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queenbirbs · 4 years

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waiting for rain | Ethan x MC

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x MC

Warnings: language

Word count: 2,786

Summary: After the funeral, Sloane catches a ride. Post chapter 11.

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It’s a beautiful day.

The last week has been nothing but blue skies and balmy temperatures, with autumn peeking its head around the corner. The city is lovely anytime of year, but Boston thrives in the fall. The Common and adjacent gardens come alive in a spray of colors as the leaves change, the canopy dipped in orange and yellow and red.

It feels wrong, then, that the day is so nice and bright as they trudge along the rows of graves and back towards Bryce’s car. Glancing over her shoulder, Sloane frowns at the swath of black as Danny’s family gathers around the grave to watch the interment. Their labored breathing and soft cries carry over the open lawn and down to the road.

“What a shitty fucking day.” Jackie kicks at a pile of loose gravel along the pavement with her heel.

“At least the rain held off,” Sienna pipes up from where she’s slumped against the car. Clenched in her shaking hand is a gladiolus that Danny’s sister gave her from the casket spray. Noticing Sloane’s attention on the flower, Sienna traces a finger along the white petals with a wobbly smile. “I’m going to press it in my copy of The Secret of Ninradell.”

“Nerd,” Jackie mutters, coaxing a tremulous chuckle from Sienna.

Beside them, the doors unlock with a droning whir. The three of them pile into the back; Elijah and Bryce’s voices drift down as they approach.

“You know, all those parking tickets you keep getting are starting to make a lot more sense now.”

“These hands are for performing surgical miracles, not parallel parking on an incline.”

“A kid with a learner’s permit could parallel park this, dude. Your car is the Chevrolet equivalent of a sardine can.”

“We’re well aware of that,” Jackie chimes in from the center seat. “So can you two hurry it up?”

As Bryce helps Elijah into the passenger seat, Sloane catches sight of Ethan’s car tucked in along the other side of the access road. She caught a brief glance of him at the graveside service, but he disappeared into the crowd of mourners soon after her impromptu eulogy. The sun’s reflection on his windshield prevents her from seeing if he’s even inside. But then, a few cars down, Harper gives a little goodbye wave towards his car as she and Aurora reach her own vehicle.

Sloane throws open the door. Jackie frowns and reaches out for her as she slides out.

“Hey, what are you--”

“I’m going to catch a ride with Dr. Ramsey.” At the wave of worried expressions she receives, Sloane sighs. “I’m okay. I promise. You guys shouldn’t… I’ll see you at home.”

With that pithy attempt at reassurance, she shuts the door and crosses over to the S-Class. The driver’s side window rolls down before she reaches it, revealing Ethan in his customary black suit. His striking blue eyes are tinged red -- a sight Sloane has become accustomed to over the last week when catching herself in the bathroom mirror.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hello,” he returns. He glances down her figure, as if cataloging something, and then back up to meet her eyes. “Come on, then.”

“Thanks.”

She crosses to the passenger side and settles into the seat, avoiding his curious gaze by feigning a struggle with the seatbelt. Thankfully, he drops whatever question is plaguing him and starts the engine. Within a few minutes, they’re cruising south down the highway. The classical station finishes its latest piece and the suave-voiced host segways into a round of commercials. When the local news spot starts, both of them reach for the volume button, their fingers bumping clumsily. Ethan reaches it first and turns off the radio, then reaches down to capture Sloane’s hand with his. He links their fingers and squeezes, once, then again, before resting their clasped hands against the leather armrest. His thumb makes easy, gentle strokes along her skin.

Sloane eases back into her seat. The dull roar of the road isn’t enough to fill the aching silence inside her head. It makes her think of being back in that tented room, all alone, waiting to die.

“The service was lovely, as was your eulogy.”

“Sienna should’ve gotten to speak. She -- those were her words, all she could bear to write, but she asked… well, begged me at the last minute to say them for her.”

“That was kind of you to do.”

Her eyes clench tight at his praise. She focuses on the measured sweeps of his thumb, but all the bitterness in her chest keeps building and building until it bursts free.

“It should’ve been raining. Why was it… why did it have to be so sunny today? It should’ve rained. He deserved that much, at least. He was one of the only staff on my side when Landry was trying to sabotage me. He didn’t need proof or need to hear my friends vouch for me. He just believed me, straight up. And he was so sweet, and so kind, and so funny and now he’s dead, and I know we took Lasagna’s oath to not play God, but if I could, I would bring back Travis just to kill him for all the hurt he caused, and I know that goes against every--”

“Hey.” Ethan glances up from the road and over to meet her watery gaze. “It’s all right. You’re allowed to feel angry, and hurt.”

“I know,” she says, but it still feels dirty, somehow, to agree. She survived, didn’t she? Why should she get the privilege to fall apart at the seams when two people are dead and buried six feet under?

She keeps quiet for the rest of the drive. Unfortunately, it’s a rather short one, what with the cemetery being only twenty minutes north of the city. All too soon, they’re crossing the Tobin Bridge. The city skyline crowds the horizon, stacks of gray and glass forking up into the cloudless sky. Ethan takes the wide curve of an exit that crosses the Charles River and into the tunnel, down below the blue blood streets of Boston. As he prepares to merge over to take them towards her apartment, she squeezes his hand to grab his attention.

“Can I…?” she trails off, regretting how weak the request sounds. She bites back a relieved sigh when he pulls his focus away from the side mirror and over to her.

“Of course.”

They make their way through the ever-present downtown congestion before he turns down a side street and into his building’s garage. Neither speak as they exit the car. His hand finds hers once more as they step into the elevator. Jenner greets them at the door with her favorite stuffed duck, insisting on meeting her quota of belly rubs before allowing them entrance.

“Would you like a drink?” Ethan asks as he steps over the sprawled form of his dog with practiced ease.

“Yes, please.”

After a few more pats, Sloane wanders over into the kitchen. Ethan’s suit jacket lays slung across the island, a more telling sign of his mental state than anything visible on his face. His tie joins the pile as he pours them both several fingers of scotch. She takes the tumbler and knocks it back, ignoring the fierce burn at the back of her throat; she hands it back for a refill.

“Fine,” he sighs, “but this isn’t a jello shot at some tiki bar in Panama City Beach.”

“I wouldn’t know, seeing as I spent my spring breaks waiting tables,” she mutters against the rim of her glass, taking a small sip at his behest.

“I hated every second of it, if it’s any consolation.”

The murmured confession draws her up short.

“Wait -- you were a PCB spring-breaker? You? The man who can’t name a single artist on the top forty hits? The person whose idea of a good time is reading the green journal and annotating the margins with all the mistakes?”

“I don’t see how knowledge of Harry Mars’s discography would increase my enjoyment in life.”

Sloane’s face breaks into a grin at the name faux pas, prompting a scowl from him. “What? You said it yourself that I don’t know--”

“No, no, ignore me. Go on.” She rests her hip against the counter. “Please tell me about how you wound up in Florida for spring break.”

“It was Tobias’s idea, actually. He told me we were going to a medical conference in Atlanta. It wasn’t until we passed through Atlanta and he showed no sign of stopping that he told me where we were actually going. By that point, it was far too late to request he turn around. I was, in effect, doomed.”

“Doomed to spend a week at the beach. Poor you.” Rolling her eyes, she knocks her elbow into his side. “Did you at least have some fun?”

“I did. Well, after I went into a store and bought some more... appropriate clothing. Everything in my bag was pressed khakis and polos.”

Her mind immediately conjures up a younger Ethan, wearing board shorts and flip flops in whatever searing color the local beach shop sold.

“There has to be pictures, right? I’ve met Tobias, he’s too much of a snake not to have snapped a photo or two.”

“I’m sure he does,” Ethan agrees. “For blackmail purposes, of course.”

“And here I was hoping that our time in Miami was your most memorable trip to the Sunshine State.”

“It was.” The weak little smirk she wears disappears, folding under the intense scrutiny of his gaze as it rakes across her. “Why did you ride back with me?” he asks.

“Because Bryce’s car is ‘the Chevrolet equivalent to a sardine can,’ according to Elijah.”

He doesn’t acknowledge her lame attempt at brushing aside the question. When the silence grows too long between them, Sloane drags in a shaky breath and caves. “Because being around them, having them dote on me and worry about me, it’s… suffocating. And not because I don’t love them, or appreciate them, but I don’t… I don’t see the point. They should be able to grieve without me burdening them.”

“Sloane.” The way he says her name with all the care in the world drives that guilt deeper. She wants to shrug away his hold on her as he wraps his arms around her shoulders, but she doesn’t. She sinks into his embrace, breathing in the scent of his cologne, feeling the thud of his heart against her cheek. “You are not a burden.”

“Hearing that and knowing that are two different things,” she points out.

“Then I’ll repeat it a thousand more times until you get it through your thick head.”

“I don’t know what to do. I’m sad, and hurt, and angry about Danny. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, and neither did Bobby. And Rafael, he almost died, and-- and I almost died. And I’m sad, and hurt, and angry about that. But what gives me the right to feel that way, when I got to live, and they didn’t? Danny, he… he begged Travis to let us go, and all I did was stand there. I fucking stood there and let him kill my friend.”

She doesn’t notice the tears on her face, not until Ethan catches them and wipes them away. “And even after you came in, even after I was wheeled out and got to see Kyra, even after I was discharged, there’s been this crushing weight on my chest. I even wrote goodbye letters on my phone, but I can’t bring myself to delete them. Because what if we’re wrong? It’s like… like what if my body suddenly rejects the antidote and I’m back in that bubble? Like I’m going to wake up and be back in that room, as if this is all a last-ditch effort my brain has conjured up to help me cope with dying.”

Ethan makes a pained noise in the back of his throat. Gathering her impossibly closer, he presses his lips to her hair.

“This is real. You’re okay. You’re safe, Sloane. This is real.”

“But I don’t want it to be. I want it to all be some sick dream. They wouldn’t’ve even been there if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t stolen the senator from Mass Kenmore, Danny and Bobby would still be alive. I just… I want to go back. I want to order them all out of that room before Travis ever gets his hand on that canister. If I could trade places with them, we wouldn’t be burying our friends.”

“You’re wrong,” he tells her. “If you were the only one in that room, we’d be burying you. And after coming close to such a thing, it isn’t a reality I’m ever willing to face.”

Sloane shakes her head as the tears come faster and faster, her body trembling against his. She feels as if she’s drowning, but her head’s above water.

“The responsibility for what happened lies solely with Travis,” he tries to assure her. “He’s the one who pulled the trigger. He’s the one who was determined to get his revenge, no matter who got caught in the crossfire. He admitted as much to me in his last moments without an ounce of regret.”

“Ethan, I…” her throat closes around the rest of her plea, but somehow, he hears the words.

His arms loop around her waist, holding her up as her knees buckle under the sudden weight of her grief. His words become nothing more than soft murmurings as he picks her up and carries her off down the hall.

In his bedroom, he sets her down on the bed. Kneeling before her, he picks up one foot and then the next, unbuckling the strappy heels she wears. Sloane leans forward and strokes against the grain of his stubble; she drags in a steadying breath when he leans into her touch. She reaches down for the hem of her dress, but he beats her to it. Raising her arms instead, she lets him slide the dark fabric over her head. He adds his own clothing to the floor, then joins her in his bed, his naked skin warm against hers.

Under the covers, Ethan tucks her there against his chest. Her eyes flutter closed at the sensation of his fingers tracing along her bare skin. It reminds her of that last morning they shared together, after the trial. The heartache now is different, vicious in that way only death can be. Sloane burrows closer, wishing she could bottle this feeling of safety and drink from it on the darker days ahead.

“Yours was the longest,” she admits, her voice sounding small in the quiet room.

“Hmm?” he murmurs.

“Your letter.”

The line of him stiffens, his hand stilling its movement.

“Hand me your phone.”

She rolls over and digs through the pile of their clothing, retrieving her phone from the pocket of her dress and handing it off to him. He holds it between them so she can watch as he navigates to her notepad app. The letters are all there, just as she said, in alphabetical order. She doesn’t miss how his thumb hovers above Naveen’s.

“I asked him to look after you,” she explains, biting her lip against the rush of emotion at knowing the words hidden beneath the names.

“When did you write these?”

Ethan’s eyes move from the screen and over to hers, tears collecting in the cradle of his lower lid. Her gaze never waves from his as she answers.

“After you took Raf away. It… became real, after that. Not that it wasn’t real before, with Danny, but to see him fall into a coma right next to me was a wake-up call. I didn’t want that to happen to me. Not without being able to say goodbye to the people I loved.”

Leaning across, he kisses her temple, and then her cheek, and then her lips. Then, with a few, quick taps, he deletes the letters and returns her phone.

“Thank you,” he whispers. At her raised brow, he doubles down. “Not for-- that was for you. I’m saying thank you because you listened to me.”

She snuggles close once more when he curls his arm around her and flashes him a curious smile.

“Go on.”

“You didn’t give up,” he tells her, his voice gone thick with emotion.

Between the sheets, her hand finds his.

“You didn’t give up, either,” she reminds him.

“On you?” he hums, pulling their linked hands towards himself to press a kiss to her fingers. “Never.”

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Author notes and what-have-yous:

So, I learned that only eleven percent of medical schools still recite the Hippocratic oath verbatim, and about thirty-three percent use Lasagna’s modern oath (which is why I included it instead).This is coming from a few articles I read, all seemingly based in the U.S., so it may not pertain to every school.

The ‘blue blood streets of Boston’ is pulled directly from a Bob Seger song, though there is a historical connotation behind it.

The green journal is another name for the American Journal of Medicine.

#open heart fic #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #open heart #Kaila writes things #f: waiting for rain

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wayward-marvel-sommer1196 · 5 years

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Hawaiian Vacation

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Warnings: Cheating (ex), language, sad/lost child

Word Count: 3934

A/N: This was written for Lau’s @dancingalone21 Summer Escape Challenge. This is like two years too late I’m so sorry for that love. I just had so much going on for a while that I just couldn’t write. My chosen destination was Honolulu, Hawaii. No beta and I know this is crap but this is my first piece of writing in a while so please take pity on me I’m rusty.

Summary: When you walk in on your fiancé in a compromising position, you pack up and take off on what would have been your honeymoon with your best friend. While in Hawaii, you run into Jensen who will forever change your life in a few short days.

One week. That was it before you were married to the love of your life Taylor. You couldn't wait. You had been planning this wedding for the last year and a half and it was finally here.

You had your final dress fitting today and it fits you beautifully. You felt like a princess. All your last final details were pretty much set. Now, all you had to do was check with Taylor to make sure he had all his final details put together.

That's where you were headed now. You were headed home to your beloved fiancé not expecting what you were about to walk into.

When you walk in the front door you immediately knew something was off.

"Taylor?" you yelled. No response. "Taylor, honey, are you home?" Still no response. You traveled further into your shared home and saw some clothes on the stairs on the way up to your bedroom. Female clothes that were not yours. It didn't take a genius to figure out what you were about to walk into.

You picked up the clothes on your way up to the door when you heard the moaning sounds of a woman being pleasured. At this point, you were fuming. ‘Really in our bed? One week away from our wedding?' you thought to yourself

"Taylor Shawn Ferly!" you shouted as you stormed through the door. "What the fuck do you think you are doing? Or rather who the fuck, I guess is more appropriate."

