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reallivegeekgirl · 3 years

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StanQuest

Something clicked on in my brain a couple months ago and suddenly Sebastian Stan became the hottest man alive. So I decided to watch everything he’s ever been in. A friend and I called it StanQuest.

Here are my spoiler-free reviews for anyone considering something similar (in inverse chronological order starting with latest works and going back in time. The stars are an overall rating of the work, not of Sebastian’s performance.

This only lists things I could find streaming for free or a price I was willing to pay. It does not count after credits scenes, music videos, or works in which he was uncredited.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) - TV show - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - This started it all. I very much enjoyed it. Good balance of humor and action, heart and heroics. I’ve watched it four times already, and will watch it again. Bucky Barnes is my favorite character of his and this is my favorite story of Bucky's so far. I can’t wait to see what he does next. (And I have a lot to say about how they treat his trauma in this show. I’ve definitely written about it before and may again.)

Monday (2020) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐ - This is the one where he gets naked. If that’s all you’re looking for, enjoy. It was a very realistic portrayal of a relationship between two deeply flawed people. It can get depressing. But hey, penis.

The Devil All the Time (2020) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - If you think Monday is depressing, this movie says “hold my beer”. But something about it is just captivating. It’s really disturbing, and if you’ve ever been screwed over by American Evangelical Christianity it might be more disturbing. Still, I’ve watched it twice. And as much of a bastard as Lee Bodecker is, he also looks really cuddly. He’s just barely in it.

The Last Full Measure (2019) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - You will cry. A lot. It’s based on a true story. Sebastian plays a man who cares more about his career than this weird quest dumped on his desk by his boss, but changes his mind and his heart as he investigates why a war hero was denied a medal of honor 34 years before. Definitely recommend.

Endings, Beginnings (2019) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - One of two love interests in the complicated life of Shailene Woodley’s Daphne, Sebastian is an adorable mess. The editing is interesting and fresh feeling. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean. Fair amount of sex in this movie, and you see his butt. It’s a very nice butt. I’ve watched this one a few times so far.

Avengers: Endgame (2019) - Movie - ⭐⭐ - There is no reason to watch this movie if you’re not familiar with at least most of the rest of the MCU. It plays merry hob with the rules of time travel, and only makes sense if you don’t really think about it. In my opinion, the ending is really freaking stupid comsidering his character’s history, but at least it sets up TFatWS, which was amazing.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) - Movie - ⭐ - If you’re into movies that are creepy but also almost nothing happens for most of the movie, this is the one for you. Sebastian is handsome as hell, but also a complete asshole. As fine as he is, I’m not gonna watch this again. I fucking hated it.

Destroyer (2018) - Movie - ⭐⭐- I had a hard time paying attention to the plot because it seemed like they made this movie just to get Nicole Kidman an Oscar nomination for wearing ugly makeup and playing a complete mess of a person. It’s a fine movie, and all of the performances are good. Sebastian looks surprisingly good with the short hair and goatee. Ultimately, the plot is depressing and the whole movie seems kind of pointless.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - Movie - ⭐⭐- Again, no reason to watch this if you aren’t already familiar with all the movies leading up to it. It’s long and the villain looks like Grimace and a California Raisin had an evil baby. The ending made me scream with frustration that I had to wait until the next one came out. Now I just watch them back-to-back if I watch them at all. It’s not a good movie, but it is part of a long-form story that I enjoy in general.

I’m Not Here (2017) - Movie - ⭐⭐- Another depressing one. Told over the course of one man’s terrible life, it’s a sad account of how much your parents can fuck you up. Sebastian portrays the middle part of the man’s life. J.K. Simmons plays the current day part and unreliable narrator.. Do not watch unless you are fully prepared to be sad for a really long time after.

I, Tonya (2017) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐- This movie is hilarious. I mean, the true story is insane and really stupid. The spousal abuse is hard to watch, and Sebastian’s mustache in this is a war crime. But the acting is great and it’s a very engaging movie. The parts that aren’t horrifying are pretty funny.

Logan Lucky (2017) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Watch. This. Movie. Sebastian Stan is only in it a little, but it’s a really fun, clever caper/heist movie and everyone in it is fantastic. I don’t want to say anything else about it if you’re going in fresh. I’ll be rewatching this one a lot

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - If you ignore how kind of silly the conflict over the Sokovia Accords is, this is a good Marvel movie. Sebastian gets a lot of screen time because Bucky is the more pressing concern/urgent point of contention than the Accords. Bucky is my favorite character of his partly because of this movie.

The Martian (2015) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I’m watching it(again) as I’m typing this. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. Sebastian Stan isn’t in it very much, but he’s very cute and so is his little story arc. Mostly I watch it because Ridley Scott made a fantastic movie. If you can get your hands on the Blu-Ray, it comes with a ton of extras. They made a very complete story that isn’t all seen in the movie. A lot of it is stuff about Mars, but there are also extra “crew” interviews, so there’s another chance to see more of Sebastian’s character.

Ricki and the Flash (2015) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - He’s not in this very much, but he’s very cute when he does appear. It’s all about the relationship between Ricki and her daughter. Definitely rewatchable. Meryl Streep is fantastic, because she’s Meryl Streep.

The Bronze (2015) - Movie - ⭐ - This is not a good movie. It’s about Olympic gymnastics, so it might be slightly more interesting right now while the Olympics are happening. Sebastian isn’t in it a lot, but his performance is certainly… memorable. Weirdest sex scene I’ve ever seen. Worth watching just for that.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - This is the one I can watch over and over. I bought a Winter Soldier face mask for when I need to feel like a badass. Bucky’s story is really sad, but he’s also extremely sexy with the metal arm and determined walk.

Once Upon a Time (2012-2013) - TV Show - ⭐⭐⭐ - This show is so stupid, but it’s also fun. If you haven’t seen it, the premise is that fairy tale characters are real and live in another land. Snow White’s Evil Queen casts a spell to transport a bunch of them to a town she creates in Maine called Storybrooke, and gives them all fake memories so she can be mayor and watch them all not remember who they are. Sebastian plays Jefferson, a.k.a. The Mad Hatter. He’s in a few episodes in season 1 and 2, and doesn’t get a ton of screen time, but he’s really cute and tragic as Jefferson. It probably helps to watch the whole first season just to understand his episodes, but that’s up to your tolerance for weird shit. Note: IMDB says he’s in an episode uncredited, but I’ve watched it and didn’t see him anywhere in that one.

Labyrinth (2012) - TV Mini-Series - ⭐⭐⭐ - Two episodes that tell a complete story. Sebastian isn’t in this one a whole lot, but he is adorable. It’s a strange story about religious stuff and a sort of Holy Grail that’s three books. It’s hard to describe. It’s on Amazon Prime right now, but they’re taking it down August 8, 2021, so watch it while you can.

The Apparition (2012) - Movie - ⭐ - If you like horror movies, you might like this. I did not. From what I understand, it’s not a very good horror movie. Watch with caution and expect it to suck.

Political Animals (2012) - TV Mini-Series - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I had to buy this through Apple and watch it on a Mac, but it was worth it. Sebastian plays TJ Hammond, the out gay son of a former American president who is clearly based on Bill Clinton. Sigorney Weaver plays the former first lady and current secretary of state. TJ struggles with addiction and relationship problems. His performance is heart-wrenching. The whole show is pretty great. I wish there was more of it.

Gone (2012) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐ - More of a psychological thriller than a horror movie. Sebastian has a small amount of screen time as the worried boyfriend. Amanda Seyfried is good. She carries the film well on her own.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - If you haven’t seen this yet, I’d like to know what it’s like under your rock. This is a movie I can rewatch a lot, and have. I 100% cried in the theater. Sebastian looks fantastic in uniform as Bucky Barnes. This is his introduction and the start of his ultimately tragic story (before he’s saved by his best friend, again).

Black Swan (2010) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Sebastian is barely in this. He’s basically just in one scene in a dance club. But I watched it to try to complete StanQuest, and I had seen it before. It’s a good movie, but might induce some nightmares, depending on what scares you. If Natalie Portman didn’t at least get a nomination for an award she was robbed.

Gossip Girl (2007-2010) - TV Show - ⭐⭐ - Carter Baizen is a little shit. The episodes with Sebastian in them might have made more sense if I watched the show from the beginning, but I didn’t want to. His character is an asshole, but a very cute one.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐- The people who made this movie are bad at math, and their rules of time travel are sketchy at best, but it is funny and entertaining. Sebastian plays a ski patrol bro who’s paranoid about the Russians, which is hilarious irony to me. Worth watching if you want to laugh at something dumb.

Kings (2009) - TV Show - ⭐⭐⭐- Sebastian plays Jack Benjamin, the closeted gay son of the king of a fictional place. It’s loosely based on the David and Goliath story from the Bible. Sebastian is so sad and so gay. His family makes his life a living hell. Ian McShane is a force of nature in this. It’s only one season. I’ve watched it twice. I will watch it again.

Spread (2009) - Movie - no stars - This movie was practically unwatchable. It stars Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche as a romantic couple, I guess? I ended up just skipping to Sebastian’s scenes and only watching those. Still painful.

The Covenant (2006) - Movie - ⭐⭐⭐ - This movie is so fuckig stupid, and I will watch it a ridiculous number of times. It’s about magic and teenagers, like The Craft for boys. Nothing about it makes sense. It’s terrible, almost irredeemable, but an evil Sebastian with magic powers is a siren song that will make me steer my boat right into the rocks.

And there you have it. There are a bunch of earlier things on IMDB that I just can’t find or don’t want to pay to rent. Maybe some day I’ll watch them and add them to this list.

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hornime · 4 years

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hq as my discovery weekly | part one

warnings: this is completely sfw, combo of fluff and angst

characters included: kenma, akaashi, oikawa, suna, koganegawa, ushijima, bokuto, kuroo, hinata, kita, terushima, iwaizumi, osamu, kageyama, sakusa

a/n: this was a random idea i thought of but i think it’ll be really cute haha. maybe you guys’ll find some new songs in the process! totally encourage anyone to use this idea if they want cus this was super fun to write!

playing... one through fifteen / sixteen through thirty

↪ “cotton candy lemonade" by blu detiger: kenma kozume

i've been up too long, something's wrong / watch the rising sun / turning all my nights to days

i've been on my own, come find me now / i'm lonely to the bone / but I don't feel so low when you're around / let's run away from home

you'll bе my kaleidoscope, my color in this life / watching thе world fade away

kenma is not the most extroverted and he’s in his head a lot, so he’s someone that might not always see the ‘color’ in things that exist around him. but when it comes to you, well, you’re someone that makes him look up from his screen a little longer than usual.

↪ “love affair” by umi: akaashi keiji

don't overthink this is love / maybe it's just a crush

i hope what I feel is enough / maybe this is just lies

i wanna know how to feel, what to feel, what's right / i never know / 'cause when it gets real, I just run away / and hide from you

akaashi gets anxiety. he used to be certain about a lot of things—his intelligence, his skill, his happiness, but most important to him was his feelings for you. he’s overthinking again, he knows it, but he’s getting an uncontrollable itch that maybe this is all in his head; he doesn’t love you, he just think he does. but when you’re in his arms, breathing even and eyes fluttered shut, he remembers what you always told him: it doesn’t matter what he knows, it matters what he feels. and he feels like the luckiest man alive.

↪ “coke” by iii addicts, danice: oikawa tooru

come closer, i been eyeing you from way over / so it's time i come for some closure

had to let her know that you could lick this / shake it up, it's gonna probably gon' bust

why, tell me why / why am i not satisfied / every time i cross that line / i feel it, i feel it

oikawa feels like tantalus: a man constantly reaching for a goal just out of reach, straining his muscles and screaming his voice hoarse just for a glimpse of an unattainable destiny. he’s desperate to get ahead, and while he may be running at top speed at all times, the finish line doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. his worst fear is that, some time he’ll slow his pace and look back and realize he hasn’t gotten very far at all.

↪ “baby powder” by jenevieve: suna rintaro

i'll put up with you babe / there's somethings I won't take / baby don't feel me false / yeah that turns me off

you're making me so high now / you're everything I'd ever want / you're keeping me so dry now / you're everything I'd never want uh

plastic on the floor but it ain't for me / ima go up to the place that i'd rather be

suna is straightforward. he won’t deal with your bullshit, and he learns that you won’t deal with his either, which makes you so appealing. when he starts letting more and more of you in, he feels you slipping through his fingers. you wanted to be friends, so you treat him as one. he doesn’t remember when he started wanting more.

↪ “chandelier (instrumental version)” by paquin: koganegawa kanji

instrumental so no lyrics lol

koganegawa is bubbly. he’s a bouncer: he bounces between social circles, bounces colors behind his eyes, and bounces back after adversity. he’s an amiable guy, and it’s landed him plenty of friends and opportunities, but best of all, it’s landed him you.

↪ “l-over” by u.s. girls: ushijima wakatoshi

my lover has no heart / magic moving blood around that body / he's cool to the touch / i don't see him much / but when I do, he does nothing for me

can you imagine trying to get / some satisfaction out of a stone?

spare me any talk of your future life / i don't know what I'll do without you

ushijima is stubborn. he’s deadset on achieving his goals for the future, and if you can’t work with them, you better work around them. you’re tired of how he grounds you; you thought it was a blessing at first, having a guy that knew what he wanted and would always act as a constant in your life, but you’ve started to see that he’s not a lighthouse anymore, he’s an anchor. he’s an anchor that’s chaining you to the ocean floor and will drown you if you, even for a second, stop kicking your legs to stay afloat.

↪ “magic!” by リアムMAZE1981: bokuto koutarou

and when you smile at me that way / well you can warm the coldest day / it's magic

and all i have to do is think of you / to make the music start to play / then i dance down the street / and the people I meet stop and say hey hey

and when you want me you just clap your hands / and I'll be with you right away / then we'll float on a breeze / while the leaves in the trees softly say hey hey / magic ways, my friend / you love the girl with magic ways and it's true / i might as well give in

bokuto is bright. he tramps around the world with the light of the sun illuminating his face. there is nothing in the universe that could ever drag him down, especially not with you around. you’ve cast some kind of spell on him, he’s sure of it, because your very presence makes him certain that he’s immortal. he must be, because when he’s with you, he’s withstanding the heat of a thousand suns that erases the darkness in every shadow, corner, and crevice of his life.

↪ “i hope that u think of me” by pity party (girls club): kuroo tetsuro

i hope that you dream of me baby / nightmares are what dreams are baby i-i-i / i think I'm fallin' out of love

you tell me that it's easy to be / you tell me that it's easy to be with me but you lie-i-i / why do you lie all the time?

kuroo is focused. he takes note of everything when he’s working on a task, down to dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s. he often finds himself with tunnel vision, unable to think of anything but the current responsibility at the top of his every-growing to-do list. somewhere along the way, he lost track of you—must’ve loosened his grip on your hand and your fingers fell through empty space. he’d look for you, back in the void, but he’s busy. he keeps moving, unaware that you’ve turned back, walking in the opposite direction as him to find the life before him that you barely remember.

↪ “the leanover” by life without buildings: hinata shoyo

kiss me, break my mind, close the door / black steel, break my mind, close the door

if i lose you in the street / i say, i say, i say, i say, i say, i say / wassup, wassup with you? / wassup with your friends?

hinata is unfazed. he knows that, when things go bad, there’ll always be something there to right them. so when your paths diverge—maybe your schedules don’t work out, your dates get canceled, your nights home become more and more sparse—he’s not worried. not one bit. because at the end of the night, he knows that you’ll always find your way back to one another, and you’ll always greet him with open arms. and he’ll always do the same.

↪ “ladyfingers - edit” by funding secured: kita shinsuke

instrumental so no lyrics lol

kita is polished. he works hard during the day to be with you at night, dancing in little circles in the small kitchen of your shared home. he looks at you with fondness and appreciation, thanking his stars a million times over for granting him with someone like you. he’s a tree, stable in the harshest of gales, but even trees like to sway with the wind sometimes.

↪ “black madonna” by cage the elephant: terushima yuuji

makes no difference here, so let's be real / black madonna, my black flower / nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide / you're not havin' fun, i think that you should ride

climb so high, don't hear a sound / don't you forget what goes around, comes around / climb so high, tell me how to feel

call me when you're ready to be real / black madonna, my hallelujah

terushima is hedonistic. he’s never concerned himself with thoughts of the future, or of the past, or of anything, really. all he can think about is making each moment as willing to be lived as possible. you, on the other hand, are practical, too practical in his opinion, and he wants you to let loose, lighten up a little bit. maybe in the long run, it won’t be the best idea to let him take you by the hand and on a midnight adventure, but you haven’t thought that far ahead yet. guess he’s already rubbing off on you.

↪ “mother nature’s bitch” by okay kaya: iwaizumi hajime

everybody / please give a warm welcome to / to this current mood

here i am / easy to please / here i am / okay with it

here i am / desperate for attention / here i am / being mother nature's bitch

iwaizumi is hardworking. he does the best he can with everything he tries; sometimes that amounts to something and sometimes it doesn’t. most times it doesn’t fulfill his expectations, as high as they are. when you’re around, his borderline hatred for himself disappears. when you’re there to tell him how great he’s doing, the tension in his shoulders dissipates.

↪ “smithereens” by rasharn powell, ab001: miya osamu

found my power / and my brethren / in a tussle with the world itself

see if I’m david, you’re goliath / there’s some power in defiance / put my heart in a slingshot / we been cycling away for days

searching for freedom always / likeness of an orgasm been had / empty with a peace that just don’t last / petite mort, then born again

osamu is pioneering. he opened a small business and eventually branched out, managing chains of his restaurant across the nation. it may not be a flashy job, but it’s a solid one, and a draining one. there are days of back-to-back shifts, afternoons overwhelming catering orders, and nights spent sleeping over on a cot near the kitchen. when he dreams, curled up with the smell of onigri still lingering in the air, he can only think of ‘what if’ he’d chosen another path, a path with a more obvious end, a more obvious definition of glory. but he still wakes up at dawn, conquering his own corner of the sky, knowing that his life, while it may be small, is not insignificant.

