#1) this installment in particular is something of a turning point in their relationship development (and i hope that's not too subtle)

[suddencolds]

The Worst Timing | [5/5]

we made it!!! part 5/5 + a mini epilogue (5.6k words) at long last 🥹 (aka the installment in which i remember that h/c has a c in it in addition to the h, haha.) [part 1] is here!

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I've written w these two!

Summary: Yves invites Vincent to a wedding, in France, where the rest of his family will be in attendance. It's a very important wedding, so he's definitely not going to let anything—much less the flu—ruin it. (ft. fake dating, an international trip, downplaying illness, sharing a hotel room)

—

The world comes back to him in pieces—first the wooden panels of the ceiling, the sloped wooden beams. The coldness of the room, the slight, monotonous whir of the air circulating through one of the vents overhead.

He’s leaned up against the wall, seated on the floor in the hallway, and Vincent is kneeling beside him, his eyebrows furrowed.

It takes him a moment to realize where he is. He had been about to head back to the courtyard, hadn’t he? He doesn’t have much memory of anything that happened after, but judging by Vincent’s reaction, he thinks he can probably guess.

“Hi,” Yves says, for lack of a better thing to say. 

He watches a complicated set of expressions flicker through Vincent’s face—relief, first, before it turns to something distinctly less neutral.

“You’re awake,” Vincent says. He turns away, for a moment. Yves notes the clench of his jaw, the tightness of his grip—his fingers white around Yves’s sleeve.

“Was I out for long?”

“A couple minutes.”

Yves wants to say something. He should say something. Anything to lighten the tension, anything to get the point across that this is all just an unlucky miscalculation, on his part. It really isn’t something Vincent should have to be worried about. 

“I’m sorry for making you wait,” he starts. Really, what he means is, I’m sorry for making you worry about me. “I promise I’mb fine.”

The look on Vincent’s face, then, is something that Yves hasn’t seen before. 

“Why do you have to—” he starts, frustration rising in his voice. He sighs, his jaw set. “I don’t understand why you—” He drops his hand from Yves’s sleeve, and it’s then when Yves notices the stiffness to his shoulders, the tension in his posture. He runs a hand through his hair, lets out another short, exasperated breath. “You’re not fine.” 

It’s strange, Yves thinks, to see him like this—Vincent, who usually never wears his emotions on his face, looks clearly displeased, now. 

“Hey,” Yves says, softly. He reaches out to take Vincent’s hand. Vincent goes very still with the contact, but he doesn’t say anything. “I—”

Fuck. His body seems to always pick the worst time for unwanted interjections. He wrenches his hand away just in time to smother a sneeze into his sleeve, though it’s forceful enough to leave him slightly lightheaded. 

“Stay here,” Vincent says, getting to his feet. “Lay down if you get dizzy again.”

Yves blinks. “Where are you going?”

“To tell the others that we’re leaving.”

Yves wants to protest. Dinner is already halfway over. It’s not as if the festivities are particularly strenuous. They’ll probably move inside after dinner, where it’s warmer.

But he thinks better of it. Judging by how exhausted he still feels, how much his head aches, it probably wouldn’t be wise to push it. 

“Don’t tell them about this,” he says.

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. “What?”

“Aimee is going to worry if she finds out,” Yves says, dropping his head to his knees. He doesn’t want to look at Vincent, doesn’t want to know what expression is on his face. “Just—let them have this night. It’s—supposed to be perfect.” I really wanted it to be perfect, he almost adds. There’s a strange tightness to his throat as he says it, a strange heaviness to his chest.

He knows what it means. If, after he’s tried so hard to do his part, their evening still ends up ruined on his own accord, he’s not sure if he could live with himself after.

For a moment, Vincent doesn’t say anything at all.

“Okay,” he says, at last. “Just stay here.”

And then he heads down the hallway. The door at the end of the reception hall swings shut behind him. Yves thinks he should be relieved, but he finds that he doesn’t feel much other than exhausted.

—

The ride home on the shuttle is silent. Vincent sits next to him, even though all of the other seats are empty. Yves thinks the proximity is probably inadvisable. He opens his mouth to say as much, and then shuts it.

Vincent sits and stares straight ahead, his posture stiff, and doesn’t say anything for the entirety of the ride. It’s strange. Yves is no stranger to silence—Vincent is, after all, a coworker, and Yves has endured more than a few quiet elevator rides and quiet team lunches at the office, but it’s strange because it’s Vincent.

Vincent, who usually takes care to make conversation with him, whenever it’s just the two of them. Vincent, who stayed up through the lull of antihistamines a couple months ago to talk to Yves, until Yves had given him explicit permission to go to sleep.

Yves tries not to think about it. Through the haze of his fever, everything feels unusually bright—the interior of the shuttle, with its leather seats and metal handrails.

The shuttle stops just outside the main entrance to their hotel. Just before he gets to the doors, he stumbles. Vincent’s hand shoots out, instinctively, to steady him.

“Sorry,” Yves says, a little sheepishly. It’s not that he’s dizzy. The roads are just uneven, and it’s dark. “I can walk.”

But Vincent doesn’t let go—not for the entirety of the walk through the cool, air-conditioned lobby, through the hallways to the hotel elevators. Not when the elevator stops at their floor, not when they pass by the grid of wooden doors leading up to their room. 

Before Yves can manage to reach for his keycard, Vincent has already swiped them in, scarily efficient. He slides the card back into his pocket, pushes the door open. 

“Thadks for walking me back,” Yves says. “Sorry you couldn’t stay longer. You mbust’ve been halfway through dinner.”

“I already finished eating,” Vincent says.

“Even dessert?” Yves says. “I think Aimee got everyone creme brulee from one of the local bakeries. I was excited to try it. Maybe Leon can save us some.” he muffles a yawn into his hand. It’s too early to be sleeping, but his pull out bed looks very inviting right now.

“Take the bed,” Vincent says.

Yves blinks at him. “What?”

“The bed’s warmer.”

There’s absolutely no way he’s going to let Vincent take the pull-out bed in his place, Yves thinks blearily. He’s spent the past couple nights muffling sneezes into the covers—if there’s anything he’s certain of, it’s that he really, really doesn’t want Vincent to catch this.

“I dod’t think we should switch,” he says, sniffling. “I’ve been sleeping here ever sidce I started coming down with this. I’mb— hHeh-!” He veers away, raising an elbow to his face. “hh—HHEh’IIDZschH’-iEEW! Ugh, I’mb pretty sure I contaminated it.”

“We can both take the bed, if you’d prefer,” Vincent says. As if it’s that simple.

Yves opens his mouth to protest—is Vincent really okay with sharing a bed with him?—but then he thinks about Vincent finding him in the hallway—the stricken expression on his face, then, his eyes wide, his jaw clenched—and thinks better of himself. 

Instead, he lets Vincent lead him to the bedroom. The bed is neatly made—the covers drawn, the pillows propped up against the headboard.

“Lay down,” Vincent says, pushing lightly down on his shoulders. Yves sits. He peels off his suit jacket, folds it, and sets it aside on the nightstand.

“Hey, I kdow that was sudden,” he says, in reference to earlier. “I’mb sorry you had to witness it. I… probably shouldn’t have pushed it.”

Vincent says nothing, to that.

Yves lays down, shuts his eyes. “You didn’t have to accompady me home, you know.”

Silence. He exhales, burrowing deeper into the covers. “It’s not as bad as it looks, seriously.”

He opens his mouth to say more. He has to say something, he thinks, to convince Vincent that it’s really not that big of a deal. Anything, to assuage that look on Vincent’s face.

But he’s so tired. He can feel the exhaustion now that he’s finally let himself lay down. The bed is traitorously comfortable, with its soft feather pillows and its fluffy layers of blankets, and Vincent was right—it really is warmer.

He feels the press of a hand on his forehead, feels the cold, unyielding pressure. Feels gentle, calloused fingers brush the hair out of his face.

“Sleep,” Vincent says, firmly. 

And Yves—

Yves, already half gone, is powerless, when Vincent says it like that.

—

When he wakes, it’s just barely bright outside. He takes it in—the first few rays of sunlight, streaking through the curtains. The bed, a little more well-cushioned than the pullout bed he’d spent the past few nights on—higher up and decisively sturdier. He blinks.

Beside him, seated on a chair he recognizes as belonging to the desk at the opposite end of the room, is Vincent.

Vincent, awake. Yves isn’t sure if he’s slept at all. He certainly doesn’t look tired, at first glance, but closer inspection reveals a little more. It’s evident in the way he holds his shoulders, stiff, and perhaps a little tired, as if there’s been tension sitting in them all night. 

He’s reading a book. Whether he bought it at the convenience store downstairs, or on one of the other days when Yves was busy running errands for the wedding and Vincent was elsewhere, or whether it’d been sitting in his suitcase since the start of the vacation, Yves doesn’t know.

“How’s the book?” Yves says.

His throat is dry, he realizes, for the way it makes him cough, afterwards. Vincent’s eyes meet his, unerringly. He shuts the book, sets it down on the bedside table.

“It’s a little boring,” Vincent says. “How’s the fever?”

Before Yves can answer, Vincent leans forward and presses the back of his hand to Yves’s forehead. His touch is unerringly gentle, and Yves allows himself to look. 

Vincent’s eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes narrowed slightly in concentration, and Yves wonders, suddenly, if he’s been this worried for awhile, now. If he’s been this worried ever since he’d walked them both back into the hotel room last night.

“I’m fine,” Yves says. 

It has the opposite effect he intends it to.

Vincent’s expression shutters. “The last time you said that, you passed out in front of me,” he says, withdrawing his hand with a frown. “So forgive me if I don’t entirely believe you.”

Yves sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. It’s a fair point. “I’m usually more reliable whed it comes to these things.”

“What things?”

“Kdowing my limits.”

Vincent says, “I think you knew your limits. I think you just didn’t want to honor them, because you decided the wedding took precedence.”

He’s… frustrated, Yves realizes. Still. He’s sure he can guess why. Their fake relationship does not extend to Vincent having to look after him, to Vincent having to drop everything in the middle of a wedding, of all things, to take him home. To Vincent having to worry about all this—the fever Yves knows he has, now, and the bed he’s currently taking up—on top of everything else. As if being in a foreign country, surrounded by people he knows almost exclusively through Yves, who, for the most part, converse in a language he barely speaks, wasn’t already enough work on its own.

And Yves gets it. He hadn’t wanted this to happen, either. He’d told himself that if this—this pretend relationship, this pretense—is contingent upon both of them playing their part, the least he can do is be self-sufficient outside of it.

But now—because Vincent is here with him, and because they share a hotel room—all of this is now Vincent’s problem, too, by extension.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” he asks.

Vincent smiles at him, a little wryly, as if the answer is evident. 

“You gave up your bed just for me to steal it,” Yves says, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “It’s really comfortable, and all, but I’mb pretty sure they make these kinds of beds for two.”

“Is that a proposition?” Vincent says.

“Maybe.” Yves thinks it through. “Realistically, probably ndot, until I have a chance to shower.” He’s still dressed in his dress shirt and slacks from yesterday, a little embarrassingly—he should probably get changed. “Speaking of which, I should do that soon, so you don’t feel the need to stay up all night reading—” Yves leans forward, squints at the book cover on the nightstand. “—Hemingway? Somehow, I didn’t expect you to be the type.”

“I’m not,” Vincent says. “Victoire lent it to me.”

“Oh,” Yves says, trying to think of when Vincent would’ve had time to ask her for a recommendation. “Yeah. She’s—” He twists aside, ducking into his elbow. “hHEH’IIDzschh-EEW! snf-! She’s quite the literary reader. Is it really that boring?”

“I can see why people think the transparency of his prose is appealing,” Vincent says. “But I’m fifty pages in, and nothing has happened.”

“Isd’t that the sort of thing Hemingway can get away with, since he’s straightforward about it?”

“In a short story, maybe,” Vincent says. Then: “You are trying to make me feel better.”

Ah.

Yves laughs. “Where in the world did you get that idea?”

Vincent just sighs. “I would be exceptionally unobservant not to notice when I’ve seen you do the same thing all this week.”

“What?”

“Telling people that you’re fine,” Vincent says. “And distracting them when they don’t believe you.”

Yves doesn’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s not like he was trying to be dishonest. It’s just that it was never the most important thing to address.

“Distracting is a bit disingenuous.”

“I don’t get it,” Vincent says, with a frown. “You’re so insistent on putting yourself last, even when you were obviously—” He sighs. There it is—that expression again, the one that makes itself evident through the furrowed eyebrows, the tense set of his jaw—frustration, and maybe something else. “You’re surrounded by people who care about you, so why not just—”

“There are plenty of things more important than how I’mb feeling,” Yves says.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

But of course it is, Yves thinks. A wedding is a once in a lifetime occurrence. An illness is nothing, in the face of that.

“I promised I’d be there,” he says, because when it really comes down to it, it’s true. He had no intention of going back on his word. “I didn’t want to be the one to let them down. Is that so hard to believe?” He reaches up with a hand to massage his temples. His head aches, even though he’s slept for long enough that he feels like it ought to feel a little better, by now. “It’s already bad enough that I had to drag you into this.” 

“You didn’t drag me into this,” Vincent says. “I came on my own volition.”

Yves tries a laugh, but it’s humorless. “I made you leave halfway through the wedding dinner.”

“I’d already finished eating.”

“Ndot to mention, you practically had to carry me upstairs.”

“Because you’re ill.”

“That’s no excuse.” Yves wants to say more, but he finds himself beholden to a tickle in the back of his throat—irritatingly present, until he concedes to it by ducking into his elbow to cough, and cough.

When he looks up, blinking tears out of his vision, Vincent isn’t looking at him.

“You should get some rest,” he says, simply.

Yves can tell—just by the way he says it—that there is no argument to him, anymore. Just like that, Vincent is back to being closed off—poised and perfectly, infuriatingly unreadable, just like he is at work, his face so carefully a mask of indifference, even in the most stressful presentations, the most frustrating disagreements. Yves wants none of it.

 “Hey,” he says. A part of him itches to crack a joke, to change the subject—anything to take away this air of seriousness. A part of him wants to reach out, again—to take Vincent’s hand, entwine their fingers; to reassure him, again, that he’s really fine.

“I’m sorry,” he says, instead. Maybe it’s the fever that loosens his tongue. Maybe it’s just a combination of everything.

He can feel Vincent’s eyes on him, still. Vincent has always held a sort of intensity to him, a quiet sort of perceptiveness. “I’m not sure I follow,” Vincent says.

“This visit was supposed to be fun for you,” he says. “And now you’re here, stuck in the hotel room because of me, even though today was supposed to be for sightseeing.”

It doesn’t feel like enough. What can he say to make it enough? There’s a strange ache in his chest, a strange, crushing pressure. Yves is horrified to find his eyes stinging. He’s held it together for so long, he thinks. Why now? Why, when Vincent is right here?

But a part of him knows, too. Of course traveling to a different country would be more involved than going to a party, or spending an evening at a stranger’s house. But there was a time when he thought this could really just be a fun excursion for the both of them—half a week in his family’s home country, with someone who he thoroughly enjoys spending time with. 

And now, because of this untimely illness—or because of his own short-sightedness in managing it—it isn’t. He didn’t get to stay through dinner, didn’t get to wish Aimee and Genevieve a good rest of their night, like he’d planned to. He has no idea if things went smoothly in his absence. To make matters worse, Vincent is here, having endured a sleepless night, instead of anywhere else.

And really, when he thinks about it, who does have to blame for all of this, except himself?

“I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this,” he says. “So I’m sorry.” He resists the urge to swipe a hand over his eyes—surely, he thinks, that would give him away.

He turns away. It’s convenient, he thinks, that the embarrassing sniffle that follows could be attributed to something else. 

“You’ve been nothing but accommodating to me, this whole visit,” Vincent says. “If anything, I should’ve insisted that you take the bed earlier. You haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

He says it with such certainty. Yves opens his mouth to protest this—or to apologize, for all the times he must’ve kept Vincent up, including but not limited to last night—but Vincent presses on.

“You spent all of yesterday morning helping everyone get ready, and when I got back, you apologized for not being around—as if the reason why you weren’t around wasn’t that you were so busy making sure everything was fine for everyone else.” Vincent pauses, takes in a slow, measured breath. Yves is surprised to hear that he sounds… distinctly angry, in a way that Yves is not used to hearing.

“And then you showed up to the rehearsal and the wedding, even though you weren’t feeling well. And you still think you have something to apologize for? Are you even hearing yourself?” Yves hears the creak of the chair as he stands, the sound of quiet footsteps. Feels the dip of the bed as Vincent takes a seat at the edge of it. 

“You know, after you left the dinner table, Genevieve was talking about how much she liked your speech? Do you know that yesterday morning, Solaine told me how grateful she was that you helped her with fixing her dress? Do you know that when I got lunch with Leon and Victoire, they told me how much time you spent preparing for everything—the speech, and the wedding, both?”

Oh. Yves hadn’t known any of those things, and he knows Vincent isn’t the kind of person who would lie about this sort of thing.

“I don’t get it,” Vincent says, sounding distinctly pained to say it. “How could you possibly think that you haven’t done enough?”

Yves finds himself taken aback—by the frustration in his voice, by the fact that Vincent has noticed these things in the first place, by the fact that he’s deemed them important enough to take stock of. He makes it sound so simple. 

“I don’t know,” Yves says, at last. He shuts his eyes. “If it was enough.”

“I’m telling you that it was,” Vincent says.

But Yves knows that he could have done more, if the circumstances were different. If he hadn’t been so out of it during the wedding. If he’d taken the necessary precautions to avoid coming down with this in the first place. If he’d been able to stay through dinner, at least; if he hadn’t needed Vincent to accompany him home. 

“You don’t believe me,” Vincent says, with a sigh.

Yves doesn’t say anything, to that.

“I can’t speak for anyone else,” Vincent says. There’s the slight rustling of the covers as he shifts, rearranging one of the pillows at the headboard. “But I had fun.”

Yves’s heart twists.

It’s sweet, unexpectedly. “You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better,” Yves says.

“When have I ever said anything just to make you feel better?” Vincent says, with a short laugh. When Yves chances a look at him, he’s smiling down at himself. “I mean it. Meeting your family has been a lot of fun. It’s not often that I get the chance to be a part of something like this.”

