#but i guess shes alright bc shes the next protagonist HELP

[teecupangel]

vampire au but (almost) every assassin is a vampire bc i mean.. vampire edward tho 👁🫦👁

I promise I'll make an actual long fic idea but now, just let me drool over the idea of Assassin vampires.

Alright, now that I got that out of my system (absolutely not), I guess we'll start from the beginning.

Buckle up, it's long because I 'accidentally' included all main AC protagonists in this fic idea hahaha

For a Vampire AU, my top two ideas are:

Let's make it full AU. We replace the Isus with Vampires.

OR

Vampires are one of the 'failed' experiments of Juno and Aita, just like the werewolf in Atlantis (maybe it was meant to give a body that can survive the solar flare but, instead, it freaking got a weakness for sunlight, super fail)

Regardless, one of the vampires survived the solar flare. We'll call this one the 'progenitor'. This progenitor vampire has a body that needs blood to survive. Human blood is the best because they're the closest to the progenitor's body. Animal blood barely helps. It would take dozens to be equivalent to one adult human.

So this progenitor drinks human blood. Through trial and error, they understand the limitation of their body. Sunlight burns them. They're faster and stronger than humans, being able to easily pin down a man three times larger than them.

Their senses let them see everything clearly. White means food. Red means danger.

They stay in the dark. They keep to themselves.

Then, one day...

Someone finds them.

Has been tracking them down.

Because one of the humans they fed from had a rich father who was willing to pay handsomely for their head.

So they fight the mercenary that found them. They fought and overpowered the mercenary.

But the mercenary manages to nick them. And their blood drips to the panting mouth.

And that's when the progenitor realized.

They could make humans loyal to them by giving them a bit of their blood.

To make them a thrall.

And that's how the Misthios Kassandra from Sparta became the progenitor's first thrall.

With Kassandra, the progenitor starts to experiment with just how much blood is needed to make a full thrall. Kassandra needed more than a drop but the drop was enough to hypnotize her, just like how their progenitor could hypnotize humans with their voice if they focus hard enough.

So he kept feeding Kassandra more blood until she became a full thrall. Loyal to a fault. With the same limitations as a human but just a tad stronger than humans and wounds that will heal the same quick speed as them. Unfortunately, even a full thrall must drink their master's blood regularly. Otherwise, the thrall will be removed.

And that was what happened with Kassandra. They fought once more. This time, the strength she received from the progenitor was enough to scare the progenitor and they hurt her too much. As she's dying, the progenitor tried to feed her their blood, in hopes that she will become a thrall and her wounds will heal.

She dies.

They bury her.

And she raises from the ground the next evening.

Not as a thrall.

But a vampire like the progenitor.

The thrall was gone.

Her hatred stays though. Not only that, but she was now a vampire like them. She tries to attack them but she cannot.

For the progenitor is her sire. Her blood refuses to harm them.

So she leaves.

And the progenitor is alone once more.

====================

Years passed.

The progenitor travels. They can feel Kassandra still alive, still angry.

But just as lonely as the progenitor.

So they stay away. Travel elsewhere.

That's when they saw her.

A human yet not.

A vampire yet not.

A dhampir, a union of vampire and human.

Kassandra's child.

But why was she alone?

Did Kassandra not realize that her child was not fully human?

Did she leave to give her a chance for a normal life but accidentally give her a life of loneliness, full of fear and confusion.

So the progenitor adopts the scared child, taught her all they know.

They treated her like their own child.

And experimented on what will happen if a dhampir was given blood.

As a dhampir, she grew the same as humans. Sunlight does not harm her. But she was as strong and as fast as a vampire.

Her senses were the same as a vampire.

Yet her stamina was the same as a human. Her body bruised and bled like a human.

She was better than a thrall in some ways, sure, yet limited by her half-human body.

And when she drank vampire blood.

Nothing happened.

How boring.

Yet she was loyal to the progenitor. Not because of any thrall, she was immune to it but because they were her parent. The one person who taught her and took care of her. Blinded by loyalty and love, she stayed with them. Became their eyes and ears in the daylight.

She glowed as blue. Their very first blue.

Their daughter.

And she fell in love.

To a medjay.

And he loved her back.

They give the progenitor humans to feed on. Criminals. Bad people.

The progenitor didn't mind.

Blood was the same regardless of how many laws a human broke.

If it soothed them, gave them an excuse not to feel bad about sacrificing fellow human beings... Then so be it.

The dhampir married the man. The progenitor stays with them. More like an in-law than anything.

Everything was peaceful.

They could not have any children.

The progenitor realized it was because the dhampir was sterile. A common trait of 'hybrids'. Still, the dhampir and her husband were together and in love.

But all things must come to an end.

Egypt is thrown into chaos and they are caught in the middle. The man lay dying in his wife's arms.

And so...

The progenitor tries once more.

The man who had never been their thrall was gifted with the progenitor's blood.

He dies that day.

And he wakes that evening.

As a vampire.

They are happy once more.

In their happiness they forgot to feed the man.

Deep into the night, when they have grown tired from the stress and the celebration, they go to sleep. The man wakes up and drinks the blood of the first person he sees.

His own wife.

His hunger fulfilled, his mind was clear once more. And he saw what he had done. He runs in shame. The commotion wakes the progenitor who sees the dhampir barely clinging to life.

So they try.

They gives up their blood to their daughter and prays.

The following night...

She wakes.

Not as a dhampir but as a vampire.

And she is angry.

Not at the progenitor but at her husband.

For running away instead of staying with them.

The progenitor tries to remind her that it was shame and grief that propelled him to leave. That he still loves her.

But she did not listen.

She leaves to find him. Whether to kill him or to bring him back, the progenitor does not know.

What they did know is that they are, once again, alone.

====================

Years passed.

They feel Kassandra, Aya and Bayek yet they do not see any of them. The world is too big for their paths to intersect.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say they themselves try not to get close to any of them.

For Kassandra, they knew it was better this way. Kassandra's anger still burns strong.

For Aya and Bayek, it is... pettiness that keeps them from following either of them. Their selfishness brings the progenitor nothing but irritation and tiredness. So they stay away.

In their travels, they meet a shieldmaiden who sees them drinking blood. She calls him a draugr and she hunts him. He runs and runs but she is a good hunter. A good tracker.

When there is nowhere left to go, they fight her. Pent up anger for his three stubborn childes propelled them to turn her into their thrall. To make her their slave. To do their bidding with no free will at all.

And when she grew old and weak, they let her go. Let her shout about the draugr that enslaved her. Let her words be heard and mocked.

As they returned to the shadow once more.

====================

But someone follows them. Someone from the shadows. Not like them.

But their blood...

The progenitor could taste the blood of their daughter running through them.

Too weak.

Like this human had an ancestor who had been a thrall instead.

And that made him weak to the progenitor. To desire a closeness with them.

So they let the human live. Give them a bit of their blood, not to enslave them but to show them that they can be a kind master if they wanted to be.

And the human guides them to the Hidden Ones. A cult created by his daughter, taking evil men from the streets and offering them to her.

To their queen.

And they know of the progenitor.

The one they call the Master.

And so they took the seat their daughter left empty, all because she is still searching for her husband.

And, to the man who brought them here, they rewarded him with the title of mentor.

The man cast away his birth name of Hytham.

And became the first Al Mualim.

====================

Centuries passed and they grow bored.

In their boredom, they grow complacent.

And that is how they are captured.

Encased in an iron chamber that pierces their body in places that will not kill them.

But will make them bleed.

So they bleed.

And the one who captured them...

The latest Al Mualim...

Uses their blood to create an army loyal to him.

Years passed.

They are forced to drink blood from a contraption Al Mualim created for them. Fresh human blood, yes, but fed to them like they were livestock.

They bleed.

And their blood creates thralls that Al Mualim controls.

They are powerless. Encased in an iron chamber that bleeds them. Chained and locked with an absurd amount of locks and chains.

But it was enough to keep them contained.

Unable to escape.

Until...

The chains fell.

The locks dropped.

And the chamber finally opens.

And the first person they see is a man with golden eyes.

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad.

The first of their favorites.

====================

To be turned became a reward only given to the most loyal of their Brotherhood.

Not a cult anymore.

But a Brotherhood of Assassins.

Serving the light by staying in the shadows. Assasinating only to rid the world of evil.

Blah blah blah

They didn't care all that much as long as they feed. And they were fond of Altaïr.

Being saved does that to most beings, even someone as old as them.

And perhaps they were lonely too. Estranged from their first childe, forgotten by their daughter and her husband...

Altaïr was a curious man, unafraid of them. He treated them like they were equals. He asks questions but he also indulges their whims. He never tries to keep them locked in a room. When night comes, he joins them as they sit on the top of their tallest tower, enjoying the cold breeze and the freedom they lost all those years ago.

He gave them a name. For he believes everyone must have a name.

Desmond.

From the French word 'des mond(es)'... The Worlds.

A grand name.

They like it. They will wear the name with pride.

And they gave Altaïr a gift in return.

For saving them.

For treating them well.

Altaïr was not their first childe. But he will always be the first childe they sired not out of fear or desperation or by accident.

A childe sired out of love.

====================

There was a coup. By those who believed they deserved to be turned. They failed.

But many died.

The remnants of the Brotherhood returned to the shadows. The loyal thralls made their way all around the world. To build safe houses and connections that can be used by the inner circle.

By Desmond's inner circle.

They travel. Years passed traveling all over. They stayed in the continent that will later be called Europe. The Templars, the Brotherhood's hated enemy, change their name as well. Yet, they still hunt down the Brotherhood.

They hunt down Desmond.

The one they call The Devil.

But Desmond is not afraid. Why should they be? They finally had childes who care for them.

They had a family.

One of the thralls did well in Italy. His descendants became a noble house and they welcomed Desmond and his inner circle with open arms.

One of the children was a curious little boy.

And Desmond indulges him. Plays with him.

Even as the boy grows older, he still gravitates towards Desmond.

Not because Desmond was the progenitor, the most important secret of the Brotherhood.

But because of Desmond's kindness and smiles.

The boy is loyal.

The boy brings the entire Templar Order in Italy on its knees.

And cuts its head off.

Only then does Desmond realize.

That they had been blind for years now.

The boy they saw had been a man for years now.

And the man deserves a reward.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze was not their first childe.

But he was the most successful of their childes.

====================

They continue to travel. To see the changes of the world. And to keep people from realizing that they do not grow old. It is during these travels in the high seas that they are attacked by a pirate ship. Their ship was damaged but they won.

But Ezio had been severely wounded, dripping blood all over the dying pirate who nearly cut his head off while he was protecting a wounded human brother. They didn't know it at that time though.

The chaos and Desmond's panic over Ezio almost dying were more important. They threw the corpses overboard.

That night...

Edward Kenway rose from the depths of the sea.

Edward Kenway became a rogue vampire. He only cared for gold and glory. The Brotherhood stayed and observed. They guided when they could but left Edward Kenway alone.

Desmond had asked them to.

For Desmond wanted to see.

What kind of vampire Edward Kenway would be.

Years passed...

The age of piracy comes to an end.

And Edward Kenway comes to them.

Comes to Desmond.

Asking for guidance.

Pleading for a purpose in life.

So Desmond welcomes him.

And gives him purpose.

As a member of the Brotherhood.

====================

Edward did not know it then. That he had a daughter.

And a son.

Different mothers. The wife he left to become a privateer then a pirate later on. The woman he spent the nights with while on a mission for the Brotherhood.

Edward found his daughter. Welcomed her into their Brotherhood.

His son was lost. Taken by the Templars who whisper in his ears the kind of monsters vampires are.

The Templars are successful in indoctrinating him.

Haytham Kenway.

The Templar's very own vampire hunter dhampir.

Haytham Kenway became their very own boogeyman. The strength of his vampiric lineage and the weaponry of the Templars serving a keen and observant mind.

The Brotherhood learns of his history and things become more complicated.

Orders to not kill Haytham Kenway resounded all over the Brotherhood.

For he was of Edward Kenway's blood.

Of Ezio Auditore's blood.

He was their family.

But Haytham Kenway used this weakness to his advantage.

Killing any and all members of the Brotherhood he found.

Humans.

Thralls.

Vampires.

In desperation, Edward did what was forbidden.

That winter night, the dhampir Haytham Kenway died in his father's arms.

The following night, Haytham Kenway awakened as a full vampire.

====================

Haytham Kenway as a vampire did not change his stance. He was still loyal to the Order and he still hunted the Brotherhood.

All it did was make him hate himself more. Hate his vampiric nature.

And that hatred only made him more dangerous.

On the other hand...

As he was sired by Edward Kenway, he could not harm Edward anymore. As Edward's sire, he could not harm Ezio as well.

And, most importantly, he could not kill The Devil.

So he took in members of the Order. Trained them in his ways. He did not turn them, of course not, that would only hinder them.

And they became the best of the Templars' vampire hunters.

But one of them was better than all of them.

May even be better than Haytham as a vampire hunter.

Shay Patrick Cormac.

A man who used to be a member of the Brotherhood. A thrall that left after a horrifying event that changed him.

Haytham found his successor.

He found the vampire hunter that will kill The Devil.

====================

Perhaps it had been a moment of weakness.

Perhaps it had been true love.

Regardless of the truth, the fact remained.

Haytham Kenway had a son.

And Edward found him as a babe, nursing from his mother's tit. Shrouded by the darkness, he took the child away and returned to Desmond.

He gifted the baby to Desmond.

A way to repent for how he had inadvertently created their greatest enemy?

A desire to have even just a piece of his son yet shackled by guilt and pain?

Edward did not say his reasoning.

All he asks is that Desmond takes the dhampir.

So Desmond did.

Connor Kenway was raised as a dhampir who believed he was Desmond's son. He was raised with love and his days were filled with happiness.

His favorite was Uncle Edward who sometimes visits to give him the nicest of gifts.

As he grew older, he learns the truth.

Of his parentage.

Of Haytham Kenway.

So he tries.

He tries to build a bridge between Haytham and them.

But the bridge he was trying to build was on top of a raging river that destroys everything that falls into it.

In the end, Connor had to make a choice.

A father who he knew nothing about and hellbent on destroying everything he held dear.

Or a father who raised him with love and gave him a choice.

In the end, Haytham Kenway dies in the arms of a son he did not know.

====================

They followed Shay Cormac to Paris where he gathers what remains of Haytham Kenway's vampire hunters and the rest of the Parisian Rites of the Templar Order. Amidst the cries of the people and the growing tension between the nobles and the common folks, two young people are driven apart by their family.

Elise de la Serre becomes a Templar and trains under Shay Cormac.

Arno Victor Dorian is turned into a vampire by Ezio Auditore who takes the young man under his wing.

Their shared history comes into play as Elise starts to dream. Dreams that leave her hot and wanting.

Her nights are filled with such delicious dreams. Her days are filled with horror as more and more of their members are killed or gone missing.

Yet, this does not break her. She is a strong-willed human. She learns the truth soon enough.

Of how Arno had used their past, their previous romantic entanglements, to make her his thrall. How she gave him everything the Order told her or what she learned all on her own.

How her knowledge was the reason why so many of the Orders died.

She tells Shay all of these. Shay gathers what remains of their forces and they help her remember.

Remember the place that Arno always takes her when she is under his thrall.

The temple underneath Le Marais.

They go there to find clues.

What they found was a trap.

And they learn that Elise did break. After learning how everything was her fault, that she led all of those people to their death...

To be told that the reason why Arno had been able to enthralled her was because, underneath all that desire to be a Templar, to be taken seriously, was a lonely child wishing to be loved by a father and mother who were too busy trying to keep the Parisian Rites of Templars alive.

That underneath all that loyalty to the Order, she hated it for taking her parents away.

Two factions entered the temple underneath Le Marais that day.

Only one faction left the temple that night.

====================

Evie and Jacob Frye were children of the Brotherhood. They were wild and brave.

And they had something to prove to dear old father.

So they travel to England to hunt down the Templars. They create their own gang and destroyed the Templars plan.

The words of their deeds (and the chaos that came after them) reached Edward Kenway who was... perhaps a bit estranged from the Inner Circle by this time. A self-imposed punishment, perhaps. He sees the joy and brashness of the two and it reminds him of how he was before.

So he turns the twins into his thralls. Not enough to enslave them but enough to just give them a little boost. And he guides them.

He helps them.

He builds a family with them.

