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copperbadge · 4 years

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Hi. I love your blog! I’m in the middle of a second major depressive episode (my first was in my teens) and like you were, I’m unemployed and living with my parents. I’m now on medication and getting help and applying for jobs, but no luck so far. How did you ‘turn your life around’ and how long did it take you – going from depressed to starting a successful career in the non-profit world? Any advice on how I could do the same?

Oh, Anon. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but in no way did I turn my life around, and I definitely didn’t build a career intentionally.

A lot of the below is general advice -- you are already doing great! -- but I figure some people who are where you are but not quite as far along could be helped by it. Thanks for the opportunity :)

So, here’s the thing: depression is the kind of mental illness that can just be with you for the rest of your life even when it’s not impacting your life. Some depression is situational and therefore (theoretically) escapable, but some of us are just never going to forge enough serotonin on a regular enough schedule. So it’s not a matter of beating depression or backing away from it, but of learning good coping mechanisms: how to recognize an episode is coming, how to keep functioning in a depressive episode, when to ask for help.

And unfortunately while I can tell you what works for me, this is going to vary by person. Some people feel sad all the time; some people feel numb; some people feel okay but are overly impacted by minor setbacks or frustrations, or can do normal life stuff but any deviation from routine sends them into a spiral. These are just examples; there are more. My methods of coping are stuff like building lists, making sure that those lists have stuff like “communicate with friends” on them, being on specific platforms that make that communication easy, and inasmuch as I can, avoiding drama and volatile emotions. Doing the bare minimum of housework to keep myself from being MORE depressed. Making sure my work gets done so that I keep my job, even if I feel like other parts of my life might be out of control.

And as I’ve recently mentioned, I write fiction as a stress response. If I’m not writing but I’m doing okay -- keeping my house clean, feeling good, having fun -- that’s fine. Not optimal, I like writing, but it’s fine. If I’m writing, I’m probably a little stressed, but I’m managing it. If I’m not writing AND I’m not functioning well, or I know I’m unhappy, then I know that the depression is probably worse than I think it is, and I need to go into survival mode.

Some people need meds -- taken year round, even when you’re not depressed. There’s no shame in that and if you aren’t currently using medication, I would recommend at least investigating its use to see if it could help. [ETA: Sorry I 100% missed the part where you are on medication, but this is still useful for others so I’m leaving it in.]

So like...”how long did it take me” is a tough question to answer because I’m still in it. I will be, all my life, and once I came to accept that, I could figure out ways to keep it from devastating me. How long it took me to establish good coping mechanisms? Well, I was diagnosed at 17, which is a rough age to be when it starts happening, but I managed to survive college (barely) and I feel like I had a pretty good handle on managing it by the time I was, I guess about 25. The point at which I was unemployed and living with my parents was the absolute low point of my life, when I was 23-24, but that was compounded by external factors. As soon as I got out of my parents’ house, things improved; as soon as I had a job, even a truly shitty one, I felt like life was survivable. (A huge coping mechanism in those days was actually Netflix, back when it was a mail-you-a-DVD service, because I knew at least a few times a week I would get mail addressed to me with a nice surprise in it.)

And the thing about being here now is -- my parents gave me three grand to get out of the house, find a place of my own, and survive 2-3 months until I could find a job. I couldn’t have done any of what I’ve done without three solid thousand dollars, and even then I got lucky. I quit my first, super shitty job (the only time I have EVER quit a job) and got a job with my last place of work literally two week before the 2008 financial crisis hit. That job happened to be a very visible if very ground-floor administrative position, and from there I was able to impress people who wanted to hire me up to the next administrative level, and from there I was promoted into the department because I showed an active and visible interest in the work they did. That was intentional, but literally nothing before it was anything other than “I need a job and this one offers health insurance.”

Once you have a job in which advancement is possible, which again is a matter somewhat of luck, advancing is just a matter of maintaining a good work-life balance while doing good work and showing you’re interested in supporting the mission of the company. Documenting the work you do, asking for raises, asking or applying for advancement -- putting yourself forward. That’s not so hard. But that’s kind of like starting on third base and telling someone you just need to run 90 feet. You’ve got to get to third base first and for me that was a lot of luck.

But here’s the kicker: you can’t win the lottery unless you buy a ticket. So for you, right now, waiting on that opportunity, your job is to keep yourself alive and reasonably looked-after, gather all the energy you have, and start figuring out a game plan. Whether that’s a shitty job that you agree with yourself you’ll only do for a year, or asking your parents for a huge financial leap of faith if they’re able -- three grand was a LOT for my parents but they knew it was probably going to save my life -- or applying to better jobs that could push you up the ladder. And of course we’re in a pandemic so like, fuck the world, all of this is just that much harder. But people are being hired, and people are moving into apartments, and going to therapy, and doing their best. So there’s hope, as long as you start homebrewing it first.

The thing that has helped me the most in the last twenty years, and which I think may be most helpful and simultaneously most frustrating to you, is that I never just said “I don’t like where I am or what I’m feeling”. I started there, absolutely, but then I asked, “What can I change to stop feeling this way?”

You have to rule out “nothing” as an answer. You probably will have to sit with the question for a while, maybe even a few weeks. You may need to google some weird shit to figure it out. And maybe what you do is a stupid stop-gap like buying yourself a $1 blind box toy once a week so you can feel surprise at something again. Maybe you admit that right now you need to pass the baton and you unfollow or blacklist political activism and activists and just fill your social media with people making dumb dad jokes and posting cat pictures. Maybe that gives your brain breathing room to find more permanent solutions.

But once you get in the habit of “how can I change this”, solutions do start to appear.

So, yeah. Truth is I worked super hard but I also got super lucky. But part of being lucky was being there when the luck finally hit. So I’m wishing you, wholeheartedly, the best of luck.

(Also if your parents have money and aren’t assholes I can’t recommend “Make them give you a long-term loan to get on your feet” strongly enough.)

#depression #coping #career building #Anonymous

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agoddamn · 3 years

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I’m also a little ??? at this whole ‘30’s reel announcer intro thing. It’s very…distinct, but it feels weird to just throw me past a bunch of interesting stuff, like the actual discovery of the signal. This is much more a taste-based complaint than my other remark about story structure, I admit. Just…it makes it feel very clear that the writing priorities are Flashy Action above story.

Another episode of the Clone Wars with no clone content.

WE EVANGELION NOW

I’ve read a lot of fic about Mortis and nobody mentioned that it was an octahedron

So Obi-Wan has that Open Circle logo on his vambrace, but Anakin doesn’t

why does this feel so much like a Star Trek TOS episode

“landed on a mystery planet and there’s a bunch of gods here I guess, whattup Abraham Lincoln”

oddity: she introduces herself as “Daughter” , no article, but the others are “The Father”/”The Son”

If I were in Anakin’s position I would have assumed that she’s immune to rocks tbh. Bitch is glowing, reality is running in fast-forward. I assume she’d be able to handle rocks

Is this the first we’ve seen of Ahsoka dual-wielding or is my memory bad?

smh Ahsoka, short sabers are a massive DPS loss that aren’t worth the additional to-hit bonus. It’s so much easier to get additional to-hit buffs via gear or feats than it is to get additional damage, girl!

“Whoever I’m looking for is in that monastery”

this is such an “I read the script” line lmao he knows nothing about this planet except that its physical features do not adhere to the standard definition of reality, why would a tall building be more relevant than anything else? I mean, it’s an assumption that’s very IC for Anakin, I’m not criticizing that. Just. It’s funny.

i put on my robe and wizard hat.jpg

this mf straight out of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice

…are this guy’s theatrics even necessary? Aside from like, one Mace Windu line I don’t think anyone’s vocally doubted Anakin being the Chosen One

>Obi-Wan straight going 'bullshit’ and drawing his saber on ghost Qui-Gon

that’s my man

I like how Qui-Gon is rendered here (NOSE.jpg) but his voice feels…off. Which is funny, cos I believe this is actually Liam Neeson? lol

holy SHIT, they rendered a blanket. Really breaking the budget for Anakin here

I dunno man, it just feels bizarre and unnecessary to me to represent the Force, something that has specifically never been gendered or anthropomorphized as a single person, as three white people. You can split hairs about how they’re not technically the Force and “only” super-powerful Force beings, but come on. Narratively you are supposed to be taking them as Force Avatars, not a bunch of random assholes high on power. They sure feel like a bunch of random assholes to me, but I’m a mean person

Do you get it. Do you get the joke. Do you get that he’s The Father because Anakin has no father. That is the joke.

GIANT MONTRALS

Do Shaak Ti’s lekku do that awkward thing in profile of dangling over her boobs like this older Ahsoka here? If they do, I don’t recall. Maybe it just looks less odd on her because she’s wearing robes

I really can’t divine the intent, the purpose of this writing, why these people are here, their goals. Narratively or in-universe.

Like, this guy says that he can only CONTROL his children on this planet, and…what does that mean. Are they not sentient? Are they sentient and he just doesn’t believe that? Anakin doesn’t even question the need to control his children (which is, again, very Anakin, but useless to us from an information perspective)

There’s a couple beats of the Imperial March around this guy’s “and a prison” line

Ah yes, so this is where we get that headass “balance is dark AND light” take. I would like to mulishly submit that these are just random, pretentious assholes buying their own bullshit.

“when news reached me that the Chosen One had been found…”

Hang on hang on hang on

You get, like…physical news? I thought you were connected to the Force or some shit. You leech space wi-fi? You steal the neighbor’s papers? Because you’re about ten years late on the whole “Chosen One found” thing and if you’re so hax powerful connected to reality whatever, it’s very weird to me that you’re this dated in your news. I guess this could be a “we perceive time differently because we’re a million years old” thing, but it’s just odd

So far Mortis is a bizarre blend of literal and metaphorical/symbolic in a way that I’m having trouble parsing. Like, The Son’s big fancy plan was just dumping rocks on a bitch on this reality-bending octahedron

LITERALLY if you’re some kind of Force spirit why don’t you just fucking know whether or not Anakin is the Chosen One. Tick of evidence in my “just random pretentious assholes” column

Obi-Wan calls this planet “herself”

stupid-ass fucking regular yin-yang in goddamn incomprehensible space aliens God I hate this so much

“release the guilt and free yourself by choosing [who lives and who dies]”

That…seems like complete gibberish and another tick in my “pretentious asshole” column but whatever, I’ll buy that you believe it

Is it that impressive to lift creatures that already fly?

“it’s symbolic (caw)” note: yin-yang is now completely black

Looks like there’s…constellations in the ring above the arena? There’s a crane in the low-angle shot of Obi-Wan

“It has been foretold that the Chosen One will keep my children in balance!”

By who? When? Is this dude supposed to be so delusional and drunk on power that he’s convinced himself that he IS the Force and that’s why nothing here lines up with greater Force lore?

I really think this guy is just a delusional asshole

#boots watches tcw

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chemicalmagecraft · 3 years

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Foresight is 20/20 Chapter 14

Hinata's palm struck me in the jaw, making me grunt. "Kick his ass, Hina-chan!" Kurama cheered from the sidelines. It was nice seeing how well those two were getting along, even if it meant him encouraging her to beat me up. The two of them actually helped each other a lot. Hinata warmed Kurama up to humankind and got him to be slightly less angry, while Kurama made sure to rub some of his "I'm better than you lousy humans" pride off on her, causing her to be a bit more confident. Plus he liked imparting little bits of arcane knowledge upon his favorite human, meaning...

I just barely noticed with my chakra sense that Hinata was leaking a small amount of chakra out of her fingertips, so I jumped back. Unfortunately, I'd determined with my eyes that expressing too much interest in obtaining the Byakugan with my chakra assimilation would only cause most of the clan to grow wary of me, so I didn't have the ability to actually see her jutsu, but at least I knew to stay away.

I made a few seals, but had to stop when the barely-there chakra rushed me. Even though I moved my arms the chakra swerved faster than I thought it would, causing my left arm to go completely numb. "Ow," I said despite the fact that the problem was that I couldn't feel any pain in my arm. "You're getting faster with that, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Hina-chan said. "Kurama-chan helped me figure it out."

I tried to move my arm, but couldn't. Eight Trigrams Heavenly Will as it was called by most of the family, or much less pretentiously Tenketsu Puppetry Jutsu by Hinata, was a jutsu Hinata invented by combining the basics of Juken that she was learning with the chakra threads I'd showed her how to make and then some sort of advice from Kurama. In addition to acting like a ranged, though technically much less potent, version of Juken, the threads stayed inside the tenketsu of the victim meaning that not only was any recovery from the attack blocked until they were removed but she could also, as her name for it suggested, puppeteer my arm.

"Impressive, sis, but you know that that doesn't exactly work on me." I raised my right pointer finger, causing a single link of yellow chain to form on it. With a bit of concentration, I changed the yellow Adamantine Sealing Chain to a shadowy purple permutation, Adamantine Destruction Chain. I swiped at roughly where I felt the chakra threads with it, managing to snap all of them and suck the foreign chakra from my body.

I'd figured out that my assimilation could also adapt powers that were compatible enough together. I was already working under the assumption that I couldn't just make new elements by combining people's affinities because that would be broken, but I did alchemize Ai's Adamantine Sealing Chain together with the Kikaichu's Parasitic Destruction to make chains that could drain chakra as well as disrupt it for some extra chakra cost. Plus, the disruption and absorption effects synergized, enhancing each other's performance. And there was also the || combination, Parasitic Sealing, which allowed me to cover my body in an aura that disrupts and absorbs chakra. Though it was harder to do than Adamantine Destruction and wasn't perfect...

But I digress. I pointed the chain link at Hinata, shooting an entire chain at her. The general consensus of just about anyone who I used my special chains on was that if I got a grab in the fight was over. Sure, I could still only have more than a few links out for a few seconds without any boost before I got super tired, but between the draining and the throw I could easily pull off with the chains I only needed one good grab to wear down even adults. At least enough to jump in with a few cheap hits to finish them off. Hinata obviously knew this by now, so she ducked under my chain, then rolled out of the way when I tried to pin her to the ground.

I was expecting her to do that, though, and had already prepped my next jutsu. Metal marbles, designed so I could hurt but not kill with my magnet release, scored hits on her side. I charged, and she blocked my foot with her hand. I winced, realizing my mistake when my leg turned numb from the near-instantaneous point-blank Heavenly Will. I used my demon gem-based flight to try to kick her with my other foot, but she got it before I could.

"Full body takeover, eh?" I asked as the rest of my body below my neck was wrested from my control. Really, having a relatively non-draining jutsu that might as well be an automatic win to anyone in melee distance is even more broken than I am...

"Sorry, but can I practice this for a bit?"

I tried to shrug, but remembered the futility. "Go ahead. I still have control over my demon gems, so I can catch myself if you slip up." Hinata spent the rest of the sparring session finding stupid dances to make me do, egged on by Kurama. I did get her to work on her proxy chakra control a bit, though. She could almost make me do Juken by the end. And I could almost do Juken by the end.

kukukuku~

Tenten said something, probably about how much it stank that we had to go to school, as we walked ourselves to school. Well, they walked and I floated because I actually may or may not have a bit of trouble matching other people's walking paces, especially if I'm not paying too much attention... I didn't know what she was saying, though. I was thinking. I mumbled something in response and pulled out my sealing notebook and note-taking pencil, which I used to write down the formula I thought of. I tuned out their conversation even more as I sketched the complex seal down as best I could.

"You messed up a little there," Tenten said as I was finishing off the last strokes.

"Hm?" I asked.

She pointed to one of the runes and oh my that was very wrong. "I'm not sure, but I think it'll just tear a hole in the fabric of space if you don't fix that stabilizing rune." I thanked her and hurriedly fixed it.

"I feel like maybe you should not write down a seal that could potentially tear a hole in the fabric of space itself until you're absolutely sure it won't do that?" Neji said with more than a little concern.

To be honest, I didn't blame him, but... "Graphite's pretty much the worst for making seals," I explained, "which means that it's really good for practicing making the more dangerous seals because it's almost impossible to activate it accidentally. Unless you're a jinchuriki, maybe, but even then you'd probably have to be pretty distracted."

"Well why didn't you have me use a pencil when you were trying to teach me seals, then?"

Finished, I stowed the notebook. "Okay in my defense I wasn't expecting you to screw up the easiest seal in the book when given detailed instructions, much less screw it up enough to accidentally make an incredibly simplified explosive seal. And with the last seal I had you do, I think we both know that you should always assume that there will be an explosion when making a paper bomb."

I tried to teach Neji fuinjutsu once. Turns out he's literally the worst at it. He somehow managed to turn a basic light seal into a thankfully tiny bomb with only a big enough blast radius to burn itself off of whatever it's written on with a noise like a firecracker, which apparently was a theme with him. No matter what, he would always make bombs out of whatever seal I gave him. And then, when I tried to have him purposefully make a bomb, hoping that maybe he was just some sort of bomb savant, he somehow managed to make a seal tag that teleported itself and whatever it was touching to a random place within a fifty meter radius. Which, okay, free spacetime ninjutsu, but how? "I'm still scratching my head on how you managed to make a short-range teleport out of a bomb. Speaking of, what's your mom make of it, Tenten?"

She snorted. "She's still on that high from the wedding, so she's been more concentrated with being all lovey-dovey with Mommy than looking over the seal, but she did say to never let Neji near a seal again when I told her it was supposed to be a paper bomb."

"It wasn't really that bad, was it?" Neji asked.

Tenten laughed and shook her head. "Not at all, Neji..."

"...It's much worse," I finished her sentence with a slight grin. We high-fived. "When I looked at the seal you were making with my eyes, I saw a lot of different possibilities. Random teleportation was one of the better ones. You don't want to know what the worse ones were."

"Right." He didn't believe me. To be fair, I did tend to mess with him... And was messing with him. "So what's the seal you were working on supposed to do? I'm assuming it's somehow related to spacetime."

"Yeah, normally when people screw up seals that have nothing to do with spacetime, the result doesn't do anything to the fabric of reality," Tenten said, elbowing Neji.

"Shut it."

I shrugged. "You're right, though. It was most certainly a spacetime seal."

"Yeah, it looked a bit like an object summoning seal, but a little different," Tenten said. "Was it meant to swap objects between two paired seals?"

"Close. My hope is that it'll form a portal between two locations when chakra's input on both ends, and that it's compatible with demon sage chakra. It's still a little rough around the edges, though."

