#There was a preserved bat skeleton there and I almost got it

[antiquepearlss]

I just got some needles shoved into my face. I think the dried blood on my nose really brings out my eyes <3

[heliosphoenix]

State of the Planet: 2020 Edition.

I know what you're thinking.

"How can you even think of doing one of these for this year? After everything that happened? You can't possibly be trying to do your little feel-good writeup!" 

Well...you're right. I can't. That's right, State of the Planet is cancelled.

I don't really have to explain why, do I? I have no words to describe this year and I know you don't want to hear them anyway. I understand your anger, your frustration, your sadness, everything you're feeling, I get it.

This wasn't the year you imagined and almost certainly not the one you wanted. Thanks for being there the entire way, and I'll see you next year.

Okay, I'm just kidding. I couldn't do that to you folks, I just wanted to get some more mileage out of a dead meme.

I first started this missive several years ago when I noticed that people were developing a tendency to condense the previous lap around the ol Sun into a series of terrible, horrible, no good very bad events at the expense of anything good that may have happened. I don't know why this was done, maybe as a ways to ensure that the coming year would have to be better by default.

Well...we all saw how that worked out for this year, didn't we?

As you all know I prefer to do things differently. I prefer to go out on a high note and remember all the good things that happened in the past year. If nothing else, I think it helps remind us that as much as we want to bemoan and be pessimistic about the state of our culture, society, civilization and even species, there's plenty of evidence to suggest we're not doing so bad after all.

And even thought it feels like this past year the world went out of its way to teach us some rather harsh lessons, I'm still determined to find something good that happened. So let's take a look back at some of the good things that happened in 2020:

A circumbinary planet was discovered at the TOI 1338 system.

Luxembourg became the first country to make it's public transportation free.

The Bhadla Solar Park became the largest solar park in the world.

The BepiColumbo space probe departed for Venus, en route to an arrival at Mercury in 2025.

A fast radio burst was detected from a Magnetar in the Milky Way, the first time such an event has been detected in the Galaxy.

A team of British and Kenyan scientists discovered a microbe that can block mosquitos from transmitting malaria.

A black hole was discovered in the QV Telescopii system, at 1120 light years away it is the closest known black hole to Earth.

A 425 million year old fossil of a millipede was discovered in Scotland, one of the oldest fossils ever found.

SpaceX launched their Dragon 2 spacecraft on its first crewed missions, the first astronauts to launch from US soil since 2011.

The Perseverance rover was launched to Mars and is expected to touch down in February.

The Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE became the first operational nuclear power plant in the Arab states.

Wild polio was eradicated from the continent of Africa.

Skeletons of 31 prehistoric animals, including 200 mammoths, were found at a construction site in Mexico City, it was the largest finding of mammoth bones ever.

The 5.37 mile La Linea highway tunnel was opened in Colombia, it's the largest road tunnel in South America.

Kosovo, Serbia, Sudan and Bahrain all decided to normalize their relations with Israel.

Phosphine, a strong predictor of microbiological life, was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus.

Preserved remains of a cave bear were discovered in Siberia.

A 1634 edition of Shakespeare's final play, The Two Noble Kingsman, was discovered at the Royal Scots College's library in Spain.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected samples for return to Earth in 2023.

The Falkland Islands were declared free of land mines.

Molecular water was detected near Clavius crater on the Moon. 

An AI algorithm called AlphaFold was able to figure out the process of Protein Folding. 

The UN commission on Narcotic Drugs removed cannabis from its list of dangerous drugs.

The EU committed themselves to reducing greenhouse emissions by 55% over the next decade.

A Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred, the closest one seen in the night sky since 1226.

Comet NEOWISE passed by the Earth and was the brightest comet in the night sky since Hale-Bopp in 1997.

Among Us became one of the most popular games in the world.

Half Life: Alyx was released, the first Half Life game in 13 years (FINALLY).

Joe Biden was elected as the 46th President of the United States.

Remember all that? Good. Because that's where I'm at.

You, dear reader, are in the future. Perhaps you're reading this in the final hours of 2020, or the first hours of 2021. Or maybe so much time has passed that both those years are now confined to the history books.

Perhaps everything I listed above is not enough to overcome all the bad things that happened this year, and that's a fair assessment. Maybe at the end of the day there's nothing that can overshadow the fact that someone in China who ate the wrong bat resulted in the entire world coming to a stop. If that's your feeling, then I understand completely.

But let the record show that those things did happen. In a year full of chaos and uncertainty and anxiety and dread, there were still moments where we could objectively punch our fists in the air and say "yes!" Even if only for a moment.

So now comes the part where I have to take all the things that we just went through and sum it up in a single word. Usually I don't think about this until the day of, but this time I've actually known for months what I was going to say:

The word is...Goodbye.

It sounds both strange and appropriate at the same time, doesn't it? As we close out this year, as well as this decade (reminder that 2021 is the real start of the next decade) we can look back and realize we've had many experiences. Both positive and negative. Hopefully they were mostly positive, even during this year.

But there is at least one experience we've all shared together, especially in times like these: saying goodbye.

I will confess to you all that I have a hard time saying goodbye. Hell, I don't even like the word. Whenever I end a conversation, I always use some variant of "see you later", since, to me at least, "goodbye" just sounds so final. Though with that said, I will also admit there's some people in this world that I had no problem saying goodbye to, and I don't mean "till we meet again", I mean "get lost." And I'd be lying if I said there weren't some people who felt the same about me, but I digress.

In the last episode of his show, Red Green delivered a monologue about saying goodbye. A monologue that I am now shamelessly ripping off for your reading pleasure. Not just because it's a way to get this done quickly, but because I think what he said is very true.

Red says that when it comes to your good friends and your family, you never really have to say goodbye. Why? Because they're always in your mind. And whenever you think about them, you're together again. I can tell you from experience that works rather well, even when it involves people that I don't want to think about. But even in that instance, where our last interaction was a negative one, I can't help but think back to all the good times we had together, and for a moment I reminisce. It's nice when it happens.

We've all heard the phrase "nothing lasts forever" and we tend to dismiss it as a cliché. But we're still constantly confronted with that reality, even if we never realize it. As Al Pacino said in Any Given Sunday; "When you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's a part of life."  

We've all lost things in our lives, and I just don't mean toys that have been sold or people that we love who are no longer on this mortal coil. I'm referring to the moments in our lives where we're forced to accept that our circumstances have permanently changed, and that the way things were can no longer be the way things are. This is why you shouldn't be having kids when you're in your 70's, and no one over the age of 50 should be naked in public.

On a more personal note, this year I got that feeling once again. It's not just because I'm most likely leaving one job behind for another job, but there were things in my personal life that shifted so dramatically that I knew things could never be the same again. And seeing as how, for the most part, I liked how things were, I'd be lying if I said that this change didn't cause me some distress.

But that's all a part of growing up, isn't it? As much as I may cringe about reaching 30 years of life on this Earth, I accept it all the same. Because, if nothing else, it's a reminder that I need to keep moving forward. Is it sad that the good ol days are now just memories and dreams? You're damn right it is. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing, because even if they're not what's happening now, they still did happen. And who knows? Perhaps the days to come will be just as good, if not better. In my opinion, that's something to look forward to.

And the same is true for all of us: if we want to live a happy fulfilling life, we have to keep moving forward. We can reminisce about all the fun we've had in days gone by, but it's just as important to be ready for the days yet to come.

I think that's why New Year's is such a poignant holiday for all of us. It's a tacit acknowledgement that we have to say goodbye to the old, so we can say hello to the new.

And at the risk of making this entry so long that by the time you're finished it will be 2022, I'd like to do that now.

To all the people that have been with me since my early days, thanks so much for all that you've done. I appreciate you sticking it out with me this far and I hope you'll continue to do so for many years to come.

To all the people that I've met recently and have decided to join me on this ride, welcome aboard. We're glad you could make it and we hope you'll stay a while as well.

And finally, to all the people that are no longer here, whether they've merely left my social circle or left this mortal coil altogether, all I can say is that we've had a great run. Whatever our reasons for parting are irrelevant now and I wish you nothing but good fortune in whatever it is you decide to do. Perhaps, God willing, our paths will cross again some day. But even if they don't, I hope that every so often we'll think about each other and smile a bit.

And now I'd like to close with something different. Usually I ask you to comment below with something good that happened to you this year. You're more than welcome to do that. But if you're looking for a change of pace, may I suggest that you close out your 2020 (or open your 2021) by listening to this song from the great Ashleigh Ball and Michelle Creber (yes I know many of you are hoping to leave the Miniature Equines in the past, but I'm hoping you'll permit them one last indulgence).

https://youtu.be/XjkPH6sZM_o 

This is the song that inspired me to write this missive (along with the aforementioned Red Green) and as you're listening, I want you to think about all of those you said goodbye to this past decade. Think about all the fond memories you had together and give yourself a smile as the clock strikes midnight. Even if they're not with us today, we still have all the memories of them that no one can take from us, no matter what happens to the world.

And now the time has come for me to end this missive. Let the record show that this was my final word on 2020 as well as my expressed hope for charity, kindness and goodwill to flourish throughout the world in the years to come.

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends

.And 2021 shall restore amends.

[pi-cat000]

MSA: Winged Arthur AU (part 8)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7,  

Part 9: here

. 

Vivi POV 3

“What the?” There is a loud declaration of confusion from Lance. Vivi follows his line of sight to Arthur. Vivi assumes he has just spotted the wings.

“I know. I have no idea how they got there. He collapsed before he could say anything.”

Lance, attention moving between her, the ghost, and Artur, exhales long and hard. Then he angles the gun more towards the ground, ordering, “Keep an eye on that bastard. If it moves, give a yell.”

She nods, stepping forward, allowing Lance inch around her and crouch next to Arthur. He needs to do a bit of manoeuvring to avoid stepping on Arthur’s mess of feathers, but he manages it in his grumpy Lance fashion.

While Lance checks on Arthur, she once again makes eye contact with the ghost. Now hovering closer to the entrance, near a beat-up semi-trailer – where had that come from? –  the ghost is anxiously clenching and unclenching its fists. Purple eyes are tracking their movements with a disturbing intensity. Creepy. Doubly so now ‘Lewis’ looks like a flaming skeleton again. She glares and receives that pitiful expression. Thankfully, with both her and Lance there, the ghost has decided to keep its distance. Vivi would rather it go away and return to its middle-of-nowhere-mansion, but it appears she’ll have to settle for whatever this was.

“He’s okay, I think, apart from the wings anyway. Too dark out here to see much besides feathers. I want to move him inside ta get a better look.” Lance leans back, muttering under his breath, “Also, it’s gotten mighty cold all of a sudden.”

Vivi nods again, relieved to have confirmation on Arthur’s wellbeing. She’s not really feeling the cold but going inside seems like a good a course of action as any.

“What happened to that tree creature?” She asks while Lance goes about trying to pick Arthur up.

“Gone, ran off into the desert with the giant fox.”

“That’s good…I think?” Vivi can’t help the twinge of worry for her fake dog who had been bleeding heavily last she’d seen. Mystery, who had been injured protecting her. Secret or no secret, she feels responsible.

“I got in a few good shots on the tree before they went outta range.” Lance continues to speak, before narrowing his eyes at ghost-Lewis, “What’s that things deal?”

“It’s a wraith,” She states, ignoring the way ‘Lewis’ wilts, flinching back, “They’re dangerous. It’s probably best we keep an eye on it.” Sure, ghost-Lewis seems relatively fine now but she knows that calm is a facade hiding a whole lot of angry fire.

“Right.” Lance doesn’t question her, focusing instead on carrying Arthur which looks difficult due to how the wings flop about. Vivi wants to help but doesn’t like the idea of taking her attention off the ghost for any length of time. Luckily, after a little fussing and several swear words, Lance manages to sling Arthur over his back, so it looks like he’s wearing a very feathery coat. He shuffles his way to the front door. The trip takes an unreasonably long time, considering the door is only a few feet away. Vivi tracks their progress, on edge and anxious.  

There is some difficulty fitting Arthur through the screen door, forcing Vivi to turn and help arrange the wings in a way that will allow them past the frame. Once done, she about-faces to find the ghost has drifted closer, appearing hopeful now neither her or Lance are acting outwardly aggressive.

“No,” She says, brandishing her bat again. “You stay out here.”

“What,” The ghost, stunned, freezes in place, staring like she’s grown an extra head. Vivi steps forward, blocking the entrance.

“You’re not welcome inside this home,” She reiterates. “Uncle Lance. Tell ‘Lewis’ he’s not welcome inside.”

Lance, now just through the doorway, stumbles almost dropping Arthur, giving an abrupt, “Huh?”

“First rule of supernatural anything. They have to be invited into homes.”

“Not what…” Lance shakes his head, “What do yeh mean by ‘Lewis.’”

Okay, so Lance knows who Lewis is…Perfect. That doesn’t change anything aside from confirming her theory that she had known this ghost at some point. She waves pointedly, giving Lance as serious an expression as she can manage.

Lance’s gaze snaps to the ghost in befuddlement.  “Hold up. Yeh not tellin me that that, right there, is Lewis?”

“That’s what he said his name was. Right before he tried to burn me and Arthur,” She states.

“I would never hurt you…I swear. It’s just…Arthur��he’s done something. I don’t know...there’s a lot I… you… don’t know. If you would just let me explain,” The ghost pleads again, genuinely remorseful. Talk about your mood swings. Another point in favour of her wraith hypothesis.

“Is that before or after you burn us both to a crisp.” Vivi snaps back.

Lance side-eyes her seriously. Then he examines the ghost, expression hardening.

“Hurt my nephew and yeh ain’t welcome here. Simple as that,” He grunts and turns, heaving Arthur with him.

“No! You can’t. I’m telling the truth!” The ghost reaches out, fire guttering and flickering to his more human form. He sounds desperate. With one shaking arm, he grasps towards her, “Please.”

Vivi glowers and deliberately slams the door in the, now human, face.  For a second, she doesn’t move, waiting to see if ‘Lewis’ is going force his way in. There is only a loud cry of frustration, more sad and mournful than angry. Back against the door, Vivi exhales hard. Why does her chest hurt like it’s full of breaking glass? She runs a hand along her collar bone trying to massage the ache away. It’s useless, the pain isn’t physical. An inhale, and she pushes herself off the door. 

