#only way to get a 0 chance is to simply not run. lol

[oflgtfol]

SCREAMING Throwing up i got the position. Its technically a paid internship whadda hell !!!

[icarusgf]

hi tony sorry for coming into your inbox like this but. im entering high school next year and im about to lose my mind 😭 i just have no idea what i should be doing right now or how i should be doing it. like college apps and whatnot or relatively far off but when the time comes i don't even know what to consider or how to look for anything. and really that's the only example that comes to mind because i feel like im doing nothing other than being online all day but i just don't know what i SHOULD do. and i came to you as you seem very well rounded and like you know exactly what're you doing and im just. not. ugh im really sorry about this but i just feel so lost and i really don't know what to do

hiii no worries at all!! here r some general tips but u can also check out my school tag or ask anything else <3 this got rly long so below the cut lol

don't be afraid to explore and just sign up for a lot of stuff. like genuinely if u have a club fair to explore activities at school just put urself down on the email list for anything that looks remotely interesting to u and try to go to at least one meeting. ur not committing to anything and can drop it anytime but it's nice to have a lot of options to just test the waters to see what u might like doing most.

u might feel like ur peers are way ahead of u but especially in ur first two years of hs, it is definitely not too late to start something new. i applied to and did this science summer program before junior year because it looked cool having 0 knowledge in the field i was placed in and it ended up being one of the biggest things i dedicated myself to during hs. i played a completely new sport in sophomore year bc of scheduling conflicts and it was the most fun i ever had being athletic. this guy i know started speech&debate his junior year and ended up a national champion by the time he graduated hs. sometimes people with natural talent will just always have an advantage but especially in hs i've found that most activities are accessible enough so that u can get good at them simply if u enjoy them and invest ur amount of time into them.

don't feel bad for not knowing what u want to do in the future! i didn't have any clue what i wanted to do in the future until i started actually writing my college app essays. and even since then what i want to do now has shifted so much since what i thought i was going to do then. i kind of just looked at what i'd done throughout hs, thought about what classes i enjoyed, and chose a major that aligned with that. ik people say "follow ur passion" but idt i even know what i'm passionate about now 💀 just look at ur options and choose which ones u like and everything will follow

kind of counterintuitive to the first point (but not really) but quality > quantity. what i mean is that after u explore ur options and figure out what activities u really enjoy, focus on those and really dedicate urself to them. it's much more enjoyable to really find what fulfills u and do that to the max rather than simply dabbling in a bunch of clubs that u might not really actually like. (also when it comes to writing college essays it's a lot easier to build a narrative abt an activity if u like.. actually put work into it and enjoyed it).

grades are important but also... don't kill urself over them. study for ur tests but please please please do not beat urself up over a bad grade bc i promise u it will not be the one factor that kills ur chances for anything. i was MISERABLE in physics i think i got a 60 on my first lab report had a solid 70 average in my quiz category and i put myself thru so much grief for that class for like. absolutely nothing. and i am still headed to mit to study random science-y shit so like.. as someone who used to run herself ragged over studying for tests it is important.. but not worth that.

sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. ik the general advised "8 hrs" is really not feasible for most people but like. i try to get in bed and asleep between 11-12 everyday and it does WONDERS. obv it may not be possible but genuinely esp as u get older i would say get ur sleep, submit ur assignment late if u have to.

i have friends who would go to the library every day during lunch instead of. actually eating bc they had so much work and like. not to say don't do ur work but as someone whose last day of hs is tomorrow i'm telling u u do not want to miss the little things like eating lunch with ur friends or hanging out. ik these tips were mostly academic and like.. high school is school but i strongly advise u to push urself to go to at least one school game or school dance or just. spend some time with ur friends bc it really does end before u know it :,)

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Webcomic Chapter 141 Review

Intro

Normally I like to take a couple of days and a few rereads to see how I feel about a chapter before reviewing it, but with ONE’s unpredictable schedule, I’d best do this now.  It’s longish.

The first thing to say is that this chapter really messed me up.

The cavalry has a stone in its shoe

The first thing that fucked me up was realising what the sound effect in the first two panels of the chapter was: the sound of the doctor’s increasingly agonised breathing.  What a horrible thing to have to hear, made worse by the three Machine Gods showing up and reporting that their latest kill would have a 0% chance of survival after 5 minutes.

If you thought then that this chapter would be about a by-the-skin-of-the-teeth save, you’re sadly mistaken.  Genos was awesome.  He spared no power (nor powers for that matter) in fighting the three dragon-level machines simultaneously, aiming to kill them as quickly as he could and get that time.

ONE’s grasp on choreography has improved immensely and he’s used it fantastically here.  He’s always been versatile, but this time, Genos was plasticity itself, wielding heat, freezing, magnetism, anti-gravity, electricity and much more.  In turn, they didn’t commit the mistake of trying to attack one at a time, analysing his moves as they went and attacking in unpredictable formation.

it might not be psychic power, but being able to move and warp anything magnetic is a damn useful substitute

Machine Gods may vary in form, but they do share a basic interest, which is in understanding heroes, and a basic personality, which is a snarky wit that’s quick to mock. Machine God Tech lobs a back-handed compliment to Genos, saying that if he’d mastered these variable abilities, he’d have been able to aim for the top of the hero world.  For their confidence, Tech and Ray end up dead in pretty short order, smashed to pieces, leaving an outraged Machine God Body howling about how it simply couldn’t be that a mere ex-human cyborg could outdo them, these magnificent AIs.  He takes up the components of the other two to strengthen himself further, but  he’s dead soon, smashed to bits by an appropriately named Final Smash.

Genos hurries to the doctor, but there’s no let up.  Seven more high-powered robots appear. Thankfully so does Saitama, still in his underwear. He takes on the five approaching from the front, leaving the last two to Genos.  Saitama casually walking through the assault, not even bothering to shape a punch has to be one of the scene-stealers of the chapter and one of the very few light moments in it.

And then it’s over.  Saitama picks the doctor up to try ferrying him to hospital, but the doctor refuses, preferring to tell Genos where to find a secret, final upgrade, to use it to run away from Them (looks like the doctor knows exactly who killed him) and to beg forgiveness.

what a way for a beautiful relationship to end

Genos doesn’t say anything. Nor does he hurry after Saitama, but after the latter has left, he bows deeply in gratitude and says that there’s nothing to forgive, for the old man did nothing wrong in his eyes.

The action recommences at dawn.  For the avoidance of all hope, we see that Saitama has buried the doctor in the forest with a chunck of the lab wall as a headstone and the shovel still stuck in the earth by the grave.  Genos comes out of the repair pod with a new body and the two of them take their leave.  Genos intends to take out Metal Knight immediately, before whatever the plan for a ‘general offensive’ is executed.  Saitama agrees to accompany him.  But as they walk along, there’s a light over the nearest city.  It seems ‘The Plan’ Machine God Tech talked about has begun.

Indeed, on the ground, there’s carnage as a formation of robots marches through, burning every building they pass and shooting down anything that moves.  Various heroes look on in numb horror as the army advances. 

That’s where this monster of a chapter ends.

never ones to half-ass things

Meta

Unsurprising Surprise

The Organization strikes at last.  Our longest-running villains finally show their hand. They’ve measured, they’ve planned, they’ve done their homework, made that list and checked it twice.  Fitting in with Metal Knight’s warning about a shadowy power waiting its time (in the manga, not the webcomic), they’ve struck right when the heroes are at their weakest.  We don’t know the extent  of it. Is City W the only place being scrubbed off the map, or is this part of a much more widespread trend?

Well, now we really do know that when Genos spoke of not only acting for himself when he introduced himself to Saitama, he was just telling the truth.  He might be looking for vengeance, but his scope was always much bigger than just himself.  It’s a shame things have had to deteriorate to this extent for us to see it.

If not now, when?

So this is it! This is as good as it gets for him then. If he is to survive, Genos will have to take a page from Drive Knight’s example and quickly master everything his new body has to offer.  We’ve (well I’ve) complained before that he’s merely competent at using what the doctor gives him, throwing parts and bodies away without giving himself a chance to truly get the best out of them.  No choice now.  And it looks like there’s a world to save -- no time to luxuriate in practice. Or grief.

Forgive me

A few years ago when I was still new to Reddit, one of my first posts was to ask if Dr Kuseno was a good man. Against his manifest good deeds in supporting Genos as he did, it didn’t sit well with me that he’d performed a Reverse Pinocchio on an ordinary boy, turning him into a living weapon.  Not hard to imagine that it wasn’t received too well by the sub, lol.  In time, as we got to see more of Kuseno, my position on him softened, but what the hell, doctor?  never went completely away.

With Kuseno’s dying words being apology, we see that he knew he’d done wrong by Genos.  He knew that roping him into his quest for justice came as much from his own selfishness and rage as it did from a desire to set the world to rights.  I’ve repeatedly said that the cyborg body Genos has has nothing to do with health. It was all about gaining the power to fight and forgoing a chance to have a life in the process.

And so Kuseno died, in agony, weeping and begging for a forgiveness that he never heard come.  He was buried like a dog in what had been his backyard. By a stranger.

Fuck.

That’s cold.

Now I’m not faulting Genos for not forgiving the old man to his hearing. But there’s a hardness to him that he’ll want watching lest it grow more.

this is why the Machine Gods always fail despite their detailed calculations.  They just do not understand the depth of the human heart, nor its importance.

But I’ll add one more thing.  Dr Kuseno did not just raise a warrior.  In the end, he raised a damn fine hero too.  In the end, I really hope that some great good might yet come out of this.

Saitama and compassion

I’m glad that Saitama is here.  I’m even more glad that he’s not been acting to try stealing the show, instead supporting Genos when the latter needs it. It’s not ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ But it is compassionate. 

What’s next?

Why fighting of course.  Lots of it. I hope that somehow, the fog of war ends up nevertheless clarifying the relationship between the Neo Heroes, The Organization, Metal Knight and possibly Drive Knight.  I’m ready for this arc to build to its crisis and resolve one way or the other.

Bits and pieces

Number 23 on the list?  If Kuseno weren’t keeping such a low profile, I’d be insulted on his behalf.

I surmised last chapter that Kuseno must have an extensive basement as the superstructure of his place looked positively humble.  West basement?  With multiple hangars?  That’s not a basement, that’s an underground castle.  I hope Genos has locked up after himself.  If he succeeds in putting sword to his enemies, he’ll want what’s in there.

Finally, with the way living and dying works in this world, I wonder if the old man might yet have survived if he’d not decided it was too late for him.  I guess we’ll never know. At least I hope not.  I hope he’s beyond the clutches of those who’d raise him to an undeath for their own purposes.

[blanknamed]

trial and error [senku x reader]

I wrote this on AO3 a few months ago and just wanted to link it on to my Tumblr. Part 2 is already out right now, but I just did this quickly during one of my lectures lol. Hope you guys like this.

SHIPPING: SENKU X READER

PREMISE: [Name] had always known Senku was a little bit of an oddball but that's what made him so interesting to her as children. Now in the Stone World, he's only even more interesting what with his claims about shooting up to a million years worth of technology back, but some things never change with him; specifically on the concept of love. As a way to get him to think about it as something other than "disgusting feelings" she proposes for him to think of it differently, though it seems to be going in a direction she never expected.

PART ONE - PART TWO - PART THREE

{--*--}

CHAPTER ONE: A SUGGESTION

Senku was completely lost at the moment. It wasn’t stuck with his most latest creation, no. It was those three sisters. They haven’t stopped staring at him for the past three hours and it was starting to get on his last nerves. Usually he was able to just ignore them and go on with his day, but what can he right now? He had spent the previous night working his ass off on planning for the next project so the working effort on his end was a little slow (well, slow in his terms at least; [Name] had already told him a few times to slow down for the sake of their non-modernized companions). At the moment, he was having a lunchbreak, sitting hunched over his blueprints trying to figure out what was happening.

Keyword: trying.

“Your head looks like its going explode.” [Name] said softly as she sat next to him, bowl of ramen in her hand. Her eyes scanned over to his spiky hair. “Well, it already looks that way, actually.”

“Shaddup.” Senku replied gruffly, but [Name] didn’t take his rudness to heart. She had known Senku since they were children. She had used to follow him around like some sort of duck. At first Senku had found her a bit of a nuisance, constantly teasing her and calling her names in hopes of making her go away, but it seemed it hadn’t worked on her. Apparently having an older brother meant immunity to any other insults being thrown at you.

Soon, Senku had started realizing she was better off as an asset for him, running errands for him like Taiju so he’d end up having to leave his little lab less. Most of the time, though, [Name] was cleaning up the messes that were created when Senku and Taiju were too exhausted to do it themselves. [Name] had also cooked food for all three of them so they wouldn’t starve when they were working on Senku’s space projects.

Byakuya liked to joke around about it, saying a then ten year old [Name] would already be one of Japan’s top chef from all the cooking she had done and Senku probably wouldn’t have survived as far as he did if it hadn’t been for [Name]’s constant reminders for him to eat.

Though, like most childhood friendships, it had seemed then it had come to an end. [Name] was two years younger than Senku so once he had entered middle school, it was a little harder visiting him. The hobbies they both took a liking to were completely different, Senku’s leaning more toward an academic side with science, while [Name] had started to develop a liking to painting. So even if they had gone to the same middle and high school, their chances of being in the same clubs were 0.

Who knew being petrified for over 3,700 years and a threat to our lives would bring us closer together? [Name] thought to herself mindlessly as she slurped on her ramen, internally cringing at how nasty it tasted.

She had been the de-petrified right after Yuzuriha by Senku’s miracle formula since they weren’t that far from one another, though she wasn’t exactly sure why she had been chosen, given that they hadn’t exactly spoken in so long. [Name] never bothered asking Senku either due Tsukasa’s unwavering need for him to have Senku killed. When he had been supposedly “killed” and then revived, it had dawned on her that she still had a feeling there were times he was going to get himself actually killed if one of them wasn’t going to be around, causing her to make the decision to stay with him while Taiju and Yuzuriha went back to Tsukasa,

From then on, it seemed Senku and [Name]’s old dynamic had started to come back. He would create trouble with Chrome and Kohaku while [Name] would sit back with Suika and remind them to not overexert themselves. Sometimes, [Name] would even try to cook the old food she used to make if the resources allowed her to. Most times, however, it was just her picking up the catastrophes he left behind late at night.

“You better clean that up or else you’re going to have a mustache drawn on you tonight.” [Name] stated, giving her friend a pointed look as if the emphasize that she was being serious. Senku didn’t answer, only staring at the same spot of the blueprint. A telltale sign that he was thinking about something else. Slapping his arm gently, she pulled him out of his rapid thoughts. “What are you thinking about this time, huh? Big brain finally distracted from his genius moments? Could it be love? Must be the end of the world.”

Senku’s mouth quirked into a tiny smirk at the mention of the last statement, causing some odd fluttery feeling in [Name]’s stomach. It immediately went away when Senku flicked her forehead, a habit he developed when [Name] was annoying him. “Love is just a construct of emotions I’m incapable of.” He stated smartly.

[Name] rolled her eyes. “Your big words don’t work on me, big brain. Now tell me what’s really bothering you.”

[Eye color] met crimsons ones, telling him to tell her in the manner only they knew how to work well with: silence. His eyes darted to the side, making [Name] glance over at the three girls staring intently at him. [Name] could only snort out a laugh.

“So it is about love. Well I’ll see you in the next life then Senku--ouch!” [Name] pressed her palms to her forehead, glaring at her friend. “What was that for?”

“You’re being a nuisance.” He said dismissively as he slurped some of his own ramen. “And so are those three with their staring.”

“Could you blame them, oh great village chief?” [Name] asked redundantly. “Good-looking stranger shows up out of the blue, pretty much causes a village to turn itself upside down and inside out in less than a year. That’s pretty exciting for some village girls; some might even say romantic.”

Senku’s face pinched in itself in revulsion. “Disgusting.”

“You say that like you have any experience at love.” [Name] replied with a laugh.

“And you do? You’re only 14.” Senku stated.

“I’m 15.”

“Whatever.” Senku replied. “The point is, neither of us have experienced it and we shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Why not?” [Name] challenged. “Think of it like a science experiment; love is a construct of emotions right? You said it was something you couldn’t attain, but I beg to differ. Test it out on someone. Take one of those three out on a date; or you can do all three if you’re so bold.”

