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raccoon-eyed-rebel · 9 months

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Pairing: barista!Mike (Hellraiser) x reader (you)

Summary: Mike's friends show up to invite you to a party - they have horrible timing.

Word count: 2.1k

Warnings: Fluff. More fluff. Then some more fluff. Shenanigans. Cats. Mention of animal abuse. Mention of a strange situation involving someone's bro kissing his bro's mom. Yep.

A/N: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the next installment of the Cockblocking Chronicles! In this episode we have... no sex! Unsurprisingly. Also we have some... cockblocking. And a lovely little guest appearance of some of our favorites - and maybe some less favorites - and THE TURTLES!

If you like this fic, please let me know 🥰 and reblog so that others may see it too! <3

@deandoesthingstome @ellethespaceunicorn @sillyrabbit81 @peyton-warren @summersong69 @mayloma @livisss @geralts-yenn @ylva-syverson

“Hey, Mikey! Is this the new girl?” You shriek at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and scramble to get under the covers without flashing whoever is behind you.

“I hope so, otherwise he’s got some explaining to do! Hey, when were you going to introduce us?” someone else says.

“We’ll let you two get dressed. Boys, coffee?” The three guys laugh and leave the room.

“Sy, Will and Evan. In that order. Not that it matters now, because I’m going to kill them...” Mike snarls through gritted teeth. He lets his head hang on your shoulder, relaxing a little now that he knows his friends are really gone.

“We can’t catch a break, can we?” Your voice finally – after all those weeks – betrays you, and Mike’s grin lets you know that he heard. So now he knows; you want him just as bad as he wants you.

“Apparently not...”

“You’re all dead to me,” Mike says as he walks into the kitchen, dragging you along behind him.

“Does he sound frustrated to you?” Will asks the others, who laugh. “He sounds frustrated to me…”

“I am frustrated, for fuck’s sake! I’ve been trying to nail her for weeks!” The kitchen goes quiet, and the guys just stare at Mike – except for Sy, who actually facepalms. “Probably shouldn’t have phrased it that way...”

“Ya think?!” you say as you smack Mike in the back of the head as hard as you can. But even you have to admit... “He’s not exactly wrong, though.”

The guys look at you as if you just told them the earth is flat – even Mike.

“Listen, this guy has been striking out since the very first date,” you continue, laughing when you see Mike’s face morph into a pout. “First it was cats, a week later parents, then he got grounded for three weeks, then it was a cop, now you guys… Cut him some slack.”

“Cop?” Evan asks, unable to hide his laughter.

“Yep. Got busted fooling around in the Camry,” Mike sighs. It’s no use lying, these guys know him well enough by now.

“Don’t you fuckin’ da-argh!” Sy interrupts your conversation with his exclamation of terror. When you look around, you see him sitting at the kitchen table, with Big Sy in his lap, who is purring contently.

“That’s hardly the massacre I was promised, Mike,” you joke as you watch the rather peaceful scene in front of you. The boys laugh at your words.

“Well, I ain’t gonna volunteer to show ya,” Sy says. The drawl in his voice is subtle but present. He’s not from around here, though you couldn’t put your finger on what part of the south he’d be from, exactly. “Someone hand me my coffee.”

You watch as Evan hands him the cup sort of carefully, never taking his eyes off Big Sy, who gives him a death glare from Real Sy’s lap.

“Mikey’s is the meanest,” Will clarifies without you ever asking. “He will swipe at just about anyone – except Mike – when he gets the idea we’re even so much as thinking about touching him. He’s completely okay with it when Sy’s not here, though.”

“Ours will let us take them off his lap, at least,” Evan adds as he bends down to pick up Nova. “Hello little attention seeker.”

“Forgive my frustration,” Mike chuckles, “but what are you fuckers even doing here?”

“Michael, language!” you hear right before the front door closes. Not long after, his mom walks into the kitchen holding heavy-looking bags of groceries.

“Ma’am, let me help you with… Motherf-!” Sy’s attempt to get up to help Mikey’s mom doesn’t go over well with Big Sy, who apparently digs all of his pointy little nails into Sy’s thighs before finally jumping off his lap.

“That’s what you get for still calling me ‘ma’am’ after all this time, Sy,” Mike’s mom laughs. “Are you okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” Sy answers with a grin as he takes one of the bags from her. The boys seem to feel perfectly at home here, because when they help Mike and his mom put the groceries away, they don’t even have to ask where things go – you, on the other hand, are standing around, feeling particularly useless.

“Sweetcheeks,” Mike suddenly says – much to the amusement of his friends, “can you grab Nova?” The furry projectile is trying to make her way into the fridge, which anyone would know to be a terrible place for a cat, only she doesn’t seem convinced of that at all.

“Come here, single brain cell, I’ll give you all the cuddles you so crave,” you coo as you pull her off the shelf she’s managed to crawl onto.

“Even if you didn’t have to work, eat, sleep, pee or breathe for a single second of your life, that would still be impossible,” Will says as he gently nudges Nyx out of the way with his foot. Soon, all the cats come running to the kitchen, gathering around Evan’s feet – even the ones that were nowhere near the kitchen to begin with.

“Let me guess,” you say as you watch Nyx and Larry trying to get into the cupboard Evan just opened, “that’s where their food comes from?”

One look into the cabinet proves you’re right, but Mike confirms it nonetheless: “Part of it. Just the canned food, wet food, dried fish, some kibble. The rest is either in the fridge or the freezer. I swear these cats eat better than I do – Tiger what the fuck?” He looks down at the cat that’s currently climbing his jeans.

“Mike!” The guys – and you – laugh when his mom smacks him in the back of his head. “Language!”

“Why are you always getting me in trouble? You’re not even mine!” he says as he grabs Tiger, who immediately jumps out of his arms.

“Wait, some of them are yours?” you ask, still cuddling Nova.

“Yeah,” Mike answers with a nod to Nova, “that one, Big Sy and Nyx are mine. The dorm allowed pets, but I didn’t take them with me. It was way too small. I was here every other day to check on them, though. Drove my mom nuts.”

“And now he lives here again,” she sighs as she makes herself a cup of coffee. “Let me interrupt this lovely conversation by asking you three–“ She gestures at Will, Evan and Sy “- why you are in my kitchen.”

“We stopped by to ask if Mike was joining us tonight at the lake, we’re staying in Will’s dad’s house – your girl is invited, by the way – and these two wanted to see how the kittens were doing,” Sy answers, nodding to Will and Evan at the kitten part.

“And you don’t want to know how the turtles are doing?” Mike’s mom replies in a way that’s somehow suggestive of something you can’t put your finger on.

“I came here to help you with the groceries,” Sy answers with a wink. From the corner of your eye, you see Mike gritting his teeth.

“Turtles are upstairs, if you three would come with me,” he says, ignoring you completely for a moment. “Oh, shit. Eh. I meant four, sorry Sweetcheeks.” Always nice to know where you stand.

As soon as Mike closes the door to his bedroom, he’s at Sy’s throat. “You need to stop flirting with my mom, because one of these days I’m gonna fucking punch your lights out, okay?”

“Alright, ease up, Mike,” Sy says, grabbing Mike’s arm and twisting it, forcing him to turn away. He’s on the ground in no time. “First off, I would love to see you try. Second; you know we only do it because it riles you the fuck up, right?”

“Let me go, you dick,” Mike grunts, turning back around as soon as Sy takes his hands off him. “Promise me you told me everything.”

“I swear to god, nothing more happened than what we told you.” The promise sounds oddly solemn for… yeah, for what? You look at Will and Evan, who both shake their heads, then at Sy and Mike, who look at each other.

“He kissed my mom once,” Mike says with the single most disingenuous grin you’ve ever seen.

“She kissed me,” Sy corrects him, with a hint of smugness on his face that Mike – luckily, probably – doesn’t notice. Inside your brain, it’s chaos. You’d absolutely pay to hear the whole story behind this, because how can it be anything but good. Do you blame Sy? Maybe not? He’s young and stupid, and Mike’s mom is a pretty attractive woman. But still… Kissing your friend’s mom?

The boys don’t seem prepared to tell you more about it now – Mike goes so far as telling you that he might tell you some other time, which also suggests he might never tell you at all, even after you insist you can’t drop a bomb like this on someone and then not tell them the whole story. Unfortunately, Mike – the fucking bastard – uses a distraction technique on you that’s absolutely foolproof: letting the turtles out of their pen.

Four weeks ago, the babies were unruly balls of floof, slowly waddling around on shaky little legs. Now, they’re fast. And absolutely no quieter than they were before, especially once the scratches on the outside of the bedroom door start.

You’d noticed it before; that door was in desperate need of replacement. Now, you understand why said door isn’t going to be replaced until the cats have actually scratched a hole all the way through it: because it would be pointless.

“It’s the second door,” Evan says as he sees you looking. At the same time, Mike pulls the door open and Big Sy, Nyx, Nova and Momo stroll in. Sy immediately finds Sy and begins walking in impatient circles around his ankles.

“They really want you to sit down so they can terrorize you, don’t they?” you ask him.

“Yep,” he says, “except when Mikey was still with his ex. He wouldn’t show up in any room where she was, so I was safe most of the time.” You don’t know why, but you shiver the moment Sy mentions Mike’s ex. Of course you knew you were hardly his first girlfriend, but you don’t like the reminder that there was someone before you. That said, the fact that one of his cats completely avoided her didn’t seem like a good sign.

Mike’s mom interrupts again, carrying a large plate of snacks into the room. “Please, stop talking about her, she was awful.”

You don’t even get the chance to ask if it was really that bad, because Mike looks at you with some form of guilt in his eyes. “Remember the – and I quote – horrible troll from the movies?” He sighs when you nod. “That was her. I was too blind to see it. And by that I mean – and I hate to have to admit it – she has massive tits and they made me fucking stupid. Never understood why Big Sy hated her that much. He’s not cuddly per se, but he’s alright around people. Well, a few months into dating her, I caught her when she kicked him off my bed. And I mean kicked.”

Without thinking – and with a look of sheer terror on your face – you reach out a hand to Big Sy, who’s contently purring in Sy’s lap. For a while, the red giant rubs his head against your hand, before getting up and walking over to you, lying down in your lap, begging for more attention. “Oh, God, sweet thing, who could ever kick you?” you say as you pet his head, and he even lets you give him belly rubs. It takes you a minute to realize the room has gone suspiciously quiet.

Mike – currently trying to keep three of the turtles from crawling on his head, while little Mikey has taken residence in the front pocket of his hoodie – looks at you completely stumped, as does (human) Sy. “He doesn’t do that,” Mike says as he points at the sprawled-out heap of red fur in your lap. “Ever.”

“I think this one passes the test, boys,” Sy laughs, finally breaking the strange tension in the room.

“With flying colors,” Mike says with a massive grin on his face.

#mike hellraiser #mike hellraiser fic #mike (hellraiser)#hellraiser mike #mike (hellraiser) x reader #hellraiser mike x reader #mikey x reader #henrycavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill characters

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raincitygirl76 · 6 months

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We need to talk about the Bambi situation. Specifically, Wilhelm shooting Bambi. It was raised recently in a different post that Wilhelm has no apparent hobbies, hence fic writers latching onto the frog stuff. But I suspect there are hobbies.

We see from the shooting range scenes that Wilhelm knows how to handle a gun. He’s not especially brillant at clay pigeon shooting, but he’s clearly not a beginner, either. And in 2.06, he threatens August with the shotgun, but keeps his finger BEHIND the trigger at all times. The only time his finger is on the trigger is when he fires into the air.

I suspect the Swedish upper classes like to hunt, shoot, and fish just like the British upper classes. And someone, maybe Erik, Ludvig, or a gamekeeper, drilled into Wilhelm as a child how to handle a gun without accidentally shooting anyone with it.

As far as I know (although I don’t know much about it), fox hunting is an exclusively British pastime. Or was, since I think it’s banned now. But all other types of “country sports” seem to be mostly Europe wide. There’s lots of forest in Sweden: I suspect salmon fishing, game bird shooting, and deer stalking are probably big things for people who can afford it. I don’t mind about the salmon or the game birds, but I cringe at the thought of poor Bambi. I suspect Wilhelm was not brought up to cringe at poor Bambi, though.

A quick google search confirmed that yes, the real life Swedish royal family shoot deer.

And there are lots of other animals you can legally hunt in Sweden. Including moose, which are enormous.

Pulling back to the macro-European level, in 2012 there was a huge fuss when King Juan Carlos of Spain (since abdicated in favour of his son, partly because of this scandal) broke his hip while secretly on an elephant hunting safari in Botswana. Not a photo safari, a safari where the elephants die. Massive ructions, since nobody knew where he was, and it looked really bad when Spain’s economy was still reeling from the worldwide financial collapse of 2008.

It had already been known than Juan Carlos liked to fish, hunt, and shoot. And ordinary Spaniards were generally OK with that. They were significantly less OK with their king shooting an adorable endangered species while on a lavish top-secret trip to another continent.

Because evidently the Spanish royal family or their courtiers realized the king couldn’t be perceived as massacring elephants for fun. But rather than saying, “No, your majesty, it’s bad PR to go to Botswana and shoot Babar,” they apparently said instead, “Your maiesty, please don’t get CAUGHT shooting Babar.”

But when he broke his hip and had to be airlifted out, the secret stopped being a secret and became a scandal. Shades of Kristina of Sweden there. “Do whatever stupid shit you want, just don’t ever get caught by anyone who hasn’t already signed an NDA.”

I sincerely hope Wilhelm wouldn’t want to shoot Babar. I’m already cringing at the idea of him shooting Bambi. It’s only the longstanding connection of the upper classes with blood sports that forces me to realize it’s a distinct possibility.

I don’t much like the large land mammal idea myself. I have much less emotional attachment to pheasants and geese, so will make it my personal headcanon that Wilhelm is accustomed to shooting clay pigeons and game birds. But his nanny let him watch Bambi at a formative age.

Whenever Wilhelm was subsequently taken deer-stalking as a slightly older child, he devolved into hysterics at the idea of ANYBODY shooting the poor deer. And eventually his family gave up trying to toughen him up on the subject. Especially because him making a ruckus kept scaring off the damn deer and ruining their sport. That’s my headcanon, and I’m sticking to it. It’s probably false, but I’m happy with it.

I don’t have a problem with hunting provided it’s not an endangered species, the rules are followed, and it’s not just trophy-hunting. If the meat gets eaten, then it’s useful. If don’t want to hunt myself, but I’m not against it.

