#twisted logic is a fun one. it does what it sets out to do. weird dark energy there

[snowshinobi]

if u were a song where in the album would u be

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 心宅猎人/Psych-Hunter.

Psych-Hunter is a 2020 drama about a hot young amnesiac who, accompanied by a rich psychiatrist with major daddy issues and a rich girl who cosplays as a cop, uses his Inception-style psychic powers to solve crimes that are part of a shadowy conspiracy orchestrated by a mysterious figure.

True story: Once I couldn't remember the English name of the drama, so I called it "House Haunters," and now my brain insists that's the real English title. If only!

Do not, under any circumstances, labor under the impression that this show is good. It's not. It's incoherent. The writing is bad. The villain is absurd. The vibe is comically melodramatic. People make inexplicable and out-of-character decisions all the time. Countless complex mysteries get set up with no way to resolve them. There's a thin lampshade hanging over it that blurs the line between bad decisions made on accident and bad decisions made on purpose, but the net result is largely the same. This is the show that first inspired my wife to declare something dumb as a guinea pig in a roller skate.

But it's fun. It's a sea of colorful chaos with brilliant pieces that shine through like strange gems. It knows how to work an atmosphere and does so to create some legitimately creepy moments. It spins a wild yarn filled with bizarre and loveable characters. And it has some twists that truly have to be seen to be believed. In the mood for some beautiful nonsense? Here's five reasons that despite everything I warned you about in the previous paragraph, I think this one's worth watching.

1. Psychonauts for Jazz Age homosexuals

Honestly, that phrase alone should let you know if this is the thing for you. But just in case, let me explain the basic premise of the show:

Jiang Shuo, a man who has lost his memory and been adopted by circus folk, is capable of jingling his keys and diving full-body into someone else's subconscious, represented by lovely and thematic dreamscapes. He does this to solve crimes. Sometimes he takes along a handsome doctor who seems like he might know more than he's letting on, by literally tying their hands together with a red string.

Also, when they do this, they get gorgeous steampunk magical girl costume changes, complete with the cutest little pony nub you've ever seen.

This show can be stunningly beautiful. It knows how to manifest dream logic eerily well. Most of these cognitions are gorgeous, and many are done with primarily practical effects, like it's a stage play. ...And it's good it relies on that so much, because the CG it has is kinda cheap and terrible! So, yeah.

(Side note for the DMBJ fans: This is directed by the same guy who directed Sand Sea, which I assume is related to how this both is a visual treat and completely falls apart on the back end.)

The reason I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't taken off more among the creative set is what a great piece of worldbuilding this Psych-diving is. These boys (and, once, the girl) get to short-term manifest bodily in someone else's materialized mental state, where the person whose brain they’re in neither controls the experience nor remembers what happened after it’s done. Were you writing weird Arthur/Eames fic a decade ago? I got a new best thing for you. Can you say freaky dream sex? Because I can.

The base premise should be more than enough to get your gears going. Come ready to get weird with it. There's so much potential here, and so much of that potential is incredibly gay and wearing impeccably tailored suits.

2. Your friendly neighborhood circus family

As I mentioned before, Jiang Shuo lucks into the best possible fate that can befall an amnesiac: being picked up by carnies.

The troupe includes Ventriloquist Man, Really Big Dude, One-Eyed Acrobat, Other Acrobat, Cheerful Fat Girl, Boy Who Looks Like A Kid But Is Actually Played By An Adult So I'm Not Exactly Sure How Old The Character Himself Is Supposed To Be, and Silver Fox Circus Dad, who manages the whole crew. They're a ragtag bunch of performers who all live together in this cute little compound in some very nice slums, and sometimes they open the gates to their lavish compound and put on a circus show for all the common people!

Now: You know this is not going to be the wokest, most sensitive portrayal of body differences, because of course it isn't. But damn, it's pretty not-bad. The show treats all the circus members as valuable people worthy of affection, whose (occasionally exasperating) quirks are no more or less exhausting than those of the non-circus weirdos in the rest of the supporting cast.

I was half-expecting them to disappear after the first arc, but no! They’re a constant fixture through the show! They’re mostly there to support the show’s more comedic moments, but some of them get wrapped up in more emotional plotlines as well. And every now and then you get to see them actually do their circus shit, which is great.

I will admit that my fondness for them is related to how much I generally love fictional Freaks — you know, misfits who have banded together because society considers them unacceptably weird, but together their weirdnesses make them strong. When you find them, they’re usually the bad guys (e.g., the Gung-Ho Guns from Trigun, the Scorpion crew from Word of Honor) whose freak statuses make them formidable and occasionally sympathetic antagonists. But not so here! The Psych-Hunter Family Circus is good guy support all the way through to the final episode.

I know "found family" is a term that suffers from overuse, but that's the best way to describe what's happening here -- really, it's a family that's already found itself even before the show starts, and now they all live together as an unconventional collective of astonishingly flexible people. How did they find one another? Doesn't matter! What matters is that they all love and would do anything for their newest member, and they think it's great when he comes home with his attractive rich friends, who often arrive bringing snacks, which is really the best use for rich people, if you think about it.

3. Two hands, one ring

Now, if you've seen the series already, you know the moment I'm talking about. But if you haven't (and, statistically, you haven't), know that what I mean is the relationship between these two losers.

Together, Qin Yiheng and Jiang Shuo form the emotional core of the series. They're both drawn to one another because of mysterious circumstances that have started to align. Jiang Shuo's memory is missing, Qin Yiheng's dad has vanished, and all signs point to those absences as having something to do with one another.

Very early in the show, we see Qin Yiheng pull a "come with me if you want to live" on Jiang Shuo, giving the impression that he knows just what's going on in this crazy city. Except, no, he doesn't. Or does he? No, we're pretty sure he doesn't. Or he does, but he's forgotten what he knows, if he ever even knew it in the first place. Anyway, time to tie their hands together and jump into someone else's brain!

I'd say they're in love, but that's not quite it. Dr. Qin Yiheng, high-class homosexual, is in love with Jiang Shuo to the point where he's about to murder someone (possibly Jiang Shuo himself) out of frustration about it. Jiang Shuo, on the other hand, is much more sticking his fingers in his ears and going LA LA LA YOU CAN'T CATCH ME GAY THOUGHTS while trying get a girlfriend in an effort to pretend that all the shit they get up to together isn't tremendously romantic.

That is, until the scene that leads to the which-hand ring guessing game, at which point the burden of their relationship falls on Jiang Shuo (and the Inception parallels get unignorable) for exactly as long as the show will allow it to, before it freaks out and has to add another girl love interest just to make sure all the homos got no'd.

It's not textually gay, because seriously, have you met Chinese television? But it's pretty gay. Or, rather, I think Liu Dongqin (Qin Yiheng) is playing his character as a dedicated homosexual on purpose, and Hou Minghao (Jiang Shuo) is just ... kinda like that? I mean, everything I’ve seen him in, he gets real dreamy-eyed around strong men who pay close attention to him. Maybe it's just his thing as an actor. I'm not judging.

However, the main cast isn't just the two of them. One of the things that led me to this show was the promise of an OT3. And does it deliver on that promise?

Well ... sorta.

Qin Yiheng, Jiang Shuo, and Yuan Muqing are a pretty standard MFM not-love-triangle trio of Male Bestie, Main Guy, and Girlfriend (respectively). There's about five seconds at the beginning of the series where it looks like Yuan Muqing might be into Qin Yiheng, but no, that evaporates almost instantly and is never spoken of again -- and with it disappears most of their interactions with one another, period. So it's less an OT3, and more a case of bisexual cutiepie Jiang Shuo getting both a boyfriend and a girlfriend in a world where censorship will only let the latter relationship exist textually.

But damn if these boys aren't made for one another. Sure, there's a level of conscious comical queerbaiting to it -- I mean, there's straight-up an "only one bed" moment, so you know the show isn't stumbling into rainbow territory on accident. No matter how sexual or nonsexual or whatever you read it as, though, their dynamic is the spine that holds the story together. Really, it's almost sad how often the relationships are set parallel to one another, because when you do that, it becomes obvious how intense Jiang Shuo's bond with Qin Yiheng is, and how largely lackluster and comphet most of his canon romance with Yuan Muqing is by comparison.

Like so.

sidebar: The Girl

I am not going to go into a full-throated defense of The Girl this time, as I am wont to do, mostly because I think Yuan Muqing is full of potential in concept but so badly executed that there's really no hope for her. Her entire personality is whatever they need her to be in any particular scene. It's just that once in a while, what they need her to be is completely insane -- like, seeing-things-that-aren't-there insane -- and it's so great that it makes me mad! She could have been like this all the time! But noooooo

As it is, she has a perfunctory canonical romance with Jiang Shuo that's about as endgame as anything is capable of being (see point 5), and it actually gets pretty cute when it finally gets to the point where it's not just awkward obligation! But alas, it only does that so late in the series that it's not even worth it getting invested in it.

She is a creation of the show. She has no novel counterpart. Her entire function in the drama is to un-gay the dynamic between the boys. You can tell that she was initially supposed to have a different role -- to be the muscle of this trio -- but the narrative forgets pretty quickly that she's got that skill set, and she regresses to being The Girl. She makes dumb decisions that forward the plot. She gets put into danger whenever it's convenient. She demands Jiang Shuo do manly things for her because that’s what a girl is supposed to do, I guess? And then there are moments where she’s cool and crazy and it’s awesome! But they never last.

So if you are going to watch this, be prepared for the fact that the female lead is badly written to the point of frustration. I feel her actor is doing the absolutely best with what she's got; the problem is that what she's got is pretty crappy. Still, Muqing gets some pretty charming moments here and there, and I think it's worth hanging onto those and imagining the character she could have been, if the writers had cared just a little more, or even at all.

4. Powerfully surreal worldbuilding

I'm not even talking about the way people's psyches are structured according to dream logic -- the "normal" waking world is almost equally bizarre. The story takes place in sort of the real world c. 1930, except that a lot of things are off. For example, Japan and England are real locations, but China kinda isn't -- instead, the show takes place in a Shanghai-like city-state run by this moustachioed generalissimo with a faux Latin American dictator aesthetic. The place has its own flag and government and police force (where all the cops have coordinating surnames) and diplomatic relationships with other countries, so it’s clearly its own thing. But what that thing is? What it’s even called? Look, don’t worry about it. Nobody else is worried, so you shouldn’t be either.

You will, at every point in the series, be wondering if the show is trying to telegraph to you that Something's Not Quite Right Here, or if it's just making weird decisions for the sake of artsy weirdness. But don't worry -- there's absolutely no way to tell the difference between the two! Just roll with it.

There's a weird mix of universe rules happening throughout, where everything is mostly period-appropriate for a while, and then somebody builds a clock with levitating parts, or causes someone else to have very specific memory loss — or, again, swings some coins in front of a person’s face and gains the ability to treat their subconscious like a VR amusement park.

You can sort of reconstruct the evolution of this weirdness: The book has actual factual ghosts in it. Well, that’s fine for books, but TV isn’t allowed to have ghosts. But TV can have people who imagine ghosts, so long as it’s all in their heads. Okay, but you know jumping bodily into those imaginations isn’t actually a thing real people can do, right? Well, then let’s make it scientific. How can that be scientific? I don't know, it’s psychiatry. I don’t think that’s psychiatry. Look, it could be. Well, it’s definitely not psychiatry in 1930s Shanghai, and that’s the set we’re allowed to film on. Okay, what if it weren’t actually Shanghai? What if it weren’t actually 1930? What if all of this were at best a weird approximation of the period that adheres to no rules except the ones we want?

Once you’ve thought that, the sky’s the limit.

The show has a very inconsistent grasp on reality, and I am listing that as a pro instead of a con because I am choosing to embrace it as a deliberate choice rather than assume it’s the result of craven incompetence. There's something to be said, though, for how pervasively inconsistent it is. It'd be one thing if there were just a few plot holes here and there (and there are), but this is more along the lines of: We woke up in a mysterious boat and got taken to an island with a giant sea monster skeleton on the shore! What's that all about? Couldn't say! Was it real? Maybe! Moving on!

Let the number of "it's fine! who knows!" comments I've made throughout this rec indicate how much this is the kind of show you just have to roll with. If you are a nitpicker or someone who is troubled by unexplained nonsense, this is not the thing for you. If you love artistic magical realism and high strangeness, you will eat this up with a spoon.

And the lampshade that hangs over all of this worldbuilding is...

5. THE STUPIDEST POSSIBLE ENDING EVER

Okay, usually I am coy about when I think an ending has problems. I am going to drag this one out front and center: Psych-Hunter has an ending so jaw-droppingly, head-clutchingly stupid that I'm actually listing it as a selling point, because it has to be seen to be believed.

When I first watched it, I suspected the show ran out of time or money or something and just had to slap together the quickest possible ending ever. But no! This is the ending they meant! If you go back to the rest of the series, you can see that this is what they were (kinda) setting up the whole time! They just set it up so poorly and decided to make the twist hit at such a late point that not only is it complete nonsense, it actually renders moot the entire emotional stakes of the show! Absolutely incredible!

Now, as I've said before in other places, I don't begrudge the actual twist itself. I mean, it's stupid on its face, but I think they could have done something with it — if they'd had it happen halfway through the series, when the characters would have had time to adjust to the new knowledge. Instead, they slap it on at the last possible moment, when there's no time to have any reaction to it. It's just jarring and baffling, and then the whole thing's over.

I've seen lots of people say "season 2 when???" Season 2 never, friends. There was never going to be a season 2. The only reason you think this was an even remotely acceptable narrative move was that you were assuming that this would be the midpoint, not the end. You're having the same reaction I did, only I can tell this was always meant to be their spectacular dismount.

(To me, it's clear what happened: They J.J. Abramsed themselves into a cool premise for a mystery with no idea how to solve it, hoping they'd figure it out along the way. When they got to the end and still hadn't figured it out, they simply ... opted out of solving it.)

Now, if you want a normal viewing experience out of this show, watch to the end of the next-to-last episode, close your browser window, and have imagination adventures about how you think all the mysteries should resolve. But you're not going to. You are going to continue on to that last episode, and you are going to realize that nothing I could have said here could possibly have prepared you for this. And somewhere, I am going to feel the urge to cackle wickedly and not even know why. Except I'll know why. We'll both know why.

Want to watch this hot mess?

That baby's an iQiyi exclusive! But you can watch the first episode on YouTube, if you feel like getting a taste that way.

Look, I know I may have spoiled my pitch somewhat with that last selling point. After all, why would you bother watching a series if you know it has a shit ending?

I refute your objection thus: Knowing it has a shit ending changes the whole game, because it removes the feeling of betrayal that hits upon your discovering that the ending isn’t what you wanted. You know that already now, so there can be no betrayal. The ending goes from being an unpleasant surprise to being exactly the unexpected thing that you expected. With that in mind, you can dive right in (ha ha) knowing that you’ll never get the closure you crave, and therefore whatever you make up along the way is perfectly valid.

This is obviously a turnoff if you prefer shows that are like seeing someone start a magic trick, perform it without breaking a sweat, and walk off calmly, leaving you wondering how on earth they accomplished such an amazing thing. Think of this more as someone starting a magic trick, accidentally letting the rabbit fall out of their hat, saying “I meant to do that!” like thirty times, and suddenly vanishing through a trapdoor, leaving you wondering what the trick was even supposed to be in the first place — but they were really good-looking and well-dressed, so at least whatever they were doing was nice to look at while it was happening.

See? They're having fun.