Senku, who had been squinting at her the entire time she was talking, suddenly changed had some type of look on his face. He never really thought of love like that; most likely because he never really thought of love at all. Maybe he should put it to the test, but the only problem was--

“I don’t really wanna use those three as my test subject.” Senku stated simply.

“What?” [Name] asked, followed by three other voices. Both of them looked up to see that the three sisters had ended up inching closer to listen in on their conversation.

In hindsight, we shouldn’t have kepy glancing their way or at least talked quieter. [Name] thought, embarrassment seeping through her.

“Why not, though?” Ruby asked, eyes bulging wide, clearly not caring that she was going to be a possible test subject. From the looks of it, her sisters didn’t care either. They really want to go on a date with him, no matter what situation it is. What a bunch of si--

“Because I want to go on a date with [Name].” Senku replied simply, pinky in his ear.

HUH?!

NEXT PART

[itsclydebitches]

one of the previous anons here (again)! :0

not to be an "UM ACTUALLY" kinda person, but I think the tinfoil anon was referring to the scene in the training room (where crosshair got stunned by hunter) insteada the scene at sea (rescuing omega and azi).

I'm.... *also* really curious about what he was thinking there, honestly? Like, all that setup to ask his brothers to join the empire with him -- but what did he expect them to say? And it even seemed like he was about to draw his rifle on Hunter, before Hunter stunned him, but the others also had their guns pointed at him? He couldn't have possibly thought he was going to walk away from that in one piece lmao, regardless of whether he outdrew Hunter or not

Anyway, yeah, apologies for cluttering your inbox with the digital equivalent of snail mail these past 48ish hours XD.... I just think these meta posts are neato

OH SHIT if that's the case so sorry other anon, that's my bad 😅

And omg, literally don't worry my inbox is already beyond saving. I've got hundreds of asks spanning back years at this point, stuff I just straight up don't have time to answer and, sadly, probably never will. Cluttered doesn't begin to cover it. If my ask box could embody physical space, it would probably smell like TBB's barracks lol

But YEAH okay, let's talk the stunning scene instead because I love being sad on a Sunday night. What's important for me is that building up to this it's Hunter who is gunning for Crosshair (pun not intended lol). Crosshair has already shown that he's not planning to hurt them by murdering his other team and he's only just started to think over Hunter's "We never were" — in response to his "don't become my enemy" accusation — when all the droids pop up. Yet instead of focusing on them, Hunter immediately jumps on Crosshair. I mean yeah, we as the audience (to a certain, complicated extent) understand why they're so wary of him, but also think about how bad that looks from Crosshair's perspective. You've just proven you're not out to hurt your team, Hunter claims you were never enemies... but the second a fight starts he attacks you. Like you're the enemy. So does Hunter believe what he's saying? So many of the problems here come down to claims vs. action. TBB is really good at saying things to Crosshair, but aren't very good at backing them up with action. Like claiming they wouldn't leave him behind vs. actually not coming back for him during this whole stretch, here we've got "We're not your enemy" vs. Hunter choosing to attack him instead of the droids.

So they tussle a bit and it's only when the droids become overwhelming that Hunter is forced to turn his attention towards them instead. When he does, we see Crosshair thinking for a moment and then we get a preview of that "Oh no, Crosshair is going to shoot Hunter!" scare out on the water: he lifts his rifle, aims in a way that appears to be at Hunter's back, but then shoots over his shoulder to hit the droids instead. We even get two reaction shots to this, Hunter's brief look of surprise and a more overt "Omg, Crosshair is helping" reaction from Tech and Wrecker.

When Wrecker pulls his helmet back down it's with a sense of new determination. The whole squad is back in action! This is (again) proof that Crosshair is not out to be their enemy. He just fought alongside them, protecting them rather than taking advantage of the situation to take them out.

... except that as soon as the battle is finished Hunter immediately has his weapon on Crosshair.

And everyone else follows his lead.

Crosshair had complete trust in them. He had his back turned right before this moment, head in his hand, not at all worried about what his allies were doing. Why would he? They're meant to be allies and the threat (the droids) is gone. Except then he turns around to find that Hunter has his weapon on him after Crosshair just killed for him, after Hunter attacked first, after Crosshair didn't attack when given the chance, and you can see him looking down at his weapon with this sense of resignation.

What was he thinking in this moment? Probably that fighting is inevitable. I don't think Crosshair believes he can make it out of this without being stunned (or shot. I mean, does he know their blasters are set to stun?), but rather that he's just going along with what the others insist is going to happen. Every time he does something to say "We're not enemies" they do something back that says, "We are."

Crosshair doesn't want to fight his team, but Omega releases droids to help them battle him.

Crosshair wants to fight the droids, but Hunter attacks him instead.

Crosshair does fight the droids when given the chance and thinks that's it, he's proven his trustworthiness, but Hunter has him at gunpoint the second it's over, as do the others.

Every time he tries to do something to show he's not their enemy — "Don't make me your enemy" he says. That's what he's trying not to be — they turn around and frame him as the enemy anyway, whether it's attacking him instead of a droid, Tech telling Wrecker he's beyond talking to, or all of them assuming he's out to shoot Hunter instead of save Omega. This is an ongoing trend that just snowballs the longer things go on. Have you watched Grisha? You know the Darkling's line, "Fine, make me your villain"? To my mind it's sorta like that only with Crosshair having better grounds to make that claim than the Darkling did lol. Raising his gun isn't about thinking he can win this fight. It's also not about wanting to fight — he's made it very clear that he doesn't want that at all. It's much more of a resigned, "Fine, if this is the road you insist on going down, I'll oblige you."

"This is who I am," Crosshair says and Hunter has made it clear, several times over, that "this" is TBB's enemy. Crosshair didn't want that, but it's what they're insisting on, so an enemy is going to defend themselves by shooting back. Which is when he's knocked out, wakes up drowning, is saved by Omega, learns the Empire tried to kill him, and is back to his half angry/half desperate, "Can you please not think of me as the enemy for two seconds and hear what I have to offer?"

As for what he thought his brothers would say in regards to joining the Empire, that offer he has... I think he thought they'd say yes. Whether that belief is born of his own, twisted reasoning, or if there is still something going on with the chip, Crosshair prioritizes their safety and their purpose over the ethics of working for the Empire. When Hunter goes, "We're loyal to each other, not some Empire" that's something Crosshair agrees with. When not forced to try and kill them via the chip, he is loyal to the squad, absolutely, even over what the Empire wants. That's why he kills the Empire's soldiers and disobeys orders to get rid of TBB, instead trying to orchestrate their move into the organization instead. That's not what the Empire wants, it's what Crosshair wants.

So they're both loyal to the team over who they work for, the only problem is a) Crosshair is struggling to believe that they ever considered him a true part of the team — "You weren't loyal to me" — and b) Hunter's loyalty, unlike Crosshair's, actually has a limit. For him, he's not willing to kill civilians to give his brothers a sense of purpose in the world. He's not willing to follow an evil Empire to ensure that they have food and aren't always on the run. For Hunter, his desire to keep the rest of the team safe and happy does not outweigh basic morality (which is a good thing!) They'll figure out a way to survive while also doing the morally correct thing. Crosshair, however, places nothing above his teammates. He'll betray the Empire's orders for them. He'll kill his new team for them. He'll murder whatever innocents it takes to give them a safe, fulfilling life in this new galaxy. The Empire wants him to kill other people's kids? What does he care if the tradeoff is getting a good home for Omega? Something, something, Jedi fear attachments. All of which makes this whole mess all the more tragic. He will do anything — literally, ethically anything — for his squad... and they didn't even come back for him. He'll do anything for them, but they're insisting on being enemies instead. The underlying problem is that Crosshair's way of expressing devotion and care — let me help you join the Empire that's definitely going to take over the galaxy so that you'll be under their all-powerful protection and can live save, happy lives — is something that TBB finds to be repugnant (with, you know, excellent reason). So Crosshair is just standing there, continually offering his heart to them, not understanding why these ethical questions are more important than the only thing he cares about: them. And, again, we don't currently know how much of that warped thinking stems from Crosshair himself, or something that was/is still up with the chip.

Plus, toss in everything else we've discussed about Crosshair's abandonment. He doesn't understand why they care about the Empire's crimes over the protection of their family and he's continually hurt by the knowledge that they won't go as far for him as he's willing to go for them, not realizing that going that far is morally reprehensible. If TBB had tried to rescue him and had approached him as a brother in need of rescue, rather than an enemy, he might be more receptive to their arguments about what's best for the team. Simply because he would have felt like he was still a part of that team. Right now, everything Hunter argues about the evils of the Empire, while 100% true, are filtered through this knowledge that Crosshair isn't a "real" brother anymore. Chip or not, he believes what he's saying and has no reason to think that he's wrong, just that others aren't listening to him. From Crosshair's POV, they wrote him off the second this all started and haven't made a single move to fix things. That's the easiest way to entrench the idea that his way of doing things is right, the only problem here are his brothers who refuse to see it, insisting on opposing him instead, just as they had from the get-go when they left and never came back. To Crosshair, he's reaching out despite (again, from his perspective) the others not deserving it, yet that extended hand is continually slapped away. Nothing in the situation is helping him realize that what he's offering is what's wrong because it's all framed to look like he himself is the problem (see: Tech's little speech to Wrecker). But that's also why Omega's reminder that he's still their brother is so important. He gets a reminder, but Crosshair needs to see that again too. He needs a reason to turn away from the Empire because, whether it's due to the chip or not, the simple argument "This is wrong" isn't doing it for him. I honestly think he'd have left with them if he felt like he could rejoin the squad because, as established, his squad means everything to him. That's the top priority. But so much happened to make Crosshair believe that his brothers don't want him, that they'll only accept him as an enemy, that any offers to join them are made only out of obligation... that all he has left is the Empire. He needs to believe that they accept him as his brother so he can toss the Empire to the curb for what he wanted this whole time: to go home.

tl;dr IT'S SUCH A HORRIBLE MESS lol and this is why I oh so hope season two tackles all this with something resembling respect and nuance. This is one hell of a tangled problem, with lots of justified and inaccurate anger on both sides, so to try and simplify it all into a, "Crosshair is just a bad guy who thinks bad things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" would be... less than satisfying imo.

[wordupcomics]

Where are the rest of the villains in this AU? :0

So I've actually answered this question before, and was just gonna link you to the post....but I can't seem to find it so....guess I'll be answering this again...(I honestly wouldn't care if there weren't enough villains to fill a college campus 🤦‍♀️)

So a lot of this is repeated from the last post, wherever it is now 😂 but I believe I expanded on several of these villains too.

First let's cover all the villains as a whole. They are all no longer villains! Tobey went good at around 14 and ended up unintentionally inspired a lot of villains to slowly do the same. The last few villains gave up crime when WordGirl retired because they didn't feel like crime would be the same without WordGirl coming to stop them. A few years after Tobey went good, when several villains had already gone good, Two Brains and Tobey teamed up to create the Anti-Villain Association (AVA), which was intended to be a place where former villains and criminals could talk out their issues with other former villains so that they wouldn't turn back to crime. It's still running to this day and they meet once a week at Two Brains's old lair. They don't just keep it to their meetings, they also have fun functions and activities. For the most part the city doesn't think twice about the AVA, but you know there are always those people who don't trust others, and these types of people are convinced the AVA is simply a cover up, that all the former villains are still villains and are gathering to plan a teamed take over of the city or world. The AVA generally ignores these people. Many of each villains' respective weapons were destroyed after going good, but some weapons still remain for different reasons. Some weapons are nice to have for an emergency (Two Brains has rays that don't hurt people, just trap their feet with spray cheese, a nice thing to keep around in the event of a burglary), some weapons have uses in every day life (when making dozens of sandwiches at once, Chuck's condiment ray comes in handy), some felt it was wrong to destroy them for no reason if they weren't hurting anyone or anything (Tobey's robots who weren't destroyed by WordGirl are happily living in a very large cabin DEEP in the woods, Tobey didn't feel right about destroying them, they are practically sentient!) and some the villains felt were too dangerous to destroy (Mr. Big had more advanced mind control tech that he and Leslie were worried would send out a mind control signal if destroyed, rather than take the risk, they simply locked them up under high security.)

Now let's get into each AVA member (well I mean i guarantee I'll forget people, but I'm gonna try and if I missed a specific former villian you want to know about let me know):

Two Brains- The Steven brain was especially inspired by Tobey's actions, and wanted to be a good guy again. However he knew keeping the mouse brain at bay would be a challenge, and knew his only chance of being good was to find a legal way of getting his cheese fix. So Two Brains started making his own cheese. He even made a cheese aging ray to speed up the process. He ended up being able to make more cheese than he could eat, and turned it into a business. Because he doesn't have to spend actual time on the aging part, he can sell quality cheese for a cheap price, and it's a very successful business. I don't have a company name for his cheese business, but the slogan is "Evilly Delicious!"  His henchmen joined his efforts and still help with the cheese factory. One henchmen, the one with no name, had a daughter (also unnamed because I think I'm funny XD) that Two Brains always considered to be a granddaughter to him. She is aware of her family's past actions and is fine with it. She sometimes will help in the cheese factory but generally prefers not to. Two Brains still co-runs the AVA with Tobey.

Chuck and Butcher- Since they went good around the same time and did the same thing, I'm just doing them together. Chuck went for his dream of running his own sandwich shop, which started as a food truck and now is a restaurant, and Butcher partnered with him and helped him. Chuck makes the sandwiches and figures out the recipes, and Butcher helps and supplies the meat. They buy their cheese from Two Brains. Chuck has a better, albeit not perfect relationship with his mom and brother. Chuck also at one point made T shirts to sell in the sandwich shop...the only people who bought any were the other members of the AVA, and that was only to be supportive. The only people who ever actually wear the T shirts are Butcher and Whammer, and again, it's really only to be supportive and it's not very often they get worn. Butcher got married, had a son, and later had a divorce. The marriage was fine, and the divorce was civil, and he's really good friends with his ex-wife and her new husband. His son's name is Kale and he has powers similar to his dad, except dealing with vegetables. Butcher and Kale don't have the best relationship, and this is really on Kale's part. Kale's very prideful and shuts out help when it's offered to him, even if he needs it (which is often) and Butcher's instinct is always to help his son. Kale has a son of his own who he had at a younger age, and who's mother is currently out of the picture. The son's name is Baker, he's 8 and like his father and grandfather (and great grandfather!) has food related powers, his relating specifically to bread (bread, not pastries! Though Baker does like baking pastries!). Baker loves his grandpa and loves spending time with him. While Kale may shut his dad out when he needs help, it's nothing that would ever make Kale keep Baker away from Butcher.

Granny May- Oh yeah, she's still alive. TBH she's probably the oldest person in the city lol. She simply retired crime upon her family's request. She currently is living in an assisted living facility and is still going strong! She's in a scooter now, but still carries a cane with her for no other reason than to whack people of her own volition.

Mr. Big- Big really struggled with going good, despite wanting to. eventually he figured out his problem was greed and wanting money, so he went in the complete opposite direction and became a minimalist hippie. He currently lives in a trailer park, still has a collection of soft bunny toys and uses a walker now. He and Leslie are good friends.

Leslie- When Big went all hippie, he gave his business to Leslie. She, practically overnight, turned it around into a very successful, but also very sustainable and ethical business. Essentially it's Amazon if they had a heart 🙃

Whammer- Whammer loves his job as a professional demolisher! You need an unsafe building torn down? Call Whammer and he'll wham it down! Remodeling your kitchen and need it gutted first? Call Whammer, he'll be happy to wham your kitchen! Snow covering the ground and need the roads cleared? Call Whammer with caution cause he might accidentally pile all the snow against the buildings, trapping everyone inside, but damn those roads sure will be whammed clear!

Amazing Rope Guy- ARG got decent at rope tricks and is now an entertainer. He will certainly not be considered for America's Got Talent but if you want to entertain children at a birthday party and are on a budget, he's your guy! Becky and Tobey used to call him for every one of Theo's birthday parties (to support him) until Theo politely requested they stop. Now he's being hired for Julie's parties.

Lady Redundant Woman- over the years she moved up in her copier place, and eventually had done every position there. Now knowing how to do every position required in a copier store, she opened her own store and her copies are the employees. It's perfect because no matter what, she always has the EXACT right amount of workers, and technically she's the only one working so she can keep all the money for herself or her business (corrupt business people, don't get any ideas!). Dave visits her often and is so proud of her. She hates this. But she sure does love her copy store!

