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nihyunluvskookie · 8 months

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“What did I tell you about distractions?”

“Seungcheol One Shot ”

Pairing: Choi Seungcheol × Female Reader

Genre: second chance romance

Warning: mention of car crash

Word Count: 3.1K

Author’s Note: This was totally impulsive, I randomly got this idea when I was returning back home after classes. Hope I didn’t end it in a weird way. I had a playlist, I made for this. Do let me know your thoughts because I think racer Seungcheol is veryyyyyy hawt.

Happy reading :)

I took a deep breath, perfectly knowing what was coming for me. five years… freaking five years. I’ve been almost waiting for this day every second, anticipating it. But now, the time has come and here I am, inside my car. I took a deep breath, adjusting everything for once. “Are you ready?”

“I need to win. I’ve been waiting for this.”

Once I heard the gunfire, I started driving. I had one thing in my mind, that was to win. I need to win and show how he taught me well. All the memories started flooding inside my brain, “I hope when I will win next time, you would be there standing beside me and cheering up for me” his words felt like echoing in my ears. I didn’t let anything distract me, not even his memories.

“You need to use all your focus on the road, press the accelerator, and then press break after some time, you can start drifting once you are stable enough.” I nodded at his words. “Racing is not very tough but not very easy, you need focus” I kissed him quickly while he was talking, “And now that’s a distraction Shasha” he looked at me, I had his undivided attention, as if I was his everything for now. He leaned closer to me, he took my hand, and placed it on the steering wheel, “you can’t be distracted like this” he leaned closer, his one hand was on me, which was holding the steering wheel and another was the on the window, caging me between him.

“one distraction and you lose focus, which means you lose the race” With each word he was saying, he was leaning closer bit by bit, and the moment he mentioned losing the race, our noses almost touched. I was trying, to focus on him but I was getting distracted by how his hands were resting on mine on top of the steering wheel, “so,” he kissed me, once “Don’t” he kissed me again “Do” and again “this” he kissed me again and looked at me, “ever again” and he kissed me pushing me back. his hand was gripping my hand; his other hand which was on the window, reached my waist and pulled me closer to him, he groaned in between the kiss, asking for my permission for the tongue. My hand went to hold him, so that I don’t fall back but he pulled me closer again.

“you’re the only distraction I have right now but I want us in the podium, standing next to eachother” he smiled and kissed me again.

I was too focused on the track when this memory flooded in. I was hearing the commentary and keeping track of my and Seungcheol’s car subconsciously. I was feeling better every time I completed one lap. Everything reminded me of how I cheered for Seungcheol whenever he would complete one lap and then continue being ahead of others and finally win. One after another lap, I needed to win. I was putting all my trust in myself and so did my teammates.

“You are learning way too fast. You’re not supposed to learn this fast, how am I supposed to enjoy if you learn this fast Shasha” I could hear him while he tried to match my pace. I couldn’t blame him for this, I was always interested in bikes, cars, and speed but never got the chance to learn because my parents were always against it and after meeting Seungcheol, life got better.

Soon, I parked my bike near Seungcheol’s house and got down, I saw Seungcheol, almost throwing his helmet and walking towards me. I couldn't even take one more step when his hands reached for my neck and pulled me for a kiss. His body pressed towards me, and making me almost lean on my bike, but his other hand was on my bare waist, pulling him closer to him. “you’re a fast learner, and pretty attractive in this racer outfit” he looked at me, his breaths hitting my face, “doesn’t mean I would lose you to a random guy, with whom you seemed to have fun talking randomly while driving, what did I say about focus. He was expecting me to answer, which I gladly would, because watching this Seungcheol all worked up because he was jealous was fun. ‘you need to use all your focus on-

Before I could complete the word ‘road’ he kissed me, that was a rough kiss but who was I to complain, I was enjoying it. His fingers doing things to my bare waist, mental note, never wear a crop top then a leather jacket when I am with Seungcheol, he will drive me insane. “me” he said in between kiss and kissed me harder again. Whenever he would be jealous, he would make an excuse but at times he would just kiss me to let me know how jealous he gets at times.

“don’t do that again, I don’t want you to get into an accident, love”

“Are you saying this because you’re scared of me getting into an accident or jealous to control yourself when I talk to other guys while driving” I was teasing him, he knew it.

“I don’t get jealous, because I am your boyfriend and you’re mine.” He came closer and decreased the distance between us again, I could feel his breaths again. I was ready to kiss him again but then, he stepped back, I was about to let out a breath because of disappointment, and then he put both of his hands on my cheeks right away and kissed me.

“I get jealous because I love you” I smiled in between the kiss

The whole thing could be an amazing win. So, I needed to win.

Every time I completed a lap, the crowd cheer felt nice, all the cheering, everything felt very well deserved because of the hardwork I did till now. I didn’t realize, it was already the last lap, and I overtook the only car which was infront of me, pressing the accelerator and the finish line was a few meters away, I could easily, reach the finish line in a few minutes. I was focused on everything, my focus was on the finish line, that one line, I wanted to complete, to show my parents that I wasn’t some loser.

“You are not meeting him again, that’s it.” I looked at my dad in disbelief, had he not caught me driving with Seungcheol four days ago. I was grounded, being, twenty-three and almost having no freedom to do anything.

“Because you’re leaving today in a few hours, everything is ready. You will go study.”

“I am not leaving.” He gave me my flight tickets, “Shasha,, don’t you remember how you came injured one time and you lied about it, but come to think about it, you fell from a bike” I wasn’t even injured badly, I got a few scratches. “I can’t see you getting involved in any kind of accident because of racing, so you’re leaving. You can’t do anything” and I had to leave him without words. Somewhere I knew how things could go downhill if I didn’t agree with my dad. He could do any kind of harm to Seungcheol because he knew him and had connections all over the world.

But after I went to Switzerland I started driving, learning with all the hardwork along with my studies. I had one thing in my mind while leaving, and that was to keep the thing alive within myself which was gifted by Seungcheol, because we won’t be having contact anymore. I hated to leave but I had to.

“You can never do anything in this, it’s something which you are doing under the influence of your boyfriend, and this is what you get.”

I always told myself, I could do everything I wanted to. One good thing that happened after dad sent me to Switzerland, was I got better and better in my driving. And driving on this racetrack was the result of my hardwork; representing one of the best teams in less than two years, was something I never thought of. I needed to prove to my parents today that it was all worth, racing was all worth the whole championship. I was all excited to win this race because the car which I overtook was long gone. Few more seconds and I would be standing on the podium.

“Seungcheol’s car crashing because-” I pressed the brakes, without thinking twice. My whole body went stiff, I couldn’t focus on it anymore when I heard those three words ‘Seungcheol’s car crashing’. My car, drifted but I couldn’t reach the finish line, I got out of my car and ran towards Seungcheol’s car, making my heartbeat fast every second I was taking a step towards him.

I couldn’t hold myself anymore and ran towards his car, not caring about other cars passing by at speed. I somehow opened the door of his car and tried pulling him out. Tears were falling constantly. It reminded me of how I was about to get into an accident once while learning and Seungcheol almost crying holding me tight; telling me how he can’t lose me ot the thing he loves the most. It felt like I was getting a déjà vu except the fact, it was Seungcheol who actually got into a car crash.

I couldn’t wait for the paramedical team to come, why are they even late? “WHERE’S THE PARAMEDIC TEAM???” I was so annoyed, I couldn’t understand, couldn’t they see the car crash, and about the car crash I very well know who it could be.

Wish I was strong enough to pull him out “Seungcheol” I was calling out his name, but there he was stuck inside the car. Soon the paramedic team arrived and pulled him out. I was feeling numb, everything I was feeling for the past few minutes faded away, all the excitement, nostalgic memories, the passion that I had to win. I wanted to be with him, I wanted to see him, on the podium together, celebrating our victory but didn’t expect I would be meeting him like this.

Once the paramedic team took him towards the medical room on the stretcher, I was trying to calm myself down.

“I’m leaving with them. Over.” I took off my headset and almost threw it; not caring about anything else, the whole audience, my teammates, everyone was in shock, I could feel my boss threatening to kick me out of the team but I followed the paramedic team in tears.

I was sitting, while waiting for him to gain consciousness. With each passing second, I was worried about him, I was supposed to be worrying about my career, the race, the podium, my boss, my teammates how I let them down, and my own parents whom I wanted to show that I could do this, this is something I wanted to do. I was feeling messed up until I saw him gaining consciousness, I looked at him. He looked lost, “Seungcheol”

“What are you doing here?” the shift in his voice, took me aback, I should’ve expected this after what I did five years ago.

“What do you mean?” I wiped my tears, trying to make my voice stable.

“You were supposed to be in the podium, holding that trophy” he tried sitting up, when I extended my hand to help him, he stopped me.

“I didn’t complete the race.” I looked at him.

“What were you thinking?” the authority he had while questioning to me, even my boss didn’t talk to me like that “Did I teach you to drive like that and leave the race when you were about to win?”

“Seungcheol, I don’t give a shit about the race when it comes to you.” I had it enough, how could he even ask that to me?

“Did I teach you THAT?” I almost flinched, when he raised his voice at me, he never did.

“But I couldn’t leave you like that” The horror I felt a few minutes ago, flashed infront of my eyes; almost making me tear up. This was important for me but he was more important for me. I was learning everything because I wanted to meet him, this was the only way to meet him. I couldn’t let myself down when I promised him that we would be standing beside each other on the podium after the race finishes.

“But you left me.” his words were stern as if he had no emotions left for me. “I didn’t want to, I had no other choice.”

“You left me, Shasha. You LEFT me.”

“I DIDN’T WANT TO” and my tears were almost choking me. How do I explain to him, that I had no choice back then but to agree with whatever my father chose for me, that was the only thing I could do for us.

I was shaking my head in denial, I looked at him, five years… five years; I waited for him. I wanted to see him, smile at me or maybe I expected too much by hoping he would hug me as soon as he will see me and maybe tell me how much he missed me and how much he loved me. But it felt like I was shattering myself only by expecting too much from a guy whom I loved so dearly.

“You were the reason, I could bring myself here, I had no other way. I wanted to prepare myself to face you but then, it looked like I was the only one missing you and hoping for a second chance.” He looked at me, I wanted him to pull me closer and wipe my tears.

He sat up facing me, “You left me Shasha, nothing could change the fact.”

“I had no choice Seungcheol, why don’t you understand that? All these years, I was longing for you, waiting for the right time to meet you, tell you everything and I didn’t expect to meet you like this? in a fucking car crash where I could see my own life flashing right infront of me”

“You didn’t have to lose the race for me?”

“And it was okay to lose you?” I questioned him, if he thinks this race was important than him, then I needed to prove him wrong, nothing is more important than him.

“You lost me once already. You were long gone even before I knew that you had left me. Tell me Shasha, did I really deserve that kind of treatment? I was so broken and there wasn't even a way to find my answers...I didn't know what questions to ask because we were so perfect back then. We were so happy and you just decided to break it all off without any explanation. I didn't need you to lose the race for me Shasha. I needed you to give me a chance.... or at least some answer. Do you have any idea the kind of self-deprecating thoughts I have had since then?”

