#also it's a small nod to my mom because she's a mathematician

[zelkam]

look what I just got 🖤

[littleredroseonthevalley]

An Opera on Separation - Chapter 12

Prologue | Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | CH. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15 | Ch. 16 | Ch. 17 | Ch. 18 |

Summary: Zig and Emily have an awkward conversation at a corner Starbucks, while Queenie prays on Nathan’s insecurities.

Rating: T - Content not suitable for children.  Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with minor suggestive adult themes.

Words: 1287

Notes: Y’all know the gist, Lady Gaga song, read, review, whatever. Alors to the important matters: I am considering writing a sequel for  Wildest Dreams, and I’d like some imput. And readers, preferrably.

As always, I’m availiable for talking on direct messaging, through my never-non-open, anon-friendly askbox, comments and reblogs on this or any other chapter, and pretty much anything other than smoke signals.

With no further ado, enjoy.

Alejandro

Zig and Emily sat at a Starbucks a block away from the apartment building. She stared at him, while he focused on his cup of coffee.

The Latino man had dropped by unannounced at the Sterling residence, looking for her. He had said they had to talk, but there would be no room devoid of prying ears at the upscale apartment, so Emily complied to a walk.

The elevator ride seventeen floors down and the walk over to the coffeeshop were done in complete silence. Once there, Zig had broken his quietness to ask her what she would like and to order an espresso and a hot cocoa. Afterwards, he reverted to the silence, as they picked up their beverages and sat at a corner table.

Finally, she tired of the icy demeanor and says: “Zig, please…”

She was cut off by him. “Why, Emily, why?”

“Why what?” She asks.

The black, thick eyebrows frown pronouncedly. “You know what. Why have you dropped everything here in New York for Nathan, of all people?” He breathes out, tired. “Do you want to get back together with him?”

“God, no!” The redhead shouts, as the mere idea disgusted her. “He served me a divorce over the phone, Zig! That’s a pretty low point for someone to come back from.”

While the phrase was relieving, the tone set the man off. “Then why, Emily?! Why run back to your douche of an ex-husband the minute he has a boo-boo?!”

“Because he needed me to.” She responds, with a low and calm voice. “He didn’t kidnap me and forced me to marry him, you know? I got into that willingly, and while it didn’t work out at the end, I still have the obligation to help him if he truly needs it. Even if out of respect for the years of our marriage.”

The pair of hazel eyes bore through hers, angry and incredulous. “I don’t believe it, Emily. It’s Nathan, for crying out loud! He cheated on you repeatedly, remember?

“Even if he hadn’t, he’s an awful person. You even know what he’s being accused of? Not to mention that Alpha Theta Mu scandal all those years ago. You owe him nothing!”

“That doesn’t matter, Zig.” The woman argues.

“Yes, it does!” He counters, almost childishly.

“People are horrible, Zig.” She looks at him pointedly. “James is a pretentious ass. Chris and Becca stopped talking to me after I divorced Nathan, because the Sterlings are big donors to his campaign. Kaitlyn doesn’t even want to hear anyone’s name, lest of all she remembers she was once a starving college student.

“And, yet, if any of them needed my help, I would help them. What people do, to you or to others, doesn’t erase the bonds you have with them. It doesn’t erase the good moments you had with them. And it doesn’t erase your obligations with them.

“Yes, Nathan was a dick to me. Yes, he could be guilty of the greatest fund embezzlement on the history of North America. Yes, if the roles were on reverse he certainly would not help me. But he was once my husband, and that commands me to support him through a difficult time in his life.”

“And he doesn’t have anyone else he could mooch off?” The brunet asks, petulant.

“Oh, believe me, I tried.” The woman laughs, humorlessly. “Neither of his parents could be bothered. I won’t even mention the rest of his extended family. And his girlfriend mugged him and skipped town.”

This tidbit of information made Zig sadistically satisfied. As much as he was bothered about him latching on his girlfriend, at least he was a maggot devoid of human connections and knew it.

That did not keep him from pressing on. “Regardless, Emily, you owe him nothing. Except perhaps contempt.”

“Look, Zig, I probably won’t ever be able to make you comprehend where I stand about this whole situation.” The woman raised to her feet and left a ten-dollar bill on the table for her unfinished cocoa. “I’m not asking you to understand, I’m not even asking you to accept it. I won’t begrudge you if you want to break up with me over this, but the truth is that I still want to be your girlfriend.”

With that, she turns around and leaves the coffee shop.

Queenie was at the common bathroom between her ‘ratty guest room’ and Nathan’s, putting on jewelry and giving a finish polish to her make-up.

