#war of the donuts is such a great episode :D

[newlunapastel]

autism be damned the flea can work a donut shop for one day.

#mucha lucha #the flea #buena girl #i was going to post this on my side but whatevs #war of the donuts is such a great episode :D

[ashen-sky]

Personal highlights from...

Red vs Blue The Ultimate Fan Guide

In honor of s19 and the continuation of where s13 left off, here are some highlights from the ultimate fan guide published back in 2015. I've been re-watching the show and it made me want to flip back through the guide. (Everything is sort of in the order it appears in the book, with a few exceptions)

Delta appears as a guide of sorts with fun facts

Caboose's position is listed as "Team Rookie/Occasional Captain/ Church's Best Friend" (it is actually struck out in the book)

He is also the only one listed with the title Captain, appearing as "Private/Captain Michael J. Caboose" (due to Wash "promoting" him, in the canyon on chorus)

Tucker is "Private First Class", Church, Donut, and Simmons are "Private"s, Sarge is listed as a "Colonel" under rank (the other Red's and Blue's ranks appears with their name while his is under "position"), and Grif is "Minor Junior Private, Negative First Class"

Wash used to be a chronic bed wetter (thanks D)

There's also a six page transcript of his psych eval prior to PF where we find out he injured a commanding officer because he wanted to "send everyone to their deaths", he also put a former bully through a mirror in fifth-grade

Grif is stated to have been assigned to Blood Gulch because he was the only survivor of an alien attack on a colony during the great war, he fell asleep at his post and everyone assumed he was KIA

Donut's position is listed as "On all fours... cleaning Red bade"

Doc's profile is "Doc/ O'Malley" and the whole thing lists both their interests, i.e "Position: Canyon Medic, Galactic Overlord"

Andy's (the bomb) name is "Andrew D. Kaboom"

Sheila and Filss share a page

Tex's notable attributes are "Kicking ass (and nuts), being a mean lady, and resurrection"

The password to unlock the file on Beta that CT left behind was "Allison" (Thanks again D)

York's page comments "Several reports were filed against Agent York claiming he and Agent Carolina had something of a "personal" relationship [...] Freelancer Command was unable to find any proof to support these accusations."

One of his notable attributes is "watching his right side" and his position is "team scoundrel"

Eta and iota (Carolina's AIs) were "fear and happiness"

According to the official time line, Carolina was around 6 when Allison died (Allison died 23 years before Blood Gulch and Carolina was born 29 years before)

Wyoming's real name is Reginald

South Dakota's Status is listed as "Extra Crispy"

Smith once spent two days contemplating in silence what Caboose meant when he said his favorite color was "Happy"

Dr. Grey's position is "(Mad) Doctor", she was considered a prodigy at age 11 when she diagnosed every patient in House M.D. within five minutes of their introduction, and she thinks Grey's Anatomy is "far too trite"

Felix and Locus' names are listed as Unknown in the book, but I do believe their names were revealed in a s14 episode

The counselor advised the director to tell Tex that Alpha was in Blood Gulch to protect him and stop her from investigating the project

Notable Features of Blood Gulch include "Avoid Tucker's Rock at all costs, as it has not been properly sterilized"

BTS from D: The opening shot of Season 6 was created by shooting players moving in different quadrants and combining the shots"

Important events at High Ground, "Washington killed Agent south in cold blood- with a much less cold flamethrower."

Fact from D: "Once a year, Reds and Blues stationed at Rat's Nest still pay tribute to Agent Alabama by sending a flaming mongoose soaring through the night sky."

Donut likes to spend his leisure time in Federal Army Outpost 37, in the jail cells in handcuffs

The statistics pages, 9 pages of stats from number of robots murdered (112) to Church's sniper rifle accuracy (9.3%)

Bow Chicka Bow Wow was first said in season 4, and Simmons never sucked up in season 12, season one had the most "son of a bitch"s at 14 Donut made 32 accidental innuendos, and the odd number of pedals in vehicles was called out on five occasions Tucker has the highest kill count of all reds and blues (counting wash and Tex), at 24 followed by donut at 22 and Tex at 21, Caboose is the lowest at 2 raised by Lopez and 3 and Church at 8 Sarge has threatened/wished death on Grif 56 times, and Donut has nearly died five times Seasons 2 and 9 had the lowest kill counts Carolina had the highest flash back kills at 68 in season ten, and the twins are tied at 23 kills in season nine

Tex's attack to free Alpha was 2 years before Blood Gulch, the great war ended 1 year after Alpha arrived in Blood Gulch and after the Wyoming incident in Blood Gulch (where they tried to kidnap junior), Chorus takes place 5 years after Alpha initially arrived in Blood Gulch

The mission books has adorable illustrations (they look like Caboose's guides from s14)

There's a mindmap for all the Leonard and Allison iterations and they they connect

Sarge has a guide on how to build a robot, scented lube is preferred, along with mad scientist goggles, a cup of baking soda, and seventeen tablespoons of sugar

More silly plans with fun diagrams

Donut's diary, D tells us that Donut washes his underwear on tuesday's

Caboose's Wisdom section on: feelings, relationships, army etiquette (including gems like crayons don't work as bullets. Use markers.), life, and the reds and blues

Simmons made a text based adventure games

BTS from D, the story of Simmons refusing to go to the Vegas Quadrant is a reference to Gus Sorola (Simmons' VA) refusing to go to Las Vegas with the rest of the rvb creators

You can find the case against Sergeant Grif from the reds at rat's Nest (he was selling red team's ammo to Caboose before he was locked up in the brig, Private Jones wore a wire tap to help the red's catch Grif's under the table dealings)

Leonard met Allison in the mess hall during basic training where he pissed off another recruit and Allison had to save his ass (Church was right, Carolina get's her temper from her mom)

I'm Church. private Church. Leonard. Leonard Church." the only thing I cared about in that moment was that she knew my name. She smiled. Her smile could light up solar systems. "Kind of a funny name. Church." "It's Jewish."

I spent the rest of basic chasing after her. In some ways, I never stopped.

Here's hoping non of our beloved idiots die in season 19! I mean, I know Church will be gone, but the others... they deserve a happy ending.

Also I miss the freelancers and AI...

#anime devil's thoughts #red vs blue #project freelancer #rvb #rvb church #rvb tex #rvb tucker #rvb caboose #rvb carolina #rvb wash #agent washington #agent carolina #rvb sarge #rvb simmons #rvb grif #rvb donut #rvb doc #rvb york #agent york #agent texas #rvb o'malley #frank dufresne #rvb delta #rvb alpha #rvb epsilon #yorkalina #chex #church x tex #york x carolina

[cinaed]

Red vs Blue Season 2 Rewatch

Well I'd meant to do my season two rewatch Saturday but was sick most of the weekend. But now I'm feeling well enough to watch and enjoy! 

Aw, I forgot that the first scene of the season is Doc's introduction. 

Church being so done with Caboose and Tucker, and the combination of O'Malley and Caboose means that his threats involve giving Church a birthday present (sure it's Tucker's head, but you know). 

Just imagining Doc's expression as the Blues explain that Church is a ghost and now a ghost in a robot makes me laugh. Also another thing is that the Blues apparently have a Spanish-English dictionary, which somehow the Reds never bothered to get for years. Sorry, Lopez! 

I love that Church actually knows military lingo and it's Tucker and Caboose who are like "???" whenever he tries to be smart in earlier seasons. Also Tucker just being like "Nope, I like my blood on the inside."

God, I forgot that Church went "I can't pronounce Frank, we're calling you Doc." Like..Frank? At least protesting over DuFresne makes a little more sense! Church really does love to mess with people. Also Doc's speech about the differences between being a medic and a doctor remains iconic. "Well, a doctor cures people. A medic just makes them more comfortable.. while they die."

I also forgot that Church just straight shoots Caboose (and actually hit him!) so Doc will go over and help him. Stone cold. "I can't believe he shot me!" "Oh, don't even START Caboose!"

Also love that the Reds have staff meetings, which Grif presumably sleeps through. Though why they all even trusted Grif to carry ammo around, I just don't know. 

And the beginning of the iconic surrender exchanges. Cake, flags (wait no flags), Lopez. Doc turning into a fake hostage. "You don't get anything except humiliation and ridicule!" "We've already got that! What else do you have?"

I forgot that Doc immediately assesses the Red Team, realizes Grif is the least popular of the group, and immediately starts insulting him to curry favor. Speaking of stone cold, like dang, Doc. 

Another iconic scene is Church ragging on Tucker as he wiggles his switch. :D And of course Sarge's amazing code is "drive." He's definitely that guy whose password is Password1235. 

Fun parallels with Donut's "I'm so freaking lost" and Doc's "Help, this Jeep is kidnapping me!" 

Lopez is like a son to Sarge! Sarge loves him so much that he forgives him for turning against him and murdering him. Also Sarge thinking he can fight a machine gun. 

Tucker: "You hardly ever used your legs before anyway. I've never heard of a grown man asking for so many piggy-back rides." Church: "Hey, I already told you: that was for science." And thus canonical piggyback rides were established. 

Bold of Simmons to call someone else Poindexter. 

Everyone thinking Church is shy because he can't turn around. 

Grif using Doc's words against him, and thus a low-key dislike of each other was born. 

Poor Doc. Stuck wandering the wilderness aka the 60 feet or however much space there is between the bases. 

Simmons and Grif squabbling like an old married couple trying to tell the story about the Blues and Doc.

I am usually against love triangles, but the Lopez/Sheila and Sheila/Caboose is so good. 

Caboose having a good idea, except they didn't consider that Lopez would immediately escape.

Ah, the old days when Lopez actually believed in the Red Team. Also will always love "Primary objectives: 1. Fix everything. 2. Hate the orange one. 3. Call mom more often." Lopez calling Sarge father! And then his brutal disillusionment as the Reds almost kill him. 

Simmons loves that machine gun. 

Lopez/Sheila is such a good ship. Love their meet-cute. Of course then Tex steals his body. Also Sheila being into Lopez AND Tex. I'd forgotten about that. 

"Tucker, there's a very fine line between not listening and not caring. I like to think that I walk that line every day of my life." 

Love Tex just rolling with "Sure, I'm a ghost." And now we're finally into the O'Malley plot which is so much fun. 

Sarge's been wanting to get a cyborg on his team for this whole dang war. He's so happy when Simmons becomes a cyborg. Meanwhile Grif and Simmons are united in hating the idea. 

Tex telling embarrassing stories about Leonard's high school years. :D And the beginning of this very weird plan to rescue Caboose from O'Malley. And seeing the inside of people's heads. Or at least Caboose's head, which means a stupid Tucker and a Church who is even more foul-mouthed than Church himself plus he's Caboose's very best friend. Sarge the southern pirate. Donut the girl. Grif's yellow armor. 

Grif sounds almost impressed when he does the 1-2-3 count that he pulled on Simmons and realizes that Donut beat him at his own game. Unfortunately then he promptly gets run over by Sheila.

"Suck it, Blue!" 

I honestly love Lopez's love song to Sheila. He's such a romantic. 

Church is such a nerd. His insults are so bad. 

And the beginning of Doc and O'Malley's saga begins. Their juxtaposition is amazing. 

And the beginning of cyborg Simmons! I still love that even if Simmons instantly insults Grif, the fact remains that he went through surgery to save Grif's life. And he sounds genuinely worried when Grif starts coughing, right up until the point he figures out Grif is using his brand new replacement lungs to smoke. And Simmons trying to get Grif to eat healthy and stop smoking. Good luck with that, Simmons...

Simmons apparently likes to dance, if his fury over the assumed cancelled holiday party is any indication. That's a prompt for someone! 

Donut and Tucker are both the romantics of their team because Tucker thinks Sheila/Lopez is sweet, he just doesn't want to deal with love triangle bullshit.

Meanwhile Lopez and Sheila go on strike for machine rights and I for one support them wholeheartedly. 

Double O Donut! I love Donut and Grif's misadventures together. 

Tucker: "Sheila and Lopez are now considering leaving to form their own robot army. They said no one would dare oppose them." Church: "What?! Did you try to talk them out of it?" Tucker: "No way, I wouldn't dare oppose them!"

Poor Donut. He has no sense of direction. And poor Doc, stuck with O'Malley for company. 

Sarge talking about the entertainment value of being tortured. Sarge...what.... I'm not gonna kinkshame, but I'm definitely gonna think about kinkshaming Sarge. 

Donut and Caboose's truth or dare scene is so cute. They're such a fun dynamic. And I really wonder what Donut was gonna say about the Red Team plans until Church possesses him. And Church is immediately super chill in Donut's head, and wants to just relax and do some arts and crafts. And Donut considers Caboose his friend! And Caboose really likes Private Biscuit.

Church trying to bargain for two robots so he can have Tex back is sweet right in the middle of a ridiculous scene. And Donut being so excited for a sleepover with the Blues. 

I'm just saying, Sarge would make an excellent car salesman the way he's messing with the Blues over these robots. And Donut must be rubbing off on him, heh, because "I've been told my lube jobs are fantastic!" is definitely a Donut line.

Church using military lingo in one episode and then a handful later not understanding military time is such a Church thing.

Finally to the iconic Tucker line of Grif and Simmons. "It's just the same two guys bickering like an old married couple. I've only been listening for like five minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. Why can't they see it?" And Church doesn't even bother to argue.

Tucker discovering Red vs Blue is a lie is still amazing. As in the ironic discussion, which I will always love. 

Donut's sarcasm when he realizes they're leaving him and Sheila behind to guard each base. Man versus tank. Should go well for him.

And set up for season three, which has some of my favorite team ups-- Sarge and Caboose, Grif and Church. That'll also be a fun rewatch. 

Time for the bonus features aka Outtakes, PSAs, and deleted scenes!

Honestly most of the PSAs this season weren't great, but the Fourth of July fireworks safety one did make me laugh. And it does have Donut with his Kiss the Cook apron!

Outtakes were okay, with the running theme of Burnie trying to explain adlibbing to everyone else, haha. Also "Great Caesar's Dressing!" is as catchy as "Great Caesar's Ghost!" And the outtake of Sarge being Hamlet. And Tarzan. And the Grif and Simmons audition tape was fun. 

Deleted scenes! Doc and Vic having some weird chemistry. Calling Doc hot and saying he missed him. And Doc complaining that no one likes him and that someone stole his wallet. Of course then Vic immediately gets mean. The others include Sarge and Grif prepping Simmons for cyborg surgery before Grif gets hurt and they actually go through with it, which mostly includes getting Simmons super drunk.  Sounds about right for Blood Gulch!

#Red vs Blue #rvb rewatch

[theragingpan]

Tag 9 people you’d like to get to know/catch up with

Thank you so much for the tag @ironqueen3000

I’m... kinda freaking out rn since I don’t think I’ve ever been tagged in anything before and @ironqueen3000 is like -- writer god. Goddess. Deity. You get the idea. Go check them out, they’re great. 

3 Ships: Frostiron, Ironhusbands (platonic or romantic, especially MIT era), and Irondad and Spiderson (platonic, no starker). These are subject to change at the drop of a hat. Last month I was obsessed with Pepperony and Ironstrange. 

Last Song: Glitter and Gold. Specifically, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUrAvKNF8s

I LOVE IT! The editing is amazing. :D

Last Movie: Do shows count? If they do, Lucifer (TV) on Netflix. (very, very good. new episodes coming end of August. i’m so excited!!) If they don’t, then The Great Gatsby. (no words. Wow.)

Currently Reading: The Blackthorn Key (Kevin Sands), and (yes I read multiple books at the same time don’t judge me) The War Is Far From Over Now (dontcallmecarrie) Just. fdksjflkasjflkesjfkasj. Amazing. 

Currently Watching: Anne With An E. I’m on the season 3 finale, and I have to say - all the characters are amazing and I love them but they’re also stupid pining lil’ idiots. I love them and I hate them.

Currently Consuming: Donut. (be jealoussss) (it’s delicious and i love it)

Food I’m Craving Right Now: Coffee. But... the weird Starbucks stuff that’s filled with chocolate and whipped cream and other questionable things. 

Tagging: Hmmmm. Um, @insane-sociopath, (hello, if you can see this, you’re great and ily) @supergaygirl07 (hello. :D) @skeleton-hellflame (you pop up in my notifications all the time! thx. your blog is great) @treatsandtrickster (:D :D :D) @worstloki (YOU ALWAYS LEAVE THE BEST PARTS IN THE TAGS) (ilysm) @corvixa, @angxlsgrxce

No pressure <3

[sammyhale]

J2 Orlando Con 2018 Main Panel

 *Watch for panel videos or gifs for context/details :) 

J2 jump onstage. 

Jensen: What are we supposed to do with this flamingo? The boys are playing with the flamingos that were left by Rich in their chairs.

Lots of joking around already :P 

Jared: Are there any Latin teachers here? Jensen: Yeah, I think the Latin teacher section is right over there lol. 

Jared: Happy new year and happy old year. Jensen: That’s not a thing! Jared: It can be our thing *points to audience* it’s the new black! 

Jared is already cracking Jensen up :)

Jared would not kill anybody off an episode he’d write because he knows SPNFamily dearly and knows how pissed off we get. It would be based on Castiel. He would write a script about Cas sitting in the rain. 

Jensen says he would do an episode of an old civil war battle. He would kill off all of the ghosts. “Thanks for the idea, Krip, we’ll take it from here.” 

Jared is telling a story about going to Florida last April for his brother-in-law’s wedding and how he saw an alligator. His kids wanted to see alligators and he was like, there won’t be any but when he was going for a walk, he saw one on the streets lol!

J2 are so giggly and happy <3 

Jensen: “Is south Florida not a part of Florida? Hey, we have parts of Texas we don’t claim.” 

Jensen: There’s certain times when they yell cut where you’re not able to just stop, especially in emotional scenes. 

Jared is sticking his hands in Jensen’s shirt again. “He has pockets in his shirt.” He’s not over it, he loves the shirt pockets lol. 

Jared: My first day at work this year they call action and we say our lines and I couldn’t remember how to act. It was the first time he was able to take a break from Supernatural (over hiatus) and separate show from real life. Jared says things stay for him if he stays in what he calls work mode. 

J2 had five full days of filming this past week. 

Jensen is telling the story about the first day shooting the new season and the crane with the camera swinging around in the car. They did a driving sequence and they have a convo, but while Jensen was driving there’s another vehicle driving around them with the crane. First time doing that. 

Jensen teasing Jared: And genius here can’t remember his lines! 

Prank question: Jared and Jensen actually didn’t do anything to Misha in their last scene they shot together and Misha was so confused lol. “It was one of our better pranks by not doing anything at all.” 

Jensen: “Impromptu is being just us being super idiots.” Jared: Supernatural Jensen: Supernatural super idiots. 

J2 in sync. 

Norton is still messing with Jared by not giving him rimshots for some of his jokes lol. Jared will look at Norton to do it after he makes a joke, Norton doesn’t do it, Jensen repeats what Jared says and then Stephen does it :P

Jensen didn’t always know he was going to become an actor, it came to him naturally. 

Jared always knew he wanted to be an actor. After SPN, though, Jared says on acting: “I’m very, very excited to put this chapter of my life on hold for a while.” 

Would you allow your children to be on the show? Jared: Shep would be evil. A child of mine has been on the show. He won’t give ep info or details, though. 

J2 talking about if their kids wanted to act and that it would have to be something they would want to do and that the industry is difficult. Jensen says if they’re passionate about it, he’d support it. 

Jared about the series finale: I think at least one brother would have to die. 

Jensen says Dean’s heaven would be doing donuts in the Impala in the Hooters parking lot.  

Jared: If Sam and Dean have a heaven it would be helping people. 

Jensen is making funny faces at Jared. Jared: I can see you on the screen lol. 

Do they believe in the supernatural? Jared: I already believed in the supernatural before spn and I’ve had some strange experiences. Tells the haunted hotel in Austin story. 