Ms. Question- She got hired onto the police force as a professional interrogator. As you can imagine, she's VERY good at her job. She doesn't even use her powers most of the time. That being said, if it was a severe crime like a murder and the person just wasn't talking or she had reason to believe they were lying or withholding details, she would be happy to use her powers, but most of the time she refuses to use her powers on others.

Learnerer- Is a detective! He watches suspects and learns their habits and can easily detect clues that will tell him exactly who it was if it was someone he's observed. He works with Ms. Question often and they're actually a pretty good team. How's that for a team up?

Victoria Best- When her and her brother were teenagers, they were taken away from their parents and put into a foster family. At first neither of them were happy for obvious reasons, they were just taken away from their parents and home. However, while Victor stayed loyal to his parents' wishes and refused to believe that they should have been taken away, Victoria soon began to see their parents for who they really were, and her own past actions for what they really were. She joined the AVA and made an effort to change, encouraging her brother to let go of their parents' control. She currently has no contact with her biological parents, and sees her foster parents regularly. She has one daughter who she loves deeply and always encourages her to just have fun with things. Try everything and fail with pride. Victoria's daughter sees Victoria's foster parents as grandparents. Victoria visits her brother somewhat regularly for small talk, sometimes she'll try to convince him to join the AVA, but she's learned to not push it. She really just sees him to stay in touch, her daughter has never meant Victor, and while Victoria would love for her daughter and brother to meet, she refuses to let them until Victor starts making an effort to be better. She still has hope her brother will come to his senses one day. Victoria runs a daycare, and did so because she wanted to be able to catch warning signs of poor parenting early in life so the children don't have to suffer in a bad household for as long as she had to.

Eileen- Inspired by, I think it was one of those "The Time I..." commercials Disney Channel used to do, Eileen learned that many people don't have the resources to have as nice birthdays as she does. She felt bad and started donating things to charities so people could have as wonderful of birthdays she always wanted to have every damn day. She currently runs her own charity, and if someone seems just a little too greedy, Eileen goes all hulk on them and turns into the Birthday Girl. People usually listen after that.

Hal- Hal sells his old blueprints for weapons to the cops so they can get a lead, and might even work undercover at times to sell current villains crappy weapons that allow them to get caught.

Coach- Instead of coaching new villains on how to be villains, Coach coaches newcomers to the AVA on the basics of staying good when you just want to commit a crime.

Seymour- Started  a Youtube series called "Can You Spot the Scam?" where he exposes scams around the city and gives advice on how to spot them and avoid them. What he's learned from this is: people are not very good at spotting scams.

Inviso-Bill and Big Left Hand Guy- Married. They got married before going good and before WordGirl retired. AVA members and current villains and WordGirl were all invited to the wedding. They spent a little bit of time as a married criminal duo before retiring. They still don't really know what they should do with themselves as good guys, they both sort of hop from job to job. But they are happy none the less!

Rhyme and Reason- Retired after WordGirl did, just didn't feel right to continue crime without her. They are in a QPR and like Inviso-Bill and BLHG don't really know what to do with themselves, but are happy just to have each other and the AVA

Okay I'm probably missing people, so again if your curious about someone in particular that I missed, let me know!

[tigerkirby215]

5e Dr. Mundo, the Madman of Zaun build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Alex “alexplank” Flores made for Riot Games.)

Honestly with my new summer job I’ve been having less and less time to both write builds and play League. I could really use a character who requires very little effort to play in LoL, who’s also very easy to translate into D&D...

Oh wait!

GOALS

Mundo's pain always at zero - Above all else Mundo is a big bulky boy with many an option to become bigger and bulkier.

Take two of these! - We need to throw a lot of bonesaws. Like, a lot of bonesaws.

Electricity make the brain work good - The only truly “magical” effect in Mundo’s arsenal is the ability to charge the area around him with lightning.

RACE

Mundo’s hardly a human anymore, and I can’t just make every character a variant human or custom lineage. I’m not going to get a chance to make a Goliath anytime soon so Mundo may as well be one! As a Golliath you get a +2 to Strength and a +1 to Constitution. You are a Natural Athlete with proficiency in the Athletics skill, and have a Powerful Build to carry more Bonesaws.

You can get some innate magic resistance, as being Mountain Born gives you resistance to Cold damage. But most importantly you can choose to just not take damage thanks to Stone’s Endurance. When you take damage, you can use your reaction to roll a d12. Add your Constitution modifier to the number rolled and reduce the damage by that total. After you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

ABILITY SCORES

15; CONSTITUTION - Mundo is a tank above all else, and additionally you have a +1 in CON thanks to your race so you’ll have nice even stats to start out!

14; STRENGTH - Healthy boy building a healthy body~

13; DEXTERITY - Don’t get me wrong Mundo is a slow lad, but DEX saves are useful as is having good AC.

12; CHARISMA - Charisma is tied to intimidation as well as good bedside manner.

10; WISDOM - Isn’t Medicine a Wisdom skill? Why, I don’t believe this man has ever been to medical school!

8; INTELLIGENCE - "Mundo not remember Mundo before Mundo was Mundo."

BACKGROUND

There isn’t a doctor background... but Plaintiff from Acquisitions Incorporated is surprisingly close! You get proficiency with Medicine and Persuasion (feel free to swap this out if you desire) as well as an Artisan’s Tool of your choice (you say Carpenter’s Tools, I say medical tools!) and a language of your choice (pick your poison.)

Your feature of Legalese can be replaced with knowledge of medical terminology like “pharmacistcistist”, “prognosis“, and “anesthesezee.” Who knows? Doctor knowledge may help if you talk to other doctors!

(Artwork made for Riot Games.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - BARBARIAN 1

I hope you weren’t expecting anything fancy from a guy whose kit consists of “hit stuff”, “hit stuff”, “regen health”, and “hit stuff.” You get two skills from the Barbarian list like Intimidation and Survival (which is more just you being lucky and built like a walking tank.) You can also walk around in “medical scrubs” thanks to Unarmored Defense equal to 10 plus your Constitution modifier and your Dexterity modifier (so currently 14.)

But of course the main trait of a Barbarian is Rage to go where you please. A Maximum Dosage of Rage gives you advantage on Strength checks and saves, extra damage with Strength weapons, and resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage. Basically it makes you hit hard while taking no damage. You have a limited number of uses of this ability as shown on the Barbarian table.

LEVEL 2 - BARBARIAN 2

Second level Barbarians can inflict some Blunt Force Trauma with a Reckless Attack, giving themselves advantage while also giving enemies advantage to hit them. You can also further go where you please thanks to Danger Sense, giving you advantage on Dexterity saves against effects you can see coming at you. It’s almost like negating the effect entirely.

LEVEL 3 - BARBARIAN 3

Third level Barbarians get to choose their Medical College-I mean Primal Path, and for those of you who know a thing or two about Barbarians you know of the only way I have to give you Heart Zapper: Path of the Storm Herald. When you pick this subclass you can choose between one of three Storm Auras, and while Desert would work if you want to play pre-rework Mundo Sea is far better for post-rework Mundo and in general. As a Bonus Action while raging you can choose one other creature you can see within 10 feet of you. The target must make a Dexterity saving throw or take a of d6 lightning damage, or half as much damage on a successful save.

Now might be a good time to talk about your choice of weapons as Mundo: your main weapon is definitely a Hand Axe that you can throw around, but the thing about Hand Axes is that they have a low range and cost a ton. So I’d actually suggest using Javelins for your Infected Bonesaw.

As for your secondary weapon I’d suggest a Light Hammer as your Doctor Bag (for Blunt Force Trauma) but as a Storm Herald you won’t have a Bonus Action to use for Two-Weapon Fighting. So you can focus on dealing as much damage with your main attacks using a d8 martial weapon. Basically I’m suggesting you carry a Battleaxe in your main hand and have your off-hand open to throw Javelins at the enemy. Or run in with a Greataxe if you want. Heck you can even pick up a shield if you want: make your own Mundo!

Also Tasha is a very good doctor, as she fixed the Barbarian to give it Primal Knowledge! You can get one more skill from the Barbarian list like Perception, because why not be more useful outside of the medical ward?

LEVEL 4 - BARBARIAN 4

Want to actually be a doctor? Grab the Healer feat to do some doctoring. Want to be a canonically bad doctor? Just take more Constitution and live forever lol.

(Artwork by Marie Magny and West Studios. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 5 - BARBARIAN 5

5th level Mundos can auto attack cancel and attack twice with Extra Attack! You also get Fast Movement to further chase down your foes with cleavers and lighting!

LEVEL 6 - BARBARIAN 6

6th level Storm Herald Barbarians can go where they please thanks to Storm Soul. It grants you resistance to a specific type of damage and for you that damage type would be Lightning. You can also go into a specific environment if you desire, and as a Sea Barbarian you get a 30 foot swimming speed! River Mundo.

LEVEL 7 - BARBARIAN 7

7th level Barbarians have a Feral Instinct for doctoring! You get advantage on initiative rolls, and in addition you can’t be surprised as long as you Rage at the start of your turn!

Tasha’s also gave you an option to reach out and zap someone thanks to  Instinctive Pounce, letting you move up to half your movement speed when you Rage!

LEVEL 8 - BARBARIAN 8

You might be thinking I’d grab more Strength at this point... Ha ha no; Mundo goes where he pleases, and more Constitution will give you the health and AC to do so.

(Artwork by Terence Cantal and West Studios. Made for Riot Games)

LEVEL 9 - BARBARIAN 9

9th level Barbarians get Brutal Criticals without building for crit chance! If you crit you roll 3 damage die instead of 2, which is good because your Strength isn’t doing you many favors in the damage department.

LEVEL 10 - BARBARIAN 10

10th level Barbarians can help the comoonity thanks to Shielding Storm. Now all friends and fellow doctors within 10 feet of you get resistance to Lightning damage! Oh and speaking of Lightning damage: your Storm Aura now (finally) increases to 2d6, meaning that you can get some value out of your big CON to do damage!

Additionally Tasha’s lets you have even more Primal Knowledge at this level: Animal Handling will help you talk with your nurse? I dunno; Mundo doesn’t exactly strike me as a knowledgable guy really.

LEVEL 11 - BARBARIAN 11

11th level Barbarians simply have too much health to die! If you drop to 0 hit points while you’re raging and don’t die outright, you can make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. If you succeed, you drop to 1 hit point instead thanks to Relentless Rage! Each time you use this feature after the first, the DC increases by 5. When you finish a short or long rest, the DC resets to 10.

LEVEL 12 - BARBARIAN 12

“12th level Barbarians can finally increase their Strength!” I hear you say. Lol no. The Slasher feat will give you some much-needed slows to keep enemies close, and will let you increase your Dexterity by 1 for more AC. Having the Slasher feat also finally gives a convincing argument for you to throw Hand Axes as opposed to javelins, which is nice.

(Artwork made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 13 - BARBARIAN 13

13th level Barbarians get even bigger Brutal Criticals that do 4 total damage die of damage! Mundo does as much damage as he pleases!

LEVEL 14 - BARBARIAN 14

At level 14 the Raging Storm of the Sea forces enemies you hit within 10 feet to make a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. Honestly while the rest of this class was kinda a bust inflicting Blunt Force Trauma on your foes is huge, as being knocked prone gives all melee allies advantage to hit an enemy while also forcing an enemy to spend time standing back up.

LEVEL 15 - BARBARIAN 15

15th level Barbarians are always regenerating health, as Persistent Rage is permanent until the duration expires or you fall unconscious. (Or you choose to end your Rage.) That’s really nice because your Storm Aura now does 3d6 damage, meaning you can keep zapping with your Heart Zapper!

LEVEL 16 - BARBARIAN 16

Strength for damage man; Mundo not damage man! Mundo doctor, and Mundo goes where he pleases! Take the Tough feat for 32 more health now and up to 40 more health when you reach max level!

(Artwork by Xu “Crow God” Cheng and Alvin Lee. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 17 - BARBARIAN 17

17th level Barbarians increase their Brutal Critical to roll 5 die total on a Nat 20. Because whether you want to do the most damage, take the most damage, or you know... fucking both then Barbarian is the right class for you.

LEVEL 18 - BARBARIAN 18

18th level Barbarians get Indomitable Might, letting them replace a roll on a Strength check with their Strength score if their check is lower than their total score. Man this sure would be more useful if we didn’t basically dump Strength.

LEVEL 19 - BARBARIAN 19

So how about we finally stop dumping Strength and bump it up to an 18 with our last Ability Score Improvement... Eh it’s still not great...

LEVEL 20 - BARBARIAN 20

Well thankfully Primal Champion is here to increase your Strength and Constitution by 4. And want to know what’s great about this ability? It also increases your maximums for those abilities to 24, meaning that you will have a grand total of 22 in Strength and 24 in Constitution!

And to top it off your Storm Aura now does a whopping 4d6 Lightning damage, which means you can officially say that Storm Herald was a better pick than Berserker or the Polearm Master feat.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

One-bajillion drops of healing juice, stat! - While I wasn’t able to give Mundo his health regen I still got him some crazy high health values. When I was done with this build I genuinely looked at the character sheet and said “I have never seen a character with 325 health before." 325 health along with 19 AC means that you can damn well go wherever you please.

How we doing patient; you numb yet? Mundo is! - While you don’t have the same near-endless supply of resistances as a Bear Totem Barbarian resisting two types of magic damage is useful. Feel free to play pre-rework Mundo with the Desert Aura if you think Fire damage will be more common in your campaign. And I dunno: maybe try to get some magic items to resist more elemental damage types?

Huh? Supposed to be painless - Even without big investment in Strength the Storm Herald Barbarian is quite good at quite good at dishing out DPS, with a big burst of magic damage every round and the ability to knock enemies prone which will really help your melee allies. Not to mention that Brutal Critical means that your Nat 20s will really help you cut off some limbs!

CONS

Beep... beep... beeeep... - Dumping your mental stats has its penalties, and you’ll be failing most of your saving throws. You could’ve perhaps grabbed the Lucky feat for some health insurance (honestly if you can max out your CON and STR before level 20 I’d suggest grabbing Lucky just to reroll some saves), but let’s just say you aren’t completely CC immune.

Me forgot how to doctor... Back to medicine school! - Low mental stats also hurt in roleplay, and while you have a surprising amount of proficiencies (thanks Tasha’s) most of them are for rather niche skills with the exception of perhaps Perception and Persuasion.

Patient; why you out of bed?! - You can throw axes but you’re not exactly a ranged combatant. Most if not all your abilities have very short range, maxing out at around 10 feet. You’re extremely hard to shake off if you can get close but enemies that can kite you will give you a lot of trouble.

But if you want to run in and hit stuff while never dying then Mundo is the man for you! Replace all your brains with brawn to truly go where you please. Just remember that unlike League you’re not completely immune to CC, meaning that it’s more than possible to get put in time out for awhile. But it’s okay if you do; everyone has to take a sick day sometimes!

(Artwork by Terence Cantal and West Studios. Made for Riot Games.)

