#the later ones were pretty awful but the overall concept ended up cool

[kedreeva]

(x)

#I think about it literally every time #final destination 2 #twitter #also like #i know y'all know of it #but you weren't witness to its arrival quite the same #it scarred so many people lol #knowing of it and watching it for the first time with no idea what would happen #are two hugely different things #also did you know they just kept making these movies?? #there's like 4 or 5 of them #and they go full circle if you watch them all #the later ones were pretty awful but the overall concept ended up cool

[pjsk-writin]

HIYA it’s me, back again <3

Can I req Akito, Minori, and Mafuyu (preferably platonic for mafufu but I don’t mind!!) w a reader that has a creative sekai?

the sekai is kinda like a tropical island except that everything is made of art materials and such <3 so like paintbrush palm trees, watercolor rivers, and all other art materials tailoring to every kind of artist

I haven’t planned out all the vocaloids yet BUT they have some sort of art they tailor in too!!! (EX: luka’s an abstract artist and meiko’s a glass artist) and the miku looks kinda like niigos, but her hair fades into rainbow and she dresses in overalls w a bunch of hair accessories

HOPEFULLY THAT GIVES YA ENOUGH INFO.... TYSM!!! <333 I love your writing SM

OMG SURE!! and hehe ty <33 hope you like this!! <3

♡ CREATIVE SEKAI - Akito Shinonome, Minori Hanasato and Mafuyu Asahina x Reader

Akito:

Akito had just gotten used to the idea of the Street Sekai, so when you tell him about your Sekai, he's just like. "I'm sorry, what-"

You take him there, and the only thing that he can do is look around in awe

Your Sekai was very different compared to his; While he was used to the smell of spray paint from the alleys, he had never been surrounded by paint like this-

The only thing that he can manage to say is "Wow." He knew that you were creative, but to have your whole Sekai based off of it?...It was pretty amazing

The Vocaloids were different to the ones he knew, and he could barely hold back his amazement as he met them

Overall, he thinks it's one of the coolest places ever! He asks if he can bring VBS sometime, because the creative air could certainly help them out

Minori:

Minori has always been in awe of the concept of Sekais, so when you tell her about yours, she'll look at you with wide eyes. "Really?? Can I go sometime?"

You end up taking her there a couple of days later, and she immediately stares around with sparkling eyes

Your Sekai was also very different compared to hers; While hers was full of never-ending stages, yours felt very calm. A lovely little paradise of art!

"Babe, your Sekai is so cool!!" She'll run this way and that, watching the watercolor rivers run before turning to you, "I'm kind of ashamed to show you mine now-"

The Vocaloids were also very cool, and she asked them a ton of questions on their respective crafts!

Overall, she's absolutely in awe of your Sekai! She asks if she can bring MMJ! too, hoping that they could all make some kind of merch or posters there!

Mafuyu:

Mafuyu's safe place was and always will be her Sekai. So, when you inform her of yours, she'll tilt your head at you. "Is it your safe place as well?"

You decide to take her there, and she'll calmly look around, taking everything in

Your Sekai was very different to hers; Hers was empty and blank, an empty canvas, while yours seemed to be full of nothing but color

"...Interesting." She pauses in front of a watercolor river, dipping her fingertips in it before staring. "Your Sekai is...Certainly colorful." 

The Vocaloids were a big contrast from the ones she knew, and she asked them about their crafts. Maybe she could start a new hobby...

Overall, she is definitely impressed by your Sekai. For being one made by your own feelings just like hers, yours was certainly full of life. She wondered if hers would be like that one day

#pjsk x reader #project sekai x reader #akito shinonome x reader #shinonome akito x reader #minori hanasato x reader #hanasato minori x reader #mafuyu asahina x reader #asahina mafuyu x reader #IGNORE ME POSTING THIS EARLY

[hopelessrromantix]

Hey! I adore your work :) I has a request if that's okay:

How would Akutagawa, Dazai, Chuuya, and Atsushi react to their gf telling them (right before they start doing the devil's tango) that it's her first time? I imagine sweet little Atsu being so flustered-

You seem so cool and sweet <3

Aw, thank you so much!! I got a bit carried away with Dazai and Chuuya, but oh well.

(not very gender specific)

𝓐𝓴𝓾𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓪𝔀𝓪

Akutagawa doesn’t really get virginity

I mean, it’s kind of a construct, right? It doesn’t change anything, so it’s up to the person to decide how important it is to them

And he really doesn’t care

He’ll definitely be less intense than he would otherwise, since it would be your first time

If it’s something extremely emotional for you, he’ll be understanding

He still wants you to enjoy it after all, and he needs a lot of time for physical contact

It’s important to him too

He’ll ask what you thought afterward, mostly to make sure he didn’t hurt you

Physical touch and intimacy is still foreign to him, so he’s worried he’s doing it wrong

Once you reassure him though, he’ll be fine

Overall… he doesn’t care much

𝓓𝓪𝔃𝓪𝓲

Dazai couldn’t be happier

He’s your first? He couldn’t be more thrilled

Will brag about it nonstop

 He will definitely tell you how good he is in bed

Will also joke about how he can’t believe someone as good looking as you hadn’t had sex before

If it’s emotional for you, he’ll treat it accordingly

Usually, he’s got a kink or two, but he doesn’t mind taking it slow for a night

He doesn’t care too much about virginity, but he will absolutely brag

If you don’t care either, he’ll still avoid the kinks for your first time

Can’t start off too heavy, right?

Will want to talk about kinks at some point

He’s not big on trying stuff ‘in the moment’, so he’ll probably want to sit down and talk about whats what

On a slightly more emotional note, he’s a bit confused why you’d want him to be your first

He’s already under the impression that he doesn’t deserve you, and this is only adding to that

He’ll ask you about it like a week later

Immediately after he’ll joke about how good you were

Will also start ranting about how no one could be as good as you

He’s not joking either

𝓒𝓱𝓾𝓾𝔂𝓪

Does not know how he’s supposed to react

Should he be happy? Nervous? Stop everything?

He kinda just stares blankly for a minute and it makes you a bit nervous

He’ll have to explain that he doesn’t that it’s a bad thing, just that he isn’t really sure what to do

Says he’ll take it slow, but will probably end up getting carried away

He’ll catch himself pretty quickly and apologize though

Is honestly a bit surprised

He didn’t think he was ‘first’ material, not that he’ll tell anyone that

He’s happy you trust him, but definitely seems like he’s walking on eggshells

He just doesn’t want to do something wrong and make you change your mind

A bit of reassuring and he’ll keep going though

Hearing any noises you make is helpful, it makes him feel like he’s doing something right

After he’ll make sure he didn’t hurt you

He’s got some kinks too, but he doesn’t want to start off like that

Once you tell him you’re fine, he’ll probably fall asleep with you held as close as you can get

𝓐𝓽𝓼𝓾𝓼𝓱𝓲

Dear god, if you thought Atsushi was flustered normally, this is a whole other story

Will put everything on hold

Honestly, you’re going to have to convince him that you won’t regret it

He’s very aware that ‘virginity’ is a weird concept, but to some people it can mean a lot

Needs pretty constant reassurance that yes, you do in fact want to do this

Honestly, if you weren’t his first, he’s very inexperienced

He wasn’t really concerned with relationships at the orphanage

But he’s absolutely certain about his relationship with you

Afterward he will question over and over if you liked it

When you tell him about things to try “next time”, he’ll faint

Sex is really emotional for him, so he’s just happy that you trust him this much

Please reassure this man, he just wants to make sure you remember this fondly

(you will)

#letters to bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #x reader #bsd #dazai x reader #atsushi x reader #atsushi nakajima #dazai osamu #chuuya x reader #chuuya nakahara #akutagawa x reader #akutagawa ryuunosuke #hopelessromantic

[vicantii]

Greetings! From A Much Better Time!

I can’t believe after 4 years I would still be doing this. I originally started doing these “updates” from pure boredom and now they seem so important for me to stop. It seems I’ve been doing one every two years so I will try my best to keep up!

A lot has happened. A LOT. Let’s see, in 2021 I moved on from that super annoying mechanic job at T.G. Lee to a more sus but intriguing upcoming company named Ocado, an engineering firm working with Kroger to do delivery-only service in Florida as a maintenance engineer. It was pretty damn promising too, with a shiny new building and brand new equipment and a really cool robot material handling concept. The only issue was the terrible management and organization there that quite literally deteriorated everyone’s social life and planning. The hours were terrible, the night<-->day shift rotations were annoying, and the constant bugs and hassles from upper management made that job go from a seemingly cutting edge concept to another hellhole, so of course I had to get out of there. I was able to land a gig at Universal Orlando where I became a technician for Cat In The Hat. It was an overall weird experience there, with a diverse group of co-workers and really opened my eyes on the behind-the-scenes of theme parks. I thought I could see myself staying there for long, but the constant harassment, bullying, mudslinging, favoritism, and degradation I was observing and going through made me need to get out. After a LOT of rejected applications, I finally was able to land a REAL engineering job! I am now a Show Controls Support Engineer for Universal Creative for their new park! I can finally be proud of my job title and my place of occupation! It’s been a while since I could actually say that!

I still love Kotorin! Three years later and we’re still together and it’s only getting better! I remember being so scared for her when she had to start her mandatory NS and I thought she wouldn’t make it out alive, but a year later and the hard part is over! Now she just needs to deal with the terrible politics, organization, and pay from them and next year she’ll be free from them and can finally come to America to live with me! I am so excited for that and really hope everything goes well for us! We’ve had our falling outs over the past couple years for sure (mostly from my end because of my terrible tendencies to overthink and my terrible neediness) but we’ve been able to rebound from those. I hope my next update to this page includes a lovely excerpt on our love life and hopefully hopefully our co-habitation!

Speaking of co-habitation, I bought a house! Who knew that I would be able to actually purchase a 3/2 house in such a terrible housing market! No more dealing with awful roommates that are ungrateful, dirty, irresponsible, and outright questionable. I’ve dealt with that ever since I became independent in 2012 and I’m so glad that I’m able to finally live independent and not have to rely on anyone else bringing me down. The only other person I want living with me is my lovely girlfriend and no one else. A lot of my monthly income is going towards the house and my newly owned car, but at the end of the day, I’ll pay whatever I need to pay for the peace of mind of living independent and away from unruly people!

Lastly, in terms of my mental health, I know I’ve posted before about my dark states and my drastic moods over the years. Luckily, that has subdued a good amount after I was able to escape the need for roommates and live by myself with my two lovely cats. I haven’t experienced any serious suicidal thoughts in my last two jobs and my daily moping is able to be diminished by going home, cooking up a nice meal, talking to my girlfriend, and being able to sleep soundly without people waking me up. I was also clinically diagnosed with depression in 2022, and was even offered a spiritual counselor for treatment, but I know that’s not something that would help me. I am able to keep my depression down to a minimum with the proper amount of minimal interaction with people, being able to take care of my new house, and having someone I love and care for and want to raise up from a conservative household to being free, just like me! 

I pray that my new engineering job doesn’t induce any stress in me and that I am able to update this page again with even better news about my job, my house, my mental health, and my girlfriend. Until then, I am still here! I am Vicanti, a 6 year strong survivor of an attempted suicide, now living the best life up to this point. I’m happy to say that I enjoy my life right now and hope for a more fruitful life! 

Take Care, future and past Roneals!

#Derp Derping #personal

[overfedvenison]