Years later, when England is fully under Brotherhood control, it would be Edward Kenway who would greet his fellow favored childes with a grin. He would hug his grandson who was now a fellow childe, one of the progenitor's favorite if the rumors were to be believed.

And he would be the one to introduce the Frye twins to Desmond.

And ask that the progenitor reward them.

And Desmond would see the joy on Edward's face. The peace in his eyes.

And they would smile as they say yes.

====================

Decades would pass and humanity will grow. They will develop cures for diseases that once killed hundreds, if not thousands, of them. They will invent objects and techniques that would make their lives easier. Humanity will prosper and destroy itself, over and over again.

And the Brotherhood will remain in the shadows. Forever foiling the plans of the Templars. Taking in thralls to keep them in check while securing their safety.

But there will be humans who will find their way into the Brotherhood.

Who will become part of the Brotherhood.

A girl raised in an orphanage being run by the Brotherhood.

A talented woman with a knack for technology.

A curious man who found the truth among thousands of conspiracies all over the world.

A broken man trying to keep himself together and looking for a place to belong.

A frustrated woman wanting to be acknowledged for the work she has done.

The Brotherhood welcomes them all.

Whether they stay as they are or become a thrall is up to them.

Perhaps...

They might even be rewarded by the progenitor.

#vampire au #everyone's a little dark #okay maybe a bit too dark #they're vampires #and i was raised by buffy the vampire slayer #also love me some vampire hunter d #gothic horror all the way babbbyy #the childe is not a typo #vampire lore: sire and childe #hey if you give me an idea i will force desmond as a major character #thems the rules #look it's me it's bound to be gay #also vampires are gay #i dont make the rules #desmond has a 'they' pronounce because old being beyond human 'comprehension' #but i might have missed a 'he' somewhere #sorry #is it romantic love? is it vampire sire-childe screwed up love? #idk #i am making this up as i go #but seriously #if i actually write a proper fic for this #it's gonna be gay #assassin's creed #desmond miles #fic idea: assassin's creed #i cant tag them all i dont have enough tags #ask and answer #teecup writes/has a plot #minimal editing

[maleyanderecafe]

I think(?) he’s the ML, but the Deon from The Princess’s Doll Shop is showing potential I think (warning bc I think he’s the ML and he an FL are step siblings, but implied to not be raised together. Still a warning if you think it’ll upset you!)

I'll be honest I'm still a little traumatized from reading the Red Fox (the step-siblings had sex with each other and my poor eyes) so I'm still a bit shook from the experience. My general opinion on any type of incest is that I don't like it whatsoever. I'll still read it for the sake of the story but generally, incest lowers my opinion of any story by a lot. In The Princess's Doll Shop, Dean and Kathia are not actually related (Kathia was born before her mom was brought in as a concubine) but the fact that Dean still calls Kathia sister while implying having a romantic interest in her is... well, it's really weird and I'm not a fan of it. I wish he would have just called her by her name instead, but that's just a pet peeve of mine.

Anyways, the story is about Kathia, a princess from the castle moving away to the countryside to open a doll shop, and while the first couple of chapters and the summary make it seem like a light-hearted story, it quickly turns into a much darker story. It's only about 22 chapters currently, but I'm sure it will build up more.

Kathia and her mother are really close and they care for each other, however, one day the king saw Kathia's mother and brought her in as a concubine because of her beauty. Her mother started to sleepwalk and Kathia had to keep an eye on her while she slept sometimes. At some point, Kathia becomes old enough to have a coming of age ceremony and while her mom initially refuses, Kathia goes through with it to try to bring her mother happiness after her mother almost drowns herself while sleepwalking. During her banquet, she meets the king's second concubine and her son, Daniel as well as the crowned prince. Daniel is shown to be reserved and shy (though Kathia is still wary of him) and the crowned prince is a twisted person that harasses Kathia during the banquet. After the banquet, Kathia asks her mother to gift her a doll for her birthday but disappears at night, causing her to worry. The crowned prince shows up and finds Kathia before again harassing her. Kathia's mother conks the crowned prince on the head, killing him, and is tried for murder, while Kathia is forced to pretend she had nothing to do with it. Kathia becomes so stressed that she starts to remember a past self (I guess stress can cause you to remember you've been isekaied) where her brother was more important than her and that the story she read over and over is the world she's been isekaied to. During this time, she remembers the main character, Deon, who becomes the future king. The next day she spots Deon and begs him to help her mother. At first, Deon is uninterested, but out of desperation, Kathia tells him that if he is able to save his mother, she will become his tool. During the trial, Deon speaks up before her mother is tried and suggests that she should become a slave instead. The court agrees, buying more time for Kathia's mother. During this time the second concubine is forcing her son Daniel to gain mana in order to power his dark magic, which requires the sacrifice of a lot of slaves and Daniel suffering to please his mother. The next day, Deon brings in a knight by the name of Troy to help with Kathia's mother's escape, although Troy is incredibly wary of Kathia. During this time we learn about Deon's condition, where he can't see color and as such has a hard time distinguishing people apart as a result. However, upon meeting Kathia, he's finally able to see color from her eyes, causing him to become interested in her. Troy cuts Kathia's throat slightly as a warning, but Kathia reminds Deon that she will become his tool and if she fails, that she wants Deon to kill her. Deon is completely in bewilderment since he was happy that Kathia treated him kindly but also thinks of the idea of him killing her as a declaration that she is his. Kathia makes a blanket for her mother who is currently being held in a cell and her mother reveals that Kathia's dad essentially raped her and that while initially, she didn't care for Kathia, she grew to love her. Kathia is so in distress that she passes out, and when she awakens, they take her mother out to be "enslaved". Right when the two are allowed to have freedom, an army comes to fight Deon. We see that Daniel appears and almost kills Kathia, but fails and kills her mother instead. Daniel returns to his mother, and the second concubine manipulates Daniel into believing that he did the right thing.

When it comes to the story, I was pretty surprised about how dark it got. I think some parts of the plot were pretty predictable (because most of it is set in a flashback, some scenes like the mother's death is expected), but I suppose that's just the nature of how it's told. The art style is very pretty and there's something nice about the linework. Kathia is... an alright protagonist, I think her relationship with her mother is very sweet, but probably what pissed me off the most about her is that she didn't even bother to help Daniel. Besides the fact that Daniel is depicted as a sensitive and soft boy who is tortured and manipulated by her own mother (like dang, I feel extremely sorry for him, I just want to pat his head), Kathia knows how the story goes and knows that Daniel will probably kill the entire castle and takes control and doesn't do anything about it. Even though it's obvious that Kathia knows that Daniel is being tortured and that he's a soft boy, she... Doesn't even talk to him?? Doesn't even try to help him?? Like sure, maybe Kathia only really cares about her mother and not the rest of the court, and perhaps even trying to talk to Daniel is a lost cause because he's so far gone due to his mother's manipulation, but... she doesn't even try?? I feel like if Kathia had also tried to talk to Daniel or maybe console him about what had happened, he would be a powerful ally because not only would she have the power of dark magic, but Daniel could also possibly try to help Katha and Dean save Kathia's mother and obviously he wouldn't have killed Kathia's mother but... No?? Maybe I just feel bad for him because he honestly doesn't deserve all the horrible things that happened to him and I have a soft spot for cute, gentle, and soft boys but still. I'd honestly think that Daniel would be a cute yandere if he somehow fell for Kathia and I really hope it builds up to something like that in the future.

Anyways, enough rambling about Daniel. For Dean there are a couple of moments of yanderes. In the beginning, while in the new countryside, Kathia starts sleepwalking like her mother and Dean catches her before she falls off the rooftop before bringing her to bed and ordering the rest of the group to make it seem like nothing had happened. During this time, Dean seems really possessive over Kathia. The other instance is when Kathia tells Dean that if she fails to be his tool he could kill her, and to him, he sees this as a sign that Kathia is essentially stated that she is his. While these are both possible signs, it's unfortunately too early to tell if he will become a yandere in the future.

Sorry for rambling about Daniel so much and making this into a much longer ask than before, I just am tilted. I guess.

Have a picture of poor Daniel as compensation before he gets tortured into oblivion by his mother.

#asks #male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #recommendation #once again i go on a giant ramble about how something in these isekai story has pissed me off whoops

[katoodlez]

i tried to be productive this morning but i dont think my brain will let me until i do this, so sam and bucky show episode 4 letS GO

i would like to preface this post by saying that I literally got spoilers (before i watched the episode) from liTERALLY EVERYTHING from youtube to gOOGLE CHROME when i was trying to read the nEWS so in order to avoid spoiling it for anyone that hasnt seen it, STOP READING because this episode is inSANE and you don’t want it ruined for you.

Okay with that being said, let’s get started.

1. the first scene in wakanda absolutely deSTROYED ME. ayo helping bucky clear the winter soldier programming from his mind and then the silent shift of emotions on his face as the flashbacks happened and then when he realized he was free was just-- KDSFKSD the aCTING WAS SO GOOD thank you mr sebastian stan

2. bucky telling ayo that Zemo was a means to an end, especially in Wakandan, gave me chills bc it’s a direct parallel of Zemo telling Bucky that he was a means to an end. this show is just so carefully crafted omg

3. karli morgenthau got so much more screentime and development in this episode and i am hERE FOR IT. it’s really intriguing to get a deeper look into the Flag Smasher’s motivations and see a more personal side of their cause as well, especially in the memorial scene.

4. can we just take a moment. we need to take a moment. to just appreciate sam. hIS DIALOGUE IN THIS EPISODE. actually, in the whole show, but eSPECially in this episode just absolutely POPPED OFF. after this episode, I’m fully convinced that sam is 100% without a doubt the best character in this show. whoever wrote his lines is a genius. i love the scene where he talks to Karli, and I hope that they can have another chance to talk without *couGH* jOhn waLKER *coUGH* butting his head in because that conversation was just amazing. i loved how they discussed things they had in common, and a mutual understanding and how sam said “i agree with your fight, but not the way you’re fighting it.” this line was so good. and literally every other part of that conversation. the entire plot would have fallen to shambles by now if it wasn’t for sam so let’s give this man a round of applause please.

5. while we’re talking about sam, I might as well mention that i was very happy to see him in the falcon suit/wings again. he didn’t fly in episode 3 and i missed the action scenes with the wings. i think I gotta give Sam the most creativity points for the fight scenes in this show because he can fight both in the air and on the ground with a set of wings and weaponize them either way and that’s really cool

6. the dora milaje. I LOVE THEM. omg. i was so happy to see Ayo at the end of episode 3 and they just aSSERTED DOMINANCE in this episode and i loved it. their fighting style and weapons and clothing/armor design is just so elegant and mesmerizing to watch. “the dora milaje have jurisdiction wherever the dora milaje find themselves to be” omg. they took no crap from john walker and it was sO SATISFYING

7. on that note, watching walker get his butt kicked by the Dora Milaje while sam, bucky, and zemo just stood there was hilarious and probably one of my favorite scenes in this entire show so far.

8. WHEN AYO DISARMED BUCKY’s VIBRANIUM ARM. OMG. bucky was *surprised pikachu face* and so was I. I really, really hope they run into the wakandans again because there’s definitely a broken trust between them and i want that relationship to be more fully fleshed out and brought to closure too

9. there’s no way i’m making this list without talking about zemo singing to the kids and giving them candy at the beginning of the episode. that kinda gave me “creepy guy who kidnaps kids at the park” kinda vibes but it was also hilarious since Zemo was the only one making any progress on getting info in that scene xd

10. zemo getting away had the same energy as Loki yeeting with the tessaract in Endgame lmao

11. BUCKY WITH A KNIFE. when he caught the knife askdjfk i’ve been waiting for a bucky knife fight this enTIRE SHOW and i finally got it and me very happy  : >>>> (i’m determined to learn how he does the flippy trick w the pocketknife in Winter Soldier)

12. when Karli called Sarah Wilson i got chills. first of all sarah is an absolute fearless qUEEN but also the fact that Karli threatened Sam’s nephews akdfjaksdj pls dont hurt them Marvel

13. the parallel discussions between Zemo and Sam, Lemar and Walker about taking the super soldier serum were really neat. they both hark back to the conversation between Steve Rogers and Dr. Erskine in First Avenger, and i think that was the key turning point in revealing/completely clarifying both Sam and Walker’s true colors, which will now directly contradict each other for the rest of the show. 

14. people say that sam is the character who always tries to reason things out until he has absolutely no options left. i think that really shows through in this episode, and it’s also a good reference point/marker of the other characters’ development. Sam’s determination to talk things through with Karli actually brought them closer together (until sOMEONE decided to intervene coUGH) but his equal determination to keep peace/negotiate with Walker only drove them further apart, which makes me feel that even though karli and the flag smashers are the “villains” in this story, they are definitely not the antagonists (that would be walker, who’s directly trying to work against Sam and Bucky, the protagonists)

15. bucky’s “i know crazy when i see it cuz i am crazy” sent me LOL

16. when lemar died i think everyone just went 0 _ 0. i don’t think Karli intended to kill him when she kicked him into that wall, judging by the way they all ran off after they realized he was dead. tbh i’ve been netural towards lemar this entire time, tho i do appreciate his more pacifist attitude to walker’s explosive impulsiveness. he’s sort of like sam to bucky. but his death really felt like an accidental cross-fire casualty that cause walker to reach his breaking point

17. and lastly the scene with the bloody shield. 0 _ 0. the whole world was watching indeed

alright that’s it for this week. i can’t believe there’s only two episodes left 0 _ 0. to be honest, from our current point of view as fans i feel like this show needs another season, maybe 2. the reason being, I can’t really see a space that Sam and Bucky would fit into in the future of the MCU. Sam, maybe, if he resolves the deal with the Captain America mantle at the end of this show, but I feel like Bucky’s end goal is just to like, retire lmao. but also, the future of the MCU is gonna be really focused on like the more magicky characters like Wanda, Loki and Doctor Strange, and ofc Spiderman, Thor/Guardians and Captain Marvel, and then ppl are saying something abt the young avengers or something. But yeah, as near as i can figure this show seems like it should bring closure for Bucky at least, except i have no clue how they’re going to wrap all this stuff up in 2 episodes. in addition to the mess with Zemo and Walker and Sharon’s whole deal in Madripoor, I hope they also get back to America to bring their issues there full circle, like Bucky’s issue with Nakajima, Sam’s family and their home, and Isaiah Bradley. guess we’ll see, can’t wait for next week already ahhhh

#falcon and the winter soldier #bucky barnes #sam wilson #falcon #winter soldier #marvel #mcu #spoilers #falcon and the winter soldier spoilers #this show is too good

[i-write-sometimes-blog]

Rumours (Daisy Ridley x Reader)

Summary: Daisy and you are dating in secret because of the cameras. During a press panel promoting The Rise of Skywalker your relationship is accidentally discovered.

Words: 1,362

A/N: This was requested by @aleyann like a month ago. Sorry it took me so long, I hope you still like it anyways. (I didn't pasted the request bc it was a bit long.)

Y/F/N stand for "Your full name"

This was so far the biggest event you had attended to promote the movie so far. In the stage the entire main cast was sitting behind the long panel, in front of every person was a small sign with their names and what character they played.

You were sitting in one of the edges of the panel with those characters that were new in the movie, smiling happily at Daisy who was at the other end with the protagonist. Exchanging yearning gazes from time to time, being carefully not to be too obvious. The world couldn’t know you two were dating.

Half of the interview passed without incidents, your castmates answered some fan’s questions and laughed at the host’s jokes.

“Daisy” said the host and you smiled hearing her name. “We heard some rumors about you?” he said.

"What did you hear?” she chuckled.

“Rumour has it you're dating a cast mate” the host said and the audience went a bit wild. You expected that, it was almost a rule to ask her that but still you got a little nervous.

“Is that so?” she said in a playfully tone and then she went silent for a second, preparing herself to answer with a lie.

The first person every fan wanted by her side was Adam, even though he was married people seemed to really wanted them to get together. Then there was John, bright as ever people also wanted him to have something with Daisy. But out of all the movie cast nobody would ever suspect of you, an actress with one of the smallest roles in this big franchise.

It amused you sometimes the way all those people assumed actor's private life. Searching for clues their favorite actors were together, but it was okay, you were willing to deal with that.

Daisy looked at you discretely from the other end of the panel, doubting. You knew how much it hurt her to deny you in front of the cameras, but by this time you were already used to it. So you encouraged her with a subtle wink. Her confident smile was back on her face when she answered the question.

