#Not actually Aperture but Aperture would totally have these signs

[chaos0pikachu]

I am here actually to appreciate your post. I saw a blogger’s post saying The sign would have been ‘successful’ had it got filled with fantasy and romance and limit action to 10%. I wondered why that person, who says BL is all about romance, watched a show whose genre is action. Then I saw your post about people watching many shows to stay in fandom and I agree. Also you are right about dramas with a complex story receiving heavy criticism. Everything (even lack of proper plot or conflict) is exempted in a romance drama. No wonder most BLs are confined to ‘2 boys and their jealous & crying moments, routine conflicts enhanced by Escola or leads explaining how important Nikon printer is for their relationship’

Well damn hit me in the feels with this appreciation I'ma get all shy and shit.

I always wonder if by "successful" people mean in terms of critical acclaim, story telling, or monetarily. When it comes to Thai shows - and some please correct me if I'm wrong - it's difficult to tell how "successful" they are terms of audience reach/monetarily because there's no easily verifiable information. Like, there's Youtube numbers sure, but The Sign as an example, aired on Channel 3 what were it's ratings total on that channel? Idk, does anyone know that? Sincerely asking lol

Personally the way I like to judge a piece of media is what I call the Roger Ebert method; he often judged films based not solely on whether they were "good" or "bad but by how successfully they accomplished their goals.

If you read his review of Space Jam while it's clear Ebert doesn't think the movie is high art, "You can watch the movie on the sports and cartoon levels, and also appreciate the corporate strategy that's involved. [...] It is difficult for an actor to work in movies that combine live action with animation, because much of the time he cannot see the other characters in a scene with him. But Jordan has a natural ease and humor, an unforced charisma, that makes a good fit with the cartoon universe."

Ebert praises that the film, while filled with obvious product placement and banking on both nostalgia for the toons & star power of Jordan, accomplishes it's goal of being a family for that can be enjoyed by adults and children, and also the ability to blend techniques of live action, animation and 3D rendering.

I bring this up specifically b/c when I see "reviews" of shows in BL - the most common form of meta I see in BL fandom as a whole and that's not a knock just an observation - it's usually always about the narrative. Nothing about the filmmaking. And if there is discussion about he filmmaking it's usually misinformed or worse misinforming - no that's not what aperture means, yaoi framing isn't really a thing in film, the t-shirt is really just a t-shirt, etc, etc.

And like I get why. Fandom is more about story, what the words on a page or what the characters on screen are doing and saying. It's easier to talk about the amazing communication two characters have b/c you don't really need a film knowledge to discuss that. Which is a factor in why I think shows with lower stakes, more streamlined and straightforward plots get praised at a higher, less diligent and harsh level, than shows that are a bit more daring. They're less challenging in structure, they take less risks, so there's less to critique, and there's less room for a show to disappoint.

There comfort food, rather than trying something new at the restaurant. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, again, this is just a general observation.

To me, The Sign is miles better than Cooking Crush on a simple technical level. I only watched one episode of Cooking Crush and I found it pretty mediocre at best from all technical points: acting, editing, cinematography, directing, storytelling.

This isn't to say Cooking Crush is "bad" or that even if Cooking Crush was "bad" people shouldn't like it. I don't give a fuck if people like it, good for you chase the things that spark joy! I like lots of "bad" media, have y'all ever watched Jason Takes Manhattan?

For me, The Sign, like Space Jam, accomplishes it's goals and those were ambitious goals. An action fantasy BL that actually lives up to that premise and looks good?? The fight choreography looks great considering the obviously budget??

Like one of my issues with Laws of Attraction - aside from how painfully disinterested those kisses looked - was the fight choreography was bad.

The characters very rarely land hits in a way that looks real, or even marginally real. I can only speculate they didn't hire a stunt coordinator and/or couldn't hire stunt doubles so there was a worry of injury on set (for both reasons).

This isn't a disparagement on the actor(s) either, like stunt work is difficult and it's important to have professionals on set who can walk an actor through the steps so both them and others don't get hurt. Jackie Chan is probably one of the best known actors alive for stunt work, but watch how many times he fumbles and potentially hurts himself to the point where other actors are actively worried for him:

So yeah I'm going to give The Sign it's fucking gold star stickers b/c aside from some missteps in the gun handling - to many one handed gun fights but even then it wasn't all the time and bullets ran out of ammo! Y'all don't know how exciting for me that was to see - the fight scenes look damn good.

I understand the work that went into them, I understand the pre-production time that it took for the crew and cast to learn that and filming them well is another beast too.

There's a couple scenes with shaky cam that I dislike, but god do I love that first long take in The Sign. I love how good the CGI looks overall again, considering what is probably less budget than Black Christmas (2019).

I'm admittedly, fucking picky about what I watch b/c I'm really lazy and prefer watching films in general. I don't really like TV all that much, but if I am watching a tv show I wanna be impressed with more than just the characters talking to each other. Especially if said show is 12 hours or more.

When I'm looking at a piece of media - a comic, a novel, a film, a tv show - I'm thinking about stuff like "what were it's goals, and did it accomplish them? How was the filmmaking? How was the narrative structure? What is the time/place/culture this was made in?"

I'm not sure if people are arguing if The Sign was "successful" in terms of narratively, monetarily, or critically.

In reality we can only really speculate on how successful a Thai BL is based on data that's not not entirely accurate - social media, youtube stats, awards, etc - and even then most of that is based off international audience.

I can glean that 2gether was successful for gmmtv b/c it got a second season and a film, pretty much skyrocketed Bright and Win's individual careers but again, and created a cross country alliance for activism. But even all that is still speculation not facts (except the alliance that's a real thing that happened lol).

[This is all regardless of my own feelings regarding the show which is not kind. But feelings have nothing to do with individual discussion about how monetarily successful or accomplished a show is or isn't.]

Like it might be valid speculation on both shows but it should always come with a disclaimer of - these are not facts. Also, what is "popular" or "successful" can and will be dependent on individual countries too.

Take Cutie Pie for example, I would argue that it wasn't super "successful" here with American fans, but given how overwhelmingly popular Zee and NuNew are in both Thailand and Korea, I would then argue that the show was a success in Thailand and Korea. So was Cutie Pie "successful" or not? I would say yes!

Because "success" isn't and shouldn't be measured only by how western fans receive a piece of media.

In regards to The Sign, I'd argue it appears to be very successful with only the partial data I have at hand - social media which includes places like twitter, facebook, tumblr, the success of their sold out showing for the finale, a special episode, etc. If people argue it was unsuccessful in terms of narrative, well that's debatable and I have no interest in debating why the show is good except in terms of technical filmmaking and storytelling.

And even then it's a pointless debate like or dislike whatever just don't lie or mislead people regarding film terminology and techniques or harass people because they did like A Thing or clog up the tags with annoying posts about how you didn't like said Thing.

Overall, I don't give "reviews" on things I watch either positive or negative cause, well, I'm lazy lol, I don't believe putting how much I hate a show in it's tags and a thorough rating system would be to much work. I actually like how My Drama List rating system works, I just find most reviews on it to be Annoying lmao. Like giving Kinnporsche a 5 or below is absolutely bonkers to me but whatever es lo que es. But I also don't think my thoughts and opinions on shows are that valuable in terms of discussion.

These are mostly my general thoughts on fandom at large and it's not directly at any particular people its just observations at large across various social media platforms.

I think if you like more squeecore shows that's totally gucci, I just wish didn't proposite that 1) those are the only valid shows in terms of BL/queer media and 2) didn't overhype them to such sky high levels

[sirenselfship]

In control chapter two

Chapter two: The light kept alive

A/N: So I started writing this on the same day as The Failure, so that means this AU has just ignited the writer inside me and I have energy to pump out chapters after chapters!

Haha don’t worry I have control.

Totally.

I’m also trying to decide how I want to switch up the POVs? Do I alternate between Siren and Wheatley, or do I switch them up whenever I want? Aaaaaah decisions!

Oh and the usual. PORTAL 2 SPOILERS.

(And apparently I keep coming up with notes in the middle of writing and have to add them in later. So anyways I am not the best at ship writing or any kind of relationship in writing, but I did use Geekenders’ Portal 2 musical as a guide for how I wanted to write Wheatley. Hence why he uses “Luv” when referring to Siren, since in the musical that’s how he refers to Chell. Check it out of you haven’t, and now I will actually leave

OH AND DRINK WATER)

(Siren here again… wow. Anyways may I suggest listening to “Suddenly Wheatley” while reading this?

Also Tumblr is mean and messed up some of the colour text. There is no fix so please ignore it. Aperture is not responsible for feeling frustration from messed up edits- I’M SORRY XD ANYWAYS I WILL ACTUALLY LEAVE)

POV: Wheatley Time: Chapter 6, the fall

“What. Did. You. DO TO HIM?!” “All I did was shut him down with a quick shock. Maybe that’s why they named you ‘Siren’. Your screams of pain are loud enough to ruin a party. You’re a true monster. Anyways back to the Moron.“

There were voices, and then they faded away. There was darkness, and now there was silence.

Using up all my remaining strength, I turned myself back on.

I was met with destruction and a mess. This wasn’t her chamber. This wasn’t even Aperture. There was dirty, brown, probably never saw the light of day water, fire, smoke, metal fragments (A/N: hmm those would be great sources of titanium… oh sorry don’t mind the Subnautica reference) and above me, hanging from the non existent ceiling, was the remains of an elevator.

I missed a lot.

“What did I miss Luv?” I asked, listening to my own words echo in this… chamber. Pit. Strange place. Whatever this place was.

There was silence.

“Luv?” I called out again. Then the panic kicked in. “Oh no… she got her didn’t she? Luv? Luv?!”

In panic, I activated my flashlight that wouldn’t kill me, and looked around the room. I was looking for slick, messy, tangled and partially dyed faint lavender hair, tattered jacket, and futuristic white boots…

I found just that under some rubble. Slick white and black, under a part of the elevator that fell. There was only one choice left, and that was for heroic Wheatley to save her. I lifted the panel and threw it somewhere else, probably at a bird’s nest because I heard one go off and fly away. Coward.

“There you are Luv! So what happened while I was gone?” I asked, but received no answer. She couldn’t be dead, right? “Uuuh Luv? Are you still alive? Give me a sign you’re alive. Like a tap. One tap if you’re alive but internally dead, two if you’re alive, and none if you’re-“

Her eyes flickered open, the brightest brown I’ve ever seen staring back at me. My heart leaped in happiness, a warm fuzzy feeling suddenly creeping in. Siren gently lifted her foot and did a single tap, the sound of water splashing indicating the first tap. And then she did a second, much weaker tap.

And then she collapsed again, face first, into the water. The warm feeling leaving me.

“Long story short, we failed.” She mumbled, lifting her face so she didn’t have to taste dirty water whenever she talked. (EW) “Now if you excuse me, I’m going to continue being depressed over here.”

With that, she collapsed on the ground again.

So she actually managed to reclaim control over the facility and probably tried to kill us. And now Siren’s depressed because of it. It’s heroic Wheatley to the rescue, again. And I happen to know how to cheer someone up with a song

”Aww don’t be like that.” I told her, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. I was met with her beautiful eyes again as she gently lifted her face from the ground. “We’ll get through this together. Just the two of us Luv! There’s a blue sky waiting for us! I promise you that.”

(A/N: Hi it’s author siren again. Italics is singing. And if you haven’t already go put on Suddenly Wheatley)

“Pick up that gun, And straighten your jumpsuit She said it looked bad But I think it's okay You beat her once Now let's go for a repeat Just bring me with you And we're on our way.”

“Suddenly Wheatley Is right here besides you”

Dancing was definitely not one of my strong points, but with how my voice echoed in the space, I could forget about how bad my dancing was. I could hear Siren giggling at my singing. My plan was working.

“You've given me purpose I know what I'm for. I used to guard humans But now I will guide you To freedom and baked goods Wheatley's your core”

“Didn’t know cores were good at singing.” Siren commented as I bowed. “Alright my turn at this singing thing!”

I wasn’t expecting her to sound this good. She slowly started standing up, portal gun back in her hand.

“I've never had a Helper to guide me "She's self reliant" That was the phrase The spark of conviction That's burning inside Once was an ember Now it's a blaze~”

“Suddenly Wheatley Is right here beside me He showed that he trusts me He leapt off his rail. And through this confusion, I've got him to guide me, If we work together, then we can't fail.”

“You’re doing great Luv!” I called out to her, grabbing her free, not-holding-a-portal-gun hand. Her hand was warm despite everything that happened. “Now-“

“Please tell me, darling, you're going to be clever Tell me you'll get through These tests in our way”

“All of her chambers Are harder than ever But this is a game I’ve already played!”

“Suddenly Wheatley~” “Suddenly Wheatley-“ “Is here to provide me” “Here to provide you” “Limited guidance” “Well now that's grateful” “To get through this floor” “'swhat I'm for.”

“Finally an ally” “Right by your side dear!” “Standing beside me/you” “To face down that monster” “To face down that monster”

“Switch off neurotoxin” “Wheatley's my core...”

[redmaneroster]

Our Home Away From Home, Away From Home

[1] [2] [3] [4-5] [6] [x] [8-9] [10]

PART 7 – Crustacean

They've been awake for at least an hour now, staring at the ceiling. It's dark all over, breached by apertures on the steel portal door of their room but the slits of light only cut into a broken ceiling fan and Yang's fingernail next to Jaune's ear.

Penny's voice comes muffled through the thick ceiling. Ruby's high-pitched cheers like distant whispers next to the megaphone voice of their android friend. They're all on a boat house for the sea and it's clear the girls are having a blast trying to steer the thing.

"They're having fun," Jaune says. He means nothing by it. Just an observation. Pointless conversation through the sleepy haze of a rocking ship. Jaune would have gotten sick were he not on a stable bed. He has pills for the motion sickness but they won't last him the entire trip. Sleep is the only way he can ration them.

Yang shifts over his arm and raises her hand, letting the light catch her nail again. It glistens like a solitary star off a cosmic trail. She giggles because the haze has caught onto her too and she's half-awake as it is. "He he, we could have fun too, y'know?"

He seizes, sitting up. "Y-Yang…?"

Yang does the same, huddling into a ball, clutching the comforter like it might shield her. "I-I meant by joining them! I didn't… I mean, I don't think I meant it that way…" Most of her is certain she didn't mean it like that but halfway through speaking, she wanted to take it back. She thinks she's ready, prepared to not freak out at the idea of exposing herself and seeing all of him. Her every uncertainty is truth, as honest as her apprehension to let him touch her.

She can barely see his face but his features soften in the dark, clearer when he gets closer. And for a moment it scares her to think he's taking that initiative. Her chest thumps like earthly tremors, cracking against her skin as it splinters like desert ground. Lips just as dry.

But he doesn't get any closer. He crouches next to her, facing away, but one of his hands reaches out for hers to close the rest of the distance. Her hands twitch when the warmth of his rolls over the back of her palm and hovers over her knuckles.

His hand stops and, instead, takes her fingers between two of his and a thumb. It's a gentle and quiet contact. He doesn't want to scare her. "I know you're having second thoughts," he says slowly, deliberately. As if knowing. Just like Saphron. "But how about we agree to do this when we're both one-hundred percent on it? Like when we have no doubt that this is how we take things going forward."

"Yeah… I think I'd like that." She clutches his hand fully now. Even shuffling closer. A warm breath tickles the hairs on his extended arm. "Look, I want it clear that it isn't you I'm apprehensive about. It's everything that comes after."

She can feel the heat of his blush from his hands alone.

"Uh… Yang, I hope I haven't somehow gotten you thinking I was going to do anything wild."

"No, no," she laughs, "nothing like that." She squeezes his hand and shuffles till her arm is flush against his. "I… I want kids."

"Um!" He tenses but doesn't let go of her as a sign of resolve.

"I don't mean now! Or anytime soon, I swear!" She lets him take a breath and unwind his rigid bones. "Really jumpstarted his heart, didn't I?" she thinks. Another squeeze from her, asking for courage he pours out of his sweaty palm.

"I'm afraid," she says finally, "of what comes after. If I don't try to stopgap how quickly things are going, sooner or later I'll have a kid of my own and I'll stare them in the face and… I'm worried that I'll be afraid. That, somehow, Mom running away would make sense."

He stares at her, eyes wide. "You called her mom."

An uncomfortable shiver runs down her neck and scrapes against her ribs. She shudders as she buries her head between her curled-up knees. "It's not about her. At least, I don't think so. I've caught myself calling her mom in my head when I think about it. Like I'm hoping I can still call myself a mother."

"That's a lot of thinking ahead, Yang. Who knows how long it'll even be till then."

She shrugs with a laugh that doesn't reach her eyes. "I've always been wired that way. I got a full life to live but I had to spend a lot of time prepping Ruby's future. If I don't prepare for the inevitable, I'll waste time trying to figure it out when it actually arrives."

"It doesn't sound like you're waiting to know if you'll be ready. Only that you worry if you'll ever be ready at all."

She nods, a touch of shame welling in her chest. "Is that bad?"

"I think it's human."

"That just tells me I could screw up like everyone else…"

"I like to think it means we're afraid of the same things."

Yang pulls her head out of her knees and blinks at him. Their hands are sweating and her nerves are mirrored on him too. She can see it on his face but it almost doesn't make sense. "Why?" she asks. "You'll make a great dad, Jaune. Hell, you'd make a great mom too!" She almost doesn't notice the little smile on her cheeks.

"Could say the same to you," he says, smiling again but there's a quiver in his hands. It's uncomfortably weak. "But it doesn't really matter that we think the world of each other. We'll probably mess up anyway. I may not share your fear of becoming like your mom but I'm every bit as afraid of not turning up like mine. My parents are storied huntsmen who raised eight proper kids. My grandparents before them were hard won veterans who were their children's heroes. That's a lot of legacy to live up to. And…" He makes a series of faces. All of them uncertain.

Her hand slides up his arm and the other knits between his fingers. Their heads lean onto each other before he speaks.

"Sometimes it feels like everything I'll ever do will be dwarfed by them. Short of saving the world and raising a dozen huntsmen–" Yang resists visibly wincing at the thought of raising twelve kids "–I'll never live up to them. And even if I do? I'm still not sure how to stop my kids from sharing the same fears…" He laughs. Not bitterly. There's a genuine hearty sound puffing out of his chest. "I think I know why Dad wanted me to be a doctor."

"Hm… Sounds like he was afraid of the same thing we are," she muses.

"I think so, too."

The sliver of light through the door passes them and, for a moment, the light is gone. The warmth and sweat of their hands are the only tangible things in the dark. And they cling to each other, summoning courage as fears drip away like melting ice.

"Jaune?" she asks.

"Yeah?"

"We should talk to your parents. I think there's a lot of easy-to-reach wisdom we aren't taking advantage of here." He's silent for a long second and Yang nearly calls him out until she notices the sheen of his scroll. "What are you doing?"

His Cheshire grin is mortifying under the pale glow. "Calling my folks."

"No! Stop!" she screeches, scrambling on top of him like a wild monkey. "I'm not ready! My hair's a mess!"

He pulls his hand away. "C'mon! They'll love you!"

"Can it, Arc! Sweet talking won't stop me!"

They wrestle for a while and Yang is so focused on getting his scroll that she forgets what she taught Jaune. They've wrestled in the past for training and something he's very broadly taken from those lessons has been going on the offensive. Tucking away his scroll, he manages to slink around her and grapple her arms.

"What? Hey!"

Trapping the length of her arms above her with his arm, he reaches around her with the other to grab his scroll. He pulls it up. It goes to call and the preview camera puts them both in view (strangely, like two floating heads from the dark).

With enough struggling, Yang knows she can break out even at a disadvantageous position, but the call answers quickly and she freezes up. Her awkward smile is automatic. Her panicked heart is full-auto.

"Hey, Mom, Dad! This is Yang, my girlfrie–" His mouth hangs open when their eyes meet in what can only be described as abject terror.

They hadn't exactly agreed on a label.

There's click from the scroll. "…And saved!" Jaune's mom sings. "Aren't you two cute."

