#LITERALLY ALL SHE SAID WAS ‘‘GESTALT RELATIONSHIP’’ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cambriancrew · 5 months ago

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We don't have DID or OSDD-1 or any other disorder due to our plurality, as while it is Deviant from the norm it does not cause us Distress, Dysfunction, or Danger.

But. We originals have been present and in communication with each other since early childhood. We switch multiple times daily, as we always have. Each of us is a distinct whole person - different flavor of queer, personality traits, beliefs, behavior patterns, hopes and fears, manner of speaking and writing to the point that we can look back at things we wrote before our syscovery and recognize which of us wrote it. We're median because we're literally inseparable and because we have a shared gestalt identity of Willow. None of us are Willow. Willow is all of us combined.

When we were 15, we accidentally created or connected with Jas, depending on if you view her as a parogen, soulbond, or both. She was vocal from very early on. We spent literally thousands of hours with her, talking and writing and storytelling. She argued with us for well over a decade, insisting she's real, while we believed she was just our "overactive imagination". Despite this, she pulled us out of our first really bad bout of depression. We were dealing with severe suicidal ideation and, without us thinking about her or intending to talk to her at all (in fact, despite us trying to shut her out) she insisted we go to our writing desk and write down our conversation. She said while things were pretty bad, that it was okay. It was just the end of a chapter of our life, not the whole story. Her faith in us pulled us out of that depression. It gave us hope when we had none before.

Over the next decade after that, we created/connected with several more, including Morrie who self-dissipated due to our mistreatment and disbelief that he was real, and Tristan who decided to cut off communication with us. She still talks occasionally with Jas, but not us Willows.

Anyway. Eventually we stumbled on the tulpa community. We realized that what we'd done with our headmates was the same as what the people in that community were doing intentionally. That the others we talked to regularly and wrote with and occasionally let write themselves were real, were headmates. It took us a few days to really sit with that realization and come to terms with the fact that they're real. At that time we had us Willows, and four parogens/soulbonds. (While we use "tulpa" to refer to the community, we have innerworld reasons for not liking the term for our created headmates.) The community helped us figure out possession in a more direct way, and we worked hard on co-fronting and then switching. One thing that made it hard to switch was we felt that when "I" the host switched out, there was part of "me" left that would pull the rest of "me" back into control. We talked about this with some system friends, and one, a DID system, said it sounded like maybe we hosts might be a median system. We looked into it and slammed face first into the realization that we'd been plural since early childhood. It recontextualized a LOT. Our "wavering" personality traits and beliefs, our fights as children among us "parts", our relationship with friends and family and of course each other.

It's been about a decade and we Willows still switch frequently. Most of our parogens (there's ten now, and Morrie came back from dissipation, but Tristan wants nothing to do with us and that's okay, that's her choice) take an active role in our external life, making their own friends, handling our responsibilities at home and work and education. They're all even more distinctly full people than us Willows.

While we do have trauma, we know we're not trauma responses. That would take another essay to explain, but basically it boils down to we recognize our own roles in our independence, in us Willows never integrating, and in the creation of the non-Willows. Placing the blame on trauma would take away our autonomy and responsibility, and we don't feel that's right and we believe very strongly that's not true for us. We don't fit any of the trauma models either.

Also, we've been part of the community here on Tumblr a long time. We remember when "system" was seen primarily as a term nontraumagenic and nondisordered plurals used. We remember when an anon messaged anti-endo Firedrake and claimed that "system" had been a DID term for over 200 years. Firedrake found a 100 year old book, Symptoms of Hysteria by Pierre Janet that he said backed up that claim, except it didn't.

Despite that, the idea that the plural community long shared term of "system" belonged only to people with DID spread like wildfire.

We remember when it wasn't like that. And it's frankly frustrating that people think it's always been a DID term that plurals without DID stole when it used to be something people with DID would tell other people with DID NOT to use as it was a term "only used by fakers".

Also. Being endogenic, like in our case, doesn't mean you don't have trauma, or don't have traumagenic members despite your plurality's initial origins being something else. And it doesn't mean you don't have a dissociative disorder. Plurals with traumagenic members belong in traumagenic spaces regardless of their initial origin (and regardless of their stance on endogenics.) Plurals with CDDs belong in CDD spaces regardless of their origin (and again regardless of their stance on endogenics.)

Sorry for the essay. Would make it shorter but we don't have time. Gotta get to our therapy appointment with our therapist who encourages us to lean on each other more as that's what's healthiest for us. :)

Hey endos, inviting you to a friendly conversation in the comments, please tell me why you genuinely think you are a system, should be included in the system community and/or included in did/osdd spaces. Genuinely curious on why you feel the need to join in on spaces for trauma survivors/osdd systems

#syscourse #Crew History

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derekscorner · 3 years ago

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The Ghost of Humanity

As with every topic this week, I was discussing with my friend Osprey, this time about Nier. The tragedy of the androids and machines. All that stuff you’ve heard from your favorite Youtuber before.

I was musing about how humanity is a ghost that hangs over the heads of these artificial lifeforms. Androids worship us as gods, the machines wish to become as gods.

The very actions the machines take, their disconnection from their network, and their finale are their desperate attempt to be human. But you likely already know this, you see it everywhere.

Machines tend to get close but not quite where they wish to be. Adam believes death and hatred define man, this is merely a portion. Eve is clingy and seeks companionship and loses his sanity when it’s gone, humans are a social species. The network develops and then fractures because, like the humans they idolize, they now have the individualism to conflict within the whole.

Most importantly to me, machines were bordering on a type of techno-biological life. They weren’t ever going to be human but they had the potential to be themselves. They just missed the forest for the trees.

I found this fascinating because if the machines of alien origin could get as far as birthing Adam from their robot orgy then androids should be closer. Androids, perhaps from the get go, could’ve become a life of their own. They already have a programmed (albeit it warped) humanity to them. They were made in the image of their “gods” as we ourselves are said to be.

Many of Automata’s missions showcase it from the android turned murderer because she was jealous of her lover, the very fact that androids can modify their bodies to have sex or take lovers, the very notion they can love at all.

They have relationships, emotionally, the androids are there. They’re at that level, they’re people. Physically, I believe they could be.

They wouldn’t be human, not fully biological life, but I do believe the androids could be their own form of life. Especially when you have YorHa units made of repurposed alien machinery.

The tragedy I’ve always found in this is why they don’t. The androids are programmed to serve humanity, the idea they may be gone was such an issue with discourse and outright suicide made our extinction a national secret.

We see how the loss of this purpose cracked 9S mentally, 2B’s death just finished the job as he truly had nothing left.

Worse yet, they likely just never considered the possibility. YorHa aside, the larger android population has likely never once considered branching out. They were programmed to do one thing and they perpetuate it.

They’re literally haunted by the 1s and 0s we put into the first androids and they’re hampered by a reverence for us that we gave them which we do not deserve in the slightest.

Again, I’m not saying they’ll magically become biological life or human, I just find a sadness in how they’re limited by something so minor. They could find new purpose, they could be a new type of life the barren earth needs but they never will be at the rate they’re going.

I believe the core of Automata’s story is the tragedy that we haunt these beings. We haunt the androids and the machines and it’s sad how we do so.

Editing this in because that theme can also be applied heavily to Nier. The original isn’t as nuanced since the literal remnants of humanity are in their death throes because even when split humanity tries to human.

Only this time, true to our own fucking nature, humanity manages to kill itself through the gestalt Nier. It’s poetic more than it is sad to me because our own mutual or self caused demise is the end I’ve always found most likely for our species.

The only tragedy here, to me, is that it’s the beginning of the androids aimless hell that is existing without their gods. Never able, or perhaps just unwilling, to consider growing beyond their boundaries.

#nier #nier automata #nier replicant #nier reincarnation #nier remaster #ramblings

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something-very-special · 4 years ago

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“and it’s gonna be TONS OF FUN.”

Look, we all know Route B is the one where you ruin everything and suddenly everybody thinks they’ve been playing the villain the whole time but can we talk about

the other stuff?

I said it must be surreal for people coming in off Automata with all those references suddenly making sense but this is surreal for me coming off the original game to have these little extra scenes intercut through the game.

See, here’s the thing that I really grew to love about NIER-- it’s a fundamentally small story. Its ramifications are world-shattering, but the story itself is very small. It’s not about the conflict between Gestalts and Replicants, it’s about love, and the great and terrible things it can do. Love between brothers, between lovers, between fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, a ragtag messed up family. The greater conflict is the backdrop and driving force, but the story isn’t about that so much as it’s about all the tiny tragedies that you bear witness to on the way to the end.

(And I realize now how powerful the Little Mermaid story would be if it could be contrasted to Papa Nier, there’s... oh there’s stuff to think about from that perspective, isn’t there? Not that the tragedy doesn’t exist with Brother, but it’s kind of how Gideon hits different between the two-- the story in isolation still makes sense, but it means more contrasted between one or the other.)

The Shades are easy to remember. But the tiny tragedy that I love most, of course, is Kaine and Emil. Two people ostracized as monsters forming their own little family unit, utterly happy to have found each other (and Nier’s there too, I guess). There was a lot implied by the little dialogue they really exchanged during the first run of the game (and the original game in its entirety) but it spoke volumes about the kind of relationship they had established. (It speaks even more to go into Automata and see that truck!Emil has been preserving Kaine’s house and the field of Lunar Tears even though he didn’t retain the memories of Kaine herself.)

The newly added scenes aren’t at all necessary, but they are such a welcome addition and corroborate a few different things that were hinted or implied rather than explicit (or were easy to miss-- later Kaine mentions they ‘don’t have Emil to hold [Tyrann] back’ and that seems like a really bizarre jump if you don’t notice that you can’t hit the finisher gauge against her in the Lost Shrine until Emil has her pinned with a spell; there’s a little cutscene post-Junk Heap that calls attention to it. And while we’re still in the parenthetical can I just say I still love the organic feel of so much of the writing? He says “If that happens, I’ll stop you again”, she says “You sure about that?” and there is no hesitation or response from him. Kaine gets the follow-up ellipses and her “Thank you” is genuine. There’s trust there. Even if she doesn’t necessarily believe her transformation can be stopped, she believes him, and that’s enough.)

But it’s also not too much. What got me all over again was the scene added after you finish the keystone; Nier contemplates going it alone against the Shadowlord, Kaine and Emil are right behind him and very huffy that he considers leaving them behind. And it becomes clear that apparently they have actually plotted out Emil’s suggestion to fix Kaine’s possessions and get his body back, and Nier’s gonna help them, and they’re gonna have to travel the world to do it and they’re gonna taste every local delicacy on the way and it’s gonna be TONS OF FUN.

And you expect that from Emil, who is literally a child and a ball of sunshine when the main story isn’t happening... and then Kaine joins in. “Yeah. And I’m gonna eat way more than my fair share, so you better be ready to pony up.”

You see that?

Kaine’s ready to be happy.

Tyann will later make mention of her heart being ‘full of light’ during the final stretch and this is interpreted as love-- usually love for the protagonist, as she goes on about how she’ll ‘be his sword one last time’. But it’s described as her rage and sorrow going away. Terrible things have happened on this trip and she’s privy to more of them than the rest of the party, but she’s entering the final battle with this also on her mind. Not that they’re necessarily going to actually travel the globe on a gastronomic adventure (but I would play that cooking game), but she’s glad to be here, with them.

(She is also the one who asks if Weiss is all right during the final battle. I might be misremembering but I swear this was Nier’s line in the original, I can hear Papa Nier yelling it in my head.)

In fact, with the added scenes, it becomes more explicitly clear that Kaine only gives up at the end of the castle because Emil isn’t there to bring her back and she knew she needed him to go on. She knew he would be able to let her go on, and would always be there so she could keep on going on. Kaine wants to die after her grandmother’s murder and her possession by Tyrann and only holds on because otherwise Tyrann would use her body to do terrible things, but it’s here that it becomes clear that you know what?

She’s up for an adventure. Might be fun.

#NieR #Nier Replicant #Kaine #Emil #Amazing Camping Adventures #I love how these two are so defined individually but also kind of complete each other

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abundantchewtoys · 6 years ago

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HS Epilogues, Meat p26 reaction

Well, we unexpectedly went on a little hiatus there, in our liveblogging. It's just one of those things you got to find time for doing, you know?

So, last time in Homestuck Epilogues, Dirk was present for Rose's ascension into omniscience. Although he did state he still had a manner of control over her, and was going to do something to anchor her to her living body. So, you know, they're not on equal footing just yet, in part because Dirk hasn't relinquished control of the narration to her.

I hope the POV switches to John again, but since we just had a page from his perspective, it might be going back to Kanaya? Or Roxy, but Dirk might not want to spent more time around her "unfathomable" mind than is necessary for the plot to advance. It's not something you'd relish, as a supposedly omniscient narrator.

