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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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I have to say I knew that at one point renji, ikkaku, yumichika and iba were in the same squad with kenpachi but good god you managed to paint a beautiful picture for me. I simply assumed that for them it was simply party time all the time along with a few bald jokes but this is much better. Emotionally healthy squad 11 which still love fighting more than anything. I always cringed when someone would just describe them as hooligans that do nothing but fighting. I mean they do that too but I love the idea that they are all emotionally healthy and mature, a loving and supportive family to their own - in their own wakka doodoo kind of way thats endearing - and of course they are in my opinion they single capable force against sexisim. Because they don't care about anything else - gendere, sexuality, gender performances, race, mentality or anything - other than if you fight good you respectable and if you fight good in squad 11 you family. ( like when kenpachi just became captain he made yachiru his lieutenant and no one was against it no one thought it was beneath them, sure thru nag at her sometimes but that's mostly in a banter like way because she call them stupid nicknames but no one hates her for being unrightfully their superior. One day they got a new captain and a new lieutenant that's a child and they just went with it.) I admit their disdain and disrespect to squad 4 is still frowned upon but I do believe some squad 4s can handle their own, it's just that we saw the really peaceful ones. Anyways sorry for ranting. Just wanted to say that yeah, I really like how the past squad 11 with iba and renji in it was a great place in general. I think if they found out some one was being sexist - for whatever reason - they would be there right next to nanao - or iba's mom protesting. Kenpachi and yachiru as well. And that makes me want to be squad 11 ,despite not being much for fighting, so bad.

So, for starters, thanks! I try to have fun whenever I write Squad 11, and I’m glad you enjoy my take on them.

My Squad 11 is just... really not very canon, though. Canon Squad 11 is actually pretty gross and sexist. Yumichika is transphobic, Kenpachi makes homophobic remarks about Yumichika, they bully Squad 4, there’s a filler episode devoted to a guy that Ikkaku bullied for, like 100 years because the guy lost his reiatsu saving Ikkaku’s dumb ass.

When you write fanfic, you occasionally run into these more problematic aspects of the source media, and you can choose to dig in and analyze them, or just... remake them in your own way. Take for example, Gin. If you read fanfic about Gin, there are some people who will peel away the layers of him and his fears and insecurities and still make him be a horrible gremlin, and it’s really stellar writing. Other people prefer to write him in an AU where maybe less bad stuff happened to him, and he’s more mischievous than sociopathic, and this is a less meaty interpretation, but it’s also more fun. Sometimes fanfic is a meal and sometimes it’s candy. It fulfills different needs and different fantasies and all of it is welcome.

Yumichika, who for me is the fulcrum of Squad 11, presents this problem. I really don’t like the way his “appreciation for beauty” plays out in canon. He doesn’t actually appreciate beauty, he just likes telling other people they’re ugly. I don’t think he’s ever pointed out beauty in anyone else aside from himself or his zanpakutou. I remember the first time I watched his fight with Charlotte and it struck me as so off -- why wouldn’t he find her beautiful? I mean, I know it’s a transmysogynistic joke, that’s why, men dressed as women is funny, hurr hurr, but Yumichika is gender nonconforming himself. This was an opportunity to make a cool character point, and Kubo took the cheap laughs road instead. Going back to what I said last paragraph, a skilled writer could, in theory, write about his insecurities and his brittleness and meanness and write a pretty compelling story, but a) Kubo certainly doesn’t, and I have never actually found a Yumichika-centric fanfic of this nature, and b) this doesn’t fit the role I need him to play in my stories. I am rarely really interested in writing about Squad 11 for its own sake. I like to write them as a backdrop for the period of Renji’s afterlife where he hit absolute rock bottom and bounced back up again. We already know the role Ikkaku played in this, except that Ikkaku is a complete moron in terms of mental health, and I really, really felt like this is where Yumichika needed to come in.

I like to massage Yumichika’s character a bit, but I do want to keep the flavor of some of his character flaws-- he’s still shallow and mean and judgy, and I love that for him, but I like to add in a positive side to his appreciation for beauty. Having Yumichika make fun of Izuru’s pores is funny but it’s even funnier if he’s just given Renji a compliment on his hair first. The idea that a Yumichika compliment is attainable makes all his drags the more vicious. Yumichika also judged people by their beauty instead of their moral character, which is humorous to me. He dislikes Byakuya as a person, but is obsessed with his haircare regime. I like to have him treat Rangiku as an equal, beauty-wise, and a person whose opinion he respects based on her aesthetic. Rangiku is actually a pretty savvy and very emotionally intelligent person whom many people write off because she likes to present herself as a lazy airhead, so in an extremely convoluted way, this all works out. I like to think that Yumichika’s ideas of beauty are also caught up in boldness and risk-taking and having one’s outward presentation ring true to their inner self. To me, this is the core of why he loves Ikkaku. To him, Ikkaku’s devotion to doing the most Ikkaku thing at all times, no matter how stupid, is irresistibly sexy.

Aside: At some point, I decided that the fact that a lot of people in Bleach have colorful marks on their faces and elaborate hairstyle and accessory games implied that make-up in Soul Society is gender neutral. I like to think there is actually more of a divide between the nobility, who like their make-up to follow rules and be classy, and, well, Squad 11, who like to get make-up ideas from Jem and the Holograms. I don’t even wear makeup (I don’t know how and it’s expensive and I am ashamed of myself, we can talk about my own gender presentation later) but I like to write about both my male and female characters wearing make-up. I don’t actually know how my readers feel about it, but it just falls under the “Is that what people want?”/“It’s what we do” philosophy of all my writing.

I think one of the theses of my writing is that middle management is more important to the character of a squad than the person at the top. Captains sort of act as ideals to strive for, but they are generally unapproachable for one reason or another. Yachiru is more like her captain in this respect (which makes sense, since she is, in fact part of her captain). Ikkaku and Yumichika present this dual idea that 1) strength is awesome, fighting and being the best is awesome, and 2) part of strength is presenting yourself to the world in a bold and confrontational way. (The fact that both of them are hiding huge parts of themselves is laughably ironic). Kenpachi and Yachiru are shining examples of Do Whatever You Want and Be So Strong That No One Can Stop You.

What really makes this work is that you need someone one layer down-- does anyone actually subscribe to this nonsense, and that’s why Iba - Abarai Squad 11 is Best Squad 11. I really, really enjoy the genre of Reddit posts where a total bro will find out that his girlfriend is trans and react by becoming a vehement advocate for trans rights. I love the bodybuilders typing encouragement to each other meme. Our world is flooded with disingenuous messages from concern trolls trying to tell us why being kind and inclusive to one another is bad or that you should reject help because struggle makes you stronger and the idea of a Himbo looking at something like that and saying “that seems dumb" is delightful to me.

I actually feel like there are a lot of awful people with bad ideas in Squad 11, it’s just that Renji and Iba don’t put up with their shit, and over time, that becomes the culture of Squad 11. I think that Squad 11 has incredibly turnover, but the ones who stay are the ones who subscribe to the ideas you mentioned-- fighting is what matters, if you wanna go argue about shit, go join Squad 5. In the IkkaYumi story I wrote, which happens shortly after Zaraki takes over, a ton of people leave. The Bount Arc (which I know a lot of people skipped) features a dude who was extremely pissed off because he had liked the old Kenpachi and thought Zaraki sucked and was so mad about it that he betrayed Soul Society. You might think that this arc would feature Zaraki caring about this in some way shape or form, but he really didn’t. So, I think there are a lot of Soul Reapers that took issue with serving under a little girl as a vice captain, they just aren’t in Squad 11 anymore.

Oh, one last note on Iba’s mom. I am of an age where a number of my friends have mothers who were Second Wave Feminists. The moms in question are a real mixed bag, because they Came From a Different Time, and on one hand, you have to respect what they went through, and on the other hand, they are very difficult to get along with. I liked the idea that Iba has always chafed against his mom and her big personality, and then Renji comes in, and is like, “hey, your mom is strong as hell and she has a lot of ideas that I never thought of but they make sense” and Iba realizes that, even though she’s still a huge pain in his ass, his mom is the person who made him who he is. Moms are complex.

Uhhhh, I have definitely lost the thread of wherever I was going with this post. Thank you for enjoying my Squad 11, which is nothing like canon Squad 11. Hopefully maybe this year, I will actually finish my Squad 11 Self Care story, where Renji stops being a drunk disaster person after Yumichika teaches him how to fill his brows; I got stuck on a part where Rangiku gives Renji a talk on ethical sluttery.

#squad 11 #sometimes i look at Things I Have Wrought and pull a full Talking Heads style 'how did i get here?'#my squad 11 stuff is my absolutely weirdest most bonkers writing #i am glad people seem to like it #just trying to find some meaning in this hot mess #i think i blame The Toast

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

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Michael in the Mainstream - Spider-Man: Far From Home/Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

It really is a good time to be a Spider-Fan.

This guy is hitting all the right notes lately: he’s got a great video game beloved by all who plays it, he’s one of the golden boys of the MCU after only a handful of appearances, and he featured in one of, if not THE greatest animated movie of all time. Now if only his comics would undo One More Day and they renewed Spectacular Spider-Man and gave it the finale it deserves, things would be absolutely perfect.

So with me being a big Spider-Man fan, I think it’s about time I talked about his greatest cinematic achievments: Into the Spider-Verse and Far From Home. That’s right, Spidey is so good he’s conquered two mediums and delivered his best stories within a year of each other. My only regret is not talking about both of these films sooner, but I suppose that just gives me the opportunity to praise them both at once.

The greatest common factor these two movies have between each other, and what makes both films infinitely relatable and entertaining, is how both films feature a young protagonist who has great responsibility thrust upon them and they must find some way to deal with it. In the case of Peter, he is saddled with the pressure of being able to live up to his mentor, Tony Stark, in the wake of Endgame’s finale and Tony’s sacrifice. Frankly, Peter just wants to be a normal teenager, get the girl, and have a good vacation – it’s perfectly understandable, and while it may come off as a bit selfish, Peter is still a young man, a young man who has suffered through numerous traumas in his life and is probably upset he can’t just be normal for once. Of course over the course of the film he remembers that with great power comes great responsibility, and he rises up to save the day.

Miles, on the other hand, while initially a bit confused and unsure of himself and what to do, really does want to live up to the memory of Spider-Man, who he only knew a brief time before his death. However, he lacks training, he doesn’t understand his own powers, and he just lacks faith in himself. The entire movie builds up his character, his relationships to others, and all he does so that moment when he takes his “leap of faith” is well-earned and solidifes the moment when he goes from merely being a Spider-Boy to truly earning the name of Spider-Man. I find it very interesting how the two Spider-Men in the two best Spidey movies have sort of opposite motivations – one is being crushed by the pressure to be a world-saving hero while only wanting to be normal, while the other wants to live up to the destiny thrust upon him but initially lacks the skill and finesse to do so – before coming to the same sort of ending. More than the man in the comics who sold his marriage to a demon because he couldn’t deal with the consequences of his actions, these Spideys realize the immortal phrase from Uncle Ben that I need not repeat.

