how I’m not allowed to get in your pants. As if you didn’t have a say in the matter. Don’t worry, darling, I clarified that you will without a doubt never care for me beyond tolerance and he seemed to unbunch his knickers.”

“You know, Jones, if I’m not your love I’m probably not your darling, either.”

“Goodness sakes, woman, can you perhaps glean the important information from my babbling and not focus the filler?”

“Fine. Fuck your filler. We’re probably late for leaving by now, though,” Emma said, glancing at the clock on the wall and then at her message-filled phone. She rose from the table slowly, downing the rest of her lukewarm coffee and shoving a doughnut toward Killian in the process. “Shall we?”

He did some type of bow/curtsey nonsenense and flourished his arm toward the door as if to say ladies first and Emma stomped right past him, already 110% fed up with his weird country boy/Jane Austen hero attempt at chivalry when she knew he was no gentleman and she was no goddamn lady.

-

It appeared that the new guy had already met the rest of the team, Ruby fist bumping him and Graham giving him a hungover nod to acknowledge his return. David and Mary Margaret were blessedly silent about any of the morning’s arguments and simply hopped in the driver and passenger seats so they could meander over to the next tiny ass New York town full of Their People.

Some days were harder than others when it came to the places they played. None of them were the hellish ‘hometown’ she’d steadfastly refused to ever revisit, but each seemed to capture some kind of echo of her past. It was really a shame that scent was so tied to memory, because dive bars were smelly places. The right combination of Marlboro Menthol Lights, Miller, and whatever was in that black bottle from Avon and suddenly Emma was back at the Buckhorn, drinking to forget the hurt she hadn’t quite sustained yet, but was inevitably coming.

She always got past it. Rage was good like that, strong enough to overcome the heartbreak of individual memories. Whiskey helped, too.

Graham and Ruby were sprawled on either side of the middle row in the shabby van, both passed out (clearly they hadn’t done enough sleeping wherever it is either of them had gone the night before). David and Mary Margaret, meanwhile, were quietly singing to each other from the front, songs too cheesy for the other three bandmates to ever agree to allow to be performed on stage.

So that left her and Killian, the only two life forms currently active in actual reality.

“So what’s your story, Jones?

He rolled his head on his shoulders, sliding his line of sight from the video to meet her (probably too-harsh) stare. “What makes you think I have a story?”

“You’re on the road with a country band. In my experience you don’t get to that point without some stuff preceding it. Come on, Jones. Someone stole your truck, shot your dog, or screwed your wife. Which one?”

“Where are your manners, young lady, you definitely take a bloke to dinner before you ask for his Tragic Backstory. That’s got to be written somewhere. For shame!” he whisper-shouted, quite overdramatically.

Maybe he’d gotten his heart broken at drama camp.

“What else am I supposed to ask you? I don’t have much information to go on here.”

“Why don’t you start with, ‘Killian, it’s so nice to meet you. How about you tell me a little about yourself?’”

Her answering eye roll reminded her she hadn’t properly removed her makeup from the night before, not having taken her usual five minutes in the lovers’ hotel room bathroom to allow for proper skin care. Fuck, her pores were going to be pissed.

“I’m not quite that polite, but fine. We’ll have it your way. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

That “little about himself” went on for about an hour, covering everything from his love of football to how underrated asiago cheese was on casual dining menus. They disagreed on silly subjects like the best fast food and what to take on a deserted island. They pretty much only agreed that David and Mary Margaret were insufferable and that love was for losers.

(And yes, that was the closest she got to unlocking even one small detail about his Tragic Backstory.)

They talked all the way to the next hole-in-the-wall bar, which did, in fact, like it might have some holes in it in the light of day.

“Thank the fucking lord we’re finally here. Will you two shut up now?” Ruby moaned into the seat cushion, apparently not as knocked out as Emma had assumed from her unmoving silence the entire ride.

“’s not our fault you two oafs don’t use the nighttime for sleeping,” Killian snarked back at her.

Hmm. Maybe they’d gotten more acquainted than Emma had realized.

Add that to the pile of Killian Jones-related mysteries.

-

Graham had been so exhausted, he didn’t even awake when the van emptied out, still snoozing even as they hauled all their shit into the bar. Just to be a jerk, Emma even tossed a drum stick at him. But he just grumbled and turned, unfazed by her minor assault.

“Hope he lost sleep for the good reason, if you know what I mean,” Killian said, as he bumped his shoulder into hers. He was carrying a guitar case in his right hand and had his left forearm wrapped around one of the boxes carrying electrical equipment.

“Yes, in that tone, I’m pretty sure people up in Vermont know what you mean?”

“I’m not sure about that one. Have you been to Vermont? I don’t think I’ve ever met a fuckable person from that whole state.”

“Don’t say that around David. I’m 99% sure he’d fuck Bernie Sanders.”

The two of them laughed so hard they almost dropped their very expensive equipment, especially when David, as if on cue, turned back toward them: “what’s in Vermont? There’s this ski place I’ve wanted to go to…”

Their laughter turned to near howling as poor, out-of-the-loop David rambled on about Mt. Snow being a great place to take a date and how exactly that could be so funny that two people who’d met last night had already been reduced to giggling middle schoolers.

-

Mary Margaret and Killian quickly started setting up for their set, even though they had a few hours until people would actually show (she was a worrier, and it was technically his first day on the job). So that gave the other slackers some time to rest and eat greasy food and hopefully get properly buzzed before the show so Emma didn’t have a random panic attack at some dude wearing a blue plaid shirt with pink Vans like Neal used to, once upon a time.

Catching up on the night before was usually their breakfast routine, but having avoided that, Emma assumed she’d just end up not knowing how Graham and Ruby had spent their time. Thankfully, both were perfectly happy to provide a secondary replay of their evenings.

Well, Ruby was happy to. See, she hadn’t done anything scandalous the night before. No fucking strangers for her! Turns out, a friend of hers from college lived in that little town and she’d gone over to her place to catch up. Friends old and new were there and she mostly missed out on sleep for conversation and a few truly ridiculous board games (who played Chutes and Ladders when they were plastered?).

Graham, on the other hand, had not had as enjoyable an evening. He’d met a girl, a very pretty girl, and she’d asked him back to her place. He had enthusiastically agreed right up until he was pounding into her against her kitchen counter only to be interrupted by her boyfriend. Thankfully there was no macho how dare you touch my girlshowdown, but it did leave Graham with a bad case of blue balls and nowhere to sleep.

“Wait! Why didn’t you come to the van with me? I don’t bite,” Emma protested as Graham was describing wandering the roads with streetlights until it was appropriately light enough to be breakfast time.

“You don’t think that’s the first place I went? I peeked my head in the fan and saw his shaggy ass and thought you might actually have taken the leap and met someone. No chance in hell I was going to spook you if you finally found a guy you didn’t want to murder on first sight.”

She yelped out a very offended hey, but deep down, he wasn’t wrong. He and David were just the only two men to ever prove to her they were interested in her as a human being and not a punching bag or human fleshlight. She was thankful for finding them and realizing that the whole not all men has some merit, but not enough to take any chances on a guy.

“Well now that you know your assessment couldn’t have been further from the truth, I bet you’re feeling pretty silly for missing out on sleep.”

“No, I stand by my decision. But, yeah, tonight I’m crashing in the van with you two. Unless, I mean, if you ever want privacy with him…”

“YES!” Ruby squealed. “You two would make the cutest babies. You know, someday. With little leather jackets and horrendous attitudes. It would be legit adorable.”

From the corner of her eye she could see David’s face turning fuchsia and she was reminded of the speech he’d apparently given Killian that morning (as if she needed protecting). Not even close.

“Hah, very funny there, Rubes. You think he’s so good looking, you can go for it.”

“Oh, no you will not!” David shouted. “No casual sex within the band.”

(Hey, at least he was yelling at someone who wasn’t her.)

“But you and Mary Margaret!” she protested.

“Nothing casual about that. Marry Killian, fine. I’ll throw the bridal shower. But do not fuck him for fun. We need him and he doesn’t need another mess.”

Before Emma had a chance to ask David to elaborate on that clear Tragic Backstory Hint, Mary Margaret and Killian plopped down at the table, set-up apparently finished.

“So… what do we do now?” Killian asked, the blunt end of his left arm fiddling with the thick ring on his right thumb.

Mary Margaret, David, and Graham collectively responded, “Eat!”

Ruby and Emma were more of the let’s get drunk frame of mind and instead replied, “Shots!”

So the crew of six ordered shots for 12 and their first official day as a team had begun.

By the time they were being announced for the stage, Emma was red-faced and stumbling, Mary Margaret was giggling about the word “banana” and Killian had already told sixteen different dirty jokes, all met with a deeper scowl from Emma each time.

-

That night Graham’s drumming was just a tad out of sync and David forgot that he wasn’t actually supposed to sing the girl parts of their one duet-style song, but none of that mattered. The crowd was wild, totally tuned in and screaming their hearts out right along with them. Halfway through their set, just before Emma relinquished lead vocals to Mary Margaret for Sappy Hour, she clutched the microphone in her hand, swaying as she returned it to the stand at the edge of the stage, yelling, “I love everyone in this bar!”

This whole ‘having friends’ thing just got better and better every single day.

Especially when puking in the dumpster at 3am. You find out who your friends are, right about then, and only Ruby was mockingly taking SnapChat videos. Killian got her water and Graham held her hair and the last thing she remembered before she passed out was telling the other strays she was just so glad they all somehow found each other.

[zdbztumble]

“Kingdom Hearts II” revisited: Final Thoughts

There’s an obvious logic to having the Drive Form named Final appear so late in the game, but I think it’s introduced too late. By the time I got it to trigger, the Door had already appeared, and I’d decided that there really wasn’t much left in the other worlds of the game that I wanted to do. That meant there wasn’t much opportunity to play around with the Final Form, or level it up, outside of base grinding, something I always hate doing in any game. I do like Final Form, but it should have come earlier in the game to give the player the most value.

And speaking of final - that final boss is really...lame. As in, not fun to play and not satisfying on a story level. You can say a lot about every KH game that’s come after this - and I have, and will, at considerable length - but at least each of them presents a final boss who is a primary character of that game, in a recognizable form, with (somewhat) motivated stages of transformation. Here in KH II, we have to fight buildings, blasters, reactor cores, those bomb things from the Gummi levels (which, I admit, I appreciated - bringing those into the main gameplay), the armored figure in a chair twice, and a dragon-like mecha before we finally get a shot at Xemnas as we know him (in fabulous zebra robes), in a battle full of reaction commands and triggers that seem intentionally designed to make Riku look like a badass at Sora’s expense.

None of these stages are all that hard IMO, nor are any of them that engaging. The brief section where you play as Riku is a low point for me, due to his limited moveset and trouble navigating the space. I’m not opposed to alternating which character you play as during a final boss, but the execution of the idea here is terrible. Denying any role in the final battle to Kairi and King Mickey is a bigger problem, and I actually refused to have Riku in my party until required to because of that. I’m convinced the staff behind this game want players to use him, but I say - if you’re going to ignore every possible opportunity you give yourselves to have the Destiny Islands trio together in a party, then I’m not going to play with your Creators’ Pet. (And he is exactly that. I may have softened on Riku over the years, but he - and Axel, and half the Organization - are textbook examples of a creative team letting their fondness for characters supersede what’s actually best for them in a narrative.)