---

"Jade kicks her shoeless feet behind her slowly, as if she’s swimming with the current of the gravitational waves pulling her ever closer to their source." Oh! I didn't think we'd see her again, at least in the Furthest Ring. Thought the Black Hole had already swallowed her up. Though maybe as a Space player, and one with a connection to a seven-year-more-experienced version of herself located outside of canon and thus with more guaranteed conditional immortality than normal, she might be able to... resist getting thorn to pieces, as she crosses the event horizon? Unlike, presumably, every other being sucked into this thing.

"the ruby slippers are gone. She kicked them off hours ago, as if to jettison all hope of returning anywhere resembling a place she used to call home. The fond remembrance of such a place no longer has any pull on her.

Now, something else entirely is pulling her." Welp, guess the Black Hole is kind of hypnotic, ain't it? Or maybe it's Alt Calliope's strong personality.

"Believe me, I’m sympathetic to the temptation. It’s always just there, isn’t it?" To jump into the void? I don't think it's ALWAYS there for everyone Dirk, but thanks for the unique perspective into how your mind functions.

"There’s something about being alone for so long, it makes time feel like it doesn’t exist. She knows this almost better than I do." ... Yes, well, Lonely Jade did, and it seems as if she might have taken over, or melded with, Reload Jade? So yeah, her three years of isolation would indeed have given her some inkling of the feeling of loneliness that Dirk and the cherubs must have experienced, being physically alone all their life. ... Right, of course her childhood on Hellmurder Island would have also done that regardless.

"Jade also knows well enough by now that time doesn’t actually exist in a literal sense, the way we generally understand it. It’s just one aspect of many, and the complement of her own, Space. It therefore can be neutralized by the introduction of her essence. Reduced to white noise or soft light. The continuum of time is therefore demonstrably an illusion. The field of sequential moments and physical conditions that stretch on and on, resulting in the mirage of loneliness, is pure projection from disproportionate attention given to a single side of one cosmic, polar pair of ideas: time." Ah yes, aspect exposition time! To quote the swamp bender: "Time is an illusion", huh? We're going that route? Well, sure, but for most people a rather convincing one, no matter what your Aspect is. Though it would be interesting to see what "disproportionate attention" given to Space would result in... Despite a ravenous Black Hole consuming an entire realm, I guess.

"It’s my way of saying, and thereby alerting her mind to what she already knows, that this feeling of all-consuming solitude and despair haunting her since childhood—it’s in her head." Like, I can only root for Dirk in trying to save Jade from whatever Calliope has cooked up, but he's still manipulating her for his own purposes.

"The ticking of time is a little contrivance in her mind as a byproduct of imbalance, of the vast disparity between her limited self and her Ultimate Self." So, what, his past is as real to Dirk right now as his present and future?

"It lives rent free there the way Dave once did, and for this version of Jade, probably still does." Funny how that points to this still being Reload Jade more than post-canon Jade.

"Maybe Dave broke her heart a little, and he keeps doing it too, no matter how many different timelines they try out." Okay, see? This applies to post-canon Jade! It seems to swing around from moment to moment, the direction the narration points into. Though, I guess post-canon Jade might really benefit from absorbing her pre-retcon selves memories regarding her relationship with Davesprite, to assess how to go about handling Dave on Earth C.

"She slips closer to the event horizon, still making no effort to impede her descent. My persuasion skills are admittedly a little rusty. Bear with me here." So very rusty, so very unused recently. :P But yeah, she's different from Rose AND John, so he'll need a different approach.

"In my experience, there’s something about being alone that can take a person’s limited meat-engine and make it imagine that it can see beyond the confines of its own electrical processes. Make it believe that it is ascending to a place where it can see the four dimensions spread out beneath it like a set of windows." Is he... paraphrasing Jade's current mindset? Or his own, isolated on B2 Earth? Sounds also as if he's describing a medidative monk, kind of.

"Like sheet music. Like a garden, where Jade used to spend so much of her time with her hands in the earth and her head in the clouds, dreaming about flowers that bloomed in six colors and grew when she played them a song. Was that real? It’s hard to tell. But it made her happy, didn’t it?

Isn’t that what she needs now?" Ooh, so he's trying to persuade her to turn around by getting inside her head and trying to figure out what made her most happy. Being omniscient, he might just have a hard time distinguishing the important bits from the trash? He seemed to describe it in such a way, as if Jade might sometimes have been daydreaming in a way it overlapped with dreaming on Prospit! And so, she might have created a space for her dreamself that didn't stick to the confines of the dreamroom.

"Isn’t it reasonable to presume that’s the only thing capable of persuading her to slow her descent—to being invited to imagine, fake or otherwise, that which once made her happy? That which could still make her happy, if only she’d slow down, think about it, and do whatever is necessary to place herself in those surroundings again?" So, he's trying to shake her out of it by thinking happy thoughts. :P

"It’s possible that manning the other end of a suicide hotline, transmitted through pure thought in a metatextual format, may not actually be my true calling." (He actually kind of sucks at this.)

"I’m doing my goddamned best here. She just isn’t slowing down, for some incomprehensible reason." So, uh, what's stopping you from pulling a John and just, like forcefully move her thoughts to where you want them?

"Perhaps my touch is too soft. It wouldn’t be the first time." Said no one ever that ever knew you. :P

"Perhaps the limits of persuasion itself are being tested by the most powerful gravitational force to ever exist?" Now that'd be something! That a pure manifestation of an Aspect could overcome narrators of omniscient inclination.

"Or perhaps it’s true that insistence is just the more effective half of persuasion.

So I’m insisting now." Took him long enough.

"Jade Harley will not go into that hole. She does NOT want us to all to see what happens when she unsettles the spirit residing there." So Dirk also seems to be convinced she's survive? Or maybe he thinks that, adding her to the matter inside the Black Hole, would upset some kind of balance.

Basically, he's like: "No, Alice, don't go into the rabbit hole!" and "No, Dorothy, don't look behind the green curtain at the wizard residing there!"

"she does, though." OOOOOOoooooohhhhhh!!!! Battle of the narrators!

Guess Alt Calliope's eon-long isolation, coupled with her Spacey thing, gave her the same powers as Dirk's. So that answers the question whether ghosts can grow into an Ultimate Self! It has interesting implications regarding Aranea and (Vriska), for one!

"Fucking yikes.

Jade throws on the brakes. I say she does. But by now, the gravity is overwhelming. Is she even trying to resist, or is it just that it’s useless to try? I’m not... I’m not sure I can tell?" Wow, yeah, so here we see what happens when Dirk encounters another narrative force of equal or greater power. He loses the ability to discern everything. But Alt Calliope remains eerily silent, only 2 comments from her so far.

"Jade realizes, preferably before it’s too late, that this is fucking serious. She needs to turn this around. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to die.

she wants to return to me." ...? Eh? Does Alt Calliope see herself as THE Self now, devouring all other beings into some sort of hivemind gestalt? Or does she refer to the time Jade (either version) spent with Calliope (either version)? Seems a bit stupid if she'd mean that. On the other hand, it might be a childish response, a desire for affection so deeply rooted into the main Calliope, that Alt Calliope during her ascension absorbed it.

"All right, I’m done messing around.

YOUR name is Jade Harley. YOU decide, right now, that you do not want to die. You resist the pull of the black hole with all your might. What would killing yourself accomplish? Sure, most of your friends are dead. But John is still looking for you. Do you want to let him down? Do you want to crush his soul? Do you have any appreciation for what he’s going through, Jade? He can take you home. To your new home, Earth C. The home I made for you, Jade. Your friends are all there, alive and well. Rose, Dave, Karkat, slutty adult Jade, Jane, Jake, Roxy, me. You wouldn’t want to disappoint them. You wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you, Jade?" Well then!! Pffff, I didn't think a Strider could ever evocate "Stern Fatherly Disapproval" like Dad Egbert/Crocker can, but here we are. Let's just skim the implications of taking a teen Jade back to Earth C to live with adult versions of her friends, as well as Dirk's less than gentle tone here, and agree that her survival is definitely desirable, just cuz IT'S ABOUT HER, SURVIVING.

Still, you have to wonder what Dirk's ultimate plans for her are. I'm starting to doubt he'll be successful, though.

"You’re close now, to the ceiling of the cancerous deformity. Too close. Just skimming the edge of this thing’s vicious horizon." It's like he's describing the event horizon as a quantum vacuum decay, which for all we know in science, it just might be.

"You dip your toes through the place where the singularity is snapping everything apart at the seams. It’s so loud that it’s completely silent. You can already feel yourself stretched thin, distorted, pulled out with your descent elongated for all eternity." I suppose there's no one suited for pulling her out at the last second, is there? No chance for Davepeta to make a last-moment re-entry into the epilogues.

Blaperile points out something significant to me: Dirk has attributed Jade the "you"-ness factor! It would be cool to have Jade come on par with John in the epilogues, but I doubt it'll last past this page.

"When you look down, the stripes of your witchy tights go on and on for miles. Please, Jade. Don’t ever say I didn’t try to stop this.

she closes her eyes and lets go." Is... Alt Calliope going to take over the narration for a bit here, on the next page?

We have three potential candidates for taking up narration at this point - and no sight of Andrew Hussie, the author avatar, who could have been a fourth.

Welp. Now Jade's really gone. I have to wonder what this means for post-canon Jade, who fell unconscious with the sight of the Black Hole seared into her eyes. It can't have been a pleasant thing that happened to her, there. I just hope Alt Calliope hasn't taken over her body like a true puppeteer, giving Dirk a run for his money.

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert #jade harley #dirk strider #alternate calliope

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twofacedwritings · 6 years ago

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Kirse

Bio for my Sidestep. Spoilers for Fallen Hero series. TW: violence, gore, suicidal ideation.

”You gotta carry that weight straight to the grave.” ”Not before I beat someone to death with it.” Name: Kirse Epsilon

Gender: Genderfluid (goes by the impersonal it)

Orientation: pansexual, but too full of loathing to do anything about it. Appearance: 4′9, overweight asian with green eyes and black hair cut in a sleek bob... or at least it would be sleek if it brushed its hair. However, after debuting as a villain, it has gained muscle and is no longer overweight, which it hides with baggy, second-hand hoodies and cargo pants. Very clearly does not get enough sleep and wears no make-up, adding to its look of being constantly worn out and almost sickly. Personality: Sarcastic and bitter, Kirse attempts to push people away so that they don’t care about it. At the same time, it is deeply empathetic and cares a lot about the wellbeing of others. It wants to make sure that everyone else is okay even if it is dying on the inside. It is full of self-loathing, and is perpetually exhausted due to running on a 24/6.5 clock. Oftentimes, it will retreat into its puppet to pretend to be human for just a little bit longer, and this both feeds into its belief that it isn’t and that it doesn’t belong. It pretends to no longer be a telepath in order to avoid suspicion of being Unveiler. Vice: Sweets. Originally a way for it to regain calories quick after a fight, Kirse tends to eat sweets at least once a day. It doesn’t eat crumbly sweets that leave a mess, preferring the soft stuff that can be neatly consumed.

Villain: Unveiler, intent on pursuing the truth and dragging it out from the dark. Fueled by a vendetta and vengeance against those that wronged them in the past. Armour is very mysterious with a mirrored honeycomb visor, a hooded cape that has become fashionably tattered. Voice modulator triplicates input in male, female, and neutral voices. Unveiler addresses themselves as we, as though they are a gestalt of consciousness. Hearbreak Scar: Outsider. Kirse was reminded during the Heartbreak incident that it can never truly belong among people. It was created to be a tool, and attempting to become more resulted in it being severely punished. Heartbreak pushed it towards being Suicidal and it put a gun in its mouth before being stopped by Charge. Nevertheless, it threw itself out the window, and, while it survived, broke 80% of their body. After being reclaimed by the farm, Kirse was literally taken apart. All the broken parts of Kirse were removed, and it was set in a room full of clone bodies. For over two weeks, it watched as parts were removed from each different body to be reattached to its own. Only its head managed to remain; they couldn't risk eliminating the telepathy part. Organs, limbs, flesh, everything was removed. It was then put through an accelerated, painful physiotherapy, during which the clone bodies were brought to life with the old limbs/organs put in them. Once it was capable of moving once more, it was made to destroy all of those bodies, essentially forcing Kirse to kill Sidestep over and over. It is but a tool. One that can never belong or become a person. Puppet: Dylan. A tall mixed man with hazel eyes and auburn hair. Very suave, charismatic, and charming, He can cook, play the piano, and keeps his hair short but sexy, with a goatee to complete his look. He has a pair of cards tattoo on his chest, an ace of spades and hearts, as well as another on his left forearm of dice and cards with a ribbon that reads “Luck be a lady.” He dresses in stylish suits, dress shirts, slacks, and the occasional vest. Relationships: After Hearbreak happened, Kirse does its best to keep people from caring about it while still worrying about them. It tries to keep things veyr one sided, completely aware of how it’s not working. - Ricardo Ortega: It’s complicated. Kirse reciprocated Ortega’s flirting pre-hearbreak, and it developed some feelings for the man before it vanished. Those feelings still linger, piled on with the concern that he’s gotten older and slower. However, Kirse is fully of the belief that Ortega would never accept it for what it truly is, and tries to keep the focus of their friendship on Ortega. That being said, they do hang out often, allowing Unveiler to gain more insight into the Rangers operations. - Herald: At first, Kirse detested the younger hero. He’s everything that Kirse is not: heroic, charming, hopeful... a person. It felt insulting to be the one admired, but his genuine desire to help people is endearing. Kirse started to train Herald, in hopes of making him tougher and able to survive the harsh world of Los Diablos. At the same time, it believes that all of Herald’s admiration and affection stems from the fact that Kirse used to be Sidestep; it can’t possible imagine someone, especially as pure as Herald, being interested in a drab thing. Therefore, Herald’s crush goes completely over Kirse’s head. - Wei Chen: Previously, they both held each other at a safe distance, but bonding over Spoon and other animals created a stable truce between them. Kirse admires Chen and his dedication, and fully believes that when the time comes for Unveiler to be defeated, Marshal Steel will be the one to do it. Therefore, until then, Chen must keep getting stronger and be better. Kirse also believes that he deserves happiness, and upon hearing about his hidden romantic interest in Ortega, subtly tries to nudge them together. - Lady Argent: Scares Kirse, for both being so dedicated to fighting Unveiler and in general. There is a shaky truce between Unveiler and Argent after recovering the Regenerator; she knows that they are a Re-Gene, but Argent has no relation to Kirse at all. It avoids her, and she doesn’t care that it exists. - Dr. Mortum: Falling in love for the doctor is ridiculously easy when he’s funny, brilliant, and so excitable. Even moreso when Dylan’s default personality is suave and charismatic. But it knows that it isn’t Dylan, and the one Mortum cares about doesn’t even exist. Dylan and Mortum never started dating, but they both know the tension is there, especially after a few moments of weakness and shared kisses. Not that it expects anything to come out of it, now that Mortum knows the truth about Dylan and Kirse... and what Kirse truly is.