Of course, what would a hero be without a villain to oppose them? Thankfully, both films deliver some of the best superhero movie villains anyone could ask for. Far From Home is a bit more focused, giving us one major antagonist: Mysterio, in the least shocking movie twist of all time. But it truly is a testament to how great an actor Jake Gyllenhaal is and how good a character Mysterio is that he is able to sell you on all of his hero garbage right up until the reveal, and even afterwards he never once drops that affable charm and charisma that belies his true nature as a petty sociopath. Mysterio has always been a character who has struggled to find good use in the comics due to writers not knowing how to use him; he does not have that problem here.

Into the Spider-Verse, on the other hand, goes for what most Spider-Man movies tend to do: cram a bunch of villains in and see what sticks. Thankfully, they manage to hit home runs three out of six times and only whiff twice. Let’s get the less impressive villains out of the way first: Tombstone and Scorpion. While Scorpion’s design is cool and he gets some decent fight scenes, he really could be swapped out with a generic mook and it really wouldn’t make any difference either way. Tombstone, on the other hand, is an absolutely pointless waste of a character, which is a real shame. He’s the bodyguard for a guy who killed Spider-Man with his bare hands and has superhumans and cyborgs under his employ, he’s frankly a bit superfluous. Green Goblin is the only middle ground villain, one who isn’t amazing but is certainly cool enough in his own right to leave an impression despite only having a single scene. His monstrous design really goes a long to selling his threat level and his brutal fight with the original Peter really is impressive. Sadly, he dies at the end of the fight and is quickly overshadowed.

Then we have the two side villains that really work: Prowler and Dock Ock. Prowler is the obvious one, as due to him being Miles’ uncle he adds a sort of tragic emotional connection, one that is only exacerbated once Prowler hesitates in killing his nephew and ends up becoming Miles’ stand-in for Uncle Ben. Dock Ock is a bit surprising, seeing as she is a somewhat unique take, essentially a genderbent original character version of Otto Ocatavius, complete with all that implies (yes, I am talking about the relationship with Aunt May). She’s been the big breakout villain of the movie, and with good reason: she’s cool, she’s cunning, and she’s hot, all hallmarks of a quality villain beloved by the masses.

And then we come to the big one, and I do mean big: Kingpin. Here, his size and intimidation is played up for all its worth, turning him into an absolute mountain of a man and giving him one of the slickest designs I have ever seen. He’s a brutal, ruthless thug, but he’s also given a legitimately tragic and heartbreaking reason to his actions, and while it certainly doesn’t redeem him, it does make him an interesting and complex character. If nothing else, it’s just really nice to see Liev Schreiber finally get to be the villain in a good superhero movie and a good animated movie villain, after getting the shaft in both regards on two previous occasions.

The ensemble casts of both films are great. Far From Home ropes in Maria Hill and Nick Fury, and finally gives Hill some more to do while letting Fury have a lot more fun and taking a more direct approach than usual. Aside from that, all the returning characters are improved – Happy is nicer, funnier, and a better mentor; Dash is still a jerk but he’s toned down and has a bit of tragedy to him; and MJ is fleshed out, given a personality, and has excellent chemistry with Peter. And then there is Peter’s best buddy Ned, who gets ne of the funniest romantic arcs I have ever seen in a movie. And I’d be remiss to not mention Peter’s bumbling teachers, who deliver some more top quality humor to the proceedings. I think it would be best to state now that Far From Home is honestly really funny, with pretty much all of its humor hitting the bullseye, and a lot of that has to do with just how well these people play their parts and dive into their characters with the sort of fun conviction you’d want out of Spider-Man characters.

Into the Spider-Verse has the heavily advertised Spider-Ham, Peni Parker, and Spider-Man Noir, but they actually only appear in the last third of the film and really only stick around to showcase how good the animation can handle other styles, fuel jokes, and help fight in some awesome fight scenes. Frankly, this is enough; they don’t really stick around long enough to overshadow Miles, but they’re also around just long enough to establish personalities and endear themselves to the audience. Out of the three, I find Peni to be the least interesting due to changing her mecha’s design from the more Evangelion-esque one from the comics as well as her just not really grabbing my attention all too much, but it’s easy to see why she has fans. Personally, I preferred the cartoony antics of Spider-Ham and the noir-tinged grittiness of Noir. Also, Noir is voiced by Nicolas Cage and Ham is John Mulaney. It would be a challenge for me to not love them.

The major supporting characters are Peter B. Parker and Gwen Stacy, and both manage to be great in their own right while, again, not overshadowing Miles, with Peter especially being an absolute blast, giving us the miserable, chubby, downbeat Peter we never knew we needed and having him go through a full arc of his own where Miles helps him overcome his hangups as much as Peter helps Miles. Gwen is a fun character, but she sadly doesn’t get quite as much of an arc as Peter, but that will definitely be expanded upon in sequels; she’s still a solid sidekick here. The rest of the supporting cast, such as Miles’ dad, are solid characters, and the film also gives what may be the best version of Aunt May ever (though all Aunt Mays are great and let no one tell you different); I don’t really think the supporting cast is quite as good as Far From Home’s overall, but it certainly does have memorable characters that will stick with you.

Before wrapping up, I of course have to address this: Spider-Verse has some of the most amazing animation I have ever seen. It truly captures that look of being taken right from a comic book, and there are just so many clever visuals and shots that it’s simply astounding. This is the pinnacle of CGI, and revolutionary in the field of stylized CGI. I hope other studios take notes on how to make CGI look good and stylish like this.

Into the Spider-Verse is just a stunning piece of animation. It has good characters, a solid plot, a lot of great humor, a lot of great emotion, and some really decent morals, all while paying tribute to the comics and the Raimi films and giving us some closure by adapting bits of the unused Raimi Spider-Man 4. It’s a beautiful tribute to everything we know and love of Spider-Man while also being a fantastic “passing the torch” story that gives Miles his own time to shine in the spotlight. This movie is basically what Big Hero 6 tried to be, but where that movie kind of stumbled over itself and felt more like a TV pilot for a series on the big screen, this feels like a fully fledged story unto itself. It also has one of the most beautifully poignant Stan Lee cameos ever, as well as what may be the greatest joke in Spider-Man history after the credits. If you love Spider-Man, see this movie. If you love animation, see this movie. If you love movies, see this movie. This might very well be the greatest animated film of all time, and it deserves to be seen.

Far From Home, meanwhile, is a fantastic achievement in live action Spidey cinema. It gives us a wonderful supporting cast, a love interest who actually has chemistry and isn’t a boring damsel that disgraces the name of her comic counterpart, an awesome villain, and genuine funny moments, and for once all of these things are in the same moment! This really solidifies MCU Spider-Man as being a fun, fresh take on a character who has been done to death in almost every medium; it keeps most of what we love while changing some details here and there so that Spider-Man can resonate more with modern audiences. What they do change tends to be for the better, too – I really have no problem, unlike a lot of people, with Tony “taking Uncle Ben’s place,” for a variety of reasons but not the least of which is the fact I’m frankly tired of seeing Uncle Ben die. Having him merely be the long dead motivator for Peter’s early heroics is enough for me. This is absolutely peak MCU, and a fantastic epilogue to the Infinity Saga. If you’re invested in the MCU or Spider-Man at all, this movie will be right up your alley. If you still need more convincing: they combined Raimi Jameson and PS4 Game Jameson into a character, and Simmons still plays him.

Both of these films are the cream of the crop when it comes to cinematic versions of Spider-Man, with Far From Home sitting comfortably up there with Spider-Man 2, if not surpassing it, and Into the Spider-Verse frankly taking on a league of its own, Both projects really alter the course of what can be done with Spider-Man, and it has me excited for all the future works involving the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man we might be seeing soon. With Spider-Verse getting sequels and spinoffs and Far From Home absolutely getting a sequel, it’s safe to say that anyone who loves Spidey will have plenty to love for years to come. And the best part is we will never have to worry about either Spidey making deals with Mephisto.

#Michael in the Mainstream #Review #movie review #Spider-Man #Into the Spider-Verse #Far From Home #MCU #Sony #superhero movie #superhero #Marvel

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nianderful · 5 years

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so yesterday i saw the infamous emoji movie, and let me tell you, it was bad. like, i’ve seen worse things, and this movie isn’t on the level of a lot of them, but on its own? it’s astounding how bad this is. a lot of this movie sucked, but here’s what i can remember from the top of my head:

-the movie becomes an advertisement about 20 minutes in, and it has a lot of the apps you can think of; youtube, twitter, facebook....it’s almost insulting in its transparency, even worse when you remember that this was made for children. there’s no jokes or any bit of self-awareness. it’s just ‘oooh, there’s an app’! there’s one moment where they make fun of the shallowness of facebook....everyone’s done that, movie. what do you want, a medal?

-gene is...well, for lack of a better term, meh. he’s too bland and generic to be hateable; what i really hate about him is how he gets away with destroying not only several apps (and the innocent people in them), but nearly wiping out the entire phone. which would have murdered the entirety of his people. he never shows any sorrow or acknowledgement of this.

-the villain, smiler (oh, poor maya rudolph :<) was honestly pretty boring too, but by the climax of the film, i started to understand where she was coming from. yeah it’s crappy of her to wipe out gene for simply existing, but his antics could have (and DID) risked not only the safety of their home, but their ENTIRE EXISTENCE.

-james c0rden’s character was awful. i normally like the guy but hi-5 is the worst. he’s a dick, he’s a nuisance, and the film clearly thinks he’s funnier than he is, because he never shut up. he spent most of his screentime acting selfishly, yet is treated like he made a change at the end....uh, hello. movie? can i actually SEE that, pretty please?

-this film clearly tried for a female empowerment angle with jailbreak (and her arc)...and this failed in so many ways.

for starters, jailbreak claims that female emojis can only be brides or princesses. ....except that smiler is a female. there is also a female emoji, gene’s mom. like if you’re going to call out gender roles, make sure it’s supported by your setting and its rules--not just through dialogue.

jailbreak and gene’s romantic arc. ignoring the fact that the movie doesn’t give them nearly enough time to bond (or even try to do so), and the transition is really sloppy....jailbreak ends up rejecting gene’s proclaimation of love, so she can follow her dream of going to the cloud. gene’s response? turn completely meh. this doesn’t get solved until jailbreak, under the threat of the phone’s wiping, breaks through to him by telling him she loves him. in short: the film guilt trips jailbreak for not returning gene’s feelings, and strong arms her into making a confession.

and that’s not even the worst part of how this arc ends--jailbreak starts the movie wanting to discard the idea of being a princess, in favor of making her own identity as a hacker--even when her past identity is revealed, she greatly resents it. and on paper, this is actually fine--until the climax. not only does she have to reveal herself as a princess to save gene--this again--but she ends up staying that way, completely discarding her hacker garb. so basically, jailbreak has to give up her dream and the identity she made and liked, for a designation she clearly hated. not to mention she’s constantly told ‘you’re fine the way you are!’/’be yourself!’ which is clearly meant to be interpreted as ‘don’t disregard your previous identity!’ it flies right in the face of the movie’s message at best, and at worst sends a terrible one to any girls in the audience. boys get to be interesting and unique, and embrace the fact that they are, but girls? just sit down, shut up, and conform to the role society gave you! that’s being your TRUE self!

jailbreak was actually one of the few things about this movie i tolerated, and seeing her so poorly treated by the narrative was just another sprinkle on the doo-doo sundae. and that’s not even getting into all the cringeworthy ways this movie tried to sprinkle feminist topics in its dialogue (’men are always stealing women’s ideas!’)