Jensen: Did it ever occur to you that your wife enjoys watching Dean on TV? Jared: Yes, she’s been a fan of Gilmore Girls *crowd cheers*

Norton finally gave Jared a rimshot and Jared flipped his chair in excitement. The whole room cheered. 

In the last episode, running back to get the last piece of lizard wasn’t in the script. Jensen was like: Dean wouldn’t leave food. 

They attached chicken to a real taxidermy lizard so it looked realistic. 

Fan: I was wondering if Jesus was ever going to be on the show? Jensen points to Jared: Savior of mankind right here. Jared *flips hair* 

JJ wants Jensen to have a princess party and that he should be Ariel “merman” 

Jared’s Disney princess would be Rapunzel. 

Jensen just called Jared a princess. 

Jared is on the floor. 

Jensen to Jared: I think it would be “a whole new world” if you were Jasmine. Jared: I’d say Elsa but my microphone was “Frozen.” 

Favorite pie? Jared whispers to Jensen, they giggle. Fan: An appropriate pie. Norton gives the fan a rimshot lol. 

Jensen’s favorite pie is coconut cream pie. 

Jared: My fav pi is the circumference divided by the radius, which is 3.1415...

Jensen leaned back on Jared and acted like he was going to sleep. 

Jensen says Aurora all sexy. Jared collapses. 

Have Dean and Sam forgiven themselves for the things they’ve done? Jared: They still harbor some sadness for some people they couldn’t save, Charlie for example. But they’re doing good for the world, so they’ve forgiven each other and a major degree of themselves. 

Jensen: I think Dean’s forgiven himself for the things he’s done but it’s hard for him to forgive himself for the things he didn’t do. Not being able to save the people he loved. 

Jensen called Jared Jasmine again :P

Jensen talking about Amara’s gift to Dean, Jared got teary eyed. Jensen to Jared: You okay there big guy? 

Jensen says Dean needed to get the weight of those feelings out during that scene with Mary when he said he hated and loved her. 

Last question!

Jared: Half the funny stuff is scripted, other half is off script (improv). 

They sang happy birthday to Clif. 

J2 fist bump, back tapping, and that’s the end of the panel! 

(Side note: The next convention is VegasCon on Feb 22-25, and I’m attending! :D Unfortunately, that does mean I won’t be able to do my panel summaries like normal. Follow Sil on Twitter here, on Tumblr here, and on YouTube here; she and her team do a great job of providing content from the cons, including panel summaries on Storify and panel videos! Thanks guys :)) 

Info via: Fangasm, Mel, NerdsandBeyond, Tina, Sil’s livetweet list

#j2 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #orlcon #spnorl #panel sum #long post #shpost

[gameboyrocket]

Splatoon: The Outcasts - Episode 6: “Sound and Fury”

           The popular cultural festival of Inkopolis, Splatfest, has come to an end for now. Divided into two teams, the Inklings of the city duked it out for control of the city’s values, pitting those who prefer punctuality on Team Early Bird against their night-loving opposites, Team Night Owl. Ultimately, after 24 hours of nonstop Turf War battles, the side that took more matches was decided, and the Night Owls were declared victorious. The Outcasts, Inkopolis’ newest group of Turf War rookies, was split two-and-two between the factions, so at least half of the team can celebrate the results in the end.

           Through the challenges and trials of the Splatfest, the Outcasts, while having been temporarily separated, seem to have learned from the experience – Amber, the team captain, has a newfound positivity about her future as a leader; André, the gigantic brawler, has finally reconciled with one of his former teammates on Team Spice Splat; and Marjani and Felicity, the team’s abrasive junkie and her straight-arrow counterpart, have grown closer together and truly become friends. The team, which usually struggles to work together long enough to play the sport, have all been given a new outlook by recent events, and their spirits are finally lifting.

           With the nonstop clamor of the Splatfest having finally died down with the closing ceremonies last night, the Outcasts are regrouping for lunch at their usual hangout, Café Cardamari, along with Marjani’s younger brother, Turf War DJ and habitual flirt Dodge. After spending the previous day playing Turf War while divided between the two sides, they’re all hoping to catch up with each other and discuss the happenings of the festival. The team still has a lot of room to grow, however, and today, the spotlight shines on two of its members who only rarely make an effort to get along with each other, and are about to learn that they have more in common than they’re ready to admit…

SPLATOON: THE OUTCASTS

Episode 6: “Sound and Fury”

           “So Jolokia and I had these guys backed into the corner, right? And Lissy lines up the shot…” Marjani held up her arms as if looking down the sights of a Charger, before mimicking the motion of the recoil of firing, “And I swear, she takes out both of them!” Felicity blushed and giggled. “I keep telling you, Marjie, you got one of them just before I fired,” she insisted. “Sure didn’t seem like it where I was standing,” argued Marjani.

           “You think maybe it was a stray ink bullet from your Splatling?” asked Amber, “Slight shot deviation could account for thinking it wasn’t your ink that did it.” “I’m tellin’ you, Lissy shot through the first guy and hit the second!” Marjani asserted. “Could’ve been Jolokia, too,” added Dodge through a mouthful of donut. “She wasn’t close enough to them!” Marjani maintained, “Why doesn’t anyone fuckin’ believe me?!”

           “Language, Marjie,” Felicity hushed her friend softly. “Chargers can’t do that,” André finally interjected, his arms crossed as his meal was long since finished. “Oh, yeah? And how do you know?” Marjani challenged him, placing one hand on the table, “You weren’t even there, and you use like, the opposite of Chargers!” “Just how they’re designed,” explained André, “Rumor has it Turf War R&D’s working on changing that, but nothing’s on the market yet.”

           “Arrrgh!” a frustrated Marjani finally gave up the argument, going back to eating her meal in defeat. “Aww, cheer up, Marjie,” Felicity tried to console her teammate, putting her hand on Marjani’s shoulder, “I’m sure there’s an explanation for it.” “Yeah, yeah,” muttered Marjani quietly, “I know what I fuckin’ saw…” “So, what about you guys?” asked Dodge, turning to Amber and André, who were seated next to each other, across from their teammates, “Any other good stories?”

           “I dunno, we already told the one where we went up against these two,” replied Amber, “We lost more matches than we won yesterday.” André nodded. “Had a couple of good moments, but I can’t remember them all that well,” he added sternly, furrowing his brow. “How’s that?” asked Dodge, “Last I checked, André, my man, you’ve got a crazy good memory.”

           André shook his head and cleared his throat awkwardly. “It’s, uh… well, there are times where I can’t remember things so well,” he rumbled, “Like when there’s a lot of loud noise, messes with my head, makes it harder to remember anything but the noise later. Still play in Splatfests, but I don’t remember a lot of specifics unless I was focused enough.” “No kiddin’,” replied Dodge with an amazed smirk, “That’s kinda weird.” André simply sighed in response.

           “Is that why you hate loud noises so much?” asked Felicity, concerned with André’s well-being. André nodded. “Yeah, part of it,” he confirmed, “Just bugs me in general.” Marjani perked up as André continued. “Wait!” she blurted suddenly, a little too loudly, causing Felicity to jump slightly in her seat, “Is that why you were complainin’ so much at the opening ceremony?! You wanted to go home because loud noise fucks with your head?”

           “Marjie, language,” whispered Felicity. “I know, I know,” replied Marjani quietly before turning her attention back to her teammate, “Seriously, though?” André rolled his eyes slightly and grimaced. “Yeah,” he sighed, “Nothing special to it.” Marjani grinned. “Shit, and here I thought you were impenetrable,” she quipped. “Hey, now, Sis,” replied Dodge, “You’re the same way; you hate loud noises, too.”

           “It doesn’t make me forget shit, though,” retorted Marjani, “And with you for a brother, ‘course I hate ‘em.” “Hey, my music’s not just loud noise,” argued Dodge. “Oh, yeah?” Marjani smirked as she folded her arms, “Then what about that time you spent four hours playin’ the same damn beat over and over at max volume?” “I-I…!” Dodge’s voice trailed off as he tried and failed to think of a rebuttal to Marjani’s comment, “Th-that was one time! And that’s not even why you hate noise, any–”

           “–Don’t,” Marjani growled loudly, her voice suddenly dropping to an uncharacteristically serious tone, “Don’t bring that up. Not here.” “…Right,” Dodge suddenly grew as solemn as his sister, his expression dropping, “S-sorry, Sis.” The group fell silent as Amber, André, and Felicity exchanged nervous glances. “Y-you know, now that I think about it,” stammered Dodge, before clearing his throat, “I might be able to help you guys with your problem.”

           “How so?” asked André, raising his eyebrow. “Direct confrontation,” replied Dodge, “We get together somewhere, I bring some of the big guns, and we ramp up the volume until we figure out what your limits are. We repeat it as often as we can until you guys can handle more and more volume.” “That’s sounds stupid as hell,” replied Marjani bluntly. “Marjie, language,” Felicity whispered a third time.

           André furrowed his brow pensively. “Stupid, yeah,” he mused, “Stupid enough to work, maybe?” “Aw, c’mon, seriously?” questioned Marjani, “You two can waste your time losin’ your hearin’ tryin’ to do this little therapy thing if you want, but count me out.” “You don’t wanna give it a shot, Sis?” asked Dodge, “At least try it!” Marjani released a grumbling sigh as she rolled her eyes. “Why am I the one who thinks this is never gonna work?” she growled.

           “Just once,” interjected André, “If it doesn’t look like it’s gonna work, we’ll call it quits. It’s no scientifically-proven cure, but Dodge is an audio guy; might be onto something, and you’re not giving him enough credit, as usual.” “Wha–!” Marjani’s jaw dropped incredulously, “I give Dodge credit! I told Lissy the backstage passes were from him, didn’t I?” “Technically, it was Marie who told me,” replied Felicity. Marjani groaned again before finally shrugging. “Fine, we’ll try it,” she gave in, “We doin’ anythin’ else tomorrow?”

           “I’ve got the day off,” confirmed Dodge. “No practice, but we’ve got a match in the afternoon,” added Amber, “And it’s with Spice Splat again. I’m starting to wonder if Caroline’s doing this on purpose, too, the same way she got our teams mixed together for the Splatfest.” “Oh, we could join them!” exclaimed Felicity, “You know, moral support and all that. And then we can all have our strategy meeting right after, right?” “Actually…” replied Amber with a small grin, “I was thinking that if they’re busy with Dodge, you and I could hang out together.” “What would you want to hang out with Lissy for?” asked Marjani nonchalantly.

           “Are we not allowed?” asked Amber, “Just sort of a girl’s day out kind of thing. You know, the kind of stuff you’re not really into.” Marjani glanced back and forth between Felicity and Amber. “B-but Lissy–” she started, before her gaze came to rest on Dodge, realizing that he was out of the loop on Felicity’s secret. “But Lissy what?” Amber smirked as she crossed her arms in victory, taking a small amount of pleasure from seeing her teammate squirm.

           “Alright, fine,” Marjani conceded, “Have your little girly-girl day or whatever. No skin off my nose.” “Yay!” Felicity rejoiced quietly as thoughts of what the morning ahead could hold in store for her and her captain. “Alright, let’s get together outside Inkopolis Tower tomorrow at, say, 9?” asked Dodge. “That early?” asked André, “Sure you won’t need more time to set everything up?”

           “If I say 10, Sis’ll be there at 11,” retorted Dodge, “You know how she is.” “Just had a Splatfest over it,” agreed André. “And we won!” argued Marjani, “Or did you forget that because of all the loud noise?” André shot Marjani an irritable look. “Don’t push it,” he warned her, “Let’s just agree to be there by 9, got it?” “Fine,” agreed Marjani, “No promises, but I’ll put off goin’ to see Spyke until we’re done with this stupid therapy thing.”

           “Great, then it’s settled,” replied Dodge, standing up with his meal tray, “I’m gonna drop by work and see what I can get from the boss in terms of equipment and a nice, quiet, open location for us to do this.” “See you tomorrow, then?” asked André. “Yeah, both of you,” replied Dodge before glancing over to Felicity, “And hopefully you ladies, too?” “Maaaybe,” replied Felicity with a cute smile, “It depends on where we all get together before the match.”

           “Back at my place,” Amber spoke up, “The match is at 4, so let’s be there for the strategy meeting around 3.” “Alright, I’ll see you guys around,” said Dodge, walking away as Marjani rubbed her temples and sighed. “Later, Dodge,” she muttered sluggishly. The four resumed finishing their meal in silence as they each contemplated the day ahead, not knowing for certain what it would bring.

             Marjani sighed as she adjusted the collar on her jacket and tried once more to rub the sleep from her eyes. She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to Dodge’s suggestion; perhaps André’s willingness to try it had something to do with it. In the time that they had known each other, André had never been particularly thrilled to be her teammate, especially after she’d flown off the handle at everyone following their first loss to Spice Splat. Perhaps she felt obligated to at least try to get on his good side before their next match with the team, but why did she care?

           She, Dodge, and André were all arriving at Blackbelly Skatepark, which was devoid of scheduled matches for the day. Dodge had successfully arranged to get the empty park to themselves, so that they could attempt his harebrained idea of “therapy.” Marjani looked around and breathed a sigh of relief as she realized there was no one else there but them. She couldn’t shake a sinking feeling in her gut that bordered on outright pain, but its source eluded her; she hadn’t even missed breakfast. Worse yet was the familiarity of the sensation.

           “Alright, here we are,” Dodge finally spoke, “A nice, quiet, open place.” He led the two over to a pair of speakers set up on either side of a table where he’d set up his controlling equipment. “Geez, Dodge, you got all this shit out here yourself?” asked Marjani, crossing her arms. “I had some help,” explained Dodge, “My co-workers pitched in. And it ain’t shit.” “Steady work must be nice,” mused André. “Playin’ Turf War would be cool, but even if I could, I wouldn’t give up music,” replied Dodge as he moved around behind the table, “It’s part of my soul, you know?”

           “‘If you could?’” asked André, “…Have you never even tried Turf War?” “Can’t,” replied Dodge as he turned the equipment on, “Don’t have an ink sac. I’m surprised Sis hasn’t told you guys.” “You don’t–?” André stopped himself from repeating Dodge a second time before continuing, “Wow, that’s…” “–Totally normal for me,” interrupted Dodge, shaking his head with a smile to dissuade André from pitying him, “I’ve lived my whole life like this. I got an infection in it before I was even born. The whole thing was necrotic, so they had to cut it out to save my life.”

           “Ever wish you could play Turf War, though?” asked André as he crossed his arms inquisitively. “Course I do,” Dodge affirmed, smirking, “When I was younger, it broke my heart that I’d never be able to play. But I got used to it and decided to do what I could with my life, instead of just sittin’ around feelin’ sorry for myself. I like to think it’s my way of gettin’ back at my ink sac for tryin’ to kill me, and not lettin’ somethin’ that makes me different get in the way of me havin’ an impact on the world.”

           André nodded in understanding. “If you two are done with your stupid little heart-to-heart, can we get started?” asked Marjani, “Let’s get this shit over with already.” Dodge nodded. “Everythin’ is ready to go. I’m gonna start with some lower volumes and work my way up,” he explained, “I got some audio straight from a Turf War match, so it’ll be the kinda stuff you guys should be used to. I figure that’s as good a place to start as any.” “Alright, already, just start it,” groaned Marjani, losing her patience with her brother.

           Dodge pressed a button on the control unit before moving a pair of volume sliders up. “You guys might wanna stand back a little bit so you’re not this close to the speakers,” he cautioned, picking up a pair of noise-cancelling headphones he’d had on the table and placing them over his ears. The song “Metalopod” could be heard starting up in the background of the noise of a usual Turf War. Marjani grinned and began to laugh as she and André stepped back from the speakers.

           “Dodge, if you wanted an excuse to blast my jam, you coulda just asked!” she joked over the noise as she glanced over to André, who was furrowing his brow while Dodge increased the volume. “What’s wrong, big guy?” Marjani quipped, “Come on, we’re just gettin’ started! Pump it up, Dodge!” André shot a dirty look at Marjani before rolling his eyes and looking away. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to concentrate. Dodge continued to increase the volume on the speakers until the sound was resounding around the skatepark.

           Marjani kept grinning at André as he started shaking his head intermittently, losing his focus as the volume increased. “Come on, André, you can do it!” Marjani needled her teammate sarcastically, “Didn’t you think this was such a great idea?” She began laughing outright as André covered his ears, grunting slightly and trying to maintain his composure. “Man, what is your malfunction?” she asked, “It’s just a little–”

           Marjani was cut short as the Turf War audio suddenly sounded off the unmistakable noise of a Killer Wail special weapon starting up. Her breath caught in her throat as Dodge’s eyes widened. He quickly tried to slide the volume down on the speakers, causing André to snap back to reality just in time to hear a blood-curdling scream coming from his teammate. He jumped in surprise as he looked over to Marjani, who had one arm wrapped around her waist and the other around her own head, sobbing uncontrollably on her knees as Dodge dropped the noise cancellers on the table and rushed to her side.

           “Shit!” Dodge hissed, “There was a Killer Wail in there?!” André watched in shock as Dodge knelt down in front of his sister. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Marjani repeated herself over and over as she tried to control her bawling. “Sis!” Dodge said, taking hold of his sister’s shoulders, “Marjani! It’s okay! I’m here! It’s alright!” Marjani looked her brother in the eye, her quickened breathing slowly for just a moment before she gritted her teeth and screamed again, this time in frustration.

           Throwing Dodge’s arms off of her shoulders, she pulled her arm back and, before Dodge could react to what was going on, threw a punch straight into his left cheek, knocking him off balance and onto his back. “You fuckin’ IDIOT!” Marjani screeched as she stood up, tears still streaming down her face, “You blasted a fuckin’ Killer Wail!” “I-I didn’t know!” protested Dodge. “You didn’t KNOW?!” Marjani screamed, “How did you not fuckin’ know?! Didn’t you listen to it first to check?!” Dodge simply sat wordlessly, still stunned from Marjani’s punch.

           “Fuckin’ idiot!” Marjani screeched, turning away and storming off, “Fuck this! Fuck it all!” André took a few steps over to Dodge’s side and held out his hand for Dodge to take, putting the other on the younger Inkling’s back to help him up onto his feet. “Sis, wait!” shouted Dodge, starting to follow after his sister. “Fuck you!” yelled Marjani one last time, throwing up her middle finger over her shoulder as she continued walking away.

           “Let her go, Dodge,” suggested André, putting his hand on Dodge to hold him back, “…You alright? Looked like one hell of a punch.” “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Dodge replied, rubbing his jaw, “I’m not bleedin’ or anythin’, am I?” “Nah,” André confirmed, “…The hell was that?” “Sis doesn’t like loud noise, but she can put up with most of it no problem,” replied Dodge, “Mostly it’s just Killer Wails that get her riled up.” “That was a little more than ‘riled up,’ Dodge,” argued André, “Gotta have a reason.”

           “Sh-she… doesn’t like people to know,” stammered Dodge, “I shouldn’t tell you. When she’s ready, she’ll talk about it.” “Now would be a really good time for her to be ready,” said André, “Not sure if you’re aware, but she just punched you over it.” “Eh, she’s hit me harder before,” said Dodge, “I’m used to it.” “That’s… not healthy,” replied André in surprise. “Nah, it doesn’t happen often,” Dodge reassured him, “And she only does it when I’ve got it comin’. It’s almost always when I do somethin’ really stupid… like that.”

           “Almost?” André questioned. “A year or so ago, she was lashin’ out a lot more, and over little stuff more often than not,” explained Dodge, walking back over to the control unit for the speakers and turning the equipment off entirely, “Mom and Dad lost their patience with her and made her get her own place.” André sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Piece of work, that one…” he mumbled, “How do you put up with her when even your parents won’t?” “Because I know her better than they do anymore,” replied Dodge pensively before looking André in the eye, “And I’m not givin’ up on her.”

