#the immersion and its just fucking cringy

[vilsoo]

fnaftok discussing about the fnaf movie and their expectations is making me cringe so bad rn

[tgcg]

bad mouther, hole master

TG: kissing with tongue is gross as hell

CG: COME THE FUCK OFF IT.

TG: what

CG: I'M SAYING SHUT UP.

TG: oh

CG: IT'S NOT THAT WEIRD. IT'S LIKE THE NATURAL PROGRESSION OF REGULAR KISSING TO EVENTUALLY INCLUDE THAT. IF YOU HAD ANY SEMBLANCE OF ROMANCE GHOSTING THROUGH THE DEVOLVING REMNANTS OF YOUR THINKPAN YOU'D APPRECIATE WHAT IT BRINGS TO THE NUTRITION PLATFORM OF ANY CONSENTING CONCUPISCENT RELATIONSHIP!

TG: youre talking about it like its a goddamn military weapon or some shit

TG: some kinda scientific fuckin method to fondle a dudes mouth with your own mouth thats

TG: thats gross

TG: this isnt supposed to be a debate before fuckin congress on the pros and cons of getting your mack on

TG: its i would say a reasonably personal thing to react about and thats just my reaction man you dont gotta arbitrate it

TG: and like why the hell do they have to linger on it so long in these movies do they really want me to immerse myself in people necking each other that much

TG: roll the sounds around in my earholes like im swilling a fine fuckin wine

TG: well my professional opinion is that shit tastes and sounds mad gross and tbh i havent seen a single movie where it was close to being any kind of necessary

TG: its just a cringy waste of everyones time

CG: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, AND I DISAGREE WITH EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF YOUR IGNORANCE GASH, YOU LUMP OF TIGHT-LIPPED CLUELESSNESS.

TG: did you just homestar me

CG: FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, SINCE YOU'RE APPARENTLY DESPERATE TO START SHIT WITH ME RIGHT NOW: HAVE YOU EVER EVEN DONE IT?

TG: hell no

CG: THANK YOU FOR PROVING MY POINT.

TG: proving your point--

TG: bro have uh

TG: have YOU???

CG: EXCUSE ME? HAVE I WHAT?

TG: come on

TG: i walked into this stupid conversation with a fucking shovel and by god am i digging myself a damn hole big and wide enough for every dave across time to squeeze in so i might as well get cosy in this shit before we all start collectively shoving dirt in our mouths

TG: bet your ass im taking you down with me though

TG: grab your spade and get digging man

CG: GRAB MY WHAT????????

TG: just tell me

CG: ???????!!!!!!!!

TG: karkat

CG: NO!

TG: f-

CG: WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!!! WHAT PART OF "SHUT UP" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND????

TG: wait no

TG: oh my god dude

TG: you can spin that shit all you want but you can do it the hell away from me

TG: i do not need to be hip to your weirdo foursquare fantasies

TG: patently not my business

CG: STOP RIGHT THERE. JUST SHUT IT. I AM PUTTING US OUT OF OUR MISERY RIGHT NOW. I AM CONDUCTING AN ACT OF MERCY ON THIS INSANE FUCKING CONVERSATION AND YOU ARE GOING TO ZIP YOUR LIPS AND TAKE IT.

CG: HERE IT IS: YOUR SINGLE OPPORTUNITY TO PRETEND YOU NEVER SAID THAT TO ME. I AM GOING TO FORGET YOU MADE A COMPLETE MOCKERY OF ME AND MY CULTURE THIS ONE TIME. AND LET YOU CONTINUE TO DIG YOUR STUPID, SHITTY HOLE.

CG: AND DAVE, I AM BEGGING YOU NOT TO WASTE IT.

CG: TO ANSWER YOUR SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION, NO I HAVE NOT DONE IT.

CG: WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK.

CG: HAPPY?

TG: ……..

TG: way to defuse the situation solid work

TG: real gold star effort grabbin that lit wick and blowing on it

TG: ok first of all you asked me first so dont act like im the one being a weirdo about this

TG: second of all i didnt mean it like that and you know it

TG: THIRD of all what the hell was the point of engaging the knightly theatrics then if you cant even verify that shit

CG: WELL FUCK, SORRY DAVE! I GUESS I'M JUST A FUCKING ROMANCE ENTHUSIAST! I GUESS I GIVE A MAJOR SHIT ABOUT THE THING YOU'RE OPENLY MOCKING TO MY FACE! IS THAT SO IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO WRAP YOUR THOUGHT SPONGE AROUND?

CG: AND IT WAS COMPLETELY REASONABLE FOR ME TO ASK YOU THAT, YOU CONGEALED FETID NOOKSTAIN! MY STATUS ON THE MATTER HAS LITERALLY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE POINT EITHER OF US IS TRYING TO MAKE.

CG: TRY TO KEEP YOUR NUGBONE FROM CAVING IN ON ITSELF WHEN I DROP THIS BOMBSHELL: I'M ALLOWED TO HAVE OPINIONS ON THINGS I ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT, EVEN IF I HAVEN'T DONE THEM! I DON'T JUST GO TROUNCING THE FUCK ABOUT LOBBING MY UNFOUNDED OPINIONS AT PEOPLE LIKE I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING. UNLIKE SOMEONE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE INVOLVED IN THIS CONVERSATION WE'RE HAVING RIGHT NOW!

TG: youre

CG: I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU BY THE WAY. THE SOMEONE IS YOU.

TG: oh gimme a break

TG: bro youre going apeshit over something you havent even done

TG: you know what that sounds like to me it sounds like an overcompensating fake fan who doesnt get any

TG: you heard of troll napoleon complex

CG: AT LEAST I ACTUALLY FORMED MY OPINION BASED ON CAREFUL CONSIDERATION --

TG: -- oh yeah i bet huh

CG: -- INSTEAD OF JUST BANKING ON NUBJERK --

TG: -- not a real thing you just said

CG: -- REACTIONS AND WRINKLING MY SNIFF NUB AT ANY SIGNS OF GENUINE PHYSICAL INTIMACY!

TG: stop saying nub

CG: YOU EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED BULGEWAD

TG: not too much worse than being a perpetual fountain of emotional diarrhea

CG: DON'T YOU DARE.

CG: DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO USE THAT AS A "GOTCHA", YOU--… YOU! FUCK!

TG: dude did you actually run out of insults

TG: okay this is getting concerning

TG: youre the international dude of verbal dunks

TG: that can not be happening

CG: AAGHRJRGHJRGRHJAGHRJGRHJAGRHJRGRHJRGRHRJR

TG: you cant run out of em youre like the ultimate peddler of hate

CG: YOU DON'T THINK I'M CRITICALLY AWARE OF THE HOOFBEASTSHIT I'M SPEWING NIGH FUCKING CONSTANTLY?! I AM PAINFULLY COGNIZANT OF HOW MORONIC EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS!!!!

TG: feel like ive done some damage here

CG: ESPECIALLY MYSELF!

TG: alright bud time to calm down

CG: YOU CALM DOWN!!!!

TG: okay whatever!

CG: WHATEVER!!!!!!!!

TG: jeez

…

TG: here

…

CG: UGH.

TG: yeah

TG: really glad stuff like this happens in private

CG: YEAH. SAME HERE.

CG: JEGUS, CAN WE GO BACK TO BEFORE WE HAD THIS CONVERSATION? I DON'T ASK YOU MANY FAVORS, SO SURELY YOUR SLURRY OF ILL-DEFINED TIME POWERS CAN ALLOW YOU TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

CG: JUST LIKE, WIPE THAT WHOLE THING OFF THE SLATE.

CG: LET'S START OVER. SAY, FIVE MINUTES AGO. HOW DOES THAT SOUND?

TG: what conversation?

CG: OKAY, GOTCHA.

[raitrolling]

Cursed Drabble meta post because i cant help myself sometimes

while i dont think i nailed the vibe for the tumblr reader x celebrity self-insert fan fiction (mainly because i just Could not get through a single fic without dying of cringe. im sorry i do not vibe with this genre in the slightest for reasons that are probably evident in how i wrote that fic) and its probably more wattpad / quotev fanfic tier, i think i did pull off the standard tropes for those sorts of fics

like how the self-insert is supposed to be a blank slate for anyone to, well. self-insert into, but they're always very obviously written to be (cis) women. and the author can't decide if they want their self-insert to be meek and easily smitten, or sassy and genre-aware, as well as simultaneously living the fantasy of having a glamorous lifestyle that people would be jealous of, but she's also totally just an ordinary girl you guys. see, she's got average looks!

and also the combination of fulfilling the fantasy of 'what if my dream man saved me from a scary situation like gross dudes hitting on me', and the fact that the love interest is... often not written that much better than the bad guys lmao. the 'i saw you from across the room and immediately fell in love and wanted to protect you because you are so beautiful' seems to be popular in self-insert fics from what i skimmed through, but a lot of the time the dudes always come across as creepy to me. but in this fic sharle is using french terms of endearment so clearly he is sexy and romantic and not also a weird sleaze, duh

i died the most writing every single piece of sharle's dialogue but also the descriptions talking about how hot he is, btw. the line about the reader imagining his hands choking someone and them smelling his intoxicating scent in his bedsheets both made me want to hurl LMFAO props to people who can write that shit, id rather swan dive off a cliff thanks (tho the hand focus is also due to me listening to that read-through of the foxhole court and the video essayist mentioning how often the characters in that story grabbed each other by the chin. i was just like 'ok yeah i need more hand stuff in this people eat that shit up')

the warnings at the start are there solely because when i was scrolling through the tumblr tags for reader self-inserts i saw quite a few that warned for swearing which i thought was funny since like. this is a 13+ website. you can say the fuck word here and not get in trouble. apart from the cringy dialogue i wouldnt say anything in the fic actually merits a warning, but i felt like i needed to add the other stuff to keep it true to the formatting style that is common for tumblr self-insert fic

the bit with ropikk at the end definitely breaks the illusion and probably turns the fic into some 'lol well that just happened' marvel '''humour''', but tbh i just wanted to include a 'he would not fucking say that' joke and needed to write a palate cleanse LMAO you can pretend that last paragraph doesn't exist if you dont like the immersion-breaking

anyways uh. this was a lot of words i wrote to explain my stupid drabble i wrote as a joke and because people voted for something cursed. you can't say i half-ass anything lmao

[thelargefrye]

could you recommend some writers who you like? 🤍

CEO SMALLS : that i like? anon you gotta big storm coming because there’s quite a few. 

so we’re gonna start off with a strong one, @atiny-piratequeen. like the woman is an icon. if i hadn’t found her blog then i probably wouldn’t have created mine, like she’s one of my inspirations for having a blog.

next is @barnesbabee not only is her writings amazing but she’s also gorgeous and has a great sense of humor and doesn’t take anyone’s shit. she really reminds me of my best friend and i think that’s a reason why i enjoy talking to her when i do.

@masterninjacow is another one and i would give the entire world to them if they wanted it. they are so nice and friendly and their works are just so ugh! soft, i love them so much. 

@ateezmakemeweep her username is a lie bc it should be ‘iwillmakeyouweep’ bc damn are all her stories just so amazing and story driven and just words. you just read one of her works and you’re hooked and the next thing you know it 3am because you just spent all day reading her stuff. she is a master class writer like that’s just. 

@vocalyunho my god this woman is not only the most precious thing in the world but her writings are also just a blessing. like i adore both her and her writings so much.

@yeocult . . . i don’t think i need any explanation on why i adore and love helen. i mean her name is helen for crying out loud! that’s most the aesthetic and softest name ever! recently she’s does a lot of moodboards that are just so pleasing to the eyes and are so cool in general.

@closer-stars again, i don’t think i need to explain. you all don’t even understand how amazing stars is until you just go to her page. her and helen are some of my favorite people on tumblr and i don’t even think they truly understand how less lonelier they made this website for me in the past few months.

@barsformars their writing is just so heartwarming doesn’t matter the genre. you just end up loving everything they write because it’s just that good! 

@felixity (formerly a-tiny-8-tiny) probably the most friendliest (is that a word? it is now lol) person in the fandom. like i remember seeing her on everyone’s profiles before i even started my blog and THEN she started appearing on my blog and i was like... “have i been blessed? i must have” but, you guys just need to follow her.