Whether he’s referring to France, or the wedding and the festivities, or being surrounded by Yves’s large extended family, Yves isn’t sure. But if Vincent is trying to cheer him up, it’s working.

“I can see why you like France so much,” he says, turning his gaze out the window, though the view outside is filtered through the semi-translucent curtains. “It’s beautiful.”

“Today was supposed to be the last day for sightseeing,” Yves says, a little regretful. “But you’re stuck here.”

“In a sunny, luxurious hotel room, with a view of the pool and the garden?” Vincent says, with a scoff. “I could think of worse places to be.”

Staying up all night, just to check up on Yves, more accurately. Vincent must be tired, too—yesterday was already tiring enough. And now it’s morning already, and he hasn’t gotten any sleep. 

“Reading Hemingway,” Yves adds.

Vincent looks a little surprised. Then he laughs. “Yes. I guess you’re right. Perhaps it’s an agonizing experience after all.”

The yawn he stifles into his hand, after that isn’t half as subtle as he tries to make it.

Yves feels his eyebrows creep up. “Are you sure you don’t want to get some sleep? There’s plenty of room.” He scoots a little closer to the edge of the bed, just to make a point.

Vincent peers down at the space beside him, a little hesitant. “At 10am?”

“It’d be, what, 4am, back in Eastern time?” Yves says. “By Ndew York standards, you’re supposed to already be asleep.”

“That’s not how it works,” Vincent says, but he dutifully moves a little closer to Yves anyways. He’s changed out of yesterday’s wedding attire, more sensibly, but now he’s wearing a knitted cardigan which Yves thinks looks unfairly, terribly good on him. Yves finds himself marveling at the unfairness of it all. How can someone look so good wearing something so casual?

Vincent smells good, up close. When he lays down next to Yves, pulling the covers gingerly over himself—leaving a careful amount of room between them, but still dangerously, intoxicatingly close—Yves feels his breath catch in his throat.

Vincent is right there, less than an arm’s length away from him, closer than he’s ever been, and Yves—Yves is—

“See,” Yves says, as evenly as he can manage to, in his current state, as if his heart isn’t practically beating out of his chest. He swallows. His throat feels dry. “This bed definitely fits two.”

“I suppose it does,” Vincent says. “Now you can tell me if I’m a terrible person to share a bed with.”

“After everything I’ve put you through,” Yves says, “I think I’d honestly feel reassured if you were.”

Vincent smiles, again, as if he finds this humorous. “Are you sure you’re going to be fine?”

“Positive,” Yves says. “You should sleep. I’ll wake you if I ndeed anything.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.” Vincent shuts his eyes.

It’s not long before his breathing evens out, not long before he goes perfectly still. He must really be tired, Yves thinks, with a pang.

Yves, for some reason, finds that he can’t get to sleep. He stares up at the ceiling for what feels like minutes on end, shuts his eyes, all to no avail. Maybe it’s because he’s already slept far more than his usual share. Maybe it’s the jetlag. Maybe it’s merely Vincent’s unusual presence—the strangeness of having him so close, in an environment so intimate.

But when he allows himself to look, he sees—

Vincent, his eyes shut, his eyelashes fanning out over his cheeks. From the window, the filtered light gleams unevenly across the crown of dark hair on his head. There’s almost no movement to him at all, aside from the even rise and fall of his shoulders.

And Yves knows what the feeling in his chest is. He’s regrettably, intimately familiar with it.

He just isn’t sure he likes what it means.

—

Vincent—despite falling asleep so quickly—is up before him. When Yves wakes, next, it’s to a hand to his forehead.

“Hey,” Vincent is saying, softly. “Yves. You have a visitor.”

Yves opens his eyes.

He’s feeling—a little better, remarkably. Still feverish, still a little unsteady, but leagues better as compared to yesterday. When he looks over, he sees—

He doesn’t jolt upright, but it’s a close thing. “Aimee!”

He barely has a chance to ask before she’s crashing into him, encircling him in a tight hug. “Yves!” she exclaims, pulling back from him. “How are you feeling? Oh my gosh, when I heard you left early because you were unwell, I was so worried…”

Yves grimaces, turning away. “Sorry, I had every idtention of staying until the end—”

“You came all the way out with the flu!” she says. “I honestly can’t believe you. The fact that you still took the trouble to attend with a fever—”

“It—” Yves starts, but he finds himself twisting away, lifting an arm to his face. “hhEH-! HEEhD’TTSCHH-iiiEEw! Snf-! It’s fide, snf-! I’mb practically recovered already.”

“I should’ve told you not to push yourself when you told me you were coming down with something,” Aimee says, shaking her head. “And you stayed and gave such a lovely speech, even though you weren’t feeling well? When I was talking to Victoire after, she mentioned that you’ve been sick for days and Genevieve—you should’ve said something.”

“I’ll say somethidg next time,” Yves says, a little sheepishly. “Did the wedding go okay?”

Aimee visibly brightens, at this. “It was more than okay,” she says, her eyes gleaming. “It blew every expectation that I had out of the water.”

Aimee fills him in on everything that happened after he left, last night—dessert, the first dance, the cake-cutting; her favorites out of the photos they’d taken after the ceremony (a shot of Genevieve braiding her hair during the cocktail hour; a shot of them leaning in close, for the dance, tired but smiling; a shot of the cake with its multiple tiers, the frosting strung like banners across it; another where both of them are holding onto the cutting knife together and Genevieve looks like she is trying not to laugh; a shot of the bouquet toss, the flowers suspended in mid-air). She tells him about the conversations she and Genevieve had with others about marriage and their futures and their plans for their honeymoon.

Then she lectures him on how he should worry about his health first, next time. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that she’s fully prepared to give him a piece of her mind the next time he tries to pull something like this. She insists that his health is more important than anything. Vincent stands off to the side the entire time, his arms crossed, passively listening in, but when Yves looks over helplessly, mid-lecture, he definitely looks a little smug. 

All in all, she doesn’t seem disappointed in him at all. And, more importantly, she seems happy. Yves finds himself relieved, at this.

Genevieve stops by, too, a little later, to thank him for the advice he’d given her the day before the wedding. She hugs him too, and she leaves him a bag of tea that she promises “is practically a cure to anything—I hope it makes your flight home tomorrow a little more tolerable.” Victoire stops by, with Leon, and Yves resigns himself to more lecturing from the both of them. It’s humbling, a little, to be lectured by his younger sister and his younger brother, though he concedes that perhaps this time, it might be at least partially warranted.

Then Leon opens their hotel fridge to show him the two creme brulees he and Vincent had missed out on, packaged nicely in small paper containers. (“Vincent told me you were interested in these,” he says, and Yves finds himself slightly mortified—but perhaps also a little endeared—that whatever it was that he’d said last night, offhandedly, Vincent had deemed it important enough to text Leon about.)

Later, after Yves showers and gets changed—when he and Vincent eat the creme brulees at the table in the living room, and Vincent tells him that he’s finished the book, perhaps a little masochistically (“it doesn’t get any better,” he says, sounding a little spiteful)—Yves finds himself smiling.

He’s happy, he realizes, despite everything that’s happened. Even with the slight headache, and the lingering congestion, the fever that hasn’t quite gone away entirely. The revelation comes as a surprise to him, at first. But when he thinks about the people he’s surrounded with, he thinks perhaps it isn’t all that surprising.

—

EPILOGUE

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” Vincent asks.

“Yes,” Yves says. It’s not a lie.

This time, he’s seated right next to the window, and Vincent is in the middle seat. Yves had offered to take the middle seat instead, but Vincent had insisted(“If you wanted to sleep, you could lean against the window,” he’d said, and Yves had accepted only because it would be better to fall asleep against the window than do something embarrassing, like fall asleep on Vincent’s shoulder).

“It’s just the annoyidg residual symptoms, now,” he says. “I—”

God. He always has the worst timing. He veers away, muffling a tightly contained sneeze into his shoulder.

“hHEH-’IIDDZschH-yyEW! Snf-! I’mb — hHhEHh’DjjsSHH-iEW! Ugh, I’m fine. I feel better thad I sound.”

“Bless you,” Vincent says, leaning over to press his hand against Yves’s forehead. “No fever,” he says. “That’s good. But you should take another day off when we get back.”

Yves doesn’t think taking another day off is necessary. “I spedt the entirety of yesterday sleeping,” he says. “I think I’ve rested enough.”

Vincent just raises an eyebrow at him. “Need I remind you that someone very wise told you to take it easy?”

“Since when has Aimee been your spokesperson?”

“She made a lot of good points,” Vincent says, deceptively unassuming. “I think you should consider taking notes.”

Yves looks at him for a moment. “You’re laughing at me.”

This time, Vincent smiles. “Maybe.”

Yves leans back in his seat, reaching up with one hand to massage his temples. The changing cabin pressure is not exactly comfortable—his head still hurts a little, but he’s flown enough times to know that it won’t be as much of a problem once they finish their ascent. 

“Thadks again for coming,” he says, unwrapping one of the small, packaged pillows the airline has left on their seats. 

“You invited me,” Vincent says, blinking. “All I did was show up.”

But that isn’t true at all, Yves thinks. Vincent is the one who spent time learning basic French, who met Yves’s family and who spoke with everyone with genuine interest, who bought Yves medicine and water, all while being careful to not be overbearing. Vincent is the one who left the wedding early to walk Yves back to the hotel, who stayed with him the entire day afterwards.

“That’s such a huge understatement I don’t even kdow where to get started,” Yves says. “Thanks for meetidg my family—they love you, by the way. They’re going to be askidg about you every summer from now on, I just know it.”

He can already picture it—June, this year, after busy season is over, if their fake relationship lasts that long. Another flight where they’re next to each other. Another dozen conversations about how they’d met, about what it’s like dating a coworker, about what their plans for the future are.

Perhaps it’s wishful thinking. This was never meant to be a long-term arrangement in the first place. But something about this—about being here with Vincent—just feels so unthinkingly easy.

“It’s no problem,” Vincent says. “The feeling is mutual. I’m glad I got to meet them.”

“Thanks for looking after me, too,” Yves says, with another apologetic smile. “I’mb sure being stuck in a hotel room all day wasn’t how you were planning on spending your last day of vacation.”

“I don’t mind,” Vincent says, sounding strangely like he means it. “I like spending time with you.”

Yves nearly drops the pillow he’s holding. 

When he looks back at Vincent, Vincent looks faintly amused. “Is that so surprising? I think I’d be a terrible fake boyfriend if I didn’t.”

“You make a really good one, as it stands,” Yves tells him, sincerely, and Vincent smiles.

Yves looks out the window—where the city beneath them begins to resolve itself into miniature, where the sky stretches where he can see Vincent reflected faintly back at him, from the glass—and finds that he feels impossibly light.

#sneeze fic #snz fic #sneeze kink #snz kink #snzfic #when i set off to write a slow burn h/c fic i don't think i expected it to be 28k words #this was a journey for me... thank you sincerely to everyone who's joined me for the ride 😭 #i am not sure if this specific chapter feels rushed? or if it's too short? (if it does i'm very sorry 🙇‍♀️) #some thoughts... (spoilers ahead; pls read the chapter before proceeding) #1) this installment in particular is something of a turning point in their relationship development (and i hope that's not too subtle) #2) vincent not being like a traditionally 'soft' caretaker and having his frustration show a little more openly is something i've had in my #head for awhile :') it was fun to let that crystallize this chapter #yvverse #my fic

[curveact42]

Finding a Dentist With an Effective Checklist

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#Dental

[gunpowdville]

The Great Flesh-Eating Cake Incident of Year [REDACTED] (Not to be Confused With the Bifrost Incident)

Chapters: 1/2

Words: 3502

Relationships: Drumbot Brian - Raphaella la Cognizi (queerplatonic), Gunpowder Tim/Lyfrassir Edda/Marius von Raum, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina (although most don’t show up until the second chapter)

Other Things: genderfluid tim, she/her tim, he/fae marius :)

Summary: Brian and Raph bake a cake. Or, they try to. It doesn't exactly go well. (aka, Why Raphaella la Cognizi Should Never Be Allowed in the Kitchen)

read on ao3 here or read below the cut for people who don't like ao3 (i will post the second chapter. at some point. hopefully soon)

Chapter 1

“Try it now.”

“Is it safe?”

“Does that matter?”

Brian gives her what she calls his teacher look, a combination of calm exasperation and gentle chiding. “I would prefer to not fry myself from the inside out, if I can help it.”

“Boring,” Raphaella accuses, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “And you know I’d fix you if you did.” Well actually, she would get Nastya to fix him, as Raph herself has absolutely no self control when it comes to the prospect of tinkering with a complex mechanism and Brian hates being tinkered on without his permission.

“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell,” Brian points out. “Not to mention how horrendously it would fuck up my systems.”

Raphaella pouts. “So I installed the flamethrower for nothing?”

Brian hesitates. “...I didn’t say that.”

Raphaella perks up immediately, turning her full attention from the clattered worktable to her partner. Brian straightens up and faces away from her, focusing at the blank wall at one end of the lab. He pokes his tongue around the inside of his mouth a little, probing at the new addition in the back. He tests out flipping its settings, making sure everything flows smoothly, then steels himself and opens his mouth, turning it on. Nothing happens.

Raphaella throws up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand! That should have worked! It-”

Brian yelps suddenly, clapping his hands to his throat as the back of it heats up rapidly, too rapidly, the heat growing from gently uncomfortable to unbearable in a matter of seconds. Luckily, his systems react before he can, shutting off the new attachment the second it could cause potential harm. The heat fades almost as quickly as it had swelled.

“Ow,” Brian says mildly.

“That was about to work,” Raphaella huffs, hands on her hips, eyes fixed somewhat accusingly on Brian. “If you had just waited a moment longer.”

“It was about to melt my vocal cords,” Brian points out in retort. Raphaella throws up her hands again.

“My husband is a coward,” she declares to no one in particular, with no actual insult behind it. Brian can’t help but smile softly at the endearment. They’re not married, technically, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be.

“I’ve started to become convinced that you’re simply trying to kill me,” Brian remarks to her as she turns back to the notes on her lab table. She shoots him a brightly malicious look, one backed heavily with fondness. “Maybe I am.”

He sits down on the stool beside the lab table and reaches for her, catching her waist from behind and pulling her onto his lap. She leans back into him as he wraps his arms around her, and he rests his chin on her shoulder so he can peer down at the pages of notes in her hands.

“Here, tell me what I’m doing wrong,” Raphaella holds up the notes so Brian can get a better look at them. He hums thoughtfully as he scans her delicate sketch of his body, each part individually labelled with possible enhancements to be added in Raph’s lacy handwriting. Brian’s own handwriting, cramped and blocky, annotates the science officer’s notes with his own observations of measurements and possible difficulties.

In his mind, Brian overlays the sketch on top of the official schematics the doc left in there, focusing on his throat and the new addition, checking for anywhere where it isn’t wired properly or messing with any of his other systems. Nothing. He bites his lip, a very natural bad habit that he’s never been able to shake, despite it splitting the rubber badly. Raphaella hits him lightly in the side of the head when she notices him doing it.

“I don’t think it’s anything you’ve done,” Brian says finally, leaning back slightly on the stool. “I think it’s simply a matter of too much heat.”

Raphaella ‘hmphs’, taking her notes back from him and setting them back on the table. She turns her head to study Brian’s face, placing her hands atop his where they rest over her stomach. He quirks an eyebrow at her, and she regards him silently. He can tell that she’s thinking through what next to work on, now that their flamethrower experiment is a bust.

He gives her stomach a light pat. “If you don’t mind, I was going to go bake something. Tim’s been complaining that there aren’t enough ‘munchies’ onboard. And yes, that is the word xe used.”

Raphaella slaps a hand to her heart melodramatically, the gesture accompanied by a theatrical gasp. “Leaving me for Tim, are we? Scandal.”

Brian chuckles gently as he rises to his feet, dislodging Raph in the process. “Yes, I’ve decided you’re much too cruel and brutal for me, and I’d be much happier feeding Tim for the rest of eternity.”

Raphaella tosses her hair and turns away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her chin up imperiously. “Good riddance.”

“Good riddance indeed,” Brian agrees drily, with no heat behind it. Raph glaces over her shoulder at him and grins, and he smiles back as he slips out the lab door, tipping his hat as he goes.

Ivy’s reading at the kitchen counter when he enters. She doesn’t look up as he makes his way into the kitchen proper, wrangling his hair into a wiry ponytail and tossing his hat on the counter. He peeks at the cover of her book and makes an intrigued little noise when he notices it’s about prophets and oracles throughout space and time.

“I was going to give it you when I was finished,” Ivy says without looking up. “I thought it might interest you.”

“It does,” Brian tells her, and she smirks, proud of herself. She still doesn’t take her eyes off the pages. Brian leans over, resting his elbows on the counter, and knocks his forehead briefly against hers, a somewhat awkward sign of affection that’s he’s developed with some members of the crew. She responds by patting his head absentmindedly, still not looking up from her book. He smiles, and turns back to the kitchen.

After a couple minutes of rummaging around in cabinets, Brian becomes aware of Raphaella’s presence leaning against the counter to his left.

“Missed me?” he asks teasingly. She rolls her eyes and pokes him in the arm. “You promised you’d teach me to bake.”

Brian pauses, replaying the last ten minutes in his mind to confirm that he has not, in fact, promised her this. And then he realizes that she’s referring to a time quite a few decades ago, when the two of them had been left back on the ship while the others had been out pillaging a nigh-extinct planet. They’d been sharing some pastries that Brian had been experimenting with, and Raphaella had asked him how he’d made them. He had launched straight into a detailed explanation of exactly which ingredients he had used and what amounts of each, and how he had played with the measurements and tweaked the recipe to see how he could improve it. Raph had listened with utter fascination, and after he had finished she had mentioned that it seemed a bit like her experiments, only with slightly different materials. He had offered to teach her a little, if she’d like, and she had said she would love to learn. And now here they are.

“I did do that, didn’t I,” Brian muses. He studies Raph, leaning against the counter, a sparkle in her eyes that both makes him excited to see what she has in store and fear for his life.

“So?” Raphaella raises an eyebrow. Brian considers.

“We are making a cake,” he tells her, keeping his voice slow, steady, and serious. “A basic cake. We are not going to put anything in it that is not on the ingredients list. We are going to follow the recipe. To the letter. And we are not, I repeat, we are not going to burn down my kitchen.”