“I...I am so sorry Seungcheol. I don’t know how to explain what happened. In the simplest of words,” I tried to not choke on my tears, trying to give him the explanation he deserves “My parents found out about us that day I went back home. I was grounded for 4 days, without internet or phone or email someone who could have conveyed my message to you. Seungcheol I wanted to tell you but the next moment I was allowed to step out of the room was when my dad handed me the flight ticket. They sent me to another country and I had no way to contact you from the other side of the world. I am sorry but I really wanted to tell you at least once that I loved you then. I really did. But my dad could have ruined your career and I couldn’t risk your chance at getting your happiness. You had worked so hard for it. So between my love and your career, I chose your happiness.”

“Shasha, look at me” his eyes softened and he pulled me to sit beside him on the bed.

“What did I tell you about distractions?” he took a pause “One distraction and you lose focus, which means you lose the-

I kissed him, and let my tears fall down gracefully. The lingering feeling was still there, I wanted him to kiss me back to tell me that I wasn’t the only one still in love with him. I was asking for a second chance for both of us. I pulled myself apart and looked at him. I couldn’t read him, like I used to, there was a thick air between us, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have- he pulled me by my neck and kissed me.

I felt my lips getting wet, it was his tears. “I missed you, so much my love,” he said in between our kiss, and kissed me again, harder than earlier. We parted after, and we were almost out of breath, “Seungcheol” my voice came out low, and in another blink, he was kissing me again. He kissed me like he wanted to remind me how he tasted and wanted me and how much he loved me. “I loved you so much, I was losing myself when you weren’t with me. these five years, I yearned for you. I wanted you to come back to me, be mine again. But I couldn’t find you anywhere until one day I saw you on the big screen, racing just like the way I taught you. I was ready to face you on the race track and today when I saw you, I had no idea how to react. You looked like mine but not mine to lose.” His words had those unspoken emotions, “I” he said and looked at me, “Will” he came closer, almost our breaths hitting “love” he kissed me “You” and another kiss “Forever” and another kiss, which almost made me fall back, but he was quick to hold me by my waist and pull me closer. My hands went to his neck and he kissed me harder. I just knew, all these years it was hard for us not to break apart and stay in the hope of each other’s love and that I would never have enough of Seungcheol.

I broke the kiss, “I love you so much” and kissed him again

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bowtiesandsandshoes · 1 year

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Spoilers for Bad Batch s2e4

Tech x Reader

No use of y/n

Warnings/Rating: spoilers for s2e4, fluff

Word count: 1.4k

Summary: You worry about Tech's safety during the race, fluff and realisations ensue

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Tech stood towards the back of the hanger, giving the ship and his calculations one last look over. He was confident in his skills, despite the look on Cid’s face when he decided he would be the one to race.

He heard footsteps coming from behind him, instantly realising who they belonged to. “I’ve gone over the final calibrations, and everything seems to be in order.” He turned to see you coming to a stop a few feet from him, a grim look on your face. “You have no need to be concerned. I am fully confident in my abilities.”

“I know you are Tech, that doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

He hummed in response. “Yes, your concern is very typical of your behaviour- “

“Tech.” You interrupted.

“What?”

“You will be careful, won’t you?” His eyebrows rose, as if surprised.

“As I have just said I am fully- “

“I know you are, but that’s not what I meant.”

You took a step closer to him. “I just,” you paused, “I worry about you. These people play dirty. All they care about is money.”

Tech sighed. Of course that would be your uneasiness would be about. As if he wasn’t also out to win this race.

“Cid is at stake here. As well as more credits that we can afford. I cannot just opt out.”

“I’m not saying you should. All I want you to understand, is that your life is worth more than any amount of credits.” You put your hand on his arm. He looked down at it. “But Cid- “

“We can always get Cid back. And no offense but I care about you a lot more than I do her.”

He looked up into your eyes, your brows creased with concern. No. It was fear. You were close to terrified.

He sighed your name, but you interrupted him again. “Just please come back in one piece. That’s all I ask.”

He looked long into your eyes, his stomach knotting. “Of course.”

He paused, then whispered your name, as if about to ask you something.

“Hey Tech! You ready?” Omega called from the entrance to the hanger, Wrecker trailing behind her. You stepped back quickly, as if you had only just become aware of the proximity between the two of you.

His eyes shifted to give you a once over, your own fixed on something near your feet.

“Yes, I’ll be right there.”

----------

You stood at the edge of the balcony, watching the hovering screen displaying the live events of the race. You were half aware of the commentary, shifting your focus mostly to the conversation happening behind you. You gripped the commlink tight in your hand, feeling the edges digging into you, knowing it would leave marks on your palm.

The racers flew out of the tunnel, Tech careening towards the run where you were all situated. The weapons carrier on the front of his ship dislodged, clattering to the ground. “Your weapons!” Omega cried.

“They were slowing me down.”

He shot forward, clearly moving at a higher speed than before. That did little to quell your anxiety.

“Tech.” You spoke into your comm. “You can’t defend yourself properly.” You did little to hide what was close to anger in your tone. “I am aware, although I have deemed my shields and speed to be of greater importance.” After a moment he added “Don’t worry. I’m being careful.”

“Yeah, doesn’t really look like it from here.” You mumbled under your breath.

“I heard that.”

As the race continued, your fear and anxiety only grew, your stomach feeling as though it was folding in on itself.

“You’re losing shields.” You heard Omega say behind you.

“Tech, if you die, I’ll kill you.” You muttered into the commlink.

“Noted.” He responded curtly, although you could hear the smirk in his intonation.

Omega and Wrecker had now joined you overlooking the track. Looking to your left, Omega was anxiously peering over the railing. You placed a hand on her shoulder, not trusting your voice enough to be convincing of the phrase, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be okay.’ She placed her hand atop of yours and squeezed.

“Here they come! It’s going to be close!” The commentator cried as the remaining ships flew out of the tunnel ahead of the finish line. A cloud of dust enveloped the ships, preventing any of you from being able to see what was happening.

“Come on Tech, please.” You muttered, your hands clenching.

“And the winner is…”

The dust cleared and one ship careened towards the finish line.

“Tech!”

Omega and Wrecker cheered. You leant forward against the railing, letting out a breath of relief with a laugh. Omega grabbed your arm to pull you, and all three of you ran down to reach Tech on the track.

You practically sprinted, launching yourself at Tech, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, almost knocking him back.

“Uh- “ Tech found himself dumbfounded. His arms hovered in the air, not knowing what to do with them. You jumped back as if shocked, suddenly realising what you were doing.

“You did it!” Omega shouted.

“You sound surprised.” He managed to choke out, still shocked by your display. You looked mortified.

“I thought you were a goner.” Wrecker laughed.

Tech went to say something to you but was distracted by the crowd chanting his name.

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You sat next to Omega on the shuttle back to Ord Mantell. Tech sat a few rows behind, watching the back of your head as you listened to an excited Omega, who was recounting the days events. He pondered your actions as he scrolled through is data pad. While you had never exactly shied away from physical affection, this was clearly the most you had ever shown to him. Along with your anxiety about his safety, it was clear you cared about him. What he struggled with the most, was trying to figure out examples of when you were worried to the same extent about the rest of the group.

It was true you had been distraught when Wrecker had been overcome by the effects of the inhibitor chip, or when Hunter had been captured by the empire. He could not recall a time where your worry had been this highly directed at any other individual, except perhaps Omega. But she was a child, which made sense. You were fully aware that he was an adult and had more than enough experience taking care of himself, and that he was a skilled pilot. He could not fathom that your emotional response to his safety in such a small circumstance would be so high.

Once the shuttle landed on Ord Mantell, the group of you made your way back to Cid’s.

Once inside, they found Hunter and Echo, who had looks of relief on their faces as you entered. He was vaguely aware of Hunter lecturing them about going off world without notifying the other two. He was mostly paying attention to how you wandered over to the bar, reaching over the counter and pouring yourself a generous glass of spotchka. Once Hunter was satisfied he had conveyed his frustration, he and Echo turned to Omega who began retelling the days events.

Tech made his way over to the bar and took the seat beside you. He opened his mouth to ask if you were okay, but you beat him to it.

“I’m sorry Tech. I know you’re not a big fan of physical touch, I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” The words came out in a jumbled mess, but Tech managed to understand what you were saying.

“I was not uncomfortable, just surprised. You have never shown me that level of affection before, so I was unaware of how to react. You have no reason to apologise.

You looked at him. “I was worried.” Your voice was strained. “I know you were, but I’m okay."

He placed his hand upon yours. As you turned to look at both your hands, he looked at you. He had never really thought about the fact that you were attractive before. Yes, he hated noted the way you looked, the slope of your nose, and the colour of your eyes, but he had never taken it all in as he was doing now.

You smiled as you looked back up at him. “I stand by what I said before. You ever die, and I’ll kill you Tech.”

He smiled back, “Understood Cyar’ika.”

Neither of them saw Omega looked between the two of you from the other side of the room. She grabbed Hunter’s arm, shaking it. “Look.” She whispered.

Hunter followed her gaze. A knowing smirk growing on his face.

#sw the bad batch #the bad batch tech #the bad batch #tech x reader #tech tbb #the bad batch fic #tech fic #star wars

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mothcpu · 10 months

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answering asks (clearing out months of inbox clutter, oops!) ⬇️

@wine-82 @mandelamoth @hsc-001 @blinder-8080 thank you for reading!!!!! I never mean to sound like a broken record when I say this but I mean it genuinely every time!!!!

maybe I've mentioned it before, but writing it helped me work through some things (by merit of it being a sort of conversation with myself), and it means the world to know it affected others in a similar way. I hope it keeps inspiring people, I can't think of a more important thing for it to do.

once I have the time and mental capacity I'd like to write a commentary track for it... I don't know if it'd take away some of its charm to talk about how I cobbled it together, but I do have a lot of thoughts about it (such as the semi-unintentional themes of predestination).

it doesn't have a meaning beyond the one you give it honestly, but if you're interested in my personal interpretation: the best way to live your life is to live it one day at a time and care for yourself and others! find beauty in the mundane, even if you feel silly doing it! it's never too late to change and never give into the sunk cost fallacy! and it's also pretty gay to die in the arms of the only friend you've ever had!

another one joins the army.... thanks, had a lot of fun drawing that one :)

@specterpants thank YOU that's very kind!!!

I am fairly neutral on my work most of the time, but your love for it makes me love it, even moreso when it's something i enjoy drawing (aka robots) :3

don't know how to sign this off so. go listen to Western Teleport by Emperor X

#ask #DECT #id in alt #sorry for the ping jumpscares but you'd get a ping either way if I responded individually. shrug #there are a couple more asks ill get to soonish as well since i wanna give them their own post

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standbyric · 2 years

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[PART I]

00: Mask Off 2016

Pairing: Daniel Ricciardo x Female!Driver OC x Pierre Gasly Premise: Formula One, Female Racing Driver Rating: 18+; Mature themes (explicit language, death, trauma innuendos, motorsport accident, mentions of sex) Timeline: Back and forth Word Count: 1.7k

“AWESOME, fantastic drive there, Z. Congratulations, that’s P1. Now you’ve put a sock up their mouths. You did a solid drive; if they complain, it’s easy to tell who are the stupid ones. Well done! I am very proud of you!”