[bettsfic]

possibly dumb question but… what exactly is structural editing and how do you do it? i assume it’s shifting the order of stuff around in a draft but how do you do that to end up with a cohesive story that flows in the end? it sounds very daunting!

not a dumb question at all!

structure is, at its core, the organization of a story. for the most part, stories are organized chronologically. we are given information in the order of time passing, and often at the same time the narrator experiences it.

if your story is chronological, structural editing will mostly involve major turning points for the story, ensuring that your tension (even if it is a very loose tension) is escalating. for the most part, writers focus on the escalation of external events while drafting, but the internal escalation sometimes needs to be reorganized or totally re-envisioned. your narrator's epiphany lands after the sequence of events that would prompt that epiphany. i know i have a terrible habit of making my characters realize important things far too early, and in revisions i have to move that realization later, which, yes, involves cutting and pasting and changing the order of things, but also affects the narration based on what the character does not yet know, and sometimes even the action of the story.

so it's cyclical logic in that way, which is why revision can be so hard and frustrating: if you change the character's inner growth, that may affect their actions in the story. if you change their actions in the story, it may affect the rate of their inner growth.

an example is the fanfiction italicized "oh." in other words, the moment your narrator realizes their feelings for their romantic interest. let's say in drafting, you put it in the climax. the narrator spends the story grappling with their feelings, then realizing them, acting on them, and then the romance culminates in a confession and/or a kiss and/or sex, and the story ends.

but how would their behavior change if "oh" was the inciting incident of the story? if they figure it out during the exposition, or maybe even before the story begins, and spend the rest of the story pining, with some other conflict keeping them from expressing their feelings?

very often my developmental edits for people involve something like, "your resolution is the inciting incident of the story you're really trying to tell," which no one ever wants to hear. but it's a good practice when pre-writing to ask yourself if the end of the story you're trying to write is actually the end of the backstory.

drafting (or what i sometimes call the discovery stage) is the order in which your story arrives on the page, and revision is working with what you've written to figure out the order of what must be known. one of the hardest parts of writing is figuring out what your reader needs to know and when they need to know it in order to have the contextual information and emotional priming of what happens thereafter.

although i do very much love when weird shit happens that makes me go ??? and *then* i'm given context in a form of a reveal, or what i call an illuminating moment that casts light on the previous events of the story. many people mistake this for a "twist," which is when the story sets up an expectation and subverts it meaningfully.

of course, you're not obligated to write chronologically. in fact i don't anymore. i prefer framing devices, long backstories, multiple timelines, and alternating points of view that sometimes overlap in time and space. a lot of writing advice will tell you these things are bad. they're not. they're just hard to pull off, because it requires an extra step: telling yourself the story in the order it comes in, figuring out the cause and effect sequence, fixing the cause and effect sequence, and then figuring out the order you want the information to be revealed in beyond the constraining device of time. never let anyone discourage you from experimenting with structure. it can be fun and challenging as both a writer and a reader.

tl;dr: structural or developmental revision is the process of putting your story in the order of the clearest escalating tension and stakes, both internally and externally, with an eye on the organization of the information revealed in the story as the reader would experience it.

[onewomancitadel]

After two years of arguing on my silly little Tumblr blog, when one volume manages to vindicate everything I said about one of my favourite characters and the consequence of his narrative actions, the major thematic thrust of the show (when naysayers said otherwise), as well as prove at least two of my theories that had major character and story consequences (Raven was involved in Summer's disappearance and knew about it/the brother gods are not the original-original gods), you have to imagine the sort of position I'm in now emotionally. It's a very strange one.

I had people arguing with me for ages about most of this - that V8 was bad and the show was actually cynical and mean and fairytales aren't real, that nothing was ever going to eventuate with Jaune [insert whatever method of him being written out of the story here], that the Penny issue was not in any way analogous to Pyrrha, that any speculation surrounding the possibility of Knightfall should just be dismissed (and probably to boot the story will be cruel about Cinder).

I'm not trying to say 'boohoo, I was right and you were wronggggg' because I don't think it's about being right or wrong, contrary to the average notification-hungry user's belief. It is actually purely about emotional investment and the way my assertions were treated - and hey, arguing can be fun, so it's not like this is some saintly endeavour. But it is really really interesting that the position I was in (and am in) was and is treated as fundamentally absurd. On some level, I've always reserved doubt myself.

I'm the first cynic. I'm the first person to call my own theories into doubt. So to be in this position once again, that I found myself at the end of V8 - that oh shit, we are actually really fucking doing it - is very, very weird. It's not like I have definite 'Knightfall is canon' on the brain - that's one of my chief concerns here, obviously, lol - but what is really interesting is that the pieces to get there related to Jaune's (and Cinder's) character have been set up. Exactly the same way as they did with Penny. Because my first reaction to him killing Penny? It was, Oh holy fuck we are really doing Knightfall. That is pretty much the only way you can make Knightfall plausibly work, and how they played the Penny problem this volume would indicate whether they were doing what I thought they were doing.

I don't think my position has really changed - every succeeding volume raises my eyebrow and makes me take the narrative more seriously, but I'm not one to ever say this will definitely happen. I try to reason based on the text and my instinct and my, you know, pure enjoyment. I think Knightfall (and the ideas related to Jaune and Cinder, and separate to them, Ruby and Ozlem et al.) embodies the most interesting and playful ideas about R/WBY. But I'm not an I-told-you-so type, and that's not what I want this post to turn into. I just think it's funny, and joyful. It does feel rewarding to be the person that everybody said was being too optimistic about Jaune's character, or whathaveyou, to be... vindicated.

That is why storytelling matters, to me. That is why narrative twists and narrative events which you can predict aren't inherently disappointing. It is absurd that people act like the best stories are ones you could never possibly see coming to the point that they alter storytelling logic and break their own narrative. That's silly, and I hope modern writing is moving past that cynical hiccough. But on the other hand - if you take a text seriously and think about it really hard, even when you know what's coming, it doesn't lessen the fun - the thrill is in the execution.

The thrill is also in being the person a lot of people said was crazy.

[alolanroy]

2023 Media Thread Pt2

it got too big to edit :(

The Cat in the Hat (2003): I’ll admit I don’t really have any special attachment to this movie. I missed it as a kid, just right past me. I’ll give it props for dedication to bonkers production design and commitment to cartoon logic, but this really didn’t work for me. The uncanny makeup and constant screaming children was consistently grating. The peeks of the world outside of the main story was great whenever we go to see it though. -3/10

Barbecue Showdown S2: They sure did cook that meat. Most of the cast was polarizing, but not necessarily in a fun way. 4/10

Andromeda S2: Once again a Sci-fi show ups its quality in the second season. I think what I appreciate is that when it does a standard episode that you’ve seen before in another show, instead of trying to one up the moral dilemma, it instead ignores it altogether and pursue character interaction. A steady progression of both the characters and the state of their world kept me well engaged. 7/10

Gravity Circuit: [At time of writing I am struggling against the last boss] At some point I yelled ‘NOW THIS IS KAMEN RIDER!’ Some of the tightest shmoovment in a 2D game of thsi type and visually stunning. Taking the GBA megaman X approach to monochrome sprites really lets the artwork flourish without diminishing readability. 9/10

DOOM 64: A fascinating iteration on the main DOOM entries. It plays clean and has fascinating level design. I won’t finish it, but I see myself coming back to it from time to time. 7/10

Avataro Sentai Donbrothers vs. Zenkaiger: In this episode of Zenkaiger, the gang gets up to some villain of the week shenanigans. In this episode of DonBrothers, the gang grapples with the emptiness of unearned success and the negative power dynamics from leadership. In other words its a pretty normal episode of both that end up in the same quarry at the end. 8/10 I miss these goofs

Geats Extra: Kamen Rider Tycoon meets Kamen Rider Shinobi: I think we all know who should’ve been the real series this season (its shinobi) 7/10

HALF LIFE MOD ROUNDUP PT 2

Amalgam: A pretty underwhelming mod with some pretty good combat encounters in a few occasions, but too long methinks. 4/10

Half-Life 2: Downfall: Pretty solid content focused on Gravity Gun playstyles, but seeing as it was made in 2017, I don’t think the other episodes are happening. 5/10

Resistance Element: This one is pretty out there. Didn’t really establish its setting and ending on ‘the Vortigaunt fleet’ is certainly a choice. 5/10

Transmissions: Element 120: Pretty good overall and the gravity gun variant was intriguing. Too bad it’s too short to capitalize off of the unique ideas. Though a surprising few mods have the confidence to end on a strider encounter. 7/10

Thunder’s Leaves: They get points for effort. An interesting twist on the setting that made it feel fresh, though it comes at the cost of the new weapons being decidedly less fun to use. The gunplay just feels...off. A lot of the ideas feel rough like this. The combine shield drones take a weird amount of damage and rocket turrets ended up doing more splash damage to me than the enemies. Still, seeing a world in the process of picking up the pieces was oddly satisfying, and more desperate combine gave their less curated technology a certain charm. 7/10

Gundam Evolution (7/22): At a some point I joked ‘This will be Gundam gaming in 2023′ and paused, ‘2023 and 2023 only.’ Yes, Gundam Evolution was announced to be shutting down in a few months, not having lasted a whole year. It’s almost like live service games with off-putting monetization strategies might not be an optimal business practices. The balance seems to have improved and The one additional unit I was able to unlock (Heavyarms) was pretty neat. Perhaps if the timing was different it could’ve worked out with Overwatch hemorrhaging as badly as it is. Honestly the lack of any worthwhile brand synergy kinda dampens it. With G-witch over for now, it only is represented in a few player icon, which is especially disappointing considering a lot of the nothing picks for new characters they did. Naturally they saved the Kampher for the day after they announced they were shuttering. maybe by the end they’ll unlock everything for everyone, but I doubt it. I still had fun, but there's no soul here. 6.5/10

Rocky Blaboa (2006): Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, this is a good movie and Stallone can Direct. It understands the mechanics of how the filmmaking made Rocky so sympathetic in the first one and wont hesitate to hold on his awkward mannerisms. I appreciate how the match was shot like a real sporting event, and for once the quick cut style that became overused in this era works as an escalation of the previous lingering. The emotional core of the movie works like a charm, and it really makes it feel like he is brightening up the world in his small way. It directly parallels the first, but especially by the end you can’t help but smile. 9/10

Bloodfist: A pretty average canon movie, but I won’t lie, the twist got me and a couple of the fights were neat. Couldn’t tell if the Filipino woman who doesn’t have any lines was neat choice or lazy production. 6/10

Airplane Mode (2019): Abyssal media. It’s racist, homophobic and shallow in that way only late 2008′s comedies did. Theres a reason it killed the comedy genre. I didn’t recognize any of these celebrities for 12 year olds besides Logan Paul which made the relentless sex pest energy of the movie worse. The worst part is that very rarely, enough crassness and lame humor piles up that just one joke can take it far enough to make me laugh like an idiot. I hated myself for it. -4/10

Deadly Spygames: Bafflingly bad but funny with a good group, though it loses momentum when it ends up just being a framing device for a worst christmas themed horror failure. -4/10

Force of Execution: Man what happened to Stephen Seagal. -2/10

Suicide Squad 2016: This movie deserves the microscope of analysis it garnered. It has all the ingredients, just put together...wrong somehow. It was better than expected, especially once someone pointed out that the Joker isn’t consequential to the plot at all. He could be removed and nothing would change. I see why there was an immediate turnaround on a remake. -6/10

Andromeda S3: I felt there was an odd drop in quality. I chalk it up mostly to not really having a clear idea of what the state of the commonwealth is and if its still only the senior staff running the ship or not. It just felt kinda disconnected and disconcerting, like I was watching out of order. 5/10

Gundam I rewatch: A friend wanted to watch this with the rest of the players in a OYW tabletop I’ve been running for a year and a half. Theres a lot of ink spilled on the subtlety of the character writing, but this rewatch I brought a new eye to spotting Yas’s style in the character design. I really appreciate how much of the legwork into nonverbal expression it pulls off with the limited resources. 8/10

Iron Man (2008): Tight as hell, stylish, confident and gorgeous. It is everything the MCU had lost by the time they removed the character. 8/10

Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island: It’s cute and whimsical and all, but I wouldn’t call it particularly fleshed out. A lot of cross pollination between this and G-witch. 7/10

Swelter: Playing this during a heat wave was just about perfect. This setting felt fresh for the Half-Life modding scene and fit in seamlessly. While the new puzzle mechanics were simple, they were clean and were a lot of fun to do under fire. The rebalancing was unusual, but I had a great time with the original weapons. Disappointingly, I would’ve liked more opportunity to use them in new contexts. It was over pretty fast and left me wanting more both conceptually and mechanically, which in this case is a good thing. 7/10

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning part I: Tom Cruise’s Quest to have a new dark brunette love interest in all of his movies has now lead to a double event. Cynicism aside, this movie was a blast and the more sci-fi villain led to lots of tense mind games. This less serious tone reminds me of my favorite era of Bond villainy. High points include a Lupin the 3rd car chase, a samurai sword fight and a batman villain tier riddle bomb. I had a great time. 8/10

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: It may not have been great, but this was MY Avengers. Plus 5 points for having a visibly Indian Captain Nemo but minus 5 for having him even slightly receptive to saving the British Empire. 7.5/10

Matrix Resurrections: Upon second watch I did notice a few clever touches I didn’t pick up on initially, but the only thing it really has going is being the most maliciously compliant film I’ve ver seen. -4/10

Kamen Rider Saber: The  phantom of missed opportunity looms large in this show. It has moments where the writing works and the characters are endearing, but most of the time it just comes out...weird. The fights feel stagnant, the CG is laughably bad at times and the theming is all over the place. It comes across as childish and poorly executed. But I’m just beating about the bush here, the real issue is that the main character and the lost childhood friend come off as...really really creepy. The visuals of him trying to rescue a child are...lets just say the optics are awful. Doing my best to put that aside, this might be the weakest Rider I’ve finished. 4/10

The Fugitive (1993): While I cannot speak to how it stacks up to its predecessor, I enjoyed it as a tight thriller. I loved seeing Andreas Katsulas, I loved seeing the infamous Harrison Ford dummy. 8/10

An American Werewolf in London: Interesting, but I wouldn’t call it particularly funny to me. 5/10

Yukikaze: Damn, this really was the Evangelion of Ace Comb----*gets shot in the head*

Jokes aside, while I wouldn’t call it particularly narratively deep and the final episode was a bit bad at communicating, it was a stimulating watch. From a technical standpoitn the dub I watched had interesting sound design that heightened the stress of the airborne encounters, though the voice mixing felt odd at times. I’m also pretty sure this was supposed to be BL at some stage. Anyway, wow, cool post-eva digipaint plane thing! 8/10

Thankskilling: The apex of cheap garbage. Exploitation nonsense at its finest and most self aware without overplaying its hand. The line between good and bad cringe was walked like a tightrope. I’m a big enough man to say that I laughed my ass off, though I can’t recommend it. I later came to a greater respect upon seeing that their long defunct website encouraged people to use the footage as public domain and even had a fan-edit contest. -7/10

Conan the Destroyer: Bummer the whole party couldn’t make it to the session this weekend. I wouldn’t mind the weaker effects and production if it maintained the distinct style of the original. It lacks the Kino factor...without it...just kinda dull. 4/10

Ninja Assassin: Rewatching this with a Rain fan made this a lot more fun the second time around. I kinda wish we could’ve seen more...ninja assassinations? but as it is it has style and action I can’t say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. Boy, I could tell this was MJS now that I knew what to look for. 7/10

Lupin III: Prison of the Past: Absolutely sauceless. It has the wonder bread plot of a Pokemon DVD movie, but animation so budget it wouldn’t cut it for TV anime at its worst. It's just bafflingly cheap looking. Its colors are so muted and its compositions so static it feels at once 10 and 20 years out of date. This was made worse by an uninterested dub. How do you make a char clone with a sword dull? If this is the bar for modern Lupin, I think I might pass. 2/10

Kamen Rider Saber side material: only a blanket note and no individual ratings on these. These really showcase how much the cast was underutilized in the main show. With room to breath I was able to be more endeared to that cast than its nearly 50 episode main run. It just goes to show how much of a weird compromise Saber was...