"I think they're just rumours." She said smiling "Because I'm not dating anyone. And I'm not interested in a relationship right now." The audience first reacted a bit disappointed but then they cheered and clapped at her answer. Your lips curved into a tiny smile admiring how much of a good actress she was.

“You just broke the heart of many boys, Daisy.” the host joked, making Daisy as well as you smile even wider, they were really clueless. You forced yourself not to smile when you felt host’s eyes laying on you.

"Alright, next question. This one goes to one of the newest member of the cast." The host announced holding his cards filled with fan's questions. "Y/F/N." The audience cheered as well as your castmates and you gave them a little weave before taking the microphone to your lips.

"Hi, everyone." You said.

"Y/N. We are all excited to have you here tonight and I know you can’t tell us much about your character but we do know she’s with the First Order, right?”

“She is, yeah.” you answered and remembered your limits about how much information they allowed you to share before speaking again. “In this movie we get to know some new faces and I think is very interesting. You’ll see.” you said.

“Okay. This are questions we always ask, which side would you be in, light or dark? and a character you would like to work with.”.

You laughed for a moment thinking how much you wanted to say Rey, but even that small answer could be a danger for both of you.

“I’m gonna choose the light side and for the character…” you paused for a moment. “Yoda.” the audience clapped once again and you allowed yourself to search for Daisy’s beautiful eyes across the panel only to found out they were already focused on you. You felt relieved your questions were easy, nothing deep due the very short appearance of your character in the movie, hoping the interview would end soon so you could get back to her.

The voice of the host dragged you out of your thoughts when he called your name. You looked at him, the man had a smile on his face and he cleared his throat before speaking again.

“Y/N, I have just one last question for you, but I need to know, would you be totally honest with me?”

“I can’t promise you anything, sadly.” you told him “I can’t reveal anything about the movie, you will have to wait to see it.” you answered professionally.

“Okay.” the man shifted on his seat “So, I couldn’t help to notice the way you’re constantly looking at this woman right here.” he gestured towards Daisy. “Is there a reason why you keep staring with such tenderness at Miss Ridley?”

You cursed yourself in your mind as the panic started to rush over your body. You saw by the corner of your eyes Daisy tensing by the question. You forced your brain to work, searching for an excuse to get the host satisfied, hoping he wouldn’t ask more.

“Oh, no reason.” you lied. “I’m just such a fan of the movies and Daisy´s work in this new one is really amazing.” you said and that was not a lie at all.

“Thank you!” she said to the microphone as if you two hadn’t interact before.

“That’s it?” the host questioned. You felt the glances not only of the public but your castmates focused on you. ‘Shit, I screw it!’ you thought.

“Yeah. Such a shame we didn’t really got to work together.” you said but you felt like you were only making things worse.

“Our characters don’t even interact.” she added trying to help you. “I barely spent time with her.”

“Barely?” commented John sitting next to Daisy. “They hardly ever separate. This is the first time I see them apart in months!” he said with a bright smile. Of course he knew about her and you, he was one of your closest friends, it was impossible not to tell him but now you kind of regretted it. Everyone knew he was not the really best at keeping secrets.

“John!” Daisy and you yelled at the same time to make him realize what he had just said. And you saw him closing his eyes for a moment in pure regret.

“Sorry.” he muttered and took his microphone again. “They’re really good friends and…” he started to explain to the audience but Daisy stopped him.

“Enough.” she said and the people went quiet. You watched her as she swallowed hard, you knew stages made her extremely nervous but she looked even more anxious than normally. “Rumours are true, I am dating one of my castmates.” there was a collective gasp in the big conference room, all of them waiting for her words. “It’s her, I’m dating Y/N”

There room went dead silent and it only made the tension on you grow bigger, but she’ve said it. Daisy made your relationship public, she who was the most afraid of them knowing and you understood it. So she saying that in front of hundreds of people and cameras made you feel a bit free, no more hiding or pretending, you could tell everyone that Daisy was with you.

“I guess it’s not a secret anymore.” the sound of your voices spreaded through the crowded room that moments later cheered enthusiastically.

Then you saw Daisy bright smile as she got up her seat and walked behind all your castmates towards you and you stood up receiving her with your arms as you held her there for a moment. Then she leaned to kiss you gently.

The audience went wild applauding your kiss, cheering for both of you. But at the moment you only cared about Daisy, and the amazing feeling being free to love her, even in front of the whole damn world.

#daisy ridley #daisy ridley imagine #daisy ridley x female reader #daisy ridley x reader #daisy request #star wars imagine #star wars tlj #rey star wars #star wars #actress x reader #actor x reader #i-write-sometimes-blog #rey of nowhere #rey x reader #rey #rey of jakku #john boyega #the rise of skywalker #tlj

[ragnarachael]

Cannot get the idea of jasper teaching the reader to ballroom dance out of my tiny brain

TRUST ME

Pairing: Jasper Hale x Reader

Summary: Bella claims she can teach you ballroom dancing, but in reality, she's just setting you up with her boyfriend's brother.

Author’s Ramblings: consider our tiny brains synced, anon 😌 (ok really fast: is the waltz the same thing as ballroom dancing? i hope so bc i think i kinda write the dancing as the waltz instead,, it’s 2:30 am please forgive me) and yes i did get onto my laptop to format this properly, don’t judge

MASTERLIST !    FEEDBACK !  

There was a conversation you had one night when you were all together, just hanging around after school. Bella has talked about her background with ballet and some jazz classes from her childhood to start, which caused many hilarious anecdotes to rise and make you all laugh.

That then caused Edward to mention something about the Charleston, but you knew for a fact it was a joke with how Emmett practically choked on his own laughter. Thus, the two of them started bickering which left you and Bella to finish the conversation.

You didn’t have much dance experience. You shimmy on the dance floor, shuffling awkwardly on your feet. Dancing wasn’t exactly in your vocabulary.

“What do you mean you can’t dance?” Bella questioned. “I’m know you can.”

“Not got a chance,” you quipped with a smirk before gasping when she kicked you. “Hey! High School Musical jokes are funny!”

She rolled her eyes before asking pressing questions like what your type of music is like. You answered with mostly classical music, of course. Your Spotify was filled with instrumentals of catchy pop songs. You much prefer those.

Then she pressed further to ask if you had seen people dance. Obviously you had said yes. You told her you had always wanted to learn how to ballroom dance ever since you saw some romantic horror film late one night. There had been a scene where the protagonist and her eventual lover were to dance smooth enough to keep a candle lit in their joined hands. And you had dreams based on this, you embarrassingly added.

Bella seemed kind and encouraging as you apparently poured your soul out to her. Eventually, the night ended with you excusing yourself to get to bed so you could get to a morning shift for work.

She texted you the next day saying that she could teach you how to ballroom dance. You were suspicious as you read her text during your break. She told you to meet her at a local dance studio that was just in a little town about 30 minutes outside of Forks around 8.

You should have known it was some kind of lie when you saw one of Carlisle’s cars parked in the lot.

You half expected to see Edward, maybe even Rosalie. But you were met with Jasper.

It was then you realized that maybe you should stop telling Bella about yourself at all costs. Part of you thought about turning around and just... leaving. You couldn’t handle being in the same room as your crush. Let alone have him teach you how to dance? In close proximity?

Hell, you may as well combust.

“Hey,” you started gently, deciding to play dumb as you silently hoped he couldn’t hear your heart pounding against your ribcage. “Are you here to have Bella teach you ballroom dancing too?”

Jasper laughed. You blushed at the sound of it reverberating in the empty dance floor.

“She set us up, I see.”

You finally stopped walking just a foot or two away from where Jasper stood with his hands held behind his back. Nervous laughter bubbled out of your throat as you nodded, playing with your keys in hand.

“Looks like it. You know how to ballroom dance?”

“Yes ma’am,” Jasper replied with a slight southern twang teasingly. You rolled your eyes dramatically.

“Alright then.” You moved to the small table that held what looked like Jasper’s keys and his phone and placed your bag next to it, your keys and phone landing right next to his own. You would have to fight down your impending panic, dancing with the guy you’ve been crushing on since the day you met him, but it was fine. You would be fine.

Turns out, you wouldn’t be fine.

One of Jasper’s hands was placed on your lower back, the other holding one of your own hands aloft in the air while your free hand that wasn’t occupied by Jasper’s landed on his broad shoulder.

His face wasn’t too far from your own as he instructed you gently as you tried to get the rhythm down of the steps. You felt so self-conscious every time you stepped on his foot, apologizing profusely. He just hushed you gently and continued to walk you through the choreography again a bit slower before gradually speeding up.

“This is a train wreck,” you huffed gently, taking a moment to pull your hand from his to get your hair out of your face with a hair tie you had on your wrist.

“You’re doing fantastic,” Jasper scoffed, keeping his hand splayed on your lower back while his other hand waited for your own to join it once more. “Just follow my lead.”

“Hard to do that when all I’m thinking of is stepping on your foot or tripping,” you replied. Jasper let out a soft laugh as you cleared your throat and straightened your posture again, slipping your hands back into their rightful spots.

“Then don’t think about it.”

“Wow, thanks. That helps so much.”

You both shared a laugh then before letting your gaze move from Jasper’s face to your feet as you started to try and follow his lead.

You were mumbling the steps under your breath constantly as you moved gracefully around the floor, your eyes never leaving your feet.

Jasper said your name gently, almost breathlessly as you followed his lead.

Your eyes stayed on your feet as you hummed back in reply.

“Look at me,” Jasper demanded gently. “Trust me to lead.”

You wished you could ignore how soft his voice sounded just then. For a bit you did before he said your name again in a playful tone. Finally, you obliged.

Jasper was already looking at you with a smile. You couldn’t help but return it as you both continued to smoothly dance around the room, gradually picking up speed. You started to lean into Jasper’s moves, finally letting him properly lead.

“See what happens when you trust me?” Jasper asked quietly, almost as if you were in a crowded room full of people. You wanted to giggle at his tone but you were far too happy to be doing something you’ve been working at for an hour or two.

“I guess I should trust you more often then, huh?” You questioned back, taking your bottom lip between your teeth as you scanned over his face. Your eyes definitely lingered on his lips for a moment too long.

He didn’t seem to mind as he kept you moving. “Maybe you should.”

“Do you trust me?” You could feel yourself moving closer to Jasper as he seemed to be looking your face over. He was quick to let out a hum with a smug looking smile.

“‘Course.”

The two of you were starting to gradually slow your steps down, feet dragging against the smooth wooden flooring of the studio as your grip tightened on his hand.

“Would you mind if I tried something then?”

“Not at all,” Jasper replied, his fingertips digging into the fabric of your shirt slightly. You watched his eyes dart down your face again before they caught your own again. “I trust you.”

You couldn’t hide the giddy smile you got from his words before you were on your tip-toes, pressing your lips to his.

#the void asked for it #jasper hale #jasper whitlock #jasper cullen #jasper cullen x reader #jasper hale x reader #jasper whitlock x reader #jasper hale x you #twilight x reader #twilight imagine #twilight drabble #yo... i did something 😳😳

[lavenderlattaes]

call me babe. | hwang hyunjin

⇒ summary: you’ve had this thing going on with hyunjin; you called each other babe and acted like a couple for fun. but what happens when he starts liking someone else?

⇒ [college! au, idiots to lovers! au, friends to lovers! au]

⇒ pairing: hwang hyunjin x reader

⇒ word count: 4.4k words (woAh)

⇒ genre:  fluff, with a smidge of angst, i guess

⇒ warnings: swear words, plus clingy and flirty hyunjin and reader lmao

⇒ note:  ajxbwjsk this is lit rally based off my best friend’s friendship with another one of our guy friends but i tweaked it a bit so now it’s purely self-indulgent bc HWANG  H Y U N J I N. honestly this is total word vomit and a complete mess — it’s just random moments of my self-indulgence for hyunjin (i need help) so ignore mistakes bc im a bit of a blind bat and enjoy!  ＼ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ／

“I’m gonna go ahead, see you guys tomorrow,” Hyunjin bids all of you good bye, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder. Everyone momentarily looks up, saying good byes to him. 

Locking class had just ended, but Hyunjin was already in a rush to leave. You stop fixing and put your hands on your hips, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Running off again, I see. Where are you off to, Hwang?” You demand, your chin held up high.

He rolls his eyes, walking closer to you.

“I’m meeting up with Yeji,” he answers and you huff. You push him away, turning around to continue fixing your things.

“Hmm, yeah sure. You’re probably just too lazy to bring me home,” You scoff. You hear Hyunjin sigh behind you and seconds later, his arms are wrapped around your waist, his cheek resting on your back.

“Please don’t be mad, babe. And I’m not being lazy! I really do have something to do with Yeji. We need to finish our choreo for the showcase. If you want, you can wait for me and I’ll bring you home later, yeah?” he answers you, making you smile while rolling your eyes. You turn around in his arms, seeing him pout at you with those pleading, puppy dog eyes of his.

“Nah, it’s okay. I can go with Jisung. Just, stay safe okay? Don’t go home late, I’m going to call Felix and make sure you’re home on time. If not, Felix won’t be able to dab again,” You threaten and he lets out a hearty chuckle, his eyes crinkling.

“Yes, ma’am.” He hugs you tight and you return with equal enthusiasm. You break the hug and he says his final goodbyes to everyone, jogging out of the studio.

Once he’s out, Jisung speaks up. “Why don’t you just date already? I’m tired of you guys calling each other babe and shit.” He complains.

You roll your eyes at him as he comes closer to you. “Why don’t you go date Minho then?” You retort and Jisung huffs.

“Shut up, we’re just friends,” Jisung pokes your cheek. 

“Hmm, okay,” you shake your head at him, and he grins, wrapping an arm around your shoulder.

“I’m going to go write lyrics with Chan and Changbin. You wanna come with?” Jisung asks as he leads you outside.

You shake your head and smile. “That’s fine, I should probably go check on my essay that I sent in for Mr. Kim’s class last week,” you reply.

“Okay, but don’t tell Hyunjin I didn’t bring you home alright? He might beat my ass up,” Jisung pouts and you laugh, hugging him. 

“Don’t worry about him. He’s just being over dramatic,” you reassure him and he laughs. “Okay, gotta go now! Bye, Y/N!” 

You wave good bye and as Jisung’s form becomes smaller the farther away he is from the building, the more you wished you had gone with Hyunjin.

A few days have passed, and Hyunjin’s been spending less and less time with you. Ever since he told you about the dance he’s working on with Yeji, he’s hardly been spending time with you. 

Truth be told, even if you wanted to call him out for it, you can’t. Because honestly, wouldn’t that make you seem clingy? It’s not as if you and Hyunjin are dating anyway. You just had this habit of calling each other ‘babe’ with a lot of flirting involved.

It started off as a simple joke; you accidentally called him babe, since you used to call your girl friends that way back in high school. He laughed it off, saying you could never resist his charms — you probably really couldn’t, but you wouldn’t let him know that. Another time came when you needed to get out of a sticky situation with a guy who just couldn’t understand that you didn’t like him, so when you saw Hyunjin pass by, you called him babe and he helped pretend to be your boyfriend for five minutes.

“Come on, Y/N. Just one date,” the guy who’s name you didn’t even know asks you, stepping closer as you stepped away.

“I’m sorry, but no. I don’t even know you that much and I really can’t,” you try again and he steps closer, taking your hand in his as you try to get away. 

“Why? It’s not as if you’re already taken,” he reasons and at that moment, you see Hyunjin pass by. You pull your hand back and smile.

“Babe, Hyunjin!” You call out and Hyunjin turns to you. He sees the pleading look in your eyes and the way you subtly glance at the stubborn boy beside you. 

Hyunjin winks, letting you know he got the message. He jogs up to you, wrapping an arm around your waist as he kisses your cheek. 

Okay that wasn’t necessary but, thank you.

“What’s up? I was just looking for you,” Hyunjin pokes the tip of your nose, side-eyeing the guy.

“I’m… gonna go now. Forget what I said, Y/N,” the guy awkwardly coughs, walking away, stealing small glances at you and Hyunjin. Hyunjin pulls you closer and watches the guy walk away. 

The guy turns around the corner and Hyunjin snorts, letting his head fall on his shoulder as his cheeks burned red. “You’re lucky I love you, Y/L/N. I wouldn’t have done something like that if it was Jisung,” Hyunjin giggles as you laugh at him.