#fallen hero: rebirth #fhr spoilers #Kirse Epsilon #Sidestep

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fantroll-purgatory · 6 years ago

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Technically these trolls fled from alternia to get away from the violence, when Condy was ruling.

mostly notes about this planet !

CD: Don’t worry, I like having a lot of info to work with. *Cracks knuckles* Mostly, when you’re building a new planet, you want to ask yourself- What makes this so different from Alternia that it’s worth writing a story on a different planet instead of a different region? I think you’ve got a lot of interesting stuff to work with in that regard, but it still needs a little work.

(SA Incoming! Plant biology (with a focus in Mycology and Fungal Like Organisms) is literally my bachelor’s. Coming in for the science references.)

“Comantem- blooming in Latin. Represents a new peaceful age for the Trolls species.”

-planet is covered in plant life !!

CD: Plant life is a really vague term. You talk later about the moss and fungus(not plants but bear with me), but that’s about as specific as you get. What kind of plant life? Is it aggressive and hostile? Is it why the planet is so dangerous at night? Or do other creatures cause that? Is it plant life the trolls can EAT and thrive with, or does it represent an agricultural problem for them? Do trolls have to try to beat back the natural plant life on the planet to farm their own food to survive? (Actually, do trolls even eat plants or are they carnivorous?) (I know not all planets that exist aren’t covered in plant life but… liveable planets are. Earth is. Alternia isn’t exactly liveable and it does. Check out where Terezi and Aradia live. You don’t really have terrestrial life without terrestrial plants. Who’s making the oxygen otherwise?)

-Rainbow drinkers are seen as great soldiers for the fleet and other things. RD can live off the blood of their enemies so its good on the planet’s economy.

CD: Jades are rare and Rainbow Drinkers are RARE. Relying on the possibility that a small subset of your already uncommon population for your military is a good way to get blasted to hell immediately. A more likely approach is to rely on golds and bluebloods. Golds tend to have psionic abilities and using them for fighting forces instead of living batteries could be a major advantage. Have them act as long range fighters while the naturally strong bluebloods take the forefront. Jades can still be considered an important part of a team/good to have on a team, but they shouldn’t be central. (I will admit that weaponizing Rainbowdrinkers in a “secret monastery of elite battle ladies” way does appeal to me, though. Given that they don’t need to do AS much of the work given that they don’t need to tame lusii or anything, maybe they can retire to military service?)

- adults stay on planet.

CD: This leads to my next question- how is the planet sustaining its population? Did they steal a mother grub? Mother GRUBS, multiple? Who takes care of these mother grubs and how does the grub-raising system differ? Do they still do the cave thing or does the gov’t regulate grub care to prevent massive death and help the population thrive?

Also, re: stealing grubs and running away: How’d they slip that one under the radar? Does Condy know where they are and is she a threat or are they hiding for now? If they’re hiding, the Sky Hives might be a little riskier. Hell, if they’re KNOWN about the sky hives might be risky. Think of the motivation for this. If they want hives off the ground, then that must mean the risk on the ground is worse than the risk of getting caught. Work with that. What threat on planet is worse than getting caught by Condy? Must be pretty scary.

-there is a government. Government still believes in blood color discrimination. If a lowbloods is elected to be in said so gov, they are respected but risk assassination attempts.

CD: If the government believes in blood color discrimination, why did it leave Alternia? Highbloods certainly don’t suffer as much oppression under Condy’s rule and get more cushy positions even in the Space War than the lowbloods who get treated like cannon fodder. This is like imagining an alternate version of history where rich nobles and religious majorities fled Europe for no reason. Give us a motive. Who is in charge? Is it seadwellers still, who are on the highest end? If so, why did they leave? Or are we playing Landdweller Government. We know that landdwellers and seadwellers are at odds and their nobility has a contentious relationship, so while purples (who are seemingly decently loyal to the crown, even if chaotically) might not be as tempted to leave, blues certainly would have some motive. That can change up the scheme of the hemospectrum, creating a shape that peaks at blue and descends on either side.

Like that.

- the sun is not harmful. But at night it is more dangerous.

CD: What makes it dangerous? I kind of went into this above, but elaborate. Where’s the danger? Is it local fauna? Local flora? Something even more insidious?

- FLARP games are uncommon to play, but still exist.

-gov puts sopor slime mix into consumables. They use this to keep the violence rate in check and low.

CD: Okay, this leads to the question of what you believe sopor is made of. Is it squashed limes, because how’re they flying THAT under the radar?

- The trolls aren’t that much physically violent and their government psychologically messes with them

- lusii are much more aggressive than the ones on Alternia. This resorted to Com trolls to using troll caretakers. Caretakers are often seen as bodyguards than just parents.

CD: What makes the lusii more aggressive? Is there something about the planet that makes them behave that way? This also raises the question of why they would even keep breeding them in that case? Why would they want these aggressive useless animals around? Have they transitioned lusii to a food source? Why don’t they just try to rely on local fauna instead? Are the high ranking officials just being old fashioned and clinging to traditionalism despite it being futile? Or is it an idea you can scrap because it has no actual useful basis?

You also need to think about the implications of trolls who have never had parents before trying to take on a caretaking role. What does this mean for the new generations of trolls? How might their behavior differ? (Lusii are also just aggressive in general. In Friendsim, there’s an entire “battling a lusus” sequence in one of the routes. They’re not like “fun peaceful animal friends”.)

-lusii have naturally growing plants and patches of moss on them. Cordyceps fungus usually affects the lusii and rarely trolls.

(But why tho.) (No. “Aesthetic” is not a reasoning. Nor is “it’s my entire world concept!” Those don’t explain this. Like… how? Why? You make a comment about trolls also getting plant patches? (also nitpick- Moss are plants, they just aren’t vascular plants. They’re not fungus) Why? What has altered troll-lusus biology SO HEAVILY that they are gestalt organisms now? That’s not a thing that just happens.) (I don’t want to be that guy, but: do you know what Cordyceps does? I literally have a degree in this subject so I most assuredly do.)

(Given what we know about troll biology -that they’re insectoid- Cordyceps species would be much more likely to affect them and not the lusii, and would be a bane to wrigglers, who would be the primary hosts of O. sinensis. Even species that are still technically within Cordyceps (like Beauveria) affect insects almost exclusively. O. sinensis killed caterpillars are even eaten as folk medicine!)

(There’s a 99% chance you’re referring to O. unilateralis, the “zombie ant” fungus. Which, as I’ve stated before, would affect your trolls LONG before it would turn Lusii into zombies. O. unilateralis would cause your wrigglers to wander into high humidity environments at a specific height, lock themselves down, and then be mummified as the fungus works its way through their bodies, and then explode into a cloud of spores that could affect other wrigglers. Given how the troll life cycle works (and the fact that you have centralized government and caretaking) this would likely never affect older trolls, and Cordyceps species don’t affect non-insects, and would struggle to burst through in larger bodies, hence why it’s evolved to parasitize ants and not like, monkeys.) (Another point is that even in Ants, the ants can tell when something’s parasitized and will literally move infected members of the community away so they don’t wreck the colony. A thing that your trolls would be able to do with medicine.)

-sky hives !! the government is always focused on moving forward so they have advanced tech powered by plants.

CD: Again like I said, consider the ramifications of Sky Hives more closely. If they’re floating up in space, they’re more likely to be noticed. What’s down there that makes being noticed the preferred option?

-mutants stay underground or in the sky most of the time.

CD: Why is there still mutant oppression? If this is a planet that ran explicitly to flee Condy’s oppression, some more weight might be given to the lives of the mutant folks. Especially because the government doesn’t want to cull them if they wanna keep their numbers up and their people invigorated. Maybe instead of them having to hide, mutants could be the ones the highbloods elevate as political symbols? It can create a unique new sort of oppressive environment for them that isn’t exactly the same as on Alternia.

- conmantemrians have glowing neon teeth in the dark, and their bones are the same as well as their eyes! (but the glow in their eyes are faint.) (Can be any color, depending on the blood caste!) Mostly due to them having adapted to the planet’s environment.

CD: How long have they been on this planet? Because if it hasn’t been a looong time, they probably haven’t biologically adapted this much. And if the planet is dangerous at night, what is the benefit to glowing? Wouldn’t that make them stand out more and be more likely to be hurt? Does the threat hate light and avoid it at all costs or something? If so, why?

-occasionally some trolls have small patches of glowing moss with either fungi or flowers. Usually the lower and mid castes get these. The high castes (Purple to Fuchsia) get stinging anemones (which feel like pinches, used for defense against wild lusii)

CD: My question here is Why. The aesthetic of this is cool and all, but think functionally. How does this happen? Where does it come from? Trolls are bugs, not beds of soil. How will they grow plants on them?

-there are barely any actual teals on the planet. Instead, there’s jade-leaning or olive-leaning. The government believes the teals would attempt to overthrow and take control.

CD: Teals are known for being relatively law-abiding folk thanks to their association with the legislacerators, so you need to establish where this idea would come from. During the original foundation did a group of crown-loyal teals attempt to rat them out? Is that still a story that gets told aroud the planet, causing teals to be associated with betrayal? Also: blood color isn’t a spectrum quite like that in the homestuck canon. Are you doing an AU where the blood colors can blend like that? If you’re trying to use canon hemospectrum rules, there are only 12 colors. There can’t be “jade-leaning” or “olive-leaning” anything. (Also, Mothergrubs don’t choose what color blood trolls have. If so, we’d never had mutantbloods. We don’t really know exactly how troll blood color is passed on, but it’d be strange to assume that this planet just doesn’t have the ability to make tealbloods. If it was 1-to-1 trolls, we’d never get any Fuschias ever, given that Condy geeks them all when they come of age, and a new one doesn’t like… immediately replace them, else there’d be overlap.)

-olives are the face of society. They’re somewhat favourable to the government. They’re treated nicely, given clothes that resembles the Greek gods, and such. They’re usually considered snooty to the other midbloods and lowbloods.

CD: You should probably take more inspo from Old Alternians than Greek Gods. Trolls aren’t going to know what Greek Gods are, after all. And I once again have gotta ask, why olives? What gets them revered? Give a backstory for why besides randomly saying it. Were olives goodluck charms for the original establishing trolls? Is it a Folk Belief that if you don’t revere your olives your shit will get fucked? If not, then it’s probably better to just transition this entirely over to the Objectifying Worship Of Mutant Folks.

-They have caste appreciation holidays but Olive and a couple others are the only ones that are actually celebrated by society

-Olive/Jade-leaning peeps are not well liked but are redeemed bc both olive and jade have good purposes in society

CD: What are the olive’s purposes? You call them revered, but you don’t say what they actually do? Given the history of the olive legacy w/ the Disciple, you cooould probably make them religious figures?

-Fucking freaky weather yo (except it’s good for the plants so w/e) (What does this mean though. Good for what plants? Plants aren’t a monolith. Is it a jungle planet? A grassland planet? A planet of entirely cacti?)