Zea couldn’t help but chuckle. After her disastrous qualifying, the team had been distraught, stating to the press that she couldn’t get a grip on the track; it might be all the nerve on the new components following the new season regulations. But she managed to make a solid comeback from P17 to finish P1.

“Thanks, Alby. Thank you for trusting me.”

“That was insane, Z. I can’t believe you just did that!” Marqués Abrego, her race engineer, shouted over the radio.

“Nah, it was all us, Marq. Thank you for being my ‘guy in the chair’; I couldn’t have done it without the entire team watching my back.”

“You were the one who delivered justice to the car, girl; appreciate yourself a little! Oh, right. P1. Once you enter the pit lane, you will park Ace in the middle for P1. Congratulations again. Couldn’t ask for a more splendid season opening. Excellent job.”

“Zea! You rock! Congratulations on your maiden win!” Jacqui Shabat, Will Stevens’ race engineer, chimed in. He sounded ecstatic. But who could blame him? Even Zea had difficulty containing her joy. With Will, her teammate, settling at P9, that was a great point harvest for Audi.

Her cool-down lap was complete, and Zea parked her car nicely at the P1 placard upon entering the pit lane.

Immediately after doing her usual swift leap to oust herself from the cockpit, sliding open her helmet and balaclava—giving her head a little shake left and right—and letting her hair fall through nicely behind her, she roared her euphoria along with Irza, who was standing across the barrier. The two siblings exchanged their intricate handshake before Irza brought their temples together and gave her a light peck on the head. He was brimming with thrill.

“That’s my baby! I’m so proud of you!”

The TV crew ate this up, putting it on the big screen for everyone’s consumption.

“Oh, there they go! We’ve been assuming they’re a couple for a while now, and from the looks of this victory celebration, I have to say we might be on the right track after all!”

Zea snickered behind her mask, hearing the ever-so-wrong assumption about her and Irza. But, whatever. She’d give them points for at least being consistent. It had been amusing, and besides, she couldn’t wait for the truth to slap that commentary right in the balls. She had promised Alby at the beginning of the season that she’d finally cast away her mask and do a face reveal if she won a Prix.

She stifled her chuckle as she touched the black mask covering her face. She’d been hiding her face since her GP2 days, saying she didn’t fancy the attention as an excuse. Hey, no rules were broken anyway. Her mother then procured her inner fireproofs to feature a fitted face mask. Well, thank you, dear mother, but today was the day she’d finally say goodbye to the mask.

Zea broke off Irza’s hug as she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Felipe Massa. The fellow Brazilian had darted his way from the middle of the pack to congratulate her first win. “Thanks, mate. See you in a bit,” she said as she returned his fist bump and left for the podium.

Behind was Daniel Ricciardo, who had secured 4th place, just one position outside the podium, glancing over the big screen. He did not expect the intimate display on the screen to hurl something inside him, but it did. He thought it could have been Martin Brundle’s comment on the nature of the two young guns’ relationship that irked him. Then again, he decided it was most definitely just jealousy over her winning his home race and celebrating with her lover. Yep, he wasn’t going to be the jackass who won’t admit his competitive side got the better of him. In his defence, she was a damn good driver. Damn good.

It was the festivity, the loud cheer, and the Aussies being a good sport about the podium members. Zeahire Sinaga had triumphed over the usual podium sitters duo from Mercedes—Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg—both favourite contenders for the season’s World Driver Champion title. Something about the warm sun and the air around the Albert Park circuit had managed to tone down Daniel’s impeding adrenaline—

“—Let me say, Wow! Yes! Listen to that cheer!”

Mark Webber sounded exceptionally astonished, followed by the roaring ‘whoa’ from the crowd. That was enough for Daniel to bring his attention back to the big screen after finishing his mandatory post-race weigh-in and parc fermé.

“Who would’ve guessed such a beauty has been hiding behind that mask this whole time?!”

Zea gave a playful shrug, plastering a cheeky smile that Daniel swore had an almost vividly readable sign that said I-know-right?

But yeah, Daniel had to nod in agreement with Mark; he had to admit that smile was mesmerising. However, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to him.

Just last season, he’d suppose the Audi garage was at the back of the paddock, far from the Red Bulls. Not many chances for encounter, and yet, every time he’d run into her, he’d almost always found himself getting caught in her blue eyes, even from afar.

“So…so what’s the story here? Why today?”

“The face reveal, you mean?” Daniel watched attentively as Zea took the mic that Mark handed to her.

“Well, Alby has been urging me to do it this season. Like, this whole bad publicity overtone has been making him concerned? But I told him I’d only do it if I finished P1… how the hell was I supposed to know it’s gonna be Australia?! The Season-Opening?!”

Daniel chuckled. Her bold choices of words for live broadcasts hadn’t changed; it made him recall Sochi 2014 when her Marussia teammate had retired from suspension problems, leaving the team to rely on her for points. She had taken over the remaining four races of the season after the late Jules Bianchi’s horrible accident in Suzuka.

“He was more than capable of doing this,” Zea had said while pointing to the JB17 sticker on her helmet, paying her respect to the late Frenchman.

“Could you have squeezed a podium there?” Will Buxton questioned her.

She sighed. “Look, I really wanna lie and say yes, but I’d have to be a war hero or something in my past life to have the luck to beat Hamilton, Rosberg, Bottas. We’ve outscored ourselves with P4. Really.”

“Oh, look at that. Humility.”

“No, I’m just stating facts. Zero probability of me winning in that car anyway; I haven’t got the pace. So I’m more than delighted to finish and score points at all—hell, this might be pure luck for all we know,” she exhaled her fatigue harshly.

“The car was—“ she had paused, reluctant to say anything, before the Marussia F1 mechanics and engineers gave her encouraging nods and hand gestures for her to carry on, “the car was shit; it was fuckin’ impossible to drive,” and Daniel recalled how much he was caught off guard upon hearing that from across the media pen. Whoa, nice choice of vocab.

“But no blame there; the team only had so much time to settle me in. I don’t know how much of the radio was broadcasted, but by the time we did the cool-down lap, the car was like, literally making noises I’m a hundred per cent sure no Formula One car is supposed to make? I thought the car would start disintegrating at some point; I was scared shitless. Okay. Maybe I watched too much Transformer.”

Will Buxton broke into laughter, amused at how she had practically spit bars for her reply, but what Daniel remembered the most was Kimi Räikkönen, who had chuckled along and said, “She has a good head on her.”

Well, Daniel reckoned Kimi had always been a good judge of character.

“It’s just—there’s been a lot of interesting conspiracy theories going around; but it’s gotten much worse at the start of the season, like, they’ve been saying I’m actually five different people! You should totally check Youtube—No, it’s real,” she playfully tapped Mark Webber’s shoulder when the former nine-time Grand Prix winner started laughing. “They even compiled videos of me walking and doing other stuff and compared them.”

See? Look at her. Outspoken, engaging, amiable…a beauty. Kimi judged right.

“But I am so sorry, guys,” Zea gave an amusingly disappointed look to the crowd, “Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I’m just…me.”

Maybe it was the way she talked? Or was it the way her expression turned animated every time she spoke? Daniel couldn’t really tell.

“I don’t… ‘mitose’ into five different people.”

Oh, and a sense of humour.

“Okay, to be fair, I definitely did… ‘mitose’ once before birth. ‘Cause, like, I do have a twin brother.”

Wait, what?!

“Yes! The charming gentleman who’s always around me! He gave me a big hug just now.”

“Oh my God!” Mark exclaimed as the big screen panned towards Irza, and the crowd of male pheromones cheered in excitement, quite possibly on the prospect of her being single. Or was it for Irza?

“Not my boyfriend, definitely not my boyfriend—eww. He’s very available, so ladies, or gentlemen, by all means, go ahead,” Zea switched her head back to Mark, “but that’s it—my only mitosis. I hope it clears everything so Alby can finally have peace of mind. Come on; I pity the old man.”

Daniel couldn’t even fathom the thrill suddenly rising from his gut, nor how the bitter aftertaste he had felt upon finishing P4 had abruptly vanished.

All he knew was that her first sentence would live rent-free in his mind.

Why?

He’d thought maybe right now wasn’t the best time to figure that out. After all, they’ve got the entire season to do that. Right?

Masterlist [I] Chapter 01 ➡️

COMING SOON. Muhahaha.

__________ Aye. This is my debut formula one fic...so please be nice 🥹 Reblog is always appreciated! ✨manifesting my eagerness to update this series regularly✨

____________

Tag list:

@scotlynaurora

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delucadarling · 7 months

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:D directors commentary on your lovely Wayhaven regency au? (I've been meaning to ask if you have a masterlist of those entries at all, because I'm not sure I caught all of them and the Tumblr search wasn't working! No worries if not!)

Oo, oh man I've barely thought about the regency au in a minute (I chalk that up to Emma and I having busted through Bridgerton months ago). Unfortunately, I don't have any sort of masterlist of that fic, though iirc there's only 5 parts posted at the moment. They'll all be on my writing blog, @delucadarlingwriting under the tag 'regency au'. Making a masterlist of fic wouldn't be a bad idea though 🤔

Commentary down below!

I'll start with some backstory from part 1:

So, I'm sure I've mentioned before, but this is not really historical fanfiction. I'm doing some baseline research, but I am also deliberately twisting certain things, like racism, homophobia, xenophobia...lots of a 'phobias u kno. They don't not exist, but they are more or less not present among the majority of people. It's only the upper class that gives those things much thought, because they're rich bastards obsessed with their own bloodlines and being better than other people based on arbitrary standards. You get the gist.

Patriarchy is still very present, and Barbie and Lucas' mother (and father before he beefed it) were very invested in upholding that. Their mom in my version of canon is a fundie boy mom, and that translates pretty well to this au. She's obsessed with Lucas, especially now that he's the Earl. Barbie is...there. Something the be bragged about in company and to complain about in private. Kira, despite being the ward of the Peachtree house, manages to escape most of the complaining. Barbie's mom most just ignores her.

Another thing here is Lucas and Kira are both gay, but because of their status in life, they can't be open about it. Kira isn't even fully aware at this point, but it won't take much for her to realize why men don't interest her. Barbie is still bi, but her preferences have always leaned masculine, which means she doesn't have a lot of opportunities to realize she's attracted to women as well.

From part 2:

Again, this is an AU that @crownleys and I work on together, so Rebecca is Kira's mom. I don't remember if I've mentioned it anywhere else, but the way we've had it, is Rebecca was not part of high society before marrying Rook. She was a working woman within the Agency, which was socially appropriate for someone of her station. However, once she and Rook fell in love, there was stiffling pressure to change herself. Rook himself never asked her to change, and even offered to retreat from high society entirely. So for a time they did.

Then Rook died. Rebecca maintained his wealth and the title she married into. She had no other support though, so she tried to re-enter society. It went so poorly that she gave it all up, including her high born daughter, so she could go back to what she was before meeting Rook. In her mind, this gave Kira the best chance at a good, safe life, while also allowing Rebecca to escape her grief.

With Murphy targeting people within the ton though, Rebecca has no choice but to use her unwanted place in society to track him down.

I can't really think of much else I had in mind while writing this! It was a very fun little series to play with, and I do want to add more to it with time, but I do suspect it will be a perpetual WIP. If we ever get Bridgerton season 3, that'll probably be what sparks my desire to revive it.