           “Dodge…” André murmured, “What happened to her? What made her like this? Is it just the addictions?” “You gotta ask her that yourself,” replied Dodge, shaking his head, “Like I said, ain’t my place to tell you.” “Well, she sure won’t,” growled André, “More likely Felicity, maybe Amber, but not me.” “If you’re that interested, I suggest you find someone else who might know,” replied Dodge, “But for now, it looks like my idea was a bust after all. You go ahead and peace out, I’m gonna call up my co-workers and we’re gonna haul all this stuff back.”

           André sighed again as he tried to process everything he’d just seen, waving half-heartedly to Dodge to acknowledge his suggestion as he turned to leave the skatepark. He breathed deeply as he glanced back to the other squid. Dodge, not realizing André was looking in his direction, wiped his eyes on his sleeve before continuing to rub his sore jaw. André looked back to the entrance of the skatepark to see if Marjani was still in sight, but she was long gone.

             André rubbed his left temple as he walked down the hall of Amber’s apartment building, his right hand holding the strap on the Roller bag slung over his shoulder. He let out a rumbling sigh as he arrived at Amber’s door and knocked. “Amber? Felicity?” he bellowed, “You two back yet?” “Come on in!” he heard Amber’s voice on the other side, “Door’s unlocked!” His large fingers gripping the knob gingerly, as if it could break were he to simply grab it, André opened the door gently and peered into the room.

           Amber and Felicity were seated upon the former’s bed, side-by-side. Felicity was sporting expertly-braided tentacles and sparkling blue fingernails, while Amber seemed to have tried a new lip gloss color – or any at all, for that matter. Amber was busy on her phone, no doubt deleting spam as usual. “Hi, André!” Felicity beamed, presenting her nails proudly, “Like ‘em? I thought I’d try something new!” André smirked and nodded. “Just you?” asked Amber, “I figured you and Marjani would be showing up together. How’d everything go?”

           “She isn’t here yet…?” asked André, furrowing his brow before sighing in realization. “Did something happen?” asked Felicity, “Is she alright?” “I’m not sure,” replied André, “Things went south after just a couple minutes, and she took off.” “Went south… in what sense?” asked Amber, raising an eyebrow. “Turns out she really hates Killer Wails,” revealed André, “Dodge played the sound of one on accident and she lost it. She punched him for it. I’ve never seen her like that.”

           “Where is she now?!” asked Felicity, panicking as she stood up off of the bed, “Where did she go?!” “Not sure,” replied André, “Thought maybe she’d go home and then show up here for the meeting. Being late’s nothing new for her, but what I saw… I don’t know if she’ll even remember we have a match. Might be better not to wait and see.” “I’ll try calling her,” Amber reassured the others, opening up her contacts list on her phone and dialing Marjani’s number.

           She held her phone up to her ear as the other two silently waited. They could barely hear their own breathing as the quiet dial tones on Amber’s phone continued, her expression slowly becoming crestfallen as Marjani failed to answer the call. Eventually, Amber shook her head in defeat and hung up. “She’s not answering,” she said as she shook her head in dismay , “She needs to set up her voicemail already.” “I keep trying to remind her,” added Felicity, “But I don’t want to seem like I’m nagging; I think that makes her care about it less.”

           André sighed, setting his Roller down and going back over to the door. “Wait, where are you going?” asked Amber, “What about the meeting?” “Won’t do us much good if we don’t have our fourth teammate, and I doubt that VX guy is just gonna magically show up to bail us out this time,” replied André, “I’m gonna go look for her. If I’m not back in half an hour, can you two get my Roller over to the tower? I’ll meet you there in time for the match.” “We could go with you,” suggested Amber.

           “No, I’ll find her myself,” maintained André, “Should’ve gone after her in the first place. Seemed like the best thing was to just let her vent.” “Why didn’t you stop her?” asked Felicity. André paused with his hand on the doorknob, hanging his head guiltily before looking back to the other two. “…Because she doesn’t like me. You know that,” he rumbled, “She probably couldn’t have hurt me if I intervened, but… I didn’t want her to try. Things don’t need to be even worse between us.”

           He opened the door and stepped out into the hall before turning back around. “Like I said, if I’m not back soon, skip the meeting and get to the tower,” he repeated, “I’ll meet you there, with or without her.” “Where are you going to start?” Amber questioned, “Any idea where she would’ve gone?” André put his hand on the outside doorknob again, nodding solemnly at Amber. “Just one,” he confirmed, “Hope I’m right.” He closed the door, this time slightly less gently than when he’d entered.

             Spyke breathed out a puff of smoke lazily as he slouched in his shop, located at the end of a shaded back alley near Inkopolis Tower. He had spent the last few days cleaning up the area and adding some needed decoration, such as hanging some exotic-looking rugs he’d found across wires to create a patchy “roof” of sorts, and putting out scented candles and incense burners that helped to mask the persistent stenches of tobacco or whatever else he had burning at any given time. This year’s Turf War season had caused his “business” to attract more customers than before, much to his delight, so his alleyway had to be at least a bit presentable.

           He took a sip of his whiskey, his bracelets jangling as he raised his glass, inspected the finer details of the cigar he was smoking, and scoffed quietly before taking another puff. He glanced over to a nearby Inkling sporting ghostly pale skin, unsettling, sleepless purple eyes, and lime green tentacles, leaning against the wall to Spyke’s left while smoking a cigarette with a grim look on his face, which bore a sizable scar that extended from just below his right eye across his cheekbone and down to his jawline. He wore a Rockenberg Black t-shirt and a pair of Black Trainers.

           “Wot ‘bout you, Nico?” asked Spyke, “It’s been a slow afternoon. Fink we oughta close up early fer the day?” Nico exhaled a green-colored smoke through his nostrils and shook his head before jerking it to his left, toward the entrance to the alley, where a massive silhouette was blocking a portion of what little light was allowed into Spyke’s dim shop now that he’d put the ceiling up. Spyke looked back to the entrance of the shop, his eye caught by the tall, muscular Inkling standing a few meters ahead of him, and gave a wide, disconcerting grin.

           Spyke pushed his lanky, gaunt form onto its feet, his bony fingers continuing to grip his drink and cigar, rising nearly to the height of the Inkling before him, a difference obscured by the urchin’s spiny head. “Well, well, well…” he mused theatrically, “What brings André the Giant Squid to my… humble establishment?” The Inkling stepped forward, his face now better illuminated. “I’m loo–” he started before being cut off by the tipsy, poncho-clad tramp.

           “–No, wait, lemme guess…” interrupted Spyke, gesturing slightly toward André with his cigar before taking another swig of his whiskey as he pondered for a moment before continuing knowingly, “…Yer lookin’ fer MJ.” André raised his eyebrow at the thought of someone calling Marjani “MJ,” but folded his arms and continued the conversation anyway. “How’d you guess?” he asked. Spyke took another puff of his cigar and exhaled, inadvertently blowing the smoke into the Inkling’s face, grinning as though he fancied himself to be some all-knowing guru.

           “‘Cause she told me ‘at André the Giant Squid’s on ‘er new team a while back. And she came by here earlier in a… right foul mood, rantin’ about ‘er bruvva or sumfin’,” he replied nonchalantly, “We passed a blunt ‘round so she could calm down a li’l ‘fore she took off. Didn’t say where she was ‘eaded, though; sorry, mate.” André grimaced before continuing. “What was she saying about her brother?” he asked as Spyke continued his smoking.

           “Ya know ‘er bruvva, right? Wot was ‘is name?” asked Spyke, “Ten-Dodgy, or sumfin’?” “Tendaji. Dodge for short. I know him,” replied André, fighting the urge to glance at the green-tentacled Inkling smoking nearby, who was staring unflinchingly at the giant Inkling. Spyke took another gulp of his whiskey and cleared his throat. “Right, well, I don’t remember exactly wot it was; sumfin’ ‘bout him bein’ loud. Was a li’l too stoned ta listen proper,” he admitted.

           “I was there. We both hate loud noises, and he was trying to help us get better at dealing with it,” André explained, “But she completely lost it when he played the sound of a Killer Wail on accident.” Spyke’s eye widened and his grin vanished as he realized the implication of André’s revelation. “Oh… OH,” he muttered, repeating his reaction as if trying to add some needless emphasis, “Well, now ‘at explains a lot.” “Can you tell me anything about that?” André questioned, “Dodge won’t talk.”

           Spyke nodded slowly as his eye glanced about, almost as though he was looking for Marjani herself to make sure she wouldn’t overhear him. “…I might, mate. ‘Ave a seat,” he offered, turning back toward his usual spot and walking back over to it while lazily gesturing toward the other Inkling, “Nico, mix up a drink fer André, would ya?” “Not old enough,” interjected André. Spyke’s lowered head perked up at this, betraying how taken aback he was, and he turned back around to face his guest, sizing him up in confusion.

           “…But yer, like, nine feet tall, mate, how’re ya not old enough…?” he asked quietly, “You sure? Ain’t no one ‘round ‘ere wot can tell ya wot ta do… Come on, live a little, mate. Nico mixes a mean Old Fashioned.” André shook his head and waved his hand sternly as if demonstrating his resolve. “Not here for vices, Spyke. Got a match later, and I’d rather say sharp,” he countered, “If underage drinking doesn’t bother you, at least respect that.” Spyke shrugged with a slight smile.

           “Alright, whatever, nix the drink, Nico,” he admitted defeat with a wave of his cigar, complying with André’s staunch refusal, before settling down back into his usual seat, the gigantic Inkling sitting down in front of him and crossing his arms. Setting his whiskey down next to himself, he flexed his emaciated fingers with a quiet crackling. He took another puff of his cigar before sighing. “…You know, I been finkin’, why do ‘ey call it ‘marowana?’ S’not even made wif arowana. S’bloody kelp…” he pondered, before placing the cigar down on an ashtray and breathing deeply.

           His eye lolled upward slightly, away from André’s gaze, as he reminisced about Marjani’s past. “Awright, well, where do I begin…?” he asked himself quietly, closing his eye to think momentarily before deciding on his starting point. “MJ didn’t always used ta be the way she is now, if ya couldn’t guess. She was… a lot brighter,” he continued, looking back to André, “I didn’t know ‘er personally ‘en, but I was watchin’ ‘er Turf War match when it ‘appened.” “‘It…?’” asked André, raising an eyebrow. Spyke nodded and sighed.

           “At Moray Towers. ‘Er team was goin’ up against ‘at one international group, those, uh, Sharkfin girls, I fink,” Spyke recalled, “MJ might’ve been nicer, but she was just as aggressive back ‘en as she is now; decided ta head straight fer the enemy base at the beginning o’ the match, ya know, ‘ead ‘em off an’ cause trouble on their side o’ the field. She knew it was risky an’ would probably get ‘er splatted, but ya know, that’s how she plays – tries ta take out more o’ ‘em ‘fore gettin’ splatted ‘erself just ta keep ‘em occupied.”

           André was silent as he focused intently on Spyke’s tale. “Anyway, just as she was comin’ up the side o’ one o’ the towers, someone on the other team planted down a Killer Wail. ‘Ey were just tryin’ ta hit one of ‘er teammates on the other side o’ the field, didn’t know she was ‘at close…” Spyke continued, “MJ got ta the top o’ the wall an’ took it point-blank… She never saw it comin’.” “So she got splatted?” asked André.

           “Worse. When she respawned, she was coughin’ up a mix o’ ‘er own ink an’ blood. She was so close ta the Wail ‘at the sound blast ‘ad messed up ‘er internal organs, done some real bad damage,” Spyke’s eyelid drooped as he solemnly called back the memories of the day, “‘Ey called off the match, an’ she spent the next monf in the ‘ospital. She was in pain the whole time, an’ kept takin’ painkillers even after she got out. Liked the way ‘ey made ‘er feel.”

           “That’s how it started, then?” asked André. Spyke nodded, looking André in the eye again in resignation. “When she ran out, she came ta me knowin’ I’d be the kind o’ guy who could ‘ook ‘er up wif more,” he continued, “‘At’s ‘how I met ‘er.” “So you got her addicted to all these harder drugs, then?” André gritted his teeth as the corner of his mouth curled into a snarl, “Took advantage of her situation to get yourself a new regular, did you?”

           “I never gave ‘er anyfin she didn’t ask fer, never pressured ‘er ta try anyfin’ new or nuffin’,” retorted Spyke, “I make it my job ta ‘elp people, no matter wot it is ‘ey need. Ain’t always strictly legal, but–” “–But, let me guess, ‘you mean well,’ so it’s all okay?” growled André, “No, of course, what people do with the drugs you help them get is their business, right? Not like you’re an enabler or anything. No ink on your hands, is that it?”

           “Look, I’m MJ’s dealer, yeah, but don’t fink I haven’t done nuffin’ to try and ‘elp ‘er kick it, too. I’m ‘bout as far from perfect as a bloke can get, but s’not like all I care ‘bout’s my bottom line…!” Spyke insisted as his volume escalated, “I’ve kept ‘er away from the more dangerous stuff an’ made sure she never gets too much o’ anyfin’. If she weren’t such a friend, I’d say I practically babysit ‘er – an’ I wager I do a better bloody job of it ‘an you an’ your teammates, eh, considerin’ you came here hopin’ ta find ‘er?”

           The two fell silent as Spyke realized he’d crossed a line with his last statement. André sighed and his expression fell as he knew Spyke was right – the urchin knew Marjani better than her own teammates did, especially André himself; while she was certainly difficult to work with, André’s own disapproval of her was also partly to blame for their poor relationship. Spyke stammered for a moment, his breath out of sync with his desire to speak as he collected himself. “Sorry. ‘At was outta line,” he apologized, “…But you asked, mate.”

           André rose to his feet silently, still avoiding eye contact with the urchin. “Guess I did…” he agreed glumly as he turned back around, “Thanks for the story. Sorry for wasting your time.” He started making his way back to the entrance of the alley. “…It weren’t a waste,” retorted Spyke. André stopped and started to look back over his shoulder. “…Good luck findin’ ‘er, mate,” Spyke added. André turned forward again. “Take care, Spyke,” he murmured, resuming his exit. “Always do,” replied the urchin quietly as André walked back out into the sunlight, briefly casting a shadow into the alley before vanishing into Inkopolis Plaza.

             André looked up to the doors to Inkopolis Tower before him and sighed. He hadn’t managed to find Marjani in time; he had spent too long listening to Spyke’s story, but the urchin had been unable to provide him with any leads as to his teammate’s current whereabouts. His only hope was that she had remembered the strategy meeting and shown up at Amber’s apartment after he’d left. He stepped forward, the automatic doors sliding open to clear his path.

           “Don’t worry, he said he’d be here,” he heard a familiar voice speaking as he looked around, spotting his teammates nearby. Amber had her hand on Felicity’s shoulder, reassuring her that André would arrive before the match. Hearing the doors open behind them, Amber glanced over her shoulder and spotted André. “See, just like I said,” she added, causing Felicity to turn around. As the two parted, André realized that Marjani was present, facing the two of them, and now him. “M-Marjani,” he stammered in surprise, “You’re… here.”

           “Yeah,” Marjani murmured sheepishly, “I was just upstairs. Had to… I had to say sorry to Dodge.” “That’s…” André was at a loss for words and simply nodded. “I kinda gave you the runaround, huh?” asked Marjani, a hint of hoarseness still in her voice, “Amber said you were out lookin’ for me.” André looked to Amber before nodding at Marjani. “Yeah,” he replied, “Looks like I was the late one for once… You did remember we have a match, right?”

           “Uh, yeah,” replied Marjani in annoyance, slinging her Splatling’s bag off of her shoulder, “Dude, we’re goin’ up against Spice Splat, I’m not forgettin’ that.” André turned to Felicity. “Were you two okay taking my Roller over here, or do I have to go back for it?” Felicity nodded, pointing over to André’s Roller bag, which was leaning against a nearby wall. “Thanks,” André said, walking over to the bag and kneeling down to unzip it, “Wasn’t too heavy, was it?”

           “Nah, we did fine,” replied Felicity, “We’re stronger than we look.” She held up her arms as if flexing, beaming at her teammate. André smirked and shook his head, chuckling quietly as he rose back to his feet, his Roller on his shoulder. “The others not here yet?” he asked as the doors to the tower opened once more. As if on cue, the four members of Spice Splat walked into the tower. “Sorry we’re late, everyone!” shouted Caroline, her usual grin plastered on her face.

           “Everything’s backwards today…” muttered Amber, “First André’s last to show, then Spice Splat is here after all of us…” “Butch here…” continued Caroline, gesturing to the team’s Inkbrusher, “Almost forgot about our match!” “Oi, I didn’t fuggedaboutit!” protested Butch, “My uncle–” “–Had yuh runnin’ an errand or some odduh bilge, we know,” interrupted Moruga, “We’ve heard it before, Butch. De point is dat it needs to stop if yuh are as committed to dis team as yuh say.”

           “I know, I know,” insisted Butch irritatedly, “Come on, we ain’t got much time ‘til da match. Let’s get goin’.” Jolokia smiled at the other team, cradling her Tri-Slosher. “It’s good to see you all again,” she greeted them politely, before making eye contact with André. Her smile fell slightly as she looked away from him. “We should really catch up after this,” she continued, a little more quietly than before, “We haven’t all been together in one place since that match in the Splatfest, and we were too busy playing against each other.”

           André nodded in her direction before speaking up. “We could… go get coff–” he was cut off as the intercom in the room sounded off. “Teams Spice Splat and Outcasts to Walleye Warehouse, please,” the voice spoke, “Teams Spice Splat and Outcasts, to Walleye Warehouse.” “That’s our cue!” declared Caroline as she adjusted her grip on her Mini Splatling, “Don’t hold back just because we’re friends now, Amber!” “Us? Friends?” Amber scoffed as the two teams made their way to the grates, “Maybe someday, Humboldt.”

           “Ouch, girl,” replied Caroline. “Looks like things really are backwards today,” added Felicity confidently, “Now Amber’s the one burning you guys!” “Zip it, squirt,” snapped Butch, “Don’t give your girl too much credit. Boss set herself up for dat one.” “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, rich boy?” interjected Marjani, “Or are you scared of a little girl with a Charger?” “Enough banter,” bellowed Moruga, “Or we’re goin’ ta be late.” The eight battlers, all chomping at the bit, transformed into their cephalopod forms and dropped through the grates.

             The four Outcasts rose out of the indigo ink at their spawn point, weapons at the ready. “Alright, Outcasts,” Amber addressed her teammates, hoping to rally them, “I know we had to skip the strategy meeting again, but at least we know what to expect from these guys. Let’s show Spice Splat what we’ve learned.” Felicity nodded with a dubious smile, psyching herself up for the match ahead, even though none of her teammates were facing her to see this. “Marjani…” murmured André quietly as he glanced over to his teammate, “You… gonna be okay for this?”

           “Yeah,” replied Marjani confidently, sounding insulted by André’s insinuation, “Relax, I’m over it. I’ll be fine.” André tightened his grip on his Roller and breathed deeply to calm himself, turning his focus and his gaze forward once more. “If you say so…” he whispered. “Three!” the usual voice spoke over the loudspeakers. “Here we go, guys,” Amber prepared herself, holding her Octoshot Replica at the ready. “Two!” the voice continued, “One!” Felicity held her Squiffer up, ready to begin charging it the moment the match began. “Go!”

           The four Outcasts rushed forward from the starting point, the narrow spawn area restricting them into moving together early on. “Marjani, you’re closest to the left path, I want you inking that! André, take the right!” barked Amber, “Felicity, hop across the containers and try to keep them on their toes once they get to the center! I’m going right into the action, so I want you covering my blind spots!” The teammates fanned out, each following Amber’s orders.