When she enters the combined living-dining space, Lance has already dragged Arthur to the couch and is in process of wrestling him into a comfortable position. He’s doing his best to work around the copious number of feathers but is struggling to find success. Vivi rushes forward to help, glad for the distraction. They end up lying Arthur down on his stomach so the wings are draped over the couch’s backrest and spill onto the carpeted floor.

“That true? The stuff about welcoming in supernatural creatures?” Lance grunts, while he checks Arthur’s pulse and breathing, running a hand over Arthur’s head and the rest of his limbs, searching for breaks or other injuries.

“I don’t know,” She sighs, straightening, “There’s a lot of lore spanning multiple mythologies, and it crops up a lot in older superstitions. It's more of an educated guess.”

A thoughtful hum.

“Suppose it’s better than nothin. Those myths happen ta mention anything like this?” Lance is now repositioning the wings to look more natural while muttering, “Don’t know nothin about birds. Do these look like they’re sittin right?”

“No myths that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean there are a few where people turn into birds. Not that I think that Arthur is turning into a bird,” Vivi hastens to clarify when Lance gives her an expression of acute alarm. She shuffles nearer, pointing at Arthur, “I think those are flight feathers. They’re definitely not supposed to be bent like that.”

They spent a few seconds straightening the plumages in soft silence.  

“There are a bunch of mythical humanoid creatures that have wings and such. I don’t know…maybe you’re related?" Vivi breaks the quiet and is met with a blank expression. “Do you have any relatives who mysteriously vanished for a few years then rocked up pregnant or with an unknown baby? Was anyone adopted into the family? Like, did someone find a child abandoned on the steps to your house and decided to keep it? Any sudden changes in a family member’s personality like they’d been mysteriously replaced?”

“What are yeh on about?”

“The most common reason why humans’ manifest supernatural traits is usually bloodline related. Someone somewhere had a fling with something not quite human,” Vivi elaborates to which Lance frowns, obviously thinking.

“There’s nothin like that that I can think of. But, don’t get along with the bastards, so who the hell knows.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I guess I can jump online and look into it.” She looks back to Arthur. “Maybe later...”

Carefully, she reaches out from where she is crouched to smooth out a few more feathers which are twisted at odd-looking angles.  They feel real, growing from between Arthur’s shoulder blades and extending into smaller downier feathers a little along his back. His shirt has ripped from where the appendages had grown in. No sign of that golden light from earlier.

“Who’s Lewis.” She asks, the question coming suddenly. The response is particular. A huff of air followed by tired and drawn eyes. Lance appears almost haunted.

“Humph. Ain’t that a question and a half,” He stands, glancing towards the broken windows. From this angle, they can just make out the back end of the semi-trailer but said ghost is out of view.

“I know him, right? This Lewis person?” Vivi prods.

“Yeah. Yeh know him.”

Lance turns, calculating, “Suppose I could tell yeh more, seeing as ya seem to be retainin the name ‘Lewis’ well enough.”

“Wh...?”

“But not before I get a drink and yeh see to any of ya own injuries. Arthur’s fine enough, but yeh look dead on ya feet."

What did Lance mean by ‘retaining the name?’ Was this linked to her memory gaps? Probably.

“I’m fine. I mean, I wasn’t fine. I got stabbed here,” She rubs her shoulder, “but, Arthur kind of took care of it.”

Lance peers at her shoulder. There’s a lot of dried blood but no sign of the injury it came from.

“Arthur? He did what now?”

“Healing magic. It’s what knocked him out. He just, I don’t know, healed everything. I actually feel great, like I’m on some crazy energy drink. Ah… Sorry.”

Lance snorts, rubbing his eyes, “Don’t apologise. That boy wouldn’t know self-preservation if it hit him over the head. If you’re sure ya ain’t injured any, then how about yeh keep an eye on the kid while I get us something to drink. Then I’ll tell yeh what I know of Lewis.”

Vivi relaxes a little and nods.

“What can I get yeh?” Lance pauses in the doorway.

“Uh…Tea I guess? Herbal if you have it.”

Lance disappears and she hears things being moved around in the kitchen. Vivi settles down into a more comfortable position on the ground next to Arthur, continuing to smooth the feathers. So, she was right, ghost-Lewis fit somewhere into the swiss-cheese that was her memory of the last several years.

.

Note: Okay, so do people want to read a ‘Lance explains Lewis to Vivi’ conversation (if so, then whose POV do you want it in). Or do people want me to skip to Arthur waking up. I’m leaning more towards skipping atm but if there’s interest I’ll probably write that scene first.

Part 9: here

[bluepenguinstories]

Intention Headaches Chapter Ten

Silence in the barroom.

Everyone, a cold hush. The chill of saltwater. Nobody ordered the taffy bourbon, it was due to go out of style.

Continued silence.

Few minutes earlier, there was an incident, but just one:

Groaning and moaning, a little in mourning. Befuddled man spoke with confidence words almost too slurred to deliver.

“That last one was an overkill, eh? I mean, the whole thing. It left a bit of a bitter taste. Li’l funny, admittedly, but sheesh!”

Everyone lifted their heads just a few centimeters high, then faces low. No one spoke, only signaling agreement.

“Anyway, bartender, how about another?”

Bartender, man about duty as he was, shook head like the blenders in the tattoo parlor.

“No, I agree. Was overkill. Think you’ve had quite enough.”

“Oh, come on! You’re the bartender! All drinks are given to all gang members regardless of affiliation!”

“No more drinks for you, Mr. Waits. Lest we have to clean up the mess on our new minted floors.”

The establishment, home for the disordered and chaotic, was in full order once again. That metallic appearance a thing of the past, unpleasant; though the sign outside may be neon, inside were wooden floor boards, with the new addition of a chrome static finish, so the environment would feel both like a tavern, saloon, or, of course, the bar. But the environment served as well as a source of energy; deploying domesticated termite machines to build the infrastructure of an automated simulation.

Afterward from an explanation and the departure of the binge of waiting, the sight of a solitary squatter on a table made for two caught the attention of two at the counter.

One of the two to the lady with the hair spikes and little else but an image: “Hey Elaine, what you doin’ alone?”

Looked up, not to ceiling or sky. Previous sights on table.

“Just felt like it.” Entrenched words from the very same Elaine, who held the two time record of having a six-letter name.

One of the other gang members, of a gang that made little difference. Woolf? Sexton? Let’s stay on topic, call it gucci. Gucci gang member, the one who didn’t speak prior, now spoke: “Don’t you usually hang around someone, though? What was his name again? Rodney? Rooney?”

“Riley,” a one word line delivery.

“Ah, yeah! That’s the one! Why you ain’t with ‘im?”

“The guy died. Stepped on a landmine during a gang war and got electrocuted. Think it was last week?”

“Oh! So sorry!”

Cracked laughter tore through the egg of Elaine. Egg was a yolk called a mouth which rested gently below the nose, but on many an occasion, opened up to reveal a cavernous system.

“Kinda funny, really! We in the Plaths always called him ‘Turtle’ because he always carried that big ol’ backpack full of surprises! So it’s like a turtle stepped on a landmine!”

Fist slammed on the table, an uproar of humor crafted from the aforementioned cavern.

No one else laughed. All else bore the gift of silence.

“Well, I thought it was funny,” Elaine looked away, possibly toward a more crowded gang of various gangs. Amore!

“But Elaine, weren’t you two friends? How could you laugh?”

“You’d have to have been there! His whole body got burnt to a crisp and I could see electricity crackling! You could stick a fork next to him, or a marshmallow!”

Again, and for the effect of repetition, no one else laughed.

“We all know the risks, it was bound to happen. Part of the Plath pact is that we rush headfirst into the heat of battle. Bud just held up the pact, and so it happened.”

“But aren’t you sad?”

“Are any of us sad? We just lost an entire gang the other day. Cranes. No one want to talk about them? Is it ‘cause they were poets? Well, anyway, if you insist on such a meandering topic, I’ll give a call for celebration.” Whistle signal to bartender flared. “DRINKS FOR EVERYONE! HERE’S TO RILEY!”

Soon the crowded silence crowded around the table of Elaine, upheld silence.

One and one, the two, congregated to the crowd in the room. The two guys who had been speaking. Yes, they had names, but it went without saying (not that their names were obvious or that there were any indication, rather the names were so incidental and forgettable that it went without saying what their names were). One upended the conversation:

“You two were best friends, right?”

Elaine drank. After a courageous belch, gave commemoration.

“Sure, but I’ve been in this game long enough. Lost plenty of friends, and some day, someone will lose me. That’s just the life we have here.”

“Say, wasn’t Riley not originally from here?”

“Indeed. Asked him about it one time back at the base, just him and I. I was like ‘Hey Riley, what was the outside world like? How did you manage to make your way here?’ You know what he told me?”

Silent faces turned side-by-side.

“He told me, he said, ‘Elaine, why does the chicken cross the road?’ I didn’t know how to answer, so I said ‘I don’t know, man, why does the chicken cross the road?’ You know what he told me? He said, ‘don’t look at me! I ain’t no chicken. Listen. I do what I do ‘cause I do it. That’s how it’s always been with me. I’ll live because I live and I’ll die because I’ll die. There ain’t much more to me.”

Ooh’s and Aah’s, round of applause, Elaine again with the drinking.

“Pretty much the same with me, I suppose. Same with all of us. Sure, who’d want to live like a place like this where someone constantly dies? But that’s our life. If I could choose another life, I could’ve been a ballerina, learned shorthand, or been a burlesque dancer. I don’t know what any of those are, but I’ve heard of such things from random parsing through neural manuscripts.”

“True enough! I often forget the names of all the people I chat with cause they usually die the next day!” Hearty laugh from one of the two guys. Were they the same two guys as last time?

Question never minded, the with the bat steps to the heels and the thundering cackles cracked, an electrifying entrance.

“How dare you disrespect the dead?!” Mother of Sexton pointed her crone finger every which way. Elaine, who knew the way, could address the one with the entrance.

“How could you know whether or not I’m disrespecting him? He’s dead, I can’t ask his opinion. Maybe he wants us to celebrate in this way.”

“You still show disrespect! Cracking jokes and trampling over the very concept! Those were people’s lives, who could very well not have wanted their fates to be that way! And you, you find levity?”

“Bah,” bitter, sour tongue. Elaine took a swig, a gulp and a set, mouth open once again. “I choose not to dwell on the dead. It doesn’t do any of us any good.”

“Wrong again! You can learn a great deal from the dead!”

“Oh yeah? Wanna know what happens when you talk to a skeleton? You know what the skeleton says? Nothing. Because the dead cannot speak. All you have to learn is that they have ceased to be.”

“Ah, but they do speak. Listen to their bones and what came before. The ashes and their power. It fills me. After all, death itself is life.”

“Again, I choose not to dwell on the dead. Does none of us any good. All it does is make you obsess. You wanna know what led someone to such an end? What it means for them? ‘Surely, there must be a reason. Imagine if they could’ve been saved’, you must ask yourself. ‘what can we learn from this?’. I’ll tell you: nothing. You can speculate all you wish, but leave me out of it. I’ll learn what I can from what exists and live while I’m alive. That’s what I’ve chosen.”

“Such disrespect!”

“You wanna tell me about disrespect? The one who respects the very concept of women?”

No answer given. Only a storm that passed, damage restoration.

At the usual counter comes the kid elderly, Ernie. Sipping wine or champagne, relinquished lamentation.

“Crane gone. I also partake in men. I was craven. My shotgun could have salvaged some. Had I the knowledge.”

“Mm. Just as Elaine said: it happens to us all. Your truths and your falsehoods, they become trivial in the face of it all. Faction and fiction, death knows no discrimination.”

Hemingway drank a heavy shot. Down the chin, it went.

“Well known knowledge. Knowledge of the war remains. Absence of the Crane as an entire entity, signifies return.”

“Return of what, dear friend?” Spoke tender, the wiper of the glass.

“War.”

“As a bartender, I can neither confirm nor deny that. My duties lie in preserving the one place of neutrality.”

Neutrality may seem in the center of it all, but the true point is zero. Move two spaces to the X-axis, two spaces down, into the negatives, lies Plath leader, hands on head. Beside her, down west, Virginia.

“What’s wrong, my fellow woman?”

Plath with the aching head, but only from within.

“It’s the hospital...they did something to me...but I can’t remember…”

“Why now do you think of this?”

“Because I want to know! I feel myself slipping, but I can’t recall what happened last time! What did they take from me to make me like this?”

“Take or give? I have gone there rather often each time I reach peak madness. They give me something.”

“Yes! You were there with me! Tell me! What do you remember?”

“I was cured. I don’t remember of what. I know they treated me. Yes. Oh dear. I may have to go back.”

“No. None of us goes and finds it; when they sense our illness, they take us back. But if I could just remember what happened. It hurts so much. It was like a pain I’ll never know of! That’s why…”

Passed by. Sexton once again. Laughed. Her own form of respect.

“Oh my, my, my. You have forgotten your hospital visit?”

“Yes! Do you remember yours?”

“Of course. I recorded it. They taught me a great many things.”

“What did they teach you?”

“Death and all that surrounds it.” Her grin was a shadow when compared to the bright spot above her forehead. “I’ll even let you listen.”

Chip was thrown, just as it would have had it been an explosive die (the singular form of dice). After Sibylline Sylvie stressed the sweaty palm, the index finger went to work and clicked. It all played to her ears, her ears alone. Her own.

Within the mind, recording went as follows, an interview:

Doctor: What brings you in today?

Sexton: I am afraid of reaching an end.

Doctor: Administer the shock.

[Electricity Crackles]

Doctor: What brings you in today?

Sexton: The hospital itself.

Doctor: Correct. Do you know the process?

Sexton: Yes.

Doctor: Do you fear death?

Sexton: Yes.

Doctor: Do you wish for immortality?

Sexton: No.

Doctor: Do you fear an end?

Sexton: Yes.

Doctor: Do you believe that children are the future?

[No answer]

Doctor: Do you believe that children are the future?

[Shock administered]

Doctor: Do you believe children are the future?

Sexton: I despise children.

