#also i do find it really neat how me and the original artist break faces into just. a rectangle and a circle. very sexy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bosspigeon · 3 years

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one for sorrow

Pairing: Gen, M!Detective/Mason Word Count: 3483 Summary: Juniper Fenn reflects on memories, nursery rhymes, loneliness, and wanting to be wanted.

Just a little (uh... kinda big, actually?) character study for my soft boy, Juni! It wound up a lot more emotional than I originally intended, but I like having this insight into his character.

CW for (implied) deadnaming, misgendering, coming out, and in the last portion a non-graphic post-sex scene with some allusions to said sex ahfdsjh.

One for sorrow, two for joy.

He thought the needle would hurt more than it did. He closes his eyes and looks away, and the artist gives him the hairy eyeball when he clutches at Tina’s knee, like she’s afraid he’ll jump off the bench and bolt for the door. He wants to ask if that’s happened before, but he thinks he’s made enough of a fool of himself so far.

“You sure you’re good?” she asks, giving him an out. Somehow, that just strengthens his resolve.

He takes a slow breath and nods, closing his eyes.

He hears the buzzing, and when the machine first touches skin, he almost jumps, but he’s more worried about looking like more of a baby than he already does than he is startled, so he bites his lips and forces himself to holds still. And it does hurt, but not like he thought it would. He squints one eye open to watch the progress of the first line over his skin. He expects to be repulsed, like when he’s having bloodwork done, and he has to look away from the needle going into his arm. But this is different, somehow. Doesn’t make his stomach turn.

“This is the quietest I’ve ever seen you,” Tina teases, when the first wing has taken shape. He almost jumps again, but he manages to contain it to a twitch. He’s going to tip the artist as much as he’s able after this is done, just for dealing with someone as fidgety as him.

He chews at his lip. “It’s… I dunno. I wouldn’t say it feels good, but it’s kind of soothing, in a weird way?”

She leans over, watching, and the artist gives her a bit of a look, so she backs up again. “Have you told your mum?” she asks.

He snorts out a laugh and looks away, back at the stencil on his arm that will soon be filled in with black feathers and ringed with flowers. “Of course not. She’d probably kill me.”

“She doesn’t like tattoos?” Tina tilts her head, watching his face like she’s waiting for him to start whining about how it hurts. She’s always been the tougher of the two of them, and he’s got no illusions about that, so he’s sort of proud of himself for keeping his cool—as much as he’s got anyway.

He shrugs the arm that’s not under the machine, and wonders when he’ll get his next tattoo. He’s already got ideas for more, and knowing that it’s not so bad as he was worried it would be is exciting. Not to mention, it’s something that’s just for him. Not for anyone else. He’s… never really done anything like this before. “I don’t know what she likes, but I doubt she’d approve.”

She sucks her teeth and he squeezes her knee again when she gives him that soft, sad look she sometimes does when his mum comes up in conversation. “What’s it going to be?” she asks suddenly. Tina’s a good friend, changing the subject before he can get moody about it.

“A magpie,” he says softly, looking back down to watch the lone bird slowly taking shape on his skin.

Three for a girl, four for a boy.

He asks what happened to all the pretty paintings around the house when he’s ten, because they disappear sometime after one of Mum’s visits, when she seemed more distant than usual. Maybe she hopes he won’t notice, but he misses them immediately. The house is too bare without them, it feels so lonely. It’s always been lonely, ever since Dad passed, but the bare walls make it even lonelier. Mum brushes it off, of course. He’s used to it at this point, so he doesn’t push her, but he’s also stubborn, so he goes looking. He’s even more determined when she tries to shut him up by replacing them all with clean, impersonal prints in neat little frames. He finds them in the attic, tucked away in a box, each one slipped carefully into a protective sleeve or folder and wrapped in tissue paper. He finds a dreamy matted watercolor of him as a baby, fat and freckly and smiling with no teeth, and he has to take a minute to sit down and cry as quietly as possible before he can start going through the rest. There’s a folder of scrawled pencil portraits, too. He finds one of Mum sitting on a pier, peeking back over her shoulder with her hair blowing in the wind. She’s smiling. He can’t remember the last time he saw her smile.

There’s a self portrait that makes him laugh through his tears, because the reflective surface Dad seems to have used as his mirror is a Christmas ornament, so his face is distorted, one eye huge, his tongue out, drawing himself drawing. He keeps that one for sure, and a few of the other ones he thinks he can get away with. An oil pastel of a wooden swing dripping with honeysuckle, a colored pencil drawing of the library, a few studies of people and plants and animals, and another watercolor of the three magpies, sitting in a juniper tree.

There are three magpies painted on his bedroom wall, from back when it was his nursery. Dad painted them right after he was born, before they brought him home from the hospital. They’d waited until he arrived to know what his gender would be. Of course, he went and messed that up, like he did most things. Sometimes he wonders if Dad would be disappointed, or if he’d think it was funny.

They used to be above his crib, and then his bed when he outgrew that, but he moves his bed to the opposite side of his room when he’s fourteen, and covers them with a poster. He thinks for sure Mum’s going to give him an earful about it, but he’s surprised she hasn’t tried to cover them up herself. He supposes it’s not really an issue, since when she is home, it’s not like she spends any time in his bedroom.

And then he's sixteen, and he’s been practicing his watercolor for years at this point. Sometimes, he creeps into the attic when he’s got the house to himself, rifles through Dad’s paintings, studies his style for as long as he can. He’s been old enough not to need a proper nanny for years now, though someone comes to check up on him frequently and make sure he’s got food and necessities, but beyond that he’s got plenty of time alone. He sits in the attic until he's sore from the wooden floor, trying to think of how Dad’s hands might have looked while he worked, the speed and angle of his brush strokes. He doesn’t think he can find anything new at this point, as many times as he’s snuck up here to look at Dad’s work, but out of the blue, he finds what might have been a really nice landscape, if it weren’t marred by fat little handprints in bright yellow and green, as if he’d smeared his hands across the palette the second Da took his eyes off it, and slapped them down in the middle of the paper. He comes back to it a lot, when he spends time in the attic, because when he looks at it, he swears he can hear what he imagines Dad’s laugh sounded like, his voice calling him a little menace with all the fondness in the world.

And then he’s eighteen, and he’s alone on his birthday. Mum calls, tells him she loves him and she would come and visit him later on, so they could do something together, but she couldn’t take the day off. She tells him how proud she is of her daughter being all grown up, and he winces, but keeps his mouth shut.

And then he maybe gets a little bit drunk, drags out his paints and brushes, rifles through the portfolio hidden carefully in the back of his closet, and finds the painting with the juniper tree and the three magpies

He takes another shot to steady his nerves, and paints in a fourth.

Five for silver, six for gold.

He shouldn’t be surprised Mum doesn't come to his graduation, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. She’s busy, she’s always been busy, she’s been busy since he was a toddler.

He was stupid to believe anything he did would be important enough for her to bother with. To believe that he could matter to anyone enough.

Tina’s stepmum had more foresight than he did, inviting him along to her and Tina’s celebration dinner at a fancy restaurant out of town, and he has to take a minute to cry in the bathroom after they proudly present him with a messily wrapped gift and a card that practically explodes with glitter when he open it, but he can’t even pretend to be annoyed because it has his name in it, and while he's trying very hard not to break down crying in public, Tina hugs him so tightly his spine creaks and tells him she couldn’t have wished for a better brother.

When they drop him off at home, his eyes are still red and a bit wet, he’s full of good food and affection, and he’s smiling like an idiot in spite of the fact that he can’t stop sniffling. The heavy sterling silver magpie skull charm rests against his collarbone, the weight comforting in a way he can’t hope to put into words. He'll never forget Tina’s dewy, smiling eyes as she clasped it around his neck and told him proudly, “Now you’ve got two.'"

He falls into bed holding the charm, reluctant to take it off, but knowing he should put it somewhere safe before bed. He exhales a happy sigh, laughing a bit wetly to himself.

And then his phone vibrates in the pocket of his slacks, and his heart seizes in his chest.

He doesn’t have to check the ID to know who it is. Nobody ever calls him, and his eyes flicker anxiously to the pressed dress in its plastic garment bag still hanging untouched on the back of his closet door. He’d given Tina the expensive name-brand heels for her own graduation outfit, because even if he did want them, he couldn’t walk in the damn things anyway. Lucky for him, they wear the same size shoe.

He takes a moment to calm his breathing, but that means he has to fumble to answer the call before it ends, and he winces when he sees two more missed calls in his log. “Mum!” he blurts, his voice instinctively pitching higher. “Hi! How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she tells him easily. “I’m sorry again I couldn’t make it today. There was a—”

“A big project, I know,” he finishes. It’s always a project, or a trip, or a meeting. The details are always scant, but Mum knows how to make it sound big and important and in need of her attention. He’s tried not to be bitter about it, but there’s always been a part of him that wishes, for once, she’d decide he was important enough to need her attention. “It’s okay, Mum.” It’s not, it never was, but it would be selfish of him to tell her that. She’s got enough to worry about.

“Well, I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten, so I had a gift delivered. It should have arrived today.”

He bites back a sigh. He wonders if it would be easier if she had just forgotten. If it would hurt less than knowing she always made the decision not to see him. “Oh, I’ll go check!” he blurts, trying to inject as much enthusiasm into his voice as possible. He rolls out of bed and heads for the door, poking out to check the mailbox. Of course, inside there is a slim, rectangular package, wrapped in tidy brown paper. The address and names are printed on stickers.

He takes it inside with the phone tucked against his shoulder, weighing the box in his hands. It’s light, and he wants to be excited about whatever it is, but he’s suddenly drained from the day, from crying and laughing and crying some more.

The dining room, somehow, has always felt more lonely than anywhere else in the house, and he’s never been able to figure out why, but he puts the package on the table and starts picking at the neat wrapping. Mum is quiet on the other end of the phone, waiting, and Juni wants to break the odd silence, but can’t even begin to think of what to say. He wishes he didn’t bite his nails, because it takes him way too long to break into the pristine paper, and inside is a long red jewelry box. When he lifts the lid, there is a delicate gold necklace resting on a soft velvet pad, understated and objectively lovely, if not really his style, but it’s the note that flutters out of the box that catches his attention. His eyes skim the note, expecting her usual platitudes that he sometimes wonders if she has someone else type for her.

I am so proud of the woman you’ve become.

His breath leaves him in a painful, strangled rush, his lungs squeezing tight in his chest. And before Mum can speak, he blurts "I can't take this," trailed by a ragged sob.

“Of course you can,” she says gently, kindly. “I know how you get about expensive gifts, but really, it’s no trouble—”

His head fills with screaming static when she calls him what she’s always called him, what she doesn’t know better than to call him, because he’s never told her. He’s never had the chance, it’s never been the right time, it felt wrong not to do it in person, but whenever he sees her in person he feels like he shouldn’t waste the time with her by bringing up something so…

“My name is Juniper!” It explodes out of him, louder than he’s ever been with her, and it stuns her into silence. “I’m not your daughter!” he cries desperately, “I’m your son. You can’t be proud of the woman I’ve become, because I’m not a woman!” He sounds insane, he knows he does, shrill and frantic, but his heart is hammering so hard he feels dizzy, the walls are yawning wide around him, the dining room feels huge and so empty and so bleak. He’s never felt more alone in this dark, quiet house he’s spent his entire life rattling around in than he does in this exact moment, and it’s suffocating. His phone drops from shaking fingers onto the floor, and he drops with it, curling into a ball and struggling to remember how to breathe, dizzily hoping he won’t need to go scrambling for his inhaler. His fingers clench so tightly around the heavy silver charm he’s almost worried he’s going to snap the simple leather cord, but he needs to ground himself or he feels like he’ll dissolve entirely.

He hears Mum calling the name that’s not his, and when he finally manages to fumble his phone with nerveless fingers, he winces seeing the screen is cracked. “I’m sorry,” he sobs weakly, his eyes burning with tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He can’t even be sure what he’s apologizing for, but he knows he has to, especially when he slams the end call button and buries his face in his knees so he can cry alone in the dark.

Seven for a secret, never to be told.

Juni’s skin is starting to get clammy, but he’s too comfortable to move. Eventually, he’s going to have to, if for nothing else than to get up and get cleaned up, but for now, he’s happy, if a little chilly. He nuzzles into the soft curls dusted across Mason’s chest, and lets his eyelids fall to half-mast, just open enough to absently count the freckles hidden under the chest hair, inevitably lose count, and start counting again. Mason smells good, cooling sweat and sandalwood, and dozy as he is, it takes a moment for Juni to realize he doesn’t really smell like smoke at all anymore. His room doesn’t smell lke smoke, either, he realizes. His heart thuds hard behind his ribs.

He gets distracted when a shiver rolls over him, the chill suddenly overwhelming against his sticky skin, and he curls further into Mason’s chest in an attempt to leach some of his warmth.

Mason clicks his tongue, and Juni’s whole body stiffens, worry zinging into his gut to rattle around there like a bird in a too-small cage. Mason shifts underneath him, and he starts to roll away, to apologize, to get out of his hair, before a strong hand clasps the back of his neck.

“Hold still,” Mason grunts, sitting up and patting around for the edge of the blanket. He pulls it out from under them both, which almost sends the detective rolling off the bed against his will this time, but Mason's hand shifts down to spread across his lower back and hold him steady until he can get them both tucked underneath.

He flops back against the pillows again, one arm tucked under his head and the other loose at his side, and slowly, cautiously, Juni crawls his way under it. The hand lands on his hip and squeezes, and Juni settles his head back on the vampire’s chest just in time to hear the pleased little rumble there. He flushes down to his chest and bites his lip, distracting himself by petting at Mason’s chest hair.

And then he pokes his flat, brown nipple and says, “Boop!” on some stupid impulse, and giggles like an idiot.

Mason scoffs and rolls his eyes, but shifts so that Juni’s thigh hitches up over his. “Keep that up, sweetheart, and we’ll be going into round two sooner rather than later.” Juni can feel the truth in that statement against his thigh, and he blushes so hotly he knows Mason can feel it at every point their bodies are touching. He might be approaching supernova levels of heat when Mason smugly adds, “Well, round two for me. Three for you.”

He hides his face in Mason’s chest with a long groan. “I’m going to explode,” he declares. “I’m going to collapse like a dying star.”

Mason laughs, sharp and startled and shockingly bright, and Juni’s head shoots up so he can see his face. His hair is a mess, but of course it still looks amazing, hanging around his face in loose, sweat-damp spirals. His vulpine grey eyes are crinkling at the corners, even his sharp nose wrinkling in a way that makes Juni’s heart almost stop. And his mouth, usually either pinned into a scowl, or twisted into a sly (and stupidly attractive) smirk, is curled into a smile, breathtaking in its open softness.

God, I love you, Juni wants to cry, his heart pounding in counterpoint to the desperate, silent declaration he traps behind his teeth by digging them into his lower lip so hard he’s almost afraid he’s going to make himself bleed. And it doesn’t stop. I love you, I love you, I love you drums in his chest, hums through his blood, and when Mason catches him looking, he reaches out to push the tangled forelock of curls hanging in Juni’s eyes out of his face, cupping his cheek to pull him into a kiss. Juni shivers and braces his hand on Mason’s chest, feeling the vampire’s heart thumping there, steady and stable and achingly familiar. His own matches it beat for beat, and thankfully his mouth is too occupied for the pulsing plea of love me, love me, please love me to spill out. So he dives into it, clings to it, and when Mason breaks away to let him breathe, Juni buries his mouth against the arch of his throat instead, presses messy kisses to his collarbones, his chest, his shoulders, throttles the words before they can escape him and pushes them into touches instead. Touches can’t damn him the way words can.

There’s a soft, shameful part of him he ignores like he always has that whispers to him that maybe, just maybe, if he pours enough of himself into every kiss, every touch, that the words will finally be understood. That the weak little part of him he buries deeper and deeper every time it cries out will finally be seen, and answered, and cradled tenderly in someone’s strong, freckled hands.

But until then, it will sit there in his chest under lock and key and ache, like all his secrets do.

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devnny · 4 years

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

JTRM — THE “R” STANDS FOR RECOVERING!

PREVIOUSLY.

AT LONG LAST!! my hiatus is broken! i’m very happy to present ch14... after months of failed attempts to finish ;-; thank you for all the kind messages in between 🖤🖤🖤 i hope you enjoy! :]c it's time for artist things, and bad memories!

[•/•/•• :

That one guy that paid me for that BIG ASS project, apparently, really liked it, and wants to see more of my paintings. Talked about exhibiting some of my shit in one of his galleries, if he likes any of ‘em. Neat.

…

And me and Johnny… had a… moment, or whatever. Whatever.]

Johnny sat wide-legged on the floor with a large crate settled between his knees, thumbing through the different paintings standing inside the box like records. His tongue stuck out the side of his mouth while he inspected each one with intrigue – Devi’s work was always so fascinating.

“Why are you even looking through that old shit?” Devi asked from across the room, smiling slightly as she spoke.

“It isn’t shit, I think they’re… cool.” His lips stuck out in a soundless ‘ooh’ as he lifted up a small painting of a retching face. He bared his teeth at the agonizing expression like a mimicking chimp, then set it back down to sift through more artwork.

With the news that she may have another chance to exhibit her paintings in a gallery, Devi had started the tedious process of scrutinizing her available pieces to slap together a decent portfolio, which was fairly difficult, seeing as she was her own worst critic.

“Well ‘cool’ or not, that’s all over a year old. The likelihood I’d want to stick any of them in a portfolio is very slim.” Devi turned to look at him as she finished, but stopped with a sharp inhale when she saw which painting Johnny was holding now.

Johnny was fixated with the canvas in his hands, finding such familiarity with the large eyes and long, devilish smile of the demonic looking subject on it. The paint was very rough in texture, and made the whole piece look rather fleshy. He brought up a finger to poke at the lumpy marks while he thought.

“Is this… me?” Johnny asked absentmindedly. Devi felt a cold sweat prickle on the back of her neck, but waved off any shame she felt with a swat of her hand.

“Yeah.” She answered honestly. Her attention focused on the painting, and she tried as best she could to not feel the deep-seated anger and disappointment that resonated within her at the time she created it. “It was a vent art I did, some time after the whole… attempted-murder, thing.”

“Ah.” Johnny nodded in acknowledgment, his mouth settling into a slight frown. “Is this how you saw me? With all the blood and tentacles coming out of my head?”

Devi’s lips slanted uncomfortably. She leaned her weight onto one of the bigger canvases she had on hand, and sighed.

“No, not really.” Her eyes wandered away from Johnny as she thought. “I just kind of, went wild with it, I guess. Added gore and sharp lines and splatters wherever I felt like. It was supposed to represent a feeling, not really… a person. I mean, it is you, but it was more like the energy you gave off, not how you looked.”

Johnny nodded, his teeth poking out again as his smile returned.

“Neat…” He commented and turned the canvas sideways to inspect it further. Devi blinked in surprise at his response, then snorted after a minute.

“—‘Neat’!?” She asked with a laugh. “That’s what you think that is?”

“It is!” Johnny’s attention jumped to her again. “I don’t have any pictures of myself really, and definitely no paintings. It’s cool that it’s… symbolic. Not of a particularly great time in my life, or spurred on by any particularly great choices on my part, but still cool. I like seeing how your brains perceived me in such an inventive manner.”

“HAH! You are truly the weirdest guy I’ve ever known, Nny.” She chuckled, and returned to the pieces beside her. As she started to sort again, Devi paused, and began picking at the chipped paint on one of her canvases thoughtlessly.

“You know, um,” She turned her head ever-so-slightly in Johnny’s direction. “—originally, it was just a normal portrait of you. I’d started it before our uh, date, then altered it later…”

Her cheeks blushed faintly at the admission; it was so embarrassing to confess that she’d taken him as her muse before she’d ever even asked him out. Part of her still felt, with little room for argument, that Johnny didn’t need to know that, but in light of recent events, it also seemed stupid to hide things pertaining to her ‘feelings’ from him at this point.

Johnny’s head popped up, his neck and back straightened fully, as he turned to stare at her. Devi wasn’t looking at him, but he could tell by her meaningless fidgeting with the canvas in her hands that her attention was still on him. It brought a giddy smile to his face.

“Oh.” He hummed contently, returning his staring to the portrait. He wondered what it looked like before she riddled its face with globs of resentful paint. With a content sigh, he answered his thoughts; “I bet it looked nice.”

“Tch!” Devi held her laugh inside her throat. “I’m sure I gave you too much credit.”

“HAHAHA!” Johnny sneered a wider smile. His brain immediately imagined an overly-handsome depiction of himself, even though he knew Devi had better taste than that. So funny. He reviewed the portrait one more time, then set it off to the side.

“Hahh… I like it a lot.” He sighed, and laid down flat on the floor, legs still sprawled. “I like all your stuff a lot. Why are you so critical about your paintings?”

Devi cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Are you going to try and tell me you’re not critical of your own artwork, Nny?” Her words jabbed playfully in his direction, and he puffed his cheeks out in response.

“WELL…” Johnny huffed, making Devi laugh again. “Maybe the stuff I do now, but all my old paintings, all the stuff I don’t remember even making… no. But I guess it’s hard to be self-critical of something you don’t have any recollection of creating.”

He brought his one leg up high to lob over the crate in his lap as he rolled onto his side to face her. Devi greeted him with a look of pity, but with a degree of immense curiosity to it.

“Shit.” Devi thought a moment. “I don’t think I ever really saw your old stuff, actually.”

Johnny had described to her vaguely last year, and in much more depth this year, his style of painting that had long-since depleted into noncomplex stick figure comics. He explained it as being rough and gritty, with themes of decay, agony, and horror, and his subjects most often being flesh-like nonsense, or close-ups of distorted human faces. The oldest of the surviving pieces would dip into dark landscapes and actual silhouettes, but that was the extent of it.

“Man,” Devi sighed as she thought. “I’d love to see ‘em.”

The comment surprised him, and Johnny laid still on the floor as he watched her with large eyes. He rolled into a seat position after a moment, and moved his staring to the carpet.

“W… would you, really?” He asked tentatively. “A lot of them are still in okay-condition, they’re just… buried in my house...”

Devi replied with a few confused blinks, mostly in regard to Johnny’s sudden change in demeanor. After a moment of thought, she was delightfully suspicious that his timidness now was because of her absolute refusal to enter his house the day she assisted him with ‘moving out’. The concern he had for making her uncomfortable was as unfortunately endearing as ever.

“You wanna go pick some up?” Devi asked with a smile, and Johnny cricked his chin up to stare at her with redoubled surprise.

“Really?” He asked in disbelief as he scuttled to stand. “I mean, I don’t want to impose.”

Devi laughed at him and balanced the canvas she held against the wall.

“Yeah. I need a fucking break from looking at my own paintings.” She explained with a pop of her back. “Who knows, maybe you’ll inspire me.”

She shrugged the last of her sentence at him as she walked past, and Johnny pivoted to watch her leave the room. He always found her teasing to be so disarming, never knowing what to do when she threw the ball into his court. It was fun, in a way, but he was always nervous to banter back besides mock cynicism. It made his heart flutter all the same.

“If you’d like.” He called after her as he walked. “I just meant—you know, if you don’t want to go inside, and all.”

Johnny stopped in the living room when he caught sight of Devi at her bedroom door, already straightening a newly pulled on t-shirt.

“Your concern is appreciated.” She smiled at him, then reached around the door and grabbed one of her shorter jackets—it was just too balls-hot to be wearing her trench coat at this hour. Stupid summer weather.

Johnny grinned, though his smile melted into an awkward squiggle as Devi approached him with that accursed collar in hand. He’d grown accustomed to wearing it on outings, but he still loathed it. He would be happy to chop it up and burn the pieces, one day.

His malicious thoughts were short-lived, as Devi roped the accessory around his neck. She paid much less mind to not touching him these days, and the caressing of her fingers made him feel like his insides might liquify from the heat. She smirked coolly as she clicked the collar shut.

“Why don’t you drive?” She suggested, and Johnny was taken off-guard again. He hadn’t driven at all since he’d come to live here, what with Devi preferring to have control over just about everything. He raised an eyebrow, cautiously inspecting her expression, but was unable to determine if this was representative of anything.

“I don’t feel like navigating the suburbs to get to your place.” Devi provided for explanation as she moved to the front door, but Johnny remained unsure. Still, he went to fetch his keys from one of the art room drawers without prodding any further.

NOW ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN:

Devi had not been to Johnny’s neighborhood more than twice, and only once during daylight hours, yet she still managed to recognize some landmarks that signaled that they were getting close. One neighbor a few streets down had an absolutely obnoxious amount of pink flamingos in their yard, and another surely teetered the worth of their fragile masculinity on the pure number of beat-up looking muscle cars that lined their curb.

The car jerked as Johnny took a sharp turn onto a different street, and Devi sucked in a breath while she watched the addresses get closer in number to ‘777’. She stubbornly refused to let the sight of the ramshackle house bring her too much anxiety, but as they slowed beside it, and then turned up the slope of the driveway, the familiar shiver of distrust climbed up her spine. Johnny spared her a nervous glance.

“You don’t have to come inside if you don’t want’a…” He reiterated, in an effort to comfort her, but Devi only scoffed and started to exit the vehicle.

“NOPE.” She replied with a quick slam of the door. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.”

Johnny stepped meekly out of the driver’s side, and watched Devi glare at his ‘former’ place of residence. Guilt gnawed away at his stomach, well-aware of the traumatic memories of that evening that were still sealed away inside his house.

He’d lived with them long after their infamous date; tromping over the wooden floors that had served as her route of escape, or laying like a limp sock across the couch that would have been where they shared their first kiss. When he paused to dwell on those sorts of facts, remorse filled him each time, but certainly not to the extent that it used to. It wasn’t the soul-splitting agony that those first days had brought – it didn’t drive him into hysterics to catch sight of his bedroom mirror, nor did the thought of sitting on the right-hand side of his sofa.

But, of course, Devi hadn’t.

She didn’t muddle through that house for months, learning to accept the space beyond those fleeting, horrible memories. She hadn’t had to wander through the atmospheric fog of departed, romantic dreams, with its lingering tethers warping around her person like ghostly fingers, searching for what was lost. She didn’t find herself stepping on glass fragments even weeks afterwards, and having to force herself to accept, with tearful blinking, that there was no changing this; that this was her house, and there was no escaping what happened here.

