#room also based on my old room… this is so nostalgic

[criiitter]

mini comic that i made in ms paint a while back. still means a lot to me

[beababoobies]

ME AGAIN!!! WITH A SAL X READER REQUEST (again) THIS TIME AIDJSJDH. a porn one at that !!!!

i need sal so bad its an actual problem

just like. imagine reader n the gang r havin a little sleepover. and reader is just so inconsolably turned on for some reason (maybe sal had his hand on their thigh when they watched a movie or smthin), so when everyone is asleep they asks sal to help them out :,,,) (his fingers r just so long n pretty,, they cant help but want them lol)

mayb he has to keep them quiet somehow, mayb covers their mouth/puts his fingers in their mouth to muffle them

hes so shy and nervous and awkward but he’s having the time of his life, watching the reader’s reactions. mayb he cant help but get himself off too, too enraptured by the way reader struggles to gasp and whine against his fingers

GOD DAMN.

would love if u wrote this mootie 🫶🏼🫶🏼 no pressure ofc ofc ofc !! (fem bodied reader pls if u dont mind <3!)

(i might write this too, i love my mind sometimes 🙏)

hey mootie!! Im giving you the fast pass because all the jjk stuff you repost got me into the series and I’m loving it, also cus you’re AMAZING! All characters are aged 20+ because this is based in chapter five of course, please do enjoy! :) (and for everyone waiting for their Hazbin requests to be filled - IT IS COMING! I am a busy woman.) 

Needy - Sal Fisher X Fem!Reader

words : 2k, warnings : SPICAYYYY!!, creampie, fingering, slightly public, needy!sal AND needy!reader, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it guys, c’mon), hold the moan trope

The entire gang had been having more sleepovers ever since Sal and Todd had found the new house. Larry was moving in so it was just the normal next step, and you loved coming over so much. More specifically to spend time with your boyfriend, but also just to feel like old times again. Even Ash came from the city every once and a while, and this was one of those days.

Since it was Larry’s last day living in the Apartments, you had all agreed to made the most out of that small basement apartment you had spent so much of your awkward teen years in. You had been doing all the same shit you used to all day - smoking in the treehouse, playing card games for hours. 

You and Sal huddled up around his old gamebuddy, playing the games Larry had kept long forgotten in the corners of his room, Larry and Ash painting on a shared canvas, chatting about life while Larry’s old metal mixtapes blasted in the background, and Todd and Neil cuddled up on the beanbag in the corner, occasionally joining in their conversation, but mostly just cuddled up and enjoying each others company. All of this was wonderful, nostalgic - even healing. 

That was all up until Sal quietly suggested you all watched an old horror movie, and you were all huddled together in the dark, you with Sal leaning on your shoulder on your right, and Ash on your left, giggling and nudging you like old times. Larry laid out casually on the floor in front of you all because of how shit his eyes were from years of refusing glasses. Which should’ve been fine.

In fact - it was fine. Until Sal decided it would be a wonderful idea to put his hand on your thigh. Your bare thigh, just below where your miniskirt started. And even that - even that, you could’ve survived with some unwanted heat in your panties. But no, the blue fucker jumped at one of the scenes, hand sliding up the inside of your thigh to accidentally drag your skirt up, his hand knocking against your warm core - hand rubbing up against your clothed clit as he pulled his hand away, and all you could do was pull your hand away from where it was sweetly brushing through Ashley’s hair like you used to do, straight to your face to hide the unbelievably needy whine you would’ve let out.

“you okay?” Ashley whispers softly, looking over to you and you just nod quickly, watching her go back to watching the movie before shooting Sal a venomous glance, which he avoids nervously, already feeling your stare of death shoot through the side of his head. You pierced your lips together, putting one leg over the other and squeezing your thighs firmly shut, Sal’s hand now comfortably resting much, much lower on your thigh. Practically on your calve, as he preferred not to die tonight. 

But that’s when it started, the unwanted slick already gently collecting in your panties, your mind running through all the things you wanted to do to him - what you wanted him to do to you. God, your mind was like a dog in heat. You couldn’t even bear to focus on the movie, sitting there, cautiously eyeing up your dead silent boyfriend. His shirt ridden up his stomach just oh-so-slightly from the way he was slouched back, soft happy trail of blue peeking out from under his shirt. God, what you would do to pull those stupid red torn up jeans down - not even fully - and ride him until he was shooting blanks and sobbing under you. 

That is how it went on for the rest of the movie. That is exactly how it went on when you all decided the sleeping plan. That is where your mind still was when you and Sal decided to take the pullout couch, Todd and Neil in Lisa’s old room, and Larry sleeping on his bed with Ashley on a cot on his floor. With the thinnest fucking walls known to man kind. You should know - you grew up with the same ones. 

Sal yawned as he laid next to you, mask placed softly on the table right beside the couch, as well as his glass eye floating in a cup, looking at you nervously as he pulled the covers up over himself too, gently wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you into him from behind, expecting you to be asleep by now - you were a heavy sleeper, he was an insomniac. It worked out like that. Until he heard a soft, half-whine of a whisper come from you. 

“S-sal..” you mumbled softly, pressing yourself back against him, causing him to let out a soft whine of his own, hand around your waist flinching ever so softly. “P-please baby, need you so bad..” you mumbled out softly, turning around to face him, seeing the needy tears in your eyes had him melting as well, piercing his lips together as he grips softly at your side.

“N-no, you know how thin these walls are - I’m sorry about earlier, but..” he says nervously as he watches you whine and writhe softly, pressing yourself up against him, one hand on his chest. That’s when you decide to make the move, grabbing his hand and moving to in-between your legs so he can feel how absolutely soaked through your panties are, causing him to experimentally run his fingers over them, biting down on his scarred lip so hard he’s concerned it might bleed. You can’t help a choked whine and a buck of your hips against his hand at that, looking up at him with those needy eyes. Fuck. 

He doesn’t say a word as he puts two shaky fingers to your lips, and you wrap your mouth around them without question, twirling your tongue around them and sucking on them like your life depended on it, all while he shakily pulled you panties to the side, prodding his fingers at your soaked hole, a quiet ‘fuck.’ Escaping his mouth when he slides one in with ease, feeling the vibrations around his fingers as you whine. “G-gotta be quiet, please - we h have to be quiet..” he mumbles out messily as he feels his cock throb to life in his sleep shorts, smearing precum across his thigh when he feels your cunt clench needily around his fingers.

He lets out a sigh of relief when you quickly nod at him, squeezing your eyes shut as he slowly starts to curl his long fingers inside of you, the obscene squealing noise making him whimper softly, hips accidentally bucking softly against your thigh as his cock tries to find some sort of friction - daydreaming about how easily he could slip inside you right now with how wet you are - how you would feel around his cock, velvety walks clenching around him and providing him that oh so delicious friction he was searching for. 

His thumb moves to gently circle your clit as you start to find a slow grinding rhythm against his hand, practically riding his fingers as he finds that delicious spongy spot on your walls and pushes his fingers up against it, causing your cunt to give another urgent and needy clench, more slick falling into his palm, making a mess as he tries his best not to whine himself.

The slippery sounds of friction, the feeling of your thigh twitching pressed up right against his own throbbing problem, or the way his fingertips are pressing up against the entrance to your throat, the way his other fingertips are pressed up against your velvety walls. It’s driving him beyond insane, to the point he’s thinking he might cum in his sleep shorts if it continues this way. And he didn’t bring an extra pair - and it would just be a waste if he didn’t cum inside of you - not while you were practically begging for it.  

“B-baby.” He whines out, catching your attention for a second, tears of pleasure falling softly down your face as your hips still, whining against his hand from the way you stopped while being so close - it was beyond downright embarrassing how quickly you were about to cum, and you were honestly glad he stopped you. “C-can i please put it in? J-just the tip, please baby, ‘s so sensitive. Need you so bad.” He whines quietly and softly, pressing his hard on against your thigh to back up his own statement, whining softly again. “Just wann’ cum inside you, please…” he whispers, watching you nod eagerly.

Pulling his fingers out of you with an obscenely wet pop, pulling your soaked panties to the side and he lets out an erotic sigh pressing his face into the crook of your neck as he pulled his shorts down, cock slapping to attention against his abdomen, precum beading from the sensitive tip as he shakily pulled your hips up, grabbing the base of his cock and gently rubbing it against your entrance, and you could hear how wet you were when he moved his tip to part your drenched lips and drag through them, whining into the crook of your neck as you grabbed his shoulders, brain fuzzy with the way his hot tip felt rubbing against your clit, sticky with your own slick. 

He bit down hard on your shoulder as his tip popped past the tight ring of muscles of your entrance, desperately rutting against you, trying not to whine or let slip how good it felt to be inside you - the way your hot, heady slick insides felt like they were trying to pull him in deeper. His hand cupped your mouth quickly, stopping you from making a sound as he gently pushed himself further inside you, feeling you grip tightly at his shoulders, nails digging into his flesh as he broke his promise, pushing his cock inside of you, inch by desperate inch, trying not to slam his entire cock into you at once - which was unbelievably hard, considering how wet you were, and how desperate he was - his tip prodded at your cervix, making you jerk forward, groaning against the palm of his hand.

He rutted into you desperately, not daring to thrust properly, letting everyone else hear how wet and desperate you were, or even worse, how even needier he was for you, the head of his cock bumping against your sweet spot, the only sound in the air being the quiet sounds of your muffled whines, and the quiet rustling of sheets as he ground into you, abdomen rubbing against your clit as he did so, bringing you to the edge so much faster than you ever expected, cunt clenching around him, the sign that you were about to cum. He just nodded into the nape of your neck, hips refusing to stop. 

“m-me too, fuck, me too, me too ‘m gonna cum, ‘s too tight, ‘s so warm.” He half whines, half whispers right into your neck as he detaches his teeth from your shoulder for a second, before hurriedly latching them back onto your neck as you feel his cock violently twitch inside you, whining desperately into his hand as you felt yourself start to cum, cunt clenching around him desperately, slick flooding from you and creating an obscene squelching between you two as you spasmed and arched under him. 

He groaned into your neck as he quickly pulled his face from your neck, smashing his lips desperately against yours, muffling his own groans as he pushes himself as deep into you as he can go, cumming hot ropes into you as he stills, thighs twitching as he pulls his mouth from you, both of you panting and catching your breaths, feeling the warm liquid pool out of you and spill onto Sal’s abdomen as he lets out a small and raspy chuckle, still catching his breath.

 “You’re going to be the fucking death of me.” 

[darby-rowe]

PILEDRIVER !

sejanus plinth x fem!District 2!reader summary when you and sejanus get the opportunity to relive your days of amateur backyard wrestling while growing up in district two, things get... well, compromising.

word count 2.5k cw childhood best friends to lovers, the inherent eroticism of wrestling, awkward boner, reader makes the first move, first kiss, cunnilingus, confident sej, p in v, unprotected sex, sej has a big dick, petnames, dirty talk, flexible reader, piledriver position, y/n usage, pulling out, not proofread notes based off of my personal headcanon that district two quickly became filled to the brim with underground fighting/wrestling rings after it was named panem's newest military hotspot after district 13 got its shit obliterated. and i was always obsessed with the idea of a district two character who was heavily involved with these rings, so i decided to "soften" up the idea a little bit by just making reader the type of child who wrestled w/ her family and friends as a little girl. thought this concept was super cute and i hope yall do too! also for anyone who's wondering, sej and reader are supposed to be doing catch wrestling, but i also combined moves from collegiate wrestling and pro wrestling :) so yeah!!

Growing up in District 2, you swiftly grew familiar with back alley tussling as your home district quickly became Panem’s military hotspot after the first rebellion. It seemed as if your entire childhood consisted of backyard amateur wrestling and secret underground fighting rings in which you constantly found yourself getting wound up in.

By the time your family bought themselves a place within the Capitol, you already had a well rounded history of getting broken and bruised by friends, family, and complete strangers. And the thing was that you loved it. You loved stepping inside a poorly made ring and roughin’ it out with your siblings or cousins.

And your parents sure could afford the medical bills after all your broken bones!

So when you were forced to pack up and leave for the Capitol, you were heartbroken to have to transition into a life of high class uppity scumbags – with the exception of your best friend, Sejanus Plinth, whom you felt was your only source of comfort among the sea of self-important snakes.

One late night, Sejanus came to you with bright eyes and grinning lips, eager to show you what he had found. “Oh, and make sure you bring a sports bra, gym shorts, and some good shoes,” he had said before you two went off. Of course you didn’t object to a tiny adventure with your best friend, so you followed him through the quiet streets of the Capitol towards a run-down building that smelled of mold and old rubber. When you stepped inside, your heart swelled with nostalgic joy, and your eyes nearly overflowed with tears.

“Sej,” you gasped as your eyes fell upon the abandoned gym. Sure, it was a fixer-upper, but it was more than perfect for just the two of you. All of the punching bags and weight-racks were right where they were left, but the most important thing in the room were the big circles in the middle of the room.

You looked back at Sejanus with a look of pure gratitude. “How’d you find this place?”

He shrugged his shoulders, his brown doe eyes sparkling with delight. “I may or may not have pulled a few strings,” he teased. God bless Strabo and Ma Plinth, you thought. “Now, enough talk – you up for some old fashioned catch-as-catch-can?”

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

The amount of time this gym must have been abandoned concerned you a bit, making you feel that if you took a big enough breath you’d be a walking incarnate of tuberculosis for the next year. But the two of you didn’t plan on staying long, as trespassing could land you a good few nights in jail. And you and Sejanus being district, that was the last thing you two needed to be added to your permanent records.

You made sure to stretch your body, making sure all your muscles were warmed up deeply before locking up with Sejanus. And him, with his big strong arms, you realized that your body was the only thing warmed up tonight.

“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Sejanus teased, wounding up his arms in large circles. “I’ll make sure to go easy on you, darling,”

“You think I can’t take you down, big boy?” you challenged, cracking your neck and knuckles. “I’ve done it before, remember?”

“Yeah, when we were five,” Sejanus countered, adding a small chuckle to his words.

