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larrythefloridaman · 3 years ago

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Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

#cpu kerfuffle #cpuk cobalt #cpuk chartreuse #cpuk crimson #im like. 80% all this info is correct but im not feeling up to rewatching matches to doublecheck rn ngl asdsfgfghgfhfgsdf #will probably edit with fixes if im misremembering smthn later

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timeclonemike · 3 years ago

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Axiom Verge 2: Here We Go Again

So Axiom Verge 2 came out not long ago, but I don’t have a Switch and I don’t trust the Epic Games Store. Rather than wait and possibly get spoiled, I bit the bullet and watched a Let’s Play.

Consequently I can now build on this post. Cutting for length and spoilers right about here.

The Filter: The biggest revelation that AV2 provides is a refinement of the multiverse theory, plus defining some terms from the original game. Trace’s note next to his wheelchair mentions going upstream to the Filter or beyond for answers. As it happens, “upstream” refers literally to the Worldstream, and different universes are connected to each other in a serial fashion. The terminology used to describe the connections is upstream and downstream, with upstream leading towards the Source Worlds that are the progenitors of all other universes. Likewise, the Filter refers to worlds in the worldstream that function as firewalls and safety mechanisms to keep disruptive influences from downstream worlds from traveling too far up, since disrupting one world can damage all of the worlds downstream from that world.

We even get to see the Worldstream or some analog to it when Indra (the protagonist of Axiom Verge 2) travels to the Filter world upstream of Kiengir (which is either upstream of or parallel to Earth) and the background of the rooms is a MASSIVE fractal pattern originating from / coalescing into a singularity off in the distance.

There are also some notes from Trace to Dr. Hammond, his research partner in the cutscene for the first game who took Trace’s revolutionary theory and turned into a way to make Faster Than Light communication and computing technology. Dr. Hammond also finds herself in a unique position to test one of the possibilities implicit in Trace’s theory, namely if the existence of an afterlife is somehow accounted for in the multiverse. One of the notes in the first game says that different instances of a person across the multiverse can survive events that their counterparts do not, but that the survivors have no idea that they even have a counterpart who died.

What happens in the second game is more about what happens to the ones that didn’t make it, because Dr. Hammond is communicating with Indra through the prototype superluminal communicators (called ansibles) scattered here and there, but Indra can also find Hammond’s body and a suicide note in some of Kiengir’s ruins. Dr. Hammond refers to where she is as a sort of “detention center” that she needs Indra’s help to escape from, and this help involves hacking the control computer in the Filter world. An earlier message at an ansible mentions data throttling, which seems to refer to the memory limitations of the ansible prototypes themselves; they can only send so much data over their operational lifetimes.

Except there’s Trace’s original paper and the axioms he starts with, where reality is described as algorithms running a universal / multiversal simulation, and cognition is a sub-algorithm within the parent algorithm. Put it all together and the game all but states that there is an afterlife, but it operates on the same rules as life - it’s an adjacent or related universe to our own and minds / spirits / souls / cognitive algorithms can migrate between those universes under certain conditions even if the material body they used to pilot is no longer functional. At least, that’s what normally happens, but for some reason the transmigration of souls was limited or stopped or throttled. It’s semi-implied but never explicitly stated that there’s a trans-universal system in place to keep the Worldstream stable, and the Lamassu computer network that controls Kiengir is part of that network, and the fact that realities are starting to glitch and break down further implies that this system is damaged or overwhelmed.

Trace’s Motivations: Trace never shows up in the game, and only gets mentioned here and there in a few notes. The game takes place in the 2050s and Trace’s lab accident was in 2005, with Dr. Hammond starting Hammond Corp and making money hand over fist in 2007 by selling the world zero-latency computing technology. Hammond’s suicide note explains that Trace was already exploring the Breach before she started her company, but she hasn’t heard from him in decades and the entire antarctic expedition was just so she could try to find him again. She mentions a few things in passing that come up in the first game, like a device called a Scry that can locate anything in the multiverse, and the term PatternMind which Trace was but Hammond was not.

By itself, this would seem to imply that we don’t know anymore about what Trace saw or experienced that turned him from a pacifist to somebody willing to commit genocide. But there’s another factor in play, one that has nothing to do with Trace at all at first glance.

At a certain point in the game, Indra gets stuck in her alternate drone form until she finds the right upgrade to become human (well, humanoid) again. She can still communicate with people, such as the survivors from Hammond Corp’s expedition and one of the Kazakh members of a Russian expedition that came through the portal and decided to settle a world upstream of Kiengir. However, coming back to revisit those areas and talk to those survivors later may result in them not being in the same spot anymore. Instead, there’s a sort of flying enemy that looks like a miniature version of the first boss of Axiom Verge. People who examined the game’s code found that there is actually an “infection” mechanic involved based on time elapsed since Indra comes in contact with the survivors.

That the survivors turn into the types of monsters we see in Axiom Verge 1 is significant on its own, but it takes on more importance when we consider the endgame cutscenes. The Kazakhs have settled and colonized an upstream world, while a few of them are staying in an adjacent world where time passes differently; this is explicitly so that they can observe and track the changing of society over long spans of time and direct its evolution. After beating the final boss, Indra decides to team up with Drushka, the leader of the Kazakhs and a name mentioned in one of the notes found in Axiom Verge 1, in order to further her own goals.

Here’s the thing: What we see of the world that Drushka is standing watch in, called The Emergence, looks so similar to what we’ve seen of Sudra as to be almost identical. Given how time is explicitly stated to pass at different rates in different parts of the Breach compared to the worlds in the Worldstream, it isn’t out of the question that the Kazakhs were the ancestors of the Sudrans. The only problem with this theory is that long before anyone from earth showed up in Kiengir, the Lamassu had upstream technology brought in to allow the locals to defend themselves, as part of its broader directive to safeguard the Worldstream from disruption. Some of this technology included Rebirth Chambers - Indra even accesses the Filter through one - which was later destroyed to prevent too much cultural contamination. That technology had to come from somewhere, so either the Kazakhs inhabited a world adjacent to Sudra or downstream from it so there were similarities in art and culture and architecture, or the Rebirth Chambers and other advanced technology were themselves brought to Sudra from upstream worlds and simply shut down rather than completely destroyed after the Sudrans nearly wiped themselves out.

In either case, the important part is how Indra is subtly implied to be some sort of nanotech Typhoid Mary. She might be the actual source of the Pathogen that wipes out Sudra, not Athetos. In hindsight there is a hint to this effect in the first game because after Trace starts getting sick and hallucinating, there is a Rusalki called Ophelia that saves him. He doesn’t have any symptoms for the rest of the game, implying he is cured. If it was something unique to Trace that made him immune, he wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place and neither would Athetos. Same with him getting better, if Trace could do it so could the original. So it had to be something unique to Ophelia that she couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do for anyone else.

And during Axiom Verge 2′s credits, we see a detailed close up look of Indra’s nanotech-enhanced body. The face and head look a LOT like Ophelia. Not conclusive by itself, but too similar to be completely shrugged off as coincidence.

And that has got me thinking.

I ended my first post pondering what Trace could have found in the Breach or while traveling the multiverse that caused a pacifist scientist to turn to genocide to achieve his ends. It’s possible that nothing could, because he didn’t. Maybe Athetos didn’t release the pathogen on Sudra, the Rusalki did; it’s shown in the notes that they resented the way that the Sudrans crippled them and reduced them basically to talking heads, but still had some influence over what was going on either through manipulating the priests or through exchange of data that the Sudrans were unaware of or incapable of understanding.

Athetos refers to the Rusalki as masters of war just before the final battle of Axiom Verge 1. He might have shown up at Sudra thousands of years prior to the events of the game as Trace, gotten healed, traveled up to the Filter to try to learn more, and then come back after the flow of time had changed to find a civilization on the verge of collapse from a virulent contagion that turned people into monsters. Trace may be a pacifist, but he will still use the Axiom Disrupter and all of its bells and whistles to protect himself in game. It’s entirely possible that the original realized that the Rusalki were trying to escape Sudra and would cause devastation throughout the Worldstream, and he applied his knowledge to create weapons and tools to turn himself into a one man army once he realized he couldn’t cure the pathogen. (Or maybe he did try to come up with a cure, and the Rusalki’s retaliation / interference was what made him realize what was actually going on.)

He doesn’t say any of this before his boss fight because he realizes that Trace and the Rusalki have the advantage now. Trace can keep coming back using the Rebirth Chambers, so Athetos has to come up with contingency plan. The secret ending shows Trace in a Dream Algorithm set up by one of the Rusalki, but Athetos shows up and shoots him, telling him it’s time to wake up. During his boss fight, Athetos shows the ability to manipulate the environment to a certain degree, spawning in new enemies and replacing power cells for the Breach Attractor when Trace destroys them. It’s not clear if this is a result of Sudran tech of being a PatternMind, but whatever the reason, it’s possible that Athetos was doing all of it to buy time.

Time for what?

To hack Trace’s Nanogates so that the Rusalki couldn’t control him anymore.

Trace keels over not long after the final battle, but Athetos showing up with a gun implies that Athetos was able to at least get a Trojan Horse into the nanogates that would wake Trace up when the remote overrides were disabled. Then Trace could wake up, find all his equipment again, and take the fight to the Rusalki before they could cause too much damage to the Worldstream, possibly including Earth.

The only truly glaring flaw in this theory is that it doesn’t account for why Indra would side with a bunch of genocidal robots, one way or another; she refers to the storage bay in Axiom Verge 1 as where “our bodies” are kept, and these are massive war machines, while her humanoid nanotech form is about human sized. The Lamassu refers to some fairly devastating war machines from upstream worlds and the Rusalki might just be those machines; she was heading to the world they were stored in because it might have the technology to restore one of her Apocalypse Arm upgrades - the child Damu that controls her drone body - to a flesh and blood body that can live a normal life.

There is a big gap between trying to help this kid she found and teaming up with sentient weapons platforms to devastate the multiverse. At least as big as the gap between Trace being a pacifist and Athetos committing genocide.

Like so many sequels, Axiom Verge 2 has raised even more questions than it answered.

#Axiom Verge #Axiom Verge 2 #Analysis

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sociopath-analysis · 4 years ago

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Sociopath Profile: Whiterose

Alias: Zhi Zhang From the USA Network television series Mr. Robot (2015-2019) Played by B.D. Wong Requested by an anon

Whiterose is a transgender hacker who is the leader of the Dark Army. She is a woman who knows how to play others without letting anyone get in her way. She has some tragedy in her life that motivates her actions, but that doesn’t really fly in the face of the sociopathic genius that she is.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

For starters, she is obviously a master manipulator. Coordinating her cyberterrorism hacks do require a ton of talent for organizing people and making sure they’re exactly where you want them. She also manipulates others by using her disguise as the male Chinese Minister of State Security Zhi Zhang. Very few are aware of the connection and that’s exactly how she’d like to keep it.

Due to her obsession with time, Whiterose only allots short amounts of time for various people and doesn’t waste too much time for many. Any waste of her time is considered unacceptable and she won’t bother to give you any more once it is up. She only cares about herself and all the people she works with are disposable when she gets what she wants. She plays every single side in the conflict all to get to her goals, showing no loyalty to anyone.

She is also utterly ruthless when dealing with her underlings as well as her adversaries. Even the slightest screw-up can result in a swift death for the poor subordinate, if they’re lucky. And she is willing to have others killed if they come after her or if it seems that there will be no potential use for them. Tyrell learned this the hard way with a bullet to the stomach courtesy of her Dark Army agents. She also marks Elliot for death when she sees him as a threat to her plans. Even before that, Whiterose dismisses him and their partnership when he misses the opportunity for a very important hack.

Whiterose is calm most of the time and rarely ever talks outside of a friendly tone. She will be nice and cordial, but it usually never genuine. She can do nice things for people and help them out, but that doesn’t mean she will continue to return the favor if she finds that you aren’t any help to her. She hides all of her malice behind lofty goals and condescending affability. All of it is superficial when it comes down to it.

"Do not mistake my generosity for generosity."

Most of all, she only works for her own gain. No matter who she collaborates with, she only ever works for herself. She backstabs people constantly and it is eventually revealed that she is playing every side in this conflict. It doesn’t matter to her what happens as long as she comes out on top in the end. She does have a bone to pick with society due to her boyfriend being forced into an unhappy marriage and eventually committing suicide because of it. However, nothing else matters in the face of getting what she believes she deserves as reparations.

Her grandiosity comes from the fact that she believes she should have control over everyone, something that starts to backfire on her later in the series. The moment things don’t go exactly as she calculated, she won’t be happy with that. And her ultimate goal is to create a machine that will control time by accessing parallel universes, a goal so lofty that I’d almost say she had a subtle god-complex. Her hubris ends up leading to her demise since she shoots herself in head after turning the machine on to prove that she has mastery over time. Elliot manages to turn it off so that even if it did work, she wasn’t coming back.

Female Sociopath List

#Whiterose Mr Robot #Mr. Robot #Zhi Zhang #BD Wong #B.D. Wong #requests #anon #profile #character analysis #First official trans character on the Female list

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sunmaylight · 4 years ago

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TGCF Book 3 Reaction pt. 6 - We are going to Mt. Tonglu!

hahaha. So, funny thing. I got impatient and just breezed though the last two books and consumed all of the post-canon content I could find. But, even though I have finished TGCF, that doesn’t mean I didn’t leave notes that I want in big chunks like this. So I will continue working on this

Even though I read the novel, I will stay true to my notes to the best of my abilities.

Ch 138: Xie Lian remembering that he threw his meatballs like bullets without any spiritual strength, like how he went about the past 800 years

- Me: Why do people not realize that Xie Lian is buff. Buff Xie Lian art, where?

Qi Rong turns out to be a better chef than Xie Lian. Like possible House Husband material

- Me: Yo. WTF. I call hack! How did- *remembering Qi Rong’s backstory*... Okay, but how did he learn and hone his skills?

Heaven’s Eye cultivator group about to chow down on some hair when Xie Lian steps in with the pebble toss

- Me: Xie Lian saving cultivators from committing c*nn*bal*sm

Ch 139: Hua Cheng builds a little golden palace outside and then kicks it. The shady inn illusion crashes as well.

- Me: Can this get animated?

Feng Xin mentioning of an ascension acceleration method with dead babies

- Me: Wait! What if Feng Xin’s ascension is the suspicious one instead of Mu Qing

Ch 140: Xie Lian finds Guzi to be sick and dehydrated.

Mama Bear Xie Lian - Awaken

- Me: Oh shit. Xie Lian is pissed at his cousin.

Ch 141: Learning about who the father to the fetus spirit is. Learning that the fetus spirit is named Cuo Cuo. Secrets around Cuo Cuo’s birth abundant

- Me: WAIT! HE HAD S*X WITH LAN CHANG. HE F*KED?!