[moonbeamsung]

under the cut you will find my comprehensive brain dump about hot sauce <3

okay in addition to all the shitposts i made about the album as i listened for the first time, i have so much i wanna say about each track so here we go, even if no one reads this i don’t mind because i’m just posting it for myself! this is 15% semi-professional-sounding album review talk and the other 85% is me freaking out lol

hot sauce: someone said this is zimzalabim’s brother and i can’t stop thinking about it, but unlike that song it honestly didn’t take multiple listens for me to like the song itself. the only thing that was the slightest bit off-putting about it was the higher pitch of the chanting (which i still don’t know if i’m imagining or not) but i don’t mind it as much as i used to. the beat is so interesting and funky and the latin-ish(?) sound of some parts suits them unexpectedly well :,) all the members’ voices are so distinct and i think they all got a chance to shine, like even without looking at the line distribution it just seems pretty even to me when i listen. okay now onto the mv i think it’s super cool and when i saw it for the first time it felt like there was a lot going on and it was a little overwhelming but i think that’s just because it was 5 in the morning and my senses were overwhelmed lol (like the lyrics say o_o (i think??)) also JISUNG’S DANCE BREAK I AM ON THE FLOOR. he sounded so good sjdfbds. renjun’s adlibs (in the final chorus especially) are really something else and his lil duet part with jisung in prechorus 2 is amazing showstopping never been done before etc etc. haechan’s high note and jeno’s and mark’s (side note i can’t believe we really have 7dream again :,)) and jaemin’s raps and chenle’s voice throughout the entire thing are just,,, perfection omg. overall i love this song so much and think it was a great title track for them!!

diggity: IT GOES SO HARD IT’S CRAZY. first of all here are some timestamps that make me lose my mind: 0:30 i swear the adlib sounds like mark but the video shows that it’s renjun and he sounds😳whew. and 2:48.....jisung.........i can’t do this............for maximum pain watch a clip of him talking from 2016/2017 and then listen to this part but warning you may cry. HE SOUNDS SO SKDFBL WHEN DID HIS VOICE GET SO DEEP🥲like i knew it was but this is just. another level lmao but anyways, the bridge in this song as a whole sounds amazing!!! i’m very much in love with really small moments like the little “na na na”s in mark’s rap and the way they sound, sorta minor in tone. also love how the beats build up to the chorus each time and i just wanna bop my head to it! it seems like i hear new little harmonies and adlibs every time i listen and it’s such a nice mix of vocals and strong raps :)

dive into you: the VIBES of this song??? i liked it from the teaser but as i listen more and more it gets even better it seems. like imagine a summer roadtrip to the coast because that’s what this sounds like.  mark and jisung really started things off with one of the catchiest raps i’ve ever heard and everything about it is so perfect😩jaemin and jeno singing >>>> and chenle chose violence with his high note and hearing all the harmonies from every single one of them makes me so happy :> they’re so beautiful like aaaaa. also i just love the minor-sounding notes (that’s a favorite thing of mine can you tell) in the chorus with the “you-ooh” parts. VOCALIST JENO AT 2:36 IS THE PRETTIEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD DO YOU HEAR HIS HARMONY. can’t forget vocalist jisung either, any time he sings i’m just🥰which has happened a lot this cb which is GREAT :DD and then on top of all that, the track video is adorable and they look so happy!! driver haechan doesn’t hurt either lmao AND THE PERFORMANCES OF IT ARE SO CUTE TOO LIKE HHHH

my youth: something about this song sounds so nostalgic and it’s going on my driving playlist because it just gives me such a carefree feeling, like being on the highway or driving through a city at sunset. it’s really chill and it’s one of the softer songs on this album so it balances out the harder-hitting tracks :) jaemin’s rap is so nice, reminds me of how much i love his voice :( i heard a clip of them singing this song live and it doesn’t sound the slightest bit different, it really shows all their singing talents🥺

rocket: omg definitely another favorite of mine on the album, it’s so upbeat and reminds me of dream run!!! also it’s moonshine produced so you know it’s going to be a total bop. for some reason it feels like something that would play on a rollercoaster if they had music, the scales and the synth make it sound really fun and it’s extremely enjoyable to listen to, makes me wanna dance around :) jaemin’s rap with the little star wars line is cute hehe. and chenle’s “level up” part, he sounds SO GOOD! from the bridge towards the end, that’s my favorite part, it’s such an energetic beat and, like, bouncy? i guess? that’s not the best word but i really really really love this track☺️☺️☺️

countdown (3,2,1) : besides the fact that mark decided to k word me with that “explOsive” line at the opening i love this one too! it sounds futuristic almost. i never knew how much i needed to hear jisung say “control freak” before this and his singing voice at 1:15 and 3:11 and 3:24 is just wOw—plus his RAP I’M NOT GONNA RECOVER FOR A WHILE😔🤭......also love the transitions from jaemin into mark and then jeno for that part in the bridge and the buildup it has to the final chorus. i think haechan’s and renjun’s voices sound so good on this track like at that softer part? aND HOLY HECK IS HYUCK THE ONE DOING THOSE ADLIBS TOWARDS THE END BECAUSE IF SO DAMN. yes boys you are very dangerous

anl: why couldn’t they have just called it all night long because everyone’s reading it wrong🤠this one is really chill and i think the way it sounds kinda matches the vibe of their boring ver. photos, if that makes sense. it’s also going on my driving playlist!! i don’t know what to call the little twinkling sounds at the start but i love those, and mark’s voice is so soothing in this song🥺something about the way renjun sings “sky high” is gorgeous and jisung’s parts with the harmonies are truly a blessing to the ears :] the chorus sounds so inherently dream and i feel like track itself has something mature about it? (not in that way geez) but like it just shows how far they’ve come music-wise/vocally

irreplaceable: except for mark’s one english line in the bridge (you know the one don’t make me type it) (but it doesn’t make me cringe quite as much anymore) i also adore this song☺️if this track had a video, i’d picture it looking something like the cafe 7dream content. it sounds really acoustic and warm and like they could just be casually singing it together in a cozy cafe or studio! also, i realized that it reminds me of another dream song when i hear it and i figured out that it’s bye my first hehe. HAECHAN’S HIGH NOTE IS WITHOUT A DOUBT THE BEST PART, MARRY ME SIR.

be there for you: literally the renhyuckle ballad we’ve always wanted!!! i don’t even have that much to say because it’s just so beautiful, all three of their voices blend so well together and it’s such a comforting track. nct’s slower and softer songs like this are very distinct and have a gentle kind of power. listening to it feels like a hug and the harmonies and high notes and the extent of their vocal ranges are just so, so amazing.

rainbow: for all the times i’ve cried to it, i still love it :,) those first lyrics from chenle make me want to bawl my eyes out simply because his tone there is so nostalgic and pretty and sad-sounding, and reading the lyrics makes me even more emotional (or maybe i’m just overly sensitive oops). the softer raps and angelic vocals and every little harmony and adlib are EVERYTHING, this is another song that just suits the unit so well. regardless of their positions this track proves that every single member is beyond capable of being a vocalist. i don’t know why it seems like such a sad and nostalgic song to me, but it’s also really hopeful at the same time. it’s like this dreamscape of emotions (no pun intended), and the video is so otherworldly and enchanted it seems almost magical. the colors and the playground set? their expressions and interactions with one another? i swear, their friendship and bond is unlike any i’ve ever seen. this track also makes me think of how proud i am of them, and i wanna give them all the biggest hug in the world🥺

if you decided to read this whole thing i would like to say i’m sorry for the ramble but also thank you for being interested in what i had to say :)

[bnha-scenarios]

☕️ Special Thanks ☕️ 

As always, thank you so much for the coffee! Your kindness are very much appreciated! ♡

Emilija | Regan | Nela Kovaříková | 1 Anon

Onwards to the progress update.

I had. So. Many. Things. That I actually wanted to complete.

… Alas, work decided to be a bitch and swamp me with things to take care of. To put it simply, there were a lot of issues that caused a lot of overtime work even on weekends, so I had to step away from coding most of the time so I won’t burn myself out.

So yeah, I didn’t manage to complete a lot of features, though I did dabble on some stuff here and there. I’m not happy with the rather small progress either. But life happens, and there are just other things that are more important sometimes. So we just have to let it go and look forward to the next month!

I’d say that this month I was quite productive in terms of organization and planning instead of the actual coding. I have at least identified what I need to write for the ‘free activity’ time of the game, which makes about 30-40% of the gameplay itself. However, actually writing the scenes and executing it is a different effort altogether, which I have only started to embark on.

Still, it’s crazy to think that the development for the full game has been actively going for around three and a half months now. Whew. Knowing that I have a tendency to hyperfocus and then get tired of something after a short time frame, I’m going to at the very least give myself a pat on the back for still keeping this project up and running until now.

More details below ↓

Added Route: Kirishima

Let me preface this first with a declaration: I won’t be adding any more love interest after this. Please please please don’t make me do it 😅 Going through all the plans and re-setting up things to figure out how to add him in was such a painful experience…

But anyway. I will be adding this boy’s route to the full game, because a lot of people seem to want to have him in the game. He does seem like a fun character to write, so I thought I’ll give him a chance.

Gameplay

Places, Schedules, and Hanging Out with the Boys

I think you would have noticed from the last two devlogs, but there are several activities you can do in-game. One of them is to visit a place of your choice at a certain time in a day.

Some places can be unlocked when you reach a certain threshold in a specific stat, and there are others which will be unlocked when you reach a specific threshold in a character’s affection meter. Nai will message you whenever you manage to unlock a new place to visit, so keep a lookout for that!

But what happens when you visit a place?

Well, each character has their own schedules -- which you should be able to figure out either by coincidence or by talking to them at school when prompted to do so. Your Quirk will allow you to see the unlocked schedule of each of the characters, so my advice would be to check it out before deciding where to go! If you manage to come to a specific place at the correct time, you will bump into them. Normally, this will trigger a set of actions you can perform: Talk, Action, and Skinship.

Talking is a safe way to increase your love interest’s affection meter, especially in the first half of the game. More topics can be unlocked under some requirements. Generally, it doesn’t matter where you are, the topics you can talk about will be the same. There are topics which might trigger different reactions depending on how high your love interest’s affection is, so have fun finding them! However, be warned that most topics can be selected only once!

Action is another safe way to further increase your love interest’s affection meter. Unlike talking, different places have a different set of actions you could select from. More actions can also be unlocked under some requirements. Responses to this doesn’t exactly change based on the character’s current affection level, and it’s not limited to one time only.

Skinship is a riskier way to boost the affection meter: simply put, it’s a high gain with a high risk. Consider the character’s current affection level when you’re selecting from this list! He might not like it if you go touchy-feely when you’re not that close yet.

On the other hand, when his affection is high enough, you’ll find that you can have a lot of fun choosing the various options here. So be smart, bide your time, and have fun ;)

And that’s not all! Interaction is a two-way street, so depending on how your love interest views the main character, he will initiate Talk, Action, or even Skinship. There’s a lot of variations in here, and I hope you’ll have fun with this mechanic! I certainly am having fun while also pulling out my hair out of frustration designing this and trying to put the mechanism to control this into code…

Progress-wise, I think at the very least the functions for controlling this specific mechanic have been 80% completed. The actual writing however, is another story. There are still hundreds that I still haven’t had the time to write yet, and most of them are not yet coded in. Those who have been coded in still don't have sprites and music, so really, I’ll just say that the writing progress for this part is less than 1% completed….

On the left is the currently WIP full game project, with what I would say around 2-4% dialogue scripted in. And on the right side is the completed demo project.

…. Can you see how much effort the whole game is going to take me now? I did say to strap in and relax, cause this is going to be a long ride. And I wasn’t kidding lol

"Nai"

Although throughout the first week, the story will flow as your environment / characters around you teaches you on how the game works, I’m aware that the game mechanics might be hard to understand for casual players who aren’t too used to playing otome games (or games in general). Which is pretty much why I’m giving you a ‘helpline’ of some sort, in the form of another character.

Why a character? Because I can and I want to. Shush 😆

If you’ve played the demo, chances are, you’ve encountered a name which you had no recollection of existing in the canon My Hero Academia universe. Well, you’re right. Like the player’s character, Nai (full name: Namae Nai / 名前 ない) doesn’t exactly exist in the canon universe, but she’s here to help you throughout the game. (She’s also there because if she wasn’t, 1-A class members becomes odd number in total and that just feels weird to me -- plus, the team exercise system in Heroics wouldn’t exactly make sense if the class has odd number of students)

For those of you who hate Original Characters with a passion (why tho), you don’t need to worry too much. She won’t be an intrusive character in the plot and will mainly not contact you unless she really has to (seriously, her full name literally means ‘no name’, so give her a break, ok?). And if, even then, you still hate her, well.... Too bad you won’t be able to enjoy the game, I guess.

For those of you who don't mind her existence: I hope you’ll take a liking to her dark sense of humor and appreciate her helping you get through the game!

Others

Fixed some bugs regarding unlocking Special Moves from certain activities and games.

Played around and customized the ‘input name’ for a little bit, so it wouldn’t awkwardly sit on the bottom of the screen. I have 0 talent in designing UI though, so the background still stays as a black screen -- but at least it looks more prominent now.

Added a little sign to indicate which route the player has entered. I think it’s pretty cute! Hopefully you’ll like it.

Assets

Those who follow me on Twitter would have seen this coming, but anyway, I’ll be using TMGS OSTs as the main character theme for the four love interests. Hush hush, okay?

Other than that, unfortunately I didn’t have time to do any assets gathering this month.

Writing

Nothing much to say here. I think I managed to script around 50% of the events in the first day, but honestly I’m not completely satisfied with it so I might go back and tweak them a bit. Still a lot of scenes to be written!

Plans for December

I'm not too sure whether there would be much progress for the next two months, since there are so many things happening and deadlines to be met at work, which is making me really unmotivated to do other side projects in my free time lately. I also feel like I haven't been taking care of my health enough ever since quarantine started, so I'm trying to get back into doing more exercises and looking for healthier food options, which also cuts into my free time and motivation I guess.

With that said, I'll still at least aim for getting some scripts coded in -- particularly for the events in day 1. Other than that, maybe hopefully some assets gathering for supporting Kirishima's newly added route, and finishing up the coding parts that I was unable to finish this month.

I'll see y'all again at the end of next month!

[eurosong]

Undo my ESC

Good evening, folks! If you saw my first instalment of “Undo my ESC”, the annual feature where I make a year’s Eurovision better for me by making alterations in each country, you might have thought that ESC getting cancelled had dulled my edge, since, comparing to usual standards, I hardly changed much at all there. Well, that’s because, once again, we have seriously uneven semis, and Semi #1 would have been killer, whilst Semi #2 would have been dead. Here is what Í would have done to even those semis up! 🇦🇱 Albania: The Albanian delegation had seemingly done all it could to wash its hands of, well, two years of comparatively excellent results with authentic, melancholically poëtic and qualitative tracks, namely Malland Ktheju tokës. They brought in Byuckman, in whose interest it is for the contest to become as generically “radio-friendly” as possible, and the genius who brought us lyrics like “this is love/rain falls from above”. As judges. Of a serious musical festival. The foreign jurors did as expected, and voted for the appointed “bop”, but were foiled, however, by one of the minority Albanian jurors on the panel who put it  low in her ranks. An actual renowned music professor who got called all the names under the sun for doing so. And so, to an ensuing shitstorm, the classical and powerful Shaj prevailed instead. Unfortunately, the battle was won but the war was lost, because the representative herself took the lessons of 2018-9, threw them down the aeroplane toilet on the way to LA, and ripped the spirit out of the song, reverting back to the previous Albanian trend of terrible “revamps” and laboured translations into English. The result, Fall from the sky, is but a husk of the original. In my ESC, I’d probably simply keeping the original version of Shaj, which was my uncontested #1 of all songs, but part of me would opt for Ajër, which I love almost as well but which doesn’t carry the baggage of hanging over my head like the sword of Democles this entire season. 🇦🇲 Armenia: I’ve more often than not loved the entries of Hayastan, from the joyous Jan Jan to the soaring Fly with me and defiant Walking out. To say they took a step back this year is kind – it was more like a powerful jump backwards that landed them in the nearest ocean, where they sank like a stone. It was one of the most singularly unpalatable NFs that I have ever watched in this era. Rather than retraumatise myself by going into detail about it, I’ll just say, I would have sent Srbuk or Artsvik again to get the top 10 that I feel both warranted!