There wasn’t a referee, nor a bell or a whistle, so you two shook hands and squatted down as you circled each other. The fingers of your hands slightly ghosted each other, teasing each other at the same time of who was going to grapple who first. The two of you then locked up in a collar and elbow tie-up, your hand grasping the back of his neck as you pulled him in for a standing headlock. You tightly secured Sejanus’s head into the pocket of your forearm as his hands felt around your waist. His strength overtook yours as he pushed himself out of the lock, and you couldn’t help yourself but lightly gasp as he pulls in for a standing headlock of his own and takes you down to the ground with a takeover. The feeling of your body flipping forwards onto your back makes you dizzy for just a second, opening your eyes to see Sejanus’s smiling face looking down straight at you.

“Thought you were gonna go easy on me,” you teased, panting from the combination of sudden movements.

Sejanus still has his arms wrapped around your head, also panting. “Change of heart, I guess,”

You huffed out a puff of air out of your mouth in a chuckle. “What a gentleman,” you locked your hands around his torso and pushed yourself into a bridge, using your strength to roll him over onto his stomach to lay him out prone. You let out embarrassingly loud grunts of effort as Sejanus was larger than you, which made him start laughing as you now laid over his body, hands still wrapped around him. “Shut up, Sej,”

“What? It’s cute,” he responded from under you.

You slowly released your hands from around his already clammy torso and stood back up on your feet, stretching your body once more to prepare for round two. “You didn’t even pin me,” Sejanus said with a tinge of confusion in his voice.

“It’s not like we’re actually doing a match together,” you told him. “What? You wanna do one for real this time?”

Sejanus twisted his body at the waist, knocking out all the kinks in his muscles. “I thought we were doing it for real?”

“Well now we can, grizzly bear,” your voice was almost a purr as you stretched out your arms at the ready. Grizzly bear? The nickname confused him, so you took the momentary distraction to two-step into a double-leg takedown. When he was on his back, you flipped your body over in a jackknife pin, but the sheer swiftness of Sejanus betrayed you.

Sejanus used the strength of his legs to roll you onto the backs of your shoulders, your arms pinned down by his legs, and knees hooked on his shoulders. You were unable to kick out by the time the three seconds were up.

“Nice,” you commented, panting as you looked up at his sweaty face from your compromising position.

“Should say the same to you,” he responded, letting you roll yourself backwards onto your knees. “Another round, darling?”

You got up onto your feet, but before you could agree to another round, you found yourself being tackled onto the ground below and folded in half. Sejanus had your arms pinned down over your head, and your knees were basically parallel with your cheeks.

And you felt the unmistakable feeling of Sejanus’s hard erection pressed against your ass.

Sejanus had you pinned down for more than the 3-second count, and he still hadn’t let you go. You blushed, eyes scanning over his sweaty form dominating over you. What do you even say in a situation like this?

You always thought Sejanus was cute. You watched him grow up alongside you and turn into an extremely handsome young man. He grew into his muscular stature, his brown curls became more defined, his brown doe eyes only grew dreamier.

And now here you were, folded in half like a damn pretzel, and he was hard.

“You’re, um…” you wet your lips awkwardly. “You–... you’re hard, Sej,”

You felt guilt well up inside your chest as Sejanus’s face seemed to drop with embarrassment. Fuck, now you felt like an asshole. “Oh… oh, Y/N, I’m so sorry–”

“Hey, hey, no,” you cooed, trying to put his worries at ease. You reached up and brushed a stray curl from his sweaty face. “No apologies, Sej. Don’t worry,”

Sejanus crawled away from on top of you, letting your body unfold itself, giving your ribcage and your other internal organs a break. You pulled yourself up into a sitting position where Sejanus had one knee folded up towards his chest and his other leg flat on the dusty wrestling mat.

You sat there in silence, thinking of what your next move could possibly be. Should you apologize for pointing out Sejanus’s erection? It seemed as if no matter what you chose to say, it was only going to make the situation worse.

So instead, you said fuck it, and chose not to say anything at all as you grabbed Sejanus’s face and pulled him in for a kiss. You felt his big hands find purchase on your shoulders, as if the initial shock was going to make him fall over.

The taste of his plump, warm lips slotting themselves against yours sent goosebumps down your back, and when you pulled away for a breather, only a few words were exchanged before you two went back at it.

“Are you sure?” Sejanus mumbled against your lips.

“Please,” you whispered. And that was all that needed to be said.

It didn’t take long before you had Sejanus trailing open-mouthed kisses down your stomach and down towards the waistline of your shorts, hooking his fingers beneath the waistband and pulling them down to reveal your plain, cotton panties. Even in the darkness of the abandoned gym, he could still pinpoint the dark spot of your wetness, teasingly circling his thumb on the area. You inhaled sharply. You were already so sensitive. You blamed it on the previous exertion of energy you shared with Sejanus and, well, also the fact that Sejanus’s face was mere inches away from your pussy.

He swiftly pulled off your panties and leaned down to deliver one kitten lick to your clit, making you gasp softly. You could tell that your reaction made the boy smirk, adding to his confidence.

In a matter of seconds you were reduced to a mewling, moaning mess as the curly-haired boy devoured your clit – licking, sucking, slurping up your juices like a man who had been starving for days. The sheer sound of Sejanus’s mouth sucking at your pussy made you blush, and admittedly, you were even a little embarrassed at how wet you were.

You whined at the feeling of his mouth’s absence from your pussy, only to feel his hand lightly grab your face to force you to look at him.

“Wanna see your pretty face, please?” he cooed, and you nodded obediently, earning you his mouth back on your swollen clit. You cried out with delight, placing both of your hands on your breasts and squeezing them.

“So good…” you mewled, your legs beginning to squirm from your increasing pleasure. The knot in your stomach neared its unraveling, until you were once again folded in half, your pussy hovering above you at a near 90-degree angle.

Sejanus’s mouth never left your clit as he lifted your body over itself. Your fingernails dug deep into the mat, your eyes focused solely on Sejanus’s mouth and tongue on your lips and bud. But before you could finally arrive at your orgasm, he stopped abruptly.

You pouted pathetically up at him, whimpering. “Sej,”

He reached a hand down to softly caress the side of your face, his thumb tracing circles on your flushed cheeks. You could see the way his wet mouth shined in the dim light of the gym, licking his lips to taste the remnants of your essence.

“I wanna fuck you so bad, baby,” The way Sejanus was practically begging you had your stomach doing backflips. “Please? Please?”

In what world would you ever say no?

You pawed at Sejanus’s big arms as you nodded up at him, mumbling phrases like, “Please fuck me,” and “Want you inside me, baby,”

Your mouth watered as he freed his hard cock from his shorts, eyes widening at how big he was. Sejanus most likely caught on to your worried face as he quickly made sure to ease your worries. “I’ll be gentle, darling, don’t worry,” he murmured, slipping his cock in between your wet pussy lips. You gasped at his teasing, biting your lip as the tip of his cock pushed against your clit so well. “Breathe, baby,” he sighed, positioning the head of his dick at your tight, wet entrance and slowly lowering himself into you.

You inhaled sharply as the thickness of his cock stretched you open, the two of you groaning simultaneously at the new sensations. Sejanus was slow and cautious at first, but you could tell he wanted so badly to thrust himself inside of you and pound into the mat.

“So big…” you whispered, earning another low groan from the boy above you. When your walls finally stopped resisting against his size, Sejanus began to slowly lift himself up and back down inside you, earning beautiful melodic moans from your mouth.

You hooked your arms around your legs to keep you in this rather compromising position, but the way the curly-haired boy looked two seconds away from pistoning his cock inside you had you salivating. You looked up at him, batting your eyelashes and mumbling how good he felt, how big he was, how pretty he looked. You relished in the sight of him blushing at your dirty praises.

Sejanus’s hands found their place on your thighs to help him quicken his thrusts, and the faster he moved inside you, the louder your moans became. You felt his balls slap against your ass, the skin of his thighs colliding with yours, and his moans – ugh, his moans – you couldn’t get enough of his sounds of pure ecstasy.

“Your pussy feels so good,” he panted, looking down at your blissed out face. And for a moment, you two smiled at each other, just happy to be in this moment together.

Your hands reached up to grab at his forearms as you felt the knot in your stomach near its unraveling once more. “Gonna cum, baby,” you moaned. “Gonna cum all over your cock,”

Sejanus expedited the arrival of your orgasm by taking his thumb and circling your clit, and in a matter of moments you were crying and babbling your way as your walls tightened and pulsated around his dick. The sheer explosion of pleasure had you seeing spots behind your eyelids, gritting your teeth and growling as the boy above you didn’t slow down his thrusts.

As your high came down, Sejanus’s high was approaching as he quickly lifted himself out of you and swiftly started stroking his cock until he was spurting thick, white ropes all over your pussy. You closed your eyes dreamily as you listened to the beautiful sounds of his groans as his cock shot out large amounts of cum all over you.

You unfolded your body and brought your hand up to your chest to feel your heartbeat, breathing heavily as the intensity of your activities wound down. You felt Sejanus lay his large body on top of you, and you instinctively wrapped your arms around him and held him close, kissing the top of his head.

And in a last ditch effort to be the comedian of the moment, Sejanus said one last thing before the two of you cleaned yourselves up and headed home.

“Good hustle,” he mumbled, earning a wheeze from you and a tiny slap to his bicep.

“Shut the fuck up, Sej,”

tagging @spideyhexx — a late bday gift from me to you. ♡

dividers by cafekitsune

[loverofpiggies]

i haven't watched adventure time since i was a kid so i barely know anything about canon besides what i've heard about secondhand but i am SO overjoyed just seeing your comics on my dash again. you've always been such a big inspiration for me. i'm just giddy and a bit nostalgic! (even though it wasn't long enough ago to qualify as nostalgia hahaha)

Hey that's super fair! Honestly what really sucked me back in was the new Fionna and Cake spin off that came out last year. I STRONGLY recommend it. Even if you don't remember most of Adventure Time, I feel like you can have a pretty good understanding whats going on regardless. The spin off is mostly what my comic is heavily based on, since the Winter King never showed up in the original Adventure Time show.

I hope the story reads well enough without knowing all the background though! Obviously there is literally SO much lore and history and detail to the universe of AT, but I like writing focused stories like this. If there's one thing I love, its shoving two characters with opposing ideas in a room and making them talk. Bonus points if one of them is a little unhinged.

Also that's really really kind! I literally had zero inspiration to do comics for literal YEARS. I just focused on game dev work, and that was that. I never expected watching Fionna and Cake that all my old comic-making obsessions would come right back out!

Honestly? It's been really nice to love making comics again :)

[mx-julien]

each ninja was a different kind of teacher (except Lloyd who basically went on a year long press tour) and it also explains why Rebooted and after they seem a bit more responsible than in season 1 and the pilot

Cole has my favorite teacher characterization because he's objectively an interesting person with cool hobbies but when he is responsible for a group of children he just becomes Dad Who Is Helping Out At The Summer Camp. we never see his classroom, but given his proficiency in the arts we can assume he's the English teacher

since he went to art schools, he's probably not used to kids who aren't actually interested in what's being taught. the louder kids seem to dislike him (ref: running gag of "Mr Cole is the worst"), but that doesn't mean he's necessarily a bad teacher- just not one to humor pranks

also his and Kai's teacher outfits belong in the 1970s. I like the touch of making their ties the same color as their gis

little bit of meta: most of the people who worked on this show went to school in the 80s/90s so to them "older/boring" teacher outfits would look like this. also, as someone who was in the intended age range and saw it at the time of release, this sort of clothing conveyed that the ninja were doing a stuffy adult job- juxtaposed with their colorful gis

Kai appears to be the history teacher? his teaching style is likely structured and straightforward. given his nontraditional childhood, his frustration with the kids likely comes from both his jealousy that they aren't aware of how valuable schooling is and that Nya was much easier to work with when she was their age. at the end of the day he's an older brother who's now in charge of a bunch of kids

he's using an old-fashioned projector with film, which I assume (1) shows how low-budget they are, (2) emphasizes that Kai is out of his element (pun not intended), and (3) juxtaposes them with New Ninjago City

Zane is the one who doesn't know what a vape pen looks like but will listen to you infodump for an hour after class, then drive/walk you home because you missed the bus. he probably doesn't get any of the classroom humor or notice if the kids make fun of him. I can't imagine him ever getting angry at the kids, and he probably is very good at keeping them to a routine and a schedule

in rebooted episode 1 he seems to be teaching science? and the use of catapults is actually quite endearing- he's probably explaining tension and going to get his kids to make little models, which shows that he both is a pretty good teacher and hasn't realized that giving elementary/middle/primary schoolers their own catapults will only lead to chaos

he and Jay have personality-based outfits, with the snowflakes being an obvious allusion to Zane's element and the zig zags on Jay's emulating lightning

the little bowtie on Zane reminds me of Bill Nye the Science Guy (program with a a host of the same name who taught kids about science in a fun and accessibly way- very nostalgic for kids who went to american public school)

Jay is the exhausted teacher who's more interested in his hobbies than class material, and if you get him talking about that hobby, he won't stop until the bell. as a jokester, I think he'd get along well with the kids and definitely encourage them to annoy the other ninja

we don't see his classroom, but given Jay's skills he's probably the math teacher. he'd have a difficult time explaining things in different ways- very gifted people who learn well on their own often find it hard to teach things to others, though he would make sure he doesn't leave anyone behind

Nya definitely teaches math classes, but she probably handles tutoring as well since she's well-balanced in most subjects. it would also give her an intelligence network- kids come to her room after class/during lunch to complain and gossip. she uses it in the noble pursuit to antagonize the others

i'm used this video and the ninjago wikia because I'm on mobile and finding other sources would've taken too long

extra group photo I found! love the detail that Zane blinked (Dr Julien probably took the photo)

[h7jfangirl]

TGS UPTADE (Chapter Cover) ✨🎩

I love this one, I think it's my favorite cover until this point.

Jekyll has his old outfit I LOVE THE REFERENCES

Guys, ITS THE OLD DESING GUYS.