But I watched Bambi at a formative age, and the thought of a character I love getting Bambi in his sights, pulling the trigger, and killing Bambi makes me freak out. Even though I realize my headcanon about Wilhelm being too squeamish to shoot Bambi is most likely bullshit, and he probably has killed deer.

Edited to add:

@sflow-er confirms in replies that hunting is a very big thing in the Nordics. Although it’s not just an upper class thing, plenty of working class people hunt too. They just probably don’t hire an expert tracker (like the one in the People article who gets paid to help the real Swedish royal family hunt deer). Note also that in Marcus’s Instagram feed, it shows he hunts.

Consistent with Canada. Plenty of working class Canadians hunt. Mostly (but not all) people who either live in rural areas now or grew up in rural areas. But Canada also has the very expensive guided hunting expeditions available for people with more money than sense. Which sounds like the guy in the first article linked above, who has been leading the real Swedish royal family on guided hunts for 30 years.

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yazzydream · 8 months

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follow up to my HI/PD post, HERE'S SHIBUYA INCIDENT. AHHHHHHHH!!! i can't wait. this arc has some of my favorite moments in the manga overall. reminder that episodes restart aug 31st!

here are scenes and moments i'm most looking forward to seeing animated. also serves as an incomplete recap ig.

manga SPOILERS, obviously.

just gojo casually stepping over normies' heads. ignoring sorcery secrecy like fuck it.

FUCK. the whole... train station massacre. this entire arc has to be rated R right? that's why this airs at midnight in japan. (i hope it's not overly censored...) and THEN gojo drops this cold ass line. he's so intimidating. jogo SWEATING. why is gojo so hot? 😭 i love scary!gojo.

i will cry. he's so BRUTAL. 😭😭😭

look at him chasing after jogo. scary......... 😭

*screams quietly in hornyhorror* L👀k at this motherfucker tricking hanami to then turn around and brutalize them.

not jogo trying to help hanami by distracting gojo only for gojo not to give a shit and just obliterate hanami anyway! only yes, because this pragmatic side of gojo is everything to me. again, this post is for parts that will make me scream, and i. will. scream.

I. WILL. SCREAM.

it's like... ok, listen. in jjk i'm pretty sure sorcerers are atheists? (i have no idea if i read that somewhere or if i made that up. sorry.) but anyway, gojo is pretty much the closest thing to a god they have in a real tangible way in jjk? but this arc is a very blatant reminder that gojo is human. he'll do the best he can (which is generally very good, thank you) but he's not actually omnipotent. he can't, he hasn't saved everyone. he's failed a lot of people actually. here and in the future too. it's soo good. akutami may hate writing gojo, but he's excellent at it. gojo is perfect in everything he does but he still fails when it's important. shit, that's good. (this is another reason why i think he'll lose against sukuna but that's another arc altogether so moving on)

omg omg omg omg. the train bursting with transfigured humans is going to be so grotesque and awful. and gojo's distressed face! bby ahhhhh

he's so aghast!!! for a fucking good reason. this massacre is sooo out of pocket.

and what the fuck this entire plot is so fucked and out in the open. there's zero secrecy and separation from the normal world. this is a game changer to what you'd expect in this series. sigh~❤️ so good.

i hate mahito. HATE. but i felt this on a visceral level in the best worst way. lemme preface this by saying, when i'm reading an english tl of japanese media, sometimes certain phrases trigger my brain into wondering what the og japanese was saying. notably, a lot of japanese words are just onomatopoeias of what things sound like. so even though i haven't bothered looking up what this actually said in japanese, i imagined mahito saying there's "uja uja" of them. which is like the sound of many crawling/swarming insects. and it made me feel some type of way. disgusted actually. which is his point. lol

RUTHLESS PRAGMATISM, LET ME SCREAM IT

this shibuya post is just turning into me screaming about the satoru gojo fight. and im ok with that.

exhausted darling. i can't wait to see it. SHOWED UP IN THE TRAILER. I'M DYINNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 💀

>:-I pouty baby

adorable.

jc this is such a typical shonen hype moment and the irony is absolutely killer. i wanna see this animated just so i can see the anime-onlys suffer.

gonna cap it here before i hit the image limit.

cont. in part 2.

#my jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk season 2 #jjk manga #jjk spoilers #let's try to be more bloggy shall we

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mostly-mundane-atla · 2 years

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I really love your revolutionary girl utena/atla au. Even though I never saw the anime, I really get the sense of the world through how you interpret the characters (love the jeong jeong piece!). I also appreciate how you addressed the issues with writing native characters in boarding schools in regards of this, because the academy is suppose to reflect a broken system. Do you have a role for aang in the au? Feel free to turn off anon btw, people love to harass others without any backlash on this site.

You're very kind ^-^

For that whole crossover au, the entire point is that it isn't Avatar characters do Revolutionary Girl Utena, it's Avatar with all its themes and something resembling its plot set in Ohtori Academy with all its rules and struggles (basically, a school where time doesn't seem to work, believing something is enough to make it real, and the student council is following the orders of some mysterious behind the scenes figure and dueling for the right to win a miracle).

Aang is a member of a nomadic nation whose starkly different culture, with regards to spirituality and family structure, has been used to excuse targeted attacks on them. Air Nomads, so called because they come and go like the winds. At a young age he found his entire caravan massacred. He had run away and ended up at a friend's house because he feared his elders would send him away to a school to more easily live in both worlds and better represent their nation, but ultimately decided he would go if he was needed. He heard about Ohtori through the Penatacs, Sokka and Katara, new friends of his at the time. Like them, Aang decides to do what it takes to get into the school, because even if Sokka's right and the shining thing hidden away somewhere on the school grounds is bullshit, if there is a chance to bring the people of that caravan back or protect what remains of his nation, he can't let it slip away.

Once in Ohtori and on the student council, his goal is to win the dueling game and harm as few people as possible getting there. Gradually he begins to question things. Who is End Of The World? Why do they want kids to fight each other? Who is the Rose Bride-- no, she has a name. Who is Mai, and why is she in the situation she's in? Why must they treat her like an object to win the game?

His goals remain the same throughout his time at the academy, but every passing day seems to throw more complications and injustices in his face.

#other interests #revolutionary girl utena #atla au #response

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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 297: We’re Bustin’ Outta This Joint

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi did his best to undo all of the good vibes from the Girl Power arc by killing off Midnight. It sucks and I still don’t like it, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, Not Killing Off Your One Female Teacher Character With Any Character Development was worth 30% of his grade for the semester, so it brought his average down all the way to a C-, and so he and his report card will just have to live with that. Meanwhile Ochako did some rescuing, and the other U.A. kids lay around unconscious and/or traumatized. The chapter ended with an abrupt cut to Tartarus, where AFO is apparently just chilling and waiting for the Nearly High Ends to come bust him free. What kind of a cliffhanger is that to leave your fans hanging on for three whole weeks. Who’s suffering more here, the characters or the readers.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “okay I know you all want to know what happens to Deku and Shouto and the rest, but have you considered finding out what happens to Overhaul and Muscular and Moonfish and New Girl Character instead?” Fandom is all, “you had us at New Girl Character.” Seiji’s dad is all, “I’m just going to say a bunch of stuff to help make sure none of the readers feel conflicted about cheering on a bunch of mass murderers escaping from prison.” Tomura is all, “dammit AFO why are you still here.” AFO is all, “shhh, Tomura, go back to sleep.” Tomura is all, “wtf but you’re literally hijacking my body and continuing to shred it to bits while we break into BnHA Alcatraz to recruit your own personal Suicide Squad.” AFO is all, “:).” Real!AFO is all, “HERE I AM, EVERYONE, SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING.” And then the chapter ends. Geez.

oh shit lol it’s a whole big fucking page all about Tartarus

my very first thought was “that’s a long-ass fucking bridge”, and then I went to go google “longest bridges”, and Wikipedia was all “son there are literally a hundred and fifty bridges in the real world longer than 5km, and the longest one is actually 165km”, and I was all “oh shit I really don’t know jack shit about bridges.” then I looked at the list for a few more minutes and realized that the super-long bridges were all built over land, and that the longest bridge over water is only 38km. which is way more reasonable, but also still really fucking long though?? ngl I would freak the fuck out on that bridge. what does any of this have to do with Tartarus you ask?? absolutely nothing, I literally forgot I was reading a chapter for a sec lol uh

anyway, my parting thought on the bridge is that it kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a giant island fortress prison, but whatever. moving on

and the six levels thing is straight out of One Piece lol. something tells me BnHA’s prison break arc isn’t going to be quite as fun. hmm

so now we’re cutting to “the Bronze Gate”, which is the main entrance off of the bridge, and some goat-looking motherfucker is out here trying to become my new favorite character. bro

SON OF A BITCH WHAT’S WITH THE BULLETS FLYING IN THE BACKGROUND. DON’T TELL ME THEY’RE SHOOTING AT GYGES. THEY CAN’T KILL OFF MY FRESHEST HOMIE GYGES. SURELY THEY WOULDN’T

ooh and now, giant robots!

giant robots with machine guns. “I’m very sorry I killed off Midnight, makeste” you know what, fuck you Horikoshi. thinking you can buy my affections back so easily

does Gyges have six arms??? look how fucking calm he is announcing the code red security lockdown, holy shit. GYGES

NOOOO

NO NOT BRIAREUS. THIS DAY EXACTS A HEAVY TOLL

YO, WHAT

he came there himself?? so much for making the Noumus do his dirty work. and based on the speech bubble shape and font, this is still AFO talking

uh oh what’s happening

is he using Decay or is his arm just sort of crumbling to pieces because he hasn’t had time to heal up yet? if it’s the former this prison break is going to set a record for shortest arc yet isn’t it

now we’re cutting to B10 which is apparently the lowest level. but do they mean lowest as in the least security, or lowest as in the deepest underground, a.k.a. the most security? idk it’s confusing and I think they should be more specific. is it B like in basement?? are there six levels or ten?? stupid Tartarus

anyway so the guards are talking about how Gigantomachia is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. heh. will there even be a Tartarus tomorrow morning

(ETA: WELL, UH.)

wow they’re talking about just killing him outright. damn

I kinda feel like “prison guard” is one of those jobs that just sort of naturally attracts shitty people. anyways yeah, Seiji your dad is a real piece of work

and he’s even doubling down on it after the other guy repeatedly keeps trying to hush him up. dude we get it, you’re an asshole

ooh and now we’re getting an interesting look at the various prisoners, some of whom look suspiciously familiar!

for starters, that’s definitely Moonfish in the upper left corner, I’m like 99% sure. not quite clear who that is across from him in the upper right, but it’s been a hot minute since we saw Muscular, so maybe?

and could that be Overhaul in the panel beneath him?? they’re not showing his face so I assume it’s someone we’d recognize, and he’s the only currently-incarcerated villain with that haircut as far as I can recall. though it seems weird that he’s not restrained more given his quirk. I thought Horikoshi mentioned in Ultra Analysis that he’d gotten it back somehow. eh well we will wait for answers

I don’t recognize the person to his left either (though she has an oddly familiar look to her?). but the person on the bottom right, next to Kurogiri... is it Stain?? the hair and body language are sure giving off Stain vibes. if someone had told the me from two years ago that I’d actually be excited to see Stain again I would have said you were full of shit. and yet here we are. these sure are interesting times

anyway so now the Code Red intruder alarm is blaring. and I gotta say, that one scene sure was effective at killing any sympathy I might have been inclined to feel for these guards lol. bring on the imminent massacre

“what horrible timing” lol yes. it’s almost as if they planned it that way

uh oh

is he omae wa shindeiruing. watch your six, Mr. Prison Guard

oh shit

WHAT DID I SAY. WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY. but nooo, you all were all, “but a bridge is more convenient!” VERY WELL THEN, LIE IN THE BED THAT YOU HAVE MADE

anyway so it’s the High Ends lol. I mean we already knew it was them. let’s just get on with it

omfg Tomura ARE YOU RIDING ONE

WHAT ARE YOU, A NAZGUL. WHY IS THIS MY FAVORITE THING

and it looks like it actually is Tomura again, too (as opposed to AFOmura)

-- is he using Decay on himself?? is that what it is?? or no wait, is this just more of the weird side effect shit that’s been happening since he Awakened. actually yeah never mind that’s clearly what it is

y’all this man is out here having a full blown argument with himself

so this is equal parts compelling and hilarious to me right now lol. like I feel so bad for Tomura, but I also lowkey want to see how far this escalates. like do you think he’d go as far as to punch himself in the face. where will this journey lead us

fucking look at this shit

other people have already mentioned this, but with this scene especially it makes me really curious how they’re going to show this in the anime. will it be AFO’s voice coming out of Tomura’s mouth? or Tomura’s voice using AFO’s speech patterns? more importantly, will it be cool and dramatic, or will it actually wind up being hilarious? or both?? never count out both

also he’s looking pretty good there in that bottom panel with his one eye just barely visible. that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but here I am, pointing it out

also also, lol at Tomura being all, “the fuck do you mean, ‘rest’, you’re the one that dragged my body out here to raid a fucking prison,” and AFO being all, “oh yeah, lol, true true, but I meant rest after that.” yes, this man clearly has nothing but the purest intentions, Tomura. trustworthy af

this fucking guy. Tomura is your bullshit radar finally operational yet?? can you see yet that it was always his intention to use you right from the very start?? oh man I am starting to get fidgety now listening to this

so Tomura’s saying he doesn’t just want to be used as a chess piece. and AFO is all, “well okay but what if it’s a VERY NICE AND IMPORTANT chess piece.” bro DID HE STUTTER

-- AHH BUT NEVER MIND THAT, HERE IT IS, THIS IS WHERE THE FUN STARTS OMG

GO ON AND ACQUIRE THEM THEN! omg. why am I so fucking excited. it seriously makes no sense. like seriously, ‘hooray, our old buddies, Overhaul and Stain!!’ -- come again now?? who is this person that I have become

meanwhile AFO is making all this fuss and I really don’t understand it though

why would you need to plow directly through the building. why can’t you just use doors like a normal person. it’s not like they can lock you out, like hello, you can literally turn anything you touch into dust, what’s with all the melodrama

anyway so he’s apparently hitting the prison with some sort of EMP attack now and shutting down all their systems

omg the suspense is killing me. this is going to be so badass once it’s animated, but right now all I keep thinking is “YES, GREAT, CAN WE PLEASE JUST MOVE IT ALONG”

the doors are opening ahhhhhhh come on come on come on let’s go let’s get to the excitement already

now the guards are running over to try and regain control. but, like

yeah that’s pretty much how I’m expecting the rest of this to go basically

so now they’re shooting at the dust cloud lol. well if there’s one thing movies have taught me, it’s that bad guys who wait inside clouds of dust while panicked cops blindly rain bullets at them until they run out of ammo are basically invincible lol. soooooo

OHHHHH SHIT

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. THEY ARE SO FUCKED LOL, SHIT

YEP, AND HERE’S ANOTHER ONE

is this the first time we’ve seen Moonfish’s face? I feel like we might have caught a glimpse of it before on an omake page or something. either way, it wasn’t anything I actually needed to see again. thanks...?? I guess??

okay but seriously, are we supposed to actually know who this badass lady is?? like I don’t know her but I feel like I know her, you feel?