↪ “must be” by lou phelps: kageyama tobio

must be the henny on the ice / must be the diamonds that I buy / might be the shit that I write / whatever a n**** do and say, that's what I like

i'm on the cloud as i walk the front door / that's a boost, that's true, that's loo

yeah, um, i'mma need my space / 'cause you's a bum-bum, can't be standing next to me, uh / forgive me for my sins / don't tell me this is wrong if it feels right

kageyama is cocky. he’s good at what he does, amazing, actually, and he sure as hell knows it. he’s surrounded by people that make him better, people that he makes better, and he can’t think of a place he’d rather be. he’s on his way to carve his way into the moon and he’s not going to tolerate anyone that wants to keep him on earth.

↪ “jealous” by eyedress: sakusa kiyoomi

you could have anyone you want / why would you want to be with me? / you know, I'm nothing special

don't tell me about your problems / if you're not trying to solve them / don't ask me for my help

sakusa is independent. he’s not one to see himself as part of someone else’s orbit, opting to act like a random rock, floating in space with no origin and no destination. he’s worried that, if he gets too close to you, he’ll end up getting drawn in by your gravity and either crash land or burn up. neither seems appealing, and the idea of a safe encounter hasn’t even crossed his mind, so he’s going to keep moving on an endless trek towards the stars.

#haikyuu!!#haikyu #hq #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu angst #kenma #akaashi #oikawa #suna #koganegawa #ushijima #bokuto #kuroo #hinata

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babysizedfics · 4 years

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hihi im back with another ask i send a lot of these now huh. anyway!! what would they all dress up as for halloween/how do they celebrate halloween when vee and ro are little compared to when they are big? do nana janus and chaotic cousin remus also join in? im super excited 'cause its halloween now and also i remembered my second ask from last night so m gonna send that now! 🐝

bee anon i know its been literal weeks since you sent this but i have been thinking about it loads and rlly hope that its worth the wait!!

i think this might be my longest headcanon post yet!

Halloween headcanon for the family

the timeline of labd took place in summer of this year so this halloween is their first one as a little family! patton was eager to suggest to the others that they make it a family halloween party where both boys are little and they can have some more childish fun!

virgil is nervous about it, he really loves halloween but he is easily frightened by horror and jumpscares and its a lot worse when hes regressed. and even though he trusts his family a ton hes worried they'll accidentally put on a scary movie or have spooky decorations that will scare baby him, so he's worried he will ruin the party by being a crybaby

however patton and roman are both so so so excited about having a child friendly halloween party and logan has been researching family halloween activities that are toddler friendly and vee is also a bit excited despite his anxiety so they all agree to it !!

costumes:

originally they all wanted to have a family group costume theme!! but roman and vee's interests are so different when they're little

whatever roman suggested was either too scary or it was from a show that was too old for baby vee

and any of pattons suggestions that baby vee liked roman complained of them being too babyish or simple

so instead they decide each little will go as a matching costume with one of the CGs! so everyone gets to match with someone and the littles arent upset

Logan and Vee go as rilakkuma (big brown bear) and korilakkuma (littol white bear) respectively

their costumes are basically just onesies they got from online, just standard onesie but with bear tail and bear ears on the hood and the tummy patch!

As a surprise though roman sews vee a pair of matching mittens for his costume! theyre fluffy on the inside and theyre white and have pink toe beans sewed on!! so they're like paws! and roman made them detachable so vee can have them attached to the onesie but can also wear the mittens without it

SIDE NOTE: this concept post is about how vee loves the mittens so much he starts wearing them a lot of the time when he's lil!

Roman and Patton go as Kuzco and Pacha

roman makes both of their costumes from scratch!! even fake jewellery for kuzco!! he's REALLY proud of himself and so is everyone else!!

quick link to the posts for what their pumpkins look like and the shenanigans that ensued when they carved them!

During the set-up:

during the day patton and roman bake sugar cookies! and roman does a great job decorating them like pumpkins and black cats! theyre really cute baby friendly designs

meanwhile logan and baby vee decorate the house! logan sticks up paper pumpkin faces and bats while vee sits on the floor in a little play area rattling his giraffe rattle and logan is like talking to him "where should i put this pumpkin sweetheart?" and vee just babbles cluelessly and sucks the ear of the giraffe and logan is like "what a marvellous idea" and hangs the pumpkin exactly where he planned

also they make tissue ghosts!

basically vee's job is to scrunch up a tissue into a ball! so logan gives him a tissue and shows him how to scrunch it and vee does a littol scrunch and giggles and logan takes it (scrunches it a bit more into a ball) and covers it in another tissue and rubber band! then he asks the baby if this ghost should be happy or sad (vee ALWAYS says happy) and logan draws happy little face on it!

when they have enough logan hangs them from the ceiling fan!! and he turns the fan on slow and the ghosts float around slowly and he goes 'vee look at that!'

and baby vee on the carpet is staring at them and then he whines and holds his arms up to mama - he wants to be picked up

lo was concerned that baby found the ghosts scary but!! vee giggles and reaches up to the ghosts and he bats them! like a little kitten! he loves it because its like a baby mobile!!

During the actual party:

lots of fun! logan cut out pumpkin shapes out of orange craft paper earlier and the boys get to draw faces on them!! and then they get blu tacked up on the walls!

and they nibble their cookies of course! very nummy well done roman and patton

but while ro is busy drawing and while vee is busy suckling his cookie and cuddling papa lo sneaks off to set up the main event...

trick or treat scavenger hunt:

there are bags of candy and little party favours (like little badges and bubbles and stuff) hidden around the house!

patton suddenly pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and gasps! then he announces that the boys got an invitation to go trick or treating around the house by some special guests! at this vee gets a bit nervous and buries his face in papa's shoulder but patton rocks him and roman is really excited!!

so patton hands the invitation to roman and its a riddle! roman has to figure out which room the riddle wants them to go to! roman is a very clever little boy, just ask his mom and dad, so he figures it out and leads them to the dining room! roman runs ahead and paatton carries baby vee on his hip

and in the dining room is logan - but he's not really supposed to be logan - he is still wearing his bear onesie but also now is wearing a big black blanket around his shoulders (its meant to be a cape) and has those really cheap uncomfortable plastic vampire fangs

'welcah to i cashel' he lisps

roman giggles because its very silly and he LOVES silly, especially mom being silly

but baby vee grips his papa tighter. he doesnt know why mama is talking weird or why his mouth looks different and pointy but it scares him and he starts whimpering

papa bounces him a little and whispers that its just mama being silly

logan hates to see ve scared of him so he tries to rectify it 'ish ohay bee ish okay wook ish mama!'

vee looks over because papa and his brother are giggling so it cant be that scary right?

but as logan tries to talk again the teeth fall straight out his mouth with a trail of drool and roman bursts out laughing and so does patton and so baby starts giggling too!! because its just mama!

anyway the game is to convince the vampire to let you have his candy. the vampire says he will only give them the treats if they can name all of the characters in peppa pig

and they do it!! vee immediately bounces and squeaks 'pepepepepa!' and then roman names mummy pig and daddy pig and george and then they get treats AND another riddle!

logan sprints out of the room to shove the next costume on and get to the next room

then roman takes them to the laundry room where the wolf man (logan with dog ears made of socks) will only give them bubbles and the next riddle if they both pet his head VERY softly!

and then they find a mummy in the kitchen and have to unwrap him! roman tears off the toilet paper from logans body and hands it to vee and vee scrunches it up like he did earlier and holds a little bit to his chest and decides its his now - the mummy gives them more candy and another riddle!

the hunt goes on until they find mama in the living room lying on the couch - and he's asleep! (he's not really)

theres a note on his chest that says that mama is under a spell!! and he can only be waken up by a kisses from all his family!! roman giggles and goes first and kisses logans cheek really loudly and sloppy and logan winces in his "sleep" at the wetnes on his cheek and roman thinks its funny

vee is really nervous that mama is under a spell :( so papa says he will show vee how to wake mama up. and patton leans down to kiss logan - logan's eyes open when he's just above him and leans up to meet him in a quick soft kiss on the lips

then its baby vee's turn and he wriggles in papa's arms so patton puts him down onto logan's lap on the couch and vee does his signature baby kiss - he leans forward, gently presses his forehead against his mamas and whispers 'mwah' behind his paci!

and then logan wakes up and says 'oh you saved me!!' and wraps a smiley baby vee in a very tight cuddle!

and when logan gets up he says he is SO grateful to his boys for saving him that he's gonna give them presents!!

For being so creative and clever by solving all the riddles and finding ways to trick the monsters into giving them treats, roman gets a rainbow etch a sketch!

and for being such a brave baby and for being so gentle with the monsters and with mama, little vee gets a squishmallow bat who will always protect him and give him cuddles!

the rest of the night is pretty much jsut roman being really excited and proud of how well he did in leadinf his family to victory and he draws all of the events that happened on his new etch a sketch!

and baby vee is just so relieved that mama is back that he doesnt leave mama's lap and snuggles with his new squishy friend al evening! he falls aslee pretty quickly because it was a busy day for just a little baby!!

the end :3

#long post #little/big concepts #asks #🐝 anon #agere virgil #little virgil #agedre roman #little roman #cg patton #cg logan #sanders sides agere #ts agere

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kai-keda · 4 years

Note

11-14 for anime ask

11: Anime you didn’t expect to like but did:

- I’m sure there’s quite a few but Dragon Ball is definitely one. Especially considering all my early attempts to get into it that ended in failure.

- Idolish7. Okay now, hear me out, Reda, her husband and myself were doing this thing where we pulled up crunchyroll and tried to find some anime that we had never seen before and preferably none of us had ever even heard of before.

So Idolish7 was one of those anime where we watched the first episode and omg it was so much fun. It’s so cheesy, it’s so dumb, it’s so obviously just trying to check boxes for “appealing” anime and it’s so ENJOYABLE!

I should go watch some more of it tbh. I remember enjoying the heck out of it despite laughing at it in the beginning (and kinda giggling throughout) and genuinely caring about the characters on some superficial level.

12: Anime that should get more attention from others:

SHIROBAKO IS INCREDIBLE AND I JUST REMEMBERED THE ENGLISH DUB DVD/BLU-RAY SET IS GONNA BE RELEASED SOMETIME THIS MONTH IF IT HASN’T BEEN ALREADY AND I NEEEEEEED IT LIKE SPONGEBOB NEEDS WATER!

Shirobako is this GREAT anime about a group of women who had an anime club in high school where they created an original anime special and played it for their school’s festival.

The anime focuses primarily on one girl in particular who works as a production assistant at a professional anime studio while the other four from her club are around and also trying to get into/ make it in the business.

It.

Is.

So.

Good.

If you are a creative - artist, animator, 3D modeler, voice actor, writer - you will find someone somewhere in this anime to relate too. I PROMISE!

It is SO AMAZING AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHY IS THERE SO LITTLE FANART AND ZERO MERCH, WHY MUST THE FANDOM GODS CURSE ME WITH SUCH A FUTILE HYPERFIXATION!

13: Funniest anime you have watched:

- It would be so easy to say Hetalia here. Like, so very easy. But let’s sit down and try to think outside the box, Kay?

There’s this other anime that I watched quite a bit of back in the day, I believe it was called Puchimas? But I’m not entirely sure. That could be a bunch of random syllables my brain is trying to put together in an attempt to remember it.

It’s another 5-minute-per-episode anime and basically there’s these miniature versions of different characters that run around causing havoc.

I don’t remember anything at all from it besides finding it hilarious.

If you want a full-length anime, though, there’s always Azumanga Daihyo. Pretty sure I’m spelling that one wrong, too. It’s really funny and it seems to me that Nichijou and Lucky Star were both attempting to mimic that style/success.

It is the definition of slice-of-life because there is no over-arching story, it’s just the characters going through High School and it is some of the funniest shit ever.

14: Saddest anime you have ever watched:

Grave of the Fireflies.

Hm but somehow something is eating at me telling me there’s something sadder I’ve watched. I feel like it’s something Quantum has shown me. Maybe I’m thinking of that one Gundam spin-off anime he showed me? What was it, 0090? That sounds right.

Aaaahh I still feel like there’s something sadder I’ve seen.

Something that really fucked me up and made me feel awful in a good way afterwards.

It might’ve been something I’ve watched with my brother where afterwards we just kinda stared at the screen and at each other like “that feels awful.”

Hm... there was that DVD of older anime shorts of some kind. Yeah, something on there must’ve been the saddest anime I’ve ever seen but I just can’t remember what it was at all.

Since I’m on mobile and don’t want to look at another “tab” on my phone cause it’ll risk losing my answer, I’ll try to find it and reblog this post with it. Maybe.

AHHH THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY FUCK IT LET’S JUST SAY GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES AND ALL GO HOME!

#anime asks #anime ask #that was fun #thanks for the questions bro

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foegold · 5 years

Text

people be wanting to know about a lil blue bastard. this ones long as hell so its under the cut jsdhfg

Your character wasn’t an adventurer, what livelihood would they lead?

farmer! he’d just keep living the way he’d been living. it’s the sort of life he imagines he’ll return to one day, after he’s seen and done enough. ‘enough’ is a really arbitrary end goal though

Who in the party would your character trust the most with their life?

who in the party wouldn’t he trust with his life tbh. in the most literal sense he’d trust Eli with it just because he knows Eli can bring him back from dying in some stupid and ill-advised way

What are your character’s core moral beliefs?

frogs are good, try to be nice to people but if they’re mean to you first then at least a few bets are off, the rich should probably be eaten. killing is sometimes necessary but maybe try some other stuff first

What relationship does your character have with their parents and siblings?

he doesn’t have any siblings, and his relationship with his mom and recently present dad is. a little weird, and not all the way comfortable, and not like really bad, but just confusing? it’s confusing. at least he’s had more transparency from his mom recently than just about any other time. it’s a start

Does your character have any biases for or against certain races?

he trusts other tieflings a little quicker than other races but its not really saying much because he’s not smart and if you’re good at talking and sound like you know what you’re talking about he’ll just believe you. he doesn’t have the good sense to second think it without prompting

What is your character’s opinion on nobility? On authority?

so far just about every interaction with nobility has been messy or bad or scary or all three so right now the opinion is “not great”. also thats just too much money. whaddahell would you do with that much money. he’s generally uneasy with authority figures at best, and flat out paralyzed by them at worst. he’s easy to bully when he doesn’t have anyone backing him up and he knows and hates it

Describe your character’s current appearance: clothes, armor, scars they’ve picked up along the journey, etc.

he cycles through an assortment of sweaters but the one he wears the most is the heart sweater he got in Wunjo that’s been altered a few times in the last few months. he do keep collecting those scars tho, before starting adventuring he had a handful of minor scars just from working around the farm with the animals and the equipment and from romping around in the country. now he’s got all sorts, but the most prominent ones are: the thin scar on the left side of his face, starting just below the eyebrow and curving gently below his eye (the last time Leo would leave a mark on him); the twisted angry scars across his torso from being mauled by a giant undead horse(?); and the fluid, patterned necromancy scars slowly spreading across his back, creeping along inch by inch

What location encountered in the campaign has your character felt the most “at home” in, or just generally liked the most?

besides his own house, Roman’s house has been the nicest! its warm and theres soup and friends there. there was a run down little ranch house somewhere at some point, but he’s not so sure anymore that he didn’t just dream about fixing the place up with his best friend

What deity, if any, does your character worship? What’s their opinion on other people’s worship?

he doesn’t have a god he actively worships, but he’s peripherally aware of the god in the mountains that’s responsible for some of the most brutal storms in the region. he doesn’t care much about religion but hes got the same amount of concern most people would have about evil deities and what their followers do

If your character had time to pick up any artisan’s tools, game set, instrument, etc., what would it be?

probably woodworking! its handy, it’s useful for living out in the country where you have to either make the tools or furniture or fun items to put on a shelf you want, or go out of your way and also spend money to get them. maybe an actual alchemy set and/or poison kit but 1) playing with poison just a fun hobby for him and Xan to get into when they have the time and the plants for it, and 2) man he wouldnt follow the instruction manual anyway so whats the point

What aspect of your character’s future are they most curious about? (If they could know one thing about the future, what would it be?)

will his friends be okay? will he be okay? is there an FAQ for tieflings learning that they’re much closer to fiend lineage than they originally thought? that would be convenient and helpful. is john gonna figure out more about the little men named ‘adam’ that’re allegedly everywhere? if he could know one thing about the future, he’d like to know if everything will end out okay. if things will turn out as nice as he’d like them to.

