#again the format might be kind of fucky

[yessu]

I am once again having lore thoughts. have some magic system/gimmick adaptation spaghetti. I’ve mentioned some of these things briefly before but I need my thoughts in one place

There’s two forms in the world- natural energy, which powers Types and is magic only in the sense of “idk, cartoon magic” re: how gijinkas use moves and have abilities in the first place; and then there’s Actual magic, which *sorta* matches up to typing but doesn’t. It’s like how the TCG had/has its own reduced set of types and pokemon that might exist in one type canonically ingame get set as something completely different- like poison types just kind of vaguely land between the grass, psychic, and dark categories. these aren’t so much schools of magic, but what we’d consider schools (like dnd terms) tend to fall under certain types, like enchantments tend to be psychic, fairy, normal type witches. me and dan workshopped these a little bit i need to find it again

ANYWAY so that magic is also what powers the Various Fuckery of the world. (Stealing the idea from my own original world lmao) It condenses into crystal formations, and location does change its effects a Little bit- it’s purest and most concentrated in Paldea (tera crystals) without doing much but being Raw Elemental Magic (changing types temporarily). Otherwise, you have to match up to its type to use it (it being refined into a Booster like mega stones and z-crystals) but it also comes with a *lot* of radiation. Galar sees this as power spots and dens specifcally, it’s also why Dyna/Gigantamaxing and Mega evolutions tend to go beserk and/or hurt the user (unless they’re using a suppression tool that focuses it down safely, like the apparatus that people plug their mega stones Into) This radiation is also what influences certain regions to manifest their powers differently, like my headcanon of Orre having more “superhero” types and north of Galar having outright monsters.

Ley lines of this magic create deposits which create mystery dungeons, where the space is always changing and you can often tap into abilities you wouldn’t have outside (emeras, if anyone else was unfortunate enough to play super pmd LMAO) and with things being so Fucky there it can produce ‘treasures’— like how items popped up around you in the distortions in Legends— which is how treasure hunters keep their work ;)

Anyway! back to the magic itself- i think legendaries utilize Both in very high amounts, which is why they HAVE otherworldly power and influence and are inherently stronger than civilian pokemon. Witches Also feel stronger than civilians because this is what they’re tapping into. Legendaries aren’t necessarily witches themselves, but they Could practice that way (not every rectangle is a square etc) Also, witches aren’t by definition cut off from natural energy, they can still use normal moves if they wanted to/don’t Know they’re a witch/don’t want to be one/it takes a while for the potential for magic in their genes to wake up. It depends if they’re Practicing or not- magic just lets them have powers that are not Moves. It does still have to sort of line up to their actual types, like a fire witch isn’t going to be a grass type pokemon (use their learnpools as a guideline), but hidden powers are kind of an exception! Heinrich is an example of this; he’s still just grass/ghost as a Gourgeist, but his HP type is fire, so his ghost attacks look and feel like fire. Some people are just more in tune with theirs than others, and when it’s especially prominent it can flavor their other attacks, even without being a witch.

HP types are linked to Tera types too, I think- Terastilizing just boosts a type, so the norm is to have a type that matches your natural strengths, but “unusual” tera types happen in those people with prominent HPs. Going out of your way to change your tera type to something that ISN’T your HP I think would then change that type too because you’re taking in a Lot of magic to influence it. — OH! and gems, the hold items that boost an attack of their type? Those are extremely diluted tera crystals (naturally or deliberately). The sparkling water flavor of tera crystal.

I think that’s everything off the dome so if y’all have questions/feedback anytime let me know B)

[12thbiologist]

ok hello! :3 pocketbook sized annihilation anon again! so Obviously there are . um some discrepancies between the book and the movie and i've been really fascinated to hear your ideas on how it couldve been adapted better! now i Cant promise anything But! i'm receiving a camera for my birthday and im thinking an Annihilation mini web series could be obtainable and Incredibly fun to do! so could i ask you for more ideas on how to translate the book to videos (and how to possibly do the affects of Area X on a well Much Smaller budget)

this is open to anyone who sees this ask and has ideas btw!! gonna keep a running list on ideas so any and all opinions on how to do this best are welcome! thank you!

- 🪢 (gonna claim an emoji for myself if thats alright! since i might become a regular around here :3)

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU JUST ENABLED IN ME OKAY. i have soo many ideas and even if you dont end up making anything it is so fun to think about regardless

incredible news about area x effects: there are none!!!! or at least, there doesnt have to be. the movie makes the border really really showy and fancy and prism-looking, but its actually inaccurate for the book's version of area x: the border is completely invisible! it just looks like a regular patch of swampy florida wilderness but you take a step too far and you're swept up into area x/the border. area x looks almost entirely just like a normal wilderness, save for certain things or animals feeling just slightly Too human. so thats good for low budget!!

the hardest things to adapt in area x are definitely the crawler and the tower, probably, and theyre not in the movie at all. unless you know where a giant staircase covered in green glowing stuff is, thats gonna be tough. your best bet is prooobably to try and find an empty spiral stairwell thats dark-ish and somehow get ambient green lighting in there and put lettering on the walls if you can find somewhere that will let you. the crawler is basically impossible to adapt to film in any good way outside of some crazy impressive cgi, but if i was shooting an annihilation adaptation i wouldnt even try to! instead of trying to get the crawler right, just focus on the individuals seeing it and let the viewer's imagination do the rest. like the shot in the movie where lena is staring into the alien blob and the light is reflecting in her eyes. the brightness is also hard, but not necessary to adapt visually since it is (mostly) an internal feeling of brightness

as for how to adapt specifically annihilation, thats kind of dependent on how you want to format the story. found footage would be cool and also quite easy to do, plus theres actual found footage from the expeditions so theres precedent + reference for how video gets fucky in area x!!! if it's a bit more of a linear story/a direct adaptation of the book, i absolutely recommend using a lot of nature imagery + nature stuff in the photography and obscuring the people as much as possible- especially the biologist!!! not sure how viable this is for a small project, but using reoccurring visual motifs would also be cool (like associating the biologist with circular/spiraly stuff, the husband with birds, area x with tall shapes, etc.)

also i am So down to try and help with like, concept art or storyboards (??) for this because it sounds so fun and i want an excuse to draw cool southern reach compositions

[frxggi]

[PENTAGON] An Unexpected Turn of Events

Part One, maybe? it depends on whether or not u want me to continue this  Okay listen....... i don’t really know how this happened It started as one thing and ended up as something completely different which just goes to show u that if u want to write something u shouldn’t do it unless you’ve done some prewritingTM  I just..... Had this idea in my head for days and I had to get it out of my system  That being said, this story goes to shit after like the 3rd paragraph, so be warned  Genre: Idk lol  Word count: 2,642  Constructive criticism is always appreciated,  Thank u and goodnight 

The air is crisp and cool and slices into your skin like a knife, causing you to pull the thick fabric of your scarf over your reddening nose. The blackness of the sky contrasts starkly against the twinkling stars that hang high above your head, dulled only a fraction by the hustle and bustle of the city sprawling out in front of you for endless miles. The streets are packed with people; those who wish to retreat to the safety of their homes after a long day of work and those who are slipping into a newfound excitement, ready to take full advantage of the unique experience the nightlife has to offer. Your shoes scrape against the pavement in a steady pace, your mind wandering to your favorite cafe and the warmth it offers. You nuzzle further into your scarf.

It’s a journey you’ve trekked many times, and you breathe a heavy sigh of indignation when you discover that your most surefire route to the small building nestled snugly in between a local bank and barber shop has been blocked off, seemingly closed down for construction. The wind begins to pick up as you quickly mull over your other options. The only other route that will get you to the cafe in a timely manner is through a part of the city with which you’re not terribly familiar. Dozens of alleyways, cloaked in shadows and hidden from the noise of the city, act as a labyrinth that twists your gut into uncertainty and nerves.  

Against your better judgement, you decide to brave the path you’ve only taken a small number of times before. The buildings are cast in a new light under the veil of the night, and you decide it’s best not to spend lots of time in the area, so you quicken your pace. You lose track of time, and minutes begin to feel like hours but thankfully the sounds of the city begin to ring in your ears, and bright neon lights come into view. You soon recognize your surroundings. The smell of alcohol hits your nose like a tonne of bricks as you pass through they alleyway leading to the bar a friend of yours always raves about. The building is tucked away from the main road that cuts through downtown, sat in front of an apartment complex for Section 8 housing. Although an unsettling atmosphere settles over your shoulders, you take this as a good sign; the cafe is only a few blocks away. You’re walking past the back doors of the building when a group of 5 men catch your attention. They’re all clearly drunk, one man relying on his friend for support while the other three walk in jagged lines, away from the building.

One of the men, much taller than you, takes notice of your presence and throws a whistle at you as you draw nearer. You brush aside the garbled words he offers-in what you assume to be a compliment-with a nervous smile. The group stumbles in front of you, blocking the only clear path out of the alleyway. The man, clearly the most sober of the party, steps forward.

“Hey, sweetheart, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.” His words are slurred together as he lessens the distance between you two. The man introduces himself as Younghyun, and you only hum in acknowledgement as you move to step aside. You tell him that you’re only passing through. “That’s a shame. Think of all the fun a pretty face like yours can have.” Younghyun purs, one of his calloused hands clapping onto your shoulder and preventing you from getting away. “I have fun on my own, thanks.” You spit back, the stench of alcohol on the man’s breath causing your head to spin.

“Bummer. Bet you my boys and I can show you a real good time, if you’re up for it?” At this, his friends whoop and holler and throw a cat-call or two in your general direction. “No thanks.” You say. “Come on, babe, no need to hold back on us!” Younghyun laughs, daring to snake an arm around your shoulders. The other 4 of his friends begin to gather around you two. None of you notice the man that has emerged from the bar now leans against the brick wall of the building, watching the situation with a hawk like stare.

“Look, you guys do seem really nice, but I have somewhere to be.”

Younghyun scoffs.

“Yeah? You here to meet someone?” The man breathes against your ear, his hold on you tightening when you try to push yourself away from him. Your stomach drops. “You know I don’t believe that for a second, babe.”

Your lips part to respond, but another voice, foreign, cuts through the air.

“She’s here for me.”

Younghyun turns, as do his friends. A man, much younger than Younghyun and Co. steps into what little light the exterior bulbs on the bar offer. Younghyun laughs incredulously, turning to face the newest addition to the party. He’s staring daggers into Younghyun’s eyes, causing his hold on you to loosen. You take the opportunity to put a few paces between you two.

“Yeo One? You mean to tell me you’re this chick’s hot date?” The man-Yeo One-shrugs, his gaze flicking to meet yours and it softens for a split second. Perhaps it’s the stench of the alcohol, or maybe it’s because you haven’t eaten all day and are running on fumes, but a switch flicks in your head and you think that he’s safe, so you dart to his side. Yeo One slides an arm around your waist as if to prove his point to the others, and he radiates warmth and you can feel the heat of his palm through the fabric of your shirt.

He’s clad in a leather jacket(that looks like it’s seen better days), a simple t-shirt sporting a phrase you can’t quite make out what with the lettering.You guess it’s the logo of an 80’s metal band. His jeans hug his legs snugly and bunch up above his ankles, where they disappear into his boots. His dark hair is parted to the side, pushed back and styled up with gel. His brows are furrowed with frustration as he speaks to Younghyun and his friends.

“What are you doing here?” Yeo One’s voice is smooth, but drips with venom. “Actually, my good friend, we were here to pay you a visit! But, we ran into this pretty lady here,” One of Younghyun’s friends gestures to you as he speaks. “And well I’m sure you now the rest.”

“Funny. I remember telling you to stay away from this place.” Yeo One says.

“Last I checked, Yeo One,” Younghyun spits, daring a step closer. “You don’t make the rules.” At this, Yeo One drops his arm from your waist, gently ushering you out of the way. You back away a few meters, though you still linger behind Yeo One, your only pillar of safety.

“Come on, Younghyun, you don’t want to start an argument in front of a lady, do you?” He tsks. “You should really save this for another time. Especially since you and your buddies are all piss drunk. The situation isn’t looking in your favor.”

Younghyun spits at the ground, “Yeah? Afraid I’ll kick your ass?” Yeo One barks a laugh. “As if.” “Wanna put it to the test?”

Younghyun narrows his eyes, instructing his posse to disperse. They do so without question, scrambling in the opposite direction. “Sorry, sweetheart. I guess I’m not much of a gentleman.” The words barely leave Younghyun’s lips before he’s lunging at Yeo One. The attack is easily avoided, and Yeo One counters it by delivering a kick to the gut that sends the other man tumbling to the ground. Your heart races, this being the first time you’ve seen a physical altercation escalate to this level. You’re frozen in place, hands brought up to cover your mouth as you gasp. Younghyun isn’t given the chance to regain his composure, Yeo One offering three more kicks to the man’s ribs. Younghyun cries out in pain, body curling in on itself. A hand grabs yours, and you’re letting Yeo One lead you closer to the bar.

When he speaks, it’s with a slight air of urgency. “You trust me, yeah?”