-speaking of characters treated terribly....the just dance avatar, voiced by christina aguilera. she essentially served as a minor helper character...until smiler’s robots get into the app, looking for gene. the app gets destroyed, aguilera’s character with it...and that’s it. the next time we see her, she’s in a trash app, dancing (it’s heavily implied that’s all she’s capable of doing, even KNOWING she’s been left to die). and that’s the last time she appears. ever. gene’s antics resulted in the destruction of her home, and possibly her own death, assuming the trash gets wiped out. even worse? gene eventually goes to the trash app...to rescue hi-5, who was caught in the destruction of the just dance app. he only shows concern for hi-5. that’s one thing, but hi-5 being an exceedingly unlikable character is another. and just like above, it’s another example of gene getting away with the destruction that came from his adventure.

-this movie is STUPID. stupid, in so many ways. from the user character, alex, deciding to wipe his ENTIRE phone when some apps act up, to a lot of the representations of apps being inaccurate at BEST (there isn’t actually an app of the just dance game--not one that doesn’t serve as another controller anyway). for a film that’s a love letter to smartphones and the internet, it gets a lot of stuff wrong.

-there is so much.....pompousness in this movie? especially when it comes to the emojis. the movie acts like they’re the ULTIMATE form of communication, to the point where the kids in this film almost never communicate through speech. (‘words aren’t cool!’--an actual quote of the movie) this is so SO not true, it’s laughable! emojis are basically sentence enhancers, like undersea swears. they’re not shortcuts for actually talking to people with, you know, words. (example of this: the emojify feature tumblr tried out. turn that on and just LOOK how incomprehensible everything becomes.)

overall, it was well intended as a film conveying individuality, but those intentions are killed by EVERYTHING about its execution--the derivative way said message is presented, the treatment of jailbreak, and the fact that there's nothing about this film that wasn't done before or better. it’s a little hard to internalize a ‘be yourself’ message coming from a film that is a frankenstine-ing of wreck it ralph, toy story, and inside out with a splash of the lego movie.

if anybody’s interested in seeing this for a good laugh....well, i guess i can’t stop you. but i’ll tell you--you will have a lot less fun with this than you think. as for me...this is one movie i am never touching again.

#nia....reviews things #sorry mobile users #long post

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placebonut · 4 years

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So I finished FFVII: Remake and I have thoughts! Need to record my first impression before I read what everyone else thinks and potentially have my opinion warped beyond recognition!

Overall, I enjoyed it. But maybe a “re-imagining” is a better description, as it looks like it’s shaping up to be a new story. I’ll need to play it again to fully understand all that wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, though. FF games tend to get a bit abstract and confusing for me toward the end, so that’s not a criticism, just my reality lol.

Highlights:

+ Wedge lives! Apparently Biggs, too, but I have different thoughts about that… Even though they’re essentially the same, Wedge happened before knowing what the Whispers are, and that capital ‘D’ Destiny is fighting to stay on track by smothering all potential divergents, so it was a nice little surprise for me that Wedge survives. I’m even satisfied with how it happened. Like, he’s in the middle of sector 7 when the plate falls, but just through sheer luck gets knocked into a secret underground lab, which I now get to explore? Cool!

+ Johnny lol. No longer “childhood friend”, but still very entertaining. Though that scene where Cloud straight-up intends to execute him while he’s bound and blindfolded is a bit… Uh? I feel like it was supposed to be telling me something about Cloud’s character, but doesn’t really seem consistent. He’s got an attitude, and is very often moody and rude to people’s faces, but that moment is next level cold. That scene also implies that Avalanche aren’t killing all of the Shinra troopers they fight. I’ll just accept “fantasy” as the explanation for how they manage that!

+ Cloud being recognised in Shinra tower. Though does the Kunsel name-drop mean that some of Crisis Core canon will be included? I mean, they basically did a frame-by-frame reanimation of Zack’s last stand, but he doesn’t have the CC scar so I assume no Angeal. Lots to unpack, but I just enjoyed the moment. It makes sense that someone would remember him!

+ I think Madame M’s main role is to replace the .. violation? that Cloud experiences in the OG Honey Bee Inn. She’s still pretty much forcing him to have that hand massage, but at least he just hates that he likes it, rather than being actually super uncomfortable in a hot tub full of strange men. I feel like they steered away from the old homophobic humour and instead embraced some fun, gender non-conforming characters. I’m very straight and cis though, so maybe there’s nuance I missed. No named Shinra employees in the private HB rooms though?

+ Tifa!! I don’t think they’ve actually made changes to her character, but you just get so much more time with her, and I’m able to love her in a way I never really did in OG. My OG first impression was that she was needy, and annoyingly timid at the worse times. Obviously she gets a lot of character growth, but I could never shake that initial impatience I had with her, and the rivalry with Aeris (who the game clearly pushes you to like) just left me with a criminal under-appreciation for her. Remake Tifa is a goddess! Her voice actor is great, which definitely helps. Her empathy, compassion, and generosity are showcased really well in lots of scenes, but she’s still such a badass! I love how she’s always the one to catch Cloud when he’s falling off of something, but my absolute favourite moment is when she steps out of the mist to offer Aerith her hand, “we found you”/”I guess you did..” Had me clutching my chest.

+ The immediate friendship between the girls is sooooo nice compared to the competition they pose for each other in the OG. Even as early as the sewers, when they’ve only just met. Maybe it’ll come later, but I kinda don’t even feel like Tifa expresses all that much romantic interest in Cloud. She’s not jealous of Aerith, and while it’s clear she worries about him and cares what he thinks, she’s certainly not hopelessly in love with him… At least not yet.

+ Voice actors did a better job than I expected tbh. Some awkward attempts to mimic Japanese vocalisations, but that’s always a problem with anime dubs. Hojo’s last scream of laughter really solidified the ‘crazy scientist’ bit. Barret was way funnier and less cringey than I thought he’d be. Marlene is cute as a button! Aerith is a bit high and breathy, but the pitch actually makes her probably the easiest to understand since the background music always seems a bit too loud when they’re talking. Cloud, Barret, but especially Sephiroth, I really struggled in parts to understand. I think Sephiroth was even murmuring things in that final battle, probably just related to his special attacks since all important dialogue had subtitles, but I’m sure I could hear his voice but could understand literally nothing!

+ Music and graphics, obvs. Man, everyone and everything is just so dang pretty!

Didn’t like, or maybe just didn’t understand?

- Sephiroth. I employed some real mental gymnastics to explain to myself what I was seeing, and I mostly succeeded until the very end. Okay, so like, his first appearances I rationalised as being PTSD hallucinations or something. Also, in a real-world sense, I read somewhere that the OG director used the movie Jaws as inspiration for how they introduce him slowly, showing only the destruction he leaves behind to create tension, but it’s 20 years later and he’s an icon in video game and anime culture, they can’t play the same tricks and expect the same result. This game only features the initial Midgar part of the story which he wasn’t originally featured in, so gotta find a way to give the fans some service. Alright, that makes sense, I can accept that.

But then it became clear he’s using the clones to actually communicate with Cloud…. huh. Well, okay, I guess there’s no reason why he couldn’t have always been able to do that. He’s much more interested in Cloud than I think he should be at this point, but if he’s trying to organise Reunion, and I suppose Cloud is the only one resisting, I can make it work: if he’s aware of the clones, then he’s aware of Cloud. It makes no less sense that he’s always been able to connect with them, than him suddenly being able to out of nowhere or only deciding to start at a plot-convenient moment. I always assumed it was Cloud’s proximity to Jenova that triggered the whole series of events in Shinra Tower. That she, and by extension Sephiroth, “wake up” while he’s there. But if Sephiroth has actually been conscious the entire time, maybe Cloud just showed him exactly where to find her, so he’s coming to get her. It’s complicated, but I think I follow.

I don’t know why he’s on the other side of the Destiny storm, though. Really, why was he even there? Is he working with or against the Whispers? And I can’t make sense of his invitation for Cloud to join him. Join him in what? Reunion, still? Sephiroth’s OG plan can benefit only Sephiroth, so what is he even offering? I’m going to have to play it again and pay closer attention to what he says. I did like Aerith standing up to him. One of my favourite OG lines, “the future isn’t just yours!” is reflected nicely. Also, “screw him!”

- Roche. Whyyy? Track record for inventing new SOLDIERs isn’t good, just leave it alone!

- Biggs lives. So, we only witness him waking up after everything has gone down, which is why I reacted differently to his survival than Wedge’s. Basically, it doesn’t make sense. First of all, physically, for him to have survived all that fire and falling. Secondly, it seems to contradict what we know about the Whispers: they interfere when the characters are at risk of taking a path they don’t want, ie. different from OG storyline. Why wouldn’t they have done something? If they’re powerful enough to revive Barret because “it wasn’t his time”, and injure Jessie so Cloud has to join the Reactor 5 bombing mission, surely they could quietly kill off somebody who is “supposed” to die, especially if he’s already most of the way there. So then it’s really Wedge they should have killed off! He’s where the chain begins: I assume he’s the one who finds Biggs and brings him back to Elmyra, since Biggs never would have known who she was, and Wedge only knows after surviving the plate fall. Does having defeated the Harbinger Whisper mean that not only future changes are possible, but past? Anyway, it’s all a bit convoluted, and tbh feels a bit cheap, too. Why not bring back Jessie, while we’re at it? Their OG deaths had a motivational impact on Barret and co., and also drives home the evil of Shinra for the player, who might not have cared that much about unnamed deaths, however plentiful. It makes the plate fall a more personal tragedy, since we’ve spent time with these characters.

- Low-key disappointed I didn’t get to see Avalanche’s secret hideout underneath Seventh Heaven.. But at least I got to play some darts.

#ffviir #ffvii remake #spoilers #ramble ramble

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drink-n-watch · 4 years

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Well, it seems this show is just going to stubbornly refuse to not be charming. Fine! On top of that it is an absolutely stunning sunny early spring day here which is saying something as it has been snowing, dark and miserable all week… I guess I’m just going to have to deal with a wonderful Saturday…. and I have to work all weekend ARRRRGGGHHH. Not gonna lie – I’m pretty bitter about it! I know I shouldn’t complain and I am grateful – I’m just a bit tired, is all.

How are you doing Crow? I hope the weather is just as great where you are and that you are getting a chance to enjoy it!

I’m very sorry to hear you have to work this weekend! At least you don’t also have to deal with a blizzard. That would be even worse. Though that probably doesn’t help much! I’m doing well, and thanks for asking. I, too, am trying to deal with Villainess’ stubborn charm. It’s tough, but I think these reviews will help! Oh, I’m in normal font and there will be spoilers.

Let’s get to this episode. I took notes and there are a few things I want to talk about, but let’s get the summary out of the way, first.

Catarina is now 15, I think, and just starting magical boarding high school with all her friends, which is also where the game Fortune Lover actually starts. And so, it is finally time to meet the great Maria. The influence Catarina has had on the people around her is quite impressive, but she doesn’t seem to quite realize it. She does call herself a dummy and her grades aren’t as good as her friends so she may just have a tendency to underestimate herself.