"Y/N! I…. This…. You…. Fuck this is not what it looks like," Taylor said as he got off the slut naked in YOUR bed.

"Really???!!!?!?! Because it looks like you are fucking some slut in our house, in our room, in our bed a week before our wedding."

Just then Taylor moved just enough so you could see exactly who this homewrecker was, and you were not prepared for the sight before you. "RANDY! Are you fucking serious right now? That's low even for you Taylor. My fucking sister? I can't even believe what I am seeing right now. How could you do this to me, Randy? You are my sister and that is my fiancé. How could you sleep with him knowing we are getting married next week?" you cried.

"(Y/N), I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen," she pleaded.

"Yeah babe, we both didn't mean for this to happen," Taylor added.

You threw Randy's clothes at her and screamed, "Get the fuck out of my house." With that order, she ran out the door putting her clothes back on.

"Babe-" Taylor tried.

"Save it, asshole. If you didn't want this to happen and if you loved me, it wouldn't have happened. You are scum, the lowest of the low. You don't even deserve my screams right now, but I can't hold it back," you screamed as you yanked the diamond ring off your finger and threw it at him.

"I will be staying with Dana and she and I will be going on what was supposed to be our Hawaiian honeymoon," you cried as you grabbed your suitcase and started shoving all the clothes you could in it and pack other essentials from the bathroom that you might need.

Taylor started getting dressed and nodded his head. "Babe, can we at least talk about this?"

"No, this," you pointed between the two of you, "whatever it was is completely and 100% over. Done. You made your bed now you get to lie in it. Peace out dick head," you said as you walked out the door with your suitcase and got in your car and called Dana, your best friend.

Once you got to her house you explained everything that happened in the last hour and cried more over a bottle of wine.

"What a fucking asshole and your sister is a mega-bitch and slut," she said.

"I know. I should have known they were talking way too much lately. He kept saying it was for the wedding to take the stress off me a bit but considering both of their histories I should have seen it coming."

"Girl, you knock that off right now. He was supposed to love you. You shouldn't have had to worry about something like this happening."

"I know, but it still hurts. I did love him."

"I get that sweetie but screw him. He is the one losing a gem here, not you. But I know how we can get him back."

"Way ahead of you. Already have the tickets in my bag."

"That's my girl. You can still get your deposits back from all the wedding shit, right?"

"From the park, flowers, and catering, yes, but the dress, I'm biting the bullet on that one."

"That's fine you may still use that one day, but forget about that for now because, in one short week, we will be in Hawaii, baby."

"Yes, we will."

One Week Later

The sun was shining, and you were laid on the beach outside the Prince Waikiki Hotel in your brand-new bikini. Dana was up at the bar getting you both drinks to help get your mind off Taylor and Randy and the wedding you would never have.

You were caught in your thoughts about walking in on your now-ex when you felt something, or rather someone, trip over your legs. It was a little blond girl who looked about 5 years old and as adorable as can be.

"I'm sorry miss. I didn't mean to trip over you. I wasn't looking where I was going," the little girl said.

"It's okay sweetheart. No worries. Are you okay?" you responded.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

Just then a tall, handsome, brown-haired, green-eyed man came running over.

"I'm so sorry ma'am. We were playing frisbee and JJ here was running to catch it when she tripped over you," the handsome man said.

"It's fine. There were no injuries as long as she is okay is all that matters," you bent down to pick up the frisbee that landed next to you and turned to JJ. "Here you go, sweetie. I think this belongs to you," you said.

"Thank you, miss. Daddy let’s go play more," JJ said.

"In a minute JJ. I'm Jensen by the way and this is my daughter JJ," the man said as he held out his hand for you to shake.

"I'm Y/N. It's nice to meet you both," you responded as you shook his hand.

"Hey girl I got the drinks," Dana said as she walked over. "Who's this?"

"This is Jensen and his beautiful daughter JJ. We were just talking after JJ tripped over my legs," you said.

"Well it was nice to meet you, Y/N," Jensen said as he and JJ walked away.

"He was hot as hell. Did you get his number?" Dana asked.

"No. A guy as hot as that is most definitely taken not to mention he has a kid, so he is probably married to someone who is just as hot as him and hasn't been cheated on."

"Girl knock that off right now. You are fucking gorgeous and any man would be lucky as hell to have you."

With that, you just nodded and you both drank your drinks while enjoying the Hawaiian sun.

Later that Night

One of the benefits of the hotel you were staying at was they had a bunch of different fun events you could attend. Tonight, was Luau night and you had the perfect dress for it that wouldn't be too hot, and you would be comfortable. Dana wore her classic shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. When you both were done you headed out.

It was everything you hoped it would be. The tiki torches, the fire performers, the hula dancers, even the roasted pig. The only thing that would make it better would be a guy to enjoy the night with.

When you were in your thoughts you felt a tap on your shoulder. You turned around to see none other than little JJ.

"Daddy! Look who I found. It's Y/N," JJ said.

"Yes, you did, sweetie. Hello Y/N. Hello Dana," Jensen said.

"Hello, Jensen, why don't you and JJ sit here with Y/N and me?" Dana suggested.

You through her a ‘what do you think you are doing' look and turned to Jensen with a smile. "I'm sure Jensen has to go back and sit with his wife."

"Nope. No wife. Just me and JJ here and before you ask no girlfriend either. It's kind of a daddy-daughter thing," Jensen replied. "We would love to sit with you, right JJ?"

"YEAH!" JJ shrieked.

She settled into the seat next to you. You thought she was the most adorable little girl in the world. "So, JJ, what is your favorite food?"

"I like chicken and ‘pasghetti," she answered.

"Well, wouldn't you know those are my favorites too," you responded.

You spent the next hour giggling and playing with JJ. You were always good with children and she was such a good little girl it just came naturally to you. She was getting kind of sweaty, so you braided her hair for her, and she hugged you. You couldn't deny that you were forming a bond with this little girl.

What you didn't notice was the look that Jensen was giving you. He couldn't help but admire the way you interacted with his daughter. She was his whole world and the fact that it seemed to come so naturally for you just tickled him pink.

Soon after your main entrée arrived and that's when the chit chat between you and Jensen began. You figured out that you both grew up in Austin and both still live in Texas. You both had a lot in common and it was nice to finally be able to talk and not think about Taylor.

After the Luau Dana went back to the room, but you and Jensen wanted to continue the night a little bit longer. So, Jensen, JJ, and you all went walking along the beach for a while. JJ got tired after a bit, so you offered to carry her and she fell asleep in your arms.

"So, what brings you to Hawaii from good ol' Texas? "Jensen asked.

"You know just needed a vacation away from home. How about you?"

"Like I said before it's a daddy-daughter vacation. I try and get as much fun time with JJ as I can. She is my world and I try to give her everything I can."

"I can see that. She's a wonderful little girl. You are raising her well. Most little kids I meet don't even know what manners are, but she just seems to naturally get it."

"Well, thank you. I try my best. You should also commend yourself, you are great with her. I could help but see that at the luau tonight. She has taken a liking in you."

"I've always been good with children. I guess it's a gift."

"It really is."

Jensen looked down at his phone and saw that it was getting late. You guys said your goodbyes and he scooped up JJ and went back to their room while you took your time walking back yours think about how easy things were with Jensen. Nothing like they were with Taylor.

Next Day

“Hey Dana, why don’t we hit up the pool today?”

“Sounds good. Let me just grab some towels and we can head out. Do you need some sun tan lotion?”

“Naw I’m good.”

You and Dana head down to the enormous pool and decide on a set of chairs off to the side away from the main group of chairs. You get settled in with your towel under you and your shades on. Dana went to the pool bar to get you guys some drinks while you waited.

It had been about 20 minutes since Dana left and you began to wonder where the hell she was at. You turned around and looked towards the bar to see Dana leaning over the bar giggling with some tall scrawny dude that you knew was her type. At this point you knew she was as good as gone. You loved Dana to death, but she was a bit of a hoe, but that just made you love her even more. Anyway, you knew is meant she would be gone for a while and you would be left alone.

Before you could dwell on the fact that you were alone you heard a shriek that you would know anywhere. It was JJ and she came running up to you and gave you a hug which you were more than happy to return.

“JJ you can’t just run away like that,” said Jensen running up behind her. “Hi y/n what’s up?”

“Hey Jensen. I’m just sitting here all by my lonesome since my very rude best friend ditched me for a guy,” you replied.

“Well that was not very nice of her. Why don’t you spend the rest of the day with JJ and I?” he offered.

“Well, that sounds like a good day to me,” you said as you tickled JJ into a hug.

You guys spend the next few hours playing Marco polo in the pool, having pool noodle fights, and racing up and down the pool.

While JJ was sitting in your chair eating her fruit snacks Jensen pulled you aside. “Hey y/n would you like to go to dinner with me tonight?”

His request shocked you. You were not expecting a man like that to be interested in a girl like you especially after what happened with Taylor. You didn’t think anyone would be interested in you. “What about JJ? What are you gonna do about her when we go out?”

“I got that covered. We came with my best friend Jared and his family and he has already agreed to watch her for me if I wanted some alone time.”

“In that case I guess dinner sounds nice.”

“Good I’ll pick you up at 7. Does that sound good?”

“Sounds good.” At this point it was almost 5 so you both agreed that you would go to your rooms to get ready for your evening. You gave both Jensen and JJ hugs and you guys went your separate ways.

You were glad you decided to bring one dressy outfit as now you clearly needed it. You showered and put on your summer dress. You did all the prep that women usually do for dates, the hair, the make-up, and the works. You walked out to see Dana dressed up as well.

“Hey good looking, what are you all dressed up for?” you asked Dana.

“You know that guy I met earlier? Well, he invited me out tonight. What about you?”

“Well, I have a date with Jensen tonight.”

“That’s awesome.”

Before you could continue there was a knock on the door. You looked at the clock and saw that it was exactly 7 o’clock. You had to admire his punctuality.

You opened the door and he was like a dream. He was so handsome and couldn’t figure out why in the world he would pick a girl like you.

“You look beautiful,” Jensen said.

“Thank you, Jensen. You don’t look to bad about yourself.”

You and Dana said your goodbyes and she told you not to wait up and you left with Jensen.

You pulled up to one of the most beautiful and fancy restaurants you have ever seen. You both go in and of course he has a reservation which you had no idea how he got in such short time considering the place was packed. You got to the table and he pulled the chair out for you and did all the gentlemanly things you didn’t think guys did anymore.

“This is so nice. How did you ever get a reservation here?” you asked.

“I have my ways,” he said with a gorgeous smile.

“So, what is it you do for a living?”

“I’m actually an actor. I am on a show called Supernatural.”

“That’s why you look so familiar. I have seen an episode or two of that show, but I don’t really have a lot of time for tv.”

“It’s nice to not have someone recognize you,” he giggled. “What is it that keeps you so busy?”

“I am a social worker.”

“Very nice. That explains why you are so good with kids.”

“Well I actually got the job because I was already good with kids and I got the degree of course.”

At this point the waiter came over and gave you your drinks and took your dinner orders.

“Tell me how’s a beautiful girl like you still single?”

You cringed at the question. You knew this was bound to come up sooner or later. You were just hopping it would be later rather than sooner. “Honestly, I just got out of a serious relationship that did not end well at all. It’s kinda the real reason I took this trip.”

“I see. Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

“It’s fine. I was actually engaged to my long-time boyfriend Taylor. I thought we were madly in love and couldn’t wait for our wedding. But a week before we were supposed to get married, I came home from work a little early and caught him in bed with another woman.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Yeah the worst part was that the woman was my sister Randy.”

“Talk about the ultimate betrayal.”

“Yeah so suffice to say I called off the wedding and this trip was supposed to be our honeymoon, but the tickets were non refundable so my friend Dana suggested that we take the vacation to let loose and not think about it. However, this all happened a little over a week ago and forgetting about is not quite that easy.”

“I can imagine. That is terrible. I am so sorry that happened to you.”

“Me too. Anyway, how are you still single?”

“Well, single dad thing aside, my job also keeps me very busy.”

“What about JJ’s mom?”

“I knew that would come up eventually. We were actually married for a few years and I thought we were happy, but I guess she wasn’t. About a year ago we got divorced because she said my job took too much of my time. Which she wasn’t wrong about. So, we got divorced but still maintain a good relationship for JJ’s sake. There’s no hate there.”

“That’s so nice. It’s wonderful you guys could put your problems aside for JJ.”

“Yeah, that little girl is everything to us. Anyway, do you have any kids?”

“No. Unfortunately my job has kept me too busy for that, but I would like to one day.”

Before Jensen could respond the waiter came over with your dinner and you began to eat. The rest of the night went along smoothly with you and Jensen talking about personal details about yourself. You took a walk along the beach after dinner until you realized it was getting late.

Jensen being the gentleman he was walked you to your door.

“I had a really great time tonight,” you said.

“Me too. You are such an easy person to talk to. It’s like I’ve known you forever,” he replied as he leaned in slowly and placed his lips gently on yours and began to kiss you. Of course, you reciprocated. As the kiss starts to deepen you push back a little and grab the key to your door and unlocked it. Jensen kissed you again as you both walked into the room and closed the door behind you.

The Next Morning

You woke up the next morning to feel the bed next to you empty. You got up still wrapped in the bed sheet and saw a note on the side table.

Good Morning Y/N,

Sorry I had to leave early. I had to get JJ and didn’t want to wake you up. I had a great time with you last night and hope we can do it again

Xoxo Jensen

You smiled at the note and decided to get ready for the day. You laid out your outfit and jumped into the shower.

After you were dressed and doing your hair Dana strolled in still wearing last nights clothes. “Well, look who’s doing the walk of shame,” you said to Dana with a smile. She just smirked and walked into the bathroom.

You decided that you were going to do a little shopping, so you went down to the shops that were down the street from the hotel. However, when you got there you weren’t expected it to be as busy as it was. It was like Walmart on black Friday. Basically, it was a mad house.

Before you could turn around and head back to the hotel, you heard a crying noise. You walked around the corner and saw little JJ sitting on the ground huddled up and crying. She was all alone so you ran to her and grabbed her attention without scaring her. She saw you and ran into your arms.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong? Where’s your dad?”

“I lost him. I don’t know where he is. He was behind me then he was gone.”

“It’s okay sweetie. I got you. Let’s go find him together,” you said as you grabbed her hand.

You searched the first shop and found nothing. So, you continued from shop to shop until you hit the fourth shop and you finally found Jensen. JJ ran up to her father who engulfed her in a giant hug.

“Thank god you’re safe, JJ,” Jensen said as he kissed her head. “Thank you so much y/n. I was freaking out. I got lost in the crowd and the next thing I knew little JJ here was gone.”

“It was no problem Jensen. I’m just glad I found her.”

“Me too. Do you have any plans today?”

“Not really. I was just gonna do some shopping and chill why?”

“Well, we were just gonna do some shopping too. Care to join us?”

“Sure. That sounds like fun.”

You ended up spending the next few hours going from shop to shop with Jensen and JJ having a good time. You even went out to lunch where you and JJ made Jensen spill his drink on his pants and laughed at him saying he peed himself.

Since this was your last night in Honolulu you went to Jensen’s room so you could the talk you had been long dreading.

“Hey y/n, come in.”