@hereisleo if you are not careful then their works will literally mind fuck you bc that’s what happened to me when i first started reading their stuff. their works just pull you in and are great overall. not to mention their blog aesthetic is just so unique and cool.

@solarmingi i. adore. nana. so. much. she is so outgoing and great and funny and her works, no matter the length, will make you think about them for the next several minutes. their works are just so good like everyone else’s on this list.

@sangie-baby i just want to say this. please for the love of god stop hating on her because she didn’t do anything but breath. she is so nice and funny and such a joy to see on my dash. her writings, in my opinion, have improved so much since she first started (which wasn’t that long ago) and everything her whole blog is just enjoyable.

@diorscript / @nytcity you all should thank her because like fie, if i hadn’t come across her blog and interacted with her, then i wouldn’t have made my blog. her works have always just been so great so please go and support her and show her love.

@lustjoong one of the kinkiest people in the fandom, and i only say that because i’m pretty sure every time i see something tentacle smut related its because of them. but their works are so great and immersive that it’ll want to make you read more. things are detailed but not the too detailed that it makes everything cringy lmao.

@mingishoe a legend in this fandom. no words are needed to describe what i like about luna because its everything.

@yungidreamer DAMN do i love the poly!yungi series they have going on. they also seem like a really nice person which is always a plus. they just posted a vampire!seonghwa that i have yet to read (you can thank my classes for that lol) but i’m sure its amazing like all their other stuff.

@shrlyrid another person i consider a legend in the fandom. they just seem so nice and friendly and their reaction post are top-tier quality. they are awesome at every genre, so definitely go check them out.

@teeztheflag she is so great and her works are as well. she does darker themed things which i don’t usually like but the way she writes can make anything enjoyable, and she’s a great person to see on my dash and talk to. 

@atiny-dazzlinglight but all her stuff is also top-tier and she’s also a legend in the fandom. i haven’t interacted with her, but from what i’ve seen, she seems like a really cool person. 

@luvteez / @hardskz one of THE best social media aus i’ve seen along with their written works are also just gold. they are also a master class writer that i think a lot people enjoy in general.

@etoilefilm guys, just follow them. you won’t regret it. top-tier, master class, an icon. so nice and friendly and a joy all around to see and read from. 

@aasthrielle y e s. they have a cute coffee shop theme going on with their blog which is super cute! and their writings are. just. the. best. it really makes my heart clench at times and i enjoy it even if i hate that feeling (i know, i don’t make no sense lol) 

@daybreakx the amount of stuff you could read from them is... is just so amazing and i love that. their seonghwa hunger games au is something that i wholeheartedly recommend so please go read it.

there are literally so many writers that i enjoy and i want to put them all down but these are the ones that come to mind first. and if i didn’t mention you, just know that all your writings are still amazing and out of this world, but my brain is just fried and i don’t have the mental energy to go and look for everyone. but please go show these authors some love.

i feel like this was more than what you wanted anon, sorry, but sometimes you just got to promote people to get others interested and so that’s what i attempted to do. 

[mimithings97]

Heartache (M)

Summary: You didn’t know such a feeling was so real, so vivid, so hurtful. But it had happened and happened to you before you could stop it. Tae had become written into your life hard and fast, so when you leave you question that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t willing to unwrite him.

Pairing: Taehyung x Y/N

Genre: Angst, Smut, Fluff

Warnings: Heartache for starters, Unprotected sex, Oral (male receiving), Swearing, Nude modelling, Taehyung’s a sappy mess, Mentions of Alcohol

Word Count: 6k

A/N: Can’t lie in saying how morbid it is that I enjoy writing angst. It’s light angst though and a lot lighter than how fucking whipped Tae is at the end. Much love for the bub though, so, enjoy x

Ahhh jungkook features as well forgot to mention. Still love him. Nothings changed there.

Heartache.

Cringy, you once thought to yourself. 

How could you be so dependent, so set and so immersed in something that your heart actually aches? 

It didn’t make sense to you until the day words were spoken that couldn’t be taken back, bags were reluctantly packed and more tears were shed than there is water in the Thames. Heartache was real, vivid and the hardest thing you have ever had to live through in your 24 years of life. 3 weeks of a deep set dropping in your stomach that couldn’t be shaken despite the booze intake, the occasional listening to his voicemails and the relentless tears.

Your mother told you that if you built up too many walls it would hurt so much more when someone knocked them down. You had told Taehyung this on the first date, your first date, ever, with any man. You had always drawn a line between pleasure and dependency, settling for short flings and the occasional online relationship (purely for the sexting) instead of the commitment and responsibility that weighed on vulnerable shoulders when you bear your entire self to another in a relationship. Taehyung knew this. But he fell and you fell harder. You fell completely and utterly under his spell for three years. 

And then he told you he wanted to marry you. Bastard didn’t even propose, just mentioned that one toxic word of marriage and you instantly laid the bricks of that wall he had so unceremoniously knocked down all those years ago.

It felt so adult yet so childish leaving someone over the concept of marriage, but when talks of marriage turn to talks of children and one party wants something completely different to the other, what kind of relationship is there to continue. 

So three weeks later, just as the physical pain of emptiness and heartache has begun ebbing away, the emotional trauma of your decision begins to cave in on you.

To Jungkook:

11:31pm

You: I know I said I’d stop this

You: But I really dont know if this is worth the pain

You: His mum sent me a get well soon card today bc he told her i was ill and that’s why i hadn’t visited

You: I’m never going to not love him

You: How does anyone get over this shit its not fair

11:35pm

Guk: Oh noona

Guk: It’ll take lots and lots of time and lots and lots of tubs of ice cream and wine but youre both adults who want different things and not everything is meant to be

Guk: Sacrifice for the greater good right

11:35pm

You: There’s no fucking greater good here

You: I hate this

11:37pm

Guk: Noona you know that down the road hyung wants children. I don’t think marriage was that big, but he’s always wanted to be a dad

Guk: It’s not fair of him to ask you to have something you don’t want but its also not fair to leave him without the thing he’s always desired the most

11:40pm

You: Its just too hard to take

You: It feels like three years for jack shit

11:41pm

Guk: If you’re really struggling that much, noona, talk to him. I know he wants to talk to you still, he’s tried to contact you everyday. Maybe it will give you some closure or just help you see what’s right

11:41pm

You: Love you

Your phone is down as soon as Jungkook mentioned talking to him. How could you take one step forward and a million steps back by talking to him? It would be like hanging just what you want right in front of you but no touching, no talking to them after that 5 minutes of hell, no seeing them ever again. Closure is what you need but never what you’ll want.

The sheets that surround you, nuzzled closely into your neck and still unwashed even after three weeks just to keep that tiny scent of Tae over you naked skin, warm you to the point your eyes drift. You don’t mean to fall asleep so easily, but when every little action weighs so heavy on you during the day, sleep comes too easily. However, so does the nightmares of crawling alone in the black abyss.

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

Resuming work was never easy on a broken soul, but alas, here you were, with three weeks of sick pay under your belt you’d rather not have and 20 children at your feet.

Ironic isn’t it.

You break up with the only man you’ve ever loved because you can’t face a future of settling down with children, yet you wake up at the fucking godforsaken hour of 6 am to tend to a bunch of five and six years olds every day. No, you didn’t hate children, but they weren’t the joy of your life either. You were good at your job and you had this mad psychological complex that if you could help a child at five or six like you had so desperately needed at that age, then maybe you’d make their life just that little bit easier and that little bit brighter. Taehyung always found your reason for working so admirable - fuck that look of pure adoration in his eyes when you told him - so he found it equally hard to come to terms with when you told him the opposite. When you told him you couldn’t have your own children because the responsibility scared you. His ears were ringing at the point where you told him you also didn’t want to share him and his kindness, even so, the damage had been done, whatever the reasoning.

“Y/N! Jennie said you were back,” it’s a tight smile from you and a loose hug, but it’s amazing you’ve managed that with the way your head is far from in the room let alone the conversation at hand. “God, I hope you’re better, you were out for a while.”

You squeeze a weak laugh out, “Yeh, it wasn’t all that fun.”

“For a second me and Jennie were thinking you might be pregnant.” The heartache subsides, rivalled by the very distinct feeling of sickness. The ball of energy in front of you persists in conversation, but it’s to drowned ears and for a second you think you’ll faint. 

You miss your name being called. Shit, you don’t even know where it’s coming from, because the all-consuming feeling of this tide of emotions has swept you far from your spot in the classroom. Marie in front of you still calls, asking if you’re okay, but it’s the tug on your skirt, not harsh, but enough to garner a reaction that casts your eyes down.

“Miss Y/N?”

It’s Jojo, eyes wide and glaring up at you, still clung to the material of your skirt.

“Miss Y/N, why are you crying?”

You instantly draw the back of your hand to your face and it catches a cascading tear, much to your shock. You face must morph into a mortified expression at the thought of so carelessly crying at work, in the presence of the kids you look after with a smile and a skip in your step each day.

“Miss Y/N, it’s okay to cry. You can draw with me if you feel crying…” he shakes his head, “sad. Sad I mean.”

You feel Marie’s hand on your back, but Jojo’s eyes sweep you into a frenzy of more tears before you find yourself kneeling on the floor by the table. His table, where he sits alone each day, with paper and paints, or pencils, or chalk, sometimes he just folds it and hands it to you saying he made his paper into a flower. He already has one of his drawings on the go but scribbled over it thoughtlessly before starting out on a series of words. ‘To miss Y/n’.  Your eyes well further, but his words stop you.

“I think sometimes that drawings can make you better. Can make better the sadness.”

---

“Tae are you still going at it?”

You peer around the corner of the door, leaning half in half out of his man cave to study your boyfriend at work. 5 hours he’d been couped up in there.

“Hmm.” 

He didn’t let you see his art until the product was finished, completely finished, because sometimes he’d say he was done and then go back when he’d found the smallest error only to get pissed off that you had witnessed anything other than the completed masterpiece.

“Tae, you’ve been in here for hours, just come out to help me cook.” You plead with him over the canvas, not daring to peak any further.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

He hasn’t looked at you since you came in, his brow well and truely glued into a furrow and the tea you’d brought him earlier cold and untouched beside him. You lower your tone into a more serious one.

“You okay?”

Silence.

“Done.” He doesn’t sound relieved or happy at the finalising of a five-hour art project like most would, like he normally does. He’s merely, ‘done’.

With an apprehensive tone, you ask, “Can I come see?” A gentle nod and you round the canvas, his arm dropping the brush in favour of tugging at the skin of your waist until you’re gently seated in his lap.

It’s beautiful and it’s simplistic and there’s so much life and emotion in it that you know the five hours weren’t all spent with brush to canvas but with him mulling over the memories and thoughts it conjured up.

“Your grandmother’s house?” Your voice is soft, not a pitying soft, but a soft that lets him know he can talk freely.

“Hmm,” he presses a kiss to the shoulder exposed by the shirt that hangs off you loosely. “Wanted to do something for her.”

You let the silence and the painting speak for itself for a while as his hands brush at your sides and you lean into his head that rest against you, chin to shoulder as his warm breath lulls you into calmness.

“You miss her?” 

“So much.”

“Painting makes it better?”

… another kiss and a sigh, warm.

“Mmm. Sometimes painting and drawing just makes the sadness a little easier, just makes it better.”

---

You see Tae in this tiny boy, this boy who draws to ease the sadness, who coups himself away on his table to be alone, too afraid to cry in front of the other boys and girls. Is he doing it too? Is he alone and painting? 

Then Jojo slides you his paper, wordlessly and your eyes with dried tears, prick once again, heartache replaced with something completely different, regret. And now hope. It’s those small boys words on paper, insignificant to him, and probably tiny in the grand scheme of things, but it’s his words that make you seek out for the one thing you know you can’t live without, the one thing that will heal your sadness.

‘To miss Y/N, i hope your crying gets better soon. Its okay to cry but its also good to make you happy. I hope you find your happy. From Jojo.”

You’d already found your happy, you just had to get him back.

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

“Y/N!?” 