Of course, the battle itself isn’t all there is to the finale, and there’s more right than wrong to the story here. For one thing, Roxas and Namine get a nice denouement, one that makes it quite clear how they feel - and what they choose - about rejoining with their original selves. As someone who was bothered by the Riku/Namine business at the end of KH III, due to memories of this game, I can concede that there isn’t a whole lot to Roxas and Namine’s relationship here. Their scenes at the beginning are emotional, and their scene at the end is sweet, but their interaction is very limited. The mere fact that they are the Nobodies of Sora and Kairi does a lot of the heavy lifting for their relationship, and that bond is strong enough - and, at this point in the series, still written well enough - to sell the idea, but only just. I daresay this is something that Days could and should have addressed, but we’ll get to that another time.

The lead-up to the final boss provides nice moments between Kairi and Riku, Sora and Kairi, Sora and Riku, and one wonderful moment between the three of them. Setting aside the fact that the whole final boss should have been a second moment for the trio, and the game’s pandering to Riku’s prowess during the fight - the scenes between Sora and Riku after defeating Xemnas are quite well-done, and very effectively illustrate how their friendship has healed and reached a new equilibrium. Even better than that, however, is the game’s final scene. From Kairi’s letter reappearing as the key to the light and the enthusiastic greetings from the Disney cast, to the last flashes of Roxas and Namine and the final exchange between Sora and Kairi (which has some of the best voice acting those two VAs have done in the entire series), it’s an absolutely beautiful finale. The bittersweet, open, and uncertain finale of KH I is still the emotional high point of the series in my eyes, and I continue to applaud the game’s staff for daring such an ending; the way KH II ends is much closer to what one probably would have expected of KH I. But the happy ending of KH II is very much an earned one, and it’s an effective cap, not just on this game, but on everything done in the series up to that point. Kairi’s past remains mysterious and Maleficent is still unaccounted for, but the chain of tragedies set off by Ansem’s research is ended, the last traces of Xehanort are defeated, the worlds are at peace, and the three friends whose lives were torn apart are finally healed, whole, and together again, ready for a new adventure.

...Or, at least that’s what should have happened.

Back when I first played Kingdom Hearts II - fresh off of KH I, unaware that CoM even existed - it was, without question, my preferred game of the two. I would’ve even called it my favorite video game of all time (which wouldn’t have meant much - even now, it’s a very short list of video games that I’ve played from beginning to end.) I would’ve said the same after the second time I played through it, even as certain nagging doubts crept into my mind. Several years and the rest of the series later, I can’t give KH II that level of praise. 

Kingdom Hearts is a series where the first truly is the best, at least so far. Like CoM before it, KH II either introduces or continues trends and ideas that would bring later games down, and they all start to grate here. Elements like the secret reports and Summons lose their motivation in-story, and in the former case become a lazy way to toss out exposition that should have been part of the gameplay and cutscenes. For the first time, certain Disney worlds are saddled with stiff and uninspired re-tellings of their movie plots, devoid of room for Sora to make a difference. The pacing is uneven and it’s easy to lose sight of the main story during certain Disney worlds. Dialogue is often clunky, and fan service and pandering to Creators’ Pets hurts significant moments of the story. A lot of potential in the backstory of Roxas and the fate of Namine is left untapped. The trend of offering Kairi the will and ability to be more involved only to ignore the opportunity continues, Riku’s reintroduction to the group has issues, and Sora is caught in an awkward transition between the hero of the first came and the idiotic and ineffectual would-be messiah of later games.

With all of that said, though...I still love this game.

On paper, entries like Dream Drop Distance or KH III might’ve had greater ambition in the amount or kind of story they tried to tell, but in the actual presentation of the story, KH II is far more daring. From the prolonged opening sequence spent with a new character to the slow burn on the revelation of the Organization’s plans, KH II is quite unconventional in its story structure, and it often works to the game’s favor. Leaving so much of the year between KH I and II untold, even with CoM, is mystery done right, in a way that feels open to speculation and possibilities rather than heavy-handed teasing and baiting for spin-offs. This is the only time in the series where Maleficent and Pete make for an equal and compelling third party, and having that third force at play makes for another off-beat structural element that’s ultimately satisfying, even with the not-insignificant lag during the back half of the first Disney pass. The Organization being a collective villain rather than a single figure (even if Xemnas was its instigator) is a nice differentiation from KH I and CoM, and how pathetic the villains ultimately turn out to be gives them a nice degree of pathos - though that pathos isn’t carried too far.

While KH II is a few steps down the dark road, it hasn’t hit the abyss yet, and things that start to look problematic here are still strong overall. Some of the Disney worlds may have stiff movie recaps, but most are loose and accommodating to the larger KH story. Some may be filler, but most of them - on both passes - are at least technically connected to the main plot, and most of them - even the filler - in a meaningful and engaging way. The reports aren’t strongly motivated, but they’re not a complete crutch either. Roxas and Namine, if unfulfilled in their full potential, are still a force throughout the game (well, Roxas more than Namine) instead of being abruptly dropped.

Kairi’s denied obvious chances to get more involved, but she does get to strike out on her own and play a more active role in the story than she did in KH I. Riku’s pandered too a little too much once he reappears, but his role behind the scenes before then makes for a strong continuation of his redemption arc from R/R and is well-woven into the overall plot. Sora’s on the road to Flanderization, but he still has many of his better traits from the first game, including his greater competence at his missions and his believable, human reactions to the events around him. While he doesn’t have the arc of growth he had in KH I, or go through the deconstruction of CoM, he does have definite goals as an individual, and a pronounced sense of world-weariness as his chances of meeting those goals - finding Riku, going home, and seeing Kairi again - get further and further away.

Most of all, Kingdom Hearts II is still manageable in its story. The two sets of villains have relatively simple (but not simplistic) goals, and they’re revealed in a comprehensible fashion. More importantly, the logistics and pseudo-philosophical notions behind the villain plots don’t override the entire game, or pull focus from the protagonists. The heroes all have stories here, and if there’s an overarching theme to this game (not as clearly presented as the themes of KH I, mind you), it’s completion and resolution. If we may break them down:

Organization XIII, having made the foolish choice to discard their hearts, desperately try to escape the consequences of that choice through evil acts, only to fail and meet their ultimate end.

Roxas, who opens the game with mystery and confusion, comes to learn who he is and completes himself and Sora with his choice to surrender to his fate, something he grows to be at peace with.

Namine, having achieved a measure of peace with who and what she is, completes her tasks from the end of CoM and rejoins with her true self, after first saving Kairi and granting (most of) the heroes an escape from The World That Never Was.

Ansem the Wise, whose curiosity opened the door to everything that went wrong later, turns his back on base revenge and works to set the worlds to right, giving his own life in the process.

King Mickey, the hero who kept a deliberate watch on the state of the worlds and sounded the alert on the danger they were in, uncovers the truth about Organization XIII and plays his part to bring them to peace and finally makes it back home.

Donald and Goofy finally find their king.

Kairi, left alone with fading memories for a year, resolves to set out to find her friends, and not only achieves that goal, but facilitates their reconciliation and provides the means for them to finally return home.

Riku, after finding some measure of peace with himself in R/R, gives his all to see Sora restored and works to help him from the shadows, but fears to face his friends after his actions in KH I. When finally forced to, he learns that he hasn’t lost them, and the last of his self-doubt is discarded as he joins forces with Sora to finish off the last trace of Xehanort and make it back home.

And as for Sora, our chief hero: he is fully restored from his trials in CoM. Though eager - even desperate - to resume his search for Riku and return home, he doesn’t hesitate to start protecting the worlds again and finish off the remainder of the threat he first faced. While an authority figure presents that threat to him, Sora chooses to take it up, and carries it out without being directed or puppeted by Yen Sid at every step. The weight of the ordeals and his constant travels wear him down, the events of the year he lost (and Roxas’s role in those events) challenge him, and he does at one point refuse the call of the Keyblade (”Not yet! I have to find Kairi!”) Yet he persists in defending the worlds, even when it benefits the villains, and he fights his way to their castle to rescue and reunite with his friends. Having set out early in KH I to rescue those friends, he achieves this, finishes off the villain who turned his world upside down, and finally makes his way home to the island, the friends, and the girl he loves.

Kingdom Hearts II’s resolutions to all of these things is so final, and so satisfying, that the series since has had to ignore its finale, and a good chunk of its story, just to keep dragging things out. That’s to their detriment, but not KH II’s. While imperfect and uneven, it is a worthy sequel to the first game - the last such entry in the series - a lot of fun to play, and an ambitious and satisfying story.

And it has, to date, Kaoru Wada’s finest orchestration for the series. I absolutely adore his arrangement of Sanctuary from this game, and it makes me wish I’d kept up with the French horn every time I hear it.

[mst3kproject]

1109: Yongary: Monster from the Deep

 The first time I saw Yongary was when I was on a Kaiju Eiga binge over Christmas break one year.  It was on YouTube, with the sound removed for copyright infringement, and no subtitles.  At the time, this didn’t bother me much.  I thought I’d seen enough weird monster movies that I could guess what was going on from the visuals.  It turned out I really couldn’t.  Even now that I’ve seen it with sound, I’m still not sure what happened in this movie.

Korea’s top astronaut has just gotten married when he’s called off to a space emergency – somebody is testing bombs in the middle east and they need a guy in space to watch it.  The bombing causes earthquakes that cross the globe until they reach Korea, where the ground cracks open to reveal, what else? An oddly rubbery and humanoid monster!  Yongary proceeds to devastate the land, as oddly rubbery and humanoid monsters do, feeding on oil and taking an occasional nap, until the astronaut’s very much younger brother (I think) Icho and future brother-in-law (again, I think) Ilo discover its one weakness: itching powder.

So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here.

If Yongary has a visual aesthetic, it’s empty pockets and boundless enthusiasm.  The production appears to have had very little money and they spread it very thin, resulting in effects that are shoddy and unconvincing across the board… and yet, the people who created them went all-out, absolutely determined to wring every last jeon out of their budget.  The monster suit never looks like anything but a monster suit, but they never shy away from showing it.  The model cities are large and elaborate, even as they lack detail or realistic lighting. Shots showing earth from space look like a seventh grade science fair project.  The matte shots are bad.  The itch ray is just light reflected onto things with a mirror.  It all looks terrible, but their hearts were in it.

Unfortunately, not half so much effort appears to have gone into the script, which wanders from character to character in a series of events that are connected only by the monster, and sometimes only barely.  A number of things are set up as if they’re going to be very important and then are simply dropped, leaving the impression that they were only there to fill time.

What, for example, is the point of the space sequence?  They drag the astronaut (whose name I never caught in the movie, and IMDB is no help) away from his honeymoon to observe this nuclear test.  Some kind of failure on the spaceship, perhaps related to said test, puts him in danger but after much worry he reaches the ground safely.  Wow!  Our hero is a great pilot with nerves of steel!  Surely this will be very important later.  Maybe he will be called to do something dangerous to defeat the monster!  Maybe something he saw from space, while he was out of touch with the ground, will be key to saving the day!

Uh, no.  He’s not even in the rest of the movie, really, and we certainly never hear tell of the space program again.  As far as I can tell, the only purpose to any of this was establishing the nuclear test (because everybody knows those create monsters) and then trying to have some tension before Yongary actually emerges.  The whole sequence was filler.

Then there’s the itching ray, which first appears in the hands of little Icho as he plays a prank on the newlyweds.  Exactly why Ilo has invented an itching ray, I don’t know.  Was it intended to do something else and just ended up being itchy?  When Icho swipes it again to use on Yongary, I figured maybe a souped-up itch ray would turn out to be what kills the monster but again, no.  The itching ray doesn’t even set up anything important. I think it’s foreshadowing that itching is Yongary’s weakness, but the ray has nothing to do with the chemical allergy that brings the monster down, besides manifesting a similar symptom.