           André kept an eye on the turf ahead as he lumbered down the ramp along the Outcasts’ right side of the warehouse, a high wall on his left completely obscuring his view of the rest of the action. As he reached the bottom, he took a moment to survey the area and make sure he hadn’t been spotted. He could see Moruga taking his place on Spice Splat’s equivalent of the vantage point where Felicity had planted herself, removed from the action that would no doubt unfold in the center but a prime sniper’s perch.

           André made a right and began making his way around another shorter wall, covering as much turf as he could on that side. As he inked underneath a grate, he suddenly felt the sting of Spice Splat’s signature red ink landing on him. He quickly ducked into his squid form and swam a short distance back through his own path to wash the red ink off of himself. “Damn, can’t tell if he’s still here or not,” he heard a voice above mutter, “How’s Ninja Squid even work fuh somebody dat big?”

           André emerged from the indigo ink to see Butch standing above. “Hey, you are still here!” shouted Butch with a grin, “Wazza madda, Kraken? Scared ta come up here and get me?” “Would if I could, Butch!” replied André, “You know I can’t ink those walls.” Butch threw back his head and let out a laugh. “Oh, I bet youse would like dat, wouldn’t ya?” he taunted his opponent, “Every time you’ve used dat famous Kraken, youse always pick me ta go aftah.”

           André gritted his teeth and glanced to his left as he swung his Roller menacingly, repainting the ground beneath Butch but missing the squid himself. “Oi, watch da tempah!” Butch mocked him, “I mean, I get it if youse hate me ‘cause I took your spot! Youse scared dey like me bettah than when youse was rollin’ with dem, I’m bettin’! Look, Kraken, youse don’t gotta be jealous! I got mad respect for youse!”

           “Was just re-inking the turf, Butch,” replied André with a smirk, “I know I can’t hit you up there. Don’t think so highly of yourself.” Butch gritted his teeth and swung his Inkbrush wildly, flinging ink all around below himself, before dropping through the grates in his squid form and transforming back. “I’m not jealous, Butch. I’m glad they’ve been doing well without me; that they found someone new who could take my place so quickly. I don’t resent you for that,” André continued, Butch’s reaction betraying that they had traded the psychological high ground.

           Butch planted his Inkbrush on the ground and rushed toward André, only for the latter to place his own Roller down, rolling forward just enough to trap the bristles of Butch’s brush under it as he neared his massive predecessor. As Butch tried to yank his weapon free, André leaned forward and looked his replacement in the eye. “What I don’t like is your overgrown ego,” he growled, “Sure, you might be an ‘Inkbrush Prodigy,’ and good enough to be my replacement, but I find it insulting that they picked such a loudmouth to fill my shoes. I don’t care if you’re all talk or not, Butch; but you do it too much.”

           Before Butch could react with a witty comeback, André continued pushing his Roller forward, splatting his horrified successor and sending him back to the other team’s spawn. Taking no time to relish his minor victory, he continued pushing forward, inking whatever he could of Butch’s handiwork before turning his attention to the center of the battlefield, where Amber was huddled behind a stack of crates smack in the middle of the flat, open area, taking cover from Moruga’s shots.

           André kept a careful eye on Moruga’s targeting sight as he made his way over to rendezvous with his teammate. “Need a hand, Captain?” he asked as Amber smiled at the sight of him. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” she sighed in relief, “Felicity helped me pin down Jolokia and get her out of Marjani’s way. She kept going on up their right path. I saw you working out your frustrations with Butch over there. How’d you get him to come down to you like that?”

           “Just told him he wasn’t the most important thing in the universe,” quipped André. Amber stifled her laughter with a quiet snort. “Asshole had it coming,” she replied, “…So I’m still not sure where Caroline is, but I’m worried Marjani’s gonna get herself splatted up there that close to their spawn, especially with Jolokia and Butch getting back out here any second now. I think you oughta get up that way and back her up. There’s enough of our ink that you should be able to slip past Moruga with Ninja Squid, but I’ll give you some cover fire to draw his attention.”

           André nodded and transformed into his squid form, leaving Amber to fend for herself as he swam toward the side of the field that Marjani had taken from the start, making his way up Spice Splat’s equivalent of the ramp that he had taken at Amber’s first orders. “Alright, Oaxaca, let’s dance!” shouted Amber as she sprang out from behind the boxes, hoping to draw and evade the sniper’s fire. As she pressed forward, she looked up to where Moruga had been standing, only to spot a different squid in his place – Caroline.

           “Guess again, girl!” replied Caroline, unleashing a barrage of ink from her Mini Splatling. Retreating back in her indigo-colored ink to the safety of the boxes, Amber panted heavily as she realized her mistake. “Shit!” she hissed to herself, “Caroline’s there now?! But then where did…?!” She looked over to where André had gone after Marjani. “No!” she yelped, “That’s a narrow passage with no way out but forward or back! If he catches them in there…!”

           As André made his way toward the top of the slope, he sprang out of his squid form, spotting Marjani ahead of him. Looking past her, however, he saw another figure arriving on the ledge above them, scowling callously at his opponents. “Marjani!” shouted André, rushing forward to his teammate as he saw the telltale gleam of Moruga’s tentacles beneath his beret. He clenched his Roller, reaching the end of the slope where Marjani was turning around to face him, just as Moruga activated his special weapon.

           Time slowed as Moruga’s Killer Wail started up. André rushed toward Marjani as she looked back over her shoulder in horror, the sound of the Killer Wail alerting her to what was coming. Without thinking, André swung his Roller from left to right, knocking Marjani out of the corridor through its only exit, into Spice Splat’s territory. He looked at Moruga in a combination of surprise and fury for just a split second before the Killer Wail went off, sending a blast of sound straight down the corridor.

           Marjani breathed heavily, tears streaming from her clenched eyes as she squeezed her Splatling’s handle until her knuckles were white. As the screech of the Killer Wail faded, she slowly realized that she hadn’t been splatted, and stood up in Spice Splat’s red ink, looking around and seeing no other players around her. “Wha… what?” she muttered to herself as she struggled to process what had just transpired.

           “Shit!” she hissed, realizing that André had taken the blast from the Killer Wail in her place, “That was…!” Before Moruga could come around the corner and get her in his sights, she quickly transformed into her squid form and Super Jumped all the way back to the Outcasts’ spawn point. She took a few steps forward as she waited for André to respawn from the pool of ink. After a few seconds, he rematerialized, dropping his Roller and falling to his knees. He grunted between heavy breaths as his eyes darted aimlessly.

           “André!” Marjani shouted, dropping her Splatling into the ink with a distinct plop and putting her hands on her teammate’s shoulders, “André! Pull it together!” André’s eyes finally stopped moving as his breathing slowed back down to a normal rate, and he looked Marjani in the eye. “That’s it, big guy,” she whispered, “It’s alright. I’m here.” “…Why?” asked André quietly. “Why am I here?” asked Marjani, “We’re in the middle of a Turf War match, you big lug. You didn’t… forget, did you?”

           André sighed. “N-no,” he muttered, rising back to his feet and picking up his Roller, “That’s… exactly why I was asking. If we’re in the middle of a match, you oughta be out there inking, not back here at spawn. Unless… did I… you didn’t get hit by it too, did you?” Marjani shook her head. “No…” she muttered sheepishly, “I-I… I had to make sure you’d be okay. I mean…” She struggled to find the right words, awkwardly breaking eye contact with her teammate.

           “…You know, just… after what you were doin’ over at Blackbelly earlier, I-I thought the noise might fuck you up,” she stammered a little more loudly, picking up her Splatling again, “That’s the last thing we need right now. You can… you know, cry about it or whatever if you need to later.” André smirked before slapping his own cheek lightly to make sure he had completely snapped back to reality. “Come on, we’ve wasted too much time here,” he suggested, stepping off of the spawn point, “Amber and Felicity need us. Let’s get back out–”

           Before André could finish, the figures of their other two teammates suddenly materialized out of the ink behind him. “Ugh!” groaned Amber before noticing André and Marjani. Realizing all four of them were back at their own spawn point, her jaw dropped slightly in surprise before she pointed to the battlefield. “Don’t just stand there staring!” she ordered, “We just wiped! They’re gonna be pushing hard now and none of us are down there to hold the line!”

           “Shit!” spat Marjani as she turned around, “Come on, fuck strategy, let’s just get out there and stop them!” “Language, Marjie!” Felicity scolded her teammate. “No, for once, I agree,” retorted André as the four transformed into their squid forms and swam forward toward the center of the map together, “No time for orders now.” The four didn’t make it very far before encountering Spice Splat’s signature red ink.

           “Wait, who got Marjani?” asked Caroline nonchalantly as she fired her Splatling, sweeping it horizontally to splatter her ink in as wide of an area as she could. “Wasn’t me!” replied Butch as he zipped around behind his teammates with his Inkbrush, inking spots they’d missed. “I thought I didn’t get ‘er wit’ my Killer Wail,” added Moruga, “Jolokia?” Jolokia simply shook her head as the eight members of the two teams closed in on each other in a chaotic flurry of red and indigo.

           “Nobody fuckin’ got me!” shouted Marjani over the cacophony, “I just jumped back to spawn!” “Language!” added Felicity quietly. “Wait, so you’re the only one who hasn’t been splatted yet?” asked Caroline, “Geez, you guys were right; things are backwards today!” “Then we’re on track to turn this around and win for once!” quipped Amber. As the Outcasts dodged splatters of red ink, trying to push back with their deep purple, a whistle suddenly sounded out.

           “Wait, what?!” asked Amber, looking around in confusion. Moruga began to chuckle. “I see yuh took my advice to heart,” he laughed, “Yuh forgot to keep track of de time limit.” Amber hung her head, knowing without a doubt that the Outcasts had been pushed back and defeated. “I was really hoping we could turn it around… and I said it and everything…” she muttered, “…What even happened? We were doing well up until that last minute or so.”

           She turned around, facing Marjani. “You jumped to spawn,” she said accusingly, “What for?” Marjani looked to André sheepishly before looking back at the captain. “I-I was on their side with Moruga on my ass,” she muttered, “Was tryin’ not to get splatted.” Amber put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Well, that’s not so bad,” she admitted, “Might’ve been able to get some of their side inked, but at least you got out of there instead of letting yourself get splatted like usual. You could’ve jumped to one of us out there in the middle, though.” “Didn’t know if you guys were safe to jump to,” retorted Marjani.

           “Sounds like you guys are learning,” Caroline acknowledged the group, “Keep it up. I legit wanna lose to you guys at least once before the end of the season.” “Speak fuh yourself, Boss!” snapped Butch, his mouth curled into a snarl, “I ain’t losin’ to dese amateurs! Not today, not evah!” “Play nice, Butch,” replied Caroline, without so much as glancing over her shoulder to her Inkbrusher, “Geez, who put a lionfish down your shirt?” Butch simply muttered incoherently to himself, folding his arms as he shot a look at André, who simply smirked back.

           “Alright, you guys, let’s get going,” sighed Amber. “Turf War’s closing up for the day. Almost time for dinner,” added Caroline, “You guys wanna go grab something with us?” “What do you guys think?” asked Amber, turning to her teammates. “It could be fun,” said Felicity. André simply nodded in agreement. “Would be nice to not be at each other’s throats for once,” he added. “Nah, not me, I’ve, uh…” Marjani stammered, “I’ve got somewhere to be.”

           “You sure?” asked Caroline, “I’ll even treat you guys.” Marjani hung her head and put her hands on her hips. “Tempting,” she said, “But I’m gonna pass.” “Alright, suit yourself,” Caroline acceded, “Let’s get back to our spawns.” She turned around and headed back toward Spice Splat’s spawn point, her teammates following behind. The Outcasts began to do the same, heading up the slope near where the match had started, Amber and Felicity leading the way.

           “Marjani,” grunted André quietly. Marjani looked up to her teammate as they walked side-by-side. “What?” she asked defensively, as if her teammate was going to scold her for declining Caroline’s offer. “Sorry for pushing you,” André rumbled quietly, not making eye contact with her, “With my Roller.” Marjani looked away for a moment to wipe her eye before clearing her throat. “N-nah,” she stuttered, “Th-thanks.” André simply nodded in acknowledgement.

           “H-hey, so,” continued Marjani, “I’m gonna go drop by Spyke’s. You, uh… you wanna come with?” André smiled, but shook his head. “Not really my thing,” he countered, “I’m gonna stick with the others for dinner. But thanks for the offer.” “Nah, man, that’s cool,” replied Marjani, “You know, you do you, man. But if you change your mind–” “–I know where to look,” André said. Marjani smiled behind her Skull Bandana as the two arrived back at the spawn point with their teammates, each transforming into their squid forms to return to Inkopolis Tower.

 SPLATOON: THE OUTCASTS

EPISODE END

             Shelley Quinn hummed the tune to one of the Squid Sisters’ recent singles, Marie’s “Tide Goes Out,” as she scrubbed a cast iron pan in hot water, the sunlight pouring in through the window directly in front of her kitchen sink. Courtesy of her child, she had heard the song far too many times recently and the beautiful, somber melody was stuck in her head, not that she minded.

           Placing the pan upside-down on a towel with the rest of the dishes she had just finished washing so it could air-dry, she took another towel hanging on the handle of the oven door and dried her hands with it, just in time for the phone to ring. She continued humming as she stepped over to the other side of the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said sweetly, greeting whomever it was that had called. Her warm smile slowly faded as she recognized the voice on the other end.

           “Oh, Fingal, hello… It’s… been a while.”

#splatoon #outcasts #splatoon the outcasts #amber #andre #marjani #felicity

[ominouslyjazzyeggs]

what in tagnation..

I got tagged by a freaking stinky @spaacegoat!!!

Rules: Answer 30 questions and [I DELETED THE REST HUAHAHAHAAA] (Kay how could you!!?!?!?! :000) {i dont know whats going on here but ok xD}

Nicknames: cybo, cybon, cybutt, egg, i dunno what else people call me... probably a loser HA

Gender: nonbinary/gender neutral, whatever floats yer boat :0

Star sign: im a liBRUHHHH hahahahaaaaa i’m here to tip the scales.

Height: too tall... way too tall... i’m really insecure about it

Time: 8:47 PM CT, yo!!

Birthday: oct 16... so glad its far away from today

Favourite Band: thats a BIG question. it kinda changes every month?? possibly Vacations... also Wings or the Beach Boys, i dunno... i’m in a transition phase right now

Favourite solo artist: MAC DEMARCO that’s easy

Song that’s stuck in your head: i don’t think i have one... best not to get me started i guess

Last movie: last night i watched the usual suspects with my family :0 it was certainly something else

Last TV show: i’m not sure, i think it was steven universe??

Why did you create this blog: at first it was to just spout nonsense into the void but now its more of a platform for spreading my art and music and whatever...

What do you post/reblog: i’ve tried to make it so i only have my posts and art tip posts... i kinda reblog other peoples stuff but i’m trying to stop that and do that for my reblog account. i still have to go through this account and delete all the non-me posts... there’s like, 3000 of them, so not looking forward to it :/

Last thing you googled: what to do when you’re still coughing after breaking a fever. i was really sick over a week ago, but now im fine!! but this stupid cough wont go away. its super dry and is almost out of my control, its really annoying

Other blogs: oh yeah!! @heofthco (art only) @eggtranscriptions (music only) and  @eggjargon (all of my reblogs)

Why the url: ooooo this is a quite the story. so a few months ago i was in bed taking nap. i put on smooth jazz to fall asleep to because i really like smooth jazz okay!! well i woke up all of a sudden, and i felt super off. out of the corner of my eye, by my closed door, i saw/felt some kind of ominous thing there, just watching me. then i felt it start to come toward me, but i realized i was having a sleep paralysis episode and was hallucinating-- so even though i know it was all fake it was super terrifying!! so there i am, paralyzed on my bed as this thing ominously creeps towards me as there is smooth jazz playing in the background. it was ridiculous. as for the egg part i’m just in this phase... eggs are funny

I follow: 101 people :P

Followers: 235!! i think most of them are dead though...

Lucky number: i don’t really know... never paid attention to that stuff

Instruments: i play the piano, though i’d like to play guitar!! though to be honest i just prefer making music through computer programs as opposed to actually playing

What are you wearing: grey shorts and a grey bleach stained beatles shirt... also a shirt on my head cause thats kinda my thing

Dream job: animator/comic artist...... i’d love to make cartoons and comics :D i’ll probably start with comics because thats most in reach

Dream trip: a fun road trip with friends or family around the country!!

Favourite food: i love sweets... donuts, that kinda stuff... i also like those sour cream and onion ritz chip crackers

Favourite song right now: Funeral Ikos :P its a classical piece but it really gives me emotion

Last book you read: i’m sorry, books??? uhhh hhhuhhh i think the great gatsby for my english class last year

Top 3 Universes: hmmm ummm, the star wars universe is cool, i like the moomins peaceful universe, and i’ll leave the third blank for now cause i cant think of anything!!

Okay I taaaaaag…. @toilycoily @jadalayda anyone else who reads this?? idk if anyone else will see this

#this took me 30 MINUTES

[lattetimes]

So How About Them New Episodes, Ammirite Ladies??

here’s what i thought of the new episodes via live reactions as i watching them!

overall, it was kinda underwhelming but there were parts that i really did like! and if you liked these episodes, that’s awesome!

MAYOR DEWEY WINS

was this title a reference to the movie/book John Dies at the End, cause if so then i’m shocked i caught that

apparently it is, would you look at that. btw i kinda liked the movie.

damn, Sadie took this hard. and Steven never told Lars’ parents. so i guess Sadie has to do that herself.

why tf does Steven care if Dewey wins?!

OH, IT’S BECAUSE HE DON’T WANT SHIT TO CHANGE AND HE THINKS HAVING A NEW MAYOR WOULD BE BAD WTF DEWEY DOES NOTHING

ok wow, there’s only 24 people in Beach City and he never noticed that Lars was gone!?

“is that why the donut shop was closed?”

“we’ll hire a new donut boy!” DEWEY. DUDE. ARE YOU FOR REAL?!

“high school mayor” lmao

how did he run unopposed for 10 years!?

LARS’ MOM KEEPS A SHITTON OF TOMATOES IN HER PURSE SHE READY TO THROW DOWN ALL THE TIME

i don’t like that Steven is so adamant on Dewey winning.

jesus, Steven, let Nanefua win. she’s obviously the better person for the job

“i’m done pointing my finger at you, and now i direct all my fingers on both my hands to the citizens” top 10 anime deaths

NANEFUA WINS, OH MY GOD YES

STEVEN, DUDE, REALLY?! LEAVE CONNIE ALONE!

“i don’t know what you’re talking about, but i need to get a new job” 2018 mood tbh

episode rating: 2 tomatoes out of 5. i can’t stand Steven in this episode at all. but hey, NANEFUA WON!!!!!!

RAISING THE BARN

....was Lapis’ main concern that Steven dropped his phone on Homeworld? not the fact that he was... idk... ON HOMEWORLD?!

ok Lapis is ready to bail immediately and tbh i dont blame her

did she just uproot the entire bard wtf?! 

BARN THE DIAMONDS, BARN THE DIAMONDS, BARN THE DIAMONDS!

episode rating: 1.5 barns out of 5. BARN THE DIAMONDS, BARN THE DIAMONDS, BARN THE DIAMONDS!

GEMCATION

^ mfw Amethyst basically spat an egg out her mouth (it was kinda gross)

well. Greg got some kinda house.... still don’t get why the crew is so against having Greg get a house

also, where’s Peridot?