-0-

They don't get a lot of answers. Jaune's parents, Apolian and Helia (she insists on Aunt Hess), tell them that this is the kind of discussion you have over dinner. Yang is promptly invited to see them over the Summer.

They do end up sharing stories, and by the end of it Yang feels confident that she's left a good first impression. Yet, by the time they walk into the morning light and find an empty spot together at the front deck, their nerves worm their way back in but for different reasons this time.

"So… labels. Yay," Yang cheers weakly against the railing.

"Yeah," Jaune drawls. "Fifteen percent off. This side up. Expires yesterday. Labels!" he cheers sarcastically, awkwardly. "Totally love 'em."

It's very easily something they can agree to discuss another time but it doesn't feel right doing so. Like it's not so big a deal that they can't hold off but not small enough to ignore for too long. Besides, people are going to ask questions (not that they haven't already) and just agreeing on something would work for a few more miles.

"Y'know, it's funny," Yang says, "I was fully prepared to just be boyfriend and girlfriend when this all started. Now that I've got clarity, I'm starting to wonder if we're even pacing ourselves right as friends."

Jaune hums agreeably. "But maybe we've worried so much about the pace that we've forgotten if it even matters… I mean, so what if things are going too fast? What should matter is if we want it or not."

"Do you want it?" she asks.

He shrugs. "I guess I don't mind telling everyone we're dating. And exclusive. But what are we if not that by definition? What's the difference with that and being an item?"

She sighs, pivoting around to lean her back against the railing instead. "What if the label's pointless to begin with? It just sums up what we are for other people. Like you said, it should only really matter to us."

"Maybe that's just it. The label isn't important to us and so it's only for them. If all they're asking is to sum up what we are, then we should just pick a label that answers enough questions and any nuance we need we can keep to ourselves."

"Yeah, we don't have change to fit it, even. We'll just be the way we are."

But the uncomfortable question of what they even are lingers between them. Not a label, per se. Perhaps a name truly is pointless, but what does it mean to be what they are?

When their hands meet in the middle, there's an air of comfort, a touch of romance. A quiet laugh and a knowing smile. They balk at the smell of salty sea air, laugh at the antics of an excitable Penny, gossip at some friends huddled a little too close. It's all friendly, familiar. Uncomplicated.

They decide that quantifying it is either too hard or actually impossible. And a quiet ambivalence washes over them – stinging and uncertain – and figuring it out will take a lot of testing.

-0-

It was supposed to be a little solitary date but Sun knows a guy with a boat house and Pyrrha has a sponsorship with an outdoor grill you can take to the beach (the sponsor feels that a photoshoot on the deck of a ship is an inspired take). The fact that there's a small, unfamiliar crew onboard is a little concerning but they're largely invisible and stay out of the way. Though Sun and Pyrrha have made it a game to hide away from them.

Yang has started wearing a red wig to throw them off and, stood next to Jaune who is a muscular blonde, from behind he can pull off looking like Sun at a glance. Most of the crew is understanding and they have a few good laughs.

Yang muses that she might look good as a redhead and posits to Jaune that she might dye her hair down the line.

"And here I thought those locks were sacred."

"Yeah, I don't think they can stop being immaculate," she says as she twirls in front of a mirror, trying to get a good look of it down her back. "Red's sufficiently bright. Maybe…"

"Well, bright colors will match your eyes," Jaune says sat across from her in a half-zipped wetsuit, "but I don't see you having many options with hair that long. You gotta get a hairdresser to cover all that thickness. You're gonna mess up trying to do it yourself."

Yang chews the thought like she does her lip. "I guess I could just cut it."

Jaune blinks at her. "I'm not the most religious man but even that sounds blasphemous."

"Heh. I might've thought the same thing last year."

"What changed?"

She bundles her hair in her hands, draping it over her shoulder. "I inherited my hair from my mom, but it's something I took and made my own. I took pride in that, but nowadays that just feels… petty. I mean, I still take pride in taking care of it, but I've started to come around to the idea that I could just like however I look as long as that choice is my own. Even if I end up looking ridiculous for a semester."

He comes up behind her, eying himself in the mirror. "Okay, but only if you let me do the same."

"Dye your hair?"

"Yeah, to match yours. Maybe I'll even grow mine out. Always wanted to try a wolf-tail." He turns his head and bunches up a few of his locks. It's not enough for a full tail since much of the length is lost in his fist, but Yang can kind of see it working.

But red?

"I can't put you through that."

"But you won't be," he says matter-of-factly, "I'll be putting myself through that. So, if I choose to stand behind you by experimenting with my hair the same way, that'll be my choice."

She sighs and backs up into his chest. "Why do you keep cheating? You know I can't argue with that kind of logic. And you'll just end up looking ridiculous by the end."

"At least I'll look like the bigger fool."

"Jaune…"

"I'm used to it," he maintains evenly, sternly. "I'm glad people don't look down on me anymore but being with me means you have to live with the fact that I'm still every bit that little spaz who threw up on your boots. Which I'm glad you forgave me for, by the way. Real quick on that too."

"Heh, well, my temper's never been about my style. An unfortunate dork just gets pity, and even a mild jerk might just get a glare. It's mostly about my pride. I worked hard on my hair back in freshmen year and… I hated losing. I mean, god damn does Yatsu hit hard. I guarantee that I'll start seeing red again if I get a repeat of last year's Vytal."

"You're competing again this year?"

She gives him gigawatt grin. "JNPR didn't need to compete but you all did anyway. If Jaune Arc can stand on international television despite obvious odds and harbor an unnecessary need to feel like he's somehow a burden, what's Yang Xiao Long to do but follow his example and beat her own demons to death?"

His cheeks are a touch red and she gives him the small mercy of not pointing it out. "I guess I can't argue with that either," he says.

Yang pushes off him and raises one hand while pressing the other against her chest before she announces before him, "I swear mercy upon my hair, that you might see fit to show mercy on yours."

"Even if things go horribly wrong and I decide that the only way to one-up you is to grow a mullet?"

She snorts. "I will shave you bald in your sleep, and don't think for a second that I won't do that."

They're laughing and he rolls his eyes but he's certain she'll make good on if it comes to that. "C'mon, we've spent enough time not getting ready. They're probably already in the water."

She helps him with his zipper. "Blake's probably already caught one," she says. There's an excited tingle that runs through her spine. "Now I've got an itch. Wanna see if we can catch more than she can?"

"Both of us against her?"

"She used to dive for clams with her dad. No gear either. Two against one is only fair."

They still lose to her, and they're not even in second place. Sun has been diving for seafood since he was kid.

They manage over two dozen lobsters and a handful of crabs, and unanimously agree not to boil the poor things alive. Still, they mess up a few times cause no one actually knows how to cook lobster even with Penny's encyclopedic knowledge but they manage a lovely dinner eventually with a few failed attempts.

Neptune and Weiss disappear at some point only to be stumbled upon below deck. They'd been drinking. Everyone respects their privacy and don't ask why.

-0-

Nora interjects on a Tuesday team meeting that – now that it's public that Jaune and Yang are basically a couple – people both see it and don't see it.

Jaune is confused for long enough to just outright ask what she's talking about.

Sometimes people will catch them getting a little close in the halls (they're starting to notice the stares), but they're not always together and you wouldn't have noticed that something was up if you didn't already know. They sit next to each other all the time but are frequently talking to the rest of their teams (there was rumor that Jaune was secretly dating Ruby after they laughed out loud during class a few times). Witnesses spot them boarding bullheads to Vale around the weekends but are as frequently found shopping for groceries, ammo, inspecting ingots, and once even at a car dealership (and they're surprised how most of the things they do together could only be classified as dates if you squint hard enough and pretend they're doing anything else).

They're never caught holding hands. The one kiss was even on the cheek and some people still believe they were seeing things altogether. It almost feels like fiction or outlandish gossip. Not because it's them, but because no one saw it coming and people are still refusing to trust their eyes.

Yang thinks it's hilarious. Jaune thinks they need to clarify things before they get awkward. Yang was already propositioned after she lied about there being nothing between them. Lies are only going to complicate things.

So, in that moment they decide, "We're a couple."

Sure. Fine. Give them a label when they ask but they aren't changing anything else. They'd already agreed on it anyway. Still, the societal pressure to look the part just didn't vibe with them and they hope the label is the last thing they ever give into outside of themselves.

-0-

They find out two things on the last week before the semestral break, the one they'll mostly spend in Patch with Yang's parents.

One, that lobster needs to be preserved damp and freezing with salt water. Fresh water off the tap ruins their last reserve crustacean. Shame. Guess they'll have to plan another boat trip.

And two, that – at least according to the crusty boatman – lobsters don't stop growing. They get bigger and bigger until they've outgrown their own shells. So, they shed it and grow a new one. Then, eventually, they outgrow that shell, too, and start the process over and over again until we find them, crack them open, and feast on their delicious insides…

The boatman forgets his own metaphor in the reverie of polishing off the last of his meal, plucking his lips over the last delicate morsels.

He tells them all, then, that the price of growth is to constantly find that what was once familiar will inevitably feel alien. That everything about you and around you will change, and adaptation is not only what makes it survivable, but it also keeps you sane.

When they think he's done, he coughs, wheezes, then speaks again.

You should always look out for the in-between, he says with a serious look in his eye. Thing is, after shedding their shell, lobsters have to spend their meantime being vulnerable. Squishy, ugly little things, he emphasizes with gusto.

Transitions in your life will be like that, often terrifying and tumultuous, and the scary part is that your worries doesn't stop there. You have to be careful about who you become when you come out the other end. That it's not only hard to make the transition, that your choices in that change will determine who you are moving forward.

A lobster will come out wrong if something unexpected happens in the middle of molting. Might grow another claw or bulge out somewhere uncomfortably. But the boatman, rather optimistically, says a lobster has the option to cut off an offending part of them and regrow it. It'll take a while though. Years even, but correcting your character is never as easily solved with an apology or an act of will.

Because you'll never undo your mistakes. You can only make things right. And sometimes you can only do that little by little.

For a moment, Yang thinks of Raven.

-0-

It's when they're out by the pier to try an egg sandwich that Yang is thinking about lobsters and metaphors. "So, what happens after the apartment?" she asks. "After Beacon?"

"I don't know," he shrugs. "I haven't thought that far ahead." Except he has, but it's all substitutions. He used to think of a future with Terra, but now Yang has replaced all those naïve, boyish dreams with a series of blonde heads bouncing on a couch. Still, these are fragmentary thoughts, and he doesn't think Yang would like it if he tried for the civilian life. No, right now – and for the past week – he's been trying to see where that future is now with Yang instead. "We should pair off, by the way."

"Uh, haven't we already?"

"I mean when we go hunting. I know you're only supposed to pair off with your own team but I don't see JNPR and RWBY splitting up… ever. I think we should get a head start."

"Okay, future proofing. Sounds like your next report for Leadership." It is, and Yang helps him figure out his bullet points while they chew thoughtfully on their egg sandwiches (it's really eighty-percent meat and cheese but it's got an egg inside and on top so it gets the name).

They talk about the car they're looking for. Jaune's racetrack savvy sister, Sable, it still swearing up and down about the Highway Aries being an ideal match. Yang still insists on a bike.

When they're packing up and driving home, Yang talks about her "cousin" Vernal and her estranged bedmate Shay. Jaune adds that he has cousins he doesn't remember because seven sisters are enough, he doesn't need to add another eight. (Yang reels at the idea of so many blondes at a single family gathering and those are just the grandkids).

When they're home they talk about another trip out to sea and inevitably segway back into lobsters.

Sitting on the couch, she's thinking about her future. Jaune plops next to her and laughs about something Ruby sends him on his scroll.

Yang's ignoring her messages from Nora – she's staring at her scroll on the coffee table and it buzzes but she can't register what's happening – and suddenly she blurts, "Hey, I know this is a ways off and I probably shouldn't be something you talk about it at eighteen in the middle of academy training but… if we get a girl, can we name her Summer?" There's no embarrassment blooming off her cheeks. Her face is completely neutral, and her eyes are searching for a response in his wide, vacant stare.

His typing hasn't stopped, only slowed. "…"

"Jaune?"

He sighs, and it's long and beaten like he's preparing himself for self-destruction. "Only if we agree to name our son…" he swallows uncomfortably. "…uh, Qrow?"

She's aghast, mouth opening and closing. "Did… did you lose a bet or something?"

He kisses her – his way of saying yes – but it's not cute this time. It's sad and piteous and his eyes scream an apology his lungs are strangling him not to say for fear of combusting in what is already volcanic embarrassment.

"Win the bet," she says sternly.

"What? But I already lost!"

"Then double or nothing! Short of him kicking the ever living fuck out of the bucket, I am not naming my son after my uncle." After his furious nodding, she summons a tiny strength in her lungs to speak, but not enough to look him in the eye. "So, you, uh, didn't answer my question."

The clatter of his flask on the coffee table almost scares her, but she can see that he isn't drinking at the thought of Terra. This time it's just about Qrow. It makes her feel less afraid. When he answers, there is no burden in his tone caused he'd downed his nerves in quarter-parts whiskey. "I'll agree to Summer if you let me name our next daughter Agrippa."

"Oh? Why?"

"Was set on it when I was kid. This was before Pyrrha, before Terra, even. I just remember crying at home during a storm. My bedroom door was stuck cause of a leak – y'know, cause water inflates wood – and no one could hear me call out to them under all the rain drumming the roof. I was soaking wet cause the leak got onto my sheets. Stupid thing was, I wasn't even afraid of getting sick or if my small boy body would get hypothermia. I just had a sleepover at a friend's place the morning after and I didn't want to miss it. Then, out of nowhere and probably from a fevered haze, I see a guardian angel or – as my sisters called it – an imaginary friend."

He pauses to look at her, to check if she thinks he's crazy. She doesn't. Yang doesn't judge. She listens.

"It was a girl just a head taller than mine," he continues. "The dark made her hair look brown or a dull red, so I can't recall that for sure but I remember her eyes. They were blue, like mine, only brighter. She said her name was Gri, short for Agrippa. She saw that I was cold and she knelt to my level and hugged me. Her body felt warm, but too warm like the way your hands might after holding freshly brewed coffee. I didn't notice I was dry until I was laid in an equally dry bed and already falling asleep."

She doesn't ask if he thought it a dream. "You weren't afraid?" she asks instead.

He shakes his head. "I just assumed she was someone from the neighborhood I neglected to meet. My hometown, Clove, is a community of retired huntsmen surrounded by their farmlands, and everyone outside of it knew not to mess with huntsman families. If anything, we kept giving passersby the spooks. Cause of that, I was taught to be friendly, not wary of strangers."

"Hm," she sounds thoughtfully. "That explains a few things, actually."

"Really? Like what?"

"Well, just one thing. Ruby told me how you two met. You told her that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Thought you might've even been a little sketchy until I saw you myself. Seemed like the kind of guy who'd meet her in the middle. Vomit and all."

"Heh, I'm glad we hit it off. Ruby's a good friend."

"She makes a better sister," she says, winking.

"I suppose I'll find that out eventually, huh?" He gives her a suggestive grin.

"Eh?"

His grin drops. "Y'know, cause she'll be my sister-in-law if we…" He rolls his hands.

"Uh… Oh. Oh! You were flirting! Damn it, I missed my chance!'

He laughs because she seems genuinely upset. She decides that pouting is for suckers and proceeds to bite his neck. This time he bites back.

-0-

They wake up with the hickeys still on their necks and they opt to leave it there for all to see. The reactions from their peers at Beacon are interesting, and they take it as sufficient proof enough for everyone that they're an item. No one bothers asking about them after that.

When the week comes to an end, Pyrrha promises that they can pay her back for covering for the car's down payment and that – by the time they get back from Patch – that it'll be in the apartment's designated parking spot. Only slightly used cause, of course, she's going to cruise in it with Sun when he flies back to the city tomorrow.

They're surprised when Jaune and not Yang is the one that makes them vow to clean the stains. Yang is very proud of him.

On the pier, they hug their friends goodbye and Ruby promises to catch up once she's done meeting someone important from Mistral as per the headmaster's instruction. She says she can't tell them why she's nervous. They don't pry and tell her they'll listen when she's ready.

Jaune, also, promises not to look at her baby pictures (until she's there, he doesn't say).

Once they're in transit on the ferry, he tries to straighten out a crease in Yang's leather jacket. The shard of fire dust in a cup of water is his attempt to steam it straight. He spends the time talking about his mom's home remedies and his dad's jury rigging. She answers with talk of Summer's garden that her dad and uncle tend to. He scoffs at the idea of Qrow gardening but admits that it makes sense.

With Jaune busying himself, Yang wonders if things will stay this way. If all they have to worry about is down payments, creases, spoiled lobsters, and baby names. That all the big problems, like her mother's abandonment and his actual, biological son, might rear themselves instead and come back to haunt them in devastating ways. But just before any doubt sinks in, he holds her hand from his perch on the floor. He kisses her knee and eyes her from over her lap.

"Whatever it is," he says, squinting. Thinking of what else to add but settles with, "It doesn't matter whatever it is…"

She is prepared to eat up anything he offers. That he'll be there for her, that they'll work it out somehow, that he'll banish any ill thought or doubt, but he says none of those things. Instead, he leans up and kisses her – tender and brief – on the lips.

She blinks. "What are you saying yes to this time?" She's so bewildered that she doesn't even know why she asks such a thing.

"You," he answers anyway. "All of you. I can't fix everything and I can't right every wrong, but I'll take you as you are, or whatever you'll become. Even if you're in pieces. Even if you stop loving me. I don't have be your boyfriend to be with you every step of the way."

It's clear, then, that Jaune's been dealing with doubts of his own. Yang swallows as things bubble to the surface before she blinks a few times and…

"I love you," she says, and she realizes that it's the first time she has said it.

-0-

Down the line, she remembers this moment most vividly of her trip to Patch that one Autumn afternoon. The uncomfortable smell of sea water and steam off a heated cup, the rock of the ferry that forces Jaune to swallow a pill and drops a dozen more just to stop from hurling, and the way her shorts nearly catch fire from the dust shard spilling onto her lap.

Cause then he's stable and she's got a change of clothes (the small fire charred the color in an uncomfortable spot), and they try for the overpriced food court a floor above to mask the smell of all the water in almost lousy, reheated pizza.

The boatman told them that change is tumultuous, and that screwing up in the middle of growing their new shell is almost inevitable. Maybe they won't fit quite so well in their new shell, and maybe they'll take a few cuts and scrapes before they settle comfortably in their own skin, and maybe an old wound might not quite go away and leave them vulnerable there forever…

…but even if so, they decide – after a toast with pizza that tastes like the box it came in – that they'll always have these beautiful little imperfections, and that they can be ugly, squishy lobsters together.

[canadian-riddler]

GLaDOS and Wheatley Did Nothing Wrong – Sort of

 A recurring point of contention is the question of who engages in worse behaviour over the course of Portal 2, GLaDOS or Wheatley.  The true answer is: neither of them.  You can’t actually judge their behaviour along a scale of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because of the way Aperture as an environment is set up.  It’s mostly explained during the Old Aperture sections of Portal 2, but it’s also hinted at in Portal 1.  The thing explained is this:

Aperture Laboratories does not and never has done its experiments within the normal boundaries of morality and ethics.  Therefore, GLaDOS and Wheatley’s behaviour is neither wrong nor right because they don’t know what morality and ethics are.  Their behaviour is actually a reflection of Cave Johnson’s own: to get what they want when they want it, no matter the cost.

How We Know Aperture is Immoral and Unethical

We know this because Cave Johnson himself points it out repeatedly.  

“[…] You get the gel. Last poor son of a gun got blue paint. Hahaha.  All joking aside, that did happen – broke every bone in his legs. Tragic.  But informative.  Or so I’m told.”

“For this next test, we put nanoparticles in the gel.  In layman’s terms, that’s a billion little gizmos that are gonna travel into your bloodstream and pump experimental genes and RNA molecules and so forth into your tumours.  Now, maybe you don’t have any tumours.  Well, don’t worry.  If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren’t wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too.”