What colors are associated with your character?

looks at the camera like im on the office

blue, white, and black are the big ones but im trying to pepper in a few other colors. reds and yellows are a close second

Who in the party would your character prioritize rescuing, in dire circumstances?

everyone sits squarely in the #1 spot on the rescue list

that aside john and roman are extremely high priority, they’re not the sturdiest and if something looked at them too hard they might keel over. baster and xan come next, he knows baster’s a shit brick house but he keeps seeing bad things happen to her and really hes just had Enough of it. eli’s a little lower priority because they can heal themselves if they’re in a tight spot, and then blu considers himself least concern. he knows he can get thrashed around some and still survive, he’d rather take a beating and know he’ll walk out of it than let someone else take it and wind up dead

Is your character the most swayed by ethos, pathos, or logos?

pathos, it’s easy to make him feel for u. legit any of them work though as long as you talk it up good enough he’ll believe you and if there aren’t any glaring conflicts between what you’re selling him and his base morals then it’s relatively easy to get him on board

If your character was granted a single use of Wish, what would they use it for?

idk probably something really simple that he put all of .5 of a second of thought into. hes not smart and doesnt have good foresight so he’d probably ask for a frog or smth unless there was something very much more pressing and present

What is your character’s favorite spell? If they don’t use spells: what is their favorite personal weapon/combat maneuver/skill/etc.?

favorite(?) spell is life transference. it hurts a bit but it keeps his friends safe so it’s worth it. invisibility is up there too, its fun and easy to steal from stores when ur not visible

How does your character feel about keeping secrets from the rest of the party?

he doesn’t like lying and also lies really poorly. he’s usually just honest from the get-go, its easier and feels better. if he has to lie its through omission, bold faced lies really just dont work

What type of creature in the world is your character the most intrigued by?

all sorts....bro the world is full of animals and lots of them like to be pet

When they were a child, what did your character want to be, or think they were going to be, when they grew up?

he thought he’d grow up and be a farmer like his mom, the adventuring thing was extremely unplanned and impromptu. he hoped he could be a kind and brave person though, the way Canna described his dad.

The player character to your left admits that they’re passionately in love with your character. How would your character respond?

random roll says it’s Roman, he’d probably laugh because the only reason that would happen is because the party is fooling around with potions again. Roman’s very married and very in love with his husband and makes sure everyone knows it all the time

If somebody (an NPC, someone from their backstory, etc.) your character trusts/loves asked your character to do something against the party’s best interest, who would they side with?

that doesn’t seem like a very viable circumstance, the only npc thats important enough that he’d listen to for something like that is his mom and she actively encourages him to take care of himself and his friends, and lets him make his own decisions about what he’s doing with his life, so

What unusual talents does your character possess?

idk if its all that unusual of a talent but he got really good at stealing and pickpocketing and he can do a sick flip. also does some black magic sometimes

What does your character’s name represent to them? (Or: why as a player did you choose your character’s name?)

it’s his name, u kno. bluebell is his middle name, but Canna called him bluebell growing up and he latched onto it a lot more than arden, and he thinks its a nice name, and a nice flower, and it sure would be nice if people would stop laughing when he introduces himself as “Blu”,

(blu was originally a stand-in name until i named him something else but it really grew on me and it fit him so! it didnt change, he just got other names too)

What major arcana tarot card best represents your character?

The Moon. 👀

What is your character’s relationship with magic? Are they scared of it, wish to know more about it, indifferent to it?

he’s def scared of magic sometimes, especially his own. he also really wants to understand it better though, and be less scared, or at least control it better. imo it’s a healthy fear, theres been lots of magic mishaps

How did your character learn the languages that they speak?

he learned common and infernal from mom! and he’s learning draconic from xan. it’s a nice downtime activity, sit down with ur best friend and homie and learn a new language just for fun

#asks #hohg.....thats a lot of questions lksjflsahfdg #c: blu

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starkxsarcasm · 6 years

Text

Meta...ish...sorta

So I have debated writing about this for a while, because it will no doubt be polarizing for a lot of people, but with Infinity War about to come out of DVD,Blu-Ray and that good stuff and having seen a bunch of gifs surrounding this, I feel comfortable stating my thoughts. So just take it how you will and if you agree or disagree, that’s totally fine. But here it goes.

I have such mixed feelings about Tony/Pepper.

Allow me to explain, for this is not a new thing. In fact, I’ve felt this way since the first Iron Man. So let’s start from the beginning.

Iron Man 1

When we are first introduced to Pepper, I was 100% on board. She was classy and sassy, took no shit from anyone and was fiercely loyal to Tony.

I mean, look at this power girl. She knows Tony has important shit to do and can’t be bothered with awkward breakfasts or underhanded remarks from “Miss Brown” here. So, in the most classiest way, she basically tells her to GTFO, bitch. I loved it!

And then there first interaction. Oh my god, the cuteness!

Like, look at these two! They’re so cute! Pepper being the studious, responsible one, reminding the man-child Tony of all the stuff he has to do, all while Tony playfully flirts with her. Adorableness personified!

I mean, most of them in this movie is just so heartwarming! Tony hearing Pepper call his name while he’s being tortured, Pepper having cried when he came back, the little bicker they had when Tony wouldn't go to the hospital, how she stood by him even after he shut down his weapons manufacturing division when it would’ve been so easy to jump ship, the fun interaction with her helping change his arc reactor. I mean, guys, they were on a roll with this! I loved it!

Then came the first point of contention.

When Pepper finds out what Tony is doing, she tries to stop him and even tries to quit. Now I gave her the benefit of the doubt here, because what Tony was doing was kinda crazy. This was all before SHIELD and the Avengers, so him deciding to just superhero it up was obscenely dangerous. And, to her credit, she listens to him when he explains why he has to do this and does eventually help him download the files and stop Obadiah. All in all, this film was a great set up to their relationship and I so wish it continued on this path.

But alas, it did not. Then comes Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2

Okay, I’m gonna try not to rant too much on this one, but honestly, this part kinda gets me heated up. So, us as the audience are privy very early on to the fact that Tony is dying from palladium poisoning, spelled out by JARVIS who says, “The device keeping you alive is also killing you.” So like, whoa, holy shit! What’s Tony gonna do now?

So, in comes Pepper! Right off the bat yelling at Tony for donating their art collection.

Okay, fine. That was probably frustrating after all the time Pepper spent curating it, but...does she even stop to question why Tony is doing that? It’s clearly out of character, or else she wouldn’t be so shocked and mad. Remember, this is supposed to be one of the people who knows Tony best and yes, Tony hides his emotions and thoughts really badly, but this is a blatant sign that something is wrong. But her first reaction is to shout at him? Okay, that’s not gonna get him to tell you what’s going on. At all. If anything, it’s gonna make him retreat farther into his shell.

And another thing that kinda peeves me is she only chills out when Tony promotes her to CEO. Okay, yeah, huge promotion anyone would be happy about, but did she just forget that Tony is acting super out of character? That something might be seriously wrong?

Then the bit where Natasha/Natalie comes in and they sort of fall back into the goofy, cuteness argu-flirting during that scene, so I’m kinda like, “Okay, we’re back on track!”

Then...The Grand Prix

No, no, I’m sorry, but I’m with Tony here. What the hell was he supposed to do? Okay, being in the race was a last minute, reckless move but was he just supposed to run away? Let Vanko cut up more cars and hurt more people? Uh, no. That’s not who Tony is. People were in trouble, he wanted to help. And he gets yelled at for it.

Then the plane ride home.

Ding, ding, ding! Hello! I mean, does this guy need a giant flashing neon sign that reads “I’m not okay”? He is clearly acting super off in this scene, not wanting to go home, wanting to “be healthy” in Venice. He is practically holding himself back from completely losing it in front of her, and she doesn’t even notice? Okay, aftermath of a battle, nerves are frayed, I get it. But come on! It’s plainly obvious!

Hell, the first person Tony opens up to isn’t even Pepper, it’s Rhodey. The guy who realizes, “Hey, Tony is not okay. Let’s put aside all this bureaucracy BS for one second so I can find out what’s going on with my friend.” And him genuinely caring about that let’s Tony open up. Hell, he shows Rhodey the burnt out palladium. And yes, later they fight, but he trusted Rhodey in that moment to let him see him at his weakest.

I’m gonna skip the party scene a bit because I can honestly see both sides. Sure, Tony is acting a bit like a jackass and Pepper is tired, but again, this is still another red flag she just doesn’t catch.

And then the scene that really had me questioning this ship real hard.

Again, I get it I really do. She is frustrated and overworked. We’ve all been there But she doesn’t even try to listen to him. This is Tony Stark we’re talking about, a man who knows how to talk about his feelings about as well as a fish knows how to fly. And here he is, trying to explain everything that’s going on, stammering over his words and trying to explain his side and she just cuts him off, like nothing. This isn’t even an argument at this point, this is just shouting louder than someone else and refusing to hear them. This scene really rubbed me the wrong way. Tony doesn’t have anyone else at this point. Rhodey’s gone, his house is a wreck, Fury is just cryptic. He needs someone. And she just shuts him down, because she’d frustrated. Like, that is just so low to me.

But okay, the movie goes on, they have the battle at the Expo and Tony saves her. Got it, got it. Cool! The interaction on the roof was cool and the kiss was cute, but honestly...it was just more bickering? And the kiss, the more I think about it, doesn’t seem earned after all that’s happened above.

But okay! Maybe things will be better next movie, right? Wrong!

Iron Man 3

Now, I’m largely skipping The Avengers, because their interactions are limited and, for the most part, kinda cute. Even the little bicker with the 12% comment was kinda light and funny. They really did have nice interactions, cute moments of flirting and it even kinda made me sad that Tony couldn’t connect to Pepper before flying into space. Overall, I have no problem with them in the Avengers.

That’s not the case in Iron Man 3.

Now this section is largely gonna be void of pictures and too much ranting, because I’ve already gone over my least favorite scene in this meta here: http://starkxsarcasm.tumblr.com/post/169317464612/musings

But I’m still gonna touch on some things.

Okay, but for real. Can someone explain to me what the fuck is going on here in this scene? Like, honestly. I’m lost. Pepper has just told Happy she’s been batting Killian off with a stick for years because he’s constantly asked her out. I think all girls can relate to that one guy who just won’t take no for an answer, so when I heard her tell Happy this, I was like, “Go, girl! Be that strong woman!”

But oh no, Killian’s turned..hot?! (I used that term loosely, because to me he looks like a bag of unflavored corn chips) But...seriously?! Because he’s cleaned up a bit, you’re suddenly all taken aback and all like, “You look great!” Girl, this was a creepy guy, creeping on you creepily for years! Now you’re letting him touch you and be all flirty without kicking him in the nuts?!

I’m totally on Tony’s side here! He has a right to be jealous, if this is how she acts towards some creep who got a five dollar makeover! To her credit, she turns down his proposal, but then acts all flustered and blushy when he leaves. What the hell, Pepper? What happened to that power girl who told “Miss Brown” to kindly fuck off?

And then the subsequent “I can’t sleep” through “Tinker with that” scene which....*deep breath* Yeah, if you wanna know my feelings on that, read the above linked meta post, because talking about it more is just gonna make me angry.

And, even after all that, even after Tony plainly explains he is not okay, the next scene with Maya is literally just Pepper taking potshots at Tony, calling Maya an “old girlfriend” and arguing with him about all that’s been going on. And yes, Tony was dumb threatening the Mandarin. Yes, Pepper has a right to be freaked out. But honestly, when is enough gonna be enough? He is trying to do the best he can, while also suffering from PTSD. Shouting at him is not going to help! I don’t know how many times I can say that before it sticks. Then the house collapses and she thinks Tony is dead and it’s sadness all around. She gets kidnapped again, Tony has to save her. Fast-forwarding because, again, I largely have no problem with these scenes. I even kinda like the “I got you.” “I got you first” line.

Then, when Tony finally does come to rescue her, first thing she does is call him a jerk. Um...okay? You’re welcome? He just fought through hell and back to get to you, but sure, “jerk” works, I guess. Then the mad scramble for Tony to go and get her followed by thinking she’s dead. Again, no problem with this bit, but that may be due to RDJ’s phenomenal acting during it, because damn, he sells it.

And then boom! She’s alive and we get some fairly cool kickass bits from her before it all settles down. Now one line that has always bugged me is the “And all your distractions?” Distractions? Like Tony said at the end, his suits are not distractions, they’re cocoons. When is she going to realize that? Also, no, “So are you going to get help for your PTSD and nightmares?” Nope, just “distractions.”

Not gonna go into Civil War, since Pepper isn’t in it, but if anyone wants to hazard a guess as to why they’re taking a break, *gestures to above text* take your pick!

And now for Homecoming and Infinity War

These I’m combining because the problem I have with the relationship now bleeds into both movies and here it is.

Is it just me or does Pepper seem bizarrely disinterested in marrying and having a family with Tony?

Think about it. When Happy pulls out the ring, she gets this look on her face like, “Uh, excuse me?” That may be from the fact that Happy had been carrying it around so long, sure, but then when Tony tries to defend it, she’s all, “I can think of something better.” Um...ouch.

Then in Infinity War, the line, “If you wanted a kid, you wouldn’t have done that.” Speaking, of course, to his new arc reactor. But...what does that have to do with anything? Pepper, after all this time, is still riding Tony’s ass about being Iron Man and helping save the world and her, and is holding the fact that he wants a kid over his head, almost in revenge. Like, “Well, you chose this, so no kid for you!” And she constantly shoots down talks about a kid and the wedding and just....did you take the ring or not, honey?! What is your issue?

Again, I know this will be polarizing for people, and you’re not stupid or wrong if you like the ship, but guys, I’m gonna be honest. I’m kinda just over it. It started off with such promise and just degraded into unpleasant arguments, ignoring when Tony needs help, and constant “yes, no” backs and forth conversations.

It’s just not a fun ship for me anymore. I wish it was.

#loooooong #meta #ish #pepperoni #slight #infinity war spoilers #my thoughts #anti pepperony

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snkpolls · 6 years

Text

SnK S3E03 Results (Anime Only Viewer Version)

The poll closed with 184 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note this is the anime only viewer version of the poll. Manga readers, please click here for the results of the manga reader poll!

Rate the episode

85% of voters enjoyed the episode. About the same percentage as last week!

Which of the following moments were your favorite?

Seeing Erwin’s backstory animated was the clear winner here with almost half of respondents choosing it as a fave. Hange kicking the table and Erwin’s promise to avenge Dimo Reeves were close seconds.

Who drew it better: WIT or Isayama?

Not surprisingly, anime only viewers prefered WIT’s interpretation of Levi’s wanted poster, where manga readers preferred Isayama’s version. I think both groups can probably agree Levi wouldn’t love either of them, though...

Who has the best reaction to Historia’s backstory?

Sasha takes first and Connie second for this one - and we’re not surprised at all. Sasha pausing mid-slurp of her soup and Connie’s “wut” face are honestly relatable.

How cute was baby Historia?

Of course baby Historia is loved by the majority here, how could she not be? Give this girl some love please?

She is too pure

How cute was little Erwin?

While responses were a bit more spread for kidwin compared to little Historia, the clear majority still love him and his kidbrows.

Protect kid!win

HAVE YOU SEEN SOMETHING SO ASTONISHING YOU WANTED KEEP IT FROM DANGER FOR ETERNITY? I HAVE. ERWIN <3

The episode was dialogue heavy with a lot of character backstories and plot exposition. What type of episodes do you tend to prefer watching?

Looks like the majority of anime watchers like a nice balance of action and exposition. Thankfully this season seems to be delivering both up to this point with an action-heavy start and a slowed down third episode.

Why is this show just all exposition now? The only cool part so far was Levi in the shootout.

Can't all be action can it we need some story guys

Did Flegel really stay in that alleyway the entire night?

The majority of respondents thought that Felgel did in fact hang out in that alley all night. We mostly asked this question for fun and the responses ranged from serious to hilarious:

He prolly came back to the scene of the crime right?

Different clothes it looks like

Who's Flegel ?

yes, he waited for commander handsome's arrival!

Hookers

He blend with the shadows

hes just chillin let him be

On a scale of 1-5, how distressed are you about Eren being tied, gagged and drugged?

Eren’s current predicament doesn’t seem to be stressing anime only viewers quite a much as manga readers - the responses were pretty evenly spread here.

Who has the best hat?

The response to this one was a lot more evenly split than we expected, but the winner here is Kenny’s cowboy hat with Pixis’ top hat coming in second. We think Jean would be devastated to learn that his fedora came in last place.

How many flashbacks within flashbacks is too many?

Looks like that majority of respondents are more than willing to take on as many flashbacks as WIT gives them.

What was your reaction to Historia’s backstory?

Sadness was the most common reaction to Historia’s childhood, followed next by anger, which is not surprising. Some respondents thought it moved too fast to have strong feelings about, however.

It was okay. It went by too fast, making it seem rather cliche for me to truly care. I hope we get another peek into her past in the future episodes.

SADNESS THAT MELTED RIGHT INTO ANGER

I don’t care cause she’s probably gonna die anyway.

Who raised her if the mom did nothing?

Ymir, please come back.

What about Erwin’s backstory?

More respondents were angry about Erwin’s backstory than Historia’s, but the majority were still sad. Several people mentioned that his backstory explains a lot of his current motivations however.

It served as a good explanation for his personal motivation. But, I have to say, kid Erwin's design looks weird.

I want to pick up baby Erwin and protect him from all the pain and anguish in the world

Complicated feelings. It was necessary for Erwin to become the way he is

Disappointed because it doesn't explain his fleek eyebrows.

It was just boring. There was no need for a flashback if he was just gonna narrate the entire thing

So far, who has the most tragic childhood backstory this season?

Historia was the clear winner here with Levi in second place. Surprising since we haven’t actually seen any of Levi’s backstory yet outside of the comments Kenny made last week.

Do you think Hange is a good choice to take over as commander?

Hange is a great choice to take over as Commander according to the majority of responses with being being unsure as the second most popular choice. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Bitch gonna slay

Yes and no, yes she's very smart, and no she's insane

Erwin believes that the king erased humanity’s memories when they took refuge inside of the walls. Do you think he’s onto something?

As crazy as the theory might sound, it looks like the majority of respondents think Erwin’s dad’s theory seems legit.

I believe in his every decision!

What has been the most interesting reveal so far?

So far anime watchers are more perplexed about the realization that if a titan eats a titan shifter, they become a human. Does this spell disaster for our protagonist?

Which group of characters are your favorite?

The 104th + RBA barely squeaks ahead of the safe choice of “all of them” this week.

Where do you primarily discuss the series?

Additional thoughts on the episode?

