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evieismol · 9 months

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BIG BEND Chapter Twenty Three

A/n: as i mentioned on the last chapter, I’m posting a more polished, edited version of this story on both ao3 (here) and wattpad (here), if you’d like to check it out! As always, I appreciate any and all support and feedback!

Content warnings: Cursing

Word Count: 2940

Previous Chapter

Zoey

I lay in my tent, staring at the canvas ceiling. It had faded from light green to nearly black as the sun light outside faded.

God, life has a lot of plot twists.

If anyone had asked me if I thought I’d be sort of living in a tent in some random part of Texas last year, I probably wouldn’t have considered it likely. I’d actually thought I was going to be married by now.

Thank God that didn’t happen.

Texas was, at least, one place I was pretty sure he wouldn’t come find me, if only because it was literally on the other side of the country. At least, I hoped so. I tried to push that unsettling thought from my mind. It didn’t work. It never really did. I’d found myself jumping at every crunch of the gravel, half expecting to see a familiar red pick up truck coming up the road.

I had gotten some good news recently, at least. The gift shop at the park was hiring, and I’d had an interview for a position there earlier that morning. It had gone well. More than well - I’d been offered the job. That, in turn, offered some sorely needed hope, given that my savings would only last so long. Better yet, it also offered housing. I hadn’t really been playing on staying at the park for more than a night, at first, but then again, I hadn’t really been planning on any of this. And a job was a job.

It wasn’t like I disliked the park anyways. Pretty much the opposite. From what I’d seen of it so far, it was absolutely gorgeous. It also seemed to have no shortage of interesting characters, from the less than friendly woman I’d bumped into yesterday to the Aphirial the park service had decided to hire. He seemed nice, if not kind of sad.

That’s something I can relate to.

I’d long felt like I didn’t really fit into the world. Of course, he quite literally didn’t fit in, and I considered what that was like. Probably pretty alienating. He had looked like he’d been crying when I ran into him the first time. Also something I could relate to. I’d been doing that a lot in my tent recently. I found myself wondering if he sat outside by that cliff frequently - if I’d find him there again.

Is that weird? I don’t want to seem like I’m stalking him or something. Then again, he did recognize me yesterday and seemed happy enough to talk. I think. I could just go on a walk, get some fresh air, and if I happen to run into him, that wouldn’t be too weird, right?

Totally.

Getting fresh air and stretching my legs did sound like a good idea either way, admittedly. I’d spent most of the afternoon curled up in my tent, a variety of less than fun memories swirling through my mind. I nodded, committing to my decision, and pulled myself up. I fumbled around for my flashlight - it had grown pitch black in the time I’d been laying there. I felt the hard plastic casing after a moment, and switched it on.

Ability to see now returned, I grabbed a hoodie and pulled it on, followed by some socks. I had actually stopped by the visitor center and learned that the only notably dangerous large animals in the area were cougars, but that they didn’t frequently attack people. Just in case, though, I also grabbed the bear spray I’d brought from up north, deciding I probably didn’t need to tempt fate by making a habit of horror movie esque decisions.

The desert air was far cooler than it had been during the day - chilly, almost. That still felt amazing to me. There definitely hadn’t been as much variation in temperature where I’d lived previously. It was mostly just cold or really, really cold for the better part of the year.

I made my way past a few other campsites as I walked down the road. A group of people sat around a fire at one, laughing as they roasted s’mores. I felt a pang of longing at the sight. My relationship with Jake had ended with me being isolated from pretty much everyone but him.

The laughter eventually faded into the night as I continued down the gravel road. I’d been right - the fresh night air was pleasant, and it was nice to stretch my legs. As I found myself nearing the rocky area I’d run into Easton previously, I found myself second guessing the other part of my plan. Did I really even want to socialize? I had neared the ridge from the other night, and felt my old friend anxiety rearing its head full force. Would he even want to talk to me? Maybe he was tired of talking to people, maybe he’d find it annoying and presumptuous that I came out here. Maybe he’d find me annoying - he wouldn’t be the first. It wasn’t too late to go back to my tent. I stopped, about to turn around.

This is stupid. I’m going back.

“Zoey?”

Fuck.

What I’d thought was a rock formation shifted, and I realized with no small amount of awe that it was instead the giant alien I’d previously met as I shone my flashlight in that direction. It illuminated his light blond hair, making it look almost white. Had I been paying closer attention, I might have remembered it hadn’t been there before, but I’d been lost in my thoughts.

Apparently that thing about Aphirials having super senses wasn’t an exaggeration.

“Easton - hi! I didn’t see you,” I said. Okay, so, now it was too late to go back to my tent.

“I don’t get that a lot,” he said, a faint laugh in his tone.

“I was kind of zoning out,” I admitted. “Lost in my thoughts, I guess.”

“Thinking about anything in particular? I mean, you don’t have to tell me,” he said. He didn’t seem annoyed to be talking to me, so far, at least.

“Uh, whether or not I’d run into you again, actually. Sorry, that sounded weird, probably. I just mean, I’ve kind of ended up staying around here longer than I thought I would, and I ended up getting a job at the gift shop for the summer season, so I guess I’m here even longer, and I don’t really know anyone else.”

“That’s awesome! That you might work here, not that you don’t know anyone else, of course.” He sounded genuinely excited when he replied. He paused before continuing. “I don’t really know that many people here well myself.”

“Seriously? You seemed really popular at that ranger talk thingy the other day.”

He gave a slight shrug. “Yeah, I think the novelty wears off quickly.”

“Huh. I’ve never gotten that. Then again, I still think planes are super exciting, like, if something’s cool the first time, I think it just gets cooler the more you think about it, y’know? Anyways, you seem like you’d be fun to hang out with regardless of novelty. Like, as a person, even if I did know other people here.”

“Oh-thanks,” he said, surprise filling his voice. “And, you do too.”

“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say after that. Small talk had never really been my forté.

“I was getting ready to head inside,” Easton said after a moment.

“Of course, right. Have a nice-“ I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. Yep, he definitely thinks I’m annoying.

“You could come. I could make you some hot cocoa or tea or-well, John could, we could watch a movie-if you want to, of course. You don’t have to. Obviously.”

“I’d like to!” I said quickly. Okay, maybe he didn’t think I was totally annoying. And that sounded way better than going back to my tent.

“Okay! Cool! Uh, I have to ask John first, actually. I can call him. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Take your time, I don’t have anywhere to be,” I replied. It was kind of endearing how excited he’d looked when I agreed. As if he’d been pretty sure I was going to find his offer annoying, just like I’d been fearing he found our whole conversation. I watched as he pulled his phone from his pocket. It was at least twice my height, serving as a stark reminder of how much smaller I was in comparison to him.

I wondered, probably later than I should have, how I was supposed to get to his house. The most obvious answer was probably that he could literally pick me up to bring me over there. He had carried John by hand the other day. That prospect was slightly terrifying, now that I was thinking about it. I wasn’t scared of heights, thankfully, but it seemed like literally putting my life in someone’s hands would require a lot of trust. And it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know him that well.

Of course, he picked up plenty of tourists for pictures every day. He’d never hurt any of them. I was more than certain that would have made the news. He didn’t seem like he’d hurt me either, but of course, I had thought that before. And been very wrong before.

Maybe I should make up a reason to go back to my campground. I could say I didn’t realize how late it was getting.

Then I remembered the group of friends that had been laughing around their fire, and how empty my campsite was. And somehow, the idea of going back to my dark tent suddenly seemed even more terrifying than letting a giant pick me up, which maybe said something about how isolated I’d been feeling recently.

Besides, he’s a park ranger. That’s like, the least sketchy job you can have, right?

“John said it’s okay!” Moments after I’d come to a conclusion that I wasn’t going to dip, Easton placed his phone back in his pocket. “And he said he could make you tea or coffee and he has pizza from last night if you want some.”

I smiled. “Cool. I mean, I’m never one to turn down food.”