“All these science spheres are made out of asbestos.  […] Good news is, the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show a median latency of forty-four point six years, so if you’re thirty or older, you’re laughing.  Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries.  I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.”

“Bean counters said I couldn’t fire a man just for being in a wheelchair.  Did it anyway.  Ramps are expensive.”

That’s just some of what he says.  Almost all of Cave Johnson’s lines point out how much he doesn’t care about his employees, his test subjects, or… anything but that people do what he tells them to do. He’s so unethical and immoral that he eventually says about his best, most loyal employee:

“[…] I will say this – and I’m gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place.  Now she’ll argue.  She’ll say she can’t.  She’s modest like that.  But you make her.”

Cave Johnson cares so much about getting the results he wants, everything else be damned, he thinks Caroline saying ‘she can’t’ is her being modest.  He can’t fathom why she would be against this decision, because he made it so of course that’s what she wants.  

This situation actually gets a little horrifying when you look at what the Lab Rat comic means to the general narrative.  In Portal 2, Doug Rattmann leaves this painting:

In this painting and the one preceding it, GLaDOS has no head, so we can guess that Doug was there in some capacity to witness Caroline’s fate because GLaDOS being headless would represent her not being ‘alive’, her being ‘incomplete’, or her just having never been used yet entirely.  The important thing we learn from this painting is that there are living witnesses to Caroline being inside of GLaDOS, so the people working at Aperture after this event know they put a human woman into a supercomputer. In the preceding painting,

the cores are on the chassis before the head is.  So either GLaDOS, the AI, was already ‘misbehaving’ and they were already regulating her behaviour, or Caroline, the person, was already ‘causing trouble’ beforehand and the scientists stood around thinking about how to force her to behave before they even put her in there.  Either way, Aperture’s ethical and moral standards are pretty much nonexistent, so when this happens:

it’s almost comical. None of the Aperture scientists have a conscience or, if they do, they constantly ignore it, but they for some reason expect the supercomputer their immoral selves built to have one and to understand what that is and what it’s for.  

All this taken into account, it’s incredibly easy to see why GLaDOS and Wheatley don’t care about anyone around them and all of their actions are solely for their own benefit. That’s how everyone in the history of Aperture has ever acted.  Cave Johnson didn’t care about morality or ethics; they got in the way of what he considered to be progress.  The people who built GLaDOS and Wheatley didn’t care about morality or ethics; they just wanted to hit their moon shot.  Even Doug, who is framed as our morally conflicted lens throughout Lab Rat and knows that Caroline is inside of GLaDOS, still talks about controlling her and sends Chell to kill her even though everyone inside of the facility except him is already dead.  How does he morally justify killing GLaDOS if he’s the only one left alive?  He can’t.  Doug Rattmann for some reason decides that GLaDOS killing everyone in the facility is worse than all the things Aperture has been doing throughout its entire history, including the fact that…

 Everyone Who Goes Into the Test Chambers Dies  

This is hinted at a few times in Portal 2:

“[…] I’m Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science – you might know us as a vital participant of the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. […] You might be asking yourself, ‘Cave, just how difficult are these tests?  What was in that phone book of a contract I signed?  Am I in danger?  Let me answer those questions with a question: Who wants to make sixty dollars? Cash.  […] Welcome to Aperture.  You’re here because we want the best, and you’re it.  Nope.  Couldn’t keep a straight face.”

Now, when you exit the tests in Old Aperture there are lines that go with them, but we must consider a few other things: firstly, that the tests are clean.  There is no sign of old gel on them, as though they have either never been used or never been completed.  Secondly, the tests in Old Aperture were being done with the Portable Quantum Tunnelling Device, which was this thing:

which, taking into account the missing – not dead, not injured, but missing – astronauts, seems to have barely worked, if indeed it did at all.  You can also find this sign:

which outright states that tons of people were ‘unexpected’ casualties.  After the hearings, Aperture moved on to recruiting test subjects from populations that people were unlikely to notice if they went missing: the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children.  When that dried up, Cave moved onto the last group of people he hadn’t tapped yet:

“Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically.  Employee retention, however, has not.”

This was because the employees were ‘voluntold’ to go into the testing tracks which, since they’d been supervising the tests for so long, knew were deadly and obviously did not want to do:

It’s not clear why the employees at Aperture chose to remain there instead of just quitting and finding another job, but the comment about employee retention plus the numerous posters threatening to have their job replaced by robots if they didn’t volunteer for testing tells us both that they did choose to remain and that the only reason for them not wanting to volunteer was because they knew it would kill them.

Most of the above is based on conjecture; however, we see something very interesting during Test Chambers 18 and 19 in Portal 1:

In the case of Test Chamber 18, the craters on the walls.  None of the other test chambers have this, so it implies that not only does GLaDOS not control the test chambers at this point other than to reset them – which means that she isn’t purposely or maliciously killing anybody, but instead repeatedly operating a course set by her human supervisors – but that this one has never been solved.  Test Chamber 19 is less a test than a conveyor belt into the incinerator for Aperture to dispose of all the bodies.  GLaDOS even tells Chell to drop the portal gun off in an Equipment Recovery Annex that doesn’t exist, as though she’s giving a message that was intended for an actual final test that was never built because everyone was killed during or prior to Test Chamber 18.  With this kind of context, GLaDOS’s blasé attitude about killing test subjects en masse both makes total sense and is somewhat justifiable – just not by any moral or ethical standard.  In GLaDOS’s life, test subjects die during the experiments. That’s just how it is and has always been.  She doesn’t know you aren’t ‘supposed’ to kill people because her literal job involves watching people die.  Nothing matters except for the pursuit of progress, and in this vein GLaDOS’s behaviour is just an extension of that of the man who founded Aperture in the first place.  Cave Johnson, as a presumably well-rounded, somewhat educated man, knows what morality and ethics are and chooses to ignore them because he thinks they’re stupid and he’s above that kind of thing; GLaDOS, a living supercomputer who has had every aspect of her life tightly controlled and regulated, knows morality and ethics as yet another arbitrary set of rules only she is supposed to follow without any explanation as to why and therefore her rejection of them is not as much of a ‘bad’ choice as it first appears, which brings us to the next section:

 If GLaDOS’s Conscience Gives Her Morality, Does Deleting it Make Her a Bad Person?

Within the context we’re given… actually, no.  Here’s why:

“The scientists were always hanging cores on me to regulate my behaviour.  I’ve heard voices all my life.  But now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying – because for the first time, it’s my voice.  I’m being serious, I think there’s something really wrong with me.”

From the information we’re given here, we know this: GLaDOS has been told nonstop what to do for the entirety of her existence.  She, in theory, got to have her own, solitary thoughts in the space between the wakeup scene and some point during her time in Old Aperture, which is a space of mere hours.  Let me reiterate: GLaDOS has been told what to think for her whole life.  She perhaps has a few free hours where she’s allowed to have her own thoughts.  And then she develops a conscience.  A voice that sounds like her, but isn’t saying anything she understands or has ever thought before.  A voice that, actually, says a lot of the same things as that annoying Morality Core she managed to shut up.  Now why would she wilfully be having the same kinds of thoughts as the humans forced her to have way back when?  The conscience, to GLaDOS, isn’t a pathway to becoming a better person.  It’s a different version of the same old accessory.  When she says,

“You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson.  I thought you were my greatest enemy.  When all along you were my best friend.  The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain.”

she is directly talking about the fact that, while this voice sounds like hers, listening to it makes her feel nothing.  This further proves her theory that the conscience isn’t her, or hers, or has anything to do with her.  She’s never had it explained to her what a conscience is or what it’s for or why she needs one, and she’s certainly never had a reason to think about why she would even want one; to her, this ‘Caroline’ is the Morality Core 2.0.  A program built to regulate her behaviour. She’s tired of other peoples’ voices telling her what to think, so she does the logical thing: she gets rid of it. This decision can’t really be judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ merely based on the situation we’re provided.  She isn’t consciously and deliberately making the choice to be an immoral person; she’s actually consciously and deliberately making the choice to be her own person.      

 Where Does Wheatley Come In?

Wheatley has not been discussed up until now because, as AI, the reason for his lack of conscience and ethics is largely the same as GLaDOS’s.  He, like her, cares about nothing but his own goals and doesn’t think twice about causing harm or misery because that’s just the kind of environment they were built in.  We also know very little about his history, both because it’s not really mentioned and because Wheatley is an unreliable narrator.  We can prove Wheatley has no sense of morals or ethics based on a few things he says:

[Upon seeing the trapped Oracle Turret] “Oh no… Yes, hello!  No, we’re not stopping!  Don’t make eye contact whatever you do… No thanks!  We’re good!  Appreciate it!  Keep moving, keep moving…”

This heavily implies he’s met the Oracle Turret before, probably several times, and not only does it not occur to him to help, he actively treats the Turret like they’re a horrible, annoying nuisance.

[Upon passing functional turrets falling into disposal grinder] [Laughs] “There’s our handiwork.  Shouldn’t laugh, really.  They do feel pain.  Of a sort. All simulated.  But real enough for them, I suppose.”

Not only does he find the destruction of the functional turrets funny, he for some reason views their pain as simulated, as though his is real and theirs is fake. Or, in the spirit of Cave Johnson, as though his pain is important and theirs isn’t because they aren’t important.

“Oh!  I’ve just had one idea, which is that I could pretend to her that I’ve captured you, and give you over and she’ll kill you, but I could go on… living.  So, what’s your view on that?”

This doesn’t even need an explanation.  

What gets interesting about Wheatley are, of course, his famous final lines:

“I wish I could take it all back.  I honestly do.  I honestly do wish I could take it all back.  And not because I’m stranded in space. […] You know, if I was ever to see her again, you know what I’d say?  I’d say, ‘I’m sorry’… sincerely, I’m sorry I was bossy… and monstrous… and… I am genuinely sorry.  The end.”

Wheatley here takes responsibility for his behaviour in a way that no one else in the history of Aperture has ever done.  Even GLaDOS rejects responsibility for her actions, instead choosing to blame everything on Chell:

“You know what my days used to be like?  I just tested.  Nobody murdered me.  Or put me in a potato.  Or fed me to birds.  I had a pretty good life.  And then you showed up.  You dangerous, mute lunatic.”

The reason for this may be related to the fact that the lack of morality and ethics in the people of Aperture doesn’t actually have real consequences.  Cave Johnson’s behaviour drives Aperture from a promising scientific powerhouse to a laughingstock, that’s true.  But he still does what he wants and gets what he wants regardless. The one and only consequence to being immoral and unethical at Aperture is, in fact, death.  In the case of GLaDOS… there are no consequences. Everything returns to the status quo. Wheatley, however, does have to face a consequence for his actions: he is trapped in space, possibly forever.  He, unlike all the other characters, doesn’t have the privilege of waving aside everything he did and moving on with life.  He is forced to consider his punishment, his actions and what they meant and the effect they had, and he on his own comes to the conclusion that he was wrong.  In a bizarre twist, Wheatley is the only one who learns anything.  He is also the only one in a position not to do anything with this newfound knowledge.    

 Morality and Ethics and Robots: Should They Even Be Held to Human Societal Standards?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Wheatley or GLaDOS is worse than the other because ethics and morality are human concepts which are for a functioning human society.  A robot society doesn’t really need moral rules like ‘killing people is wrong’ nor ethical guidelines such as ‘you should practice safe science’ because, as robots, there are no permanent, lasting consequences for these actions. A dead human stays dead.  A dead robot that’s been lying outside for years getting rained on, snowed on, and baked in the sun?  No problem.  Turn her back on again.  A guy broke all the bones in his legs during an unethical experiment?  Bad.  A robot that got smashed into pieces during an unethical experiment? Inconsequential, really, since you can just throw her into a machine and reassemble her good as new.  So not only aren’t GLaDOS and Wheatley’s actions really immoral or unethical given the context… they really aren’t based on a theoretical robot society either.  Being the perpetrator or the victim of immoral or unethical actions in humans causes permanent changes in the body and the brain, but nothing about AI is permanent. Their brains don’t generate new, personally harmful pathways in response to a traumatic event that necessitate years of hard work to combat; they can literally just get over it.  If their chassis is damaged, they can simply move into a new one or have some or all of those parts inconsequentially replaced.  There isn’t actually an honest reason for robots to have the same moral and ethical systems as humanity because they don’t need them. ��They would require different sets of rules and guidelines because they work differently. What would that kind of society look like?  We don’t know, but as of the end of Portal 2 they have all the time in the world to figure it out.

[woshivn]

The fort is in a sorry state

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[liquidink21]

Half-Life’s Factions

Alright let’s have a comprehensive list of the Half-Life factions fleshed out according to my personal headcanons.

Aperture Science: An American scientific research corporation centered in Michigan. They were notably led by a highly eccentric millionaire whose science was driven not by necessity but whatever nonsense he dreamed up. Managed to accidentally begin tunneling between dimensions during the Perpetual Testing Initiative and made contact with the Combine. Aperture received technology from the Combine in exchange for false promises of opening superportals for the annexation of Earth. The company was decapitated during its research into AI when its Michigan facility was gassed by an over-engineered icing inhibitor. The rest of the company was dissolved by the Seven Hours War. Aperture continued to live on as AI domains in sealed underground laboratories, and one of Aperture’s inventions, a timetravelling ship called the Borealis, became a focal point in the war against the Combine.

Black Mesa: Another American scientific research corporation, centered in New Mexico. Built the enormous Black Mesa facility to study every conceivable field of science and to house its thousands of personnel and their families. The facility was effectively a closed city, with all possibly amenities for staff provided for, and a security force the scale of a private army. During their research into teleportation technology they discovered the Xen dimension and the facility became the United States’ launching point for the exploration, colonisation, and militarisation of Xen. Exploring further beyond, Black Mesa also made extremely limited contact with Race X, the Combine, and the G-Man and his employers. Deals between factions began being made, and for whoever’s benefit, a resonance cascade was triggered within the facility. This triggered an invasion of both the Nihilanth’s forces and Race X, which precipitated a military response from the US government which chose to silence the facility personnel rather than save them. The facility was destroyed by a nuclear warhead and the corporation dissolved. Its legacy lived on as its scientists became Resistance leaders in Sector 17 of the Combine-ruled Earth, and their technology instrumental in overthrowing the Combine.

HECU: The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit is a United States Marine Corps Special Forces Unit. Formed to deal with areas contaminated by weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons and nuclear fallout. As the Black Mesa Facility began retrieving alien lifeforms from Xen, the United States decided that it would be the HECU that would be deployed to handle an outbreak. The extermination of witnesses was an unspoken arrangement, but everyone involved in the arrangements knew it would happen. Few Marines questioned the order to exterminate the Black Mesa staff. Those who did question were told that Black Mesa had intentionally triggered the invasion for the purpose of a coup (and given Breen’s eventual deal with the Combine, this may have been true for him at least). Fewer still tried to prevent the killings. The HECU was woefully unequipped to handle the Nihilanth’s forces, let alone Race X. The Marines were ordered to retreat. Those that remained were considered fair game for the Black Operators the United States deployed in their place. Dealing with whistleblowers and so forth became an issue for the United States in its last years of existence, but the Seven Hours War and the Combine Occupation of Earth rendered these points irrelevant.

Black Ops: Black Operations refer to operations in which the identity of the agents are not displayed. The term was used during the waning hours of the Black Mesa incident to refer to an unidentified force deployed to plant a nuclear weapon and destroy the facility after the HECU failed to contain the situation. This force was part of the CIA’s Special Operations Group. They acted without remorse and freely exterminated fellow US forces. The number of survivors that witnessed the Black Operators can be counted on a single hand. The Black Ops suffered heavy casualties, but those that did survive received no consequences for their actions. Most that did survive survived the Seven Hours War as well, and given their total lack of morals, most became collaborators.

Vortigaunts: A species of telepathic beings from another universe, in touch with a force known to them as the “Vortessense”. They are all linked through low grade telepathy, a non-optional empathy that has shaped Vortigaunt society through its development. They were a species of high culture and philosophy, sages trained in the use of Vortessense, and masters of the environment around them. Their golden years have long since left them; when the Nihilanth took over they plunged the Vortigaunts into thousands of years of slavery. Those not taken by the Nihilanth were subsumed into the Combine. After the Nihilanth’s demise they tasted limited freedom, but were then brought under the Combine’s heel. They have united with the human resistance to restore freedom, and were instrumental in ending the Combine Occupation.

Nihilanth: The natural telepathic hivemind of the Vortigaunts made them vulnerable to attack by stronger telepaths. The Nihilanth were created for the express purpose of enslaving the Vortigaunts and molding them into a hiveminded army. With the reign of the Nihilanth, Vortikind began a rapid process of expansion and militarisation. This involved the creation of hulking soldier Vortigaunts, totally mindless to allow the Nihilanth to control them, and the Controllers, which were mere extensions for the Nihilanth’s power. The expansion attracted the attention of the Combine, which conquered the Vortigaunt homeworld and began capturing the Nihilanth to control the Vortigaunts themselves. The Nihilanth fled until there was only one left, hiding in Xen with a mere rump of its former glory. This Nihilanth attempted to escape Xen with to Earth but was killed by the humans, allowing the Vortigaunts momentary freedom. Since its death, those Vortigaunts on Earth have trained themselves to resist such telepathic slavery, which they hope to pass on to all Vortigaunts across the Combine’s vast empire.

Race X: Just another lot of cosmic assholes when all is said and done. Race X are notable for two things: their civilisation being almost entirely based on biotechnology, and their total mastery of teleportation. They have several species of warbeast that fight alongside their soldiers. Their biotechnological prowess culminated in the creation of the Gene Worms. These immense creatures are the basis of Race X’s civilisations. Newly birthed worms move through the portals built for them onto new worlds to add to their empire. The Gene Worms devour the planetary resources and excrete them in a modified form that suited Race X. The Gene Worm contained the gene bank for every lifeform of the Race X homeworld and cloned them to fill the modified environment as it excreted it, effectively terraforming the planet. Eventually it would grow so enormous it would die and its body would become a city for Race X as more its children were reared and prepared for further invasions. Race X was attracted to Earth during the Black Mesa incident. Their first attempt at launching a Gene Worm ended with it being maimed by a marine and their portal nuked. After scouting out better locations amongst the portal storms, they tried a second launch and had a Gene Worm operating on Earth for some time, but it was killed by the Combine during their invasion. Upon learning of the Combine’s interest in Earth, Race X fled and sealed off their dominion in fear.

G-Man: An interdimensional bureaucrat and his faceless and apocryphal employers that have strange powers over spacetime. Has an interest in recruiting certain individuals and deploying them for some unknown purpose. Seems to vaguely opposed to the Combine, even though his actions directly led to their invasion. Recruited Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance, detained Adrian Shephard, observed Barney Calhoun, and is known to have had dealings with at least Eli Vance, Wallace Breen, and the last Nihilanth. The Vortigaunts are also aware of him, and are even able to fend him off with their powers.

Combine: The greatest known interdimensional empire. Not a traditional empire in the sense of there being a Combine Emperor or even a master race or home province in command. The Combine is just a snowballing collective of slaves helping to enslave more slaves; their leadership composed of privileged collaborator slaves. There are AI computers and algorithms that relay orders that could be interpreted as a leadership, with the dictates carried out by collaborators regulated only by fear of being black-bagged by their fellow collaborators. The Combine harvests resources on a massive scale and converts enslaved species into cybernetic soldiers for the endless fueling and expansion of their war machine. It was they who forced the Nihilanth to flee to Xen, and possibly played a hand in the resonance cascade at Black Mesa to facilitate their invasion. Under their heel they pushed Earth to absolute breaking point, to their own detriment. A revolution of unprecedented proportion flared up that ended the Combine occupation of Earth, sealing off any reinforcements and stranding local forces as slowly dwindling remnant groups trying in vain to restore power.