There’s this Traditional Architecture movement I see sometimes. It’s interesting to see it gaining traction. Personally, I’m pretty skeptical of them... But kind of in an optimistic way. I see potential here in their philosophy, even if I think it has some deep flaws I can’t quite articulate.... These guys also tend to annoyingly infest architecture resources, so by being an artist I see them a lot. And they’re kind of weirdly varied, from genuine movements to make streets more walkable to history people to weird politics people, and a lot that just seem to really hate modernism. But at it’s core, it’s got a few concepts. So I guess I’m trying to parse the core of what they’re saying, you know? To summarize the rather broad movement, I see a lot of the following from these Traditional Architecture people: - “Traditional architecture evolved to it’s environment and this is important to the quality of daily life.” ...There is an idea here that much of our modern architecture is over-reliant on technology and doesn’t consider enough the practical purposes of these traditional styles; such as tall ceilings in Southern architecture giving a cooling effect or the trees around the house dramatically reducing heat. Architecture, they say, should suit the local environment and tie into it in ways that mitigate environmental factors; this also makes it cheaper to maintain Additionally, they say that a majority of people find modern architecture styles disheartening; I don’t know how true this is, but it does seem like traditional stylings are more populist.   - “Our reliance on modern architecture and city design is unsustainable and we need to build for long-term sustainability” The idea is that modern architecture tends to be largely disposable, opposed to the more permanent buildings emphasized in traditional styles. There are roman ruins still standing, and some still functional, thousands of years later. But modern buildings are not really intended to last in perpetuity; this is both highly wasteful and also impersonal as many traditional styles are built to make maintenance easier There is a notable idea here about long-term sustainable living, I find this interesting because this is largely more of a right-leaning movement; they seem to use a traditional lifestyle as the basis for a sustainable lifestyle. It’s not like they think that alone is enough, but it’s sort of a reactionary philosophy in the respect that it thinks a proper respect and adherence to what has worked in the past is a good path to the future - “Architecture should be beautiful and something that inspires the people” So the short of it is that they want buildings that look nice, opposed to depersonalizing people. They say that modern architecture tends to devolve into a really depressing look once reality gets to it; I find it notable that even proponents of brutalism tend to call it a kind of ‘architecture of doom.’  The argument here is that architecture should, mostly, serve the people and not the architect. You want to build a -space- and not a -building- if that makes sense, and you want those spaces to inspire people. This isn’t without merit; you know the old idea that areas with broken windows are more likely to be vandalized? This is the opposite; if an area is beautiful, people will be more inclined to keep it nice. This also helps build a community, etc Now... I don’t really think this is exclusive to traditional architecture. A lot of people note that non-traditional architecture is just as capable of inspiring awe, and those people have a point. I think a lot of this sorta ties in to a respect for the past and tradition - “We should restructure society to be more ‘human-scaled’ as in the manner traditional towns evolved, instead of dividing things into clusters of residence and large mall centers accessible primarily by car. There should also be more communal areas in cities.” Right, I want to say right off the bat that this is one of the more utopian and radical ideals, here. But it’s rather core to the whole point, I think... So it’s like, a strong emphasis of the traditional architecture movement is to be ‘human-scaled’ opposed to built around cars. So they want like, fewer roads and wider walkways to encourage walking instead of driving; and, to this end there is more of an emphasis on human-scaled habitation - They do not want this city planning design where there is this area for commerce largely detached from a residential area ass connected by roads. Instead, they kind of want these clusters of communities centered around public spaces all pretty walkable; this is based on how old cities were before everyone had cars. And, they seem to really like trains connecting these communities. Thus, instead of these clusters of malls, you may have smaller shops all closer together and build around areas of public spaces So like... Imagine a park and local garden, and on a little sidewalk next to this park are small shops; say a bakery and some small grocery stores. Above the stores are some apartments. You can thus just kind of... Exit, walk over to the garden, get grocery shopping done, and walk home. It’s this kind of idea; this idea that no matter where you are in a city you should be in easy walking distance of whatever you need and that this should be attached to the local community A lot of the time they also want more trains as a method to connect these things, and point to Tokyo as an example of an impossibly large city that has managed to achieve a generally clean environment largely based off of these principles .... Uhh, I see a lot of people questioning modern city design, and in particular there are a lot of people opposing ‘lawn culture’ and the like as this inherently wasteful, nonsensical thing. So it’s sort of like, there are a lot of these opinions building up over the generations. I think the Traditional Architecture movement tends to get stereotyped as these weirdos that want society to be castles and wheat fields. There is honestly a lot of people who don’t think deeply, and it kinda just feels like they want to live somewhere pretty. But those that do delve into it beyond the traditionalist bend... bring up good points Now, I don’t think we should just let them all run wild with things; I find the Traditional Architecture people’s ambitions have some queestionable aspects at times. But I think it will kinda go hand in hand with those people questioning car dependency, monoculture lawns, seeking more bicycles in cities, seeking public transport support, and more progressive takes on sustainability as we move forward.  What’s my point, overall...? I have no idea. I guess I’m just trying to parse this weird movement I see cropping up. It’s something I see a lot that’s like, ‘Yeah, you make some good points,’ but I’m often left with this idea that something is not really thought through on it. I see a lot of people mocking it, but this traditional architecture focus... there’s some deeper ideas there, deeper than ‘I love tradition and greek statues and want a tradwife’ like we often dismiss this as. There are... A surprising amount of futures in fiction that tend more towards the ghibliesque. I think, this idea they have, it might be a nice world. A humanity that uses more traditional principals to live in harmony with nature... At least, it’s an interesting concept to think about. We should obviously do more than simply recreate the past, but then, that will come regardless.

[ladala99]

Overall Thoughts On the New Event

It's been a while since the last time we got a new event! Last time was three years ago, changing the weirdly-balanced Flood event to the storyline-based Egypt event.

Now, we're getting rid of the storyline parts of the July event and replacing it with a new feature. A feature that has some kinks that I hope get worked out. I'll get into that later.

This got a little long so I'm putting it under a cut. TL;DR - I mostly like it, especially the carryovers and the new art-based stuff. The gameplay balance is where I get critical. (I also started writing this before further adjustments. I'm still finishing and posting it but with some notes on those parts.)

The Carryovers

To start off, I'll say that my favorite parts of the old event were (in this order):

1. The Celestial/Murder Stone (sacrificing NCLs to gain Energy/Exp *rubs hands evilly*)

2. The fact that the storyline branched in so many ways, letting you get a different ending every year/on both accounts

3. The Celestial Raffle

Of those, two survived! I totally understand the reasoning for the storyline getting the axe - it had some moments that are completely normal in gameplay, but not-so-great when put into a canon form. I struggle with dancing around stuff like that in my own lore.

So this event gets a good start, keeping most of what was great about the old event. The only reason I miss the Firefly stuff at all is that I tagged July as Agility in my Fight Calculator because it would be useful for catching fireflies. So that's not a thing anymore. (But July's still Agility because I'm too lazy to change everything after I just recently balanced it)

Tefnut's Memories

...I'm going to get to the applicators later.

Aside from that, I like that it exists, and the decor prices are pretty reasonable. It's nice to have a place to get/reget all those storyline items that I missed or used up, and I really like the designs of these characters so it's nice that they're still around, in a way.

I also think having the prices be in SB is perfectly fine. This isn't the main attraction of the event. They're mainly legacy content that's still around because they're cool items.

New Stuff - Artwork

Space. Dragons. Pink/Purple space dragons at that.

If you're not aware, I'm of the Arcane Flight on Flight Rising - aka I'm on the pink/space/alien/(magic/radioactivity/crystal) team on the dragon game. This stuff appeals to me.

I just cannot express how excited I am about the dragon morph and buddy decor in the main shop. Amazing. Adorable. I want it all and I want to add it to my lore somehow.

I also really enjoy the new explore area art, especially how the background changes every click. I like how the enemies are based on nebulas, too. Very misty and pretty/cool-looking.

New Stuff - Gameplay

EDIT While I was writing this more changes were made. I'm still posting it as it was, although it seems all my issues are being addressed!

Here's where things get less great.

The idea of use primary energy to get secondary energy to get tokens for prizes I've seen before, and it usually works. Wolvden does it for the Lunar Event, and I think that game has a great system down.

But that's not really what's happening here. What's happening is:

- Use primary energy (Energy) -> Occasionally receive secondary energy (Meteorite Shards). This amount is usually less than one secondary energy step.

- Use secondary energy AND primary energy -> Occasionally receive event currency (Axion Cores). Sometimes you also get nothing and use up secondary energy and there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you get nothing and use up both primary and secondary energy if you lose a fight. (EDIT no longer necessarily true!)

This is where it gets punishing. There's only a small chance of getting Meteorite Shards in the first place, and it's in amounts smaller than you can use right away. And then when you use them, you could just get nothing.

If it were just the Meteorite Shards at stake, that'd be one thing, but since you have to have enough Energy to fight, it means it's sucking up your ability to get more Meteorite Shards at the same time. It's an awful cycle. (EDIT and I'm glad they took away the Energy requirement)

All that is issue enough, but the real trouble comes from the applicators in Tefnut's Memories. (EDIT which they're adjusting again)

I don't know how they were priced originally. I just saw after the adjustment and the reply on the news post requesting the price raise saying some of them were 6k SB. 6k SB is pretty expensive for an official shop item by itself, since the game punishes you for having over 5k SB by removing your ability to gain more in Explore. I try to keep under that cutoff, myself. But 6k's not too unreasonable to get.

But after the adjustment, they were 10k SB for base applicators, and 15k SB for marking applicators. Which is pretty unreasonable. I don't think I make that much in a month (maybe I do? Studs and Chasteberries add up). I'm still recovering from using 5k SB on the Vredefort Crater quest.

After feedback and a GB price crash, they changed them back to Meteorite Shards. Except now it's so much harder to gain Meteorite Shards because they're a secondary energy now, and it was already pretty hard to get to the prices they were at without using them on anything else.

So basically, you have a choice: participate in the event and don't get the Tefnut's Memories applicators, or get the applicators and miss out on all of the new stuff.

(EDIT they took the applicators out of the shop temporarily, I'm assuming to think it over better. Thanks devs! I hope you come up with a good solution.)

Overall, it has issues, and I really hope they rethink the balance soon, if not next year. (EDIT they are doing it as I'm writing this!)

Conclusion

Great concept, great art, rocky execution. It is overall more good than bad, but the bad is pretty strong since most of the good hasn't unlocked yet.

#lioden

[fanfic-scribbles]

Lunch Buddy: Chapter Fifteen

Masterlist

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

Overall Story Facts:

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Story Summary: Steve Rogers makes a friend. A prickly, generally people-averse friend, but they’ll both take what they can get.

Quick Facts: Friendship (/Eventual Romance) – Steve Rogers & Reader (leading to Steve Rogers/Reader) – Female Reader

Story Warnings: Reader-insert that verges on OFC, written in 1st person past tense

Chapter 15: Avoidance

Chapter Summary: The thing about avoiding your problems is that you always have to face them sooner than you think.

Chapter Word Count: 2611

A/N: Slight warnings for a little bit of angsting, and it’s a little light on Steve content (though he eventually appears from afar). Anywho. I wish I could say something cool like ‘enjoy the pining!’ but I have no idea how long I can actually keep them apart considering I have been mushing two dolls together in my head and going ‘now kiss!’ since I started posting. There will be a little pining though. Like, maybe a car air freshener, at least. Enjoy!

    I avoided Steve for the rest of the long weekend. It was easier than it might have been had he not been called in for something. Though we still had texting, he was busy and I didn’t instigate. Even when we did communicate, my responses were short and didn’t leave much for follow up. He probably assumed I needed time to de-socialize, because that was the kind of guy he was, sweet and caring and all good things. Meanwhile, I knew exactly why I was trying not to talk to him, and it stressed me the hell out.

I didn’t want to think about any of it and found my perfect excuse on Monday morning, when a work project made me skip lunch and go into overtime. I immediately texted Steve telling him I’d be busy for a few days and threw myself into work. Unfortunately the project was too time-sensitive and it was done before I even clocked out Tuesday afternoon.

“Okay, this definitely isn’t about money anymore,” my boss said that evening, just when he was packing up. “Do you have a spouse you’re having a fight with?”

“I’m just…looking for stuff to do. To keep me busy.” I didn’t back down when he stared at me. “Just for this week?”

He sighed heavily and rubbed his face. “Okay. Lunches and up to one hour after if you spend it working on organizing the junk drive. Make real progress on cleaning that out and I’ll approve the overtime.”

That was two hours of mindless-but-incredibly-draining work that would put me at a worse commute time and make me crawl into bed at the end of the day, and hopefully completely wipe me out on the weekend.

Perfect.

“Thank you!” I said and started to bound out to get started on the one job everybody in my department passed around like it was a beach ball on fire.

“Seriously,” he said and I stopped. He stood there with his bag over his shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”

I almost smiled, but remembered that would be out of character. “I’m fine,” I said and shrugged one shoulder. “Holidays, you know?”

It worked. For the most part. I at least had a plausible excuse to keep Steve off my back, and my boss didn’t press any further, and I made progress on the most mind-numbing task ever embarked upon by an actual human with an actual brain.

The only problem was that it wasn’t numbing enough. As much as I tried to avoid thinking about Steve at all, he was still in my phone, as was Sam, and even Clint and Natasha now too. Pepper wasn’t a very social texter, thankfully, but I kept getting pulled back to Steve in other ways. In the course of three days I: saw a tuft of blonde hair that made me do a double-take, heard his recorded laugh as I passed by someone who didn’t understand the concept of using headphones, and had to listen to a few older ladies gossip about ‘what a man’ he was in unfiltered detail. I even had a dream about some of the things they said because the universe hated me, apparently.

And then there was Steve himself, not texting that much, but always taking the time to send me a little photo every day that was obviously meant to make me laugh. He even sent me the ‘Hang in there’ kitten poster (which made me snort way too loudly in public) along with ‘I dare you to use this for your lockscreen for a month.’

I texted back, ‘What do I get for it?’ before I realized I was breaking my own goddamn rules and smashed my face into my desk.

Steve: Something good ;)

Oh god. Did he know what he was doing? If he did I wished he would have just put me out of my fucking misery already.

Steve: How’s work?

Fuck.

Me: Busy. Me: How’s work? Steve: Almost done Steve: I hope your job lets up this weekend Steve: Sam is coming back with me and we’re hoping you can come out with us

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Me: We’ll see

Work did let up. Unfortunately. I made good progress on organizing the long-forgotten junk drive and my boss repaid me and betrayed me in the same breath.

“I’ll approve the overtime,” he said. “But that’s it for now. You look exhausted and I need you to take the weekend to rest up, okay?”

It was the one and only time I had ever wished to have a bastard boss again. But I was tired, and I didn’t have any excuses. “Okay,” I said and left his office feeling miserable. I got home pretty quick for a Friday night, which just left me more time to think about things I really didn’t want to think about. And there was only one cure for that.

The club was busier than I was used to, busier than it had any right to be with the night just really beginning, but as soon as I got in I made a beeline for the bar and snaked in the first opening I could find. It was loud, and too crowded, and I really wasn’t up for this, but I didn’t know what else to do. So I started drinking.

That was a bad idea. Aside from the ‘using alcohol to try and drown your emotions’ being a baseline fucking awful idea, it also didn’t fucking work.

Couples. They were everywhere. Leaning next to each others’ ears, making out along the wall, dancing together like it was foreplay; they were so all over the place that even the fake ID crowd seemed less obnoxious by comparison.

Except for when a gaggle of party girls yelled right next to me for no real reason and reminded me they really weren't. The music thumped and I winced and turned away from watching the floor to sip my drink at the bar like the true lonely miser I was.

And wasn’t that just the thing.