CD: Weather Starts in the sky, usually, so how does this impact the sky hives?

Pro/anti-plant people for the plants on the trolls (arguments on whether growth should be allowed bc not everyone gets them) (I discuss earlier how this concept makes little to no sense, but having political debates about them checks out, given that it’s like… very bizarre and strange for trolls.)

-Secret sopor farms! Sopor factories! Lots of purple-blood overseers

-Sky hives = blood rain on the rare occasion someone dies

-Government made FLARP manuals to show peeps the ‘right’ way to do it and keep them from getting violent in their games

CD: I’m combining the Blood Rain and the Nonviolent FLARP thing because I have an idea. Now… FLARP stands for Fatal Live Action Roleplay. There is NO way to avoid being violent in FLARP. FLARP is, inherently, totally, and completely, a violent game. So if the gov’t wanted to regulate it, what if they did Gladiatorial FLARP instead. Arena Combat Hours. This can make the blood rain more of an EVENT. They blood of the slain players is rained down Intentionally.

A summary; Comantem: a planet filled with lots of plant life and a government that drugs their citizens so they cannot rebel but is generally a peaceful planet compared to Alternia.

Hope this is good enough? This is a new concept that I made like a day ago so yup

CD: It’s definitely a real interesting concept! You’ve got some work to do filling things out and making the world feel living and breathing, but you’re on your way! Thank you for sharing and I hope these comments have been helpful.

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shanksnbuckfast · 3 years ago

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Reflections of a Soon-To-Be Father

i. The Past

Back when I was 18, my girlfriend at the time told me she was pregnant. "Don't worry though", she said, "I'm getting rid of it". I think in reality, the two halves of that sentence were separated by a couple of days.

It's worth noting that said GF was 17 and a kind of not in a good place. She was - at least I realised in later years - a compulsive liar. She was also a melodramatic narcissist. In her defence, again, she was 17 which now at my ripe age seems a lot closer to 12 that 20; we were both kids. I could go one about her in detail, there's some good (bad) stories, but it's off topic, I shall save them for another day.

The days of contemplating whether I was to be a father were pretty dark and fatalistic. My life had ended before it had started and I would forever be bound to this person I didn't want to have in my life (I had enough of those and she was perhaps worst of all). But, as I spoilered my own story above, she decided to get a termination. As far as I remember it was pretty late in the window of what is allowed, 16 weeks perhaps.

After the termination she seemed genuinely sad about it. She was as I said a queen of melodrama but this seemed authentic. She said she regretted it at least once. I was pretty disconnected emotionally from it, well disconnected from the significance of the potential of a human life being snuffed, though quite connected to the idea that I wasn't going to have to cancel my 20s. I guess I felt guilty how little I cared.

Before talk of pregnancy our relationship had already been on borrowed time, both hanging on to a thing we didn't really enjoy because we both came from turbulent backgrounds and were desperate to have some kind of intimacy. This is again, a story for another time, but we broke up and I moved on.

ii. The Present

Flash forward to today. I am married to a kind, fun, beautiful woman with a beautiful family who are now my family too. That 20s I was worried about losing, well I lost a lot of it to inaction, boozing and more terrible relationships. But I also discovered psychedelics, met my wife, became a programmer and made a tonne of great friends - in that order!

And we are soon to add to that family as my wife is up the proverbial duff. She is with child. She is eating for two. Sorry, but there's something really helpful in taking a dead-parrot sketch approach to explaining it in order to drive it home to myself. I will, as the title of this piece says, be a father soon. She's about half way there. So really fucking soon.

I am so thankful to feel ready for this now in a way which is quite literally a lifetime away from where I would have been at 18. I have a career. I have left my home town. I have established a self image that I am proud of. I am still a feckless drunk who plays too many video games, but I'm counting on those behaviours to be the ones I sacrifice for fatherhood, rather than my creative pursuits... here's hoping...

I can't quite get my head around the reality of it. I don't even know if both me and my wife really know what we're going to do. I am sure as hell not really preparing for much. Well, apart from buying a house, I guess that is a pretty significant preparation. Yes, we're aiming to move house whilst my wife is heavily pregnant, into our first owned house. This is actually a house I have chosen on my own and my wife hasn't seen yet, though we are seeing it this very afternoon.

I am really, really banking on it all just kind of working itself out. Stupider people with fewer resources than me do just fine every single day and the vast majority of people in the world come from such a situation, well resources-wise anyway.

I shared on Facebook (before I took the leave of absence which lead me back to Tumblr) a picture of our child's first scan. One of the people who liked the post was my girlfriend from when I was 18. So she knows now. That seems like the closure of some Gestalt.

iii. The Future

The future will be me getting fired if I don't do some work today.

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kitsoa · 7 years ago

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Lyric Comic Q&A

So it turns out when you work on a project for half a year, you get a lot of Thoughts and want to express them whether people are actually curious or not. Without further ado, your un-requested Birdmen Lyric Comic Q&A

(Warning: I’m long winded)

*Why a Lyric Comic?

Dude, lyric comics are cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the beautiful, multifaceted artistic experience they provide, because of my love for music and art. Furthermore, I am often plagued by cinematic trapped in my head, spurred by the movement and lyrics of my favorite songs. Since I have no means or experience in the animation category (which would free these phantoms from my head) the lyric comic was a godsend of a medium for this inspired idea of mine. Kiki-kit of the Gravity Falls fandom and Tides-miraculous’ lyric comic in the Miraculous Ladybug are my main inspirations, I’ve adored their sense of motion and emotional savviness. It’s quite the powerful medium.

It’s also a good medium for me personally. I am a ‘looper’ with my music, allowing me to listen to something over and over without tiring. This is useful in the drafting stages! I loved the challenge (though I definitely didn’t anticipate it’d take this long).

*Why this song?

“Out of Mind” was one of those songs that spoke to me, in an overly cathartic, heart-yearning-- almost funnily sardonic ways. Birdmen being on the brain, I started to easily see how much the singers voice reflected that bombastic frustration our Eishi is so known for. The Pre-Chorus “Are you kidding me?” speaks to me the most, reminding me of his cry of frustration during his first blackout, screaming against his fate as he fell from the sky (this exact image did not make the final cut in the end, but I certainly vied for it until other themes overtook it-- let’s face it, there are many screaming Eishi’s to choose from).

This period of time between Takayama’s disappearance and the inevitable reunion is super intriguing to me. Eishi’s in the role of the heartbroken singer, hopelessly betrayed and unable to get over the good thing they had.

*Breakdown the story:

The progression goes like this:

Eishi’s loneliness consumes the first verse, Takayama’s empty seat, Eishi standing alone… all the while peppered with Takayama’s broken promise, which culminates with Eishi’s defiant Death Tweet. The Refrain then serves as these hallmark moments that define them. This is what they had. Every rescue, every proclamation or venomous defying of fate-- it’s what made them. And you’d have to be out of your mind to think that these moments could be forgotten.

Verse 2 is all about that shift in Eishi to follow him. Wistful memories drive Eishi as he chooses to leave and depart from everything he knows, just to get him back. Meanwhile, that opinion of Takayama is still weighed down by that grating irritation (like hell he’s in touch reality, how could he do this?) culminating to his call for him in the Himalayas. The Refrain fires again with the same point as the last but this time I tried to go for a more fervent angle, some of the scenes actually focus on Takayama’s feelings for Eishi and ultimately the pull they have towards each other.

The Bridge is where things get desperate. The moments in the manga where Eishi is in physical pain because of the Whiteout shake me so much. It reminds me of a straight up panic attack. I let this crescendo with the music, making the black void swallow the chaos in a quick snap. Building to the final chorus.

The whiteout is special because Eishi both yearns after this figment emotionally (his friendship with Takayama) and intellectually (what the hell is it and what does it mean?). It represents his unique position in the realm of the story being able to see it, but it ultimately captures the almost divine force behind the relationship of Eishi and Takayama. The outro then brings us back to Eishi failed call at the Himalaya’s, the whiteout ripping him up and forcing Takayama to save him. All the while calling back to that first interaction between them. A mysterious moment that obviously held more weight than any world shaking rescue. And I cap it off with a warmer depiction of their reunion.

*Are you shipping in this comic?

Despite the romantic song, my affections for the pairing, and any other subtext I’ve provided, I went in with the project with a platonic angle. Like I’m not lying. I’m on the ace spectrum or whatever so I kind of interpret every strong bond in the same realm. So that means, if you think it’s a romantic interpretation-- then you’re right. If you think it’s not, you’re also right. Love comes in many forms. Have fun kids.

*What was your process?

Storyboarding

Listen over and over and figure out where to phrase the panels. I then divided the lyrics up accordingly in a draft and reviewed the pacing over and over again. Does it flow? How many words would comfortably fit with each panel?

Determined the thematic arc. At this point I already had a few anchoring moments so I wrote a description of the panel in the draft. I went with the formula of Verses= move the ideas, Refrain= emotional accents, and the Bridge is like… the climax with an epilogue of an outro. This was tricky step. I debated a lot of ideas and some lyrics didn’t feel like a good fit until I really sat on it for a while.

Fill in the draft. This is where I sketch the general shape of panels. This is also where I look at the gestalt of the thing and make sure the composition is easy on the eyes. I tried to make it dynamic and zig-zaggy so as not to be boring. This is the step where one gets really excited about the project. Cause it’s no longer trapped in your head.

Sketching

Gathered references. Surfed the web, made some myself.

Made time to sketch, I did a lot of them at my summer job, made sure to draw about 2 or 3 a day. I had the time then because it was before I took on my day job. I was very surprised to find that I rarely went back to edit a picture or dispose of a draft. I went through with the mantra that I was going to finish the picture no matter what.

Stayed disciplined with said time. I would not let myself take a break from drawing because half the success came from the fact that I was on a roll.

When I finished them I then went through the process of scanning them (my scanner broke between the first 20 panels so RIP)

Coloring Stage

...Good lord. This is where I probably went the most wrong. Make sure you have a good process in place before starting out this stage. I was not one to digital art much as of late so my familiarity with my program was lackluster (and it also is literally the worst program in the world), and my laptop couldn’t handle more than 10 panels. So hurray for a very desperate fix. I did everything from my brothers computer, in his room. Sometimes at terrible hours because that's the only time I’m home.

Color planning. I rushed this process but I pulled up the textures and color pallets and reference images from internet searches and stock piled them. While planning I approximated the overall ‘tone’ of each pane; (is it a dark shade, a light shade, blue, or red in hue…) and then I adjusted that so the colors didn’t repeat or blend unless the panels where connected in the same scene. There was a lot of problem solving in the actual coloring so some of this was not as smooth and I paid for it later.

Sketch Editing. I was able to go back in, move around things and edit certain aspects of the sketch without compromising the entire work. This was a life saver.

Actually coloring. Because I color sketches it’s actually a painstaking process where I can’t use a wand or a fill. I’m not familiar with certain masking and coloring methods that would have sped the process up and I wanted to be consistent. This would take 3 to 5 hours a panel which I would do in small bursts.

Type-setting

Deciding font. I was hunting around for a good font for ages until I just decided… to use my own handwriting. This meant that I had to makes sure my tablet pressure specs were up to date and I had to practice my style. It’s not perfect but its cool.

Apply font to panel. There were moments when I literally said ‘screw it’ and left my handwriting a little more sloppy than standard.

Consultation. I worked with my graphic designer friend on improving the placement of text and the color choices. This was an interesting step she is a saint.

Finalize

Every single panel is extremely large. I had to resize each one. Before this I had many tests in the drafts to see how certain sizes would load or format.

*Will you make another?

Probably. Like, there is nothing more satisfying than getting something stuck in your head out of it. I have a lot of tunes I am fond of but barely any qualify for lyric comics (need to have a good pace, easy to latch on musical phrases, thematic content that works etc.) The fandom is important too. Now that I think about it I have storyboards for an old DCMK ‘lyric comic’ idea to Imogen Heap’s “A-ha” (it was like some hidden dark side!au shit I still come back to it). I can’t let my interest wan or it straight up dies. Birdmen is a really unique series for me because its held on for a remarkable amount of time and strongly at that.

Fun Facts:

I colored a total 77 panels, 11 of which were scraped versions of the core 66 because perfectionist tendencies.

It took me 3 months to sketch all the panels out, sometimes drawing 3 a day. I would often cradle my sleeping kitten while I drew.

Panel 54-- the final chorus, whiteout splash page-- took three days to draw. At first it was two pages taped together, then it was three. I had my friend mend the images together into a massive pic for me to color, then break it apart for blog distribution. The full version is used in her video edit of the lyric comic.

I didn’t use pressure sensitivity on my tablet until I got to the last chunk. RIP

It usually took me over a day to do one picture.

I do not have a computer in my room that utilizes the art program I need. I literally did every panel after #10 in my brothers room. Sometimes hella late at night too. Props to my generous brother, he tells me he likes the company.