"Let me guess, secret base," Tenten said.

I brushed my hand through my hair. I was combing it less now, so it was a bit curlier and fluffier. And it was getting so long that my bangs started falling over my left eye more. I loved the way it looked, though. "Obviously. In fact, I have an agent working on finding the location right now. Haven't found anything good yet, though."

"How do you have an agent?" Neji asked me.

"Magic." I noticed a certain building and pointed at it. "Hey, isn't that the school? That looks like a school."

"Yup, that's the school," Tenten said. "Mommy took me here a lot. Mama's job is a little less kid-friendly, plus the teachers looked after me when I didn't want to sit through Mommy's classes."

"Oh right," I said. "Your mom's a teacher."

"Yeah, I said that earlier, weren't you paying attention?"

Something about that sentence felt a little doomy, though I couldn't tell why. "No, I was thinking about how to breach through spacetime to reach another location without accidentally summoning Mega Neo Beqthulhuzillaon, Destroyer of Souls and Eater of Worlds."

"Is that an actual concern?" Neji asked. "Are you messing with us or could you have actually summoned some sort of eldritch horror monster?"

I smirked. "You should know the answer to that question by now. I'm assuming you know the way, Tenten?"

"Duh."

kukukuku~

I tried very hard not to groan. "My name is Uzumaki Tenko," our teacher for the next few years said, writing it on the chalkboard. God I hate chalkboards. If I were Hokage I'd make chalkboards illegal. Which is probably one of the reasons I should not be Hokage, actually... "I look forward to teaching you." I slumped in my seat. It's not that I didn't like her. Tenko was really nice. No, the problem was that she knew I was a literal genius relative to my age level, and with that comes... expectations...

Before, my plan was to just rest on my near-complete high school-level education to put the bare minimum amount of work into the actual academic parts of ninja school, which considering what grades I got with how little effort I put into school before would've made me best in class or thereabouts already. But Tenko already saw me put actual effort into something, meaning she might have been able to tell when I didn't put in the work. So if I didn't want to hear about it from her and Tenten both I'd have to at least half-ass it. Ugh...

I sound like Shikamaru, don't I?

"Didn't I tell you she was going to be our teacher earlier?" Tenten muttered to me. I guess that was what I missed... "And why are you so annoyed Mommy's your teacher?"

"Because she'll actually care if I don't put any effort into my work," I whispered back.

"How terrible," Neji snarked. I flicked him with natural energy. Using natural energy without sage mode may have been a lot weaker, but I could at least flick someone sitting right next to me hard enough to feel. He flicked me back, though. My Neji may have been completely seal-illiterate, but he was just as much of a ninjutsu genius as in canon, and figured out how to feel and manipulate natural energy just by watching me do it, though he hadn't quite managed sage mode yet. We proceeded to engage in invisible and incredibly petty warfare that Tenko would probably have stopped if she were a sensor. Luckily, Tenten was too amused to turn us in. She almost gave us away with her giggling, though.

"Now, why don't you introduce yourselves?" I'm not saying that I completely tuned everyone's introductions out, but I am saying that the only names that I retained aside from Hyuga Neji, Uzumaki Tenten, and Rock Lee was someone from the Yamanaka family whose given name was Kaede. Kaede is a pretty awesome name. Why couldn't I have been a Kaede?

"Hello. My name is Hyuga Kouki," I said when it was my turn. "The reason why I don't look like Neji despite us having the same family name is because he's adopted."

"What!?" Neji spluttered. "No! You're the adopted one!"

"It's nice to meet you," I halfheartedly finished, pretending Neji said nothing. He flicked me for my troubles when I sat down. I flicked back, and as if someone assassinated a duke or something, Flick War II began.

kukukuku~

"Just remember that these are friendly matches," Tenko said when we were all sitting on the ground by the sparring ring. "If I feel like someone is being hurt too badly, I'll stop it there. And once more, it's taijutsu only."

"Why'd you look at me when you said that?" I asked. Her glare turned a little more accusatory. I pouted. "I wasn't gonna do it anyway..."

"Right," she said, turning away from me. "You may now look at the slips of paper I gave you. Who has one?" Tenten and a boy I should probably have known the name of raised their hands. "You two are first. And Tenten, try not to rough him up too badly, okay, sweetie?"

The unnamed kid grinned maliciously. "I hope teach doesn't get too angry after I beat up her precious daughter." Neji and I exchanged a look and snickered. Right, like that kid stood a chance. When they were told to start, the kid jumped in for a punch. Tenten dodged easily and shoved him to the side. He stumbled and fell.

"Get him with your Uzumaki strength, Tenten," I cheered dully.

She scowled at me. "For the last time!" Tenten shouted, then picked up the nearest object. Namely the unnamed kid. "I'm not!" She hoisted her hapless victim above her head. "Freakishly strong!" She threw Hapless Victim at me. Without even blinking, I deployed the demon gems hanging from my earlobes. One formed a springy barrier in front of me that safely absorbed the impact of the collision without too much damage to Hapless, while the other formed a barrier under him to cushion his fall.

"I have no idea why I would think that," I said as I recalled my gems. "Truly, your ability to lift over your body weight in small child despite being yourself a small child is totally unremarkable." She blushed and growled at me.

"Kouki, please stop antagonizing Tenten," Tenko said. "The match is over, Tenten wins."

"How did you do that?" another small child I probably should've known the name of asked me.

"Magic."

Hapless (I was now trying to commit his face and chakra signature to memory so I could keep calling him that) groaned and sat up. "I thought we weren't allowed to use jutsu!" he complained.

"You weren't," I said. "The Uzumaki bloodline manifests itself passively in the form of enhanced vitality and strength, something that Tenten definitely has even if she doesn't quite have the traditional looks."

"HEY!"

"So really, you didn't stand a chance."

Hapless stomped off to his seat and the rounds began again. After a few, it was my turn, as well as, "coincidentally" enough, a young Rock Lee.

"Remember, no jutsu," Tenko reminded me.

"Yeah, yeah," I said, then got into my fighting stan- "Ah, crud," I muttered, realizing that I had not been doing regular old sparring enough. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd actually practiced fighting someone without ninjutsu or genjutsu.

"Start."

I dodged a really shoddy punch. To be honest, it was pretty weird seeing Lee suck at taijutsu. Very lucky for me, but weird. I leaned away from another punch, then caught his arm. "Stop," I commanded. I uncurled his fist, removed his thumb from his palm, and then forced his hand into a proper fist. "It's a common mistake," I assured him. "If you punch someone with your fingers around your thumb, you'll probably break it. Oh, and hit me with those two big knuckles, not the entire fist." When I released him, he cautiously punched me. "Good," I said after catching his hand with mine. "However, I'm afraid that now I have to..." I twisted around and slung his arm over my shoulder in an attempt to suplex him or something. "Finish you!" Key word being attempt... I may or may not have only lifted him onto my back...

"I don't think you did what you were attempting to do..." he said.

"Stupid physics. I always hated that subject..." I shrugged and just dropped backwards in what I hoped looked like a planned move. I really needed to work on my taijutsu...

"Okay, that was not at all what I was expecting..." Tenko sighed. "Kouki wins, I guess..."

"You okay?" I asked as I got off Lee.

He sighed. "I am fine..."

The third noteworthy match was Neji versus Yamanaka Kaede, a hotblooded girl with orange hair like that one Fu guy and red eyes. While Neji was technically a pseudo jinchuriki by now from my experiments, his powers were weird and technically even his "passive" strength would be considered an active jutsu, especially because he could turn it off. The Yamanaka, on the other hand, was surprisingly strong for a Yamanaka. Maybe she was part Uzumaki? She did have red hair. At any rate, while Neji was almost overpowered at one point, he beat her. He was a genius after all.

kukukuku~

"Hey," I said, then sat down on the floor next to Lee. Okay, I actually floated just a bit off the ground, but the sentiment was there... "Sorry about beating you so bad."

He sighed. "No, it's okay... I already knew I would not do well here. I cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu, and you saw how my taijutsu is..."

"Can you channel chakra into things?" I asked. I really wanted to know what would happen if I started him off early.

"I can, but no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to use a jutsu. The doctor said that there is a problem with my chakra coils, so I am incapable of molding my chakra into jutsu..."

I shrugged. "Not exactly a dealbreaker, if you're willing to work extra hard."

"What do you mean?"

I summoned my crystal ball. Yeah, I know it's kind of a stereotype, but I'd made the jutsu from that crystal ball jutsu Sarutobi used to see Naruto in the first episode, plus it did kinda look cool. "Watch this." I waved my hands over the floating crystal ball, casting the jutsu. Despite not activating my Shoraigan, the crystal ball changed to show another location. By using a physical medium, I could show my vision to others and didn't have the same backlash, though with the downside that it wasn't private and I didn't get nearly as much information.

"See that man?" I said, pointing to Gai training. "He used to be about where you are, but now he's one of the most dangerous shinobi in Konoha through taijutsu alone. Do you want to know how?" I put away the ball and looked at Lee. His eyes said yes. "An insane amount of practice, training, and diligence, combined with challenging himself to do something even more difficult whenever he fails a training exercise. You should probably take time to rest every once in a while, especially at first to keep from permanently damaging your body, but I see a fire in you. There's no reason why you couldn't become as good as or perhaps even better than him one day."

There were stars in his eyes, and he was almost crying. "Do you think so?"

I gave him a small grin. "I know so. Also..." I pulled out the other thing I had for him. "This is a bit of a beginner's fuinjutsu kit, at least my version of it. Try and see if you have some aptitude for it. You may not be able to inscribe seals with chakra alone, but if you pick up enough you might be able to work wonders with seals." Imagine Rock Lee with the ability to make and use seals. To be honest I have no clue what would happen but I do know it would be amazing.

He stood up, energized, and gave me a deep bow. "Thank you very much! I will make sure to become a splendid ninja!"

My grin was genuine. "I'm sure you will."

kukukuku~

Usagi

I lurched along the dirt path. My new body of stone and earth was not suitable for travel in the slightest, but I had no other alternatives. It seemed that compatibility with myself was not quite as common outside of Konoha as I assumed it was at first, and the rabbit was either a stroke of luck on my part or perhaps somehow related to how Kurama was present in End Valley at one point. Perhaps his chakra acted as a primer. Still, I did sense a few scattered people in small villages who had compatibility, though I couldn't in good conscience simply abduct and kill an innocent person. I needed to find a bandit with compatibility.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" a source of malicious intent jeered as two men appeared from behind trees. Speak of the devil... The two bandits, however, were nowhere near compatible.

"There's a toll to use this road," the other bandit said, brandishing his sickle. They had yet to realize my anomalous existence on account of the cloak, gloves, and mask I had fashioned for myself.

"Oh," I said. "I do apologize. I was not made aware of the toll. You really should put up a sign."

"You gettin' smart with us?" the first bandit asked. "We'll rough you up!" I probably didn't look like much of a threat either. The body I'd formed for myself was rather on the short side, to save energy. It was still definitely in the adult range, but not by much.

"You two are bandits, aren't you?" I asked. I already knew the answer, of course.

"Of course we're bandits, now give us all your loot!" The sickle-wielding bandit rushed me. That was a mistake. My body became fluid, the eyeholes of my mask gained two red lights where my eyes should have been, and I dodged effortlessly. I removed one of my gloves and placed my hand on his face, my hand like a lunging viper.

"Do you take chakra instead?" I asked, then infused his body with demon sage chakra. He dropped his weapon as his brain itself was altered in such a way that, while he didn't technically die, he certainly couldn't have been said to have been truly alive anymore. I removed my hand, revealing red markings across his face.

"What the hell!?" the other bandit shrieked. Without turning to him, I sent a signal to my new thrall. The bandit that I had just "killed" snarled like a beast and rushed at him. The... I suppose the best word for it would have been "zombie" bit the man on his arm with partially crystallized teeth. The man shrieked, throwing the zombie away and running in terror. I nodded to myself and split my attention in two, one half of my mind focusing on breaking the zombie down into more demon gems and the other tending to the bandit.

When my zombie bit him it infected him with my chakra, causing the cells in his arm to start to transform into the demon gem-like material that I'd used to zombify his partner. I altered the rate at which the infection spread, causing it to slow near the surface while speeding up within his blood and bones. My hope was that he'd notice the infection, cut his arm off and assume he got it all, then hurry back to his leader while carrying the infection. That would be fun. When I was done with the carrier, I turned my full attention to the zombie, which was almost prepared. With a final command, the corpse disintegrated into red powder. Some of it scattered to the wind, where it would be carried elsewhere. The rest came to me. About half of it went behind my mask, where it bolstered my existing gem. The other half I formed into another gem that I hid within my cloak.

With that done, I placed all of his belongings into a bag I had tied to my makeshift body under the cloak. I wasn't to know fuinjutsu, after all. I continued down the lonely road, ever-so-slightly quicker than I had before.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #fanfiction #Foresight is 20/20 #F20 CH14

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yfere · 5 years

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Shipping Calculus! Live Updates from C2E55

“What about shipping calculus? Isn’t the shipping calculus going to be interesting?” people have been asking, and boy oh boy have we wanted to deliver this quickly, but three things happened: 1) Three quarters of our staff took sick days after the episode aired because the anxiety made them physically ill, 2) the Angst Points statistical program we use was overloaded and we had to recalibrate it to handle larger loads of data, and 3) one asshole decided to write fanfiction on company time instead of doing their job.

+10 to Caleb/Cat-Shaped Creatures or in this case, cat-shaped spells. Caleb may have a big heart, but if you want a place in it you’ll have a tight squeeze beside his massive love for massive pointy-eared, bewhiskered, four-legged folk. Bonus points because Caleb’s cat-love apparently gives him game with the rest of the party, between Fjord’s MeeeOOOW and thinking Caleb’s spells are super sexy, Jester going right for Caleb’s goopy center with the “big heart” comment, and Caduceus Clay Grinning Like A Fool.

+10 to Caleb/Fjord/Jester between Jester’s “Caleb is going to kill me, and Fjord is going to finish me off!” belief of the two Charmed and Charming Men (alas, Jester, you could have been charmed with them!), and then Fjord and Jester both standing over Caleb’s unconscious body, desperately trying to keep him and each other alive. For the record, Caleb tried his best to help them too. Mostly he managed it by accidentally tanking and absorbing damage with his multiple KOs.

-2 to Jester/Succubus While Jester was open to the flirting and pursuing the relationship, the succubus decided Jester wasn’t her type after all.

-30 to Beau/Incubus Neither Beau nor the Incubus were each other’s types. What the nine hells was he thinking? If he’d only checked in with Caleb before trying, Caleb would have let him know he should spare himself the effort.

+15 to Fjord/Detective Work Fjord is definitely out to oust the Detective Agency as Wildemount’s #1 Detective, between discovering the beginnings of anchor glyphs being sketched in the tunnels (identified and destroyed by partner Caleb Widogast, rubbings taken by Beauregard), and then discovering the Big Bad Abyssal Anchor that had been causing all of their trouble in the first place (alongside partner Caduceus Clay, identified by partner Caleb Widogast). The Agency needs to work on defending their reputation! Perhaps those documents Nott located on the Succubus will help them gain some ground next week.

-10 to Caleb/Uk’otoa and Fjord/Uk’otoa as for the second time Caleb puts up his middle finger at Uk’otoa’s Super Special Powers and Anyone Fucking with the Wall of Fire. Fjord was sadly robbed of the chance to admire Caleb’s guns as he was knocked himself against some stalagmites by the bidet he summoned. He and Caleb are equally stinky now though, which seems….symbolic.

+15 to Caleb/Fjord as besides being the most compatible Detective Duo outside of the Agency, how Fjord shows Absolute Implicit Trust in everything Caleb says and does. Destroying the glyphs perhaps not a good idea? Absolutely shouldn’t destroy them. We should destroy the glyphs? What a wonderful idea! The only person to support Caleb’s Abyssal Riftmaker in the Bag of Holding idea before Caleb himself thinks better of it. Stays put for as long as Caleb asks in the tunnel, literally saying they’re staying put because Caleb said so, and coming forward again because he said so as well. Sure, he and everyone else got blasted to smithereens for it, but though Caleb/Leadership got -10 points, Fjord was probably mostly just impressed by Caleb’s ability to totally murder him and shoot down all his magical abilities. Concerned and hurting, yeah, bruised in body and ego, but a little turned on, all the same.

-5 Fjord/Self Confidence as Fjord attempts self affirmation exercises to build himself back up after Caleb Fucked Him Up, screaming “I’m not useless!” as he just barely manages to kill a quasit.

-50 Nott/Being a Team Player between healing the mildly-injured wizard in preference to all her other friends he brought to the precipice of death, and forgetting for the second time (third time?) that making things explode while her friends are around causes collateral damage. She’s picking up some bad habits from Caleb in the explosion department.

-3 Caleb/Humor No spell will ever make him laugh. Points mitigated because the joke was a bit questionable.

+8 to Beau/Tough Love. Tries the Diplomatic Friend approach with Caleb, nearly gets set on fire. But beating some sense into Yasha proves effective! Experiments show that fists are the only way to solve problems, guys. And she can do it from a distance now, hey!

+20 to Beau/Yasha. Did not know it was possible to gain so many points while the player for the character is absent! Nonetheless, Yasha continues to carry on the M9 shipping tradition from Fjord, not of having a crit of love, but having crit fails of love. It’s almost as if a part of Yasha was resisting hitting Beau in particular, but once Beau cottoned onto the fact that Yasha wasn’t on her ass in exactly the way she was hoping, Beau too carried on the M9 shipping tradition from Molly of beating your partner back into awareness. Yasha had to scamper off to murder a demon before she could get a kiss, though. Damn.

+4 to Jester/Beau as Jester begs for the enemy to come after her instead, and not Beau. Does the plea make logical, strategic sense, what with Beau’s higher AC, higher HP, and reaction punches? No, but love is rarely logical and strategic. Love is just love. Beau and Jester also bond once more over their love of chopping up dead demon bodies. Compatibility! Keeping the huge demon heart is probably symbolic of something.

+2 to Fjord/Jester as Fjord makes sure to choose Jester’s side of the flanking formation, just to make sure she doesn’t end up alone again.