Xie Lian reassuring Hua Cheng, but Hua Cheng turning it around to saying that his actions are up to him. Xie Lian feels something.

Xie Lian and Hua Cheng had a moment when suddenly they see someone sitting at the table making tea

- Me: No! Is it Jun Wu?

Jun Wu is pouring three cups of tea

- Me: He saw the intimate scene between the two

Red flower that slips on the edge of the flower pot is about to fall when Xie Lian caught it like it’s the most precious thing in the world

- Me: Foreshadowing???

Xie Lian basically saying that Heaven will fall if the Heavenly Emperor is dead. Xie Lian basically saying that Heaven is floating in the sky because of the Heavenly Emperor

- Me: Man, I really hope that the Heavenly Emperor doesn’t die and make Heaven crash onto the ground, only to be upheld by the power of Xie Lian and then create a parallel of that scene in book 2, or Atlus holding up the world.

Ch 143: Heaven and the Ghost Kings have a mutual beneficial relationship

Hua Cheng using this fact to exploit Heaven singing him praises for a year.

- Me: Cunning bastard. I would have asked for praises sung to me and Xie Lian if I was in his shoes

Mt. Tonglu has the Klin and both places is that one poisonous jar where the last poisonous creature that is alive after x amount of time is emerged as the victor.

- Me: Battle Royale to the death.

Xie Lian sneaks with Ghost as a Puppet Master

- Me: Oh, nice disguise

Swift Life-Extinguishing Blade says he can find if a ghost is suspicious

- Me: Okay, but what if you are the suspicious one?

Xie Lian crouches down to hid behind the 8-12 year old looking Hua Cheng

Hua Cheng as the “Puppet Master” disguise: “No one shall touch what I love except for me”

- Me: Impressive acting there

There is a cloaked figure that Hua Cheng says they are wearing a fake face

- Me: Is it Pei Ming?

Swift Life-Extinguishing Blade dies from one slash. Xie Lian making an observation that sounds like a joke

- Me: lol

Ch 14-Mt. Tonglu gate

Some ghost ladies get hurt and the cloaked stranger immediately asks: “Are my ladies alright?”

- Me: I was right. It was Pei Ming

Pei Ming about to tease Hua Cheng when Ruoye whips out to hit Pei Ming

- Me: I don’t know if that was all Ruoye or influence from Mt. Tonglue, but go Ruoye.

Pei Ming’s mysterious candy he got to disguise his spiritual powers is revealed to be shady candy made form Ghost City. Consuming the candy is the equivalent to rubbing skunk spray all over yourself.

- lol

E-Ming has been affected like Hua Cheng. It is now a small sword

- me: Cute

Pei Ming can sense the atmosphere around Hua Cheng and Xie Lian

The Swift Life-Extinguishing Blade turns out to be alive still. Both halves are moving freely

- Me: It’s still alive. how?!

Pei Ming is revealed to be the “General Who Snapped His Sword”

- Me: *Four Tales of Heaven Background Understanding Update*

Wine: 100% Understanding & Truth of Creation

Flower Crown: 100 50% Understanding of Creation & History -Second Ascension & Third Ascension are Unknown-

Princess: 15% Understanding of Identity & History

Sword: 25% & Growing...Processing backstory now

A giant savage, dark skinned burly man in broken armour appears

- Me: Wait. Do I know this character?

It is revealed to be Ke-Mo

Xie Lian pulls a trick on Swift Life-Extinguishing Blade/Ming’Guang and Pei Ming saw it work. The trick was actually the most vile swear word of the Banyue kingdom that is the most disrespectful insult ever.

- Me: What did the army teach you Xie Lian?

Xie Lian calls out for Banyue & Pei Su knowing that they are not at Mt. Tonglu as a tactic to distract Ke Mo

- Me: lol. What if they actually come after Xie Lian called them.

When things start to look good, Xie Lian calls out on it. It is immediately changes into a bad thing

Tiny E-Ming grows with praises from Xie Lian.

Pei Ming does a big brain and smashes E-Ming’s hit to Xie Lian’s lips. E-Ming grows to a very long scimar

- Me: Pei Ming caught on what Xie Lian didn’t. Also E-Ming reflect’s Hua Cheng, so, affection makes E-Ming grow. Hua Cheng

As Ke Mo and Ming’Guang are abotu to beat Xie Lian and Pei Ming, Banyu and Pei Su do that badass entry of jumping down a cliff and kicking the opponents.

- Me: lol, Banyue and Pei Su actually appeared.

Banyue throws a scorpion-snake at Ke Mo fully knowing what she is doing and the 200 years of mutual dislike is behind it.

- Me: Ultimate betrayal.

Banyue: We came here with Rain Master

- Me: Wait. Rain Master is here?

Ch 148: Xie Lian thinks that if he does the same things he did to E-Ming to help him grow, it will help Hua Cheng grow

- Me: Awe. So cute.

Ke Mo vs. Banyue & Pei Su - Round 2: Banyue is too embarrassed to throw her snakes again at Ke Mo. Pei Su swoops in and yeets a basket full at Ke Mo who screams at them

- Me: For some reason I find this scene really funny.\

Xie Lian: Moves into kiss Hua Cheng. He kisses the forehead and is sad about it.

Pei Ming learns that Banyue is that Banyue while she backs away from Banyue as Pei Ming comes close to her

- Me: Oh wait. Does Pei Ming still smell of those Ghost Candies?

It is revealed that Banyue is weary of Pei Ming because of the candy scent

- Me: Lol, it was the candy

Rain Master is brought up

- Me: *random thought* Does Rain Master & Pei Ming have some history together?

Rain Master is at Mt. Tonglu because Qi Rong stole some of her farmers.

Pei Ming is revealed to be the opposing General of the Rain Master

- Me: Oh, they do have some history together.

Xie Lian & Readers learn about the ‘Tale of the General Who Snapped His Sword’

- Me: LORE!

Sword: 75% Understanding

Ch 149: Pei Ming insults Banyue for not knowing how to cook like other females

- Me: General Pei, I understand that in your time that might have been a norm. But modern times that is different.

Xie Lian says he will teach Banyue how to cook

- Me: Oh no. Someone please stop them.

Banyue is holding a pot of food

- Me: Oh shoit. Did Banyue?

Ch 150: Banyue’s chicken meal is a black mass of questionable origins

- Me: *sob* it’s over. Banyue is now added to the list. But at least she took up her cooking skills after her adopted dad.

Pei Su takes the dubious food and eats it after watching Hua Cheng try some.

- Me: RIP Pei Su

Hua Cheng telling Xie Lian about the history of Mt. Tonglu while Pei Su is dying in the background. Banyue’s cooking somehow turned into a spirit or eldrich horror

- Me: *sob* please. You two are so adorable together, but someone (Pei Su) is literally dying from food poisoning. You are like that one pool meme

Pei Ming has given up on Pei Su to hang with the oblivious couple

Xie Lian has heard of Wuyoung before from his past while training to Ascension.

- Me: Oh. Interesting.

Little Xie Lian learned how to recite the Ethic Sutras like nothing because he was a curious child about a forgotten kingdom and the Guoshi made him shut up through sutras.

- Guoshi, how are you real?

Xie Lian: Pei Su is talking weird. Is it because of the Scorpion-Snake?

Banyue: Pei Su has immunity from them

-Me: God you two are so oblivious.

Ch 151: What if Jun Wu is from Wuyoung? Nah. He has a 500 year difference from then.

- Me: *Remembers Qi Rong calling Jun Wu a faker and thinks there is some truth in those words* What if he became an immortal 500 years before his ascension and just loitered around for 500 years until he achieved ascension status.?

The group is Scooby-Doo investigation with Ace Attorney observation skills on the temples. of the Kingdom of Wuyoung to learn why it fell

- Me: intersting. I hope they find something interesting.

-----

Alright. Going to stop there cause the actual journey to the Klin starts and it is a long journey where there is actually more than what I commented on. Man, I just really picked and choose what to highlight while reading

#sunmay rambles #sunmay reads tgcf #sunmay reads tian guan cifu #sunmay reads hob #sunmay reads heaven official's blessing #tgcf #hob #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #tgcf spoiler #hob spoiler #book 3 spoiler #Mt. tonglu spoilers #RIP Pei Su #I hope you develop an iron stomach like Hua Cheng to eat Banyue's cooking

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writingithink · 3 years ago

Text

Improbable Multiversal Transcending Temporal Spacetime Event Pairing: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Rated: T Word Count: 7,101 Summary: The best way to show someone you care is to blow up their job ... right? Notes: I'm back! And it's not a Tangled Timelines update (sorry!) But it is something? I've had this in my WIPs for awHILE now, and when I was cleaning my studio the other night I found a planning page for it in a random tote bag and was like ... oh yeah. And the ending just came to me and I love it when that happens. Hopefully there will be another chapter up for Tangled Timelines soon, though!

As always, infinite thanks to my wonderful beta, @hey-there-juliet who is fine with me randomly sending her fics at all hours and with no warning XP

All mistakes are mine, as always.

<<READ IT ON AO3>>

If the other him in the other universe had taken the time to imagine their human life together in a parallel universe, the Doctor doubted he would have pictured this. His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was always quite whimsical. Happiness had made him impractical, really. Because despite all of the drawbacks, all of the reasons he currently loathed himself, the Doctor knew every single reason why the other truly felt like this was the best possible option.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Sometimes, despite it not occurring too often, he was wrong.

They had spent five and a half hours on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay.

(I create myself.)

She had been so upset; said that after everything they’d went through, everything she did to get back, the other him owed her a proper goodbye. She had stopped speaking to him when he told her that, actually, he would never give her a proper goodbye.

And she didn’t let him explain why. Now that he finally could.

Now it had been 57 days since she’d last spoken to him. Since he’d gotten more than a brief glimpse of her with his own eyes. That he’d spent piecing together a picture of what her life had been like here, without him. Such a short time, really, now that it was over (almost over), but yet also some of the worst moments of his entire existence.

It seemed fair that the multiverse would demand just that extra sequence of pain, considering everything he could potentially get in return. What another version of himself could only hope for, bitterly gambling eternities, following their timeline through all of it’s complicated swirls and turns, names weaving around each other, stamping themselves on the structure of creation.

Forever isn’t something that ends.

(How long are you going to stay with me?)

Quite the opposite, actually. And he knew, eventually, she would remember that. Knew it, but didn’t feel it.

The Doctor finally understood what all of the human writers meant about falling in love. Not just the terrifying sensation of the unstoppable freefall, but also the immense pain of crashing into the immovable object at the end of the journey.

They had sat on opposite ends of a Zeppelin. He had gone back to the Tyler Manor with Jackie, and Rose had gone back to her flat. Hoping to see her, talk to her, he had immediately joined Torchwood (once they agreed to his very detailed, highly specific, entirely ironclad contract). Their paths rarely crossed, and when they did it was just tiny, insubstantial moments.

A flash of her at the far end of a hall. Her name in a report (a lot of reports). Snatches of her voice, there one moment and gone the next.

It all made everything hurt so much more, somehow, having her so close but yet further than he could have possibly imagined.

But yet …

His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was still quite whimsical. So when he tried to think of the bigger picture, waxing poetic, alone on his office couch, the Doctor tried to look at the last few years as the impact, and this as the aftershock. Still, philosophical jaunts weren’t exactly a solution to his problem. A temporary solution was moving his office even further away, so that’s what he did.

Plus, he found it kind of fitting, commandeering the inside of Big Ben. UNIT may have it in the prime universe, but in this universe he had the fancy landmark office. Well, office-slash-home (without Rose Tyler, a proper house with doors and things was absolutely unthinkable). Not that it was just about having a private laugh. The gears soothed him, the sound of ticking helped the gnawing emptiness that had filled his mind ever since the TARDIS dematerialized without him in it. The Doctor had thought it was kind of fitting - the closest he could possibly be right now to time.

Not that he wasn’t spending every possible spare moment working on the baby TARDIS, just a tiny piece of coral still, currently sitting in the extended electro-percussive environment chamber. He wondered if, in three years (his best-possible projected timetable), when the new TARDIS would be ready for flight, she would still not be speaking to him.

Incidentally, the emergence of that thought and the start of his supposed ‘self-isolation’ coincided to an alarming degree for how coincidental the two really were. The fact of the matter was, he was busy. Tons of experiments to run, alien equipment to identify, classify (and more often than not remove from Torchwood entirely), a baby TARDIS to tend to, and a backlog of Rose’s mission reports to hack into made spending slightly over three weeks in his tower easy.

The problem was the fact that during that time the Doctor avoided sleeping, barely remembered to eat, and existed on overly sugared tea alone. Not sleeping didn’t put the demons at bay, but at least when he was awake he wasn’t forced to confront the man he never wanted to remember being.

It had been 57 days since Rose Tyler had last spoken to him, and the Doctor detonated a bomb in the abandoned annex Torchwood had scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt.

Then the counter reset to zero.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled, barging into the top floor lab where he had been checking the readings on the EEPEC.

Everything that he wanted to say to her, and the Doctor was struck mute.

“Whatever plans you think you have, however good of an idea it is, for the good of the planet or, or the galaxy or what, you don’t just go blowing up buildings without a word to anyone! Do you know that everyone else was too scared to come up here and have a word with you, because that highly confidential ridiculous contract you drew up made its way through the gossips and isn’t so classified anymore. Now no one wants to go toe to toe with the man who ‘speaks for the planet’,” Rose growled through the air quotes. “So tell me, Doctor, what genius reason you’ve got for blowing up the Records Annex?”

A slow smile spread across his face.

“It worked.”

“What?”

“Remember ‘run’?” he asked, bouncing away from the baby TARDIS and circling her, picking up his new sonic screwdriver as he did and deadlock sealing the only door off the floor.

“Run?” she frowned as he circled back.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear as he passed, running up a small set of stairs to flip a giant switch that activated the clock-lights outside of their automated timer. Likely no one noticed outside with the sun still out, but it lit up the lab. “Henrik’s basement, Nestene Consciousness, shop window dummies, you and me. How did that night end?” he asked, with a manic grin as he skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Oh, that ‘run’,” Rose breathed, trying to fight back a smile. “You blew up my job.”

“I blew up your job.”

She huffed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and crossed her arms. His shoulders fell, exhaustion pressing down onto each and every bone of his new, much more fragile body.

“I just want to talk,” he told her, only a moment away from begging.

“Alright then. Talk.”

Everything he wanted to say to her, and all of it felt disjointed in his overtired mind. Yet she was here now, and if she left he didn’t have a new idea for getting her back again. So he talked.