Johnny frowned to himself, and started toward the front door, fretting all the way about what Devi’s response would be.

Devi gathered herself as she followed him up the pathway, and as Johnny fiddled with the lock, she spared a moment for a little flower that was poking out from the cracks of the cement. Symbolic, or ironic, she couldn’t decide.

The sound of the worn lock’s mechanics moving in sync with the key that Johnny jammed into it brought her attention up from the ground, and she steeled herself as he pushed the door open with a throw of his fingers. He remained on the front step with her, half-way shielding her from the innards of his home, as she peeked beyond the doorframe.

Even with her expectations low, she couldn’t help but blink her eyes wide in shock.

“Did you… throw out everything?” Devi questioned as she tried to peer past him and into the living room. The décor wasn’t particularly abundant the last time she had been there, but there was more on the wall than a weird little poster that said “I WUV YOU”, and certainly a decent amount of worn furniture. Johnny shot her a confused look, and waited a beat before allowing himself to relax into a smile.

“Oh, no.” He sniffed a laugh and took a few steps inside, loosely raising his arm to gesture to the far side of the room. “The TV n’ shit is just over here now.”

Devi poked her head past the threshold to see, and slanted her mouth uneasily at the sight of the stained sofa a few steps away. It looked even more beat up than the last time she saw it, but it was definitely still the same one. She smothered a scowl under her pursed lips, and fully passed the door’s threshold with a swing of her leg. It was just a stupid, dilapidated couch, she reminded herself—nothing to be wary of!

“My house got kinda wrecked after the wall-thing sent it careening through a tear in the dimension or, something like that.” Johnny continued. “Shit got tossed around everywhere, so I just pushed it all into one of the rooms… Pulled the couch and stuff back out after I came home a couple months ago.”

“That’s…” She cocked an eyebrow. “—I mean, at this point, sure, why not.”

Johnny snickered a little at her incredulous response, and continued further into the house, explaining in greater detail his decision making for what furniture he had rearranged and where. Devi paid little mind to his babbling as she gradually trailed his steps, taking in the house’s atmosphere with as little bias as she could. It was just as dingey as she remembered, and it did help her sore memories that it was basically gutted, aside from the worn couch and beat-up television. It barely looked like a house the way it was, instead looking more like a large shed. It definitely didn’t look like the place she remembered, and that was a very good thing.

“—I don’t spend much time in my bedroom, but I still thought it was important enough to leave it usable, so I just jammed everything in here.” Johnny finished, flinging open the door to his former ‘studio’. A few random objects fell and rolled out from the mass of clutter that loomed all the way to the top of the doorframe.

“Holy Hell.” Devi said loudly, aghast at the sight of the mounds of dusty debris and overturned furniture. There appeared to be parts of doors and chunks of ceiling plaster mixed in with the heaps of furniture and belongings, giving the entire mass the look of a true junkyard.

Johnny bend his leg up and reared it back as far as he could, before springing his heel out straight, sending most of the blockade crashing backwards inside of the room with one demanding kick. With the first heap out of the way, Devi could see more clearly that there was actually quite a bit of bare space inside. Enough floorspace to walk in, at least.

Johnny led the way, and sent a chunk of splintered wood clattering with a lazy punt of his boot. Devi watched it kick up dust as it fumbled along, then fall still near a pile of damaged Christmas decorations. The room was musty, and the only light granted inside the space was from the poorly boarded up windows that failed to stop the sun’s glow outside. She looked up to the ceiling for a light, but the only spot for one had a shattered bulb still twisted into the fixture.

“My drafting table was in here.” He mentioned offhandedly as he inspected a box.

“Ah,” Devi nodded in understanding. “so that’s why it took you so damn long to drag the thing out.”

“Well, yes, and the fact that it’s heavy as fuck.” Johnny snorted and peeled back the remains of an ironing board from its resting spot against the wall. It make a cracking sound, like bark being torn from a tree, then gave way in a small flood of junk to reveal some paintings hidden in the area behind.

“AH-HAH.” He cried in triumph, and moved proudly to the side to allow Devi the opportunity to inspect them first. Devi looked at him with an unsure expression, but decided to humor him and approach the pile as invited. As she stepped toward the stack, the twisting paint gathered her full attention, and she reached a hand out for it like a gleeful child.

She gripped the corner of the first canvas, and hoisted it up from the stack with a smooth pull of her arm. The rolling swirls of brushstrokes that greeted her brought a tantalized smile to her lips, and she had to extend the artwork out with both arms to continue her appreciation of it.

It was about three-feet in height—a fairly average sized painting—and was smeared with meticulous bends and curls of dark paint that made the two grim subjects look as though they were positively radiating in fear.

Gorgeous, she thought.

Devi gleamed, and set the painting to the side, eagerly reaching for the next one in the pile. Johnny watched her with uncertain, but very delighted, eyes. A timid smile bent his mouth as Devi reviewed his art. It was a lot different than her critiquing his current work, since these could actually be on par with what Devi herself might create. He desperately wanted her to be impressed, even though he could barely take credit as the artist anymore.

The painting Devi pulled out next was too large to properly view while holding, so she set it on the floor, tilted at an angle against a box, and stepped back a few feet to study it. Her lips parted with a curious exhale at the detailed eye in the center of the canvas, surrounded by flesh-like tethers and threads that seemed to keep it upright, like a spider’s web.

“Oh,” She breathed, and squatted down to see it more clearly in the wispy light. “I love this.”

The last of her apprehension of being inside the house flittered away as she absorbed herself in Johnny’s art, appreciating fully all of the effort put into the fine lines and details of this piece in particular. This one was definitely coming back home with her—she could already see it replacing that outdated movie poster in the living room.

Devi’s reaction surprised Johnny, and he dropped his neatly folded arms out from behind his back. He felt breathless, like he often did when Devi praised him, but to a much higher degree than usual. He watched her with a look of awe—she was completely captivated by one of his creations. One of the stupid paintings he almost loathed, simply because it was a symbol of the self he lost—because it was meaningless to him; no memory behind what drove him to paint it, or how he was feeling at the time, not even an approximate date as to when he made it.

But with the way Devi reviewed his work with such adoration… now, he felt pride. Real pride in his former abilities, and a deep, desperate desire to create something now that would make her react like this. Her expression could drive him mad; looking so brilliant and excited, with that bright smile, and eyes that shimmered just as brightly. His shoulders raised up to his ears in an attempt to quell is elation.

“Do you have more like this?” She turned her attention up to him with a grin, and Johnny held in a shiver.

“Oh—yes!” He nodded, happy to offer her more of what was currently invigorating her. “I do… but most of them are very large. Like, full-wall-size large, so they’re down in the basement… Perhaps another time?”

A nervous laugh accompanied his suggestion, and Devi nodded without argument, though a soft smile remained. She already knew what horrors he’d committed down there, and wasn’t keen on venturing down into what was formerly a demon’s torture den. Maybe next time, if there was a next time, she would have the bravura to follow him into the fucking abyss.

For now, though, she would remain satisfied with her newly excavated treasures—she could already feel her own inspiration spinning in her head in response to such fantastically morbid art. Something like these but the size of a mural? Now that she wanted to see!

They continued rooting through Johnny’s amassed garbage for a couple more hours, spearheaded by Devi’s eagerness to rescue as many paintings as she could from the bones of the decrepit prison that had stolen their creator away from them in the first place. By the time they were packing away all of the works that Devi wanted to bring back to the apartment, it was nightfall.

“Safe travels.” Devi commented with a smile to the stack of canvases tucked away in the back of Johnny’s car, then heaved the trunk lid closed.

Johnny stood off to the side nearby, surveying the night sky with a lofty smile. It had been a very long time since he stood in this driveway, watching the clouds drift over the starlit darkness in wispy smears. It was almost surreal how strangely foreign it felt now, but after the months of his nightly backdrop being the city’s lousy view, most often from Devi’s apartment windows, he had forgotten one of the few benefits to living in an unlit, ‘quiet’ suburb.

“What a lovely evening.” He hummed absentmindedly, and Devi turned to him with a questioning look, before moving her focus up above them.

“Yeah.” She breathed with a matching smile, and crossed her arms over her chest while she took in the view.

“On nights like this—when I lived alone—I’d always like to go up to the Hill.” Johnny said, eyes still trained on the glittering sky. Devi looked to him curiously again, and whether he felt her stare, or realized the significance of that spot between the two of them, he quickly turned to meet her with wide eyes. Devi snorted a short laugh, never taking her eyes off of him.

“Do you… want to go?” She asked him with dubious smile. Johnny stiffened at the question, grimacing at his carelessness.

“Oh—no, no, not at all! I’d never! That’s not what I—” He stopped, registering her tone only after he started his denials. “Um, well… I mean I would but, I’m not saying… I guess; do you want to go?”

Devi’s smile crinkled upwards more, teasingly, then she readjusted her arms while she looked off in thought.

She had already dredged through Johnny’s shitty little house of horrors, was she really prepared to delve even further into her freshly revived emotions tonight? It wasn’t like the hilltop was particularly connected to anything bad that happened that night, but it was still connected to said night, intricately-so. She drummed her fingers on her bicep as she debated.

She was very happy to be out of residence 777, but being there had brought her a little bit of peace. It wasn’t much, but a few hours’ worth of sifting through artwork was now the most time she had spent there, and it made the fading memories of Johnny’s Pillsbury-Doughboy-influenced attempt on her life a little less predominant. It wasn’t like she had any intention of spending more time there, but Devi did not like having any lingering fear for a dirty, eldritch-demon-housing shack, and the fact she could bear even a second inside with her head held high made her very proud.

So if she could handle such vicious, lingering resentment, surely she could handle a quick visit to a place coated with softer, waxy memories, accompanied by the individual that had made them so bitter.

“Sure.” Devi said finally, prompting a surprised half-smile from her companion. “The clouds are clearing, even.”

Johnny grinned fully, and took note of the brilliant moon starting to peer out from behind the thin clouds. He tried to quell his excitement as he urged Devi to the car, and quickly hopped into the driver’s side to begin the trip farther out of town.

A FEW HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE CITY:

Johnny was already regretting his request to visit his cliffside spot.

The drive out had been as casual as all their drives were now, with idle chatter about plans for the coming days and mockery over whichever handful of bad movies they’d ingested recently. The only real difference was that it was Johnny driving tonight, and with that being the case, the music droning beneath their conversation was marginally quieter.

But, as the vehicle climbed the dirt road to the top of the hill, Johnny had become more engrossed with the details that were so comfortable and pleasant.

Things were too pleasant. The mood was too kind and light, with the crunching gravel below the car’s tires, and Devi’s tittering laughter over something dumb he’d said. It reminded him far too intimately of the atmosphere that surrounded them that night, on that damned date. How stupid, he thought as the car came to a gentle stop at the peak of the mountain’s height, that it would be such airy, nice sentiments that tore and ripped the edges of his comfort zone.

After taking a moment to walk the measly fence that skirted the edge of the cliff, he and Devi both plopped down on the end of the car’s hood. Devi sat loosely, head tilted upwards as she enjoyed the first breeze the summer season had bothered to offer her. Johnny’s posture closed in tighter the longer he watched Devi relaxing.

She was so beautiful, wonderful—the same way she was before, maybe even more so. He could hardly stand to look at her, with her skin almost iridescent under the yellowing moonlight, and her sharp, blade-like hair cutting across the stars, almost dark enough to fool the eye into thinking someone had carved two pointed shapes from the shimmering sky itself. Johnny turned his gaze to the crusty earth below, and tried to steady his mind.

“Haven’t seen a view like this in a while.” Devi murmured, eyes transfixed on the flashing of some neon signs in the downtown area. Johnny only hummed in reply.

“I was actually up in the mountains maybe… half a year ago now? But it was waaay over… there.” She pointed to an adjacent set of hills further south. Johnny lifted his head and focused on the area she was pointing to with a curious look.

“I think it was that one.” Devi said half-committally, followed by a laugh. “That was the night that plane hit my apartments—y’know, the one I told you about, with the psychic fat lady downstairs and all?”

“Ah.” He replied with a nod of comprehension. “I’m sure that was quite a sight.”

“It was. Tenna and I sat up there for like an hour before the fire finally died down. A morbidly magnificent sight—even if the burnt fat lady smell permeated all the way up here.” Devi punctuated the comment with a mean laugh, and Johnny couldn’t help but join in her cackling. Dark humor was so delightful.

As their laughter quieted, Devi set her palms flat behind her and leaned back a ways to sigh out her last chuckles. Johnny watched her with a warm smile, as captivated as always by her every move.

He loved her laugh, and being the spark that set it off always filled him with immense pride and glee. He was fortunate that her sense of humor had consistently been on the same frequency as his own, and that she was sharp enough to match, and even outrun him, in verbal banter. It made it rather fun to back-and-forth, and send each other into hysterics. They did so quite frequently at the bookstore, though if Devi wasn’t on a break, they had to muffle themselves to an extent, lest a customer complain.

A gentle push of wind across his face reminded Johnny where he was, and intertwined that knowledge with his current train of thought. His heart pulsed with sinking remorse as he remembered the events that followed their first visit to the Hill.

“I wish I’d declined.” He said suddenly, voice low.

“Huh?” Devi turned to look at him, but Johnny remained slouched forward, elbows balanced on his knees.

“When you asked me to the movies,” he clarified. “I wish I had declined.”

Devi was taken off-guard by that, but shortly scoffed, rolling back into her leaning position with a slight smile.

“Why’s that?”

Johnny finally raised his head with a look of vaguely-annoyed disbelief.

“What d’you mean ‘why’s that’?” He grunted, and Devi breathed a quick laugh at his persnickety tone. He couldn’t help but smile too, though it fell away nearly as fast as it appeared.

“Because I could have spared you… all of this.” Johnny continued. “…I’d wanted to—to say ‘no’, I mean… out of habit. But I couldn’t because I just… really wanted to go. It sounded like so much fun, I thought it would be… fun.”

He hugged himself, staring out into the darkness of the road as his thoughts led him into a myriad of ‘what if’s. Devi observed his shape with a small frown; she was very much accustomed to Johnny’s habit of allowing his emotions to swallow him up, but at this point, she felt it was pointless for him to wallow in his regrets to such a pitiful degree. Their relationship had turned pretty big, fucking corner, recently, after all.

“Was it fun?” She asked him finally, smiling like she already knew. Johnny pouted at her.

“…Well, yes.” He sighed again. “If you don’t count the attempted murder, or the immense ass-beating you gave me after.”

Devi spat out another laugh at that, and looked down to Johnny with a tired smile when he tilted his head backwards to frown about it.

“—or the fact I got you infected with lose-your-creativity-and-kill-people disease!” He snarled, and laid back fully on the car’s hood to sulk. “I just—wouldn’t that have been better? If I just said ‘no, thank you’, and we kept being friends, and maybe you had found some nice person to date that wouldn’t try to kill you?”

“And you could’ve just gone on murdering for that wall-thing forever?” Devi asked him smugly. His eyes went wide at that, and he stopped to consider the idea.

He wanted to argue that no, the creature probably would have had him die at some point—he long suspected that it was the wall-thing’s desire to regain control over it’s doughy minions that had allowed him to die in the first place—but he couldn’t know that. It was very possible that he might have gone on for his whole life, or at least long enough to allow Mr. Fuck the autonomy that he so desperately desired, and who knows how detrimental to the world that could have been.

Devi observed Johnny’s uneasy, sad expression with a shake of her head.

“Look Nny, the thing is, if there’s an eldritch fucklord that births mental parasites, that target artists and-the-like, to gorge itself on until their victim is reduced to a worthless meat-husk, I want to know about it.” She gave him nod before looking off. “I don’t have to like it, but considering that it exists and it’s happening, I’m not going wish for blissful ignorance, blabbering spittle onto my bib like a fucking infant about bullshit that doesn’t matter. And if you just learned of a plague like that, wouldn’t you want the same?”

Johnny stared at her from his spot on the hood, surprised by her response. He couldn’t believe how easily her blunt take on things still sideswiped him from time to time; he really should be used to this by now.

“Heh… yeah, I guess so.” He looked off with a hesitant smile. Devi smirked with another roll of her head.

“And as absolutely horrible as it is, my… involvement meant that you died before things really got ugly… I’m still not happy about it, but I guess if you couldn’t truly ‘die’ no matter what, it’s not so bad, especially seeing as you’re free now.” She paused. “Well, mostly free.”

“GEE, THANKS.” Johnny laughed, and Devi arched into another laugh too. The pair giggled over their horrid luck for a few minutes, before Johnny’s mind settled on an old memory.

“Hey, do you remember that joke you said, after you told me you liked me?” His smile stretched wide enough to give a mischievous squint to his eyes. “About how you’d kill me?”

Devi blinked at him, mouth drawn low, before breaking into laughter again. She redoubled into hysterics when Johnny joined her, and she held her face in her hands while he gave the metal beneath them a few slaps amidst his cackling.

“WELL, YOU DID.” He reiterated the point, and Devi gave him a shove.

“Shut UP, Nny!” She laughed, and turned away from him to try and quiet herself, with limited success.

OFF TO A NEARBY 24/7:

Johnny winced his left eye shut as he gave the straw of his Brain-Freezy one more voracious suck, hoping to gather the last of the watery remains of sugar from the air bubbles at the bottom of his cup, but only really achieved making a repeating, cacophonous sound. Devi smacked him with the back of her hand, in a wordless way of saying ‘knock that off’.

They had stopped at the first 24/7 they saw, one on a normally unventured side of town, to pick up some snacks before returning home. The large advertisement in the window featuring disgusting gas station nachos had reminded them both that they hadn’t eaten since early that afternoon, and the lure of 2-for-1 deals on just about everything was hard to pass up.

“I think you got it all.” Devi said, flicking a crumb of tortilla chip off the corner of her mouth with her thumb. Johnny pouted at her before flinging the empty cup cleanly into the nearby garbage can.

“I’m trying not to be wasteful!” He defended himself as he started the walk back to the car. The rub of material against his neck reminded him of the goddamn collar he wore, and how the leash Devi had insisted on putting on him before they entered the store was, in fact, on him. She needed to have a little more faith! Just because they were in an even shittier part of town than normal, didn’t mean he would run off on a murderous rampage at the drop of a hat!

“Oh, you’re so frugal, my wallet thanks you.” Devi replied with a sarcastic smile, matching his stride as they made their way to the side of the building, where Johnny had parked.

Just when they thought they’d escaped humanity unscathed, a quick whistle hit their ears, and both eyerolled in the direction of God, to ask him with mixed expressions ‘why’. Devi and Johnny both turned toward the source of the sound, Devi looking somewhere between bored and irritated, and Johnny glowering just past her shoulder. She was unsurprised to see the group of men chatting idly on the other side of the small parking lot gesture in her direction.

“Heyyy, that’s kinda kinky—WOAH.” One of the men called, then stopped suddenly. He pushed himself off of the side of a car and started to approach them. “—No way!”

Just as both Devi and Johnny’s fight-or-flight responses had reached their peaks, the man spoke again.

“DEVI?” He said loudly, with an obnoxious smile. Devi blanched. The man had very few features she would find memorable; patchy dyed hair, brown eyes, tall and thin—could have been any number of guys she’d hung out with before… except for the eyepatch.

“Eddie!?” Devi replied with a horrified expression, and Johnny’s irises snapped to her, shocked that she actually knew this person. Eddie’s lip perked up further on one side, and he slapped a hand over his cheek with a laugh.

“WOW, it’s been forever, huh?” He gleamed. “But I knew it was you, cause of your face.”

Devi only stared at him with vague disgust, still too shocked to fully absorb the situation. She hadn’t hardly thought about this particular idiot since high school, the recent retelling of their failed date withstanding. Johnny scowled at their uninvited guest, but did his best to hold back the volatile feelings he already had churning in his gut.

“Who’s this little guy you’re with? Your boyfriend?” Eddie asked casually, without a braincell to stop him. He set the side of his hand against his mouth, and leaned further in Johnny’s direction, as if to whisper, only to say at a completely normal volume; “Don’t count on getting too much outta her—she’s hot, but she’s a total prude.”

Johnny stared at him with incensed disbelief at the comment, as did Devi. With thin pupils, Johnny jutted forward, still crouched, to rebuke the remark.

“NEVER speak about Devi in such a repugnant way—in fact, never speak about her at ALL, you cycloptic knuckle-dragger!” He hissed. Devi could only cringe as her mouth twitched into an uncomfortable scowl.

“Hey, don’t blame me for warning you dude, it’s true!” Eddie defended himself. “I took her out, paid for everything, and she wouldn’t even kiss me. I had to be dying before she agreed to at least sit on my face.”

“I NEVER SAT ON YOUR FACE, YOU DUMBASS.” Devi snapped, face hot. “That was the AIRBAG.”

“—See! That’s even worse. My dying wish, and she’d sooner just let me die empty-handed.”

“SHUT UP!” Johnny seethed, bowing out his stance. “Shut you fucking mouth—I’ll cut your dirty GODDAMN THROAT! You don’t deserve the privilege of speaking, you boorish ogre—I’d be doing the world a damn FAVOR redirecting your vocal chords into your ear canals! Maybe then you could hear the UNBRIDLED FILTH THAT EXPECTORATES OFF YOUR TONGUE!! I—”

While he ranted, Devi stood beside him, vibrating in insult. Eddie was her first ‘real’ date, and he was horrible one at that—she would have gladly never seen his dumb ass again. In fact, she had kind of hoped he had died in different sexually-motivated car wreck in the years since she last saw him, but obviously she had no such luck. The smarmy fucker, acting like he knew her, acting like he had any comprehension of who she was, or what drove her physically. BASTARD! Ugly, horrible bastard!

Devi bared her teeth; she wanted retribution! Her body ached, with pulsating, twitching fists, to obliterate Eddie where he stood. Her mind floated away from level-headedness, her anger coaxing her ever-closer to violence, tantalizing her with the beautiful release of emotion she’d be granted with a few kicks to his head. But, as her trembling hand squeeze the handle of Johnny’s leash, her cracking logic had a quick, hateful idea. She didn’t give herself time to reconsider, she just wanted out of this situation.

With wide, angry eyes, Devi stared at Eddie, then released her hold on Johnny and retreated to the car.

Johnny felt the tether around his neck go slack, and swiveled his head around in surprise to watch Devi’s withdrawing form.

“Aren’t you going to stop me!?” He yelled to her. Devi opened the car door and turned back to him with a glare.

“Stop you from what?” She said with a biting tone, then dipped into the car with a loud SLAM! of the door.

Johnny stared at where she had just stood, dumbfounded, then moved his attention to the loose leash dangling from his neck. After a few moments of consideration, a grim smile spread across his face. He was rather certain that Devi was, quite literally, turning a cheek to this exchange—and if she was leaving it up to him, Eddie would not be leaving unscathed for those repulsive comments.

He raised his head, and his posture, with dark shadows swallowing up his grinning face. Eddie cocked an uncertain eyebrow when he heard the creak of the vehicle’s trunk, and only looked more confused when met with the sight of the tire iron that appeared from behind Johnny’s back.

Johnny stepped closer, happy that the exchange had garnered the attention of the rest of Eddie’s little group; he hoped they would intervene, they were all just as shitty in his eyes! A set of eerily slow laughs emitted from his throat, that slowly hiccupped into something maniacal, as he brought up his weapon up above his head.

“That was baaad, Devi.” Johnny sung in a teasing tone while he drove, blood still smattered on his face and hands. Devi sulked in the passenger seat, glaring at the street signs as they passed them.

“Whatever.” She grumbled. Johnny giggled in reply; he rather liked when she was feeling vindictive.

“NOT TO WORRY,” He boasted earnestly. “I didn’t kill any of them—I knew you wouldn’t like that, so I only gave them all a some blunt-force trauma, just a bit of facial bludgeoning, promise!”

Devi looked to him with a grouchy frown, but rolled her eyes away after a moment, face falling into mock-boredom.

“Thank you, Nny.” She sighed. At least someone had some self-control tonight. She could only hope that her choice to let Johnny dish out the ass whooping that her wrath had so desperately craved had no adverse effects on his self-restraint—they’d both worked too hard to ruin it over Eddie of all things.

“You are ever-so welcome, Devi.” Johnny smiled, happy to exact some vengeance in the name of his dearest friend.

“Who was that moron, anyhow?” He asked casually. Devi huffed.

“Just some dick I dated in high school.” Another eyeroll. “He was the first guy to ever ask me out—I told you how it went, didn’t I? The date was bland and meaningless, but he thought it went well. The genius tried to convince me to screw him while he was driving, and when I said ‘no’ he tried to push the point and crashed the fucking car into a tree. Dumbass.”

Devi sneered at the memory, but was quickly shaken out of her thoughts when the car took a violent turn, leaving her to yelp and grasp onto the center console for balance. She snapped her head in Johnny’s direction as he drove at an increasingly fast speed.

“Nny, what the Hell!” She shouted at him, but Johnny was too focused on the road.

“WELL YOU DIDN’T SAY THAT!” He replied aggressively. “I’M GOING TO FINISH KILLING HIM.”

“NO, NNY.” Devi yelled, drastically grabbing for him, or the wheel, or both. Johnny shrugged her away, doing what he could to use his shoulder to keep her from interfering with his burning desire to murder. “Johnny!!”

(He turned back around, don’t worry.)

NEXT...

#FINALLYYYY WEEE #chapter #jthm #devnny #jtrm #mine #im v happy.. to have this done #7.5k words!! AT LONG LAST

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buggynightjar-blog · 3 years

Text

Beliefs Version II

I believe in the amoral land of faery in which all artists must live, submitting to forces that totally outstrip them or even terrify them.

I believe in the hidden devils of American advertising.

I believe in the bloated gassiness and constipation of Americans, and the poisons they take to make things flow again, to make dead rivers flow with blood.

I believe in the ghost dance and the rainbow-colored clothing of children in ditches.

I believe in the other half of Laura Palmer’s necklace.

I believe in the plastic surgeons who made Melania’s and Ivanka’s faces look like perfectly fortified stone, to withstand the wickedness of the horrible prisons in which they must live.