“Hey Jensen, can we talk?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I have been dreading this conversation all day. But tonight, is my last night in Honolulu which means it’s the last night I’ll see you and JJ, and I really don’t want it to be the last time we see each other.”

“Me neither. I really think we have something special here despite only meeting less than a week ago. We both live in Texas why don’t we give this relationship a shot?”

“I really want to, but I live an hour away from Austin. How are we supposed to make that work?”

“An hour is nothing. We can figure the details out later but if you are willing to give this a shot then so am I. So, are you?”

“Yes.”

And with that Jensen pulled you into a kiss and your worries about the future faded away. You two would figure it out together.

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imx-doomer · 6 years

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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (A review of sorts)

[Image Credits: @CallegosY on Twitter]

The latest entry in the Wolfenstein franchise has left quite an impact in many ways. It is been four months since the release of the game but, has it really been said everything about the game? I don't think so.

(I mean, I wouldn't be writing this if that were to be the case, I think).

A disclaimer: This post will be very, very long (I think it has the right to be), and it will contain major spoilers about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and the previous games (The New Order and The Old Blood). Desist from reading this post if you have not played and finished the game(s) on its entirety, and go play them before reading this. English is also not my first language so please excuse the grammatical mistakes I might have.

As of right now my experience with the game is based on me watching someone else play the game on launch, not because I prefer it that way (I heavily oppose that kind of practice, actually), but because I do not own Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or the hardware to run the game on my PC. However, it is my intention to acquire the means to play the game as soon as possible, because I firmly believe that's how you're going to get the full experience.

It took 25 years for a Wolfenstein game to feature Adolf Hitler up front in its main story again. That same amount of time also happens to be the time Wolfenstein was absent from being in a position of controversy. But, contrary to what one would have thought a few years back, the inclusion of Hitler himself was not the cause of the controversy.

A lot has changed in those 25 years, but, as the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. And if there's something that I have learned from all my years spent playing videogames is that people will always complain about them no matter what. I don't have the exact percentage, but most of the time, those complains are dumb. Really dumb.

As a matter of fact, back in the day in 1992 when Wolfenstein 3-D was released it received complains about being "too violent" and "being heavy on the ketchup", and also even the Anti-Defamation League protested the inclusion of swastikas and nazis in the game (Source: Masters of DOOM, pages 114-115). This also ended up causing the game to be banned in Germany, because of the prohibition of nazi imagery in entertainment.

Keep in mind, this was way back in 1992. Of course, don't get me started when DOOM came out. That's a whole different story.

Another game that fell into controversy (as that franchise usually does, now that I think about it), was GTA: San Andreas. I remembered San Andreas while I was writing this post because I reminded myself of the days where I swore to not even touch the game, in part because of a portion of its fanbase (my experience with the game back then consisted of annoying kids playing nothing else but GTA:SA in arcades or cybercafes).

But then one day I decided to play the game myself for the first time, and after the first three hours I was sold. There's this one spot in the highway that connects Verdant Bluffs with Downtown Los Santos, near El Corona and the Los Santos Intl. Airport, where cars would go fast enough to crash with one another and cause huge explosions without any actual input of the player. Those who have played the game might remember that spot. You could just stand there and watch the show unfold, it was so hilarious to me.

That's how I learned to separate the game from the things that ultimately had zero impact on the game itself. A very valuable lesson.

But now, let's talk about the Wolfenstein II, shall we?

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a videogame released in November of 2017, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks for PC, XBox One and PlayStation 4. In this year (2018) it is expected to be released on the Nintendo Switch with help of the same studio (Panic Button) that worked on the port of DOOM 2016.

Now. The game?

The game...is good.

Keep in mind, I said "good". Not very, or great, or excellent, or fantastic, or maybe even GOTY. "Good". There is definitely a feeling that the game could've been -at least- very good, or that it could've achieved GOTY status. In fact, even after some people claimed The New Colossus to be their own GOTY, it wasn't until very recently that Wolfenstein II received a nomination from an important institution for GOTY; a GOTY nomination that ended up losing in favor of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Now, some of you definitely have issues with a few parts of the game, and I don't really know if we have the same kind of issues, but I'll give you the very short description of mine:

-The story happens, B.J. liberates America from the nazis (big spoilers there I know), but it doesn't really feel like it actually did. There's a feel of balance between the gameplay and cutscenes, but some key moments in the story lacked the necessary impact that was needed in order to strengthen their importance in a game where the story is supposed to matter. -The game also has some balance issues with the difficulty, or rather, the AI of a few enemies. -The gameplay enhancements (you know the ones) arrive perhaps a little bit late, and are not properly introduced in a way that could've improved the experience of the game for many players. -The main villain of this game doesn't even hold a candle compared to the main villain of the previous game, or even other villains of the new game itself. And this is further reinforced by... -The absolute STATE of the last sequence of the game.

There was also another issue. When the game was released there were two groups of people, those who couldn't run the game, and those who bought the console versions. Jokes aside, there were (and maybe still are) some optimization issues with the PC version of the game that stopped a lot of people from playing it, but then again, you had people with PCs that could actually run the game with little to zero issues. Such is life in the mustard zone, I guess.

(Wasn't DOOM 2016 plagued with those issues too? Someone help me with this)

I will expand on each issue in a moment, but before that...

-Wolfenstein: The New(found) Audience-

...Remember what I said about GTA: San Andreas and actually giving videogames a chance? That's more or less what happened with the new Wolfenstein game, I believe. We all were witnesses of that, because the moment when the first trailer for Wolfenstein II was shown back in last year's E3, people that have never touched or mentioned a single FPS game in their lives became instant fans of the franchise.

But, well, to be completely honest, there was more to that than just the footage of the first trailer that made people glued to Wolfenstein. I believe I don't need to go in full details about what I'm talking about. That's not (and will not be) what this post is about and that's an entirely different subject anyway. These series of events have naturally left a lot of people angry and tired. And it should be no surprise that people would latch onto the new game as soon as it was officially announced and started being promoted.

Quite frankly, if you didn't see that coming after the events of August of 2017 in the US, you were either looking the other way, or you haven't realized the kind of impact videogames have these days.

I mean, there's no gentle way for me to put it, that was bound to happen one way or the other. It's not my intention to brag (it isn't something to brag about anyway), but I hinted this scenario way back in a post made in January of last year, so I guess you could say my expectations were met on that aspect.

Though I must say, I genuinely did not expect to see people loving this game when last year they were part of the crowd criticizing DOOM 2016 for being "too violent"...

I did not expect to be proven wrong, that is! I thought their morals were firm about that subject, one can only guess they had a change of heart when they saw the trailer, too!!

(Image by @gamepadink on Twitter)

You have to admit that Bethesda and MachineGames capitalized on this. It took a while, but they did.

They initially choose to distance themselves from any comparisons with real-life events....

And here’s the [SOURCE] of that, by the way.

They did, however, a release of a partial demo of the game to various gaming websites featuring two sections of the game, one of them featuring a very peculiar chitchat between two nazi soldiers that served as a double hook aimed at the new audience gained by the E3 trailer.

It also hinted the very premature death of a certain character, that's also why I told everyone who were avoiding being spoiled to look away from the videos featuring that demo.

They maintained their distance for a while, but then on October 5th they decided to bite the bullet and go all-out. I don't have the screenshot of the initial promotional message but at this point there's no need for a reminder, I think.

Naturally that move turned some people off, and not because they felt personally attacked by the decision, but because there were fears of the game being unnecessary meddled with references to modern-day political events, and making the game look and feel dated in the process.

At least that's how one group of people felt. You also have that other group of very fine tiki torch people that...well, you know the story by now.

Now, after the game was finally out in the shelves and people finally got to play it, personally, I think that was not the case. Keep in mind, there is a handful of nods to modern-day events here and there, but you have to really deviate from the gameplay and search for them in the game to find them; and there's nothing that genuinely gets in the way of gameplay and the main story, and barring three characters that may have been based on real-life characters of the time and a certain old nazi German, there's not a single character in the game that resembles someone in our current day or anything like that.

People will definitely have their opinions of the marketing moves made by Bethesda and MachineGames to promote the game, but you gotta admit that, marketing-wise, they played their cards very well. I mean, one of the golden rules of marketing is to make the consumer feel like they need your product, isn't it? It might be a poor move, but in general the basics of marketing have never been about morals. Whether they turned more people off compared to the ones being brought in or not, I feel it can't be guessed right now. The game was released four months ago and the Switch port is coming soon, I feel there’s something more to come to give a final verdict.

"But WHY were people complaining? Wolfenstein has always been about killing nazis!"

I mean, yes. Nice observation. That is absolutely correct, but let me ask you something:

Where were you back when Castle Wolfenstein was released? Where were you when Wolf3D or maybe Return to Castle Wolfenstein were released? Shit, where were you when Wolfenstein: The New Order was released?

Where were you these 24 years while Wolfenstein was a thing in the gaming industry? Where were you back when Wolfenstein was seen as 'yet another boring WWII FPS game'?

Feel free to not give an answer, I'm not expecting one anyway, but me and many others were suspecting, almost standing by for this to happen around the time of release.

But hey, who the fuck am I to be the unofficial Wolfenstein gatekeeper, anyway? As a matter of fact, fuckin’ welcome to videogames! Pick your favorite and feel free to disconnect a little bit from reality. That’s why they were made!

-The Right Game, The Wrong Time?-

In a way, Wolfenstein II can't really be compared with other games that don't rely heavily on its story like the ones from the new, current Wolfenstein timeline do; DOOM 2016 for example, it employs 20 seconds of the beginning of the game to show the player how much the story matters by making the main character push away a status screen during a cutscene while making a little bit of fun of the usual cinematic sequences that some modern FPS games have.

Wolfenstein II, on the other hand, uses the first 10 minutes to set up the tone for the game by going full narrative/interactive cutscene mode. Unlike the new DOOM, the current timeline for Wolfenstein sets the player in a game where the story takes a slightly bigger spotlight compared to the gameplay.

And from what some of the reactions I saw, most people who picked the game seemed to ignore this, expecting The New Colossus to play like DOOM 2016. Big mistake.

You're not an unstoppable inter-dimensional being of legend, prohibited by Hell itself from being disturbed from its involuntary and forced imprisonment (Doomguy/Doomslayer), you're a war hero that went back from being comatose for more than 20 years, barely survived a grenade blast, and is stuck with half health for half the portion of the game (Blazko).

(Some of) those who complained also seemed to completely forget the existence of The New Order, and treated The New Colossus as the very first time where a Wolfenstein game was more story-driven compared to previous installments. Now, I did not have the opportunity to time the cutscenes and the actual gameplay, but truth be told, and comparing it to other modern-day games, The New Colossus doesn't feel like you're "playing" a movie at all.

With that being said, the story portion could've definitely been expanded a little bit. Some side missions are somewhat important in terms of additional upgrades and missing holes in the main story, maybe they could've been included in a way where you can get to play them in a specific order before getting into the main missions of the game. It's definitely not the "interactive movie" that some people were painting The New Colossus to be. And while it may or may not have the amount of levels that The New Order had, it's still a good single-player ride. But...maybe it wouldn't have hurt if the ride lasted a little bit more?

I will touch the main story in a moment. And boy oh boy, there's a lot to talk about it.

-From 0 To 10, How Hard Do You Want The Nazi Dog To Kill You?-

The difficulty is also something that I've been hearing a lot about. I think this was something that an important portion of the people expected to happen with the buzz that Wolfenstein II got (me included). Now, like I said in the disclaimer, I don't own the game (YET), so I can't really speak much about the difficulty of the game as much as I would like to, but I'll say this:

A good game is not a good game without some kind of challenge. When trying a new game, let the game challenge you for a bit, see for yourself how much you can handle. If you're facing heavy opposition and you can't get past it, lower the difficulty, but JUST by one level.

And if you really can't help it, fine, go ahead and take the dive straight to "Can I Play, Daddy?", but please don't go around saying the only way to enjoy The New Colossus is on Easiest! That's just something you don't want to say in public, unless getting trashed on the internet is your kink.

(Not that I'm actively trying to kinkshame anyone, mind you. You do yourself!)

From the gameplay that I was witness of when I was watching a stream of the game, some enemies were just your normal, run-of-the-mill mobs, then you had the ones that had a little bit of a different dynamic that the player had to get accustomed to in order to advance, and then you had the bullshit nazi dogs that could just end your run in less than two seconds.

There's also another issue with some bosses of the game, because at the time, there were at least a couple of boss battles that the player could dismiss entirely without any punishment. One of them was definitely in Roswell. You could just, escape, run over a few nazis on the way and completely skip fighting that big ass robot. Was this intentional or not, I'm not that sure myself.

Apparently a patch was released recently in order to fix and balance the difficulty a little. Like I said, I really can't say much about it or confirm anything about it, my experience was obtained during the first days after the release of the game. But only those who are willing to give the game a second play might want to check if this ended up benefiting the game or not.

What could also benefit from a patch of sorts is the plot of the game, if you ask me...

-The Story-

Boy...

Except for a couple of people, the characters were fine to me. There was a continuity between some of the characters in terms of their background, but some others were kind of dismissed as the story went along.

Barring the obvious changes that he went thru before The New Colossus, Blazkowicz was the same good ol' Blazko from the previous game. His struggle is pretty damn present throughout the game, and we get a bit of background in regards of his childhood.

In regards to how the game starts, it goes more or less like this:

The game starts with B.J. Blazkowicz back in General Deathshead's compound on the brink of death. A grenade just exploded right between him and Deathshead, which obliterated the nazi leader's head to pieces and left Blazko with a nasty open wound, laying on the ground. Blazkowicz starts having flashbacks as he's being rescued by his comrades before an atom bomb hits the compound. One of the flashbacks involves his mother Zofia (with a very visible black eye) feeding him on his bed, another flashback is the "Make A Choice" scene where you pick between saving Wyatt or Fergus, which is the same choice you make in The New Order that determines which timeline you play in both games. It seems like they decided to make the player pick a timeline again.

After you make a choice, you see Anya (B.J.'s girlfriend) with the rest of the search group (and the person you saved) rescuing B.J. before an atom bomb hits Deathshead's compound, which is something I assumed was going to happen *after* the bomb hit.

B.J. Blazkowicz somehow surviving an atom bomb would've kicked major ass. Oh well. Letdown City - Population: Me.

Someone gives the order to Bombate to drop the bomb, and as soon as it hits the compound Blazkowicz blacks out again. Back to his childhood, his mother (with no black eye this time) hands him a heirloom, an engagement ring that was handed by her father. Then, Blazkowicz's father is back home, and she quickly tells him to hide it.

And speaking of which, yeah. B.J.'s father. Not the very best example of a model dad.

-Rip Blazkowicz, American Traitor-

MachineGames took some ballsy decisions with the direction of the sequel to The New Colossus. One of them being turning B.J.'s father into basically the complete opposite of his son.

On one hand, you have William Joseph Blazkowicz, undeniably a war hero, hardened by one tragedy after another, and caring of his close friends and loved ones, going as far as willing to give his own life to save theirs. On the other, you have Rip Blazkowicz, a good for nothing, selfish, avaricious and failed salesman, and a traitor to the country.

Oh, and he's also racist.