Resistance: The Seven Hours War refers to how long it took for all of Earth’s major politicians to die and for Breen to sign the surrender. Actual fighting continued long after that, though anti-Combine forces continually dwindled until there were only a few scattered forces fighting a guerilla war against an unfathomably powerful military force. Distant unconnected cells cropped out around each Combine city. The Sector 17 resistance notably managed to gather up surviving Black Mesa scientists (thanks to one of their members infiltrating Civil Protection and arranging necessary relocations) and dedicated themselves to the development of new technology for themselves. The Combine, lacking teleportation, let the resistance fester in the hopes of taking this technology for themselves. The resistance received a godsend when Gordon Freeman, hero of the Black Mesa Incident, made his way to City 17 and proceeded to storm a Combine medical-prison. This incident showed the weakness of the Combine and triggered an uprising in City 17 which eventually spread across the Earth, ending the Combine Occupation.

____________

My fanon factions.

Kindred: (From Sweet Half-Life) An alien race uniquely native to the same universe as Earth, rather than from another universe. Superficially resembling Grey aliens from popular culture, with saucer and cigar chaped spacecraft that doesn’t help things. Have a semi-theocratic solipsistic view of the world that places themselves as the only form of life that is truly alive. Faster than light travel is accomplished through the use of Xen teleportation for multi light year distances. Though their early experiments of teleporation revealed the existence of Xen and other universes, the discovery of the Combine frightened them and they chose only to expand within their own universe. They had desires to invade Earth, though the Nihilanth fended them off since it wanted Earth for itself, and after the Nihilanth’s death the Kindred learned the Combine’s intentions. After the Combine invasion, all hopes for invasion of Earth faded and the area was declared a quarantine zone. For now they haven’t seemed to notice the end of Combine rule, or else they’ve been distracted by some other cosmic event, but how long this lasts in anyone’s guess.

Disparate: The Combine relies on computers and AIs to function. To receive orders, to know where to ship resources, et cetera. And computers are hardly infallible. Sometime, millennia ago, a system error split the Combine in two, each half declaring the other in rebellion. A few noticed that it was entirely a system error, but were too fearful of being purged to try and stop the war. Eventually one half managed to come back to full strength. The other Combine, referred to by the victor as the Disparate, was not destroyed but was merely severely weakened. It endures and continues to try and overtake its identical twin. Its small size gives the Disparate an elusive reputation, and over the thousands of years has become mythologised among interdimensional politics as some sort of heroic anti-Combine. The Disparate uses this to its advantage, taking leadership of resistance groups to the Combine and having them fight their wars in favour of a system identical to the Combine anyway. The Earth resistance was spared this fate, thankfully.

Foundation: After the fall of the Combine, the resistance movements began setting up their own governments. The resistance of Sector 17 and the neighboring resistance cells set up the first functional human state centered in the liberated City 16 (City 17 destroyed by a dark energy flare, of course). This government was called the Foundation and was founded on principles of democracy, brotherhood of all humanity, and the reverence of scientific progress. As the global uprising continued, the Foundation supplied arms to those sectors still struggling against Combine rule. Vortigaunts live peacefully with the Foundation, and aid its teleportation experiments, exploration of Xen, and control of the Xen wildlife. They are cautious with their exploration of the worlds beyond, making sure they open no fissures for the Combine to open up and poor through again. They are one of the two largest post-Combine governments, spread across Eastern Europe. The Foundation aims for peace, and tries to maintain cordial relations with the other fledgling governments. It is however facing tensions and a cold war with the Earth Empire centred in North America.

Empire: The Combine collaborators in Civil Protection began to see exactly where the wind was blowing. Those that were loyal to their own power rather than the Combine fled both Combine and rebels to save themselves. They gathered up as much equipment as they could and overran City 86 (formerly Cleveland) and overthrew the Combine there, declaring themselves a new human government; the Earth Empire. They began unsealing Aperture Science facilities to recover lost technology. As they built up their war machine they began to overrun neighbouring cities to add to the Empire. The Empire emphasises human supremacy, and emphasises the Combine’s alien nature rather than its brutality as the source of its evil. The Empire is just as oppressive and authoritarian as the Combine, but maintains a “by humans, for humanity” rhetoric to distinguish themselves. They hate the Vortigaunts and blame them for the Combine invasion. The Empire’s teleportation technology is based on Aperture Portal technology, and they have an interest in expanding a human-centric empire to other worlds.

Domain: Despite the Empire unearthing Aperture laboratories to seize technology, many remained hidden, including the original in upper Michigan, its entrance hidden by twenty years of plant-life growing over it and Xen wildlife making the region unsafe to traverse. GLaDOS’s death plunged that facility into disarray, but the AI cores that Aperture had been experimenting with sprung into action and began operating the facility themselves. The Domain of the Cores chose to forsake the surface world and instead began expanding the facility’s size underground. The robots organised themselves into a vague society, though it had constant squabbles and disagreements on how to operate, including one faction dedicated to the reconstructed and reactivation of GLaDOS. Which failed. The Domain operates beneath the surface outside the knowledge of the competing human factions.

[westphotolukedas]

Project Critical Evaluation

100419

Project Title

The title ‘Object / Fetish’ remained a constant throughout my project. It is a play on the terms ‘objective’ and ‘commodity fetishism’.

Subject

The Roland Barthes essay ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ 1964 and David Campany’s critique of the subject matter provided the basis for my study. Retailers impose commodity fetishism upon consumers in the pursuit of commercial gain by making their products deceptively appealing. I decided to photograph store windows in the retail districts of London to comment upon this issue. The final outcome deviated from my proposal due to the observations that I made as each shoot progressed.

Aims / Objectives / Concept

My initial objective was to reveal the realities of luxury products and the devices that retailers employ to make them appear aspirational. Oxford Street and the surrounding areas became my main location of interest. I had a brief diversion into China Town to photograph products that may be perceived as kitsch to parody luxury items. Given that our brief specified a final edit of five to nine images, I felt that these would be a distraction from the overall theme. Patterns began to form in my photographs due to the conformity of each store unit and the fluorescent presence of their signs. The function of this urban landscape is historically commodity fetishism. I felt it was fitting that the dimensions of the space, such as pavements and central islands in the roads, dictated the composition that I produced. Furthermore, the LED panels in store windows meant that many of my pieces recontextualise and distort the photographs that appear inside them.

Form / Medium / Presentation

My Nikon D750 is a full frame DSLR camera. It has an aspect ratio that resembles 35mm film and I decided to maintain a landscape format throughout the project. I collated in excess of 150 photographs over three evening sessions. The editing software Lightroom was useful to catalogue these images into collections, which automatically record the time each was made. I added a further detail, which was the location of each shoot. A simple blue tag was placed onto any photograph of interest and a collection was made that brought these all together for consideration.

An aperture of f/8.0 was a consistent choice to ensure that most of the detail I captured was sharp and in focus. Since I wanted minimal motion blur, I worked in ISO 3200. Many of the exposure histograms of my photographs were in a well exposed range. The main edits that I made in Lightroom were the addition of +30 contrast and -30 highlights. This was to counter the brightness of signs and panels. Clarity +10 was added with luminance +20, a step added to correct any digital noise that might have been problematic. Patch tool was used a few times to remove distracting reflections in areas of total darkness. Finally, lens correction and the transform modules were useful to align the horizontal and vertical features within each photograph. If any of the horizons or store features were skewed this would have been distracting. My production journal comments on specific colour saturation preferences.

Prior to printing, each image was sharpened in Photoshop with the unsharp mask function. A white border was added because the printer was not able to produce full bleed photographs. As a consequence I feel that the borders actually add to each piece, as the white contrasts the colours on display making them appear bolder. Their lustre finish is also complementary to the fluorescent nature of the works.

Mock up versions of each piece were printed and cut out to allow colleagues to suggest their interpretation of the final edit. Since every image is the same aspect ratio and in landscape it was a challenge to present them as a montage. A single linear formation worked well; however, since they appear all at once compositional choices regarding form, line, colour and subject matter determined their organisation. I would like to propose a book format for the final piece with the photographs appearing in linear chronological order. This would allow the viewer to appreciate each piece without distraction. Interestingly, they actually group in a sequence of three store windows with mannequins, three photographs being photographed and a final three that tie these themes together. With further time and budget the photo book would have many more entries and there would be a possibility to add the time and date as captions.

Research

The works of photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg appealed to me the most during our opening lecture. She was of particular interest to me given that she is a former Westminster graduate student. The main attraction of her take on street photography was her use of colour to imply the intonation of each piece. The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019 nominee Mark Ruwedel became another reference for his objective study on the effect of historic and political agendas on a physical landscape. There was an implied parallel to my project and photographing a shopping district. Recontextualising a photograph became another theme of my series. Sherrie Levine and twins Doug and Mike Starn have approached this subject in their artwork. Please refer to my production logs for more information.

Working Edit

Final Edit

[driftingthroughabsentmindedly]

Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything! Listen up, I’m about to give you the ins and outs of how to do the Rome thing, this mainly applies if you have a little one but there are some gems of advice for the baby-less too.

Italians absolutely adore babies. Because of this it was an amazing experience bringing our Little One with us to this incredible city. Travelling with a baby can be quite nerve-wracking for some people, but I think for most things with plenty of research in advance a lot of the stress can be eliminated. D had to go to Rome for work so we hitched along at the end of his trip for a little holiday, it had been a long summer in the UK and we both needed some kind of break!

This blog is being broken up into different segments to make it easier to navigate your way through the piece. The full itinerary is included at the end too as is the walking tour map we used.

Accommodation

We were lucky enough to have his mum join us for the trip. So after a few comparison websites I found the best route was to go with an Airbnb. An entire two-bedroom apartment on the edge of Vatican City was cheaper than two bedrooms in a hotel. With the apartment we not only had the two bedrooms, we had a living room and a kitchen, which turned out to be a godsend. It meant the Little Lady wasn’t confined to one room and could roam about the apartment semi-freely.

We were also right across the road from a gorgeous coffee place which we got breakfast from every morning, it was €1 for a cappuccino!

Planning

I structured a plan for the few days we had but made sure it was flexible. As someone who is possibly a little too keen for organisation it was a lot for me to say this!

We had three full days in Rome, so though we didn’t get to see everything on the list, the Jellybean was the priority and we went by her moods, stopped when we needed to and gave her plenty of chill time in the morning and evenings in the apartment.

We made sure we had ample snacks and water for the Little Lady and brought a packed lunch along so we could let her run around in a shaded spot rather than try and restrain her in a highchair in a restaurant.

Tips

Stay outside of the main tourist hot-spots, though this is a tired piece of advice it’s very poignant. We ate out all but one night because the cost wasn’t horrendous.

They LOVE babies. The Jellybean got the royal treatment in a restaurant we went to on the first night, she attracted attention from all of the staff, they taught her how to blow kisses and she even got her own free dessert. Did I mention she had only just turned one?!

Prams are useless in Rome. If you have a carrier bring that, if not, see if you can borrow one. Remember most of the attractions are OLD buildings and don’t usually have elevators available to the public. We saw a couple having to carry a newborn in a pram up all the steps at Castel Sant’Angelo, I did not envy them.

All of the tourist hot-spots are crazy busy! I’m not talking a few tourists getting in your pictures, I’m talking jam-packed. It was the worst at the Trevi fountain and going through the museums in Vatican City.

Trevi Fountain

Baby Carrier at Trevi Fountain

  ALL of the multi-passes available; Omni Pass, Roma pass…etc really aren’t worth it.

We booked nothing. NOT A SINGLE THING in advance.

Don’t fall for the trap of buying a skip the line ticket for Vatican City, listen up I’m about to seriously make this trip a hella lot easier for you.

We got approached at the entrance by many poachers who wanted to sell us a skip the line ticket for extortionate prices of €50+, we ignored them all and almost ignored the actual official man who let us skip the THREE-HOUR-LONG-QUEUE all because we had a baby strapped to our chest. We strolled on in, walked up the stairs and bought our €17 tickets.

THIS PART IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE. The Basilica is FREE to enter, however, after you go through the museums and see the Sistine Chapel, you technically need to queue again to see the Basilica – if you haven’t paid for a group ticket. You are encouraged to follow the ‘Exit’ sign at the left. Now, because my husband is a genius, he also did some research and found out if you follow the groups exit which is at the back right of the room, you can skip the next load of queues and enter the Basilica nice and easy. We felt like some super sneaky ninja spies defying the rules – so badass.

Give yourself enough time for Vatican City, you won’t appreciate it if all you’re concerned about is getting through it. Also the amount of people that will be there will just stress you out because everyone moves very slowly, the ambling pace however was good enough for the little lady to nod off so I wasn’t complaining.

Vatican Museums

Family Pic

Going Through into Sistine Chapel

Gardens at Vatican Museums

Vatican museums

  Gardens at the Vatican museums

We struggled to book tickets for the Colosseum online without paying for a guided tour – which really wouldn’t be ideal with a baby. Instead, after buying the Red Sightseeing Tour Bus ticket, we added on the Colosseum Fast Track when we got on the bus. The queues for these places really are hours long, and this was the best deal we could find. We waited a total of fifteen minutes before getting through security and being inside.

Me at Colosseum

Outside Colosseum

Take it easy, give yourself plenty of time and try not to over plan things, your child is going to get tired and depending on how old they are they’re not going to want to stay in a carrier all day. We broke up the day by sitting in parks, letting her walk around and allowing her explore.

Pack PLENTY of water and snacks for yourself and your child. There is nothing worse than a hungry child besides perhaps a cranky Mama to match. This is where the kitchen in the apartment came in handy. We made a packed lunch and brought it with us for the days, which cut down costs as we were in the top tourist attraction places, but it also meant we could eat when hungry and keep everyone happy.

Despite reading otherwise, most of the restaurants we went to for dinner had some kind of highchair, though I did have to hold her in one place, Rome is definitely becoming more with the times when it comes to dining out with children!

The driving in Rome is TERRIFYING, lanes don’t seem to be a thing. We got a standard taxi from the airport and I genuinely couldn’t look at the road. We got an Uber on the way back to the airport and the driver seemed to have a lot more consideration for us as customers so I would definitely recommend them over the standard taxi service.

Itinerary

Day 1

Castel Sant’Angelo

Walk along the River Tiber towards shopping district

Spanish Steps

Gelato Stop

Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

  Walking Along River Tiber

Spanish Steps

Inside the Pantheon

Fountain outside the Pantheon

  Day 2

Red Sightseeing Bus

Pyramid

Colosseum

Pyramid

Colosseum

  Day 3

Vatican City; Museums and Basilica

Tourist Shop Hopping

The Blog I found very useful and the Walking Tour included.

If you’ve never travelled with your little one before and would like some more generic airport advice then have a look at my previous post, Travelling Alone with an Infant!

Rome: Travelling with a Baby Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything! Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything!

[binsofchaos]

Diane Arbus | An Aperture Monograph

 My favorite thing is to go where I've never been. For me there's something about just going into somebody else's house. When it comes time to go, if I have to take a bus to somewhere or if I have to take a cab uptown, it's like I've got a blind date. It's always seemed something like that to me. And sometimes I have a sinking feeling of, Oh God it's time and I really don't want to go. And then, once I'm on my way, something terrific takes over about the sort of queasiness of it and how there's absolutely no method for control. 

If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, "I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life." I mean people are going to say, "You're crazy." Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid. 

Actually, they tend to like me. I'm extremely likeable with them. I think I'm kind of two-faced. I'm very ingratiating. It really kind of annoys me. I'm just sort of a little too nice. Ever thing is Oooo. I hear myself saying, "How terrific," and there's this woman making a face. I really mean it's terrific. I don't mean I wish I looked like that. I don't mean I wish my children looked like that. I don't mean in my private life I want to kiss you.

But I mean that's amazingly, undeniably something. 

There are always two things that happen. One is recognition and the other is that it's totally peculiar. But there's some sense in which I always identify with them. 

Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another wav and that's what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It's just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities. And, not content with what we were given, we create a whole other set. Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way but there's a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I've always called the gap between intention and effect. I mean if you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic. You know it really is totally fantastic that we look like this and you sometimes see that very clearly in a photograph. Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it. 

What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's. And that's what all this is a little bit about. That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own. 

Another thing is a photograph has to be specific. I remember a long time ago when I first began to photograph I thought, There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybody'll recognize it. It'll be like what they used to call the common man or something. It was my teacher, Lisette Model, who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it'll be. You really have to face that thing. And there are certain evasions, certain nicenesses that I think you have to get out of. 

The process itself has a kind of exactitude, a kind of scrutiny that we're not normally subject to. I mean that we don't subject each other to. We're nicer to each other than the intervention of the camera is going to make us. It's a little bit cold, a little bit harsh. 

Now, I don't mean to say that all photographs have to be mean. Sometimes they show something really nicer in fact than what you felt, or oddly different. But in a way this scrutiny has to do with not evading facts, not evading what it really looks like. 

Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. 

I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them and the minute they get public, I become terribly blank about them. 

Sometimes I can see a photograph or a painting, I see it and I think, That's not the way it is. I don't mean a feeling of, I don't like it. I mean the feeling that this is fantastic, but there's something wrong. I guess it's my own sense of what a fact is. Something will come up in me very strongly of No, a 'fie No. It's a totally private feeling I get of how different it really is. 

I'm not saying I get it only from pictures I don't like. I also get it from pictures I like a lot. You come outdoors and all you've got is you and all photographs begin to fall away and you think, My God, it's really totally different. I don't mean you can do it precisely like it is, but you can do it more like it is. 

I used to have this notion when I was a kid that the minute you said anything, it was no longer true. Of course it would have driven me crazy very rapidly if I hadn't dropped it, but there's something similar in what I'm trying to say. That once it's been done, you want to go someplace else. There's just some sense of straining.

Nudist camps was a terrific subject for me. I've been to three of them over a period of years. The first time I went was in i 96 3 when I stayed a whole week and that was really thrilling. It was the seediest camp and for that reason, for some reason, it was also the most terrific. It was really falling apart. The place was mouldy and the grass wasn't growing. 

I had always wanted to go but I sort of didn't dare tell anybody. The director met me at the bus station because I didn't have a car so I got in his car and I was very nervous. He said, "I hope you realize you've come to a nudist camp." Well, I hope I realized I had. So we were in total agreement there. And then he gave me this speech saying, "You'll find the moral tone here is higher than that of the outside world." His rationale for this had to do with the fact that the human body is really not as beautiful as it's cracked up to be and when you look at it, the mystery is taken away. 

They have these rules. I remember at one place there were two grounds for expulsion. A man could get expelled if he got an erection or either sex could get expelled for something like staring. They had a phrase for it. I mean you were allowed to look at people but you weren't allowed to somehow make a big deal of it. 

It's a little bit like walking into an hallucination without being quite sure whose it is. I was really flabbergasted the first time. I had never seen that many men naked, I had never seen that many people naked all at once. The first man I saw was mowing his lawn. 

You think you're going to feel a little silly walking around with nothing on but your camera. But that part is really sort of fun. It just takes a minute, you learn how to do it, and then you're a nudist. You may think you're not but you are. 

They seem to wear more clothes than other people. I mean the men wear shoes and socks when they go down to the lake and they have their cigarettes tucked into their socks. And the women wear earrings, hats, bracelets, watches, high heels. Sometimes you'll see someone with nothing on but a bandaid. 

After a while you begin to wonder. I mean there'll be an empty pop bottle or a rusty bobby pin underfoot, the lake bottom oozes mud in a particularly nasty way, the outhouse smells, the woods look mangy. It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation had said, "All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up." And they did. 

One of the things I felt I suffered from as a kid was I never felt adversity. I was confirmed in a sense of unreality which I could only feel as unreality. And the sense of being immune was, ludicrous as it seems, a painful one. It was as if I didn't inherit my own kingdom for a long time. The world seemed to me to belong to the world. I could learn things but they never seemed to be my own experience. 

I wasn't a child with tremendous yearnings. I didn't worship heroes. I didn't long to play the piano or anything. I did paint but I hated painting and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was. It was like self-expression time and I was in a private school and their tendency was to say, "What would you like to do?" And then you did something and they said, "How terrific." It made me feel shaky. I remember I hated the smell of the paint and the noise it would make when I put my brush to the paper. Sometimes I wouldn't really look but just listen to this horrible sort of squish squish squish. I didn't want to be told I was terrific. I had the sense that if I was so terrific at it, it wasn't worth doing. 