I took a few notable breaks. All of Inktober was used on the art challenge. The weeks leading up to Birdmen Week. And at least half of the Christmas season was spent on coloring hiatus.

I like adding a ring around the pupils of the seraph eyes. This is not canon, but an error that I really liked. You can see it as a sort of glow.

I am having my friend edit the panels into a video for your convenience. I have no idea how long it will take but I’m tired.

#lyric comic project

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aceb · 4 years ago

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Layers

"Point, line, and plane are the building blocks of design." (Lupton 33) The point can be defined as a mark in a position of space. A line can be described as a single point that continues for a distance, or as the connection between two points. The purpose of a line in graphics is to help the artist to communicate to the viewers what it is they are supposed to be seeing or taking notice of. Layers can create a sense of depth in an image with point, line, and planes. Layers are the different levels at which one can place an image. Layers can be stacked, merged, or defined when creating a digital image. In this design, I used both point, line, and plane and layers as a way to create a nostalgic image. The person in the image is an African American singer and songwriter named is Frank Ocean. He is best known for his song “Thinking About You” on Channel Orange created in 2012. The reason I decided to draw him is his music speaks to me differently than anything I’ve heard before, you can say he is one of my favorite artist. I wanted my favorite artist to be in many favorite city, so I choose Mount Fuji in Japan.

Rhythm and Balance

In this design, I explored the power of perception or the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. The words I choose to explore was the famous hashtag started by black Twitter “BLM’. BLM stands for “Black Lives Matters” which is a decentralized political and social movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. I wanted to emphasize the issue of Black lives to raise awareness of the death of innocent black bodies in America. I used a black woman as the face of this design to show the power of the black women’s role in the movement. Most of the time a black woman is defending herself and others on the front line. As Lupton said, “By exploiting the brain’s capacity to find and create order, designers construct simple, direct logos, layouts, and interfaces. In addition to seeking out clear, direct communication solutions, they can also use the processes of perception to invent surprising forms that challenge viewers to fill in the gaps.” (265) I wanted to challenge the viewer to fill in the gaps and think about why BLM is important to them by boldly presented the issue. I used eye contact as a way to manipulate perception as well.

Color

The perception of color depends on how the color is presented, the brightness, and the character of light. We can also perceive a given color in relation to the other colors. “Color can convey a mood, describe reality, or codify information. “Words like “gloomy,” “drab,” and “glittering” each bring to mind a general climate of colors, a palette of relationships. Designers use color to make some things stand out (warning signs) and to make other things disappear (camouflage).” (208) When creating the art based on Immigration and Native American land I thought about politics. During the election month, America seems to be divided into two. I wanted this design to bring awareness to the divide and create a central understanding. To create relationships between color and monotones I used the color red to emphasize the blood of millions of Native Americans and blue to express the beauty and pride that still exists. I used monotone green to create a feeling of warmness.

Boarders

A border is a design that runs lengthwise along the edge of a design.“Whether simple or decorative, a border creates a transition between image and background. Against the pale wall of a room, for example, a black picture frame sharply separates a work of art from its surroundings. Alternatively, a frame whose color is close to that of the wall blends the work of art with the room around it.” (Lupton 364) The purpose of my boarder was to emphasize my design of the Amur Leopards. These animals are one of the top ten animals to go extinct. The Amur leopard is threatened by poaching, habitat loss, and deforestation or of their land. Their natural habitat is also threatened by forest fires and the construction of new roads. I choose a black border to express boldness. I also juxtaposed the image to make a point that they're endangered.

Gestalt Principles

(5) Gestalt principals. Gestalt principles include similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, ground, symmetry, and order. “Building on memory and experience, the brain fills in gaps and filters out extraneous data.” (p. 99) Gestalt theory emphasizes that anything is greater than its parts. Gestalt principles can elevate a design that seems like it's fighting for a user's attention to one that offers a natural interaction that makes your design feel familiar while guiding users toward the action you want them to see. The goal of Gestalt’s theory is to teach people to become aware of sensations within themselves and their environment so that they respond reasonably to a situations. In this design, I used this Ghanises woman to communicate beautiful and pain. The interpretations could go in many directions but one thing you cant deny is the Ghanises flag behind her. In this flag, the star would normally be in the middle. However, she is the star. Her heart shines bright but her skin is brighter.

Frame

Framing is the presentation of visual elements in an image about other objects. Indeed, balance is a prized commodity in our culture, and it is no surprise that our implicit, intuitive relationship with it has equipped us to sense balance--or imbalance--in the things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.” (p. 49) Framing can make an image more aesthetically pleasing and keep the viewer's eye focused on the framed objects. “A frame can serve to either emphasize or downplay its contents.” (p. 125) In this design, I used the frame to make the perception of the camera looking down. The jacket as well as flying plane is meant to catch the viewers eye first. Jacques Derrida defined framing as a structure that is both present and absent. The frame is subservient to the content it surrounds, disappearing as we focus on the image or object on view. The mechanical eye tends to cut the camera into fields of vision. The point of this frame is to look deeper into the mind of the person in the image. The statement is that the person is at a higher level of thinking, his mind is open. This frame created a condition for better understanding of the image.

Transparency

In design, transparency can be defined as something that is nearly or completely invisible. Words, pictures, and textures can all become transparent. Lupe suggests that “…transparency suggests clarity and directness.” Yet in design, transparency is often used to create dense, layered imagery built from color and texture. In this design I used a brand name I’ve been experimenting with called “fade away”. Fade away represents the fading of the mind from the world in order to elevate and become closer with the universe. “Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations. . . . The position of the transparent figures has equivocal meaning as one sees each figure now as the closer, now as the farther one” Gyorgy Kepes”. (Lupton 451) Transparency is often used not for the purposes of clarity, but to create dense, layered imagery built from veils of color and textures. I lowered the opacity to 17 and added red lettering to a black background to make the words stand out.

Diagram

This diagram design was inspired by anime styled drawing in a series called “Monster’’. A diagram is a simplified drawing showing the appearance, structure, or workings of a design in a schematic structure. “Diagrams allow us to see relationships that would not come forward in a straight list of numbers or a verbal description.” (Lupton 215) This diagram has both words and pictures laying out more background information. The words directly respond to the image falling under the category of either good or bad. I wanted to explore the visual aspect of the words “good” and “bad”. I used angel to represent good and devil to represent bad. Though a simple style the message was still able to be understood. The overarching message of the image was that love is above all. In all images love has been presented in some way or form. Diagrams add a layer of detail to a design that can make it look more professional.

Grid

(8) Grid. In graphic design, a grid is a structure made up of intersecting straight or curved lines used to structure content. Grids are tools for organizing space, text, images, and other elements placed in a design. Grids add structure to a design. They lead to rational standardized systems that help people absorb the information trying to be communicated. The grid serves as an framework on which a designer can organize graphic elements in a rational manner. Grids allow designers to add elements to a layout while using the grid structure. In this design, I wanted the theme to be digital so I used colors like deep blue, red, and yellow. The Grid also gives this design a digital feel with horizontal, vertical, curved, and straight lines. The lines give depth to the image but also gives the image a 3D effect.

Motion

Motion is one of the most exciting aspects in graphic design. “Motion is a kind of change, and change takes place in time. Motion can be implied as well as literal…” (Lupton 233) Motion in graphic design is often used in the film industry with Openings to movies, television shows, and news programs can use photography to make the introduction. In this design I used motion to show the process of a seed growing. Before the seed grew, it rained, the sun came out, and once the seed finished growing a flower bloomed. This process is not easy it involves patience and time. Motion graphics are pieces of animation or digital footage that create an illusion of motion or rotation. Animation is my favorite form of motion. The design is all hand drawn using the flip book method. The flip book method is basically taking multiple flashcards and combining them by flipping them to create the illusion of motion.

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fuckblizzardbearlover · 7 years ago

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I really really REALLY hate that LGBTQ rep is SO sparse shitty and is only within the last few years gotten a fraction of where it should be that there are so many teens and young adults who literally look at the second most * homophobic way to put in gay characters into a story and go “yaaass queen” and whats worse is that so many people especially male ‘gamers’ are SO homophobic that those of us who ARE gay have to grin and bear it and promote these piece of shit characters because its a way to Fuck with the homophobes by essentially making them unhappy by reminding them we exist

So the League of Legends tag blew up today apparently because there is this character called Varus and based on peoples responses you’d think the guy was a Garnet-ian fusion of 2 gay men whos Love overcame death.

But thats not it at all.

One of the ancient race of darkin, Varus was a deadly killer who loved to torment his foes with arrows, driving them to insanity before closing for the kill. Possessed of wondrous beauty, Varus was imprisoned at the end of the Darkin War, but escaped, centuries later, in the remade flesh of two Ionian hunters. The two men had unwittingly released Varus and now bear the bow containing his bound essence. Varus now hunts those who trapped him in order to enact his brutal vengeance, but the souls bound within him fight him every step of the way.

At the end of the Darkin War, the queen carried Varus’s bow to a land that would become known as Ionia. Her last act was to imprison the bow deep within a lightless cell sunk deep beneath a mountain temple overlooking the village of Pallas. There it remained, imprisoned by the natural magic of Ionia and the ritual ministrations of its guardians. The bow remained hidden deep underground for centuries, unknown, untouched, and all but forgotten until Noxian invaders attacked Ionia. Two beast hunters - Valmar and his heartlight, Kai - fought the first wave of these invaders at the Temple of Pallas. Though their courage was great and drove off the attackers, Kai was mortally wounded. A grief-stricken Val carried him inside, praying the temple’s magic would restore him.

But the temple held only damnation, and both hunters were consumed by the unleashed power of the darkin. The very matter of their bodies was unraveled and bound together in a warp and weft of new flesh to craft a perfect body, fit to bear the soul of Varus. What emerged from the temple was a gestalt creature, pale and inhumanly beautiful, part human, part darkin, Varus was reborn as an entity with a war for supremacy being waged in its soul.

The human and darkin elements of this newborn body are in constant flux, with each element sometimes managing to wrest control of the body for a short time before being reined in by the other. Varus fights to overcome Val and Kai’s resistance once and for all so that he may wreak vengeance on mortals for the destruction of his race. But Kai and Val fight on against his malevolent influence, hoping against hope that their love can overcome the darkin’s baser urges.

How long Val and Kai can keep Varus fully at bay is anyone’s guess, but should this sadistic and egotistical darkin killer come to fully dominate his new body, it is certain he will seek to reunite with the survivors of his race in hopes of reducing Runeterra to an ashen wasteland.

Like....I get it , i get what they were going for. Varus is canonically part gay lovers, and supposedly their love might one day purify or at least stop him

But that still leaves them killed, who turned to their temple for salvation and instead got murdered and their bodies violated and their souls trapped to be in a Hellish struggle for the rest of their existence in which if they fail a horrible monster that used them will go out and murder who knows how many.

This isnt , like i said, a Garnet like thing. it could have worked. it would still be “bury your gays” and WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH STRAIGHT PEOPLE THAT THEY CANT THINK OF GAY PEOPLE UNLESS SOMEONE IS DEAD! But like it would have been easy to have it to where this was not a dark aligned creatures, that their love DID IMMEDIATELY overcome the demon and cast it out and they roam the world now together as this fused being fighting evil.

And i think whats worse the idea that maybe someone who was gay pitched this idea because its Terrible and there is enough gayngst out there.

but like there are people out there, and prob some of them young teens that dont know any better, shoving this around like ...people being gay is something good. No! Gay characters have existed forever, they were just called Dandy’s or Professional Bachelors they were gay coded but never mentioned. There has ALWAYS been gay representation its just been BAD representation.

but you want to tell me that a Demon eating the souls of two gay men who will endure torture for the rest of their existence is wonderful? fuck off with that. I bet a majority of the LoL characters sexuality doesnt even come into play with anything except for some shitty professional artist who works for them and makes upskirt shots of the overbreasted women in the game. there is probably a dozen of them that a new short story could casually mention an old lover, or they just have to put a stray thought into their head. any number of their established hero could have been gay or bisexual (or trans)

Like....Its obvious the stupid bitch who runs starwars and made sure all our heros of color in Rogue One wants to avoid being the one to put gays in Star Wars, and the cast behind supergirl basically condemned fans for wanting Supergirl to be in a relationship with the only person she has a healthy relationship with that isnt her sister.

most of the “lgbt” rep out there is still used as jokes, joke characters or as pervy “oh look how liberal and progressive we are with our drugs and sex and gays and murder” characters.

UG!

*forgot my astrix - the MOST homophobic way to deal with a gay character is to make a Tortured gay who is sexually repressed** who finally gets tired of having good morals and decides to start leading a path of hedonism, sex, drugs and irresponsibility because being gay and being a meth addict are the same kind of sin and if he’s going to die eventually might as well be as Sinful as he can be, right?