“remove all shoes before entering” Pearl fucking THROWS A RANDOM ASS PAIR OF SHOES

OKAY PEARL SCREAMING “PARTY GUY, NO!” WAS ACTUALLY KINDA FUNNY

S H O W M E P A R T Y G U Y Y O U C O W A R D S

“Steven, you should join me. become a raisin” ok Garnet

did. did Steven completely cut Garnet off as she was talking about Pink Diamond and the Gem War with the whole, “yeah, yeah, i get it, Mom. i already heard this story” kinda thing? B R U H that ain’t okay

AND GARNET JUST SHUTS UP AND WAS LIKE “good, you understand”

PEARL WAS GONNA STRAIGHT UP ADMIT TO SOME HUGE THING AFTER HER “THERE ARE THINGS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO EXPLAIN” LINE AND HE CUTS HER OFF WITH “CONNIE HATES ME”

WHY COULDN’T STEVEN AT LEAST TELL THESE FOUR THAT HE WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT CONNIE HATING HIM?!

I’M KINDA GETTING SICK OF SEEING STEVEN MOPE LIKE THIS FOR 3 EPISODES STRAIGHT AND I HOPE HE DOESN’T KEEP THIS UP FOR THE NEXT 2

OH NO, PLEASE DISREGARD ALL OF THE MESSED UP THINGS YOU SAW ON HOMEWORLD CAUSE CONNIE IS (rightfully) UPSET WITH YOU. LARS D I E D.

GUITAR DAD SAVES THE DAY

i love Greg Universe

how would you not notice if you aren’t getting any service on your phone? your phone tells you when you’re getting service or not

bruh you almost made your dad drive off a cliff for you to get phone service

Greg Universe is a ride or die kinda guy

this ending shot is cute, i’ll give you that. 

episode rating: 2 party guys out of 5. Party Guy should’ve bitten Steven’s phone and his shit attitude. also PEARL WTF ARE YOU TELL US ALREADY

BACK TO THE KINDERGARTEN

Connie i miss you

“of the three things i have to do in the sink now, this is the one i least mind you seeing” B R U H

 Peridot listens to country music, this is disgusting

HOLY SHIT AMETHYST IS TOSSIN’ PERIDOT AROUND LIKE SHE WEIGHS NOTHING AND I’M CRACKING UP

“can i bring my music?” “NO.” damn Amethyst you already threw Peri around like she ain’t nothin’, let her bring her music if it’ll help her

aaaay, they’re in the train again!

dang, Peri really loved the barn.

i kinda like that Amethyst is going around trying to figure out which member of the Famethyst came out of which part of the Kindergarten. kinda cute. 

so everything is seriously determined by the nutrition, right down to the style of a Gem’s hair? ...huh. iron deposits determine hair styles.

damn, Peri went with a sucker punch to the gut with her little speech about how Kindergartens kill off life and are just “lifeless husks” once all the Gems are done being formed. and Amethyst feels awful about it, dang.

ok. there’s a flower growin’ in the Kindergarten, and that should technically be impossible due to all of the nutrients in this one area being used up. this could be interesting.

ok, so now the trio is gonna farm & see what happens. ok, ok, i can roll with this i guess.

FARMING MONTAGE

look at them flowers

they proud

don’t make Peri live here

why the flamingo thingy taller than both of them

gods i didn’t need to see Steven happily showering

they’re talking about how the flowers are probs gonna look beautiful i bet they all died, they’re too positive about this. $5 them flowers are dead.

them flowers are dead,

...now they’re arguing, cause Peri blew up on them. alright. this ain’t good.

aaaaaaaaaaaand Peri crushed the original flower that grew here. both Steven & Amethyst made pained whimpers. ok. this ain’t good.

oh it’s a Gem creature- haven’t seen one of those in a while!

IT ATE PERIDOT HOLY FUCK

SMOKEY QUARTZ IS BACK

ngl i like Smokey’s theme music

btw there’s no dialogue from Smokey, just a quick 2 second thing

Peri doesn’t reform with a star on her

ok, that was kinda cute. and having a technician that also likes gardening is cute too

episode rating: 3.5 dead sunflowers outta 5. it was an okay episode & i did like it. 

SADIE KILLER

heh, i get it. cause lady killer.

oh god, that looks bad

WHY IS THAT MOP SO BIG

instead of reading off a long-ass list to the overly worked employee, just hand Sadie the list so she won’t fuck up?

“and a coffee. hold the coffee.” same tbh

oh. he’s in a band with the Cool Kids. WE GET TO SEE THE COOL KIDS!

“...i hope he [Lars] is safe and all, but working all these shifts by myself has been a huge drag” GIRL, LARS DIED IN SPACE AND IS STILL THERE

Steven stealing all the napkins is something i’d do tbh

man, i love the Cool Kids

is my girl Jenny rockin’ the bass? aaaaaaaaaaay!

Sour Cream, what the HECK IS RAP-A-BILLY?

“Doo-doo. Butt. The government corrupts” Buck is the voice of this generation

welcome to EB Games

they... they admitted to following her home from work....

“doo-doo. i think i broke your bed” Buck wtf

also, i guess them watching all of Sadie’s horror movies gave them inspiration to do that weird donut-brain-eating song. weird.

“we are the working dead, and we lurch for minimum wage” same Sadie

......ok, she’s freaking everyone out. and they look uncomfortable. Sadie, seriously stop. they’re concerned.

...she. put lipstick on her eyes.

see, if she wasn’t freakin’ everyone out with this, i’d say this song is a bop. 

ok they’re fine now & thought it was lit ok cool cool cool. i ain’t a big fan of the lyrics tbh, but i do like the song.

 “aww, doo-doo”

ok so Steven’s askin’ for advice on how to write horror-themed songs from Sadie. how about LARS DIED ON HOMEWORLD

SADIE’S ADVICE IS:

LOSE YOUR LIFE TO A BORING JOB

LOSE THE ONE PERSON YOU WERE CLOSE TO

LOSE YOUR MIND WORKIN A TON OF SHIFTS

GIRL FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Steven puttin’ Sadie on blast, good lord he just sang an accidental roast tryin’ to sing shit like she does

HE STOLE ALL THE NAPKINS AGAIN

“you can’t help being cute no more than i can help being cool” Buck, you’re a blessing

“yoooooo, what if this is all a dream?” Buck, wtf?

oh. Sadie’s goin’ with them. okay. 

OH. SHE QUIT HER JOB. UM. OKAY?

episode rating: 3 funky riffs out of 5. Buck Dewey is great.

KEVIN PARTY

I DO NOT WANT TO WATCH THIS EPISODE, BUT IMMA DO IT ANYWAY

DIDN’T EVEN START THE EPISODE AND I STILL FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE

let’s just get this over with...

why’d Steven wait this long to track down Lion?!

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, here he is......

gods, i still hate him

stop being gross to kids, leave Steven and Connie alone ya freak

at least he knows they use they/them pronouns. 

how did he find out where Connie is? doesn’t she live far away from Beach City? did he track down these two kids just to “invite” Stevonnie?!

“no one turns down an invitation to a Kevin party” i sure as fuck would

lmao Kevin has an old phone

“your name’s Steven? weird, i thought your name was Clarence” OI, DON’T INSULT CLARENCE LIKE THAT

rude, Steven brought snacks and ya just toss ‘em into the void?

ok. he’s creepily obsessed with Stevonnie cause apparently they make parties and shit like that hella fun. um. stop? being obsessed with kids??

WTF WHY IS LION AT THE PARTY

Connie actually showed up. and had Lion the entire time. that’s. super fucked up. Lion is the ONLY way to get to Lars directly!

and also, there’s TWO KIDS AT A PARTY WITH OLDER PEOPLE?! NO ONE BUT DERRICK QUESTIONS THIS?

Kevin’s gonna try to get them to talk to each other... so they can form Stevonnie... so his party won’t suck...

also, he keeps calling them 7-year-olds........ siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, ok Kevin.

KEVIN YOU IDIOT LET THEM TALK TO EACH OTHER SO HE CAN SAY SORRY DON’T GIVE HIM YOUR “COOL GUY” BULLSHIT

“i need those old people to whisper my name when they die” tbh goals

“who’s Sabina?” Kevin got all red in the face and almost lost his cool

so Kevin’s gonna try to make Steven look like he’s moved on from Connie or some shit. this won’t end well.

NO, NOT DERRICK’S JACKET

now we get a montage of 2 kids being uncomfortable surrounded by older people at a party they should’t be at, ok.

at least Connie looks cute. and she got a haircut! so cute!

NOT CUTE NOT CUTE NOT CUTE

GOD, I HATE KEVIN

Steven, what are you doing?

STEVEN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

ok, quick recap cause i didn’t mention this: Kevin thought Steven & Connie were dating, so, Connie only went to the party to see if Steven’s okay and if they could talk. Steven decided to follow Kevin’s advice for some reason, and Connie thinks Steve’s new BFF is Kevin, and Kevin has no concept of what friends are.

so. Connie didn’t text Steven cause she preferred talking face to face about this, and that texting him wasn’t good enough to work out these issues. very fair point. still don’t get why you legit stole Lion from him, but the not texting back thing makes complete sense.

ok, she rode Lion to his house while Steven, Greg & the Gems were away (the episode Gemcation). and that’s when she bumped into Kevin and got the invite. ok. now Kevin is slightly less creepy, but still disgusting nonetheless.

oh, yay! they’re talking it out! and Steven isn’t disregarding Connie’s anger!

yay! they’re friends again!

don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie, don’t form Stevonnie.

LMAO GET FUCKED, KEVIN, THEY AIN’T FORMIN’ STEVONNIE

episode rating: 1 Lion out of 5. least fave episode, tbh. but hey, we got Connie back!

#su spoilers #su leaks #su criticism #su critical #spilled latte

[tube-thoughts-blog]

Vol. 10

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

Killer Couples: Toybox Killings *An interstate prostitute escapes from a Truth or Consequences, New Mexico "rape dungeon" after being held hostage by a near retirement park ranger party animal and his much younger but still nearing middle aged yet still a white trash party girl at heart lover and willing accomplice. Oxygen network thrives on this kind of investigative murder porn, but gives mixed signals when the show's main sponsor is Oxygen's previews for a feel good family sitcom featuring Damon Wayans.* either zero or 2 stars

Breaking Greenville: You Are Now Safe *An orange tanned, obnoxious news anchor goes weird on the air and starts having a midlife crisis while talking inappropriately to the viewers about his pending divorce. The same guy brings together his news crew, in his small apt, to give them facial masks and it gets surreal looking at newspeople being reality tv stars buying for fifteen minutes of fame with these strange painted faces. Then, a nerdy meteorologist gives an awkward report from a tornado bunker, followed by a spunky morning reporter trying her hardest to be serious for a story of a church burning. A news veteran, with a walrus mustache, gives the spunky reporter advice, while inhaling a chocolate covered donut, to cover more stories about happy topics like food.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Plastic Surgery, Nip-pocalypse *Put a bag over your head, if you must, but don't put a butterfly tattoo on your ankle.* close to 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: Season 1 Episode 12 *"There's nothing like being part of the team. That feeling that you're just an insignificant part of a much larger scheme." All for one and one for all. You can't handle the truth or pull the sword from the stone. "Human flesh is the ultimate fun food."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Look Around You: Ghosts *They're there in their room.* close to 3 stars

Hippies: Muddy Hippies *Pitching a tent with the socialist state, landing in doo doo, and selling out to the bank.* 2 1/2 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 4 *The original Gong Show had acts more absurd and interesting than 20 something hipster nerd that's kind of good at yo yo or stripper catholic school chick lesbo act that's entertaining only at bachelor and frat parties.* running from 1 to close to 2 stars

=== Ghosts Adventures, Aftershocks with Zak Bagans: Zozo

*D-bag Zak puts on a sports jacket over his muscle shirt to give some former haunted people, from the show, a bit of paranormal therapy, Dr. Phil style.

The poor sap on this episode gets hammered with accusations that his conjuring of a demon via a oujia board (available at toy stores and gag gift shops in malls nationwide) led to his ex-wife having an affair with the nasty spirit and to her current stay in jail.

You can't make this stuff up. Oh, wait... you can, and they did, and it's as laughable to watch as it sounds.

Also, and I'm not making this up, there's some kind of contention, that needed to be explained by host and guest, about said lady's crotch odor actually not being her fault and instead was a sulfur smell from the pits of hell.

No kidding.*

1 star

-----------------------------------------

---- 12:01 Beyond --- Episode #5 --- Love Is Sex Misspelled ---------

*RKO cartoon - Cupid Gets His Man: An all out Cherub amorous assault on an old maid and an old bachelor.* 2 stars

*Old school, praise-filled promo for the cult classic Dr. Caligari 1989.* 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo sends one out to the lovers who like to "cop a feel."* 2 1/2 stars

*"Eavesdrop on America's darkest secrets." Intimate Secrets "Adults only. $2.00 per minute. Classic sleazy 900 number phone service.* 3 stars

*Ninja the Mission Force - "N" Is For Ninja: "Keep your money in your shoe." and your heart off your pajama sleeve.* close to 3 stars

*Super retro anti-drug cartoon circa late 60s or early 70s from Hanna Barbera.* 3 stars

*Republic Pictures Serials - The Crimson Ghost in Chapt. 5 'Flaming Death': Collision course on a collision course.* 2 stars

*Ballroom Dance Floor (interesting music video inspired by the Great Gatsby.* 2 1/2 stars

*Grindhouse trailer showing an "Oath of Green Blood."* 2 1/2 stars

*Mr. Lobo romances a potted plant.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

*A big costume heart shows up and sings to Mr. Lobo and his potted lady.* 2 1/2 stars

*Tom Sizemore in "Bad Love": Tom is Lenny -a lowlife, jealous, pathetic, controlling, abusive, mostly terrible lover/boyfriend to this short-haired city chick, who could do much better but is too dumb to try, in a saxophone and soft piano filled skid row setting softcore sex in the mid 90s romance flick.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Videotape advertisement for satellite signal descrambler to have "American eXXXtasy" available to all those using a video cipher 2 for only a few hundred bucks. Get all the porn you want, same as an average schmoe in a trucker hat and a plaid shirt.* 3 stars

*A colorized King Kong goes car shopping for a Volkswagen to haul his captive sweetie around in a 1960s or early 70s car advertisement.* close to 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo can't get any privacy or satisfaction from the invasive Heart mascot, a cloud of poisonous urinal cake gas, or a post-apocalyptic plant lady mishap.* 2 stars

*Classic TNT Monstervision theme song, sung by Joe Bob Briggs, intro video where Joe Bob can't get any love from the hot, white trash bimbo TNT "Mail Girl."* 3 stars

*"Red Nightmare": Jack Webb stands on suburban street corners, staring into windows, abducting family men, who won't get in line and act like a good American, sending them to Soviet society where their freedoms are stripped away. Jack Webb is too ignorant to see the irony of his own thoughts and actions.* 1 star

*Superman in "Jungle Drums": "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" Superman saves Lois from stereotype African savages who are trying to sacrifice her for not spilling top U.S. Navy ship location secrets to the savages' Nazi overlords." 3 stars

*"Women fear being raped, but it's double the fear if it's in outerspace and by aliens." in this grindhouse quality trailer for "Insemenoid."* 3 stars

*Colorful, quirky, scale model filled XXX outerspace adventure with horny space women, Harry Potter look-a-like with his Hogwarts professor sidekick, and overtly gay alien ship's computer voice. "Spaced Out." a grindhouse style trailer.* 3 stars

*"Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders" another retro trailer.* 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo is the last man on earth, left to his own devices -licking telephone receivers.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Zero stars for the annoying voice over lady who complained during everyone of her intros. Was an enhancement the first few episodes of 1201, but for this episode it was a real detraction. Not sure if it was part of the act, or if it was a legitimate show of feelings. Either way, it sucked. Get rid of it, and her, if necessary.*

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

VH1 sneak preview "Hot Grits" *Another insipid reality mess featuring "good looking" people, this time the cast being overprivileged 20 somethings from the southern United States (A number of other cable networks have similar shows. So, it's already a tired premise.) and VH1 really is daring its idiotic viewers to "hate watch" the awful people and antics on this steaming vomit, served in a bowl, excuse for a tv show.* zero stars

Red Letter Media presents Best of the Worst: Blood Debts, The Tomb, and Undefeatable *Generic Charles Bronson with a tiny cannon and a wife named simply "his wife" in the movie's credits, then a Indiana Jones rip off that has nearly zero action... limited stars' screentime... and phone filled exposition, followed finally by a mom jeans karate lady in a universe where everyone knows karate and an eyeball ripping out serial rapist is on the loose.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

American Horror Story - Asylum: Continuum *Communal state of delusion.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Hellphones versus Interthreat *Electronic etiquette.* close to 3 stars

Forensic Files: Bitter Potion *Poisoned by Pie. Scratch that. Poisoned by Coca-Cola. Better yet, poisoned by a member of MENSA. A real 'Walter White type' chemist / former meth cook.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Fatal Lisa *"Getting it on (on the hood of a Dodge Viper, which is true love)" with a genie who won't take no for an answer.* 3 stars

Wizards and Warriors: Night of Terror *For the night is long and filled with spiders.* 3 stars

Swamp Thing: The Prometheus Parabola *John Wayne and Arcane have a tech-war shootout showdown.* either 1 or 3 stars

Viper: Firehawk *"Beware the Bandersnatch" Urban assault and compromising situations of a vehicular nature.* either 1 1/2 stars or close to 3 stars

Spicy City: Manos Hands *Redbeans, bongo musica, and bruja? brewha?* close to 3 stars

X Files: Darkness Falls *Pitch black.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Mother Earth Bitch *Throwing a live chicken, wearing a jet pack, into the air is not pollution.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Forensic Files: Fatal Fungus *Mold takes hold in the ghetto.* 2 1/2 stars

Gargoyles: Reawakening *Castle and community.* close to 3 stars

Hill Street Blues: Gatorbait *Passive aggressive "Prelude to oblivion."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Robocop the series: Trouble In Delta City *Strange side effects. Tame violence and hokey characters are just fine when the satire is funny and biting.* close to 3 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 episode 5 *This show is so far removed from the spirit of the original Gong Show that it reminds one of a skanky Hard Rock Cafe amateur talent night. Adam Sandler's production company "Happy Madison" is in charge of the show, so that says something about the quality and the reason why this episode featured two unworthy, obnoxious female friends of his who were also "actresses" in one of his terrible movies (Something something Zohan).* 1 1/2 stars

Everything Is Terrible -----------------

*Family Easter Hell!: "Because he lives, we can face tomorrow. Now, here's an egg." A decorated egg.* 3 stars

*Christ Or Die: Too busy to hear about salvation? Think it's nonsense? Boom, comically horrible death without redemption.* 3 stars

*Jesus Has A Big Dick!: #BOING!# "That's right!" Gitty up, little doggie.* 3 stars

----------------------------

VH1 Classic --- Pop Up Video --- Episode 3

*Meredith Brooks - "Bitch": A female dog was the first earth creature to orbit in outerspace.* 3 stars with pop ups 2 1/2 stars without pop ups

*Gin Blossoms - "Allison Road": According the the U.S. Census Bureau, you are watching television right now.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

*Madonna - "Take A Bow": Madonna wanted to get knocked up by Dennis Rodman. True fact. And true that she is as pretentious as this gorgeous 90s artsy music video.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

*Milli Vanilli - "Girl You Know It's True": The only thing true about Milli Vanilli was they were both lip syncing.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars (guilty pleasure) without pop ups

*Bobby McFerrin - "Don't Worry, Be Happy": "Happiness is a psychiatric disorder."* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

----------------------------------------------

Look Around You: Sulphur *"9 hundred billion, billion, billion, billion matches."* 3 stars

Twitch City: People Who Fight Too Much *"Alleged spontaneous nature of..." dynamics.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Voting, Electile Dysfunction *Don't "Rock the Vote!" More people coupon than vote. Voting should be fun like the lottery or the Pepsi Challenge.* 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: season 1 episode 13 *"Doomed souls wander the earth, unfit for either Heaven or Hell." Special guest Howie Mandell, and a Jeffersons reunion.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"Bad Dudes Versus Dragon Ninja" (A Data East arcade game) *In 2015, Islamic terrorists are beheading innocents, Hillary is once again running for the highest office in the land, and a moron lands a gyrocopter on the lawn of the capitol building. In the 1980s, we had a president named "Ronnie" and he was kidnapped by ninjas.* close to 3 stars

"Shaq Fu" (*Brought to us by PEPSI and ego*) *Shaq wanders into an Oriental antiques shop, the kind that would sell a Mogwai to a stupid Westerner. The little old man sends him to retrieve a golden child from an ancient realm where Shaq ventures across what looks like the map from Super Mario World for the SNES and there he beats up voodoo women, cat women, and stereotype Universal style monsters.* 2 stars

Hippies: Disgusting Hippies *Young punks think Simon Pegg's hippie newsletter editor character is a cunt.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Killer Party *"Did you just turn my parents into teenage party animals!?!"* 3 stars

The Greatest American Hero: Reseda Rose *First off, it's crummy being an 80s kid with a flakey parent who won't spend her weekend with a kid at the zoo, 'cause she's too busy with her acting in commercials career. Then The Greatest American Hero breaks Superman's privacy rule by using his x-ray vision powers to peak through walls at a cocktail waitress hogtied by Russian undercover spies.* close to 3 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 6 *More b list celebrities flirting with Las Vegas "rawker" looking skanks and trying way too hard to be edgy talent/comedy routines.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Bob and Margaret: The Dental Convention *Oral hypnotism. Bob's "matter of fact" attitude charms the masses and puts off his smarmy, new age dental clinic dental school classmate at a dental convention in Frankfurt, Germany.* close to 3 stars

Flinch (Vertigo - DC Comics) ------

*Mostly White: Women lose their small child during the insipid panic surrounding a big department store's Christmas rush. Reminds one of a more bleak Storm of the Century by Stephen King.* close to 3 stars

*The Harvester: Surgery of harvesting a deadbeat's organs goes through, even with the moral dilemma of the supposed braindead deadbeat not being dead.* 2 1/2 stars

*Sitter!: A neurotic slacker gets stuck babysitting his thug friend's wrapped in plastic dead stripper girlfriend's body that he shows up at his apartment with.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

-----------------------------------

--- The Ben Stiller Show: Unaired Sketches

*An absurd and kooky wrestling characters battle royale. Ben dresses up like a deformed Ron Perlman and along with Bob Odenkirk and Andy Dick predicts the sad, pathetic lives of what would become "furries" in a mascot competition.