My kitchen, Aurora corrects him gently.

“Our kitchen,” he concedes.

Raphaella steps forward and takes Brian’s hands, looking him solemnly in the eyes. “I won’t let you down,” she promises. “Trust me.”

“Phee, I love you to death, and I always will” Brian tells her, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the back of it. “But I draw the line at trusting you.”

“Rude,” Raph sniffs, while Ivy tries to cover up a snort.

“Practical,” Brian shoots back, letting go of her hands and reaching past her to pluck the recipe from the counter. With a flourish, he deposits it in her hands. “Find me these ingredients.”

Raphaella mutters something about ‘bossybitch Brian’ as she turns away from him and marches purposefully toward the cupboards. He watches her fondly for a moment, before busying himself gathering pans and setting up his beloved electric mixer, something he’d found being sold for scraps on a junkyard planet and had lovingly repaired and repainted with his own two hands. Its name is Small Brian, and it remains one of his most prized possessions.

“Bri, which eggs are we using?” Raphaella calls to him, her head buried deep in the disorganized fridge. Brian abandons Small Brian for just a moment and pokes his head in beside hers.

“Ah, not those,” he says, indicating a half dozen of jet-black eggs glowing faintly from within. “Those are Ashes’. They will supposedly hatch into a rare breed of fire-breathing corvid.”

“And those?” Raphaella points to the other carton of eggs.

“We’re using those,” Brian confirms, pulling the carton out. “Ah. Wait. Not this one.” Carefully, he removes a small, round, green orb from the carton and places it gently on the counter. “An octokitten laid this. We think.”

Raphaella leans over and picks it up, holding it in the palm of her hand and bringing it up close to her eyes. She looks suspiciously like she’s about to slip it into her pocket, so Brian plucks it from her hands before she gets a chance to. She sticks her tongue out at him. He waves her off to go collect the rest of the ingredients, reminding her that the lovely ceramic pot labeled ‘sugar’ is in fact actually filled with gunpowder, and the sugar is in the cabinet to its right. Meanwhile he goes back to fussing over Small Brian.

The mixer isn’t starting up properly, it keeps stuttering and stopping whenever he tries to turn it on. Brian frowns, tapping the top of it with a metal finger. “Come on, love,” he says softly to Small Brian. “Don’t give up on me now. Not after all we’ve been through.”

“Raph,” Ivy speaks up from her place at the counter, her tone amused. “Brian’s talking to the appliances again.”

“If either of you make a joke comparing me to an appliance, I will kill you,” Brian warns both of them placidly, fiddling with Small Brian’s mechanisms until the machine whines and starts up properly. “Good lad,” Brian says, patting the appliance lovingly.

“I saw that,” he adds when he catches the look Ivy and Raphaella share over the counter. Raphaella rolls her eyes and gestures to him to come approve the ingredients she’s gathered. She hooks her arm through his and tips her head onto his shoulder while he checks each one off against the recipe.

“Excellent, that’s everything. Thank you.” he says, kissing her on the top of the head. “ Now we can begin.”

Raphaella, as always, is a very attentive student, listening well and asking questions when necessary. He suspects that she asks some of the questions just to listen to him talk about something he loves, and he adores her for it. They work very well together, the two of them, bantering back and forth as they do. Ivy chimes in on occasion, never taking her eyes off of her book.

Jonny strolls into the kitchen at one point, zeroing in on the chocolate chips scattered across the counter with a predator’s precision. As soon as he spots the first mate, Brian sweeps a knife into his hand and points it at him. “Out.”

Jonny backs away, throwing his hands up in surrender. He’s been killed enough times over messing around in the kitchen that he knows by now that the best thing to do is back off.

All in all, it’s a shockingly peaceful time. Brian hums to himself as he stirs ingredients together, and Raphaella goes through the cupboards, looking for something to play with. She reaches to open one in the back, and Brian notices too late which one it is. Raphaella stops, tilting her head in curiosity as she stares at the contents of the cupboard.

“Oh, Briiiiiiiiaaan?” she calls in a singsong voice, which is usually a sign that Brian is about to either be taken apart or assist in taking apart someone else. “What is this?”

Brian sighs and sets down the bowl, making his way slowly over to her. She raises an eyebrow at him as he gazes silently for a moment at the dismantled skeleton shoved into the back of the cupboard. “Those… are my bones.”

“Your… bones.”

“My bones.”

“Why…?”

Brian shrugs. “It’s not like I’m using them.”

“Right.” Raphaella studies the skeleton for a moment longer, before declaring, “I’m going to make soup out of them.”

Brian starts. “I’m sorry?”

“Your bones. I’m going to make soup out of them.”

“You are not.”

“Bone broth is a thing, isn’t it? Ivy?”

“It is,” Ivy confirms, casually turning a page.

Raphaella grins, gathering the bones into her arms. “Brian soup.”

“Brian s- no!”

“Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup-”

“NO.”

“I thought the doc took your bones,” Ivy mentions, as Brian attempts to gently cajole his partner into giving him back said bones.

“I asked her to let me keep some of them,” Brian explains, tugging a rib out of Raph’s arms and dislodging about three more, which clatter to the floor unceremoniously. “They are mine, after all.”

“It’s unusually sentimental of me, I know,” he adds as Raphaella ducks under his arm, executing a perfect twirl to get the bones out of his reach, “I’m not quite sure why I wanted them.”

“For soup,” Raphaella quips, and Ivy snorts as Brian throws himself at the science officer. Raph yelps and scrambles away from him, and so begins an epic chase around the kitchen, Raph struggling to run away while clutching an armful of bones, the owner of said bones following a step behind her, playfully angry.

Brian doesn’t realize he’s started humming to himself until Raphaella turns to face him, jogging backwards, and asks what song it is.

“It’s a new one I’m working on,” he says, using her moment of distraction as an opportunity to trap her in the kitchen, the wraparound counter devoid of exits besides the one that he is currently standing in front of. “It’s called ‘Raphaella Please Don’t Make Soup Out of My Bones.’”

“I hate it,” Raphaella decides, still backing away. She’s almost hit the counter, and Brian smirks at his inevitable victory.

“You’ve barely heard it,” he argues, and begins humming louder. Raphaella’s back hits the counter, and Brian stops. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, he begins tapping his foot along to the tune.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Raphaella starts, but the other foot has already begun to move as well. Just tapping at first, tap tap tapping to a beat in Brian’s head, but the footwork quickly becomes more and more complicated as he eases into the song. Ivy picks it up quickly and starts tapping her fingers on the counter, taking charge of the beat while Brian continues humming the melody.

Raphaella shakes her head, refusing to let his shenanigans charm her, but Brian refuses to give up. He dances his way smoothly across the floor to her, finishing with an elegant twirl and an extended hand. Raphaella regards him with reluctant defeat, then rolls her eyes and takes Brian’s hand.

He waltzes her out into the middle of the floor, two steps forward, one step back. He spins her out, then spins her back in so they’re swaying with her back pressed to his chest. “You’re a master manipulator, you know,” she says to him. He smiles. She twirls him out, then twirls him back in and dips him, effortlessly holding up his mass of metal.

“I don’t remember this step of the cake recipe,” Ivy comments drily. She’s finally looking up from her book and is watching the two of them with an expression that is equal parts exasperated and amused.

“Which step, the bone soup or the dancing?” Brian returns, just as dry. Ivy is saved from having to respond by the arrival of Marius, who comes striding through the door like an invading general, arms spread wide in greeting.

“Well, if it isn’t my three favorite delinquents,” fae says, grinning like a maniac. “Dancing in the kitchen like- wait. Why is Raph in the kitchen?”

“I’m helping,” Raph says proudly, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a decidedly smug fashion as Brian collects his bones and returns them to their cupboard. “How can we help you?”

Marius pulls up a stool and takes a seat next to Ivy, scanning the pages of her book idly. “Tim stole my partner.”

“To be fair, Tim is also dating your partner,” Brian points out, handing the bowl of cake batter to Raph to finish stirring and put in the oven.

“Sure, but she’s being smug about it. So I’m pouting,” Marius replies, metal fingers tapping on the counter. “Oh, also: Tim wanted me to tell you. She/her for the time being.”

Brian nods, taking note of the pronouns. “Well, when you feel like speaking to Tim again, you can tell her that a cake is on its way.”

Marius raises an eyebrow. “You mean that cake that Raph just slipped something into behind your back?”

Honestly, Brian is surprised that this didn’t happen earlier. Slowly, he turns to Raphaella, who meets his eyes with a mischievous smirk as she slips an empty vial back into her pocket.

��What was in that?” he asks gently, not mad, just curious.

“Just a little something I whipped up,” Raphaella says, giving the batter an experimental stir. An odd squelching noise escapes from the bowl, and she quickly lets go of the wooden spoon as a dark tendril of… something curls up around it, possessive and hungry. “Oh. That’s interesting.”

“What the fuck was that?” Marius leans forward over the counter, curiosity evident on faer features.

Raphaella sets the bowl carefully on the floor and steps away from it, circling around it to Brian’s side. He gives her a questioning look, and she shrugs cheerfully, indicating that she has no idea whatsoever the effect of whatever she put in may be. With somewhat tired resignation, Brian steps forward to investigate what has become of his simple chocolate cake.

It’s… alive. The dark, viscous substance in the bowl has begun to writhe and bubble in a distinctively sentient manner, tendrils forming reaching out, looking to grab hold of something. The tendrils feel their way around tentatively, like a newborn animal learning to walk for the first time. The substance itself has an oddly familiar shimmer to it, the nearly oil-black surface revealing colors of every hue and nature when the light hits it.

“That looks like…” Marius frowns, clambering over the counter and dropping next to Brian as what was meant to be a cake slowly drags itself out of the bowl and onto the floor. “Oh, Raph, you didn’t!”

“Don’t touch it,” Brian advises as Marius crouches near the thing to get a better look.

Marius gives the Drumbot a scathing look. “I’m not a moron, Brian, I’m not going to-”

“Mare, get back,” Brian snaps, but it’s too late. The crawling blob has already reached the violinists foot and has clamped on tightly, wrapping its tentacles up and around his leg. He stares down at it in mild concern for a moment, then says: “Fuck.”

What happens next is hard to describe. The viscous thing sort of… stretches itself, until it covers Marius’ entire body, undulating and pulsing, then collapses in on itself, returning to its smaller form, leaving nothing but a slightly steaming metal arm left where the ship’s doctor once stood.

“What the hell did you do?” Brian demands, staring at the (now slightly larger) creation as it drags its way across the floor.

Raphaella doesn’t respond. “I think it ate faer,” she says instead. Then, “where is it going?”

Brian glances at the floor just in time to see the thing disappear into the vents. He lets out a cry, but it is much to late. It’s gone.

“Well,” Ivy says, staring with vague concern at the open vent. “Fuck.”

#fic #my fic #mechs fic #formatting like this bc there are some people i know who might want to read it who don't like ao3 #drumbot brian #raphaella la cognizi #marius von raum #gunpowder tim #ivy alexandria #my writing #long post #very long post

[siswritesyanderes]

This is a series of asks bc, while I do LIKE all the charas of Fantastic Beasts individually, much of the romantic pairings dont sit well with me. By that mean the messy love polygon w Newt & I think I finally figured out why & I'd like another's opinion on it. For starters, Newt's attraction with Tina is too fast for me considering he was friends w Leta, got expelled out of Hogwarts for Leta, carried Leta's photo in his case, & basically loved her for YEARS. But this is all undone by a [1]

jaunt in NY having met a woman, who he admittedly went on a huge adventure w, over the course of maybe a few weeks. He's so taken w her she replaces Leta's photo w her own &, after refusing to go to Paris for Dumbledore, leaves immediately once he finds out she's there. I just find this unbelievable. I can rationalize it from Newt's perspective where Tina is a fresh breeze sweeping into his life on (percieved) unrequited pining, but this is my conjecture based on my understanding of Newt. [2]

The audience shouldnt be left to rationalize endgame couple of the mc on their own. & the whole thing w Leta is so messily handled I dont think they can save it even if they bring her back in FB3. How she feels for Newt vs Theseus & unresolved lingering affection, etc. She & Newt were SO important to each other & we SEE that & they dont HAVE to get together, but they need proper resolution bc they have actual history between them. God Leta in general deserved so much better. [3]

But my main gripe is that this love polygon serves no purpose to what I believe is the main selling point of FB: the world. HP having love stories makes sense bc we're following the story of a boy as he goes through adolescence & his journey through that via school is part of that, which is why the romance feels fitting. It's a very personal story. FB on the otherhand is the best peak we have at the wider wizarding world beyond school. HP introduces the world of magic, but FB rlly expands it [4]

To that end Jakob & Queenie's relationship is the only one I find myself liking, bc it's deeply tied to the world setting, the series' biggest selling point (in my opinion, should have said this earlier). It underscores the attitudes of the period & the conflict they face feels suitably substantial & not like filler. There's a moral question between them of are they worth it? And how far should they go to be together?

Imma be real hear & say FB2 was rlly Queenie's movie & they should have been ballsy & just make Queenie the mc for FB2, bc her story was actually considerably more important to the overall development of the story than Newt's, which mostly came off as a rushed & a tad clichè soap drama. & making it about Queenie I think builds more room for good conflict & independent narrative for Tina that would serve her chara better. [5? 6?]

If I bad to be REAL ballsy, I'd say my big issue w/ the relationships in the FB series & how it enhances or impedes the main story & what I believe to be it's biggest attracter (the setting) could have been solved if they made Newt's romantic interest a muggle. It attaches a deeper meaning & relevance to them & the story so it felt more deeply that they truly moved WITH the narrative rather than beside it but I guess Im just picky. Thx for putting up w this! [Final]

(My response below the cut.)

Yeah, pretty much all of this is right.

Regarding the Tina thing, it was definitely rushed, especially since there was literally nothing romantic between them in the whole first movie, except maybe the end part where they're stumbling over their words. Despite knowing how movies work and knowing that they were the male and female lead, I still found that completely out of left field, because they don't really share any interests and I didn't feel like they felt anything in particular for each other before that. She really wants to be an auror and feels really intensely about it; he just wants to travel the world and write about magical creatures and take care of them. I don't see a lot of compatibility there, and the movie didn't really do anything to reconcile that gap.

Jacob and Queenie made sense, because they actually sowed some seeds for it. It's not even about the fact that they both like to cook; they showed an interest in each other throughout. They noticeably like each other. Newt and Tina never really had that, to me, so it was bizarre for her to become his primary motivation in the second movie.

Queenie's trajectory in movie 2 overall bothers me, so while I agree it would have been better if they'd centered it more around her, I definitely think they needed to drastically rewrite pretty much everything she did. Enchanting Jacob at the beginning never sat well with me; I usually only have to say this in the Descendants fandom, but if one half of the ship is magical and the other half isn't, we can't have the magical one enchanting the non-magical one for romantic reasons without addressing what a violation of trust that is. Like, Jacob would be justified for never trusting her again, over that. Also, the fact that she apparently holds it against people if they think bad things about her is not something I would expect from someone who has been a Legilimens as long as she has, and not a detail I like, at all. Especially since it was used to give her justification to be mad at Jacob after she enchanted him in the first place. I find it sad, because Queenie was definitely my favorite character in the first movie. (Also, joining Grindelwald was a nonsensical thing to do. I can only assume she's there to spy on him or something, because it makes literally no sense.)

As for Leta, I really don't like how that was approached. First of all, I don't like how their mention of her in the first movie was "She was a taker; you need a giver," because once we actually met the character, that only made me resent Queenie for representing her that way. Leta deserved better in pretty much every way, and they definitely shouldn't have killed her off like that. I find the whole situation really iffy from a racial standpoint. The first black character to be written three-dimensionally in all of HP lore, and they make sure to preemptively tell the audience that she's a "taker", kill her in the same movie we meet her, and manage to trivialize her death by turning it into a little "Who was she saying 'I love you' to?" mystery. I like her relationship with Newt and Theseus, and I'd definitely want to see more of it.

Yes, it definitely would have been better, thematically, if they'd made the love interest a Muggle. (I'd honestly say they should've paired Newt with Jacob, but I know they're unwilling to do that. That would be kind of cool, though, to see the movie shaping up with two male characters and two female characters and have the men end up with each other and the women just live their lives as humans.)

With the story they ended up telling, though, I don't think that is needed; since Queenie is already dealing with the wizard/Muggle storyline, Newt could have a different conflict. Maybe his love interest should be a werewolf or something, to tie in the wizarding world's unresolved dislike for "half-breeds". And if he were in a relationship with someone already regarded as a creature, the wider wizarding world might take a different view to his studies and look down on him a lot more. Idk, a thought.

And then, with Leta/Theseus and Grindelwald/Dumbledore (if they were willing to actually deal with that), they'd pretty much hit every controversial beat they've got: wizard/Muggle, wizard/"half-breed", interracial, homosexual. Credence and Nagini are both creatures, kind of, but I still like them together, so their relationship doesn't have to tie into any theme; it just has to be developed way more.

On the whole, Crimes of Grindelwald felt like they skipped a movie. It feels like they needed a middle installment to make these relationships happen, instead of jumping from "Do Newt and Tina maybe have feelings for each other?" to "Newt loves Tina and Tina is possessive enough of Newt to be outwardly upset with him when she thinks he's engaged to someone else," and creating a whole relationship between Credence and Nagini that we see none of.

The fact that Queenie and Jacob were done well in the first movie gives me a fair amount of goodwill for them, but that goodwill only offers enough cushioning from the botching that movie 2 did that I'm near-indifferent to the ship, now, instead of actively opposed. I'd like to see things improved, but as it currently stands, I'd be just as happy seeing them end up not together as together. The fact that Leta's relationships with Newt and Theseus were more interesting than any of the aforementioned makes it that much more ridiculous that they killed her. What ship am I supposed to care about how? If I can't go into the next movie delusionally hoping Newt and Leta will get some moments, or enjoying the Theseus and Leta content, then I'll just be sitting there waiting for Credence and Nagini to share a screen, and who knows when that'll happen?

