#its the shittiest version of the story.

[waterfall-ambience]

head in my hands i need to rewrite the entirety of perpetua arc 1 NOWWWWW

#auri rambles #draft 2 shouldnt take as long because i kind of know what i'm doing now and i've been editing as i go #there are loose plot ends that i was like 'okay that gets resolved in a future arc' but theres not enough focus or build up to that #until they become relevant again. #perpetua progress notes #welcome to the state of auri waterfall-ambience 2023. in which theres minimal evil xisuma posting and the show is just #'watch me try to shape a story out of this mess in real time' #its okay though! the whole point of draft 1 is to have something to work with and refine later. #its the shittiest version of the story.

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

Controversial Character Tournament Round 2: Gamzee Makara from Homestuck vs Maeglin Lómion from The Silmarillion/The Fall Of Gondolin

(remember that these characters are fictional and your fellow tumblr users are real. i will block you if you harass others in the notes, please consider sending your unhinged harassment to my inbox instead)

Propaganda under the cut, may contain spoilers:

Gamzee Makara:

LOVE: - "Okay, so Gamzee is such a divisive character that I even hesitated on choosing "love". Sad clown with an absentee father raised in a fascist dictatorship. Was mind controlled into killing his friends and then mind controlled during a toxic relationship (or two). Suffers from addiction so fandom likes to go "Oh, how scary his withdraws are. Clearly being drugged up was the only thing keeping this THIRTEEN YEAR OLD from murdering his friends (who largely ignored him, insulted him, demeaned him and acted like they wanted nothing to do with him). Having one such friend gently touch his face didn't cure him of his issues (or the mind control) so obviously he is an irredeemable monster and an abuser. This is genetic." I know you've gotten tons of Vriska, so basically insert any of Vriska's apologists' points here." - "Gamzee is a complex character who is used as a puppet both by the other villains of Homestuck and by the arthur. Once someone takes a deeper look at him they might find a tragic character who had lots of chances where he could have gotten onto a better path but those chances were not able to be given or taken. On the flip side Gamzee suffers from some poor writing that leaves aspects of the character to based off poor stereotypes, he also lacks chances to show his internal character as thr story goes on and is treated like a tool by the story. He also killed some fan favorite characters and has a version of himself (homestuck is a multi timeline story) that abused a different fan favorite character." - "I know Vriska is the obvious pick for controversial HS blorbo, but consider: He is the world's shittiest boy. No one knows why he does the things he does he might just be a murderclown but he might be mind controlled or something no one knows and people have really strong opinions on him based on what they believe. He makes me very sad because I did think he was a cool character before he snapped." - "He was written so poorly 💔" - "when i was 12 i had a crush on him i was like a gamzee apologist and i was probably right i dont remember homestuck. i used to listen to icp and think wowww this is just like my clwon boyfriend and giggle and blush and kick my legs and i still do that with my fake boyfriend but hes not gamzee and its not icp and im not 12 but he kind of sounds like gamzee but thats because hes a smoker and he wouldnt listen to icp he likes techno. anyway i used to get so sad when people said they didnt like him because of the killings and i brought him up to my old therapist a couple times thats kind of funny looking back but i would do it again (but not with gamzee. with my fake chain smoker boyfriend who likes techno). anyway anyway my mom listens icp because her old friend from highschool who died was a juggalo and whenever i hear her listen to it i think about gamzee so i havent forgot about him yet. hes wasnt my favorite character thouhg my favorite character was the gemini one (i also had a crush on him when i was 12 i tried to lucid dream to see him once) (it didnt work). ok love you bye." - "-Funny clown -Cares about his friends -Absent parental figure :( -Did some murder but it wasn't his fault really he didn't have all of his mental faculties (see next point) -Got brainwashed by a universe-destroying god that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time through the form of a rapping marionette -The author(s) fucking hates him for some reason and retconned his previous characterization to make him a one-dimensional shitty villain and used canon text to make fun of fans who like him and no I'm not exaggerating -If I don't make him my blorbo who will"

Maeglin Lómion:

LOVE: - "LISTEN okay so he DID betray the city of Gondolin to the guy who literally invented evil, and that DID result in it getting destroyed and a whole bunch of people dying or being taken prisoner (which is probably worse in this instance), and also he DID attempt to throw his cousin's seven-year-old son off the city walls to his death during the attack. BUT. I love him. Also, and more substantially, a) he didn't go out of his way to betray the city, he was taken prisoner and threatened into it, b) he had an incredibly painful history with Gondolin involving both his parents' violent deaths happening like ten minutes after he arrived there, and he was legally not allowed to leave, and c) he was SO YOUNG (only 180! that's hardly anything for an elf!) and he is SO ANGSTY and INTERESTINGLY GOTH and SELF-HATING and I LOVE him. So." - "First of all he was LITERALLY CURSED TWICE OVER so there was NO WAY he was coming to a good end okay. Sure he had a crush on his cousin but he canonically didn't say anything and she only knew because she read his mind and he wasn't able to hide it from her. He had a major éowyn moment (iconic) and was trapped in cage after cage all his life and tbh after what he saw in the Nirnaeth I'm NOT surprised he voted to stay instead of go. Or just told the king what he wanted to hear. Anyway the POINT is that breaking under mental torment to morgoth, whose force and victory he'd seen firsthand, is NOT a moral failing, and idril started conspiring against him before he'd actually done anything wrong. The attempted murder was, admittedly, not great though. But he didn't even SUCCEED like c'mon he just got homoerotically yeeted from a cliff about it. In conclusion: maeglin did nothing wrong except all the things he did wrong, and the version in which he's most openly evil is also the one where both the narrative and the other elves are racist to him so like they had it coming"

#poll #round 2 #maeglin #maeglin lomion #the silmarillion #lord of the rings #gamzee makara #gamzee homestuck #gamzee #homestuck gamzee #homestuck #6 submissions #2 submissions

[ourladyofmaplemurder]

Riverdale is Bad and I’m So Smart

So, I was going to make a response video to Friendly Space Ninja's video on the finale...but honestly, there are just other things I'd rather do with my time...

I did, however, write a script for the video. You can read that here if you wish.

The short version is that people who talk about art the way he does are fucking idiots and I'm tired of being nice about it. If you don't know what you're talking about, either figure it out or shut the fuck up. **And let me clarify: There is a big difference from expressing a personal opinion to friends and standing on authority with a huge platform to provide "critique". Huge difference. Not understanding or not liking the finale is totally valid, (It wasn't necessarily what I would have done with the final season) but what makes me angry about this guy in particular is that he positions himself as an authority on media criticism and analysis. He then provides the shittiest fucking examples of both. I can't stand it.

Hi. So. Our dear friend Friendly Space Ninja put out another video about Riverdale. This time, he took it upon himself to discuss the finale. Anything for a click, right, buddy?

Well, he made all sorts of claims about the finale and the final season. He gave his thoughts on the show as a whole. And all of it, dear viewer is entirely worthless. Strong statement, I know, but hear me out.

He didn’t watch the latter half of season 5, nor season 6 at all. He didn’t even watch all of season 7. He watched the first few episodes with specific expectations and when those were not met, he skipped to the end only to be baffled by its conclusion, claiming that it was all meaningless and even going as far as to “explain” quote unquote that Angel Tabitha’s rework of the timelines erases the other shows that Roberto Agurrie Sacasa has made. This, by the way, demonstrates such a lack of understanding of the surface level plot, that I can’t even respond to it.

For these reasons, I will not be refuting his assertions as I did in my last video response to him. It’s simply not worth it. His video is so deeply stupid that picking it apart would be giving it more credit than it deserves.

I was very diplomatic in my last response video, but I really don’t wish to be this time. I really don’t think it’s worth it.

However, I would like to say a few things, just to give you a sense of why I am so fucking angry.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about the work of Barnett Newman. In particular, I’d like to talk about Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III. The first time I saw this painting, or even just paintings like it, I scoffed and said, “Why is something like this in a museum? It’s stupid. It’s just red, yellow, and blue. Is this even art?” Years later, however, I learned an interesting story about this painting.

In 1986 the painting was vandalized in an anti-Semitic attack. Daniel Goldreyer attempted to restore the painting in 1991. Should be easy, right? I mean, it’s just three colors.

However, the effort proved utterly unsuccessful as the depth of the color was incredibly difficult to replicate. The skill required to create this painting was far more than the untrained eye could perceive.

The first time I saw this painting, I did not understand it and condemned it as stupid because I was an arrogant prick.

And I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people who also don’t understand painting would agree with such a dismissive sentiment.

But just because I have millions of people agreeing with me doesn’t mean I know anything. It just means a lot of people don’t understand painting. That’s it.

Friendly Space Ninja’s video on Riverdale is the equivalent of someone looking at this painting and calling it stupid without understanding anything about abstract expressionism, painting techniques, and the works of Neoplasticism that this series was responding to.

It is watching Sunset Boulevard and complaining there is no color.  

It is the equivalent of an incel giving you dating advice.

But let me address Mr. Space Ninja directly and I won’t use any metaphors because I want this to be understood.

More than making a stupid response to Riverdale, your crime, Mr. Space Ninja, is arrogance. You look at a piece of art, you are utterly baffled by it, as you yourself say in the video, and you assume that the art must be the stupid one. It couldn’t be that it’s going over your head. No. It must be meaningless because you can’t grasp its meaning.

This is very troubling and also quite sad.

Though, I suspect you have no interest in providing useful insight into the works you discuss. It’s far more lucrative to provide inflammatory confirmation bias and, at the end of the day, that’s all you’re really doing. And to be clear, that is an insult. Wouldn’t want you to miss that. <3

Now, I also watched Alex Meyer’s video on the finale as well out of curiosity, as he also has a large platform. I haven’t watched his other videos because they seemed overtly negative about the show and I figured they wouldn’t be even remotely enjoyable. Curiosity won out though and honestly, though the sacred cow he is mocking is mine and thus, I disagree…I can’t fault him for this. There was a lot of care and thought that went into this. Even if he thinks the show is silly (and it certainly is) there’s a clear affection for it.

Not only that, but towards the end of the video he says this: “Time will be kind to your show. And all the chucklefucks like me with our kneejerk reactions? That's all going to fade away."

He also acknowledges the fact that there might be more to it than just the silliness. He doesn’t talk about it because he prefers to joke about the show rather than analyze it. He’s a jester, not a scholar. I could never fault him for that.

But I also don’t think anyone in their right mind would consider this critique. This is a comedy bit. And I’m not saying that comedy is less important or valuable than analysis. Not at all. It’s just different.

Anyway. Friendly Space Ninja. Fuck you.

#Riverdale #Friendly Space Ninja

[antirepurp]

hot and happening guide to playing shadow the hedgehog (2005) in a manner that lets you have a good time

emulate it. your best bet is the ps2 version if your computer is closer to a potato, otherwise the gamecube version might be better as far as i've understood. use save states as much as you feel like, i've done one whenever i hit a checkpoint and that works quite well

start with neutral missions. it's largely the intended first-time experience, it's reminiscent of traditional sonic stages, and lets you get familiar with the controls which are very heroes-esque to begin with

blue gauge -> level skipping. not particularly good for most hero/dark missions but is helpful for neutral missions and some other end-game use cases

guns are friends. you will not have a good time with just the homing attack, grab a pistol and get some distance to your foes

some missions will be long. this is double the case if you're going into things blind or with little experience. most of them are a matter of patience and being thorough in eliminating enemies and the like, so explore as much as you feel necessary

avoid Central City. shit is full of hazards and has a time limit for both missions, consulting a walkthrough feels like a requirement unless you're already familiar with it. you will only play it on a pure-dark run and can avoid it by doing Cryptic Castle Neutral mission -> The Doom Dark mission

avoid following missions: Lethal Highway Hero, Iron Jungle Hero, Air Fleet Dark. all of them involve shooting down an escaping air craft, effectively putting you on the shittiest time limit known to man. while iron jungle and air fleet are on nicher paths, lethal highway is on the logical pure hero path, but can be avoided by doing Westopolis Neutral mission -> Glyphic Canyon Hero mission

honorary mention mission: Space Gadget Hero, which is on a time-limit. this is another niche routing case as it leads to Final Haunt, and you can play Lost Impact Hero to get there with no time limits

customize your playthroughs. even with the above three points you can play this game in whatever fashion you'd like, take advantage of its design and revisit stages you liked, avoid shitty missions, get some cool as fuck story sequences in your library. you have 326 unique routes you can take through the game, the sky's the limit with this bitch (though for lore and story purposes you might take the "intended" routes first)

take breaks. this game is not designed to be no-lifed, do a route or two a day and chip away at it if your goal is to unlock the true ending

shth is a relic from a particularly edgy era of video games and for that it is a goddamn masterpiece. you should play it actually because, unsurprisingly, it's not as bad as it's made out to be. go be a funny little hedgehog with guns and a tragic backstory i promise it's a cool time

#soda offers you a can #this game has its flaws certainly but if you plan around them it's honestly enjoyable #it's charming! it's edgy! e-123 omega says damn!!!

[felassan]

Illuminating tweet series by a former Anthem developer [source].

They mention elsewhere in the thread that Anthem was developed in 15 months. Per the tweets, before this period, it spent 5-6 years in pre-production, lacking a clear vision and with an ever-changing vision; in game development this causes a lot of working and reworking. The devs were talented and all passionate about the game, but they were building "a new IP from nothing on an engine that was meant for an FPS with half a team that had never created live service games".