Kamen Rider Geats: Somehow this season felt way longer than the 49 episodes it ran for. It jumped around and became so many different shows. As a result I can hardly wrap my mind around it. Every positive has either a negative cost or a feeling of missed opportunity, which is thematically appropriate...

-Conceptually it never capitalized on the ‘battle royale game’ concept. It sped through so many formats and games that I never felt the tension and intrigue of the reality shows it emulates. I understand the production reasons they can’t juggle tons of riders, but Ryuki proved this is possible, and it didn’t have the advantage of only needing to make half of a new helmet for a new character. This kinda comes to a head with Neon’s bodygaurds only having forms slightly off camera and punkjack being sidelined to play Pikmin since his helmet was un-re-colored. Occasionally we got to see now formats that iterated the concept in interesting directions, but some reboots just felt pointless, or the final one that speedruns a typical season in like 10 episodes.

-The character writing was a bit all over the place, but I felt attached to the cast for the most part, and we got enough charm to make it work. However Ace’s gimmick of pulling clever plays never really gelled for me.

-The broader mystery and mechanics of this sci-fi world really grabbed us. We were properly speculating about the mechanics of their world and the nature of the future viewers. It taps into the kind of classic sci-fi concepts I eat up, like the addled sadism of the future people. It’s never fully explained, but left with plenty of room and ambiguity that you can read a lot into their behaviour.

I think it pulled it off in the last quarter, but that might be recency bias. 7.5/10

Stargate Origins: This would’ve benefeited from being a two parter. The result is drawn out, not terribly exciting and marred by stilted dialogue. At the end of the day, I still like stargate and some of the talent they got for this. 5/10

Andromeada S4: Wow, it just got so much worse. I had to force myself to pick it up a few times and have been actively procrastinating adding it to my watch list. Most episodes felt less like they were regurgitating stock episodes of sci-fi shows and more like I accidentally put on one of the worse episodes I had already seen in a previous season. I got the distinct feeling that something must have been wrong with the episode order on Tubi. It would account for why the serialization makes no sense, but alas, its just bad. After a few underwhelming show-running decisions, my heart sank when I realized there was a fifth season.

I tried the 5th season. 3/10.

Maids II Deception: Don’t judge me for speaking this highly of a skyrim mod without hearing me out first. I saw this recommended as a story mod and assumed it would be a paper thin, cringy excuse for some mild titillation and weeb armor. Turns out the only thing I was right about was the silly looking samurai armor (Todd Howards greatest mistake was giving the Blades samurai swords). Instead I got an epic campaign between a dozen factions and hundereds of years of lore that lured me in before plunging me into intrigue, groupthink and a harrowing ending that left me crushed and empty inside. Spoiler alert, there isn’t any tittilation. This thing dwarfs Skyrim in terms scope and ambition. It has varied mission types, all types of crazy mechanics that it isn’t afraid to drop and just when you thought you had a good bead on things it drops a new DLC scale open world island I can’t even begin to explain in the FINAL CHAPTER. Even the title is an outright lie, you only really get to interact with the maid mechanic in the endgame, potentially dozens of hours later.

Since this was released in chapters over the course of years, the quality of the game, writing and voice acting improve as it goes. By the end I think it could go toe to toe with a lot of the upper eshelon of RPG writing. While some of the voice acting (and mic quality) felt relatively amateurish I couldn’t help but grow attached to the cast and feel crushed when even minor spear-bearers met their fate. However in the final chapter I could feel the scope might have grown too large and some of the gameplay and area design suffered. For example the ambitious mechanics in the wizard tower just didn’t work for me and the final hours were a painful slog of fighting my way to the end. Some of that could’ve been easily cut. It is a shame I have no idea if we will get a third entry, it sets up so much... 9/10, despite its flaws

Sand Shark: Half the run time is just a retelling of Jaws, the other half is repeating the sequel hook trope where another jaws appears at the end like 3-4 times in succession -4/10

Wild Hogs: It made me laugh out loud a few times. Does that make up for the homophobia and awkward old man wish fulfillment. *shrugs*. 5/10

Dragonball Evolution: High school angle: check. Women being paired off to have cat fights during action scenes: check. yep, this is a 2000s anime adaptation. It really is clear they had no interest in the source material, but the odd part is that if they made it a bit campier in a few places it might’ve worked, but perhaps that is One Piece 2023 talking. -4/10

Cats 2019: It somehow looks worse in motion than I expected. Once the novelty wore off about halfway through I just felt bad for the effects artists. Can you tell they had no kind of motion tracking when they filmed it and it all had to be done by hand? I can!. -5/10

The Expendables: I was expecting a cheap looking ego trip for over-the-hill action stars, but this is probably the best version of that that could exist. The only part that looked outright bad are the blood squibs (or whatever effects plugin they were using). The dialogue was well acted and natural feeling enough that it threw me a bit off balance, specifically mickey rourke. In an odd way, the part I feel the most nostalgic for is the gasoline explosions. I really miss that stuff. 7/10

[bearpillowmonster]

Terminator Ranking

I'm not as big of a Terminator fan as your average bear but I've come to appreciate the franchise and have finally reached seeing all of them so I figured, why not rank them.

Salvation- I wanted to see this for a long time, ever since it came out despite never having seen a Terminator film yet but when I learned that it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be, I got scared because I had this ideal vision for it. How could it be bad? I finally saw it as a second to last movie and I think it boils down to direction. That opening is great but the rest is meh af. It should feel satisfying to see a giant Terminator get blown up at a gas station and the protags run away in a truck but it just doesn't. It's too dull of a look, Kyle and Sam- I mean! Marcus have a kind of dumb side thing going on. It's just the delivery of it all and their relationships to each other, too much centered on the wrong stuff.

3: Rise of the Machines- I barely even remember this one but people have clamored for a proper sequel to 2 all this time that they've actually gone back and inspected this one saying it's the best sequel which is funny how much they settled. From what I remember, it panders to try and give you little stuff to keep you entertained, here's a new model, here's Arnold for a minute, here's- is this Robocop? This reminds me more of Robocop than Terminator, I like Robocop too but it just goes weird after 2 (go figure) I just don't care to watch it again and see what else is wrong with it. I'm sure I forgot it for a reason.

Dark Fate - Terminator: Leave You In The Dark. A lot of it is pointless, inflating its runtime, it's like it introduces all these ideas to you and they go through each and every last resort. You're not as stupid as it likes to think, yeah, she's some resistance person, big whoop, I could've told you that in the intro but they use that as the big twist? It doesn't justify itself, it has a few good action scenes but those are mostly at the beginning anyway so why bother?

1- A good base, more driven on horror with a clear motivator and villain. It's a weird romance plot for today's standards so it's definitely an 80s B movie but that's a little of its charm, I suppose.

2: Judgement Day- People claim this is the best, not just for Terminator but for movies in general and yeah, it's fun and it has a lot going on. What's weird is that James Cameron took the more horror centric Alien and make the action-oriented Aliens which was great but had trouble building off of that and then took his own horror centric Terminator and made the more action based T2 and had trouble building off of that. So maybe it's changing the formula too much, maybe it's only meant to be done once, maybe Cameron should see his trilogies through, I don't know. It curses too much though, I get John's a delinquent but stop it Cameron, it's unneeded for all your movies.

Genisys- Ha! Gotcha! People hate this one, even the people in it. But me? It's a guilty pleasure. You see, I saw this and thought it was an average movie at best, so trust me, I get it, but the more I sat on it, the more I thought about it, the more it stuck in my head and had my favorite stuff. I mean, it does so pretty logically, expanding on Kyle's character, though he's not perfect, we get a modernized update to the romantic elements by giving them a choice. Bringing back a younger Sarah but just as experienced with good guy T800 so we don't lose too much, a sort of Sarah Connor Chronicles if you will.

As a sequel, yeah, it sucks, and as a reboot, it copies a good bit but it might just do it in a better way of what it copies. Best of both worlds. But as a spinoff, it's great because it sets itself apart and makes use of the "failures" before it by calling them alternate futures since we strayed away from the "straight line" and now everything's on the fritz, so it keeps us guessing what's actually going to happen. It keeps itself contained so it doesn't really need a sequel. The acting isn't on par but I'd follow Emilia Clarke into a drowning river. I recognize the goofy things this movie offers but at least they're memorable. The funniest is when Kyle is in the clothing store while the T1000 is stomping around and he peeks around actually shopping, seeing a leather jacket he likes and takes it rather than just any clothes he can get then grabbing a pair of shoes, actually hopping on one foot to see if they fit his feet. Stomp stomp stomp, the T1000 walks past the dressing room and Kyle steps down with the Nike logo centered and branded. Hilarious product placement, I just gotta love it. That ending is kind of dumb where they revisit young Kyle, I see where they needed to make it all fit together but it's dumb. Give it a better battle on Cybertron- I mean, the future! like Salvation and you have a pretty entertaining romp.

[thescrapbookingscientist]

Bimonthly Media Roundup

- Hellsing Abridged (Webseries) - A rather old one but I do really like the aesthetic of this series - The kind of rough gothic look that was popular in the early 2000s. I appreciate that the author took the Dracula lore and just decided to go really weird with it with the multiple monster designs for Alucard himself, then applying that same "Rule of Cool looks over logic" monster lore for every other character in the series.

- Army of Darkness (Movie) - VHS night at my friends place, While I was familiar with Ash Vs the Evil dead I'd never actually seen this film and uh. Well I don't know what I was expecting but boy this sure wasn't that. I would not exactly call this a 'good' movie but it certainly was a fun one, and an incredible watching experience in a group setting. It reminded me a lot of Big Trouble in Little China with it's campy low budget energy where weird shit is constantly happening that the movie will never explain and the characters react very nonchalantly to the batshit things they are experiencing, Plot wise the movie could be described as Bruce Campbells No-Good Very Bad Day but the things that make it bad are honestly very funny and creative so good for it. I wish they made more movies like this nowadays honestly, just dumb little fun passion projects with obviously fake but still cool practical effects and an unnecessary skeleton army.

- Star Trek Strange New Worlds (TV) - Not too far in yet so not much to say, I like court themed episodes so I'm having fun with season 2 so far. Pike and Uhura are my faves as they are just very likable and silly guys who still know when to take their jobs seriously. Also this is a cool poster.

- Star Trek Lower Decks (TV) - Also only 2 episodes in so far but Season 4 is starting strong, I loved The Moopsy and everything about it and the menagerie in general, the vulcan girl getting a larger role with Tendi in particular seems like it will be a fun dynamic, and the humor and overall hyped vibes of the characters is still as strong as ever. Hmm I wonder if it would be worth it to paint myself green to do a Tendi cosplay or if Homestuck made that illegal for everyone forever.

- Dr Stone (Anime) - Yup.

- The S Classes That I Raised (Webnovel) - While I was never not invested in the story I've glad we've moved on to a new arc. Han Yoojin using his abilities to find people with unique non-fighting skills to take business away from what would be an evil mega corporation is a nice use of time-travel based knowledge, so I hope we get a bit more of that. I also would like some more downtime as I like all the characters and wish they got to hang out in low stakes situations more often. I suppose I'm also just a bit worn out of scrolling through action scenes, as while I quite like the art (and especially the coloring) style, the big effect explosions just don't translate super well to the scrolling style still-art pages of K-webcomics. That being said it could be a lot worse as Yoojin's relative powerlessness does make every fight at least interesting in how it needs to be thought through rather than just punched a lot - I just enjoy the fun character banter and political drama more.

- Ace Attorney Vs Professor Layton (Video Game) - Well that ending. happened. In truth I don't hate the twist necessarily on it's own, so much that it's the kind of twist that if you think about it too long it retroactively makes the rest of the story nonsensical. I also find the storyteller and Darklaw's motives to be very dumb which brings it down, not to mention they just axed Barnum from the last part of the game entirely despite him being arguably the best character in the game. Overall I didn't hate the game though, as I found a lot of the little character dialogue, puzzles, and Layton interactions cute - It makes me want to play a Layton game again that's for sure. I'm not sure it's a good Ace Attorney game as it feels very tonally different from the rest of the series, but hey with this I've experienced every Ace Attorney game in the franchise so that's nice, I'll have to do some character and case rankings at some point.

- One Piece (Anime) - Just finished Skypia and thinking about doing a liveblog from this point out. This was a pretty good arc honestly, I loved the villains design aesthetic and powers, lots of good crew bonding moments (Especially for Sanji + Usopp and Luffy + Nami), I liked the setting, the flashback episodes with Mont Blanc had uh questionable politics but the "we both have wives offscreen but are always shown together, think about each other constantly, and die thinking only of the other" gayness of it all made me laugh, and I think it did a good job giving everyone something interesting to do. Other notes would be how funny it is that Robin for the first half was having an entirely different, lovely experience wandering through the woods while everyone fights for their lives, that she nonchalantly snapped a guys neck when he told her to leave, and that poor Chopper had to fight 3/4 of the big bad guys all by himself that poor little deer.

- Genshin Impact (Video Game) - Still here, doing more co-op with my friend now, exploring the bonkers long Chasm quests in Liyue, hoping Kokomi comes back because I want her on my team so bad. Anyway Inazuma has been cool so far, I like the different environments on the islands (other than the lightning island which can sink into the ocean frankly) and there are lots of good character designs. Also I've been listening to the music more and its good!

Listening To: Bones by MSMR, In My Head by Mike Shinoda, Ivy by Taylor Swift, Dancin by Aaron Smith, Make Up Your Mind by Florence + The Machine, Ordinaryish People and World's Smallest Violin by AJR, Ghost by Justin Beiber, IDOL by YOASOBI, Atlantis by Seafret, Doin’ Time by Lana Del Rey, All the Boys by Panic! At The Disco.

[wondereads]

Weekly Reading Update (06/05/23)

Reviews and thoughts under the cut

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (9/10)

This book has been hyped up to the moon and back, so I was a little nervous going in, but I really enjoyed it! This book was packed to the brim with action, and I loved the romance. It is fundamentally a fantasy romance with the romance taking precedence over logic occasionally, but it was just so enjoyable to read. There's always something going on, I absolutely loved the worldbuilding, and the dragons, both their magic and personalities, were engaging and likable. Also, Yarros does a great job foreshadowing twists without over-compensating, which is an issue I run into frequently. I refrained from giving this book a 10/10 for two reasons. First, it is pretty cliche, and second, while I liked Violet and her skills, her personality is kind of cookie-cutter for NA romantasy protagonists.

Blood Bonds by J. Bree (8/10)

I pushed through this one last night so I could include it in the post. I will say that I hit a block with this one. It starts out with a ton of action and then it just kind of stalls in the middle. Oleander expresses frustration about being protected and doing nothing, and I was right there with her. Honestly, a lot of the action is starting to feel recycled in this book; the Resistance has like one plan of attack. The huge upside is Oleander's bonds. We're finally getting to properly know them, and North in particular has a miraculous redemption arc. As of right now, my favorites of them are Gryphon and Atlas. The reason this book is an 8 instead of a 7 is an absolutely crazy, jaw-dropping, insane plot twist at the end.