#darling speaks #ask meme #thanks for the ask!

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marzipanandminutiae · 2 years

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its really too bad that you didnt respond to the well written response nbraraeaves made to your incredibly cruel and judgmental tags on that post. they brought up a lot of good points and its disappointing how youre so unwilling to hear any perspective other than your own.

Genuinely I had no idea what this was about until I scrolled halfway down their blog. Maybe next timetry specifying the theme of said post at least, so I have some idea about what I've been "incredibly cruel and judgmental" in regards to? We're not mutuals, and this was such a quickly dashed-off reblog that I didn't think to keep track of it after moving on to the next post.

I found what you were talking about, I think. I tagged a post about wanting community tags to block "x reader" fics- that is, second-person fics where the reader is a given character's OC love interest -thus:

Which, I admit, was a bit snarky of me. Although I will clarify that I meant it as an expression of genuine surprise: most fandoms have stories ranging from breathtaking to unreadable, quality-wise, in every sub-category of fic, so it surprised me that I'd never come across any Well-Written But Not My Thing stories of the Xreader variety. Logically I still figure there must be some out there, somewhere; it just seems strange that I've never found them.

the commentary, unlike this ask, was very polite and considered, and made some points I hadn't thought of before. (hence why I am actually responding to it, instead of simply deleting the ask)

They mentioned a lot of things I'll admit I hadn't considered- I assumed it was mostly just people wanting to bang a specific character. Which would be fine, to be clear! I don't go into Xreader circles and yuck anyone's yum- I said this on my private blog, where I thought nobody into that sort of thing would see it.

Which leads to another point: I did not think anyone who was into Xreader would be following me.

Listen, on the balance, the Xreader fanfic in my fandom tends to be. Not kind to the female main characters, Lucille especially. And again, that's fine; I'll just avoid those fics. But it lead me to assume, clearly incorrectly, that most CPeak Xreader writers hated my Best-Beloved Blorbo, and therefore were unlikely to stick around once I made my love for her clear.

(Why I didn't think about other types of XReader writers...I can't say. Fandom laser-focus, I suppose.)

Now, clearly I was wrong- that commenter is a CPeak Xreader writer and at least tolerates my immense desire to blanket-burrito Lucille like a hissing kitten enough to actually read my fanfic. It's for them that I'm answering this, not you; however that post came to my attention, it's still worth sharing, and they shouldn't be punished for what some anon with a bug up their ass does.

@nbraraeaves: I appreciate you sitting down to tell me why your preferred form of writing is meaningful and enjoyable to you. Thank you for your comment. While XReader will probably never be my thing- honestly, more because I want the characters to be with each other and not me than out of any perceived Inherent Failing of the medium, above tags notwithstanding -I can understand your perspective on it much better now. I hope it continues to bring you joy for a long time to come

@Anon: you may now retreat to your hidey-hole, proud and secure in the knowledge that [checks notes] you got a random person to stop being a little bit disdainful towards your favorite fanfic genre on the Internet. your gold star will be arriving in 3-5 business days

#ask #anon #anon hate #long post #fandom #listen I have a lot of pent-up nervous energy right now because the world is on fire and my shoulders really hurt #and I cannot find a damn clock repair person in this city that I can actually get to #so yes I'm feeding the troll this once #forgive my bad example #NOTE: ANON IS THE TROLL. NOT THE PERSON WHO MADE THAT COMMENT #THEY GENUINELY SEEM QUITE NICE #AT LEAST BASED ON A BRIEF SCROLL OF THEIR BLOG AND SAID COMMENT

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thisselflovecamebacktome · 5 months

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My top 5 albums/eps for 2023

So it has come to the end of the year again, and despite now having been burnt twice doing this list before the last day of December only to listen to albums that should have made them within the year (Evermore and SOS, you will always be famous lmao), I'm ready to put out my top 5 albums/EPs that were released in 2023. And before anyone asks, no, rerecordings do not count and will not be considered for this list (sorry Taylor and Demi), same with deluxe versions (sorry Noah). So without further adieu, here are my top 5 albums/EPs for 2023.

5. The Age of Pleasure – Janelle Monae.

Following up Dirty Computer was always going to be a challenge. For those who haven't listened to Dirty Computer, I would literally call it one of the best albums of all time. And, at least for me, there's been a pattern with all artists where once they release an album I adore, I tend not to like the next one. But Janelle well and truly rose to the occasion. Much like Dirty Computer, I felt like I was transported to a different time and place listening to The Age of Pleasure. Each song is strong on it's own yet works so well together but are all different and distinguished enough to be memorable. Unfortunately I feel like as a whole this album did not get the hype that it deserved, but I am hoping that its AOTY grammy nomination will help give it that chance for more people to listen to it. All in all, the only, very subjective, reason that this album was not higher is because it's personally not relatable to me, and that's a major reason I listen to music. Like I said though, that is very subjective, and not at all a comment about its quality.

Favourite Song: Champagne Shit.

4. Guts – Olivia Rodrigo.

I'm just going to say it upfront, this album was too hated on just because it wasn't Sour and over weirdo rumours. Like do I think it'll be my favourite album of all time? No. But neither was Sour and Guts does just a good a job at being the perfect teenage album. And I say that in the most affectionate light because I think it is an art to capture an age like that. At the current time, Sour and Guts flip flop as my favourite Olivia project, and realistically, had I had Guts when I was closer to Olivia's age (rather than nearly a decade older), I think Guts would have taken the cake easily. It's relatable and unfortunately still socially relevant given its topics of age gaps in relationships, the way the music industry treats young female artists, and the guilt and shame that come from both of those. Likewise, its commentary on honesty about who you are and what you feel compared to what others want (extending as far as into the bonus track Scared of My Guitar) is a relatable and interesting theme throughout the album. As a whole, Olivia well and truly defied the sophomore album dip for me and I cannot wait to see what she does in the future (hopefully including an Australian tour lmao).

Favourite Song: The Grudge.

3. The Good Witch – Maisie Peters.

I'll say it outright, if this had come out in 2018/2019 (when I was 22 to 24 years old), it would have well and truly been my number one pick of the year and probably joined the ranks of albums like RED and Melodrama that define the year they were released for me just by being released right when I needed them. Even now with the distance of several years, I still think of the same person I would have then when listening to most of the songs on this album; I just get the benefit of being able to laugh along to the songs rather than be sad. Admittedly, it took a few listens, both with the standard and deluxe version to fully feel this album as a cohesive project (ironically You Signed Up For This, Maisie's first [non soundtrack] album, was too sonically cohesive for me to the point I prefer to listen to the songs on their own and The Good Witch initially felt not sonically cohesive enough), but once it hit, it hit. I remember my first listen and hearing There It Goes for the first time and having a quiet moment of judgement thinking that the wrong song was picked for the closer because how was it going to top There It Goes as a statement piece for the album... I was quickly proven wrong as History of Man started to play and I realised that not only was this the perfect closer, but objectively one of the best songs I've ever heard. So yes, as a whole, I think she made the right choices in terms of tracklist order and what was left on the deluxe. Additionally, jokingly I am grateful that we didn't have “you had a phone, you should have called” in 2018, for I would have acted irrationally lmao. Overall, after having seen Maisie live in February, this was one of my most anticipated albums of the year, and much like Olivia, Maisie has well and truly defied the sophomore album dip for me and I can see myself loving this album for years to come.

Favourite Song: There It Goes

2. This Is Why – Paramore.

Over the years, I've had a very up and down relationship with Paramore. I loved their earlier work, fell off with (read: only liked a few songs per album) their self titled album and never fully made my way back to them... until now. To me (and I believe the intent of the album was), this album is like the encompassment of being alive in 2023. It's tired, it's angry, it holds back and even resents “positive” emotion at times, but ultimately it is just very human and reflective of where the world is right now. Of all of my choices this year, This Is Why is absolutely the album that is most relatable to myself in this current moment. And, having a year where I came back to pop rock music in general, this album just came at an absolutely ideal time for me. Overall, it is the album I feel has the most potential for me to look back on and be like “yeah, this was 2023 for me”, and for that alone, it has earned its spot on my ranking. My only regret is that I unfortunately did not get to see this album played live on tour due to other things going on in my life... almost as if I ran out of time (pun intended).

Favourite song: Running Out Of Time.

Rolling Up The Welcome Mat – Kelsea Ballerini.

So some of you may have realised the title of this post is my top 5 albums AND EPS and have realised that there is a direct lack of extended plays spoken about so far. Well surprise! Before this year, the only Kelsea song I had heard was The Other Girl featuring Halsey, but she's someone who I have wanted to listen to for a while. So when I heard that she was releasing an extended play, I jumped straight in and fell in love. I've never been through a divorce, but the emotions and grief of losing a relationship (romantic or otherwise) that you feel you fought so hard to grasp onto despite knowing it wasn't working and feeling like the other person wasn't trying resonated so deeply with me. And much like The Good Witch, I think if I had had this ep in 2018, it would have been the album I felt sad to, and honestly? To a point where I may have avoided it because it hit too close to home. But instead, all of its tracks were my top streamed tracks with nothing breaking them up. Overall it is an exemplary, relatable piece of work to which my only complaint is that I cannot buy it on CD (sorry, not much of a streamer) and while I haven't had a chance to go listen to Kelsea's other stuff (sorry it's been a busy year), I cannot wait to see what else she has in store, both in her past discography and future projects.

Favourite song: Genuinely all of them, but if you're going to put a gun to my head, Mountain With A View.

#janelle monae #olivia rodrigo #maisie peters #paramore #kelsea ballerini #this is why album #rolling up the welcome mat #the good witch album #the age of pleasure #guts #i really should start my own tag so i can access these easier because I do them every year lmao

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crunchycrystals · 8 months

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every book i read in september 2023

i did in fact bring this back because i thought it would be fun and all my followers should know that before everything, i am a book nerd. i genuinely think i only feel like i'm alive when i'm reading regularly. no spoilers for any of the books i talk about because i can only have one cut per post

before i get into the books here's some general info on reading stuff this month. so i read 9 books which i'm really proud of myself for after being in a reading slump for ages. i was still reading then but i really was not enjoying myself nearly as much as i was in previous months and i'm really enjoying myself now. 5 of the books i read were physical copies of them, 1 was an ebook, and 3 were audiobooks. my average rating was 4.29/5 and read a total of 13.78 hours on audiobook and 2476 of pages shout out to storygraph for all this info i am telling you use storygraph if you want to track your reading its so great

the cruel prince. i really liked this surprisingly??? the worldbuilding was great and i loved all the political aspects of it. jude was a really interesting main character and i had a lot of fun with the story (especially the plot twist/s, no i'm not saying if there's more than one). i liveblogged a couple parts of the entire series this month so you can check my tfota tag for more in depth thoughts

the lost sisters. it was pretty interesting to see the plot of the cruel prince from the perspective of a different character but i didn't think much about my enjoyment of it since i was just reading it for more info on the series lol

captain stone's revenge. so i went on a nancy drew diaries binge once and i've been keeping up with the series ever since then just because, and i had a hold on this book for like 2 months at the library and i finished it in a day lol. it's a short book and definitely not as good as other books in the series but yk it wasn't awful still had fun reading

we are okay. this is one of my favorite books and i cried for 40 minutes straight as i finished the last like 50-80 pages. it's a really great exploration of different kinds of grief that are complicated and how it affects people. i posted while reading it "every chapter there's something that makes me take psychic damage" which was very fun but also deeply painful (in a fun way most of the time, sometimes i was in public trying not to cry). the ending is so hopeful it made me cry for a different reason why i was crying for the past 35ish minutes. it's a great book i highly recommend it it's only like 230 pages.

