#chase thinks its a big ol pile a bullshit

[meadowmines]

OC-Tober Day 2: Impossible

Some Kuroshi/Kei-chan fluff with possible b0ngl0rd69? Tomita sure is an insufferable enough nerd but I haven't decided yet.

---

"Oh, shit. Sorry, Yu-chan. I didn't see--shit, wait, I've been sittin' here watchin' this idiot for HOW LONG--"

It is very much on brand for Kei-chan to get caught up in a particularly interesting task and work well beyond closing time, but it isn't like him to do so without calling in. Hence, this.

"Is there a problem?"

"Not an 'emergency' kinda problem, just..." Kei-chan's voice drops to a whisper. "I got a situation. Can ya come in so I can throw ya under the bus about it?"

Not a dangerous situation, by the sound of it. If Kuroshi had to guess, he'd wager that one of Kei-chan's... less socially apt regulars has gotten caught up in playing with the merchandise and all of the usual methods of persuasion, short of physically removing him from the premises, have failed.

"You'll owe me dinner," Kuroshi warns.

"Worth it. See ya."

---

Wonderland Games sits just off Sotenbori Street, its colorful neon sign turned off for the night but its storefront windows still far too bright for this hour. The door and windows are covered in posters exclaiming buy! sell! trade! and advertising the latest and greatest new consoles and games. There is a single decal just above the door handle marking the business as a member of the Sotenbori Civic Association. Which is why the police don't interfere with the business being conducted in the back room.

It's not what you think, whatever that might be. Yes, Kei-chan's business does contribute to the Kijin Clan's piggy bank, but it's nothing unsavory. Kuroshi doesn't understand much of the nuts and bolts, but he does understand that the manufacturers of these consoles would probably object to some of the aftermarket modifications being performed on them here... to say nothing of the less-than-ethically sourced games they're being stuffed with.

Kuroshi has a key, of course--he owns the building, after all. So he lets himself in the front door to see what in the world is keeping his better half this late.

That turns out to be a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor, controller in hand, playing a particularly bloody fighting game. There is a magazine open on the floor next to him--an American game magazine, by the look of it.

"Hey, Yu-chan." The relief in Kei-chan's voice is as thick as a heavy wool blanket. "Yo, Tomita. Look. I gotta lock up now. See, my guy's here, we got dinner reservations n' shit. Scram." A little white lie, of course. They never eat anywhere that requires reservations. But he did give Kei-chan permission to throw him under the bus.

"Wait! Just--ten more minutes! I know I'm onto somethin' here! See, it's gotta have somethin' to do with that 'BYC' floatin' across the moon--"

"The shadow thing's for unlockin' Reptile, ya dingus!"

"Exactly! And maybe different shadows mean there's more characters to unlock than Reptile!"

"Look, sittin' here watchin' ya chase a hoax was kinda fun for a while but the store's been closed for an hour."

"It ain't a hoax, Sugihara-han!" Tomita protests. "Look at those screenshots! That look like a fuckin' hoax to you?"

"What on Earth is going on here?" Kuroshi asks, knowing full well he won't understand half of the answer.

"Eh." Kei-chan flaps a dismissive hand. "Tomita here came chargin' in with this American game mag, plunked his ass down in front of the Mega Drive, says they just found a secret character in Mortal Kombat." He projects the rest of this directly at Tomita: "Which is a big ol' pile of bullshit. 'Nimbus Terrafaux?' C'mon. Tell me that don't sound fake as shit."

"But the screenshots--you can't fake those! That's impossible! You said so yourself!"

"I said it was hard as hell, not impossible!" Kei-chan rubs his forehead. "I'd buy it if it was an actual fuckin' photo of someone's TV where they found him but these are professional-ass screenshots. Whoever took these had professional-ass capture gear, and that shit ain't cheap! Now who do ya know that'd just have that kinda kit lyin' around to take whatever screenshots they wanna take and then maybe doctor 'em up with some fake characters for funsies? Ya think maybe, I dunno--" And here, Kei-chan snatches the magazine up off the floor. "An outfit like, say, Electronic Games Monthly?"

Tomita pauses the game and gives Kei-chan the most incredulous stare. "Are you sayin'," he starts, slowly, "that a respectable publication would just... make shit up?"

"That," Kei-chan counters, "is exactly what I'm sayin'."

"But they can't do that! C'mon, Sugihara! Gimme ten more minutes!"

"I gave ya ten more minutes ten minutes ago. Out."

"Have a heart, man! I'm this close to crackin' this shit--"

Kuroshi swears he hears something snap in Kei-chan's head.