“I’m not so sure. You just beat the shit out of that guy!” You exclaim, though you don’t make any effort to free yourself from Yeo One’s grip. Your only response is a bitter laugh. You get to the back door of the building, and Yeo One turns you to face him. His gaze has hardened. “Listen to me. I can get you home safe, but you have to trust me, okay?” He doesn’t give you the chance to respond. “Go inside. Find a man about ye high,” he gestures with his hand, “He should be behind the bar. Tell him I sent you.”

You hear Younghyun throw a, “You son of a bitch!” to Yeo One, but the insult falls on deaf ears.

“He’ll get you home.” Yeo One says. You want an explanation, but it’s clear you aren’t going to get one when Yeo One guides you firmly towards the heavy door of the bar. He offers you a warm smile that makes your heart flutter before he turns his attention back to Younghyun.

You can’t fathom why, but you decide to take a leap of faith, to trust the words of a stranger and wander into the bar. It’s not nearly as packed as you had expected; only a few tables are filled and a few lone drinkers are staggered at the bar. Your eyes land on a tall young man, jet black hair and full lips that are set tightly in concentration as he scrubs at the surface of the bar with a damp cloth. He’s the only one behind the counter, and he’s as tall as Yeo One had described. You figure that he’s the one you’re supposed to talk to, so you timidly make your way over to him. He acknowledges you with an inquisitive quirk of his brow. You find your voice stuck in your throat, and you take the chance to wet your lips before your soft voice rings out.

“Um, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing.” The man’s face lacks any interest as he folds the cloth lazily and tosses it over his shoulder. “Yeo One told me to talk to you.” You add in quickly, feeling so utterly small under the bartender’s scrutinizing gaze. His ears perk up, and he hums in understanding.

As if on cue, the door in which you entered slams open, Yeo One hanging from the frame. He’s panting, his jacket missing and his hair looking almost windblown, his dark locks askew in every which way. His voice sounds loudly over the dull sound of music and murmuring patrons,

“Hey, Wooseok! Get her home, yeah?” And then he’s gone, the door being slammed shut behind him. The others in the bar hardly seem to mind. Wooseok clicks his tongue in annoyance, breathing a heavy sigh.

“Wait here.” He says, then disappears behind the wall lined with bottles of beer, into the kitchen. He returns but a moment later, a set of keys in hand. He silently beckons you to follow. You trail behind him, out the bar and to the far end of the parking lot. He leads you to a rust colored pick-up, clearly over two decades old, but seemingly in perfect shape. Wooseok opens the passenger side door.

“Get in.” He instructs. This is where you hesitate, standing your ground and eyeing the boy in front of you. When he speaks this time, it’s soft and warm and comforting and a stark contrast to his attitude only moments earlier.

“You trust him, right? You can trust me.” To most, the words wouldn’t mean much. To you, they shouldn’t, but the kindness in his voice eases your nerves, and, to continue your streak of Things You Wouldn’t Normally Do, you get into the truck. Wooseok hops into the driver’s seat, and the engine sputters to life.

The two of you are out of the parking lot and onto the main road in a few short moments. “Where to?” He asks, and you give him the name of your apartment complex. The air between you and Wooseok is thick enough to cut with a knife, an awkward silence hanging between you. It’s maybe a solid three minutes before Wooseok speaks. “Look, I don’t know what happened to you, or how you got to meet Changgu, but I’m sure you’re a little shaken up.” He offers you the opportunity to respond, and takes your silence as cue to continue. “He’s a little...Much, when you first meet him, I know. You’re not beaten to all hell, though, which might just be because you’re a girl. Even so, he’s asking me to look after you, to make sure you get home safe, so he’s got something brewing in his head. I don’t know what, but whatever it is, you seem to have peaked his interest.”

“He doesn’t even know my name, what do you mean I’ve ‘peaked his interest’?” You question. Wooseok only offers a chuckle in response. “He may not know your name now, but he will.” You throw the driver a confused look, and he clears his throat and sits a bit straighter in his seat. “Look, all I’m saying is that you don’t have to worry about anything. Those guys… Changgu will take care of them.”

“You know who they are?” Wooseok nods. “Yeah. They used to come to the bar a lot. It was their turf, I guess. But then Changgu sort of just swept in and took the place for his own. Aside from that, they’ve had issues with Changgu for ages. They aren’t the type of guys you want to get involved with. That’s probably why he has me taking you home.”

You only nod in response, and Wooseok doesn’t bother to speak any more. Time passes quickly enough, and before long Wooseok is pulling into your apartment complex. The truck comes to a stop in front of your building, and it’s as you’re getting out of the vehicle when Wooseok talks again. “A word of advice,” he begins, leaning over the passenger seat to meet your gaze through the door. “I’d stay away from the bar. It’s not the place for a girl like you, and I’m almost positive Changgu wouldn’t want you around that area, either.”

You agree, telling him you wouldn’t be caught dead at that dump. He scoffs, muttering about how he keeps the joint in tip top shape.

“I know what happened is probably freaking you out, but give it a while; Changgu will find you soon enough and answer your questions.” Wooseok says, offering you a reassuring grin. You take note of his words, and thank him for the ride. He waits until you’ve gotten into your apartment before he takes off.

Once you’re inside, you slouch against the door, rubbing your face as you take a deep breath. What the hell was Wooseok talking about? Who were those guys you had met earlier and why did they have such resentment towards Yeo One? You check the time, discovering it to be half past eleven o’clock. The events of tonight finally settle into your bones, the weight of Wooseok’s words and Yeo One’s actions causing your shoulders to slump forward. You’re exhausted, and it’s the weekend, so you don’t hesitate to kick off your shoes and trudge to your bedroom, where you flop down on your bed and fall asleep without so much of a second thought.

[whumping-every-day]

ANON ASKED: Now I kinda wanna see the first time the new harness gets implemented. Ash's fear, Callum's resignation that it has to be done. Perhaps some struggling and hyperventilation once its on or as the straps are being buckled. Good, juicy stuff.

--

I’m sorry Anon, the format is being fucky for me with asks right now. I had to copy and paste your question and make a new post. I wrote this instead of going to bed; I hope that you enjoy!

A follow up to This 

Content Warnings! Allusions to noncon, degrading language, dehumanization, noncon bondage (muzzle, collar, harness), obedience and trust, the blurriest possible line between whumping and caretaking, hunting dog whumpee.

--

“What’s the matter?” The jeering tone is at odds with the quivering, wet eyes in front of him. “Did you finally find something your bitch won’t tolerate?”

Callum inhales slowly, and Ash blinks, sends tears spilling down his cheeks. “What did I fucking tell you people?” Callum turns just enough to glare, not relinquishing his grip on the vampire’s quivering shoulder. He gives a little squeeze; the gentleness he can manage. A wordless it will be okay.

Callum has been very clear these last few missions that he has no intentions of sharing. And he’s been very clear that he doesn’t need their commentary.

“Fucking freaks.” It’s the same few men as usual, the ones that like to linger, the ones that like to watch Ash a little too closely. It takes more now, each time, to make them back off.

“You’d better thank your fucking stars that this freak is on our side.” Callum intentionally ignores the way they’d included him in their insults.

Ash is only halfway into the new leather harness, and already he’s panting in unconscious terror. It’s a restrictive device; the larger straps go around his torso and over his shoulders, and there are buckles in the back where his arms can be buckled tightly against one another.

He hasn’t tried to escape, and Callum knows by now that he won’t. But the vampire is hyperventilating, even though he doesn’t need to breathe, and he’s already muzzled, so he begs with its eyes. The collar is laced up firmly around his neck, wide enough to almost function as a brace.

Before they’d left, Ash had said the wider grip was comforting.

“I know, bud,” Callum whispers to him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. This has to happen.” He steps into the vampire’s space, holds an arm out, and Ash folds into him. The vampire’s skinny shoulders fit readily against Callum’s breadth, and the hunter can feel him trembling.

From behind them, someone wolf-whistles. Callum’s grip on the vampire tightens, and Ash whimpers, nosing his muzzled cheek into Callum’s chest.

“I know you’re frightened.” Callum holds him for a moment, lifts a hand to rest on Ash’s mess of curls. “I need you to be good. Just for a little while longer.” Callum feels the way Ash pauses, and then, an echoing heartbeat later, the resignation in the way he slumps.

His arms are already in the leather straps, trapped behind his back, but the buckles are still undone, slack. Callum lifts a hand to the straps, and Ash’s breath hitches.

“You can do this,” Callum murmurs. Then, softer, “I won’t let anything hurt you.” Anything or anyone.

Ash shudders against him, but the vampire pulls in a deep breath, and lets it out in a gusty whine. He’s still trembling, but when Callum carefully grips his elbow and gently pulls it higher behind his back, into place, he’s pliant. Tears soak through Callum’s shirt as he does the buckles up, one at a time, cinching the creature’s arms together and up, till there’s no give left and he can’t move his arms without moving his whole torso.

For a split second, as the last buckle tightens, Ash cries out and bucks. Callum catches him, finishes tightening the last strap.

When he’s finished, Ash’s fingertips touch his elbows. It’s a new kind of helplessness, to not be able to move his hands, and to be blindfolded on a lead at the same time.

But the others had had complaints, after the first mission. Docility, they said, was worth nothing if not enforced.

So Callum clips the leash back onto the ring on the front of the harness and straightens.

As he always does when he’s terrified, Ash’s attention it fixed on Callum. He whimpers and sways when Callum releases him, takes a stumbling half-step after him. Callum gently guides him closer using the lead. The pressure is evenly distributed by the harness, and absently Ash thinks that it will be nice to be leashed this way, if one of the others tries to yank on it again.

He obeys the pressure, then folds to his knees at Callum’s feet, the lead swinging loose between them. He leans shamelessly against the hunter’s thigh, and one of those familiar, calloused hands settles at his nape, just above his collar.

To anyone else, it’s submission and a possessive display. To Ash, it just feels safe.

Callum cups his jaw, tolerates his whimpering until the very last second, until it’s time to go. Then the blindfold is fitted back over his eyes, and Ash is plunged back into perfect darkness.

He stumbles, at first, following at Callum’s heel. It’s harder to transverse the terrain without his arms, and the vampire is flooded with dread because now it’s slowing them down, even though Callum had been lenient and chosen leather bindings, and it should be able to fucking walk-

"You’re doing fine, little one.” It’s quiet, just for them. “Just follow the lead.” There’s a faint change in pressure on the harness, and Ash adjust to it. Callum’s got the leash wound short, and Ash is grateful. Every inch of freedom is an inch of room for him to make a mistake.

In the end, the hunt goes as well as it could have; they corner the beast they’ve been chasing, and Ash spends four minutes on his knees, tethered loosely to a tree with his blindfold off, trembling while Callum and the others do battle with a wild boar three times the size of Callum’s horse.

When it’s done, Ash is so relieved that he spends the entire evening clinging to Callum’s ankle while the men sit around the fire. He’s blindfolded for the duration, curled on the ground at Callum’s feet, but he doesn’t mind.

He still hears the things they say about him. He doesn’t want to see the looks.

But Callum keeps him close all throughout, always a hand on his hair or shoulder or leash, always holding onto him somehow. Some of the others make comments, and Callum rebuffs them, only responding to questions about hunting and occasionally his research.

It’s a strange sort of peace, Ash thinks as they drift off to sleep, once again hidden under tents as the sun rises. He’s muzzled like a hunting dog and hooded like a falcon, and like both of those animals, all he has to do is as he’s told. He gets to be helpful this way, gets to have a real, tangible use.

He even gets used to the leather harness and not having the use of his arms, after a while.

It is good to have a purpose. And, Ash thinks, much more guiltily, it is nice to sleep so close to someone else. There is only one tent, and Ash gets to sleep curled up at the base of the hunter’s bedroll, with a blanket of his own. The muzzle is the only thing that stays on, and even that is loosened for the night.

When Callum gently nudges him awake the next morning, the creature wakes in a flinch. But then it remembers and immediately turns soft and apologetic. Callum just hushes him softly, spends a few minutes stroking his hair and telling him how good he’s been.

By the time they part ways with the others, Ash is almost as comfortable without his sight as with it. He responds to the slightest change in Callum’s directions like a fine-tuned weapon might, and yet still folds under the smallest direction like paper.

When Callum finally gets him home, he spends over an hour slowly, gently taking his gear off and rubbing at any soreness that might have developed in his arms.

This time when Callum tells him what a good boy he was, how well he did, how proud Callum is, he means it.