Loneliness, as a thing in my life, had stopped bothering me after a while– or maybe I had just stopped noticing it– either way, it wasn’t generally a thing I dwelled on. I took for granted that I wasn’t the type anyone would settle in with; I was too…whatever. So for the longest time I had just assumed I’d be on my own and I was okay with it. I knew I could handle it, and figured I and everyone else was better off for it. People came and went, and no one ever stuck around before– not that I ever gave them a real reason to. And if I couldn’t make friendships work, I had no business getting into a relationship. It truly didn’t bother me. Most of the time.

So it figured I would fall for the first person I’d had qualify as ‘friend’ in a while. That thought was slightly concerning, but as long as I didn’t make these feelings Steve’s problem, I could sleep easy at night. For the most part. The question was how to deal with it. Did I continue as normal and bottle this up for the rest of time, hoping it would fade out? Did I continue as normal but let him know, and let him decide if he wanted to stick around?

Or did I just…let go. Did I stop putting in the time to keep this friendship going. Did I stop responding, start avoiding him, and just fade out of his life even easier than I had faded in. That seemed like a real option. I was so naturally good at it, had done it so much by accident, he wouldn’t even miss me. After a while I doubt he would remember I existed.

My mouth tasted sour and bitter and I tossed back my drink. It didn’t help.

~

An hour later I was home, sitting at my kitchen counter and hanging my face over a cup of tea that got colder by the minute. My head still pulsed in time with the beat that had driven me out of the club, but it had become less and less over time.

My phone buzzed. “Shh,” I said softly, but it ignored me and I looked over only to hurt my neck when I did a double-take. Steve had sent three texts. Shit. I sat up and opened my phone directly to my messages. If Steve had gotten injured again I was really going to hurt him.

Fortunately the first message was a simple ‘Hey’ sent soon after I had set out on my ill-advised adventure. The next was ‘Are you busy?’ and then simply my name.

I hesitated. I had the terrible thought that here was where I could start ghosting on out of his life. Fade away like the nonentity I was.

I swallowed and sent back, ‘Sry. Went out’

Steve: Oh Steve: Good :) Steve: How are you? Me: Okay Me: You? Steve: I’m okay

The conversation stalled and I realized why I had even considered ghosting– it was easy to not respond when you didn’t know what to say.

Me: Good Steve: Can I ask you Steve: Are you really okay?

His texts came too fast after mine to be responding to the silence. Fuck.

Me: Yes Me: Why?

I shouldn’t have asked, but I had a bad feeling about this. I tapped my fingers on the table while I waited for a response.

Steve: You haven’t been talking to me much lately Steve: I’m just Steve: worried Steve: Was it Thanksgiving? Steve: Was I inappropriate?

Shit, shit, shit. I hit my forehead on the table which, fucking ow, but I deserved it. I had never intended for him to feel bad for something that wasn’t his fault, nor was it ever supposed to be his problem. It wasn’t right for him to be upset because of my bullshit. So I decided to be honest.

Me: No Me: It’s not you Me: It’s very definitely me Me: I’m mis Me: miserable Me: And awful Steve: You’re not Me: Am too Me: It’s not you tho Me: I’m having a hard time Me: That’s all

Honest to a point, at least.

Steve: I’m sorry Steve: Can I help? Me: No Me: Gotta Me: Push through Steve: Okay Steve: I’m your friend though Steve: You can always come to me Steve: And hey Steve: Sam and I are going out tomorrow for dinner Steve: I’ll text you the details just in case you’re up to it Steve: But I won’t expect anything Steve: Is that okay?

Why did he have to be so fucking thoughtful all the time. Why did he have to be someone so out of my league in every single way.

Me: Fine Me: Can’t promise Steve: That’s okay <3

I was going to straight up murder whoever taught him fucking heart symbols. Preferably by taking their heart.

Steve: Have you eaten yet? Me: Don’t wanna Steve: How about dessert?

‘Only if you’re here to share it,’ I thought. The worst part was that it wasn’t even sexual– I just wanted him here. With me. All of the time. Okay, maybe not all of the time, but most of the time. And that was new. That was different. That scared the hell out of me.

Then there was a knock at my door and I froze up. Nobody had buzzed for me and while my building wasn’t exactly Fort Knox, I also didn’t expect company I didn’t explicitly invite over. I gave it a few seconds but kept my connection to Steve in hand (just in case) and went to the peephole.

Me: Someone knocked. If I don’t respond maybe send help Steve: It’s safe :)

I squinted at the message and then peered out again. I didn’t see him at all and it wasn’t like him to hide. I cautiously opened the door and looked around but there was no one– but there was something.

A bakery box sat in front of my door, with a note scrawled on receipt paper that had my name followed with very flowery bubble letters telling me to “Feel Better!” from a hand-scrawled smiling sunflower.

I stared at it, picked up the box, brought it in, set it on the counter, and stared at it some more.

Steve: Okay now you’ve put that thought into my head I’m a little worried Steve: Are you okay? Me: brb Me: crying into cake Steve: Don’t cry Steve: Or cry if you need to I guess Steve: But eat something too Steve: I’ll say good night here Steve: And text you again with dinner info Steve: Again, only if you want to. Sam and I will NOT be slighted Steve: I promise Me: Good night Steve Steve: Good night <3

“Just fucking end me,” I muttered and stared at the screen while I dug into the cake with a fork. (It was small; I felt no shame.) It was also so unbelievably good that I actually stopped and checked out the box.

Me: Wait, how did you get a cake this late??? Steve: Asking the real questions

I laughed. That surprised me, but I couldn’t help it.

Me: It’s really good Me: Thank you Steve: Anytime

I forced myself to think about this whole…situation…while I ate. Phasing out of his life was, apparently, not much of an option if he was just randomly thinking of me like this. And I knew now very firmly that even accidentally hurting him was not an option. Love was an easy word for complicated emotion, but it was the best way I knew how to classify how deeply I cared for him. And I cared, to the point where if anybody was going to get hurt, I’d rather it be me.

The more I thought about it though, the more I had real hope that maybe nobody would get hurt at all. Steve was a really good guy. So even if he accidentally found out (I knocked on wood at the thought) it wouldn’t be the end of everything. He wouldn’t let it be the end of everything; he would be flattered, reject me politely, and we could move on. I hoped.

And for once, the best-case scenario didn’t seem the least likely. I trusted Steve that much. That was something I didn’t want to look into too much, but to be fair, he also trusted…me. He would know I wasn’t infatuated with some aspect of him and we might even work past this together. If not, he would give me the chance to work past it on my own, and I wasn’t about to let him down.

The box topped off my trash so I pulled the bag together and got ready to make the trek to take it out. Coming out the door I almost ran right into my neighbor, Robert, who was apparently doing the same thing.

“Hey,” he said. I was polite like a real human being and asked after his wife and kids. We made some more small talk on the way, and he even waited to hold the chute open for me. When I lifted the bag, his eyes zeroed in on the box stuffed half in the top. “Oh, that place is nice. You celebrating something?”

“No,” I said and shoved it in. “I…wasn’t feeling so great. So a friend sent it to me.”

“That must be a pretty good friend,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about Steve and finally feeling hopeful. “A really good friend.”

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers & reader #captain america fanfic #avengers fanfic #reader insert #lunch buddy

[impalementation]

Not sure if you’ve talked about it before because I couldn’t find anything from tags but, what’s your opinion on Faith in each season and her dynamic with Buffy?

I’ve gotten a couple different asks in this vein! Sorry for taking so long to answer them, this response got out of hand. Consider this my official thoughts on Faith. Putting it under a cut because it got long.

I think Faith is a crucial addition to the show. Admittedly, she isn’t someone I spend a ton of time thinking about, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t interesting or important. I like Faith for two reasons: first, for how she affects Buffy, and second, for how she ends up transcending the role of “someone who affects Buffy.”  

Regarding the first, a lot’s been said about what a classic foil she is, as well as how she’s an example of doppelgänger-type anxiety. Faith is someone that, simply by existing, makes Buffy conscious (even possessive) about her identity, in ways she’s never been before.

Which is one of the big themes of season three: Buffy’s relationship to identity, especially slaying as an identity, and slaying as a symbol of identity. In Anne Buffy abandons her slayerness, abandons her life and name, and fights a villain that literally takes away its victims’ personhood (“Who are you?” “No one.”). She loses her powers in Helpless. Her slayerness makes her an object of social retribution in Gingerbread, and a hunted animal in Homecoming. In Lovers Walk she toys with the idea that she could leave Sunnydale and have an identity that doesn’t have to do with killing demons.

And then you have Faith, a slayer who is presented as an alternate version of/path for Buffy. When Kendra was introduced, the show didn’t do much to emphasize what she and Buffy had in common; if anything, the show emphasized the ways they were different. Kendra was more rulebound, less social, and had accepted the idea of being a slayer a long time ago. Whereas Faith regularly plays up her and Buffy’s similarities: “We’re slayers, girlfriend. The chosen two.”, “You know it could be you.” Buffy herself admits that “it could be me.” I think it’s pretty deliberate that Buffy in The Wish has a jaded, Faith-like swagger. Or that the season features the concept of alternate-universe selves in general.

(That said. Despite the fact that I don’t see Buffy and Kendra as foils to the degree that Buffy and Faith are, I do think season three features Faith for much the same reason that What’s My Line introduced Kendra: both are about being at a crossroads of identity. Buffy in The Wish is a bit like Kendra too.)

I posted before about how seasons three and four introduce the idea of Buffy making choices about who she wants to be, rather than choices about who lives and dies. And how Faith is central to that. Faith makes Buffy aware of choice by (a) being a slayer, meaning that unlike any other character, she’s under the same constraints that Buffy is, (b) openly having desire for things (food, sex, slaying), © making different choices than Buffy, and (d) tempting Buffy to use her powers non-heroically, whether in the Bad Girls sense, or by forcing Buffy to potentially kill her in Graduation Day. Also, by encroaching upon things that Buffy considers “hers”, like her friends, lovers, or family, Faith clarifies for Buffy that she even considers anything “hers” at all. In other words, she makes Buffy notice both her identity as it is, and her identity as it could be.

But for all that Faith has nice symbolic and dramatic reasons to exist, what I actually really like about the way the show uses Faith is that she becomes a character in her own right. It ties into the show’s existentialist themes in a really effective way. I know, I get tired of myself as soon as I bring up the existentialist stuff, but I don’t think it can be understated how existentialist Buffy is. It’s why Buffy is a vampire slayer specifically, even though most of the time she isn’t even fighting vampires. She’s a vampire slayer because vampires are the opposite of existentialism. They’re nihilism. They’re thieves of agency, identity, and life. By virtue of lacking souls, they are incapable of moral choice. They don’t age, they don’t mature. They’re the opposite of “growing up.” They fill the open-ended eternity of their existence with destruction and death.

(You might point to Spike and Darla as exceptions to this vampire symbolism, but I genuinely don’t think they are. Both characters realize that their vampiric nature causes harm to those they love, and this realization leads both characters to self-destruct. Darla by staking herself, and Spike by getting a soul…which also results in his death a season later. Them achieving the ability to make a true moral choice leads directly to them ceasing to exist as soulless vampires.)

To bring this back to Faith, I see something vampiric in the concept of a doppelgänger or foil, the idea of this empty vessel that takes your identity because they have none of their own. Someone whose identity exists only as a reflection of someone else’s. A grasping, black hole of self.

The problem is, a real person can’t be a foil. That’s a literary construct. In real life, seeing yourself as a reflection or extension of someone else just means that you’re afraid of creating your own identity. Maybe for good, understandable reasons, and maybe not. Who Are You? is one of my favorite episodes because it makes this problem explicit. It turns Faith from an abstract foil figure into someone who literally steals Buffy’s identity, and is shown to not have a solid sense of self. I posted earlier about the similarities between Anne and Who Are You?, but I like those similarities not just because they create thematic continuity around identity-related ideas. I like them because there’s this kind of awful, tragic irony to the fact that even Faith’s identity crisis episode uses pieces from Buffy’s arc.

Speaking of using pieces from Buffy’s arc, I also love the way that Buffy’s role in Who Are You? mirrors Faith’s role in season three. Just as Faith threw Buffy’s identity into relief, Buffy now throws Faith’s identity into relief. Being Buffy frees Faith to act in ways she wouldn’t ordinarily let herself, and being treated as Buffy forces Faith to confront whether she actually does or doesn’t want to be treated in those ways. You might say that by fully confronting the ways that she sees herself in terms of Buffy, Faith is able to start moving beyond it. The episode is basically an exorcism of Faith’s foil-ness.

Unfortunately I can’t speak very well to Faith’s arc on Angel since I haven’t seen most of it. Just Five By Five and parts of Sanctuary. But there are a lot of things I like about Faith’s return in season seven. I love that in her introduction she asks whether she’s “the good slayer now”, and when she and Buffy talk in End of Days she tries to pull a “maybe we couldn’t exist at the same time” thing. Because she’s literally talking about herself like she’s a literary device. But by this point she’s also developed enough that it’s only semi-serious; she’s quick to accept Buffy’s point that no, her choices were her own.

I think it’s perfect that season seven includes Faith, because season seven involves Buffy once again grappling with choice, and what it means for her to be the slayer. I think it’s perfect that Faith gets the opportunity to finally understand Buffy’s loneliness, and that the two of them are able to commiserate about being “hot chicks with superpowers.” Because it’s them finally getting to have their slayerness just be something that they have in common. Instead of this big complicated identity thing. It foreshadows Chosen, and the way that being a slayer goes from being something that isolates Buffy, to something that Buffy can share with people. I also really like the reversal of the fact that in Empty Places Faith isn’t the one who wants to take Buffy’s leadership away from her. She no longer wants to take Buffy’s role or Buffy’s friends. Instead it’s everyone else that is determined to perpetuate the idea that only one of them can be in charge, or that Buffy can be replaced. It fits with the way that the season frames isolation as not just a personal problem, but also a social and systemic problem. Even though Faith has grown past many of her issues, that doesn’t mean that the people around her have, or that the fundamentally, systemically solitary nature of being a slayer has changed. See also: Andrew mythologizing Faith’s background, and Caleb calling her the “Cain to [Buffy’s] Abel.” Of course it would be an avatar of the First that tries to get Faith to see herself as an archetype again.