+2 to Caleb/Jester Another rollercoaster week for a Jester ship! We should be glad we aren’t in negatives with these two! Peak Widojest with the “big heart” comment, with Jester telling Caleb to catch up, with Jester as always standing over Caleb’s unconscious body (whether faking or otherwise!), spending all her time healing him even before Fjord came to help, and dragging him away from the fray. #ItPaysToBeADamselInDistress. How even casting spells against Caleb, Jester chooses the one that will make him less dangerous without hurting him. Points taken away because Jester chopping up bodies brings up supes unpleasant memories, and Caleb came terribly, terribly close to murdering Nugget. The dog is off limits. I guess we could mention Caleb nearly murdering Jester, too. There is that.

+2 to Caleb/Caduceus “I can definitely see you,” Caduceus says with delight as Caleb attempts to stealth. Alas, Caleb is concentrating on Srs Bussniss and does not respond to Caduceus’ poking (Question: Are all Cads ships fundamentally based on banter???) Caduceus trying very hard to heal Caleb in battle despite being in Lots Of Danger, and Caleb’s gift finally coming to use as Caduceus is knocked out for the crime of focusing too much on healing people besides himself. Caduceus making sure to give Caleb resistance while he tries to identify the Abyssal Anchor. I mean, gods forbid he should die, right???

+15 to Caduceus/Death “That was invigorating,” he said. Dying, but getting that sweet confirmation you are on the right path to your personal quest in the process? That’s great. That’s so cool. Can’t wait to do it again.

-20 Taliesin/Periapt of Wound Closure. That item is cursed for you, my guy. That’s 2/2 times you’ve used it and your characters have died. It’s dangerous!

-500 The CR Cast/Sam’s Terrible Beauregard Puns. Stop!!!!!!!!!!

+1000 yfere/Stress ..........................................................................this episode.................

#cr spoilers #critical role #widofjorester #widofjord #widojest #fjorester #clayleb #beauyasha #lavorregard #beaujester #jestregard #please blue gals fans....just pick one ship name so i can tag it #this ep was stressful and observations/calculations may have been affected #we're still troubleshooting the Stress Bug in the statistical software #shipping calculus

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thattimdrakeguy · 4 years

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I used to like Stephanie Brown very much but honestly lately her fandom ruined the character for me. They want EVERYTHING to be about her, even when we are talking about a mlm ship they are like "pls don't erase Steph" and I am like??? And literally saying character flaws are not hating on a character, or most people just hating on her because seriously she is so different in comics and fandom, they need to chill the fuck out and not say everyone is misogynistic just because they don't like her

+ and everytime someone says "Cissie and Steph are best friends" just because the new cover of YJ... y'all forgetting Bart and Cassie were Cissie's best friends!!! Sorry I just hate when people force her into everything and then blame timkon fans for being misogynistic just because people don't want her to be on the team because she has no good relationships with the team, that's not misogyny everyone!!! I hate this fandom sometimes

I just want to ask why TimSteph stans are hating on Tim but still shipping him with their fav character? Literally every single TimSteph stan on their tag are posting anti Tim Drake posts, and talking shit about him, but when someone says something bad about Stephanie they are getting mad and acting like everyone is hating women because of other ships??? Can someone pls explain this to me I really want to know the reason

That’s the part of the fandom that I see sometimes and really brings my mood down a lot of the time, because they’re so caught up in their own world sometimes that it drives me nuts.

Before I disliked Damian because his writing is just freaking awful, I began to not like him just from the connotation of his fandom being so obsessed trying to make him something he’s not based off of just a few moments that aren’t even in-character.

With the toxic part of Steph’s fanbase they’re just so obsessed with trying to make her seem like more of this astonishing character. Not to even say she’s a bad character. I still think she’s a good character, but it’s just the limit the obsessive part of her fandom goes to, just to convince people she’s so great. Sometimes they just exaggerate stuff or just lie so much because they seem to be under the belief that if she’s not incredible as a person that she’s unlikable, but then, why do they like her.

I think that part of her fandom comes from people projecting on her so much that they begin to become defensive of everything she does to the point it feels obsessive.

“OH SHE HAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE BECAUSE *says a very simple thing that they say in way too many words that give the complete wrong connotation of the actual events to make Stephanie seem more impressive*”

“SHE HAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH DAMIAN THAT NEEDS TO BE ADMIRED MORE BECAUSE completely ignores how Damian was a total pervert and a body shamer to ridicule her. Which isn’t a relationship to admire at all. Along with people constantly taking out of context some of the things she did with him, and how it was another case of a writer ignoring Damian’s problem to woobify him. Which makes the issue poorly written. But we must exaggerate it to make Steph seem like a saint apparently.”

This type of fandom stuff bugs me no matter the character.

I remember not that long ago I kept seeing posts that were exaggerating Tim so much, and it bugged the ever-living crap out of me.

Because sorry, but, I don’t care what Red Robin says. Tim could not beat up all those assassins.

I don’t even honestly believe Tim’s a master tactitian. He’s just smart and clever, he isn’t this war general figure.

I don’t care that a comic says that Tim could trick Bruce with a fake Uncle.

Given the way he was built up as a character, that stuff just doesn’t work. That wasn’t anything that was actually developed for his character. It was something they tacked on in what I assume was attempts to make Tim “cool”, because DC doesn’t like relatable characters.

Which is a bit rich because Sideways, a character written by Didio himself, just feels like a knock-off Ultimate Spider-Man with the tone and character-style.

So I don’t want to give the impression that I think everyone in the Stephanie Brown fandom is an obsessive loon, or toxic as could be, because I don’t believe that to be the case. The toxic part of her fandom is just something that has arisen. Something that happens in all fandoms at one point or another. Now is just Stephanie’s go at it I guess. Even if it seems to be from just a few over vocal people, that people gave too much attention because I guess they liked having their fav be overly praised.

The people that say you’re misogynistic if you don’t ship TimSteph are just stupid honestly. At least about that.

If you ship TimKon, it makes no sense to include Steph in posts about it. Unless it’s like, just mentioning how Tim used to date her. Which I don’t feel is a big enough reason to act like people are misogynistic, because, even if say I shipped Tim with another girl. Id be awkward to talk about Steph. We don’t need to shove Steph into everything.

I don’t say the word stupid like I think they’re stupid at everything.

I call myself stupid when it comes to a lot of stuff for an example, but the argument that you’re misogynistic if you think of Tim as gay is stupid, because there’s enough of Tim for so long were it’s easy to interrupt him as gay, and it’s not misogynistic.

You don’t hate women if you’re gay, or anything like that.

That’s homophobic.

If you still think Tim is straight, congrats, I’m not upset. I’m not upset people ship TimSteph. One of my best friends ships TimSteph and she’s writing a wonderful fic.

I’m not even against TimSteph at all.

Just that stupid part of that fandom.

Like Stephanie Brown has flaws right? She flirted with Tim when she knew he had a girlfriend, even kissing him. Reckless as could be. Took things the wrong way. Made Tim straight up uncomfortable with her flirting sometimes. Had a problem with listening even when it was beneficial to her safety. She also had a trust problem when her and Tim’s relationship got into it.

Some of you are probably thinking “Well Tim has flaws too. She had her reasons.”

And you know what?

I agree.

Because that’s how freaking characters work.

Tim’s sheltered childhood made him insensitive to certain situations. He was immature to the point of detriment to his relationship with Ariana in some situations. Too naive to understand some things. Even too bossy because he’s a cruddy leader and didn’t know how to communicate enough for that job.

He’s not a perfect human.

Characters can have flaws, and it’s okay, because that’s how we get interesting stories and dynamics between stuff. Just because Tim has flaws, doesn’t mean he’s not a good person. He’s kind, caring, heroic, despite his immaturity. Just because Tim couldn’t handle the topic of cheating and became immature doesn’t mean he didn’t step up to the plate and try to help Ariana when she was close to being sexually assaulted and she was a bit mentally unstable (that might be strong wordage, but I use those words for myself when a situation hits. So it’s not me talking down about her situation) for a bit.

When you were raised in a mad house, it’s understandable she’d grow up to be reckless. She grew up so independent at a young age, because her parents certainly weren’t taking care of her. It’s also understandable that she has trust issues, because if you’re dating someone with a second life, you would worry that they’re cheating on you.

This is just how characters work

So these posts that wanna pretend she doesn’t have flaws, bugs me, because they want to deny her character sometimes.

Then acting like she’d just be best friends with everyone is freaking delusional. It’s the kind of stuff where it’s done in the vein of “peppy fangirl”, but it just becomes a bit obsessive. I think that’s stuff were my theory on some of those types of fans projecting on her for their own good come in.

I can get, being like “I wonder if these characters would get along”, but getting so hyper and exaggatory is just wack.

I think Tim and Jon would get along and could be good friends now that Jon’s older, but if they were in a comic together I’m not gonna get myself worked up and pretend things are were they clearly aren’t.

Even in the case of Cissie and Steph, I actually feel like they would be pretty good friends together. I can easily see that. But just cuz they’re on a cover together doesn’t mean they’re best friends

And if somehow Steph brought Cissie out to be Arrowette, that’d just be stupid. I don’t know how Steph would even know who Cissie is, because I don’t know if she even knows Arrowettes name is Cissie, let alone in this timeline. Plus Cissie last seen wasn’t a hero. So that’d just be some super cheap and forced writing.

But given the write circumstances, that actually work and make sense, I wouldn’t be against that. If they became friends, I’d be totally cool with it.

It’s that weird obsessive “THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS OH MY GOSH” that’s just a bit unnerving. Like settle down.

Write some fan fics, I really don’t care, but it gives me the vibes of those boyband fandoms that wanna act like their fav is dating some hot chick cuz he looked at her.

It’s less worse than that, cuz those are real people, but it’s that obsessive vibe that I get from it.

I don’t like it.

As for TimSteph shippers that hate Tim. I think it’s because it’s for a similar reason some people make all those posts overexaggerating or lying about so much stuff about Steph.

It’s to get her attention.

They know that Steph’s almost always only gonna show up because writers attach her with Tim almost exclusively, and that may be the only way she’ll show up. So I think they’re doing that, to get some kind of attention so Steph will show up at least with Tim, cuz something is better than nothing.

Although personally, I root for Steph finally hanging out with other characters, because seeing her relegated to just “Tim’s girlfriend” is very annoying, cuz even in the 90s she was more than that. She wasn’t created just to date Tim. She was created to be her own dang character.

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weirdhistorywritings · 4 years

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The Battle of Kleidion (or How to Not Quite Kill a Ton of People)

On today’s episode of weird history writings,

Basil II, more commonly known as Basil the Bulgar Slayer.

Depending on who you ask about Basil you’ll get two very different answers. To ancient Byzantines and even some modern day residents of that region, Basil was basically a saint who could do no wrong. To descendants of the Bulgars, he’s a dick who needs to gtfo.

Quick Background on Basil:

When he was born, Basil’s father, Emperor Romanos the Second, appointed him co-emperor. This was just a fluffy title to make sure he got the gig when Dad died, and it’s a title Romanos gave his other son too so don’t think Basil was too special in that regard.

Anyway, Romanos dies when Basil is super young, and word on the street (literally, it was like the tabloid gossip of the day) was that his wife did it. Honestly, she probably didn’t, but everyone already hated her for being a commoner so they jumped on that train real quick.

Anyway, Basil’s technically Emperor now, and his mom is technically regent. But he’s so young and his mom doesn’t know much about ruling, so all the power went to other leaders who all hated each other and were bickering over who got to do what and who killed who and blah blah blah. They’re unimportant.

Basil finally puts on his big boy pants, and he actually ends up on the throne for several decades.

Quick background on the Conflict with Bulgaria:

It was over land and power, because let’s face it everything is.

Bulgaria set up shop in some Byzantine land a couple hundred years prior, and they’d been fighting each other over it ever since.

Bulgaria had actually been a powerhouse a few generations before Basil’s reign, but they’d been under new management for a while. It wasn’t looking good.

They were being attacked from the north. One of their emperors caved to Byzantium and gave up the entire eastern half of the country. Basically, shit had hit the fan, and they were all sitting around wiping crap off the walls trying to get that shit together and in a bag.

Unfortunately for them, Basil’s young with something to prove and he likes killing things (or almost killing them as you’ll see).

War with Bulgaria:

Pretty much the first thing Basil does when his ass hits the throne is say, “Let’s go slay some Bulgars.” But as Hannah Montana says, “Nobody’s Perfect,” and Basil isn’t either. He attacked, got owned, lost a bunch of men, and was a super sore loser about it.

While Basil was distracted, presumably being butt hurt and putting down other uprisings, the Bulgars were like, “Hey, he’s not looking, let’s steal second base.” So they did, and they took back a bunch of the land they lost.

And then, once Basil beats everyone else, like all of us, he dwells on that first defeat in the 2nd Grade Spelling Bee to Mitchell McDonald, and he vows his revenge (presumably).

Basil and the Bulgars, led by this guy named Samuel but we’re gonna call him Sam just because, basically go back and forth over the years.

Basil wins a battle here. Samuel attacks over there. Basil pillages a town. Samuel burns Basil’s collection of beanie babies.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Throwing metaphorical punches that literally involve killing tons of civilians.

Sam is, however, slowly losing. It’s just math. He’s smaller and has less men. Every time he loses a guy, it hurts a lot more than every time Basil does.

The Battle of Kleidion:

Unfortunately, Sam failed geography class because he forgot that a whole empire was bigger than Bulgaria.

Sam decides to fight Basil outright. He rallies the troops, does some nice strategizing, presumably doodles lots of x’s and o’s on a white board.

And they actually put up a really good fight. All credit to Sam. He failed geography but that man aced P.E. They beat Basil back, and it was pretty impressive.

Sadly for Sam, Basil did not fail geography class. He sent some troops around a mountain, and now Sam’s being attacked on both sides.

Sadly for Sam’s troops, Sam was not a captain because that boy did not go down with the ship. He jumped out of the boat and saved his own ass, leaving them all to be taken prisoner or die.

There’s some smaller fights, but for all intents and purposes this was the last great stand of the Bulgars.

The “Incident”:

What really makes this story worthy of discussion is the aftermath.

Basil’s left with tons of prisoners, and by tons I mean 8,000-15,000 and what do you normally do with tons of prisoners in 1000 AD? Well, normally you kill them all, steal their wallets and go home.

Not Basil, Basil lines the men up in lines of 100 like it’s grade school. And you quite literally poke their eyes out.

Basil started at the back and poked out both eyes of 99 men in a row, and when he got to the guy at the front of the line he only poked out one of his eyes. He did that 80 to 150 times in a row for every single line of men until he had thousands of blind men and only a few dozen that could see out of one eye.

Then, like a sadistic DJ, he made them all line up and do a conga line home.

I’m not kidding. The reason he didn’t completely blind the first guy in each line was because he made that guy lead all of the others home.

I’m sure part of it was that Basil was petty about losing that first fight decades ago. I’m sure part of it was a warning to never do anything like that again. I’m sure part of it was punishment for their crimes. Also, imagine the psychological toll this took on anyone else who was considering joining. It’s one thing to hear that a soldier died. It’s any entire nother thing to see an entire army come back blind.

But also, consider this.

Normally they’d all be dead (or sent home. Some people were nice I guess). Normally, a country would have to deal with the loss of those men emotionally and physically. Yes, there would be a few people coming back with some form of disability, but without modern hospitals you usually came back either dead or alive in those days.

But here, they don’t have to deal with their loss. They have to deal with their care. They aren’t without those men. Quite the opposite. Basil’s just dropped thousands of people into a medieval country who’s only skill is no longer of any use to them and who now are jobless and need to be taken care of.

Much as they despise Byzantium, and believe me they do, how are they to scrounge together an army when they need all hands on deck helping at home.

And that is why he’s called Basil the Bulgar Slayer.

Here are some credible sources that are far more official and far more polished than me. Because finding credible sources can be hard, and as much as I like dramatizing amusing history, it’s mostly a ploy to get you to look into these things yourself.

For Further Reading Online:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Basil-II

https://erenow.net/postclassical/byzantium-the-surprising-life-of-a-medieval-empire/21.php

https://smerdaleos.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/paul-stephenson-the-legend-of-basil-the-bulgar-slayer.pdf

For Further Reading in Books:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/in-the-heroic-age-of-basil-ii-emperor-of-byzantium_penelope-delta/542531/#isbn=1931807523&idiq=12472061

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/lost-to-the-west-the-forgotten-byzantine-empire-that-rescued-western-civilization_lars-brownworth/344493/#isbn=0307407969&idiq=3775765

#battle of kleidion #basil the bulgar slayer #basil ii #byzantine empire #byzantium #900s AD #1000s AD

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mss4msu · 5 years

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We Never Go Out of Style

Summary: You and Steve are in a continual on/off relationship when you finally decide you need to get out of the vicious cycle. That is until he shows back up and convinces you that your relationship never goes out of style.

Pairing: Steve x Reader

Words: 2461

A/N: I wanted to write a fic using the lyrics from T. Swift’s “Style”. The bolded words are the lyrics, and they’re in order based on verse, so hypothetically you should be able to sing along. Also, this used to be a NSFW fic, but I’ve edited it to be clean.

Warnings: There is some angst bc it’s an angsty song. And there is “language”.

Photo Cred: http://alphalewolf.tumblr.com/post/128652676252 @alphalewolf

After a long and exhausting week of work, you decided you needed to blow off some steam. You called up Nat and Wanda and plan to hit the clubs. You spent the past hour dancing and giggling, and were somehow convinced that it would be a good idea to do shots in addition to the drinks you had already ordered. After your 3rd tequila shot you realize that maybe you should’ve just gone home and slept after work. The quality of the dance music was rapidly decreasing, and Nat and Wanda were busy flirting up guys to get them to buy them drinks. There were only so many random dudes you could feign interest in without getting bored. He was the only one on your mind.

“Hey, guys, this has been fun, but I think I’m gonna head home,” you tell them.

“You sure??” Nat asked, turning around from the bar with yet another free drink.

“Yeah, it’s been a long week and I just need to go sleep I think.”

“So it always goes with you. How are you getting home?” Wanda asks.

“I’ll just call an Uber, I’ll be fine! I’m going to run to the bathroom first though.” you respond.

While you knew you should just call an Uber, you also knew you’d rather see him. Although, the chances of him actually answering were slim to none. He was probably still on that mission to God knows where he had left on without telling you. You get into the bathroom and let out a sigh of relief to be able to hear yourself think again. You pull out your phone and check the time: Midnight. You find him in your contacts after a few minutes of searching. You had to stop changing his contact name every time he pissed you off. With each subsequent ring, your heart starts pounding louder and louder.