They further elaborate in more tweets that:

EA had their reasons to release it early but were stupid and the devs' team "had to pay the price". EA learned a lot from the development of Anthem but whether they applied those learnings is unknown

Jason Schreier's article (How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong) was all 100% true at one point in development or other, and only scratches the surface

How did they manage to ship it in 15 months? The dev mentions working about 90 hours a week for 15 months. Many other devs on the team were also doing so and they think that others were doing 90 hours a week prior to the 15 month mark. "It wasn't sustainable and not even a position we should have been in." "I'm fine now, but not without damage. Contributed to the cost of my marriage and I needed therapy for a while after that endeavor." "It was a lot of morale hits on a personal level and a team level. Everyone had their own way of dealing with it." "There was a lot of pissed, stressed, rinse, repeat. It was a vicious cycle." "I guarantee we could have put something out in Unreal. Working in Frostbite was rough." After launch the team got death threats because of drop rates

Anthem was delayed as it had missing features, lack of polish and bugs that needed fixing. Another big problem that it faced was that it had lots of scope creep. "There were really high expectations for this game and the team felt it. We always were trying to push for cool features, etc.. So I think we could have done it if we kept our scope creep in check."

The main team was focused on getting the game out in a functional state. "We really needed another 1-2 studios to make endgame content while we were finishing up the game."

After launch it was all hands on deck to stabilize the game. Content and features that they wanted to do consequently kept getting deprioritized. A major focus they were trying to address at launch was all the server issues. "I think the shittiest part about this, besides no endgame and replay ability, was that during development, management was putting in gating mechanics to 'lengthen' the time it took to complete the story. IIRC it was removed from the final version after backlash from devs."

"It was a great team effort to get the controls how we shipped. We went through many iterations and it was super rough in the beginning. I know the team was really happy where the controls landed too. We actually took in a lot of feedback from the EA game changers."

A Twitter user asked "When you say it wasn’t ready, was that always communicated with other members of the team i.e. publishers?". The dev replied "I think it was ignored/denied from leadership. There is a story there, but I will refrain."

A transparent retrospective on Anthem/its development will likely never come to light because of both current and former devs still being under NDA

The dev has an assumption that if they didn't release Anthem, BioWare would have been dissolved. They also observe that BioWare just wasn't good at multi-project development, which is hard. Most people at BioWare didn't believe in "BioWare Magic". There was and maybe still is a lot of stress and politics surrounding Anthem from the development and publishing side (a problem not specific to Anthem). The dev mentioned that it was both an EA failure and a BioWare upper management failure. "I actually don't think it was all EA's fault. A developer and publisher is supposed to be a healthy relationship of trust and transparency. It's a 2 way street which i don't think was satisfied on either side."

Re: who made the decision to release the game in the state it was, some of them left and some remain at BioWare

On Anthem 2.0/Anthem Next, the game was really fun and was going in the right direction. The team had hit a really great milestone, when EA canned it. It was a different development team driving Anthem 2.0. The team were gutted when it was cancelled

(please note it's always best to read tweets and the like in full and in context, from the original source)

[source]

#bioware #anthem #video games #long post #longpost #death threat mention #death threats mention

[himehikoshrine]

Mary Jane and Frankenstein 

In honor of Spooky Month and the imminent arrival of Mary Jane Day, I have done the scariest thing imaginable, returned to tumblr dot com to write a meta/analysis post.

[image description: images side by side of the top of the Mary Jane poster, showing Mary looking down sewing Jacob, next to the 1831 edition front panel illustration of Frankenstein, showing Victor looking down on his creature in horror]

This is a mostly informal attempt to collect my thoughts on the fact that Neji’s little spooktacular, in addition to being a very pointed exploration, as all of his plays are, of art and theater, the school, himself and his classmates (without their permission, the menace) and just, a lot of fun, is perhaps one of the best piece of Frankenstein related media I have EVER seen in relation to the original novel. 

This is pulling a lot of things from the Stage Script rather than the in game version, which summarizes a lot of the things I'm mentioning specifically. You can find the full Stage Script in the game menu, or

[ here ]

because I love this play so much that I needed a searchable version.

Caveat Emptor here is that it’s been a long time since I’ve read the novel in its entirety. If this game gets me to read it again, I may have to revamp things. But again, largely informal. But very long, somehow.

Oooops.

If you're curious about anything in here and want to expand on it more, or hear my thoughts on it, please feel free to reblog, send an ask, or message. Or ask me elsewhere if we're already connected there. There's a lot I glossed over, especially at the end of this. I have a lot to say, and if we're back to writing metas on tumblr dot com the chances of stopping at one are slim.

Mary as Frankenstein, Mary as Mother

Mary’s name is acting as several allusions at once. I mean, there are at least 3 Mary’s in the bible one could point to - Mary, Mother of Jesus is absolutely at play. But Lazarus’s sister is also a Mary. And while technically Mary Magdalene is often misrepresented and amalgamated with other characters in retellings, the idea of “purifying” her has canon precedent - having had seven demons driven out of her.

Of course, Neji’s twisting all of it, in his Neji way.

(Interestingly enough, these are the Three Marys of the Quem Quaeritis - widely considered a point of "rebirth" of theatre in Europe during the middle ages.)

But Mary is also the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein. And this, this is a Frankenstein story. It is, in fact, a beautiful inversion of so much about the book that gets left out in most far more serious attempts at a Frankenstein story. 

The original book is about motherhood and its inversion. Much could be said about when during her life she wrote it, or her own mother’s death shortly after she was born, or any number of things that have been hashed and rehashed a thousand times from AP English to the ivoriest of towers. But, fan of Death of the Author that I am, I posit you don’t need any of that to see in the text.

Victor creates a person with science, rather than by ‘nature’. It is an unnatural birth. And Victor is just about the shittiest possible parent. The Creature spends a good deal of time explaining to him, when they meet up again, that Victor is his father, and that he was literally abandoned as a newborn, and maybe that was kind of the worst possible thing he could have done. It’s not a mantle Victor has any desire to take up, the role of a parent. He wanted to create life, but he didn’t want to be a parent. But that’s what it means to create life. 

By gender swapping the role, you’re already inverting the inversion - but Mary’s creation is no more “natural” than Victors. But it is different. Neji, ever witch-coded himself, has Mary put one of her own hairs into every doll. It’s returning the shared body to the act of bringing these creations into being.

But even without that. Mary considers herself a mother. She considers herself a mother despite having no memory of one herself - Mary knows lots of things she shouldn’t, and doesn’t know many things she should. But she calls herself a mother. Even before any of the dolls move, she is their mother. A motherhood she wants to desperately share with others. She considers the act of selling a doll a kind of ‘adoption’. These are her children. And they know it. It’s stitched into every stitch in their doll bodies. They know Mary is their mother. And they know she loves them.

[image description: screenshot of Mary in her workshop. The text shows Mary's line saying "I'm back, dear dolls. Mommy's home."]

The Creature comes to think of Victor as a father - an absentee one at that, and craves that love, a love he is never shown. Mary averts this spectacularly. She creates out of love. 

Names

Mary takes great care in naming Jacob, and ends up doing so, though she doesn’t say it, after a biblical pun (Jacob, in the bible, is explicitly named such as a pun on the word “Heel”). But names are important to Mary, and she is sure to give one to Jacob as soon as he’s fully formed, even before she sees him wake up. Victor very particularly does not name his creature. Instead, he tends to throw around insults, many of which are demonic or satanic. When they finally meet again, the Creature says to him “I should have been thy Adam.” Mary averts this mistake, among so many others, spectacularly. Being called by her name is important to her, and she extends that offer to Jacob even before he’s fully “born.” Like a good mother.

[image description: a screenshot showing Fumi and Kai dressed as Mary and Jacob, as seen from the stage with the audience in the background. Kai is saying Jacob's line "I did, Mary. You are Mary Jane. My mother."]

Not only does she give him a nice biblical pun of a first name, she shares her last name with him, again before he’s even more than a doll. That’s her boy, that’s her best friend. That’s her family.

The song here, which is only sung and dance AFTER Mary has given him a name is called "A Friend Without A Name" Almost as if specifically calling attention to this fact. Mary is as much the friend without a name as Jacob, if not more. She is the one that has never heard another voice say her name, where as Jacob is called his before he's even awakened by the Island's magic and Mary's love.

[image description: the screen from just before A Friend Without A Name showing Mary and Jacob's CG of Mary Stitching Jacob.]

Mary as a Good Mother

Some of the weirder moments in the play actually make a lot more sense when you look at them through this light. Jacob randomly saying he hates Mary in a fit of jealousy? It’s because he’s a child. He’s a baby. That’s a baby boy. Mary, herself quite childish, forgetting so much of what’s important, as the Island is known for, reacts incorrectly, but understandably. This is her first friend - and far more of one than the others she thinks she’s made, in terms of mutual respect, compassion, and small acts of kindness. But this level of connection and emotional reciprocation is still new to her. She’s hurt. She runs.

And The Order of Shadow’s duo is quick to tell her that that’s just the nature of ghosts, telling themselves a little joke about how they have been lying to her from the start, and fully intend to stab her in the back, far more than any ghost. Victor’s instinct is to consider his creature a monster, a fiend, a demon. Mary is told by characters positioned as far more knowledgeable about the world than her that he must be exactly that.

And how does Mary react? She refuses to believe it. Even hurt as she was, even with someone who just said this is their entire expertise telling her it’s in his nature to be cruel, Mary refuses to accept it. She still loves him. She makes the right choice. That’s her best friend. That’s her family. That’s a (un)life she brought into this world, and she stands by him. No matter what. She would risk her life to rescue him. She will fight for him.

This is why that scene has to be there. Because she has to be given that temptation, that trial. And she passes spectacularly in a way Victor will not, to the end.

It’s also a thematic explanation for the garbage scene, which is probably there as much to be silly as anything. I mean, it’s also there to show many other things — Mary’s eccentricity is ingenious in its own quirky way — the islanders who hated her, who she didn’t understand, give her the tools to save Jacob and the others — Mary not even considering the same level of violence — it being a moment of empathy between Mary and the islanders who never showed her even a shred of it back — she understands that they couldn’t tell which food was rotten. She sees things from their point of view. And many more besides.

But, from the point of view of Mary as a Mother, Mary succeeding brilliantly where Victor failed… Mary is literally willing to coat herself in filth to rescue Jacob. Parenthood is messy. It involves a lot of gross things. Even Victor's, sanitized of the normal processes and cloaked in science, was made of corpse parts. But the play actually brings back a part of parenthood that Mary had been able to avoid thus far - the mess. Mary, once again, doesn’t hesitate. For Jacob? She’ll do anything.

Jacob is shown love and kindness, and he responds with the same. He has the same unnatural strength as Victor’s creature, but he’s only ever shown using it to rescue himself and others. When Mary asks for a handshake, he replies that he can’t, because such would be an invitation for a duel. And that they should hug, instead. Mary didn’t even know what that was. Far from disgusted by the lack of warmth she feels from his skin, she looks beyond that, to the emotional warmth and connection.

Frankenstein’s creature, famously, lashes out in violence. While Victor views this as his responsibility only in so far as he brought a demon into the world, he doesn’t understand, even when the Creature eloquently explains it, that the Creature was a being who had only known cruelty.

Jacob knows love. He knows kindness. He knows sadness and loneliness and pain. And refuses to engage in any form of touch that could even be considered violence. They hug.

Which is not to say Mary’s creatures can’t kill. But they do only to protect their mother, and only after Mary has risked everything to protect Jacob. They are Mary’s children, not Victor’s. Even their violence is an act of love. And in another inversion - they are the ones telling Mary to run. Something she does not want to do. She doesn't want to leave them behind. After all, they are her children. She departs from them only at Jacob's literal tug away, and with an apology and a thanks.

[Image description: screenshot of Fumi, dressed as Mary Jane, shown from stage view, with the audience behind, while a Doll's lines "Protect Mommy, let mommy run away." are shown below.]

Boats and Framing

But the parallels are not only in the most famous part of the novel - consider this - Frankenstein, the novel, is written as a series of nesting framing narratives. The bookend narrative, the one we open and close on, is a boat. Most Frankenstein adaptations cut the boat trip frame, but Mary Jane very specifically opens and closes on a boat at sea, and its ending is EXACTLY the reverse of Frankenstein’s. If for some reason you’re this far in and don’t want more spoilers for a 200 year old book, now’s the time to click away, I guess.

The boat is on a course to the Arctic. Victor is on board, telling his story, because his creature has fled there, away from humanity. Victor intends to pursue him endlessly, to kill him, fully aware that he is almost certainly going to die, frozen and alone, in the process. We don’t get to see this happen - the story ends merely with the certainty that this is what is coming. Victor, on a boat, intending to go to the ends of the earth alone to kill the Creature he brought into the world, treating it like some burden and punishment. 

[image description: a screenshot from Mary Jane, with the CG of Mary and the Ghosts on the ship, with the summary text overlayed on it reading "Friends together, fun forever."]

How does Mary Jane end? With Mary, and Jacob, and a cast of playful characters — her friends — sailing off for the ends of the world, together, in pursuit of life and happiness - even in death.

Ghost Party ends the play because its a triumph. Neji throwing out Horace’s Ode to Cleopatra in there because he can’t not do silly things like that — but Frankenstein famously contains many references to classics — many made by the Creature himself, who was forced to educate himself via books, lacking a parent to help him. 

Mary Jane takes a section of sheer joy out of a poem of complex mixed emotions, and says them repeatedly. This is a party. This is a triumph. Mary leaves on a boat for the ends of the world a success, a good mother, a friend. And a human.

Humanity, Connection, Isolation

The play deconstructs so wonderfully this question of humanity. Mary doesn’t find any joy in it, despite barely understanding it herself - until she is able to use it to help others. The first time in her life she’s been glad to be human - something she only really understands as “needing to eat food” - is when it gives her the ability to save her ghost friends. If that’s what humanity is, the ability to care for others, the ghosts of the chapel, the play is telling us, are far more human. 