Not to interrupt, but “doesn’t seem to quite realize it” is a really, really kind way of saying she didn’t feel the mighty wind as the clues passed right over her head! In rapid succession. For hours at a time.

This said, the group is as we know them. Ketih may be attractive and therefore draw the attention of women, but he’s pretty much the opposite of a playboy. Catarina keeps calling Geordo “dark hearted,” but he has been patient and kind with everyone from what we have seen. Alan is relaxed and has no particular need to constantly prove himself and Nicol… well we never got to know him much, so I can’t say. In any case, these are certainly not the archetypes we started with.

So when Maria makes her entrance, she doesn’t have quite the effect on them that she is supposed to, but Catarina is blind to all that and still very worried about her future. A worry she deals with in her traditional way: Farming. However, when Catarina and Maria fnally do meet, Catarina can’t help but be charmed as well, and the two become friendly to the point that Catarina protects Maria from bullying when other students were picking on her for her commoner background. An event that was supposed to have happened with Gerodo.

Keep your enemies closer is a fine strategy, but what now!

The theme you mentioned of Catarina still being so worried is giving the show so much opportunity for humor and happenstance based on misperceptions. Like when Catarina and Alan were looking at the student rankings, and he “casually” mentioned he was asked to give a piano recital and wondered if she’d attend. Still wanting to avoid doom flags, she enthusiastically said she’d love to. It was only then that he actually agreed to do it — pretty much just for her.

Or when, after saving Maria from the bullies (and may I say that I now have a strong appreciation for Catarina’s Resting Villainess Face and how effectively it scared the bullies away?), Catarina scarfed down all of the muffins. Which had been on the ground. Catarina misinterpreted Maria’s expression and apologized all over herself. But when Catarina said how delicious the treats had been, Maria positively glowed.

Or how about Mary coming right out and saying that if Catarina didn’t feel well, “I’ll look after you day and night.”

Catarina seems like she’s already conquered the entire main cast! And yet she’s still terrified.

One thing I kept thinking about, if Catarina was a 17 year old girl in a 9 year old body, is she in fact 23 now? Will she outgrow these games? I’m not saying she should, I haven’t…

I haven’t outgrown games, and I’m more than 3 times her age! Heck, now I can afford a better gaming rig than I could when I was a young ‘un. I still think disposable income is cool…

We only see him for a second, but I am very intrigued by the student council president. He’s the final character in the OP, which makes him fairly memorable and I have been wondering who he is for 3 episodes now. He didn’t have a big role this week or anything, but I’m really curious what his part in the story will be. Any guesses?

Catarina seemed quite taken with Sirius Deek (to use Anilist’s spelling; Crunchyroll used Sirius Dieke). I wonder if her actions will turn the game on its head? Will she actually develop a romantic interest in Sirius — and the rest of the cast becomes his rival? Or will he get swept up in Catarina’s harem hurricane like everyone else?

Maria finally got a face after she met Catarina. I really like this on a couple of levels. You could easily write off her facelessness up until now as a stylistic choice to add some suspense and mystery to the character. Keep us on our toes. But it also fits well with the tome theme as main characters (especially in older games) are often faceless. I think it’s for that the people who play them can just project their own features on the character, or something like that. Even the mystic messenger MC is faceless and that’s a fairly recent game.

I don’t like faceless MCs. It’s a little creepy and it really drives home just how shallow and substanceless these “characters” usually are. Yeah, I hesitate to call them characters…

So I’m choosing to read way too much into it and say that her meeting with Catarina allowed Maria to become more than an empty vessel. Not just a stock character whose entire purpose revolves around getting herself a man but an actual person, with friends! Awwwww!

Including a friend who, with a fierce look, drove off four or five other young women who were probably upperclassmen. Maybe I could make the case that Maria is still close to the trope of a shrinking violet, but it looks like the closer she gets to Catarina, the more comfortable she becomes with herself.

Bit of a trend, isn’t it?

And once again Maria stole one of the boy’s scenes. That’s at least twice now! I got to say, the boys only seem happier for it. We could always overthink this one as a gentle commentary of socially imposed gender normative roles and how we are better off just being ourselves.

But it may also be an excuse for some more implied shoujo-ai.

Heck it can be both!!!

I’m going with both. I’ve never been one to embrace false dilemmas! There are enough real dilemmas to be embraced! Or something…

So what I’m saying is that this is a very fun show. My favourite anime about tree climbing so far!

I cannot think of a funnier or more enjoyable tree-climbing anime ever. It’s quite the distinction!

And I’m still laughing over Catarina’s mom’s parting words of advice: “Don’t lift up your skirt, eat food off the floor, or throw your toys even accidentally.” And Catarina’s already eaten food off the floor! Well, the ground, anyway.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! ep 4 – Ave Maria Well, it seems this show is just going to stubbornly refuse to not be charming. Fine! On top of that it is an absolutely stunning sunny early spring day here which is saying something as it has been snowing, dark and miserable all week… I guess I'm just going to have to deal with a wonderful Saturday….

#anime #blonde bishie #comedy #My Next Life as a Villainess #otome #reverse harem #romance

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404botnotfound · 5 years

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The Line [7]

…and where to draw it

SERIES: Destiny WORD COUNT: 7,265 SHIP: Quinn/Drifter CHARACTERS: quinn leonis (AU), glyph, kel, luke, roland, nyx-14, nikon, leilani, the drifter, darin-8

vii. uncanny

adj. having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; uncomfortably strange

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Taking Kel’s advice to heart when she feels so heavy isn’t easy, but she tries anyway. She tries to allow herself back into the welcoming company of her friends and fireteam, to enjoy the festivities and smiles and laughs.

Luke manages to dredge up the ghost of a smile from her a few times and takes a clear sort of victory in it, despite how small and fragile it is, and she feels something warm and fond in her chest when she meets up with Nikon and Leilani down in the City. Even Roland’s grouchy company seems to ease the weight on her shoulders, albeit briefly.

Try as she might, though, she still feels distant, apart, and it frustrates the hell out of her.

Fuck’s sake, Roland, the perpetual misanthropic asshole, seems as though he’s enjoying himself and feels like he’s part of the group rather than a side feature of it. Shocking, considering Nik still regularly threatens to throttle him.

Those threats, ever present since Roland initially joined, have lost most of their edge and menace. Nikon is leaving his grudges and pain behind, clearly. Why can’t she? What’s the trick?

She wants so badly to be able to enjoy herself, to shelve her anger even for just a day, but the knowledge that Cayde should be here but isn’t and won’t ever be again haunts her. Every time Luke cracks a joke, she imagines Cayde throwing something even funnier back and the two of them devolving into cackles at their own terrible senses of humor.

The pressure of her melancholy persists even with three days of trying so hard, and Quinn decides that there just isn’t a damn thing that’s going to lift her spirits until Uldren has been brought to justice. Still, all she can do is stand here and fucking wait, hoping that Petra can accomplish the thing she’s being barred from.

Nothing is truly stopping her. Ikora had all but given her the unofficial go-ahead to join Petra on the hunt…

But as she watches Nyx chase Luke around with a broom, the maintenance frame it belongs to shuffling around after them slowly in distress and trying to retrieve its tool, while Leilani laughs and Nik smiles and Roland tries and fails to hide a huff of laughter behind his hand–she feels unbearably torn.

She thinks of the Drifter, so free from ties to people and places and things to the point that he’d abandoned any semblance of even a name, and she wonders what advice he might give. Is she really willing to give up everything, like he had, just to ensure Cayde’s murder doesn’t go unpunished?

If it had been the other way around, if she had been killed and if Cayde were the one in her place, what would he have done?

The thought makes her chest tighten with more pain and she swallows thickly; he’d already lost his best friend to a Fallen mercenary, and he’d told her bittersweet stories about the kind of hijinks he and Andal would get up to decades before she had ever come into the picture. He’d said more than once that he’d wished she could have met him.

It’s some kind of cruel irony that Cayde had been killed by Fallen separatists and their would-be king.

Eyes are heavy on her, and she looks up from where her own had gone distant. Kel is watching her, the only other one in the group remaining apart from the celebration even though he, true to his word the other day, actually participates when the Vanguard doesn’t call him in.

She’s never felt uncomfortable under Kel’s careful scrutiny, but for the first time, the impassive blankness of his helmet leaves her feeling laid bare and unhappy about it. “What?”

“I heard from Petra,” he says, simply, and she stiffens. “They’re still tracking Uldren and the Barons.”

Her eyes drift over to the rest of the fireteam.

Roland tips back some kind of cider being handed out by Festival hosts and makes a face at it. Nyx has apparently given the broom back to the poor frame just doing its job and is now speaking quietly with Nikon, watching as Luke in his Vandal mask chases around a bunch of kids with Leilani. Both of them are making noises that could barely be construed as Fallen language, and the kids are laughing.

None of the rest of her team seem the slightest bit off balance like she suddenly is.

“Have you told the others?” She asks, though she already knows the answer.

“No. Zavala told me and Ikora to keep it confidential.”

Confidential? She thinks, fury sparking. After what he’s denied to her and her team already, is he trying to keep it from them? To stop them from being emboldened to chase the lead and leave the City behind? It’s a spiteful thought and she knows it–subterfuge just isn’t Zavala’s style–but after the War, he’s been obsessively paranoid, pulling so many ranks of guardians closer to the City, and…

She presses her lips into a thin line and drags a hand through her hair, inhaling deeply. Justifications, justifications. She’s still looking.

Had Petra sent other messages that he’d also kept from them?

“Why share it with me?” Kel should know better. With everything she’s struggling with, being reminded of what she could be out there doing, Vanguard’s blessing or not, he’s just adding fuel to a fire that she’s trying her best to keep contained.

He turns away from her, gaze settling on the group. “Because you deserve to know. Someone is out there trying to earn justice for Cayde.”

And it should be her. Gritting her teeth, she crosses her arms, her fingers white-knuckled where they dig into her skin. “I’m still thinking about saying damn the City and leaving to help. Ikora told me the other day she wouldn’t stop me from doing it.”

“I know.” His response momentarily douses her frustration, and she blinks at him; he’s still looking away, unmoving. “She asked me whether she should after Zavala told us to keep quiet.”

“And you thought it was a good idea? Do you know how hard I’ve been fighting not to?”

“I did and I do. It’s up to you to decide what happens next.” He’d been silent enough to make her wonder if he was going to reply at all. “Ikora and I both know that no one, not even Zavala, is going to be able to stop you if you choose to follow that path.”

There’s another long silence, and as with Ikora, Quinn knows he’s not done, so she stays quiet. When he does speak up again, he sounds weary. “She wanted to make sure you knew the consequences. I want you to know the choice is there.”

“But you don’t think I should.” She grouses.

“What I think doesn’t matter,” he replies, pausing when Echo flits over to him from where the group’s ghosts had been gathered. She lets out a few urgent chirps and trills before flashing out of sight, and then his focus is on her. “It’s the hardest choice you’ll ever make. Don’t treat it lightly or it’ll consume you.”

Her eyes follow him as he starts to walk away, her frustration near to boiling over again.

“Kel,” she moves after him until he stops, hesitating until she sees his hand twitch with a bare hint of impatience. “Ikora said she knew I was already getting off-world and implied she also knew I wasn’t already on the hunt. Did you know?”

His reply is delayed. “Yes.”

“But Zavala doesn’t?”