Into the Wild by Erin Hunter (8/10)

I am rereading the Warriors series with some of my friends, so this is the beginning of a hefty endeavor, especially considering how much more has been published since I last read it. While I remember some crazy stuff from this series, the first book is pretty standard. Honestly, you could probably transplant this plot into a high fantasy and nothing would be amiss. I do appreciate that even with a name like ShadowClan and their constant antagonism towards ThunderClan, the Erins did not decide to just straight make an entire Clan evil and instead create a corrupt ruler instead. As someone who has read the books before and is now like twice the target age, everything's very predictable, but I can definitely see some twists taking a fourth grader by surprise.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger (9/10)

Another reread, I'm starting from the beginning of KotLC because I don't remember much. I find the plot to this book super engaging, especially for middle grade, and it does a great job setting up a conflict that will last for over nine installments. The pacing is great, keeping the major reveals for later without stalling in the middle, and there's a ton of fun worldbuilding. Sophie is, obviously, ridiculously overpowered, but that presents a ton of obstacles by itself, and I find it incredibly interesting that she has to deal with her own existence not fully being her own, a complex concept for middle grade. I will say that, while not unexpected, the weird focus on romance was a little grating at times. Connected to that, I'm sorry, but I just don't like Dex. I can tolerate him, but I think the breaking point is when Sophie tells him some really devastating news for her and he just focuses on what it means for him.

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint Vol. 1 by Sing Shong (CR, 83%)

I've finally started reading ORV again! I hit a wall a couple of months back, but I've got the motivation again. I feel like taking this book at face value kind of leaves a lot of questions; it seems like a ton of plot development and worldbuilding with little if any attention to character. However, Kim Dokja is a very unreliable narrator in my opinion, and what he chooses to focus on is very telling. The conflict between his separation from the other characters, which is one of his main skills, and the natural human connection that blooms from these sorts of situations is so interesting. Also, I think I'm at a place where everything starts to pick up a little.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (CR, 13%)

I just got an ARC of this one, and it's very good so far. Silas is a very interesting main character, and his reactions to be forced to suppress natural parts of himself, specifically his autism and gender, are visceral. While I'm a little squeamish, the medical content is well-written, and so far I'm picking up on some very complex family relationships. I'm looking forward to continuing!

Fire and Ice by Erin Hunter (CR, 2%)

Second book in the Warriors series, and I've barely started. I'll likely end up finishing it later this week!

[esonetwork]

'SATURN’S CHILD And Other Tales' Book Review By Ron Fortier

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/saturns-child-and-other-tales-book-review-by-ron-fortier/

'SATURN’S CHILD And Other Tales' Book Review By Ron Fortier

SATURN’S CHILD And Other Tales By Mark Allen Vann Xepico Press 211 pages

Writer Mark Allen Vann has the marvelous talent of spinning old familiar genres around until they appear like something totally fresh and new.  He does this to perfection in his latest collection of stories, “Saturn’s Child And Other Tales.” There are a total of seven and each is wonderfully presented with seven new and original heroes battling all manner of villainy.

Saturn’s Child kicks off the collection wherein Vann does a flip on a classic Edgar Rice Burroughs off-world yarn. In this case, it is the beautiful Saturn Princess Xian Xenn who, while fleeing assassins, is magically transported to the planet Earth. Specifically Los Vegas in the 70s where she encounters mobsters, and berserk bikers and ultimately has a meeting with none other than the King. We’ll be nominating this one for a Pulp Factory Award.

Secondly “Bad Medicine at Blackstone Gulch,” is a weird western that introduces us to Marshal Hollister Payne charged with bringing the deadly four Yancy Brothers to Silver City to be judged for their many crimes. Along the way, they encounter the ghost of an Indian Shaman set on delivering his own blood-oath vengeance.

“Dented Halos and Dirty Faces.” Angel City was once a thriving metropolis protected by the Justice Squadron. Then the vampire invasion fell upon it and the heroes were defeated. Now the citizens cower in fear every night as the bloodsuckers seek out their new victims. Private Eye Jana Dhark, the former super-hero Jett, is hired to find a missing teenage girl by her father. But to do so will mean assembling a new team with the courage to enter the Dead Zone and confront an army of the undead.

“They Call Him…Iron Mask” is a really charming twist on the Superman origin, only this time the rocket ship that crash lands in Martha and Elroy’s farm backyard is carrying a humanoid-shaped robot with good intentions. What happens next is both amusing and endearing. A story we personally love and will be another award nomination for sure.

“The Lion of Llanaxa” begins well enough but simply doesn’t deliver its conclusion. It’s a tale that goes nowhere and thus is the weakest one in the book.

“Through Fog of War” has World War II Navy sailor Colton Kendricks shipwrecked on a strange deserted island in the South Pacific. What he discovers on that island defies all reason and logic, but proves to be a very good opening chapter to what we hope is more to come.

Finally, Vann wraps it all up with “Stalker in the Shadows,” the tale of Rick Mordane who lives in a world where the dead have come back to life. Well at least as visible, interacting ghosts if you will and he’s a private eye better identified as a Poltergeist Negotiator. What a hot looking redhead comes to him saying she’s being stalked by a former lover, Rick finds himself unable to resist her charms even though the case itself has more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. A really wonky, fun story.

And there you have it, four terrific yarns, two genuine gems and one lackluster affair. Meaning this is another well-crafted Xepico Press offering by a writer whose talent is only growing with each new collection. You don’t want to miss it.

[accidental-host]

This is worded so weirdly because it’s just me ranting, but I had to get it out

Some Thoughts: Clotted Cream is right

DISCLAIMER: This is posted before the next part of the update, they have not arrived to the Republic yet at the time of me writing this. I do not care if this ages poorly.

The point:

Honestly, I did not think this was controversial before checking out the fandom’s reaction to the first days of the update. But since it is, I wanted to give my two cents because I have seen some takes I REALLY disagree with on here. This whole ramble is pretty much just my take on this whole moral dilemma.

YES, Clotted Cream was insensitive about the way he approached the Ancients about his proposition. YES, he went too far comparing Dark Cacao to Enchantress, YES he should not have been the one to break the news that White Lily was Dark Enchantress and he had no right to do that in such a setting. But this isn’t entirely about that.

Clotted Cream was ABSOLUTELY correct about his point of splitting the power of the Soul Jam / researching them to find a way to harness the power better for the good of everyone. I have seen A LOT of people calling him an idiot for even proposing it, saying he’s clearly evil, but I really don’t think that’s the case.

It IS weird that warriors are expected to die for the cause of fights between immortals battling over their power that the common solider will never be able to even fathom. It IS weird that this infinite incredible power is being held entirely by a select few, while mortals die whenever an Ancient isn’t there to swoop in. The ancients cannot be everywhere at once, they should understand that better than anybody.

Madeleine’s perspective is from of a side of this war the Ancients do not see. This is the plight of mortals, expected to fight and die over power they themselves will never experience, they are fighting for the right of the Ancients. Clotted Cream himself is mortal, the Republic does not have an Ancient, they have come to a different conclusion about this fight than the Ancients have.

And Hollyberry and Dark Cacao acknowledge this very little.

From what Clotted Cream himself knows, Dark Enchantress is one of the ancients that was corrupted by power. Mortals are dying in battles over a war that comes down to power they won’t ever hold. The remaining ancients are vehemently refusing to give up the same power that corrupted their friend.

With him knowing all of this, coming to the conclusion of the power being distributed more evenly is incredibly understandable and a reasonable thing to want. It is understandable for the Ancients to be skeptical, or even paranoid about what will come of their power. But I think a lot of this fandom has interpreted this so oddly and fail to acknowledge how nuanced the situation is.

Getting this out of the way:

I have not seen enough leaks to know the entire story of the update, and at this point I usually stay away from them and prefer to experience it firsthand.

I do believe the Republic has ulterior motives, this is not about that and I do not care if it ends up being that the Republic actually is evil and the Ancients were right. This is about Clotted Cream’s original point that he presented to the Ancients, and how it is incredibly reasonable and logical and born from a care for mortals who have lived and died unacknowledged in the war over Soul Jam.

Honestly, I will think it’s HORRIBLY wasted potential if Clotted Cream turns out to be a stereotypical twist villain, à la Hans Frozen. I will think that’s lame as hell and I really hope that isn’t how this update goes.

In conclusion:

Clotted Cream was right. And some of y’all are really letting your blind hatred of this character get in the way of understanding the complicated/nuanced situation of fantasy politics. No, I don’t dislike the Ancients and this post is not Ancients slander. They are flawed characters that are written very well, and how layered/interesting their characters are is exactly why it’s so fun to see them presented with moral dilemmas like this.

If this ages poorly, I will not change my stance. Clotted Cream’s original point is right and he is 100% justified in in.

[parachutingkitten]

Imma go on a rant here, and like... this isn't something I care about... at all, but screw it, I'm tired, and this irritates me, it's rant time.

Anyway, it's a Tommy tweet. And like, Tommy tweets are great and they can be cute and fun but when they go into establishing important lore, I feel like they should be taken with a massive grain of salt or just completely ignored as a suggested theory because most of them are just... so weird on so many levels, and are very clearly just his personal opinion or HC, and yet people treat them as fact and... this one just got under my skin something different.

It's surrounding the whole "What is Lloyd's element" debate, and in season 4, Chen calls him the "Master of Power" which would imply that a good or at least acceptable name for his element would be power. But Tommy... doesn't like that name, so his retcon is that Chen is a villain, so you can't trust him about... what elements are called?

Like, why would he lie about this?! What possible motive would he have?! Does this imply that he's lying about other element names? And what would it profit him to call elements incorrectly? What name could Lloyd’s power possibly have that would be so earthshattering that he needed to call it something entirely different?! He's studied the elements, his whole plan revolves around getting all of them, that takes research, it's not like you can argue he's uninformed on the topic or something- he's spent his life obsessing over it! If anyone could give us an answer, he might very well be a good option! How does this line of logic make any sense?! I don't get it. Because he's a bad guy you can't trust that he's truthful about basic names of stuff?

Like it's possible that there is a storyline you could write where he misleads Lloyd about what his element really is and later reveals the true nature of it once he's obtained the power or something, but if you were gonna make some sorta revelation about Lloyd's element... time has long passed for it to happen.

No no no. This is a case of the writers needing a name for the element for the tournament, picking one, and then Tommy trying to backtrack afterwards cuz he doesn't like it or has some, much more convoluted thoughts about how it all works.

Why are we gatekeeping basic lore about the show's main character? Why?! Maybe you can say that because Lloyd's power hasn't had a master before, it doesn't have a name, that's why it's referred to as so many different things! That even keeps it open for a reveal later down the road if you really wanted (although, at this point idk of anything you could do that would really be that much of a twist). There's this whole thing about "essense" in some of his tweets where creation and destruction come from, and supposedly whatever Lloyd's power is is an "essense" too, but like, Lloyd's power functions as an element, it's treated as an element. What makes essenses any different than elements? And why does it necessitate that he can't be called the "Master of [whatever]" that title doesn't even necessitate the power be an element! Why have this distinction? Why make it so complicated?

And why isn't any of this worldbuilding, that's pretty damn vital if it's supposed to be canon, estabLISHED IN THE SHOW?!?!?

The writers gave lloyd this vague green energy in season 2, and instead of just addressing it by giving it an explanation, or keeping it as a funny running joke like the show's tried to do, Tommy comes in here like "Oh, the main character's power is ~undisclosed~" implying that there is an answer, but they're just not telling us. Not only does it withhold information, but by refusing to give the fandom an acceptable name to use to even reference this power, it renders basic discussions about the show massively confusing and contentious. He dances around the information like the fandom needs to wait another ten seasons before we can figure out basic facts about the main character that aren't even set up to be a mystery.

THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!?

I'm sorry. I need to stop. I have gone on a little too long here. See, this is why I'm not a ninjago lore person. It would break me... so quickly.

Anyway. Goodnight everyone.

Side note: Please don't try and argue with me about what Lloyd's power is, like I said at the top of the post, I honestly don't care. I just wanna watch the color ninjas go spin.

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x12 Review

Second Chances was a lacklustre finale for an uneven season. Let’s dig in!

Earlier this week I re-watched S1 in preparation for the S2 finale and the contrast between the two seasons is jarring. In almost every way S2 has been worse and after seeing this finale I’m less optimistic that Tim will be able to fix the long list of things that have gone wrong. Tim has said in some of his interviews today that pretty much all of S2 was written before the pandemic and that they didn’t have to do as much re-writing as people might think due to the stringent safety measures Disney put in place. Of course, that removes an excuse for the bad writing we’ve seen so much of this season as according to Tim what we saw of S2 is largely what he envisioned minus big crowds and background dancers.

 Across his many interviews today, the one consistent point is that Tim does not have any real plans for future seasons; things like Ricky’s endgame he hasn’t decided on and he can’t even guarantee the summer season the finale sets up due to the weather in Salt Lake. I do think a S3 is an almost certainty given the show’s popularity but I’ll take Tim at his word that he truly doesn’t know if they’ll be renewed since it seems to be a new Disney tradition to wait until seasons are done airing before making a renewal decision (the same thing happened for the popular and well received Mighty Ducks: Game Changers which got a silent renewal only after all of S1 aired). That being said as poor of a season finale as Second Chances is it is also a terrible potential series finale. In large part it goes back to his lack of planning, he wants to keep all options open but in doing so Tim is crippling the show’s ability to deliver any pay offs or tie up loose ends.  

The one mostly well done plot line this season was Portwell which got a happy ending tonight as they canoned. The only good thing about the big brother angst was that it was so insane that it had to be addressed and sure enough it was and Gina got her first kiss with a guy she really liked. If Tim is to be believed the reason we didn’t get an on screen Portwell kiss was not because of their age difference or covid concerns but because he felt that everyone’s first kiss was different so he wanted it off screen so viewers could fill in the blanks themselves. Tim’s line of reasoning is profoundly stupid. Imagine if they had Jamie show up and he and Gina talked off screen and Tim tried to claim that because everyone has a different relationship with their own siblings that he wanted the audience to fill in the blanks as to how their conversation went!

Still we saw great character development on Gina and EJ’s part as both really grew from the people they were in S1. As Tim noted, EJ bringing Gina back in 1x10 was kind of the set up for this story line. The only thing missing was a brief Portwell scene sometime in eps 2x01-2x04 to set them up. The consistent development they got from 2x05-2x12 is unlike any other ship on the show; only Rini exceeds their development. 

Unfortunately I don’t think that will last in S3 because Tim will always favour Ricky over EJ and if he wants to do Rina he’ll dispose of Portwell before doing so. I was surprised that they never bothered to have Ricky and Gina have a conversation about Gina’s S1 confession. It was a huge mistake to have Gina pine over Ricky for half the season and it was no surprise that Gina’s story line got instantly better once she stopped interacting with Ricky. Tim has made clear in interviews that he’s still interested in the possibility of Rina which makes his poor writing of them even more bizarre. What conclusions are the audience supposed to draw from the Rina story line this season? That Ricky never cared that much about Gina? That it’s totally fine for the show if they don’t interact for 6 eps in a row? That Gina has moved on? I’ve said before that a wiser man than Tim would recognize that doing both Portwell and Rina will do tremendous damage to the show and he should pick one and not do the other. Of course he’s not that smart but it is wild how he’s accidentally written their story line to make for a perfect end to Rina. 

Second Chances was great and is the only part of the finale that would have been well suited to being part of a potential series finale. 