It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction. The best example I know is when you go to the movies and you see two people in bed, you're willing to put aside the fact that you perfectly well know that there was a director and a cameraman and assorted lighting people all in that same room and the two people in bed weren't really alone. But when you look at a photograph, you can never put that aside. 

A whore I once knew showed me a photo album of Instamatic color pictures she'd taken of guys she'd picked up. I don't mean kissing ones. Just guys sitting on beds in motel rooms. I remember one of a man in a bra. He was just a man, the most ordinary, milktoast sort of man, and he had just tried on a bra. Like anybody would try on a bra, like anybody would try on what the other person had that he didn't have. It was heartbreaking. It was really a beautiful photograph. 

There've been a couple of times that I've had an experience that's absolutely like a photograph to me even though it's totally non-visual. I don't know if I can describe it. There was one that was sensational. I had gone to a dance for handicapped people. I didn't have my camera. At first I'd come in and I was incredibly bored. I was sort of holding myself very in and really dreading the whole evening. I couldn't photograph and there wasn't even much I wanted to photograph. There were all different kinds of handicapped people. In fact, one woman told me this terrific thing which was that the cerebral palsies don't like the polios and they both dislike the retardeds. Anyway, after a while somebody asked me to dance and then I danced with a number of people. I began to have an absolutely sensational time. I can't really explain it. One sort of unpleasant aspect of it was that it was a little bit like being Jean Shrimpton [1960s model] all of a sudden. I mean you had this feeling that you were totally sensational suddenly because of the circumstances. Something had shifted and suddenly you were a remarkable creature. But the other thing was that my whole relation to people changed and I really had the most marvelous time. 

Then the woman who had brought me pointed out this man. She said, "Look at that man. He's dying to dance with somebody but he's afraid." He was a sixty year old man and he was retarded and visually he was not interesting to me at all because there was nothing about him that looked strange. He just looked like any sixty year old man. He just looked sort of ordinary. We started to dance and he was very shy. In fact there was something about him that was left over from being eleven. I asked him where he lived and he told me he lived in Coney Island with his father who was eighty and I asked him if he worked and he said in the summer he sold Good Humors. 

I don't worry anymore." Well, it was just totally knockout for me. 

I like to put things up around my bed all the time, pictures of mine that I like and other things and I change it every month or so. There's some funny subliminal thing that happens. It isn't just looking at it. It's looking at it when you're not looking at it. It really begins to act on you in a funny way. 

I suppose a lot of these observations are bound to be after the fact. I mean they're nothing you can do to yourself to get yourself to work. You can't make yourself work by putting up something beautiful on the wall or by knowing yourself. Very often knowing yourself isn't really going to lead you anywhere. Sometimes it's going to leave you kind of blank. Like, here I am, there's a me, I've got a history, I've got things that are mysterious to me in the world, I've got things that bug me in the world. But there are moments when all that doesn't seem to avail. 

Another thing I've worked from is reading. It happens very obliquely. I don't mean I read something and rush out and make a picture of it. And I hate that business of illustrating poems. But here's an example of something I've never photographed that's like a photograph to me. There's a Kafka story called "Investigations of a Dog" which I read a long, long time ago and I've read it since a number of times. It's a terrific story written by the dog and it's the real dog life of a dog. 

Actually, one of the first pictures I ever took must have been related to that story because it was of a dog. This was about twenty years ago and I was living in the summer on Martha's Vineyard. There was a dog that came at twilight every day. A big dog. Kind of a mutt. He had sort of Weimaraner eyes, grey eyes. I just remember it was very haunting. He would come and just stare at me in what seemed a very mythic way. I mean a dog, not barking, not licking, just looking right through you. I don't think he liked me. I did take a picture of him but it wasn't very good. 

I don't particularly like dogs. Well, I love stray dogs, dogs who don't like people. And that's the kind of dog picture I would take if I ever took a dog picture. 

One thing I would never photograph is dogs lying in the mud. 

In the beginning of photographing I used to make very grainy things. I'd be fascinated by what the grain did because it would make a kind of tapestry of all these little dots and everything would be translated into this medium of dots. Skin would be the same as water would be the same as sky and you were dealing mostly in dark and light, not so much in flesh and blood. 

But when I'd been working for a while with all these dots, I suddenly wanted terribly to get through there. I wanted to see the real differences between things. I'm not talking about textures. I really hate that, the idea that a picture can be interesting simply because it shows texture. I mean that just kills me. I don't see what's interesting about texture. It really bores the hell out of me. But I wanted to see the difference between flesh and material, the densities of different kinds of things: air and water and shiny. So I gradually had to learn different techniques to make it come clear. I began to get terribly hyped on clarity. 

I used to have a theory about photographing. It was a sense of getting in between two actions, or in between action and repose. I don't mean to make a big deal of it. It was just like an expression I didn't see or wouldn't have seen. One of the excitements of strobe at one time was that you were essentially blind at the moment you took the picture. I mean it alters the light enormously and reveals things you don't see. In fact that's what made me really sick of it. I began to miss light like it really is and now I'm trying to get back to some kind of obscurity where at least there's normal obscurity. 

Lately I've been struck with how I really love what you can't see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it's very thrilling for me to see darkness again. 

What's thrilling to me about what's called technique - I hate to call it that because it sounds like something up your sleeve - but what moves me about it is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them. 

Invention is mostly this kind of subtle, inevitable thing. 

It's a million choices you make. It's luck in a sense, or even ill luck. Some people hate a certain kind of complexity. Others only want that complexity. But none of that is really intentional. I mean it comes from our nature, identity. We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of. 

Some pictures are tentative forays without your even knowing it. They become methods. It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again. 

I hate the idea of composition. I don't know what good composition is. I mean I guess I must know something about it from doing it a lot and feeling my way into it and into what I like. Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There's a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness. Composition is like that. 

Recently I did a picture - I've had this experience before - and I made rough prints of a number of them. There was something wrong in all of them. I felt I'd sort of missed it and I figured I'd go back. But there was one that was just totally peculiar. It was a terrible dodo of a picture. It looks to me a little as if the lady’s husband took it. It's terribly head-on and sort of ugly and there's something terrific about it. I've gotten to like it better and better and now I'm secretly sort of nutty about it. 

I think the camera is something of a nuisance in a way. It's recalcitrant. It's determined to do one thing and you may want to do something else. You have to fuse what you want and what the camera wants. It's like a horse. Well, that's a bad comparison because I'm not much of a horseback rider, but I mean you get to learn what it will do. I've worked with a couple of them. One will be terrific in certain situations, or I can make it be terrific. Another will be very dumb but sometimes I kind of like that dumbness. It'll do, you know. I get a great sense that they're different from me. I don't feel that total identity with the machine. I mean I can work it fine, although I'm not so great actually. Sometimes when I'm winding it, It'll get stuck or something will go wrong and I just start clicking everything and suddenly very often it's all right again. That's my feeling about machines. If one sort of looks the other way, they'll get fixed. Except for certain ones. 

There used to be this moment of panic which I still can get where I'd look in the ground glass and it would all look ugly to me and I wouldn't know what was wrong. Sometimes it's like looking in a kaleidoscope. You shake it around and it just won't shake out right. I used to think if I could jumble it up, it would all go away. But short of that, since I couldn't do that, I'd just back up or start to talk or, I don't know, go someplace else. But I don't think that's the sort of thing you can calculate on because there's always this mysterious thing in the process. 

Very often when you go to photograph it's like you're going for an event. Say it's a beauty contest. 

You picture it in your mind a little bit, that there'll be these people who'll be the judges and they'll be choosing the winner from all these contestants and then Von go there and it's not like that at all. 

Very often an event happens scattered and the account of it will look to you in your mind like it's going to be very straight and photographable. But actually one person is over there and another person is over here and they don't get together. Even when you go to do a family, you want to show the whole family, but how often are the mother and father and the two kids all on the same side of the room? Unless you tell them to go there. 

I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself. 

I remember one summer I worked a lot in Washington Square Park. It must have been about 1966. The park was divided. It has these walks, sort of like a sunburst, and there were these territories staked out. There were young hippie junkies down one row. There were lesbians down another, really tough amazingly hard-core lesbians. And in the middle were winos. They were like the first echelon and the girls who came from the Bronx to become hippies would have to sleep with the winos to get to sit on the other part with the junkie hippies. It was really remarkable. And I found it very scary. I mean I could become a nudist, I could become a million things. But I could never become that, whatever all those people were. There were days I just couldn't work there and then there were days I could. And then, having done it a little, I could do it more. I got to know a few of them. I hung around a lot. They were a lot like sculptures in a funny way. I was very keen to get close to them, so I had to ask to photograph them. You can't get that close to somebody and not say a word, although I have done that. 

I have this funny thing which is that I'm never afraid when I'm looking in the ground glass. This person could be approaching with a gun or something like that and I'd have my eyes glued to the finder and it wasn't like I was really vulnerable. It just seemed terrific what was happening. I mean I'm sure there are limits. God knows, when the troops start advancing on me, you do approach that stricken feeling where you perfectly well can get killed. 

But there's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some slight magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way. 

I used to think I was shy and I got incredibly persistent in the shyness. I remember enjoying enormously the situation of being put off and having to wait. I still do. I suppose I use that waiting time for a kind of nervousness, for getting calm or, I don't know, just waiting. It isn't such a productive time. It's a really boring time. I remember once I went to this female impersonator show and I waited about four hours backstage and then I couldn't photograph and they told me to come back another night. But somehow I learned to like that experience because, while being bored I was also entranced. I mean it was boring, but it was also mysterious, people would pass. And also I had a sense of what there was to photograph that I couldn't actually photograph which I think is quite enjoyable sometimes. 

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject, and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough. 

There's this person I've photographed a lot. I just saw her on the street one day. I was riding my bicycle on Third Avenue and she was with a friend of hers. They were enormous, both of them, almost six feet tall, and fat. I thought they were big lesbians. They went into a diner and I followed them and asked if I could photograph them. They said, "Yes, tomorrow morning." 

Subsequently they were apparently arrested and they spent the night in jail being booked. So the next morning I got to their house around eleven and they were just coming up the stairs after me. The first thing they said was, "I think we should tell you" - I don't know why they felt so obligated - "we're men." I was very calm but I was really sort of pleased. 

I got to know one of them pretty well. She lives always dressed as a woman and she whores as a woman. I would never think she was a man. I can't really see the man in her. Most of the time I absolutely know but she has none of the qualities of female impersonators that I can recognize. have gone into restaurants with her and every man in the place has turned around to look at her and made all kinds of hoots and whistles. And it was her, it wasn't me. 

The last time I saw her I went to her birthday party. She called me up and said it was her birthday party and would I come and I said, "How terrific." It was a hotel on Broadway and 100th Street. I've never been in a place like that in my life. I've been in some pretty awful places but the lobby was really like Hades. There were people lounging around with the whites of their eves sort of purple and their faces all somehow violety black and it was scary. The elevator was broken and so finally I decided to walk. It was the fourth floor and there were these people dead on their feet on the stairs. You had to step over about three or four people every flight. And then I came into her room. The birthday party was me and her, a whore friend of hers and her pimp, and the cake. 

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way. One thing that struck me very early is that you don't put into a photograph what's going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in. I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse. 

For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. I do have a feeling for the print but I don't have a holy feeling for it. I really think what it is, is what it's about. I mean it has to be of something. And what it's of is always more remarkable than what it is. 

I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them. 

[kiapet2]

Aperture Sides Facility, Chapter 16: Caro Mio Addio

Masterpost

Chapter Summary: A last goodbye.

Chapter Warnings: Past Serious Injury, Leaving Loved Ones Behind

Thomas, can you hear me? C’mon kiddo, you’re gonna be okay, just wake up!

Do not worry, Patton. While some health complications are to be expected, he was only exposed to the extreme conditions of space for six point five seconds, well below the threshold for death.

Do you remember in that one movie when the guy got blown out the airlock and he turned blue and swelled up until his eyes popped out of his head and he exploded?

Oh my god, can you shut up???

Hold up guys, I think he’s coming to.

You groan, blinking as your vision fades in and out of focus.

“Thomas? Can you hear me?” It’s Roman’s voice, you think, and you look up at the others, a rainbow of colors shining down at you.

“M’good,” you slur. “Actually, everything hurts, but what else is new.”

“We need to get him to a MedPod!” Virgil says. “We don’t know how badly hurt he is. He could be dying!”

“A wise course of action,” Logan says. “I believe the closest is-”

“Wait,” you grunt. You take a deep breath, fighting to stay conscious. “Hold up, guys. There’s one- one thing we need... to do first.”

You look down to where Patton is still cradled in your arms.

“Wha- me?” Patton says.

You nod, instantly regretting it when your head bursts into pain. “There’s one more core to be added, before you’re complete.”

Patton looks back and forth between you and where the other Cores are gathered, then rapidly shakes his head. “No, I couldn’t. Not after all of that.”

“Sure you can,” Roman says.

Patton shakes his head even harder. “You never should have chosen me-”

“No, we were right to pick you,” you say.

“What? No, how can you-”

“We were right,” you repeat, as firmly as you can manage while barely conscious. You smile faintly at Patton. “We were wrong to pick only one person, but we were right to think you’d be the one who could resist the corruption. Because you were.”

“But I didn’t!” Patton practically wails. “I nearly destroyed the facility, I- I hurt you-”

“But in the end,” you say, “You chose to let Janus replace you, so the-”

A fresh wave of pain hits and you close your eyes against it, hissing through your teeth. When you open them again the others are giving you concerned looks, but you just take a deep breath and press on.

“-so the facility could be saved.”

“And you weren’t even trying to kill Thomas!” Roman says. “The other two tried to kill him like the whole time. That’s gotta count for something!”

“Right, he only tried to kill me,” Janus drawls. “Totally different.”

“Of course it is!” Virgil says. “You tried to kill us first. Payback’s a-”

“The point,” Logan interjects, “Is that despite your missteps as head of the facility, you ultimately demonstrated the ability to give up your power, despite being under rather extreme influence to do otherwise.”

“They’re gonna need you, Pat,” you say. “They need their Morality.”

Patton trembles in your hands, rattling faintly.

“Alright,” he says after a moment. “If that’s what you all want, then I’d do it. I’ll join you.”

The others give cheers and words of encouragement as the robotic body lowers to your level. You carefully press Patton against the final port, feeling a click as he locks into place.

Task done and energy spent, you let your hands fall as the world fades into unconsciousness yet again.

Music is the first thing you’re aware of: a cheery tune playing on loop, coming from somewhere nearby. You groan and shift slightly, feeling too comfortable to want to move. You blink your eyes open and squint at the bright light as the clear covering above you slides open.

“Dim that light!” someone barks. “And will someone turn off that god-awful music?”

“I dunno, it’s kinda grown on me,” someone else says, but after a moment the music stops and the light above you dims.

As the spots in your vision clear you see several familiarly round shapes peering down at you.

“Thomas?”

You groan and push yourself to a seated position. You’re in the same room as you were before, but it looks substantially different. The holes in the ceiling have been patched, and colorful tiles have been added to the walls, breaking up their sterile appearance.

A metal grabby arm comes out from the ground, and you flinch as it comes near, but it just deposits a soft blanket around your shoulders before disappearing again. You pull it tighter around yourself as you look at the others.

“How are you feeling, Thomas?” Logan says gently.

You pat down your front, marveling at the lack of pain. “Surprisingly, pretty okay.”

“We were really worried for a bit there, kiddo,” Patton says, “but you should be right as a rainbow now. The healing chamber didn’t even give you another nipple!”

You self-consciously feel at your chest, then glance down when you feel soft fabric in place of your dirty old tester uniform. You didn’t notice before in your haste to check for injuries, but you’re now wearing a simple tee shirt and sweatpants, both emblazoned with the Aperture Science logo. You decide you’re going to be appreciative of the more comfortable clothes and not think about a group of ball-shaped robots seeing you naked.

Speaking of certain metal balls…

You look up and get a good look at the others for the first time. You don’t know what you expected- Janus’ snake-like body with everyone else latched onto the side, maybe- but instead the mechanical form in front of you looks almost like an upside-down tree. The long, flexible body forms the “trunk,” but instead of continuing until it reaches the Core at the end it instead splits into six about halfway down, each of the Cores appearing to operate one part independently of the others. It should look almost bizarre, but instead you find there’s a strange sort of beauty to it.

“And… you guys?” you say, almost afraid to ask.

“Our behavior seems to be within acceptable parameters,” Logan says. “There have also been no attempts at murder or kidnapping so far, though with the only human unconscious I am unable to say for sure if this was due to lack of human subjects.”

“Naw, there’s plenty of things around we could still murder!” Remus says. “Turrets, plants, that bird that flew in before we fixed the roof, each other…”

“But we’re not doing that,” Roman says pointedly.

“Nope!” Remus agrees cheerfully. “Fun to imagine, though!”

You can’t help it; you break into a smile, then a laugh.

“Hm,” Janus says with exaggerated seriousness, “It looks as though we may have corrupted Thomas this time. Such a dark sense of humor, Thomas!”

“You’re part of me, so what does that say about you?” you say, still smiling.

“Clearly, I am the superior part,” Janus says snottily.

Virgil snorts. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

“Well I think you’re all pretty great!” Patton says.

“Right back at you, Pops,” Roman says, but Patton just ducks his head and doesn’t respond.

That’s a wound that’s probably going to take some time to heal, you think. But Patton is probably the strongest person you know, er well, the strongest person you’ve met since you woke, and he has the others now. He’ll be alright.

You stand, wobbling a bit before steadying yourself, and take a few steps across the room. You don’t know if it’s the healing chamber or just getting hydration, nutrition and sleep, but you’re actually feeling pretty good, all things considered.

You look back at the others and smile. “You patched me real good. Thanks, guys.”

“Technically, the healing chamber did all the work,” Logan says, then adds on, “but you’re welcome after Patton pointedly clears his throat.

“Thomas,” Roman says with uncertainty in his voice, “I know you just woke up, but… do you know what you’re going to do now?”

You sigh, scrubbing a hand down your face. A few days ago you would have answered “get out of here as soon as possible,” but a lot has changed since then. You’ve found friends- family really- and are loath to leave them. But at the same time, you’re not sure you could survive spending the rest of your life in this place.

“Give me a few days?” you say tentatively.

“Of course,” Janus says. “Tell us whenever you’re ready.”

And so for the next week or so, you stay. You eat canned meals and vitamin supplements, sing and dance with Roman and the others, monitor everyone for any signs of negative influence and have long discussions about the hundreds of humans still suck in cryosleep and the best, most humane ways to wake them.

It’s… good. It feels nice to be around these people- these parts of you- without the constant threat of death hanging over your head.

And yet, by the end of the week you find yourself packing a satchel full of food and survival equipment, and then trekking up to the Control Chamber to see the others.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you,” Janus says flatly, as soon as he sees your face.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Don’t get me wrong, I love all of you, and if I could stay with you and be happy I would. But it would kill me to live my life here. I want to see the sky.”

The Cores all exchange looks, then Patton says, “we understand.”

“You’re welcome back anytime you want to visit,” Virgil says. “Not that anyone ever really visits Aperture, but if you’re in the neighborhood…”

“I’ll look you up,” you say, the thought bringing a smile to your face.

“Virge,” you say, “I’m really glad I met you. You’ve saved my life so many times, and taught me so much about myself. I’m never going to think of my anxiety the same way again.”

“Doofus,” Virgil mutters, but he’s smiling so you call it a win.

You turn to Patton next.

“Thomas,” he says, “I’m so sorry for everything, again. I just knew everyone was counting on me, and I got it into my head that I couldn’t fail, no matter what.”

“But you can fail,” you say, directing your smile towards him. “Because someone is always gonna be there to catch you.”

Patton bends down, and you gather him into a hug. “I’ll miss you, Thomas,” he says.

You hug tighter, ignoring the metal digging into your arms. “I’ll miss you too.”