“No.”

She doesn’t understand–he knows what she’s struggling with, and she knows him well enough to know that he obviously doesn’t want her to pursue Uldren. “Why haven’t you tried to stop me? Or told Zavala?”

“Like I said. It’s your choice to make.” The simple answer hangs in the air between them, and her brow furrows at the air of rare indecision she can pick up on from him. Eventually, he turns back around and stands in front of her. “Be careful. The Drifter’s not who he wants you to think he is.”

She freezes.

Unperturbed, he steps away and resumes walking away. “Grief muddies waters enough as it is. He’ll make it worse.”

He’s long gone by the time she finds herself able to string words together again, vanished into the City crowds while questions swirl in her head. It’s not altogether shocking that he does know, after all–he’s had an uncanny sense for things that are off ever since he’d returned to the City, and it isn’t like the Drifter’s got himself a perfectly inconspicuous hiding spot.

He could have noticed her coming and going, but she wonders if he’s just got a funny feeling about the guy and is simply worrying about her in his own strange way, or if he knows something she doesn’t.

How does he know the Drifter well enough to be able to make that kind of warning with such clear certainty?

He’s talked about his close brushes with the darkness before, he knows how dangerous it is, just as she does. If he knows about the Drifter, does he know about Gambit? If he knows about Gambit, there’s no way the Vanguard wouldn’t know–it’s a game with too much danger and too much darkness to risk.

“Quinn!” Leilani calls and snaps her out of her thoughtful daze, and she turns around to find her beckoning her over. “We’re all gonna go run through the haunted forest again. You coming?”

Luke, Nyx, and Roland are all walking away behind her, their ghosts breaking off from Ion and Glyph to follow, and Glyph drifts over to join her where she stands. Nikon waits a few paces away, watching.

Quinn winces, knowing that she should keep making the effort to mingle and be happy with her friends, but between how much is on her mind and how burnt out she feels from the last few days of trying, she knows it’ll be a failed venture.

She waves back but shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ve...got something I need to do.”

Glyph’s shell twitches with suspicion. She offers it a thin smile in response.

Leilani’s expression dims slightly but exudes nothing but patient acceptance. “Okay. I’ll see you another time!”

She turns and runs off after the rest of the group, and Quinn’s smile strengthens just the tiniest amount with wonder at how kind of a person she is.

Nikon lingers when Leilani passes by; Ion hovers over his shoulder but bobs impatiently. His expression warms as he looks at Quinn. “It’s good to see you out and around more. We’ve missed you.”

“I’m trying.” She replies, for lack of anything better, and lifts her shoulders in a shrug.

He nods, and then she’s left behind.

When they’ve disappeared into the crowd, she turns around and lifts her eyes to the Vanguard Tower looming over the City in the near distance.

Worrying her lip in thought, she struggles with indecision. Shaxx rarely spends more than a day or two participating in City events–too busy butting heads with the City factions and their frequently ridiculous demands and requests, or monitoring Crucible matches–so he’s likely busy at work.

If the Vanguard knows, then so does Shaxx. Had he lied to her, or is she right in assuming Kel’s just savvy enough to know the Drifter’s playing games?

Asking would be one way to find out, but he’s as hard to read as Kel is since he, too, has an apparent allergy to being seen in public without his infamous one-horned helmet. But if she were to focus on reading his body language and words…

She rules it out. If he does know what the Drifter is up to and he catches an inkling that she’s competing, he’d be the first to shut it down. He’s always taken the safety of competing guardians seriously, and she’s particularly at risk.

“I thought you had something to do?” Glyph speaks up, drawing her back to Earth and making her frown at the realization of just how much time she’s been spending wrapped up in her own thoughts.

And, well, she did have something to do, but she isn’t yet willing to risk Gambit. She’s having far too much fun with it, danger aside, and that’s a feeling that’s rare for her lately. Plus, she’s still curious about the Drifter.

Suspicious, she quickly corrects herself.

She’s suspicious of the Drifter. She’s especially suspicious after Kel’s warning.

Arms dropping to her sides, Quinn turns away from the new Vanguard hub and heads in a different direction, with the old, under construction Tower now in her sight instead. “Honestly, Glyph, I’m just tired of talking to people.”

And tired of thinking. Ever since she’d first made the decision to track down whoever was behind Gambit she’s had a dozen and one things on her mind at any given time–somehow, by seeking a single distraction, she’s gotten herself stuck with several.

After a month of nothing but dwelling and feeling empty, it’s overwhelming. If it weren’t for the fact that going back to having nothing to occupy her thoughts would leave her thinking about Cayde again, she’d miss the lack of busy tangles in her head.

She needs a distraction from her distractions. Something to remove all her tumultuous thoughts and suspicions for just a little while without locking her right back into a room with nothing but grief to keep her company.

There’s a solution to that problem, and it starts with ‘l’ and ends with ‘iquor’. Numb is definitely a far cry from empty.

“Tired of talking to people, or tired of people trying to talk sense into you?” Glyph quips as it follows.

The tone of flat reproach slides off her shoulders like water on feathers, her mind set on nothing but the numb, liquid oblivion that’s waiting for her ahead. “Yes.”

Her ghost lets out a soft, huff-like trill but says nothing more, dematting quietly.

She only has to ask Glyph to point her in the right direction twice as she makes her way to the Tipsy Sparrow; silly as it is, it feels like an accomplishment to not be so out of it as to find herself lost. It’s the small things, she guesses. A month ago, even those two requests for direction would have made her feel uselessly miserable.

It’s late enough by the time she reaches the bar that the majority of festival participants had migrated from the events to the less child-friendly City haunts, and Darin’s joint is particularly bustling. She can see why–the newly renovated building looks better than ever, complete with a brand new neon sign.

“Glyph, did Darin send out a notice that there was some kind of reopening?” She asks, looking warily at the crowd gathered on the patio outside and filtering in and out through the propped open door. Does she have the energy to deal with so many people?

‘A little over a week ago,’ Glyph answers. ‘You were in the middle of a match, and I don’t think you heard me when I told you later on.’

She winces. “Might as well go say ‘hi’ even if I’m late for it, right?”

It doesn’t reply.

Sighing, she steps forward and carefully winds her way towards the door, ducking past a warlock that nearly runs her over in his haste to exit.

It’s crowded outside, but inside there’s scarcely enough room to breathe. Every booth and table is occupied by laughing, happy patrons, and the rest are all hovering around or dancing to music she can barely hear above the din.

She huffs, struggling to see over heads and shoulders–difficult, considering her short stature–whether there are any open bar stools as she moves further into the bar. A worker frame and one of Leilani’s coworkers bustle around behind the counter in the front, but it’s the large Exo standing behind the rear counter that catches her eye.

Her expression brightens considerably. And there’s an empty seat near him, too. Score.

Nudging her way towards it, she slides onto the bar stool only seconds before a middle-aged woman does, earning herself a nasty look that she pointedly ignores.

Darin notices her, his red eyes blinking and jaw light flashing orange when he lifts his chin in greeting. One of his fingers lift in a request to wait, and then he leans towards the woman she had usurped her seat from when she flags him down.

He works quickly with skilled hands in spite of his size, and she finds herself watching his movements. Exos are still fascinating to her, and she’s wondered more than once why whoever had designed them had insisted on giving them the same kind of organic musculature with synthetic materials; frames certainly hadn’t been given the same special treatment.

It still throws her off, despite the fact she’s had years to acclimatize to primarily inorganic beings moving with all the deftness of an organic one. Cayde had certainly demonstrated, more than once, just how deft they could be.

Blinking, she drops her head into her hands. Staring at Darin while thinking about Cayde–way to be weird, Quinn.

Fuck, she needs a drink. She misses him so much.

“Been a while,” Darin says somewhere in front of her, synthesized voice deep and black-armored face invisible behind the hands she doesn’t lift her head from–at least until she hears the sound of a glass being set down.

Straight whiskey on the rocks. It had been her drink of choice a few years back before the Red War, right after Gil’s death. Her expression sours. “I look that bad?” She asks, regardless lifting the glass to her lips and drinking.

“No offense,” his tone is flat, “but you’ve got circles darker than my plating under your eyes. You’ve lost weight, too.”

“None taken.” Between short bouts of a few hours here and there, and her half-a-day ‘naps’ after Gambit wore her out, a consistent sleep schedule is something that’s eluded her since the Prison.

She does glance down at the weight comment and frowns; she’d noticed it after her first match, realizing it was the cause of her inexplicable exhaustion. Considering she’d once gone two months–exerting as much energy as she had in that match–without weakening until well into that period of time, it had been alarming to say the least.

Wake up calls come in all forms, she supposes.

He’s looking at her with shrewd eyes, leaning forward on the bar. His jaw light flashes, once, twice in consideration. “Cayde busy? Usually don’t see you down here without ‘im.”

Her heart lurches. She quickly lifts her glass and tips it back for a much larger gulp than the first, wincing at the immediate burn and staring intently at it when she sets it back down. “Real busy. Probably gonna be just me visiting for a while.”

He hums in response, the sound drawing her eyes back up. His jaw shifts like he’s about to say something, but someone else catches his attention and he steps away to take care of his business.

Taking the open opportunity, she knocks back more of the whiskey and considers asking him to just leave the bottle when he comes back.

Glyph flashes into sight next to her, looking between her and the glass, and its facets droop unhappily. “You know, that’s not a good way to cope, either.”

“I know,” she replies, only caring about the drowning buzz that’s creeping up. The Festival clearly isn’t working–what else does it want from her when the only method of coping she has that works is the rush of a competition it doesn’t like?

“At least slow down?” It whines as she lifts the glass again.

Her motion halts at its request and she stares at it, pursing her lips and closing her eyes. With a heavy sigh, she sets the glass back down and nods. While the idea of getting blackout drunk as fast as possible sounds great, the aftermath doesn’t.

And she’s been worrying her ghost enough lately as it is.

“Fastest I’ve seen you drink.” Darin stops in front of her again after a brief lull, and she looks up at him sheepishly. “Usually ‘bout an hour in here before you’ve drank that much.”

“And Cayde would end up tripping over himself another hour after that.” She replies, trying to sound amused at the memory of how little alcohol tolerance Cayde had and only managing a soft murmur. It’s tempting to take another gulp of her drink, but, aware of Glyph’s eye on her, she forces herself to sip instead.

His eyes flick down to her glass and then back up, and his jaw light pulses. “Y’know how useless it is lyin’ to a bartender?” He mutters.

She balks. “I wasn’t lying.”

“Mhm.” He sounds utterly unconvinced, and Quinn knows it’s useless to hope that the whipcrack-sharp titan hadn’t put the miniscule pieces together and knows exactly what she’s keeping from him. “Guessin’ it’s Vanguard business, whatever it is. You plan on keepin’ it Vanguard business, take it easy on the alcohol. You’re an open book sober, kid.”

A huff leaves her. “You’re probably the only bartender that’s ever advised someone not to drink.”

He chuckles, but thankfully drops the subject, and the two of them dive into ordinary conversation; the state of the City after the War, the myriad factions and their shifting efforts at recruiting, and the bar’s renewal. Everything except Cayde.

He definitely knows. She tries not to mentally kick herself for it.

