* ✉ [ @4ger ] asked : ❛❛ if bry.de was a video game final boss, how would the battle unfold? consider things like mechanics, the music, the setting, the stage, potentially the story etc. is he one of those fuckers who get a second stage when you think you've already beaten him once? ❜❜
The game has started with Bry.de pulling you out from the dark, and it will end with you condemning him into this dark. (Pull his plug, watch him go out like a light bulb.) He has been a friend, a teacher, but now he's the thing standing between you and the world as it was, as it has always been. An uncomplicated reality with rules. A realm where all your loved ones live, but you don't belong. Awake. Asleep. Real. Not real.
Your character wakes up in a dream in a forest high up in the sky. Bry.de is there, waiting in a clearing. There's no need to say anything. He knows what you have come here to do. An oppressive soundtrack begins to play.
You call for your trusted weapon, Nightmare. In an instant, a flaming sword materializes in your hands. Instead of calling for his own blade to meet yours with, Bry.de looks at the sky and wishes for rain. And rain it falls, dousing the flames on your sword, rendering the fire damage null. The game prompts you to approach. You have no other choice.
You fall upon him with Nightmare. The QTEs are tough. You fail most of them. (You are meant to fail them. It's a deliberate game design.) Bry.de easily sidesteps your every attack. When he does retaliate, it's only to push you back. You barely take damage from it, but it gets frustrating after a while. His voice is full of pity when he pleads for you to stop. Your character hurls swears at him, angry that he's in control even now.
You realize the only way to make him take damage is to weaken him first. Change the arena to your advantage. You know his weakness. Why not use it to douse his flames like he had yours? You close your eyes and dream of a city. High-rise buildings rise from the ground around you two, tearing the trees from the earth by the roots. The ground shakes, and so does your controller. The buildings groan as they shoot up towards the sky. Above the groaning buildings, aeroplanes soar through ominous grey clouds with engines louder than thunder. Trains and cars appear around you only to crash into each other, polluting the air with toxic fumes and creating more sound. Every loud noise comes together to create an ear-bleeding cacophony that seems only to affect Bry.de. You and Bry.de fight for dominance of the dream. Black, oily liquid flows from his eyes, nose, and ears. He's covering the city in it. You stand ankle-deep in this mysterious black blood. He looks like he's screaming in pain, but no sound comes out of his mouth. You win, you think, when Bry.de falls to his knees, hands covering his ears.
The game gives you two choices. You can cut Bry.de's connection to the Dreaming, or you can eradicate the Dreaming entirely. Cutting him from the Dreaming means sending him into a dreamless sleep, never to wake. Tens of thousands of dreamers will follow him, eventually. They will live for a while, but it will be a slow death for every single one of them. Bry.de has a plan to save them all. Forever. If you let him go, he could save them all. But his plan involves breaking the world as you know it. You're not sure what "breaking the world" entails. Will it save tens of thousands only to doom billions? Bry.de is sure it won't, but he is just a man (despite you looking at him like a god).
Destroying the Dreaming means destroying all things beautiful and dreamt. It means no more dreams for you. No more dreams for the dreamers. But it also means no more nightmares. No monsters to bring back to hurt your loved ones. It will be a quick death. You'll just go to sleep; every dreamer and dreams will go to sleep, but it means you'll have made the world safer for the non-dreamers.
So, death either way. You could have a chance of a good life if you let him win, but the game doesn't give you that option. You have no other choice.
Whatever you end up choosing doesn't matter. It ends the same. Bry.de grabs your blade when you approach him. He looks you in the eyes, more aware than you realize and strong still. You realize he hasn't lost this fight. This is him surrendering out of his own free will. He's tired. He's so, so, so damn tired of fighting. He loves you. If you want this, he'll let you have it. You have chosen wrong, but he doesn't hate you for it. Time is a spiral. He will come back again. Maybe you two will be friends again. Maybe you both can change the world forever together next time. He guides Nightmare into his heart. It cuts not only his flesh (dreaming and waking), but also his connection to the Dreaming. He has made the choice for you.
His head falls forward. In the dream and in the waking world, Bry.de takes his last breath. Your controller shudders in your hands as he takes his last breath. The controller's light changes from red to white.
The world is still open for you to explore after this seeming victory. There are quests to complete, people to save. You still have your other companions, but it feels as though you are walking the world alone. He's not there to ask about a relic you found. He's not there when you need him to do his magic. You feel Bry.de's absence in everything.
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You know what, I didn't like the Barbie movie much. It wasn't progressive at all.
It was funny. That goes from person to person on wether the movie is actually good and fun and worth your time. I just didn't think it was progressive and profound like it was being marketed and/or talked about by literally everyone.
I feel like it tried so hard to be progressive that it ended up making fun of and trivializing very real concerns like patriarchy and feminism. Like, it looped the other way and ended up being reductive instead. The whole thing was extremely yassified and white (there wasn't intersectionality at all). I didn't actually think a movie like that was gonna try to be deep, and it honestly shouldn't have.
I also thought the movie had too much stuff crammed into it. Barbie is a feminist icon. But she's also the reason girls are insecure. Barbie is discovering herself. Ken is the villain and he's plotting a men uprising. Feminism and patriarchy are discussed superficially. Ken doesn't actually care about patriarchy and wants to discover himself too. Mattel is there. And then the ending felt super hamfisted too.
There's a lot of other problems too, I know I'm only brushing over the surface, but other people probably have criticized it better than me. I just know that I watched it, not even expecting anything other than a fun lighthearted movie and came out with a bad taste in my mouth. It sucked.
But like, that's a deeper analysis of the movie, and that movie isn't deep at all, so on the surface I can say it was pretty funny.
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@fawndubois
They'd won. The vox had won. vox dei.
She'd danced on a capitolite roof when it had been announced, grinning and smiling. Her parents, estranged as they were, had only texted once, a week later, after word must've spread to them about what their 'daughter' was up to- had been up to for a year. They were in hiding, it read. she was disowned.
That was fine, she didn't need them. hadn't really wanted them, honestly. She could've turned that over, but didn't bother. let them hide like rats in the sewers of this new and brighter world. No more games. No food, either. but that was just because they were working out new trade routes, right? ones that would make food more equitable around the whole country. She'd starved before, she could do it again.
Vox Parva was busy at work. some vox had scrounged up what probably amounted to half the spraypaint in the city, and Enna got to work making murals for the vox in broad daylight, without a mask. She was grinning, happy. thrilled as she walked back into the tower, smelling of spraypaint and happy to be a part of such a good thing. "Hey!" she greeted someone in the lobby- anyone in the lobby of the tower now had to be vox, or at least vox enough not to be one of the loyalists in jail or hiding- "Vox dei! How's your day going?"
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The Fallen Deer Winslow Homer 1892
Fawn response
Floorboards creak
and eggshells crack
under my feet.
one wrong step
and I can't turn back
what if I say the wrong thing
and you'll hate me.
if my spine grows too
strong I backtrack.
retreating into the grass
frozen for a second like
a dear in headlights.
licking the dents of
the car that hit me
so it does not get mad.
if I try to stand up for myself
and in defence bite back
all backbone grown in
starts to retract
when your teeth are bared
I've done it again,
shown an undesirable emotion
do you hate me?
when you use my name
it makes me scared.
no no, it doesn't matter
water under the bridge.
I'll say whatever pleases
fawn for your favour if it
will fix any rift
that you caused.
but it was my fault
for reacting to who cut me first
with your claws.
Kaci O'Meara ☆
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