[chrislistenstopodcasts]

podcast review: the white vault

overall rating: 9.6/10

synopsis:

put out by fool and scholar productions, the white vault is a true survival horror podcast, dealing with extreme cold, starvation, and isolation, as well as a mysterious supernatural threat. seasons one and two focus on a team sent to research outpost fristed in svalbard, approximately 33km northeast of ny ålesund, the northernmost populated settlement on earth. upon arrival, they are trapped by a particularly intense and long snowstorm, which turns out to be the least of their problems...

season three switches gears to a new team documenting an archaeological site in the patagonian mountains, with some eerie parallels to seasons one and two- something goes fucky, and they too are trapped on the mountain surrounded by fog and strong winds that make descending back down nearly impossible.

all three seasons are presented in a found-footage format by an unnamed academic narrator that the script simply calls “the documentarian”. she herself is given some minor background eventually and seems to somehow be involved with the situation, although it is currently unclear.

the white vault is intended to be five seasons long, with season four launching in october 2020, and you bet i’m gonna be listening as it releases.

writing: 10/10

this podcast is phenomenally written. i don’t think i can put it in any other words. the writing achieves a fantastic balance between what you know and what you don’t, which is ridiculously difficult to do in horror. we know, from the fact that it’s presented as found footage after the fact, that it is likely the characters are all dead in the time we are hearing their story, but it is never stated, leaving the actual status very much in question. we get very little context outside of what the characters individually know, but boy do we get a lot of that. we get a lot of journal entries, video diaries, and group recordings that piece together the plot and the characters’ theories, across all three seasons. 

characters themselves are incredibly well-developed and well-written. one thing i really appreciate about the white vault is that in both plotlines, we get an incredible diversity of characters without it ever being a big deal in any way. the svalbard team consists of a brit, a mexicana, an icelander, a german, and a russo-canadian. the patagonia team (i believe, there are some who i do not think are completely specified) consists of a brazilian, two chileans, an unspecified latina, a chinese woman, and an mlm american. none of these are ever brought up as plot points or big deals- the only times it comes up are the occasional discussion of “back home” and even then it’s just given as a fact. each of these characters also speak their own native language at one point or another, and fool and scholar productions made a point to hire native speakers both to ensure accurate translation, and to actually voice the characters. that level of dedication and attention to detail does not go unnoticed and is a huge factor of why the podcast feels so realistic to me.

acting: 10/10

i touched on this a little above, but one detail fool and scholar productions did not skimp on is the acting, especially with the unique language aspects of the production. often written notes are read out loud by the character actor themself, rather than the documentarian, and the first few sentences will be in their native language, before they switch to english. those first few sentences are also repeated in the english translation, so you definitely won’t miss anything. i noticed this immediately, being a native german speaker myself and perfectly uderstanding the german character in season one. each character also has a very unique voice from the others and each speak with the kind of authentic accents that only a native speaker could bring to the table. this makes following the podcast much easier in my opinion, because i can always tell who’s saying what, which i will admit i have a hard time in stories where everyone is, for instance, from the same small american town. the acting itself is also top-notch.. we get incredibly realistic screams and gasps and strained breathing, and everything else you would expect. the white vault has definitely set the bar high for me on this count and honestly? i can’t complain about it at all

production: 9/10

okay, the only reason i am not giving this one a perfect score is that sometimes it’s produced a little too well. the sound design is impeccable, between just various mic effects mimicking echoes in caves, the soundscaping, and audio distortion where it is appropriate. the audio distortion is the only thing i somewhat take issue with, and even then i can’t really be too mad because the entire point is that sections are meant to be so deep-fried they’re unintelligible. i personally struggle with audio processing issues now and then so occasionally i have missed things when the distortion beings to fade out and things become audible again, but given that the transcripts are online free and i’ve honestly relistened to this podcast... what, three times now? it’s not a huge deal to me. but to anyone else that might have these kinds of problems, be aware.

in conclusion, the white vault is fantastic, and if you like a good survival horror or supernatural horror, it should definitely be the next podcast you check out because boy, you will not be disappointed.

[radramblog]

More Inevitable Hot Takes- MTG Announcement Day edition

I only have myself to blame for this one. I forgot this was upcoming, and I went and blathered about dumb preview cards from most of a month ago anyway. Well, now I’ve got to spend two posts in one week talking about Magic cards. Woe is me?

Once a year, WoTC has a big day where they announce, like, everything for the next year’s releases. And with the picking up speed of set releases, there’s a lot there, and thereby I have a lot to talk about.

To be clear, I’ve deliberately avoided Magic Twitter and Magic Reddit for these announcements. Tis a silly pair of places.

Standard Sets 2022

In order:

Kamigawa Neon Dynasty is very concerning, as one of the people who’s a genuine big fan of the original Kamigawa block. The thing is, I like Kamigawa, with it’s spirits and artwork and samurai and the like. I like cyberpunk, with the aesthetic and the themes and the music. I’m not sure I’m going to like the two combined. We better see some fucking weird-ass spirits, and I’ll only be slightly annoyed if they’re cyber-ghosts or whatnot as long as they maintain that bomb-ass art design.

We have a new plane and a set to go with it, which is cool and nice. Urban Fantasy is a thing Ravnica already did, to be honest, but if I had to guess, Streets of New Capenna is going to be a much more low-fantasy, noir-y take on the genre. I think I saw something about Azra returning, which is cool. That one on the key art looks…very Ob Nixilis-y, though.

And then we’re going back to Dominaria and actually doing The Brother’s War, again? I think Urza block was about that arc, though the Dominaria United set might be like, before all that nonsense. They might have given details, I wouldn’t have seen them, I’m going based on someone’s TL;DR. I’m excited to finally have a Mishra card that isn’t the Time Spiral one, though I’m concerned about how they’re going to make an Urza and a Mishra that are both powerful enough for the iconic characters but not so powerful as to be dominant in the Standard they’ll be legal in.

So, so much Universes Beyond

I think the four Warhammer 40k precon decks is kind of exactly what I was hoping we were going to get for that particular crossover. Just enough to get fans happy and make some fun new cards, not enough that there’s a ridiculous influx of Tyranids into Magic’s annals. I’d be interested to see what regular Magic cards translate well into these decks, seeing as they’ll have to be 40k-ified.

I feel similarly about the Baldur’s gate Commander draft set. I remember fans of that particular D&D spinoff were frustrated with the lack of representation in AFR (I think Minsk was like the only thing they got), so now they have a whole set to work with. Ultimately, D&D is now already, and interminably a part of Magic’s multiverse, and more from those particular realms isn’t going to make anything super fucky. Also, Commander Legends was cool as hell, and this is going to be another one of those, so that’s a plus.

And…a Lord of the Rings set? Like, a full set? I’m assuming whatever got them 40K also got them rights to tabletop LOTR, seeing as Games Workshop has run the LOTR tabletop game for a while. Like with D&D, the medium-high fantasy of LOTR crosses over pretty well into Magic, so I’m not worried about that kind of cockup making things Feel Weird. I’m a little confused about the legality of the set, though, seeing as it’s in Arena, but not Standard legal, but it is Modern legal? What and why and what about Pioneer or Historic?

Secret Lairs

Few hits, few misses, though I remember seeing spoilers from a few that aren’t on this list. Presumably, the Art Series: Johannes Voss, Thomas M. Baxa, and Purrfection and Math is for Blockers were announced separately? Anyway.

Hits: The Kamigawa Ink cards look drop-dead gorgeous, holy shit. Add in the fact that I already play two of those cards and that the others are all cards I like? Might have to get that one. Math is for Blockers is a fun lineup though I don’t…really get the theme? Both Artist Series look incredible, though I’m not huge on the card lineups.

Misses: PURRFECTION would be great if it wasn’t apparently a convention exclusive and also if the art of cats were on cat cards. It’s cute as fuck, but eh. The old-format walkers are frustrating, but I’m not as against them as a lot of people are- like they’re ugly, but not worth throwing a fucking fit over. I weep for any new player staring one of these down, especially if they barely understand planeswalkers in the first place and/or haven’t seen one of these particular ones before. Also, the art is kinda just ugly.

And then there’s the Universes Beyond ones. Fortnite and Street Fighter, both with new cards that will eventually have regular versions (which leads me to wonder if TWD will do the same). There’s a clear attempt here to hit the zoomers and the boomers in the community, though the former probably won’t have the money to afford the Secret Lair if they’re burning all their cash on V-Bucks. It’s…not a great look? Like I’m not opposed to cartoony art styles (the Goblins Kaboom SL looked great!) but Fortnite’s in particular looks like dogshit in my eyes and I’m not looking forward to seeing it in a Magic frame. Street Fighter I’m more excited for, because I like Street Fighter, and because they confirmed Chun-Li is going to have multikicker which is kind of perfect. Obviously we’re going to have to see the cards, but in one case I’m dreading that, and in the other I’m welcoming it.

Other Cards

We have more Challenger Decks, for Pioneer this time. The decklists are already out, and they look pretty solid! The Challenger Decks have been pretty cool previously, a really solid set of lists that only needed a bit of tweaking to be FNM-viable, but they were held back by the fact that they were often released not long before rotation. With Pioneer being a non-rotating format, this is going to be great for getting people into the format.

Another Double Masters set is…egh. It’s another thing that’s not for me, I can’t afford to whale on that shit. With shipping and conversion those packs end up ludicrously expensive in Perth, and I’m pretty sure I only got to play with one the first time. Also, this one is going to have all the collectable nonsense of 2020/21 Magic, which is going to be A Lot.

And another Jumpstart. Eh. Don’t cock the shipping on this one up and it’ll probably be okay.

Commander Collection Black is here, and the list is already out. The Green one ended up way overpriced, but at least in this case the cards are all super playable. Actually, they were for Green too, I think, but hey there’s a Deluge reprint and a flip Lilli, so. I kinda miss the Signature Spellbook series already, though.

Finally, Unfinity. Another Un-Set. Unstable was a fucking incredible set, both on a comedic level and as one of the sickest draft formats in a long time, so I’m excited to see that one followed up. On the other hand, Unsanctioned kind of landed with a dull thud. Apparently though, they got some of the folks from LRR (among others) to help write names and flavour text for this set, and I love those guys to death, so I can at least guarantee the comedy element will be present for this one.

Other stuff?

Well we have a date for the Netflix series. I have a hard time believing it’s actually happening. When I first started playing was around when rumours and announcements were still happening regarding a full-on movie, and that basically didn’t go anywhere. So it’s a little surprising to have a solid, actual time frame for Magic Story Content in Video Form. I haven’t kept with the story for a fair bit at this point (since Dominaria, tbh), so I’ve got no idea if it’s been any good, and as to whether this will be any good. Considering apparently Gideon’s in the lead, my hopes aren’t huge.

The only other thing is Pins. I like Pins. I have a bunch of them on my bag. I would like to get more Magic pins. So this is good.

And that, I think, is the sum total of it. These announcements always end up with a combination of excitement, trepidation, and dread, but I think this is leading more on the positive end of that spectrum. There’s still way too many fucking sets, but I think that is largely at Hasbro’s feet. The money machine must keep churning, after all. Maybe someday Magic and WoTC as a whole will be able to unshackle themselves from that particular constraint, but I am not holding my breath.

[writingducks]

Cordelia Cut the Fucking Bracelet

what’s up i got three people asking for this story which it good enough for me. i don’t write stories or fanfic a lot and i never post it so this is a first. I’ll put the story under a read more if i can figure it out. I almost exclusively use mobile so 👍 anyway, the format got a little fucky but oh well, i hope you enjoy

One year. That was the deal. One year of marriage, and then divorce. She would be free. Her reputation would be intact. And it will only take one year. And that year was almost up.

After months of their sham-marriage, James and Cordelia were almost finished. James imagined that she was ready to leave. They’d never had a real marriage. If nothing else, he was preventing her from finding a real marriage, a real husband. Besides, James had Grace. He loved Grace; he always had. He loved Grace, not Cordelia.

And yet, he found himself dreading the end of their marriage. After months of being with Cordelia, James had become comfortable. At least, that’s what he told himself. The truth was more complicated. He didn’t love her, but the idea of Cordelia marrying someone else was disheartening. He didn’t like the idea of someone else holding her, but he couldn’t tell why. He sat, deep in his thoughts, while Cordelia sparred with a training dummy. 

She was a picture of violent grace, her hair a blur of fire as she whipped her sword around her in a flash of gold. James watched, mesmerized. He knew what it felt like to thread his finger through that fire, to press his lips against hers. It had always been a ruse, something to convince everyone that they were in love. But maybe, James thought, it had worked too well. Maybe he had convinced himself, too. 

“James?” Cordelia’s breath was heavy from training, her skin glistening with sweat. “Is everything alright? You seem troubled.”

“Daisy,” James rose to his feet, striding across the room. “My Daisy,” he said as he reached her, his hand lifting to cup her cheek. “I-” his words caught in his throat.

“James?” Cordelia was staring up at him, confused. 

“Daisy, I,” he took a breath, steadying himself, “I find myself hoping that we might continue our marriage, beyond the year.” He spoke slowly, the words coming in segments. “That is,” he added, “if you would like to as well.” He gaze held still on her face, waiting for her response.

Cordelia knew that her marriage was a lie. But she still dreaded the end of it. She had hoped and prayed over the last year that it might become real. She and James had been friendly: reading, talking, laughing, but they had never been in love. At least he hadn’t. But he had always been kind about it, always trying to make her happy. But he couldn’t. Not when he didn’t love her. Nonetheless, he had stayed close, whispering, holding hands, holding her when she needed it. But never anything more. After the first few months, the pain had dulled from a sharp point to an ache, and his closeness had become comforting. Familiar. Constant.

Until it wasn’t. Over the past month, James has slowly been drawing away from her. Less touches, less jokes. Eyes darting away every time she caught him looking at her. Occasionally, she’d catch him gazing at her out of the corner of her eye, something like longing on his face. But it wasn’t longing. It couldn’t be. Could it? Cordelia dismissed his odd behavior, telling herself it was simply due to their marriage coming to its close.