Especially not recently.

“So, are you just going to pick me up or like-“

“Oh-uh, I can. There’s a trail down the cliffs that way and a human sized elevator at my place, if you want to walk, but, I can carry you if you want. And you’re comfortable with it.”

I immediately felt a little silly at my previous worries - I’d apparently made several assumptions. I’d already come to the conclusion that I was fine with him carrying me, though.

“I’m cool with it. But whatever you want.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding uncertain about where to go from there.

“You can just carry me. It’d be quicker. And I’d probably find a way to fall off the cliffs getting down anyways,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure why I went with that option. I’d already psyched myself up for that, and I hadn’t psyched myself up for climbing down a desert trail, I guess.

“Are you sure?” He asked. I nodded.

“Yeah. I mean, you can see in the dark, right? So out of the two of us, you’re way less likely to trip over something in the dark.”

“I guess so.” He lowered his hand to the cliff where I stood. He amended his statement quickly. “I mean, I definitely won’t trip over anything, I swear. I don’t know if you’ve heard the whole spiel I give, but you can climb on whenever you’re ready, please stay seated in the middle of my hand once I start moving, I won’t get up until you say you’re settled and ready.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.” Taking a deep breath, I stepped towards his hand. His skin was way warmer than I’d thought it’d be, I thought as I climbed onto his hand. Like, heating pad warm. That made sense, I supposed, given how comparatively ginormous he was. I glanced up at him. He was watching me attentively, which felt somehow reassuring. I half crawled to the center of his palm, quickly realizing it was also far harder to stand on someone’s palm than I would have guessed. After a moment, I glanced back up.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“Great. I’ll move slowly, and just let me know if you want down at any point,” he said. I nodded, watching the ground grow farther away as he slowly lifted his hand and stood up.

“What’s it like? Being able to carry people literally in one hand?” I asked, looking up at him again.

“Kind of weird,” he said, then once again jumped to amend that statement. He did that a lot, I was noticing. It seemed ironic that an actual giant would be so unsure of his words, if not also relatable. “Not in a bad way. It just feels like…a lot of responsibility. Since you guys are putting so much trust in me.”

“That makes sense. I can’t imagine how anxious I’d be about accidentally dropping someone or something,” I replied.

“Yeah, no shit,” he said, almost half to himself. I couldn’t help but laugh. He looked surprised for half a second, then joined in.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mind carrying you or anything, it’s just…hoping tourists don’t decide to like jump up or something when I’m holding them all day is…”

“Extremely anxiety inducing?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

We’d arrived at his tiny house - I’d decided I was going to keep calling it a tiny house, even if size wise, it was anything but. He opened the door with his free hand, golden light pouring out to greet us. The interior was just as modern as the outside, seeming almost mismatched with the rustic posters of plants he had adorning the walls. While it was certainly spacious for me, I guessed it was probably smaller than the average dorm room for him. There was a desk to the right of the door. A human sized table sat on top of it. Then there was a bed against the far wall and right wall. Also against the far wall was a small kitchenette, and a door I guessed led to a bathroom.

Also against the right wall was a platform with a railing and a human sized doorway. A walkway along the wall led from it to the desk, where there was another human sized door against the front wall. Probably the elevator he’d mentioned. Moments after we’d stepped inside, John appeared from the door behind the platform. He made his way down the walkway towards the desk.

“I’m going to lower my hand to the desk, and then you can climb off. Just please don’t until I’ve stopped moving.”

I nodded, waiting patiently until he’d firmly placed his hand on the desk. I climbed off, managing to do so semi gracefully. John had made it to the desk as well by that point.

“It was Zoey, right?” He asked. I nodded.

“Yeah. Do I call you John or like Agent-“

He laughed jovially, shaking his head. “Just John is fine.”

“Okay! Also, this-,” I gestured to the building around us, “-is so cool.”

“Isn’t it?” He said. “I have my own little apartment back there,” he said, nodding towards the door he’d come from. “Speaking of which, Easton mentioned you might be hungry?”

“Oh, I mean, only if it’s not an imposition. I’m fine-“

“I have way too much pizza to finish myself anyways,” John said. “You’d be helping me out, really.”

“You could just give it to Easton too.” There I go again, just saying the first thing that came to mind. That did seem like the most obvious solution, though it occurred to me moments later John was probably mostly just trying to make me feel comfortable.

What does Easton eat anyways? It’s got to be a lot of whatever it is.

“It’s pepperoni. He’s a vegetarian,” John replied, seeming to take my literal interpretation and subsequent suggestion in stride at least.

“In that case, yeah, I’d love some,” I said.

“Great. I can bring it down, or you can come with me to heat it up and we can come back here. Whichever you prefer.” John turned, heading towards the walkway.

“Um, I guess I’ll wait here?”

John nodded. “I won’t be long. And I think you were going to make dinner too, Easton?”

Easton quickly glanced between us. “I’m fine. I can eat later.”

“Are you sure?” John asked.

“Yeah. You guys enjoy the pizza, though.”

“Alright. I’ll be right back,” John said. I watched as he headed up the walkway, then turned to look up at Easton. He’d taken a seat on the chair next to the desk.

“You’re not hungry?” I asked.

“Not really,” he replied, changing the subject. “So, any ideas on what movie you want to watch? I don’t have a tv, but I do have a laptop, and it works with earth technology so I have like, Hulu and stuff. I hope that works?”

“I think that’s probably better than a tv - it’s probably IMAX-sized compared to me,” I said. He gave a slight laugh.

“Fair enough.”

“I don’t really watch that many movies, though, so I’m cool with whatever. Wait, have you seen very many earth movies?”

He shook his head. “Only a couple.”

“Damn. Well, we could see what’s new out I guess.”

“That works for me,” Easton said. I smiled. This evening really was looking up

#g/t #giant/tiny #gt #sfw g/t #gt sfw #g/t oc #gt writing

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mejomonster · 2 years

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Grade these fanfiction tropes!

-Amnesia

-i forgot what it's called but the trope of accidentally ingesting or inhaling a drug that turns the character lustful

LOVE AMNESIA FICS IF EITHER A. AMNESIA MAKES SENSE FOR CHARACTER (in the end 90% of my fanfic preferences boil down to "if it's in character it's good, if it isn't something they'd likely go through boo" unless it's a quite unique idea or well written enough to tempt me). Or B. It's sort of a very temporary Tabula Rasa "short term" type amnesia because that can be very funny or interesting exploration and if it is angsty its temporary. (I say this but I've written... the long angsty kind).

I'll say A-B grade. I don't look for it unless the source characters already got amnesia like Zhang Qiling or Zhao Yunlan (of past lives), because I really like canon compliant/adjacent/divergent fic so it's playing with a character situation they already had. (I do get my heart desperately broken searching for both those characters amnesia fics ToT). But it's a B if it's for anything else - I like it and I'll read it but it's not Absolutely My Jam always.

