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tightwadspoonies · 5 months

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Dumpster Diving and Salvage Shopping

If you asked me what my role in the ecosystem is, I'd say I'm a scavenger. I hate confrontation and I hate spending money when there are other options. I will gladly just take whatever you don't want in order to avoid such unsavory obligations.

So dumpster diving, salvage stores, and incidental meat registries and I get along pretty well save for the anxiety. This post, hopefully, takes some of that away for my fellow scavengers who would love to dumpster dive but just don't know how yet, or are afraid of getting in trouble.

Dumpster Diving:

First of all, dumpster diving is legal in all 50 states of the US, but check local ordinances because rich people get fussy about people digging through trash to the point of some cities condemning the practice. It's on a bunch of other posts but it's worth saying.

Cops, of course, will lie or imply otherwise on this. A good way around that is to look like someone who is "not breaking the law". AKA: look like a suburbanite: Wear some khakis and a polo shirt, carry a Starbucks cup, and act as white as you can possibly get away with. If approached, smile, call the cop "officer" or some such referential title, and explain that you thought it was legal. Not that you know it's legal- that you thought it was legal. If they tell you to scram, do so. No argument with law enforcement is worth what is in that dumpster.

Note that it is illegal in many places to put stuff into dumpsters that aren't yours, though, so if the cops are having a slow night, be careful about them asking you to put stuff back.

You also don't want to be the reason dumpster diving gets banned in your community. Do this primarily by never getting into a dumpster. I know the container of perfect strawberries is just out of reach, but if you fall or are unable to get out you are not only up a creek yourself but potentially causing an anti-dumpster-diving frenzy that your town's grocery stores will never recover from. Also, people have legitimately died from getting into a trash compactor.

Now, "legal" does not mean "pro-store-policy". One of the main reasons for this is that is dumpster diving can be somewhat dangerous and no store wants to be the store that's known for letting people break legs on their slippery dumpster juice or what have you.

Avoid too many store policy issues by waiting until the store closes, doing a pass-by to ensure no one is waiting to see if anyone is picking out of their dumpsters, and (again) looking like someone who wouldn't be diving in dumpsters.

Store management tends to worry that they will be sued for letting you eat expired or unsafe food. If you do get approached by a manager who isn't excited to see someone picking over their dumpster selections, it is a good idea to impress upon them how very many dumpsters you pick from and how you wouldn't possibly be able to prove it was their dumpster that gave you food poisoning. Also, if you're feeling particularly bold, let them know that you are saving their store money by decreasing the weight of their waste. Probably not by a lot, but hey, you're on their side here. If told to scram, once again, do so with haste.

On that note, there are safe and unsafe foods to pick:

Generally Safe:

Packaged shelf-stable foods even with damaged outer packaging

Milk if still cold

Cheese

Eggs

Bread (including frozen bread if still cold)

Whole Veggies and Fruits, even with bad spots

Fermented anything

Non-Food Items like dry pet food, hand sanitizer, soap, cleaning products (except bleach), etc...

Generally NOT Safe:

Sliced lunch meats

Cheese touching meat

Cut salads or veggie trays

Prepared hot foods (even if still hot)

Pre-cooked refrigerated meals

Frozen veggies (unless still mostly frozen)

You want to make sure you have some time the next day to process your haul. Everything needs to be carefully sorted, cleaned, peeled, and in the case of perishable food like eggs and veggies, cooked prior to eating.

One final thing:

Be considerate. Leave everything how you found it and make sure you're not making more work for employees. Also, if you know others in your area dive, leave some stuff there for the next person.

Salvage Shopping:

Perhaps you aren't completely up for dumpster diving but still like living your lil raccoon life? Thats fine!

Salvage groceries are a great option. Essentially, instead of throwing food away that they can't sell to traditional consumers, grocery stores sell near-dated or damaged products to salvage grocery stores for pennies on the dollar, and that savings is passed along to the consumer.

Most salvage stores are smaller than traditional grocery stores, and some are cash-only. Some have fresh or frozen sections, but the smaller ones are pretty much all packaged goods. If you are living exclusively on salvage stores, you may want to supplement with some dumpster diving, foraging, or gardening (or even maybe going to a grocery store, but that's hella expensive).

Salvage groceries are not necessarily going to be perfectly food safe. There will be expired goods (doesn't mean bad). That just means you will have to do some due diligence. For example:

Make sure that an item you want to purchase is still in a sealed container

If there are more than one of an item, make sure they are the same color

Prioritize un-dented cans

If you must buy a dented can, make sure the dent isn't on an edge or seam

Don't buy expired canned tomato products

If you open a food and it smells bad, looks like it thawed and re-froze, hisses or bubbles- THROW IT AWAY

Generally be more cautious than you would normally be at a grocery store.

In my area these are pretty much always run by the Amish and Mennonite communities, but check around in your area. They are becoming more and more common outside these communities.

Not all of them will be listed on google maps. Look for a shop called "Bend and Dent" or "Salvage Groceries" or a small store advertising "Discount Groceries". Once you find one, it's easy to find others by asking at the checkout, since they tend to cluster together.

A drawback is that, because they do tend to cluster, they may be farther away than other grocery options. If you are far away, I highly recommend getting a few friends together and making a day of it. I can't say this about most things, but the extra cost in gas is well worth the savings, even if you are driving over an hour.

#free food #food #dumpster diving #USA #homesteading #tightwadery #adulting #reference

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khruschevshoe · 4 months

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OFMD Critique: Bad Faith, Fandom, and Respect

All right. You know what? Screw it. I saw one post I just cannot ignore anymore that encapsulated all of my problems with the fandom right now. Personal rant incoming.

I understand that there's a nuance to the discussion of season 2 of Our Flag Means Death, and that there are people going a little too far with both their critiques and their support of the show. But oh my God, I'm tired of being straw-manned and made fun of for legitimate critiques of the show.

I just used the block button on someone in this fandom for the first time. Some of you might think I'm overreacting for this, but I saw a post that I could not on any level stand. This person, who I will not name names of, because I'd rather just block them and never deal with their level of bad faith again, took their one legitimate criticism of those of us who critique the show, the back and forth on whether or not Izzy's death was homophobic or not, and used it as the first in a literal list of straw man critiques that no one I've read in the OFMD Critical tag has made (and I check it like once a day bc I like reading meta, sorry), proceeding to absolutely make fun of the legitimate critiques that people have of the show, parodying them in the worst possible ways. They took our legitimate critiques about everything from the sexist handling Zheng Yi Sao's character, the absolute ableism of the finale, the questionable optics of the handling of trauma, etc. and stretched them into things that they very much were not (two examples were that we were crying ableism bc of something to do with seagulls and that we thought the problem in the Stede&Zheng dynamic was the "emotional labor" involved).

Now I'm pretty sure this post was a joke. I *think* it was a joke. But how in the world am I supposed to feel comfortable in the main section of a fandom like this when the comments and replies to this post were full of people agreeing sincerely that this is what the critical section of the fandom is like? How am I supposed to feel when I just see people making fun of me for my analysis of the show? I love this show. I adore season 1 and I'm clearly still making fan related content (moodboards) for season 2 along with my critiques.

Sure, I vibe way more with fanfiction than the actual canon at this point, but I still genuinely engage with the show. And to have the critiques that I made in good faith, regarding issues that I sincerely care about such as ableism, sexism, homophobia, and the handling of trauma, made fun of and taken out of context and straw-manned to their extreme, makes me feel so absolutely unwelcome in this fandom.

Other than keeping up with the couple of fan series that I'm currently still reading, I don't know if I can stay in this fandom any longer. I can't say that I'm excited for the new season if this is the kind of response that any good faith critique of the show is going to get. I can't say that I feel safe or comfortable when there are this many people ready to dog pile on me for a critique I made with ACTUAL TEXTUAL EVIDENCE to back it up.

I would like to thank all the people who have been making excellent critiques of the show. Their meta-analysis is what got me into making my own critiques, which I was nervous about making in any other fandom. I don't think I've in any way tagged them all, but just a few I can remember off the top of my head. Go read their critiques/meta- it's really good!

@sky-fire-forever @carrymelikeimcute @blue-b-bro @bougiebutchbinch @treesofgreen @sixstepsaway @alex51324

And from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has engaged with my mood boards or my critiques or anything else that I've made, as well as the amazing writers and artists in this fandom (such as @ruecrown, @aletterinthenameofsanity, @fool-for-luv, and @possumsmushroom). You guys have kept me going with my love for the show and engaging with it for a while now. Despite the stuff that is making me take a step back now, I really did love this while it lasted! I'm still planning on making a few more mood boards, but other than that, I'm going to take a step back from engaging.

Hope this post can spread enough support/joy your way to counteract the ache I'm currently feeling!

Sincerely,

Ashley (aka @khruschevshoe)

#ofmd critical #fandom critical #ofmd #ofmd season 2 #this show was supposed to be a source of joy and kindness and it become something sour #izzy hands #zheng yi sao #stede bonnet critical #ed teach critical #I'm not tagging them bc I don’t want hate #fandom shenanigans #meta #analysis

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sepublic · 1 year

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Anyhow, I want people to understand the significance of me crying over TOH ending because. I generally do not cry. It’s hard for me to cry, I feel sadness and grief sure! But tears themselves are difficult. And as much as I love media, it’s very rare and hard for it to make me genuinely cry. Other cartoons and shows I’ve gotten into haven’t done it, but...

The Owl House genuinely made me cry. After the grief of Agony of a Witch, the lonely despair of King’s Tide, and so many other painful moments. The Owl House finally made me sob, genuinely, wails I had to cover up, hot tears, sore eyes and a dripping nose. I heaved and made myself cry even more, because goddamn is there such a relief in the catharsis of feeling this pain, and knowing it means you’ve felt something, you’ve felt happiness to begin with.

So yeah. The Owl House has always been pretty special to me. But I think this expression of how I felt was low key what I was waiting for, working towards, after the finale. The absence hurts, but it makes me appreciate all the more the presence it entails for TOH in my life. For the community, for the experiences, the analyses, the genuine fun and laughter and speculation! The hype and friends I’ve made along the way, me building up my own skills as a reader thanks to this show!

I remember being enamored by The Owl House’s first announcement in February 2018, the first ever, possible public reveal of that show; You could’ve only known it beforehand if you worked at Disney and/or were one of Dana’s friends. Something about Luz, about Eda, about King... The very premise itself, the magic. Something about this show felt special to me, I had a really good feeling about it I couldn’t explain.

I ended up checking Dana’s Twitter obsessively for updates, was excited when she posted this one art of Luz and King having an ice cream run, while Eda was displeased with a little demon trying to get her dessert. I expected mostly casual things, but something about the vibes, the magic and wonder experienced through the lens of Luz... It got to me in a legitimately depressive state of my life.

Because I was depressed. Suicidal, even. It was perhaps the worst phase of my life ever, and I hope it’ll stay that way. The beginning of 2018 felt like me finally getting over the big hurdle, that enormous halfway point at the top, and how it was all relatively smooth, downhill sailing from here. So it feels fitting that it was the beginning of the easier part that TOH was announced for me. All I knew were Luz, Eda, and King; I eventually gave up checking Dana’s accounts for art, because I was SO excited and impatient for this show, inexplicably.

That’s probably why I missed Dana’s little sneak peek of Amity Blight, haha... But anyhow, TOH gave me something to look forward to. Something to live for. And when I finally got a shot of Eda throwing treats to Luz and King, the former taken aback by the eyeball, the latter having it bounce off his skull. It didn’t make it to the final cut obviously, but it was my first glimpse of how the show itself would look.

I was in despair when The Owl House was delayed to 2020; I had to wait another whole year for it! And going from 2018 to 2019 was painful enough as is! But man... Was it worth it. The first teaser, the mystery and wonder it promised. My Bionicle brain freaking out over the reveal of the Boiling Isles as a giant corpse.

And then the theme song. Me learning Luz’s VA, scouring very obscure media to get an idea of how she might sound like. And finally I heard it, we got other announcements; Eda by Wendie Malick, who made perfect sense, and King by Alex Hirsch, cue those obnoxious Bill Cipher theories I still hate to this day!

Some crew members announced cupcakes they made, complete with banners like “Drinkers Coven” and I got hyped for this little content. I wanted to try cashew meringues because of it, and later recognized the repurposed frames of Luz, Eda, and King in actual episodes. I saw some concept art and expressions removed from the show, and was glad to recognize them later, as I did a frame-in-process of Luz wondering about her magical destiny.

I checked Tumblr but it seemed like I was the only person actively anticipating, and not just including TOH as part of a larger collection of media posts. I wanted TOH for itself, someone was curious if it had owls, I scoured the first teaser for a screenshot to satisfy them! I wanted more people in on it! I saw some clips, figured out Luz’s ethnicity from her squealing “Ay que lindo!” in response to King.

I made a few ancient posts, my first TOH post was me admitting I was excited and wondering if anyone else was. It got NO traction, at least not until much, much later... But that didn’t stop me! I had a dream where Luz was revealed to be disabled, her legs were prosthetics and Eda ended up giving her new magic prosthetics styled after owl feet. This would prove weirdly prophetic... Less so, my dream about Luz being the Anti-Christ (this was framed as a good thing), hence why she found the isles.

I speculated Luz was an orphan who had nobody, hence why she found the isles; But then an article mentioned her mother Camila. I went with that spelling until some end credits confused me with a typo that gave us Camilia, which led to a big fandom debate later until Dana clarified.

I analyzed the trailers, trying to figure out the plot and trajectory, wasn’t quite right there. I was happy to see TOH would have full 22-minute episodes, allowing them to get nitty gritty and elaborated, instead of truncated into 11-minute segments. Boy did that pay off, and looking back I can appreciate what a rarity that was, an achievement. People pointed out the anagram for me...

I speculated on the titles, confused bits from Covention with scenes from the first episode, wondered if Escape of the Palisman referred to the tower. And in the end, the first episode finally came out, after I was enjoying Infinity Train Book 2, and I was enamored. It was wonderful, it utterly blew me away and was all I wanted and more. I had to get more! The moment Luz spoke of liking editing anime clips into AMVs and all that other stuff, I felt seen, and that was just the beginning.

I spoke my praises, but alas there was no fandom. The next week, I was surprised to find posts for the next episodes so early, and learned the episode was released ahead of time on DisneyNOW, so I immediately subscribed. I was excited to meet Amity Blight, Willow and Gus; And I was caught by surprise by how openly mean Amity was when she debuted! But I analyzed the sub-text of her actions and dialogue, and was vindicated.

Amity was such a fun and interesting character because she really felt like a puzzle that we unlocked more and more pieces of, to better understand her. And I really got the sense of TOH’s re-contextualization and surprising character continuity, such as when King’s B-plot in one episode actually became the focus of the very next! You could tell the writers really cared about making a deeper story for kids and teenagers.