#long post #fantastic beasts and where to find them #crimes of grindelwald #newt scamander #leta lestrange #theseus scamander #jacob kowalski #queenie goldstein #tina goldstein #credence barebone #nagini

[maxerikson]

The Character Development of Sonic the Hedgehog: A Character Analysis

The Sonic the Hedgehog video game series is one that does not require very deep or complicated stories to go with their games. Due to the simplistic nature of the franchise, its characters are probably best described as two-dimensional, which would be fine, because they don’t require that third dimension of depth. The main character himself, Sonic the Hedgehog, doesn’t even have much character development throughout the series; at least at first glance that would seem to be the case, but I am here to tell you all that Sonic the Hedgehog has gone through a lot of character development throughout his adventures, making him very three-dimensional. There are four key character arcs that Sonic has gone through over the course of the main series, and I’m going to go over all of them while examining Sonic’s development in the major installments.

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From Loner to Team Player

I believe at the very start of the series, Sonic the Hedgehog was a loner, who had trouble making friends and might have even closed himself off to others. In Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic was the only playable character, and the only other character in the whole game was the villain, Dr. Eggman. More characters appeared in later titles, many more, but none of them are people Sonic knew before Sonic 1. They were all strangers to Sonic when they first appeared. Another piece of evidence comes from Amy Rose. Several years ago now, Sega did a mock Q&A with Sonic, and one of the questions asked of him was why he wasn’t interested in Amy. His answer was because he was too busy with his adventures to have a relationship (although there’s also an inappropriate age difference between the two, with Sonic being 15 years old, and Amy being 12).

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that this makes it hard to form any relationship, whether romantic or platonic. Being able to move as fast as he can, the world around Sonic is just too slow for him, and the people that were in his life before Tails and Amy likely just couldn’t keep up. Not only that, but his powers and his status as a hero likely make him a target, which would make him dangerous to be around, as if his super speed didn’t make him dangerous enough already. However, Amy would force her way into Sonic’s life, not minding the danger, and in the Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic met Tails, who was able to keep up with him thanks to his propeller-like twin tails, and tagged along on his adventure to stop Eggman from destroying West Island in his search for the Chaos Emeralds. Tails may have been Sonic’s first real friend in who knows how long, maybe even ever.

That being said, Sonic still saw Tails and Amy as people he had to protect, and he had trouble getting along with people like Knuckles, who was also quite the loner, although much more so than Sonic. Then Sonic Adventure 1 took place, and it seemed like Sonic’s fears were coming true. When the Tornado 1 was shot down during the first attack on the Egg Carrier, Sonic and Tails were separated. Sonic had no idea if Tails was OK, so he needed to find him quickly, but Amy just had to show up asking for him to help a lost birdie. Sonic never agreed to this, but when Zero arrived to capture Amy and the bird, Sonic was determined to rescue them, but Zero escaped with them. Sonic had failed to protect his friends, and he wouldn’t have needed to if he was their friend in the first place.

Sonic didn’t have long to dwell on this failure, however, because Tails almost immediately appeared in his Tornado 2, which he and Sonic used to attack the Egg Carrier, and this time successfully made on board, where they find out that Amy had already escaped custody...with help from an Eggman robot, no less! In this moment, Sonic has learned that his friends can take care of themselves, meaning he can have friends without putting them in danger.

The story for Sonic Adventure 1 had a central theme that was used as the inspiration for the main song, Open Your Heart. The story was all about how you need to open your heart to others, because closing yourself off will create a cycle of pain and hatred. This lesson was put into words when Sonic gave his speech to Tikal before the final boss battle, telling her why they shouldn’t just seal Chaos back into the Master Emerald. I believe Sonic wouldn’t have been able to make this speech at the beginning of the game, because it’s a lesson he’s been learning since the beginning of the series, and it had just sunk in. That speech is the climax of Sonic letting his friends be part of his life, but it isn’t the finale.

In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic found himself framed for a crime he didn’t commit and thrown in Prison Island. How did he escape? He didn’t—at least not by himself. It was actually Amy who released Sonic from his cell while Tails was keeping Dr. Eggman busy. Not only could Sonic’s friends take care of themselves, but they can even be relied on to save the day when Sonic can’t. Sonic is shown to have learned this lesson when he gets trapped on the ARK, and about to be jettisoned to his apparent death; during that scene he tells Tails to take care of Amy, letting him know that Sonic has full faith in him to be a hero in Sonic’s absence. By Sonic Heroes, Sonic has become a true team player, treating Tails and Knuckles as equals as they worked together to stop Eggman.

A lot of this is intertwined with the next area of development I’m about to talk about, which is….

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Sonic’s Confidence

Sonic the Character is well known for his confidence. A lot of people view him as cocky, but I’ve never seen him as such. However, I believe that’s because by Sonic Adventure 1, he’s already lost a good chunk of that cockiness (all games before SA1 had what I like to call ‘video game stories’, with little-to-no dialogue or cutscenes). One way a person can combat loneliness is by convincing themselves that they don’t need other people in their lives—they’re awesome enough by themselves! Sonic in particular wouldn’t need to try that hard to convince himself of this. He was able to defeat Eggman and destroy his base in Sonic 1 all by himself, and no-one even died. He got some help from Tails in Sonic 2 and 3, but he was basically support. Speaking of Sonic 3, this game basically started with Sonic, as Super Sonic, getting the super knocked out of him when Knuckles caught him by surprise. That definitely would have been a blow to Sonic’s ego. First Metal Sonic and now this gullible Knucklehead? Sonic keeps finding opponents who can actually go toe-to-toe with him.

Still, as far as Sonic was concerned, he needed to be as unstoppable as he believed himself to be. No-one else can do what he can, which means saving the world was his responsibility alone. Now I would like to point out something I said in the previous section: “Sonic had failed to protect his friends” in Sonic Adventure 1. Sonic experienced his first real failure, and what happened? Tails and Amy turned up OK without Sonic saving them. Sonic doesn’t always need to protect them, something that is further proven in Sonic Adventure 2, which also featured more of Sonic’s failure. First, he’s captured by G.U.N. after being framed by theft, then he meets Shadow—the guy who framed him—and learns that this lookalike can outclass him. First Knuckles, now this faker? Sonic keeps meeting people who can make dents in his ego. Speaking of which, he’s immediately captured by G.U.N. again, and needs Tails and Amy to rescue him. Then there’s the final boss battle, during which Shadow—who was fighting alongside Sonic—apparently dies, and although the two of them saved the planet from destruction, Sonic couldn’t save Shadow.

Sonic has realized that he’s not invincible, but he also doesn’t need to carry the whole weight of the world on his shoulders, because his friends can help. We know Sonic has learned this lesson, because at the end of Team Sonic’s story in Sonic Heroes, Sonic admits to Knuckles that he wouldn’t have been able succeed in this journey without him and Tails, and thanks him; and you know this is a big deal because Knuckles responds with an expression of utter shock! Does this mean Sonic Heroes is the end of this particularly character arc for Sonic? No, because now Sonic was underconfident. Once someone realizes they’re not as amazing as they believed themselves to be, they begin feeling inadequate. This is best illustrated in Sonic Unleashed. At the beginning of this game, Sonic is at his lowest point. Eggman  not only defeated Sonic’s super form, but used the power from it to split the planet apart. As a result of this failure, Sonic was turned into a beastly werehog, and he accidentally gave someone amnesia (or so he believes).

Later in the game, Sonic is found by Amy, but she thinks she’s confused a stranger for Sonic, so she apologizes and runs off to find her crush. Considering how much Sonic finds Amy’s crush on him annoying, you’d think Sonic would be delighted by this, but nope! He’s clearly saddened by this, and we get a mopey werehog. That’s because his werehog form is a reminder of his failure, and of his self-perceived inadequacy; but then Chip regains his memories and reveals he’s actually Light Gaia. Sonic theorizes that this is why he’s still himself on the inside when he turns into a werehog, because Chip was with him that whole time, but Chip tells Sonic that it was all Sonic. It was Sonic’s own willpower that kept him sane. I would also like to point out that this is the first main series game in a long time in which Sonic is the only playable character. That’s why I think it’s very important that the main theme of this game’s story is about Sonic realizing the power he had inside himself all along, regaining his confidence and becoming Super Sonic once more to defeat Dark Gaia.

In short, Sonic went from being overconfident to underconfident to confident. However, he’s still very impulsive.

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Chaos Impulse Control

It only makes sense that someone with super speed would lack patience, and while Sonic has always been shown to be pretty impatient, it wasn’t until Sonic Lost World that it came to be an important part of a game’s story, at least explicitly. I feel like there are examples throughout the main series where Sonic’s impulsiveness was reflected in gameplay and level design. The only examples I can think of from the top of my head though are two from Sonic Adventure 1. Perhaps one of the reasons that orca attacked was because it was startled by Sonic running through its enclosure at such high speeds? Maybe Sonic was the one who accidentally caused that avalanche he had to snowboard away from? Who knows? All I do know, is that Sonic Lost World was the first game that really made full use of Sonic’s impulsiveness.

In SLW, Sonic recklessly got rid of the conch Eggman was using to control the Deadly Six, which made things worse. Sonic’s impulsiveness then got Tails captured and almost roboticized. In the end, Sonic acknowledged his mistakes and apologized to Tail; so does that mean Sonic has learned his lesson? Well, yes, but I believe this will continue to happen. Allow me to repeat myself: Sonic has super speed. Living life with such a power is definitely going to be like living with attention deficiency and hyperactivity. The world is always going to feel too slow for Sonic, which means he’s always going to be in a rush to make things faster. It’s something he’s probably going to live with for most of his remaining life, even if he’s aware of it. Luckily, he has friends who can support him by helping him reign himself in, or by helping him fix his mistakes when he is unable to.

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Before I move on to the fourth and final area of Sonic’s character development, you may have noticed that there are three major Sonic games I haven’t mentioned so far. That’s because Sonic doesn’t go through any development in Sonic Colors or Sonic Forces. On the surface, that seems to be the same for Sonic Generations, but just think about it for a few seconds: Sonic is traveling through his past during this game. He is seeing a lot of reminders of his past, which could make him think back and reflect on the lessons he’s learned since beginning his adventures on South Island, reaffirming those lessons onto himself; and don’t forget, there are two of him in this game. While Modern Sonic is reflecting on his past, Classic Sonic is getting a glimpse of his future; of the person he could eventually become and the lessons he’ll need to learn to reach that point.

Still, that’s mostly headcanon. It would have been nice if it were more explicit though, and Sonic actually talked about this stuff at least a little. At least we got Sonic telling his past self that his future “is going to be great,” clarifying that Sonic is happy with where he is in life, and that he doesn’t hold any regrets. Which begs the question: What else is there left for Sonic? Well, there is one more part of himself that Sonic is still learning about….

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Sonic’s Powers

How is Sonic able to move so fast? So far, fans haven’t been given an answer, and Sonic doesn’t appear to know either. Remember when I said Sega did a mock Q&A with Sonic? Well, in that Q&A, Sonic revealed that he was able to run at super speed for as long as he could remember, with no idea how or why he has this power. Although we have yet to be given an answer in these games, we have  gotten at least one game where Sonic was shown to be thinking about it, and one where he might have been.

When Sonic and Shadow were working together during the final boss battle in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow exclaimed that he figured out that Sonic is the ultimate lifeform, not Shadow. How...is this possible? Shadow was supposed to have been created by Prof. Robotnik to be the ultimate lifeform. There are hints in the game that Robotnik took inspiration from Angel Island’s hieroglyphs, which we know from Sonic & Knuckles depict Sonic, but I want to focus more on the game’s final scene, which shows Sonic thinking about what Shadow said, and how Prof. Robotnik was trying to create the ultimate lifeform.

“Am I really the ultimate lifeform? What does that mean exactly? Does it have anything to do with my speed?” These are likely the questions going through Sonic’s head after these events. That scene hinted at Sonic having questions about his own origins, and he might have been given his first real clue; but has this come up again at all during the series? Perhaps it did, in Sonic Unleashed.

Remember how Chip said Sonic was still Sonic even when he was a werehog because of the power inside of him? Is that just Sonic’s inner strength and willpower, or could it also have something to do with him being the ultimate lifeform? That’s probably what Sonic’s thinking at this time, but who knows?

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Conclusion

Sonic began his adventures as an arrogant loner with impulse control issues, but over time he has grown into a humble team player with impulse control issues. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but I think it’s pretty important. The next, logical thing to do with Sonic as a character is to explore the origins of his powers, at least if we want to see more character development, but it isn’t the only option. Another path writers could take is relapse, and I think Sonic Forces has created an opportunity for this route, despite its awful story. At the beginning of this game, Sonic gets defeated and imprisoned for six months. During that time, Eggman conquered most of the world, all because Sonic was there, basically proving Sonic’s former belief that he needs to be the one to save everyone as correct.

If I had to choose though, I’d rather see more about Sonic’s powers. Still, what should Sega do if Sonic’s character becomes fully developed? Is it time for a reboot? No, not necessarily. There’s nothing wrong with a flat character arc, after all. Instead of having Sonic improve himself, future stories could exclusively portray the characters around them going through character arcs as a result of Sonic’s actions and his relationships with them. That’s technically already something we see in most Sonic games, but that’s while Sonic is going through his own character arcs, at least in the major installments. In minor main series Sonic games, like Sonic Rush, it doesn’t seem like Sonic goes through any development, but the characters around him do. That could become the norm if Sonic completes his development, and that’s OK.

Here’s the big question though: Was any of this character development intentional? Probably not. At the very least, I doubt it was planned by Sega’s higher-ups, and more like the result of individual writers each trying to create the best stories they can, and then all of that work put together created a happy accident. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Sonic lived and learned to open his heart, and to work with his friends to become stronger together, while also acknowledging the endless possibility of what’s inside of him. Sonic the Hedgehog is my favorite video game character, and realizing all of this just makes him even better in my point of view. With this analysis, I hope I’ll get people to appreciate his character as much as I do.

#sonic #hedgehog #sega #character #development #analysis #story #video games

[hilltopsunset]

4 Ways to Breathe New Life into the Pokémon Franchise

I love the Pokémon franchise. It’s because I love it that I truly want new installments of the game to feel meaningful, to make an impact, and to provide players with something new, different, and worth coming back for without relying on complexities that could turn away new players.

As I will talk about in a later blog post, Game Freak seems afraid to stretch Pokémon’s creative muscles any further; meaningful innovation has been petering out since the end of Generation IV in lieu of minigames like Pokémon Contests and Super Training alongside inconsequential time sinks like Secret Bases and Poké Pelago. While I do enjoy the inclusion of things to do outside the main storyline, these additional events and sidequests should not be the only significant additions to new generations of main-series Pokémon games.

The main attractions of recent generations have provided slight twists to gameplay with the addition of mega evolution and Z-moves, but these changes don’t fundamentally change or challenge the way players experience the game on a moment-to-moment basis. And despite the graphical and processing power of recent gaming devices, and even the long-awaited shift of the franchise to a main console, we are still getting the same low-effort and outdated battle animations we’ve been seeing since X and Y. We are continually denied a more genuine battle experience with Pokémon physically interacting with each other through animations that more appropriately suit each Pokémon’s unique identity.

So what can be done? Here’s a short but detailed list of 4 things I would like to see in a new Pokémon game, in no particular order of importance.

1.       Let the Player Character Be an Active Part of the Story

When has the player character ever been a consequential part of a Pokémon game? They never speak; they never have any personality whatsoever. They never experience any growth, regardless of NPC’s trying desperately to iterate how much the trainer has grown over the course of their journey. Certainly the Pokémon carried by the player character have some impact on the story, but the trainer?

Let them speak! Let the player character actually interact with NPCs in meaningful ways rather than just listening at all times. Give the trainer a personality of some sort. Don’t just slap a never-changing pleasant face onto the model regardless of tense, frightening, or sinister scenarios (I’m looking at you, Sun and Moon). 

Giving the player character a more active role in the story provides intrigue—as a player, it doesn’t feel compelling being pulled from one place to another; it’s not interesting when the only thing pushing me forward is NPCs telling me I need to get the gym badges, or stop Team Rocket. It would be much more interesting if the Player Character had some imperative reason to pursue these endeavors, rather than get involved simply because “it’s the right thing to do” or, worse, “it’s the ONLY thing to do.” I want to watch the character I’m controlling grow as a person and make choices that have positive or negative consequences on people they care about and the places they visit, rather than be a perpetual observer of events with no real stake in the game.

2.       Trainer Levels

Speaking of the player character, create a leveling system for them. There are so many possibilities for a system where the trainer more actively impacts gameplay. For instance, there could be a class system and each class can have unique skill trees that provide access to passive and/or active abilities that improve how the trainer interacts with the world throughout the game. It could be required to choose your path at the beginning of the game, or perhaps you can access them all throughout the game, but can only have one active at a time.

Here’s a list of example possibilities:

Explorer: The explorer class specializes in travel, as well as tracking and catching new Pokémon—this tree can be subdivided into those paths: Travel, Tracking, and Catching. This tree provides skills that assist them in accessing otherwise inaccessible locations, increasing encounter rates with rare Pokémon, and specializing in different types of Poké balls to improve catch chances. Experience for this class is gained through catching Pokémon, encountering rare Pokémon, and exploring (walking in new places, finding treasure, accessing hidden areas, etc.).

Combatant: The combatant class excels at offensive battle prowess through its three branches: Type Affinity, Commands, and Reputation. This tree allows a trainer to specialize in certain Pokémon types (up to 2) to improve their STAB damage. Eventually, you can get a skill that provides STAB for your specialized types even for Pokémon not of those types! You gain access to in-battle shout commands that provide momentary buffs to your party, like improving damage, resisting a big attack, or improving critical hit ratio. A strong reputation will allow you to avoid battle even with trainers who have caught your eye; and in battle, an enemy Pokémon may flinch due to your intimidating presence. Experience is gained by knocking out Pokémon, winning battles, using moves of your type specialization, and issuing commands.

Breeder: The breeder focuses on developing deep relationships with their Pokémon. Skills of this class can be divided into the Breeding, Bonding, and Healing branches. Through this tree, trainers can hatch eggs more quickly, improve high IV chance from newborn Pokémon, develop friendship levels more quickly, etc. Bonding provides Pokémon with beneficial defensive capabilities during battle, like providing a chance to survive an attack that would otherwise bring HP to 0, and having a strong will to resist abnormal status effects like paralysis and confusion. A Breeder’s knowledge of caretaking allows for healing outside of battle, and can even teach Pokémon how to slowly recover in-battle. Experience is gained through hatching eggs, developing friendships with your Pokémon (through feeding/petting, etc.), participating in Contests/minigames, and having Pokémon in your party with whom you have developed a close relationship.

