#and apparently was involved in a bunch of controversies around another game a while back

[doedipus]

for some inexplicable reason 9moons started releasing their strive player ranking thing despite the plurality of top players telling them not to bother, and one of their panelists getting in a high visibility fight with one of said players over twitter and recusing herself

#for some reason they're staggering it out over a few days #but already ranks 50-41 include a guy who is a moderator of nick 9moon's TO discord #and apparently was involved in a bunch of controversies around another game a while back #meanwhile mike saftig (one of the best players in latin america) got stuck in 46th place #presumably because most TOs are sick of him wasting time in brackets #which I mean same but you gotta put the petty beef behind you if you want to be taken as reputable by any stretch come on man

[duhragonball]

Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”.   It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo. 

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing.   In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial.  But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.  

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012.  But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies.  “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger!   Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!” 

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality.   That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person.  Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from.   Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them.   Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm.   Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting.   Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft.   I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?”  Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons.   It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria.   Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world.  Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology.   I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things.   First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation.   Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve.  It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline.  You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence.   “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.”   “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.”   “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.”   It’s a fucking kids show.   “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!”   Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show.   Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc.   The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see.   It’s all about establishing a moral high ground.   Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”. 

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community.  As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do.   But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out.    Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul.   I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills.   It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved.   I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back.  It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why.  The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow.    They were like “See?  He hates Ron Weasley too!  That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.”   The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes.   I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective.   But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them.   Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others.   But he sucks too because he failed. 

And the shippers were the same way.   I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes!  Boost the signal!  That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!”  And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does.  They’re all terrible and I hate them.”   I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.”   Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it.   Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs.  This is what people mean when they say to read another book. 

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem.   The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny.    They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general.  And this sort of thing is all over the internet.   Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.  

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too.   At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off.   And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one.  I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens.   People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake.   Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance.   If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.  

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up.   Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them.    Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.   

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago.   But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle.   Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons.   She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice.   I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while.   People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing.   It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations.   I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do.   And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up.   So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.”   Just a thought. 

[toartemis]

My Cherries and Wine

Part 3 of The Moon’s Serenades series. You can read on Ao3.

Summary:  Cardan and Jude haven't had the time to be alone with each other in a while. They decide to play a game.

Word Count: 4794

Warnings: Oral sex, rough sex, dom/sub undertones, top!Jude, bottom!Cardan, degradation kink if you squint, biting.

Preview: The fabric bunches up around her waist and he scrapes his nails up her inner thigh. Her hand shoots down to grab his wrist and she doesn't know whether it's to push him away or pull him further towards her. She doesn’t do either, yet. Cardan watches her hesitate beneath him, and he links their free hands together, lacing their fingers. 

He waits for her signal. It only takes Jude a small moment to gather herself and nod.

---------

Dawn passes outside the windows of the palace’s Council room. Jude, in a facetious manner, has designated said windows as her favorites for when she needs to space out during boring meetings. There is something about them that she likes. They have some extra flare or sparkle that suit her fancy compared to others in the room. Or, maybe, she just started to imagine they do because the repetitive arguments she has to listen to have started driving her insane over the last months.

So far, the day went exactly how she expected: Wake up, meet with the Bomb, sign papers, sit in the throne room (and hear what complaints the Folk have about her), spar as a way to release frustration, then attend this meeting with Cardan and have the rest of the night to herself. 

Of course, Council meetings never turn out to be simple, and she's been here for eons it seems. Her free time disappeared out those favorite windows, along with Jude’s attention, around hour four. 

She could tell when she walked in that this meeting would be longer than originally expected, even more so than usual. Cardan was already there, lazing in his designated, beautifully carved  chair, at one end of the long, engraved table. He had his chin resting on his fist and his eyes were already glazed over. She sighed as she accepted her dull fate for the night.

Jude locked eyes with her husband when she sat down in her equally extravagant seat at the opposite end of the table. His gaze said please put me out of my misery. She raised a brow as a response, and the meeting began. 

Orlagh was discussed, along with Madoc, who promptly had any and all titles and privileges removed after Jude’s ascension to the crown and was being kept on close watch, along with any creature who might be keeping contact with him. Jude listened intently to these topics, but began to zone out at the mention of more mundane things. Honestly, she never would have imagined that she would let herself be idle in any part of her job as the High Queen, but talks of the woods and colors of the land get monotonous quickly. Eventually, the subject changes again to the most controversial issue of the last six months.

The Folk and their lasting resentment towards Jude. 

Really, over the short amount of time since she was crowned Queen, many of the fae have taken a liking to her. Much more and much sooner than she thought they would. The land has flourished and ancient beings have long settled with her new status, but there are still the stubborn creatures that despise her and threaten her life. 

Jude pretends she is confident in how safe she feels, but she knows she could be assassinated at any moment if they don't keep up with the constant precautions they've been taking, like the personal band of knights she has flanking her almost every waking moment. Even the enchanted clothing she wears that alerts her of potential ill intent any fae may have towards her when they get close enough doesn’t soothe the nerves. These meetings always focus on new measures that might be taken to ensure her and Cardan's safety and how to possibly quell the rage and unrest of their enemies. It's more of the same at this point. 

Jude has always been more involved with the meetings than Cardan, but damn it all if they don't bore her as much as they do her husband. She's dished out as many ideas as the rest of the Council, but they're running dry at this point. It’s been so figuratively beaten to death that she can almost genuinely smell the blood.

The underlying conclusion she's made is that it'll just take time.

So she sits and listens for the first few hours of this, then she lets herself space out again. 

She adjusts her circlet, watches the sky, and feels the thrumming of the land as they drone on, her thoughts running about. 

Making sure everything not only runs, but runs smoothly, is much harder than it seems. 

Jude is good at juggling responsibilities and coming up with barely-successful plans, but running a kingdom correctly is like trying to stack jagged stones together a mile high without them falling over.

Even so, that being coupled with the threats thrown her way every day, she would be lying if she said she hasn't been enjoying her life as of late. The only thing she can't really stand is the fact that she sees Cardan much, much less than she expected she would. 

Sure, they rule together, and often see each other before bed, but they most often have different focuses in their duties, so they are not together much more than they are. 

She hates it. 

Once Jude figured out that they both simply enjoy each other's company, whether it be just having a conversation or reading near each other, she began missing him terribly every second they weren't together. It was frightening to be so attached to someone.

She knows so much more about him now. And he knows all about her. The thought that she has someone she can share herself with as they learn to live and heal together thrills her.

Even now, she smiles at the thought. 

Jude steals a glance at her husband across the table and finds him watching her. Cardan has a glint in his eyes that she doesn't quite recognize, which is disconcerting to her, and his mouth quirks up just a bit as she watches him. 

She feels butterflies in her stomach, and the next breath she takes hitches in her chest. 

When was the last time we even…?

Too long, apparently. Jude's thoughts immediately turn to some of their previous escapades. It's hard for them not to.

Jude and Cardan had weeks of lively, fresh joy where they had ample time to explore each other. But then they got busier, and their time together quickly shifted to barely getting their hands on each other whenever possible. Now they're both so tired after long nights that the farthest they ever get is falling into bed, and occasionally into each other's arms, before sleep takes over.

Jude decides at this moment that she refuses to be tired today. Cardan, it seems, is on the same page.

"Are we done prolonging things, or shall we keep going and eventually arrive at the same conclusion as always: that there's nothing we can do right now," his voice cuts through whatever conversation was happening. The Council members either look annoyed or insulted. One of them speaks.

"If... the High King wishes to meet again another time—"

"He does," Cardan says, and he stands abruptly, chair scraping across the floor. Jude stands with him, but with better concealed bravado. 

The rest of the Council follows looking exasperated. Jude decides to simply leave without looking behind her. Cardan is right on her heels. 

Her heart is pounding, a smile tugging at her lips. They only make it a few corridors and turns away from the Council room before Jude spins to face him. He's mere inches from her, breathing heavily. 

They really are on the same page, now. 

But Jude doesn't want this to go the way some of their other trysts have: quick and dirty, so good but over too soon.

No, she wants to prolong this. 

So she leans into him, threads her hands through the hair at the nape of his neck and says, "I want to play a game."

Immediately, want flashes in Cardan's eyes. 

"Oh?" He says, head tilting to the side. "What did you have in mind?"

Jude tightens her hands in his hair and pulls his mouth to hers. The kiss is rushed, all teeth and sharp exhales, a startling promise. When she pulls away, his lips chase hers, and something hot and dark spreads through her chest at the sight of him. His eyes shut, his mouth open, and she kisses him again.

Jude prides herself on many things. Lately, one of those is that she’s gotten much better at thieving, and she’s come to know that sly hands are very useful in all types of situations. In this moment, they work better than ever. She’s leaning towards his ear, mouth nipping along his jaw. Her hand is at the crown on his head and she slips it off without him even noticing.

With a smirk and one last kiss below his ear, she whispers, "Catch me."

And she bolts. 

It takes Cardan a few moments, then Jude hears him chuckle from somewhere far behind her. She barely glances back as she rounds the corner into another hall, but she sees he hasn't moved.

Giving me a bit of a head start, then.

Jude rips off her own crown, dislodging some of her hair from its braid, and runs faster, turning another corner, her leather slipper clad feet slapping against the floor. 

She really picked a horrible day to wear a dress. It’s a sheer, flowy one at that, pale green with stupid poofy sleeves and tiny embroidered flowers. But no matter, she works with what she's got. 

She gathers the front of her dress in one hand, both crowns in the other, and sprints into a room that leads into a stairwell. In there, she feels something in the air shift, and stops for a second. 

She knows Cardan must have started after her by now. She set no time limit, and he seemed impatient back there. Jude feels giddy, and takes a moment to be glad that the faeries living in the palace should be asleep soon. It means less obstacles to watch out for. She ascends the stairs and slips into a library there. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she the Roach told her there was a secret passageway in this room, but she has no clue where, so she starts feeling around the walls and bookcases for anything strange. Jude finds the hidden latch by one of the smaller shelves in the back of the room surprisingly easily. What she learned during her time with the Court of Shadows stays with her.

As she steps into the tunnel, Jude thinks of Cardan catching her in here.

Exhilarating panic shoots through her chest and desire pools deep in her. Jude almost regrets not giving him any instructions. Anything she said he would have followed with no thoughts of cheating. She could have given herself an advantage in this little game, but she didn’t. She loves a challenge, especially one where the odds are against her. And they definitely are right now.

Cardan is a creature of the night; a boy who blends with shadows, and though there is daylight shining through the sparse windows of the palace, there are more dark spaces than bright for him to creep through.  

It is impossible for her to outrun him. But she will try to out maneuver him. All at once, this game becomes real, and she desperately wants to win. 

She makes her was through the tunnel as quickly as she feels comfortable, and pushes the door open on the other side. When she closes it behind her, she realizes she's in the opposite side of the palace, and she grins. Bless those secret passageways.

Jude doesn't linger. She runs out of the room she's in and almost smacks into a royal guard in the hall.

"Your Grace—" the fae says to her, but she's already darting away, dress whipping out behind her. Another staircase comes into view in one of the Northern entrance halls, but it's grand and exposed. She has the option to continue to the corridor on the other side of the room or take her chances with the stairs. 

She chooses the latter. 