Yet now, Cordelia couldn’t believe her ears. She had dreamed of this moment, a time when her husband would declare his love, real love, for her. And here he was, standing in front of her, the Mask gone entirely. And he was asking for her. 

But it wasn’t real. Cold silver circled his wrist; she could see it sparkle in the corner of her eye. He didn’t love her. He couldn’t. But here he was, asking her to remain married. And she couldn’t wrap her head around it. He still loved Grace; she knew he did. But right now, he was looking at her, face open, eyes brimming with hope. Those golden eyes that she loved so much. She could be like this, be with him, forever. He was asking her to be. And yet,

“No, James.” Although it broke her heart all over again, she pulled away. She couldn’t say yes. She couldn’t have a husband, a real husband, who loved someone else, even if he loved her, too. She turned away, ready to flee, but he caught her hand.

They stood, frozen, for a moment. She felt her hand slip out of his grip as he said, “I understand. Forgive me, I’ve overstepped your boundaries. It’s just, for a moment, I could imagine a world where we were… together. For real.”

Cordelia felt her breath hitch. She saw the world he described almost every night, in her dreams. If he could see it, too… But that wasn’t the only dream she had. Some nights, she was plagued by images of Grace. Dancing with James, talking to him, kissing him. The images drove her from sleep. She’d lay awake, James beside her, so close yet so far. And she’d contemplate curling into him, letting him protect her from her nightmares. But she couldn’t. Not when he was the subject. Not when he was the source. And although they often awoke closer to each other than when they had fallen asleep, Cordelia would not allow herself to move closer. Not while awake. She wouldn’t let herself get used to something that she was going to lose. She could suppress her desire. It was only for a year.

“I shouldn’t have assumed you could envision the same,” James was still talking behind her, begging her forgiveness.

“James,” she turned to face him, “I can envision that world. But it is not the world we live in. I’d lie to say I have never thought about it. About our lives if we stayed beyond the year. But I cannot.” She reached out, taking his hand into her own. “I find I wouldn’t mind to remain your wife, but I cannot be married to a man who loves me second.” She brought his hand up, showing him the bracelet on his wrist. “You love Grace, James. You always have. You always will.” She was surprised her voice kept steady. Her mind drifted back to the time, almost a year ago, when Grace had taken the bracelet back. James had kissed Cordelia, in the Whispering Room, so fiercely that she had allowed herself to believe it had been real. But it hadn’t been. 

“I love Grace,” he repeated softly, staring at the bracelet. “But I,” He cut off, turning his gaze back to Cordelia. “Daisy,” he whispered, his gold eyes dark with something she couldn’t make out. “Daisy, I-”

She brought a hand to his mouth. “Jamie.” She had kept him, trapped him, in a marriage he didn’t want, for almost a year. She would keep him no longer. Grace may have been engaged, but she had time to break it off, turn around and marry James if she so desired. “I have kept you for a year. I will not keep you any longer. At the end of the year, you will be free to marry whomever you wish,” she told him, “As will I.” He tried to respond, but she didn’t let him, “You love Grace. Far more than you could ever love me.”

The bracelet. James had forgotten about the bracelet, the pale silver cold against his skin. He had forgotten the world beyond Cordelia. 

“Daisy, please. I-” he choked, “I love you,” he said desperately, shocked at how right the words felt.

“No, James,” she dropped his hand, “you don’t.”

He watched her turn, scooping up Cortana on her way to the door. The silver circlet burned against his wrist.

“Daisy,” he ran after her, not daring to touch her. She froze nonetheless.

“James-” she turned around, facing him once again.

He spoke before she could continue, “Let me prove it to you,” he said, his hand rising, fingers coming to the bracelet on his opposite wrist.

“James, no,” she said, staring in shock as he followed the loop of the bracelet, searching for the clasp.

What was he doing? He was breaking his promise to Grace. Every part of him screamed at him to stop. Every part except one. And that part won out. He was a Herondale. Herondales love fiercely, completely. If his heart was the one telling him to take off the bracelet, to show her, then he would listen. He saw Cordelia tense, watching silently as his fingers fiddled for the clasp. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The way her hair glinted like fire in the witchlight, her brown skin against the gold of her sword. 

His fingers had found the clasp. They worked around, trying to undo it.

And nothing happened. Cordelia released her breath, sounding slightly disappointed. The sound tore at his heart. He tried again. Still nothing. Cordelia turned wordlessly, once again heading for the door.

James was frozen. His eyes darted to the silver on his wrist. His fingers had the clasp, but when he tried to unsecure it, it wouldn’t budge. Something was wrong. He tried again and again and again. To no avail.

“Cordelia,” his voice came out hushed, no more than a whisper, “Cordelia, I can’t do it.” He felt panic edging into his voice.

“I know, James.”

“No, Cordelia. It won’t come off.” 

She could hear the panic rising in his voice. She spun around, appearing at his side in half a second, “What do you mean it won’t come off?”

“I can’t undo do the latch.” He was fumbling, hands unsteady in a way that was so unlike him. “I can’t take it off. I can’t-” he felt himself sink to his knees. “It won’t come off.”

“James,” she started.

“Help me.” It was a simple request, but he heard the desperation in his voice. He had scratched his wrist in his futile attempts to remove the bracelet, his skin becoming raw. The bracelet taunted him, sliver upon red. “Cordelia,” he said, her name like a prayer on his lips, his eyes rising to her face, “please. Help me.”

“Okay,” she said, “It’s okay, James. Let me.” She held a hand out to him. He placed his wrist into it. Relief flooded through him. Cordelia was a calming presence. He was aware of her hand against his arm. He was still panicked, but the overwhelming sense of wrongness was lessened by how right her touch felt. He stared into her face for a moment longer, taking in her features. Her brown skin. Her face was set, but her eyes shone with fear. Her hair spilled over her shoulders as she bent her head, reminding James of a fire burning through a cold night. He held his breath as she tried the clasp. Nothing. She tried again. And again. And again. And again. She kept trying until he drew his hand back. “Okay,” she said, her voice teetering with unease, “okay. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.” She had gotten up and was pacing back and forth. “We’ll send for Christopher. We can find Magnus. Magnus will be able to help. We can tell your parents-”

“No,” he cut in, “No, Cordelia. Please.” He was gazing up at her from the floor. She stopped short.

“James, we have to.”

“No, Cordelia.” He met her eyes. For a moment, the world held still. Time folded in on itself as James sat staring. Pleading. “Cordelia,” he said, “I’m scared.”

She froze. Time continued its crawl as he waited for her to do something, anything. 

Eventually she moved, coming to a crouch beside him once more. “James,” she said, “We need help. We can’t get this off you on our own.”

“I can’t,” he said, realization dawning, “but you can.”

“James, no,” she said, backing away. Was he crazy? For the second time in the past hour, Cordelia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was dreaming. She had to be. This was nothing more than a new, twisted nightmare. But the way James looked up at her made her heart skip a beat. His gold eyes staring at the wall behind her, brimming with confidence. In her. He kept that confidence as he told her the stupidest plan she’d ever heard.

“But you can,” he had said, rising to his feet. “Cordelia,” he fixed his eyes on her.

She knew exactly what he was thinking. And she couldn’t do it.

“Cordelia, you can cut the bracelet off.”

“No, absolutely not.”

“It’s the only way. Cortana can cut through anything.”

“Including your wrist, James!” She marched up to him, meeting his gaze. “I can’t do it. I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered.

“You won’t,” he said, wrapping her in his arms. “Please, Daisy. Please do this for me.”

She was shaking in his arms. She couldn’t do it; she was shaking too hard. She couldn’t hurt him. She shook her head against him, “I can’t.”

His hands landed on her shoulders. He was suddenly holding her away from him, his eyes boring into hers, wild in desperation. “You can,” he said, “I know you can.”

Her heart tightened in her chest. He looked at her like she was the only person in the world. No one existed beyond this room, this embrace. “I can’t hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Then you can give me an iratze.”

“But what if it’s not enough.”

“It will be.” He looked at her with such intensity, she found she would have believed anything he said. “Please,” he whispered.

He sounded confident, but he was shaking all over. His eyes were wild; he spoke too fast. His movements were choppy, not at all graceful like his usual self. She imagined he would have vanished into shadows if he could. She numbly scooped up her sword. Cortana. Forged by Wayland the Smith. It can cut through anything. Not everyone believed it, but Cordelia had seen it firsthand. She had cut through the stone of Tower Bridge. She had shattered the barrier between worlds. She had plunged it into the chest of a greater demon, a prince of hell, Belial, James’s Grandfather. Surely she could cut a bracelet.

Cordelia took a shaky breath. She didn’t want to, but if he believed she could do it, she believed him. Forcing herself to meet his eye, she heard herself say, “Okay. Okay.” She sounded more confident than she felt. “But if this goes wrong-”

“It won’t.”

But those times had been life or death. They had been forceful swings, intended to harm, to maim, to kill. To protect James from the demons trying to manipulate him. How much force would it take to sever the bracelet? More or less than it would take to sever his hand?

She could feel herself shaking as she held out her hand once more. James placed his hand, palm up, into it. She drew the two of them to the floor, turning his hand over and closing his fist. She held it steady below the wrist. She brought her sword up with her other hand. She slid the end under the chain, laying the blade flat against the back of his hand. Despite her shaking, Cortana was steady in her hand. Cordelia glanced at James. He was staring at his wrist, shuddering under Cortana’s golden surface. She followed his gaze. The bracelet seemed to burn against her sword. Silver against gold, but the gold keeping the silver at bay. She took a deep breath and held it. She moved the sword ever so slightly to the side, catching the bracelet. She put more pressure on the sliver, increasing it slowly, trying to avoid any sudden jerks of the blade. The chain pulled, digging into his skin. She heard his breath hitch. She pushed harder. And harder. And harder. Until.

The sword pulled free, moving in a wide arc. The bracelet hit the ground with a dull clink. James closed his eyes as relief flooded his senses. He let out a shaky breath before opening them again. Cordelia was in front of him, her sword flung out behind her. Her hand was supporting his wrist, sending waves of lightning up his arm. He knelt there, frozen. She dropped her hands, laying her sword on the floor. Her hands flew to her belt, fumbling for something. A moment later, she was holding a stele to his arm.

“What are you doing?” he said breathlessly. “You didn’t cut me.”

“I know, but you scratched your wrist to hell, you idiot!” She was shaking, her voice tinged with relief. She pressed the stele to his skin, still despite her shaking. She drew the mark slowly, like she was afraid to make a mistake. Not that James could ever imagine her making a mistake.

He felt as though he had had an albatross draped around his neck, and Cordelia had cut it free. Her hand lingered on his skin for a moment. He could still feel her touch. She sat back on her heels, watching him, her expression guarded. He stared at her, their eyes meeting. He was dimly aware of his ragged breathing, the absence of the bracelet. But he was focused on Cordelia. Her eyes searched his, her hair swept around her, her lip between her teeth, like she was holding back a question.

He knew what it was like to kiss those lips. He remembered the first time he visited the Hell Ruelle. The way she looked in her bronze dress, dancing on stage as a distraction. It had been a very good distraction. And then later, in the Whispering Room. He thought about the way her lips felt against his, her waist under his hands, her leaning into him, pressing their bodies together.

Suddenly he was moving, grabbing her hands and pulling them to their feet.

“James?” she asked. The way Cordelia said his name made his heart stop. He longed to pull her closer, to kiss her the way he had in the Whispering Room. But he didn't know if she wanted it, so he did nothing.

“Daisy,” he said, his voice hushed. It was the only sound he could muster. The only word he wanted to say. "Daisy."

He must have been pulling her without realizing it, because she stepped closer to him. Before he knew what he was doing, he pulled her into him, drawing her into his chest. She looked up at him, confused. But her expression held more than just confusion.

“James,” she started. 

He looked down at his wife. By the Angel, his wife. They were married. She was his wife. Obviously, he knew that, but it was dawning on him what that meant. They were married; they had been for almost a year. And he had wasted all that time. He realized that now. Now he knew that standing here, in his arms, was his wife. His face broke into a smile. It felt like the first time he had smiled in a year.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Of course I am,” he said, smiling down at her, “Am I not allowed to be happy with my wife?” He watched her face ripple. They had only referred to each other as husband and wife around company. She looked confused, and that looked deepened when he said, “I find myself, in this moment, very happy with you, Mrs. Herondale.”

He was about to lean in to kiss her when she drew away. “But James,” she said, breathless, “Grace.”

Grace. He had forgotten about Grace. Grace, who he was supposed to love. Who he was supposed to be willing to do anything for. Who gave him the bracelet. He thought about her, trying to bring back any of those feelings. He remembered feeling them, but now he couldn’t even imagine them. He couldn’t imagine loving anyone, anything, more than Cordelia.

“Grace,” he said. “I don’t love Grace.” The words came slowly. He realized with a start that they were true. He didn’t love Grace. He wasn’t sure he ever had. But, he had, right? He remembered loving her. But he remembered it the way he remembered a dream: hazy, disconnected, and a little bit ridiculous.

“What?” Cordelia asked in shock, “James, you love Grace. You said it yourself.”

“No, Daisy. I don’t love Grace. I know that I used to, at least I think I do. But not now. Right now, I can’t imagine loving anybody in the world more than you.”