One of my favorite exchanges in the play is after Charles and Figaro explain to Mary that the corpse parts used to make Jacob were their friends. Mary is not malicious in the least. She has no concept of this act as sacrilege or desecration. She is genuinely childishly innocent in most of what she does. And she can’t understand it.

Mary says “If you can love unmoving corpses so much… How can you not feel for living ghosts...?"

[image description: Mary in front of the burning town. She's saying "How can you not feel for living ghosts...?"]

Charles responds that she must be completely off her rocker. But she’s correct. Mary sees life in front of her, even undead life, and wants to protect it. Even the Islanders, who only ever treated her with distain, who only ever made her miserable — she doesn’t want them to die, even knowing they are already dead. 

Outside of Mary, her oddball eccentric self, in this play, the more human someone is, the crueler they are. Figaro and Charles are only ever here to mess with her before dragging her off to be killed. They have no willingness to even try to understand anything outside their world view. The Islanders, who think themselves human, revile Mary, and make up terrible rumors about her. 

Both of these groups do so, in part, for similar reasons. Because to have empathy would force a realization on them they cannot bear. The last thing Figaro realizes, before he’s dragged into the most poetic of justices, is that the dolls have SOULS. They are ALIVE. It’s a moment of anger and madness, but it’s a last minute realization that he’s been wrong now that it’s too late. Of course it’s not a revelation he’ll remember. You tend to forget what’s important on Kakuriyo Island.

If Mary averts all of Victor’s mistakes, Charles and Figaro make many of them. Seeing the Creature as a collection of corpses, as demonic, as an abomination against God. Reacting only in anger, in cruelty, in violence. Chasing something they view, wrongly, as an abomination to the ends of the earth, until it kills them. Mary has Victor’s role, but Victor’s actions and outlook are given to the antagonists. 

It’s fascinating to me, then, that there are two of them. In the version of the play that gets performed, they’re twins - doubles. Two halves of one whole, who egg each other along in their cruelty. But they also exist to show that even these two are capable of empathy and connection. They do in fact understand the thing they tease Mary with. They have the ability and understanding to extend that to Ghosts, or to Mary. They simply refuse to. Figaro really does love his brother - his grief at his death is genuine. It’s a clever way to show that.

In the book, Victor is extremely isolated, by his own choice. He withdraws from everyone in order to work on his creature, and after he runs from it, he keeps to himself just as much, now blaming the idea that he can tell no one what he’s done. Even when he’s surrounded by family, he is utterly alone. By choice. The Creature eventually lashes out and kills the woman Victor intended to marry. In Victor’s mind, he cares about this girl, but it is not in his actions. Like much else, she exists more as a creation of Victors mind than something in the world for him to interact with and care about. Until she dies. Then he’s furious. And decides to spend the rest of his life chasing down the Creature to kill him for it. 

This contradiction in Victor has always read as intentional to me. The book is calling out his hypocrisy here. He doesn’t actually desire connection - the connection his Creature eloquently explains his longing for. But if it is denied him, he acts like he’s been affronted, painted with a shallow layer of sanctimoniousness or justice. Murder is bad, of course, and the Creature shouldn’t have killed an innocent young woman to get at Victor, of course. But the discrepancy between the way Victor reacts to her in death and the way he does when she’s alive is intentional.

Victor has every chance for human connection. Time and time and time again he’s given that chance and refuses it. Even to the very end, on that boat. He could stay with the crew. Sail back home. Let it go. The Creature has run away from humanity which it has come to despise as much as its absentee father disdained it. There is no need to keep chasing. But Victor cannot let it go. 

The Creature longs for connection and is denied it. Victor disdains and refuses it, even when it’s available to him.

Mary as The Creature

Contrast this with Mary — It is Mary, rather than Jacob, that is in the Creature’s situation here. Mary is constantly chasing connection. Constantly trying to find something to reflect humanity (compassion, life, emotions — rather than the matter of blood and flesh that Figaro and Charles always talk about it as) back at her. And she can’t get it. She, like the Creature, hides in the bushes and watches it from afar. She, like the Creature, chases after it only for people to run away, to treat her with cruelty. Mary is Frankenstein, but she is also a reflection of the Creature. She is both in one, in this sense.

[image description: screenshot of summary text over the church and figures of the church ghosts. it reads "The friendless Mary dreamily watched the ghosts as they sang a happy song.]

Her costume specifically makes her look nearly as much the doll as the ones she makes - in the world of the story, because she's sewing both - but thematically, it ties her to them not only as their mother, but as a reflection of the Creature, herself.

Like the Creature, Mary is an odd mix of naivety and childishness, with startling gaps in her knowledge, and extreme skill and adult abilities. She knows what she knows well. Like the Creature, Mary has no memory of kindness, of family, of parents. She has only ever seen it in the way the Islanders interact with each other. She is the Creature here - raising herself, learning of the world through watching it, being reviled for every attempt she makes to reach out.

One thing the Creature explains to Victor is that he didn’t even understand, at the time, why he was being treated this way. He had no awareness of his own nature and what he looked like in the eyes of others. Only that they ran in fear and chased him away, and reacted with violence.

Mary Jane inverts this. Mary is human, but the humans around her are something she cannot understand. Like the Creature, Mary doesn’t understand why people react this way. The book expects you to come to the same conclusion as the play - the fault lies not with the Creature anymore more than it does with Mary, at this point. It is those around him, those around her, that are at fault, that are a thing neither can understand. Human’s are cruel. Ghosts who think they’re humans are cruel. It is a disconnect between themselves and the world around them they don’t understand, and desperately try to bridge over and over.

Even Mary, as quirky and childlike as she is, is on the verge of giving up, of being consumed by the Lonely Darkness. We don't know what her fate would have been if the Order of Shadows had not come. Victor's Creature, far more morose than Mary, gives up on connection, as well. He is denied the most basic of needs, and eventually, he learns the violence and hatred being directed at him, and, newborn that he is, lashes out.

But, ultimately, companionship and connection are the Creature’s goals, and it is that that he requests of Victor, who refuses to provide it himself. Make for me a mate. Mary is the Creature, and she is Frankenstein. She makes a friend for herself. Her motivation in creating Jacob is not science, it is not in defiance of  death or God — very pointedly — it is out of loneliness - the same motivation that the Creature gives for his desire that Victor make him another like him. And when Mary does so, she’s a good mother, and a good friend.

Religion

Frankenstein’s full title is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus - it is about forming people, but it is also about stealing fire from the Gods. The question of if creating life out of death the way Victor does is an affront to God is something that Victor himself thinks about, but the book is much more interested in exploring it as the way characters view it. Victor punishes himself, it is not the Divine that punishes him. The Divine acts not as a force, but as an idea. One that both Victor and the Creature end up grappling with and trying to find their place within.

So that Mary herself seemingly has no concept of it, is fascinating. She goes to watch a chapel every night, but I don’t know she knows what a chapel even is. She mentions God once herself, saying that the smell of the garbage would be enough to affect even God, but she also talks to the Moon as a companion and a friend. Her worldview is uniquely hers, in relation to all things. As I said, the idea that making the dolls the way she does, or using corpse parts to do it might be sacrilege does not even occur to her.

Rather than go the route of the novel, Mary Jane twists this around too. In the world of Mary Jane, religious objects hold not only the power of an idea but an actual force. And it is a force that is completely, within the world of the show, amoral and nonsensical. The blessed weapons and fire the Order of the Shadows use are “holy” as a property, but that gives it no moral weight within the world of the play. And the play is messing with it the whole time. Holy wood or water can destroy a ghost, but they live in a church. Something that Charles and Figaro comment on, but cannot interrogate in terms of what it means for their conviction. But they’re split on how to proceed - the fact that ghosts can live in it doesn’t shake their faith, though. Sister Ghost is there largely for this joke. A nun who is constantly evoking the divine, who would be killed by a consecrated item. 

[image description: the summary text over the chapel backdrop with the text of "the chapel where Jacob and the others were left behind was being filled with the scent of holy water.]

If I could add something to Mary Jane, I would have loved for Mary or Jacob to ask Sister Ghost what “God” means (this is a conversation that happens in bonus material for Tokyo Ghoul once, actually). I would have loved to have that brought up more explicitly. But it’s also very funny that it never is.

The first definitions for a God we get are them being applied to Mary herself, with plenty of ambiguity on if the Order’s faith itself has a mother figure at its center or not. And either way it’s a fascinating play on the idea, and the themes of the novel.

Closing Thoughts, Other Connections and Ideas "Beyond the Scope of this Essay"

Anyway, all of this while playing around with everything else going on in this play, Neji’s totally, without permission, commentary on Fumi, on Tsuki’s legacy (please read the stage script, somehow the game thought it was a good idea to cut that whole specific reference even when making Kisa pick between an “erase Tsuki” option) and on Kai. On himself as an artist. ("I am the one who is strange. With my changing moods, with my hobbies. That is why everyone thinks I'm strange and avoids me.”). As with several other plays, a commentary on authority, and on creation, and on isolation and friendship and connection. 

And, of course, what I’ve been holding back this whole little essay is that Mary Jane is, thematically, at its core, playing off the exact same situation as I Am Death. Like — both of these plays center around a woman pouring her emotions into an undead creature. I see you Neji. You can’t hide from me. Reading I Am Death as a Frankenstein Story remixed into an old Japanese mytho-history is a LOT of fun to do, but is, as the academics say, beyond the scope of this essay.

(and, I Am Death itself is about Neji and Chui, and the twisted, messy love-hate revenge drama they are acting out across all the routes in the game. Neji writes the plays that introduce Chui to the world. Then he runs. And spends the whole game trying to beat him (affectionate.). “Make me another like me” you say… 

Literally the only thing I’ve come up with to make the “bad end” CG more compelling to me, is that this is what it’s riffing on. I like my I Am Death costumes way weirder.)

Mary Jane is a Frankenstein Story, I Am Death is a Frankenstein Story, Jack Jeanne is a Frankenstein Story. The other, other thing I’m leaving out here is that the Order of the Shadows are OBVIOUSLY pulled from Tokyo Grand Guignol, aesthetically. And the most famous TGG play is Litchi Hikari Club, which is, say it with me, a Frankenstein Story. Also one that takes the themes of the novel (gender, love and sexuality, childhood, genius, violence, blind pursuit to the point of madness, god complexes) harder than most, but runs with it in nearly the exact opposite direction. But again, very much beyond the scope of this essay.

Also also also leaving out the fact that Tokyo Ghoul is... kind of ... not not a Frankenstein story. It certainly riffs on the motif quite a bit. Even if you've never read it, you've seen the mask design (an in universe riff on the joke.).

Even just one dimension of this play, and look how many words you've made me write Neji-senpai.

[image description: image from the bottom of the Mary Jane poster, with the cast list, showing the chapel ghosts with a focus on Ushinoko, Neji's character, looking towards the 'camera'.] Some little Halloween Spooktacular you’ve got there. Bravo.

#jack jeanne meta #jack jeanne #Mary Jane #frankenstein #lit crit #doing lit crit of stories within stories - what a trip #meta

[churchbelles]

AARON LYCAN?

STUPID IDIOT MOTHERFUCKING AARON LYECAN GOD DAMN FOOL APHMAU LOVING BORING ASS RAT OLD BASTARD SHITHEAD IDIOT WEREWOLF OF THE WHORE BIGGEST CLOWN IN THE CIRCUS LAUGHED OUT OF TOWN COWBOY MOTHERFUCKING AARON LYCAN

STOP PINNING ME WHEN I TALK ABOUT AARON LYCAN I HATE HIM SO MUCH WHY DOES HE HAVE ZERO INTERESTING QUALITIES WHY DID HE DECIDE TO FUCK AROUND AND NEVER FIND OUT IS HE DEAD IS HE A BASTARD MAN HAS SUCH A VISCERAL AFFECT ON ME NOT EVEN IN THE ROOM NOT EVEN IN THE EPISODE AND I KNOW HE HAS THE WORLDS SHITTIEST DRAWN ON ABS GET AWAY FROM ME

if i wanted to get into heaven and god said aaron lycans waiting inside i would piss on gods feet for the sole purpose of getting sent back down

if i have to deal with aaron lycan speaking one word in person on episode not only will i close the tab i will delete my bookmark out of spite and have to rewatch the entire series again for the experience of being able to skip all the times when he is mentioned or onscreen

i dont even know why i hate him so much. he is a werewolf but i am just mad because i am angy

he better have some fucked up backstory to explain this if hes just some boring shithead whos only thing in life is being aphmaus love interest with no other qualities ill go ham

BETTER have had someone make him kill a man cuz if he didnt Im going to make him

paypal.com/IFuckingHateAaronLycan

episodes not even about him. vaguely mentioned what is supposed to maybe be his sister and I lost it

where the fuck is aaron lycan if hes still alive im going to so deeply wish he wasnt

weird little bitch

ill punch aaron and his sad pathetic old man bones will simply flake apart under my epic huge meat fist and he will disintegrate until all thats left is his phone that he always kept on him with the only contact being aphmau and i'll smash that thing until its dust

im not breathing im hyperventilating at this point

i hope theres a date given for when aaron died or will die so i can make it a reminder on my phone

everyday once a year i will see it and do anything but pay respects to the man who was the worst character in any of aphmau's stories

CHILDE GENSHINIMPACT?