The Rini closure was a sad inverse of their S1 opening night confession. They’ve fallen so far from being the it couple of the series and I fear Tim doesn’t actually know what to do with them now. He really needs to decide if he’s tearing down that treehouse for real. 

The less said about the Valentine’s chocolates the better but at least Gina and Nini are cool again and Nini can explore her budding music career with Jamie’s help. Tim repeatedly said in interviews that the scripts about Nini’s music career were all written before Driver’s License came out and I think he understands that the audience is just going to see the show as copying from Olivia’s life. 

The wildcats just deciding to drop out of the Menkies was a lame cop out. Tim has said he always meant for that to happen though they were originally going to compete at the Menkies then drop out (presumably that’s where we would have heard Lily singing Home). Somebody should have mentioned the $50 000 prize money which the East High theatre department could surely use after Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara burned it down (remember that story line that had no consequences?). And that NYU scholarship could have been life changing for one of them and yet no one even brought  it up once this season. 

I did like the twist that it was EJ and his dad who got Mazzara into Caltech. He’d be a fool not to take it but I’m glad he confessed to Miss Jenn. She’s had a really rough season and I hope she redeems herself in S3.

Howie was acting so weird tonight and last ep that I have a hard time believing he was really so awed by Kourtney’s talent rather than feeling guilty for helping to steal the harness. The harness is another useless plot device; there are no consequences for Lily stealing it, she’s not caught, East High pulls off another version of the transformation off screen, and then East High withdraws from the Menkies anyways. Doubtless the harness will eventually come up to serve Rily angst. 

At least Lily was straightforward, I’ll give her that. She has such an odd way of speaking, almost child like. As awful as it is there is potential for a forbidden/secret romance story line with Rily. It really does not speak well to Ricky’s character that he’s so easily fallen for Lily’s act when he has no reason to trust her and she never apologized for making fun of Big Red during the auditions or making Ashlyn feel insecure during the dance off. 

The one way in which S2 was drastically better to S1 was in regards to the Seblos story line. Clearly Joe being bumped up to regular made a big difference. We got the first same-sex kiss between two boys and the first love song sung by one boy to another in Disney history and that is a legacy to be proud of. Of course, there was still some Disney censorship such as Carlos and Seblos being unable to use the word gay in the same ep that focused on Carlos singing In a Heartbeat to Seb. 

S1 of HSMTMTS had a clear direction, the wildcats would have to try and come together to stage High School Musical and Ricky and Nini would have to decide if they still had a future together while Gina and EJ had to work on being better versions of themselves. It was simple sure but it worked very well. There was a lot of heart but also a lot of humor and the show never took itself too seriously. What has S2 had? Beauty and the Beast was hardly the main focus of the cast or the writers and the central couple that S1 was built around is now broken up either for a long time or for good. There was a lot less of the meta moments that jokes that made S1 such a hit, for far too many eps this season the show took itself way too seriously. Hell even the lighting this season was darker than in S1. 

Olivia Rodrigo’s team had complained in a recent article that Olivia wouldn’t be able to potentially tour until fall 2022 due to her contractual commitments which is a sign that they think a S3 is very likely though I wonder how late S3 filming would have to start to keep her occupied until late 2022. There’s no confirmation of this but I thought it might be worth keeping an eye on; a post on r/hsmtmts by someone who claims to have a source working on production says that the plan is for S3 to be a summer theatre camp possibly with Camp Rock renditions and the plan for S4 is to jump 6 months ahead to the final semester of senior year and end with Ricky, Nini, Big Red, and Kourtney graduating from East High. They also say that part of the delay in the S3 announcement is a conflict between Tim and Disney executives. Tim wants to move production to LA and film on sets as it’s easier and cheaper while the Disney execs still want some on location shooting in Salt Lake. Again this is all unconfirmed but if it pans out it will represent a major shift in the series. 

Regardless if Tim wants the show to remain successful he needs start planning out what he wants to happen. He should not assume he’s getting more than 4 seasons. If the series gets a S3 but then is suddenly cancelled then how would he want all the main story lines to wrap up? And if they make it to S4 where does he see it ending? The graduation of the current juniors is a logical series ending point but if Tim wants to do something different he needs to start thinking of that now. I can’t say I’m excited anymore for S3 but I do really hope that Tim and his writers can turn things around and that will only happen if they recognize what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. 

Until next season Wildcats

[zeldanyx]

Some thoughts on Euphoria (S1, special episodes and S2) in no particular order:

The actors look so old, it’s way beyond believable that their characters are high schoolers. Why not just set it in college? Life doesn’t end after High School. The only logical reason I can see is that Nate/Jules had to be underage for the story, but c’mon. Especially in the beginning of S1 I was so bothered by this.

I don’t really see why some people claim the show glamorizes drug use. Sure, there are aestetically pleasing visualisations of being high, but generally it’s always treated as something destructive for Rue and her surroundings.

The framework for Rue’s narration is weird. Yes, she knows these people, some of them are her friends. Yes, it is mentioned that she feels like she has a visionary power when she’s on drugs. But all the details in her narration that she can’t possibly know, that might of course be true, because they fit in well with what she really does know about these people for a fact - these details and backstories are sold as factual to the viewer? I mean, the narration and what is visually shown about the backstory of the people is always the same. So, is it just Rue’s imagination to go in line of what she is saying? Otherwise Rue kinda has to be an all-knowing narrator. And that’s a really odd choice, in my opinion. But maybe I’m just overthinking this.

My favourite characters in s1 were Cassie and Kat. No wonder s2 was disappointing.

All these people have such beautiful make-up ahhhh. I need to buy glitter eyeliner now.

Very beautifully shot.

I enjoyed the special episodes. They were unlike anything I’ve seen before and so well written.

S2 episode 5 was so intense. Having to watch Rue destroy every good relationship in her life was so heavy and devastating.

I’ve heard people say Cassie was the villain of season 2. Why, though? I never would have interpreted her character that way. Just... needy of therapy like everyone else in this show. From the beginning on she felt bad for what she was doing to Maddy, and I know that doesn’t justify her behaviour, but there was no malicious intent inside her, only the twisted obsession for Nate.

Kat’s break-up with Ethan was so cringy, help me. 

Generally, Kat. S1 kinda portrayed her evolution as “empowering”, which is problematic as she is literally underage. The show never explored the damaging side effects the sex work must have on her views on sex and intimacy. It was hinted at, occasionally, but never became a storyline, which is a real shame I think. Her struggles with maintaining her relationship with Ethan could have been presented under that light. It really wouldn’t have been difficult.

So many of Rue’s actions didn’t have repercussions. All the things she damaged in E5, the money she owned Laurie ... But well, I hope this comes up in S3 again.

I think it’s sad that the themes of Jules’ solo episode weren’t explored more, her relationship to femininity and such. Again, only hinted at, but Jules wasn’t as fleshed out in S2 anymore.

Am I the only one who didn’t think it was okay that Lexi performed her play at the school? Let me explain. So, the way her play was, there would have been a time and a place for it to be okay. Some years in the future, when most of the at the time on-going conflicts between the people portayed are resolved, on any stage that is not the one in their High School. But performing an autofictional play with literally no changes except for the names in front of an audience full of people portayed without their consent while the conflicts are still present? Like, she literally included the carousel scene with Cassie. I, too, would have felt so mocked, even if the majority of the audience didn’t know it was about me. I get that it was about “Lexi taking action” or whatever, but it felt impious to me. Also, she didn’t really do much with the story in terms of creative processing, it’s just like her diary. At least her Mom had fun and it helped Rue. But I don’t think she deserves to be treated like a saint for bringing this play to the stage and into the story.

Some visualisations of drug use reminded me of my all time favourite series “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”. I’ve seen articles comparing the two before and I can agree, in a good way.

[riathedreamer]

Zero is Null

A discussion of Zero’s love-hate-relationship with RvB and struggling independence; including a hotdog too big for the bun, tragic backstories, a single bow-chicka-bow-wow, and a cookie at the very end.

Welcome to what will be a lot of text. Basically, it will explore why Zero fails as an RvB (with emphasis on RvB) season. I will not be the first one to bring forth some of the points, and I promise to be fair and civil and fun. This isn’t supposed to be a piece of hate – in fact, I’m writing this because I love Red vs. Blue.

Okay, first of all, to increase your fun – take a guess on just how much of Zero is spent on fight scenes. You see, I’ve calculated the exact amount, and I will reveal it later, but for now, take a guess and remember the number. Maybe you are the winner!

Alright, time to share my thoughts. Wait! Since I suffer from anxiety and have this one annoying voice pretending to be all those critical statements my opinion could be met with, let’s give it an actual voice and address the points throughout this review.

“Why would I care about your opinion, Ria?” – I don’t know, you’re the one who clicked Read More.

“Your opinion doesn’t matter!” – Of course, it doesn’t! Geez. Do you think your opinion matters, though? Listen, we’re on Tumblr, the actual equivalent of screaming into the void. And it’s fun, too!

“If you don’t like it, don’t watch!” - *activates Uno Reverse Card* “You can’t talk about something you haven’t watched!”

“You’re just a Hater” – Actually, this is a point I’ll come back to. Like a cliffhanger. Also, at the end of this, there’ll be a cookie. But this will also include me talking about the stuff I like, because, surprise, Zero is not without talent!

“You just don’t like it because the Reds and Blues aren’t in it!” – Actually, that’s a good point, so instead, this review will start with a sole focus on Zero and discuss the problem that lies within that story. Then we can address why the lack of OG cast is understandable and problematic and weird.

But first! Backstory.

When the first 5 second teaser dropped back in spring (you know, when we were young and innocent and the world didn’t feel like an apocalyptic movie yet), I held onto that one image of what I thought (hoped) to be Grif and Simmons in the sunset, hopefully addressing Grif’s hateglue arc, but boy was I wrong because a) that’s not Simmons, that’s Sarge, and b) the image was from a PSA since the Reds are not in Zero.

Actual face-reveal of me below:

Admittedly, when I heard that the Reds and Blues were not going to be the main characters (or even show up), it felt like a gut punch. However, I actually found myself getting excited due to the creators’ hype. I want to praise them for this. It’s been a while since an RvB season was talked so much ABOUT before its release; it had advertisements, it had creators and voice-actors talking about it. Please. More of that in the future. Their passion rubbed off on me, and that deserves recognition. So it pains me that this was clearly a passion-project, and then when I gave it a try, I didn’t want to touch it again for weeks.

Here’s the thing. I cannot whole-heartedly say that Zero is bad. It’s not gonna melt your eyes. It’s not even so-bad-it’s-good. For me, it’s meh. It’s a Saturday-morning-cartoon aimed for a younger audience with a rushed plot and clichéd characters. The problem is that it calls itself RvB, and with that title comes something to live up to – but more importantly, something to continue.

My main issue is that Zero forces its story into existence by ignoring established content rather than adjusting to it. Let’s call this for the hotdog-too-big-for-the-bun syndrome solely for the sake of the bow-chicka-bow-wow that’s coming now. Bow-chicka-bow-wow. Many of the separate issues I will dive into all add to this hotdog-issue, so I will scream “Hotdog!” whenever this is the case so we can all keep track of my argument.

You can continue the story of Red vs. Blue without the Reds and Blues. While that would personally crush my heart, it can be done. There’s a story of Red vs. Blue that can be continued. The world can be expanded, the previous actions of the Reds and Blues can be explored from another angle.

So.

How does Zero do this? It doesn’t.

I just want to make it clear that new elements can definitely be added when it comes to worldbuilding. That’s literally the point of sequels. But Zero’s settings are presented with so little grace and with no connection to previously established worldbuilding. We get Alliance of Defense and GLASS thrown in our face as very big important organizations – yet we’ve never heard of them before. A big central plot point of RvB is the UNSC and Project Freelancers, and those were introduced naturally with the plot. We already have big established intergalactic organizations. What is AOD’s connection with those? We aren’t told. We are just told they exist and expected to accept it, no questions asked. If this was a whole new world and story – fine. But when you need to build on an already established worldbuilding, you need more grace than this. Chorus was a whole new setting, but it was explained, and it was connected to the previous plot. Same with Iris. Same with Desert Gulch. In Zero, it feels lazy. It feels forced. These organizations are just there because the story is built around them (HOTDOG).

This vagueness when it comes to wordbuilding is also reflected in the settings - we have a desert, a training base, a lab, temples, Tucker’s workplace, and we do not know if all those are set place on the same planet. If that is the case, what is this planet’s relationship with Chorus? Is it Earth? And most importantly, what is the deal with the temples? Why are they connected to Tucker’s sword if it isn’t the same planet. Are they made by the same aliens? Are people okay with this? Why haven’t these temples been explored before? Chorus makes sure to establish this, while Zero doesn’t, adding to a growing amount of confusion.

Okay, so no connection with previous worldbuilding. What about characters? I mean, we got Wash and Carolina and Tucker! So we have RvB characters, it gotta be RvB! Technically – yeah. But it feels dirty. These three characters are not here to be characters. They are here to be props to the new cast. They are not given any development. Their presence isn’t even that important, and if this was a whole new show, they could easily have been replaced with an unknown face. Worst of all, they feel miswritten.

Carolina and Wash are working at a new military organization? Leaving the Reds and Blues behind? To help people? First of all, fucking bad idea, Carolina, the last time you left the Reds and Blues alone, they changed the timeline. But most importantly – Carolina and Wash just joined this new super elite military organization? After being mistreated and manipulated by such an organization in the past?

Carolina is there to introduce the characters. That’s it. We are force-fed their personality by having her literally read out loud their personality. There is no gentle introduction to the new cast. We are not allowed to get to know them naturally. Why show when you can tell, huh? That’s Carolina’s role. That’s why she is there. To introduce the cast and explain their story. That’s it. (HOTDOG).

How about Wash? He is there to get beat up and be a damsel in distress so that the new cast has a reason to explore the plot. Oh, and that brain damage that was the consequence of previous seasons – gone now. The guy who literally has trauma from having an AI explode inside his head is fine with having a computer inserted into it instead. Because that’s needed. To explore his brain damage wouldn’t work now when his role is to be a prop to lure the new cast for one episode and then be put onto the bench for the rest of the runtime (HOTDOG).

And Tucker – he is there to die for a second and have his sword taken from him. That’s literally it. And for the few moments he is there, he feels like old super flirty Tucker, which erases the character development he went through in previous seasons. Okay, so Tucker dies, and then not dies, and then he is put on the bench with Wash where they can sit and talk or whatever (‘cause holy shit, the new cast is not allowed to that), because he isn’t important. The sword is. Tucker is just a prop, even more than his sword is (HOTDOG).

Damn. Wash gets beat up. Tucker gets beat up. Dies. Gets his sword taken away. Almost seems like a Red’s wet dream. Sorry not sorry, Blues, you were done dirty.

So there are miswritten old characters. Even worse is the retconning. The plot needs a “normal” Wash, so, bam, magic computer solution. Never mind Wash’s trauma and character traits. Never mind the logic of the new worldbuilding which also includes a character suffering for years to heal an illness. But the brain damage that was such a big consequence that it became the main part of the plot of the last two seasons – gone. I mean, a gunshot to the head can be healed by CPR. That’s canon. But no one gave Wash CPR so it’s a big thing, okay. It was canonically a big thing, and Zero erased that. This is not me saying that a Cerebral Enhancer couldn’t work in the RvB universe. Imagine it being done right. Wash struggling with the choice of getting used to his disability or accepting the possibility of help - at the cost of reliving his trauma. The struggle between what to choose - what should he choose when he wants to help as many as possible, the sacrifices he thinks he has to make, the way it could have been used as a part of his character growth. But in Zero, the enhancer isn’t a part of Wash’s character. It’s there so the story can work without having to deal with the previous plot’s consequence (HOTDOG).