Sex Pollen trope I think is what you're looking for? Grade A+++ showstopping. Amazing. Incredible. A classic from Star Trek TOS Pon Farr episode that I'd now like to see played with for fun wherever people fancy to explore (whether that's crack comedy to angst realism I'm fascinated where people go with it). Considering rhe intense amounts of tentacles grabbing Wu Xie in dmbj, a spore thing impregnating him, and every other canon batshit Wild thing that can happen in dmbj

(if you said the iron Triangle met an alien, stole it's ship, met Spock, Pangzi married T'Pring, Zhang Qiling punched Dr. MCcoy out. Then Captain Kirk dropped them home in a rush into America Washington DC and Pangzi ran into Krychek from X Files and made a hush hush shady deal for some cold sexy cash? I would believe u. I would say yep, canon compliant. Anything is probably canon compliant... except San shu being a good uncle and apologizing to wu xie for all the fucked up shit. But hey idk I haven't read Everything, maybe one day that awful uncle Does apologize and Wu Xie goes to therapy about it???... I doubt it but hey. Canon divergent if not compliant, probably, something changed so San Shu would do such a thing.) My point is sex pollen is absolutely well within the dmbj wheelhouse of batshit weird sci fi horror esque bullshit and I'm frankly a bit shocked there's not at least a heap more tentacle sex and sex pollen fics. And if there are more than I think, then I'd like links/recs ToT

Adjacent to the something makes characters magically horny trope? I'm also quite fond of any Wild Trope used in a fic for the hell of it especially if it's a canon compliant/adjacent/divergent fic (or such a fic but comedy crack). Like dmbj and Guardian and Star Trek are Excellent fandoms to play with fun bizarre ideas since you could argue its "just another day they likely had I guess." Shen Wri turns into a kitty cat and Zhao Yunlan takes care of his boy? Some Dixingren turned him. Wu Xie has time traveled? Sure, he went the wrong direction and ended up 1000 years in the past why the fuck not. Spock is now inside someone else's body? Well he's already been in McCoys! Might as well right any body switch of your dreams!! Hei Xiazi's a vampire?! Well maybe he's always been and just didn't bring it up! ToT. Zhang Qiling jumped universes to an alternate reality where "insert your dream AU here"? Sure, he can't always remember stuff, for all we know this has happened before and Will happen again. I just love the kinds of stories where wild tropes are just very easy to insert amd play with regular canon.

#ask #replies #ask game #<3 <3 #personally i do love a Good amnesia fic but i dont always wanna cry my heart out u know how it is

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globalcatastrophe · 1 year

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Blonde -2022

Written last year, longlisted for the Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism.

Blonde – 2022

For a film purportedly about the ‘real Norma Jean’ (or what is left of her), the Great Spirit that is Marilyn Monroe looms large in perpetuity over the narrative, to the point where, as often happens with biopics, the famous images necessarily dominate. Besides, what would the subject be without them? Where would the interest lie in Norma Jean Baker without her conjoined twin? Marilyn stands above the grate, white dress billowing. Marilyn smiles at us with bedroom eyes. Marilyn cries, and finally, Marilyn dies. The Norma Jean that was has by this time faded into the background completely. Presumption takes the place of knowledge when there is very little information to be found that isn’t fabricated by those who knew her the best, honest, or would have known her best or even saved her if only they could have met her, scout’s honour. The controversy of Blonde, shared with the Joyce Carol Oates novel on which it is based, seems to lie chiefly in how many liberties it is appropriate to take when telling the story of a deceased subject who appears to have suffered enough, frankly.

The first act of the film is a passably sensitive examination of a troubled childhood, a sequence of maternal alcoholism and mental illness, paternal absenteeism and eventual near abandonment of poor Norma Jean, what we now can clearly see as the fatal starting gun to her inevitable death race. The second act, the longest, is much wobblier in quality, so brimming with passion play pathos (and talking foetuses) as to be almost comical. After a few scenes with Showgirls-esque line delivery from the principal players, one is tempted to discard the film as yet another piece of underdeveloped Marilynalia, but perhaps it is necessary to look deeper. Ana de Armas (who apparently received approval for her performance from Marilyn herself, such is her omnipotent loyalty that she still makes time for fans from the hereafter) appears on the film poster in perfect Marilyn drag, all thick red lipstick and bleached curls, and the likeness really is rather uncanny at times. She does an impressive job of portraying all the Marilyns we know and love. Marilyn as giggling, dizzy, fizzy movie star, Marilyn as Dostoyevsky reading intellectual and Actors Studio disciple, Marilyn as a grown-up little girl still aching for the love of a father figure, Marilyn as wife, Marilyn as almost-mother, Marilyn as abused object of male (specifically Kennedy) lust and finally, Marilyn the most famous corpse in the world, sprawled upon her satin sheets. Unfortunately, de Armas’ performance as a believable Marilyn is patchy, giving the impression of a Marilyn waxwork or, at darker moments, an act of necromancy gone horribly, horribly wrong. Marilyn the smiling, shining star, transformed into a pitifully weeping child, each tear lavished with attention, the famous red rictus pained and hinting at the horrors to come, as come they do in the third act, the spinning camera turning Marilyn’s Hollywood bungalow into a disorientating house of horrors, claustrophobic Blair Witch impressions in abundance, the dark fairies finally arriving to steal the princess away for good, to eat her up and swallow her.

It is as a horror film that Blonde gives the most satisfactory viewing. As a traditional biopic it is a borderline offensive exercise in stretching artistic licence to its absolute limits. As a raw piece of reflection on Hollywood’s treatment of women, it is too voyeuristic and fetishistic, all-too male to be taken seriously. It does however, work masterfully when considered as an expression of the great booby-trap of fame. Marilyn as the corrupted ideal, a glittering object of fantasy transformed into abjected object of ghoulish pity, to be enjoyed and reviled in equal measure. Ultimately, it says more about ourselves than about her. It speaks to our tabloid hunger for pain and pity. After the execution we soak our handkerchiefs in their blood then wipe our tears with it. In this sense, the Marilyn of Blonde functions as a cipher for several familiar stories of tragic Hollywood doom.

Marilyn’s persistence in our memory is reflective of our continued reverence for sainthood, of death without putrefaction, an object corrupt yet incorrupt. We want her both as we remember her when alive, and we intone the piteous circumstances of her death time and again, in songs, in books, in films. If we view Blonde as a forceful cultural exorcism of one of our most eminent departed, every possible instance of pain considered in conscientious detail, and ended with a full stop, perhaps when the next nostalgia cycle comes around the necromancers will have nothing left to resurrect. No more illusions left to shatter, Marilyn can rest in peace, lipstick, diamonds and satin sheeted death all but forgotten. An unlikely story. The Blonde remains.

#journalism #article #criticism #review #film #filmreview #blonde #marilyn #marilynmonroe #hollywood #movie #netflix #moviereview #writer #writing

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ariendiel · 2 years

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Hi! I like your headcanons! I hope you can still accept any requests.

Imagine if s2 LIs was actually in love with PLAYER, not MC? You know like Doki Doki Literature Club if you know the game.... what will be their reaction or confession?

Hi! I'm always happy to take requests (sometimes it can take a while to answer though, but I'm doing my best 🤍), so thank you for dropping by my inbox

And I LOVE this idea! I remember Doki Doki Literature Club so well, specifically watching let's plays back in the day... literally so many memories just unlocked... Anywho, I've done my best to answer this for you. As per usual, I'm mainly doing the LIs I feel like I "know"

🕹 If the S2 LIs were in love with Player 🕹

Bobby – I can see Bobby starting to ask directly if you find his jokes funny, not MC but YOU. As the games progresses and after a few replays, he'll start to friendzone MC because he's actually in love with Player, and it's such a mess because MC is an extension of Player but Bobby doesn't get that and it slowly becomes more and more unhinged

Carl – Carl being Carl, he'd totally try to hack the game from the inside to get a message to Player, right? He'd slowly corrupt the game from the inside until he controls it and has to fight fusebox trying to "fix" with Players help, and that's the beginning of a great friendship that turns into romance

Elisa – Absolutely would just start to appear in any scene you're in. You were on a date with [insert LI here]? Not anymore. Elisa is curious about Player, and wants their undivided attention. Maybe she'll start asking their opinion on her, or try to ask Player to hack the game and replace Marisol with her? That way, she can romance Player from the start, which she confesses is what she really wants

Gary – It'd take a few replays, but he'd gradually become more and more self-aware, until he starts complaining about some really bad déjà vu and question the other players if they haven't had these conversations before. When Player says 'yes' he'll start to ask them more and more, eventually having a small break down when he realises the person he's fallen in love with is, well, not who he thought

Henrik – Absolutely baffled to realise he's in a game. To the point where he'll "knock" on your screen, and just think the whole thing is super interesting. He'll ask player if they think he can get away with doing weird stuff to try and "break" the game, and together they'll totally cause the weirdest glitches