Other things I like: The fact that Faith reveals to Spike that she was in Buffy’s body, because it’s yet another case of her finally owning up to being herself, instead of a reflection of Buffy. The fact that when the night out goes badly in Empty Places, it’s not because of anything that Faith did (that night), the way it was in Bad Girls. The fact that Buffy hands Faith a blade as an expression of trust in Chosen, a reversal of gutting her with a blade in Graduation Day.

Overall I just think it’s a really cool statement on identity that the character who was introduced to give Buffy identity issues, then has to go on her own search for identity. No one in Buffy is exempt from the project of self-creation, least of all the vampires and the doppelgängers. But it’s especially appropriate that Faith go on that journey because she’s a slayer, and slaying is arguably a metaphor for existential striving. It would be weird if she didn’t grow, really. She’s the rare case of the female redemption arc, especially a redemption arc that doesn’t involve her becoming less violent or sexual (or dead) afterwards. Just less unethical about it. She gets to play that role in a more-or-less gender-neutral way, the same way Buffy gets to be a hero in a more-or-less gender-neutral way. Buffy and Faith both start out as archetypes, and both end up humanized in a way that transcends and complicates those archetypes. 

[Your ask didn’t mention Buffy/Faith, but a couple others did, so: as far as Buffy/Faith goes, my feelings are the same as most Buffy pairings, which is that I don’t personally have any investment in it, but I can certainly see the appeal. It sounds like a fun thing to ship. I would’ve been totally on board from a story/character perspective if the show had ever tried to make them non-subtextual. Partly because I’d be on board with anything, as long as it was interesting. But also because I can see it making a lot of storytelling sense, given that Faith’s whole job is to shake up Buffy’s sense of identity.]

#btvs #please clap i spent too long on this #buffy #faith #gen

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider Movie Wars #1-#6

So... what is all this stuff?

When I decided on starting my Kamen Rider watch I was determined to watch as much as I could, everything seemed okay but there was always a huge problem: the movies.

I didn't know where to look at for information so most of my research was done in the Wikia and if you visit the Kamen Rider Wikia you'll see that the way they list the movies IS CONFUSING AS HELL so I set my mind in watching only the stand-alone movies and any extra released after the show ended that wasn't part of any crossover project.

I decided to do this way to try to avoid spoilers of the previous series that I haven't watched, not necessarily because I didn't want to know what exactly happened in those series, but because I didn't want to have a certain impression of a Rider before I could watch their own show and don't be so judgemental about it before actually knowing that character and the set of extras that'll orbit around it.

But then we cut to 4 months later and I'm watching a video on youtube about W and they comment about how in the crossover movie they explain the events of Beginning Night and I go "shit, these movies DO have necessary information, I think I'll need to watch them orz", so here I am.

Before I go talking about these movies let me just say I think they're all pretty stupid. Like, even calling them movies is a low move, they're extended episodes of each series that converge on an awful CGI battle scene at the end, it's not a lot of fun considering the thing that sells the movie usually don't last longer than 30 minutes. I think the thing that just really pisses me off is how they aren't very considerate of people who didn't watch these movies and they'll usually bring up in the show events that only happened in the movie to the show itself, don't explain them, and expect that the audience will already know what the things they're referencing means. I know it seems like a dumb complain since I'm watching these seasons after they aired so I can watch the movies in the proper time if I want to, the thing is I shouldn't need to watch a movie to understand a thing that happened in the show, the movies should be extra material. And I'm not saying these movies shouldn't be canon, but they shouldn't be integrated with the main continuity in a way that would exclude people who didn't get the opportunity to watch said movies to understand them.

But that's enough for my rant let's get to these movies.

Movie War 2010

So, for the original Movie Wars, I watched only the W's portion, I didn't watch either the Decade part or the conclusion because of the reasons I mentioned up there.

This movie was more or less just a huge flashback, this is also the movie that pisses me off the most because it introduced Skull and the Lost Driver that are things that would become key elements not just for the show but also for their movie and well I already made a huge paragraph about this issue so I won't repeat myself.

I honestly don't remember much about it, but as many problems as I have with this whole set up, I enjoyed this movie. Huge part of it was because Skull was there and he's cool as heck, I'll admit, but I had fun. Though nothing will change my mind that this should've happened in the show not isolated in a movie.

Movie War Core

The next one in line is Movie War Core, I had more fun with this one but this was still pretty bad.

W's portion of it was pretty decent, seeing more of Skull was great, and it was also nice seeing what would lead up to the events in the Accel movie. My biggest problem here is that Akiko never seemed so against the Kamen Rider before so it seemed a little off that she would freak out like that only now, but oh well, it was still nice seeing Skull, I wish we had a movie exclusive to him he's so cool he deserves it (I know it's probably late for me to ask for this, just let me leave XD).

Sadly from that moment on the movie got really boring. I wasn't interested in the attempt of reviving Nobunaga plot, I feel like things were happening way too fast in that, and also Kamen Rider Core was just awful as a final villain, I hated that.

Movie War Megamax

The Fourze x OOO movie is probably my least favorite of the bunch. I really didn't buy that thing of a Kamen Rider from the future coming out of a black hole after meteors were falling, the implication that the medals weren't destroyed in OOO's final battle kinda weakens the ending of the series and the fact they didn't explain Ankh being back just shows how this plot wasn't very well thought. Also, the Kamen Rider from the future coming back at the end just to give OOO the Super TaToBa medals was very dumb, that form also doesn't look good either.

And the Fourze portion was awful because they decide to "give" Gentarou a "girlfriend" and that was just the most stupid plot EVER. They gave the girl a rider form but even that they screwed up, it still baffles me they made the girl attack with her butt. I know this is a show that has primarily boys in mind but you don't have to make every female character like that, especially in a live-action where real people have to act that with their bodies.

Gosh, I hate this movie so much.

Movie War Ultimatum

The next movie wasn't as bad, it was just way longer than it should've been. I watched the director's cut and that is almost two hours, that's absurdly long for a movie where not a whole lot happens. This movie was also pretty weird to watch because they did a whole bunch of homages to older tokusatsu, and while having those didn't make the movie any less good or bad it was still off, you could tell those weren't creatures that originated in this world/franchise. I also wasn't really here for this time travel concept, especially in here it was done in a very messy way, it wasn't cute.

But you know, for the part while I was still paying attention I enjoyed it. The Fourze cast is way more bearable when they're not stupid teenagers, seeing them as adults was quite fun, I like how it started like an actual action movie with Ryusei and that girl from the Fourze movie doing some spy work, and I also like to see that he and the goth girl still have their thing. Gentarou as a teacher looked like a mess, but I like that they put him to be a teacher, it makes a good amount of sense for his character. The students were also a bit interesting so watching Fourze was actually fun for me for the first time! But once again Fourze was there being nasty and doing a whole bunch of close-ups in the girls' tights during the fighting while one of those two was supposed to be a teenager in school and that's just gross. Nadeshiko also comes back for this afterward and ew the butt attacks came back, she even jumped at a monster once where it looked like she was reverse cowgirling him and that was very uncomfortable to watch.

The Wizard portion was quite decent as well, I like the concept of the "farm of monsters", I wish they had used more of these smart ideas in the actual show, Poitrine was fun and I like the reveal that in the end, she was actually the Donut Shop keeper, but I think this portion was longer than it needed to be, especially considering they don't do much. But I guess this is the best way to describe this movie. The joint part was pretty bland, but I like that they had a good amount of out of suit fighting, that kept my attention for a while.

Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle

This was an odd one, kinda like Core this one had a decent first portion and a meh one for the current season but overall it was still pretty bland. It was good seeing an actual epilogue for Wizard, I wanna complain about jetpacking in this plot because Haruto was in Brazil for some reason and then in the next scene he was in Japan again, but he has a teleport spell so I can't call them out. But it sure was funny to see they randomly put a Rider on Brazil for the second time in this movie series. The thing of using a 3D pen to make another Koyomi and make her the villain was a fun twist, but I feel like it wasn't used at its fullest.

The Gaim portion was just awful, I didn't care for this parallel world where they revived a Sengoku battle, I feel like this is one of the things that works better with people who actually have knowledge of Japanese History, but I believe that even if you have knowledge this would still such because we're in those Gaim early days where the characters aren't very likable yet so it's really not enjoyable to watch.

This movie also introduced crossover power-ups and Holy Jesus, this is probably one of the worst ideas this franchise has ever made because none of them look good. And speaking of things that don't look good, they ruined a very good design Bujin Gaim had going on for it in order to make him this weird CGI flower thing that doesn't look good, neither intimidating, it was just awful.

Movie War Full Throttle

Last in the list is the Gaim x Drive movie and while this isn't the movie I disliked the most, this is the movie I less cared about, this is the movie I less remember about, which is weird because I watched it twice. I think my problem comes from the villains for this movie, I didn't buy the idea of this apparently alien race defeating an actual space god and capturing another one, I also didn't care for their designs they were pretty bland. But this movie gave Gaim an actual closure so I guess it wasn't so bad. The Drive portion was weird because it seemed very disconnected from the plot. I like this story and I like Lupin's design, but this should've been, if not an actual episode, a TV special, especially considering they give Krim's backstory about how he ended up being in the belt and nothing can change my mind that this should've been explained in the actual show.

Ironically enough, the part of the movie I remember the most is when Gaim and Drive use each other's powers and they get in those awful crossover forms. Again, this idea was a mistake, Drive's hat looks like a fucking trash can lid, it's awful.

Just like these movies. I had fun at moments, but I'm not gonna lie, I wish I could have those hours back, these movies aren't good, they completely drained my energy. I think I'm gonna wrap up for now, what are your thoughts on the movie wars, let me know in the comments. I'm gonna try to be happy again now. I'll see you guys tomorrow for the second Drive review.

#Kamen Rider W #Kamen Rider OOO #Kamen Rider Fourze #Kamen Rider Wizard #Kamen Rider Gaim #Kamen Rider Drive #kamen rider

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Five

Will we make it off the Citadel in this update??

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Flux is my favorite bar in all of the first game, I know there’s not many to choose from, but I like the music best, everybody’s clothed, everyone’s having a good time, there’s slots upstairs for entertainment, there’s dancing, and plenty of space to chill out in.  Also the color scheme is great.  It looks particularly great now with the graphics mod improvements.  

Doran gets a nice glamour shot here.

I’m a tattle tale who always turns this guy in.  I agree with Kaidan...

Also I really love Rita’s quest with her sister.  She loves her sister, Jenna  wants to be helpful, even Doran’s like “Hey I’d love to give her her job back.”  Everyone here is pretty wholesome.  And Jenna gets one of the best surprise appearances in ME3 if you do things right.  ME1Recalibrated fixes the bugs with her quest, too!

Speaking of bugged quests, Hello Conrad!  ME1Recalibrated fixes Conrad’s bug, and even if it doesn’t, ME2Re does.  The only bad thing about that is it makes his apology for accusing you of something you maybe didn’t do make no sense.

Everyone else was sure Conrad would turn out to be evil, too, right? Instead making him into just a big lying dummy with an advanced degree was a great move.  I was kinda hoping he’d show up in the Citadel DLC.   

Harkin is JUST the FUCKING WORST.  I’m always tempted to let Garrus cap him in ME2 because what a waste of air he is and doesn’t learn his lesson.  

This is also maybe the most overt place where FemShep experiences sexism.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s some pretty shitty sexism sprinkled throughout the games (as discussed a bit last post) but ugh this guy, if I could shoot him this game, I might.  At least on renegade playthroughs.

Speaking of Garrus...

Finally, an alien who wants to hang out with us.

As primarily a Kaidan-romancing gal, who tends to keep up with the Kaidan Alenko tag, especially back in the heyday of tumblr, for a while, loving Garrus was... difficult.

In October, when I was finishing up my latest ME3 playthrough and also cleaning up my blog, and also rewatching Doctor Who and thinking a lot about Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, I posted a long thing in a post about Kaidan and Garrus and badly behaving fanbases, which I don’t feel like typing again.  Here’s the whole thing, but I’m going to pull a part of it into here.

I love Garrus, so much.  And I was thinking with this whole parallel DW rewatch / Mass Effect replay think I’m doing right now how both Rose Tyler and Garrus Vakaraian are characters that were ruined for me for awhile due to their respective… overly enthusiastic fanbases who a small percentage of were dicks to people who loved other characters.  The Kaidan tag (and from what I understand Thane got some of this too, but not nearly as bad) was a pretty hostile place for awhile (and yeah I used to regularly check the Garrus tag too and there was a small amount of tag-invasion there but uh, like 5% of what the Kaidan tag got) which made loving the character of Garrus a lot harder for awhile.  But when actually watching seasons 1 & 2 / the end of 4 of Doctor Who, or actually playing the ME games, those characters are awesome.  

Fanbases can be amazing or terrible, and time and time again I think you start to realize that no matter how great a fandom is, there are going to be a few people who can only enjoy themselves by feeding on drama, or on lifting up what they love by stomping on other people/characters/plotlines.  