Same with the sword thing. They sorta explain it by having Tucker flatline, but it’s weak. Honestly, I find it sorta offensive. What about Locus’ sword as well? It’s twisting previous lore to make the new plot work (HOTDOG). (Also, are we not gonna talk about the ultimate power being Spencer Porkensenson’s helmet? Have the writers forgotten Spencer Porkensenson? Have we as a community forgotten Spencer Porkensenson?)

If you have Red vs. Blue in your title, you cannot ignore what you inherit from it. You need to respect the worldbuilding, the established characters, and the previous plot. Zero does not do this.

Let’s talk about the Triplets. No, really, let’s do it. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about them before, because season 14 was a mixed bag for me (that I have now learned to appreciate. Thank you, Zero.) because I have heart at the size of the Grinch and can only love a few characters at a time, and that did not include the Triplets. Can’t even remember their names. Well, I can, but I can’t for the love of me remember which state is which, and my tongue is twisted every time I try to say Ohio, Iowa, and Idaho, and I know it’s on purpose. I know it is. And it got me good. That being said, the fandom actually embraced them really, really well! Seriously, I’ve seen more content for the Triplets than for Zero as a whole.

Why talk about the Triplets? (Was Iowa the lesbian? Or was it Ohio? Fuck.) Because like Zero, they introduced new characters with a story of their own. The Reds and Blues didn’t play a role. But here’s what I feel like the Triplets got right. They didn’t change the settings to force their narrative. They used stuff already established (Project Freelancer), added their own story as a continuation of that. They even included old characters in the beginning (Wash and some other Freelancers) but it felt natural and it didn’t feel like it happened at the expense of the old characters. Wash’s writing felt natural, and his presence wasn’t needed to tell these new character’s stories. He wasn’t a prop to them. He was there to establish the setting and to establish the relationship with these new characters, and then he and the other familiar faces (helmets??) left, and we as the viewers were left with these new characters. And the new characters told their own story by themselves. It felt like, hey, here’s something you know – remember Mother of Invention, and remember Wash’ lower rank, but now, try to imagine being even lower rank than him, aren’t you curious about those fates? Now let’s hear their story! It was new, it was something else, but it didn’t wreck what came before it, and it stayed true to the classic vibes of RvB.

As I said before, the hotdog-issue is my biggest problem with Zero. It infuriates me. I will return to this. But there are more issues, even if we try to look past the title-related problems.

If we try to imagine Zero as its own story and universe (as it should be, in my opinion), it still earns the meh review from me.

These isolated issues include awkwardness, the writing, lack of self-awareness, and pacing. First of all, holy shit, this is a tell, don’t show. Nothing is subtle, nothing is allowed to develop. It’s like the show thinks you are six years old with an attention span of a goldfish. You are not just led by the hand – they have literally pulled off your arm by the end of the show. We are force-fed every bit of information, every bit of personality from these new characters.

The voice-acting is a mixed bag for me. Sometimes it’s pretty good, sometimes it’s not. Some of the problems can definitely be blamed on the dialogue that you can only do so much with. It’s not good. I can’t remember any good jokes (the one joke I really appreciate was the cast on armor, and that was freaking visual humor. That was so RvB. Kudos to that. It was fun. More of that, please.), and RvB is known for having memorably good lines. This is a show built on good, clever, funny dialogue. Zero does not deliver. You have to sit through clichéd lines – “You’re not my dad”, “I trusted you”, “Come with me”, “It can’t be!”, “She’s way too powerful”, and “We have to do this together” – performed unironically. I cringed more than I laughed. Worst thing is that Zero could be a good parody. Sometimes, it feels like it is. One-dimensional characters, a villain wanting ‘the ultimate power’, very overpowered characters, bad one-liners, etc. But Zero takes itself seriously, and I was one of the people rooting for Jax to show up at the end and yell “Cut”. That would have been a funny-as-fuck twist. A spin-off parody. If I can’t have “Sarge the Movie”, I would have taken that and loved it. I would have forgiven everything. “We put so much info into finding that power, but we had no idea what it was” is really a line in the finale, and I cannot believe this is real in a show that somehow still tries to present itself as serious. What a plot.

We have to talk about pacing. God, first of all it should be stated that RvB is a mess when it comes to pacing. I honestly get what they were going for. Sometimes, RvB has come across as a bit boring when you get three episodes stretched over three weeks without much going on. I know season 11 did not have the warmest welcome because it was seen as boring until the finale. But when you see season 11 as a whole, as a movie, as a part of a trilogy, it works so well. Zero is more focused on being episodic. They want something to happen all the time so we will stay tuned. The thing that will happen – a fight. Oh god. The fight scenes.

I have done the math. I have run the numbers. I deserve a freaking cookie for this. Are you ready?

If you put all the episodes together, you have a runtime of 106 minutes. HOWEVER, with the introduction of credits in every episode, you gotta account for this. Removing the credits, this gives us 94 minutes of actual runtime. Out of that, 45 minutes are dedicated to fight scenes. That means 48% of the show is fight scenes.

If I wanted that many fight scenes, I’d watch Death Battle. Except the actual RvB Death Battle episode has a runtime of 20 minutes, and out of that, 5 minutes is dedicated to the actual battle. For the people who hate math – that’s 25% of the actual runtime.

RvB Zero has more fight scenes than a show called Death Battle. Take that in.

The pace suffers from this. Where’s the time to explore the characters? Where’s the time for good dialogue? All I can think of is this:

I get that RvB is a show that’s literally making fun of itself by acknowledging all their characters do is stand around and talk. I get that you want characters to do more than that. But for the love of Church, would it kill the new characters to stand around and talk? For just a minute? Stop fighting, I am begging you, stop fighting! Am I a pacifist now? Am I purple? Have I joined Doc’s team? What has Zero done to me?!

The good thing though is that fight scenes are very good. They’re entertaining. However, they seem to deconstruct themselves when we need to get a fight scene in every episode. Usually, the few fight scenes in an RvB season were in some of the most climatic episodes. In Zero, I can hardly keep up with the pace because they won’t stop moving. Fight scenes aren’t plot. They aren’t character development. You need more than just fight scenes. They entertain, but there’s a limit to that.

Noël Wiggins, the co-writer, stated the inspiration was a Saturday-morning cartoon. They nailed that vibe. If that was their goal, hurray, they have accomplished something! Because of the poor plot and constant fight scenes, it feels like you could just switch on the TV and drop in at any moment and let yourself be entertained by the cool and colorful soldiers punching and kicking each other. I will admit that the fight scenes entertained me. But they don’t make it a good season.

If I were the six-year-old with the attention span of a goldfish that the show believes I am, I honestly would enjoy it. The stiff dialogue and the constant tell-don’t-show makes you feel like an audience that’s not supposed to do anything else but admire the flashy fight scenes. I miss the cleverness of RvB. I miss the characters I get to connect with as I see them grow.

I miss the tone of RvB. Because this isn’t RvB to me.

It’s not that RvB hasn’t changed its tone before. Holy shit, I sorta do want to experience the absolute shock the RvB fandom went through when s6 aired and they were given new characters and serious plot. I would have loved to experience that, but I was too busy being ten years old. The Freelancers seasons also introduced a new tone and more fight scenes with very talented fighters compared to the Blood Gulch gang, but a balance was kept by having half of the season still revolving around the Reds and Blues. But Zero – Zero is so much change. And it’s on purpose. At least this has been made very clear from the beginning.

They constantly seem to appeal to new fans, rather than be directed towards older fans of the show. If you want an entirely new audience with a season with a new cast, new worldbuilding, and new tone, I’m confused as to why they don’t just make a new show. The hotdog-problem begs for this solution. This story and environment and characters feel so out of touch with the original RvB, that with a few rewrites and lack of Halo-armor, it could just be a new show. Problem solved.

If not this, then present it as a spin-off. In all ways, it feels like a spin-off (again, see everything marked HOTDOG). But the creators refuse to do this, and I don’t understand why. I could forgive many of these issues, had they officially separated themselves from canon.

Ah, what’s the idiom? You can’t both swallow and blow? (You can hear the Bow-chicka-bow-wow in the distance). Something about eating cake and having it. Forgive me, English isn’t my native language. POINT IS why are you calling yourself RvB while actively fighting against the core essence of RvB? In my humble opinion, you can’t be both. Marketing it as a spin-off would have granted it some defense when changing, well, literally everything, and I just, would someone please properly describe why it isn’t a spin-off? Isn’t this season marked by its association with the plot of RvB rather than a continuation of it? Zero presenting itself as not a spinoff feels like a toddler clinging to the hem of its mother’s dress while forcefully running away from her, ripping the dress in the process.

When they do connect with the original RvB, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. When they let Carolina, Wash, and Tucker appear for a moment, it feels like luring viewers in with the RvB title. Look at me. Look at me! I’m not saying this is the case. I say that it gives me the annoying vibes of being lured, rather than letting the characters be a part of the show for their own development, rather than having RvB in the title to continue its story. I should not be getting these vibes at all. But I am.

If you want to use RvB in the title, something from the core of RvB needs to be embraced. Things can be changed. They should. Something new should be brought in. But there’s a limit to how much you can change and replace and twist until it would have been better with an original show. As a season of RvB, it should tell the story of Red vs. Blue.

From my perspective, Zero fails to do so.

It pains me that the old cast has been replaced, but as stated earlier, a season could have worked without them. However, I do not like the take that one should be excited about all the new characters. That it isn’t a big thing that the OG cast got replaced. That we should just deal with it. Just, try to imagine another show suddenly replacing the main characters with characters we’ve never met before. Imagine RWBY suddenly only focusing on a new team of huntresses with the previous main characters reduced to an Easter Egg presence, or Camp Camp suddenly being about a new team of campers, no warning given. Can you imagine the outcry? So maybe let’s agree that a replacement of the main cast is a big thing and should be addressed and it’s valid to be upset about this change.

Could Zero have worked? It’s hard to answer this. How can I accept something as RvB if the season actively pushes away the core of RvB aside for an isolated story that could have been told in any other media? As a spinoff, I could have ignored it. To enjoy Zero, I have to fully separate it from RvB in my mind, and then it’s alright. S’not good. But it’s not bad. It’s entertaining enough. I really ended up liking Raymond and Tiny, and there were a few good jokes, and the fight scenes were admirable (but too much) and I love the creators’ passion. But it’s not RvB. I also wish that the new characters had been attached to previous worldbuilding, for example soldiers on Chorus or agents from Project Freelancer. That way we could build on familiar lore which would have decreased the confusion and added a much needed connection with the previous seasons of RvB.

God, the anxious voice is back (by the way, it sounds like Tutter from “Bear in the Blue House”).

“You’re racist” – I hope not. Literally, I do not want to be. Tell me if I’ve ever crossed some lines, because I swear, that is not my intention, I will apologize and most of all, change and do better. I included this because I’ve seen this take thrown around in the big ugly mess that is the fandom clashes regarding Zero. And racism is problem within RT community (this includes AH and RvB, sorry, I just use RT as an umbrella term for the latter), and I’m not saying it hasn’t been a problem with this season. Writers should never be harassed, and never-fucking-ever because of their skin color, and voice actors shouldn’t be treated like they are responsible for the choices of the show. But I was legit nervous to post this review, and I hope it’s been factual without feeling like personal attacks on the creators because that has never been my intention. I was delighted to hear about the diversity behind this project, and Torrian’s passion legit blew me away because it’s been a while since I’ve seen that for an RvB project. I’d hoped for it to be good, and when I feel disappointed, it’s for the reasons stated in this analysis. That said, Zero is made by a diverse cast and it’s made with love, and both of those things are so, so great, but it does not mean that Zero cannot be criticized. It can, and it should. It’s a product, just like all the other seasons, and fans are allowed to discuss it – both what they loved, and both what they found troublesome. And to repeat previous points, and be respectful, always, fuck racists, and never-fucking-ever harass the staff behind a season, what the fuck is wrong with you if you do this.

“Don’t you get it, it’s different because it’s trying something new!” – Hey, remember the philosophical question: if you replace all the parts of a ship one-by-one, is it still the same ship when you’re done? If it doesn’t include the Reds and Blues, if it ignores previous plot, if the old characters feel miswritten, if it values animation over dialogue, if it values fight scenes over comedy, if it wants to be Fast and Furious instead of Red vs. Blue – is it still Red vs. Blue? Because it doesn’t feel like it to me.

“It's been 17 seasons, it’s time to let the Reds and Blues go so someone else can shine!” – I simply do not understand us having been with the Reds and Blues for 17 seasons should be an argument to let them go, rather than be an argument as to why their absence hurt like hell.

“The Reds and Blues ran out of things to do!” – Did- did they, though? I mean, if we were discussing pretty much any other show, I’d probably agree that they were running out of content. But for the Reds and Blues… I think the PSAs nailed it this year! I’m not kidding, I had more fun watching the Reds and Blues discuss how to do laundry than watching Zero. You could literally give me an hour of the Reds and Blues trying to bake a cake or clear a gutter or simply settling down with an ordinary life, and I would trust them to make it worth the watch.

“The flaws were due to the fact it’s only 8 episodes long!” – Look, I can only judge a product the way it’s presented to me. I cannot come up with excuses for it. If they had 8 episodes to work with, they need to come up with a plot that works with this runtime. Seriously, this excuse cannot work when 48% of the season is spent on fight scenes. They could have used more runtime, sure, but the show needs to be able to pace itself and be planned accordingly.

“The OG cast couldn’t be a part of this year, hence Zero!” – That might be true. But. Would one year without RvB kill it? Is Zero necessary? Again, I just can’t judge excuses for the show. But trouble with the cast has been an issue before. Season 15 solves Geoff’s sabbatical by actually making Grif’s absence a part of the plot. Zero’s lack of Reds and Blues just feels like this excuse to tell a story that needn’t be a part of RvB.

Am I a hater? I guess? I greatly dislike Zero for the critique stated above. I do, however, not harass the creators and no one should ever do that. However, I have to admit that I feel there’s been this weird rejection of any critique of Zero where everything’s been brushed off as haters gonna hate, including the critique stated above. And I think that’s a problem because critique, as hard as it can be to hear (and I know this. I’m an author of original works. Weird flex, I know), is valid and necessary and shouldn’t just be shrugged away. As always, both sides of the fandom should always be respectful, but my own opinion is that addressing the flaws of Zero should not be controversial.

Does this super long rant/critique/whatever mean you cannot enjoy Zero? Gods no! I almost envy you if you enjoy this season, but holy shit, feel free to love it and tell the creators that you love it! Me pointing out the issues I have with the season shouldn’t be stopping you. I loved (and still love) s15 when it came out, and it was majorly rejected by the fandom. There were many, many critical posts, people were going on about how RvB should have ended with s13, and it evolved into the writer receiving death threats (me, once again: never ever harass the creators, assholes). But I didn’t tell people to stop being negative. I actually agreed with many of the flaws that were pointed out, and I enjoyed the season despite this, because that is possible. We, as RvB fans, should agree that RvB, is... I mean, it’s not the greatest, most flawless of shows, but we love it nonetheless. So go ahead and love Zero. This is not a stop sign. This is my opinion that you chose to read.

Wait, I promised you a cookie, didn’t I? Well, you’re not getting one. Why? Because I’m a Red and this is my chance to piss off a Blue. As Caboose wisely said: “Well, at least I don't go around... knocking on people's non-doors... and promising them cookies... and then NOT. GIVING. THEM. COOKIES!”

Blue Team sucks.