STUPID IDIOT MOTHERFUCKING CHILDE GENSHINIMPACT GOD DAMN FOOL GNOSIS COLLECTING DUST EATING RAT OLD BASTARD SHITHEAD IDIOT HARBINGER OF THE WHORE BIGGEST CLOWN IN THE FATUI LAUGHED OUT OF SNEZHNAYA COWBOY MOTHERFUCKING CHILDE GENSHINIMPACT

STOP PINNING ME WHEN I TALK ABOUT CHILDE GENSHINIMPACT I HATE HIM SO MUCH WHY DOES HE HAVE SO MANY FUCKED UP WALLETS WHY DID HE DECIDE TO FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT JUST SET THEM LOOSE IS HE DEAD IS HE A BASTARD MAN HAS SUCH A VISCERAL AFFECT ON ME NOT EVEN IN THE ROOM NEVER SEEN THIS MANS FACE AND I KNOW HE HAS THE WORLDS SHITTIEST ANIME BOY HAIRCUT GET AWAY FROM ME

if i wanted to get into heaven and god said childe genshinimpact was waiting inside i would piss on gods feet for the sole purpose of getting sent back down

if i have to deal with childe genshinimpact speaking one word in person on voice in game not only will i close the game i will delete my save file out of spite and have to replay the entire game again for the experience of being able to skip all the times when he is mentioned or alive

i dont even know why i hate him so much. he collects gnoses but i am just mad because i am angy

he better have some fucked up backstory to explain this if hes just some rich shithead whos a fan of streetfighting games and wanted the irl version ill go ham

BETTER have had the fatui make him kill a man cuz if he didnt Im going to make him

paypal.com/IFuckingHateChildeGenshinImpact

Quest’s not even about him. vaguely mentioned what is supposed to maybe be his title and I lost it

where the fuck is childe genshinimpact if hes still alive im going to so deeply wish he wasnt

crusty young man

ill punch childe and his sad frail old harbinger twig bones will simply flake apart under my epic huge meat fist and he will disintegrate until all thats left is one final wallet he kept on him at all times simply titled Now You Fucked Up in ancient yiddish

im not breathing im hyperventilating at this point

i hope theres a date given for when Childe died or will die so i can make it a reminder on my phone

everyday once a year i will see it and do anything but pay respects to the man who had so many fucked up if true schemes

[yellow-stars]

do- do you wanna tell me the OG story of Repunzel?

I never read it

YOUVE NEVER READ IT????? omg,, i legit got up to grab the book off my shelf to reread it again just so i dont get anything wrong ((even tho... ive read it 100s of times...))

---

so theres this poor couple who really wants to have children. one day the wife gets sick and basically says "i need that cabbage or i fucking die" and the husband, who obviously loves his wife, goes steal the cabbage. and then the wife wants more cabbage and he goes to steal more and more- you get the point.

however! plot twist! the garden he's been stealing from is owned by a witch! so she catches this poor guy who just wants to ease his wives weird pregnancy cravings, and makes a deal. he can take all the cabbage he wants, but in return gets the kid. she also promises to be a good mother and to treat her right, but the parents will not be allowed to see her ever again.

obv, the guy takes the deal, cuz man this witch is scary looking

so rapunzel is born, and is named after the cabbage the wife wanted (her name literally means salad leaf in latvian /srs). she spends years and years in the tower, and one day shes just singing, cuz the witch left and she's alone. some prince who happened to be wandering around in the middle of a forest hears her and is mesmerized from her voice, and goes back daily just to hear her sing.

a few days later, as he's listening to her sing, the witch comes home and does the classic "rapunzel rapunzel let down your hair" shtick, which gives the guy an idea.

next time he sees the witch leave, HE calls her to let down her hair. she does and ends up being like "oh who the hell are you???" but they end up bonding! nice! and the prince keeps visiting but only late at night so he's not caught.

that works! until it doesnt. rapunzel complains about how hard it is to pull up the witch, but so easy to pull up the prince. the witch is now fuckin ANGRY, cuts off all of rapunzels hair and throws HER outta the lil window. she's still alive and well btw, just depressed as shit and living in the middle of the forest now.

the witch then waits for the prince to come and call for rapunzel to let down her hair. but yknow! its the witch who lets it down instead! so this idiot climbs up, gets confronted and... jumps outta the window... and end up faceplanting in a bush full of thorns, going blind.

he wanders the forest, still blind, for like a year, and is sad hes w/o rapunzel. however, he ends up finding rapunzel cuz of her singing again. he stumbled his way trough the forest in her general direction and ended up meeting up! hooray!

they hug and cry, their tears end up.. mixing together and BOOM BOOM MAGIC the prince can see again! he leads her back to his kingdom and they lived happily ever after.

---

this has gotta be the shittiest book report youve ever seen but dear god am i obsessed w this book. plus you literally asked for this. i think i would've remembered like 90% of it even w/o rereading the story just now. ALSO! i found a link that leads to the english version of the story for free! [link here] its very short, just barely above 1.3k words

#response #112 writes #RAPUNZEL THE OG STORY IS MY GODDAMN PASSION

[sereneres]

eta / hype boy ¹

hanni pham x 6th member!reader / 1.6k

summary. — never have the words, “i told you so”, felt so appropriate yet innappropiate to say.

warnings. — mentions of cheating/heartbreaker activities

hanni never really understood how you couldn’t see how unbelievably toxic your crush was.

if you were to search up an example of the world, “scum”, his picture would be the first thing to pop up. if you asked her where the garbage can was, she would point in his general direction. that was how bad he was.

read: that was how much she hated him.

so imagine her, as well as your friend group’s, surprise when they found out that you had liked him.

REC •

“you like 💌?!” hyein shrieked, eyes wide with surprise as she stared up at you from her couch. you wince, quickly putting a hand on her mouth, but the damage had already been done. a quick glance around the room told you as much.

“💌?” danielle repeated, pushing herself off of the ground. haerin, who had been lying beside her, did the same, stretching as she did so. “as in, that 💌?”

“yes, that 💌.” you sighed. “look, i know you guys hate him and all–”

“we don’t just hate him, unnie.” haerin interrupted, eyes fixed on yours. “we despise him. there’s a difference.”

“haerin!” minji chided, brows furrowing. “don’t say that.”

“but it’s true!” hyein was now frowning, her hands on her hips as she looked at you, a look of displeasure on her face. “💌’s no good for you, yn. he’s dated almost every single girl at this school and all of his exes agree that he’s a two-faced player!”

“hyein!” minji said, seemingly scandalized at the younger girl’s words. the girl in question turned to her and shrugged, as if to say, “it is what it is”.

as both hyein and haerin continued to badger you with insults about 💌, with minji chiming in occasionally to scold one of you about your language, hanni continued to stare at you.

“are you okay?” danielle asked, placing a hand on the older girl’s shoulder.

“of course not.” she retorted, frowning. “our friend likes the shittiest-”

“hanni!” minji called, and the two aussie’s turn to see the girl looking at them with her hands on her hips. “language!”

“how did she hear me?” hanni whispered, turning away from the korean with a look of awe and terror.

“minji-unnie has a sixth sense for this kind of thing.” danielle murmured, shrugging.

“…moving on, what does she see in him anyway?” hanni asked, frown deepening. “all i see when i see him is a steaming pile of garbage!”

“maybe he’s changed.” danielle said, prompting the slightly shorter girl to laugh dryly.

“knowing 💌, he definitely hasn’t.”

↳ making jeans — clip #1

“-and the story for ynnie’s music video is super duper interesting!” danielle gushed, clapping her hands excitedly. “i can’t wait for you all to see it!”

pd: what makes it so interesting?

“what makes it so interesting?” the australian repeated, tilting her head as she thought over the question. “i don’t know what the word for it is, but ynnie’s version has… lines that we have say? the other versions didn’t have much, we mostly just communicated through facial expressions or dialogue, but ynnie’s has… uh…”

[struggling to put thoughts into words ⌃⌃;]

“dialogue?” hanni suggested, popping up from behind danielle. the latter jumped, quickly turning around and laughing as she playfully slapped the former’s arm.

[pop!]

“hanni-unnie! you scared me, i didn't even hear you coming!” the mentioned girl giggled, and danielle shook her head before continuing. “anyway, yeah, ynnie’s mv has more dialogue than the others.”

[;3]

“there’s even a script for it.” hanni said, holding up a paper with its contents blurred out. “I'm pretty sure she wrote it herself, didn’t she?”

“she did?!” danielle gasped, raising a hand over her mouth. “i didn’t know that!”

[o0o]

“know what?” hyein asked, walking over with a curious expression.

[a wild hyein has appeared!]

“ynnie wrote the script for these scenes!” danielle said, smiling proudly, and the younger girl’s eyes widened.

[o0o x2]

“seriously?” hyein asked as she looked at the sheet of paper in her hands as if it were made of gold.

“seriously.” the aussie answered, nodding with a serious look on her face.

[a rarely-serious serious danielle]

“when i first found out, i didn’t believe it either.” hanni said, facing the camera. “i thought it had been written by a professional writer.”

[ln yn, idol by day, professional writer at night! *⌃*]

↳ making jeans — clip #2

“what i think about yn’s music video for hype boy?” minji asked, leaning against the couch she had been on moments earlier during the shoot. “i think it’s good – it’s fun, creative, and definitely something that’ll make you excited when you watch it.”

[good job describing it, minji! ò-ób]

“it’s the only video to have actual dialogue in it.” she continued. “of course, our voices will be cut out, but don’t worry, you’ll know what we’re saying.”

[⌃⌃]

REC •

“i just don’t get it.” hanni said, frowning with her arms crossed. “just what do you see in 💌? he’s a player, a cheater, and more important, someone who’s going to break your heart!”

“he’s changed.” you replied tiredly, your gaze still on your phone as you scrolled mindlessly. ever since hyein had let out the fact that you liked 💌, hanni had been determined on reminding you of how ‘horrible’ of a person he was. “and you don’t get it because you’re determined to continue hating him.”

“guys like him never change.” she retorts, rolling over so that she was laying on her stomach. “people who say that about guys like 💌 have definitely read way too many romance novels, and not the good ones.”

sighing, you turn to her, propping your head up with your hand. “there is no romance novel that isn’t good.”

“coleen hoover’s books.” hanni promptly responded, giving you a pointed look. “you can not tell me those books are good in any way, shape, or form.”

you blink, tilting your head in an innocent manner. “oh, those are still considered books?”

the two of you stare at each other for a brief moment before you burst out laughing. it takes a while for the laughter to die out, but by the end of it, the only sound in the room was your heavy breathing.

“i just want you to be careful, yn.” hanni said, breaking the silence. “i know 💌, i know you, and i definitely know that he’s no good for you.”

“mmh…”

danielle) hey yn, isn’t this 💌? danielle) boy_kissing_girl.jpg hanni) oh my god, it is! hanni) see, yn? i told you he was bad for you! minji) not the time, hanni. minji) yn, are you okay? hyein) she’s reading our messages but she’s not saying anything. haerin) we need to find her. haerin) and quickly.

REC •

it, surprisingly, doesn't take long for hanni to find you. that said, it’s not like you had actually tried to hide yourself anyway.

“yn.” she calls, and she can see you hastily wiping your tears from your eyes and drying your cheeks upon hearing her call your name. “yn...”

“what, unnie?” you ask flatly, standing up and dusting off your skirt before walking out from behind the tree. “here to gloat about how you were right?”

“no, i’m here ‘cuz i’m worried.” she sighed, running a hand through her hair. “i know how important 💌, was to you. seeing him with that girl must have hurt a lot.”

“it’s okay.” you say, averting your eyes and kicking at the dirt. “i knew what i was getting into when i started having a crush on him.”

“it’s okay to not be okay.” she murmured, taking your hands and linking them with hers. “you just got your heart broken, and by a douchebag, nonetheless.”

“hanni.”

“kidding, kidding.” she said, rolling her eyes before muttering, “not really…”

“i heard that.” you said, feigning anger at the older girl by frowning. upon seeing her genuinely panicked expression, though, you couldn't keep the act up and started giggling.

“yah, ln yn!” she yelled, playfully pushing your shoulder. “disrespecting your elders like this, you really have no manners!”

“manners.” you repeat, biting your lip in an attempt to stop laughing. “i think it’s hypocritical of you to scold me for not having manners, hanni-unnie.”

“tsk. seriously, no respect whatsoever.” she shakes her head before sighing again. “but seriously, i’m sorry i kept berating you for liking him, even though i was right all along.”

“that last part was not necessary.” you deadpanned, shaking your head as you too sighed. “it’s fine, unnie. i should’ve listened to you, but i didn’t, and look where that got me.”

“yn, this was in no way your fault.” she said firmly, grabbing your shoulders and shaking you lightly to emphasize her point. “you hear me? it is not your fault 💌 is a douchebag.”

“unnie…” you murmur, eyes tearing up again as you smile sadly at her. “thank you. for helping me and, well, everything.”

“of course! what type of friend would i be if i didn’t do that? it’s literally the bare minimum.”

“you’d be a shitty one, that’s for sure.”