And it merely takes your name for you to lose every word on your tongue. Any word you could’ve conjured at that moment couldn’t have described how you felt. He looks dishevelled, and beautiful, hair unwashed and falling into his eyes, white top littered with stains and his pyjamas bottoms you bought him for Christmas hanging off his hips. 

His eyes lull from their immediate shock before he turns to look at his apartment, running a frantic hand through his hair and stumbling on his words. 

“Shit. I- I mean. I wasn’t really thinking- I didn’t expect you.”

You probably shouldn’t have come. Some people would’ve turned and gone the other way. Maybe that was the right thing to do, was that the brave thing? Were you being a coward by rooting to the spot and not being able to speak a word?

He looks at you, then behind you somewhere, then back into your eyes and his gaze sinks so far into yours, you think you might just cry there and then.

“Dooo you want to come in?” He sounds apprehensive, he probably thinks you are too, but all you want to do is be back in his apartment just like three weeks ago, touching him, talking to him unhinged, perhaps feeling the skin beneath his shirt where his heart lies, feeling if his heart has ached as yours has.

With blinking eyes that try not to glaze over, you nod, short and curt, and you miss the puff of air his mouth rings out with relief. 

He dashes away once you’re past the threshold, scampering around as if to distract you from the surrounding environment - it’s dusty, too cold and dark with the way the curtains shut out summer light and you barely recognise his floor as wood with the way food scatters and clothes are strewn.  Small shards of light reflect from out of the study and your eyes naturally draw there only to find a mess, door open just enough for the hoard of half-finished painting and wasted canvas’ to come into view. The door is closed by Taehyung like he knew where your gaze would lead you.

“I-I’m fucking sorry about this, it’s gross and it’s messy and i-”

“It’s just like mine.” The corners of your mouth turn up sympathetically but also because you’re relieved he’s not okay. It’s awful to say but heartache has clearly done a job on him too and for that you’re relieved. “Don’t worry, it’s just fine.”

“Just fine,” he mutters under his breath with a half-laugh. 

You’re still stood stuck to the doormat, jacket hanging tightly to you like a defence mechanism and your hands remain tight to your sides. When his eyes find yours, you seize up further like it’s the first time he’d ever seen you.

---

You’d told Janice one too many times for this situation to be coincidence. You may or may not have told her you were a sucker for exhibitionism. She’d found it all shits and giggles until the art class she headed entered into ‘naked form’ week and it was too good of an opportunity to pass by. 

So the robe drops and you’re way too aware of the last time you shaved - you think you’d be prepared, but pair a hangover with a 7:30 start and bodily care wasn’t the first thought to come to mind.

Janice gives off a flow of instructions, pointing to your body like you were a cow on show, and telling the artists to ‘admire her form, the way her body dips and flows and let you brush or pencil do the responding as though her body was talking to you’ - you almost scoff aloud at her waffle because art is so full of shit.

Exhibitionism kink or not, you’re thirty minutes in and the way your hip cramps and you eyelids lower, there is nothing alluring or desirable about this. 

But then the door on the far wall swings open all too harshly for your eyes to feign jolting away. And they blow out further when they’re met with the masculine figure uttering apologies and skidding halfway from door to seat with his urgency.

‘Just women’ she said. ‘Nothing to be worried about,’ she said. It ruined the whole ‘i like being stared at by fit men’ at first but then put you a little at ease that some 70 year old man, trying to spice up his last years of life with a too expensive art course, wouldn’t be staring your tits down. 

Yet here you were, with a man with eyes too beautiful to be tarnished by the view in front of him, gazing in shock at your naked body.

“Mr. Kim, it’s nude form week. Guessing you didn’t get the email?”

You only have your imagination for what his voice must sound like because he only shakes his head, throat too dried and scorched from you laid out, baring it all in front of him for him to say anything.

But your imagination didn’t do justice in those two hours of torture. Because his voice telling you he’s ‘sorry for interrupting the session’ and even ‘sorrier for being so unworthy of staring at something so beautiful’. 

You’d always hated cringe. But cringe never sounded so good when it was spun off Taehyung’s silk tongue.

---

“Can I get you anything?” 

It’s him who breaks the silence, and it’s a godsend because you were two seconds away from spinning on your heel and cowering out of the entire thing.

“N-no. Thank you, Tae.” 

He groans at the timidity of how you say his name and nickname at that.

And silence soaks the atmosphere again, tenser this time because greetings have been uttered, drinks offered and there’s nothing more to say that unspoken words of the past.

That’s what you thought you were here to do at least. To tell him you’re sorry, first and foremost, because you’d never intend to break a soul as tender-hearted as his. Then you were supposed to tell him that you loved him, and you would always love him, and that sacrifice must be made for the greater good.

Jungkook had told you that once. But he’d said Taehyung must be the one sacrificed and you should be the one salvaged - until you realised there was no greater good in that situation, no salvation to be had.

“I’ll sacrifice myself,” words come out loud and unexpected as your train of thought is voiced. They’re too loud also, and they break the atmosphere to his shock, so his brow furrows like he doesn’t understand. “I- I will sacrifice myself for you.”

His face falls and you can’t bear the way his words stutter and his throat fills with a choked cry, as though he’d held it in as soon as your presence had hit him. It must have done the same to you because your body befalls you and tears and on the floor as you work your feet towards where he is rooted.

“I can’t ask that of you. You know I can’t do that,” he closes his eyes when your  body meets his, hands firm on his cheeks because they’re wet with tears and his shoulders are hunched in pain, “please.”

“Please.” You reciprocate. 

This is it for you. You’ll do anything for this quivering shell in front of you. You’ll plead. You’ll beg. You’ll give up your livelihood and every mantra you have ever told yourself about self-preservation because fuck it, some things are too good that you have to lose yourself in them. 

“You- I-”

“I’m- I might not be ready for kids now. I will though. If that’s what it takes. Fuck it I’ll marry you tomorrow.”

He chokes on a sob when his eyes meet your pleading ones and a quick hand wipes the stains from his cheeks so he can see every expression you give to him - untainted and full of love.

“We can take our time over this or we can have it all at once, but it has to be we. I’ll really do it for you, I have to Tae,” another sob and a whimper, “isn’t that what we’re here for. Kids.” You’re babbling now in a frenzied expression of all you have to give, and you’re so lost in his eyes that you laugh out, “‘be fruitiful and multiply or some shit.’ I’ll do it, I swear to you.”

“You’re not even Christian.”

“I would be if you told me to.”

“Fuck.”

He kisses you quick and without care, wanting to feel everything you have to give him like it’s what keeps his heart beating - and it’s beating fast because you finally find fingertips under his shirt and against the pounding that intensifies underneath.

He grapples at your hair, then waist, then hair again because his hands can’t decide on what he wants most. So you grab at them yourself and intertwine fingers as though he’d never left you. Each knuckle deserves a kiss and that’s what you give when your lips part.

“I’m so sorry-” you keep kissing across his hand, “I ever left,” and bring his hands to your neck, “never again.”

The tears subside in his eyes as they do yours. There is still relief, hot and painful inside your stomach because you have come back to him and he has taken you back, as if there were never to be anything but the two of you as one, yet now he finds your lips in something that claims more than just love. Possession. He has to know you’re his.

You were correct when you thought his room would be as sorrowful as yours - heartache as painful as what you had felt. 

Food containers stripe the floor dirty. Towels strewn and clothes dirty and forgotten. Again the blinds are closed as though you’re not here at 5 in the afternoon when the sun begins to fall into the red and purple hues of evening. 

But the blinds leave enough of a gap that his face is haloed, angelic and all too beautiful for your eyes to feign staring when your mouth departs his. Eyes glow amber and skin glows golden and you never want to look away, not from him, not now.

“You really want this don’t you.” There’s no question to the way Tae speaks. Instead, it’s disbelieving, like he can’t quite fathom that it’s really your shirt he has under his fingertips and your smell that lingers under his nose. Heartbreak had slowed his heart enough that it’s beating too fast for him to keep up with, so he slows it down.

“I really want this- You. I really want you.”

“And everything that comes with me? You’re sure?”

It’s a loaded question but at this point it is so light on your shoulders you laugh, grabbing and pulling up his shirt so you can sink lips to his chest, trying to find the beat of a heart somewhere there. 

“You act like you’re a chore, Tae.” You’re eyes soften when he still looks like you like he’s young and vulnerable. “Baby, I am so sorry I ever did this to you. Left. And made you feel like that.” 

Your hands map his skin delicately and you preserve how it feels because you hope, but never know, if you’ll feel it again.

“Never again, yeh?”

“Yeah.”

Clothes are shed until he looks at your naked body like the art that he first saw it as. He wants to paint it, remember it and cherish it as though he’s never seen it before. Every scar and blemish, precious to his vision, but the painting would only be worth it to him because he’s all who gets to see you.

“You’re not gonna turn off the lights?” 

Something that you’d told him was a habit of yours. Maybe something, a subconscious body image thing that was another way of saying, ‘I can’t give my whole self to you, I’m sorry’. He’d ran with it as though it didn’t hurt his pride. But now, as you push him down on his bed and clamber over his thighs, he’s so grateful he never got to see you in this light, because he loves it all the more now.

Fingertips tremble over your thighs when your hips find his, naked crotch so close to where he throbs. 

“Tae,” his eyes don’t meet yours, pieced, instead, onto where your bodies are so close to meeting like his gaze can fuse them together. “Tae, it’s me. Relax.”

Purposefully, your hands find his hair and coax him into a state of submissiveness, because his body still quaked underneath you no matter the words you uttered. 

You can’t lie when you say sex was a factor in your relationship you had missed. There was a heartfelt bond that went deeper than sex.

Admittedly the flatmate before Tae, the friends before the boyfriend and your parents who knew you better than you admitted to yourself had all said you were sex before substance. Some hated you for it and some laughed. Some said, ‘I wish I could be as emotionally detached as you’ and some thought you were the local gal whoring about like bodies were meant to be used. Then, somehow, Tae flipped the whole thing on its head. Made you feel butterflies before orgasm and it had you spellbound. 

So, no. Sex wasn’t it for you when you were with him. 

Yet, here you were, over your man gleaming with the physical sweat of want and need as well as the even more apparent glow of how his body lit up for only you.

“How do you want me Tae, what can I give you?”

“Fuck.” His hands fall over his eyes, not comprehending that you’re his and you’re this plaint. No, he wants you to take over him. “Anything, baby. Fuck. Anything.”

Instantly nails brush over the hardness that had been laid out under your folds obediently since you’d found yourself on top of his crotch.

A man could only control himself so much and immediately Tae found his dick twitching and his hips leaving the mattress in favour of chasing your hand.

“Y/N, I really don’t know if I’ve got it in me for teasing, I’m so horny I could cum!”

Well then.

The outburst has you struggling to fight off a laugh because he seriously is that desperate. Not the laughing kind either. The all-bearing, stripped clean and pleading kind of desperate.

So, you sympathise and let your lips find his, hand still trailing lightly so he doesn’t cum early, but enough for the need to remain.

“You wanna be inside me Tae?” His tongue is on yours yet the words are clear. 

“Urgh, fuck, please.”

Your eyes peer between your bodies, mapping where his muscles, tight with restrictions, create a V-shape down to the very distinct outline of a red hard cock. You think it’s photograph worthy in the moment, something worth slipping the camera out for, and if you hadn’t kept his dick pics from months ago maybe you would. But:

“Please baby, -need it.”

You deny yourself the simple pleasure of slipping him in because Tae whining and pleading is something worthy for the spank bank. You drop lower down the bed so his hips meet your eyes and the skin glistens so beautifully in this light you have to leave his dick untouched just so you can kiss around the area. 

His stomach, thighs, crotch, they see it all, lips and tongue mapping bold strokes because he tastes just as you remember and you want to savour it.

“Y/N ple- oh fuck,” and the taste of his dick beats anything that preceded it, let alone the noise that came with it. 

His tip is taken care of first, small licks and stripes with your tongue, so he’s unsuspecting when you choke him whole.

“FUCK.” 

Hands grab your hair violently. He’s deep and hits the back of your throat so you choke, unashamed of the noise. You’re past that and you know he likes it anyways. 