The game tells you right away that Rip is not a very good person. It actually gets you involved with B.J.'s childhood in such a way that the very first interactions you have in the game are throwing jars at him after he hit Zofia, and the other one involves taking yet another impactful decision over the family pet dog. And I really, really hope you were part of the group who intentionally missed that shot.

Rip is straight up a bona fide asshole. And while you may have the usual crowd that will complain about its inclusion because they feel projected on him, some others might be concerned with the prominence of the role he was given in the story

He actually plays a key part, not only in Blazkowicz's childhood but also on the events of the game. And again, more to that in a moment; but if you still can't get over his existence in the game and the role he takes in Blazkowicz's life, just remember that this current timeline is set in an alternate universe where the nazis won WWII; it does not rewrite the events of Wolfenstein 3-D, and in that timeline Blazkowicz still lends a hand in helping the Allies beat the nazis and win WWII, he's still a war hero with a proud family behind him.

I mean, the Blazkowicz from the Wolf3D timeline married a (seemingly) all-American woman, I guess that's all you need to differentiate him from this Blazko (who married an ass-kicking Polish nurse of Jewish descent).

Now back to The New Colossus and back in 1961, B.J. Blazkowicz wakes up after remembering those traumatic moments, and barely manages to sit in a wheelchair in order to defend Eva's Hammer (the submarine he captured in The New Order) from an assault of nazis leaded by Frau Irene Engel, seeking revenge after Blazko killed her lover, Bubi, and destroyed Deathshead's compound.

Blazko receives a gun from a guy that looks a lot like Dolph Ziggler back when he had brown hair, and then goes to town killing nazis while he's sitting on a wheelchair.

Surprisingly enough one of the most enjoyable points in the game. It was also a really big introduction of Blazkowicz's all-out approach against opposition to the newest players, because nothing beats the feeling of killing nazis while strapped on a wheelchair.

(Well, maybe being Doomguy can beat that).

After being (re)introduced to the Jewish scientist Set Roth and seemingly killing all the nazis that got inside the submarine, he gets rescued from a sneaking nazi soldier by a pregnant Anya (pregnant with twins!).

Holy shit, Anya. She became the low-key MVP of the Resistance, and she also plays a few roles in some of the most ridiculous moments of the game. It can be argued that she doesn't really have to do the stuff she does, but if some of the info. I gathered about The New Order is true, she might as well be one of the most heavy-tempered women in any WWII game.

A few moments later you are re-introduced to two returning characters (Frau Engel, the main villainess, and Caroline Becker, the leader of the Resistance) and a brand new one who is directly related to Frau Engel. Engel takes her sweet time to both call out Blazko while she holds an unconscious Caroline captive as well as reprehend her daughter, Sigrun Engel, for not being tough enough to be part of the Regime and their antics. The player can't help but reflect back at the flashback moments that transpired between Blazkowicz and his father, which is definitely something that was put there intentionally by MachineGames to get you involved even further with the story.

Blazkowicz lets himself get captured with the intentions of saving Caroline with help of the friend who was saved during the first cutscene of the game. Inside their ship, Frau Engel taunts Blazko as well as Caroline, orders the nazi guard to knock her down and hands over an axe to Sigrun. Engel wants her daughter to kill Caroline herself by chopping her head off, but Sigrun refuses. Engel insults and berates her own daughter, makes her cry, slaps her, takes the axe, and does the job herself. Frau Engel proceeds to take Caroline's lifeless head and taunts Blazko with it.

Yet another traumatic moment for poor B.J., and boy oh boy, unfortunately the trauma won't be stopping there.

I think the game failed to set up the importance of Caroline for the Resistance, as she was the former leader of the Resistance before her unfortunate demise. She also played an important part in the previous game, which is yet another reason why you should play it just so you can get the idea! Caroline inadvertently becomes a martyr, and one of the main reasons why Blazko pulls himself thru all the bullshit from the first half of the game, to the point of murmuring to himself, asking her to "borrow her wings" for a moment (he actually wears the Da'at Yichud Power Suit that Caroline wore during the first game).

Once she's done, Frau Engel attempts to harm your comrade with the same axe, but Sigrun prevents her own mother from killing him, and then you either get Fergus with only one arm or Wyatt with severe ear damage, depending on which one you rescued. Blazko kills the guards, gets inside the Power Suit and proceeds to fuck up the nazis on their own ship. Having played the first proper level of the game, you end up freeing Eva's Hammer from the nazi captivity, and proceed to carry over Caroline's headless body alongside your friend and a poor Sigrun who wants to redeem herself and distance from her vile mother.

And who wouldn't want to distance itself from your parent who is a fucking nazi general, anyway?

-Sigrun Engel, Too Pure For This World-

Okay everyone, raise your hand those of you who did not like Sigrun at all. Okay, lower them down. Now close this tab and be gone from this post. Leave her alone, you of little faith.

In the midst of the most gruesome global conflict planet Earth has seen yet, Sigrun Engel takes a role that she wouldn't have wanted to play if given the chance. It's one thing to be born a German during WWII, but being the daughter of a nazi general with thirst of world dominance and revenge? Shit, man.

It's pretty clear that before meeting the Resistance (and even after doing so), Sigrun had nobody to talk to and help her cope with her grief. She suffered abuse from her own mother because of her condition, and she goes as far as describing in her diary an encounter with fucking Hitler himself where he orders Frau Engel to put her daughter in a body conditioning camp of sorts.

If you don't side with someone who got fat-shamed by fucking Hitler, I'm letting you know right now, I don't fuck with you.

Now, naturally a few interactions were to be expected between a descendant of a nazi and a descendant of a Jewish family, and this ends up being the case with a heated discussion between Sigrun and Anya that takes place in the dining area of the submarine of the Resistance. Blazkowicz can't help but feel bad for her, and Sigrun seems to understand that virtually nobody wants her to take part in the group.

And things just get uglier when Grace joins the Resistance as their new leader.

After you're done with the first proper level of the game and finish paying respects to Caroline, you are now free to wander around the submarine. You can do a few side missions, interact with some of the members of the Resistance, and you can also end up killing a few nazis that were pretty damn hidden inside the submarine! Apparently they were the reason why they were captured by Engel at the beginning of the game, so your second mission ends up being cleaning that hidden area of the submarine.

After doing that, your next stop is New York, which ended up being victim of an atomic bomb from the nazi regime that ended up causing the defeat and surrender of the US. Caroline's will was to liberate the US from the nazis and make it the central base of operations with the purpose of liberating the rest of the world. With that objective in mind, it seemed that Caroline had made contact with another resistance group hiding in the Empire State Building. And Grace Walker is their leader.

Now, Grace is uh...well, she's tough, and she's got a deep sense of assertiveness that makes her naturally a leader. But she's far from being a great, let alone a perfect leader.

She naturally hates nazis and the white supremacists that oppressed her and her people before, during and after the war, and that's completely understandable and justifiable. But what I find hard to justify is the severe trust issues and prejudice she has.

First of all she points a gun at B.J.'s head the moment he arrives at their base despite the fact that she may have been told by Caroline beforehand that there might be a chance of a white, tall dude with blue eyes named William Joseph Blazkowicz to show up in their base and contact them. Maybe she completely forgot about that, maybe she didn't. Then Grace pulls that idiot prank on him with the grenade that wasn't a grenade but actually it was a dud. Like, come on.

Then you have the inevitable clash with Sigrun Engel. Grace doesn't hold back and just kept calling her names and calling her a 'nazi spy' until the poor European girl had enough. Grace genuinely spend her moments as leader in the game bullying Sigrun whenever she dared to speak, and this isn't up to debate, it is a fact.

And if you ask me, Grace is a downgrade from Caroline when it comes to leaders of the Resistance. Anya actually ended up being the interim leader while the New York mission played out (a pretty damn fun mission, I might add), and she seemed to be pretty good at it, so why Grace ended up being the new leader, anyway? Yes, she has a good amount of experience, but so does Anya. Oh well, apparently it was part of Caroline's plan for Grace to become the new leader (according to some dialog found in the game).

Grace is also married and has a child. Her husband is Super Spesh, which is a lawyer that successfully defended her on a trial for a murder that Grace didn't commit (and ended up being a trap from the FBI). This trial happened before the events of WWII. Super Spesh (real name Norman Caldwell) is also a little bit paranoid and an avid conspiracy theorist with a certainly unhealthy obsession with UFOs and space alien technology. This takes further meaning when the next mission after the contact in New York is Roswell, New Mexico itself, with Super Spesh's front of operations taking a role during this mission.

Blazko meets with Grace and Super Spesh, they're found by the nazis but they manage to escape with their fellow members of their resistance group while Blazkowicz mows down all the nazis invading the building. Blazkowicz successfully recruits Grace and co., and they part to the submarine again.

With Grace as their new leader, their objective now is Roswell. Grace's plan is to drop a fucking atom bomb in the nazi-filled, underground Oberkommando base in Roswell, which was originally a site of an unearthed Da'at Yichud cache. For those who are not aware, the Da'at Yichud was (is?) an ancient Jewish mystical secret society that designed and created many inventions and artifacts, centuries ahead of the time. This secret society has played a huge role in the development of this timeline and it might be further explored in the next game of the franchise. In fact, the suit that Blazkowicz was wearing during the first half of the game is of Da'at Yichud manufacture and is originally from the first game.

Back to TNC, Blazkowicz is sent to Roswell with the disguise of a firefighter, while carrying the atom bomb inside a portable container. There are ads everywhere with Blazkowicz's face on them, with the intention of selling him as a “dangerous terrorist”, going as far as to label him "Terror-Billy".

Now, there's no gentle way for me to say this, but Roswell has been culled. I don't recall seeing a single non-white person in the town (which had a fucking nazi parade going on during the mission), and this is further reassured when you listen to some of the dialog the NPCs have during the first part of the mission in Roswell. One person talks about slave auctions as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and then you have another person trying to play nice with a nazi officer by speaking German in a poor manner. And then you have some of those white wizards (you know the ones) walking around fully clothed and shit.

All of that was just fucked up.

Your first objective is to locate the base of operations of Super Spesh, which ends up being a diner that he inherited from his father. A nazi officer walks in and you get to see that one scene from the first trailer where he questions Blazko about his whereabouts. The one that ends up killing the nazi officer is Super Spesh, and after doing so, proceeds to lock down the deli and hide Blazkowicz inside.

Once inside his bunker, Super Spesh tells him about a secret tunnel that connects his base to the Oberkommando, not before going into yet another space aliens conspiracy rant while Blazko was there. After he's done, you're set to go through the underground tunnel and reach the nazi base where you naturally dispatch as many nazis as you can, while also finish the job of putting the atom bomb inside a reactor within the base for maximum damage. Once Blazkowicz escapes the base, he detonates the bomb while strapped on a pretty damn cool unicycle, obliterating the Oberkommando in the process.

With that mission done, Blazkowicz is set to return back to the submarine, but then for some godforsaken reason, he decides to take a quick detour to Mesquite, Texas, which was where he used to live.

Now, you have to admit that this ended up being a damn stupid decision. Why would he even return there in the first place? I mean, sure, the heirloom that was mentioned at the beginning of the game was there all this time and Blazko wanted to give it to Anya, but that was actually a setup. Blazkowicz had no business being there. Oh well.

Anyway, Blazkowicz ends up having even more flashbacks to his childhood, one of them being the actual encounter with the African-American girl that his father wasn't happy to learn about (her name being Billie).

Apparently Billie is somehow an easter-egg/reference of a real-life African American jazz singer and musician called Billie Holiday. Now, I'm not entirely sure if this is real or not, but this is what I remember reading on a post in Reddit (which has been deleted by now, but I'm leaving a reply made to it), so take this with a grain of salt.

Blazkowicz enters his former home, and starts wandering around, having even more flashbacks to his childhood and the handful of amicable interactions he had with his father.

I would also like to take the time to point out and remark that, at one point during this section of the game, you may end up interacting with a piece of newspaper located inside the house.

This piece of newspaper in the game was titled "Fragment of Old News Article", and quotes an excerpt of a piece written by Henry Louis Mencken, a newspaperman and political American commentator of the first half of the 20th century. Here's a screenshot of said piece:

This is an exact quote of what Mencken said all the way back in July of 1920, in an article titled "Bayard vs. Lionheart". This quote has been passed around for almost a century, and it had a resurgence because of certain real-life events that have no business being mentioned here.

Now, I won't question what was written by Mr. Mencken, but what I'd really like to question here instead is this: How this piece of paper ended up being there, when we later learned that Rip Blazkowicz had been hiding there all along ever since he learned about the attack to the Oberkommando, and he doctored and moved around a few things inside the house?

Why this particular piece of newspaper didn't include a date that matched the setting of the game, while the rest of the (fake) newspapers bits in the game had a date each, and matched the particular time? (From the early 30s to early 60s)

Especially when this quote was written all the way back to the days before The Great Depression (started in 1929) and the date could match the settings of the game with zero issues? (July 1920)

Why would Rip Blazkowicz keep a piece of paper that could ultimately contradict the way he thinks about the new regime that governs his country?

This particular interaction made me think a lot about whether or not there was an intention to send a message thru the game with the inclusion of this particular piece, even if it ultimately can be ignored completely and has no impact in the gameplay. What I'm trying to say is that this piece could've fit better inside Grace's personal space in the submarine rather than being in Rip Blazkowicz's setup in the house. That detail felt kinda out of place.

Moving on, Blazkowicz finally arrives to the room where he used to sleep, and finds the heirloom. And his father, somehow still alive. Fucker. Rip and William start having a heated discussion, where is revealed that Rip ratted out his friends and his own wife to the nazis and sent them to extermination camps in New Mexico. William has heard enough, and despite being held at gunpoint by his own father (branding the same shotgun he used to kill the pet dog), he takes the gun off from him and kills him with an axe.

His father musters his last words, revealing that the Nazis heard everything thru a telephone. After what could arguably be considered the best non-interactive confrontation in the game, the player now has to deal with nazis falling down the sky while Blazkowicz tries to find a way to escape the house which has been ripped from the ground by Engel's nazi spaceship

Unfortunately for B.J., he ends up falling from the house to the ground, severely hurting himself in the process. He wakes up only to find Engel putting the heirloom in her own dirty hands while he is stripped apart from the Da'at Yichud supersuit.

And this, my friends, is where things...they don't fall apart, but...keep reading and you'll find out.

Blazkowicz is captured, and he somehow wakes up inside a small room in an undisclosed area, only to be greeted by Super Spesh himself, who apparently is now your lawyer (?) for a trial for murder and treason (!!) with heavy implications that you could end up being publicly executed. Spesh claims that the Resistance have a plan, and that they're going to get you out of there (wherever you ended up being sent to). In order to do so, he hits himself on the table in order to bleed, and he's going to pretend that you attacked him so he can stab the officer from behind. Okay?

This obviously doesn't work the way Spesh intended, and he ends up being killed by Engel herself after pretending the nazis didn't knew he was there to rescue you. Now apparently the Resistance is being attacked in the parking lot by the nazis guarding the building, while you're being subject to the weirdest, most awkward attempt of torture ever conceived in videogames by Frau Engel, who puts the same gun she used to kill Spesh in your mouth. Finally, you're punched in the back of the head and they put the black veil on his head again.

And now we arrive at everyone's favorite part of the game: The courtroom level! Yayyy!

Boy, what a shitshow.