One nice memory was when I wrote a post appreciating Willow and Luz’s friendship, the idea of Willuz as a ship; I took a shower and went back to check afterwards, and got notes! I analyzed the mechanics of glyphs deeply when they were first revealed, getting nitty-gritty; I remember the events of a few nights and what happened around me writing a post, comparing glyph magic to artificial replication of dragon breath!

I looked for crew art, which alerted me ahead of time to the existence of Emira and Edric, thought I didn’t know their names, and was delighted to learn Amity had older siblings!!! They were hers! Shoutout to @anistarrose who was one of the few people in the tag at this time. I really appreciate that post where you called out people constantly trying to make King into Bill Cipher in a serious manner, and the annoying implications of it. And how you realized a tweet poem by Dana foreshadowed Warden Wrath and the Emperor’s Coven... AND THE CODES TOO!!!

I distinctly remember this one meme video in the tags, a song singing “This girl is a lesbian” as Amity showed up as the punchline. I thought it was cute and loved the idea, I had no clue...! I even tried to analyze the dates on her diary entries because I was so obsessed with the show and wanted more, trying to see if I could figure out a calendar...

Spoiler alert, I didn’t. but it was FUN trying! Putting in all of this unnecessary effort for a detail nobody cared much for, because you could tell the crew were people who did the same, Dana even confirmed it later for herself! I remember being shocked about Eda having a curse, that one theory it was a Blight who did it. I suggested King being the Boiling Isles Titan, some Youtube channel even asked permission to use my post in discussing that theory! I was skeptical but checked and it was legit, and was pleased.

I went through that godforsaken Witch’s Apprentice game, realized too late the artifacts represented each episode and gave hints to the rest of 1A. I watched Look Hoo’s Talking, with Owlyvia and Horus, shout out to those who remember! I was amazed by Eda’s self-awareness in deciding things for Luz, especially after Luz briefly called it out in Covention. I found myself so ATTACHED to the characters, which makes sense since I hyped myself from the start!

I remember being surprised to see King wasn’t an overlord... Or was he? The original 2018 announcement suggested as such, but the way the show played around even after the premiere seemingly disproved it was fun. I speculated on what Luz’s magic track would be, enjoyed fanart of her in Potions as Eda was. Seeing Young Eda was a blast, and I remember being so distraught at the idea of her being cursed! I made a post wailing about it and Cat-Harman Mitchell commented LOL as I ranted about taking vengeance on the curser. Little did I know...!

I was afraid of a cliffhanger with Season 1A, but nope! Eda made it out despite the demon hunters! With a hiatus, I was left impatient and needing more. I scoured crew art, speculated on what Emperor Bellows would be like; Covention’s subtitles mispelled him as such, and Dana had to clarify in a tweet when 1B’s trailer released! I got into deep discussion with @fermented-writers-block about the show, about the mysterious owl mural.

I guess TOH was my first start at really analyzing a show from the start, especially since nobody else was around to do it for me. And coming fresh from reading the meta of those who did inspire me, I went HARD, reasoning that even if it was disproven, the process was fun! I analyzed snake motifs, the mysterious green hand that stole King’s crown. I made a whole diagram about parallels between Luz, between King and the Gildersnake, between ‘human counterparts’ to Amity and Willow and Gus. This definitely fed the revelation of Creepy Luz later on...

But yeah. To think the snakes did pay off with Luz’s palisman Stringbean; Back then people speculated as such with the title’s design, and I’m so happy to see it came through! I speculated on lore, wrote my first TOH fics, The Bile Coven and Amity’s Diary Entries, the latter of which I feel particular pride for since it was a character study of her that proved rather on the spot!

I was obsessed with the worldbuilding, came up with my own ideas. Imagined what Bellows and Kikimora were like. I waited IMPATIENTLY, and even had a dream where Eda was captured by Lilith, Kikimora, and Wrath, as well as some covenscouts... But then it was revealed her curse was a result of possession by the creature depicted on the mural; And it progressed to the next stage of converting her body to its own as she got more feral and escaped on her own!

The airship used by the Emperor’s Coven proved prophetic. And after 1B seemingly disproved this idea, 2A brought it back after all and I was delighted! TOH was and is a show that keeps giving for me, makes me feel rewarded for engaging with it, and is grateful even when I’m wrong, as Any Sport in a Storm’s B-plot attests. I made jokes about King being Mata Nui because I was a Bionicle fan. Someone saw a Grom poster in the background of a shot and suggested Lumity, but I didn’t get my hopes up... Hah.

There was a trailer that alluded to an episode of Luz and Eda in a snowy place; I knew of an article on TOH that mentioned a ‘Witch’s Arena’ at the Knee and guessed this was it. I liked the song that played because I associated it with TOH, found out for myself.

Rebecca Rose, shout out to one of the OGs talking about the show on Youtube! She made a wonderful video discussing Amity’s development and potential, speculating on her, and I felt SOOOO vindicated and followed her for it! As you know, she became THE fan channel for TOH, and was eventually ascended to a full-on crew member for it. We’d all watch her reactions and discussions afterwards.

Adventures in the Elements leaked, I correctly guessed it wasn’t the next episode but the one after it. I was delighted to see the twins be good siblings, and Amity’s casual outfit... Before that, I read a fic during the hiatus of Lilith adopting Amity from abuse (Remember when we thought she was that functional?), and it understandably depicted the twins as mean-spirited and basically apathetic. It was a good fic.

I remember joke-speculating that Bellows would be short, because I was projecting analyses of the Pale King from Hollow Knight onto him! I considered making an animatic of Farquaad’s reveal from Shrek but with Bellows, but alas I’d never actually done an animatic and had zero clue lol. I had another dream about Bellows coming in with the Emperor’s Coven to apprehend Eda, who became an even larger version of her Owl Beast form in response.

Then Summer 2020 came around. What a wonderful time of my life... New fans came in when they saw the possibility of canon sapphics with Lumity, and I was exhilarated! So careful not to get my hopes up, but look now... I was hyped to see Belos’ appearance. I analyzed the 1B trailer, took screenshots and organized them to guess which episodes they were. Rebecca Rose found foreign titles of 1B and translated them, and I did note how translations could skew the intended anagram. I remember “Mini-Problems” being an episode title...

You can probably guess the rest from here, since this was about when the fandom really kicked off. And boy did people stick around for it all. I felt delight in knowing Grom was sooner, due to Understanding Willow being paired with Really Small Problems on the same day! Two episodes at once, instead of the original plan for the last two episodes of the season together! I ended up regretting that low-key with the angst and pain of Agony of a Witch, which made me realize how much I cared for Luz, Eda, and King, and made me the closest to crying from the show.

I felt vindicated to see a popular artist like MoringMark begin making fan comics, I had no idea that’d be THE thing he’d be known for, after I knew him as the Gravity Falls guy. I followed Matthieu Cousin on Tumblr, got excited for that trend of dressing up TOH characters for Grom and sending in your designs, with a winner announced! I don’t think that ever happened. Anamanaguchi’s Prom Night became a thing thanks to a crew member, and who can forget Little Miss Perfect? Kwame rolled with the success and I was glad for him. Eda’s gray eye appearing after the season finale in the end credits shocked me.

There was the Reddit AMA, where I prepared lore questions afterwards and had none of mine answered, but we learned a good deal! Especially the telling “Clawthornes are a bird motif” from Dana, her being put into a headlock by a nun. Amity and Lilith weren’t close but as I mentioned a while back, Dana expressed that she also made connections with cartoons as a kid. Odalia liking her kids color-coded, hence Amity’s hair, and Alador being interesting. Which led to a bunch of fanart that proved off the mark but also not? Alador wasn’t THAT well-put but otherwise...

And that stream! That wonderful stream! I contemplated spending so much money via donation to get something. Eda drinking Apple Blood, Spencer Wan almost spoiling Lilith having a Raven form. Our first sneak peek at Hunter’s face, not counting his appearance as the Golden Guard in S1; We all guessed he and the Golden Guard, or “Owl Mask” were the same. I was stumped and baffled how he fit into Belos’ dynamic... Hoo boy. And we all thought Hunter was an adult, even Alador at first, because of those eye bags!

I wanted to see the coven heads, based on their banners we saw; I liked the Potion Head especially and even when his design proved different than I expected, it was still my favorite! I thought Darius might be a Blight grandfather and he DID have a connection... I had a dream of the twins working for Osran at a library and messing with him, recognized Mason from Covention, and dreamed Terra was named Botanica.

Christmas art of the cast came out, I was happy to see Emira and Edric happy there, after being saddened by Dana’s Grom art of them and even writing a whole fic about it, which I’m chuffed about! She also drew Mattholomule... I recall in the wait for Season 1B, she did some art of the characters. Gus playing games, Mattholomule losing to him; King despairing over stubby thumbs.

Fanart of the kids in quarantine, Amity declaring it’d be easy to stay away from Luz, to Luz’s sadness; Boscha being mad because she couldn’t talk to her friends. Remember when Boschlow was a big thing, until Understanding Willow killed off some of the hype? And confirmation that Willow worked out, which we saw come to fruition in Season 2; People were surprised but I wasn’t! And of course, Frewin being his own entity from Bump, and not Bump himself.

But back to chronology, I guess this is where I should end off. Sorry, this ended up being MUCH longer than I intended, and really you could write a book about my experience with TOH and the journey on a meta level. But those were interesting times, those beginning eras. Back when I didn’t feel the need to always add screenshots to posts unless necessary. And it’s making me nostalgic. It’s making me appreciate everything we’ve been through, the roots of my hyperfixation. And how it all led to me finally crying, because I really did build up THAT much of a love for the show.

I found my first fandom I really felt a part of, found so many people who enjoyed my meta and validated me for it! I feel I’ve grown so much as a person because of TOH. And as I nostalgically reminisce on how different the show was then, I appreciate all the more how far we’ve come, and what it is now. Snapping back to the present does make me sad over how much has passed and changed, but I also appreciate it while remembering the ideas I once had.

I’ll miss that era, and TOH as a whole. And boy do I associate that classic ending theme, how I loved the melancholy of those end credits, speculated on them paying off in the finale. And they did...! It feels good to hear it one last time after a year without it, due to the end credits being removed or redone. There was something so idyllic and dreamlike about that original sequence, capturing the feeling of coming home, and I’m glad TOH did that once more with it.

#the owl house #ramblings #long post

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sendmyresignation · 2 months

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if you wanna indulge me, id love to hear your opinions on sing (all of mine are detractory which i know isnt the complete view of the song)

omg id love too!! sorry this took me a sec to formulate post-work haha. i know we don't agree about sing but honestly that's the beauty of music opinions- I feel like it becomes easier to define what I like about things when faced with legit measured criticism anyway

for me, i want to start with the structure and instrumental since it's usually not mentioned (most of the criticisms of sing are exclusively lyrical or intention-focused). it's so cool. and evocative. and full of tension!! my favorite use of synth on danger days, plus the keys and the drums (man i love the dd studio musician drums lmao), really emphasizes sing as a suspended moment both in the album (necessary bridge, tonally, between bulletproof and planetary imo) and in the track itself- its alllll building up to that bridge and final chorus. but there's all these little pieces- the backing vocals, there's so many hidden guitar parts that riff just under all the noise, that opening like, tambourine. sorry for not having a quote on hand but Ray's said he really loved writing sing and it's so totally obvious to me. especially live- part of the reason I was soooooo excited for sing swarm tour edition is that even during dd ray was like absolutely shredding for sing after the bridge. and everytime time it's so good. part of the reason the lyrics don't bother me is sing could stand alone instrumentally and I'd still want to listen to it. (sing also reminds me of Ray's solo music- the sentiment is more significant that the lyrics and the music is itself a vehicle for storytelling)

also though, i think there's a lot of intention with sing (it's up to the listener to determine if that paid off obv) but within the context of dd the record as a pirate radio station, sing has always read as a trojan horse song. making it a single too, like once a song takes on a life of its own outside the record there's new meaning and circumstance. so both within and outside the killjoy universe sing is a vehicle for not just the bridge but the overall sentiment of dd (how fucking excited was gerard when glenn beck took the glee bait) like, yes, i do agree they could've benefited from another pass over the lyrics (i will always defend keeping "sing it till your nuts" bc its sounds like sing it to your nuts though) but I don't personally get the criticism that sing isn't "specific enough" about what exactly it's against or is too optimistic about "sing it for the world"-- i think there are songs on the album (notably planetary right after it!) which do that job just fine. dd is gerard in arguably top lyrical form so theres a lot of meat in the rest of the record like. sing it for the world is a purposely simplistic art is the weapon. like those are the same sentiments rendered very differently!

also like. i do think there was a very directed target at the younger part of their fan base here (girl/boy) which is sweet. to me. like i did hear sing first when i was a young teen (one of the few dd songs i was familiar with) and it did feel huge and empowering at that moment. my chem are their best when they are navigating the dualities of their specific fame, which includes simultaneously making very serious, adult rock music which is concerned with violence death grief and sex, as well as being a role model for younger people and taking them seriously and neither of these are in rhetorical conflict with each other. so like whatever sing is a little juvenile. but it's still filled with passion! taken as a legitimate project with a creative instrumental and a narratively-driven music video. I like that aspect, it works for me. I'll never call it my favorite my chem song but its certainly not the worst when you add in the bridge (i wanted to prove my point without the bridge but like. damn!! it's a good bridge!!!). that's my spiel.

#god this is long but thank you for the ask it made me think :)#like at the end of the day a great instrumental with subpar lyrics is going to beat out #a song with incredible lyrics and a bothersome instrumental bc that effects tone and meaning and listenability and impact #so i think sing is v easy for me to appreciate #my posts #angstics #igottheanswer

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poppyseed799 · 5 months

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Since I mentioned how Martyn saved Last Life for me, I think it’s time I finally make my Martyn Appreciation Post that I’ve been meaning to make because the fandom is too mean to him sometimes.

Once upon a time, I discovered a series called 3rd Life. I watched it because I had watched Grian many years ago and figured “sure, I’ll see what he’s up to now.” The premise was very interesting and the episode got me hooked. The second episode came out and I watched Scar’s, it was so funny I subscribed despite never knowing anyone except Grian before 3L. I watched the series as it came out, always watching Scar but branching out to see the other POVs too, because I was invested in the whole story. And of course, how could you watch 3rd Life without watching Martyn, the hand. His editing was great, he added so much to the enjoyment of the story with just editing.