Her footsteps echo in the empty room, one that isn't used much company because it's a part of the palace that’s bare except for some hidden gardens, which she thinks would be too obvious for her to head towards, so, stairs it is. She's nearing the top when she feels a prickling on the back of her neck and her heart stops as well as her feet. Her chest heaves from the excitement. There’s sweat on her brow and her skin feels a little too tight. Her hand twitches around the crowns in her grasp. She steels herself before glancing back over her shoulder. 

Sure enough, Cardan stands at the base of the stairs, a smirk planted on his face.

She moves again before she's even thinking, increasing her speed, heart beating out of her ribs.

She should have heard him coming, but she knows he can erase all sounds of his movements if he wants to. 

Creature of the night. 

She barrels through a door to her left and finds herself in a pair of empty apartments. Skirting around a chair in her way, she runs through to the other room and freezes. 

It's just a study. There's no other way out this way as she had hoped. She turns around and confirms what she already knows: she's trapped herself. One way in, one way out. 

And that's when Cardan appears out of thin air, silent as a cat, in the doorway she just ran through across the room. Intoxicating delight spikes through her blood, and her mind is screaming runrunrunrun—

So she does, and a terrified giggle escapes her without her permission. She leaps over a low stool and scrambles behind a desk at the far end of the room, breath coming in shallow bursts, before she whips around to face the study door, her back to the wall. 

Her hair has come loose from its braid, her skin is tingling all over and her stomach drops when she sees Cardan standing in the middle of the room.

He has triumph in his eyes along with something else that's deep and predatory. 

Jude swallows. 

Her only way out is if he comes for her and she somehow makes it around him.

Again, she curses her dress. She'd have a much better chance if she was wearing trousers like he is.

Neither of them move. Jude's heart is in her throat. 

Come on, come on, come on—

Still, he doesn't budge, just looks at her like he's a wolf salivating over a kill. 

A jittery feeling takes over her limbs. She feels a pang of fear, which she knows is ridiculous, but she can't help it. 

Honestly, Cardan can be terrifying. She used to not let herself forget that.

The toe of his boot moves forward an inch and Jude flinches. Cardan laughs. He's messing with her. She feels a spike of anger. 

He does it again, inches his foot forward, and that’s all it takes for Jude to sprint to her right and for Cardan to move after her. She knocks over a table and chair to put obstacles between them before running as hard as she can into the other room and towards her chance to escape, but she barely makes in ten feet before she feels arms suddenly squeezing around her like a snake. 

Jude shouts, the sound a strange mixture of shock and excitement, and tries pushing at his arms. 

No luck there.

He swings her around and carries her back into the room of their miniscule showdown, all the while she scrambles to get free.

He drops her in front of one of the bookshelves, and she barely has time to regain her footing before he's got her pressed up against it, books digging into her back, his body trapping hers. She releases her hold on their crowns, lets them clatter on the floor, and tries wriggling away from him, but goes still when his teeth are suddenly at her neck. 

Her pulse is beating wildly, anticipation too high, and he drags his teeth to her ear.

"Caught you," he whispers, then withdraws to look her in the eyes. "Do make it harder for me next time." 

Jude scoffs. The smile he gives her is wicked. 

She jerks her chin at him. 

"You assume this will happen again?"

He looks at her lips.

"I know it will."

"Asshole," she says with an eye roll.

"What an inappropriate word for a queen to say."

"Oh, fuck you, Cardan."

"Yes, please," He responds and rolls his hips into hers. Jude gasps. 

He is so annoying. So incredibly insufferable and irritating and beautiful and she loves him so much. 

She closes that last bit of distance between them with a searing kiss. He pushes her back against the bookcase even harder and she bites his bottom lip in retaliation. She tries to get her hands on him, but it's hard with their proximity and the way he's caging her in, so she attempts tugging at his shirt where it's tucked into his trousers, but it doesn't work either. 

Cardan grinds his hips again, then pulls away just enough to sneak a hand between them to yank her skirts up. Jude's breath stutters from her chest.

The fabric bunches up around her waist and he scrapes his nails up her inner thigh. Her hand shoots down to grab his wrist and she doesn't know whether it's to push him away or pull him further towards her. She doesn’t do either, yet. Cardan watches her hesitate beneath him, and he links their free hands together, lacing their fingers. He waits for her signal.

It only takes Jude a small moment to gather herself and nod.

Cardan goes straight for her underwear, moving the fabric aside to run his fingers over her as he attaches his mouth to her neck again.

Jude throws her head back at the sudden contact. Cardan nips at her skin in response.

He drags his fingers slowly through her folds and says, "Look at you, you're so wet for me." 

Jude doesn't know if she hates or loves it when he talks like this. She says nothing back.

He mouths at her jaw. "You liked me chasing you."

To this, she huffs. 

Without warning, he pushes two fingers into her. A small, choked noise escapes her at the feeling. 

"You wanted me to catch you, didn't you?" His thumb moves over her clit as he works his fingers in and out. 

"Shut up," she mumbles. He pulls back to look at her.

"Make me, Jude," he curls his fingers, and sparks fly behind her eyes.

Annoying.

Jude rises to his challenge immediately and tugs his hand from her center, her fist tight around his wrist. Cardan raises an eyebrow as she brings it to her face. 

When she licks long and slow over the fingers he just had inside her, it seems like all the breath rushes out of him. His stares at her lips as she takes both of them in her mouth and sucks languidly, tongue flicking in between and swirling around. 

Yeah, that shut him right up. 

His eyelids grow heavy, lashes grazing his cheeks, and his mouth parts at her ministrations. 

He's so easy. 

Jude takes advantage of his distraction to unlink their hands, pull her mouth away, and shove him hard. 

He stumbles backward a few paces and continues to retreat as Jude advances. She corners him right into the desk she hid behind earlier and can't help but smile. 

Now it's her turn. 

His mouth clamps shut when she reaches for his trousers and starts undoing buttons and laces. She pulls his shirt loose and unceremoniously shoves her hand down his pants to wrap around his cock. 

Cardan gasps and puts his hands behind him on the desk for purchase.

She loves him like this. As soon as she touches him, it’s like a weight lifts from his shoulders, and suddenly he's soft dough in her palms; malleable and delicious. They both prefer it when she's in charge. 

"Come on, Cardan, hard already?" She says as she fully pulls him from his pants. He closes his eyes and doesn't answer. Jude sinks to her knees.

"Don't pretend you didn't enjoy our game just as much as I did," and with that she licks from the base of his cock all the way to the tip. One of Cardan's hands immediately threads in her hair as he takes a steadying breath. Jude continues teasing him with her tongue, all the while his thighs are steel beneath her palms.

Jude's waiting for him to beg. She can’t always get him to, but this time they’re both riled up. 

So she keeps her pace. Slowly, Cardan's jaw unlocks and his mouth falls open, and eventually his eyes lock with hers, then her mouth. His breathing is erratic as she places open-mouthed kisses on him from tip to base, and runs her fingers lightly over him in the wetness she leaves behind. 

Finally, she hears what she’s been waiting for.

Cardan chokes on a noise that sounds like a whine, then says, "Jude," and it's heavy, breathless. "Jude, please." 

And Jude complies. Her lips wrap around his cock and she sinks onto him, one hand wrapping around what she can't reach. 

She's knows, deep down, she’s not the best at this, but she's had time to practice and learn what he likes. She loves watching him get worked up because of her. So, despite lacking some skills, she is incredibly enthusiastic in this act. 

She takes him in as far as she dares and twists her hand as she goes, then sucks lightly as she withdraws, and repeats. She pauses at some points just to see his reaction and give herself a break, and Cardan looks increasingly desperate every time. She does this again now and his cock jumps. A shaky breath leaves him and his hips jerk toward her. 

Jude's confidence boosts at this, and she feels entirely smug at his reactions. She revels in this power over him. 

Her mouth is moving again, sinking lower than she has yet to go, and Cardan makes a sound like he got all the air knocked out of him. Jude hums around him, taunting and teasing. On her way back up for air, she makes sure to drag her tongue along the bottom of him and press her thumb into the junction of his thigh just the way he likes, and sure enough, Cardan moans brokenly, and his chest curls over her, head hanging low, hands in her hair pulling himself deeper into her mouth. 

He's close.

As soon as the realization comes to her, she pulls off of him completely and stands. His hands fall from her hair and grip the desk again, hard enough that she's sure the wood will certainly snap, but it doesn't. Jude trails a hand from his navel to his chest, muscles jumping underneath her touch, and grips his jaw tightly between her fingers. It takes him a moment to come back to himself long enough to look at her, his eyes thoroughly glazed over. 

Jude leans up, mouth close to his.

"Fuck me," she commands.

Cardan puts his unnerving speed to good use, then. 

He grips Jude at her hips and lifts. Within seconds, he has her on the desk, his shirt and pants all off, and he's kissing her breathlessly. 

Jude is seriously impressed, and so turned on that she aches. 

Cardan doesn’t bother with removing her clothes, he just tears her underwear in half, throws the pieces on the floor, and hikes her dress up. She leans back on her elbows. 

Jude's throbbing in anticipation and is more aroused than she can remember ever being. It's been much too long since they've had time alone together; time to do this. 

Before she can tell him again, Cardan pulls her hips to the edge of the desk and pushes into her in in one stroke, completely to the hilt. They both groan at the feeling. There’s something about that first connection that drives Jude insane every time, like she’s being lit on fire from the inside out and she needs him to keep going, going, going—

Yesyesyesyes—

Cardan pulls back and thrusts forward carefully, then begins a fast pace that has her toes curling in seconds. Her nails scratch at the wood of the desk. He feels good, so good, so good. She keeps looking from their joined bodies, where his cock disappears into her over and over, to his face, where he watches only her, brow furrowed, lips glistening.

He's waiting for something. Waiting for her to speak, or move, or—

He gives a particularly hard thrust and she moans, mouth hanging open. She catches his eyelids fluttering at her reaction. 

Ah, she knows what he wants. 

"Come on, Cardan," she pants. "Harder."

His next breath catches in his throat and he increases his pace. Jude locks her ankles around his waist and pushes herself up to lean on her hands. She knows she must look as wrecked as he does, but she doesn't give a damn. Cardan's hands splay on the desk near hers, their faces close.

"You can do better than that," she says into his mouth as she brings a hand up to tug on the jewelry in his ears, her calves squeezing his slender hips. 

Cardan moans, and she can see his tail flick behind him. He puts both his hands on her hips as an anchor and begins really fucking her. 

Jude loses herself in white-hot pleasure for a moment. The hand she had on his ears grips the back of his neck, her eyes squeeze shut. She throws her head back, broken moans escaping her.

But she gathers herself and leans up again putting her mouth to his neck. Jude rakes her nails down his chest and she can't tell if the sound he makes is one of pain or pleasure. 

"Harder," she demands against his skin. 

Cardan groans above her, his grip on her is hard enough to bruise. His tail winds around his own arm restlessly, then around one of her ankles, slipping across her skin. He lifts her hips now and tugs her to him with each thrust. 

Jude's mouth falls open but no sound comes out. She can't catch her breath and all she can focus on is the feel of skin slapping on skin and the sounds Cardan is making and she's so overwhelmed that she really, accidentally, bites into his neck. 