I believe in the way babies are born knowing how to suck and make the milk flow, and how they show me this in dreams.

I believe in the children who mined for the new diamond on a wealthy divorcee’s finger, and the dreams they have at night under their wild moons and hunger.

I believe in the hunger of all people, and I believe in hunger as the black primordial source of all things, before time and memory.

I believe strong winds may exist. I believe nothing may exist. I believe it is terrifyingly strange that anything exists.

I believe in acid Advaita and the merging of the droplet into the sea, and I believe this, and our assholes, and our farts, and our need to fuck and cry and shit and be loved could save the world.

I believe in the completely unknowable mystery at the other side of night, and that if you go three stars to the left and straight on til morning you may never find what you seek, but you will find a glittering darkness that lives in all directions.

I believe in the vision of original sin, which is not what you think, and can be given through some portal, which is more disturbing than words can convey and which has the strange glitter of magic falling all around it, slowly.

I believe there are people who can live with a violence that is pure and clean and that these are the weird new kind of saints.

I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church, the torrential blood of innocents and the way that Mystery lives even in the smoke of the Vatican rooftop, telling history in real time.

I believe in the wet pussies of American housewives and I believe they allow their wet pussies to gleefully cloud their thinking in the vast historical game of democracy because they must use the power of their pussies to cloud, hypnotize, entrance, control or destroy something. I believe in the anger that lives in their breasts and livers, which will finally be enunciated in cancer and revolutions.

I believe in the spontaneous, chaotic, destructive creation of the crab, Karkinos, cancer, and how after his forlorn face is snipped off with poultry shears, as a reward for his service, he becomes a host of stars.

I believe music is scarcely human at all.

I believe in the ghost in the machine.

I believe in the crazy mouths of mystics and fortune tellers, and the weird poetic wheel that could open on any prophetic word.

I believe in the white hot horse in the belly, the lightning of the body meeting death in each moment.

I believe in the abyss against which all thoughts are had, the chaos against which all minds carry out their neat operations, until it floods in like a spilled drink or like honey. And I believe when that finally happens, it is experienced as a vast, unspeakable lucidity.

I believe there are true friends you haven’t yet met, and that there is a love waiting somewhere that could rip you in half, utterly destroy you, and that this could be the most religious experience of your whole life.

I believe in the black mass as the apotheosis of all that is great about Western culture, breaking the most sacred codes. I believe in doing it all and the wild rending of all institutions as they live in the gut, hair, and soul until first light.

I believe in the insanity of my friends, in the wild lightning rod up the central column called “butterflies” and the exotic spices I can discern on the lyrical night wind of our love reaching forward and backward forever.

I believe in Cernunnos and his snake consort. I believe he fucks women in their dreams and I believe I am one. I believe you really can become Satan's bride, the light bearer.

I believe in the strange images people carry with them from other worlds, which they try to materialize.

I believe that in every instance of love there is fuck, in every instance of fuck there is love, and that this makes everyone so uncomfortable that they will invest their lives in making it untrue, but I believe it remains as true as blue shy sky.

I believe that fucking is a portal, a mysterium tremendum et fascinans which no one can control, contain or understand, ever.

I believe this also describes the soul, and art.

I believe it is morally wrong to sell answers to anyone, ever.

I believe that the unfree like to punish freedom, that the ugly like to punish beauty, and that these words are dangerous.

I believe that if Christ was alive today, he would be hanged on the 4 o’clock news.

I believe in the etheric violence of our brave new dystopia and the new bravery of the soul it demands.

#weirdpoems freeversepoetry badpoemsforbadpeople

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same-side · 5 years

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hiiii! i just wanna say, i adore your art. second, im teaching myself to draw and while i can draw simple basics (mouths and sometimes eyes if im lucky), im still a beginner. ive watched many art videos and im still a bit confused on wtf im doing. so i just came here to ask if you had any words of wisdom for beginners? could be anything from what tablets to buy to simple mistakes to avoid. ive read some of the other posts here and have found it all extremely helpful so far! Thx for all you do!!

Hey there! Thank you so much!

I would put a read more but tumblr is broken. I’m trying to cover a lot of varied thoughts in little points, so if there’s anything you would like me to elaborate on or otherwise have questions on, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm me!

General

I think the biggest thing to remember is not to compare yourself extensively to others. A little bit of comparison is healthy... But too much will destroy your confidence, motivation, and take the fun out of art. Particularly if you are comparing yourself to someone older than you (life experience and coordination come into play here) or that has been drawing much longer (practice).

Additionally... If you’re not having fun (and you’re not getting paid to do it), don’t force yourself. If you find yourself being frustrated or bored with art, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s how you burn out and get art block! This applies to parts of a peice, too! If you don’t feel like drawing a face or a hand today? don’t force yourself to finish it. Come back to it later when you aren’t as frustrated or are getting better results. Even if its a week or a month from now. Honestly, at any given time I have probably ten headless bodies in my drafts. That’s okay! I just come back to them when I’m ready to do the face. And don’t be afraid to abandon something if it doesn’t feel right!

Something that also doesn’t get said enough.... take care of your body! I never knew when I started art, but artists are supposed to do warmup sketches and stretches and muscle exercises! I didn’t do any of this, and i went through a period of a few months where I was drawing for 5ish hours every single day. I developed carpal tunnel from it! So remember to take care of yourself. Take breaks, stretch, remember to eat.

Practice

Practice!!!! Even if its just for fifteen minutes every day. Or twice a week. But if art is something you really want to get good at, you have to put in the time and effort!! You can’t expect to draw an hour per month and be on the same level as someone who draws an hour a day!

I know I say this a lot but I think the biggest thing is just reference! If you don’t know what something looks like, look at a picture of it when you draw it! To go hand in hand with that, though, don’t just copy what you see! Learn from it and apply it! So take, for example, a shoe! pay attention to the way the heel is shaped, the location of the eyelets for the laces... how large the toe is, how steep the top! While you’re at it, look at other styles of shoes as well, and compare them! See what makes it look like a boot versus a trainer! And then the next time you draw it, hopefully you’ll remember all the things you learned the first time around!

I do lots of studies that serve no purpose other than to teach me things! I use referencing/studies to learn about color theory, shapes, and anatomy in a real environment. For example, hands or fabric folds! Oftentimes I’ll do them timed (20 or 45 minutes) so that I don’t fixate on perfecting things, just on the process itself and what I can learn from it. This also helps with getting better acclimated to your software and more coordinated with what you’re doing. Repetitive learning, like with playing sports.

I’ve realized a lot of people don’t quite understand what a study is? Basically you just look at a photo and try to replicate it so that you can learn about lighting or color theory or textures or anatomy or whatnot. So here’s an example of a timed study.

Additionally, don’t avoid!! We, as humans, have a tendency to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or are difficult. But it will make you a better artist in then end. When I first started, I absolutely hated doing fabric. I felt like I wasn’t good at it. So instead of avoiding drawing clothing, I sat down and did studies and sketches of different kinds of fabric. By the end of this learning period, I became comfortable with it and grew to enjoy it. These days, I adore sketching clothes, and it’s why my pants and shirts and things tend to be detailed instead of stylized in line art. If you don’t like drawing hands because you feel like you aren’t good at it? Sit down, look at a bunch of pictures of different hands, and practice it. By the end, you’ll be more comfortable, you’ll have learned something. Even if you feel like the drawings you ended up with aren’t good, you’ll still have learned, and that’s what matters!

Style

I worked on basics before I tried to develop a style. I made sure to start with a very realistic method at first, so that I could be sure I understood how fabric folds, anatomy, and realistic expressions worked before I tried to stylize them. I think in the long run this approach really paid off for me. It also allowed me to be conscientious of what elements I was absorbing into my artwork. I hear from so many artists that they started drawing when they were younger and into anime or cartoons or things like that, and tried to emulate it. Because those styles became so ingrained into their artistic skillset, it becomes near impossible to iron out those influences and get rid of them later. So starting with realism is a way to ingrain proper anatomy and other good practice into your artwork.

One way to develop style is to take a look at the artwork of someone you admire, and try to list out the things you like form their style - perhaps the thickness of their lines, or the way they do eyes. Do this with several artists, take all those little details you like and try them out! See if you enjoy using them in your own drawing process! Think of it like a grab bag or a pick-n-mix, sprinkling in the elements you like here and there to create something new and your own - not just copying another artists style word for word.

Don’t worry too much about it though; don’t allow yourself to become anxious or fixated on “achieving a style”. Its a natural ever evolving process that comes with time and practice. I know a lot of people get hung up on style, but just take it one day at a time!

Also try to keep in mind what style you’re going for as you begin drawing. And I don’t mean that like sailor moon vs. ghibli. I mean that as in, is this piece going to be a painting, a lineart, a lined painting, cell shading...? It will help you in the longrun if you narrow down the broad kind of style you use, and refine from there.

Workflow

My workflow for paintings is very different from my workflow for lineart and cell shading. A full tutorial on how I do paintings can be found here! A process video for how I cell shade can be found here!

Everyone is going to have a different method that works for them! You just have to experiment and find out how you like to draw! For me, personally, I use color blocking for painting (see the tutorial above) and a spine method for lineart. How the spine method works is that I will draw lines that represent the legs, arms, back, etc. so that I can determine the placement, length, and composition. From there, I’ll add a dark outline that actually shows the shapes of the body. Then, I’ll use thinner lines to add details. This is the method I’ve found that works for me. Another commonly used method that I’m sure you’ve seen is representing body parts with cylinders and cubes. There are lots of good tutorials out there on breaking down bodies into shapes like this!

Something that I do is if I’m not quite happy with a part of a drawing, I don’t just erase it. I duplicate the layer so that I always have the original copy, and then I make changes from there. Sometimes I can end up with five or six different versions of the same arm or face that i’ve made minor changes to. And then I compare and pick the one I like best, or condense all the parts I like from each version to make a “best” version.

Tools

Currently I use Procreate and the standard Ipad with Apple Pencil. Prior to March I was using a Wacom Bamboo Touch and Photoshop Elements 2008. I find its harder for me to do full paintings in procreate, but its made my life a million times easier for lineart and cell shading. The pen pressure is phenomenal, and I also adore that its wireless / active screen instead of plug in like the wacom. The programme itself is intuitive and easy to get the hang of; it simply lacks a lot of the neat tricks that photoshop has, like rendering (lens flares, for example), gradients, and gradient maps. Try testing out different trials of programmes... firealpaca, photoshop, autodesk, whatever it may be! What works for me may not work for you!

#thegodbucky #asks for ts #t talks #long post #art reference

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hxneypetals · 4 years

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Void

Pairing: Chris and original character Summary: After Chris’ big movies Knives Out and Endgame, his long term partner Natalia finds herself lost. Chris and Natalia seem to have lost connection and they find themselves eager to fill the void between them. Pronouns: Natalie: she/hers Chris: he/him

The smell of coffee and lavender lingered in the air, Natalia had bought a couple new candles that she had seen through a stores shiny windows. Natalia had been walking from her art class which was located downtown in Boston. She often discovered herself lingering after classes, walking and looking. Frequently at objects of great value to which she couldn’t afford. Of course she could use her partners money, but it didn’t seem right. He had worked so hard, it was like stealing to Natalia. Lily’s Candle Shop, stuck out to Natalia. Through the shiny glass, she had seen many candles as well as tea and coffee. Signs plastered on the exterior of the shop stated that the products were locally made, and that there was a sale. She had stopped to wonder if she should cave from her impulses. The products were local, what could do any harm? Plus no one can run from a sale. Natalia walked out that day with two bags full of coffee and candles. She was very straight forward, and never liked running super low on anything.

Now the candles shone in her and Chris’ home. Their house was very welcoming, blankets scattered the floor, books were filled in a tall wooden bookcase, there were a few plants, and their home was very neat. Well except for Natalia’s work. Art was her passion, she wasn’t really doing anything but Natalia loved to create. Her works rested on desk Chris had helped set up a few weeks ago. Natalia remembered the faint swearing every few minutes, it was nice to know someone cared about what she did and her in general.

Chris had been very busy, Natalia discovered the quiet of their home they had created together. She missed the television on random channels, dodger barking, his laugh, or how he snuck up on Natalia working. Commenting on the colors or how she had arranged the piece. Which really meant he wanted attention, which ended up in him sitting by her and telling any random story. Natalia missed the presence of him. Chris’ recent projects included Endgame, which Natalia adored, and Knives out which he was currently working on. Natalia knew the cast, she was a big movie fan herself. She loved Chris’ acting and she loved how he loved his job. Natalia wouldn’t stand in the way of his career, but it was hard sometimes. Not being able to text as often, or call.

Natalia sat in the present, trying to get out of her head. Her hands held a warm mug, as she painted a page in a sketchbook. Today felt like a watercolor mood, Natalia loved painting flowers. The brush flew across the page, as her body sat still. Her hair tied in a bun as her mind focused on the present. It was something new she had learned, from Chris of course. It was called, silencing the noise.

Chris was set to come home today, he didn’t text much the night before. Natalia assumed he would take a taxi. They had been so distant lately, Natalia hoped it was her mind noise. It was so hard to ignore. She decided to take a break from her new project. Moving from her desk to the kitchen table. As she sat down, the door opened to a faint smile and a loud “hello”.

Chris looked tired, but stunning as usual. Natalia understood how he felt. Chris placed his suitcases down in relief, Natalia reached out on her tiptoes quickly embracing him. Her brunette hair nestled in the small of his neck, his arms tightly around her waist. Chris’ head fell into her neck, and he let out a small breath.

“It’s so good to see you.”

“You look so tired, are you hungry do you need anything?” Natalia wanted to pull away, she was worried about him. Chris’ arms quickly pulled her back.

“Don’t worry about me,” he smiled, “I’m happy.”

For a few minutes they enjoyed the presence of each other. Once again the quiet returned, but not in the way each of them had previously grown familiar to it. This time there was something else rather than quiet, the static noise just became Chris’ humming, as he swung Natalia back and forth. Chris’ twirled Natalia, as she returned the favor.

His suitcase rested in the living room for now. Chris’ felt so relieved to be home. It was something he couldn’t explain, there were so many good memories here. He wanted to cherish them forever. Natalia looked so beautiful, he thought, her eyes still the same brown he had remembered. Chris’ could look into them forever. His eyes however, drifted off onto Natalia’s desk. It was seconds before he marched off to see what she had created, Natalia running behind him. Her hands fidgeted and her heart barely could keep moving. His blue eyes examined each page with great detail. She loved how he actually cared because he liked the pieces, or at least seemed to be interested in them. Natalia bit her fingernail.

“What do you think?” she asked.

His strong hands placed the paper gently on top of the desk. The blue of his eyes met the brown of hers.

“These are amazing!”

“Really?” she smiled.

“I could sell them for you if you want?” Chris softly implied.

“No it’s okay I’m actually doing an art show in a couple weeks, gotta get as many pieces completed as I can.” a light smiled filled her face. “How was your filming?”

Chris’ eyes rolled

“What, am I not allowed to know about your trip!?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

This time their eye contact broke, Chris sat down by the island on a high chair. Everything was escalating so quickly. Natalia thought that maybe she should’ve talked to him about this before. Instead of one little argument, she would have to deal with a huge outburst of emotion. Natalia couldn’t handle confrontation of emotions, not even her emotions. She stood, hands by her side. It broke her heart she got into arguments with Chris. They made each other so happy, she hated seeing them feel sudden hatred.

“Why do you do this every time?”

“Maybe because I do this for a living every single day of my life!” Chris snapped.

His voice was loud, upfront, strong. It had come from a very conflicted place within, that scared Natalia. But she had to deal with it, Natalia knew she had to deal with whatever was going on. Relationships ended because of miscommunication, and she didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want to lose coffee and pancakes in the morning, cable knit sweaters, his hugs, or his stupid songs that they always seemed to dance to.

“Well I love hearing about your life too! Is that so much to ask?”

Chris’ knew Natalia was right on this one. There was a moment of silence.

“Yes because you don’t understand how hard it is, to have the paparazzi follow you around everyday, or to get asked if I work out instead of my movies. Or when you have to film half the day and eat stupid buttery cookies that despite being delicious, make you want to throw up because you’ve had so many.”

His eyes looked guilty, he had just dropped the bomb. They didn’t know of what yet, or why this fight was even happening. It wasn’t even really a fight. They both were very guilty. Chris’ hands fell into his lap, his jaw clenched up. Veins popped out, teeth grinding together. Natalia looked at the floor, which she had practically memorized now. The lines and patterns, were too familiar after only few seconds. They couldn’t stand to look at each other, maybe they never would.

“Chris, I love you” it had almost been an eternity since they had confessed. Maybe this is what made relationships special, true relationships. Despite what happened, there would always been love, as much as they couldn’t stand each other right now. It had hit Chris’ hard, his eyes softened. Natalia had never said it in such a direct way. It was always a silly ‘I love you’ or one before bed. He was guilty he had forced a serious tone. “I’m sorry if you want a girlfriend who is so tight with Hollywood.” They giggled at ‘tight’. “Sometimes when your actor friends come over I seem so out of place, and they’re very nice but it’s like I can’t connect with them, it’s also because I truly care. I love movies, and I love you, I want to know what’s happening, I want to know the funny things that happen on set. I’ve never told you this before but I’m a huge movie nerd, that absolutely, deeply, loves you”

His hand reached towards hers, she stepped closer and their fingers laced together. Natalia was still filled with rage, as well as Chris, but they couldn’t hate each other forever. Maybe they understood what Natalia had meant. Chris took a deep breath again, exhaling like right before a confession.

“Natalia, first off my actor friends love you. They can never stop asking when you’ll come on set, or to a premiere. You’ve just never seemed interested, or when I ask you’re busy with art, which is fair. I love you, Natalia. I don’t want you to be another movie star, I want you to be that cute artist I met at the coffee shop. The one standing on the step stool, painting the menu, almost falling as she rushed to get an order. The one who I now know, knew me, but pretended not to.”

“In my defense,” Natalia interrupted, “I have manners and I know celebrities are real people, also I was working.”

They laughed glancing at each other. Natalia’s dimples had reappeared, and Chris’ infectious smile had come back.

“To continue,” he did some hand motions, which always cracked Natalia up. “You’re right I should tell you more, you always tell me so much about what you do and what’s going on. I’ve been very distant lately and I’m sorry. I guess I just wish that I could live your life. You can walk around with no one bothering you. You can get a coffee without everyone snapping pictures with that fucking bright flash.”

This time Natalia pulled a high chair from the island, their hands still connected she softly sat.

“Maybe people should start recognizing me?” Natalia smiled. Their hands disconnected, Natalia brushed Chris’ cheek.

“The Knives Out Premiere is next month, I made sure it didn’t interfere with your art.”

They both smiled.

#chrisevans #chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #writing #chris #knivesout #fanfic

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dccomicsnews · 4 years

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Review: THE FLASH #750

[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]

Writers: Joshua Williamson, Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato, Marv Wolfman, Scott Lobdell

Artists: Rafa Sandoval, Stephen Segovia, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, Riley Rossmo, David Marquez, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund

Colours: Arif Prianto, Michael Atiyeh, Ivan Plascencia, Alejandro Sanchez, Luis Guerrero

Letters: Steve Wands, Rob Leigh, Joshua Reed, Deron Bennett, ALW’s Troy Peteri

Reviewed By: Derek McNeil

Summary

The Flash #750: Beginning: “The Flash Age”! The story we’ve been building toward since issue #50 comes to a head! While a supercharged Speed Force wreaks havoc on Barry Allen’s life, a new threat appears on the horizon in the form of the deadly Paradox. Destined to destroy the Flash’s legacy, Paradox sends his herald, Godspeed, to trap the Flash family! Plus, in this special anniversary issue: tales from across the generations of super-speedsters by an all-star lineup of writers and artists!

Positives

In honour of the 80th Anniversary of the title, DC has reverted back to legacy numbering. Thus, The Flash #750 hits the stands this week instead of the expected 89th issue of the series. “Legacy numbering” means that if the title kept the same incremental numbering through every relaunch of the title, then the number would have naturally progressed to issue #750 with this very issue.

This covers the tenures of DC’s primary three Flashes, Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West, and appropriately, all three are well represented in the six stories included. As the current star of the title, Barry merits three stories, while Jay and Wally each get a single, yet important story each.

This first, and main, story is the first chapter of regular series writer Josh Williamson’s “The Flash Age”. I really liked this story, as it mostly gives a break and allows us to catch up with the current status of Barry’s world and the people in it, before pushing into the next big conflict. This makes the story a nice jumping-on point for new readers as well as providing a neat wrap up of the previous story arc.

Most importantly, it shows that Barry and Iris are back together and that their relationship is as strong as ever. In fact, things seemed to be going so well, that when Iris said, “I have something to talk to you about. A surprise”, I was expecting that she might propose to Barry.

Positives Cont.

Unfortunately, this is where the impending conflict cut into the story. Godspeed interrupts this moment, taking Barry to face Paradox. Paradox then gives Barry a choice between giving up being the Flash or fighting for his life against Godspeed. This is where the story leaves off, giving us a rather effective cliffhanger to bring readers back for the rest of “The Flash Age”.

I also love that this story includes several instances of Central City’s citizens showing their gratitude to the Flash for saving their lives or helping them in other ways. It’s a nice touch for an anniversary story. Plus, it provides a nice counterpoint to Paradox’s claims that Barry has been endangering everybody by the effect his powers have had on reality itself. Hopefully, this will help Barry realize that the good he has done outweighs any damage he has caused.

In the second story, Geoff Johns bring us an interesting little tale featuring Captain Cold, set during Wally’s tenure as the DCU’s primary Flash. In this story, we see that what Wally assumes that Cold goes on a rampage for the sole purpose of infuriating Wally.

However, the story shows us that the “rampage” came about unintentionally. Cold merely stumbled into the midst of an armed robbery when shopping at his local corner store. Through a series of misunderstandings, he finds himself in the middle of a confrontation with the Keystone City Police. While this doesn’t excuse Cold for his crimes, this does show how easy it is for events to quickly get out of control for a villain in the DCU.

Positives Cont.

The next story, by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato features Barry examining the question of whether the Flash has to be Barry Allen. He does this by using a previously unseen power to send his consciousness through other timelines where somebody else became the Flash instead of him. In each timeline, he finds that someone admirably fills the role of the Flash. He arrives at the moral of the “Even if it doesn’t have to be me… I”m glad that it is”

However, I have to wonder why the examples of Wally and Jay aren’t enough evidence that that someone else could serve as the Flash other than Barry. I would have thought either would be proof enough to settle the question.

Marv Wolfman, the man wrote the story of Barry’s death in Crisis On Infinite Earths, returns to the character to tell of an interesting encounter between Barry and the Mirror Master. The interesting conceit of this story is that the Mirror Master’s mirrors in the story enact various transformations upon the Flash’s body. These transformations allow artist Riley Rossmo to revisit some of the bizarre transformations over the years, such as the time Abra-Kadabra turned Barry into a walking wooden puppet.

Next, regular writer Joshua Williamson gives us a story of Jay Garrick, set in the title’s inaugural year, 1940. The story centres around an encounter between Jay and the Thinker. However, the most intriguing bit of the story is when a mysterious figure, presumably the Reverse Flash, whispers in Jay’s ear, “They’ll forget you Jay Garrick. I’ve seen your future…”.

Positives Cont.

This seems to be setting up a future storyline involving Jay and the Reverse Flash, which is further borne out by the blurb at the story’s end. This blurb promises, “To be continued in The Flash in 2020″. Unfortunately, this seems to imply that we won’t see the followup immediately, but it is coming relatively shortly.

Also, I noticed that the image on that page also shows Wally and Bart. I hope this means that we will be seeing a full reunion of the Flash Family when this story continues.

Finally, the entire creative team for the Flash Forward miniseries returns to provide an epilogue to that miniseries. Writer Scott Lobdell continues where that story left off, creating a bridge between it and the upcoming Generation Zero: Gods Among Us and subsequent Generation One to Five specials.

While little is known about this upcoming event, it has been speculated that it will involve a major shift in DCU continuity. That speculation seems to be borne out in this story, where Wally, now wielding the power and knowledge of the Mobius Chair, exams the current state of the DC Universe’s continuity.

It has been my theory for a while now that the time itself is unravelling in the DC Universe, and this story confirms that. Wally looks through his own personal timeline and sees that multiple contradictory events seem to concurrently exist in the current continuity. The original Silver Age origin of the Teen Titans happened as Wally remembers it, but the New 52 Teen Titans also exist as the first group to call themselves by that name.

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The Flash #750 1940s Cover

The Flash #750 1950s Cover

The Flash #750 1960s Cover

The Flash #750 1970s Cover

The Flash #750 1980s Cover

The Flash #750 1990s Cover

The Flash #750 2000s Cover

The Flash #750 2010s Cover

Positives Cont.

I must also interject that it’s great to see that Wally remembers the original Teen Titans costumes, and not the New 52/Rebirth re-imagined versions of the original outfit – even down to Robin’s short pants.

Wally confronts Tempus Fuginaut about the state of the DCU, stating, “Everything. Time. Space. Reality. It’s all broken. It all risks collapse”. And if there is any doubt about the severity of the situation in the reader’s mind, the story itself drop many significant keywords that indicate big reality-changing events in DC history: “Crisis”, “Flashpoint”, “Doomsday”, “Rebirth”, and others.

Truly, the DCU is reaching an important turning point. But there we are given ample reason not to dread this. When Fuginaut asks if Wally is up to the task of repairing this damage, Wally West, the DCU’s symbol of hope and rebirth replies, “My name is Wally West. I’m the Fastest Man Alive. I sit on the Mobius Chair. The power of a God races through me. So yeah. I got this”.

This speech gave me chills and reassures me that whatever the Generation special lead to, it bodes well for the future of the DCU.

Besides the amazing lineup of artists in each of the stories, there are also fine selection of pinups, as well as the multitude of gorgeous variant covers. I love the look of the decade covers. Especially, with the care taken to match the title logo and DC symbol for each time period. DC does pull out the stops to make sure these anniversary events look truly amazing.