“Hello?” Your heart skips a beat as you hear his voice. “(Y/N)?”

“Steve,” you whisper. You realize you’re the only one in the bathroom. You clear your throat, cursing that tequila for making you think you should call him over a regular Uber. “Will you come and pick me up? I’m out at that dance club that we went to a few times. You know the one?”

“The one on 53rd? Yeah I remember it. Sure, i’ll be there in 10.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks,” you reply and punch the red button to hang up harder than you meant to. Why did you do this to yourself? He wasn’t even there yet and you already knew the night was going to end badly. To get your mind off of it as you wait, you decide to dance one last song with Nat and Wanda. Finally you feel the buzz of your phone.

“Alright ladies, that was my last song, my ride is finally here. I’ll see you later!” you see two new guys approach them as you turn to leave. They would be fine without you.

You get outside and see people stumbling around you. You look up and down the street, but see no headlights. You then hear a honk and your heart skips a beat. This was a big mistake, you think as you run over to his car.

“Hey,” you say as you slide into the passenger seat.

“Hey,” Steve replies. You hoped he noticed how damn good you looked. You had probably subconsciously planned to call him tonight, as you were wearing the shirt that best showed off your cleavage. “So you want to go home?” he asked

“Yes, please,” you respond, buckling your seatbelt and slouching into the seat. Your head was pounding from the silence after having spent hours listening to non-stop bass, and your heart was pounding to actually seeing him again.

“As you wish,” he said, turning the car back on.

“You finally got to The Princess Bride on your list?” you asked him. You had specifically requested that he watch it, but he had always put it off whenever you were together. You could never figure out why, as it was an iconic love story and the two of you had been in love once, at least you liked to think you had.

“Yup,” he curtly replied. From his short answer you could tell this was gonna be a long drive, but you noticed that what he lacked in words he made up for in the looks he kept giving you. He can’t keep his wild eyes on the road, you thought, feeling yourself start to blush. You could feel him undressing you at every stop sign and red light. At this point, you decided the night could end in burning flames or paradise.

You jolt awake to the car coming to a halt and as your eyes fade into view, you see Steve reaching over and unbuckling you.

“Oh!” I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep!” Wow, Steve is finally back and responsive, takes me home, and I can’t even stay awake for it, you began to internally yell at yourself.

“It’ fine (Y/N),” he answered, holding the door open for you. “You know, it’s been a while since I have even heard from you.”

“Well, I haven’t heard from you either,” you start fumbling for the light switch, taking the time when the lights are off to compose yourself.

“I’ve been busy. I haven’t had time for anyone anymore. It’s not easy being Captain America,” he says as he’s taking off his coat.

“Hmm,” maybe that was true, but it was a bullshit excuse. “Yeah, that’s why I quit.” Nat and Wanda had been trying to get you to tell him for ages, but you wanted to keep this little piece of information to yourself until it was convenient to bring it up. The fact that he had had little emotion all night, which is probably what made you fall asleep in the first place, made you finally decide to share.

“You what!?? Since when?” he asks with shock in his voice and wide eyes. Finally, you got the satisfaction of an emotional reaction.

“I got tired of all the drama, Steve. Saving the world every day takes a lot out of a girl.”

“What drama? Saving the world I get, I say all the time that it’s no easy job. But drama? I don’t know about that...”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Steve. I’ve heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl. You obviously have time for someone.”

“Some other girl?” he asks and then pauses. Finally he says, “What you’ve heard is true, but I can’t stop thinking about you and I. Things didn’t really end well between us and I got lonely on that last mission, (Y/N). 3 months away from everyone I know and love and care about, and then one random person starts to give me some attention and I felt compelled to give it back. I’m sorry.”

“Steve, this is the biggest bullshit. Things didn’t end well between us because, yet again, Fury gave you an assignment and you just left without telling ANYONE. I swear, right now I should just tell you to leave ‘cause I know exactly where it leads...” but I can’t, you finish in your head. You couldn’t give him that satisfaction right now. You were too angry. “How many times will we let this relationship end and then stupidly decide to start it up again? I hate that I just watch it go round and round each time and never try to change it.”

“(Y/N), I said I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately and I get that we are in this cycle of on-again off-again and everything you’re thinking, I’ve been there too a few times. I want to make this work though. I’ve had these past three months to really think about everything and I realized all of the mistakes I’ve made, especially when it comes to you and I’m ready to redeem myself. But, if you want me to leave, you got it,” he said with rejection in his voice.

You angrily look him up and down. You were extra pissed that he had that James Dean daydream look going on tonight. You felt your eyes well up with tears. No. You were not going to cry. He was not getting that satisfaction from you. He never understood that tears didn’t always mean sad. Right now you were pissed. You were pissed he’d gotten with another girl and you were pissed that he had cut you out of his life and you were pissed that he still looked so damn good.

“Something in your eye, (Y/N)?” he asked gently.

Shit. You were tired of him making you cry, and you had sworn to never waste your tears on him again.

“Steve, you’ve been gone for 3 months with no communication. No phone calls, no texts, not even a fucking letter. I know you know how to send a letter. That’s the only way you had to communicate ‘back in the day’!” you couldn’t help the sarcasm that came out.

His face fell. You would maybe have felt a little badly about it if you hadn’t been so heated it. Thank you tequila! you thought. You were finally going to get all of this off your chest and he was just going to have to take it.

“You’ve been gone for months and I still can’t forget you! Anytime I go out I got that red lip, classic thing that you like. I still dress like I’m trying to impress you even when you aren’t here. That’s fucking ridiculous. We just live in this fucking cycle of being together and everything going great and then you get some ‘super secret’ assignment and go away for months with no word and then, wouldn’t you know it, you show up again just as I’m ready to move on! I’m so exhausted by it! When we go crashing down, we come back every time and I just can’t take it! Plus, this time there was another woman involved. Like fuck, not only did you not make time for me, you somehow found time for someone else. Fuck you, Steve.” You were finally crying, you just couldn’t help it at this point.

“It’s ‘cause we never go out of style,” he says quietly to you.

“The fuck does that mean? Use modern terms, Steve.”

“I mean, we never go out of style. This relationship is one that will never get old, even when we do.”

“You know what does fucking get old, Steve? You leaving and me never knowing when you’re coming back or where you went, or apparently who you’re with when you’re there. I’m surprised you even answered tonight, let alone actually show up for fucking once.”

“I’m really sorry I’ve treated you this way, (Y/N). I really want to make it up to you.”

You stared him in the eyes and the softness in his made you take a deep breath and think about what he had said. Three apologies? In one night? There was no way that was what had been happening. In your anger you had probably imagined it. These things were never this easy. Any fight you had lasted hours if not days. He always fought you on any mistake you said he made, apparently his never giving up attitude applied not only on the battlefield, but in his romantic life too.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you say, to which he just shakes his head. You’re so struck with disbelief by his apparent change of heart that you take his silence as time to regain your train of thought. This also gives you a chance to really look at him. Apparently his attitude was not the only thing about him that was different. His hair had grown since last time you’d seen him; you’d never seen it that long. You noticed he also had his hair slicked back. And he was wearing a white t-shirt that you could slightly see through. Fuck, this happened every time too. You’d get pissed, fight, and then remember how fucking hot his body was. The silence between you became more deafening than the music in the club.

He was the first to break the silence. “You’re right, I’ve been absent and it hasn’t been fair to you. I’ve never made the time for you that you deserve and I’ve always put myself first. I’ve really been re-considering my behavior and how I let my job get the best of me, and I got to thinking about how I let myself get the best of me too. You have always been the best part of my life. Everything about you is perfect for me: you are, or were I guess, in the same line of work, you’ve got that good girl faith that a God-fearing man like me looks for, and you look damn fine in a tight little skirt. And you’re right, when we go crashing down, we come back every time. So, let’s stay together this time. I’m telling ya’ gorgeous, I only need one more chance to prove it to you.”

“Why? Why should I think you have or will change? Why would I give you another chance?” you ask him, although hearing him talk about why you were perfect for each other had caused you to feel butterflies in your stomach. It had also caused your underwear to get slightly wet.

“‘Cause we never go out of style,” he repeated.

Your heart was racing. You had been avoiding eye contact during his whole apology, afraid that if you looked at him, you would give in too quickly. Hearing him talk about why he wanted to be with you and having him pledge to not break your heart again, caused you to finally look up. His blue eyes pierced yours and you felt a jolt in your gut.

“Steve, how can I be sure? How can I know you’ll treat me right this time? How can I trust you?” Tears began to sting your eyes

“Because, I love you, (Y/N). I always have and I always will.”

He stepped towards you, putting both his hands on your face, gently wiping the tears from your cheeks. You took a step towards him, feeling the warmth radiating from his chest.

You looked him straight in the eyes, “Always?”

“We never go out of style,” he replied, his fingers tangling in your hair as he put his hands on the back of your head, pulling you in for a kiss.

Tag List:

Steve Rogers/Chris Evans Tag List:

@patzammit

Permanent Tag List:

@sophiealiice @sai-kida134 @mrsdeanwinchester19 @thisismysecrethappyplace @ailynalonso15 @221bshrlocked

#fan fic #revamped post #style #steve rogers #steve x reader #taylor swift #lyrics

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aftermathdb · 6 years

Text

DEATH BATTLE Review: Mario vs. Sonic (2018)

A classic match… With the modern rules… Today, we are seeing an old battle with new rules, better animation, and superior research. Bare in mind, that since the original battle was animated, researched, and written by Ben, so there might be some new things, and there might be a lot of different ideas.

It’s also the first time we’re going to see Wiz and Boomstick animated too.

And the overall episode only really brings them into focus when doing a bit, a demonstration, or a bit of math. So it’s not like we’re watching these two do stuff like use a laser pointer to showcase certain things, we’re seeing them only when it would be funny, or when some math would be needed.

The initial preview states that they are going to focus on the core games, and any material from anything that would be supported from the games.

Mario’s Preview:

Mario’s preview has all the usual stats that you’d see in an initial preview.

And a quick thing about his full name is in a notecard.

(Personally, I’d go with what’s more recent).

And then there’s Mario’s arsenal. Which is uh… Pretty big.

Mario’s arsenal is very big. And with those indefinite uses, he’s got more on him easily.

(Mario easily takes arsenal in this scenario).

He’s also fast enough to react as a being of living electricity. From Mario Odyssey.

And a strength scaling feat is added too.

And Mario having a Tyrannosaurus tossing feat is backed up by the solid gold chain chomp feat back in Mario Sunshine.

And Mario’s feats are a sight to behold.

And Mario punting castles puts his best strength feat at about…

That.

By the looks of it, Mario’s definitely earned the title of Nintendo’s posterboy.

Sonic’s Preview:

And Sonic takes off at blinding speeds, with, what else, his background.

Sega’s lack of caring about how biology works in the Sonic universe is also mentioned. Like how real Hedgehogs aren’t that fast, they aren’t blue, and how Foxes are their natural predator.

Sonic’s equipment isn’t as vast as Mario’s, but it’s still pretty impressive considering that some of his are natural powers, and not limited to power-ups.

And Sonic doesn’t. exactly have Lightspeed capabilities. If one recalls from the Metal Sonic vs. Zero battle, Sonic isn’t exactly light speed, but he’s definitely at least hypersonic.

Sonic also can outrun lightning. Meaning that hypersonic is more or less lowballing Sonic’s speed stat.

And outrunning the black hole thing in Sonic Colors puts Sonic’s best speed at about…

That.

Sonic’s Super Forms also get a quick rundown as well.

And to top it all off, Sonic also has quite the tub of feats to pull from.

Sonic’s certainly earned the title of being Sega’s mascot.

The Battle Itself.

Blindferret is animating this bout, and it’s the second time they’re animating something since Smokey vs. McGruff. Mario will be voiced by Kamran Nikhad while Sonic will be voiced by Nicholas Andrew Louie. Music is done by Therewolf, and is called Retro Rivals.

So, if you saw the sneak peak, you know that the reason the fight starts is because Sonic decided to tan in Mario’s spot.

(And here I thought the reason for Yang starting the fight with Tifa was petty).

Sonic lands the first hit, and until Mario manages to land a good blow on him, Sonic is left to try for a Wisp. By the looks of it, Mario isn’t being granted Cappy, but considering Sonic’s ability to resist mind control, there’s probably no reason to believe that Cappy would have made a difference.

And after using his Catsuit and Double Cherries, Mario manages to force Sonic into the water, and get him to use up his Water Shield.

This forces Sonic to utilize his Super form, and makes Mario use his own Star and Wing Cap. Until the battle gets taken to space, where the resulting clash causes…

That. The resulting clash causes THAT.

Finishing Blow in

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

And the trip back down paints a clear picture as to who would win, considering that Mario up and throws Sonic downward at what can only be assumed to be way faster than terminal velocity.

(So uh… Does this mean that Luigi could beat Tails, or…?)

Verdict + Explanation.

So, in terms of arsenal, it was pretty even… at least considering what each power up could do. But Mario’s wider range of Power Ups gave him a leg-up.

Sonic had speed, no argument there. But Mario had strength. So the big question was if Mario could hit Sonic.

And considering that Mario could react as a bolt of electricity, and pilot the Star Diver, the answer would be yes.

Another factor in the fight would be durability. While both were impressive, Mario’s durability feat would blow Sonic’s strength out of the water.

And Sonic isn’t that much tougher than Mario either. It was only a matter of time until Mario managed to hit Sonic with an attack that could kill him.

Overall impression.

After thinking about it for a while, I came to realize the biggest reason Mario won was because he had more games in the time between the original and this than Sonic had. Mario didn’t really have many feats that could back up being able to hit Sonic back then, and while I’m trying to look at this objectively, I’m a guy who spent the last few years under the impression that Sonic would beat Mario more times than not. Not that I just blindly believed DEATH BATTLE, I just didn’t think that Mario could actually manage to hit Sonic at all to land a killing blow.

It’s a bit hard to come to terms with that, but when you write a story using the characters that appear in DEATH BATTLE and have to make them interact in a scenario where they’re not killing each other, you learn how to no longer give any shits about results.

Overall, the animation was stunning, and the music was really fun. The rundown was pretty good too, and it really feels like it was a big thing. Though, now I’m worried that the fans will start demanding that they go back on other episodes and do those over too, so that’s going to be fun. Can’t wait to see a bunch of angry fanboys demanding that they do Batman vs. Spider-Man over again because they’re still salty about the Dark Knight’s loss to the Web-Slinger (And yes. There are still people being angry and salty about it in the comments section).

8.5/10. It wasn’t a battle that I wanted, nor was it a battle I was expecting for number 100, but it was still fun.

Next Time…

I feel kinda underwhelmed by this matchup. And to be honest, I blame Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite for making people think that this was a better matchup than Ultron vs. Brainiac.

But I guess one extremist robot against another isn’t too bad of a fight. Though this now begs the question as to who Brainiac could fight.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

Robo Extremist vs. Robo Extremist.

#screwattack #Death Battle #Deathbattle #review

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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June 2020

-(16)- - Dream Squasher

Exhibiting for the eighth time on full-length form their mastery of groovy southern sludge metal, the L.A.-based quartet make their statement of longevity and experience a versatile one, from the most trudging, doom-ridden iterations like “Acid Tongue” to the most groovy cuts like “Harvester of Fabrication”, while tracks like “Sadlands” and the harmonica-infused “Agora (Killed by a Mountain Lion)” pay tribute to the NOLA-borne sludge sound’s southern roots. The band do well to keep their performances vibrant all the way through, but the album does eventually tire compositionally a little more than halfway through, the band expending most of their creativity in the first half for sure. Nevertheless, Dream Squasher is far from a letdown and a robust statement of the band’s intent to hold their ground at the top of the sludge metal ladder.

7/10

Cosmovore - Into the Necrosphere

One of my more exciting Bandcamp finds, Cosmovore’s debut here, Into the Necrosphere came out in May, but I couldn’t just skip it. The album is an aesthetically pretty familiar type of spacey, filthy death metal that makes heavy use of a lot of the same low register guitars and dissonant chords that Meshuggah used on their Nothing album, but filled to the brim with blast beats and filthy growls too, sometimes using those more typical death metal elements to jolt out of the meditative trance rather than induce it. The writing here is impressive, the way Cosmovore glides so smoothly from one mood to another and through their various winding atmospheres is beyond what I would expect of most debut projects in this vein and I hope there will be more to come from them soon because this is a very good start.

7/10

Cryptic Shift - Visitations from Enceladus

Speaking of Bandcamp finds, Cryptic Shift’s Visitations from Enceladus has been one of the albums getting a lot of buzz around there and for good reason. 26-minute opening epic that takes up more than half of the entire album is certainly an ambitious kick off for a debut LP, but Cryptic shift have been around for a little while now and have trained for this debut through several splits and demo releases across the previous decade, and Visitations from Enceladus just shows that they are ready and not messing around. As if summoned by the disgraceful dissolution (and recent reformation) of Vektor, Cryptic Shift fill the uber-technical sci-fi thrash void Vektor left behind, though Cryptic Shift lean more toward a balance with 90′s progressive death metal than straight thrash than Vektor, with animalistic growls taking the place of the piercing shrieks in Vektor’s music. Visitations from Enceladus is as cerebral as it is celestial, winding through odd time signatures and twisted atmospheres on a journey as mesmerizing as it is bumpy and dynamic, mirroring the band’s road to this inaugural point in their career, and now that they’re initiated I’m looking forward to what else they have up their sleeves.

8/10

Ulthar - Providence

Certainly one of the more anticipated sophomore albums of the year after their rather hyped up debut in 2018, I was hoping Ulthar would live up to the hype and build on the indeed solid start they set off with on Cosmovore on its follow-up. Providence is certainly not a step down, but the band still aren’t doing anything particularly mind-blowing with their brand of snarling blackened sludge metal mixed with moderately technical death metal. The band do well to emulate a small spectrum of proportions of black and death metal but they are at their best at their fastest and most direct, leaning more toward the death metal portion of their sound, but for about equal time on Providence, they are at their least exciting trying to doom-ify their sound, ultimately just sounding super derivative. I don’t know how the rest of the people who caught this band’s first album’s hype are feeling about this continuation of their sound, but I feel like I’m still needing to hear more to be converted.