The whole babe thing just kind of stuck, and while most people thought you two were dating, only your friends knew that you were just playing around. You and Hyunjin sort of used that tactic to “ward off” — his words, not yours — those people who wanted to get into relationships with either of you that you didn’t want. You weren’t up for a relationship yet, seeing as you both were working hard in college to get into a really good company after graduating. You had to fight off any potential distractions and helping each other out by pretending to be a couple seemed like the best option. You both had this joke that the whole calling each other babe thing would end once the both of you started seeing someone officially. 

Anyway.

Currently, dance classes have just ended and you look around to see that everyone’s already left. 

Except for Hyunjin.

“Jinnie.” You call out, walking over to him. Hyunjin opens his arms for you and you step into his embrace. 

“Hi, babe, what’s up ?” He says, grinning. 

You pout at him. “Where do you run off to these days? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” you whine. Hyunjin laughs, making you laugh as well. You sounded so clingy but you didn’t care. Hyunjin’s even worse.

“I, uh, meet up with Yeji to practice our dance.” He replies and you raise an eyebrow.

“Are you really practicing for the showcase?” you ask, stepping away from him, raising your eyebrow playfully and he grins sheepishly. You keep teasing Hyunjin about Yeji, the pretty girl in his other advanced hiphop class, telling him that soon enough, he’d drop the babe on you once he finally gets the balls to ask her out. The poor boy just whined at you.

“Well...” he trails off, scratching the back of his head.

“Aish, whatever. Go to your woman,” you say, sounding like a mom. He grins, hugging and kissing your face. You scrunch up your face, swatting him away.

“Ew, Hyunjin stop,” you whine and he laughs at you. He stops pestering you and he fixes himself up like a little kid would on his first day of school.

“How do I look?” He asks you, and you looked him up and down.

“Like an idiot,” you deadpan. He pouts and you laugh, ruffling his hair.

“You go on and have fun, yeah? Don’t go home too late,” You tell him as he picks up his stuff.

“Yes, mommy.” He mock salutes you, walking out.

“If shit doesn’t work out with Yeji, don’t whine and ask me to come pick you up! Take care, oh and don’t be an idiot, okay?” You call after him and he raises his thumbs up.

“Whatever you say, ma’am!” He calls out. 

Looking out the window, you soon see Hyunjin walking out of the building. He breaks into a jog once you see Yeji standing a few feet away. There’s a smile on her face and she grins, giving him a hug which he reciprocates. Sighing, you lean against the wall and slide down, bringing your legs up to your chest.

You look up and start talking to yourself.

“You’re such an idiot, Y/N”

“Do you really have zero feelings for him?”

“If I did, you think I’d be pushing him towards Yeji?”

“But isn’t that what main protagonists do in films? If they like a person and can’t risk the friendship they push them towards other people?”

You purse your lips, resting your cheek on your knee.

Do you really like Hyunjin? Or are you just bothered by the fact that his attention is on someone else that isn’t you? Didn’t you initiate the entire thing with Yeji, anyway? Do you want Hyunjin, or do you just want the attention that Hyunjin gives you? 

Weeks after that encounter with Hyunjin, he’s been spending ZERO time with you. You were looking for someone to hang out with, since your rehearsals just ended and you had about three hours to kill before your next class. But Hyunjin’s busy practicing with Yeji, and it didn’t help that Jisung’s busy too with his final showcase with Chan and Changbin. All of your friends, Woojin, Seungmin, and Jeongin were all busy rehearsing for their showcase too. Felix and Minho were your only hope since they didn’t have their rehearsals until later, but they weren’t answering their phones. 

“Why buy phones when you won’t answer them,” you mutter, slowly walking away from the auditorium. “Hyunjin would probably try and find some way to hang out with me,” you whine and stop in your tracks.

Damn it.

You do like him. 

“Y/N!” Fuck, speak of the devil. You don’t turn around and speed-walk, trying your best to pretend you didn’t hear him.

“Y/N! Hey, wait up!” Shit, shit, shit. At that moment, the doors to the lecture hall a few steps away open and a crowd of students file out. You walk faster and slide in the huge crowd, losing Hyunjin. His voice drowns out and you soon find yourself in an empty room, locking the door behind you. Looking around, you survey the area and realize it’s the photography room. The photography majors didn’t use the room around this time, so hopefully no one will scold you for being there.

You like Hyunjin. You actually like the idiot. Why else would you compare him to the other guys? Why else would you try and avoid him like the plague like you’re hiding something? You were an open book around him, so he’d definitely see right through you. You’d blow your cover and ruin the best friendship you’ve ever had with anyone.

You flop down onto one of the chairs, running a hand through your hair. Whipping your phone out, you type a message to Jisung.

you: i know u’re probs still w chan and changbin, but what time do rehearsals end?

jisung: i was just about to text you, hyunjin came in looking for you. Where are you?

you: dont tell hyunjin anything. can you come over to the dorms now? 

jisung: i have about fifteen minutes more with chan and changbin. Is that okay?

you: yeah, just. Don’t tell hyunjin or chan or changbin anything. Or any of the guys.

jisung: okay 

You exhale shakily, standing up to leave. You quickly make your way to the dorms, hoping Hyunjin didn’t see you.

“What’s up? Spill.” Jisung says the moment you open the door for him. You lock the door behind him and pull him to sit on your roommate Ryujin’s bed. 

You stare intently at Jisung, trying to find out how you’re going to tell your loudmouth friend. You’d much rather tell Woojin since he definitely wouldn’t tell anyone, but he was unavailable at the moment and Jisung was actually really trustworthy if he wasn’t so loud all the time.

Deciding to just go with it, you blurt out, “I like Hyunjin.”

Jisung smirks, “I knew it.” He’s about to say more, but then pauses, suddenly confused. “So, what’s the problem?”

“He likes Yeji and I can’t risk our friendship. We both agreed to drop the babe thing once we found someone we genuinely liked, and he’s found Yeji. Soon enough, he’s going to tell me he’s dropping the babe and I’m not going to be selfish and admit that I like him. That’ll just ruin everything and I don’t want to ruin the best friendship I’ve ever had with anyone; not that I don’t have great friendships with you guys too, but you know what I mean.” You say all in one breath, Jisung looking at you in awe.

“Do you wanna, maybe join 3RACHA? We can be 4RACHA,” Jisung says.

You stare at him. “Jisung.”

Jisung shrugs, then sighs. “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t see Yeji that way. Besides, they’re both Hwangs. Wouldn’t that be weird?”

You give him a look. “Jisung, you and I both know that last names don’t matter. I mean, look at Song Joong Ki and Song Hye Kyo,” you point out. 

“Didn’t they get divorced around like, August or something?” Jisung looks up in thought.

“Han Jisung!” You whine.

“Okay, sorry, we’re getting off topic. Anyway. Hyunjin doesn’t like Yeji.” Jisung reassures you, leaning back on the wall.

“Well, even if he doesn’t, he’ll never feel the same way for me.” You look out the window, seeing all your friends running around the field, minus you and Jisung. Hyunjin was there too.

“I want to avoid him.” You turn back to Jisung. He looks perplexed at this point.

“And why? Are you insane? You know that avoiding your problems never help, Y/N.”

You sigh. “I can’t let him know I like him, Ji. It will make things worse.”

“But—”

“Please trust me on this. I’ll ignore him only for as long as my feelings are here. I’ll talk to him when I’ve completely moved on. It won’t affect my relationships with you guys. I promise.” You plead, clasping onto Jisung’s hands.

Jisung looks defeated. “I won’t trust you on this one, but I’ll respect your decision. If this is what you want, I’ll go with it. I’ll always be here, okay?”

You give him a grateful smile and he pulls you into a hug. 

“Please don’t get your heart broken, Y/N,” Jisung sighs, and you can only squeeze him tighter.

A month passes by and you’ve been ignoring Hyunjin. During the first week that you didn’t greet him when he entered class, he brushed it off as you not having a good day. However, Hyunjin knew that even if you weren’t in a good mood, you’d come to him all the more. You once told him his hugs made your day better, so the fact that you were ignoring him and not asking for his hugs left him confused. He just let it go, thinking that maybe it’s something really serious. You’d tell him eventually.

The second week that you still didn’t talk to him, he tried asking the guys about it, but none of them knew what was going on with you. You still talked to all of them, except for him. Hyunjin however, did notice you hanging out with Jisung a lot more than you usually did, so he tried asking Jisung, but the boy refused to say anything. 

By the third week, Hyunjin soon thinks that maybe he did something wrong. But every time he tried to think of all the possibilities, he couldn’t come up with anything at all. Did he forget a promise he made with you? Did he say something wrong? Did he borrow your favorite book and lose it or forget to return it or something? Did he eat your secret stash of M n M’s in your dorms? Hyunjin’s sure he’s done none of those.

By the fourth week, Hyunjin gives up when he sees you hugging Jisung. Maybe you had feelings for Jisung and you didn’t know how to confront Hyunjin about the babe thing. Maybe you think it would be weird to continue being so touchy and flirty with Hyunjin now that you’re dating Jisung. 

Your last class had ended for the day, and you’re now just waiting for Jisung and Felix. Jisung had invited you to hang out with him and Felix, since they were going to go relax a bit before facing the showcase which was scheduled to happen next week. 

You’re too lazy to take your backpack off, so you’re just sitting cross-legged on a bench, your backpack still on your shoulders. Your earphones are in, playing really sad Day6 songs you didn’t realize Woojin and Seungmin snuck into your playlist while you read some underrated angsty teen novel you found at a random bottom shelf in the library. It’s around 4pm, so the sun is still high up in the sky, giving you enough light to read. Suddenly, your source of light is blocked and you frown, trying to make out the words. You look up and lock eyes with the one person you’ve been avoiding this whole time.

You gasp and try to stand up, but realize that someone’s tied the ends of your backpack straps to the bench. Fuck. You pull your earphones out and take your backpack off, deciding right there that you can be a total idiot and just abandon your bag there and get it later. 

Yes, you were that desperate to get away from Hwang Hyunjin.

“Y/N, wait.” Hyunjin’s hand shoots out to wrap around your wrist. You freeze and look down at his hand resting on your wrist. His grip is firm, but gentle.

You gulp and slowly turn around. Your eyes meet his hurt and confused ones, your heart aching at the sight.

“Are you dating Jisung?” Hyunjin asks softly and you frown at him.

“Are you dating Yeji?” You answer back with your own question.

“Answer my question first,” Hyunjin sighs and you purse your lips. You shake your head and Hyunjin lets go of your wrist, visibly relaxing,

“I’m not dating Yeji either.” He says. Although you didn’t want to know that, because your stupid, stubborn self refuses to believe that he likes you, you still find yourself feeling relieved.

Hyunjin steps closer to you. 

“What wrong did I do for you to avoid me this long? How big was it that you’d willingly leave your backpack here, when I know that you’d never ever leave it behind even if a zombie apocalypse would suddenly happen because you told me that one time? You even told me you’d leave Felix behind, or maybe sacrifice Changbin, but never your bag. So, what did I do wrong, Y/N? Why have you been avoiding me? It’s driving me crazy,” Hyunjin bombards you with questions.

You purse your lips and shake your head. “I’m not avoiding you. I’ve just been really busy.” You lie right through your teeth.

Hyunjin chuckles humorlessly. “So busy is sitting down on a bench, listening to music and reading books now? You’ve been avoiding me for an entire month, Y/N. Like, blatantly avoiding me!” He snaps. 

That escalated quickly. You’re getting tired of this. The more you look at him, the more it’s getting hard for you too look away. Even with his face in a frown, his eyes filled with frustration and maybe even anger, Hyunjin still looked beautiful to you.

Fuck him and his genes.

You take a huge step back from him, crossing your arms over your chest. “What’s it to you, huh, Hyunjin?!” You glare.

“I just wanted to know why you’re avoiding me, Y/N! What did I even do? Please do enlighten me,” He shouts, frustrated. You’re glad everyone’s either gone home already or still in classes, so no one’s there to witness your fight.

“Can’t I just ignore you because I just don’t want to talk to you?” You say, anger bubbling up inside of you. Or is it your feelings, already on the verge of spilling out of you like vomit? 

“No, Y/N! I know you well enough to know that if you avoid people it’s not because you just don’t feel like it— there’s a reason behind it.” Hyunjin replies, exasperated. 

“Why do you want to know so badly? Why do you care?!” You shout back. You’re tired of this; you’re tired of staying away from him, hoping it’ll get rid of your feelings for him. But the more you stayed away from him, the more your heart yearned for him. You just wanted the words to leave your lips already.

I love you. 

You’d only realized it recently; you don’t just like Hyunjin— you love him. You love the way his eyes crinkle into small crescent moons when he’s genuinely happy. You love his loud, infectious laugh that you can pinpoint even if you were a mile away. You love his hugs, you love how he dances with so much passion because it’s something he loves to do. You love everything about him and it’s driving you insane too. It’s driving you insane that you keep wanting someone who can’t love you back in the same way.

“Because I’m your friend, Y/N! I worry about you, okay? Can I do something to help you? Why don’t you share your problems with me? Please tell me!” Hyunjin pleads with you, his hands coming up to grip your shoulders desperately.

Uh oh.

“No, Hyunjin! You can’t do fucking anything to help me because you’re the reason why I’m doing this, why I’m avoiding you! I love you, I’ve fallen in love with you, and it’s scary. It’s scaring me, okay? I’m scared that you don’t feel the same and it will change everything! You have Yeji now, don’t you? I can’t be selfish and ask you to return my feelings when you’ve already found the one for you,” you blurt everything out, feeling out of breath afterwards. The tears you didn’t know you were holding in start falling freely down your cheeks now. 

You didn’t care anymore. Hyunjin at least deserved to know. You feel better though, because everything that’s been bottled up inside of you is now out in the open. 

Hyunjin stands still in front of you, his face holding an unreadable expression. You’ve always been able to read Hyunjin like an open book, but you can’t decipher what’s going on in that pretty head of his. Every second that passes by that he doesn’t say anything, makes you feel more and more of an idiot for saying anything at all. You sigh, wiping the tears away hastily, but there’s still more. 

“Forget it. Forget I said anything.” You whisper, your voice rough and raspy. You turn around to get your things and get the fuck out of there when Hyunjin suddenly holds you back. 

You sigh. You turn around to face him, “Hyunjin, what—” he cuts you off mid-sentence when his lips crash against yours roughly. The kiss catches you off guard and you almost stumble, but his arms quickly wound around your waist, holding you in place. You’re surprised, but you kiss him back, and he tilts his head to the side to kiss you better. Your tears are still flowing freely, and his arms leave your waist to cup your cheeks, as his thumbs wipe away the tears. Your arms go around his neck, pulling him in closer. He pulls away slightly, before going back in to kiss you again, this time, softer and gentler. The second kiss leaves you lightheaded and you clasp your hands tighter around his neck. Hyunjin’s lips, his oh, so soft and plump lips feel so perfect as they mould against yours. His lips taste like vanilla, and you’re guessing he just ate vanilla ice cream because he knew you liked vanilla and he once told you he’d eat the things you loved — even if he didn’t like it that much, if he missed you.

And you’re just realizing this now, too, that Hyunjin does so many things for you, and because of you. On days when the winter air is particularly cold, he’d bring you an extra pair of gloves because he knows you keep forgetting yours. He buys you hot packs because you easily get cold. You’re always trapped in his hugs because he knows how much you need his body warmth. In the summer, no matter how hot it is, if you want to go out for ice cream, he’d willingly go with you, if it means seeing you all smiley and happy. He always seems to know what you need, whenever you need it.  You realize now that Hyunjin lives for your happiness and he cares about you way too much. 

Maybe he’s always felt the same way for you and you were just too dense and too stubborn to realize that.

When you both pull away for air, he looks at you, your heart beating loudly in your chest. He kisses your forehead as he pulls you in for a hug, his arms going around your shoulders as yours wrap around his waist. You bury your head in his chest and listen to the fast beating of his heart.

Hyunjin suddenly laughs, causing you to snort.

“How’s Yeji doing?” You joke, your hands playing with the ends of his hoodie. Hyunjin chuckles, his chest vibrating as he kisses the crown of your head.

“You know I only have eyes for you, babe.”

“Glad to know we don’t have to drop the babe thing and it’s finally official,” I laugh.

“True. Oh, and by the way?” Hyunjin pulls you back so he can look at you properly. He cups your jaw and tilts your head up, pressing a soft kiss to your lips. He smiles when you pull away and he looks in adoration at the expectant look on your face.

