#a lot of stuff felt like a love letter of the sorts with unique spins and goooooooosh

[shantechni]

"Okay guys, I just went to see Mutant Mayhem, and I-"

sees the Shredder in the post credits scene

[hawkland]

Destiel fic recs (round #4) + commentary

Time for another (mostly) Destiel fic rec round-up post before my bookmarks get out of control! This one’s a mix of longer and some shorter fics (or series thereof), no particular theme except I guess a lot of angst, hurting Cas, and all the other things that tickle my Id. Several Season 9 human!Cas divergence fics, plus some later season angst-fests and rewrites.

In the Shadow of your Wings by Enochian Things (Salr323) (52k) The first of two fics by this author which I absolutely fell in love with! Canon-divergence from the end of Season 11. Cas finds himself blasted to Naples, Italy by the banishing sigil in the bunker and he stumbles — almost literally — into a sexy, delightful Italian Man of Letters, Luca. When he makes his way back to the bunker and finds Dean still alive, he tries to confess his feelings but Dean panics and shuts him down. Cas goes back in Italy soon thereafter and ends up beginning a relationship with Luca, much to Dean’s chagrin. Meanwhile Sam is still missing and it turns out there may be some dangerous individuals who are out for Cas more so than even the Winchesters. 

I loved everything about this fic so much - Luca is an amazing OC, the Naples and London locations are wonderfully evoked and took me straight back to places I’d been. The angst, the pacing, the plotting and the eventual Dean/Cas getting together are all amazing and this is definitely on my re-read in the future list.

The rest of my recs below the cut!

My heart is beating from me by Enochian Things (Salr323) (55k) The other fic by this author that I literally inhaled in one day! Season 9 Human!Cas canon divergence. It’s been months since Sam and Dean have heard from Cas, and when they do, it’s in the form of a wedding invitation. Cas is getting married to Daphne - the woman who “rescued” him and named him Emmanuel when he’d lost all his memories post-Leviathans. It seems Cas went back to her while on his own and they’ve rekindled their relationship...whatever it is. Dean just knows something isn’t right about her, so he sets out to investigate and try to figure out WTF Cas is doing before it’s too late. 

This story is so, so good! The case Dean gets Cas to come along on is unique and provides a neat investigation subplot, but what’s so especially wonderful is the explanation the author gives of who Daphne really is — and why she’d been so cool about just having a strange man with no memories move in to be her “husband” (and then want to marry him for real a couple years later, after he’d vanished from her life!) In fact it’s so brilliant I’m basically accepting it as my Daphne headcanon from now on and I don’t want to spoil it. The fic is also great in exploring Cas still struggling with understanding human emotions, customs and etiquette, Sam is A Very Good Friend, and Dean is, well, Dean. (I’m just sad this author hasn’t written more SPN fics because what they have is just brilliant.)

The wilderness. by orange_crushed (8k) Wonderful, shorter Season 9 canon divergence fic by an author who consistently makes me happy. Human!Cas leaves the bunker with a few things to get off the ground from Dean and directions to connect with Garth...but he ditches that plan to try to find his way on his own. It’s wonderfully detailed about the basic struggles of survival, finding work, making ends meet and trying to make some new friends...and why it’s important for him to prove he can make it on his own before he’s willing to welcome Dean (back) into his life.

I Through My Window See by deHavilland (26k) This is an interesting one, written well before we had canon human!Cas in Season 9. Canon-divergence in which Cas remains human after they avert the apocalypse in Season 5. Sam and Dean set him up in an apartment in Sioux Falls and then...just kind of abandon him there. He spends most of a year just barely existing before a visit from Sam finally stirs him out of his inertia and depression, to eventually get a job and also start hunting on his own. This is an interesting read, if just to see an author exploring the idea of human!Cas abandoned by Dean a few years before it actually...ended up becoming canon! I love how Cas is written in this (it’s a story much like the next one on my list that I thought does an amazing, realistic job of capturing what depression feels like), but I do have some issues with Dean. It’s never fully resolved or explained why Dean was being such an ass so I honestly wasn’t totally sold on the ending - I wanted some more out of Dean, some more explanation or apology or something. It’s a story that would have been great to have a sequel from Dean’s POV but after all this time, that will just have to exist in my brain, I suppose! Still worth a read because it’s excellently written, Cas becomes totally bad ass again by the end and it’s always fun to read early SPN fic speculating on future developments.

I Shall Not Want by domesticadventures (20k) I found myself inhaling a bunch of wonderful short ficlets by this author the other day, but this is the one I had to stop at to rec. It’s another Season 9 divergence fic, of a sort - Cas is newly human, for the sake of the story there’s no Abbadon to worry about, Sam is healed...and Sam wants to move out and get on with his own life. Cas and Dean are both struggling with adapting to their new lives and it’s a hauntingly rich and stark portrayal of depression, inertia, and the slow healing process of accepting and adapting to change. I also liked that this story gives us a Dean who is a little more aware of his feelings for Cas and they both struggle to reach out to each other - for once it’s not sexuality causing a crisis of identity but all the other shit they are coping with.

Don't Sing Love Songs by ireallydidthistomyself (17k). I’m not normally a big fan of baby/toddler!Jack fics - I like the angst that he was forced to grow up too quickly, and in general I’m not big on kid!fic in fandom. This author’s work is a big exception to that. They’ve written several stories along a similar theme: Cas raising Jack on his own/in secret for years, Dean only finding them or coming back into their lives later on. But this is the version of that idea that really packed the most punch for me and was incredibly emotionally satisfying. Dean finds Cas after 6 years, where he’s kept Jack mostly isolated and safe from the world. But with Dean allowed back into his life, Cas may be inviting grave danger upon Jack as well. This one ripped my heart out but managed to make it all better by the end.

Better Ways to Kill Our Time by always_a_birthday_girl (8k) I don’t know why I torture myself reading Dean-in-the-Ma’lak-box AUs, but I do. I think because it’s pretty much my biggest nightmare/horror and for some reason it’s cathartic while terrifying? Anyway here’s one where Dean goes through with his plan, Cas crashes and burns for most of a year, until Dean finally starts doing what he promised he wouldn’t: praying to him. Cas figures out a way to communicate back and over the distance, they manage to have certain conversations they should have years before. It’s painful but lovely and there is a happy ending, so it’s well worth the read!

Time Flows Like Water and We're Drowning by triedunture (7.9k) A little break from the later-seasons stuff I (mostly?) read, featuring a seriously hot (but angsty) Cas/Endverse!Cas/Dean threesome. When Zacariah’s plan to show Dean the future doesn’t change his mind about taking on his “responsibility”, he sends Endverse!Cas back in time to try to convince Cas instead, showing him what he’s to become. I don’t think Zac expected it to turn into a threesome, but it’s hot and beautiful and sad and wonderful all at once. 

hachikireru by vaudelin  (23k) At one point I went on a wallow-fest of reading a bunch of sad 14x20-15x03 divorce-arc fics. Just to hurt myself more, I guess. I know this fic’s been recced around a lot (at least on fail_fandomanon) and I can see why! After leaving the bunker, Cas ends up in Sioux Falls to visit Claire. She’s busy tracking down leads to find Kaia’s killer and he decides to go along with her on one such hunt. But what they find is an unexpected supernatural threat targeting those with broken hearts. Well. I think you know where that might be leading. This is a wonderful casefic with lots of character moments between Cas & Claire and then Cas & Dean, working through their pain and angst and just...it’s a very satisfying read.

Moriah Codas: A Trilogy by Toomanyfandoms99 (11k total) A series of 3 shorter fics spinning off the events of 14x20, developing a slightly divergent universe the author’s written where Cas does have his wings back and has helped resurrect a few of the angels (Balthazar, Gabriel, and Samandriel in particular). This series is absolutely heartbreaking — Cas is completely broken by Jack’s loss, has “fallen out of love” with Dean after he was ready to kill Jack, and sees no way back to what he’d had and felt before. He’s determined to just let the Empty take him...but not until he and his assembled squad of “avenging angels” clean up the mess Chuck has created, smiting zombies and taking out super-powered monsters across North America. 