6/10

Make Them Suffer - How to Survive a Funeral

On the bright side, at least I can make this one quick because in a year that is seeing metalcore continuing its revival (or next wave) through blossoming young acts like Code Orange, Vein, Knocked Loose, End, etc., Make Them Suffer come through with one of the most cliché, dated, and forgettable, melodic metalcore albums of the year. The melodies are unexceptional at best and cheesy at worst, and the structures of the songs from intro to breakdown are thoroughly predictable. You can imagine your way through this album and you wouldn’t be far off. The highlight moments I could count on one hand are not worth the full 35 minutes to find them that this album eats up.

5/10

The Ghost Inside - The Ghost Inside

Making a significantly more convincing case for the sustenance of 2000’s metalcore, The Ghost Inside’s self-titled fifth LP certainly isn’t shattering any norms or expectations, but the L.A. band showcase a much more competent handling of Gothenburg-influenced melody and a much more palpable sense of urgency in their performances than Make Them Suffer. It’s, again, by no means reinventing the wheel of metalcore, but it is at least taking some of the compositional cues of the times to avoid sappy, cheesy, pop punk melodies a la The Amity Affliction or A Day to Remember (with “One Choice” being an unfortunate exception) in favor of the more direct aggression of bands like As I Lay Dying whose older brand of metalcore has survived the harshening landscape of metalcore these days. While there aren’t too many exceptional standout tracks, when the band hits those cathartic sweet spots like “Begin Again”, “Phoenix Rise”, and “Overexposure” they hit them hard, and at least the filler in between is quite serviceable.

7/10

Cro-Mags - In the Beginning

With two decades of absence to make up for, the hardcore punk energy of Cro-Mags re-enters the fold at quite the apt time, and the band do sound like they haven’t missed a beat. Granted, the primeval brutishness of the punk the band play thrives primarily on attitude more than technical ability or compositional ingenuity, so 2020 alone was probably enough to warm Cro-Mags right back up for their sixth album of meaty punk thrashers. The writing is pretty straightforward and expected for Cro-Mags, but the speed and urgency the band need to resume their duties is present from front to back, with enough grit from vocalist Harley Flanagan and enough solo display from guitarist Rocky George to keep the melody interesting and the octane high. Cro-Mags are definitely a band whose return this year is welcome, and In the Beginning is a good restart.

7/10

Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough - Volume I

Doom power duo Bell Witch emerged steadfast from the tragic untimely loss of former drummer Adrian Guerra with 2017’s monolithic single-track double-album Mirror Reaper dedicated to Guerra’s memory. The 82-minute epic was an absolutely beautiful tribute to the friend and former band mate, subtly brimming with grief throughout the calmer parts of the album, but absolutely open and overflowing with lamentations during the bursts of droning funeral doom heaviness. The duo’s sprawling melancholic doom largely dominates this collaboration with Erik Moggridge’s folly solo project, Aerial Ruin, with the funeral folksman making an easily unnoticeable impact on the album. Perhaps the next of the apparently multiple volumes of this collaboration will be more weighted on Moggridge’s folky style, but for now, Stygian Bough - Volume I is very much a continuation of the heavily slow-trudging dirge that characterized Bell Witch’s first two records and was extremified on Mirror Reaper. Arguably an even further extremification, Stygian Bough - Volume I zeroes in on the hauntingly cleanly sung portions of the band’s seminal album and builds around them with pensive acoustics and towering doom passages, and it’s as sorrowful now as it was in 2017, my one wish with this project being that the band made up for their stylistic specializing with more compositional dynamic.

7/10

Vile Creature - Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm!

Another crushing doom power duo, this one coming with the high praise and recommendation of Lingua Ignota mastermind Kriten Hayter, Vile Creature hails from Ontario, Canada and their third LP here is much more seething and violent in its response to the tragedy and ills of this world than Bell Witch. Blackening their sludgy approach to doom with a searing flame quite similar to that of Inter Arma, drummer Vic and guitarist KW share tortured vocal duties during both the album’s eviscerating climaxes and its eerie atmospheric build-ups, and the diversity of sounds and motifs the band are able to establish through such simple foundational means is honestly pretty impressive. And though the compositional aspect of the album is pretty par for the sludge-doom course the fire of the band’s performances is more than enough to power this album to its destination. Unwaveringly spewing with disdain and furious passion, the kinship between Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm! and an album like Caligula is pretty clear and the mutual respect the creators share makes perfect sense. Knowing Hayter’s eagerness to collaborate with her friends in the music world, perhaps the joining forces of another enigmatic solo visionary and doom duo is on the horizon... But for now, Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm! is well worth appreciating for what Vile Creature alone bring to the table.

8/10

Mushroomhead - A Wonderful Life

As much as their hardcore fan base will deny, Mushroomhead’s legacy for their nearly 30-year musical career has been one of living the shadow of one of modern metal’s most iconic acts, and even if you put Slipknot out of your mind as best as you can, the Ohio band’s angsty musical endeavors have often been obscured by the more tangible strife of off-stage tension that has kept them in a constant cycle of line-up changes and bled into their music through silly posturing and pettiness. Throughout all the replacement members and returning members, the steadfast presence of founding vocalist Jeffrey Hatrix and founding drummer Steve Felton have seemingly been the one thing keeping Mushroomhead from just dissolving completely, until 2018 when Hatrix finally went the way of the dozen others band that walked away from Mushroomhead, leaving Felton the only remaining original member. Now I don’t get too hung up on who’s leftover from original lineups and all because bands evolve and it’s kind of arbitrary, so this doesn’t really hit me. And I say this with all due respect to the guy and all the well wishes, but I was actually kind of looking forward to hearing Mushroomhead without Jeffrey “Nothing” because his vocals were just never my cup of tea and consistently one of my least favorite parts of their sound. Plus I was curious to see what the addition of Jackie LaPonza’s vocals would bring to the band. As I alluded to previously, my general distaste for Mushroomhead goes beyond Jeffrey Nothing (who I do respect as a capable vocalist, just not my taste); the band’s amateurish experimentation has never helped their already-low-brow alt-metal that has made negligible evolution across the band’s career, and their last album in 2014, The Righteous and the Butterfly, did not do any convincing for me to revisit their catalog. While still kind of redundant compared to most metal acts, on A Wonderful Life, the band’s three-pronged vocal attack reaches a new height with Nothing’s replacement, Steve Rauckhorst, being a respectably versatile filler of shoes and a much more pleasing clean contrast to the oomph of J Mann’s gruff shouts, which still stand out as a highlight in the band’s sound. LaPonza indeed brings a novel element to the band’s sound which is carried heavily by the vocal dynamic on this album, though she’s not quite as distinct as J Mann or Rauckhorst. Nevertheless, her contributions are a net positive for an album that surely needs them, which brings me to the instrumental facet of the album. Despite their aesthetic rejuvenation and upgrade on the vocal front, the vast majority of A Wonderful Life is still Mushroomhead being Mushroomhead in all the same wrong ways: generic alternative metal with corny methods of enhancing the horror and edginess of it all and clearly mismanaged attempts at experimental techniques that are clearly out of their league that only end up hampering the album’s impact. The band land a few hits here and there; “The Flood”, “Madness Within”, and “Pulse” come to mind. But the rest of the album is passable alt metal at best, with some real stinkers like “Carry On” and “Seen It All” thrown in there to make up for all the ground they gained on the standout cuts. I really want to like Mushroomhead because something tells me I should, but they really are running out of time to get me on board, and by the looks of A Wonderful Life, I think that’s a train I’m just not gonna ride any time soon.

6/10

Aversions Crown - Hell Will Come for Us All

Seemingly through sheer force of technical and melodic prowess alone, Aversions Crown emerge with undoubtedly one of the standout technical death metal albums of the year, and one that serves as a fierce advocate for the genre’s natural power. Hell Will Come for Us All is neither aesthetically groundbreaking or even compositionally progressive; the band’s footwork is dazzling and impressive despite it all being a smoke screen to the same destination every time. You know exactly how they’re going to punch you every time, but they still land each hit, and they land hard. The incredibly deep guttural vocals, the monstrous guitar rhythms, the joint-breaking percussive fills all explode with such overwhelming pace and firepower it’s impossible not to at least appreciate, and if techdeath is your cut of tea, this year’s harvest from Aversions Crown will certainly be a good one to sip on for awhile.

8/10

Mulla - مَوْلَى

This debut album from Iraq’s Mulla actually came out in January, but the band’s mission to capture the spooky atmosphere of the middle east as they say is accomplished through many of the same gnarly means that the Norwegian godfathers of black metal sought to portray the icy desolation around them. The guitar tone is thin and dry as expected for a lo-fi black metal project, but there’s a cutting quality to its graininess, like a sand-ridden windstorm. It is pretty straightforward and not too compositionally dynamic, but it sure as hell captures the mood Mulla is going for.

6/10

Inexorum - Moonlit Navigation

While it’s no surprise that their 2018 debut album, Lore of the Lakes, slipped by me unnoticed, Inexorum’s sophomore effort this year will be a harder one to ignore. Stitching together the triumph of Amon Amarth-esque melodic death metal with the naturalistic grandiosity of atmospheric black metal with the magnificent sense for modern pensive doom guitar melodies and harmonies that made Khemmis’ Desolation an absolutely perfect album. I had to re-listen to this thing quite a bit to make sure my affinity for it wasn’t just for its resemblance to an album that I love so dearly. But my enjoyment of Moonlit Navigation honed in, rather than waned; I became appreciative of the interweaving of the sorrowful melodic motifs into the driving black metal structures, and while I think the band still has some compositional knack to hone, I think this album is a fine foreshadowing of what they’ll have to offer if they hone in on this sound and refine it.

8/10

VoidCeremony - Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel

Another impressive debut record making the rounds on bandcamp, VoidCeremony’s Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel is more than just the confident exhibition of technical death metal ability the band members clearly possess. Taking a slightly more cerebral approach to Obscura’s brand of melodically and compositionally grounded technical death metal, VoidCeremony manage to tame the unwieldy bucking of the genre’s natural elements to a swaggering walk when they feel like it, but also hang on just fine through the dizzying gallop the genre is known for.

7/10

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Avant-garde gothic folk icon Chelsea Wolfe and longtime percussive collaborator and friend Jess Gowry team up for a quick, raw dose of nasty, industrially tinged grunge. After an expanded return to her folky roots on last year’s Birth of Violence, Self-Surgery is maybe not the return to the heavier sound and form Chelsea Wolfe was moving toward on 2017′s Hiss Spun I was hoping for beyond just a warm-up to the heaviness again. The sound is grainy and nasty and a bit lo-fi, hearkening back to the rawness of the pair’s earliest collaborations, but despite the aesthetic familiarity, the two don’t sound all that natural in this sonic space. Performatively, Wolfe’s more tormented vocal performances (like that of the opening track) fit the mood the album is going for, but her haunting angelic singing (like that of “Downer Surrounded by Uppers”) sounds the most out of place among the Bleach-esque garage sludge. Gowry’s drumming fits the brooding melancholy across the album well, and Wolfe does well when the album is at its most similarly doom-y to Hiss Spun, like the album’s longest track, “Knelt”, but compositionally the album is otherwise rather half-baked, and the pair can only halfway get away with it, as long as they can keep the spooky vibe strong, which is about halfway through any given track. But at less that 19 minutes, it’s worth a check-out to find a few highlights and remember how stylistically flexible Chelsea Wolfe is.

6/10

End - Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face

Comprised of elite veterans of the 2000’s hardcore scene including Counterparts vocalist Brendan Murphy, Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney, and Structures drummer Andrew McEnaney, recently formed supergroup End come through with their first full-length statement as a collective after 2018’s preliminary EP, From the Unforgiving Arms of God, a more than sufficiently gritty and mercilessly battering six track appetizer which I regretfully missed out on at the time of its release. But I’m very much here now for Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face, which is undoubtedly the metallic hardcore album of the year so far (sorry, Code Orange). While definitely landing End in the same modern metallic hardcore vein as Code Orange, Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face is a more direct album than either of Code Orange’s past two releases, not nearly as industrially experimental as Underneath, and even more straightforward than Forever, perhaps most in line with I Am King, but even more consistent, punchy, and extremely fulfilling. Stylistically, there really isn’t all that much to say about Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face. It balances powerviolence speed and thrash with gut-punching breakdowns in a quite familiar way, but it’s an album whose bludgeoning, mosh-inducing performances from front to back speak well enough for themselves through the deliciously thick, muscular production of the filthy guitar tone and bruising drums. The grooves on “Hesitation Wounds” and “An Apparition” are so mobilizing, while the ripping chaotic hardcore thrash blasts of “Covet Not” and “Captive to My Curse” keep the dynamic interesting, and the breakdowns on “Fear for Me Now” and “Pariah” are absolutely impossible to not do pit karate to! Altogether it’s such a blistering, invigorating, blood-pumping album that captures exactly what is making metallic hardcore such the hot style right now.

9/10

Thou - Blessings of the Highest Order

After a hefty four-project year in 2018, Baton Rouge’s Thou Return from their well-deserved rest with a massive new album, a Nirvana Covers album that has left me with just one question: why? After the band showcased new versatility on their four releases in 2018, especially the despondent acoustic grunge of Inconsolable, I actually went into this project pretty eager to hear how Thou would approach the work of this band they obviously have such reverence for. Ultimately though, I wound up disappointed to find that the band basically just took the lyrics and structures of the songs they chose and fed them through heavier distortion and slowed them down to the band’s well-known sludgy pace, which eliminates pretty much every charm of the original. From the droll, monotonous black metal shriek being a far cry from the raw expressive performances Kurt Cobain was famous for to the indeed crisp, but unfittingly clean production smoothing away all that charming grit that was so refreshing and exciting about Nirvana’s sound at the time, Thou really manages to capture everything but the essential aspects of Nirvana and just delivers a big-ass, dragging album of standard blackened doom sludge (I mean this thing is 75 minutes long) that vaguely resembles a bunch of Nirvana songs. So, again, what was the point of covering these songs if everything great about them was just painted over with the thick coat of sludge of nearly every other Thou album? A few of the groovier songs from Bleach go over alright like “Blew” and “Floyd the Barber”, but Blessings of the Highest Order is just one of those cover albums that seems like a rookie mistake; you (as a band) can’t cover just any of your favorite influencing artist’s catalogs so completely with either high fidelity tribute or an intriguing novel spin to their sound, and Thou can’t really turn Nirvana songs into Thou songs. But also, like shit. Nirvana’s songs are so low-technicality, it should be such an easy task for any band to crank out a Nirvana covers album. I mean I could honestly put together a decent bunch of Nirvana covers if I had the equipment to do it, so this seems like too easy of a target to excuse the band for missing.

4/10

Carach Angren - Franckensteina Strataemontanus

Despite the subject/inspiration of the album, 18th century occultist Johann Conrad Dippel, being not quite as grotesque in his experiments on cadavers and not quite as influential on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the mythos behind him is often perpetuated as being, that didn’t stop Carach Angren from going all out in symphonic black metal theatrics to emphasize those aspects of their narrative. And Franckensteina Strataemontanus is indeed at its best at its most theatrical, its ghastly tale’s stage set well by a narrator that sounds like if David Attenborough was introducing a gothic play, and its eccentric and expressive use of piano (especially on the title track) giving it a vibe all its own that sets it apart from the less imaginative symphonic black metal albums, with plenty of healthy straightforward bangers like “Monster”, “The Necromancer”, and “Skull with a Forked Tongue” doing well to break up the more concept-serving pieces. It’s an engaging and well-written album, much like a well-written stage production that keeps you interested in each movement as it comes and not falling asleep in the theater.

8/10

Lamb of God - Lamb of God

Probably the most widely anticipated release of the year so far, Lamb of God’s self-titled record is their first without foundational percussionist Chris Adler after the band reportedly decided to make the drumming maven’s time off from the band to do other projects permanent (with Adler attesting that he did not leave on his own volition despite also citing burnout from playing the same songs repeatedly for the duration of the band’s career) and making his temporary touring replacement, Art Cruz, a full-time member. With a longer gap between their self-titled album and its predecessor than the gap that contained Randy Blythe’s nail-biting trial in the Czech Republic, I can understand the rest of the band maybe just wanting to get on with it, but whatever they got on to, they were going to have to justify letting Chris Adler go, and choosing to make their first album without the skilled and beloved drummer who helped establish the signature rhythm of their pummeling groove metal sound eponymous was certainly a bold move to say the least. The album sure does represent Lamb of God the way self-titled albums are kind of supposed to. At this point Josh Wilbur’s production is as integral to Lamb of God’s fingerprint as Randy Blythe’s versatile inflections, and he does the job he’s always done for the band on their tenth album, as does the group’s newest member, who emulates the Adler drumming style convincingly, even if that core sense of groove isn’t the same. The album indeed captures the smashing groove metal breakdowns of Ashes of the Wake on songs like “New Colossal Hate” and especially their thrashier early side on “Routes” as well as the band’s recent branching into melodic clean vocal territory on their two most recent albums on tracks like “Memento Mori” and “Bloodshot Eyes”. And of course the refined melodic and hardcore-infused groove metal that the Sacrament and Wrath brought forth is the steadfast cornerstone it has been since 2006, and songs like “Reality Bath” and the uncannily “Set to Fail”-esque “On the Hook” show that the band are still committed to representing their influential calling card themselves. While not fitting nicely into representation of any particular era of the band’s career, the swaggering riffage and menacing delivery Blythe gives on “Resurrection Man” certainly deserves mention for how it finds the band able to construct novel transfixing nastiness from captivating opening to filthy breakdown through such basic means this many years on, its probably the best testament to their compositional creativity on the album. As the album’s eponymous nature suggests, it does represent Lamb of God as a whole pretty honestly and thoroughly, perhaps to its own detriment, as its shine wanes most when the band temper their compositional creativity to emulate their various stages of growth. As with Resolution and VII: Sturm und Drang, they still don’t commit beyond partial measures integrating clean vocals into their sound, and consequently, the times it shows up here are just as odd and clearly token as the previous albums’, which leads me to think that they should really give it a full go on an EP or something (not just “The Duke”) or drop it. I think they could make it work, but not by tiptoeing around it. Fortunately the band show that they still have plenty of creative juice on the instrumental front to continue refining their iconic modern groove metal sound. With a relatively hefty bounty on the table, I’d say Lamb of God a little more than broke even on this hand.