(ETA: lol there are already like 60 different theories about how she’s related to every single character in the series. will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. although we did just get three “this villain was secretly related to [insert character(s) here] all along” reveals just in the last arc, so idk, it might be better if we pass on it this time lol.)

girl who are you. please stick around. for the love of god don’t let this man kill you off too

????

wait so is this Overhaul? boy sure has seen better days huh. but the floppy sleeves... yeah, it’s gotta be him

anyway so then the only ones missing are Stain and Kurogiri, yes?? omg. and one page left to go

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO CONVINCE ME HE COULDN’T HAVE DONE THIS SHIT RIGHT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. FUCKING TIME-BIDING DRAMA QUEEN

AND HE’S JUST FLOATING HIS LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM ALONG BEHIND HIM SOB. THIS FUCKING GUY

AND IS HE JUST ABSENTMINDEDLY DRAGGING SOME POOR SCHLUB’S CORPSE ALONG BESIDE HIM LIKE A SLEEPY TODDLER CARRYING THEIR TEDDY BEAR. I FUCKING CAN’T. REST IN PEACE, FRIEND. GIVE MY REGARDS TO GOOD OLD BRIAREUS

so that’s it! and we still don’t have any idea what AFO is actually planning to do now, after all of that. are they going to merge bodies?? or is he going to try to switch with him?? either way Tomura’s body has to be part of the plan somehow since he keeps making so much of a fuss over it. flkhglkhlk. dammit I need answers lol

#bnha 297 #shigaraki tomura #all for one #overhaul #muscular #moonfish #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #horikoshi where is gyges!!#your silence is defeaning #first midnight and now this #I am beside myself #r.i.p.

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skye-thorne · 3 years

Text

it's just you and me now

Based on @screnwriter's prompt: after your lover dies, your friend has to physically drag you away from their body, while you cry uncontrollably and kick them, screaming at your friend to let you go, which can be found amongst many other wonderful prompts here.

This isn’t real. It can’t be.

The world is spinning, falling apart; it feels wrong, so wrong.

Civillian’s gaze is empty, his face cold and still, and it hurts.

Physically.

It’s a pain that stabs her right in the chest, sending icy tremors down her spine and across her skin, like she's about to die too.

Hero sees those eyes, the warmest caramel colour, crinkled at the corners as he smiles at her. They’re dancing in her kitchen and it’s a week ago and he’s still alive.

Fooled Around and Fell in Love by Elvin Bishop crackles through the speakers of her radio on the counter. They sway in each other’s arms, both laughing as their eyes meet. He spins her, pale blue skirt twirling around her, and it’s a little slice of that ordinary magic he taught Hero to look for in the world.

“Magic is everywhere,” Civilian told her one night when they were both curled up on the living room couch watching Peter Pan, her head on his shoulder. His thumb was tracing circles on her hand entwined in his, and she remembers shivering. “We just take it for granted,” he’d said.

When she’d taken his head in her hands and kissed him, savouring the taste of strawberry pie on his lips, she understood what he meant.

He was her magic.

And now he’s gone.

She’s gasping for breath, her hands running up and down Civillian’s torso, shaking him, willing him to blink, to breathe in, to say “Honey it’s alright, this is all a misunderstanding.” And then he’ll smile, warm and radiant, and take her hand, and everything will be alright.

But he doesn’t move, his eyes stare into nothing, and her vision is blurring from tears, and her suit is soaked with his blood, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

“No no no no no no no. This can’t be happening,” she keeps saying, stuck on a loop, refusing to move forward. “Please,” Hero gasps hoarsely, resting her head on his chest, her fingers gripping his white t-shirt now stained with blood. Sobs rack her chest, tears wrenching themselves from her body with physical force.

“Alright, I think that’s enough,” a voice says from behind her, deep and detached from emotion, completely unaffected by the scene in front of him, unbothered by the carnage he caused.

Him.

Her best friend, her confidant, the second most important person in her life.

Cold hatred surges through her blood, and if she wasn’t so lost in her grief, she’d be pouncing on him, ripping him to shreds, stabbing him with the same knife he’d used on her Civilian.

This is the man who took her on adventures in high school, from climbing on the roof of the gas station for midnight stargazing to scavenger hunts at the aquarium to cringy poetry slams where they screamed about their teenage angst until their voices were hoarse.

This is the man who pulled her from the deepest parts of her depression, staying faithfully by her side as she struggled through the littlest of things. He was there to encourage her, give her reasons to get out of bed, provide hope for a future where things weren’t so bleak.

This is the man who brought her coffee and cheese danishes (her favourite) when they were up late studying for finals, and who supported her in her campaign against her creepy algebra professor (going so far as to sneak into the professor’s office for evidence against him), and who helped her hide and care for the stray cat she found wandering around campus, even though both of them could have been fined per the school’s rules on animals in campus housing.

This is the man who made her his signature lasagna every Tuesday for their game nights together, watching all of her card tricks with interest and dominating her in Spades, only for her to destroy him at Rummy. Their competition was fierce and ruthless and bantery, and when they finished their games for the night, the two of them would sit on her balcony, naming the stars like they were back on the gas station roof in high school.

He was one of the first to know about her alter-ego and superhero work, and he made it his mission to keep up with her mental and physical health, talking her through dark missions that left her shaken and making sure she never went to work on an empty stomach.

When Villain kidnapped Civilian, her friend was there for her, comforting her as she lost herself to anxiety, helping her find the clarity to handle the situation reasonably.

And then the situation evolved. It was a showdown, a war between heroes and villains, and Hero never could have expected the outcome.

When the battle was over, when Hero was on her knees, surrounded by fallen civilians and heroes and villains alike, she’d looked up to find Villain, her villain, standing there with Civilian. The air was still, eerily so, Civilian and Villain the only ones left standing on a field of death. Civilian’s hair was ruffled, his face bruised, dark circles under his eyes, and his hands were tied behind his back. Hero’s heart had beat wildly against her chest, and she'd had to swallow bile back at seeing him like that, beaten and bruised and afraid because of her.

But then he looked up at her, and his shoulders relaxed, and his caramel eyes crinkled, and his crooked, pained smile in spite of the bleak circumstances felt like home.

It’s going to be alright, his expression said.

And before Hero could react, or move, or even blink, Villain had plunged a knife through Civilian’s heart.

And when he’d ripped his mask off, the triumphant, gloating eyes that met her’s were his.

Her best friend. Standing over the love of her life, knife dripping blood, his eyes pinned on her as Civilian whimpered in pain. Her best friend was Villain.

And then he stabbed Civilian again, in the stomach, and Hero let out a strangled, feral sound, and she was rushing towards his body as he dropped to the ground.

By the time she’d reached him, he was already gone.

Now, Hero ignores Villain, holding tighter to Civilian’s body. Let him kill her if that’s his endgame. What reason did she have to continue living?

Rough hands grab her arms, tearing her away from Civilian. Villain clamps a metal band around her wrist, an ability dampener, and the shock of the device sucking her powers away is nothing compared to the shock of Villain’s hands around her arms, her friend’s hands, a sensation so familiar yet so foreignly callous now.

“No,” Hero protests, numbly at first. Villain’s grip is iron as he wraps both arms around her, pulling her away from the battlefield, away from Civilian. “No!” Her words are almost unintelligible, ragged screams as she repeats the same word over and over again.

She’s kicking and thrashing and screaming and pleading and cursing, but it’s no use.

“Let me go!” She yells the words over and over again until her throat is raw because her brain can’t process the situation enough to generate anything else to say.

Without her powers, there’s nothing she can do to fight against his enhanced strength.

“Shh, it’s okay now love,” Villain says, the words soft and comforting and sickeningly sweet, before planting a kiss on top of her head.

Bile rises in the back of her throat, burning its way into her mouth. She swallows it back down, shuddering in Villain’s grip.

“Please,” she croaks, her voice barely a whisper. “Just let me go.”

They’ve made it to a car now, his car, parked safely away from the massacre behind them.

“I can’t do that,” he says, so simply, as if it’s an obvious fact. He holds her with one arm as he moves to retrieve something from his coat pocket, and though Hero tries to use this to her advantage, to kick out away from him, he’s quick to snake the other arm back around her.

When he lifts his hand, the needle of the syringe in his grasp glints in the falling sunlight. It’s her only warning before he plunges the syringe into her neck, sharp pain exploding from the invasion point.

“It’s just you and me now, Hero,” he whispers against her ear, and though his breath is hot on her neck, chills scatter across her skin. He presses a soft kiss to her pulse, smothering her pounding heartbeat.

As she slumps against him, the world fading to black, the last thing she hears is Villain’s rumbling voice.

“Just like it was always meant to be.”

#villain x hero #hero x civilian #villain x heroine #my writing #writing #creative writing #fiction #romance #tw: death #tw: depression #heroes and villains #villain #hero #heroxvillain #short story #ficlet #writers #writeblr #twist

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rovelae · 3 years

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Behind the Scenes of “Hologram”

Today marks exactly one year since I posted arguably my most popular fic. “Hologram” is a postgame Saiouma one-shot about escapism, loneliness, and running away from the past. I put a lot of myself into this fic and I’m blown away by all the love it’s received, not only on AO3 but in Discord servers and other social media. All that excitement made me keep thinking about it, so I thought I’d share a (very self-indulgent) behind-the-scenes of sorts about how I wrote it, as well as what I think of the story.

This essay will contain spoilers for the whole fic, so if you’d like to read it first, you can find it here. Of course, if the tags scare you off, that’s valid, but you might want to skip this post too since I’ll be quoting it throughout (so, just to be safe, expect the warnings I’ve posted on AO3 to apply here too).

If you’re a Lorde fan you’ll recognize the lyrics in the fic summary – “Nothing’s wrong when nothing’s true,” from “Buzzcut Season.” The inspiration for this fic came to me while I was on my way to an early shift at work, and I needed a good song in my head to give me the will to live for the next eight hours. Not sure why I chose that song in particular, but maybe part of it is because I like imagining stories to go along with the songs I listen to, like AMVs playing in my head, and I’d never been able to pin down exactly what this song reminded me of.

The mood of the music is really what compelled me – there’s something lonely about it, and the lyrics sound like the singer’s trying to convince herself that everything’s okay even when all evidence points otherwise. There are “explosions on TV”, and “The men up on the news / They try to tell us all that we will lose,” but “we live beside the pool / Where everything is good.” Despite everything going wrong, despite the notes of fear creeping into the pre-chorus, the character will “play along… in a hologram with you” and “never go home again.”

From there, it was an easy jump to “postgame Saiou” and that was that.

There’s a cloud of seagulls hovering in the air around him, and a dozen or so more standing just out of reach, staring him down with beady black eyes. Kokichi takes a slice of bread from the loaf he’s holding and tosses it to one of the birds, watches it catch it and stumble under the weight, watches its head bob as it tries to swallow the whole thing at once. It gets remarkably far before four other birds descend on it, shrieking wildly.

“Mine, mine, mine,” he mumbles into his folded arms, wondering if Shuichi would get the reference.

He really wishes Shuichi was here.

Kokichi upends the rest of the loaf of bread onto the sidewalk and laughs at the resulting chaos until his chest aches.

To start off, I wanted to create the same lonely mood from “Buzzcut Season” in Kokichi’s simulation. He’s not exactly trapped there, but he’s refusing to leave, because as long as he’s on the fake Jabberwock Island, he can pretend the killing game never happened. The trade-off to that escapism is that the only people he can talk to are the NPCs, who aren’t complex enough to be remotely interesting to him, and Usami, who… well, tries her best, but is more of an informational / moderation program and can’t offer him what a therapist could.

The only thing Kokichi has to look forward to is Shuichi, who he’s convinced is an extremely lifelike computer program rather than the real thing, because the real Shuichi would definitely hate him for everything that happened during the killing game. He’s so locked into this line of logic that he doesn’t let himself consider that Shuichi has forgiven him – he doesn’t even have a good answer for why the Future Foundation wouldn’t just keep the supposed Shuichi AI on indefinitely, believing it’s their way of baiting him into leaving the simulation.

It’s not a healthy or sustainable lifestyle in the slightest, but Kokichi stubbornly refuses to do anything but wander the islands aimlessly, passing the time with ice cream and feeding seagulls until the next time he can see Shuichi.

He dreams that DICE is here in the simulation with him, smiling and carefree as they explore the weird music venue. One of them has gotten the karaoke machine working, and another found a box of kazoos and maracas in the back room. Kokichi already pities anyone unfortunate enough to walk by the building tonight.

“Not going to sing, Joker?” one of his DICE asks (over the sound of their youngest member shrieking through seven kazoos at once), sitting on the bench next to him.

“Some games are more fun to watch than play,” he answers, leaning back on his hands and sighing.

“Like a killing game.”

The warm dream-atmosphere turns cold then, and Kokichi’s head snaps over to look at him—but his brother is gone and Kaito’s looking back at him instead, blood in his teeth and face ashen pale.

“You... we don’t have to do this, man,” Kaito says, but it’s a lie and they both know it, and he doesn’t want to look behind him because he knows the machine’s looming over him with its unyielding steel and slow slow slow descent—

“You’re not real,” he snaps at dream-Kaito, who doesn’t respond except to lift him up again. “Nothing’s real, none of—PUT ME DOWN! LET GO OF ME! DON’T PUT ME BACK IN THERE!”

“Death is more mercy than you deserve,” Kaito says, and Kokichi claws and bites and kicks his way out of Kaito’s grasp like a wild animal, only to end up in front of a prison cell full of—

DICE, his beloved DICE, trapped and hurt and afraid, bloodied and beaten and helpless.