Negatives

However, there is a nasty side to all these variant covers. This is a book with a $7.99 cover price. But with ten different covers (including the blank cover), that’s almost 80 bucks. Now I didn’t mind this when Action Comics and Detective Comics reached issue #1000. That’s a once in a lifetime milestone. Now DC is doing the same for Wonder Woman and The Flash reaching #750, which is a bit much, but okay. But DC has announced similar 80th Anniversary events for Robin, Catwoman, The Joker, and Green Lantern. That’s one or two of these expensive specials a month. Such a cash grab is excusable when it is once in a blue moon, but DC is venturing into the realm of highway robbery. Please, DC! Have mercy on my bank account!

Verdict

Review: The Flash #750 Review: THE FLASH #750 Writers: Joshua Williamson, Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato…

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vminity21 · 5 years

Text

Write Me A Memory

Pairing: Namjoon X Reader

Word Count: 1.6k

Warning: smut

You’re nearly floored by the fact you’re here, in the writing room of ibighit awaiting the arrival of none other than Kim Namjoon from BTS. Your career as a singer took off a few years prior, your fame worldwide, but nowhere near as successful as the biggest KPOP band in the universe- a band who has been your guilty pleasure since they debuted, yet you haven’t had the pleasure of truly meeting them. Not until they reached out for a collab nearly a month ago, your management planning with theirs on when a good time to schedule would be. For now, the song idea is currently part of the writing process, Kim Namjoon being one of the main writers, he’s agreed to be the one to help co-write the song in mind.

He greets you with a kind smile, his blonde hair shaved on the sides, but the top strands long and styled in a neat gelled quiff; a hairstyle that brings a withering desire you suppress by masking with a wide smile. He offers his hand to you, shaking it once before settling next to you on the couch, his arm brushing yours as your trembling hands reach for your notebook and what you consider, your good luck charm of a pen.

“It’s nice to meet you, [Y/N],” he nods once, you hardly can contain your excitement with how close his proximity is to you which you reiterate his polite statement to then trying to bring your business mind back to the present. You explain the idea of the song, what message you’re wanting to convey before both of you lean forward in concentration, scribbling down multiple lines of lyrics and piecing them together until they each form a verse. The song is half your native language and half his which the two of you admit you originally wanted; hours passing until both of you feel the song is close to completion.

Of course, during mini breaks in between, the two of you share personal stories, relating in different aspects as artists do, but one thing you can’t shake is how much you enjoy seeing his dimples in person. The way his smile hasn’t left him since he stepped into the room- you’re unaware of how long your eyes have traveled among his face, and you’re oblivious to how close he’s inched to you on the couch mirroring the same attraction you’ve been trying to maintain.

Shaking your head inconspicuously, you reach forward to gather your things, him rushing with the same intention until your fingers brush his. Instead of jolting away like a normal human, you freeze, your breath hitching in your throat from the strange tremors waving across your skin. Slowly you lean back onto the couch; if rejection wasn’t something you feared, you wouldn’t be as nervous, but it’s Kim Namjoon- how can you not be insanely terrified to face him and just smother him with endless kisses?

Reading your mind, he closes enough distance to where his breath warms your cheek, him moving his hand to rest on your thigh. At that moment, he realizes he has stepped into dangerous territory, because in one swift motion, you swing your leg around him to sit in a perfect straddle, grasping his lips with yours so fast, it takes him a second to recuperate. Warmth floods every inch of your body prompting you to moan into his kiss, your hands pressing along the sides of his face while his slide seductively up and down your ass in a caressing manner.

Tongues meeting, they lick together in a swirling motion, breaths increasing until lips relock. You’re aroused out of your mind, him tightening his arms behind your back just to flip you under him, his long legs close to dangling off the couch while he grinds his clothed erection in between your thighs. Your hands grip the sides of his face not wanting his lips to ever break away as they move so passionately with yours. It’s been too long since you’ve had a rendezvous such as this; and with it being with someone you have admired for so long, you know you’ll never forget this.

Squeezing your chest, you give him permission to slip his large hands underneath your shirt, trailing up your ribcage before swallowing your breasts whole in his heated palms. Nipples so sensitive, your heat drenches the moment he realizes the effect it has on you just by merely brushing the rising buds, lipping at your neck while he basks in the beauty of your moans. You’re craving every bit of him at this point, wanting him to just sex you already. When clothes start to be thrown off, you stroke his erection, him immediately finding your entrance to fill it with his fingers- both of you pleasuring each other, yet still getting lost in kissing so deeply, the two of you forget to gasp for air. The sensation of heated pressed bare skin can be the most beautiful thing, especially with the way your legs entangle with his. He brings a hand to his penis, rubbing his tip along your slit letting the sloppy sound of you leak onto it. He then rubs it along your clit, your fingers digging into the backs of his shoulders while you moan softly into his ear.

“Goodness, you’re so fucking sexy,” he breathes, your hips begging for him like they have since he stepped into the room.

Before you know it, he carries you into a nearby office, you lean over a desk before he slams his erection inside you- thrusting so hard, your mouth screams his name in intense pleasure, begging him for more while his hands grip your thighs. You don’t want to be finished yet, you’ll never want that- turning to fully face him, you kiss him harder, his hands moving to grip the desk, keeping you trapped within his arms. He towers over you, being cornered by him being the most arousing thing you have yet to encounter, letting him captivate you with his every mannerism; your vaginal walls clenching nonstop below you in a deafening longing.

He hoists you onto the desk until your back is pressed to the chilly wood, his hands raising your folded legs to where he can scan your heat. You know what he’s about to do, and you’ve never felt a crave so strong- for his tongue to whisk you away to another planet. The tip of his tongue causes you to hiss while your body tenses, him flicking deliciously on your core, slipping it within your walls in a fast pace motion before ravishing it onto your clit.

“Oh, Namjoon. Ohhh, ohhh,” you moan, his tongue doing wonders to your slit while he savors your taste, soon pumping his fingers within your walls whilst licking your clit with the tip of his tongue. At this point, you’re done for, your climax firing below you until your thighs squeeze together from the sensitivity rupturing- your drenched core coating his fingers which leads him to suck your taste from them before he flips you around, not giving you a moment to recover before he thrusts into you. Sex on a desk has never been a thought, but with the way his penis knocks your g-spot with every stroke, you’d sex him anytime, anywhere.

Relishing in the feel of him inside you- he roughly pounds, obeying your desires as his hands' pan your ass; the brink of his orgasm finally spilling into you while another orgasm weakens your limbs, you collapse onto the desk, suppressing your pants into your folding arms. “Holy shit,” you exhale, “I don’t think songwriting has ever been this… Scandalous.”

Your taunting tone brings a wide smile to Namjoon’s face, him sweetly twirling his fingers along your back, offering his hands to help you stand- your core trying to convalesce from the multiple orgasms he’s skillfully provided you. The stench of sex has never smelled so delicious to you before, his calloused hand holding yours until both of you reach the writing room- making sure the coast is clear before fully stepping into the room to redress in the clothes you both arrived in. Sadness plagues your heart, for with the industry he’s in, you know better than to hope for a chance of ever being more than what this encounter really is. But, it’s never wrong to hope. Is it?

The moment you’re both clothed, the awkward tension is suffocating, you hardly catch Namjoon’s fingertips slowly lifting your chin to meet his timid brown eyes, “I hope to see you again,” he murmurs, planting a long, sweet kiss on your lips, before gathering his things and slowly walking out the writing room doors. Tears brim your eyes, your stiff limbs hard to move; a tear pangs your notebook, you finally taking a step to pick it up, opening it to the page where you and Namjoon finished what will soon be a #1 hit song worldwide. Meaning, the two of you will be seeing plenty of each other which is currently unbeknownst to you.

Instead, your eyes trace the pages you flip through trying to think positive things though your heart aches to relive the day you’ve had with an idol you can’t rid from your mind. It’s then you discover, a small piece of paper fluttering to the ground from your notebook. With furrowed eyebrows, you bend down, gripping the edge of the paper with your fingertips, slowly unfolding it, a gasp escapes your lips, joy soaring within your soul from the words read back to you,

‘Thanks for the memory,

I don’t know about you, but I would like to make more.’

At the end of the note, a smile spreads across your face, for not only did Namjoon leave such genuine words,

He also left his phone number.

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takerfoxx · 4 years

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The Rise of Skywalker Review

All right, new year, new decade, and all that jazz. Now, I do have a few things I wanna say about reflecting back on where I was and where I am now, personal growth and all that, but first, I have some major I need to get out of my system, something that’s been eating at my mind all week, something I really need to sit down and dissect to properly suss out my thoughts and feelings.

And that thing is this: what the fuck happened with The Rise of Skywalker?!

Now, just for the record, I’m that lapsed Star Wars fan who grew up with the original trilogy, who had a full shelf of EU novels that I read and reread over and over until their covers fell off, who spent untold hours replaying both of the Knights of the Old Republic games, was majorly let down by the prequels and became disillusioned by the franchise as a result, who reacted to the news of Disney’s acquisition of the franchise with cyncisim, who thought that The Force Awakens was decent but otherwise substance-less knock-off of A New Hope, who was bored to tears by Rogue One, who skipped Solo entirely, but who actually was surprising engaged and receptive to the subversive themes and new places that The Last Jedi took the franchise even if it was very flawed structurally and thought that it was the best Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi.

And hell, let’s just state my reasons right now. The Last Jedi came out at a time when I was just so tired of people trying to recapture lightning in a bottle with once-great franchises that had lived on long past their expiration date with trying to pass off clearly inferior knock-offs to their original installments as sequels. I mean, it can work, sure. Both of the Creed movies followed the Rocky movie formula pretty closely but were still great, and even if it didn’t click with me the way it did with other people, Fury Road was a fantastic film. The thing is though, both of those movies were still being handled by their original creators, specifically Sylvester Stallone and George Miller, while my beloved Star Wars and Jurassic Park had become divorced from their daddies and were now being handled by people who just. Didn’t. Get it.

And then The Last Jedi came along and was all, “Shut up about bloodlines, they don’t matter! Your main character is not the descendant of some already established character, she’s just some rando Force-sensitive that caught up in all this and decided to answer the call, so let her stand on her own! The Jedi were a well-meaning but immensely flawed, so leave them in the annuals of history and stop venerating them! Same with your heroes! Also, your Resistance has its hands dirty too because it’s a fucking war and war makes monsters of everybody while the little people suffer, sometimes you need to listen to the people in charge instead of being a hothead bucking the system, and the intimidating villains in black are in truth a bunch of insecure man-children playing dress-up to make them feel better about themselves and are pretty pathetic until they take that last step and become actual threats because that is how fascism works!”

Do you realize just how refreshing all of that was? Oh my God, is the Star Wars franchise actually…moving forward? Are we getting new stuff that’s not hampered by George Lucas’s unbearably hackneyed writing?

Yes, the whole Finn and Rose sidequest contributed nothing to the plot and ultimately went nowhere. Yes, the whole Poe vs. Admiral Holdo had the looming question of “Why doesn’t she just tell Poe that she’s got a plan instead of doing everything to set the team rebel off?” which undercut its message. These are major problems, I acknowledge that. The thing is, they are easily fixable problems that would have been smoothed out by a few more script treatments. It sucks that they weren’t, but as for me, they were roadbumps, not dealbreakers. I noticed them, I saw that they were major problems, but they didn’t make me angry, and I liked what they were trying to say enough for me to still be with it. And I felt that all the Luke/Rey/Kylo stuff was gangbusters (yes, I loved cranky, disillusioned old Luke. I know Mark Hamill didn’t care for it, but that’s fine, it worked great for me), so I ultimately left feeling pleasantly surprised. As if in, it was a flawed but very refreshing experience, one that said things I had been feeling for a long time and took things to interesting places that I actually wanted to see play out. I even got choked up when Luke let himself fade away when feeling absolutely nothing when Han died the previous film.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be a minority opinion, with many other Star Wars fan outright detesting it, sometimes to a pretty gross level (you know what I’m talking about). So when JJ Abrams was brought back on board to try to salvage things for the final installment, my reaction was, “I’m going to hate it, aren’t I?”

Still, I knew I was going to see it anyway, just to say that I did. And…welp.

…

Dafuq was that?

All right, all right, now before I continue, I need to acknowledge something. First of all, I have nothing against JJ Abrams as a person or even really as an artist. From all accounts he’s a cool guy who’s been taking all the backlash he’s been getting with a commendable amount of maturity, and he was placed in a very unenviable position by taking the reins in the midst of a very volatile situation. Plus, he had set a ton of things up in TFA that TLJ burned to the ground. Granted, it was a bonfire that I thoroughly enjoyed, but as the person watching his ideas just get cut off, that must have been frustrating watch. Like, what was he supposed to work with once he was brought back on after Colin Trevorrow had gotten the boot? And on a side-note, they really need to stop bringing Colin Trevorrow into big blockbuster franchises.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher, which, in addition to being a terrible loss in general because she was a wonderful person that we’re all the poorer without, this movie was supposed to in some way revolve thematically around her, much like the TFA did with Han and TLJ did with Luke. But with her gone, they were just left with footage and recorded dialogue from deleted scenes from the first two films, which is next to nothing to go off of. Now there’s a debate to be had about whether or not it would be appropriate to CG her face onto a different actress, and I do get them feeling that doing so would be ghoulish…but they kinda already did that to bring Tarkin back in Rogue One, so…

Even so, that really sucks, and as awkward as the Princess Leia scenes are as a result, it isn’t their fault, so I’ll leave it at that.

And finally, it must also be acknowledged that a lot of the things I’m going to criticize them for were present in the original trilogy, and were just as awkward then. The OG movies weren’t perfect, folks. We’ve come to accept these flaws, but they were just as clumsy asspulls back then as they are now.

All right, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I actually want to start off on a positive note, specifically talking about the stuff I liked.

Let’s begin with the thing that I consider to not only be good, but actually kind of great: the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. Their weird Force-link in TLJ was one of the few new ideas that everyone seemed to like, especially since neither of them could really control it and were equally befuddled by it. It’s just a cool idea, a new aspect of the Force we haven’t seen before, and it’s slowly built upon, actually affects both the plot and the characters, and leads to some great scenes between the two of them.

And you know what? I was actually surprised by how much I liked these two together. After the wooden pile of bleh that was Anakin and Padme, I was bracing myself for more of the same. But as it turns out, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver have an incredible amount of chemistry, and Adam especially was able to pull off the whole tortured bad boy who’s trying to be a villain but feels endlessly conflicted in a way that Hayden Christensen never could (though to be fair, Adam had way more to work with). So giving them that weird link where they’re forced to interact at different points despite being galaxies across from one another is a fantastic idea.

And I was happy to see that not only was this idea not walked back on, they actually built on it. Without giving too much away, there’s an amazing scene where they actually have a lightsaber fight despite being in two completely different locations and not really knowing where the other is, with the camera jumping back and forth from each other’s perspective and items from each other’s surroundings keep getting thrown into the other’s area and it’s honestly really great.

There were also a lot of visuals that were pretty great. The whole indoor lightning of the Sith Planet was neat, as was the flying stormtroopers, and that festival was pretty cool, and…

Actually, come to think of it, most of the scenes in this movie are, when viewed in isolation, pretty good, and could have worked if they had been buffeted by, you know, proper buildup, actual pacing, and taking the time to let events have weight.

But that leads us to this movie’s biggest failing, the problem that bring the whole thing crashing down. And that is it will just. Not. Slow. Down!

Seriously, don’t take a bathroom break, because if you do, you’ll come back to find everybody on a totally different planet doing something completely different, and the plot point you left on is completely in the rearview. It’s exhausting how quickly this movie jumps around from place to place, where we get a look at a setting and characters that might have been interesting if we got to spend actual time with them, only to drop it and we’re onto the next part. This isn’t a story, it’s a list of bullet points! It’s a three hour highlight reel of a whole-ass fourth trilogy, one that could have been cool to watch if they had chopped it up into three parts and fleshed them out into three movies. Hell, I’ll tell you where to end each one: Rey vs. Kylo on the Star Destroyer, Rey vs. Kylo on the wreckage of the Death Star, and the actual finale. Expand on the stuff in between, flesh things out with actual, you know, character development and consequences instead of zipping around, trying to come up with as many places as they can to cram into Star Tours’ randomizer.

And that’s what this basically is, an overly long Star Tours ride! Now I like Star Tours just fine, because it visits places that hold actual meaning due to being properly developed in actual movies, but these places just left me feeling hollow. And while we’re on the subject, did we really need another desert planet, ice planet, and forest planet combo? Spice things the fuck up! Say what you want about the prequels, but at least they tried to take us to cool new places.

And you know what? I’m going to say it. This movie is actually worse than the prequels. Not because it’s nearly as clumsily written and woodenly acted, or because it’s dragged down by dumb attempts at comedy; it’s none of those things. But at least the prequels were trying! George Lucas might be totally inept as a writer and should not have been given free reign, but there were attempts at things like proper plot and character development, pacing, plot twists, mystery, building things up and paying them off. Just go read the novelization of Revenge of the Sith. It’s fantastic! Same plot, same events happening, same conversations, but the dialogue is reworked to give the characters actual personality and it’s narratively told in an awesome and creative way and it’s overall just a great book. So George Lucas’s movies had the framework of a good story, he just wasn’t the right person to tell it.

In contrast, this movie has actual good acting, and the dialogue isn’t anywhere nearly as corny, but it’s just so unbelievably basic. It’s surface level writing, with barely a hint of cleverness and very little personality other than what the actors are about to wrangle out through their performances. But structure-wise, other than to expand it into a full trilogy, I don’t see how anyone can turn this mess into an engaging, single-movie narrative. So much happens, and it just feels so empty.

And…okay. Let’s address the Bantha in the room. Let’s talk about Palpatine.

Why is he back? Why? Just…why? He doesn’t need to be back! He doesn’t! It’s stupid, it’s hackneyed, it’s not even explained! I mean, there’s an offhand mention of cloning, so yeah, it’s feasible, it just makes no narrative sense! Hell, the fucking opening title crawl just plain says, “Yeah, he’s back. No reason, he just is” and goes on from that. And apparently he’s been behind everything that’s happened, like Snoke and Vader’s voice in Kylo Ren’s head and stuff, because things just can’t happen without being masterminded by someone I guess.

Really? This is the best they could come up with? I know TLJ cut off a lot of their plot branches, but goddamn it, this is the best you’ve got? Resurrect Palpatine? They do remember that the first two movies from the trilogy barely had the emperor as a presence, right? Vader carried them all just fine! Just run with that! Have Kylo Ren be the main antagonist! Have this be able his ascension to actual mega threat instead of Darth Vader cosplayer. If you want Ian McDiarmid to ham it up in the robes one last time (and hey, who wouldn’t?) just give him a cameo! Like, a holographic message to any potential successors Kylo Ren is looking for. Have him be the devil on Kylo’s shoulder in a is-he-real-is-he-just-a-hallucination sort of way. Make him something tempting Kylo Ren to fully embrace being the new Sith Lord, something Kylo has to overcome if he wants redemption. But don’t bring him fucking back! That’s just so, so stupid.

And Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter kind of pisses me off. Her being revealed as a nobody from nowhere in the last film was great! I loved that idea! But no, let’s just retcon that whole business because we’re trying to apologize for the only one of these movies that had any balls and everybody has to be the descendant of someone important. Even fucking Lando gets a long-lost daughter in this! No, I’m not joking, he totally does.

Now, could Rey’s Sith heritage have worked? Sure! In of itself, it’s a rad idea, one that could have been used to explore all sorts of awesome themes…if that had been their plan from the beginning instead of a cheap attempt to replicate Empire’s big plot twist. But let’s face it: they threw it in as a desperate attempt to placate the fans. There never was any sort of plan. Abrams made the first movie with the sole intention of trying to recapture that nostalgic feel and fucked off, Rian Johnson took over with no notes and decided to do what he wanted, Trevorrow got fired, and Abrams got brought back for PR reasons because hey, people liked his movie, and he had to scramble to piece something together! Damn it, Disney! You literally have infinite resources! Hire someone with actual creative talent!

Oh wait, you did, and people hated it. Fuck.

So yeah. Rey’s parentage? Total waste, raises more questions than it answers. Chewie’s apparent death? Total waste, because he was actually on another ship! Though you could Force sense these things, Rey! Dark Side Rey in the trailer? Total waste, just a Force vision. That whole bit with C-3PO potentially sacrificing his entire identity? Total waste. No one seems to care, he gets no say, and after his memory gets wiped it’s treated as comic relief. Yeah, one last look at your friends indeed, Threepio. Some friends you have there. Oh, except Artoo’s got your memory backed up, so it doesn’t matter, just like everything else.

Oh yeah, and fuck Chewie’s medal! Who was really asking for that?

What a mess. What a disjointed, soulless, pandering mess. What a waste of potential, squandered on nothing. Bleh.

Oh well, at least we still have the Mandalorian. I’ve started watching that and it’s really cool so far.

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #rey #kylo ren #jj abrams #the last jedi #the force awakens #george lucas #rant

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khadij-al-kubra · 5 years

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Thomas In Wonderland (Full Fanfic) Chapter 1

Characters: Thomas (fictional), Roman, Patton, Logan, Virgil, Remy, Emile, Joan, Talyn Deceit, Nate, the Dragon Witch (i mean jabberwalkie), Possibly fan adopted shorts characters

Pairings: None (although knowing me and my love of ships, this may change)

Words: 1368

Summary: Thomas seems to have lost his inspiration, his creative drive, and in short has a seriously BAD case of writers block. Perhaps an accidental trip down the rabbit hole into a land of nonsense and madness will help him find that flighty spark he’s been looking for.

Author’s Note: Greetings guys, gals, & non-binary pals! Looks like this is going to be my first multi-chapter fanfic of the new year. This chapter is more of a prologue than anything so it won’t be as long. If you know my writing though, than future chapters are pretty much guaranteed to be MUCH longer. And as always feel free to leave a comment in the messages or reply if you have any notes or constructive critiques. I’m always open to writing advice. Also, if you would like to be in the tag list for this fanfic, feel free to message or inbox me and I shall happily and gratefully add you to the list. I’m super excited about this, and I hope you all enjoy.

Prologue

Writers block. The bane of his existence and possible the only thing that Thomas hated even more than he hated bigoted jerk faces. ...Okay he hated the latter way more, but writers block was definitely up there on the list, right behind mucky Florida heat and cold pizza. His current bout of creative block however was making its way up that list.

“Come on brain...think of things. Come on brain, be so smart,” Thomas mumbled to himself, disappointed he couldn’t even come up with something more original than a borrowed line from that Lin-Manuel Miranda vine.

He certainly felt like the embodiment of it though.

He had been sitting at the table in his living room for the past two hours. His laptop was opened to a mockingly blank page, a lined yellow notepad next to it covered in scratched out bad ideas, crumpled papers were scattered around him, and his Steven Universe mug half emptied of coffee that was cold by now. To add insult to injury, it was an actually nice crisp yet sunshiny autumn day and Thomas could only sit inside as the beauty of it mocked him from the other side of his living room window. The jerk!

He would’ve loved nothing more than to go for a walk outside or visit his friends, but sadly Thomas had a new script to write. Normally he and Joan were pretty good about keeping on top of schedules and they’d even gotten the last two scripted videos out in pretty good amounts of time. Which hopefully made up for that six month dry spell they both swore never to speak of again. However, Joan reminded him that a new scripted video was due soon and Thomas for the life of him just COULD NOT seem to come up with any new or exciting story ideas! It was like his creativity was wandering around a blank page desert and the oasis of is imagination had dried up.

“Say, that could make for a neat Sanders Sides video,” Thomas mused to himself perking up...only to deflate back down after realizing they didn’t have the budget for that kind of a green screen effect. “Besides, the sides never debate outside of my living room and moving them to a location outside of my house wouldn’t make any sense.”

Thomas groaned and plonked his forehead onto the wooden coffee table. Making videos and writing scripts used to be so much fun. Until it started being his job more than a passion. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was signing up for. He wanted this, and he knew he was luckier than most that he got to get paid for creating art and doing what he loved. Not that he and his team did it for the money. Except lately creating felt more like a chore. Not something eh wanted to do but like something he had to do. Like dusting, which was his least favorite chore. Creating felt like a chore! But he couldn’t let Joan or Camden or his wonderful famders down. So he needed to come up with something good...Thomas just wish he could feel that rush of wondrous joy and colorful excitement about his work again. He missed coming up with ideas that were so out there yet he felt a surge of pride every time they worked. Lately all his ideas felt, well, like looking at a faded rainbow. Which was sad as both and artist and a gay man...But deadlines were deadlines and he had to create something to post for the next video.

“That is if i could come up with something period!” Thomas sighed. “Maybe i need a break. Just five to ten minutes of something fun to get the ol’ juices flowing again. Something exciting...”

He looked at the very cold coffee with a pouted lip. Or maybe I just need a boost from my favorite caffeinated drug, he thought. With that decided Thomas picked up the mug and got up to go to the kitchen. Before he even reached the entryway however, a flash of purple in the corner of his eye stopped him. It was from outside. Curious, Thomas went over to the window to peer outside, hoping to see what that thing was. Maybe it was a pretty hummingbird or something, he mused, on its way flying south for the winter. He squinted as he saw the bushes across his yard tremble and this time he caught the flash of purple as it popped our from the foliage.

Only it wasn’t a hummingbird. It was a rabbit: A black rabbit wearing a velvet purple waistcoat. Thomas did a double take. he rubbed at his tired eyes to be sure he wasn’t just seeing things after staring at a blank screen for so long. Nope. It was really there. And if that weren’t jaw drop worth enough, now the black rabbit was taking out a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket.

“Well that’s not something you see every day.”

Too curious to pass seeing this delightful oddity up close, Thomas quickly set down his mug, pulled his jacket over his favorite faded circle shirt and slipped his sneakers on. He was out the door and across faster than you could say Jeemanetty. When he was a few feet away from the rabbit, who was paying more attention to his pocket watch, Thomas slowed down to a tip toe so as not to scare the rabbit off. As he got closer Thomas saw that there was an elegant storm cloud design engraved on the back of the watch. What a cute little fella, Thomas thought to himself. But where did he come from? How did he get a fancy watch and threads like that? Should I call animal control though? As he was debating this, something even weirder happened.

“Ah geeze,” said the Black Rabbit. “I am so late! He’s gonna have my ears and whiskers for this, along with the rest of my head.”