Doctor: Think of them as an extension. If you wish not to see an end, repeat the process. Create them like any other invention. Like a weapon. Do you remember who came before you?

Sexton: Yes.

Doctor: She was you, once. Make a child that can become you and you will never reach an end. Understand?

Sexton: Yes.

Doctor: Do you believe that children are the future?

Sexton: Yes.

– Recording ended –

Such was the mother Sexton’s treatment. Silvery scent sent the chip away. Such a cross toss. As for the parent herself, she laughed. Her voice carried over the merriment.

Slipped past the crowd, Sylvie stroked over the silence, right where Elaine sat.

“What I heard confirms it,” she told Elaine, lower in her voice than her own posture. “Karen gave us our next mission. Was a simple one. I will accept.”

“What is it?” Elaine, humble in her ignorance.

“To find the artifact known as The Bell Jar. With it, our gang shall surely flourish.”

“You should refuse.”

“What? How could you?”

“I don’t think you’re in the right condition.”

“Even with us separated, you still act like you have a say in it!”

“If you don’t want me around, kick me out. I’ll respect it.”

“No!” Her own throat a tinny sore. “I cannot keep you with me, but I cannot let you go too far!”

“Ladies, ladies,” a man in the Plaths. “You’re both pretty.”

Elaine snapped. Five fingers, in a twist. “That’s true, but not the matter at hand!”

Already angered, Sylvie stormed away, stood tall and took off. Before through the door, declared: “I will accept! I am the leader! I am! I am! I am!”

Some Plaths looked toward Elaine, whose name was six letters long. “What will you do about this?”

Six letter word shrugged.

“She said she’ll accept.”

“Yeah, but you seemed against it.”

“Indeed. Let me finish my drink. It’s last call.”

“Then, after bartender sacks us?”

“I’ll have a smoke.”

No further on the subject. One last drink for good ol’ times before the neon sign sparked ‘Closed’ on the door outside. Bartender needn’t say a word.

[satans-helper]

Sphinx 🍁 imp 🍀 hydra

sphinx: do you enjoy riddles and puzzles?No :( too stupid

imp: do you consider yourself funny?No :( not funny...I mean, I laugh at myself all the time but I know I’m not funny to other people

hydra: do you collect/have a lot of anything?I don’t really collect anything but I have a lot of books (who doesn’t), especially books of poetry...I sort of collect “creatures.” I have a preserved bat and bird, I have almost an entire deer skeleton. Like if there is a creature that can be preserved or bones to be cleaned I will take them. Got that from my dad lol. I will also collect just about anything that I think is cool that I organically find. I have a lot of pictures/drawings/notes I’ve found from other people that I’ve saved. Little random trinkets, too. Just shit that you find walking around. 

Thank you, beautiful crow!! ~~

[lechevaliermalfet]

Seasonally Appropriate, part I: A Long Look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

So it's Halloween season, and I thought maybe it would be interesting/entertaining for me to tackle some themed content.  So here we go.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

There are few video game series that so clearly fit the season as Castlevania. A series that usually has Dracula as its final boss, with any number of mummies, werewolves, and Frankenstein's monsters prior to the ultimate showdown with Bram Stoker's Wallachian sensation, there are few that are perhaps a better fit for the season.  And this is just a small sample of the horror and horror-adjacent enemies (we've also got your standard zombies, ambulatory skeletons of varying sizes, gargoyles, giant bats, and giant spiders, gorgon heads, Medusa herself, and even the grim reaper).

But despite the parade of classic horror monsters, Castlevania has never really been scary.  It's really always been more of a sort of horror fantasy than anything.  

Most installments prior to Symphony of the Night featured you playing as a muscular hero who is the latest scion of the Belmont clan, a powerful, nearly barbarian folk whose sole heirloom appears to be an enchanted chain whip (with a spiked morning star on the end) which is consecrated for killing vampires and other creatures of the night.  It's a good thing they have it, because Dracula, in life an evil sorcerer, and in death the king of vampires, seems to come back to life every century. Sometimes this happens on its own, sometimes he's resurrected by various disciples.  

Listen, the lore here is neither deep, complex, nor consistent.  Anyway, Symphony of the Night marked an interesting fork in the series development.

Let's look back for a minute at the mid-90s.

More below the cut.

It was the dawn of the fifth generation of video game consoles.  Sony's PlayStation, Sega's Saturn, and Nintendo's N64 (the three consoles of this generation that mattered, and that are worth remembering as more than a footnote) were collectively the vanguard of 3D graphics in game design.  Blocky and pixellated as a lot of those games look, believe it or not, it was an exciting time to be into video gaming. Boundaries were being pushed.  New genres (such as survival horror) were being invented.  And many developers were struggling mightily to find ways to translate their existing franchises into three dimensions.

TV Tropes refers to this phenomenon as the Polygon Ceiling.  Some series, such as Final Fantasy, had a relatively easy, painless transition into 3D.  In fact, RPGs broadly speaking weathered the change with few growing pains, if any. The main reason for this, I think, is simply that the mechanics that defined an RPG had very little to do with how those kinds of games were presented, in terms of graphics.  The switch from 2D to 3D didn't really change anything about the essence of an RPG, and in most cases was actually beneficial.

The same was not true of more action-oriented titles, such as Mega Man, or Contra, or Ninja Gaiden, or... well, Castlevania. For an RPG, the way a player and the player's character(s) interacted with the world was fairly rudimentary, and the specifics were largely (in most cases) inconsequential.  But in an action game, the player's interaction with the game's world is everything. Running, jumping, shooting, slashing, exploring, commandeering vehicles...  The feel of these things was every bit as important as how they looked.  And the specific details of the mechanics were important.  Does the character have a life bar, or do they die in one hit?  Can they control their jump mid-air, or are they committed once they launch themselves?  Is the game a side-scroller, or a top-down action game?  Is there a lot of jumping and verticality to the environments, or is it largely a horizontal affair?  And so on, and so forth.  

The transition to 3D presents a couple of problems, then.

Problem one is a pet theory of mine: 3D gaming compels a certain adherence to reality, at least notionally.  I think that, subconsciously, players are better able to accept the more abstracted characters and environments of a 2D game because its nature as a 2D game means it is not operating in a space the player can recognize as real.  So the abstractions – things like floating platforms, massive leaps, double-jumping, etc. – don't really seem troubling. But 3D environments have to look, if not realistic, then at least plausible given the restrictions or abilities of the setting. Platforms hanging in mid-air are an abstract thing that's du rigeur in a 2D game, but they look really weird in a 3D game without some kind of justification.

Problem two is less theoretical: 3D gaming requires a from-the-ground-up re-think of level design.  Part of the reason the level layouts of a 2D side-scrolling game work at all is that the player has that side-on perspective that lets them see what's over the next rise, and react or plan their movements accordingly.  3D games generally don't allow for that, unless they're going for what's referred to as 2.5D – 3D graphics, but levels laid out and played the same as if they were in 2D.  The reason this is a problem is the domino effect it causes. If you're re-designing the levels, you also have to re-design the way the player interacts with them.  The player character's moveset has to change to accommodate this new setting.  And then you have related problems to solve, which were never an issue in 2D games, such as camera control.

In essence, taking an established series from 2D into 3D changes everything.  The environments, the way the player character interacts with said environments, the character's moveset, and the pacing. Meanwhile, franchises tended to be built on a certain consistency.  You tend to buy a Contra or Castlevania or Mega Man game because you know what those games are like.  The name indicates a certain kind of experience.  So, the dilemma: How do you change literally everything recognizable about your game while preserving the essence of the experience so as to maintain continuity with what the franchise is all about?

Outside of Nintendo's major first-party franchises at the time, most of the heavily action-oriented series that were already big when the 3D revolution either:

Stayed 2D, and saw diminished exposure and popularity as a result (some went portable)

Went 3D, failed (sometimes after multiple tries), and died out in a console generation or two

Which brings us to Castlevania, and the fork in the road.

So, like most developers in the mid- to late 90s, Konami was trying to find ways to make their existing franchises work in 3D.  This was at some point before Metal Gear Solid became their major cash-cow franchise.  

Castlevania was a proven money-maker for them in the U.S.  About the only entry they'd left in Japan had been Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, mainly because it was a game for the TurboGrafx-CD, which was doing almost nonexistent business in the States, and had been from its beginning. Which is a shame, really, because Rondo of Blood was damn near perfect.  The Super NES conversion, Castlevania: Dracula X was good in general, but paled in comparison.  But we'll come to that.

So naturally, the thing to do with their big franchises was to make them over in 3D.  Which is exactly what they were doing with Castlevania on the N64.  The result, Castlevania 64, was to be the the definitive statement of the series on modern consoles.

It... didn't work out that way.

Castlevania 64 went on to become one of the defining examples of what it meant to hit the Polygon Ceiling.  Later that same year (1999), Konami brought out Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, which expanded on its ideas and made some improvements, but still wasn't all that well received. But there was this other game that came first...

Koji Igarashi, a programmer at Konami, had put together a B team and gotten permission to make his own spin-off Castlevania game for the PlayStation, titled Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It was going to be a 2D game, so Konami didn't put much effort into marketing or advertising it, at least not in the U.S.  I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but in the U.S. at least, there was a certain drive to leave 2D gaming behind in favor of 3D.  A certain amount of this (it's difficult to say how much) was admittedly driven by the console manufacturers and software publishers themselves, in an effort to sell more games by making said games look as cutting-edge as possible.  

But gaming in 3D was in a transitional state.  And most transitions are ugly and awkward.  Two-dimensional games like Symphony of the Night or Rayman or Silhouette Mirage lacked a lot of the immediate wow factor that 3D games possessed; they were an iteration on what had come before in a generation when everyone was fixated on what was new and shiny.  But at the same time, they had the benefit of established technique.  Developers had at least two console generations' worth of history to draw upon when it came to designing a 2D game, to help them understand what worked or didn't work, and why.  Many conventions of game design had been pioneered in the 8-bit days – the third console generation – and had been refined in the fourth generation.  This fifth generation and its newer technologies offered the opportunity to refine it further still.  

Time has been unkind to many of these early 3D efforts.  However impressive most of these games looked upon release, many of them have aged poorly.  With controls that are often both clumsy and awkward, and with graphics that frequently looked rudimentary even one console generation removed, they can be hard to go back to.  And I say this despite all my intense personal nostalgia for games in this period. Two-dimensional games, meanwhile, have frequently aged much better.

Symphony of the Night, for example, which went on to become the face of the Castlevania franchise.

It's a little strange to think about Symphony of the Night being the odd one out, nowadays.  It, and all the portable games that chased after its success and were to varying degrees crafted in its image, became what the franchise was known for in the end.  There's a reason the genre is called "Metroidvania". But this was where all that began, and as a non-linear exploration-based side-scrolling game with RPG elements, Symphony of the Night seemed like a weird fit for the series at the time it came out.

There was some precedent for this in the series prior.  Castlevania II: Simon's Quest had seen the player character traversing the Transylvanian countryside looking for bits of Dracula in order to unite and destroy them, and thus break the curse upon him.  It was also a non-linear and exploration-based side-scrolling game.  However, it was bad at communicating with the player and providing the necessary clues to make sense of its challenges.  Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, meanwhile, featured multiple routes through its levels by the simple expedient of giving the player a discrete choice at the end of most stages leading up to Dracula's castle.  Rondo of Blood featured multiple paths, but presented them more organically, by having branching pathways and hidden routes in the levels themselves, which often led to different subsequent levels when pursued.  

But all of these were mere flirtations with the idea of exploration compared to the sprawling, open mass of content that was Symphony of the Night.

Likewise, the series typically featured physically imposing, practically barbarian heroes before.  Symphony's immediate predecessor, Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, had about the most characterization the series had seen in any of its heroes with Richter Belmont, who went on his adventure not only because Dracula was a bad, bad man, but also because he had kidnapped Richter's fiancee (along with a few other village girls, and a young lady named Maria Renard, who could also be played once rescued).

In place of the usual pseudo-barbarian hero, Symphony instead features a new playable character, Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son.  His true name, according to the manual, is Adrian Farenheits Tepes (yes, really), which...  I can't decide whether that's awesome or ridiculous.  Anyway, he goes by Alucard, which of course is his father's name spelled backward, to symbolize his opposition to his father.  

Alucard first appeared back in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, which Igarashi has stated was his favorite game in the series. There, Alucard was one of three possible partner spirits the main character could recruit, after first facing him as a boss enemy.  In that game, Alucard had a weaker version of his father's trademark triple-fireball attack, and the ability to turn into a bat and fly to locations other characters couldn't reach (at the cost of a constant expenditure of special weapon ammo).  There, he was probably the least useful of the three partner spirits.  His bat transformation was really helpful in only a small number of situations, and his attack was weak even when powered up to the three-shot version, unless you could make all three shots hit the same target.  And like all the partner spirits, he was more fragile than the main character.

He's appeared elsewhere in the series since.  In addition to an appearance prior to Symphony in one of the old-school Gameboy entries, he also shows up (under the alias Genya Arikado) in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the Gameboy Advance, as well as in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the original DS.  His appearance in Symhony of the Night led to a change in how its heroes looked.  Character designer Ayami Kojima has a far more shoujo design sensibility, and as a result the franchise's leads have tended toward being more slender and androgynous ever since, even in the games she didn't design characters for.

But getting back to Symphony of the Night, Alucard was the perfect character for what Igarashi had in mind for the game.  Both in his personal identity and in the kind of character he was, he represented something altogether different from the series norm: a slender, impeccably dressed nobleman in place of a broad-shouldered, leather-clad warrior; a cold, remote swordsman over a muscle-bound whip-swinger.  He served as much as anything else to communicate that Symphony of the Night was headed in a different direction from the rest of the games up to that point.

Most games in the series were fairly typical for side-scrolling action games.  Enemies tended to be weak defensively, but packed a punch, and were intended to soften you up for the bosses.  You had your standard layouts of platforms to navigate between, with spike traps and instant-death falls into bottomless pits as punishment for bad timing of your jumps.  Your player character did not grow as the game progressed: You had a single weapon with which to attack the enemies, though Castlevania allowed you to supplement this with sub-weapons, which you could find scattered throughout the game's stages, and which required ammunition to use.  The game, meanwhile, grew in difficulty as you progressed, requiring you to hone your skills as you went.  What was unique about Castlevania was its difficulty (its particular mechanics put it on the high end of fair, for the standards of the day) and its medieval/gothic horror setting.