And then suddenly, (I think this was the first instance but I could be wrong) he had almost died and there was a voice telling him it wasn’t his time to die yet. I watched Scar first as always, so I knew Martyn would survive, but the editing made it feel like he wouldn’t until that voice came and “saved” him. I wasn’t expecting anything like that at all. What was that voice supposed to be? Why wasn’t it the right time for him to die? Fans all talked about it of course. Back then, it was called the “voice lore”, cuz that’s all we really knew. A voice. This voice lore gave fans even MORE to talk and theorize about, which is always great in fandom spaces. The series went on, the voice coming back sometimes as we’d try to figure out what was going on. It wanted him to kill Ren, but he never did. He couldn’t, because Ren had died and Martyn fell shortly after.

The 3rd Life finale was fantastic. I cried. Like actually I cried, and despite not writing often I even wrote a little retelling of the cactus fight mere hours after watching the finale. It was that inspiring. I was crying as I wrote. Eventually, I got around to watching Martyn’s POV of it, cuz how could I not? It was amazing, a totally different side of the war, a very tragic one at that. Of course, Martyn died. I knew he would, I watched Scar first every time. But I wasn’t expecting what would happen after he died. His character falling in a dark void, some speech about always fighting, even if you have nothing to live for. It made me cry. Yes, I cried a lot in my time in the life series. It’s great that a series could make me feel that way. Anyways, I cried at that speech. Then it ended, and the voice returned. It wasn’t very happy with Martyn. I was actually legitimately worried for his character. Until that point, I had been imagining afterlives for all of the characters (yes I cried at Scott’s finale too). Happy afterlives for them, since I loved the characters so much. But when I saw that last bit of Martyn’s finale, I was worried he wouldn’t get a happy ending like I wanted for all of them. But of course, my feelings aside, this was lore. Why wasn’t the voice happy? What was it going to do?

I went on twitch and found Martyn streaming, talking about 3rd Life. I watched and learned so much behind the scenes stuff. I’m just going to bring up this point now: Martyn’s interactions with life series fans is part of what makes him and his lore so great. But more on that later.

Then Last Life came out. I was so excited, I actually recently dug up my old DMs with my sister from when I found out about it, apparently I was a couple days late to realize it came out lol. Not sure what I was doing, I also don’t think I knew there would be a second season, even though I know I watched Grian’s finale where it said there would be. Idk maybe I forgot. Anyways… I was OBSESSED with Last Life. Completely and fully invested. My birthday was during its run and all I asked for was my family members to draw wizard Scar. But anyways the point is Martyn. The voice returned! And this time… there was more! Martyn was acknowledging the voice. There was a secret shadow group formed, and we learned more and more about the voice but not enough… yet.

One of my favorite parts of Last Life was when Martyn was… hallucinating? Jimmy and Mumbo were alive and he did Mumbo’s intro. It was well put together, disturbing, sad, and also a great teaser for the episode when he uploaded that Mumbo intro compilation. Then he runs and has an argument with the voice before finally giving in. Like… wow. What was that lol. It was awesome! Martyn’s character has always had such… character. He’s merciless and willing to betray, yet also loyal and empathetic. It feels like he would be a sweet guy and a nice friend if it weren’t for the circumstances. I love c!Martyn so much, he really feels like he has feelings even tho he’s just real life Martyn’s OC he roleplays as in minecraft.

But now, that famous Last Life Finale. Martyn dies (in a very bad way I might add) and the same thing that made me sad last time happened again, but worse. The voice was upset with him. This time, to his face, and VERY angry. That end speech is one of my favorite parts of the life series EVER. I want to have it memorized. It explained so much, was so powerful, just vague enough that you might not understand at first but could easily figure out with a bit of thinking what they’re referencing. And since that day, it was no longer called voice lore. We knew what the voice was now. It was now known as the watcher lore.

Now, to be honest, I think I actually first experienced this legendary speech from a stream. I was just absorbing the Last Life finale (which was disappointing for me personally but that’s a different post) when I saw Martyn was streaming an explanation of his lore. I watched it, and it was amazing. I got to learn what everything meant, little bits of trivia and behind the scenes, all that! It honestly saved my slipping enjoyment of Last Life. I had never watched EVO, but the great thing was you didn’t really need to. If there was something you didn’t understand, you could ask other fans, or just ask Martyn. That’s one of the best things about the watcher lore! The guy writing it is very open to discussing it with fans so you can understand it better, show him your theories, learn behind the scenes and all that!!

I just don’t see how people could hate it so much. Out of all the life series creators, Martyn interacts with the fans the most. Not even in an uncomfortable way, he seems to understand fans and fandoms well. Here on tumblr if you’re interested in his lore you can just shoot him an ask and he’ll likely answer! He’s planning on making an explanation video for his lore too, which will be really helpful. It’s the most interactive part of the life series (aside from the new “suggesting secrets for secret life” thing), of course the fandom will obsess over it!

It’s just disheartening to see people diss it so hard just because they think the fans are annoying. First of all, most posts that talk about that reek of cringe culture, second of all, have some respect for the hard work Martyn puts into this!!! There’s no reason to drag him down just because his work inspires the fandom more than you’d like it to. I’ve seen people say it’s just fan service. First of all, I don’t see a problem in him seeing fans talk about watchers a lot and think “let me give them more to work with!”, especially when second of all HE WAS PART OF EVO, I’M PRETTY SURE HE WAS ONE OF THE WRITERS FOR IT. He has full right to continue the watcher story. Also people don’t seem to realize the lore has existed since 3rd Life? Probably because we didn’t know it was watchers back then. But still, he didn’t randomly see watchers and go “I’ll do that”. Before the watcher reveal I think I saw watchers in the fandom like twice? Because Grian made the series. It was mostly just AUs anyway. So yeah. Martyn wasn’t like stealing fanon lore for clout he just wanted to use watchers and we went “that’s so cool” and went insane.

Within the series, the lore isn’t as overbearing as people claim it is either. Once again stop dragging Martyn down for gripes you have with other fans. There wasn’t even ANY in double life. In Limited Life, it was just a few rhymes and such, which was still awesome! His finale also added more to the lore, was very cinematic and cool. Lots of work put into it.

On that subject I also made it to the Limited Life Finale Stream!!! Explaining the lore and answering questions and giving behind the scenes information!!! It was great! Other members of the series helped him with his finale which is cool. He gives us tons of stuff to work with all the time, lore to theorize on, he just gives so so much to the fans. It’s no surprise at all that we love his lore.

Just… most hate I see is so misdirected towards Martyn. Don’t hate him because he made an incredible story! I stand in front of him with a sword and a shield and say “he is not your enemy! Everything you’re complaining about is because of the fans!” So you turn around to fight the fans only to see I am also standing in front of them with a sword and shield. But that is a conversation for another day.

Basically, Martyn lore so good he is great for the fandom and I cried ten million times while in this fandom. In a good way.

#trafficblr #martyn inthelittlewood #eyesandears #life series #this post is a mess and I don’t think I conveyed anything properly but. Thats how my posts are baybeyyyyy

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year

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North To The Future [Chapter 3: Everlong]

The year is 1999. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

A/N: I hope you are all having a magical holiday season!! My birthday is Dec. 24th so I’m always extra excited for this time of year. 🎅🎄☃️🍾🎁🥳

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, boy bands, and discussions of sex. Do you know that Tom Glynn-Carney is the lead singer of an alt-folk-rock band called Sleep Walking Animals?? I do and it’s ruining my life!!

Word count: 5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario @meadowofsinfulthoughts @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @b1gb3anz @hinata7346 @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

“Dad, do you have an extra parka that I could borrow? Like, permanently?”

He furrows his brow at you as he scrapes his plate clean with a fork: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, Rice-A-Roni. He’s curious; he’s concerned. “Yeah, ladybug, sure. Why?”

“I have a friend who needs one.”

“You’re going out again tonight?” your mom inquires, cautiously optimistic. She slathers her roll with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. It’s Thursday, and exactly one week before Thanksgiving.

“Twice in two days!” your dad says. “I’m proud. I’m very proud. You work too much, you know. Which friend is it? What size is she?”

“He,” you correct.

Your mom’s butterknife abruptly stills. “He?”

Your dad is grinning. “Uh oh,” he says.

“He’s a friend,” you reiterate. “And he’s new to Alaska and not properly equipped. That’s it.”

“Is this friend married?” your mom asks.

Great question! No one knows! “Probably not, Mom.”

“Is this friend sexy?” your dad says, then he and your mom bust out laughing. You wait patiently for them to tire themselves out. “Okay, how big is he? Around Trent’s size?”

“Smaller.”

“Let me see what I have…” He lumbers down the hallway towards your parents’ bedroom and reappears moments later with a black L.L.Bean parka. He hands it to you. “Here, this should work. It fit me fifty pounds ago, so it should be nice and roomy on your sexy friend.”

“Your sexy single friend,” your mom amends.

“You’re the worst,” you tell both of them, smiling. “You will rue this day once I reveal myself to be the Ice Fisher and claim you as my final victims.”

Your mom shudders, but your dad chuckles and pats your shoulder three times. That’s how he says I love you. He hasn’t been your dad your whole life, only for about as much of it as you can remember. When you were born, your mom was married to a man named Jesse. He was charismatic and clever and talented and, from what you can gather, a lifelong addict. There was some untold amount of suffering that your mom endured and then one February morning when you were five years old, Jesse washed up on the shore of the Gastineau Channel. This is not something that you carry around as a tragedy—you barely remember anything about Jesse, and you and your mom are surely better off without him—but you do carry it. It is a sort of ancestral memory that travels with you like a suitcase. When you enter a room, you can tuck it away for a while, store it in a closet or under a couch; but when you leave that room, the suitcase always leaves with you. There’s a box full of Jesse’s old journals up in the attic. No one ever reads them, your mom won’t even acknowledge them; but perhaps getting rid of those journals would be like throwing out the best parts of the man she once believed was her soulmate, the parts that he drowned in vodka and Valium and heroin. Perhaps it would be like killing him all over again.

Your dad says: “Have fun tonight, ladybug.”

“Yes,” your mom murmurs, gazing down into her cup of tea, cloudy like the Juneau sky; it clears so rarely you can hardly ever see the Northern Lights. “But don’t go anywhere alone.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“He said what?!” Heather gasps.

“That he likes me. That he really likes me.” You’re in Heather’s usual booth at Ursa Minor. She has a Sex On The Beach; you’re restlessly spinning a blackberry Bacardi Breezer between your palms. The parka your dad gave you is squished beside you in the booth. For reasons that remain unclear to you, Trent and his friends are—loudly, annoyingly, howling out peals of laughter like hyenas—assembling a drumkit in one corner of the room. Aegon has yet to appear. The Christmas lights glow like stars. The staircase that leads up to the rooftop patio—only really useable three or four months out of the year—is adorned with sprigs of holly.

“And what did you say back?!”

You wave your hands around helplessly. “I don’t know, I just…kind of…like…left.”

“You left,” Heather says flatly. “You actually met a guy that you are into—a miracle! water into wine! loaves and fishes!—and you have this completely deranged romantic moment in a Taco Bell, and then you follow him back to his apartment where he lets you pet his adorable golden retriever and admits that he likes you, and then you…leave?!”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“What is wrong with you?” Heather says. “Did you party a little too hard in vet school? Blackout a lot? Are your remaining brain cells lonely? Are your parents first cousins?”

“Look, I have reasons.”

“Let’s hear them. Wait.” She takes a sip of her Sex On The Beach, ruminative. “You, being the sensible and risk-averse person that you are, don’t want to gamble on falling madly in love with some maybe-murderer glorified homeless man who could pack his figurative bags and disappear tomorrow.”

“That’s some of it. Not all of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

You shrug, drinking your Bacardi Breezer, pretending to be distracted by the other Ursa Minor patrons. Kimmie is at the bar flirting with some barely-twenty-one college student who’s wearing a University of Alaska Southeast hoodie. Trent is hooting as he wallops his friend Rob with a pair of drumsticks. Shania Twain’s Honey, I’m Home drifts pluckily from the stereo.

Heather bangs her Sex On The Beach against the table like a judge’s gavel. “The rest?”

You sigh and confess in a vanquished rush. “If nothing happens, then I can always comfort myself with the thought that the sex might have been terrible anyway. Maybe he would have passed out halfway through. Maybe he’s never heard of the clitoris. But if I sleep with him and it just so happens to be earth-shatteringly amazing, then…”

“Then it’ll hurt that much worse when he leaves.”

“Right. I’ll be like a traumatized Vietnam veteran. I’ll never be free of those flashbacks.”

Heather’s eyes are kind, sympathetic, twinkling with the reflections of Christmas lights. “My good bitch, this is a clusterfuck.”

“I’m not disagreeing.”

“You really don’t know anything about him? Hometown, family, ex-wives, credit score, criminal record, horoscope sign…?”

“No,” you say. “I think he might be from Miami. And that’s literally all I’ve got.”

“If only there was some way to instantly uncover a person’s entire personal history and social life.” Heather slurps down her Sex On The Beach until there’s nothing left in the tall glass but clinking cubes of ice. “There’s this thing called Google, I saw it on 60 Minutes. But no one around here has internet. Not in their houses, anyway. Like, maybe the Wells Fargo office has internet, but I don’t think they’d let you use it to research the slutty rando boozer who just slinked into town.”

The metal bells on the front door jangle. You turn—too quickly, too eagerly—to see who enters. It’s not Aegon; it’s Joyce. She stops by the bar to get a can of Surge and then slides into the booth beside you, lifting her book out of her purse and laying it on the table. Across the room, a cackling Trent drops a cymbal on the floor and thus attracts the judgmental stares of everyone in Ursa Minor. Dale, looking tired and irritable, scowls at him as he pops open a fresh Miller Lite for Kimmie.

“Hey,” Joyce says, then is promptly absorbed into the fantastical world of the half-naked, horse-riding man on the front cover of her book.

“You need to find out if Aegon’s a Gemini,” Heather tells you. “That would be absolutely disqualifying. Two weeks spent dating a Gemini and you won’t need the Ice Fisher to end it all, you’ll be ready to strangle yourself with your bare hands.”

“Yeah, totally, I’ll get right on that. Um, what is Trent doing?”

Heather rolls her eyes. “His band is performing tonight.”

“His band? Trent has a band?”

“He has something that he alleges is a band. Dale agreed to let them have their highly anticipated world premier here tonight. I think he’s regretting it already.”

The electric guitar. The electric guitar in Aegon’s apartment. “Who’s in this band?”

“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t care enough to ask any follow-up questions.”

“Huh.” You watch Trent and his friends as they finish setting up the drumkit, the amps, two microphone stands. Trent spies you and waves, beaming. You wave back halfheartedly.