The fact that itching appears in the movie in more than one context probably makes it a motif.  Why, out of all the possible themes and symbolism you could put in a movie, the makers of Yongary chose itching, I have no idea.  Perhaps it represents something below the surface trying to break free, like the monster itself?  If that’s the case, then it’s fitting that the source of the itching is always externally imposed: the ray and Yongary’s allergy induce itching, and the nuclear test makes the earth ‘itch’ so that Yongary breaks out.  Whether this means anything deeper than that, I honestly cannot say.

Itching brings us to Icho.  I’m pretty sure Icho is the actual main character of this story.  He’s there at the beginning, he’s there at the end, and he’s the one who realizes what the monster’s weakness is.  He even has a bit of an arc, I guess… he’s nothing but an insufferable brat at the beginning of the film, and while he continues to be bratty throughout he does develop a more mature outlook, coming to understand the need for Yongary’s destruction while still feeling sorry for the monster.

Icho is clearly supposed to have some kind of emotional bond with Yongary, but this is completely one-sided and even less justified than Kenny’s supposed friendship with Gamera.  Whereas Gamera saved Kenny from falling to his death, I don’t think Yongary ever even notices Icho – which is probably all for the best, since Icho is doing things like turning off his food supply and zapping him with itching rays.   Icho’s defense of Yongary is also a little more realistic than Kenny’s of Gamera. He never insists that Yongary is good and gentle, only that the monster didn’t mean to hurt anybody.  This is probably true.  Yongary is not presented as a creature with a personality or intentions, he is merely a force of nature, doing what giant rubber monsters do.  He does not seem capable even of understanding that he is causing suffering.

What’s kind of interesting about this is that it makes it clear that Gamera, rather than Godzilla, was the primary inspiration for Yongary.  The monster emerges as a result of a nuclear bombing that is never mentioned again. It eats oil and is strengthened by fire. Annoying little kids like it for no readily apparent reason.  As an attempt to create a Kaiju franchise in 1967, when the genre was already well-established, it was probably inevitable that Yongary would look like a ripoff of something, but the choice of Gamera for a model seems particularly weird when we consider the ending.  At the end of Gamera, the monster was sent to Mars where he would presumably continue to live without bothering humanity.  This is pretty cool and appeals to children.

In Yongary, the monster dies of internal bleeding while Icho watches.  This doesn’t seem to have bothered Icho but it sure disturbed Jonah and the bots, and once I saw it in a context where I understood what was happening, it made my jaw drop, too.  When I think back on the deaths of monsters in Kaiju Eiga, they tend to be fairly quick affairs: in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the oxygen-destroyer pretty much instantly skeletonizes things.  Even bad-guy monsters tend to die or be driven off in one final blow or finishing move, as when Gamera throws Gaos into the volcano.  When the monsters visibly suffer, like Gamera with the baby Jiger inside him, or Anguirus when Godzilla rips his tongue out, it’s shocking and unpleasant.  Maybe this is because we think of these movies as being for children, or perhaps it’s the unavoidable anthropomorphic shape of the creature suits.  Whatever the reason, Yongary’s death is a major tonal departure and the ‘happy ending’ that follows it makes it even weirder.

I know basically nothing about the geography of Korea, but people who do have apparently written a great deal about how important the landscape is to Yongary.  According to critic Steve Ryfle, Yongary emerges in the northern part of Korea, near where the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953 – this makes him perhaps symbolic of aggression from the north, marching inexorably down the peninsula towards Seoul.  Korean critic Kim Songho noted that Yongary destroys the old Seoul Capital building, a symbol of the Japanese occupation of Korea before and during World War II (the building was knocked down in the 90s for this reason).

Using your giant monster to make a political statement, particularly an anti-war or anti-colonial one, is nothing new, but I don’t think the makers of Yongary intended a unified one by this.  The two political messages in the landscape seem opposed to each other: one paints Yongary as a semi-foreign force of aggression, the other as a native being destroying a symbol of foreign aggression.  This isn’t a problem for me, the non-Korean viewer, and the two ideas work fine when they’re each considered in isolation, but they do speak to the overall lack of unity in the script.

That lack of unity is probably the biggest single obstacle to enjoying Yongary for what it is, rather than the ironic amusement people like me get out of bad movies.  The jarring ending, the space program that is set up and then not used, and the inconsistent symbolism all make Yongary: Monster from the Deep feel like something assembled from parts rather than being a coherent whole.  All movies are made by committees, but a good movie shouldn’t feel like it was.

[anncaster]

Learn Our Crystals

Oh what’s my name Compared to your assemblage of me? You would drink stars And raise a glass to me

When Visuals was released earlier this year, Learn Our Crystals was not at all a stand-out track to my ears. It seemed like a fluffy type of filler track in the subtle way Mew tends to do those songs, but the lyrics were a different story. I’ve gone through some major personal changes this year and it felt as if I were being walloped upside the head with its message. It seemed to me like an imaginary conversation with Jonas in which he was telling me “Look, I might be a pretty cool guy, but I’m just a guy, you know?” In other words, “Slow your roll, fangirl! You’re also doing some pretty awesome things too, and you deserve some credit! Don’t make this all about me!” Jonas is one of the most humble people on this planet despite what he’s accomplished, but he also is happy to let people know when they’re appreciated.

It almost seems like a miracle that I can behave in a sensible way around him and the rest of the band, given my level of adoration for them and their work. But, for whatever reason, I never feel any sort of fear or anxiety in their presence. The lead up time to meeting them each time is fraught with anxiety and panic, but oddly it evaporates as soon as I make eye contact with Jonas. This guy exudes an aura of calm unlike anyone I’ve ever met before. He puts me at ease just by being there. I like to think I possess a similar quality and our vibrational state is just on a similar wavelength so naturally there’s no friction. It’s always incredibly pleasant to be near him.

Despite my history of traveling around to see them perform (which at the time of this writing is 19 times in 6 different countries) and many opportunities to meet them in person, one prize has always eluded me: a chance to have a long, personal conversation with Jonas. In the past, things never lined up in such a way to make the timing right. But this time around, I got my wish (and then some.) I spent somewhere around 7 cumulative hours with all the band members in very quiet, intimate settings, so conversations were plentiful. It was basically everything I could have ever hoped it would be.

My main takeaway from all of it is that my intuition has always been spot on about important things in my life, and this was no exception. Jonas is exactly what he appears to be: a generous, kind, compassionate, sweet, awkward geek. He has an amazing sense of humor and enjoys teasing (and being teased.) I don’t mean that in a weird way, mind you, but rather the sort of light trolling you might do with your close friends to show them you care about them. It’s effortless to be around him, like he’s someone I’ve known for longer than I can remember. He embodies all the best qualities of my dearest friends in one beautiful package.

Obviously things are a bit lopsided here, given how much I know about him and how little he knows about me, so I could see in his eyes he was trying to figure me out. His expression as I talked was mainly of happy interest, but at times I could see it shift into a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, like he was cautiously wondering what I had up my sleeve that I was prepared to throw at him at any moment. Understandably so, given the very first thing I did after we greeted each other with a hug was troll him with a Scientology pamphlet, to recreate a story he’d told during a technical glitch at Mew’s show earlier this year in Bristol. That might seem like a bizarre thing to do to one’s hero, but my intuition told me that he would find it funny given the length that story had to travel to get to me in the first place and its utter obscurity. My position gives me insight into things that happen all over the world through all my amazing Frenger buddies, so not much gets past me. He was very confused at first, but then laughed. “You know the story, huh?”

We chatted about all sorts of things: our shared love of Twin Peaks and David Lynch, meditation, the Danish language, foreign spouses, rising property prices, the US healthcare system, museum exhibits, tattoos, Bob Ross, the impending solar eclipse, and favorite music. Just imagine that: a beautiful conversation in a state of flow, as though we were old friends catching up after some time apart. It was a beautiful gift I was so grateful to receive, which is a big deal for me. I have been working very hard this year to allow myself to fully receive things rather than letting the good things ping off my protective armor and only letting the negative permeate.

I spent nearly a full week following them around the West Coast of the United States. Thursday night, they played a VIP show in KEXP’s Gathering Space, followed by a guest DJ spot on DJ Shannon’s late night show. Saturday night they played Seattle, Sunday night Portland, and Tuesday night San Francisco. I was there for all of it. I had the fortune of being there to assist Shannon during her radio show, then spend time with the band in the Green Room. After the Seattle show, Shannon and I went backstage with them, to a too-loud bar which we immediately vacated, and then onto the tour bus. On 3 hours’ sleep, my friends and I drove down to Portland and back again the same night. Then the next day I was on a plane to San Francisco, to return 2 days later. My head is still spinning with the speed and intensity of all these events.

The best part of all of it was that I was always, and I mean always, surrounded by my best friends in the world. They were all there to support me and my love of this amazing band, and of course to enjoy the music themselves. But it does not go unnoticed by me that their love for me was what brought them to these venues to enjoy my favorite thing in this lifetime. I am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.

I’m the sort of person who doesn’t understand how I feel about something until I’ve written it down. With all the craziness happening, this is my very first opportunity to do that, and I am still so busy with so many aspects of my life that I don’t feel I have the freedom to allow myself to feel and process my feelings fully since I risk breaking down under the weight of it all. I will save that for a quiet time when I can be alone with a handwritten journal and some tissues, should the floodgate of tears arrive.

Whenever I have an amazing experience of any sort, I often think to myself that things couldn’t possibly get any better than what has just happened. But time and time again I prove to myself that I am a master manifester who is able to make her dreams come true on a regular basis, and no matter what, there is always going to be some experience that surpasses the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Last week was the best proof I’ve seen so far, and I know with absolute certainty that things are only going to keep getting more and more awesome.

[maneaterwithtail]

Warning depressed overindulgent rant about kids cartoon incoming

I’m cross-posting that’s from spacebattles. You know I really need to start posting some positive s*** about Steven Universe. There’s a reason why it keeps getting my attention. I really love the setup, there are wonderful events, I love that its Aim so well. It’s managed to assemble a number of things as well as had a way of interacting with fans that encourages creativity and a community that produces so much that can be loved and expresses Joy. 

I guess I’m just a natural Grump and I can only talk about things when I’m pissed off or think I’m being smart by dissecting it. Which in my mind means needlessly ranting about every silly little thing that I observe about a work or feel about a work or I feel about the people that I’m watching the work alongside. I understand if this is not the kind of thing that you like. I can also understand if you want to be defensive of the show. Just respect the fact that I’m a person who has watched the show for a bit or just a person at all. But I do want to have some sort of discussion. It is why I am posting this out loud. It’s just with the ramp up for more speculation and another interview I just feel like we’ve been at this dance so many damn times and we’re just being jerked around here. Which of course is the purpose of any work of art. At least serial media. You constantly give just enough so that people feel inclined to come back for more. But I guess well read the rant

Whiteeyes, post: 36894166, member: 314250

No mo, it felt much much worse. See Lost had no answers when it was written. It was created to pile up mysteries for a season or so and then get cancled like Twin Peams and every ither wekrd mystery show so they never had to answer any. It became too popular to cancel and they had to scramble to invent answers. SU has had dorwshadowing and setup as warly as season 1. It knows what it is doing.

 .... I personally think that Steven Universe's character development and pacing is hampered by the fact that it wants to make everything a f****** mystery. This was a characteristic of Lost in a way that it got ridiculous. To the point where things like what's on Jack's tattoo or who is married or who was not or who had a terminal illness that they had known publicly forever and so on and so forth.  

  I think Steven Universe suffers from the same problem. Basic character development, interaction, or what-have-you tends to be put in a mystery box just so that that way we can create drama and then have it emerge later to create a resolution without progress. 

The problem is that while mystery is their main tool in this endeavor to set up interest it's not the only way in which they do this and then be annoying. Now some of this is the fans frothing themselves up.

 relevant example, when we see a title and then flip out about major speculation for a major plot point and then get disappointed when it's basically not so. 