Cardan just whines. 

Jude's arm behind her loses balance on the desk and she collapses onto it, the small of her back right on the edge, and Cardan comes down with her, back bent over her body. 

This is absolutely feral, what they're doing, and Jude loves every bit of it. She's vaguely aware of him bleeding and what that might do to her mouth but she doesn't care, all she can focus on is how their chests touch and his cheeks are flushed and his lips are swollen and the way her hips feel like they'll crack under his grip and the building pressure in her belly. She reaches to grab onto Cardan's forearm as a way to ground herself but she doesn't get to come back to reality because as soon as her hand closes around his arm, his brows screw up and he's moving his shaking hand down to where their bodies meet and he’s swiping his thumb over her clit and she's gone.

She's pretty sure she screams. 

And it takes Cardan all of three more strokes before his face is buried in her neck, his voice stuttering over something like a sob as he follows her over the edge.

They stay like that, intertwined, spasms wracking their bodies, all the while Jude runs her hands soothingly over Cardan's skin and through his hair.

They've barely been recovering for even a minute before Cardan shatters the glow.

"Thought I was—" his chest heaves against hers, "—going to die—in that meeting."

It catches her off guard. Jude laughs so hard and suddenly that she wheezes. 

Cardan laughs too.

He's still catching his breath when he untangles himself from her and lifts her to her feet with him. Jude winces. She's already sore. 

"We should cut our meetings short more often, don't you think?" Jude says while tracing a finger over his jaw. He leans into her touch.

"Mmm. Maybe next time you'll give me a challenge,” he says, voice sickly sweet with a cocky smile on his face. 

Jude rolls her eyes and tries her hardest not to beam right back at him. It doesn't work. 

So, so annoying.

She loves him more than anything.

---------

Cardan is a bottom and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Thank you for reading! It took me a while to get to this because school started up for me and I have professors giving me hard ass critiques all day every day, so I’ve been a little discouraged lately. Hope you enjoyed!

#jurdan #jurdan fanfiction #judecardan #the cruel prince #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #the cruel prince fanfiction #tcp #twk #qon #jude duarte #cardan greenbriar #tfota #tfota fanfiction #my work #my writing

[readersguidetotheuniverse]

Beach Reads

When we reviewed Beach Read (by Emily Henry) we were highly disappointed by the little reading that was done at the beach, thus we thought to recommend our own favorites. Whether you read them at the beach, on a bus or sitting at your local coffee shop, we hope you enjoy them!

The Hating Game, by Sally Thorne

Alicia: Personally, one of the tropes I enjoy the most is 'enemies to lovers'. I find it so thrilling, I just can't get enough of it. If you're like me, this book may be for you. Sweet and sexy and perfect to take your mind off things. (Also, apparently there’s a movie adaptation in the making starring Lucy Hale and Robbie Amell, and I really hope it's not going to end up being cancelled because I’m really excited about it now)

Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord

Alicia: This one is more on the teen side, but it's still such a good option if you want something to read that won't make you use your brain too much. It's a really fresh and enjoyable story full of funny tweet wars and an 'enemies to friends to lovers' plot that is so cute and adorable. It's so light and quick to read and if you give it a chance, it may surprise you.

Did I Mention I Love You, by Estelle Maskame 

Alicia: This one is somewhat controversial. The main characters are step siblings (no blood relation whatsoever), and some people don't feel comfortable with that, so it's definitely not for everyone. If that's not a problem for you, you may enjoy this series a lot. It's so quick to read and almost addictive. There are three books and a 4th one with a different point of view, so you have a bunch of books to binge-read if you want something light.

 The rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson

Ariadna: If you are a fantasy reader, you sure have heard the name Sanderson at least once. He is one of the masters of the genre, known for his prolific, intertwined worlds and complex magic systems (they make such sense that sometimes you wonder how come they are not real). He usually writes long, rich books, but this one in particular, being directed to a younger audience, is supereasy, superfun to read. In a world where the chosen ones can invoke magic through chalk drawings, Joel, who knows everything that needs to be known about the Rithmatism but has no magic ability whatsoever, and Melody, a terrible Rithmatist student, to win a competition and solve some bigger mysteries. A must-read if you love a good fantasy novel with impeccable worldbuilding.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman

Ariadna: Eleanor Oliphant follows the same exact routine everyday, the same sandwich for lunch, the same cup with the same tea, the same phone call from her mother ever Wednesday... She is so organised and thorough it is borderline sociopathic. But her life will turn upside down the moment she meets Raymond, her work colleague, an unapologetic opposite to her.

This novel is a ray of hope for those who feel weird and mildly left behind in society. I bought it without much expectations, and it surprised me how much you could empathise with such an eccentric character who, in the end, suffers as any of us do. It is full of delicate moments, daydreaming, kindness, pain and unconditional love — a fuzzy and heart-warming novel of self-discovery and overcoming of the past traumas which will leave you feeling optimistic and, somehow, sheltered.

If Only It Were True 1 and 2, by Marc Levy 

Ariadna: Lauren is a pretty and successful medical resident working in the Emergency Room of San Francisco Memorial Hospital who suffers a car accident. Arthur, a single, thirty-something architect rents a flat in San Francisco to the family of a girl who is in a coma... And starts seeing her! You may have guessed right, the ghost is none other than Lauren, and together they will go to unimaginable lengths to help Lauren go back to life.

This plot may ring a bell to some. Yes, the movie «Just like Heaven», starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, is based on the first book of this series, so I won’t spoil you the sequel. If you don’t feel like reading a book of a movie you have already seen, I recommend you to read any other book by Marc Levy —a French romance writer whose short novels are full of light-hearted, optimistic relationships and wondrous journeys (both literally and figuratively) to self-discovery. I personally enjoyed The first day and The first night as well as The strange journey of Mr. Daldry.

The Martian, by Andy Weir

Marina: If there’s something I enjoy doing at the beach more than escaping the scorching heat, it’s reading. The Martian is one of those books I could read a hundred times. It has science facts explained for us lesser humans that know nothing about space; whitty and dry humour that makes you put your book down because you’re laughing so hard; and a trip to Mars, what’s there not to like? This astronaut’s diary is the perfect companion for a day of reading at the beach.

If you think this reminds you of something that’s because there’s a movie adaptation starring Matt Damon, Sebastian Stan, Kate Mara and Jessica Chastain (it even has a little cameo but I’m not going to spoil who it is) that’s also very entertaining. Though, folks, this is another one for team “The book was better than the movie”.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Joël Dicker

Marina: If you’d prefer a mystery for the ages with flashbacks to the time of the crime, here’s a book for you. Dicker’s debut novel, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, takes place in New Hampshire when a novell author takes refuge after a (too) long writer’s block to seek inspiration and visit his old mentor. Who so happens to be the main suspect of an old murder case that took place in 1975. A well crafted and fast-paced thriller you can enjoy while tanning ;)

What’s even better, after the success of his first book, Dicker has published more thrillers that have been very well received among fans of the genre. 

Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy #1), by Nora Roberts

Marina: Now, I know what you’re thinking: Nora Roberts only writes romance books, wrong! He has a couple of amazing urban-fantasy sagas that are amazing. One of them is The Guardians trilogy. It takes place in the Mediterranean (this first book begins in Greece) and Ireland. Six people are brought together by the stars to Corfu to find and protect the stars of fortune from evil. 

I have to warn you though, this is a Nora Roberts book and there is romance involved. Each book revolves around one of the couples (what, you thought destiny brought together six adults and they wouldn’t end up dating each other?) and their roles in the group.

#beach read #reading #read #review #romance #sci-fi #sci fi #fantasy #love #ya #young adult #goodreads #readers guide to the universe #rg2u #rg2universe #mystery #thriller #chick lit #book #book review #book rec #Book Recommendations #summer #literature

[xb-squaredx]

Pokémon Sword and Shield: A Franchise Turning Point

The Pokémon franchise has been around for over 20 years, and in that time it has proven to be more than a passing fad and has carved out a massive multi-media empire. Outside of some rare spinoffs like the Pokémon Stadium games or the likes of Colosseum or Pokken Tournament, the series has stayed primarily on handheld consoles. For years fans dreamed of what a true, mainline Pokémon game could be like on a home console. During E3 2017 when Game Freak announced that such a title was in development for Switch, people got excited. The resulted games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were not quite the main leap people expected, instead being a strange hybrid of Pokémon GO and remakes of Pokémon Yellow. However, the announcement that a true new generation of Pokémon would hit the Switch in 2019 reignited that hype. While at first excitement was high, over time a dark cloud hung over the titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Controversies erupted over the announcement that not every little critter would be featured or transferable to the game, and as time went on any new announcement was met with pushback. Everything from visuals to new features was criticized all the way up to launch day. Now that Sword and Shield are in players’ hands, at the end of the day…how did it all turn out?

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

This time around, trainers embark across the Galar region, basically the Pokémon equivalent to the UK. I do like Galar as a setting; it has a ton of character, with probably the most interesting aspect to it that Pokémon battles are treated as a major spectator sport. If you want to join in the Gym Challenge, you need a sponsor, and your Gym battles take place in massive stadiums filled to the brim with roaring fans. It’s an interesting deviation from past games, even if the basic formula is about the same. The characters within Galar also have a fair amount of charm from your main rivals to the Gym Leaders, to the undefeated Champion. A lot of people give Hop, your main rival, a lot of flak, but I found he had a lot of hidden depth to him and he has a satisfying arc as the story goes on. As he loses to you again and again, he doubts himself and subsequent battles have him throwing in random Pokémon and strangely his signature partner, the adorable Wooloo, is absent. Once he gets his act together, however, he forms a pretty balanced team, and Wooloo’s back front-and-center. It was a neat moment of character growth shown off through gameplay. As far as Champions go, Leon has a lot more presence throughout the game than a lot of past Champions. His flair, his awful fashion sense, his inability to follow directions…it all made him a bit more endearing. Most of the Gym Leaders are pretty much just there as stepping stones, but they all are fairly memorable either for designs or flashes of personality. It helps that everyone gives you neato trading cards too!

Galar’s main claim-to-fame is the Wild Area, a huge collection of different biomes located smack in the middle of the map. It has far and away the largest collection of Pokémon within, with different monsters appearing depending on the weather or time of day. It’s a place you’ll be returning to time and time again, and it made a big impact. It’s the only area in the game with a controllable camera, for one, and rather than follow a linear balance curve, the Pokémon you encounter in the Wild Area are often far too strong to handle. You’re even forbidden from catching Pokémon if you lack a certain number of Gym Badges, so the place is full of Pokémon you can only really admire from afar until you’re “worthy” of getting them.