When I saw this cover, my first thoughs of it weren't the most pessimist, really

The colors are soft and lighter, and the place looks beautiful and peacful, it gave me nostalgic vibes but I mostly felt... Comfort

So I though this chapter would be the star of the final redemption arc of Jekyll's and Hyde's relationship, the chapter where all their fight would finally end for good and start to actually accept themselfs and work together as a team

I interpret Hyde's expression as a "Wait what!?" Reaction to actual self-love coming from Jekyll, and read the name of this chapter as something of "We are a team! We are together in this! So if one of us goes down, we are going down together! I would never ever leave you alone!" Like a thing of friendship or Brotherhood even.

But after reading the Comment Section in the page, I finally notice that something was off in the cover, a simple detail telling that this may not be a 'end of the conflict' type of chapter

And that simple detail...

It's Jekyll

I really hope he goes insane in this chapter, like ACTUAL insanity, I love when a calm character goes through a 'madness arc' and sadly I don't see it often so I WANNA SEE SOME GOOD SHIT.

Jekyll is grabing Hyde's clothes very strongerly, you can feel the anger on his grabing and how close he puts his face towards Hyde's.

His body says "I'm about to kick this asshole's ass"

But the thing is that he is also... Smiling. You can't see his eyes but there is a shadow on them that you can tell something it's not okay, something it's wrong with Henry but not in the "Poor victim" type that we always had see him before, on the whole comic

But in "This man is dangerous" type

So, with that grin and his body looking agressive towards Hyde, you can said Edward may be in danger in this chapter.

Predictions~

Now, everybody agrees that the place we were shown it's actually part of Jekyll's mind, a memory actually. So, I think that somehow Jekyll and Edward will both go inside their memories, to see what were the events that lead them to this specific moment

Maybe with Frankestein's help, in a intent of her to understand the experiment's true nature, also trying to help Jekyll and Hyde to they can finally understand it too (THEY ARE TAKING A THERAPY SESSION TO A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL)

Or

They go both inside their own memories because the transformation got worse, and now their body is unconsious, so it would be only Jekyll and Hyde alone inside their mind, finally being able to stand in the same room at the same time, and netheir of them knowing what will happend outside, now that Frankestein knows their secret and the mob it's still out there

So of course, Henry wouldnt have someone who could help him and calm himself, so he is blaming Hyde for the situation as Hyde avoiding the accusations and also blaming Henry too. The rest of the chapter would be about them looking at their memories and reflecting about their actions

But of course, I can imagine two final scenarios happening, based on the scenario shown on the cover actually happening. They finally go together to see a old memory, and they are both close to the cliff, seeing the place

So, Henry finally has the conclusion of blaming Hyde for all the situation, and snaps angst him, deciding to end this just right there, now that he is able to touch and feel Edward's skin as if he had his own body, as a another person he can fully touch

So there is two options:

Jekyll's grabs Hyde's clothes and makes both of them jump to the water, accepting the death as a end but making sure to drag Hyde with him as well, so it feels actually worth it. Of course this being a moment similar to Hyde's ephifany when he is told that he could take down Jekyll as well.

But of course, in this case we'll see Jekyll's perspective to this words "Taking you down with me" (I love how similar they are, even if they turned out to be so different from each other, somehow they are still the same person)

Or, there is this other option. Jekyll actually dosen't jump to the cliff but instead, he shove Hyde to the cliff in a intent of murder him, being mostly like a metaphoric suicide rather than a direct one (Because they are the same person after all). The reason why Jekyll is also jumping in the cover may be a symbolic jump as "Going insane/Jumping the cliff of sanity" for doing something so brutal that the normal and sane Dr Jekyll wouldnt do... Push a person on a cliff, to kill them. So not only this would be a intent to kill Hyde but at the same time accidently murder the person he used to be, the good Dr Henry Jekyll

(Jekyll also jumping can be more like of "how he feels" rather than something literal, he feels atrap and his only company is Hyde, and I dare to say he is the person Jekyll hates the most at this point).

Of course, in any scenario, nethier of them would actually die (yet) because there is like two chapters left to finish this comic, duh

But I like to think about the Second Option. Because it could also explain those spoiler images Sage share in their social media a while ago

There it was another one with Jekyll with a lot of bottles around but I couldn't find it.

Because I think it would fit in. After pushing Hyde on the cliff Jekyll goes out and takes back the body's control and fix the angry mob problem, thinking he has done right in killing Hyde, when actually you can see that he dosen't has his normal eyes anymore but now has Hyde's bags in him (Of course, it could be for the fact that he climp up the society to get in the roof, but I don't think he would like to being seen very tired) meaning that Jekyll has change, in a more hyde-like way. Hyde is not death, and Jekyll's actions will have more consequences, as long they keep fighting each other there will be no end to their problems.

So, this is the tgs UPTADE. I like everyone in the fandom started to make theories like crazy and I love every single one of them.

Sorry for my bad english hehe bye~

[billlydear]

pairing: billy hargrove x steve harrington / WC: 4501

summary: based on this post by @ariesbilly (i was anon), el shops rather creatively for billy's birthday and steve has some things to say about his new look

this will be crossposted on AO3 as soon as i've got the time to set up a new account there. i hope you enjoy, and please consider leaving some feedback! also, i've got a harringroveson spidey/venom au in the works, so please let me know if you'd like to see that :-)

Billy’s genuinely, truly concerned when Jim pulls him aside at his little birthday dinner, and not just because he’s still a tiny bit wary around the man. He hasn’t done anything awful yet, so far there’s not a bone in his body that resembles his dad’s, but Billy’s lived with Neil all his life, and Jim only a few months. He’s getting better, but he’s not there yet.

“Listen,” Jim murmurs, taking the hand he’d used to usher Billy into the kitchen off of his arm. Billy appreciates it, it’s like Jim knows he doesn’t like being grabbed; like he pays attention to Billy’s comfort.

“She’s come a long way,” Jim praises El, “-but gift giving for anyone but Max is… hard. She just shops for herself, it’s like-” Jim rubs an exasperated hand over the scruff on his chin, leaned up against the kitchen counter while Billy leans in slightly to hear his low voice, “It’s like she finds something she likes. And since she likes the person she’s giving it to, she equates the two. ‘Thinks that whatever she likes, they’ll like too. That’s why I drink out of that glittery cup every morning,” Jim gestures to the tumbler currently drying on the rack, ‘BFF’ written in white loopy letters on the plastic, “She’s got the spirit, just not the know-how. And I was really trying to get her to branch out for you, I took her to the mall but she beelined for Claire’s, and-” Jim sighs, shooting a cautious glance back to the living room where the girls are waiting with their gifts, “Just- please act like you like ‘em. If you want, I’ll give you the receipt, and you can return them for cash, just- humor her. Please.”

“Okay,” Is all Billy says, really all he can think of saying, and Jim reaches out to pat his bicep.

“Thanks,” His shoulders slump in relief, “Alright, birthday boy, let’s get going.”

Billy’s used to birthday gifts, but not nice ones. If he was lucky, he’d get gas money for the week from his dad, but that’s only because Susan insisted on acknowledging the day. Gifts have always been an obligation, never a gesture, so sitting on the couch in front of three tissue-paper-stuffed bags is a bit daunting for the man.

“Mine first,” Max demands, pushing her bag forward. Billy sends her what he hopes she perceives as a smile, a small twitch at the corners of his lips. They’ve gotten a lot better with each other now that Neil’s not goading Billy anymore, and Billy’s glad for it.

Inside there’s a gift card to a surf shop he’d worked at one summer back in California. He doesn’t even know if there’s anything on it - for all he knows, she found it in a box of his old stuff - but just seeing the logo of the place makes him nostalgic, and his barely-smile blooms into an unbridled one. The gift of memory is one he didn’t know he’d appreciate this much.

“Damn,” He huffs out a laugh, plucking the thin plastic out of the tissue, “Where’d you find this?”

“I wrote to my grandma,” Max confesses, “There’s 50 bucks on there, but for the record, all I sent her to put on there was 20.”

Billy remembers Max’s grandma; they’d visited her once. She was awesome, but the kind of awesome that made parents distrust her, and contact was lost after the move to Hawkins. The old lady had crammed Billy and Max into the back of her cluttered bug to get ice cream after Neil and Susan had gone to bed, and it was nice for Billy to hear she was still doing well.

“Thanks,” Billy laughs, almost a scoff as he reaches out to ruffle her hair. She pretends to hate it, maybe she does a little, but she lets him, which is like another birthday gift: Annoying Privileges.

He sees a flash of black as he puts the gift card back in the tissue, and it explains why the tiny plastic was wrapped so excessively.

Don’t show Hopper, the note reads, with an arrow down, so he discretely peels away the paper to find three cartons of cigarettes beneath it. He’ll worry about how she got them later, for now he shoots her a smirk that she returns.

“Alright, mine’s kinda-” Jim fumbles for his bag, “-tied into hers. Here, kid.”

The tissue crinkles under Billy’s fingers, and he peers down into the blue bag to see a paper.

He pulls it out, squinting at the fine print.

It’s a hotel booking. A hotel in California, shit, right by the beach.

“I already called you off of work,” Jim smiles at Billy, “It’s about a month from now. Only condition is you take the girls with you, they’ve got their own room and we’ll send ‘em with gas money.”

Max’s grin is bright, and Billy knows this is just as much of a gift for her as it is for him. His chest feels tight, like each word on the page had sucked air out of his lungs until there was none left, and now he’s struggling to breathe. He’s wanted to go back since the moment he left, but his dad never would have let him, and moving in with Jim and El then immediately fleeing the state seemed rude, so he’s grateful for the push. He doesn’t even know how to begin thanking Jim, so he starts with the words themselves.

“Thank you,” Billy croaks, trying not to let a gush of emotions overwhelm him. “Seriously, I-” His voice wavers and he clamps his mouth shut, looking down and pinching his fingers along the folded crease of the paper to thin it down even more, “Thank you, Jim.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jim reaches out again, gives him that little pat pat to the bicep instead of trying to hug him. Billy thinks just for that, he will let Jim hug him next time.

Once Billy’s regained his composure and only let one gruff sniffle slip, El is handing over her bag.

“Mine was not as much money as theirs,” She looks serious, like Billy’s going to backhand her for not renting them an RV for the trip, “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Jim starts, ready to console her and teach her an etiquette lesson, but Billy lets out a weak chuckle.

“Don’t worry about it, El.” He tugs at the tissue paper, “One time I wrote I.O.U. on a piece of paper for Max’s birthday.”

El’s brows furrow at the unfamiliar phrase, and Max leans in, “It means I owe you, like, ‘I owe you one’. He didn’t get me anything.”

“I offered you something,” Billy gripes, pausing in his unwrapping efforts, “Not my fault you chucked it out.”

“Oh, no,” Max laughs, “I still have it. But I wasn’t gonna waste it on arcade tokens. I’m gonna make it count, you’re gonna bail me out of a bad party or lie to the cops about-”

She reconsiders, looking at Hopper who’s stiffened slightly, his eyes narrowed at her, “-Nothing. Lying to cops is bad.”

“Nice save,” Billy deadpans, ducking his head back down towards the bag. The tissue inside is messy, he can tell El did it herself. 

Beneath the first layer of tissue, the stuff crumpled up to give the present volume, there’s six individually wrapped packages. Billy’s stomach does a little flip; call it nerves, call it endearment, but whatever it is, he reaches for the first package without paying it any mind.

His fingers peel at the tape sticking it all together, and his strong grip rips the tissue. He goes with it, tearing into the gift, and a purple plastic card falls into his hand. It’s punched in two places near the middle, and inside each hole is an earring. They’re- not his style.

They’re studs, little balls of gel in rainbow colors with squishy spikes sticking out of them. They honestly look like something a kindergartener would make with a hot glue gun, but there’s an expectant smile on El’s face and Billy finds himself smiling back at her, genuinely so.

“Thanks, El,” He flips the package over, price tag ripped off messily and silver backings staring at him, “These are cool.”

“I know you like earrings. There’s more,” She prompts him, the section of her hair that she’s tied up bouncing as she leans forward enthusiastically, “Open them.”

“Okay,” He laughs, setting the earrings aside. The second package yields another pair, this time two pieces of bread with little smiley faces on them, one painted brown for peanut butter and the other purple for jelly.

“That’s cute,” Billy laughs breathily, “That’ll go good with my purple button up.”

“Mhm,” El nods, hair once again bouncing, “That’s what I thought.”

As Billy expects, each package contains a pair of earrings. He gets tiny springs, a gradient of pink to purple to blue covering the curved metal, and they look like they’d be permanently damaged if he stretched them out even once. Then a pair of jellyfish-inspired ones, a clay head with a smile on its face connected by metal rings to all of the tentacles dangling below. Next are lollipops, stiff sticks leading into plastic that’s swirled in design and shaped like a bear’s head with yet another smiley face. Each little black curve on the earrings’ faces only makes his own grow. The fifth pair are meant to look like goldfish, suspended in resin that fills the bowl to make it look like they’re swimming in water. It’s the most intricate pair of earrings he’s ever seen, he’ll give Claire that. The final pair is much bigger than the others, and when he unwraps it, a pom-pom sticks out.

They’re big puffballs, tie-dyed pink and purple, connected to a peace sign stud that goes through his ear. They’re obnoxious, something you’d only see on a child whose grandparents had bought the biggest pair of earrings they could find because their vision was too poor to appreciate any smaller designs. Nevertheless, Billy pops the squishy backing off of one of them, and sticks it between his teeth. He slips his own earring out of his ear, and tucks it into the breast pocket of the shirt he’s wearing. He sticks the puffball into his ear right then and there, and El’s grin is almost unbearably wide.

“It looks pretty,” She gushes, and Billy laughs.

“Thank you, El.” He gives her the obligatory brotherly hair ruffle as well, but she looks honored compared to Max’s exasperation. In leaning forwards to reach her, the metal point of the second earring digs into Billy’s palm where he’s holding the card still, and he glances down at it thoughtfully.

“Here,” He thinks fast, plucking the backing off of it and handing it to El, “Let’s match.”

She looks at it wide-eyed, caught off guard, “You want me to wear the other one?”

“Duh,” He nods, hand still outstretched, “How else are people gonna know who bought them for me?”

She’s more than happy to snatch the second earring from him, sliding it into her own pierced ear and shivering slightly at the feeling of the fluff brushing against her skin. 