the wicked king. sequel to the cruel prince, i also really enjoyed this but i don't think i enjoyed it as much as the cruel prince. still well written though and i have more in depth thoughts under my tfota and/or reading commentary tags

queen of nothing. 100% my favorite from the trilogy i loved it i thought the characters and plot in this one were all super great and i loved the ending especially. i do have more detailed thoughts that i wrote down for me personally but this is a no spoilers section so i won't share it unless someone asks

cress. this is the 3rd book in the lunar chronicles series and aaaaaaa i loved this so much i had so much fun reading it i love the alternating povs and how they all end up clashing with the dramatic irony in that one scene i loved kai's povs i wanted to keep reading constantly i love these characters so much go read the lunar chronicles please

chalice of the gods. uhhh so i finished this in less than 12 hours i liveblogged it all i really enjoyed it you can see my thoughts there go check it out (cotg or reading commentary tag). a lot of cringe moments (WHY does he mention boomers so much) but i am choosing not to see it i only see percabeth and percy grover friendship content again and i enjoyed reading it

daisy jones and the six. i listened to this on audiobook and it was incredibleeeeeeee the voice actors were amazing it was so entertaining. another taylor jenkins reid book about the drama between famous people and it was very entertaining to read about. stressful at times but overall i liked it. once again there are some notes in the reading commentary tag

i also started winter this month but i am definitely finishing it in october so i don't count it lol

#crunchyposts #books #monthly wrap up #<- in case i end up doing this again

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wayhavenots · 6 months

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A commentary track for You will surely be the death of me would be amazing 👀

Thank you!!! :) Below the cut because it got long haha.

You will surely be the death of me

First: This was written for Wayhaven Frights (prompt: dawn) and for Fictober (prompt: I choose you). It's so fun to come back to it a year later! A prompt-related idea I wanted to incorporate but didn't is that Dawn is Avery's middle name.

Second: The title comes from the song Like the Dawn by The Oh Hellos, which is a retelling of the creation of Eve from the perspective of Adam. It's a very pretty song about finding someone who was (literally) made for you, that person lighting up your world like the dawn...even if they will ultimately be your downfall (the line which is the title).

Avery sips from her travel mug as she watches the dark sky fade to navy blue, a promise of warmth and light just over the horizon. But for now, it is chilly on this rooftop. She sets down the drink and huddles into Nate, head tucking into his chest and arms snaking underneath his coat and around his waist. "Cold," she explains.

For once, I actually paid attention to imagery here, Nate being a source of warmth and light just like the slowly rising sun.

She tilts her head back to observe his handsome face—dark eyes gazing back at her, a smile on his lips. She's not sure if she believes him, if she's a sufficient distraction from whatever nightmare left him so shaken this morning. Something from his past, something he’s carried with him for three hundred years. Something he doesn’t want to talk about. “I’m so sorry for waking you,” he said when he stopped shaking, his smile forced. “But it seems we are just in time to watch the sunrise.” It's the type of activity that wouldn’t have occurred to Avery, despite her proclivity for staring at the sky. Her fascination lies with bodies much farther away—with the exception of Nate, of course.

I liked the idea of Nate being the one to suggest looking at the sunrise, even though Avery is the one who's always looking at the sky, the one who's always been so fascinated with stars. I think Nate suggests it as a way of trying to salvage the morning after his nightmare, a little bit of a way to apologize for waking up Avery, a little bit of a way to ground himself back in the present.

“There’s this theory about the Sun," she says, to fill the silence. "That it had a binary twin once. Another star orbiting around the same center of mass. They call it Nemesis.” “An evil twin, then," comments Nate, with a smile she hears rather than sees. “For kicking an asteroid into the Earth and killing the dinosaurs, I guess,” she explains. “There’s no evidence for Nemesis. If it was ever close enough to do any damage, it isn’t anymore, and never will be again.” She thinks about his past, still kicking asteroids into his life. Her hands venture out of the warmth to hold onto his, which are linked around her shoulders. “But we know that most stars occur in binary systems, and we suspect that almost all stars started out with a far-away companion. They get closer, or they break apart, leaving single stars. It's a mathematical model that explains some observations, anyway." “Oh, I like that. Like soulmates."

I had a lot of help from Seren about the astronomy here! Since Avery's science is astronomy and I am not an astronomer, I'm always getting these little ideas for astronomy-themed metaphors and I never know if they're total nonsense (and then I ask Seren who is very kind about answering my questions)! In this case, linking binary stars to the concept of soulmates, and then trying to connect that organically to the sunrise by bringing up the Sun's theoretical once-but-no-longer binary companion.

It’s such a Nate thing to say in response to her rambling; she has to smile. “Do you believe in that? Soulmates?” "Yes, I think so. More so now." She doesn't miss the implication in his voice, one that might have sent her panicking not too long ago. "Do you?" Avery doesn’t answer for a moment. It’s certainly a model which would explain, well, this. Them. Feelings she never felt so deeply, like he's the warm soft glow of a brand new day. But there's something sad in that, too. A hundred years from now, she will be long gone; or worse, a memory that wakes him in the middle of the night, alone.

I've changed a lot about how I view Avery and her feelings about love. I used to view her as being afraid of love or not believing in love, and that Nate would change that (but that narrative feels kind of icky to me now tbh). I think this fic and this passage really captures her bigger fear, which is that her love will hurt Nate. It's something she saw happen to Rebecca after Rook's death. Maybe they were soulmates...but maybe that was a bad thing.

"No," she finally decides. "I chose you, and you chose me, and gravity has nothing to do with it."

I'm very proud of this line. I'm not even sure if Avery really believes what she's saying, exactly; she decides. She knows that she wants Nate to believe it, that there isn't anything special about her, that when she's gone he'll be able to move on.

But he smiles to see her looking back at him and angles his face towards hers. Her heart skips a beat. He could keep her warm from light-years away, and she feels lucky to be here in his orbit, if only for a few decades.

Since writing this, I've definitely decided that Avery will become a vampire one day. She never wants to put Nate through losing someone. I really liked writing with this sense of temporariness haunting the narrative, how it turns everything a little bittersweet. But it's occurred to me since then that Avery wouldn't leave it at that, if science has given her a way to stay with Nate forever.

“I can’t decide which theory I like better," says Nate thoughtfully. “Because certainly, I chose you. And I choose you.” He dips his head low to a brush a kiss over her lips. “But, my sweet astronomer, my dearest heart, there could be no other choice.”

I really liked this bit too. Nate the diplomat finding the common ground between their differing viewpoints, even though (he doesn't realize) it kind of plays into Avery's fears. And being so smooth all the while.

Words rise to her throat: I am just the beginning for you, Nate. I think you will choose someone else some day. I hope that you do.

I'm pretty sure I wrote these lines way before I saw any of the prompt lists or had any corresponding fic idea; I think these lines were just languishing in some Tumblr draft and dying to be used.

But the words evaporate in the heat of the kiss that follows, and she lets them go. There is no use in thoughts orbiting around the inevitable future, no point in casting her eye skyward, when her universe does not need more than him or now.

I think Avery started looking at the stars in part because they were always there, even when her mother wasn't. So she's always looked up and out and away. And it's maybe the same reason she's so preoccupied with the distant future. It's just not in her nature to narrow her focus to the here and now.

But this whole sunrise-watching activity is spurred by Nate trying to shake off the memories of his past.

So in the end here, they kind of meet in the present. Avery sees the beauty in what is close and doesn't worry about what is far away. What she's been looking for out there is right with her now.

#goodness did this make any sense at all #anyway i appreciated the excuse to ramble about this fic haha i really put more thought into it than i usually do

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chaosnojutsu · 1 year

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I am going to ask a lot of you :) 12, 18, and 26!

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

this is going to sound Fake, but sex pollen! i rarely come across this trope in my reading (especially well-written ones, respectfully) and i have been holding onto All The Thoughts for a specific obscure Naruto ship, but then lo and behold one of my favorite authors dropped what would become one of my favorite fics, coincidentally with that trope and that couple. (i am emotionally attached to sing me to safe harbor)

not that that means i can’t do it too, of course, but i think BECAUSE i hold your fic in such high regard that i keep intimidating myself out of writing it, you know?

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

From chapter 14 of Reliance, I give you kissing lessons:

Naruto rolls his eyes. “So you do the last three steps all together. The head tilt, close your eyes, and then you just lean in…”

And Naruto does lean in. It’s part of the demonstration, after all.

“Are you about to kiss me?” Neji asks, tinged with panic once more.

Naruto backs away at once, his regular self shining through. “I wasn’t gonna actually do it!”

Neji looks Naruto up and down. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

“I wasn’t gonna—”

“I don’t want to kiss you.”

“I know!” Naruto yells. “I don’t wanna kiss you either! It was for the demonstration, you know!”

THESE TWO. This was the most ridiculous idea for a scene and I’m so happy I ran with it instead of shutting it down. I can hear the sitcom laugh track playing between the dialogue. The struggles of “don’t touch me like you touch my sister” vs “if you don’t teach me how to kiss then so help me” vs “no homo” vs “we’re friends so it wouldn’t be weird right” just… yeah. Hits the spot. Theirs is another friendship I wish we’d seen more of in canon!

26. (For Reliance) Which part of [x fic] was the hardest to write?

*slams button* THE DINNER CHAPTER.

when i tell you i went back and forth for MONTHS trying to plan out how that would look. so much time spent on drafts that should never see the light of day, as all writing goes.

finding the dynamics between each set of characters was definitely the most difficult part. we have so little content of hiashi (reformed) and hanabi (in general) so i have a lot of room to play with them, which is fun, but i wish i had a little more guidance, you know?

hiashi was such a delicate balance in particular because while he’s a manipulative antagonist who consistently thinks of himself first, he’s trying to do better. he has no idea what “better” looks like but he’s trying. and on the flip side, effectively conveying neji’s internal struggle was something i’m still not sure i did justice on. he wants to believe so badly that hiashi really has changed, but he’s got major trust issues and deep wounds that still need healing.

hanabi and tenten are So Much Fun together. i really don’t have more to say, i just enjoy writing them a lot! i’ve been kind of framing them as the same side of two different coins so it was really interesting having them interact.

and of course hinata tries to give good advice but is oddly cryptic about it, meanwhile neji has No Idea what she’s going on about 🤣 i think hinata should be allowed to be a Weird Girl. give her some flavor.

-/-

thank you so much for asking and sorry it took forever and a day!! these were so much fun to answer :)

#ask game #winterberryholly #naruto #nejiten #reliance

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undercityrezident · 1 year

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My Commentary on Pokemon Scarlet

Way back in—wait, when was it… April, May? February even?—whenever it was we saw the first trailer for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I was gobsmacked because I absolutely did not expect to see a new Pokemon game so soon. I was taken so by surprise by it that I was almost confused. I was thinking to myself, “Man, it feels so soon after just getting done with Pokemon Legends: Arceus that I’m still coming down from it. And there’s already another one coming on the horizon. Is it too soon? Did they even have enough time to make this game?”