“Why didn’t you save us, boss?” says his second-in-command, clutching the bars with bleeding hands. “Why didn’t you do more? Now we’re all dead and it’s because of you.”

Moments like this are my reference to Buzzcut Season’s pre-chorus, where the not-okay starts to creep into the illusion. Despite Kokichi’s valiant efforts to forget, he’s still dealing with the aftermath of seeing his family hurt and in danger, watching his friends die, orchestrating the deaths of two of them, being killed himself— and then being told every bit of it was made up to entertain an audience who sees nothing wrong with that picture. Running away is not the way to heal from trauma, and one day soon it’s all bound to come crashing down around him.

“Do you know what this … island paradise represents, Kokichi?” [Hinata] asks, and Kokichi’s really not in the mood for a lecture but he continues anyway. “Jabberwock Island … was the setting for the fiftieth season of Danganronpa. The golden anniversary, they called it. It was my season.”

Kokichi hunches over, hugging his arms over his torso and stifiling a scream. He does not want to think about this right now—

“They wanted it to be the best season of all, which, unfortunately for us, meant it was also the bloodiest,” Hinata says. “Twice as many participants, deadly traps hidden across each of the islands— they even changed the way the motives worked, like when they told Fuyuhiko to cut out his own eye so Peko could have a quick death instead of suffering for days.”

“Do I look like your therapist, porcupine-head?” Kokichi hisses. A sharp pain is pounding into his skull, and there’s a bitter, metallic taste at the back of his throat. A taste like poison and blood.

“There was so much going on that the simulation malfunctioned,” Hinata says. “When people died, their Ultimate talents downloaded themselves into me. I’m told that the stress of so many personality grafts came close to liquefying my frontal lobe. I’m lucky I woke up at all… especially considering more than half of the others didn’t.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kokichi grates out through the static building in his head. If he opens his eyes, will he see the beach or the dull chrome of the machine closing in on him?

“Because I know how much you want to forget about what happened,” Hinata says. “Believe me, I get it.”

….

“These things that happened to us… we can’t erase them, no matter how much we want to. Some things have to be remembered.”

I’d mostly like to leave Hajime’s season up to interpretation, but there are a couple things I wanted to say about it. I imagine Danganronpa is like the Hunger Games in that it’d go all out for big anniversaries. So, there were twice as many participants for the Jabberwock Island beatdown that was probably subtitled “Bloodbath Bay” or something equally appealing. The game’s formula changed from a focus on the mystery and the trials to “look at all these kids massacring each other a la Lord of the Flies,” and since the VR system wasn’t equipped to handle that many people and their deaths, it malfunctioned, giving Hajime way too many Ultimate talents and putting half the cast into comas from which they never woke up.

Viewers either absolutely loved or absolutely hated this season, depending on whether they were DR fans because of the “blood n’ guts” factor or the “mystery and psychological thriller” aspect. Team Danganronpa faced quite a bit of backlash for actually causing the real-life deaths of half its participants, but were able to weasel their way out of serious legal repercussions because of the waivers the participants had signed beforehand (plus a lot of bribery and falling back on their longstanding popularity). So, the cast of Season 50 failed to end the killing game, but helped provide great evidence for the “Danganronpa is morally wrong” argument.

Hajime works as a victim liaison for the Future Foundation and has been trying to take down Danganronpa since he got out of it. He’s like that in a few of my fics, actually; I like the idea of Hajime acting as a big brother of sorts to the V3 cast. It’s especially entertaining to imagine his interactions with Kokichi— though maybe not so much in Hologram, since to Kokichi he’s a representation of the past he’s trying so desperately to forget and the future he refuses to acknowledge.

“SHUT UP!” He launches himself at Hinata, his hands wrapping around the other man’s throat as he uses his momentum to slam him to the ground. “SHUT! UP!”

“Ko— ghk—” Hinata coughs, eyes wide with surprise, but aside from moving his hands up to grip Kokichi’s wrists, he doesn’t seem all that worried about fighting back.

The thought only fuels Kokichi’s rage until he’s choking Hinata so hard his knuckles are white. “If you want me out of this simulation so badly, you can kill me,” he snarls. “I’m never waking up! I’m never leaving, do you UNDERSTAND ME?”

Hinata grimaces, the outline of his avatar flickering, but he still doesn’t struggle, and Kokichi hates him all the more for it, despises him with a seething malice that festers low in his stomach. He wonders distantly if he’d actually kill this man in real life. Or if he’d be able to stop himself, feeling like this.

Kokichi’s breakdown here is more out of fear than anger. Like I mentioned, Kokichi sees Hajime as another piece of what’s hurt him, and no matter how Hajime tries to help, Kokichi will always remember Danganronpa whenever he sees him.

Warm yellow-orange light casts a relaxed, cozy glow over the dining hall. It’s an ambience compounded by the flickering candles on the table, which seems overly idyllic, but Kokichi will let it slide because of the adorable way Shuichi flushed when he noticed them as they sat down. Well, if he’s being honest, everything about Shuichi right now is adorable, from the way his hair keeps falling into his eyes to the way he’s nervously fiddling wth his chopsticks. Kokichi wishes he could keep staring at him forever.

Ah, not… not in a weird way, though, just… because Shuichi’s beautiful, and when Kokichi looks at him he can forget everything bad that’s ever happened, can create some new and brighter world to exist in.

This is an idea I wish I’d had room to explore a bit more in the story— that is, just how far Kokichi will go to pretend everything’s fine. I thought about making him border on delusional, like having him talk to people who aren’t there or forget what’s actually happening around him because he’s so lost in his fiction-within-a-fiction. It would have creeped Shuichi out a whole lot.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much room for that past the plot I’d already nailed down, so I focused on his loneliness and escapism instead. I do touch on it later in this scene, though— the couple paragraphs where he slips into fantasizing about being a phantom thief having a surreptitious meeting with his detective under the not-so-subtle supervision of his DICE. There would have been a lot more of that if I’d gone with the ‘delusion’ stylistic choice, to the point where even the readers would be confused about what’s real. Maybe I’ll look into writing something similar in a future story.

Eventually, Shuichi sets down his bowl and looks away with a little sigh, and Kokichi clenches his teeth because that’s the sigh he does when it’s time for that conversation.

“Um… Kokichi?”

Kokichi’s only response is to exhale the breath he’d been holding in a quiet hiss.

“I-I know you don’t want to, but… but I really need to talk to you about something,” Shuichi says. “Please?”

“My Mr. Detective can talk about whatever he’d like!” Kokichi says with a lilt to his tone that makes it sound more sarcastic than he wants it to. He takes the last bite of curry and wishes that it burns hot enough to hurt.

“It’s about Kaito.”

This more serious part of the date scene is meant to reflect the little bridge in “Buzzcut Season”:

“Cola with the burnt-out taste

I’m the one you tell your fears to

There’ll never be enough of us.”

It’s a part of the song that sounds especially bittersweet to me, a bit of self-awareness between the insistence that everything’s okay.

Really all I think I managed was to reference it when Kokichi’s internal dialogue comments on his drink being “so sweet it tastes burnt” and then later not tasting like anything. But hopefully the mood’s still there.

“Tell him… that I have nothing against him,” he says.

“That’s … not a lie?” Shuichi presses.

Kokichi shakes his head idly, still not raising his gaze. “I wanted to wreck the killing game and he wanted to save his friend. We both got what we wanted. I’d say the end more than justifies the means.”

Was that a lie?

(I don’t want to die Shuichi I’m sorry I’m sorry save me Shuichi please I’m sorry ithurtsmakeitstop—)

His fingers tighten into clawlike shapes, nails digging sharply into his forearms.

I really don’t think Kokichi would have anything against Kaito, even if here he’s not being completely honest with how much he’s affected by what happened. It wouldn’t make sense to him to hate Kaito for something he himself proposed, but I think there’d still be a subconscious barrier between them. Too much history.

“Don’t go, Shuichi, I’m so sorry, I— that was so dumb, what I said, please don’t be sad anymore.” He’s not sure if he can’t breathe because of the exertion of running or because of the hysteria boiling over in his head. “Please don’t go, I didn’t mean to hurt you— please don’t leave, Shuichi, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Kokichi….” Shuichi’s tone is strange, soft and pitying, like he sees something Kokichi doesn’t, and he shakes his head slowly as more tears follow the paths of the others.

Kokichi goes to his knees, ready to grovel if that’s what it takes, but Shuichi follows him down, closing his other hand over Kokichi’s, and then they’re both crying and he doesn’t know why, and all he can do is repeat a mantra of I’m sorry and hold on as tight as he can.

It’s horrible. Shuichi’s horrible. Shuichi’s wonderful, and kind and lovely and perfect and Kokichi hates him, Kokichi adores him, and it doesn’t matter because Shuichi’s not actually here but Kokichi doesn’t want to be alone, just let me pretend some more, please, please let me have this—

“I’ll… I’ll stay,” Shuichi says at last. “I can stay a while longer.”

You shouldn’t, Kokichi wants to say, but his mouth won’t obey him. You shouldn’t stay if you don’t want to. I don’t deserve having you here. I’m not worth your mercy.

But there on the bridge, crying tears of relief, he soaks up as much mercy as he can get and hopes it’s enough to drown him.

I wanted to create a contrast between them that highlights just how the isolation and trauma Kokichi’s experiencing has affected him. He has an almost unhealthy reliance on Shuichi as “the only thing that makes this world bearable,” and panics when faced with the prospect of being alone again so soon. Part of why Shuichi’s crying is because he’s realized the extent of Kokichi’s desperation. It’s not that he thinks Kokichi’s apology is insincere, but that he’s hardly heard him apologize for anything before, so Kokichi going this far has him realizing how bad things really are.

The door rumbles and slides open when they approach, revealing the bright light of the log-out point that took Shuichi away every time, that would wake Kokichi up in his real body if he walked into it. Shuichi stops just a step away from it, biting his lip as if searching for something to say, but before he can find it, Kokichi reaches out to tug at his sleeve.

“Shuichi?” he says, distant as the waves on the beach that he can still hear if he listens closely enough. Shuichi turns back toward him. “Before you go, can I be selfish one more time?”

“Huh…?”

Shuichi doesn’t move when Kokichi steps closer, reaches up to ghost his fingertips over Shuichi’s jaw and around the back of his neck. He lets Kokichi tilt his head downward, lets him hover inches away, close enough to feel their breath mingle in the night air. Kokichi pauses there to give him the chance to pull away. He doesn’t.

So Kokichi closes his eyes and the distance between them.

That last line is a ZEUGMA! It’s a literary device where one word refers to two more in a different way. A popular example is the hyenas’ line “Our teeth and ambitions are bared” from The Lion King. It’s my favorite grammatical trick and I’d love to see more of it in fanfic.

Slowly, he slides his hand down to Shuichi’s shoulder, using it as leverage to push himself away. That hurts even more. He can’t seem to open his eyes, and he feels so weakened, breathless, fragile. Cracked open, hollowed out.

When he finally does open his eyes, Shuichi’s are wide with some mix of astonishment and a dozen other emotions. Kokichi bows his head, taking a deep breath to ground himself. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I just wanted to know.”

“Kokichi,” Shuichi breathes, like a bullet through his heart.

“Goodbye, Shuichi,” Kokichi says, and shoves him into the light.

Shuichi’s little yelp of surprise cuts off abruptly as he falls through the door, vanishing into the glow, and all too soon, Kokichi’s alone again in a dream that suddenly seems far too vast. Alone, with the faintest taste of Shuichi’s lips still lingering on his own.

And he thinks, It was enough just to know you.

It’s a lie.

Nothing to say here except that this is my favorite scene and I’m so happy with how it turned out.

Fake sun rises over fake ocean, fake seagulls glide through fake sky while fake wind tousles fake palm fronds. Kokichi lies on his stomach in the fake grass and talks to his fake family in the fake notebook. Gives them fake names and runs through everything he remembers about them. Apologizes, over and over, wishes he could hug each of them goodbye one last time. Wonders if it would be more painful to die or to never have existed at all.

He leaves the notebook of his memories on the seat of one of the Ferris wheel cars on the fourth island, because one time he promised them they’d steal the London Eye together.

He buys a can of fake soda from the fake convenience store on the first island and sits on the fake beach watching the fake waves. Wonders when he’d hit the end of the simulation if he started swimming, or if he’d drown first.

White sand, blue sea, bluer sky. Washed out, like an amateur watercolor painting.

He opens the soda can and raises it to his mouth, but … even the thought of drinking it makes him sick to his stomach. He sets it down in the sand and flicks it over, watching the bubbly liquid run down and sink into the sand. The color’s all wrong, like blood streaked against a metal floor.

He walks the fake streets of the fifth island, passing fake skyscrapers and fake commuters and their fake conversations, until he finally stops outside the factory he’s never been able to bring himself to go into. Smells like oil, and metal and machines and he can hear the sounds and he’s immediately back in the hangar, dizzy on adrenaline and desperation and leaning heavily on Kaito so he doesn’t keel over and die then and there. Kaito says something about how maybe he should sit down for a minute, and Kokichi didn’t agree back then but he does now, goes down on all fours and dry heaves.

When his vision solidifies and he can stop gasping for breath, he sits up and presses his back against the factory wall, covering his ears and hiding his face in his knees. Tries to convince himself not to imagine Shuichi’s there with him, holding his hand again, promising everything’s going to be okay.

“I’ve got you. No one’s going to hurt you anymore,” or maybe, “Breathe with me, it’ll be over soon. You’re safe now.”

I love you.

He laughs until there’s nothing left in his lungs. He called these little daydreams obsession, before, but now they just seem sick and insane.

I wanted to indicate throughout this scene that Kokichi’s gotten substantially worse. Instead of halfheartedly interacting with the NPCs or finding something to spend time doing, he’s aimlessly wandering the islands, focused on how fake all of it is. Not even talking to his sketches of DICE can make him feel better. The suicidal ideation starts to slip in even if he doesn’t realize it— a fixation on wondering what death is like, purposefully triggering himself by walking by the factory….

The thing I want to talk about most though is the italicized I love you. I left it outside of quotation marks and dialogue tags on purpose because I wanted it to be ambiguous as to who’s saying it. If it’s Kokichi’s line, it’s sudden and almost out of place, like he couldn’t hold back from thinking it anymore. But it could be Shuichi saying it, too. Since it’s outside quotation marks, unlike the previous dream-Shuichi lines, it’s more vague, almost a whisper in Kokichi’s thoughts— like he can barely bring himself to imagine it and even feels guilty doing so, because there’s no way it could possibly be real.