7/10

Emmure - Hindsight

Emmure and drama-attracting frontman Frankie Palmeri came out the victors after the band’s most recent prominent controversy when Palmeri replaced the entire rest of the band in a move that paid off with a significant upgrade on the band’s previously try-hard Atilla-type deathcore on 2017’s Look at Yourself, the band’s best album yet. Not only was the production far heavier and more at pace with the violent metallic hardcore movement bubbling up in the latter half of the last decade, but the band’s writing was etter tuned to that approach as well, and the newly assembled crew displayed an impressive chemistry together. Unsurprisingly, the group have already undergone a member replacement in the time between now and Look at Yourself, with new bassist Nicholas Pyatt coming in for Phil Lockett, but on Hindsight the controversial band luckily still mostly maintains that momentum they got from the creative kickstart Look at Yourself provided. The once clumsy but fiery attitude that the tangibly confrontational Palmeri brought to the table on the band’s previous album continues to improve with his vocal performances on Hindsight as well; no more contrived, hollow high screams or semi-cringy rapped sections, Frankie has honed in on his strengths as a deathcore vocalist and heightened them. Meanwhile, the rest of the band keep expert pace with him on the absolutely destructive rampage he leads them on through room-wrecking modern metalcore rhythms given the finest production treatment with a dash of Rob-Zombie-style samples to spice things up, and the results are once again impressive. With Palmeri finding his groove, Emmure honestly carries a certain honest rage all their own that sounds so much more real coming from them compared to so many of their similarly “pissed-off” contemporaries. And the band spare no time for needless ceremony either with the thirteen tracks here just barely eclipsing the half-hour mark, fulfilling the suggestion that the band strip down most of the repetitive structures on the songs in favor of ultra quick bursts of deathcore violence like that of “Smokey” versus “Solar Flare Homicide”. The disregard for individual song composition is made up for by the sheer force of the album as a whole as it flows from super-short track to super-short track. The perplexingly cryptic whispers of “203” are perhaps the one exception to this rule the doesn’t work out in the band’s favor, but the slew of supremely disintegrating bangers and slammers like “Pigs Ear”, “(F)inally (U)nderstanding (N)othing”, “Persona Non Grata”, “Gypsy Disco”, “Action 52”, and “Uncontrollable Descent” fulfill exactly the purpose they’re meant to, with Hindsight proving that Look at Yourself was no fluke and Emmure are not the laughing stock they used to be in the deathcore world. No, they have evolved to a much stronger form and are not to be taken lightly.

8/10

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erraticprojectjunkie · 6 years

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2017 Book of the Year: Sweet Sixteen

The bittersweet fun of the Book of the Year Bracket Challenge is removing competitors one by one. Today, it's the big cuts. We'll be whittling down the competition from 26 books to the Sweet Sixteen. Some books will find themselves automatically moving forward while 10 unlucky souls will be left behind. Here is where we start... Buckle up...this is a long one... You'll notice that some brackets have only one competitor. Due to the number of books competing and the inability to fully fill the bracket, six lucky contestants move on automatically through the first round. And so... The Weight of Feathers by Anna Marie McLemore, The Master Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan, Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs have all earned the right to continue. That was the easy part. Now...let's get to the meat of this round... Left Side Bracket The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg vs.The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg Ah...the magic of having the randomized bracket. It's totally unfair to Holmberg that two of her novels face off against each other right off the bat, but hey...she also managed one of the freebie slots, so I'm calling it even. I debated over this one for a bit. Both of these books are good--the initial and second reads in The Paper Magician trilogy. I initially struggled to get into the series, finding a lot of parallels and fearing that the trilogy was just a ripoff of Harry Potter. But...Holmberg has her own way with things and I quickly found myself more intrigued by the world she created and wondering about certain details as I read. This distracted me from the previous apprehension, and I mowed right through the series. Each of the two books has its merit. The Paper Magician was responsible for getting me interested in the series in the first place, but The Glass Magician was impressive as a sequel in a trilogy. It wasn't dull or serving as just a tie between the stories presented in the first and third books, as so often happens. Ultimately, I had to give credit where credit is due. And so... The Paper Magician takes the win and moves on to the next round. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolvervs.Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline The Bean Trees was given to me in a book exchange and Orphan Train has been sitting on my bookshelf for what seems like forever. The Bean Trees was a decent read, but the plot was a bit choppy in pieces. It was honest and raw writing without a feeling of melodramatics...well, not ones that drew away too much from the narrative. I wasn't wowed by it, but it wasn't a worthless read either. Orphan Train had pieces of absolutely beautiful writing and heartbreaking action. I loved half of this book...the half that was written in the past. There were two sets of narration in the book and that, for me, was the biggest downfall. The historical pieces were amazing and read swiftly. The modern sections felt like they were written by an entirely different author and just seemed forced. Both books were moderate reads that I wanted...expected...more from. But one book just left me feeling more satisfaction in the read. So even though these books were, honestly, quite evenly matched, only Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline survives this round for further competition. Slade House by David Mitchellvs.An Abundance of Katherines by John Green This is a shocking match up for more than one reason. Number one...I don't read horror. Seriously. I haven't read a horror novel since...oh...somewhere around 1994. My apologies to Stephen King. I was pleasantly surprised at Slade House, which I read as part of RIPXII. It was witty and catchy. I read it pretty quickly since it gripped me quite well. I was slightly disappointed in the ending (this happens all too frequently), but overall I really quite enjoyed it. The other reason it's shocking? Well...Slade House managed to get paired up against John Green. Oy. Seriously. Based on my reading and rating history, An Abundance of Katherines should have been a shoe-in for progressing to at least the Final Four. And yet...I enjoyed the book, but I wasn't wowed. It was a good read, but didn't seem to be as deep and hard hitting as some of his other books. And that...well, that is the short version of why Slade House manages to edge out An Abundance of Katherines to move forward in the BOTY competition. The Girl Without a Name by Sandra Blockvs.Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan This was a pretty odd pairing to consider. The downside of a randomized bracket, I suppose. The Girl Without a Name is a mystery and suspense novel. I don't typically read that genre, but the synopsis drew me in. The story itself was quite interesting and the writing shows some definite talent. However, there were a few glitches that caused me pause. One major glitch, in fact. The author has a medical background (she's a neurologist) and yet her protagonist repeatedly disregards the principles of HIPAA, one of the most important and basic parts of being a medical provider. Anyone in real life who acted in the way her character does would immediately be at very least suspended and more likely fired with the possibility of having a licensure review. This nagged at me so much...seriously...it almost resulted in my ditching the book altogether. However, I soldiered on due to the good writing and the promise of a solid story. Ultimately, the plot held and I didn't hate it, but some of the characters seemed underdeveloped and that glitch just rubbed me the wrong way. Similarly, I found that Dad is Fat was a bit disappointing. You must think at this point I'm just a negative reviewer, but I blame this on seeing Gaffigan's stand up routine too often. I find him highly entertaining and enjoy his anecdotes. The book just fell short of whatever bar I had set for him. Damn you, preconceived notions. Don't get me wrong, the book is still funny and I did find myself giggling on occasion. I think I just expected to be wowed a bit more. Rats. So...two books that I had high hopes for that wound up being mediocre. Ugh. This is a depressing match up. Let's just rip the band-aid off and be done, shall we? Dad is Fat moves on to the next bracket, out of the sheer merit of not ticking me off. It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Hanvs.A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles It's Not Summer Without You was my one reread of the year. And here's where I sound like an idiot... I didn't realize it was a reread until I was about fifty pages in. I just kept reading, thinking "Geez this sounds familiar. Have I read a book with a similar character before? Dang it...I know I've heard this name." And hey, guess what? I'd read it before. Embarrassing. And yet, I still enjoyed it. It could be a good beach read. It's nice and light and quick. Not hard hitting or enigmatic, but still entertaining. I read A Gentleman in Moscow as part of a short-lived book club. It took me a bit to get into...something of a slow starter, but I really enjoyed the character development. Alexander Rostov is an interesting character with a mesmerizing background. The narrative plows through several historical events with clever detail. Russian history is not my forte, so I think I did lose a little bit through my ignorance. Additionally, the author is incredibly bright and the writing is highly intellectual. The vocabulary is complex, which occasionally detracted from the story for me. It's definitely worth the read, but I would have gotten a bit more out of it had my understanding of some of the historical references and the language been more comprehensive. In this case, I decided to judge the winner based upon which one I would be more apt to grab up again or refer to a friend. Granted, the recommendation choice would likely be dependent on which friend was in question. But...I'm going by the most likely. So...A Gentleman in Moscow moves into the Sweet Sixteen. Right Side Bracket The Lauras by Sara Taylorvs.We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge Ah...the easiest pairing you shall ever find. Well...at least in this list. I received the The Lauras from the publisher as a review copy. I had read Sara Taylor's The Shore a couple of years ago and thought she held great promise as an author. I wasn't wrong in that. The Lauras is a contemporary fiction novel that could easily fall into a young adult category. The writing is very honest. Taylor does fantastically with description and creates a very vivid narrative. There were detractors that kept this away from a 5-star review, but they aren't important for this particular match-up. So...we'll address them later. We Love You, Charlie Freeman...oh boy. This book...I really am almost at a loss for words. Almost. But let's cut to the quick...I did not like this book. Nope. Not at all. I should have thrown it straight into the DNF pile. There was a gigantic eww factor that developed for me and the narrative just fell seriously flat. Nope. Big, fat pile of nope. Obviously, The Lauras takes this pairing. Library of Souls by Ransom Riggsvs.Ceremony by Leslie Silko Marmon Library of Souls is the final book in the Miss Peregrine series. It totally holds up the series. I stayed up super late to finish it because I just couldn't put it down. That is the sign of a delightful book. Riggs is a talented author and I very much enjoyed this conclusion to the series. I read Ceremony as an assigned book for an American literature course. It's a fantastically honest Native American historical fiction novel. It's painful and raw, but beautifully written. It's a political and social commentary, but still maintains an individualized feel. It's a great journey book. This was a good pairing, but there was an obvious winner from the start. For me, a book that keeps me from sleep is always a good one and a difficult one to beat in these circumstances. Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs takes the slot and heads on into further competition. A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnayvs.Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert I read A Secret Kept because I had so loved de Rosnay's Sarah's Key. I think it suffered from the fact that I had read her prior work. A Secret Kept just felt okay. There wasn't a wow factor in any capacity. It read fine and had a decent plot, but the characters didn't feel fully fleshed out and the narrative was nowhere near as hard hitting as I expected. Again, having read Sarah's Key first, I really had a bar set that just wasn't reached. Big Magic was given to me by my sister-in-law. It's technically a self-help book, which had me leery at first, but don't let that label tarnish this one for you at all. The book stresses the individualism of creativity and the need to embrace the talent that may come from it. I found its message freeing and inspiring. That sounds completely lame to say, but it's totally true. This honestly is likely a book that could demand a reread every once in a while to refresh my belief in myself. Big Magic is going to take this bracket and push forward as a member of the Sweet Sixteen. Hollow City by Ransom Riggsvs.Snow Flower & the Secret Fan by Lisa See If you're someone who picks a book based on the cover, don't tell me you wouldn't stop and seriously consider Hollow City. The good news is that the book is just as fabulous as its cover. Hollow City is the second novel in the Miss Peregrine trilogy. It breaks the mold of the sad sequel, those books lacking in originality and spice, existing only to further the narrative and extend it to a third book. Nope. This one holds its own, baby. The world Riggs created in Miss Peregrine just continues to be marvelous in its strangeness. It's fabulously fun. Snow Flower & the Secret Fan is a historical fiction novel and it's heart wrenching. I was suuuuuper close to putting it in the DNF pile after struggling to get into it for a few months. But, it turns out that the issue wasn't the book...it was me. I just wasn't in the right place to appreciate it at the time. The second attempt was the winner. It's beautiful and real and the characters are just fantastic. I definitely anticipate that I will be reading more of Lisa See's work in the future. It was a close one in this case. Either of these two books could have easily taken the win and moved into the next section of eliminations. But...we all know the rules. Only one can win. And so, Riggs takes it again and Hollow City moves into the next round. We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Hanvs.A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman We'll Always Have Summer is the concluding novel in Jenny Han's Summer trilogy. While it does have a decent ending (which is a small miracle), I did find that this one was a bit too predictable. I don't know if it's a matter of having stretched the series out for too long rather than reading the books back to back, but I just wasn't as enthralled as I had hoped to be. On the plus side, it was a quick and light read. Fitting for a summer based series, this one (as with its companions) would be a good beach read. A Man Called Ove was an adorable read. Seriously heartwarming, but also highly entertaining in Ove's quirkiness. Ove is a curmudgeon. He's grouchy with his neighbors and stuck in his ways. But he's also the cutest old man ever. He's a sweet widower in his own right, he just doesn't show that beyond his own private moments. This one would be a good book to revive someone out of a reading slump. Another easy choice. I loved Ove so, so much. He was just so incredibly well-written. Backman did a great job at developing a plot that served well to Ove's tedious nature without allowing the narrative to succumb to the same tendencies. A Man Called Ove will be moving on. WHEW! That was a long post and took me just about forever to write. But...we're through the hardest round in terms of volume. We now have sixteen books remaining in the running for my 2017 Book of the Year. Did your favorites make the cut? Inspired to add any new reads to your TBR? Think you know who will take the ultimate prize? Next up...the Elite Eight! This post originally appeared on Erratic Project Junkie and is copyrighted by Elle. Find EPJ on Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads

#Books #BOTY Bracket Challenge #BOTY2017

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theofficialautisticgamer · 4 years

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Do You Have 10 GP For A Cup Of Coffee? A "Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest" Review Played on Retroarch (SNES Emulator) Beat in 11 Hours 24 Minutes and 49 Seconds Review by TheAutisticGamer (Michael) PROS AND CONS AT THE BOTTOM! Back in the day, I was a Nintendo Kid. In fact, I still am one. I love the Nintendo Switch and I'm amazed at the comeback they made in the last few years. However, back in the day, I loved them a lot. I had a Gamecube, A Game Boy Advance, a Nintendo DS, A Wii, Nintendo 64 and SNES. One game I played on the SNES, introduced me to a huge franchise and a genre that was booming, RPGS. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is a childhood favorite game of mine and I absolutely loved it. I haven't however, beaten it until now. So how do I feel about it now that I'm 23? The game is a entry level JRPG starring a character you can name (His actual name is Benjamin) who is the hero of the prophecy and must save the four crystals of the world and defeat the Dark King. The game has you travelling with one companion at a time including Kaeli, a tree whisperer, Tristam, a treasure hunter, Phoebe, a girl who wants to stop a winter spell that has been put on Aquaria her home and Reuben, a warrior who lives in Fireburg. Guided by a old man, Benjamin and the gang face terrible threats which leads to the climax of the game. It's a very bare bones and standard Final Fantasy game and it's not very long at all. In fact, I actually 100%'d the entire game because of how easy it was to find stuff by exploring which is incredibly rewarding in Mystic Quest. There are lots of positives to say. First, although the sprite work and graphics isn't that special, it is kind of appealing to see a Final Fantasy game with a different art style. The game's simple combat and exploration are incredibly fun. It's really awesome to get all the spells and start experimenting them on enemies. The good thing about this game is that there are no random encounters. Enemies show up on the map and you can exit at any time if your characters aren't asleep or confused or what not. Mystic Quest also has a great english translation, probably because it came out in North America first. There are rarely any typos except maybe one and that's impressive coming off a disasterous Final Fantasy IV translation. One of the cool things is that in the game, you can use weapons in the world to cut down trees, blow up entrances, climb walls, it's kind of groundbreaking for it's time that it combined action adventure elements into a turn based JRPG. There are two things I absolutely love about this game coming back to it. One is the Pazuzu boss fight which is a incredibly different boss from all the others you encounter. He has a defensive spell that counters any attack or spell used on him and you have to wait it out. It's kind of like the first boss in Final Fantasy VII to be honest and must have been an inspiration to the team working on it. The other, is the soundtrack. In my opinion, the soundtrack stands as one of the greatest video game scores of all time. The music is kick ass most of the time. Fireburg, Battle Theme 1, Doom Castle, Volcano, all fantastic songs that cement Mystic Quest as one of the great soundtracks of the 90's. I still listen to it to this day and always am amazed by it. Alright, I want to get to the negatives because there are a few. First off, the game has this chest exploitation thing where if you open and chest, leave and come back, you can open the chest again with the same items, making it super easy to get lots of heal potions and bombs. I don't know if this was a programming error they overlooked or it's actually intentional but damn it's easy to do that. Also, the game is infamous for being too easy. It's only too easy if you get the encounters you want and the bosses take some time to think. But yeah, I agree with most people that it's a pretty easy game. So the thing I want to point out is that the writing, for a JRPG at the time, is pretty bad. It seems rather rushed and forced and not much thought was put into any of the ideas. Some towns folk will give you useful information, others will just do crap all. Your party members seem to come in for plot convenience as well. Plus, the party members are one shot everything while you have to hit each enemy in two shots which can get annoying. But that ending. Christ. The ending is incredibly underwhelming and is extremely rushed. There is barely any time to breathe with this ending. It just ends to cheerful after what you've been through. It's probably one of my least favorite endings to any game ever. But, at the end of the day, I feel Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is still worth checking out despite these flaws. The game was made at a time when RPGS were niche to introduce players to the genre and I think it did a fine job with that. I do recommend playing it especially for the kick ass soundtrack. Very enjoyable but not for everyone. 8.5/10 PROS: -Unique Graphics Style -Gameplay is simple and fun -Spells are extremely fun to use and experiment with -Easy to 100% the entire game -Pazuzu Boss fight was awesome -Groundbreaking World Weapon Use -One of the best soundtracks of all time -Great Translation -Exploring is worth it NEUTRALS: -(Unintentional?) Chest Exploitation makes the game very easy -The game is a bit too easy CONS: -Writing is really bad for a JRPG at the time -Party members are always stronger than you -Party Members seem to appear for the convenience of the plot -The ending is one of the worst I've seen for a game.