Thomas literally felt his jaw drop and his eyes bug out near cartoon level.

“You can TALK!?” Thomas shouted.

The Black Rabbit jumped at this voice. The silver watch shook in his trembling hands, the poor thing. He hadn’t meant to frighten the little guy. It’s just a talking black rabbit wasn’t something you saw every day, not even in the Bermuda Triangle of America that is Florida.

“It’s okay little guy,” Thomas said, hands held out carefully. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I just wanna talk.”

The Black Rabbit anxiously looked from Thomas to his watch and then back again.

“No time to talk,” he said. “I’mlateI’mLATEI’MLATE!!!”

And then quick as a lightning strike the Black Rabbit dashed into the thicket of shrubbery and trees. Without thinking about it Thomas ran after him.

“Wait, I’m sorry! Come back! Maybe I can help you,” Thomas called out to the purple clad creature ahead of him.

He chased the Rabbit through brambles and bushes, across lawns and through low hanging leaves. If Thomas had taken a moment to think he would’ve realized that there was no way he could possibly catch up to a wild animal, least of all one with a waistcoat and pocket watch, which was surely proof that he was smarter than the average bunny even without the talking. He also would’ve noticed that the hole that the Black Rabbit had ducked into was much larger than a normal rabbit hole and was probably dangerous if someone were to get too close. Most of all, had Thomas slowed down for a moment to think, he would’ve realized that when he left the house in a hurry, he had forgotten to tie the laces of his sneakers that he’d slipped on.

But Thomas did none of those things. As a result, what he did do was trip on his laces just after seeing the Black Rabbit go down the whole. And because he was so close when he tripped on his laces, even if he wanted to, Thomas could not stop to think now.

All he could do was scream loudly as he fell headlong down the rabbit hole into the unknown.

Next =>

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#KDsWriting #Thomas in Wonderland AU #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #Logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #deceit sanders #remy sanders #joan and talyn #emile picani #nate sanders #dragon witch #i'm super excited for this fic guys #ya girl is back at it #first fanfic of 2019

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thedeviltohisangel · 5 years

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How The Night Changes//4//You Mean Everything

Olivia has a date to a gala that is not Duncan.

Warnings: physical fight, mentions of noncon acts, attempted noncon acts

my URL /writing will bring you other parts and also my series’ with Michael and Jim!

Thank you to @kellysimagines for the request!

“I was there because the President invited me, mom...Yes, Olivia was there too...No I didn’t get a chance to sweep her off her feet...Listen I have to go I’m in the middle of the grocery store, I’ll stop by before the gala tomorrow, okay? Love you too, bye.” Olivia watched him roll his eyes from where she was poking her fingers into the kitten crates, allowing them to playfully swat at her.

“Your mother wants you to seduce me?”

“Something like that,” Duncan muttered as he returned to looking at the varying kittens as he had been before his mother had called. “Did you decided on one yet? Any of them speaking to you?” Olivia had decided her new townhouse was too empty, her belongings from Paris not filling up as much space as would be necessary in order to make it a home. She decided she needed a cat to keep her company and she had enlisted Duncan’s help in accompanying her to the shelter to find. “I don’t know why you couldn’t get a dog.”

“Because I’m not home enough now to take care of one. My little kitten will be able to travel with me easier too.”

“Please do not be one of those girls that keeps her animal in her bag.”

“If that’s going to be a dealbreaker then…” She didn’t have time to run away as he lurched forward and ghosted his fingers over her ribs, the tickling sensation enough to make her squeal and attempt to curl in on herself. The volume of their laughter and their public display of affection was of no concern, the Secret Service making the shelter stay open later than usual to accommodate the special guest.

As Duncan paused to allow her to catch her breath, she noticed an orange kitten watching them intently from a crate at the bottom. Enamored, she bent down and placed her hand flat against the bars on the cage, the kitten mimicking her actions with its paw. “This one. Definitely this one. Let me go find that lady.” He watched her scurry off and bent down to assess the kitten she had chosen.

“She’s the best person to be loved by, you’re a lucky fluff ball.” All he got was a ‘meow’ in response.

“What do you think I should name her?” Olivia asked as she came back with a clipboard and a pen.

“How about something to remind you of Paris? Maybe Eiffel? You can call her Effie, for short.” He shrugged as he said it, returning to looking at the kitten while she mulled it over.

“That’s actually perfect. You’re much more sentimental than I originally thought of you.” She squatted down next to him and puckered her lips, Duncan pecking them. “Come on, you can help me carry all of her accoutrements to the car.”

When the SUVs pulled up to Duncan’s building and she made no sign of getting out he groaned.

“You’re not spending the night?”

“I have to take Effie home and get her settled. And I have to be at the White House early tomorrow for the gala. I’ll see you there though, right?”

“Yeah and if you look too good in your dress I might regret it.” She snickered as he leaned over and kiss her soundly, pulling apart with her lip between his teeth.

“Not fair! I’m not going to get to kiss you all day tomorrow.”

“The price we must pay to keep certain people out of our lives.” He opened the door and when his feet hit the pavement she called out his name.

“I love you.” The day after they had exchanged affirmations of their love on the beach, the two had murmured the words into each other’s mouth over and over before making a pact that they would only say it when they really meant it, it was not a feeling either of them took lightly.

“I love you more than you’ll ever know,” he replied. Effie meowed from her crate in Olivia’s lap. “You too Eiffel.” Duncan couldn’t help but be amused that even his girlfriend’s, if he could call her that, cat had him wrapped around her finger. “Until we meet again.”

She had spent the past few nights with him and he was unafraid to admit that he had gotten used to the feeling of going to sleep with her in his arms and waking up to her legs tangled in his. Had fallen in love with it even. As he walked into his dark apartment, her camel colored jacket over the top of his couch, he felt lonely. His bed looked cold and uninviting without her in it and his bathroom smelled bland without her rosemary scented shampoo wafting through. Duncan looked at himself and had only one blunt thought: he was fucked.

Olivia sat with Effie in her lap while her hair and makeup were being sorted for her mother’s gala to welcome the Prime Minister of Malaysia. She hadn’t heard from Duncan all day but she was buzzing with anticipation of seeing him that night. She had already fallen in love with the blue Roberto Cavalli dress that had been loaned to her for the night and she couldn’t wait for Duncan to see her in it. He had never seen her all dressed up and done up before and she hoped it would go just as the fairytale in her mind did.

A knock on the door startled Olivia out of her daydream, her mother’s head poking into the room. “Ladies, can I have a moment alone with my daughter, please?” The hairstylist placed the curling iron on the vanity, the makeup artist tucked the eyeliner into her pocket and the two walked out without even a nod.

“Do you no longer like the color I’m wearing? You said it made my eyes pop.” Olivia always expected her mother to have a criticism to present to her. She had never reached her full potential, and most likely never would, if you asked her mother.

“I need you to take a date tonight. Henry Macy. A big vote is coming up on my Equal Pay Amendment and his happiness would go a long way in getting his father’s vote.”

“Are you expecting me to...to physically persuade him?” She felt sick to her stomach over pretending to flirt with another man that wasn’t Duncan, let alone if her mother was going to ask her to ensure his happiness by any means necessary.

“We’ll see how the night goes. Thank you, sweetheart. I’m sure even your attention will make it the night of his life.” Her mother left after kissing the top of her head, Olivia no longer as exciting for the evening as she had been before their conversation.

“Duty calls, right Effie?” The women tasked with making her glamorous emerged once again and got back to work. Olivia took out her phone and sent a text to Duncan: I love you and only you. Please don’t think tonight is a reflection of something else. My mother is making me. She didn’t want him to think she was ignoring him or that her laughs and touches meant anything substantive. She was his and he was hers and Olivia was just hoping they could get through the night still in tact.

Duncan stood in conversation with his mother and a group of people, but he wasn’t listening in the slightest. He had to resist his urge to pace while he waited for Olivia to make her entrance. He had spent all of last night and all of this morning missing her and then when she had texted him his stomach had dropped. The line about her mother had lead Duncan to anticipate that she would be walking in with a man on her arm. A man that wasn’t him. The mental image had made his blood boil and he was already on his second vodka neat in preparation for the reality to be in front of him.

“Duncan, you seem so anxious. Have you overheard something detrimental?” He shook his head at his mother as he swallowed the sip of alcohol he had just taken.

“No. Just can’t wait to eat is all.” He snagged a deviled egg from a tray as it passed him as a way to emphasize his point.

“Well I am sure Clare will be arriving soon. This will be Olivia’s first big appearance at a state event. We’ll have to really read up on the media reports tomorrow, see how she can fit into our plan.” Thankfully, Annette was called over by another group and she missed the way Duncan’s face paled at the mention of his mother and uncle working her into their master plan. He had vowed to himself over and over that any capital he had within his family would be used to keep her out of their dealings.

It was when the murmur of the crowd fell to a hush then rose back up to its normal volume that he knew they had arrived. He politely pushed himself towards the front of the room where they had entered in the hopes of catching Olivia’s attention before she was whisked away for the rest of the night. Duncan saw her bare back first, his mouth running dry at the sight of her in that blue gown, her leg slightly exposed and the strapless bodice providing enough of her for him to feast on for eternity. She must have brushed something shimmering over her collarbones because he couldn’t take his eyes off the way they reflected the light. He took a step forward in order to intercept her when he noticed an arm snake around her waist. A hand press itself on the bare skin that resided between her shoulder blades. An arm that wasn’t his. A hand that wasn’t his.

He felt his grip on his glass of vodka tighten and he placed it on the nearest table in the fear he would squeeze so tight he’d break it. It didn’t matter who or what the offensive appendage belonged to but it shouldn’t be touching Olivia. Touching the bare skin of the woman he was in love with.

“Duncan! It’s so nice to see you!” His anger faded only slightly as she finally caught his eye in the crowd and made her way over to him, her shadow in tow and his hand not moving from the small of her back. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen you.” The sparkle in her eyes at the game she was enjoying playing almost made it more bearable.

“Too long,” he mused in response. She braced her hands on his shoulders in order to reach his cheeks to place a kiss, whispering a promise in his ear that they’d find time to be alone together later. “And who is this?” Duncan aimlessly gestured towards her date.

“Henry Macy. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Shepherd.” Duncan wasn’t ashamed to say that he made sure to present an extra tight grip when he shook his hand, Olivia watching him intently.

“Henry’s father is the most sought after caucus member in the Senate, isn’t he?” She was doing this for Duncan’s benefit, he was sure of it. Henry looked entirely uncomfortable having the reason for his attendance be broadcast in such a blatant manner but Olivia could not care less. Clearly her warning to Duncan had done nothing to stem the tide of rage that was flowing through him. Answering his questions in non-descript ways would have to suffice until after the event was over.

“I’m sure he receives quite the sought after attention then.” The three of them chuckled politely before an awkward silence set in.

“Shall I get you something to drink, Olivia?” She opened her mouth to respond but Duncan jumped in before she could get the words out.

“Cabernet, if memory serves me correctly.” She shot him a warning glance.

“It does. Thank you, Henry.” He awkwardly placed a kiss to her hand before heading in the direction of the bar. “Duncan, you must behave. You can’t be angry at me.”

“I could never be angry with you, Olivia,” he scoffed, “It’s that prick. He has his hands all over you and it makes me seethe.”

“Anytime you feel the anger becoming too remember that you’re the only man I love.” She took a step closer to him and whispered the next part. “That you’re the only man I’ve considered letting near my-”

“If you’re about to say what I think then please do not because that will do nothing to help me cope with that-” The offensive creature returned with her glass of wine before Duncan could finish his warning.

“Thank you,” Olivia replied warmly while taking a sip and keeping her stern gaze on Duncan over the rim of her glass. He was going to excuse himself to drinking something strong and straight by himself in the corner for the rest of night when her mother approached the trio.

“Duncan, it is so nice to see you. And to see you acquainting yourself with Olivia. I’m sure she’s introduced you to Mr. Macy.” Duncan put on his best political smile and shook her hand warmly.

“An honor to be here tonight, Madame President, and to be in your daughter’s presence.” It was. That bit of his act wasn’t fake.

“I was actually just coming over here to see if my daughter had offered you a personal tour of the floor, Henry. The usual groups don’t come down here but there is still a lot to see.” Olivia’s eyes widened in fear at the thought of her mother expecting her to go on a secluded walk around the White House by herself with this man she had just meant.

“She hadn’t but if you’re willing, Olivia, I’d love to go on one.” Clare didn’t miss the way the Shepherd boys nostrils flared nor did she miss the way his hand twitched as if he was stopping himself from reaching out to her daughter. Olivia looked at Duncan in a silent plea for help but there was nothing he could do without seeming impolite or exposing their secret. He wasn’t unaware of the rumors of the Underwoods using their youthful, graceful, beautiful daughter as leverage but Duncan didn’t think he’d have to see the look of terror in her eyes as it was being asked of her. Or that he would feel a blinding rage to protect her and make sure that any person who tried to have what was his would never be able to have anything again.

“Follow me.” She made sure her hand brushed against Duncan’s as she walked away from the party.

“Stay away from her.” Duncan looked at Clare in horror at her words.

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me, Duncan. You go near my daughter in any capacity other than for a brief exchange of pleasantries and I’ll bury you.” A biting remark about the extent of the pleasantries he and her daughter had exchanged sat on his tongue but he bit it and nodded once as she walked away from him. There was no question in his mind that the stern glare he had gotten from Olivia only moments before had been a hereditary gift from her mother.

“You know, I’ve heard about the gifts boys who come on these private tours with you get.” Olivia turned around from where she had been leading Henry down a hallway.

“Just nasty rumors. No fear,” she chuckled as she wrapped her arms around herself and continued meandering forward.

“It’s the only reason I agreed to come, Olivia, and I intend on cashing in.” He angled her towards the wall and took measured steps until her back hit against the concrete.

“Stop that. I’m not doing anything with you other than going for a walk.” She moved to get out from the bind he had her in when his hand shot out and tightened around her wrist.

“If your mother wants my father’s vote, then I need something in return.”

“Get your hands off of me,” she spoke through gritted teeth.

“Don’t fight me, Olivia. It’ll only make me go slower.” It was in that moment she realized he wasn’t going to heed her pleas. He was going to take what she wanted no matter what she said in order to stop him. When his head angled to kiss her neck she screamed and used her one free hand to push against his chest which only served him to stumble back a step or two. That was her chance to run back the way she came, her frightened tears obscuring her vision. She didn’t stop until she ran into a body, looking up to see familiar blue eyes.

Duncan looked down at her crying form, the hand shaped bruise around her wrist, and looked up to see Henry adjusting his jacket. It didn’t take him long to put it together.

“Duncan, please. Please just take me home.”

“I’ll only be a moment.” Olivia squeezed her eyes shut, afraid to turn around. “You put your fucking hands on her? Does terrifying a woman make your dick hard?” Duncan wound himself up with each step closer to Henry.

“I’m sure you know of the things people say about that little slut around here, Shepherd. About the things that mouth can do.” Duncan’s fist connected with his jaw with a satisfying snap, his body following him to the ground as he connected again. And again. And again.

It was then that Olivia rushed forward and and grabbed his arm from surging forward again. “Duncan. Duncan, stop! Please! Please, stop!” He grabbed Henry’s collar and pulled his bloodied face closer to his.

“You even look at her again and I’ll fucking kill you.” Duncan let his body drop back to the tiled floor before standing up and turning his attention to Olivia. “What hurts? Where’d he touch you?” He picked up her bruised wrist gently, replacing Henry’s touch with his own in an attempt to remove the imprint from her mind.

“Nowhere. I was running away when you were on your way down the hall.” He nodded.

“The look in your eyes before you left with him...It made me uneasy so came after you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

“I’ll have the car brought around. You head out. Let me make a call to get this taken care of and I’ll be right out.” She kissed him gently with a nod, sparing Henry one last glance before exiting the scene and entrusting Duncan to make it all go away.

That night as she lay next to him in bed she couldn’t help the ache in her chest that made her feel like she needed to let go of a secret she had been holding onto for so long. Or at least she thought it had been a secret.

“It happened once. Me exchanging a physical favor in exchange for political capital for my parents.” She turned her head to look at him, tears streaking down her cheeks in the moonlight. “It’s why I moved to Paris. I couldn’t deal with the dirty feeling. The shame.” Duncan pulled her against him soundlessly.

“You’re the strongest person I know, Olivia. You’re not less than because of it.” He wanted to cry with her. Her pain was his pain and it was washing over him as she trembled slightly against his chest.

“I felt I was unworthy of happiness and love because of it. You changed that, Duncan.”

“I’m never going to let a day go by where you feel that way again, ok? You can come to me with anything. We’re stronger together, right Livy?” He bumped his nose against hers. “I’d set the world on fire for you.” And she thinks in a way that he has already set her world on fire. They just had to make sure they didn’t get burned by the flames of their passion.

#duncan shepherd #cody fern #michael langdon

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pedrobrvs · 6 years

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Wreck-it Ralph 2 Analysis

With almost all the Disney princesses (that belong in the "Disney Princess" line) appearing in Disney's newest movie, many people went crazy, many more went "oh. that's neat i guess", but it caused some discussion. The changes done to all the characters to fit with the Wreck-it Ralph universe were disappointing to those who were looking forward to see a more faithful recreation (like me), and some people even brought up the argument of "Same face syndrome" again.

Since I absolutely adore Disney animation (It being the job of my dreams and all), I'm making this post in hopes of shining light on the resemblances and differences and arguing that maybe these adaptions are more respectful to the originals than people give them credit for.

For that I'm comparing most of them with the originals, for obvious reasons, and when applicable I'll also compare with the gaming franchise Kingdom Hearts, since rather than adapting the models to fit an uniform style, Square-Enix decided to recreate them as closely as they could. Head under the cut to see all of them!

SNOW WHITE (1937)

Before I explain the similarities, I want to point out something about the first 3 princesses. Snow White, Cinderella and to a lesser extent Aurora were all animated with heavy help of a method called rotoscoping (where you draw on top of live-action footage) and consequentially have more realistic proportions than almost every other princess. Sleeping Beauty would be one of the first movies where they'd start experimenting more their human characters, but it is still restrained.

Anyway. Snow White has chubby cheeks, very round eyes with softer corners and 3 larger eyelashes that are very characteristic of her. Her lower lip is large and round, and her eyebrows are simple curves. She has a button nose. She is animated as a comedic, exaggerated version of her original self, mainly symbolized by the way she holds her hands (pictured) and the little head shakes she does when singing.

CINDERELLA (1950)

Personally out of the 3 original princesses I find Cinderella to be the most different from the cartoon. Not just because, well, she has ears now but because I don't seem to get any cues of her original version from the animation. Then again the original Cinderella is animated with gentle, delicate slower movements movements while this one is making a shiv out of her shoe. However, she does keep some of the original design in the model itself. Her eyes are a bit round, with the upper eyelid being rounder than the lower, but the corners of her eyes are evident without causing the eye to look almond-shaped. I'd pull her outer corner a little bit more outwards or at least add an eyeliner but nobody is perfect. Her nose is slightly pointy but mostly round. I'm hoping that when we get to see more of her she'll demonstrate more of her slower, graceful nature. I don't mind that all those characters are more energetic and cartoony in this movie, but in Cinderella's case it seems to go against her very personality.

AURORA - SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

Aurora has a very diamond-shaped jaw, and while she appears to have a rounder one in this movie screencap, she demonstrates this diamond-shaped jaw whenever she's not facing straight forward. Her lower eyelid has a very prominent "corner" to it like the original, making it kinda look like she has two outer eye corners. Her nose is pointy and thin. Her inner eyebrows could go lower and be closer together but the general thickness is very close. Her mouth isn't as wide as the others and her smile is V-shaped. My gripe with her design is her hair, because IT SHOULD CURL THE OTHER WAY. Her body language captures a lot of the gracious, romantic behavior she exhibits while awake in the movie. It differs from Cinderella's posture because Cinderella behaves more in a motherly, warm and kind fashion while Aurora behaves more "professionally" and in a more reserved way.

ARIEL - THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Ariel is one of the closest to the original IMO, but she has subtle differences. Her eyes keep the same general curves, with the upper eyelids being more curved and bending more towards the inner face. However, in the new version they are less vertical. Her nose is small, pointy and turned a little bit upwards, her lips are thin and don't have a cupid's bow. She has big cheeks but they are not as round as Snow White's, and her forehead is more forward, giving her the curve seen in the 2D version. For her the biggest difference is the eyelashes, that are way less uniform and are way thinner in the 2D version. She still keeps the bright-eyed, curious expression, being very similar to Rapunzel in behavior.

In a side topic, I'm extremely glad to see her hair being done properly in 3D, by comparison with Kingdom Hearts 3. Her hair is a huge part of her animation and what made it impressive (as important to her body language as Rapunzel's hair is. Strange how much the two of them have in common) I was disappointed that in Kingdom Hearts 3 she kept the stiff hair she had in the first games even with the advance in technology. Her eyes are also closer in shape to the original than the Kingdom Hearts edition even if that one got the general face proportions right. KH is closer in proportion while Wreck-it Ralph is closer in specific shapes.

BELLE - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)

Belle is also one who I didn't see a lot of her original personality, though she was very gentle and gracious in the original as well, which contrasts with her more cartoony animation here.

She has a larger nose than most princesses and it's also one of the most round, and her lips, while they have a cupid's bow, are less defined.

Her eyes are more almond-shaped, having the outer corner being higher up than the lower. Her eyebrows are pretty close in shape, thickness and distance to the original (considering the change of art style).

One thing that could be done was to make her laugh lines more prominent in the 3D model, since they tend to appear when she's grinning in the original. Going back to Kingdom Hearts, i must say that Belle's appearance there is not very accurate. I think that something is off with her face in Kingdom Hearts 2, like her face looks squashed, longer and different from the original.

JASMINE - ALADDIN (1992)

Jasmine for me is one of the most accurate to the originals, with her almond shaped eyes, characteristic nose, sculpted lips and more oval shaped face. Her eyebrows also look slightly more accurate to the original than the KH counterpart, with the inner edge not being round (though they should be thicker). She shares a lot of the posture of the original, specially with the tendency of stopping with one leg in front of the other and bending her torso in a way that kinda highlights her butt (but you do you Jasmine)

POCAHONTAS (1995)

So, Pocahontas is one of the most unique-looking movies in the Disney canon, having the most realistic body proportions of Disney canon in decades.

Her movie is also characterized by having stronger edges and a more angular shape. That entire proportional yet angular look is mostly out of the window, but her face still has the most geometric features of them all.

A strong chin, a big triangular upper lip, a nose with up-turned nostrils that has a kind of v-shaped outline... Also even with the change of art style she has a slightly stronger build than the rest of the princesses.

In terms of animation she has that classic impossible hair, and keeps the dignified and mysterious attitude she has most of the time when she's not trying to see what's just around the riverbend.

MULAN (1998)

She is definitely really close to the original, though the proportions got shifted around for the art style.

Her round face, almond shaped eyes with a single eyelash going outwards in the corrner, and her very caracteristic lips are there (her lips are one thing they did more accurately than Kingdom Hearts as well). Though I think her nose should be slightly flatter to be closer to the Original and the Kingdom Hearts rendition.

I haven't seen enough of her facial animation to form an opinion on expressions, but she does enter the scene with that jump kick she does in the end of "Be a Man" so there's that.

TIANA - THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (2009)

Same case with Mulan, the biggest differences are just to accommodate for the art style. Her characteristic smile looks pretty great in 3D, dimples and all (though I think Coco did a better looking dimple for Miguel, those look a bit fake)

Since the movies are so close together, being technically released in the same "Disney era" with way more artist overlap than previously (as in, more people who worked in the two movies), the animators already have a lot of practice animating her so I expect that she'll be pretty accurate.

RAPUNZEL - TANGLED (2010)

Speaking of accuracy, we're finally on the realm of 3D disney princesses. I like this comparison that @constable-frozen made (I apologize for not asking first/Lo siento no haber pedido antes/Desculpa por não ter perguntado primeiro). It shows that even the 3D princess got changed to fit the movie so it's not the 3D that is to blame for this change and that it was very much intentional rather than just lack of skill from the artists. But back to the comparison, I find it amazing how apparent the improvement in technology is, with Rapunzel having more natural skin and more strands in her hair (as well as the hair also looking more natural). Like i mentioned before, Rapunzel's hair was ground-breaking for Disney, since they spent years perfecting the technology for it. 8 years later and it looks greater than ever. The whole lighting in the scene looks more natural as well, taking away the slight "PS3 game cutscene" feel the original gives me. Speaking of her hair, Kingdom Hearts 3 still didn't give us a look at her face, but the developers keep telling us of how much work they put into making her hair and turning it into a gameplay element as well. Seems fitting that a story about a girl with long hair would cause innovation in hair simulation for both animation and games.

MERIDA - BRAVE (2012)

Ok so this will definitely take some using to. In this pic specially she looks a bit like a baby. Though from other pics I think they at least nailed the facial expressions. Still, seeing her with those big bright eyes makes her almost look like Jessie from Toy Story, both having red hair and a very round face.

MOANA (2016)

To finish, here's Moana, from their last movie, to exemplify again that the change in art style is pretty much intentional. Larger eyes and eyebrows, smaller nose and mouth. Thin neck. Pretty much what happened to everyone else. Wreck-it Ralph stylized them to make them fit with each other and with the place they appear in. Otherwise they keep the basic shapes and ideas of the originals, only following the general style of the current artists. I hoped they'd keep the proportions and styles as close to the original as possible, but I won't pretend they didn't put any effort. All characters presented in those images belong to Walt Disney Animation Studio and Pixar Animation Studio.

PS: ANNA AND ELSA - FROZEN (2013)

I couldn’t get decent enough pictures for the both of them for me to make a comparison while I was writing. Might edit the post with the pic tomorrow.

In the original, their eyes are larger than most princesses and their noses are pointier. The two of them look really alike because they're sisters but there's differences:

Anna has chubbier cheeks and curved eyebrows while Elsa's eyes have a drooping lower eyelid common in smug/sexy characters, as well as L-shaped eyebrows.