Ibrahim – Rahim would totally become self-aware by thinking LITG is just part of multiple game universes (not untrue). His confession of love for Player would be so muddled by the game file trying to force him to kiss Jo etc too, and he'd always apologise for what the game makes him do, begging Player to help him escape into a different game

Lucas – I feel like he'd be super suspicious of player the second he becomes self-aware, and just act that out by asking MC weirder and weirder questions until addressing it directly. Then, he'll realise player is key in him staying in the Villa, and on a replay he'll ask for their help in staying. Once he starts working with player however, I think he'll start to fall in love but only admit to it after a few replays where MC aka player gets with someone else

Marisol – Psychoanalyses incoming! She'll definitely start having philosophical conversations with herself at first, and then start to engage MC aka Player in those once she realises they're playing the game she's part of. These conversations become longer and more heartfelt, with Marisol contemplating her route etc, until she admits to having developed feelings for Player

Noah – I feel like he'd start complimenting the Player's in-game choices. Like imagine if Player is romancing him and he just goes "oh, trying my route are you? I'm sorry it won't be easy, but I love that you're willing to do that for me." He'll lament to Player that he wishes he didn't have to go back to Hope after CA, and maybe try to rewrite some of the game code himself, with the help of Player, to mend. it

#so tempting to make these absolutely horror-esque #hope you approve though!#this was such a fun ask tbh #loved it and now I'm back watching doki doki literature club videos lol #ask #litg s2 #love island the game #litg #litg noah #litg bobby #litg lucas #litg gary #litg carl #litg henrik #litg marisol #litg rahim #litg ibrahim #litg elisa

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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/9/2020: DEADLINE (1980)

This is an extremely weird movie. Actually, it's so eccentric and overstimulating that I have a hard time describing it in terms of quality--terms like "good" and "bad" can become kind of irrelevant when a movie's priorities land so far from anything familiar--so I'll just say what I can. DEADLINE is, in modern parlance, cuckoo bananas.

N.B.: Spoilers abound.

I'm tempted to describe this 1980 genre entry from Maltese director and co-writer Mario Azzopardi as an anthology film, but that isn't completely accurate. Insofar as it is focused on anything, DEADLINE primarily concerns pulp horror writer Stephen Lessey (Stephen Young, late of SOYLENT GREEN) on the downslope of his career. His young children struggle to get his attention, and he and his drug-addled wife fall deeper in loathing, as he wrestles with a stubborn new screenplay. His previous success, a movie about kids who kill called THE EXECUTIONERS, seems to have brought him even more trouble than fame, as we discover when a collegiate speaking engagement is met by a veritable lynch mob. As he becomes increasingly embattled on all sides, Lessey's crumbling mental state is emphasized by a series of vignettes depicting his crazed attempts to imagine "the ultimate terror."

In its attempt to offended on all available levels, DEADLINE includes quite a lot of swearing, making me aware of the fact that I usually don’t hear the word “motherfucker” this much outside of the blaxploitation genre, particularly from little kids.

For about the first hour of DEADLINE, Lessey's story shares roughly equal screen time with the most frantic, uncontrolled version of a horror anthology that I have ever seen. The vignettes intrude on the wraparound story unceremoniously, and some of them are only a few seconds long, appearing and disappearing in brief bursts of blood and gore. (They are also decidedly child-oriented, which makes some amount of sense when you know that DEADLINE was shot by Manfred Guthe of THE PIT fame.) A woman drowns in a shower flooding with blood; a telekinetic goat feeds a mechanic to a thresher; little kids burn their grandmother alive; fetuses "decide to commit suicide" in the womb; and, out of absolutely nowhere, iconoclastic new wave band Rough Trade collaborates with Nazis to weaponize their music using the brown sound. This segment was probably the hardest on my brain, which was torn between the pleasure of watching charismatic singer Carole Pope lead the group in this ROCKY HORROR-esque music video sequence, and the dismay of knowing that at any moment, a bunch of drunk bums were going to shit their pants in front of me. (Actually, it was sort of a relief to see that the bums "only" explode) To further DEADLINE's jarring collage effect, we also weave in and out of the movie-within-a-movie, Lessey's new picture about vampire nuns. I have to admit that this cacophony of tasteless ideas definitely had my full attention, and I was just as engrossed when the movie abruptly abandons its anthological structure for an incredibly grim drama about Lessey and his family.

First, a word about the director: Azzopardi's TV-heavy filmography was not remarkable to me, except for one item that happens to be a personal favorite: the 2002 made-for-tv movie SAVAGE MESSIAH. This gruesome and harrowing drama about the real life crimes of Mansonesque cult leader Roch Thériault is, for better or worse, unforgettable, and while its simmering atmosphere has nothing in common with the utter bonkers-ness of the first leg of DEADLINE, it may somewhat prepare you for the intimate apocalypse that takes up the remainder of this movie. In a twist that would give Tipper Gore an orgasm, Lessey's life explodes completely when his neglected sons murder their little sister (Cindy Hinds of THE BROOD fame) in a specific imitation of his movie THE EXECUTIONERS. In the immediate aftermath of this terrible shock, Lessey's cartoonishly ruthless producer (Marvin Goldhar) tries to keep him on track by shipping him off to a mansion with a gaggle of prostitutes. Once the party starts, a boatload of booze and cocaine catalyze Lessey's inevitable nervous breakdown, sparking an all-out war with the women that would be just as at home in an Abel Ferrara film.

There are things about DEADLINE that I really like. I really like psychic goats, and flesh-eating nuns, and kinky new wave music videos. I also really like despairing psychodramas about the collapse of the family unit. But, what really stands out about this movie is the apparent lack of deliberation with which it was assembled. I really have no idea what DEADLINE wants from me, and I don't think Azzopardi knows, either. I will repeat, under the caveat of hearsay, that the blu-ray appears to contain an interview that reveals the filmmaker to be a purely commercial director who vaguely understood that a) horror sells, and b) horror is bad for your brain. So, it's worth mentioning that this may go some distance toward explaining what you see on the screen. But, that material is not in front of me at present, so the only promise I can make is that my understanding of whatever the hell just happened to me remains a mystery. Watch SAVAGE MESSIAH, though, it will totally ruin your life.

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nitrateglow · 5 years

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Halloween 2019 marathon 14-15

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (dir. John S. Robertson, 1920) [REWATCH]

The Barrymore Jekyll and Hyde has a great transformation scene. With clever lighting and Barrymore’s contorting body, it seems as though Hyde is breaking right through Jekyll’s skin!

In terms of Jekyll/Hyde movies, this one is pretty good, though not my favorite. The cinematography is often very static and the story tends to tell us more through intertitles than it shows outright. Unlike the 1932 version, we don’t get so see as much of Hyde’s interactions with others or Jekyll’s dynamic with his fiance, which dilutes the tragedy.

Another thing I don’t care for is how Jekyll is made out to be saintly, not even tempted by his baser urges until someone else drags him to a club. Unlike Frederic March’s take on the character, who was arrogant and sensual to a fault even before he took the potion, Barrymore barely seems touched by flaws save for that one little moment with Nita Naldi in the bar.

However, Barrymore is great anyway-- especially when he’s Hyde. He��s so cheerfully evil, exuding menace even when he’s leaned back with a cigar between his gnarled fingers. His make-up grows more grotesque as the story progresses and truly does get disturbing.

In fact, the whole film has a sense of griminess that makes it, well, gross. The nightlife scenes and the make-up on the extras sell the seediness of these places. The filmmakers cut between the cozy mansions of the elite with these hell-holes, emphasizing the duality within society as well as within the individual.

Props must also be given to Nita Naldi as Gina, who gets far too little screentime. She deserves as much development as Miriam Hopkins got in the 1932 movie, but ah well, she does great in her small screentime. Naldi usually chews the scenery in her work (particularly when her co-star is Rudolph Valentino), but here, she infuses her character (an exotic dancer named Gina) with a sense of weariness and understated melancholy.