🇦🇹 Austria: What a journey for Österreich. From Conchita to this guy, a perky homophobe who explicitly said he wished his kids would not turn out to be gay. He comes up with a third-rate impersonator of a third-rate Benjamin Ingrosso impersonator’s third-rate impersonation of a Timberlake b-side. I would throw that in the bin and invite Pænda back from last year for a shot at redemption after her gorgeous Limits got slept on in 2019.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria: Some people had the neck to say to me “who needs Hungary when Bulgaria is coming back?” Well, I do. Hungary were constantly in the top of my rankings, and just quietly and consistently brought quality. Bulgaria has brought me one good thing – Poli Genova’s œuvre – and a tonne of hype. Their song this year was one of the favourites, and I still can’t wrap my head around how other than the force of PR. It’s a bizarre, unsettling combination of passive-aggressive “look how much you’re making me hurt myself” lyrics with Disneyish saccharine accompaniment, topped off with a key change?! For want yet again of a national final, I would bring Poli back – third time even luckier? 🇨🇿 Czechia: The Bohemians (and Moravians) keep it contemporary but superficial for a third year running, although, thankfully, for the first time since they began doing national finals, we finally have a song without a dubious attitude towards women in the lyrics. Not that there is much to analyse in those lyrics. It’s a merely ok song for me, no better, no worse: a superior alternative would have been Barbara Mochowa’s lush and contemplative second effort, White and black holes, or the glorious 90s British indie-influenced All the blood. 🇩🇰 Denmark: Did Denmark confound international monitors into calling it the world’s happiest country by exposing them to the relentlessly cheery songs that they pick for Eurovision lately? And yet – I really do say yes to Yes, To a certain extent, to a limited amount of exposure, and despite the fact that it leans a little too hard into the territory of sounding like a second Little talks. It was one of the few good songs from DMGP – I also liked the 80s shoegaze-ish Den eneste goth– and I feel so mad at DR that they won’t give Ben and Tan a guaranteed second shot to represent their country after they won in front of an empty crowd. 🇪🇪 Estonia: The days of Eesti being Beesti seem like from a distant memory to me, but there was some quality and quirkiness in Eesti Laul, buried under mountains of beigedom, like the rich-voiced Egert Miller’s soulful Georgia, the jazzy Write about me, or the feisty earworm that was Ping pong. Instead, we got a dreary dirge with sub-Hallmark lines about wot luv is, which would have sounded dated in a contest 30 years ago, sung by a repugnant guy who tried to get people to vote for him last year by leaning on the idea that he was the “only true Estonian.” I’d have Egert get his rightful place as Jüri Pootsmann’s spiritual successor. 🇫🇮 Finland: I was one of the few to be jubilant when a bizarre ode to an Italian porn star with a backing track sounding like a violated version of Eläköön elämä came second in the polls to its spiritual opposite: a shy and rather awkward guy singing a quietly moving song about the passing of time. I love Looking back and wouldn’t change a thing. 🇬🇪 Georgia: You never know what to expect from Georgia, except the unexpected, and yet even I was surprised by what they came up with: a close-shaven guy with veins popping in his head screaming “why don’t you love meeeee?” to a rocky, electronic backdrop. Me being me, I actually do like it a lot. “Take me as I am” sounds like a veiled potshot at the big 5 and a vindication of Georgia’s “keep it weird, send what we want” philosophy. I could suggest that the lyrics, that sound like those of a spurned angsty teen, change a bit, but that would be defeating the purpose of Georgia: one takes them as they are. 🇬🇪 Greece: So, somehow, despite S!STERS coming dead last with 0 pts in the televote last year, using exclamation marks to substitute the letter I is now a thing in Eurovision with the advent of Superg!rl. I spent an hour watching folk waffle on in Greek in its reveal show only for them to reveal the song literally at the very end, so after that, it was a little underwhelming, and nowhere near as good as Better love in 2019. I don’t hate it – and the music video’s concept of her being an amazing superhero who can change the world, but instead she’s stopping people slipping over bananas and rescuing cats from trees is weirdly endearing, so it can stay, but I’d improve the lyrics, particularly in the chorus. “I’m a supergirl, supergirl, in a crazy world, crazy world” is not much higher than “this is love, rain falls from above” in historically bad Greek lyrics at ESC. 🇮🇸 Iceland: Daði Freyr came back from near-victory with the delightful Is this love, added a lovely inspiration in his newborn daughter to a similarly funky and playful track, and came out with Think about things. Unlike what usually happens with songs that are a little bit odd, I was positively surprised to see it walk the NF, and become a phenomenon even outside the ESC fandom. This was perfect and joyous from beginning to end. I hope Iceland will not be like the other Nordics, and will invite Daði directly back .🇱🇻 Latvia: I have come to enjoy the bizarre chaötic energy of Still breathing, It’s a hot mess, but I take weird over dull any day. It wasn’t my favourite in Supernova – that would be the effortlessly cool Polyester, an earworm with a social conscience, written about the cost of fast fashion but dismissed by many people as “she luvs t-shirts song lol”. Given that Samanta Tina tried over half a dozen times to go to ESC, finally won and then had the chance ripped out of her hands by the cancellation, I don’t have the heart to remove her from my ideal ESC 2020 though. She stays, but maybe the staging changes? It’s odd to have what you believe is a feminist anthem but then relegate your backing singers to in the distance, their faces shielded away. 🇲🇩 Moldova: Life is too short to follow Moldovan national finals, especially when you know, lately, that whoever is backed by the hilariously inaptly named Dream team will win there. They are like a parasite, sucking out the colour and fun out of a country that once had plenty of both – cross-reference Hora din Moldova or Lăutar to name just two examples. I guess out of an uninspiring lineüp, I’d go for Moldoviţa for having at least a hint of the brassy folk that used to be their calling card. 🇵🇱 Poland: Speaking of calling cards, after a one year hiatus with an arresting combo of white voice and rocky instrumentation, Poland has returned to what it has most often done in recent years – presented us with an absolute dirge, Empires, which seems like it was written by an unenthusiastic English student whose homework assignment (for which they received a generous C-) was to write a poëm with a bunch of metaphors “we’re moths to a flame, birds to a pane of glass, gasoline and a match”. Despite having a big music industry from which to choose many gems, Poland offers me little alternative choice given that there were only three songs in their grand final – one by the Czech representative last year who, as you might guess from what I said literally a sentence up, isn’t even Polish!Horny Elf, who’s contractually obliged to write only creepy lyrics for songs, tried to represent Polska with a song inspired by a true-life situation where he went around Tel Aviv with a cardboard cutout of one of the hostesses of the show. It’s a love song inspired by gallivanting around with a piece of cardboard. Addressed to that actual hostess. And it’s an almighty earworm that hasn’t escaped my mind since. Amazingly, his Lucy would be my Polish representative. 🇵🇹 Portugal: Portugal is another country beloved by me by for dancing to the beat of its own drummer, or perhaps, rather shedding tears to the strumming of its own fado guitar. They struggled being different, they won being different, and for the last few years they’ve struggled again, despite having a lot of support for both O jardim and Telemóveis amongst fans. This year, the televote went for one interesting song, the charmingly Gallic, accordion-drenched Passe-partout, a song about a cultured girl shaking off her boorish ex who could “never even get into Piaf”, whilst the jury got behind another interesting song, Gerbera, an entrancing, arresting and poëtic song laden with metaphor about the idea of music competing itself. This let Medo de sentir,second in both polls, turn silver into gold. It’s a lovely, heart-felt track, but rather unexceptional - I would have had one of the other more singular songs win. 🇸🇲 San Marino: The weird boil on the face of ESC that somehow never pops, SM is back after its bewildering qualification with a tone-deaf dentist wailing to a microwaved disco song… with something actually palatable, sort of. The aptly named Freaky is dated, odd, overly busy, but Senhit has a lot of charisma, and the idea of “break[ing] all the rules, mak[ing] up some new [ones] and destroy[ing] all of them too” and “life goes by too quickly not to be freaking it up”, well, maybe we do get on board. 🇷🇸 Serbia: Serbia is usually a byword for quality at the contest – they won with one of the best 21st century winners hands down in Molitva, and also sent some of the most beautiful compositions in the contest’s history at the hands of Željko. This year, they decided to join in the leitmotif of reliable countries sucking by sending a group that sound like a third-rate mid-2000s girl band from Transnistria when beautiful songs like Cvet sa Prokletija were right there. 🇨🇭 Switzerland: Fair play to the Swiss for not doing a Cyprus and leaning in on their success with their male Fuego, She gat me, and instead going in a completely different direction with this moody effort. I’m not entirely convinced by the teenage emo-ish lyrics or the unnecessary falsetto, but Répondez-moi is a refreshing effort, and has the bonus of being in French too! And the automatic qualifiers: 🇫🇷 France: You’ve heard of France, right? You know, that wee country south of Belgium, north of Andorra, not much of a music industry… or so you’d think, given that the troolee jeenyuss new delegation, who abandoned their brilliant national final which showcased how diverse and qualitative their music scene is despite it being a huge success in the fandom, and instead reached out to the writer of last year’s last place song for the UK and a few other rentaswedes and they produced something that sounds like a b-side that not even Westlife would have recorded, replete with a stock key change. About as French as IKEA köttbullar. A real shame for one of Europe’s most highly esteemed cultural hotbeds. If they wanted to pick Tom Leeb, who seems like a nice guy and has written some lovely music, he could have made his own song and it would have indubitably been scores better than this. 🇪🇸 Spain: I’m going to apply this to all the automatic qualifiers voting on this semi-final: they scrapped a national final for this? OT was not an ideal format as last year demonstrated with its shit show of contestants sabotaging themselves so as not to get picked for ESC – but still. There’s not much I can say about this other than I don’t like it much and I’d rather Spain return to a proper NF. You don’t spend time trapped on a bus where this song with its torturous falsetto was on replay and emerge with fond feelings. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Usually, in this space, I can point to a song that the UK should have sent and that I fell in love with – like I wish I loved you more or You. Once again, though, another big 6 nation scrapped their NF after tanking it with a bizarre format last year. The BBC said nothing for months, then were unwilling to spend tv time on ESC this year so just blurted out an announcement of an announcement in  about 40 seconds after some dance show. And then they dropped this song. It’s… passable at best, with an annoying chorus (especially that beat in “my last… breath”) and a staggering amount of repetition in a song that clocks in at only around 80% of the standard Eurovision song length. James Newman surely could have come up with something better. It’s a baby step in the right direction, but one taken at the shore where you need to start running to avoid getting pulled away in a rip.

[sibyl-of-space]

Finished a binge re-play of Ocarina of Time (3D) for the first time in a very, very long time. Long-winded thoughts below.

Disclaimer: I played the original n64 version (red blood Ganondorf and all) ad NAUSEUM as a kid. It was by far in my top 3 most-played video games, and if you all know me you know that I don’t play a lot of video games, I play the same few over and over and over and become obsessed with them. As such, OoT is not new to me. I also played the 3D version once before, but it was over the course of several years when I was in college and that was a no-lens-of-truth run for the heck of it. I have not touched either since though, so this is the freshest eyes I’ve had on the game since I was probably about 6-7 years old seeing it for the first time. Do keep in mind though that I already knew virtually all the easter eggs and secrets and story and progression and had a vague recollection of the vast majority of dungeon concepts/puzzles before going in, because this game was my entire world for many formative years.

This game has really excellent dungeons. I ranked them below because I was inspired by my friend ML’s ranking (in fact a desire to rank them myself is what caused me to binge replay this in the first place), but honestly I found all of them engaging. My least favorite was ice cavern but even ice cavern has a really cool atmosphere and an interesting concept, it’s just a bit tedious and bottle management gameplay is not particularly fun to me.

1. Spirit Temple - unlike Shadow which uses invisible walls as a mechanic to trick you, Spirit subverts every single mechanic and puzzle you've encountered so far to really throw you. It's extremely clever. The ambience and overall design is also just excellent.

2. Forest Temple - gameplay wise it is fine but as the first adult temple it REALLY sets the scale and tone for the latter portion of your adventure; the vibe in this temple is just so fucking cool. The sacred forest meadow honestly does come off as sacred, ancient, and haunted but in an ethereal way as opposed to a spooky way. Ooh, I love it.

3. Ganon's Tower - the concept is excellent and the execution is solid, the medallion portion is interesting but the gauntlet up to Ganondorf with increasingly loud organ music and hallways filled with bats and just cool fights and great atmosphere makes this one of the sickest final dungeons I can think of. I was starting to be like "eh maybe the medallion rooms are a bit underwhelming" and then I got hit with the fakeout room in Light that just won me over with how cheeky it was. All the medallion rooms felt a bit like Spirit temple with how they played with expectations, which (ironically?) made the spirit portion actually the least good.

4. Gerudo Fortress - I'm counting mini dungeons and the whole espionage thing is just SO much fun. Break into a thieves’ hideout, jump across rooftops and shoot people with your bow to sneak past them?? WHAT IS NOT TO LOVE?????

5. Water Temple - okay I gotta say this replay really sold me on water temple. It's a cool concept and a fantastic atmosphere, and 3DS quality of life changes (boot swap ease of access + very clearly visually marked water level change rooms) made me actually thoroughly enjoy playing it. Also Dark Link is rightfully hailed as one of the coolest, if not the coolest, miniboss(es) in the game, so extra points there.

6. Bottom of the Well - Shadow's invisible wall mechanic is much more interesting when you can't see through them and everything is a potential trap. Falling down to the basement does get frustrating but that room where you light torches to open coffins and a FLOATING GIBDO EMERGES makes up for it, holy crap. Shadow Temple is underwhelming because Bottom of the Well already did what it tries to do but better.

7. Dodongo's Cavern - hey man I like blowing up dinosaurs this dungeon is just solid 0 complaints

8. Fire Temple - Fire Temple is also solid I just a) am so used to the original music that this version feels empty and lacking atmosphere by comparison, and b) find the above temples cooler. Shout out to dragon whack-a-mole boss fight though.

9. Shadow Temple - this suffers from being the only temple I really had completely memorized (I think my weenie friends* must have made me beat it for them as kids) so playing it this time was really just going through the motions; it didn’t get the chance to win me over because I remembered all of it and nothing particularly stuck out to me as being super clever. The boat ride, however, is sick as hell.

(*disclaimer: I was also a weenie. Shadow Temple scared the absolute pants off of me. But I clearly played it enough times that the entire thing was etched into my memory regardless, so.)

10. Deku Tree - does its job as tutorial dungeon, nice atmosphere, thats about all there is to say.

11. Jabu-Jabu's Belly - redeeming feature is using Ruto as a projectile. Throwing her at the ceiling switches will never not be hilarious. Honestly not a bad dungeon, merely gross and I like the other ones better.

12. Ice Cavern - I used to dread Ice Cavern; this time around I just found it tedious. The atmosphere is successful - it really feels cold and chilling - but not appealing enough to make up for it being dull and kind of annoying. Has the potential to be really cool if the blue fire were used in a more interesting way than “fill your bottles and dump them elsewhere.”

BUT, I feel it would be a complete disservice to my younger self and my younger self’s reasons for playing this game so much, if I focus completely on dungeons and disproportionately on gameplay in a review. Because while gameplay is a huge reason I kept going back to it (hard to want to go back to a game if it isn't fun to play), that’s not what made me love it so much, and a replay has given me fresher eyes to enjoy everything else it has to offer.

Ocarina of Time creates a world and a story that I deeply cared about, and revisiting as an adult, I find if anything I have more take-aways than I did previously. I have always really enjoyed coming-of-age narratives when done well, and this is a coming-of-age narrative done REMARKABLY well. You see dumb bratty kids doing dumb bratty kid things and then see the mature people they’ve grown into 7 years later; the game does not make the mistake of projecting a personality onto a voiceless protagonist, but it does imply a narrative arc for him (and you) regardless just through how strong and cool and awesome you get by the end and all the rad shit you’ve accomplished over the course of the game. It manages to very, very successfully make its story about other characters who DO have personalities, but also make you as the blank slate mc cool guy hero very much have a part in that story that feels very earned and satisfying.

Link doesn’t have a personality. You can project whatever the hell you want onto him or nothing at all. Ocarina of Time makes that *work*, because it doesn’t try to frame him as either ~adult in a child’s body~ or ~child in adult’s body~, it just lets you experience the literal growth from a kid who has to jump to reach ledges and has to thwack things twice with a slingshot and tiny sword, to an adult who can LAUNCH MASSIVE PILLARS INTO THE AIR and one-shot previously difficult enemies, and interpret that however you will. I think the most powerful example of this is going back in time again after doing several adult temples, and entering the bottom of the well, where you see enemies you’ve previously only encountered as an adult, and feel confident that you can tackle them as a child, too.

I really love these kinds of narratives. Where the growth of the main character is purely in the sense of you as the player becoming more adept and stronger, and the context of the story makes that mean something, but the game doesn’t try and pretend the avatar itself has a 3-dimensional personality.

I also think the balance between narrative and gameplay is excellent once it hits its groove. The beginning is very hand-holdy (Navi taught me how to open a door after I had already opened a door elsewhere because she’s scripted to do it at a specific door even though you can technically get to a later one first. lol), and I very firmly believe that with Saria’s Song as a device that lets you seek advice when you want to, it is completely unnecessary to have Navi yell at you what she thinks you should be doing. That said, the game doesn’t stop you from doing whatever the hell you want, and the number and depth of dungeons makes exploring and killing stuff by FAR the meat of the game, over the story. There is a suggested dungeon order, but you have some freedom if you’d rather do them a bit out of order, and there is a LOT of fun side stuff you can do and get rewarded for.