“Alright,” Jim claps, a loud, striking sound, “You guys look great. Cake time?”

“Cake time,” Max agrees, already rising to her knees to stand and head for the kitchen, “Chocolate, Billy, your favorite.”

Billy’s all Thank you’d out. Not because he’s not thankful for this, because he’s more than that, but because he’s said it so many times today that the words are starting to lose their meaning, and he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be insincere, so he’ll save the ‘Thank you’s for when they really count.

Max and El settle on the floor in front of the tv to watch the movie they’ve picked out, clearly one that Jim hadn’t seen until now.

“Oh, not Terminator,” He reaches for the television to shut it off, but both girls scramble to fight him off, “It’s rated R, girls!”

“It’s Billy’s favorite,” Max huffs, and that’s not true, but he knows nothing in the movie will shock her, and El grew up being bounced around dimensions, so she probably won’t lose any sleep over a bit of blood.

“It’s true,” Billy drawls settling back on the couch with his cake and his beer (that Jim only reluctantly handed him because it’s his birthday), “But it’s fine, Jim, we don’t have to watch what I want, they can turn on My Little Pony or some shit.”

Jim wonders briefly how he’s been outsmarted by two tweens and a teenager. If he says no, he’s the asshole that ruins Billy’s birthday. If he says yes, the girls are going to see gratuitous shots of naked Arnold Schwarzenegger that he’d rather them not witness.

“You cover your eyes for the first scene,” Jim finally concedes, narrowing his eyes at Max and El, “I mean it, no peeking or I’ll do it for you.”

“Okay,” They agree, already far too amused for Jim’s liking, and Max turns to grin mischievously at Billy. It’s nice, he thinks, to do dumb shit with her. Like real siblings.

The movie starts, and Jim’s a bit too preoccupied eagle-eyeing the girls to make sure they’re not seeing anything raunchy to notice that Billy’s paying more attention than he ought to be. But once the man straightens back up so does Billy, mentally so, and turns his attention to Jim when he leans over towards Billy.

“Hey,” Jim’s whisper is gruff, but El doesn’t hear, “Thanks for that. She’s really happy.”

“No problem,” Billy admits, “They’re… different, but they’re kinda cool.”

Jim laughs, and Billy gets the sense that Jim doesn’t think he’s being sincere, but really, he is. The earrings themselves aren’t kinda cool, a year ago he’d rather have pitched himself into the quarry than wear rainbow-colored springs dangling from his ears, or a smiley piece of peanut butter toast, but what’s kinda cool is that someone gave them to him because they thought he’d like them; because they like him. 

What’s kinda cool is love, Billy figures out that night, and his cake tastes a little sweeter because of it.

--

El doesn’t usually accompany Billy to work at the auto shop, but that’s only because he leaves too early for her to be awake yet. She’s recently discovered sleeping in, and sometimes she’s not awake before two in the afternoon. Now, though, she’s bursting with excitement for the California trip, even though it’s not for another month. Billy hadn’t slept with the puffball earring in, but he’d put it right back on this morning, and so had El. They’re sitting behind the counter now, planning an itinerary for the trip he’s not too stressed about, because he knows El will lose the paper before they leave in a month.

“And we have to go to In-n-Out,” She decides, “I know those are in California.”

“Yeah,” Billy laughs, “They’re not that good. I mean, I like ‘em, but there’s good burger places everywhere. They have these palm trees though,” He moves  his hands to cross over each other, “They cross like an ‘x’, it’s pretty cool. My friend tried to climb one once, we got kicked out.”

El giggles, and her eyes wrinkle at the corners with the expression. Billy likes it, he wonders if his own eyes scrunch when he laughs. But he doesn’t do it very often, and especially not in front of a mirror, so he might never know.

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom, so Billy turns his attention to their customer log instead. There’s a man coming by in two hours to pick up his car, but the repairs are complete, so Billy doesn’t have to do anything about it. And there’s another customer coming at five for an oil change, but it’s only eight in the morning. He hears the scrape of wheels on gravel, and he cranes his neck to see over the reception desk and out the door.

Fuck. It’s a red beemer, one he knows almost better than his own car because of how frequently he’d crammed his camaro in beside it in the high school parking lot. It’s Steve Harrington’s car, and that means Steve Harrington came with it.

Billy tugs on the hem of his tank, tightening the shirt over his chest. It’s not that he wants to look good for Steve, it’s just- well, no, that’s it. The banter he’d shared with Steve over their time at Hawkins High was the most tension he’d felt in his entire life, and it came at a time when he sought thrill and excitement the most; apparently being sweat-covered, shirtless opponents on the basketball court does things to a man’s head. He’s not naive enough to think he’s gonna be able to sweep the guy off of his feet with one suave remark, not when just last week Max had somehow convinced the man to give her a ride back home from Jim’s place after a sleepover, and Steve had seen Billy bleary-eyed, messy-haired, and pajama-clad. He’d tried to own it, leaned back on the couch with his legs spread, one arm up on the back of the couch and exposed by the shirt he was wearing as he nodded with a lazy grin at Steve, ‘Morning, Harrington’. If he’d squinted, he could see a bit of pink coloring Steve’s cheeks. But a success or not, the experience was embarrassing, and he’s glad that he’s a little more put together today. 

Billy forgets just how put together he is today. He feels the soft brush of the fuzzy earring against his neck right as Steve starts towards the store, and his stomach drops.

He has a very important choice to make.

He can take the earring out, giving him a better chance at this coy little game they have going, and subsequently insult his new sister, or, he could leave it in, puff up his chest with pride, and greet Steve with confidence, ultimately risking his win.

He almost tears his ear from how hard he rips the earring out.

“Harrington,” Billy drawls, “Car trouble?”

“Battery’s dead,” The man huffs, and there’s sweat beading at Steve’s hairline, “I had to push’er down the street, I was getting groceries.”

Billy feels like a cartoon character; he almost audibly gulps at the thought of Steve muscling his car down the road. He wonders if Steve could see his Adam’s apple bobbing if he really did dry swallow. He wonders if Steve would watch.

“Tough luck,” Billy sends Steve a lazy grin, passing the sign-in book over the counter with a pen, “Just fill that out, I’ll get your service started.”

“Thanks,” Steve mumbles, “Got an estimate?”

“Depends,” Billy shrugs, “I might do you a favor and replace those ugly seats you’ve got, too. That’ll cost extra.”

“Like your car’s hot shit,” Steve scoffs, but his tone isn’t demeaning, and Billy’s chest does that weird tight thing again when he realizes they’ve advanced to friendly banter, “Do you know how ugly that blue and yellow license plate looks against the blue of your car?”

He laughs, but before Billy can quip back, say that it’s California grade, that he’d rather die than replace it, the door to the back opens up, and El comes out.

“Steve!” She smiles sweetly, “Is your car broken?”

“Yeah,” He laments, eyeing her accessory, “Woah, crazy earring.”

“Billy has one, too.” She brags, then notices it’s missing from his ear. Billy’s stiffened where he’s rifling through the desk drawers for a form to give Steve, and before he can make any excuses, El spots the puffball where it’s fallen to the floor.

“Oh!” She lunges for it, handing it to Billy with a sweet smile, “It fell out. Here it is.”

Billy has another choice to make.

Scoff at her, say ‘nice one’, and tell her to put her earring back in. Or, take it from her and embarrass himself in front of Steve.

This time, he decides she’s ultimately more important.

“Thanks, El.” He grins at her, taking the puffball from her hand and hooking it expertly through his ear. It dangles against his neck, and he passes the form over to Steve who’s looking between the two of them with some sort of guarded amusement.

“Fill this out, too.” Billy instructs, “And I’ll start on your car.”

“O-kay,” Steve complies, more of that amusement painting his features as he ducks his head to fill out the form, “Pink looks good on you, Hargrove.”

Billy shuts the door to the back room as a response. He feels like punching the wall, because did that mean ‘good’ as in good? Or good as in ‘ridiculous’? He’s well aware Steve had a mean streak in high school, and Billy isn’t interested in being bullied.He’s never worried about being bullied by his peers before, he was always on top. Now it’s different, this isn’t high school and he doesn’t have backup boys to make his posse. It’s a one-on-one fight, and Steve’s got the advantage. And- and if it did mean good, what’s he supposed to do with that information? Wear a pink shirt the next time he sees Steve? Go as Pink Panther for halloween? He considers just about everything but dying his hair, mind swirling with possibilities.

He starts on Steve’s car to distract himself, and he barely manages to gather the courage to take his shirt off to push Steve’s beemer into the garage like he’d originally planned. He still does, of course. But it’s a hard decision to make.

--

“Steve,” El steps out from behind the counter, walking over to where Steve’s flipping through an old Highlights that Billy’s boss keeps there for kids, “What did you get Billy for his birthday?”

The man flounders, “Uh, when’s his birthday?”

El’s brows furrow, “It was yesterday. You didn’t get him anything?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head, “Sorry, El. I’m sure he didn’t expect me to, though, ‘probably didn’t hurt his feelings.”

“But friends give each other birthday presents.” She insists, “Why didn’t you?”

“He’s not my friend,” Steve grimaces slightly, but backtracks when El only gets more scandalized, “We- I… Ugh,’ He groans, rubbing a hand down his face, “We, like, hated each other in high school or something. I think he’s only nice to me now ‘cause he has to be, we’re all friendly, y’know?”

“Billy likes you,” El promises, “That’s why he comes out of his room when he knows you’re coming over. And why he always takes us to get ice cream. He likes seeing you.”

“Uh, I think-” Steve stammers, heart pounding so viciously he can hear it, “That’s probably… not what that means. Hey, um, do you have any water I could have? I’m really thirsty from pushing my car.”

He’s out from under her scrutinous gaze for long enough to compose himself, tamping down any hope she might have given him. It doesn’t help that he’s first heard Billy’s genuine laugh today, and the vision of the man’s bright eyes, scrunched and wrinkled at the corners have been plaguing him ever since. Things need to stop piling up, he decides.

When she gets back she sits in the chair beside him, one leg bent beneath her and the other firmly planted on the floor, “You should get him a birthday present.”

Steve hums, bringing the cup she hands him to his lips to buy him time to respond. Eventually, he settles on, “I’ll try to find something,” and she seems to like that answer, so she lets it go.

“I got him earrings,” She explains, and pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place in Steve’s head, “The ones that he’s wearing now. And five other pairs.”

“Wow,” Steve nods, feigning awe even though he knows Jim probably paid for them himself, “That was nice of you. He liked ‘em?”

“Yes,” She nods, “He likes earrings. And he said he’s going to wear them with me when we go to California.”

“California,” Steve echoes, brows raised, “That’s nice. When are you going?”

“In a month,” El recites, “Billy’s from California.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods, eyes drawn to Billy’s framed employee picture on the wall, noticing the tan adorning the smooth skin of his handsome face, “I know.”

--

“Okay,” Billy turns to look at the girls in his backseat, bright smiles on both of their faces, “Gas money?” 

“Check,” Max slides him a wad of cash, and so does El.

“Snacks?” Billy pulls his wallet out, stuffing the bills inside.

“Check!” El takes over this time, a plastic bag in her hand that’s filled with enough ziploc bags of goldfish to last them halfway through the road trip. 

“Bags?” 

“Check,” Max jabs a thumb towards the camaro’s trunk, “We didn’t forget our suitcases, Billy.”

“If you did, and I hadn’t asked, you would have blamed me,” Billy narrows his eyes at his stepsister, “Don’t make me push you out of the moving car.”

What can he say: things are better, they’re not perfect. She knows he’s joking, though, she sticks out her tongue in response.

“I have one more thing,” El calls, effectively breaking up Billy and Max’s banter. The two look curiously at her, and she passes Billy an envelope, thick towards the bottom left corner.

“It’s a late birthday present.” She informs him, “Open it. It’s for the trip.”

“El,” Billy tears at the envelope with a confused furrow in his brow, “You got me stuff for my birthday. Why more?”

“It’s not from me,” She admits, “Just open it.”

The envelope was sealed well, by whoever sealed it. Billy all but mangles the paper to remove its contents, and when he does, a pair of earrings falls out, mounted on a purple plastic card. Claire’s.

There’s a pink and white striped surfboard on the left side, and a glitter-covered palm tree on the left. There’s a note inside too, and Billy peels it apart much more cautiously than he had the envelope.

Billy,

Happy birthday. Enjoy California.

- Steve

P.S: I wasn’t kidding. You look good in pink.

Billy nearly rips the earring card trying to wrench the surfboard off. Once he gets it out, he slides it into his ear, passing the palm tree back to El and grinning at the girls through his rear-view mirror. He admires the way that the earring looks against his tanned skin, and- oh, look at that; his eyes do scrunch when he smiles.

“Ready?” He raises a brow, sunglasses perched on his head and lost in his curls  in wait of the California sun.

“Ready,” They confirm, and El’s nod sends the palm tree earring swinging beside her face.

Billy revs the engine, and it’s never been a happier sound, “California, here we come.”

[nitrateglow]

Halloween 2023 marathon: 12-15

Rope (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)

Brandon and Philip do everything together: share aesthetic philosophies, go on road trips, and commit thrill kills in their living room. After strangling a classmate, they hide the body in a chest. They also happen to be throwing a dinner party that night. The thrill of possibly being caught excites Brandon, but Philip is on the verge of a breakdown all night. And when their old prep school headmaster Rupert shows up and starts to notice their combined strange behavior, matters grow potentially deadly.

I watched this one with my grandmother, who had never even heard of it before. She ended up really liking it, which made me happy because I think Rope is Hitchcock's most underrated film. Hitchcock himself dismissed the movie as a failed experiment. The central gimmick is that the film appears to be shot in a single take, lending the story the sense that it's all unfolding in real time. It's not a seamless illusion, but it is effective, so sorry Hitchcock, you're wrong.

Rope is a great companion piece to Dial M for Murder. Both are based on plays and both feature debonair, egomaniacal killers who seem more excited about the plotting of their crimes than any material benefit they could get from them. (Someone please write a crossover where Tony and Brandon compete to commit the best perfect crime ever. Like that is the fanfic content I want!)