The game took a huge jump in difficulty, because at some point the player didn't knew if the enemies were endlessly spawning or not, and it was definitely the hardest level in the game so far and arguably the hardest in the entire game, pre-difficulty patch.

And not only you're out of your supersuit, making you extremely vulnerable to damage, you also have very limited armor and you're also fairly limited in terms of cover in some points of the level. If you were begging for more action after the first levels of the game, the courtroom level was definitely the answer to your prayers.

And what was the reward for your efforts, you might ask? A cutscene where Blazkowicz somehow finds his mother in one room, falls to her knees only to be comforted by her and told that "You just have one more hardship to go through". The screen fades to black, and you're back at the beginning of the courtroom level, only to realize that you're actually being sentenced to death.

All of that was for nothing.

You never punched that nazi in the face. It was all a dream.

Damn.

That was genuinely a criminal move by MachineGames. Think about it, they made you kill all those nazis, reload the level I don't know how many times, and just for "heh, Blazko was hallucinating all along. time to die lol". If I were to be playing that game blindly (as in, first playthrough ever with no spoilers), I would've been so upset. Why didn't you make it into an entire cutscene in first person? You're making the player think that his actions are actually going to influence the outcome with no confirmation or hint that it won't be the case. It wasn't until the last moment where they pull the "it was all a dream" card. Damn.

And then you have the public execution scene. That one moment that cemented two things:

- Frau Engel is genuinely a main villain with no major impact in the story of the game. She might as well be replaced by someone else entirely and there'll be zero impact in the game whatsoever. - In terms of how unrealistic a Wolfenstein game can be, they might've jumped the shark with what they did in The New Colossus.

Blazkowicz is sentenced to death for treason, and beheaded personally by Engel at a heavily vandalized Lincoln Memorial in front of millions in a televised event (or so the game thinks it's making you feel; more to than in a moment).

“The old and the weak are doomed” - Blazkowicz’s “last thoughts”. You get your head chopped off your body, and then you “die”.

"Look, guys, Blazkowicz is dead. For realsies!"

Now, a parenthesis. There were some rumors going on before the game was released that Blazkowicz was apparently going to have his head reattached to a new body because of the heavy damage he suffered from the previous fights with the nazis in the timeline. At the time, I decided to dismiss them, thinking that they were too far out there to actually become reality. Boy I was wrong.

Not only the game hints, almost spoils the fact that Set Roth might've found a way to reattach someone's head on a different body, there's also the omniscient reminder that B.J.'s body is failing him. Anya actually confronts Blazko because of this; she knows something's wrong but Blazkowicz doesn't want to admit it. He knows he must be strong, for Anya, for his future children, for the Resistance, for America.

But as the game went on, I kinda settled on the idea that this was going to happen. And it didn't dawn on me at the time, but it does now, they pulled it off in a mediocre way.

Okay so, you have the cutscene where Engel throws the head of Blazko down the furnace, and it apparently it goes all the way down...

Except not. Because apparently we've been watching a screen all this time, as a tape apparently starts rolling back, and we see Blazkowicz's head fall down the pit, but then some kind of 60's styled drone picks Blazko's head, and replaces it with someone else's head (presumably just another nazi), and flies away from the scene.

Then you're told that Set Roth, Max Hass, your companion and Anya are trying their damnedest to rescue the head in order to make the quick transplant to a new body. The drone arrives where they're hiding, they proceed with the operation, and it is a success! Hooray!

Why did this felt way unrealistic to me? More to that in a moment!

Blazkowicz wakes up in the submarine, and he's told by Anya that they reattached his head to a super-soldier body stolen from the nazis. Somehow they survived the assault at the parking lot from earlier (how they did it is never addressed in the game), and now you're told to make a choice between what kind of upgrade do you wish to have.

You can choose between Battle Walker (some huge ass sticks), Ram Shackles (shoulder pads that can fucking gib nazi scum) and Constrictor Harness (they literally make you a snek).

You go from being literally a dead man walking to a nazi-killing Megaman X

After choosing one of the upgrades, B.J. proceeds to murmur to himself: "Caroline, thank you. Take back your wings. I don't need them anymore". And proceeds to go back to New York in order to retrieve a location of another resistance group located in New Orleans.

Not before catching Sigrun and Bombate having sex in a boat.

If this ends up in the Nintendo Switch port I'll be pretty damn impressed.

After the sequence where you get accustomed with the new contraption, the side missions will be unlocked. These side missions can be unlocked using Enigma Codes, cards that some mobs in the game often dropped during gameplay after being killed. These side missions are pretty entertaining, and like I said previously, they could've enhanced the experience for a lot of people if they were to become part of the main story, because not only they unlock all the contraptions and help you reach their maximum potential, you can also discover new things about some characters.

Like for example, the one side mission where you return to Roswell (the one where you can get to kill the white wizards? Yeah, that one), it is explained that Spesh was actually aware he was going to die one way or another during the fight of the resistance, and had left a goodbye letter to Grace. There's another couple of notes in a side mission in New York where the real name of Super Spesh is revealed (Norman Caldwell).

And of course, like I said, there's also the fact that once you finish all the side missions you'll end up with all the three contraptions fully upgraded. Wouldn't have ruled to have all three of them before the final mission, or the ones before it? You don't really need all of them, but they could've been of great help and could've improved the experience for many.

Now, let's address what bugged me in the second half of the game.

-Where. Is. Everyone?!-

“Hewwo...? Echo, echo, echo...”

Remember what I said about certain moments of the game that felt like they were "not actually happening at all" and needed more impact? Well, let's go back to the execution scene.

Do you recall seeing any American person watching the execution live, regardless if they were pro-nazi or not? Do you recall anyone of the Resistance watching the nazi shitshow before the execution? That's right, we didn't see anyone. The same thing happens a bunch of times later on. For a "highest rated TV hour in history" (according to an article found in the game), it seemed like nobody was actually watching his execution at all (I even recall hearing some 'boos' while Engel was holding Blazkowicz' head).

Why you didn't show any Americans watching the execution live? Where are they?

Barring the members of the Resistance that end up joining you in Eva's Hammer and the people at Roswell on the first half of the game, you never get to interact with a single regular citizen of the US during the game.

They're all either members of the small resistance groups that you recruit during the game, or they're part of the group of NPC white Americans that were inadvertently being oppressed by the nazi regime.

For a game where rising against your oppressors is the main message that is trying to be conveyed, I'm sure as hell that I didn't see any regular citizens that could've felt identified with the liberating actions of Blazkowicz. If your game is meant to be narrative and story-driven, make sure the player is genuinely feeling it, make goddamn sure like it's actually real.

Fuck, I mean, the only regular person that the player could witness in the game got instantly killed by some nazis in the very next level (New Orleans). Barring that single moment, it seemed like all the levels in the game were exempt from any humans other than Blazko and the nazis. And again, yes, the members of the Resistance that join the group and become NPCs inside the submarine exist, but they were all active members already.

Postcards and letters won't just cut it this time. Make sure the next game has some regular citizens, otherwise it'll feel like there is no actual connection between the Resistance and the regular people.

Moving on with the game, Blazkowicz arrives to New Orleans, who has been affected by the nazi regime in a hard way. Basically they have separated the people deemed as "undesirable" in one part of the city and the other "fine people" in the other. The problem is, they basically wiped both these sides at the time of your arrival.

Your objective is to meet Horton Boone, a leader of a small resistance group hidden deep within New Orleans. Horton is a man with strong communist beliefs, an avid alcohol consumer, anti-capitalist as well as a "preacher" (even though he really isn't). Horton didn't seem to have that much of an impact in the game, and was relegated pretty damn quickly. Which is unfortunate because he was a such a refreshing character in the sense that he actually put some resistance (hah!) before joining the group.

When Blazkowicz finally meets him, Horton seems surprised that he's still alive. Blazko initially tries to recruit them, but Horton doesn't seem to be that motivated, as he hands him his "Horton Special" (a liquor of his own craftsmanship). They start having a heated discussion about political beliefs and the way they thought of each other's side during WWII, which ends in Blazkowicz kicking his chair away, claiming that he won't be raising his future kids in a world dominated by nazis. Horton is surprised by Blazkowicz resilience, and as Blazko starts blacking out because of the strong liquor, Horton accepts his proposal to join them.

Grace advises Blazkowicz that they're about to be assaulted by nazis soon, so they escape New Orleans by using a goddamn atom bomb to impulse themselves. The New Orleans stage was pretty damn fun from what I saw. Unfortunately you don't get to mount a Panzerhund in the game after that, which is a shame because the Panzerhund fucking rules.

When you get back inside Eva's Hammer, you're told that the nazis employ the Ausmerzer (the ship they used to trap your friends at the beginning of the game) to shut down any attempts of revolt. Naturally, the Ausmerzer is heavily guarded, and after the events of Roswell, the security codes to deactivate the heavy weaponry were secured in a place far away from our planet. Venus.

Jesus Christ they also conquered Venus.

-It Was Space Nazis, Maaaan!-

Your next stop is naturally Venus, and in order to get inside the new Oberkommando headquarters, you must disguise as an actor named Jules Redfield trying to participate in an audition for a propaganda film based on the capture and execution of "Terror-Billy". Once you get inside their facility, you're greeted by the director of the film, Helene Winter, and the rest of the people trying to get the same role as you, and then...he arrives.

One of the game's highest points, arguably the best moment in the entire game, is when Hitler shows up to the audition. Goddamn. Godfuckingdamn. These twenty-five years of wait were so fucking worth it.

Holy shit, Hitler's portrayal is fantastic. KEEP IN MIND, it is fantastic in an historical and logical sense, don't get confused and start calling me a Hitler-lover. He is (clearly) old, senile, has severe mental issues, aggravating paranoia, he pukes in the floor, he attempts to pee but fails miserable (indicating some severe issues related to pissing blood), mistakes Helene for his own mother...yeah, basically the Fuhrer is not with us anymore.

And it makes sense, because it has been thoroughly documented that he used to be a heavy cocaine and drug addict, and he was malfunctioning already before his death; it only made sense for him to go on a downward spiral at his 70s.

I've been clamoring for Hitler to come back in this current timeline, because who the hell doesn't want to kill that fucker again? Good on MachineGames for having the balls to do that after all this time.

Going back to the main story, Hitler demands immediate respect from the auditionees to his persona, and because of his paranoia against Jewish people, he ends up killing one of them after an hilarious exchange.

RIP Arizona Man

Something to point out here, some people started throwing around the idea that this person was actually Ronald Reagan. Initially I didn't see the resemblance at all, specially when you attempt to align his timeline and age with WWII, but then the developers started uploading the concept art and model designs to ArtStation (preeety beautiful and thanks to every single game developer that does this, by the way), and as it turns out, this character is indeed a reference to Ronald Reagan!

I still don't get it. Maybe because I'm not American?

Blazkowicz in the disguise of "Jules Redfield" is told by Hitler to recite the lines of his role of Terror-Billy. Blazko barely manages to do so, and then Hitler proceeds to ask another participant to do the same. This other guy does a pretty damn good job at it, and both Hitler and Helene get ecstatic about it.

Later on they move to the second part of the casting, which consists of taking down a nazi soldier and recite a monologue inside a glass panel. A participant enters the panel, does a poor job, and gets out not before getting shot in the head by Hitler. Now there's only two of you, and Blazkowicz is asked to participate next. William then proceeds to kill the nazi soldier for real, slams the panel and asks the directors if that's "good enough". Hitler seems perfectly pleased with his "realistic" performance, and ends up killing the other participant left sitting in the room with another bullet to the head. The audition is over, you got the role.

Hitler leaves the audition and is not seen again for the remainder of the game. Until Wolfenstein III, old fuck.

The Venus level is goddamn fantastic, and if you played DOOM 2016, you'll definitely be reminded of the extraterrestrial/futuristic scenery of the game. The mechanics involving the space suit may seem bothersome to a few players, but it only makes sense once you learn about the temperature of the planet (over 400 Celsius/752 Fahrenheit!!).

The nazi Venus facility is far, far bigger compared to the Moon facility of the previous game, and it also features a brand new gun called the Ubergewehr (roughly translated as the "Supreme Gun"), which is basically the BFG9000 equivalent of the game, and perhaps the franchise. According to the game, this weapon is partially powered by energy from micro-portals of extra-dimensional origin. And I don't know about you, but the energy that emanates from this weapon is red, and it bears a striking resemblance to the Argent Energy of DOOM 2016...Unfortunately this weapon appears in a later stage in the game, and you really can't enjoy it as you could've wished for.

B.J. obtains the documents pertaining the secret code to shut down the system, and leaves Venus for good. Back on Earth and back on the submarine, Blazkowicz hands over the code to Sigrun so that she could analyze it, and she finds that the code to shut down the Ausmerzer is VALHALLA. Happy with this discovery, Sigrun proceeds to tell Grace and everyone else about it, but is completely dismissed by Grace and is once again berated.

Sigrun has had enough. She yells at Grace, and proceeds to slap her. Following that, Grace seems to attempt to return the favor, but is stopped and overpowered by Sigrun who shuts her shit down and asks her to start respecting her by stop calling her something that she is sick of hearing (being called “a nazi”). Grace admits defeat and swears to not call her nazi again.

That was an amazing moment. To top this off, NOBODY intervened. Grace had it coming, for all the time she spent literally bullying and bothering Sigrun with that nonsense. If you were to ask me, she should be glad she didn't die at Sigrun’s hands in an hypothetical betrayal plot. I was actually surprised myself because I thought Sigrun was going to betray the team at one point of the game, but fortunately that wasn't the case. Please forgive me for not trusting you, Sigrun.

Now, moving on to the final level...the Ausmerzer. Blazkowicz and Anya (!!!) end up being the ones spearheading the assault to the airborne platform. The level is similarly great to the Venus level, except that it is relatively shorter in comparison. Lots of nazis to kill, including two super soldiers that end up becoming the final bosses of the game (I know, I'll discuss this in a moment). The final encounter with the Zerstörer isn't that much of a hassle if you finish the regular mobs first and then dispatch them later. Add this that you get to maneuver the Ubergewehr again, and the fight shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Before reaching the final room, a door opens revealing a good bunch of enemies, and Blazkowicz is about to be obliterated, but suddenly Anya appears out of literally nowhere, throws a grenade, catches flames from a Panzerhund, takes off her jacket (the only thing covering her naked upper body) and proceeds to shoot everyone and everything on her path.

...Oooookay?

I mean, after the execution scene, the over-the-top silliness of this scene was kinda pointless for me. I personally found unnecessary that Anya ended up playing an active part in the actual fights against the nazi forces, I mean, for God's sake, she's pregnant with twins. I had fears that she was going to die during the entire game, and that scene didn't help at all.

I'm glad that she's still alive, but please, keep her at home in the next game. Blazkowicz has suffered enough, losing her would be devastating for all of us.

Blazkowicz and Anya proceed to enter the VALHALLA code, and the defense system is finally shut down.

And now...the final encounter with Frau Engel...boy oh boy.

-Frau Engel: Die Neue Enttäuschung-

So...Engel is in Los Angeles a guest on The Jimmy Carver Show, but Blazkowicz and co. have taken control of the Ausmerzer, traveled to L.A. and infiltrated the studio. The last thing you ever do in the game is to sneak past the public and get in front of her, she tries to shoot him but Blazkowicz chops her arm off, and proceeds to split her face open with the hatchet. Engel dies immediately afterwards, and that's it.