“I’m sorry. That I made this choice for you, even if it was technically a different me who did it. I’m sorry that this is the best option, the safest option. I’m sorry I never got the chance to explain everything to you before. But I am never going to say goodbye to you, Rose. Never. And I know that the power of words doesn’t translate as well for you, the science of psycho-kinetic-telepathic influence on the elements of creation. But there are some things I can never risk saying aloud. There are some beings that exist, at least in our original universe, that could easily- … still, no matter what universe we’re in, I’m never going to say it. Forever, Rose Tyler. It’s longer than you can comprehend. An eternal silence stretching infinitely ahead, timelines swirling in every direction. This one is ours, if you’ll- if you could just- if you could see in twenty-odd dimensions and focused on individual temporal waveforms, the quantum reality of specific-”

“Doctor!” she shouted when his legs gave out, immediately grabbing hold of him, joining him on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but when he moved to get back up she easily held him down. Rose gently manipulated his face, giving him a basic medical check. He couldn’t help but smile a little at how much she had learned while they were away, only to then frown at how hard he imagined it all must have been for her. Floundering, he tried to make a joke. “So, I’m still the Doctor?”

Which went ignored.

“You look like a wreck,” she told him, and it wasn’t new information. The Doctor now made much more frequent trips to the restroom and was well aware of how pale he was, of the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He had at least been making a disjointed effort to shave, which was another activity that had increased with his meta crisis, and admittedly it had slipped his mind for a couple days.

“It’s not easy, doing this without you,” he admitted. “But if you need more time, I want you to take it. I really am alright. There’s just so much I need to tell you, now that I can.”

“What do you mean, ‘now that you can’?”

“Different universe, firm walls in between. I don’t have to worry about using the wrong words at the wrong time and having cosmic consequences … for a lot of things, not all things. With our timeline in a different dimension and reality back as it should be, at least for the moment, I can tell you all sorts of things. Though the most important one, the one I’m never going to miss an opportunity to say, is that I love you, Rose Tyler. Forever.”

“I love you, too,” she sighed, caressing his cheek for a moment before helping him up. “But I’m still mad at you. Now you need sleep.”

“But I’m not done talking,” the Doctor complained, dragging his feet as she led him over to the sofa in the corner.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve gotten some rest, okay? I promise.”

“Thank you,” he sighed, more horizontal than he remembered being just a moment ago. Something soft and warm ensconced his body. He hadn’t realized how cold he had been until just then.

Another breath and black oblivion overtook him. Peaceful until it suddenly very much wasn’t.

A shockwave. A rift in time and space. A breached void. A crack in reality. A big red button. No more. Howling, howling, howling.

“Wake up!”

His eyes snapped open.

He didn’t know where he was. Nothing felt right; not the air, not time, not even his own body. The Doctor tried to do a quick systems check, and the results were all wrong. His hand flew to his chest, where only one heart was beating.

A choking scream echoed through the space, which seemed to be tick tick ticking, and he didn’t realize that it was him who shouted until soothing hands were brushing through his hair. Vision focusing, he saw Rose Tyler kneeling next to him, or at least it was something that looked like Rose Tyler. She felt too cool. Or maybe he was too warm.

“Are you real?” he asked, hoping that she wouldn’t lie to him.

Just one heart working, and it was beating too fast, refusing to slow down. The air was too thick, he couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah.” A sad smile. “I’m real.”

The Doctor didn’t know if he believed her, closing his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see the moment she inevitably vanished. “I’m dying,” he told the being-who-might-be-Rose as he shuddered and collapsed back onto some sort of sofa.

“You’re fine,” she lied, but it was a lie she seemed to believe.

“Only got one heart beating,” he admitted, trying to get his breathing under control as his malfunctioning body began to sweat. The room ticked away, and he wondered if all of this was about to explode, if he should be running, if he even could run. His legs felt like lead. So did his arms. The air was too thick, dragging him down.

“That’s-”

The Doctor shut his eyes tighter, tears escaping that he hadn’t even realized were there. She must have vanished, just like he knew she would. And if she was never real to begin with, why did it have to hurt so much for her to go?

A weight rested on top of him, and he would never forget the feel of her. He vaguely wondered what it meant for him, to be having tactile hallucinations. Olfactory hallucinations. Even the buzz of time that had never left her skin after she took in the vortex was present.

“You’ve still got two beating,” Rose whispered as his arms wrapped around her in a tight hold that didn’t feel nearly strong enough to keep her. He wasn’t strong enough to keep her.

Her heart beat steadily over where his right heart had failed.

“I’m scared,” the Doctor admitted, eyes still closed though it was oddly easier to breathe.

“I’ve got you.”

“Please be real,” he whimpered, even as his mind grew foggier.

She said something, but he didn’t know what. Everything was fading away, darkness becoming darker, becoming void.

Nothing.

The Doctor awoke alone on the couch in his office. According to his time sense, he had slept for eighteen hours and twenty-one minutes. He felt better than he had in weeks, but also so much worse. He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it.

“What’s wrong now?”

The pillow dropped from his hands and his eyes locked with Rose’s as she raced up the slight stair onto the platform that separated his primary workspace from the rest of the top floor.

“What?” His voice cracked.

Rose Tyler sat next to him on the couch, hand immediately resting on his forehead, primitively gauging his temperature. The Doctor cleared his throat before trying again.

“Rose, what are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad, I’m so very, very glad you’ve come.” Her hand dropped away and he was able to get a good look at her, dressed in a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts (Jackie had bought him a ridiculous amount of clothes before he left the manor, all of which he sent out to be cleaned). He swallowed audibly. “W-why are you wearing my clothes?”

“‘M locked in here. Door’s deadlock sealed.”

Flashes of memories began to speed through him. Attaching a re-calibrated Tziklian implosion grenade to a newly-repaired retroreflective Clishtahrr drone. Obsessively trying to circumvent his vision in order to peer at his own timeline, making himself sick. A contained rift event in the lower levels of the tower that made him feel like he had looked into the untempered schism again.

(Run, run, run!)

“I’m sorry. I don’t … I’ll just …”

He pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, found his sonic screwdriver and unsealed the door. And he wished he hadn’t trapped her with him, even if he was starting to remember why (inky black terror crawling up his spine, wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe).

“Do you remember what happened yesterday?” she asked, following him as he went to check the TARDIS on autopilot, looking as if she was worried he would collapse (again).

“It’s coming back to me,” the Doctor admitted. Still had a good four hours to go before the shatterfry process would be complete. He straightened his shoulders, trying to stand tall as he turned to face her. “Things got a little, uhm, unpleasant. I’ll do better.”

“Unpleasant,” Rose scoffed. “I’m pretty sure you had a bleedin’ breakdown!”

“It’s been a difficult regeneration,” he deflected, turning away, leaving the platform and making a beeline to the tiny kitchenette tucked off to the side. Tea. He just needed more tea.

“So, this how it’s gonna be, then? All that stuff about wanting to talk, but now you’re just done?”

He nearly spilled the kettle with the speed of his turn, brows furrowed and mouth falling open. “What? Of course I want to talk!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Just, er, what did I say? Before?”

Memory was still a bit of a blur. Successful energy funnel for the TARDIS’ growth tank. Vodka tasting different in a universe without potatoes. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. No contact.

“You don’t remember?”

“I said it was coming back to me, it’s just not coming in the right order.” he sighed, refocusing on the tea.

“Well, what’s the last thing that you vividly remember?” Rose asked, moving around him, easily finding mugs and sugar and milk.

“Thirteen days ago, creating a temporal disruption chrono-field manipulator. Needed to siphon rift energy for our TARDIS. She needs a very specific growth environment.”

“Thirteen days?! Wait, siphoning the-” She leaned against the tiny countertop and covered her face with her hands. The only sound for a few moments was of the electric kettle quickly boiling the water. “Our TARDIS?”

“If you want,” the Doctor muttered, lifting a hand, wanting to touch her, but then thinking better of it. He clenched his fist as it dropped to his side.

Rose groaned as she turned back to him. “Of course I want that, you daft alien git! But you don’t exactly make things easy, do ya? I spent years getting back to you, and then suddenly there’s two of you and one of you abandons me just like I was always afraid of, but one of you stays and I’m expected to be able to process any of it? And then for weeks it’s an effort just to give myself space, knowing that wherever I go you’re so close, part of me wondering why I’m even trying to stay away when all I wanted for ages was to be back with you. Then suddenly you’re gone! I still know where you are, but there isn’t a chance that I’d actually run into you. And I still don’t know what to feel, but coming here yesterday, seeing you … I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so broken.” There were tears in her eyes. His nails dug into his palms with the effort it took not to wrap his arms around her, to wipe them away. “I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.”

“It’s not. It’s my own fault. You haven’t done a single thing wrong,” he assured her.

“That’s not true and you know it,” she tried to laugh, but it came out watery. “I’ve been an absolute cow. And I still haven’t answered your question. You’d said some things about words being a type of science, and that you could say things here that you couldn’t in the other universe. Like you were paranoid, under surveillance or something? I think you tried to describe how your time sense stuff works, but you almost fainted.”

“Fifty-seven days without you and that’s what I was talking about?” The Doctor grimaced.

The kettle clicked off.

“If it makes you feel better, it was kinda romantic. The stuff about not saying goodbye and forever and blowing up my job.”

“Blowing up your what?!”

“That’s why I had to come here. You blew up the old Records Annex.”

“Riiiiight. That explains the drone bomb. It’s not like they weren’t going to blow it up anyway. Didn’t I help?”

Rose rolled her eyes before moving to fix both their teas. “We’ll get into that later. Right now I don’t even want to talk about us. I wanna know about you, what you’ve been doing these past two months. Because I didn’t even stop to think what this all must be like for you.”

Cuppa in hand, the Doctor led her back to the couch as he tried to think of how best to explain something that he barely understood himself.

“I was created in a two-way human-Time Lord instant biological meta crisis. Hundreds of years as one being, then suddenly two. Exact same mind, almost the exact same body, but different enough that I can barely comprehend existing in it. If you remember, the first forty-eight hours of the regeneration cycle are complicated and dangerous. Barely a few hours into mine I was dropped outside of the prime universe that all Gallifreyans are meant to exist in, cut off from all telepathic contact as the walls of reality continued to sway, slowly falling back into place. It’s been … an adjustment. Sometimes things don’t feel real, even when they are. Sometimes things feel incredibly real, even when they aren’t.”

“You had a nightmare,” Rose told him, placing a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing soothing circles through his layers. “I woke you up, tried to help. You didn’t think I was real. You thought you were dying, because you only had one heart.”

He tried to smile, and the action felt painful. “Sounds about right.”

“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so selfish-”

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for. I want you to put yourself first.”

“But I can’t stand seeing you in pain like this. What can I do to help?” she asked, a desperation in her eyes that he couldn’t bear.

“You’re already helping,” the Doctor sighed, finally giving in and leaning into her touch, lying his head on her shoulder. It was the closest he’d felt to time since they’d been left on that bloody beach.

Memories were still racing through his head. Energy coils radiating artron energy into a centrifuge. The smell of burnt flesh against the remains of a Bverni navigational system. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. No contact.

“The other Doctor said that you needed me.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yes, because he needs you. He also said that I was dangerous. I am. He is. We are. But you already knew that. It’s easy, you know, to yell at yourself. Not often that there’s actually a separate you there to yell at. I destroyed the Daleks, but we’d already done that before we met. In fact, so did you. The other me was lashing out, knowing what he would have to do but not wanting to do it.”

“That’s another thing,” Rose said, moving to face him, dislodging his head, “you said that us being here, in this universe, was the best, safest option. What was that about?”

“Something’s coming. Has come. Ended and began. There’s a massive paradox surrounding me in the other universe. Incredibly dangerous, potentially catastrophic. All I know is that it has something to do with a woman named River Song who claims to be my wife.”

“Your wife?!”

“I said claims. And she did seem to be telling the truth, besides the fact that what she was saying was entirely preposterous. My soul is entirely bound to yours.” The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it. “So I think I have an idea of the kind of man I’ll have to become in order to keep the universe intact.”

“What’s that?”

“A liar. If she is going to believe that I could possibly join myself to someone else, someone who isn’t you, I’m going to have to lie. I’m going to have to forget. I’m going to have to lie so well and for so long that even I believe the fiction I’ve created for myself.”

He wondered what the other him in the other universe would think, then, whenever he caught a rare glimpse at their timeline surrounded in gold, bound with Rose’s for all eternity. What kind of explanation he would craft. The Doctor shuddered.

“But that sounds horrible!” she cried.

“It’s the sacrifice he’s making for the sake of the universe. My timeline is dangerous and someone, something is tampering with it. You and I made one tiny little paradox and it almost destroyed everything. This one is circular, might be able to be maintained, but the scale of it, Rose. And who knows if it will even work. River seems great and all, at least I hope so, but I don’t think she has much of a handle on time travel. That, or she’s a manipulative psychopath. Suppose that’s a surprise for the other me to find out.”

Rose sniffled and he pulled her into a hug.

“He’s going to be all alone.” The words were muffled into his shoulder, his shirt growing damp with her tears. He cringed and tried to think rationally, that of course she would feel this way, that it had nothing to do with how she felt about him him. But then again, maybe it did.

“He won’t be alone. He’ll find someone. I always do, eventually.”

“B-but I-”

“We’ll figure it out. How to get you back there, once it’s safe,” he whispered into the top of her head. Maybe that would be it- what she needed this him for. And if so, it would be enough. It would have to be enough.

“Really?”

The Doctor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“So it’s not- you really weren’t abandoning me here?” Rose lifted her head, eyes brimming with a hope that had been missing before.

“Never.” The word felt as if it was torn out of his very being.

She cupped his cheek, stubble beginning to smooth out into the beginnings of a beard. He really needed to shave.

“I thought you said to never say never ever?”

“That was before.”

It occurred to him that he had tea, so he took a sip - it had gone cold.

“Oh, right, all the, uhm, psychic-kinetic-telepathy science stuff.”

He opened his mouth to correct her - she was very close, though - but was interrupted by the ringing of the giant clock. It was heavily muffled by the sound proofing adjustments he had made while setting up the office, but still audible enough.

“It’s eight now, yeah?” Rose asked, even as she moved away.

“Yes.”

She walked over to his desk, where the Doctor now noticed a pile of her folded clothes sat. He frowned when she brought them over to him.

“Do you think you could sonic these clean for me? I’m gonna quick hop into your decontamination shower.”

“Th- there’s a proper shower, it’s two floors down. First left, third right, door marked ‘Security Level Alpha’.”

“What, really?”

“Didn’t want random lab techs using it. Has a retina scan. It’ll let you in.”

Rose laughed, ruffled his hair, and gave him a kiss on the cheek before disappearing to get ready for work. The whole thing left him confused. He went through his list again, checking and double checking to make sure that this all was real . It was, just as it had been all morning.

More memories. Recalibrating the tower’s new sub-basement weapon’s vault. Burnt toast and no more jam left. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. Contact made.