**look at lgbt authors for examples of repressed tortured gays who come to enjoy life and realize they have been victims and all their self hate is unjustified gaslighting caused and they can live their life when they realize this. The problem is not ‘repressed gay” per sei but then only abandoning their repression when they realize that there is nothing wrong with being gay because its ok to be a hedonist , disgusting freak, because thats what that narrative says

#lgbtq #mlm #homphobia #lol #league of legends #moba #gaming #representation #overwatch #supergirl #true blood #game of thrones #who thought 2 gay men have their souls sucked and their bodies violated by a demon was a good idea?

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rethdis-love · 8 years ago

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Chapter 12. December 30. Denis.

Lina looked at my back in silence. Sometimes I felt her fingers on my skin and was amazed at this girl. All my back was covered with a smooth network of healed and half-scarred scars, eternal greetings from the past, the legacy of my father, a payment for genius. Not so high, what can I say. Once I believed that women escape only because of scars, but several years ago realized that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Then I stopped all attempts to build a relationship. - Is that why you have no one?- Lina asked suddenly. - Well, scars ... and they say that the man is decorated with scars. -I would kill the man who said so, - I sighed and put on my T-shirt. - Personally, I got to hear that I'm a freak, and it's not like a compliment. Not only in the scars, of course. I laughed. -You know, a few years ago, when I still had women, one of them said that the scars are, in general, nonsense, although it looks disgusting, it's much worse to think about how I got them and it's probably a rotten story . And that such a man certainly should not try to build a relationship. And you know, I inwardly agreed with this. I stopped trying to find a woman and finally plunged into drawing. Well, something like this. The girl pressed her cheek to my shoulder and suddenly asked: -You'll tell me, where are the scars? I did not run away, as the others saw them ... I heaved a deep sigh. Yes, she did not. But who will give a guarantee that she will not run away after learning the answer? Chance is one in a million ... Lina looked inquisitively at my eyes. And I decided to take a chance. Lina. Denis, limping, went to the table. I rummaged in the drawer and pulled out a small black and white photo. She was a girl, quite young, obviously not much older than me. Denis looked like her, vaguely, elusively, but it immediately became clear that they were close relatives. My heart ached with pain. I already understood why Denis never even mentioned his mother ... He ruffled his hair and looked with longing at the photograph. - In general, I do not know why I'm so sad when I look at this photo, I've never seen my mother. She died during childbirth and my father brought me up. If this can be called upbringing.

Denis laughed sadly and neatly hid the photo back on the table. - My father was also an artist, but not particularly talented, more stubborn. And crazy. Unable to reach the heights himself, he decided that he needed a child to raise him a genius. The idea-fix, unclosed gestalt. He was lucky, I really turned out to be what he wanted, he did not even have to drive it into me. As soon as I could hold the brush, my father sat me down at the easel and my training began. He just motivated me - a lot of sharp and not very objects on the back. Banal such a story about beatings in the family. Morally, he also carefully destroyed me, suggesting to me that I should only draw and nothing more, because the other I still will not work. To all this I eventually got used to, I still did not know another life. I drew all day, to cramps in my hands, in the hope that maybe a little bit of beating would stop, but every day my father was more and more starved. In general, no one could call him a good father.

Denis rubbed his prickly chin and stared at his hands. I wiped the tears. The voice of the man was calm, as if he informed me about the weather outside the window, but I saw his evil eyes and I became scared. I already understood for a long time that Denis only wears a mask of a calm and confident person, but inside he hides complexes and fears. And now I understood where everything came from. And really - everything comes from childhood ... And what should I do now? He ran away from the women, maybe they immediately knew what kind of person he was and understood that it was better not to mess with him? Maybe I should get away from him, too? I felt ashamed. Literally an hour ago I dreamed of sleeping with him, and now I think that I need to leave him. And how do I differ from others?

Denis, meanwhile, continued. - I do not remember my childhood with my father very much. The memory is almost erased and I'm glad of it. Each day was like the rest, such an endless nightmare - an easel, beatings, pain in the back. I was a little saved by Ani's family. We lived in the same house and, in fact, my mother is a very distant relative of Anna’s mother. With Anya, we are also relatives, but we do not care about this, especially since the degree of kinship is too ghostly. But for you, it's probably still disgusting? The man shrugged and, without waiting for my answer, spoke again. -No matter how it was, Anna’s mother did not let her father completely destroy me. I was weak, almost incapable of anything, but still alive, and this was the main thing. She did not try to replace me with her mother, but she did everything with me and I'm grateful for it. Why does she need someone else's child when she has her own age? But the main thing is that I could communicate with Anya and it was then for me the most beautiful thing in life. We went to school with Anya together. It was terrible. So many people in one place, completely unreal.

I do not remember how, but it was at school that my scars showed up. Even Anna's mother did not know about them, imagine? And what happened then? He thought. - I do not remember at all. My father was deprived of parental rights, I was in the orphanage. And the father? What was he doing? A year later I was informed that he was dead, but from what? I was not interested in this, I was so happy. Do you know what happiness is, Lina? I then found out. With me, of course, worked a lot of doctors, after all the psyche was shattered. Now I am calm, but then ... however, I do not want to remember this. Moreover, we are already drowning in your tears. He embraced me and wiped my long fingers off my cheeks. - Do not cry, Lina. Now I'm fine. Of course, I had to tell you everything at once, but I'm selfish, right? And what if I left immediately ... I could not allow this. But when I realized that if we were to sleep, you would still learn everything, I decided to avoid you. Stupid decision? Maybe… He lifted my chin and kissed me. I did not answer the kiss, and Denis let me go, disappointed. Sadly looked out the window and went to the exit. I waited until the door closed behind him and fell onto the bed, choking in tears. What decision should I make?

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Russian text

#ts4 #ts4 story #my story #painter

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doycetopia · 7 years ago

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Masks "Menagerie" Campaign - Session 6 to 10

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about our ongoing Masks game (superhero antics in the vein of Young Justice, Teen Titans, or Avengers Academy), but that in no way means the game itself has slowed. Quite the opposite.

So, if only for the sake of bragging, I thought I’d catch things up.

The last time, I covered sessions 0 though 5. This time, it’s sessions 6 to 15, so buckle up.

Before I get rolling, I want to recognize two resources that have made this broad overview far more manageable.

The first is the forum that is automatically made available for any campaign you set up on Roll20.net. (Our game is played online, and while the voice chat isn’t able to handle our group’s particular challenges, the other tools it provides are invaluable.) The forum lives here, and sees continuous, nigh-daily activity in the form of fiction, world-building, general discussion, and (of course) the blow-by-blow Actual Play summaries – usually authored by Dave Hill – which supplement if not completely stand in for my spotty recollection.

(Said forum has been made even more valuable with the addition of a custom coded search/scraper that Bill forced around roll20’s forum code at great personal effort.)

The second tool is a more recent addition to our electronic tool box, a wiki built and customized (again, mostly) by two of the players, Bill and Mike. Thanks to the organization of the wiki (and downright sexy layout), I’m able to excavate all kinds of trivia and bits of game lore that might otherwise have flared and died within minutes of being introduced into a session.

With that out of the way…

When We Last Left Our Heroes…

Sessions 1 though 5 were mostly about introducing the heroes to the people of Halcyon, and the players (and myself) to the Masks system. They had a morning show interview, a downtown brawl with some bad guys, and then rode the fallout from those events, (including the speedster getting temporarily lost in an alternate, devastated version of Earth.)

Session five saw the team looking forward or inward – taking stock of the problems they had on their plate and making plans to deal with them.

It also saw their team coming to the attention of AEGIS, the SHIELD-esque organization of the Masks universe.

Issue 6

Issue 6 recording on YouTube

AP Report

One of the directives for a Masks GM is presenting adults as supportive but short-sighted; willing to help but always pushing their own vision and agenda on the teen heroes – help with strings attached. Okay.

Enter Agent Ted Waters (who’s probably going to be the most supportive, least strings-attached adult in the game – though that’s a low bar), an experienced AEGIS agent and the father-figure/handler for Link (whose actual father is super-villain Rossum the Minion Maker). Waters shows up at Quill Industries (the ‘sanctum’ for the team’s Doomed character) with paperwork in hand that will officially recognize the team by AEGIS… a move AEGIS hasn’t… umm…. actually sanctioned?

This paperwork is simple – it merely requires the team pick a name and an official leader. Easy, right?

The name had been under discussion via in-character posts on the forum, but we hadn’t brought it to the forefront yet. This was meant to facilitate that. They tell Ted the team will be the Menagerie and it gets the expected, bemused response from the older man (a good sign you’re on the right track in a teen-oriented game).

The ‘strings’ attached to this bit of help were more meta-level than an actual condition offered by Waters – the team had to pick a leader; a requirement I thought might generate some drama/angst/hand-wringing/reflection/et cetera.

It did all those things, so yay. 🙂

The team eventually settled on Jason Quill (the Doomed, played by Dave), a decision which the team treated with varying levels of seriousness. (Jason on one end of the panic-stricken-with-the-weighty-responsibility spectrum; speedster Mercury (Kay) providing the ‘whatever man paperwork is boring just write something in it doesn’t matter’ counterbalance.)

While Jason continued to process this development, Ghost Girl went and got herself in one kind of trouble (attacked by someone who saw her as a dangerous menace, starting both an arc and introducing her current Mundane-vs-Freak Hook), while Like found another (investigating a mutual friend’s disappearance and running afoul their supernatural kidnapper).

This development brought us to the end of the session with the team rushing to help GG, but split (“where the hell is Link?”), and under a leader (technically) who was still a bit in shock.

Issue 7: If the Graveyard Be My Destiny!

Issue 7 on YouTube

AP Report

(All credit to Dave for the comic-book-classic session titles.

This session was meant to introduce one of Ghost Girl’s issues and a sort-of nemesis; Ghostheart (one of the characters from the Masks Deck of Villains) whose main deal is obsessively keeping living people over THERE, and dead people over THERE, and NO TOUCHING NO TOUCHING NOT EVER.

Charlotte is all about connecting with people amongst both the living and dead (she’s playing the Outsider playbook, and filled with wonder at the modern world in which she now finds herself), so Ghostheart seemed almost a custom-written enemy for her.

Most of the session was a nighttime fight at GG’s home cemetery against Ghostheart and a couple of his summoned demonic henchthings – Rawhide and I-Didnt-Catch-the-Other-Guy’s-Name. After the fight (and some really stilted, useless, uncomfortable leadership, beautifully delivered by Dave), the heroes (reunited, since Link was tussling with Rawhide on his own, initially) tracked down and rescued the kidnappee “@powerpony” – an online-mutual of both Link and GG’s (PC-NPC-PC relationship triangles are good – need more of those).

Offscreen

The players conducted a couple Google-Doc-based scenes after this session, simply to get them done in satisfying fashion without taking up too much in-game time.

The first was Link talking with green-lantern/Blue-beetle-esque Concord about the details of the kid’s powers.

The second was between Link and Jason – an often tense but ultimately fruitful and relationship-building ‘discussion’ about what kind of leadership the team really needed (and what kind Jason could legitimately provide).

Both scenes were great, and the ‘offline’ RP option proved a good one, though we try not to use it too much, as it tends to move characters whose players have the mid-week bandwidth for such things further center stage, in a play environment (online, short sessions) where it already seems someone ends up drawing the Spotlight Short Straw every week.

Issue 8: Lo, There Shall Be an Evening of Character Interaction!

Issue 8 on YouTube

AP Report

As a means of exploring GG’s current Hook (her Mundane connections with others, versus the Freak nature of her powers), we also learned a bit more about why Ghostheart wanted GG out of public circulation – her interactions with the Living were creating some kind of ectoplasmic catnip that would inevitably attract a terrible entity known as Pandemonium to the material world.

The only way she could guarantee her living friends’ safety was stay away from them. Which sucks.

AEGIS rolled back into the picture much sooner than anyone expected, as the team called them back to take Ghostheart into custody. (The team opts NOT to go the morally-and logically-questionable route of the Flash CW show, with villains held without due process, inside a particle accelerator, and fed Big Belly Burgers on a… mostly daily schedule.)

The rest of the session involved the team either trying to help each other out with Comfort and Support-based roleplaying (with mixed but fascinating and sometimes hilarious results), or working through their own problems; Link’s robotic not-girlfriend Pneuma announced she was departing Halcyon for a bit to visit ‘someone’ in Japan, while Jason went down a digital rabbit hole, investigating how and why his nemesis Alycia Chin infiltrated Quill Compound as a lowly warehouse employee for a month.

Jason’s investigation led to a great scene where he uses his nanobots and latent genius to analyze Alycia Chin’s actions, and gets knocked cold in the process via some kind of latent … mental … something … Alycia left behind in the video recordings of her activities. Remote Memetic Programming, maybe? Image-gestalt boobytrap? That would be bad.

Issue 9: Sizzling Big Adult-Influence Issue!

The Beginning of the Day From Hell

Issue 9 on YouTube

AP Report

Morning! The second Weekday of the campaign, and time once again for all good heroes to… get to school.

(Assuming they aren’t a ghost from the civil war, or unconscious, of course.)