It’s not fair to characterize everyone who loves a popular thing as someone who does this.  It’s also hard to avoid completely because there will always be jerks, or young/new people who don’t realize what bad form they’re showing.  I did learn by trying to fight it for a year or two, that responding might help that one person not do it again, but it’s not going to stop overall.  

Anyway, don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.  

It’s sad that even thirteen years past the release of ME1 and eight years past ME3 some people still need to have this fight online.   It’s basically impossible to enjoy like, any non-curated Mass Effect space online because of pissing contests or people spouting the same boring opinions.  Which they’re entitled to.  I’m just real tired of “Kaidan is boring!” “Ashley is a racist!” etc with no further depth of thought being given.

The ability to mute / block people and get away from the worst of it is one of the reasons I’m still on tumblr.  Especially always mute/block “confessions” blogs.  Yeesh.

---------

I’m glad Garrus is here, and I’m glad he’s on the team.  What’s funny though, is that people tend to forget that Garrus like, wasn’t really all THAT popular of a character before ME2.  I know I was only in the fandom for a year before ME2 but I dug in pretty deep in that time.

It wasn’t until he gets his face blown off and starts talking about Old Times that a lot of people started to REALLY like him.  He’s still great in ME1, but not like, elevated to god-tier that so many people did post ME2 release.  But in ME1 he IS neat because he’s really malleable.  Probably the companion who can have the biggest personality shift depending on your choices.

Also, I remember a time when the people who wanted to romance Garrus were like... outliers?  I remember thinking “GARRUS?  As a romance?  That’s... weird.  Who would do that!?”

OH HOW I WAS WRONG.  But that was before reach and flexibility.

Hey I even have a Shep that romanced Garrus in ME2 and ME3.  And I loved it!

Were I to replay a different Shep, she’d be my first choice.

So yeah, I love Garrus, I keep Kaidan in the squad all the time in ME1 and the other spot I try to rotate everyone else somewhat evenly, but you’ll see plenty of him.  Then ME2 he’s by my side most of the way.  And an awful lot in ME3, too.  But I’m happy for him to get crushed on by Dr. Michele and glad to see him and Tali find happiness in ME3.  SO that’s the path we’ll be going down if we get that far here.

I love the Destiny Ascension flyby moment on the Citadel, and it’s so easy to miss.  Also really hard to get good screenshots of.  Thanks Flycam.  Don’t pay attention to the untextured wall in the first pic, just look at the pretty lights!

Let’s go get another squadmate!  This time, a not-as-initially-friendly alien!

What an amazing entrance for Urdnot Wrex.

“Do you want me to arrest you?”

“I want you to try!”

Hell.  Yeah.

Here’s where the somewhat in somewhat evenly comes in.  I probably do favor Wrex and Ashely in the squad in ME1 a little because... well you know what’s coming for Ash and Wrex you get the least amount of time with by far of the other companions.  Also, he’s just... great?  A tank, with some biotics and a shotgun... okay well so am I as a vanguard, but Kaidan has just enough tech powers for us to muddle through where we need to when Wrex is in the squad and he’s so much fun to have around.  His “Fuck you, I don’t care” attitude is great, and his growth story throughout the trilogy is one of the best arcs a character gets, imho.  I just really love Urdnot Wrex.

This is a real nice flight control office you’ve got here, C-Sec.  It would be a shame if someone planted a bug in it later, since literally anyone can just walk on up here uncontested.

This entire area really is so pretty though.

I always pump points into Paragon as much as possible from as early on as possible, and saving these poor guys’ lives is one of the big reasons.  They don’t need to die.

Ash usually still stays in the party up to this point, though sometimes it’s Garrus.  Fist is still a dick in ME2 but he doesn’t need to die here, sorry Wrex.

...raise your hand if you still occasionally forget to pick up Emily Wong’s evidence and have to reload.  I remembered!  ...once I was almost out of Chora’s Den and had to turn around this time.

Kaidan?  Kaidan my love?  My darling... perhaps YOU shouldn’t be the one standing in the middle of the corridor with no barrier or protection?  (I suppose I could scooch over but then I’d look less badass for these screenshots.  Naaah.)

It’d be a shame if someone properly lit the corridor so we could see what’s going on.

But hey... TALI!  Tali Tali Tali!  The first quarian we see, and only one for... awhile?  Is there another quarian in this entire game? I’m trying to remember and seriously can’t think of one.

Anyway, I love Tali, but another character you really need to ignore their most rabid fanbase portions of.  Yikes, Talimancers were really something back in the day.  The biggest problem I have with Tali being in the squad is that normally she’s REALLY useful against Geth and... not so much against just about anything else.  She gets sidelined on my team more than I wish she would.  Especially since she doesn’t show up until very late in ME2 and late-midway through ME3.

Finally, the proof we need.  And the game continues to introduce new concepts to us with the Conduit and we hear the word Reapers for the first time.  We also get a loredump on the quarians and the geth.  

Tali’s voice doesn’t have quite as heavy of an accent in ME1 as it does in 2 and 3.  I guess we can assume she’s lost part of it while on her pilgrimage?  Picking up the local dialects a bit?  The next two times we see her she’s just spent a lot of time with her own people.

Tali’s suit and omnitool look SO GOOD with the updated textures.

I swap Ash out and Tali in at this point, and usually finish up a few more quests along the way.

Ah, Septimus.  You lovesick fool.

Honestly, the very best thing with Septimus is to bring Garrus here if you’re gonna romance him, have Garrus laugh at him for coming undone for love and then... well, ME2 and especially ME3 happen.  But still.  Septimus... always needs a kick in the pants but will get around to doing the right thing.

Hey here’s a cool thing ME1Recalibated does -- Morlan carries a Squad Iconic Armors stock, so you can always find tier-appropriate default look armor for you and all the squad.  Very cool of you, Morlan.  You are currently my favorite store on the Citadel.  Now stop sending me spam, I didn’t sign up for your mailing list.

Look, I have questions about what exactly Xeltan told the consort and how... all that... works... but... I don’t think I actually want to ask them.  Just.. let’s all shut up about all of it, it’s over now.

BTW, according to one of the novels, Councilor Anderson finds Ambassador Cayln super annoying.  I need to re-read that book.

OK fine... I’ll go talk to the Council.

Coming at ya with Actual Proof and a quarian tagging along to back up the claims, the Council is ready to listen.  And while not surprising that it’s finally time to become a Spectre, the actual ceremony is really well done.  With the swelling theme music blaring, and all three councilors stressing what a big deal this is and what will be expected of you, you really feel the weight of this moment.  People take notice.  Although apparently later, Kaidan or Ash get an entire televised event around becoming a Spectre, I guess there’s no time for that right now.

It definitely feels like the game so far has been building towards this moment, not only with POUNDING it into your brain about who Spectres are and why they’re so important and letting you know you’re being evaluated... but it feels like there’s been a shift in the game after this moment.  It’s A Big Deal.

I didn’t finish all the sidequests on the Citadel yet, they can wait, I’ve been here long enough.  Let’s go check out the new cool stuff we can buy.

ME1Recalibrated adds in this Spectre Armor.  Eeehhhhh... no thanks.  We’ll stick with Onyx.

I did cheat myself in a bunch of credits and picked up Spectre weapons though. This ain’t no tryhard playthrough.  

Well OK, we can finish ONE more quest.  Thanks, startlingly loud and triumphant music queue that’s never used again!

Man, this would be SUCH a good pic of the Normandy if... the airlock didn’t go straight through the ship.

We’ve got a ship of our own!  And most of our squadmates to put on it!

Sucks for Anderson to be sidelined, though.  We already love you, Anderson!

It’s cool to get a bit more of the Saren & Anderson backstory here for real.  Still, I enjoyed the book more.  Maybe I’ll do a re-read of all the ME books here soon.

Udina... just keep being you, I guess.  

WE HAVE A SHIP!!!

Okay, whew... we made it off the Citadel.  Now I gotta actually play some more to have more updates to post.  Might be a few days.  Have to actually go back to work tomorrow. :p

Let’s probably do like one sidequest then go get us an Asari!!

#mass effect #bioware #kaidan alenko #garrus vakarian #urdnot wrex #tali'zorah #annakie's mass effect stuff

[brightbeautifulthings]

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

"But these words people threw around--humans, monsters, heroes, villains--to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human."

Year Read: 2019

Rating: 4/5

About: Victor and Eli are college roommates with a shared interest in near-death experiences and the possibility that, under the right conditions, people may develop ExtraOrdinary powers. When they decide to test the theory themselves, the experiment goes better--and worse--than they ever could have dreamed. Ten years later, Victor has broken out of prison with one goal in mind: revenge on his former best friend. In the last ten years, Eli has been hunting down other ExtraOrdinaries, convinced that they're evil and unnatural. The last time they faced off, Victor went to jail. This time, they're determined to stop each other by any means necessary. Trigger warnings: death, child death, suicide, suicide attempts, animal death, rape (off-page), violence, body horror, torture, blood, guns, drowning, alcohol/drug use, overdose, hospitals.

Thoughts: After the experience that was The Monsters of Verity duology, pretty much everything Victoria Schwab has ever written has ended up on my TBR. After reading Vicious, I can conclude that she's the reigning queen of villain stories. Thank you for writing novels for all of us weird people who love monsters more than hero stories. Nearly every character in Vicious is a villain; it's just a matter of who's the bigger villain that determines which side we're on. It's a novel for fans of anti-heroes like Batman and The Green Arrow, only darker, like Unbreakable meets Flatliners with the gritty noir of Sin City (depending on which part of the book you're on). As far as concept, world-building, and characters go, it's one of the best books I've read this year.

The concept of ExtraOrdinaries, regular people who have acquired or were born with superpowers in an ordinary world, isn't unfamiliar, and in Schwab's hands, it sounds utterly plausible. When she starts us off, ExtraOrdinaries are only a theory that Victor and Eli set out to prove through whatever mad science and near-death experiences necessary, and these flashback scenes were among my favorites. (You also can't convince me that Victor Vale, for all his alliterative supervillain name, wasn't also named for Victor Frankenstein.) The more characters we meet with extraordinary powers, the more fascinated I was by them. The powers may be familiar, but what the characters do with them is all Schwab.

If you don't like characters who are awful, there's almost no chance of liking this book. By default, Victor is the hero only because Eli is a greater villain. He's motivated completely by revenge and what other people can do for him, while Eli is convinced that he's on a righteous crusade to wipe out the unnatural ExtraOrdinaries. However, Victor is easily my favorite because he never pretends he's anything but a villain. There's something so compelling about a character who knows he isn't a good person and doesn't care (and also, his power is COOL). I was less enthusiastic about Eli because religious motivation pretty much always hits me the wrong way, and I just didn't find his chapters as interesting as the others. On the other hand, I loved Serena for her coldness and the lengths she would go with her powers. (Was anyone else picturing Serena van der Woodsen? Beautiful, persuasive blonde with the same name?) And, of course, Sydney and Mitch should be loved and protected at all costs. The relationships among Sydney, Mitch, and Victor are awesome and dysfunctional, and I love them all. Excellent, excellent cast.

If there's any downfall of the novel, it's probably the pace. Initially, I enjoyed the short chapters and the jumping around of the timeline. It's cleverly modeled after graphic novels, which tend to be quicker-paced (and, obviously, feature superheroes), and I think it would work really well for people who don't like reading much or who struggle to stay invested in novels. Personally, I prefer longer chapters, and I think my attention wouldn't have wandered so much if I wasn't constantly being pulled into a different part of the story, but different novels accomplish different things. Despite these distractions, flashbacks, and quite a few things happening, the overall pace felt a little slow, like the whole thing could have been fifty-or-so pages shorter. There's an entire novel of build-up for an end conflict we know is coming, and we can, more or less, guess how it's going to go. However, these are small complaints against an otherwise great book. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for Vengeful.

#book review #vicious #v.e. schwab #villains #superheroes #4/5 #rating: 4/5 #2019

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - The Squids, The Squids (Bankshots Music, Inc. and Oto-Songs, Inc., 1981) and Duganopacalypse Now (A Fan Compilation, circa 1981)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not-so-recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

The first band I ever loved was the Beatles, and John Lennon was dead years before I had any idea of who they were. It wasn’t until Kurt Cobain died that I had any interest in Nirvana--I recall an eighth grade classmate looking at mw with contempt after I told them I was unfamiliar with their music, when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was already an MTV hit. The chemical composition of my brain was dissolved and reconstituted over the course of two weeks when, at twelve years old, I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Cool Hand Luke on late-night television, but both films were about twenty years old by then. I just heard of Herbie Hancock’s V.S.O.P. album, featuring Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, about two weeks ago. I’m 42 years old now and I’ve only just come to realize how cutting and prescient Claude McKay’s novel Banjo is. 

All this to say that I wish I’d been around when Honolulu’s The Squids were playing around town. (Much thanks to Roger and Leimomi from Aloha Got Soul for pointing me in the right direction.) The Squids were so odd and varied, a New Wave outfit with the muscularity and venom of the truest punk rock, able to invoke the B-52′s in the same gig as Talking Heads or the Ventures or the Specials, all with the same veracity, but much weirder and crueler. They married a sunny, breezy synth sound with an aesthetic that I can only describe as joyously psychopathic, spraying smart-ass malice on the unfortunate subjects of their songs.