Duel (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1971)

Holy smokes did I ever love this! Never at any point in his career did I figure Spielberg had a Hitchcockian horror in him.

Duel is disarmingly simple: a tired middle-aged salesman is trying to drive home from a business trip when he encounters a slow, oil-spewing truck on a remote highway. He passes the guy, figuring like any sane person this is no big deal. Instead, he angers the truck driver, triggering a drawn-out nightmare as the truck pursues him with lethal intentions.

That scenario sounds like it would get old quickly in a 90-minute movie, right? WRONG! Spielberg and screenwriter Richard Mattheson squeeze every bit of suspense they can from the conflict, never allowing the viewer’s nerves a moment’s rest.

My favorite scene actually isn’t any of the chase scenes, but the part in the diner where the protagonist, seeing the truck parked outside, glances around at the other patrons, every single one of them now a suspect. Dennis Weaver’s acting, the tight cinematography, and the Bernard Hermann-esque music all combine to make pure magic.

Hell, the unseen truck driver has to be one of the scariest movie villains of all time. Over and over again, you hear “the best villains have understandable motivations, pure evil villains aren’t interesting, blah blah.”

BULL.

This truck driver is freaky as hell and all the more compelling because he is such a potent force of unbridled malice. To give him a face would dilute the terror from the scenario. Sometimes, the idea that someone just loves to make others suffer is enough. Sometimes, the idea that someone wants to hurt or kill you just because you exist and that makes you fair game is terrifying and more than enough.

Absolutely see this movie!

#halloween 2019 #thoughts #horror #thriller #duel #dr jekyll and mr hyde #silent film

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bbs-backlog-challenge · 5 years

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BB’s Games Of 2019

2019 as a year felt like it lasted two years, and a lot happened in my personal life. Got a new job, learned to drive, got my first car, moved out of the in-laws’ basement into our first real apartment, started my first long-term game of DnD (which in itself has involved a new relationship and an emotional breakdown)- and between it all I somehow managed to play 77 games. Backlog’s down to 35 titles, lads- at this rate, I’ll be down to zero by July 2020. (Not gonna happen.) In 2020, I’d like to explore the SNES catalogue a little more, but before that happens we have to review everything 2019 brought me, in a somewhat chronological order.