Cas’s motorcycle gang/angel squad is so fucking awesome (I want a happy fic where they do this!) and this is BAMF!Cas at his finest. I just have to include a quote:

He set down the empty glass, and Gabriel said, “well, dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to kick some zombie ass. Since they have chosen to amass in Carthage, we are here to take out as many as we can without causing this town to flip the fuck out. Are we in agreement?”

“I expect,” Balthazar grinned, “a full-on bar brawl. Do not disappoint me.”

“Cassie, Driel,” Gabriel addressed the duo, “how are we with weapons?”

“I have enough machetes in a storage facility uptown to film a Jackie Chan movie,” Castiel said.

But it’s also utterly and completely heartbreaking, so don’t read this one if you need a happy ending. If you do read, check out the author’s other later-season coda fics and fic series as they are all really great.

to mend what is not broken by gothyringwald (2.6k) This last short one I’ve mentioned before, but I just have to rec it again! It was my gift for the 2021 Hurt Comfort Gift Exchange and it’s everything I wanted, and more. Sweet and caring Dean, wounded but still prideful Cas, and some lovely wing!kink/wing!care that pushes all of my button just right.

Anyway, that’s it for now as I think this is long enough. If you enjoy my recs, could you let me know? I try to not just list titles but give some commentary...as it helps me re-find stories I enjoyed the most, too!

[priincesspacificaarchive]

40) things you said when you met my parents crime au

[i’m too lazy to tag the meme anymore. i literally wanted to write some dipifica while i was one so i figured i’d get rid of these.]

This was stupid. Stupid and dangerous.

But also kind of necessary. And sad.

And maybe exciting? On a weird level. And nerve-wracking, of course.

Lioness’s gut trembles and tumbles with all the emotions spinning inside of her. Her husband reaches over the gear shift and takes her left hand, pulling it to his mouth for a brief kiss, eyes still on the road ahead. Mason always knew what she was thinking. He could mostly control it by now, but having been together so long he didn’t feel the need to when it was just the two of them. Unless she makes it blatantly obvious that he’s invading her privacy. There was always a little nudge, like he was knocking on the door to her head.

“They’re going to love you.”

“You haven’t spoken to them since you were nineteen, corazon.”

He looks over her and grins, “I know, and I know they aren’t going to like a lot of other things that we have to tell them. But they’ll be happy I’m there. And they’ll love you.”

“By penalty of death, right?” she deadpans.

He rolls his eyes and looks back to the road. “Of course not, that’s only the lackeys.”

Her hand tightens around his. “It’s nice, seeing you like this. Almost like-”

“Something about crossing the border, I guess. I feel like a kid again.”

She looks over and grins at him, squeezes his hand again. “Good.“

➢

He parks the sleek black car in front of the house, and the moderate home immediately makes her feel completely overdressed. He looks to her, eyes sweet. “You look perfect, North Star. You always do.”

Her smile is stiff now, but she nods and squeezes his hand in hers again. He pulls away from her, opens his door and steps around the front of the car to let her out. “You did tell them we were coming, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Did you tell them why?”

“No.” The firm voice. He’s still getting over it himself. Of course he is. Her hand reaches out to his and holds it, he grips back tight.

They start up the front walk, eyes set on the door. Two people burst from inside, greying hair and fogging glasses in the heat. The woman is short, and what Lioness imagines Mabel would’ve grown up to look like. The man at her side is a beaming smile, something she’s seen from both twins, but he’s definitely more rugged. Like Stan.

“Mason!” The woman cries, tears already streaming down her unmade-up face as she rushes down the steps to him. Mason lets go of her hand as his mother comes faster towards him, bolting right into his chest and clinging to him. His father comes down much slower, the way he clings to the railing reminding Pacifica of how old they must be. He stops right behind his wife, hands on her shoulders as if to pry her from their son, but gently. Mrs. Pines steps back, wiping at her eyes, as Mr. Pines wraps his son in a bear hug of his own. Mason is content in these, clinging just enough for her to know this is as anticipated a moment for him as it was for them.

Mrs. Pines fixes her glasses and finally looks at her.

“Oh, my.” She tugs Mr. Pines’ sleeve. “George, look. Dipper brought a girl home.”

The old nickname does the trick, and Mason pulls away from his father and wraps an arm around her waist. He clears his throat. “Mom, call me Mason. Please.”

His mother has the decency to blush. “Of course, dear. I’m sorry. I just can’t believe my little boy is all grown up now.” She wipes at her eyes again.

Mr. Pines wraps an arm around his wife’s waist and smiles that beaming grin at her. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Pacifica Northwest.” She looks to Mason. “Well, Pines now, isn’t it then? Or maybe I’ll hyphenate.” She looks back to his parents. “It’s nice to meet you.” She reaches a hand out, and Mrs. Pines grabs it and pulls her into a hug.

“Oh it’s so nice to meet you, Pacifica! The kids told us all about you when they first came back.”

Pacifica forces an awkward giggle. “All the good first, I hope.”

George looks down at her. “Not exactly.”

She shrinks under him, pulling from Mrs. Pines to the safety of Mason’s side. Her eyes flick up to him, a dark look on his face. He clears his throat. “Not now, Dad.”

Pacifica looks back to Mrs. Pines and grins again. “No worries, Mrs. Pines. Mason’s tired from the trip.” Her hand laces with his and she squeezes, hard. A warning.

Mrs. Pines shakes her head. “Oh please, dear, call me Maggie.”

Pacifica grins. “I see why the naming theme, then.”

She shrugs. “George actually picked them, I just thought they sounded nice together.” She smiles so big her eyes wrinkle. “Your name is so unique, though. How do you get a name like Pacifica?”

Pacifica’s turn to shrug. “Your great-great grandfather founds a town in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a family name, actually.”

She looks back to Mason, who is smiling down at her like the goddess he’s carved her out to be. Her eyes flick to George, “No hard feelings. I wasn’t a nice kid.” He nods, and Pacifica’s hand on Mason tightens, asking what he’s done. Nothing he whispers in her head, but she doesn’t believe him. Fine. Temporary brain shut down. He’s sleeping with his eyes open. He’ll wake up in a sec.

Wake him now.

A few seconds tick by as they all look at George, Maggie curious as to what’s going on. Then George blinks and he looks around. “Sorry. Must’ve dozed off.”

Pacifica’s grin feels plastic. “No problem, George.”

Maggie waves them all towards the house, insisting they get inside before they’re all eaten alive by mosquitoes.

➢

Mason brings in their bags, only enough stuff for a couple nights. They can’t stay, they won’t. Pacifica sorts through their things, hanging up only what absolutely must be hung, separating out toiletries, and organizing things for a speedy getaway if necessary. When she’s finished, she and Mason head down to the main living area, where Maggie is sitting in a corner chair, knitting. A smaller chair is next to hers, a pile of different yarns between the two.

“So that’s where Mabel picked it up.”

Maggie shrugs, looking up from her work sheepishly. “She wanted to. We used to sit here and work on projects together.”

Pacifica smiles and nods and feels like the doll her parents always wanted to build her into. The thought makes her skin crawl.

George is seated in a Lay-Z-Boy, eyes on the Wheel of Fortune episode playing. “Got this one figured out yet, son?” He asks, pointing to the puzzle on-screen as she and Mason take seats on the couch between the two. Pacifica sits closest to George, in case Mason loses his cool again. He leans over to her over the arm of the Lay-Z-Boy. “Lil Mase here used to solve these puzzles faster than anyone I knew.”

Pacifica looks back at the puzzle, only a few letters out.

“Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln,” Mason says, eyes never straying from the TV. A few minutes later the puzzle is finished. Mason was right.