Though the band only officially released a 7-inch EP in 1981 (currently unavailable on Amazon) Comrade Motopu, the mysterious archivist who, through digitized vinyl and cassette tapes, as well as donated photos, scanned liner notes, flyers and news releases, has painstakingly agglomerated Hawai‘i rock music and associated miscellany on a magnificent pre-Y2K looking website, has not only shared the Squids’ EP (featuring “Tourist Riot,” “‘Love Theme’ From Surfer Boy,” “In,” and “Rio”), but what is also listed as Duganopacalypse,  a fan compilation with even more twisted tunes: “Medicine,” “Sexy,” “Head in the Sand,” the ska-soaked “New Girl in Town,” their partially awful, mostly spectacular “Cool Clear Water,” and “Pretty Vacant (with Dugan),” the Never Mind the Bullocks classic with a seemingly hated fan on the inarticulate vocals. I only pray that Comrade Motopu continues documenting this underhand era of Pacific rock music of the late Seventies to early Nineties--the site is a treasure, and more words about the bands highlighted on comrademotopu.com (the Vacuum and Yahweh’s Mistake, for instance) will be coming soon.

The Squids began as a concept by guitarist Beano Shots in 1979, later to take shape as a full-fledged human/cephalopod music group with members Kit and Gerry Ebersbach, Dave Trubitt, and Frank Orall. Those of us who sweatily flailed our way through a booze-and-drug bender on the strobe-lit (at least, as it appeared then) dance floor of the Wave Waikiki between the hours of 2 AM and 4 AM when all the other bars closed down would be surprised to learn that the now-demolished former nightclub, a hub for the scraped-out, after-hours husks operated by the residual combustion of chemicals in their blacked-out reptilian brains, once hosted the edgy Squids as the house band, presumably when the going-out crowd still had an affinity for fun, strong music, and did not simply seek to propel themselves upon the the mechanized beats and soulless zombie tracks initiated by a faceless button masher, in hopes that they would be manipulated, by the end of the night, into some loveless fuck with a nobody. 

Of the Squids’ stage show, we have but one recorded example of the band live in concert: a faithful interpretation of the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant,” in which the players serve as back-up band for a loyal heckler known only as “Dugan.” Having taken (jokingly) enough shit from Dugan, the band harasses him into sing-shouting the song. The performance captures the “fuck you” sentiment of “Pretty Vacant” with a primitive abandon that almost makes the original seem like a Monkees’ tune. It also portrays a punk rock scene less enlightened to the diverse lifestyles it later engendered, when “dick sucking” was applied exclusively as a pejorative.

The same pissed-off adrenalin leads off the the 1981 EP in “Tourist Riot,” an apocalyptic narrative of that species of traveler compelled to hammer a new experience into a predetermined mold that will establish an appropriate backdrop to their social media posts. The tourists here burn hotels and smash out windows when their expectations aren’t suitably met--a bad vacation in which they are pushed around and mistreated leads the tourists to murder and mayhem.

“Tourist Riot” lays out the Squids’ music aspirations right away, especially in the interplay between Beano Shots’s electric guitar and Kit Ebersbach’s keyboards, which morph from forbidding electronic warning tones to psychedelic ghost notes to the replicated sirens of a city on fire, collateral damage in a war between locals and tourists. Following a surprisingly effective bridge that concludes with a shouted “Fuck it, I’m going to New York City!” is an atonal guitar solo reminiscent of Nels Cline asleep at the wheel, redeemed by a more fluid keyboard exploration.

When Jimi Hendrix claimed that “you’ll never hear surf music again” in 1967, he was, through the example of his own transcendent playing on “Third Stone from the Sun,” burying the corpse of that elementary, improvisationally unimaginative rock instrumental with the axe with which he had slew it. To that end, after hearing Jimi Hendrix and all the musical manifestations that took shape from his cosmic residue, it is sometimes hard to take surf music seriously. “‘ Love Theme’ from Surf Boy” comes across as the Squids’ winking parody of the genre, with its reverb, its whammy, its overall melancholy, and its simplicity. That said, there is some sophistication in the song’s structure, as if the wordless tune was more an exercise in technique, an attempt to take stock creatively before reaching out to a farther and stranger place.

On “In,” the guitars and keyboards snarl rabidly toward the same explosive destination, barely kept in check by the talents of the players. Lyrically minimalist, the song’s non-sequiturs slice through the instruments like assembled cut-up style by William S. Burroughs. “Are you losing sense of humor, could be Jesus was only kidding” followed by “are you losing sense of humor, could be Jesus was just a salesman.” These pieces of thoughts unfinished resonate in my head like something close to catchy--to what end, I don’t know. Where the keyboards overmatched the guitars on “Tourist Riot,” on “In” the guitar is locked in and dirty, climaxing in repetitive harmony between the instruments to close out the song.

When I first read the track listing to the 1981 EP, I thought the final song “Rio” would be a rough rendering of the hit video single by near-contemporaries Duran Duran (whose synth-guitar arrangements, though undoubtedly smoother, find relation in the Squids’ overall aesthetic). Instead, “Rio” is an acid commentary on the American Capitalist, represented as a white suit soaked in sweat, and his compulsion to foster vice and iniquity to exotic locales.

I’m not sure whether the fan compilation Duganopacalypse, also available for listening through the Comrade Motopu website, was recorded before, after, or  during the sessions of the 1981 EP. A few tracks lead me to believe that the songwriting and arrangements are from a wiser, more sophisticated band, while other songs seem so apelike in their imitations as to come through as pointless satires, or maybe the explorations of a band trying to find its identity.

In “Medicine,” for instance, the Squids operate under an overpowering B-52′s filter that washes out their uniqueness. Whereas on previous tracks this influence existed only at the fringes of their sound, the singer on “Medicine” channels Fred Schneider on the verse and switches to David Bowie during the bridge. The role-play, though, doesn’t kill the the more interesting aspects of “Medicine”--its guitar lick is inventive and so wormy as to be slightly irritating, and the song’s themes, that one must willingly imbibe “the medicine” to accept the hypocrisies of this “downer world,” resound strongly to anyone who casts their eyes around a crowded room.  

Where the B-52′s references go deep in “Medicine,” Talking Heads emerge in “Sexy,” from David Byrne’s vocal tics to the subtle and swampy “Take Me to the River” vibe. It goes beyond straight homage to cover band territory, but it does emphasize the band’s technical ability to lock into a groove. “New Girl in Town” is a heaping serving of not-completely-warmed-up ska leftovers, a bit misogynist (of its time, but still). “Head in the Sand,” regrettably, could have been the Squids’ crossover pop hit. I say “regrettably” because, even though the song has a point--that the ability of humans to maintain a semblance of happiness is to carefully cultivate the warm fuzz of obliviousness, sacrificing will to fate in the belief that nothing we could do to change anything would matter anyway--the effort seems more calculated than organic, a plastic approximation of the closest this band, given their specific set of skills, could get to a pop crossover hit. The work put into it seems to drain away at some of the dirty magic. It‘s self-conscious in a way that the other songs aren’t.

Finally we have “Cool Clear Water,” what would have been the band’s masterpiece if they’d spent a little more time recording a decent take (the version on the Duganopacalypse almost sounds live, though it could have been laid down in a rehearsal space). This is not the country classic performed by Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash. The Squids’ “Cool Clear Water” is the frightening confession of a soldier recently returned from the war in Vietnam, directed by an angel spirit to mass murder with a shotgun from a tower in town. When the killer is set to be executed, the angel spirit comforts him, tells him his spirit will be redeemed in heaven for “setting the people free.” The unnerving subject matter of “Cool Clear Water” is given sinister shape by the relentless horror-notes of Kit Ebersbach’s organ, the guitar holding down the song’s march toward inevitable nothingness because the bass (normally played with elan by Gerry Ebersbach) is a complete mess (I’m not sure if she hadn't learned the song or if she just showed up at the gig drunk).

As Marc Maron frequently says on his podcast, “there’s no late to the party” anymore, given the the amount of content available to all of us via the digital consciousness that we are now more plugged into than not. But I’ve waited all my life to lose myself in something vital, of the moment, with my eyes and ears and heart present while the thing is taking shape, at its most temporal. I feel that way listening to the Squids. I wish I could have seen them at one of their Wave gigs. I wish I could have had a beer with them afterward, and gushed in the embarrassing way I do about things I love.

#freshlisten #thesquids #honolulu #1981ep

[strawberryspooktacular]

STRAWBERRY SPOOKTOBER WRAP UP

To wrap up Strawberry Spooktober, we have selected our best pair picks sorted into the best, the worst and so bad it’s good. We also chose 3 personal favourites and a few Honorable mentions. V stands for Vic N stands for Nic

Pair favourites:

Good:

The Ritual (Before: 9.5, After: 10.5)

V: I liked the monster and the design of said monster, but I really liked the fact that the monster was a monster of guilt, or rather a monster that fed on guilt. Being Native, specifically Cherokee, this monster really like, brought my ancestors up from the dead and I immediately wanted to worship the monster.

N: This movie was atmospheric, it had a definite link to Norse mythology and the runes on the house and trees were accurate. It was an interesting and different idea of a horror movie based on Norse mythology. The only downside was their lack of knowing directions, THE SUN IS IN THE WEST OR THE EAST. 

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (Before: 9.5, After: 10.5)

V: I liked the hillbillies and the way the college kids all died. Even if that’s an awful thing to say.

N: This movie was a comedy horror which is always a favourite genre to mix. The twist of the classic hillbillies being the protagonists and the college kids being the antagonists makes for amazing hyjinx. Chad the villain was 100% terrifying and creepy while Tucker and Dale made for compelling unlikely heroes

Mandy  (Before: 9, After: 10.5)

V: NIC CAGE GOES BATSHIT INSANE AND KILLS A LOT OF CULTISTS. AND THERE WAS A PENIS ON THE SCREEN FOR WAY TOO LONG. 10/10 WOULD RECOMMEND. 

N: Mandy is an insane look through the eyes of a mad man. Nicolas Cage does LSD in the woods and is attacked by LSD bikers and cultists. It’s funny and insane, the visuals are great and the funny bits are hilarious.

So Bad It’s Good:

Tremors  (Before: 9.5, After: 9.5)

V: Kevin Bacon’s Ass, especially in those Jeans™️. Being from Oklahoma, this movie actually really scared me when I first watched it (because it takes place like an hour and a half drive from me) and rewatching it reminded me of the first time I watched it with my Grandpa.  

N: A delightfully 90s film, so 90s it might as well be singing Smash Mouth. A younger Kevin Bacon plays an amazing character and the pure idea of the movie was amazing. The only problem was the slightly anti climactic ending. 

Sleepwalkers  (Before: 8.5, After: 8)

V: I loved the cats (and the actors) and I kind of loved the monsters, but not the design. They could have done the design of the monsters much better in my opinion. 

N: A look into one of the more strange movies of the Steven King franchise. The concept of the monsters was good but the execution was lacking. However, the movie has some funny moment and some incredible animal actors, particularly Clovis the cat.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Before: 8, After: 8)

V: I loved the 70s feel of the entire movie and the insanity of the whole movie, but the abuse of antiques and instruments really hurt me. 

N: This movie captures the feels of 70s horror movies perfectly. Really the movie is made to be corny and so bad it’s good. Leather face was fun and weirdly relatable but the sheriff was creepy, although he was made to be that way.

The Worst™️:

Silence of the Lambs  (Before: 6.5, After: 6.5)

V: I really didn’t like this movie. It gave me really bad anxiety for some reason and even now, I’m not sure why it happened. I did like the characters and the actors’ take on the characters. 

N: This movie was good in its plot and main characters. Hannibal and Buffalo Bill are especially creepy and a perfect snapshot of a psychotic mind. However many of the characters felt under developed, such as the creepy 

28 Days Later  (Before: 8, After: 4.5)

V: This movie was just awful. The zombies didn’t really make sense and acted more like humans instead of actual zombies. And we didn’t even see the zombies that much because there were only like 10 zombies. However I did like the actor playing the chained up zombie. 

N: This movie was strange, it felt like three separate themed movies pushed into one. The beginning of the movie was a classic zombie movie set in London, then it turned into a family fun road trip before ending on a dystopian after apocalypse movie. The music never fit any part of this movie, the main character turned into a ninja 5 days after waking from a coma, there were 10 zombies in the last hour of the movie and they acted like humans. Also IT RAINED ONCE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE, SET IN ENGLAND. 

The Borderlands  (Before: 7.5, After: 5)

V: THE ASSHOLE OF THE CHURCH; how did that ending fit into the movie? I did like Deacon and Grey, and the setting of the movie itself was good. I did like that for being a found-footage film, the video wasn’t shaky.

N: This movie started well, this movie actually was a good movie for the majority of the running time. The characters were well developed and well balanced in humour and seriousness, the setting was pretty and it was a different take on a found footage movie. HOWEVER THE ENDING WAS TERRIBLE, CONFUSING AND OUTRIGHT WRONG.

Vic’s Picks:

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark  (Before: 9, After: 10)

I really enjoyed the monster designs and the fact that at least one of the monster’s actors was actually doing the stunts that are in the movie. I loved that they didn’t make the ending sad, like they could have, but they gave the characters a happy ending after all the nonsense they went through.

As Above So Below  (Before: 7, After: 9)

I wasn’t expecting this movie to be one of my favourites, but it was. I loved the story and the locations that they filmed at and the characters. I wasn’t a huge fan of the jumpscares, but the ones they did have weren’t unnecessary.  

My Bloody Valentine  (Before: 9, After: 10)

I love Jensen Ackles and I loved the twist ending. The 3D was also really well done and hilarious to watch in 2D, because it didn’t really work as well as if we had watched it in 3D. I do have to say that the villain design was terrifying and I did enjoy hearing my History major girlfriend geek out about coal mines. 

Nic’s Picks:

The Pyramid  (Before: 9, After: 10)

This movie was a different take on the Egyptain pyramid horror movie, not focusing on the classic mummy but instead on Egyptain mythology, specifically the gods and the journey to the underworld. The father and daughter relationship was well developed and the found footage format was given up to ensure that important scenes were captured well toward the end. And it was cute to see my girlfriend geek out on the Egyptain gods.