Symphony of the Night is still a side-scrolling game, but that's essentially where the similarities end.  Igarashi took a page out of the Metroid playbook, and crafted a non-linear, exploration-based action game.  Then, for good measure, he bolted on some basic RPG elements.  So rather than a linear march to the endgame, the player is allowed – encouraged, even required! – to explore every nook and cranny, gradually acquiring new weapons and abilities as they go, and to revisit old locations with their new-found powers and abilities in order to open up new pathways.

Yet for all the ways it's different from the series that sired it, Symphony of the Night leaned more heavily on the (admittedly somewhat anemic) series lore than any game had previously.

Rondo never saw release in the U.S., which is a goddamned crime, even as I understand perfectly why Konami passed on localizing it.  What we got instead was Castlevania: Dracula X for the Super NES (known as Vampire's Kiss in Europe).  This version of the game has some interesting trade-offs going on.  The graphics are somewhat better, since it's a Super NES game.  However, the music, while nice, doesn't hold a candle to the CD soundtrack featured in the original game.  It also loses out on the multiple routes that were perhaps the defining feature of the TurboGrafx-CD version, which seems more questionable. The result is something that feels very much like a bright, shiny consolation prize.

Symphony of the Night is set in the 1790s, about five years after the events of Rondo of Blood. Alucard himself first appeared in the fifteenth century during the events of Castlevania III, so he's been around a while already; Symphony is therefore tied to two different games in the series.  But as much as there was a shared continuity between installments, their taking place a century apart meant that none of them really required you to have played the previous installments to appreciate the current one. It isn't the first game in the series to revisit a particular point in time and set of characters – the very first sequel did it, after all – but it is the first to show real growth of any kind in those characters. Richter returns in a startling reversal of his original role as vampire hunter, and Maria Renard is all grown up and looking to take care of things on her own.  And while it's true that you still really don't need to have played Rondo of Blood to enjoy Symphony of the Night, there was that added layer of interest for fans of the previous game.

Among the many other things Symphony gets right is its gameplay.  Overall, the game is a little on the easy side, but that's easy to forgive.  One of the things that makes it easy is simply its design.  As an exploration-based game rather than a linear side-scroller, a lot of the traditional instant-death traps (such as bottomless pits) really don't make a lot of sense from the standpoint of environmental design.  Punishing the player's bad timing is basically antithetical to the design of a game like this. The challenge lies far more in figuring out the correct path to the end, instead.  Instant-death scenarios would be deeply unfair in that context.  Instead of running a gauntlet, the player is navigating a labyrinth.

As befits a game that takes up as much geographical space as Symphony of the Night does, the enemies show wide variation in shape, size, strength, and tactics.  Their placement is likewise well-considered.  Enemies of the same type only rarely occupy more than one region of the game's map, giving each region its own ecosystem.  Many of them pose little threat, playing into the relative easiness of the game.  They're there because fighting them gives you something to do as you traverse the castle.  The real challenge is finding your way through... and, of course, fighting off the bosses.

While many of the bosses pose only a middling challenge, a few encounters are genuinely harrowing, and many of them – Olrox, Granfaloon, and Galamoth, just to name a few – make for fantastic setpiece fights.

In addition to its gorgeous and varied environments, Symphony also offers the player several different powers and abilities.  Over the course of the game, Alucard gains access to powers that allow him the classic vampire transformations (into a wolf, bat, or mist) which are essential for navigating the environment.  This is in addition to abilities such as double-jumping and being able to walk underwater. There's also a multitude of weapons the player can find, with a variety of abilities and drawbacks, as well as several with hidden moves.

The only place the game really falls apart is in its second half.  After uncovering enough of the castle to find a particular item, then player can then face off against the seemingly final boss, only to discover that this boss isn't so final as previously believed.  In fact, it's just the halfway point.  The game then reveals that there is an entire second castle to explore, where the real final boss is hiding.  This is great in theory.

In practice, it’s somewhat less great.  The second castle is a mirror image of the first; take the castle, rotate it 180 degrees, and you have the second half of the game.  The problems here are manifold.

It's not as interesting to explore, because you've seen all this before.  The color palettes are altered in much of the reverse castle, but the layouts are otherwise exactly as they were in the first castle, right down to all of the secrets.  But at the same time...

It's disorienting, because while essentially familiar, it's also upside-down.  It constantly messes with your ability to navigate without constant reference to the map. And while it would be nice to praise clever level design that works both right side-up and upside-down, the fact that you can double-jump, high-jump, and fly means that pathfinding is trivially easy no matter which way the environment is pointed.  And since you already have all the essential expansions to your moveset...

There's less to get excited about.  Part of the appeal of any good Metroidvania game is the player character's slowly evolving moveset, which allows increased exploration of the game's environment. There's a small thrill at the "Ah-ha!" moment when you realize that your double-jump or ability to fly or turn into mist will allow you to access an area you couldn't reach previously, either granting access to new areas or to yet another new power-up, expanding your moveset further.  But that sense of excitement goes away since you already have all the essential maneuvering capabilities.  It also means...

Since you've already acquired all your essential abilities, there is no direction suggested by limitations upon your movements, as there would usually be in a game like this.  Most Metroidvanias are structured so that there are initially only a few places you can go, with tantalizing hints of what might lie beyond currently accessible regions. Thus, while you're free to explore in the reverse castle, the lack of growing capabilities means every direction is arbitrary.  You spend the whole latter half of the game just going wherever, because one direction is as good as another.

While the game still never gets really hard, the difficulty does spike in the inverted castle.  Unfortunately, it does this mainly by just making the enemies give and take more punishment.  Monsters who served as minor bosses in the first castle now show up as basic enemies.  As a result, the game slows down as you slog your way forward.

The thing is, this doesn't make Symphony of the Night a bad game.  It does mean the latter half falls apart a bit, and is somewhat disapointing as a result.  Most of the time, when I play through it these days, I tend to stop once I reach the inverted castle.  The level of novelty adn inventiveness on display throughout the first half tapers off pretty abruptly in the second half.  But it's still overall a vastly entertaining game, and one that I love.  It’s worth playing through by basically anybody.

Inverted castle aside, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a smash hit.  It was one of the first PlayStation games I ever bought, somewhere in the spring of 1999.  

I remember suddenly recalling, out of the blue one day, that I'd read about a Castlevania game for the PlayStation that was a little different from the rest of the series.  That was it.  I knew it existed.  So renting it seemed like the safest bet.

The problem with rentals, of course, is that after the end of the rental period, they actually do expect you to give it back.  And that was a problem, because after just about half an hour spent playing the game, I decided that this was one of the most phenomenal games I'd ever played.  It went without saying that I wanted to own it.  In fact I wound up picking up a copy that night (technically, it was after midnight, so that would really make it the following morning) for $20 at a Wal-Mart that was open 24 hours.  I returned the rental the next day, since I wouldn't be needing it any more.

Really, I think I knew I wanted to own this game the moment I got into the Alchemy Laboratory, the second main area, and the first that really allowed for some exploration at the very beginning.  It was perhaps the first area where everything I loved about the game came together perfectly: the graphics (lushly detailed and lovingly animated), the environments (big, eclectic in theme, and interesting to look at), and the music (as eclectic as the environments, beautifully orchestrated and arranged).  

I still wind up digging into it for at least a little while every year – and, yes, it's usually around Halloween that I do.  I don't usually go through the inverted castle, as I mentioned before. I have stuff to do, and my enthusiasm usually wanes around that point.  But I did it this year, for old times’ sake.

It’s always a pleasure playing Symphony for the little details here and there throughout the game.  But I especially took notice playing through it earlier this month, since I was playing it to finish it, and to take a more critical look at it.

For all that the PlayStation is routinely (and, let's be honest, correctly) assessed as a system with anemic 2D capabilities, Symphony of the Night is a 2D powerhouse for the standards of its day.  And as pixellated as it looks when viewed on HD TVs or monitors today, it still looks fairly amazing.  

There are all sorts of tiny details that work to sell the environments of the game as places with their own distinct identities.  Birds nest in the belfries of the Cathedral.  The frozen-over sections of the underground caverns have a thin skin of ice on the pools of water there, which will break off, a bit at a time, as you collide with them.  Then you have the rats doing their rat business in the little inaccessible nooks and crannies of the Outer Wall.  For that matter, the Outer Wall's weather will randomly change whenever you enter it: It can be clear, foggy, or raining.  There's no effect on the gameplay; it's purely for effect.  Then there's the way many enemies (not just bosses) have unique and involved death animations.  This is on top of them being already highly detailed as it stands.  And these enemies are rarely repeated throughout the game.  Each area has its own unique ecosystem of enemies which aren’t often found elsewhere in the game.  Seeing the full range of the game’s bestiary is in fact one of the few real joys of exploring the inverted castle.

The only part of the game that’s aged somewhat less gracefully is its 3D graphics, which thankfully don’t matter too much.  There’s actually very little 3D in the game proper, and what’s there is used either as background elements (rushing clouds in the Cathedral and Clock Tower areas, and the clock tower itself), or as a supplement to the 2D graphics (the ice crystals that the Ice Maiden enemies use to shield themselves or shoot at you, the pulsing lake of lava, etc.).  About the only instance of 3D where I cry foul is the wings of the giant bat.  Those are honestly kind of embarrassing.  Everything else is fine, if a bit low-fi.  But I find myself getting pretty nostalgic for that, honestly.  

Still, as easy as it is to get wrapped up in extolling the virtues of Symphony of the Night’s technical mastery, what should be kept in mind is that buried under all the flash is a solid game.  Like the best Metroidvania titles, it challenges you not through your steel-trap reflexes but by your ability to navigate the world, to find the correct way ahead, to ferret out the secrets necessary to success.  Unlike its predecessors, it presents not a gauntlet to be run, but a puzzle to be solved.

Because it amuses me, let’s take a look at some of the localization oddities of Symphony of the Night.

Someone at Konami – I'm about 80 percent sure this was someone on the localization team, not the original Japanese development team – was hell-bent on inserting fantasy and sci-fi literature references into the game.  

The boss Granfaloon takes its name from a word invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his book Cat's Cradle. It's used to describe a collective of people whose commonalities might seem to be significant factors in their association, but which are in fact meaningless in the grand divine plan.  This boss shows up in at least one later game (Aria of Sorrow), and is renamed to the more-appropriate Legion.  

There's a handful of references to The Wizard of Oz, of all things.  These come in the form of three different enemies: a scarecrow who jumps around fairly brainlessly, an enemy called Tin Man which is essentially a steam-powered machine full of blades, and an enemy called simply Lion which is described as being cowardly.  

And then there are the references to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion...

This will be easier as a list:

The Nauglamir: In-game, it’s a necklace that raises the player’s defense.  In The Silmarillion it’s a necklace made by the Dwarves for the Elvish king Thingol, which among other gemstones contained one of the Silmarils – a gem (out of a set of three) containing vast but frustratingly vague magical powers.

The Sword of Hador: In-game, it’s described as belonging to the House of Hador.  This is a reference to The Children of Hurin, which is one of the main tales of The Silmarillion, and more recently was expanded into a book in its own right.  The House of Hador is more famous for its dragon-crested helmet, but the game has a dragon helm as a major piece of Alucard’s equipment already, and the developers probably didn’t want to name one of the more important items after something in an intellectual property they didn’t own.

The Fists of Tulkas: In-game, they’re a set of gauntlets to be equipped for punching enemies. Tulkas in The Silmarillion is a god-like being whose area of divine responsibility is war.

The Mormegil: In-game, it’s described as a black-bladed sword, and by its statistics, it’s especially powerful against holy-aligned enemies.  In The Silmarillion, it’s a sword used by Turin Turambar, of the House of Hador (though it’s not an heirloom of said House), which does indeed have a black blade, and a sinister past.

The Ring of Varda: In-game, it’s a ring that gives stat bonuses to the player.  In The Silmarillion, Varda is a goddess of sorts – the queen of the highest tier of divine beings, just below the creator – who is associated with the stars.

Azaghal: In-game, a unique enemy who appears in exactly one location (the inverted version of Olrox’s quarters, for the curious).  He is an enormous glowing phantom who swings a sword that’s at least twice the size of the player’s character.  In The Silmarillion, he’s a Dwarvish king slain in battle by a dragon.  He has a dragon-crested helm which is given to one of the Elvish princes after his death, which is the same helm that ultimately becomes the heirloom of House Hador, after changing hands a few times.

The Crissaegrim: In-game, it’s the most game-breakingly powerful sword the player can find, being a sword that strikes four times in the amount of time most other swords take to strike once, strikes diagonally upward and downward on two of its strikes, and has the best reach of any of the game’s other swords’ standard attacks. And you don’t have to stop moving to swing it.  In The Silmarillion, it’s a mountain range where the Eagles dwelt.  By the time of The Lord of the Rings, it no longer exists, having sunk into the sea along with much of the land where The Silmarillion takes place.

Castlevania has always borrowed from pop culture to some extent.  The original game borrowed its boss monsters from classic horror movies and literature (Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the mummy), and its sequels up to this point borrowed still more.  But the specific things being borrowed in Symphony of the Night have always struck me as weird.  There's something a bit more... universal? (pun unintended) about Dracula or the mummy or the wolf-man or Medusa or...  The list goes on.  The Silmarillion and Cat's Cradle and The Wizard of Oz are more puzzling, at least to me.  Maybe it's just that they're not in the public domain (well, The Wizard of Oz is; the book, at any rate).  Maybe it's because they're not as firmly in the horror genre themselves, or even horror-adjacent.

The success of Symphony of the Night helped propel Koji Igarashi to the position of de facto steward of the franchise.  After Konami's double failure to craft a worthy Castlevania in 3D on the N64, they decided to go smaller-scale for the series, at least for a few years. The next game, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was released in 2001 for the Gameboy Advance.  While it wasn't directed by Igarashi, it clearly aped Symphony of the Night in most respects.  Regrettably, its overall quality wasn't one of them. Igarashi returned to the director's seat for the next several games in the series.  He got his band back together (Michiru Yamane on music, Ayami Kojima on character designs) for Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, which has a somewhat divisive reputation among the fanbase.  The follow-up, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, is often considered to be the first truly worthy successor to Symphony. The following games on the DS – Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia – saw diminishing returns.