You set a rhythm, and it soon becomes clear he’s going to cum from it and that you very much want him to. Your hand finds his balls to fuel the process and the other one snakes to your core because there’s nothing that beats Tae’s moans when he’s getting a good sucking. 

“I- Fuck Y/N, I can’t- Shit!”

He’s close. Stomach seizing and balls throbbing in your palm so you sink back down again and take the choke like you want it and you want his cum more. It’s fast from there.

“Love you. I’m cum- Fuckkkkk,” salt and warmth line your throat, but only for a short while because he came quick. His hips stutter a few times and your eyes water when you continue to take it. 

Then it’s cold and silent. Yet somehow you feel buzzed. Like someone cumming down your throat was enjoyable. Like you’d do it a thousand times over if it meant he’d say he loved you again.

The hands that had once set deep into your scalp and verged on making you horny now pulled at your cheeks to lift you to eye level. 

He’s sweaty and a mess. 

“You’re sweaty and a mess baby.” 

His laugh is unfiltered, wholesome and worthy of the way your heart stutters.

“Because someone’s got a mouth on them sent from the gods.”

Blush overtakes your cheeks, whilst your stomach tumbles over at the fact that your blowjob skills are up to scratch - you thought a month off might have done something to your ability but clearly, you’re still on point. The bitter taste in your mouth tells you enough. 

“What’ve I done to deserve you coming back.”

Sincerity returns into his eyes as well as his words, and somehow you feel his dick twitch again from underneath you. He’s so soft under your hands so you keep feeling at his skin to reassure you he’s real.

“Nothing. You’re enough. You’re it.”

You kiss and kiss again, keep going until the fire ignites in him once more where it still flamed for you.

“Please.”

His voice is low no matter how much he whines so a guiding hand slips him into where you’re filthily wet. And he’s huge despite seed already spilt. He’s loaded like it was meant for you and not your mouth, throbbing enough so your pussy can feel it.

And suddenly you realise it’s bare. Complete bare. As in, bare enough that you are willing to take on a child kind of bare.

His eyes tell the story when yours find his, wide and curious. They roll back into whites when you pull up fully and then sink back down, milking him for all he has so he knows this is your full intention. Naked in every sense.

“Shit, Tae.”

“Fuckkkkk,” he doesn’t swear often, but sex is a must and the quirk of your lips tells him just how much you like him losing himself in pleasure.

He hits deep from here, cock lodged far in and even further when he begins to take control. 

His feet plant and his hands pull you down so skin flushes to skin and he can pump up into you with unadulterated need. 

Your teeth have to clamp onto his shoulder with the way he hits your cervix, it’s uncomfortable yet you love it. That kind of sex where everything is so fulfilling that you just can’t mutter ‘stop’. How could you say such a thing anyway when he’s groaning that he loves you with every upbeat.

It hits good once. Twice.

“Tae, fuck. There.”

Three times. 

“Here?”

Again.

“Oh my fuc- Fuckkk,” and there’s nothing you can do when you’re so stimulated you tumble deep and hard onto him and continue to do over and over in waves. 

He’s finding his end in the way your pussy grips him. 

“Baby. Y/N, Cunt so good, jesus.”

You’re burning when he’s going so fast the headboard bangs louder than your moans. So your hand quickly finds his balls underneath you and that does him, unravels him to the point he quakes.

“Holy- Love you. Love you. Fuck. Love you.”

Your ears might ring but that’s all you hear for the next minute. His mantra that keeps his lust alive until his love is so set in stone the words are not needed. 

Your hand, winding into his hair and the thrum of your heart against his tells him enough.

It’s this. Silence and tranquillity yet with the constant buzz of electricity all around you.

You’re still there entangled, limbs on limbs and lights touches on bare skin as the slither of light through the blinds turns ruby red in the heat of sunset.

You know his eyes must glow golden from where the sun angles on his face so you can’t help but spare a glance. And you’re right when you imagined it as beautiful because the sun bathes him like it was meant to. 

He’s still awake because his eyes flutter when you trail the outside of your fingers down his cheek and then onto his lips. It’s even more apparent when he brings his hand up to yours so he can kiss each knuckle individually.

“You came inside.”

It weighed heavy on you, the obvious factor that had happened earlier. And before allowing the beauty of the moment to settle in you had to see his expression when you mentioned it.

Yet there’s nothing but closed eyes and the slight smile that had been painted on his lips since you’d told him how much you wanted him.

“Mmm.”

“And you’re okay with that?” It’s not harsh, just a question from you. A security query because you have to know what this was for him. Caught up in the moment or something deeper?

His eyes bolt open at the question though.

“Are you?”

You almost have to think. Almost.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“And so am I.”

[these-are-the-first-steps]

“The Rise of Skywalker”- A Review from Memory

So it’s been a week since I’ve had to live with this film in front of my eyes, and a week and a half that I’ve had to grapple with the brunt of its sins. With a heavy sigh, I think I’m ready to go through the play-by-play of every plot hole in this film that I can manage from memory without the thing in front of me. And even then, the laundry list is hefty. Keep in mind that this is a FILM-BASED review only- I have tried to refrain from including new information we have learned since its release last Thursday in an effort to keep this as focused and topical as possible.

+The first scene of this film is weird. I’m all for watching Adam Driver wild out on some dudes, but it is never explained who these guys are and if it’s just Kylo ‘committing more slaughter’ (as the casual audience is wont to think) or if there’s something significant here. As the movie goes on and Kylo makes it clear that he’s under no one’s thumb, *and* that the object he was after was Sith, you start to get an idea that maybe those guys at the intro are No Good, but this is never explained or confirmed. To a casual audience with no interest in additional materials, it just looks like Bad Ole Kylo Doing More Bad Ole Stuff. *sigh*

+Exogol and Palpatine’s hideout looks like the Borg Cube from Star Trek: First Contact from 1996. This really smacked me in the face how similar it was.

+Snoke’s significance getting sniped by Palpatine in one fell swoop felt like two five year olds arguing over action figures in the sandbox. “No! He’s dead now! Now the good guys can go on their quest!” “Well if he’s dead now, it’s only because MY guy was the REAL bad guy! DOOSHDOOSHDOOSHDOOSH!!” Like….really? At least Palpatine’s never-spoken-of Snoke manufacturing lab was vaguely interesting. Too bad we never saw anything about that- what a story of intergalactic puppet-masters that would have made! We’re not here for clever storytelling, though, so moving on…

+I don’t think they should have included Leia in this film. It really added to the disjointed nature of this movie with flat audio, crippled dialogue, and CGI where Leia only really had one facial expression for 90% of her appearances. It really wasn’t worth it. I know Star Wars doesn’t do flashbacks (which, frankly, I appreciate a lot), but I think they could have utilized the IDEA of Leia better than her actual self. Leia was forced, it showed, and it wasn’t good. Honestly they did a WAY better job reviving Tarkin in RO.

+An incredibly unnecessary amount of new information for the third act of a series was introduced in this film, starting with Leia suddenly being a well-trained Jedi or something. At least enough to ‘train’ Rey, which…frankly wasn’t believable. Leia having the force was a given. That she distanced herself from active application of the Force as a residual reaction to the bombshell of Darth Vader being her father is what is, and always has, made sense. THAT is a nuanced perspective, but it gets thrown out in favor of not just shoe-horning Leia in to the movie, but also because they had no idea what else to do with her at all in this film. This is also why Leia shouldn’t have been in this movie the way she was.

+Oh, you knew Palpatine was behind all this the whole time, Leia? Really? Always there, huh? When in TFA it was always snoke? Obvious dialogue lift is obvious, but the use of it was just Bad and inconsiderate to the story.

+Poe’s backstory was published on December 18th, 2015 in a book called “Before The Awakening” that details the lives of Poe, Finn, and Rey leading up to TFA. Poe is the son of two famous Rebel fighters and he grows up with a nice quiet life on Yavin 4 learning about ships and loving to fly. He goes straight from his home world to joining the Republic navy. It’s a handful of months before Leia Organa picks up on him and brings him into the Resistance. Now…this is a backstory that is JJ Abrams approved, has been out since 2015, and yet Oscar Isaac said he ‘never knew’ Poe’s backstory, and JJ somehow thinks four years later that there is space in this incredibly concise timeline for him to become a drug runner. What?? This was possibly the BIGGEST wtf moment for me in this film. What in the actual world. WHAT.

+Sidelining old characters to pointlessly introduce new ones does not serve a story, it clogs it up, drags down its rhythm, and confuses the hell out of it. As seen by Zorri and Jannah. And out of those two, only Jannah carried any kind of actual literary weight, because for Finn, he’s found more people like himself. This sort of setup is a typical play to foreshadow where Finn eventually settles down and goes at the end of the war. But this is never expounded on or explained further. It’s just, BOOM, more former troopers and a girl who is suddenly irrationally attached to him at all times.

+Rose gets replaced by Jannah, a brand new character that we only know one single thing about, and who gets to latch on to Finn out of the blue while Rose is left at home or on a ship. It was weird. It was obvious. It was incredibly awkward to watch. There was no point to Jannah clinging to Finn like this. She was reduced from a strong character to a cringy clingy one, while Finn’s love interest was completely ignored.

+The ‘Journey to The Rise of Skywalker’ comics released a couple weeks before the film heavily implied we’d get a lot of great Rose and Rey team time. We received none of it. It felt like someone had jerked a present away from us and it was a gross omission.

+It is only by the very end of the film and after multiple watches that you THINK they are trying to hint that Kylo is spiraling, thus why Leia steps in in death, but it never ever gets shown. Never once are we let in on Kylo’s state of mind. In fact, never once are we let in on *any* of these characters’ states of mind. We never really see what they are feeling or thinking or going through. Kylo is nothing but action when in TFA and TLJ we see him falling apart. This is what bad direction looks like, and it takes a Real Talent to fuck up directing an actor like Adam Driver. Another big sigh…

+There are only two cool things about this movie- The bleeding of reality between Kylo and Rey, and Palpatine’s shadow senate. When Kylo and Rey fight and the red bits go flying on the floor, it screamed serious TLJ aesthetics to me that I had to blink a moment. I think this ‘Bleed-through’ of their realities is the only TLJ hold-over we were allowed. It was a genuinely fascinating touch, which is how you know it didn’t come from *this* film’s production office.

+When you stick three people in a closet together, you expect some sort of progress in two-thirds of the potential relationships in such a cramped space. We received no such thing. Forced Trio Time resulted in no character development and seemed more like an unnecessary comic relief vehicle than anything.

+In ‘Before The Awakening’ and ‘Rey’s Survival Guide’, both publications printed under JJ Abrams’s  blessing, we learn Rey named *herself* after a helmet she found in the desert. How is it Rey’s alleged parents know her fake name? Gross, gross plot-hole.

+Four years was spent emphasizing that you don’t have to come from anywhere ‘special’ to be Important to a big story. Then they threw it out. Post-TROS interview with JJ reveals it was because they ‘couldn’t think of how else to get rey engaged in fighting palpatine’. Because he wasn’t a nasty enough dude on his own? Seriously? This is pure negligence.

+Four years was also spent emphasizing that you also don’t even NEED the force to be important to the big story and make a huge difference to the future. But let’s throw that out, too, and give Finn the force. Clearly regular people are absolutely worthless in the Star Wars Universe, according to JJ Abrams.

+Finn is only used to babysit Rey the entire time they share screen time together. The number of times he shouts her name could be turned into a drinking game. It’s one thing to care about somebody, and another thing entirely to act like you’re their high school chaperone. The whole thing was weird and awkward.

+Zorri Bliss sounds like a stripper name and she served no purpose other than to shoehorn Felicity into a star wars movie. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Babu Frik is the only true-to-star-wars critter in this whole film.

+Leia literally goes and lays down on her own funeral spread? What was that about. And that’s what that was because why would her bed be out in the open like that? That was really, really weird. And the RoTJ medal throwback was just a tacky tether to the past.

+Everyone seems so irrationally tethered to the past in this film. Kylo Ren’s spent two movies desperate to ‘leave the past behind’ and I don’t blame him at this point because it’s getting exhausting.