Most of that side stuff is an excellent way to highlight the humor in this game. If you beat Malon’s horse race record she mails a literal fucking cow to your house. Your house in Kokiri Forest. You just show up and there is a fucking cow in your house. That is the funniest thing that has ever happened in a game in the history of forever, sorry. You can race the running man, and all of the other sidequests in the game make you think there is a beatable goal you’ll be rewarded for, and the fucker just goes “lol good try but I beat you by one second. :)” You can blow up the Gossip Stones and they turn into rocketships and launch into space. After you beat the game, and have a really poignant moment with Princess Zelda where she sends you back in time, there is a completely out of nowhere dance party featuring the entire cast in celebration. The game does not try to explain this. It just gives you a dance party, and after such a bittersweet finale and such a fun and engaging game, a no-context dance party is exactly what it needs. A line o Gerudo doing the can-can? Thank you, yes please.

There is SO much that this game does not feel any need to justify in-game, that it simply puts in there because it is fun or cool or both, and I appreciate that so much. There are easter eggs out the butt (still haven’t bothered catching the Hylian Loach and I have still NEVER found the sinking lure despite following every guide in existence). Most of the temples imply some sort of greater history that is not even the slightest bit touched on. It has a very cohesive “core” game that has a start-to-finish suggested progression and a matching narrative, and it has absolute mountains of random shit outside of that it in no way pretends to justify. It explains just enough to give it ground to stand on, but no more, leaving you with more questions than answers. That ambiguity drove me nuts as a kid, but now, I think it’s also why I kept coming back. I wanted answers the game wouldn’t give me so I felt compelled to try and find them myself.

Ocarina of Time’s ending is incredible in ways I am just now able to appreciate. First of all, Zelda is like “I’m gonna send you back in time now” and pulls up the Ocarina and instead of playing the Song of Time which everything in the game implies she should, she plays Zelda’s Lullaby and hesitates just enough on the last note as you are sent back in the past - oof, that’s a good moment. The entire game you’re told about how the Kokiri can’t survive outside of the forest and suddenly they’re at Lon Lon Ranch having a dance party. You walk away from the Master Sword and seal it back in the temple, but nonsensically are then able to meet Zelda in her garden as if nothing had happened, meaning she sent you back so far it erased not just the adult timeline but also everything you accomplished as a child too? So many questions, but the fact that it does not even bother to answer them and just leaves you with such an open-ended image of you and Zelda as kids, calling back to that very early moment after the first dungeon in the game, and you can interpret for yourself what exactly that means.

I’m getting rambly (HAHA as if I’m ever not) so I should wrap this up shortly. Ocarina of Time’s ending is why I am so vehemently opposed to the concept of a ~Zelda Timeline~. The ending is nonsensical if you try to apply concrete logic to it. This game proposes ideas and makes me feel a certain way about them and the ending succeeds in providing just enough closure to make me satisfied and just enough open-ness that makes me want to keep coming back to it to experience it again. It’s not an open-and-shut piece of history of a fake world, it’s a really remarkable journey thats ambiguity is what allows it to feel so very magical.

Ooh boy I can’t wait to replay MM again, but that is a game I’ve never stopped playing, so it’ll be anything but fresh. It hits different right after completing OoT, though. The only way to follow up on a story like Ocarina of Time is to be even MORE batshit, ambiguous, and loose with your definition of how time works.

[fmdalyssia]

HELLO Everyone! Alyssia is finally back! She’s one of my most tragic muses–ever, slightly revamped, with a bit of a new development to her completely – so for the most of you its a hello again with this beautifully tragic muse of mine ehehe. I’m excited to bring back to you Alyssia in her entirety, my inspiration for her came rushing in like raging waves of the sea after my exams, and in the process while she was away she developed a little bit more both backwards and forwards. Compared to before, Alyssia has completely taken two steps back instead of forward and recessed back into the person that she hates to be the most (her real self) due to some external…issues, so if any of you are really interested in her, below the cut is a little more tldr about her! If you’re interested in hitting this hot but tragic mess, please hit the LIKE button and I’ll slide slowly but surely into your dms! I can’t wait to let her develop and explore her further with everyone! 

♫ Profile ♫Biography ♫Personality ♫Connections ♫Trivia

COMPLETE TRIGGER WARNING 

Alyssia was born Park Da-hee to an alcoholic dad and a mother that died far too soon in her youth. Probably because of her dad’s alcoholism and her mother’s early death that it really led to Da-hee having the most tragic childhood and life ever–though not that she would ever tell that to anyone or blame them for it.

Her mother died when she was 4, so she has no memories of her mother, and her earliest memory is of her dad puking his guts out from an alcoholic night

Its said that she looks exactly like her mother in features, who was a very beautiful woman before her untimely demise

Lived in Jeju, situated in one of the poorest areas – her family is considered to be impoverished

Her childhood memories were never good, the sexual assault that her father did to her lasted for 12 long years, and she came away with more than just a little bruises 

Till now she doesn’t understand how people could have seen her and not noticed the signs of someone in desperate need of help and abused

Earliest period that she ran away was when she was 6 years old. A family friend found her and brought her back to her dad – and that night her father abused her for running away. 

12 years of abuse took a toll on her, and she learnt slowly to put on a perfect facade for herself in front of others, whether it be in school or not.

She had a lot of suitors throughout her schooling years, even her trainee years, lots of boys would come and give her flowers, because of how pretty she looked.

She really hated being given flowers, because somehow those flowers all seemed to die hours after she holds them, as though telling her that she’s not good enough to keep them as beautiful as they were.

She was scouted whilst singing one day by a scout – singing was always something that connoted pretty bad things and good things for her, partially because her father always demanded to hear her sing so that he could hear the fear in her voice shake, and the good – because she found that it was a good way for her to release all the tension and stress.

Being scouted on her birthday gave her hope, and Da-hee started to plan on running away to Seoul to audition. She had saved some money from working some odd jobs here and there, and a part time job that she forged her father’s signature for permission to. 

She researched BC for one entire night, before sneaking away in the dead of night, stealing all of the money that she knew her dad had, and just with her clothes on her back and a simple change of clothes in her bag.

She successfully audition into BC not because of her sweet voice (which would have blossomed if given more attention), but because of her visuals.

BC nearly dropped her amidst her trainee period, because Da-hee had so many psychological problems (ptsd, panic attacks, night terrors etc.) and most of all skinship problems and issues that they thought she wasn’t lucrative to keep.

They gave her one more chance, and determined to prove that she could stay on (so that she wouldn’t be sent home), Da-hee CREATED the stage persona ALYSSIA.

Alyssia is the more confident, sassy, sensual, quirky but enigmatic part of Da-hee that has been amplified and brought to the surface. Compared to Da-hee who shrinks back, Alyssia is the personality and persona that Da-hee has conditioned herself so much to believe that she sometimes can’t tell which she really is.

As Alyssia she can tolerate a lot of skinship with people, is open, laughs loudly (and a lot), has no issues with befriending people, lesser panic attacks etc.

The only people that would have seen Da-hee at her worst would be her BEE members, and even they don’t really know the cause behind why she’s like that (they could speculate, but she never confirmed why she had so many night terrors and panic attacks) [ BEE MEMBERS WE CAN PLOT HER TELLING THEM ABT HER PAST]

Da-hee is the completely opposite to Alyssia. She’s like a wounded animal that can’t stand on her own, like a broken glass haphazardly pieced together to form some semblance of sanity and respite. Baggy clothes, timid voice and flickering eyes, Da-hee usually resurfaces after her panic attacks and after she’s ran away from something that triggered her. She’s usually hiding in nooks and crannies, in the darkest spot and the most hidden spot of the current place that they’re in that she can find, and she hates people seeing her so broken and in pieces.

She’s very affectionate towards girls, and a little jittery towards males, though she seems to make more male friends (the irony)

To a lot of males she seems standoffish, but she really is trusting and gullible, because of the lack of affection (plot!). Alyssia usually finds herself in toxic relationships where she gives everything to the male and receives almost nothing but manipulation in return (connection!)

Her skin crawls everytime she finishes filming a music video, because of the sensual choreography and the looks of people when they film her dancing. When she gets nervous, she’s usually overly affectionate, so bear with her–

She’s an idol actress!! (that’s something new) :D BC decided to play on her visuals and sent her for acting, claiming that it would help her get out of her shell more easily. She’s currently working towards her newest acting project for a lead, and is pretty acclaimed in acting in her supporting roles.

She actually parties. Quite a lot. Aly found that partying helped her sometimes, as did alcohol, because she’d be too inebriated to feel too much. (people who party xD come to Aly)

She hates cigarette smoke, because it practically reminds her of her dad.(pls be careful around her when smoking, it triggers her sometimes, she also has cigarette burns scattered all over her body, so it's definitely triggering for her)

AS OF 2019, she has resigned happily with bc (doubt that happy thing lol) BUT another issue has occurred which made her recess a bit into her frightened self.

Her dad moved from Jeju to Seoul, and is currently blackmailing her with evidence of her past childhood abuse, threatening to reveal that she’s not that quirky, happy go lucky and pure Alyssia that most people know.

She’s been sending money to her dad ever since he got hold of her phone number, but the very fact that he’s here in Seoul completely terrifies her.

Current count for people who know that she’s being blackmailed? 0. She didn’t even tell her members nor her manager about this situation, and simply bore everything on her shoulders. [potential plot of others finding out about her being blackmailed hmu]

Congrats for tolerating the long winded intro! Here’s a happy Aly for you :3 

[akatsuki-trashcan]

Could we have a hc about Tobi, Deidara, Zetsu, Sasori, Itach, Hidan, Pein and Konan confessing to their s/o that they love them? How’d they plan it and what they’d say?

Confession from Tobi, Deidara, Zetsu, Sasori, Itachi, Hidan, Pain, and Konan

~Tobi~

-Just as you might’ve expected, this can go way or the other. He might either have no filter and confess as soon as he realized he likes his S/O, or he might be like a school girl harboring a crush. Either way, it’s pretty easy to tell he’s got a crush from the obvious (but harmless) stalking traits, or the scribbling that persons name all over anything he might own.

-To show his affection through a confession, he’ll probably show up with some of his favorite snacks and attempt to share them over a bubbly/giggle conversation. Even with a mask own, the S/O should go ahead and assume he is definitely blushing.

-Persistent in a small way. If by any chance he was turned down, he’s be super discouraged, but would try again later at least 3 more times before settling for the fact the person might not like him back. Even then, he’s still a goof and supportive friend. Besides, who could say no to him?

~Deidara~

-It takes him a while to confess partly because he is shy and has never done that before, and also because he wants to be sure he has the S/O hook, line, and sinker before he reels them in.

-What I mean by this is that, he won’t confess until he’s done “peacocking”, or showing off his best attributes first. It’s no secret at all that Deidara likes to gloat and brag ESPECIALLY when it comes to his art. He does this a lot more when the person of his interest is around because he simply wants to impress them

-In a way, he’s scared to throw his heart out there because he really hasn’t ever done that before. His shyness will almost always peek through his gloating in the form of a blushy pink on his cheeks, especially when his S/O is taking excitement in his art.

~Zetsu~

*Thanks for asking for him. He doesn’t get enough love lol

-It may be repetitive, but you should already expect the two personalities to bicker a bit before coming to an agreement. The light side has already fallen for the S/O, but it takes the dark side a long time coupled with some coaxing methods to fall for them too.

-Light Zetsu takes the S/O out everywhere, but his favorite place is a stroll through the meadow whenever it’s midnight out. It becomes extremely more enjoyable whenever the two can see the fireflies that are out at the time, and her the gentle sound of the creek running nearby. 

-Of course dark Zetsu is dragged along for ALL of these so called dates, and gets just about fed up with it all until one night he looks over at the S/O resting nearby in the meadow, the moonlight illuminating their (skin color) and cascading on then like a soft blanket. It’s almost like he’s become mesmerized as well, and soon realized “this person can everything I have to give if I can keep waking up next to them like this.” Afterwards, the two personalities come together with gifts and flowers (ESPECIALLY FLOWERS), and confesses in their own way.

~Sasori~

-Spends more of his time avoiding his own feelings than he does working on ways to confess properly. He doesn’t really have/or show much emotion at all. The little that he does express is almost always frustration, or sass. Love is foreign to him (especially after his childhood situations passed). Therefore when he did start to feel what tiny shred of love was leaking its way back into his life, he did everything in his power to avoid this.

-Actually, it takes his S/O being around a lot and being consistent with including themselves in his presence before Sasori starts to let his thick walls around his puppet heart down. After each amount of time they spend together, he loosens up a bit more each time because he’s becoming trusting and interested in his S/O

-Before you know it, he’s trapped. He’s spending less time on his work, and more time with his S/O. Less time questioning why he’s spending time with a feeble human, and more time admiring their each and every perfection and flaw. Less time being cold...and more time being warm. Before you know it, he’s at their bedroom door with a hand-made puppet and a heartfelt confession that would make even the coldest person cry.

 ~Itachi~

-He’s really more focused on the goals ahead of him, but he’s a lot more susceptible to falling in love than most of the others. He might be a little dim in the first few days. “Why is (he/she/are they) being so nice to me. Why are they sharing so much with me? Why are the always looking out for m...OHHHH!” After he catches the drift, he most definitely falls in love with no caution.

-He devotes himself to them. He protects them, cares for them, and is mostly by their side with the exception of some missions. And even then with those exceptions, he’s constantly finding a way to send mail to them (depending on the length of the mission.)

-It only takes a short while before he confesses that he’s fallen for them (even though it was pretty obvious to tell before hand), and only an even shorter period of time before he’s down on one knee pledging his life to them...what little of it that may be left.

~Hidan~

-This guy is a wreck tbh, but he has the capability to straighten himself out when he tries enough (and lucky for the S/O, he does). First he’s annoyed that they’re even in the same room as him, let alone  the same base. With their stupid eyes that glisten, and their dumb, soft looking (hair color/texture). Their ridiculous smile that lightens up a room full of villains. Just who do they think they are?!?!

-He then realizes after some time that he’s staring at them all the time. Now he doesn’t really think this through with his head at first. He just turn it over to his grizzly instincts and figure “I wanna hit that.” Of course he’ll probably slide a few gross, teasing words their way. If that doesn’t stick then he’ll put some more thought into things.

-He realizes even longer afterwards that he’s not only staring at them all the time, but thinking about them a lot too. It’s only after a bloody ritual that he sits up out of the blue, looks at Kakuzu, and asks “Hey...what the hell is love anyway?” Of course Kakuzu grunts with annoyance and replies “Something that’s also completely unimportant when compared to money. Now get up, you’re taking too long with your damn rituals again.” Instead of becoming annoyed like usual, Hidan is too focused on the S/O. 

-Out of the cold sweat of night, he wakes up, walks to their room, and has a long talk with them about how his head’s been a mess since they joined the akatsuki. He slides a sly confession of his love in the conversation nonchalantly, and genuinely hopes they accept him for who he is.

~Pain~

-Much like Sasori, he just isn’t focused on love or any other emotion at the moment. In fact, he shows much less emotion than Sasori does! Its work, domination, work, domination, work, etc...

-It’s a crazy situation, but he unknowingly starts to fall for them bit by bit! I mean this as in he becomes very protective over them and worrisome about their well being before he even knows why he did it! At one point he finds himself stopping his work and plans to bring them some herbal soups because they were sick that particular day. Maybe an hour later he sits up suddenly in his chair and think “Why did I do that?”

-His confession comes off as emotionless and like he’s reading from some sort of a script, but he really means everything that he says. As an attempt to solidify this, he’ll give his very best attempt at a small smile afterwards.

   ~Konan~

-There is 0% hesitation from her once she’s realized she is in love with the S/O. In fact, the only reason she hasn’t confessed yet is because she’s busy finding ways to be romantic with her confession. 

-She either makes it a comfy confession where they’re in the base with some dinner she picked up from a ramen shop nearby, and a few flowers laid out with some candles.Or, it’s elaborate with a lit walkway in the forest, and dozens upon dozens of origami butterflies shrouding the sky in beauty

-Either way, she pours her heart out completely, and she means every single thing that she says. It would be impossible to reject an angel like this.