It wasn’t fair that she had spent almost an entire day with him yet he had missed most of it. Still, he sonicked her clothes, as well as his tea. Finished his cuppa, and then had a second before Rose came back from her shower.

“Why’s there no one around?”

“Dangerous radiation leak,” the Doctor shrugged. “I fixed it almost as soon as it happened, but apparently there’s ‘procedures’. How’d you get in?”

She bit her lip, fighting a smile. “Mighta shot a few of your doors,” Rose admitted, picking up an electro-pulse blaster off of a nearby cart. Non-lethal on organic matter. Very effective on fancy doors. “Nobody told me anything about a radiation leak, though.”

“Classified radiation leak.”

“And why’s that?” she scowled, hands on her hips.

“Everything to do with time travel is classified to this office. Bethany is not being very cooperative about putting you down as a liaison-whatever. Please believe me, I wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret.”

“Oh.” Rose glanced over at the EEPEC, absently biting her thumbnail.

The Doctor didn’t know what she was thinking, didn’t know if he should ask. After a moment she disappeared into the loo to change, promising to be back in a tick.

It was a funny multiverse, really, that his reunion with Rose Tyler would be such a stilted thing. That it would be about him and her, but not this him. Acknowledged with a few questions after his health, sure, but that was just polite. She’d always been compassionate, caring for others. Rose didn’t see him as the Doctor. Not the proper one. Sure, she used his name, but it would be easier for her to do that this time around.

He looked just like him.

He was him.

But he wasn’t.

Memories were still coming. Adjustments to Torchwood’s alien tech retrieval protocols. Nutrition shots. Reports reading: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. Contact made.

He went through the list again. Still real.

Unless it wasn’t.

Unless he wasn’t.

What would have stopped the other Doctor from knocking him out and uploading him into a matrix? Giving him a half-life with a programmed Rose Tyler?

The air here felt wrong.

(Wrong universe. Wrong universe. Wrong universe.)

“Doctor!”

(Daleks exploding. “What have you done?!”)

Pressure against his hands. Why was it so dark?

The Doctor opened his eyes to see Rose in front of him, pulling his fingers away from his palms. Oh. He was bleeding. Hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry, sorry.” He spun away from her in order to grab the first aid kit from his desk.

“What happened?” she asked, vibrating with barely contained panic.

“Nothing, nothing. Things just got jumbled for a second,” he assured her, efficiently cleaning his palms and wrapping them in gauze in a practiced motion.

“How often do you-”

“Hard to say. I’ve been graphing them. Seems to be stress contingent, but generally decreasing. My senses are gradually acclimating to this universe, so I have to hope that once they do, I’ll be fine. Perfect. Molto bene. No inconvenient lapses.”

“Stress? What h- oh.”

He didn’t like the sound of that ‘oh’. The Doctor clenched his jaw before facing her.

“We still haven’t talked about us,” Rose pointed out, approaching him slowly. Like he was a wild animal. Like he would hurt her. “And you … you don’t really remember yesterday still, do you?”

“Not really.”

His hands hurt. His body ached. One heart, and it was beating so quickly that he was sure it would give out.

Rose wrapped her arms around him and he automatically returned the embrace.

“Maybe I should just call in,” she suggested as she pulled away. “We can just take the day?”

“Or don’t and stay anyway,” the Doctor couldn’t help pointing out. “Some bits have come back, and didn’t they send you here?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my god, they did!”

And it was beyond words, how great it was to hear her laughing again. To see her smiling.

But …

That was wrong.

Rose was upset with him.

Time didn’t feel right.

The air tasted off.

Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe.

The Doctor staggered backwards.

His respiratory bypass was malfunctioning. It was like it wasn’t even there. He couldn’t get air into his lungs.

Everything went black.

There was a shot of gold, and then a different kind of black.

“Doctor,” said a whisper in the dark. “The timer went off for the TARDIS. ‘M I supposed to take her out of that thing?”

A TARDIS timer?

TARDIS … timer …

The timer for the extended electro-percussive environment chamber!!!

The Doctor shot up from where he had apparently been lying on the couch and ran over to the EEPEC, swiftly shut it off, removed the tank housing their baby TARDIS, and then poured in the pre-prepared aqueous nutrient solution before inserting the tank into the quasi-dimensional artron chamber (currently set to it’s highest opacity setting).

“Hah!” he exclaimed, punching his fist in the air and itching to switch the chamber’s outside view settings to transparent. He turned to Rose, opened his mouth to ask her, and then paused.

It all came back to him, all of it, not just the jumbled recollections he had been getting earlier. Apparently he had fallen into a healing coma, and it seems to have been just what he needed … but it all truly hadn’t been fair to Rose. Though, to be fair, she was currently smiling like it was Christmas, so-

Christmas. Healing comas.

Huh.

“Shall we switch it to transparent?” the Doctor asked, unable to reign himself in any longer. “It was clear when Benny - quite the coincidence, right? - helped me set it up. This is a quasi-dimensional artron chamber. It’s funnelling in rift energy and centrifuging artron particles, and the end result in that chamber is the specific environment needed to properly grow a TARDIS. Well, along with the chrono-nutritio aqueous habitat. Benny describes looking into it as being similar to taking DMT, which, by the way, is completely inaccurate. It’s exactly like looking into an Eye of Harmony. If it’s malfunctioning, it’s like looking into the untempered schism, which I don’t recommend. But everything’s stable now, we could-”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to look into the vortex?” Rose interrupted, and …

“Right … erm, well ,” he hedged, scratching the back of his neck, “I mean, it isn’t actually the vortex, but you’re probably not completely wrong. Best not risk it.”

Excitement abating, the Doctor slumped against the chamber and at that moment realized that he had been changed into jim jams.

Jim jams. Healing comas.

Huh.

At least these were his own pajamas, and not some ‘friend’ of Jackie’s, though how strange was it that he owned his own pajamas in the first place?

“C’mere,” Rose said, beckoning him back toward the couch, which she was sitting next to, but not on. Not your typical decision, but he had likely taken up all of the space earlier. “I made you some tea.”

It really wasn’t worth it, cataloguing the similarities between this and when he had first regenerated into this body … even though the list did seem to be growing.

“Perfect! Just what I need!” the Doctor smiled as he walked over, taking a seat next to Rose on the floor.

Silence fell as he sipped his tea, and he found himself unsure of what to do or say next. There was too much to say, and he’d certainly done a piss poor job of organizing his thoughts earlier.

“Feeling better?” she asked, after another moment.

Small talk. He could definitely do small talk.

“Mmm yes, very much so.”

“Better enough to talk?”

The Doctor coughed, having swallowed his tea incorrectly (bloody hybrid body, still acting up), before nodding. Rose moved onto the couch and he scrambled to join her.

“So,” she began and paused, face scrunching up in concentration (it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who found this whole business incredibly awkward), “I guess … what is it that you actually want? Aside from a working TARDIS, that is.”

His brows furrowed.

Sure, there were plenty of ways he could answer that question and have all of them be true, but he had a feeling that she was looking for a specific type of ‘want’.

Problem was, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure what that was .

“What?” he asked, in lieu of any better things to say (as the runner up response was to ask for some jam, or maybe a banana, or some of the takeaway from the shop down the corner and blimey, he was hungry).

“This whole time, all of it, since you c- since you were- since you stopped just bein’ a hand- ” the Doctor had a list of complaints and corrections that he barely held in “- nobody’s asked what you wanted. The D- the other Doctor chose for both of us, really, and I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. An’ I wanna know. What do you want?”

Removed from the actual experience itself (and therefore not feeling incredibly, deathly ill), visions of the slight peek he’d gotten four days ago of his own timeline played in his head.

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand, weaving their fingers together.

“I want this.”

She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Care to elaborate?” she asked with a slight laugh.

“Nope,” he replied, popping the ‘p’. “Because as long as you’re happy, everything else is just- just semantics. I mean, obviously it’s going to be a bit dull until the TARDIS has grown enough for proper travel, but I think we can make do?” At least, he really hoped so. It hadn’t been going swimmingly so far, but the Doctor sincerely hoped that he could chalk all that up to the initial side effects of the meta crisis, compounded by all of the, er … technical difficulties he had run into while constructing the TARDIS’ growth tank. Also, his new hybrid body needed much more maintenance than he was used to, including sleep. Really was rubbish without regular sleep. Such a waste of time.

“So, if I were to suggest you moving into the flat?”

He opened his mouth, intending to immediately agree, but then frowned. The TARDIS was here, after all. And he absolutely could not move her. Not at this stage. Not until she could connect to other dimensions on her own. The Doctor looked over at the quasi-dimensional artron chamber, once again wishing that he could switch it to transparent and watch the process unfold.

“How moved in is moved in?” he asked once he forced himself to turn back toward Rose.

“You’d sleep there, shower there, eat some of your meals. Most of your clothes an’ stuff would be there. Y’know. It’d be where you live. With me. If you want.”

“And that’s what you want?” he double checked, trying not to telegraph his surprise - he must have missed a lot while in a coma, as last he knew they were teetering on the edge of a row.

Rose rolled her eyes, and that was much more in line with where he thought they were at, er, relationship-wise.

“Well, I don’t fancy living in a clocktower office. When I’m done working, I’d like to not still be at work, ta.”

She did make some excellent points … but still, it all implied that they would be staying together. And that was what he wanted, of course it was, but the Doctor still couldn’t help but feel he had missed something crucial despite the fact that he could now remember everything clearly.

“You blew up my job. ”

“I love you, too. But I’m still mad at you.”

“You’ve still got two beating.”

Maybe there wasn’t something to have missed. Human emotions were relatively complex, after all, and there was no rule requiring them to happen in isolation.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked, realizing as he did that to Rose it was coming from seemingly out of nowhere.

This was confirmed as she blinked, brows furrowing.

“I don’t know. Maybe a little, but …”

“But?” the Doctor repeated, unable to stand the suspense.

“It’s hardly the first time we’ve had a fight, yeah?”

He nodded, unsure of where she was planning on going with this and hoping that he wouldn’t need to begin apologizing for every insensitive thing he’d said or done since they first met. It would take ages.

“Well, we always end up workin’ it out. And we did live together, travelin’ on the TARDIS, whether we had a row or not, so …” Rose shrugged, now examining her fingernails.

Speaking of the TARDIS, though …

“First things first,” the Doctor began, rubbing the back of his neck as he stood up and began pacing, “I want it on record that I would absolutely love to live in a flat with you, with carpets and doors and things. Assuming we’d spend much of our time traveling about, that is.” He turned back toward her, having paced his way back over to the TARDIS’ QDA chamber. “The thing is, it’s … I don’t want you to think that- the TARDIS. She needs me here. This is a critical development period. For the next three to six months, the TARDIS will be growing in the chamber, learning how to connect to and create dimensions. Until she can manage it, I can’t move her and she requires near-constant monitoring. Every hour or two.”

“She’s like a newborn baby,” Rose commented, getting up and joining him at the chamber, where she stroked the side.

“Exactly.”

“Well, I suppose this’ll have to do then,” she reluctantly … agreed? “As long as we’re living in the flat as soon as she’s moveable, mind. The bathroom here is two floors away.”

“It’s a clocktower, Rose! There’s only so much space.” The Doctor scrunched up his face as he said the word.

“Then why’d you pick this place? I know because of the Rift, but doesn’t it stretch further than just the tower?”

“Nope,” he shrugged.

It’s not as though he hadn’t checked.

“Really?”

“Small rift.”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed, “a small rift right under Big Ben.”

The Doctor laughed with her, amazed that he finally could.

Then he frowned.

It was all a little too good to be true.

Was this real?

“Hey.”

He refocused. Rose was right in front of him, their eyes locked.

“You were getting that look in your eyes,” she informed him.

“Look? What look?” the Doctor asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew. Some sort of dazed tell, some sort of glaringly obvious indicator that his grasp on reality was failing him.

“This look you get when you start thinkin’ you’re in the wrong universe.”

Wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe.

“Well, I am in the wrong universe,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Yeah, I know. Me too. But y’know what?”

Rose wrapped her arms around him, and it was almost as if she were his tether, grounding him to this new reality they’d found themselves in.

“It’s better with two.”

#TenToo x Rose #doctor x rose #pairing: rose x doctor #timepetals #fic: improbable multiversal transcending spacetime event #fandom: doctor who #my fic

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fluffyeddybear · 4 years ago

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I’m about to gush about .hack, but only because it’s relevant to what I’m about to say about myself so this is going under a readmore lol

I’ve never seen anyone who’s already into .hack complain about these things, but I can see people new to it point out how 1) quite a few characters share designs and look too similar, such as straight up palette swaps, and 2) the story premise is usually the same. Now 1, it takes place in an mmo called The World and as people know, mmos tend to have limited character creation and there’s always a chance of people having similar taste in character design and MOST of the time, there’s a reason that characters share appearances. Such as 2 characters being parallels role wise in different stories or even in the same story. Chances are, if two characters look alike, they will point it out themselves whether it be symbolic or just for gags. Hell, there are 4 instances of the same exact character model being shared between 2 players with 2 of the instances being “Oh we share this account and take turns logging into this character” like twins sharing a character and a mother passing her account down to her 3-4 year old daughter lol and the other 2 being “hey you two were the 1,000,000th and 1,000,001st person to sign up, have these legendary character models”

Now 2, the premise and end goal of the stories are usually the same, a massive corporation called CC Corp is running a worldwide popular VR mmo that could bug out so badly that it causes people to go into comas or trap their consciousness in their player character and render them incapable of logging out. And it’s up the players and the friends they make along the way (that may or may not include actual employees of CC Corp) to figure out how to fix it. Even the bug itself could gain sentience and really fuck shit up. And usually during and after the crisis, CC Corp manages to dodge accountability and shift blame and players either believe CC or they just don’t care because the game is just that fun to them. Hell, some of them find the situation thrilling whether they believe it’s real or not!

But the journey is always unique due to the varying cast of characters in each season/game and new elements introduced overall. And they may even dive into the lore of the mmo itself which does get updated when a new version is released. There’s also a lot of backstory to .hack itself like the development of The World and things happening behind the scenes in hidden areas of the game and irl groups who oppose CC Corp. The main conflict is important, but it’s usually meant to drive the characters to their personal development and to progress their relationships with each other as well as serve as a kickass fantasy of saving the world by risking your life playing an online game. Literally the first season ends with the initially closed off and scarred main character developing relationships with various people who become a support system (and a legal guardian) irl and help them out of a life threatening, abusive household.