No fanfare, no spectacular last boss fight, no nothing. That's it. She's dead, Jim.

Here Lies Engel, She Never Scored.

Before I give you my overall thoughts about her, let's recapitulate what Engel did in this game. Let's ignore whatever happened in the previous game and let's focus on what happened in The New Colossus:

-She kills the leader of the Resistance (at the time), Caroline.

-She berates her own daughter for not being nazi enough.

-Kisses Blazkowicz, steals the heirloom from him, and puts a smoking gun in his mouth in what apparently was meant to be a torture scene.

-"Kills" him on a public showing that who knows if it was actually watched by anyone on the planet and felt completely ridiculous.

Now, let's compare what happened in the previous game with Wilhelm Strasse, Deathshead, the previous main villain of The New Order:

-Assumes control of ancient Da'at Yichud technology that helps the Reich take over and gain advantage in WWII

-Captures Blazkowicz's squad in his compound, incinerates some of them, and proceeds to toy around with the rest, forcing Blazkowicz to decide between one of his teammates (Wyatt or Fergus) to sacrifice.

-Then he proceeds to vivisect that teammate on the spot, in one of the most gruesome sequences ever recorded in the Wolfenstein franchise, and saves that person's brain for later.

-HE FUCKING TOOK YOUR FRIEND'S BRAIN

-Successfully invades the original hideout of the Resistance, and his squad captures/executes some of their members, one of them being totally-not Jimmy Hendrix himself in one of the timelines. -Remember the brain of your friend? Well, now he put it inside a goddamn war machine, and now that machine is trying to kill you.

-He basically forces you to kill your friend again to end his suffering.

-And after you're done fighting with that nazi fucker during an actual final boss fight, he somehow pulls a grenade (probably out of his ass) and attempts a suicide attack.

-He dies but he definitely left you for death at mercy of your own friends who are about to drop a goddamn atom bomb.

Well, I don't know about you, but I guess it's unanimous.

Not only Engel’s death resulted in perhaps the most disappointing moment of the game, but overall she was perhaps one of the most pointless, inconsequential main villains of the franchise. She doesn't even come close to what Deathshead did in the previous game, and not just because Deathshead may have put the bar way too high for her, but because she really didn't to much at all during the game to warrant her becoming the final person to be killed at the hands of Blazko in the main story of game.

You know what would've ruled? An actual boss fight against Engel.

Now that her lifeless body is laying on the desk, Horton, Grace and Blazkowicz walk up to the screen and tell the American people watching the show to rise up against the nazis, and start revolting. Game logo on the screen. The End.

(Cue some really, really horrible version of 'We're Not Gonna Take It' playing in the background as the credits roll)

In a post-credits scene, Blazkowicz takes back the heirloom ring from Engel's lifeless body, and proposes to Anya with it. And if you picked either Wyatt or Fergus, you get one of them ranting around in front of the screen.

Well. What can I say?

The main story was okay, it could've definitely been polished a bit in order to turn it great. The liberation of America from the nazis was kind of a given, and when you look back at The New Order and compare it to The New Colossus, the ending of the latter ended up becoming the lowest point of the story. In the New Order the game ends on a cliffhanger, while The New Colossus doesn't offer much in terms of what could possibly happen next.

There's not that big of a difference if you pick Wyatt or Fergus, I think. The interactions with Fergus are more leaned towards your typical "heh, remember the time when you threw away your bionic arm while you were drunk?" war stories, and Wyatt's timeline is more focused with the problems he has to overcome because of war trauma.

Max Hass was fantastic. Max Hass!

The side missions on the submarine are fine. You actually get to explore the same areas but in a different way each. The side missions for the additional upgrades on the other hand, not so much. The majority of these missions are just revisiting old areas, discovering hidden areas, and that's it. The DLC doesn't seem to offer much in terms of new areas to explore except for maybe one or two stories.

Overall, Blazkowicz's father ended up becoming a better and more meaningful antagonist than Engel, and maybe he could've become the actual final boss of the game. Imagine if the Rip Blazkowicz that you killed in your old home was actually a clone, and you end up fighting him at the top of the Ausmerzer while he's controlling a clone of the London Monitor (remember the giant nazi robot machine from the first game?).

The way they handled the story, and adding the fact that some encounters were lackluster, and how they completely missed the opportunity to build some characters that needed more spotlight, leaves the feeling that The New Colossus ended up being a rushed project. I definitely hope this isn't the case and we can get a few explanations about some of the issues I wrote in this post (thanks for reading it, by the way).

With that in mind, I would like to take the opportunity to advise you all to give the game a try. If the contents of the story bother you in some way, try to dismiss them as much as you can, and focus on the gameplay itself. I don't know, you might end up liking it despite of your initial opinions about this game!

Would I recommend The New Colossus?

Well, here's the deal. As of right now, the game is sitting at $60 USD on Steam, and with the DLC added is $80 USD. And look, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to engage in the "is it worth X amount of price" debate for any videogame. Ultimately, a videogame costs what you want it to be. You can buy it right now, you can buy it later at a certain discount, you can visit some third party site to obtain a cheaper copy, I don't know. That's not my problem, it's yours. You should know by now how much money you can (and you're willing to) spend for something, and you should also know by now what you value the most about what you want to obtain in life.

Yes, yes I would recommend The New Colossus on the virtue that, if you want to play the third game, you might want to get some background first about the first two games (The New Order and TNO) before diving in to the third.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to watch someone else play a game rather than experience the game myself, so at the end of the day if you want to watch a LP the decision is yours. I definitely won't agree, but I'm willing to respect it if you give a good reason about why you don't want to play a videogame.

With that being said, and this is something that is definitely worth pointing out, as of right now you can buy the first two games (The New Order, and the prequel The Old Blood) for $30 USD on Steam. These games were released four years ago, and they're in sale on a regular basis on many sites. If you want to keep your money for whatever reason and wait until a “tri-pack” bundle is released, go ahead. Unlike a handful of games that unfortunately ceased to exist because of pettiness from the developers (looking at you, Konami), The New Colossus is going nowhere. It's going to be there for the moment you want to give it a shot.

Now, if you were part of the group of people who got pissed after what happened with the promotional campaigns for the game, I'd say that you should still give the game a shot, at least one play. If it changes your mind, good, if it doesn't, it's okay. But just be careful not to say dumb shit that could reveal that you're talking out of your ass about things that don't exist.

I will be expecting news about the third installment of Wolfenstein, and there's no other choice but to have Hitler be the main antagonist of the game. I mean, who the hell could it even be other than fucking old Hitler himself?

Any question/comments/suggestions? Let me know! My inbox is open! Thank you for spending your valuable time reading my post!

#gaming #wolfenstein #Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus #The New Colossus #b.j. blazkowicz #videogames #video games #bethesda #machinegames #IMX reviews a thing #offt #long post #very long post #spoilers

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gallifreyanlibertea · 7 years

Text

Beached

a/n: I asked @aph-blue what they wanted for their birthday and then wrote them the polar opposite of what they asked for, but that’s actually their fault? Because, I had the opportunity to not see a set of pictures and they took that from me, and my mind, haunted by those aforementioned pictures that are now burned into my skull, couldn’t write anything but this, and it is probably bad because I was the one who wrote it.

Beached, but not bloated, and a fuckboy Alfred because why not. Happy birthday, blue!

Alfred caught his first boyfriend when he was seventeen.

The tide had been turbulent that evening and Alfred had seen a guy thrashing in the waters, head bobbing above the waves before going back under, screaming all the way through.

Never mind that he was on the shallow end of the ocean. Alfred was there to save him, jumping off his stand to sprint across the beach and throw himself into the water, dragging the gasping man back onto the sand. After he’d coughed up the ocean, he’d given Alfred his number, and it was then he swore to himself being a lifeguard was the best thing that would ever happen to him.

The pay was less than ideal, yes, but the worship made up for it. Half the beach would congregate around his chair, flaunting themselves for a chance to be his next treat. It was mostly perks, to say the least.

Which is why Alfred rolled out of bed today when he could’ve been sleeping his summer away. It was his turn to claim the afternoon shift, and he did so with a sigh, falling into the familiar routine of lathering on sunscreen, slipping into his shorts and spending ten minutes in front of the mirror to pick which sunglasses he was in the mood for that day.

Beauty was hardly effortless.

Besides, the lady he’d saved from being ‘sucked into the ocean’ from the shore- a ruse many had used on him from time to time, and a ruse he let himself believe when he found that it benefitted him the most- was going to meet him after his shift today. Lucky for him, weekday afternoon timings were hardly busy, which meant, maybe, possibly, most probably, a romp in the sand.

A romp on top of a towel, actually, he wasn’t about to let himself make that mistake twice.

Alfred stepped out onto the beach with a smile that melted as soon as his boss hollered, “No cell phones, Al!”, through the crummy window of his beat-down tiki bar.

He stepped out closer to the shore, sitting in his lifeguard chair with a grunt.

It was silly, actually. There was something of a no-checking-your-phones rule, partially because his boss seemed to have it out for him and mostly because he wouldn’t be able to see a potential drown-er if he was too busy checking his Snapchat. He could full well be updating his Instagram with an effortless beach selfie, right this second.

Or perhaps a photo of the waves with a filter slapped on, a thought provoking quote as a caption.

It was unfair, keeping him from doing the things his generation loved the most. It had to be a crime, ageism of some sort. He would argue with his boss later.

On the other hand, he had to admit it. Had it not been for the rule, Alfred might not have noticed all the good things about an empty beach in the afternoon, like the waves crashing softly against the shore. The way the sunlight danced on the water, his skin tingling in the heat. The wicked tan that would soon come to replace his current, slightly less wicked tan.

And more importantly, the serious bedroom eyes the guy beside him was serving.

It was a travesty, Alfred couldn’t assess what hid behind the giant bulky rock that covered most of the man’s body from his view. In fact, before today, he had no complaint about the thing- his boss tried to get it removed more than once, but it refused to budge, and Alfred was fine with it as long as it brought cute ‘aspiring photographers’ to the beach for their tacky photo ops.

So at the moment, Alfred was stuck having to settle for a clear view of the guy’s chest and above. The way those green eyes were practically fluttering in his direction.

Alfred couldn’t say he wasn’t used to the attention, but men hardly ever put themselves out like that and he had to say, it was a shame. They really should.

“Hey, there.” He offered, but received no response. The stranger instead propped himself onto his side with a coquettish smile.

Alfred’s next move consisted of pulling down his sunglasses for a quick wink, to which the stranger replied with an almost bashful bite of his lip, and to Alfred’s further delight, a welcoming crook of his finger.

Say no more.

It didn’t matter that from what he could see, the man looked a tad bit sunburnt, or that his blonde hair seemed disheveled. It was a sexy kind of unkempt and Alfred was all for it, leading to him practically scrambling out of his chair to try his luck with the guy.

After all, the beach was more or less empty. No one would miss him for a while.

“You can talk, can’t you?” He chuckled, patting the rock as he knelt on the other side of it, watching as big green eyes blinked at him idly for a moment.

The man broke out into a grin, “Ah, I’ve still got it.”

“What?”

Another small shift towards the stranger answered all his questions, and additionally, sent him scrambling backward with an embarrassingly audible squeak.

“What the fuck, dude?”

The guy was a fish.

An actual, factual fish, with those slim, creamy pale hips melting into a long fish bottom. A green tail, a blueish tint, with a brilliant sheen that glittered under the light of the sun, like tiny emeralds crafted into scales, all of which seemed tangled into what looked like a net.

“No, no! Come back!” A British fish, at that, but Alfred was already poised to run for his life the very moment he remembered how to use his legs. “Please, I need your help!”

“Dude, you’re a fish.”

“I’m a merman.” He shifted his position so that he was on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, blinking innocently in Alfred’s direction. “And I’ll die soon without your help, please.”

And Alfred paused, brows pulled together in suspicious contemplation. “This is a joke.”

“No, this isn’t a joke, I-”

“What are you, like, a YouTuber or something? Because mermaids stopped being funny last year.”

“No, I-”

“Mermaids can’t even speak English, they’re like… yanno, how aliens don’t speak English? It’s like that.” Alfred pointed out, because it was true, and if someone was pranking him, they really should’ve done their research. “Real funny, jerk.”

“It’s typical of you sailors to take from merpeople. To think you bumbling lot invented the language, hah.” The guy grumbled before blinking up at Alfred, “You are a sailor, yes? When did you all stop wearing clothes- why are your bifocals so black?”

“Cut it out, man.” Alfred sighed, casting a glance around the beach before turning to look back down at the ‘merman’.

YouTube prankster or not, the guy was smokin’ and the beach was empty.

“Truce, okay? You’re hot, I’m hot, and this-” He gestured to the tail, to what appeared to be slight gills along that slender neck, to the makeshift clam necklace resting on that flushed chest. “-is clearly not working. So... how about we try something that’ll definitely be more fun for the both of us?”

When the stranger didn’t seem to understand, Alfred clarified with a wink, “If you catch my drift.”

“Very well, take off my costume.”

The merman rolled over. It was quite an act- the slight wince in those features as he shifted his ‘tail’ in the net, elbows propped up behind him as he put a slight arch in his back.

“Freaky… out here?” Alfred whispered with a laugh, but an offer was an offer.

He shifted closer to press a warm palm against that flat, strangely cold stomach, drawing a soft gasp from the guy’s lips. Inching lower, lower, maintaining firm eye contact that most others would’ve shied away from but strangely, green eyes remained adamant to hold. Alfred tucked his fingers under the flap of the tail with a smirk.

Except there wasn’t a flap, nor was there a smirk.

“You’re actually a fish.”

“Merman. Stop touching me.”

Alfred snatched his hand back like he’d taken it from a flame, “And you’re going to die without my help.”

“Most definitely.”

On one hand, whatever someone could say about his lack of understanding the responsibility of his job, it was Alfred’s duty to protect anyone who needed protecting on the beach, even if they were only half human.

Whereas on the other hand, the guy was half human. It could be some sort of trick, and he could get dragged into the ocean and killed, or eaten.

“Please, it’s not much to do.” The fish pressed, and suddenly the decision wasn’t all that hard. Alfred was caught in those big green eyes, and those long, dark lashes, freckles splashed across those cheeks, plump coral lips parting to-

It was a spell. It had to be magic, because now, the guy before him seemed a bit duller, and those lips, if anything, were slightly chapped.

“Woah, what-”

“To top it off, my power’s wearing out.” The merman hissed, falling backward into the sand and exclaiming between grit teeth, “Oh, Neptune.”

“You should teach me that shit, man.”

Through the stranger’s personal misery, he managed to shoot Alfred a withering look. “I don’t have time for your jokes, boy, fetch me some water.”

And an order was an order, despite the fact that there was no magic to make him do it.

Alfred slunk back to his chair.

He’d developed the habit of bringing things with him to help him through his shifts. It was a typical red backpack full of the essentials- some chips he would eat when hot people weren’t looking at him, an apple he would eat when hot people were looking at him, a bottle of water, a few other things, and for more recent purposes, a giant beach towel to fight off the possibility of sand in all his crevices.

Which he would most probably not be using if his new fishy friend had anything to say about it.