 However I think this is in a part with all of their setup plot developments. As an example the return of Marty.  

  I actually want to be very fair-minded here. The Sour Cream situation identity and everything about him was very carefully set up over the course of a year and it actually made sense for once that he was a relatively new char in Stevens life. He's apparently older, runs with a different crowd, all that stuff. 

Marty comes back for one episode 

Not only do they run the most cliched plot imaginable about a deadbeat father and artsy dreamer son and the man who doesn’t get their passion but they do this basically to setup a virtue signal and reconcile sour cream and yellowtail in perhaps the worst way imaginable. In the first episode they actually share a scene.

But they don't share a scene in anyway proceeding to their actual reconciliation. All of that is cut aside just so that we can get to our cute little happy ending. This kind of ran things into the ground for me in some ways. Everybody defends moves of aborted long-term plot like this by saying that Steven Universe is more about people and characters and it is not about big plot twists and Sci-Fi Action. 

That might be true but they're doing that character and living the life stuff in a bad way as well. By not having the family reconcile but by having Yellowtail basically come around and agree because Sour Cream suddenly has a villain for Yellowtail to prove immediately better than.

  For a show that's often praised for its diversity and lack of stock archetypes this was too cliche    You see this time and again with long setup plot points whether it's the eventual return and revelation of the backstory of lapis Lazuli, the face off with the cluster, and others- That isn't to say all long-term plot points have fallen on their face but a lot of them have and it seems as if what succeeds or what gets the necessary follow-up is arbitrary and random

This isn't the usual complaint of "this is filler! where is the plot?" This happens whether it's character Focus-interaction that often feels as if it's taking forever to happen or gets bogged down in Mindless drama such as the entire relationship between Sadie and Lars to the point that Lars doesn't feel as if he has a real character until these last 7 or so episodes. 

He was basically the Grump. A cartoon stock archetype, a television stock archetype, a place talk archetype. 

You didn't have to think about why he was grumpy because there was no reason other than to make him and grumpy.  And remember this is the longest term character that's been on the show (was in the pilot) and he had a ridiculously thin characterization.

 All of this would still be bad even if he didn't have a plot line that made me cringe 

mackon, post: 36912103, member: 9256

Sure there are a lot of scenarios where the Zoo could be where it is and Pinks holdings only cover the solar system but just looking at what we have seen so far it looks like Pink administrated space covers more -shrug- How the Gempire is governed is sure to be more complex than X diamond runs this area and Y diamond runs that area anyway.

 And this just all ties it together. We get all of this stuff that's supposed to matter then push it all to the side and then come up with confrontation that's in many ways not satisfying because there's no build-up or it's just confusing or inevitably leads to more stupid questions that aren't even asked in the show.    I guess what makes this so frustrating is that the show has great set up. it does set up very well. But every time, or at least many times, when it's time for the payoff for those Domino's to go it always goes off like a bad fart. 

All of these are pointing to the same issue. . .

For some people this is the climax of The Cluster. For others It's the Return of Marty. For others it's The Search For Answers.  Some others feel disappointed because they think that there hasn't been enough queer text in the show. Others feel like characters are often push the Wayside and not given enough time to interact with the world shaking plot.  All of these are pointing to the same issue, broadly speaking. Crewniverse throws something in the air but they don't follow through. Or they passport or just suddenly resolve something with another IOU. 

The weird part is when they do this with a plot point they say that it's about the people. But Fusion Cuisine (wryyyyy) I think keeps hurting me because it's the episode that proves they don't respect people and character interaction.   

 Character interaction has to have consequences. Those consequences can be negative.  It can be positive but it has to arise and seem to follow from each other. Subtle or flagrant but the consequences of character interaction, if having dramatic focus, have to be observable and meaningful. Instead, all too often, we see artificial ways in order to create drama and then arbitrarily end or ignore it. For some people this is Stevens disturbing naivete childish behavior when he supposed to be a mid teenager. The lack of follow-up questions or the way that plot points will conveniently go off screen for months at a time only to then pop up in order to keep up interest and tease us and then come off with a lack of resolution despite lots of build up to no change or wasted opportunity.  

I think one thing that's bothering me is the reintroduction of there being some mystery to the death of Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz's crime against her. We've been here. already.  we know what the answer is supposed to be. And yet apparently there's a new mystery. 

Only I bet this new mystery is going to end up just as dissatisfying as “What is Lapis’s backstory?” or “How are we going to find Malachite?” or “How are we going to resolve The Cluster?” or “How will Beach City recover and her people deal with overwhelming change and trauma of an unnatural disaster?”

This shows up in other ways such as the not taking care of the Rubies when they have a ship. Or the fact that Homeworld keeps taking its sweet damn time in order to take care of the Crystal Gems and Earth even when it keeps on being a hostile instigator in the lives of the gems.    

And I think Fusion Cuisine is emblematic of this fault with regards to character stories and showing that statement about character over grand plots as a poor excuse. They will create a situation that literally doesn't require any crisis which won’t be treated or result as one. The family just needed basic common sense or respect, even between strangers, and then they won't follow through on the natural consequences of the family’s disrespectful lies or dangerous actions. 

And underlying this is a sense of- I don't know-  condescension or virtue signaling? On one level the Crewmiverse really do follow through on the implication that yes Steven has a queer family. On the other it feels as if they've set up the Maheshwarens as strawman that they've spent the rest of their appearance just being someone in order to goof with. I still claim this due to the fact that Dr. Maheshwaren is treated as if she's overprotective or crazy because controls her daughter media consumption; when connie lied to her (twice) regarding her experiences and activities with STeven and his family.  She lies about taking dangerous lessons from a person who partook in an assault of her daughter and has expressed bigoted opinions of her race -as in the human race- for months. This disobedience, to make Connie a fighter, is Justified because the story made Dr. Maheshwaren too damn stupid to notice not only does her daughter not wear her glasses anymore but that the three limbed candy colored being with no heartbeat is a gem Fusion and Connie saves her from it.   So the resolution is Connie NEEDS to be a sword fighter for the growing dangers of the Cluster.

 only we remove that as a valid point 

 For a show that keeps purporting being about togetherness, the cast herding and other things kind of put that as a lie. And Fusion Cuisine is an exemplary of this. It exists for a lot of reasons, but the number one thing it ends up doing is helping justify this sense of distance between humanity and the gems and completely ignoring ways in which they can come together and be understood.  Or conflict and come to resolution and understanding. So the character conflicts and development feel artificial or low stakes or superfluous and the plot and combat and Magic feels as if its always being sandbagged for these meaningless character beats.

 I think the show is going to lose me.    And I don't think there's any big thing that it can do now to convince me. It's spent so much of the goodwill and belief from its initial run and set up.  It has undermined all of it set up when it's actually gotten anywhere. I no longer trust the show to turn out to be well. At least in a way that I think will be satisfying for when they pull another “wait until you see the payoff for this” move AGAIN. And I suspect it's going to keep misfiring in ways while implying that it's so damn clever. 

There's just something incredibly artificial about Lars being captured with Steven and effectively telling all of his emotional issues that I feel like they have not been appropriately Illustrated despite multiple character Focus episodes.    And given the track record on how long it takes to actually engage with plot points or how they can be unsatisfying-ly resolved and then put out the way until they are unsatisfying-ly resolved is also bothersome. 

I was kind of okay with the end of The Cluster but I also understand how that could frustrate some. But one way that I can agree it was bad is we effectively spend all this time setting up the end of the world and the resolution of The Cluster basically put it out of mind and hasn't been Revisited or had any further effect.  The only lasting consequence has been the Turning of Peridot.[and according to some that’s been flattened to irrelevance too] 

So that meant that The Cluster basically existed so that that way we would have something in order for Peridot to oppose to justify her becoming a good person. Which reminds me of how they handled Marty and Sour Cream and Yellowtail and so I'm really really uncomfortable about them trying to go “oh, we're going to be all about character don't be all about the magical Destiny b*******.” only characters remain thin and ignorant and nothing but potential fodder

  Maybe I'm just in a really nasty mood[edit- looking back I was]. But I will say this; I think after this much time the show has set up its relationship with the audience and I think it's made me distrustful and doubtful of its reliability. I don't want any more promotional material. I don't want any more interviews covering for stuff not in the show. I don't want any more teases. I want an actual story executed on the screen in a satisfying manner.    And honestly I think what with the relative Circle walking season 4 and the reintroduction of more complications about mysteries about Rose and more drama about Steven feeling sad and more “Steven is going to have to introduce Humanity to this alien-person” as his own life seems as divorced from Human Experience as possible. 

The artifice of the show is coming out. It's much like how some can't take Game of Thrones seriously anymore. It makes sense to kill off the characters that they have killed off but there's no more emotional investment and we’re getting more and more sense that all of this is a bunch of Sensational nonsense.

[multipleuniversesinwriting-blog]

Title: The End of Days 5

Warnings: freaking out, screaming, swearing (man Crimson has a mouth), kind of a filler and a check in with Crimson

Word Count: 2574

Summary: Crimson mopes around her room all day until Anya brings to her a surprise to bring her out of her funk.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Crimson woke the next morning she was sore- her cheek muscles especially so. She kept her eyes closed and ran her thumb over her third finger on her left hand- the metal resting there not so cold, but still cooler than her body temperature. Her eyebrows furrowed just the slightest and she cracked open her eyes- before the events of yesterday came rushing back and she began gasping for breath, turning her face into her extremely soft pillow as she gripped the blankets in a death grip.

“Generally- when experiencing extreme moments of panic and hysteria- you avoid putting your face in a pillow.” Loki said- and then she was sitting up and somehow throwing her pillows at him, screaming bloody murder.

“OUT! GET! OUT! I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU! LEAVE!” She screamed, her hands throwing the last pillow on the bed as she cried. She didn’t care if Loki saw her right now, she didn’t care what he would think or how he would act, she just wanted him gone.

“Unless you’re sending me home I want you gone! NOW!” She screamed- staring him down. His eyes were wide with what she guessed was supposed to be shock, and he stood, wiping every emotion off his face.

“As you wish.” He said, leaving her bedroom. The door closed behind him and she pulled the blankets up to her face- quieting her sobs into them. A few moments later the door opened again and someone was placing her pillows on her bed before sitting beside her. Crimson already knew who it was- and she felt betrayed and angry and grateful.

“Sh it’s-”

“When- when was your first kill?” Crimson asked her, interrupting Anya. Anya fell silent and Crimson pulled her face out of the blanket, cleaning her face off with it before looking to Anya- who was staring off into space.

“Not till I had matured- I was probably… around 200.” She said and Crimson was watching her. “Though i had matured sooner than most, I wasn’t forced to mature like you had.” She said, looking at Crimson with pity. Crimson frowned.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a charity case. I didn’t ask for your fucking pity.” She snarled and Anya flinched just slightly but stopped looking at her like she was a pity case- so she didn’t care. Crimson looked away and slid out of bed, just standing beside her bed. “Did Loki send you?” She asked, looking to Anya once more.

Anya was silent as she looked at Crimson and Crimson knew the answer before Anya opened her mouth. Her lip curled and she turned away, her large shirt and shorts a comfort to her. Anya didn’t say anything as she moved over to the bookcase and stood there- staring at the books.

“You’re dismissed- I-I wish to be alone for a while.” Crimson said in a much softer tone than before, and Anya left quietly. When the door closed Crimson closed her eyes- the tears spilling over again as she stood there. The girl’s body flashed in front of her eyes and they flew open- Crimson grabbing the nearest book and ripping it off the shelf.

