Praise for milesofregret
A few months ago, I was reading, yes, actually reading the samples for whatever particular round of the Josscars it happened to be, when I came across this sample:
Slender fingers curled around mine, and I squeezed back. She didn't have a lot of strength left to squeeze back but she was tryin'. And everytime she tried, everytime she moved her eyes or bit back a cough it felt like I was dyin' just a little bit along with her. And I didn't know whether to be sad, cause she was about to leave me. Or be terrified that she was about to leave me and I was next on the list.
Could feel the tears springing to my eyes when she coughed. Never heard a cough like that come from a slayer. Course last I checked most slayers didn't get taken out by big government super flu's either. Her skin was all patchy and flaky, and she'd stopped lookin' like the Buffy I knew a day or so ago. Now she was just a corpse waitin' to die. Waitin' for it all to be over. After all of her fighting, after how hard she'd loved and lost none of it made a damn. For so long we thought we were all untouchable. We'd lived outside of the world for so long, fought back apocalypses and it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because Dawn, Giles, Red, Xander...they were all gone. All knocked out in one fell swoop by a virus that the government couldn't even fucking contain.
Spike would have a big old laugh over this. I was sure of it. All of his noble self-sacrifice, dying to save a world that was about to kill itself off slowly and painfully.
Xander was the first one that got sick. The big black patches spreading up across the skin of his arm. Then it did nothin' but spread. Could still hear Dawn crying for her mother as she died. Didn't think I'd ever shake the sound of her wails as she laid in a bed across the hall from mine. And I remembered....remembered hating myself because the whole time lil sis was dying I couldn't shake the terror that I'd be next. That I'd wake up in the morning with black patches dotting my skin.
Then they were all gone. All of them were dead. Fuck, the entire city of Cleveland was dead nothin' but a big demon playground now. No more people, except for me and Buffy. We thought that we'd made it because we were slayers, that we were immune. Everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, but the two of us? Chosen two. We were gonna be okay, we were gonna live. So we did. We grieved, we comforted eachother, but we lived on as best as we could without the others. Me and my sister slayer. Then one day, no warning, the black patches crept onto Buffy's skin. Could still remember the grim way she had told me that she needed to show me something. My heart had practically stopped when she lifted her shirt and showed me the black flaky patches on her back. And then for the first time, it really felt like the world was over. She wasn't supposed to leave me. She was supposed to be here with me, help me get through it.
She wasn't gonna help me get through it though. She was dyin' in her bed and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I was about to be the last person left standin' in Cleveland. The last remnant of Slayer Central, and if no one else thought this was some big fucking cosmic joke that I must be the butt of then I must be missin' something for real.
Now, first of all, anyone who knows me, know that anything where Buffy and Faith have even an insinuation of a likability toward one another, has me at hello. But that wasn't went striking my chords so violently up and down the length of the spectrum.
It was gripping. It was raw. It was powerful. It did in one paragraph what some people try to do in the span of an entire game. I was just sitting there, thinking, wow. That's incredible. And not only is that incredible, it has my vote. But I couldn't just stop there. I had to know what this game was, and have another fix of this story. I had to know if the rest of it was as powerful, or if they had just packed the most punch into the entry post as they could. I commented, asking the Josscars mod to give me a link when the voting was over, and though it took a bit to get a response, I finally got a link to this:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/milesofregret/
It's a one-on-one game, of Faith and Angel, and for all the life that they breathe into it, it might as well be an entire community full of people running it. It amazed me.
The characters are strict to the canon concepts outlined by the shows themselves, but perfectly adjusted to fit the storyline. I love both of their portrayals, how much Faith is so introspective, and so impassioned, and determined. It's a side of Faith that was never really seen, but I believe was so possible, if we had actually seen more of Faith. And Angel is wonderful, down to every single line, and mannerism you can see in your head as you're reading, though played on an imaginary film reel in your head. They're the perfect fit. And the writers have beautiful, magnetic chemistry.
And the storyline, talk about fantastic. I haven't seen anything out there like it. That's part of what got me so hooked, was that it was so different, and unique.
I wish I had the words to really describe what really hits me about this game. I mean, most of you have read some of my more scathing commentary on other games and things, or my thinly veiled cryptic criticism on others. And believe me, I'm not friends with either of the writers in this game, so this isn't any kind of lip service.
I just really love this game.
It's raw, and it's painful, and it hits you in the gut. It makes you feel. Where so many games, and I swear to God, this isn't to slight or criticize anyone else or any other game out there, but where a lot of games, it feels like everyone's just going through the motions, or it just doesn't have that edge that Joss always gave every single scene, every single motion, this game has it. It really does. And I've been meaning to write this up for such a long time, but hey, life gets in the way, you know?
The complications of taking a character like Faith, and a just as complicated character like Angel, both of them having walked the long and twisting road of redemption, both of them, romancing, always romancing the ghost of not just a girl like Buffy, but the ghost of Buffy between them, pulling themselves from the wreckage that this game starts out in, only to carry it with them as they walked through the still burning parts...