Take the Wild Area away though, and Galar feels pretty small. With only ten Routes in the game, Galar is among the smaller regions. Most Routes are very straightforward, not many branching paths or hidden goodies, and there isn’t any neat new areas opened up after beating the game either. The Wild Area, from a franchise standpoint at least, is pretty impressive, but looking at the game on the whole it feels a little lacking. That’s not to say Sword and Shield don’t bring in new mechanics to mess around with, but whether they make up for what’s been taken away is going to vary with people.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Since the games went 3D, each region tends to have its own core “gimmick” to differentiate it with older titles. X and Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon had Z-Moves and for Sword and Shield we have Dynamax. Something in the air in Galar can allow Pokémon to grow to colossal size for a short time, granting them extremely powerful Max Moves for its duration. While Dynamaxing seems cool at first, the spectacle kinda wears off after your first few uses of it (not to mention the animation lasts forever), and upon further inspection it’s not as great of an upgrade as you’d think. For one, a Dynamaxed Pokémon only gets a health increase, and all other stats stay the same. Abilities and their elemental types stay the same too, so it’s not a game-changer like Mega Evolution was and it really has more in common with Z-Moves. The Max Moves can be nice, as they’re usually a good deal more powerful when it comes to raw damage, and can come with nice side-effects, but it’s kinda inconsistent. The stronger Fighting-type moves actually become weaker as Max Moves, for one. On top of the base Dynamax ability, some Pokémon can use “Gigantamaxing” instead. This changes their look overall and grants them a unique G-Max Move, though considering how hard they can be to acquire I’m not sure it’s all that satisfying. It doesn’t help that rather than having a certain species of Pokémon capable of Gigantamaxing, it comes down to unique Pokémon themselves that have the trait and it can’t be passed down through breeding either. Overall, Dynamaxing has its uses but I highly doubt it’ll become a staple of the series and will likely be replaced with something else for the Generation 9 games, and I can’t say I’ll miss the mechanic much.

One big addition to the series is Max Raid Battles, found in dens littered all over the Wild Area. Teaming up with up to three other players, locally or online (or team up with awful CPUs if alone), your goal is to take out a permanently Dynamaxed Pokémon. You get a limited amount of turns and if you suffer more than four knockouts, the Raid will end in failure. Victory, however, enables you to get rare and powerful Pokémon, some even coming with really great stats and difficult-to-obtain Abilities, and it’s practically the only way to get Gigantamax Pokémon. The difficulty of the Raids increases as you progress through the game, however, and the Five Star Raids can be brutal. The rewards are great though, getting a lot of extra loot. Bonus moves to teach Pokémon, EXP candies that eliminate a lot of grinding, and more, even if the capture attempt fails. The one real issue with Raids is that some Pokémon can be pretty stingy with appearing in Raids, and you’ll have to use somewhat rare items, Wishing Pieces, to kick some Raids off. There are also the occasional connection issues, but I have more to say on that later.

Outside of these new features, there are the standard quality-of-life changes that each game has, though some can be harder to notice and appreciate than others. You can send Pokémon in storage out on Jobs, to get some neat rewards and some EXP for them, though I find them to be a bit underwhelming. Being able to swap Pokémon on the fly now is a godsend, and together with the EXP Share built into the game, it allowed me the freedom to switch up the monsters in my party and get newcomers up to speed quickly. Most games I barely bother with more than the maximum six, but the sheer variety of Pokémon in Galar let me feel more comfortable with constantly swapping around. On that same note, no National Dex aside, there’s a LOT of choices in Galar. Route 1 alone has over ten Pokémon you can catch right at the start, as opposed to the common mammal, common bug and common bird. It was nice to see some under-represented Pokémon make the cut, but I won’t argue with anyone bummed that their favorites aren’t allowed in. It is a regrettable decision overall, even if it might have been unavoidable here.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention the story much at all because…there isn’t much of one. Pokémon as a franchise isn’t known for its storytelling, despite the Black and White and Sun and Moon games existing and having very well-done stories. Overall, Sword and Shield seems to focus more on characters than an overarching plot and that isn’t too bad overall, but it makes the eventual climax more than a little disappointing. Team Yell, our villainous organization this time around, are just a bunch of hardcore fans for another rival of yours, a girl named Marnie. The conclusion to their story felt very flat, and the eventual main problem involving the Legendary Pokémon is tacked onto the end of the game with little build-up. It doesn’t help that the main villain’s motivation doesn’t make sense. He wants to avert an energy crisis that’s 1000 years from actually happening, and for some reason he refuses to let you get your shot at fighting the Champion because apparently putting things off for one day is unacceptable. It’s just very sloppy. And honestly, “sloppy” can describe a lot of this game, sadly.

WHY Y-COMM WHY

No game is without flaws, and Sword and Shield are far from the first Pokémon games to have their fair share of issues, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these games in particular are a victim of compromise. Game Freak doesn’t have the luxury of delaying games and polishing them up to a fine sheen, not when the multimedia empire has merch and anime to launch at the same time. I’m also certain that working on this game alongside the Let’s Go games AND Little Town Hero did them no favors. So there are areas in the game that lack polish. The story’s abrupt conclusion, the visuals in general, and Galar itself feeling a tad empty; these are all compromises that had to be made to get this game to ship on the date decided well in advance. I can sympathize with the developers here, and really they’re in an un-enviable position. But at the same time, I’ve been playing Pokémon games for over twenty years, and I kind of expect better, you know? Far too many times I have to shake my head and question why something is designed the way it is, or why it feels at times like the games are going backwards in quality. Problems that were solved several games ago rear their ugly heads again, and for this being a brand new generation and the “proper” debut on a powerful home console, I can’t help but feel that this is just a 3DS game that’s been blown up onto my TV.

NPC character models and the Pokémon themselves look fine, as does the sleek UI, but environments look kinda rough. The Wild Area itself, I say with no exaggeration, looks like it was ripped out of a GameCube game. Those trees are a meme, but at the same time, they also look that bad. Some of the main towns are pretty grandiose, be it the giant castle theme of Hammerlocke, or the steampunk designs of Motostoke, while others feel incredibly barren. It’s kind of intentional with Spikemuth, but I was more than a little disappointed with how small towns feel. While it’s great that HMs have been officially retired (starting from Sun and Moon), Galar itself feels like it has little to offer those that want to explore. You don’t get access to a way to cross water until near the endgame, but there are only a small handful of areas you’d need to backtrack to with that ability. There’s not even a Victory Road in this game, or a rough equivalent.

Sword and Shield, from a competitive standpoint, seems to be trying to make strides in breaking down barriers and allowing more casual fans to dip their toes into competitive play, which I really appreciate, but I think there’s still room for improvement. While on the one hand, it’s never been easier to tweak and customize your Pokémon to your heart’s desire, the game is still not as transparent on certain subjects. You can view a Pokémon’s Effort Values, extra points you can place towards stats, on their stat screen, but only if you hit the X button on that screen, and there’s no indication that’s a thing you can even do. I was more than fifty hours into the game before a friend even told me that! There have been some pretty major strides to reduce the time commitment however, so I have to give the game credit there. As far as game balance goes, having less Pokémon to choose from does inspire creativity, though from what I hear, a fair few Pokémon are a bit of a problem, but that’s no different than any other game. Honestly, even attempting to balance a game with so many moving parts and possible strategies is pretty admirable. I’m not deep into the meta of competitive Pokémon though, so I feel there’s not much I can add to the conversation. If there’s one thing I can’t defend however, it’s this game’s connectivity features.

Starting from the DS era, Pokémon has had online features, but Sword and Shield marks the first time that the Global Trade Station, or GTS, has not been available. This means it’s impossible to put up a posting for a desired Pokémon, or fulfill other’s requests. This wouldn’t be so bad if the way to trade with friends wasn’t such a chore. Rather than being able to freely select a friend and initiate a trade or battle with them, players must enter four-digit codes and HOPE the game pairs them up. This is in every way a downgrade from the past several games. X and Y released over SIX years ago and solved this very issue with the Player Search System. Y-Comm, as it stands, is an awful replacement and there’s not one thing about it that other systems didn’t do better.

If you connect online, the game will have “stamps” appear that show you what friends are doing, alongside broadcasting trade or battle requests from random people, but often those requests are out of date, and trying to join in will result in error messages, the requests fulfilled long ago. Trying to join friends in Raid Battles is an exercise in trial and error, and if online in the Wild Area, other players constantly appear within it and as a result the game begins to chug along. What could have been a neat way to interact with other players across the world results in the game becoming worse to play, so I mostly left it off. Connecting with others has always been a franchise selling point, way back to the days of the Game Boy Link Cables. To see this game drop the ball so severely is worrying. I care about this far more than the graphical issues, far more than the National Dex, and it makes me hesitant to try out the next titles if they can’t solve these issues and KEEP them solved.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games; they’re in fact filled with charm and fun. I’ve logged over 80 hours into the game over the past few weeks and the hours flew by. There’s a lot of work that’s clearly been put into the game. The Pokémon designs and concepts this time around are really creative, for one. There’s the Applin line, dragons that hide in apples, and the abominations that are this game’s fossils; carelessly stitched together pieces of incompatible fossils resulting in a freak of nature. I love them. My heart goes out to Game Freak, because it’s clear people worked hard here, but this simply can’t be the game they wanted to make. I think Sword and Shield are turning points for the series, but it’s unclear if that’s a good thing or not.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding these games, they’re still the fastest-selling Switch games ever. Many fans are pretty satisfied with the game as-is, and the real bitter pill disgruntled fans need to swallow is that…these games have no real reason to improve in quality. Think about it; sales aren’t down, and there’s not a true rival to these games anymore, so why would the hire-ups at Nintendo and The Pokémon Company give these games more time and resources? On top of this, remember that these games are only one part of the massive whole that is the Pokémon brand. Pokémon GO makes a frankly disgusting amount of money, the anime has been going strong for two decades, merch is in no short supply, and now we can likely add major Hollywood films to the list as well. If Game Freak was any other developer, behind any other franchise, they’d likely be able to delay the games to polish them up and add in content that would otherwise be cut, but they can’t do that when they MUST launch simultaneously with the anime, the card games, the merchandise, etc.

The series has been around for so long now as well, while many fans have likely moved on from the franchise, new ones are lining up to take their place. On top of that, there are Pokémon diehards that will likely always support the series. Pokémon is a constant for them; it’s almost like comfort food in game form. They’re not WRONG for feeling that way, and I’m kinda in that same boat. I knew going in that these games were going to be somewhat disappointing, but I still bought the thing! For all the rage directed at these games, many people still gave them their money, and I think the message has been read loud and clear: Pokémon can get away with cutting Pokémon, so it’s unlikely Game Freak will change course any time soon.

Now, of course, that’s one way to look at things. A negative way to be sure. It’s also possible that Game Freak can learn from issues they had with developing these games and push past them. As they get used to console development, to HD development, and get a better idea of what fans want, the next games might actually surpass all expectations. Pokémon as a franchise has always had feature creep to deal with, and Sword and Shield is clearly where it all boiled over. So maybe if they don’t have to worry about accommodating nearly 1000 critters in every single game, they can make larger strives towards higher quality. I don’t want to count them out, but at the same time, I won’t hold my breath either. I’ll always be open to what path this franchise takes, even if they stumble a bit to get there.

In the end, Sword and Shield feel more than a little rough, but there’s some real bright spots glimmering in what might be the franchise’s Darkest Day. The Pokémon themselves are still fun to use and capture, the characters and world of the games are still wholesome fun, and I’ll reiterate that pumping over 80 hours into this game didn’t feel like a chore and I was largely engaged for the entirety of that time. Here’s to hoping that brighter days lie ahead, and a few years from now we can look back at the Dexit controversy and laugh.