“oh, i’ve been meaning to tell you, don’t ever let minji-unnie hear you swear, she caught me swearing once and i nearly died–”

↳ making jeans (unreleased audio)

“yah, why are you crying?!” [o0o]

“yn’s crying?!” [0x0]

“are you okay? what happened?” [ó_ò;]

“nothin’. just got too caught up in the moment.” [ ㅠㅠ ]

“aw, ynnie got sentimental~” [ <3 ]

“we’ve never seen you cry before, unnie.” [⌃・・ ⌃]

“yeah, so it’s sort of like a special event, yn-unnie, like a, uh, ufo spotting or something.” [⌃⌃;]

“…what?” [????]

previous. / get up. / next.

x. taglist — @awkwardtoafault @brocoliisscared

#sereneres #seren.writes #newjeans x reader #newjeans imagines #kpop x reader #hanni x reader #hanni pham x reader #nwjns.yn #ᙏ̤̫

[benefits1986]

Moon Child, Moon River

The moon seems to call me more and more the past months. Looking back, the moon has been my refuge in my darkest nights, too.  A few months ago, as I was taking a break from my ina’s wake, I was greeted by the crescent moon with the unapologetic Venus. While I am a fan of full moon and try to track them and align them with my trips outside Manila, that night was magical and mundane. I remember huffing and puffing while a tiny stream of tears fell down my cheek. I remember whispering a prayer to mother dragon which is all about making sense of this loss which I didn’t expect to hit me hard.  That night, as the moon smiled at my side of the universe, I tried smiling back. I tried to make amends to it. While Venus showed off her majesty, I somehow fought back even when deep down, I am totally wrecked. That night is a reminder that even the darkest nights can be beautiful, even when the world is weeping and the grounds are shaking. That night is a reminder that while my version of love and beauty may be rarities, they can actually come to life. That night is a reminder that when things are toughest, looking up and allowing the light and shadows to embrace me would make me feel more human.  I guess, after 37 years of arguing that mother dragon has been making grand alibi as she points the moon as my nemesis and my confidant, she might be right all along. I guess that the moon is my Polaris as I have phases, too. One too many but always in a cycle. I may not have my own light but this gift, this curse, is where I draw inspiration to intention to make the most out of the light and shadow that is bestowed upon me.  I guess that this Taurus szn is actually what I needed and wished for, too. It may be one for the books of really thick plot twists. I’ve cursed it one too many times; but during those really crazy times, I was able to earn life and love lessons that will matter not only a year from now; but maybe, just maybe, even a decade or so from now, too.  Battling a good number of trauma is definitely a highlight and a low light, too. Forcing myself to trust people amidst my trusted trust issues is another hallmark. Doubling down on facing my vulnerabilities and those I come across a la serendipity is just above and beyond me. Perhaps, one of my wins this 2023 Taurus szn is finally being able to tell stories about the my fallen Taurus Twin Towers. The shaky hands, the ego, the pride --all worth it. I owe my audience of one the hardest crashes and the major burns; because, just in case someone needs to here my shittiest and realest thought farts, here they are. As I bleed so badly in my scarlet sins, may each letter, each pause, each typo, be of help to those who maybe looking for a safe space in one way or another.  Let Moon River be the song that reminds me not only of my ina’s burial day. May it also be my guiding light as I choose to allow myself to feel instead of numbing the pain. May I choose to conquer fear instead of falsifying its existence. May I choose to be human as it is more than divine. May I continue breaking the silos within me. May I be more intentional with how I curate my life stories that are about being kindest to myself and others, too. May I choose to let the tears of sadness, of joy, of disgust, and of anger flow as I go for slow growth. May I continue choosing the path less taken and while at it, may I be with people who matter most.  Thank you, universe for sending me angels who I’ve been pushing away many, many, many times. Thank you for making me see that to heal means to help others heal in the name of healing together. Thank you, universe for allowing me to make it just in time for recalibrating my current color grade along with all shades of blacks and whites. Thank you, universe for my people. I don’t know how, but I dearly hope that these people would also allow me to be with them in their battles, especially the silent ones, too.  PS 1:  Gah. Huy. Ang seryoso masyado netong thought fart na ‘to. Dapat yata ‘yun na lang “Love... Not Like The 90s” na lang ako because sabi ng tatay ko bago ako pumasok sa opisina kanina, para daw akong clipart ng 6-year old self ko na first day sa Prep school. :D To which I replied na, tumabi siya. ‘Wag siyang tumingin kung naabala siya kasi wala na akong maisip isuot kasi ang init ng kalakhang Manynila today.  PS 2:  Baka eto lang excuse ko na next tat ko apart from biking scene namin ng tatay ko e, phases of the moon naman kasi ‘di masyadong kita mga moon elements ng existing tats ko. LOL. Saan kaya maganda ilagay saka kelan kaya papaggawa? Sa Siargao na ‘PAG mas lumabas na clavicle ko. Shemay. Kaya ba yesterday ‘yung pag-labas ng clavicle?  HAHAHAHAHAHA.  PS 3:  Bukas talaga, Pluto Retrograde na topic ko. Try natin English pero graphic version. :D 

[legionofpotatoes]

I wrote a few deeply personal, possibly stupid, and definitely embarrassing words about one of my favorite games. Placing it under the cut for mercy.

I finally managed to do my perfect playthrough of the shadow of the colossus.

I hated that game as a kid. I hated its washed out dream sequence look. I hated how shit the controls were. I hated how laborious the battles felt. I hated the emptiness in-between those battles. And most of all, I hated what wander turned into in the end; how selfish and cruel the story made us out to be. Slaughtering animals for a dead woman's soul and losing all humanity in the process. An eternal toil of misery. I enjoyed none of my time with it.

As I grew through my teens and beyond, I slowly found that the reasons for that hatred were morphing into arguments as to why I loved it. I remember so vividly when I suddenly realized I had nothing bad to say about it anymore; my early memory had dressed the game up so well. Its sense of jank and awe were singular, unknowable, and inviting. Its combat? As contemplative as it was punishing. Its vast emptiness but a necessary vessel for turning the mental eye inwards, and its ethos ultimately beautiful in its raw sincerity. As I learned to know real love, I learned to also love wander, and empathize with his reckless drive to love again, at any cost. An achingly human trait. By that time I was yearning for a replay, but the disc and console were no longer available to me. So I settled happily for my recontextualized thoughts and started quietly evangelizing it as the greatest game ever made, much to the tune of everyone else.

I am an adult now, and knowing love has been aggressively supplanted by an overwhelming knowledge of loss. And out of all its jagged facets, acceptance is by far the shittiest to deal with. I hate how I can continue experiencing forward momentum in time while others are so suddenly and violently severed from it, barely changing the course of the river and quietly fading into the rapidly growing distance between me and their point of death. I hate how my life remains the same size, yet the share of death within it only grows, never offset in any way. And thus everyone learns how to mourn. It is hard, but necessary; moving forward requires looking forward. It is risky to stumble.

My girlfriend got me the remastered copy of the game for my birthday two years ago. It had been collecting dust ever since, for weird reasons; I didn't have particular reservations for jumping back in, but I felt like I outgrew the premise. I got both sides of the argument, I thought; extinguishing innocence vs fighting for love can be a divine dilemma, but I wasn't interested in that binary nonsense anymore. I was a big boy. But I loved my amorphous memory of the game, so I decided I would still revisit it at some point. And so a few nights ago I threw the disc in my PS4 on a whim.

There is nothing dreamlike or mundane about the remastered version. It is an immediately lush, busy, and arresting sight. Its musical narrative swells with newfangled richness. As wander reaches the ancient bridge, carrying his overwhelming loss with him on an impossibly long road towards his doom, I realize I'm sobbing. Red-hot tears. My child's mind had dressed the memory of the game in such intricate detail, and now that detail was simply all there. I felt like I was reliving that time, but with the baggage of two decades thrown on. Shockingly, I also felt the narrative unfurl like a kaleidoscope to gently fit around that baggage. I was somehow still welcome.

But how is that, exactly? Mainly, I think, by way of two jarring things that become apparent as the gameplay starts. One; the game does not begin active tutorialization and forward plot momentum until you explicitly reach the arena of the first colossus. And two; the entirety of the world opens up much, much earlier than you reach said arena. A curious pair of choices. To me, they felt almost intentional, like a gentle hint blanketing the entire larger context. There is meaning here. A choice. It had escaped my memory; I did not remember that the binary tale of selfish love was a story the player had to actively CHOOSE to trigger.

And then it hit me slowly, what this game was going to be about for me now. And once it started hitting me it came rolling in waves. It is not going to be about inhumanity or conflict. This is simply about mourning loss.

The game solemnly agrees. Without taking an active step into that walled pocket of tutorial land, no colossi will spawn into this world. No goal will be articulated. No stakes set.

It will just be a boy, stepping out of a tomb where he laid his love to rest, and into a vast sunlit field. And maybe he never raises a sharpened sword that catches the sun to point out a tangible goal. Maybe he gets none of that luxury. Maybe the pain is all he has. And perhaps the choice now is in reconnecting with life instead of ending it. Mourning and accepting what is gone. It feels impossible and futile. It feels exactly right. I mount agro and canter off in a direction of no particular meaning. All I know is that I avoid the first arena.

Over the course of the next several evenings I spend with the game, I visit almost every location in the forbidden lands. The colossi aren't there; this version of the story doesn't need them. Here, suddenly, the technical side of the remaster shines as a loadbearing ingredient. Its viridescence, its primordial air of mystery, all spilling out of the screen as I slowly snake my eye through every crack and crevice of the gorgeously photoscanned and textured environments. I ride slowly through the deserts, forests, coastlines, and dried lakebeds dotting the landscape; I occasionally stop and pray at temples and maybe try to carefully divorce a silver tail lizard from its titular appendage. I mostly run out of patience and decide to eat a whole bunch of fruit instead. The shrine of worship, where mono lies at rest, penetrates the skybox at every turn; its unmistakably erratic silhouette looming centered in this plot of land I explore, impossible to fully ignore. But oftentimes distant; greying behind a saturated tree bark beset by blue butterflies.

This new variant of the forbidden lands is no longer calcified in a low-poly prison of emptiness, flat surfaces, and demure tones. It is teeming, bustling with small life. It is alive and present. I keep journeying through. Through the temple ruins that are overrun with moss and plantlife, and the waterfalls thundering and crushing into plunge pools rich with fish, and the rolling fields ebbing and flowing with the wind, carrying distant echoes of birds of prey hard at work. I ride through this weird simulacrum of nature and feel a primal sense of joy. It washes over me like a rising tide. I ride aimlessly through these blooming lands and it all somehow makes sense. This is wander's destiny beyond all the fantasy of reckless indulgence and myth-making; this is the endless toil writ large.

The boy mourns. As do I. And the game, out of fucking nowhere at all, completely facilitates this approach. Intent notwithstanding. There's no overwhelming sense of urgency, UI prompts, or arrows and timers dragging me off. The canvas is simply laid bare. It just fits.

I discover the final temple and look out over the edge of the high rise that it straddles. The horse playfully darts around my field of view. The quiet whistling of the wind is lowered to a murmur this far from the map's center. The shrine containing her tomb now but a speck on the horizon. Maybe it is finally time to head home.

I turn off the console and let loose a few tears for my perfect playthrough of the greatest game ever made.

#text #shadow of the colossus

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel & Johnny if they were canonically queer...

oaky real talk what I like about Daniel and Johnny is how tragic the whole thing is, because I love a tragedy 

two boys coming-of-age in the 80s - arguably one of shittiest times to be queer, one of whom “passes” as straight while he performs the toxic masculinity he’s inherited from three male role models (his dad, Sid, Kreese), but always with the awareness that it wasn’t natural - he forced himself into that mold because he himself was a sensitive, hurt boy

the other who arguably doesn’t pass - or has that classic “I don’t know why I dislike him, but I dislike him” queer subtext to him that leads to him getting bullied, because he’s too small, he’s too pretty, dammit it’s too easy to punish him for not being masculine enough

and then it switches on its head and Daniel wins and Johnny hands him the trophy and tells him he’s alright and Kreese punishes Johnny - almost kills him - for failing to Be A Man

and there’s a version of this story where after Miyagi saves Johnny, he and Daniel could’ve become friends, could’ve figured out how to deal with dead fathers, absent fathers, emotionally and physically abusive fathers, (man there’s a Message here about fathers and legacy huh), and... who knows...

but instead they go their separate ways and whatever brief moment of togetherness they experienced as teens with a lot in common that remains unspoken is seemingly washed away by years of never getting to face whatever “waves hands” all of that meant, a connection that was so strong that it lasted across 34 years - 

Daniel’s story continues in the movies obviously, so we see how he goes through it with cobra kai himself, but he emerges out the other side with an on-the-surface decent life that hides all of that repression and insecurity (still coming back to being a man - a good man, but a man who’s also performing through the act of money, and wife, and kids, and house), because Miyagi’s legacy hangs so heavily on him, and so does his past as being poor and smaller and bullied and less-than... 

And Johnny just crashes and doesn’t stop crashing. You get a feeling that there were attempts that probably largely ended once his mum died (which I only just realised was very shortly before Robby was born) and by the time he and Daniel meet again he’s absolutely resigned to the role he’s been cast in this time - from star athlete with a whole future ahead of him to a middle-aged man who can’t hold down a job and doesn’t know how to use a computer 

Both of them constantly, constantly struggling with what is expected of them, either by pushing themself to present the perfect front or by entirely giving up

And neither of them ever acted on the feelings they’ve had about men, starting with the complicated relationship they’d had with one another and then continuing to repress and repress and repress...

Until there it is, the only versions of themselves they’re allowed to be as ostensibly “straight men” - successful business owner with two kids on one side, failed father and alcoholic on the other

and all that time - 34 years - they’ve been circling each other! There were so many opportunities too see each other for years and neither of them took one, even though they’ve clearly been thinking about one another all this time!

and then they meet due to fate’s facepalm making sure that Daniel’s daughter was in the car that rear-ended Johnny’s, that the car was sent to Daniel’s workshop, that Johnny’s son ended up as Daniel’s student... and everything that happens in the show

I don’t even usually like soulmates as a concept, but these two really are fate’s stupidest dumbest most idiotic soulmates, who could’ve been so good for years and years, and now, finally, when they’ve spiralled back into each other, they’re so affected by so many years of not even close to dealing with anything, they don’t even know where to begin, it’s like open wounds of emotions and because they’re the eye of the storm of each other’s lives, they take it out on each other, not realising that they’re the only two people who can help each other make sense of any of it...

As always, there’s three versions of the story - there’s Daniel’s, there’s Johnny’s, and there’s the truth...