George taps her shoulder and winks at her. “Told you.”

Maggie puts down her knitting, then nods at George. George shuts off the TV with the remote.

Mason takes a deep breath.

It’s time.

Maggie is still smiling so brightly and George is still basking in the glow of a re-ignition in his son. It feels wrong to tell them now.

Maggie looks right at Mason. “We’re so glad you’re home, Mason. Even if you came back just to say hi we’d be overjoyed.” She looks down at her knitting needles, fiddles with them. Nervous tic. Then looks back up at her son. “And we’re so happy to meet your wife, Pacifica. But you said on the phone that there were some things you needed to tell us?”

Mason nods, clears his throat again. He’d been planning what he’d say for days, and now Pacifica straightens his shirt collar, trying oh-so-subtly to remind him she was here. Mason nods. “Yeah. Mom, Dad. Things aren’t good up in Gravity Falls.”

George shakes his head. “We know, son. We’ve seen some footage about gang activity. Are you and Mabel safe?”

Mason shakes his head. “That’s what I came to tell, you, actually. Mabel’s missing. She has been for a long time. She was involved with something not quite right last I saw her. She and her partner have disappeared. We haven’t been able to find or contact her. We presume she’s dead.”

Maggie gasps, loud and just as motherly as Pacifica expected, but George’s reaction surprises her. He curls into himself, she thinks she hears sobs. She knew this wouldn’t go well, knew there’d be extreme emotions, but this was getting to be too much. Her empathy was spiked so high she felt sick. Mason places a hand on her thigh, warm and reassuring. She reaches a hand out to George and it hovers right over his shoulder. She’s scared to physically touch him while he’s like this. Scared of his reaction or what would happen if she caught more of his emotion than she already had.

“We wanted to tell you in person,” Pacifica says, her throat raw, tears clawing at her eyes. There’s a shine to Mason’s as well, but nothing falls from either of them. “We’ve alerted who we could, but because of what we’re scared she was involved with, we didn’t want to alarm them and have them go after her, or worse, spook her further and have her get even further away. We have who we can looking for her, any trace of her. We’re doing all we can.” And it was true, Mabel was known in town for disappearing and reappearing in grand ways, but since she’d been off the radar for months, Mason got worried. He ordered lackeys to be on the lookout for her, contacted those on her side, pleading as a concerned twin brother. Her disappearance has wrecked him further than he’d let anyone see. Not even she had seen the full extent of how he was handling this one.

She rests a hand over his, squeezing comfortingly.

The parents are consoled briefly, and then excuse themselves to their bedroom for the evening. Mason turns his hand to lace their fingers. “Come on, I wanna show you something.”

➢

He leads them up the stairs, past their guest room, to a pair of doors at the end of the hall. Mason’s nickname in black on a blue door. Mabel’s in rainbow colors and glitter on a pink one, the letters haphazard, while Mason’s are neat, almost blocky.

“Your old rooms?”

“Figured they’d have moved them around by now, but the doors don’t even seem touched.” He runs two fingers over the doorknob on his old door and examines them. No dust. He shakes himself out, then grabs the knob fully and opens the door. “I got to see your room. A lot, even. It’s only fair I let you see mine once.”

Pacifica steps through the doorway, and she feels twelve and haughty and on-top-of-the-world again. It’s like feeling the kid that Mason left behind. The walls are blue, the same blue as the door, a conspiracy board over his desk off to her left, his bed straight across the room. There’s a bookshelf, with mystery books and conspiracy theories and school trophies. Science club. She steps further into the room, hands gently running over anything she can reach. Mason flips off the lights, the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling still have some green to them. He flips them back on, then walks over to her, hands on her hips, pulling her to him. He presses a soft kiss to her forehead. “Thank you. For doing this. For taking this journey with me.”

“I love you,” she responds simply, blue eyes glowing in the moonlight coming through the window. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“Even when I go places you can’t follow?”

“If you mean your head, I can get in there pretty easy. But if you mean a public bathroom…” she trails off with a bright grin, feeling like a teenager with him again.

He laughs, soft but genuine. He presses his forehead to hers, and she shifts, leaning up to kiss his birthmark.

[gaming-grandma]

Skyrim and Breath of the Wild: My Two Favorite Open World Games

While botw doesn’t really qualify as an RPG, it still has many elements similar to one that I feel like this comparison is fair. Even though a large gap of time, graphical style, aesthetics, music, and story splits the two in feel and theme, I still feel like both games plucked the same heartstrings for myself, albeit in different ways. This is a long, long essay type post with no pictures. I wrote this instead of doing a reading assignment, so enjoy.

Both of these games came to me at opportune times in my life. Skyrim came to me right in the middle of my ‘golden-days’ of highschool, where I had the absolute most amount of free time and no responsibilities. I delved into the game and devoured it whole, and when my brother would take it to uni with him I would spend hours into the night until 2, 3 AM pouring over the guidebook and analyzing tactics and build ideas and roleplay elements I could incorporate into it the second I got my hands on it again. I almost convinced my dad to buy me the game so I could play it while my brother was away, but for my own good and those of my grades I failed. I would play Skyrim until sunrise, and then until sunset again, and I would go on to make probably actually hundreds of characters, each with different back stories and approaches and methods of play and skills. They would all feel unique and I would treat each one like an experience and go new places, or even go to places I knew well on purpose to see if I could put new spins on it. The world was so open and ready to manipulate and bend to your will that I, the moldable teenager I was, was utterly bent on feeling every square inch of this game hundreds of times, like a baby given a new toy they have to shove in their mouth for hours. I’m not proud of the amount of time I spent on Skyrim, but I am glad I got to, and I’m proud of some of my accomplishments. I invented this method of infinite Magicka regeneration as long as you were in a circle of a certain spell by making myself a vampire Breton with 100% magicka absorb (which involved using a glitch allowing you to use the same constellation stone twice) and casting a banishment spell on myself with the perk that makes restoration affect vampires. I spent days perfecting this until the final product: I could walk into a dungeon and cast a circle of light on the floor, walk into it, and unleash untamed power and destruction and anything I wanted anywhere until the circle wore off, and I’d cast it again. When my brother walked in on my working on this his jaw kinda dropped.

 Similarly, I would go on to invent all sorts of my own clever elements to the game as I mold it to my will, like one of those shake lights you have to break in a bunch of places to get it to light up. I would play the game dry over and over. Graduation came, and I slowed down. Other things came into my life and I had other games to play, new experiences to mull over. New worlds to bend. I would always go back to Skyrim for a few days, trying to pick it up again and feel the same awe and excitement and pure wonder I did when it first came upon me, but I would eventually realize “I’ve done this exact same thing too many times now” whether it be the character, route, skills, or style, I’d done it already. To this day, it’s the only game I’ll actually pull out and play sometimes when I’m truly lost or have nothing to do or feel depressed or broken. It’ll always remind me of my youth and make me have something to look forward to again. I’ve still already done it all, but that doesn’t really matter sometimes does it? Sometimes it’s just about remembering and being a totally different and older person sitting in front of the screen that gives you the same experience and joy no matter what you’ve been through.

I don’t trust Bethesda with TES6 anymore. I don’t think it’ll work for me, and I don’t think it’ll be a great game. I’m excited for it, as I’m naturally inclined to be and I won’t shut myself up over it, but it won’t be the next Skyrim for me. It won’t make me a wide-eyed 14 year old again, nothing can do that. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, I’m sure I will. But I don’t trust Bethesda’s methods as a company, and I don’t know if they’ll ever achieve what they did in my eyes when I was a kid. I’ll sit and listen to the music sometimes, and it’ll hit me in waves; the world, the awe, the excitement. The memories of coming home from big life events like finals or job interviews or trips and being able to relax and play it again. It almost sounds like an addiction at this point, and my brother would joke that I was, but it didn’t harm my social/professional life in any way, so I don’t think it was a true addiction.