End speech.

[yan-twst]

MC finds out that Grim got turned into a human for a week, but the other boys don't know about it. How would the boys react when they see this new boy hang around their crush? (Non yandere) {Octavinelle trio, Adeuce, and Epel}

azul ashengrotto

azul freaks out a little when he visits ramshackle and is greeted by some weird dude just... chilling in the lounge

he doesn’s immediately connect the weird human in the couch where his crush lives with the weird monster cat his darling keeps around. yes, sure, they both have dark grey hair and unsettling blue eyes, but- how is he supposed to know that’s grim?!

he’s a bit tense when he asks who the hell he is. sure, he’s laying on his gentleman act quite thick, but it’s more of a cover due to how anxious he is

of course his mind immediately wanders to the worse scenarios. is this- is this his crush’s boyfriend...? was he too late...? no, no way- this dude is so... scraggly and he looks so mischievous and his appearance is so unkempt- but then what if that’s what they’re into?!

when the weird man proclaims he’s “the great grim, of course!” azul’s tension sort of... melts away. ah. it’s grim. the cat. the little creature always hanging onto his crush’s side

still, azul can’t help but be a bit cautious. sure, his crush explains that the spell that hit grim is only going to last a week, and he doesn’t think grim would do anything bad to his crush, but... he can’t take any chances! he’ll constantly check up on his darling, citing the fact they’re now living with a... curious roommate as the cause for his check-ins

he’s mostly just relieved when grim returns to his usual cat-like form. as interesting as it was to have grim be a human and do as he pleased (and by interesting he means incredibly disastrous), he can’t help but breathe easier knowing that there’s not just. a dude hanging out at his crush’s place at all times.

jade leech

perceptive and smart, it doesn’t take jade too long to make the connection between the strange man suddenly stuck to his crush’s side and the little monster known as grim. sure, the man looks nothing like a cat; he’s very clearly human, but... those eyes and his attitude give it away. not to mention, the actual grim isn’t around- it’s gotta be him, right?

still, jade will ask. he is rightfully curious about how this happened and how they’re managing it. he can’t imagine dealing with grim on an everyday basis is an easy task, and to suddenly have him get a human body...

he might even feel a bit bad for his crush. it’s like babysitting a whole man, isn’t it? he can clearly tell grim is not used to his human body by the way he runs into things and miscalculates where he can fit, and by the way he’s doing all the things he couldn’t do before; it kind of reminds him of floyd the first time he transformed into a human

of course, jade still isn’t too happy to just have some man hang around his crush at all times. sure, it’s grim, and he knows it- but... well, it may be a bit selfish of him, but he just doesn’t like it. if it was just normal, little grim, he’d never dream of feeling jealousy towards the little creature, but... there’s just something about the way this human grim keeps clinging and bothering his darling that rubs him the wrong way

he knows it’s just leftover traits from his usual cat form- hanging onto his crush’s shoulder, snuggling into them when he’s cold, pawing at them for attention- translated into his human body, but he just... doesn’t like it. he’s pretty much counting days for the week to be finally over so he can sleep in peace (he’s mortified by the thought of where grim is sleeping. if the cat usually sleeps in his crush’s bed, then- no, no, they wouldn’t... they wouldn’t just, let human grim sleep there with them? right? right.)

floyd leech

eeh the fuck is this

floyd cannot understand why this weird, lanky man is suddenly all over his crush. he does not like it, not one bit- if he isn’t allowed to just go up and squeeze them whenever, why is that man allowed to bother them and hang onto them like that?

he’s so annoyed it takes him a good minute to realize grim isn’t there. he doesn’t immediately connect the weird man to grim because, why would he? unlike merfolk, who retain some of their features when turning human, grim is a completely new person.

floyd doesn’t mess around. he dislikes it, so he sets out to do something about it- which is just going up to his crush with a pout and asking who their new friend is. he’s almost baffled when they just chuckle tiredly and say it’s grim, who got hit by a spell and is going to be like this for a week.

aaah, shrimpy doesn’t look too happy about this... is human grim a bit of a menace? upon closer look, floyd can see the similarities- this dude has the same hair colour as grim’s fur, his eyes are that same electric blue, and his teeth are sharp. kind of like his? 

surprisingly, floyd finds human grim to be kind of hilarious, when he isn’t being clingy or touchy with his crush. in fact, floyd does his best to keep grim away from them; even as a human, he’s still ridiculously easy to distract. it’s even easier now, since his human body lets him get up to more antics than usual

floyd will be very clear: he cannot wait for the week to be over. he’s sure his crush feels the same way, but maybe not for the same reason as he does. they’re probably just tired of making sure grim doesn’t burn down the school, and he’s just... a little jealous. but he’ll resolve that with lots of hugs

ace trappola

ace takes no time to take guesses. he sees this weird dude hanging around his crush (who is also one of his closest friends) and so he immediately goes up to them to ask what’s going on

is this- is this allowed? it really feels like it shouldn’t? why is there someone in school who knows a spell powerful enough to even cause this scenario to happen?? he knows merfolk usually take potions to turn into humans, but that’s like- it’s less weird because merfolk are like, half human already, but grim?! grim was a cat monster, 100% animal magical beast or whatever, and now he’s just... a whole dude?

it’s a little fun, sure. now that grim is human, the idiot trio is way more chaotic than usual- since now grim can physically drag them into trouble and also aid them in their antics

but it’s also... well, ace knows exactly how he feels: jealous.

when he sees grim just take his crush’s hand, wrap his arms around their shoulders, or drag them around campus, his heart twists. he knows it’s not like grim has bad intentions- he’s used to being touchy, since he was a cat, he was used to being picked up and petted and all, so it’s logical he’ll act like this

but welp, he can’t help it. he doesn’t like it at all

he might tease grim in an attempt to make the damn dude stop acting like that. granted, trying to teach human intimacy and limits to a creature that is usually a little gremlin cat monster is a bit difficult and most of the time doesn’t even work

ace is going to butt heads with grim. he already does this when grim is a normal cat monster- but as a human? no hesitation at all. deuce and ace’s crush are probably going to have to intervene a few fights before punches start flying. it’s all in good nature (and also fueled by their fiery personality) and there’s no hard feelings, but still

ace is desperate for the week to end. he wants cat grim back. he never thought he’d be missing having a weirdass big cat hanging around, but he does. at least normal grim doesn’t make him sizzle in jealousy whenever he cuddles up to the ramshackle dorm leader

deuce spade

deuce tries to assume the best and to not jump to conclusions. tries being the keyword. when he sees a boy he’s never seen before in all of nrc suddenly walking out of ramshackle next to his crush, he draws blank. is it- is it a friend? no, but they don’t know anyone outside nrc... could it be a fourth year? that’d explain the uniform and why they’re here- but how would a fourth year be in campus and also be so friendly with them?!

deuce isn’t the most socially adept, so he ends up asking a bit awkwardly and bluntly. he wants to deny it’s got anything to do with jealousy- it’s... it’s not attractive for a guy to be jealous, right? he wants to deny the fact that seeing another man hanging so close to his crush boils his blood

it takes him a good second to comprehend the situation. so grim- the grim he knows- got turned into a human?! for a week?! 

human grim is terrible for deuce’s everything. he’s trying to be a model student but ace and grim keep getting him dragged into trouble (he might partly be causing the trouble. maybe), and more importantly, he’s supposed to be a gentleman but whenever he sees grim being all touchy feely with his crush he gets the urge to just plant his fist on the smug cat (man?)’s face

deuce’s attempts to keep grim apart from his crush for the week are... transparent, really. but it’s not that hard. grim is impulsive and his human body lets him get up to all sorts of shenanigans; sure, he feels quite bad about setting up grim to cause trouble while he spends time with his crush, but... it’s already awkward to try and be a bit flirty with grim in his usual body. human grim would just make it impossible.

epel felmier

the hell? since when did ramshackle get another student? and why’s that weirdo hanging out around the dorm leader like that?

epel is confused and also a little bit jealous. scratch that, he’s very jealous. he already has to manage his time to be able to hang out with his crush, he has to make sure he’s leaving a good impression, he’s working hard to impress them- and this dude just... lives with them?! is he even allowed to be there?!

he assumes it’s a student from another dorm that’s staying in ramshackle for whatever reason. sure, he could never dream of doing that (if vil found out pomefiore students were trying to live in other dorms nobody would hear the end of it), but there’s other dorm leaders that probably don’t care, right?

either way, he’s not amused. at all. and he totally did not accidentally stress-carve way too many apples and had to gift them around before they oxidized and went brown. shut up.

epel will try to be delicate about it when asking what’s going on. he doesn’t want to make it seem like he’s... possessive or something. as much as he likes the ramshackle leader, they’re his crush, not his partner. if they want to... hang out with weird dues who live in their abandoned dorm... epel can’t... complain...

imagine his relief finding out the “weird dude” is just grim. grim the weird magic cat. epel’s jaw nearly hits the ground. so he’s been stressing over his crush being stolen by a weird cat. 

epel sleeps easy every night of that week knowing that when monday comes grim will be back in his usual body and this whole ordeal will be like a bad dream. he doesn’t say that he dislikes seeing human grim hang onto his crush like that, but it’s noticeable by how he scrunches his face every single time; he’d like it to be over, thank you

[birdship]

Leave It In The Sun: Chapter One (a Disco Elysium fanfic)

Warnings: Full game spoilers, eventual spicy scenes, basically the level of adult content in the game itself.

General summary: A slow(ish) burn exploration of life at Precinct 41 after Harry and Kim wrap up the case and Kim makes the move to Jamrock. Mainly just about how Harry and Kim's relationship might develop, and a sort of character study of some of the employees of Precinct 41 in general.

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

Chapter one summary: Two difficult weeks after leaving Martinaise, Harry finally reaches out to Kim. Chapter length: Approx. 4.3k words

The sun is only just setting over the streets of Jamrock, drenched in rain and neon. The city stops to catch its breath in the intermission between day and night.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: And so do you. You could’ve sworn the nearest payphone was, y’know, nearer than this. Maybe that bone-shattering gunshot wound also isn’t quite as far along in the healing process as you thought either.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Brilliant claws of pain rake down your thigh as you lean against the payphone and try to center yourself.

You glance at the phone resting in its cradle, with some trepidation. Phone calls are always a bit… difficult for you. Especially these days.

SUGGESTION: You can still change your mind.

VOLITION: No. You came here for a reason.

SUGGESTION: Or… you could always just call her instead.

VOLITION: *Focus.*

You take a deep breath. The late spring air is turning chilly in the slowly setting sun. The rain drizzles lazily as it has all day, showing no sign of stopping. A handful of people are still--or already--out wandering downtown Jamrock, laughing and talking and hurrying home and running errands and entirely focused on just about anything in the world *besides* a washed up middle-aged man having a minor anxiety attack and moderate-to-severe hip pain next to a public phone at 6:04pm in the rain.

INLAND EMPIRE: The loneliness knocks the wind out of you. You thought you were used to it by now. It’s worse outside, around people.

DRAMA: The threadbare costume you created for yourself in the privacy of your dark, trash-strewn apartment doesn’t seem quite as convincing with an audience.

VOLITION: Stop the goddamn pity party and pick up the phone already.

The receiver is light in your hand as you fumble for change and the crumpled slip of paper you’ve had in your jeans pocket for the last two weeks or so. You slowly, deliberately dial the phone number written on it, as if some part of you is afraid that your fingers might just automatically fall into the patterns of *her* number instead.

VOLITION: They might. But you’re done hurting yourself.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Well, maybe not entirely. Yet. But you’re done hurting yourself *with her* for sure.

INLAND EMPIRE: You still feel like you deserve that pain. But it’s wrong to keep using her as the knife you gut yourself with. She deserves better, even if you might not.

LOGIC: In any case, this isn’t about her. It’s about you, and it’s about--

“Hello?” Kim’s voice is muffled and tinny through the old, worn copper wiring. He sounds tired, but you guess that’s not particularly surprising. You’ve been pretty damn tired too.

“Kim, hey, it’s uh, it’s me,” you reply awkwardly.

“Harry? Do you need something?”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: This is the first time you’ve called him since leaving Martinaise, despite carrying that little piece of paper around for the last two weeks. He’s thinking, why now?

“Yeah, no, I just happened to be downtown this evening,” you ramble, “and I thought--”

“You’re drunk,” he says. It is completely without judgment. A stated fact. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Harry Du Bois is drunk. “Where are you exactly? I’ll--”

“Wait, no!” you exclaim, a little too loudly. A nearby pigeon makes a mad dash in the opposite direction at the sound. “That’s not it! I swear I’m basically sober right now. Mostly.”

A long pause on the other end. “Alright,” he says plainly. “So what can I do for you?”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Make no mistake, he’s picking his battles here and gingerly stepping *around* that “mostly.”

EMPATHY: He’s just relieved it’s even that much.

COMPOSURE: How embarrassing.

VOLITION: Just start over. Your first sentence was garbage, but you know you’re under no obligation to continue it, right?

You take a deep breath, then try again.

“Well, it’s really more about what *I* can do for *you*,” you say as smoothly as possible. “You know that big motor carriage exhibition in town? It just so happens I’ve got *two tickets* to it.”

Another long pause. “You mean the one that ends today?”

“Yes,” you confirm.

“And are you aware that it is currently around six o’clock in the evening?”

“Is it? I mean, yes. Yes it is,” you say confidently. “I am aware of the passage of time.”

“And you waited until now to do this?” he asks.

EMPATHY: He sounds more amused than annoyed, though you definitely detect a bit of both.

“Uh,” you falter. “Look, it’s open until 8:00, so do you want to fucking go or not?”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: About half a kilometer away, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is sitting in the kitchen of his new apartment, already in his pajamas and winding down for the evening. It’s a bit early for that, but he figures he should take the opportunity to rest before he tackles that mountain of backlogged cases he was promised upon making the move to precinct 41.

Two weeks ago, he said goodbye to the strangest man he’d ever met. A man he found himself inexplicably drawn to in the week they spent together, and whom he thought about every day since. Wondering if he would take the lifeline Kim tried to throw to him, or if that little slip of paper would just end up forgotten at the bottom of a vomit-soaked trash can in some shitty bar. Wondering if the dawning trauma of everything that happened in Martinaise and the restlessness from sitting at home recovering from its aftermath would combine to pull him down into a dark place beyond Kim’s reach for good. Wondering and wondering to fill the silence. And now finally the silence is broken, but whatever this cry for help is, it is not the one Kim ever expected to receive.

But he knows one thing for sure: it *is* a cry for help.

“Alright,” Kim says finally. He takes a sharp breath. “Sounds good.”

The walk to his apartment takes a bit longer than you expected. It’s not that far from the downtown payphone, but you still wasted a good 20 minutes on the journey.

ENDURANCE: You are expecting too much of yourself too soon.

INLAND EMPIRE: It’s always one or the other with you, isn’t it? Too much or not enough.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Twenty minutes to walk a few blocks? Fucking pathetic. What kind of cop are you? Hell, what kind of *gym teacher* are you? Man up.

ENDURANCE: No. It’s a miracle that you’re still standing at all.

PERCEPTION: Beyond the apartment door, you can hear footsteps and soft humming.

You knock, and the door opens almost immediately.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Shit. You were hoping you’d have a few spare seconds to think of something really cool to say.

REACTION SPEED: C’mon, say something fun and upbeat to prove you’re not a depressed sack of shit who’s been spending the past two weeks drinking alone in the dark.

DRAMA: Showtime!

“Howdy, pardner,” you hear yourself say.