The establishment of a class system like this, where experience is gained through different means relevant to each class, incentivizes players to participate in those aspects of the game, and provides extra rewards for players who already want to get involved. It makes the trainer feel like a relevant and impactful part of the team, rather than a hollow vehicle strictly used to lug the real heroes—your team of Pokémon—from battle to battle.

And for those who think the inclusion of such a mechanic would trivialize the content, I have several suggestions: first, they could easily make the game content more difficult to compensate. Second, they could mitigate the strength of these class skills during key battles like Gym Leaders, the Elite Four, the Enemy Team (Rocket, Galaxy, etc.). Third, NPCs (especially the aforementioned key NPCs) could have access to these skills as well. Remember, I’m asking for significant changes, and this would provide something new, interesting, and impactful.

 3.       Battle Animations

Update them. It’s that simple. Let Blastoise shoot water out of his water cannons rather than out of his face. Let Scorbunny run up to its opponent and give it a nice kick! Get rid of the old, outdated animations of a drawn foot—we now have well-rendered 3D monsters on gaming systems capable of handling the graphical processing necessary for this to happen. Give each Pokémon a more unique identity with their animations; make them feel like they’re actually in a battle with one another. It’s time.

I acknowledge that providing significant animation updates for the 800+ models is an enormous undertaking that would require a massive amount of time and manpower to make possible. To this I say: spend the time doing that rather than developing Dynamax or whatever. Spend the time on more significant animation development instead of wasting that time on another gimmick that isn’t going to significantly impact gameplay anyway.

To be honest, this point alone would be enough to convince me to buy a new Pokémon game.

 4.       Populate the World with Pokémon

I know that the Let’s Go series and Sword/Shield did this a little bit, and while it certainly wasn’t executed perfectly, it was fun running around and actually seeing all the Pokémon that inhabit it. Spawn rates in both games were often a bit too high, resulting in cluttered areas. Adding aggressive Pokémon would further enhance the immersive experience—being required to sneak around certain stronger Pokémon could be a really fun mechanic and provide tension; it was a bit too easy to avoid Pokémon in Let’s Go and in the Wild Area. While it was nice to get through Mt. Moon without encountering a single Zubat, imagine instead running through a section of the cave with a trail of 15 Zubats on your tail? Make me work for it a little!

Ultimately, I want to see Pokémon behaving more naturally in their habitats, and not just in sections of the world that I can’t get to. I want to run into a Caterpie hanging from a tree, or a Fearow fishing for Goldeen, or a Pikachu grooming itself. I want to interrupt Pokémon from their lives, not run into a giant gaggle of automatons circling tiny areas for no reason.

So there it is: a look at just a few things Pokémon games could include to make things more interesting and breathe new life into an aging franchise. These changes would require work, but any new game should—I would hate to see Pokémon continue the troubling trend of easy and/or insignificant content when there is so much potential to do so much with what they have.

With all that said, I do want to offer a bit of praise—Sirfetch’d and Galarian Ponyta are pretty awesome, and Galarian Weezing is perfectly ridiculous. But I ask that you keep in mind what your money is telling Game Freak when you purchase their games: it tells them that you don’t mind the severe lack of innovation and improvement. It tells them you don’t mind Scorbunny hopping in place as a giant, orange, human foot strikes its opponent. It tells them that you’re willing to fund their copy/paste animations from 6 years ago, their uninspired gameplay updates, and their ever-increasing focus on gimmicks and minigames.

As for me, I will continue holding Pokémon to a higher standard and hoping that, eventually, Blastoise will fire water from his cannons.  

#pokemon #game review #game freak #hilltop sunset #suggestions

[jokertrap-ran]

(未定事件簿) 夏彦 SR [忆中人] [Tears of Themis] Xia Yan SR [Reminiscent Person] Card Story Translations (Part 1)

*Tears of Themis Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Xia Yan’s personal tag will be #Tears of a PI. Personal master-list under construction!

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / SMS

Location: Shopping Mall

MC: This is the place?

Xia Yan: That's right, this is it, based on the address.

It was a weekend and Xia Yan and I came to an Experience Hall of Tacit Understanding that had recently gained much popularity.

The owner of this Store had specially crafted and designed various questions and levels to test all players that participated in the game. Despite the fact that there were best friends and siblings alike coming to challenge this game, couples still made up a larger portion of the players here.

Speaking of which, the only reason why Xia Yan and I even came here to have fun was because of the commission that he had received last week.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Home

I had only just returned home after a busy day when my phone suddenly vibrated to life.

I picked up my phone, seeing that it was Xia Yan calling.

MC: Hello? Xia Yan? What's up?

Xia Yan: (Y/n), ever heard of the Experience Hall of Tacit Understanding?

MC: The Experience Hall of Tacit Understanding?

Xia Yan: ...They call it an experience, but it's actually something that two people have to get through together.

Xia Yan: You'll have to play some games that test your Tacit Understanding on each and every level or answer a difficult question. You must past the test to proceed onto the next level.

MC: I seem to recall my colleagues talking about something like this...but I've never been there before.

MC: Why are you suddenly asking me this?

Xia Yan's voice paused on the other end of the line.

Xia Yan: Oh...I just accepted a job, and they want me to investigate this particular Store.

MC: Is there something wrong with this Store?

Xia Yan: No, it's just that the Client's girlfriend really wants to try this Store out, but eight or nine out of ten of the friends around him had broken up with their significant others after having participated in it.  

Xia Yan: He's afraid of being used by his girlfriend and not acting up to standard when playing, so he sent me to investigate just what exactly they're going to be playing inside that Store.

MC: But...why not just ask his friends about it then?

Xia Yan: Of course, he did, but the Store had recently changed their running theme and even increased the difficulty.

Xia Yan: He even concealed the fact from his girlfriend that he had gone off and played through it once with a friend of his...acting as a couple...

Xia Yan: But they only managed to survive the first round due to insufficient Tacit Understanding…

Having listened up till this point, I could already guess what Xia Yan was pretty much trying to get at.

MC: So, you're saying that you want me to investigate this Experience Hall with you, right?

Xia Yan: Yes. I can't think of anyone else who'd be my partner besides you.

Xia Yan: Plus, you're also the one who understands me best.

I couldn't do anything to help my slightly reddening face as his gentle voice reached my ears through the phone.

Xia Yan: Unless you're not confident in getting across the hurdles?

MC: Why would I be? We'll definitely clear it all without a hitch!

MC: Don't forget that I'm still your Watson after all!

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Looking at how eager Xia Yan was, I smiled and asked him.

MC: I thought you said that you didn't accept commissions that had anything to do with relationships?

He jolted, his expression looking a little unnatural on his face.

Xia Yan: …Actually, this Client's a relative of a friend of mine, so this can be considered as me doing him a favor.

Xia Yan: And what he asked me to investigate was the content of this game...so strictly speaking, it's not really considered as a commission related to relationships.

MC: This job doesn't look like it has space for development, but yet you're still so actively invested in it...

MC: Are you sure it's really not because you personally want to play this game too?

Xia Yan: How can that be…? I've always been this way towards each and every commission...

Looking at my seemingly smiling, yet un-smiling face, Xia Yan stammered as he tried to come up with an excuse.

But in the end, he only sighed helplessly.

Xia Yan: Alright. You've seen through me… I only agreed to take this job on because I was curious about it.

Xia Yan: But curiosity isn't all there is to it, I also thought that...

MC: What?

His voice gradually faded off and I didn't manage to catch whatever he had said after.

Xia Yan: Nothing, I was just distracted earlier.

Xia Yan: Oh yes, take this. I've installed a miniature camera on it.

I lowered my head, spotting a delicate and exquisite looking bracelet lying on in his hand.

MC: How exquisite. It doesn't look at all like the piece of "Detective Equipment" it is.

Xia Yan laughed, clasping the bracelet onto my wrist.

Xia Yan: Do you like it? You can keep it if you do since it was something made for you to begin with.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Experience Hall's Front Desk

We walked into the shop entrance after having prepared ourselves, the Front Desk Clerk coming up to greet us with a smile.

Front Desk Clerk: Good afternoon to the both of you; do you have a reservation?

Xia Yan: Yes, my surname's Xia.

Xia Yan whipped out his phone and showed the Clerk his reservation details.

Front Desk Clerk: Mr. Xia, yes? … Here it is. You've made a booking for the Couple's Package with the theme of the "Cursed Castle".

Since this Establishment would slightly adjust the content of the game in regard to the relationship between players, we decided to register as a couple.

Despite knowing that this was all just for work, my heart still skipped a beat when I heard the words "couple".

Discreetly peeking at him, I realized that his ears were a little red.

Xia Yan: Yes… That's right.

Front Desk Clerk: Alright then. Welcome, both of you. Please follow me to get yourself registered.

Front Desk Clerk: You cannot use your mobile phones during the game, so the both of you should go store yours.

Front Desk Clerk: The both of you can go wait in the Rest Area for a bit. Another member of the staff will come look for you later.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Rest Area

We both walked to the Rest Area and managed to coincidentally catch sight of a couple leaving the Challenge House.

They both had their heads bowed and didn't seem to be in a very good mood, leaving the Experience Hall one after another in silence.

MC: Looks like they weren't successful in clearing it.

Xia Yan: That doesn't seem to be all… looks like they had a fight too.

MC: I actually thought nothing of this at first, but now that I've seen them like that...

MC: I'm actually starting to get a little nervous...

Suddenly, the piercing sound of a quarrel cut me off.

Female Player: You even forgot the place where we had our first date!?

Male Player: I'm sorry, okay? It was so long ago; I really couldn't remember.

Female Player: Long? You think of even such a short period of time long!? Do you think there's no meaning to being together with me!?

Male Player: Can you stop making a big fuss out of nothing!? Didn't you also forget what my favorite ballgame team was!?

Female Player: I don't usually watch ball games. Plus, you were the one who used up all the hints! Yet you still dare to talk back to me!?

Under the watchful and surprised eyes of the people around them, she gave her boyfriend a shove before leaving, never once looking back.

The guy stood there stunned for a moment before walking out of the door, cursing and swearing.

MC: ……

Xia Yan: ……

MC: Looks like the percentage of a successful clear isn't very high...

Staff Member: Both of you, it'll be your turn very soon. Come with me to fill out a questionnaire first.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Under the guidance of the Staff Member, Xia Yan and I were brought to separate areas to fill in our own questionnaires.

The questions were simple enough and included things like my habits, likes, dislikes, memorable things, etc.; probably information to be used in the game.

I raised my hand to tuck my hair back behind my ear, turning the lens of the hidden camera on the bracelet I wore to face the questionnaire, snapping images of the questions as I filled them in.

After answering the questionnaires, Xia Yan and I were both led away by the Staff Member, officially entering the doors of the “Challenge House”.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Inside the Challenge House

Behind the door was a dark room that resembled an abandoned residence, it's walls covered in "cobwebs".

???: Welcome to the “Cursed Castle” experience, I am the Gamemaster of this place.

Gamemaster: Please remember every word I say as you carefully explore the secrets of this Castle.

Another Staff Member appeared beside us. He was dressed in an impeccable black swallowtail coat, elegant and graceful.

Gamemaster: You will now be faced with the first stage of the challenge—— Silent Tacit Understanding. There are three segments to this level…

Gamemaster: You'll have 15 minutes for each segment, and you'll have to answer 10 questions correctly to proceed onto the next segment. I will explain the requirements of each segment in detail to you before the game begins.

Gamemaster: The both of you will only have 3 chances to ask for help throughout this entire game, so please use it wisely.

Gamemaster: That should be all the rules. Do either of you have any questions?

Xia Yan: No problems on my end. How 'bout you? You ready for this?

He looked at me, all smiles.

MC: Of course I am! Let's get this game started!

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Inside the Challenge House

The Tacit Understanding Challenge began after the Gamemaster had explained all the rules.

The first segment was a game of draw and guess. Xia Yan drew, and I guessed 

Xia Yan wasn't good at it by any means, for the horse he had drawn back in Art Class had been recognized as a pig by our fellow classmate… But we'd taken to sending each other Holiday Greeting Cards on a yearly basis ever since we were kids, and there would always be one of his "masterpieces" drawn on it…

So that's why it's easier for me to recognize what exactly he was drawing.

Gamemaster: You have both successfully completed the challenge in 6 minutes.

Xia Yan: This sort of difficulty won't pose a problem for us at all.

Gamemaster: This segment's just a warmup, so don't underestimate it.

Xia Yan: Then, what are we going to be playing in the second segment? Please don't tell me Charades...

Gamemaster: Mngh… That's right. The lady will be the one making the gestures and this time, Mister, you'll be the one guessing.

I took a slip of paper from the wooden box that the Gamemaster held.

MC: (Graceful and slender figure? How very coincidental…)

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Hall Party

Xia Yan and I used to often play Charades with each other in the past.

The first time we played this game was back we were both still in high school, at a party 

MC: (Graceful and slender figure…? Just how am I supposed to act this out?)

MC: Xia Yan, it's an idiom. Four words.

Xia Yan: I know this, I know! It's "To dance for joy"!

Xia Yan: Ah? That's "To act in confusion!"

Xia Yan: Uh... “To make threatening gestures”...?

MC: ……

Xia Yan had his back turned to the projector screen and was thus unable to see the answer being projected onto it, but all our other classmates could…

At this point, everyone was already breathless with laughter.

Classmate A: (Y/n), he thinks you've gone bonkers!

Classmate B: Hahahaha! To make threatening gestures…? Pft— heh, it's getting more outrageous by the minute...hahaha…!!

My face flushed in front of the entire class, and I ended up darting out of the door to make my speedy escape.

Xia Yan freaked out, immediately running out after me to apologize, even reciting "graceful and slender figure" ten times over.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

I couldn't help but to smile as I recalled that one embarrassing experience of ours.

Xia Yan became a little suspicious when he saw how I was barely able to hold back my smile.

I winked at him before imitating my actions from back then, awkwardly twisting my body twice.

Xia Yan, who was at the side, blurted out the four words:

Xia Yan: Graceful and slender figure!

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

After successfully answering a couple more questions in succession, Xia Yan and I eventually reached the last segment of the first stage.

The Staff Member led us to a table where various food items were laid out along with some exquisite ornaments.

Gamemaster: In this segment, one of you will have to guess the word whilst blindfolded.

Gamemaster: The answer spans across books, people, film and television works, and more, but they can all be derived through inference all the same.

Gamemaster: Now, I will blindfold this man here and give the lady the answer to this puzzle.

The Gamemaster turned to face me.

Gamemaster: You can choose to use anything in this room here that's related to the answer to convey what it is to this man here.

MC: But he's blindfolded, so just how will I...

MC: I get it now! He has to guess what I'm holding before he can try making inferences as to what the answer to the puzzle really is!

Gamemaster: Correct.

Xia Yan: Can she describe how it looks to me?

Gamemaster: No. Please keep in mind that you cannot use words to hint the other.

After saying so, the Gamemaster pulled out a black handkerchief and handed it to me.

I took the handkerchief from him, tying it securely around Xia Yan's head.

MC: Is it too tight? Is it constricting your eyes?

Xia Yan's soft hair slid between my fingers, a faint fragrance wafting from his locks.

Xia Yan: Nope, just nice.

I took his hand and helped him seat himself onto the chair.

MC: I'll go look for something so stay put and wait for me!

I opened up the small slip of paper that the Gamemaster handed me. The answer to the puzzle was none other than "Sherlock Holmes".

MC: It's the name of a book… Just what can be related to the name of this book?

I looked to the lavishly arranged assortment of food on the table, feeling a little at a loss. Suddenly, peanut candy entered my field of vision.

MC: (Peanut… Watson…)

MC: (I'm sure he'll be able to guess the wordplay if I use this.)

Picking up the peanut sweet, I walked back to him.

MC: Xia Yan… Open your mouth.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Xia Yan was sitting quietly on the chair, startling slightly upon hearing my voice. But he opened his mouth slightly without a moment's hesitation.

This was the first time that I've ever really looked at his lips. They were thin, but were absolutely soft-looking.

MC: ……

Xia Yan: What's wrong?

His voice of suspicion snapped me out of my thoughts, and I hurriedly moved to place the peanut sweet into his mouth.

His lips were as warm and soft as I'd imagined, not doing anything to help my reddening face. Feeling the sensation of food between his lips and teeth, Xia Yan instinctively dove at it with his mouth.

My fingers registered the fleeting feeling of something warm and wet, which was probably his tongue.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

MC: Ah…

I jerked backwards, as if I had just received an electric shock, causing the peanut candy to also slip from his mouth, following my abrupt retreat.

MC: S-Sorry…! I'll go get another!

Xia Yan: No worries… I'll wait for you...

His voice turned a little hoarse.

I turned around, only to see the Gamemaster watching the both of us with interest.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

(CG)

I darted out of his line of side and hurriedly went to fetch another piece of candy.

⊳  Select blindfold

Xia Yan's eyes were tightly bound by the pitch-black cloth. Under the dim light, I could see the hints of a blush dusting his features.

MC: (I really wanna run my hands through his hair…)

MC: (Wait, no! What did I just think of!?)

⊳ Select collarbone

Standing in front of him, I could see his collarbone peeking out of his shirt upon lowering my head.

MC: (Not bad at all.)

MC: (Why oh why am I focusing weirder and weirder things now…?)

⊳  Select hand

Xia Yan: You're… you're back?

MC: Yup… Now open up.

Looking at his slightly parted lips, that soft and wet feeling that I had experienced earlier floated back into the surface of my mind yet again.

I took in a deep breath, stuffing the peanut candy into his mouth.

It was super quiet within the room, with only the sound of Xia Yan’s chewing of the candy and the rapid yet fierce beating of my heart.

Gamemaster: The answer is a title of a novelized series; you may begin guessing now.

Swallowing the sweet in his mouth, Xia Yan grinned.

Xia Yan: I know. The answer is "Sherlock Holmes".

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Gamemaster: That is the correct answer.

He religiously glanced at the watch sitting stop his wrist, sighing.

Xia Yan only smiled cheekily at him upon hearing the grudgeful undertone of his voice.

Xia Yan: That sort of question ain't too hard for me!