Like a storm, like a meteor, Aegon crashes through the front door and slams it shut behind him, engulfed in a whirlwind of frigid arctic air. The bells jingle shrilly. He’s wearing a black and white striped long-sleeve shirt, ripped jeans, and his battered jade green electric guitar. His white-blond hair is in disarray. There’s snow all over his Doc Martens combat boots. His eyes scan the room, settle on you, stay there. He smiles knowingly, mischievously. And then he goes to join the rest of the band.

“Oh no,” Heather says. “Oh God. Oh no. He’s hot. Look, Joyce, look. He’s hot.”

Joyce glances up briefly. “He’s okay.”

“He’s hot,” Heather moans. Trent greets Aegon with a fist bump and a bear hug. Rob, even-keeled and stocky and hoisting on his bass guitar, gives him a placid nod. Heather reaches across the table to seize your hand. “Come on. I want front row seats to your willpower’s funeral.”

There is a crowd gathering: you and Heather and Kimmie, Trent’s gang of friends, assorted locals, even Joyce wanders over with her ring finger keeping her spot in her book, as if she might lose interest in these peculiar real-world happenings at any moment and need to retreat back into the oasis of fiction. Trent plops down behind the drumkit and gives the toms a few experimental whacks with his drumsticks. Rob warms up too, plucking at the strings of his bass guitar with his sturdy fingers. Aegon plugs in his guitar and tunes it, a bright green pick between his teeth. Satisfied, he grabs the pick and takes his place at the forefront microphone stand.

“Check one, check two,” he says, tapping the mic. “How’s everyone doing tonight?”

There are tepid claps and whistles. Kimmie squeals enthusiastically. Aegon doesn’t seem to notice her. His eyes—a deep and calm blue, not steely or translucent, not icy or sharp—flit to you. You react before you can think too much, before you can troubleshoot or veto it. You mouth: You look great. Aegon grins, toothy and effervescent.

“Dear lord, that was quick,” Heather mumbles.

“Anyone in the mood for an appletini?” Aegon says, then laughs as the crowd roils with confusion.

“What the hell’s an appletini?” a cantankerous middle-aged logger asks his wife.

“Tonight we have a very special cover for you folks,” Aegon announces. “If I don’t know you already, my name is Aegon and I’m here with my good friends Rob and Trent. It’s the first-ever public performance for our little band, which we’ve named Boat #27 after the commercial fishing vessel we were destined by fate to meet on.” He strums his guitar once. The notes ring out rough, powerful, magnificent. “Special thanks to Ursa Minor owner Dale for making this possible and for letting me have like eighty rum and Cokes on my tab. Alright, let’s roll.”

Aegon begins playing, and it takes you a few seconds to recognize the opening chords: it’s Everlong by the Foo Fighters. The bass and drums join in. Rob is self-composed, so unpretentious you could forget he’s there. Trent assaults the drums with a childish, frenetic sort of energy. Aegon’s fingers move artfully across his electric guitar’s fretboard, confident and nimble.

Heather informs you, regretfully, as if it’s catastrophic news from halfway around the planet, an earthquake or a famine or a hurricane: “I think he knows his way around a clitoris.”

“Goddammit,” you whimper miserably.

“Hello, I’ve waited here for you, everlong…”

In this moment, Aegon sounds very much like a rockstar. He looks like one too: hair shagging in his eyes, combat boots stomping, face flushed and halfway between euphoria and agony. There’s black eyeliner smudged around his eyes and glitter on his cheekbones. He mostly keeps his eyes closed or faraway as he sings, but there’s one line when his gaze finds yours and locks there.

“Breathe out, so I can breathe you in, hold you in…”

“Oh snap,” Heather says. “Do you think you should take a pregnancy test after that?”

“Please shut up.”

“Look, I can read palms too.” She grabs your hand. “I see many Cobainbies in your future.”

When the song ends, the bar erupts into cheers, more convincing this time. Even Dale claps. “Thank you, thank you,” Aegon says. “Have a great rest of your night. We’ll be back soon, I promise.” He unslings his guitar, sets it on top of one of the amps, and begins walking over to you. Kimmie intercepts him, yammering at lightspeed and asking about his jade green guitar, his favorite bands, his boots, his hair. Trent finds you instead.

“Hey,” Trent says exuberantly.

“Hi,” you reply. “Awesome show tonight.”

Heather adds: “Yeah, I’m sorry I mentally muted you as you were explaining this to me.”

“Man, it was da bomb!” Trent says. “You have no idea how long Rob and I have been trying to find somebody who could be our frontman, and then Aegon came out of nowhere, I mean it was like he dropped out of the sky, and he was just perfect…”

As Trent rambles, your attention strays to Aegon. He’s nodding politely at whatever Kimmie is saying, but he’s looking at you. He turns away when he catches you watching him. Trent, eternally eager to impress, ventures off to the bar to procure you another Bacardi Breezer. He gets preoccupied talking to Dale, a sort of idol for him; Dale was a park ranger for years before giving it up to open Ursa Minor, and Trent has been feverishly submitting applications to the U.S. Forest Service. It’s easier work than trolling, more consistent, less backbreaking. You’re still staring defenselessly at Aegon.

“You know what’s interesting?” Heather says, following your eyeline. “He’s ignoring Kimmie almost as much as you’re ignoring Trent.”

“He’s ruining my life,” you groan, rubbing your face with both hands. “I’ve known he exists for four days and he’s ruining my life.”

“Uh oh. I think he’s coming over. Time for another Sex On The Beach.”

“Wait—!”

Heather hurries away. Aegon, having abandoned a patently disheartened Kimmie, appears like stars out of cloud cover. He’s tipsy, but nothing more than that. It is as close to sober as you have ever seen him. “Hey.”

“So you did lie to me,” you tease, nodding to where his guitar rests on the amp.

“Yes,” Aegon admits. “But that was a necessary lie.”

“Is any lie truly necessary?”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” he says. “I needed to know what you really thought of me before your judgment was compromised by the whole cool, tortured rockstar thing. Every chick in this room is looking at me differently now than they were yesterday. Except you. You look exactly the same.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

“It is.”

Trent returns with a pomegranate Bacardi Breezer for you and a Heineken for himself. Heather comes back with a fresh Sex On The Beach. Rob is trying to chat with Joyce by making fun of her fantasy novel; Joyce is calling Rob stupid with words that are too big for him to understand. Rebuffed by Aegon, Kimmie has pivoted to chatting with Trent’s friends Matt and Gary, who are both entirely enchanted.

“Okay, okay, important question,” Trent asks you. “Fight Club or The Sixth Sense?”

“The Mummy.”

“ER or the X-Files?”

“The X-Files, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Aegon agrees.

“Microsoft or Apple?”

“Apple,” Aegon says instantly.

Trent laughs. “You have some kind of vendetta against Microsoft?”

“No.” Aegon glances at you, smiles, winks. “I just really like apples.”

“Totally,” Trent says uncertainly. “Lots of Vitamin C. Backstreet Boys or Boyzone?”

“Oh, no question, Boyzone!” Heather exclaims. This begins a fierce debate. As they battle it out, you find yourself watching Aegon again. The sounds of Ursa Minor bleed away, the conversations, the giggling, the clinking bottles and glasses, the resumed Shania Twain hits. You are aware of nothing else but these things: the gravity of his voice, his large expressive eyes, that stubborn lock of hair that always escapes from behind his ear, the way he gestures with his hands, the fullness of his cheeks when he smiles.

Absentmindedly, as he is arguing the merits of I Want It That Way, Aegon scratches his forearm and pushes up his shirt sleeve. There, in the crook of his elbow, is something that puzzles you: it is a cluster of small dark patches like bruises, knots of scar tissue that are probably years old. Before you can ask, you realize what they are. They’re track marks. You hear his voice in your hushed skull: I’ve been better than I am now. I’ve been worse.

Aegon catches you watching; your face is horrified, but more than that it is wounded. He rolls his sleeve back down and shakes his head subtly enough that no one else will notice. What he means is clear. Please don’t say anything.

It hits you like a bullet, like a blade: not the past, but the future. He is going to die one day. You all are, of course, but unless Aegon changes he’ll be first. The thought is nonsensical, excruciating. You don’t want to lose him. You don’t want to imagine a world without him in it.

“I have something for you,” you tell Aegon suddenly, interrupting what Heather was saying. You dart to the booth and return with the parka that your dad generously donated. You hand it to Aegon.

“No way!” he says, admiring it. “How? Why?!”

“It’s my dad’s old one, it doesn’t even fit him anymore, so don’t feel weird about it. It cost me less than a Bacardi Breezer. But it’ll keep you from getting hypothermia.”

He dons the parka and models it, hands in his pockets, then on his waist; everyone agrees that it looks very fashionable. “I’m going to go try it out,” Aegon says. “After a quick detour.” He departs to get a rum and Coke from the bar. With his drink in hand, he ascends the steps that lead up to the rooftop patio, which is very much out of commission at the moment.

“Aegon, it’s closed!” Trent calls after him. “Hey! Aegon! Well…what can you do.” He shrugs, blasé now that the cause is lost, and smiles at you. “Ricky Martin or Jennifer Lopez?”

Heather detonates: “JLo, clearly!”

Five minutes later, Aegon comes flying down the steps and pulls you away from the group. Trent almost interjects; Heather stops her brother and diverts him with a passionate diatribe about New Kids On The Block, which Trent reveres unequivocally. “You have to come up to the roof with me,” Aegon says, low so no one else will hear.

“What? Why?”

“You just have to. Right now. You’ll see.”

“Um…okay…?”

You get your own parka off the coatrack. Then Aegon, wildly impatient, takes your hand and half-leads, half-drags you up the wooden staircase. The luminescence of the Christmas lights and clamor of voices disappear behind you as you step out with him into the cold, dark, mid-November air. The snow crunches beneath your boots. The wind is sharp and brutal, harsh enough to crack skin like ice.

“What—?”

“Look!” Aegon insists ecstatically, pointing up into the sky.

And then you see it, what the clouds and fog of Juneau hardly ever leave visible: the rippling curtain of green and blue and purple, fluid like silk, soundless like eternity. The aurora borealis. The Northern Lights.

Aegon is laughing, spinning around, gazing up into the sky with speechless, awed wonder. He flops down onto the snow, bathing in the otherworldly light. After a moment’s hesitation, you lay down beside him. The sky is remarkably clear. You can see stars, the crescent moon, the shadow of the Milky Way.

“This place is so fucking beautiful,” Aegon sighs, his breath white mist in the air. Then he looks over at you. “Thank you for the parka. This would be really painful without it.”

“Thank you for saving me from Trent.”

“Are you not into tall, beefy, obviously hot football stars? Is that not your type?”

“Tragically, my type seems to be alcoholic Greek guys.”

He smiles, the star-fire radiance of the Northern Lights on his face. “Oh no. You poor thing.”

“I know. I’m destined for annihilation.”

He turns towards you, rolling onto his side, and like a mirror image you turn towards him. The snow shifts to accommodate the shape of your body, shoulders and ribs and hips. You and Aegon study each other as the universe wheels by, mesmerizing and yet indifferent. That unruly lock of white-blond hair rests on his cheek.

“Aegon?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell are you running from?”

“I can’t tell you,” he says. “I mean, I could lie to you. I could give you a million different reasons. But none of them would be true. I don’t want to lie to you. I’d rather say nothing.”

“You’re married,” you try.

“No,” he replies, chuckling, thinking it’s absurd.

“You have, like, twelve kids and are fleeing child support payments.”

“No kids. Not that I know of.”

“You’re a demon who got in trouble and was put on demon probation and as an opportunity to redeem yourself you were sent here from the underworld to ruin my life.”

“No. Me ruining your life is just one brilliant coincidence.”

You reach out through the cold night, tuck the escaped lock of hair behind Aegon’s ear, caress his cheek—smooth, yielding, strangely delicate—with your hand, roughened by a lifetime in this unforgiving alcove of the world. And then Aegon closes the space between you to touch his lips to yours.

What shocks you is not that he does it, but how soft the kiss is, how slow. He’s gentle and careful, not reckless, not insistent; he’s warm while Juneau is freezing, freeing while so much of existence feels like a cage. He’s a key that throws doors wide open. He’s a harmless, weightless fire like starlight. His hands explore your face, your hair, tentatively, as if he expects you to stop him. His tongue leaves remnants of his rum and Coke in your mouth, bitterness and sweetness and spice. There are pounding footsteps on the staircase; you break the kiss not a second too soon.

“Hey,” Heather says as she opens the door, flinching against the cold. “Unless you plan on sleeping up here—or, uh, whatever you’re doing—you’ll want to come downstairs now. Dale is closing up the bar.”

Ursa Minor is in chaos: people are hustling to get one last drink, arranging rides, saying goodbyes, making plans, gathering their things. Aegon fetches his guitar and then joins the melee at the bar, begging Dale for another rum and Coke.

Dale is bellowing over the commotion: “Alright, the rock concert is over. Everyone better be out of here by 10:00, I’m exhausted, I gotta wipe everything down and go home.”

“One more!” Aegon pleads. “Please, Dale, my man, hook me up!”

“Fine,” Dale surrenders. “Just one more…”

“And a Heineken for me too?” Trent says hopefully. Dale groans in exasperation.

“Are you coming?” Heather asks you as she, Joyce, and Kimmie head for the parking lot, parkas donned and zipped. You hesitate and then push through the mob to locate Aegon.

“Do you need a ride?”

“Huh? No, I’m good,” he says. He’s mostly paying attention to the rum and Coke that Dale is mixing. “I’m more than good. I’m great, Appletini, don’t worry about me. Yeah, Dale, can you make that a double…?”

You leave him, a little annoyed, a little anxious, and follow your friends outside. Within ten minutes, your Jeep Cherokee is pulling into your parents’ driveway. You enter to find your mom and dad still awake and embroiled in a heated Scrabble game at the kitchen table. You shower, change into comfy oversized pajamas, and lay on your bed staring up at the ceiling. The walls are covered with posters from your middle school days, your high school days, your college days, your current days: NSYNC, Will Smith, the Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, Hanson, Winona Ryder, Heath Ledger, Ryan Phillippe, Ricky Martin. You would have chosen him over JLo when Trent asked…if you had cared enough to answer.

The phone rings once, twice, goes quiet. Someone must have picked up downstairs. Thirty seconds later, your mom knocks on your bedroom door and then opens it a crack.

“Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

“There’s some boy on the phone for you. I told him I wasn’t sure if you were still awake, just in case you wanted to avoid him. He sounds annoying.”

Oh great, Trent. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll handle it.” She disappears and your hand fumbles to grab the phone on your nightstand. “Hello?”

“Hey,” says Aegon.

You bolt upright in bed. “Heyyy. Stalker.”

“I am not a stalker,” he objects, slurring. “I am an…uh…an investigator. Yes. I investigate. That’s what I do. Not stalk. Investigate.”