He rests his forehead against yours and nuzzles your nose, making you giggle. “I love you too, Y/N.”

⇒ let me know what you think or hmu with anything under the sun here!

#here's the hyunjin fic i promised you guys lololol #stray kids #stayshub #skz #stray kids x reader #stray kids oneshot #stray kids imagines #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #hwang hyunjin imagines #hwang hyunjin one shot #hwang hyunjin x reader #hyunjin x reader #im sucha sucker for hyunjin :(((( #i love him sm lmao #this is word vomit lmfao #nise writes #hyunjin fluff

[sylkana]

ok @jennystahl asked me about my original story so obviously i had to dump a little. sorry about that

alright SO i've been slowly adding to this story for the past almost 4 years, it's not at all finished nor have i really started to write it in any way i'm bad at plotting and don't know how to write consistently and blah blah ANYWAY i'm still working on lore (i have a handful of other story wips that kind of tie into the same universe as this one) and worldbuilding so excuse me if it's...... bad but uh i'll just start with the main characters and see where we go from there

ok so there's a few different races in this, those being: dragons, "normal" humans + a race of humans that have the blood of dragons mixed with their own (i'm still working on the specifics alright), elves (otherwise known as vishala in this world), fae and a race i'm working on that's currently called the oka which is kind of a mixture of something like a tiefling and orc + wings maybe. alright now let's introduce the main characters with vague information bc i don't want to "spoil" anything LMFAO

nisy valthyra and ezra valthyra are the twin protagonists of this subpar story and also apart of that race of humans that are mixed with dragons that i briefly discussed up there. they're SURPRISE royalty bc i said so and their..... realm? or whatever is currently named haeisa, well, former realm considering it's been destroyed BUT WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT MORE LATER MAYBE

next we have casimir veles and he's just your typical, average human guy ..... or is he? 👀 LOL BUT SERIOUSLY i can't really say a whole lot about him without spoiling literally everything and i mean i won't ever write this probably but you know.... just in case

then there's saige fawnhart who is the vishalan (elven) queen and i've always had this idea for her that she's at war with her husband/king trying to become the sole rightful ruler of the vhisala so uh there's that i guess

next is mathias tarsis, he's human and he's an asshole. that's it. that's all you need to know

then we have yrethya amakiir, she's of the fae or more specifically the unseelie as of right now bc i'm still not 100% sure bc i have a few ideas bouncing around my head but what i DO know is that i want her to have a "monstrous" form that allows her to suck the souls from anyone and all that neat stuff

now onto brey akiona, she's human and a skilled healer but as with casimir i can't say a whole lot bc she has layers alright that are tied with what little plot this story has

and last but definitely not least, we have the baby of my characters as in he's the last one i added to the "main" group and his name is kestrel falck!!! and he's of that race i'm trying to craft aka the oka and he's a scientist and he's adorable and has little protruding teeth and i have plans for him and I JUST LOVE HIM OK

now onto the plot i guess. i'm horrible with plotting ok i get cool little ideas but don't exactly know how to string them all together so they make sense and i'm angry @ my own big dumb brain BUT LETS IGNORE THAT and i'll just tell you some tidbits bc i'm self conscious everyone will think my ideas are stupid. anyway so what i can tell you is that there's dragon gods and for reasons they went into a deep slumber and eventually once nisy and ezra are around and discover that hey not ONLY are we twins but we're apart of this long thought to be dead bloodline so that's cool i guess and also not to spoil everything but they miiiight be a couple of old dragon gods reincarnated ;) but the basic plot revolves around nisy and ezra trying to 1. rebuild their own of haeisa and find their people and care for them and 2. awaken the other remaining dragon gods to help them seal satan away or something and also literally everyone wants them dead lmfao so fun times ahead

ok so this was bad and i'm sorry i didn't go too in-depth but as i said before i'm too nervous that people will hate my ideas 😔

#god. im so vad at explaining my plot. i swear its better than that little blurb thing up there #i SWEAR it is im just...... really self conscious lol anyway #i hope you somehow enjoyed something from this #long post #kenzie.txt

[kuriboo]

so. yugioh vrains is over. the last episode has aired.and with that in mind, with three seasons of this show, i’ve still got a lot of feelings about this show. especially that last episode. so i guess this is sort of the final thoughts and feelings post about yugioh vrains. not the last post in general about yugioh vrains. just the big opinions post, i guess, because there’s a lot.

yugioh vrains was good

yugioh vrains was very good. i liked it a lot. and me liking it a lot is the only criteria here for whether i’ll say it’s good or bad. i liked it! so it’s good.

i’m also very thankful that vrains has broken a curse yugioh has been suffering for awhile now. we’re talking about the dub. and no, i don’t really care that much that the dub censored some bullets, i think it’s funny, but i don’t care otherwise. this is just about general dub quality. zexal’s dub was bad. written bad quite a bit of the time, and a lot of the voice acting was just, not good. arc v, i can’t speak for the writing, because i only have seen like ten episodes of it, which is to be fair more than most people on this website, but the voice acting in arc v is atrocious, it’s worse than zexal. i’ve seen 20 episodes of the vrains dub, and look, i know. i know arc v’s main villain sounded like iago from fucking aladdin, i know that dub yusaku is voiced by someone who did voicework in zexal. but in 20 episodes of vrains, there wasn’t a single voice i didn’t like. the voice acting in vrains is good. and the dub is written well! it’s actually funny! i think i actually laughed more with the vrains dub than the sub for those 20 episodes. you know how the zexal dub tried to be funny every episode but it was just obnoxious? vrains was actually funny. the jokes are actually good. it’s been awhile since yugioh’s been dubbed well, and it was refreshing. the only thing i don’t like about the dub is that it only airs in canada and it’s impossible to watch in like any way online. i’m not done watching the dub btw eventually i’ll be able to watch more and i will watch more and i’ll be back here in this tag. if nothing else, i’m hoping it joins the other yugiohs on hulu or something when the dub’s done in like, two years. and if there’s a vrains manga i’ll definitely read it but like. shrugs on that.

the show’s got big megaman battle network, code lyoko, and the world ends with you vibes. i’m not saying this to knock vrains or anything. i love vrains. but if you like any of those games/shows, and you haven’t given vrains a chance, even if you haven’t watched any other yugioh series, i highly recommend it. the card games in vrains were very secondary to the story itself, and i think that went a long ways here, it worked well. 

so like, how was vrains, how did i feel about it

season one...season one was really good. in hindsight, season one had some good foreshadowing for season three. season one was probably my favorite season, though, but not by much. season one showed yusaku in school the most and i actually loved all the school scenes. revolver’s a really cool and interesting character, and while i’m glad he stopped being a villain after season one and went the sort of anti-hero route, revolver did make a really good villain. uncovering the mystery of the lost incident was fun. a lot of people guessed early on that revolver was both the person yusaku was trying to take down and the person he was trying to save, way before yusaku himself figured it out, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all. i’m pretty sure the show wanted the audience to figure it out before our protagonist, and the reward itself felt pretty rewarding. revolver has cool dragons, yusaku got a cool dragon, ai got insulted a lot, kusanagi was there, definitely a solid season.

season two was easily my least favorite season. bohman and blood shepherd kinda ruined it for me. thoguh, to be fair, blood shepherd didn’t do much. he gave us an excuse to get some takeru flashback, which we could’ve gotten through other means, and he sort of revealed judgement arrows and helped everyone be able to prepare for it, but like, anyone could do that. i hate blood shepherd a lot, but he’s easy for me to forget. i forgot him between episodes a lot, actually, and when he’d show up i’d have to be like, oh that asshole exists. bohman was worse because he was the main antagonist of season two. and he shouldn’t have been. bohman wasn’t a good villain imo! i feel like he wasn’t written super well. i can sort of make him work out in my head, but i don’t like him, and he kept just pulling ideas out that seemingly came from nowhere. he’d make these leaps that were hard for me to follow, and this was after lightning stopped messing with his memories. and since bohman was the main antagonist and because i really didn’t like him, it made it hard for me to enjoy season two. there were other good things in season two. takeru joined the scene in this season, and i love takeru a lot. i require apologies from everyone who didn’t trust my man takeru. lightning was a really good villain (lightning should’ve been the main antagonist imo), was very interesting, and i liked lightning a lot. and hell, haru was alright! i kinda wish they did more with haru. season two wasn’t bad by any means. we also saw the story of how kusanagi and yusaku met in season 2, and those were some of my favorite episodes of the season, along with the yusaku vs kusanagi duel. the story and message was good (though that doesn’t boost it up a ton given season 3 had the same messages) but honestly i just really don’t like bohman.

season 3 is very close to being my favorite season. this is the season of the protagonist having to face against their partner. it happens in like, any yugioh where the protagonist has a partner. vrains didn’t disappoint on that front. this season felt short! season two felt like it dragged on forever and season three felt short. it didn’t necessarily feel like it needed to be longer, when it ended, though. i just wish the show wasn’t over lmao. everyone got baited super hard like episode 1 when everyone thought queen would be the next antagonist after lightning + bohman and then she super wasn’t, which was kinda funny. most of hte time this season i was just yelling at ai to tell me the truth. i loved roboppy and ai this season. and im SO sad about what happened to them!! ai and roboppy were written really well, they made really good villains. i’ll definitely be making more posts about ai in the future. and also, that epilogue though!!! i didn’t get into it when i watched bc i was in a hurry, but!!! jin looks really happy, i love his haircut! and kusanagi is keeping the hot dog truck open so that yusaku still has a place to come home to! im gonna cry!!!! the knights of hanoi are all super good now and i love them. akira’s the ceo of sol!!! it’s what he deserves!!!!! and the whole takeru + kiku scene was really nice. everyone was screaming about that ship being canon now, which i guess it is? i didn’t read it as romantic, i read it as “kiku is a little scared about everything with vrains and takeru is helping her feel safe and secure, like, making sure she doesn’t fall off his hoverboard and shit”. i honestly read it more as takeru still being gay for yusaku while thinking about how cool yusaku is lmao. but i know yusaku + takeru will never be canon, i never thought it would be, and knowing yugioh, takeru + kiku im sure is supposed to be canon so like. it’s not a bad ship. i’m surprised how many people i see like that ship? but it’s just not for me i guess. im happy for yall who wanted this though. and that last scene!!!! we saw ai!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ll save thoughts on that another time i guess, including yusaku post that time skip.

i liked shima a lot this series. i honestly wish there was more of him lmao. i mostly wanted more yusaku + shima interaction, not in terms of shima finding out yusaku was playmaker, i just wanted the two of them to bond more. i wanted to see more of them being friends (read: shima forcing his friendship on yusaku and yusaku reluctantly goes along with it but actually likes it more as time goes on). and i wish we got to see takeru in the duel club at least once. takeru and yusaku both going to one meeting and yusaku sleeps through it and takeru is pumped and like taking notes and shit and shima is just like how can yusaku sleep through it this is the best!!!

aoi....i have mixed feelings on. i liked her a lot in season one, and i liked her a lot in half of season two. i really don’t like the blue maiden avatar (i did like blue girl!), and i preferred the trickstars over marincesses. i did enjoy her figuring out yusaku was playmaker though, that was a fun scene. i like aoi a lot still, love that girl, but after a point i stopped liking what they were doing with her.

they did ghost gal dirty. ghost gal was GREAT in season one. i loved her. and then they gave her a brother, her brother was shit, and everything about ghost gal got thrown out the window so that her character could revolve only around her shit brother. i feel so bad for her. i mean, i kinda get it? this whole thing’s about bonds, a lot of the bonds focused on were familial bonds (either in the blood family or found family sense, there was both). but ghost gal was already developing a sort of family-ish bond with akira and aoi by that point. i never felt like she needed anything else. she still could’ve done cool things in seasons two and three without having a shitstain forced into her life.

im madly in love with kusanagi and if anyone says a single bad thing about him i will stomp you to death with my hooves

i’m running out of people to talk about here i can’t avoid it anymore i’ll talk about blood shepherd now. i hate him. i hate him. he’s an idiot. i’ve yelled about this before and i’ll do it again. some shit happened to him because of malfunctioning ai or whatever. cool. great. now he has a grudge against all ai. that makes no sense. if im playing basketball and i get hit in the head by a basketball (by accident) am i gonna blame the basketball? no, i’ll either blame the person who threw it or myself for not noticing it and letting myself get hit. if i sprain my wrist playing volleyball am i gonna get mad at the volleyball? no, i’m mad at myself for messing up and playing in a way that caused that injury. if i get in a car accident because my car brake stops working, am i going to blame the car itself? maybe a little, but not as much as either the manufacturer or, if i recently had work done on the brake, the mechanic i visited. see, these things are all inanimate objects with no malicious intent or free will. since vrains is one of those shows, it may sound cruel comparing an AI to a car or a basketball. but the ignis (all generations, we’ll include pandor and bohman and haru in here for simplicitiy’s sake) are a special case. the ignis specifically stand out because they were made with free will. other artificial intelligence does not have that. it cannot have malicious intent. artificial intelligence cannot do anything it is not programmed to be able to do. it cannot hurt or kill someone, unless it is either programmed to have that function, or you’re looking at an ignis. and blood shepherd KNOWS THIS, because he became a hacker, and even REPROGRAMMED AN AI THAT WASNT SUPPOSED TO LIE TO LIE FOR HIM. along the way, he would’ve had to learn that somewhere. an ai malfunctioned and caused blood shepherd and his mom to get in a car accident. the ai itself isn’t to blame for that! that’s the fault of whoever made it!! or if the car was hacked to cause that problem, it’s the car manufacturer’s fault! you blame those people!!! and if blood shepherd went after those groups it’d be fine! instead he goes after artificial intelligences because he’s the biggest fucking idiot the world has ever seen. this does not make sense, even in the vrains universe, because again, the ignis are the only ai with free will and who can make their own decisions. any other ai cannot do something like this on purpose. the solution is to make ai better, not get rid of them. the solution is to improve security. not get rid of ai. at this point ai is so ingrained in society that you’re not gonna accomplish that anyway. oh, and i hate blood shepherd for what he did to ghost gal’s character. other than that, he was cool for two episodes before we learned his bullshit backstory, and he hasn’t done a single thing i liked since except he died twice, and i liked those parts. i fucking HATE blood shepherd. easily one of the worst yugioh characters ever. i could rant on about bohman, too, but im tired.

i don’t have bad things to say about a lot of characters. yusaku, kusanagi, jin, ai, roboppy, revolver, lightning, aqua, akira, earth, go onizuka, windy, i don’t really have bad things to say about them now that the series is over. i liked them a lot!!! they were really good. 

i guess the bottom line of this is, i wish yugioh treated its girls and its “joke characters” or “comic relief characters” better. and i wish bohman and blood shepherd didn’t exist, or were executed better. other than that, very solid.

if you were curious about my preferred ships here, yusaku + takeru is the best ship this show has to offer and it’s a shame more people don’t like it, and miyu + aoi is really good. anything else is like, okay, but i don’t love it. the show’s most popular ships are fine but not for me. yusaku + ryoken is okay but doesn’t really work in universe for me, i don’t love it but it’s fine, and it’s aight in a like real au setting. i don’t think there’s any ships i don’t really like, not like, other than the obvious. but these two are the best. 

all in all, vrains was really good. this show helped me through some real bad times, and will continue to do so as bad times continue. i love it lots, it holds a special place in my heart, and im glad i was able to watch it. im excited for whatever yugioh has to offer next, especially following this, because vrains is definitely one of my favorite yugioh series over all. it was a lot of fun and made me suffer and cry a lot and it was just...a good time. please watch it if you haven’t. thanks for going on this journey with me. i’ll probably end up talking more about bigger characters like yusaku and ryoken and takeru and kusanagi and ai more in different posts. ive talked enough here already

#vrains liveblog #long post 235

[softshelltaakos]

what’s up everybody! it’s time for part 2 of my taz graphic novel review.

part one covered (most of) my beef with the writing and storytelling choices. this part is gonna cover character designs!!! you should know going into this that my opinions are not positive. this post is also a lot less analytical in tone than part 1, because art is not my forte.

disclaimer: i love the mcelroys. i truly do. taz has gotten me through some very difficult stuff and i have a tattoo. all this to say i’m not doing this because i hate them or because i like hating things. if you feel the need to message me about how i am overreacting, specifically to green taako, or about how i should just calm down and ignore it, or about how it’s sad that i’m getting so worked up instead of just enjoying the show, i’ve heard it and i don’t care. you will not be taken seriously. save yourself the energy.

there are spoilers for the graphic novel under the cut.

alright. i’m getting the elephant in the room out of the way first because it’s the most important thing to address, and once it’s out of my system i’ll feel better goofing on the rest of the designs. as i mentioned in the disclaimer: Green Taako Is Bad.