Igarashi's success with his Metroidvania titles in the series eventually saw him put in charge of a new attempt to make Castlevania in 3D.  The results, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness on the PlayStation 2, were... competent, at least.  I’ll probably talk more about those another time.

The Castlevania franchise ultimately got farmed out to Mercury Steam, a Spanish developer, who took the series in a different direction (though one of their games is at least to some extent a Metroidvania in Igarashi’s mold).

More recently, Igarashi's gotten back in the saddle.  While he's no longer with Konami, he's been toiling away on a Kickstarter project called Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which follows aggressively in the footsteps of his Metroidvania games.  His initial Kickstarter pitch leaned heavily into his success with the Castlevania franchise. While Ritual of the Night has yet to be released, his team put together a faux-8-bit homage to Castlevania III titled Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, which seems to be positioned as a prequel to Ritual of the Night. It's fantastic, and is available for PC and all current consoles.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Symphony of the Night; I should probably discuss its availability for whoever is curious. I’ll break this down by systems.

Sony: By far, Sony’s systems have the widest availability for this game.  The original PlayStation disc can be played on a PlayStation, PlayStation 2, or PlayStation 3, or via any halfway decent PlayStation emulator on PC. Almost any computer you can buy today will run PlayStation games just fine with emulation.  In addition, this same version is available digitally as a PS One Classic on PSN, so you can download it version for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, PS Vita, or PS TV.  Like most single-disc PlayStation games on PSN, it runs about five dollars. Then there’s Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles. This is a PSP release whose main purpose was to be a shiny new 2.5D remake of Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, a.k.a. Castlevania: The One That Got Away for many years in the U.S.  However, you can easily unlock Symphony of the Night in it (as well as the original TurboGrafx-CD version of Rondo of Blood). This version of Symphony features a new voice cast and a rewritten script, which may or may not recommend it.  The original game was never going to be High Drama even in some theoretical ideal form, and the original script and hamtastic acting at least gave it a kind of B-grade charm.  As it stands, the newer version’s acting is more professional, but loses some of that overwrought but undersold charm. However, it's completely serviceable, and the fact is that all three games in the collection make it well worth a purchase.  It's available physically (for PSP only) or digitally (for the PSP, PS Vita, and PS TV).  Finally, there’s Castlevania: Requiem, a combo pack for the PS4 which contains both Symphony of the Night and the TurboGrafx version of Rondo of Blood, with the English translations and voice work from the PSP release. These updated versions of the game feature a new song that plays over the ending credits (more on that below).  Castlevania Requiem also allows you to enable filters to soften the sharpness of the image, or to play it stretched fullscreen as well as in the original 4:3 aspect ratio with a variety of frames for vertical letterboxing.

Microsoft: An HD remaster of Symphony of the Night came out early in the Xbox 360's lifespan for Xbox Live Arcade.  It offers a smoothing filter for the graphics, and a frame for the vertical letterboxing (the game itself is still presented in 4:3 aspect ratio with no option to stretch the image).  The script and voice acting are the same as the original version.  There are two brief CGI cutscenes in the original version of the game which were cut from this version to save disk space (originally, Xbox Live Arcade titles had to come in under a certain size limit), but nothing of value here is lost.  The music for the ending credits has also changed from the original version.  The original song, "I Am the Wind", was replaced with a new piece due to licensing issues.  Again, personally, I think nothing of value was lost.  "I Am the Wind" sounded tremendously out of place, tonally, compared to the rest of the game.  In addition to the Xbox 360, this version of the game is also playable on the Xbox One via backward compatibility.

Nintendo: Nothing, sadly.  The closest Nintendo ever got to this game was having a near-perfect port of the Japanese version of Rondo of Blood on the Virtual Console, but the VC's basically shut down at this point.  You can still download games you've already purchased, but new purchases are no longer possible.

PC: No official release of Symphony of the Night has occurred on PC, despite it being an excellent candidate for Steam, because Konami is a shit company run by shit people, and they've decided to leverage all their intellectual properties for pachinko machines these days, which is a very shit thing for them to be doing.  Your best bet for PC is to get the PlayStation disc and download an emulator.

[svtskneecaps]

Blink and You’ll Miss It - Part 1

Summary: Sanha’s been a curious shit her whole life. Jackson’s always told her she’s going to get herself killed at some point. She thought that was a bunch of bull, but he might’ve actually been right. She might be in way over her head on this one.

Featuring: A bunch of bull, a lot of cursing, merciless butchering of honorifics, and other things. Essentially, it’s a Comedy of Errors: Story Version.

Warnings: Cursing. Lots and lots of it.

First ~~~ Previous ~~~ Next ~~~ Masterlist

(just don’t look too closely at the header; i’m 300% too lazy to fix it)

“Okay fuck this, I’m out.”

Jackson had been saying that for the past twenty minutes, so Sanha didn’t take it too seriously, rolling her eyes and tugging on his arm.

“Come on, oppa, the project said we had to explore the history of the world around us, and what better way than to wander an old abandoned dorm building?”

“To look something up in a library?”

“Oh, everyone and their mother can do that. They’ve probably got something awesome we can use in here.” She pulled on a door to the side of the hall, slipping through the crack she’d created.

“You know,” he grunted, squeezing through behind her, “when I said I’d do this project with you I didn’t expect to be crawling through some old building.”

“Me either.” She was already behind the desk to the side of the room, clearing the shrubbery off of it. “It’s wild how that works, isn’t it?”

He made a face at her cheeky grin. “Just get what you want and let’s go. Old buildings always have ghosts in them.”

“Oppa~ Lighten up, just think of it like we’re the Buzzfeed Unsolved guys,” she cooed. “We come into old buildings, look around, see nothing, and leave disappointed.”

“They only don’t find anything because they’ve got cameras.”

“So pull out your phone and start recording, and we’ll be a-okay.” Sanha pulled a drawer open, her entire face lighting up. “Ah! There’s a book in here!” She took it out and thumbed through it quickly, skimming the star charts within, before brushing most of the dust off and stuffing it into the satchel at her side. Jackson spluttered indignantly.

“You’re stealing now? Do you have a death wish? We’re going to get some vengeant ghost following us home hell bent on murdering us!”

“Murdering me,” she corrected. “I’m sure they know full well you’re not in on this, what with the amount of whining you’ve been doing.”

“Okay, you know the only reason I’m here is because you’re not allowed to do anything dangerous without me.”

“If you hate it so much just go back to the dorm. I can handle myself.” Sanha slid back out the door, wandering over to the large flight of stairs to the side of the front door.

“Are you kidding? No way, you can’t do this stuff on your own.” He trooped up the stairs after her as she skipped up them, two at a time. “That just doubles your already way too high odds of getting straight up murdered. Maybe triples.”

“You worry too much,” she sang. “C’mon, let’s check out the room with our number.” She pointed at the sign on the wall as she climbed past it.

“And then we can leave?”

“I never said that.”

He groaned.

They climbed another couple flights of stairs to get up to it, which winded neither of them (the elevator in their own building was incredibly untrustworthy, so neither of them used it after it broke down and trapping them for three hours one night).

“I don’t trust this.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“The floor looks like Swiss Cheese!”

Sanha jumped over one of the holes, holding a doorknob on the other side for extra support, and grinned at him. “Weren’t you the one who called yourself a parkour king?”

“That was a joke! And I’m not about to let you kill yourself, even on accident.”

She crouched down and directed a finger under a section of the floor that was intact. “There’s a wall under this bit; probably load bearing.”

“That’s not how load bearing walls work.”

She shrugged. “It’s a support. Look, I’ll go first and you can just step where I do.”

“And I guess you’ll expect me to catch you when you inevitably fall,” he grumbled as he carefully walked on the section with the wall under it, testing it with each step. “Well no way, if you fall you’re just going to fall.”

“Love you too.”

“And besides, you’re a little featherweight.” The sound of his mumbled rant carried her forwards. “It might all crumble under me even if it holds you.”

“I won’t judge you if you wait at the landing, you know.”

“I can’t let you do something stupid on your own; your mom’ll kill me.”

“She doesn’t even know you, remember? She’s back in America.”

“She knows we’re roommates.” Jackson flinched slightly as the floorboard under his foot creaked. “Man, why couldn’t you get someone else to go for you? Like Youngjae.”

“You know I’d never willingly put the kid in danger, and besides it’s no fun to let someone stick their nose places for you.”

“At the very least I wouldn’t have to worry so much,” he grumbled. “You’re not even on a news crew, why do you insist on doing stuff like this?”

“Blind curiosity, my dear Watson,” she sang, leaning backwards while holding onto the doorknob for 1704. The rotted door jamb split and the door abruptly swung open, pulling her dangerously close to a hole in the floor. Jackson sucked in a breath and reached out, but she caught herself with room to spare. The broken pieces of wood clattered to the floor below.

“Be more careful!” He didn’t bring up the Watson comment, so she knew it’d really scared him.

“I’m sorry, but everything’s fine, see? Nobody’s injured.” She peered over the edge, noting that she’d only have fallen a story if she hadn’t been able to catch herself. “It’s not even that far of a drop.”

“Not that far,” he imitated. “It’s a full story, you could break your neck.”

“Probably just a leg.”

“That’s not much better!”

Sanha pulled the door back open, gesturing dramatically for Jackson to enter first. He made an exaggeratedly gallant bow. “Please, thrill seekers first.”

She grinned and playfully batted his shoulder before testing the floor and stepping inside. Jackson followed closely behind, close enough she could feel his breathing.

“Heyyy, they’ve got a balcony in here!” She whistled appreciatively. “Living large and in charge.”

“Wish we had a balcony back at our own not haunted, warm and safe dormitory.” His voice grew steadily more passive aggressive as he continued. “Wish we were there instead of here.”

She ignored him. “You think they turned it into a haunted house attraction?” She tapped her fingers across a dust covered wooden table. “From like a theme park or something?”

“No, not really. Why, did you find a prop skeleton in the closet? Maybe a skeleton that isn’t a prop?!”

She snickered. “Yeah, and it’s got a floppy brim purple hat. No, I can hear the backing track for it. Maybe I tripped a switch downstairs?”

“Hold on, you hear the backing track? Like, creepy music?”

“I mean I hear something like that. Might just be my phone,” she mused as she fumbled around her pocket to take said item out and check if the music had started playing while she wasn’t paying attention.

“I sear, Sanha, if you dragged us into this and get an angry ghost sicced on yourself then I’m going to holy fuck what is that-!”

Her neck snapped up so quickly she gave herself whiplash. A dark, humanoid shadow was silhouetted on the doors to the balcony. “What,” she mumbled. The music in her ears swelled, and she could almost make out the lyrics. Despite any instinct for self preservation, she took a few careful steps toward the balcony doors, reaching a hand out. The figure began to turn, and in one fluid move she closed the remaining distance and pushed the doors open-

-and immediately tripped as he foot caught on a tear in the carpet. She scraped her hands on the weather worn wood as she slammed into the floor. A curse word escaped her as she forced herself to look up, her whole body quaking.

“Oh my god.” It took all of a second her her to burst out laughing. “Oh my god, oppa look.” Her sides shook for a completely different reason. “It was a bird. It was a fucking bird, oh my god.” No response. She turned around to see Jackson clutching his heart, his back pressed against 1701 across the hall and burst out laughing again.

“Let’s both agree,” he said, breathing heavily, to never speak of this.”

It didn’t take much convincing for her to agree.

“Maybe there’s something, you know, on the ground floor for you to poke your nose into,” he said once his breathing steadied.

“Nahhh.” She skipped back down the stairs, stopping in front of a broken door as her carefree tone dulled into a thoughtful hum. “Well, maybe.”

“There’s got to be something; it’s an old building covered in dust and ivy that no one’s lived in for probably centuries out in the middle of nowhere.” He gestured around them, indicating the moonlight that streamed through gaps in the ivy that covered a broken window.

“It’s still in halfway decent condition,” she commented, knocking three times on the shattered door.

“Yeah, except for the Swiss Cheese floors,” he grumbled, “and this door that somebody took an axe to; that bodes well.”

She hummed lightly in response, squeezing through the wide crack, her clothes catching on the sharper sides of the hole as he complained about her always running towards the danger. She heard him rattling the knob behind her as she pulled herself through.

“Sanha stop, the door’s locked!”

“Climb through the crack, silly.”

“I don’t fit!” His face appeared in the crack. “Not all of us are midgets.”

“Just make the crack larger or just wait there. I’m not picky.”

“Yah, Kim Sanha! Don’t you dare go on alone!”

“Oh, chill out. I’ll be back in a sec.” She kept walking, her feet kicking up dust. “It’s just an empty hallway anyway, I just wanna see the view out the window.”

She ignored him as he kept calling her name, continuing down. It was a surprisingly long hallway, and there were lightened square spots on the wallpaper where, she assumed, someone had hung pieces of art. Too impatient to walk the whole way, she ran to the end, the draft from the broken window at the end blowing her hair off her shoulders.

“Oh man oppa, don’t you wish you could see this,” she called back as she gazed out the window in awe. The sky had long gone dark, but now was colored in beautiful hues of soft pinks and lavender, and the stars were so bright and brilliant. There were more than she’d ever seen before. She pulled her phone out and snapped a few pictures, before just standing there a second, a soft smile resting comfortably on her features as she leaned on the windowsill.

Finally turning around, she jogged back to the other end of the hallway.

“Find anything of interest?” Jackson asked tiredly, sounding done with her shit.

“Actually, I did. Literally the best view. . . you’ve ever. . .”

Jackson’s heartbeat audibly sped up. “What? What’re you- Why did you stop?”

“I-” She knew there hadn’t been anyone in the hallway just seconds before, and there weren’t any open doors. And yet, there he was, standing there at the end by the window, teal jacket brushing his knees.

“As if in slow motion, he turned and they locked eyes. Her breath caught in her throat and she forgot how to blink, how to think, how to unstick her breathing, how to reassure her friend that everything was okay as the man started moving towards her, slow at first, before he ran. She watched him in slow motion, a voice ringing out in her ears singing the words to the melody she’d heard faintly upstairs.