Then I realize they don’t even have the same guy on music for TES6 as they did for morrowind/skyrim again and I remind myself it won’t be the one.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a gullible hope that TES6 will do all those things to me again, though. But when it comes down to it, Skyrim was the biggest and most influential game on my life as a teenager. It was just a great game. I loved it, everything about it. That’s all there is to it. It’s one of those games I wish I could erase my memory of and do all over again.

And you’re wondering why the hell this essay is titled with BOTW, and here’s the connection; the only other game I truly would like to erase my memory for and experience again is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But this is for a totally different reason.

BOTW came into my life at a similarly critical point of my life in young adulthood; I was at the end of my community college career, having only 2 classes for the entire semester. I had a job, but I hated it and was depressed over it. I felt like I was going nowhere fast, and BOTW came out with the switch and I decided to buy into the hype and see what it was like. BOTW is an untamed love letter to everything that made Skyrim amazing to me, and yet it was totally new and unseen and alien. It was huge in scope, the awe and wonder it hit me with was the same as when I first realized how huge the province of Skyrim truly was; this was even bigger. The immersion and aesthetics were beautiful and appealed to me in ways skyrim never did, but I still fell in love with it and played this game up and down and inside out. I just checked and it’s still my #1 most played game on the switch nearly 2 years later at 120 hours. That’s not even 1/10th of how long I played Skyrim, and yet it managed to have that insane appeal to it that drove my young eyes wide in pure thrilling excitement. The minimalist music accompanied by beautiful sounds of nature reminded me of the frozen tundra of the mountain sides watching sunrises in the Throat of the World, or exploring the sun glazed Rift. None of this was actively in my mind as I played it, but I knew that the same heartstrings that Skyrim tugged on were being tangled with by this amazing game. As a Zelda game it blew me out of the water, and if I devoured Skyrim whole, then Breath of the Wild ate ME whole, because I was not in control of this world; I was merely a spectator trying to survive and watch it for as long as I could.

My biggest gripe once I finished the game to pieces that fall was that there was “nothing to do”. “There’s nothing to do!” I whine as I sit on my 120 shrine, 600 korok seed save file that had a full inventory of every best weapon and nearly every side quest completed save file. The DLC would then come out but I never felt compelled to play it or finish it. I’m tempted to today and that’s why I’m writing this. I did everything the game had to offer, or at least I thought, as I would late learn of lots of different activities I never got to finish, but I enjoyed it and I wouldn’t trade that time for any skyrim experience.

BOTW struggles to stand up to Skyrim’s depth, but its scope is ambitious and accomplishes its own voice without relying on anything ever created besides the actual Zelda franchise characters and lore. Skyrim, on the other hand, is an achievement of a long struggle as a gaming studio, the ultimate pinnacle of what Bethesda has learned in creating open world games. BOTW is most certainly an easily accessible game, and is not nearly as dated as the launch graphics of Skyrim, but I still have to give Skyrim the title of my favorite open world game, not purely because of the nostalgia, but because of the depth and variety you could get out of multiple playthroughs. BOTW only has 1 link, and link only has so many skills. You can use them to screw with the environment and do some crazy cool stuff, but nothing will top the pure blank canvas that was a new Skyrim file in my eyes. BOTW doubtlessly takes a hard 2nd place.

[thecheapsteaks]

VIDEO GAMES... 2018

2018 was a thing.  It felt like it lasted 2 or 3 years.  It is honestly a bit difficult to track which media I consumed during the year. I'll start pondering a game that I feel like I played last year only for it to dawn on me that, oh, it happened this year.  It makes keeping track of this stuff a bit tricky, honestly.  Anyway, I am still going to try to do that, to get my thoughts in order and let everyone see what I had in mind. I will go over all of the important things needed to survive:  video games, music, anime, and other things.

VIDEO GAMES

Again, it's a bit tricky to remember what even came the hell out this year game wise. I am not going to rank things, because I suck at ranking things and also comparing a lot of the things I played this year is like comparing apples and termites.  I'm just going to make a good effort to go over some nice highlights of the year.

Bayonetta 1 and 2

Bayonetta is a game series I have been interesting in playing forever, but just haven't gotten around to due to circumstances despite it being released on multiple systems I owned.  I passed it on the PS3, couldn't afford to buy it when it was out on the WiiU, so when it came out on the Switch I had to give it a shot, and it was worth it. Admittedly, I sort of sucked at it (I take a ton of damage playing games, which isn't the best for getting high ranks) but I still enjoyed it and am glad that I played both of them (except for that one part in the first game in the angel territory where you fight those thunder and fire claw dudes who are immune to witch time, they can eat my ass).  The characters are fun, the over the top action and enemies are neat, and Bayonetta is just too damn cool.  I'm definitely interested in the third one and looking forward to seeing where the sequel goes. 

(I had forgotten this game had came out this year, it was in February, goddamn how long was this year)

Kirby Star Allies

I will admit, I am heavily biased towards Kirby to a fault.  If a Kirby game makes a reference to a past Kirby game I will gleefully clap as I notice it like a trained seal, and Kirby Star Allies, serving as a Kirby anniversary title, plays into that nostalgia hard.  Compared to the other modern 3D Kirby games (Return to Dreamland and past) I feel that the single player experience is on the weaker end, admittedly. The main campaign, while satisfying, blazes by quick, and the game does re-use boss styles a lot, which is a shame since the past few Kirby games had some very satisfying bosses.  Fortunately the extra content, including the post game modes and extra DLC support, was a marvelous way to keep the game running way after its release.  The nods and references to past games worked wonderfully for me, and it was admittedly great to see long dormant characters such as the animal buddies, Gooey, and Adeline/Ribbon return as playable characters.  The game's single player campaigns, both the initial story mode and the DLC conclusion “Heroes in Another Dimension” have very satisfying conclusions, and the challenge offered by the obligatory Arena mode is wild.  Really, I just love Kirby, and this game is a nice love letter to Kirby.  I have no idea where the game will even go after the plot line from this, but I am ready for the ride.

Octo-Expansion

Being able to play as an Octoling was definitely a long anticipated update for this game, and the way they were integrated into the game was amazing.  The initial Octo-Expansion trailer oozed almost rude amounts of style, and getting a whole new bonus single player campaign made purchasing an expansion worth it.  The additional stages were absolutely geared for challenge, and I don't think I will go back to finish the ones I didn't finish any time soon, but they had so many cool new implementations and spins on the Splatoon formula.  Splatoon on its own would make a decent game if it were just the single player campaign or multiplayer, so having both just makes for a nice, complete experience.  The whole climactic sequence, from finally completing the challenge of the subway to escaping to freedom, has that absurd escalation I just love in video games too. Also I love my stylish Octoling.

Kemono Friends Picross

Somehow I made it so long without ever playing Picross, but this finally brought me into it.  I have no idea how this combination came to be, but it finally got me into a fun puzzle system and I enjoy it. Somehow I have put in nearly as many hours on this game as I have Star Allies.  A lot of it does come from having the game paused as I idly go through puzzles while working on other projects, but having a game that does not demand a ton is pretty nice and fits with my gaming and lifestyle.  I'm looking for friends.

WarioWare Gold

WarioWare is one of my favorite video game franchises and a bit of an underdog, I feel.  The original Mega Microgames was my favorite experience on the GBA, with its unique game play mixed with a silly style.  The games that followed in the series for the DS and Wii were fun, but Made in Wario on the WiiU changed from the Microgame based high score hunting style to a collection of modes and games based on the WiiU game pad.  There were some bright ideas in there that might have done better as their own eShop titles, and the shift towards multiplayer games didn't quite fit as well with my style of gaming.  After that there was silence from the Wario Ware camp until the announcement and release of WarioWare Gold, which like Star Allies is a celebration of the series's past.  It was fun to have another Microgame experience that blended all of the weirdness and frantic gameplay that made me love the series, with a solid selection of classics built in.  It even has fully voiced cutscenes (an expansion on Smooth Moves's narration for each different style) that are oddly charming in a Saturday morning way.  It was good to have this series back, and I hope to see more unique takes on Microgames in the future.