Jeopardy (dir. John Sturges, 1953)

Doug and Helen are an ordinary American couple vacationing in Mexico with their young son Bobby. They go to a remote fishing spot to picnic. The pro of this spot is its nostalgic quality for Doug. The con is that its remoteness is inconvenient when you get trapped under heavy ass timber just as the tide's coming in... which happens to Doug. With only four hours to save him from drowning, Helen drives off to find help. Instead she gets kidnapped by Lawson, an escaped criminal who isn't shy about murdering people. He's uninterested in helping Doug, so Helen has to find a way to either escape her captivity or manipulate Lawson into helping her before it's too late.

What an underrated thriller! I mainly watched it for Barbara Stanwyck, but Jeopardy is a great suspense film with a fiendishly simple set-up. It's the perfect example of writing advice I once received about how to deal with writer's block: just keeping making your main character's life worse. Got a husband about to drown? How about being kidnapped by an escaped criminal while you're trying to get help?

It runs at just 69 minutes and not a second of that runtime is dull. I had planned on only watching half of the movie before going to bed because it was very late, but I was so wrapped up in it that I said "Screw it" to getting a good night's sleep.

Stanwyck is of course amazing. Her character Helen is written as a terrified housewife susceptible to "hysteria" (hello casual 1950s sexism), but she's actually pretty crafty. Stanwyck plays her as a fighter and even when her captor gets the upperhand, you can see in her eyes that she's scrambling for the next potential escape plan.

The best scenes are between Helen and Lawson. There's both an antagonism and undeniable sexual tension between them from the start. When she seduces him in a shack, she starts lounging about and puffing at her cigarette like her character Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity, which is both funny and awesome. In addition, it's ambiguous how into Lawson Helen exactly is. You could say she seriously considers running away with him once he helps her husband out, but the opposite might be true as well.

In this kind of story, it would be easy to make the husband a wet rag in comparison to the attractive villain, but Doug is super likable, keeping a cheerful face on his increasingly hopeless situation, and his attempts to keep his son calm and optimistic are truly touching. And that just adds to the suspense-- you don't want to see that guy drown, even if Lawson is also charming and charismatic.

And hot. Cannot deny, Ralph Meeker is super hot in this, like holy shit. He's got some definite Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire vibes going on.

Also this promotional image of Stanwyck and her two male co-stars cracks me up. It's the polar opposite of the film's actual tone.

The Sealed Room (dir. DW Griffith, 1909)

In an unspecified century in an unspecified country, an unspecified king finds out his mistress is having an affair with the court minstrel. What's worse, they have their trysts in a hidden room the king likes using as his love cave. He decides to brick the two up alive, just as a gotcha.

The Sealed Room is one of my favorite nickelodeon era movies. It's got a great Poe-themed story, enjoyably hammy acting (the king makes so many reaction image worthy faces and poses, I just CAN'T--), and a pretty sophisticated use of composition and space that emphasizes the claustrophobic terror inherent in the premise.

This movie also features a great example of what I often call "silent movie logic." It's those scenes where something happens that would technically make a hell of a lot of noise but other characters don't notice and most of the time, I don't notice unless I think about it too hard. But in this case, it's hard to miss-- the king's servants start bricking up the exit to the hidden room while the mistress and the minstrel are like five feet away. Those servants are either very good at their job or the lovers are too horny to pay attention to anything else.

It Follows (dir. David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

When high school girl Jay loses her virginity at the end of a date, she expects her life to change. And it does-- but not in the way she expects. Her date tells her he's just passed on a curse to her-- a mysterious figure will follow her around until it gruesomely kills her and the only way to get it off her trail is to transmit the curse to someone else via sex. Terrified and hurt, Jay and her friends try to find a way to stop the monster permanently.

It Follows had so much hype around it back in 2014. It was the horror movie du jour, with everyone praising the hell out of its old-school vibe and intriguing premise.

I'm sad to say I was underwhelmed. The premise IS cool, as well as a fun meta commentary on the traditional sexual politics of the slasher genre, and the lead actress Maika Monroe is very good as the soulful young Jay. I was never really scared though-- and if you're a regular of this blog, then you know it's not because I don't like slow-burn horror. I love it, especially when there's a bare minimum of crappy jump scares. This one just felt meandering, slow for the sake of resembling artsier classics of cinematic horror, and I lost interest halfway through. Even the monster ceased to creep me out by the end.

And that makes me sad, because I loved the score and the atmosphere of the film. There's a weird out of time quality to it-- the score is very 80s synth, characters watch old horror movies on the TV (Jay and her date even go to see Charade at a movie theater), and there isn't much in the way of teens staring at their phones (though one of Jay's friends has a cool clam-shaped e-reader). However, I just could not get into the story. It just lacked that extra something to make me love it. Or maybe I just wasn't in the proper mood.

I don't know. It could very well be a "me" problem.

[noodlefluid]

I HAVE A RISE X READER ASKKK post krang invasion. donnie and reader are hanging out in his lab. donnie is upset bc he misses his old lab and the tech he had, now he has to build everything from scratch again. reader is chilling on one of donnies many spinny chairs and gets curious abt how his life was before the krang invaded, reader starts asking questions abt his lab and life n stuff.

he tells them how cool his lab was and the adventures they had and how they fought villians, then donnie brings up jupiter jim and the reader is like “what’s that??” and from then on, donnie is scavenging the base, looking for the comics (maybe the comics can be in leos room and they have a lil argument bc leo wants to know why donnie needs his comics and donnies ashamed to admit he wanted to get them so he can read them to reader) after donnie retrieves the comics he shows them to the reader and the two of them chill w each other, reading all of the jupiter jim comics

Never the same | Donnie×Reader

▪︎Sumary

Donnie gets nostalgic about his past life and start talking about it. After you ask him about one of his favorite super heroes, Donnie decides he have to show it to you no matter what.

❥Type: Fanfic

 ❥Characters: Donnie Leo Reader

 ❥Reader's pronouns: no mention

 ❥Relationship: Crush (implied)

 ❥Autor notes: Hi, sorry for the delay. This is my first request and therefore I wanted it to be the first one I published,I think this ended up being more focused on donnie and leo, but I hope you still like it . Also, please remember this is my first time writing and that english isn't my first language, any mistake either in writing style, grammar or just any suggestion in general is welcome, but please be kind :)

Warning: probably ooc leo and donnie, Angst, verbal argument, y/n is bland as hell lol, minor swearing

Word count:3225

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ »◦✿◦« ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

“ugh…” Donnie was looking at one of his latest invention, it didn't go as planned and it was starting to annoy him, this was already fifteenth try and it was going nowhere 

You were sitting in a chair beside him, spinning to beat the boredom and just trying to disconnect with the world for a moment, but as soon as you heard the sigh leave the purple turtle’s lips you stop what you were doing “What's wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just…this stupid thing doesn’t work” you could see the frustration in his face, he was agitated, he groaned out of frustration “This wouldn’t happened if I just had my old lab”

Curiosity began to flourish from the moment these words were uttered. Even when the four brothers were seen as heroes, no one really knew too much about them, and no one could be bothered to ask either, we were in and out of danger every single day. Still, the atmosphere of this half-built lab make you feel nostalgic, you were starting to miss normal even when you sometimes complained about how boring was your past life, you were missing those exact moment of boring.

You met the brothers once they saved you in one of the many rescues they performed after the krang began to invade New York and finally the whole world. A world of suffering, where humans and yokai struggled together trying to survive the apocalypse. Maybe it was because of the way you encountered them for the first time, but it didn't take you long to get attached to them.. Especially, the purple one, Donatello, he never left the base unless necessary since he was responsible for maintaining the shields, because of that you saw him often. Donnie took his job seriously, always making some sort of gadget  to make missions easier and faster. You spent a lot of time around him, it seemed to bother him at first but now he was more used to your presence. It was probably because of this that you started to feel curious about the past of the turtles that saved your life, and this was just the perfect moment to ask

“How was it?” You asked, looking at the ground due to nervousness

“hmm? what do you mean?” The mutant looked away from his work to pay attention to you

“your lab, how was it?"

Donnie's face immediately light up “Oh my dear y/n, it was magnificent” He turn his whole body to you, noticeably excited to talk about it “I had so many inventions and material, you would be impress, a-and” The excitement make him trip over his word “Not to brag but the aesthetics were, heh, just marvelous, if I say myself, the purple LEDs and my incredible organization make my lab the best room in our...home” he sigh that last word, leaning back on his chair “I’m sure you would have loved it...I use to spend days in between those walls. I had this drone named S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N, he was sometimes annoying, but he was my pride, almost like a son to me, he was severed damage in a fight, and just when I managed to bring him back… this happened” He looked annoyed but you could feel the sadness on his words, he keep talking. “I just kinda wish this lab could make itself, you know?, now it just messy and doesn’t look scientific enough, my old lab had everything a turtle could wish, it was perfect”

“Well, I think is nice tho” you felt stupid for saying that and gave yourself a mental slap in the face, he didn't need kind words, it was a dumb

“Yeah…it is "nice", but I miss my old one, and…well, I guess my whole life in the lair” He sounded a little down there, looking somewhere between his work and blueprints

“How…how was your life before?" You feel imprudent for a moment, you already make him quite sad, and you were just putting salt on an open wound. Sometimes you hated your curiosity “if…if you don’t mind me asking, I-I understand if you don’t…” your voice reflected a bit of shyness as you spoke faster than usual, it didn't matter if you were friends with the turtle, he still was your superior, and most important,the hero of the apocalipse, you always tried to treat him with respect, but the familiarity was such that you sometimes forgot to put your filter on

Donnie gives you a little smile “It's okay." Of course the turtle was oblivious to your thoughts, he didn't care about ranks between you two "Well…hmm" He started talking "we were just hiding in the sewer, we couldn’t really go out that much. I think It is one of the few things I like about now, we can interact with humans without scaring them away” He looked puzzled, hesitant, probably asking himself what was worth telling “we were…usually fighting again some mutant who was dumb enough to use their power for evilish things, those oozquitoes where quiet the trouble”

You opened your eyes, news were full of strange event about people turning into monster, one of them being the world famous chef Rupert Swaggart, but you actually never pay too much attention to it, since it always ended up solving itself in some strange circumstance, now you knew the true “Wait, it was you? that it's so awesome” Your eyes were sparkling of excitement, just when you thought they couldn’t be cooler "Those incident were everywhere, I actually thought they were just some kind of stuff TV came up with for the audience or something like that, b-but it was you?, it must have been fun, you're amazing Donnie" This just add to the reasons you admired the turtle brothers

Donnie's cheeks burn at the compliment, he try to hide it “Yes, it was fun. Although I preferred it when we were just relaxing in the lair, making fun of the last stupid thing Leo did, playing video games, and when the only fights we had were over who got the last slice of pizza or which Jupiter Jim movie we were going to see first, you know?” He spoke softly, looking down and making a few gesture with his hands here and there while speaking

You looked at him confused. “What's that?” you asked

“What's what?”

“That umm.. Jupiter…Jim?” you were quiet for a few seconds trying to figure out if you had said it correctly, after deciding that you did you start talking again “What it is?”

Donnie looks at you like if you had insulted all his ancestry “Captain Jupiter Jim? you don’t know who captain Jupiter Jim is?!” You started thinking that this had to be really important for one of the Hamato brothers to be this defensive, maybe it has something to do with their training? perhaps a really important figure in the ninja world?. Donatello looked thoughtful you were gonna ask about it but you were interrupted as the soft shell suddenly stood up with a determined look “I need to go” and with that the turtle walked out his lab leaving you even more confused

« • ❁ • »

Donnie went into Leonardo’s room, he was the biggest fan, so it wouldn’t be weird for him to have the comics and maybe the movies that were saved from the lair. He was searching in the bookshelf

“What are you doing?” the sudden sound of a voice make him jump, slamming his back against the shelf and knocking some things over., it was his twin brother

Donnie didn't know whether knowing who the voice was coming from made him panicked more or relieved...he was panicking obviously.  “uh- um…no-nothing?, nothing! not searching for anything here” the soft-shell turtle picked up the thing that fall from the bookshelf while speaking

Leo looked at his brother with obvious oddity “uh…sure” the blue turtle throw his odachi on his bed, he was just arriving from a mission and totally didn’t expect to see his brother trying to steal something, he keep making eye contact with Donnie, he knew how to get responses from him “so?”

“s-so what?” Donnie try to maintain the eye contact

“What ya looking for? Need your big brother's help?” Leo smiled teasingly, it was weird to see Donnie so nervous, and he was gonna tease the hell out of him to get answers

“I just said I wasn’t looking for anything, and for the last time, it is obvious that I’m the older Nardo.”

“uh-huh…yeah, sure” Leo looked unimpressed of both statements

“As I say, I wasn’t looking for anything, since anything that belong to the such of you it’s probably unworthy” Donnie broke the eye contact first, looking at the door, obviously wanting to escape from this situation

Leo saw his intentions and immediately put himself as a barrier between his brother and the door “Well, if my belongings are so unworthy, what were you doing in my chambers?” he made a mocking gesture along with the last word, kinda proud of himself for using book words

“I-I…um” he stuttered trying to find the correct words to leave this situation “You know…I was just doing normal typical brotherly things, just uh…wanting to spend time with my favorite brother” Those last two words had a bitter taste in donnie's mouth. 

Leo couldn’t help but laugh “I’m your favorite brother?” he continued laughing so much that tears started to come out “That was a good one Dee hehe…so what do you want?” The face of the blue turtle turn serious with the last sentence

“I said it was nothing” Donatello hissed annoyed “...but just by chance, have you seen those jupiter jim comics?” He finally admitted,

“Ah ha! you did want something” Leo shouted victorious, just to realize about something not even a second later “Wait…Why do you want my comics?” Leonardo knew his brother, this was suspicious behavior, Donnie was something special when it comes to comics.

“Why do I have to tell you everything? Do you have them or not?” The soft-shell bark his words at his brother, trying to hide his embarrassment, if Leo was to know the reason, he would never hear the end of it

“I do have then, but I'm not giving them to you if you don’t tell me, so start talking” Leonardo insisted, it sounded like a command which make Donnie even more nervous

“I’m not telling you” 

“Then you won’t have the comics”

“But I need them”

“Then talk."