Which do you think?

Eh, I don’t have an answer. When I hear it in my head, they say it at the same time.

“How did you know?” he finally croaks.

Shuichi’s breathing still sounds shaky, too. “Because you said ‘goodbye,’” he says.

Kokichi finally looks up at him in a silent question.

“You never say goodbye,” Shuichi says, rubbing his sleeve over his eyes. “It’s always….”

“‘See you later,’” Kokichi finishes for him. Despite himself, a tiny huff of astonished laughter escapes him. “I didn’t even know, not until a couple of hours ago. And you figured it all out from one word?”

Shuichi bites his lip at that. “You kissed me,” he says.

Kokichi’s stomach twists and he looks away. “I said I was sorry—”

“No.” Shuichi squeezes his hand into a fist and lets it fall to thump against Kokichi’s chest, like he’s trying to knock some sense into him. “It was so honest, and vulnerable, and… and I know how much you hate showing how you really feel.” Another tiny sob catches in his throat. “And so it felt like … like something you’d do if you weren’t going to s-see me again.”

“Shuichi….” Kokichi trails off as Shuichi muffles his cries in his hand again. He’s so breathtakingly smart. There’s no one else in the world who thinks that way, no one else who could possibly be that attentive and that clever. Not a programmer, not a team of shrinks… how can an AI manage it? How is it that Shuichi always manages to take him by surprise? How can he see straight through him when he least expects it?

Kokichi’s hand reaches up to Shuichi’s cheek. Reverently traces the path of the tears falling down it.

“I wish you were real,” he confesses in a whisper.

Kokichi’s stubborn. So, so stubborn. And he’s not used to being cared about, if the way he does everything by himself is any indication. So it makes sense to me that he’ll refuse to believe anything good can happen to him even in the face of convincing evidence. He’s pretty self-hating for someone so arrogant.

Kokichi’s weak, deep down to his core, weak for this man. Already knows he’d do anything for him, and the thought is terrifying—that one person could have that much power over him, even if he doesn’t realize it.

But what if he has realized it? Couldn’t this all be an elaborate ruse, a lie he knew Kokichi would be so desperate to believe that he wouldn’t bother questioning it?

…Shuichi’s never hurt him, though. Only that one time, when he really deserved it. Shuichi wouldn’t … betray him, even for what he thinks is Kokichi’s own good. They’re… different from each other, that way.

But still….

“I’m so scared, Shuichi.” It’s barely a whisper. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“You won’t be.” It’s so hard to be skeptical, lost in his eyes. “I’ll be right there with you, for as long as you want. I won’t let you feel like this anymore.”

Promise me, he wants to blurt out. Promise you’ll stay. Promise me you’ll never leave me, Shuichi, he wants to demand, but that’s wrong, that’s manipulative and selfish and everything he doesn’t want to be for Shuichi anymore.

Shuichi, of course, says it anyway.

“I promise, Kokichi.”

…

“Kiss me again,” he says. “Please?”

Shuichi leans in close, then pauses, his brow furrowing the way it does when he catches him in a lie.

“I’ll kiss you again in the real world,” Shuichi says. “Okay?”

Kokichi shakes his head. “Shuichi, please.” Please, I don’t think I can do this. Please, I don’t want to wake up to a lie. Please, one last kiss for me to remember in case it was all fake.

Shuichi reaches out to tilt his chin up and Kokichi closes his eyes, savoring every second, burning it into his memory.

Shuichi’s soft breath ghosts over his lips.

“Trust me,” he murmurs.

Kokichi’s eyes flutter back open, searching his face. Shifting him around on the white board in his head, seeing what categories he fits into this time. Weird, of course. Suspicious, maybe not. Trustworthy?

Trustworthy….

“I do trust you,” he realizes.

Kokichi’s still hesitant to accept all of this— Shuichi kissing him didn’t magically fix everything. He’ll still doubt all the way to the log-out point, but at least now he realizes that this simulation is only hurting him— that if things are to get better they’re going to have to change, too. He’s got a long way to go before he’s all right, but he’s not going to have to face it alone anymore.

And that’s a wrap!

Once again, I’m really proud of this story, and I feel like I grew as a writer because of it. There are a few things I would change if I wrote it again, but for all its flaws it’s still my baby and I like how it turned out.

Thanks again for all your support for “Hologram,” and thanks even more if you actually waded through all this nonsense of a director’s cut. It’s a huge confidence-boost to think that people liked what I wrote, and even wanted to hear what I had to say about it. If there’s any interest, I’d love to review some of my other fics here, or theorize or brainstorm or whatever else you’re into. (Ask me what Byakuya’s Thing is in my superhero AU, I dare you 😉)

I do have a WIP in my folder of bits and pieces currently titled “boy finally gets that kiss”, and it’s a post-Hologram scene from Shuichi’s point of view to just sorta… tie it all together, have them talk things over again… and kiss, of course. We’ll see if anything comes out of that.

Until next time!

#Rov talks #Hologram #Saiouma #Oumasai #Behind the scenes #Director's cut #Fanfic review

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freckleddoll · 3 years

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Reasons why Doll could still be alive

1. I’m still in denial

I compiled a list of reasons why I think that there is a possibility of Doll coming back in the future! Although I do think the chances are slim, given the fact that she hasn’t appeared in the Manga since 2009, which was 12 years ago. However, there is a handful of reasons from a story telling perspective of why it’s possible, and also a handful of inconsistencies between Doll’s death and all of the other Noah’s Ark Circus deaths. Very long post under the cut.

Starting with the most obvious, we never see Doll’s death actually happened, it’s ever only implied.

We don’t hear a direct command, it’s only implied that she died. This is “affirmed” a second later by Undertaker.

He laughs about how Ciel is hastily, and that he can not take back what he’s done, even if he regrets it later. However, this isn’t explicitly about Doll. We as the audience are made to believe that this is about her because we just saw the frame before, of Doll’s signature lollipop falling.

We have seen every other death on screen. We are certain to see each of their corpses, except for Joker, who’s death is confirmed by William T Spears earlier in the chapter.

This is placed conveniently, or dare I say, deliberately before Doll’s death. We see William and Ronald collecting souls only before Doll shows up. The only other Reaper we see in this chapter afterwards is Undertaker.

This is of course speculation, but I don’t believe that the death Undertaker is referring to here is Doll’s death. I think he might be referring to the massacre Ciel and Sebastian have basically just committed after being employed for this mission to save the children. This is something Ciel can not take back. But Undertaker never explicitly said Doll, in fact, he specifically chose the phrase “to hold each and every soul dear” which implies that multiple souls were lost. I don’t think he is actually talking about the Circus Troupe, Doll or Joker.

What could this mean?

I think we are purposefully being misdirected as an audience member here, and I believe that the decision to withhold the details of Doll’s death was deliberate. I believe that the narrative is purposefully withholding information that will much later in the story become important.

Another thing I’d like to point out is, why on earth is Undertaker here? His presence isn’t explained, other than to “affirm” Doll’s death. He is seen with a carriage, along with Charles Grey and Charles Phipps. Well this could tie back to R!Ciel, I think that it’s also possible that:

Doll is actually dead and the information being withheld from us is that Undertaker took her body to later use as a Bizarre Doll to mess with Ciel later in the series.

Doll was disarmed by Sebastian, and once they left, perhaps even believing Doll was dead, Doll was taken in by Undertaker and R!Ciel for revenge or something. I know this one is a lot more dodgy, but it’s the one I believe makes more narrative sense.

Now let’s move on to how this makes sense from a narrative perspective.

Obviously, Snake is still alive, and believes that his family is alive. He goes to Ciel’s manor looking for them.

Ciel offers Snake a position at the Phantomhive manor, under the guise that they are looking for Snake’s family. Snake joins him because Ciel is manipulating him here, telling him that Snake can essentially have a new family at the manor while looking for his old family.

I believe Doll is a big influence as to why Ciel makes this decision.

Ciel sees Doll when he looks at Snake, which seems to be painful for Ciel. He then goes out of his way to affirm that they were, in fact, bad people (perhaps to justify his own actions in his mind) but then goes back on this and claims that he believes they were good people as to manipulate Snake.

He wants to help them achieve happiness and give them the chance to atone for their sins. The question is, is Ciel taking Snake in to atone for his own sins or to manipulate Snake?

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. A crucial character that is being played in this scene is of course, Doll. In every single memory that Snake shares, Doll is center frame, or the person who was closest to him.

Doll is either takes up the most space in the frame, or she’s the one who is standing closest to Snake. Not even Joker is this present in all of the images, but she is in all of them. While we didn’t see this much play out in the actual Book of Circus arc (given that Snake had very little screentime in that arc anyway), we can infer from these images that Snake felt the closest to Doll out of everyone at the Circus.

We also aren’t just seeing his actual memories normally, we are seeing his memories in an emotionally charged state. While he is feeling highly emotional, the person he thinks of the most is Doll. This is not just him remembering her as being the friendliest or most open person to him, this is who he was actually closest with within the Circus.

Doll’s relationship with both Snake and Ciel are very important parts of both of these characters. We see Ciel soften and feel guilt when he is reminded of Doll, and we see that Snake and Doll were presumably very close because of this scene.

Also just some fun images that I felt like pointing out:

Doll is featured in this image with one of Snake’s snakes. There isn’t much of a reason to feature one of these Snake’s snakes, unless we’re meant to infer a connection between these two.

I’m not quite sure where this image came from, but look! Doll and Snake are sitting next to each other, and Snake has a little smile on his face, which as we know isn’t very common for Snake in this series. There are very few instances of him smiling. However, this is obvious in the anime style so it likely isn’t manga compliant it’s cute though.

They’re featured together in another image!

Now for Doll and Ciel of course:

Doll and Ciel are seen here lying together.

These two images are very important to me and I feel they both hold a deeper meaning. Now it’s time to talk about Ciel and Doll.

Of course, there is the eye symbolism. Both of them keep an eye covered up, because both are hiding secrets that they need to keep covered up. Both wear a costume and live under a persona (Doll’s Circus persona that hides her identity of someone who kidnaps children and Ciel’s Smile persona where he is hiding his identity of the Queen’s watchdog). Yet, both of them are drawn to each other despite their secrets and form lasting connections.

We also see Ciel reaching out to Doll, and Sebastian taking the lollipop out of his hand. He is literally taking her away from him and blinding him from finding her. He is concealing the truth?

Despite what her family says, Doll refuses to believe that Ciel is with the yard.

She draws the parallels between herself and Ciel right here! She literally said it herself! Both of them are capable of holding secrets, and despite what appearances may suggest, people are still capable of hiding things. When she says “but we” she is acknowledging that appearances don’t always match expectations.

However, she still believes in him, up until the very end.

Even up until this point, she was still willing to listen to Ciel, and denies it until she can’t anymore. She reflects on their time together, having believed that their friendship was real.

Doll finally accepts it and feels hurt, betrayed and angry. She tries to kill him after this. Instead of anger, fear or hatred, this is the face we see Ciel make.

He looks sad and tired. This isn’t the face of someone who takes pleasure in the idea of killing her. We see him feel remorse for Doll even earlier, like I pointed out earlier in this scene

This scene is what compels him to take Snake in, being reminded of Doll. He looks sad here, he looks remorseful.

But most importantly, there is this image.

This takes place in the Green Witch arc, meaning that he is still thinking about Doll, she is still relevant up until this point in the story.

This image isn’t necessarily him leaving behind those who impacted his life who have since died, though that is certainly part of it. As we know, R!Ciel is still alive which O!Ciel at this point was not aware of. This picture does not reflect the complete truth.

His last obstacle could be interpreted as the Circus itself, but Doll and Joker aren’t positioned together like Rachel and Vincent are. Doll is a distance away from Joker in this image, and her image is a different size than Joker’s, implying that they are two completely different obstacles. In my opinion, Joker represents the Circus as a whole and himself. He represents all the sacrifices he had to make in Baron Kelvin’s manor. He could even represent his trauma while inside the cult.

But Doll is a completely different obstacle. She represents a personal obstacle. She seems to have impacted him greatly, being an influence in what compelled him to take Snake in. She is also one of the only people in this series we see Ciel feel remorse for. She is important.

At this point, this is supposed to give us the conclusion to all of these stories and ideas. But as highly speculated by the fandom (and practically canon) the first Ciel we see in the image is actually R!Ciel who O!Ciel left behind at the cult, who we know is still alive. The first greatest obstacle and his last greatest obstacle. That’s symbolism right there, right?

But I don’t believe that Snake’s story has concluded just yet. His family should still be a huge part of his character and his motivations. If his story isn’t leading up to something, than I think it’s going to be a rather poor choice on Yana Toboso’s part. But as we know, she doesn’t just do things for no reason, I believe that a lot of this was intentional.

TL;DR: Because Doll’s death is never specifically seen on screen, because Undertaker seems to purposefully mislead us after Doll’s death (and because of Undertaker’s presence in the first place), because the promise of looking for Snake’s family who is pivotal to Snake’s character, and because of the importance of Doll’s relationships with both O!Ciel and Snake, I believe that there is a chance that Yana Toboso is planning on bringing Doll back into the story.

This is all speculation, of course. I’d love for it to be true, but it is still rather dodgy given the fact that Doll hasn’t appeared in the Manga in twelve years. I could definitely just suffering from hopeful thinking, but I would love to see our girly make a return. Perhaps with R!Ciel? But the idea of her returning with R!Ciel is an idea for another day and I might make a separate post about it sometime! Thanks a bunch if you made it this far!

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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crdenhart · 4 years

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10 Movies You Should Watch This Halloween 2020

It’s the first full week of October, so Halloween is in full swing! This year, I continue my tradition of recommending some excellent films to watch during the Halloween season but with a COVID-19 twist for many of the movies on this list. Here are the 10 movies you should check out this Halloween:

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

“My family’s always been in meat.”

This movie recently got a 4K remaster making it look even more gruesome than ever! The film feels so real compared many other slasher horror films with the deaths coming out of nowhere and the killings being hyper-realistic. They even used real skeletons for the making of some of the scenes! The sound design also is something so terrifying; you’ll never want to listen to the sound of a chainsaw ever again!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

“Let’s do the Time Warp again”

One of the most fun horror movies of all time celebrates its 45th anniversary this Halloween! I like how the film satirizes the B-movie mad scientist genre and Tim Curry gives a stellar performance as Dr. Frankenfurter. Also the songs are so fun and catchy and will get stuck in your head forever! My favorite songs in the movie are “Science Fiction Double Feature” and “Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul.”