#daniel larusso #johnny lawrence #cobra kai #lawrusso #i read them both... as so repressed... so so so repressed... just completely unable to deal... #anyway the truth is they've been in love for their entire adult lives #cobra kai meta #my meta #my writing

[scones-and-texting-and-murder]

if you would’ve been the one

(1300 words, rated T, read on ao3)

When it happens, Dean’s so hyped up by the adrenaline still coursing through his system that he almost doesn’t notice. It’s not until Sam dispatches the last vamp and Dean sags a little in relief, only to realize he can’t move. He’s pinned, like a butterfly in a display case, like he’s back on the rack.

It’s almost funny. That he could battle every sort of evil creature out there—demons, monsters, even God for fuck’s sake, only to be taken down by a bit of unfinished carpentry. He ponders the cosmic significance. Maybe there’s the start of a Jesus metaphor here, with that single nail between his flesh and the wooden post, like he’s only up to C-R-U in a fucked up game of H-O-R-S-E.

Then he remembers there is no God, no universe sending him signs or trying to teach him a lesson. Just his own free will and, apparently, shitty fucking luck that’s brought him to this inglorious moment.

Sam doesn’t get it, not at first, promising he’ll run and call for help, do what he can to patch him up but Dean stops him, asks him to stay. Yeah, they could probably do all that but Dean realizes something: he’s tired. And not only that, he’s ready.

Each night since Cas has been gone, Dean lies in bed and turns his name around and around in his mind, like a rock in a tumbler, smoothing all sides of it with his thoughts. It’s not praying, not quite, the intention isn’t there, but if Cas can still sense his longing, well, he's got that in spades. Cas gave his life for Dean, professing his love in a way that couldn’t have been more clear and Dean…he just stood there processing it all.

Dean tried to do what he always does and tucked the stunned grief he felt at losing him deep inside where the jagged edges couldn’t harm him. He rededicated himself to powering Jack up, to killing God, like finishing that would somehow make Cas’s sacrifice worth it. And when Jack became whatever it was that he became, Dean didn’t ask about Cas, even though the question was right there, trying to force its way out of his throat. Instead, he swallowed it back down. Cas had said that moment was the purest happiness he’d ever known and Dean didn’t know what to say next without defiling it.

It’s the shittiest version of waiting too long to text back until so much time has passed that it’s become awkward.

But now, with this piece of metal jabbed into what sure as fuck feels like some important organs, he finds he has some time to think. He’s got nothing left to lose, so he lets Cas’s name become an honest prayer.

The whoosh is nearly instantaneous, somehow closer than even the rushing of his pulse in his ears. It seems fitting that they’re back in a barn, although this time Dean’s the one being impaled. He hears a crackling, but it isn’t the lights showering him in sparks, just the anger flickering off of him, electricity as blue as his eyes.

He doesn’t even say it, no Hello, Dean, and yeah, Cas is pissed and Dean deserves that.

As Cas approaches, Dean realizes Sam doesn’t seem to notice him, in fact he’s faded out into the background so it’s just the two of them.

“You called?” His tone is cold, much closer to the first time they met in a barn than the last time they were together. Cas had been so human, then, emotion choking his words and filling his eyes with tears.

“I, uh, find myself in a bit of a pickle,” Dean says, and already that’s wrong.

Cas raises an eyebrow. “More like a piece of art hung on the wall.”

Dean’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. “Was that a joke?”

“What is it you need from me, Dean?”

It should be obvious, but Dean can’t seem to say it.

“The stories they will tell,” Cas begins, “of Dean Winchester, the greatest hunter of his time, brought down by a lowly nail.” He sighs, and holds out two fingers. “I can do this but it would’ve been nice if you’d at least kept up to date on your tetanus shots.”

Dean feels a grinding in his teeth that he probably can’t yet blame on lockjaw. He tries to duck out of Cas’s reach. “Okay, stop.”

With a look of surprise, Cas does.

“Listen, I know I should’ve contacted you earlier. I get you’re mad, I do, but all those things you said…I didn’t want you to come back and realize how wrong you were.”

“So you’ve been looking for a way to ‘let me down easy’,” he says, air quotes and all, and goddammit Dean loves him. He loves his cranky angel ass and his wild hair and stupidly blue eyes the way he’s insisted on leaving Dean affixed to this pole while they talk.

“I love you, too. I have for so long. I never dreamed you could feel the same way, not like that.” Dean can barely breathe now that he's said the words out loud.

“You’re a hard man to pin down, Dean Winchester.” There’s a small smile playing around Cas's mouth now, and the relief has Dean laughing much harder than he would at the terrible pun. It hurts and his laughter turns to a grimace. Cas touches his arm. “Let me heal you.”

But Dean shakes his head, reaching to take his hand instead. “I’m ready, Cas. Ready for what’s next. If you heal me, Sam’s going to stay and keep hunting and maybe that’s what he wants but maybe it isn’t. Either way, he’s never going to decide for himself while I’m still here.”

Cas’s face is as serious as Dean’s ever seen it, but he sees a flicker of hope in his eyes. “And you?”

“Thought maybe you could escort me upstairs and we could spend eternity making up for all we missed down here.” Cas’s face goes soft and Dean bring their joined hands to his mouth, kissing his knuckles gently. “I wish it would’ve been you,” Dean says softly. “Nailing me from behind like this.”

At that, Sam suddenly zooms back into focus, his face anguished. “Cas! Oh, thank God you’re here. Dean’s—“

“Sammy, stop. I’m okay. We got a change in plans, though.”

Confused, Sam looks between them, finally noticing their joined hands.

“We’re free now. Free to make our own choices and for once in my life I’m going to be selfish. I choose Cas. I dragged you back into this life and now I’m shoving you out of it again. You want to keep hunting? That’s up to you. But if you want to go find Eileen and settle down, that’s up to you, too.”

Sam blinks, clearly caught off guard. “Dean, are you sure?”

Dean catches Cas’s eye and they share a smile. “As sure as I’ve ever been.” Dean tries to reach for his brother to hug him, but he’s brought up short. “Cas, could you…”

“Of course, Dean.” With a wave of his hand, Dean’s free and he steps forward to embrace Sam. “Go have the life you always wanted. Have a bunch of fat babies and name one of them after me.”

Cas furrows his brow like maybe he’s seeing the future. “But don’t plaster his name on his clothing. That’s just basic child safety.”

It hurts him to see his little brother cry, but Dean knows this isn’t the end for them. “Tell them how I was the coolest and better looking brother.”

Sam nods. “I will definitely not do that.”

They hug one last time and Dean murmurs in his ear. “I love you and I’m proud of you. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Sam gives him one last bone-crushing squeeze before releasing him. “Take good care of him, Cas.”

“I will,” Cas promises.

Dean gives Cas his best blue steel. “Oh, he will.”

With that, Sam leaves and Dean knows he could never bear to watch him walk away without Cas strong and steady at his side.

Cas must sense the hesitation. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Dean answers him with a kiss.

#spn #spn spoilers #15x20 #coda fic #fix it fic #deancas #destiel #My writing

[arvandus]

Touch (pt 3)

Pairing: Dabi x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: 18+ only please!  Drug abuse/withdrawal, adult language/themes, heavy angst, past trauma/abuse, anxiety/panic attacks, PTSD, fluff, pining, slow burn, eventual emotional SMUT. *please pay attention to the chapter tags as these warnings will apply at different times*

Synopsis: When you first joined the LOV to lend your healing quirk, Dabi  terrified you.  Not interested in attachments, he wanted to keep it  that way.  That is, until he needs your help. (Slow burn, soft Dabi).

Please let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future chapters.

Recommended Chapter Song:

Dizzy by MISSIO

Part 1   Part 2

Artwork credit to @hellowon31​ on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hellowon31)

Part 3 - Resistance

The next day, Dabi woke up feeling like a complete wreck of a person.  A mockery of a human being, made of faulty parts stitched together haphazardly by a cruel universe.  He was angry. Furious.  Wasn’t your quirk supposed to last longer than this?  His head pounded.  The sun peeking through the crack in his curtains was an assault. Sweat covered his exposed pale flesh and yet he felt cold, clammy hands shaking.  Dabi laid back on his bed to cocoon himself into his blankets when he realized…his back was still painless.

Your quirk was still working.

Dabi’s bleary eyes caught sight of his empty pill bottles on his nightstand, and realization dawned on him. Withdrawal.

It started sooner than he had hoped.  He would have refilled his stock by now, but his usual seller went missing, most likely picked up by the feds.  Dabi had already reached out to Giran to find a new source, but the old man hadn’t returned his text messages.  So, Dabi spent some of his time the day before following connections within the villain network.  His search came up with nothing; what he could find wasn’t strong enough to justify the expense or the sellers were obviously trying to swindle him with a diluted product. Long story short, he felt like shit and had no quick fix for it.

He wanted to crawl out of his skin.  Fuck. Everything.

The memory of your cool touch on his skin came forefront to his aching head and he wondered if your quirk would be useful for his withdrawal symptoms…

Dabi pushed the thought out of his head.  He wasn’t going to let that be an option.  It was a slippery slope leading to a dependency that he simply couldn’t afford and definitely did not want.  He was already on edge from yesterday’s conversation. His sympathetic thoughts, no matter how brief, made him see a man he didn’t recognize, and the thoughts plagued him ever since.  He had never considered himself a soft guy.  It wasn’t that he didn’t have feelings.  Things could still bother him if he let them.  But he had learned very early on that what he felt didn’t matter. Perhaps it was the gradual silencing of his conscience, small pieces of him chipped away like stone worn down over years of crashing waves.  Only rarely, every once in a while, did the waters of his vengeance and bitter hatred recede enough to allow sunlight to touch his burnt heart.  And in that moment, he saw you, a fragile boat approaching rocky, dangerous shores.

He frowned.  As long as you did your job, what should it matter? You chose this life just like everyone else did.  It wasn’t his responsibility to protect you from it.

As if his heavy thoughts summoned you, your familiar knock rang through his door.  He cursed under his breath.  During his misery, Dabi had forgotten that you were going to visit him this morning.  He had planned to be gone before you came looking for him, a silent show of defiance to your mothering.  But instead he here was, stuck, feeling the shittiest he felt in a long time.  Maybe if he just ignored you…

You knocked on the door again, your pounding louder, incessant.  You were so fucking stubborn.  He glowered at the wooden barrier angrily, the intolerant noise sending a ringing like a tuning fork into the depths of his brain.  He contemplated setting the door on fire just to make a point. He held his restraint by hair, only vaguely aware that doing so would make him feel even worse, if such a thing was even possible.  Plus, you were the only person here with a lick of sense for medical care – he was ninety percent positive you had some sort of medical background.

“What?” he growled as he sat up begrudgingly, unwilling to let you see him so weak.  Nausea permeated him from his sudden motion.

On the other side of the door, you stared at the wood in confusion.  The sound of Dabi’s voice shocked you – low, scratchy, slurred… menacing.

You almost wanted to concede to the unspoken request, but your determination to treat him held tight to your will.  “It’s me.” You replied, hoping your voice didn’t sound as small as it felt.

A pregnant pause greeted you before he finally spoke. “Come in.” It sounded like an order.  Or was it a surrender?  Could it even be both?  How did this man always seem to have two versions of himself running simultaneously?

You came into the room and closed the door behind you with a quiet ‘click.’ You were met with a dark stuffiness, the air unusually warm and infused with the stink of sweat. The curtains were drawn closed, light straining to seep out along the edges of the fabric.  A thin slit of light stretched across Dabi’s bed where he sat, his back facing you.  He looked like a fallen angel, a broken soul.  His shoulders were hunched, drawn tight like a bow string, struggling not to fold in on himself and break.

His bravado was gone, his casual presence muted in the deafening silence.  He wasn’t even trying to pretend this time.  His distress was palpable.  You felt shame being here, your presence intrusive.  You weren’t supposed to see him like this.  So why did he let you in?

A mild panic filled you. Did he hurt himself again since you last saw him?  Or was this your fault?  Did your quirk wear off already?

“What’s wrong?” you asked. He didn’t respond.  You stepped forward cautiously.  “Dabi…?”

Your voice grated on his conscience – words of concern, a tone meant to soothe. He didn’t want your compassion.  He wanted you to be cold and indifferent, a mechanic repairing a broken part.  Or maybe even have you be as crazy as the others, waxing poetic about bloodlust and freedom.  That was a language he understood, that he could navigate with ease.  Not this benevolence.  Not this normalcy.  Why were you so different?

“You’re annoying.” He growled just loud enough for you to hear.

You halted your approach and your back stiffened.  “What?”

“Stop acting like you fucking care.”  The words spilled out of his mouth without a concern as to their damage.  He knew you cared, even if it was on a basic level, which was why he desperately, accusatorily denied it.

Everything bothered him. His head.  His body.  The stink of this room… you seeing him like this.  Why did that bother him?

You pressed your lips together, your jaw taut.  The tension in the room became as palpable as the stifling air.  What could you possibly say? That you did care?  Well, did you? You cared enough to be here, at least. You had a responsibility to treat him, and you’d be lying to yourself if you said he hadn’t been on your mind more than usual the past couple of days.  Of course, he’d never know that…. But were you friends by any stretch of the definition? No.  Definitely not. So, if he wanted to be a jerk and suffer with his pride, then you’d let him.

“If you want me to leave, just say so.” You replied coolly.  “I’m just here to do my job.”

Your answer satisfied him, cold and to the point, a counterbalance to your overwhelmingly gentle nature.  It provided him the emotional distance he needed, a cloak he donned willingly to shelter himself from your prying eyes.  And through his mental fog, he realized in mild amusement that it was the second time you called his bluff, grinding in your heels to deflect his verbal strikes. You weren’t easily bullied; at least, not as easily as he’d originally thought.