So if titans become humans after eating a shifter, why wasn’t Santa turned into a human after episode 1? And after they turn into a human does that mean they’re a shifter since Ymir can now go back and forth? Why are the “shifters” able to shift? Why aren’t they stuck in titan form all the time? Why can’t Eren do any fucking thing in this show? Why is the main character always getting fucking kidnapped? Who even are the Reiss? I completely forget them from everything and I couldn’t care less that I did? Where’s the beast titan in all of this? Why is this show just all exposition now? The only cool part so far was Levi in the shootout.

Hange needs to apologise to table

The Government made a BIG MISTAKE by not killing kid Erwin. Now he's all grown up and preparing a coup on their ass!

The relationship between Reiss and his co-conspirators seem weird to me. It feels like there's a distance between them but they also trust him to do what they need him to do.

Who else was on the farm? Historia couldn't have lived there alone all that time…

good stuff

You have too many questions in your poll; I ain't got all day!

HAVE YOU SEEN SOMETHING SO ASTONISHING YOU WANTED KEEP IT FROM DANGER FOR ETERNITY? I HAVE. ERWIN <3

It seemed ridiculous of Pixis to accept Erwin's seemingly-out-of-the-blue plan. He didn't hesitate at all. It made me wonder whether Pixis and Erwin had been plotting something like this off-screen, long before the revelation of Historia's ancestry. Seeing Connie and Jean wearing hats was pretty funny. However, I noticed the animation was a bit derpy during certain scenes. They, also, didn't bother to animate the shot showing the 104+Levi's reaction to Historia's backstory. I hope they correct them on the Blu-Ray. Overall, it was a good episode.

Thank you to everyone who participated. See you again on Monday!

#snk polls #snk poll #snk spoilers #snk s3 #poll results

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hollyplays · 6 years

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The Roundup: July 2018

It’s been a shitty, shitty month. I’m getting evicted, we got into a car accident, the new insurance has my girlfriend confused for someone with a horrible speeding ticket record, and my little brother, who is learning to drive, has started hiding the car keys for some reason.

I have a tendency to hoard media. During my first year of college I was extremely depressed and contemplating suicide when I read a piece of advice- find something to look forward to, and you’ll never do it. So I started hoarding comics- I think I have 180 GBs of comics on my computer- and movies.

Well, at some point during July things got so bad I started burning through my movies. I’m not sure exactly how many I watched, but...it’s a lot. This is going to be long.

(I have since stopped watching multiple movies a day, and gone back to semi normal movie watching habits.)

Tampopo: I think I technically watched this in June and forgot, but I love it. Tampopo is a “food western” about a group of food enthusiasts helping a young woman perfect her ramen restaurant. Tampopo has lots of smaller vignettes about how food affects our lives, and the result is lovely and comforting and meditative. Tampopo is excellent, and manages to have one of the best opening scenes to a movie I’ve ever seen.

The Exterminating Angel: This was my first movie by Luis Bunuel, and I loved it. This kind of supernaturalish, surreal horror really really works for me. Plus, the rich suffer, which is always nice. This movie is really wonderful, plus the behind-the-scenes stuff on the blu-ray was super interesting. Apparently to make the actors more uncomfortable in the scene, Bunuel would rub honey all over their arms. Nasty.

The Fisher King: My second Gilliam movie. Better than Jabberwocky, but I still wouldn’t call it good. Robin Williams was excellent as always, but I felt like Jeff Bridges was playing half a character. It had some touching scenes, but overall kind of forgettable. I don’t think I’ll be seeking out Gilliam anymore.

Badlands: I try not to judge directors on their first movie, but Badlands really comes out in Malick’s favor. This is as wonderful a movie about a serial killer as I’m likely to ever see. It’s like a landscape painting with characters. It manages to never be slow or drag despite long flowing scenes. I’m still thinking about Badlands more than a month later, and that says a lot.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine: This is a really interesting game. WWTLW has one of the most unique mechanics I’ve ever seen in a video game, and the process of watching your stories grow and evolve is so, so cool. I wish the overworld map wasn’t so barren, and that the sprinting mechanic wasn’t such a pain, but beyond that this game is excellent. The writing here is top-notch.

Eraserhead: I’d technically seen this before, but I was half asleep so I’m counting it. Eraserhead is obviously good- it’s film history for a reason- but on a second viewing I’m struck by just how impressive the visual storytelling is. The dialogue in this movie could fit on half a page, but there’s still so so much to it. You need to see this at least once.

Frances Ha: “Frustrating, but enjoyable” seems to be Baumbach’s general ouvre, and Frances Ha is no exception. Still, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Frances is likable, even when she’s fucking up, which is more than I can say for her life partner Sophie. For as much time as Frances spends making mistakes, it’s really lovely and warm to see things come together for her in the end. Worth a watch, especially at an hour and fifteen minutes.

The Thin Red Line: Jesus christ, this movie is so long. It’s two hours and forty minutes long, and nothing of worth happens after the forty minute mark. It’s a war movie that manages to be beautiful and haunting, which would be impressive if it didn’t just fucking drag. I might watch this again and just turn it off at two hours, honestly.

Days of Heaven: I wanted this to be better than Thin Red Line and it was. Days of Heaven brings Malick’s landscape painter sensibility to labor in the 20th century, and the result is genuinely fantastic. The visuals here are stunning, even if the story is a little lacking- my biggest frustration is that most of the story events take place in the third act, like Days of Heaven is the first part in a series of novels that doesn’t exist.

Fat Girl: I get what this movie was trying to do. I understand the metaphor for how dangerous it is to be a woman. I get it, and I can respect it, but fuck do I hate this movie. I just don’t wanna watch 2 hours of a young fat girl getting shit on by her family, interspersed with rape scenes. I’m not interested in that, no matter how pretty it’s shot.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower: I watched this as a palate cleanser after Fat Girl, and it served that purpose just fine. It’s an okay movie on it’s own, but in the shadow of the rest of Ghibli it kind of pales. The animation and visuals are as phenomenal as ever, but the story is a little all over the place. Definitely still enjoyable, but sort of middling.

Sounds of Summer by Ten Toes Spumoni: If we’re Facebook friends, you’ve probably already seen me talk about this album. It’s been on repeat around here pretty much since it came out. Ten Toes Spumoni is a good friend of mine, and I genuinely believed nothing he made would top Journal of Hypnosis, but Sounds of Summer blows it out of the fuckin water. Throw a few bucks his way, because he deserves it.

Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette: This is a standup comedy act that isn’t particularly funny. It’s amazing, and full of toothed commentary on the world and LGBT issues, but it isn’t funny. It’s heavy, and hard to watch, and worth the trouble. I think this is one of the few things I gave 5 stars this month, and it deserves it.

Wizard of Legend: A big part of watching movies for me this month has been finding the perfect roguelike to play while I watch movies. I eventually settled on Gungeon, but Wizard of Legend was a strong contender too. It’s roguelike elements are really enjoyable, and finding the perfect combination of spells is fun, but resources are a little too scarce for my liking.

My Own Private Idaho: I loved this movie more than I expected to, and I knew I’d like it. My Own Private Idaho offers an exceptionally gay take on modern Shakespeare, and River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves are absolutely phenomenal here. The interview segments are a little hard to watch, but the rest of the movie is beautiful and sad and lovely. One of my favorites in a long time.

Coco: Similar to Witch’s Flower, I thought this was fine. The music is wonderful, and the animation is beautiful, but the story is a little lacking, especially towards the third act. I think Pixar forgot how to write villains that aren’t just ‘good guy’s been bad the whole time’. Hell, even Incredibles 2 did it.Those complaints aside, Coco is really enjoyable and well worth your time.

The Spirit of the Beehive: A meditation on childhood, the Spanish civil war, early film, and Frankenstein. I enjoyed thinking about this movie later more than I actually enjoyed watching it, I think. It’s a little slow, but the third act picks up and wraps the story up nicely. Definitely watch Huellas De Un Espiritu if you watch it, it adds a lot of context which helps the movie out.

Simon Of The Desert: Short movies are nice when you’re watching three a day, so I really appreciated Simon Del Desierto’s 45 minute runtime. It’s both less surreal and funnier than I expected- Simon Del Desierto feels more like Monty Python than Jabberwocky did. Highly recommended.

Cronos: A little disappointing, I’m not gonna lie. I’m a huge Del Toro fan, so I was really excited to watch his first movie, but it left me lukewarm. He describes it as a vampire film, but it takes a long time to find it’s legs. Worth the watch just for Ron Perlman and the scene where a little girl breaks his nose.

The Devil’s Backbone: This is what I wanted Cronos to be. A Del Toro twist on gothic romance and ghost story, Devil’s Backbone is as unsettling as it is charming. The kids in this movie are exceptional actors, and the script sells their childhood so, so well.

The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins: I didn’t expect too much from the graphic novel of TAZ’s first arc, but it really surprised me. Carey Pietsch’s art is just cartoony enough to bely the adult humor in the series, and the characters have been deftly adapted. The first arc in the podcast suffers a lot from ‘pregen syndrome’, where Taako and Merle weren’t super fleshed out, but the graphic novel rights the ship really well.

Black Girl: At 59 minutes, Black Girl is well worth your time mostly for how angry it’ll make you. Black Girl tells the story of a Senegalese woman who is deceived into becoming a house maid for a rich French woman, and the sheer amount of bullshit she puts up with before losing it makes her a saint in my eyes. I enjoyed this movie a lot, and I’m excited to see more African cinema.

A Hat In Time: I’ve played the shit out of this game and it never gets old. A Hat in Time is as charming as charming gets, and it perfectly recreates the feeling of playing Mario Sunshine for the first time. Only, you know, Hat in Time is fun.

Pony Island: Pony Island is one of those games that’s just a little too short- not because it feels rushed, but because I wished there was more when it ended. It’s a little cheesy in places, and the dialogue is a little slow, but the puzzles are perfectly scaled and the sense of humor is really great.

Styx: Shards of Darkness: This game might be good. I don’t know. The main character’s dialogue was so shitty I only played about 40 minutes of it. Imagine the mechanic in Jak & Daxter where Daxter makes fun of you when you die, but they got the writers from Family Guy really drunk and had them write it and never told them no.

#holly talks #holly plays #the roundup #july 2018

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upontheshelfreviews · 6 years

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Sigh, poor package features, why does nobody like you? Why is it that internet reviewers and Disney critics and fans always seem to give you the shaft? Is it the minimized animation budget? The effort towards story and character that was forcibly driven towards wartime propaganda over actual films? The deviation of a traditional three-act structure in favor of a string of unrelated shorts woven together by a loosely connecting theme or narration? Well in a manner of speaking, it’s a combination of all three. For one thing most people I know prefer to sit down and enjoy a movie that has one uninterrupted story. And yes there are a good number of films, great ones, in fact, that play around with how the story is presented, but as of writing there’s yet to be an audience or even a filmmaker clamoring for an animated equivalent of something like Pulp Fiction.

In theory.

And of course the major factor in all this is the time period in which these movies were made. I’ve already talked about this in my review of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad but for those not on the uptake, THERE WAS A FREAKING WORLD WAR WHILE THIS WAS GOING ON. Disney couldn’t afford to do something on the scale of Pinocchio or Fantasia or even Dumbo because his best animators were A, drafted out to fight, B, struggling to work with what little resources they had when the government was also pushing them to remind the public to buy bonds, or C, kicked out because of the disastrous animators’ strike of the early ’40’s. Projects with linear narratives that were considered big scale like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp were put on hold for virtually a decade. The best they could do was package a bunch of fun little shorts together because releasing them individually wouldn’t bring in as much desperately needed revenue as a full feature would.

And who says these shorts are bad? I don’t! At worst they’re fluffy little time fillers, but at their best they can hold their own with the big leagues of Disney animation. Again, going back to my Ichabod and Mr. Toad review, Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow is the first thing I and a good many others think of when the story comes to mind. I also have the advantage that a lot of people today sadly don’t in that I grew up with virtually all of the package feature shorts in one way or another, either through individual VHS releases or on the Disney Channel as part of shows like Mouse Tracks, Donald’s Quack Attack, or the DTV music videos. It would be years until I saw them all as they were meant to in order as one full film, but blame Disney themselves for that. It’s a Catch-22 situation when it comes to their forgotten films; Disney sees there’s not much public interest in these old movies and so holds out on releasing them for as long as possible, while the public notices Disney never getting around to releasing these movies and think it must be because they’re not worth their time. So nobody wins and we all get smothered under another avalanche of Frozen dvds.

“FROZEN??!!! FROZEN FROZEN FROZEN!!!!!”

“No! Go home! You’re drunk!”

As of writing there’s only two – count ’em, TWO – Walt Disney Animated Classics that have yet to be released fully on Blu-Ray, and they’re, you guessed it, package features. “Make Mine Music” and “Melody Time” to be precise. You wanna know how old the dvds for them are? The advertisements that play before the main menu are for The Tigger Movie and The Little Mermaid 2. That’s THE YEAR 2000. NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO. And the only reason why today’s feature “Fun and Fancy Free” got on blu-ray is because the higher ups at Disney decided to combine it with Ichabod & Mr. Toad. So now we have a package blu-ray of two package features (three if you count The Reluctant Dragon which is also on there). It’s Package-ception, if you will. BWOMP.

“She’ll get around to the actual review any minute now, folks.”

Back to the topic at hand, World War Two was finally winding down and the country was in a state of elation from having their boys return home after tearing the Axis powers a new one. Walt Disney had ideas for two full-length features, one inspired by a short story by Sinclair Lewis (I’d say based on but it barely resembles the tale that’s printed) and the other a take on Jack and the Beanstalk starring Mickey Mouse. Neither of them were able to get the treatment he wanted due to story issues and because the first thing to go during wars and Republican administrations is money for the arts. So he compromised by bringing them both into one movie with each of them sharing a half. Looking back I would have loved to have seen what an hour-length or even 75 minute version of Mickey and the Beanstalk would have been like because for all its flaws I enjoy it that much, and I’m tired of holding my breath waiting for Disney to do SOMETHING with “Gigantic”. Bongo on the other hand, I can’t see as anything other than a short, but that’s not a jab at its quality. Yet how do both stand up as a feature? Does it live up to what its title promises? Let’s find out.

After the main title song (which sounds like the opening theme of a variety show from that decade), we get Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio going about his merry way in somebody’s house singing “I’m a Happy Go Lucky Fellow”. This was actually a deleted song from Pinocchio meant to be sung by Jiminy, so it’s good to hear it sung here. It proves the old adage about ideas at Disney is true; things are never thrown away, just put aside for someone to find and use later.

Wait, that book, is that…Darkman?! Whoever owns this library has good taste.

After startling a goldfish who resembles Cleo from Pinocchio, Jiminy concludes the fish suffers from too much anxiety and tries to reassure her by showing her a newspaper full of headlines that amount to “doom imminent, we’re all gonna die” (ah, the New York Post never changes). He explains that everyone’s been playing Nostradamus for years saying the world is going to end tomorrow but you can’t go around thinking like that. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, you get the idea. I get where Jiminy’s coming from, I truly do, but it’s hard to back up his philosophy when he’s using real current problems as examples to ignore.

See what I mean?

Jiminy runs into a hungry cat and hides out in a child’s playroom where he bumps into a sad-looking doll and teddy bear. Assuming that all toys must be like his buddy Pinocchio he takes on the role of conscience yet again and tries to help them with their problems.

“Lemme guess, you’re wishing to become a real girl, right?” “No, I’m just disheartened by the extreme gender stereotyping that are enforced through children’s playthings and the psychological ramifications that are passed down with every generation.” “Swell!”

Jiminy’s prognosis is that these two depressed toys are in desperate need of some music and fun to cheer them up. So he whips out a record of Dinah Shore reading and singing the story of Bongo the Bear.

“The main character of the piece we’re about to watch, obviously.”

“No, I mean who the hell is Dinah Shore?”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

Dinah Shore was a popular big band singer of the 1940’s and one of the first female artists of her day to make a successful solo career for herself. She appeared on multiple popular radio shows, was a Chevrolet spokeswoman, won a total of nine Emmys for her various television shows and specials, and was romantically linked with stars ranging from Jimmy Stewart to Burt Reynolds. And remember Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special? She’s the woman who keeps popping in singing an endless rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas that goes over the end credits.

This wasn’t Dinah’s first contribution to a Disney package film as she had lent her pipes to the titular song of the “Two Silhouettes” segment in Make Mine Music the year prior. She does fine as the narrator of this section, though there’s one teensy problem I have which I’ll get to eventually.

The record begins with Dinah Shore saying this is a story about three bears.

No, Ms. Shore spells it out for us – a girl bear, a big mean bear who wants to be her mate, but mostly of Bongo, a bear born and raised in the circus who’s the star of the show. Had this story turned out the way Walt originally envisioned, it would have been something of a crossover-sequel of Dumbo with the titular elephant and the catty matriarchal troupe of pachyderms providing cameos. I assume this fell through due to Dumbo’s salary demands being a little too far out of Walt’s price range.

You know the war’s hit you hard when working for peanuts puts a crunch on your budget.

Bongo puts on his impressive act of juggling on a unicycle while on a high wire before making a spectacular dive. But we’re also privy to what happens when the show is over; no sooner does he back out of the tent from his curtain call than he’s manacled, hosed down, tossed into a cage and hauled off to the next state for a literal rinse and repeat. He’s the circus’ main draw, but he’s treated worse than, well, an animal.

And people wonder why Ringling Bros. went out of business.