Both twins were known for their stubbornness, they never gave to others, much less to each other.. Their fight could last hours if you let them, and one of their brothers always had to interfere. They stared at each other once again with flaming eyes, trying to intimidate the other

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because" The other replied "I’m talking to the person who cried when he had to open his comic without gloves” 

“I didn’t cry!”

“You did!”

“Ugh! whatever, just give me the comic for einstein sake” Donnie’s fist clenched

“Just tell me why you want them!” Leo demand once more

“I just want to...read them”

"Why can't you just tell me the true?" 

"I JUST DON'T WANT TO" The soft shell shouted, making his twins take a step back, both looking at each other surprised. The purple turtle covered his own mouth, he wasn't expecting to yell

Leo sighed, he didn't wanna fight with his brother for some dumb comics, he has more important thing to worry about, and knowing Donatello, he knew he wouldn't tell a thing if he didn't want to "Fine…no need to yell, I was just teasing" He sighed once again, not dearing to look at his brother

Donatello had a complicated expression. Back in the lair, they would keep screaming at each other until Raphael or Michelangelo made them stop, they would keep teasing at each other, maybe go physic, but at the end of the day they wouldn't even apologize, at least not with words, they would hang out in one of their room or Donnie's lab and have those unspoken conversations they always had. But this wasn't the lair or their past lives, there were just so much that wasn't the same, even when they were still living together, they never see each other, they were starting to feel like strangers, and it make Donatello feel insecure "I-I'm...sorry…I didn't- I" he spoke tripping over his own words. Donnie felt pathetic, starting to fidget with his fingers, his breath a little accelerated, avoiding any eye contact

"Hey, hey, It's okay, don't worry" Leonardo tried to comfort his brother, smiling and making sure the other knew he wasn't angry or anything while searching for something under his bed. A cardboard box "Here..." Leo offer the box to the other mutant

Donatello took a closer look at the box, inside there were not only the Jupiter Jim comics, but also some action figures, posters, among other stuff from the franchise "umm…thanks" both brother were uncomfortable, neither of them were good with "feelings" and "sincere moments"

"Yeah yeah, but next time just ask, don't come to my room to snoop around like a creep, you weirdo." Leonardo teased Donnie, trying to make the atmosphere a little less serious, it was starting to suffocating them both

The comment make the other laugh a little, but he covered his mouth to not give the him a clue "Scoff" he looked away

"Oh, shut up."

Donnie finally had the comics, now it was time to show them to you, were you gonna like them? What if you didn't like them? He went through all those problems, if you didn't like them he would probably cry internally. 

« • ❁ • »

Donnie sends you a message to come to his lab. You were still confused about the events from early on, but maybe he needed you for something important, it wasn't weird to ask you to test his inventions. When you arrived at the turtle's lab, he was on his desk looking at something, but you couldn't see it.

He then noticed you standing on the entrance "Finally!" the mutant spoke, he get up of his seat and walk towards you, taking you by the shoulder and sitting you on omce of the chairs, you then saw the thing he was looking at, there were various comics with Jupiter Jim as the title in it

"What's all this?" You asked 

"This, my dear y/n, is one of the best comic and movie franchises of all. And I just can't be friends with you if you don't know about this" Donnie has bright eyes, you could see how they were sparkling on excitement

"So...It's this the thing you talked about early?" You take on of the comics and give it a quick look at it, all your theories of a great and important ninja figure collapse with one glance, it was just a comic

"First of all, you can't call it "thing", this is a super valuable collection of Jupiter Jim merchandise" He takes the comic off your hands "second, you shall treat it with respect" he sat beside you. You couldn't help but laughed at how serious he was about those comics, it was hard to believe that the great Hamato Donatello, the smartest living being and one of your saviors, could be so excited about sometime so childish, your heart feel all fuzzy and warm inside.

The mutant searched sometimes inside the box, it looked like he was looking for something specific “ah ha! found it” the turtle beamed at the comic book in his hands, after giving it a quick look he gave it to you “here, read this one. It's one of the best to begin with”

You took the comic, staring at the cover. Just like the one before, the pages had the title “Jupiter Jim” in bright yellow, a dark skin man standing heroic, dressed as an astronaut with a little funny looking red fox on his side. You started reading the first page “The colors are so pretty”, it was the first comment you made, colors always had been a focus point for you

Donnie was just staring at you while you kept reading in silence, nodding or adding a few “I know, right” to your occasional comments. The purple turtle started to order the comics, trying to decide which one to give you next, there were a few chapters missing, he put a piece of paper to remember what needed explanation from a previous loss episode. He then just stared at you some more, it was quite interesting for him how focus you could get at something

“Wow…” You proclaim, closing the comic book and looking at the distance for a few seconds, trying to process what you have just read, and then looking at the turtle “That was such a roller coaster of emotion, like- like the fights a-and…“ You spoke fast, as if you were trying to put all your thoughts in one word "It just so awesome!! I can't describe it, I don't know how I have been living without knowing this" You kicked your feet with pure joy

Donnie was flapping his hand while listening to you talking about your first impression of the characters, story, just the whole thing! he didn’t want to interrupt but at the same time he wanted to ask so many questions about your thoughts. He felt himself over the moon just listening to you talking about one of his favorite things, he could barely conceal his delight “I know! I told you, this is a history treasure” he shouted, not being able to regulate his voice.

“I feel so foolish for thinking of such an amazing creation as childish, I shall regret my words and promise to worship this great creation.” You hold the comic with both hands, putting it in the air as a  sign of respect for a few seconds before snapping “Please, please!! show me some more” you got a little too close to the contrary 

Donnie would have usually pull you back, but his joy was just enough for him to not care and unconsciously put you closer instead “Oh dear y/n we are just getting started, this is not even a fraction of how amazing Jupiter Jim is” he took another comic book, holding it with both hand with the cover facing you, it was quite close to your face so you couldn't actually read the title “This is one of my favorite, buy I would need to explain some things, since to my sadness the first episode of this saga is missing” He put his chair closer to yours, opening the first page, you also got closer to get a better look “First…” He started explaining “The previous episode ended with this big battle between Jupiter Jim and…” You both began to read the comic, laughing and sharing your thoughts of the story. Time seemed not to move forward as you both enjoyed your time together, just having a fun time in the middle of this chaotic world, which may never be the same again, but for that moment you both forgot about that.

[twilightmalachite]

Raison d’être - A Premature Burial 3

Author: Akira

Characters: Shu, Mika

Translator: Mika Enstars

"By the way, Oshi-san, I know it’s a lil’ late t’ask, but how come I’m bein’ brought with to yer family home?"

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Winter

Location: The Itsuki's House (Exterior)

Noon the following day. At the Itsuki family villa, the building where Itsuki Shu was born and raised…

Shu: What a nostalgic house of mine.

Hmph. Although the building itself remains to be a half-hearted and unbecoming Western-wannabe. I envy that dreadful Tenshouin only in that respect.

Mika: Nnah, ya sure like the Western style, Oshi-san.

Shu: Japanese style is tasteful, but it needs to be just that. Nothing should be done by halves. I find the Rokumeikan[1] to be a disgrace upon Japanese history.

Though I suppose some art is borne from the chaos of transitional periods too.

Well, it’s fine. You know the house plenty well already, you can leave your luggage in the room that you used to occupy.

I was told the room has been left untouched as nobody’s had to use it.

In the meantime, I will greet my parents and the rest.

Mika: Ah, lemme come with ya. I’ve stayed here under their care fer a while, so I’d like to greet yer household as well. I’ve brought some souvenirs and stuff too!

Shu: Hm. It appears that you’ve learned some social etiquette as well.

Mika: This past year, I’ve been exposed to society to an extent—

By the way, Oshi-san, I know it’s a lil’ late t’ask, but how come I’m bein’ brought with to yer family home?

Shu: You’re asking this only now? And to correct you, this is not my family home.

The main residence of the Itsuki family is in Kansai. This is nothing but a villa built in Tokyo, built by a former head of the family several generations ago.

It is just a foothold; a frontier base used to advance into the Tokyo area, so to speak. Also called a vacation home.

Our main residence is a very old-fashioned Japanese-style building, in terms of convenience, it’s technology much is much more inferior than modern day—

My family moved here out of consideration for Grandfather’s poor health with the building made with a barrier free design.

Mika: So it’s kinda like a nursin’ home for yer grandfather, huh?

Shu: Yes. This was before I was born, however, so it would not be incorrect to say that this is my “family home where I was born and raised”.

And our grandfather, who had worried those around him for years saying he was dying, continued to live on for more than a decade.

Likely just an excuse so my western-minded grandfather could live in a modern, western-style building.

Mika: Nah, there’s no way…

Shu: As much as I hate to say it, Grandfather would do that.

To you, he might be nothing more than an “emaciated sick man” that you visited alongside me…

But for us in the Itsuki family, Grandfather was like the eye of a typhoon. A disaster, a windstorm that would destroy everything on a whim.

Since I was a child, Grandfather has been causing us all sorts of trouble time and time again.

No one could complain, though. This was my Grandfather, the head of the family attributed to the restoration of the Itsukis, they were dealing with. But everyone was tired of it.

And this time too, it’s likely just another of his “usual episodes”. Judging from the way Nii-sama spoke, at least.

Mika: (Ah, so looks like Oshi-san expected as much too. Thank goodness~, hopefully “Ryuu~-kun”-san and Nazuna-nii were right, then.)

(That the news that Grandfather passed away was just an inappropriate lie, or joke, and that he’s actually still alive and well.)

Mika: (And unlike what I’d heard from “Ryuu~-kun”-san, Oshi-san seems to be relatively calm…)

(Right, he’s no longer a kid that panics anytime somethin’ would happen, ain’t he?)

Shu: …What is it? Wipe that condescendingly affectionate and unpleasant look off your face at once!

Mika: Nnah~, my baaad? I dunno what t’say, when I’d lived in the house I never asked questions to try t’be considerate.

So I’m happy t’hear about your house among other things this time, Oshi-san! ♪

Shu: Hmph. Though if you hadn’t held back and asked, it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. You’re already my family, in many senses.

Well, I was rather unstable at the time, I suppose I would unreasonably yell back no matter what you had asked.

[ ☆ ]

← prev | story directory | next →

1. A large diplomatic building in Tokyo built to house diplomats and other guests from overseas. It stands as a controversial cultural symbol of the Meiji Period's Westernization policy. The Rokumeikan was done almost entirely in the western style, and notably does not mix Japanese and Western elements; Shu is likely referring to its status as a symbol and the westernization policy. See a photo of it here!

[pineappleciders]

hihi!! could i ask an omori headcannon with an gn reader that loves videogames?? if you already do, could ya do with an reader that loves the stars?? SORRY IF I'M BROTHRJRGTIGN YOU SKDLVJSKL

MIKU DANCING BTW

RW OMORI gang with a reader who loves video games

includes: SUNNY, AUBREY, KEL, HERO, MARI, and BASIL

A/N: i have not done this so!!i also might do the stars request sometime :3 and you aren't bothering anyone i promise🫶 it has come to my attention after writing this that i mentioned wii's and controllers a lot. i grew up a console gamer and since omori kinda takes place in like the 2000's there isn't much pc stuff oops🤫

☆ ☆ ☆

SUNNY

i just KNOW he loves video games. he locks himself in his room and plays games on his puter for like 8 hours straight

his favorite games are RPGs and shooters!!! he really likes the old-school super mario bros games, and he likes smash bros sometimes but rages too hard at it

he can coach you in shooters so you absolutely DESTROY the competition. like he has a little mic in ur ear telling you what to do like you're playing sports

he also LOVES when you teach him game tactics, like his eyes are sparkling when you show him a sick combo in smash bros or an animation cancel. he thinks you're so cool for knowing that

he is always daydreaming about games and games actually affect a lot of stuff in headspace for him!!!! like a bunch of boss fights are based off of bosses in his fav childhood games

as a kid he always took his gameboy everywhere, and you always watch him play and cheer him on. and he lets you play with it too!!

AUBREY

video games are more of a nostalgic thing for her, like for her they're childhood memories of playing mario on kel's wii and getting super competitive with him

she likes to watch you play!! like if you're stuck in a certain part of a game she'll brainstorm and try to help you out. she's also very impressed that your brain can comprehend it all, for her it all just melts together

honestly i think she'd kinda suck at a lot of games but give her a controller on a FPS shooter and she's like. laughing maniacally and going on a killing spree

she definitely has some. errrr . rage issues. you might wanna take your controller back before she can throw it at the wall. she doesn't say ez or anything but if her teammates are trash-talking her she gets BRUTAL and bullies the shit out of them

she likes RPGs for awhile but when she gets stuck or lost she gets angry and gives up LMFAO. huffs and thanks you if you help her out but still might not play the game out of spite

KEL

he played more games in his childhood, but he's always been a tryhard!!!!

he doesn't rage, but he gets really competitive and tries REALLY hard. esp if he's against aubrey. he was more of a sore loser as a kid, now he's a better sport. still super sweaty though

lots of playing mario kart!!! the only other big game lover in the group is sunny so you three end up playing games on kel's wii together. kel prefers to play it himself but if you wanna take a turn he's all for watching you play!

he cheers you on and tells you to absolutely demolish the enemy team. like he's hovering over you and shouting like "HE's RIGHT THERE HE'S RIGHT THERE"

hero ends up telling u all to get outside and play when u end up sitting on the couch for hours. you groan but reluctantly comply

he appreciates it if you coach him in a game,, he's really great at fighting games like mortal kombat but he kinda sucks ass at FPS shooters. RPGs he just doesn't find entertaining and usually gets distracted

i can see him liking GTA but never being allowed to play it, so if you have it he'd play it at your house (u two giggle together when he enters the strip club) (and hero yells at you both for it)

HERO

hero never really played many games, only as a small child on his gameboy. sometimes he'd watch kel play games but other than that he isn't experienced

honestly. he goes into a game saying he doesn't know how to play and is gonna get his shit rocked and he sucks sooo bad and then he is GODLY at the game.

like he picks up the controller and his thumbs just start moving even if he has no idea what's going on. it kinda pisses u off LMFAO

he's great at gaming but doesn't find much interest in it, he'd love to watch you play though!! he thinks it's so cool how you understand everything that's going on on the screen

probably gets you an old-school gaming device like a gameboy or nintendo DS as a gift,, he thinks you'd appreciate it because it's 'vintage', and buys cartridges of games from his childhood so you can experience it with him!!