“Don’t look away, keep your eye contact with me, nobody can take us apart.” His lips weren’t moving, but she knew it was him singing as he halved the distance between them. The lighted squares on the walls grew even lighter until a sunshine sky seeped through as though they were windows. Unconsciously, she reached out to him as he was to her, the desperation on his face striking a chord within her.

“Sanha!” Jackson’s urgent voice slipped through the melody, and without thinking she glanced at her friend. The song ended abruptly, fading away in a split second, and when she returned her gaze to the hallway half a second later, the man was gone as though he’d never been there. “Sanha what the hell happened, why’d you stop?”

“. . . nothing.” She forced herself to laugh, eyes still unfocused, before shaking her head and returning her gaze to her friend. “Nothing happened, I was just fucking with you.”

“Aish, you little twerp. I thought you were about to get murdered,” he griped.

“Sorry.”

“No you aren’t, just get back over here and let’s go.”

“Okay okay.” A giggle escaped her lips despite her confusion as she crawled back through the door. She’d tell him what she’d seen later, once they’d left the bulding. She was pretty sure that he’d actually murder her if he knew. The only reason he’d even come was to make sure she didn’t get killed, and she almost had.

“Hope you’ve seen everything you wanted to because we are never coming back.”

She hummed unconvincingly, tearing down the stairs ahead of him so he didn’t have time to think about it. “Last one to the car has to buy dinner!”

“It’s midnight!”

[joyous-art]

Wordtober Day 6: Sword

The sun rose through the trees and he throws his arm across his face to block it out. Something the size of a cat pounces on him and he jumps; the sleep in his eyes making the world appear hazy as he blinks at the small, rust coloured figure.

“Not now. I just got to sleep.”

“Aaand now it’s time to get up”

He groans and rolls over, hauling the blanket up to cover his head; knocking the creature off him in the process. He can hear it curse at him as it struggles to stay on the bed.

“I feel sick.”

“You should've thought about that before staying up all night.”

He grumbles as the sheet slowly becomes transparent; exposing him to the burning sunlight.

“You’re awful.”

A small chuckle can be heard; well, the equivalent of a chuckle anyway and there’s a flap of wings as he sits up. He stretches, watching as the blanket returns to it’s normal, solid, tawny brown. He yawns as the dragon sits on him again and presses its head into his hand.

“I made breakfast.”

“Lord help us.”

This particular dragon’s idea of ‘breakfast’ consisted of a variety of grubs, worms and whatever it caught in the island's shallows; not the most appetizing meal for… basically, anyone who wasn’t a dragon.

“Oh relax, Xen. There’s scrambled eggs and toast for you”

Xen raises an eyebrow in confusion. Usually, when something humanly edible was made it was cooked oysters or fish or crab but eggs?

“...What kind of eggs?”

“Chicken, I think.”

“Chicken, you think. Better question, where did you get the eggs?”

The dragon hesitates for a moment, manoeuvring itself to the end of the bed; out of arm's reach.

“Zeothess. Where. Did you get. The eggs.”

“From Poppy.”

“Poppy.”    

It had been it hadn’t been that long since he’d last seen her, only about a year. At one point they’d dropped out of contact for nearly a decade; leading him to believe she was dead until she showed up on his island one day.

“I visited her yesterday but you were so busy you obviously don’t remember me telling you.”

Xen had used the lighthouse’s power supply to aid a Mergirl he’d seen sitting on the shore a night ago. It had cost him a great about of energy to cast the spell and when he’d attempted to turn on the light the following night it had burnt out. That prompted the loss of several daylight hours and the all-nighter he was currently regretting; his own fault for deciding to live there he supposed. He was just thankful the emergency light had turned on without a problem. The one thing that made it worth it, was hearing Poppy’s voice carry across the waves that night.

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s alright. Still looking wrinkled.”

Xen swats at the dragon but Zeothess dodges it; cursing at him as they do.

“Shut it. She’s only as wrinkled as I am. What about the girl? Is she alright?”

“After you lead her into the water, with that creepy glowy-glow trick? Yeah, she’s good; hasn’t found all her scales yet though. Poppy says thanks by the way.”

He sighs and swings his legs off the bed; stretching into the sun to let his scales absorb some of the light. Being only half Mer, his scales wouldn't absorb enough to completely rejuvenate him, but it helped. He stands and throws on in his robe before heading down into the kitchen.

Xen was a person that couldn't be classified as a Mer, nor could he be classified as a Shift; and he was certainly not a Fae. He fell into a completely different category and for this and many other reasons: solitude suited him.

“Whatcha thinking ‘bout?”

“Lots of things Zeo… lots of things.”

He absentmindedly runs his hand across the dragon's back, used to the smooth, water-worn texture. The radio springs to life when he waves his hand at it and the weather report echoes through the stone tower.

“Expect a rough storm to roll in mid-afternoon with winds reaching speeds upwards of fifty knots and five-foot waves. Boats are recommended to stay in port and beaches to be cleared until it passes.”

Xen turns it off when he finishes breakfast and rubs the pale gill scars on his neck. Zeothess studies him carefully; attempting to read his expression, bat-like wings rustling in concentration. He makes eye contact with the little dragon; thin and lanky, a newt but larger and magical.

“You're not thinking what I think you're thinking… are you?”

He doesn't answer. They both knew they had to enter the Mer realm.

“No.”

“What choice do we have, Zeo? We can't weather the storm out here; we're too exposed.”

“Xen, they tried to kill you remember?”

The dragon was right; they had tried to kill him. They'd lashed at him with swords of sharpened coral and whips of kelp. Not to mention the leviathan that guarded the nearby city. He may be a Mer halfling but he was also a halfling of the forbidden realm; the human realm.  

The storm could be seen on the horizon as Xen began to pack the necessities in a waterproof sack. He'd chosen to ignore Zeothess’ warning; with some difficulty.

“We could take the boat and stay with Poppy-”

“We both know we'll be caught in the storm before we reach land and the water's too choppy for me to swim ashore without being smashed into rocks… we have no choice.”

Zeo whines softly, wrapping their tail around his leg in a failed attempt to stop him.

“We'll be fine. Seaton said there's a cave under the island; we’ll find it and stay there till it’s over”

The two of them finish prepping the lighthouse to weather the storm and head down to the water's edge. Xen eyes the black clouds; closer now.

“We wouldn't stand a chance up here”

A statement. Something to convince himself that this was the best solution. He hated storms with a passion after his father's ship had gone down in one; nearly fifty years ago. But his mother's realm wasn't friendly either; at least not to him.

The wind billows around him, wishing him luck as he steps into the water and he knows that she'll carry a message to Poppy. With the pack slung over his shoulder, he dives, relishing the feeling of his gills reopening after a long time on land. Zeothess joins him and the pair swims down, looking for the cave as the waves start crashing on the rocks.

It's quiet below the storm, almost eerily so; no sign of anyone to stop them. Xen turns on his waterproof lantern attached to his pack instantly illuminating the storm darkened waters. As the pair dive deeper they’re faced with a haunting sight: skeletons lay on the seabed, preserved in the salt-laced water. Weapons of all sorts lay scattered across the sand; coral swords and tridents, spears, daggers and others Xen couldn’t identify. He does his best not to focus on them as the remnants of dull scales catch the light. These people were Mer. Mer that had rebelled against their queen and council millennia ago and were destroyed for it. Zeo draws closer to him as they swim on; trying not to look down.

They’re almost at the cave entrance when an ancient shipwreck looms out of the darkness. Zeothess lets out a small squeal at the sudden appearance and latches onto Xen’s pack. He swims in place for a moment, admiring the wreckage; here long before the lighthouse was built to prevent its sinking. Something near the bow reflects the light; half buried in the sand. Everything in him advises against investigation but Xen feels himself drawn toward the object and finds himself swimming down for a better look; reluctantly followed by the little dragon.

“Xen, what’re you doing?”

He ignores Zeo’s hissing and brushes the sand aside, uncovering a sword of glistening iron. Its hilt was gilded and decorated with shards of aquamarine. A single, sparkling diamond adorned the end of the handle and an inscription could be seen on the blade itself, written in Eldoshi; the Mer language. Xen brings the light closer so he can read it.

“What is it?”

Zeo leans over his shoulder as he begins to translate it.

This sword, this blade of all waters, created by only the finest of workers, was once wielded by our gracious Queen, Andromeda Ochena II and used to dispose of those who dared rise against her.  

Ochena… When Xen was born he’d been given his mother’s last name; as Mer were traditionally matriarchal. His thoughts race as the stories his mother had told him, so long ago return in hazy fragments.

“Xen? Who’s Andromeda Ochena?”

Xen shakes his head and lifts the sword, unburying the sheath with it and marvelling at how it fit in his hand like it was made for him. There were no indications of a date; no clue to when Andromeda ruled but Xen knew one thing with absolute certainty:

“She was my great-grandmother.”

[jubilantwriter]

A Benchful of Memories (Abandoned)

Chapter 1 - Chasing After an Unseen Firefly 

(Next)

Summary:  Hospitals are meant to keep you alive, healthy.  That’s what they told you anyway.  But really, you’re just wasting away, waiting for the day your health finally takes a turn for the worst, because really, isn’t that what everyone else is waiting for?

Your life is as fake as a paper flower, preserved for beauty, but can never capture the real thing.  A fake imitation of life.

“Heya, bud.”

But then again, don’t fake flowers deserve a bit of sunshine in their life too?

Life, as you felt it, was mediocre, boring, and repetitive.  It probably didn’t help that you spent most of your life stuck in a hospital, the sterile walls a sad excuse for a home, and its nurses and doctors ever bustling around, reminding you that this was a place where attention was dedicated to you, a mere patient in an ocean of many, and that death was always a possible threat for the people residing within its walls.

When the monsters came up from the underground, you didn’t bat an eye at the news.  Why should you?  Nothing the news did would bother you anyway.  However, watching the various filmed negotiations on the TV certainly changed up your viewing program.  In your own way, you rooted for them in your hospital bed, hoping that the monsters would be accepted wholeheartedly by your fellow humans.

Of course, that didn’t happen.  After all, in a country filled with racism and other isms and phobias, people hating on monsters was unsurprising.  They didn’t deserve it, but it was bound to happen anyway.  It just added to the general bad taste humanity left in your mouth.  There were times that you were ashamed to be called human, and this was one of them.  Luckily, the monsters took it all in stride, more or less, and they worked even harder on the peace negotiations.  Smaller groups of people began to accept them, and soon the smaller groups became large in size.  Now, it was only a matter of time before the monsters could fully win their rights, or so you hoped.

With the rate of progress that was being made, monsters began finding jobs and some hospitals gradually began integrating monster-practices in order to accommodate for the newer patients, doctors, and nurses.  Your hospital was one of them, though, you weren’t really surprised either.  The hospital you resided in was located in a fairly distant community, the community too big to be a town, but too small to be considered a city.  There wasn’t a lot of patients as a result, and the hospital was all too happy to expand its practices in hopes of gaining more income.  Humans could be unsurprisingly selfish, even if the cause they are working for is supposedly just.  The only bright side to this was knowing that not all humans were working in the hospital for selfish reasons.  Doctors and nurses were supposed to be well-intentioned after all.  Or, so you’ve heard.

Once the monsters became full-time doctors and nurses (whispers through the walls told of tests and examinations of degrees were done before they were even let in), you were handed a thin packet about something something and another thing.  You didn’t read it and just signed it, assuming that it was some form consenting you to be treated by a monster nurse.  It didn’t matter much to you, so you signed it without a second thought.  As you had guessed, a monster nurse began coming in to care for you under the watchful eye of your stationed nurse, and the kindly creature went through the motions slowly, adjusting and taking notes on your health and being before trying out the new medical procedure: soul examination.  

It was the first time you’ve seen your soul, and the soft cyan glow entranced you.  The monster smiled sweetly as she talked you through the exam.  Nothing really registered as she chattered endlessly about her work before in the underground and how excited she was to see and work with a real human soul.  She did some odd tests to it, and eventually it returned back into your chest.  The monster turned back to your nurse, and with an approving nod, the two said their goodbyes and left you alone.

Life, after the appearance of monsters, didn’t change as much.  Sure, there were monsters around now, but nothing really changed.  You couldn’t go to school - your body was too weak for that - and the weather was too cold for your frail body.  So you spent the time folding paper and creating shapes.

Origami.  It helped to ease the boredom a bit, and it helped keep your hands busy.  Sometimes, when you were in the process of making a crane or a lily, your monster nurse would come in to check up on you.  She’d smile and ask, “What are you making?”  

You’d respond, “A lily.”  Or something along those lines.  The shape always changed.

Your nurse would sit down in a nearby chair and watch you fold until the finished product was held gently in your hands.  “It’s pretty,” she’d say, before getting up to take her notes and double check your medicine.  You’d wait until she was close enough to gently plop the paper onto her clipboard.

“For you.”  You’d say, receiving a smile in return.

“Thank you.”  She’d say, before patting your head and leaving your room to attend to other patients.

Months passed like this, until the warmer days of spring arrived.  When the days grew brighter and more welcoming, you could barely be confined to your room.  You would stand up, pace about, before looking out your window with excitement and eagerness.  Both your nurses would come in and chuckle at your antics, your human one patting your arm gently and getting you to sit on the bed for your daily check up.  

“When can I go outside?”  Your human nurse smiled and wrote down some notes as your monster one examined your soul.  

“When the temperature goes up just a bit more.

“Okay.  I can wait.”  She patted your shoulder once more, her eyes filled with affection as she took in your image.

“I know you will.  You were always so patient.”  Your soul returns to your chest, and your monster nurse hums happily at her results.

“All done!  Your soul is just as strong as before!”  She grins a toothy smile, the sharp fangs that make up her smile looking not the least bit threatening.  You wondered if she could open a can of tuna with her teeth.  She almost seems to be waiting for something before you remember, leaning over to the small table besides her bed and picking up two roses for your nurses, placing one on each clipboard.