In between shows the miserable Bongo dreams of a life of freedom out in nature. We’re supposed to feel immediate sympathy for Bongo based on what we see and because Dinah Shore tells us to, but the abuse is edited so quickly and played off almost comically. They’re aiming for Dumbo’s level of emotion but we had time to get to know Dumbo and develop a connection with him. We saw him be happy, we saw him bond with his mother, we saw him befriend Timothy; almost all of that happened before he was thrust into heart wrenching drama. We barely know anything about Bongo apart from he’s a talented circus performer who’s more like a prisoner than a celebrity. Did he have a good childhood? Was his family in the same line of circus work? Does he have a favorite color?

One day the call of the wild is too loud to ignore. He escapes thanks to a very flimsy lock on the door of his train car (you think between that and how the staff treats him they’re purposefully setting up an opportunity for him to vamoose) and soon he’s zooming down the mountain on his unicycle. For the next several minutes Bongo explores his new forest surroundings and befriends the usual bevy of Disney fauna. Dinah Shore underscores Bongo’s laid back euphoria with “Lazy Countryside”, an easygoing and pleasant tune.

Unfortunately after night falls Bongo is quick to learn that the bare necessities of life will not come to you, at least not right away. Between the incessant chatter of nocturnal animals and insects keeping him awake and a storm threatening to cut his newfound life short, Bongo spends the night and most of the following morning cold, alone, and starving. His attempt at fishing like a bear should doesn’t go as hoped, but it does catch the eye of our story’s love interest, Lulabelle.

Voted “Most Likely to Awaken A New Generation of Furries” in the ’47 Disney yearbook.

I love Bongo’s reaction to seeing Lulabelle for the first time; an unmoving incredulous expression on his face as he tries to wake himself up from this vision, all the while Dinah Shore says “I must be dreaming! It’s too good to be true!” about three dozen times. The two flirt for a little while before we’re spun into the next musical number called, you guessed it, “Too Good To Be True”. It’s cute, but the floating on pink clouds, the hearts everywhere, the little cupid bears flying around, it all seems somehow familiar…

“Do the Care Bears countdown, and send a wish on to the aiiiiir…”

The song itself is nice, but there’s one that always springs to mind which I prefer. My introduction to the story of Bongo was not through a full viewing of Fun and Fancy Free or even a tape of this segment, but through DTV. See, the Disney Channel launched around the time MTV was a massive success, and wanting a little of that to rub off on them the company commissioned a series of interstitials comprised of clips from their shorts and animated films edited to classic pop, rock and blues hits and called it DTV. They basically predated the kind of fanmade music videos you see on YouTube. It was popular enough that there were even a few hour-long holiday specials built around them (mainly Valentine’s Day and Halloween). I bring this up because one of the first DTV videos I remember watching and am still fond of is Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” set to a few mountain-climbing themed shorts but primarily scenes from Bongo. And darn it, it cuts through the corniness and simply works. The imagery and overall sappiness of “Too Good To Be True” evokes every single vapid and thoroughly unsubtle Valentines Day product that is churned out en masse that time of year. No, wait, it’s not Valentines Day level of beating you over the head with glamorized romance. It’s Defcon 5, people – it’s LOVE DAY.

So Bongo and Lulabelle are happily in love, but it would make for a pretty dull short if it ended right here. Looks like we’re gonna need some more conflict to get the ball rolling. Enter our third bear, Lumpjaw, whom Dinah Shore describes as “the roughest, toughest, meanest bear with murder in his eyes”.

Meh, typical cartoon bear, he’s not so scar –

AHHHHH!! I TAKE IT BACK! I TAKE IT BACK!!

Lumpjaw is jealous that this newcomer is making moves on “his” girl, and since Bongo doesn’t know how to fight like an ordinary bear he starts getting the crud kicked out of him until Lulabelle intervenes – and slaps him silly herself.

Bongo believes Lulabelle must hate him and is completely oblivious to her and the other bears watching the spectacle waiting for him to hit her back. You see in this movie, the law of the forest dictates that bears show love by hitting each other repeatedly.

“She hit me…and it felt like a kiss…”

And oh I can already hear the wailing of “this promotes abusive relationships” through my computer screen. First off, I KNOW firsthand what an abusive relationship is, and it is more than just physical violence. That doesn’t condone violence, not one iota, but emotional/psychological abuse play a part in it as well, and Bongo is at least quick enough to recognize the smacking as what it should be, an unwarranted act of aggression that is entirely the slapper’s own fault. Second, give the kids you put this on for some fucking credit. Children’s entertainment is not one size fits all. Some might internalize this backwards logic of “hitting means love”, but others may ignore it completely. If you’re concerned that they might act out this kind of violence after watching this, just sit them down and talk to them about it instead of assuming the worst and convincing your neighborhood to toss their dvds into the nearest dumpster fire. Even if you tell them something as basic as “this is only how bears show they love each other but not how people do” they’ll be more apt to listen. Speaking of, there is some truth to this fact as bears in the mating season can get territorial and violent, hence all emphasis on the slapping. As ridiculous and horribly dated as this whole concept of this plot point is, I’ll give the story men credit that they didn’t pull it entirely from their asses.

Lulabelle doesn’t understand why Bongo isn’t hitting her back and since they can’t talk it out because the only method of communication is the narrator providing inner monologues, the usual romantic misunderstanding ensues. You know how I feel about this blasted cliche, so there’s no point dwelling on it. She tries to give Bongo one more chance with another slap, but he ducks and she hits an eager Lumpjaw instead. The other bears congratulate the two on their forthcoming nuptials while Bongo sulks off.

Then comes our next musical number performed for the half-happy couple by the tribe of bears, “Say It With a Slap”. It sounds like something you’d hear in the Country Bear Jamboree, from the background yodeling to the square dancing bridge to the subject matter being hilarious for the time and for Southerners but awkward and uncomfortable by today’s modern sensibilities. Also as far as ritualistic courtship dances go I’m more fond of the Finnish Fish Shlapping Dance myself.

Watching the festivities from afar Bongo finally puts two and two together and races back to Lulabelle. Since Bongo can’t fight Lumpjaw on the big guy’s terms he faces him like a smarter than the average circus bear and pummels him good with his unicycle. I’ll give the sequence this, it’s the most entertaining thing in this half of the picture. Maybe if this story had focused more on Bongo learning to adapt to the wild bear lifestyle and finding a middle ground between that and his circus upbringing rather than dawdle on love montages and countryside imagery this could have been a more interesting short.

The two wind up on a log on a river, and since this is an animated movie they quickly find themselves at the edge of a waterfall. Lumpjaw goes over but oh no, Bongo’s gone too – oh wait, no he isn’t, yaaaay. The bears celebrate, Bongo becomes a willing participant in Lulabelle’s masochism tango, and they live slappily ever after.

The record ends and Jiminy is pleased to see the toys are now smiling. Thrilled that he’s got two inanimate objects buying into his well-intentioned dime store philosophy, Jiminy is about to go on his way when he spies a birthday party invitation lying about and uses that as an excuse to invite himself. I’d make a complaint here about Jiminy being a gate crasher but it’s something he’s done since Pinocchio; hell, that movie kicked off with him hopping into Gepetto’s workshop uninvited looking to spend the night and messing with some of the toys there as well so nothing has changed between then and this movie.

At the house across the way is the party in question being held for Luana Patten, a Disney child star who’s also appeared in Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart, and Song of the South, usually alongside future Peter Pan Bobby Driscoll. The host is a popular ventriloquist of the day, Edgar Bergen, and his two dummies, little wiseacre Charlie McCarthy and bumbling bumpkin Mortimer Snerd. In fact, they’re the ONLY ones there. Just tell yourself Luana’s parents had to go out for the night and Bergen’s a family friend who’s babysitting and it makes this scene slightly less questionable. When Jiminy shows up, Bergen is doing one of his ventriloquism tricks for little Luana with a literal hand puppet.

This early version of Lamb Chop’s Play Along is WEIRD.

Now this scene is something that irks a lot of people, and I understand why. Bergen is often touted as the man who popularized ventriloquism but here you see his lips constantly moving. In this kind of act what impresses people is that you’re making your puppet appear to be talking WITHOUT making it obvious that you’re the one who’s doing it. The fact that his popularity got started on the radio, where NOBODY could see him pulling this off is especially baffling. I suppose what Bergen lacked in innate talent he made up for with a good sense of comic timing and his fairly likable if simple characters. Speaking of, Charlie and Mortimer are odd to be sure, and I see why some find them off-putting with their big unblinking eyes and noticeable slits around their large mouths, but personally speaking I’ve found certain Muppets to be much creepier than these dummies. Despite all this, I can’t hate the guy or his weird looking puppets or their questionable placement in this movie.

And you wanna know why?

Because if it wasn’t for Edgar Bergen, we wouldn’t have Jim Henson.

I kid you not.

Henson was a huge fan of Bergen as a child, and it led to him wanting to become a puppeteer. I think we all know how that turned out. It’s enough that as a way of showing his appreciation to Bergen he gave him and Charlie McCarthy a cameo in The Muppet Movie and dedicated it to him after his passing.

Bergen decides to regale the company with the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. When you think about it, Jack and the Beanstalk is a hard tale to tell, not because it’s been done so many times before but because there’s so few good versions out there. Let’s get one fact straight, Jack is a TERRIBLE main character. He makes a stupid decision that nearly plunges his destitute family into further poverty, then cons and steals from an innocent housewife no less than three times and kills her husband in cold blood when he’s caught. It takes a lot to make you want to root for him, and lord knows people have tried. The Faerie Tale Theater version added a backstory where the giant was the one responsible for killing Jack’s father and stealing his family’s treasures in the first place. HBO’s Happily Ever After series and The Henson Company’s made for TV movie explored Jack’s morality by having him learn greed makes him as much of an all consuming monster as the giant. The Gene Kelly television special and the animated Japanese version both added a cursed princess in need of rescuing; the latter also went for straight out weirdness just for good measure. And then there’s the Sondheim musical Into The Woods, which told the story best by forcing Jack to face the consequences of his actions when the giant’s widow finds another beanstalk and climbs down for revenge.

So how does Disney make their version one with no questionable morals or character motives? By having their three main stars Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy star in it, of course (if you haven’t already gotten that before). There were tons, and I mean TONS of story ideas that were tossed around when this was being developed as a full-length feature which I would have loved to have seen in the final product. One version would have had Honest John and Gideon from Pinocchio be the ones who swindle Mickey into buying the magic beans. Another one had Minnie be the queen of Happy Valley (proving that not all animated queens who don’t have ice powers have to be evil) and had her give the beans to Mickey as a way to return the dried up Happy Valley to its former glory. There were lots of gags and and creative visual concepts about the land of the giants and what would happen when the main trio got there. For a time the hen that laid golden eggs, a staple of the original story, was a part of it, and she would have been played by the now relatively obscure character of Clara Cluck! Unfortunately everything had to go when the war started and the budget got slashed. And that’s not the only thing that went with it. This short would be the last time Walt Disney would provide Mickey’s voice as his smoking habit was beginning to affect his performance. After this he would pass the torch to the studio’s sound effects wizard Jimmy McDonald.

Bergen opens the tale in the magical land of Happy Valley and we see Luana imagining it in her mind as he builds on details like babbling brooks, lush farms and a splendorous castle overlooking it all. And in that castle lives the key to Happy Valley’s success, a magical singing harp (Anita Gordon). She sings the lovely “My What a Happy Day”. I really like this song; some have told me it’s the sound of blandness, but I can’t hear them over the innocent joy it infuses me with. Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up with this particular short that makes me enjoy it so much. My VHS copy had the story narrated by beloved Wonderful World of Disney character Ludwig Von Drake with bookends featuring him and Herman the Bootle Beetle, and I watched it all the time. It was my childhood.

According to Bergen the song of the Harp casts a spell of prosperity and happiness over the land, which admittedly raises one potent question: The enchanted prosperity I can get but is the happiness a side effect, or is it enforced like that one Monty Python skit where everyone in that Happy Valley has to be happy all the time or else?

Of course the story would go nowhere if it was constantly this happy which leads into my favorite exchanges between Bergen and Charlie:

Bergen: It was too good to last – Charlie: I knew there was a catch. Bergen: For one day – Charlie: They built a schoolhouse.

Out of the blue an enormous shadow creeps over the valley like a storm cloud (complete with actual thunder and lightning too) and snatches the Harp from the castle. Without the Harp’s music Happy Valley decays into a barren wasteland that no amount of song can salvage.

And Lord knows they’ve tried.

We check in on Mickey, Donald and Goofy, three starving farmers with nothing to their name but a dried up cow, a crust of bread they have to slice paper thin, and a solitary bean. It’s a darkly comic sight, one made even more tension-filled and humorous when it’s filtered through the narration…

…in the Von Drake version.

Yeah, while we’re on this topic I might as well go into why I prefer the one with Von Drake narrating over the original. The main problem I have with Bergen is the same I have with Dinah Shore’s voiceover in the Bongo section, yet by comparison Shore is barely a nuisance. You want to know what that is?

BERGEN.

NEVER.

SHUTS.

THE HELL.

UP.

Everything he adds to the proceedings is already plain to see before us, and when he isn’t talking about the current action on screen or trading barbs with Charlie McCarthy he’s going into what the characters must be thinking or feeling at that moment. It’s not like film is a visual medium where we can draw our own conclusions based on what we’re viewing and our prior knowledge of the characters, oh no, we have to be told everything like we’re children. Oh wait, we don’t, because I watched the Von Drake one when I was a child and I knew what was going on without him telling me every five seconds! The Von Drake edition knows when to clam up and let what’s happening speak for itself. It allows this half of the movie to breathe and lets us take in some good atmosphere and music where there was once constant voiceover. On top of that, Von Drake’s delivery hits all the comic beats while Bergen’s is rather dry. The original Mickey and the Beanstalk from Fun and Fancy Free has cleaner scene transitions as well as moments that were edited from the Von Drake edition since that was taken from television, but half the charm comes from Von Drake and Herman; that and the previously mentioned amount of narration makes their take the superior version.

“Wow…I never realized how much I needed to say all that.”

“Felt good, didn’t it?”

“You have no idea, Cynicism.”

Anyway, caught between starvation pangs and an omnipotent voice incessantly stating the obvious, Donald finally snaps and attempts to make a sandwich out of the plates and cutlery. Goofy and Mickey bring him back to his senses, or so it would seem.

Ah, I knew this movie was lacking something – nightmare fuel!

Mickey spies the axe conveniently hanging on the wall has gone missing nearly too late. Outside Donald is making his moves on the cow.

Heeeeeeere’s ducky!!

For many people this is one of the scariest moments in Disney cinema. While I’m not inclined to agree I can surely understand. His slow descent into madness is framed almost like a psychological thriller. Plus, we all know Donald’s had a temper before but we’ve never seen him flat-out attempt murder…almost.

I’d like to point out that in the picture on the left the gun is going off in a crowded theater. Unfortunately the timelessness of Disney’s films doesn’t always apply to their early shorts.

Mickey and Goofy intervene in the nick of time and the story fades back to the puppet party. Charlie is all up for Donald murdering the cow to survive and lists a number of increasingly gruesome ways to pull it off over Luana and Mortimer’s distressed protests. Ok, NOW I think I understand why everyone is terrified of Charlie McCarthy. The kid’s a little wooden sociopath.

After some more blathering, Bergen gets the story back on track and tells us Mickey went to go trade the cow for some much needed vittles. But Donald and Goofy’s dreams of a Be Our Guest style feast are dashed when he returns home with nothing but a handful of beans. Donald goes berserk even after Mickey says they’re supposed to be magic and smacks them out of his hand where they fall into a hole in the floor. Yet as everyone sleeps that night, light from the full moon shines into the house, which is the very thing needed for the beans to work their magic. The whole sequence where the beanstalk grows through the entire house and raises it up to the sky is a highlight. It begins with an almost sinister air, the beanstalk crawling its way upward and silently through the dark like a snake, and the wonder and music constantly builds as it climbs higher towards the heavens. Every action matches with the music, and the animation is the best in the whole movie. I must say it always amazed me that Mickey, Donald and Goofy are able to sleep as heavily as heavily as they do through the whole ordeal, especially since they get shaken around so much and come close to falling so many times. Were the hunger pains that bad that they took a heavy dose of Ambien before turning in?

The three wake up that morning in a land in the clouds where everything towers above them (and apparently they’re totally fine with their house being destroyed). They venture to a nearby castle where the only clue as to who lives there is a set of footprints each the size of a ditch. While crossing the moat Donald angers a formation of dragonflies and one dive bombs them. On the tape I had it was immediately swallowed by a jumping fish and the ensuing splash washed the friends to shore. So imagine my surprise the first time watching it in full and seeing this was a full-blown action sequence of sorts with the dragonfly going after them repeatedly and their little vessel nearly sinking. I’m guessing it was cut for time but it’s kind of a neat part.

Mickey and crew climb up the enormous stairs and sneak in the castle under the door, and all the while Bergen does not stop talking. I’m almost tempted to put it on mute when the animated characters aren’t the ones who are speaking. They come across a giant table laden with enormous food and gladly help themselves. Goofy in particular gets in plenty of shenanigans involving a bouncy jello mold. The gorging is cut short when they hear the voice of the Harp coming from a locked chest. She informs them that she was kidnapped by the giant Willie.

Twenty-eight years of watching this…how did I not realize… There is no way that name could have been chosen at random!

Bergen tells us Willie is “a heartless monster” who stole the Harp because “he was cruel and selfish and didn’t care what happened to Happy Valley”. And I…he…I…

No.

NO.

Screw you, Bergen.

Screw you, screw your horrible narration skills, and especially screw your picking on my Willie!

“Ugh, there’s no way around that phrasing, is there?”

Again, going back to the Von Drake edition, they painted Willie in a much kinder light, one that’s more true to his character. He’s not the crude, gluttonous, overly violent thug like past giants. He’s big enough to pose a threat but he’s silly and very endearing, almost childlike at times.

Come on, does this even look cruel, selfish and wicked to you?