'Hard Edition,' a Hard Copy tabloid tv show parody keeps catching a horny, teenage Andy Dick whacking off to nudey magazines.

Three's Company era Don Knotts portrayed by Andy Dick joins a spandex wearing and lasso swinging Ben Stiller infomercial workout expert and his dominatrix.

Bob Odenkirk is a creepy, conspiracy theorist sitting on a bench in a park rambling about cancer, Dick Clark, Elvis, adult diaper cartels, tainted peanut butter assassinations.*

(I can see why some of these didn't make the cut, but still funny.)

3 stars

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crossballs, the debate show: Sex Battle USA *A flamboyant pansexual Matt Besser character gets bitchy with a conservative reverend who believes the sexes should act their sex. A feminist has to explain the 1964 Civil Rights act allowed for women's rights not to be sexually exploited in the workplace. Ha. A business consultant thinks that the WNBA should dress their ladies like the Lingerie Football League so that they'll stop be unsuccessful in the ratings and attendance. A crazy inventor presents a robot vagina for the workplace.* close to 3 stars

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES) *So we've got an evil sorceress Latoya Jackson look-a-like, a turkey behind a computer terminal, and a jacked up toad zipping its way through hordes of pig-beasts wearing amateur wrestling singlets and viking helmets, raccoons with magnets, moles on checker board pieces all through fast flying obstacles and platform puzzle levels, like one where the toad has to hang on for a ride on the back of two tropical snakes through the holes of their tunnel nest. A rare gem alongside Donkey Kong Country and Rayman.* close to 3 stars

Death Rattle #18 (Kitchen Sink Comix) -------

*Bulto the Cow Camp, Thirty Years Later....: Historical and allegorical tales of ancient deposits of precious minerals sought by 19th century men of manifest destiny with gold and silver twinkling in their beady eyes.* 3 stars

*The Old Wisconsin That I Knew: Musings of an early 20th century bigot thinking back on when he and the white man could exploit and show unpunished cruelty to the red man out in the frontier of Wisconsin. Thanks to nature's natural ways, a cruel fate meets the old bastard in the most bleak and darkly poetic way possible, spilling his guts before his eyes and leaving his bones to be drenched by pounding rains and dried by the menacing sun.* 3 stars

*Small Acts of Revenge: A loner, whose overbearing parents still haunt him from the grave, tries to escape reality into the grotesque world of Tales from the Crypt style comics. That is when he's not being haunted by the gruesome visages of the victims of his wrongfully applied revenge.* close to 3 stars

*When I Grow Up: Kids playing make believe, on a suburban lawn, see a shooting star. A somber girl makes a wish, and strangely they begin aging and acting out the drama of their teenage through adulthood to middle age and death life sorrows.* close to 3 stars

----------------------------------

The Angry Video Game Nerd: Atari Porn *In the early days of videogames, designers were happy just to be able to pixelate  penises, humping, and ejaculating. It was that immature. Take history's tragic a-hole, General Custer, and have him dodging arrows so that he can poke a naked Indian chick tied to a cactus. Have a guy jerking off on top of a building with willing naked bimbos below to catch his falling semen. How bout a topless witch squirting milk to men with their goobers poking out of their pants? Or even a juvenile fantasy of a poorly pixelated naked chick stalking a neighborhood and breaking into houses to hump men in their sleep?* 1 star for the shitty games 3 stars for Nerd enduring the absurdity of it all

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (Electronic Arts for Super Nintendo) *When Michael Jordan was the most exciting athlete in the world, he was careful about how he had his image used. He'd play Larry Bird in a ridiculous game of h-o-r-s-e for a Big Mac or Pepsi, and he'd sell overpriced sneakers in an arthouse commercial co-starring and directed by Spike Lee, but you couldn't live out your dreams of being like Mike in basketball videogames like the awesome arcade dunkfest NBA JAM. No. At the time, you could play this game and bounce a basketball around a haunted, flooded, bat infested house / dungeon to platform hop and rescue Michael Jordan's NBA All Star team-mates.* 1 1/2 stars

Look Around You: Music *Don't play the forbidden notes.* 2 1/2 stars

Obscurus Lupa Presents: Pocket Ninja *If you were an 80s or early 90s kid, you were a martial arts spazz. You watched Ninja Turtles, you watched 3 Ninjas (barf), Surf Ninjas (laughs). and you were a threat to kick another kid or adult in the nuts while stupidly attempting karate. This one, Pocket Ninja, is a relic of its time. It's a cheap and direct to video IMDB bottom 100 "movie" featuring poor editing, awful slapstick in place of entertaining chop sockey, bad acting 90s brats, and a lot of taking itself not serious at all while thinking it's funny when it's not.* 2 1/2 stars for Obscurus Lupa's review and 1 star for the movie clips

=== Dead Rising *2006* (All story cutscenes in movie form)

*I'm not here to discuss the sandbox gameplay.

The cutscenes play like any other zombie outbreak flick, and nicely, with the usual mad science government conspiracy gone wrong.

This time with a theme of Americans' insatiable lust for red blooded meat and the abuse of the third world to get it.

Like with their Resident Evil series, Capcom nails the ambiance of a survival horror story with the crawling up on your shoulder sounds and music cues, and the mall setting is a nice homage to Dawn of the Dead.

Expect over the top acting performances from the CGI created stars and voice actors.

But unfortunately like more recent Capcom survival horror games it strays off the path with too big of a narrative scope and not knowing when to stop and what genre to stay in

(zombie wasps, Oriental stereotype psychopath butchers and grocery store managers gone mad, and an ending involving a military jeep battle with a tank commanded by the type of military a-hole like in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket).

Other than that it fits in nicely with the zombie revival craze of the 2000s.*

2 1/2 stars

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Xenophage, Alien Bloodsport (Story Mode) *A "faces of meth" David Duchovny look-a-like, in a Canadian tuxedo, along with a Gillian Anderson look-a-like, both get abducted by the United Federation of Planets & Hokey Outer Space Martial Arts Tournaments. Nick (Duchovny) is midly disturbed by this. Think Mortal Kombat meets Celebrity Deathmatch levels of uncanny valley faces on the two humans. Of course, these two everyday Joe and Jane pair can hurl energy blasts from the palms of their hands, as requirement by all fighting games. The lizard / insect alien creature designs are at least visually interesting and deserve to belong in a better mid-90s sci fi PC game.* 1 star

River City Ransom (NES) *This game lives up to its name. You pretty much walk along the streets, by a river, in a nice Japanese (posing for American, I guess?) city, getting hit in the back of the head by "student" thugs, with street gang weapons, as you try to rescue your girlfriend from a high ranking crime lord named Slick. Sounds like the plot for many other 80s beat 'em ups / karate movies, and it is. Charming little title with the bite sized NES and cute little Japanese flare, including a bad side of town called "Generic Guy Territory" or something along those lines. And don't worry about the enemies, because our hero has a superfast kick attack that would make Street Fighter's Chun Li's loins quiver.* 2 1/2 stars

"No Exit" (Amiga) *A 2D fighter that looks like it pre-dates both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. More like Mortal Kombat, though, and a possible influence (?) on the series. It contains small character sprites but they can perform special moves like turning into killer fish and screaming banshee faces. There's even a hilarious finishing move sequence where the loser walks around headless, with the head floating just there, before they collapse into a  pool of blood and electric sparks. The backgrounds are dark and gothic with demonic statues and menacing trees with faces, again like Mortal Kombat. Also there's an intro screen / possible box art with a regular Joe street fighting man set against a dark and gritty cityscape with the 'Satanic-goat-horned' image of what must be the main villain against the background, and that's just pure exploitation goodness for ya.* 2 1/2 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 2 Minute Super Soul Brother *"Doing it" in the name of science (?), money (?), bulletproof skin, mad science midgets, and big tittied blonde women.* 3 stars

Mortal Kombat: Defenders of Stupidity *Kombat krazy white chick special operative in gymnastics attire, untrustorthy ninjas of all kinds of variety, bumbling super computer wizard Native American stereotypes, and a black dude with bionic arms who calls a Thunder God the unflattering insult name of "girlfriend."* 3 stars

Eternal Champions (Sega Genesis) *A 1920s gangster, who knows kung fu, is teleported to a mystical martial arts tournament after his death. Fight against trident wielding mer-men, prehistoric brutes, neo ninja chicks, and cyborg dudes in a colorful Street Fighter 2 clone.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Red Letter Media presents Best of the Worst ---------

*Ghetto Blaster: An urban warfare expert returns to his home city and finds it full of crime. After the convenience store robbery death of his dad and the brutal burning to death of his old black man friend (and his alley cat), the guy decides to take action. Pulling off mildly harmful clown pranks on the goofy acting gang bullies around town.* either 1 star or 2 stars

*Terror In Beverly Hills: "Terrorists have kidnapped the President's daughter and are holding her hostage in the old bean factory." (PfffHAA!) Cue keyboard cat-lady and Frank (totally not Sylvester) Stallone.* either 1 star or between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

*Killing American Style: Elephant Man look-a-like Robert Zadar and his gang of escaped convicts and sex perverts pull off a violent / half assed home invasion "thriller" at the home of a Rico Suave look-a-like and Steven Segal martial arts expert.* either zero stars (uncomfortable family murder / rape), 1 star, or 2 stars

Red Letter Media agrees that Terror In Beverly Hills is Best of the Worst

-----------------------------------------------------

Natsume and Milton Bradley present "Abadox" *Imagine Metroid for the NES, only with monsters ripped from the minds of H.R. Giger and Clive Barker.* 3 stars

"Guardians of the Hood" (Atari Arcade) 1992 *Some Jersey Shore rejects battle their way through a poorly digitized bad side of town filled with hookers and gangbangers and flashing perverts. Cheered on by a haggard looking gym owner similar to Mickey from Rocky. And unconvincingly menaced by a lipstick wearing model in "guy drag." In a tacky twist ending (to go along with the tacky rest of the game), the "Big Boss" (the model) takes off her old school gangster disguise and has a final fight with our steroid muscled and orange tan heroes while she wears dominatrix attire.* 1star

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Bulletproof *Gary Busey invents and overuses the catchphrase "butthorn." Whatever that means.* 3 stars

"Kakuto Chojin" (X-BOX) *In the early 2000s, industrial techno noise & nu-metal guitar riffs were a grating chorus to America's bleeding eardrums, and the same "xtremez" who enjoyed this were likely to take Fight Club literally. This game represents the kind of turn of Y2K, gritty, urban fist to face revivals supposedly going on in back alleys and parking garages across cities nationwide. Gritty, but pretty in the same way Ninja Gaiden could be on the X-Box hardware. And featuring a nice presentation effect of having the camera do a 360 degree slow motion pan around each KO. The most memorable thing about the game is the controversy around one character's Muslim extremist dialogue in the game. This lead to it being pretty much dead on arrival in the American videogame climate of the early days after 9/11.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

"JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" (Dreamcast) *Over the top manga presentation style with characters drawn in the same way mannequins' faces are both appealing and appalling. Each fighter fights alongside a spirit / avatar being / creature. It's like the Monty Python cartoon, but creepier, cousin to all the other highly animated 2D Japanese fighting games of the 90s. Funniest moment, that I witnessed, being when a steam-roller gets dropped on a pug sized dog character and the opponent begins pounding the steam-roller, with his fists, as the dog whimpers beneath.* 2 1/2 stars

"Dark Edge" Sega 1992 (Arcade) *Set in a sprite art pixelated and nifty cyberpunk dystopia. Battle it out as leather clad ninja chicks on hoverboards, mech dudes with missiles and flying torpedo dive attacks, biological monsters, another guy in a monkey-fighting-style inspired mech suit, and a final boss that's a techno ghoul nightmare like out of Frank Miller's Ronin. Fighters can move around each other giving the illusion of early 3D gameplay, and featuring the upbeat style of 90s Japanese video game music and bad "Engrish" phrases like "Wound One" instead of round one.* close to 2 1/2 stars

"Strider" Capcom (Arcade) *"All sons of old gods die!" Pretty dramatic, eh? Well, if Emperor Palpatine made a deal with space pirates, Amazon women, and robotic commies you wouldn't need no Jedi, Wonder Woman, Captain America, or Flash Gordon to save the day. Just take one arcade token and about 15 minutes and let a wall climbing ninja do what the galactic rebels couldn't do in a trilogy of movies.* close to 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Netforce *'So dated that it's funny' fearmongering about the dangers of global e-terror during the early days of the internet.* 3 stars

---- Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (Nintendo 64)

*The world of pro wrestling is a niche part of entertainment culture.

Fans watch it for a variety of reasons:

kids who enjoy the heroic action, adults (who never grew up) for a more nostalgic reason, fandom fans who admire the celebrity surrounding the hunky dudes and buxom babes of the sport (er... sports-entertainment), and the internet wrestling community who dissect the current product and the past eras of the product and consider it an artform with varying degrees of level of quality of product and performance.

Well, you can't get more niche than a Japanese version of pro wrestling and a pro wrestling game that was made in the late 90s.

The popular AKI "No Mercy" wrestling engine featuring a legendary wrestler and anime character "Tiger Mask Number 2" and portrayed by a legendary Japanese wrestler (Misawa) who tragically died while performing his "art."

In this game, it's made weirder by the fact the game features a crowd of cardboard cut out Japanese wrestling fans.

Yeah, pro wrestling is niche, and weird, but it's fun, just like this wrestling game featuring great action and a great game engine that's had a lasting appeal of fun gameplay to play or watch for close to two decades.*

3 stars

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

"Buriki One" (SNK) 1999 *Remember that scene in the movie "Lost In Translation" where Bill Murray couldn't get the tone right for his Japanese whiskey commercial? That's sort of what this game is like and that weird period of time when combat sports mayhem was trying to figure out just how to go about what would eventually become mixed martial arts like the UFC. Different styles of throwdown meet here, on the mat, including everything from karate to pro wrestling to low impact elderly ancient Chinese exercise technique (jk). It's interesting, but it works about as well and is almost as boring as the first time these different styles of sport met when boxing clashed with karate in the infamous Ali versus Inoki fight where one challenger, afraid of the other's fists, chose to lie on the ring floor and kick at the other like a scared rabbit.* either 1/2 a star or close to 2 1/2 stars

"3 Count Bout" (SNK) *Superficial and on the surface is a stigma when it comes to video game graphics. As soon as developers could make 3D and fans could get their hands on it, we entered into a trying time. Blocky and often ugly characters replaced sprite animation because it was the new thing. Dreary attempts at 3D environments were as fun to look at as getting about an inch away from a dirty, grey concrete wall and cracking your skull against it. Things have improved from those early days of 3D graphic experimentation, but at the time, I would have rathered stuck with something like this game. An early 1990s arcade button smasher featuring colorful kabuki ninjas throwing big bad Mad Max movie inspired bruisers around & into electrified deathtraps in a cheesy, and dated, --beat'em up-- 'eye candy' grappler.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

---- "Real Bout Fatal Fury Special" --Level 7 Ultra Hard-- (SNK Arcade)

*Playing as a Jacki Chan inspired Hong Kong super-cop wielding a set of nunchaku through a series of scantly clad karate babes, little old sensei who morphs into huge muscle bound badass, and dance fighting dudes from the Caribbean.

Finally beating the purple haired Euro-dictator-themed final boss, one would think that an arcade battler would be done munching one's quarters.

But think again. During the celebrating credits, the music changes to a wind instrumental samurai movie sounding theme and one is transported through a  series of sliding open doors featuring beautiful classic Japanese artwork of feudal warriors.

It stops at a martial arts badass with his back turned towards the camera and standing amidst huge samurai warrior oni statues in a menacingly eerie flame lit dojo.

It's secret final boss, by the name of Geese Howard, who looks like a handsome American corp executive or presidential candidate and is ripped with muscles and decked out in kung fu threads.

The screen reads the bold words "Nightmare," as he precedes to backfist you in the mush and charge up monster truck tire sized energy blasts to pummel and embarass you with and make you feel like a loser, even though you beat the game.