[jbuffyangel]

Boom: This Is Us 3x09 Review: (The Beginning is the End is the Beginning)

Well now that’s a twists I didn’t see coming.

Let’s dig in...

Jack and Nicky

Jack has spent the last two weeks trying to clean Nicky up. It’s not going great. Nicky off drugs is no more amiable than Nicky on drugs. As I said before, he’s no picnic. But traumatized people seldom are and what they need is someone to never give up on them. For Nicky, that’s Jack.

But Jack is running out of time. He has 48 hours to clean Nicky up before he’s put back on his old base. Jack informs Nicky about the ticking clock after Nick punches Jack square in the jaw. DON’T HIT JACK NICKY! IT’S JACK!!!

Jack takes Nicky to a spot across the river. The town they are stationed in looks small from a distance. Jack tries to explain to Nicky Vietnam will be a distant memory once they get home. 

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams 

Unfortunately, a Jack Pearson speech is not going to fix Nicky. I think it’s important for us to see that there are problems not even Jack can solve. He’s not God. Jack is just a man trying to save his brother.

But a “distant memory” isn’t how war, drug abuse and PTSD work. Even Jack had difficulty coping with Vietnam once he returned home. He tried to bury his pain and it became the source for his alcoholism. 

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams​

So, if a man like Jack is traumatized from war what has it done to someone like Nicky? Someone who is gentle, sweet and, shy. Someone who doesn’t have a reserve of emotional strength like Jack. Someone who is unable to cope with his fear. Vietnam broke Nicky the same as it did Jack, but only one Pearson boy found a way to hold himself together in Vietnam. Only one Pearson boy put himself back together once he returned home.

Nicky: I don’t want to get clean, Jack. I see it all again when I get clean. I’m not gonna complete the mission.

This is probably the most heartbreaking line of the episode. We cannot save those who do not want to be saved. Nicky wants to be high. He wants all his memories washed away in a wave of euphoria. The drugs take the pain away and all Nicky wants is to stay in that place no matter how short a time. It doesn’t matter to him that he’ll keep chasing the same high, but it will become shorter and less intense. It doesn’t matter to him that he’ll need to take more drugs to have the same effect. None of it matters to Nicky because he’s an addict.

Jack returns from a mission to find Nicky missing. Then, there’s an explosion. A boat blew up with one of the men on it. Of course, Jack believes it’s Nicky and he dives into the river to save him. However, we never see Jack arrive at the wreckage or pull anyone from the water. The camera simply cuts away.

STORY TIME. So, before my husband and I began watching the episode he said to me he believes Nicky is really alive and he didn’t die in the war. I mocked him, quite thoroughly. 

Me: You are nuts. That’s the crap Arrow pulls. This is This Is Us.

Husband: He’s totally alive. 

Me: You are totally wrong and delusional.

Then, Kevin’s guide tells him he never found a record of his uncle’s death. I said to myself, “Well it was Vietnam. It’s completely possible they missed a body.” 

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams​

And then we cut to old man Nicky living in a dilapidated trailer. My husband just quietly gloated. Now I have to eat crow for the next decade. Thanks a lot, writers.

This is absolutely a twist I did not see coming as evidence by my overly confident mocking. I have no idea how Nicky survived Vietnam. My initial guess is he faked his death and went AWOL. I don’t think Jack knew he was alive, but it brings up a lot of questions. As shockers go this was a spectacular one.

Kevin and Zoe

Is Kevin making a documentary with Zoe? I don’t know how I missed that, but apparently I did. His comment about getting a good ending makes a lot more sense to me now.

It’s cool to see Kevin walking the same roads in the same towns his father once was. 

Source: whitefluffyyeti

I was certain the man still living in the village was going to be the injured boy who Jack helped. Yeah, I was 0/2 this week. I’m not great at guessing This Is Us plots. lol The conversation proved fruitful regardless. This is a transformative trip for Kevin. I don’t think he sees in all the ways just yet. He’s getting answers to questions he wasn’t even asking. 

In some ways, Vietnam became what Jack said. It looks completely different with a little time and distance. Kevin sits down with the villager and he’s hoping he will recognize either the woman in the photo or his father. The villager recognizes neither, but the conversation goes in a direction Kevin wasn’t expecting.

“They both hid their war stories. They both pretended to be okay for their children.”

Two sons, whose father’s were once enemies, have a chance to sit down and discuss who their fathers were. Kevin and this villager have very little in common, but they have this thin thread that connects the past and present. One day we are enemies on a battle field. The next we are drinking tea and sharing stories about our loved ones. It is a crazy, wonderful and frightening world we live in. 

As disappointed as Kevin is not to get any answers about the necklace, I think Jack would be profoundly proud of his son. Kevin found the answer Jack wanted him to find. The necklace was Jack’s reminder to hold onto his humanity no matter the circumstances. The thank you was a constant reminder to be a good man, which gave Jack purpose. By sitting down with that villager, and sharing stories of their fathers, Kevin found the humanity his father searched so hard for in Vietnam. Kevin connected to the little bit of peace Jack had during his time at war. 

But discovering Jack’s brother Nicky is alive? That’s the BOOM ending Kevin wanted for his documentary. 

So much of Kevin’s search is focused on the woman wearing the necklace in the photo. Kevin is almost driven by fear that there was another woman his father loved and he held on to her for all these years even while married to Rebecca. We know the truth though. There is only one woman in Jack Pearson’s heart and it will always be his Bec. 

Vietnam has never been about a woman for Jack. Vietnam is about Nicky Pearson. Kevin is going to find the brother Jack lost years ago. Jack’s son is going to do what he couldn’t. Kevin is going to bring Nicky home. 

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams​

Kate and Toby

I just need good things for these two, particularly since our marital rocks Randall and Beth are headed for a rough patch. I want Toby and Kate to enjoy this pregnancy. I know how impossible that is. There wasn’t a day of my pregnancy I wasn’t absolutely terrified, because I had a miscarriage. My pregnancy with my daughter also became an absolute nightmare and I wish in those earlier days, when I wasn’t so sick, I had been able to enjoy more moments like Toby and Kate had tonight.

Kate doesn’t want to be surprised about the gender of the baby. I feel you girl. One of my few happy days of pregnancy was finding out we were having a girl. Toby and Kate are terrified knowing the gender will make it more difficult if they lose the baby. But Toby eventually comes to conclusion that it will be devastating if they lose this baby too. There is no protecting themselves from that pain, so they might as well enjoy the pregnancy while things are good.

And things are good. They are having a boy. Of course, they will name him Jack. I accept no other suggestions.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

Kate also decides to finish her degree after she is turned down for a job she’s perfect for, a chorus instructor, because she doesn’t have a college degree. I cannot describe how insanely challenging it is to continue your education when you have children. It’s not impossible, but it is difficult. So, Kate should absolutely use this time to finish her degree.

Rebecca and Tess

Soooo… Kate outed Tess to Rebecca. My initial reaction was NOT COOL KATE.

But then I thought about it. I realized if it were my child, niece or nephew I would want someone close by to know so they could keep an eye on the child. If Kate lived nearby she probably wouldn’t have said anything. Telling Rebecca may make Tess hesitant to trust Kate going forward though. Bottom line: Kate betrayed Tess’ trust, but she did it out of love and concern. Sometimes a child’s privacy has to be sacrificed in order to protect and help him/her.

I love Rebecca because she’s just so damn earnest. She is a beautiful 5’7” column of love. Rebecca so desperately wants to help sometimes she oversteps. She almost always backs her way into help. Rebecca screws up the opening move, but she lands the dismount.

Carrying secrets does way on your soul and body. Rebecca has had her fair share of secrets. It’s kind of a Pearson family trait to bury your feelings deep and I admire Rebecca for trying to break the cycle with her granddaughter. Tess decides to tell her parents largely because of her grandmother’s advice and experience.

Randall and Beth

Oh boy.

Randall has his first city council debate and even though he gets his mojo rolling it takes awhile. Unfortunately, his campaign manager informs Randall he is just too far behind Sol Brown and he’s going to lose the race.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams​

Tess tells Randall and Beth she might be gay and the three have a touching heart to heart. They are parenting goals. Randall and Beth sit down to regroup and drink some wine. Beth finally tells Randall she wants him to drop out of the race since they have so much going on around the house. Beth didn’t anticipate much of an argument since he’s losing. After all, Randall promised her that if the race ever got to be too much for the family that he would drop out.

Unfortunately, Randall does not keep his promise. He tells Beth has to see this through.

Wow. Just… wow. I don’t think being married to a Pearson is always the easiest thing because these children are occasionally narcissistic. We’ve seen it with both Kate and Kevin. Randall was our shining star though and he just came crashing to the ground.

I don’t think Beth was ever jazzed about Randall running for city councilman, particularly for a city I think he lives at least 45 minutes away from. But she put on her supportive wife hat and went out campaigning. She even tried to make Randall’s dream her dream. It didn’t work.

Things have changed though. Beth finally mentions their finances and how they’ve had to dip into savings to make “the dream” happen. 

Blessed be to Jesus someone finally addressed the bills. They are officially not the Rockefellers. I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. Then add in Deja and Tess’ emotional upheaval and Beth’s unemployment… she is absolutely right. There’s a lot going on right now.

But here’s the kicker – none of those “things” going on right now directly relate to Randall. He’s not the one in emotional upheaval or unemployed. Randall is fine so Randall is going to do what Randall wants to do. However, I have a feeling if the shoe was on the other foot and Randall was in emotional upheaval or lost his job the whole household would grind to a halt to help him through it. Or at least Beth would.

I don’t understand how Randall can say his family will always be his number one priority, when Beth outlines all the ways this campaign does not prioritize the family. Randall is very clearly putting his campaign before the family. So, as of right now, the campaign is more important to Randall than how his wife feels or what his family needs. Of course, he made promises to potential constituents, but the promises he made to his wife and daughters is more important.

I talk a lot about balance in a marriage. Marriage is never 50/50. It’s more like 60/40 or 30/70 or 90/10. Our needs shift in a marriage. One partner is giving more while the other is receiving more. What’s important is the support shifts along with the needs in the marriage and that’s what makes it 50/50. One partner cannot carry the supportive weight 100% of the time. That doesn’t make for a healthy relationship.

I believe Randall and Beth have a healthy relationship and an outstanding marriage. However, I think there’s been a continued focus on Randall for quite awhile. All for good reasons, but now is a time where the needs have shifted and therefore so should the support. But Randall isn’t shifting. He’s not giving the same as he’s received. The spotlight needs to shift to Beth and Randall refuses to take a step back. And Beth has every reason to be pissed.

The flash forwards reveal the “she” everyone is going to visit is Rebecca. There seems to be some apprehension on Tess’ part, so maybe Grandma isn’t doing well. Rebecca would almost be in her eighties. Also, the way she described her bones aching in present day felt like some kind of clue to whatever medical issue may be going on with Rebecca in the future.

Tess tells Randall she will call her mother in the car and then it cuts to Beth standing on a balcony watching ballet dancers. 

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams​

She is obviously running her own dance program, since her assistant called her boss. So, Beth’s passion is dance and she found her way to it. YEAH!!! She remembers to bring “Pin The Tail On The Donkey,” a Big Three birthday party tradition, so maybe it’s Rebecca’s birthday. The flash forwards seem to imply Randall and Beth are not together, but I don’t believe that for a second. I think the heaviness comes from whatever is going on with Rebecca and not from marital strife.

Beth and Randall are going through a rough patch right now, which happens in a marriage. This feels like a bomb going off right now because there are some long simmering issues Beth and Randall have to deal with coming to a head. However, I have no doubt they will work it out though. 

I’d start by apologizing Randall. 

Stray Thoughts

Kevin is my travel soul mate. I’m a planner too.

I want a shirtless selfie. How do I get a shirtless selfie Kevin?

Copacetic? Annie is like 5! Mini genius alert.

“Return it like Serena.” YASSS SISTER.

A city councilman shoveling my driveway? Randall gets my vote. SOLD.

[saltpepperbeard]

☕️ galey bird

THEM’S FIGHTING WORDS, ANON LOL. THAT NAME ALONE IS ENOUGHTO INDUCE RAGE. I honestly can’t even watch THG anymore without snapping somekind of something/shouting profanity at him whenever he comes on screen lol. SOYES, LET’S DISCUSS THIS LOVELY INDIVIDUAL SHALL WE. I’m about to go on a HELLof a tangent, because I of course have OPINIONS™. Some of which actually aren’t that bad actually lmao BUT I DIGRESS; HE ALWAYS MAKES ME EXTRA AF-

*Lowers the Extra Meter* Okay. In all honesty, I canappreciate Gale as a character. He’s written well, and he’s rather complex. Heis very hardheaded and sticks to his goals, so much so that he isn’t afraid tothrow other people completely out of the way. Very very strong-willed, veryvery loyal, and very very fiery. Definitely makes for an interesting character.

…HOWEVER LOL, my appreciation for him is very quickly tarnisheddue to how he treats Katniss throughout the series. And how he acts in responseto her actions/motivations.

I will say, their relationship was acceptable in THG. Heactually was tolerable during this book, as I appreciated their friendship/howthey’d been hunting together for the majority of their lives. And how they’dbeen helping their families along after the mining accident. Even BEFORE Istarted shipping Everlark however, and even BEFORE I knew Everlark was endgame,I didn’t hop on any kind of romantic Katniss x Gale train. I viewed them onlyas hunting partners, and as friends.

Soooooo when mr. gALEY BIRD started showing feelings forKatniss, and when he made things worse by being an ASS about it lol, my likingfor him began to drop.

It’s very clear fromthe beginning of CF that Katniss wasn’t wild about romantic involvement withGale. She talks a lot about their families managing during the food shortagesand what not, but then she also goes on to say “I’m sure plenty of peopleassumed that we’d eventually get married even if I never gave it any thought.”And then she mentions Peeta and how she’s unsure of how exactly she feelstowards him. But like, STRAIGHT UP WAS LIKE “i never thought to marry galelmao.”

And THEN, he randomly kisses her right. And instead of beinglike “oooh that’s nice :),” she literally sits by the fence and has to decidewhether she liked it or resented it. And thought about Peeta. And just wenthome lmao. And decided to prepare a speech about “never wanting a boyfriend andnever planned on marrying.” LIKE…SHE WAS PRETTY CLEAR.

But he continues to lay it on thick in CF, and goes fromlike 0 to 100 flirt wise whenever he can. I think because he gets majorlyjealous of Peeta, and tries to win her affections back from him. But like…Hedoesn’t seem to respect her feelings towards Peeta at all. She’s MAJORLYconfused/conflicted in early CF, because Gale’s coming at her and she’s like“tf this is my best friend i Don’t Want This but i’m Hurting Him” and thenshe’s like “everything i did with peeta was for the games…bUT WAS IT REALLYTHOUGH???” So she’s just in this STORM and he doesn’t really do anything toalleviate that.

AND OKAY, TO BE FAIR LOL, both boys were actually erring onthe problematic/entitled side in early CF. Peeta was all pissy because he“didn’t want to forget” and consequently went cold on Katniss for a bit, andthen Gale’s advances are only met with Katniss going :/. SHOUTOUT TO THE “ILOVE YOU/I KNOW” LMAO.

BUT, difference between Gale and Peeta, Peeta apologizes forhis actions. He has a conversation with her about it, and decides to start overas friends, which she appreciates. Because she mentions something about wantinga regular, uncomplicated friendship with Gale again, but he doesn’t even giveher that option. He just keeps pushing and getting more possessive, especiallyas she gets closer with Peeta.

And of course my favorite example of the disconnect with howGale/Peeta treat her is the lovely “running away” example lmao. When she asksGale, he picks her up and is all for it, but sours up the second she mentionsPeeta/refuses his advances. Peeta on the other hand, agrees, asks if Gale iscoming, and is completely fine with everything. While Peeta did admit to beingjealous of Gale, he doesn’t…ACT LIKE AN ASS ABOUT IT LOL. He’s willing totolerate him if it means Katniss is happy. Matter of fact, to quote from thefreaking BEACH KISS-

“Peeta’s intention is clear. That Gale really is my family,or will be one day, if I live. That I’ll marry him. So Peeta’s giving me hislife and Gale at the same time. To let me know I shouldn’t ever have doubtsabout it.”