I say all of this to get to the fact that I believe this franchise is why I’m so attached to mmos. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted that friend group. Of course I don’t wanna risk my life to go against a corporation who constantly gets away with their rogue AI dodging their bug smashing Admin guilds and bugfixes, but the journey and camaraderie that comes from it all. Whenever I get heavily into one, I imagine gathering friends (and other people I respect and trust won’t call me a slur) to join me and we’d form our own guild or alliance or free company or whatever term is used in-game and we’d do dungeons, raids, events, and even just chill and chat in the game. And it’d progress to hopefully meeting irl and hanging out. Of course the game we play together would come up, but there would be some much to do and talk about offline. I like going to the mall, walking around town, playing sports (though my back would kick my ass for it and i’d be bedridden for days to weeks for too much activity ;-;). We could just talk about life, share funny stories, create together, and like I mentioned before, be a support system for each other.

I know I’m coming off as a massive nerd, but games are a jumping point for friendships for me and the teamwork and excitement that can come from it are things I love and look forward to. Not that you have to accept, I can’t be friends with everyone, but when I’m trying to get you to join me in a game or I’m trying to take part in a game you like, that’s me wanting to be your friend. And before I get any scoffs or “log out”s or “get other hobbies”, I just listed offline irl things I love to do. And I have other hobbies, I just prefer to do them alone lmaooooo.

#holy shit this is long and I rambled but I literally stopped making my food to come type and post this LOL #pardon me

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reginaldvonspiffington · 4 years ago

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The Curse of Creativity by Richard V Kelly Jr

(disclaimer: This piece is edited by the author’s daughter posthumously. No new words were added, only passages deleted or rearranged)

1. The Wrong Kind Of Creativity

At the advanced age of 59 I found myself in a hospital psychiatric ward full of dejected people. I had reached the point of near catatonia, almost unable to interact with the world, unable to sleep, barely able to speak, spending all day in bed staring at the ceiling. My diagnosis was “Major depression with psychotic expressions”.

Before this, I had composed symphonies and film scores. I had written textbooks, short stories, magazine articles, and half a dozen novels. I had sculpted in wood. I had written the code to create educational and artistic Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence applications. I had helped design a new school for creative kids. I had made educational films, created animations to teach Chinese, and written courses in every subject from neural networks to cryptography to architecture.

Most of my existence had been spent in a world of ideas and imagination. My mind had been a sparkler, shooting off scintillas in every direction: fragments of music, lines of lyrical poetry, drawings, sculptures, computer programs, virtual worlds. But that life was gone. And here I was lying in bed fixated on the light of a bulb leaking in from an air vent.

I was still inventive at this point, but it was the wrong kind of inventiveness, the frightening unacceptable form. I had broken the membrane that separates playful imagination from gibbering lunacy. I still made up stories in my head, but they were all dark, bleak, lugubrious tales. The vent I was staring at obviously led to a parallel world where “they” were watching my every movement. I could feel the heat emanating from the wall, a form of thermal ray designed to cook my brain and mold my behavior. I had progressed beyond the creative person's liberation-from-the-mundane to the disturbed person's liberation-from-the-real.

There was no sense in moving from the hospital bed. Movement didn't matter. Nothing mattered. There was no future. And all the things I had created in the past seemed like a colossal waste of time. What was I thinking writing books no one would ever read and composing music no one would ever listen to? What was the point of that? Or anything else?

The disease I was suffering from, depression, is astonishingly common. Almost 10% of Americans are taking anti-depressants right now. In fact, anti-depressants are the most prescribed drug in America. Almost 20% of women between the ages of 40 and 60 take them. And one in five people will eventually experience depression. So, pretty much everyone knows someone who has suffered from this illness.

But there is a level even deeper than the bottomless well of depression. 20% of people diagnosed with major depression (“major” in this case signifies acute, rather than chronic) also develop paranoia or other symptoms of psychosis including delusions and hallucinations. I was one of those people. I was terrified by my diagnosis, not because of the word “depression” – I knew there were treatments available - but because of the word “psychotic”. This was a term I had often used to describe crazy violent people for whom there was no cure. I pondered my possible future life as a babbling derelict.

The new psychiatric resident assured me that the psychosis of depression and the psychosis of schizophrenia “are completely different disease processes originating in different parts of the brain”. And I knew intellectually that paranoia was misuse of my imagination. It was the dark side of the creativity that had sustained me my entire life. It was creativity as self-torture. But, even though I understood that my internal chemistry was creating false stories to misguide my thinking, I still felt hopeless, dejected, and persecuted.

Staring through the fog of delusion, I realized that I had finally reached my secret goal of living in a world entirely of my own creation, but not in the way I had intended. I had hoped to spend every day reading my own novels, watching my own movies, laughing at my own animations, and listening to my own music, comforted by a sensible lyrical self-made universe. Instead, I was enwrapt in a vivid nightmare. My own creative thoughts were tormenting me. I couldn't wake up to escape them, and I couldn't sleep to avoid them.

The onset of depression is a slow process. One day I stopped reading. The flavor had gone from my favorite activity, so I dropped it. Then I stopped listening to music; it no longer provoked any feelings. I couldn't write anymore; creating worlds had lost its joy. I stopped watching TV and movies; they were pointless and unfulfilling. Everything I loved doing slipped away. I felt like crying all the time. The future turned black. I stopped working. And I hardly slept, so I became sleepy enough at the wheel of the car that I stopped driving for fear of hurting someone. This led to a shut-in's existence. I became what the Japanese call hikikomori – someone so tired of the world or sensitive to its vileness that they have pulled themselves inward and withdrawn from all contact, often never leaving their room.

Paranoia crept in. I thought the backyard garden was somehow being tended at night by persons unknown who were fertilizing and weeding it while I slept. I thought the morning bird calls were synthetically generated. I thought black and white cars were following me. I avoided my computer because I assumed it had been hacked by a malevolent villain who presented bad news to me in order to blame me for something I didn't entirely understand. And I all but stopped eating because I imagined that each food had a particular meaning, incriminating me in some crime. After 3 months I'd lost 30 pounds.

As the disease progressed, I spent hours at a time in a swimmy somnambulance, as if I'd been drugged. Think of this predicament for a moment. Imagine being unable to read, write, exercise, work, garden, fix things around the house, chat with spouse or friends, eat, sleep, play cards, surf the net, or watch TV or movies. What would you do? Try it for a day. Eventually, I was reduced to pacing the living room, sitting for hours lost in rumination, or trying to sleep and being unable to. I had always thought of a person's mind as their only defense against a hostile world. Now that my mind had abandoned me, the hostile world came pouring in.

I began to develop severe cramps in my abdomen that curled me up like a baby at night. I felt as if I was giving birth. I developed headaches – a malady I'd never been bothered with before. And I became preoccupied with delusions. I imagined my wife had somehow been divided into different people: a 54 year old, a 40 year old, a 30 year old, and a 20 year old. I spent many nights awake, staring at her as she slept, waiting to see if she would switch to a different version of herself.

By summer's end, my existence consisted of getting out of bed, passing like a weary ghost through each day, void of joy or even interest, enveloped in rumination, miserable at the prospect of another excruciating night featuring nothing but heat, pain, and wakefulness. And it all felt as if it was being done to me. Eventually, I ended up just lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

I knew what was in store for me because my wife's brother had died by his own hand after a similar bout of depression. But, through the miasma of pain and woe, I insisted all was well. My family tried intervening to get me to a doctor, but I refused. And, eventually, my wife, conspiring with my doctor, cried as she urged me to go to the hospital for “just an evaluation”, which I assumed consisted of a casual chat in the emergency room followed by a prescription. I ended up in a locked ward in a hospital bed for a week having horrific nightmares as the medicine kicked in while listening to patients cry out at night for help.

I learned that there are three different psych wards in a large hospital: one for schizophrenics, one for depressives, and one for Alzheimer's/dementia patients. Because there were no spots open in the depression ward, they put me in the dementia ward with people twenty years my senior who had much bigger problems than I had. One woman had no family to look after her outside the hospital: no husband, no siblings, no kids, no living relatives, only a friend. Many people had lost all that was important to them in their lives, and were now losing the memories of their own life stories. The place was frightening, humbling, fascinating, and one enormous eye-opening lesson in appreciation for the wife, family, and friends who came to visit me every day or called me on the phone.

By studying the subject of depression, I learned that the trigger can be many years ahead of the expression, so I may never find out what provoked my downward spiral. Genetics probably had something to do with it. A difficult childhood was certainly a factor. But my guess is that trying to be a creative person in a world that consistently crushes or exploits creative people had the most to do with it.

Depression is like being anesthetized then dropped into a bathtub that slowly fills. The water rises to your back, then your sides, then your chin, then your eyes, then over your head, until all you can do is look at the surface above and blink.

Depression is like having life peeled away from you layer by layer until nothing is left. Wake up one day and there is no literature. The next day music is gone. Then movies disappear, then working, then moving, then talking, until only breathing remains, slow, mechanical breathing.

Depression is like being overcome by an illness, as if a degenerative virus has taken control and sapped the strength of your muscles, then infected your bones, then infiltrated your nerves, and finally seeped into your head so that every part of you is diseased.

Depression is like becoming a statue. A running animated active body slows down and finally stops. Arms, legs, and mind freeze up. The inner armature stiffens. Movement ceases. A shell forms and hardens until only an effigy remains that is gradually overgrown by vines and bramble. It starts with a slow numbing to the world, a withdrawal, a closing off to pleasure until the mind turns to marble, motion stops, the last spark of optimism is snuffed out, reason is suspended, rigid misery sets in.

Depression is like being a sun that slowly burns itself out, gradually losing the coronal fires, the heat diminishing, the plasma churning less and less every day, cooling to a smoldering ember, the flames snuffing themselves into smoke, and becoming quiet until all that is left is a burnt brown rock that gives no light or warmth, a cold stone floating in limitless space.

It took time to recover. After the hospital, I went to a two-week out-patient group with other folks also recovering from anxiety or depression. And, a few months after the hospital visit, I was feeling much better. The two drugs they gave me – one for depression, one for psychosis - worked miraculously. The medicine and the realization that I was actually surrounded by people who cared about my welfare set me back on the road to health. The paranoia dissipated. I gained 14 pounds in two weeks. I started reading again.

I came away with the impression that this could happen to anyone. There's nothing that separates me from the homeless people in the street except a simple exceeded threshold of neurochemicals.

And I received two great gifts from the experience. The obvious one was the realization that I had a wonderful wife, family, and friends who would help me, people I had formerly taken for granted. But the unexpected gift was the experience – because of the anti-psychosis medicine - of becoming a non-creative person for the first time in my life. That encounter with the non-creative worldview was as interesting an experience as the depression and paranoia had been.

2. My Non-Creative Life

Within a month after starting treatment I had risen from a waking death. I was talking to people, reading, and watching movies again. But the chemical I was ingesting to stave off paranoia had the effect of preventing me from writing stories, composing music, scrawling art, scribbling computer code, building animations, or even thinking creatively. I could ingest the world again while taking the medicine – through books, movies, music, podcasts – but I could not actually produce anything. The portcullis gate had come crashing down. Access to the creative part of my mind had been blocked.

The disease of depression was about closing off inputs. I couldn't read, watch, or listen when depressed. The cure was about re-opening inputs, but closing off outputs. I could take in the world again, but I couldn't write, film, draw, program, or compose. Under the depression, I couldn't take in anything new, but I could still confabulate. Under the cure, I could absorb the world, but I couldn't create any new worlds in my head.

The mechanisms of the brain that allow someone to make up stories in order to become paranoid are the same mechanisms that allow someone to make up stories to write fiction. So, the medicament I took, designed to eliminate the alarming connections of paranoia inside my skull, also eliminated the lyrical connections of story-telling. For the first time in my life I got to feel what it was like to be non-creative.

No more five-new-ideas-before-breakfast. No need to keep a pen and an adding machine scroll of paper beside the bed to jot down nocturnal inspirations. No more getting up in the middle of the night to write a paragraph that had evolved during the murky half-asleep state. No more days spent in animation development. No more running to the keyboard with a new melody in mind. I stopped composing music. I put aside my novels. I stopped thinking in the way a creator thinks. It was as if half of my mind had been carved away. It was as if I were grounded in the material world for the first time. I began to adopt what I imagine the life experience of most people to be. It was fascinating.

I've heard people say, “I don't have a creative bone in my body.” My response to that statement had always been mystification and a shocked wonder at what that must feel like. I thought turning off creativity would be like turning off hunger, joy, or reason. I had experienced exactly that - turning off hunger, joy, and reason - during the depression. But I was still creative then. With depression, I couldn't take in anything new, but I could still confabulate. With treatment, I could absorb the world again, but I couldn't create any new worlds in my head.

This was rather astonishing to me. Ordinarily, I'm only thinly connected to the palpable realm. I live so much inside my own head that the physical world is all but meaningless to me. I eat when I'm hungry. I get cold in the winter. It hurts when I step on sharp rocks in bare feet. But, beyond those links to the realm of atoms and sensation, I don't have much of a relationship to the tangible plain. All of my time is spent with ideas, words, interpretations, interconnections, the embrace of novelty, the prosody of life, everything that is above “the stuff” of existence. I usually live a sort of meta life – in the world, but not of it. For the first time, because of the medicine, I could experience only existence, only “the stuff”.

For a year, I woke up, washed, ate, evacuated, watched movies, chatted with people, watched more movies, poked around in the garden, and slept. Then I got up again the next day and did the same. I had no original thoughts. I wrote nothing. I composed nothing. I invented nothing. I began to wonder if I ever would again. I just walked through life, taking it in, but not putting the pieces together to produce anything new. I responded to the world around me as life happened, but I did nothing more than respond. I thought, “So, this is how other people feel? This is what it's like to not have a creative bone in your body?”

I figured my brain needed time to heal, so I let it heal. And I appreciated experiencing the mental life of an ordinary person. I would not want to live that way forever. But it was restful to live without layers of meaning. Everything was only what it was. I could pick up an orange and think only “orange”. There were no associations, no mental rambling, no blaze of connections, no desire to interpret experience, no wish to create something new, only the requirement to react to what already existed.

Before I knew it, a year had gone by. I began to taper off the paranoia medicine. And then, one day, I stopped it altogether. The day after stopping, my creative mind switched back on. I returned to my usual state of entertaining 40 ideas at once, all jostling for space in a crowded little wet bone box.

I'd pick up an orange and review in my head the discovery of sweet oranges in the New World as opposed to the sour oranges from India that Europeans had always known. I'd ponder the differences in the etymology of the word “orange” across all the European languages (many countries refer to it as a Chinese Apple). I'd consider the place the color orange fills on the visible light spectrum, the fact that cats and dogs don't eat the fruit – and don't see the color - because their bodies make their own vitamin C, the use of the peel in cleaning products, the vesicles holding liquid in pouches divided into segments to encourage sloths and mammoths to eat them in Pleistocene America. I'd dwell on the toxic coloring sprayed on the rind by growers who want all the fruit to appear ripe, the carnauba wax coating to seal out air and preserve freshness, our past family experiments with planting the seeds to grow indoor orange trees. And then thoughts would flow to kumquats and other indoor citrus plants we'd grown that were invaded by rancher ants that carried in aphids to suck the sap so the ants could drink their sweet excrement, to the plum curculios attacking the Asian pear trees outside, to the use of chickens to clean the ground of curculios, to ...