Whether it’s the result of the alcohol or the way she’s burnt off her restlessness and tangled frustration with Gambit, or even the fact she’s talking to someone not associated closely with her fireteam, it’s the easiest that conversation has come to her in months.

Glyph is sufficiently pacified by her slowed drinking pace and joins in the chatting, clearly happy with her going back on being tired of talking to people even if it’s not happy with where said talking is taking place.

Darin’s attention wanes as the next hour ticks by when one of his employees clocks out for the night and leaves him to pick up the remainder of the business. He replaces her glass with something much lighter once she finishes–ignoring Glyph’s huffed protest with a firm “she needs it, little light, let it be”–and then she’s left to her own devices as the crowd slowly dwindles.

Glyph drifts around the bar without her when it’s clear that she’s got little intention to leave, move, or otherwise be entertaining, and she spends time she doesn’t bother keeping track of to just sit and let the alcohol works its way through her system.

Numb is good. Numb means even accidentally thinking of her loss won’t hurt.

If she thinks it hard enough, maybe it’ll actually work.

“Hey!” Glyph calls out to her, and she blinks at it, lifting an eyebrow at the energetic spinning of its shell. “Listen! I just got a message. Zavala wants to talk to you.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Oh, come on! Maybe he’s lifting your lockdown and letting you back into the field.” Glyph says, making sure to doggedly remain in her line of sight when she looks away.

She doubts the hell out of that. More likely he had caught onto her excursions and has plans to reprimand her, remind her that her first responsibility as a guardian is to the City and the remnants of civilization, not herself and her selfish wants.

She starts to think that she doesn’t particularly care about the City these days, but guilt and discomfort sucker punches her and she shakes it away.

As she’s about to respond to Glyph, a shout cuts over the low din of the bar.

“You’re a dirty fucking cheat!”

Quinn blinks in bewilderment that’s reflected by her ghost–and then a familiar voice follows the first.

“C’mon, brother, no reason to go blaming your own bad luck on someone else cheatin’.”

She spins around quickly enough that her alcohol intake catches up with her. Wincing, she scrunches her eyes shut until the dizzying static disappears from inside her head, then looks up and focuses on the back corner of the bar.

Sure enough, sitting there in the farthest corner booth is the Drifter. A man stands across the table from him while he grins, completely unbothered by the tense set of the man’s shoulders. A spread of indistinct cards is scattered on the table between them.

The Drifter’s expression, at first glance, seems aloof, but she recognizes the dangerous glint in his eyes; the same kind of honed edge she’d seen when the titan from her first match had challenged him. She wonders if he realizes that he wields a grin the same way a vicious dog wields a snarl.

It’s hard to imagine he doesn’t.

He lounges comfortably, one arm thrown casually over the back of the booth seat. One of his hands extends, palm open flat and fingers bending twice. “Pay up.” He says, slowly.

The two stare each other down as she watches. She counts out three heartbeats before the Drifter’s opponent lets out a noise of frustration and a trio of fist-sized glimmer cubes materialize onto the table.

Her eyes widen. No wonder the guy is pissed–that is a lot of glimmer.

She stands as the man slides out of the booth and storms away from the Drifter, who’s looking entirely too pleased with himself. He hefts one of the cubes in consideration, and then all three cubes flicker back out of existence.

Still no sign of his ever-shy ghost.

She doesn’t even realize she’s started moving through the crowd until Glyph darts out in front of her, and she makes a face at the abrupt and awkward stop she’s forced to make. “Quinn, just ignore him.” It begs.

Heedless, she very intentionally ducks under her ghost and continues forward, sliding into the space the man had vacated before Glyph can protest further.

He’s gathering up his cards when she sits down, and he looks up at the sound of her glass clinking down on the table. A wide grin–this time of the genuinely friendly variety–spreads across his face. She catches herself mirroring the expression.

“Fancy seein’ you here.” He drawls.

“Should be me saying that,” she replies with a lifted brow, “the bartender is a friend of mine, I’m here a lot. I figured your only haunt was that dirty alley you decided to set up shop in for some reason.”

“I got a life, too. You think I wanna be like that one-horned idiot up in the Tower, at the beck n’ call of bureaucrats and zealots, standin’ around like some kinda decorative fixture? Nah, ain’t my style.” He waves dismissively, shuffling the deck of cards in his hands.

“No,” Glyph mutters over her shoulder, “instead you skulk around like a cockroach and pretend to be everyone’s friend.”

Drifter laughs aloud at the accusation. “You got one helluva mouth for somethin’ that ain’t got one, ghost.”

“And you’ve got a lot of nerve setting up somewhere you’re not wanted!” It fires back.

“Glyph.” She stares at it with wide eyes.

She hasn’t heard it so incensed since her fireteam had been called out to Mercury to help Sagira clean up the mess her guardian had created in the Infinite Forest–she distinctly recalls the two getting into a heated verbal spar about keeping her guardian from screwing around with something as dangerous as Vex simulations.

Which is, more or less, exactly what it’s been trying to do, wanting her to avoid the Drifter and give up Gambit. She already willingly acknowledged that associating with both is probably dangerous before Kel had implied as much earlier.

And yet, here she is.

Her eyes shift to the Drifter, but he just looks amused at its anger. “You set the rules in the Tower now, little buddy? I must’ve missed the memo.”

Glyph starts to argue, facets flitting around in agitation. It seems to reconsider, and simply says: “I’m not your buddy.”

“‘Course not.” Drifter snorts, tapping his deck on the table twice and then pointing at her with it. “How ‘bout you? You bothered by ol’ Drifter’s presence?”

She glances at Glyph again. It’s looking back at her hopefully, and she averts her gaze. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“See, I like that. Too many of you City types are too quick to jump to conclusions.”

“Are you telling me I should trust you?” She asks, genuinely curious.

“Hell, I wouldn’t trust me. That’s the nature of trust though, isn’t it? I’ve met plenty of people could make you believe they’re the most trustworthy person in the space between here ‘n heliopause–still shoot you in the back first chance they get for a few scraps.” He sets the deck down and leans back, his arms crossing.

His lips curl, then, and he looks at Glyph. “Met a few of you ghosts like that, too.”

Glyph recoils in offense, shell popping out in anger. “None of us are like that!”

“You met every one of your kind in existence?”

“I–” it bobs once, suddenly uncertain thanks to his certainty. “No. But the Traveler made us to help humanity. It’s not in us to be selfish.”

“Your big, dead god tell you that?” He asks, waiting with lifted eyebrows and a knowing look for it to answer.

When it fails to, he leans forward and cocks his head to the side, smile challenging. “Listen, I’m not gonna argue dogma with you, ghost–all I’m sayin’ is that big ball in the sky ain’t lookin’ out for any of us. Dark Age proved that thousands of years ago.”

Glyph stares back at him, drooping slightly but clearly struggling to hold onto frustration and distaste for the man. After a lengthy pause, it finally backs down and silently demats into her light. ‘Can we go?’ It asks her.

Quinn sips at her drink and says nothing; she’s more curious than ever, now, and she knows it’s unhappily aware.

Had the Drifter been alive during the Dark Age? His conviction with that last statement suggests as much, and from what she knows of that period of time, it would certainly explain his disregard for the loss of guardian life.

“Why are you here if it’s not to help protect the City?” She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear and leans forward as well, watching him carefully.

“I got my reasons,” he answers flatly, something flashing across his expression fast enough that she fails to catch it. “Can’t just say some things, darlin’.”

‘Because that screams trustworthy.’ Glyph grouses in the back of her head.

Her gaze goes distant with frustration at its sullen attitude. This is probably–definitely–the longest conversation she’s had with the Drifter, and it’s certainly making its displeasure with the fact apparent.

Drifter laughs at her expression. “Your little friend doesn’t like me too much, does it?”

“I’d say I’m sorry on its behalf, but I’m still not sure it’s entirely unjustified.”

“Ah, it ain’t the first and it won’t be the last.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” She frowns.

His answering smile is toothy. “I’ve been on the bad side of scarier things than it and most everything this system’s got to offer, so no. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

Her skin prickles with gooseflesh at the implication, and she stares at him–but the cold fist of panic closing around her heart and lungs from the reminder doesn’t come, and the flashes of nightmarish images behind her eyes are indistinct and easy to brush aside.

It’s getting better.

From their first interaction up until this one, it gets easier to believe that he’s been alive for over a thousand years, maybe more. He has a scary grasp of reading people that puts her own talent for it to shame.

It’s the kind of skill that comes from years and years and many more years of practice.

Kel is nearly two thousand years old by his own admission, and he’s just as good at it.

Her eyes settle on the deck of cards sitting between them. She’ll treat his question like a rhetorical one even if it isn’t meant to be. “What game were you playing with that other guardian?”

The easygoing demeanor he melts into drags a small smile out of her again. Watching as he splits the deck and deals out two hands while explaining the rules, she ignores Glyph’s grumpy comment about his friendly attitude being snakelike.

Between Kel’s warning and her own uncertainty she isn’t blindly trusting the man, but Cayde was the last person that could so easily make her smile when she’s down–and she’s tired of wallowing. She had come here to drown out her problems, but she likes to think she’s smart enough to find an alternative to something so self-destructive when it presents itself to her.

Once she finds a substitute for Gambit, it’ll go the same road. She can let the Drifter believe she trusts him as long as he keeps her distracted until she manages to sort her shit out.

The cards he deals to her are different from anything she’s ever seen; taller than a regular deck and decorated with circular and semicircular symbols (which she frowns at, because somehow they seem familiar and she can’t place why) in a number of different patterns and colors.

Maybe it’s a game older guardians used to play. It’s a far cry from poker, only alike in the sense that she struggles to grasp how to play and is miserably awful at it.

The Drifter shares none of her difficulties, playing like an expert or what she imagines an expert would be given her lack of familiarity.

She made the observation upon meeting him that he likely wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep playing her under the table, and that thought had only been strengthened during his explanation of Gambit–you want someone to hold your hand? ‘Cause I ain’t gonna–but she’s surprised to find that he’s patient with her questions and mistakes.

What’s the difference between Gambit and this? He doesn’t strike her as the type to change his stance on learning something new, so there has to be some kind of significance.

Figuring it out isn’t helped by how mildly tipsy she is, but then it’s not so much the game itself that she cares about. It’s great for a diversion, sure–but so is he, cracking jokes that make her laugh louder than she has in months and occasionally dropping comments or stories that pique her interest in him even higher.

She’d say he’s tight-lipped, but the truth is that he speaks freely about a few things, and with everything else just manages to wind the conversation back around to her and subjects other than himself. Again, not helped by the alcohol, but, still.

Every time she tries to tip the wordplay back in her favor, he smiles knowingly at her, drops a card onto the table to win the hand, and diverts around it.

It distracts her every single time.

She doesn’t realize the bar has almost completely emptied as their game continues. When Darin passes by the table and mentions that he’ll be closing up soon, she blinks and looks around, wondering how time had passed so quickly.

It’s a thought apparently shared by the Drifter. He smiles at her as he gathers up his cards. “Time spent with friends sure flies by, don’t it, sister?”

“Is that what we are?” She scoffs, crossing her arms on the table and dropping her chin down onto them. Her eyes follow the motions of his hands as he shuffles the deck, and when the deck is dematted by his ghost, she pouts. “I’m not sure someone would rob their ‘friend’ blind at cards.”