Gamemaster: You still have to answer 9 more questions correctly, so don’t let your guard down..

After saying so, the Gamemaster placed another one of the puzzle answers into the palm of my hand.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

This segment was harder compared to the previous two, and it was very hard to find the corresponding items of relation for certain answers.

Fortunately, all answers could be attained through inference, so Xia Yan and I managed to get through it smoothly.

Gamemaster: Congratulations to the two of you for having passed stage one.

Xia Yan: See? Didn’t I tell you? It’s no problem for us at all!

Gamemaster: I have a question for this lady here. Do you like deducing things? You seem to have a really good grasp on it.

Gamemaster: But… you didn’t seem to have written it in the questionnaire.

The Staff Member who’d been in charge of guiding us looked at me in puzzlement.

Xia Yan: So, you’re really picking things that I like, but she doesn’t understand.

Xia Yan: Only that you never thought that she’d have an excellent grasp of it either.

Gamemaster: Not purposely. But it’s a test of Tacit Understanding, so it’ll obviously be tailored to both your individual preferences, of course.

Gamemaster: The first two segments aren’t hard, but most players usually choose to use up one of their chances of asking for help on the last segment...

Gamemaster: So, I really wasn’t expecting the two of you to get through this so smoothly.

MC: I actually like it quite a bit, but my understanding of this is mainly influenced by him, for better or for worse.

MC: Especially since said someone has been a big fan of detectives ever since he was a kid!

MC: (Not to mention that he’s even working as a part-time detective. And oh yes, his real job’s a secret agent...)

But I could only voice all these complaints inwardly to myself.

I looked at Xia Yan and gave him a wink, to which he only smiled helplessly at.

Gamemaster: But the two of you shouldn’t be taking this lightly either; there are much bigger and harder puzzles waiting for the both of you.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Xia Yan and I progressed through a couple of stages which were mostly just testing our ability to work together.

He was much more highly skilled than ordinary folk, so things that were supposedly hard like retrieving something from a high place or even the laser array, weren’t even worth mentioning to someone like him.

We soon found ourselves arriving at the second last segment of it all.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Outside the Maze

Gamemaster: This stage is called the “Memory Maze”; you both have to answer questions while trying to find your way out of the maze.

Gamemaster: The both of you will be separated in this stage and will be entering the maze from different entry points. You have to find each other within the maze and make it out together for you to successfully pass the stage.

Gamemaster: You have to answer the questions on your own. Take note, you’ll lose the moment you ask your partner for help!

Xia Yan: There are two of us, who are you going to follow this time round?

Gamemaster: I won’t be following any of you. The two of you will have to explore the rest of the way yourself.

Xia Yan: How would we be able to tell how much time has passed without you around?

Gamemaster: You guys will have a total of 20 minutes and reminders will sound when you have 10, 5- and 1-minute left respectively.

MC: Let’s see each other in a while then, Xia Yan!

Xia Yan: Don’t worry, I’ll definitely find you in a jiffy.

Heading in the direction where the Staff Member pointed out, Xia Yan and I split up at the fork in the corridor, entering the maze from two separate entrances, each on one side of the room.

───⋅𝕿𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖓𝖊𝖝𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊…⋆⋅☆

#Tears of Themis #Xia Yan #Translations #Otome #Mihoyo #未定事件簿 #夏彦 #忆中人 #Reminiscent Person #午夜华章 #Symphony of the Night #Tears of a PI

[gatheringbones]

HEY I GOT A WRITING ASK! You've had good advice about focusing on the end *result* you want out of a scene/setting/character instead of the current solution/version you have envisioned. Can you talk about that more, and how you figure out what the "point" of a [thing] is as you cycle through different ideas of what it looks like?

I dithered on how to answer this for the longest time— something about learning about story structures and how form is mutable but function isn't and how you can swap in any number of bits and pieces as needed as long as it gets you where you wanna end up in the long run— but at the end of the day the thing I kept coming back to was, the more you pour into something, and the more you cultivate and nurture your love for it, the more everything works itself out. 

I think that everything that comes up in your brain when you think about your story is connected somehow— not always literally, and sometimes you have to do some digging to find out why, but the digging itself is always worth it. The more I sat with myself and tried to figure out why all of my ideas had something to do with death and rotting and infection and invasion, the more I was able to clue in to the fact that these images and motifs were all the language I had to express some deep dark hinky thoughts on attraction and repulsion and repression and identity that desperately wanted to come out of me any way they could. I think that the more time you spend turning your story around in your head as some marvelous puzzle that only you can solve, the more you develop your intuition and respect for it, the more the part of you that lacks language for what you're trying to express starts throwing out the next closest thing it can find, and then the next closest thing to that, and it'll do this over and over and over again until you realize that there's something that all these things have in common and it's up to you to discover what it is. 

I remember being a few months into drafting and that moment of thinking "no hold on I keep throwing the grungiest body horror I can think of I keep flashing back to all my old season 1 hannibal days I keep thinking of annihilation I keep thinking about sophia tolstoy I keep thinking about everything I've ever read about gaslighting and internalized homophobia and any line of thinking that can get into your head and start moving all the furniture around before you have words for any of it" and realizing that, anything I added from this point on had to build and support that, whatever it was, even if I could only define it by instinct. Suddenly that cut whole swathes of potential plotlines away, the chatter died down, and then all the ideas I had after that seemed laser focused by comparison. The setting I couldn't finalize cohered itself in an instant. The exact kind of romantic relationship I wanted to include snapped into place, and soon after that, the romantic lead walked right out onto the page and settled herself in comfortably. I had guidelines, parameters, a goal, and I knew that all the dozens upon dozens of wild ideas I'd trotted out and tested in the early days had at least one element inside of them that was the only way I'd been able to express something, and I had better language for that something now. I ditched the language barrier I had installed between my protagonist and my romantic lead because I understood that, yes, of course there would be cultural differences and difficulties in communicating, but I had better ways of expressing that now. I scrubbed whole characters and divvied out their assigned traits to my core cast instead, knowing that there was a reason I wanted someone to perform a particular task, but that I was better serving my cast by consolidating their responsibilities. 

I genuinely think there's no such thing as a bad idea as long as your relationship to your ideas is healthy; I think each and every one of them has a secret exciting clue buried inside of it that's worth exploring. try being bruce lee and bob ross all in one and see what happens. 

#writing thoughts #banish rigidity cultivate curiosity etc #this was hard

[lizziestudieshistory]

Books of 2021 - Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

I haven’t been tagged but I need something to queue while I’m on holiday, and I want to revisit my reading for the first half of this year... Anyway, if you want to do it then consider yourself tagged by me!

1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2021

Okay two answer because I’m one of those people who can’t make a straight forward decision!

Best reread: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb - Farseer is technically not Hobb’s best series, but it’s my favourite and Assassin’s Apprentice is my nostalgic favourite within the series. Whenever I read this book it feels like I’m coming home and not many books have managed to make this impression on me.

Best new read: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgommery - it was hard to choose this one because there were a few I’ve loved but I’m trying not to repeat answers. I’ve loved every adaptation of Anne of Green Gables I’ve seen but I’d not read the book all the way through before, well I managed it this year and fell completely in love. It made me laugh, cry, and feel like a little girl again!

2. Best sequel you've read so far in 2021

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang? - I’ve not read that many sequels this year, not new to me sequals anyway because I spent last year trying to finish my ongoing series... I’ve read a surprising amount of standalones and first books in series though, so I’ll have some by December I suppose. So it’s this one by default.

I did like The Burning God, but it’s the weakest in the Poppy War trilogy and I was slightly disappointed by the ending. As a historian I appreciated the messiness and unsatisfying nature, but as a reader I was left questioning ‘is that it?’ I also have major issues with the structure and pacing of this book, so I’d take this answer with a pinch of salt.

3. New release you haven't read yet, but want to

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - I love Pulley’s writing and this one sounds SO GOOD, I can’t say much more to be honest. Someone remind me to read it if I haven’t by December!

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman - another one by default... I’m not that up to date on new releases unless it’s from an established author. I need to read 3 books before I can start this one though...

It would be Agatha’s installment in Gail Carriger’s Delightfully Deadly series but I’m not sure if it’s coming out this year or not? I’d be very grateful if anyone knows and would let me know!

5. Biggest disappointment

Again two books because I’ve got a book I hated the most, and one that was a let down - I guess disappointment isn’t hatred but I’m going to give both answers.

Hated: Villette by Charlotte Bronte - I can’t say much more on this than I already have... However, I hated it with every fiber of my being! I was looking forward to Villette, especially as I’m not a fan of the way Bronte framed the romance in Jane Eyre and I was told this one would make up for it. At least with Jane Eyre it felt like Rochester genuinely liked Jane, it wasn’t healthy but I understood it. This one was worse, so that in addition to the appaling writing style and framing has put me off Charlotte Bronte completely - which is a shame because I wanted to complete all the Bronte’s novels before I turn 25... Well at least I still have Anne and Emily!

Let down: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan - I just didn’t get on with this one, I’m not a fan of action driven fantasy novels, or hard magic systems. The magic felt gimmicky (in a similar style to Mistborn, but less well developed and I didn’t like Allomancy that much...) and the characters fell flat. It’s a book that will, and does, work well for other people but it wasn’t for me.

6. Biggest surprise

The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo - I usually dislike YA fantasy, especially earlier series that I missed when I was a teenager. I also typically dislike fantasy that focuses too much on relationship drama... Yet I devoured this one?! I couldn’t stop reading! I’m not going to claim it’s a great piece of literature, however, I had so much fun with it. If you think too hard this series will fall apart at the seems, but it’s a lot of ‘trashy’ fun and incredibly entertaining.

7. Favourite new author (debut or new to you)

Tamzin Merchant!* She could have fallen into the biggest surprise category because I was expecting her prose to be a bit...purple? And the story to be a bit naff - that’s my own prejudice against actors writing novels showing. But this book was a delight to read. To be honest Merchant’s prose was a bit purple BUT it suited the story so well! She knocked it out of the park with her debut children’s story, The Hatmakers, and I’m in love! I can’t wait for the sequel and I suspect I’ll be reading whatever she decided to release.

*I don’t typically like to claim an author as a favourite until I’ve read more than one book by them, however, I’ve not read that many new to me authors this year as I’m reading through my physical tbr. The only other option would be Lara Elena Donnelly but she’s featuring elsewhere! However, Donnelly is another one who astonished me with the quality of her writing, much like Merchant her prose perfectly fits the tone of her series.

8. Newest fictional crush

The Darkling and/or Nikolai from Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse - another by default sort of answer, I’m not one for fictional crushes but the Grisha trilogy brought out my inner teenager. These two would have been right up my alley when I was 15. (Now if we’re talking about the Shadow and Bone tv series then Ben Barnes is just... well hot!)

9. Newest favourite character

Again, I can’t just give one answer because characters become favourites for different reasons! (Technically newest would be Cyril and Aristide though)

Cyril DePaul and Artistide Makricosta from Lara Elena Donnelly’s Amberlough Dossier - I can’t accurately describe why I love these two, especially as I’m trying to avoid spoilers, you need to read the book. However, they are truly FABULOUS both together and separately. I’m so invested in them at this point it’s bordering on an obsession. They’re the reason you read these books, and Aristide in particular carries the whole show with his unique blend of vulnarbility, strength, and sass.

Brutha from Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods - Brutha is a character who crept up on me... I started out feeling indifferent about him, but as we saw his unfailing constancy in core personality I came to love Brutha. He went through so much character development and realisation, but he never really changed? To the end he was just Brutha - simple, honest, faithful, and truly good. In the space of a single book Pratchett made me love Brutha as much as I do Death, Granny Weatherwax, and Sam Vimes (who have huge roles to play in Discworld!) The last scene in this book just took my breath away and made me realise just how good Brutha’s character had been. He’s seriously rivalling some of the best written character in the series and I’ve never felt this way about Pratchett’s standalone novels.

10. Book that made you cry

Anne of Green Gables - just one word: Matthew

11. Book that made you happy

How to Marry a Werewolf by Gail Carriger - this is probably my favourite of Carriger’s novellas. and possibly my favourite of her adult novels! I just smiled the whole way through this one, which is exactly what I want from Carriger who is my ultimate comfort read author.

12. Most beautiful book you've bought so far this year (or received)

The Amberlough Dossier by Lara Elena Donnelly - just LOOK at these gorgeous covers! They also really suit the tone of this series - the whole thing is stunning really.

13. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

What don’t I need to read? A few urgent reads:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay

Master of Sorrows by Justin Call

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

#mid year book freak out tag #books of 2021 #books #bookish discussion #qeued post #I'm not tagging all of these

[feliciamontagues]

My Ranking of Every Hercule Flambeau Episode (S01-S08)

There are some spoilers for S7 and S8, but they are fairly vague and pretty much the sort of thing that you might see on the official press release. So not true spoilers as such. Also this is totally subjective and the result of my own personal biases. It’s also behind the cut because it’s looooonnng. 

8. The Two Deaths of Hercule Flambeau (s06e10)--

So, this episode is *fine*. It’s hardly the worst episode of the show, but it’s easily the weakest of the Flamby eps, despite their being a few isolated moments I enjoy. (Hercule getting a long overdue bedroom scene for one :P)

My main gripe is with this episode is the uneven way Lisandra Flambeau is written. The script seems to flip-flop over whether we are supposed to find her sympathetic or not.  On one hand,  many scenes imply that she genuinely loves Hercule despite them having a shotgun marriage after only a few days of knowing each other. On the other hand, she does not hesitate for a minute before poisoning an innocent (Fr. B) for no other reason than to hurt Flamby, which makes her lose a lot of sympathy points.

And as a result, it seems to make Flambeau seem like more of arse than normal for betraying her, while somehow also absolving him of responsibility for doing so, because she turns around and does *THAT.*

And ngl, it does make me a little uncomfortable that while the character of Lisandra (as an Italian) is possibly not meant to be interpreted as a POC, the actress portraying her definitely is. (Sara Martins is of Afro-Portuguese descent).  Which makes the uneven characterization (and underwritten-ness) seem even more glaring, especially  when compared to that of the other (white) women in Flambeau’s life (his first love Rebecca and his daughter Marianne, arguably Lady Felicia as well). It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth even if  in all likelihood, the part wasn’t written with Sara Martins in mind.

I think a much more interesting approach to Lisandra would be to have intending to betray Flambeau all along. Maybe she had her own agenda for seducing Flamby, meanwhile he thinks he’s the one using her for his plan. Maybe she does develop some feelings for him along the way, but it only makes her hesitate for a moment before going ahead with her original plan. That way, she keeps her agency and isn’t reduced to the “woman scorned” stereotype while also leaving the writers free to ship Flamby with others in the future without seemingly endorsing guilt-free adultery .

Other random note: I can’t take  parts of this episode seriously because the “Crown of Lombardy” is very obviously Guinevere’s crown from BBC Merlin with no attempt to alter or disguise it. 

7. The Daughter of Autolycus (s04e05)--

Not gonna lie, I am not really a fan of “character has long lost relative that we’ve never heard of until now” plots. And that goes double when said long-lost relative is a child or sibling. As such my low ranking of this episode is partly due to unconscious personal biases against that trope.

That being said, if we had to get a long-lost relative that we’ve never heard of until now plot, I’m so glad we got Marianne--even if it takes her another episode to really live up to her potential. 

I have to knock off a few more points for Nero Hound as a villain. For one thing, he was played by Nancy Carroll’s real-life hubby, but they didn’t let let him interact with Lady F at all. Such a *waste.*  Also Nero Hound is far too similar a name to Nero Wolfe, and I’ve definitely confused them on more than one occasion). He’s also rather generic in my opinion, even compared to some of Flambeau’s other “generic mobster” rivals/associates like the ones in S8.

However, there are some moments in this episode I genuinely like--particularly the theft “imagine spot” and Flambeau’s bishop disguise in general. Plus, the scenes where Flambeau and Marianne appear together are excellent, as are the hints that Marianne will become a redemptive trigger in Flambeau’s life.

6. The Judgement of Man (s03e10)--

Again, the low ranking of this one may be due to personal biases.  In this case, I’m still low-key bitter--five years later-- at the BBC marketing department for baiting me with the idea of Flambeau actually interacting with the rest of the squad (esp romantic tiems with Lady F)  and then giving me the absolute minimum of Felicia/Flambeau flirting and no Flambeau/Sid and Flambeau/Mrs. M interaction.

But there are other reasons why this is in my bottom 3 Flambeau episodes. 

Honestly, I feel like an equally compelling episode about the Vatican’s complicity in Nazi art theft could’ve been made without having to insert Flambeau in it. I mean I suppose it does make sense to have the art thief character  in the art episode, but still I feel like both Flambeau backstory and important historical lesson about Nazis, the Church, and Jewish art suffer from being crammed into the same episode. 

That being said, Mrs. McCarthy’s duchess disguise in this episode cleared my skin, watered my crops, etc, which is why I’ve ranked it higher than the previous two. 

5. The Folly of Jephthah (s08e05)

It loses a few points because I got very exited about the idea of Marianne becoming Bunty’s thief gf cool new friend, and yet in the episode itself, they only shared one scene and didn’t really interact much in it. That being said, I did like like that Bunty and Mrs. M had a bigger role in this episode than the squad usually gets in Flambeau episodes. 

Overall, I feel this episode works a lot better than most of the other “backstory-heavy” Flambeau episodes, because we’ve already gotten the Marianne-related exposition out of the way and can focus more on allowing her character, Flambeau’s and their relationship with each other to develop.

I’m also a bit smug in that I predicted (or at least hoped for) this exact character arc for Marianne within a few weeks of “The Daughter of Autocylus” airing and that my hopes came to fruition so beautifully.

It doesn’t particularly impact the ranking too much, but I do feel like this episode deserves a special shout out, because it has established a (hopefully-continuing!) pattern of Father Brown calling Flamby  almost exclusively by his first name, which is a major significant step in their bromance and deserves recognition as such. 

4. The Blue Cross (s01e10)--

As someone who was first exposed to Father Brown through reading the stories for a college course, I always find it especially interesting to look at the episodes that were adapted from Chesterton. 

This episode is neither the most faithful book-to-show adaptation (which is probably “The Three Tools of Death”) nor is it the best (imo “The Sign of the Broken Sword’) , but it is arguably the most significant. “The Blue Cross” was the first ever Fr. Brown story and is probably the most well-known. It’s also the first real look we get at the character of Flambeau, who (in the stories and arguably the show as well) is probably the closest thing we get to a clear character arc.