- Near A Tomato Carry-over from last year’s post since I was in the middle of playing it at the time. I definitely never quite got a handle on the combat and I think some of the themes went over my head, but I still had fun here, and the 9S hacking minigame never got old. It was a gift from an old friend who I miss. Was nice to reconnect. - SSBU With my new main Zelda, I cleared all of WoL and got every spirit on the Spirit Board. I never really used her before but she’s cute now! Really liked the attention to detail in the spirit encounters. Unfortunately, Cloud is still in the game. - Mega Mans 1 2 and 3 I actually spoke about my experiences with the Mega Men in my BBLC post for Mega Man Eggs, so you should read that right now. - Metroid Samus Returns It’s Good. Like, a solid Good. Never Great, never Bad, just Good. It’s nice to see one of the least accessible games in the series get a remaster, but it feels very disposable, if that makes sense. Like they just needed a Metroid to keep people busy while they reboot Prime 4 development. AM2R is vastly superior, go play that. One point of amusement- the game tells its story without narration, and also seems to pre-suppose you know Metroid lore. I was entertained by the thought of a newcomer to the series being completely mystified by the sudden space-dragon that comes out of nowhere to wreck you at the end of the game. - Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls You can click here to download it, ‘cos it’s free, which is almost criminal. This is one of the higher tier games I’ve played this year. A little bit Mega Man, a bit Metroid, with hints of Touhou and Undertale, it’s pretty tough at times but never to ‘precision platformer’ levels. It’s a lot of fun and the dev deserves your support. - Steve And Ollie RPG Oh, I made this one. Making something else next year? Question mark? - Prof Layton 3 Feels like these are getting weaker as they go along. The story has always been absolute boohockey, but the puzzles feel like they’re degrading in quality too. With over 200 in each game, that’s not super surprising, and I’m glad they didn’t bulk it out with a load of the awful block-slider puzzles. Still, it’s Layton, if you liked any of the other games you’ll like this cos it’s the exact same thing. - Fault Milestone Two Yo, there ain’t a damned thing I can say about Fault, so go play the first one and then play this and you’ll understand. - Full Throttle I never bothered to finish it. The obtuse old Sierra puzzlers were hard enough to deal with back in the day, and just feel kind of inexcusable now. I don’t have the patience for it. - eXceed 3rd Slick and fun bullet hell with a nigh-incomprehensible story and great music. Touhou fans will like it. Music by SSH who is relatively well known in doujin circles. - ASAMU Finished it before writing my BBLC post! - Eternal Senia Everything I said in my post rings true- do your best to look past the wonky translation, because there’s a heartfelt story underneath it. Very accessible gameplay, by design. - Inivisble Inc You have never before been, nor will you ever again be, so aware of having left a door open. I fully expected to hate Invisible, but I got hooked pretty hard. Quite tempted to do another run of it once the backlog is clear. - Pyre GOTY. Supergiant’s best game so far, and that’s not an easy thing to say for this Bastion veteran. I sobbed by the end. I’m not being dramatic- literally sobbed. Please play it. Music and writing and, just, heart, are all top tier. All the Nightwings are the best, but Hedwyn is the best best. - Ellipsis Finished it before writing my BBLC post! - Just Cause 2 I found myself getting bored very quickly. The main missions are all identical (really, they are) and the side missions are very uninspired. Blitzing around in a jet or grappling around a mission target is a lot of fun but it feels very shallow. There’s a lot to do but not really any reason to do any of it. I dunno, it’s a kind of hollow experience, that I nonetheless had fun with. - LiEat It went over my head a little, but that’s more on me I think. These horror-esque, eccentric japanese RPG Maker games usually do. But, it’s neat, and short. If this sort of thing usually sticks on you, I think this is a good title. - Shantae Pirates Curse These games always felt non-essential to me; I’m not sure why they never stuck. They never really go below or above Good. Entirely enjoyable but I don’t feel like I’d have really missed anything if I hadn’t played them. It is, however, absolutely worth investing in for the utterly superb sprite work. That doesn’t sell a game by itself, I know, but Shantae is a pixel art masterclass. - FF5 I’d more or less finished it by the time I wrote my BBLC post, so I don’t have much to add. It’s a refreshingly goofy entry in a series known for taking itself too seriously, even compared to its predecessor. Look forward to my entry for this game in my Games Of 2020 post, having played the Four Job Fiesta! - Touhou 17 It’s mid-tier in the touhou hierarchy, IMO. Didn’t set my soul alight but I did enjoy it. Playing as Wolf Marisa makes the final boss too chaotic to really enjoy, but playing through again with Reimu made it more fun. I beat Extra on my third run through, which gave me false confidence that after 10 years I might actually be good at these games- to then be quickly humbled by attempting Th11’s Extra. Final Boss’ theme song has one of the greatest lead-ins of all time, especially given you start the fight by running away from her! Also really loved the Stage 4 theme as you barrel head-first into Hell (the real one this time), and the haunting, calm-before-the-storm serenity of Stage 5, overlooking the City Of Beasts. - HackNet + Labyrinths GOTY. (Yes, I know I already said Pyre was GOTY; it’s my post, I can have two GOTYs. Make your own damned post!) It’s hard to say what I loved about these games without spoiling too much- just know that they play very much like investigation games, and figuring out the puzzles feels great. Labyrinths technically takes place during the events of Hacknet, with a somewhat more Black Hat approach to things- despite this, play all of Hacknet first, and then play Labyrinths. The expansion introduces a lot of new stuff and much trickier challenges, such that going back to the base game afterwards to finish that would leave it a little hollow- a disservice to how great the ending is. - Mega Man X I said everything I wanted to say in my BBLC post, and anything I didn’t cover was better said by Egoraptor. - Octodad Finished it before my BBLC post! - Chroma Squad The final mission is disappointingly poor, but everything up to that point was pretty good. Huge variance and creativity in the bosses. However, the most fun I got from it was when I realised the game allowed me to customise my team name, transformation name, and other such terminology. Dave, Dayve, Davy, Davina, and Dehve shouting “It’s time to Chromatise, Chroma Squad!” very quickly became “It’s time to shit, you bunch of fucks!” and it was funny every single time. (Personal favourite bit of dialogue- “I tried to shit! It worked!”) - Pyrite Heart Finished it before my BBLC post! - Starfox 2 Finished it before my BBLC post! - Burly Men At Sea Finished it before my BBLC post! - Disc Room Finished it before my BBLC post! - Kokurase Finished it before my BBLC post! Should have broken these ones up a bit! - Metroid Rogue Dawn Very, very impressive romhack let down by a distinctly un-fun final section. They managed to fix so many of OG Metroid’s problems, I’m surprised the gauntlet of terribleness that is Tourian escaped with only a cosmetic change. Nonetheless, it’s free, and the other 95% of the game is superb, even from a purely technical standpoint. - Wuppo I dunno what happened here! I was full of praise for Wuppo when I played it, but somehow I just couldn’t stick with it and just never felt like playing it. It’s a very aimless game, and I wonder if that might be why? It’s a shame, I feel disappointed in myself for not seeing it through, but ultimately I play games to have fun and I just wasn’t quite there with Wuppo. - Super Mario Odyssey I loved it, obviously. I wrote my BBLC post towards the end of my time with Odyssey so most of that stands- I do want to add that the controls always felt a little loose, like I wasn’t quite as in-control as I was in Galaxy. Also Mario prioritises walljumping over ledge-grabbing and it’s super-hard to unlearn that instinct after 20 years. Finally- Long Journey’s End is just bullshit. - Secret Of Mana Dropped it pretty soon after Finning it. There’s some logic to the way the game works, some kind of hidden turn-order system, that I could not at all figure out. My AI companions (useless, btw) would hit an enemy which meant I couldn’t, except sometimes the hit would still register but only actually go through 3 seconds later, without any way to tell which way it was going to go. It takes like 7 months for your character to get back up after taking a hit. It’s just, wonky, and I couldn’t solve the puzzle of how to make the game do what I wanted to do. - Pokemon Shield Still working my way through it. It’s- yeah, it’s pokemon. Get a similar vibe to Sun/Moon with it that it’s kind of unfinished- lots of small (and some not so small) parts of the game just feel like there were bigger plans that couldn’t be realised in time. I’m still enjoying it! They did a great job of making the gym battles, and the whole process of 8-badges-then-champion, feel like a spectacle. I think only the anime has managed it to this degree before. - Earthbound Man, I really, really want to like this game, but the battle system is terrible. I need to play through the game again buffing my party up with cheats or something, because it’s so unbalanced and cheap. Everything else about the game is wonderful, but I got so frustrated with the fights! - Mario Kart 8 Didn’t play any of the single player this time, it was midgi’s christmas present so I just joined a couple of multiplayer games. Absolutely baffled that the game features F-Zero style anti-gravity courses, has Mute City and Big Blue, and even has the Blue Falcon as a selectable vehicle, but they haven’t put Captain Falcon in it. Like he’s ever going to get another game of his own? Let him have this! - Carmageddon 2 It’s pretty clunky by now, being 20 years old, but still plays well enough. The physics are super loose so you slide around like your tires have been buttered. It was more fun when they were zombies instead of just normal people. Missions are brutally hard and should be skipped with cheats. - Neopets After 15 years of playing, I finally got a Ghostkersword. The site as a whole has gone through a lot, and certainly its heyday is long gone, but there’s no other game quite like it. I’m playing the Food Club every day, still. - SIF New phone can’t run the actual gameplay section well enough, so I just log in occasionally to grab free scouts. Here’s another one whose golden years are behind it, sadly, but I certainly still have a lot of affection for SIF. - FF1 Mobile version, which fixes a lot of the bugs with the NES original. This year I completed a solo run with 1 Red Mage, a 4-black belts run, a low-level run, and a 4 White Mages run (which ended up being a lower-level run than the low-level run). I’m fairly comfortable in calling myself an expert in FF1, now. There’s still not really any other games like it- build a party as balanced or imbalanced as you like, and see how they fare. I’d like to build my own game in a similar style, one day. - Re: Live Gacha games and RPG just don’t mix! Both gacha and events do not gel with core RPG mechanics of your character(s) developing in strength as the game goes. It seems impossible to balance the game well- do you cater to the whales who spend and spend until they have the strongest teams possible, meaning the free players or the terminally unlucky can’t stand a chance, or do you cater to those players and give them no reason to spend for the more powerful characters? It’s a shame, because the anime was baffling but in that enjoyable way where you just kind of go with whatever it throws at you, and exploring that in a non-freemium game with a solid beginning middle and end would be really interesting. - Tiny Thief Mobile game that’s not available any more, I think my BBLC post covered it well enough. - F-Zero One of the criticisms most commonly levied against F-Zero is that it wont hold your attention for long. While that’s true, it’s not like you have to make a purchasing decision about it any more- it comes bundled in with the other games you’re buying, so the only investment is time. Ignoring that, it’s still fun to burn around the tracks, and the sense of speed hasn’t ever diminished. The music, too, is underappreciated, with Port Town being my personal fave. - F-Zero GX I can’t believe Nintendo hasn’t done anything with this ridiculous universe for 15 years now. The cutscenes are so hilariously overwrought, and the cast of characters is huge! It could so seamlessly intersect with the Starfox universe, too. There were rumours of a Starfox Racing title some time ago, and I really hope that’s the case. It’d work so well (by which I mean, a particularly enjoyable kind of awful). Anyway, the game still plays great, Story Mode is WAY too hard, Dr Stewart’s theme is a Tune. - Stratosphere This game is from 1998! Build a flying fortress, deck it out with fortifications and weapons and power supplies, then use it to destroy other fortresses. I only ever played the demo as a kid, never got the full game. Took some cajoling to get it to work on modern hardware, but eventually I got in and it wasn’t worth it at all. Wow, that performance, apparently it was designed to run at a terrible frame rate and it wasn’t just a result of my 1998 PC not being up to the task! A shame, but I guess it put one of my ghosts to rest. - DKC 2 The best of the three SNES games, despite the inclusion (and protagonism) of Diddy Kong. Lots to love here, but the OST is top notch. - DKC 3 Not as good as 2, but IMO better than 1. There was a much heavier emphasis on gimmick levels in 3, not all of which hit their target, but does provide a great deal of variety. Consensus is that 2 is better, but if someone claimed 3 was the best DKC, I’d let them get away with it. - King Arthur’s World (SNES) Speaking of putting ghosts to rest… We somehow always managed to get this game whenever we got a SNES, and kid!Beebs most certainly didn’t have the patience for it. Adult!Beebs barely does, either. It’s a very ambitious attempt at some sort of RTS/Puzzle hybrid, somewhat comparable to Lemmings? King Arthur must make his way from his starting position to the throne elsewhere in the map to claim it as his own, using the myriad abilities of his soldiers to get him there in one piece. I decided this year that I was finally going to play through the whole damn thing, start to finish, for the first time ever. With copious use of save states and rewinds, I was finally able to slay this demon. For as fiddly and frustrating as it is, I would still say people should check it out if they have the tools to do so- there’s not really anything else like it, on SNES or otherwise; you’re guaranteed a unique experience, if nothing else. - Oscar (SNES) Terrible. - Spanky’s Quest (SNES) With a name like that, how could I refuse? It’s a weird little puzzler, aping (wahey!) Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars a little. You’re a monkey who can blow bubbles that stun enemies, but if you bounce the bubble on your head it gets progressively larger and can be burst to send a barrage of similarly-sized sports balls at your opponents to knock them out. You know, just like real life. - Addam’s Family (SNES) This easily-dismissible movie tie-in is actually a very competent platformer with some very, very light metroidvania exploration involved. Gomez has to go through Addams Mansion and rescue the members of his family who have been kidnapped by… something. There’s hidden secrets everywhere and the family can be rescued in any order you like. Genuine recommendation. - Panel DePon/Tetris Attack The only vs puzzler I enjoy (yep. Not even puyo puyo. I know.) I played the HECK out of this in my teenage years, and got crazy good at it. Tendonitis says I’m not allowed to do that any more, but once I shook the rust off I was still pretty strong! It was released as Panel DePon in Japan and was fairy themed, but for the western release they replaced all the fairies with Yoshi characters and renamed it Tetris Attack despite having nothing to do with Tetris at all. Up to you which you prefer- language isn't too much of a barrier here. Soundtrack is killer. - Subsurface Circular Finished it before my BBLC post. Still not decided if I liked the way it ended. - Master Of Orion 2 C’mon. After playing three other pretenders to MoO2’s throne, I had to give the real deal a couple of spins too. It’s Civ 5 in space. Customisable race builds. A whole galaxy to bring peace to, by whichever means you prefer. Would love for someone else to get into it. - Touhou 8 Last minute entry I just played yesterday ‘cos I wanted some Touhou and I haven’t played this entry in a long while. A Solo Marisa Normal Final B run, if you’re interested. Kaguya beast-mode tearing apart the Spell Of Imperishable Night at the end of the game is still an awesome moment, but it’s a shame you can miss the last couple of spells if you take some unlucky hits. - And here’s the list of Bins, which are all covered in their BBLC post: No Time To Explain MoO Skyborn Jumpjet Rex StH 4 Ballistick Munch’s Oddysee Outland Project CARS RiME Magicka Waking Mars Urban Chaos Divinity: Dragon Commander Strike Suit Zero Hell Yeah! Lambda Wars Beta Stranger’s Wrath MoO 3 XCOM Lots more Fins than Bins this year! Good to see!