The changes from the movie to the Wreck-it Ralph 2 version are essentially the same as Moana's (larger upper face, smaller lower face), plus an extra difference of them having bigger, more voluminous hairdos than what they had.

PS: PS: On the off chance Tumblr messes up the images, I posted this entire thing on Imgur

#Disney #wreck it ralph #princess #disney princess #analysis #comparison #animation #walt disney pictures #pixar #same face syndrome #not #kingdom hearts #KH

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lightblue-flower · 6 years

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Love Lies - Chapter 1

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A/N: I posted this a while ago on AO3 but wanted to keep it on here as well (since I...already posted the prologue here lol). Anyway, I’m glad that this story has gotten a positive reaction, so I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Pairing: FrUk, Minor Pairings (NedPort, SweFin, DenNor, lightly salted RoChu)

Also Read Here: AO3

“Always remember Arthur- it’s better to not say anything if you don’t have anything nice to say towards other artists. It’s best not to give the paparazzi what they crave for- they sell off of drama, and one day it’ll come back and bite you in the ass when all they’ll ask about is your fight with the other person. You don’t want to get into one so early in your career.”

Those were the wise words of Yao during their first session of Yao coaching Arthur on how to present himself to the public.

There really is no difference in the reaction around you when you explicitly say you don’t like someone or you diss someone, whether your famous or not.

When you’re not famous, and you say something about someone in public, there’s the chance of someone you know that is outside of the people you’re telling this to hearing it and it becoming gossip amongst your circle of acquaintances and friends.

Same for when you’re famous, except the outsider you know is the paparazzi and entertainment reporters. And the gossip is not only within the industry- it belongs to the entire world who gives a shit about these things.

And, from the multiple line up of tabloids and magazines one would find at the local supermarket, it’s clear that there’s a lot of people who do give a shit.

After Arthur’s interview with Eduard that one fateful night, the gossip and talks already spread to most news outlets the next afternoon- when Arthur woke up back in his hotel bedroom.

Yao and Mei were sitting in the small living room area, waiting for Arthur to wake up, with Mei’s laptop propped on the coffee table with the interview on full screen. Yao, who’s face was almost as red as the shirt he was wearing, gave Arthur a long, well deserved lecture one what he has done and the implications of what he said to his career.

It’s different when you’re a DJ- you should be in solidarity with others due to the simple fact that your beginnings were harder for wanting an unconventional dream within the music industry. Not just anyone makes it big, and there is a reason there are fewer mainstream DJs compared to singers.

Mei had her nose scrunched up slightly- something she does when she was also angry, but she wanted to hide it. After Yao’s scolding, Mei tried to be calm, and take a more gentler route.

“You’ll still get work, it’s just that now people will be pitting and comparing you and Jean against each other,” Mei said, tapping her slender fingers on her folded knee. Arthur, messed up from yesterday’s party, was laying back on the sofa, still trying to keep up with what Yao had just said. “And you’ll be getting more questions about him- something you always complained about.”

“And I don’t think you want to be known as that guy who starts fights,” Mei continued in the same tone, before Arthur cut her off with a groan.

“I didn't start a fight,” Arthur grumbled, covering his eyes with an arm, the light giving him a greater headache. “I just stated my opinion- it’s just an honest critique!”

“Yeah, well, your little ‘critique’ will get you into a fight,” Yao snapped, his brows furrowing deeper. He took a deep breath, as he gathered his loose long, chestnut hair and began to put it in a neat ponytail, saying in a cooler voice, “We all know this industry loves when people have a beef, and it would come to the point that people will only remember you because of the fights.”

“We’re not rappers- we’re not going to release diss tracks.”

“No, but people will eventually start being choosy with who they collaborate with. You’ll have artists that will only collaborate with you, and those who would choose Jean, giving you limited opportunities,” Mei replied in Yao’s place. “You might get the short end of the stick and end up with unpopular artists-”

“Look, I don’t care that much about who I collaborate with- as long as my work is original and sounds good, and isn’t some generic shit that the rich kids from Notting Hill are partying to.”

“That’s not the point,” Yao huffed, before shaking his head in defeat. “Aiyaa….Mei what can we do?”

“Do nothing- so I say shit about his music. So what? It’s not gonna end his or my career,” Arthur rolled his eyes, fixing the sofa cushion that was underneath his neck. “Now can you two please leave me alone? I don’t feel good and I have a headache and your voices are making it even worse…”

“This is why we tell you not to drink!” Yao exclaimed, immediately going into the kitchen, going to the cupboard to grab a pot. Arthur couldn’t help but feel happy when he saw the pot- he knew Yao was going to make him soup. Despite him not being overseen and sort of babied by Mei and Yao, he appreciates it greatly when they would make food for him. And at this moment, Yao’s infamous soup is all Arthur wants. “It’s like we’re taking care Siu Chun everytime we go on these trips with you…”

“Thanks Yao, you’re my favourite publicist,” Arthur said loud enough in a slurring and cracking voice, sounding like he was in the midst of dying. Which he partly was.

“I’m your only publicist,” he could hear Yao mumble back.

After that discussion (or moreso, a lecture), Arthur decided to turn to his phone to see what might have happened after that disastrous interview. Immediately, he saw Tino’s name on the screen, with a message accompanied with a bunch of worried face emojis.

Tino: Arthur! I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone with Matthias! Are you okay? Did you see Weekly Entertainment??

Arthur immediately replied back to let his friend know that he was okay, he safely made it to his hotel room (somehow), and that he was going to check the interview right away.

Arthur didn’t look too bad in the video, but he could tell that he was far away from sober and sane during the interview with the swaying and the dazed look on his face. And honestly, he didn't say anything really bad- he just called Jean’s music generic, he didn’t even say that his music was shitty.

But, after he read the comments on the video, he started to feel bad, and Mei’s opinion started to sink in properly- he really doesn’t want his life to revolve around Jean.

And so the young Brit took to Twitter at the advice of Yao, ready to formerly write an explanation saying how he still respected Jean as a producer (even though it’s a lie, but nobody needs to know that), when he saw the issue trending on the homepage. Clicking it, one tweet popped up immediately, and caught Arthur’s attention- the one with little blue check and the accent egu in the username.

And it read simply:

The king is whining like a little prince. Sore loser much?

@JÉpine

Out went the civility and out went any way of saving a professional relationship. Arthur in turn lightly insulted him, but the light insults soon turned into them calling each other intentional insults through subtweeting. Notable insults include being a “weak motherfucker who wouldn’t dare fight Arthur because he might break a fingernail” and a “a whiny pussy who’s jealous that their music isn’t as good as they thought it was”.

Jean Epine’s true colours did show to the world during that Twitter dispute. So did Arthur’s.

What really took Mei by surprise, however, was that neither of their reputation was tarnished. Rather, people were still lining up to book Arthur for their festivals and his album sale actually increased suddenly. There were still plenty of fans backing both of them, and the biggest thing was, their dislike for one another just added on to their popularity.

This was the turning point in both of these young men music careers-their rivalry has been sealed for the public to enjoy.

And all of these events lead up to the present, years later.

***

“Just want to feel

A bit alive for a moment...”

Arthur glanced down to the array of slides and buttons, pushing and twisting them when appropriate, as João’s familiar voice sung the lyrics to the song from a playback recording. He could hear the crowd of people that surrounded the huge stage singing along, most bouncing up and down in a dance.

Lights flashed around from the stage where he was standing, and lit up the darkness that had started to consume the open arena.

He was happy to do a set again at Tomorrowland, one of the most popular music festivals in the world, even though at this point in his life. Boom, Belgium had always been one of his favourite places to go, and there was always had a vivid and excited crowd.

"Thank you, Belgium!” Arthur yelled into the microphone he had, and the crowd continued to scream and cheer, as he walked off to the side, feeling the adrenaline pulsing through his body starting to slow down.

He passed by the buzzing stage crew, who were scrambling to usher Arthur away from the stage and trying to find their next act.

“Good job, King! That was great,” one of the performers called to him and he smiled and thanked them, before joining most of the performers that stood idly behind a curtain, hanging out.

He was in a good mood as he talked to the others, and wanted to stay, but he got a message from Mei saying that she was at the back of the arena to pick him up. Arthur intentionally wanted to hang back to watch Matthias, Tino, and Berwald’s performance, but decided against it- it was already late, and he was starting to feel slightly tired.

Arthur got up from the chairs and started to walk out when he suddenly, he spotted a man walking towards his direction, to the waiting area. His smile faltered, and his eyebrows drew in slightly, as he kept his walk at a consistent pace. The man noticed Arthur as well, and a smile grew on his face.

“Jean.”

“Petit Prince,” Francis replied with his thick French accent, taking off the dark sunglasses that covered his eyes.

What kind of douche wears sunglasses at night? Arthur thought, though it did suit his face.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Arthur replied evenly, not wanting to show that that nickname that Jean gave to him bother him. “How was rehab? Are you still getting over your heroin addiction?”

Jean scoffed. “I have standards when it comes to drugs- heroin would ruin my perfectly beautiful arms.”

“There are different ways to take heroin,” Arthur rolled his eyes at Jean’s self compliment, while Jean smiled smugly.

“Yes, you seem to know a lot about it. Nice shirt by the way. Where did you get it from- Tesco?”

“You’re lacking in the creative insult department- you better step up your game,” Arthur replied. “Then again, what can I expect from a man who lacks creativity?”

Jean clicked his tongue, and looked ready to talk back when suddenly, Matthias came out of nowhere between them.

“Jean! ‘Sup!!” Matthias suddenly interrupted their bickering, grinning wildly as he hung off of Arthur’s shoulders. The rest of Arthur’s friends have actually maintained a good relationship with Jean, despite Arthur’s personal feud with him. It was often that they would even invite him to the parties they would host, though, in those situations, Arthur learns to tolerate the Frenchman. “You’re on next right? Good luck with your set! Me and the guys can’t stick around too long to watch- but we can catch up next time at the DJ Awards, alright?”

“Thank you. I can’t wait to see you guys in Amsterdam!” Jean smiled, as Matthias was called over further away by Tinos.

Arthur was about to leave as well, not wanting to give the Frenchman the respect to say farewell, but Jean spoke up.

“Goodluck, petit prince,” Jean said in a more soothing tone. He then said in a much slyer voice, “You’ll need it.”

"Suck my dick, frog,” Arthur grumbled, his hands clenched into fists, marching away as Jean entered the stage. Arthur frowned when he heard the eruption of screams from the crowd, and quickly went further backstage to meet up with Mei, who was waiting in a limousine to take him to his hotel.

It’s been about 8 years since that one fateful night. 8 years of Jean and Arthur going back and forth like this. And was Arthur tired of it?

Hell no. If anything, his burning passion to be the best - or, at least, better than Jean- burned just as brightly as it has since their first conversation.

Each year was an opportunity for him to one up Jean and maintain his rightful place as the top DJ. And each year, well- it alternated.

See, after that year where Jean Épine took first place at the DJ Top 100 Awards, Arthur continued to create music, as did Jean. The next year, Arthur managed to beat Jean by getting first place, whereas the Frenchman got 2nd. It was one, if not, the single best thing that happened to Arthur at that point. The EDM scene went crazy over it- KING, who some tabloids made it seem like he was all talk and no bite, managed to beat Jean Épine.

But that sense of achievement only lasted for a year. Because the year after Arthur’s incredible win, Jean Épine once again reclaimed his spot, with Arthur coming close behind.

And thus, their rivalry, specifically in music,become more and more intense, with subtle jabs here and there when reporters would ask them about each other. Arthur maintains that Jean Épine has no actual substance to his music, whereas Jean flaunts that Arthur may just be jealous, because his music also lacks a particular motif- love. Sometimes they do manage to make civil conversation if the situation calls for it, though it would still be sprinkled in insults, and if they were unlucky (as they are) it dissolves into an argument.

They didn’t necessarily win first place each year, sometimes a different DJ that was not involved in the same areas as either of them would take that spot. However, they did manage to get a higher spot than the other.

So far, Arthur has won first place 3 times, with Jean placing first twice. Arthur, obviously, is winning in this little game they found themselves in.

This year, if Jean managed to get first place, they would be tied. Something Arthur would like to avoid, in order to further crush Jean’s ego.

“Hey Artie, did you have fun?” Mei said in a motherly tone, a way of teasing his as Arthur slipped to the seat across of her. Arthur, however, was not in the mood for banter.

“I’m tired,” Arthur replied, as he leaned over to look out the window. “I can’t wait to go home.”

“I thought you liked coming here?”

“It was nice until…” He didn’t finish his sentence, knowing that it was the pettiest reason to want to leave a place.

“Jean?” Arthur’s eyes narrowed.

“You two are too old to keep this fight,” Mei continued, as she fidgeted with her phone.

“I’m not that old,” Arthur grumbled, now feeling a bit grumpy thanks to Mei.

“30? In the DJ world, I’d say it is,” Mei asked, though it was more so rhetorical. “Some tend to retire before that age and go into something else.”

“Those ones can’t handle the scene. And there are DJs that still play after they reach 40.”

“Yeah, but most go back to being more underground or they go to a genre that isn’t house,” Mei replied, finally taking her eyes off the screen, and looked directly at Arthur with a frown. “Which is what both you and Jean have been doing.”

“The day I retire is the day he dies,” Arthur muttered, returning his gaze back outside. “Can you play the radio?”

Mei did as she was told, flipping the channels around before landing on one playing popular music. There was this one song that started playing, a newer release that Arthur has heard once or twice before. What was it again...

“Did you hear about this guy?” Mei asked suddenly.

“What?” Arthur replied, not understanding what she meant.

“Lars Jansen,” Mei replied. “The guy who produced this song. He’s a DJ too.”

“Okay, and?” Arthur still didn’t understand why she thought he was relevant.

“He’s 19,” Mei shrugged. “What do you think of this song?”

Arthur listened to it for a moment, frowning slightly. “Reminds me a bit of Jean Épine’s songs...He’s 19?”

“I heard this from Eduard,” Mei continued. “He’s a rising producer this year. Kid’s from Amsterdam.”

“Why does it matter? He’s just a new kid- he might get written off in a few years.”

Mei raised an eyebrow, and Arthur read her thoughts. “You think this kid is going to knock me off the map?”

“Lukas even started to rebrand himself and his sound slightly, and Matthias and them continue to make music, but they no longer rank in the top 10. You might get a lower ranking this year,” Mei replied, in a more softer tone. “I’m just saying- there’s going to be newer DJs rising up. You two should stop wasting energy fighting like this. It’s like your rivalry is the only thing that’s keeping you in the public eye. If you want to keep it mainstream, you’re going to have to change up your music to be like Jean-”

“I’m not doing that,” Arthur cut her off in a louder voice. “And I don’t care about the popularity! I just want to beat his arrogant ass.”

“You say that,” Mei sighed. “But trust me, when you stop being as famous as you are now, you’re going to have a hard time adjusting.”

“Like that'll ever happen,” Arthur mumbled, allowing himself to sink into the leather seats, watching the building pass by.

Maybe Arthur should consider this option of rebranding himself. He wasn’t going to be any younger, and the older he got, although he maintains a famous, close to veteran status, the time where his music might fall out of popular demands is likely. Sounds are changing with the times, and now Arthur should try to stray away from his roots and go towards the sound that is well received nowadays.

Giving up his branding is rough, moreso for personal reasons. He is known for that punk mixed with electro sound and image- it symbolised his own emergence from a punk band to electronic music, by taking the best of both sounds and blending it beautifully. His lyrics had a tinge of angst and anger found in punk, meant to make the audience be in tune with their harshest emotions- he wasn’t into this chilling and relaxing, ‘oh please be with me in my bed, I miss you boo hoo’ shit.

Maybe it was time to rebrand.

Maybe.

***

They need to really stop paparazzi from getting in here , Arthur thought as he walked behind the rails leading into the backstage of the arena, smiling as the flashes of the cameras nearly blinded him.

It was now October and Arthur was currently in Amsterdam, which can only mean one thing: tonight was the awaited DJ Top 100 Awards.

The year had gone extremely well for him- with his newest album peaking the charts for a good few weeks, with the songs still playing on the radio till that month.

Arthur was expected to score quite high on the list- even hitting number one- however, ironically once again, so did Jean Épine. It was a close call really- a lot of people wasn’t sure who would win, but it was guaranteed either of them will get the number one spot.

I’m going to beat him, Arthur thought as he walked down the carpet, entering through the set of doors backstage to where the performers were hiding away.

As Matthew and Tino chattered with interviewers that stopped them inside, the Brit noticed long blond hair flowing from the corner of his eyes as they entered through the door. He could hear some people screaming outside the person’s name, and Arthur tried not to let his smile turn into a frown.

“Jean Épine!” One of the interviewers called as he politely smiled and talked to them. Arthur knew he was staring for far too long, and started to shuffle away, when he saw a familiar face almost intervening his step.

“King! How about a pre-show interview?”

“What happened to saying ‘hello’?” Arthur asked Eduard with a smile.

“Nah, we’re tight, we don’t need to say that,” Eduard replied with a sly smile, a microphone in hand, and his usual cameramen standing nearby. “Shall we start?”

“Alright, as long as you don’t interview me at the after party,” Arthur said, as Eduard laughed, and they started the interview. The usual questions as usual, until Eduard asked this question, which Arthur didn’t know how to answer.

“So, this year we have a newcomer that a lot of people say might actually beat you two,” Eduard started, and there was a subtle intent in his voice. “Lars Jansen. Now, he has said previously that he was a fan of your work while he was trying to figure out his own sound, but he also says that Jean Épine was also a source of inspiration. Do you think that, considering how different your sounds are, Lars Jansen would be a worthy adversary ?”

This kid again? Arthur casually thought after he gave some motivational answer along the lines of “Of course, I’ve heard his music and he does stand a chance!” as he caught up with Matthias, as they start to go into the auditorium again.

For some godforsaken reason, Arthur was seated right next to Jean Épine in the audience. He had specifically requested to sit in between Lukas and Tino, though they must have ignored it in favour for this seating, letting his other side open for Matthias.

There must be cameras on us, Arthur figured, scanning and noticed a camera perched so that it could nicely capture their section.

“Looks like we’re sitting together, prince,” Francis said from his seat as Arthur started to sit down beside him. He leaned closer, and Arthur could smell his cologne, which was mixed with the smell of tobacco. It wasn’t a bad smell- Arthur just didn’t like that he liked how Jean smelled. “I didn’t know you wanted to sit next to me all this time.”

“I don’t want to,” Arthur snapped. “Why would I want to sit with a pervert like you?”

“You always call me a pervert, but I don’t understand why,” Jean sighed. “I just love love. Why can’t we just be friends and get along, cher?”

“I’m not one of your little fuckbuddies, Jean,” Arthur replied, finally making eye contact with him. He could see the amusement in Jean’s attractive blue eyes, which made him slightly more agitated. “And I’d rather get hit by a car than be your friend.”

“That’s extreme,” Jean smirked, still leaning too close than necessary to Arthur. The lights on the stage started to flash slightly- a sign for the attendants to take their seats. “Looks like they’re going to start. I can’t wait to beat you.”

“They say that I have a good chance of getting top of the list,” Arthur sighed, pretending to be calm and not caring that much. Slight boredom crept as Matthias left Arthur’s side to bug Lukas when he thought. If he was going to sit beside Jean motherfucking Épine, he might as well talk to him. It can help him recharge without losing his egde.

“Hey, did they ask you about Lars Jansen?” Arthur suddenly asked, thinking back to the interview question he got from Eduard.

“Yeah, they asked about whether I was worried he’d beat me,” Jean replied, a perfect eyebrow raised. “Though, I said I only care about our little competition.”

“It won’t be a competition if I win tonight,” Arthur scoffed, as the hosts for the event appeared to on the stage, and the event started.

The night progressed and finally, it was time to announce the top 10 DJs of the year. The familiar screens lit up and the lights started to dim slightly.

“Number 3...KING.”

“Number 2...Jean Épine.”

“Wait...that means,” Arthur mumbled wide eyed, completely taken by surprise at his ranking for two reasons. The first, which wasn’t too devastating, is that Jean Épine beat him this year. Which isn’t too bad- they were technically tied in this case. The second, which was much more of a big deal, was the fact that neither him or Jean snagged first place.

He glanced over to Jean, who had a mixture of content, but mild confusion, on his face. Mei guaranteed that spot would be either of theirs...so why did they place second and third?

“Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s number one DJ is…” the host opened the envelope once again. A pause, and the leaned into the mic.

“ Lars Jansen! ”

Arthur didn’t know what to do. And neither did Jean Épine, actually. Neither of them really cheered, instead opting to simply clap to be polite.

Now this took them by surprise.

They watched as a tall man walk down the catwalk, wearing stylish clothings as you would expect Jean to wear, with his gelled up blond hair kept up like Matthias to reveal an incredibly handsome, yet stoic, face. It was hard to believe the this person was still considered a teenager- he wasn’t awkward looking and well built, and he didn’t have a single mark or pimple on his white skin.

He spoke into the mic to say thank you to everyone, and Arthur was taken aback by how deep his voice was, which carried a Dutch accent that added a control to his voice.

Arthur didn’t know what to say to this spectacle that he was witnessing. Neither could Jean, evidently, because throughout the post op and the drive down to a fellow DJ’s mansion that was located in the city, they both didn’t talk or argue (to everyone in the limo’s relief) as much as they would.

They weren’t the only ones surprised- most of the people who greeted them at the party (all around his age and were considered to be nearing veteran stardom as well) made a comment about how a young boy like Lars Jansen beat both of them.

Arthur and Jean were currently sitting on the bar stools at the island in the kitchen, across of Tino and Lukas who sat opposite to them. Pre downloaded songs shuffled through the background, and everyone around them were either guzzling down beers, snorting lines on any surface, skinny dipping in the swimming pool outside, or doing a combination of all three. Arthur decided to not deep dive into the scene right away- everytime he does, he gets wasted too early and gets into some shit- and waited as Berwald tries to find some decent beer.

Lukas was mindful not to bring up Lars at all during their conversation, and it was starting to be a complaining circle of how little sleep they receive, when Matthias stumbled towards them, cackling at his phone.

“Bros, you two are definitely not gonna like this,” Matthias laughed as he nudged his phone towards Arthur, as Jean leaned over his shoulder to peer at the screen. It was originally a live post show interview that occurred inside of the arena, and lo and behold, it was by everyone’s favourite reporter.

“What do you think about placing above both KING and Jean Épine whom you've always looked up to? The world is amazed that someone as young as you was able to dethrone two of very popular veterans, and a lot were surprised at that feat. Do you, yourself, find it surprising that you beat them?”

Lars, with his piercing dark blue eyes, held eye contact with Eduard, and Arthur could tell there was a cocky smirk playing on his lips. “I really respect both of them and I’m happy that I won, but I’m no surprised that I beat them. At this point, their music and sound doesn’t resonate with the EDM crowd as it once did, and, you know, times are changing and people are liking different things. As they say, out with the old and in with the new, and right now their old sound isn’t as popular as it once was. It’s mostly popular with people who are their age- old people, maybe- but not for the new generation of EDM listeners.”

Arthur heard Jean audibly gasp (but only when he implied to be old), and he himself was at a lost at words at how direct Lars’ answer was. What happened to respecting your elders?

“Kid’s got guts to say that,” Lukas noted as he took a sip from his beer. Berwald slid two bottles towards Arthur and Jean as he sat on the stool beside Tino, nodding along.

“A lot of the newer DJs are starting to get feisty with each other,” Tino replied, taking a nacho from the platter. “You know, it’s not like how it used to be- everyone used to keep it behind the scenes.”

“These two really helped start the whole public beef thing in the EDM scene,” Matthias shrugged towards Arthur and Jean, and Arthur threw a look of annoyance. “You two would cuss each other out publicly, and would’ve threw hands if Jean wasn’t so civil.”

Arthur just made a slight grunt and starting to down the drink. Jean made a hum in agreement, while taking a quick sip.

“Now you guys can join the underground squad,” Matthias continued, reaching out for another bottle. He took his bottle opener keychain and popped it open, the white foam spilling over the tip down the neck. “Just like the rest of us here.”

“What do you mean?” Jean spoke up.

“C’mon Jean, you know what I mean,” Matthew laughed, his smile a bit wicked. “You guys won’t be invited to so many popular events, and if you do, you won’t be headlining compared to the popular ones. Less paparazzi hounding you down, which is nice, but less attention means less fans and smaller concerts. Partying will be the same, but don’t expect the famous bitches to be there- they’d rather be with someone relevant. It’ll be just like the good old times before you made it mainstream-”

“You’ll be one of those people that are known,” Lukas said, lifting Matthias bottle so that it was in his mouth, to shut him up. “And now you’re rich, but you’re just not relevant. You’ll be considered old school.”

“If the drugs and alcohol won’t force you to retire, this will,” Tino said cynically, though he had his usual upbeat voice. “Most people do it and go back to playing sets at the club sometimes.”

“You’ll definitely miss the rush of being famous,” Matthias mumbled, and if the gloominess of the conversation hasn’t fallen on them yet, it has now. The Aftermath had fell off from the public eye, and while Lukas has a grip on the fame, it was only a matter of time before he would have to start to go underground.

They were all older though, nearing their late 30s. Jean and Arthur were still in their early 30s, with Arthur turning 30 that April. He was quite young to be written off from the media as out of touch with the younger crowd, yet, he did break out into the mainstream early on in his life. It’s been more than a decade since he has- was he really ready to let go of being relevant.

The idea of ending up like Matthias was unpleasant. Arthur wasn’t sure how to word it exactly, but he knows he hasn’t seen them at all during the big events yearly events DJs would be invited to, and their not as hyped up in popular media as they once were, much less in the EDM scene. There were just a distant memory, a name dropped here and there on radios during their ‘Throwback Thursday’ days.

Nowadays, due to not being as busy as they once were, Arthur noticed that Matthias had started to find other ways to feel high and satisfied with his life - mostly through drugs and alcohol- much more than he did before, but he couldn’t really judge him. After all, Arthur isn’t exactly clean himself.

“Pass me another one,” Jean demanded in a louder tone, his eyebrows pulled in, as if he was having the same internal talk with himself as Arthur.

“Same,” Arthur said immediately and Berwald didn’t hesitate to silently stand up and grab them their drinks.