The show keeps some of the important elements of the short  story: Flambeau’s clergyman disguise, the switching of the packages. But it also has the challenging task of upping the relatively low stakes of the story, as well as introducing a major recurring character that resembles his book counterpart but remains distinct enough to justify the fairly different direction show canon is taking him. 

The show does this reasonably well--if not particularly imaginatively. I do enjoy some of the touches (I’ve written an entire meta before about Flamby’s reading material on the train and how it relates to his character)--particularly the show’s choice to have Flambeau fixated on religious art specifically (RIP for Flambeau’s Dairy Company though. It will always live in my heart).

Unfortunately in the adaptation, loses a few points for not really using the show-original characters particularly effectively. It loses still more for Flambeau’s characterization in this episode . He comes across as much more  serious and menacing in this episode than in all the others. It works okay when we consider this as a standalone episode but provides some glaring Early Installment Weirdness when we compare it to other episodes. 

3. The Penitent Man (s05e15)--

So as the rest of this list  will testify, I have strong preference for the “fun” Flambeau episodes over the more series ones. This is the exception that proves the rule--the  serious, cerebral, melancholy episode that simply “works” for me in the way that some of the others have not.

A lot of it is due to the more-intense-than-usual Flambeau character focus that goes into this. Sure, we’ve met his (presumably ex-by-now) wife, his daughter, and his first love by this point, but all of those episodes focused primarily on Flambeau as an extension of the relationships with others. (”The Judgement of Man”  in particular is far more Rebecca’s story than Hercule’s.)

Whereas this episode is very definitively focused on Flambeau himself and allows more nuanced exploration of two of the most defining facets of Flambeau’s character:  (1) his fascination with religion--and spiritual salvation in particular--  as  something he seems to resist and crave in near equal measure  (2) his almost masochistic streak of recklessness.

Even though Flambeau’s supposed “piety” is revealed to be all part of his heist plan, there are strong hints that his desire for redemption and atonement are at least somewhat genuine, even if he is not  ready to pursue them just yet. 

Off topic, but a few random things of note in this episode: this episode all-but-confirms bi!Flambeau, wet!Flambeau at the end is extremely relevant to my interests, Father Brown attempts to smuggle Flamby a lock pick from the beginning and has the audacity to say “ I only use it when I get locked out of the presbytery.”

Also, it has this iconic exchange:

Goodfellow: What is that awful smell?

Father Brown (covered in sewage): It’s me

2. The Honorable Thief (S07e10)-- So nearly all of the Flambeau-centered episodes from S3 on  have been a little preoccupied with filling in some of the gaps in Flambeau’s backstory, which is *fine*, but honestly, I feel like in doing so, they’ve really lost sight of why we fell in love with the character in the first place. 

 He’s vibrant and clever and funny and over-the-top. But most importantly, Flambeau is a lot of fun. Therefore, it follows that episodes that feature him should be a lot of fun too. 

And well... they are all fun in some way,  but they aren’t as fun as they really could be. John Light is insanely charismatic, but charisma can only go so far when the episode in question is a downer.

Fortunately, this episode is the furthest thing from a downer imaginable. It’s absolutely delightful from start to finish. The plot is serious enough to keep things engaging, but also light enough to keep us from getting too distracted by angst. 

I’m also incredibly biased in favor of this episode, because it finally gave me the Felicia/Flambeau ship tease I’d been passionately hoping for (if not really expecting to get after “The Judgement of Man” disappointed me). But it was so much and so good, and I wasn’t ready for it.

In a broader sense though, this episode really delivered with Flambeau/squad interaction in general--which was a key component that has been missing from most of the other episodes. And the Father Brown & Flambeau interactions were also has heartwarming and funny as they always are.

If I have one tiny little gripe with the episode, it’s that Daniel is not Sid. He has enough broad similarities with Sid that I can’t help but wonder if the episode was originally written with Sid and then hastily re-written when Alex Price couldn’t return. That being said, he was a likable enough guest character in his own right, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

1.  The Mysteries of the Rosary (S02e05)-- Perfection. Not only is this THE definitive Flambeau episode, but is also one of the best episodes of the show overall. It has everything: the birth of bearded Flamby, bromantic road trips, a treasure hunt, great guest turns from Anton Lesser and Sylvestra Le Touzel.

I think part of the reason this episode resonates so strongly with me is that it’s really the first proper sense that we get of Show!Flambeau as a character. Sure we officially met him in “The Blue Cross,” but considering he didn’t show up until halfway through the episode and was in disguise for most of it, we didn’t really get much of a sense of who he is.

This episode changes all that and sets Flambeau up as the character we will know and love for the rest of the series--charming, urbane, funny, passionate, a carefree carpe diem exterior masking (or overcompensating for?) a sense of uncertainty and conflictedness.

Somewhat off topic, but as great an episode as this is for Flambeau’s character, it is nearly as wonderful for both Sid and Father Brown’s characters. We get to see Sid’s  ease with Father Brown, the casual camraderie that the two of them have--as well as Sid’s protectiveness (and jealousy) when Flambeau decides to gatecrash their bromantic road trip. 

Honestly, there are so many things that are great about this episode that I don’t think I could possibly list them--but one little detail that really struck my the last time I watched was that the first proper glimpse we see of Flambeau in this episode (we see him in shadow in a flashback before) involves him  saving Father Brown’s life.  Whereas the last proper glimpse we see of Flambeau is after Father Brown has saved Flambeau’s life.  Thematic reversals. Cinematic parallels. We love to see it. 

#father brown #bbc father brown #hercule flambeau #the adhd hitting hard; this was in my drafts for well over a year #that's right another flamby episode aired and had to be added before i finally finished it #that being said i really enjoyed it #let me know if you want me to rank more things #like i don't think i could rank every episode; but perhaps every episode in a given season #or the seasons themselves #or the top 5 best or worst episodes--either in general or for a particular character #meta #misc #one of these days i'm gonna go full feral english major and write a giant character analysis on book flamby vs show flamby #and all the interesting adaptational implications and nuanced writing choice of #mon petit gallique merde

[dllerrorfix]

How to fix Missing DLL stirs up in Windows 7?

How to fix Missing DLL stirs up in Windows 7?

https://fix-dll-errors.com/dll_files3.dll.php

Let's face it, nuances matter a stunning technique in any new development. Really, a little pinion can go off the deep end and lead to most horrendous results. DLL stirs up in Windows 7 are an authentic model: they are vexing issues that spring up all of a sudden and ruin your applications from working fittingly. What a disturbing impact. Spot of actuality, you should guide them right away. Just read on to know how.

What are DLL records?

Dynamic Link Libraries (or DLL) are really outside bits of your applications that store huge pieces of code. DLL records are stacked into memory and utilized when their substance are needed by your activities.

Why do DLL blunders come up?

Right when a DLL record is missing or shocking, the code it contains gets hard to seek after your OS or applications. That is where you get the acclaimed 'DLL report is missing' message.

How should you fix DLL fumbles in Windows 7?

DLL wrecks, steady at any rate they may show up, are fortunately astounding sensible.

Here are our standard 10 pieces of data on the most ideal approach to manage supervise fix missing DLL records in Windows 7:

Reboot your PC

Update your Windows 7

Take a gander at your Recycle Bin

Recover your DLL reports with groundbreaking programming

Reinstall the application which is having DLL-related issues

Play out a plan restore

Run a SFC check

Update your drivers

Clear your PC for malware

Play out an ideal progression present

Shouldn't something be said about we research the whole of the procedures:

1. Reboot your PC

That is the central thing you should do while investigating the 'missing DLL record' issue. The issue is, some DLL goofs may make your PC slow. In a condition like this, you ought to oblige restart your machine.

2. Update your Windows 7

If DLL issues progress forward your PC, have a go at supporting your OS – this may fix the issue.

Use Windows Update to restore your OS

Here is the methods by which you can do that:

Start menu - > Control Panel - > System and Security

Windows Update - > Check for upholds

You will see the Select Updates to Install window - > Click on the updates you wish to present on your PC - > OK - > Install upholds

Restart your PC and check whether your issues have been settled.

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3. Obliterate your Recycle Bin

As a matter of fact, you may have by chance annihilated a hint of your DLL records. Accordingly, go to your Recycle Bin and cautiously take a gander at its substance.

4. Recover your DLL records with fundamental programming

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5. Reinstall the application which is having DLL-related issues

In the occasion that running a particular application causes DLL issues, consider reinstalling it's anything but's an affirmation to this trouble.

On a very basic level stick to the headings under:

Start - > Control Panel - > Programs - > Uninstall a program

Select the program you need to uninstall from the fast system - > Click on it - > Uninstall - > Click Yes at whatever point incited to assert your turn of events - > You will get a status message - > Click OK

Present your program again and check whether the DLL issue has gone.

6. Play out a development restore

Engaging as it would sound, it's anything but's a hint of time traveling to fix missing DLL records in Win 7. Luckily, the System Restore recovery feature will push you its full help and plan your OS to a past state:

Start - > Type System Restore into the Search box - > System restore

Restore structure records and settings - > Click Next to proceed - > Select the attracting restore point from the diagram

Snap on Scan for affected undertakings decision to see what changes will happen to your tasks and drivers

Then affirm your restore point - > Your PC will restart

The restore cycle will start consistently - > It may require some endeavor - > After it's anything but's, an eye if, notwithstanding all that it has settled your issues

Use System Restore to figure out your plan to a past state

7. Run a SFC destroy

Your DLL upsetting effect may come from shocking or missing course of action records. You should check them advantageously to set up your course of action once more. Likewise, we propose you use System File Checker.

Here is the most ideal approach to manage regulate do that:

Open a raised Command Prompt (Run it's anything but's a chief) - > Type 'sfc/scannow' (without proposes) - > Press Enter

SFC will check your plan records for breakdown and fix them if major > It might require some endeavor

If DLL issues endure, proceed to the going with fix.

8. Update your drivers

Old or defective drivers may have thrown a spanner in progress and caused your DLL records to vanish, which proposes you should fix your driver issues rapidly.

You have 3 decisions to do that in Win 7:

Use Device Manager

Contraption Manager is an undeniable gadget that can reestablish your drivers dependably.

To permit it to deal with its work, take the steps under:

Start - > Right-click on Computer - > Select Manage

Device Manager - > Select the contraption which driver you need to reestablish - > Right-click on it - > Select the Update Driver Software elective

Use Device Manager to reestablish your drivers

Update your drivers genuinely

Device Manager is neither unprecedented nor perfect: it may excusal to find the best driver groupings for your stuff. In such a case, you can expect authority over issue: separate the net for the latest maker proposed drivers and present them on your PC.

Use amazing programming

Contemplating all, propping your drivers requires a gigantic heap of time and manual work. To save yourself a lot of effort, use an amazing contraption, for instance, a solitary tick Auslogics Driver Updater, to get the whole of your drivers perfectly healthy.

9. Clear your PC for malware

Hurtful programming never rests: it might have entered your Win 7 and annihilated it's anything but's a result, your DLL records have vanished. Appropriately, it is the most clear opportunities for you to run a full improvement to see and take out the troublesome guests.

Here is what you can do:

Use Windows Defender

This grasped Windows instrument is proposed to guarantee your PC against malware. Pondering everything, the explanation not use it right away? Everybody arranged and open:

Start - > Type 'Secure' into the case

Select Windows Defender - > Scan - > Full yield

Use your standard security plan

If you have a trusty third-social unlawful relationship antivirus approach on your PC, you ought to use it to check any spot of your plan – recollect that malware is particularly covert these days.

Use a superb adversary of malware instrument

There's no rest for the risky: chances are your inaccessible antivirus making PC programs isn't adequate. Truth be told, you need an associate that remains nearby one more of the latest models and upgrades in the space of malware. Auslogics Anti-Malware fits this portrayal immaculately: this instrument can pursue down the managing substances your key security plan most likely will not consider.

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10. Play out an optimal plan present

If none of the fixes above has shown huge for you, you don't have anything to do despite play out an ideal present of Windows 7. Horribly, this framework will get each one freed from the records off your hard plate, so endeavor to back them up. In this way, you can use standard Auslogics BitReplica, which will store the whole of your records in the cloud so you can get to them from the measure of your contraptions.

To give your Win 7 a fresh start, boot from your foundation media, screen things for the foundation records to stack and follow the on-screen prompts to give your OS no designing.

We perceive your DLL records are in their place now.

Do you have any snippets of data or deals concerning this issue?

We are expecting your comments!

[bevvydraws]

This is going to be my feelings/opinions towards all of the main characters in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. This is directly related to my interpretation of events in the series! If you disagree with my thoughts/feelings that’s totally cool but this isn’t meant to be a debate! 

A lot has been going on right now and I don’t have the energy to do much digital art right now, so I figured I’d just open up a little more about one of my favorite series! Maybe I’ll do my opinions on characters for the other games next. 

** This post will contain information that will spoil the series for you, so continue at your own risk**

Makoto Naegi:

Honestly I really like Makoto. He is really average but honestly I think that’s what makes him so appealing. Not only that, but he comes off with a type of charisma that only “average” people can pull off. He has a base knowledge on a variety of subjects that allows him to talk to the other students. That and I find the concept of his “luck” very interesting. Also, side note, but that sprite of him focusing with his finger under his chin is probably one of my most favorite DR sprites ever. It’s just so cute! (I might redraw it someday hehe) 

10/10 

Aoi Asahina: 

While I adore Hina, I really wish that they would have made her more than just a ditzy character who was obsessed with donuts in this game. I loved her energy though! Her interactions with everyone always made me smile. My appreciation for her character just increased exponentially after watching the Despair Arc of Danganronpa 3. All in all I’m super glad that her character survived in THH.

8/10

Byakuya Togami: 

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about Byakuya. I think he’s a great antagonistic character, truly, but beyond that I’m not sure. I definitely think that his character is humbled throughout the course of the game, and in later games/animes he seems a lot less asshole-ish, but I’m not sure if I like him or hate him. I guess that just goes to show just how great he is as an antagonist. One thing I thought was hilarious though was how he casually admitted to being a true-crime nerd. I’m really glad he survived because I think his “talent” was really important for the Future Foundation. 

6/10

Celestia Ludenberg: 

Okay so real talk, I used to be a huge Celestia fan when I first stumbled across the series. But now, I don’t really like her character all that much. I think that out of all of the killers in THH her motive was the most shallow and that really is terrible considering how much potential she had. Her disconnect with her true identity could have made for an interesting character arc. And I really hate how they gave her literally the most complicated murder scheme when it would make sense for her to take a little risk as possible. Her character design is really cute though. 

5/10

Chihiro Fujisaki:

I think Chihro’s death was one of the hardest for me in the game. I played through all of his freetime events and was super attached to him (I know, a horrible idea in a game like DR), and as soon as he died I was just in shock. One thing I love about how they portrayed his character was truly allowing the brilliance of Chihiro shine through even after his death. He created the AI that not only helped aid in their escape, but ultimately saved Makoto's life. I also really liked the juxtaposition of Chihiro and Mondo (the seemingly weaker one ultimately being stronger after all). All in all, Chihiro is a great character. 

10/10

Hifumi Yamada:

I’m not really a fan of Hifumi, but I definitely think he gets wayy too much hate or just gets overlooked completely. I think that the creators leaned a bit too far into the stereotypes for him, and that made him come off as stiff and just… there. I knew from the very beginning that he wouldn’t survive, and honestly he’s the only character I had that feeling with (minus Leon). There are some quirks about him that I like, though, like how he never fails to refer to the others politely.

4/10

Kiyotaka Ishimaru:

So I originally found Taka annoying but after playing THH again he became one of my favorite characters. I find his enthusiasm adorable and his free time events boosted my admiration of him. He’s the only Ultimate that makes a conscious effort to prove himself and not rely on his prodigy-type status. And his relationship with Mondo, albeit short-lived, was so pure. It was so obvious to me that he was happy to have a friend (because Mondo is the first friend he’s ever had), and having that suddenly ripped away and listening to his desperation at the end of chapter 2 made me sob. 

10/10

Kyoko Kirigiri: 

Kiri’s background made me feel really sad for her. I first thought she was just the aloof, cold, smart type that was a bit snobbish. But then you realize that she’s been raised to not be in the spotlight, to work alone and without credit behind the scenes. Detective work is basically her birthright and she’s clung to that like a vice. Her character development throughout the game was really nice, and I think her and Makoto are super cute for each other. The side plot with her and her dad in DR3 made me really sad, too. I really liked overall that she was unapologetically holding true to her beliefs, even if it made her come off as cold. She was a solid, strong female character. 

8/10

Leon Kuwata:

It was super obvious from the beginning that Leon was gonna die. There was 0 attachment to his character for me and he just came off as just...kinda there. I don’t really have much to say about him, other than that I’m not a fan.

1/10

Mondo Owada: 

Mondo was such a big sweetheart in his freetime events. I thought his character was really well rounded and I was so sad that he ended up killing Chihiro. Despite that, I thought it worked really well for the story and played off of both of their weaknesses. Again I really loved his friendship with Taka, and having it formed and ended so quickly surprisingly hurt. 

8/10

Sakura Oogami: 

Honestly I didn’t like how they made her character the spy, because it seemed ridiculously out of character for her. Honestly I think this would be something better suited to Celeste, as she would view it as a way to increase her chances of living if she’s in “kahoots” with him. I dunno, I think the spy thing was unnecessary anyways. I loved her character though and her friendship with Hina was super cute. I also loved how they mentioned that she wanted to embrace her femininity while also not wanting to give up being the strongest person in the world. 

7/10 

Sayaka Maizono: 

Honestly even though I’m not the biggest fan of Sayaka I really like the role she played at the beginning and I think they played it off perfectly. Her desperation fueled by the fear and harsh reality that comes along show business and easily being forgotten really works in the narrative. She seemed like a well-rounded character but I think that if she had lasted past chapter 1 I would have liked her less. All in all her character did a great job of kicking off everything. 

6/10

 Toko Fukawa: 

I hate how they portrayed her character in THH, but her obsessive and odd behavior (outside of her split personality) is easily explained by her traumatic past. She obviously has a warped sense of what “love” is, and that plus her intense delusions turned into obsession for Byakuya. I started loving her character a lot more in UDG, when she started becoming more well rounded and open around Komaru. 