"Oh," Kei-chan says, "I'll crack this shit for ya." And in one swift motion he reaches down and plucks the cartridge from the console mid-match.

"Hey!" Tomita wails. "I was--"

"C'mere, dipshit. Look." Kei-chan plugs the cartridge into... some kind of device attached to a PC and does some... things. "I'm dumpin' the ROM for ya right now."

"Ya didn't have to pull my cart out, man!"

"Oh, but I did, 'cause I coulda showed ya on another one and you'd talk some shit about different versions or whatnot. Okay. Let's pick this shit apart and I'll show ya. Here. Here's all the character sprites n' shit. There's Johnny Cage. There's Sub-Zero. There's Scorpion. There's Reptile. There's everybody's sprites except Nimbus Fuckin' Terrafaux. He doesn't fuckin' exist, man. Give it up."

Tomita stares at the screen, slack-jawed. "...I mean," he stammers, "he's a secret character and it took this long for anyone to unlock him. What if they hid his sprites in another directory--"

"What if I hid my dick in yer mom?"

Kuroshi turns away quickly. Even in this setting it just wouldn't do for a civilian to see him lose his composure.

#oc-tober #yakuza #yakuza oc #who else remembers egm's nimbus terrafaux bullshit #pepperidge farm remembers

[bosspigeon]

my first boy (who romanced mason-- bc dum bitch w terrible taste) is named Chase Kingston btw

he's grumpy and snarky and was sort of bullied into the police force to avoid jail time, but he's kind of low-key a marshmallow when he cares about/trusts people-- but it takes a long fuckin time to for him to trust people.

he's also covered in tattoos from his wild youth so his boss makes him cover himself from the neck down when he's on duty

#pidge plays wayhaven #he thinks its stupid bc everyone in town has seen him in short sleeves #they KNOW hes inked #hell the guy who did the shitty stick n pokes on his wrist when they were 15 probably works at the fuckin bank now #but the chief is a hardass and appearances are important #chase thinks its a big ol pile a bullshit #also he and verda had 👀👀👀 a thing before verda got married #it was 100% physical bc theyre not romantically compatible at all #but verda's husband knows and is cool w it #and also thinks its hilarious and adorable that verda ks constantly trying to set chase up w people #and also if he gets even SLIGHTLY tipsy he tells people Way Too Much about chase's sex life #of which there is v little to know at this point #but he's got a good memory

[grrlinthefireplace]

Hey so I’ve been seeing you post a lot about La Casa de Papel recently. What exactly is it? It looks kinda interesting.

Thank you so much for asking!

I am delighted beyond reason to have the opportunity to tell you - and by extension the entire world - why this show has cleared my skin, watered my crops, and legitimately healed my soul after this particularly soul-crushing season of Grimdark White Man Television almost broke me as a human being.

I will attempt to keep this as spoiler-free as I possibly can, because this is a show that should be experienced in the moment, but in a nutshell, La Casa de Papel is a heist show set in present-day Madrid which follows both a found family of thieves who rob the Royal Mint of Spain, and the law enforcement officials on the outside who are chasing them.

If that is enough for you, go right to your TV or computer, fire up the ol’ Netflix, and don’t waste any more time.

If, however, you need a little more, here are the top five things I flail about to every single person in my life to convince them they need to start watching this show like immediately and then come back and tell me all about it.

For visual flair, we’ll intersperse them with some gifs of ladies, because I know my audience.

5. character driving plot > plot driving character.

You know that infuriating thing lazy TV writers do where, in order to to hurry up and get to the big explosion or battle scene or dragon attack or whatever, which is the only bit they really care about, they handwave away the whole concept of motivation and make some character do something that any halfway-attentive viewer will immediately clock that they would never actually do?

There is none of that bullshit here.

In its simplest form, the plot of La Casa de Papel is as follows: a brilliant criminal mastermind devises a heist which cannot possibly go wrong, and then we proceed to watch all the ways in which it goes wrong.

This is a fantastic setup for an action story, made even more breathlessly exciting by strategic use of my favorite heist movie plot device (as perfected by Ocean’s Eleven): namely, “scene where it looks like our crime heroes have been outsmarted and are now threatened by a completely unforeseen disaster” immediately followed by “flashback to the team prepping for the heist where we learn that of course they prepared for this exact scenario.”

But from time to time, things do actually go wrong (as they must, or else there would be no story); and, when they do, it is never because you can tell a writer just wanted to write a scene where bullets go flying, and didn’t care how he got there. These characters are so clear, their behavior so consistent, that when gasp-worthy plot twists happen, they happen because of course that character, in this exact scenario, would do that exact thing.