[ID: a panel focusing on taako. he’s skinny and minty green with chin-length light blonde hair and a big, pointy nose.]

now, a lot of people have made posts about this before, and i’m not saying anything new about it by any means. i’m also not the most equipped person to talk about why green taako is bad, because i’m a white gentile (i’ve heard conflicting opinions on whether or not green taako is antisemitic, but it feels remiss not to mention that there’s been discussion) and therefore not part of any groups affected by this whole debacle, but in short: when pressed for more diversity, specifically in taako’s case as a pretty large chunk of his arc involves literally inventing a mexican cultural food (fun note: that’s never mentioned in this book,) carey pietsch decided he should be green and the mcelroys were down with it. this is not an issue that cropped up when this design was released; it was something that there was already a ton of discourse surrounding, and it should never have gotten concepts drawn, let alone made it to publish.

this article by natt cuesta has been linked before on the subject, and i think it’s a good, concise explanation of why green taako is bad as well as why aracial characters in general are bad. this is a racist design.

now that we’ve gotten those ethical ramifications out of the way... i’m sorry, but it’s an ugly design, lmao. he looks like a palette-swapped version of pearl from steven universe with less character. the ONLY thing about this design that i like is the prominent lower lashes, if only because they’re the only thing that keeps him from looking entirely generic. because, like, y’all, when has anything about taako been generic?

[ID: a panel focusing on magnus. he’s a muscular fair-skinned man with auburn hair, a bushy beard, and a scar over his left eye.]

generic is a word that’s going to come up a lot over the course of this review, because i genuinely can’t think of a more apt descriptor for pietsch’s designs. it feels like she went with the lowest common denominator of every character’s design, a synthesis of all of the most popular (and most boring) ones, except in instances where that would lend any personality to a character’s design. magnus fits what brief description we’re given in the podcast: auburn hair. beard. big. and i guess that’s all you need?

i understand that by appealing to the most common and basic designs for these characters you’re inviting a lot less ire than you might by going with something more individual, so i get the motivation behind it -- or i would, if her designs hadn’t always been about this dull. but it’s bizarre to me that in a story as unique as the balance campaign, we ended up with the most basic ass Fantasy Hero lookin’ dude in the world as one of our protagonists.

i just really don’t have a lot to say about this. i’m just bored by it.

[ID: a panel of merle. he has medium-dark skin with a smooth white bun and beard.]

merle is simultaneously the design i like most out of the boys and the one that throws me the most, because i feel like he’s the most out on a limb one. which... oof. most merle designs i see give him a floral motif (i guess he has a few petals in his hair, maybe?) and big coke-bottle glasses, and i miss those things with this design, but at least it doesn’t totally feel like pietsch threw every merle she could get her hands on into a blender and poured it out on a page, although honestly, that might have been more satisfying. people do some really fun shit with their merle designs, but again, he’s. generic.

as the cuesta article mentions, with how much of an issue it was to get any of the boys to be poc in the first place and in conjunction with minty up there, this design also feels like tokenism -- an appeasement rather than an honest attempt at diversity or god forbid because the artist actually headcanons merle as a person of color. personally, i wish that she’d gone a step beyond re-coloring his skin and idk given him a natural hairstyle or something. he still feels very much like a recolor to me rather than a character who was designed as a person of color from the beginning.

i feel like he looks more like a cleric than he looks like a merle, which i feel like is pretty contradictory to who merle is.

[ID: a cutaway showing griffin, a white man with brown hair and glasses wearing a collared shirt.]

i’ve said before that it feels a little odd to talk about her design of a real person, so i’ll keep this brief, but... you know how every drawing of a basic white dude looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how that one arthur character looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how everyone is constantly messaging mysillycomics about how her avatar looks like griffin mcelroy?

how did carey pietsch manage to actively attempt to draw griffin mcelroy and miss the mark? it boggles the mind. he doesn’t not look like griffin, i guess, but he doesn’t look like griffin, either. i don’t know, man

[ID: a generic gerblin. he has yellowy-green skin, slight tusks or fangs, and weird, nubby little horn-type things.]

i hate these gerblins. they are ugly. next

[ID: two images of klaarg/g’nash. he’s a bugbear with brown fur and yellow eyes as well as a mouth full of pointy teeth. in the first image he looks pissed off; in the second he’s starry-eyed and delighted.]

klaarg is probably my favorite design in the book, and that’s just because he looks like a cute dog for most of the time he’s on the page. he’s fluffy and i love klaarg anyway, so like. did not take a lot to reach this mark. especially considering how i feel about most of the other designs lmfao

i do definitely think he keeps up the trend of looking generic, though.

[ID: an image of barry bluejeans. he looks like tom arnold, kind of; he’s square-jawed and white with thick-rimmed glasses. he also has a light brown mullet.]

i hate this. i hate the mullet. i’m sorry, y’all, i really, truly, cannot stand the mullet. i don’t feel like barry has mullet energy. i feel like it’s too powerful a move for him. it wouldn’t be a good move, mind you, but it would be a big one. i don’t know y’all it’s just bad

[ID: an image of killian. she’s a green-skinned orc woman with prominent eyelashes, eyebrows, and tusks, and straight brown hair.]

i can’t have been the only one who was hoping for a badass, visibly muscular, maybe even butch killian design, right? that wasn’t just me being a big old lesbian, that’s a pretty common theme of killian designs? i guess kudos for going out on a limb again, but then, like, take the kudos back for going out on the most boring limb possible again. i could hang with the face if her hair wasn’t so boring, but it’s... it’s so boring

[ID: an image of magic brian. he’s a drow with long white hair and an oblong face and oddly shaped nose.]

for how many of her designs are syntheses of popular ones, i..... don’t understand how this happened. i don’t understand how whimiscal and flamboyant magic brian who’s often drawn as taako-but-a-goth-dark-elf ended up looking like this. he looks like he used to play football and got his nose busted up and peaked in fantasy high school. he looks like the first quarter of a monster factory video where the thing’s just ugly but doesn’t have a personality or any endearing traits yet. he didn’t have to be the goth twink we all know he is but what.......... is this

[ID: an image of gundren rockseeker/bogard. he’s a light-skinned dwarf with dark long hair and a matching beard.]

..........listen i know they’re cousins and distant cousins at that but all of merle’s cousins are light-skinned and, like, not to say that that can’t happen but having them be anywhere near merle’s skin tone would’ve been such an easy way to help bolster the obviously inaccurate idea that this is a work concerned with diverse character designs, or rather to help ppl claim it was being bolstered, and yet

[ID: avi, a fair-skinned man with long dark hair kept up in a ponytail and slight scruff on his face.]

i feel like maybe avi is intended to be east asian so i think at this point that brings the count up to a whole two characters of color. we’re almost done with the book. cool. he’s cute, i guess, but guess what word i’m about to say again (it’s generic)

[ID: a panel of several unnamed cameo characters. from right to left: carey fangbattle, a light blue dragonborn; brad bradson, a green orc man with a long brown ponytail; and presumably lucas miller, a tan human with glasses and dark hair.]

ok. deep breaths.

first off, there’s another panel w these three as well as boyland, who looks fine, but i didn’t grab that one bc it’s harder to make out detail. carey is cute. brad is fine.

i assume the third guy is lucas miller because i’m not entirely sure who else he would be, and... oof! as you may know i can’t stand lucas miller, which has nothing to do with his necromancy or nerdiness and everything to do with the various human rights violations he commits in the small time he’s got focus as well as the fact that he’s got a theoretical redemption arc that’s not actually an arc so much as us being told he’s better now. lucas is an entitled jackass who repeatedly uses other people’s bodies and minds without their consent, from the obvious offense of using the bugbears as brainwashed chore-doers (read: slaves) to the less-oft discussed dragging of noelle and others out of the astral plane into robot bodies, again to do his chores for him. because of this, it has always sat very uncomfortably with me when people make lucas a poc, because everything about him screams Shitty White Nerd Boy to me. it sits extra uncomfortably coming from carey pietsch, given how white all of her other designs are.

it’s a little hard to tell because i took all these pics with my phone camera in my room’s lighting so they’re not super high fidelity or anything, but pietsch’s lucas is noticeably darker than any other character we’ve seen so far save merle. maybe he’s just a white guy with a tan, but all the same, it strikes me as incredibly skeevy to have one of so few characters of color be this fucking guy.

[ID: johann, a black man with an oblong face and textured dark hair.]

johann’s design is fine, although this is a similar face shape to that brian from earlier and i just. i don’t. understand it. it’s not especially interesting, but hey, at least he’s not another generic white guy.

that being said, as i mentioned in part 1 of this review, johann’s role is severely cut in this -- he’s reduced to three panels, when in the show itself he’s the one who escorts the boys to the voidfish’s chamber and inoculates them. as i mentioned in that post i understand that they shifted it some to give lucretia a more prominent entrance, but as i also mentioned in that post, they should have compensated for that. three panels.

johann is not a character with a great deal of screentime as it is, but he’s a character with a major impact. he is the reason story and song happens. his song serves as a direct foil to john’s nihilistic conversion of his own home plane into the hunger. the fact that he’s been reduced to three panels with little to no characterization at this point, especially in conjunction with the fact that he’s one of very few poc, makes me really, really uncomfortable. avi is in more panels in this book than johann is, and while i love avi and as i said i am parsing him as an asian dude, he’s also still light-skinned enough and the style is nondescript enough that there are definitely people who will parse him as white, and also, avi’s role in the story is not as big as johann’s.

it doesn’t sit right with me.

[ID: an image of davenport, a fair-skinned man with a big red mustache and slicked back red hair.]

ginger davenport with a big mustache. groundbreaking.

[ID: an image of lucretia, a slender black woman with short white hair dressed in blue layers.]

and finally, lucretia. now, i’m biased, and it’s hard for me to see a lucretia design i don’t like. i also think that this is, compared to a lot of the others at least, one of the more interesting designs in the book, at least as far as her clothes go. it’s not a long robe that would be hard to move in, and i appreciate that -- it strikes me as a pretty practical outfit while also being ornamental and wizard-y. and she’s pretty, and she’s not whitewashed, and that’s all great. i like her earrings.

all that being said, i feel like it’s not enough. luc’s hair continues a theme with merle’s and johann’s (as well as the preview we’ve seen of angus,) which is that it strikes me as very low-effort on pietsch’s part. it’s short and it’s definitely not straight, but it doesn’t feel to me like it had as much thought put into it as, say, minty green taako’s hair. we could’ve had a lucretia with a big beautiful afro, or long box braids, or so many other natural hairstyles; we got this. it’s not bad, but i do think it’s disappointing. without going looking for it and without being a person who reads a great deal about character design, i’ve seen a fair amount of discussion from black women (artists, writers, and none of the above) about the portrayal of black women as it pertains to their hair. they’re never designed to be as feminine as their white counterparts. their hair is never treated with the same amount of detail or respect as their white counterparts. it’s short, maybe curly if you’re lucky.

i’m gonna circle back quickly to killian’s hair. it’s long and smooth and kept down, despite the fact that killian is an action-oriented women and might not want it to be in her face all the time -- it could have at least been braided or in a bun. it could’ve been short! and that would’ve made sense. and i don’t mean to say that lucretia couldn’t have short hair, but she’s a very elegant woman whose dress is described as intricate. she wears business regalia. she could have any number of hairstyles, from something elaborate to something simple but more out-of-the-box than this, but she doesn’t. i found this on a quick hunt through my ref tag -- it’s a tutorial for drawing black folks with just a small selection of interesting things you can do with afrotextured hair. these resources aren’t hard to find! and i’m doing this for fun -- carey pietsch is a professional artist who was paid for these designs. if she’d put in more than the bare minimum effort, we could’ve had some really interesting shit going on, but she didn’t.

and that’s the core of the issue here. i truly do not feel like pietsch put the same amount of care into the designs for the few characters of color we see as she did into the white ones, and that’s upsetting and emblematic of a larger problem in the work: neither pietsch nor the mcelroys put in very much care at all for the fans of color who spoke up and asked for representation.i know i said i was getting taako out of the way first so the majority of the post could be goof-heavy, but goddamn, y’all, it’s hard to goof about when it’s so blatantly shitty. pietsch’s designs are boring at best and racist at worst, not to mention conspicuously lacking in anyone who is not skinny, muscular, or a dwarf. people have praised this thing so uncritically, including people whose opinions i generally really respect, as if the fact that the mcelroys signing off on green taako made it above reproach.

it didn’t, by the way. there’s no such thing as an unproblematic fav, because everybody fucks something up now and then, but even then, this is a pretty egregious fuck-up! and it was willful!

i’m not saying y’all need to burn your copies of the gn or stop listening to the mcelroys entirely or anything of the sort -- you may remember the disclaimer at the top of the post where i say i really, really love them, and more specifically, i really love taz: balance. but i am BEGGING YOU to think critically about their work. good, good boys can do bad, bad things. white people can produce work that’s racist even if they’re gay women. it’s not mean to critique the boys and it’s not homophobic (or god forbid reverse racist, which is still not a real thing) to critique carey.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the real kicker of this whole thing for me is that there’s a small fanart gallery in the back of the book. most of them aren’t labeled with the artist’s handles, just their names, but there are some truly beautiful pieces featuring diverse designs -- galacticjonah and milkychai both have beautiful latino taakos featured! galacticjonah’s is fat, too! but even after the backlash against green taako, even aside from that being the design that people are going to accept as canonical, there are pieces in the gallery of green taako, as if doubling down on it was the right move.

and by the way, yeah, i’ve read griffin’s apology. but i thought we all learned in kindergarten that an apology doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.