Hausu (1977)

“My fingers are gone!”

“House” is the title in English. This trippy Japanese haunted-house movie is a real treat for the eyes! The film is so mesmerizingly weird with its flashy colors and cartoon-like special effects. Definitely one worth checking out if you are looking to feel terrified and strange at the same time!

The Hunger (1983)

“Forever and ever!”

David Bowie as a vampire... yes please! The makeup and effects are really good in the movie especially in the scenes as Bowie’s vampire character ages rapidly from lack of drinking blood. The film has some creepy sequences, including some intense scenes in which it seems as though Bowie’s vampire is going to claim another victim and a scene in which Susan Sarandon’s character comes across several coffins of vampires. Definitely one of the scariest vampire movies of the last 40 years!

Ghostbusters (1984)

“Who you gonna call?”

We didn’t get the highly-anticipated Ghostbusters: Afterlife this year because of the pandemic, so to tide us over until it comes out, this Halloween would be a good time to revisit the original horror-comedy classic. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and the rest of the cast give some of their most memorable performances in this movie. Growing up I used to watch this and its sequel in the ooze-green boxset that included a couple animated episodes; highly recommend tracking a copy down if you want the best Halloween viewing experience.

The Exorcist III (1990)

“I have dreams… of a rose, and then falling down a long flight of steps.”

This movie might be one of the best horror sequels ever made! George C. Scott gives a fantastic performance in the lead role as do Jason Miller (returning as his role of Father Karris from the original Exorcist) and Brad Dourif as the Gemini Killer. I saw many of the filming locations when I visited DC back in 2015. A majority of the movie takes place in a hospital, which is usually scary enough on its own. There is an especially frightening scene involving a possessed patient and surgical scissors! This year marks its 30th anniversary, so this Halloween would be a good time to check it out if you haven’t seen it in a long time or are a fan of the original and never saw this one (you can actually skip the second one as this film makes no direct references to that movie). There is a director’s cut that was released a few years that provides some good deleted scenes and extra dialogue, though overall I prefer the theatrical cut.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

“Michael Myers is my business!”

This 6th entry in the Halloween series celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Lots of fans consider this the “worst” of the Halloween movies, but I find lots of good merits in the film, especially the producer’s cut released 2014 which features several extended and alternate scenes. I really like the Halloween (holiday) scenery of the film making it feel like it really takes place on October 31st unlike most of the series particularly in the scenes taking place at the Halloween carnival (the “red rain” scene being a highlight). The cinematography and suspense also are superior compared to many of the sequels, probably the closest the series has ever come to capture the style of the first two films. I also like how the film explores the mystery of Michael Myers more so than the other ones giving him a reason for his killing nature other than he is just “evil.” This movie is the last time Michael Myers is actually scary and not just a “killing machine” or some dummy for Busta Rhymes to kong-fu fight (ie Halloween: Resurrection). This also marked the final appearance of Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis as he died in real life shortly after filming his scenes. Definitely check out the producer’s cut if you have never seen the film or you have only seen the theatrical cut as it makes it one of the best Halloween films.

Goosebumps: “The Haunted Mask II” (1996)

“That’s no mask! That’s your face!”

Everyone is wearing masks these days, so what a fitting episode of Goosebumps to watch this Halloween! This is one of my favorite episodes along with the first one from 1995 (which was on my 2018 Halloween watch list). The scenes set in the basement of the costume shop are so creepy; something about abandoned places, especially in the dark, have always frightfully fascinated me. I used to watch the VHS of this movie every Halloween at my grandparents’ house and always hope they would do a 3rd one. Maybe someday!

Cabin Fever (2002)

“I don’t want any of us getting sick!”

Everyone is worried about coronavirus right now, so this Halloween would be the ideal time to check out this slasher in which a deadly virus is the killer. Really creepy shots of people getting infected and dying from the virus; the movie will make you a germaphobe! Interesting note that David Lynch was originally going to produce the movie but backed out during production, however Lynch’s frequent composer Angelo Badalamenti provides some of the music for the film.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

“We’re all dying. The world’s just one big hospice with fresh air.”

This sequel to The Shining was released last November nearly 40 years after the original, but it was well worth the wait! The film visually maintains the same style and tone of Kubrick’s original film while expanding upon some of its themes but without giving too much information as to ruin the mysteries surrounding the original. Like some of the other films on this list, there is a director’s cut which fleshes out scenes and characters; highly recommend it!

As a Halloween treat, here is a shot from my new spiritual horror film Sister, which should be released sometime this coming year! Happy Halloween everyone!

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Jason Voorhees

(WARNING! He’s back! THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK!)

...ki ki, ki, ma ma ma...

The slasher subgenre of horror has plenty of villains, but the key to any great slasher movie (aside from quality kills) is having a memorable slasher who sticks in the mind of those who watch the film. You can’t just have some generic evil guy and expect the killer to be cool and memorable; you need to give them a fun gimmick. And in the scores of slashers who populated the 80s, there are few out there who are quite as legendary and iconic as Jason Voorhees. Jason is one of those few villains who, even if you’ve never seen a single one of his movies, you’d know on sight.

Even now, with him being absent from cinema for over a decade at the time of this writing due to legal disputes (though not from other mediums such as video games), Jason is still a household name, still remembered as one of the coolest, creepiest horror villains to come out of the 80s. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say Jason might be the greatest slasher villain of all time. So let’s take a look at the man behind the mask and see what we’ve got here.

Motivation/Goals: Jason as a villain is motivated by two main factors: a desire to make his mother proud, and a desire to get vengeance for how he was treated. The first few movies are all Jason taking out his anger over his mother’s death on anyone near Camp Crystal Lake. In earlier movies, he’d really only kill anyone who invaded his territory, but later sequels had him expand his killing range by going to Manhattan, Springwood, and even outer space. Basically, Jason is motivated by revenge against a world that persecuted him, and a desire to impress his mother. The simplicity of his motivations is actually a great strength, because it means there doesn’t need to be constant time in each new film adding on to Jason’s lore like they do with Freddy, Michael Meyers, and so on. Jason kills kids who have sex, that’s it. Simple, clean, effective, and a vehicle for cool kills.

Performance: There are a LOT of people who have put on the hockey mask throughout the franchise, but perhaps the most well-known name is Kane Hodder, the hulking actor who portrayed Jason in the seventh through the tenth films. He’s certainly the Jason that will spring to mind when thinking of Jasons, but he’s the obvious one. His actor in Freddy vs. Jason, Ken Kirzinger, was chosen because he had kind eyes and could tower over Freddy, and amusingly he actually appeared in Jason Takes Manhattan as a huge chef Jason tosses aside. Then of course we have Ari Lehman, the man who cameoed as Jason at the end of the first film in the Carrie-esque jump scare, most notable because he is so proud of his role that he named his punk rock/heavy metal band First Jason.

And these are just the few I wanted to highlight here; the original continuity is ten movies worth of actors playing Jason, and he even has multiple actors in some films.

Final Fate: It depends on the movie. His mortal life is ended by a young Tommy Jarvis in The Final Chapter, but then he comes back in Jason Lives as a zombie, a zombie who is only incapacitated until Jason Takes Manhattan where he is seemingly killed off for good by the nightly flooding of the Manhattan sewers with radioactive sludge (likely a safety measure against C.H.U.D.s). But then he comes back in Jason Goes to Hell where his original body ends up obliterated for most of the movie until the ending, but soon after he’s dragged right down to, you guessed it, Hell. But then comes Jason X, and he’s brought to space where he finally ends up obliterated for real by falling through the atmosphere of a planet and burning up. And this isn’t getting into the numerous deaths from games, comics, and so on; Jason is a man who is very hard to kill.

Best Scene: What does one pick for the best scene? His sleeping bag kill from VII? The liquid nitrogen kill from Jason X? The numerous amusing scenes he has when he actually reaches Manhattan in Jason Takes Manhattan? It’s a tough choice, but honestly. I might just have to go with his corn field rave massacre in Freddy vs. Jason. It’s just so damn cool.

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Final Thoughts & Score: Jason Voorhees is one of the great early slasher villains and, most impressively of all, he managed a remarkable level of consistency until the very end, at least compared to some of is peers. Compare to Michael Meyers, who had to constantly be rebooted because filmmakers kept trying to find ways to humanize and explan his motivations to the point that franchise has a fractured timeline to rival the Zelda series, or Freddy Krueger, who deteriorated from a terrifying psychopath who treated killing like a game to a non-stop quip machine that spent more time slinging one-liners than kills. Jason, while certainly going through some odd phases – recall the time he was a weird demon worm that could surf between bodies, or the time he went to space and became a cyborg – never really lost sight of the things that truly made him effective as a character.

Yes, Jason is a silent antagonist, but he says a lot with his deeds and actions. He’s a killing machine, but he certainly isn’t mindless, and he usually seems to have some sort of ethics that perhaps we don’t understand, but Jason certainly does. For instance, in later films Jason does not hurt animals, and once he’s a zombie he doesn’t kill children either. A lot of this likely stems from Jason essentially being a child in a deformed man’s body, and this goes a long to making him an interesting, tragic figure. Jason almost certainly doesn’t understand what he’s doing is wrong, and if he does, he’s almost certainly too blinded by rage to care, especially after becoming a zombie.

I think the underlying tragedy of Jason simply being a monster who only wanted to please his beloved mother and violently lashes out at those he sees, through his warped perspective, as the ones to blame makes him an interesting and complex character… and here’s the great thing! Unlike other slasher villains, this is all established very early on, and rather than continue piling on more and more backstory, the series decides to throw Jason into interesting situations. This is a problem that befell his slasher sibling Freddy; as cool as Freddy managed to be, every new film added more and more convoluted backstory rather than trying to put Freddy into an interesting scenario he could have interesting kills in. And the less said about Michael Meyers, the better. But Jason? They gave him all he needed in the first two movies, made him a zombie in the sixth, and then spent the rest of the series getting weird and creative. Jason is a villain effective because his simple characterization and motivation means he can slip into any sort of situation, be it fighting a telekinetic girl, going to Manhattan, fighting Freddy Krueger, fighting Ash Williams, slaughtering camp counselors en masse, or going to space.

It should be incredibly obvious Jason is an 11/10. He’s a testament to what makes a slasher villain great and memorable: he has a simple yet flexible mindset that allows him to be thrust into a variety of situations, he has an iconic outfit, he has an awesome weapon of choice, and he is parodied, referenced, and known throughout the world to this day. He has killer video game appearances in the likes of Mortal Kombat X and his own Friday the 13th game, he has tons of comics including ones where he takes on Freddy, Ash Williams, Leatherface, and even Uber Jason, and despite the obnoxious legal battles currently keeping him from appearing in any media to any great extent, you’d be hard pressed to find a person without even passing knowledge of Jason.

Here’s a few interesting notes, though – a lot of shout outs to Jason have characters using a chainsaw, which as we all know is the tool of Leatherface. Jason uses a machete for the most part but is very versatile, but even so the closest he ever came to using anything remotely like a chainsaw was in VII, where he used a weed whacker. Jason also didn’t gain his iconic look until the third film; in the second movie, Jason wore a burlap sack over his head. And finally, there’s a bit of trivia I’m sure most are aware of by now: Jason was not the killer in the first or fifth films. In the first film, the killer was actually Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees, and the fifth film Jason was still kind of dead so a copycat killer named Roy Burns took his place. So hey, while we’re here, let’s talk about these Jason adjacent killers:

Pamela Voorhees is one of those rare female slasher villains, and the fact she is so absolutely amazing makes you wonder why there aren’t more. She’s basically to Friday the 13th what The Boss is to the Metal Gear Franchise – an all-important female figure whose actions completely and totally changed the course of history. Her quest to avenge her son’s death led to her slaughtering people at Camp Crystal Lake, which led to her death… but then it turns out her son had lived all along, and her death served only to make him into a violent, vengeful monster. Add on the fact that Pamela was using the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis on her son to empower him (supported by Jason Goes to Hell and Freddy vs, Jason vs. Ash), and Pamela is indirectly responsible for every murder in the series. Or perhaps even directly, if it really is her voice Jason hears in some of the movies and the Friday the 13th game. Betsy Palmer absolutely kills it in the role (pun intended), and it’s a shame she was annoyed by the role for years, though she apparently did eventually come around and embrace it. As one of the great ladies of horror, Pamela definitely earns a 10/10.

But now let’s take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum with Roy Burns. The idea of a Jason copycat killer is not entirely without merit, and for the most part, the movie is incredibly solid, with good kills on Roy’s part. The issue comes with the ultimate reveal of his identity, which turns the entire movie into an utterly convoluted mess that makes absolutely no sense. The lack of buildup of any kind, save for two brief scenes prior to his unmasking, makes the twist lack any sort of punch, and his reasoning for killing people is just absurd. Hell, he isn’t even targeting the one person responsible – that guy gets away with a jail sentence while Roy butchers innocent people!

Basically, Roy fails at being an engaging replacement for Jason due to the film’s finale, which goes out of its way to undermine him and everything you just watched. It should come as no shock that he’s a 1/10. Still, unlike most villains with this rating, he does have a little bit of redemption due to being playable in the Friday the 13th game. You’re just controlling him as he kills without any worry about stupid backstory, so hey, I’ll give Roy that at least, and I can’t deny his mask is pretty sick.

UPDATE: Ok, I was way too hard n Roy. Yes, his motivation is stupid and poorly explained, his killings are absolutely ridiculous and make no sense with his motivation, I still stand by all that... and yet, I’m watching this movie for creative kills, right? And boy does our boy Roy provide. He slaughters his way through these oneshot characters with gusto! I think I’m just still bitter he’s not Jason, but I like Season of the Witch even if Michael Meyers isn’t there, so maybe I’m just too harsh on Roy and his movie in general. I think his dumbass motivations hold him back, but I think the correct score for him is a 6/10. He is most certainly not abysmal enough for a one and I was really foolish to issue a score like that. Sometimes even I have trouble overcoming my biases.

It’s interesting, though, that both of these characters tend to be forgotten, overshadowed by Jason. In the intro of Scream, Drew Barrymore’s doomed character accidentally says Jason is the killer of the first film, rather than Pamela. And I think that while that is likely a common misconception, it’s less because Pamela is forgettable but more that Jason is so overwhelmingly cool that he overshadows anyone else in these films with few exceptions. Jason may very well be the greatest slasher villain of all time, and if you disagree, well, who won in Freddy Vs. Jason again, hmmm?