“Okay. How did you investigate your way into calling me?”

“I asked Dale if he knew your parents’ phone number and he had it in his address book.”

“Top notch, the CIA is missing out if they don’t recruit you.”

The smile is gentle and hazy and warm in his voice. “You want to come over and watch the X-Files with me?”

“What, right now?”

“Yeah. Right now.”

In his apartment. On his couch. Just the two of us. Alone. Well, alone except for Sunfyre, who hardly counts as a chaperone. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“Oh, no, you misunderstood. I said X-Files, not—”

“Okay, great, as long as you’re aware. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.” You hang up the phone.

When Aegon greets you in the doorway of his apartment, he is wearing a pink San Diego hoodie and green plaid pajama pants. He staggers when he walks; there are three small empty bottles of 99 Whipped on the counter, along with two mugs of hot chocolate, dutifully topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. “Yours is the one in the blue mug. It’s booze-free, I swear. I double-checked like five times.”

“Are you a Gemini?” you demand.

“No,” he replies, bewildered. “Aquarius.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

You retrieve your hot chocolate and sink into Aegon’s couch. It’s threadbare and sagging, but surprisingly comfortable; he sits all the way at the other end, leaving a full middle cushion of No Man’s Land between you. Sunfyre leaps up to fill the gap, resting his cone-embellished head on your lap. His stitches are healing beautifully; you’ll take them out next week. On the tv is a rerun of the X-Files. Fox Mulder is, somewhat predictably, ranting about a government conspiracy. You are watching, but you are also wondering if this was a good idea. It feels like you know Aegon—completely, inexplicably—but you don’t really. He’s just some stranger, a drunk stranger, a drunk former-addict stranger who you are beginning to suspect you love.

Lyrics from The Distance come back to lurk in the corner of the room like a ghost: She’s hoping in time that her memories will fade.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” you ask Aegon.

“I don’t know, probably making a turkey for me and Sunfyre. He loves the organs, the ones that come in that little plastic baggie they shove up inside the carcass.”

“Charming. But you can’t be alone on Thanksgiving.”

“I’m usually alone on Thanksgiving, I’m used to it.”

“You don’t make friends in all those glamorous cities sprinkled across America?”

“Not the kind of friends who would invite me home for Thanksgiving.”

You stare at the tv, sipping your hot chocolate, scratching Sunfyre’s floppy ears. You are hyperaware of the precise amount of space between you and Aegon. You are alarmed by how natural it would feel to make it disappear, like Northern Lights blotted out by fog.

“Look,” Aegon says, breaking the tension. “What you told me on the phone…that’s not why I called you. That’s not what I’m expecting from you right now. I don’t want to do anything that you’re not totally cool with. And I can see that you’re not cool with it. So nothing is going to happen. Completely off the table. Zero percent chance.” He’s nervous, you realize; you’ve seen him frantic, and you’ve seen him angry, but it’s the first time you’ve ever seen him nervous. “What I mean is that I don’t want you to be sitting here stressing about what you think is on my mind. So I’m telling you flat out, that’s not what I’m thinking.”

“What are you thinking?”

He smiles, opens his hands futilely, looks down at his bare feet. “I can’t tell you. But I promise it’s not that.” Then an idea occurs to him. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that you shouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving.”

“Are you finally inviting me to your house? Because I invite you to mine constantly and my house sucks.”

“I am officially inviting you to my house. Sunfyre can come too, my parents adore dogs.”

“Is your dad going to be waiting for me in the living room with a shotgun?”

“No. He’s not that kind of dad.”

Outside, there is a swelling whirl of sirens. They build and build as they approach the apartment building, then fade as they shoot off into the darkness towards the lakes: Crystal Lake, Moose Lake, Dredge Lake. Aegon goes to the window and pulls aside the curtain. Then he looks back to you. The lights of the passing police cars paint his face in shades of ruby and sapphire, ocean and blood. “I think they found another body.”

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon x you #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen ii #hotd fanfic #hotd imagine

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justgallifreyanthings · 5 months

Text

Sherman’s stance (and my reaction)

Loren Sherman (creator of Sherman’s Gallifreyan) and Sirkles (prolific Gallifreyan artist + friend of Sherman’s) posted a video a few hours ago where they talked about how to read the phrase on the new Screwdriver as well as how they feel about the BBC using Sherman’s Gallifreyan on an official prop.

Some key takeaways:

Loren noted that the use of Sherman’s Gallifreyan by the BBC does not make it canon. For it to be a canon system, the BBC needs to officially acknowledge that they are using Sherman’s Gallifreyan as the Gallifreyan on Doctor Who

Loren explained that the concept of Gallifreyan, and the concept of a circular language used by Time Lords, are owned by the BBC. Meanwhile, Loren Sherman’s system of writing, which many people call Gallifreyan, is free to use by anyone — including the BBC

Loren and Sirkles said that they aren’t offended by the BBC using the system, and in fact it’s very exciting to see the system being legitimized by being used by a show they really love and respect

It’s interesting to hear their reaction to it, and good to know Loren doesn’t feel like their toes have been stepped on. As the creator of the system, they sort of have the final say on who can use it and how, in my opinion. So if they’re giving the BBC the green light, then I’ll respect that.

I think they’ve also done a good job subtly making a distinction between the BBC using someone else’s system and the BBC canonizing a system of Gallifreyan — “canonize” here meaning to officially make a part of the Doctor Who IP. Until the BBC acknowledges that they are using Sherman’s Gallifreyan (and acknowledges Loren as the system’s creator by extension), the circles on their show, the screwdriver, and their merchandise are technically just random circles. The BBC can say these circles mean anything they want. And while this specific pattern of circles is now part of Doctor Who IP and thus protected by the copyright, any sort of “system” that could be used to ascribe meaning to the circles is NOT part of Doctor Who IP — including Sherman’s Gallifreyan. (I’m obviously not an intellectual property lawyer, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but this is my understanding.)

All that said, I’m still feeling a bit pessimistic about how this all shook out and what this means for the relationship between the BBC/DW showrunners and Gallifreyan artists. Regardless of the legality of using or nodding to Sherman’s Gallifreyan in an “official” capacity, I feel like it’s still….morally gray to use a fanmade system and hide behind a sort of “wink wink nudge nudge, real fans know the lore” attitude, while knowing that all the press and articles are going to think it was created by the BBC and won’t do the research to credit Loren Sherman. And especially when taken in tandem with how the BBC has explicitly stolen Gallifreyan fanart to use on the show before…. I don’t have a lot of faith in the BBC honoring the subtle distinction between them using Sherman’s Gallifreyan and then owning Sherman’s Gallifreyan.

We’ll see what this means for the future of DW and the future of the various fanmade Gallifreyan systems that exist! I’ll certainly be keeping a fearful eye on my Etsy store for the foreseeable future, but it’s been really lovely to see the community come together and get excited about this.

#this has all reignited my latent desire to switch careers and become an IP lawyer #gallifreyan #mod post #doctor who #this is probs the last I’ll talk about it until something else massive happens

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rainylana · 2 years

Text

LOTR premiere with hellfire headcanons

Eddie Munson x female reader

summary: eddie and hellfire loose their shit over the new lord of the rings movie:)

requested by @itiscj

warnings: ultimate fluff and very slight language, reader is described with blonde hair! also lotr characters and scenes mentioned. that’s it!

taglist!

@ariesl0ves3ddiemuns0n @eddiemania @eddiemunnson @mic429 @kellysimagines @avobabe87 @bellasfavoritesweatpants @averysblog @antigoneidk @fionnthebandersnacc @imabadarsebard @lillianofliterature @underthebatcape @supercalifragilisticprincess @delilahtaylorsverson @your-starless-eyes-remain @cosmic-lavender @flowers-and-tsukki @catherinnn @imangy @ahzysauce @kaqua @getbillzoned @xx-hospitalforsouls-xx-blog @blowing-mikey @chaos-incorp @ultimate-sdmn-trash @noturmom15 @lexthemess21 @softyutae @tripthlightfantastic @livasaurasrex @hearts4laura @insomniac-nerd-posts-things @justaproudslytherpuff @ches-86 @actuallybarb @kneelforloki @fvcking-gxddess @phantomxoxo @tessiemessie @ohlovelyhollow @aa-li-yah @nothisispatric @genuine-possum @no0neknowsm3 @rovckwells @heeyitsg @dream-alittlebiggerdarling

• When it was released that the ever famous trilogy of Tolkiens ‘Lord of the Rings’ would be turning into a motion picture, never in your life had you seen Eddie, or all of hellfire, so excited. No, excited didn’t cover it. They cried. Legitimately cried when they heard the news.

• It was an entire year before the movie actually premiered, and during that year, it was all he ever talked about. He tried not to talk your ear off about it, but when Dustin and Mike came over, he wasn’t able to help himself. They talked about what they hoped would be included in the film, what they hoped would be left out. And when they found out Ian Mckellen was playing Gandalf….you had to leave the trailer for the night because it had flooded with tears.

• So instead of hellfire nights, they dedicated their time to rereading the trilogy, along with ‘The Hobbit’ and having very detailed discussions and arguments.

• “Eddie, I love you, honey. And I know you’re excited, but shit, can’t we talk about something else?”

“Oh. Y-yeah, sorry, sweetheart. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, huh?”

• They made their own costumes of their favorite characters for premiere night. Eddie was Aragorn, of course. He’d found armor at a second hand store and a sword to go with it. It was plastic and cheap, of course, but it got the job done. He had dusty, torn boots that matched the description of Aragorns in the book, and he kept his hair pulled back slightly.

• You weren’t exactly as big of a fan as he was, but you had to admit that you were excited to see the movie adaptation, so Eddie was able to convince you to go as Legolas since you had the blonde hair for it. You were able to borrow a few of Wayne’s hunting arrows to put on your back, and Nancy braided a strand to lay against your temple.

• Dustin went as Frodo💀

• You stood in line outside the theater for two hours waiting to get inside. You sat on the concrete sidewalk with your head against Eddie’s knee while everyone else stood.

• And oh, my gosh- when the movie started with Galadriel’s narration about the nine rings, Eddie had gripped your hand so tight you squealed in your seat. The theater was crowded with nerds so it wasn’t just them who were screaming and shouting.

• OH! when Gandalf was defeated by the Balrog, Eddie was sobbing💀

• You had to admit, though, it was pretty amazing to see the boy’s finally get to watch the movie, and it had been amazing. You know how special those books were to Eddie, how much they meant to him. Even Wayne knew how big of a deal this was.

• His favorite part was definitely when Boromir had been killed by the Urak-hai pack. And when Aragorn had kissed his forehead when he passed, you felt him squeeze your hand tighter.

• When it was over, you flinched when they all jumped up, clapping and cheering. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.

#eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson x reader #stranger things season four #joseph quinn #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson one shot #eddie munson headcanons #eddie munson x female reader #eddie x fem!reader #eddie #eddie munson smut #eddie the brave #eddie the banished #eddie the freak munson

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aroacesigma · 9 months

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do you have any sigzai hcs (or just hcs about sigma or dazai separately)

you're going to regret asking this . headcanons under the cut cause im gonna feel annoying otherwise . most of them are what i headcanon as happening like post canon in a nice world where everyone is alive and happy lol

sigzais <3

ok so to me they are THE transmasc qpps ever . i might be projecting a little but both dazai and sigma are both so transmasc to me. on one hand you have sigma who wears 10 billion shirt layers and a long ass coat and goes on and on about being an ordinary man, and then on the other hand you have dazai who also wears clothes like that and bandages over his chest

hc sigma as oriented aroace with ???? orientation . hes just very confused . theyre so confused . and dazai as bi aroacespec and not particularly averse to any stuff just doesnt feel the attraction most of the time

poor sigma has spent all this time around fyolai like 'god why the fuck are people like this' and then he meets dazai and is like ohhhhhhh. oh .

when sigma joins the ada (and they will u mark my words) him and dazai end up sharing an apartment

at first dazais excited because maybe he wont be living off horrible cooking

unfortunately sigma also cannot cook for shit . he fucking sucks . legitimately the only thing he can cook is cookies in a packet mix .

sigma is unfortunately going through the same phase that kids of controlling parents go through when they finally get freedom, which is making a bunch of stupid decisions . dazai , being the wonderful boyfriend he is, is encouraging all the dumb decisions because he thinks its funny

most of their dates is just going to cafes because sigma has the worlds most horrendous sweet tooth and sigma has no moral objections to guilt tripping him into it

despite being pretty bad at it themself, sigma has a tendency to hit dazai with a pillow until he takes care of himself

vice versa dazai will be a distracting little bitch and wont stop if he thinks sigma is overworking himself

sigma

he/they sigma is so real to me btw just need everyone to know this . they like messing around with neos as well sometimes i think

even though he's pretty much always tired , isnt really a huge fan of coffee , definitely prefers really fancy tea and energy drinks

decided to run with the whole purple thing cause of his hair , abolutely loves the colour. anything he owns is purple if they can get it .

smiles all happy while listening to music in a way that makes you think its something nice . its not . his only musical requirements are loud and screaming to drown out the Anxiety™

not my headcanon but i saw someone say once that they headcanon that occasionally people get an uncanny valley kinda vibe from looking at him cause of his weird origins and honestly i think thats pretty interesting

very happy to join the ada . not quite as impressed by the paycheck .

like , really not impressed by the paycheck . theyre struggling with the dwindling clothes budget . i can totally see him trying to decide whether he wants dinner or new earrings . and probably picking the earrings .

they get along with everyone at the agency really well . a few people dont really trust him straight up but atsushi and dazai vouching for him shuts that down relatively quickly

he gets along the best with atsushi

they have a friendly rivalry with kunikida . agency productivity going straight up just because those two keep trying to outdo each other

dazai

100% has multiple troll accounts online . he enjoys being a menace . not in the mean way , in the absolutely fucking infuriating kind of way

remained in denial (or more oblivious really) about being trans until he was 16 because he asked chuuya if everyone felt like that one time and chuuya was like well yeah (also trans and stupid)

on a related note (this one is kind of about dazai and chuuya but it still counts) mori was kind of like ohhh teenage boys are so much easier to deal with right ? kouyou decided it was best not to inform him that hrt gives you mood swings .

adhd. adhd. adhd.

hes a candy crush mum . its a problem .

eats everyone at the ada's food . but he doesnt eat the whole thing he'll just take a bite . its high up on kunikidas 'things that make me want to string dazai up by his legs and attach him to a ceiling fan' list

has been known to send 12 yr olds graphic violent death threats after losing to them in video games

he has the music taste of a 14 yr old cishet girl . i will let you decide what that entails .

my deepest apologies for making you read all this but i love them both dearly and i have lots of Thoughts

#asks #dreamsicle262 #sigzai #sigma #dazai #ramblings #headcanons i like

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saltymongoose · 1 year

Text

🔞 [THE KISS] 🔞 - How They React to a Vampire!Player's Bite ft. The Main 4

I'm so glad to finally be posting this, sorry for the long the wait. 😅 You guys know the deal, minors do not interact in any way, heed the tags and TWs. Other than this, enjoy! <3

(TW: !Minors Do Not Interact!, Extremely Suggestive Content, Yandere, Obsessive Behavior, Biting, Descriptions of Blood, Reader is a sadist again lol) [Part 1 - WORLD WITHOUT LOGOS] ←

As it turns out, your vessels were more than happy to accommodate you in every way possible, and this includes your dependence on vitae - blood.