It was no longer just “orange” in my head. It was endless layer upon layer of simultaneous meaning. The word itself led in a hundred directions. The idea of the fruit led in a hundred more. The color led to yet another hundred. Everything intertwined. And I could see all the interlacing between the items. It was like looking at fabric that stretched to the horizon: the tapestry of past experiences, the rococo filigree of facts, the warp and woof of book learning, ideas knitted together by other languages, the mesh of mental images, braided databases filled with concepts. And there were countless sheets of this fabric, one of top of the other, each one interwoven with all the others.

With the medicine, an orange was a unitary experience. A thing was only a thing. An idea referred only to itself. A word had one meaning and no connection to any other words. Life was stark and simple.

Without the medicine, it was all a multi-colored rain of associations that poured, spat, gushed, spurt, surged, and inundated the landscape, tumbled, turned into braided streams, cascaded off cliffs, fed tributaries, swelled into rivers, and emptied into an ocean of sensation, memory, abstraction, fact, and imagination. And each raindrop was itself a kaleidoscope, a shifting hologram that held its own image in its separate pieces and recursed back onto itself and then out into the vastness.

Sooner or later, I'm going to long for the simplicity of “orange”. But when the medicine stopped, I leapt aboard ship and began sailing again on a sea of associations. The waves splashed me. I linked together the drops and began inventing things again, spinning stories, tying together melodies, inventing characters and worlds, re-immersing myself in the act of creation.

Being non-creative meant holding only one thought in my head at a time. Being creative meant having an uncountable number of thoughts and tying them all together to make new thoughts that no one had ever come up with before.

Being non-creative was like listening to one radio station all day. Being creative was like listening to sixty radios at once and making up new songs by dipping into the individual songs being played and selecting out pieces that went together in new compositions.

Being non-creative was like being a lumberjack. I would wake up, see the trees, and cut them down. Being creative was like being both the gardener who plants the acorns and the furniture maker who uses the harvested wood.

Being non-creative meant engaging with the quotidian world on its terms. Being creative meant devising a new world on my own terms.

Being non-creative was like eating and sleeping. Being creative was like having children.

3. The Creative Life

Ride the bus to school and watch the kid drawing manga characters in his notebook. Visit a grandmother's house and watch her sew a dress for her granddaughter. Observe the people who write stories their whole lives – for no other reason than to write stories. Watch the musicians alone in their rooms experimenting with new guitar riffs, new violins arpeggios, new piano chords, new vocal arrangements. Study the people who, unwilling to wait for a real-world teacher, learn from the internet how to make films, video games, and electronic art.

There are people who dance in their rooms at night, trying out new moves in the mirror. There are people who practice story-telling among friends. There are media artists who can't keep their hands off a new technology, who need to twist it to some artistic purpose as soon as they get their hands on it. There are people who make their own furniture to feel the lines of something that came from their own hands. There are people who blow and spin enough glass ornaments to fill the houses of their relatives. There are people who write the screenplays for the movies they want to act in. Creative people are everywhere. But most of us are invisible to the rest of the world.

I am one of millions of people who insert their art forms into the cracks of their daily life. They design and sew their own clothing at night. They compose songs to express their feelings. They draw comics and animations to make the mundane fantastical or the fantastical ordinary. They write books without any audience in mind just to create new worlds. They manipulate photographs because they have the urge to bend reality in a different direction. They fill their closets with water colors because no one will take any more of their paintings. They write fan fiction, invent electronic gadgets, build miniatures, construct robots, act in community theatres, slave over computer programs, and carve decoys, not because they see their obsession as the surest way to get rich, become famous, or entice sexual partners, but because they find a kind of joy and satisfaction in the act of creating that nothing else provides.

I am one of these people – someone who has sat at his sequencer, composing music on a Friday night after work, watching the sun set, dabbling at the keyboard, feeling joy, concentrating, and then looking up to see the sun rising again – so focused on the ecstasy of creation that no memory of time passing remains.

I am one of the people who, while getting paid to write software for financial applications at the state treasury, wrote miniature novels in the comments sections of the computer programs. I would adopt different voices – the cowboy, the cheerleader, the astronaut, the 1940s gangster – and write instructions to fellow programmers in those personae.

I am one of the people who made up stories for his kids every night – a different story each night, composed on the fly, weaving details of ordinary life into tales of talking animals and villains who always got their come-uppance.

I am one of the people who carved a wooden Christmas creche using penguins as models instead of people. I am one of the people who made enough money in the stock market one year to quit work and then spent his free time making animations, writing stories, and composing nocturnal jazz until the money ran out. I am one of the people who spent a lifetime choosing jobs, not for the money they brought in, but because they featured a creative element that could be explored. I'm also one of the people who got fired from jobs for being creative instead of political.

I am not famous. You have never heard of me. To the world at large I am invisible. But I am creative. In fact, the vast majority of creative people are invisible. And it's not because they are less talented or less dedicated to their craft than the famous people.

The famous people will certainly claim that talent, hard work, and persistence got them where they are, but there is an enormous amount of serendipity involved in becoming famous that no one talks about. For every famous creative person there are thousands of others with more talent and more dedication who are invisible. They are less pretty than the famous people. They are the wrong color, gender, persuasion, size, age. They live in the wrong place, in cultures that don't value their art, or among non-creatives who are mystified by anyone who spends their time having ideas or perfecting skills that do not lead to money, power, or sexual partners. Does that stop the no-names from being creative? Of course not.

These people are creative in ways that society does not value. But so what? Creativity is its own reward.

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costeausunset · 4 years ago

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What I played this month: October 2020, Part 2/2

Part 1

GIF by me (except for The Evil Within 2, I was to lazy...)

They bleed pixels, 2012, developed and published by Spooky Squid Games Inc, ~10 euros:

A young girl picks up a haunted book, becomes purple while swords replace her hands and she is now on a quest to kill the force of evil… I mean that's one of the best resumes I've seen for some time. The game is a hack and slash and platformer. As per the resume, the ambiance is really special, with the aesthetic and music. However this game isn’t for everyone, it’s definitely for more experienced players and even then you might still have issues finishing the game. The original difficulty of the game would be the equivalent of a difficult to very difficult scale. From what I saw this causes a lot of trouble for some players and the dev added an easy level, which is, for me, way too easy. So here I was stuck between almost no challenge, or stuck with levels that sometimes almost made me gauge my eyes out. For me, the main problem of the game is the platform part. You control a character that goes very fast, through levels that require precision and carefulness. You have three lives, but let’s be honest, you either die by falling in a pit, in which case, the three lives don’t matters, or you get hit by an enemy, which throws the character off in a nearby saw, which throw her right back at the ennemy, who hit her again, and bam your dead.

I honestly didn’t have the patience to finish the game. I honestly recommend you watch a playthrough or try a demo of the game before buying it.

Detention, 2017, developed and published by RedCandleGames, ~12 euros:

This game was a nice surprise! I bought it because I liked the artstyle, and I noped out of it back when I first started it because I didn’t realize it was a horror game. But just for this month, I started again, and I’m really happy I did! The story takes place in Taiwan during the white period. You control two students, Wei and Rin who are stuck, alone, in their high school during a storm, but not everything is as it seems. Soon enough Rin will wake up and find Wei dead, and in the middle of a dilapidated school occupied by evil spirits. The game is a point and click, you go forward solving puzzles. The puzzles are well organized, as is the level design, you will never find yourself lost for 20 minutes wondering where you need to go. The story is very interesting, but it takes some time to understand where the game is taking you. I would say you start to understand what happened half-way through (the game is 3 hours long). I would also recommend replaying the game or watching a playthrough after you finished it to really get the full extent of it. The horror in the game falls on the presence of the evil spirits and the fact that you don’t know what is happening, but once you start to understand, the horror feeling kind of disappears from the game, around the last hour, but I think this was wanted by the developers. What I really like about this game is that it shows you the real horrors of life are the ones that happen around us and who are perpetrated by other humans, and not the ones created by a common imaginary. I really recommend this game, but I think you should read a bit on the historical context before (you can find the info on the wikipedia page of the game!)

Speed dating for ghosts, 2018, developed and published by Copychaser Games, ~6 euros:

It’s a dating sim but with ghosts! I really enjoyed this game, you essentially speed date ghosts. Each of them has a really different story, a different way that they react to their death, and their new life as ghosts. Some stories are funny or hopeful, others are heart wrenching. There is also a dog ghost that you can pet! Which is one of the best arguments in favor of you playing this game! There is nothing to say more about it, just go and play it!

Sagebrush, 2018, developed and published by Redact Games, ~6 euros:

It’s a short point and click game. The game takes place in an abandoned small village who harbored a cult. You will be able to visit the common areas, the church, the cult leader home… in order to discover what happened in this place, how these people got enrolled in the cult and how they all died, how was their day to day life,.... The gameplay is really simple, it’s just a point and click, the puzzles are also really simple. But it doesn’t really matter as I feel like the main subject of the game is first and foremost the story, explaining how a cult works, how it indoctrinates people and how it can lead them to do things most people would never do while in their right mind. For me the game addressed the subject well, going right to the point and showing how a cult can slowly but surely, go into more and more extremist views, without necessarily condemning the members of said cult. If you are interested in things related to cults or you want to learn about it, you should play this game!

The Evil Within 2, developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda, 2018, ~30 euros:

It’s a psychological horror game. You play the detective Sebastian Castellanos who’s thrown into a programmed town to retrieve his daughter. This town has been programmed as a sort of parallel dimension that can be inhabited by humans via linked consciousness. However, the town collapsed, and when you arrive most of the inhabitants have been turned into zombies.

So for starters, I like how the game induces horror, with the music, sound design, the position of the character who’s hiding a good part of the screen, the fact that he is slow even when running… The level design is simple but it works even if I’m not convinced by the use of an open world in a horror game. The level up of the character and the weapons is intuitive but a bit bland. You have several weapons available, but the game limits your ammunition. They are all common except the crossbow! Ah, the crossbow! I love this weapon! You have different kinds of bolts with different effects: lighting, smoke, bomb… The design of the enemies is, in my opinion, fairly usual for a zombie horror game but effective.

However, the story and characters are a bit bland in my opinion. The pitch of the story, of both The Evil Within games, is very interesting in my opinion, but I think it was better explored in the first game. The rest of the story is really not that interesting, it consists of go-to point A to point B. The only character I found interesting was Stefano (but honestly it’s probably because I’m a bit weird and I can relate to the idea of doing anything for your art, even killing… Even if I would never do that…) the other characters feel very caricatural, they have a two-line background that doesn’t even need to be there, and they are only there to help Sebastian advance the story, none of them have other goals or interests which ended up in one-dimensional characters without any flavor. Even the relationship between Sebastian and his family feels very empty.

I would only recommend this game if you are interested in a good horror game and not in a good story.

#video games #video game #they bleed pixels #spooky squid games inc #detention #RedCandleGames #Speed dating for ghosts #Copychaser Games #Sagebrush #Redact Games #horror games #horror #spooky #the evil whitin 2 #tango gameworks #bethesda

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venus-says · 5 years ago

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Kamen Rider Zero-One Episode 28

Politics is a dirty game.

I know I'm gonna sound repetitive but I've said this last time and I'll have to say it again. How can a show be this good but at the same time be this bad????

There's so much to unpack here I don't even know where to start. I usually rather do these thematically but to be easier on myself I'll comment on things chronologically.

The episode already started getting me mad because they came with this story of Hiden being in the talks with the government to bring Daybreak back (or build a new one) for the entire past year and we've seen NONE of that being mentioned before. You all can't imagine the huge facepalm I've done at that moment I was watching it. And this ties-in with the point I brought up last time, if their intention this entire time was to have this referendum be the decisive thing for the Humagears' fate, why didn't they bring this up earlier? Why wasn't this the pitch for this arc rather than the stupid corporative race between ZAIA and Hiden? In fact, this makes way more sense to be the conflict driving the second arc, and maybe even the season on its entirety. If this was the pitch since this arc began I know at least I would be way more invested and caring way more for the events that happened because it wouldn't look like just two rich guys fighting over power but look like two different ideologies being put against the other, which in my eyes is a way better way to carry things on. This is an example of a great idea that was poorly executed.

Going to the battle, on a superficial level. I like the idea of a politician being brought in to do this because that's what makes sense, and I also like that there's no politician Humagear because they can't take chairs in the public offices because that would be being ruled by a machine and would be very creepy, and as weird as it is, I like that who they bring up to help spread Hiden's words to the public was a rapper, that's a decision that doesn't make a lot of sense, but is really fun I can't deny that. And I also like that this is reflected in their campaigns, it draws a simple yet very decent parallel with politics in real life. The most serious conservative party is able to reach and voters in the older demographic, while the idealist progressists speak easier with the younger ones while occasionally getting and older voter here and there. I also like that the previous MOTW cases are brought up as concrete back-ups for each party's claim. This was all very well done and this episode deserves praises for this, but it also highlights the flaws of this whole thing not being started earlier and also how having two-parters hurts it because all the examples of good Humagears came from the first arc of the season rather than this second one.

And while I don't think it was that bold of a move to do a call out in the corrupt politicians, I like how this was used to backfire their plan. You know, living in a country where corruptions run wild, seeing that guy lie in everyone's faces felt very real. I would rather that the in-suit fight didn't happen right there while the debate was going and they were being filmed because I feel like this gives an easy way out for Hiden's side, I mean the preview of the next episode makes it looks like this very interesting conflict will be solved right there, but it created an interesting predicament by turning public opinion directly against the Humagears in a very easy, quick, and effective way. (just in case you're curious, I'd rather the fight happen after the debate and being captured by security cams rather than by TV because they could add more layers to the accusations this way IMO)

But it's here in this fight where the only one-sided problem of the episode resides that I don't have a good point to balance out my feelings. This whole thing of Gai seeling Kamen Rider as weapons is dumb. I know I've said before it wasn't that big of a stretch for him to do this, but in this episode, it was just stupid. It made the whole thing seem staged and, I don't know, it felt like it's an element that doesn't belong in this particular story anymore. After seeing this episode I realized having this thing as motivation for Thouser is just an easy way out of the debate human vs technology, because it becomes less about the ability of humans and humagears coexisting and more about this guy controlling everyone to make technology look bad, and this completely weakens the discussion and the meaning of this entire show.

I wanted to talk about Yua but I'm already frustrated enough about that, you can check my previous posts where I talked about it more. But Fighting Jackal looks dope as hell, I wish this was more of a Valkyrie power-up rather than a separate thing that will probably not be used again after Yua gets defeated.