Katamari Damacy Reroll

The original Katamari was a quirky game I bought on a whim back in the PS2 days that was sold to me on its weird look, style, and nice price point.  I enjoyed the first so much, and We <3 Katamari is one of my favorite games of all time.  Having a nicely touched up port on the Switch was welcome.  Somehow, despite having not played the original or its sequel in decades, I took to it like I had just played it yesterday, rolling up incredible Katamaris like a pro.  The original does have some warts in its gameplay that the sequels ironed out marvelously, and the dual stick controls do bother my thumbs at times, but it's still so satisfying to play and it's great that this game has a new chance.  Please go by this one, it's so enjoyable, but also because I want them to port We <3 Katamari so badly so you can all play that and see Katamari perfection.

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate

Smash Bros games seem to live on hype.  I will admit I never expected to see a Smash Bros game so early in the Switch.  It doesn't even feel that long since Smash 4 came out!  So having a trailer in the beginning of the year and a release in the same year was a bit astounding.  There was lots of drama and intrigue with leaks, character additions, and whatnot, and even if I am sad for some that didn't make it (pour one out for Ashley and Shadow, please) having every character available, along with some fun new additions, is definitely nice.  The spirits mode is a nice twist on the event mode, and the rebuffs to classic are nice.  Really, the best part is just being able to play Smash again with my pals, try out all of the characters, and just enjoy it with everyone.  I look forward to the DLC, and that we get Banjo and Crash to create some sort of bizarre realization of every ones mid-2000s dream game.  It was a fun ride leading up to it, and I look forward to playing it more with pals in the new year.

STUFF I STILL NEED TO FINISH

There are some games I got really recently that I still need to finish as gifts from the Steam Sale and whatnot.  I have right near the end of December received Celeste, Donut Country, and I finally got Cuphead thanks to the kindness of friends.  These will be some nice games to get me started on the new year even if one of them is from last year. At some point I may go back to Hollow Knight and Dark Souls, although admittedly the requirements for the true ending of the former are a bit of a turn off and I am having a bit of difficulty getting into the game play, controls, and progression style of the latter, but who knows!  I am also intrigued and interested in Yokai Watch 3, Yoshi's Crafted World, in the near future, and hope to see some nice news on Animal Crossing. Lastly, may Platinum Games heed my calls and give the world a Wario World sequel where Wario wrestles God or something in the pursuit of money.  Amen.

Also I still need to finish Persona 5.  Really at this point I’m just doing it for Futaba. She’s the best.

Next up, I will write about my favorite music from the year, as well as cartoons and film, which admittedly I have not gotten as much into this year!

[strigital]

Headcanons: Hero of Kvatch - Kassandra Saryn

‘tis about time i did something like that with Kassie. so here we go!

Kassandra is a halfbreed: she’s got a Breton father and a Dunmer mother. She looks very much human in almost every way, from the shape of her face and complexion of her skin, to the Nibenayan accent of her speech and a preference for simpler, less posh things. The only elven things about her are her pointed ears, predisposition to magical arts and slower aging.

Kassie’s got heterochromia: her left eye is bright blue and her right eye is vibrant green, which is believed to be the result of mixed blood. Her unique physical traits are also attributed to her vast and complicated genealogical tree, which includes centuries worth of interracial marriages, infidelities and all sorts of blood mixing between men and mer you could possibly imagine.

Her natural hair color is chestnut brown, not pearly white. Her hair was bleached by exposure to strong magical energies at a very young age, when her mother used a teleportation spell on the girl and her twin in order to relocate them from Morrowind to High Rock, to their father’s family.

Getting such a dose of raw magical energy not only made her hair standout in the crowd, but also awoke her own magical talents. Kassie got predisposition to Destruction and Illusion, while her little sister’s magic leaned towards Restoration and Alteration.

Kass considers herself a self-taught mage like her mother, though anyone at the Mages Guild would call her incompetent, unskilled and dangerous to both herself and her surroundings, especially after you learn that this girl favors Fire spells over anything else. She’s chosen fire not so much because of her Fire Resistance inherited from her mom, but rather because of many ways she finds instant fire out of nowhere useful in the wilds. However, Kass is NOT good with her spells: most of them aren’t even real spells, just random conjurations of magical fire and as such, most often than not, she ends up burning something. Usually herself. A nasty burn scar on her left arm and a frequent smell of burnt hair are constant reminders that she's in a dire need of a tutor. On the other hand, her skills in the arts of Illusion are a lot better. The only spells she knows from this school are a Candlelight and a somewhat effective Chameleon which are quite useful and help her out far more often that a little wild magical fire. Lucien believes that the reason why she’s far more successful as an Illusionist, rather than a Pyromancer is because one of her signs is the Shadow, which is known to favor anything that has to do with invisibility and sneak.

Kass was born under two signs, which even Uriel Septim VII himself believed to be of prophetic significance. She was born during the season of the Shadow, on the 5th of the Second Seed, 410 of 3rd Era, yet a wandering sign with no assigned season, which is known to pop up on the night sky every now and again - the Serpent - was also present on the night of her birth. Kass believes that the Serpent is responsible for all the misery in her life, but the Shadow is the one which allowed her to dodge all those miseries despite all odds.

After her daring escape from an orphanage as a kid, Kass ventured to the Imperial Reserve, where a huntsman from Chorrol named Honditar took her in as his apprentice. She’d spend summers at his lodge, learning the secrets of survival in the wilds and would leave before winter, when he went back to the city ‘till next spring. Kass then would go to the Gottlesfont Priory, where kind nuns gladly took her in and taught her about herbs and traditional medicine. Those were the best days of her life.

Years spent living in the wilds made her quite an aloof. She developed a strong dislike for cities and civilization in general, preferring thick woodlands over cramped streets any day. She would only leave the woods and go to the nearest town in order to trade furs and occasional treasure for soap or new clothes. If a certain winter happened to be a bit too harsh she’d find a job at a farmstead as a shepherd or a maid, but as soon as thaw began she’d disappear into the wilds once more. On the other hand, she became a real pro at all this survival stuff. She could make a trap out of anything, track down almost any living being and never get lost in the woods. One look around and she’d immediately know where’s the north, how far is the nearest river and what kind of predator frequents this place. Unfortunately, this also means that she’s absolutely helpless in a city. The streets confuse her, the people annoy her, the guards scare her and there’s no way of telling which way is the exit! Her life in the cities became easier once she discovered a way onto the rooftops though.

Because the wilds are never truly safe, Kass learned to sleep like a rabbit, with her ears perked up and listening. She’s such an incredibly light sleeper, that even Lucien couldn’t sneak up on her during the night of their first official meeting. On the other hand, she has serious troubles getting well rested and can’t stay asleep for longer than four hours without a cup of strong chamomile tea or a sleeping potion. That makes her the second insomniac of the Cheydinhal family right after the Speaker.

Since she’s the wild hermit from the forest, Kassie is an absolute tragedy when it comes to high class socializing. She can’t do small talk to save her own life, doesn’t understand when someone is flirting with her or how to pay back a compliment and most of the jokes totally fly over her head! She is polite, however, mostly due to her having some experience working as a servant girl. Also because of her uncivilized way of life, Kass never had a lesson in courtship. Poor baby does not understand all those sexual innuendos and metaphors people keep telling, has no idea what sexuality is and is absolutely clueless when it comes to sex and/or making out. Madam Josele finds her innocence irresistibly adorable and more than once scolded Lucien for attempting to use his charms on the poor girl.