Yes, as a Pokemon fan, I was asking myself: am I getting too many Pokemon games too quickly?

It feels like there’s some measure of absurdity in that, but having read and written work about crunch time in the video game industry (not on this blog, but for school), I feel like the cost for Game Freak putting out another game would be too high. And I don’t mean monetarily. I’m sure they’re raking in the green, but I’m talking about other costs: the costs to the sanity of developers and the costs to customers on the quality of game they’re getting for modernly full-priced triple-A games. I could also cite the cost of Game Freak’s reputation but I don’t know if that’s worth mentioning in the same breath as the former two. Plus, I’m starting to worry the franchise and the Pokemon Company no longer have the esteemed reputation they once had for putting out great quality games.

Okay, let me try and turn the tracks on this train before it becomes a full-on rant on my annoyances with video game industry standards and my tendency to wax on at length about where the Pokemon franchise is going. I’m here to review Pokemon Scarlet. Yes, just Scarlet. I’m only paying for one of these games. I’m a student and don’t have money to burn on both versions. Given what I saw, especially toward the end of the game, maybe there are some differences in Violet that make for a different tone in the story, but I won’t be able to account for that in this review.

I should also list out where I am in the game so that folks know exactly where I’m coming from when I write this review so I can get flamed in the manner of: “Oh Rez! You need to do this, this, and this to get the full experience of the game!” I do think I’ve completed most of the actual substance in the game to make what I feel is a legitimate review. But, like my other reviews, this is largely something for me to just get my feelings about the game on some medium so I can properly look back at it later and either cringe or feel some sort of justification for my struggles, frustrations, or feelings of accomplishment. At any rate, listed below are what I’ve done so far for context so that you, my few-and-far-between readers, can see the context from which I’m coming at this assessment of Pokemon Scarlet. Suffice to say, from this point on, there’ll be major spoilers:

· I’ve completed the main three storylines.

· I’ve finished the Area Zero arc that comes after the three storylines.

· I’ve gotten about 320 or so out of 400 pokemon in the pokedex.

· I’m still working on the four ghosts Professor Raifort tasked me with finding.

· I still need to find another Sweet Herb Mystica for Professor Saguaro.

· I did my victory lap with all the gym leaders.

· I finished my first School Tournament.

· I’ve peeked into just about every nook and cranny in Paldea’s huge map.

Ok? We good on establishing where I am? Ok, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this review.

The World of Paldea

Pokemon, especially in more recent generations, has been notoriously slow to start their games and hook me in. Lengthy tutorials and exposition are the names of the game with Game Freak. I can’t entirely blame them, as they have to make introductions that help new fans integrate into the game while also cementing established or new features for veterans. That said, it takes quite a while for us to get to a point where we feel like we’re finally being unleashed on this promised open world.

Pokemon Scarlet has this problem too, unfortunately. Grant you, I’m an obsessive explorer who has to see everything available to me—side content and every little hiding spot on the map—before I push forward in the plot. Still, I think streamlining the introduction up through to when the treasure hunt starts would make the start of the game feel a lot less dull for me. My interest wasn’t truly seized until I finally found myself starting on the game’s three main quests.

That said, this world is expansive and, at least at a distance, pretty to look at. Paldea has some great vistas and I definitely wouldn’t mind settling down to live there if I had the chance. Compared to other open-world games that can feel quite empty, this one feels pretty lively from the differing environment types and the fact that pokemon… are… everywhere. You won’t go more than 20 meters before you see another lone pokemon, or even a swarm, that either draws your interest or force you to change course to avoid them.

On top of that, Paldea has a littering problem that certainly needs addressing. There’s a wealth of items both visible and less so scattered around the region. If you’re one to build up your stock of potions and other battle-item essentials, you’ll barely have to spend money at stores, as the world itself seems to provide it in abundance for the obsessive explorer such as myself. I usually only had to restock on pokeballs at stores, mainly due to my obscenely bad luck with pokemon catch rates.

And exploring has other perks too, such as how I was able to catch my adorable ghost pupper, Greavard, early due to a Tera Raid Battle in the first area. That was a nice find and a treat to start with.

Beyond the starting area, the game offers a diverse landscape. From grasslands to a scorching desert to a, chilling mountain, Paldea mixes up its environments. Admittedly, it seems mostly green and grassy at the start, but the diversity comes when it’s needed: toward the middle and the end of the game. Sorry, no fiery volcano level for you fire-type lovers, though the fire types themselves aren’t absent in this game, so don’t worry.

Of course, there are barriers to this exploration. Compared to some other open-world games, you can’t just go anywhere immediately, at least not without consequence to you and your feeble starting team. While you can choose how you explore, either east or west from the main city, or both if you want to be like me and inflate your playtime, the pokemon levels in the zones increase from area to area. I had hoped that levels would scale with you and the number of badges, titans, or squads you’d bested, but sadly, that level of dynamic world adaptation was not programmed into this game. I think it would’ve greatly enhanced the fluidity of game completion if you were able to truly go about and do this game in any order you wanted, but maybe there were some logistical issues that I wasn’t aware of that necessitated the existing system.

Barriers also exist in the form of what capabilities your ride pokemon, the legendary Koraidon (or Miraidon if you’re playing Violet) is capable of. While I don’t recall anything essential to game completion being put firmly off-limits (except for the final titan requiring surf) by these mechanics, it does open up new, more convenient, and more fun ways to explore the landscape. Once you’ve unlocked the ability to dash, high-jump, surf, glide, and climb, the world really opens up to you and you feel like an absolute badass as you explore even the roughest, most remote regions of Paldea… even though it’s your ride pokemon doing all the work.

That said, for all my praise, there are a few issues I find with this world.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss one of the big things that have been on everyone’s mind when it comes to this game: the graphics. I’ll try not to dwell on it too long, as countless people on the internet already have. But, as I said before, the game looks great… at a distance. Get up close though, and that’s a different story.

Like in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the textures leave something to be desired, and the framerates for characters, pokemon—or any moving object in the distance, such as a windmill—are absurdly choppy until you get close enough for the game to decide to start rendering them at an acceptable rate. While I’d thought Legends would be a tech test for this generation and thus would improve on its performance, I found the graphical quality and framerate issues to be even worse in this game. I would even caution those with any sort of epileptic condition to prepare themselves for flickering lights in places where shadows keep appearing and disappearing without apparent cause. I know I found it a bit of an eye strain at times.

Admittedly, I recognize a lot of these issues stem from the fact Scarlet and Violet are ambitiously large games and their zones aren’t rigidly segmented like in Legends, but we’ve seen other games from earlier in this console cycle perform much, much better—cough, Breath of the Wild, cough. Again, I chalk this up to the obscenely short development time on the game. There are clearly optimization issues and other ways this game could’ve been smoothed out if the proper time and care had been taken. But Game Freak seems quite obsessed with the idea of putting out a Pokemon game every year. And this isn’t the only part of the world that suffers as a result.

While there’s a diversity in landscapes in Paldea, there’s very little creativity in the naming of these regions. The towns and a few specific areas get names: Glaseado Mountain, Asado Desert, and Casseroya Lake just to name the ones I can recall off the top of my head. But the great majority of areas and regions don’t even have a name. Now, if this were an unexplored, unestablished region, that would make sense. But Paldea, as noted in the game’s own history class, is a region that’s been inhabited for thousands of years by a once-powerful empire and is now a modern country. You’d expect some great naming conventions for the areas in-game. Instead, all we get are descriptors along the lines of “South Province: Area One” or “North Province: Area Two.” While I understand the Great Crater of Paldea being named Area Zero for dramatic effect and the idea that it’s generally been a place humanity has not been able to colonize or explore until recently, I don’t think that naming theme did any favours outside of that forbidding place. I think so much character could’ve been added if they’d named these areas properly. And yes, I know we’re talking about a franchise that routinely names areas “Route 17” or “Route 22,” but this is a game that’s supposed to defy standard conventions of the franchise with its open-world concept. The naming of its areas should reflect that initiative as well. Again, this lack of polish in even the naming smells of the limited development time the game was put under.

That all said, I do think Paldea is an amazing place and I’m happy to have been able to explore every little cave and cliffside. Exploration of the massive landscape is even encouraged from an in-game perspective, with flight points gained from finding Paldea’s ten famous landmarks. From Cortondo’s Olive Fields to Glaseado’s Peak, the world is fun to explore, and I actively encourage you to do so, especially if your goal is to fill your bag with potions or to fill your PC with mons.

How We Play in Paldea

The gameplay in Pokemon Legends: Arceus gave us a new way of looking at how a Pokemon game could play—or even should play. It was tailored for a new paradigm and design philosophy that I hoped the franchise would take: give the players the choice in how they approach exploring the world and catch pokemon. You could chuck an endless stream of balls at pokemon after creeping around in the grass and luring them over with bait to ensure a better catch rate. Or you could dive into battle and capture them the conventional way. It was liberating to have the ability to choose.

In that regard, Pokemon Scarlet took a step backwards.

I will wholeheartedly admit, discovering couldn’t catch pokemon in the same way as I did in Legends put me off the game at the start, probably contributing to my dislike of the game’s introduction. Instead, I was forced to get into a battle, weaken the wild pokemon, and throw balls until I get it while my poor team members soak hits for every failed catch attempt—not something enjoyable as someone with shit luck when it comes to catch rates. Now, I won’t say that the system in Legends was perfect, but, thinking Legends was a tech test for this generation, I figured that the system would be improved upon. The fact it wasn’t implemented at all was disappointing, considering how they decided to iterate on the open-world concept that Legends brought to the table. I got over it as I played, but the wish for this more dynamic way of approaching how I filled out my pokedex was something that teased the back of my mind the whole time I played. At least quick balls are still in the game, thank Arceus.

One thing that I’m fine with being left in the misty past of Legends was the new battle system. It was intriguing and a nice departure from the main series’ methods, but I found it rather unpredictable, especially combined with the absurd power and tendency towards revenge KO’s that littered Legends. The traditional way of doing battles still seems more balanced to me, though I’m not opposed to Game Freak trying their hand at the other system again when they inevitably try to do another Legends-type game. Maybe they’ll refine it enough next time that I’ll like it over the current system. But, in the meantime, the main-line battle system works well enough, and I still enjoy it.

Imported, to some degree, from Legends, is the ride pokemon system. While you had several different pokemon that could help ferry you around Hisui’s landscapes, in Paldea, you have one legendary pokemon you get near the start of the game. As you complete tasks in the titan pokemon storyline, your legendary ride, Koraidon, gains the ability to dash, high jump, surf, glide, and climb. What’s more, it ties almost neatly into the story being told in the titan storyline, making it feel both rewarding and helping to cement your bond with your goofy lizard on whose back you’re on the majority of the game. I have and will continue to advocate for the riding pokemon model, as it’s far superior to the HM system from the days of yore and fits very well into world traversal in Paldea.

That said, crossing Paldea is not without its own set of pitfalls, and not due to the adverse weather conditions you’ll face—and believe me, with the majority of your battles, even gym battles, taking place outside, you’ll be dealing with plenty of that. I’m talking about, yet again, something that’s taken the internet by storm: the glitchy and scuffed way you interact with the world.