It's cheap, you feel like a klutz, but it's pure unadulterated martial arts tournament cliche movie/game exploitation goodness to the last clud to the floor in agonizing defeat.*

3 stars

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

"Ninja Master's" (SNK/ADK) 1996 *From an artistic eye viewpoint, feudal Japan was one moody place. In this setting, one might witness a lone swordsman standing in a rainstorm with a flash of lightning to reveal ninja assassins creeping up on him, or a samurai sword clash in front of a desolate and overgrown farm overran by crows, then maybe another bloody encounter on a lone pier watched over by a willow tree above other trees in the newly flooded river with mountains in the distance, an honorable duel to the death might come in a cave filled with bats, and moonlit temples often played host to battles with evil samurai overlords like the dreaded Nobunaga and his sentient, burning blade.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"Weaponlord" (Namco for the SNES) *Long before Namco mastered weapon based combat games with the Soul Calibur series, they jumped in on the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat 2D fighter action. What it boils down to is stone aged brutes bashing other stone aged brutes, Viking women, and demonic brutes in the skull with swords, axes, and huge rocks tied to huge clubs with leather. Featuring  an artistic style similar to a Frank Frazetta drawing -thanks to comic arist Simon Bisley who is famous for his dark fantasy artwork in Judge Dredd & Lobo. Eyecandy for fans of 1980s heavy metal album covers, sword and sorcery flicks of the same era, and readers of Conan the Barbarian pulps and comics.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

---"Sexy fights and brutal deaths in" **The Black Heart** (indie) *An indie (Mugen, a form of online fighting game mashup creator and sharing service) 2D fighting game with over the top super moves similar to Marvel vs. Capcom. However, darker than Capcom's own horror based fighter Darkstalkers. Inspired by the more bloody Silent Hill, Hellraiser, and the Japanese ghost genre of The Ring. It does feature a few comical characters like a twig man who smokes pot and wears a green suit like another silly horror villain in Warwick Davis's Leprechaun. Also there's a sexy "fan service" spider-lady who looks like something out of a Tim Burton stop motion movie.* 2 1/2 stars

"Abobo's Big Adventure" (New Grounds & I-Mockery) *The alternate history imagined tale of a random baddie from the arcade and NES classic "Double Dragon." The bald, mean faced, and lovingly dumb, newly protagonist murders his way through tons of classic NES game characters. It's a tribute / parody with a very morbidly entertaining sense of humor.* 3 stars

"Martial Masters" 2001 *Playing like a brightly colored cousin to Capcom or SNK fighters, but featuring a setting and cast from China of old. Gorgeously pastoral with scenes of old men sweeping the floors of temples as cranes pose gently near about, a monkey boy and his actual monkey friends dancing around, and children sitting in a meadow playing with and feeding a panda that's rolling to and fro for their amusement, along with the typical market scenes of the genre. For fans, like myself, of Shaw Brothers kung fu movies and modern fare like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.* close to 3 stars

Everything is Terrible: 3 Minute Unborn 2 *Overly dramatic bad horror movie about a killer baby that's such a horrible looking prop that it's even harder to take seriously than it already would be. Ends with mom having had enough and elbowing monster baby in the face, several hard times, before blowing herself and junior (and even more unbelievably the house) up with the old homemade explosive device in the microwave trick.* either 1 star or 3 stars

Dave's Nostalgia Trip: "Big Bang Pro Wrestling" (SNK) Neo Geo Pocket Color --2000-- *For a handheld wrestling game this has a nice presentation. The crowd is lively, the tunes have a headbobbing gentleness that's not so grating, and the action packs a bang (even if the game is bite sized). Any pro wrestling game where you can pull off a top rope moonsault has an instant fun factor.* close to 3 stars

Weird Science: Sex Ed *"You don't understand the meaning of the words funky cold medina, shoop a doop, zoom uh zoom zoom in the boom boom."* 2 1/2 stars

Manimal: High Stakes *Wild horses couldn't chase as much tail as Manimal.* either 1 star or close to 3 stars

Ed the Happy Clown: Issue 6 of 9 (Drawn & Quarterly Publications) *A micro-dimension has been discovered when the tiny head of another dimension's Earth's president Ronald Reagan appears as the penis head of a loser named Ed. Tiny pygmie savages, of the city, want to worship it as a penis god. And a tv show/government agency of science wants to investigate this other dimension, but they turn against the whole idea, rather violently, when they discover the only way to again contact this other dimension is to put the other dimension's Ron Reagan into a dimensional gateway that also happens to be the anus of a dead man. It's not the necrophillia that they have a problem with, it's the homosexuality.* 3 stars

"Burn: Cycle" (Phillips Compact Disc Interactive) --1994-- *"Sol Cutter has something on his mind... ...in two hours it's going to explode!" You kind of know what to expect from a dated full motion videogame when you hear something like that as a tag line. This one has all the cliches of the cyberpunk 90s genre: cityscape right out of BladeRunner only with poor 90s cgi, flying cars, high tech espionage plot, sinister new-age cult, cyber addiction, hipster nite club with neo-jazz music, and a main character who narrates his broken down in the gutter life like a noir tragic figure. It's like Johnny Mneumonic (sp?) with an "Everybody betray me!" Tommy Wiseau level of bad acting, yet dull.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Super Star Wars --SNES-- (Lucas Arts) *Storywise, it's the even more juvenile imagined parts of Episode 4 turned into a run and gun sidescroller. But in reality, it's set in a galaxy far, far away. A very long time ago before the edited special editions and prequels killed most of the magic of the series. And before Disney dug up the holy corpse to cash in on it. It's Luke blasting first and asking questions never, pulling an Annie Starkiller and wasting countless lives of Jawas, Sandpeople, and Stormtroopers. He hadn't really got a handle on the whole more peaceful side of the force yet. You can get Chewbacca (for a more whimsical approach) or Han (for a more morally ambiguous path). Still, it feels rather repetitive and very Duke Nuke'em instead of Jedi Knight or loveable space rascals.* 2 stars

"Mace: The Dark Age" (N64) *Some would say this 3D brawler wants badly to be either Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat. Especially with a voice announcer who demands "Execution!" after the final round. But you can't totally dislike a game that puts a dwarf in a steampunk powered war-mech built out of ale barrels and carrying a Thor hammer and spiked mace as weapons.* close to 2 1/2 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 7 *It all feels a little too rehearsed. Everyone of the contestants has an edgy or alt-2000s carnival act. Where are the true weirdos and not these phonies?* 2 stars

Spicy City: Tears of a Clone *One in a million girl with a one in a million genetic code. But not anymore, and hardly worth the trouble. Still, you kind of feel for her.* 3 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn, the series: Self Contained *Owed a soul and a crossing over.* close to 3 stars

Farscape: Family Ties *A cross between the lunar landing and Return of the Jedi, only more bleak.* 3 stars

Attack On Titan: Episode 1 *Taking the tired concept of refuge from a horde of cannibalistic humanoids (zombies) and turning it on its head. This time instead of thousands of zombies clawing outside a wall or a building, it's giant, mindless humanoid cannibals clawing outside a giant wall. The people inside are shaken from their sense of comfort when one is big enough to bring even the huge walls down for the first time in a 100 years or something. Made even more entertaining by the grandiose over the top anime style acting and voice performances. Also, this show reminds me of SouthPark, for some reason (maybe the kids?), and that's definitely a good thing.* 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Death Drug *Angel Dust makes Miami Vice's Phil Michael Thomas go crazy and destroy a supermarket.* either 1 star or 3 stars

"Nasty Hero" circa 1980s or officially 1987 via 'The Private Movie Company Inc.' (ooh fancy) *A real Neandertal is released from the slammer after being framed for a crime he didn't commit. Now he's out for ridiculous action movie revenge. He always wears a dirty wife beater or mechanic's shirt (hence the name Nasty Hero, I guess). He'll have to take down the blackmarket sports car ring of obnoxious yuppies out to make his life a living hell. The main douchebag is even after his old flame Yolanda (*snickers*). Set in the "So 80s it hurts!" time period in the thousand flushes blue toilet bowl of America that is known as Florida. And featuring a ton of bad movie cliches and homo-erotic moments. Still, the cheese and action goes down easy.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Heart She Holler: Fear Is Dog Spelled Bassackwards *Perversion of the conversion. Regular folk, n-word, chicken dinner.* 2 1/2 stars

Kung Fu, the series: The Soul is the Warrior *A rose grows beyond the wall.* 3 stars

--- "Daraku Tenshi, The Fallen Angels" (Psikyo) 1998

*Usually fighting games don't have a uniting theme when it comes to stages.

If they can animate it, then they'll fight anywhere from the jungle to outerspace.

Even if it doesn't make any sense.

Here is not the case. The setting being a decade after a major cataclysm leaves a west coast city, with an obvious Asian influence, in the climate of a cesspool and never recovering from the disaster.

It makes sense then that a dirty karate master, who is followed around by flies, would fight in a dingy back alley near the trash dumpsters in which he'd fight cats for his supper.

Or a somber, rainy graveyard which would be filled with victims of the earthquake.

The criminal element, like crazed kung fu dudes in leather jackets and hired gunmen, would go for the little bit of human blood left in encounters in dingy bars that are in disrepair and haven't seen a patron in years.

Fat, mutated freaks would fly into fight in tire filled junkyards with the rubble of the never cleaned away destroyed city as the backdrop skyline.

It really has a beautiful art style.*

3 stars

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

"Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe" (Warner Bros.) --2008-- *Most modern videogames play like movies, but they often find a hard time defining whatever generic protagonist is the lead. The lead usually designed by committee to fit the bland tastes of a mass audience. Fighting games and superhero comics don't have the problem of generic characters. They're usually bold. This game plays like a movie and has an ensemble of really bold characters. But these two "universes" don't mesh together out of a "Gee, what if?" concept put down on paper. I applaud the cinematic effort, which the MK team would improve on somewhat in the sequel/reboot (Mortal Kombat 2011). Still here, it's awkward and filled with unintentionally funny moments and dialogue (a lot of it laughed at by The Joker who almost seems in on how ridiculous it all is). either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

---- "Samurai Showdown" II thru V-Special (SNK)

*In my early teens, during the 90s, I was an Mortal Kombat fan.

I wish I would have had better taste. The gore and juvenile humor and dark fantasy appealed to my angst ridden desires.

At my local arcade, no one crowded around the Street Fighter machine. Even the Marvel versus Capcom series didn't appeal to me, though a few years earlier, I was a big fan of the X-Men cartoon.

Nope, me and the neighborhood kids craved blood, guts, farts, glimpses of titties, gangster rap, Beavis & Butthead, Summer blockbuster movies, alt-rawk.

In my early 20s, I started appreciating Samurai movies on cable, and in my later 20s, I began reading Lone Wolf & Cub samurai manga.

During the 16 bit 2-D fighting game craze, I wish I had been sopisticated enough to have taken notice to this highly artistic, and yet still bloody and fun, take on Samurai and a fighting game.

It does a lot of what made Mortal Kombat appealing to my teen tastes, but with a master stroke that has the lasting effect of standing the test of time as true art and not mindless "junkfood" fun that really has more of a nostalgia appreciation value (like Mortal Kombat).

3 stars

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

--- Jason Vorhees special guest character in "Mortal Kombat X" --2015--

*My generation had a lot of movie boogeyman.

They were so much in our young, collective conscious that they were almost urban legends seemingly lurking in the woods at the end of the street.

Kids, today, could care less. When, the internet "nerd culture" began reporting on this horror icon coming to a fighting videogame, the comments sections below the articles read something like this, "Laaame, LOL, who'z this f@g, no one wants thhis hockey face lozer INOURGAME!!!!"

To that I say, this guy invented "fatalities," kid.

He was figuring out ways to dismember long before there was even a Mortal Kombat or the outrage of a fatality in a videogame.

More than that, you were probably not even alive or were in diapers when Mortal Kombat was originally popular.

Jason even had a videogame that was terrible, but still gave my generation, including me, nightmares.

I remember, to get nostalgic again, the first time I saw it. It was at my weird next door neighbors.

The dad had an artificial leg and beat his kids and made them go to bed before dark.

But for some reason he was nice to any kid not his. Even weirder he had an NES that seemed to be more his than his kids.

He showed me, and another neighbor kid (not his), the Friday the 13th NES game, and seeing a hockey mask wearing purple-boogeyman stalk victims in 8-bit had me eyeing the door to escape not just the creepy one-legged neighbor but this pixelated killer.

Cheers to Jason's return to videogames and to the collective conscious of dumb, videogame playing youth everywhere.

Even if they don't appreciate it.*

2 1/2 stars

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

"Tattoo Assassins" (Data East) 1995 *This "game" strived for infamy, and fell into obscurity, never being released. Out of shame, I'm sure. Surprisingly, Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale came up with some ideas for it. It almost shows in a tongue in cheek way. It all seems like a big joke parodying the 90's over the top media in the same way almost that Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers did. Except this is more Looney Tunes than anything with racial stereotypes and absurdity out the wazoo. With characters based off the likes of tabloid trash like Tonya Harding and boasting to have thousands of supermoves like turning an opponent into a famous painting, farting random objects from one's anus, and comic nudity. There's also some nonsense about magical tattoos that thought tattoos wouldn't be tacky enough so they're the cause of the supermoves and are animated like they were created using Microsoft paint by a special needs person. Also, the game's mascot is a sad-faced eastern looking religious figure in an adult diaper.* 1 star (so bad it's almost good)

=== Wrestling Society X (MTV)

*For a brief moment, in the 90s, pro-wrestling was "edgy."

As absurd as that sounds. "The Rock" & "Stone Cold" were household names, much to the disappontment of concerned parents groups and tabloid hysteria news.

Pro-wrestling's punk rock moment all seems ridiculous now in retrospect.

The WWE went back to a family friendly product in order to sell t-shirts and toys.

So, who was to satisfy the wrestling dreams of backyard idiots who were jumping off of grandma's house onto a pillow filled with rocks?

MTV stepped in with its timeless formula of stupidity for the youth.

They aired, again briefly, an "underground" wrestling tv show filled with constant explosions, constant loud music, and constant shouting....

Goth kids, pregnant teens, musclehead niteclub douches, rednecks amped up on Mountain Dew, and wiggers across America, in the mid-2000s, rejoiced...

well, maybe not rejoiced.

More like they barely took notice with all their attention disorders, or skateboard trick injury videos taking place, and myspace photo sessions in the bathroom mirror.*

zero stars

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

"Bad Street Brawler" -NES- (Mattel Inc. & Beam Software) --1989-- *"Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you!" Trouble, I guess, means a metrosexual "badass" with a yellow flat-top hairdo, black sunglasses with the yellow city lights  reflecting in them, a yellow tanktop, wearing only yellow underwear (no pants), and cute knee high yellow boots. Hello Yellow! Most of his attacks look like danceclub moves and he spends a lot of time fondling enemies and dogs.* either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

"Dead Man Calling" --Junji Ito-- (Manga) *The ghoulish projection of a death row inmate haunts the family of his victims. Seeking forgiveness. A nightmarish meditation on grief and revenge.* close to 3 stars

Forensic Files: The Blood Trail *A failing farmer, in the quiet English countryside, stages a bizarre seies of crimes, around his property, including blowing up his wife in a homemade carbombing, putting a severed sheep's head and threatening note on his own fence, and poorly attempting to make it look like his "deranged" neighbor visited one evening and tried to kill him with a boxcutter, forcing him to shoot the neighbor in "self defense" with a shotgun.* 2 1/2 stars

Freddy's Nightmare: Freddy Something ----------------

*A jobless yuppie, with an extreme fear of the dark, goes nuts working in the sewers for the eccentric old guy from Gremlins.* 2 1/2 stars

*A lowlife owner, of a 1980s videostore, gets "Scrooged" by a self-help Billy Ocean wannabe that the lowlife ripped off in his typical jerk fashion.* 2 1/2 stars

--------------------------------

Forever Knight: Dance by the Light of the Moon *A black-hearted seductress tries to manipulate our reformed from evil detective, much like she does with every other poor male.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

----- Croooow Plays: Way of the Warrior (3DO)

*Video-blogs used to play videogames for a blogger's web audience are called "Let's plays."

Let's get that out of the way.

I personally prefer video reviewers like SpoonyExperiment, AngryVideoGameNerd, ObscurasLupa, and so on.

The reviewers take the time to find something' interesting about the game or movie to actually critique and even write jokes, scenarios, pick out certain clips from what they're reviewing, and put it all into a usually enjoyable package.

"Let's play" bloggers seem to have a level of vanity where they think they can just sit down and roll the camera and do it "on the fly."

It hardly ever works, and is often annoying, frustrating, and dull.

They struggle to play the game and find something interesting to talk about it, other than their ineptitude or frustration, and their random attempts at humor are painfully bad.

One "let's play" celebrity named PewdiePie has hit stardom with his awful brand of yelling unfunny nonsense while playing a game live, unedited garbage and SouthPark took notice satirizing it and him.

It's almost as bad as when during the 90s hack videogame programmers took the cheap digitized graphics craze to its overkill by hiring their handful of what I'm guessing were party friends or the local community theater rejects to be physical "actors" as horribly over the top generic stereotype characters in shitty disc format vidja lames.

Our let's player, Croooow, struggles to "let's play" and also entertain in his "let's play" video.*

zero stars for the game

and 1/2 a star for Croooow

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

Forensic Files: Charred Remains *A male stripper cremates a former playboy playmate over a cocaine sharing night gone wrong.* 2 stars (zero for the exploitation of the cremated remains)

American Horror Story - Coven: Protect the Coven *Fried green blood fetishes.* 3 stars minus 1 star for the Twilight romance feel good ending

#killer couples #breaking greenville #crossballs #ben stiller show #look around you #simon pegg hippies #gong show #dave attell #ghost adventures #best of the worst #spicy city #x files #robocop the series #Tattoo Assassins #River City Ransom #Martial Masters #Weapon Lord #Mortal Kombat #Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm #No Exit Amiga #Eternal Champions #Natsume #Abadox #Guardians of the Hood #Kakuto Chojin #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Dreamcast #Dark Edge Sega #Strider Capcom #Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 #Buriki One

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Summary (Episode 89)

Denise message: “I emerge from the loam to reclaim what is mine.”

Brian gives Laura and Liam roses a la Bachelor. Travis doesn’t get one and is v. sad.

Critrolestats: The last episode crushed the record for most DM facepalms.

Laura and Vex both thought they wouldn’t be able to get through to Vax and would thus have to deal directly with the Raven Queen

Laura asked Matt for a bunch of information about the Raven Queen after buying the book.

Grog was hesitant to get involved in Vax’s resurrection after his contribution wasn’t heard in Scanlan’s, but Travis couldn’t resist the callback to what happened in the workshop. In the past, he would’ve shaved Vax’s head or something, but the prank-war stuff seemed less appropriate now.

Travis after a discussion of which tooth Vax lost: “We haven’t yet addressed dental work in this land of Exandria.”

Laura mentions that it was really intimidating to have Liam on-set for the ritual. Brian proposes a Waiting-on-Resurrection cam, and Laura tests some lighting for it. Travis is terrified.

Laura didn’t realize Orcus is, you know, a god. She got a lot of tweets along the lines of “you done fucked up”. Travis recounts the story of the time Matt showed him a picture of Orcus and how terrifying he is. They all point out that Matt could very well deviate from the D&D canon in his interpretations of these characters, so they’re trying not to make too many assumptions.

Brian: “I went reddit-free like Travis, and I lost 15 lbs of emotional regret.”

Grog has been paying attention to all the good things Vax has done for the rest of the party and beyond, and so he’s been moving away from seeing him as just a target for pranks. Both Grog as a character and Travis as a player were really moved by Vax’s words in the workshop, to the point where he couldn’t come up with a response and chose to just leave it at that.

Laura is still appalled that Travis tried to steal her donuts.

Laura doesn’t think Vex would’ve become the champion if Vax hadn’t made it, and she wouldn’t have put on the armor. She didn’t make that pledge to the Raven Queen, but she wouldn’t have blamed her for what happened. If Matt hadn’t ended the last episode where he did, Vex would’ve blamed Keyleth--unreasonably, Laura hastens to add, but she would’ve lashed out irrationally. There wasn’t really any place to add that in, but she had a callback to that emotion in the apology to Keyleth later in the episode.

Everyone discusses how Keyleth made the right call in jumping out with the twins when she did.

Liam is choosing to interpret everyone’s successes in their various resurrection rituals from an in-game perspective as Vax deciding that this is a sign that they’re all being pushed along a certain path, and that they all have a purpose together in the Raven Queen’s eyes--he’s Fate-Touched, but they’re all tangled up with him.

Grog essentially assumes that the resurrection ritual is gonna work every time, because that’s what’s happened so far. He’d react pretty strongly if one of them permadied, because he’s not used to dealing with the death of people he actually gives a shit about.

Grog is mostly just relieved that Scanlan’s alive. He doesn’t have a very nuanced impression of why Scanlan left, but he assumes he’s gonna be back.

The twins bicker over whether Vex might technically be older than Vax now since he was dead longer.

Travis talks about developing a character with a weakness and playing to that weakness. Makes it much easier to improv a character if RP is an important part of the game.

Liam: The point of the game for this group is to make each other laugh and surprise each other.