As such, Kass was never in love before joining the Brotherhood. Lucien Lachance was her crush since day one and he, knowing that, deliberately manipulated her with his charms in order to make her a loyal little puppy by rewarding good behavior with a smooch or a suggestive smile, but punishing undesirable actions by giving her a cold shoulder or talking in harsh professional tone. That being said, Kassie felt that her feelings towards her boss were doomed and so she kept her options open. During one of her contracts she met a rather dashing Dunmeri merchant from Wayrest, with whom she exchanged letters for quite a few months after he went back to High Rock to his boring wife. However, Vicente was the one who pushed Kassie towards Lucien and when she insisted that he already had a mistress, the vampire said something that made her change her mind in an instant: “she gives him what he wants, but you give him what he needs.”

Later in the future, when she becomes a mother to Lucien’s only child and a future High Listener - Lawrence - Kass won’t stay to rebuild the Brotherhood after the civil war. She’ll disappear beyond the mysterious blue door in the middle of Bravil’s lake to never be seen again.

Kass may have a very simple taste in clothes, but boy does she know how to make them! Even though her auntie and a step mother died before the girl was five, she learned quite a few things from her before her demise. Sussana Saryn was a quite popular tailor in Anvil and did miracles with all those fabrics her husband brought to her from across the seas on his ship, and Kassie was always there to help with sewing. Give the girl a piece of cloth, a few needles and a thread and you’ll have a simple but cute dress in less than a day!

Kass is crazy for simple, energetic folk dances, which she learned whilst working at farmsteads during harvest seasons. Nothing gets her feet moving as much as a violin and a handsome farmer’s boy with whom she could spin under a linden tree in the late afternoon ‘till she loses her breath. Ah! Truly happiness lies in small things like these.

Because most of her adolescence she was malnourished, Kass has fallen victim to stunted growth. Even at the age of twenty she’s got thin limbs, small hips and little to no volume in her chest area. Because of this she looks unthreatening and small, which in some cases greatly helps her with contracts in crowded cities and other places where the ability to be unnoticeable is crucial to the success.

Kassie dislikes people, because for the most of her life they were cruel to her and indifferent to her miseries. For this reason she always preferred the company of animals, because in her eyes an animal will not lie, betray or deceive: if it wants to kill you it growls and does not pretend to be your best friend, and if it is truly your best friend then it will gladly follow you to Oblivion and back. Even after joining the Brotherhood she remains quite introverted, preferring to play with Schemer when everyone else is gossiping at the dinner table, or go for a walk with Ragnar rather than have dull conversations with other members of the Black Hand.

For some reason Kass dislikes felines. Maybe it’s because she has to constantly compete with wild big cats for food in the forest, or because she was robbed by Khajiiti highwaymen so many times... She just doesn’t like felines: housecats, wild senches, Khajiits or anything in-between she doesn’t like. The only exception is Vicente’s cat, who lives in his mansion in Blacktown. She’s a fluffy gray Alfiq named after the Queen-Wolf, who somehow managed to win over Kassie’s heart with her big eyes and melodic meows. Must be her magic!

That being said, Kass only makes friends with a few people at the time and stays loyal to them ‘till the end. Her best friend is, of course, Vicente, whom she found very likeable since their first meeting. Monsieur Valtieri became like a father figure to her, a mentor and a friend in one person. She always found vampires fascinating, because they live for so long and most certainly must know a great deal of things! Even in times when she’d doubt Lucien’s decisions, her trust in Vicente’s wisdom would remain absolute.

Kassandra may be polite, shy and unnoticeable, but she certainly can make her own decisions. It is often believed that she’ll do anything for the Brotherhood and will never disobey an order, but in truth she always does things as her heart says. If she’s given an order which doesn’t make sense in her mind and just screams “not right!” at her, she’ll do things her own way. The job will be done, but the contractor may be left displeased.

Her favorite season will always be spring, because with thaw comes warmth, longer days, first harvest of berries and mushrooms, prey comes out from hiding... With spring she can breathe easier, knowing that hungry winter is behind and for the next few months she’ll be busy hunting, gathering and exploring away from those pesky humans and their suffocating cities. Her favorite weather happens to be heavy rain in summer, when the sun is brightly shining from behind the clouds, whilst a wall of warm water falls from the sky, rejuvenating vegetation and washing away dust and sweat. On the other hand, she hates storms. Lightning and thunder were always scary, but in the middle of the woods at night? Absolute nightmare.

Kassie’s favorite food (and beverage) will always be milk. Just your simple milk straight from under a cow. Since most of her diet usually consists of roasted game, raw berries and an occasional fruit, the “normal people’s food” like bread, milk and soup are rare commodities in her life. A glass of warm milk is all it takes to make this lil’ elf a happy camper.

However, ever since becoming Lucien’s agent Kass developed a taste for apples, specifically those big red ones the Speaker always orders from Bretoni merchants. They’re big, sweet and juicy and most importantly they keep both her and her horses well fed.

Once she learned that everyone and their mother in the Brotherhood have their own postal pets, be it a bird, a bat or a magical construct, Kass didn’t hesitate to get her hands on her very own courier. After many hours spent walking about the animal market, she chose a small but witty flying fox, brought to Cyrodiil by poachers from the jungles of Elsweyr. She named her Chestnut.

After some phenomenal events in her life, Kass became heavily involved in Brother Martin’s life. Despite her constantly running back underground to deal with the Brotherhood’s problems, she and Martin became good friends. In fact, she was the only one the prince was not afraid to share his secrets with. At some point she even brought him the Rose of Sanguine so he could destroy it in his ritual and through this, symbolically, destroy his own dark past. He never forgot this gesture.

Kass is one of the few living people who knows that the last Septim did not die at the battle for the Imperial City. She made sure that nobody ever learns of what truly happened on that terrible night and provided Martin, who was no longer in possession of Dragon’s blood nor the Amulet of Kings, with quiet, safe and anonymous life somewhere in the meadows of the newly rebuild county of Kvatch. She’d visit him once every few months up until her journey to the Shivering Isles.

whoo boy, another long one, eh?

welp, y’all know the rules: if you made it to the end have a cookie and praise our Dark Lord while eating it C:

[artdjgblog]

Innerview: David Hudnall / The Pitch

August 2011​

Photo:​ NA / Posters: DJG Design

Note: Featured news article.