#gaming #video games

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pain-somnia · 6 years

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Day’s SasuSaku Fic Recs

I’ve decide to make a list of fics that I love and why. If you haven’t read these fics I highly recommend that you do, although I’m sure you all have because these are awesome. any fics with ♡ are completed

Breath Mints | (part one) (part two) starting off this list is a work by adxe that I adore and keep going back to because it’s a funky sort of post-apocalyptic story. if mysteries and post-apoc stories are your thing, you’ll love this one.

Tinder AU | (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (epilogue) ♡ I don’t think this fic needs much more explaining about it’s premise because of it’s name? just watch Sasuke swipe the wrong way and end up on a wacky journey to find the elusive Tinder Girl. sun-summoning is a woman after my own heart. everything she writes is a joy to read. I’m a huge fan of her comedy although her star wars-esque and game of thrones aus are to die for. if you’re going to read any of her work read this one. it was a long, long time in the making and was worth the wait for every single part. this was a masterpiece.

Home Is Where The Heart Is | (fanfiction) written by xxlovendreamsxx it’s one of the most popular fics out there, I know, but there’s a reason for it. it’s a lovely post-canon/blank period that has it’s moments of angst. as a person with depression and that has dealt with ptsd I lived for watching Sasuke come to terms with his life after the cursed seal.

Kyuro | (part one) (part two) (part three) ♡ another by the lovely adxe, this story had me on the edge of my seat. It’s a mystery and that beautiful kind of horror that makes for a great read. it’s got Team 7 interaction and SS working together to solve a problem and it’s just amazing.

Sakura’s Secret | (fanfiction) roraewrites searched deep into my old shoujo guilty pleasures for this one. a student/teacher au that will leave you frustrated with each cliffhanger but trust me you’ll be hooked on teacher Sasuke and student Sakura’s relationship and the way they twist and turn to hide it. it’s rated M just fyi.

Yours, Forevermore | (fanfiction) xxlovendreamsxx makes yet another appearance on this list with this Hokage!Sasuke au. literally her fantastic writing and hokage!sasuke had me hooked before I read it and trust me it’s a good read. a good steamy read.

Jail Sex Fic | (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) do I really gotta explain what this one is about? thelittlechook has a way with smut and this fic is the work that has it so I can no longer hear or say the word “professional” the right way anymore.

Two Miserable People Meet At A Wedding | (fic) (more) here’s that Star Wars-esque au by sun-summoning that I absolutely adored. and a little more that she added.

Penthesilea | (master post) ♡ A Warring States AU with a little a bit of Romeo & Juliet going on. kuriquinn wrote a fantastic fic about two people that are supposed to be enemies falling in love in the midst of war.

LOTR!AU | (you know better than that) (you asked for it [M rated]) did you know that xxlovendreamsxx wrote LOTR au one-shots? well now you do! i can’t find them all but here’s two that were in my likes. i know it’s tempting to go straight for the smut but read the first fic linked before moving on to the smut.

(this list will be updated when I can find links to some fics I’ve lost)