His goofy voice plays a part in it as well thanks to Billy Gilbert, the same actor who voiced Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. At one point he even gets to do his trademark over-the-top sneeze. Willie does not seem at all like a cold-hearted brute who would leave an entire kingdom to rot for his own selfish pleasures. It’s highly likely he didn’t even know the Harp was needed for the land to thrive and was completely ignorant to the fact that Happy Valley was turning into Death Valley without her. That’s why it bugs me when he’s lumped into the group of Disney villains. Nearly every bad guy in the canon either openly embraces how evil they are or do what they do because they believe it is the right thing. Willie falls into neither category; most of his maliciousness is incidental rather than intentional. If you don’t believe me that he isn’t evil, look at how he’s portrayed beyond this movie. In a bout of perfect casting, he plays the friendly and jovial Ghost of Christmas Present in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. He’s also made positive appearances in shows like House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Maybe it’s just because I’ve always had an affinity for big tough looking characters who are really enormous marshmallows (wait until you see who my favorite character is when we get around to reviewing the American Tail movies), but I can never see Willie as a true villain, and that’s a good thing. So back off, Bergen. He may be a big galoot, but he’s MY big galoot.

What also separates Willie from the giants in most other adaptations is that he has the ability to change himself into anything he wants provided he says or sings the magic words “Fee Fie Fo Fum”. A common complaint with this new feature is that it’s completely unnecessary; his superpower is that he’s already big and strong, so why give him magic? I disagree. I like his transformations and think it adds something special to him. Walt purposefully wanted to create a combination of the traditional beanstalk giant and the shape shifting ogre from the fairy tale Puss in Boots to add more danger and intrigue to the story (as well as eliminate the moral quandary of making a side character a widow). In fact one has to wonder if this means Walt ever planned on doing an animated take on Puss in Boots someday. My only wish is that Willie’s powers were utilized more as it was originally planned in both his song and the first draft of the ending, where he’s shrunk down to normal size and becomes a member of Queen Minnie’s court.

Willie discovers Mickey hiding out in his sandwich and snatches him. But clever Mickey has already seen Willie showcase his powers through his introductory number and pretends to learn and be impressed by that fact after reading Willie’s palm. Willie is eager to show off and Mickey, spying a flyswatter nearby, asks if he could transform himself into a housefly. Willie is of course suspicious and would rather be something like a pink bunny but goes along with it anyway. The friends prepare to attack, but Willie does the old switcheroo and exposes them.

I’m guessing Mickey never bothered to actually read the original Puss in Boots story; there Puss convinces the shapeshifting ogre to turn into gradual bigger and fiercer creatures and then taunt him into becoming something small and helpless so he can dispose him. Sweat the small stuff immediately and the one you’re trying to trick will be on to you right away.

Willie captures his would-be murderers though Mickey escapes before he can get locked up with Donald and Goofy. Luckily they have an ally in the Harp, who sings Willie to sleep with the sweet lullaby “My Favorite Dream”. Mickey is able to sneak the key out of his pocket after almost waking him with an upturned box of snuff and rescues his friends. Donald and Goofy start making their way back to the beanstalk with the harp, but Mickey tries to buy them more time by tying up Willie’s shoelaces in case he wakes up. Unfortunately doing this does cause Willie to wake up and attack. There’s a surprised “Oh!” from Luana at this part that was left in on the Von Drake tape so for the longest time I assumed it was the Harp crying out in terror despite the fact that they sound nothing alike. Oops.

Mickey manages to outsmart Willie at every turn, mainly because the giant is so furious he conveniently forgot he can become anything and catch and crush Mickey like an insect at any second. The story abruptly ends with the three friends cutting down the beanstalk and Willie crashing to his death. We don’t even get to see the harp returned or Happy Valley restored or Mickey, Donald and Goofy sharing a victory high five. Mortimer’s not satisfied mainly because he’s saddened by Willie’s murder, and I don’t blame him. As if I need to repeat it, they do too good a job of making him likable that you don’t want to see him die. Bergen responds by reminding Mortimer that Willie is only a fictional character and gives him a crash course in fantasy vs. reality – one that is completely thrown out the window when the real Willie looks in on them.

So, sentient crickets and puppets are accepted as normal as well as a living giant that everyone once believed to be fictional…

This whole movie took place near Gravity Falls.

There is no other possible explanation for this.

Bergen has the appropriate reaction and faints, Mortimer takes comfort in knowing reality is an illusion and the universe is a hologram, and Jiminy figures maybe now is a good time to get the heck out of dodge before this crossover gets any stranger. So our odd little film comes to a close as we follow Jiminy tailing Willie as he terrorizes the downtown Los Angeles area in search of the mouse who made him homeless.

“Run!! It’s Godzilla!!” “It may look like Godzilla, but due to international copyright laws and the fact that this giant is so obviously a human whereas Godzilla is reptilian, it’s not.”

Well…that was something. Maybe not as spectacular or fully underrated as I remember, but it was something. The host parts are disjointed and don’t gel very well, even in comparison to the other package features. But the main draw at the time was less about the animation and characters and more about the celebrities that would be playing a part in it. Fun and Fancy Free basically predates the Dreamworks formula by about fifty years. Food for thought, huh?

As for my summary of the individual segments, Bongo is perfectly fine. Not amazingly humorous or gorgeously animated, but not poorly scribbled out or annoying, at least for the most part. It’s middle of the road entertainment that I don’t have much to complain about or praise. The worst I can say is that it’s as padded as my high school brassiere. Mickey and the Beanstalk, though? Never fails to give me the nostalgic warm and fuzzies. It’s a big adventure with a boatful of lovable characters and great songs. By all means though, seek out the version that has Ludwig Von Drake narrating. It’s available on dvd, and last time I checked it’s on Netflix too. It even comes with some of my favorite Mickey shorts like “Mr. Mouse Steps Out” and “Brave Little Tailor”. I know I’m not the only one who feels some connection to this part of film; whereas nobody remembers or bothers to reference Bongo, even in Disney media, there’s one or two mentions of Mickey and the Beanstalk in the Disney parks, primarily in Fantasyland. Also, take a look at these stills from the Animaniacs parody of the fairytale and tell me it wasn’t influenced by the Disney one in any way.

Fun And Fancy Free performed decently at the box office, though it was overshadowed at the time by Walt Disney’s infamous testimony at the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Now it’s merely a footnote in Disney’s history. When interviewed about the film years later, the animators openly admitted they didn’t want to work on it. Even Walt barely had anything to say about it in his interviews and biographies. It was merely an assignment they had to do in order to keep the studio afloat, hold on to their jobs, and get their mascot Mickey back in a starring role (the last one he’d really hold until Mickey’s Christmas Carol in 1983). Truth be told, the making of Fun And Fancy Free, which was included on the original VHS and DVD release, is more interesting than the film itself as a whole.

But at the end of the day, do I dislike this movie?

No, not really. I can’t call it one of my favorites, yet there are things I like about it that I wish they were allowed to expand upon. It’s an uneven film that does the best it can to be simply light and entertaining like its title. And I guess that’s why people are quick to harp (ahem) on it. Disney is capable of making great art. But just because it can doesn’t mean we should diss it when they to do something lighter and fluffier. Sometimes you need that shallow, pleasant bit of pure escapism to bolster your spirits. Do you think the animation team would have been able to get by after Walt if they didn’t make The Aristocats? Or begin recovering from the failure from The Black Cauldron without The Great Mouse Detective (which I don’t think is merely shallow filler at all, but I’m saving my thoughts for the actual review of it). I admire Disney for being able to shift gears and go from deeper subject material to goofy comic fun when need be.

In other words, when watching this particular film, just repeat to yourself “It’s just a Disney movie, I should really just relax”.

Thank you for reading. If you like what you see and want more reviews, vote for what movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

If you want to support me and totally not get swindled into buying magic beans, please consider supporting my Patreon. It’s completely optional, you can back out any time you choose, and it comes with perks like extra votes and adding movies of your choice for future reviews. Special thanks to Amelia Jones for her contribution!

And a VERY special thank you to The Three CommentEARS for their insightful and entertaining commentary on this film which helped influence and inform this review. I’ve done some commentaries with them in the past for Pinocchio and the extended anniversary edition of Pocahontas, and they know their Disney stuff. Please go and check them out!

Caricature by Brian Slatky, 2017

June Review: Fun and Fancy Free (1947) Sigh, poor package features, why does nobody like you? Why is it that internet reviewers and Disney critics and fans always seem to give you the shaft?

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buildridernews · 7 years

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[Review] Kamen Rider Build - Episodes 21-24

It’s the middle of the month, so it must be time for me to finally be caught up on last month’s Build episodes! My excuse this time is that I’ve been watching Sentai. I mean hey, it’s good to give all toku some attention.

This is really neither here nor there, but I gotta say, I am impressed that Blood Stalk still has a voice actor and a proper actor as separate entities. With Wizard it was clearly a case of "Okay, we revealed his true identity, let's ditch the voice actor" but they are dedicated to keeping this guy around. I appreciate that for some reason.

Also highly unrelated to everything in this review... did... did Sawa just establish, 23 episodes in, that there’s a fictitious currency in this show? Like, it’s referred to as a “Doruku” which could be Dork, or Dolk, or Dollark as Over-Time chose to call it. Sure! That falls nicely into my headcanon that Build takes place in the future.

So, without making jokes, I’ve gotta really start us off with the thing that’s most important in the first half of this month: The Hazard Trigger, and the surprising amount of forms used with it.

RabbitTank Hazard Form receives an eerie introduction that’s beautifully shot, and not only does he start off punching everyone in sight, but he also does something that I did not expect to be such a major deal: He kills off the Stag Hard Smash; Aoba.

I’m most certainly going to be wrong because I’m blanking on it, but in all the shows where humans turn into monsters, they never actually die, do they? At least not to the hero. Or if they do, they probably stopped being human along the way. Like in Gaim, for example. Of course I’m not gonna forget Gaim.

But Gaim involved humans who have been mutated into something inhuman. Here, Sento very clearly killed someone who was still a living, breathing human with thoughts, ambitions, and fears. After so much dedication towards protecting humanity and undoing the deaths caused by his former Katsuragi self, blood was on his hands that he couldn’t wash away.

This episode really puts an emphasis on that weight as Sento spends much of it in a slump, even when the government has decided to settle things by having a one-on-one battle with Grease VS one of the Riders of Touto. Sento can’t bare to take part because of what he’s done.

I think the most stunning scene in this episode is when he’s giving his respects to Aoba and is being so haunted by the memory of the incident that he collapses and seems close to vomiting - kudos to the actor. It’s a great and unsettling episode, especially because it’s almost entirely devoid of music.

This also features a nice contrast as Kazumi shows how he’s coping. Unlike Sento, he’s very collected and tells him how Aoba was knowingly a tool for war - he died knowing the risks. However, since Aoba was his friend, he promises to kick his ass for Aoba once their duel begins.

Despite the state he’s in, Sento is the one who has to do it for Touto. And I’ve gotta lighten up this review now that the heavier stuff is behind us.

In order to prepare him for the fight, Soichi dumps a bunch of Fullbottles into Sento’s inventory, among them being the RoseCopter Form pair! This form is not particularly interesting on its own, but it is within the context of what it was originally supposed to be.

GoldScorpion Form was meant to be released instead according to toy catalog listings, but just before this episode aired, Bandai decided to swap this in. According to CS Toys, Bandai simply said they were going in a different direction. Gonna be honest, they probably found RoseCopter a lot more... easy to come up with a combat style for. RoseCopter does what you expect, it’s got vine whipping and a rotor weapon. I don’t know what you’d do with gold bars. That’s really my only theory.

In any case, I’m glad Stalk made reference to how many reds and greens Build swapped through. Oh and I guess TurtleWatch Form is technically a show form now, if you wanna get into those semantics. It’s not. It’s a game form. Anyway~

What’s interesting about this first episode is that it ends with the implication that some time has passed before the big duel. This is where the YouTube spinoff comes into play, and I am actually gonna talk about that since both parts are out! If you missed it, they were subbed by Genm Corp, who I understand are fine if you can’t wait for a more accurate translation, and I doubt anyone else is gonna sub these.

So the YouTube spinoffs for Kamen Rider have so far been pretty skippable. Ghost tried making them tie into the show... in a way that still doesn’t make sense even in context, and Ex-Aid’s is pretty fun but also very skippable. This time, they used it to tell some semblance of a story.

In these episodes, Sento makes use of the Fullbottles he was given to raise his Hazard Level and become stronger. Utsumi helps him, surprisingly, and even fights as Night Rogue (clever clever) to help out.

This is where we get what I had assumed would be exclusive forms, but PhoenixRobo appeared in the show in January and RoseCopter JUST premiered, so SmaphoWolf Hazard Form is our exclusive I guess. Then in part 2 we get ToraUFO, KirinCyclone and KujiraJet, which were all fun combos.

I am pretty pleased at how these turned out. They only have enough time to provide some fun fights, but there’s a surprising amount of story as we see Utsumi testing out the Kaiser System (pulling back in a thing from the winter movie), and even a bit of info on how some of these forms work. At least for part 1.

This is supposed to be a 3 part thing, and much like the last two series, part 3 will be on the DVD release - I hope it’ll at least be worth the wait this time. There’s at least gonna be an exclusive form.

The duel begins. Build and Grease fight for an entire episode, which is pretty interesting as far as episodes go, though they do try to break it up by including some flashbacks to moments leading up to this.

Particularly, we learn that Sento is so concerned with claiming another life that he gives Misora the job of detonating his gear if he goes too far, which is pretty unexpected. It... kind of fits him wanting to prevent more deaths I suppose, but I’m glad they saw it fit to send in Ryuga to punch him instead. It’s pretty manly.

We also learn that Kazumi’s amnesia was actually all a hoax! Which is a nice little twist that isn’t toooo surprising but it adds some nice depth to him. He just wants his bros to do better by being a tsundere.

Even though Build won the duel against Grease, a wrench has been thrown in their civil plans. Seito has declared war, and they’re doing so with their own weaponized humans: Remocon Bro and Engine Bro. Yes, Bros or Bro’s is the proper spelling but the plural nature of that word is bugging me on a grammatical level.

These two make a nice pair of badasses, but I hope they matter by the time they eventually get defeated, because as is they are pretty hard to consider as anything but a duo. I mean, I guess the Hard Smash are a trio of a similar nature, but they at least have more distinct personalities.

Regardless, they cause trouble in Hokuto and Kiba of Kazumi’s gang is trying to stop them, only to get mercilessly trampled. It’s at this point I realize this episode is almost entirely just a Kazumi episode, as we see how he struggles against these bros and how much his own bros are also suffering. Even after a narrow rescue, Kiba dies, bringing us to just one more Hard Smash.

And then there’s THIS asshole.

Okay but seriously, can we just... admire how much of an edgelord Gentoku has become as of returning? In what seems like a relatively short time since he left the show, he’s back with a new Rider title, and a badass jacket draped over his shoulders that goes perfectly with his evil facial hair. He really embraced how much of an obvious villain he is.

I dunno what the fuck happened but I guess that’s a good teaser for the Rogue blu-ray spinoff. Based on what we get to see I kinda wonder how much more of a twisted guy Utsumi is. He got his sweet catharsis here.

But also as a nice detail I once again did not foresee, Kamen Rider Rogue is actually Namba’s “Make our own Kamen Rider” project, and it’s been made for Seito, which means we now have Riders for each nation. That’s pretty dope, tying that all together.

It seems that Gentoku has really become a much more interesting and vague person now that he’s become a Rider. He’s putting aside revenge so that he can crush Touto and protect the country... which seems a lil counterproductive but I’m gonna guess he’s not quite right in the head right now, so I’ll give him a pass.

All this means that Kazumi and Akaba have no choice but to join the heroes, but it feels like they’ll actually blend in, potentially. I mean, it seems like Kazumi has learned to admire the passion Sento fights with, and even admits to being inferior because of it. So I’m pretty happy to see them working together, as opposed to going “Okay, we’re doing this trope”.

They need to stick together if they stand a chance against Rogue. Always on the move, Pandora’s Box has made its way to Rogue, and he intends on opening it once he defeats Build. But with how much he overpowers him even with the Hazard Trigger, what’s stopping him?!

Oh. That’d do it.

So that’s one hell of a cliffhanger to end this review on. What’s going on with Misora?! I’m not even gonna watch episode previews for this one, I wanna see what the show does firsthand! See you again soon for another Build review!

#kamen rider build #reviews #feed

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hiddenremains-blog · 7 years

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The DeerGod of ENDS Interview: @Deerxxgod

Welcome all, to the new HiddenRemains. Our first Interview this time around is one that’s been a long time coming. As some of you may or may not be aware, we here are pretty tight with the folks of ENDS, who I would want to call a group, but they’ve really shown themselves to be a lot more than that. Today we have DeerGod, a producer for ENDS with us today to share a bit about himself. Also, thank you all who still keep tabs with us and who check out the people we interview. It means more than you could imagine. As always, the interview is below, enjoy!

A: Mind telling us a bit about who you are for those reading?

D: Bet, I go by DeerGod or DG. I’m 24 and a producer for ENDS.

A: How long have you been a producer for if I can ask?

D: I’ve been producing since 2012, so for five years now. Funnily enough, I started producing on Garageband on an iPad.

A: What made you get into producing as opposed to singing or rapping?

D: I tried rapping right around the same time I was getting into making beats but it just wasn’t my thing. I’ve always been more interested in the instrumental part of music.

A: Does producing come easily to you? Is there some difficulties to being a producer?

D: For me it comes in waves. Somedays, I can bang out 4 tracks and then a week later I won’t make anything. I think that’s the problem with any artist. We have to stay inspired constantly if we want to stay productive and consistent.

A: I feel ya man. What made you link with ENDS?