“Way I heard it,” he replies smoothly, leaning back, “Cayde won your games at every turn. Wasn’t he more than just a ‘friend’?”

She recoils sharply. Most of her and Cayde’s card games had taken place in private after he’d either shirked his duties or finished with them–and they’d also bet on things other than money, but that’s besides the point.

There’s only one conclusion she can come to. “How did you know Cayde?”

He waves a hand vaguely at her wary tone, still smiling, though it looks just the slightest bit dimmer. “Long story. Your man knew a lotta people. Some would surprise you.”

A stone settles in her throat. Not her man anymore. Uldren and the Barons had seen to that.

She fixes her eyes on the surface of the table, nail chipping idly at a crack in the polish. Unsure of why she’s suddenly unwilling to meet his eyes and unable to decide whether she’s more upset or angry at the current subject, it takes her a moment to find her words. “Yeah. He was good at making friends in strange places.”

“I’d say it’s what did him in.”

Her decision on how to feel shifts like a switch had been flipped, a flicker of rage passing over her expression as she fixes the Drifter with a dark look.

His hands lift in a placating gesture, the smile dropping from his face. “Sore spot. Didn’t realize. He was a good guy and I ain’t happy he’s gone, either.”

“You sure don’t sound like it.” She snaps.

“You live as long as I have,” he says after a beat, any previous trace of humor in his voice gone entirely, “you end up with a long list of names you aren’t ever gonna see again.”

Like that’s supposed to make her feel any better.

Expression twisting somewhere between pain and anger, she runs a hand through her hair, trying not to let herself picture a list of her own. Earlier she had wondered whether leaving that list behind for justice would be worth it–now she’s wondering if it would be better than waiting long enough to see them get crossed off instead.

Picked off, one by one, by the enemies of humanity.

Just like Gil.

Just like Cayde.

“Listen, darlin’,” Drifter says, and she looks up when he shifts in her periphery. He’s leaning towards her again, one arm on the table in front of him. “Don’t let his death weigh on you. Somewhere out there, someone’s got a bullet with your name on it.”

She stiffens, an icy chill settling over her skin and disconcerting deja vu swirling in her veins. The dream she’d woken up from the other day rockets back into the forefront of her mind in stark clarity, reminding her of why she had wanted to speak to him in the first place.

The Drifter in her dream had said those exact words to her.

What the fuck.

He continues, either unaware of her confused unease or assuming it has to do with the conversation. “Same for him. Same for me. Not a thing we can do about it. He knew the best way to deal with it was to go out on your terms with a gun in your hand, somethin’ I’m sure he kept to right up ‘till the end.”

She stares at him, swallowing thickly and struggling to put a finger on what she’s feeling. Struggling to figure out how to respond. Part of her wants to be pissed that he’s daring to assume what Cayde may have been thinking in his last moments, but she knew Cayde, and his words ring true enough to keep her quiet.

You tell Ikora and Zavala...tell ‘em the Dare was the best bet I ever lost. And sunshine? This–it wasn’t...it wasn’t your fault.

Cayde’s voice had distorted and cracked to the point of incomprehensibility after that, but machine or not, she’d been able to see the I love you in his eyes. Then they’d gone dark, and he’d gone still, and it felt like she’d been the one shot instead.

His last words, what she’d seen from Sundance’s last operational recording–the Drifter is right. She’s not sure how to feel about that.

It wasn’t your fault.

Tears well up in her eyes and she blinks them away by sheer force of will alone. “You sound like you knew him well.”

“We ran together for a while. I respected him. Better man than this world or these people deserved,” he admits, and she wonders at it. He doesn’t seem to hold many people in such high regard, and it’s a bittersweet thought that Cayde had been one of the few to earn it.

The Drifter’s not who he wants you to think he is.

How much of this whole conversation is just an act? Is any of it an act?

Everything she wants to say refuses to come to mind, and she sits there in silence, wondering how a decent end to the night had twisted so quickly.

He slides out of the booth and steps closer until he’s standing next to her. He’s as quiet as she is, seemingly looking for the right words, too. “The Derelict’s always open to you if you need to vent.”

He’s walking away before she can say anything to that, but something occurs to her and she calls out, “Hey! How much do I owe you for those games?”

The question stops him, and when he turns back his usual overly-charming grin is back in place. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Just keep showin’ up for matches and I’ll consider us solid.”

She blinks at the easy answer and watches him leave.

It’s only her and another patron slouched over the bar, now, and Darin is trying to rouse the latter to get him out. Huffing out a laugh, she thinks: give it another sixty seconds and he’s just gonna haul the poor bastard out like a sack of potatoes.

She looks back at the table and rolls the conversation she’d just had in her head. Had the Drifter meant that she’s welcome to participate in Gambit at any time, or that he’s fully willing to lend her an ear when she needs one?

Save for her fireteam, Petra, and the Vanguard as well as its inner circle, he is the only one aware of Cayde’s death. One of the few people she can freely talk about it with.

He has such a vastly different perspective on it than anyone else.

Her fireteam? They can’t do anything without Vanguard approval, so they may as well move on. Kel? He’s dead and nothing will bring him back, so seeking justice is worthless. The Vanguard? Justice isn’t worth risking another war, even though any retaliation by the Reefborn after Oryx shredded their fleet and killed their Queen would be laughable.

The Drifter? Yeah, he’s gone, but he knew it was coming and he went out on his own terms. No trying to convince her to let it go, just a push for her to find some comfort in knowing that an end is coming for everyone in one form or another.

Fatalistic or not, it’s his perspective that, somehow, does give her some measure of comfort.

It doesn’t make it hurt less, it doesn’t make her want to give up on seeking justice for him, and she’s not sure if she can ever admit it to Glyph, but it’s something.

#f: the line #sh: embrace the dark #c: quinn leonis #c: nikon #c: nyx 14 #c: Luke #c: roland #c: glyph #c: leilani #c: darin 8 #ch: the drifter

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meditationadvise · 5 years

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What’s Up, Doc? 15 Life Lessons On Spirituality From Bugs Bunny

' Exactly What's up, doc?' Ends up there's even more to that little concern than fulfills the eye. And also obviously, Pests Rabbit has got a whole spiritual collection of knowledge bigger than his set of teeth.

Check out the write-up listed below from the Huffington Message by Vaishali. It's an outstanding read and will make you laugh like you would not believe.

What's funnier is that these life lessons from our long-eared friend are pretty insightful:-)

Everything I Required to Understand About Spirituality ... I Gained From Bugs Bunny!

By Vaishali from the Huffington Post

Some individuals have actually located themselves influenced heavily by such famous religious numbers as Jesus of Nazareth, or the historic Buddha. Others discover convenience in the words of Gandhi or Lao Tzu. For me there has actually been just one character over the years that has stayed petrified in sheer excellence, one voice that comes puncturing through the illusion of everyday life and also its challenges, the one that has actually always been there for me: Bugs Bunny, my spiritual sign of selection! Apart from constantly entering the last word, Pests consistently comes via every convoluted circumstance an animated creativity could throw at him, totally unharmed, never any kind of even worse for the wear, never ever a hare misplaced, continually grinning, and also ever confident. After a life time of researching different religious practices, I still have not located a much better embodiment of transcendent wisdom compared to Bugs. He has actually taught me everything I should learn about spirituality to attain enlightenment.

If you do not know just what reality is, do not take it seriously. There is no truth more absorptive than Pests Rabbit's, and also he never takes his belief concerning reality seriously. This is his obvious strength as well as power. Insects is constantly senior to the drama that surges on around him, since truth exists to offer Bugs, Pests does not exist to offer reality. Brings an entire new meaning to wascally wabbit, don't it!

Question authority initially, after that ask good concerns like, 'Just what's up Doc?' In the 'know thyself' pursuit, expedition is absolutely important. It is constantly Emotionally in style to examine any type of and also all dogma. Discovering the nature of truth is exactly what we are all here for, as well as just what far better means to undertaking because quest compared to by asking, 'What's up, Doc?'?

Deal with your adversaries by providing them, a full-on kiss on the lips. Bugs lives a life without worries and fear. He went beyond every dispute from Elmer Fudd to Daffy Duck by giving his villain a complete kiss on the lips! Bugs brings an entire brand-new definition to 'Love overcomes thy adversaries!' (It likewise keeps them confused.)

Choose a spiritual symbol that is additionally an effective cross cabinet. ( Allow's encounter it, with a butt like Pests, you can truly use anything!) I want a spiritual icon that has gone beyond the traditional male/female duty limitations. I want a spiritual icon that knows exactly what it resembles to wear both the constrictive female underwears in addition to the combustive man vanity. Who far better compared to a transgender enjoyable caring Bugs!

Be adventurous! Be horrendous! Be Pests! Spiritual growth always happens outside the box. All great spiritual teachers like Insects Bunny have lived outside the restrictions of cultural limitations and also prudish sensibilities. Attempt to be your original self! Risk to be genuine and also to life. Dare to be brave! Dare to be outrageously Bugs!

Know when it is 'Wabbit Period' as well as when it is not. Bugs understands when to his choice his fights. Bugs knows when to declare, 'This implies battle!' as well as when to run (or hop). Understanding when it is the period to enjoy or plant, recognizing when it is time to emerge from the bunny hole when to stay below ground meditating, this is the concealed, higher mentor of Hare Krishna!

Always leave 'em laughing. Bugs constantly leaves ya laughing, because Insects understands that the only point any individual truly has any kind of control over is their perspective. We do not constantly get to choose when we discover ourselves gazing down the packed end of Elmer's hunting rifle, but we always obtain to choose our reaction to that reality. If there were a much more enlightened response after that leaving 'em chuckling, Insects would certainly have designed it!

There are no tiny cartoon characters, only tiny people. The influence that people have in our lives is most impressive. Often it is individuals that have the tiniest walk-on duties in our lives that impact us most profoundly. There are times when that unidentified individual, who passes us on the road with a smile and also well wanting, lifts our day to its highest experience. No contact is tiny, some have a shorter direct exposure time than others, yet all have limitless potential.

Live to be over fifty years old, with just one gray hare. You are only as old as you think you are. Bugs proudly announces he mores than fifty years old with just one grey hair! Only you determine your inner age. You select your degree of daring exhilaration as well as interaction to life. You select the number of gray hairs will certainly determine your action to life as well as love. It's your choice.

You can't kill a toon. Resilience is the name of the game, and it is constantly in vogue. Most of us involve the planet to exercise growing past what has harms us. No person can do that without the power and commitment of resiliency. Durability is just what makes children such powerful self-healers. Resilience is exactly what makes our life worth living. Resiliency is the excellent spiritual style accessory that never goes out of style.

Always enjoy a cartoon before the main feature. Have a perspective finder in your life! When the little things that show up in your life annoy you, experience them as an opportunity to expand beyond just what infringes upon you. In this way, when you truly require it, you will certainly have that ability completely established. If you see whatever that concerns you as a chance to a richer life, when the 'major occasion' of your life turns up, it will certainly bring you and also cultivate internal richness, not unlimited suffering. Popcorn, younger mints and soda, as constantly are, optional.

Take life gently - as well as Insects seriously. We invest method to much time taking our unreasonable concerns seriously as well as our Divinity lightly. Our divinity existed before our life battles and also will certainly exist long after them. Only love is genuine, and also we do not have love, we are love. Bugs advises us to see our love-self as powerful, and also our life difficulties as an interesting animated joke.