“There.  I found a new design I wanted to try out, but I’m not that great at it yet.  It’s supposed to be a rose.”  They both brighten a bit, one more so than the other, and thank you before leaving to attend the other patients.  You turned towards your side table and leaned down to pick up the laptop stashed underneath it.  Pulling it onto your lap, you browse a bit on the interwebs to pass the time.

Knowing that you’ll soon get to feel the fresh air on your face, it fills you with patience.

////

The minute your nurses informed you that the weather was warm enough for you to handle, you quickly got up and started pulling out clothes to put on.  Your nurses laughed behind you and closed the door, giving you some privacy as you picked out long sleeves, a warm sweater, jeans, and a shawl for good measure.  Changing quickly, you pulled out your trusty little backpack and filled it with packs of origami paper, a notebook, pens and pencils, and your phone (headphones included).  You hoisted it onto your shoulders and walked out of your room with a huge smile on your face.

Waving goodbye to the familiar doctors and nurses, you made your way out the doors and walked slowly towards your destination: a secluded, quiet park that was tucked away between a nearby neighborhood and the old, forgotten shopping district.  You made your way to a bench that overlooked the park’s small area of playground equipment, the empty sight filling you with a sense of nostalgia.  With a heavy plop, you sat down on the worn bench and pulled out your cellphone.  You had a new text message from your little sister (bless her heart) asking you how you were.  You smiled at your sister’s care for you and responded back with cheerful news of your escape from the hospital, hitting the send button and picking some music to listen to.  As serene music flowed into your ears, you picked up a sheet of origami paper and folded away.  

As the time passed, the bench was slowly building a line of cranes, each a different color as you lined them up, one by one.  You were too focused on your task of covering the entire bench that you didn’t notice someone wander into the park.  As you finished off a pink little crane, your eyes barely noticed the slippered feet that were standing just at the edge of your field of vision.  You blinked once, twice.  Slippers?  Those are pretty comfortable, but you’d never wear them outside the hospital.  They didn’t cover your feet completely after all, so it didn’t exactly keep your feet warm in the elements.  However, whoever was wearing these slippers out in a park must have had a comfortable walk.  Good on them.

You looked up and realized that the slippers belonged to a skeleton, as he (her?) stood there scratching the back of his (her?) skull.  

“So, uh…”  The skeleton gestured to the bench littered with neatly lined up cranes, their words audible enough to hear over the music.  “Is it alright if I…?”  You look over at your cranes before realization clicked.  The skeleton wanted to sit down, but you were selfishly using the bench for your own desires.  It was a pretty good bench, so you needed to share it with everyone else who wanted to use it, including the skeleton who was still patiently waiting for you to respond as your thought process continued to ramble.

“Oh, OH.”  You quickly pulled your backpack wide open and sweeped the cranes into it, dropping a few of the onto the ground.  The skeleton (he sounded like male enough, so) bent down and picked up the fallen cranes and dropped them into your backpack before sitting down on the vacated spot.  The two of you sat there in silence, him staring out into the park and you staring down at your hands.  You paused the music and carefully wound the headphone cable around your phone before depositing the holy marriage of portable music into your backpack.  Taking out another sheet of paper, you slowly began working on another crane.

Then another.

And another.

Pretty soon, you had made a grand total of five new cranes, all of them sitting on your lap as you leaned over to grab another sheet of paper.  The feeling of being stared at registered in your mind, and you remembered the skeleton that was sharing the bench with you.  You looked over at him and found him staring at you and your cranes.  The pinpricks of light in his eye sockets focused on you, and the present smile on his face curled up at a corner.

“So uh, what are you doing?”  He gestures to your hands and lap, before shoving his hands into his hoodie’s pockets.  Or was it a jacket?

“Origami.”  You lift up a finished crane and poked it.  “These are paper cranes.”

“I can see that.  But, why are you making so many of them?”

“Cause why not?”  You smile at your crane before putting it down on your lap.  You look over to the skeleton and gestured to them.  “Do you wanna try?  I got lots of paper.”

“Nah, too much effort on my part.  Doin’ all that folding would just…” he pauses for a second, then closes one of his eye sockets (how?) and smiles wider, “crane the energy right outta me.”  It takes a while to process, but once you get the poorly made pun, you cover your mouth and try to stop the snort of laughter that bubbles up your throat.  Nevertheless, he relishes your reaction and slumps down onto the bench, closing his eyes and listening to your poorly masked snickering.  Once you calmed down, you put the cranes away and follow his lead, slumping down on the bench and taking in the sunlight.  He opens one eye and glances at you, smile ever present as he speaks up again.  “You shouldn’t sit like that.  ‘s bad for your spine.”  You glance over at him with a raised eyebrow.

“What about you?”

“Me?”  He slumps further down the bench, his body almost slipping off the bench.  “I’m made of magic.  I don’t gotta worry ‘bout that stuff.”

“Lucky you.”  You can’t help but grumble as you slump even more.  Monster magic must be amazing if they don’t have to worry about health problems, unlike you.  Speaking of which -

Your phone makes a loud beeping noise, alerting you to the current time.  Huffing to yourself, you reach down and pick up the phone, turning the alarm off and sitting upright.  The skeleton looks up at you and keeps his posture.

“What’s up?”  

“My alarm.  I gotta go and return to my place.”  You still weren’t comfortable calling the hospital your home, but really, did you have one at this point.  He looks amused by the idea of the alarm and closes his eyes.

“Weird you need an alarm to remind you to go back.  Why do you need it?”  You flash a smile at him, polite and calm before responding.

“Do you always get so personal when you meet a stranger?”  He shrugs as best as he can.

“Nah.  But not everyone has an alarm remindin’ them when they need to go home.”

“I guess.”  You stand up and stretch, picking up your backpack and swinging it over your shoulder.  “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Skeleton.”

“Sans.”

“Hm?”

“It’s Sans.  Sans the Skeleton.”  He reaches out a hand for you to shake, and so you smile and take it politely.

Pbbbbtthhhhhhh.

Silence.

Sans grins up at you, one eye closed as he pulls his hand back to reveal a whoopie cushion.  How-?

“The ol’ whoopie-cushion-in-the-hand trick.  Always hilarious.”  You blink once, twice, before devolving into laughter.  You’re not sure why you’re laughing so hard, but damn does it feel nice to laugh this unrestrained.  You hear Sans chuckling in front of you, and you wipe away a stray tear as you straighten up.

“Ha, yeah, that was pretty funny.  But I uh, gotta go before my nurses get worried-”

“Nurses?”  He looks at you with that ever-present smile, and you can’t help but wonder if it’s just stuck like that.  His eyes sure don’t look like they’re smiling.  You give a nonchalant shrug, not wanting to have this funny monster worry for you.

“It’s nothing big.  Just some check-ups and stuff.”

“Huh.  Alright.  Well,” he winks at you and waves you away, “if you got an appointment to make, don’t let me slow you down.  We don’t want your nurses needling you about why you were late.  ‘Specially if you tell them that a hilarious skeleton was the reason for your hold up.”  You snicker at his pun and shrug.

“They’re usually pretty nice, but I liked the pun anyway.”  He smiles wider and shrugs.

“First thing that came to mind.  Now shoo,” he waves you away again, “I don’t wanna face the wrath of any nurse any time soon.  Hospitals are too clean for me.”  You laugh and start walking away, waving your farewell to him.

“Bye, Sans!”

“It was nice to meetcha, kiddo.”

/////

Returning to the hospital always makes you feel a sense of mild dread, mixed with some helplessness and loneliness, but you quickly sweep the feelings aside, taking a deep breath before entering through the glass doors.  You greet the familiar doctors and nurses once more, before heading back your room.  Upending your back onto your bed, your paper cranes come tumbling out, as well as the paper and other supplies you kept in it.  You pick up the cranes and take them to a table that sits against the wall and place them down.  Later on, you can work on stringing the cranes together as decorations for your room.  For now, you just had to wait for your nurses to come in.

It was about time for your treatment.

[newstechreviews]

In the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the White House was openly fixated on shrinking the footprint of the government Trump was leading. It was one part pander to his rally crowds that he would “drain the swamp” and another part distrust in a man who spent his career atop an empire of his owning. Deep cuts to sectors of the federal workforce, top jobs left unfilled and an open contempt for career bureaucrats were all hallmarks of the first years of Trump’s tenure.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, overwhelming the U.S. health-care system and sending the economy into a spiral. The workhorse agencies that had been running on skeleton crews needed to swing into action fast, and suddenly, the neglected organizations and shuttered offices sprinkled around Washington began to look a lot like a liability. The latest relief package negotiated between Congress and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin includes almost $2 billion in new funds set aside for federal workers’ salaries and expenses — a small slice of the total $2.2 trillion package but a sizable increase for an administration that had been at war with its operational cogs.

The move, buried in a package that primarily focused on keeping small businesses open and airlines in the skies, has won praise from pragmatists who say it is merely a first of many relief packages that are to come. But critics — who say that a bigger government is not the answer, even in a pandemic — say it was a federal jobs trough that came through the backdoor.

“It’s classic: government has a crisis, so they decide they’re going to pad their own budgets,” says David McIntosh, the president of the anti-tax Club for Growth. “I was pretty outraged that the government is supposed to be helping the American people create jobs for them and it’s padding its own payroll.”

The biggest pool of those salaries is a $675 million allocation for the Small Business Administration (SBA), now in charge of running a $349 billion program helping small businesses with loans that can be forgiven if employers preserve current payroll levels. The added workload stood to overwhelm the relatively small government body if they weren’t able to add staff to administer the program. Before the pandemic hit, total spending at the Small Business Administration was just a little more than $1 billion. “This is what we need to give them,” says Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio, who took the lead in writing the small-business lending plan. On Tuesday, Trump said he was asking for another $250 billion for the loan program.

Keep up to date on the growing threat to global health by signing up for our daily coronavirus newsletter.

The hiring spree isn’t limited to the SBA. Other agencies deemed critical to the federal government’s response to the pandemic are also being given money in the stimulus to build up their ranks or cover overtime costs. The Social Security Administration is slated to get $300 million to bring on new staff to process a backlog of new disability and retirement applications, the Federal Communications Commission was on deck for $200 million and the Department of Treasury was on track to get $104 million more in salaries. The Bureau of Prisons, Congress and the Capitol Police Department also are among the two dozen organizations receiving money to cover salaries.

To be sure, the $2 billion is a relatively small amount in the overall scheme of federal spending. The federal budget is $4.8 trillion, but about two-thirds of that goes to automatic spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security. Civilian federal workers earned $136.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2016. That means the new money is less than a 2% increase on what the government pays workers.

But for Trump, and the anti-government ideologues who support him, it’s a big shift. Early in his term, Trump went about dismantling the permanent federal bureaucracy that carries from one administration to the other. Instead of relying on the backbone of career federal workers, the Trump administration sought to run things through political loyalists. Even this week, Trump sought to discredit or remove watchdogs who appear critical of his work. And there remain 149 Senate-confirmed positions in Trump’s administration for whom there is no nominee, according to a tracking project from the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post.

Raw numbers suggest Trump hasn’t so much gutted the federal workforce as shifted it around. But backwater offices and programs have felt the cuts, and droves of experienced hands have retired rather than navigate the churn of Trump’s making. The result has been seen in surveys of workers’ sliding morale.

Many of the new jobs that the stimulus creates will be done by contractors and subcontractors, not permanent hires who would have union-protected rights. But critics of the move to grow the government payroll say the toehold will be strong and there is no shortage of items on many departments’ to-do lists.

“Once there is a new contractor or subcontractor in an area, they will likely find additional things for them to do once this immediate crisis goes away,” says Paul Winfree, a former Trump White House budget official who sees a mixed bag in the outcome. “It’s possible that we will see an eventual reduction, but it won’t match the pre-crisis levels.”

When asked for comment on its apparent reversal of position, the White House referred TIME to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond.

The efficiency of a small government has always been a dream in some corners of the Republican Party. As the anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist famously put it in a 2001, ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’

But critics also worry that the government simply cannot afford to bring more people on. The United States is closing in on $24 trillion in debt and there’s talk in Congress of adding another trillion dollars in a follow-up round of coronavirus spending. It is a massive pile of IOUs that could hamper the plans of future administrations — and generations — long after the crisis point of the pandemic passes.

“We’ve been out-of-touch and out-of-control and this just serves to reinforce the fact that once we get past it — and we will get past it — what are we going to do to put our finances in order?” says David Walker, a former Comptroller General of the United States and one of the country’s leading critics of government red ink. Previous generations, he notes, spent wildly during crises or times of war, but deficit spending is now so commonplace no one bats an eye at routine spending that saddles the next generation with the bill. “We have a cultural problem that we’ve got to come to grips with.”

First, though, the country has to get through the immediate crisis.

— With reporting by Tessa Berenson/Washington

Please send tips, leads, and stories from the frontlines to virus@time.com.

[itsfinancethings]

In the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the White House was openly fixated on shrinking the footprint of the government Trump was leading. It was one part pander to his rally crowds that he would “drain the swamp” and another part distrust in a man who spent his career atop an empire of his owning. Deep cuts to sectors of the federal workforce, top jobs left unfilled and an open contempt for career bureaucrats were all hallmarks of the first years of Trump’s tenure.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, overwhelming the U.S. health-care system and sending the economy into a spiral. The workhorse agencies that had been running on skeleton crews needed to swing into action fast, and suddenly, the neglected organizations and shuttered offices sprinkled around Washington began to look a lot like a liability. The latest relief package negotiated between Congress and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin includes almost $2 billion in new funds set aside for federal workers’ salaries and expenses — a small slice of the total $2.2 trillion package but a sizable increase for an administration that had been at war with its operational cogs.

The move, buried in a package that primarily focused on keeping small businesses open and airlines in the skies, has won praise from pragmatists who say it is merely a first of many relief packages that are to come. But critics — who say that a bigger government is not the answer, even in a pandemic — say it was a federal jobs trough that came through the backdoor.

“It’s classic: government has a crisis, so they decide they’re going to pad their own budgets,” says David McIntosh, the president of the anti-tax Club for Growth. “I was pretty outraged that the government is supposed to be helping the American people create jobs for them and it’s padding its own payroll.”