SAVOIR FAIRE: Finger guns! For god’s sake, don’t forget the finger guns. Without them, you just look like a goddamn lunatic.

You do the finger guns.

Kim does not seem particularly impressed as he slowly looks from your outstretched gun fingers to the twisted grimace that now wracks your face.

“Please, holster those things before coming inside,” he says humorlessly.

You blow the pretend, metaphorical smoke from each of your hot weapons before stuffing your hands in your pockets. As you do this, he watches with an appraising look.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s wondering if this is *regular* weird or *drunken breakdown* weird. However, he is intimately familiar with your brand of stupid bullshit at this point and it doesn’t take long for him to place it in the former category.

“We should hit the road soon,” you comment as you peek curiously into his apartment.

“Hit the road,” Kim repeats with mild amusement, “in what?”

LOGIC: Oh. Right. The Kineema is property of Precinct 57. Not Kim Kitsuragi personally.

“Shit, yeah,” you concede. “But hey, if we call a taxi now--”

LOGIC: You’ll arrive just in time to immediately turn around and go home.

HALF LIGHT: You fucked up. You’re a fuck-up. Great job, idiot.

VOLITION: Try not drinking and blacking out all day next time.

LOGIC: Yes, but then…

“Fuck,” you inhale. “Fuckady-fuck-fuck. Shit. Goddammit.”

Kim waits patiently for you to catch up. You’re almost there.

“I should’ve called earlier, sorry,” you apologize. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

LOGIC: What is wrong with you is that you drank all last night, slept off a hangover most of the day today, and woke up in a daze about 45 minutes ago. But what’s done is done. No point in bringing that up now, right?

“Nor do I,” says the lieutenant with a small smile. “But whatever it is, I am no longer surprised by it, I assure you.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” you repeat, leaning on the door frame pathetically, a congealed ooze of mental illness and embarrassment. “Sorry for bothering you in the first place. You’re always so nice to me, even when I’m a pain in the ass.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Which is to say *constantly.*

Kim says nothing. Just sighs almost imperceptibly.

EMPATHY: Your self deprecation is frustrating for him, and he does not know how to respond to it constructively and compassionately.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He *does* think you’re a pain in the ass sometimes, but a pain worth dealing with.

INLAND EMPIRE: For reasons beyond your understanding.

“Why did you agree to go in the first place?” you sigh. “You’ve got a brain that actually works, you knew it wasn’t gonna happen. If you’re trying to make fun of me, then, well…”

You pause.

“That’s just fine, I guess. Good job, carry on.”

He adjusts his glasses and looks away. “I appreciated the intention,” he says finally, in a measured voice. “And since I hadn’t heard from you the past couple weeks…”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: ...He was afraid you wouldn’t bother trying again.

“Sorry,” you mumble. “I’ve been kind of busy. You know how it goes after cases like that.”

“I do,” he says. He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “you’re welcome to come in if you like.”

You hobble into Kim’s sparse kitchen and collapse on a dining room chair. It creaks ominously under the velocity of the assault.

“I’m glad we have an opportunity to catch up,” he says politely, pulling up the other chair and gazing at your pained expression from across the table. “Your injury is healing well, I assume?”

EMPATHY: It is obvious that he does not in fact assume this at all.

You shrug, still trying to get a hold of yourself and push back the ache swirling at the edges of your mind.

He watches you struggle for a moment, then gently says, “it will take time to heal, but it *will* heal.”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: *So please be patient and kind to yourself,* is the silent plea left unsaid. It hangs in the air pitifully. You both know it’s there.

“Time hasn’t exactly been a good salve for me in general,” you mumble.

He’s silent for a while. Opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again.

“Harry,” he says finally. “What happened in Martinaise is not your burden to carry alone.”

“I thought you didn’t like *personal issues*, lieutenant,” you say.

“I don’t,” he says with a frown, “but this…”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: This is about me too, he thinks. As much as he hates to admit it. He doesn’t particularly like his *own* personal issues either. But the past two weeks were hard for him, and you didn’t make them any easier.

EMPATHY: He was worried about you, and--although he will never admit it to himself, let alone you--there’s a part of him that selfishly hoped you were worried about him too. At least a little.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s used to this line of work, and so are you despite the holes in your memory, but it never gets any easier to deal with some things.

EMPATHY: There was so much death that day. It haunts you. And now as you sit in Kim’s kitchen, the alcohol slowly filtering from your blood and leaving behind the dregs of a headache, you realize it still haunts him too. You both added perforations you never wanted to make.

ENDURANCE: It’s too much. Your head swims and your entire body aches in the throes of repressed grief fighting its way to the surface of a sea of quickly evaporating Commodore Red.

INLAND EMPIRE: Warning! Trauma containment center has been breached! Evacuate the area immediately!

HALF LIGHT: You’re going to cry, aren’t you? You’re going to fucking cry. Right here in his kitchen. Why can’t you keep your shit together for more than five minutes straight?

You are entirely unable to keep the tears from rolling silently down your cheeks, unbidden.

INLAND EMPIRE: You don’t have it in you to really cry properly, like a normal fucking person. Not anymore. Something has disconnected the wire from your “press here to begin sobbing during your emotional breakdown” button, and you’re not sure what or when.

ENDURANCE: But human beings *cry.* And despite everything inside you that’s broken and rotting, you *are* a human being. You can’t not be.

Kim’s standing next to you now, his hand resting comfortingly on your shoulder. He doesn’t say anything.

EMPATHY: That’s the point of this whole shoulder-touching business in the first place--your disconcertingly unhinged behavior has left him at a loss for words, yet compelled to offer *something.*

This goes on for the longest five minutes or so the world has ever seen. But finally, you’ve wrung it all out of yourself and the tears stop almost as abruptly as they began. His hand gives your shoulder a squeeze, then he sits back down in the chair opposite you, avoiding your eyes. He rummages in his pocket for something, then hands you a blue handkerchief.

“Where the hell do you keep all these?” you mumble as you reach for it. “Fuckin’... infinite handkerchiefs around here.”

“What can I say? I like to be prepared,” he says.

“For drunk idiots who throw up all over crime scenes and have mental breakdowns in your home?”

“Usually to clean my glasses,” he says flatly. “But at this point, I suppose it *is* fair to say that it’s also for your various crises as well.”

“Well, thank God one of us is prepared,” you say. “What would I do without you, Kim?”

He hesitates, a strange wistful expression tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know. What *did* you do the past two weeks?”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets them.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t… That’s none of my concern,” he says quickly.

AUTHORITY: Who the hell does he think he is? You’re not a child who needs to be minded. You’re a grown-ass man who can sit alone in his apartment and get wasted if he fucking wants to. Assert yourself!

“Honestly? Drink, mostly,” you say with a self-conscious chuckle.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He just stares at you with the bleakest expression you’ve ever seen cross his face.

EMPATHY: He’s so tired. So frustrated. So disappointed.

INLAND EMPIRE: Oh God! He’s *disappointed* in you? This is terrible. Anything but that, please!

“I thought I was doing better,” you say quietly. “Guess not.”

“You were,” Kim says kindly.

INLAND EMPIRE: Tequila Sunset hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it still will. Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe when you took up that mantle, it was like some sort of alcoholic event horizon. Tequila Sunset is the only way it was ever going to end. What other force in the universe could begin to exert as much gravitational pull over you?

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: From the void we came, to the void we must return.

“Listen,” Kim tells you, “this is not surprising. It’s got to be harder now that you’re back in Jamrock.”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s *easy,* baby. All your old favorite haunts are here. You know all the cheapest bars, the sketchiest parts of town with the purest amphetamines… You can’t remember the names of half of them anymore, but the muscles in your legs can trace the steps there perfectly. That shit’s burned into your body forever.

“Yeah.” You swallow hard. “Anyway, what about you? How’s Jamrock treating you?”

EMPATHY: The darkness clouding his expression lightens a bit.

“Good so far,” he says. “I’ve actually only been here for a few days. G.R.I.H. wrap-up took longer than I expected.” He pauses and looks out the window. “But I’m glad to be here now.”

“Really,” you say with a laugh. “In this shithole?”

“It has its perks,” he says. “I’m looking forward to beginning work at Precinct 41.”

“You’re not working solo, are you?”

“For right now, yes I am,” he replies. “I’m fine with that. I’ve done it before.”

INLAND EMPIRE: The idea of sharing a workplace with him and yet not being at his side when he needs you… it makes you feel cold, lonely, somehow.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You have a duty to Jean. Jean is your partner.

SUGGESTION: Fuck it, just say it. You know what you want to say. Say it and get it over with.

“You should work with me,” you blurt out. “We were such a good team in Martinaise. We could keep those good times rolling!”

“I’m flattered, but,” he says, turning his head. “Satellite-Officer Vicquemare…”

“Doesn’t give a shit about me,” you say. “Fuck him.”

EMPATHY: That’s not exactly true. You know it’s not.

INLAND EMPIRE: But the truth is complicated. It’s easier to just boil it down to *fuck that guy.*

LOGIC: Jean is bad for you, and you’re bad for him. Or, you used to be. And has anything really changed? Are you really any different? Maybe it was just the change of scenery that fooled you into thinking otherwise.

INLAND EMPIRE: Same old Jamrock. Same old coworkers. Same old bad habits. Same old *you.*

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kim says delicately.

“Forget about him,” you push, suddenly more serious about this than you intended to be. “I can arrange this shit with Captain Pryce, and I can deal with Jean.”

“I… uh,” he coughs. “I don’t know what to say.”

DRAMA: You’re in control of this show now. Pull an honest answer out of him.

You point at him and narrow your eyes. “I know what you should say: what you *feel* in your *heart*!” You pound one fist against your chest over your heart to drive home the point, then wince.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Please don’t do that.

You break the dramatic pose and lean back in your chair again with a shrug. “Or just tell me to fuck off. None of this wishy-washy noncommittal shit, though.”

He’s silent for a long time, watching and listening to the rain as it picks up outside. Then finally he gives you an apologetic smile and speaks.

“Harry,” he says kindly. “Fuck off.”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Translation: maybe. But not now.

EMPATHY: He’s not angry, he’s deflecting. This is by far the nicest way you’ve ever been told to fuck off. Don’t take it too hard.

“Alright, alright,” you say. “Forget I said anything.”

You spend a while just making smalltalk at Kim’s kitchen table. None of it means anything, but it’s nice. It’s a nice, good, human thing to do, sitting and chatting with him. Makes your “regular well-adjusted person” costume fit a little better. The rain begins to let up a little in the fading sunset.

“You know, we could do something else if you like,” he says brightly. “Here in Jamrock, I mean.”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Yeah. Lots of stuff to do in Jamrock. Like speed and hard liquor. Or crying in the bathroom of a dive bar because you’re too fucked up on speed and liquor.

SUGGESTION: He probably wouldn’t go for that.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: There’s got to be somewhere else to go. Something else to do with him. Think. What do you want to do with him?

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh buddy, are you sure you’re ready to open that can of worms?

The lieutenant watches you as you rub your temples in an effort to massage the awkward thoughts out of your terrible brain. Then he says, “you know what, don’t worry about it. It’s fine, we can just stay here.”

“Yeah, okay,” you say. “Sounds good.”

“I’m going out on the balcony for a cigarette,” he informs you. “You can--”

“I’ll come with you,” you interrupt.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He pauses, wondering how many you might’ve had already. Then again cigarettes are, shockingly, by far the *least* detrimental of your *many* vices.

The two of you step out onto the lieutenant’s rather small balcony. It’s still raining very lightly, but this is probably as good as the weather is going to get tonight. Good enough. There’s really not quite enough space for two adult men to comfortably lounge around out here, though. You try to make yourself as small as possible as you fumble in your pockets for a cigarette and lighter.

PERCEPTION: You hear the soft click of a lighter and smell smoke on the gentle evening breeze drifting over from your left.

“Fuck,” you grumble. “I forgot my light--”

You realize Kim is holding out his own lighter wordlessly, still gazing out at the city sprawling out below.

“Thanks,” you say.

He nods. He pockets the lighter again once you’re done with it, then leans on the railing and exhales smoke with a sigh.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Outwardly, he is silent and pensive. He almost seems anxious in a way. But in truth, he likes this. He’s enjoying standing out here in the rain and the dark and smoking his nightly cigarette by your side once more, just like that first night in Martinaise.

You rest your arms on the railing as well and try to map his sightline. Your arm presses against his in the cramped space, but he does not react.

“Pretty bitchin’ view here,” you comment. “Comparatively.”

“Mhm,” hums the lieutenant. “By Jamrock standards, quite bitchin’.”

PERCEPTION: His hand dangles loosely over the edge of the railing. It’s a bit smaller than yours and much thinner, bonier. Sharp and angled like a marble sculpture.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: A work of art. Just like the rest of him.

SUGGESTION: Wonder what that hand would feel like in yours…?

“Everything alright, detective?” Kim asks, smoke escaping from his lips as he speaks. You realize that you’ve been staring at his hand for longer than is generally considered acceptable by polite society.

“Just spacing out a little I guess,” you mumble, averting your gaze.

“Par for the course with you,” the lieutenant chuckles.

VOLITION: Don’t make this too weird. Don’t think about that cigarette dangling loosely from his beautiful hands, or how soft his lips must be, or how nice it would be to just give up all pretense and embarrass yourself and hug him tightly right here on the balcony. Whatever you do, don’t think of any of those things.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Shit.

“Well, it’s getting late,” you say, stubbing out your half-finished cigarette in the nearby ashtray. “I should probably go.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. We’ve got work in the morning after all.”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You do?

VOLITION: Just play it cool.

“Yes,” you say, nodding stoically. “Tomorrow is Monday. I am aware of this, and that is why I said that in the first place, and not for any other reason.”

SAVOIR FAIRE: Nailed it.

“Tomorrow is Tuesday,” Kim says flatly, his face expressionless.

“I know that!” you say defensively. “I was just testing you. Come on, Kim, you don’t think I’m really that stupid, do you?”

He starts to say something, then thinks better of it and instead takes a long drag of his cigarette before trying again. “No, detective. I don’t think that.” Then he puts it out on the bottom of his boot and drops it in the ashtray.

The two of you head back into the apartment as the rain starts up again. You pull on your tarpaulin cloak in preparation for the long walk back home. But as you reach the front door, the lieutenant stops you.

“You know, you could just stay here if that would be easier,” he says abruptly, looking tense. “It’s late, and it’s raining, and…”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: ...And the route from here to your home features at least a dozen bars along the way.

EMPATHY: He’s worried you might not be able to resist the siren song of their garish neon signs and blaring dance music spilling out onto the streets like a red carpet unfurling.

“And your injury,” he adds quickly. “It was causing you some pain earlier, wasn’t it?”

HALF LIGHT: You don’t need his *pity.*

INLAND EMPIRE: Maybe you *do.* He knows you too well already.

EMPATHY: And, for whatever reason, cares about you a little too much. A terrible decision on his part, really.

“Yeah, good point. Plus your place is closer anyway,” you reply. “Thanks. Sorry to impose.”

He gives you a little nod. “It’s no trouble at all.”

Soon, you’re settled in on Kim’s couch under a small pile of blankets that still smell like artificial flowers, cloying and too sweet, freshly laundered.

He says good night and disappears into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. It’s strange somehow, lying here in his living room alone in the dark. Like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Like sneaking into a museum after it closes.

PERCEPTION: In the hazy twilight of impending sleep, you notice a calendar on the wall across from you. You can just barely make it out in the dim light, and you realize something.

“Son of a bitch,” you shout, “tomorrow *is* Monday!”

Just before you retreat into the blanket nest you could swear you hear a muffled apology from the next room.