It landed on the ground with the sound of crumpling pages and then a few more books followed. Crimson couldn’t stop herself once she started, she was ripping the books off the shelves with a fever as she cried. She didn’t know how she managed to sleep peacefully but now that she was awake she was being tormented relentlessly. This continued until she had ripped off all the books she could reach- and then she fell to her knees and picked up a book, closing it carefully and stroking its spine as she rocked back and forth muttering ‘I’m sorry.’

A few hours later Loki quietly entered her room to find the books scattered across the floor in front of the bookshelf. After restoring the books to how they had been before her rage he noticed her sitting in the desk chair out on the balcony- knees pulled to her chest as she stared out at the city.

He walked forward and entered her balcony, walking forward and leaning against the railing, arms crossed on top as he gazed out over the city. Neither of them said anything and when Loki glanced over at her he found that she was staring at the bridge. He looked over at it, continuing the silence.

“I hate you.” She whispered, and he looked back over again, and she still held that blank expression on her face as she continued to stare at the bridge. “I hate you more than anything and yet you are vital to my survival.” She whispered, and he hummed in thought as he looked down at the people walking below him.

“Yes, I have to agree. I am rather vital to your survival right now... “ He listened to her move and adjust how she was sitting.

“The moment you’re not vital, and I get the chance to kill you, I’m going to.” She said and he looked over at her to find she was watching him, her eyes glassy and red. He stared at her for a moment before standing tall, hand resting on the railing as he continued to watch her- read her emotions.

“For once, I don’t doubt you.” He said softly, and she blinked once before looking away, her hands resting in her lap as she twirled her thumbs around each other. She bit her bottom lip before softly sighing- eyes darting up to him before looking away. Though he hadn’t had her for long- this was a new side of her he hadn’t seen yet, and he was surprised.

She was a vicious spitfire, heated words and actions, sharp eyes that seemed to be on fire. Proud, strong, she never wilted or bowed beneath him unless he forced her to. It was what made her exciting- she gave him a challenge. She made things interesting in his otherwise currently dull life.

“Soon I will be going back to earth, to establish my reign over those who have survived and properly rule it…” He said and she was watching him intently, longing written in her eyes. In her soul. “The chance you will return with me is high- if I have broken you by then and know you will fight for me.” He said and the hatred was back and burning in her eyes.

“I will never fight my friends.” She snarled and he smirked, pushing off the railing as he began to walk away.

“Never say never Lady Faye- you would be surprised.” He said as he left the room, and Crimson glanced over her shoulder as the door closed. She found herself wishing for Anya’s company as she turned and looked back out over the city.

‘I don’t have to be broken- I can simply pretend. He won’t know the difference.’ She told herself, pulling her knees back to her chest as she sat there- holding herself tightly.

Her next visitor was Anya. When Crimson looked to her she found that Anya was carrying a tray of food for her. She stretched her legs as she moved out of the chair, grabbing it and carrying it back to the desk where Anya had set the tray. Crimson sat down and quietly began eating- taking small bites.

“You are a warrior in spirit, but not in fight.” Anya said as she sat on Crimson’s bed. Crimson glanced over at her and shrugged, putting more potatoes in her mouth. “I have realized how boring this room must get, to sit alone by yourself all day…” Anya began and Crimson paused in her eating- giving her a side look that would put Loki’s to shame. Crimson resumed eating as Anya spoke again. “I wish to train you.” She said, and Crimson stopped eating once more to look at Anya full on.

“Really, you wanna train the 16 year old who’s out to kill your master?” She asked- unamused. Anya softly sighed and looked to her lap, allowing Crimson to resume eating again.

“It’ll get you home, so yes.” She said, and this time Crimson froze. Disbelief ran its course through Crimson first, and then excitement and joy. The pieces were falling into place. If she pretended- acted like she was broken and she was loyal to Loki, once he removed her ring so she could fight for him she’d leave, she’d either try to kill him first or disappear in the heat of a fight and appear at the Avenger’s tower.

Suddenly it was so possible and Crimson almost hated herself feeling the hope she felt at the thought of returning home. She’d get to return home and then she could see everyone again- be surrounded by comrades and family once more.

“And you really mean it?” Crimson whispered- afraid that this was an illusion and Anya would either not be there or say that Crimson was stupid for getting hopeful.

“Yes, I really mean it.” She said, and Crimson looked down at her food. She took a deep breath in, and slowly nodded.

“Sure- I want to do it. I want you to train me.” She said, and Anya smiled a wolfish grin- excitement in her eyes.

“Then eat- I want to start as soon as possible.” She said and Crimson resumed eating, letting Anya go into the closet and pick out whatever outfit she wanted for Crimson. When Crimson was finished eating she changed into the outfit- surprised to find that it was Asgardian armor, not what she had worn to fight yesterday.

Anya had led her through the hallways and towards an empty training room, weapons on racks and hanging on the walls.

“First, you must learn to be able to handle any sort of weapon to come your way- though you specialize with a staff, yes?” She said and Crimson nodded, catching the staff that Anya had thrown at her. “Then show me.”

Hours later Crimson was stepping out of the shower, two handmaids there to lead her to a seat on the tub and began drying and fixing her hair. They ignored her fresh red eyes and the bruises blossoming across her hands and jaw. They dried her hair with the towel and then proceeded to braid it back in one thick french braid. Afterwards she dressed herself in a simple loose flowing dress.

It was a velvet red dress styled after medieval gowns- the asymmetrical sleeves covering up most of her hands. There was a belt around her waist that connected in the front and hung down closer to the bottom of the dress for looks, the intricate sewing appearing around the ends of her sleeves and her elbows, as well along her neckline.

Not long after she dressed Anya arrived, though without her dinner- for which Crimson found she was craving. Anya came up to her with a hurried expression, grabbing her hands and working quickly to heal the bruises there, muttering about Loki arriving soon.

Anya had just managed to finish healing her face when the door began to open. She took a step back and Crimson immediately sat on her bed, crossing her arms across her chest and giving Anya dissatisfied look. Loki entered- eyeing the both of them warily, and paused.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything…” He began and Crimson stood, grabbing her skirt and lifting it a little as she walked out onto the balcony- proceeding to ignore Loki. “I’ve come to invite you to dinner.” Loki said after another moment of silence and Crimson leaned against the railing.

“Why does the murderer wish to eat with me?” She asked sourly, and Loki headed out towards her as Anya slipped out of the room.

“I eat with my own kind.” He responded swiftly and Crimson’s gut clenched- bile creeping up her throat. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in- knowing Loki was watching her every move.

“There is a difference between us Loki.” She began softly. “You kill because it brings you joy- hell it might even get you off-” he looked offended at that statement but she didn’t care. “But I killed because I had to. You put me in that situation- me or them. It’s clear what I chose. I kill for survival, and that, Loki, is the difference.” She said and Loki chuckled softly.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.” He said and she went back to ignoring him, arms crossed on the railing. He looked over at her and eyed what she was wearing with distaste. “You’ve taken a liking to those red dresses- maybe I ought to get rid of them all to see you in something else.” He said and Crimson slid her gaze over to him- looking bored. “What, prefer to see me in green?” She almost purred, and Loki couldn’t help but feel surprised at the complete change of character from this morning.

“Well, yes, I would prefer to see you in green. Maybe wearing something scandalous-”

“Watch it Loki.” She spat, and he watched her- eyes narrowed slightly.

“How old are you Lady Faye?” He asked and Crimson looked away- sighing through her nose.

“I’m almost 17...” Was all she said before pushing off the railing, Loki watching her a little differently as she walked away.

“Only 17? I would have thought you older.” He said and she let out a bitter laugh as she moved to the desk, her voice echoing around the room.

“Oh Loki, wish I could say that you’re the first to tell me that.” She said, grabbing a book he hadn’t realized was sitting on the desk and moving towards her bed. “Is that all? Or do you wish to make some other alarming remarks about me in clothing?” She asked, the book resting open in her lap as she looked over at his form on the balcony. He was quiet as he walked in, staring at her as he stopped at the foot of the bed.

She stared back evenly- searching his green eyes for something as he searched her. They stayed like that for a few moments before she looked at her book muttering ‘guess not’ as she opened it to a page and beginning to read. He watched for a few more seconds before leaving her room without a goodbye.

She let out a sigh and rested her head against the headboard- closing her eyes as she relaxed. Despite the healing of the bruises she still felt sore and having a visit from Loki only drained her more emotionally. Training with Anya had given her something else to focus on for those few hours- it distracted her long enough that for a moment she wasn’t grieving, in pain, or suffering. She was just, her.

Almost as if she was back in the tower, training with everyone for a little bit before they all collectively went to shower and order pizza and watch movies all night. It had reminded her of the good times- even if training with Anya was more intense than training with the Avengers.

She softly smiled before looking down at her book, her free hand moving to gently rub her jaw. It was certainly more intense- but it sure as hell did improve her mood.  

[fly-pow-bye]

DuckTales 2017 - “The Fight for Castle McDuck!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Ben Siemon, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzaga, Krystal Ureta, Brandon Warren, Hayley Foster

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

A family feud!

This episode begins with Scrooge, the nephews, and Webby making another trip to Castle McDuck to meet Scrooge's parents. How are they able to visit this castle with that mist that only disappears every five years, as explained in the last episode that featured Scrooge's parents? Apparently, there's a fritz in the castle's mist, and Fergus, Scrooge's father, immediately blames Scrooge for giving them a lemon. As Webby narrates this clenched-teeth meeting of father and son into her tape recorder, Downy, Scrooge's mother, goes up and hugs the two.

Downy McDuck: Oh, let's just be thankful for this unexpected family visit! Group hug! (hugs Scrooge and Fergus, not really accepting of this)

Just in time for Thanksgiving weekend! Okay, it's not really a Thanksgiving special and it may be just a coincidence as there's no proof of Disney swapping the intended order of episodes this time, but it is an episode where someone is thankful for a family gathering that will involve some food; I've seen flimsier excuses to air episodes at certain times. Webby isn't the only one happy to see Scrooge's family again, as Huey, Dewey, and Louie are after yet another artifact: the Blessed Bagpipes of Clan McDuck. Yes, it's not just one of Scrooge's catchphrases, it's also an ancient artifact that was foretold to Huey by a druid somewhere between Mount Neverrest and that place where the Terrafirmians went after that one episode.

No, just kidding, it's yet another artifact in that journal that seems to be used to make filler episodes to feel more important. This is not to say this episode isn't necessary. These Blessed Bagpipes have a bit more potential than, say, the Sword of Swanstentine: the bagpipes are told to be able to bring life to the lifeless. Louie doesn't interpret this as zombies, but instead just hears is that this is a rare and potentially expensive artifact, and since they already dealt with this castle's traps before, it should be easy to get! As for Dewey, he's going to be important later.

Scrooge isn't really here for Thanksgiving or the bagpipes, though, he's here essentially as a magic castle repairman. Using his cane, he pokes the druid stones that usually power that mist that keeps his parents out of his sight, and he comes to the conclusion that it seems like the magic was sucked out of it. Even if we didn't see the cause right before the opening, which we do, this is a good enough hint to what could have possibly happened. Fergus doesn't believe him, and Scrooge replies with him asking why he even asked him to do this instead of getting one of his other children to do the dirty work. Short answer: he tried.

Meet Matilda McDuck, the youngest sister of Scrooge, who likes to start random businesses like emu farms. The very sight of a new McDuck neither she nor the audience has seen regresses Webby back to her Season 1 "McDuck fangirl" persona. Why wouldn't she still have that? Most of all, to her, there's no such thing as sibling rivalry in Clan McDuck, as McDucks always stay together! I'm assuming the sibling fights Huey Dewey and Louie sometimes get in are because they're merely Ducks.