Carrots are divine, you get a loads for a dime. It's magic! Bugs sees every one of life as magical. Even the tiniest most mundane things or event in life is imbued with special wonderful top qualities, since Bugs knows he makes the magic within himself. Pests recognizes he IS the magic. All you have to do is insurance claim it!

Monsters are such interesting people! Bugs is constantly unconditionally accepting. Bugs has accepted some of one of the most dangerous computer animated monstrosities ever before created, as well as he lovingly replies to them with the knowledge that: 'beasts are such intriguing individuals!' Pests experiences all life creates as benefiting his benefit, aiding and assisting him in his personal growth. No animal, no matter just how fiendishly packaged, is anything much less compared to interesting and also right here to empower him!

Bugs is a karma totally free religious symbol. No one has been eliminated incapacitated or tortured in the name of Pests. Nobody has ever before shouted, 'die in the name of Pests!'

Do you understand how tough it is these days to locate a religious symbol that numerous countless individuals have not been eliminated in the name of? Regarding the cumulative awareness is concerned, Pests has no blood on his white gloved paws. There are no kids available recovering from an Insects abusive youth. No youngster has actually grown up with a person spruced up as Bugs, slapping their hands with a leader and also screaming that they 'Obtained it WRONG!' Nobody will rot in hell for all infinity for taking Bugs' name fruitless. And absolutely nobody has actually been terrified for publishing a satirical anime of Pests. Insects can be openly as well as courageous embraced by all. Insects is beyond corruption, exploitation, fraud or licentiousness. Verily, I say unto you, 'If you do not see Pests in all, you do not see Insects in all.'

Taken from the Huffington Post, written by Viashali.

#meditating #meditation #meditation for beginners #spiritual #spiritual growth

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its-just-like-the-movies · 7 years

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (17, B)

With reviews for delightful films with ambling titles like My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea and I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore waiting on my hard drive, nevermind other personal favorites like The Final Girls waiting in the wings, why not take the time to talk about this weekend’s biggest indie hit, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2? Yes, that joke is stale to me too, but since this feels like the very first Marvel movie that’s indulgent to the kind of movie director James Gunn wants to make, and since the joke is terrible, it feels very fitting to this particular lot. I’m genuinely surprised to be as excited about this as I am, not just because I liked the first Guardians without feeling the love a lot of people in my life did, but because even the first half or so of Vol. 2 kept grating me in spite of how confident Gunn was that it was hilarious. But then, with one glorious set piece, everything comes together perfectly as the film finally becomes the best version of the Marvel template that’s ever been realized while seeming to carve out a whole new path through sheer force of will and deliriously entertaining spectacle. The family ties with these characters matter more than any Avengers get-together ever has, not just because they’re better defined here but because everything, from the worlds to the side characters to the visual palette to the villain of all goddamn things, has been realized with equal care, and color, and thought. At a certain point the jokes are a lot funnier, it’s more kinetic, the CGI final battle extravaganza is more its own mess than just another round of stolid off-grays coming together to fight a really really big off-gray thing. It’s the most personality a Marvel movie has ever had, and for that alone it’s the best they’ve made yet.

It doesn’t start that way, though, and it takes a little while to get there. For sure the opening spectacle of Lil Baby Groot dancing along while the rest of the crew fights some eldritch horror is a delight, and has one of the best early Drax jokes in the film. But James Gunn thinks the one basic joke Drax has, or is - his stubborn literalism - is a lot funnier than it is, and at the very least the sheer insistence on making him the primary valve of comic relief got old fast. Not that any one joke was bad, and as someone who wasn’t cackling at every joke I was the outlier in my audience, but every joke pointed at the same aspect, hitting it harder on the head and to cruder effect practically every time. Kudos to Dave Bautista for being game, I guess, but it flattens the character even as he tries to tell the story of seeing his wife for the first time. On top of that, making Drax the outright comic relief deprives the rest of the crew from getting as much comedic material. Mostly they all get to bicker, and boy does everybody have issues, with each other and themselves. Even the captured Nebula has a lot to reckon with, aside from completing her Beatrix Kiddo hit-list. There’s also the race of golden alien beings who chase the Guardians around in remote-controlled fighter pods with user stations that are hilariously stylized like an 80’s arcade game, but they’re sort of tangential for the moment. Yondu faces similar issues, though he at least doesn’t start off with the gold people problem. Re-introduced in a scene that seems to imply he just had sex with a robot prostitute, we learn his Ravagers faction has been cast out of the entire Ravagers network because of that whole child-napping thing he did with Peter. Scorned by Sylvester Stallone and offered one last job by the High Priestess of the Goldfingers, to capture the Guardians of the Galaxy so she can kill them as penitence for Rocket stealing some of their lightbulbs, Yondu’s seeming path to vengeance is clear.

Ego doesn’t have this problem, simply hoping to reunite with his long-stolen son and become the dad he never had the chance to be. Kurt Russell, as the equally ruggedly handsome father of Chris Pratt, is inspired casting for the part, giving as good a performance as everyone else in the cast to boot. Accompanied by the empath Mantis, who gets to do a far more earnest and good-natured take on Drax’s whole “unstoppably literal” thing with great aplomb by Pom Klementieff, the journey to Ego’s self-made homeworld is the biggest blast of color that’s come from any Marvel film before it. Asgard didn’t look this majestic, and it manages the impressive feat of featuring practically the entire color wheel without ever becoming a garish eyesore, balancing hue, saturation, and texture on a tremendous scale. As Peter, Gamora, and Drax join Ego and Mantis on his homeworld, Rocket stays behind with Groot and the imprisoned Nebula, who manages to break free and complete a mutiny against Yondu once he talks of letting the Guardians go despite the million dollar bounty on their heads from the Goldfingers. And as things get worse for them, things get better for Peter and Ego as Ego teaches his son how to harness the energy of his planet to create shapes and become effectively immortal.

All of this is compelling stuff, but for one reason or another none of these plotlines quite clicked within themselves. There’s plenty of great moments, like watching Peter and Ego play catch with orbs of pure energy, or Rocket, tied to chair, completely tearing down the head mutineer who willingly chose to call himself Tazerhead. Yondu having a heart to heart with Rocket is surprisingly touching, and if the joke of Groot trying to find a prototype fin for Yondu runs a little long, its sheer absurdity and escalation makes it worth it. And then they get that fin, and it somehow doesn’t look silly on Yondu, who then whistles his way to slaughtering every single being in the ship except for our heroes and regretful mutineer Sean Gunn while “Come a Little Bit Closer” plays over the carnage, and it all came together. I’ve lauded how expansive the color palette is already, but the neon pink of Yondu’s murder wand as it flies around the compound, in tandem with the falling bodies, gives you so much to look at while achieving real heights of visual interest and charisma. Rarely is there more than any one thing to look at in the frame in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and rarely is it in such a gorgeous array of colors. Of course they have nothing on DC’s murky, sad grays and almost inherent fear of anything bright, joyful, or fun in any sense, but Guardians is still an impressive peak that far outstripes the visual style of a film series that struggles in terms of inventive composition or visually arresting color schemes. Even the eventual third act Big Bad Boss Battle, overflowing with CGI, is still more coherent in its fight choreography and geography than say, the Captain America: Civil War airport fight, and bursting with creativity on all levels while fully utilizing each of the characters involved.

The characters, too, are far better drawn than the usual Marvel ensembles, and do so without a larger wellspring of goodwill for viewers to instinctively draw upon. As compared to the seemingly arbitrary lines in the sand drawn between the amazingly vaguely rendered Avengers in Civil War, each of the Guardians and the surrounding characters have far more logical, better defined wants and relationships that are further enhanced as we learn more about them. The sibling rivalry between Gamora and Nebula is given as much room to shine as Peter’s contentious relationships with Ego, Yondu, and Gamora are mended and unmended. Yondu’s own relationship with Rocket lands in the emotional truths it exposes about both of them, and if Drax seems mismanaged as a joke machine early on, his bonding with Mantis ends up in where it needs to once Act Two starts. Even the threat of the High Priestess and her Sovereign, who I looked up the names of between paragraphs, is more effective than other doomed-to-fail MCU villains like those in Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, the Chi’tari swarms of The Avengers, or even Nebula in the previous Guardians film. The ultimate villain and their plan, which finally encompasses the destruction of the entire universe, is easily the most effective of Marvel’s villains that’ve appeared yet. After acting like the universe is at stake in every previous film, it’d be odd to say it’s so refreshing that they go for it this time if the tone of the second half didn’t feel so appropriately attuned to the grandiosity of it. In part, it’s because the villain is so effective in how they challenge our heroes, their attitude so unique among Marvel villains. Their offer is surprisingly tantalizing to the character they ask allegiance of, until it very much isn’t, but more than that they seem genuinely thrown by the idea that anyone would’ve want them to wipe out all life as we know it beyond them. But more than that, James Gunn’s direction of the second half of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is such a unique style for not just a Marvel movie, but any film to take. It’s remarkably in range of a jukebox musical, or a family melodrama, which is one of the easiest subjects for a musical to explore. The choreography and editing of scenes in tandem with the song score is a sterling achievement, one that begins in the opening scene and keeps going strong with continuous creativity. I practically expected characters to start breaking into song at a certain point, and the poignant returns to previous conversations and themes certainly could’ve lent themselves to it. Yondu in particular, whose starts his arc an exiled child-napper and ends the film celebrated and redeemed by his fellow Ravagers and Peter Quill, is perhaps the easiest character to translate into a musical, but all the characters and their arcs would fit wonderfully into that kind of milieu, and their actual dialogue works fairly well as the book parts of a show, be it original or jukebox tunes. Maybe speculating on the potential of a Guardians of the Galaxy musical adaptation isn’t the most constructive angle to consider this film, but it gets at the spirit of the film with ease.

Going forward, I hope this is a sign that Marvel will let their directors have more tangible influences and visions in their projects, especially with films by Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler coming ‘round the bend. I also hope that James Gunn will continue in the direction he’s going with this series, and that the Russo brothers are watching the responses to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and taking note of what everyone is responding to so positively here that isn’t in other MCU films but absolutely should be. We need color and light and really inventive composition in our films. Children and art can always go together. And how nice is it, between this and Logan, that there’ve been two very distinct and different kinds of comic book films doing well on the market? I hope Wonder Woman breaks from the traditional DC mold and is actually watchable, and I hope Justice League is bad enough for the theater to unabashedly laugh at it with me, since I know my otherwise spectacular boyfriend is definitely going to make me go with him to this, and I’ll always wonder would’ve happened if I’d laughed at the beginning of Batman v Superman like I wanted to. But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about a good movie, one that started out just fine and turns into a pretty great movie, showing real creativity on nearly every front. I think this is the first film I’m talking about I can’t even pretend to encourage people to see, since everyone has probably seen it already. And thank goodness such a fun, unique comic book blockbuster is getting the somewhat perfunctory but still gloriously deserved attention it’s receiving. Let more franchise films learn the lessons about being pretty and allowing their directors to actually shape their films, and if not, at least we have Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 to keeping savoring among so much unadventurous clutter.

#my posts #my reviews #guardians of the galaxy vol 2 #2017

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