And more importantly, what slasher villain has an Alice Cooper song dedicated to him?

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I rest my case.

#Psycho Analysis #Jason Voorhees #Kane Hodder #Friday the 13th

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offtopicoverload · 3 years

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alright, i was on the fence about the oc weekend idea, but fuck it i have a bunch of shit made why not? block “oc weekend” tag if you don’t care cuz same

so have some cleo (and nia) headcanons to kick whatever the fuck this is gonna be off

super long cuz i have a serious problem

So her starting skills were bow, charisma, and wildlife, then woods lore, then blade, medicine, deception, brawling, seduction

She made some money hunting, which is where the bow and animal skills came from

With being an elf, her and Kade were orphaned together in a massacre and taken in by a local farmer

Absolutely got into so much trouble, usually Cleo getting a bad idea and dragging Kade along, but could always talk her way out of it, hence the charisma

MC canonically has relationship experience, right? I think she had a short term partner, maybe some flings with travelers or something, but never really got invested in relationships, just wasn’t her thing

Especially in RIverbend, where everyone knows everyone and it’s awkward if you break up

She’s pretty similar to canon MC, wild and goofy and somewhat reckless

But also really determined and caring and sweet when she needs to be

I adore her if you can’t tell

The first time she saw Nia, totally tongue-tied and a flustered mess, she’s smooth when it’s a joke but incapable of any coherent words when it turns real

She’s pretty awkward, definitely stiff at first, but slowly loosens up as she gets closer to Nia, letting her goofy side show

She for sure pines and gets made fun of for it by Kade, then Mal and Imtura every time she gets flustered

And Threep likes to rub it in too, occasionally threatening to say something unless he gets snacks he does the same to Nia askjksdf

I’m also in love with the idea of Mal and Imtura playing matchmaker and constantly trying to set them up in situations where they have to be close, and the two of them losing their minds when Cleo and Nia get stuck in that pit

The night at the cabin in the Deadwood was the first moment Cleo realised that there could be something real there, like it just never clicked until Nia was straight up telling her she liked her

From then on things definitely change, and Cleo starts being a lot softer, like at the masquerade and stuff

But the argument in the cabin always sticks out in her mind, she defended Nia’s right to spend her life as she chooses, but she doesn’t necessarily like it

She always tries to find work arounds for Nia using her light, like using her own before Nia can get the chance

She for sure nearly decked the High Priest, just for all his bullshit, and was very happy to get that tracking orb from him to make sure they would be safe she had some plans already

So I don’t accept MC being cool after Nia straight up gets yanked into the Shadow Realm, Cleo absolutely was about to jump in after her until Imtura grabbed her and jerked her back like “what the fuck are you doing”

Cleo was about to snap the entire time they were working their way through the Shadow Realm, definitely wrecked Vonstratz on Nia’s behalf

I also don’t accept the “single tear” line when MC fucking KILLS Nia, Cleo would be bawling her eyes out and refusing to let go of her when she dies

There not being an ily felt kinda weird to me, and cuz Cleo’s a sap, I feel like she’d either say it before stabbing Nia or during the diamond scene where they’re looking out at Whiterun

In the first instance, it’s more for her piece of mind, that Nia knows what her sacrifice means

When Nia comes back, Cleo whispers it a million times into her shoulder as she hugs her, until she sounds like a broken record

For the second one, it’d be a bit spur of the moment, she’d just be looking in Nia’s eyes as the words spill out, but she wouldn’t even care cuz it felt so right

And now I’m going to ignore book 2 and make up my own shit

So immediately after, Cleo and Kade go back to Riverbend to pack up their lives there, Kade in order to stay in Whiterun cuz King Arlan made him a librarian or something, idk but he’s in Whiterun at the royal library and archives

Cleo ends up running a few odd jobs out of Whiterun for a while, helping Mal out quite a bit as Nia ends up with a lot of responsibilities at the temple after the High Priest gets axed

Cleo ends up quite well known as a good adventurer/travel mate by the time Nia ends up quitting the temple

Before they leave on their first trip as just them, Cleo takes her up to that terrace overlooking Whiterun after taking her to the market

They stare out at the city for a while, until the sun’s setting along the horizon

Cleo pulls out a ring from her bag, fiddling with it as she shifts on her feet nervously. She’s wussed out like half a dozen times already, and this is her last chance to do it somewhere so special

Nia figures out something’s up and starts prodding to figure it out, poking her and stuff and laughing the whole time

Cleo’s kind of found out, and turns to her blushing the ring held between her thumbs and index fingers as she avoids eye contact, “So, um. You wanna get married?”

Not what Nia was expecting at all and she kind of just 👁👄👁 for a while, until Cleo starts trying to back out of it, thinking she fucked up

And then it’s Nia’s turn to stumble over her words something along the lines of, “No, wait! Okay, um, no, so - No, I don’t mean no, just - Yes! Of course!”

The ring’s super basic, like plain silver without even a gem

I feel like Cleo found it on a trip with Mal, and immediately thought of Nia and proposing and freaked herself out a bit, but that’s why she didn’t look for another cuz shes a sap

They travel around the realm a bit, stopping in Undermount so Cleo can look into House Nightbloom, and getting rides from Imtura when Mal gives them a tip on a relic or something

All the while Nia’s trying to spread the Light in small villages, using her magic for little things as Cleo works favours again

At some point they get a cottage a ways away from a village, I’d say not too far from the Deadwood and things slow down for the most part, only the occasional trip for the temple

It’s a really cute house, small and surrounded by flowers and huge trees, Cleo builds a swing on one

The others visit occasionally, Kade and Threep the most often, and I almost want to say they take in an orphan, but I can’t decide if Cleo would trust herself enough for that

Though I feel like Nia would love to have pets at the least cleo always compares threep to the cats to annoy him

Elves canonically have longer life spans than humans, and Nia’s is even shorter from using her Light, so I’m sure you can tell where I’m going with this

Nia passes in her sleep before anyone else in the gang and it really fucks up Cleo, like the way she wakes up to it and can’t even stop it

And the worst part is that she’s always hoping just a little bit in the back of her mind that it’s like the first time, and Nia’s just going to wake up or knock on the front door

The gang meet up all together for a funeral, and Cleo plants the flowers from the bouquet from the end of book diamond scene

She ditches the cottage cuz too much of it is Nia, and is just kind of aimless for a little bit, staying with Kade in Whiterun, but ultimately hates not having a purpose

She moves to the old elven cabin in the Deadwood cuz shes a sap cuz it’s one of her favourite places

She devotes herself to fixing it up and making it better, helping travelers through the Deadwood cuz I feel like Tyril would open Undermount up

Everyone’s stayed in relative contact and tend to invite Cleo on adventures if they don’t hear from her for a while, just to keep her from isolating herself in the woods

Mal works with the monarchy to make things better in the Nooks and Crannies while still thievin, and especially when he’s older settles down more

I feel like he lives pretty long, but ends up sick and passing away, second to go and he kinda laughs about it his mum was sick right? and he jokes about the irony to feel better?

I doubt Imtura really accepts being a princess, I think she keeps captaining and fights it as long as she can until she really doesn’t have a choice

But she’s not like her mum, actually leaving Flotilla and like working with the guard and stuff

I think she’s third, dying in battle like a badass and saving her crew. She’s honored by the clans, and the monarchy and even Undermount declares her a hero or something idk how it works there

I feel like Kade would keep to stories, but maybe spend a while just moving about the realm, stay in Undermount to explore it and stuff, builds up his name as a bard

He dies in his sleep too cuz he deserves it, he passes when he’s visiting Riverbend again, he’s buried there and like the whole village shows up

I feel like Tyril’s significantly older than everyone else, but being an elf hides it

He always gives Cleo tips on artifacts, or asks her to escort travelers through the Deadwood or around the realm if they’re important to keep her busy

He’s not the head of House Starfury, but he’s still pretty involved in elven politics, mainly focused on opening up Undermount, educating people on the elven empire and spreading the wealth and stuff

He’d go before Cleo, just running out of life force after all his magic

After Tyril passes, Cleo’s just done, he was the only thing giving her purpose, and she’s spent decades cleaning up the Deadwood as best she can

Threep’s joined her after Tyril’s funeral, staying with her for a few days and how following her out into the forest

She walks out to the clearing they saw the unicorn at and stops right on the edge, sitting down and setting up a purification ritual

She’s known how for years, she learned after Nia passed so she could spend some of her life completing one of her dreams like a sap

She clears out the darkness from a lot of the Deadwood to drain the last of her life force, stumbling over to a tree and sliding down to the ground, her back pressed against the bark

Threep flutters into her lap, her nails scratching behind his ears as he licks her chin comfortingly, a final goodbye

Her breathing starts heavy, growing slow as her chest feels far more hollow than it did a moment ago, and her eyelids slowly grow heavy

A breeze brushes her hair, stirring her awake. The lake’s shimmering before her, bright and magical as she stumbles to her feet, Threep gone from her lap

The Deadwood’s healed, more than she could possibly have managed on her own, and she has so much more energy now than when she fell asleep

She trips through the trees, running for what feels like hours until she’s back at the cabin, the stone bright against the trees as it sits, whole again after all her effort

She shoulders the front door open, freezing when she sees the fireplace, or rather, what’s before the fireplace

Nia’s there, her back to the flickering flames as she smiles, cheeks redder than the curls falling down her shoulders

And Cleo doesn’t stop running, tackling Nia into a hug and squeezing with all she is, tears dripping down her chin as she laughs, carefree and disbelieving and happy. So, so happy, for the first time since she last saw that smile

#i got very carried away oops #cleo nightbloom #shes getting a tag now cuz im committed tothis dumbass elf #and her magical partner #im assuming nespers live crazy long based on loola #and nia said 'well meet again beyond the veil' so im also assuming there's some sort of afterlife #oc weekend #wrote this like two weeks ago lmao #so ignore how erratic it is

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senadimell · 4 years

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Characters I like AKA ‘hurt face’ master post

The characters I like in movies and books are distinctly different. With books, I have all sorts of favorite characters, and I love that I know what they’re thinking. I just love a good deep third or first person.

In contrast to books, there’s just something different about movies. We’re watching actors, and the visual component really dictates how I interact with film. I can get over a bad storyline if the emotional journey I’m watching looks real.

When I’m watching a movie, I will almost always fall for lonely characters played by actors who can clearly express pain and sadness. Bonus points for guilt, insecurity, and a history of rejection. I will like them even if they’re not likable, or kind, or nice, or even good. They are visually compelling. Of course, I’ll love them even more if the backstory actually backs up why they’re in pain, and gives me a reason I shouldn’t dislike them beyond “they emote so pretty.” Experience with high school theatre productions has taught me there’s so much more to anger than volume, and so much more to sadness than tears; I’m in awe of actors who can communicate those emotions with subtlety and/or clarity.

So in real life, most of us aren’t that good at communicating with our faces, are we? For me, anyways, it’s hard to distinguish between tired, angry, or annoyed. When someone’s in pain or hurting, they rarely just look sad. Life’s not like a movie, when a good actor can show you exactly how a character feels without saying anything at all. I’m not so good at telling what people are thinking and often assume that that people are mad (and that they’re mad at me), when in reality I think pain must be more common. Most peole think of actors as imitating real people. I think they have to do more: they have to be expressive, and yet have it come off as genuine, so that we don’t even see the face but the character.

I only just figured out why it was that when Frozen came out, I was obsessed with it. The story itself leaves a lot to be desired, but I was willing to excuse that. My phone was full of pictures of Elsa, but most of them were stills from the movie rather than fan art. I had pictures of almost every face Elsa makes in Let it Go, when she just looks exhilarated and like she can’t believe how happy she feels. I also had every frame from when she hugs frozen Anna (pictured below). It was the first time I’d really seen an animated character visibly express insecurity, loneliness, self-rejection, guilt, and anxiety.*

This whole “visibly expressing negative emotions” thing is also one of the main why I’m obsessed with the first four seasons of Doctor Who. The Time War plot checks off every box, and Eccleston and Tennant are just brilliant about letting that emotion show through.

Same thing goes for musical theatre. With cast recordings, the best is when you can just hear everything they’re saying in the way they sing things. Pretty Funny from Dogfight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-HBOsY50s) is just brilliant. Some other favorites: Track Down This Murder/Down Once More from Phantom, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables (see: all of Les Miserables, actually), I’m Not That Girl as well as its reprise and No Good Deed from Wicked, Satisfied and Burn from Hamilton**

There are these characters who are...awful. They have objectively done awful things. I don’t think their actions are excusable. Yet the visual part of my just loves to watch them because they’re in pain and it’s written all over their face. (Loki and Kylo Ren fall into this category for me). I want to make all of these excuses for them, and am not repulsed, and spend all of this time analyzing them because what the actors can do with their faces just sucks me in.

Now that I think about it, this is probably why I hate Elijah Wood’s performance of Frodo. The boy had exactly four faces: happy, sad, sick, and demented

A warning: this is a rough collection of GIFs that don’t all match in shape and format.

I will take the ring to Mordor.

Rose.

In the most loving way possible, David Tennant as the 10th Doctor is rather melodramatic and constantly aggrieved, so I’m going to leave it at these two scenes even though I could probably mine a gifset from almost every episode he appears in post-Rose.

Everything I am dies

Loki:

Massacre your entire species to prove your worth and please your father

It’s just rocks and dust.

There was a war, and we lost.

(I love just about every face Christopher Eccleston makes as the Ninth doctor, but will save that for another post.)

I actually didn’t care one way or the other for Alan Rickman’s Snape until this scene. After watching that, I was moved and reevaluated my whole take on the character. I don’t personally see Snape’s relationship with Lily as romantic like I once did, but I don’t think I would have gone back and evaluated the character as deeply as I did without first watching Rickman in that scene. I’m now firmly in the Snapedom.

Frozen:

Then leave.

AKA Viggo Mortensen breaks a toe.

This jerkface.

Samantha Barks was amazing to watch and hear.

Eddie Redmayne is a gift.

Anne Hathaway was phenomenal.

Les Mis was actually really hard to watch in movie theatres because there were so many closeups of the actors’ faces during intense emotional moments. It was a little overwhelming.

Pearl Mackie is a gift.