Trick r Treat  (Before: 10, After: 10)

Four different movies about a horror filled Halloween night, all linked together in the end and done well. Each story was unique with its own twists and amazing monsters. The children in this movie were adorable, even the evil one.

Troll Hunter  (Before: 10, After: 10)

A Norwegian horror movie in a food footage style but told well through the eyes of college students doing a report for a project. Hans, the troll hunter they follow, is wonderful in his grouchy demeanor of a man worn with the world. The trolls themselves were wonderful in their lore and the use of CGI.

Honorable Mentions:

Grave Encounters  (Before: 8, After: 9)

V: Surprisingly, I really liked the jumpscares in this movie.

N: A found footage movie set in an abandoned asylum with a lot of good jumpscares and a creepy atmosphere overall.

Apostle  (Before: 8.25, After: 8)

V: I really liked Micheal Sheen in this movie and I really liked the cult, before they started killing people.

N: A cult centred horror movie set on a small island, Micheal Sheen is always good and the monster design was incredible but the movie was a little slow to start with some plot holes.

Dog Soldiers  (Before: 9, After: 9)

V: The werewolves were so beautifully designed and I really liked the story and the actors themselves, ESPECIALLY THE DOG ACTOR. 

N: A werewolf horror movie set in scotland with great characters, well designed werewolves and THE BEST DOG.

Joy Ride  (Before: 8.5, After: 9)

V: The truckers and the whole concept of this crazy journey that the characters take throughout the movie was really good.

N: A very American horror film set around a very creepy truck driver that relies on atmosphere and actual threat rather that jumpscares. And Jim Beaver is always a plus.

Thirteen Ghosts  (Before: 7, After: 9)

V: I loved Dennis and the makeup was well done. 

N: A ghostly horror movie set around a strange mansion and a ritual, the make was done well and the characters, particularly Dennis and Maggie, were well developed and fun.

Puppet Master  (Before: 6.5, After: 8.25)

V: Cuddly Bear was great, the actors were great, and the cast was diverse. 

N: This movie had well designed scary puppets, good physical effects and a great cast of characters.

Deep Blue Sea  (Before: 9, After: 9.5)

V: The sharks were beautiful and I loved that the sharks had a reason for attacking instead of just attacking for the sake of attacking.

N: A different take on shark horror movie with Samuel L Jackson and LL Cool J as amazing characters with some incredible physical effects.

Winchester  (Before: 7.5, After: 9.5)

V: I really liked the costume and makeup design for this movie. 

N: A movie centred around a real ghostly horror story and house with amazing effects and a great cast with developed characters

Don’t Knock Twice  (Before: 6.5, After: 8.5)

V: The ending was a huge twist, the monster design was beautiful, and the actors were great at setting the scene for the scary things to happen.

N: A Welsh horror movie with a well written story, great cast with a good range of emotions, a lot of terrifying jumpscares, a good monster design and a twist ending.

#spoilers #horror movies #Gays watch films #Strawberry spooktober #october

[fenrirlives]

So after getting some feedback here and from some gacha folks on discord, the overall picture I’m seeing here is that people had a much larger problem with the way Minase wrote a lot of the servants and their interactions than the concept of Agartha in general. I also see alot of people base their dislike on the JP version, which I can’t really comment on because I don’t speak the language and I’m not a fan of basing opinions on possibly biased translations for or against the subject matter

tl;dr, I liked it a good deal! Hated the repetitive dialogue, but the blended fictional worlds, Megalos, and a bunch of other things were really to my liking! I view it as a cool singularity with a sloppy ending and sloppier dialogue. Not as good as Shinjuku, but leagues better than Septem, London, or Orleans on my chart.

also as far as villain servants go, Columbus goes in my “What a douche, I love em!” shelf of fame right next to Mebd and Teach. I mean look at this dude!

Truly Rider is best servant class in all respects! (also his artist is great go follow!)

Addressing the elephant in the room first, I was really confused at the whole misogyny complaints. I saw a few people who found the tyrants to be sexist in concept, while others took more issue with Fergus’ interaction with Scheherazade, or how Fergus as a character was treated overall. 

I don’t imagine there are THAT many people who see the kingdoms as the problem, as they never came off as a commentary on gender to begin with, and context shows that they wouldn’t even work as commentary since all aspects of them are either A) fabricated in regards to the non servants, or B) altered by Scheherazade’s Noble Phantasm in regards to actual servants. If anyone saw them as the writer’s take on gender roles, I think it’s unintended.

People taking umbrage with Fergus and Sche, I can understand a little more, as alot of that is a symptom of the repetitive dialogue that plagues this whole singularity. Fergus’ message near the end is one that I agree with (living in constant fear of death isn’t living at all, and using your trauma as an excuse to generalize or hurt other people is unacceptable), and I was a big fan of how the end of his quest to become a good king is realizing he’s just not meant to be one.

 The thing is, character arcs are carried by their dialogue, and having Fergy either repeat the same crap about training/not hitting women or break the pace of a scene to internally monologue about the philosophy of a kingdom really did no favors. I also wished that his revelation about there being strong women was something someone else told him instead of something he just randomly remembers when the time is convenient, because that makes his whole “younger self” aspect kind of meaningless outside of not letting him be playable. Medea and Medusa lily were far better examples of how one goes about writing these younger servants and their relation to the knowledge of their future selves.

 I think it would’ve worked better to use Adult Fergus instead, and have him show new levels of discomfort both with the situation in Argartha, and with his own behavior when first interacting with Sche (thereby betraying her expectations and reason for summoning him by actually being more thoughtful and reserved than she initially expected) . Maybe have him focus more on male camaraderie with Columbus and the resistance than sleeping with women, as I don’t imagine he’d have much interest in cell dividing zombies with fabricated personalities, even if he doesn’t know that’s what they are yet!

Now, Scheherazade is actually my favorite character from this singularity besides Wu. I love stories that have trauma & behavior developed from trauma (rather than principle built upon trauma) as an antagonistic force. Having to perfect your craft of storytelling to survive for over 2 and a half years while also suffering abuse and captivity is nothing short of awful, and the fact that this attracts the Demon Pillar to her and allows them to work together is really interesting.

 I did dislike the fact that she seemed more affected by her infatuation with Fergus than his encouragement to find strength and pride in her storytelling, and see her nature as a heroic spirit as a boon to it, rather than something to fear. It feels like a big flaw of her character in FGO, which is that DW can’t decide if they want her to be a shivering leaf that hates fighting, or a sly beauty that subverts authority with her tales. Ideally these two aspects should be combined, but it comes across as inconsistent since there’s no solid in-between to give that transition more nuance. 

That being said, I think the folks that label Fergus’ speech as inherently sexist are kinda missing the forest for the trees. No amount of headcanon or fan interpretation changes that he’s a character highly motivated by carnal instinct, and the fact that it’s the lense through which he tries to argue against Scheherazade’s viewpoint is pretty consistent, though the afore mentioned issues with his dialogue makes his sudden shift back to being horny on main jarring and could be fixed by him always being adult Fergus. I can at least appreciate that the story brings up the clumsiness of his words and that even if they get the message across, the flaw in delivery means that Scheherazade will not indulge him on his terms, even if she’s grown just a tiny bit out of her old mindset (plus everyone calls him out so it’s not like his attitude is treated as being “good”, just that it’s not all there is to him). Bottom line I love both those characters, and Agartha left them both in a place where I’d love to see more about them and their relationship explored!

Drake/Dahut was unremarkable (though I was a huge fan of the character design, and I wish DW would make that a skin for Drake). The concept of Ys and her being a creepy rapist/murderer using Drake as her puppet was interesting, but she really didn’t get screen time needed to do anything with that. Wu Zetian on the other hand, I felt was really fun!

I would’ve liked to see her more before the confrontation while we were in the Nightless city, but her speech about working her way up from nothing to becoming a ruler through sheer tenacity, contrasted against the lady that tries SO hard not to let it show that she likes being doted on really clicked with me. All in all, she definitely swiped Gorgon’s spot as the 4 star servant I’m gonna use that ticket on later in the year!

Penthesilea and Megalos had the highlight of the singularity. Nothing was cooler than fighting a bunch of Amazons as those two clashed overhead, and despite almost losing that fight due to a string of Penthesilea’s intrusions hitting my team, I actually wish they did more damage at this point because I wouldn’t even be mad (fyi Colombus actually got killed by Penth during the Megalos fight and I couldn’t stop laughing).

Now if we’re talking about parts of Agartha I absolutely hated, that’s Phenex with a bullet! Besides his bossfight being the most drawn out and irritating thing ever, the fact that both him and the Pillar in Shinjuku don’t fight us in their more humanoid form feels like such a waste. These are supposed to be 4 (5 counting ccc) Pillars that had enough independence gained to run away from Goetia, so the fact that they still look like pillars and never become those human forms when we fight them seems like a real dropped ball here when it comes to visual storytelling and Story/gameplay integration.Also, after how radical Shinjuku’s final fight was, Agartha really didn’t do much to sell Caladbolg finally going off in the middle of the fight (the poison of Wu’s NP was a nice touch at least!)

so yeah, I had quite a few problems here, but I always regard the art and media I consume on a component basis, and for me, the lows here really couldn’t beat out the fact that Agartha was this really cool combination of fabricated settings with tyrannical rulers facing off against a villain masquerading as a revolutionary hero, with a Nightmare monster appearing anywhere at any time, and our heroes seeking to find out which of these figures was the one truly responsible. 

This was always the strength of the Remnants imo, taking looser concepts that normally don’t fly in Nasuverse fiction, and using it to twist the rules of servants through singularities in a way the original seven didn’t outside of Camelot and Babylonia. It wasn’t as great as those two by a long shot, but at the end of the day, It’s left me quite excited for Shimosa, which I’ve been told is the hypest Pseudo Singularity out of the bunch. 

It sucks that this singularity gets such a bad rap when it has so many cool and interesting things in it, but if people dislike something, then there’s nothing for it. As for me, I’d give it a B- on an F to S scale, with Camelot still sitting at the absolute top for me. Anyway, Happy 4th of July tomorrow if you celebrate it, and here’s to EoR 3 and Shirou eventually getting in the game (lmao nope)

#Big opinion words #no hard feelings here if you disagree! #I wish Scheherazade was higher tier man #I wuv her lots #Also Hydras are annoying and I wish something else dropped that Wine dawg

[lacquerware]

Cy Girls is a PlayStation 2 game

Some say it’s the most mediocre fragments of pop culture that end up defining each era, because they’re little more than amalgams of the flavors of the day, while the best works draw from some greater vision and seem to be immune to time. I don’t think it’s quite that simple. True, there are games like Shadow of the Colossus, whicheven in 2005 felt like it was stuck on the wrong hardware and stands out now as a timeless classic. But then you’ve got Super Mario Bros. 3, which is quintessentially NES despite being one of the NES library’s best-aged titles. So I guess it’s more case-by-case.

In the case of Cy Girls, you may find yourself having a hardcore flashback or two to the age of frosty tips, Fatboy Slim, and Matrix sequels, because CG is pure early 2000s chaff. I can’t think of another game that so shamelessly mashes together so many momentary fads. Bullet time? Check. Cover shooting? Check, and it’s awful. Wall running? Stylish kill screens? “Cyber” aesthetic? CHEX MIX. Plus it’s forged out of the table scraps of Metal Gear Solid 2, so the entire game looks like someone doing a comedic impression of the PS2.

↑ Wall-running was one of the more bizarre fads of the PS2 era, featured in games like Shinobi, Devil May Cry 2, Ninja Gaiden (on the Xbox), Bujingai, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Cy Girls isn’t a good game—the environments are boring, it feels crummy in your hands, the mission objectives are a crash course in how not to design mission objectives—but it exemplifies the ubiquity of the third-person character action genre and the freedom developers had to experiment during the PS2 era. It’s astounding now to fathom a time when something like CG could survive past the earliest phase of conception, let alone make it to market. It has one good idea (more on that later), lacks even basic competency in several areas, and yet is also so big that it spans two discs. It’s both bad and big. Double-disc titles had almost gone extinct thanks to the PS2’s DVD tech, but somehow Konami deemed Cy Girls, agame that is nothing but formulaic tropes, the one which warranted breaking form. I can only theorize that Cy Girls’ co-creator, the toy megacorp Takara, was donating heavily to the cause.

↑ A Cool Girl I found on Google.

To the game’s credit, the best thing about Cy Girls is its main conceit: a virtual, one-for-one cyberspace replica of the real world called “Cy-D.” Both protagonists have a rare gene that lets them “dive” into Cy-D without the typical need for a virtual avatar; they can simply upload their brains or something. They do this via enormous 1940s-style computer terminals scattered throughout the game. A slick FMV commences, and they emerge in a world of neon wireframes and particle effects and malevolent abstract objects. 

It’s a pretty brazen invocation of Tron,and that’s just fine by me. It is inherently enjoyable to occupy Cy-D with its gentle mood lighting and soothing lounge soundtrack. You’re also much more powerful in Cy-D than in the real world, thanks to a long list of “Skills” found over the course of the game. You input these via different sequences of face buttons, an interface I think meant to evoke the feeling of entering and executing a string of code. Simple as it is, it works pretty well, and really helps set the Cy-D activities apart from the banal horseshit of the real world. The Skills themselves range from hollow gatekeeping mechanics (“use this Skill to flick the switch that only exists to give this Skill a purpose!”) to cool core abilities, like a soaring high jump, a flashy dash move, and a stockable projectile attack. You also innately have the ability to bust a tatsumaki-senpûkyakuand a few other martial arts moves. 