“Ale-Ale-Alejandro, Ale-Ale-Alejandro.” She sung while opening her eyes wide to put on the mascara. “You know that I love you, boy/Hot like Mexico, rejoice/At this point I've gotta choose/Nothing to lose. Woo!”

A person stood by the door, clearing their throat. “Where’s Emily? We have to finish cleaning my closet, and then we have to set up her room.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She responds. “I’ve already been through your mother’s stuff and sorted them.”

“Between what you’re stealing and what you’re burning?” Nathan says, unamused.

“Exactly.” She giggled, happy with the results.

He rolled his eyes. “Where’s your daughter, Soraya?”

“She’s out with her boyfriend.” The woman responded, dismissive.

“Emily has a boyfriend?” Nathan asks, surprised with the titbit of information.

Queenie laughs derisively. “Yes, Zigmund Ortega. You’ve been introduced before, I’m certain. Tall, dark, handsome? Brooding Latino bad boy? Honour roll at Hartfeld?”

“Yes, I remember him.” The blond responds with his teeth clenched. “But I also remember that Emily hasn’t seen him since our marriage.”

“Yeah, he’s a teacher at Emily’s school. A volunteer, at it! Such a coincidence, right? It’s a small world indeed, after all.” The woman puts on an earring to finish off her preparation.

“Volunteer? What does he do for a living?” He inquires, trying to coax some information out of his former mother-in-law.

“Don’t tell me you think you’re the only rich guy me and Emily know.” The matriarch smirks. “He’s co-owner of a tech company and is a highly-sough after programmer and mathematician.”

“What? Zig?” The man scoffs. “Don’t take me as a fool, Soraya.”

“Believe what you want, Wonder Bread.” She responded, pushing him out of the way and walking over to the living room. “I’m off to bingo. Mama’s feeling lucky tonight! Toodle-hoo!”

It was shortly before midnight when Emily finally crossed into the apartment threshold. All she wanted was get to a bed and cry her eyes out.

Not one to get what she wants, though, she encounters Nathan, lounging in an armchair at the living room.

“Hey.” He greets, looking up from his book.

“Hey, Nathan.” She manages a weak, polite smile. “My mom’s sleeping?”

“No, she said she was going out to bingo.” He informed her of the older woman’s whereabouts.

It was enough to elicit a groan out of Emily. “Not this again. I don’t have the strength to deal with her tonight. If the police calls, I’m not home, okay?”

“Sure.” He nods, laughing softly. “I’m guessing your talk with Zig did not end the way you wanted to.” The blond said, appraising the woman carefully.

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know how I wanted it to end, really.”

“You want to talk about it?” The man offered.

The redhead shook her head once again. “Not really. I’d prefer to go to bed now if you don’t mind. I’m too tired and I have classes tomorrow morning.”

“Of course.” Nathan agrees, sporting a comforting smile. “Queenie switched the linens on the bed, so it should be fine for sleeping. If you need anything, there’s extra covers on the closet.”

The redhead sighed, relieved. “Thank you, Nathan. Good night.”

“‘Night.” He responds, and the woman walks over to her bedroom.

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An Opera on Separation - Masterlist

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on... a few games

[discussion of A Case of Distrust, Gray Skies Dark Waters, and The Lion’s Song below the cut. there won’t be any major spoilers, but I will be at least alluding to some things that you might be better off not having heard allusions to if you want to play the games.]

Thoughts on A Case of Distrust

I heard rumblings about A Case of Distrust on Games Twitter, and, while the pitch sounded enticing, there wasn’t any demo and I didn’t want to buy a game I knew next to nothing about. I put hands on it for a few minutes at PAX East this weekend and immediately bought it from the developer. (I confess the discounted PAX price helped.)

The enticing pitch is as follows: You play PC Malone, the only female private detective in 1924 San Francisco. PC mostly gets adultery gigs - snoop jobs for suspicious wives - but snags her first proper case from a shady rum runner investigating some death threats he’s received. Things get dicier when her client shows up dead the following morning. The art and presentation are killer, the downtempo jazz soundtrack is choice, and I appreciate the way the game leans in to having a female protagonist in a classically male role.

This isn’t some alternate-history 1924, where women are treated with equal respect to men. PC quit the police force after the death of her biggest advocate, her uncle Lewis, knowing that none of the other policemen would let her work real cases. So she struck out as a private dick, and is constantly underestimated by the suspects she interrogates. (Though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in my playthrough, it’s a safe bet she goes by PC instead of Phyllis so that potential clients won’t know she’s a woman until they meet her in person.) (Also PC is interactive fiction speak for Player Character.)