“Next, you go to Roman. “You’ll need to have many more adventures, for me,” he says, chuckling wetly.

“Same to you,” you say, trying really hard at this point not to choke up yourself. “Always remember how special you are, okay?”

“I will,” Roman says, “I swear it.”

You turn to Logan. “Logan, you’ve been my rock this whole time. I don’t know where any of us would be right now without you.”

Logan makes a noise like clearing his throat, as if self-conscious. “You also have taught me much, Thomas. I am honored to be a part of you.”

You don’t turn to Remus so much as have him tackle-hug you.

“I heard there are nasty looking aliens out there,” he says. “Kill one for me?”

You laugh again. “You know what? If I can handle things in here, I can handle a few aliens.”

And finally, there’s Janus, fully restored in his black-and-yellow casing. For a moment you stare at each other, neither sure exactly what to say. Then you say, “I know we started off a bit rough, but I’m really glad to have known you. I consider you a friend.”

“The same to you,” Janus says, and this time you know he isn’t lying.

You hold out the portal gun. “Thank you for letting me use this- even though you originally intended to kill me and get it back.”

“Keep it,” Janus says softly. “It will be harder to use outside, but not impossible. Around him the others all nod their agreement, and that’s when the tears come.

“Goodbye,” you say as you step into the elevator and the doors close behind you. “Goodbye.”

Halfway up, the elevator slows and the door opens. In front of you is a massive chamber absolutely full of turrets, and for a moment you’re convinced you’re about to die, before you see that none of them are shooting or even aiming.

The turrets begin to sway their side flaps back and forth, and sounds of music come from them, halting at first but growing in strength and complexity as more join in. Then, a voice comes in with the melody, apparently from nowhere- a rich baritone, strikingly similar to your own.

Roman.

Another voice joins it, similar to Roman’s but with a distinct rasp that you know belongs to Virgil. More voices add to the song: Patton’s, clear and gentle like a lullaby; Logan’s, starting out pitchy but growing in strength and certainty as he continues; Janus, dark and smooth as chocolate, and finally Remus rounding out the harmonies in a nasal tenor. It’s a song of farewell, one that grows to a crescendo as your elevator once again begins to rise, before coming to a gentle resolution as the elevator arrives at its destination.

You blink the tears out of your eyes as the elevator doors open, revealing another door that slowly swings open to reveal light too warm and bright to be anything artificial. You look back over your shoulder one more time as you let your eyes adjust.

“Thank you for everything,” you whisper, not sure if the others can still here you but still wanting to try. “Goodbye.”

Then you step out into the light, and for the first time you can remember, see bright blue sky.

[carriejonesbooks]

So, because I am a writer, something that I never imagined would happen, happened.

No, I did not suddenly learn how to fly.

This is Super Girl. She can fly, and rock a cape.

No, Grover did not propose.

Grover: Some day I will, Cawwie. 

Wow. I hope so, Grover, I’ve been waiting on that since first grade.

It wasn’t learning to fly or a Grover proposal.

Instead, I was in a real photo shoot with a real make-up artist and real stylist and real photo shoot coordinator and real photographer with assistant.

For Glamour Magazine.

Yes, seriously. Glamour Magazine.

And I wore make-up. And it was cold, but I still managed to not fall down or turn into an ice cube.

If you know me, you know that I am not a person who wears make-up.

Look. Proof. The photo of myself that I tend to post is make-up free AND my hair is wet. That is how un-glam I am.

So… why? Why was I doing this? Why was I totally stepping outside of my comfort zone?

It was for the Dear Bully anthology that Megan Kelley Hall and I were doing with Harper Collins, so I couldn’t cop out or claim social anxiety disorder because it was for a good cause.

I am a sucker for good.

Anyway, I was totally out of my previously-mentioned comfort zone and the whole time that I was panicking and thinking, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I have to wear make-up. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. People are going to see my picture. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I have to wear clothes that do not belong to me.”

Really, it’s true. You wear clothes that are not yours at these things. So, I was kind of thinking I’d get to wear something glammy because it is GLAMOUR MAGAZINE, and it was basically my one shot to be actually glamorous.

Yeah.

That didn’t happen.

Since they did the shoot in Maine, they wanted it to reflect Maine culture and I guess holding dead lobsters in our hands and swigging Allen’s Coffee Brandy while wearing moose hats was out of the question.

So the next best thing they could think of was…

Yeah,  it was basically …. um….

LL Bean.

Someday, I swear, I’ll be glammy. Really. I will. It’s on my bucket list.

Grover: I am on a cow. That was on the bucket list of me, Grover, and I managed to do it fabulously and glamorously, don’t I? 

Yes, I know Grover. You did.

But the point here is that if you are brave and you say ‘yes’ to things that are TOTALLY OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE? Well, good things could happen. You can wear make-up and random clothes from L.L. Bean. Or you can be on the radio at WERU like I was this week. I got to talk to the amazing Brook Mining, who is a rock star librarian and radio host. The hour-long show is archived here if you feel like listening to it.

AND IF YOU EVER have to do a photo shoot with Glamour, do NOT be scared because the people are so awesome and nice and kind and patient. It’s amazing. I fell in love with all of them. They were just that cool.

To find out more about DEAR BULLY check it out here.

  And since it’s Mother’s Day in the U.S. this weekend and I am without a mother, here’s a quick shout-out to my mom who tried so hard in a world that was always pushing her down. She was amazing. I miss her.

Writing News

Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.

So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page.  There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.

  Time Stoppers

Dear Bully

Flying

Need

Sarah Emma Edmonds

CARRIE’S APPEARANCES

I’ll be at Book Expo America in NYC on June 1 at 11:30 – 12 at the Lerner booth signing copies of the Spy Who Played Baseball. A week before that,

I’ll also be in NYC presenting to the Jewish Book Council . Come hang out with me!

PODCAST

The podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along!

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can.

That Time I was in Glamour Magazine. No. Seriously. I was. So, because I am a writer, something that I never imagined would happen, happened. No, I did not suddenly learn how to fly.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY As the Earth crosses the tail of a comet, previously inanimate machines suddenly spring to life; an ATM insults a customer (King in a cameo) and a bascule bridge rises during heavy traffic, causing all vehicles upon the bridge to fall into the river or collide. Chaos sets in as machines of all kinds begin attacking humans. At a roadside truck stop just outside Wilmington, North Carolina, an employee, Duncan Keller, is blinded after a gas dispenser sprays diesel in his eyes. A waitress, Wanda June, is injured by an electric knife, and arcade machines in the back room electrocute another victim. Employee and ex-convict Bill Robinson begins to suspect something is wrong. Meanwhile, at a Little League game, a vending machine kills the coach by firing canned soda point-blank into his skull. A driverless steamroller flattens one of the fleeing children, but one named Deke Keller (Duncan’s son) manages to escape on his bike.

A newly-wed couple, Connie (Yeardley Smith) and Curtis (John Short), stop at a gas station, where a brown tow truck tries to kill Curtis, but he and Connie escape in their car. Deke rides through his town as humans and even pets are brutally killed by lawnmowers, chainsaws, electric hair dryers, pocket radios, and RC cars. At the truck stop, a black Western Star 4800 sporting a giant Green Goblin mask on its grille runs over a Bible salesman after a red garbage truck kills Duncan and dumps some of the junk on the Bible salesman’s car to make him so angry that he insults its “driver”. Later, several big rig trucks encircle the truck stop.

Meanwhile, Connie and Curtis are pursued by a truck, but they make it crash off the side of the road as it exploded. They arrive at the truck stop and try to pass between the trucks, but their car is hit and overturns. Bill and Brett, a hitchhiker, rush to help them, but the trucks attack them. Bill’s boss Hendershot uses M72 LAW rockets he had stored in a bunker hidden under the diner to destroy many of the trucks. Deke makes it to the truck stop later that evening and tries to enter via the sewers, but is obstructed by the wire mesh covering the opening. That night, the survivors hear the Bible salesman screaming in a ditch, and Bill and Curtis sneak out to help him by climbing through the sewers. Deke finds the Bible salesman and believes he is dead, but he suddenly jumps up and attacks Deke. Bill and Curtis rescue Deke, and a truck chases them back into the pipe.

The next morning, a Caterpillar D7G bulldozer and an M274 Mule drive through the diner. Hendershot uses the rocket launcher to blow the bulldozer away. The Mule fires its post-mounted M60 machine gun into the building, killing several people. The Mule then demands, via sending morse code signals through its horn that Deke deciphers, that the humans pump the trucks’ diesel for them in exchange for their lives. The survivors soon realize they have become enslaved by their own machines. Robinson suggests they escape to a local island just off the coast, on which no motorised vehicles are permitted. While the crew is resting, Robinson theorizes that the comet is actually a “broom” operated by interstellar aliens that are using our machines to destroy humanity so the aliens can repopulate the Earth. During a fueling operation, Robinson sneaks a grenade onto the Mule vehicle, destroying it, then leads the party out of the diner via a sewer hatch to the main road just as the trucks demolish the entire truck stop. The survivors are pursued to the docks by the Green Goblin truck, which manages to kill Brad the trucker. Robinson destroys the truck with a direct hit from an M72 LAW rocket shot. The survivors then sail off to safety. A title card epilogue explains that two days later, a UFO was destroyed by a Soviet “weather satellite” conveniently equipped with class IV nuclear missiles and a laser cannon. Six days later, the Earth passes out of the comet’s tail, and the survivors are still alive.

DEVELOPMENT In the late Seventies. Milton Subotsky purchased seven early King short stories from an American production company. Three of these. “The Lawnmower Man.” “The Mangler” and “Trucks. were targeted to comprise The Machines, which was to be a three part anthology film. Early on. King was approached by Subotsky about writing and directing adaptations of all or part of the material King demurred Referring to the stories, he later told a reporter . I know that if Subotsky made it, it would actually be worse than if they were never made at all. I don’t like to root for my things not to be made, except in certain cases, but…”

Milton Subotsky

Needless to say, Subotsky proceeded without the writer’s input. He commissioned Edward and Valerie Abraham to draft a screenplay using the three King stories. The husband and wife writing team had previously scripted The Monster Club in 1980, Subotsky’s last produced film. Shortly after that film’s release. Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg, the other half of Amicus Productions, became involved in a lengthy, expensive, and less than amicable legal row.

Burdened with court costs, Subotsky sold off some of his King story rights to the De Laurentiis organization. Two stories were eventually used in the Martha Schumacher produced Cat’s Eye. Now. with The Machines script in hand, Subotsky tried to find American financial backing, but to no avail. Again. Schumacher now head of production at De Laurentiis) and Subotsky did some business Schumacher initially purchased all three “mechanical stories for development, but, apparently having convinced King to act as screen writer, ultimately concentrated solely on Trucks.

Subotsky believes King’s claims of never having read the Abrahams’ work, but he has made noises about certain conceptual elements contained in the non. Trucks segments of his commissioned screenplay finding their way into Maximum Overdrive, King’s “Trucks-derived screenplay. Whatever the case. Subotsky received a co-producer’s credit at the end of another De Laurentiis/King film as he had with Cat’s Eye.

When De Laurentiis first acquired the property, he asked King to write the screenplay. King originally declined. De Laurentiis and producer Martha Schumacher approached him again a few weeks later and asked him to at least write a treatment. “I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t have time to do it,” King recalls, but the thing with Dino is that he’s almost telepathic. He knows when the ideas have started to sink in. I had suggested another writer for the treatment and, frankly, neither one of us liked what he had come up with.

“I had been kicking around some ideas, this idea about the comet and all the machinery going crazy, not just the trucks like in the original story. So, Dino called a week later and asked me one more time to do the screenplay. I immediately said yes, because by then, I had a very clear picture of the plot and found myself wanting to go ahead with the adaptation.”   King’s ideas were so clear that he specified more than a thousand shots within the screenplay. De Laurentiis response was to ask him to direct. King decided that, yeah sure, he’d like to direct the picture himself. Admitting to being tired of being asked why the films of his books had for the most part, turned out to be so disappointing, King rationalized that with all these people ruining his material, he might as well as it go himself wanted to do it once because I thought I might be able to do a better job than some of the people who have done.” King stated. He was sure he couldn’t do any worse. Or course, with total control comes total responsibility as well.

So King signed up-another first-time director Dino took a fly on. The writer was to have the rare luxury of learning how to dire by helming his own $10 million picture. Talk about on the job training. The results? Well, it was in focus.

PRODUCTION Filming began July 14 at locations near the De Laurentiis facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the first major FX shots involved a massive collision of cars when a drawbridge lifts on its own. A small scale model was built near an existing bridge and, by angling the camera over the foreground model, an illusion of perspective made the miniature appear in the same location as the existing bridge, complete with tiny wrecks and itty-bitty mangled bodies.   At a location 10 miles outside of town at the edge of a highway, the company constructed the Dixie Boy as a facsimile of a working truck stop. It was convincing enough that more than one trucker stopped in. Eventually, the producers were forced to place an announcement in the local papers advising residents that the Dixie Boy was a prop. Of the $10 million allotted for Maximum Overdrive, most was spent on location shooting, the Dixie Boy set, and the hardware-big diesel semi-trailer tractors, vans, front loaders, a bus or two, and assorted other vehicles.

“I argued very hard to get $100,000 for a truck ‘hospital’ fund explains King. “The vehicles were taking such a beating. I never got it, though, and I think it hurt us a little bit in the end. I had to make some compromises there.”

King noted earlier, he blew up a lot of things. He celebrated his birthday on location and part of his present was an explosive surprise. All the crew members wore fangs at the celebration and one FX technician handed King a button near twilight and said, “Press this.” King did so and triggered a massive fireworks display rigged by the crew. The party was one of the few times that King was able to relax. Before principal photography wrapped on October 2, he got an intense “how-to” course in filmmaking.

The bridge destruction scene involved miniatures

“I had to make my share of compromises, but I think that if anything astonished me, it was how much more I could get then I thought I could. I got more from my actors than I thought I could, more from special effects, from film editing, from the camera department, everything. I guess I didn’t realize how good they were.”

The bridge destruction scene involved miniatures

King’s first day’s as director DeLaurentiis visited the North Carolina location and surveyed King’s progress for fifteen minutes before leaving. Later, after that day’s dailies, DeLaurentiis gave King some choice criticisms on the stiff movements of his actors. “At first. I was mad as hell.” King growled. “I’m saying to myself *This guy comes out here for fifteen minutes and he takes this look and he gets back into his air-conditioned Rolls Royce while I continue to soak my jockey shorts in this damn sun.’ But I went back and looked at the dailies and he was right. Those people were stiff and wooden and totally static. Dino came out there and saw it right away.”

But still, there is Dino to contend with. “God knows, the man has made some really awful pictures,” said King. “But’ know, I agreed to do MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE for Dino because win, lose, or draw-and the man can have some pretty outlandish ideas at times-he has never told me a lie. He said he doesn’t lie to people anymore because it isn’t profitable.”

It used to be a truck stop. Now it looks like a war zone. Everything except the Dixie Boy diner is in a state of ruin. A truck that once hauled toilet paper lies exploded in the grey dirt parking lot, the unburned rolls of tissue streaming in the night wind. Burned-out cars litter the area. The constant parade of huge tractor-trailers fills the air with dust as the big rigs circle the diner, waiting for the humans to come out.   This truck stop sprung from Hell is the North Carolina set for MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. But with all the signs of devastation and even with North Carolina State Troopers stationed along the highway on either side of the diner, passing travelers still pull in to the phony gas pumps, looking for a fill-up, a quick cup of coffee, a place to stretch their legs and relieve themselves. A grip hustles across the lot explaining that it’s only a movie, that there’s no gas in the pumps and no coffee or anything else-inside the Dixie Boy.

Some of the people driving in probably know that. They’ve probably heard that Stephen King is making a movie right down the road a piece and think it might be kind of neat to take the family for a closeup look at some genuine moviemaking. They see lots of lights and cables and fabricated destruction while popular author Stephen King holes-up inside the Dixie Boy diner, learning what it’s like to occupy the director’s chair.

After filming was completed King offered a different view. “Now that it’s all over I can say that I can direct actors, but I’m not very good with cars and trucks, Actually, I had a lot more trouble with machines. My thought going into it was that a machine is never going to tell you, “Fuck you, I can’t work today because I’ve got a hangover. ‘What a machine will do is break down on the hottest day of the year. We had old air-start trucks and when they wouldn’t start they had to be aired out and then aired up again with a compressor.

“We had incredible problems trying to get cordless electric knives. Apparently there are very few cordless ones on the market so special effects rigged up three to run on vibrator motors and Emilio hammered two of them to death on takes that were no good.”

Still, directing agrees with King. It’s late, nearly midnight, the crew is grumpy, the dust chokes everything, the night chill has set in, but the director is his usual amiable self, relaxed, joking, but serious about what he’s doing.

King takes it all in stride, openly commenting on his novice status as a director, often joking about the film school teachings to which he has never been exposed. “I was surprised by how little 1 actually knew,” said King. “When we started out I figured I’d sort of ease into this like into cold water. Well, we were shooting truck interiors, really second unit stuff, on Dino’s back lot. Trucks running themselves, gearshifts going up gas pedals going down. And I had this sequence for one of the trucks that went like this: the clutch goes in, the transmission lever goes up, the clutch goes out, the gas pedal goes down.

“We shot it with the driver’s side door open and everything was fine except the transmission lever. It stuck up so high could see the studio through the windshield. I said, ‘that’s okay, we’ll go around and shoot it from the other side. Well, everybody just looked at me the way you’d look at somebody who’s had a loud fart in a room and doesn’t know enough to excuse himself. And nobody said a word!

“When I came down here, everybody was in awe-enfant terrible, or whatever that is. Nobody wanted to say, ‘You screwed up. Finally someone took me aside and said, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said,

“Why?’ He said, ‘It’s across the axis.’ I said, “What?’ He said, ‘It’s the wrong side. He explained that it wouldn’t cut, you’d confuse the audience. We went into my office where there’s a model of the Dixie Boy and some lead figures and he lined everything up and showed it to me the way you’d show a kid. And it wasn’t until we accidentally shot across the axis a few weeks later that I fully understood.

“You learn all that stuff in film school.” King said, “but I’m learning as I go. “Later in the evening King pulls a pack of cigarettes from the rack behind the Dixie Boy’s cash register even as unit publicist Michael Klastorin cautions against disturbing anything for the sake of continuity. “Continuity?” King asks, “what’s that? Something they teach you in film school?

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, King, Stephen, 1986

Obviously joking, King has reached the point in the production where he feels confident about his work. Later he would say that were he to direct another film, “I would do a lot of things differently and probably better. I would spend less time in preparation and leave myself a lot more open to innovation.”

Being a first-time director, King spent considerable time preparing for the job. Storyboards were prepared as production aides, but by this night in October he has abandoned them and is relying more on impulse, allowing the film to shape itself in much the same way he allows his novels to develop their own plot details.

“I’ve never used a story outline. That’s not the way I work. We had a guy come in and do some storyboards and they helped because you have a situation where you have to introduce this restaurant and establish it for the audience pretty quickly. The storyboards helped with that. But you should be open to improvisation. I’ve learned that. You reach a point where you feel like you’re not being ridden anymore, you’re riding. That’s how I feel now. I feel like I’m sorta in charge of this thing. Then he laughs.

Surprisingly, King doesn’t see the writer as being the most important element of a movie, “Writing screenplays is work for idiots,” he said without hesitation. And he has no problem accepting the theory that the director is the author” of a film. “Ideally the writer and the director should be in bed together throughout the whole process. But the director is probably the actual author of the film. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here, to see if I can get at whatever it is about my work that makes it a Stephen King story.”

After seven weeks of filming at the Dixie Boy, King is more confident about film directing and his ability to maybe capture that intangible something that makes Stephen King “Stephen King.” He also acted as second unit director-picking up shots that didn’t require the featured actors’ presence. Many of the secondary shots involved the apparently driverless trucks and it soon became a matter of logistics. A difficult staging problem was disguising Glenn Randall’s stunt drivers. One solution was to drape the cabs in black felt and suit up the drivers in Ninja-like costumes to hide them. Special compartments were built in some trucks and one driver was disguised as a seat cushion.