A while back, Concord’s player had started a discussion on the forum where we all talked about whether the Nova playbook was working for him, and we collectively came to the conclusion that the Janus playbook worked better. So we retconned it.

This session was the one where we started to get into that ‘dual identity’ drama a bit more, very literally in this case (because I am a ham-fisted hack) with Concord trying to help Link with an unconscious Jason (via an energy construct copy of himself) while simultaneously attending school in his ‘real’ body. He didn’t exactly balance this out well, and ended up being sent to the principal’s office when he confused his multiple mouths and remonstrated his English teacher for being a ‘walking deceit’ when he meant to be talking to the vision of Alycia Chin in Jason’s head.

I’d call this situation a solid B effort on my part. Maybe a B-. We get better at this in short order, though, so I’m not going to beat myself up too much.

Meanwhile, Mercury and Ghost Girl spent the morning reaching out to adults for advice and input, before Mercury had to get to school.

Harry’s dad-joking, eggplant-emoji-texting dad, Silver Streak.

This is always a fraught situation in Masks – going into a scene with an adult or adults in Masks carries an undercurrent of threat akin to an armed parley with A-level super-villains. Honestly I’ve never done as much broad-spectrum damage to the team with a bad guy as I have in scenes with their well-meaning mentors dispensing advice, constructive feedback, and (horror of horrors) heartfelt praise.

It didn’t really go better here, with both Harry’s dad and the retired ‘grail knight’ Armiger (Lucius, owner/operator of the Has Beans coffee shop, downtown) kicking in their two cents about Ghost Girl’s ongoing Ghostheart/Pandemonium problem, what they thought the kids should do about it (and, ultimately, who they thought the kids should be.) They got what they were after, but Ghost Girl at least wasn’t feeling great about it afterwards, which lead to some Condition-clearing reckless behavior later. (As it should.)

Issue 10: Halcyon High-Jinks (Hell Day, Part 2)

Issue 10 on Youtube

AP Report

Dave, Margie, and Katherine were all out of town, which left Jason recovering from his tussle with not-Alycia, Ghost Girl roaming the city doing reckless things without consulting the team, and Harry actually attending Gardner Academy (the private high school that tends to specialize in rich kids and publicly recognized supers).

Concord and Link, on the other hand, are on their way to HHS – Halcyon High South – part of the public school system, where they academically toil in relative anonymity.

Bill and Mike (and I) were excited to play around with that classic of teen superhero comics, the high school, so we had a good time with this. First order of business was to establish the normal day, and I had fun introducing some of the faculty, and went to the players to fill in NPCs (which gave us the wonderful Ms. “No!” Rodriguez, Leo’s lab partner.

I also introduced Taz, a new transfer and tech-nerd who seemed to either be a bit on the spectrum or way over-informed about Leo, or both. She showed up both in Leo’s chem class as well as at lunch with Leo and Adam, and was generally fun to play, freaked out the players a skosh, and has more going on that I’m looking forward to getting into.

With the norm established, it was time to get some Concord-grade villains on the stage, and that mean “galactic” villains. For this, I went back to the Deck of Villainy and pulled out The Farlander (who is just too weird looking and fun to play) and Sablestar who, by sheer coincidence in visual design, seemed to be … related to Concord and his powers in some way. There’s some vague hand-waving on her card about being a member of the Void Collective and something of a space-anarchist, but I already have an anarchist villain, so Sablestar and the VC became a kind of counter-(if not anti-)Concordance, in my head. We’ll see how that fleshes out over time.

So: a bit of fighting at the school with The Farlander, and the introduction of Sablestar, and as things get complicated we call it for the night, ready to bring in the rest of the team next session as things heat up.

That’s five of the ten sessions I wanted to cover, so I’ll stop here and do 11 to 15 in the next post. More soon!

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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“Hours dreadful and things strange” is as apt a description of the post-Brexit climate as folk horror itself, with its normalisation and spiked increase in xenophobic attacks, a gestalt mentality, any questioning of the result labelled as a heresy by pro-Brexit tabloids, and a wide-scale embracing of political fantasy and inwardness. We have burnt our Sgt Howie in the wicker man, and now wait naively for our apples to grow once more, confident that we have “taken back control.”

— Adam Scovell, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange

“I believe,” Paul said, “that if we don’t believe in demons, they won’t believe in us. Do the demons believe in us? That’s the question. The day the demons believe in us, we’re in real trouble.”

— Conor O’Callaghan, Nothing on Earth

IN HIS new book on the landscape and folkloric tradition as it relates to British horror cinema, Adam Scovell returns again and again to the question of what constitutes “folk horror.” Is it a resurgence of interest in occultism and New Age philosophies born out of the counterculture of the late 1960s? Or could it be the inevitable tragedy that occurs when modern metropolitan man — for it has generally been men who have claimed the starring roles in folk horror’s touchstone texts as Scovell identifies them — becomes alienated from the landscape and culture of his rural forefathers? Perhaps it expresses a thwarted desire for authenticity in an increasingly artificial environment, or articulates a political tirade against the continuing inequalities of the British class system?

I would argue that Scovell’s hesitation in assigning a precise definition — his tendency toward a “you’ll know it when you see it” approach — arises from the fact that all horror and especially British horror is, in a sense, folk horror. Horror fiction and film has always explored the myriad ways that fundamental wrongness — dis-ease — is found in those places where we traditionally seek refuge. Of all the speculative genres, horror is particularly obsessed with place. Those who argue for science fiction as the most overtly political form of the fantastic often point to horror’s putative conservatism, its preference for isolated settings — old houses, bleak moorland, remote villages, that dodgy patch of wasteland on the edge of town — and its seeming indifference to the wider world. Yet one can also see horror’s obsession with place as, by extension, an obsession with history, with the past as it meets the present and offers warnings about the future. In this regard, horror is the most subversively political of literatures, mired in causality up to its armpits.

Scovell’s touchstone texts — films like Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) or Peter Plummer’s TV adaptation of Alan Garner’s 1967 novel The Owl Service (1969–’70) — are characterized above all by the myth of a return to the land that many would claim as folk horror’s most characteristic attribute. Yet we need only look to works like Alan Clarke’s film Penda’s Fen (1974) or Peter Dickinson’s “Changes” trilogy (1968–’70) to see that Cold War cosmopolitanism has proved every bit as significant in terms of its influence on British horror as hippie rusticism. If the two core ingredients of strange fiction are iconoclasm and anxiety, it is easy to see why the 1970s were such a fertile soil for artists with a creative leaning toward the uncanny. Weird narratives of the ’70s were obsessed with reconnecting us with our sense of place, even if such belonging turned out to include the suppression of dissent, Satan worship, or human sacrifice. There is a “better the devil you know” undercurrent to ’70s horror that could be seen as a natural corollary to the anxiety and sense of powerlessness that comes from living in a world teetering on the brink of Armageddon.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 saw a lessening of these anxieties and a corresponding shift in horror narratives out of the countryside and into the newly encroaching realities of global capitalism. As horror went mainstream during the 1990s, it became more extroverted, less intimate. Yet over the past decade, folk horror has been experiencing a resurgence that parallels if not surpasses that of the 1970s, and it is not hard to see why. The swaggering confidence of the ’90s has evaporated. Global terrorism, climate change, corporate disenfranchisement, and forced migrations have all impacted our sense of self as well as our relationship to our surroundings. In British horror literature especially, these shifts have produced the sense of a void at the heart of things, a defamiliarized landscape rife with political extremism and mass psychosis. If ’70s folk horror was all about embracing our pagan past, contemporary British weird fiction seems to suggest that we have no past, that our mendacity as a nation has rendered it forfeit. As writers and citizens, we are adrift in a landscape that is being steadily, inexorably erased in front of our eyes.

English author Sarah Hall would probably not refer to herself as a horror writer, yet those elements that best characterize folk horror — a rootedness in landscape and a bone-deep, anxious awareness of dis-ease — recur in her work to such an extent that her relevance to this discussion cannot be in doubt. Hall’s first novel, Haweswater (2002), is the story of a rural community facing extermination at the hands of corporate greed. Her Tiptree Award–winning and Clarke Award–shortlisted The Carhullan Army (2007) explores a dystopian near-future England through the eyes of a band of female resistance fighters, while her more recent novel The Wolf Border (2015) imagines a newly independent Scotland on the cusp of re-wilding. In her latest collection of stories, Madame Zero (2017), Hall returns to the themes of anxiety and transformation that formed the backbone of her earlier collection, The Beautiful Indifference (2011), but with an increase in both bleakness and urgency.

In “Mrs Fox,” the story that opens Madame Zero and that won the 2013 BBC National Short Story Award, a comfortably well-off middle-class couple are forced into an entirely new set of circumstances when the woman, Sophia, experiences a literal return to the land and transforms into a vixen. There is nothing allegorical or airy-fairy about this metamorphosis — Sophia literally becomes a wild fox, living in the woods and eating her meat raw. She makes messes on the kitchen floor. She offers her husband no indication that she is anything other than entirely satisfied with her new life. Eventually she gives birth, a development the husband watches with a thrill of recognition and acceptance:

Privy to this, no man could be ready. Not at home, skulling the delivery within the bloody sheets, nor in the theatre gown, standing behind a screen as the surgeon extracts the child. The lovely sting in him! They are, they must be, his.

There is a sense of rightness here that is unfamiliar and unexpected. The man does not try to prevent or deny Sophia’s changing. He recognizes instinctively that “he has no role, except as guest.” As a result, “Mrs Fox” feels very different from other, similarly themed stories — such as Angela Carter’s “Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest” (1974) — in which a woman’s metamorphosis acts as a trigger for her male partner’s desire to control. We sense Sophia’s dissatisfaction with the life she has been accustomed to lead, yet we also sense her mate’s willingness to continue his life alongside her insofar as that remains possible given the circumstances. Against all odds, they remain together: “Mrs Fox” is a story not only of the distance between people but also of the fierceness of personal attachment, the unbreakable connections that are bound to endure.

Similar themes are explored in “Case Study 2,” though with a less happy outcome. A young child, Christopher, has been placed in the care of social services after being expelled from the commune where he grew up. Christopher has no understanding of individual identity — he invariably refers to himself in the first-person plural. This chronic dissociation is a major concern to Christopher’s psychotherapist, who confesses in private transcripts that her involvement in the case may have been compromised by her own inability to become pregnant. Shortly after referring to himself as “I” for the first time, Christopher dies, leaving us to ask if the individualism we deem so desirable might not also be toxic. Stripped of communal structures, the intimate bond with the landscape that had defined his existence, little Christopher quite literally ceases to be.

Themes of unbelonging and separation from one’s personal context are again explored in “Wilderness.” As in Hall’s earlier, thematically related story “She Murdered Mortal He,” the protagonist finds herself isolated in a foreign country, unsure of the rules that silently govern the behavior and relationships of the people around her. When her husband and his childhood friend Zach hatch a plan to walk across the rusted railway viaduct that spans a scenic river estuary, Becca’s fear of heights is waved breezily aside. As Becca’s terror mounts, we learn that her acrophobia may have its roots in a past that comes to her only seldom, and in dreams. “Wilderness” is a masterful story in which the surrounding landscape not only reflects the personal anxieties of the characters but also radically alters the relationships between them.

A more overtly speculative vision is at work in “Later, His Ghost,” a terrifyingly bleak climate change story set in a near-future Norwich. Britain is more or less permanently ravaged by monster storms; whole communities have been swept away, with thousands of casualties and irreparable damage to much of the country’s infrastructure. The protagonist is holed up in a barn on the outskirts of town, his life reduced to two primary concerns: taking care of a traumatized pregnant woman and locating a complete copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. His vision of himself, as he briefly catches sight of his reflection in a broken window, speaks poignantly for all who have survived and struggle on:

He looked like some sort of demon. Maybe that’s what he was, maybe that’s what he’d become. But he felt human, he remembered feeling human. His ankle hurt, which was good. He could use a can opener. And he liked Christmas. He turned away from the mirror and climbed back out the window. Snow was flying past.

The claustrophobia that pervades this story is so powerful that we continue to feel suspicious of the more recognizable environment depicted in the piece that follows. “Goodnight Nobody” is told from the point of view of young Jemima, or Jem, as she delivers a packet of sandwiches to her mother, who works as a mortician at the local hospital. The outward simplicity of the narrative belies the tensions and dangers lurking beneath: not just the stark choice Jem’s mother faces in trying to care and provide for her daughter, but also the ways in which Jem herself must learn to survive in this seemingly banal world of corner shops and busy A-roads, where death is always closer than you think. “One in Four,” a vignette in the form of a suicide note, pushes the world of “Goodnight Nobody” to its logical conclusion, with vested interests and corporate penny-pinching sending our globalized economy spiraling toward a disastrous endgame.