The whole of the interface is a fairly robust notetaking system, where you can interrogate any suspect about any statement made by any other suspect or any evidence you’ve seen. Getting new bits of information and using them to contradict a suspect’s story is the whole game. It has one thing to do and it does it well: letting you construct a theory of what happened in your head and test every piece before making an accusation. It’s something a lot of mystery games imply while actually doing the hard parts for you, and, while I wouldn’t say A Case of Distrust completely forsakes handholding, it knows what the fun bits are and lets you do them yourself.

What the game is missing is... a plot. A Case of Distrust has a complete first act: it has an inciting incident with the rum runner hiring PC, it sets up its themes about PC’s feelings of failure as she tries to live up to her uncle’s example, it introduces its central characters and hints at its world of seedy speakeasies and businesses that serve as criminal fronts, it has an unexpected (and very artfully directed) dream sequence, and the first act ends with the rum runner’s death.

It also has an ending.

Between them, there’s no real plot. There’s a mystery, for sure, and what hardboiled detective story would work without one? And it opens with an excellent nod to the scene in The Long Goodbye where Philip Marlowe fails to feed his cat. But it doesn’t have the scene where Sam Spade meets with Gutman and then passes out from a spiked drink, or where Jake Gittes sleeps with Evelyn and then tails her car through Los Angeles, or where Brendan Frye gets thrown in Tug’s trunk and driven to meet with The Pin. There’s no rising or falling action, no setups or payoffs, no setbacks or reversals. There’s just the mystery. Every suspect stays right where you left them - one guy sits in a chair waiting for his barber to get back for the entire game - and the only thing that happens between you and any of them is conversation. There’s not even much in the way of red herrings; you can have a bad theory, but there’s never anything that sends you down the wrong path to eventually turn up nothing.

Even the threads about PC trying to be a proper detective in a world that doesn’t take her seriously, though not exactly dropped, are unsatisfactorily resolved. (Frankly, the defiance of gender politics would go down easier if the female suspects weren’t the same old noir tropes, jealous gangster molls with no real agency.) The whole affair ends pretty abruptly, save for an obligatory sequel tease.

The game is worth playing, certainly - more mysteries should have that notetaking system - but I hope the next one recognizes that the mystery itself is the least important part of a noir. It’s what happens around the mystery that makes or breaks it.

Thoughts on Gray Skies, Dark Waters

Another mystery of sorts, though, in this one, the female detective is simply a daughter trying to find out why her mother vanished the year before. There aren’t any interrogations or recovered murder weapons, just a girl wandering her home town and asking her friends and family what they know.

It’s hard to discuss Gray Skies, Dark Waters without addressing its production values. I’ve played a number of microbudget indie games in my day, but even small-scope adventure games have a hard time looking polished without a decent amount of money. Gray Skies, Dark Waters is maybe the roughest-hewn game I’ve ever bought off of Steam. There’s no character animation to speak of: main character Lina has a walk cycle and that’s it. Everyone else has a talk animation and a standing/sitting-in-place idle animation. (This is another game where everyone stays in the same place waiting for you to come talk to them for the entire game; only one character shows up in a second place.) No one’s lips move when they talk. No one moves their hands when ostensibly handing inventory objects to each other. Voice actors are very clearly recorded using different mics, because the audio quality differs wildly from character to character, sometimes from line to line spoken by the same person.

I want to say this up front because I want to get it over with. I came up on TIGSource, I’m used to rough edges. None of this matters if the story is good.

I’m not sure the story is good.

It’s definitely not bad, though it’s hard to talk about without spoiling anything because the game is very short. Lina and her family have been living alone with her dad for the last year, ever since their mom disappeared. Much of the game’s appeal is in the details: Looking for clues means hearing Lina’s musings on her house, and, by extension, her life before and after her mother’s disappearance. Talking to her siblings is one part investigation and several parts painting a picture of different ways children deal with grief. And, frankly, the dialogue and characterizations are quite good. Some of Lina’s poetic commentary is overwrought, and the siblings can be a bit one-note, but foibles of a talented writer who hits the mark more often than she misses.

The game’s biggest setback is that there’s just not much mystery to the mystery. The explanation is not the kind of thing you’d assume from the outset, but you’re going to have it figured out by the midpoint. This makes the gameplay feel less like uncovering a narrative and more going through the motions. It can almost feel like a third-person walking sim, where you’re just moving through the narrative, not really directing yourself through it.

But I like walking sims, so that’s not really a complaint either.