Danny Gibson’s Quiet Contributions

Forty hours of Danny Gibson’s week are occupied by a data-entry job, but when he’s not at work, he’s often putting together an art project of some kind in the basement of his house, which sits south of 39th Street in the shadow of the old Loretto Academy building. Gibson is a collector of things — gloves, old toys, obsolete technology, office paper, corn husks, helicopter leaves — and he stores his prized finds in this colorful subterranean lair. That he is an artist who uses much of what he collects in his work cushions him from the label of the collector’s less endearing alter ego: the hoarder. But a case could be made. Gibson is best known for DJG Design, the name under which he has been designing poster art for local and national bands for the past decade. Starting September 2, he’s displaying somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 original pieces of work in an exhibition, Quietly Contributing, at 1819 Central Gallery. None of them are for sale. After the show concludes at the end of the month, he’ll haul them all back to his cave. “I’ve only sold a few originals,” Gibson says, sorting through a dusty stack of notes, sketches and old prints. “A lot of this stuff I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. They mean too much to me.” Nosing around Gibson’s basement is like flipping through an old yearbook of the Kansas City and Lawrence music scenes. Anvil Chorus, In the Pines, the Stella Link, Namelessnumberheadman, Doris Henson, the Afterparty, and about a hundred other local bands’ names — many defunct and mostly forgotten — are inventively fashioned onto show posters. In this way, the 1819 Central show isn’t just a celebration of Gibson’s work. It also serves as a kind of retrospective of the past 10 years in our local music scene. “There’s a sort of timeline or history involved with these posters,” he says. “Lots of stories, lots of other people’s bands. Promoters, venues. Posters have such a short life span, and then they’re kind of forgotten. So it’ll be neat to line it all up.” This winter, Gibson made the decision to retire DJG Design in order to focus more fully on visual art, which also makes the show a bit of a memorial. “I had been wrestling with the design thing for several years. I’ve always been more into visual art than design,” Gibson says. “And I’ve been kind of moving out of the music scene in some ways. A lot of my friends in bands have grown up and moved away. I don’t get out as much as I used to. I woke up one morning in February and was like, ‘I’m done.’ It felt good.” Gibson grew up on a farm in north-central Missouri — barnyard imagery is a recurring theme in his work — then studied art and design at Missouri State University in Springfield. After four years, he dropped out and relocated to Kansas City, where he moved into a house (“a rathole by where Costco is now”) with some Elevator Division band members, whom he knew from Springfield. The house became a sort of revolving door for local musicians, and Gibson converted the basement, used by a previous tenant as a photography studio, into his own art studio. He started making posters for Elevator Division shows, which led to work with other bands. “A lot of people knew Elevator Division, so people would see my stuff and come to me and be like, ‘Hey, will you make us a poster?’ ” he says. “I got paid a lot of times in cheeseburgers. There’s no real money in making poster art for your friends’ bands. But it was exactly what I wanted to do. Make art, mix it with music. I had a really great time with it.” Working for design and advertising firms was never appealing to Gibson, partially because of his aversion to computers. (He has a very old-looking desktop in his basement that contains a version of Photoshop’s 1999 5.5 version, which he uses sparingly.) For many of his DJG years, Gibson was employed as a janitor at the Kansas City Board of Trade, an occupation that allowed both his collector’s instincts and his artist’s instincts to run wild. He once intercepted 15,000 sheets of office paper headed for the Dumpster and took them home. Plant clippings he discovered in a trash can were repurposed as the font for a Billions poster. “I’m big on process, and being a janitor allowed me to work out a lot of my daily thoughts and ideas,” Gibson says. “I’d end up writing and sketching things on paper towels. Sometimes I’d put the paper towels, or whatever I was writing on, into the final posters. I love midcentury Polish poster art and folk art. The hands-on, cut-and-paste approach. I like including my notes or even my e-mails on posters. It gives it a more human element that I think is missing in a lot of computer design stuff these days.” Gibson’s imaginative worldview makes it easy for him to artfully convert cat hair into lettering, but self-promotion comes less naturally. I spoke to a number of people who consider Gibson one of the most talented artists in the city. But Gibson largely lacks ties to the local art establishment. “I like to sort of exist in my own little world, I guess,” he says. “In some ways I don’t think I really understand the adult world. I can survive in it. But I prefer to be down here in the basement, working on my stuff.” Lately, though, some friends who believe strongly in Gibson’s work have emerged to assist him in getting his name and work further out into the public sphere. Some of them, not surprisingly, are musicians. Coinciding with Quietly Contributing is DJG Was Here, a 35-song compilation album (downloadable for free at noisetrade.com/djgwashere) featuring music from many of the musicians for whom Gibson has designed posters over the years: Darling at Sea, Max Justus, Sam Billen, the ACBs, Thom Hoskins, David Seume. “Danny puts sweat into everything he makes,” says Bryan Lamanno, whose band, the Tambourine Club, appears on the compilation. “He’s not just sitting at a computer. I always just let him do whatever he wants when he designs stuff because he always comes up with something fun and interesting and intricate.” Though Gibson is a collector, he also likes to share and is eager for others to see what he’s put together for Quietly Contributing. “There’s some great moments that I’m excited for people to see,” Gibson says. “Sometimes I look at these posters and I’m like, ‘What was I doing? How did that happen?’ There’s something much bigger to it all that I can’t really explain.”

We asked Gibson to pick a few of his favorite posters and talk about the process and ideas behind them.

001) Darling at Sea, Anvil Chorus (New Year’s Eve at the Brick) New Year’s Eve being such a big night, I wanted to shoot for an epic poster. I had an idea of the post-party: the contents of an insane partygoer’s stomach or the contents on the floor the morning of January 1. So, I set a rule for myself and just grabbed whatever I could at arm’s length around me at my studio desk. I threw it all on the scanner and created a sea of strange things swimming. The posters were printed in black on Wall Street Journals I saved from my day job, and I hit them up with a red heart rubber stamp. I’m pleased with the typography on these, especially for a computer font, which I’ve used very sparingly over the years. 002) Violet Burning, the Billions, Gabriel Yard I was working as a janitor, wondering to myself about a unique, springlike concept for a poster for this show. I had been away from my cart cleaning something and came back to it and found plant clippings and prunings anonymously placed in it. I instantly saw this poster. I pushed my cart down to my little dungeon desk, decided to go on break, and started making the typography. 003) Onward Crispin Glover, the People, Elevator Division At the time I made this image (2002), I was more aggressive about incorporating political-social messages into my work. It was my early 20s, and I guess it was the post-art-school political-poster-making in me talking? I think the news at the time had some major headlines about American importing and exporting. So, I have a backwards American monster eating a ship. The image was made in ink, and the boat was cut from a very old book. I ran this through an old fax machine to get the dirty look and then printed it on old green-and-white-striped computer paper. Notice this show was at the Pub, which is now the Brick. I always forget that. It’s interesting to see a bit of history in something as short-lived as a concert poster. 004) Flattery Leads to Ruins, James Dean Trio, Roosevelt I had a ton of fun with this one in a pop-art kind of way, I guess. I also enjoy a chance to throw celebrities or notable people into art. I was literal with playing off the band names James Dean Trio and Roosevelt. But the other, Flattery Leads to Ruins, came out of the headlines at the time. Martha Stewart was on trial, and I would watch CNN every day while cleaning a lunch area at my day job. This is a great example of taking visual liberty with a batch of bands on a concert bill. With the printing I made black-and-white photocopies and then ran them back through an oversized printer to get the color. 005) Atom and His Package, Brazil, Pixel Panda, Mail Order Midgets This is one of my personal favorites. I love a good visual pun, and I like to spin ideas off of band names. Here we have a guy named Atom carrying a package of Mail Order Midgets and a Pixel Panda (the panda is based from my childhood drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). The original art will be on display at my poster exhibition, and it’s fairly big compared to the small print the final poster ended up as. I’d love to revisit these characters; there’s a good road-trip story there. I’ve always had visions of being cursed or challenged to journey cross-country carrying specific heavy things in my arms along the way. I think about that with this poster. Poor Atom.  

[ttawoabw]

OwlCrate: January ‘Classic Remix’ Box

Okay, so if you don’t know what a book subscription box then;

Where have you been?

Check out my blog post about them HERE. (I really need to update this…)

As some of you might have gathered I am the sort of person that researches upcoming releases and tries to guess which books will be featured before I decide to order a box – or at least I’ve begun doing this and do not intend to stop.  This is a handy little practice that means I can better maintain my funds and spend less on books and book boxes so I can begin paying back the excessive amount I owe my mother.  But I didn’t need to do research to guess which book would be included in the January box, I knew, I had anticipated it since I first heard of it’s eventual existence, and I had a lot of hope for this box – I was a little disappointed with the overall contents of the box, but I’ll get into that throughout the unboxing and in my final thoughts.

As always OwlCrate has lovely Introduction/Information cards in each box that are surprisingly detailed.  I love this one!  And of course the box arrived in perfect condition and the packaging was excellent.

The first thing I saw in the packing worms was this The Little Prince inspired tea by First Edition Tea Co. which I think is cute but as I am not a tea drinker and no one in my household drinks herbal teas I shall be gifting this to a teaholic friend for her upcoming birthday.  It’s mint and rose flavoured and was created exclusively for this OwlCrate box.

The next item hidden in the packing worms was this open book soap by TeaSoapBooks.  The scent is inspired by The Secret Garden and it is scented with white tea and berries.  I don’t typically use bar soaps (they carry a lot of germs and usually leave my skin either dry or with an oily residue) but this soap does smell nice and I’m willing to give it a try.  It was made exclusively for this OwlCrate box but they have heaps of others open book soaps and bath salts inspired by literature so be sure to check them out!