You'd be lying if you said you didn't expect a positive, if not outright excited reaction to the idea of you feeding on them. (After spending so much time around them, their amusing amount of possessiveness over you wasn't something you could ignore.) However, their complete lack of regard for their own safety was still something you found concerning. Especially when you let them know that you took more than just blood from your vessels.

You let them in on this when you were trying to warn them: “Well, besides the fact that you might die, another effect of a mortal getting fed on by a Vampire is that said Vampire can get your soul, or part of it,” you had said flatly. A look at their stunned and weirdly awe-filled expressions was enough to prompt you to continue before they asked any questions.

"Most kindred don’t have the ability to do that, but I do. It’s one of the things that makes me so powerful if I go overboard with the feeding. If I drain you dry, your entire soul is mine, period. I already know you’re going to ask, but even if I don’t kill you by feeding, and the loss of that part of your soul won’t have much of an effect if any, it’s still important. If I get your blood in my mouth and I swallow it, a part of who you are will belong entirely to me. Forever."

You thought that would be a deal breaker for them. Surely giving up something so important to a monster like yourself wouldn't be desirable in any way, right? Wrong. Which you admit you honestly should've expected.

On the contrary, the thought of you legitimately owning part of their souls was actually exciting to them. Even the more level-headed grunts of your troupe couldn’t help the flush that overtook their faces as they silently mused on how wonderful it’d be to have such a thing happen; to be yours in the most literal sense possible and have the essence of their existence belong to you (as it should). They even thought it sounded romantic, really. Your fated partner having a part of your very being integrated into theirs, so that you’ll never truly be away from them (even in death).

Your vessels were touched by how much you cared about their safety, but that didn’t stop how tantalizing being bitten by you appeared to be. They want you to own them. So no, of course they wouldn’t dare let anyone else have the privilege of receiving “The Kiss” from you (as your kind called it). And you weren't the type to look a gift horse in the mouth (blood from the willing always tasted far better anyway), so you accepted their little proposal, to their absolute delight.

- [HANK J. WIMBLETON] -

Hank has zero hesitancy whatsoever in regard to you biting him, having wanted to bear your mark from the moment you first met. In his eyes, your relationship was one of ownership already; he was your vessel and you were his Player. (The only one he’d allow to control his every movement without question, the individual who he respected and loved enough to give himself to completely.) Being bitten by you would serve to make your claim on him open and obvious, so the fact that you would be bound together through his soul afterward was just a bonus if anything.

Perhaps this is what makes him so incredibly impatient whenever it’s his turn to receive The Kiss from you. His trembling and rushed movements are symptoms of the excitement he feels at getting closer to being marked by you. You can feel it especially well when he's yanked you into his lap, pressing you so tightly together that you have to bend backward to look him in the face. He beats you to it when you try to undo his coat and bandages, nearly ripping the offending cloth away before leaning into your shorter form. (You give him a look when he turns his head to bare his neck to you. It hasn't even been five minutes since you started.) Honestly, it seems like Hank is on the verge of somehow forcing your teeth into his neck himself most of the time.

Biting Hank also comes with an additional stipulation. With most of your vessels, you do a quick bite - one that you can cover up and heal quickly. Thing is, Hank doesn't want you to pierce him with just your canines. Instead, he prefers for all of your teeth to penetrate his skin; the full mark of your bite left indented in his flesh is what he truly needs. You’re fine with it, of course, even if it’s a bit unorthodox for vessels you actually mean to keep alive.

Hank is surprisingly noisy when you feed on him. His breaths grow more and more labored when your maw's sharpened razors begin to stab into him, sinking into his skin easily as you squeeze your jaws down and sending an odd jolt of heat to his lower body. Another harsh nudge of your teeth further into his neck is met with a low groan from him, the noise muffled from behind his mask.

(He's never felt anything like it. The sharp sting blooms into an intoxicating mixture of pain and overwhelming pleasure, only made better by the way he can feel your lips pulling into a smile when he pants.

The haze from your bite clouds his mind until he’s lost in the euphoric feeling of you finally showing him everything you try to hide: The animalistic nature of your hunger that he only sees in fights, the cruel, amused laughs you make when another moan or whine leaves his mouth, and how you nip playfully, painfully, at his bite to elicit more noises from him. It’s overwhelming in the best of ways…but it’s still never enough.)

The slow draw of his blood from you sucking at his wounds makes him want more of something, igniting an urge for him to completely surrender everything to you. It's something you realize early on, with how you're able to read your vessel's minds like this.

He tries to satiate that incessant need by leaning further into your form to try and catch your fangs deeper into his skin, attempting to silently persuade you into making this even bloodier than it began. Perhaps even trying to force you further into his lap, caging you tighter to him in the hopes that the closeness of you pressed against every part of him would somehow stop that hunger for more of whatever you can give him. It doesn't work, though, and you can tell from the way his hips shift underneath you, and the tightening grip that threatens to force the tips of his claws into you that he's getting frustrated with it. (He can’t even explain why he feels so discontent; this is what he wanted, but it still aches. He has to have more, he needs it-)

However amusing (or perhaps even cute) you find his uncharacteristically desperate movements and noises to be, you acknowledge that you probably should give him some small kindness to alleviate that pull you know he’s feeling. Considering how you can't drain him dry, your chosen remedy is simple. Bite him again. The sudden burst of pain is enough to pull a choked moan from him, his purrs rumbling even louder as you tear another deep mark into his flesh. And then you do it again. And again.

You aren't really sure why it works, but you can tell from how the tension in him seems to be winding tight and how his body is starting to tremble that it’s at least a suitable distraction. This, and the fact that the only thing you can read from his mind is a hazy sense of happiness and adoration (odd, considering what you were. If you happened to be more careful in pulling your teeth from him after that, and soothing the wounds with your tongue, then it was purely coincidental.)

Of course, it’s not like Hank always stands perfectly still when you do this. He’s obedient to a fault, especially to you, but you honestly can’t expect him to just sit there and take it when you’re moving around in his lap and marking him repeatedly like that. So when you inevitably end up pinned somewhere with Hank’s panting form looming above you, blood dripping down onto you from the collar of bites you've left on him, you suppose you only have yourself to blame. Tempting the beast, and all that.

Either way, you've probably been full for a few minutes and the extra bites are always more for his benefit than anything. It won’t fully sate that deep-seated need he has for more from you. Nothing will, until you do more to claim him as your kind would.

But watching him almost frantically pull his mask down before slamming his mouth against yours in a bloody kiss, and feeling the way his weight rests on you heavily to seek out more contact tells you that this has been at least somewhat satisfying for him. Although, you'd be a fool to assume he'd calm down quickly from this high you've given him and let you go just because you think you're finished. (If he croaks from blood loss, he figures Doc can just bring him back again. Right?)

- [2BDAMNED] -

2BDamned tries to approach you biting him in a clinical, professional manner, he really does. He insists on doing it in a sterile environment, even taking a shower beforehand so he’s completely clean for you. He sits at his desk and has his tablet in front of him in case he needs to record information on anything odd he’s feeling. He wants to treat these occasions as research in addition to something just to feed you. However, he never actually fulfills that objective, no matter how many times you do this.

Doc tries to ask you questions about the process while you stand over him, lifting his jaw and tilting his head to the side to get a better view of his neck. You find it really funny since it’s obvious he’s trying to get himself together. The cracks in his composure start to show when you bring your face closer to his, and he stumbles over a few words. That’s nothing compared to how he gets when you respond to his inquiries, though, lips and the edge of a sharp canine ghosting over his skin.

(“We’re lucky I’m not from one of the more…picky clans. Some of us can only drink from really specific types of humans, and I’d probably starve if I was restricted by that,” you muse quietly, paying no mind to how your lips press slightly to his throat on some of your words. What you do notice is how 2B’s breath hitches from it. You tilt your head and breathe out a silent chuckle. You can’t even tell if he got anything you just said. “What, no questions?” He flinches a bit. So he wasn't focusing on what you were saying. How interesting.)

His hold on his composure only slips further once you bite him. The press of your teeth is met with a sharp inhale, and he tenses up when they pierce his skin. You won’t hear any obvious noises from him, at least nothing he doesn’t attempt to muffle. With your hearing though, it isn’t difficult to pinpoint the little gasps he tries to hide when you nudge your sharp fangs a little deeper into his flesh, nor is it hard to tell that he's fighting to keep his breath stable.

He’ll try to continue asking questions, only to fade off in the middle of them, completely losing his train of thought as you drink from him. In Doc's defense, having you so close and sucking at his neck is enough to stop him from thinking; his head feels fuzzy, and he isn’t sure if that distinct warmth he feels building in him is from your vampirism or your traits as the Player. He can admit to himself that it feels...good. Too good, actually. It's enough to make him achingly self-aware of his own reactions, and to compel him to at least try not to act so “out of line” with you there.

(You're someone he considers a sort of superior; your status as his Player demands the utmost respect; even if you're biting his neck and draining his blood, he has to keep some level of decorum with regard to that. It's difficult, with how a large part of him wants to just give in to the feeling of you, but he tries to manage it.)

Sometimes you might try to get him to let go of this facade he's so desperate to hold onto. (You don't want him worrying about something like this since it really doesn't matter to you, and the experience would be so much better for him if he just relaxed for a change.) This could mean letting your tongue linger for a bit longer as you lick up his blood, or nibbling at the edges of the wound harshly so the bruise of it'll stay for a while longer.

Does it work 100% of the time? No. But it's a convenient challenge to focus on when you're ensuring your focus doesn't fall entirely into draining him. Though if you want a guaranteed way to break Doc, you found that outright telling him how good you think he tastes works exceedingly well. It's enough to make him choke back a small moan, so you consider it a success. The blush you see sweeping across his skin, even visible on his jaw and neck, makes it even better.

2BDamned knows that you do this just to make his attempt at a professional demeanor slip. It's obvious from how he can feel you grin once you manage to get something substantial out of him, which causes his face to burn hotter. He doesn't know what to do with the knowledge that you seem genuinely pleased when this happens, and embarrassingly enough, he can even feel himself beginning to purr when it does. He stiffens when he feels the rumbles starting to build up; it's like that animalistic part of him is satisfied by how happy you are when his instincts begin to break through. (They are an important part of him, even if he keeps it hidden most of the time.)

2B also tends to go far longer than the others do with letting you feed. He’ll allow you to drink from him for a concerning amount of time before doing anything to try and alert you, whether it be outright telling you that he can’t go on further or tapping you to signal that something’s changed in his condition. Even if he's starting to feel exhausted, he doesn't feel the need to stop you. Not with his claws digging painfully into the palms of his hands as he fights the urge to make more noises (he'd die of mortification if he lets another loud whine slip from him again). Not even when he shifts back into his seat to stop from squirming too much at the euphoric feeling of you draining him. The motivation just isn't there.

He'd never openly admit it, but he feels far too good to. (And it's not like he can think of a pragmatic way to do it with his head so foggy.) It's probably because of your abilities, but he also concludes it's also connected to how he's essentially being marked by you. Claimed as yours in the way that grunts have always staked such importance on. He likes it, to put it simply. It's fulfilling, and he relishes in the event as much as he can. Of course, you receiving part of his soul along with his blood was not something he initially expected, but with Nevada's poor excuse of an afterlife, he thinks it's the best option. He wants to give all that he was to you, and you spending so much time marking him worked perfectly with that. Even if it makes him weak, why would he ask you to quit when the positives so obviously outweighed the negatives?

This means it typically falls on you to stop this, which you do with little fanfare. You may or may not press a little kiss on his jaw to soothe him after working over the wound with your tongue (just so it heals up all nicely, an effect of your saliva), earning another pleased sigh from him, but you hold off on a lot of what you could do. You figure with how Doc is, the nicest thing is to let him try to regain his composure. Even if it takes a lot, with how boneless he looks under you and how red he is, even with all that blood loss. You can tell his heart is beating unnaturally fast, but you're blind to how he's looking at you in an almost lovesick daze. You smile at him and he shifts in his seat. You still have his blood on your lips.

At this moment, he usually wonders if it's disappointment he feels at you not continuing and doing more with him. It only takes receiving your Kiss a few times to realize that this is entirely correct, and a couple more for him to start formulating ways to get you to stay.

- [SANFORD] -

For someone who faces the chance of getting grievously injured nearly every day, Sanford is surprisingly nervous leading up to your bite. He doesn’t talk that much or shift around a lot, instead just fidgeting a little with his hands and stiffening up when you come closer. It’s almost like he’s trying to mentally prepare himself for it, which you can understand. Being bitten by you is incredibly overwhelming, even for other vampires.

You’re more gentle with Sanford from the get-go since you don’t want to take him off guard too much or make him uncomfortable. The added gentleness is obvious from how you softly rest your hands on him and slowly work him through some of the steps you’re doing, even outright telling him when you're about to bite him. You're careful in a way you rarely show to others, and it makes his heart start to beat faster before your lips even touch him.

Sanford is incredibly restrained whenever you officially start one of these encounters. The nervousness shows, but he tries to steel his facial expression to keep it down, biting back a noise when you finally cut into him with your teeth. He can feel your hands moving, fingers tracing comforting circles as you tighten your jaws to pull blood from him, and he shifts slightly, turning his head to both bare his neck more to you and hide his flustered expression. You haven’t even really begun draining him, but he’s already getting overwhelmed.

(A reaction he blames on how grunts are. It’s only natural to get flustered if someone you like romantically incidentally claims you with a piercing bite, especially when it’s in such a visible spot. He knows you're aware of this too, which only makes the reaction worse. Is it really so outlandish to assume that you welcome this idea of officially staking a claim on him, since you showed zero hesitance to continue after being informed? He hopes not.)

The grunts have always felt very warm to you due to your vampirism, but you’re a little shocked by just how hot he feels. If it were Deimos, you could blame it on pyrokinesis, but with Sanford it's more worrying. You were relieved to find that it was simply his blush that made him like this. It seems this flusters him more than you initially thought it would. (How odd it is, that he’s able to get so red when you’ve started draining him of his blood.)