D: I started talking with Blu and Junior on Twitter sometime in the beginning of this year. Prior to me joining, I made a song with Blu titled Natural Selection if I remember correctly. I remember also seeing a flier of what I think was Juniors’ first show and it was only an hour from where I lived. It’s a small world kind of situation, as Junior, Ayame, Dxrkz, and myself all ended up being from Michigan.

A: Man, that’s fuckin’ nuts. Have you all linked up in person yet?

D: Yeah man, it’s pretty crazy, we all try and hangout in person as much as we can. They’re all from the same area and im about an hour from them. Junior and I went to a Nascar show month and it was fun/funny as fuck.

A: That’s fucking cool man. I wanted to ask, who or what has been your biggest inspirations when it comes to producing?

D: Harry Fraud is hands down the reason I started producing. He’s my favorite producer for sure. Fraud aside, a lot of different genres of music influence my work, from metal to jazz, to punk and hip-hop, I’ve just always loved music. Growing up I played in some bands, but I never really liked having to get people together.

A: I’m sure I’ve asked this before to the other members of ENDS, but I wanna ask: what does ENDS mean to you, and how’s it affected you?

D: ENDS reallly helped me find a place to belong, I never really knew where I fit into this scene prior to. It’s helped my numbers too, but that isnt all that important to me. We all love music, fuck numbers, and fuck clout. ENDS to me is a family. It goes deeper than just our music, we all talk with each other everyday, and it’s because of that I got it tattooed on me.

A: Man, that’s fucking legit. What can you tell us about the future of ENDS, as well as your work?

D: ENDS isn’t going anywhere but up. I can confidently say we’re one of the more consistent collectives when it comes to dropping music. That being said, expect a lot more music. Junior and I are working on ‘Hunted By A Deer EP PT. II’, no features this time around, just something we can call our own. I think everyone is working on a project all the time. Definitely more Michigan shows, we’ve done a few already and it’s been a lot of fun. 2018 expect T-shirts, patches, cassette tapes, and a lot more, we’re always talking about merch ideas. We’ll also be announcing some new members towards the end of the year which i’m very excited about. As for myself aside from ENDS, I’ll be producing for this group with my homie Cho Marie. It’s gonna be more Lofi, chilled out, boom bap type of rap. You’ll definitely hear a MFDOOM and atmosphere influence, but once it drops y'all can decide that when we drop the first tape, which has no set date, but I can say the first tracks’ insane.

A: Could you give a hint as to who’s joining ENDS? It does sound really exciting.

D: Man, as much as I would really like to I can’t really speak on it yet but just know it won’t be random people that we dont fuck with already.

A: Gotcha. Can you tell us a bit about your name? What’s the meaning behind DeerGod?

D: I got the name from this shitty metal band that was from my area growing up. The vocalist would yell “Dear God” before a song so I sampled that and made a tag out of it, but spelling it as DeerGod. I rarely tag my beats though.

A: Very nice man. What would you say keeps you inspired and moving through this music scene? I’m sure ENDS plays a big part in that.

D: ENDS definitely plays a big part man. Everyone feeds off each other’s music and it’s cool to see everyone develop and become better artists too.

A: That’ll do it man. Got any final words/shoutouts to give?

D: Hell yeah man, shoutout to all of ENDS, Cruel World, FURY, Cho Mari, Solar Stu, $LOTHMANE, Kurona, Lil Lurka, and everyone that fucks with my music. Of course shoutout to HiddenRemains as well, and thanks for taking the time to interview me and showing mad love to ENDS.

A: The pleasure’s been mine man, thank you for your time.

Links:

DeerGod’s Twitter

DeerGod’s SoundCloud

ENDS Twitter

ENDS SoundCloud

#interview #ends #soundcloud #producers #collective

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preciousrichard-blog · 8 years

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Second Thoughts, Second Chances (Sniper/Spy)

Chapter 8: Burnt Up

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9419246/chapters/22560905

Rating: Teen+

Chapter Summary: There’s a masked invader in Sniper’s home, touching all of his possessions and compromising his privacy. But for some reason, it feels alright.

He began enjoying mornings again now that he’d moved back into his camper. Ever since the birds had returned for the approaching spring, the barren winter mountains repossessed their picturesque life and light. Unfortunately, this particular morning, Sniper missed the silence as he cradled his dully aching head. He lumbered, swaying toward a small refrigeration unit on the floor once he’d slipped out of his lofty mattress over the cabin of the van. He muttered malcontented curses as he rummaged for a bottle of water and sat at the bench seat of his fold-out table to down it all. The night before affronted him with the tenderness of bruises that he’d collected from Spy’s perilous driving. He shook his head at the thought that he was now a local accessory to murder, but it was nothing new to him, and at least he wasn’t burying bodies this time. Granted, trouncing a crowd of drunken fools in a game of marks had been fun, but now he’d probably have to drink in the next town over.

Despite the minor inconveniences the Frenchman caused, Sniper smiled, appreciating the way Spy looked out for him even when they played sworn enemies at work. He could swear he still tasted the sweetness of the others tongue in his mouth while he affectionately reminisced of the way he’d restrained himself for Sniper’s sake; even drunk he really was one hell of a considerate man. Sniper honestly regretted being unwilling to appease him, as much as he really wanted to. He’d felt shamefully selfish when he’d returned to the privacy of his camper afterwards and recalled preceding events for his own carnal uses. Now it was morning, and the numb pain in his forehead persisted. Dehydrated and burdened, he wondered how the spy in question must have been doing that morning. He could only imagine how he was holding up having drunk twice as much as the sniper did. He ignored the taunting voice in his head calling himself a mother hen as he got up to make an extra strong pot of coffee; just in case the dramatic Frenchman paid a hung over visit to his position later and needed a pick-me-up.

He cursed when he found the coffee machine in the van simply wouldn’t turn on, it’d been on the fritz for weeks. He’d have to make a special trip to the base and he never really looked forward to those. Dressed and washed up, he stepped down from his doorway onto the cushy grass. At least the pleasant green of spring would console his aches until he got his hands on a medical kit in the battlements. He’d set up camp among the trees far enough away that even if he yelled at the top of his lungs no one would hear him, and that was just his minimum. When he’d reached the mess hall he was surprised to find everyone was gone. There was ample time left before the morning match, but while Sniper wondered where they’d run off to so early he couldn’t complain about the quiet. He set up the coffee maker and made a particularly strong batch for the BLU spy’s sake, but upon waiting decided that he’d investigate the strange disappearance of his teammates. He discovered the door of a weapon stock room was ajar and upon nearing it, heard familiar voices. He adjusted his glasses and slouch hat before walking in, feeling unwelcome when the entire RED team turned around to face him with expectant expressions in the dim light.

“Did I miss something?” Sniper asked awkwardly, curling his upper lip.

The engineer looked around to be sure no one else was stepping up to speak, then nodded, “Yer gonna wanna see this pardner.”

The others returned their attention to a soft glow that backlit their silhouettes and Sniper crept forward. Before the mercenaries was the lifeless body of a man in a dark suit and hat with a portable television strapped to his chest. Blood covered parts of the illuminated screen, obscuring the image of the Administrator that looked out disapprovingly at the lot of them. She seemed to eye the Sniper as he filtered through and frowned.

“How nice of you to join us.” She offered disinterestedly. Her analogue voice came out hollow from the speakers as she spoke, “As I was saying, due to the unfortunate circumstances, you will all be transferred to a new station at the foot of the mountains. Travel arrangements have already been made, and you are to take nothing but your personal belongings.”

Sniper knew there was no way she could be, but the harsh old woman almost seemed as though she was staring right at him. It unnerved him and made him wonder if this was about what he and Spy had done last night.

“Question.” Soldier blurted from among the nine. The Administrator gave an exasperated look and he continued, “Permission to bring Lieutenant Bites?”

“Who is…? Oh never mind, I don’t care.” She frowned in response, “Personal belongings only. Whatever you leave will be disposed of. You’ll be transferred within forty-eight hours, oh, and for the last time- stop killing my messengers.” She switched off the transmission with that grating command and the room went dark.

Immediately the complaints poured in, even if no one was shocked. It was nearing time to be transferred either way, and they'd been moved prematurely before. Almost everyone had one gripe or another about it though, and the scout in particular wouldn't stop complaining about leaving some poor girl in town that would likely be glad to see him go.

"What exactly was all that about?" Sniper asked the engineer as they funneled toward the dining area.

"What? You mean you didn't see the protestors?" Engie asked, shocked.

"Protestors?"

"That’s right, I reckon you’re campin’ too far out to hear ‘em. A whole heap of 'em are gathered outside the gates." The short man explained nervously, "They look mighty unhappy. Heard a merc was out in town'n killed a fella. Ya'll wouldn't know anything about that would ya?" Engie asked him innocently.

Sniper shook his head in response, there was no way Engie could have known the Aussie went out last night, "News to me, mate. Where is it they're sendin' us?"

"Down south. Some sort’a gravel quarry at the foot'a the mountains."

"Ain't it always a gravel quarry?" Sniper asked playfully, and Engie laughed.

Spy was having trouble getting his usual rhythm on the job that day. When he tried to sap and stab the RED engineer, he missed and was blown to bits by his sentry. When he disguised as the enemy pyro, he was caught by them and burnt to an awful crisp. That was his least favorite way to die. One might imagine respawn would clear his hangover, but since he'd absentmindedly clocked in with it that day he was left respawning with it every time he died. The system was finicky that way, and he'd have to wait until his shift was over to fix the problem. He'd tried to visit his dear sniper early on but as soon as he stepped foot through the door the Aussie had gotten his head blown clean off by his BLU counterpart. It got blood on Spy's suit, fantastic.

After a grueling day the spy had finally made time for one more visit, he'd regretted not only spoiling one of Sniper's few favorable places, but apparently causing the entire operation to relocate. He'd been overwhelmed with the feeling of foolishness and guilt since he heard the news. He took a flight of stairs up to the spot he'd seen the sniper last, and walked in on the Aussie holding a jar full of urine at the ready, aimed at the doorway.

"Mon Dieu please no!" Spy cried.

"Oh Spy, it's you. I thought you were that bloody BLU soldier back fer more." Sniper remarked, lowering his unsanitary weapon.

"Merde." Spy sighed, placing a hand on his chest, "If you had thrown that revolting thing I would have killed you."

"Heh, I don't doubt that." Sniper smiled, "You look better than I expected you would after last night."

"Looks can be deceiving."

"Rough day?"

"It is a challenge to get around when your team keeps leaving their corpses in my way."

"That ain't very polite of us is it?"

"Quite rude."

"Not all of us can die in a million bits from sentry fire like you can mate."

"You saw that." Spy sighed.

“Sure did.” Sniper laughed, sitting a moment longer before the look of recognition straightened his body and he slinked back from the railing. “Say, did ya hear the news?”

“The transfer? Yes, it seems our little skirmish has caused quite the controversy.”

“Our skirmish?” Sniper sneered, “Yer the one who killed him.”

“You invited me to drink.” Spy argued back nonchalantly.

“Yeah to drink, not get into trouble.”

“Such things are not mutually exclusive.” Spy retorted, and Sniper groaned. Spy approached him to rest a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “My only regret is that you can no longer visit a place you enjoyed. For that, I apologize.”

“Gah, I only liked it ‘cause it was close by.” He assured.

Spy looked around as he always did, and as he worked out the basic floor plan of the room he noted the glass pot of coffee still half full and cocked his head at it as Sniper returned to working. "You always finish your coffee." He observed.

He didn't notice the pink blooming on Sniper's face, "You're welcome to have some if you’re still feelin’ seedy."

Spy looked at the coffee pot, then down at the empty mug beside it. He thought for a spell and picked up the container, inspecting the scent of it. He eyed it curiously and picked up the cup. "Did you leave this for me on purpose?" He asked, pouring some out.

"What? No." Sniper defended.

"Did you?"

"No."

"Did you?"

"Shut up and drink yer bloody coffee piker."

Spy smiled and lifted the cup to his lips, "I normally detest cold coffee." He took a drink from Sniper's mug, "But this one is too good to pass up."

"Shut yer cake-hole." Sniper scoffed.

"It's exceptionally strong."

"Maybe that's how I like it."

"Merci beaucoup, Sniper." Spy sighed, leaning on the other softly.

Sniper mumbled something under his breath, and although Spy didn't know what he said, he chuckled regardless and sipped the cool black liquid. He felt warmth in his cheeks; that dirty outdoorsman certainly knew the way to Spy's heart, even if he was unhurried about it. How domestic, the Frenchman thought, almost as if we were not in the middle of a war zone.

"Sorry if it ain't sweet enough, I don't much care for sugar." Sniper mumbled looking through his lens.

"Oh Bushman please, any more of that and I'll be forced to pull you into another storeroom." Spy sighed, putting down an empty cup and lighting a cigarette.

Sniper swallowed hard, his felt his pulse skip, "What's with you and dark cramped spaces?"

"I forget your natural habitat is a wide open field to graze upon."

"Oi."

Spy chuckled, "That van of yours is dark and cramped non?"

"It's compact." Sniper grumbled.

"May I see it?"

"What?" Sniper turned his head.

"May I see your van?"

"I thought you hated my camper."

"I have nothing against it personally. It's simply not to my tastes."

"So why d'ya wanna see it?"

"Because it is yours."

Sniper was shocked to say the least. He remained shocked even when he agreed to Spy's visit, and even when he came back to his camper after work. He found himself cleaning up for the first time in a while, sorting out his meager belongings and putting away scattered kitchenware and mail. He didn't feel much like himself scrubbing down the stovetop and sink. He felt more like his mother when they were expecting guests back at the house. No one had come to actually see his living space since he'd bought the damn thing. He wasn't a terribly messy person but he wasn't very fickle either. He hoped the smell of soap would air out before he got there.

When Spy arrived that evening he knocked on the door, and Sniper opened it, and they said hello, and it was all so extraordinarily normal. Sniper let him inside and was relieved to see Spy neither grimaced nor recoiled in disgust. Spy was, in actuality, pleasantly surprised. The interior was mostly wood - although Sniper didn't seem to bother polishing it - a vinyl floor with some repeating gray patterns, fixed lighting in the ceiling and red upholstery. It was a far cry from the tribal animal skin decor Spy half expected, and even came off as quaint. Spy looked around as Sniper fiddled with his fingers apprehensively. He didn't know why he cared so much about what the spy thought, but for some reason he couldn't help but want to appease him. It must have been that overpowering presence again.

Spy smiled at Sniper, and he arched his eyebrows in return. "It's much larger on the interior." Spy marveled.

"Uh yeah, s'pose it is. Enough fer me anyway." Sniper scratched at the side of his nose.

"Tidy as well."

"What'd you expect? That I live like some sort’a animal?"

"I did not know what to expect."

"Well, there you are. Nothin' fancy."

"It's charming." Spy commented genuinely, walking further in to inspect the table, counters, and bed. "Mon Dieu," he gasped as he stepped up a rung on a short ladder to look at the mattress, "how do those legs of yours fit in there?"

Sniper felt highly scrutinized if not a little self-conscious about his long legs. He hadn't really known what to anticipate from the spy, but now that he was looking in to every little thing as spies always do, it was getting harder to keep his cool. "It's bigger than it looks." He offered. "Oi what are you doing?"

Spy was gingerly climbing up into the very personal space the sniper slept in nearly every night, among other things. He pursued but stopped short of the bedside, sighing as the Frenchman was already lying back in his sheets. For someone who held manners in such high regard he sure was quick to forget them when he wanted. Spy folded his arms up behind his head in the pillows and crossed his legs, making himself far more comfortable than he ought to.

"You were right, it's far more spacious than it appears." Spy smiled at him, turning to face the other who disapprovingly shook his head.

"You've made yourself right at bloody home haven't ya? Ya mongrel."

Spy smirked at him, and looked around the space once more before dipping his neck to inhale into the pillows. Sniper tensed and floundered. "What are you bloody doing now?" He gasped, mortified that the man was literally sniffing the bedding the slept and occasionally sweat on.

"It smells like you." Spy hummed, letting his body relax into the bed.

Sniper grew red, "Is that a bad thing?"

"Non." Spy smiled, letting his eyes lull closed.

"What does “me” smell like?" Sniper asked quietly, leaning against the mattress with his arms as he stood on the ladder.

"You."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Everyone has a scent, Bushman."

"I guess... But, it ain’t bad right?"

Spy opened his eyes and laughed, making Sniper even more flustered than he was. "Not at all you silly kangaroo." He said as he edged up to Sniper's face and tenderly kissed his forehead. Clearly he caught on to the self-consciousness.

Sniper frowned and stepped back, "Whatever you say." He blushed, "But get down from there would ya?" And Spy obliged.

Sniper told him to stay put as he stepped outside before it got dark. He was gone for all of three minutes before coming back to Spy at the table flipping through an album of photos he'd somehow found in that time.

"You nosey little bugger!" Sniper snapped, "I leave for a bloody minute and you've already gone through my things!"

"You were quite the scrappy young boy." Spy smiled, ignoring his irritation, "These are your parents?"

Sniper dragged his palm down his face, groaning and surrendering once again to Spy having his way. The snooping snake had already seen the pictures now; there was no use in hiding them. "They're my folks yeah." He admitted, sitting beside the other as the spy made room for him.

"How sweet, I see your crooked smile hasn't changed." Spy mused and Sniper rolled his eyes. He turned the page. "What a shaggy head of hair- Good Lord, is that a buck?"

"Yeah... First one I shot all on me own."

"You don't look more than ten years old here. Your father taught you I presume?"

"That's right, the old man taught me everything I know. The rest was practice." Sniper smiled fondly.