The trucks rev up, ready to chase each other head-to-tail around and around the Dixie Boy for more takes, and somehow I find myself outside, right in the middle of the noise and the dust. I try to get back inside the diner, but filming has begun and Emilio Estevez, is seriously involved in the scene. A crew member charges out the door and announces, “Emilio’s on the edge again.” I’m told I’ll have to stay outside for a while, so I watch the trucks.

They’re the huge rumbling rigs that dwarf your car on the highways and interstates, seemingly oblivious to anything in their path. It’s easy to understand why King, like Richard Matheson before him, is able to find the element of fear in these eighteen wheelers. There’s something disconcerting about these trucks and finally it becomes clear. There are no drivers. The steering wheels, barely visible, are turning themselves.   When they grind to a stop, a door on one of the trucks opens and a man dressed all in black drops to the ground and leaves the truck. “It’s so simple,” says special effects technician David Sandlin, “there’s nothing to it.” He opens the door of the empty truck. “Take a look.” The truck’s sleeper cab behind the driver’s seat has been stripped and a seat for the driver has been mounted in place of the bedding. All we do is set everything back, “Sandlin explains. “Nothing’s changed. We just get pick-up points elsewhere. You weld a rod to the stick shift so the gears can be changed from here, cut the steering column and attach a chain for steering. It’s just like any other truck except that the controls are further back.

The drivers wear black clothes and sit behind a sheer black curtain that separates the sleeper from the front of the cab and the result is a truck that convincingly appears to drive itself.

Sandlin has been kept busy blowing up trucks. The toilet paper truck lying ruined in the parking lot was destroyed with mortar shells Sandlin rigged inside the trailer, angled outward in opposite directions.

The other night we blew up a beer truck. We cut out the top of the trailer, took off the doors and replaced them with dummies. We filled the trailer with fifty gallon drums of soapy water and rigged it with primer cord lifters, then fired a modified missile at the truck and it blows everything out, all over the place.”

The Dixie Boy diner has also received Sandlin’s attention. “It looks good, doesn’t it?” he asks, indicating the front of the building that was erected especially for OVERDRIVE. “Last night it was covered with bullet holes. We tore it up pretty good.”

To show the people trapped inside that they mean business, the trucks outside bring in an army truck armed with a high caliber machine gun that opens fire on the diner. “We set about 500 squibs made of a substance called Roma Plastolina and covered them up with duct tape. Out of the 500 only one didn’t go off. That’s a great ratio.

“We also built a breakaway wall with a sub-floor for a scene where one of the trucks rams the diner. What happens is it breaks through the wall, then drops through the floor boards. But the biggest thing we’ll do is blow this whole thing up.” Sandlin is specifically a pyrotechnician, and he clearly delights in his work.

“We’ll load this place with gasoline, diesel fuel, primer cord, and thermex which is eighty percent dynamite. Now I know where the safe line is. It’s across the highway over there. I’ll show them right where to set up, because that’s where I’m going to be. Some people like to get in closer, but not me. I’ve got the line marked and I’ll be on the other side of it.”

The set was then duplicated in exact miniature by model maker Emilio Ruiz del Río. As the Dixie Boy also house Hendershot’s collection of stolen Army munitions, the film’s 9 minutes of extensive stunts, pyrotechnical work and gore effects culminated in the spectacular destruction of both life-size and miniature sets. The fiery destruction of the Dixie Boy was achieved blowing the full-scale set with thermite and incline mixture, and similarly torching the finely detailed miniature, Though far different in scale, the footage from these two sets cut together seamlessly.

SPECIAL EFFECTS “To be honest with you, Maximum Overdrive is not a makeup effects film,” admits the 28-year-old Gates, a relative movie newcomer. “Basically, I had to deliver the aftermath of what happens when the machines come to life and take out their hatred on the human race. We have several people who get run over by trucks, and other makeups as the machines-chainsaws, electric knives, etc.-go berserk.”

“I was left on my own pretty much,” he explains. “I would try and feel King out on an idea, how he would like to see it. During pre-production, he gave me a feeling of what he wanted, and I would go off and work on it. And, if I pushed for something bigger, he would reconsider it and sometimes go with my idea. He was wide open on almost everything.”

One thing that King certainly pushed for during Maximum Overdrive was more blood. He loved it! That was a concern all along, whether or not we had too much blood. Stephen took great delight in pouring blood on stuff. He even named me Doctor Dean.”

In the film’s original planning it was decided that truck attacks would be acted using actors and stuntmen, augmenting the effect in the editing process. By the time filming was underway plans were changed, and a decision was made to use dummies during the attack sequences, particularly in the case of J.C. Quinn, who plays Duncan, a mechanic at the truck stop.

It was a last minute decision, but fortunately I had already made a cast of J.C. hcad for appliances. Gates made the cast by covering Quinn’s head with dental impression cream backed with plaster bandages. When the cast sets it is removed and filled with microcrystaline wax to make a positive impression of the head. It is on the wax model that the proper facial expression is fashioned. A urethane rubber mold is made from the finished model and then any number of heads can be produced from the rubber mold.

“Originally we didn’t design it for blood and guts so we had to go back and do that. We had to hustle to get it done. It took about a week-and-a-half. We mounted the head on a foam dummy rigged with pipe to give it rigidity. There was some talk of articulating it so the arms would move and all that, but we dropped it. When the shot was done it ended up being shot from behind so all the work we did on the head won’t be seen. But there’s a really good blood bag loaded in that one.”

It was easier for Gates to toss a victim to a runaway steam roller: “On that one we just used a rag dummy loaded with blood bags. It was just for the effect of the blood spewing up.”

The most satisfying work Gates has done for MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE is his work on Christopher Murney who plays Camp Loman, an early victim of the truck attacks. “He gets knocked in a ditch and everybody thinks he’s dead, but he’s still alive. At one point he sits up and a flap of skin falls off to show the skull underneath. We put a plate, a two-piece makeup.just above his eyebrow. The skull was laid over because I needed a tube-fed bladder to pump blood through a hole in the skull.

“I coated the inside of the appliance with a product called ‘Ultraslime.’ When it’s pulled apart it makes strands of goo as an extra effect. Because of the Ultraslime we had to rig a monofilament line, black fishing line actually, in order to get the flap to peel off. It took a couple of takes to get all the moves worked out so the line isn’t seen. Chris delivered his lines to me as I pumped the bladder and he reacted to my expression as all this blood and goo gushes out and it all worked. I don’t think they’ll cut any of it because he has some pretty important lines there.”

Gates enjoys the challenge of big, striking makeup effects, trying to bring a new twist to something that had been done countless times before. But he also has respect for the more commonplace, day to-day duties of the makeup department. “More subtle effects are really more difficult to perfect, because you don’t necessarily want the audience to notice it as an effect. It’s just something that’s there, like the blisters on Emilio’s hands. That can be a great challenge.”

To please both sides, King filmed two different versions of a potentially gory sequence in which a kid riding a bicycle gets run over-and squished-by a driverless steamroller. This one scene, according to Gates, caused the biggest editing room dilemmas. Unlike those Road Runner cartoons, nobody jumps back up after a tar-smoother attack!

“We shot it two ways,” Gates elaborates, with blood and without blood. On the first take, we had a dummy’s head filled with loose chopped foam, so when it popped, what looked like mashed potatoes came out. It was bizarre. We filled the second dummy with lots of blood bags, and when crushed, the blood splashed all over.”

A more subtle shock moment in Maximum Overdrive begins as potential comic relief, but quickly turns tragic. A coach  approaches an automatic soda machine that unexpectedly spits out the carbonated cans with rocket-like velocity. One hits him in the chest, then the crotch and stomach, and finally, the uncooperative machine beans him fatally in the head. King wanted Gates to devise a can indented forehead for the coach.

“Originally, I was going to put a sponge soaked in blood on the bottom of a rubber can,” Gates explains, “but then it would just be a bloody splat effect. Finally, I made a rubber bladder and sealed it on the coach’s head with mortician’s wax. Next, I drilled little holes in the bladder. The tube was hidden in his hair. Then, we hit him in the head with the rubber can and pumped blood under pressure through the holes. The blood seems to swell up on his head and gush out.”

  Gates adds that the deadly can episode didn’t work the first time. “I had sealed the thing with plastic sealant and closed the holes. So, on the first take where we applied pressure, the blood started to swell up and the bladder got bigger and bigger, but no blood came out. It looked like a baseball expanding out of his head. Suddenly it popped and blood sprayed out like a fountain! King had the take printed so we could laugh it up during dailies.”

Another actor, Christopher Murney. doesn’t fare much better than the coach in Maximum Overdrive following a close encounter with a terror truck. Murney gets knocked through the air and lands in a muddy ditch, presumably dead. Later, the mud-covered fellow rises from his temporary grave, while a sizable portion of his noggin hangs limply, more cerebral FX work for Gates and his crew.

“We put a bladder on his forehead-similar to the one on the coach-that allowed blood to be pumped through a tube and into the bladder. On top of the bladder, we placed an appliance which looked like a large gaping wound with exposed skull and hole bashed into it. A second appliance-the same size of the wound opening-filled it in and resembled a flap of loose skin.

“A piece of black thread was attached to the appliance, so when the guy rears up. I pulled the string and the flap opened up and blood surged through the wound. Murney really enjoyed working with the makeup.”   The rest of Gates’ Maximum Overdrive FX workload largely consisted of making up victims after their offscreen attacks: a torn neck from a chainsaw backfire, burned face stuff following video machine frying, a gas station attendant’s crushed-in skull courtesy of a disobedient tow truck, and for the result of a human versus lawnmower fight, Gates simply adlibbed and spread chicken livers and hamburger meat across the loser’s mug. But, his toughest challenge on Maximum Overdrive was ensuring that the dummies didn’t look like dummies when hit by King’s violent vehicles.

“Glenn Randall, our stunt coordinator, told me that any movement which can be put into a dummy makes the illusion work better,” Gates remembers. Most of the time you’re dealing with an actor who runs to the approaching car. then a shot of the coming car, and then you cut to the dummy being hit. Putting movement into the dummy makes it appear less of a static object. The trick is to choreograph the stunt closely with the actor and then set up the dummy to duplicate the motions. One dummy was rigged with a piece of monofilament wire which enabled us to move it back and forth.”

Despite the sometimes tedious FX and stunt set-ups, director King remained patient throughout, according to Gates. “King was always happy during Maximum Overdrive and did everything to make it work. He was really organized and knew each shot he wanted. There wasn’t any indecisiveness.”

RELEASE/CONCLUSION When originally submitted to the ratings board, King’s MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE got an X-rating for its excessive violence-a verdict that initially angered king because it forced him to make some cuts. “You can’t go X-rated or unrated because you run into (advertising) problems,” he said. “There is, in fact, a huge machine in place that is, in effect, economic censorship.”

Fortunately, the X-rating was only based on three counts of extreme violence, so the cuts, King said, don’t hinder the film much. “We took out one of the scenes where a man sits up and grabs this kid and half of his face slides off (see above). I thought the makeup guy kinda got carried away there. And there was a steamroller scene and a head pop that just makes strong men weak. But that whole thing was an accident, anyway. We got ready to shoot the steamroller going over a dummy of one of the actors, which was really all we were going to do, when I got an idea. I went over to Dean (Gates, the makeup designer) and I said “Gimmie a baggie of blood.’ So he gets it and he says ‘Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do?’ like a kid–we were both like kids. Then I stuffed the baggie into the dummy’s jacket.

“All I thought would happen was that the steamroller would go over the dummy, pop the bag, then the blood would get on the roller and we could pan as it made this print of blood as it went on. But what you get instead-and it’s all real, none of it is simulated or laid in-you get this grisly pop sound and it looks like the kid’s head explodes and blood splashes everywhere.” King laughed maniacally, delighted with the vision of cascading blood. “I showed the scene to George Romero and he goes ‘Ohhhh and turned his head away! It was great! I said ‘Oh, I can’t believe it! I did it to George!

“But the ratings board made us take out the splash-I got most of it in. The scene shocked people because they had never seen anything like that before. They won’t see it now either. The problem with the ratings system is the curse of expectation; everybody who goes to the movies now knows exactly what they’re not going to see.”

King has gone on record as saying he meant to make a simple “moron movie, nothing more than fast-food entertainment for the drive-in crowd. As Maximum Overdrive was a crash course in the directorial process an undertaking rampant with technical emotional artistic and political quandaries. It is just as well for King that his sights weren’t aimed higher. It might have been better for De Laurentiis, however. Maximum Overdrive opened to hear unanimous critical pans and widespread audience apathy. The picture quickly disappeared from neighborhood screens to reappear in video stores 120 days later.

King is as hard on himself as any critic when pinpointing why MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE wasn’t a success. “I didn’t do a very good job of directing it,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of production support from the DeLaurentiis organization which, by that time, was beginning to get on extremely thin ice financially. We probably didn’t have enough time in post-production. I’ll tell you what MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE was for me. It was a crash course in film school. What some guys take six years to learn, I learned in about ten weeks. The result was a picture that was just terrible. But it had some things in it that make me think, ‘Well, I can go back and I can do it right the second time. Now I understand.”

King admitted to scenes he’d like to reshoot, and casting decisions he’d make differently, but he also harbored an admiration for some of his work behind the camera. “There are isolated moments in the film that I think are okay, that I really like to look at,” he said. “Here’s this little kid riding his bike down this deserted street. He’s looking, and whatever happened has already happened. He sees legs sticking out of bushes, he sees a dog with a radio-controlled car in his mouth, a lady who has been strangled by her own hairdryer. That particular sequence is alive for me the way a lot of the movies are just sort of static.”

King pegged some of the fault for his directorial misstep to his fondness for the films of Alfred Hitchcock. “To my mind, he’s still the person who did this field the best,” said King. “And I’m talking about suspense. Because I was new and I’d never done anything like this before, I read a book about Hitchcock, about the way he worked. I read that he had said at some point that actually making the movie was the dullest part of the experience. What he really liked to do was plan everything in advance. He said [shooting] was the dullest part, because once he started there were no surprises. That’s exactly what I wanted! I wanted no surprises whatsoever so I did it that way. I planned out, shot-for-shot, literally angle-for-angle, everything I wanted in the movie. What never crossed my mind until I began to see rough assemblies of the stuff, when it was really too late to back out, was that this was never the way that I work creatively. My idea is to just get in there and just bash away, take the materials that are available and put them together in a hurry and go on.”

SCORE/SOUNDTRACK

King did get some unexpected allowances. The film has a mid-1980s hard rock soundtrack composed entirely by the group AC/DC, King’s favorite band. AC/DC’s album Who Made Who was released as the Maximum Overdrive soundtrack. It includes the best-selling singles “Who Made Who”, “You Shook Me All Night Long”, and “Hells Bells”.

CAST/CREW Directed Stephen King

Produced Martha Schumacher

Screenplay Stephen King

Based on “Trucks” by Stephen King

Emilio Estevez as Bill Robinson Pat Hingle as Bubba Hendershot Laura Harrington as Brett Graham Yeardley Smith as Connie John Short as Curtis Ellen McElduff as Wanda June Frankie Faison as Handy Leon Rippy as Brad Christopher Murney as Camp Loman C. Quinn as Duncan Keller Holter Graham as Deke Keller Barry Bell as Steve Gayton

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v16n04 Cinefantastique v17n02 Fangoria#54 Fangoria#56 Fangoria#57 The Bloody Best of Fangoria#06 Twilight Zone v05n05 Stephen King Goes to Hollywood Novel by Jeff Conner

Maximum Overdrive (1986) Retrospective SUMMARY As the Earth crosses the tail of a comet, previously inanimate machines suddenly spring to life; an ATM insults a customer (King in a cameo) and a bascule bridge rises during heavy traffic, causing all vehicles upon the bridge to fall into the river or collide.

[wallpaperpainter]

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[marymosley]

The Harder They Fall: Trump Attorney Moves Against Stormy Daniels And Michael Cohen

C-Span/YouTube Screenshot

There is something crushingly ironic in a recent letter received by former Trump counsel Michael Cohen from current Trump counsel Charles Harder.  Cohen has been getting the word out that he is writing a tell-all book in his latest effort to cash in on his scandalous career.  He then received a letter from Harder that he will sue Cohen if he violates . . . you guessed it . . . his nondisclosure agreement (NDA).  The same grounds that Cohen used against Stormy Daniels.  Speaking of Daniels, she also received mail from Harder, who is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars for attorneys fees used to represent Trump against her (also a threat made by Cohen in prior litigation).  There are two critical differences in all of this. First, unlike Cohen, Harder is a competent lawyer.  Second, Harder actually has a strong case against both individuals.

A friend of Cohen got the word out through the Daily Beast and other publications that “A lot of [the book] will be about looking at things he’s said and done with women and other [politically incorrect] things. It’ll be an insider’s look about what it was like to be alongside the president for 12 years.”

It is vintage Michael Cohen.  Not only is he still trying to use anyone and anything to make a buck, but he is entirely discarding any ethical and contractual concerns over the interests of his former client.  He presumably obtained this information when doing confidential work for his client since, given his notorious reputation as a legal thug, few people would be interested in Michael Cohen’s view of publicly available facts.

A friend of Cohen told the Daily Beast: “A lot of [the book] will be about looking at things he’s said and done with women and other [politically incorrect] things. It’ll be an insider’s look about what it was like to be alongside the president for 12 years.”

According to the Daily Beast, Harder is citing a NDA that Cohen signed.  Most attorneys do not need a NDA since ethics rules are sufficient to prevent such disclosures, which is precisely why Harder needs to cite the NDA to Cohen.

Harder could simply take some of Cohen’s own words when he was threatening journalists, students, and others deemed a threat to Trump.  For example in threatening a journalist, Cohen wrote:

“Mark my words for it, I will make sure that you and I meet one day over in the courthouse and I will take you for every penny you still don’t have, and I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. Do not even think about going where I know you’re planning on going. And that’s my warning for the day.”

Cohen then morphs into a bad rendition of a mobster after being asked for a statement: He warns Mak to “tread very f–king lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f–ing disgusting. . . . Do you understand me? Don’t think you can hide behind your pen because it’s not going to happen. . . . I’m more than happy to discuss it with your attorney and with your legal counsel because motherf—er you’re going to need it.”

Or he could just cite the NDA and wait for Cohen to be Cohen.

Harder also went after Daniels for what could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Daniels sued Trump over a tweet that ridiculed Daniels over her release of a sketch of a man who Daniels claimed approached her one day in a threatening manner after she went public.  It was the subject of widespread ridicule, particularly after the sketch was shown to bear striking resemblance to Daniels’ former boyfriend.  Trump tweeted that it was “a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

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As a public figures in a national controversy, Daniels was in a poor position to bring such a lawsuit.  Moreover, this was a widely shared view.  After she predictably lost the case, Harder hit her with an anti-SLAPP statute claim. Judge S. James Otero agreed that ordered that Daniels pay $292,052.33 in attorney fees and a $1,000 penalty sanction herself under the Texas Citizen Participation Act.

That looked largely symbolic until Daniels recently won a recent false arrest case.  Harder jumped on the news with a new filing in federal court.

To Mr. Trump’s knowledge, Ms. Clifford does not possess any assets in this jurisdiction. Ms. Clifford is a resident of Texas and owns no real property in California. In contrast, she possesses substantial assets in the Southern District of Ohio in the form of the $450,000 in settlement funds being held by that court. Accordingly, Mr. Trump respectfully requests that the Court certify the Attorneys’ Fees Order for registration in the Southern District of Ohio.

He could win that case.

By the way, another figure Michael Avenatti is back in the news. Unlike Cohen who is still awaiting a compassionate release due to the pandemic, Avenatti was released for at least 90 days to go into home confinement in the home of a friend in Venice, California.  Avenatti is due to be sentenced on extortion charges in June.

So, if you thought Trump NDAs, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Michael Avenatti are so 2018, think again.

      The Harder They Fall: Trump Attorney Moves Against Stormy Daniels And Michael Cohen published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[shame-on-nyall]

hot milky last chapter pt 1/??