MARI

she doesn't game often (at all) but when she does she's AMAZING AT IT. like you introduce her to a game expecting to absolutely roll her and so ur about to go easy on her and you get DESTROYED

and she'll get all smug and act innocent about it too. like "oh haha i haven't played this in so long i'm surprised i'm still good at it!😊😊" all while literally wiping the floor with you

she claps for you and tells you she's proud of you if you beat a certain level or level up or something. she'll like make you a special treat too even if it's something small (she's very proud!!)

always insisting that you and sunny 1v1 or play together. she thinks it'd be so cute to have you to share something you both love!!!!

she never rages or anything, but i can see her getting really dirty sometimes with trash-talk. like if someones being mean to you in vc or match chat she's angrily typing the worst things imaginable and telling you not to look

BASIL

like aubrey, games are more nostalgic childhood things for him. like he remembers always watching sunny play on his gameboy and cheering on sunny and kel when they played games on saturdays

he's okay at gaming, like he's not bad but he's not good. he's okay at FPS games and shooters but he prefers RPGs and cute games like minecraft and stardew valley. indie games and games like OMORI r stuff i think he'd like too

loves to watch you play, and if you ask him if he wants to try he might hesitate but agrees and starts SHREDDING. idk i feel like he'd he really good at cod zombies even if he thinks he sucks. like he literally is so good at it it's annoying

very encouraging. he is your #1 cheerleader when playing

when he's in the store and sees like merch of games or figurines he always thinks of you like 'oh Y/N would like that!!' and if he can afford it then he gives it to you all casually

"yeah i saw this $300 figurine at the store, it made me think of you! ... do you not like it? i can bring it back !!!!"

[radleysgamereviews]

Honest Review of Gourdlets 7.5/10

I have never played a strictly sandbox game before, but when I heard Gourdlets had no objectives, no currency, no grinding for materials, and to just create a cute world, I knew I had to check it out. So, let’s dive in!

Want to watch my review? Click the link below! If not keep on reading :)

You start off with a small plot of land and a singular Gourdlet. You are told from the very beginning that Gourdlets are simple beings and are not picky with the world around them. Basically, they are just there for the good vibes and fun times. Then the game gives you a quick rundown of all the building features and options, and when that’s done you are sent on your merry way. That’s it, that’s the game. A simple sandbox.

However, I want to dive a little deeper into the game without giving all the details and I feel the best way to do this, is with a list.

Outdoor Decorating

Like I said earlier, you are given a very small piece of land to start, and you’ll realize pretty quickly that you’ll run out of room. Thankfully, the game gives you a few land and path options to expand in any way you want as well as being able to place those paths in either a straight line or sketch alternative. Once you have grown the land to your liking (or left it the way it is), you can begin exploring the different categories to make a perfect town, some of those categories being housing, decorations, and foliage. While the decorations and foliage are pretty self-explanatory, houses and buildings have a pretty cool feature! You can decorate the inside!

2. Indoor Decorating

Just like the outdoors, you are given different decorating options to choose from, but of course for indoor features. Some of the categories are appliances, seating, tables, wallpaper, flooring, and much more. Each house/building only has one room to furnish and depending on what size structure you picked, will determine how big the size of the room is. Something that I missed with my video review is that they have indoor fencing options which basically is like placing a wall. I prefer using tables to build walls though, because you can place things on top whereas the indoor fencing you cannot, but that’s just me. The wonderful thing about this game is you get to decide how you want to build.

3. Gourdlet Customization

Lastly, Goudlets are able to be customized! You can pick any color imaginable, like really, any color. From neon blue, to bright orange, to deep red, you will never run out of color options. They also have a reasonable number of cute accessories to put on your adorable veggie friends. Essentially, all of your Gourdlets will be different, or you can make them all the same.

/

Instantly I fell in love with my new vegetable friends, and I felt like each Gourdlet that arrived in my town had their own unique personality, which made me love them even more. And if that wasn’t enough, the decorations, furniture, and landscape features are so eye catching and colorful it made me want to dive right in. The hard part of this all, I really don’t have any knowledge on sandbox games, which made it difficult to come up with a score for Gourdlets. So, I had to take a different approach with my scoring. Usually, I base my score on gameplay, storyline, character development, if it’s easy to play for everyone and price. This time however, I will be basing my score off of graphics, building mechanics, number of items to choose from, and price.

With that said, I will be giving Gourdlets a score of 7.5/10.

First and foremost, Gourdlets is $4.99USD, which in my eyes is an amazing price for this game. Seeing a price for a game be so affordable for so many people is something we don’t see often anymore. As for the graphics, I personally love the pixelated style. I think it gives off a very nostalgic vibe and as a 90s kid it’s just something that will never get old to me. Building mechanics are ridiculously easy and not having to grind for money or materials was amazing. I feel like every city builder game I play these days requires a ton of grinding and it’s starting to get old. Where I think this game falls short however, is the somewhat lack of items, items being exclusive to indoor/outdoor use, and the single room houses/buildings. I’ll give a quick example. I wanted to build a boardwalk with arcade games and rides, problem was the arcade machines are indoor exclusives and there was only one ride. Now I could build a building to be my arcade, but the options were either a tent, a house, or a huge townhall looking structure. I honestly would have loved to have a building that was designed look like a shop to be placed on my boardwalk or even around town. This kind of brings me to my last point of single room houses/buildings. The indoor fencing is just not cutting it for me when it comes to dividing the floor plan. Being able to have multiple rooms would honestly be a game changer. Could you imagine being able to have a restaurant looking building and, on the inside, have the ability to design multiple rooms to be a kitchen, dining area, and maybe even add on a few bathrooms. That alone would bring the game to the next level.

/

Overall, if you are looking for a cozy sandbox game with super chill vibes, a game to kind of turn your brain off for a little while, this is the game for you!

[penroseparticle]

Hiiieeeeeeee. I heard you like v-games.

3. Favorite boss?

15. Hardest game you’ve ever played?

19. A game that you wish you could play for the first time again.

25. Favorite environment in a game?

40. Best game cover art.

I went back in my inbox and there are some asks I haven't answered, clearing things out. So throwback meme!

3. Favorite Boss:

I'm partial to Facade from Link's Awakening. I think he's simple, he's memorable. He comes at a part of the game where you learn a very big revelation. The music for The Face Shrine is stunning, and really does something interesting considering the Ballad of the Wind Fish isn't a part of the song despite being part of the other dungeons' music. I like that Facade isn't an enemy you can fight with a sword. I like that his name means edifice, and he's the floor aka part of the building, but also mask, and he's a face. I like that he comes when you have to decide between dream or reality.

Can you tell I did a Zelda deep dive a bit ago?

15. Hardest Game You've Ever Played?

This is a tough and interesting question- what's a hard game, after all. Do I play hard games? I don't know if that's something I do. I like fiddly or intricate games. But I'm not sure I play hard games- I get frustrated easily. I guess I do play hard games, but they have to onboard you really really well. You have to feel like it's hard but achievable right? Like you're struggling but you could succeed.

I might say Desktop Dungeons. Simple concept, really intricate execution, technically not hard at all, but the Tower of Ga'antalet is still not cleared on Vicious on my save file, and I followed that game from Alpha to Beta to release to Rerelease with better graphics. My account is like a decade old. Maybe I'm dumb. Or maybe I just need to drill in and practice, because I've cleared almost everything else.

19. A game that you wish you could play for the first time again.

Final Fantasy Tactics. It's my first major game. Introduced my love of turn based strategy. Great story, rich execution. Broken as hell and glitchy, but in a fun way. Tons of side content but plenty of room to be expanded. I wish I could go through it the first time all over again, not knowing what was next, what was important, how to play correctly. The struggle was fun. I remember getting creamed on Dorter Trade City, like every new player. I remember thinking the Desert Map was crazy. I remember not playing the game for like 3 weeks when I got to the rooftop with Rafa because it was IMPOSSIBLE (Ok maybe some bits of the game aren't that great. Fix Rafa's AI so that's not a roulette ok thx).

Favorite Game. Excellent content. Gonna play it again right now probably.

25. Favorite Environment in a Game?

God I really, REALLY like the setting in FFXII, but particularly I like the Rainy Season Giza Plains. I just have such fond memories of that area, and the Wild Hunts are fun. It's early, it's accessible, its somehow new and exciting because it introduced weather as something that you have to care about. I like Phon Coast too but it's a bit too sparkly, and I also like the Salikawoods too. Just a great game for environments imo.

40. Best Game Cover Art

Ask me this in 5 minutes and my answer will change. I think it would be really funny to say Triangle Strategy (Hello most generic cover art and name of all time. Great game, but TERRIBLE marketing). I think today I'm going to go with Celeste- because it's nostalgic for me. It's cute.

[asleepinawell]

i'm in some sort of Mood about finishing the kh series (for a given value of finished) since I've been playing it since kh1 on ps2 a million years ago but instead of dealing with that i'm going to write my mini retrospective of the titles based on my replay

rest below the line

kh1

story - 7/10. it wasn't the most interesting but it was the first and laid the groundwork for the series. maleficent had a lot of screentime which is always a big plus. love her evil ass. it's also the start of the 'kairi never gets to do anything ever and gets kidnapped every time she tries' persisting problem in the whole series

gameplay - 6/10. feels a bit clunky now in comparison to some of the newer ones. it was harder than some later ones, but mostly because of wonky control issues and not great boss fights. but it's very playable and fun still. mushrooms do a little dance and shake their butt at you. i will never not feel nostalgic about traverse town music. THANK GOD YOU CAN SKIP THE PRE FIGHT CUTSCENES ON RETRIES NOW OH MY GOD YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ONE BEFORE THE DARK RIKU FIGHT WAS LIKE TEN MINUTES AND BACK IN THE DAY YOU HAD TO REWATCH IT EVERY TIME AAHHHHJHHH *i am tranquilized and removed from the room*

re: chain of memories

story - 8/10. i love the focus on the organization 13 internal drama. bitches are running around bad mouthing and killing each other. larxene is a constant joy. marluxia is pretty and goes swish swish and makes flowers. axel was an instant fave. zexion is a shitty twink and i do so love shitty twinks. there was some disney stuff too i guess

gameplay - 2/10. the first time i played it my brother was crashing at my apartment and watching me play and got very into making cool deck combos. so i had him do that for me and i did the combat and the fun sibling shenanigans got me through it. this time i quit after thirty minutes and watched the cutscenes on youtube. it's just so repetitive and meh

358/2 days

story - 7/10. that's too many soras! put some back! story was a bit slow at times but i did enjoy seeing the daily life of the organization and axel/saïx handling their divorce so so well. needed more demyx

gameplay - it's packaged as a movie now so i did not replay the game and can't fairly rate it. i remember it being not the best combat but not terrible for a ds game

kh2

story - 8/10. it would get higher but the fact the beginning is incomprehensible if you haven't played com and 358 loses it some points....i had not played com when i got kh2 and boy howdy. it made more sense on the replay of course and yeah it's a good story. obsessed with how maleficent remains one of the main recurring characters in this series and just Does Shit from time to time because why not. god forbid women do anything etc. also the gay divorce continues to go terribly. saïx is handling this so well i say as he goes into berserk mode again. needed more riku screentime tho

gameplay - 9/10. huge upgrade from previous titles. it was very fun and fluid. the form shifts were a great addition. there were a lot of options but it didn't feel overwhelming or like it disrupted combat. my only real complaint was it felt a bit too on rails at some parts... like cutscene, battle, walk three steps repeat. oh and i hated the gummi missions but i am a gummi hater in general. oh also antiform was amazing. sora can turn into a feral creature... as a treat

birth by sleep

story - 10/10. fuck i love birth by sleep. aqua my beloved daughter who is the most terrifying keyblade master ever. terra my troubled son who got fucked over by shitty adults on an hourly basis. ven the thousand year old little kid who has never caught a break once. also hey it's xehanort and he also has ex husband drama. only note is that aqua should get to say fuck

gameplay - 10/10. the command deck was right up my alley and command forms were the best form gameplay they've done. i loved how all three kids had a unique style and abilities. i loved melding cards and gems to make new cards. i enjoyed playing monopoly. i thought it was the best game in the series when i first played it and that remains true

re:coded

story - 6/10. it was okay? it was largely a rehash but did add a few things. my friend and i kept saying welcome back alvis whenever data riku used a computer so that was fun

gameplay - this was also presented as a movie in the bundle so i won't score it. i don't even remember how it was from way back when i played it

dream drop distance

story- 9/10. the games that switch between multiple perspectives seem to be my favorites and i think it's partly that it makes the story more interesting. the time traveling norts were a bit wtf but that's just an inescapable part of the series. inspired me to get twewy which i will be playing next. MEOW WOW!!!!!