Now, I knew going into this game that it wasn’t polished, so I set my expectations low. I also knew that the internet has a way of blowing things way, way out of proportion. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t encounter anything game-breaking, nor any goofy character model glitches, and I had only full-on game crash (though plenty of slowdowns that had me spamming the save feature for fear that I was on the cusp of one). I didn’t even fall through the world once! But I did freak out when I saw a whole squad of Golduck come out of a cliff wall to try and assault me. And there were plenty of times I saw pokemon simply standing partly inside a wall, reminding me of poor Han Solo in his slab of carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back.

I wasn’t always completely fortunate in avoiding glitches and issues though. As battles tend to reposition your character for space, my character was placed on a slope that ended up having me slide ingloriously into the sea after the battle was done, and there were plenty of times I couldn’t even see my pokemon battle since it spawned into a wall as a part of the battle arrangement. And I can’t forget the time I skidded around Levincia City on Koraidon stuck in his downward falling animation until the game decided to black out and reset me. I’ll be honest, all these instances made me laugh out of the sheer absurdity of it. None of these glitches caused me too much delay or caused a loss of progress, but these are all things that could’ve been handled so much better and allowed me to immerse myself in the game that much more deeply if the game had been allowed to bake for another six months to a year.

Another thing that could’ve benefitted from that time is something I find a lot more damning and frustrating though: the user experience. What do I mean by this? Well, to start, menus were laboriously slow to load sprites of pokemon, particularly in the box menu. Considering how often I went into this menu, I feel like I could’ve shaved several hours off my play time for time spent loading the pokemon in the boxes. As well, I found myself rarely changing my look and clothing because my character model took twice, or even thrice as long to load as my pokemon in their boxes. I find myself confused by why menus are so slow, considering that they have nothing to do with the world, which I imagine is what takes up most of the processing power. Again, this might be an optimization issue that isn’t as easy to resolve without more time. Worse yet, sometimes menu elements would overlap in annoying ways, such as experience screens popping up over status bars in double battles, or prompts overlapping pokedex text when I’d caught a new mon. And then, on top of this, about 10% of the time I picked up a new item and it popped up a text box to explain what it was, it would disappear before I pressed anything else, leaving me no chance to read it and have to play a game of “What’s this new item that’s popped up in my inventory!” Not fun when your back is stuffed full of goodies already.

But another thing I should mention that frustrated me was how the world didn’t pause when you did. I found it interesting, and perhaps even charming at first, to bring up my menu to muck around with my team while wild pokemon wandered up to me and made their cute little noises as they looked at me with all their curiosity and wonder. But later in the game, I found it an absolute pain, since most pokemon were aggressive, and would actively camp your spot while you were paused, so that the moment you vacated your menu, you would be thrust into a battle you didn’t want. Heck, even during battles the world continued to move around you, which I have to admit, was kind of cool. I loved the idea of drawing a crowd of pokemon to witness our battles in the wilderness. But even that got tiresome as the fifth Tauros charged me immediately after I finished with its companion’s battle, leaving me in a chain of endless battles that, more likely than not, left my team a wreck as I tried and repeatedly failed to run away from them. In a sense, it almost resembled griefing from MMOs I used to play, and that didn’t leave a great taste in my mouth.

And you know how that problem was solved in Legends?

You could—quite literally—move your character in battle and run away physically. How amazing would that have been? This was another feature inexplicably absent from Pokemon Scarlet that I loved. Moving your character in battles, even to the degree you could have yourself being knocked over by standing in the way of moves, was goofy and fun: feelings I have and want to continue and associate with the Pokemon franchise. It would’ve likely solved most or all of the problems I had with griefing pokemon and the weird battle position issues.

But, all of this aside, the classic core gameplay of pokemon is still present and still works very well. But that’s the thing: it’s just the classic stuff. In terms of gameplay, we had something great on our hands in Legends, even if it was an unpolished gem. I had so desperately hoped it would be refined and made to gleam in this game. But alas, that is not what we received. I’m hoping, as time and the series goes on, that we can revisit these new ideas and implement them into the main games to help the series evolve beyond the standard that’s been repeated for nine generations now.

The Distinct Stories of Paldea

Much as the introduction of the game is mired by a slow start in terms of gameplay (i.e. the delay of the true appearance of the game’s open-world nature), I found the opening of the game’s story to be equally underwhelming. I won’t say that I ever expect much in terms of story from the Pokemon games. The series has never been too well known for that sort of thing, barring a few exceptions like Gen 5’s attempts to cast a shadow over the concept of pokemon battling and ownership with N and Team Plasma. That said, even from the first trailer explaining the concept of the school academy angle the story was taking, I was not a fan of the idea. Having finished the game, I’m still not fond of the school angle.

While it’s certainly possible that a school setting can make for exciting narrative works, it fell flat for me here, and frankly, I don’t think it’s a great fit for pokemon games in general. It worked to a minor degree in Pokemon Sun and Moon’s anime, but I still would’ve liked Ash to have just travelled around Alola more as opposed to resetting to the school all the time. But this isn’t about what Ash did in the anime. This is about what school means for these games. And I think it really was wholly unnecessary since we ended up leaving school for an independent study/journey anyway.

To me, the initial school arc of the story was fodder, and all it did was set the stage for us to travel around the region on our treasure hunt and introduce us to the characters. Setting the stage for our adventure and introducing characters are admirable goals, but we didn’t need all the lengthy pageantry that came with our enrolment in school to meet these characters. Hell, we met Nemona, our rival and precious battling-obsessed cinnamon roll, at her house minutes after we set foot out of our own house and we didn’t need much more than that to realize what her character was about. I would’ve been just as fine with meeting Arven through a sandwich shop that could’ve doubled as a good way to tutorial us through the picnic system and learn about the titan/herb mystica quest from there. As for Penny, it’s harder to integrate her storyline without the school setting. Maybe the school could be a resource used on the side rather than being forced through it and the Starfall Street quest line could’ve been what introduced us to the school as an option for additional tips and interactions. I do love that the school seems to function on post-secondary rules in terms of when and how you enroll and how you take classes. As such, emphasizing that quality by making interacting with the school an option rather than something forced and contrived would’ve felt a lot better and more interesting to me.

That said, I do love all the teachers at the academy. They’re all rich with personality and zest, and it was perhaps the sole redeeming quality of the whole school concept. Feel free to let me know which professor you liked the best, and why it was Professor Raifort.

But, once you’re past that nonsense and finally get the chance to travel Paldea, the school angle tends to fall a bit into the background. Yes, you’re still on your treasure hunt, but the school angle is played down on two of the three questlines. The school setting constricted us, but thankfully, the freedom of travelling for our independent study feels a lot more liberating. I just wish we’d gotten to it a bit faster.

But, as I mentioned, and as most of you have no doubt heard from trailers and the like, the game is split into three quests. Now, in the way I played the game, I chose to complete the challenges levied by each questline in batches based on their area and level range. I’m not sure if you could zip through a single quest line without rapidly falling behind on your required levels, but it seemed to me that completing these quests a little at a time and swapping to another seemed to be the best way of going about the game while levelling at a steady pace. Swapping also helped to pace out each story, since there wasn’t a whole lot to each one: there are eight gyms, five titans/herbs, and five gangs affiliated with Team Star. Not quite enough to make each one feel like a deep, rich narrative if you chose to hyperfixate on one to the exclusion of all others.

But that’s fine! I feel like the intended method was to space out these encounters so that you could take in Paldea one province at a time and dip into these storylines little by little. I think it’s very much to the benefit of the game’s story to have separated these ideas into three distinct narratives because it gives some much-needed focus on certain story elements. The previous iterations of the Pokemon series lost out on this opportunity due to these elements being subjected to a homogenized blend of badge collecting versus intermittent interference by the games’ villainous teams. It made each of these smaller stories a little richer for it.

“Victory Road,” the game’s quest for collecting badges, pits you versus the gyms as you have in most previous Pokemon games. It’s simple, tried and tested, and true to form. And you get to see the lovable Nemona time and time again. There were times I wondered if she was stalking me, and there’s even a one-off comment she makes that plays on that worry, which did make it feel pretty funny in the moment. But that doesn’t stop Nemona from being endearing and adorable and one of my favourite rivals for her sheer exuberance and energy. You also get to talk with her a lot more than most of your rivals historically, so that in itself helps make her a more relatable and enjoyable character to see grow with you. Or rather, she tends to watch you grow and keeps testing you along the way, given she’s already at the top of her game. It’s an interesting angle to take on a rival, and an actively supportive one compared to most friendly rivals in previous games, and one I enjoyed very much. Also helps she’s cute as heck.

As to the gym leaders themselves, I’m happy to say that Game Freak has continued with the tradition of making interesting personalities and main/side-gigs central to their characters. There are some big hits and small misses in my opinion though. Iono is a standout for me, with her gym challenge showing off her personality and her very transparent need to get more views and subs as a streamer. In her case, I’m not sure if she was written like that to be a reflection of what the developers think of people in that profession or as a parody, but she’s easily one of the most memorable gym leaders.

Though… Grusha… I love that man. He’s so cool… But no really, the fact his background has him lecturing you about being reckless as a trainer as a way to emphasize the lesson he learned after an injury led to the end of his snowboarding career—and subsequently being so cold about it… haha—really speaks to great characterization in my books. It’s especially apparent when you beat him a second time that it was a hard lesson for him to learn and something hard for him to overcome.

And if we’re talking about personality in a gym leader, we definitely need to mention Ryme, the MC of RIP! She’s fantastic but suffers from what Piers did in Sword and Shield, that is to say… she, and a lot of people in this game, really need some voice acting. Especially when it comes to these musical gym leaders and characters, there’s so much awkwardness in seeing character swing and lip-sync to a beat but with no actual sound or song to back it up.

On the other end of the gym leader theming spectrum, I found Tulip to be an odd choice for the psychic type. The link between her personality, motivations, and the psychic type didn’t stand out for me as much as that with other gym leaders. Also, I think Tulip might’ve been abusing her friendship with Professor Dendra to get her to run the psychic gym challenge, but I might’ve been reading into it a bit much.

Also, on a minor note, I felt some of the gym challenges lacked the depth they had in Sword and Shield. I know that isn’t saying much, but a few of them felt… almost tacked on compared to others. Again, I bet this was a problem due to the limited development time.

Of course, at the end of this storyline, we had to take on the Elite Four and the Top Champion: Chairwoman Geeta. This was an interesting challenge in itself because it started with an interview where you had to pick a gym leader you had the hardest time with. For me, it had been Larry, the normal-type gym leader. And guess who was the third member of the Elite Four: LARRY! I thought, for certain, this meant that your choice in those questions actively influenced whom you’d meet in the Elite Four as your third challenger. Suffice to say, I was crushed when I found out it was a mere coincidence. I thought it was an absolute stroke of genius that these questions might influence how your elite four fight went since it was so odd to have an interview before the battles. The idea of disguising that one choice with all these other questions seemed so clever to me, especially for a Pokemon game. But nope… it was just Larry all this time. Which is fine, I love the guy, but how brilliant would it be if they brought in the gym leader you had the hardest time with? Ah, well, for a little while, I was awed at the idea of Game Freak doing that.