+As stated previously, it’s only vaguely suspected but Kylo seemed to SUPPOSED to be spiraling. Adam Driver plays Kylo like a man finally free of the voices in his head, but the plot and dialogue point to an entirely different direction saying that REALLY the monsters have allegedly doubled-down and he’s even more unhinged than before. Here is a MAJOR indication of story re-working after the film has already been shot. Adam Driver, and Daisy for that matter, is a PRECISE actor. It seems almost impossible to tell a story with him that you did not originally MEAN to tell. And it shows. JJ tried to U-Turn the story but it absolutely failed- Adam’s Kylo Ren is a calm, free man, focused, who finally knows what his purpose in life is, and that is uniting with his Dyad in the force. When really JJ tried very hard to suggest that he was spiraling so hard and so ‘lost’ in the Dark Side that it took his mother’s last breath to swing him back around. No one is going to see that narrative. The only reason why I see this shoddy attempt is because I’ve been absolutely immersed in this shit since December 2015. But the main audience? This was absolutely not conveyed.

+Seeing Dark Side Rey was nothing but a ‘cool’ moment and actually served zero function to the plot. Rey was always shown as being Grey in the force and someone who struggled to maintain balance. If that whole scene was removed, it wouldn’t change anything.

+Kylo was never in a position to kill Rey on the Death Star, and Rey taking her cheap shot to stab him while he heard his mother’s voice is an attempt to convey how much seeing her Sith self affected her than Kylo’s already very faded aggression in this film but it failed. It was weird and out of character, and even coming to that conclusion took may rewatches to come to because there is NEVER a ramp-up to Rey’s darkside taking over long enough to stab Kylo- there’s no fire, no red eyes, no teeth, none of it, to indicate she was ‘overcome’ so it just looked like bad mischaracterization. Yikes.

+Kylo and Han’s moment on the Death Star is the most moving scene of the entire film. The dialogue starts out rather familiar, and it almost seems like a cop-out, until you realize….how many times has Ben had this conversation with himself?? He doesn’t seem shocked at all that his father is there. Not at all. In fact, that Last Conversation on the bridge of Starkiller comes off as a well-rehearsed dance that Ben puts himself through regularly. And every time he hopes it’ll be affirmation enough that it’s all been worth it. But here, at the last reenactment of the worst day of his life, the script changes. He surrenders. He says dad. And he rejects Kylo Ren forever. Harrison Ford and Adam Driver are two beautifully matched, talented actors and I’d watch a movie with the two of them in it any day. God bless them.

+Hux has been wasted for the past two films. He was Terrifying in TFA and Dom gave him such significant presence that I was genuinely terrified for what he might try in the future. But instead he was lost as comic relief. When it is comically delivered that HE is the spy, every single person in my movie theatre shouted “WHAT??” in a way that was not a Good what, but in a “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” kind of what, and I will never ever forget that. I hate seeing Star Wars diminished like this.

+Luke rehashing Obi-wan’s speech to him about how Rey MUST confront the Big Bad was an obvious rehash, and way too convenient to what Palpatine wanted. This whole appearance of Luke is very suspect, but that would be crediting them again with clever storytelling, which again this is not.

+Luke claims that Leia saw ‘the death of her son’ at the end of her Jedi Path, which one can assume why she threw it away. But then Luke says something bizarre about ‘hoping someone else would pick up her path someday’. Is that...is that not the same path leading to Ben’s death that she was avoiding in the first place? And if someone else picks it up, is that not no longer Leia’s path but that other person’s? Therefore, is not the outcome automatically going to be different and thus *avoid* Ben’s death? This was an attempt at supposedly clever foreshadowing or Mystical Talk or some shit, but all it was was dialogue that backfired in meaning spectacularly due to looping-in on itself too many times. Luke negates himself at the same time he tries to prove his point...which he then negates in the same breath. What a mess.

+All of Ben Solo’s lines were cut the last act of the film to stuff more pointless exposition at the END of film and to give more screen time to Ian McDiarmid. Ian’s great, but he’s not the main character of this series, and cutting Ben’s lines for this was Gross.  

+Space Horses? Really?? I didn’t like them in TLJ but at least there they had context- they had zero context here. The size of the horses and the ship they came off of was absurdly mismatched. Is that ship the TARDIS? That whole bit was so unnecessary and ridiculous, especially with zero setup. Which is amazing because this film is 90% set-up.

+All those ships at the end? That’s all it took? After books and comics going on about how everyone’s too terrified to help Leia because of FO scorched earth policy? Jesus it was weak, and too obvious a Deus ex Machina with THAT many ships.

+Palpatine’s Shadow Senate is cool. The idea that this guy trapped on an ugly planet stuck on Sith life-support couldn’t go two seconds without attention and praise to the point where he had to recreate the exact same senate he destroyed years ago is a concept I like. Is the Shadow Senate just in the *shape* of the old senate but filled with animated Sith proxies? Or is it actually comprised of the enslaved souls of former Senators now forced to attend the Emperor for eternity? Either way, destroying the Shadow Senate at least either set those souls free or sent them back to wherever they came from. That was actually interesting, and it’s a shame we didn’t get to learn more about such a genuinely creepy thing.

+Palpatine’s ‘we’re family’ routine drops the moment he realizes Ben and Rey are a dyad. This is suspicious, but considering the whole movie so far, it seems incorrect to giver JJ and Torrio credit for a possible mis-direct.

+Rey and Ben’s realities bleeding into each other is experienced again in swapping the light saber. This is cool. This is probably the coolest moment in the film. And then the coolness literally gets thrown into a pit when, instead of the both of them, as a Dyad, defeating Palpatine, Rey is left to carry the burden alone.

+Oh hey look a cop-out to save Rey from being bad- just have her reflect his own power back at him so it’s like he’s killing himself, wow, so original! The second Palpy revealed his gameplan about wanting to die, this became the obvious choice to both kill him and avoid giving him what he wanted. Eh….

+The Star Wars 9-movie series is the story of one man desperately begging anyone within hearing range to kill him, apparently. This is so, so old by the 9th friggin movie. 

+Ben Solo spends his entire life begging for guidance from his ancestors only to be ignored and Rey get all their attention instead. Ben Solo spends his entire life since the womb being a burden to his parents by merely existing and being manipulated by gross sith ghosts. But nah, let’s be parents to Rey and help out Rey. This is not to say she doesn’t deserve any of this, but to say there are priorities here- Rey has had a lonely life, but at least she had her sanity and was self-sufficient. Ben had neither his sanity or any control over his own life whatsoever. And to place Rey above Ben is a literal mess. The two of them were meant by the Force to rise TOGETHER, and it didn’t happen.

+Rey doesn’t disappear when she ‘dies’ after using the last of her life force to both feed Palpatine, fight him, AND defeat him. And yet while Rey has two strikes in her before kicking it, Ben, someone who is RADICALLY more trained in the force, its lore, and mechanics, only has one? This doesn’t make any sense.

+Rey has no reaction to the literal other half of her soul vanishing in front of her. Because this is a mangled JJ Abrams Finale(tm) and why should anyone, let alone his own characters, have any space to Feel? I mean, that’s not what movies are even about, right? Feeling and Telling A Story? It’s not that, right? Right?? JJ Abrams covers up Rey’s reaching-hands scar on her arm for the entire film, doesn’t address it, and apparently hates the shit out of it. I don’t know how the King of Cheese could possibly hate something like that. It was a weird and obvious omission, and frankly disappointing because the scar had come to mean something at the end of TLJ and it, like a lot in this film, got thrown in the trash.

+More forced trio time in the form of a group hug where nothing gets actually expressed because we ran out of space for dialogue 30 pages back.

+Anakin Skywalker viewed Tatooine, his place of enslavement, as the worst place in the galaxy. Luke Skywalker spent his entire youth trying to escape. Leia hated it on principle because it was where Darth Vader came from and where she herself had been enslaved in a gross gold bikini for a giant slug. Rey spent 14 years of her life dreaming of leaving the sand planet she was trapped on. But I guess that’s a fitting place to bury some memories, yeah? The place where nothing good ever, ever happened. That’s a nice spot, right?

+Rey Skywalker isn’t explained, is never led up to, and feels like a gross gimmie after four years of trying to create a Better Message that names don’t matter. HEAVY SIGH.

+Rey watches the two suns set as she is left with little more than she started- alone, on a sand planet, but this time taunted by the Twin Suns of Tatooine that the other half of her soul is literally missing and that she is now left with a gaping wound in her Force signature and her own spirit worse than if she’d just lost a Force Bonded mate.

+Ben Solo is left missing, vanished on a world that is supposedly a thin spot in the force, with no ghost, no presence, and no one to mourn him- not even by the other half of his very soul. THREE GENERATIONS of Skywalkers over NINE FILMS died to try and rescue their future embodied in the form of Ben Solo and it looks like it was for nothing. Instead, the incessant bad guy no one can move on from looks like he ultimately wins the day through an alleged granddaughter, and even that claim is on shaky ground considering the mistakes in the vision and how quickly the family conversation vanished upon the revelation that Ben and Rey are a dyad. Ben is lost, so every family member died for nothing, apparently. But hey, this is a Fun and Hopeful narrative, right?

+While the Final Order fleet is destroyed at the end, the First Order is.....still out there? It’s still out there. Nothing in that department has changed whatsoever. Leaders die. They get replaced. The cycle goes on. We spent three movies batting at a fly we didn’t even kill. Amazing.

Overall this movie is BRUTAL. Every other scene is a plot hole served to us on a silver platter, with the biggest insult being that they are plot points JJ created HIMSELF 4-6 years ago. This man literally shot himself in the face and then said it was fine as he bled out all over the film reels and it shows. If you were anyone who came along for the Additional Materials ride of the past four years, you were greeted by this film with a hard, swift, and REPEATED, backhand to the face. There was no reward here at the end of this road for fans, old and new, who actually paid attention and took an interest in the deeper lore surrounding this sequel trilogy. There was just a big fat Disney-branded middle finger as all your hard work and cash was ripped from you with a trademark villain laugh.

And that is what we’re left with.

This review does not go into detail over what we’ve discovered since the release of the film, either. That it was never finished in the editing room. That a current comic series, Rise of Kylo Ren, and what’s in the new TROS visual dictionary maddeningly contradict themselves. That allegedly SIX different endings were shot for this movie, and in the end the one they chose looks like it was *literally* reverse-engineered to confusingly kill, as JJ once called him, ‘The Other Half of Our Protagonist’. There is no time to go into detail about how Oscar Isaac just told us that noone in the cast knew that Rey Palpatine was going to be endgame except for maybe Adam when they made him do ADR declaring it with a masked face on screen (convenient). There is no room to show you the collective cast reaction they all gave to the end of the movie- none of them good, and John Boyega looking like he was holding back from punching something (he loved Kylo/Ben as much as the audience did and more). And there is no room to include what we will continue to find out as the days roll on about the tangled mess of a film that was edited and reedited, and how word on the street is a cocky director demanded Carte Blanche from Kathleen Kennedy, and I guess the story group too given the state of things, and then promptly self-destructed in the grossest, messiest end to a 40+ year series in cinema history.

There’s just no space.

But there IS a lesson.

And the lesson is this: No matter what, never stop investing in Story. Never stop caring about the details and about plot and about moving a story FORWARD. Never be afraid to move FORWARD. Look at TROS, the mess it is and the potential it had it in itself to be, and then look at the beauty that is TFA and the love that went into TLJ, and study that shit until it burns into your brain- Do not repeat those mistakes. Go out into the world and write better, shoot better, direct better, and BE BETTER. Because these producers and directors? They’re old and they’re on their way out. Just like the stable boy at the end of TLJ who secretly has the Force, know and realize that those of you out there reading this are the next generation of storytellers. YOU. And YOU, and I, and others out there like us who loved this series with our whole heart and who are watching it bleed out now on a floor that doesn’t give two shits about it, have the ability to make sure this NEVER happens again. But in order to do that….we have to pick up that pen. Pick up that pencil. Pick up that camera. Jot down that story idea and share it with likeminded friends. Go out there and CREATE, and create BETTER. Because it’s up to us now- the future of cinema is up to us. And my god, we have so much potential….