You'll have more than seven hundred miles of regret if you don't read this.
xoxo
Slender fingers curled around mine, and I squeezed back. She didn't have a lot of strength left to squeeze back but she was tryin'. And everytime she tried, everytime she moved her eyes or bit back a cough it felt like I was dyin' just a little bit along with her. And I didn't know whether to be sad, cause she was about to leave me. Or be terrified that she was about to leave me and I was next on the list.
Could feel the tears springing to my eyes when she coughed. Never heard a cough like that come from a slayer. Course last I checked most slayers didn't get taken out by big government super flu's either. Her skin was all patchy and flaky, and she'd stopped lookin' like the Buffy I knew a day or so ago. Now she was just a corpse waitin' to die. Waitin' for it all to be over. After all of her fighting, after how hard she'd loved and lost none of it made a damn. For so long we thought we were all untouchable. We'd lived outside of the world for so long, fought back apocalypses and it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because Dawn, Giles, Red, Xander...they were all gone. All knocked out in one fell swoop by a virus that the government couldn't even fucking contain.
Spike would have a big old laugh over this. I was sure of it. All of his noble self-sacrifice, dying to save a world that was about to kill itself off slowly and painfully.
Xander was the first one that got sick. The big black patches spreading up across the skin of his arm. Then it did nothin' but spread. Could still hear Dawn crying for her mother as she died. Didn't think I'd ever shake the sound of her wails as she laid in a bed across the hall from mine. And I remembered....remembered hating myself because the whole time lil sis was dying I couldn't shake the terror that I'd be next. That I'd wake up in the morning with black patches dotting my skin.
Then they were all gone. All of them were dead. Fuck, the entire city of Cleveland was dead nothin' but a big demon playground now. No more people, except for me and Buffy. We thought that we'd made it because we were slayers, that we were immune. Everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, but the two of us? Chosen two. We were gonna be okay, we were gonna live. So we did. We grieved, we comforted eachother, but we lived on as best as we could without the others. Me and my sister slayer. Then one day, no warning, the black patches crept onto Buffy's skin. Could still remember the grim way she had told me that she needed to show me something. My heart had practically stopped when she lifted her shirt and showed me the black flaky patches on her back. And then for the first time, it really felt like the world was over. She wasn't supposed to leave me. She was supposed to be here with me, help me get through it.
She wasn't gonna help me get through it though. She was dyin' in her bed and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I was about to be the last person left standin' in Cleveland. The last remnant of Slayer Central, and if no one else thought this was some big fucking cosmic joke that I must be the butt of then I must be missin' something for real.
Now, first of all, anyone who knows me, know that anything where Buffy and Faith have even an insinuation of a likability toward one another, has me at hello. But that wasn't went striking my chords so violently up and down the length of the spectrum.
It was gripping. It was raw. It was powerful. It did in one paragraph what some people try to do in the span of an entire game. I was just sitting there, thinking, wow. That's incredible. And not only is that incredible, it has my vote. But I couldn't just stop there. I had to know what this game was, and have another fix of this story. I had to know if the rest of it was as powerful, or if they had just packed the most punch into the entry post as they could. I commented, asking the Josscars mod to give me a link when the voting was over, and though it took a bit to get a response, I finally got a link to this:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/milesofregret/
It's a one-on-one game, of Faith and Angel, and for all the life that they breathe into it, it might as well be an entire community full of people running it. It amazed me.
The characters are strict to the canon concepts outlined by the shows themselves, but perfectly adjusted to fit the storyline. I love both of their portrayals, how much Faith is so introspective, and so impassioned, and determined. It's a side of Faith that was never really seen, but I believe was so possible, if we had actually seen more of Faith. And Angel is wonderful, down to every single line, and mannerism you can see in your head as you're reading, though played on an imaginary film reel in your head. They're the perfect fit. And the writers have beautiful, magnetic chemistry.
And the storyline, talk about fantastic. I haven't seen anything out there like it. That's part of what got me so hooked, was that it was so different, and unique.
I wish I had the words to really describe what really hits me about this game. I mean, most of you have read some of my more scathing commentary on other games and things, or my thinly veiled cryptic criticism on others. And believe me, I'm not friends with either of the writers in this game, so this isn't any kind of lip service.
I just really love this game.
It's raw, and it's painful, and it hits you in the gut. It makes you feel. Where so many games, and I swear to God, this isn't to slight or criticize anyone else or any other game out there, but where a lot of games, it feels like everyone's just going through the motions, or it just doesn't have that edge that Joss always gave every single scene, every single motion, this game has it. It really does. And I've been meaning to write this up for such a long time, but hey, life gets in the way, you know?
The complications of taking a character like Faith, and a just as complicated character like Angel, both of them having walked the long and twisting road of redemption, both of them, romancing, always romancing the ghost of not just a girl like Buffy, but the ghost of Buffy between them, pulling themselves from the wreckage that this game starts out in, only to carry it with them as they walked through the still burning parts...
You'll have more than seven hundred miles of regret if you don't read this.
xoxo