Alfred cast a few looks around him. To his relief, the beach was as empty as it was before his life took a spinning dive.

“I could like, poke a hole in the lid and spray you with the water if you want.”

“Don’t be daft, I’m just thirsty.” The creature watched with curious eyes as Alfred unzipped his bag, handing him a plastic water bottle, “What am I to do with this... Contraption?”

A possibly ancient, magical aquatic creature, and Alfred’s water bottle was the weird thing.

He smirked, “You open the lid and drink from it, like this.”

He was never one to turn down the opportunity to amaze. The creature watched with awe as he twisted the cap open, tilting it to his lips for a small sip.

“Your turn.” There was no way fishboy could sit up proper enough to drink the water all on his own. Alfred wasn’t sure how his body worked, whether it could bend that way or if the tail in the net kept him from sitting up, but when the merman propped himself back up and those lips parted expectantly, Alfred couldn’t help being thrown off for a bit before remembering the bottle in his hands.

If he pretended not to notice the tail, or, if Alfred could find some way to do it- he was pretty damn sure he would hit that.

“I haven’t got forever, human.”

“Right, open up.” He pressed the bottle’s opening to that plump lower lip and watched as relatively cool water trickled out into the creature’s mouth. The merman gulped it down erratically, almost desperately, and Alfred really took the time to assess what was before him.

An obviously beached fish.

He could now see the slight dull glaze on the tail, that smooth, pale skin beginning to take on a red hue, the chapped lips, they were clear indicators.

The stranger pulled away from the stream and arched his back as if to let the water run down his sore, sunburnt chest, tilting his head back with a satisfied sigh.

Alfred swallowed around the lump in his throat and took it as a cue to drizzle the water over the parched body before him, ignoring the heat in his cheeks because there was no fucking way he found anything erotic about a fish.

“I’m Alfred, by the way, wh- uh, what do I call you?” He said as he tucked the empty bottle back into his bag.

“My name is-” Alfred, who thought nothing else could ever surprise him, let his jaw hang as the creature made what sounded like clicking noises, and something else mixed in, possibly the call of an aquatic animal. “I suppose, anglicized, it would be Arthur.”

“Okay. I’ll stick with Arthur, and I’m assuming that net isn’t very comfortable for you.”

Arthur watched with brows furrowed as Alfred’s hands hovered toward his tail, slowly, gently, like a hand reaching to pet an upset animal.

The first contact with the surprisingly smooth scales seemed to startle Arthur because he flinched. “You humans throw so many things into the water, you know? This net could’ve choked me to death.”

Alfred rolled his eyes, smoothing his hands over the scales, searching for an opening.

There was one toward the end fins. Arthur couldn’t possibly have reached it on his own. Alfred scooted down, gingerly tugging at the net until it shook free. He hooked his arm underneath the tail and lifted it with a grunt, sliding the coarse lump of wire and rope out from below.

“Thank you.” Arthur flexed his fins with a slight whine, “They’re rather dry, I’ve been here since last night.”

“Let’s get you back into the water, then.”

Green eyes widened, “No!”

Okay.

Fearing a possible magical beat-down, “What do you… um, what do you want, then?”

That was how Alfred found himself digging a pit under the hot, hot sun, with a mystical aquatic mer-creature propped up and goading him on from under an umbrella, sucking on a popsicle Alfred had stolen from the tiki stand.

Arthur had decided to wear his sunglasses too because the ‘black bifocals’ could help shield his poor, distressed, fatigued eyes from the sun. Like Alfred’s eyes didn’t need shielding either.

So to put it in simpler words, Alfred was Arthur’s bitch now.

And the cherry on top, the way Arthur was sucking that popsicle was too reminiscent of one of Alfred’s escapades earlier that week. A little too much for him not to be a bright shade of red, and to completely focus on the task at hand.

“Arthur, could you not do that?”

“Do what?” Arthur replied innocently as he paused deep-throating his popsicle, “I really must thank you for this, you’re doing a wonderful job keeping me cool, human.”

He resumed licking his treat, sucking on the tip. With a pleased sigh, he went as far as lightly bobbing his head, thrusting it into his mouth in an even, shallow rhythm as he let his tongue lap at the underside.

Alfred stared at him. “Dude.”

“Why did you stop?” Arthur snapped, tail twitching in mild annoyance. The blue-raspberry had begun to drip from the popsicle, running in small streams down the merman’s arm. He bent his head to drag his pink tongue across the skin, scooping it back up.

Alfred swallowed. He went back to digging his pit.

The plan was to get it deep enough to fit Arthur. Alfred would then be saddled with the task to fill the sandy pit with water, all the while tossing a cautionary eye out for other human beings.

Arthur wasn’t making the task any easier. “Ah, yes, I’ve forgotten you humans’ strange ways of correlating innocent objects to sexual organs.”

“Yeah?” Alfred replied with a grunt as he finished scooping one last handful of sand behind him, “Welcome to humanity.”

Arthur hummed in response.

“We’re close to the shore, I can carve out a tunnel to the waves to help fill this up.”

When Alfred received not one encouraging response, he set to work.

He had no idea why he agreed to all of this. How much time did it take to get back into his chair and pretend not to notice the frankly rude and inconsiderate merman behind the rock? It was certainly less time than it took to save him, and certainly less energy than it took to dig tunnels without, as Alfred snidely made a mental note of, one word of thanks, and under the broiling afternoon sun too.

Which reminded him, “Hey, check my bag for some aloe gel, you look kinda burnt.”

Arthur blinked in response, “Erm, how do I do that exactly?”

“Pull on the zipper.”

“The what?”

Alfred dragged his foot through the sand, watching as the water from a wave followed behind on the beach’s natural slope. It wasn’t much and it soaked up rather quick, but he managed to pave the way for the new waves in no time, etching the sand tunnel into the pit. “The metal bit, just pull it.”

Arthur pulled on the zipper quite literally, tugging at it helplessly until Alfred stomped over and did it himself, pulling out an emergency bottle of aloe he kept in case some rather appealing individuals complained of a sunburn.

Well, the case wasn’t too off.

“This is for your skin, to keep it from hurting from the sun,” Alfred said slowly as he uncapped the bottle, squirting a pile onto his palm. “May I?”

Arthur offered him his arm.

“You humans are quite the innovators.” He mused as Alfred toiled over him, smoothing the cool gel over his arm as gingerly as he could.

“We kinda have to be, it’s not easy living under the sun, yanno?” Alfred moved to the other arm.

“It’s difficult underwater too, I’ll have you know. There are a lot of predators down there.”

“Is that why you won’t go back in?”

Alfred hesitantly gestured to Arthur’s chest, to which the merman responded with a roll of his eyes, offering himself to Alfred’s hand with an arch of his back.

“I’m running away.” Arthur hissed at the feeling of the cool gel on his tender, sunburnt skin. “I just happened to be caught in a net and dragged onto shore, and I thought I could claw my way towards shade and wait for a human to help.”

Arthur’s skin was silken under his fingertips, smooth and cool, like one would expect a creature of seduction to feel like.

“That’s not a very good plan.”

“This feels nice.” Arthur set his sunglasses aside with another flutter of those dark lashes as he held Alfred’s gaze. There was just something about him- despite the strangely thick, dark brows that framed his face, despite his lack of anything more than a torso, and despite the fact Arthur claimed his magic had declined, Alfred could’ve sworn he was under some spell.

“I- um, I think the pit’s filled enough, let’s get you in there.”

Arthur let himself be pulled up into Alfred’s arms and lowered into the saline pool. It was an almost immediate change in character. A happy twitch of his fins and a small genuine smile.

The merman nipped at his popsicle. “This feels nice as well.”

Alfred moved to the back, lathering more aloe into his skin, “Why did you run away?”

Arthur leaned back into Alfred’s touch, tilting his head back with a lazy smile. It left Alfred reminding himself, for what felt like the hundredth time within the span of the hour, that what was before him was a fish, it was just a fishdude and Alfred shouldn’t be feeling this way.

“My father wanted to give me to the sleazy King of the Pacific.”

Alfred blinked. “Like, make you… marry him?”

“I can’t go back, Alfred, you understand this, yes?”

Alfred capped the aloe bottle and slipped it back into his bag. “I mean, you can’t stay in this pit forever.”

A cool hand on Alfred’s arm and Alfred watched as Arthur turned to look at him, lips twitching into a smile.

And Alfred smirked back, on the brink of losing himself again in those bright eyes.

“That’s why you’ll be taking me to the Indian Ocean.”

Alfred didn’t hear that.

He couldn’t have heard it, impossible, no, because Alfred was on a beach in the Southern U.S., on a minimum wage lifeguarding job, and Arthur was a merman, and Alfred could not, no, was not going to fly him tens of thousands of miles away to the Indian Ocean.

He probably said all of this out loud.

“Alfred!” Arthur practically whined, gripping Alfred’s bicep with a strength Alfred had no idea Arthur possessed, “My father owns the Atlantic, the Pacific is out for me, I have a friend, Bharat, who’s willing to keep me safe in there and you have to do this.”

“I literally can’t take you to the Indian ocean.”

Arthur pouted and Alfred ran through it all again. He was a merman, a fish, and a ticket to India was at least a few hundred dollars, and Alfred just met him, and he should not be wanting to spend all his savings on him, this was insane!

Congrats to Arthur because his magic was definitely back. There was no other way Alfred could be considering helping the guy, because that would be insane.

“Hey.”

Arthur folded his arms, “What?”

“Can you tell me, for super, super certain, that you are not using that magic stuff right now.”

“It stopped working, so no.”

Alfred pulled out the giant beach towel and soaked it in the pit.

Alright, new plan, there was no magic, there was no deceit, Arthur was a genuine damsel in distress and it was somehow better than the romp in the sand he’d been waiting for. So Alfred scooped Arthur up, wrapping his damp beach towel around Arthur’s tail and holding him to his chest closer than he would’ve ever let a human-animal hybrid creature be near him before today.

This was his new plan. Arthur wasn’t using magic, and if somehow, despite that, Alfred still wanted to help the merman- if somehow, the weird, fluttering pressure in his chest wasn’t because of a spell or the shameless prospect of sex in the sand- it had to mean something beyond Alfred’s comprehension.

“Alfred, what’re you-?”

“I’m taking you home… and that’s as far as the current plan goes.”

“Marvellous!”

Arthur practically squealed, throwing his arms around Alfred’s neck, nuzzling into his chest with the affection of a newly adopted pet. “Do humans still have tubs? It would be perfectly charming to stay in one, I wouldn’t mind it at all. Human food must be different as well, this is all so exciting, I-”

Alfred eased Arthur back into the pool. “Funny story, I get out of work in like, two hours, totally forgot about that.”

He knelt to wrap the towel around Arthur’s shoulders, watching with a triumphant smile as the merman curled into the makeshift blanket, “But I, I will definitely help you out, fishboy.”

“And I,” Green eyes met blue, and an impish smile spread across those cheeks that served to set Alfred on fire despite the slightly chapped lips that served them. “I will definitely be sure to reward you, human.”

Whatever that entailed from a merman, Alfred was ready for it. Although his bathtub wasn’t the Indian ocean, he was pretty damn sure the King of the Atlantic ocean wouldn’t snatch Arthur away, so that was that, consider him saved.

Now.

Now, Alfred was fairly certain that nothing in the world could surprise him.

“Wait, hold up, Arthur, what did you say something about merpeople creating the English language?”

#happy birthday #sorry I made you suffer #aph america #aph england #USUK #lifeguard!Al is my favorite #fuckboy!lifeguard!Al is another favorite #mermaid au

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bebopjared · 7 years

Text

The Time for Conversation is Over

In this era of Donald Trump, the issue of Freedom of Speech has been brought to the forefront of American politics. Debates rage across the United States asking the question: do we have the right to shut out ideological extremists from civil discourse? This question has been asked because of the renewed visibility of Right Wing extremists like Nazis, the KKK, Neo-Confederates and the Alt-Right. These extremists have always been present in the United States. Going back to the inception of this nation, there have been White people who believed not only that African-Americans (who were, for the most part, enslaved), LGBTQ+ people and religious minorities (mainly Jewish people) were inferior to them on the basis of their race, religion and sexual orientation. The Ku Klux Klan was formed by former Confederate generals after the Civil War to combat progress made for African-Americans, mainly through terrorism. Fascist sympathizers have existed for as long as Fascism has been a published ideology. The Nazis looked to the American eugenics movement for inspiration for the development of their own racial policies. And now, it is normal to see Neo-Nazis marching in the streets, tiki torches and all, spewing their vile ideology.

The renewed debate on free speech started for me when video of Richard Spencer, a famous American white supremacist, appeared on the internet, showing him being punched by an Anti-Fascist protester on the same day as Donald Trump’s inauguration. It was immediately memed and took over liberal Twitter and Facebook pages. Most media outlets covered it and some posed the question: is it ok to punch a Nazi? Some said yes, some said no and with this video, free speech was up in the air again.

Another important flashpoint was Milo Yiannopoulos’ canceled speech at UC Berkeley. Yiannopoulos is notorious for harassing undocumented immigrants at events he has spoken as and has in the past outed undocumented students at college events. He is an outspoken critic of Islam and feminism. He was banned from Twitter for encouraging racial harassment of Leslie Jones. Many students and faculty at UC Berkeley did not approve of the inviting of Yiannopoulos because of his history of harassment. In response to his scheduled appearance on February 1st, 2017, hundreds of people came out to protest. Some of the protestors turned to violence, causing $100,000 in damage and injuring several people.

This debate came directly to Bard’s campus last Spring when Lucian Wintrich, White House Correspondent for The Gateway Pundit (a far right “news site” that reports hoaxes and conspiracy theories) was invited to be apart of a panel. The goal of this panel was to try to bring in people of differing viewpoints together to have a civil conversation (here’s the link to the whole panel). Lucian brought a posse of people with him, who both verbally and physically harassed several students on campus.

Many questioned whether or not white supremacist groups should even be allowed to apply for permits for marches, especially in response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia which was provoked by the white supremacists who claimed to be protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.

My opinion on free speech has shifted throughout my life. In a middle school social studies class, I was introduced to the debate over free speech for the first time. Before this class, I understood the first amendment of the American constitution protected freedom of speech, including hate speech. But after this debate was introduced to me, I began to believe that hate speech had no place in our society. As the years went by, I softened my position on hate speech. But now, confronted to the normalization of white supremacist ideas and positions in civil debate has forced me to reevaluate my beliefs.

I wholeheartedly believe in free speech. You should be able to say what you want without fear of a violent response by other people or the government. Once you begin to incite violence or provoke others to violence, you have lost your right to say what you are saying. Where I break with radical white supremacist speech is in civil discourse. I believe that white supremacists and those arguing in favor of white supremacist ideas, at every avenue, should be shut out of civil discourse. Their vile ideology has no place in any civil society that I would like to help create. They are wrong, plain and simple. White supremacists abide to an ideology that is genocidal and has no purpose besides to oppress those they see as inferior. Their ideas add nothing to conversations on racial justice and liberation.