-B

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #zacian #zamazenta #applin #scorbunny #sobble #sobblesquad #grookey #nintendo switch #blog #review #xb-squaredx

[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a fantasy role-playing game developed by Big Huge Games and published by Electronic Arts. In the fantasy realm of Amalur, Fate has dictated the comings and goings of all things. Particularly sensitive to the workings of Fate are the immortal Fae, whom are divided into the Summer Court and the Winter Court. However, tragedy strikes when a rebellious Winter Fae named Gadflow decides that the current Winter King isn’t doing enough murder, and that he should be king instead. After killing the Winter King and usurping his throne, Gadflow and his followers, the Tuatha Deohn, go to war against the mortal races of Elf, Gnome, and Human. The mortals seem doomed, as while the Tuatha can be killed, they reincarnate quite quickly and return to fight, whereas the mortals die when they are killed. To circumvent this disadvantage, a Gnome by the name of Fomorous Hughes creates the Well of Souls, a device meant to resurrect the dead. You are its first apparent success, and in the process of reviving, you become unbound from Fate, and basically ruin it for everyone. Now, you are the last hope for mortal-kind to defeat the villainous Gadflow and his Tuatha followers, restoring balance to the Fae Courts and preserving the realm of Amalur.

I first heard of Kingdoms of Amalur back in the mid-2000′s, just around when I was playing Oblivion obsessively. It was contemporary with another third-person fantasy thingie, Two Worlds, which the GameStop employee recommended against, before trying to shill for GameInformer. I suppose my point here is that I picked up KoA:R because I was curious to see what I had missed all those years ago. And yes, I am aware of the controversy surrounding the game’s creation and the dismantling of Big Huge Games, but I must confess to not being too familiar with the happenings.

The first thing one may notice in this game is the graphics. They’re actually pretty damn good, with beautiful vistas and vibrant landscapes. The characters are surprisingly expressive, even if that expressiveness does result in some humorous facial expressions. The character models are a little funny though; all the men, at least, have what I like to call “Ground Beef Body”. I ended up naming my character “Flaskkott Djur”, or “Pork Animal” in Swedish because he immediately reminded me of a hunk of ground beef (I got the word “Flaskkott” confused with the word “Nottkott” which is “Beef”. There’s your Swedish lesson for the day).

(Just look at that chin! And he’s got the neck of an ox to boot!)

Speaking of vistas, the diversity of environments is greater than I might have expected; although, get ready to see plenty of magical forests. There are, however, plenty of deserts, beaches, swamps, and arid landscapes to explore, all with plenty of monsters to kill and things to loot. All the environments are quite pretty and vibrant to behold and great emphasis has been placed on making each area feel like its own self-contained region. Even the magical forests feel different enough from one-another that you’re not likely to get lost.

(Upward shot of one of the game’s major cities. Go all the way south, along a beach and across a desert and through a forest, and you’ll find a Greco-Roman city ruled by Gnomes, as opposed to this necropolis-looking thing.)

Character creation is interesting. You only have two choices at the start; race and deity to worship. Funnily enough, you can choose to be an atheist, and it may be the best choice in my opinion, not because I’m some trilby-wearing “Dark Enlightenment” nutter, but because being an atheist gives you a permanent +1% experience point boost, and I’m always a slut for levelling up. All the other deities give you different boosts, and each of the four playable races gives you certain bonuses to non-combat skills.

When I say that you only have two choices at the start, I was leading up to something. See, KoA:R sort of has you create your character throughout the entire game. Every time you level up, you get a point for non-combat skills and for combat abilities. You could easily make the case that all RPG’s do something similar, having the player build up their character over the course of the game, but the difference is that KoA:R basically gives you nothing to begin with, save for a few points in all the beginning combat skills, plus a few points in non-combat skills dependent upon your chose race. Most other RPG’s would at least give you a bit more than that, if only to establish a direction. KoA:R is unique in that building your character is a persistent, fluid process, which keeps it engaging; in addition, the ability to refund all your points for a small fee allows you to go back and try a different build should you get curious/ fed-up.

One side-note I’d like to make mention of: If you’re the sort of person who gives a shit about difficulty curve, don’t buy the “Weapons and Armor Bundle” DLC. As the name would suggest, it creates a chest in the first town filled with weapons and armors for you to grab and use at your leisure. And while you’ll get/craft better equipment in time, it’s still better than the equipment you would otherwise have at the time, and it throws the balance off for a bit.

Speaking of crafting, the game actually has a pretty rad crafting system which allows you to create equipment, potions, and socketable gems. And frankly, once you put enough points into the requisite skills, you can craft some frankly ridiculous things. After a while, I was salvaging nearly all my equipment for the spare parts, rather than selling it. Gold wasn’t much of an issue anyway, and I wanted to see if I could craft an even more effective murder tool.

If it seems like I’ve been avoiding the topic of combat for a while, it’s because I’ve been avoiding the topic of combat for a while. Honestly, I think it’s one of the weaker elements. It’s slow and cumbersome, and it’s completely possible to be hit for a full combo because you couldn’t get your fucking shield up in time because you were already swinging at a different enemy. Whenever I swung my sword, I was committed for roughly the next half-hour. Also, for those of you more used to Dark Souls styled dodge-rolling, I should warn you that the dodge-roll in this game does not seem to have any invincibility frames; it just zips in a direction real quick is all.

(Spiders rather quickly became my arch-nemeses. They always came in groups, attacked somewhat unpredictably, and where often harder to kill than might be expected.)

To be fair, once you level up a bit and develop your own tactics, combat becomes easier. Learning your enemies’ attack patterns and learning abilities that stagger them, or prevent you from being staggered will help immensely.

If the plot synopsis up there seemed kind of involved and a little faffy, it’s because that’s how the game is. Ostensibly, the whole thing is based on old Irish and Scottish myths about the fae, and while the influence is clearly there, and it’s clear that the devs at least did a modicum of research on the mythologies they use. I like the idea of fighting Fate, the rapacious bastard. Although, there’s a bit where it’s implied that you’re appearance (remember, your character exists outside the web of Fate) was itself predicted by Fate. As others have pointed out, that point is kind of mad, but it’s not as big a deal as it sounds, and there’s evidence to suggest that perhaps Fate has simply rewritten itself to fit you in.

(The antagonist either screaming in madness or receiving amazing head. I’ll let you decide.)

Now, I have a bit of a confession to make. I spent almost my entire time playing this on sidequests. Much work has been done to ensure that the sidequest chains are engaging, from helping the resident mercenary guild fight an invading demon lord and his army of elven followers, to saving a small village from a rogue Fae and her spider minions. I had a lot of fun on all the sidequests; I almost forgot about the critical path. By the time I got back, I was massively overlevelled and had a set of powerful equipment to back me up.

Here’s a weird thing apropos of nothing: while the human ladies are dressed normally (boob-plates notwithstanding), the elven ladies are almost always in some kind of revealing top, often a deep V-neck. I have no idea why this is; there’s no lore reason for it. Maybe Big Huge consisted entirely of elf-misogynists? It’s bizarre is all.

(She’s just dressed like this. No idea why, especially when a normal human wearing leather armor has it look like regular leather armor.)

Now, some people have compared this game to Skyrim; certain reviewers even calling it “Baby’s first Skyrim“ I don’t necessarily think the comparison is a fair one. Whereas Skyrim is very much a standard fantasy RPG in the vein of its forebears, KoA leans more heavily on semi-frenetic combat action, even bumping up against the (admittedly nebulous) action-adventure genre in the subway car. Crafting is different as well. Whereas Skyrim has you stock up on ores and ingots to craft with, this game has you salvaging your old weapons to find screws and grips and rivets, which gives the crafting a different feel, even if they are functionally very similar. While Skyrim is admittedly a more detailed, immersive experience (glitches notwithstanding), KoA is about as complicated as it needs to be. It gets in all the features it needs to be a pretty good game in its runtime.

And Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a pretty good game. Levelling up is more addictive than it is in most RPG’s, and great pains have been taken to make sure that each quest is fun and interesting, not just the main questline. Despite the reputation it’s accrued as a cut-rate Skyrim or “That one game what got a bunch of people in trouble and now it’s owned by Rhode Island,” I’d recommend it to anyone who likes somewhat complex fantasy worlds and/or anyone who likes their RPG’s a little bit on the actiony side. I may come back to it. After all, I’m more than half-way to the level cap and I’m not even close to the end of the main quest.

All in all, it’s a damn fine game. Would love to complete it some time.

(A back shot of a male character. I told you these people are made of ground beef.)

#archon reviews #video games #video game #fantasy #rpg #kingdoms of amalur: reckoning #kingdoms of amalur

[tigerlover16-uk]

Zeno has became rather controversial in this arc. so what is your opinion on him?

Honestly… I’m not completely sure what to make of him anymore.

I mean, I liked him at first. He had a neat design, he was simultaneously kind of adorable and yet creepy, and his interactions with Goku are interesting. As of this arc… I don’t know.

I mean, he presents a different kind of conflict I suppose. The guy is literally the top God of the multiverse and he could wipe out anyone just by raising his hand. There’s no punching this guy into submission to save the day, with him deciding to blow up any of the universes that don’t meet the standards that have been set for them everyone’s basically stuck, since none of the God’s feel like there’s much hope in reasoning with him.

It does raise a lot of questions, and leaves me curious about how the heck the Z fighters are going to make it out of this while saving the other universes aswell. Because there’s no way they’re not going to at least try to wish them back. Why have the super dragon balls involved if that’s not the case. I’m really curious to see where they go from there and how they manage to get the Zeno’s to agree to spare the universes afterwards.

I think it’s a good idea for the series to experiment with different kinds of antagonists, apart from straight up bad guys you have to punch and shoot with lazer beams and boom, the day is saved. Variety in the big threats is good and keeps things from getting too formulaic. The whole tournament is a bunch of heroes, a couple of rogues and a tiny handful of villains (Frost, Frieza) and just regular warriors who want to go about their business being thrown into a fighting ring and forced to fight for survival all because God is a careless child who doesn’t seem to put much value in the concept of life. That is pretty interesting as a concept, it’s suitably original for Dragon Ball at least.

When I think about it, Zen’o really is the most terrifying character in the entire franchise, just for how dangerous he is and how kind of messed up it is that someone with his mindset, a child who flicks planets into one another like marbles when he’s bored, is the king of the multiverse. Contrasted with a lot of his genuinely cute and childish mannerisms, and it just makes him all the more disturbing.

At the same time, I don’t really think he’s been used to his full potential yet. We had a slow burn build up to him and what kind of a threat he could pose from his introduction, through the Future Trunks saga, to the start of the universe survival saga. It worked pretty well, but for most of this saga he’s just been kind of in the background with the focus mostly being on the main cast and some of the other universe characters preparing for the tournament.

We see glimpses of him and Future Zen’o now and again, but we never spend a ton of time with the two on their own, I think there was only one episode where we got significant screentime with them and the Grand Priest before the tournament, and that was mostly about giving us glimpses into the various universes.

We don’t really get much into either of their mindsets, why they want to destroy the universes other than the idea that they’ve been wanting to do it for a while since most of them have fallen short on expectations. And honestly, other than just being the rulers of the pantheons of Deities I still don’t know what their actual duties include, especially since the Grand Priest comes off as more the one who actually gets things done.