Mostly, though, Cy-D time is spent “downloading” readable files, eavesdropping on avatars, and solving puzzles. You can only stay in Cy-D for ten minutes or you go crazy and die, so occasionally it turns into a race to find the right file or hack the right switch and dive out before the clock runs out. These were by far the most exhilarating moments of Cy Girls (especially one occasion where I escaped with literally one second to spare). It’s a cheap thrill, but overall I found the Cy-D stuff very charming and wished they would’ve sent me there more.

Unfortunately you spend much more time in the physical world, which is rarely any fun. While Cy-D offered fantastic light shows and clear, urgent tasks in confined but densely populated spaces, the physical-world stages are sprawling labyrinths of drab, box-shaped rooms filled with drab boxes. Mission objectives are often vague, the map only sometimes gives you an objective waypoint, and puzzles are often nonsensical, unreasonably laborious, or both. There are no good block-pushing puzzles in gaming, but Cy Girls contains the uncontestable worst block-pushing puzzle in history. Even trying to explain why it’s so bad would be too tedious to bother, but I’ll just say it took multiple hours to even set it up, and another half-hour to execute even after looking up the solution in a FAQ.

Each of the two discs in Cy Girls is a separate campaign starring a different Cy Girl—there’s Ice, the gunslinger, and Aska, a katana-swinging ninja. I played the Aska campaign, which often felt like it was taking notes from Tenchu—you have a comically huge inventory of ninja tools, including a shamelessly similar grappling hook and several functionally redundant projectiles, but unlike Tenchu the game basically never challenges you enough to encourage any thoughtful strategy or discernment. Aska can perform cinematic insta-kills simply by jumping before an attack or by attacking when close to a group of two or more enemies, so she can get through almost any encounter by charging straight in. It’s like playingTenchuif you could stealth kill without being stealthy. That could make for some fun power-fantasy escapism were the mission objectives not so elusive or the enemies infinitely respawning. Even Aska’s more spectacular kills get really old after you’ve aimlessly scoured the entire map a third time.

At some point you take a step back and realize that the bulk of Cy Girlsis just an indiscriminate list of features from other PS2-era games. Its back-of-box text should read, “It sure is a PS2 game!”—even on the GameCube version. Instead, it says “Fight terrorism from deep caves to outer space.” Fine.

Anyway, it’s hard to recommend anyone subject themselves to Cy Girls, but there’s a timestamped charm to it I can’t seem to deny. What it lacks in entertainment value it makes up for as a conversation piece, and that earns it a permanent place on my shelf.

Weirdly, a bit of post-credits text confirms there was a sequel in the works by the name "Beyond the 8th Dimension," which was also the subtitle of '80s cult flick Buckaroo Banzai. I must know more.

#cy girls #gaming #games #video games #videogames #gamming #retro #throwback #ps2 #playstation 2 #underrated #hidden gems #konami #aska #review #reflections #criticism #lacquerware

[allykat4416]

Meme Trip 2k19, Pt. 1

Dates: May 16 and 17th

Park: Kings Island in Mason, Ohio 

I didn’t make trip reports for my second meme-trip in August of 2018. At the time, I thought I was doing myself a favor. Now, I incredibly regret not sharing that stuff straight away. I missed the chance to talk about my first visits to two parks that have very unique spots in my life. The first of those, obviously, is Six Flags New England, a park I’d been dying to go to because of one certain Superman. {And I did leave Massachusetts as a Super Stan.} The other of these parks is Kings Island.

Kings Island and I have a long, storied history filled with intense emotions. Like Carowinds, a lot of my plans to visit KI fell dead along the way— Dad didn’t win the tickets, I didn’t like my classmates enough to justify the trip, I wasn’t able to make the drive up, etc. It’s a park that means a lot to my dad, and he took my mom there when she came to meet his family for the first time. He was one of the first riders of Beast, there for her birthday as a gift for his own.

I cried in 2018 because I didn’t want it to be my home park when I thought I would be going to Northern Kentucky University. I used to crusade hard as hell for KI to never get a giga. The park gave me the largest heebie-jeebies when I visited in August of 2018. I don’t think I feel emotions as intensely for theme parks as some of my comrades, but Kings Island is one of those parks that almost makes me believe I can.

It was a rainy Thursday after a day of nothing but car-riding [and driving for Casie, bless her soul] when we pulled up into the parking lot. We saw that infamous “HELL IS REAL” billboard about an hour out, and I found it quite ironic. For a park that’s been so full of death and negative energy, it was fitting that that’s where we saw the iconic sign.

When we got into the park, both of the Not-Evil Wooden Coasters [NEWC, as it is] were down. We didn’t know why regarding Beast, but we did find out later that Mystic was struggling from electrical issues that day. We liked to think they were conspiring to make the 2020 giga not suck and help everyone else with half a soul say “fuck off” to Steve. Enemy of the enemy is my friend and whatnot.

Instead, we decided to get a snake in our boot since we were already in Rivertown. Diamondback has always been a solid ride—I maintain that B&M hypers are like ordering chicken tenders at a new restaurant because it’s very, very hard to mess them up and even 232 is fun when the trims don’t hit—but she was running really well that day. Diamondback ended up being our final ride of the day in the pouring rain. Rain at 80 mph doesn’t feel very great, but it was a laugh riot and worth it. I keep meaning to get a front-row ride on this, but the back row is such a tantalizing experience that I can’t quite pull myself away from it.

As far as B&M hypers go (and I’m not counting Fury), Diamondback is now my favorite. At any other park, it would probably be my second favorite in the overall roster, but Snek is actually my third at KI because of the aforementioned NEWCs. I wish we were able to get a ride in the following day, but Coasterstock had her queues slammed. Oh well.

After that, we headed over to see our favorite little anxiety boy, Flight of Fear. I don’t get the hate these rides receive. I find both this and his twin at KD to be fine, upstanding rides that are always worth at least one lap when I go. It’s one of those rare rides where stopping on the MCBR actually works in its favor. We were also assigned to the front row, which gives me the biggest uwus. We came up with a really cool character concept if Orion/Polaris sucks in the queue for FOF, and even if the ride is underwhelming, we’re happy Felix has a vaguely-powerful ally. There’s not a whole lot else about FOF to say- the transitions were nice and whippy, the little alien as you pull into the exit station is adorable, and I like the enclosure of it. I hope FOF is around for a nice long while.

(Obligatory RIP Firehawk comment here as well. Thanks for being a good flyer. Piss off, Nighthawk.)

Since it was the only wooden coaster open, it’s time to talk about Racer. I don’t want to talk about Racer. But sadly, I have to talk about Racer. Everything about this ride feels wrong- the aerial view of the turnarounds, the tunnels on the brake runs, the way almost literally everyone else universally adores this ride… Racer holds a lot of energy, and all of it is cryptic. It makes me wish I’d ridden Thunder Road, because Rebel Yell does not have this sense of permanent creeping dread. Ride-wise, Racer is inoffensive. But the vibe that ride gives me isn’t good. At all. We rode twice, red and blue. We raced Deb, Kat, and Brandon while in red and lost. We were the only people on red train, but we did not feel alone in the worst possible way. We won when we rode blue to peek at construction. The cheering in the tunnels had us fucked up.

I hate that, if there are any personifications that have a chance of being real, it’s most likely Abraham and Thaddeus. I’ve never been so wrong about a coaster’s personification before I rode it in my life.

We needed an exorcism after that ride on blue train, so we went to Banshee next. Again, while not my favorite invert, I don’t understand why so many people seem to hate this ride. I think a B&M invert complements their park nicely, and that slow roll at the end is nothing short of fire-hot. It’s also tons of fun to flip off Outpost 5 while you’re on it. It’s what Brynn would want us to do. Plus, missing the pre-drop never fails to give me butterflies! I do wish they had played the audio scream before we dropped though.

We got to ride this with one of our Insta friends, Wild, and we were both really happy to see her. She’s a great kid, and Banshee is a fun ride. We love our pastel goth icon, and we love our Junkrat Stan of a little sister. We also befriended a Banshee ride operator, and their group chat is called “Banshee’s Hot Topic” and that makes me want to cry in a good way.

Bat is awful in the sense that it breaks my heart. Yes, Tanner as a character is very sad (especially so in the Project Shooting Star universe), but it always hammers home how badly I miss Big Bad Wolf. What I’d give for one last ride on the Rhine with my lupine friend… Bat’s in a beautiful area, but that queue makes me feel like I’m at Camp Crystal Lake and Jason’s about to have some fun. Also, can we all say how much we hate seeing SOB’s old station? Because I hate that! A lot!!

Again. Like Racer, Bat as a ride is objectively inoffensive. But there’s so much energy around it, and I’m not sure if it’s residual garbage leftover from Son, the gunpowder factory, and the safari or what. Bat feels so detached from the rest of the park, but I don’t think there’s a more perfect place than KI for a ride that feels this full of sorrow.

Vortex was a one-and-done for us after some sinfully delicious blue ice cream, but I do admit it was better in the rain. The drop actually provided some decent air, and while the transitions are pretty janky, it’s an Arrow from the 80s. You can’t go into it expecting something butter smooth like B&M. That isn’t fair. It’s still not my favorite Arrow looper, and it wasn’t even my favorite one of this trip, but I do think I might have judged it a tad too harshly before. Like FOF, there isn’t much else to say about this ride.

The people we met also made the day phenomenal! Wild, Brandon, Kat, Debra…this one’s for you. I raise my Raisin’ Cane’s tea to ya’ll, stay funky and ride on.

But one day at that cryptic-ass park is never enough, shit’s like Hotel California. Being gluttons for punishment, we returned to Cursed Island.

Kings Island is so different in bright sunshine. It almost feels like a normal amusement park. Almost. We went for the first couple of hours, since Coasterstock people were there and it was a Friday on top of that. It was also hot as a ghost pepper outside. I’m still really sad we missed Tristin and Plummy!! Maybe next time. We did, however, finally get to meet Stephanie in real-life, and she’s pretty chill. We did the dumbest shit for our picture. However, I’m 99% sure the ride operator said “Enjoy your ride on Son of Beast!” when she was with us and I heavily dislike that.

We’d done basically everything else that we had wanted to the day prior. We already had the credits for Backlot, Invertigo, and Adventure Express, and none of those really warranted waiting in the lines. Vortex and Bat had been ridden already this visit. We have mad love for Banshee, FOF, and Diamondback, but those waits were gnarly. We didn’t want to even look at Racer again, let alone ride it. So now, we went to the NEWCs.  

Since Five is dead, we rode Beast three times that morning. She was over her alcoholic shitfit, I suppose, and was running very well. Brandon called Beast a good noodle. From a ride standpoint, you can make the case that until that final helix, Beast doesn’t do very much. I personally like how it’s a bit more speed-oriented, but I understand why some others might not. Like Boulder Dash, I think a lot of the ride experience comes from the scenery. I also think knowing Beast’s history makes it the marvel it is. We got some pretty good air on the first hill after the main drop, and that helix is always so damn scary to me. Top 10 coaster moment for sure.

Beast has a TON of energy to it, but unlike Racer or Bat, it isn’t malicious. You may not like Beast, but you WILL respect Beast, you feel? And that energy is why I think Beast will always be my favorite in the park, even over the giga (and especially so if those blueprints are real.) Beast isn’t just a coaster. It’s an experience, and one that makes the park so worth visiting. My only regret is we didn’t get one of those fantastic night-rides.

If those blueprints are real, it’s time to talk about what will most likely still be my second favorite coaster at KI come 2020. Since Thunderhead was my first major coaster, I always have held a soft spot for GCI. And while I do still believe Thunderhead is better, boy howdy do I love Mystic Timbers. It’s a shitshow of a name for a kickass ride. Lines only allowed us to ride once, but we were lucky enough to be assigned to row one. Mystic is definitely better towards the front, I believe. You feel better air there, and while I still don’t think MyTi’s got ejector, it’s stronger floater in the front. (The truck out front played Survivor and I had to scream “WOW I LOVE SIX FLAGS”, so maybe she was just pissy over that.)

I understand why people were disappointed with the shed. Holograms can’t hold a candle when you’re expecting a Verbolten-style drop track. But the shed is cute for what it is, and it’s better than being stacked in the sunshine. We saw the snake scene this time, which is probably my favorite since Tatzelwurm doesn’t even exist in PSS universe anymore. Killer Cat was the best shed scene, but snakes will do.

Also, fun fact about Mystic. When we visited in October, I kept saying how badly I wanted to hear Bonnie Tyler in the shed. We hear it. Friday, I jokingly went “oh booooy I hope I hear my girl Bonnie again!” Lo and behold, we hit the shed and it plays Total Eclipse of the Heart. I lost my goddamn mind. Mystic Timbers said 80s retro. Hate that name, but man oh man, do I love that ride. We love our GCIs with big tiddys and bad personalities.

We rode the train to snag some pictures of Mystic and Snake Friend, but then we dipped and hit Taco Bell as one does. It was better that way. Kings Island had told us all it wanted to for now, and it let us take our time to mosey to the next park and really digest what we’d seen. We also had the opportunity to meet back up with Bee and spend some time with her since we left!

All in all, KI is such a cursed park. I know saying that makes it sound like I really dislike KI, but that’s not the case. I adore Kings Island BECAUSE it’s so cryptic. Their lineup is solid, and even though we can’t truly judge the giga before it opens, I don’t think it’s going to elevate them any but it won’t necessarily bring the park down. There’s so, so much in Mason to unpack, especially in the months to come. I can’t wait to see them again.

#trip reports #cursed island makes me do the big uwu