Now as a final thing, this episode said that both Yua and Fuwa have chips implanted on their brains, that's why they're able to use the Shotrisers, and this is a very interesting element that was dropped in the story, but again, this should've been hinted before and more often because it felt like this came out of nowhere, it doesn't work as a revelation because there never was a mystery about this thing to begin with. And another thing I didn't like was the reveal that Fuwa's chip was hacked and that he was the hooded figure helping metsuboujinrai, again there were no hints about this so it doesn't work as a shocking revelation. I wanna say it also doesn't make a lot of sense since we've seen the hooded figure and Fuwa in separate places before, but they can easily say it was just illusions caused by the hacking so... But the thing that saddens me the most is that this can mean the fourth general, who's a character that would be very important to bring in to the series seeing that they're portrayed by a non-binary actor won't be coming to the series and it'll remain as a character for the Thouser specials only and that's a personal let down for me.

As I said before, this show has many great things, but there's an equal amount of bad things and it's frustrating as hell. Well, at least the action has been consistently good, the Horobi and Thouser fight in this episode was *chef's kiss* marvelous. Anyway, let me know your thoughts about this episode and their arc as a whole in the comments, I'll catch up on you all later. See ya~

#Kamen Rider Zero One #kamen rider

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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February 17th-February 23rd, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 17th, 2020 to February 23rd, 2020. The chat focused on Crossed Wires by Iris Jay.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Crossed Wires by Iris Jay~! (http://crossedwires.irisjay.net/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until February 23rd, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic!

Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Alex_makes_comics

Just started on this comic. It's highly addictive. The art is super expressive ( I am always really jealous of people who can use dot shading effectively), and the story is fast paced. It keeps you turning pages. I did not see the twist of the vr helmet coming at all and I love that. I love thinking I am reading one thing and then finding out I am reading something else. It suddenly made the character design choice of having a dragon samurai as the MC so much more understandable. This choice was fun to begin with, but it so much more perfect when you realise it's an avatar. I'm only on page 25 and I have to get back to work,so it's early days yet for a favourite character. So far, I'm just annoyed at all the characters for talking in class

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I made it through the comic, and it was a really fun read! I like how the mechanics of the universe embellish the concept of hacking without... making it "unrealistic"? Like, I often see hacking portrayed in media as just typing gibberish code and saying "i'm in", which is generally pretty silly. What Crossed Wires does is turns hacking into essentially real-world heists, where you need disguises and acting and people watching your back. Sword fights aside, that's actually way closer to how hacking actually works (like, it's easier to get someone to tell you their password than to crack the password database). My absolute favorite example of this is the ending of Chapter 02 (which is also my favorite scene of the comic). Michael has been built up as this absolute dirtbag, and the number of creeps he somehow has following him has made him nigh-unbeatable. I'm not going to spoil exactly how the gang gets to him in the end, but watching him get beaten down was one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen in a comic.

RebelVampire

I agree that story wise, the way it handles hacking is really unique. Which tbf to TV, real hacking is generally actually very boring. And as @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) says, there's actually easier ways like just getting someone to tell you their password that are way easier. In real life, even, the first thing companies who are hired to test another company's security do is just show up in person and try to trick their way past people. People are really the worst enemy of all security. But anyway, even though it's a bit weird, I definitely think turning hacking into this real life VR experience is unique while capturing the real life flaws that humans create for security ventures. I also like that the beginning really just starts right up with this premise without taking like 20 pages to exposition. Just gotta accept a fighting dragon, which works really well in this case.(edited)

My favorite moment in the comic so far is actually probably the one morning chat between Cass and VRRMN where they have a serious talk about their relationship and the future. I actually like that their relationship is built on the point that sorry isn't enough, and that while you can see VRRMN's sincerity, you can also justifiably see why Cass isn't going to forgive so easily. And it was just a very real and heart breaking scene since no matter the direction,, nobody was going to be happy. Which tbf, I also like this scene because Cass is my favorite character. I like that Cass is a smidgen more down to earth than some of the other characters so far, and I really like this dilemma where Cass wants to leave hacking, but keeps coming back. Plus Cass is cool and badass, so there's that too.

Ironically, though, I think I like seeing Cass and Alan interact the most. I like this kind of...brother sister relationship they have going on where Cass just wants to protect Alan who is way too eager to get over his head. So all their interactions are super cute

But lets chat about art for a second. I really like that the art style in this is like this interesting mix between modern and cyberpunk. When it comes to stories where you have VR or similar involved, there's a lot of directions to go. Some just use the same art style throughout, some drastically change it, etc. It all depends on what is being sold to the reader in terms of setting. What I like about the art, though, is that despite it really doesn't change much, I'm sold on both the modern real world and the cyberpunk sort of feel I get from the world of the hackers. I always feel like both aspects are unique and have a lot of character, which I don't find in a lot of other similar comics

Iris Jay

Iris Jay here, author of Crossed Wires! Thanks for the rad comments so far, it means a lot that y'all are reading my weird queer hacker comic. <3

And I'm glad you dig the worldbuilding!! XW originally started as a Hackers fan comic, and I wanted to capture the same general feeling of it-- a cyberpunk story that wasn't happening in some neon-lit future, but now, the present, albeit with slightly better graphics capabilities. (Of course, with VR technology rapidly catching up, it's probably going to be historical fiction by the time I'm done with the series, buuuuut what're ya gonna do...)

Cass gets a LOT of cool stuff coming up very soon in the comic. I'm super excited to show y'all where the story goes next!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Oh, one other thing I love - I really like how both of the main protagonists are trans. Like I really think it adds some interesting parallels and theming to the story - these are both characters who felt rejected by the world, they went into VR for escapism and for avatars that portrayed who they really were. And I'm interested to see how the theme of a person's VR avatar being very closely tied to their identity is explored further in this chapter (I'm guessing it will be, particularly with regards to Cass).

sagaholmgaard

Im only about 30 pages in but I dig the style difference between the digital world and the dots for shading, and the real world with the greyscale shading. It's really cool. And the use of big areas that are colored black!! Love that kinda stuff, want to get better at using that myself!

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. What exactly is the Amphisbaena Project and how does it work in a way that it physically affects a person? What is the goal of the people who revived it, and who revived the project in the first place?

10. Do you think Cass will ever forgive Vrrmn/Theresa for the events that happened between them in the past? Can their relationship be repaired, and how will their soured relationship affect their separate relationships with Alan?

11. Do you personally believe in the hackers’ mission in exposing wrongdoing despite it being illegal? In general, what do you think the story has to teach us about standing up for both ourselves and for society?

12. Overall, how do you think the events of the story will change Alan, his relationships with others, and his pursuits of hacking? How will the other characters change and grow as people over the course of their adventures?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I feel like the Amphisbaena Project maybe started as like an anti-hacker measure. Since it's not like hackers are doing legal things, so it walks that ethical grey line of what is and isn't ok to do to law breakers. Like, if someone is invading your home, is it fine to shoot them. But now I think the people who revived it (which I have no guesses as to who yet), are using it to eliminate business rivals. Cause that sounds like something a corporation would do. As for how it works, I think it's just a simple matter of information overload to the brain, just on like...a brain-breaking level. Which this leads me into the moral quandry of, do I believe in the hackers mission. The short answer is no, because personally speaking I don't believe breaking the law is good in most cases, and often wrongdoing taints the results. However, I also emotionally understand why people would do this. The characters have made their personal mission sort of clear, and that makes me empathize with their plight. So all in all, I feel the story teaches us that standing up for yourself and society isn't easy. Whether it's an emotional or physical hardship, there are sacrifices and sometimes, you just gotta be ok with that.

Let me move onto character growth. I don't feel Cass will ever forgive Vrrmn, but I do think Cass will move past it to the level of being cordial. And I think Alan will be a big part of that, since both seem nice enough to not want to put Alan in the middle of their personal issues. So while the relationship will never be what it was, they'll probably be able to say How are you without Cass sneering. XD As for Alan, I kind of feel that the story will teach Alan more humility. We've already seen quite a bit of this, but I think his overwhelming confidence could still be more tempered as the story goes on. Not just because Alan will face strong people, but with more experience comes more wisdom. So at the end, Alan will be able to recognize that those boasted skills in the past weren't so great. As for other characters, I feel like I need to know them more before I can say.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

What I'm most looking forward to in the comic is probably just seeing more of Cass. I'm interested to see where Cass goes both emotional and physically as the hacking world begins to change somewhat do to the events of the story. Overall, this is a stylistically interesting comic that covers a lot of ground with lots of interesting visuals that complement the story well.

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Crossed Wires this week! Please also give a special thank you to Iris Jay for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Crossed Wires, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://crossedwires.irisjay.net/

Iris’ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/irisjay

Iris’ Shop: https://shop.itsnero.com/

Iris’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/irisjaycomics

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #crossed wires #iris jay

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msbeccieboo · 6 years ago

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Arrow 7x19 Brain Dump

I didn’t really dig this episode to be honest (see what I did there?! Such lolz 😂). It wasn’t that it was bad, it was just misplaced within the season, and maybe also it just seemed to fall a bit flat after last week? Meh…perfectly watchable though, and I love one John Thomas Diggle, so it was great to see him take centre(ish) stage again!

John Diggle

Oh Diggle…I love Diggle…I miss Diggle…yay to all the Diggle! We finally got to meet another relative of John’s after 34627 years, and it was no other that Winston from Ghostbusters! Dig and Oliver approach General Roy Stewart, who turns out to be Dig’s estranged stepfather, for intel on a flash drive from the Ninth Circle. That he was Dig’s stepdad is news to both Oliver and Felicity, which I think was a real shame; in all these years spent together he’d never mentioned his parents?

Anyway, plot happens, and Dig and the General are kidnapped by Dante, which gave the men an opportunity to work together and to demonstrate the love and the respect they have for each other, which was just lovely! Never in my life did I imagine I’d see Duncan MacLeod electrocuting Winston from Ghostbusters 😂!

The backstory with Dig and his stepfather was actually really poignant. Where Dig had believed the General to be at fault for his father’s death, then promptly swooping into his mother’s and their lives, he actually had been protecting Dig’s father’s legacy for all these years. The General hid the fact that Bio-Papa Dig actually died due to his own negligence, also causing the death of two other Marines, but had allowed Dig and Andy to believe the worst about himself, keeping their father’s memory a brave and heroic one. This is what being a parent is, and Dig is finally able to see him for the good man, and strong father-figure he really was for all these years. The general tells Dig “Every child deserves to believe that his father is a hero, and believing it, you became one.” This is the legacy he has left for John. I did get a bit choked up at this, especially John’s line “If I’m a hero, it’s all because of you, Sir”...my John Diggle heart 😭😭!!

Continued under the cut

David is such a wonderful actor, and if this episode did anything at all, it was showcase this. He gave an interview saying that the story with his Stepfather continues from here…so will we see Winston again? I hope so! Or this may just mean the continued theme of non-blood family i.e. Dig’s eventual adoption of Connor.

There were some sweet moments between Oliver and Dig, with Dig opening up about his step-father and real father. Oliver was there for him, as both a sympathetic ear, and to give some advice. It’s nice to be reminded, and shown, that Oliver and Dig will always have each others’ backs (Dig’s personality transplant in 7a notwithstanding).

However…where was my Delicity??? There was ample opportunity, just wasted…Felicity was right there, she discovered the truth about Dig’s father! Delicity for the taking!! But no 😡 Where was Dyla??? For fucks sake, we have a Diggle-centric episode and Lyla doesn’t’ even get a look-in? Barely a name drop? Or JJ (in the present)?? COME ON PEOPLE!!

My main gripe with the episode was, we could and should have had this storyline for Dig at any other point in this season, or at any point with in the entire series. Imagine this going off in S4 when Dig was also dealing with learning of Andy’s true past as well, or S5 when he was dealing with his guilt over Andy’s death and coming out of the Army again! The story wasn’t fitting for the final run of episodes of the last full season of the show, and also squeezing in end-of-season plot points to Dig’s hard-earned solo storyline was a disservice to his character; he deserved a true standalone episode with no distractions. Also, where the hell was the spartan logo in the credits??? RUDE!

Felicity

Although not as explicitly as last week, Felicity was still a focal point in this episode, hurtling her story towards the end of the season, for Emily’s final episodes 😭😭. I loved seeing badass Felicity (since always😉), pulling a gun on the random Irish Ninth Circle dude! She was so brave, if not a bit reckless, but this is the hero Felicity Smoak has grown into over the past 7 years, and I love her all the more for it! Alena brandishing a keyboard was a hilarious bonus!

Perhaps Felicity’s most heroic act in the episode is destroying her ‘legacy’, Archer (who she refers to as ‘her’…so adorable!!), in order to stop the Ninth Circle from using it to target anyone else. She has a bit of a eureka!moment, when she realises just how dangerous her creation could be in the wrong hands, despite her best intentions for creating it.

Source: smoakmonster

I loved her drawing a parallel between herself and her father (although unfairly, I believe), knowing that in the future she literally pretends to the whole world that she becomes The Calculator, again in the pursuit of saving the city. In the face of this, she says she still wants to leave something behind that is from Felicity Smoak, not Overwatch. My love for this character knows no bounds!

So by the end of the episode we realise that Archer won’t be the basis for Smoak Tech. Seeing Felicity talking Smoak Tech business with Alena was awesome, and I can’t wait to find out what she creates to launch her company, as we know how successful it becomes in the future! I also loved seeing Alena’s faith and encouragement of Felicity.

Source: arrowdaily

Ah Alena…I knew this was too good to be true! Despite her clear love and faith in Felicity, it looks like Alena is not ready to give up on Archer, and will likely rebuild (albeit with good intentions, I still believe). But it looks like Alena will be the one responsible for the Archer program ultimately ending up back in the hands of the bad guys, be it the Ninth Circle, or ultimately Galaxy One. Felicity is undeterred by losing Archer, and knows she has more to give, to create in this world, as she simply says about her legacy “I guess I’ll just have to build a new one” 😍😍

Bonus:

All of Felicity’s helmet-talk in this episode made me giggle! (I’m immature, ok!!)

“John’s helmet just came back online”, and “Madame Helmet” in the flash forwards 😂😂😂

Olicity

The Olicity moments were definitely far more subtle in this episode, as they arguably should be in a Diggle centric episode, but I still would have liked mooooore...I’m a greedy Olicity whore, sue me 😂😂

We got some little hand holding moments, which will just never not make me swoon 😍

Along with the Felicity-patented chest rub 😍

Source: lucyyh 💗

Finishing each other’s sentences 😍

Source: 1-crazy-dreamer 💗

Then just Olicity being a badass vigilante team, saving John, and hacking/breaking into classified government sites 😍

Source: smoakmonster

I would have liked to see more of Oliver’s reaction to Felicity and Alena’s attack; he showed such restraint when checking she’s ok!!