“James, I-” she started. She was staring into his eyes, as if she was looking for a reason not to believe him, that this was all a sick joke.

She never finished her thought. James moved without realizing it. Before he could think, he was kissing her. Her lips parted in surprise. She was still for a moment, before leaning into him. She threaded her fingers into his hair. His hands moved to her waist. He traced the outline of her lips with his tongue and felt her shudder. He grinned against her lips. She locked her fingers behind his neck and pulled him down. They stood, locked together, and let the world fade into the background.

When they finally came up for air, neither of them spoke. They held each other close, as if they were afraid the moment might end, and they would find themselves right back where they started.

“James?” Cordelia said at his ear. She drew back to meet his eyes, “What was that?”

He felt his smile falter, “What was what? The kiss? If you didn’t enjoy it, I promise to never do it again.” And he wouldn’t. Even if it killed him, James would never so much as touch her again if she asked him not to. He prepared himself for the worse. Which never came.

“No, I did enjoy that,” she said, blushing violently. “I was talking about the bracelet.”

“Oh.” One uneasy feeling had been replaced by another. What was that? “I’m not sure,” he admitted, “but I sure would like to.” He watched as she crouched down and picked the broken chain from the floor, holding it by one end away from them. “Why wouldn’t it come off? Do you think it was enchanted?”

“I’m not sure. We can send for Magnus. He’d be able to tell.”

“Yes. We’ll call Magnus.” He smiled down at her, “My wife is a well of great ideas,” he told her, sending her blushing again. “Maybe he could help me find a replacement. I get the feeling we should get on like none of this happened.”

“Oh.” She dropped her shoulders.

“I mean,” he added quickly, “in company. I think I should appear to still have the bracelet.”

“Oh.” She sounded relieved. “So, we could be…” 

“Husband and wife. For real. That is, if you would like to.”

“Yes!” she answered quickly, “I mean, that sounds… pleasant,” she corrected.

James smiled at his wife once more, “So do you think we might remain married?”

“Oh James, I would love nothing more.”

He drew Cordelia into his arms once again. She laughed as he spun her around. Later, they would send for Magnus. They would tell their friends their marriage had become real. They would discover the truth behind the bracelet. But today, right now, they would make up for lost time. They would lose themselves in each other. But they wouldn’t rush themselves. They wouldn’t have to. They no longer only had a year. Starting now, they would have the rest of their lives.

[bladekindeyewear]

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh.  Time to pay the piper.  Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to.  FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!??  Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash?  --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it.  I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive.  Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33:  Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized.  They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining.  But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such.  They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT.  Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state!  Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it.  And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted.  :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this.  The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice.  At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall.  Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though.  Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us.  Real Dirk-like, actually.  Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know.  No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises. 

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all.  He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance. 

Huh.  So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him?  That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such.  That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that.  I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid. 

This is ALSO what I came here for:  Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us.  I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it.  So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand. 

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious.  Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue. 

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole. 

You know... who IS doing the commentary here?  One of the authors, all of them?  One of the artists??  This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions. 

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure. 

HERE we go!  This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place.  John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake.  (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.)  So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag. 

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening.  Good!  No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet).  That’s an honest relief.  The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens. 

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so.  Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that? 

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting!  Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting.  Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter!  But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65:  Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood.  I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!!  I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson.  Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole. 

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood!  I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving.  I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”?  Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it?  Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing?  I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that.  I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here.  I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”.  I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context.  (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any.  I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please.  Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product???  They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man.  That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it. 

Wait.  What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...?  Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving.  How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far!  Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected.  $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on.  Sound fair?  I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake.  Have a good MLK weekend, y’all.  :)

[imuybemovoko]

I die inside while dissecting Jesus music, part 3

Yep. Doing this shit again. It might take me a hot minute to write this one up, but I’ll get it done sooner or later. 

This one gets a bit more fucky than usual, so here’s a few (US) suicide hotline numbers and a rather serious trigger warning. If you’re going to have a hard time with religious trauma, weird indirect forms of suicidality, and that kind of thing, go read something more wholesome. Practice self care better than I do. For the love of all you hold holy, my thoughts are less important than your well-being. Do not read this if it’ll hurt you to do so.

National suicide prevention lifeline:  1-800-273-8255 Trevor Project lifeline: 1-866-488-7386 The Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741-741 Trans Lifeline:  1-877-565-8860

I’ve looked through my playlist trying to find a song that I don’t remember as being repetitive as fuck. There are artists out there who don’t make their shit sad and modular for church camps and I was at least somewhat into their stuff. There are also older hymns. The playlist is mostly full of that weird shitty contemporary Christian music, but somewhere nestled in between stacks of almost painfully similar songs from Hillsong (they’re not all samey, but they get pretty repetitive) is Audrey Assad’s Even Unto Death. 

At first glance, listening back, it seems to have some of the same formatting elements as the shitty modern-styled songs I’ve gotten tired of, but it gives me a very different vibe for a few reasons. First, Assad’s general body of work as I can find it on Youtube (and is also stored in my playlist) is largely older hymns, and that’s her general style. This song is, as far as I can tell, an original work, but its instrumental and melodic style is heavily influenced by the vibe that older hymns give off. Second, the bridge is more varied and interesting than that of Even So Come or Gracefully Broken. The song does, in the final bridge and in the choruses, engage in some repetition, but at a level that I find far closer to what’s typical in secular music. Third, the melody reminds me somewhat of old hymns in a way I don’t know exactly how to describe. I just imagine it with piano and SATB choir. Most modern Christian music just doesn’t land like that. But for the trauma, I’d say analyzing this song might end up being a breath of fresh air. 

But for the trauma...

Anyway. Here are the lyrics, and here is the video again. 

The song is formatted in a way that’s nearly typical of a pop song. You have a verse (in this case composed of “Jesus”, two lines of bullshit, “Jesus” again, and two more lines of bullshit), a three line chorus repeated twice, a second verse (same format), the chorus again but this time with a more personal form of address on the second time through, the bridge (which Genius divides into four distinct sections) with some repetitions of the final lines, the chorus again, and an outro that’s basically just some repetitions of lines in the chorus and then “Jesus” and the first line of bullshit from the first verse, twice. 

So let’s get into this.

First verse:

Jesus The very thought of You It fills my heart with love Jesus You burn like wildfire And I am overcome

Alright. These lines are (clearly) addressed towards Jesus. (Speaking to him directly is a thing people do.) The song has a bit of a mix of a romantic bent and something a... little bit weirder, and both are starting to become visible in this first verse. The first couplet is like... straightforward. The singer is very in love with Jesus and even thinking of him makes her feel things. She’s not quite doing a John Donne here, I don’t think, but this is a pretty strong thing and this is part of why I say there’s a romantic bent to this. The second stanza contains that “fire” imagery that’s often associated with the Christian god, most often the Holy Spirit, that serves the purpose of showing how believers’ whole beings should be consumed by God. Then she says “I am overcome”. This reads to me like one of those “this makes me feel things to a degree I don’t know what to do with” kind of things, but there’s an element of what I’ll describe as a conquest narrative here. ...Again, not quite doing a John Donne, but not not doing it either. 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

Next comes the chorus, and I think it bears mention now rather than somewhere strange like I’d normally do it because this verse flows right into it. 

Lover of my soul Even unto death With my every breath I will love You

It plays through this twice. 

Gives me the same kind of vibe as Job 13:15 here.  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” The difference here is Assad’s song mentions love, which I guess goes beyond trust. So it’s even a bit crazier, and the “with my every breath” thing is the absolute kicker. This means she’s wanting to do literally everything, literally everything, in a way that expresses her love for Jesus. Extreme sentiments like this aren’t uncommon in song, sure, but given that we’re discussing Christianity... 

it’s not just hyperbole, they actually think this way and it’s very fucking toxic.

Also the chorus is the main reason I say this has a romantic bent. “Lover of my soul” is a fucking juicy lyric. 

Jesus You are my only hope And You, my prize shall be Jesus You are my glory now And in eternity

I think this second verse is mostly straightforward too. Literally just “Jesus is the entire source of my hope and I see him as a prize for whatever I’m doing” and “Jesus is my glory now and forever”. Glory here refers to like... honor and magnificence. In Christian parlance it refers to the condition that believers will be in after the world is overthrown by Jesus and me and all my fellow non-believing sexual deviants get hyucked straight into the eternal fire. It’s just like... shorthand for being “cleansed of sin” or whatever and living with God for eternity. I don’t know what circles Assad is active in; she might have a different take on this than I’m inclined to, but honestly given my understanding of this concept that’s primarily fueled by Protestant views and especially Evangelicalism, I’m inclined to read this as an empty threat.

Oof.

Onto the bridge. 

I notice now that the bridge has essentially two main sections. Genius says four; that’s a weird choice to me because each section they label is not doing a separate thing, but the two I see, based more on the repetition of the last two lines of each stanza and the similarity of the sentiment in the first half of each, very much are.The first chunk of it goes like this:

In my darkest hour In humiliation I will wait for You I am not forsaken

The idea here is that even in the darkest hour of their life or humiliating moments, the singer is trusting in God to get them through it and like... idk, remedy their humiliation or make it worthwhile somehow? This serves as a reminder that God hasn’t left even if it looks like he might’ve. 

Genius does a bit of a fucky-wucky here in the second section. They replace “though” with “oh”. I’m not sure how they could’ve messed this up, the video they link is literally the same lyric video that I linked, produced by Assad’s literal official artist channel, and the video shows this section the way I do below.

Though I lose my life Though my breath be taken I will wait for You I am not forsaken

This second chunk is more of the same “even if this destroys me I’ll trust you God”. Job 13:15 again, basically. Again, not hyperbole, they actually aspire to this. It’s not healthy at all. This first half of the bridge is basically just “haha I’m devoted to this relationship to the point of self-betrayal and inaction.” 

Oof.

Second half:

One thing I desire To see You in Your beauty You are my delight Yeah, You are my glory

So this third section is basically just inserting verse 2 into the bridge in slightly different words, but the role it plays here, juxtaposed so much more directly with the extreme, self-betraying devotion expressed in the first half of the bridge, is more as a declaration that Jesus is the only thing that truly matters to the singer. Like the entire vibe here is “this life doesn’t even matter to me, yeet this body and idgaf, just let me go see Jesus.” I think I mentioned in a previous post, I think another one of these depression-spiking jesus song dissections,  that this kind of mindset leads to what I’ll describe as a soft form of suicidality in which someone desires death by way of yelling at people for Jesus in places where that’s dangerous to do. If the singer’s only real desire is to see Jesus, then they’re very much at risk for this. Which prompts the question...

Is Audrey Assad okay?

You my sacrifice Oh, Your love is all consuming You are my delight Yeah, You are my glory Yeah, oh You are my glory God, yeah You are my glory Yeah

So aside from the “sacrifice” line here, which I’ll get to, this whole thing is more of the same. All-consuming love, Jesus is her delight, blah blah. The sacrifice thing refers to the crucifixion and to the framework Christianity posits by which blood needs to be spilled so that God can decide not to fucking yeet someone into an unending fire hole and that Jesus came to be the final perfect sacrifice so that no one needs to stab a goat or whatever the fuck again. 

After this there’s the chorus and the outro that’s basically just the end of the chorus and then the first two lines repeated a bit, you know, just as this last little reminder that dying is ok if it’s for Jesus. 

Which I guess is the overarching message of this song too. Dying is fun if it’s for Jesus, kids! Also let’s definitely not do a John Donne! 

I feel like I reference that poem a lot. But it goddamn fits. Like terrifyingly well. I think the reason I latched onto that poem so hard when I learned about it in my literature survey course last fall is because, minus the borderline sexual nature of Donne’s thoughts here, it maps onto my own experience very goddamn hard. I went far enough into Assad’s self-betraying devotion to God for a while there that I fantasized about dying for Jesus in a country where that’s likely. Suicide by martyrdom, if you will. 

On that note, here are the hotlines again.

National suicide prevention lifeline:  1-800-273-8255 Trevor Project lifeline: 1-866-488-7386 The Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741-741 Trans Lifeline:  1-877-565-8860

If you read this far, I guess thanks for being interested in my thoughts, and I really hope this didn’t trigger anything too serious. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should probably go talk to my therapist about this.

[dzamie]

Sure! So there’s a tool called yt-dlp (tumblr can be fucky with links in notes, so just google yt-dlp and click on the github) that does most of the heavy lifting. To download it, click on whatever it says is the “Latest” in the “Releases” section (right column, just under the fork/view stats) and then click yt-dlp.exe to download the exe file. I think you click yt-dlp_macos if you’re on a Mac, but I’m on Windows, so idk. Save the file somewhere memorable - Mine’s in dzamie\Videos\yt-dlp\

yt-dlp is a command-line tool, so double-clicking it won’t do much. Instead, create two new text files: list.txt and get.bat (these names are arbitrary - if you want, you can name them, like, “pancake.txt” and “david_tennant_nudes.bat” or something). Make sure that get.bat is named get.bat, and not get.bat.txt - Windows is sometimes tricky like that. There might be a warning that “this kind of file can modify your system” but that’s fine - it’s gonna create files, that’s what it’s made for.