[cloudtower-edu]

honestly I don’t even think the problem with the new winx show is that it’s darker(TM). People keep saying: Why does it have to be dark, Winx was a fun show and this is just a stereotypical treatment! And in a way, yes, it has become very repetitive but we also shouldn’t forget that especially the first few seasons of Winx could be pretty dark - think about the finale of the first season. Those were really dark themes.

But even the other gritty themes, I can forgive. That’s like...the smallest problem there is. The problem is what they do with it. They could have easily gone a little darker and more mature simply by challenging some of the pre-conceived notions of the Winx-universe a little bit; dug a little deeper into some aspects of the original-series (world-building, gender roles, monarchy, poverty, the standing of witches in the magical society, how to use magical powers in general, canonically ambigious characters) - that were difficult to explore in a show for kids and young teenagers. All that might have provided interesting insights and plot-points for a more mature audience and I feel like they tried that by being a little more morally ambiguous. But considering that they have pretty much remodelled the entire Winx-universe and the magical dimension, an audience who knows the original series does not get the sense that this is in any way a smart commentary on it (because it isn’t) and anyone who hasn’t seen Winx isn’t really drawn into complex, innovative magical world - it’s just somewhere between Hunger Games and Harry Potter with very little energy put into creating a world. In fact, I feel like the first few episodes of the original show, with all its limitations - did more to create a complex world than Fate.

Also, instead of making the characters more complex and actually mature, they just slapped random adult-y themes onto each character.

And a) This just...fails to be authentic and b) makes it really hard to like the characters or be invested in them. That is not to say I dislike characters who smoke week and have threesomes and while I do find it a bit ...out-of-touch and cringy to do this with Winx Club of all shows, it’s not my problem here. My problem is that this seems to be the only concept of maturity they have or rather, it’s an absolutely distorted idea of teenagers projected on them by adult writers and at this point you have to wonder. Who is the target audience here? Because the original audience of the show has no interest in seeing their childhood characters do this stuff, actual 16yo likely don’t feel represented, and older people who didn’t watch the original show will have even less reason to stay invested.

Especially, because you get about 50 different scenes in every episode so it’s hard to really get invested in who’s currently drinking, smoking weed, lying, having a threesome or whatnot. These are not character traits – these are actions and since everyone is kinda doing it to some degree or another, it’s not one that defines any character in particular. In fact, the only one stands out (sad to say bc of the white-washed mess the character is) is Terra - because she’s the one actually struggling with this kind of environment and behaviour. And while she’s sad about struggling, nothing really happens with that. She just accepts it. There is no development in her actions.

But I think it’s Stella who’s the prime example here. Now, to clarify, I haven’t watched the full series yet because I find it really hard to get through but I think she’s a great character to illustrate the problem with:

Stella, in the original series, is bubbly, loving, can be a bit self-oriented but is actually very caring. She is actually very powerful but also doesn’t really like to train. She is passionate about fashion, art and loves to share these hobbies with others. These are things we learn pretty early on in this kids show where each episode has about 20 minutes.

If we look at Fate, we never really get to know her. The first impression we get is that she is very stand-off-ish, bitter, and downright manipulative. And I like villains so that’s not so much my problem beyond the …. “that’s supposed to be Stella????”-weird-off. And the thing is, with the backstory they have given her, it might make sense that this version of Stella might turn out that way - because she internalised that treatment from her mother. But here is the problem: Original-Stella is very, very likable. It’s very easy to get invested in her problems. But that’s not the case with new Stella and they don’t really take any steps to make us invested in her problems beyond telling her story. The scene where her mother insulted her magic and humiliated her was the first one where I felt something close to an emotion for her character – but that was because her mother is objectively horrible to her child, not because of Stella’s character in particular. This scene could have happened with literally any other character and I would have felt the exact same emotion.

As an example, the reason we are shocked by the idea that she might have blinded someone is mostly because we know the original Stella and this is so absolutely out character for her. If you only watch Fate, you might learn this information and be like: “Okay, wow, what an asshole.” - but that’s it. You’re not shocked that Stella of all people would do something like that because you haven’t actually seen the loving, joyful, bubbly Stella we encounter in the orignal series. Her personality is basically non-existent (and she’s one of the more complex characters), the audience hasn’t really shared any moments with her that particular endear her or convinced us that this is shocking for any other reason than a) this is a threat for Bloom and b) wow blinding your best friend is fucked up.

Or take Musa. In the original series, we actually spend a lot of time with Musa before we learn about her backstory. And we get to know her as a happy, cheerful girl who loves music. So finding out that she actually went through a lot of pain and hardship (especially by the standards of a kids show) was actually quite the change of pace – and finding out that her father doesn’t want her to do music and doesn’t encourage her was a development you didn’t see coming. Plus, the show dedicated a lot of screen-time to this instead of giving each and every character that walks through the screen in that episode their own problems. If you look at Fate, I have yet to discover anything that Musa is really passionate about, any particular personality traits – and each and every scene is: We now cut to Musa. Musa struggles with being an empath once more. Next scene. There is no development. No plan. No perspective other than it being useful sometimes. There is no revelation.

And I feel like this is where this show falls flat: The original winx club was a very immersive show on various layers: The characters as well as the world-building. But the characters in Fate barely have any personality whatsoever. The reason the Winx worked as heroes was because you had very distinct personalities and talents (at least in the first few seasons) and while it might seem more mature to have more nuanced characters, they actually continued the same gimmicky cartoon characterisations in many ways without actually adding complexity.

[happymetalgirl]

The 15 Worst Metal Albums of 2020

This list might have been shorter if not for my running into a few awful albums at the end of the year that I had been avoiding wisely up until that point. My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and what’s done is done. I’m paying the price for it by going back over the worst albums I heard all year. Let’s get this over with.

15. Ghøstkid - Ghøstkid

This was the debut solo album from the former singer of Eskimo Callboy, who had a pretty decent backing of hype heading into this release under the Ghøstkid moniker, but with the namesake frontman putting in no more than the standard performance on a bunch of poorly assembled tracks in an unappealing and dated poppy metalcore style, ultimately the eponymous album wound up disappointing me pretty substantially.

14. Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

Powerman 5000 are just such a low-rate band that even one of their more okay albums makes it here. While not as astoundingly, mind-numbingly basic as their worst material, The Noble Rot is still some of the most unevolved, underwritten, and forgettable electro rock and industrial metal I’ve heard from a big name artist. This is some eighth grade level songwriting here, and that’s a fuckin’ feat for a band that’s been around longer than any eighth grader has.

13. Corey Taylor - CMFT

There was a lot of hype around Corey Taylor finally coming out with a solo project, and it was pretty damn disappointing to hear a bunch of uninteresting classic rock too tacky for Stone Sour. CMFT focuses on the fun side that has made its creator such an enigmatic figurehead in the metal press, but its one-note approach does little more than highlight Corey Taylor’s songwriting deficiencies. I really could have seen this album turning out better too, with just some more time and care put into it, if a fun time of an album is what Taylor was going for. Unfortunately Taylor tried to make a party album and a grand ceremonial tribute to his greatness at the same time, and ego-petting and partying don’t really go hand in hand.

12. Evildead - United States of Anarchy

It has some good bones underneath it, but Evildead’s long overdue (if anyone was asking for it) third album wears out its welcome so quickly with some of the most adolescent thrash I’ve heard in a while. The band gets some good rhythms going and the vocals aren’t terrible either, fitting the older thrash style pretty well. But the band’s predictable formula tires out very quickly, and the political commentary of the lyrics is too cheesy and cringeworthy to ignore. It seems every year we get a handful of these kinds of albums that try to get into the simmering thrash revival with some ultra retro approach, and a good portion of those albums are from long-defunct bands who figure their primitive old-school approach might be a selling point despite their sounds often being even more juvenile against the backdrop of today’s metal landscape. So it’s not a huge surprise or anything to hear an album as ham-fisted and corny as United States of Anarchy; this year it just happened to be Evildead.

11. Five Finger Death Punch - F8

They may not always place highest in this list, but they always manage to make it here, and this was actually an improvement on the last album, not that that’s saying all that much. In fact, I’d say this is the only time in the band’s history that they actually shifted their trajectory upwards. But while the band’s ugly continual creative decay has been a hard thing to watch and made them the five finger punching bag of the metal world, there seems to be a large enough swath of mouthbreathing chuds who love their incoherent derivative shit and flock to their shows enough to put them in lucrative headlining slots and on top of the metal world. Goddamn that sure sounds a lot like someone else we all know doesn’t it. I’ve criticized them plenty in the past, and while indeed an improvement, F8 only mildly remedies the numerous problems with Five Finger Death Punch. Still septic to the system are the predictably formulaic and tiresome songwriting, the stale production, the corny butt rock choruses, the shitty bootlicking worldview that bleeds into Ivan Moody’s douchey and faux-deep lyrics, the contrived ballads and country-dabbling. Even with an improvement in the flow of the track listing and a few more bangers that somewhat hearken back to their first album, F8 is still an over-thought and overly calculated batch of Sirius XM fodder that’s trying to please everyone in some superficial way. I’ll grant that it seems as though the band realized they had been giving the more metal-immersed side of their fanbase that has been with them the longest smaller and smaller crumbs with each new album. I’m not gonna hold my breath for this being anything more than placating for the time being; I’m sure the next album will find the band back on whatever bullshit they feel (or their execs feel) they need to be on to pull enough streams from inattentive radio metal bros. I always end with the disclaimer that I still steadfastly stand by the band’s first two albums, and even American Capitalist to a degree, and that I totally acknowledge the immense potential for greatness this band could seemingly at any time decide to fulfill. Ivan Moody is a talented vocalist with a lot of star power and they really could have been the second coming of Pantera or singlehandedly ignited a new wave of American groove metal and metalcore or carried it on their own. But instead the band have followed the money on the path of least resistance to fast-track their way to the top of festival tickets, which I’m sure affords them quite enough luxury and comfort in life, more than most bands these days get, but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism, and unfortunately I think their legacy will show that they were a lowest common denominator kind of band at the end of the day when they could have been, again, like a second Pantera or something.

10. Anvil - Legal at Last

Another year, another album of Anvil unable to evolve past their prototypic thrash of their forty-year-old origins. Though as tacky as ever, Anvil actually also managed to make a mild improvement on their last album on the musical front at least. The songs are a little more energetic and easier to get through, if not for the lyricism though. Anvil lyrics are never anything beyond a fourth-grader’s poetry assignment for their English class, but some of the Facebook boomer lyrics here are fucking cringy dude. A quick look at the track listing will let you know exactly where you’re gonna find the juiciest cringe, but honestly, even as far as cringe goes it’s nothing comedically special and cringe culture in general is played out anyway. So do yourself a favor and just ignore Anvil the way they deserve to be ignored.

9. Halestorm - Reimagined

It feels a little harsh to place an EP here, especially for a band whose album back in 2018 was one of the best things I have heard to come out of hard rock in a long time. But these stripped back covers and revisions of songs from the band’s catalog just suck all the oomph out of them, perhaps making the case by contrast for the importance of the role the rest of the band behind the indeed charismatic powerhouse frontwoman Lzzy Hale play in making their sound what it is. It’s unlikely this points to any kind of new direction for them, so I’m not particularly worried about them running into this problem again. Plus, I don’t think Halestorm and Lzzy Hale are like fundamentally incompatible with more ballad-y rock music, this forced balladization of older songs just did not work, and it makes perfect sense as to why.

8. Gama Bomb - Sea Savage

The fact that this album is only number 8 on this list is just depressing for its reminder of just how much shittier it got this year. The fact that there are seven albums from this yet worse than Sea Savage, goddamn. With one exception, this was maybe the stupidest album I heard all year, at least in the thrash department it was. God this thing is a sugar high mess. I feel like a toddler on an entire bag of Halloween candy or an elementary schooler on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew sat at a computer to program a thrash album would’ve probably come up with something like this. The erratic operatic highs and dumbass lyrics, it all just embodies everything that ever made thrash look bad. It’s like that drunk guy at a party who’s hyper as shit and doing a bunch of crazy stunts for attention because he thinks it’ll make the people there like him more, but really he’s just embarrassing himself. Yeah, definitely the worst thrash metal album I heard all year, and one I wish I could unhear.