The biggest pool of those salaries is a $675 million allocation for the Small Business Administration (SBA), now in charge of running a $349 billion program helping small businesses with loans that can be forgiven if employers preserve current payroll levels. The added workload stood to overwhelm the relatively small government body if they weren’t able to add staff to administer the program. Before the pandemic hit, total spending at the Small Business Administration was just a little more than $1 billion. “This is what we need to give them,” says Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio, who took the lead in writing the small-business lending plan. On Tuesday, Trump said he was asking for another $250 billion for the loan program.

Keep up to date on the growing threat to global health by signing up for our daily coronavirus newsletter.

The hiring spree isn’t limited to the SBA. Other agencies deemed critical to the federal government’s response to the pandemic are also being given money in the stimulus to build up their ranks or cover overtime costs. The Social Security Administration is slated to get $300 million to bring on new staff to process a backlog of new disability and retirement applications, the Federal Communications Commission was on deck for $200 million and the Department of Treasury was on track to get $104 million more in salaries. The Bureau of Prisons, Congress and the Capitol Police Department also are among the two dozen organizations receiving money to cover salaries.

To be sure, the $2 billion is a relatively small amount in the overall scheme of federal spending. The federal budget is $4.8 trillion, but about two-thirds of that goes to automatic spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security. Civilian federal workers earned $136.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2016. That means the new money is less than a 2% increase on what the government pays workers.

But for Trump, and the anti-government ideologues who support him, it’s a big shift. Early in his term, Trump went about dismantling the permanent federal bureaucracy that carries from one administration to the other. Instead of relying on the backbone of career federal workers, the Trump administration sought to run things through political loyalists. Even this week, Trump sought to discredit or remove watchdogs who appear critical of his work. And there remain 149 Senate-confirmed positions in Trump’s administration for whom there is no nominee, according to a tracking project from the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post.

Raw numbers suggest Trump hasn’t so much gutted the federal workforce as shifted it around. But backwater offices and programs have felt the cuts, and droves of experienced hands have retired rather than navigate the churn of Trump’s making. The result has been seen in surveys of workers’ sliding morale.

Many of the new jobs that the stimulus creates will be done by contractors and subcontractors, not permanent hires who would have union-protected rights. But critics of the move to grow the government payroll say the toehold will be strong and there is no shortage of items on many departments’ to-do lists.

“Once there is a new contractor or subcontractor in an area, they will likely find additional things for them to do once this immediate crisis goes away,” says Paul Winfree, a former Trump White House budget official who sees a mixed bag in the outcome. “It’s possible that we will see an eventual reduction, but it won’t match the pre-crisis levels.”

When asked for comment on its apparent reversal of position, the White House referred TIME to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond.

The efficiency of a small government has always been a dream in some corners of the Republican Party. As the anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist famously put it in a 2001, ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’

But critics also worry that the government simply cannot afford to bring more people on. The United States is closing in on $24 trillion in debt and there’s talk in Congress of adding another trillion dollars in a follow-up round of coronavirus spending. It is a massive pile of IOUs that could hamper the plans of future administrations — and generations — long after the crisis point of the pandemic passes.

“We’ve been out-of-touch and out-of-control and this just serves to reinforce the fact that once we get past it — and we will get past it — what are we going to do to put our finances in order?” says David Walker, a former Comptroller General of the United States and one of the country’s leading critics of government red ink. Previous generations, he notes, spent wildly during crises or times of war, but deficit spending is now so commonplace no one bats an eye at routine spending that saddles the next generation with the bill. “We have a cultural problem that we’ve got to come to grips with.”

First, though, the country has to get through the immediate crisis.

— With reporting by Tessa Berenson/Washington

Please send tips, leads, and stories from the frontlines to virus@time.com.

[amplesalty]

Day 9 - House of Dracula (1945)

Our house is a very, very, very fine house...

Well, we’re nearly getting towards the end of our journey through the original line of Frankenstein movies. This is the penultimate one, with the last being Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Who’s on First aside, they’re not an act I’m overly familiar with given that they were famous some 40 years before I was born, but even I know they’re a comedy duo so that’s going to be more of a parody/comedy romp. So I guess this is the last of the most straight laced Frankenstein movies.

But before we get to that, I think it’s time for our yearly Dark Universe life check. Apparently they’ve still disowned The Mummy and now seem to have given up on the whole shared universe idea entirely, reverting to just stand alone films. But they’re actually making some progress as they wrapped filming on a reboot of The Invisible Man last month and have it’s release scheduled for the back end of February 2020. Lead Oliver Jackson-Cohen has some pedigree in the Universal franchise, playing Jonathan Harker in the 2013 Dracula TV series. He reminds me a little of Jake Gyllenhaal but I suppose that’s for nought considering he’s going to be wrapped in bandages half the time. Let’s hope he has booming voice to match Claude’s from the original.

As for this one, if this is the end, it’s more of a whimper than a bang. I’m honestly losing track of all the times that someone wants to be cured in these movies. It’s one thing when Larry Talbot is coming back movie after movie, wanting to be rid of the werewolf curse. But even Dracula’s getting in on the act here, coming to Dr Franz Edelmann in search of a cure to his vampirism.

Whilst I am getting sick and tired of Talbot and his constant misery, at least he’s on the up and up about what he wants. He even takes to throwing himself off a cliff here, ending swept up in a cave below the Doc’s castle where they just so happen to find the preserved body of the Frankenstein monster, still clutching the skeleton of Dr Niemann in his arms.

Dracula though, I don’t know what his game is here. The Doc does these blood transfusions on Drac but I don’t know if that’s ultimately accomplishing anything. Drac seems more concerned spending his time trying to woo one of the Doc’s nurses. The more normal of the two nurses that is. One of them is a hunchback which I didn’t even notice for like half the film, just feels like a promotional technique to add another face to the monster mash roll call.

When the Doc finds out what Drac is up to, he makes something up about needing to do another transfusion but this time Drac reverses the transfusion and infects the Doc with vampirism. And when the Doc finds out about that, he just goes to Drac’s coffin and opens it in the sunlight. Man, Drac really got punked out there. There’s something really anti-climatic about Vampire deaths sometimes. It’s almost cheating to kill them when they’re in their coffin. They’re completing defenceless, most unsporting.

Again though, I don’t know what Dracula was trying to accomplish. Was he aware that the Doc knew what was going on and this was like a panicked way of doing something? Maybe sharing his essence somehow gives him some degree of power over the Doc’s body?

I mean, the Doc does become this deranged version of himself when the vampirism takes hold but I don’t know if that’s some element of Dracula coming to the forefront or just the vampirism in general that does that. There’s a very Jekyll and Hyde feel once this happens, the Doc becoming wild eyed and crazy, suddenly displaying violent outbursts and becoming very interested in reviving the monster in search of immortality. Is every doctor in this universe just destined to become enamoured with this monster? It’s like he’s the rebellious bad boy that all the girls think they can change. Sure, every time he’s resurrected he brings nothing but violence and destruction but this time I think I can fix him.

One of the other good parts of the movie is Skelton Knaggs as Steinmuhi, a local whose brother works for the Doc but ends up being murdered when the Doc’s vampiric rage takes over. Just something about his look, accent and the delivery of his lines is off in this creepy way. When he finds evidence linking the Doc to the killing, the police wont listen so he forms a posse to go get vengeance. I feel like people just didn’t have anything better to do in those days so would just form torch wielding mobs at the drop of a hat. You know, I bet those Salem Witch Trials wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if people had Instagram to distract them.

Knaggs was also in a movie with KARLOFF called Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome which I’m sure I’ve got laying around here somewhere on DVD. I think I found it cheap somewhere when this whole monster thing was kicking off and I was looking for backup movies. That’s why I’ve DVD’s like The Bat, The Terror and The Stuff. All the ‘The’ movies.

Speaking of the police, the actual best part of this movie is that Lionel Atwill is back again as a police inspector. Sadly, he was very ill at the time of filming and would pass away only months after the film’s release. At least he got another Universal outing here though, even if it’s not quite the heady days of the fake arm policeman in Son of Frankenstein.

These movies tease this big monster jamboree but it just never turns out that way. The most you get is a very unsatisfying tussle for like 60 seconds at the end, some chemicals get knocked over, there’s a bit of smoke and that’s it. Overall, it��s a disappointment to come to this after the bright start to the franchise in Frankenstein and Bride. I blame Larry Talbot, miserable sod. I just don’t get the obsession with rehashing this same story of the monsters looking for a curse, especially Larry. It’s been going on for three movies now! If he pops up looking for a doctor in that Abbot and Costello movie next year then I’m going to scream.

[satans-helper]

Hydra and Siren :)

hydra: do you collect/have a lot of anything?I don’t really collect anything but I have a lot of books (who doesn’t), especially books of poetry...I sort of collect “creatures.” I have a preserved bat and bird, I have almost an entire deer skeleton. Like if there is a creature that can be preserved or bones to be cleaned I will take them. Got that from my dad lol. I will also collect just about anything that I think is cool that I organically find. I have a lot of pictures/drawings/notes I’ve found from other people that I’ve saved. Little random trinkets, too. Just shit that you find walking around. 

siren: favourite genre of music?Too hard to choose, I’m not very genre specific and it doesn’t really matter to me. Also how many genres do I even need to keep track of? It just doesn’t matter. I listen to lots of different stuff. 

Thank you, darling ~~

[itsfinancethings]

April 08, 2020 at 11:24PM

In the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the White House was openly fixated on shrinking the footprint of the government Trump was leading. It was one part pander to his rally crowds that he would “drain the swamp” and another part distrust in a man who spent his career atop an empire of his owning. Deep cuts to sectors of the federal workforce, top jobs left unfilled and an open contempt for career bureaucrats were all hallmarks of the first years of Trump’s tenure.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, overwhelming the U.S. health-care system and sending the economy into a spiral. The workhorse agencies that had been running on skeleton crews needed to swing into action fast, and suddenly, the neglected organizations and shuttered offices sprinkled around Washington began to look a lot like a liability. The latest relief package negotiated between Congress and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin includes almost $2 billion in new funds set aside for federal workers’ salaries and expenses — a small slice of the total $2.2 trillion package but a sizable increase for an administration that had been at war with its operational cogs.

The move, buried in a package that primarily focused on keeping small businesses open and airlines in the skies, has won praise from pragmatists who say it is merely a first of many relief packages that are to come. But critics — who say that a bigger government is not the answer, even in a pandemic — say it was a federal jobs trough that came through the backdoor.

“It’s classic: government has a crisis, so they decide they’re going to pad their own budgets,” says David McIntosh, the president of the anti-tax Club for Growth. “I was pretty outraged that the government is supposed to be helping the American people create jobs for them and it’s padding its own payroll.”

The biggest pool of those salaries is a $675 million allocation for the Small Business Administration (SBA), now in charge of running a $349 billion program helping small businesses with loans that can be forgiven if employers preserve current payroll levels. The added workload stood to overwhelm the relatively small government body if they weren’t able to add staff to administer the program. Before the pandemic hit, total spending at the Small Business Administration was just a little more than $1 billion. “This is what we need to give them,” says Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio, who took the lead in writing the small-business lending plan. On Tuesday, Trump said he was asking for another $250 billion for the loan program.

Keep up to date on the growing threat to global health by signing up for our daily coronavirus newsletter.

The hiring spree isn’t limited to the SBA. Other agencies deemed critical to the federal government’s response to the pandemic are also being given money in the stimulus to build up their ranks or cover overtime costs. The Social Security Administration is slated to get $300 million to bring on new staff to process a backlog of new disability and retirement applications, the Federal Communications Commission was on deck for $200 million and the Department of Treasury was on track to get $104 million more in salaries. The Bureau of Prisons, Congress and the Capitol Police Department also are among the two dozen organizations receiving money to cover salaries.

To be sure, the $2 billion is a relatively small amount in the overall scheme of federal spending. The federal budget is $4.8 trillion, but about two-thirds of that goes to automatic spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security. Civilian federal workers earned $136.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2016. That means the new money is less than a 2% increase on what the government pays workers.

But for Trump, and the anti-government ideologues who support him, it’s a big shift. Early in his term, Trump went about dismantling the permanent federal bureaucracy that carries from one administration to the other. Instead of relying on the backbone of career federal workers, the Trump administration sought to run things through political loyalists. Even this week, Trump sought to discredit or remove watchdogs who appear critical of his work. And there remain 149 Senate-confirmed positions in Trump’s administration for whom there is no nominee, according to a tracking project from the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post.

Raw numbers suggest Trump hasn’t so much gutted the federal workforce as shifted it around. But backwater offices and programs have felt the cuts, and droves of experienced hands have retired rather than navigate the churn of Trump’s making. The result has been seen in surveys of workers’ sliding morale.

Many of the new jobs that the stimulus creates will be done by contractors and subcontractors, not permanent hires who would have union-protected rights. But critics of the move to grow the government payroll say the toehold will be strong and there is no shortage of items on many departments’ to-do lists.

“Once there is a new contractor or subcontractor in an area, they will likely find additional things for them to do once this immediate crisis goes away,” says Paul Winfree, a former Trump White House budget official who sees a mixed bag in the outcome. “It’s possible that we will see an eventual reduction, but it won’t match the pre-crisis levels.”

When asked for comment on its apparent reversal of position, the White House referred TIME to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond.

The efficiency of a small government has always been a dream in some corners of the Republican Party. As the anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist famously put it in a 2001, ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’

But critics also worry that the government simply cannot afford to bring more people on. The United States is closing in on $24 trillion in debt and there’s talk in Congress of adding another trillion dollars in a follow-up round of coronavirus spending. It is a massive pile of IOUs that could hamper the plans of future administrations — and generations — long after the crisis point of the pandemic passes.

“We’ve been out-of-touch and out-of-control and this just serves to reinforce the fact that once we get past it — and we will get past it — what are we going to do to put our finances in order?” says David Walker, a former Comptroller General of the United States and one of the country’s leading critics of government red ink. Previous generations, he notes, spent wildly during crises or times of war, but deficit spending is now so commonplace no one bats an eye at routine spending that saddles the next generation with the bill. “We have a cultural problem that we’ve got to come to grips with.”

First, though, the country has to get through the immediate crisis.

— With reporting by Tessa Berenson/Washington

Please send tips, leads, and stories from the frontlines to virus@time.com.