#prim.txt #tazposting #tazmeta #taz: balance #taz balance #taz graphic novel

[lilietsblog]

GHOST TRICK: THE BIG FINALE

so I finished the game yesterday all on my lonesome without internet

why yes I am perfectly fine and not emotionally compromised in the slightest

enjoy my screaming

IT'S GHOST TRICKING TIME which is to say it's ghost tricking time without internet so I'm doing this in wordpad tumblr really needs an 'import rtf' function >_>

SO from what I remember, when last we left off I was about to try to figure out how the fuck a knitted cap and a helmet are going to help me stop a bullet LET'S DIVE RIGHT BACK INTO THIS FOLKS

I still love how Sissel just ignores the dog's little 'WHATS A HOSTAGE O NO' instead of digging into explaining it

oh thank god the game DOES remember ive read this text before

...oh, I forgot how I did this the last time O WELL

all right, so I remember swiveling the lamp and dropping the hard hat, then when the knitted cap is over here I can swap it with the book and get it on the hook but how did I get the knitted cap over here

aha, he looked away for a moment, the helmet part is done what the fuck do i do now

AHA okay, so now i very quickly cart the ladder back and forth, I think I remember this

fuck, he noticed me, okay don't swivel the lamp while he's watching, swivel it while he's still looking away

I gotta note the 'I don't know why you're wearing my face' part HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

fuck, nope, I can't swivel the lamp back at that moment because he notices it clattering and turns right around FUCK OKAY LET'S TRY TO DO IT WITH THE LAMP THERE

ugh, if only I could do shit during the cutscene while he rolls away >_>

OK I SHOULD HAVE HAD MORE TRUST IN MISSILE HE IS GREAT AND A VERY GOOD DOG AND CAN AIM FOR SPLIT SECOND TIMING OF A BULLET BEING IN THE AIR OKAY

haha, and the knitted hat still hit Cabanela with enough velocity to knock him over I love this and I particularly love his dramatic leg up in the air he doesn't evne know what's happening he just aims to be the most dramatic possible at all times and it's really helping us out <3

'i love knitted hats... so warm, and most of all, so SOFT' <3 <3 <3

god Missile is so good this is pain IS THE DAWN DEADLINE A LIE MAYBE DID RAY JUST SAY THAT TO GET SISSEL'S BUTT MOVING I DON'T KNOW

oh yeah Cabanela's still got broken bones all over I kind of forgot about that

oh ok, looks less like broken and more like just really fucking bruised, becuase in that movement he's put pressure on all limb bones and nothing bent out of shape, so that's good

lmao and Cabanela's just like 'BUT IF I WAS KILLED IN THAT EXPLOSION THE SITUATION WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER' I I don't think it would necessarily work out that way, considering how much difficulty our protagonist was having saving just the professor :x

oh hey we've got our next source of information! should be quite a wellspring if Sissel remembers everything he should ask

yeeep Cabanela you FUCKED UP

oh, the gun :x

HON IM PRETTY SURE THE FIRST PART IS MORE IMPORTANT THE PART WHERE YOU TRIED TO SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF HIM CORNERED RATS BITE THIS IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY YOUR FAULT, ALL OF IT

aha, those cases, okay

and Cabanela was doing the thing because of Jowd that makes sense -_- kind of

yep, that one little snag kind of puts a question mark on the whole thing alright, that almost makes sense? kind of? makes Cabanela kind of a selfish butt doing this for his own obsession rather than for personally Jowd but makes sense

ok, the bringing him to justice minister to buy time thing actually does make a lot of sense it wasn't A LOT of time that he bought but it was just enough and that's what counts

oh hey, this guy used to have the job that the blue fake stole? (and yeah sounds like blue guys are just foreigners -_- bc they couldnt find spies that didnt stand out visually or anything)

hum not a scratch, huh regenerating dead body, okay

oh come ON Sissel don't be surprised now that part was obvious from the moment he said the corpse disappeared the meteorite's radiation, okay, quite interesting :D

"it was like a meteorite had struck me on the head" so, has that been a cause of death today yet, because if it hasn't, this looks like foreshadowing -_-

hum, so the gun would have been loaded because he controlled Kamila, which she then wouldn't have a clear memory of makes sense

HI LYNNE JUST IN TIME

arrest her to keep her safe, that actually makes perfect sense IF ONLY IT HAD WORKED LMAO no wonder pigeon guy roasted him for that in the deleted timeline XD

"while he was at it" <3 <3 <3

awwww pigeon guy was friends with him too <3

hee right on top of his striped jumpsuit honestly he looked less escaped-from-prison-ish in the paint-splattered robe thing XD

a present, huh?

awww see Sissel you don't feel lonely and that's what counts

ALRIGHT THEN :D LET'S FUCKING GO :D AND, UH, DO SOMETHING, I GUESS I love how out of proportion Sissel's powers are rewind time, talk to dead people... and move small objects a little

so, uh, Sissel, are you sure there's answers for YOU over there or did you just get into habit of telling this to yourself to feel better

okay well how the fuck did Jowd infiltrate a fucking SUBMARINE like, I just want to know the physics of how this happened?

omfg the bullet had a radio transmitter well, I have a newfound respect for Cabanela, I gotta admit like I already respected him but I just figured he shot the guy out of a desperate 'can't do anything else might as well try this' urge to do SOMETHING but nope he had a plan (which would have worked even with him dead)

wow, and he actually gave the thing to Jowd beforehand n i c e

wow, okay, that's stealthy

aha, and he can totally leave his body and wander around freely I think that was already confirmed but it's nice to know for even surer

wow, okay, what the fuck re: that thing reaching up from below that definitely looked like... something else for a moment there 0.0

aand okay the meteorite is possible to extract from his body I wonder if evil!Sissel actually knew that... or if that actually did anything to him :D

okay, what the FUCK and how many more people are dead now

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW MISSILE IS HERE TOOOOOOOO

the phone is ringing, how convenient :D

ooohkay this is tricky

so, why the fuck were there baseball and basketball balls hanging in nets under the ceiling on a submarine ... ... you know what I don't want to know

wait, Kamila can't hear him? oh, right, over the phone ghosts communicate by close range telepathy

aaand this makes the FIFTH time Lynne's dead tonight! or is it sixth? did i lose track somewhere?

AWWWW THIS SCENE IS LIKE AN OVERDOSE OF CUTE

'i wonder what happened THIS TIME' yep lmao

no actually 'i dont remember what happened after that' sounds like evil!Sissel to me, personally

but do you know what this wheel does Sissel are you sure turning it is a good idea

"I just sort of blacked out, the next thing I knew, I was dead" <3 <3 <3

"now it's all making even less sense than before" AND THAT'S SAYING *SOMETHING*

but actually okay yea this does kind of sound like an explosion that killed Lynne and knocked Kamila out

aaand nope I was absolutely correct )=

can this guy only puppet one body at a time? couldn't he have just possessed Lynne and had her slit her own throat or shoot herself or hang herself or something? that sounds a lot more productive than having a little girl fight her I mean, even if he only can puppet one body at a time, puppetting Lynne would have been a lot more productive overall, is there a reason he can't?...

or does he just love to do things in the most convoluted and roundabout manner typical to villains everywhere -_-

"nobody ever calls the dead" ARGUABLE a number of phone calls has been made this night specifically for the purpose of putting our!Sissel on the line

aand okay :D looks like the blue assholes saved Lynne just in time, sort of ...for a certain definition of 'saved'

so anyway this guy said something like 'you cannot possibly comprehend my suffering' so it would be funny if he was just a random dumbass that a bad thing hapened to one (1) time, which granted also killed him, but all the misery since then has been of his own making and he's put every single person involved in the events through worse just over the course of tonight, and simply has no sense of scale, perspective or proportion I think that would be great if the story went there XD EDITOR'S NOTE IN RETROSPECT: the story didn't go there and that was not fucking okay (it's dead women in the fridge again!)

and Sissel can't understand revenge as a concept SOUL TWINSIES WITH ME OR WHAT

lmao Lynne is starting to get touchy about how many times she's needed rescue lately XD

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHY CAN'T I REACH FOR ANYTHING YET also, interesting to note that in the 4 minutes ago past, neither Lynne nor Kamila have a core looks like Sissel's interaction with this realm is limited after all, and not only by phones there's v interesting existential fuckery going on here, of the exact sort I ABSOLUTELY LOVE

oh THERE we go 'nobody ever calls the dead' ARGUABLE again and I love Lynne's signature instant-snap-into-hands-over-head animation + pose Good Reflexes

ALRIGHT, FIDDLING WITH RANDOM SHIT WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT IT MIGHT DO TIME ...and that sure worked fast

hum, a random mechanic, alright

oh hon that's a, um, what's the opposite of exaggeration I know this word in Russian >_> over...littlification? that 'restless ghosts onboard' THAT'S ONE WAY TO PUT THAT

lmao that was one odd fate change

alright, found the temsik fragment capsule, I see yay unexpectedly strong wastebucket lids (seriously, that's a whole freaking basketball, there's a reason the nets worked like that lmao)

alright, just watching the cutscene for now, that's fair this guy sure looks like he's going to abandon his entire crew and blow up the sub or something

"farewell, sir" WELL THAT DID NOT SOUND QUITE RIGHT

alright, and we're left in the capsule rather than the fragment which apparently did not have a core of its own for some reason

OMFG THERE'S A LITTLE RAT IN THE TORPEDO ARE WE GOING TO HAVE A RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE INVOLVING A SMALL RODENT AGAIN BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE BEST KIND BUT ALSO THIS IS NOT HOW TORPEDOS WORK BUT ALSO HI RAT!!!

yeah exactly thanks Sissel! how the FUCK did it get here also I love that the characters DO pay attention to the wellbeing of innocent rats in this game <3

well, you COULD just try to get it to blow up earlier, in the water you'd be stuck but you'd be heroes, or something well, Lynne would go back to her body, Sissel would be stuck :D oh, and the rat would die, that's the bad news

YEAH LET'S SAVE THE RATTIE FIRST if this time the rat is going to be in the way rather than helping, well, I REALLY DO RESPECT THAT LET'S SAVE THE RAT

alright, after some trial and error I DID manage to get both weights in the same position (mostly by luck) and throw off the rat NOW TO SAFETY

alright, this looks promising OKAY IT ALSO LOOKS LIKE KAMILA AND LYNNE MIGHT BE SAFE FROM EVIL!SISSEL NOW THAT'S GOOD NEWS

yusss caring about rats ftw <3

that's what missiles do, huh they're unstoppable i dont know who it is i hear there but Missile is great yes

well, whatever this is, our!Sissel just turned it on maybe it's pumps to remove water!... not that they'll do much against an unplugged breach but

aha, okay, won't move for long

this movement through a machine's gears feels like the purest expression of the game's premise since the junkyard tricks at the very beginning <3

the way Kamila's speech kinda fades in from white? that worries me

...eeeyup

god but I love this game's animation. this little one of Lynne hoisting Kamila up on her back? it feels, like, PERFECTLY balanced with their weights and Lynne's strength and everything <3 <3 <3

oh my god Lynne why couldn't you just... be able to swim not that it would help much with Kamila unconscious but

oh my god Lynne is literally right here why do I still have trouble moving around freely???

oh, found it!

wow, she's climbing one-handed while carrying Kamila, that's some serious upper body strength <3

W E L P

YEP THAT'S SOME SERIOUS STRENGTH THAT SHE DIDNT JUST FUCKING FALL NOR DROP KAMILA

yeeep okay WOW

ARE YOU BOTH GOING TO DIE NOW OR WHAT okay, no, just fall, and not even in the water that's good news

LYNNE THIS IS NOT A POSE YOU WANT TO BE IN RIGHT NOW unless you're actually holding yourself against that shit in the background with your left hand and I just can't see it I guess

...nope, she was holding her chin LYNNE NO

MISSILE HURRAY

okay, the fan thing makes sense

now to swap around a bunch of broken pipes so they don't get in lynne's way, got it

FOR FUCK'S SAKE I REALLY DON'T SEE A WINNING COMBO HERE

aand I fucking lost but at least I got Sissel in position -_-

alright, now with one pipe turned off it actually works out easily it just... took me really long to realize I'd need Sissel for this one -_-

Lynne honey but have you considered: you have no fucking clue what's behind that door although presumably submarine has only been breached in one place and it's this room?

holy shit with the hook Sissel managed to hoist the combined weight of Lynne and Kamila now THAT's a nifty trick

SISSEL FOR FUCK'S SAKE SHE CAN'T MUSTER LEVERAGE FOR THIS BECAUSE SHE HAS TO HOLD HERSELF AND KAMILA UP AND SHE'S TIRED SHE CAN ASK FOR HELP EXCLUSIVELY IN SWAHILI SWEARS AND IT'D STILL BE A WAY THAT YOU HAVE TO PUT UP WITH

aww, someone's saving us!!!

someone who commented on unstoppable missiles earlier, perhaps?

right, the truth... that's still relevant. while on a sinking submarine. yep

haha sinking submaries i have just been playing oxenfree haha

oh wow that's an improvised mechanism made out of garbage sticking in a close range telekinetic field nifty shit

oh oh okay that explains absolutely nothing evil!Sissel is not evil now, or what?

lmao this is getting more confusing, but like... in a very satisfying way <3

evil!Sissel still seems to have SOME amount of powers, at least, though possibly not the manipulating humans ones? but this amount of telekinesis is still incredible

so okay our Sissel's name possibly IS Sissel, but this dude's isn't I'm more confused than ever before I doubt there are three of them, so...

ahh, Lynne making Kamila more comfortable <3 <3 <3 and again, animation is fucking excellent. just, the timing of everything? it's better than 90% of all 3D animation I've ever seen in games

power and time, okay, got it so the dawn deadline IS real, just not for him wait, possibly not for Sissel and Missile, either?

I see he still fell in his signature ridiculous pose it's less funny now, overall

ah, okay, so the time effect is different too it seems to have been the same for Sissel and Missile though? is this a personality powers deal?

I love that Missile is perfectly comfortable with weird shit because as a dog, that's about the amount of understanding he has of his everyday surroundings, too <3

oh, hum so the moment this guy actually 'died' is the moment that blue guy took out the fragment?

wipe out everybody, huh

okay, so the shooting is as we knew, kind of

the first shot missed the mark, huh? quite curious, quite curious stray bullets are known to be deadly :D

alright, so that's a conversation that mostly confirmed what we already knew we have a new ally though, sort of

aand Lynne's empathy saves the day -_- like I said earlier, this guy's feelings aren't like... unique or anything, he just sucks at theory of mind

Kamila!!! so hey kiddo this guy in front of you is the guy who killed your mom

anyway, I'm still pretty sure Sissel hadn't yet introduced himself to you when you started calling him "Sissy" so there's that lead

and Kamila makes herself comfortable <3 I love this Little Lady so much <3

AWWWW THE RADIO THING <3 <3 <3

'and what about a torpedo' WHAT ABOUT A TORPEDO LYNNE THIS SOUNDS EXTREMELY UNSAFE

KAMILA ARE YOU KIDDING ME YOU'RE TOUGH AS FUCK

OMG IT'S A GRAPE SERVING MACHINE I LOVE THE LUXURIOUS FUCK THIS WAS MADE FOR

alright, torpedo room, that works

swap  the switches to get them unstuck!!!

so I'm going to guess everyone there died, too, and Sissel's going to have to prevent that, too that makes perfect sense

that 'understand exactly how he feels' thing our!Sissel and evil!Sissel are really fucking different in this particular respect :D

awww and the girls convince the doggo <3 <3 <3

so, does Kamila know about the dawn deadline for all ghosts, or

oh thank god I didn't need to control that hop this game really has a policy of not having a permaloss option <3

Yomiel, huh so that's his name

alright, and 'Sissel' is an alias ...I'm just going to keep using it for the protag, just to make things slightly less confusing

ah, so this guy had access to national secrets, and that's how he did the singer thing

and he was proven innocent offscreen <3 <3 <3 stylish

stylish animation, nice

didn't help anybody? did you ever try? because our!Sissel sure figured that shit out quickly

welp, the blue guys are assholes but then, they were also kind of dealing with an asshole I can imagine why they didn't think he was reliable to deal with :x

awww, I like the leaflet guy so much <3 <3 <3

I love how Jowd's like 'well, I'm dead, are you happy now' and Sissel's like 'so anyway about that' FUCK death not tonight, not when Sissel's here <3 <3 <3

alright, and this guy's a robot that still doesn't quite he's pretty human-like >_> I am not a fan of the blue guy in charge is all I'm saying also lmao I nicknamed this one 'iron man dracula' i didn't mean it that way but

ah, remote-controlled, alright that 'farewell' was odd then

'your country's use of technology is just plain off' I LOVE THIS

could there have been two pieces of meteorite in this guy's body? okay, nope still!

OH WOW FOUR MINUTES BEFORE HIS DEATH THAT'S THAT'S ACTUALLY EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED FROM THE VERY BEGINNING EVEN THOUGH I THOUGHT THIS BODY BELONGED TO THE WRONG 'WHOM' THIS IS SOMEWHAT MORE AMBITIOUS THAN PLANNED BUT

...okay, no, his 'death' would actually be before the control room was launched, not all those years ago STILL THIS IS THE -EXACT- THING

alright anyway this is plenty of buildup WHO THE FUCK IS OUR PROTAGONIST it's funny how so far absolutely 0 of what we've seen has pointed to that I have plenty of odd thoughts in my mind ofc 'that guy from another point of time' being the prime one as a homestuck, the possibility of there being multiple ghosts of the same person doesn't faze me in the slightest in fact it seems like an intuitive conclusion BUT THEIR PERSONALITY SURE IS DIFFERENT

anyway, :D :D :D

Final Chapter

...aha! so it counted ten years ago after all! dang :D

aha, I see that mascot thing I see baby Lynne!!!