McDucks, on the other hand, don't really do fights, as exemplified by Scrooge handing his sister a whole bill to invest in this empire of giant emu eggs. Wow, Scrooge must have been impressed: usually it's just a coin that's worth less than even if it was just one dollar! She immediately rejects the bill because she doesn't do family investments, unlike Scrooge and his Number One Dime. She then puts him in a headlock. Webby pays this no mind and talks about this sibling friendship, while Dewey just sits in the background and sarcastically says, "yeah, sure." No, being the stand-in for the audience isn't his important bit.

Huey and Louie get into a sibling rivalry of their own, as Huey plans to do this epic adventure to get the bagpipes, with plenty of strategies that Louie calls, and trademarks after a long yawn, "boring nerd stuff". Louie, on the other hand, decides to do the "ask really loudly to the great-great grandma where the magic bagpipes are" approach, and Great Great Grandma Downy just tells them that bagpipe must be in the junk room, and she'll even show them where it is.

Louie's faces during these scenes are top-notch; there's a fine line between "off-model to the point where it's disturbing" and "off-model enough to be funny", and the scenes are more in the latter. We might even see it with Huey, who seems to be desperately trying to keep that inner Duke of Making A Mess in control.

If one hasn't guessed yet, our villain of the week is none other than the Phantom Blot. We saw the Phantom Blot earlier in the episode, sucking up some castle magic with his magic-sucking gauntlet. He's joined by one of the Eggheads, a charismatic, overly happy sidekick named Pepper. The first time I watched this episode, I thought this was Matilda in a disguise, but then I noticed she didn't have those circles under her eyes. This is a totally different duck.

Blot didn't want any duck to be his partner, or any partner at all, but F.O.W.L. won't allow Missing Mystery taking alone. The Blot has his own vested interest in destroying anything magical, especially something as dangerous as a bagpipe that can turn something that's lifeless into living things. This is the second episode in a row where someone wants to take an artifact they feel is too dangerous, though it's done in a different way.

Unknowing of any kind of evil, Webby, Scrooge, Dewey, and Webby are going on a tour through the castle. Webby stops at a room full of statues, including one statue of Danny McDuck that happens to be holding a bagpipe with symbols on it. Webby is completely enamored by all of this, but Dewey questions which one of their ancestors is invisible. Matilda explains that this space was left blank until a worthy McDuck can be immortalized in this room with a statue. Webby talks about an obvious candidate for such an immortalization: Scrooge McDuck!

Matilda laughs at this nomination, saying that it would be more fitting for someone who actually takes care of the castle, while Scrooge fights back by saying not only has be built this castle, but he built the castle that gave her and their parents immortality. This is where Webby's main conflict in the episode lies: she can't believe two McDucks can talk to each other like that, and, despite being told that sibling rivalry happens all the time by Dewey, she vows to fix this.

Her first attempt at doing this? Let Scrooge look at an old family diary. This appears to work pretty well, as Scrooge is reminded of his first brother-sister mud pie business. Unfortunately for Webby's plan to let this feud end so early, one of the photos happens to be Whiskers, Scrooge's pet hairball, being around his sister, going against the story he was told that Whiskers ran away. Not only is Whiskers still around...

...Whiskers had a new fur dying session, too! The emu eventually biting it ends up being the last straw, causing him and her to get into a sibling quibble. It's funny to see these people acting like children, even yelling out to their mom to tell on each other. It's not so funny to Webby, who thinks that she's going to break her beloved Clan McDuck, though Dewey insists this is normal. It's good that Webby isn't perfect, but one knows she's going the wrong way here.

Meanwhile, in the junk room their great great grandma led them to, they see a whole bunch of bagpipes stacked onto each other. Once again, we see Huey trying to think of a good strategy to find out which one is the real bagpipe, and Louie just runs up and jumps on the pile. This massive bagpipe blowing this not only causes does cause a mystical bow and arrow to break a canister of tiny green flying lightbug beings that exclaim their freedom, but it also proves that all of these bagpipes are just ordinary bagpipes. That mystical bow and arrow also causes Huey to drop the book near a cardboard box that Pepper and the Blot were hiding in. Must have learned that from some snake.

This scene with Pepper and the Phantom Blot does show us one thing: she may seem like an incompetent sidekick, and the Blot sure treats her like one as he didn't want a sidekick to begin with, but she knows a clue when she sees one. She takes a picture of it with her smartphone, and deduces that the symbols that were drawn on it represent different rooms of Castle McDuck. This begins a slow bit of character development for the Phantom Blot, who was merely just "I hate magic and everyone" before this.

Meanwhile, as Webby is watching the family aggressively eat their dinner, she comes up with a plan. She even ropes Dewey into this for his big, important moment. Dewey gets to show his best talent...

...pretend he accidentally died while trying to make everyone happy by making two statues! See, it's a win-win situation for everyone: Matilda and Scrooge would believe they're both deserving of statues, and Scrooge basically confirms what Dewey always knew: that he was the favorite. Honestly, I'd say he's only saying that because he's supposedly dead, but don't tell Dewey that. By the way, Scrooge falls for this even though Scrooge did fake his death before in this series. I should also talk about how Webby would have to find a way to show that Dewey didn't actually die for potential future adventures, but she won't need to even think about that.

Huey and Louie end up in this room, too, and Dewey just couldn't resist telling them that Scrooge said he's the favorite. This leads to even more bickering amongst Clan McDuck. This ends up being a perfect distraction for the Phantom Blot and Pepper to sneak around the room, too. Webby doesn't notice those two, but she finally decides enough is enough, and outright calls out the family for their bickering, saying that it just isn't the Clan McDuck way. Scrooge decides to agree, and says Matilda is worthy of being the next Clan McDuck statue...

...because he's no longer going to be a member of Clan McDuck! This part feels like it should be in the trailers as a misleading line, as anyone would guess this would eventually be reversed, but even I'm not so sure if it was in the end. It really goes to show that Webby pretty much did what she feared she was going to do. It's going to take a miracle to fix up this family, and it has to be something blessed.

Remember that Danny McDuck statue with the bagpipe? Turns out, that's where the bagpipe was hiding all this time. Unfortunately, it wasn't any of the Ducks or McDucks that figured this out first, but it was Pepper. Admittedly, she had to smash through the bagpipe of the statue to find it, and I'm sure even with their bickering, degrading one of the statues would be a huge faux pas. The good news is that, while she may be able to figure out a mystery, she's still somewhat of a klutz, as she drops the bagpipe. Not only does this finally reveal the sinister villains behind what caused that fritz in the mist, we get to see that ability to give life to the lifeless that was foretold by that book.

No, not zombies, but the bagpipes give life to the lifeless statues! It seems like this episode was going to go to a rather predictable ending, showing the now separated family that Webby was right all along, and that Clan McDuck is all about being together. Just let those statues show what being a family is all about. This could very well be, but the bagpipes gave them the vocal cords of the people they're based on, too.

They immediately start fighting, starting with who stole the bagpipe, and Webby lets out an "oh, come on!". Not only does this lead to a big statue fight, this leads to a bunch of other fights. The statues are fighting, Clan McDuck are fighting, and even Huey, Dewey, and Louie are fighting. The last one seems a little tacked on, but it does add a little more power to the scene where Webby talks into her tape recorder about how, in her quest to strengthen Clan McDuck, she managed to ruin it. Even if I wasn't as big of a fan of Webby's antics in this episode, as I think she should absolutely know what she was trying to fix in the beginning was normal, it's still a powerful scene.

There's also a scene where The Phantom Blot and Pepper, hide behind a pillar, and Blot uses this opportunity to scold Pepper on nearly ruining the entire mission. It's nice to see the Phantom Blot actually getting a little development here.

Of course, in the end, they do make up. A lot of this is due to the situation that surrounds them, and Scrooge even uses that to get those ancestor statues to finally stop fighting and get these F.O.W.L. agents out of their hair. Because, and I'm sure people will see this line coming a mile away...

Agnes McDuck (the one in the royal dress): Nobody fights our family but US!

Heh, get it, because all they've been doing before this is bicker. Nonetheless, it's still a good lesson, and it's good to see Webby still learn lessons from Clan McDuck that she wouldn't have learned anywhere else. In the end, the villains get defeated, and the family does find some way to get together and do something, even if it is as simple as cleaning up the mess everyone did. Happy Thanksgiving...kind of.

How does it stack up?

Matilda is entertaining, and while I feel Webby is the weak point of the episode, her actions do lead to a good lesson in the end. Four Scrooges.

Next, ho ho ho, oh no no no.

← The First Adventure! 🦆 How Santa Stole Christmas! →

[whitewolfofwinterfell]

The Punisher season 2 review

The Punisher season 2 was released 18 January and since I’ve finally finished watching it I thought I’d share my thoughts about the season. 

First of all, I should say that I’m new to The Punisher, and watched both seasons within a week of each other, so there’ll some mentions/comparisons between the two seasons since they’re both fresh in my mind. This will also be a critical review (it’s not very positive towards Billy Russo, Krista Dumont, Amy Bendix and a teeny bit negative about Kastle - more about the way they were written than the ship itself) that analyses the writing of the characters and plots.

On a whole The Punisher is inconsistent across both its seasons. It has brilliant, compelling episodes that have you on the edge of your seat, laughing and crying all within the space of 50 minutes, but likewise there are some episodes that lack in substance, are slow paced and not very engaging. Season 2 is no exception to that. Whilst the first episode of the season started out strong (it was by far one of my favourites of the season) and the finale was equally strong, the episodes in between were a very mixed bag. So I thought I’d sum up what I liked and didn’t like about the season, like a pros and cons list of sorts. 

What I liked about season 2: 

JON FREAKIN’ BERNTHAL - This man is a God. I cannot praise his performance of Frank enough. He devotes every piece of his heart and soul to being Frank Castle (this is a man who does all of his own stunts and broke his hand on one of the first days of filming season 2 whilst doing a stunt, but was so dedicated that he continued performing stunts with a mangled hand because he didn’t want to stop working) and it really shows. His on-screen presence is magnificent, he’s captivating, exhilarating and captures the rage, brutality, vulnerability, grief, empathy and hopelessness that’s inside Frank. Frank’s character and Jon’s performance is what holds the show together and makes it what it is. I’m not ashamed to admit that he’s 99% of the reason that I continued watching until the end of season 2 and he deserves to win all of the awards for his memorable performance. (Unfortunately, Jon has been held back by not-so-good writing which prevents him from going even further with in the role, which I’ll discuss more later).

The first episode of the season - I’ve seen mixed opinions about the first episode of season 2 ‘Roadhouse Blues’, but I loved it. It was the perfect place to pick up after where we left Frank in season 1. His main mission - to kill the men responsible for the deaths of his family - was complete and he was faced with the prospect of trying to rebuild his life in the absence of a war. It was good to see Frank just be Frank for five minutes, have a drink in a bar, listen to a band play and flirt with a pretty woman. This episode felt like fantastic character development to me, because Frank spent the entirety of season 1 consumed with war and the season ended with the realisation that he needed to try and start moving forward from that and begin the healing process. Beth was clearly not going to be a serious love interest, she was simply a nice person who Frank connected with and with whom he could ease the loneliness that plagues him. It would be detrimental to Frank’s characterisation to deprive him of this kind of intimacy, because it’s part of what prevents him from being happy - his inability to let anyone get close to him, particularly in a romantic/sexual context, because of his intense love for Maria and fear of harm coming to anyone that gets close to him. It was also nice to see Frank interact with Beth’s son because Frank comes to life whenever he’s around kids. It really serves as a reminder as to how much of a brilliant father it was and how heartbreaking it is that he will never have a chance to have that interaction with his own children. But of course, there was sprinklings of the big bad Punisher. The introduction of Amy, and Frank’s rampage in saving her life, contradicted the development Frank seemed to be going through in the rest of the episode, but was very fitting. Beth getting hurt confirmed Frank’s fears that anybody that gets close to him is in danger, but we all knew that he couldn’t just give up his lifestyle as the Punisher because that’s come to be his purpose and driving force in life. Like Amy said, it was like he was looking for an excuse to swoop in, save the day and embark on another war. It might have been nice for Frank to have some normality for a while, but he still wasn’t ready to truly move forward from being the Punisher. Overall, this episode was great and a very strong start to the season. It also perfectly demonstrated a key theme of The Punisher - the internal war inside Frank about whether he should fully embrace being the Punisher or give it up. 