I’m telling you, I came to this show for a ship (more on that in a minute) and I stayed for a swooning, heart-eyes writer crush on the impeccably-designed plot structure and characterization.

4. High stakes, low gore.

Tone-wise, on a sliding scale of Heist Film Intensity where a really fluffy episode of Leverage is a 1, Reservoir Dogs is a 10, and the Ocean’s franchise is somewhere in the 3-4 range, I would place La Casa at a 5 or a 6, which is perfect for me. I love action, suspense, drama and adventure, but I hate gratuitous violence (especially when it’s pointless and masturbatory and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot) and have a very low tolerance for blood and gore. So I kept waiting for the story to eventually take a hard left turn into Tarantino Land, until eventually it was all just one huge pile of dead bodies, and was genuinely surprised when it didn’t.

This is how I learned just how badly my brain has been fucked up by lazy showrunners who think shock deaths are the only way to raise stakes. During the first season of this show, before I had figured out that it was a Flawless Gem of Television Which So Far Has Not Once Disappointed Me, there were probably a dozen moments where I was absolutely convinced that some character was about to be gruesomely killed for shock value … and I was wrong every single time.

Reader, it was fucking wild.

Every single time I was convinced that person A was going to shoot person B in the head because blah blah maximum angst over here in this part of the story and then it will motivate person C to do this other thing, the show did the hard work of finding a smarter, more unexpected direction to take that character’s story. That means that when deaths do come along - and there are a couple - they feel genuinely earned, and they matter deeply to the story and to us.

3. I would die for these women.

This show loves women. Like it truly, authentically, uncompromisingly loves women in all our fucked-up messy glorious complexity. There are no “types” or cliches here; no one is forced to be only one thing. Fuck your one-dimensional Strong Female Characters, lazy writers.

For one thing, on many shows you might be lucky if you get maybe one mom who is given a personality and a story outside of motherhood. Often, on shows written by men, the fact of her motherhood diminishes her strength or her agency. On this show, nearly every one of the central female characters is both a mom and an action hero simultaneously. Seriously. By season 3 there are four different battle moms. They’re all different, they’re not all on the same side, they have different perspectives, and their role as mother impacts the story differently, but that’s the joy of having a whole lot of different kinds of women - no one has to be everything to everyone.

These women are complicated. They laugh, they cry, they crack dirty jokes, they get laid, they have babies, they fight, they make mistakes, they fall in love, they grow. Men pull sexist shit and they shut it the fuck down. Some of them have love stories, some of them don’t, but they are never defined by or triangulated around relationships with men. They get to have relationships with each other. All of them are excellent at their jobs.

Tokyo is the kind of hot mess antihero protagonist we’ve been watching middle-aged white men play for decades.

Allison is such a realistic teenage girl it’s genuinely painful to watch.

Monica has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen on television, this is not a drill.

Alicia is terrifying. (A pregnant black ops interrogator! ON WHAT OTHER FUCKING SHOW!?!??)

Nairobi is unlike any other character you’ve seen on TV before; she’s got a little bit of Parker from Leverage, a little bit of Raven Reyes from The 100, but she’s entirely her own creature and you will fall in love with her instantly.

And Raquel. Oh, my love, my angel, my hero, Inspector Raquel Murillo. Love of my goddamn life. A fierce, kickass hostage negotiator swimming upstream against a tide of workplace misogyny who sometimes has to make the frustrating little male-appeasing compromises we all have to make to get through the workday. A beautiful, sexy, powerful heroine over 40 whose femininity isn’t diminished based on some bullshit notion that, for example, pairing your tough-bitch suit and gun holster with red toenails and a lacy blouse detracts from your strength. A loving mom and daughter who has to juggle raising a small child and caring for an aging parent with the stress of, you know, trying to stop the biggest robbery in the history of Spain. A domestic violence survivor (TW for those who need it; nothing is ever shown onscreen, but it’s discussed several times) who is given the space to discuss the things that have happened to her and how she has worked through them with such dignity, accuracy and respect that you can tell the writers did their homework.

This is a show where you can tell there are women in the writers’ room.

2. The Professor and Raquel. I don’t want to spoil a single thing for you here except to say that I myself was lured into this show by the promise of electric sexual chemistry between a criminal mastermind and the police inspector hunting him down, and my God I was not disappointed.