Now, list.txt is gonna be where you paste your YT URLs, so let’s skip that and move onto get.bat. This is one line long:

yt-dlp.exe -a list.txt -f "[height<=?720]"

Let’s go through this step by step.

yt-dlp.exe

Pretty obvious, this tells the computer to run the exe.

-a list.txt

This says “open list.txt and download every single video you see listed in there” - without this, it’ll expect you to give it a URL directly, which we’re trying not to do because that takes time and also sucks. Once again, if you decide to name your text file “bazinga_bazooper.txt”, just go ahead and write that in instead of “list.txt” (if the filename uses spaces, throw some quotes around that bad boy... or do it anyway, just to be on the safe side).

-f “[height<=?720]”

This is optional to include. -f is the “choose format” thing, and [height<=?720] says “find me the best video quality worse or equal to 720p.” I use this because I don’t notice much difference between 720 and 1080 when I’m just casually watching a let’s play or something, and 720 downloads about twice as fast as 1080. If you have good internet and storage space, you can leave this off; if you have shitty internet or a nearly-full disk, and don’t mind watching 540p or 360p, go ahead and change that number accordingly. Small number means fast download and worse quality. Note: if you decide to use this part of the line, make sure you delete the quotation marks and write them in again in Notepad (or whatever .txt editor you’re using). Windows can be finicky about what quotation marks it likes in its command line, but it always accepts default Notepad quotes.

Then just save the batch file. Now that get.bat is set up, it’s time to get to downloading! Open up list.txt and start pasting in URLs, one per line. It should look like this:

[ID: a screenshot of Notepad. Three YouTube URLs are visible, each on their own line]

Then save the file and double-click get.bat! This nifty command line window will pop up, letting you know what video it’s downloading and how fast it’s going!

[ID: a screenshot of a Windows command line window with several lines of text giving statuses on downloading videos. One video has been fully downloaded, and another is at 15.7%]

Sometimes a video just won’t download, and it’ll skip that one, but that doesn’t seem to happen all that often. When that’s the case, it won’t generate a thumbnail in file explorer and it’ll be like 0 bytes big or something. Just delete it - you’ll have to open it in browser, probably. But otherwise:

[ID: screenshot of two video files in Windows File Explorer. One is named “Square Enix Promises A Sickening NFT Future” with a thumbnail of a wrestling ring, and the other is named “‘Hang in there, everybody!’” with a thumbnail of My Little Pony pixel art]

Ta-da! Videos! Saved locally, so you can hang on to them however long you want, you can watch them whenever you want, and they don’t even show up in your browser history!

I actually manage my YouTube subscriptions through Thunderbird, so these days it’s pretty rare I ever actually go to youtube.com in browser.

hate being the generation that remembers no ads on YouTube & the annoyance when we first saw 1 ad every 10 videos, then 1 every 5 videos, then on every video, then multiple ads within a single video, only for YouTube to market paying for Premium™️ to ‘get rid of ads!’ which weren’t even there at the start

[whifferdills]

I am dumb about terms of fiction but my only emotional reaction to Heather showing up was being pissed that main companions' het love interests on this show more often get build-up, while Heather got far less. sorry if I'm missing all the points, it was just a really frustrating finale to me for multiple reasons besides this one, I'm not trying to be holier than thou, I just found the whole thing hurtful on a bunch of different levels? sorry again, I'm not trying to be dismissive

that’s a far more thoughtful response than what i had, you’re not missing anything. the finale relies on the audience giving it the benefit of the doubt (the Moff era in a nutshell), there’s a lot it does that it hasn’t quite earned. it worked for me, but in the same way “Heaven Sent/Hell Bent” does, which assumes we accept this grand, important relationship after a season where Clara was frequently underused or just straight-up MIA

(”The Doctor Falls” also confirms for me that “The Lie of the Land” is this season’s episode that needs to be excised from continuity. the Dr’s speech about kindness is somewhat undercut by the Dr having been such an intense asshole for so long)

for Bill, i do like the idea that she was saved, basically, by hope for the future, considering where she started. in the broader context, tho, it is frustrating. there’s not nearly enough representation for it to not be frustrating, like we finally got an openly queer main companion and that’s the story they chose to tell? hmm. dunno. def a discussion to be had there

(whatever my opinions on Chibnall specifically, i’m looking forward to seeing how the writers-room mechanic plays out. the classic DW mode of writer-foward stories where everyone comes in with their own thing works for one-offs, but once you start adding in arcs it’s like an exquisite corpse. a lot of what’s wrong with New Who is down to writers who just don’t get where they’re at in the context of the show, that’s where you get your dropped balls and fucky characterization. get everyone on the same page and, fingers crossed, DW might succeed in a serialized format.)

[16-gauge]

27kra analysis frame by frame, turns out fake + turns out a footage taken from a horror movie - ???

Hello TJLC conspirators and all people still digging to find some explanation for all that season 4 mess. Although I checked out your blogs and read metas from a long time, I didn't have my own account, and the reason I decided to start one is something I recently noticed, which may or may not give some clues about something, i don't know. I may be right, I may be terribly wrong, whatever, but the whole conspiracy itself is already one big madness, so I might as well drop something which may seem crazy or irrelevant to me...

People probably already analyzed it a hundred times, but I'd like to come back to the subject of thelostspecial.com and the whole 27kra thing. It's unknow whether it's a real official site established to mess with our minds, or an incredibly well done and entertaining fan made, but I think there's something weird going on and the site's content is definitely worth checking out. When you type thelostspecial.com/27kra/ you get a rather spooky, The Lost Highway-ish kind of gif which consists mainly of VHS-type glitches. Since I'm a huge fan of VHS, super 8, analog formats and all those glitches and deformations related them, I decided to split the gif into frames and look at them closer. Here I'm going to analyze what is visible on those frames (or maybe, what I can see). I won't go on with guessing 27kra name, I'll concern strictly on the gif's content. There's something that I noticed that I didn't see mentioned anywhere on Tumblr (though I may be wrong and it could have been written already, and then I'm sorry for making sensations over old news). Okay, here it goes.

I'm going to post the frames in order. I'm going to write what I see on those pictures, which of course doesnt mean it's right or anything cause other ones might see it completely different, and of course we cannot be sure of anything at all.

First off, we see something that looks like an entrance, or an exit, and a chunk of the corridor behind the "door". That's the first thing that came to my mind. It somehow made me think of Sherrinford, all that simple architecture, corridors and portals, etc., probably because of those numbers visible on the top and the bottom of the footage, it all reminds me of some sort of CCTV footage.

Next frame is just glitches... or maybe something more? If you look closer it seems like some very blurry footage of some room. You can see the black doors in the right corner of the photo, and just next to doors (or maybe a window?) on the left you can see a dark rectangle which might be a tv screen. Then there's something dark on the left side, and on the bottom there's something like a... white bottle??? Or just a bottle-looking glitch, which seems more probable. I swear at first I considered it just a composion of glitches, but now I see it as a room.

Then there's THIS WEIRD SHIT. It appears at least four times in different variations, so I'm going to discuss it later. To see description scroll this writing. Now I'll pass onto the next frame.

Glitches... anyone can see something in there?

"TV room" comes back again.

What the hell is that. A table with some books/CDs/packages (with some metal holders?)? And with something round? And on the left side there's something like a floor and the wall? It seems as if someone took a photo of table (or whatever it is) standing just by this table. Table. Why am I even calling it a table? What the fuck is that? SOmEBODY HELP

Beautiful colorful smear of I don't know what. Althought some people claim to see something in there.

A more blurry version of the "table". I know it's not a table - I hope someone enlighten me wtf it is.

???

And then there's something that probably everyone already noticed. An eye. Or THE eye. I've seen people writing it's Moriarty, well, that's also the the first thing that came to my mind. I tried to find some photo of Moriarty looking down (sort of) so I could compare those pictures - I admit you guys are better at finding needed photos/screencaps, here's the best I could find:

I cut it just to have an eye in the center. Not exactly the same position, but it doesn't matter. I think they didn't show him with eyebrows cause it wouldn't be easier to see the similarity (IF there are some THEY, IF it is who we think it is.) Containing Moriarty in the footage would be a real sign that something wicked this way comes. But, I don't know. Someone told me it might be John Watson's eye, which would fit the shot-in-the-eye theory. What do you think about it?

Another (or the very same room). A kind of cluttered room...

This one seems like a look at the room from above, maybe another CCTV angle. I think it's the more visible version of the previous.What the fuck is that? A sofa? A coffeetable? Why am I seeing tables everywhere? And what's that purple thing?

AND FINALLY SOMETHING FUCKY

Please let me paste the frame which I passed Here's what follows just after the CCTV-looking frame

I may be going mad but ISN'T IT A FUCKING FACE IN HERE?! I mean-

That's how i see it. The face seems to be tilted back. If you look at the higher resolution screen you can see it seems nose-like and eye-like. The "hair" seem to be long and straight, so it's a woman? Not a woman? Eurus? Not Eurus? Whoever? Or is it just glitches? But if you look at other frames by the end of the gif you can see "the face" sort of MOVES:

It's tilted back a little bit more and turned in its left a little. Here's the same thing in negative:

The things that follow:

BUT! I just now got this one idea... a crazy, fucked up idea, it definitely is insane and probably wrong, but...

Of course, of course I know it might me fake, something put together by some Sherlock fan, or whatever the fuck else. But something tells me it's not. This COULD be the real thing, right? So, what does it tell us, fans/The Great Game players? At best: something's coming, something's happening, you're on the right path. At worst: someone's mocking us and though to me it's highly enjoyable, it's not Mofftis and we're seeing things (IT'S JUST THAT THERE'S TOO MUCH OF THOSE SUPPOSEDLY NONEXISTENT THINGS TO SEE, COUGH COUGH). Either way, we're being experimented on. I don't know about you, but either way it's awesome. For the first time from a long time i'm having real fun, and trust me, that's a lot. But, for real. If it's just a fake and we're all wrong, I would be highly disappointed. THIS ALL IS TOO GREAT, TO GENIUS, TOO ENJOYABLE TO RESULT IN NOTHING. And it means I've spent four hours on putting together a writing about something that doesn't exist. To be honest, I've spent too much time on analyzing unreal things and searching for subliminal satanic messages in something very fucked up just to aknowledge it was all in vain. And now I'm just too mindfucked over this and other things that all of you post every day... Maybe I got excited over something not relevant or already discussed, i don't know, you decide. But i needed to throw it out somewhere. Please tell me what you think about it, and if you have something new to add about it or ask me about anything don't be afraid to do it. I'm more than eager to discuss with you guys. Maybe I sound like a crazy person but it's their fault, not ours, right?

originally posted by allthesherlockgifs

I'm new here but I decided to tag people that I followed before I even made and account and that I consider awesome meta writers - I'm not asking for attention, I just want to get in touch with people interested in investigating this difficult and mysterious™ case. So here it goes:

the-7-percent-solution   tjlc    jenna221b   inevitably-johnlocked     waitedforgarridebs       marcespot   marcelock teapotsubtext      

Congratulations and thanks to those who got through it and are still with me. Don't judge me too hard, I'm shy and confused but yeah, here's all of that, maybe someone finds it interesting. - Bloody

---------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Guys it's solved. There's nothing in there. It turned out that most of those glitches can be easily found on Youtube as free samples of vhs glitches, except for the supposed "Moriarty's eye". I apologize for raising hopes and making some of you excited about the concept, but it all turned out absolutely fake. I'm sorry. So sorry.

To somehow not to leave you irritated/disappointed entirely, here's one last thing that still could be relevant...  There still could be some spark of hope because of the "Moriarty's eye". I couldn't find it anywhere in premade popular glitches so it still could be a thing, maybe they just decided to do it easier way and paste one important frame between some easily-found shit from Youtube. Though i would except more from them. But... isn't it all about spreading confusion? Maybe it's MEANT to be that way... It does make me wonder why is it just like that, and well, the aim of all this investigating is to make us wonder, so... you never know. Sometimes it's all about finding ONE IMPORTANT THING between irrelevant pieces and chaos, so if you want to believe this theory, we have this one important thing, we have Moriarty. I don't know what to think of it all, right now I'm a little upset, so i can't tell anything else.

That was my more positive take on all of this, at least i tried to find some proof it wasn't entirely fake/irrelevant, maybe you have something wiser to add here. But personally i'm disappointed. I feel like an idiot now. Seems I'm as bad wannabe-detective as Anderson. Or even worse. I apologize again. :(

________________________________________________

ANOTHER UPDATE

@peggymarsh

  Unfortunately yes, I've seen it there. Even more frames. People on YT were guessing

it might be one of those cheap old idiotically-colored porn videos. Hmm.

@gemfangirl

  asked if it isn't actually Mary's eye. Here's my answer:

Damn you might be right. The main recently reoccuring "secret" not secret villain is Mary, not

Moriarty, or Eurus, or Culverton. They seem to be almost minor compared to this hell that's

currently going on with Mary. You know, the Murderous Mary, cofusion about "happy-housewife-Sherlock's-best-friend-who-cares-i-shot-him" image presented in S4. She's actually a most hated

character in fandom (aside from Irene Adler, lol) and her so called "development" in S4 is one of these things that make no sense.

This is all the logical and thinking part behind it. Now let's have a look at photos for some comparision and, well...