#final fantasy mystic quest #the autistic gamer #how long to beat #game review

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lovelyirony · 7 years

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Silence is Golden, Observation is Platinum

ok guess what fuckers i found a super sad story idea about tony somehow losing his voice and the avengers actually like it better so let’s write it and cry (update: idea from @thoseironeyes so ur welcome i saw it and cried)

Tony was seriously annoyed that he was cursed with not talking. But were the Avengers going to know that he messed up and Loki told him that talking is unbecoming? No. Because he’s better than that, and he’ll get his voice back in a couple days after Bruce or Thor notice and flip out. Besides, he has things to do.

Sure, working with Jarvis is a little bit harder. He has nonverbal cues, learns a little bit of sign language, and wastes time by looking at videos of dolphins clicking to get around town. (Well, around sea, but that doesn’t matter. The scientist also named the dolphin Eric, but that’s dumb, so Tony named him Dennis instead.)

When he comes up to get food, he wants so badly to make the witty remark to just totally roast Barton, even if Natasha hits him on the arm for it. But sound won’t come out. His mouth opens, but he closes it again. If he writes it, then the comedic value is lost.

“No stupid commentary for once?” Clint sasses. “Wow Stark, you’re playing nice. I’m impressed.”

“Good job, Tony,” Steve says, flipping through the newspaper. (Ugh, Tony hates getting it delivered, newspapers are so last year.)

He’s floored by the fact that they don’t notice anything. He makes no sound. When Natasha has a nice pun, he can’t laugh. No sound comes out. Tony can’t talk, and they seemingly don’t care. They like it.

He tests it. When he watches a movie with Steve and Natasha, they say it’s nice that he doesn’t have the constant running commentary. (Screw you, his joke about Bruce the shark from Jaws was funny.) He doesn’t do anything in response. Natasha herself hasn’t even noticed anything; it’s like they ignore him.

Weeks go by, and no one notices that Tony hasn’t made a peep in over a month. They like it. Bruce says it’s calming to have total quiet in the lab, save for Tony’s music. Tony doesn’t say anything. He bans Friday from saying anything about it.

The next battle against Loki, he returns it. “I’m shocked they didn’t notice,” he muses, blasting his stupid freaking magic at the suit. (Tony hates magic.) “It must have been a nice reprieve for them, you not talking all the time. Wasting oxygen and breath with silly little comments.” Tony just scowls.

“You’re an asshat,” he mutters, voice coming out like water from a leaky faucet. He’s not used to it. But Loki painfully brought up a point; they liked Tony better when he wasn’t talking.

After the mission, Thor suggests Indian food. Tony really isn’t in the mood, but he eats same as them. He doesn’t say anything. Clint grins at him. Tony weakly smiles back, and thinks about what Loki said. Wasting oxygen and breath. He shouldn’t be doing that when people so obviously don’t care. Tony should’ve learned at an earlier age, what with Howard not paying attention to anything besides booze, inventions, and cars. No one has ever cared.

So, Tony doesn’t talk. He does his job, releases things, and no one cares. No one notices. The Avengers like it better when he doesn’t talk. So, it stops.

Not like anyone notices.

He texts them, yeah. But those are easier to articulate, easier to maneuver. Even Natasha can’t beat him at the texting game. It’s easier than talking, easier than babbling only to realize that no one really cared about the invention he had made for his lab. It wasn’t cool, it was just another thing to tune out.

He gets a small ray of hope when Bruce says that he hasn’t talked to Tony in forever.

“You did at the mission thingy,” Clint says. “You know, when you had to patch up Cap?”

“I did?” Clint shrugs. That’s the end of communication for them. Tony hasn’t talked to Bruce in three weeks and counting, not like it’s a big deal or anything.

Tony honestly thought they would notice by now. He wasn’t doing interviews, he wasn’t at the forefront of his company meetings talking about the new revolutionary tech; it was all Pepper and the other members of Research and Development.

Rhodey is the only one he periodically talks with, but Rhodey isn’t at the base. At least he would notice. Probably. Maybe. It was iffy.

When Rhodey gets to the tower, he notices.

None of the Avengers are spoken to. At first, he thinks that maybe Tony is giving them the silent treatment, and fists will be thrown if they did anything to Tony.

“Tony, why aren’t you talking to any of them?”

“They like it better when I don’t talk,” Tony says nonchalantly. “So I just don’t.” Rhodey’s throat constricts with shock and rage.

“Tony,” he says lowly. “What have I said about jerks who don’t want to talk to you?”

“Kick their asses and take names,” Tony says with a sigh. “Rhodey, I know. But maybe...maybe this is better.”

“No, it isn’t,” Rhodey says, anger growing. “If those clowns can’t handle you talking like you’re about to die from not talking, they’re not friends. They’re not going to be in this tower, making you feel like shit. That’s not how friendship works.” He storms off, towards the common room.

“When did Tony stop talking?” He demanded, looking straight at Natasha.

“What do you mean?” Clint responds for her. “He talks all the time.” Rhodey takes a deep breath. Lord, give him strength.

“No, he hasn’t,” Rhodey says. “The entire time I’ve been here, he hasn’t spoken a word to any of you. Jarvis, since apparently you’re the only one who knows anything around here, when was the last time Tony had an honest-to-god conversation with any of the Avengers?”

“Approximately two months and three days ago,” Jarvis answers. The silence is so stunning that Rhodey would probably win an Oscar for his presentation of facts.

“So none of you have even attempted conversation with him for over two months?” Rhodey asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. “None of you have...? God, I thought things couldn’t get worse, but no, this is the tip of the iceberg. Why haven’t any of you attempted conversations?”

“We didn’t notice that much of a change. Usually, Tony just talks about his inventions anyway, and we can’t really understand what’s going on. So we just, you know, tune it out,” Clint offers feebly.

“I’m sorry you’re angry with us, Colonel,” Steve says, “but I doubt you would’ve noticed a change if you had been with us.” There’s a silence so thick that Rhodey could cut it.

“Okay, listen up Shit-for-Brains, I’m only gonna say this once, so you better respect an army guy with a higher rank than you,” Rhodey says with a growl. “Tony talking all the time is awesome. You get so much out of it, and when he talks a lot about his inventions, it means he’s comfortable with whoever he’s with. But apparently, since all of you are Emotionally Constipated and can’t recognize signs of Unhealthy Activity Among Humans, I’m gonna spell it out for you. all of you suck. All of you need to shower him in gifts and appreciation, because guess who is living in one of the nicest places in the western hemisphere? Oh wait, not me.”

Tony just watches Rhodey go off. He’s silent (what else is new?) and almost smiling. He’s ripping them to shreds, and Natasha sidles up to Tony.

“I’m sorry,” she says simply. “Am I forgiven?”

“No,” Tony answers on instinct. “You owe me a hell of a lot, Natasha. It starts with listening to me tell you all about how you’re screwing up your weapons that I made for you.”

#if i cry you guys are gonna cry too #tony stark #why is anyone like this #i don't own the prompt #i just got inspired #this turned salty i'm sorry #rhodey is the best???#i didn't include sam because sam would notice sorry #all of this is just me being salty #rhodey is honestly the only person i'm here for

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waytoooutoftouch · 7 years

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First date hcs with all the DEH kids? Let's do this

Okay, so these might not be very good, but just bear with me.

Putting them under a cut because THERE’S A LOT

Evan

-he wants to take you to a national park, or somewhere with a lot of trees, because those are some of the only places where he’s truly comfortable? but he doesn’t want you to think he’s a complete nerd/dork

-sooo he’s super stressed about where to take you, he googles “first date ideas”, “where to take her on the first date”, and he even asks his mom for advice

-Heidi of course is like “!!!” and immediately helps him come up with several places.

-Eventually they decide that he’ll take you to a family-owned diner that’s kind of out of the way? so they know it won’t be too crowded because crowds and social anxiety don’t mix

-he picks you up and he’s just like “wow, she’s pretty”, like he’s completely stunned because you’re dressed up a little more than usual, and you did your hair a new way and he doesn’t realize he’s staring until you ask if he’s okay

-he immediately blushes and nods

-the date itself is a little awkward but still really nice

-the only other people in the diner other than the cooks/servers are this cute old couple, so there’s little to no pressure

-and you split a milkshake, they bring it with two straws, and it’s literally the cutest thing ever

-you can tell he’s super anxious in the beginning because he won’t hold eye contact with you for more than a few seconds and he keeps fidgeting

-but you’re super patient and he eventually becomes more comfortable

-by the end, you guys are laughing together and oh wow he looks so cute when he��s laughing??? Like his nose scrunches up and he looks down slightly and you’re just “oh my god I need to make this boy laugh more often.”

-in the end you both have a lot of fun and agree to a second date

-when he drops you off, you lean over and kiss him on the cheek and I swear his brain short circuits

-but then you’re about to go and he gathers his courage and goes “wait!”

-you pause and look over at him

-and he leans over and very very gently kisses you on the cheek

-And you’re. So. Shook.

Jared

-this meme takes you to an arcade

-it’s absolutely wild

-like you’re surrounded by kids half your age, and he’s up at the token machine with them buying $20 worth of tokens and you’re just staring at him like “who are you?”

-but it’s actually really really fun?

-he makes you play guitar hero against him, and you’re reluctant, and he acts super cocky, like “I’ll even let you pick the song, and I’ll go easy”

-except you actually beat him

-and his jaw just drops when he sees your score against his

-he’s?? so?? impressed??

-like obviously he had an interest in you because he asked you out but now he’s like “holy shit this one’s a keeper”

-and you teased him the rest of the night about beating him.

-but he redeemed himself with skee-ball

-sort of

-okay, so you know how you’re supposed to roll the ball underhand and it rolls up and lands in the hole?

-he just straight up throws the ball in the 1000 point hole

-like a baseball pitcher or something

-and you’re like “jAReD you can’t DO THAT”

-because all these seven-year-olds are staring at him

-but he ends up with a bunch of tickets

-you guys also play air hockey

-and it’s pretty evenly matched until near the end, when Jared gets a one point ahead of you

-and he’s so confident that he’ll win, and then you look up and wink suggestively at him and he’s like “woah” and then you score while he’s distracted!

-it ends with a tie

-he’s honestly so salty about it tho, and he keeps saying you cheated

-and you’re like “I play to win.”

-by the time you guys run out of tokens, you actually have a decent amount of tickets? so you go up to the redemption counter

-and he wants to get a bunch of cheap candy but you fall in love with this little stuffed animal behind the counter

-he pretends to be annoyed, like he’s giving in, when he asks the person for it and they hand it to you, but he just thinks it’s adorable

-up close, you can’t really tell what kind of animal it is, because it’s kind of lopsided? and has horns? and is missing an eye?

-Jared can’t stop laughing at it

-but it’s really soft and you insist on Jared keeping it in his car

-he does it for you

-on the next date, you’re surprised to see it in his cupholder

-and he’s just got this shit-eating grin when you look at him, and you insist that he’s a softie

-he’ll deny it until the day he dies but you know the truth ;)

Connor

-when you’re talking about what you’ll do, he’s kinda quiet, and can’t really think of anything

-because he finally has a shot at this person he’s been crushing on and he doesn’t want to mess it up

-so when you propose a movie, he agrees and then you tell him that you’ll surprise him, that you’ll give him the time and all he has to do is just pick you up

-of course, he thinks that you’re going to pick a rom-com or something like that

-and he’s mentally preparing himself for it when he picks you up

-but honestly, he wouldn’t even mind that much? because he gets to spend time with you, and that’s worth a shitty rom-com

-ANYWAYS, when you guys go into the movie theater, you walk straight up to the counter and ask for two Spider-Man Homecoming tickets

-and he looks up so fast

-he’s honestly s h o o k

-because he used to love comic books when he was younger, and Spider-Man was his favorite (I stole this detail from the cut song A Little Bit of Light)

-you actually knew this, because you had talked to Zoe when she found out you had a crush on him

-“so, I heard you were Spider-Man for Halloween?”

-“… I need to have a talk with my sister.”

-honestly though he’s so surprised because that’s the most thoughtful thing that anyone has done for him in a long time? he tries to act all cool about it, but you can tell he’s excited

-the movie is so good, you laugh at all the funny parts, and he laughs too but is mostly distracted by how cute you are

-and then he catches himself, and he’s just “why am I acting like a cliche smitten teenager?”

-THEN you laugh again, and he’s just “oh”

-the date means a lot to him because for the longest time, he thought he was damaged goods, and that he would never be good enough for anyone to date him

-and then you came along

-I mean obviously you aren’t going to solve his problems

-but he thinks that maybe if you can believe in him, then he can work on believing in himself

-when you guys are leaving the movie theater, you’re talking about how good the movie was, and before you know it, you’re next to his car

-then he just

-he hugs you

-and your heart flutters

-you hug him back

-and you hear a soft “thank you” in your ear before he lets go

-shoot now I want to write a second date headcanon for Connor

Zoe

-heard from someone that you like fishes? She’ll definitely take you to an aquarium.

-and will insist on paying the entrance fee, citing her rich parents as an excuse despite your protests

-at first you get stuck with a school group (“Who goes on a field trip on a Saturday? That’s a crime against humanity” “Zoe, they’re kids.”) but you two manage to break away from them.

-her favorites are the clownfish because of Finding Nemo

-from here, you learn that she likes Pixar movies, and that her favorite is WALL-E, but Finding Nemo is a close second.

-when you’re looking at the fish, she’ll take a step back and take a quick picture of you for her Snapstory, captioning it with “”

-it’s not until later, when you get home, that you see it, and it makes you blush madly

-when you’re walking to the next room, you two accidentally brush hands, and instinctively move them away

-but then you realize that you would absolutely love to hold hands with Zoe Murphy

-so a few minutes later, while she’s reading a display, you quickly reach out and lace her fingers with yours

-she looks away from the display, grins at you, and squeezes your hand and you swear your heat skips a beat.

-you insist on grabbing lunch at the aquarium’s cafe

-it’s delicious

-and you ask Zoe how jazz band is going, and she starts talking about this piece that she has a solo in, and her eyes light up, and it hits you that you’re talking to Zoe Murphy at an aquarium because you guys are on a DATE and she’s just so enthusiastic and just looks so pretty talking about music and wow you’re completely smitten with this girl

-you both buy matching baseball caps at the gift shop afterwards (I’m not gonna lie, this is based off of the pictures I’ve seen of Laura Dreyfuss wearing a baseball cap because DAMN)

-on the way home, you both sing along to the radio

-you’re at a red light when you notice her looking at you

-“What?”

-she just grins again

-“thanks for the date”

-when she drops you at your house, you lean over the console awkwardly and hug her, and she hugs you back and it’s great

-you whisper to her “I get to plan the second date,” before you move back, and you swear she’s blushing?

Alana

-God, I love Alana

-okay, so this girl does not do things halfway, so she would love to take you out to a nice dinner

-BUT she remembers she’s busy volunteering all day that Saturday (the day that you offered)

-she feels really really bad when she tells you, and wants to apologize

-but you’re literally just “can I come with?”

-and her heart goes “!!!”

-and she’s just like “yeah, of course!” and gives you the time and date

-you show up (it’s a food drive for the local soup kitchen) and Alana immediately runs over to you, and you’re stunned because she’s dressed in the most casual clothes you’ve ever seen her in (a t-shirt with your school’s name on it and jeans) and she’s so so happy to see you?

-honestly part of her thought you wouldn’t come bc who would want to do volunteer work on the first date

-but then you showed up!

-wow you guys are so smitten for each other

-but she puts you in charge of organizing the food as she and a few others bring it in from the collection tables

-you do that for a while, and then one of the other volunteers leave, so you go up front and help her

-and you guys have little conversations whenever you can about the most random things

-it’s not the most conventional first date but wow is it cute or what

-honestly you’re literally standing there talking and one of the underclassmen yells out “get a room!”

-and the others laugh a little bit but it’s not in a mean way? It’s just that everyone there can see how into each other you are

-and Alana honestly just turns bright red

-you don’t hesitate of course

-you grab her hand and drag her into the hallway, to an abandoned classroom

-she’s laughing at this point

-still though, she says that you guys have to go back

-you shrug, say “they can live without you for a few minutes”

-you guys talk here, a real conversation, and it’s great and by the time you go back, you’re convinced that you’ve completely fallen for this girl

-Alana thanks you for coming afterwards, and insists on taking out to a really nice restaurant for the second date

-you, of course, agree

-–

OKAY I hope these weren’t too bad, I’m sorry if they were :/ but I had fun writing them

#dear evan hansen #dear evan hansen headcanons #deh #evan hansen #jared kleinman #connor murphy #zoe murphy #alana beck

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bonerhitler · 7 years

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So I Finished Hollow Knight

With Hollow Knight done I have a great excuse to not have to think of a more interesting subject to write about! I have some very self important opinions to talk about regarding this game. I also plan to go over my first impression of it and see what held up and where I was wrong. Spoilers; I was pretty wrong about some stuff. Also, spoilers. I'm going to be talking about the end of this game and other plot bits.

So lets start with the things I was way off base and straight up incorrect about from last week;

“there’s no dodge skill.“

Turns out there is a dash! So I was presumptuous on that one. You get it after the second real boss. However it only launches you forward, not backwards. So it's not especially great for avoiding enemy attacks. You also only get one air dodge before you have to touch ground and traversing the map before you get it is a pain in the ass, you're slow and your mobility is crippled.

Personally speaking, I think you should have been given a limited form of the dash before beating that boss. Start the player off with the ground dash at least, give it a longer cooldown even. Let the upgrade obtained after the boss fight unlock the air dash and reduce the overall dash cooldown or something because the simple act of getting the dash upgrade made the game go from frustrating and miserable to play, to enjoyable and fun at once. I also wouldn't say no to making the dash do a backwards dodge if you're not holding forwards.

“Breakable walls are in no way indicated until you hit them “ I was just straight up wrong! Turns out this game is just like Symphony of the Night, Metroid and basically every other game ever in this regards. The walls I was annoyed with are just regular secret passages. You didn't have to attack them. Walking through them would reveal them, enemies could reveal them. Basically anything would. Breakable walls, on the other hand, were clearly marked with cracks and reacted when hit. I don't have any issue with this now.

Also I didn't explicitly say it in the post as far as quick glance tells me, but I was wrong about quick travel too. You don't have to pay every time you want to use the quick travel spots. You just have to pay once to unlock a few of them. Not even all of them, just a few of them. I presumed and made a presumption out of pres and ume again. Or however that saying goes.