“Whatever.” He grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with, I got shit to do.”

You clenched and unclenched your hands around your bag.  You were grateful Dabi caved, your conscience breathing a sigh of relief.  You’d make it quick, to address what you needed to and leave him to sort himself out in solitude, like you knew he wanted.  You began to approach him, quiet steady steps around his bed so you could get a closer look at him. If he was going to let you treat him, you might as well try to make the most of your limited time and see if you could figure out what was wrong.

As soon as you could see his face, you realized he was holding something in his hand. An empty pill bottle.  His eyes stared at it like it held the answers to the universe while also cursing its existence.

Suddenly, everything clicked.  The agitation.  The pain. The misplaced anger… Of course.

You closed the distance between you until you were standing in front of him.  Without saying anything, you quietly took the bottle from his hand, which, surprisingly, he let you.  You read the name and the dosage.  It was a strong one.

“Dabi,” you said quietly, hoping you didn’t sound patronizing, “How long has it been since you’ve had your medication?”

There it was.  That kindness again.  You brought it forth so effortlessly, as if he didn’t just insult you a moment ago. Somewhere, behind his defenses, the itch of guilt settled itself into his mind like an unwelcome guest.

He was quiet for a moment as he stared at the bottle in your hand, his eyes either unable or unwilling to meet yours.  “Two days.” He replied, his voice scratchy.

You quickly did the math in your head.  He had mentioned that his pain meds ran out when he first asked for your help, but you had thought nothing of it at the time, assuming he had ways of fixing his problem.  You should have known.  You should have checked with him.  Drug withdrawal was no joke.

“When are you getting more?” you asked.

“Not sure, doll.  My supplier has gone AWOL and I haven’t found a backup.” He put his head between his hands and rubbed at his temples.  You watched him with quiet concern.  At first you wanted to use your quirk to try to help him, your hand starting to reach out to his wild raven hair instinctually. You faltered.  Would your quirk even work with this?  This wasn’t a cut or a burn or a broken rib… this was a chemical imbalance in his brain.  What if you hurt him or messed him up somehow?  Slowly you lowered your hand.  He needed his drugs.  

“How many of these did you take a day?” you asked as you looked at the bottle again.

He answered.  Your eyes bulged slightly.  How was this man not stumbling around when you first met him? He must have built up a tolerance over years of use.  Besides, quirkology affected everyone’s body a little differently.  Still, it definitely explained his bored expression and overall body language – this guy was constantly high.

“Don’t look so surprised, doll.” He stared up at you with shining bloodshot eyes.  His forehead was beaded in sweat, his skin so ghostly pale that only the rise and fall of his shallow chest indicated he was a breathing, living human.

You watched him, taking in his current state.  If he did finally get a hold of new meds on his own, would he be able to show restraint? Logically, you knew that he was experienced with this – it obviously wasn’t his first rodeo.  But still, a part of you couldn’t help but worry.

“You could really hurt yourself with these.” You replied softly.

“I know my limits.” He stated firmly, annoyance starting to seep in.

“That’s what everyone says, until they don’t.”

His brow furrowed, dark eyebrows pulled together like closing gates.  “Look, doll.  If you’re gonna lecture me, then you really can leave.  I don’t need your help with this.  I got by just fine before you came along.”

You wanted to snap back at him, to defend what seemed common sense to you, but you held back.  Poking the bear would help no one.

You kneeled down next to him and opened your bag, rummaging through your things.  “I’m not trying to lecture you.  I’m trying to help you.”  You found what you were looking for and pulled it out.  Nervousness filled you – you hoped he didn’t ask too many questions.

Dabi eyed the bottle of medication in your hand in hunger.

“It’s not as strong as what you’re used to,” you explained, “but it will take the edge off.”

“What kind of doctor are you, aiding a drug addict?” he teased.

A pang of guilt shot through you, but you steeled yourself against it.  “If you’re going to be taking pain meds, then I’d rather have it be something reliable and safe that I can monitor instead of something you find on the street through dubious means.”

“Oh yeah?  Like all of your little supplies don’t come from shady sources.  You can’t exactly get this stuff from anywhere.  Those are prescription only.” Dabi nodded at the bottle clutched so tightly in your hand, that he couldn’t see the label on it.  He couldn’t help but wonder… was it your name on that white sticker?  Or someone else’s?  What other items did you have in that bag of yours?

You lifted your chin pridefully.  “I have an inside source.  Trust me, the stuff I get is the real deal.  And that’s all you need to know about that.”

Dabi grinned as you gave him two of the pills from the bottle.  “Well, look at you, doll.  What a criminal.  You could get in serious trouble for this, sweetheart.”

“Oh, I think we’re well past that by now…” you replied with a grin, which earned you a chuckle.

Dabi popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.  Your smile faded slightly as you felt the urge to say one more important thing to him.

You stared at his hands in front of you, long fingers intertwined together and suspended in the air as his elbows rested on his knees.  “Look, Dabi…” you started.  Your eyes traced the metal rings holding his skin together.  “I can’t imagine the kind of pain you’re constantly in.  I understand why you take drugs. I think anyone would.  That’s why I’m helping you.  Not having pain meds isn’t really an option for you.”

“So, does that mean you’re gonna let me have that bottle?” his eyes stared at the bottle still clutched in your hand.

You held the bottle to your chest protectively, a part of you afraid he’d try to snatch it from you. Withdrawal made people do desperate things.  He raised an amused eyebrow at your defensive action, a small smirk upturning the corner of his mouth.

Your body felt warm and you broke eye contact.  “Not yet.” You replied.  “I want to make sure you’re okay with it.  It’s different from what you were taking before.  It might feel weaker than what you were taking or might have different side effects for you.  I don’t want you to overdo it.”

“And what makes you such an expert?” Dabi pried, his bloodshot eyes narrowing as his head tilted.

You put the pills back into your bag as you looked away from him.  “I have a medical background, so I know a lot more than you might think.”

Dabi grinned, despite his headache, the skin pulling tight enough along his rings to send an ache of pain along his jaw.  He was right. Not that it was that hard to figure out, but he liked that you answered him honestly.

“You don’t trust me, doll?” Dabi’s teasing tone made you look up at him to find his fiery eyes piercing yours.  That familiar spark of life, dangerous and wild, was starting to return to his drawn features.  Oddly enough, you found it comforting even if it did send your pulse racing like a scared rabbit.

Meanwhile, he was amused at your caution.  Little did you know how many drugs he’d tried over the years, how many times he came close to ‘overdoing it,’ as he learned what his body could and couldn’t handle. Sure, he needed his drugs to keep the pain at bay… but he also needed to carry out his mission.  He refused to let himself devolve into a zombie when he still had unfinished business.

You rolled your eyes at him.  “I just want to make sure you transition to this new pain medication okay.  Switching drugs can be a messy business.  If I decided to trust you and something went wrong, well…” your words faltered, unable to finish your statement.  It almost surprised you how much the thought of something horrible happening to Dabi bothered you… especially if it was caused by your own negligence.

“Aw, doll, you’re making me blush.” Dabi grinned.  “You better not try to take advantage of me. I’m under the influence.”

You raised an amused eyebrow at him.  “Really? Who’s taking advantage of who here? Someone just got free drugs.”

“Trust me, sweetheart – you’ll know when I’m taking advantage of you.”

A proper comeback couldn’t find its way to your lips while your mind was so distracted by suggestive thoughts.

He continued on unfazed, as if his previous words meant nothing to him.  “So, how are we gonna do this then?”

You cleared your throat and wet your parched lips with your tongue.  Dabi watched the gesture intently, but you didn’t notice as you avoided eye contact.  “We’ll start with what I gave you. When it wears off and you feel like you need more, you come find me.  If you have any issues or feel anything weird, you come find me.  I don’t care what time it is.  If it’s 3 in the morning, you come find me.”

A devilish grin spread across Dabi’s features as his head got a rather detailed less-than-pure mental picture of a late-night visit.  He knew that wasn’t what you meant, but he enjoyed where his imagination took him, nonetheless.  He eyed you for the first time since you came into his room, allowing himself to take in your appearance from head to toe, his eyes lingering where he wanted them to, without a care as to if you noticed.  He might not be willing to touch, but he was definitely willing to look. Life was too short to not appreciate the finer things in life, and at this moment the finer thing was you.

You shifted nervously under his penetrating gaze, your pulse quickening under your skin like a raging river. You weren’t quite sure what he was thinking, but the light of his eyes made you feel exposed.  You resisted the urge to wrap your arms around yourself protectively, your self-consciousness fighting to get the better of you.

Your forced yourself to continue, looking away abashedly.  “I’m still coming to take care of your bandages, so I’ll be checking up on you again tonight.  Do we have a deal?”

Dabi was quiet for a moment as he stared at your determined face.  Finally, he smiled.  “Yeah, doll. We got a deal.��

“Good.  Now let me check those bandages.”

He stood up and you instinctively took a step back as his presence filled yours within the tight space between his bed and the wall where you stood. The scent of him filled your nose and you resisted the urge to inhale.  You liked it and you couldn’t explain why.  He turned his back to you and removed his sweat-soaked shirt.  You waited to see if he would move to the more open space of his room, but he didn’t, and you stood awkwardly before deciding to just change his bandages where he was.  Maybe he had a headache and moving was a little too much for him.  It’d take about thirty minutes for the pills you gave him to really get into his system and start working, and you’d be long gone by then.

You changed his bandages quickly and efficiently as well as added a little boost with your quirk to make sure his back was pain-free until you returned to check on him later in the evening.  He seemed to have enough on his plate to deal with without having your quirk wear off.

He was silently grateful you changed his bandages in silence as he waited for the pills you gave him to kick in. He was familiar with them, of course – they weren’t the best for what he needed, but you were right when you said they’d take the edge off.  Still, he didn’t want to use up your supply.  He didn’t know if that was your only bottle, and at the rate that he typically popped pills, you’d be out within a few days.  He’d reach out to Giran again to get a hold of his own.

Once you were done, you packed up your items to leave.  But before you did, you reached into your bag and pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to him.

“Hydrate.  Please.” You said.  “You took those pills and they might make you nauseous on an empty stomach.  Besides, your body needs more than coffee, energy drinks, and alcohol.”

Dabi grinned.  “Have you been watching me, doll?  You’re not stalking me, are ya?”

“I watch all of my patients.” You replied with a critical eye.  “Nice try, though.”

“You got any ramen in that bag?” Dabi teased as he opened the water bottle and took a swig.

“No, but I got a granola bar.  You want it?” you replied casually. You pulled out said item and waved it in Dabi’s face.

Dabi’s lip turned up in disgust.  “That shit’ll get stuck in my rings.  And it’s disgusting.”

“It’s healthy.” You replied with an extra wave for added emphasis.

“You’re like a walking drug store.”  Dabi commented as he watched you put the offending food away.

“I feel like a damn mom with all this stuff, but you’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.” You replied.  “Alright, well I’m gonna go and let you rest.  Do you have my number?”

You said it so casually, that Dabi had to stare at you to process your words for a moment.  He didn’t easily fluster, but he also didn’t ever have pretty girls offering their number to him, his scars always scaring them off.  It was such a personal gesture and completely alien to him.

“What for?” he finally replied.

“In case you need me for anything.  Like if the drugs wear off, or your bandage comes loose or something. We might not always be in the same place at the same time and I’d hate for you to not be able to reach me if something’s wrong.”

The tension in Dabi’s chest eased slightly.  Of course, it had to do with his health.  He noticed that about you – when it came to business, you cut straight to the chase.

He wanted your number.  But as soon as he realized it wasn’t for health reasons, he immediately shot it down, his iron wall crashing down.  “I’ll be fine.”

You stared at him and shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  Just trying to be efficient.  If you change your mind, you can reach out to one of the others.  I think you’re the only one who doesn’t have it.”  You walked to the door and turned back to him.  “Like I said, I’ll be back tonight, probably at around 9pm.  You’d better be here, or you won’t get your pills.” Mischief danced in your eyes and Dabi realized you were teasing him. He grinned.

“You think you can manipulate me?” he challenged.

“We’ll see…” you replied casually and left his room.

After you were gone, he stood there for a moment staring at the water bottle in his hand before he realized he had a dumb fucking smile on his face. He threw the water bottle in his trashcan.

You were a goddamn pain in his ass.  And he was a damn idiot, getting flustered over a pretty face being kind to him. What was this, fucking middle school? Like he’d never been around a girl before?  You were here to treat him.  As soon as his wounds were healed up and he got his own drugs, things would go back to normal.

It had to go back to normal.

__________________________________________________________

Part 4

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Taglist: @lemonfvck @vs-redemption @inanabsentia ia @sheedaabee @toshiuwuu @marydragneell @chillinwithmybakubros​ @genuinelytodorokisbitch @sam-i-am-1025 @redflannel @axerrri​ @necccomancy​ @miadraws0​

#dabi x reader #dabi #dabi fanfic #bnha #mha #bnha imagine #soft dabi #fluff #slow burn #pining #long talks #intimacy #dabi is a todoroki #touya todoroki #dabi is touya

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (1/3)

So first things first, disclaimers! I do not claim nor pretend to know every nook and cranny, ins and outs of the history of FooFan's conception, existence and uncertain future. I do not own the game nor its characters, only the opinions and thoughts stated hereon out.

This was born to vent out my frustrations with how a game like this was abused poorly by its own developer and publisher instead of being nurtured to become its full potential that could have overshadowed and remained better than the likes of Tencent's Tales of Food --I could dream, but it honestly had the potential to be.

Out of respect for the main tag, I personally will not be tagging this post and the following two with the main tag. If you want to tag it yourself with it, that's your choice. Only followers of my blog will see this.