7. Amaranthe - Manifest

One of the albums I was avoiding but reviewed late out of my own weird sense of obligation that I wasn’t surprised to find only validated my reasons for avoiding it in the first place. The weird combo of dancy pop music and power metal isn’t as crazy of an idea as it might seem at first thought. In fact, that’s basically in part what Babymetal are doing, and actually getting better and better at. But Amaranthe get the worst of both worlds with Manifest, unsavory pop melodies and utterly generic symphonic metal to make for something I’m not at all surprised I was so repulsed by.

6. Trapt - Shadow Work

Yep, I listened to it. God, no wonder this band is flailing in irrelevance with aggressive MAGA nonsense being their only audible desperate plea for attention. The album, thank fuck, isn’t steeped in the same bitch boy tantrum that the band’s singer has engaged in all year to the point of getting his band’s Facebook page banned for hate speech, and the music isn’t like offensively poorly made or anything like that either. There’s clearly a conscious meeting of the baseline requirements for the type of music they make, but holy fuck it’s so damn flavorless and predictable. It’d be one thing if this was the trendy thing to be doing, but this diet hard rock for people who think Three Days Grace is too wild has been out of fashion for over a decade. And Trapt are just recycling the same dumb formula that overstayed it’s welcome in the early 2000’s. Yeah, I’m not surprised at all, but god, it’s the kind of thing that has to be apparent to the band themselves too unless they’re lacking of any and all self-awareness. Trapt have thrown themselves to the forefront of the online metal world’s discourse by being an annoying, toxic, and childish presence all year; the silver lining being the unity among metalheads in roasting their laughable posturing about their Pandora numbers and the juicy memes about their one hit “Headstrong” that rile the snowflake singer up without fail. And this shit album is just another reason to laugh at them and more fuel to roast their crybaby Trumper frontman with. Go back into your hole, Trapt. 3/10

5. Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I talked about it in my review, but there really is only one simple thing that sinks this album so low. And that is just how incredibly low-effort and lifeless it is with a genre that’s supposed to be so life-affirming. Power metal isn’t the most highly revered genre in metal, but that’s just for its cheesiness. I love it; when it’s at its best, it’s some of the most inspiring metal music out there and I genuinely wish there was a bigger demand across the board for it. But Unleash the Archers just sound so flat and unenthusiastic in this album, and, sorry, in power metal, unabashed enthusiasm is just nonnegotiable. The guitar parts are phoned in and lacking in imagination, and the vocals especially are so narrow-range, it’s all so antithetical to the ethos of power metal and it doesn’t make a strong case for itself. I’ll leave it there; this album is lazy and lifeless so I feel no need to waste any of my time and work on it.

4. Burzum - Thûlean Mysteries

Ol’ Varg must’ve needed a new wizard hat or camouflage pants or whatever goofy shit he’s been doing since retiring the Burzum name to focus on his racism and LARPing because I thought Burzum was supposed to be finished. I thought you were done with Burzum, Varg. Apparently not too done to not dump an hour and a half of embarrassingly half-baked ambient dungeon synth song fragments that sound, so many of them, quite obviously unfinished. Varg Vikernes has been a washed-up shell of the musical god the various weirdos who idolize him make him out to be for a long time now, and it has shown in the gradually degrading work he had put out after his release from prison. Yet after clearly not caring about creating music in any meaningful way for a long time, Varg drops this heap of shit in his fans’ laps. I suppose they deserve it, but I’m sure some of them are delusional enough to lap it up with a smile on their face while still believing their white nationalist idol to be a musical genius. Again, it’s entirely dull ambient music, not metal at all, but it deserves to be shit upon for its astounding laziness and purposelessness.

3. Asking Alexandria - Like a House on Fire

Doubling down on exactly the unflattering crossover of pop music with their significantly sanitized butt rock in their apparent quest for arena glory that started with their self-titled album back in 2017, Asking Alexandria’s bid for the big spotlight that Imagine Dragons occupies didn’t get any stronger this year with Like a House on Fire. After three or four years of aiming for this style, the band still aren’t even all that competent with the basics of fucking pop rock, which is pretty downright laughable. Honestly, for an album so high up here on my shit list, my feelings on it are more or less just that of unsurprised disappointment; as soon as I got a feel for what the band were doing with the album, I knew it was going to be a mess of predictable results. And lo and behold. This was just such a wholly inexcusably floppy paper towel of an album, and one more Asking Alexandria release I know I won’t be returning to ever again.

2. Hollywood Undead - New Empire, Vol. 2

Coming on at the last minute to get on the scoreboard, reliably, is Hollywood Undead. When I reviewed both volumes of this project earlier, I referred to them as “corporate Linkin Park”, and I stand by that 100%. This album especially showcases nothing but what an incoherent, vapid, clout-chasing act they are, with such a corny, focus-grouped sound that sounds like it was made in a lab by a bunch of out-of-touch boomers. God, they could’ve been safe too if they had left it with the more tolerable first volume back in January, but this follow-up sequel from just this month was exactly why I had avoided listening to the first installment in the first place. And I should’ve never played this second one either. The album opener, “Medicate”, is probably the worst song I sat through in my own volition this year, and the rest of the album doesn’t get much better. It’s nothing new for Hollywood Undead after I gave their 2017 album my award for least favorite album of that year: more unfitting interplay between machismo posturing Eminem-cosplay and the sappiest, wimpiest radio rock and pop choruses; more cringy tough-guy struggle bars; more forgettable-at-best instrumentals. Congrats again, Hollywood Undead, you made one of the worst albums of the year once again.

But even worse than Hollywood Undead is an album that I feel like is already so legendarily bad, that there is no other album that could’ve been sat here. It had to be this one.

1. Six Feet Under - Nightmares of the Decomposed

Shitty metal bands everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief any year Six Feet Under decide to put out new music because any album they release is just about bound to end up as everyone’s #1 worst album of the year, and boy is that guarantee becoming more and more airtight with each successive release. It’s truly astounding too how Six Feet Under manages to outdo themselves every time. I don’t even want to think about what could possibly come after Nightmares of the Decomposed; we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But for now, holy fermented shit, this thing is not just bad, it’s like the holy grail of terrible TERRIBLE albums and I don’t want to know what kind of apocalyptically despicable album Chris Barnes and company could possibly conjure to outdo this one. And make no mistake, it’s still Chris Barnes dragging this band down. I gave this album a 1/10 instead of a 0/10 because there was at least a sliver of salvageable instrumentation on it, as thin of a sliver as it was, a few halfway decent musical ideas of you squinted hard enough. The instrumentalists are checked out and clearly just participating for the paycheck, but I can’t even imagine what kind of professional instrumental performance could possibly overshadow the embarrassment that Chris Barnes put to tape in the studio here. Maybe that says it, because it honestly sounds utterly unprofessional. It’s baffling how this got through management and sound engineering to be released to the public because I don’t think I’ve ever even heard any amateur high school band’s vocalist sound this bad. Vocal ingenuity is generally something to be applauded in the metal world, and pioneers like Randy Blythe, Dani Filth, and Travis Ryan deserve all the praise they get for their innovation with dirty metal vocals, yet what Chris Barnes has “invented” here on Nightmares of the Decomposed to compensate for his continually-deteriorating vocals is just sad. The man simply cannot perform highs anymore, clearly, and the alternative is this fucking comical, cartoonish squealing that sounds more like a bratty toddler gargling their own snot than it does anything fitting for a death metal record, even a death metal record at stupid and cheesy as Nightmares of the Decomposed. Chris Barnes should be thankful that metal is not a sport and that there’s not nearly as much of an abundance of performance statistics to point to and analyze to see what kind of records are broken in a legendarily awful performance. I feel like if there were any kind of performance stats to pull up, this album would have to break some kinds of records. Like this is worse than that 7-1 Germany-Brazil World Cup game, this would be like if the Brazilian team all got unholy levels of blazed and repeatedly scored on themselves because they kept going the wrong way and kicking the ball into their own net, and then pissing their fucking shorts. Even in 7-1 defeat, Brazil had more dignity than Chris Barnes here. Six Feet Under and their label have to know they are a laughing stock and that people will listen to them at this point for the sheer entertainment value of how mind-blowingly awful they sound. It’s not an illegitimate marketing tactic, and it’s the only explanation I can come up with for how this passed inspection. If that’s their mission, to be a spectacle and instill cringe in death metal fans in a regular ritual of comically stupid performances across every successive album, they’re sure doing it, and I guess this baffling headache-trophy is their well-earned prize. Congratulations Six Feet Under, you did it again! Worst metal album of the year.

[raintowhiterun]

The Story of Aus (Skyrim SE 100% Playthrough) Information & Introduction

So, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this or not, but I did work hard on it so I figured I’d share, plus I’d like to keep this as a memory ^~^)/ Basically, this is the “script” for the prologue for the series I plan to start, possibly tomorrow? I’m super excited so here goes!

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∾ Introduction

Hello hello and welcome to my channel! My name is Tiger and I use this channel to keep my gaming memories. I don't expect anyone to watch this series, but if you decided to check it out, I'd like to welcome you! I hope you enjoy this game as much as I do.

I wanted to start this series on the PC, but I don't know when I'll be able to buy the audio splitter that I need for my computer and there's no guarantee my mic will even work when I do manage to buy it, so I decided to just play this out on the PS4, which will be streamed since I don't have recording software. I'll be using a timer to keep the videos around 30 minutes long.

Now, this series will be a 100% playthrough. I've seen several of these floating around, but some of them leave out factions, others leave out the Daedra quests, some don't do locations. And in my opinion, that isn't a true 100% playthrough. In this series, my goal is to truly 100% the game by doing EVERYTHING - the main storyline, the war storyline, all of the guilds, the Daedra quests, discovering all locations, completing every single quest including the miscellaneous ones, and so much more. It's going to be a long ass ride, but I'm excited to discover this game in its entirety!

It may seem boring or stupid, but the point of this 100% playthrough is so I can take my time and enjoy the game as its meant to be enjoyed. It's such a beautiful game with so much content and such a rich story, I want to take my time and enjoy it while streaming so I can keep the memory. Who knows, maybe someone else will enjoy this adventure with me~

I should mention that I WILL be attempting to play the role of this character as if I AM her. If you've seen my Dark Brotherhood playthrough which, at this time, is currently on-going, you'll know that this is going to be cringy as fuck, but I'm going to try my best. I won't be skipping any of the dialogue, either. I AM using a few mods, but no over-powered or crazy ones, in my opinion. I'll drop those in the description so you can judge that for yourself. Most of them are just aesthetic mods~

Let's get started by meeting our main character and learning about her story!

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∾ Backstory

My name is Auserie, or Aus for short. I was born on a cold, rainy night in Solitude's chapel to an Altmer woman named Erralaine Aedire. Everyone assumed I was fathered by her fiance, an Altmer man named Ondolemar, but they assumed wrong. My mother loathed Ondolemar, but the two had been set to wed since they were just infants, fresh out of their mother's womb. She tried everything to avoid this union, but her family would not let her get away. She a member of the Aedire, after all, a clan of Thalmor soldiers that served the Almeri Dominion without fail. In an attempt to comfort her, Erralaine's grandmother, a kind woman named Ley, tried to convince her that love would eventually blossom between them.

But how could love possibly blossom from such a deep hatred?

To Erralaine's surprise, love DID blossom, but not with Ondolemar. No, love came to her from a young Nord soldier fighting for the empire. Atarse Fire-Hair was one of three soldiers tasked with guarding Erralaine and her elder sister, Siranya, on their way to the Thalmor headquarters in Solitude. He was the youngest, not yet wise to the ways of the world, and he didn't hesitate to strike up a conversation with the two women. While Siranya ignored him, Erralaine was happy to be speaking to someone that was neither haughty nor rude. It wasn't long before the two of them fell in love and from that love, I was born.