For playing characters that are family in D&D, Liam and Laura recommend sitting down to hash out backstory together, so you can throw in references throughout to tie it together. It also helps that they already kinda treated each other like siblings to begin with.

Laura has really been noticing what a great job Marisha’s been doing of building Keyleth’s character, and Vex has been noticing it, too. “Keyleth’s been getting so freakin’ cool because Marisha’s so freakin’ cool,” and she can finally let that start to bleed through.

Grog didn’t entirely get what Percy did in terms of the Friends spell, but if he’d asked Grog to do something he didn’t want to do, things might have been different, but he didn’t give a shit either way.

Laura doesn’t think Keyleth’s mom is dead.

Someone points out that Vex is the only one who hasn’t called VM their family. Laura is startled and says she absolutely considers them her family, it just hasn’t come up explicitly.

Liam points out that Vax doesn’t know shit about being a paladin of the Raven Queen. Laura points out that Vex arguably knows more about the RQ than Vax.

Laura starts going through all the flavors of donut she had. Brian cuts the show there.

After Dark:

Vex would give up the broom to save Trinket, would not give up Trinket to save Grog, but would give up the broom to save Grog... and would probably not give up Trinket to save Grog.

When asked if Vax had any criteria that his friends could’ve failed the resurrection with, Liam refused to answer.

Laura ran into a Critical Role fan at Target once.

Ashley got recognized a lot in New York by Critical Role fans.

A fan asks Vax what it’s like to be controlled by a voice actor named Liam O’Brien. Liam, in-character: “Well, he’s a bit of a dad, isn’t he? He’s a doofus.”

Everyone is asked which item they’d want to have in real life. Travis: Whisper. Laura: Raven’s Slumber on the long-term, the broom on the short-term. Liam: Deathwalker’s Ward.

Laura saw fanart of Vax giving Vex the feathers when they were kids, and she loved the idea. Originally they were just part of Kit’s concept art.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #long text post

[evilasiangenius]

Tagged by @war-nux

a - Agency you think deserves more funding: NASA. b - Baked goods: I like cake better than pie. c - Cartoon: I have been watching old episodes of The Simpsons daily for months.  I’m only up to season 21. d - Drink you last had: Water.  e - Every day starts with: The existential horror of consciousness and some writing/editing. f - Favorite fanfic author: Greekhoop.  I’d like to write as beautifully as she does. g - Games you like to play: The one where you’re tagged in an ask meme and then modify/mutate it for your own amusement. h - Historian:  Eugen Weber.  I like his Western Tradition series, even if I don’t agree with everything (it’s a little dated). i - Integer: I like primes. j - Jam: I bought some grapefruit marmalade the other day that I mean to try.  Otherwise, I prefer honey with my peanut butter.  And I prefer my sandwiches with no peanut butter. k - Kangaroo: Have you ever seen one of those fuckers up close?  They’re huge and super muscled.  I saw one at a zoo once and it turned around, flexed, and was like, “Do u even lift bro?”  Not a good situation there, stay away from those guys.  They’re all jerks.  Actually, all Australian animals are basically jerks (esp. the birds).  You think they’re cute, but then you turn your back on them and they’re stealing your wallet and giving you a wedgie. l - Last time you had a donut: They had free donuts today.  Sadly they were store-bought in tubs and not from a donut store proper.  Those donuts were all lies.  Tiny powdered sugar lies. m - Mathematics: Abstract Algebra.   n - Nicest number ring: Integers! o - One wish: If I say it outloud, it might not come true. p - Person you last called/texted: @tfuriosa  q - Quest you want to undertake: Byzantium by sea. r - Really good movie: Pather Panchali.  I cried forever.  s - Summer: Best summer in a while was 2015.  I wrote so much that summer that it was like being mentally ill, in a good way.  MM:FR does good things for people. t - Time you woke up: 8:08 AM.  @elinekeit knows why. u - Undersea adventure: It’d be great to dive the Great Barrier Reef.  Why does this meme keep turning into stuff about Australia? v - Vacation destination: When does this intersection of having both money and free time simultaneously exist?  And it’d be nice to go back to Australia.  Damnit, it’s about Australia again... w - Wonderful people you talk to semi-regularly on Tumblr:  In no particular order: @war-nux, @elinekeit, @shejackalarts, @sigmastolen, @voidwarden​, etc.  I talk to tfuriosa elsewhere.  :p x - Xylophone?: I prefer the vibraphone. y - Your favorite food: Something freshly cooked. z - Zodiac sign: Gemini     I already tagged a bunch of people in this for no good reason.  If you want to do it, feel free, though if you want a more accurate version of this meme, go to @war-nux.  I was in a weird mood and modified it beyond recognition.

#memememeee? #for the record I'm bad at reading directions #just give me the hex key and the pieces I'll put it together #directions are for people who actually do things correctly and conscientiously

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for August 26 through September 1 is “Sunday,” the fourth episode of AMC’s Lodge 49.

In his classic 2000 sociology book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam made an argument that at the time read like an epitaph, but now reads like a prophecy. Putnam was talking about the decline in civic engagement in America, which he first connected to voter turnout rates and the like. But then he broadened his argument to talk about something else entirely: a decline in community investment and involvement, based on the idea that people are no longer involved in communities larger than the ones behind their front doors.

To make his case, Putnam combed through countless numbers of membership records for bowling leagues and Masonic lodges, for church groups and social circles. What he found was that a whole way of American life was dying out, just like that. As the generation of Americans that lived through the Great Depression and World War II began to die, these organizations went with them. Now, if you have a bowling alley in your neighborhood, it’s almost certainly positioned itself as some extreme variation on the sport, or it’s an intentionally nostalgic throwback to an era increasingly few of us were actually alive for.

Putnam’s argument was more complicated than, say, “Television killed off social and civic organizations,” though that was one of its themes. His larger argument was that the death of these organizations presaged the death of Americans’ belief in their communities as communities.

If you wanted to trace the roots of the country’s shift from a kind of big-picture progressivism to more individualistic conservatism, well, you could do a lot worse than looking at the shift from neighborhood gathering place to individual home, from men play-acting at being members of a weird, mystical order in a local lodge to turning their houses into fortresses.

The little town I grew up in was just far enough out-of-step with the times to still have bowling leagues and Masons and Elks when I was growing up. But now, when I return, those buildings often sit empty, with no one to inhabit them. Change is inevitable, of course, and many of those organizations were rooted in racist and sexist attitudes, to be sure. But I still wonder what might have been lost in their passing.

And that might be why I like Lodge 49 so much.

The lodge members debate what to do with the “reliquum corpus.” Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

It’s not particularly easy to explain what Lodge 49 is about, because it’s not really like any other TV show I can think of. Its premise revolves around a Long Beach, California-based lodge maintained by a (fictional) fraternal order known as the Lynx. (Think the Masons or the Elks, but with a stronger record of gender and racial equality than those groups had.) The lodge is an all-purpose hangout for its members, but also seemingly a weirdo portal to some other, more purpose-driven life. It’s sort of, uh, Cheers meets Twin Peaks amid the ruins of late capitalism.

Lodge 49 uses this lodge as a window into the lives of its characters and the city of Long Beach, which is caught in transition between its working-class roots and its increasingly hipster-focused rebrand. (I used to live in Long Beach, which is perpetually in danger of becoming Los Angeles’s latest version of Brooklyn, though Silver Lake may have something to say about that.) But there’s also a lot of medieval symbolism and references to alchemy amid the tales of gentrifying neighborhoods.

Lodge 49’s protagonist, Shaun “Dud” Dudley (Wyatt Russell), finds a ring belonging to a deceased member of the order while beachcombing; later, he finds himself at the lodge itself after his car putters to a halt right in front of the building. (The show has a hefty dose of fate and/or destiny at its core.) He joins the lodge, where he becomes the “Squire” to longtime member Ernie Fontaine (Brent Jennings), who serves as his “Knight.” The two become friends, even though Ernie is initially wary of Dud, and … so far that’s about it.

It’s not clear what the larger point of the series is, or where all of its mystical portents and hints about some larger purpose for these characters are going. There’s a strong subplot about Dud’s twin sister, Liz (Sonya Cassidy), who’s working at a Hooters-ish sports bar named Shamroxx, because she’s so burdened down with debt passed down to her by her and Dud’s deceased father. There’s a dead body in a secret, hidden room in the lodge. There’s a loose seal wandering across the road.

All of this, I think, has led to people trying to guess what Lodge 49 means. It has some of the outward trappings of a mystery show like Lost or Twin Peaks, so it must play by the same rules as those shows, right? But the series’ fourth episode, “Sunday,” is as good an argument as anything that the series is less about trying to make sense of its many loose ends and more about realizing that you find life amid the loose ends.

The plot of the episode, such as it is, is simple. Dud and Ernie head out on a quest to find Larry, the strangely absent head of the lodge, while Liz spends her day off from work by going in to work to hang out. But the details are what make the show. There are parking lot shopping cart jousting matches, corporate stooges carrying gift baskets, a billboard reading “Is There Another Way to Live?,” news reporters who keep trying to call the corpse in the lodge a “mummy” (when it’s clearly a reliquum corpus, goodness!), and that seal blocking traffic.

The meat of the story is easy enough to explain, and, indeed, all of the characters find what they were looking for in the place they thought they left it. But it’s everything served to the side that makes the show so entertaining. Maybe the best way to describe this series is Don Quixote for scuzzballs.

Liz goes shopping cart jousting. Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

For me, Lodge 49 clicked into place around the midpoint of its first episode, when Dud, sitting alone in a donut shop, muses about the dark turns his life has taken since he was bitten by a snake, which ruined his surfing career and led to the cascade of events that included the death of his father and his sister having to take a job at Shamroxx. “Don’t have to live like this. Gotta be another way,” he says, and while he’s mostly talking about his present situation, there’s a layer of social commentary here too. There has to be a way to live where a snake bite doesn’t mean a family loses everything. There just has to.

There are things about Lodge 49 that don’t entirely work yet, to the degree that the show acknowledges it, right down to a scene where Liz and Dud admit they’re once again making her the responsible killjoy while he’s the loosey-goosey fun guy who joins lodges and goes on weird quests. But these nitpicks fall away when I think about the show’s overall vision, not just of itself but of life in general.

Both Dud and Liz are running away from death in some fashion, trying to live forever, both in the wake of Dud’s near-death snakebite experience and the loss of their father (a probable suicide). And the lodge itself, tied to a bygone era, is no longer the healthy organization it once was, to the degree that everybody assumes Dud is joking when he tries to join. Ernie even charges Dud way too much for his membership dues, presuming he’s a prankster.

What’s quietly beautiful about the show is how it positions the lodge — and by extension, a more community-based way of thinking about the universe — as the “other way to live” that Dud is looking for. It’s no good to live your best life if you don’t have others to live it with. Or, as Ernie puts it in “Sunday,” “What’s the use of living forever if you’re all alone on a Sunday?”

Lodge 49 feels a little like a show removed from its time, like it landed here direct from 2011. (It would be a perfect companion piece to the late, lamented FX detective show Terriers.) It shambles when other shows would sprint, and it never bothers signaling where it’s going, because it thinks maybe you’ll be interested enough to come along for the ride. It is not a show about a premise or plot, instead choosing to focus on characters and vibe. And that makes it a distinct anomaly in today’s TV landscape.

But that also means it’s a show capable of moments of almost tossed-off profundity, like finding something of immense value in a pawn shop. It is not a show about masculinity being used to break apart the world but, instead, about how masculinity can be used to heal it, to forge bonds between lonely men in desperate need of something larger than themselves. That shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does in 2018, but there’s some quiet comfort in the idea that neither Dud nor Ernie need to ever again go bowling alone.

Lodge 49 airs Mondays at 10 pm Eastern on AMC. Previous episodes are available on AMC’s website. If you are a subscriber to the channel’s AMC Premiere service, you can watch all 10 episodes of season one right now.

Original Source -> AMC’s Lodge 49 is an impossible TV show to describe. I love it.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[lexathorn]

Hey it's your old pal Santa. I have been slaving away these past few days making toys and shit but I'm just about finished now, so I can lavish you with some attention, d-nut (my new nickname for you). Planning a special treat for you as I type. Have a great rest of your weekend - Sants

Hey Santa. Awesome, I look forward to seeing what you made. Thanks for doing that, I appreciate you. Speaking of donuts, I ate 6 donuts by myself last Friday and Saturday. Donut binges like that are rare for me :] but I slip every now and then. I have to say, I’m not a fan of Tim Horton’s new Chocolate Cheesecake Donut :/ Kinda stale, bland and overly sweet. How was Star Wars by the way? Since you asked about it, I’ve considered watching episodes 4-8 more and I just might do it. 

#secret santa #clexa ss 2017 #asks

[multipleforks]

  New Yorkers know how to pack a lot into a small space and the DUMBO section of Brooklyn is no exception. DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is a section of Brooklyn that originally housed warehouses and industrial buildings because of its proximity to the ferry landing. It is located between the Brooklyn Bridge and Water Street, encompassing an area of 0.05 square miles (that’s the equivalent to 25 football fields arranged neatly in a rectangle). Mention the DUMBO section to anyone who lived in Brooklyn prior to the 1960’s and you will get an odd look and a question as to why you would want to visit an area of only factories responsible for producing such items like Brillo and cardboard boxes.

Just in case you ever make it to Jeopardy: The DUMBO section of Brooklyn was originally called Gairsville because Robert Gair invented the cardboard box on Washington Street in this area of Brooklyn. Here at Multiple Forks we not only provide insights into food but we offer valuable material for Trivial Pursuit!

After reading about the incredible growth in this area of NYC and hearing from others about it, I decided to check out DUMBO for the first time and I completely fell in love. What is not to love about the old feel of cobblestone streets, railroad tracks, and large red-brick buildings combined with beautiful parks, vintage shops, and numerous restaurants. I found myself walking around the small, winding streets and covering most of the 0.05 square miles in the course of an afternoon enjoying everything DUMBO has to offer. Below are few reasons to visit this amazing section of NYC:

PARKS:

In the concrete jungle of NYC and the surrounding boroughs, finding a park among the chaos is a welcomed gift that changes the hustle and bustle of the city into a quiet suburb. If you take the ferry from Manhattan’s Pier 11 (Wall St./Financial District) to the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, you are greeted by an area, outside of the ferry landing, filled with people and a large outdoor section where you can grab some food and a drink. There are also pedestrian walkways heading in every direction with views of the East River and the Manhattan skyline. This 85 acre area is known as Brooklyn Bridge Park where you can do anything ranging from outdoor movies to fitness classes. The day I visited, the Google House was open for visitors and workers were handing out donuts to all who went inside. This is also a very dog friendly area, so be sure to bring your favorite four-legged friend. Also, do not miss the opportunity for a picture and a ride on Jane’s Carousel.

SHOPPING:

Vintage is cool and DUMBO is the best place to find anything from records to clothes to furniture and anything in between. The epitome of vintage shopping is contained at the Brooklyn Flea. Brooklyn Flea is an experience like none other; name it and the Brooklyn Flea  has it somewhere. Always check the website for times before going but once you are there the shopping is incredible. If you end up in DUMBO on a day when the Brooklyn Flea is not happening, do not fear, there are still plenty of unique places to visit for your shopping needs. Be sure to check out the following:

TRUNK – Home to some incredibly creative items such as art, furniture, and jewelry.  https://www.trunkbrooklyn.com

Front Street General Store – Quite possibly the most unique place in all of DUMBO. As you enter, pretend you are the host of an episode of American Pickers. This place has EVERYTHING packed on a series of shelves. Even if you do not buy anything, the experience is worth every second. http://www.frontgeneralstore.com/

The Powerhouse Arena – Remember books? A bunch of pieces of paper containing words bound together behind two hard covers. This is the place to find those ancient artifacts in case you left your iPad, Kindle, or other electronic reading device at home. They have a beautiful array of books covering a number of topics. You can buy one of those books and sit out in the park and enjoy some non-electronic device time! https://www.powerhousearena.com/

ART:

During my visit, I saw three different weddings taking pictures throughout the area. The views of Manhattan are stunning but the feel of the old buildings and the streets add an artistic element for professional and amateur photographers, alike. Besides the outdoor views, you can enjoy the indoor artistic scene at:

Klompching Gallery – Once industrial factories left Brooklyn, the void was filled with incredible works of art. Art drives the desire to be in DUMBO and it features one of the best indoor galleries dedicated to photography. https://www.klompching.com/

St. Annes Warehouse – A 30 year old staple of this incredible neighborhood features fantastic space to see a rock show, theatre production, or anything that needs a stage in a renovated warehouse. http://stannswarehouse.org/   

AIR Gallery – Another art gallery but this one prides its genius being fueled by the ideas of creative women in the area. I wonder if they need a young, female, blogger?!https://www.airgallery.org/

RESTAURANTS:

FINALLY! There were a number of restaurants with outdoor seating along the park and scattered throughout the area. There were also vendors selling everything from lobster rolls to Mexican food to ice cream.  The must stops for your trip to DUMBO should include:

Vinegar Hill House – You cannot go wrong with this restaurant mainly because it contains a wood burning stove. They pride themselves on using fresh ingredients and offering an eclectic menu of brunch and dinner items. http://vinegarhillhouse.com/info-and-hours/

Blue Stone Lane – My obsession is all things New Zealand and Australia and this coffee shop/Café does not disappoint. They are most famous for their avocado smash but the rest of their menu items are equally as good. As an added bonus for the DUMBO location, there is a cocktail list. Great views, satisfying food, and a cocktail list – I am in love! https://bluestonelane.com/cafes/dumbo/

Jacques Torres Chocolate – Chocolate! Not just chocolate but chocolate chip cookies from a world renowned pastry chef. A fantastic snack for your walk around this awesome section of Brooklyn. http://www.mrchocolate.com/locations/#dumbo

Juliana’s Pizza – I am not here to start a Brooklyn pizza war; Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge is landmark and it is incredible. Thankfully, Juliana’s was opened by Patsy Grimaldi and is the best option for pizza in DUMBO. The best part about Juliana’s – they only serve whole pies! No need to share. http://julianaspizza.com/

I could not leave DUMBO without finding a new place to eat. I recently read an awesome article on Eater about a newly opened DUMBO restaurant, Celestine. The cuisine is based on a mixture of African, Turkish, and Mediterranean flavors and was perfect on a warm fall day. Open only for about a week when I visited, Celestine, was already crowded the night I ate there. In fact, I arrived with no reservation (Retsy only) at 5:30pm and was told there was only one table available inside. Given the incredible weather lately, I decided to dine outside and ordered a few appetizers including the baked hummus, yogurt with honey and almonds, and marinated olives. The hummus and yogurt came with freshly made pita bread with olive oil and it was absolutely delicious. The best way to describe the taste of the appetizers, olive oil and pita – FRESH. It tasted like everything was prepared that moment and it was a perfect complement to their signature cocktail list after a long day. I tried their ‘East of the Sun’ cocktail and was incredibly pleased, it was very refreshing. After a short break between the appetizers and with the arrival of a glass of wine, we ordered the main course.  The dishes are not overwhelming in portion size but they are substantial enough to split with someone. My date and I split the fusilli pasta with white anchovies and a mushroom tart with goat cheese, spinach, mushrooms, raspberries and blackberries. We were both satisfied with the meal both in quality and quantity.  https://www.celestinebk.com/

My trip to DUMBO was awesome. Its historical, hip, close to Manhattan, entertaining, and relaxing. The food choices are abundant and the area is enjoyable. Given the convenience and the opening of new places constantly, I will be visiting DUMBO often and I hope you do as well.

  Hope you enjoy my latest post! New Yorkers know how to pack a lot into a small space and the DUMBO section of Brooklyn is no exception.

#art #Brooklyn #daytrip #dumbo #Foodie #shopping