To your joy, you can actually feel him relax into your grip when you gingerly remove your teeth, even if he tenses up the slightest bit when you run your tongue over the opening you made, testing to see if the bite was deep enough. Honestly, Sanford thought it’d be painful at first, maybe with some numbness mixed in. But when your lips seal onto his neck and you suck at his split skin, he realized that it’s the exact opposite. The feeling of your mouth on him, pressing roughly onto his flesh as you tongue at the cuts where his life essence spills from is one that makes heat curl in his gut.

Despite how hard Sanford tries to remain quiet, not wanting to be inappropriate when you’re only doing this for food, he can’t stop noises that leave his throat; little cut-off moans and deeper groans, even a few breathy whines and gasps. He's purring too of course, the rumbling echoes in your ears while you busy yourself with pulling blood from his body.

It's shameful for him since he worries he's putting you off by acting this way, but he just can't stop it. It feels so good, to have you leaving a mark on his flesh and pressed so close to him. The painful sting of the wound only elevates the sensation, and the tension in him winds tighter every time your sharp teeth graze him. He has to do something with this weird longing he feels, whether it be making noises or subconsciously reaching up to rest his hands on you to ground himself. You let him pull you closer with no complaint.

You really don't care about how he acts, of course; it's a completely natural reaction to what you're doing. The biggest reaction you'll give is a chuckle when he gives a particularly loud moan, or a small exhale in amusement when you notice how his hips jolt when your thighs brush his. Seems noises aren't all you can get from him if the way he seems to seek contact with all of you is any sign.

Shame can wait until after you're finished, when the high of having you biting him and sucking his blood has faded away. At the moment, he's too lost to the heat from your actions and the hazy, painful pleasure of your Kiss. It's paired with an odd duality from you; the gentleness you show in all aspects except for the way you nip at his skin and suck harshly, as though you want the "hickey" you leave to last for days afterward. He can't tell if he feels lightheaded from blood loss or just being overwhelmed by your actions, but either way, he wants more.

(Or perhaps he just wants you to desire more from him. He knows you already get a part of his soul from this, but he still aches for you to take him completely. He knows that it's probably an irrational thought, since this is probably just a side effect of losing a part of himself, but the overwhelming need is still there.)

However, Sanford at least has the sense to stop instead of insisting you go on. You don't often push him too far, but if he ever feels like he's starting to get too weak, he'll tell you as best he can manage. (Or maybe just nudge you pointedly if he can’t muster the words, which happens.) You're quick to pull away as soon as you notice, taking a quick glance over him to check for any serious signs of blood loss. It’s nothing too bad but you still agree that you should stop, so you give him a soft look before slowly returning to the wound to close it. He shudders when he feels your cold tongue swiping over him, and you pause for a moment to make sure he’s alright before continuing. You’re honestly really sweet to him when you end your “sessions”; you even whisper a small thank you to him after you’re completely finished, sometimes accompanying it with a soft peck to his cheek.

Sanford questions if he’s more embarrassed by his reaction to your bite, or at how something so simple and innocent almost makes him just as flustered. In any case, it’ll provide him enough motivation to ask you to stay, at least for a little while. He’d like the company while he recovers, he reasons, and you accept the proposal every time. It’s a good way to monitor him (plus it’s just nice to cuddle into Sanford's side while he rests, not gonna lie). If Sanford happens to play up his condition a little more to get you to remain with him for another hour or five, then the others will just have to put up with it. (Forever would be better, he'd muse to himself as he tightens his arms around you...Maybe becoming a Vampire wasn't such a bad idea after all.)

- [DEIMOS] -

If there’s one word you would use to describe how Deimos acts when you bite him, it’s restless. His clawed fingers tap repeatedly on your waist and thigh as you loom over him, and he squirms with anticipation when you bring your face closer to his skin and your hands move up to pull his coat off his shoulders. No matter how you try to ease him into it, whether by doing it when you’re already cuddling him or during your other more comfortably intimate moments, he just doesn’t stop fidgeting.

(If you were someone with less experience (or maybe if Deimos had been anyone else), you might’ve been annoyed. But you were in no rush, and truthfully, you found it to be a little endearing.)

This doesn’t stop when you actually bite him, either. He might pause and hold his breath when your lips brush his skin, swallowing roughly when you stop over a spot you like, but this halts the moment your teeth actually pierce him. A loud cry will leave his lips before teetering off into an airy whine, his legs knocking into yours as his hips jolt under yours, forcing you to rebalance yourself as you instinctually clamp your jaws down a bit tighter. Something you’d do as a warning for your more expendable sources of blood, but the pain just forces another raspy moan from him.

Deimos is one of the quickest to fully lose himself to the sensations of you biting him, his mind going fuzzy and thoughts spiraling until the only thing that’s tethering him to the moment is you. Maybe it’s something about you being a vampire, or that it’s you who’s doing it to him, but the only thing he can focus on is your lips pressing roughly to his skin as you suck his blood into your mouth, your hands cradling him so carefully, and the weight of you over his body.

Deimos is probably one of the most vocal vessels you’ve had the pleasure of drinking from as well. His whines, raspy moans, and ardent praises fill your ears when you suck at his wounds, lapping his life essence up with restrained delight. During those few seconds where you have to pull your lips away to reorient yourself (mainly to stop from getting too into it and draining him dry), he whimpers little pleas for you to come back.

(“Fuck-wait, nonono, don’t stop, please.” He begs, trying to hold you tighter when he feels you wrench your mouth away from him with a wet squelch. No, you can’t leave him like this, you wouldn’t- You just laugh and hold him tighter, pressing a few bloody kisses to his jaw in a move that makes him blush a deeper shade of red, if that’s even possible.)

If it weren’t for the fact that everybody knows what you’re doing, you might’ve considered using your abilities to stop him from being so loud. You happen to find it extremely amusing (and perhaps a little cute) though, and the self-satisfaction of reducing him to such a messy state is enough to stop you from even dwelling on the idea. Come to think of it, messy really is the perfect adjective to describe the state you reduce him to when you drink.

Especially with how his noises rise slightly in pitch with each rough suck to his wound and his clawed fingertips scratch at your skin, hips bucking up while he squirms underneath your form like he’s trying to seek out friction from you. The only intelligible words from him are little praises, curses, and begs, intermittent with panting, moans, and raspy purrs. It’s so funny, just how little inhibition he has with acting this way around you. Not that you blame him that much; it’s normal, and he just can’t help himself.

(This won’t stop him from being mortified by his behavior afterward. Even if you’re okay with it, since it’s pretty natural for those you feed on, you still shouldn’t be seeing him like this when the situation shouldn’t call for it. It just isn’t proper. Then again…what if you like it?)

Sometimes, if you’re feeling particularly generous, you’ll brace a hand on his chin, tilting his head down as you remove your bloodied mouth from his neck and allowing him to regain at least some of his composure. It doesn’t work a good majority of the time, since he typically just whines out a complaint and arches his back as a way to try and return that closeness you had before. You still ask questions about how he is to try and bring him back to the moment (“Dei, you feeling alright? Lightheaded? Dizzy?”), because you're responsible enough to make sure he isn’t too out of it. A sly grin spreads across your face when you lean closer and delicately wipe the drool from his lips with your thumb, gauging his facial expression as you wait for some semblance of a response. (Again, very messy.)

Occasionally you don’t get one though, because even if he’s suffering from the effects of blood loss, most of the time he won’t even acknowledge it. This is partly due to how your abilities work to dampen that realization (something you try to lessen by stopping for those few minutes), but more importantly because he just really wants your mouth back on him. Even if he’s starting to feel a slight weakness creeping up on him and his pulse is rising dangerously high, the sensation of your lips on his jugular and your tongue lapping at his wounds fills him with an odd, stirring warmth that’s just too good.

You’d say that Deimos is lucky you have a lot of self-control for a vampire, otherwise you think you'd completely devour him. His blood is almost addictive; thicker than the others is due to the nicotine he consumes, and almost sticky. It’s like syrup to you. The reactions you get out of him just make the idea more tempting, especially since you can tell that he seems to desperately need more contact with you, to press together and have you swallow him whole so you'll never be apart. But you can't do that.

By the time you’re finished with him, he looks utterly debauched. Purring and in a strange trance as he looks at your blood-coated lips, another desperate noise leaving him when you lean back further. It'll take him a while to recuperate and get back to "normal" after this, so you keep an eye on him for the time being. It's not like it's difficult to justify when he hasn't actually let you go yet.

A small thought comes to Deimos' mind when you start to clean him up, gently swiping the residual blood away from his skin with your tongue, your saliva working quickly to heal up his wounds. Maybe he can get you to leave the bite next time? Or better yet, make it permanent?

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canonicallysoulmates · 1 year

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Mr. Rolin Jones, creator and showrunner of Interview with the Vampire appeared on the post-finale episode of the companion podcast to talk about this first season but also season 2, and the future of this series. It's super insightful, I highly recommend giving it a listen, we learn so much about the process behind creating this show and this season but also about what's coming next like he's thinking about this show in long-game terms like going on for 8yrs minimum, and by the sounds of it so is AMC. The first book is going to be explored in 15 episodes total, we've got the first 7 which means s2 would be 8 episodes. And start getting excited for s3 because the current plan is that the third season will give our brat prince the opportunity to tell his side of the story and explore the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

In this post, I have compiled some highlights of his interview but I reiterate that if you can do so to give the full thing a listen cause it's really interesting.

On getting picked to be the showrunner:

"I came back to the loving arms of AMC. I had done some work with them before and there were a lot of really savy executives, I had a big overall meeting- here are 19 things I wanna do for you guys, talk, talk talk, talk, talk, as I'm leaving the door one of them goes 'you know we forgot to mention our bosses bought the Anne Rice books' and I stopped, and I put everything down, sat back down and said 'we're gonna take another 45 minutes for this meeting' and by the time I walked out I kinda knew that's that I was gonna do. And then they put me through a gauntlet of things to prove that I was the guy and it wasn't just about what's a good pilot story, what's a good first season it was what does this thing look like 8 years from now?"

Up until today, I didn't know showrunners basically had to audition.

About the decision to change Louis race:

"I kinda came around to his ethnicity through a very weird way which is through Lestat. So, there's a very famous sort of rewrite of Lestat starting with book 2 he's an aggressively different character than he was in book 1 but that's the Lestat that she carried on for the rest of time. And I was like okay that should be Lestat and so we tried to take the given circumstances that are set with Lestat and put him back into this time period, and so he had this sort of super emo relationship with this guy named Nicki, and then he had a very...uh, excitable relationship with his mother as his second companion choice- get into that season 3 y'all. And then I was like let's give Lestat a legitimate third attempt at trying to figure out how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how do you not repeat your mistakes. So, I started from there and I wanted somebody who had some money cause I think he wanted to be you know with his own folks there, and I think he wanted someone I thought who could fight back and who could be a challenge and who would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was really interested in seven seasons of the regretful plantation owner so you know- even with that though you want it to have some connective threads to the novel so we made Louis come from a lineage that once did own a plantation, did own slaves. The other thing was sort of aesthetic if you were gonna take away the ruffled shirts and all the swampy goodness and you wanted to make this something new, what's the next hot time that had a sense of smell and taste and sound? The birth of jazz seemed pretty right on, and it just so happened there was a spot at that historical time where a black man could get in on some business and still have the sort of morally grey thing that owning a plantation would and- I don't know it all actually clicked into place pretty quickly."

How do they decide when they deviate from the books?

"There were a couple caveats. Make it here and now, make it grand and big but we said you know look she wrote a very transgressive groundbreaking novel in 1973 and try to put her in the room where she was tasked in 2021 with making a tv show out of this and you want it - there's no reason to do something if you're going to just run rough shot over it. So you're constantly, constantly revisiting the book and that's not only in the room where you're building story but that's when you're in draft, that's when you're in after production draft, that's when you're last minute like little things and you find some things that you had passed over didn't think were relevant like 'I'm screaming back at you' and dropping in as much Anne as we could, and that we were gonna write this sort of heightened language that is in the novel we're gonna make our actors talk like that; she is our safety net all the time."

This is insane, when they were in pre-production they were writing scripts for the entire book but due to covid and the cost of lumber AMC called and asked if they had enough in the first half to stay in New Orleans for the entire season. At first, Rolin's put up a fight but what they did was they turned what was originally the first four episodes into this first season. And they did so 50 days before they shot the first day! His original pitch was 10 episodes, they were aiming for 8 but it's now a 15-episode book. He does think the change was to the benefit of the show. I agree, it's mind-blowing to think that the amazing 7 episodes we got were originally compacted into just 4 and that they managed to change course and deliver a product of such high quality within just 50 days.

"Memory is a very, very huge part of this show. The tagline for this show should be: memory is a monster. We're only on episode 7 of 15, you only know half of it. Maybe." 👀

Why is Louis truly doing this interview?

"It is absolutely the question. If you wanna know what we're still digging out of it, it is the why of it. There's a real reason why this is a second interview and the first interview is super important. Tune in season 2. And I will just say this, these two (Daniel and Louis) have been brought together because something very significant happened, life-altering happened to them in 1973. And they didn't get it right and they weren't the right people at the time to do it, and know they think they are, and yet like all of us you still don't know who you are and you still gotta go deeper but that just means there is a lot of meat not only on Louis side but on Molloy's side and most importantly Armand's side who has become for us the single most fascinating character of season 2. Yeah, there's a lot in Dubai that's yet to be revealed."

I need s2 to hurry tf up because what does that mean sir 👀👀👀👀

The real reason he wanted to do this show is s3, The Vampire Lestat. He really knows how he wants to do it, and he couldn't be more excited about it. As goofy as body switching is, and they'll come up with some elegant way, he thinks there's something in the Tale of the Body Thief, Queen of the Dammed he has to think about because it's so massive, and he doesn't know if that's gonna be covered over one season or two.

#rolin jones #iwtv #interview with the vampire #iwtv podcast #iwtv amc #just a heads up i did post other bits and pieces from this interview they're just in their own separate posts #the thought of getting years of this show makes me very happy #mine #non spn

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taoofshigeru · 5 months

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2023 Game of the Year Post

Looking back, I was surprised to see how few "new" games I had played this year. But two of them were absolutely excellent so I'm going to talk about them a little.

In February, a game I was expecting to be good showed true greatness, and, in mid-November, a black-and-white indie touched my heart.

[Spoilers for In Stars and Time/Octopath Traveler II to follow.]

Let me start by talking about In Stars and Time/ISAT.

ISAT is a gay game about timeloops. The aloof but amiable rogue Siffrin sees their sanity stretched like a stick of used chewing gum as the fighter repeatedly chickens out on confessing his love for them and sincere heartfelt moments of human connection become rote scenes he must perform.