#ss fanfiction #sasusaku #fic recs

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brigdh · 7 years

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October Readings

In which I read a bunch horror novels because it's Halloween. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. A novel in the recent genre of "Lovecraft but with antiracism". In this one, the main character Atticus Turner is a young black man in the 1950s who has just discovered that he is the closest living descendant of a powerful wizard from early America (via Atticus's great-great-great-however many times grandmother, who escaped from slavery the same night the wizard accidentally immolated himself and everyone he was close to in an attempt to gain greater power). The wizard's surviving followers have tracked Atticus down and would like to use him for a ritual he is not intended to survive. They kidnap his father to force Atticus to follow him to their creepy small town in rural New England. This sets off a series of events in which Atticus, his extended family, and several friends are repeatedly caught up in supernatural events: a coup within the wizard cabal, haunted houses, magic potions that grant tempting powers, visits to distant planets, devilishly evil – literally! – cops, treasure hunts for mysterious artifacts, and so on. Each chapter is relatively disconnected from the others and focuses on a different character, so the book has somewhat of the feel of a series of short stories rather than a regular novel. Since Lovecraft himself was more of a story writer than a novelist, the homage is obvious. Through it all, though, the specter of Jim Crow racism proves more dangerous and pervasive than any creature from another dimension. One of the most haunting sections is a flashback to the childhood of Atticus's father, when he escaped the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. I wanted to like this book more than I did. There's nothing wrong with it, exactly; I just wanted it to go a bit deeper or explore further than it ever actually did. Most of this is down to the short story-esque format; since each one has a new narrator and plot, I never got to know any of the individuals well enough. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly scary book either, though to be fair it's not trying to be. The concept of wizards competing over ancient books of power is really the only detail it takes from Lovecraft. There's no ancient gods or mind-breaking geometry man was not meant to comprehend here, nor races of squid-people. Lovecraft Country is apparently being produced by HBO as a series, which seems like a great idea. I suspect this is one of those cases where an adaptation (particularly a serial one, like a TV show) could do more with the material than the original did. Bone White by Ronald Malfi. A horror novel set in contemporary rural Alaska. Paul Gallo has a contentious relationship with his drop-out druggie twin, Danny, but ever since Danny disappeared a year ago while on a trip to "find himself", Paul has been dedicated to figuring out what happened to him. Then a serial killer surrenders in the small town of Dread's Hand, Alaska – the same place Danny was last heard from. Paul, of course, heads to Alaska to start his own investigation, and discovers that something supernatural may be going on. The people of Dread's Hand tell stories of a devil who turns people "bone white" – poisons them from the inside, leaves them soulless and dangerous – and everyone, from the local cops to the hotel owner to the serial killer himself, is clearly helping to cover up whatever happened to Danny. This was an absolutely fantastic book. Malfi is not only a master at creating creeping tension, conveying the horror of absolute isolation, coming up with straight-up uncanny images, and just generally being scary, but his prose has a beauty that's rare in this genre. A few random examples of lines that struck me: Daylight broke like an arterial bleed. He could feel the slight increase in his heartbeat, and despite the cold that he’d carried in with him from the outside, a film of perspiration had come over him. He felt amphibious with it. Blink and you’d miss it: a town, or, rather, the memory of a town, secreted away at the end of a nameless, unpaved roadway that, in the deepening half light of an Alaskan dusk, looks like it might arc straight off the surface of the planet and out into the far reaches of the cosmos. A town where the scant few roads twist like veins and the little black-roofed houses, distanced from one another as if fearful of some contagion, look as if they’d been excreted into existence, pushed up through the crust of the earth from someplace deep underground. There is snow the color of concrete in the rutted streets, dirty clumps of it packed against the sides of houses or snared in the needled boughs of steel-colored spruce. No one walks the unpaved streets; no one putters around in those squalid little yards, where the soil looks like ash and the saplings all bend at curious, pained, aggrieved angles. And even farther still, he saw what appeared to be an impromptu landfill—a conglomeration of old washing machines, truck tires, TV antennas, and even an entire discarded swing set lay in a jumbled heap in the overgrown grass, like some beast that had succumbed to the elements and left its skeleton behind. Sure, it's not poetry, but it's a damn sight better than the workmanlike prose that I expected, and is a major part of why I loved this book. Another thing I adored was Jill Ryerson, investigator in Major Crimes Fairbank and the book's secondary narrator. Despite Paul and Jill being relatively the same age and both single... they never hook up! They never even waste time experiencing 'sexual tension'! They just get on with their jobs, interacting like two platonic professionals! DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THIS IS? I was ecstatic when I realized that there wasn't going to be some dumb romantic subplot. Jill even gets this wonderfully un-feminized description when she fall ill at one point: "A whip of Kleenex corkscrewing from one nostril and a steaming mug of Theraflu on the counter, she’d listened to McHale’s voice in disbelief." There are complaints I could make about Bone White: there's a dumb recurring theme of powerful chakras, and the ending felt a little anticlimactic. But all of that is minor compared to the all-important trio of 1.) a genuinely scary book, with 2.) lovely writing, and 3.) well-written, competent female characters who are not there to be sexual foils for the male heroes. This is the first book I've read by Malfi, but I was incredibly impressed and will definitely be reading more. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. This is one of those books where just figuring out what the hell is going on takes until the end; they can be fun to read, but they're damn hard to review. So here's what we know: a significant portion of the southern US (I assumed, though now that I think about it, I believe the country is never actually specified) has been cordoned off by the government for decades and renamed "Area X". Exactly what happened to Area X – something supernatural? alien? environmental? disease-related? radioactive? – is either unknown or deliberately suppressed, but the only humans allowed into the area are small teams of explorers. Our unnamed narrator, known only as "the biologist", is a member of the twelfth expedition, along with three other women: the anthropologist, the surveyor, and their leader, the psychologist. All members of previous expeditions have died, either within Area X itself – whether of suicide or killed by other members of their team – or after returning, due to aggressive cancers. The biologist is meant to study the pristine wilderness created by humans having abandoned the area, but she slowly realizes that the act of observation is changing her as well, turning her into something that may not be quite human. Her past and her reasons for taking such a job are also slowly revealed. It's a short novel (about 130 pages), and though there's plenty of unsettling descriptions, we never do get a firm answer on what's going on with Area X or why any of this is happening. Annihilation reminded me a lot of House of Leaves. There's that same sense of the normal being made uncanny, though in this case it's swamps, a lighthouse, and dolphins with too-human eyes rather than a four-and-a-half minute hallway. Nor are there any explanations to be had, except in the vague sense of symbolism and the main character's psychology. Unfortunately, unlike House of Leaves the cryptic nature of Annihilation didn't quite work for me. I'm all for open endings, but when the characters, the plot, the setting, and the meaning are all vague as misty streaks on a cloudy night, I'm left with nothing to hang on to. It had some lovely descriptions of plants, I'll give it that. Invasive by Chuck Wendig. I asked for recs for scary reads over on twitter, and call_me_ishmael provided me with a list, of which I chose this one. There's a very simple reason for that: it's a horror novel about ants. A lot of people are creeped out by spiders. Me, I've never been able to stand ants. The shiny blackness of their surfaces, more like metal or plastic than any organic substance; the unnaturally sharp angles of their joints and segments; the flat reflectiveness of their eyes; the pointed mandibles in the base of their overly aerodynamic heads... it's wrong. Alien, robotic, monstrous – I'm not sure which, but they just don't seem like something from Earth. And so an entire book focusing on a creature that already makes me uncomfortable seemed like the perfect read for October. In a rural cabin in upstate New York, FBI consultant Hannah Stander is called to what may or may not be a crime scene. An unidentified body is found with its skin having been eaten by ants; the ants themselves were later killed off by a cold snap. Hannah and others at first assume the guy was probably dead before the ants arrived, but as they investigate further they discover the ants are of no known species. Or rather, they're of multiple species: the ants are genetically modified organisms combining the traits of many different kinds of ants to make them uniquely and viciously deadly. They possess a venom potent enough to paralyze a human with anaphylactic shock after a single sting, and they're drawn to harvest human skin for its yeast in much the same way leaf-cutter ants collect greenery to grow fungus. An investigation of their DNA finds markers tying the ants back to the company of an eccentric billionaire of the Richard Branson/Elon Musk type; he, of course, denies all involvement, but Hannah is invited to travel to his privately-owned island where his team of scientists do cutting-edge research. And where they are all horribly isolated when the ants break out. Hannah is a fantastic character to be the narrator of a horror novel. She suffers from panic attacks and has anxiety about everything – global warming, antibiotic resistant diseases, turbulence, etc – so her constant low-grade tension builds suspense before anything even happens. On the other hand, she was raised by off-the-grid doomsday prepper parents, so when the shit hits the fan she has the training and drive to survive the end of the world. She's complex, likable, and flawed, and I enjoyed spending time with her. Invasive is apparently a sequel to Wendig's Zer0es, but there is relatively little overlap between the two (Hannah, for example, seems to be new for this book), so I had no problem reading it as a stand-alone. I do have a few complaints: the section of the book between the first death and before the ants are released is pretty slow-going, as Hannah just wanders around interviewing scientists and contemplating who might be lying. But once swarms of ants are covering the island, things kick up to such a high gear that all that boring stage-setting is redeemed. Secondly, the ultimate reveal of who made the ants and why wasn't satisfactory. Still, the horror genre as a whole can almost never stick their landings, so I suppose I can't hold it against Invasive too much. Overall, this was the perfect horror techno-thriller: exciting, gross, and cheesy in just the right amounts. The Wishing Tree by Aline Hannigan. I'm pretty certain I bought this because it was written by a fanfic author I enjoy, but of course now I can't remember whose penname it is, so maybe I was mistaken about that. Anyway. In this novella, Theodora Miller – expert in weird supernatural shit – is called from her home in East Harlem to a small New Hampshire town suffering from a plague of mysterious murders. They seem to be connected to the 'wishing tree', an old oak in the nearby forest that local folklore has caused to be carved with the initials of every resident. Also, it turns out that there's a deadline: Theodora has only a few days to solve the case before the entire town will be destroyed. The Wishing Tree suffers from a few minor grammar mistakes (though if the author was one of you, let me know and I'm happy to do a beta), but overall I liked the inventiveness of the mystery and its resolution. There's a twist at the end that nicely ties up the plot, the creepiness of the scenario is well-developed, and both Theodora and the local sheriff were interesting, effective characters. Fifty pages doesn't give one much room to build up the world, but I see the author plans to write the further adventures of Theodora and that could make for a very promising series. It kept me engaged despite reading it on a turbulent flight, and what more can humanity really ask for from our greatest literature?

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#matt ruff #ronald malfi #jeff vandermeer #chuck wendig #aline hannigan #books #book reviews

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