They just seem weirdly detached from everything. Even Goku, who present Zen’o considers a friend, but he didn’t show much reaction when he was possibly killed, just some general interest in the stuff he and at times his son are doing in the tournament.

Which, alright, that all gives the sense that they, and probably the angels too, have a very alien mindset and don’t have a similar view of morality as we mortals do. That could be interesting, and is kind of appropriate for higher being type of characters. 

But thus far, nothing much has really been done with it other than Zen’o just generally being presented as a loose cannon who Goku or any character could unwittingly set off at any minute if they’re not careful, but that doesn’t really happen until the current saga.

The two of them have just been sitting around for the whole tournament going “Whooooaa!“ and generally acting like small children. Sometimes it’s cute, at times their dialogue gets really repetitive and can be annoying. Maybe that’s partly the point, and sometimes they can actually be charming, but it doesn’t always work and can come off as padding when they’re just stating the obvious.

I don’t even know what we’re supposed to think of them based on how the Zen’os are presented. On one hand, the fact that some careless children with no apparent value for the sanctity of life and the power to destroy all of reality are the gods of everything is terrifying, and I haven’t seen anything to really prove that the multiverse wouldn’t be better off without them. Maybe they’re supposed to be villains, but yet Toriyama did set up the whole friendship between Zen’o and Goku and depicted him initially as really just wanting a friend, which was treated as a really sweet moment when he was introduced to his future counterpart.

So… are we supposed to hope that Goku can somehow reform the two through his interactions and friendship with them, teach them the value of mortals and they’ll go on to be better, less destructive rulers? That could be interesting, and kind of fits for this franchise, but we haven’t really seen any sign that that’s the end game. The two have just been there hovering above everything, and Goku hasn’t had much interaction with them for a while.

Are they going to do a plot at some point where everyone rebels against the Zen’os and the Grand Priest? That could also be interesting, I guess, and would give us an interesting conflict about how the heck do you defeat someone who can just raise his hand and poof, you’re gone? But again, no real indication that’s where this is going.

So far, they really just feel like they existed to get the plot rolling here. I’m sure we’ll see where this is all going at the end of the tournament, but for now I really don’t know what to think.

They’ve committed some abominable acts, so I could see them being treated as villains. How exactly you would redeem them is a good question. Extreme Blue and Orange morality applies, so you can’t exactly judge them by the same standards you would a normal person, especially since they’re just children that didn’t know better and of course the stuff they pulled is going to happen if you give all the power in the universe to some small children and tell them they have to run everything, perhaps? Is that anywhere near good enough, even if the damage they did gets reversed and they do a better job going forward?

Or maybe they’ll just go with the whole Grand Priest being the real villain thing. I don’t know anymore.

There’s a lot to unpack about Zen’o, yet all of it just makes me confused about how I’m supposed to feel about him. I think the reason he’s so controversial is because the series, possibly deliberately, doesn’t seem to want to tell us what the heck we’re supposed to view him as and just leaves his actions and role rather ambiguous outside of the fact he’s really dangerous.

I’m reserving a lot of my judgement until I see how the current arc ends and what Zen’os role is going to be going forward, and we have a better idea of what we’re supposed to view him as. A villain, a neutral but deadly force, something else? Right now he just feels like a walking plot device, and depending on how things are executed going forward he could either be an interesting character in the long run, or just a waste.

#zen'o #Omni-king #dragon ball super #dbs

[a34trgv2]

Top 10 Disney Disasters

#10. Renewing Pickle and Peanut: I acknowledge from a business stand point, if a show is popular, it should get another season. Pickle and Peanut, however, is not that popular. Not only have ratings declined since it’s premier, but less and less people are talking about it, and when they do it’s not positive. But apparently, no one at Disney Television give a shit as it’s been renewed for another season. If you thought less people were watching it by the end of Season 1, then no one is going to watch it at the start of Season 2.

#9. Giving up on John Carter: After being in development limbo for over 80 years (I’m not kidding, Hollywood’s been trying to get this character of the ground since the 30s), Disney finally gave John Carter his cinematic debut. Despite under performing at the box office and getting mixed reviews from critics, audiences were very accepting to it and wanted more. However, instead of let’s say attempting to make an animated show based on it like one of their other cult films (Tron) or having the character find new life in video game form, Disney just gave the film rights back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ estate. Really? After decades of being stuck in development limbo, John Carter is just thrown back in? I know Disney lost money on the film, but they could’ve saved the character from falling into obscurity again by making a tv show. But, that’s reality I guess :/

#8. Ripping Off Ren and Stimpy: I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll keep it brief. Disney is a company that has made a name for themselves in pushing the boundaries of animation and story telling. So they should be more than ashamed of themselves for mooching off the success of their competition instead of making their own original show -.-

#7. Ending Wander Over Yonder: Just, why? About a year ago, Disney decided not to renew Wander Over Yonder. Why? Honestly, I don’t know. I know Craig McCracken said they “felt 2 seasons and 80 cartoons was enough,” but he never explained WHY they felt that. And no, it wasn’t because of the ratings nor was it because Disney didn’t like it. It really does baffle me how Phineas and Ferb got 4 seasons and 222 episodes before getting the axe (not bashing the show, I actually like it, I’m just trying to prove a point) and yet they felt Wander Over Yonder was just a 2 Season show and a 3rd would spoil it. What?!

#6. Canning Potentially Good Sequels: I know the direct-to-video sequels are notoriously unpopular, but that doesn’t mean they’re all without merit. Cinderella 3 told a fairly solid story and had some genuine stakes involved. Tarzan 2 you could argue is just filler, but kid Tarzan does go through a real character arc in this movie. And Return to Neverland is my personal favorite of the bunch and that’s mainly because of Jane. Disney Toons had plans for sequels to Dumbo, Chicken Little, Meet The Robinsons, and Pinocchio among others before John Lasseter shut them all down. I respect his dislike for these films, but I honestly believe some of them could have been more than just run of the mill. Like, more adventures with Pinocchio or The Robinsons; I actually wanted to see a Mulan 3 (Mulan 2 isn’t in my top 10 Disney sequels, but I don’t think it’s that bad). At the very least, these movies could’ve been decent with the right amount of effort, but like with Circle 7, John would like the rest of the world to pretend these ideas never happened.

#5. Bad Timing on Release Dates: Winnie The Pooh, Muppets Most Wanted, The Rescuers Down Under, The Rocketeer and Treasure Planet. You know what these movies have in common? They were all released at the worst times for their respected genres. I’m not a box office analyst (check out Grace Randolph for those statistics; yeah, yeah I know “she’s terrible” “kys” blah blah blah -.-), but last time I checked, you shouldn’t put something as innocent and family friendly as Winnie The Pooh up against something massive like Harrry Potter. Nor should you release a goofy family comedy like the Muppets in the spring if you expected similar results like its predecessor. Also, who’s idea was it to release one of, if not THE best Disney sequel the same week as Home Alone? I don’t know about you, but that’s not very smart if you ask me. Why? Really think about it; this was Disney’s first sequel and it’s set in the desert of Australia. They put in alot of effort to make this an improvement over it’s predecessor; from the animation, to the characters, to the story, even down to the humor. All that effort and yet they decided to release it around the holiday season, as opposed to, I don’t know-SUMMER?! I know no studio is perfect, but there should be no reason why they messed up these release dates so bad.

#4. Sitcom Overload: You know how many sitcom are on Disney Channel right now? 6. And they’re all about preteens or teens going through their everyday lives with wacky hijinks and some character bonding along the way. To be fair though, they are better than the Stupid Sitcoms on Nickelodeon, but the quality of them isn’t the problem. The problem is that there’s so many of them and not enough animation. Like I said earlier, Disney has made a name for themselves in pushing the boundaries of animation and storytelling. So, where on Earth is the animation on television? Answer: Disney XD. The reason why this is bothersome is because when people think of Disney, they think of the animated content first and the live action stuff after. Disney has made some good live action movies and tv shows for sure, but they’re not nearly as remembered as the ones that are animated. As such, the Disney Channel is generally regarded as the Disney Sitcom Channel. Yes, from a business standpoint, sitcoms are profitable, but too many sitcoms can damage you brand as an animation company and in a sense it has. Also, on a minor note, can we change Disney XD back to Toon Disney? I’ve honestly never understood the name change so can we turn it back? No? Worth a shot :/

#3. Controversial Jokes: I know comedy is subjective, but that doesn’t mean joke’s can’t cause an uproar if handled poorly. And boy were these handled in the worst way possible. Making a joke about models barely eating on paper, sounds exactly what you think it sounds like: a joke that inadvertedly sounds like an eating disorder joke. And it was. The joke was from an episode of Shake It Up and while that joke was removed, this wouldn’t be the last time Disney did something like this. Did you know Jessie has a character who eats a glutten free diet and they made an episode revolving around this? No? Because alot of angry parents saw that and Disney was forced to change it or risk getting doxed. Disney should really remind themselves that they can’t make light on topics like these as it does more harm than good. They didn’t joke around with racism, so eating disorders should obviously be a no no.

#2. Producing Dumb Ideas for Bad Movies: Mars Needs Moms, Alexander and the God Awful Title, The Santa Claus 3, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Prom. All of them were terrible ideas made into equally terrible movies. Mars Needs Moms, from the title alone is their worst film, no contest. You know it’s bad when the title sounds like a 4 year old thought of this film. The plot is nonsense, the characters are awful, not even the animation does it any favors. This isn’t the first time I’ve ranted on this film, so let me explain the biggest problem with this movie: the concept. Why would an alien race need our human mothers to grow the species? They were doing just find before. Alexander, meanwhile, is based on a kids book. Wouldn’t be so bad if A. The title wasn’t stupid and B. The plot wasn’t a light version of Everybody Hates Chris. I’m aware The Santa Claus has its fans, so it wouldn’t be fair to put it on the list because of my hatred for the film. Objectively, however, The Santa Claus 3 should not have been made with the generic It’s a Wonderful Life plot. I don’t care if It’s a Wonderful Life is a classic, it should not be remade and retold over and over again. The other two were based on a joke or dare, I swear. Who was asking for a movie about going to the prom? And don’t people hate Lindsay Lohan? And drama queens? Especially if they’re teenagers? I’ll refer you back to my point at #s 4 and 8 because I hate repeating myself -.-

#1. Ignoring Song of the South: In the Tom and Jerry Highlight Collection, Whoopi Goldberg did an introduction explaining why the cartoons featured in the DVD included Mammy-Two Shoes despite her being criticized as a racist stereotype (I’m with BenTheLooney in that this criticism is bull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl01VhWbC74). Whoopi said that taking her out of the DVD would be the same as pretending she didn’t exist. Don’t get me wrong, racial stereotyping is bad, but so is pretending films and cartoons involving black characters didn’t exist. Case in point, Song of the South, I feel, is one of Disney’s underappreciated films simply because of the portrayal of blacks in the Post-Civil War era. I get it, slaves were miserable after the war; that said, that’s not what the film’s about. Its about a boy living on a plantation who listens to the stories of Brer Rabbit, told by Uncle Remus. The film was last seen in theaters in 1986 and never received a home release in the U.S.. Bob Iger calls it “fairly offensive” and you can debate all you want, but not giving this movie a home release isn’t helping your case. That only makes people want to see it more. Whoopie Goldberg herself wants this movie to have a home release. Sure you can just bootleg it or watch it online, but if you were to own it on Blu-Ray, you could get some insight into the process of making this movie, a brief history of racial stereotyping in movies. They still play the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah song, and they put alot of effort to the theme park attraction. This movie should not be ignored because the company wants to stay family friendly. Families don’t keep things from each other, just saying.