As an aside, I do want to compliment Pokemon Scarlet on the idea of making champions a level of trainer, rather than a distinct, singular trainer in this region. I think it makes a lot more sense and I hope it’s an idea they carry forward into future games.

But this game doesn’t just have the gym challenge; next, we have “The Path of Legends” questline featuring Arven, a young man who I was decidedly not a fan of to start until we learned his secret. That secret: he’s a softie for his dog for whom he’s going on a whole mythical quest to save. There’s a lesson here in narrative: if you ever want to make a character more sympathetic and relatable, have them pet a dog. No, but seriously, the moment we learned about Mabosstiff and Arven’s dedication to that big, good doggo was perhaps one of the most tender and heartfelt moments in the game. And then we got more of that as our dark-type dog friend got more and more of its vitality back with each new herb mystica we found. On top of that, each time we found one, it felt well-earned because each of the titans’ fights felt pretty epic, or at least fun and well-earned. It definitely felt reminiscent, perhaps even a bit old-hat, as it felt like we were fighting a mix of an alpha pokemon and a totem pokemon. But the encounters added more variety to the world and the story itself. And learning about Mabosstiff merited enough motivation on my end to look past the gimmick central to this storyline.

Finally, we come to “Starfall Street,” the third storyline featuring Penny, our adorable friend with their eevee backpack. Now, never let it be said that pokemon did anything with any sort of subtlety. This storyline’s twist is easy to see from a mile away. After encountering Penny when she’s accosted by Team Star thugs trying to be a bit pushy about getting her to join, we get a mysterious call from someone named Cassiopeia who puts us on a quest to dismantle the various squads making up Team Star: five in all. We take on the extremely entertaining and goofy personalities of the leaders of these gangs (Mela, Giacomo, Atticus, Ortega, and Eri) to have them surrender their positions as leaders and essentially dissolve the squads one by one. As we go on, we learn an intriguing and, at times, touching story about a group of students who were victims of bullying who come together to fight their oppressors. As someone who was bullied, I absolutely loved this idea and could only dream of something like this happening. It turns out they succeeded, but at a cost that had their big boss—no not the one from Metal Gear—disappear on them and leave the squads to grow out of control and become something of a menace. We learn more and more about these five leaders’ precious friendships and, in the end, I almost felt guilty for having to continue along our path and end Team Star.

Now, remember that plot twist I mentioned earlier? As it turns out, Cassiopeia was their big boss. And in another big, though easily foreseen twist, Cassiopeia was revealed to be Penny herself. As a shy, computer-savvy type, we got to see her little by little over the course of the story as someone who gave you supplies during your quest to end Team Star. Given this character development, it was easy to see that she would’ve been Cassiopeia, but it didn’t make the story any less impactful for me. Her bond with her allies made the final battle with her all the more enjoyable and climactic. Also, an all-eeveelution team? Ballsy, but I like it! Goes nice with your backpack, Penny!

I have to say though, one of the standout moments of that questline was the incredibly transparent attempts of Director Clavell, the school’s headmaster, to disguise himself as an outrageously pompadoured student. The fact the game lets you poke at the disguise through dialogue options was a great touch.

Now, despite having these individual questlines, if you want to reach the end of this game and Area Zero, you need to complete all three. I like this because all these stories diverged near the start of the game, and I love the idea of them converging again to help finish it off. Moreover, the new friend group formed by your character, Nemona, Arven, and Penny, has some quirky clashes in personality and dialogue that makes me want to see all four of them go on more adventures together. It makes me want to go out and find fic for all four of them just being goofy on their off-time.

However, despite this high note of companionship, the story’s ending left me feeling a bit off. The revelation of Sada’s work in the crater bringing back pokemon from the distant past (the incarnations of those pokemon very are cool and I love them) using a time machine felt a bit jarring after everything leading up to it. It felt like a bit of tone and genre whiplash to me, especially when the game revealed that Sada we’d been interacting with was an artificial intelligence of all things, even going as far as to say in dialogue that we don’t possess that technology yet, but the resources in the crater made it possible for all these things to happen.

Again, I know not to expect too much from a Pokemon narrative… but really? This felt so… forced and contrived. I don’t know… like… someone was forced to write this under really tight time constraints? Oh right, just so many other things in this game. I should’ve expected even Pokemon’s writing would suffer under those conditions. Now, for those who played Violet, and got to see futuristic pokemon and Professor TRON MAN, I imagine that this seems more on theme for a story involving the future and advanced technology (assuming it had the same story beats, I have no idea if it did or not). But for Sada and the theme of prehistoric pokemon… this seemed way off base for me. At the very least, the clash between your Koraidon and the opposing Koraidon that ousted it from the crater had a heartwarming ending, especially with it getting strength from your companions’ encouragement. But overall, the final moments of the main story felt unfulfilling to me after so much hard work put in to recover from the terrible start the game had in its story.

Overall, the story had many ups and downs. Still, for the most part, especially concerning the titan/herb questline and Team Star, there was more to sink my teeth into than in a lot of previous Pokemon games. I’m glad I was able to endure the start of it to get those parts, but it’s just a bit sad that the ending flopped for me. But it’s not just the story we’re here for when we play these games, is it? It’s the pokemon!

The Pokemon of Paldea

So having 400 pokemon in this game’s pokedex seems like a pretty good haul to me, honestly. I haven’t been privy to any debates, so I don’t know if there’s a fuss being made online about how not all the mons are in it again like they did for Sword and Shield. Whatever the case I’m pretty happy with the lineup we got… except for no Heliolisk and Helioptile. I got lucky with them in Gen 8, so I guess I’ll be thankful for that and their presence in New Snap.

That said, I love a lot of the new variants and mons that we got in general. I won’t dive too deep into all of them because this review is already getting long enough as it is, but I’ll say that when I played, I went for all new pokemon that were added in this game for a variety in my final teams.

They were:

· Skeledirge

· Pawmot

· Arboliva

· Squawkabilly

· Garganacl

· Mabosstiff

· Rabsca

· Tinkaton

· Veluza

· Annihilape

· Clodsire

· Cetitan

· Baxcalibur

Not only did I have fun using all of these, but I thought most of their aesthetics and designs were top-notch. But I used plenty of others throughout my journey and loved all of them too. I won’t mention them all here, but shout-outs to my new favourite pun pokenames: Capsakid and Scovillain. My favourite new designs and concepts (aside from the above) were found in Naclstack, Lokix, and Brambleghast. Overall, I loved all the new additions and variants. Except for the new Dudunsparse… I mean, I’ve seen so many fan-evolutions of it that looked so much better and more creative than making it bigger and adding more sections to its body.

The prehistoric variants were killer though, especially Great Tusk, Scream Tail, and Sandy Shocks (I always had wondered what the magneton line would look like before modern times, if they even existed). Also, have you ever heard of a more metal name than Roaring Moon? Probably not. And I’ll admit, I still think Koraidon and Miraidon look goofy to me, but given that I’ve formed a bond with Koraidon over the game, I’ve been able to overlook it.

The Music of Paldea

I always have to talk about music in new Pokemon games. It’s practically a genre unto itself for me and one of my favourites to boot. I do like how they tackled overworld music in this game. They made a theme for each of the four provinces and then had different remixes and reorchestrations of it in different regions of each province, including towns and named areas like the Asado Desert. Some might think this could be lazy or uncreative, but I think it was well-executed, such that I enjoyed most iterations of each province’s tune. Heck, even the wild pokemon’s theme in that area was adapted from those themes too, which made musical transitions so smooth. I loved it!

Except for the south province’s tune. I got tired of that one very quickly. And I could see how people could easily get tired of any of the ones I liked if they spent too much time there or had negative experiences associated with the zone.

That said, you cannot hate the West Province’s theme. It’s objectively amazing in all its forms and you cannot convince me otherwise.

Of all the gym themes from previous generations, this one took me the longest to warm up to. But I did, and I’m glad they kept the final crowd-chanting version when the gym leader’s down to one pokemon as they did in Sword and Shield. However, while there generally is a crowd around your gym battles, I feel like the crowd chanting suited the big stadium settings of Galar more than it did here, so it didn’t feel like it belonged as much. That said, it didn’t detract from the experience.

Meanwhile, the Tera Raid theme was a banger (and one of the ones that Toby Fox contributed, from what I understand), as were most of the battle themes throughout the game.

Overall, the array of music in this game was very solid and well-composed. While many musical pieces were derived from each other, they helped link the world together and made for a fantastic experience for the ear that synced up to what you saw and did.

My Final Thoughts on Paldea

So, we’ve been through it all. The gyms. The titans. The squads. The sandwiches. Admittedly, I didn’t do much picnicking, but that’s something I might do more of later, but the few times I did it were charming.

Actually, that’s what this game has in abundance: charm. And I don’t mean the fairy-type move.

This game has a lot of faults, I won’t even try to deny that, nor should I. The fact that Nintendo has been offering refunds for this game is a damning spotlight on the poor condition of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet on its release. I didn’t go into this game with much hype at all because, funnily, we have too many Pokemon games. Almost one a year it seems like. It’s way too much. There’s something to be said about building up anticipation. Hell, I don’t even remember seeing this game very heavily promoted, which might speak to how crunched they were to get this done. I imagine they barely had time to do anything to advertise it, let alone finish it properly.

But below all that scuffed, unfinished woodwork that makes up this game, seemingly teetering on the edge of collapse as you see it creaking and bending sometimes, there’s a lot of heart put into it. Every time I play a Pokemon game, I can see that the developers behind it love what they’re doing it shows in the soul of the game. From the goofy pics you take after every major game accomplishment—Kofu’s stands out to me in particular in my mind—to some of the more ridiculous dialogue that either had me facepalming or laughing hysterically, there’s a charm in this game that I can’t ignore.

That’s what keeps me coming back. That’s what makes me love these games and put up with the other nonsense I’ve ranted about throughout this review. It speaks to that child in me and makes me smile as I sit on a couch in these cold winter months looking for entertainment.

Is this the best example of a top-tier Pokemon game? No. Is this the best example of what a Pokemon game could be? No. Pokemon Legends: Arceus still holds that prize for me. But it’s part of what I hope are just growing pains for this franchise as it struggles to transform into something new and incredible. I wonder how much more fun I would’ve had if I could’ve played this game like I’d played Legends.

But I still did have fun while playing this game. I did my fair share of shouting at the game for bullshit too, and some eye-roll moments at some technical nonsense, but that’s nothing new for this franchise. Hell, it’s nothing new for me with video games as a whole. But in the end, I did have fun.

What I want is to have more fun. I want to see this franchise take what it’s learned from SV and Legends and make a truly stellar game out of it next time.

And. I. Want. Them. To. Take. Their. Time. Doing. It.

That’s how we’ll get the incredible, technologically impressive, open-world Pokemon game that so many people have been pining for. And I’m willing to wait for it.

#Rez Rambles #Pokemon #Scarlet and Violet #SV #Pokemon: Scarlet and Violet #SV Spoilers #Long post #Go figure I talked about this one even more than I did about Legends #It is a bigger game I suppose #Again I'm not writing this to force my opinion on anyone #Despite a few gags to the contrary in there #This is to get my thoughts on the game out there on something #Despite doing 7800 words in one day though #It was actually quite fun to write #For those with the patience to read this #I salute you and appreciate you

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