However I do take issue with the quick travel options offered in the game. For one thing, we're not given any kind of simple teleport back to the main town. That would have been a life saver, even if it cost you all of your money or something dark souls style. Instead if you want to warp you have to find the nearest Stag Station and ride a giant stag beetle around. Except those are usually in the far back corner of whatever zone you're in, assuming the zone even has one. There are several zones that don't have one, and they're usually zones you're going to spend a lot of time traveling to and from. So every time I wanted to go to one location, such as The Abyss, I would have to warp from the nearest Stag Station to King's Station in the City of Tears, walk several screens and then jump down a spike filled chasm and fall into the Ancient Basin then climb down another spike filled pit and reach The Abyss. Getting back out took twice as long and the only other alternate routes required me to go to the Deepnest, a place which is dark, maze-like and full of annoying enemies, or the Edge of the Kingdom which doesn't have a Stag Station so I would have to hoof it across like three zones to get there anyway. And boy howdy do you have to go to The Abyss a lot.

What I'm trying to say is that this game desperately needs either some kind of Library Card equivalent that warps you to a specific place, or an ability that returns you somewhere useful because navigating the map blows, and the stag stations ultimately don't help as much as they should unless you need to straight up get across the entire map. There aren't many shortcuts to unlock, and the ones you do unlock are usually so out of the way there's never any reason to bother using them because they are, more or less, just shoved in there at the end of puzzle rooms that leave you with no alternative way out than to just smash a wall down which just reeks of awful level and puzzle design.

Most of your abilities are also just glorified keys. To bust out the tired old Symphony comparison; when you got the super jump you could reach places you couldn't before. You could reach travel upwards faster, but you had no control over it. You couldn't really move left or right so it was ill suited for proper exploration. As the game progressed you unlocked the Double Jump, which let you reach new heights and control your jumps better and eventually fully developed the Bat Form which allowed you to freely fly and explore as you saw fit. Using these abilities you could go anywhere. You could speedily climb, change form and explore the greatest heights. Fall, use a double jump to catch yourself and hunt out any secret there was.

In Hollow Knight, however, the closest to this kind of thing you get is a single air dash and a rather flimsy double jump. Your double jump takes a while to pop off so you lose some height on it. There have been times I've fallen onto spikes mid-jump animation because you continue to move downwards until mid-way through the animation. So it's not really great for catching yourself. As mentioned before you get a single air dash which while useful for platforming, doesn't really help in the mobility department. It's really only useful for making longer jumps the likes of which the game will toss in your path specifically so you can't progress without unlocking the air dash and double jump yet. Then there's the third “jump” type upgrade. Called the Crystal Heart you charge up and just rocket across the screen until you hit something. It sounds really cool. In fact I was really excited the first time I used it and blasted across like three screens. But here's the big flaw with this item. You can only travel horizontally with it, you can't move while flying and literally any obstacle will stop you dead. Even enemies. You would think it would kill enemies, or knock them out of the way. But no. You just hit them and fall down, usually into spikes. It's not even a great item to use to quickly get past screens you've walked through a million times because there are very, very few screens that don't have enemies buzzing around everywhere, platforms randomly decorating the scenery or just walls sticking up in the middle of the air.

In fact the only upgrade I can honestly say was genuinely useful through the entire game since getting it and didn't really feel wasted at all was the Mantis Claw. Because all it was, was an upgrade that let you wall climb and wall jump. Grabbing this thing made the game amazing. Dodging became easier because now I could bounce off a wall and get behind enemies, avoid their attacks and actually be aggressive freely. Climbing wasn't a miserable experience of hopping onto tiny platforms, then getting knocked off because I didn't see an enemy flitting on the edge of the screen. I could actually grab ledges and recover for once. There were even tricky segments I could approach in more than one way thanks to the wall climbing letting me maneuver around obstacles more freely.

The non-mobility upgrades honestly aren't anything to write home about either. You can upgrade your sword to do more damage. I guess that's why every enemy feels like it has way too much health? Because they balanced the whole game around having the ultimate weapon upgrade? Because by the end, after I scoured most of the map and got it there were relatively few enemies I wasn't one-shotting. But until I got it, the game was miserable. Bosses felt immortal until I just hit them enough and they stopped being. Even basic enemies that respawned every screen took two-three hits and something just feels off when enemies have that much health. The combat in this game didn't feel fun at all, and not in any kind of moral way either. Just in kind of a lame “I'm not having fun playing this video game” kind of way. You do learn special techniques for your sword, but you have to charge your sword's attack for that and it takes so long there's no particular reason to ever use them. In fact the only way I found to make the melee combat in this game tolerable at all was to exploit the AI. You see, if you jump over an enemy and use the downward slash you just bounce off of the enemy's head. Most enemies in the game don't have an upwards attack. The ones that do usually can't hit you because the attack won't track you while you're bouncing back upwards through the air. Even the last boss in the game succumbed embarrassingly easy to the tactic of “bouncing off of his dang old head for a few minutes.”

You could just use magic though. Magic does more damage than your sword attacks, but eats up a lot of your energy. Hitting enemies with your sword gives you energy back. Magic is also the only way to heal outside of sitting at a save bench. There are things you can do to augment it all though. You see, you have this entire equip system of charms. They're basically just badges you equip that have a value of one to like, four. You start with three slots, gain up to ten or so by the end of the game. Being able to see your icon on the map is a charm that costs one slot to equip. As is a charm that lets you gain a lot of energy by taking damage. It costs three points to increase your distressingly narrow melee attack range and there's only one charm in the game that straight up increases your melee attack or damage. In fact the whole system reeks of wasted potential because a lot of charms do gimmicky things, and a few do cool things. But there's almost no reason to use any of them other than the ones that just make you do more damage and recover more energy, or the ones that give you more health. Turning into a snail while I heal is cool I guess, game, but why would I do that when I could just kill everything faster and never need to heal. Like with so many other gameplay elements of this game, it's a cool idea that just feels kind of wasted because it doesn't feel like the most was made of it.

Speaking of wasted potential, enemies and hazards! This game has some spectacular enemy variation and I love that most areas have a unique cast of creatures to fight. However there are some frustrating things that go along with this. Like the exploding, screeching bat things. Why are they in almost every area of the game? Why do all of the environmental obstacles make the most obnoxious noises possible? And was it really necessary to make so many things in general explode, and give them such massive blast radii at that? The bosses are all pretty great though – seeming immortality aside – they all definitely feel unique and I would much rather have had more of them in the game over a smaller map. Personally, the Mantis Lords are still my absolute favorite fight, it keeps you on the move constantly but never really throws too much at you at once so you can always react and play aggressively without the game just slapping your hand for having fun with it. The Broken Vessel is easily my second favorite, but it does a bit too much with the balloons spawning in and then just occasionally stands there spitting poison goo while you smash it to death making it way too easy. I really wish more of the combat and enemies in general had taken after the bosses than just been annoying slogs against flying enemies always floating out of range spitting poison, or against big guys with shields. Because most of the bosses are fast, aggressive whereas the enemies are always just kind of there. In your way, annoying. Even with all their health, the bosses are fun. The enemies aren't. All the regular enemies have going for them are their cool visual variation from zone to zone.

Okay that's getting to be a bit of a downer. Let me take a moment to talk about things I liked instead. Hollow Knight's visuals from beginning to end are still spectacular. Each area is well defined visually. Even when two areas are similar, like Queen's Garden and Greenpath, they're still distinct enough that you always know where you are at a glance. As down as I am on the actual physical map design, I think their atmospheric world design was spot on. The Fog Canyon is a fantastic area with almost unearthly purple tones and filled with weird jellyfish. All the sounds are given a filter that makes the whole zone sound like it's underwater and it messes with you because it, clearly, isn't. The Fungal Wastes are just a mushroom infested cave and I love me some mushroom designs. Deepnest, on the other hand, is a genuinely creepy and almost stressful area. The whole zone is filled with an undercurrent of gross crawling sounds, and all the spikes in this are are living, writhing centipedes. Most rooms have this aggravating rushing noise of gigantic horrible bugs crawling across the screen, you can't hurt them either. They're just obstacles. Half of the zone is a giant spider nest filled with eggs and parasites that crawl out of corpses. The other half is just a dark centipede filled hell hole. I love the Deepnest. My favorite area, however, is The Abyss. Dark and silently menacing the only bugs there are just passive crawling things. The more plot relevant enemies at the bottom of the pit are fantastic though and I loved every moment of the game's story.

In fact, let me take a moment to praise the story. This game, it's developers really, manged to very clearly tell their story while still being delightfully ambiguous about it. Even going for the “true” ending you only find out what you absolutely have to, unless you look for it. There are a ton of little secret rooms hidden around the game that contain information. Very little of it bluntly handed to you on a text dump or item description. But most of it told through visuals. You also get an item fairly early on called the Dream Nail. It lets you read thoughts and enter dreams. Almost every enemy in the game will have their own thoughts. You can use it on corpses too, presumably to read their last thoughts, fears or desires. You can piece together what happened in an area, what happened to the world before ever reaching the point where the game its self tells you. Even after the game spills its guts you're still left with several big unanswered questions. Nothing quite so frustrating as “who are these people” such as Dark Souls tends to leave its audience with, but rather questions as vague as “But why?” And I love it. So kudos to the writer for managing to make a game fascinating enough that even though I was not a fan of the gameplay, I still stuck through because I was enthralled. And to the artists too because the visual design is spectacular. I just really hope the next game, if there is one, is a bit fuller. Not necessarily bigger or anything. Just more fleshed out in the gameplay department.

So, in the end would I recommend this to anyone now? Reluctantly, honestly. If it's someone who is really into story and design but doesn't care so much about gameplay then certainly. If it's someone who cares more about gameplay over any other aspect then probably not. I'd still try to get both people to buy Aquaria first, however. Seriously; go play Aquaria.

#nerdshit #Hollow Knight #I finished with 98%#That flower quest broke me #I refuse to do garbage like that #Also the music was okay but kind of forgettable

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comicteaparty · 4 years

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December 4th-December 10th, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from December 4th, 2019 to December 10th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What comic ended or went on indefinite hiatus that you miss? What about that comic do you like?

AntiBunny

An old one I enjoyed was Mindmistress. It was very interesting to see the combination of futurism and superheroes. It not only looked at what superhero tropes would and would not work in reality it took those tropes and looked for a way to make them work when they seem impossible. It wasn't exactly realistic, but it was believable and consistent within its self. The comic stopped very suddenly in the middle of a story arc.

carcarchu

Pao Ge Huang Taizi - https://www.kuaikanmanhua.com/web/topic/840/ i loved the funny and lighthearted tone of this series and really wish i could know how was supposed to end

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

My mind immediately jumps to Hannah is not a Boy's Name, which was one of the first webcomics I've ever read (that were not on the German site I was mostly reading where everything was manga inspired). Especially what Tess Stone did with typography in the comic pages was just...top notch (also one of the first comics I've seen that made used of vertical scrolling. It's pretty sad bc it ending had nothing to do with the creator, tho I'm glad Tess went on to create other really cool comics.

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

Oohhh seconding Hannah is not a Boy's Name. That story inspired me to no end, and then it just disappeared :8(edited)

Cronaj

For me it is almost always Grand Spirit. (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/grand-spirit/list?title_no=6608) I fell in love with it back in 2015, and then it disappeared for 3 years until it returned unexpectedly in 2018. Aaaand then it disappeared again this past July without a word. So who knows, it could be another 3 years before they return... Or it could be forever. I mainly loved it because the idea was really something. When this comic was originally published, it was for the Webtoon sci-fi contest back in 2015 (which I didn't participate in because I didn't have a solid idea to work with). But naturally, the story is about... fairies. XD Robot fairies created by the humans with one program in mind: protect the grand spirit of nature that humans have destroyed. The main character, Wang Min, is one of these programmed fairies, but he realizes when he is injured and taken by a human to be repaired that he is a machine created by humans for their own purposes. I mean, beyond the amazing concept, I thought the whole comic was excellently done: good character designs, excellent pacing, beautiful artwork. All this things falling into place for the author. They actually got past the first round of the contest, which is pretty amazing, but they didn't go any further past that, even though I was rooting for them. And then after that... They went on their hiatus. It makes me wonder if maybe the creator wanted to make money from the comic, and once they discovered they weren't going to in the immediate future, they gave up. Very disheartening. There are plenty of other comics that I love that have either gone on indefinite hiatus or that have ended that I still think about, but Grand Spirit is the one I think about the most.

Erin Ptah (BICP 🎄 Leif & Thorn)

I still miss No Rest For The Wicked

Not to mention What Happens in Carpediem, which was on Smackjeeves, so I bet even if the artist wanted to come back they'd decide it was more trouble than it's worth.

Eightfish

It makes me sad how quickly people responded to this question ): I too know of several comics I wish would be continued. Such is the world of webcomics though. Also, you guys, stop with the descriptions. They're too good! You guys are tempting me into reading these comics but I know if I do it will only end in disappointment edit: what is that thing below this vvv(edited)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh gosh, where do I start? So many over the years. One that stuck with me the most was an old, old comic from the early '00s called Fallen about a fallen angel of death. The humour was so quirky and good, but it also hit the drama and emotional beats really well. It's long since vanished after going on perma-hiatus, but 10+ years later, I still miss it. Another was Off-White. The art in that one was incredibly gorgeous. I'd link the site as it's technically still 'there' but the archives are either broken or missing. And finally, one that hasn't been officially announced as dead, but probably is, is White Noise. This comic has such great writing and atmosphere. Like Fallen, it really hit all the emotional beats so well and the build-up to big reveals was always pulled off superbly. Fortunately, the website for this one is still up and functional, and you can read what there is of it here: http://whitenoisecomic.com/(edited)

Erin Ptah (BICP 🎄 Leif & Thorn)

@Eightfish: the server has levels for every user based on how active you are -- the more you post, the more you level up! There's not a whole lot to it tbh, but there's a list of ranks and what comes with them in #rules

SAWHAND

Oh shoot! I remember Fallen @Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) ! And I don't have a great memory for stuff like that, but that one really stayed with me.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh man, White Noise was one of the first webcomics I ever read, but I still have never made it through the whole archive. I lost it for a few years when I switched computers and I think when I remembered it again it had gone in that hiatus. I think that made it to hard to try and reread again :(

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

For sure. I never start a comic that’s already on hiatus. It’s too sad to get invested in something that might never continue.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

So for me I guess my White Whale of indefinite hiatus comics is this one called Scarecrow Lullaby. It was also one of my really early first webcomics and it wasn't like, the best comic in the world but it hit a lot of the spooky but cute notes that I like in a story. There was also something about the art and character tropes that really resonated with me and my own comics I was making at the time. So I felt kind of a kindred spirit connection with the comic in some ways. I've felt that for other comics too over the years, I figure that's probably not uncommon for folks but I don't really know? But anyway, the hiatus for this one just really haunted me almost because the creator just kind of disappear. Like there wasn't any goodbye post or anything. The comment section got wild on the last page with people speculating that she had died or something. There were people saying they were real life friends confirming that the artist was dead and then others saying no, she was still alive but wasn't planning to continue. I still go check in on it every few years just to see if there's any news. I think what makes me most sad about it isn't that the story didn't finish but just that the artist vanished. Like I wish I could follow her on Twitter or Instagram and see how she's been doing the past 10 years but if she has accounts they aren't under the same name. Just a big weird mystery! https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/ScareCrow_Lullaby/

RebelVampire

The comic I miss the most is Chronicles of Oro http://www.chroniclesoforo.com/ . I really loved how languages were handled in the comic, the character designs, the interesting world, etc. It was a really great start to a good fantasy story that really just hit all the right notes with me. It's only been 2 years since the last page was posted, but its been agony. However, unlike some of the other depressing tales, the creator does occasionally pop in to give a "It's not forgotten" status update, so maybe it will return one day.

mathtans

I'm gonna show my age here. "Elf Only Inn". http://www.elfonlyinn.net/ It started as a comic about internet chatrooms in 2002. After a few years it went on hiatus and rebooted itself as a comic about an MMORPG. As if the same users were using a new medium. Brilliant. It's been on indefinite hiatus since 2008. I still get a kick out of the "Nimoy" character being mistaken for an elf.

keii4ii

I too remember the comic Fallen @Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) though I don't remember much of its humor, so not 100% sure if we're talking about the same Fallen? Is it the one where the human MC has a pet snake? I don't quite miss this comic, at least not in the sense of longing for its unlikely return. But it left an impression on me. Taught me an important lesson in writing character-driven stories. See, at the time I was chest deep in Chosen One stories and the likes, so I thought central twists had to be about what a character was. But Fallen showed me that a story could revolve around who a character is. It's such a basic lesson, and sometimes I feel dumb for not having learned it at an earlier age, but better a little late than super late!

It was a good comic, and I super appreciate what it did for the Younger Me.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@keii4ii It must be the same Fallen, because I def remember the MC having a pet snake.

keii4ii

Woo!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

The humour wasn’t terribly prevalent, but I remember when it surfaced, it always made me laugh out loud. The author also left snarky and often hilarious comments under the pages.

Erin Ptah (BICP 🎄 Leif & Thorn)

Oh, man, Elf Only Inn takes me back. Such a perfect distillation of free-for-all tween chatroom roleplaying. She's a princess mermaid elf who is also a vampyre(half)!! I'd love to see someone do a sequel/homage with present-day kids. Same kinds of jokes, but it's on a Discord server with 2019-style memes.

"Not everyone uses a 1024x768 screen size, so we're shrinking the comic." #just2002things http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20020705.html

Kabocha

Comics I miss... So, it's not even online now, because the author pulled all mirrors and was going to redo the site back in 2012, but I really miss Picatrix. It was kind of fundamental to getting me into webcomics at all, and I became friends with the author. It was kind of an isekai sorta deal - Main character ends up in another world with magic and stuff, finds out there's a prophecy that she's gotta fulfill. Only she wasn't reincarnated or anything. But also the whole, "oh crap arranged marriage to a king?!" plot? I was kinda into it. Especially with how Az and Winnie started off hating each other.

AntiBunny

I'd forgotten about Elf Only Inn. Really takes me back to those late nights of chatting on IRC.

€heshire777

Dr. McNinja is my first thought

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

Did that die?

AntiBunny

Dr. McNinja finished. The creator works as a pro in comics now, but he occasionally does a short. Like "Never Enough the Wario Diaries" that he's posting on Twitter right now.

Kelsey (Kurio)

What sorts of comics does he work with nowadays?

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #reader favorites #comic tea party #ctp

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