Frank and Madani’s friendship - I loved seeing the evolving dynamic between Frank and Madani. Whilst they were kind of allies in season 1, this season built upon that a lot and created a very endearing friendship between two unlikely characters. The traumas they faced with Billy bonded them and it was fascinating to see Madani’s character development in trying to navigate her loyalties to her job and Frank. Madani’s a very moral character who strongly believes in justice, and aiding Frank both affirms those beliefs and contradicts them. On the one hand, Frank’s moral code is very similar to Madani’s except that he operates outside the boundaries of the law, but on the other, there’s no escaping that Frank’s a criminal. I enjoyed seeing how fiercely she defended Frank and that she never even doubted Frank when it came to the murder of those three women. She knew immediately that Frank wouldn’t have done that and it was a testament to how well she has come to know him and how much she believes in what he does. If there’s a season 3, I hope to see more of their friendship. 

Curtis/Frank and Curtis’ friendship - Curtis is a great character who balances out the brutality and darkness of the other characters. He has a pure heart and good intentions, and it was wonderful to see more of him in season 2. His friendship with Frank was a particularly important facet of the season (as it was in season 1), because Curt felt like the only true friendship and connection that Frank had. Although he also had Madani and Amy, Curt was the only one who he has a long history with and their interactions showed that depth of history and bond that they share. It’s a shame we didn’t get to know more about Curtis as a character e.g. more about his back-story and personal experiences, but I enjoyed seeing so much of him in season 2. 

Action scenes - Season 2 definitely wasn’t as brutal as season 1, but there were still some great action scenes in there that make The Punisher what it is. Although the action isn’t the primary reason I watch (I know it is for a lot of people, particularly male fans), the show wouldn’t be what it is without the violence. Jon commitment to doing all of his own stunts only improves the action scenes since we can physically see that Frank is fighting (unlike BTVS where I’m taken out of the moment of a fight by the vision of some random stunt woman in SMG’s place). Also, this is slightly off topic but if Frank were a real live man, he would be completely dead. How could any man receive the brutal beatings he does and survive, let alone be well enough to go back out the next day and get into another fight?

I wanted to find pick out more aspects of season 2 that I enjoyed, but unfortunately, I couldn’t. The shipper in me loved the scenes we got between Frank and Karen in 2x11 ‘The Abyss’ and were everything I wanted to see, but I was unable to fully enjoy them because the way in which they were written felt like fan-service. Karen was absent from the entirety of season 2 (she was only mentioned once in the first episode by Frank) and as far as we were aware Frank had had no communication with her since the events of 1x10 ‘Virtue of the Vicious’ which I assume was a few months before the start of season 2. So to bring Karen in like that for one episode and have those very intense scenes with Frank felt...out of place. Plus, she disappeared again immediately afterwards without even another mention. I know this issue was likely because of Deborah’s commitments to filming The Defenders at the same time that season 2 was being filmed, but even if Deborah couldn’t physically feature on episodes, Karen could’ve been more present on the show through references from Frank, whether that was simply talking about her in general conversation or mentioning that he’d been in touch with her (or even a two minute phone call where Deborah wouldn’t necessarily had to of been on-screen) and then her appearance wouldn’t have felt quite so sudden. 

What I disliked about season 2:

The wacky timeline - Season 1 had a decent amount of flashbacks, but the timeline of season 2 felt incredibly disjointed and seemed to jump back and fourth incoherently. This was a particular problem with Billy whose flashbacks and timelines didn’t seem to fit with the events of the rest of the show. 

The pacing - It’s true that season 1 suffered from pacing issues (largely because the plots that are created on the show aren’t enough to maintain 13 50 minute episodes of television), but season 2 suffered from bad pacing on a grander scale. Some of the episodes felt like they were entirely made up of filler and there were plenty of times where I was on my phone or laptop whilst watching and still didn’t miss much of anything. 

The main plot(s) - I know I’m not the only one that struggled, but I just didn’t even follow the plot this season. Once again this comes back to the lack of coherence overall. The Pilgrim plot seemed to be thrown in haphazardly alongside the Billy-Krista plot and there was no connection between the two. Although it’s common for shows to have an overarching plot and then one or two smaller sub-plots, the way the plots were executed just didn’t work. One moment the emphasis was almost entirely on Billy and the next it was on Pilgrim. Episode 10 ‘The Dark Hearts of Men’ really emphasised this issue. The primary focus was on Frank and Curt staking out Russo’s hideout, and so the scenes with Pilgrim spinning off the deep end with alcohol and drugs felt completely irrelevant and disjointed. The scenes between Madani and Krista were important to revealing Billy’s plans, but they also felt disjointed, particularly since it was unclear those scenes were a flashback until the very end of the episode. This kind of incoherence was really one of the main issues I had with season 2 overall.

Krista Dumont - I really didn’t like Krista’s character or the part she played in the season. She was unlikeable, she had way too much focus for a new character and the manipulative psychologist trope is so cliche. I’d like to believe that someone so obviously corrupt and unstable as Krista wouldn’t be granted access to vulnerable people like Billy. Billy was lost and broken at the start of the season, he didn’t know where to turn and Krista used her influence over him to push him over to the dark side. One might argue Billy would have gone over to the dark side anyway since that’s the nature of his character, but nonetheless Krista was still a huge influence on Billy. Her relationship with Billy was cringey and unappealing. Billy’s arc would’ve been so much better if she hadn’t of been a part of it. Any attempts to make her sympathetic through her relationship with Billy, her scars or her phobias of heights/windows completely failed, yet the writing didn’t go far enough to portray her as a villain. Overall, she was a very unwelcome addition to the season and I’m sure I’m not the only one that was just waiting for her to disappear from the screen each time she came on. 

Billy’s arc - Billy was an interesting character, a great villain and I loved his arc in season 1, but in season 2 it was awful. It felt like Billy’s story had already run its course in season 1 (I think it would’ve been more fitting if Frank had killed him at the end of season 1) and the result was that his entire arc was very repetitive and dull. Whilst I appreciate the shows exploration of mental health (which it does better than many shows I’ve watched), it was boring to watch endless scenes of Billy chatting with Krista. In addition, his facial disfigurement wasn’t severe enough or explored enough. The purpose of Frank mashing his face into the mirror was to take away his beauty, destroy his self-image, give an external visual of his internal ugliness and serve as a reminder of the awful betrayal he committed against Frank and his family. Unfortunately, by wiping Billy’s memories that impact was completely lost and too much time was wasted trying to help Billy retrieve his memories rather than exploring the complex issues of his psyche. His arc also seemed to jump all over the place. I’ve already mentioned the continuity issues with the timeline, but his motivations were also incredibly spotty. He got out of hospital and the first thing he did was kill the man that abused him as a child but why? Since he couldn’t remember the events of season 1 he was no longer out to get Frank, but it still didn’t make sense that he would revert to wanting to kill that man. Presumably he had years to do that, why now? Then he suddenly recruited a bunch of veterans and convinced them it was a good idea to go around the city committing acts of mindless violence and crime. Why? When he found out Frank was the one responsible for nearly killing him his motives switched to wanting to destroy Frank, which was understandable and his method of doing that (making Frank think he’d killed three innocent women) was very effective. Unfortunately, Billy’s characterisation and arc was so jumpy that it lacked any real impact. When Frank finally killed him in the final episode all I felt was relief that he was gone. And not because he was a villain or because of the awful things he’d done, but because I was so bored of him. Billy had the potential to be a fantastically complex villain but it felt like Lightwood didn’t know what to do with him in season 2 so just had him lurch from one villainous thing to another (often with no real reason) whilst simultaneously trying to paint him as a sympathetic victim. Unfortunately, the writing failed to really make Billy either of these things and I grew very tired of him by the end of the second episode. I also found Ben Barnes acting to be a little iffy this season. I saw someone comment that he ‘over-acted’ a lot, and I’d be inclined to agree. 

Amy’s character/arc - Before watching the season I saw a lot of edits of Amy and Frank/Amy and was looking forward to the new dynamic she was going to bring to the show, but I was really disappointed. As a character, Amy felt underdeveloped, stale and for the most part unsympathetic. Although one of the main plots of the season was focused on her I wasn’t invested in her enough to care and she was way too passive within her own plot. For the majority of the season it felt like she was hanging around for Frank rather than actively being involved in the events that were unfolding. Although she was technically an ‘innocent’ young girl, she didn’t feel worth the time or effort that Frank (and others) invested in saving her. We know that Frank is concerned about the well-being of innocents (particularly women and children because they represent Maria and his kids), but I didn’t understand why Frank was so invested in Amy. That’s largely because her relationship with Frank felt...meh to me (which is no affornt to Giorga’s acting or her chemistry with Jon, it’s more about the writing). I understand exactly what their relationship was supposed to be -  a connection to Frank’s daughter and an opportunity for him to bond as a father with a young girl who would’ve been Lisa’s age - but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t see the development of their relationship, it just felt like they went from being strangers who gave each other false names to friends over night. There were a few scenes between them that were adorable (I particularly loved the one where they were playing 3 card brag and Frank was getting frustrated because he sucked so much at it haha), but overall the relationship was lacklustre and therefore I wasn’t invested in it, Amy or her arc. 

The lack of focus on Frank - Frank Castle is the heart and soul of The Punisher because he is the Punisher. The show has a strong cast but Jon Bernthal’s is the star of the show and without a doubt the best aspect of The Punisher. I can’t speak for everyone that watches the show but my guess is that a majority of people watch for Frank. We love him and he’s the one we’re most invested in. Unfortunately, in comparison to season 1, season 2 seemed to take a big step back from Frank. In fact, it felt like we saw more of Billy than Frank. Even Krista seemed to get nearly as much screen time as Frank despite being a brand new character. The confrontation with Billy was really the only part of this season that felt like it was about Frank, but even that was more focused on Billy than Frank. Everything about Frank this season was directly tied to others - particularly Billy and Amy - and it felt like he was propelling everybody else’s arcs forward rather than having his own. As the main character, that’s definitely not what Frank’s purpose should be. He’s the leading man and the plots should be built around him with the supporting characters supporting him (the clue is in the title lol) and propelling his arc forward. In season 1, I feel like he had a fantastic journey and brilliant character development, but not so much in season 2. If the show is cancelled and season 2 is the last season it’s so sad to see Frank still living his life as the Punisher having not truly found closure or happiness. Some may think it was a fitting ending because the show is titled The Punisher after all, and they believe Frank cannot be ‘saved’ or ‘redeemed’ or find any alternative other than living as the Punisher, but personally, I see the show as being about Frank Castle, the man, as much as it’s about The Punisher, the anti-hero. This is a complex issue about Frank’s character, because everyone has different interpretations of what/who his character should be, but personally I believe that the core of Frank’s arc should be about his humanity, so it was disappointing to see the way the season ended. (As a side note, I’m currently in the process of writing an in-depth analysis of Frank’s character, so keep your eyes peeled if that’s of interest to you). The show should really make full use of Frank/Jon (which it did in season 1), because Jon’s fantastic acting has the ability to disguise some of the bigger issues with the writing from view. I know that I spent the entirety of season 2 glued to my screen whenever Frank was on and the second Billy, Krista or Pilgrim appeared on-screen my attention slowly waned and my phone found its way into my hands. 