I added the same sample of noise from the eye frame. The still is from Miss Me video message.

Glitches are confirmed fake but eye case is still open. What do you think?

___________________________________ UPDATE OF UPDATE

Guys there's something completely fucked up about this gif. It started from @memrysapendragon pointing out she found a short clip including vhs glitch stuff on twitter, this particular clip: https://twitter.com/secretcinema/status/793098416444375040  Then i found most of those trames on Youtube by searching "vhs glitches" tag. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUoA-dKQhtc

It doesn't contain Moriarty/Mary eye and I think it doesn't contain a frame with a "sofa and tables" from the CCTV angle above the room, which i compared earlier to Baker Street. Now i read the comment section again and i noticed some people claimed the footage was stolen from a movie called V/H/S/2. I googled it and it appears to be some shitty horror/gore movie made from a few separate stories, and one of them included someone finding old vhs tapes with "scary shit".

A really shitty movie, i can tell from screens i've seen in graphics, and what i read about it in general, so i don't recommend it, don't waste your time if you're not actually a fan of things like that. Couldn't bring myself to watch this shit, so i can't confim it's true but some people wrote it's from V/H/S/2. I don't know. Others however didn't even know the source of the footage and this youtube short is widely considered to be just a collection of samples which people download for their purposes. Hell, it's been used in some promo video on this Twitter account, while this whole "Secret Cinema" account has nothing to do with horror movies.

Does it mean thelostspecial.com is fake? Or there is some purpose behind this confusion? It's getting weirder and weirder tbh

[valleanenowe-music-walk]

Start album as soon as foot leaves far porch side

Try to estimate based on location and remaining album time when I should start walking home. Aim for album ending as soon as I get back

If album ends early, restart it and listen to the first couple tracks or so but at a very low background volume

On the 1st walk I listened to “(Surfing on Sine Waves)” by Polygon Window, aka Aphex Twin! It took about 57 minutes. Richard D. James was silly enough to put parenthemals around his album name and someone was committed to preserving that in the metadata of their copy of the album, so he won the listening queue. Congratulations Alex twin. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On that 2nd walk I listened to “…I Care Because You Do” by Aphex Twin, who is Polygon Window’s secret alter ego but retains the aspect of putting silly punctuation so that I listen to his albums first. It took about an hour and 3 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone, and used the freed space to add the album “Mouth Moods” by Neil Cicierega. Unfortunately.

On that 3rd walk I listened to “/\/\ /\ Y /\”, by M.I.A. This is a new lady who stole Mr James’s tactic of making me listen to her music first by using silly symbols. The difference is that, I feel more respect for her! I am not sure why. This album looks cool because it has Youtube and I think the lady knows stuff. The walk took about 54 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape: E-scape Nyetscape 2.0 Party kicks

On that 4th walk I listened to “18″ by Moby. This fella is kind of pulling the same trick but he can get away with it because it’s just a number! Maybe he was 18 when he made the album. He wasnt but maybe he was. This walk took about an hour and 11 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape:  After Nyetscape Nyetscape 3.0

On that 5th walk I listened to “[Bump Master Flesh]” by Gold Midas. I really like both of his albums, I think this is just an EP of instrumentals or something. I guess “[” comes after numbers in the sorting system. This is the last album that will pull such title trickery, at least for now! This walk took about 26 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 6th walk I listened to “Adventures in Schizophrenia” by 18 Carat Affair. This is the first album that does not use the trickery! Ok. It was really shitty. It took about 27 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape

On that 7th walk I listened to “After” by Nyetscape. It took about 28 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add “Trinity”, also by Nyetscape.

On that 8th walk I listened to “AIM” by M.I.A. It took about 54 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone

The available albums have been jostled, a couple removed and a couple added. I am noting that the last one I added is “Nyetscape 3.0″

On that 9th walk I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Digital Overdrive” by Liquid Metal. Which is a pseudonym of James Ferraro. I don’t know why I bothered to keep his pseudonym! It feels satisfying to do so. This is the first of many of Ferraro’s drone-y hypnagogic pop albums which means that this is the point at which the walks get quite fucky! It took about 52 minutes which was only occupied by one 52-minute song, a common sort of trait in his albums I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 10th walk! Ooh! Uh! Double digits! I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Scream in Blue Surf Video” by James Ferraro. What a mouthful! I look forward to James’ other alternative soundtrack except without a pseudonym and split into four tracks but still quite long, I believe. Ah, it’s shorter, so far less dense with the track lengths. I mean, I looked forward to it. I’m trying to format this into past tense now that the walk is over but when I put it liked that it sounds like it was a letdown. It was an alright album. It took about 46 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape.

On that 11th walk I listened to “Ambient” by Moby. It was better than I expected. It took about 52 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Trinity” by Nyetscape.

On that 12th walk I listened to “Animal Rights” by Moby. This is his poorly-received punk rock album that he made because he thought people didn’t like his electronica and almost killed his career but then he became famous with his next electronica album. I have to just get this one out of the way. I dunno, maybe I’ll like it. Ehhh. “Living” was 10x better than all the other tracks. It took about 53 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Better Angles of our Nature” and “World Edit”, both by Nyetscape.

On that 13th walk I listened to “Arular” by M.I.A. Now this was one I’d been looking forward to, so much that I walked to it pretty far into sunrise! Which I did but now it’s been like a week and I did it again at night! It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Instrumental Tourist” by Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin

On that 14th walk I listened to “As Sunhoner: Anhedonia” by Lonney(s). I didn’t really know much about this album, I thought it might be like a heavy metal album? And it was. I barely retained a second of it. It is by the famous YouTube Poop creator Imaperson. I downloaded it a long time ago because it is dedicated to Jerry Holtz, aka Orangy, who died in 2014. It took about 42 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “夢想假期” by Pastel Lounge LLC, and “OST (1).rar” by R23X.

On that 15th walk I listened to “Atrocity Exhibition” by Danny Brown. This was the first “cheat album” i.e. this album exercise is mostly fully-unlistened stuff but there’s gonna be some scattered around that I already have more familiarity with, such that they don’t fit in. But they are ones that I feel like I need to build some more familiarity with, or would fit a walk very well, or I’ll just like the album a lot and be like fuck it! It took about 47 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “OSV: Original Sound Version” by R23X, and “John Larkin”, by none other than Scatman fucking John

On the 16th walk I listened to “Better Angles of our Nature”, by Nyetscape. It took about an hour and 18 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Scatman’s World” and “Everybody Jam!”, both by Scatman John

I have skipped “Beyond The Zone”, by Internet Club. I have used the freed space to add “Take Your Time”, by Scatman John.

On the 17th walk I listened to “Blackstar”, by David Bowie. This was another cheat album. It took about 41 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 1″, by James Ferraro.  I have used the freed space to add “The Ultimate Party Collection Vol. 1″ by Sick Animation, and “The Phynx”, by Sun Araw.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 2″, by James Ferraro. I have used the freed space to add “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw, which has jumped straight up to the top of the queue. Also “Heavy Deeds”, by Sun Araw.

On the 18th walk I listened to “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw. It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On the 19th walk I listened to “Caustic Window”, by Caustic Window. As an interesting bit of trivia, this album was actually supposed to be called “Aphex Twin”, but there was a massive misprint error on the vinyls that effectively changed the title. Also its by Aphex Twin. It took about an hour and 9 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to re-add “XXX”, by Danny Brown, which was erroneously deleted.

I have skipped “Chameleon Ballet″, by K2. (K2 is a synonym of James Ferraro) I have used the freed space to add the “Good Time” original motion picture soundtrack, by Oneohtrix Point Never.

I have skipped “Channel 8″, by Local News. I have used the freed space to add "Diva”, by Annie Lennox. 

I have skipped “Cheetah”, by Aphex Twin.

On the 20th walk I listened to “Citrac”, by James Ferraro. It took about an hour and 20 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “On Patrol” and “Leaves Like These”, both by Sun Araw.

On the 21st walk I listened to “Clear”, by James Ferraro. It took about 40 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Achievement”, by pilotredsun, which has jumped straight to the top of the list

On the 22nd walk I listened to “Achievement” by pilotredsun. Jesus fucking christ look at what resizing did to this poor album cover. It took about 45 minutes. The walk, I mean. Not the resizing I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Major Grotto”, by Sun Araw.

On the 23rd walk I listened to “Cold”, by James Ferraro. I was kind of excited for this one, thought I’d been sleeping on it for way too long. It took... Over 53 minutes. More detours than usual I have now removed it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “async” by Ryuichi Sakamoto, which has jumped to the top of the list

On the 24th walk I listened to “async” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It took about an hour. This one was very good I have now deleted it from my phone.

Uh... Very interesting moiré effect from resizing this one On the 25th walk I listened to “Come To Daddy”, by Aphex Twin. It took about 33 and a half minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add "Doris" and "Solace", by Earl Sweatshirt

On the 26th walk I listened to “Composition Of The Sensibilities Of Melted Knowledge”, by James Ferraro. It took about 50 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. 

I have skipped "Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2", by Aphex Twin. I have used the freed space to add “Operation: Doomsday” by MF Doom.

On the 27th walk I listened to “Condo Pets”, by James Ferraro. Just a little EP so it only took about 16 minutes. Didn't even go to the dorms for that one. Just snaked around the neighboring apartment complex I have now deleted the album from my phone.

I have skipped "Cruisin' The Nightbiker Strip 1977", by James Ferraro. I have used the freed space to add “Mm.. Food”, by MF Doom.

On the 28th walk I will listen to "Crying Girls", by Alias Conrad Coldwood. Somewhat of a cheat album. It will take about 58 minutes. I will turn left.

I liked that album! ACC seems like a cool guy too. But for the first time, I’ve postponed that walk, I stopped in the middle and came home, It felt like it'd never end. I couldn't hear the album because my thoughts wouldn't stop racing. I had this horrible endless feeling in my gut. I will retry this later

Okay let’s... Try this again. Once my phone is charged

Okay, it’s over. I will now delete it from my phone. I deleted it. I used the freed space to add “Night Gallery”, by Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw

On the 29th walk I listened to “Cyanide Sisters”, by Com Truise. It took about 42 minutes of songs with the same BPM and synth timbre. I hope that I can enjoy it regardless of that! I will turn right! Here I go! I have now deleted the album from my phone!

On the 30th walk I listened to “Daily Night Euphoria”, by Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza. It took about 18 and a half minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Ancient Romans”, by Sun Araw, which has jumped to the top of the queue.

[valleanenowe-music]

Start album as soon as foot leaves far porch side

Try to estimate based on location and remaining album time when I should start walking home. Aim for album ending as soon as I get back

If album ends early, restart it and listen to the first couple tracks or so but at a very low background volume

On the 1st walk I listened to “(Surfing on Sine Waves)” by Polygon Window, aka Aphex Twin! It took about 57 minutes. Richard D. James was silly enough to put parenthemals around his album name and someone was committed to preserving that in the metadata of their copy of the album, so he won the listening queue. Congratulations Alex twin. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On that 2nd walk I listened to “…I Care Because You Do” by Aphex Twin, who is Polygon Window’s secret alter ego but retains the aspect of putting silly punctuation so that I listen to his albums first. It took about an hour and 3 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone, and used the freed space to add the album “Mouth Moods” by Neil Cicierega. Unfortunately.

On that 3rd walk I listened to “/\/\ /\ Y /\”, by M.I.A. This is a new lady who stole Mr James’s tactic of making me listen to her music first by using silly symbols. The difference is that, I feel more respect for her! I am not sure why. This album looks cool because it has Youtube and I think the lady knows stuff. The walk took about 54 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape: E-scape Nyetscape 2.0 Party kicks

On that 4th walk I listened to “18″ by Moby. This fella is kind of pulling the same trick but he can get away with it because it’s just a number! Maybe he was 18 when he made the album. He wasnt but maybe he was. This walk took about an hour and 11 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape:  After Nyetscape Nyetscape 3.0

On that 5th walk I listened to “[Bump Master Flesh]” by Gold Midas. I really like both of his albums, I think this is just an EP of instrumentals or something. I guess “[” comes after numbers in the sorting system. This is the last album that will pull such title trickery, at least for now! This walk took about 26 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 6th walk I listened to “Adventures in Schizophrenia” by 18 Carat Affair. This is the first album that does not use the trickery! Ok. It was really shitty. It took about 27 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape

On that 7th walk I listened to “After” by Nyetscape. It took about 28 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add “Trinity”, also by Nyetscape.

On that 8th walk I listened to “AIM” by M.I.A. It took about 54 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone

The available albums have been jostled, a couple removed and a couple added. I am noting that the last one I added is “Nyetscape 3.0″

On that 9th walk I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Digital Overdrive” by Liquid Metal. Which is a pseudonym of James Ferraro. I don’t know why I bothered to keep his pseudonym! It feels satisfying to do so. This is the first of many of Ferraro’s drone-y hypnagogic pop albums which means that this is the point at which the walks get quite fucky! It took about 52 minutes which was only occupied by one 52-minute song, a common sort of trait in his albums I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 10th walk! Ooh! Uh! Double digits! I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Scream in Blue Surf Video” by James Ferraro. What a mouthful! I look forward to James’ other alternative soundtrack except without a pseudonym and split into four tracks but still quite long, I believe. Ah, it’s shorter, so far less dense with the track lengths. I mean, I looked forward to it. I’m trying to format this into past tense now that the walk is over but when I put it liked that it sounds like it was a letdown. It was an alright album. It took about 46 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape.