Also, I loved Genocider Syo’s personality. While I obviously don’t condone serial murders, I think that her character is extremely interesting. She doesn’t try and condone her own actions, admitting there is no rhyme or reason. Plus I think it’s really interesting that she considers herself a “professional” and is incredibly particular about the details. 

Overall 6/10 in THH

Yasuhiro Hagakure: 

I feel like Hiro gets a lot of shit as a character because they think he doesn’t contribute anything. I think he adds a lot of much-needed comic relief. Also I think that everyone glosses over the fact that once Taka goes silent he actually tries to encourage him to speak up again. And then tries to do his part and keep everyone together and upbeat. I really think that Hiro is a fun character who deserves more love, even though I can’t say he’s one of my favorites. 

7/10

Mukuro Ikusaba:

I wish Mukuro’s personality would have been able to actually show through in the game. The only glimpse we really see of it is in the bonus school mode while she is still posing as Junko. I wish in the anime they’d have harped less on her odd obsession with Junko and focused more on her internal struggle. I think her character has potential but I can’t say I was particularly attached to her (I suppose that was kind of the point, though). 

4/10

Junko Enoshima: 

Junko is probably one of the most well-written villains I have ever seen in a series. At first I thought it didn’t make sense, and was confused how one person could have so much influence on a mass amount of people. Then it was revealed in later installments that Ultimate Fashionista was not her real talent, just a cover she forged for herself to help her blend in to the school. Her real ultimate talent as the Ultimate Analyst allowed her to predict people’s actions and more importantly, their reactions. Her innate ability and incurable boredom made her seek out something unpredictable: despair and chaos. I think what made me love her as a villain was the line “You can’t argue with me, because there's no reason for anything that I do.” 

As a villain I give her 15/10. If I were to rank her as a person? -11037/10

Overall Opinion: 

I really find most of the characters charming but it’s super obvious when comparing this game to the others that these characters were not as fleshed out as characters in other games. I found it hard to be super attached to most of them and felt that some of their actions were really uncharacteristic. However I really do like the characters and what they add to the story, even if some of it doesn’t add up completely. I’m the least attached to these characters out of all of the characters in the DR series, although there are obviously some exceptions. I think there couldn’t have been a better opening cast of characters.

#bevvy talks #bevvy rambles #bevvy's opinions #danganronpa thh #danganronpa thh characters #danganronpa opinions

[drmedicsgamesurgery]

Danganronpa Togami Volume 3 Part 7 (Summary)

Sorry for the short summary after 2 weeks, i have been very busy and this part required a lot of hard reading and research to translate. Good news is I will be much more free soon, so if you are lucky you might get 2 summaries a week.

Thanks to @enoshima-pyon @shockersalvage​ @jinjojess​ @hopeymchope​ for helping out!

One more thing:

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ KIRIGIRI SOU, DO SO NOW OR YOU WILL BE SUPER CONFUSED AS TO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. LINK HERE.

5.

This feeling. 

Why, why is it that when I learn more about the K2K system in this place, I feel completely confused? 

This may all be fake. Maybe, I already knew that things would be like this? From the time when Borges’ anomalies became more and more obvious, I had begun to have already noticed it within my own heart.

My own story. 

Originally, I was just an item belonging to Byakuya. 

However, I also had my own story and I was destined to confront it at some point. 

And that is now.

I drank cold coffee and K did the same. The old man just talked about the tragedy of Don Quixote. [1] He said that the scene in which all the main characters had arrived into an inn had become unreadable due to the language. He said even Kafka and Sōseki [2] still resisted like this.

Speaking of which, there are also very exaggerated incidents in the books of authors like Banana Yoshimoto [3] and Haruki Murakami. [4] People feel like these can be too coincidental or contrived. Is that also a kind of resistance? Or is it that an exaggerated incident is an indispensable element for an interesting story?

Anyway, the old man who was drinking coffee in front of me, by pure chance was also something of a long shot. I just so happened to meet him and just so happened to listen to him. He just so happened to be an alumnus of Hope Peak Academy. He just so happened to be related to the Bible Plan. He just so happened to have participated in the development of Borges. It's almost like just one big joke.

I don't know if K knows my inner monologue. He has been talking in the calmest tone since then.

"It was not long after the end of the 'The Worst Incident in the History of the Togami Family. A person who claimed to be an insider of the Togami Family found me. Presumably, the superiors had already learned of the 'Bible Plan' to some extent. The insider was begging me: 'Can you write a dictionary for us?' What a charming invention!’ Still, I wanted to find a safe place to hide Borges. The Togami’s wanted to learn the techniques behind the 'Bible Plan'. Although I don't like the phrase very much, it was a win-win relationship for both parties."

Shinobu, naturally, has grown quite distrustful from these explanations but K assures her that he only provided the dictionary aspects of Borges, and points out that while any ‘missing pages’ were on the publishers fault, it was on the ‘reader’ in how they used the dictionary. When K was called on by the Togami’s, Borges hardware was already complete and he had installed the K2K system in it. However, complications arose because instead of using Borges as just a dictionary Shinobu used it as a way that K describes best as someone “watching the Raiders [5] while playing the game at the same time.”

That was a very modern metaphor, but thanks to it, things have become easier to understand. Indeed, I have always been obsessed with “Journey Under The Midnight Sun". Writing "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" is my only value in life.

Since Shinobu kept using Borges to search things related to Byakuya in order to write his biography, the K2K System inside it became specialized in Byakuya. And just like it led a person into committing murder by showing him a particular book, it started showing to Shinobu a book recommended to her. It started showing only the reality she wanted to see.

Shinobu responds that she had no chance to learn about the Hasegawa Research Institute or the Ketouin Conglomerate but K compares it to that of the ‘Anna Karenina’ [6] translations and how Nabokov [7] commented on how many times the word ‘home’ appeared throughout them all compared to the original text. Eight in the English version, once in French and no more than twice in the Czech version. He ponders how many times the word appears in the Japanese iteration before saying that reading those translations can be touching, but there will always be an inability to grasp what the original was. This causes Shinobu to think about her conversation with Hiroyuki on the talk of translations and he encouraged her to read the original.

It’s like singing karaoke without seeing the lyrics. It should be alright, but it seems that there is something wrong with it, which makes people feel uneasy and fearful.

K sums it up with this: “In a nutshell, no matter how many correct explanations I make, your dictionary will not translate them accurately to you.”

Shinobu demands to be told what the actual names of the Ketouin Conglomerate and the Hasegawa Institute...only to become exasperated when she thinks K is joking when he says they are the SkinSkin Conglomerate and Clark Kent Research Institute. K points out as long she had Borges, what she said and hears really can’t be guaranteed. It has mostly to do with the dictionary installed in it. Because the multiple editors are different, the content is different as well. Like how the concept of love varies between definition and cultures and philosophy.

“Just like an analogy. In addition, because of their different levels of knowledge, their understanding ability is different. After reviewing the dictionary, different users will have a considerable degree of understanding of the meaning of a word. The dictionary thinks that it understands 'A', but it may be misunderstood to understand 'B', and when it is described in language, it is 'C', and this may happen."

Shinbu comments she doesn’t want to misunderstand the world, though K points out people are misunderstanding everything throughout their lifetime, like how someone made Gulas by following a curry recipe or how people have turned to terrorism because of watching “Island of the Evil Spirits”[8]. Shinobu, horrified, wonders how she has been talking to people. However, K explains it that as long as people get the gist of her actions, communicating with others should be fine. Even though her reality is twisted in distorted, her unreality is still set within the bounds of reality.

Yet, even still...

"I just want to see the real thing."

"This feeling is actually normal, but it’s impossible. Borges is like a mother who overprotects her child, hides everything that is not good for you, and only provides you with what you want to see."

"I don't have Borges in my right eye, so why is it impossible? Haven't I gotten rid of its influence?"

"Even if the child is independent, it is impossible to get rid of the influence of the parents immediately. A person who has necrosis of the right side of the brain due to cerebral infarction will replace the right side with the function that has been lost. The same is true for you as well. Now all the organs in your body are running at full speed, instead of Borges continuing its work."

"How hopelessly despairing."

"Don't say that. If it lets you see the truth all at once, you will certainly collapse. It’s because this work is still in progress. It’s so you can still see the world you want to see.”

The world I want to see?

Shinobu soaks this in and starts to lose it, repeating her belief that Byakuya Togami is God. K tries to snap her back to reality by reminding her that Byakuya is human and is destined to grow old and die. Shinobu, however, still continues her silent freak out as she comes to grip with this information.

With or without Borges. I am still myself. 

This is irrelevant! Byakuya is God! It’s not that I put a sparkling aura on him or anything, but he is just is so shining! He was born to be the North Star! That old man doesn't really know what he is talking about when it comes to such a God! Byakuya is unbeaten, and Byakuya is invincible! 

At this time, he still plays the world in the palm of his hand. Since then, the world has always belonged to Byakuya. This fact will not change, even if the sun expands and swallows the Earth. The universe is coming to an end, yet Byakuya is still God! I wrote "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" to let this truth pass on to the future, and wrote a completely true biography with Borges... 

Ah, but Borges has been full of lies...hey? The reason why Borges lies is because I want to see such a world, right!? What I want to see is Byakuya as the world's God? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! 

I need to drink Bufferin.

I seem to be in a mess and I can prove that this is why K that was so eloquent before. However, he did not say a word, but was quietly watching me. I don't know if what he is thinking is either "this would be the crash after a person knows the truth" or "it’s hard to keep faith now". Regardless of the case, all this really teaches people how to be angry... 

No, actually, I’m not. This feeling...this is not how I actually feel! Honestly, I would like to use Borges to search for vocabulary related to feelings.

In fact, I want to let Borges manage me, just like before!  Ah, no, that’s not right! Because I have neither hope nor despair. Since Otsuki was present as my brother. Since Kazuya became my younger brother. Since the day I was born into the house of the Togami family.

That’s when that moment started. 

Hope won't make me feel splendid. 

Despair won't make me depressed. 

I don't need to use these things to spur myself!  

Yes, I will get the approval of Byakuya Togami and I will get to work on writing the biography given by him!

...But if these memories are also just illusions that Borges have been showing me...things are going to get quite confusing.

6.

"The picture."

After a while, K whispered. I stared at the painting hanging on the wall with my left eye, the weird creature that stood on the ground with a big nose.

"It's scientific name is the “Hopsorrhinus aureus”. This creature uses a jointed nose to jump like a kangaroo," K explained. "In 1941, this creature was found on the island of Hy-yi-yi in the South Pacific. This is a special sub-type of mammalian animal called the Rhinogradentia. [9] So far, 14 subjects have been discovered.”

K lists off the types of Rhinogradentia that have been discovered, including the species that has tentacles coming out of its nose that they use to walk with.

"How is it possible for there to be such creatures?”

“BAU UND LEBEN DER RHINOGRADENTIA was published in 1961 by Professor Harald Stümpke. [10]”

“Is there a book about them?”

“Yes, and it was translated to all over the world, causing there is a huge response. There should also be a Japanese version. You can check it out after you return to Japan."

"Then, what kind of book is it? Is it like a fake book?"

"The Foreword and Afterword are actually written by a real and famous zoologist. A review of this book was even published in scientific journals, and there are many related books too. How would you doubt an academic book on all the issues that modern zoology deals with from Morphology, anatomy, ontogeny, physiology, actions, diets, and phylogenetic evolution? With such an academically sound book, do you think you are qualified to doubt it?"

"There is no more direct evidence than images."

"I don’t have any."

"Why?"

"This creature is extinct."

"Extinction?"

"In 1957, due to a nuclear test conducted nearby, the islands where the Rhinogradentia flourished sank."

“It's a super-perfunctory ending.”

"Don't say what the ending is."

"So there are no photos? Since it was in the 1950s, there should be photos, right?"

"All the information sank with the island."

"I’m really speechless. There are no photos, anymore? If you can't investigate on the spot, there is no way to prove that this creature actually exists. This is really not credible."

"Do you know the Dodo?"

"A bird that is already extinct?"

"Because of that, do you think ‘Did this bird really exist?’"

"Of course it did."

"How can you be so convinced? The Dodo did not have any photos survive. The Dodo had once thrived on the island of Mauritius. This is only the testimony of the sailors at the time that can be proved without any other reliable information. Dodo, like the Rhinogradentia, are impossible to verify what kind of creature it was and what kind of life it lived."

"I remember seeing specimens..."

"There is a sample of a Dodo stored in a monastery in the Czech Republic. However, there is no evidence to prove that the terrible thing that is covered with charcoal is the real thing.”

“Therefore, the Dodo is a bird like a dove and a seagull, but the creature walking on the nose is looking for it. There is no such thing in the world, that is to say, common sense can prove that it is contrary to common sense, is false, can be judged by common sense."

"No, believe that the Dodo is real, but doubt the authenticity of the Rhinogradentia. This is not based on common sense judgment made, simply because you lack the logic to accept the existence of a real Rhinograde.

“You mean to say my lack of knowledge?"

"Reality and unreality are indistinguishable from the experiencer. I believe that a real person can see the existence of the Rhinogradentia it even if it is fantasy, and will also write an article to prove its existence. If a third party believes in the article, then the fantasy will be shared by them and become their common fantasy. By the way, when the book was published, most readers completely believed that the Rhinogradentia existed."

Shinobu cant laugh even if she thinks its too stupid. These people at the time had no real way of knowing the Rhinogrades were made up. Shinobu thinks about the Kudan, and thinks to herself that the Kudan definitely exists, like the Dodo. 

People who don't believe that the "Kudan" exists makes me laugh.

“People are only willing to see the reality they want to see,” K said calmly "No matter how convincing a certain argument is, as long as people are unwilling to accept it, they can't understand the meaning of it. This pathology is similar to the story in Don Quixote.”

K then gives another example similar to the previous one before continuing.

“No matter how much we experience, how much knowledge we learn, it is impossible to have the same sense of reading as the readers at the time. That is absolute.”

“Absolute...” murmurs Shinobu.

K says as long as Shinobu believes that Byakuya Togami is a God, Borges would do everything it could to strengthen that position, even if what is happening is different. To sum it up, “The sacredness of Byakuya Togami, if you couldn’t find it, you would make it.”

What?

I...understand.

Now I understand. If Byakuya Togami is not God, then my world will end.

The only purpose of my existence is to write "Journey Under The Midnight Sun", and I couldn’t let that weakness and fragility of Byakuya be exposed to my eyes.

So I made up and fabricated the storyline.

I built the story I wanted to see for myself. Not on purpose, but because of Borges's interference. In order to make Byakuya Togami become God, I have created a lot of lies so far. I made people who didn't exist, created a group organization that didn't exist, and looking back I think I even falsified the past. 

I now understood all of this and was mentally prepared. Although I can't say that I was awake...I have accepted the uncertainty of my brain.

I have accepted the fact that life has only just begun today.

With this realization, Shinobu stares at the painting and asks for the name of this animal and finds them cute. The Snout Leaper is what it’s called. Shinobu says that it would be nice if the Snout Leaper really existed, but believing in something and it actually being true are two different things. K says that belief is just enough.

“I still want to hear the truth, I want to know the truth."

"Although I don't know if I can't do it, it's worth a try."

"I didn't expect you to say that too."

"I didn't mean to tease you," K said shrugging. "At present, there is no Borges in your right eye. Then you have to look at the real things with your own eyes and update your reality. Although the information falsified by Borges will not disappear easily, but since you have found a path that convinced you, no matter how difficult it is, you should follow that path."

"I think so too."

"Then I’ll tell you something, maybe it can help you. Although it's just a hypothesis, the Despair Disease is more than likely a lie made up by Borges” he begins...only to be cut off by a piercing sound.

Just then, countless bullets penetrated the window and the kettle in the kitchen was riddled with holes.

 Translation Notes: (I highly recommend reading these this time if you don’t normally.)

[1] Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern novel" and is sometimes considered the best literary work ever written.

[2] Natsume Sōseki was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since. 

[3] Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto says that her two main themes are “the exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan” and “the way in which terrible experiences shape a person’s life”. Her works describe the problems faced by youth, urban existentialism, and teenagers trapped between imagination and reality. Her works are targeted not only to the young and rebellious, but also to grown-ups who are still young at heart. Yoshimoto's characters, settings, and titles have a modern and American approach, but the core is Japanese. She addresses readers in a personal and friendly way, with warmth and outright innocence, writing about the simple things such as the squeaking of wooden floors or the pleasant smell of food. Food and dreams are recurring themes in her work which are often associated with memories and emotions. Yoshimoto admits that most of her artistic inspiration derives from her own dreams and that she’d like to always be sleeping and living a life full of dreams.

[4] Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. His work has received numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize (yes really), and the Jerusalem Prize. Another notable feature of Murakami's stories are the comments that come from the main characters as to how strange the story presents itself. Murakami explains that his characters experience what he experiences as he writes, which could be compared to a movie set where the walls and props are all fake.

[5] The Raiders can refer to either The Los Angeles Raiders or the Canberra Raiders. Both are sports teams.

[6] Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Many writers consider Anna Karenina the greatest work of literature ever, and Tolstoy himself called it his first true novel. It was initially released in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger.

[7] Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were written in Russian (1926–38), but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945. It should be noted that a novel of his titled “Despair” (Novel), is about a man who meets a homeless man in the city of Prague, whom he believes is his doppelgänger. You can't make this stuff up, I’m serious.

[8] Island of the Evil Spirits is a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. I honestly can’t find much about it.

[9] Yep, you Kirigiri Sou fans should be very blissful now. Interesting how K explains the non-canon routes of Kirigiri Sou to be based in “unreality”.

[10] Gerolf Steiner was a German zoologist. Steiner is best known for a 1961 book authored pseudonymously as Harald Stümpke on the anatomy and habits of the rhinogradentia, a fictitious order of extinct mammals whose nose evolved in unusual ways.

To Be Continued

https://drmedicsgamesurgery.tumblr.com/GameSurgeryDRTranslations

#Danganronpa #Danganronpa:Togami #danganronpa togami #DRT3 Summary #Danganronpa: Togami #Kirigiri Sou #Part 7

[stevewaldron01-blog]

Steve Waldron Real Estate, Builders & Contractor - Best Qualities You can find in a Contractor

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