Overall, I don’t think season 2 was as strong as season 1 (’Home’ is above and beyond any season 2 episode) and it definitely wasn’t a strong enough season for Netflix to want to renew it for a third season (although I still think there’s a possibility it might return, but perhaps I’m being optimistic). However, Jon is a fantastically talented actor who still has so much to give, the show has a lot of potential and there’s still a lot of interesting stories that could develop if there is  a third season. The show definitely hasn’t reached its full potential and therefore, it would be incredibly sad to see it cancelled. With a few tweaks to the writing, more attention to detail and focus on fleshing out the characters and plots, The Punisher could be amazing. Plus, who doesn’t want to see Jon Bernthal return to our screens as Frank Castle? I know that I certainly do. 

Overall rating: 6/10

(For reference, this review really sums up a lot of my thoughts on the season.)

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 16th September 2018

Pretty uninteresting week on the charts today so maybe this episode might be short. I hope not but on the weekend you’ll be getting BLAST TO THE PAST so maybe Snoop Dogg will be a bit more interesting and provide me with some more material. Anyway, top 10.

Top 10

“Promises” by Calvin Harris and Sam Smith stays still at the number-one spot, and if that’s not a pretty apt depiction of the charts this week, I don’t know what is; that song feels like it lasts 10 times the actual length.

Also not moving is “Eastside” by benny blanco, Khalid and Halsey, at the runner-up spot, an equally worthless song.

We have a debut at number-three today, fuelled by the YouTube streams (it’s probably only here because they have recently started to count on the UK Singles Chart) and YouTube memes. That song would be “I Love It” by Lil Pump and Kanye West featuring additional vocals from Adele Givens. I’ll talk about this song more when we get to the new arrivals.

At number-four, we have a one-space increase for “Body” by Loud Luxury and brando, and I’m not exactly bothered by that, although a closer look at the lyrics reveal them as pretty... dodgy.

Talking about dodgy men, we have “Taste” by Tyga and Offset moving up three spots to number-five.

“Happier” by Marshmello and Bastille has gone up nine spaces to enter the top 10 at number-six, for some reason.

“Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B is also up three spots to number-seven.

Oh, remember the three Eminem songs we had in the top 10 last week? Well, they’re still there, and now they’re consecutive. “Fall” featuring Justin Vernon is up a spot to number-eight... why?!

“Lucky You” featuring Joyner Lucas is down three spots to number- nine.

Finally, “The Ringer” is a whopping six spaces down to number-ten. Oof.

Climbers

There is only a single climber here. Yeah, yikes, it was quite boring here. Other than the top 10 and a couple small climbers for songs by Freya Ridings, Jess Glynne and a couple others, that aren’t worth mentioning, we have “Be Alright” by Dean Lewis moving up eight positions to #27. Nice song.

Fallers

We don’t even have much of these... there are quite a lot of fallers at about one space or two down but otherwise, yeah, there are just a few worthwhile decreases here. “Shotgun” gets its streaming cut in half as part of a chart rule, forcing it down 14 spaces to #17, “In My Feelings” by Drake featuring City Girls is collapsing down the charts, with a whopping 14-spot decrease right to #21, whilst “Rise” by Jonas Blue and Jack & Jack is down eight positions to #32, as is “Solo” by Clean Bandit and Demi Lovato down to #36. There are also two five-spot falls for “Youngblood” by 5 Seconds of Summer and “Jackie Chan” by Tiesto and Dzeko featuring Preme and Post Malone, down to #30 and #38 respectively.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

We don’t have all too many big dropouts this week, but there are a lot of smaller ones that were pretty expected like “If You’re Over Me” by Years & Years out from #34, “Ring Ring” by Jax Jones featuring Mabel and Rich the Kid from #37, “LO(V/S)ER” by AJ Tracey off the debut from #38, “Only You” by Cheat Codes and Little Mix from #39 and “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME” by the 1975 from #40 (please, stay out!).

As for returning entries, we have “This is Me” by Keala Settle and the Greatest Showman Ensemble because it can’t leave the freaking charts apparently to #40, as well as that confusingly-credited “Ay Caramba” song by Fredo, Young T & Bugsey and their weirdly-titled record label Stay Free Get Lizzy back to #39.

IN MEMORIAM

“What’s the Use?” – Mac Miller featuring Snoop Dogg, Thundercat, Dam-Funk and Syd

I’m sure you all know of Mac Miller’s tragic death on September 7th due to what I believe is a drug overdose. I was never a massive fan of his music, his lazy flow never appealed to me and personally his production could be hit-and-miss. At 26 though, a clearly great talent with a lot of musical growth and potential, who touched a lot of peoples’ hearts with his songwriting, being lost, is awfully sad, and one of the recent musical deaths I’ve actually taken to heart and cared a great deal for, enough to check out more of his stuff at least. I’m not covering the song that charted on the UK Singles Chart – it didn’t get into the top 40, and I’m rather indifferent on it – so, instead, I figured I’d talk just a little bit about one of my favourites off of Swimming, “What’s the Use?” featuring uncredited vocals from Snoop Dogg, Thundercat, Dam-Funk and Syd. The track, produced by Pomo, also the man behind Anderson .Paak’s “Am I Wrong” (one of my favourite songs of the decade), has some of the essential elements of synth-funk, with a smooth falsetto vocal from Mac Miller in the hook, a freaking great bassline, and really pretty synths serving as the base for the handclaps that perfectly encapsulate Mac’s lyrics and performance – they’re not energetic, in fact, they’re just kind of there... with very little effort or charisma, like Mac’s vocals, where he’s clearly hopeless and careless about what he’s singing about, which is, shocker of the century, drug addiction, which he has since grown numb to, and it’s just become part of the routine. Oh, and I love how is flow is ever slightly off throughout, it adds a more natural touch. Thundercat’s bridge is pretty heavenly too, and the ever-so-subtle Snoop Dogg vocals are quirky and do their job well; if you add Snoop Dogg to a track, you will most likely never fail, he just has too much charisma to ever ruin a song, I love him for that. Great track, check it out. Rest easy, Mac.

NEW ARRIVALS

#31 – “RAP DEVIL” – Machine Gun Kelly

Okay, so, I’ve heard “KILLSHOT”. Eminem, basically on auto-pilot, still destroyed Kelly, and that’s because Kelly doesn’t seem to be able to stir up the anger that is clearly being felt from how Em’s disappointed him as a fan (trust me, I’ve been there) in any way that seems visceral or even interesting compared to Eminem’s thirsty verse in “KILLSHOT” that even Em sounded bored recording. The beat is actually pretty good, with the simple guitar strumming being covered by a lot of distortion and some skittering trap percussion, as with Ronny J’s typical style, but it’s pretty effective, especially when the distortion and drums cuts out in the intro and bridge. Meanwhile, Kelly has an autotuned hook where he rhymed “let’s talk about it” with itself, petty and moronic references to how Eminem’s beard is weird and how he’s named after confectionary (really, Kelly? That’s the best you could come up with?), an admittedly nice delivery at some points (especially during the “f**k the Rap God, I’m the Rap Devil” passage, where he flows pretty nicely and the lines are actually pretty hard; not hard-hitting but work very well with Kelly’s aggressive and faster style), backing vocals desperately trying to prove anything Kelly says is worth listening to by repeating “facts!”, and finally, how the real Slim Shady can’t stand up. Yeah, that’s a hilariously pathetic line, not in concept but how the beat cuts out for such an uninteresting line, and that’s how he ends the second verse. It’s pretty funny, but the song itself? Not exactly worth it. Sorry.

#15 – “Electricity” – Silk City and Dua Lipa

So, this is a song featuring vocals from Dua Lipa, and partly written by Mark Ronson, Florence Welch and Diplo. Recipe for success, right? Well, not exactly, but it’s awful at all, in fact I’d argue it’s pretty damn good for what it is. Yes, it’s a tad underwritten, but do these dancefloor-filler house tracks need much of that to be fun, energetic bops? No, of course, they don’t, and this song succeeds in being just that, with some beautiful vocals from Dua Lipa, who proves to be a perfect base for the deeper pitch-shifted vocals in the drop, and a pretty nice piano melody, with a great bassline to boot, as well as some pretty interesting vocal samples in the bridge that appear alongside some cloudy synths. Much like the last song I reviewed by EDM producers that featured Dua Lipa, “One Kiss”, it’s a good song, but it’s not anything I’m able to really talk much about. It’s not void of any discussion, and I expect this to stick around on the charts for a while (at least in the UK), but it doesn’t exactly give me much material. Oh, and the outro with the “woo-hoo!” ad-lib and the funky guitar strumming is such a great ending, albeit slightly unfitting. It’s alright and I’d definitely recommend it for someone looking for these types of tracks, but that’s as much as I can say about it.

#3 – “I Love It” – Lil Pump and Kanye West featuring Adele Givens

This is “I Love It”, a song presumably taken from both Pump and Kanye’s upcoming albums, featuring a sample (and a video cameo) from comedian Adele Givens, and a video featuring Kanye and Pump being trapped in blocky ROBLOX suits and overly-large shoes while following Givens, dressed somewhat like an angel, in a grey hallway, that premiered at the Pornhub Awards, which Kanye creatively directed. Can’t make this up, folks.

The song that was pretty blatantly rushed last minute so that the video would serve any purpose, and in an attempt for Kanye to get some more chart success after how ye performed, is also pretty humorous, actually, and it’s not like it’s all that terrible, either. It’s got a nice enough bassline – possibly stolen from T-Pain but that’s besides the point -  but that’s all it has, and I’m not over exaggerating all that much here; other than the percussion and the vocals, starting off with a decent enough introduction from Adele Givens, sampled from a Def Jam comedy special, that is actually kind of funny to be fair to Givens here, but then it continues down the road to an awful feature from Lil Pump, where he ditches his yelling for a more melodic, autotuned style as he croons about how his girl is such a hoe and he loves it. That’s completely fine, until he talks about telling her cousin that he’s with her, and then banging that cousin, or her sister as he’s apparently oblivious because he does so much Xans or whatever, and then, in shock and pure disgust, he exclaims what I’m pretty sure is the ROBLOX death sound and the beat cuts out to show his genuine anger at how “she take lines”. I thought you loved her (or her cousin, or her sister) because she was a freak, what’s wrong with her taking cocaine? Man, I didn’t think I’d be able to find plot holes in a Lil Pump song this easily considering the lack of even trying for any substance in the subject matter but anyway, after Pump makes up some words, shouts out both London and Smokepurrp and repeats the chorus again, we get a skit from Kanye which is just there to fill out the runtime... as is the mind-numbing repetition of “I’m a sick f**k, I like a quick f**k, whoop!” After about four or five takes at the line, he starts rapping about how if you perform oral sex with him, he’ll buy you a sick truck... and he delivers on his promise, Kim got a green Mercedes-Benz back in August. To be fair to Ye here, he puts more effort in comedic delivery than Pump, so some of his lines can actually pass off as at least partly humorous, like “How you start a family? The condom slipped up”. And after a few filler lines that rhyme “hoe s**t” and “more s**t” with itself two or three times, Kanye’s done and basically the song’s done. It’s really not worth your time unless you’re watching the video. The official clean version on Spotify is somehow even more incompetent than the song though, it’s bloody hilarious.

Conclusion

Best of the Week goes to Silk City and Dua Lipa for “Electricity”, because at least they tried, and Worst of the Week goes to Kanye West, Lil Pump and Adele Givens for “I Love It”. I like all three of these guys, I just wish they were able to come out with something more worth my time combining all their strengths. See ya next time!