No one but great grandma Ley knew of this secret, and she wasn't about to tell anyone. While Erralaine still was not happy with her husband, she acted out less with me around, but as I got older, I started to look more like Atarse and people started to notice. I was five the first time Ondolemar hit my mother, accusing her of being a harlot that slept around on him. He would have gotten rid of her, but she was currently with child and, according to the priestess of Arkay that often checked on my mother, she was due to have a boy.

This pleased him greatly and he kept his mouth shut, denying any allegations that were raised to him about my appearance. Exactly one year after my brother, Tusriil, was born, my mother came to me in the middle of the night, rousing me from my sleep. Even in my confused, half-asleep state, I recognized the urgency in her voice. She spoke to me in a hushed voice, telling me that everything would be okay. But it wasn't - at least not for her.

She snuck me out of Solitude with the help of a few Imperial soldiers, where I got onto a horse with a soldier whose name I was never given. He was kind, and I remember the soft smile he gave me and the protective way he held me as the horse started to trot away, leaving behind my mother and baby brother. At the time, I never thought I wouldn't see them again.

We rode on for nearly a day before arriving at a small shack northwest of Rorikstead where a red-headed man was waiting. I'll never forget the bright smile he offered me, his blue eyes full of happiness. I'll never forget how his expression darkened as he asked about my mother to the soldier, who shook his head. This man was Atarse Fire-Hair, my father, and this shack was to be my new home.

I later learned that, two days after I was smuggled out of Solitude, my mother was found stabbed through the heart. They called it a robbery gone wrong, but everyone that was involved knew better. It was no robbery, and it certainly wasn't an accident.

Despite missing my mother and brother dearly, I was happy with my father. He taught me how to use a bow and how to hunt for food, he read to me every single night, and he was there every time I had a nightmare. He was a damn good father, better than Ondolemar could even dream of being. I loved him dearly but, as he got older in age, he grew weaker and weaker until, finally, his body gave out on him and Shor carried his soul to Sovngarde.

For a while, I just sat within the shack and slept. I had no one and I felt so... lost. What was I to do with my life? But I knew neither of my parents would want me to suffer the way I was. They would want me to live, to experience life as I wanted to and, more importantly, to be happy. It was the toughest time of my life, but I took my father's bow and arrows, and I left the shack for the last time, not looking back.

For two years, I just wandered the land of Skyrim, living off the land and avoiding all major cities. While I did interact with some people, I much rather preferred to be with nature and with the wilds that lived within in. My life was peaceful and I was slowly beginning to recover from the loss of my father.

And then I got dragged down by being in the wrong place as the wrong time. I had been hunting near the border separating Skyrim from Morrowind when Ulfric Stormcloak, leader of the rebellion against the Imperials, appeared with a few of his soldiers in tow. I realized the situation and did not want to be swept up in their war, but it was too late - the Imperials ambushed them and I was captured as an accomplice, along with another man who had just been passing by at the wrong time.

While I did manage to escape losing my head, the situation in Helgen set off a chain of events that I know is going to alter my life, whether I like it or not. I'm not sure what path my life will go down and I don't really have a goal to go after, but I hope that by wandering through life, I will find my purpose. A small part of me wants revenge against Ondolemar, and another small part wishes to find my baby brother, but that's a can of worms I'm just not ready to open.

So, this is my story.

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∾ Mods

Here's the list of mods I'm using in this playthrough:

1. Meeko and Vigilance are huskies 2. On The Hunt - Gathering 3. On The Hunt - Hunting (Survival Friendly) 4. Epic Enhanced Console Graphics V5 (PS4) 5. NLA - Natural Lighting Aesthetica 6. No Salt Required! 7. Marry Almost Anyone 8. Various Dragons 9. Dense Grass PS4 10. Better Horses 11. Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul 12. Hunter's Cabin of Riverwood PS4 13. Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers 14. Realistic Conversations ( PS4 ) 15. [PS4]Lampposts of Skyrim:Special Edition 16. Point the Way

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[jojotichakorn]

HIStory3: Trapped: Review (& General Info)

About the Series:

Summary: A police officer and a gang leader were killed in a gunshot attack four years ago. What's the secret behind this case? The only survivor, Tang Yi, is now the gang leader. Shao Fei is a police officer, who’s been following Tang Yi around for the past four years, trying to figure out what’s really happened during the attack. Will he be able to get to the bottom of the case? And can something unexpected come out of their rivalry? (Trailer)

Couples: Main gay couple, as well as two side couples - one gay, one straight.

Running Time: 10 episodes - around 45 minutes each - 8 hours in total

Cast (& their Instagram pages): Jake Hsu (Shao Fei), Chris Wu (Tang Yi), Andy Bian (Jack), Kenny Chen (Zhao Zi), Diane Lin (Hong Ye), Sphinx Ding (Dao Yi), Zhang Guang Chen (Andy), Stanley Mei (Li Zhi De), [more].

Where to watch? VIKI (if you watch on mobile, you’ll have to download the app).

Related Shows: HIStory is a recurring Taiwanese BL series, however, each season is separate from the others and none of them are connected in any way, so there’s no other Trapped content out there.

My Review:

Rating: 9.5/10

Short review: Trapped is my favorite BL of all time. It has a good plot, fantastic acting, the most wonderful couple ever (whose intimacy is handled incredibly well), amazing characters, awesome friendships and a whole list of other great things. Despite having one controversial character, a slightly questionable background couple and a not-so-satisfying (though still not bad) ending, I don’t think there’s anything that could stop you from enjoying it. And though, as usual,  it’s obviously your own decision to make, it’s definitely a must-watch in my book. 

Extended review (under the cut):

I consider Trapped the best BL that exists to date – without a shadow of a doubt. Not everyone agrees with me and that’s entirely understandable, however, I assure you that even though someone might prefer one or a couple of other BLs to this one, everyone considers Trapped one of the best ones for sure.

The plot of Trapped is thought-out and actually good. It obviously isn’t a masterpiece of modern cinema, however, unlike so many other BLs, the plot actually matters. It’s interesting, gripping, well-thought-out, with a nice mystery and some unexpected reveals that might actually surprise you. Everything gang-related isn’t just there for show – it’s done tastefully and doesn’t seem cheap at all, you truly believe it. So many moments are hilarious, especially in the beginning. And the show is very meticulous and careful with all its little details, so there are no annoying minor plot or aesthetic inconsistencies that could take you out of immersing into it. The pacing of the plot is a tiny bit slow in the first couple of episodes, but it needs that to build itself up properly, and it quickly picks up as soon as it can.

The characters in this show are amazing. You will not only fall in love with the mains, but also adore most of the background characters and hate the rest of them, which just goes to show how much each of them can impact you emotionally because they’re that fucking great. All the details about the characters are well thought-out and awesome too. Tang Yi is not just a gang leader in name – Chris, the actor who plays him, does a fantastic job of showing just how intimidating Tang Yi can be and generally convinces us of him being the Big-Bad-Gang-Boss through so many brilliant subtle acting choices. The villain is actually threatening and terrifying too. Shao Fei can be rather embarrassing and cringy, however, Trapped certainly manages to show that this is truly just his personality, and they’re not just doing this for laughs. Besides, I’ve heard many people who usually get second-hand embarrassment all the time say they didn’t feel awkward for Shao Fei at all – he isn’t embarrassed since this is his true, authentic self, so no one else is embarrassed for him either. Finally, two background queer characters are fantastic. Usually, in other BLs background queer characters, who aren’t there for a romantic plotline, are never anything beyond a stereotype and are always there for laughs. That’s not the case in Trapped. Both of the characters are absolutely incredible, authentic and beautiful – most certainly one of the best background characters I’ve seen in any BLs.

I must note that one character definitely caused some controversy in the fandom, and I can’t say much else beyond this without giving you a gigantic spoiler. However, even though I do think they could’ve handled the topic better overall, I don’t find there’s anything wrong with having one of the many queer characters in the show be a bad person. I’ve talked about it many times and, considering the fact that we still have at least six positively-portrayed queer characters, the seventh being a piece of shit does not affect the representation in any way and doesn’t suddenly give all queer people a bad name. There are shitheads among us too, you know. And it’s important to talk about it.

Moving on, let’s talk about relationships. For starters, the main couple is hands down the best enemies-to-friends-to-lovers you’ll ever see – that I personally guarantee. Their romance is developed well and treated with the care it deserves, and they end up being the most adorable, wholesome couple ever. I also want to especially point out how well Trapped handles their intimacy. A lot of other BLs have their couple treat each other like friends half the time, be dating another half and kissing/having sex on rare occasions. In reality, though, a couple is always intimate with each other. And I don’t mean that everyone fucks like bunnies – no. I mean couples have intimate conversations, hold hands, kiss each other in a million different ways (and on a million different spots), cuddle for no reason, hug, express emotions and, of course, sometimes have sex. Not every couple does absolutely everything I’ve just listed, of course, but you get the overall point. Couples are intimate. And Trapped gets that. It shows that. And that’s wonderful. As for others, the straight background couple takes up just enough screen time to not annoy you and it’s actually kind of cute, which is super rare for me to say. Now, the gay background couple is rather questionable. One of the guys is kind of oblivious and juvenile, while the other pushes him too hard. It’s not so critical that I’d tell you to skip their moments, however, it is definitely food for thought and I’d say pretty problematic.

The friendships in Trapped are sort of a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have Shao Fei and Zhao Zi, who were proclaimed to be best friends, but don’t end up having any meaningful moments together and are really out of the loop with each other’s lives by the end of the show. This can be explained and justified, but I still feel like it’s a little unrealistic. On the other hand, though, we have Tang Yi and his friends – mainly, Andy, The Doctor (whose name I, apologies, don’t remember), as well as Hong Ye and Tang Guo Dong. Despite only seeing a couple of moments with each of them, we get attached to every character and their relationships with Tang Yi very easily. His friendships with Andy and The Doctor are familiar and realistic. His relationship with Hong Ye is deep and authentic – you can truly see they are like siblings to each other. And his relationship with Tang Guo Dong is so beautiful and raw that you end up falling in love with the “found father” trope and wish you had the same relationship with your parents or any mentor figure, really. Despite Tang Yi and Tang Guo Dong only having four small scenes with each other – all of which are flashbacks, their dynamic is my second favorite in the show and their relationship is one of the best father/son relationships I’ve ever seen.

Finally, the show is shot beautifully and the acting in it is on a completely different level. Seriously, you will say, “Holy shit, this actor is so good!” like every other second. I literally grabbed my pen to write some version of “the acting is so good” in my notes, while rewatching the show for this review at least twenty times, and the only thing that stopped me is already having it written down thrice.

The very last note I have is about the ending. Now I will say immediately that this show does not have a bad ending – I could not have it as one of my favorites, if it did, I’m strictly a happy-ending kind of person. However, the ending is still a little too vague for my taste and I wouldn’t say I’m satisfied with it. It’s not the end of the world and overall it’s an alright ending you can live with – nothing bad happens. However, I wouldn’t call it the best ending this show could have – and that’s all I can say without giving any spoilers.

Finally-finally, should you watch this show? Fuck yes! Absolutely, my guy! Have you heard all I’ve just said? It’s brilliant. An absolute fucking masterpiece, I’m telling you. So yes, I recommend it to literally everyone. There is legitimately no other series I want to show everyone as much as this one – this is fucking mandatory in my book. Regardless of however I feel about it though, at the end of the day, it’s obviously your own decision to make.

[kiddblack]

🔥 about smut specifically. trying to find a good fallout 4 fic is killing me right now and it's 100% of the Extreme Amount of Cock™ that writers feel the need to include at every turn.

NSFW Undercut

Over description of dicks n balls in fics are one of the biggest reasons I don’t care for smut fics. Its cringy, uncharacteristic of the medium (most of the time) and pulls the reader out of the immersion of the literature. Like, you don’t need a thousand words to describe how erect a dick is, open a fucking thesaurus.

You gotta have proper build-up, unless you’re specifically and exclusively writing a sex scene. There has to be chemistry and if you ain’t got chemistry you’ve got a boring ass pork piece. In FO4 specifically (as well as most RPG fics) you’ll find a lot of self insert that’s just abysmal. We get it Becky, you want to bounce on MacReady’s dick as much as everyone else, you’re one meat thermometer descriptive away from My Immortal.