I note how for someone threatening to shoot the kid, Yomiel's gun sure is pointing in the wrong direction AND he's holding out the kid to the side, not between himself and Jowd SOMEONE sucks at hostage taking lmao

a kitty, huh

and then a meteorite, okay

I note the lamp

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Yomiel is thinking 'so maybe I'll die in another way and all this will have not happened, that's a better outcome anyway' isn't he god his faces are Sissel faces and look this game knows EXACTLY what it's doing with its visuals exactly one facial exression of Yomiel's has not matched Sissel's I doubt it's because of lazy artists

alright, so a good plan would be swapping the mascot and the lamp

but seriously, WOW Yomiel sucks at taking hostages this game's animation is always stellar and brilliant, there's NO fucking coincidence there he was absolutely not willing in any way to put baby Lynne in actual danger, even if he pretended he did and it worked on Jowd

anyway how the fuck do we get to the lamp

'we can talk about all this later' ARGUABLE TBH the entire, like, THING is going to change oh man is everyone going to go back to their bodies 10 years ago with their new memories because that's fucking hardcore was Kamila even BORN yet

augh I DONT KNOW I CANT REACH I THINK I CANT REACH ANYTHING WHAT DO I DO MISSILE IS IN THE SWEET POTATO ON THE FOUNTAIN SISSEL IS IN THE NOZZLE BUT NOT THE CENTRAL ONE AND CANT REACH THE CENTRAL ONE WHAT DO I DO

okay sounds like I missed my chance let's try that again

ghhhh okay I think I have figured this sequence out even though I have to rewind again 1) rock the basket 2) jump into nozzle to launch the potato 3) Sissel jumps into the potato and then from the potato to the central nozzle 4) Missile jumps into the potato 5) launch the potato x2

okay, Mino fell into the fountain, not that I know how this can help because AGAIN, Missile can't reach Mino from the lantern :x and Sissel can't do absolutely fucking anything

annd the finale is a cutscene alas

alright, let's try that again...

hum we didn't get a FATE CHANGE registered after dropping Mino might this mean we have to do something right in the process?

AW YEAH THAT DEFINITELY JUST HAPPENED LMAO

are we going to kill everyone by dropping Mino on them instead XD

trick time, huh Sissel still can't reach anywhere Missile can swap two identical lanterns, not that this does anything he can talk to Sissel, for what THAT's worth

aha, the lantern dropped, Missile can move around now, that's good

Sissel still can't do shit though

well, that's the detective's LEG, not... anything else or anything

oh man, yeah... YOUNG JOWD IS A DUMBASS man, even Yomiel isn't aiming at him anymore, he's like 'hey dude are you okay' so the theory that Sissel is alternate!Yomiel is really gaining steam in my head not that it wasn't the primary one all along but

AW FUCK YEAH MISSILE THE BULLET CATCHING BADASS DOGGO!!!

anyway sweet potato?

BOO YAH um or not

OR YES ACTUALLY THAT WORKS

OH MY FUCKING GOD YEP THE LAMPPOST FUCKING MINO

awwwwww and finally the trauma of remembering your death is brought up!!!! Sissel cares <3 <3 <3 (and Yomiel doesn't at the moment NOT THAT I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THAT IN CONTEXT) (then again I'd understand it if Sissel didn't either but he's the purest being in existence so)

awwww Yomiel is finally going to contribute!!!

omfg lmao "Make it spray as if your life depended on it!" "Uh, I'm dead though" Yomiel is winning ALL the sensitivity awards tonight <3 <3 <3

I I think that Yomiel hasn't done anything yet oh, okay, we're still winning time

holy FUCK Yomiel that was definitely a thing you just did

dear Young Jowd, Yomiel is the one who saved her. Not gods

awwww and he gave baby Lynne a detective's badge <3 <3 <3 he's so good with children <3

so, can Yomiel be alive please :x ALRIGHT, HE IS THAT WORKS

THE KITTY DID THE METEORITE KILL THE KITTY

wait wait wait is is Sissel the kitty is that why he has no idea how guns work or anything else like that that that is truly fucking incredible f y'all's i AND I GUESS IT FITS WITH HIM AND MISSILE JUST GOING AROUND SAVING PEOPLE TOGETHER LIKE A BADASS DUO AND IT FITS WITH HIM GETTING KILLED BY LYNNE'S FIRST SHOT ON ACCIDENT I HONESTLY CONSIDERED A RAT OPTION FOR LIKE A SPLIT SECOND THERE

OMG OMG OMG OMG YE S AND HIS NAME REALLY IS SISSEL

god jesus fucking christ this this fucking game i just im howling this this definitely is a thing that just happened it owned me so hard im so fucking owned right now

yep hes the cat he's Yomiel's cat

aaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww there's a good reason he had identity confusion in all this they WERE confusable as one being for a while

'her' huh?

oh man wow THIS particular part of the story sucks

so Sissel was a girl's name all along? okay

but also, FUCK no wonder he went bonkers specifically about being unable to die

'his powers couldnt help anybody' more like they couldn't help ONE SPECIFIC PERSON

so that bag is a kitty carrier huh and Lynne's miss accidentally killed the kitty

LMAO THE PART WHERE WE ALL THOUGHT LYNNE HAD KILLED THE PROTAG WASN'T WRONG

I DAMN FUCKING REMEMBER THAT CAT JUST FOR YALLS I I ABSOLUTELY REMEMBERED THERE WAS A CAT THERE I JUST NEVER LINKED IT TO ANYTHING I JUST THOUGHT IT WAS A VERY PRETTY RANDOM STRAY

anyway Yomiel that's what you get for playing with guns they're deadly weapons and result in death you're fucking welcome

so anyway who the fuck is Ray

but anyway kitty Sissel saved everyone...

okay but hold on hold on hold on I didn't quite get the implications about the fiancee the first time around WHAT THE FUCK CAPCOM i was just recently thinking how fucked up it was that I remembered the last name of Polly Jenkins, just because of how much her brief story shook me

and uh I think is that also the implication here because that's not fucking okay

anyway so did Yomiel die as the result of that or nay bc that looked fucking deadly if not instantaneously so

god but this ffucking game

this fucking... game

oh Missile I'm pretty sure YOU are going to see HIM alright lmao wasn't Jowd taking him home

but also damn the original events of these ten years, as remembered by - a dog and a cat - Detective Jowd and Kamila (but not Alma, who never was brought back to life directly) - Lynne - Cabanela - the medical examiner - the minister of justice AND NO-ONE ELSE ...wait, no ALSO THE GUY FROM THE FUCKING PARK ...yep that's a thing we're doing

so another important thing is that the rock star kid is going to be okay and the curry guy, too nothing bad happened to them in this timeline, right?

ALRIGHT HI RAY WHAT/WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU

(right now my bet's on 'a rat')

oh, Sissel also killed two people tonight, that happened

lmao and in this version of evens Missile died in the presence of Temsik

omfg and Ray is alternate!Missile this is fucking amazing <3

lmao his ghost aged and lost its powers?

also the dawn deadline was a lie he just wanted to get Sissel's butt moving I FUCKING KNEW IT

I love how Sissel's just "I DID WHAT" even though he's been doing that all evening this time around too

yup doggie's a fucking liar the only real time limit is the lifetime they would have had if they were alive huh damn

but seriously I called that before I started this section of the liveblog even if I think I never actually made that post 'what are the odds Ray is a fucking liar' I don't think I ever wrote that I kept getting distracted but yep I fucking called this

THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART GOD I AM ;U; THIS DOGGO

anyway one participant of the events who definitely wasn't born yet 10 years ago is indeed Missile 0.0 how's that... gonna work...

but I do love that just... the justice minister, of all people, is also going to be in possession of those 10 years

OH MY FUCKING GOD LYNNE IS ABOUT TO HAVE A FUCKING HEART ATTACK I KNOW THERE'S NO GUN BUT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

KAMILA WHAT THE FUCK DON'T FUCKING DO THAT THAT'S ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING

aawwwwwww IT WORKED THIS TIME AROUND

'nice to meet you' OH BOY OH BOY I GET HOW IT WORKS NOW I THINK ...uh, I'm not sure how Lynne knew to flee from the junkyard then, but either way it looks like they're only getting back their memories at the PRESENT and that's why Kamila didn't fUCKING KNOW AND REMEMBER WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH DOING THAT JUST NOW

LMAO SOMETHING'S GOING TO EXPLODE TONIGHT

oh, nevermind, it's not that yet :D but it really does sound like it's going to :D right... about... dawn? :D

aww Jowd actually carries toy badges with him everywhere <3 <3 <3 'child handling tools'

still a kitten, huh yeah, that whole Temsik thing :D

aww, and here's her, all alive and everything

SO BIG MEMORYSPLOSION PLEASE

(at dawn) (it's fucking coming that's my headcanon and you can't beat it) (a bunch of people are going to become really fucking traumatized tonight)

hey!!! Missile!!! Cabanela brought him, huh

so, what's up with Yomiel, anyway

COME ON SISSEL MAKE NICE WITH MISSILE HE CAN'T CLIMB UP THERE

that guy's imitating Cabanela lmao

Memry <3 <3 <3

very best customer, huh

AWWW ITS THIS GUY HI GUY YOU'RE OKAY NOW WITHOUT YOMIEL TO RUIN EVERYTHING YOU'RE JUST FINE

hah, and these two

.............................................yup. they died

'the indescretions of a minister perhaps?' I LOVE THIS FUCKING LADY I LOVE HER I LOVE HER

ah, these two what deal is it this time

the little rock sinter guy!!! yeah!!!!

hi medical examiner guy <3 guess you're not doing medicine after all huh

HI LEAFLET PARK GUY YOU ARE STILL CUTE

HI BAILEY

oh man oh man Yomiel :D hey are talking about Yomiel :D

SHOW ME HIS FIANCEE YOU COWARDS

lmao he's the painter this time even the robe sits the same

SO SHOW ME

OH YEAH OH YEAH HE REMEMBERS THATS THE PICTURE OF THE FUCKING CAT AND NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT

YUP YUP THIS IS IT lmao that crane i sure do remember it well it murdered two people tonight <3 <3 <3 kitty <3 <3 <3

aw yeah! in that picture with Missile!!!

#douche mcpointyglasses #is she dead #(for quite a while there the answer was 'basically yes') #cute shoes #dance dance inspector #the mysterious him #alba dracula #iron man dracula #sexy lamp #ddoggo!!! #those are all the character tags i remember #liliet plays ghost trick #this has been A FUCKING TRIP #i love this game

[morningmoon]

Saw DSoD

I love how the movie is built, it feels like there's a lot to discuss, in fact we had a pretty long debate about Kaiba’s fate on NAC’s discord. Kuwabara did an amazing job because a Lot of times the visual design of the movie conveyed messages alongside the script, helping make these high-concepts easier to understand. Him and Takahashi worked really great together, and all the animators on board made a great job with how sharp and beautiful the movie became. 

It's great, it was a very good, full story and I cannot wait to buy the bluray when it releases (to see the subs and catch whatever the dub couldn't convey) and see this again to enjoy it some more and catch more of the visuals. (Also Gaia looked very yuma-esque with his colors, nice.)

Under the cut some long ramblings

Dub-script: Felt pretty alright! There were some dialogue stuff (the eight millenium item!) that immediately pulled me out, but there were like two or three and very, very spread far in-between. Lots of added goofs but mostly just side-jabs, which honestly made the characters feel a bit fuller (my favorite has to be Tristan's "you're not crazy, you're just dumb" in the softest voice ever). There's a ton of high-concepts and it did an adequate enough job at presenting them, specially since most are told to us visually, but i'll touch on that later. Felt very true to the movie while keeping a tone similar to the original dub, kinda like Ocarina of Time 3D, it's not exactly the old thing bc the old thing has huge flaws, but it's how you'd remember it with its improvements. Yugi and Kaiba came out particularly well. I fucking loved Mokuba, I forgot that since thsi is the manga canon that means Mokuba is actually a good character. The story: Aigami ironically sorta has the problem Arc V has in which he is more of a walking theme than a villain, but his actions are so very important to everything, his motivations are crystal clear and relatable. Heck, you could make an argument that he shares the protagonist role along with Yugi, on the other side of the coin you can say that Kaiba is the protagonist. It's pretty interesting how Yugi is the only heroic dude here, but he gets the less amount of time because his character story is already told, so instead it's two extremely morally gray dudes with conflicting goals trying to do something for the wrong reasons. The expanded role Shadi gets was fairly surprising. I love that it turned out he was a ghost all along lol. Surprised that the evil/good item split wasn't used to explain away his questionable actions, he was just a friendly ghost who killed for good reasons. Guess it fits with the justice of the time. So the gift of prana was made possible thanks to him "defeating" death, pretty cool. I love, love that Prana Leaving is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Aigami just gave reason for Atem to return and take it away. Super love the story, memories are such a big part of DM, so seeing it expanded as metaphysics and alternate worlds is a good-ass view. It's a good story, mostly playing with high-concepts and established characters. The prana stuff is overplayed since it's such a concept and a half for a 2 hour movie, but I love how firmly the rules are established and how they mesh with the journey our characters have had, particularly Jou being able to overcome the prana stuff thanks to his memory of Atem bringing his story full-circle, because despite being higher than humanity it still falls below the gods, below those who have truly ascended, thus even the memory of Atem is too powerful. The Visuals: really just gonna continue talking about the story next paragraph, but until then: the movie looks beautiful. The visual designs on everything look amazing, the expressions are lively, the movements are great, the colors were fantastic. The only thing I don't dig much is Anzu's designs, bit too waifu, but alas. Where the visuals truly shine is in telling the story. The opening shot just, god, just so good. I'm guessing the opening of it represents how memories can fade away to the light, to being forgotten, but the ones that persist make way for other memories to follow along and each is a world of its own. I want to link that to stories in general, the power of fiction is that to survive as memories, so while many get destroyed and become forgotten, those who survive make way to others, much like how the original yugioh manga survived being forgotten and allowed for an adaptation world to happen, and a world of Yugioh R, and the world/story of Gx, and its manga, and so on as the Yugioh franchise grows, but it's not even the start of that DNA sequence (also worlds that can survive being forgotten is the DNA of fiction itself, but that's just obvious given the way the worlds are presented) there were stuff before even the original yugioh story, such as what Takahashi used for inspiration. If Dragon Ball was in that DNA sequence, Journey to the West would be there as well above it, helping it survive and shaping it with what's forgotten and remembered of it. And after that metaphor we get the space bridge in the shape of the kaiba corp logo. lmao. There are so many visual things i'll probably just list them at random now: -There's one consistent element i just want to call "ascension", when golden particles happen to represent the powers of Prana, be it to teleport the kids or to send goons to other dimensions. And immediately after its first use we see the sands of egypt and yup, that's it, that's the whole thing, it's much like the sands of egypt, it gives shape to the land but it's not consistent, it changes and shifts and rapidly changes the landscape while it remains seemingly the same, it ascends like a pharaoh would. -Aigami vs Kaiba has one main element: Aigami's cards make the "ascension" happen to the crystal dragons, and it is so great even those seemingly timeless beings fall to it, because they are attached to this world's rules, then BEWD also falls to it, that is why Kaiba's deepest memory of holding power beyond mortals makes for a being greater than sand: stone. A stone so powerful it is above prana, and thusly the stone soldier of obelisk can defeat Diva's whole shenanigans even when they use this ascension to empower themselves or when they defy our laws by using cubes to make all sorts of curved shapes. -Aigami vs Yugi has the coolest representation of Aigami losing himself, with his final monster being much more man-made than anything else, it's just a creature with gears and a machine gun, no longer a being above humans. And Yugi so easily expects his anger it lets him play a triple combo that locks him into venting his rage to his own defeat. -Aigami vs Yugi and Kaiba has the latter two use a plague and technology to try and harm Aigami's creature, but it is too strong. It's also a good inverse, Kaiba is mostly tech-based but at that point he uses biological stuff to do harm and Yugi was more living-creatures-based but switches to technology, or rather progress. While Kaiba devolves in his desperate struggle, Yugi continues moving forward, which is important for what Kaiba does at the end. -Jou in his own memory world owns, the light destroying his memory ultimately falling to the power of his memory of dueling Atem at the end of Battle City is amazing. Having closure with Atem is such a good detail to show off. -Loved, loved LOVED that the space station/bridge was made just like the alcatraz island his dad had, just he uses it to go above war and such things and into a higher place. -ATEM LOOKED SO GOOD. He looked like his early manga self and that was amazing to see. Also just adding here, Takahashi's sequence looked awesome if overly detailed. -Loved how Atem's return makes things go normal by having all that "ascension" stuff go back to the ground, the sands of egypt return to how they should be instead of defying nature. Makes me think that the rain scene has a deeper meaning with how it's water that falls, but alas it eludes me. -Really dug the contrast with the darker "sand" stuff, showing seemingly straight-up death only by ring- oops, there's Kaiba. Going off to his techno-tomb, being sent from a place high-above to the ground, as he slowly dies but gets enough time to finally face Atem one last time, to get the memory he craves the most. He fucking dies, man. -Yugi says goodbye to another loved one who goes off to a place above. It's because she's leaving like Atem with going up to the heavens being another representation of the afterlife you guys. The score: was alright, pretty neat here and there.

#dsod #ygo dsod #yu-gi-oh! #yugioh dm #darkside of dimensions #yugioh #this was really freaking good