“Don’t look so gloomy guys!” Tino said, his voice chipper. “This is a party! Let’s have some fun and do some shots!”

“Fuck yeah! Who wants some fucking tequila?!” Matthias suddenly exclaimed, standing up, and started to chant drunkenly ‘Tequila! Tequila! Tequila!”

“Let’s not dwell on this any long, mon prince,” Jean sighed whimsically, putting an arm on Arthur’s backrest, brushing against his back amicably. Maybe it was the warm buzzing feeling Arthur had started to feel after his first drink, but for once, Arthur didn’t feel the need to tell Jean off. If anything, he leaned back deeper into the arm, and a flicker of appreciation lit in him. “Let us drink the night away.”

“What else can we do,” Arthur replied as whimsically as Jean had, and downed the rest of his beer, as Matthias lined the glass shots in front of them.

#fruk #aph fruk #fruk fanfiction #fruk dj au #aph france #aph england #nedport #aph hetalia #hetalia #hetalia fanfiction

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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50 Best Fighting Game Final Bosses from Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and More

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When it isn’t about rage-quitting against your best buddy sitting next to you on the couch, or some guy playing against you across the country, fighting games are all about beating the arcade mode. Doing so means defeating the pesky final boss.

We’ve fought so many final bosses over the last 30+ years. Whether they’re godly megalomaniacs or bloodthirsty loners out to prove they’re the best, there are pleny of cheap-ass villains standing in the way of character-specific epilogue cutscenes.

So I’ve decided to rank the 50 best final bosses in fighting game history. This ranking includes both default final bosses and special secret bosses, but they have to be the last guy you fight. That means characters like Goro, Cervantes, Apocalypse, Vega, and Antonov don’t count. I’m also not counting games like Street Fighter Alpha and Vampire Savior where there’s no real set boss and different people have different final opponents, which is why Jedah isn’t on the list.

Now let’s face it straight!

50. JINPACHI MISHIMA

Tekken 5

I think this is the moment when Tekken’s story started going off the rails. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the lore of the series, but after doing a game about Heihachi vs. Kazuya vs. Jin, they decided to go further and bring in Heihachi’s dad. And he’s possessed by a demon because why the hell not.

But really, the reason he’s possessed is because otherwise he’s the one member of the bloodline who isn’t a jerk. That doesn’t make for a good boss design. In Tekken 5, he takes over the Mishima Zaibatsu and sets up a new King of the Iron Fist tournament ASAP just so somebody strong might be able to kill him before he completely loses control and wipes out all life on the planet. His ending cutscene even has him cry blood over this because he’s that hardcore.

The tragedy is that, in the end, he was killed by his great-grandson Jin, but Jin came out of it learning the wrong lesson. Jin, suffering from his own possession problems, went and took over the Mishima Zaibatsu and started a world war as part of an elaborate plan to commit suicide by putting a giant target on his back. It took two more games for him to finally get his head on straight.

49. SILBER

Buriki One

SNK shamelessly ripped off Akuma, but at least the studio did it with style. Coming from the lesser-known fighter Buriki One, Silber is a Victor Creed-looking urban legend who is obsessed with increasing his power and challenging worthy opponents. At the end of the game’s big MMA tournament, when the player is ready to face his fellow finalist, your opponents’s busted carcass is instead knocked through the entranceway like a punted football. The mysterious Silber takes their spot.

Win or lose, Silber’s response is to just quietly jump off and exit the arena. The endings are mainly about the winners being asked by the press what the hell that was even about. And if you unlock Silber and beat the game with him, he just leaves the press hanging by jumping off into the distance.

Silber also appeared as a hidden mid-boss in King of Fighters XI, but his fighting style lacks anything really bombastic. No fireballs or energy explosions or anything like that. Just brutal karate with his flashiest move being a flipping legdrop.

I do really get a kick out of how one of his King of Fighters intros has him throw a non-descript martial artist to the ground before jumping into the fight, like it’s his regular thing to kick some schmuck’s ass and take their spot in a tournament.

48. SHANG TSUNG

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat’s attract mode sold the game by going, “Yo, check out this huge claymation beast with his four arms and topknot! He will break you in half if you even blink!” But this unstoppable monster was actually second to some floating geezer. Surely, that at least had to mean that Shang Tsung was a special kind of threat in his own way.

Indeed he was. A shape-shifter was a fantastic gimmick for a final boss, especially since it jibed with his tendency to eat souls. Even though he was turning into other playable characters, the insinuation was that you were more or less fighting all the dead warriors from the years that he had absorbed into his being. Then Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa played the HELL out of him in the movie and his legendary status was solidified.

While lesser on the totem pole in later games, Shang Tsung regaining his youth made for a good trade. It’s just too bad that once games were on discs and had loading times, Shang’s tendency to morph mid-match took a powder. As one of the final bosses in Deadly Alliance, it just didn’t feel the same. He was just some guy.

47. SOUL EDGE/INFERNO

The Soul Series

As far as I’m concerned, the Inferno concept peaked in the first game. Cervantes was an evil dude, but he was still just a pawn. As shown at the end of that fantastic CGI intro that still holds up to this day, the swords were really running the show. So after taking down Cervantes, the swords came to life to fight you as a more powerful version of Cervantes with a flaming skull head.

The development of Siegfried wielding the Soul Edge and being transformed into Nightmare was a wonderful twist and selling point for the sequel’s storyline, but it made Inferno look a little redundant. The flame body was neat, but he was just Nightmare with a weaker design. Inferno never really had a personality of its own. Then Bandai Namco started having Inferno adopt random movesets, but there are like a dozen characters like that in SoulCalibur.

The concept of Inferno did translate well in SoulCalibur V where they showed that the Soul Calibur sword has its own counterpart in Elysium. It appeared in the form of a scantily-clad Sophitia in order to manipulate Sophitia’s son, Patroklos. Man, Inferno may be evil personified, but at least it didn’t try to seduce Siegfried by turning into his dad in a speedo.

46. MISS X

SNK Gal Fighters

The Neo Geo Pocket Color game SNK Gal Fighters features an all-female roster in a comedic story about a mysterious Miss X putting together a Queen of Fighters tournament, with some kind of wish-granting talisman up for grabs. When you reach the end of the game, you discover that Miss X looks an awful lot like Iori Yagami wearing a mask and a dress. While many of her opponents aren’t fooled, nobody outright says Iori’s name, and Miss X insists she isn’t who they think.

But also, please don’t tell Kyo about this.

Of course, she still fights exactly like Iori Yagami and is flanked by Iori’s former King of Fighters partners Vice, Mature, Billy Kane, and Eiji Kisaragi. Miss X is REALLY committed to the act, but it’s never really explained why she’s created this whole disguise.

Miss X made a few more appearances too, including when Dimitri performs his Midnight Bliss attack on Iori in SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos and as a DLC character in SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy.

45. SAGAT

Street Fighter

As the boss of the first Street Fighter game – which nobody really cares about – Sagat being on this list is more of a courtesy. While a difficult opponent, Sagat’s position as a final boss isn’t really that memorable. If anything, he’s defined by his defeat here. It’s why he has that cool scar on his chest, why he suddenly has a Dragon Punch knockoff in the sequel, and it’s the crux for his redemption story and frenemy relationship with Ryu.

Sagat’s spot as the original Street Fighter boss actually helps build up M. Bison and Shadaloo in general. He returns in Street Fighter II, scarred both physically and mentally, while physically stronger and more driven. Yet he is still only the penultimate boss, showing that this time he’s outranked by a big-chinned dictator.

44. ZEUS

World Heroes 2 Jet

World Heroes 2 Jet doesn’t have any character-specific endings. Instead, the endings are based around Zeus, a jacked behemoth who watches your penultimate victory from a balcony, acts jazzed about finding a worthy opponent, then makes the grandest of entrances by flexing off his suit (revealing body armor underneath), walking down some stairs, and kicking the doors off the entranceway.

A regular old pain in the ass, Zeus’ reaction to his defeat is decided by how much health the player has left. If it’s a close match, he’ll berate you until realizing that it was a fun fight. If the player has half a life bar left, he’ll threaten to kill them the next time they meet. If the player has almost all of their health, Zeus will mope as his henchman Jack tries to cheer him up. He insults the player, then cartoonishly cheeses it across the image of a map.

What makes this so golden is the iffy English translations. Here are some of Zeus’ lines from his endings:

“Why you, you, YOU… YOU CRAZY FUNSTER! To think that you were this strong!”

“YOU FILTH, YOU SLIME, YOU LAWYER! To think you had such power… But, heh, heh, heh…it was a crazy, hip time!”

“Hey, you. Still can’t walk and chew bubblegum at the same time? Oh, nooooooo!”

Classic.

43. DARK KAHN

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe felt like a joke someone made about Marvel vs. Capcom that someone else took as a serious suggestion. Quality of the game aside, the two worlds meshed well together, which is why we’ve seen the two parties meet up again a few more times. Mortal Kombat and DC, for the most part, didn’t so much match up as they complemented each other.

One pairing in particular matched up perfectly. Darkseid and Shao Kahn were both evil overlords, two peas in a pod. Rather than fight each other or team up, they did one better: they merged.

Dark Kahn isn’t exactly better than the individual characters but this modern Amalgam design still kicks ass. Darkseid’s stony flesh mixed with Shao Kahn’s skull face to create a lava beast who lives to blow up the multiverse.

Dark Kahn IS…OUTSTANDING.

42. MISTER KARATE

Art of Fighting

Just because someone is designed as comic relief doesn’t mean they can’t have their moments of serious competence. See also: Deadpool, Mankind.

Mr. Karate started as the original Akuma type. In Art of Fighting, Mr. Karate was a mysterious mob enforcer who happened to look and fight just like protagonist Ryo Sakazaki, but with a different head and more damaging attacks. In another light, Mr. Karate’s tengu mask could be seen as silly, but considering how brutal he was, it was easy to see it as a threatening symbol of martial arts dominance.

After that game, where it was established that Mr. Karate was Ryo’s father, Takuma Sakazaki, who’d forced to work for the mob, he became a secondary character. He showed up in King of Fighters regularly as just Takuma, but became something of a joke. When he appeared in the Mr. Karate mask, he acted like a total goof and everyone rolled their eyes at his lack of self-awareness. But comedic or not, there were still moments here and there that made him look tougher than the rest of his family combined.

But it was SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos that revitalized him. Depicted as Akuma’s SNK counterpart, Mr. Karate was given both a silly base version and his “serious” boss alter-ego, who reminded the world of what kind of force he was in his Art of Fighting days. Right on.

41. ASMODEUS

Mace: The Dark Age

The Nintendo 64 was lousy when it came to compiling a fighting game library, so we had to do the best with what we had. Mixed in the shallow pile was Mace: The Dark Age, which was like if the guys who made Mortal Kombat were tasked with making a SoulCalibur game. The basic story was roughly the same: an insidious, medieval weapon of ultimate power falls into the hands of evil and everyone wants a piece. The difference was that while the Soul Edge brought demonic chaos in its wake, with its wielders just wandering around destroying stuff, the Mace of Tanis brought demonic order, as its wielder used it to rule Eurasia and its corrupt council.

This created a conflict where everyone wanted a shot at holding the Mace. Not just the heroes, but also conniving members of the Council of Seven because they’re evil and power hungry. And wielding the Mace of Tanis? None other than Asmodeus. His name popped up in exposition dumps but he didn’t even have a pre-fight profile image. You didn’t get to see him until you actually faced him in the final battle and, all in all, he met the hype.

For all of the limitations of the Nintendo 64’s graphics, Asmodeus looked amazing. He appeared as a gigantic, reptilian demon so big that only his upper half was peaking out of a portal. His offense wasn’t much to talk about, as it was mostly just swiping attacks and pounding at his prey, but damn if he didn’t look like how a final boss should look.

40. MUKAI

King of Fighters 2003

The 10th and 11th King of Fighters games released in the final days of the franchise’s classic art style, and included some great designs, like Oswald. But while the bosses in these games looked and moved exceptionally, they were mostly really lame otherwise.

Mukai from King of Fighters 2003 provided a great balance, though. He didn’t have much going on besides being the harbinger for lesser villains, but he looked totally sweet and his stone-based motif led to a fun boss fight that wasn’t too hard to figure out. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for the glowing lava design usually reserved for rock creatures, but making that classic design monochrome feels fresh and absolutely badass.

Too bad he died like a punk in a random cutscene several games later.

39. KULL THE DESPOILER

Way of the Warrior

It’s disappointing to me when a ridiculous and/or stupid fighting game doesn’t have that final boss that just pushes it further into hilarity. I’d love to discuss ClayFighter here, but it’s not like N. Boss or Dr. Kiln were anything to write home about. Tattoo Assassins is a total trip, but there’s not much to say about its big bad Koldan. Death from Time Killers is just lame and ugly to look at.

Way of the Warrior is an extreme piece of garbage and sweet Jesus does that translate to its final boss, Kull the Despoiler.

This 3DO classic is one of several Mortal Kombat knockoffs that tried to cash in on digitized graphics and bloody violence. Other features included a White Zombie soundtrack, hideous backgrounds, a character who just a regular guy’s sprite but enlarged to look like a giant, and a couple boss characters brought to life by mid-‘90s CGI.

After the player has gone through the main cast and a CGI dinosaur named High Abbott (with another CGI dinosaur watching from a throne in the background), we take a trip to the citadel graveyard stage. There’s a memorial statue of the great warrior Kull that suddenly breaks apart to reveal that his living, 8-foot-tall skeleton is inside.

“Not even death shall keep my name from the Book of Warriors!”

You must fight this silly skeleton warrior, who is armed with a bloody hammer and iffy voice-acting, all while the guy who made Devil’s Rejects is singing. A fitting finale for such a game.

38. HEIHACHI MISHIMA

Tekken Series

In terms of pure power, Heihachi is one of the weakest boss characters in relation to his series. He’s played the final boss a few times in the Tekken series, but these fights are always less about him being the ultimate force of destructive evil and more about his importance to the story as a scheming bastard with the occasional redeemable moment as a human being.

It’s also about how he measures up to his son, Kazuya, the would-be protagonist who is ultimately more evil than Heihachi. The first game’s plot focuses on Kazuya as a vindictive monster who smiles at his father’s assumed murder, and Tekken 4 finally brings the three-way generational conflict between Heihachi, Kazuya, and Jin to a head for the first time. Then in Tekken 7’s story mode, Heihachi gets his final battle with Kazuya in a war that’s been ravaging the whole world.

Despite being hilariously unkillable in the past, Heihachi appears to be dead for real now and it’s solidified his true purpose as a final boss: to pass the torch to his son, who is both stronger and straight-up worse as a human being.

37. ATHENA

SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos

If there’s anything resembling a story in SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos (not counting the completely bonkers Hong Kong comic adaptation), it’s that all the street fighting going on in the world has caused havoc on time and space. Beings from the past and future have ended up in the present. By the end, it gets so out of control that by defeating Shin Akuma or Serious Mr. Karate, you create a rift that sends your character to Heaven or Hell.

(Let’s rock!)

If you’re in Hell, you fight Capcom representative Red Arremer from Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins. If you go to Heaven, it’s SNK’s Athena, but not the annoying pop star from the Psycho Soldiers team in King of Fighters. It’s the original SNK Athena from the sidescroller where she’s a bikini-clad goddess. Funny enough, despite there being pre-fight dialogue specific to each pairing, none of the King of Fighters crew pay any lip service to this.

Rather than annoying you with constant screams of, “PSYCHO BAAAWWWWW!!!” this Athena uses lots of summoning and shapeshifting powers to get the better of you. If King of Fighters Athena brought out a giant baby chick to destroy her opponents, I’d probably choose her more often.

If you lose the fight, she transforms you into an animal specific to the fighter. If you win, you get to meet God. Either way, it’s a pretty eventful day.

36. ABYSS

SoulCalibur III

I was thinking of putting Algol on this list before realizing that I have absolutely nothing to say about the guy. He was fine. Nothing especially memorable about him.

In terms of end bosses wielding both the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, Zasalamel’s final form, Abyss, is where it’s at. Mainly because Zasalamel is one of the last great SoulCalibur characters (along with Grizzled Owl and Harley Quinn Gollum). He’s a fantastic neutral warrior who ironically uses a Grim Reaper scythe despite being cursed with immortality and wanting a permanent death.

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After Zasalamel is transformed into Abyss, you actually begin rooting for Zasalamel to come through. This is his chance to put a stop to his endless cycle of resurrection, but it’s unfortunately turned him into an uncontrollable demon.

In the end, Zasalamel comes out of it better. During the experience, he sees a vision of the future (our present), and after reverting to his normal self, he goes from, “I must use the two swords to kill myself for good!” to “I have to prevent the two swords from ever killing me because the future looks fun as hell!”

Which reminds me, where’s my Zasalamel in Tekken, Harada?!

35. ONAGA THE DRAGON KING

Mortal Kombat: Deception

After Shinnok disappointed Mortal Kombat fans, Midway decided to introduce a new final boss who was a Shao Kahnier Shao Kahn. Fortunately, Onaga worked.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance made an effort to clean the slate and start fresh, removing Liu Kang, Shao Kahn, and Goro from the board. Having Shang Tsung and Quan Chi share the final boss spot went against that attempt for freshness, but Midway made up for it by planting the seeds for the sequel.

The whole plot was about introducing the Dragon King – the most Mortal Kombat villain name possible – who ruled Outworld before Shao Kahn. They built up anticipation through the game’s lore without showing him or even outright naming him, and we just knew the heroes were on a collision course with something monstrous. Reptile’s ending, in which his body was possessed and mutated by the Dragon King’s soul, made it definite.

Deception revealed that Shang Tsung and Quan Chi defeated the heroes, but it didn’t matter. Onaga was back and he made the two look like jokes. Things were already dire after the good guys lost, but now there was also this 10-foot-tall tank covered in scales with gigantic dragon wings just sauntering around.

Unfortunately, he got stuck being archenemies with Shujinko and that dude straight-up SUUUUUCKS!

34. NECROSAN

Primal Rage 2

The holy trinity of almost-to-completely-finished fighting games that didn’t get released are Thrill Kill, Tattoo Assassins, and Primal Rage 2. Primal Rage 2 is a fascinating unreleased game that not only had action figures, but a novelization that I would love to read one of these days. It’s always crazy expensive on eBay, though.

The first Primal Rage didn’t have a final boss, but legend has it that Atari Games originally planned to introduce Necrosan in an updated version. Instead, the studio saved him for the sequel, and while the game never saw the light of day, he simply rules too much for me to ignore. Much like King Ghidorah, Necrosan is an alien invader in a world of Terran kaiju. An extremely well-animated winged dragon skeleton coated with muscle tissue, Necrosan looks metal as hell. His backstory complements his look too: he singlehandedly kicked the asses of all the beasts from the first game.

Also cool is the twist that the big meteor that caused the first game’s post-apocalyptic origin was actually an egg housing Necrosan who planned to conquer the planet for his race.

33. KRIZALID

King of Fighters ’99

After spending several years doing the Orochi storyline, King of Fighters finally moved on to something different: mad scientists. The NESTS Cartel was a neat idea in theory, but the further the story went, the more they revealed themselves as dorks. In other words, don’t expect to see Zero or Ignis on this list.

Krizalid had a great look…er, well, his first look. That coat with the fur top covering his jaw was great. The more flexible S&M garb from when he burns it away, not so much. He made for a great first threat in this new story, especially due to how the endings painted him as a tragic figure and made NESTS look like bigger dicks because of it.

For all his posturing, he’s just a deranged clone, pitied by the heroes and exterminated by his bosses at the first opportunity. Then again, maybe they were also annoyed that he got rid of the coat.

32. SHINNOSUKE KAGAMI

Last Blade

The Last Blade games are some of the most underrated titles in the SNK library. Despite only having two installments, the series features plenty of interesting moments, including a redemption arc for its initial villain, Kagami. Originally guard of a portal to evil and darkness, the high-and-mighty Kagami lost his faith in humanity and decided to use that portal to wipe out life on Earth and purge mankind completely. Using his refined swordsman skill and ability to wield flame, he killed a lot of people to help pull off his scheme.

In the end, he was defeated by the hero character Kaede and banished himself into the portal to be tormented. But was resurrected to fulfill his original role as guard of the portal as well as help take down Kouryu, a former victim of his whose reanimated body was possessed by evil from within the portal. This made Kagami second guess his role in the initial adventure, deciding that humans aren’t bound to evil after all and may even be good.

I always liked how he’d have a normal stance in the first round, but after taking a loss, he’d levitate half a foot off the ground. It’s just ominous enough without having to completely change his style.

31. SUPERMAN

Injustice: Gods Among Us

“Evil Superman” has been done to death. It can be used well, but a lot of the time you just end up with Brightburn. Injustice: Gods Among Us did a decent enough job by taking an interesting episode of the Justice League cartoon and leaning harder into it. The main difference between the two Supermen was that, while the animated version was driven, he wasn’t as mentally cracked as his video game self.

The animated Superman still had Metropolis and Lois, but Injustice Superman lost them both at the hands of the Joker. As shown in the better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be comic book tie-in, Superman began his reign of terror by killing the Joker in a fit of anger, and bitterness, time, and betrayals caused him to become obsessed with order and a world where there was no war because he said so. It didn’t help that so many of his superfriends sided with him.

Superman is so regularly pushed as the top guy at DC that it’s not that surprising he’s the final boss in a DC fighting game. In fact, the only way to beat him was to get the good version of Superman to do the job.

30. NU-13

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

When I played through BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger’s arcade mode, I made sure to use Ragna the Bloodedge last. The fact that he was the protagonist, yet very rarely appeared as an opponent for everyone else’s arcade mode path made him seem special. This ended up being the right way to play the game as his dialogue with Nu-13 hit me like a train.

BlazBlue’s plot of, “Wait, I think I understand, but… No, you lost me,” means I can’t fully explain what Nu-13’s story is but the gist of it is that she’s some kind of experiment gone wrong and she’s showing up around a portal that’s messing with the time-space continuum. Everyone comes across her in arcade mode and she usually greets them with extremely dry robot talk throughout the boss fight. When she meets with Ragna, she suddenly acts like an excited schoolgirl who has been pining for this guy and writing his initials in her diary. It’s extremely off-putting and unexpected.

As a boss, she’s a great fit for the game, which takes place about 200 years into the future, but Nu-13 is the only one truly diving headfirst into the futuristic look. Even the game’s resident cyborg Tager comes off lacking compared to all the crazy sci-fi shit Nu-13 has going for her.

29. KARNOV

Fighter’s History Series

There is a holy trinity of ’80s video game asskickers who are remembered fondly due to a mix of genuine nostalgia and internet irony: Abobo, Mike Haggar, and Karnov. The latter fighter is a fascinating bloke. Not only did he star in his self-titled platformer game, but developer Data East also decided that this dadbod adventurer should just show up in several of their games like a mascot. This is why Fighter’s History is treated as a sequel to the original Karnov game in which the bored treasure hunter holds a fighting tournament with lots of his money on the line.

Fighter’s History is such an obvious Street Fighter II clone that Capcom tried suing Data East. The game’s only real saving grace is the use of Karnov as the carrot to lead you to the end. And while the sequel/update of the game is just the same cast with the bosses playable, Karnov looks completely different. In the first game, he’s completely jacked, albeit extremely short. In the next game, he’s taller and fat with a nasty stomach scar and has moves that allow him to morph his body like Jake from Adventure Time.

I suppose if it wasn’t weird, it wouldn’t be Karnov.

28. PYRON

Darkstalkers Series

When the gimmick of your game is that all your characters are Japanese takes on classic monsters, it’s only logical that the biggest threat is extraterrestrial. Pyron is far from the best alien in a video game, but he does the job here as both Silver Surfer and Galactus wrapped in one.

Seriously, look at his ending. If he can turn as big as the sun, he probably could have saved time by leading with that. But what do I know? I’m just a human who hasn’t been murdered by a vampire with stupid hair.

Pyron gets by with his design, which looks absolutely beautiful in that mid-‘90s Capcom arcade animation. The rippling energy waves of cosmic flame almost make you forgive him for what he was like on that terrible Saturday morning cartoon show.

27. MASTER HAND

Super Smash Bros. Series

Chucking a bunch of Nintendo icons into a game and trying to make a narrative out of it is a fool’s errand. Luckily, Nintendo didn’t overthink it too much and just decided, “They’re figurines or something having an imaginary battle.” It’s Lego Movie meets Secret Wars.

And after so many dream fights like Mario vs. Link and Kirby vs. Yoshi, who would be at the top of the ladder to threaten the heroes? Bowser? Ganon? Andross? King Slender?

No. It’s a hand. Just a big, disembodied glove dead set on crushing the player. I suppose Nintendo didn’t need to have a recognizable final foe. The four-way Nintendo slugfest was enough. So why not have a big hand that can do silly big hand attacks? It’s just the bizarro icing on the cake at this point.

I love how random Master Hand is. It’s a boss fight version of the Toy Story toys revolting against Sid the bully. With every new game, Nintendo had tried to add needless context, and this has caused Master Hand to expand into transcendent final boss concepts like Crazy Hand and Tabuu. That’s just a special kind of weird. Imagine creating a giant hand as your villain and then in each sequel thinking to yourself, “How do we build on that?”

26. KRONIKA

Mortal Kombat 11

Despite rebooting the series’ winding and convoluted storyline, Mortal Kombat 9 ended on a low note. Sure, Shao Kahn was dead, but so were most of the heroes just as Shinnok was preparing to make his own move. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat X, while not having the happiest ending, culminated with most of the major threats taken off the board. Kahn was still dead, Quan Chi was dead, Shinnok was just a head, and Onaga’s resurrection was prevented. Things were looking up for once!

But in Moral Kombat 11, a cosmic Tilda Swinton appeared as not just Shinnok’s mother, but as a meta representation of video game designers at odds with the story. Kronika wants good and evil to war with each other on equal enough footing forever. The status quo doesn’t allow enough juice for what she wants, so her plans include bringing back dead characters with a hand wave, reverting characters who have developed farther than she cares for, and even rebooting the franchise itself.

Even her kind, the Titans (higher up on the chain than the Elder Gods), play into this. Scorpion’s ending shows that reality simply won’t exist without the backstory that his wife and child were killed, all because the Titans deemed it so. These games are getting dangerously close to the fourth wall.