On that 11th walk I listened to “Ambient” by Moby. It was better than I expected. It took about 52 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Trinity” by Nyetscape.

On that 12th walk I listened to “Animal Rights” by Moby. This is his poorly-received punk rock album that he made because he thought people didn’t like his electronica and almost killed his career but then he became famous with his next electronica album. I have to just get this one out of the way. I dunno, maybe I’ll like it. Ehhh. “Living” was 10x better than all the other tracks. It took about 53 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Better Angles of our Nature” and “World Edit”, both by Nyetscape.

On that 13th walk I listened to “Arular” by M.I.A. Now this was one I’d been looking forward to, so much that I walked to it pretty far into sunrise! Which I did but now it’s been like a week and I did it again at night! It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Instrumental Tourist” by Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin

On that 14th walk I listened to “As Sunhoner: Anhedonia” by Lonney(s). I didn’t really know much about this album, I thought it might be like a heavy metal album? And it was. I barely retained a second of it. It is by the famous YouTube Poop creator Imaperson. I downloaded it a long time ago because it is dedicated to Jerry Holtz, aka Orangy, who died in 2014. It took about 42 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “夢想假期” by Pastel Lounge LLC, and “OST (1).rar” by R23X.

On that 15th walk I listened to “Atrocity Exhibition” by Danny Brown. This was the first “cheat album” i.e. this album exercise is mostly fully-unlistened stuff but there’s gonna be some scattered around that I already have more familiarity with, such that they don’t fit in. But they are ones that I feel like I need to build some more familiarity with, or would fit a walk very well, or I’ll just like the album a lot and be like fuck it! It took about 47 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “OSV: Original Sound Version” by R23X, and “John Larkin”, by none other than Scatman fucking John

On the 16th walk I listened to “Better Angles of our Nature”, by Nyetscape. It took about an hour and 18 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Scatman’s World” and “Everybody Jam!”, both by Scatman John

I have skipped “Beyond The Zone”, by Internet Club. I have used the freed space to add “Take Your Time”, by Scatman John.

On the 17th walk I listened to “Blackstar”, by David Bowie. This was another cheat album. It took about 41 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 1″, by James Ferraro.  I have used the freed space to add “The Ultimate Party Collection Vol. 1″ by Sick Animation, and “The Phynx”, by Sun Araw.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 2″, by James Ferraro. I have used the freed space to add “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw, which has jumped straight up to the top of the queue. Also “Heavy Deeds”, by Sun Araw.

On the 18th walk I listened to “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw. It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On the 19th walk I listened to “Caustic Window”, by Caustic Window. As an interesting bit of trivia, this album was actually supposed to be called “Aphex Twin”, but there was a massive misprint error on the vinyls that effectively changed the title. Also its by Aphex Twin. It took about an hour and 9 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to re-add “XXX”, by Danny Brown, which was erroneously deleted.

I have skipped “Chameleon Ballet″, by K2. (K2 is a synonym of James Ferraro) I have used the freed space to add the “Good Time” original motion picture soundtrack, by Oneohtrix Point Never.

I have skipped “Channel 8″, by Local News. I have used the freed space to add "Diva”, by Annie Lennox. 

I have skipped “Cheetah”, by Aphex Twin.

On the 20th walk I listened to “Citrac”, by James Ferraro. It took about an hour and 20 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “On Patrol” and “Leaves Like These”, both by Sun Araw.

On the 21st walk I listened to “Clear”, by James Ferraro. It took about 40 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Achievement”, by pilotredsun, which has jumped straight to the top of the list

On the 22nd walk I listened to “Achievement” by pilotredsun. Jesus fucking christ look at what resizing did to this poor album cover. It took about 45 minutes. The walk, I mean. Not the resizing I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Major Grotto”, by Sun Araw.

On the 23rd walk I listened to “Cold”, by James Ferraro. I was kind of excited for this one, thought I’d been sleeping on it for way too long. It took... Over 53 minutes. More detours than usual I have now removed it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “async” by Ryuichi Sakamoto, which has jumped to the top of the list

On the 24th walk I listened to “async” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It took about an hour. This one was very good I have now deleted it from my phone.

Uh... Very interesting moiré effect from resizing this one On the 25th walk I listened to “Come To Daddy”, by Aphex Twin. It took about 33 and a half minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add "Doris" and "Solace", by Earl Sweatshirt

On the 26th walk I listened to “Composition Of The Sensibilities Of Melted Knowledge”, by James Ferraro. It took about 50 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. 

I have skipped "Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2", by Aphex Twin. I have used the freed space to add “Operation: Doomsday” by MF Doom.

On the 27th walk I listened to “Condo Pets”, by James Ferraro. Just a little EP so it only took about 16 minutes. Didn't even go to the dorms for that one. Just snaked around the neighboring apartment complex I have now deleted the album from my phone.

I have skipped "Cruisin' The Nightbiker Strip 1977", by James Ferraro. I have used the freed space to add “Mm.. Food”, by MF Doom.

On the 28th walk I will listen to "Crying Girls", by Alias Conrad Coldwood. Somewhat of a cheat album. It will take about 58 minutes. I will turn left.

I liked that album! ACC seems like a cool guy too. But for the first time, I’ve postponed that walk, I stopped in the middle and came home, It felt like it'd never end. I couldn't hear the album because my thoughts wouldn't stop racing. I had this horrible endless feeling in my gut. I will retry this later

Okay let’s... Try this again. Once my phone is charged

Okay, it’s over. I will now delete it from my phone. I deleted it. I used the freed space to add “Night Gallery”, by Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw

On the 29th walk I listened to “Cyanide Sisters”, by Com Truise. It took about 42 minutes of songs with the same BPM and synth timbre. I hope that I can enjoy it regardless of that! I will turn right! Here I go! I have now deleted the album from my phone!

On the 30th walk I listened to “Daily Night Euphoria”, by Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza. It took about 18 and a half minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Ancient Romans”, by Sun Araw, which has jumped to the top of the queue.

[valleanenowe-music]

Start album as soon as foot leaves far porch side

Try to estimate based on location and remaining album time when I should start walking home. Aim for album ending as soon as I get back

If album ends early, restart it and listen to the first couple tracks or so but at a very low background volume

On the 1st walk I listened to “(Surfing on Sine Waves)” by Polygon Window, aka Aphex Twin! It took about 57 minutes. Richard D. James was silly enough to put parenthemals around his album name and someone was committed to preserving that in the metadata of their copy of the album, so he won the listening queue. Congratulations Alex twin. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On that 2nd walk I listened to “…I Care Because You Do” by Aphex Twin, who is Polygon Window’s secret alter ego but retains the aspect of putting silly punctuation so that I listen to his albums first. It took about an hour and 3 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone, and used the freed space to add the album “Mouth Moods” by Neil Cicierega. Unfortunately.

On that 3rd walk I listened to “/\/\ /\ Y /\”, by M.I.A. This is a new lady who stole Mr James’s tactic of making me listen to her music first by using silly symbols. The difference is that, I feel more respect for her! I am not sure why. This album looks cool because it has Youtube and I think the lady knows stuff. The walk took about 54 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape: E-scape Nyetscape 2.0 Party kicks

On that 4th walk I listened to “18″ by Moby. This fella is kind of pulling the same trick but he can get away with it because it’s just a number! Maybe he was 18 when he made the album. He wasnt but maybe he was. This walk took about an hour and 11 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the following albums by Nyetscape:  After Nyetscape Nyetscape 3.0

On that 5th walk I listened to “[Bump Master Flesh]” by Gold Midas. I really like both of his albums, I think this is just an EP of instrumentals or something. I guess “[” comes after numbers in the sorting system. This is the last album that will pull such title trickery, at least for now! This walk took about 26 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 6th walk I listened to “Adventures in Schizophrenia” by 18 Carat Affair. This is the first album that does not use the trickery! Ok. It was really shitty. It took about 27 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add the album “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape

On that 7th walk I listened to “After” by Nyetscape. It took about 28 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the free space to add “Trinity”, also by Nyetscape.

On that 8th walk I listened to “AIM” by M.I.A. It took about 54 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone

The available albums have been jostled, a couple removed and a couple added. I am noting that the last one I added is “Nyetscape 3.0″

On that 9th walk I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Digital Overdrive” by Liquid Metal. Which is a pseudonym of James Ferraro. I don’t know why I bothered to keep his pseudonym! It feels satisfying to do so. This is the first of many of Ferraro’s drone-y hypnagogic pop albums which means that this is the point at which the walks get quite fucky! It took about 52 minutes which was only occupied by one 52-minute song, a common sort of trait in his albums I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 4″ by Nyetscape.

On that 10th walk! Ooh! Uh! Double digits! I listened to “Alternative Soundtrack to Scream in Blue Surf Video” by James Ferraro. What a mouthful! I look forward to James’ other alternative soundtrack except without a pseudonym and split into four tracks but still quite long, I believe. Ah, it’s shorter, so far less dense with the track lengths. I mean, I looked forward to it. I’m trying to format this into past tense now that the walk is over but when I put it liked that it sounds like it was a letdown. It was an alright album. It took about 46 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Nyetscape 5″ by Nyetscape.

On that 11th walk I listened to “Ambient” by Moby. It was better than I expected. It took about 52 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Trinity” by Nyetscape.

On that 12th walk I listened to “Animal Rights” by Moby. This is his poorly-received punk rock album that he made because he thought people didn’t like his electronica and almost killed his career but then he became famous with his next electronica album. I have to just get this one out of the way. I dunno, maybe I’ll like it. Ehhh. “Living” was 10x better than all the other tracks. It took about 53 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Better Angles of our Nature” and “World Edit”, both by Nyetscape.

On that 13th walk I listened to “Arular” by M.I.A. Now this was one I’d been looking forward to, so much that I walked to it pretty far into sunrise! Which I did but now it’s been like a week and I did it again at night! It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Instrumental Tourist” by Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin

On that 14th walk I listened to “As Sunhoner: Anhedonia” by Lonney(s). I didn’t really know much about this album, I thought it might be like a heavy metal album? And it was. I barely retained a second of it. It is by the famous YouTube Poop creator Imaperson. I downloaded it a long time ago because it is dedicated to Jerry Holtz, aka Orangy, who died in 2014. It took about 42 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “夢想假期” by Pastel Lounge LLC, and “OST (1).rar” by R23X.

On that 15th walk I listened to “Atrocity Exhibition” by Danny Brown. This was the first “cheat album” i.e. this album exercise is mostly fully-unlistened stuff but there’s gonna be some scattered around that I already have more familiarity with, such that they don’t fit in. But they are ones that I feel like I need to build some more familiarity with, or would fit a walk very well, or I’ll just like the album a lot and be like fuck it! It took about 47 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “OSV: Original Sound Version” by R23X, and “John Larkin”, by none other than Scatman fucking John

On the 16th walk I listened to “Better Angles of our Nature”, by Nyetscape. It took about an hour and 18 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Scatman’s World” and “Everybody Jam!”, both by Scatman John

I have skipped “Beyond The Zone”, by Internet Club. I have used the freed space to add “Take Your Time”, by Scatman John.

On the 17th walk I listened to “Blackstar”, by David Bowie. This was another cheat album. It took about 41 minutes I have now deleted the album from my phone.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 1″, by James Ferraro.  I have used the freed space to add “The Ultimate Party Collection Vol. 1″ by Sick Animation, and “The Phynx”, by Sun Araw.

I have skipped “Body Fusion 2″, by James Ferraro. I have used the freed space to add “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw, which has jumped straight up to the top of the queue. Also “Heavy Deeds”, by Sun Araw.

On the 18th walk I listened to “Beach Head”, by Sun Araw. It took about 42 minutes. I have now deleted the album from my phone.

On the 19th walk I listened to “Caustic Window”, by Caustic Window. As an interesting bit of trivia, this album was actually supposed to be called “Aphex Twin”, but there was a massive misprint error on the vinyls that effectively changed the title. Also its by Aphex Twin. It took about an hour and 9 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to re-add “XXX”, by Danny Brown, which was erroneously deleted.

I have skipped “Chameleon Ballet″, by K2. (K2 is a synonym of James Ferraro) I have used the freed space to add the “Good Time” original motion picture soundtrack, by Oneohtrix Point Never.

I have skipped “Channel 8″, by Local News. I have used the freed space to add "Diva”, by Annie Lennox. 

I have skipped “Cheetah”, by Aphex Twin.

On the 20th walk I listened to “Citrac”, by James Ferraro. It took about an hour and 20 minutes I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “On Patrol” and “Leaves Like These”, both by Sun Araw.

On the 21st walk I listened to “Clear”, by James Ferraro. It took about 40 minutes. I have now deleted it from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Achievement”, by pilotredsun, which has jumped straight to the top of the list

On the 22nd walk I listened to “Achievement” by pilotredsun. Jesus fucking christ look at what resizing did to this poor album cover. It took about 45 minutes. The walk, I mean. Not the resizing I have now deleted the album from my phone. I have used the freed space to add “Major Grotto”, by Sun Araw.