Conclusion: I love Disney, just about everyone loves Disney; but they’re not perfect and to think otherwise would be foolish. Pointing out their flaws and criticizing their actions is the only way they can get better. I’m aware of the Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar problems, but I wanted to focus on Disney specifically. Know any other Disney slip-ups? Let me know in response to this post. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon.

#Disney #Walt Disney Pictures #whoopi goldberg #song of the south #uncle remus #Disney Channel #disney xd #disney television animation #cartoon #sitcoms #like #share #reblog #follow #pixar #marvel #star wars #Wander Over Yonder #savewoy

[jbuffyangel]

HVFF Nashville Wrap Up

It’s midnight. This is the first second I’ve had to sit down and write about Nashville. I was knee deep in SDCC planning with my Just About Write ladies today. It’s gonna be lit folks! We can’t wait to cover it for you.

So... I decided to go to HVFF Nashville for one reason and one reason only. M*lissa B*noist was attending and my daughter could meet Supergirl. The obsession runs deep my friends. When M*lissa canceled Lauren was absolutely devastated and I was in a bit of a panic. Primarily because I didn’t know what else she would enjoy at HVFF. She’s not allowed to watch Arrow. She’s only seen a few clips, but Lauren loves Felicity Smoak. Hand to God this is how she described the show to a friend.

Friend: What’s Arrow? 

(The friend overhead my husband and I discussing my blog)

Lauren: It’s about Felicity Smoak. She is super smart and loves computers like I do. She fights crime.

Friend: Okaaaay. But... who is Arrow?

Lauren: (completely blasé) Oh. He’s just Felicity’s boyfriend.

I mean.... she’s not entirely wrong. She also possibly summed up 95% of the fandom’s view of the show, so I give her points for that. But... Emily Bett Rickards wasn’t going to be there. So, I was unsure of her level of excitement over Stephen.

Turns out she was pretty excited to meet him. 

Well, she was excited to dress up as Felicity, spend time with Mommy, shop and swim at the hotel pool, but Stephen was absolutely on the list. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how much of the convention she would enjoy. Turns out she LOVED all of it. 

She shrieked when she saw Chewy and BB8. The force is strong with this child.

I fully support her superhero choices.

Honestly, it was just fun to share my little Arrow world with her. I already blogged about her autograph with Stephen, but here are a few more details. She was nervous and wanted very much to ask him a question, but didn’t know what to ask. So I gave her the question, “Will we have to wait all season for Olicity to get married?” Thanks @callistawolf for the suggestion. Man didn’t even blink. Folded immediately with, “No I don’t think so.” WEDDING CONFIRMED. THANK YOU MY ANGEL. Stephen is powerless against little Felicity Smoaks.

After the autograph, apparently Lauren felt like she had a rapport with Stephen. (Wink wink) Lauren floored me when she said she wanted to ask Stephen a question at the panel. Thought it all up by herself. Marched on up to the mic. I promise you she does not get this confidence from me. This is all her father.

Round three was the photos. Lauren said she had another question for Stephen. I explained that every time she had a question for Stephen, Mommy had to fork over a bunch of cash, so she was all done. Undeterred Lauren remembered she still had a photo with him and decided she could ask him there. She wanted to have a chat with Steve I think. Maybe over milk and cookies. I very quickly downplayed the interaction and explained he has a lot of people to get through and the photo goes very quickly. There won’t be any time for questions. 

She waited very patiently for her photo and, yes the line was moving fast. I could tell she was getting nervous again. When it was her turn, Stephen smiled at her and I said, “There he is. Go ahead.” I knew Lauren’s plan was to just stand next to him, but Stephen smiled at her again and said, “Yeah... no. Let’s try...” and he scooped her up. Lauren was airborne and completely shocked. My girl is tall but very thin for a 10 year old, so the man basically palmed her like a basketball. LOL To say she was thrilled would be an understatement. 

He set her down and I whispered thank you as she scurried back to me. And Stephen gave me a very sweet wink.

This was our convo after...

Lauren: HE PICKED ME UP MOMMY! I was NOT expecting that.

Me: I know. I saw. Pretty awesome!

Lauren: I was going to ask him on a scale of 1 to 100 how strong is he?

Me: I think he answered your question.

Lauren nodded speechless.

Me: I’d say as strong as Daddy. 99?

Lauren: (giddy) YES!

My daughter can be very introspective at times and the conversation we had on the airplane on the ride home struck a chord with me.

Lauren: Do you think Stephen gets tired of doing conventions?

Me: Well... I think he’s making a lot of money and people tell him he’s amazing all day. As jobs go, I don’t think it’s  a terribly tough one, but he does have to travel a lot and that can be hard.

Lauren: (very quietly) He probably doesn’t get to see his little girl very much.

(Stephen told a sweet story about Mavi at the panel. I was truly surprised Lauren brought her up.)

Me: That’s true. He lives in a different city when he films the show. Then he travels to conventions. Sometimes she comes with, but you are right. Stephen spends a lot of time away. Although I’m sure he sees Mavi every chance he gets.

Lauren: How old is his daughter?

Me: She’s little. I think she’s in preschool. 

Lauren was quiet again and I could tell what she was thinking.

Me: It’s nice that your Daddy is home every night isn’t it?

Lauren: Yeah.

Me: Fame has its perks, but there are negatives. Daddy isn’t famous, but I think you got the better end of the deal, don’t you?

Lauren: Yes.

Bonus points to my husband for remembering that Ming Na voiced Mulan as we scanned the guest list after Melissa canceled. Well played Dad. 

Of course, Ming Na is gorgeous and wonderful with kids. Lauren named off most of the characters in the movie and wanted to know if Ming Na had stuffed animals of them. (Stuffed animals rank high with her still). Answer: Yes, she does in her office. Lauren was quite pleased Ming Na was Disney Princess-ing properly. She had bracelets and candy for the kids too, so her parenting game was strong too.

Of course, meeting fandom friends is always a highlight of conventions. It’s always so funny when we introduce ourselves. Obviously, we start with our real names, but it’s only when we say our screen names that the light bulbs go off. 

I was able to meet @scu11y22, @jedichick04, @laurabelle2930, @ireland1733, @redpensandgreenarrows, @emmilynestill, @quant-um-fizzx, its_mjayy and Brittany_Ellis . (Sorry if I forgot anyone!!!) Y’all were as nice as can be. So sweet to both me and my daughter. Thanks for chatting Arrow with me, listening to me ramble (Yes, I do the same thing in person as I do in the reviews. I am deeply obsessed) and sharing your convention and real life stories with me!!! So happy to met you all.

We spent the weekend with my amazing friend @hotcookinmama. She is my life saving editor and beta for all my fics and Nashville tour guide extraordinaire. Angela picked us up from the airport, drove us around town and gave us a fantastic tour of Nashville. She found great restaurants for us to eat at. Absolute gem of a host. She is also one of the sweetest and most genuine people I’ve ever met. Our girls were fast friends and had a wonderful time playing together. #Perfectweekend

Two of my favorite convention moments were with Angela and both involved David Ramsey. I had a VIP ticket so I told Angela to tag along with me while I got my autograph with David. Typically they don’t mind how many people you have with as long as they don’t try to get an autograph at that time. I figured this would give Angela two visits with David (she would get her auto in the general admin line later). David and I chatted. He gave me that great spoiler and off we went. I started chatting about the spoiler as we walked away, but as I turned to look at her I realized she was crying. 100% FEELS OVERLOAD from meeting David Ramsey because he’s freaking David Ramsey and always wonderful. It was her first convention and I was just so happy to be part of that purely joyful moment with her. It’s so rare when we are gloriously happy as human beings and she absolutely was.

The second, of course, were the AMAZING SPOILERS David gave Angela. She essentially guessed the first six episodes of S6 because she’s a clairvoyant, kick ass fic writer. I was standing in Stephen’s empty booth, just on the other side of David’s. I was out of earshot, but enjoying watching Angela and her family interact with him. When Angela came over to me she was freaking out by what he told her. Then I was freaking out. It was AWESOME.

Regarding M*lissa’s cancellation - yes I was angry. These tickets are expensive, plus airfare, and it’s always difficult to disappoint your child. There seems to be some controversy over whether or not she was really working. Obviously, if she was working that’s understandable even though it’s frustrating. 

If she wasn’t really working well... that sucks. A LOT. 

That said, Stephen’s kindness went a long way to ease my daughter’s broken Supergirl heart and I appreciated it. I should probably let her watch Arrow now. ;) What’s most important though is the time we spent together and the memories we made on our mother/daughter trip.

#personal #arrow fandom #olicity fandom #hvff nashville #stephen amell #arrow cast appearances #arrow spoilers #arrow season 6 #olicity spoilers

[celticnoise]

We, as Celtic fans, have certain rights and responsibilities.

Our responsibilities including giving our club scrutiny when that’s required.

You know what? That’s also one of our rights.

As Celtic fans, as people who love the club, we do have that right because our scrutiny is of the healthy sort.

It is the kind that keeps Celtic on the right track.

What happened at Ibrox in 2012 could never have happened at Parkhead.

I firmly believe that.

Even at the hour at which the bank was readying itself to foreclose in 2004, there were Celtic supporters who were aware of every development and actively involved behind the scenes.

Yes, Fergus got there first with the chequebook but people either forget or don’t want to remember that there were others waiting in the wings, and that his success was built on a grass-roots campaign within the support itself.

Take nothing away from the wee man – he’s one of my idols – but if he had been forced to rely on backing from the sort of Peepul who watched the Craig Whyte show unfold he’d have had a much harder climb to the summit.

Nobody has to tell me or the other writers on this blog, or indeed you guys, that our club has a transfer policy which often seems incoherent.

Today’s latest rumour – which in keeping with my promise I won’t discuss until it’s done – simply adds to the general level of bafflement about areas not strengthened.

But amidst it all I know there is method in Brendan’s apparent madness and if we pull off the deal that’s being touted around in the papers then it’s a signing I’ll be very happy with even as I scratch my head.

Other people claim to be scratching their heads, but their commentary is designed to do only one thing; to stir the soup.

Take Tam McManus for instance; when this guy speaks the football world does not exactly stop to listen.

He’s another example of an ex-player who thinks pulling on the boots for luminaries such as Dunfermline, Ayr United, Falkirk, Derry City and the noted global superpower of Rochester Rhinos, qualifies him to speak intelligently about the game.

You need intelligence first, though, and it’s not the only requirement.

See, it’s not for nothing that I read and respect The Guardian’s sports team above all others.

Here in Scotland there seems to be an assumption that fans would rather read the lumbering claptrap of ex-players rather than brilliant, insightful stuff from professional writers who combine their technical skill with a keen understanding of the game, although when you read some of the “journalism” produced by those in our press who are allegedly qualified for it the difference between their output and that of the likes of Kris Boyd is minimal.