Meta or not, Kronika is a fantastic addition to the Mortal Kombat mythos. That endless time-reverse Fatality of hers is one of the highlights of that game’s many kills.

25. ULTRON SIGMA

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite

Despite its huge roster, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 didn’t have much in terms of Capcom-based villains. Plus, the big boss was Galactus. Where do you even go from Galactus in a sequel? For Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, bringing Galactus back was a no-no due to Disney being stingy with the Fantastic Four property at the time.

But Capcom had a pretty good solution. First, introduce Sigma from Mega Man X into the world of fighters. Second, bring in box office superstar (at the time) Ultron. Third, take a page out of Dark Kahn’s book and merge the two into one being. They’re robots. Robots love that shit.

For the record, the most hyped I got for this game was the stinger on the announcement trailer where they showed a shadowy Ultron sitting on a throne with Sigma’s glowing eyes appearing on his torso.

Not only do you get each meatbag-hating robot on their own and in merged form, but then there’s the over-the-top design of their final form. Transforming into a nightmarish and gaudy final form is Sigma’s MO, so it’s nice to see Ultron just go with it.

Yeah, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite didn’t have staying power, but it did have a giant Sigma head with Ultron’s body sticking out…as well as that head-scratching plot point where Thanos made a gauntlet powered by Ryu’s inner evil for the sake of throwing fireballs at Death. See, that’s why you need arcade mode endings in games like these. Let your crossover freak flag fly.

24. VICTOR ORTEGA

Ring of Destruction

Saturday Night Slam Masters is remembered well enough, partially due to its SNES port, but few talk about its sequel Ring of Destruction, which had more of an emphasis on fighting game mechanics. Players of only the first game would still recognize Victor Ortega, as he’s the Billy Graham/Hulk Hogan guy in the intro, tearing his shirt off. Though not part of the game’s roster, his identity is revealed if you’re able to beat the game without losing a single match.

This mountain of muscle was a previous CWA champion who was so dominant in the ring that he left out of boredom. Getting the first game’s best ending has Ortega return to challenge your wrestler, ending in a cliffhanger.

The sequel is about the Capcom Wrestling Association being invaded by heels representing the Blood Wrestling Association. This situation piques Ortega’s interest, as hewants the last man standing to challenge him for the title. He proves to be a pain in the ass to take on — not only can he uppercut so hard that fireballs fly out but he was busting out jumping Yoshi Tonics all the way back in 1994!

23. ZANKURO MINAZUKI

Samurai Shodown Series

In fighting games, having a katana means getting some extra range and damage. In a series like Samurai Shodown, what does one do for an extra range advantage when everyone is armed with a sword? Easy. Create an 8-foot-tall Brock Samson samurai guy with a katana befitting of his size.

Zankuro is one of the rare examples of a character who talks about “the demon within” but isn’t actually possessed by one. Ryu is a good person despite having a magical dark force inside him threatening to turn him into a rage zombie. Zankuro is just an asshole. He slaughtered villages of people because killing people is his vice. And really, who’s got the skill to get in his way and tell him to stop?

But the outcome is inevitable. He has to die. In Samurai Shodown III, Zankuro had a fake-out death followed by a real death, just as he lamented his horrible acts. He was be sorry about his sins, but sidestepped having to live with them.

Except…he keeps getting resurrected.

22. DIO BRANDO

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

It’s kind of crazy how popular Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has become in the US in the past few years, especially when you look back at how niche it was in the late ‘90s when Capcom’s Jojo fighter hit the arcade, Dreamcast, and PlayStation. Back then, the best you could do was find some low-quality manga scans and hope that someone online could translate them. All Capcom had was the manga and a few episodes of an anime, but they still managed to turn those into a kickass video game adaptation.

Dio was a major part of this. His moves and animation set him up as someone who could be cold and collected one moment and a slinking psychopath the next. The way he’d jump off-screen, return with a steamroller, and smash you with it while laughingly clawing at the vehicle defined what kind of series-carrying villain he really was.

The biggest mark against him is that regular boss Dio is not nearly as cool as his faceless counterpart Shadow Dio, based on the stretch of the manga when nobody knew what Dio’s powers actually were but understood that he was scary as hell.

21. WOLFGANG KRAUSER

Fatal Fury Series

SNK did Krauser dirty. His appearances in Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special made him the most epic boss fight of the era. First off, the dude was so jacked that he was able to burst out of his chest armor with a mere flex. Second, he got this epic line:“I’ll chisel your gravestone! Sleep well!” Most importantly, his background music was only a version of “Dies Irae” but it was played by own personal orchestra during that fight!

Dude wasn’t even up to no good. He was just an intense man who wanted a good fight. Even in defeat, he stood back up to dramatically yell, “You were perfect! I have met…my match…” before collapsing. Legendary presentation.

Unfortunately, then we got the second Fatal Fury anime, where SNK inexplicably got rid of Krauser’s amazing purple mustache. Why would you do such a thing? That mustache never did anything wrong.

He was almost completely forgotten by the time King of Fighters rolled around. He appeared in King of Fighters ’96 with a lanky redesign that made it look like he had a swimmer build, but everyone knows that Krauser needs to look like 2003 Triple H.

Oh, well. At least they didn’t get Ray Park to play him in a movie.

20. FERNANDEZ

Waku Waku 7

Waku Waku 7 is one of the liveliest and enjoyable fighting games that nobody has ever heard of. With one installment to its name, this Sunsoft creation has a handful of anime archetypes and knockoffs fight to free a magical fairy and earn a wish. In order to release the fairy, they have to grow into a giant and take on the kaiju known as Fernandez.

Known as Fernandeath in Japan, Fernandez is a large, black ball with a smiley face, bat wings, ball-shaped limbs, and a glowing aura. The giggling beast seems cute at first, but the more time you spend with it, the creepier and more malevolent it becomes. Its eyes turn red, it sometimes has pointy teeth, and at times it’ll turn full-on demonic.

There are some silly move animations thrown in there, but getting devoured and then shot out of its butt like a cannon can’t be the most enjoyable experience out there.

19. JUSTICE

Guilty Gear

Guilty Gear gets a lot of flack for its confusing plot and ridiculous titles, but the gist of the story is unique and surprisingly simple: Once upon a time, humanity took part in a devastating war called the Crusades, where they fought against robo-mutants (a cross between SkyNet and the Age of Apocalypse) and barely survived. Now, with the world reaching borderline utopia, it’s constantly threatened by the possibility of going back to the bad old days. In other words, we missed out on seeing the exciting, explosive, action-packed era of this fictional world, but we absolutely have to prevent that from happening again.

Adding to the terror is that Justice was never fully destroyed in that war. She was simply sealed away for all eternity, which never lasts in fiction. In the first Guilty Gear, losing to this lizard mech meant endless death and destruction. But through her defeat at the hands of Sol Badguy, we not only got a tragic origin story for our main hero that explained what the hell a “Guilty Gear” is, but Justice opened up this world to the possibility that the Crusades could return in various ways despite her death.

18. BRAINIAC

Injustice 2

When your first game is all about Batman taking down an evil Superman, where do you go for the sequel? Easy. You figure out a threat so huge that both Batman and Superman have to put their feud on hold in order to save Earth. The logical choice is Darkseid, but NetherRealm went in a smarter direction with Brainiac. Even though he’s an established character in other continuities, Brainiac had yet to show up in any form in Injustice canon, so the studio could treat him as a brand new threat.

He was the perfect fit, too. Since he was the one responsible for blowing up Krypton, the game used this backstory to also introduce Supergirl and gave us a villain that Superman would hate just as much as the Joker. Even in defeat, Brainiac’s plan created another violent moral argument between Batman and the murderous Superman.

Above all else, Brainiac felt like a big deal. His moves during the boss fight made him seem like an even more advanced take on Doc Ock. The inside of his space ship added to his cyber nightmare aesthetic, too. Last but not least, he was voiced by Jeffrey Combs, whose chilling delivery made him sound like the most menacing threat in the universe.

Sorry, Darkseid.

17. THE GENERAL

Kaiser Knuckle

Kaiser Knuckle is your average Street Fighter II knockoff from the early days of fighting games, and there’s only one reason anyone remembers it at all. That reason is the General.

At first glance, he’s little more than a blatant ripoff of M. Bison. Then you fight him. Without a doubt, the General is the absolute hardest boss in fighting game history. He’s unbelievable. Not only are his attacks unfair variations of Bison’s offense, but he has a move where he releases Green Lantern construct projections of himself in various directions.

He’s an afront to God and when he wins the round and calls himself a perfect soldier, it’s hard to argue.

16. RYO SAKAZAKI

Fatal Fury Special

Some time after Mortal Kombat gave us Reptile and mere months before Street Fighter gave us Akuma, Fatal Fury Special introduced a very special hidden boss: Ryo Sakazaki. Sure, King of Fighters ’94 would be released within a year, but this was our first time seeing a major SNK fighting game crossover. This was the first Terry vs. Ryo matchup.

One of the reasons this debut hits so hard for me is that Ryo and the Art of Fighting crew never seemed to be too prominent in the King of Fighters games. There are two main continuities when it comes to SNK’s fighters. King of Fighters puts everything together and says it all coexists in the same era. Meanwhile, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Buriki One, and Savage Reign are on a staggered timeline. With Art of Fighting taking place in the ‘70s, it means that the Ryo in Fatal Fury games and Buriki One is a hardened, middle-aged legend and not just another young upstart like he is in King of Fighters.

In other words, Ryo showing up in Fatal Fury Special isn’t just an early crossover, but a passing of the torch.

15. EYEDOL

Killer Instinct

Killer Instinct always valued character designs first and everything after. Ninja, robot, dinosaur, T&A secret agent, boxer, Native American, skeleton, werewolf, ice creature, and fire guy. Then came the story.

To that effect, Eyedol, much like Spinal, is a tribute to the stop-motion fantasy movie monsters of the old days. Specifically, he’s a two-headed version of the cyclops from the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He made for a memorable final battle, thanks in part to the cheap-ass healing ability that he’d spam while the other fighter recovered in between rounds.

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Eyedol was the last classic character released for the Killer Instinct reboot, and they redesigned the HELL out of him. Depicted as a holy chosen champion turned demonic and ogre-like due to his own ego, Eyedol’s two-headed cyclops look was explained as the result of having his head cleaved in half down the middle, then being resurrected. The wound is healed, but not undone, resulting in some gnarly body horror.

Much respect to his old ending, which was not only a parody of Blanka’s Street Fighter II ending, but by having his would-be mother refer to him as “Billy,” it becomes both a sly reference to Double Dragon (Billy and Jimmy) and musician Billy Idol.

Get it?

14. GILL

Street Fighter III

Following up on M. Bison was never going to be easy. For a long time, he was the poster boy for fighting game final bosses. For the third major installment, Capcom needed to introduce someone who felt different but also as big a threat as his predecessor. Rather than introducing “M. Bison’s boss” or “M. Bison’s dad,” the studio instead went in a completely original direction with Gill. Was he powerful? Yes. Did he use street fighting tournaments as a front for some kind of maniacal scheme? Yes again. Was he the ultimate evil? Well…I guess that depends on your thoughts on organized religion.

Rather than a villain delusional enough to call himself a god, Gill might as well BE a god. And he both wants to be virtuous, but he’s also an egomaniac about it. It’s definitely a fresh take on the mustache-twirling monsters in these games. Even Alex, the main character of Street Fighter III, only wants to fight him to get revenge after for his mentor, who Gill beat so bad in a street fight they had to send him to the hospital. Alex doesn’t seem to really care about the whole new world order cult gimmick.

With Street Fighter III being such a beautiful-looking sequel, Gill also brought the novelty of an asymmetric 2D character who wasn’t just mirrored when he looked in the opposite direction (i.e. Sagat’s eyepatch switching eyes depending on where he’s facing). That fit well with Gill’s mastery over fire and ice.

Screw him for that cheap resurrection power, though.

13. KING LEO/TRUE KING LION

Savage Reign

A lot of times in fiction, futuristic designs are based on the decade when they were conceived. That’s how we got King Leo, a villainous champion in the future of the Fatal Fury/Art of Fighting timeline, who looks hilariously try-hard ‘90s. The angular mask/boots/codpiece combo, the boxing gloves with sword, the ridiculous flat-top mullet, the cap, the ab window, etc. He has it all. He is pure extreme.

In both Savage Reign and its sequel Kizuna Encounter, he’s playable but not really. King Lion is selectable from the beginning, but it becomes apparent that he and the final boss are two different entities. Playable King Lion is an impostor meant to test the challengers, while King Leo is the far more powerful real deal.

Even when Jyazu appears in Kizuna Encounter as the actual final boss by impaling King Leo with his giant sword, King Leo is still able to later shrug off that major wound in a post-credits sequence. God, I wish that game had a follow-up.

12. GALACTUS

Marvel vs. Capcom 3

I’m surprised it took Capcom so long to bring in Galactus. The studio had the giant boss thing going in its Marvel games with Apocalypse, Onslaught, and whatever the hell Abyss was, and probably should have gone with Galactus for Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but I guess Capcom wanted to do multiple forms for the battle and that’s what Abyss brought to the table. Fortunately, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 finally brought in the Eater of Worlds.

Galactus isn’t the kind of guy who is supposed to get taken down by Ryu and Wolverine, but considering Capcom made a Marvel fighter where Spider-Man can take down an omnipotent Thanos, and that there’s an in-story reason that Galactus isn’t at 100%, one can give this story a pass. He still fights like Galactus should with cosmic energy beams flying all over the place.

Probably the best thing about him is his silly appearances in various endings, like being put on trial with Phoenix Wright as his defense lawyer or an annoyed Wolverine telling X-23 to get Galactus’ defeated body off his lawn.

11. MARIE KORBEL

Skullgirls

The Skull Heart from Skullgirls is terrifying and interesting enough to build a fighting game story around. It’s a demonic relic powerful enough to grant you any wish you’d like, but it will possess you in time. How fast it possesses you depends on how selfish your wish is, but the sad fact is that no matter how altruistic or heroic your actions are, every wish is selfish on some level. To use the Skull Heart is to damn yourself and doom everyone else.

That’s the tragedy of Bloody Marie. She grew up an orphan, abused and treated as a slave. Her thirst for vengeance was justified, but it didn’t make a difference. As the all-powerful Skullgirl, it was only a matter of time before she lost herself completely and slaughtered everyone. This struggle translated to her appearance, which seemed normal enough…until you notice the glowing, bare ribs peeking out the side.

Marie has several forms, and each one depicts her as being less in control until she’s just scraps of bone being manipulated by the Skull Heart. Defeating her not only means wiping out a young girl who really doesn’t deserve it, but for some of her challengers, it means they’re walking towards their own tragedy with the Skull Heart.

10. ONSLAUGHT

Marvel vs. Capcom

Capcom pulled off a miracle when it made Onslaught cool.

In general, Onslaught is like the Star Wars prequels. A solid idea in bullet points, but terrible in practice. The idea of an insane Xavier/Magneto/Juggernaut hybrid commandeering all the Sentinels and becoming such a threat to the Marvel heroes that the only way to stop him is to send a purified version of the Hulk after him sounds so awesome, but…well, ‘90s comics are ‘90s comics.

Marvel vs. Capcom’s Onslaught makes for such a sweet boss fight and is a big improvement over Apocalypse, who bypassed the normal-sized battle for the sake of immediately turning giant. Onslaught is Magneto on steroids, who turns into Apocalypse on steroids, and works because ‘90s Capcom was so damn untouchable.

We’re at a point in pop culture where War Machine is a mainstream superhero and “Lethal Protector” Venom made more in the box office than the Justice League. Onslaught is still considered a very specific time capsule that’s yet to be redeemed, which makes Capcom’s use of him here that much more impressive.

9. OGRE

Tekken 3

Tekken is like WWE where it’s so much better when isn’t focusing on the old man running things and his shitty family. When the bosses aren’t part of the Mishima bloodline, they’re usually some kind of unearthly being. You have your Egyptian demigod, you have your goth lady wearing sludge overalls, and you have your Aztec God of Fighting.

Ogre is the one Tekken boss who doesn’t directly tie into the Mishima family. It’s refreshing and makes the whole world feel bigger. He’s a completely unrelated force who reveals himself by beating the crap out of different mainstays in between Tekken 2 and 3. Granted, it was more impressive early on because Ogre got credit for wiping out so much of the early cast. But those guys returned in later games, and it seems Ogre only really killed the first King and MAYBE Jun, who sucks so good for Ogre.

Outside of non-canon stuff, Ogre didn’t last long in the Tekken series, but his death brought forth the rivalry between Heihachi and Jin, springboarding the Mishima war into a new direction. It was also explained that the Ancient Ogre form was defeated by Paul Phoenix, which is sadly one of the last times that character was treated like an actual threat.

8. OROCHI

King of Fighters ’97

Nailing the landing on a long-running story isn’t easy, and it’s truly impressive when a franchise pulls it off. Fans of Avengers: Endgame know that feeling well.

While the first King of Fighters game was all about Rugal, his return in King of Fighters ’95 built on the idea that he was tapped into a greater power that dwarfed him. Then King of Fighters ’96 continued that by showing us Goenitz, who was also a player in Orochi’s game. Even Iori Yagami – an antihero who wanted nothing to do with the evil god – was powerless to be anything but its bloodthirsty pawn.

King of Fighters ’97 not only acted as the climax to this whole saga, but it really felt like the peak of the whole franchise. There were great King of Fighters games afterwards, but this was where everything really felt like it lined up. And so, after all this build up, we got a team of Orochi worshippers, two insane pawns slaughtering in his name, and one guy so insane and bloodthirsty to start with that he shrugged off the magical need to go feral. Then by the time you got to Orochi, he felt like a true final boss that they spent several years building towards. He was the right level of malevolent celestial being and, while challenging, was never too hard compared to other SNK bosses.

As the exclamation point, most endings in the game warned that he’d be back someday. The only way to truly do away with him was to beat the game with a very specific trio of fighters, which happened to trigger one of the coolest endings in the series. The following arcs of King of Fighters would try to build towards other masterminds, but none of them held a candle to Orochi.

7. DIZZY

Guilty Gear X

As I said earlier, the true conflict of the Guilty Gear series is that shit was bad long ago, and the heroes have to keep the world from unwinding back into that chaos. When it came to the villainous Justice, things were pretty cut and dry. Justice had been released from her prison, cloned, and even resurrected at times. But Dizzy was a deeper take on the idea. She is the daughter of Sol Badguy and/or Justice and is an omega-level threat who could very well relaunch the war between humans and Gears.

It just so happens that she’s also an innocent, young woman who just wants a peaceful existence, someone who just wants to be left alone where she can’t hurt anyone. Despite being possibly the most powerful character in the series (give her Instant Kill attack in Guilty Gear Xrd a look), Dizzy is left alone in the end. She ends up finding friends, love, and even has a son.

6. THANOS

Marvel Super Heroes

Marvel Super Heroes is a very loose adaptation of Infinity Gauntlet, and that’s part of the reason the final battle with Thanos work so well. You spend all game accumulating Infinity Gems, adding more power-up options to each fight. Then Thanos steals them away and you have to take on a fully-Gauntleted Mad Titan in front of a backdrop very reminiscent of the big heroes vs. Thanos fight from Infinity Gauntlet.

Now, for those of you who haven’t read the comic that inspired Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos got the Infinity Gauntlet and became omnipotent. A bunch of heroes dogpiled him, and Thanos even gave himself a handicap to make it the slightest bit challenging, but the heroes still lost BADLY.

So here you are, playing as Spider-Man or Iron Man or whoever, having to have a kickass one-on-one brawl with Thanos and having to do alone what almost 20 superheroes couldn’t do in the comics. But because fighting games exist in a reality where everyone can win (and not just Jim Starlin’s Jim darlings), everyone — from Psylocke to Juggernaut — stands a chance at dethroning Thanos and truly earning the Infinity Gauntlet.

5. RUGAL BERNSTEIN

King of Fighters Series

I’m a huge fan of this character despite his tendency to be a bullshit SNK boss. Fighting him in King of Fighters ’94 should be banned by the Geneva Convention. It’s just that…man, the dude has so much swagger and radiates such coolness that I can’t hate him. He’s Rugal Goddamn Bernstein and we’re better for knowing him.

As with most early villains of fighting games, Rugal is overshadowed by his replacements. Shang Tsung works for Shao Kahn. Sagat works for M. Bison. Heihachi is the son of Jinpachi. Eyedol is the rival of Gargos. Geese is the weaker brother to Krauser. Rugal got the ball rolling in his own way as a way to build to the Orochi storyline, which practically defined all the following King of Fighters storylines. Yet in the end, despite being the first step in the saga and being killed for good during the second entry, Rugal has solidified himself as THE villain of King of Fighters. Dream match games and non-canon adventures tend to just go with Rugal as the final boss by default, usually with some extra bell and whistle, my favorite being God Rugal from Capcom vs. SNK 2. A coked up Rugal with Akuma gimmicks is my kind of boss battle.

Rugal is mostly a collection of awesome motifs and special attacks, but I also love that he’s just as defined by his number one weakness. Yes, he’s good enough to crush a team of three like nobody’s business, but he has his physical limits and his downfall is that he doesn’t see that. In canon and as God Rugal, he loses because he absorbs and uses up too much power for his body to handle. It’s nice when a villain is done in by their inability to leave well enough alone.

4. SHAO KAHN

Mortal Kombat Series

The worst thing I can say about Shao Kahn is that, while I dig the way his latter appearances lean into his “painted on the side of your van” metal design, he will never be as completely rad as he was in Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. Probably because loud growling doesn’t hold a candle to his eerie whisper and proud laughter.

Kahn is more intimidating than most bosses. The attract sequence in Mortal Kombat 2 showed a silhouette of Kahn reading Shang Tsung the riot act followed by a more direct look at his appearance, and it was immediately clear that this guy was absolute trouble. The first game tried to make Goro seem terrifying, but we knew that he was still second to Shang Tsung. Shao Kahn was THE boss, and we knew that, even if we climbed up that ladder (with Kahn STANDING ON TOP A MOUNTAIN), Kahn would be the end of us.

And a lot of the time he was. He would beat you with a war hammer, kick you across the room, and taunt you and you’d love him for it. He was so perfect as a boss that Midway simply had to bring him back for the next game.

Even after taking a backseat in the subsequent games, Mortal Kombat Armageddon’s story revitalized him by making him the winner of what was essentially the Mortal Kombat Royal Rumble. It was such a tragic turn of events that Raiden had to go back in time to stop it. Even with nearly all the good guys dead, it was all deemed worth it just because Kahn was killed. At least for a few years.

3. M. BISON

Street Fighter Series

As a kid, I was always confused about why this bus driver was running his own fighting tournament, but that feeling was replaced by my rage at his damn slide kick and arm-hook throw combo. You have fire-hand powers. You don’t need to be that smooth, dude.

Bison isn’t as deep a character as Sagat or as hardcore as Akuma or as naked as Gill, but he is possibly the hammiest final boss in the history of fighting games. All the various actors who have portrayed the character seem to be taken by the infectious fun that comes with playing him, whether it’s Raul Julia in the first live-action movie, Gerald C. Rivers and Kenji Utsumi in the games, Richard Newman on the cartoon, and, hell, even Neal McDonough had his moments in that crappy Chun-Li movie.

As the first final boss that anyone ever cared about, Bison is a wonderful pile of escalating craziness. Over time, he’s become a comedically-jacked guy with a constant smile whose plots involve Buddha statues with laser faces, running over Ryu with a bigass truck, shoving his soul into gender-swapped clones, and dropping satellites onto civilization for the sake of causing chaos. Capcom can try to write him out of the series, but he’s just too iconic to destroy for good.

2. AKUMA

Street Fighter Series

It’s crazy to think how Electronic Gaming Monthly did an April Fools’ joke about there being an enhanced version of Ryu as a secret final boss in Street Fighter II and Capcom decided, yes, that’ll do. That’s how one of the most iconic fighting game characters ever was born.

“Ryu but darker and more powerful” could have ended badly, but Akuma’s always shined as the X-factor of Street Fighter’s roster. He’s more than just an evil final boss. He’s a malevolent force that is somehow neither good nor evil…which is for the best, considering Capcom eventually labeled M. Bison as literal pure evil.

What’s funny to me is how Mortal Kombat introduced the idea of the hidden boss fight with Reptile, then gradually turned him into the biggest jobber in Mortal Kombat lore. Akuma showed up, wiped out M. Bison with his so-powerful-we-can’t-even-show-you super move, gave you a nigh-impossible boss fight, and then Capcom made sure to keep him going as the guy who will make you shit your pants every time he shows up. When SNK made its SNK vs. Capcom crossover game, the team even put an ending in there where a bored Akuma challenged God to a fight.

1. GEESE HOWARD

Fatal Fury Series

As fighting games are ensemble pieces, so are their storylines most of the time. Fatal Fury, not so much. Fatal Fury is really the story of Terry Bogard vs. Geese Howard with a bunch of supporting characters. Even Andy Bogard, who has just as much a reason to be the protagonist as Terry, is relegated to being “the guy who is reluctant to sleep with his hot girlfriend.” Fatal Fury is really about Terry and Geese and everyone else is, at best, an extension of the two of them.

Geese is everything you could ever want in a final boss, unless you’re looking for a giant shooting lasers out his eyes. He’s slick as oil and tougher than brick, with a moveset that’s based around throwing you like a ragdoll or blasting you into the stratosphere. He’s the right balance of difficult enough to make you curse, but not cheap enough to make you throw the controller through your screen.

Not only is he unique in battle, but he just has so much personality. His cockiness is on another level. His every gesture makes him look like he knows he’s superior to everyone else in every way, but kicking their ass is a better use of his time than whatever else he has planned. Even his counter moves (“PREDICTABLE!”) make him seem untouchable.

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His canon death scene in the Fatal Fury games is also second to none. Hanging off a tower rooftop, he sees Terry reach his hand out. Rather than be saved and maybe even forgiven by Terry, Geese chooses to smack it away, let go, and fall to his death while looking up at the winner and laughing maniacally at him. What a boss way to go.

The post 50 Best Fighting Game Final Bosses from Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

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