Some concluding observations:

This is a very white list. It was also feeling pretty male until I added Doctor Who companions and musicals.

This was harder than I was expecting, emotionally. Here’s some more Bill Potts to lighten things up.

*Actually, one of the reasons I couldn’t stand Anna is because she comes off as completely ignorant when Elsa’s every expression is plainly written all over her face, even though narratively she has every reason to be in the dark. If Elsa wore the regular, confusing expressions most of us wear, Anna wouldn’t come off as so silly. (Also if she would stop talking for a few seconds and listen). If Elsa’s animations weren't so expressive, I probably would cut Anna a lot more slack naturally **After I had the privilege of seeing Hamilton, Quiet Uptown joins this list possibly the best bit of acting I have ever seen without a single word being said. You can’t completely hear it in the recordings, but Eliza’s face goes through about 50 emotions without even opening her mouth moving, and I was sobbing as I watched.

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aconboyindependent2021 · 3 years

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‘Now and Then’ - current state of play

My film is a re-imagining of the site of Brighton General Hospital next to my home. Until around 70 years ago, a workhouse operated on the site (for details, see: Gardner, J, (2012) A History of the Brighton Workhouses). Aspects of the austere workhouse are still evident on the site today. I began to think about the stories of the residents of the workhouse – what did they have to endure? With this in mind, I bought the above book by a local author about the history of workhouses in Brighton.

I have always been fascinated by the idea that traumatic events in a particular location can be recorded and replayed at a later time in history and that this might be a basis for ghosts and hauntings – for example, in the blockbuster, Poltergeist, and the BBC drama from the 1970’s The Stone Tapes (Sasdy, 1972). This is one of the key concepts behind the film.

After a lot of thought, I settled on the story of the workhouse being told by a single woman, Agatha, whose infant child was taken from her illegally and sold to a rich couple living in Brighton. This is a variation on the common Victorian practice of unmarried women being compelled to give their children to a foundling home.

The film starts with Aggie telling her story in largely neutral terms and comparing the workhouse and the site’s positive use today as a hospital, but it climaxes with Aggie screaming with the loss of her child, and we see that she is a tormented spectre.The film ends with her anguish fading into a sign on the present site, promoting a nursery for infant children.

The film will be around 5-6 minutes long and will consist of edited original footage taken on the site in the present day. The film will be treated with video effects to alter the pacing, colour and atmosphere of the original footage. I have asked for a drama-trained friend to narrate the film as Aggie and will be using original and library sound effects and music motifs, or possibly drones to punctuate the soundtrack.

Now and Then – influences from other artists

1. Brian Percival - About a Girl

Female voice-over revealing a terrifying truth about motherhood at the end of the film. This film gives a cold dead feeling inside from the casual yet downcast demeanor as the leading character talks about her dysfunctional life and especially the ending, where the girl is revealed to have secretly miscarried a baby and we see her dump it into the canal (“I’ve become good at hiding things”). Both my film and About A Girl attempt to humanise the female main character outside of their tragedies.

2. Tobe Hooper - director of Poltergeist Paranormal activity centred around past events and the presence of aggrieved spirits. This was a film that made an impact on me from its non-stop tension, even before the presence of the supernatural becomes apparent. Tobe Hooper, ever since creating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) has achieved many awards, and after this film, it is easy to see why. It also has a similar plot to my initial idea for my film - where a great wrong done in the past creates a ‘haunting’ by aggrieved spirit(s)..

3. Peter Sasdy – Director of The Stone Tape (1972)

The original idea from the film was stones “recording” traumatic events from the past. While the current draft has drifted away from this concept, it still lives on with how Agatha remembers everything about the past as if she died yesterday, despite the superficial veneer of the current day hospital. However, Agatha is a real soul though in my film.

4. David Lynch - Eraserhead, The Elephant Man His black and white films – particularly The Elephant Man In the latter, view of Victorian England shot in black and white featuring cruelty and time-specific sounds, sights and atmospheres. The film always seems to have a sense of foreboding, even when the scene is uneventful, and with a deeply engaging soundtrack. Eraserhead will always always be an influence due to its deliberate disturbing monochrome style, investigation of altered perception and the anxieties of parenthood.

5. James Gardener- Author of: A Complete History Of Brighton Workhouses A detailed and easy-to-understand book centred around the original workhouse in my area. It includes the Brighton General Hospital Site. It helped give a real-life grounding to my supernatural tale.

6. Richard Boden - director of the Blackadder series 4 finale, Goodbyeee The series as a whole has very little to do with my film, but this is a powerful episode whose fade-out ending and closing-sound inspired the cross-dissolve effects and soundscape in my film - coincidentally both are centered with the cruelty of the past and atmospheric sound. Present and past merge at this point. One of the most popular scenes in TV drama/comedy and understandably so too.

7. Piotr Obal – various films and still images Obal is an independent artist who works with art, music and still photography. Occasionally, he teaches youths how to work at the computer like me (!) when he was helping out with an arts award I was studying for. Below is one of his images that has been an influence on me and the film. I love his Photoshop collages and the wonderful images he posts from his native Poland.

Work by Piotr Obal

8. Nalini Malani- for her immersive installations, ‘disgraced’ women under partiarchy, history and mythology, miscarriages of justice. I found out about Malini when I was writing my essay on her work in the Diversity module: what started off as just finding out about an artist for the sake of my writing became a long-lasting admiration and inspiration from an artist who not only knows where she is coming from (from her upbringing hugely affected by India and Pakistan’s partition) but willingly sticks her neck out for those oppressed by society and history, and confidently shows her creations to the world. A particularly relevant aspect of her work is her use of the supernatural and mythology stories and myths to highlight aspects of women’s oppression throughout history.

9. Chris Butler- director of ParaNorman A key influence, supposedly aimed at children, I used the same of the spectre in this moving animation, and I was influenced by its themes about the cruelties of humanity and how we “moved on”. The spectre is a ghost of a falsely accused of being a ‘witch’ who wreaks her revenge on those who persecuted her.

It was also a strong influence that is more powerful at its climax and twist. In-depth look at how prejudice destroys lives that are never regained - even death provides no relief. Butler is a part of Studio Laika, creating animated films that go beyond the norm.

10. Jacqueline Wilson - the writer of the Hetty Feather trilogy and other such Victorian novels such as Clover Moon.

A part of Jacqueline’s writings is her commentary about how unjust the past could be compared to today: even though her protagonists speak in ways that were customary to Victorians, she keeps them relatable the same way she keeps her modern-day protagonists relatable. The writing style of her books inspired certain characteristics of Agatha’s narration, because it was easy to understand yet engaging.

11. David Lean - Director of Great Expectations (1946) This film, based on the Dickens book, also brought to mind the cruel period of the Victorian era, and the acting and emotions continued that spirit and my inspiration around my project. I love that it is black and white as well as dialog-centred - I particularly like the formal style of speech - even to express negative emotions- for example:

“Let me point out the topic that in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth for fear of accidents. It's scarcely worth mentioning, Only it's as well to do as others do”.

Miss Havisham, an almost ghostly older woman, in a similar way to Agatha cannot move beyond the terrible wrong done to her - she was left at the alter and devoted her life to training her adopted daughter, Estella, to get revenge on men.I use s similar obsessive, sing-minded hatred to motivate Agatha.

12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This film involve a man becoming the object of affection of a former silent movie star, Norma Desmond who overtake his life little by little until she kills him. Norma suffered with the times when silent movies went out of fashion and she is unable to move on, alone in her great house: people told Norma that she had no value and it had an impact on her psyche. She loses all sanity when arrested for killing Joe Gillis as she believes she is back in show business. The film also explores facades; Norma may live a glamorous if not lonely life, but her mental state torments her, like Aggie has with hers as she wanders around the hospital site driven ‘mad’ with grief and anger.

13. R D Laing: ‘anti-psychiatrist’

'Here was someone explaining madness, showing how the fragmentation of the person was an intelligible response to an intolerable pressure”

Quote from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/25/rd-laing-aaron-esterson-mental-illness

In discussing the concept of my film with a member of my family, I was directed to the psychiatrist/anti-psychiatrist, RD Laing. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s Laing wrote about how a person’s so-called ‘mad’ behaviour was in fact intelligible when their entire situation and experience was taken into account. He and other writers (like David Cooper) talked about the concept of the ‘double-bind’ where a person’s opportunity to make a decision to resolve the way they were being treated was blocked – perhaps by a member of their family saying that it was not in their personality to be assertive or angry.

This reminded me very much of Agatha; she tries to express her outrage at the great wrong done to her, but she is judged as unworthy and undeserving, so the wrong is seen as justified and her punishment for being the ‘low-life’ who would have a child and have to live in a workhouse. It is circular – she is treated badly because she deserves to be treated badly and so this means that her hatred and insanity brings the great wrong up herself.

Laing is largely forgotten today, but his ideas resonate with certain ideas in feminism and anti-racism. ‘Gaslighting’ is everywhere, both back then and now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NnBonXPLJM

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starwarsfic · 4 years

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Arrangements

Originally posted October 13, 2020

Summary: Obi-Wan's first mission as a Shadow takes an unexpected turn.

Details: Pre/Obi-Wan. Jango/Obi-Wan. Jedi Shadow Obi-Wan. Written for SparkySheep.

CW: Character death.

xxxxxx

Waking up to blaster fire was an osik way to spend a morning, but with Death Watch there weren't many better ways.

Obi-Wan shoved his hand under his pillow for his holdout blaster with a sigh. Not bothering to throw on any clothing he ran out into the sitting room, shooting before his thoughts caught up to his actions. It wasn’t very useful against a fully armored opponent who was already watching out for bolts from Pre, but it looked like he was participating.

"Who the kriff are you?" he demanded, taking in the scene: Unknown person in beskar'gam, Pre in just his boxers ducked behind their couch, blaster marks covering the walls already.

"Jango Fett," both men said in completely different tones, giving Obi-Wan momentary backlash as he placed the name with a person.

Slowly, he lowered his weapon, realizing it was really, really bad for a Jedi to be shooting at the only survivor of the Galidraan massacre if it wasn't in self-defense.

"Cyare?" Pre was, of course, confused.

After Qui-Gon had abandoned him for his "Chosen One," Obi-Wan hadn't given a lot of thought to what he'd end up doing--but others had. He'd been recruited by the Shadows in less than a day of wandering around his new, single apartment in the Temple and trying to find a new meaning for his life. At the time, it had seemed like a great deal--get away from the Temple, do something helpful, get solo missions where he didn’t have to deal with people asking him about Qui-Gon or Anakin.

When they'd told him his mission was to infiltrate Death Watch he'd...been less sure. The mission reports from Mandalore spoke of him doing just that, of him getting fairly deep into the organization before leaving. They didn't talk about Pre beyond vague mentions of Tor's heir.

They definitely hadn't said anything about the unintentional sexual relationship Obi-Wan had started up with him to help his cover. Or Pre's quick infatuation with him.

In a way, Obi-Wan supposed it was a good thing that hadn't let up, that the years hadn't made Pre forget him. He'd slotted back into Death Watch with very little friction, his sob story of abandonment by his "jetii buir" hitting all the right places in Mandalorian hearts and working well with what they'd known of Qui-Gon from his earlier mission.

And as Pre's lover, the future spouse of the Mand'alor in many people's eyes, he'd had access to all sorts of information to send back to the Order.

It wasn’t even all bad--even terrorists had down time, when they acted like normal people, when they joked and played, trained for not just killing. When he could just keep Pre quiet during the sex it was...honestly amazing. Scarily good, even, all things considered, not just something he'd been nostalgic about as his first real experience while eighteen and stressed out.

This possible assassination of Pre might, finally, be where he had to draw the line in just going with the flow to complete his mission.

"I can't attack Jango Fett for Death Watch, Pre. That's horrible optics."

"Optics?? For who???"

"The Jedi?"

"They abandoned you!"

"No, my deadbeat Master did and I couldn't handle it,” that was the very basic summary of what he’d told them, after all.

Fett's helmet whipped back and forth to watch them as they spoke, his confusion and disbelief dancing through the Force.

"...You're a Jedi?" The weight of the gaze dragging along him was heavy even through Fett's visor.

Obi-Wan shrugged. "Yes."

"Huh," the thoughtful noise wasn't what Obi-Wan had been expecting--fury, maybe, or disgust.

Perhaps Fett could just appreciate how distracted Pre was, though, because a second later he was falling from a blaster bolt between the eyes.

"There goes the mission," Obi-Wan muttered, slumping against the doorframe and wondering how the Shadows would feel if he just dismantled what was left of Death Watch instead of staying to spy.

Fett moved forward, drawing Obi-Wan's attention immediately. There was no sense of danger, but no denying that he was alone and vulnerable with a predator, not from the way Fett stalked towards him, crowding into his space.

"You're a spy?"

"Yes. I think you can agree the Jedi Order needed to keep better abreast of what Death Watch was up to." Obi-Wan met his challenging tone with like, straightening to his full height to look down at him--if he was going to die in the nude next to Pre kriffing Vizsla, it wasn't going to be meekly.

The shot he was waiting for didn't come, just Fett raising his free hand, running the back of his glove down Obi-Wan's flank as though soothing an animal. And he did find himself relaxing, as quiet minutes went by without any sense of hostility, just Fett's intense concentration on him, his thoughts clearly racing from the impression in the Force. The intimacy wasn’t lost on Obi-Wan, despite how confused he was.

"Death Watch won't survive this.” There was something in his words, some greater plan beyond just killing Pre, that Obi-Wan couldn’t begin to guess at.

Swallowing, trying to get his dry mouth to cooperate, Obi-Wan could only equivocate, "That's...understandable."

"Not just that, is it? You'd enjoy their destruction, too--they used your people like mindless attack dogs."

"What are you getting at, Fett?"

"I'm proposing a temporary partnership. You, me, until Death Watch has been ground into the dust."

There were emotions there, below the consideration, that Obi-Wan tried to read. "And how much of that has to do with the fact you want to conquer something Pre had?"

Fett's satisfaction curled around them like a lazy smile. "Most of it," he agreed. "If you let Pre touch you, are you really going to say no to me?"

"I made Pre keep the lights off and his mouth occupied."

The finely honed control of Fett's slipped and his laughter almost had his body curling in on itself. "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."

#ship: preobi #character: pre vizsla #character: obi wan kenobi #character: jango fett #ship: kenfetti #verse: shadow obi wan #theme: mandalorian culture #theme: humor #theme: death watch

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