The next thing I pulled out was this double sided bookmark which says ‘Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.‘ which is a quote from Slaughterhouse Five – a book I have not and will not likely read.  But I love this quote and the bookmark, made by the talented Lexy Olivia, is stunning! Again, it was made exclusively for this box and is not available anywhere else – a running theme with this box.

Up next we have something that, though cool and pretty, is completely useless to me.  A desk calendar, designed by Obvious State.  Each month features a unique print with a quote inspired by 12 different classic children’s stories.

January: Peter Pan “Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?“

January: Peter Pan “Would you like and adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?” February: Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland “Where childhood’s dreams are twined in memory’s mystic bond.” March: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz “The north and south winds met where the house stood.” April: The Call of the Wind “Old memories were coming upon him fast… stirring the realities of which they were the shadows.” May: Anne of Green Gables “To sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine.” June: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “It did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river.” July: The Secret Garden “It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine.” August: Treasure Island “Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.” September: The Wind in the Willows “And still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.” October: The Time Machine “Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.” November: The Jungle Book “We will leave the lights of the village and go to the low moon.” December: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea “If one’s destiny is strange, it is also sublime.”

As I said I don’t have any use of a calendar such as this but the prints are lovely so I’ll cut them out and stick the ones I like around my room.

Next up we have this magnet of The Phantom of the Opera designed by Sweet Sequels.  I love The Phantom of the Opera and so does my mum so this magnet now lives on our fridge.

Something to know about OwlCrate is that they don’t typically include promotional stuff but I am so glad they included this promotional mini poster for Wires and Nerve – I love it and I love the series and I can’t wait to read the graphic novel following Iko (I just have to properly read the series…).  This is the kind of promotional stuff I like and enjoy hanging on my door.

Something OwlCrate has included in all their most recent boxes is a collectable pin that matches the introduction card.  I’ve been thinking of putting all my pins on a book bag, but I’m unsure- until I decide I have very little use for the pins but they’re fun to get.

  And this month’s book is….

Roseblood by A.G. Howard.  This is an atmospheric and dark romance set in the tunnels of Paris.  It is a modern-day retelling of The Phantom of the Opera and I am so excited this exists.  The Phantom of the Opera was the first musical I saw live, I was 13 and instantly fell in love with the dark tale.  Back then I didn’t understand the dark themes, it was just beautiful music and costumes.  But in the past 8 years I have come to understand that the Phantom is a tale of obsession and possession and is in fact not a love story.  I love how dark it is and I’m so excited to read this retelling.  I’ve already started a bit and it’s stunning, it’s so descriptive and the writing almost makes the music come alive and take hold of you as it does to Rune.  I’ve also been loving the subtle nods to the original story that only people who have seen the production or movie (or even read the book) would pick up on.  I can see how those who haven’t had a prior introduction to this tale could become confused or not really click with the story but I love it and can’t wait to continue.

In this modern day spin on Leroux’s gothic tale of unrequited love turned to madness, seventeen-year-old Rune Germain has a mysterious affliction linked to her operatic talent, and a horrifying mistake she’s trying to hide. Hoping creative direction will help her, Rune’s mother sends her to a French arts conservatory for her senior year, located in an opera house rumored to have ties to The Phantom of the Opera.

At RoseBlood, Rune secretly befriends the masked Thorn—an elusive violinist who not only guides her musical transformation through dreams that seem more real than reality itself, but somehow knows who she is behind her own masks. As the two discover an otherworldly connection and a soul-deep romance blossoms, Thorn’s dark agenda comes to light and he’s forced to make a deadly choice: lead Rune to her destruction, or face the wrath of the phantom who has haunted the opera house for a century, and is the only father he’s ever known.

Something extremely cool to note about this copy of Roseblood (not sure if it’s just those included in OwlCrate, just hardbacks or for all) is that the text is all red!  I will say that when I come across italics (which is frequent because all French is in italics and they’re in France) the red text does blur a little to me, but I don’t even care.  This is something I’ve never seen before and it fits so well with the story.

And of course a letter from the author to us subscribers is included in each OwlCrate box.  This is one of the things that initially drew me to OwlCrate, I love reading about what inspired the author.  I love reading their passion for their book and I think it’s such a special thing to have – especially when it’s a book that means a lot to you.  A signed bookplate was also included, which is as always awesome.

Dear OwlCrate Reader,

While re-reading The Phantom of the Opera in preparation to write RoseBlood, I was once again struck by the Phantom’s loneliness: being rejected by so many because of his gruesome appearance, something he couldn’t control or change. Any of us can relate to rejection.  In high school, I was too introverted and shy to fit in.  My clothes weren’t cool enough, and neither was my beat-up Datsun.  But there were other classmates dealing with far worse: a girl who’d been in a car accident that left her with brain trauma; a boy who walked alone to school each day in a worn-out jacket, even when storms or snow weighed heavy on his shoulders; kids no one talked to due to rumours surrounding them. I defended that injured girl once when she was teased for being different, and it felt so good to step outside of my own problems and stand up for someone else; even though several classmates shunned me for it.  That shining moment made such a positive impact on my life, that when it came time to build on the Phantom’s story, I wanted to give him a chance to embrace altruism. to step outside of his bitterness and help another human soul.  However, there’s a sacrifice involved, as there was when I stood up for my classmate. I won’t tell you if the Phantom does the benevolent thing and finds peace; you’ll have to read RoseBlood for that answer.  But what I will do is challange you to look for opportunities when you can set aside your own fear of rejection to help another person.  There’s nothing more rewarding than being a friend to someone who feels alone, even if it’s only for one shining moment. Wishing you happy reading and courageous living, A.G. Howard

  Final Thoughts:

Okay, so odviously I loved the book and the related items (the letter and signed bookplate), the Wires and Nerve mini-poster now lives happily on my bedroom door and I do enjoy collecting beautiful bookmarks.  But to be honest I wasn’t that over-joyed with the main three items included in this box.  It isn’t that they’re bad quality or anything like that; they’re just not things I really use.  As I said I’ll give the tea to a friend, test the soap out and use the pictures from the calendar as art but I felt somewhat let down by the contents of the November box as well.  Primarily the inclusion of tea.  I know a lot of people really enjoy getting tea in their book boxes, but I really don’t like that it’s included to the extent that it is.  Also while I think it’s cool that OwlCrate have included something they’ve never included before (the soap but also the calendar) I know there are people who have sensitive skin or are vegan who may not be able to use the product.  Although everything individually is good the combination of them is kind of a let down.  I’m not upset that I got the box, I feel the value of the book with the signed bookplate and author’s letter is equal to the total price of the box (minus shipping) but I have felt somewhat let down by OwlCrate these past two boxes.  I’m thinking of giving OwlCrate a rest for a little while (unless the theme matches a release I’m eagerly anticipating) so maybe absence will make the heart grow fonder? (The break from OwlCrate has nothing to do with feeling disappointed, but more to do with the fact that I owe my mother A LOT of money and I need to start saving for my license and a car…)

Just as I’ve said I’m thinking of giving OwlCrate a break; the theme for February is ‘Run Away With the Circus‘ – if you’re part of the book community you can probably guess what the book included will be and you know that it is a highly anticipated novel for everyone.  And the two sneak peek’s we’ve been given are both from artists or companies that I look forward to receiving products from, so that’s promising.  I think you can still order this box, either as a subscriber or as a single purchase.

  You can order your Owlcrate box HERE for $30 USD (not including shipping). If you want to check out past boxes you can click HERE and HERE.

  My Links:

Goodreads : Becca Winter

Instagram : becca_theory

Twitter : @Becca_Theory

Facebook : The Troubles And Woes Of A Bookworm

Becca

xxx

The opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone.  This post is not sponsored I paid for the box myself.

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