1. Love.

This show came into my life at a period where I was so weary of cynicism on television - so fucking furious at showrunners who dangle hope in front of us and then crush it, who only care about building anything if they can tear it down later, who treat love and fun and joy and hope and family and happiness like they’re intellectually lesser than grimdark nihilism with no soul - that I was honestly kind of broken by it. I was just so. fucking. tired. Tired of “the way we show this heroine is strong is to kill off her love interest.” Tired of “sorry but all this rape and murder is NECESSARY because of REALISM” (particularly rich when coming from shows featuring evil A.I.’s or dragons and ice zombies). Tired of getting invested in relationships - whether ships or friends or found families - only to realize that the show I was watching was always going to sacrifice character to force plot mechanics into place, and those relationships were never going to get the kind of care and focus I wanted them to get.

But that is not this show.

The single most revolutionary thing, to me, about La Casa de Papel - the thing that sets it apart from every other rollercoaster action thrill ride on television - is that every single thread of the plot is tied to love.

Every.

Single.

One.

Love of all different shapes and sizes - parents and children, friendships, doomed crushes (straight and queer), toxic exes, blossoming romances, siblings - and over it all, a deep, deep love for humanity.

The thing I said before, about how when things go wrong they go wrong in character-driven ways? It’s this. Love is why everything on this show happens. Love is what makes children want to live up to their parents and what makes parents fight to leave a better world for their children. Love is why deaths have stakes. Love is why we spend so much screentime lingering on small moments another show might ignore, like all the thieves at heist camp sitting down every night to have dinner together and argue about paella techniques. Love is what causes chaos in the middle of the heist; when there’s one person in the room you care about more than the others, you can get distracted and take your eye off the ball. Love is how your enemies can get to you, by leveraging or blackmailing the people who matter most, knowing that you’ll crack if they’re in danger. Love, gone wrong, causes toxic men to develop possessive and controlling behavior towards women. Love is how the Professor gets the idea for the heist in the first place. The plan is flawless on paper, but it doesn’t account for the human variable, and over and over again we see that relationships and connection and sex and family and love cause people to behave in unpredictable ways and throw the whole plan into chaos, which is what makes for a dynamic and compelling story.

How refreshing to see a show simply refuse to grant the oft-repeated premise that a show cannot have both high-octane thrills, and a big soft squishy heart, at the same time.

ANYWAY, I’VE TAKEN UP ENOUGH OF YOUR VALUABLE TV-WATCHING TIME, GO JUMP ON BOARD THIS TRAIN AND COME SCREAM ABOUT IDEALISTIC SPANISH ROBIN HOODS WITH ME, AND LET THE GOOD SHIP SERQUEL INTO YOUR LIFE, YOU WON’T BE SORRY

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

#lannister-slings-and-arrows #la casa de papel #money heist #from the inbox #i have a lot of feelings about this show #is this entire post just one long subtweet of 'the 100' #listen #maybe #i'm still pissed about kabby and will be for awhile #but legit this show was HEALING and CATHARTIC in some unexpected ways #yes virginia you CAN have functional loving stable relationships and high-stakes drama at the same time

[lifeisgreatagain-blog]

The Adventures of Luke, ep. 1

I ran out of dip at work so I walked down the street to the convenience store. The store calls itself a “bodega” but I don’t know what that means. And if I don’t know what something means that means I don’t need it. But I did need some more dip, so I closed my eyes and shouted “this is a convenience store!” as I walked in, so that fixed that.

The guy behind the counter looked at me funny. He was probably a junkie. I told him I didn’t have any money for his drugs, then tried to buy some dip. He said if I didn’t have any money then he couldn’t sell me any dip. I asked him what kind of operation he was running if he couldn’t sell me any dip until I gave him money for his drug habit. That’s no way to keep customers. He looked super confused.

“That too much for your brain to handle, druggie?” I shouted calmly.

“Get the fuck out of my store, asshole,” he screamed at me, his eyes crazy from the drugs.

I felt threatened, so I unholstered my gun and pointed it at him, just like I learned to on the internet. “Not one more move, druggie!” I peacefully protested.

“What the fuck are you doing, you crazy fuck?!” the junkie screamed.

I read online that the drugheads get irritated like that when they’re “jonesing” for a “fix,” so I kept my gun pointed at him, real cool. I made sure he saw me take the safety off.

“Now look, I don’t need any more of your druggie bullshit,” I asserted. “I just came in here for some dip. You’re the one who went and turned this into something neither of us wanted.”

He threw a can of Skoal at me. “Take it and just leave! Please!”

I don’t chew Skoal. That’s the kind of service you can expect when “convenience stores” don’t properly screen who they hire. Your business gets tarnished by junkies like this asshole. I told him what brand I wanted and he threw a whole sleeve at me.