Throughout the process, Siffrin uses humor to deflect from serious emotional questions and eventually starts drifting away from the group during conversations. The specific character traits of 1) serial people-pleaser, 2) depressed person, and 3) funnyjokespun person who at times used humor to deflect from those issues was a little too specific in a way that hit in an emotionally relevant way.

Even more than that was the way it toyed with my patience as a player. I'm what I would describe as very good at games with repetitive tasks. Like, my tactics-loving friend and I have been doing a co-op playthrough of Tactics Ogre, and I was the enby who ultimately chose to be responsible for grinding Galgastani CF to recruit ultimate goth girl Cressida. It took hours of repeating the same battle and just babysitting the game for hours at a time. Sure I'd be willing to read through heart-to-heart events repeatedly to make the Siffrin's friends happy. I'd do it once, twice, even a fifth time. But my persistence is not bottomless.

In Stars and Time read me perfectly.

I did end up skipping or avoiding those events once the game stopped being a combat RPG and started being a visual novel/monkey island-style adventure in Act 4. I did start zoning through particular events once they happened more than 10 times. My patience did give way, though not to the extent of the protagonist Siffrin when they suffered a meltdown. And this happened right around the time when Siffrin started putting real distance between them and their friends. It took me to a dark place with the character in a way that made the catharsis at the end so worth it.

All of it went towards really effectively communicated the game's point of how it's worth it to talk to your friends about your problems.

~~~

The other game that moved me this year was also built around repeating and growing. It was about throwing yourself at the wall over and over again, with a little more force, a little more refined strategy, a little more panache and willingness to take risks. And about getting it just right, finally. This was my experience with Octopath Traveler 2

So, first of all, strategizing in OT2 kicks ass. Like the Bravely games of yore, this game nerfs the most broken tools (i.e. the Hunter's patience) from the first game, but gives the player new broken tools that synergize in new, exciting ways. And critically, it then throws enemies at you that can take it all and still be a challenge. (Sea of Stars did not do this last part.)

Got used to using someone's primary job for a lethal combo setup? Well guess what, primary jobs are now banned! Got a 6-attack strike with a killer legendary weapon that'll break any monster? Guess what, that weapon you used to get the break is now no longer the zombie dragon's weakness! Spent all your time building up your favorite 4 in an 8-character party? Guess who's gonna handle the superboss' second HP bar?

For a single-player game, it legitimately felt like I was experiencing a design that had been built to anticipate the player's combat choices on a meta level and would only let the door open for solutions that were suitably intricate and clever. Aside from superbosses, the game wasn't extraordinarily difficult, but it still left me constantly scrambling through my toolkit of HP, MP, turns, latent power, items, collectable monsters, and money mid-battle to find a solution to pick any given boss' lock. As a turn-based combat RPG, OT2 killed it.

And that wasn't even the strongest point.

The character stories in Octopath Traveler one were, on a basic level, enjoyable, and were engaging enough that the game's art, soundtrack, and deep turn-based combat could combine to make a great game. Octopath II ups the storytelling game significantly, offering nonlinear chapter order, story-focused chapters that end without a boss fight, and a cast that's generally very well written and played brilliantly by the English vocal cast. The positive impression I had of the game after the first ten hours gave way to a wowed one as characters started to interact, showcasing entertaining personal dynamics and tugging at the strings of a looming, bigger mystery. The climactic arc, Journey for the Dawn, ties all eight chapters together and presents an incredibly satisfying and at times emotionally wrenching finale.

I don't know if any side character in a game has ever hit me half as hard as Ori the Scrivener has

But also, mystery arc main plot removed, the world of OT2 has so much character. There's a whole questline where you sit through a court hearing and then have to investigate the mystery around town to show up and avoid a wrongful verdict with a key testimony or piece of evidence. Secret princess/gardener lesbian subplots and eldritch stuffed toys are just some of the things that exist in the background.

The story about getting it just right wasn't just a player experience. It was also the meta narrative - writing in the first game wasn't weak by any means, but the writing in the second game is just an inarguable improvement. Combat in the first game pitched juicy fastballs that were well-scaled to my play experience, but this baby kept tossing out monster curves and tricky sliders.

I think creative perfection is a myth, because it's always possible to improve. Octopath Traveler II shows how, and that's why it's my game of the year.

~Thanks for reading my selfish little blurb!~

#spoilers #game of the year #goty 2023 #goty #octopath traveler 2 #in stars and time #in stars and time spoilers #isat spoilers #octopath traveler 2 spoilers #isat

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construingseacats · 6 months

Text

Umireread: Legend of the Golden Witch - Chapter 10: The Six Chosen by the Key

Sun, Oct 5 1986 - 6:00AM

The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.

I’m so excited for this chapter, you have no idea.

Extremely funny mental image of Yasu going to Natsuhi’s room, seeing the charm, then deciding “well if she’s off the table then I’m killing that asshole who gave me night duty while he did his crossword”. Of course, she probably had to kill Gohda to help avoid any incriminating testimony from her changing her assigned position last night, but it’s still funny to think about.

Since the rest are the adults, it’s easy to think about Gohda being an odd one out and the obvious replacement for Natsuhi, but given the above I wonder who the unfortunate backup was. Maybe Rosa? Or potentially one of either Rudolf or Kyrie, originally intending to only kill one of the adults per pair?

I love how Genji goes “Sorry. The Telephones are down” then “By the way Gohda is missing”, and completely neglects to mention that Natsuhi’s door is coated in bloodstains. Just leave the most obvious detail as something for her to find out for herself, you know.

“Natsuhi had a pretty good idea” is SUCH a funny line. Not even concerned by the horror movie trope, she already suspects which family member did it. I wonder who her mind immediately jumps to - although let’s be real, it’s probably Eva.

Eva tries to check on Kinzo and Natsuhi immediately shoots her down. It’s really funny how blatant the cover up is. Like, you’re unlikely to question it, since we keep getting fantasy scenes of Kinzo in his study, but it sure is there if you go looking for it.

Speaking of - the moment we see Kinzo in the office here, we’ve accounted for 17 of our 18 (with 5 known missing). Good game Shannon, we have our six chosen by the key.

Natsuhi, alone in the study, worries about how much Eva is going to tear into her, and then immediately makes up a pep talk to make herself feel good. I’m telling you, these study scenes are a goldmine.

Yeah, Eva absolutely would have been the one to leave bloody scratch marks all over Natsuhi’s door.

Here we go

HERE WE GO

…Okay, you can have that one. Saying it’s a sigh of relief right as they uncover the bodies is very cheeky, but the irony balances out how tense the scene is. It’s a breather for the reader as well.

We actually get a breather with the kids as well. Final moments of innocent Battler caught on tape.

Chills. Full chills.

And here it is.

Allow me to indulge for a moment.

When I was a kid, my first anime was The Haruhi of Melancholy Suzumiya. I watched it through low-resolution fansubs that had been posted on a YouTube that was still in its youth, with each episode awkwardly split into three parts since you couldn’t upload videos longer than ten minutes. I probably watched that at an age that was slightly too young for it, but as a kid who only knew the world of animation through the veneer of kids cartoons and Matt Groening shows (except maybe that one time I watched Spirited Away when I was 5 - which also left a stark impression on me), it really opened my eyes to a world of new media that I hadn’t even conceived of before. I really wanted to see what else there was.

Anyway, my second anime was Higurashi no naku koro ni.

If I was slightly too young for Haruhi, I was definitely too young for Higurashi. But that was part of the appeal, I suppose - the prepubescent desire to cast away the shackles of childhood and prove your maturity. That you’ve grown up. I legitimately remember 10 or 11 year old me showing a friend the scene of Rika stabbing herself in the head while going “look at what I’m watching now! Look how mature I am!” - admittedly, this was to a friend who had allegedly already seen all manner of films rated 15 or 18, so it arguably would have been relatively tame to them, and boasting about your maturity is undoubtedly the most immature thing a person can do.

While the initial appeal there was that Higurashi was “mature”, it was still really interesting. There was good intrigue there, the plot had me hooked, and from start to finish it was a really good piece of media. I’m pretty sure my younger self saw the scene where the sound of gunshots are covered up by fireworks at the local festival and thought it was the smartest plot point in any piece of media ever. Anyway, a short while later, I heard that there was going to be a sequel anime to Higurashi - a new show, called Umineko.

Now, I had a fine time with the Umineko anime. I would have been 12-13 as it was airing - still eager to consume media I was too young for - and, with no bar for quality, I enjoyed it. There was cool gore! The mystery was exciting! The red truth was such a neat concept and the witch fights were badass! Sure, it may not have had as much of a lasting impact on me as Higurashi, but it was still good, right?

Well, it wasn’t good. In fact, pretty much all the anime reviews I saw for it were negative. There were still a few fools like myself who had enjoyed it, but there was one thing I kept seeing - a sentiment that was effectively universal. A simple statement.

“The Visual Novel is so much better.”

I held onto those words for a few years.

I don’t know what the instigator for it was, but somewhere down the line, I decided to act on it. I bought the original japanese version of Episodes 1-4 and 5-8 through what I believe was the old Witch Hunt site - quite possibly one of the dodgiest deals I’ve ever made, as anyone who procured Umineko back in the old days can attest to - and applied the fanmade english patch. The PS3 sprite mod looked so much better than the original sprites, so I installed that as well. And, 10 years ago, I started playing.

It was… fine. I wasn’t a huge fan of how the text covered the whole screen, rather than appearing in text boxes, like it did in the other VNs I’d played. I say that as if I’d actually played any VN other than Katawa Shoujo at that time. But, I remembered liking Umineko, so I pressed on. I pressed on through the boring introductions, through the boring discussions of the inheritance, waiting to get to the cool parts where Beatrice showed up and the magic fights started happening.

But then, we got to this scene.

There I was, sitting with my laptop on holiday, with my cheap earphones plugged in, as the cousins approached the gardening shed. As the adults told them not to get any closer. As they did so anyway.

What followed is some of the most unrelentingly raw reactions to a visceral scene like this that I’d ever seen in any piece of media, ever. This wasn’t the dulled impact that the anime had hit me with - this was a full, unfiltered, uncensored dive into the immutable affliction of being human. They’ve got no faces - you could feel Battler’s unmitigated despair oozing from it all. These weren’t just characters reacting to a scene in a book. This was something more.

This was the moment that I fell in love with Umineko.

Perhaps I gave too much background to that statement - perhaps I’ve fallen afoot of the same criticisms I levied against the earlier parts of the tale for not getting to the point quicker. But that is the play-by-play of how, 10 years ago, this scene went straight for the jugular and bled me dry. This is where I knew I wasn’t just reading another version of that anime I’d seen the years prior, I was reading something special.

I would be remiss to say this is entirely down to the writing - a lot of this is also heavily driven by the blaring tones of goldenslaughterer. If Umineko was simply a series of 8 books, it wouldn’t have had the same effect on me as it has done for the past decade. If this scene wasn’t equipped with one of the most perfect aural accompaniments imaginable, I don’t think it would have stuck with me as much as it did. But the palpable emotion dripping from each word - the killer performances from each of the VAs (Jessica’s screams are INCREDIBLE) - and the musical storytelling doing just as much heavy lifting as the writing is… it’s an inimitable experience. This is what everyone was telling me that I was missing out on back in the halcyon days of 2009. They were right.

Perhaps it was for the best that I did give it those few extra years, so that I could truly appreciate the masterwork being crafted before me. I can’t imagine even beginning to comprehend the themes or the mystery of this tale at age 13, when I scarcely did so at 17. But regardless of the what ifs, this is the path that led me to what I consider, with no exaggeration, a pivotal moment in my life. It’s hard to describe the emotions that were stirred as I approached this scene for the reread - if I had to approximate it, then it would be unbound excitement mixed with trepidation, a great interest in re-experiencing such an important scene tempered by a fear that it may not have been as good as I remembered.

Of course, it wasn’t going to hit me in the exact same way that it did the first time round - you cannot recreate the sensation of a sucker punch when you know that it’s coming. But I can say, with certainty, that this scene was just as good as I remembered. That it still hit all the points that made me fall in love with the story originally.

I cannot wait to keep reading the rest.

Honestly, after what I’ve just said (and my feelings at large), it feels sacreligious to stop and dissect this scene. It’s something you want to just let play out, to absorb the experience - part of me wants to just skip straight to the end.

But still, I’d feel remiss not to mention Nanjo’s acting here - he goes into doctor mode and then realises “wait, I need to be more emotional” before dropping it immediately. One of those moments that doesn’t arouse suspicion on a first read but feels super blatant afterwards.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Hideyoshi looks and sounds so pained having to perpetuate the crucial lie over here. You can really feel the thoughts running through his head of “do I expose it? Is it worth it?”

AND THEN WE GET HIT WITH WORLD END. I cannot stress how much music matters to me and accentuates the experience; a sound novel utilised to the full extent of the medium can truly produce a story that no traditional paper novel ever can.

Phenomenal work from the VA here - they clearly got the memo that this is a panicked “no” of not wanting the lie to be unveiled, rather than one of sincere desire to protect George. Again, you can still interpret it as the latter, so you’re unlikely to pick it up on a first read, but absolutely there on the reread.

There’s an incredible parallel made here of George holding onto Shannon’s smile, while Battler is doomed to remember the gored faces of his parents. Not only is this great by itself, it’s yet another example of fantasy versus reality, with George being able to hold onto happy memories by being ignorant to the truth (even if that truth isn’t a real truth in this case).

“Proved beyond doubt”, the narrative says, about the one body that we should doubt.

No commentary - this is just a great line and I wanted to highlight it.

And so all the associates chime in to cover it up.

I feel like it’s fairly easy to miss how well Eva is taking the whole thing in this scene. Everyone else is traumatised, and she’s holding up remarkably well.

Interesting how it’s the associates setting up the howdunnit as well! I suppose Yasu wants to make sure that element isn’t missed by the would-be detectives.

And so Umineko tells you to your face that this is the story about a serial killer who wants to be discovered. I suppose there’s already elements of that in the letter to solve the Epitaph, but it’s really made explicit here.

I’m still riding the high of the first twilight. I’m not sure if there’s any other scene in Umineko that I’ll gush about to that extent, but I know there’s plenty of moments yet to come that won’t fail to blow me away.

I know it’s integral to the story, and it wouldn’t work otherwise, but I do have to say that the howdunnit hook adds so much to Umineko that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Some of my fondest memories from the first readthrough was trying to figure out how it was all done (without ever considering the scenes that were lying to us, oops). I’m really looking forward to going through that all again, with the lens of love.

#umireread #umineko #umineko spoilers

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