In all these stories, Hall’s personal concerns — new parenthood, separation and abandonment, individuality and the loss of it — are the foreground for a more general sense of disquiet, a concern with the decomposing landscapes of our contemporary lives. This is folk horror at its most intimate, its most precarious. Hall obsessively shows the undermining of social reality through a doctored political consensus, the potential for imminent destruction that hovers on the margins of everyday life. The pieces that make up Madame Zero are shorter, more impressionistic than the stories in Hall’s earlier collection, but in terms of their intensity and political weight they are every bit as substantial, a perfect balance of language and content, poised at the magical midway point between the distillation of poetry and the vicariousness of prose. Hall’s alternation of mimetic with more overtly speculative texts conveys a queasily jolting effect, leading us to question the apparent normality of our lived environments.

In Conor O’Callaghan’s brief but powerfully haunting debut novel Nothing on Earth, published in 2016 in the United Kingdom and recently reprinted in the United States by Transworld Publishers, an environment that should be prosaic in the extreme — a nondescript close on an anonymous housing estate — is rendered as a landscape so uncertain that it gradually becomes invisible, particularly to those who would rather not be reminded of its existence. The events of the novel are narrated by an elderly priest who, during one memorably hot Dublin summer, becomes caught up in a series of incidents that affect his life and plague his memories. Paul, his wife Helen, and her twin sister Martina come to live on the estate because it is cheap, one of the numerous “ghost” building projects that were abandoned in the wake of the Irish recession. One night toward the end of August, the priest answers his front door to find Paul and Helen’s 12-year-old daughter seeking refuge following her mother’s disappearance earlier in the summer. The girl tells him that not only has Helen disappeared, but that her father and aunt have as well, the house reverting to an empty shell: “The things of a show house belonged to lives that should have happened but never did. They gave off no noise at all, and that was more deafening than anything.”

The priest feels uncomfortable about being alone in the house with the child, and there are hints of a dark shadow cloaking his past. He calls in a neighbor to act as chaperone, though he is later forced to admit that she did not stay in the house with them overnight. As the priest looks back over the events of that summer, we are confronted with one disquieting question after another: What happened to Martina and Helen’s parents, a tragedy so terrible it sent the sisters overseas for many years? Does the estate — the postmodern stand-in for the quintessential Bad Place of classic horror literature — possess the uncanny ability to literally eat people, or is it simply a metaphor for the social and economic deprivation that stalks the land? What of the Slatterys, as doomed and desperate as the rest of the estate’s shrinking populace in spite of their middle-class pretentions? Above all, it is the weather that leaves its mark on this novel: the days feel endless, taking on a dreamlike quality, the stealthily encroaching madness of a long hot summer.

The water rationing intensified. The taps ran dry from eight every evening. It hadn’t rained for almost two months. The mounds of muck up at the townhouses had dried to a fine orange sand that blew off in plumes whenever a warm wind came swirling around. The sand got everywhere: into the house, their clothes, everything. It got on the scraps of furniture they had, on the fruit in the picnic salad bowl. Every mug of tea or coffee seemed to have a film on its surface. You took a shower and the shower basin was coated with it, as if you had been at the beach all day. There was no point in cleaning the windows: within twenty-four hours they were gauzed with sand again.

The narrative teems with uncanny acts of duplication and mistaken identity — twin sisters who cannot be told apart, an elderly couple who appear to have walked out of a photograph, a confusion over names. At one point the estate, so new it is still partly a building site, is tellingly referred to as “historic ruins.” We shiver with apprehension of ghosts come to life:

It was mid-afternoon and they felt like aliens. It was, Paul said, like a coach tour of the Balkans, where you take a pit-stop in one of those dying hamlets that had been the centre of some medieval empire.

This is horror of the most resonant kind, because it is real and because it is happening now. There is a feeling of stasis twinned with impermanence, a halt to progress combined with a pell-mell stampede toward the new. Into the disappearance of this fractured family we read the disappearance of entire communities, thrust out of their own lives by an economic imperative to strip away the social provision we have spent so long in building. The priest’s shock as he is confronted by the reality of the failed housing estate — an environment that increasingly resembles a war zone — reminds us that, in a sense, O’Callaghan’s book is itself a ghost, the kind of narrative some people would prefer not to come into contact with at all.

Most of all, Nothing on Earth serves as an antidote to that fraction of horror fiction that is still mostly concerned with reassurance: Gothic melodramas in which the ghosts are safely confined to the past, sets of familiar tropes that suggest it is only those who wander off the path who will fall afoul of fate. O’Callaghan shows us that horror is now, and we are the demons.

As a society, we often feel more comfortable collecting press cuttings about tragedy than asking meaningful questions about its genesis. Nothing on Earth is less than two hundred pages long, yet its implications and reverberations carry more weight than many novels three times its length. Like Hall, O’Callaghan achieves his effect not through elaborate metaphors or densely styled “literary” writing, but through a declarative, pared-down prose and the gradual accumulation of significant detail.

While both Hall and O’Callaghan could be cited as authors of the literary mainstream with folk-horror sympathies (Hall has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and O’Callaghan is a prize-winning poet), Malcolm Devlin’s work feels as if it sprung directly from the compost of ’70s folk horror, finding inspiration — and a renewed vigor — in the tropes and assumptions of authors such as Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Holdstock, and Joan Aiken. His debut collection, You Will Grow Into Them (2017), thus perfectly embodies the shifting emphases and new grounding imageries of folk horror in the 21st century.

The collection opens conventionally enough, with a classic piece of English weird fiction, “Passion Play,” in which a teenage girl subsumes the anxieties of her troubled family into an obsession with a “stick man” who she believes haunts the icons in her local church. In its conflation of landscape elements with a lingering social unease, the tale has a strong taste of 1990s miserablism about it (think: Nicholas Royle, Joel Lane) and is exactly the kind of well-made, literary horror story one has come to expect from the British magazine Black Static, where “Passion Play” was originally published.

In the next story, “Two Brothers,” we begin to see You Will Grow Into Them move away from ’70s folk horror and toward a more modern and personal aesthetic. When his older brother Stephen is sent off to school, William remains behind at the family home. Standing at the station awaiting his brother’s return for the Christmas holidays, William finds himself devastated by the gulf that has opened between them:

He smiled when he saw them waiting for him, but it was not the lopsided grin which William remembered but a thin smile he didn’t recognise, and it was not directed at him personally. When William turned, he saw the same smile reflected on his father’s face. It was a cold expression, colder than the snow and the wind, and it was then William understood that while his brother had come home, he would remain alone.

“Two Brothers” is replete with elements of the uncanny we might recognize from Robert Aickman’s strange stories, yet there is something more too: a hyper-modern awareness of social divisiveness. We understand it is the father’s insistence upon tradition that poisons the boys’ future, rather than anything specific that happened at school. As in Sarah Hall’s “Case Study 2,” the enforced destruction of personal bonds leads inexorably to mental torment and eventually, breakdown.

The bonds of community are further explored in Devlin’s longer story, “The End of Hope Street,” in which the residents of a single street — parallels here with the estate in Nothing on Earth — are forced to abandon their homes when they mysteriously start becoming “unliveable.” We never learn the source of the power that transforms the residents’ houses into shadowy death-boxes. What we see instead is the impact of these events on the families of Hope Street, who respond to the crisis in differing ways. For a significant majority, the enforced return to values of good-neighborliness and closer personal proximity comes as an unexpected pleasure. They realize they do not, after all, need so many things, so much personal space. There are no grand confessions or personal epiphanies — one of the charms of this extraordinary story is how British it is — just a tacit redrawing of boundaries, a mutual understanding that they will stay together:

There would be a Christmas that year in Hope Street, no matter what happened, no matter what it represented. It would be both spiritual and secular and in its own peculiar way it would be an act of rebellion. Because even joy and companionship could be subversive, under the right conditions.

Extreme societal change is likewise the subject of “Breadcrumbs,” a deliciously twisted variant on the Grimms’ “Rapunzel.” Ellie lives in a tower block on an inner-city estate. Far from finding her circumstances restrictive, she simply reimagines her world as she wishes it to be:

She’s always preferred the view at night. The estate looks so bleak in the daytime, but now, the grey concrete of the surrounding tower blocks is consumed by the encroaching dark and only the lights remain. Dot-to-dot clues which her imagination mis-draws to denote superstructures coiling up into the night. The lights of the traffic on the distant bypass? Those aren’t cars grounded on the road, they’re flying machines on an express route, looping the loop at the intersection. She cocks her head and watches them fly.

Then her dreams, in a way, come true. Left alone in the flat when her parents and brother go to visit an aunt in hospital, Ellie awakes to find quotidian reality entirely gone, replaced by a startling fairy-tale landscape of forest and trees:

The city is barely a city any more. The estate has a beauty to it now. Where it had once been coloured in shades of concrete and steel, it is now a rich and wide expanse of browns and greens. The tower blocks are wrapped in roots and vines. They grow branches that stretch high. The tarmac at street level has been shattered into jigsaw pieces by the growth from beneath.

As in “The End of Hope Street,” these radical changes to the built environment are eventually accepted as a positive development. The characters — like Sophia in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox” — embrace their new animal natures while the remaining “hu-mans” are seen as cave-dwellers, conservative primitives to be pitied for their old-fashioned insistence on staggering around on two legs.

The obverse of such tolerance is seen in “Dogsbody,” a darkly satiric fable in which a seemingly random swath of society encounters prejudice and social exclusion after becoming affected with “Lunar Proximity Syndrome” — in other words, they turn into werewolves. This is a story that pulls no punches in detailing the dozens of tiny ways in which minority groups routinely find themselves bullied, exploited, disadvantaged, and set apart:

A little superscript asterisk pointed to a lengthy paragraph of small print at the foot of the page. A promise that an affirmative answer would not invalidate the chances of employment, a warning that a dishonest one would lead to disqualification.

Equally incisive in its social comment is the novella-length story that forms the centerpiece of this collection. The protagonist of “Songs Like They Used to Play” is famous for having once been “little Tommy Kavanagh” from the hit reality-TV show Family Time. The program ran for years and, in spite of its deleterious effects on the real Kavanagh family, attracted a devoted following:

During the live shows, the public were invited to dress up and serve as background extras, a proposition so popular that security was increased. To Tom, the set took on the aspect of a bizarre prison. One where people from the future were happy to queue for hours in the rain for a chance to get in, while he peered through the fences at the modern world beyond, and wondered if he might find the opportunity to escape.

Now an adult, Tom reconnects with an old boyfriend, Bobby, who secretly harbors more nostalgia for the show than Tom himself:

“We get a lot of stag parties in York,” he said. “I’ve got double glazing, but you can still hear them out there screaming at each other. You know what I hear most? ‘Two world wars and one world cup.’ And they’re still talking about the fucking Empire, like that was ever a good idea. But that’s all we’ve got in the world now. We’re this little island rotting into itself, feeding off our sordid little past, lying to ourselves that it was something to be proud of. […] But then you hear something like this and somehow … Somehow it all makes more sense. Like it’s an anchor, a safety line. Something beautiful to hold on to. A promise that if the world could have been this good once, there’s hope for us yet.”

“Songs Like They Used to Play” is an original and persuasive story that riffs on our current obsession with “frock and bonnet” shows like Downton Abbey, with royalty and celebrity, with the sanitized heroism of historical romances and World War II movies. Brexit may be the most recent and significant demonstration of the power of such falsified narratives — the fairy tales of our own time — to affect the trajectory of our political present, but it is far from being the only one. Devlin’s insights into modern Britain are rendered all the more potent by his clear grasp of the cultural preoccupations of the recent past, a past many of us will remember first hand, those ghosts we happily recall on Christmas Eve, or Hallowe’en.

As Malcolm Devlin adds himself to the ranks of those writers — Paul Kingsnorth, Benjamin Myers, Aliya Whiteley, Wyl Menmuir, Jess Kidd, Helen Oyeyemi, Cynan Jones, Caitriona Lally, Andrew Michael Hurley — who are currently leading the new folk-horror revival, we are reminded that what unites these very different artists is their commitment to using the gestures and imagery of folk horror as a means of expressing highly contemporary political concerns. Disenfranchised through false histories and bigoted ideologies, the characters that people their stories are no longer able to find comfort and strength in the deep truths of their surrounding landscapes because the very origins of those landscapes are rooted in slavery and oppression.

No matter how twisted, the folk horror of earlier decades was created from a sense of continuity and, above all, nostalgia. Now we find stories increasingly powered by the engine of change. The new folk horror — metamorphic and disjunctive — is in part a voicing of our personal distress in the face of that change, but it is also an acknowledgment that change is necessary. We can no longer avoid the knowledge that entire classes and races of people have been systematically excluded from any sense of ownership of our landscape and history, and have consequently found the familiar environments of folk horror defunct and irrelevant. In order to escape our sense of statelessness, it is necessary for us to examine the state we are in.

Nina Allan is an English writer of weird and fantastic fiction. Her novella Spin won a British Science Fiction Award in 2014.

The post The New Folk Horror: Recent Work by Sarah Hall, Conor O’Callaghan, and Malcolm Devlin appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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