“I don’t want a full sleeve, just one can,” I shouted at him, losing my patience a little. “I don’t have the money to pay for a whole sleeve!”

“Just take it and leave!” he screamed, crying. He must have been in a lot of pain from the lack of drugs. Well it’s not my job to care about his bad decisions.

“Fine, but I’m going to call your manager and tell him about you being high at work and giving away his merchandise, asshole,” I jeered.

I left the store, fingered a big ol’ pile of dip and started chomping. Then I realized I was hungry from all that commotion. Luckily there was a taco truck parked on the corner, and it was open. And it sure smelled good.

I like tacos, and I like trucks, so I walked up to place an order. And wouldn’t you know it, the whole damned truck was packed full of illegal immigrants!

“What on God’s green Earth do we have here?” I asked as I walked up to the order window.

“Welcome to La Niña, sir, can I take your order?” said the dirty little kid working the register.

“Yeah I got an order,” I said to her, slyly. “I order you to show me your immigration papers and your I.D., now!”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You heard me,” I said, louder. “Prove to me you’re in that truck legally, cuz I ain’t about to buy tacos from an illegal alien!”

“Sir, I’m 14 and I was born here,” she said, mocking me. “I don’t have an I.D. and I don’t have any papers because I’m a citizen. And I really think you should leave, now.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You don’t have any papers because you’re an illegal. I know your dirty little tricks. I’m going to call the police!”

Lucky for me, a police car came speeding around the corner at that very moment with its lights flashing. I tried to flag it down, but it went straight to the “convenience store” back up the street. “Well at least they’ll put that junkie away for awhile,” I thought. But I needed them at the truck.

I turned back to the immigrant working the taco truck, and she screamed.

“He’s got a gun!” she sounded scared. I had forgotten to put it back in my holster after that incident with the junkie, but I got a right to carry my gun however I want, so I didn’t see what the little coward was bellowing about.

“This would make you feel safe if you weren’t all illegals,” I said, waving my gun through the order window. “You tell me I need to leave? Well you leave and go back where you came from if you’re so scared of freedom!”

Just then, a couple of black cops come running up the street with the junkie from the “convenience store” following behind them, pointing at me and shouting.

“There he is!” the junkie yelled.

One of the black cops had the nerve to pull his gun on me, and here I am trying to be a good citizen.

“Drop the weapon now!” he barked.

“I got just as much a right to carry this gun as you do, officer,” I said with a little annoyance. Now, I ain’t racist, but I just don’t think colored people make for good cops. They tend to break the law more than enforce it, like he was doing to me.

“Drop the weapon now!” he repeated.

“Now officer, why you hastlin’ me?” I asked, calmly inching my thumb to the safety button on my gun. “You should be arresting that junkie you got chasing you. He’s high as a kite. And this truck here’s full of ILLEGAL immigrants.”

“You have to the count of three!” he responded.

“Stop him, Officer Mellon!” the alien girl shouted.

“It’s gonna be alright, Anna,” the officer said to her. “One!”

“Now officer, I know my rights,” I said, inching my gun up.

“Two!” the black cop continued counting.

“And if you’re going to look out for that junkie and these illegals over a God-fearing white man who actually works for a living then--”

At that moment the other black cop tackled me from behind. He knocked my gun away and grinded my face into the sidewalk real bad.

“That’s police brutality!” I screamed at him, but he didn’t care about the law. These black cops always beating up on the wrong people. It’s fine if a cop wants to play a little chin music on some thug or some drug dealer from the ghetto who’s actually breaking the law. But I didn’t do anything wrong.

The black cop started going through my pockets. He pulled out my wallet and my can of dip.

“Hey, you can’t just steal from people because you want to, pig!” I screamed.

“Is this the merchandise this man stole from you?” the pig asked the junkie.

“Yeah, and that’s the gun he pulled on me right there,” said that drugged-up faggot, pointing at my gun.

“You fuckers are in league with each other!” I screamed. “I’m going to call up the police captain tomorrow and tell him what’s really going on here!”

“You can tell her that when you meet her at the station,” Officer Mellon said as he handcuffed me. “We’re gonna go there right now.”

“Well that’s good, because there’s going to be a drug freak, two black so-called cops and a whole truckload of illegals in the pokey by the time I’m done telling my story!” I said, reasonably.

“Shut the fuck up,” said the other officer, then he hit me in the face and things went a little hazy.

-- Taken from a collect call transcript, caller Lucas Voegel, inmate at the Lancaster County Jail

End Episode 1