This seems to be a popular opinion in some Liberal and Leftist spaces but has faced huge backlash from all sides of the politics. Those who disagree with this position say that I am barring anyone who disagrees with me from having a conversation with me. That simply is not true. To me, there is a clear difference between people who disagree with me and those who would like to exterminate my people or spread ideas that are clearly coded white supremacist language. For example, I believe that our current system of Capitalism is not working for most people in this country and is in dire need of replacement. That doesn’t mean I won’t talk to people who support Capitalism with all their heart. As long as they do not think that all people who oppose our current system of Capitalism should be burned at the stake, I am completely willing to have a conversation.

White supremacists would love to talk about whether Black lives matter forever. Why? Because if we keep talking about it, there will never be a conclusion and therefore, no solutions to clear institutional problems. If we keep debating whether or not racism is a factor in the lives of people of color, we won’t get to the point, which should be to deconstruct racist systems. If you don’t believe racism exists, you have been tricked and are not worth my time. If you think that Black people are simply mistaken when they say race has been a major factor in their life, you have been tricked and are not worth my time. If you think race is not a huge determining factor in police interactions, you have been tricked and are not worth my time. I refuse to waste my time with those who are too far gone. It is not my responsibility to guide your fragile white mind to the truth. If you want to do liberation work, get with the program or step aside. If you think I’m crazy for wanting to exclude white supremacists from my discourse, you have every right to believe that and you do not need to discuss matters of liberation with me.

Frankly, the time for conversation is over. The time for revolution is here and it has been here since the first slaves arrived in the Americas. Nat Turner understood that. Toussaint L’Ouverture understood that. Malcolm X understood that. The Black Panther Party understood that. #BlackLivesMatter understands that. Black people are being oppressed everyday by white supremacist institutions. This is a fact. Plain and simple. From school segregation to state sanctioned lynchings. Frederick Douglass in this famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852), when speaking on discussions on slavery said, “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is need but fire; not a gentle shower but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

I will no longer debate whether or not I am a person. If you don’t think I deserve equal rights under the law on the basis of my race, I will not have a conversation with you. If you have ideas that are rooted in white supremacy, even if you denounce white supremacy whole heartily, I will not have a conversation with you. My time can be and will be better spent than giving you a sense that your racist ideas are legitimate in a civil society.

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kunsart · 6 years

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Bad Luck:

I haven’t been able to complete any new art this month, nor write articles because I had the opportunity to move back to the U.S. and stay somewhere where I could devote myself to art for about a year. This was the kind of fortunate circumstance I needed to really apply myself and get my art career off the ground. However, after leaving Cambodia – and I gather while my plane was in the air – the pivotal person who was making this venture possible had a debilitating stroke. Now I am sleeping on my girlfriend’s Mom’s couch in Hawaii, where we arrived, as planned, en-route to the mainland for a visit. Looks like I’ll have to go back to full-time work, hopefully something that will allow me to chip away art art on the periphery, and most likely move back to SE Asia as well. Starting from scratch in America without significant help is not really feasible, though my girlfriend is looking into house sitting [let me now if you know someone he needs it]. Instead of a great opportunity to take my art to the next level, I have another major roadblock, and the carpet pulled from under my feet. And it’s not the first or second or third time this sort of things has happened.

True, I could make art for a whole year with the proceeds of just one of Damien Hirst’s thousands of dot paintings, painted by assistants, and about as inspired as the most generic wallpaper, but, until one is popularized by the appropriate authorities, fine artists make so little that being a starving artist is a relative privilege. It means you are still able to make art. Most have to abandon their dreams, gifts, aspirations, and purpose in order to work office jobs or in the service industry, which I’ve certainly done myself, in which case they don’t get to be artists at all. I still aspire to being a starving artist as soon as I can make the leap. In the interim I can at least write, for now, and thus this more personal sort of post.

Lessons in Humility:

Some people go through life more or less in a protective bubble, shielded from reality, and able to make self-serving judgments from a cozy perspective of entitlement. It’s not a lot of people, and even in America it may only be (or have been) normal and taken for granted by a few generations of folk. If I got what I wanted most the time, which would have happened simply if I had enough money, I’d be one of those people. As it happens, at least comparatively speaking, I’m not. I’ve traveled enough in the developing world to know, quite clearly, that simply by being an American at all I’m immeasurably better off than, say, the school-aged child I saw pushing a metal cart of edible snails in blazing hot and humid weather down a dusty street where I lived and worked in Siem Reap, Cambodia. No school for her, and the child-labor was of the more grueling variety.

When it comes to true artistic freedom, that kind of individualism doesn’t exist in a lot of other countries. It’s not something one would even think to aspire to. So, at least in the US one hypothetically has a chance to make original art.

I had a drawing teacher at Pierce Jr. College, one Milton Hirschl, who once told me I needed lessons in humility. I thought, but didn’t say, “you got the wrong guy”. Rather, he was falling for my act. I must have been about 20 at the time, and you really want to present yourself to your peers as, if anything, better off than you are. I could have probably used a lesson in the opposite. I didn’t need lessons in humility then, and I don’t now – others could far more benefit from even a single dose – but new servings keep arising unexpectedly. But there is a sort of silver lining to having ones complacent bubble of stability popped, and that is the frequently unpleasant brush with reality that keeps one from being a mentally complacent ass, which is a very common affliction.

I can give you a simple analogy to make my point. In my experience traveling my richest journeys were the times I traveled one star, and usually alone. For example, I crossed Lao by local bus a decade ago, making every planned stop and also stopping for people who mysteriously appeared with a suitcase or basket of fruit after the driver pulled over for no apparent reason. Without enough seats I sat on a bag of rice and gazed on the pigs and goats that shared the ride. Truck tires were loaded along with anomalous boxes on top of the bus. When the bus would pull into a designated more major stop children would rush the side of the bus reaching crucified bird carcasses (too small to be chickens, maybe they were quail) through the windows in hopes of a sale. This sort of transport was infinitely more interesting than going by private car, taxi, or in a tour bus. One would rarely if ever choose to be jolted around in a suspension-less bus and arrive at ones destination covered with red dust, but what’s the point of travel if you don’t get your hands a little dirty.

I wouldn’t have chosen to work at Burger King while in High School if I knew a better option (a friend worked in an office making an amazing $10 an hour while I worked the broiler and the garbage compactor for $3.75). I had a peculiarly sadistic manager, named Luther, who kept me hours overtime inventing new and ever more unpleasant tasks for me to perform. One was cleaning the drains in the floor, another was sweeping the gutters outside the restaurant on the corner of a busy street, and my favorite was scraping the gum off the cement in front of the drive-thru window. This was in addition to the usual undesirable tasks I customarily performed, including removing the bags of garbage from the trash bins and compressing them in the garbage compactor, and when the compactor reached its limit, using a hydraulic dolly to transport the contents out to the dumpster, jacking it up to roughly shoulder height, flipping the heavy bag of grease and other reeking compacted refuse onto my back (wear it leaked onto my uniform), and heaving it into the dumpster.

And here’s a caricature I made of Luther at the time:

The day Luther kept me overtime I consoled myself that I’d quit the stinking job. However, when you come from a very working-class home, the values are a bit different from the middle or rich kids. Thus, the problem wasn’t Luther, but me. “Are you too good to take out the trash compactor!?” “no” “Are you too good to clean toilets?!” “no” “Are you too good to clean drains?” “no”. And that would be a relatively light “lesson in humility” that I’m willing to talk about, that isn’t too personal or embarrassing. If I’d just said to Mr. Hirschl, “Eeeh, I used to work at Burger King” he probably would have taken back the thing about humility without me even elaborating.

[Little tangent. When I first worked temp jobs I would specify warehouse or physical work because I didn’t have a single button-down collared shirt, pair of slacks, or any formal wear. Though later I made the transition and did office work galore.]

Good Luck/Bad Luck:

When I was a kid I watched a lot of re-runs on my B&W TV: I love Lucy; Bewitched; I Dream of Jeanie; Happy Days; Gilligan’s Island; The Partridge Family; The Brady Bunch… The only thing I really liked was The Twilight Zone, or, better yet, The Outer Limits. I barely remember anything from all those sappy sit-coms, but one Brady Bunch stood out, and it was the one about Good/Bad luck.

They go to Hawaii and Bobby, I think, find some old Polynesian tiki idol at his dad’s construction site. A local tells them it’s taboo and brings bad luck. Since they had it there was a tarantula that crawled on Peter in his sleep, and Greg wiped out in a surfing contest and could have drowned. Finally there’s some monologue, probably delivered by the father about how it could be good luck because the spider didn’t bite Peter and Greg wasn’t harmed in his wipe out. That episode stuck with me because there are just so many instances where I could interpret something as either bad or good luck.

Probably the best instance of bad-good luck was when out of desperation I accepted a teaching job with a language school smack in the middle of China. Purportedly the school was in a scenic mountain outpost, but was really situated in a flat, gray, drab, concrete, city where the pollution was so thick you could look directly at the sun without squinting, as it was hidden behind a perpetual gauze of coal and other industrial mist. My keyboard would acquire a film of white powder I’d need to mop off every few days, and once the ambient particulate in the air was so dense that within a classroom I could see it like a glimpse of a ghost.

Worse than the city was my apartment against which all the other teacher’s apartments were homes of the rich and famous. Mine was filled with grease, a coating of cigarette residue, the odor of sewer gas belched up through the lidless toilet, and the distinct impression that the last tenant had died there alone and desperate, and his body had only recently been discovered and removed.

If you complained about conditions in China some other English teacher would always admonish “THIS is China”, but they didn’t live in my apartment. As it happens, a Chinese teacher, upon visiting, claimed, “There are 3 things wrong with your apartment. It’s old, it’s ugly, and it’s broken”. Even by local Chinese standards, my apartment was shit.

Here’s some pics I took of my apartment, affectionately known as “The Monkey Cage” with witty captions (and typos). Oh my, I forgot about the surveillance glass. Click thru and have a laugh at my suffering. I lived there for over one year, when I was in my 40’s, with a Masters in art:

There were only a handful of “lao wai” (foreigners) in the city, and so everywhere I went I was surrounded by locals announcing “LAO WAI”, and as soon as one did it others would take up the chant and there would be pointing, laughing, gawking, mocking, and so on.

My students were children and my job was surely to teach them, but also to be their personal Jim Carey or Mr. Bean or combination thereof. You want humbling or humiliating, try doing that for 6 months, or a year. Oh, I forgot to mention I had no internet connection and could only go to a local internet bar, which I rarely did, because it was so difficult. This means not only had I been deposited in the middle of a country where I didn’t know a single person, I was also effectively cut off from everyone I did know. This is somewhat equivalent to hitting “hyperspace” while playing Asteroids. And this was not a tourist destination like Chiangmai or Siem Reap. When I later moved to Chiangmai I kept forgetting I was still living abroad because the culture shocks was, well, comparatively speaking, more like going to a theme park in America.

After the first 6 grueling months I could say two things with confidence: 1) I would never have willingly put myself through that, not go through it again. 2) Those were the richest 6 months of my life.

Why was this such a valuable time? I ended up staying in China for about 4.5 years, though that was broken up with a 9-month stint in Vietnam. Sometimes when I reflect on my life in China tears well up in my eyes and I miss it dearly. It’s not that I miss the un-flushed squat toilets in restrooms you never needed to look for because your nose could always guide you, in which case you just needed to move toward the horror. It was because my life was so different there, and so cut off, that it was like a separate life altogether tucked into my overall life. The locals didn’t speak English so I had to rely on my Chinese. The only Western food option was one KFC, and Chinese restaurants didn’t have English. It was a parallel existence. I’m as cut off from it now as America was for me when I lived there.

I’ve often thought that the most momentous events in my life were the ones I couldn’t anticipate: the sudden complete and unforeseen changes. They were the things I hadn’t already taken into account. Rarely were those changes on the face of it good, and if they were they quickly revealed themselves as the opposite, at least in the short run.

There are ways in which we try to grow, and there are ways in which growth is forced upon us. If we had our way I for one would skip what on reflection are some of the most valuable experiences I’ve had. Had I the money, when I first saw that apartment in workaday China, I would have insisted on being shown to a hotel, and would have been on the next train out of there. Not only that I would have delivered an eloquent and damning lecture, probably with a few choice epithets, and perhaps a double bird salute. Of course, I wouldn’t have gone to China at all if I had found work in NY at the time.

Even more of a whopping coincidence, or instance of synchronicity was the day I left that city in China, but I’ll leave that story for another time.

It’s All a Game:

This is the kind of idea that depending on my circumstances and frame of mind is really useful or else would piss me off something fierce. It goes a little something like this:

This life is a game, and the purpose is not to win, to beat others at it, to amass a fortune, or to collect possessions. The purpose is to get it, to open up, and evolve.~ J. Sri Bhagovwid

The idea that life is a game is a real pisser in a way because it seems to trivialize real hardship, like stepping on a land mine, or working in a sweatshop. [Note that according to a former classmate of mine from elementary school maintains that people in the developing world should be grateful for sweatshop labor, which might bring you back to my earlier paragraph about the danger of being a judgmental, mentally complacent ass.] But the useful part is the argument about the purpose of life, which is a lot like Socrates’ infamous pronouncement, “the un-examined life is not worth living”. In this context one becomes less bitter or angry about less-than-desirable circumstances or outcomes – barring the extremes, such as torture – and bearing the difficult-to-bear is a challenge rather than a damnation. It’s also a lot like Nietzsche’s “that which does not kill me makes me grow stronger”, except Nietzsche’s vantage exists within a paradigm of a “will to power” which can easily slip into the idea of winning, or dominating others. And if that’s not enough truisms/clichés, there’s always the one about “how you play the game”. But I like my version [of course I am J. Sri Bhagovwid) in which life is a game, because it helps one not take things too seriously (if they are not), and keeps focus on what really matters, which is evolving. What I mean by evolving is something along the lines of what I experienced that first 6 months in China, not developing a sixth finger.

Even if things get a little tight and I end up having to hightail it back to SE Asia and teach full-time, which I’d rather not do, I didn’t have a stroke and I also didn’t have my forefinger bitten off by a dog (which recently happened to my girlfriend’s stepfather), and it will all be easier with a better attitude.

And I just remembered to add that many years after I’d left Pierce college, and probably when I was at UCLA (which I’d never dreamed I’d ever have the privilege of attending) I ran into Milton Hirschl in a grocery store. He asked how I was doing and I told him of my struggles in my art program. And he gave me that other sort of lesson finally. He said, “That’s because you are a REAL artist. You won’t be happy in any art school.”

I think I’ll wrap things up here, as I have an art book review to write up next. One of the good things about being marooned on this Island is the local library had a couple books of art criticism.

Be back soon with another baboon.

~ Eric

Oh, and if you are one of my long time followers (or a newbie) and have thought about dropping me a donation in the coin jar, and you are still laughing at my China apartment, this might be a good time to let your better side shine.

Funding. Through Patreon, you can give $1 (or more) per month to help keep me going (y’know, so I don’t have to put art back on the back-burner while I slog away at a full-time job). Ah, if only I could amass a few hundred dollars per month this way, I could focus entirely on my art. See how it works here.

Or go directly to my account.

Or you can make a small, one time donation to help me keep on making art and blogging (and restore my faith in humanity simultaneously).

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Bad Luck & Rupturing the Protective Bubble of Complacency… Bad Luck: I haven't been able to complete any new art this month, nor write articles because I had the opportunity to move back to the U.S.

#art #bad luck #China #humor #long reads #philosophy #teaching overseas #travel

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