LIKE??? HOLY SHIT LOL. GALE WOULD NEVER, MY DUDE. “You canmarry Peeta it’s okay Katnip I know you love him” LIKE LOL NOPE FALSE FAKE NEWS.

He even went out of his way to help Gale after he gotwhipped too. He took him back to the house, watched over him for Katniss, andwhile he was probably feeling jealous, did NOT complain about it. Just makes methink of Gale not giving a shit about Peeta suffering in the Capitol lmao.

…HEY SPEAKING OF MOCKINGJAY LOL, I GET PARTICULARLYJKJSLDKSDS. Mockingjay is weird actually, because unlike THG/CF, there’s a characterization rift between the books and the movies, at least in the first half. During the first part of the book, it seems like the thing that predominantly drives a wedge between him and Katniss is his commitment to war/fighting/killing. He starts really getting into it, wanting to appease Coin, making deadly traps, etc. And a lot of anger erupts between him and Katniss consequently.

Because, she of course can’t kill senselessly, and death is extremely personal to her. But to him, it’s not; he can easily GRA-TA-TA without much thought, as long as it means he comes out on top. And throughout Mockingjay, it seems Katniss can tolerate that mindset less and less. Which of course leads to her saying “I don’t need Gale’s fire. I have plenty of fire myself.” He starts thinking like the people she’s been trying to fight, so he later turns into the enemy himself. 

SCREWS HIMSELF RIGHT OVER, HE DOES.

And like…I can actually appreciate having him fight so selflessly? Like, a lot of D12 citizens definitely would have died without him jumping into action. He definitely doesn’t hesitate to fight for what he believes in, and that’s admirable. But he just…starts going about it the wrong way in Mockingjay, especially towards the end. And that’s just…can’t hAVE THAT, MY GUY.

Buutttttt then we have movie!Gale lmao. And I think Gale in both of the Mockingjay movies is predominantly where most of my salt comes from. Which. yeah yeah I know, naysayers; it’s technically not fair because that’s simply an adaptation of his character. BUT IT’S STILL HIM IN THE END LMAO SO I JUST.

On top of his war commitment, there’s also major possessiveness/jealousy still going on, which makes him all the more difficult to bare lol. Like in the movies, he doesn’t care about the fact that Peeta’s suffering at ALL. He glares at Katniss when she watches propos, he refuses to support Peeta whatsoever, he makes all sorts of backhand comments…And then oddly enough is the first to volunteer for Peeta’s rescue lmao. THAT doesn’t make sense. His characterization doesn’t know what it wants to do in those movies. (And then like also he wants to kill those in the Capitol without much thought but then says it’s not fair to hunt the buck in D13 like????) Other than iNDUCE ANGER.

In the books, he at least backed off his advancements towards Katniss, which she said she appreciated because she felt like they could just be friends again. Though, I’m not sure if it was entirely genuine/coming from the right place? Katniss mentioned something about Peeta being out of the picture and the fake-marriage thing not hanging over Gale’s head, which in turn made him a Normal Freaking Person again. Which…KIND of makes me narrow my eyes, because like…he should have just acted normal around her like that REGARDLESS of what was going on, REGARDLESS if Peeta was there or not.

“WHAT WOULD PEETA MELLARK DO.”

And it’s so unfortunate because she legitimately appreciated his company/their friendship. Idk why he had to get so bent out of shape about trying to get her to love him back, and getting pissy when she started to fall for someone else instead. Like, I’m sure if he had just held his tongue, it would’ve made things way easier on their friendship.

It also makes a little more sense that he volunteered to save Peeta in the books, because he AT LEAST wasn’t pissed off towards him 24/7 like he was in the movies lol. I imagine his jealousy was still there, but he was probably doing it to make Katniss happy. He was probably trying to score some points with her lmao.

Jodi? Not trusting Gale at all? IT’S MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK.

And then I feel like the characterization matches back up for the second half of Mockingjay/MJ2. He starts getting all possessive again with Peeta back in the picture, and his attitude towards fighting gets completely amplified when they’re in an actual warzone. Annndd so therefore I start getting mad at him all over again lmao.

It actually makes me my angriest whenever he complains about Katniss kissing him and it not feeling genuine, whenever he lowkey highkey manipulates her into trying to fight by saying “I don’t think Snow used any rulebooks when he hijacked Peeta,” and when he says he’ll kILL PEETA WHENEVER THE CHANCE ARISES LIKE??? YO. IT MAKES ME SO READY TO FIGHT HIM LOL.

SO. TL;MAJORLYdr, I’m okay with him in both the movie and book of THG, NOT okay with him in the movie and book of CF, OKAY with him in the early part of the book in MJ, but NOT okay with him in the later half or the two MJ movies.

It’s like…Essentially, I appreciate his friendship with Katniss. I like when they cooperate, and when their fiery attitudes kind of match each other. But he tarnishes that whenever something else comes into the picture, be it war or Peeta. He kind of turns their friendship on its head for the sake of wanting to fight a certain way, or by trying to get Katniss into loving him when all she wants is a friendship.

And it’s sO…Like I almost feel bad for them, more so for Katniss though lmao. Like if he had just been more patient with her, and more understanding of what she wanted, then maybe things would have turned out better between them. Like, MAYBE they could have still been friends after the rebellion, and wouldn’t have to throw away years of friendship.

Buutttt he didn’t, chose instead to be problematic on multiple accounts, and so I’m definitely clinging to Peeta lmao, tHE GENTLE AND UNDERSTANDING ONE.

[calvin-af-crone]

Giant Deconstructed

This video is quite simply an artistic masterpiece on multiple levels. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to view the video in expanded view on a big monitor to get the full effect. Most viewers immediately feel emotionally affected & recognize its greatness w/o understanding why or how they’ve been affected. Allow me to break it down for you. Understanding how Emil Nava’s magic tricks are done should heighten instead of diminishing your appreciation.  

On a meta-narrative level, the story being illustrated is a classic Hero’s Journey. A boy suffers despair over his sickly mother. A mysterious deity summons him into a magical realm. By determination & perseverance, he confronts his personal deity & receives spiritual wisdom. Then by the power of music & dance, he attains his inner strength. This is essentially the narrative told by the lyrics of the song & the music builds to a emotional peak before shifting into a potent primitive chant ending w/ triumphant affirmations.

One of Nava’s favorite visual tricks is subliminal messaging. These visual affects flash an image at the viewer so quickly the effect of the image slips beneath conscious awareness & triggers a subconscious emotional response or unconscious reflex. Diabolical subliminals last less than a fraction of a second. The viewer is entirely unaware of receiving them & these can be regarded as an attempt at mind control. Putting them in commercials is actually illegal. 

Nava’s subliminals last almost a full second. You do see them but aren’t given enough time to consciously figure out what you’ve seen. However, your subconscious definitely does see the content of the image & responds emotionally. Sometimes, he aims deeper & sets off an unconscious instinctive reflex. All of these flash edits are benignly intended to heighten your experience during the video & subtly manipulate your emotions. On a practical level, the feeling that you’ve missed something tends to generate a million views in a day. 

Nava also heavily uses symbolism to sneak resonant ideas into your viewing experience. I’ll deal w/ examples as they arise in the breakdown. But, let’s start w/ the surface imagery & what it shows our consciously aware minds. Nava quickly establishes a real life scenario that most viewers immediately understand. A boy living w/ his dysfunctional mother suffers the burden of responsibility all children feel for a sickly parent. He’s going thru his ordinary life carrying a weight of despair. The scenes are cast in shrouded dismal tones of blue & gray like the boy’s outlook on life. He’s even dressed in blue—a color symbolically associated w/ sadness.

Then we’re only 9 seconds into the video when Nava hits us w/ a what-the-fuck-was-that flash of red expertly timed to hit simultaneously w/ the strike of a sharply high-pitched chord. That timing is another layer of perfection thru-out this short film. Every action is synchronized like in a ballet to land w/ the beat, flow on the bass line, or enforce primary chords in the music. 

I had to adjust the brightness of the image to identify feet dancing in mud puddles. Red symbolizes passion & energy. Consciously, we see the red flash as a burst of energy & hope. Unconsciously, we’re getting a flash forward & are being prepared for Dance Music to literally change the boy’s life.

The next red flash forward hits at the 0:25 mark, shows rave dancers, & lasts long enough to actually be perceived unless you blink & miss it. 

On the surface, we see the boy looking at a photograph of a plant & that’s overt foreshadowing. Then at 0:33 thru 0:37, we’re hit w/ a major scene shift at the very moment Rag’n’BoneMan first declares, “I am a giant!”

In sharp contrast to the boy’s life, we’re transported to an idyllic lake in a misty forest & see a figure dressed in sun yellow standing in a boat. Bright pure yellow symbolizes the sun. Consciously you think “oh, there’s Calvin”. Subconsiocusly you recognize a solar deity. This scene shift establishes an alternate location in the narrative.

Then we’re back to scenes of the boy’s dismal & at 0:43, we’re back at the lake & stay for an 2 entire seconds, long enough to watch birds flying from left to right over the left shoulder of the figure in yellow. 

Back w/ the boy, we see more scenes of his unhappiness & note his mother’s problem is drug addiction or she’s chronically ill & requires medication. He is shown sitting morosely on the back of a park bench & Nava pulls off a lovely example of symbolic visual echoing. The birds that flew in the scene at the lake seem to arrive from left to right over the left shoulder of the boy & land in front of him. You can see this clearly in the video but its impossible to see in this still.

Go watch the video again because one second after being visited by the birds at 0:51, the boy is motivated to move w/ a sense of purpose. We get quick scenes from home w/ his mother now bathed in a warm, hopeful glow interspersed w/ action scenes as he goes thru a gate & starts running. His face shows determination. He is not running away from his problems. He is running towards... something. Just when we start to wonder, “where’s he going,” the scenes quickly cut back & forth between the man in the boat & the boy’s effort.

From 1:17 thru 1:21, there’s a scene at the lake that made me bark out a laugh the first time I saw it. Up until this moment the narrative has been rooted in reality. Now it’s surreal! If you missed the clue of the birds being sent to summon the boy, if you thought the man in the boat was only DJ Calvin Harris, this scene ought to startle you. Fish leap out of the lake in response to a god of Nature!

At 1:21 thru 1:28, the camera pans over & into a forest. We see a doe lift her head at a sound & the boy is seen running as fast as he can into a misty magical realm. There is nothing real about this! The boy could not have run far enough to leave a city & enter a real forest. It’s physically impossible, even for someone in good shape, to continue running a peak speed for miles.

Again the narrative shifts back & forth between the god & the running boy. The god takes off his yellow jacket to dig up a potato. The boy keeps running. The god is gathering herbs & mushrooms, suddenly dressed like Prince Harry on a Nature ramble. What could be more magical than that? LOL! During the video, the unidentified deity goes thru five elegant costume changes. He’s not some hobo in the woods or a wild nature god like Pan. He looks like a British lord...

At 1:44, we are confronted by five riders on horseback coming straight at us & most viewers will feel deep emotion in response, maybe even a tiny surge of fear. Let’s pause for a moment to consider Nava’s peculiar affection for images of riders on horseback. He drops these symbols w/o any logical reason into videos every chance he gets to give viewers a cheap surge of vicarious exhilaration. Symbolically, seeing a person riding a galloping horse represents Power & Freedom. It is both a symbol of the human will triumphing over Nature & conversely the union of a horse & rider represent harmony with Nature.  

In the same way no one taught you to leap away from the sound of a hissing snake, you have an instinctive reflex to seeing riders on horseback, especially if they are riding towards you. Aboriginal humans reverently made cave paintings of horses 25,000 years ago. Deeper than cultural symbolism, our response to riders on horseback is hardwired into our brains. This time—bless his heart—Nava staged a video that uses horseback riders for maximum effect to whip up anxiety & awe along w/ the music’s turbulence.

I probably don’t need to explain the symbolism of the riders wearing exercise togs exactly like the boy’s, except in red. Blue symbolizes water & sadness. Red is the color of fire & energy. These are the minions of the solar deity, elemental spirits like flames in the mist, & they come galloping like an opposing army. But we only have a few seconds of dread before we glimpse a rider in the mists going in the same direction as the running boy. In later scenes, it becomes clearer they are escorting or herding him towards his destination. 

After these quick action cuts, at 1:53 we arrive at a static scene.

Your subconscious mind is fully capable of counting 12 passive creatures dressed in red & realizes the magical significance of the boy in blue adding up to 13 pairs of sneakers on the ground. 

From 1:59 to 2:04, we are reminded of where the boy came from & at 2:05 we are reminded of his destination—the elegantly dressed deity. There are more frantic scenes of riders and the running boy between scenes from home, now glowing w/ yellow light then red-lit as the boy dances in his room. Did the kid even leave home? Is he tripping out in his room? Does it matter? I say it doesn’t because the effect on him will be the same.

There are more quick cuts between galloping & running interspersed w/ scenes starting at 2:28 of the deity by a campfire in the forest, preparing a feast for his guest. At 2:39, the five riders come out of the mists directly at us triggers another surge of dread. Supernatural pairs of eyes glow in the darkness behind them. This ominous visual moment is perfectly timed to coincide w/ the music shifting into a guttural tribal chant. The first time I heard the song I thought this part of it sounded like a primitive pagan ritual & the lyric was an incantation to disperse negativity.

Apparently the song gave Nava the same visual because here we are at 2:46 w/ the boy in a forest clearing in the dark of night w/ red-clad nature devas standing like flames. The five riders might represent the five sacred elements—earth, water, fire, air, & spirit. Over all this imagery, the music spins a potent magical spell. Rag‘n’BoneMan stands at the center of a circle of hay bales looking like a modern day skinhead shaman. Lightning flashes in the sky like supernatural energies are being aroused. At 2:49 for less than a second, an owl—symbol of wisdom—is shown on a tree branch. The horseback riders start circling the boy & fire spirits where they stand immobile. 

For one second at 2:53, we get a subliminal of the deity—now wearing a garment stripped in blue, red & the purple of royalty—standing still beside a black stallion. Then for less than a second a red-hooded skull-like face impacts our subconsciousness before the boy stomps his foot on the ground at 2:55 when the compulsion to dance overcomes him. 

To leaven the tension, Nava unfurls a Scottish flag for amusement as the boy’s dancing becomes positively demon-possessed. One second, he’s in the circle at night, the next second he’s in his room at home, & the next, he’s dancing in the day-lit forest. The imagery flows on w/ exhilarating & dizzying speed. 

After another rabble-rousing wave of the Scottish flag, the action freezes at 3:11 in a tension-inducing static shot—the boy in blue faces off a girl in red w/ her cohort standing by & it’s raining! Emotion is literally drenching the scene! A subliminal of the boy’s mother & her medications flashes by then one second each of the boy looking thru flames & the deity solemnly regarding him. These two moments symbolize the transfer of power from the god to the boy.

It’s a relief when everyone starts dancing in the rain and stomping in mud puddles at 3:19. There are more quick cuts back & forth to the boy dancing in his room, the stand off w/ the girl as a lightning flash divides the sky, & the rave in full revel. A subliminal second of the boy & girl standing closer then another of him dancing in his room.

And we are suddenly transported back to the scene of the deity standing beside his horse for a full 2 seconds to absorb the fact that a light snow is falling. The god exists apart from the rave. The imagery cuts back to dancing bodies & horses rearing then the boy stands alone for a second at 3:37 in falling snow & this subliminally puts him on the same plane of existence as the deity. After another couple seconds of rave dancing, we get slightly over a second at 3:40 to fully absorb snow falling on the diety & his horse w/ a halo symbolizing divinity behind them. 

The video concludes w/ 2 seconds of the boy facing the girl in the rain, one solid shot of Rag’n’BoneMan’s face w/ snowfall & then a bright flash of green light!

Thru-out the video, we’ve seen scenes tinted blue, yellow, & red but this is the only shot of bright green & it’s flashed at the viewer like a piecing ray. Green symbolizes the Earth, growth, & as the mid-point in the color spectrum it represents balance. Green is also the color of the metaphysical Healing Ray of Light. And that’s what it represents in the context of this narrative. Summoned & guided by a deity, empowered by the magic of music & dance, our boy hero has been healed of his malaise. In the last moments, we see him standing alone, strong & resolute, looking up in wonder as snowflakes drift down upon him. This is a lovely conclusion to the tale.