But I especially distrust ex-players who become pundits and who betray their complete lack of knowledge every single day by trying to get by on being controversial and stirring up fans. With a handful of exceptions – I love to listen to Steven Thompson and Michael Stewart for example – they are a pretty clueless bunch.

McManus sent out a tweet earlier asking what formation Brendan expects to play with the signings he’s made thus far.

It was part sarcasm, part cry for help.

The media is really having difficulty with the idea that our manager has decided that the best way to wrap up the league title and to go after the Treble Treble is to score more goals than the opposition … but that particular theory has I, think, been fully vindicated.

It is, after all, the whole point of the sport.

But I’ll tell you what; on the day Brendan needs team-building advice I am certain that the first person he’ll call is the man who thought Kris Boyd should be selected for Scotland last year. That kind of insight and intelligence and ability to spot talent is what our manager lacks.

Or does he?

What’s Brendan’s record again?

Oh yes, it’s seven trophies for seven.

I reckon I know whose judgement I have more faith in.

Then there’s a news article which seems clearly designed to do nothing more than have a cheap dig at Brendan and the club, because the point it raises is so specious that it’s barely worth debating, yet debating these things is pretty much what I do, so here goes.

Written for The Evening Times, and by Matthew Lindsay, it is entitled “How is Brendan Rodgers going to give all his Celtic players game time after January recruitment drive?”

The title alone makes you shake your head in wonder at the cheek behind it, the brass neck, the brazenness. Had we not bothered to sign anyone the media reaction would have been hysterical. Now we’ve signed too many players and can only have an unhappy squad.

I mean, really, how else to treat that but with utter contempt?

Yet the article itself answers its own question; it is not a bad piece in fact, except for that clickbait headline and opening which reads like a dig before actually showing some of that insight which is missing from the likes of McManus.

Brendan’s ambitious expansion of the front line gives us options, creates competition and gives us more direct firepower than we’ve had in a while. Yes, there are a lot of players vying for a handful of starting slots but I could write an article on how Gerrard faces an identical dilemma with his over-bloated midfield and three strikers competing for one position.

But that’s not an assessment you’ll read in the press.

“How does he give all of his players game time? Isn’t there a chance that some will grow disgruntled due to their lack of involvement?” Lindsay asks, about Celtic’s squad and the choices our manager faces.

It is hard – no, it is impossible – to imagine Chris Jack asking the same questions, and yet the situation over there is even more complicated and has implications for their financial sustainability. Celtic’s playing squad doesn’t endanger our existence.

I love that these people are so concerned about our tactical plans and about the composition of the squad.

Celtic fans are concerned too, but for different reasons. We do understand that improving the attack is the key to breaking down eleven man SPL defences and that our defensive record – we’ve conceded only 14 goals in 20 games – isn’t really where the problem lies, at least as far as Scotland goes.

We get what the manager is trying to do.

Our worries are more to do with Europe, with next season, with the Champions League qualifiers we sort of take for granted.

The thing is, Brendan doesn’t and he knows that we need to be more readily putting teams to the sword.

The concerns of people like McManus are noted; but you can’t escape the notion that they are, of course, not concerned primarily for Celtic but with Celtic.

The folks who drooled over Defoe and said that his signing had “laid down a marker” seem awfully worried about our response to it, and when you’re at Celtic and are making these people nervous then you know you’re definitely doing something right.

You can discuss this and and all the other stories by signing up at the Celtic Noise forum at the above link. This site is one of the three that has pushed for the forum and we urge all this blog’s readers to join it. Show your support for real change in Scottish football, by adding your voice to the debate.

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#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #TheCelticBlog #News

[theconservativebrief]

Just when you thought it was safe to relax, for no further new TV shows were coming to humbly request your eyeballs, The CW decided to start premiering most of its shows this week.

The tiny network — home to some of TV’s best shows, like Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — traditionally waits for October to debut its series, where they can premiere slightly outside of the biggest crush of fall TV season. But with the network expanding to Sunday nights for the first time this fall, it’s got more new series to flaunt than usual, to say nothing of all of its returning shows.

Thus, this week, we offer thoughts on The CW’s new high school drama All American, as well as its reboot of the venerable witch show Charmed. Finally, we have thoughts on HBO’s new series from Girls producers Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, Camping, which also marks Jennifer Garner’s return to TV.

Few of these shows are great, and as critics, we often have limited information on whether they’ll get better. (It’s rare to impossible for broadcast networks, especially, to send out many episodes for review beyond the first couple.) But there’s something in all of these shows worth checking out, especially if you’re a particular fan of their genres.

(A note: We’ve only given ratings to shows where we feel we’ve seen enough episodes to judge how successful they will be long-term.)

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Who doesn’t like a teen drama about a boy from an underprivileged background getting a hand up into the world of the rich and comfortable? It’s been the story of many, many teen soaps over the years, but perhaps most famously on The O.C., where Chino-born Ryan Atwood found himself suddenly living among the spoiled and pampered denizens of Orange County.

The CW’s new series All American takes that format and mixes it with Friday Night Lights for one of the strongest new dramas of the fall. It has its rough edges, but there’s something hard to beat about a good-hearted kid discovering the excesses of money and power, while those who have the money and power discover just how much they have in common with the new kid.

At the center of All American is Spencer (winning British newcomer Daniel Ezra), a football star at South LA’s public Crenshaw High. Spencer is black, and he comes from a majority-black neighborhood. (He’s also based on the real NFL player Spencer Paysinger.) When a coach for a Beverly Hills high school — played by Taye Diggs, who I never thought would make a great Coach Taylor but makes a great Coach Taylor — turns up to offer Spencer a chance at a role on a higher-profile team, Spencer worries about betraying his community before eventually realizing going to Beverly Hills could cement his future.

You can sort of see where this is going from there, but creator April Blair shows a refreshing willingness to keep the story moving throughout the first three episodes, unveiling a healthy dollop of plot twists and soapiness, while also giving her characters a whole lot of heart. Indeed, the twist at the end of the pilot takes the show from “pretty good” to “something I’ll give at least a season to figure itself out.”

There are issues here and there (the ensemble is perhaps a little too large for a show this young, and there’s way too much music to drive every emotional point home), but All American is an intriguing stew of teen soap tastes that taste great together. —Todd VanDerWerff

All American debuted Wednesday, October 10, on The CW and is available on the network’s website. Future episodes air Wednesdays at 9 pm on The CW.

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For whatever reason, The CW’s new spin on Charmed has been embroiled in controversy over its status as a reboot starring brand new actors, rather than a revival starring the show’s original cast. And, sure, the original series has die-hard fans, and in a climate where seemingly every other popular show from the ’90s is being revived just as it was back then, it’s not hard to imagine a world where that happened with Charmed, too.

But if those disgruntled Charmed fans tune in to the new version, they’re likely to find a show that, despite a pilot that’s a bit of a mess, has the right elements in place to become just as fun as that earlier series (if not more fun — that original show could be a bit of a mess itself). Most importantly, Jessica O’Toole, Amy Rardin, and Jennie Snyder Urman (of Jane the Virgin fame), who developed this new Charmed, have nailed the single most important element of the show: the casting.

To make a show about three sisters who are witches — and so much more powerful when together than when apart — you really need three actors who simultaneously exude raw supernatural power and a sisterhood that feels real, not assembled right before shooting the pilot. (Even if you know that’s what happened.) And Madeleine Mantock, Melonie Diaz, and Sarah Jeffery absolutely seem like sisters, with all the attendant benefits and baggage that relationship carries.

Plus, revamping this show to be about a Latina family offers a subtly powerful twist on the idea of those without traditional political power having untapped reserves of raw power. The pilot could do more with this idea (and the series hopefully will), but at least the sisters never feel like they’ve been made Latina to score empty diversity points.

The pilot gets stuck trying to do too much, establishing the sisters’ powers and setting up a longer mystery about an unsolved murder and offering up a #MeToo metaphor as its monster of the week. But with this cast (including a very game Rupert Friend as guardian angel Harry) and smart writers behind the scenes, Charmed will hopefully find itself very quickly. —TV

Charmed debuts Sunday, October 14, at 9 pm Eastern on The CW.

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Watching the four episodes of Camping that were sent out for review, I couldn’t help but think of another recent HBO series: Vice Principals. The shape of that series wasn’t immediately apparent in the first couple of episodes, and what it ended up being was vastly different from (and better than) what its beginning suggested. It rewarded the viewer for watching through to the end.

It seems as though Camping might fit a similar bill, though I would hesitate to presume that it’ll pull off the same gambit. Created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, and adapted from the British series of the same name, Camping doesn’t really make any progress in the first half of its season.

The reasons to watch are apparent from the start: The cast is absolutely stacked, with Jennifer Garner simultaneously playing to type and against type as Kathryn, who works day in and day out to make her life as flawless and meticulously ordered as her Instagram account. David Tennant is perfectly cast as her husband, Walt; he’s as easygoing as Kathryn is wound-up, as embodied by his lankiness and penchant for bucket hats.

Filling out the rest of the group of friends (just imagine quotation marks around the word) out camping in celebration of Walt’s 45th birthday, there’s Ione Skye, Chris Sullivan, Janicza Bravo, Brett Gelman, Arturo Del Puerto, Juliette Lewis — there’s not a weak performance in the bunch.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough. By the season’s halfway point, Camping seems to be fixated on showcasing people behaving badly — whether on their own or due to outside influence — without necessarily having a larger point to make. It’s thin ice for any series to skate on, but even more so when a series asks its audience to invest in characters written to be annoying or self-involved. These people are poison to each other — why keep watching them?

A few moments shine — again, the cast is terrific, and manages to find bits of truthfulness in the way these characters tear at each other — but without a firm sense of plot or structure to keep it all together, the show falters. —Karen Han

Camping debuts Sunday, October 14, at 10 pm Eastern on HBO.

As mentioned, basically everything on The CW is back this week. (Some shows — notably Jane the Virgin — are being held for midseason, of course.) That includes the final season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Friday at 8 pm), which kicks off with a bang, as Rebecca Bunch finds herself in prison. A happy ending to this saga might seem a stretch at this point, but we’d settle for a “mostly okay” ending, honestly.

If you love streaming shows, this is a hectic week, too. Netflix brings the terrific new cooking docu-series Salt Fat Acid Heat (Thursday), based on the book of the same name, and the superbly spooky Haunting of Hill House (Friday). Amazon, meanwhile, launches the first season of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner’s The Romanoffs (also Friday), while the new streaming service DC Universe unveils the gritty Teen Titans reboot Titans (whaddaya know, it’s debuting on Friday). We’ll have full reviews of some of these in the days to come.

If you’re a fan of podcast hosts, HBO launches its TV version of Pod Save America (Friday at 11 pm) and ABC launches The Alec Baldwin Show (Sunday at 10 pm), should you require a TV version of something originally designed to appeal to your earballs.

Finally, if you’re me (Todd), then the only thing you care about is adult swim’s Harvey Birdman: Attorney General (Monday at midnight), a brand new special reuniting the voice cast of the original Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, one of the great, silly spoofs of the 2000s. Sing it with me now! Whooooooo is the man in the suit? Whooooooo is the cat with the be-eak!

Original Source -> This week in TV: a teen drama to check out, a new spin on Charmed, and Jennifer Garner

via The Conservative Brief

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