gameplay - 9/10. flowmotion was really neat and fit the style well. i loved the pokemon aspect so much you have no idea. i was a little sad you couldn't meld command cards but it would have been Too Much with all the other stuff going on. a few fights near the end had some really dumb mechanics (the type where when you look up a guide it just says good luck) but there were also some excellent ones. i do think it lost a little something in the port because the stylus on 3ds was important. however there is nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing meow wow hit xehanort with giant bouncy orbs so I'm willing to forgive it a lot

union x/back cover/dark road

story - 9/10. i was shocked how much i enjoyed the story of these. i got very invested and i was only watching the cutscenes, not playing. really interesting world building and the master of masters was an instant fave. one of the only kh titles that passes (barely) the bechdel somehow. also could be retitled as kh: dead kids, because boy did a lot of kids die! extra points for maleficent managing to set major events in motion twice and being very eh whatever about it. love her for that. and the backstory of the xehanort/eraqus divorce, of course. i love a good divorce

gameplay - didn't play this one, just watched ELEVEN HOURS of cutscenes. no longer available which is hilarious considering how much important lore is in it that is referenced in kh3. hopefully they make it into a single player offline game someday with better gameplay

fragmentary passage

story - 8/10. very short but filled in some gaps. i love aqua so i was predisposed to love this one

gameplay - 8/10. it felt like a rough draft for kh3 and that meant it didn't have all the annoying extra crap kh3 added in and played pretty smoothly. i liked the little puzzles. it was a unique game and i enjoyed it more than i expected

kh3

story - 6/10. the fact i had to sit through entire disney movies worth of cutscenes brings the score way down. we did not need to see 3 musical numbers in frozen. if i wanted that I'd watch the movie. i just wanted to play the damn game. the majority of the game is sora got benched and has to get his groove back which was very disappointing for the climatic finale to the series. once i got into the end game though it was much better (i would rate the later game stuff way above a 6 which just makes my frustration with earlier stuff worse). re:mind added in the bits i felt were missing and i came away satisfied overall with the wrap up. axel/saïx had divorce arc three and then got back together finally 🏳️‍🌈🥂🎉. xehanort/eraqus also got back together as they fucked off to be gay in the afterlife. finally we are free of the norts (OR ARE WE???) and the master and the foretellers are slated to come back next from the looks of things. maleficent continues to hang out in the wings waiting for opportunities to #girlboss and I'm excited too see what cataclysmic events she sets off next

so that's it. i did watch the brief melody of a memory scenes but there wasn't too much new there. i may watch the cs from the missing link beta at some point. otherwise it's back to my life long journey of waiting for the next title to drop

gameplay - 5/10. ugh. i bought the game when it came out but between the full length disney movies and the over saturated gameplay gimmicks i didn't get far. this time i powered through and by the end i was enjoying it for the most part because I'd figured out what things to ignore and how to avoid them. attractions were the worst addition to gameplay ever. everything was too flashy. way too many instances of being locked in a "cool" transition animation instead of actually doing combat which broke up the flow of things. i missed the command deck and how much it let you customize your play style. i didn't like the keys being locked to command forms as much as the bbs forms since it meant if you had a keyblade with better stats but hated the special on it you were kinda fucked. this became less of a problem as the game went but was still annoying. overall felt like a step back from the others. they tried to do too much. oh also why were there ten thousand instances of having to learn new controls for some new mini game in every area??? just let me hit things i am begging you. it really felt like they went for cool spectacles over satisfying gameplay

general notes on all of them: i enjoyed the story much more this time due to being able to play them in order. the fact they all released on different platforms originally made the complicated story even more confusing since i couldn't afford to buy a new system every time a new one came out. i really hope they veer away from that practice in the future but i kinda doubt it especially since they've got another mobile game lined up already. while the disney stories were fun early on it felt like the story outgrew them (except for the characters who were in the main story as well like mickey and maleficent) and they were kinda a drag by 3. i doubt they can move away from those since they're the whole gimmick of the series but it would be better imo. deeply worried they'll start bringing in newer disney acquisitions.

one of my biggest complaints about the series has always been how few female characters there are and how little many of them are used. it got slightly better later in the series but overall was still not great, especially for kairi. i kept wondering if they added stuff for her in re:mind due to complaints about this.... the dlc felt like an apology for several things tbh. aqua was great but she shouldn't be the only one and even she got upstaged in kh3 when she's supposed to be the third most powerful keyblade master. weirdly enough maleficent was probably the best written female character. really wild how much she wove into the plot and affected events so much without even trying to (especially in union x). she should fire pete though (i think she should hire demyx)

I'd like to see them let you play as characters other than sora more often since that was always really neat (he's had a billion games to himself now). I'd love a kairi and aqua game but i can imagine square and disney both clutching their pearls over female protagonists

something i noticed was that playing them when i was older i liked sora much better. when i started the series as a teenager i found him annoying. as an adult i have more sympathy and tolerance for teenaged boys who are Going Through It. growth or something

[cryptidsurveys]

Thursday, August 15th, 2024.

Do you like McDonald’s sprite? It's fine. I'm not a big soda drinker, though. I typically only have it when I go to the movies, and in that case it's a small diet Coke. I don't even finish it.

What age did you start becoming more independent? It's only been within the past year that I've really started to become more independent. I was in the waiting room for a therapy appointment a few weeks ago and one of the nurses was joking with me about how I was there without my dad. I was like, "You know, at first I felt all cool doing things on my own, but now it's like…oh, so this is adulthood. How boring." ;D

How do you like your oatmeal? I usually make it with fruit, peanut butter, and sugar-free chocolate syrup, but I like it all kinds of different ways.

Do you ever just dance around the house? Sometimes.

List 5 things you need to do soon. In order of urgency: litter boxes, switch my laundry to the dryer, go grocery shopping, clean my room, clean the upstairs bathroom.

What do you do when you start to feel sad? It depends. Sometimes I have to stuff it down for the time being; in that case, I try to distract myself until I can deal with it later. I also try to figure out what's making me sad (assuming it's not entirely obvious). Sometimes I'm just tired or running low on emotional/social reserves, which means all I really need is either some quiet time by myself to decompress or some positive interactions to bring everything back into balance. I also like to watch my favorite YouTubers, cuddle with my kitties, spend time at the Mountain Park, etc.

Have you ever been to a metal concert? No.

Do you like metal? Yeah.

What’s your favorite Christmas movie? I don't think I have a true favorite.

What about Halloween movie? Same. But in general, I like a mix of horror and nostalgic childhood movies.

Do you like the taste of cilantro? Yeah.

Have you ever busted a window accidentally? I have. When I was a kid, I was playing baseball with some friends in one of their yards. We used rocks for the bases, and afterward I was tossing them back where they belonged and accidentally hit a basement window.

Do you remember those Bratz dolls? What were your favorite dolls? I do remember them, but I think I was too old to be into them.

What was the last thing to bum you out? I thought that said BURN me out, lmao. :') But I guess it's more or less the same answer regardless. I'm feeling a bit of animal shelter burnout. I was called in today; I know I could have said no - I'm technically just a volunteer - but I went anyway. It's a mix of physical exhaustion lingering from the last few days and just…ugh. I feel like I've hit a wall when it comes to tolerating mean and petty people. I don't want to keep taking it, but I don't know how to push back in a way that's not inappropriately explosive. I'm just tired of being walked on, nitpicked, and disrespected…especially when I am just a volunteer. But then it's also like, well, it is my choice to be there and put up with it, and I do want to be there, so…I feel a bit stuck. I really need to learn how to politely push back against people who are heaping too much shit on me. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the idea of sticking up for myself is terrifying. I have this stupid belief that I'm only likeable if I'm people-pleasing. Ugh. I'll figure it out. Also, to be clear - MOST of the people at the shelter are great and have always been kind to me. This is really only about a select few, around whom I unfortunately have to spend the most time.

What is your summer anthem? I don't have one.

Do you enjoy apples? Yeah.

Have you ever made apple butter? Do you like it? I've never made it before, but I do like it.

Do you own any pocket knives? Somewhere. We have this Swiss Army knife with a bunch of different gadgets.

On a scale of 1-10…How happy are you and why? Maybe a five. I know it's a relatively temporary five, though. I'll probably bounce back over the course of today/tomorrow. It's that balance I was talking about above - I just need more uplifting experiences after a slew of dissatisfying ones. Plus some time to relax, spend time with my dad and my cats, make some art, catch up on housecleaning, etc. It's not the first time I've felt like this and it probably won't be the last, so I know that all I have to do is weather it and it'll pass.

Do you think diamonds are overrated? Yeah. I'd much rather have a ring made from a meteorite or something cool like that.

How many languages can you greet somebody in? English, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Japanese.

Do you have a favorite planet? I don't.

Do you know how to play the flute? No.

What do you enjoy putting in your smoothies? Milk or yogurt, bananas, strawberries, mangos, blueberries, chocolate syrup, peanut butter…not necessarily all at once, but in some combination.

What’s a medication that has really helped you? OTC migraine meds do a surprisingly decent job…but I probably need to explore further options. When it comes to psych meds, though, I don't feel like any have significantly helped me (and I've tried a whole bunch of them) which is why I'm not on them anymore and haven't been for a number of years now. I've found other ways to cope.

Do you forgive easily? Yes and no. Intellectually, I think I can forgive fairly easily/quickly. Emotionally, it takes a bit. I'm like, hey man…this is the part where you drop the grudge, okay lmao. DROP IT.

Have you ever broken up with somebody? Yeah.

What was the biggest phase you went through when you were younger? Some sort of goth/emo/anime thing.

Is there something you’ve been hiding from someone? No.

Do you believe in demons? Idk.

Have you ever seen a spider consume another spider? No.

What’s your favorite fruit? Probably mangos.

Do you ever go clubbing? No.

Have you ever been to a church camp? I went to this Bible camp thing as a kid. Not a sleep-away camp, but a day camp.

Have you ever accidentally swallowed something you shouldn’t have? Maybe…?

Last book you remember enjoying? The one I've failed to pick up for weeks now. :')

When was the last time you got scared? I'm not sure.

Have you ever seen a boy band live? No.

When was the last time you drank water? Just a few minutes ago.

Have you ever been dehydrated? Yeah.

Have you ever shot a gun? Yeah.

Do you use Facebook? No.

Would you say you’re well educated on religious topics? I wouldn't say I'm well educated, but I'm not entirely ignorant either. Even though I don't practice any particular religion, I still find them interesting.

What’s the longest you have walked at once? Like 13-14 miles.

Do you ever take those Buzzfeed quizzes? No.

How long was your last phone call? Just a minute or so. My mom called me while I was at the shelter earlier to ask how the little kitten was doing. He's an absolute sweetheart and an absolute terror.

[enibas22]

The star of Game of Thrones and Stranger Things gave us an exclusive interview, Tom Wlaschiha answered all the questions

The kindness and directness of the actor is irresistible.

Tom Wlaschiha is a well-known and popular actor, who became really known as Jaqen H'ghar in Game of Thrones. The 49-year-old German actor is not at all unfamiliar with Hungary, as he visited Lake Balaton with his parents a lot as a child, and he still likes to be nostalgic here, as long as he is not tied down by a role in a world-class series. After the epoch-making series based on the books of George RR Martin, Wlaschiha appeared in another masterpiece with a huge fan base, in Stranger Things he played Dimitri Antonov, who quickly stole into the hearts of the viewers.

On the occasion of the Comic Con held in the BOK Sports Hall on the second weekend of June, the actor was happy to answer the fans' questions, he also took time for Tények.hu in an exclusive interview . 

Upon entering the room, he immediately had a huge smile on his face, it seemed that he was happy with the opportunity and came up with a very detailed answer to every question that was put to him, the type of figure who sneaks into the heart of the other person almost immediately.

You've played many exciting roles over the years. What character have you always wanted to play but haven't had the chance yet?

Well, I'm pretty happy with the variety and selection of characters I've played over the past few years. And I don't believe that... It's a question that gets asked sometimes, what kind of character do you want to play? Evil or kind? Well, there is no true evil or good, just like there is in real life. I mean, even if you're playing someone in a fantasy world, you have to try to give a human dimension to the role so that it's relatable to the audience. Otherwise, if you just played a hero guy, the audience would quickly get bored, the same way a bad guy would quickly become boring. Actually, I prefer bad guys, I mean "bad guys." I always try to play them as the good guys. You know that creates a kind of controversy and then the viewers say, wait, very dear, but he does terrible things. What's going on? And that's when it all gets interesting.

In the series Stranger Things, you played the character of Dmitri, who was loved by fans. How was this role different from your other roles and what was the reaction you got to the character?

Well, the role was challenging because I had to play a real Russian. And I'm not a real Russian. But you know, I talk a little. Long ago, 40 years ago, I studied Russian at school. So the language was somewhat familiar to me, but I was far from a perfect speaker. Of course I wanted to do it as well as possible. I had a dialect teacher, but the main challenge was to speak English as a German with a Russian accent and at the same time as a real Russian, preferably without an accent. So it wasn't easy at all, and besides all that, I also had to focus on my acting. So that was the main challenge for me.

Many people are interested in what will happen in the final season of the series. Could you tell me a small behind-the-scenes secret about this?

If I tell you any secrets about the final season, I will be killed. I will have a horrible death on screen. No, I'm just kidding, I actually don't know. I know as much as you do, especially with Stranger Things, because the show is entirely the Duffer brothers' baby, and they do everything. They write the scripts, they direct, they are responsible for practically everything, which means they don't have to share any information. So only the two of them know. But there will be a 5th season. That's the only secret I can tell you.

Since you studied at a music school and your uncle was a famous baritone singer, you must pay special attention to the musical part of movies or TV series. Which was your favorite that you think everyone should listen to at least once?

Do you mean to talk about my favorite soundtracks? Or should I mention a TV show worth watching because of the music used in it? About the music, yes. Now, I can't say Game of Thrones, for example, although I think the soundtrack is brilliant. But everyone knows that. What else could it be? Should it be something I was in? Or just interested in general? I listen to a lot of classical music every day, I would say this is my favorite genre, because it is very soothing and I think many people distance themselves from this genre, even though they shouldn't.

As I know you have very good language skills, you speak German, English, French, Italian and Russian. Do you think Hungarian could be the sixth language you learn? Do you know some Hungarian words?

Of course. I can count. I can count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven twelve thirteen. I know that Vizsla, I only know a few such basic words , but this may change in the future.

Fans are always curious about what awaits their favorite actors in the coming period. Could you give us some insight into an upcoming project or role you're excited about? What can be expected from you in the future?

I just came out with a new series called Mrs. Davis. It debuted in the US on the Peacock platform a few weeks ago. And I'm sure it will be shown on some European TV channel in the near future, but unfortunately I don't know who bought the rights and in which country. Anyway, this was a really cool series. The showrunner is Damon Lindelof, who also created Lost. It's a really crazy series. It is completely unlike anything I have ever read or seen. It's basically hard to describe what it's about. In a nutshell, maybe it's an artificial intelligence fighting a nun. It is a battle of technology versus faith. It's basically about the search for the Holy Grail and a bunch of stuff that spans from the 14th century to the present, and they've tried to do it in a bit of a Monty Python style. I think this works really well. So it's funny, it's crazy at the same time, and I'm playing a Catholic priest who's not actually a real Catholic priest, he's just pretending.

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

The original interview was written in the Hungarian language. The English translation is by google translate.