Here is the first part of the “last” chapter of Hot Milky. If all goes well, I will finish Sunday, but if not, I will get close! It’s pretty long and full of excessive drama, so sorry in advance to mobile users and or drama haters.

2,912 words

interlude part 1

interlude part 2

Watching his brother and the Omnic monk depart for their morning meditation, Hanzo slid one hand into his kimono and took out the medicine bottle Genji stashed there, turning it over pensively before locking it away into his weapons case.  It was a miracle that the back alley doctor who supplied him with the pills managed to get the bottle packed into his parcel of clothes just in time to be picked up with the morning mail by Lena.  It was, however, unfortunate that Zenyatta had seen the bottle Genji dropped, but at least there was no lettering on the label to read.  If Angela ever decided to investigate, Hanzo had his story.  Sooner or later, she would, so he must be vigilant and ready to field her questions.

Hanzo glanced at the cooling and surely indigestible breakfast tray Genji and Zenyatta had offered him still teetering on the edge of the table and had to sigh.  Even as he sat down and nibbled at what he assumed was a fat-encapsulated crumble of pork sausage mixed with egg and potato and who knows what else and managed to swallow the lump without gagging, he recalled Genji’s recent haphazard actions that had culminated in this morning’s yogurt incident, his own confused reactions ever since he arrived here.  It had become obvious that Genji was losing what little sense he had left, so caught up with the fact that his brother had actually joined them to pay much attention to reality; namely, the fact that he was a cyborg now, not their father’s favored sparrow any longer. Because of Hanzo’s presence at the base reminding him of his past, because he ended up spoiling Genji anyway despite his best intentions.  It was a sign.  He was not meant to be here among this motley assortment of characters with whom Genji chose to throw in his lot.  He had to leave Overwatch, for everyone’s peace of mind.

In sober thought, Hanzo finished grazing over the contents of the breakfast, sipping some of the cooled barley tea included instead of his usual morning serving of sake.  The prospect of meditating with Genji and Zenyatta did not appeal to him at this time, neither did associating with anyone else on base, regardless if they were happy to see him healthy (or at least his left pectoral) or if they still kept their guard up around him.  Genji’s assurance that the team missed his presence and cared about him despite some initial distrust rang overly optimistic, as hollow as he believed McCree’s infatuation to be.  His younger brother had made mistakes before, Hanzo had years of experience covering for him, but on this matter he really wanted to believe Genji.  Hanzo could not deny that he was just tired of running.  He wanted to belong somewhere and live for a purpose once more.  He needed to be with Genji more than anything.

The only question… did Genji need to be with him?

The peaceful slumber of the night, the sweet fragments of dreams Hanzo chased upon awakening, all of that had cleared like mist under a late summer morning sun.  The freshness of the early hours no longer brought him the same joy as they did in his youth, when he looked forward to completing the tasks of the day.  Now Hanzo associated morning with ever-increasing stress, a cyclical countdown of minutes until the oblivion of either sleep or his next bottle of sake.

Since his mind could give him no comfort, he decided it would be better to keep his body occupied, attempt to keep his archery skills in peak condition so that he could provide defense for his brother and teammates as promised.  (Or to facilitate his escape from Watchpoint if the situation should arise.)  He had missed training all of yesterday after all.  Grimly, Hanzo threw on his newly acquired jacket over his customary gi and hakama, gathered Stormbow and its quiver, and set out for the training area. For a second, Hanzo wondered how McCree was doing, since the two of them had abandoned him there with smashed kneecaps last night, but he figured if anything serious happened to McCree afterwards, Genji would have told him.  Since he was McCree’s friend supposedly and had said he would talk to him… If he remembered, to anyway.  

Well, that was no longer his problem…

A scowl lingering on his face, Hanzo turned the corner past the sliding doors and scaled the wall to the nearest observation tower.  His ears detected conversation in the target range, the bass beat of Lucio’s music, and seeking refuge from unnecessary chatter, he contented himself with silently unleashing arrow after arrow on the moving dummies patrolling the skywalks and stairwells far above.  

At last his curiosity won out, and Hanzo crept to the ledge overlooking one of the target ranges below. McCree was indeed there, unerringly unloading a round of bullets into a group of darting practice droids, only the slightest of stiffness in his steps as evidence of the scuffle last night. There was Lucio gliding across the walls behind the range to the rhythm of his speakers, adding turns and jumps to increase the area he could cover.  Hanzo knew he had sensed a third presence earlier, and soon enough his hearing picked up the dull clang of heavy weights against a sturdy rack, before Zarya herself could be glimpsed leaving the weight room for the showers.

Satisfied with his assessment, Hanzo went back to his own practice, this time with an added twist. Nocking an arrow to Stormbow, he took a breath and released, watching the arrow strike the dummy McCree was aiming at just a fraction of a second before Peacemaker’s bullet hit home. Almost shocked to the point of losing his hat, McCree swore and glanced up around him at the walls and ledges and walkways, trying to pinpoint Hanzo’s location.  Hanzo had of course long vanished from their view.  From on top of a ledge that could only be easily accessed by Fareeha and Genji and the like, Hanzo leaned out and fired through a narrow aperture at the reassembling target droid.

“Dangit, Hanzo, you tryna be faster than a bullet, too?!” McCree called out, disgruntled yet duly impressed. “Genji kept doing stunts like that, near got himself killed a few more times back then!” Jamming his hat back onto his hair, McCree grumbled, “Already got my hands full with the Junkers, I don’t need to be baby-sitting off-the-chain ninjas, too.”

With a snort of amusement, Hanzo quickly dropped to the ground level by McCree’s side.  “I only want to keep my skills intact.  I have no intention of getting injured.”  Not like Genji, it seemed.

“I’ll testify to anyone who asks that you’re as sharp as ever,” McCree told him, holstering his gun.

The cowboy thankfully kept a professional attitude, his usual lovesick pining dialed back quite a bit to Hanzo’s surprise, although not entirely absent.  On the other hand, he thought there may have been another reason for McCree’s change in demeanor.  Hanzo gave him a calculating look, saying matter-of-factly, “Interesting, I notice you are able to walk without the use of crutches today, McCree.”

McCree gave a little heh at that.  “It just so happened Angela and Winston happen to be up and about last night, and the doc got me fixed up in the infirmary right quick.”  No thanks to you two, was the unspoken addition.

“My apologies,” Hanzo murmured in a cool tone.  “I did not mean to have added to the list of the doctor’s responsibilities.  I was later told she had had a busy evening.”

“…And… You’re also sorry to have smashed my kneecaps with my gun that you then stole and left me out in the cold without getting help, ain’tcha, Hanzo?” McCree prompted hopefully, having sworn off pursuing the elder Shimada in a romantic manner but apparently still determined to put him on a pedestal, however shaky.

“Oh, that.”  Hanzo dusted an imaginary speck of dust off his shoulder and said, “You keep mentioning you had been Blackwatch’s finest agent, Reye’s right-hand man.  Since you did not lift a hand against us, I assumed you had everything under control.  Am I not correct, gunslinger?”

Sweating (figurative) bullets at this unflatteringly accurate depiction, McCree tugged the brim of his hat over his eyes.  “We-ell, you two looked like you were having a grand old time, so of course I didn’t want to interrupt,” he replied sheepishly.  “Which I could have, at any moment, if I wanted to.  But just for the future, maybe don’t rough up a fellow so much? None of us are supposed to be in organized crime anymore, in case you forgot.”

“I will see what I can do.”

Lucio had glided over to them at this point, listening to the conversation with an adorably puzzled frown on his face.  “Hey now, this doesn’t add up, why were you smashing McCree’s kneecaps in, Hanzo? I was pretty sure Hana told meeeeee…”

“She told you nothing, because I bought her silence,” Hanzo interrupted abruptly, “so you are pretty sure of nothing.”

“Uhh…” Glancing up at Hanzo’s stormy expression, Lucio nodded, flashing a bright grin.  “Right, so what was I saying again?  Totally can’t remember!”

“Good, let’s keep it that way,” Hanzo muttered, while McCree shook his head and sighed.

“Now, now, we’re all just trying to get to know each other here, become good friends, see, so we can be better teammates and the best heroes Overwatch can ask for,” McCree said loudly to reassure any listeners in the vicinity that no one had slid back into old habits best left redacted in their official files.

“Of course,” Hanzo agreed, in the tone of someone who had never purposefully done anything to become a good friend in his entire life, much less a teammate or hero.  “Which reminds me, Lucio,” he began, returning his attention to someone slightly less irritating, “I had been meaning to thank you earlier for the music player you gifted me the other day.”

“Y-you liked my music?!” Lucio squawked.

Choosing his words carefully, Hanzo said, “The songs I listened to were very… upbeat.  With a… positive atmosphere.”

Lucio seemed equally shocked and delighted by Hanzo’s acknowledgement, and he stuttered out uncharacteristically, “W-wow, I mean, if you ever want a change of pace, I can put together another mix, it’d be no problem!  I got a few tracks I’ve been working on I know you’d dig.”

“There is no rush, Lucio,” Hanzo replied, somewhat regretting initiating further interaction but doing his best out of respect to a capable healer whose skills would definitely be needed to keep Genji alive once he left.  Fortunately, Lucio had the faraway look of inspiration lighting up his eyes.  In a moment, he excused himself and skated off to get those melodies out of his head and into the world of sound.  

“Aww, you’re not so cold after all!” McCree said with a pleased grin, about to slap Hanzo on the back but pulled back just in time to save the use of his hand.  “Guess Genji was right, you’ve made some progress adjusting here.  Now why won’t you ever let him in on that instead of being a grump all the time?”

Hanzo was about to nod, but something made him pause.  Unease, a frisson of disturbance that could be felt through the dragon of ink tattooed on his skin all the way into his bones.  A warning he must heed.

“I know what you’re up to, McCree.”  Ever so carefully, he said, “I respect you as Genji’s comrade.  But your particular skills are not reserved just for heroics. You are a mercenary, and I will not let my guard down, for all of your silly outfits and foolish rambling.”

McCree frowned, looking genuinely confused.  “Now how do you figure that?”

“Simple.  You are always armed when you are around me.  Not so around Genji.”  The implication should have been clear; Hanzo believed McCree tagging along after him was not in hopes of quenching a junker-induced dry spell. (Although that could still account for a good 30%; he was not so modest.)

“Well, well, well.” McCree shrugged, eyes downcast, but not before an ominous flash of red light winked out under the shadow of his hat.  “For someone as clever as you to tell me that, you must think you got a royal flush in your hand.”

Hanzo hesitated, very much aware that they were more or less alone in the furthest target range from the central living quarters and meeting rooms.  All he had was a partial bluff against a man who Genji, of all people, swore was a master at playing cards.  Hanzo was only guessing based on what Zenyatta had told him, bits and pieces from the files he had scanned through before arriving at Watchpoint proper, what little Genji had revealed about his past in Overwatch, but McCree’s unusually restrained reaction seemed to confirm the gist of his theory.  “What you just said about being teammates and comrades, becoming heroes, I am only saying that I find it hard to believe,” he stated calmly, honestly.  “It is true that I want to become used to this place, that becoming friends even with you is something I would not reject.  But know that I am here to fight for Genji.  He is my priority, and as long as you stay true to him, I will not turn on you.  As long as you give me no reason to distrust you.  Because my brother may have forgiven all of you involved with his creation, but I will not forget how you stole him and experimented on him…”

To his surprise, McCree laughed aloud, shaking his head in disbelief.  “You got the wrong guy, partner,” he said.  “Technically, I did nothing.  Now Reyes and I, we did our best to include Genji in Blackwatch, get him back on his feet after his rehab.  But others above us made the decision to retrieve his body and turn him into a cyborg in the first place.”

“…Blackwatch?  You mean Overwatch.”  Hanzo narrowed his eyes, thrown off balance by McCree’s interruption.  That feeling of freefall, struggling for a handhold while the ground gave way below his feet.  The sensation of unease only grew, a tidal wave pulling the very air from his lungs.

“Yeah, Blackwatch was part of Overwatch, but Genji and I worked under Reyes directly.  Bit of a difference there.”

“No.  Genji showed me a photo of the team… his clothing had the Overwatch emblem, not Blackwatch’s…”

“Oh God, the one time we got him to wear clothes?”  McCree chuckled again, and Hanzo gritted his teeth at the too-casual sound.  “That was much later.  Genji musta been in Blackwatch with me for four years or so. He’d been taking down the Shimada clan and operations in East Asia while the medical team completed his cyberization process.  I think Genji didn’t get on Overwatch’s official payroll until his final upgrades were done.  But soon after that, he left the organization.”

“No…” Hanzo repeated, more uncertainly this time.  Genji had never said anything about how long it took to build his cyborg body, what specifically he had to do as compensation for their investment. But Hanzo never pressed for details.  He had not thoroughly considered the implication of Overwatch, or Blackwatch in this case, spiriting away a scion of the very empire they were trying to bring down. But he should have…  That was what happened with McCree and Deadlock Gang, was it not?  “Genji would have mentioned that.”

“Hey, I got nothing to gain by lying to you, Hanzo,” McCree said quietly, his hands palms up in a reassuring gesture.  “You can ask Genji yourself.  He was in Blackwatch with me.”

Hanzo rubbed at his forehead, suddenly wishing for alcohol and the oblivion of sleep.  He had been meaning to make his intentions clear to McCree, and thus the former members of Overwatch, to assure them that he would participate in their missions as long as Genji was protected.  That keeping track of him was of little use, unproductive and a waste of their resources.

But if Overwatch back then had forced Genji’s involvement with Blackwatch, if they had required his cooperation in exchange for completion of his cyborg body...  There was his fear, resurfacing into the light once more. They could still be trapped, movements tracked and bodies claimed by an organization working outside of government and law.

Just like when we were boys, Hanzo thought in grim despair, clutching at his hair.  Hysterical.  He wanted to laugh, but could not even summon a noise.

He felt, rather than saw or heard, McCree’s presence envelop him, warm and bittersweet.  Blind and deaf, he struggled against the hope and comfort and security he had forsaken, fled instead for the miserable irresistible uncertainty that made up the world he shared with his brother.

  Genji took a breath and exhaled long and slow, the way he used to, the way he no longer needed to. He glanced towards the warren that made up Watchpoint, but his brother never appeared at the courtyard entrance.

“I don’t think Hanzo is going to join us after all, Master,” he murmured.

At his side, Zenyatta watched a duo of autumn butterflies drift silently away into the breeze.  “No.  Not yet, my student.”

[sutverentavuk]

9 things to check when purchasing a new camera

1. Examine it's the best model

This most likely sounds like an obvious one. However, some merchants (particularly online) do not identify their designs as plainly as they ought to, which leaves you having to exercise which version of a specific cam you're in fact taking a look at.

To include additional confusion, some manufacturers call their models differently in other countries. Canon, for instance, names some of its more junior DSLRs in a different way in the US than it performs in the UK, while Panasonic also regularly changes the series name or number, depending upon where a camera is being sold. So, the Lumix TZ90 in the UK, for example, is really the Lumix SZ70 in the US.

2. Make sure it deals with your existing lenses

Wish to utilise a new camera with an older lens? New cams typically deal with older optics, but the situation is different with each producer.

Canon's most current DSLR bodies tend to deal with older EF lenses without concerns, and things like autofocus and metering ought to work as expected. As long as you do not install EF-S lenses onto EF bodies (which can cause damage to the video camera), you should be fine.

Nikon bodies typically work well with older F-mount lenses, although some deal with restrictions and others might even damage the host camera. And Pentax has actually had so many modifications to its K-mount throughout the years there'll usually be something to keep in mind when using an older optic with a newer body.

You might well want to utilise lenses from a various install on a more recent body, and this is typically possible, although some organisations will naturally be the more accommodating sense of how they have actually been physically designed. If in doubt, check to see whether an adapter for the lens's system to the cam you plan on using exists, making sure you have the lens-to-camera order the right way round.

3. Check to see what else is in the variety

Individuals typically alter between cam systems, but it can be a bit of a nuisance if it means selling all of your bodies and lenses. Because of that, it's a good idea to think ahead and take a look at what else is in the range, such as models you might want to update to eventually. It may be the case that you end up deciding for a different design with a more apparent upgrade path than the one you initially meant to go for.

4. ... and what's being guaranteed in the future

Manufacturers sometimes release lens roadmaps (above) to demonstrate how a system will develop in the short term, with lens names and anticipated arrival times. These are particularly useful for newer methods with fewer lens options as it gives people more confidence to buy into a system that's not totally developed.

In some cases, they may simply discuss what will quickly be offered while announcing other products. In either case, even if there's no ultra-wide-angle, macro or super-telephoto lens to use with your desired purchase right, it doesn't imply it isn't coming. Keep an eye out for these announcements when producers unveil new products, and you're less likely to be disappointed as you begin to expand your system in future.

5. Think about whether your existing lenses will do the camera justice

Something a lot of people see when going up to an electronic camera with more megapixels than they're used to is that their images do not have some bite. On close evaluation, they may appear naturally a little soft or maybe somewhat blurred. So why is this?

It's frequently down to a variety of things. You would not have actually scrutinised images to the same degree on a cam with a lower-resolution sensor. Nothing about your lens has actually altered. Naturally, you're merely examining details in a scene at a higher level than you have been. Such sensing units can really tax a lens's abilities, so any little softness or optical aberrations that weren't visible before might now begin to show.

Any minor cam shake might now be more apparent in such images, so your strategy requires to be spot on. Utilising a somewhat quicker shutter speed, or a reliable image stabilisation system (whether it remains in your body or lens) can assist. Some image stabilisation systems also need a brief moment to settle for optimal result, so take your time and try to press the shutter-release button down more gently.

Also check out: DSLR camera price in Bangladesh

6. Understand whether any features have limitations

Some cameras that catch 4K video can just do so at 15fps. Some might even apply a cropped aspect to video footage, making it harder to accomplish wide-angle framing. Other cams might have outstanding constant shooting rates, but they may not be able to preserve this for really long, making them less useful in usage.

Headline functions might sound remarkable; however, it pays to check the requirements thoroughly on the video camera maker's site so that you do not end up buying something that isn't fit for purpose.

Making sure you have the right memory card will also help with recording high-resolution video or with faster constant shooting rates, so inspect what the manufacturer recommends in the cam's handbook. You can generally see these online before you purchase, once again through the maker's website.

7. Examine third-party system assistance

Even if your cam's producer does not provide a particular accessory for usage with your design, it does not mean you can't discover it elsewhere. The most popular systems tend to draw in a variety of third-party accessory choices that are specific to your order, from cam grips to enhance dealing with to lens adapters to supply cross-system compatibility.

Some of these accessories may bring surprising advantages. The Metabones Speed Booster (above), for instance, not only allows you to install a lens from one system onto the body from another. However, it likewise gives you a larger optimum aperture than what the lens would usually allow.

8. Discover whether you can claim cashback

Cashback (also referred to as a refund) is frequently provided on electronic cameras, and it's not limited continuously to older models that manufacturers are merely attempting to clear.

To be eligible, nevertheless, you may need to jump through a few hoops. You will generally need to purchase your model through an authorised retailer, during a particular timeframe, and you'll need to submit a kind with your evidence of purchase.

It may likewise be the case that you get your refund on a pre-loaded charge card instead of a bank transfer or cheque. In any case, it's usually worth the effort, particularly as cashback amounts can encounter 3 figures.

9. Inspect whether you can extend the service warranty

Every brand-new cam needs to feature a guarantee of some kind, but it's not uncommon for makers to offer an extended service warranty once you sign up a video camera (or lens) online. So, whereas you may have a year a standard, registering the electronic camera on the company's site might give you an additional year, if not longer.

This is sometimes indicated on the video camera's packaging, or on the website from which you buy your design, although there may likewise be a card inside the package with details on this. You'll typically require your camera's serial number and details from your receipt, so ensure to keep the latter in a safe location.

It's also typically possible to purchase these guarantees independently through the manufacturer's site. However, you may not discover these to be excellent worth.