The spy flipped through most of the black and white images of trophies and family outings rather quickly, smiling without realizing Sniper was watching every expression he made. They'd discuss the occasional interesting snapshot, and Sniper recalled each story to the best of his abilities. But near the back, as the pictures of the sniper showed him progressively getting older, photos of two different recurring girls beside him appeared on a single page.

“Girlfriends?” Spy asked, trying not to snicker.

Sniper fidgeted, moving to grab the album but Spy pulled it away before he could. “That’s enough-“ He struggled, but Spy held the book away from him and peeked closer.

“Good Lord! They have mustaches!” He screeched.

“Gimme that bloody thing- Aussie sheilas all look like that! It was secondary school!” He stammered, pushing into the Spy then reaching over the table. The playful jostling caused a loose photograph to flutter from the pages.

"Who is this?" He asked, letting the other snatch the album away. Spy picked up the image of Sniper and another young man with their arms around each other’s shoulders looking no older than twenty.

Sniper leaned over curiously, but his face dropped when he saw the content of the image. "Oh..." He responded flatly, "Nobody. Not too sure why that's still in there."

Spy immediately picked up on the change of mood, "You had a falling out?" He asked, more interested.

"You could say that."

"Perhaps an old lover?"

Sniper's heart stung, "No." He said gravely. He looked over to find the piercing x-ray eyes of the Spy digging into him. He fidgeted. "He was just... A mate." He continued.

"But you are not now."

"He's not too fond of me's all."

"Why is that?"

"Oh for God's sake why are you so bleedin' meddlesome?" Sniper snapped angrily, and Spy's hand froze. They went silent, and Sniper looked away.

Spy released the picture to settle limply against the table and the air went thick. "That was impolite of me. I apologize." He said with a tone of professionalism.

"No- no." Sniper interrupted, exasperated, "I've never told anyone's all, I don't mean to be a wanka." He exhaled and rested his elbows on the table, putting his face in his hands. "We were good mates, best mates...” He mumbled, and Spy watched attentively. “We did everything together. Campin’, nickin’ cigarettes, sneakin’ out with girls even though I wasn’t keen on ‘em.”

“It sounds as though he was a dear friend.” Spy consoled.

“Then I went n' fell for him.” Sniper grimaced, and Spy blinked in surprise. “Things started makin’ sense after that. But once we finished school he was gonna move away.” He sighed and slowly lifted his face to look distantly at nothing with weary eyes. “I needed to kiss him just once before he left, y’know? Just one time." He sighed heavily, "But he socked me right in the eye, called me a bloody queer n' I never heard from him again." Spy cringed, “He cut me off just like that, like I was nothin’ after that. I was lucky he didn't go n' tell my parents."

"Sniper-"

"Put me right off ever tryin' that nonsense again."

"Sniper..."

"As if I didn’t like people enough before that."

"Sniper."

"What?" He turned his head languidly, sapped of all his energy, and then Spy kissed him.

He closed his eyes, the warmth washing away all of the memories and replacing them with the subtle smell of cigarettes and the feel of leathery gloves on his neck. Like a curative, he felt Spy cleanse him of the bitterness and cold of his thoughts. They parted with a dewy smack, and Sniper took in the masked man, in awe of his restorative touch.

"Some things are best left in the past." Spy comforted him softly as he adjusted the collar of his red shirt, and Sniper felt more at home then than he had in a long while.

They put the album away, and stepped outside together as darkness fell over the forest. Sniper lit a fire, and sat flush beside the other on a dry fallen log disposed of when the complex had been in use. He held Spy's hand when Spy gave him the picture of himself and the boy, and he squeezed his fingers when he tossed it into the flames. Spy wrapped an arm around him when it burned away to ashes that dispersed into the cool spring air, and as the dying orange embers mingled amongst the stars, the spy really understood why the sniper was so fond of the outdoors. Sniper rested his head against Spy's shoulder while he told him stories about the craziest trips he'd ever experienced. Spy held him firmly about the waist while he offered back descriptions of beautiful exotic locations he'd been to. When the night fully took hold, Spy had convinced the Aussie to play him something on his saxophone, to which Spy applauded, dazzled by the smooth jazzy melodies that echoed into the firs and pines. When at last the blue departed, Sniper grabbed him before he stepped away. With wanting eyes he pulled him in with the strength of a captivated man to kiss him again. Spy left smiling, and Sniper went to bed that night feeling indisputably whole.

The move to a new base was always tiresome, as the mercs were expected to do their own packing and carrying. It would take them a few days to settle in to the new fortress of machinery, rubble and rocks. Sniper had it easiest, as pretty much everything he owned was already on wheels. The new complex was enormous, with some very nice long sight lines by the looks of it. It had two bases connected by tracks, which could only mean BLU would be delivering payloads to the RED side of the map for the next few months. But at least it meant he would only have to defend rather than capture any points, which was half of the work. The takeaway was that he'd be doing a lot more moving around.

It was the first match on the new site and RED was already losing. They hadn't anticipated the payload to be an unstoppable train, and more than one of Sniper's teammates had blundered because of it. Although the time Scout became wedged between a wall and the cart, then blown to bits by a stray grenade was a little amusing. Sniper had been stabbed thrice by the supremely confident BLU spy already, and the fourth time he heard the decloaking hiss of his watch he was ready with his kukri in hand. He swung around, knife splitting through the air, cutting just short of the BLU spy's tie. Sniper stilled seeing the man's palms up before him in a peaceful surrender and slouched.

"Ya can't just kill me all day then surrender before I can get my revenge." He groaned, sloppily sheathing the oversized blade.

"Do forgive me, I will give you a chance to shoot me when I go." He smiled, "If you can guess the path of an invisible man."

Sniper snorted and grabbed his rifle, holding it by the grip and adjusting his brown fur felt hat. "I'll take that as a challenge."

Spy chuckled at him, but it was a strange sound. He brushed it off and took aim down his scope, he found the windows in the buildings there all had thin glass easily broken with the stock of his gun. He felt hands touch his sides and he jerked, fumbling with the weapon.

"What the-?" He turned, and Spy was pressing into him now, arms snaking around the other from behind, "What is it?"

"You've been standing every time I've stabbed you, why don't you sit down." Spy smiled, and Sniper side eyed him suspiciously.

"What's this all about? Are you distractin' me on purpose?" He cocked a brow.

"Not for my team's sake." Spy smiled, and Sniper shook his head.

"I get a free shot on ya if I sit."

"Deal.

"While you're visible."

"Merde. Fine, deal."

With that the Sniper sighed and plopped down on a stack of wooden boxes. Spy raised his chin at him and lifted the hat from his head, setting it down and stepping around to his back. "Today is Friday." He reminded casually, gripping the Sniper's shoulders and squeezing.

Sniper wriggled under the pressure and furrowed his brow, "Uh, yeah. We're off tomorrow."

Spy began digging his thumbs into the muscle of Sniper's upper back, "You could use a break Bushman," he curled back at the pleasant sting of Spy's hands, "the tension in your shoulders is astounding."

Sniper groaned reflexively, and winced as Spy worked his fingers deep into the tight muscle of his arms and neck. "Now I know you want something." He grumbled, allowing every relaxing push.

"Who, moi?" Spy chimed innocently.

"Nah the bloody floorboards." Sniper quipped and felt a warm kiss on the shell of his ear. Spy pulled back the collar of his vest and peppered kisses along the hot skin there as his fingers massaged along his shoulder blades. It was becoming clear Spy was starved for attention. "We're workin' Spook." He mumbled, face going warm under the onslaught.

"Not for much longer." Spy breathed, releasing his grip on the other to slide his hands down his sides. The marksman shivered.

"This is hardly the place to-"

"I know. I wouldn't." Spy whispered and Sniper could hear his grin.

He felt heat overwhelm him when Spy dragged his palms up both of his thighs, and he was just about to stop everything when the other slipped away, leaving him cold. "What was that all about-" he swung his hand up in confusion, but Spy took hold of it instead. Sniper narrowed his eyes and furrowed when the Frenchman bowed and planted a kiss right on the dusty palm of his hand. "Uh..."

"Au revoir." He smiled and vanished before explaining anything.

Sniper sat stupidly, unsure of just what had happened. He looked down at his palm, and found a paper there. When did he...? Sniper thought, and picked the little blue note up to read it.

"I promised you a bed. I will be waiting for you here tonight. ❤ 3790 Bear Paw Road Granville King Hotel Room 104"

Sniper's stomach sank; it seemed Spy was starved for more than just attention. He could suddenly feel a hot burn in every place Spy had touched him. The warmth of his lips lingered on his palm and neck as he looked back out of the shattered windowpane. There was Spy, disguised as the sniper himself, casually waiting down below. He stiffly lifted his rifle. They could say what they wanted about that sneaky ratbag, but he was a gentleman of his word in every way. Sniper charged up his sights, and shot him fatally in the heart.

#tf2 #sniperspy #sniper/spy #down undercover #Team Fortress 2 #fanfiction #now its off to finalize chapter 9

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Curse of Enchantia – WON!!

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

That’s it! I conquered Curse of Enchantia! I slayed the beast! Victory! Free at last!

I have mixed feelings about it. One part of me is very proud to have done this without a walkthrough (even if the temptation was very strong a few times) and the other part is astonished by the vacuity of the whole thing. I think my soul has died a little by playing this game to completion. Good thing it was for the blog, if it helps at least one person to stay away from this game in the future, maybe my sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.

But for now, let’s all go back in the enchanted land of Enchantia one last time in order to help Brad get rid of the evil sorceress once and for all! Yay!

Don’t worry, Brad. It’ll all be over real soon.

After my trip to the planes of madness, I find myself back in town once more. As I now have in my possession the precious fire extinguisher and electric fan, I pay another visit to the wizard. I expect him to send me back to the cliff so I can give these items to the giant parrot but then again, the wizard has proven in the past he can be a little erratic about what his magic exactly does. What’s the worse than could happen? It’s not like he’s going to kill me right?

Oh.

So I wake up into some sort of grave, proving the wizard has a sick sense of humour (or is totally incompetent). Looking around me, I grab a bone and ATTACK the wall with it so Brad can carve his way out of here.

Black Mamba was a wuss.

Exiting the grave, I find myself in a nice looking graveyard, complete with a tombstone to my name, bats, full moon and zombie hands trying to grab innocent feet. Nice place you got there! I guess I’m getting close to the evil enchantress. If only the music would change somewhat to reflect the atmosphere of the whole thing, but then again we are stuck with the same tune.

Why my tombstone is actually on the grave next to mine is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was another Brad.

Immediately after, a vampire appears and rushes towards me. When he touches me I disappear and the whole scene starts again. This puzzle is actually the one that took me the most time during this session. I grabbed the cymbals and the shovel next to me and tried everything on the vampire but nothing worked.

What a warm welcome! In my arms!

The fact that the vampire is running towards me is a bit of a clue though. I try to go down on the screen for him to get grabbed by the zombie hands but I get grabbed instead. I spend a long time trying a lot of things but the solution is simple enough. You have to get behind your grave as soon as you exit it so the vampire falls into it. The difficulty is actually managing that because the pathfinding is quite finicky and the time window very short. After the bandit and the yeti, this is the third time in this game someone falls down while trying to grab me. At least this time I actually had to do something for him to fall, it wasn’t automatic.

The land of Enchantia is full of clumsy runners.

After getting rid of the vampire, I grab what seems to be a mirror or a silver plate on the ground and can finally progress east (after falling in my own grave once or twice and getting grabbed by the hands because of the hit detection). After a few steps, the vampire reappears but stands still this time.

Surprise!

I’ll call the vampire Bob for now on because it seems he won’t go down so easily so he needs to be named and Bob seems like a suitable name for him. So this time, attacking Bob with the shovel works!

Worst vampire ever.

Two more steps and Bob is there again. This time, he is nice enough to let me take all my time in order to pick up the garlic bread and the crucifix lying on the ground.

New theory : Bob just likes getting hurt and he leaves these kinds of items purposefully on the ground.

So now I have a few items to get rid of a vampire : crucifix, garlic bread, mirror. Even the cymbals, fire extinguisher, match and the pen could easily be used. But as we all know now about Enchantia, there is only one way to solve a puzzle. So this time, you have to push the tombstone next to Bob on his foot.

I expect the next encounter to be solved with a 1-ton acme weight.

I can then proceed to the next screen… and you guessed it… Bob is already waiting for me. I think he’s into BDSM or something.

50 shades of vampire.

So how are we gonna hurt Bob this time? Simple enough, I eat the garlic bread and make him smell my breath.

Good thing there is no damsel in distress in this game. My killer breath could have been a problem later.

I grab the vacuum cleaner (probably left there by an overzealous graveyard keeper) and Bob reappears.

He is not even trying anything now. He’s just waiting for me to attack him with something.

Attacking him with the crucifix works this time. Pretty straightforward. Let’s move on.

I am the great Jacinto. Take that!

Going farther east, this time, Bob reappears, badly hidden behind a gravestone, waiting for me. He is a bit late though, because I’m already behind him.

Come on, buddy, you’re not even trying.

I approach him quietly (probably with a sadistic grim) and attack with the cymbals. Turns out this vampire is also sensitive to strong sounds.

Don’t worry. This hurts you more than it hurts me.

Finally, Bob seems to have had enough and he quits his job, leaving the door open.

Come on, Bob, don’t take it like that, we were having fun.

The next screen holds a skeleton, a flower and a strange-looking tree. Very elaborate, especially considering you can’t seem to do anything with any of these objects and that only one of the three obvious exits works.

My guess : a few puzzles had to be cut due to budget or time restrictions. Well I won’t complain. This game has wasted enough of my time already.

So I go into the only walkable exit northeast and arrive in front of a gate with fire-spewing gargoyles. Maybe it’s finally time to use my fire extinguisher? Nope. You just have to walk to the gate and push it.

I certainly hope this security system didn’t cost them too much…

I arrive in front of what can only be the enchantress’ castle and enter by the front gate. So I’m guessing the whole security of the castle was based on a single pain-loving vampire and two useless fire-breathing gargoyles. I kinda wonder why the enchantress hasn’t been overthrown by the people earlier.

Once you realise the monstrous door looks like it wears a small red hat, the whole thing feels more festive than intimidating.

I pass the empty hall of the castle and enter an empty room with a fireplace in which I find a lonely golden ring on the ground.

The only interactive item in this room. Seems like a waste.

Trying to climb the stairs in the hall leads to a kinda funny slapstick moment where the stairs give way and Brad falls down face first.

Well funny except for Brad who is now completely toothless.

The door on the right leads to a library. Only one book is interactive. I try picking it up but it doesn’t work. Turns out you have to push/pull it because, as in all good castle libraries, it opens a secret passage.

I think the book in question is “Adventure game programming for dummies”

And the secret passage leads to… the enchantress’ laboratory. This is it. The final showdown. The battle for control over Enchantia. The ultimate fight for my freedom.

Hey you look eerily like your sister in the ice cave, don’t you?

So the fight goes as this : the enchantress prepares a spell and you have a few seconds to react before she kills/stun you and you can try again. Her first attack is a ghost she sends toward you.

‘Tis but a flesh wound

Considering you’re locked in your spot and your only options are using all your inventory items, the whole ordeal is pretty straightforward and relies mostly on trial and error. For now, attacking with the vacuum cleaner works on the ghost.

Who you gonna call?

For her next attack, the enchantress evokes fireballs so the fire extinguisher seems to be the obvious choice. It stumped me a little because you have to PUSH the extinguisher, not ATTACK with it.

Here, cool off.

She then switches to direct fire blasts in your face which are surprisingly fast. You need to attack with the electric fan to send the blast back to her.

Magic can’t do anything against a good electric appliance.

The enchantress collapses and you need to put the ring on her finger (well let’s say you need to COMBINE the ring with the enchantress). Why? At this point I confess I’m just trying anything on anything and not searching for any kind of justification. I’m guessing the ring that was just lying on the floor three screens back was the ultimate weapon against the witch. Kind of another big oversight in the overall security, don’t you think?

Now that the witch is done for, I can quietly turn super-saiyan.

And with that done, we are teleported back to the baseball field and are granted a fabulous end screen with Brad doing his victory jump, fist first and smiling at the camera, like the hero of some kind of very bad 80’s baseball underdog movie.

Oh, and Shadow of the Beast wants its font back.

And that’s it! Yay! I can’t help but feel the whole ending sequence has been drastically cut, probably because someone at Core Design felt the whole creating process had been long enough (and probably cutting back on beta-testing as well). Then again, considering the difficulty of some of the other parts of the game, I really can’t complain. The ending sequence is straightforward and could even have been fun (despite its simplicity) if my hatred for the game hadn’t been so high at this point.

I’m not sure the lads gave enough criticism.

For a bit of fun I looked over Let’s play on the net and I found one narrated by none other than Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame). Here is a link to it. It’s as funny as usual (if you don’t know his work, I really urge you to look into it, the guy is hilarious) and he comments on a lot of similar points we did (notably concerning the blu-tack for example).

So now, all I have left to do is crush the game with all the might of the PISSED system (which probably never wore its name more accordingly), but in the meantime I have a few questions, I don’t know if anyone can answer but I need to ask them anyway.

Why did I finish the game with 92% completion? Maybe I missed a fantastic optional area with exceptional puzzles? Yeah, probably not.

What were the use of the silver plate, the pen and the piece of meat?

Why didn’t I do anything in the village inn? Seems like a lot of work for an area with absolutely no purpose.

Why am I still asking questions about this game while all I want to do is drink my sorrows away and go play an actual good adventure game?

Thank you all, folks for your support during this ordeal. I couldn’t have done it without you. See you next week for the final rating!

Session time : 1 hour Final total time : 9 hours 30 minutes (way too long) Items that never found a purpose : Piece of meat, match, silver plate, pen Final score : 441 Percentage complete : 92% (why???)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/curse-of-enchantia-won/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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