Flash Forwards

I am a big fan of the flash forwards, and I loved them in this episode!! Still missing my boy William though…please come back soon!! The plot was pushed forwards, we got some nice character backstory for Connor, and some quality SmoaknHawke moments. Nice to see the writers can still do some things concisely and effectively!

We opened with Felicity working on the Galaxy One Helmet that Laurel gave to Mia last episode. I adore that despite the many changes to Felicity in the future, she still exclaims “frack”!! In order to get data from the helmet, Mia and Connor need to go in search of a power module. This leads them to the Deathstroke Gang (!!!), where their leader, JJ, is referenced!! JJ DIGGLE GUYS!!!! I can’t believe he ended up one of the bad guys…baby Sara would never!!

Connor opens up to Mia about JJ being his adoptive brother, and former best friend 😭, though they have lost touch ever since JJ went dark after becoming overwhelmed with the expectations he felt pushed on him by Dig and Lyla….whaaaaat???! I can’t wait to meet future Dyla and JJ! I’m so into this family drama already haha!! I loved seeing this talk, and mutual understanding between Mia and Connor, I ship them so hard already! I also liked seeing the softer side of Mia again, she definitely has a gooey centre like her parents…just buried deep 😂

As they are chased out by JJ’s goons we get an epic almost-kiss that had me squealing KISS HER!!!!!

At the end of the episode, Felicity finally discovers that the helmet is one of many that are all interconnected and running the weaponised version of Archer. As they come to realise the implications of this we see the army of Galaxy One soldiers lining up, super chilling! I love where this story is heading, and look forward to seeing these parts of the episode every week!

Oliver/Emiko/Ninth Circle

While Oliver’s love and faith in his family is generally one of his most endearing qualities, Oliver….honey….give it up, Emiko is EVIL. I am so utterly bored of Emiko now. She is a waste of screen time, an unnecessary distraction for Oliver and a drain on my patience 😡

Oliver tells Emiko that Dante killed her mother, that he misled her, that he doesn’t care about her, but that Oliver still does. Oh Oliver 😭😭

By the end of the episode Emiko decides to kill Dante (bye then!), and continue her path as head of the Ninth Circle, now that they are in possession of the experimental bioweapon. So that’s another villain offed this season. Beth and Steven said pre/early S7 in interviews that there wouldn’t necessarily be a big bad this year, which I guess is what they’re going for by killing every attempt at one. Emiko certainly isn’t big bad material herself. The writers seem to be using this season to wrap up Felicity’s story, launch the flash forwards, and set up season 8 (and possibly the crossover?). But in trying to do all of this they are sacrificing this season’s storylines, which is annoying me slightly. At this point in the season we normally have an idea of the trajectory of the final few episodes, but it’s still not really clear. Given that this is the final season for Arrow as we know it, this is super frustrating.

Hmm, for a bit of a meh episode, this still got long…oops!

Thank you to all the wonderful gif makers, as always. You guys rock!! 💗💗

#Arrow #Arrow 7x19 #Arrow season 7 #Olicity #John Diggle #beccie's brain

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thestoryof-officially · 5 years ago

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Day 308 - Robotic

Day 308 - Robotic: Write about a robot.

This one immediately made me think about a particularly impactful dance performance I saw a few years ago. A lot of us probably know him, Merrick Hanna. His audition dance on America's Got Talent was about a robot, and we saw him dance to the story of the robot being built, played with, then forgotten and left behind. It was, in my opinion, very beautiful, and very sad, and definitely left a lot to be thought about. So that, of course is one idea. Write about the dance. Or write about the life of a robot. Maybe tell a story through a robot's eyes! Or write a poem about a robot, or about someone like a robot. Really, I think all my ideas usually boil down to short story or poem, but no one else's has to! This one opens a world that takes us back to childhood, I think, and there's so much to think about in that context.

Entry below!

~~~

Nine years ago, I was running from a guard and literally ran into him. It? Him. He, this robot, I mean, had more humanity than anyone I’d spoken to since I was 11. Without even questioning what was happening, he grabbed my hand, pulled me into the bushes, and got me out of trouble. The guard ran by cluelessly and never found us. We became best friends.

Six years ago, we got caught in the war. We were “the bad guys” because we were fighting the government, who was sapping power from anywhere it could be found. I got shot at. He took the hit and lost an arm. I was suddenly really glad he couldn’t feel things like we could.

Four years ago, he started becoming less human. I suppose that’s a poor choice of words considering he was never human to begin with, but the kindness I’d seen in him five years previously had simply disappeared. He became gruffer. The second glance he gave people ceased to exist. He almost completely stopped talking to me, and it was like all the things we’d been through as best friends stopped mattering.

Three years ago, the little lights that told me his systems were running started flickering. His joints became stiffer and he truly began to move like a robot. His replaced arm was the only thing that worked like new, and even then its movements became stiffer and more calculated, yet less careful. It was the last time he spoke a word to me or anyone.

Two years ago, he shot me in the leg. When I cried out, I saw a flicker of recognition in him. He looked guilty. He looked sad. And then it was gone. He turned his back on me, and was pulled in by the government’s system of robotic forces. He stood next to army bots and technology years ahead of him. He stood next to the bots that shot off his arm. He stood next to their Admiral, who just happened to be the guard I was running from so many years ago. And in that moment, ‘he’ truly became an ‘it’.

A year ago, I started to question the war. I used to think robots could be as good and as human as... As… Well, as other humans. I thought they could be kind! I thought they had heart! But I travelled the country side, with a limp, by myself. I became bitter. It was out of sheer will of mind that I didn’t shoot down every robot I saw. I don’t know why. They were unfeeling. Those that had been recruited by the government didn’t care, they killed without thought. They were ruthless and cruel, and I didn’t want anything to do with any of them. Not a single one.

Six months ago, it came back. This time he- it was running from the Admiral that he’d been oh-soooo-loyal to. The irony of him- IT- running into me and running from the very same person was almost laughable. I don’t know why I followed that stupid parallel. I don’t know why I pulled… it, aside, into the bushes, and kept us hidden until the Admiral was gone. I don’t know why… why it wanted to talk to me. Why it started talking again. Why the lights still flickered but looked alive again. But he- it betrayed me! It left! I don’t want anything to do with him- WITH IT! Ever! Again!

Four months ago, I gave up. This robot hasn’t stopped talking since it found me. It talks more than it did before it went silent years ago. It goes on and on and on about why it left me, about how it wished it had never shot me, about how the arm I made it after it got shot was the best thing it had, how it wanted another chance, how it knew what was going on within the governmental forces- and that’s when I gave up. That information was valuable, and I’d let it tag along this long.This was the only reason I was going to start listening. It was the ONLY reason.

Two months ago I gave him another chance. It was… He was once my friend, and he was respectful of me and my boundaries. He’s spent so much time trying to fix the things he messed up, how could I not- Anyway, with his help, we discovered a weakness at the center of the entire government’s power system. There was this massive building at the base of it all that provided some kind of wireless control and power generation to every single one of the government built army bots. As well as their biggest weaponry, their heaviest machinery, and their most dangerous tools. It’s safeguarded to everything we can think of, though. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but somehow having my… my friend, back, is- it opens up a side of me I forgot I had and I think we might have a chance at this.

One month ago the entire world was strapped to a time bomb. The government has been producing army bots at a rate faster than I can blink my eyes, and their weaponry has become so powerful we don’t have anything, anywhere, to rival it. Other world powers are too afraid to intervene. Anyone that doesn’t ally with this government is eradicated. Our small band of rebels grows smaller every day because people are afraid. There’s promise of protection and freedom should you join that side, but it’s a lie. I know it’s a lie. My best friend knows it’s a lie. He knows first hand that it’s a lie. And if they win, they will bleed every resource dry, they will kill anyone, man, woman, or child, that chooses not to stand with them, and they will have absolute control of everyone on their “team”. Factions and groups of lower ranked people within their control are already being separated out, and I can see that they are neither protected nor free. There’s so much discrimination. There’s so much control. The army bots create so much fear, and the coming generations are spending their childhoods in filth ridden villages with barely any food or shelter, much less education or freedom. And when I see my best friend reacting to these things so emotionally and passionately, it’s like he never left.

A week ago, we infiltrated the government system. We hid in one of their abandoned underground tunnels and set a plan in place. We don’t know if it will work, but given how little time we have left… this is our best shot.

Six days ago, he told me it wouldn’t work. He told me it couldn’t work, that something like it had already been tried. Words and fists were thrown his way, but he never hit me back and I ran away without looking where I was going.

Five days ago I sat in a cell and tried to understand why draining the power system wouldn’t shut down their Source. He found me and told me he was getting me out. When he couldn’t figure out the cell’s lock code, he jammed his hand into it, the one on the arm I made him so long ago, and sent in a pulse of energy that overwhelmed and shut down the systems. The cell door all but flew open and we made our escape. Suddenly I understood.

Four days ago, we put together a plan. We tried to contact our other known rebel forces and allies, but none responded. It was down to us. He knew what needed to get done, and I knew what needed to get done. As long as we were precise and timely about it, we could get in, shut it down, get out, and hopefully things would unravel to our benefit from there. All we had to do was get ahold of the relic, supposedly half of… something, whose other half powered the Source. If we could get it, we could overwhelm the Source and destroy it. It was almost too simple.

Three days ago, he managed to find the relic but couldn’t touch it. He said as soon as he touched it he felt his own power source spike. We had to replan a little bit, and close to midnight I went back to get it myself, after I taught him how to keep track of our hack into the security cameras. The guards were still looking for their ‘escaped prisoner’.

Two days ago the guards found their escaped prisoner. I managed to get the relic to him last night, but when I was wandering around in the early hours I was found. They shot me. In my bad leg. And I think they figured out that I have a ‘companion’ hiding somewhere underground. I hope he stays hidden.

Yesterday he came to find me. The guards never even had to look. Since he could watch the security cameras, he figured out where I was. He wrapped up the relic and came to me. We were too close to being out of time for him not to, and then he got caught too. I can’t believe I let this happen! I think we’re in over our heads!

This morning we concocted a plan. The guards came to execute us and take back the relic. I’m surprised they didn’t take it back right off the bat. Anyway, as soon as they walked in, we attacked. Fighting alongside my best friend again, I was thrown back through memories and realized I knew this feeling. I knew it well. We’d done this sort of thing all the time. And I missed it.

Six hours ago we ran away from the holding cells, the relic tucked under my arm. We were too close to miss this, there was too much at stake!

Five hours ago we returned to our hiding spot underground for our things. It was crawling with guards. In the end we shrugged. We were returning to destroy my equipment. They’d done our work for us. Shame we’d be missing out on the last of those energy bars, though.

Four hours ago we tripped the alarms. At that point it was all or nothing. We ran at breakneck speed toward the center of the base, so out of breath I was afraid I’d pass out. Two turns from our destination a guard grabbed my leg and I felt my entire body come slamming down onto the ground. I dropped the relic and the sheet wrapped around it came off. It rolled away from me and hit my best friend’s foot as my head started to pound. He stopped and glanced back, realizing I wasn’t with him, and I yelled at him to take the relic and run. But he couldn’t do it. He tried to pick up the relic and his power source spiked again. The last thing I saw before my vision went black was guards coming in from all directions and grabbing him by the arms.

Two hours ago I woke up. Funnily enough, I lay right next to the Source. I heard an electronic humming, but it was- it was painful to listen to. Almost like nails scratching against a chalkboard, but somehow translated to the world of technology. I glance to my left. There are dozens of guards stationed around the entire room, at every doorway, against the walls, by every dip in the floor. I look to my right and gasp. He’s there, strapped to the floor. I realize belatedly that I am too. The relic is hanging by what looked like a thread over his chest, and little sparks of electricity and energy are fizzling and crackling around every bolt and wire in him. That’s the humming sound that’s making my head hurt so much, but it looks like it’s hurting him more.

An hour ago, we met the man in charge. Rather, the robot in charge. Er, neither? He looked like he’d once been human, but more of him was robotic than organic. He tried to tell us that our relationship, a human and a robot being friends, was something as beautiful as he was. That we were meant to be fit together like one, and that what he was trying to do was make that more real, like him. When I tell you I took that as utter nonsense- As it is, I managed to pull one of my arms out of its restraints. The man laughed. He simply let me and my best friend out altogether, released the restraints. He invited us to try whatever it was that we were gonna try. I looked at my best friend and knew he wasn’t buying it either. Of course, I was right. I yanked the relic from its dangling position and ran at the Source. I touched the relic to it and… nothing happened. The relic glowed a little. It was rather pretty, but not particularly useful. Then the man laughed, something that sent a chill down my spine as it was neither human nor robot. The guards attacked us and he watched, amused. It was all a game to him.

30 minutes ago, I was shot. My head was bleeding. My leg was bleeding. My arm was bleeding. But I was alive.

15 minutes ago, he got shot. We were running out of energy. I didn’t know how much longer we could hold them off.

Ten minutes ago the man took the relic and laughed as we were overwhelmed and backed into the Source.

Five minutes ago I got kicked away from my best friend and I couldn’t get back up. The guards were ordered to stillness and the man approached him menacingly.

Three minutes ago, my best friend got the relic back. His hands burned and sent up smoke as soon as he touched it. The man grew furious and ordered his men and the army bots to attack him and get the relic back. We made eye contact.

Two minutes ago he backed into the Source and held the relic to his chest. There was an explosion and all the lights when out.

A minute ago everyone went still except for me. The lights stayed out. The human guards became confused because their partners, the army bots, they all stopped working. The computers turned off, the Source went dark. But I couldn’t stop crying.

30 seconds ago I cradled my best friend in my arms. The glow of his power source was gone.

10 seconds ago I realized we won. He saved the world.

5 seconds ago I stopped being able to see through my tears.

Now I’m watching myself being pulled away from my best friend. We won. I lost.

~~~

This is most certainly among my longer entries for this daily prompt thing. And it's definitely not what I was planning to do. I meant it to be shorter for one, but the more I wrote, the more I got sucked into this story I was making as I went. About a quarter of the way through I knew I meant to have the robot die in the end. Rereading this I worry that differentiating characters is too difficult to do and that the progression of time doesn't make sense. I have it counting down the whole time, and the goal with this is to instill a sense of anxiousness. I want readers to see "five days ago" and start worrying because we're getting really close to right now, because we're getting really close to the presumed end. I want it to make you think about needing to know what happens next. I think the concept in and of itself could have been very successful in doing this. It's not necessarily unsuccessful now, but it's unrefined, and all of this came to me as I went so it may be a little more scattered and disorganized. In the end, I think I like it. I think I like the story it tells and I think it could be a lot of fun to play with another time in the future.

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