This analysis is divided into three parts: Funtoy, Elex, and the Community. It starts under the cut. Well let's get started.

Funtoy

Ah yes, the creator. The developer. You'd think that with their sudden rise to fame during their global launch, they'd have used the massive profits they earned within the first quarter of 2018 to improve certain things about the game and then trickled it down as quickly as possible towards Global, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

After playing the game since launch, I've seen and experienced way too many things that just hammer in the fact that this is one of the most unfair gacha I've played in years. Some reasons being the following:

(Note: These are experiences ONLY on Global's version, it may also apply to CN being the original server)

⦁ The game's gacha model is aimed towards maximum predation on its players. F2p are forced to either spend some money (and thus tempt them to keep spending after getting a taste of it), or risk not even getting a good ascension of the unit to be useful at all. Paying for the event packs also doesn't guarantee that you would be able to secure a spot in the ranks. In fact, if you can't comprehend how the battle mechanics work, you could even de-rank. Fun way to burn that 800$, huh? At least you have the skin from rebates.

⦁ A little less known thing and probably theoretical at worst, the long joked about spaghetti coding of the game along with an outdated spine technology for the sprites could very well be the reason why a 2D game like this experiences the shittiest lags. Also how easy it is to hack this game with the right know-how.

⦁ Speaking of bad gameplay mechanics, did you know you could spend over fifty Mirrors and not get that final enhancement from +9 to +10 simply because there's absolutely no tangible safety net before +10?

⦁ If you're F2P, this game is terrible in giving you resources to stockpile. Because Funtoy certainly doesn't have a lot of weekly/monthly or even friendly events wherein you can get resources without spending another kind of resource. The Hawthorne event's rewards are lackluster at best, Bingo is severely limited in what it gives, and Recall also doesn't give much for a big event that only happens (supposedly) every 6 months. Did I also mention that daily resource rewards also kinda suck compared to how much you burn in just one event?

⦁ Monthly subs are a scam. Yes, you heard that right. My point of comparison here is Arknights. A monthly in AK allows you to have enough to 10-pull after 30 days, on top of a bit of stamina to help you. In FooFan? You have two monthly subs that do different things and even then, you won't have enough to 10-pull by the end of 30 days, nor is the stamina you get enough to even stockpile and ease the pressure of your need to save for the Gates or that stamina event that suddenly popped up.

⦁ A conga line of 'Must procure this unit at a high ascension to do well in the following events!'. You missed the first Pizza event? Missed the first Turkey event? God forbid, you weren't able to 5* your Beer on his debut? Well sorry, that 5* Black Tea of yours isn't gonna do squat to give you good damage. No, your 2* B-52 also isn't going to do much of anything with his lackluster damage capabilities. If you want a chance to get those event URs again, you have to wait for their pool with laughably limited pulls... and a bloated price to even pull.

⦁ The events starting after the first iteration of Turkey event get even more paywalled. As far as I remember, by the time Minestrone rolled around, an F2P with ample crystal resources can only get 2* at best. 3* and above are paywalled.

⦁ The game has incompetent balancing. The devs themselves likely have little experience in gameplay design and balancing, especially for a game with a growing roster of characters . A prime example of them launching a character not knowing it would pretty much unbalance the game? Look no further than Beer. The guy had to have a couple of nerfs done to him because he was just too meta. You know what's sadder? Before the 'switch' to Brave meta, almost all meta units was built to benefit off the Beer meta.

⦁ Artifacts. Do I even have to explain how the introduction of such a game feature so early into the lifespan of this game essentially fucked over the balance even more? Not to mention, all the more reason you'd be crying with the Gates of Trials demanding so much out of your stamina and crystal resources. F2Ps are again, the ones that suffer in this part. What's their reason? Profit, of course.

⦁ The nerf of resto chests. This was the primary source for people who were saving up stamina for the Gates... until Funtoy decided they were being too generous to their playerbase and dropped the stamina probability rate to 1% or less.

⦁ Terrible UI layout and design. Come on, be honest now, you've lost several thousand of your hard earned crystals buying screws in the fishing shop because you didn't notice that shiny warning in small text and a green button with the crystal image slapped on it, didn't you?

⦁ Look at all these SRs! All of them! Wow, they even outnumber the Rs by at least 80! What's that? There's more URs now too compared to Rs and Ms combined? That can't be real. But seriously, you'd think Funtoy could make some of these SRs into Rs and add them to the perm pool/shard fusion so people aren't stuck pulling Macaron or Dorayaki every time. They could have also populated the Team Up rewards with SRs instead of Rs. But you know... that won't bring them profit. Haha... haha.... Oh and I haven't even told you about the SP class...!

⦁ Lore. Yes, I'm sure by now you're aware that the in-game lore is different from the ones in the non-SP Food Soul bios, in the SP Food Soul bios that sort of ties in with the New World story (that global will never be getting btw). At this point, Funtoy handwaves the confusion away by saying, 'they're all different timelines'. Yes yes, an easy and cliche move to explain how shitty the writing direction went after a while. I don't know what happened, all I know is that lore got weird(er) when they introduced SP Rice.

⦁ They. Keep. Adding. More. Characters! They fail to see that a lot of their earlier players have imprinted on the first few waves of Food Souls and they sadly also fail to properly give some of them more story expansion... or skins. At the moment, they're shelling out so many JP-centric Food Souls because... as I see it? They're pandering to the last bastion of whales they have.

⦁ Merchandise. And I mean a variety of merchandise that isn't using the same official art every time. Like they couldn't afford to commission a couple of artists one or two times to make unique merchandise that would sell. They started too late on that train, and they even made it too hard for anyone not in CN or JP to even procure what already exists. Not to mention, they keep using the same 'popular' set of characters for their merchandise and never really expanding out to making merch for other characters.

These are all the things I can list off at the top of my head why Funtoy as a developer sucks ass. They could sweeten their words all they want, it won't change the fact that they've certainly made way too many bad decisions and found out about it too late, and now they're desperate to keep Food Fantasy alive to keep their profits coming in to make whatever that cat girl game they have and that supposedly 'side-game' FF2 they announced.

There may have been problems out of their control that I or you do not see, but one thing is for sure, they were blinded by greed for the money they were raking in on all their servers at the start, and never actually bothered to invest in more manpower in the right places to improve the game, both gameplay-wise and worldbuilding wise. It's actually saddening that this game could have been so much more with several QoLs and a more fleshed out lore, perhaps even spacing out the number of new units they keep introducing while going back to giving their old units more attention.

That's it for Funtoy. We're moving onto Elex in the next part and boy is that also a trip.

#ravings of a madman #food fantasy but not tagged right

[streets-in-paradise]

Fictional Sibling relationships i live for

I had been thinking about this topic lately and decided i would like to make a post about it because it is a very fun and interesting one for me. I had mentioned a few times here that in terms of fandom involvement i am more invested in family and frienships than in shippings, particulary i have a fixation with strong sibling bonds or sibling like friendships. I think it must be because i have a strong bond with my younger sister, i identify with that and that’s why i tend to get more involved and interested in this sort of character interactions. 

I will keep this just in movies, movie adaptations of books and tv shows because i don’t want it to be super long but still want to talk. In movie adaptations i will try to stay in movie’s territory as much as i can, if i add commentary on the book versions this would never end but i may slip a bit towards it because i can’t help it. 

As always, i make the disclaimer over the images i will use here, they belong to the sites where i found them.  

Sorry for my pathetic language skills in english. 

Note: this got so long that i will probably make a second part for more characters i coulnd’t include 

Boromir and Faramir in lotr 

Lotr is full of great material for people who, like me, obsess over families. Frodo and Bilbo, Merry and Pippin, Elrond and Arwen, Theoden ,Eowyn and Eomer are other great examples of family relationships i’m interested on from here ( i pretty much love to overthink stuff about almost all the lotr family relationships). I choose to talk about this bros because they have a particular place in my heart. How many times we had seen the common trope of a royal or noble family where the father is a dick who gives all his love and attention to the older brother, neglects the little one causing him to grow up resentfull and ending up as a villian while dad’s favourite is the hero of the tale? Not this time, and it is so refreshing. 

Boromir and Faramir choose each other over their father’s bullshit, you can see it in the lovely deleted scene the gif up here comes from. When Denethor shows up they are both annoyed, when he is mean to Faramir Boromir calls him out and tries so hard to make him show some appreciation for his youngest son. it is clear that, in this version, Boromir is more family to Faramir than his father ever was. I love how much they care for each other, how they pass beyond the differences. Boromir is a super amazing big bro, i love how he protects Faramir and is there for him instead of letting his father’s praise get in between. I could talk for hours about this two because i love them so much. I’m doing a hard effort in stopping myself from throwing a whole set of headcanons i have for them so i will stop now before i get too excited. 

Fili and Kili in The Hobbit

Staying in Middle Earth for one more mention i had to talk about this two. Being fully honest, the movies broke my heart because they took the exact opposite way i would had wished for. When they were introduced In An Unexpected Journey this two adorable brothers were one of my favourite aspects of it because i loved their Merry and Pippin like dumb chaotic energy. One of my biggest complains with the Hobbit adaptation is to have shifted the narrative of the strongly family focused story arc of the Line of Durin. Kili’s romance with Tauriel shifted the focus and, in my particular perspective, i hated that because i was already super involved in the family story. Besides from the “I belong with my brother”  iconic line we don’t see much more of Fili and Kili’s bond after the introduction of Tauriel. In fact, Fili loses a lot of his initial screentime in Desolation of Smaug and Battle of the Five Armies.

 I love this two, the relationship with their uncle as it was introduced in the first film and i would had loved to see more of their family dinamic explored. One of my biggest complains, besides from the change of focus on their supposed ending, is that i’m convinced that they should had entered the mountain with the rest of the company. It is such an important moment they would probably waited for since they were children, is the legacy of their family. In short terms, i love them and i would had loved to keep seeing future developments of the Line of Durin story they had in AUJ. 

Hector and Paris in Troy 

This two represent the opposite case. The relationship they have in this movie is very different from the source material but i love the great development it has here. It is outstanding to see the importance the sibling bond has in a movie that is supposed to be about a war caused by a romantic passion. 

The sons of King Priam are absolute opposites. Hector is the embodiment of a true hero, a Steve Rogers of ancient times. His strong caring nature and will to protect everyone reminds me of Boromir as well. Unlike Faramir,Paris is a freaking mess. He is the careless, adventurous and reckless little brother Hector ends up protecting every single time he gets into trouble. I had stated before that i think Paris is a selfish prick but i think that is a slight confussion of mine with the original. This Paris is more a reckless dumbass and, unlike Iliad Paris, his arc in the movie it’s a bit more simpathetic. In this version Helen is trapped in a loveless marriage to an old prick who treats her like trash (in the director’s cut Menelaus jokes about how he only cares for his wife for breeding purposes on a conversation with Hector). I can understand at some point that, if he trully fell in love with her, he felt horrible for letting her stay there as a prisoner of her husband. Going back to the my focus for this talk, i like that the movie had decided to make this two close brothers who actually care for each other despite being absolute opposites instead of two guys who barely know each other, are barely aware of being brothers and share only hatefull interactions. 

Hector’s protectiveness over Paris warms my heart. He had threated him a few times ( director’s cut has the “ i will rip off your pretty face from your pretty skull” excharge. I love that scene), he gets furious at him for his foolishness, they argue but when the time comes he always chooses to protect him. Honestly, that’s such a big bro thing, i can’t help to feel identified. The weight that this relationship has in the development of the story is a surprising thing and it makes everything more tragic. Paris being the killer of Achilles has a more significant meaning because, now it’s not just the irony of the weakest character killing the strongest. Paris is aware that he owns the memory of his fallen brother so much, he wants revenge. Hector was there for him all his life, the least he can do for him is to kill his killer and avenge his death. Briseis begs him to stop but he can’t let himself do that, he owns it to Hector and that debt is bigger than anything. 

I will not delay this any longer, the family relationships on this movie are my favourite aspect of it and i have a soft spot for the bond between the trojan princes. Don’t get surprised if i one of this days i end up making an entire separate post talking about the family dinamics displayed in the film (same goes for lotr but that would take me ages and i would have to make an entire series of posts if i wanted to discuss every lotr family relationship i would want to talk about). 

Sam and Dean Winchester in Supernatural 

If you reached this point you may had noticed that i have a big thing with family tragedies involving siblings. Supernatural is my favourite show because it combines lots of elements i love. To mention just a few: horror, mythology,classic rock and a strong family approach in its pretty tragic but outstanding plot. 

Sam and Dean are one of my favourite duo of bros of all time. I don’t think i have a lot to say about them because their relationship has been analized lots of times by the very big fanbase of the show. My main difference with the common interpretation is that i don’t see the Winchester family in a similar way to the movie versions of the Steward of Gondor and his sons, which means i don’t think John has been the shittiest father ever despite his many mistakes. Unlike movie Denethor he tried hard and in the interactions we saw of him with his boys he actually cares for both of them. 

This bros were the ones that made me realize in an actual concient way of my tendency to get too attached to families, story arcs regarding them and sibling love. I’m super attached to this story, i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do with my life once it ends. 

I will end this post here. It is more than sure that there would be a part two because i have tons of more brothers,sisters and other family relationships to talk about. 

Thanks to everyone who has read my very long ramble 

#my weird rambles #sibling bond #family dinamics #families in media #lotr #the hobbit #troy 2004 #supernatural #boromir #faramir #fili #kili #hector of troy #paris of troy #sam winchester #dean winchester #sean bean #david wenham #dean o'gorman #aidan turner #eric bana #orlando bloom #jensen ackles #jared padalecki