On the whole, I think there’s a lot of value to playing a game like this. I’m not sure I’ve experienced an adventure game that was this comfortable with sadness. Plenty of games have broken my heart before, but not many are about the laborious process of mending one. If it has a failing, it’s that it’s insubstantial. This isn’t a portrait of grief or of family life, it’s a sketch. It has barely enough time or budget to glimpse the big picture before its over. But it’s a big picture worth glimpsing, I suppose, of a subject rarely addressed in games.

I’d call it a worthwhile experience. That’s not quite a recommendation, but it’s not not a recommendation, either.

Thoughts on The Lion’s Song

Of these three games, The Lion’s Song is the most ambitious. It’s a pastiche of pre-war Austria’s art and science culture, viewed through three vignettes and a coda. Each character is devoted to a particular passion and is trying to create their first real masterpiece: Wilma is trying to compose a symphony (the titular Lion’s Song), Franz is trying to break through a person block with his painting, and Em is trying to write a mathematical proof but has to disguise herself as a man to work with other mathematicians.

The gameplay is largely about how each character manages the personal issues that both impede and inform their work. The player helps Wilma tune out the parts of her environment that distract her and focus on things that give her inspiration; helps Franz pick and converse with his portrait subjects to try and locate their essence; and helps Em extrapolate a proof about objects in conflicting states from her own dual existence as both man and woman. This is all done very artfully, with a number of visualization tricks and some gorgeous sepia pixel art.

The writing is also quite lovely across the board.

The weakest link is the final chapter. I’m not the first to say so. Each episode has cameos of the characters from the other chapters, and the episodes are even more tightly related thematically. But I’m not the first to say that the ending, which aims to tie them all together narratively shoots for the moon and lands somewhere short of the stars. What it’s going for is a sobering reality check on what happened to the mini-Renaissance in Europe at the dawning of Modernist thought, and it’s very poignant on paper, but in practice it just comes out of nowhere, to the point where it feels like a cheat. In an episodic story where you rely on the ending to tell you what it was all about, not sticking the landing casts a shadow backwards on the whole series.

The other elephant in the room is the problem with telling stories about genius artists: You have to be a genius to pull it off.

The devs can’t really sell Wilma as a genius composer if we’re going to hear snatches of her symphony, or Franz as a genius painter if they’re going to show us his paintings, or Em as a mathematical prodigy if they’re going to show us her proof, if any of these things are not made by actual geniuses. The music is lovely, but it’s being sold as holding its own with Stravinsky; the art is pretty, but it’s sold as holding its own with early Duchamp; Em’s proof is either based on real math but simplified until it’s unrecognizable, or it’s gobbledygook that’s meant to sound sort of like math.

I never want to be the guy who asks “why is this a game,” but one might pull this off better in a non-audio/visual medium. (Then again, Marc Estrin tried to pull this thing where he’d make up “genius” symphonies and ballets that took pages and pages to describe in Insect Dreams, and that book was insufferable.)

As an analysis of how artists and scientists push through creative blocks, it’s a bit over-simple. But as a kaleidoscope of the artistic culture and the social and political pressures of Vienna at the turn of the century, it’s kind of wonderful. (Or, at least, 3/4 of it is.) The first episode is free and the whole endeavor is worth checking out.

[leiselpizzatale]

One Fresh, No Fresh (Chapter 9)

Hey Guys! I said that I will make a chapter before I left for my Uncle’s, so here I am! (At 2 freaking O’clock in the morning!) Anyway! Oh, and when I get back home, I’m going to start like a Q and A thing, so if you have any questions from the story that you have, you can ask me there. And it will be on until I get to finish the epilogue of this story! Now without further ado, lets get to the chapter!

Asy (mentioned) belongs to @furgemancs

Fresh, Geno, and Error and herself belong to @loverofpiggies

MommaCQ and herself belong to @alainaprana​

Ink (mentioned) belongs to @comyet​

Other characters and story belong to me, @leiselpizzatale​

Warning: Mentions of depression, attempted suicide, and injury

After a few minutes of group hugging, Fresh stood up, saying, “Geno? Error? I’m really sorry for what I did. After leaving, I was so scared. I had thought that if I went back, the police would arrest me for hurting you, Geno. I kept thinking the worse of what will happen if I went back, and that fear had pushed me to go all the way to Ohio, where I had to stop, because I had fallen ill, and met Alaina.” Alaina waved at them when her name was called, Geno and Error waving back.

Fresh smiled, before frowning, saying, “While I rested at Alaina’s house, I saw that I didn’t have much money left, so when Alaina’s parents asked me to stay, I agreed. Since then, they were my temporary parents. Then, I started going to school, making friends, and now,“ Fresh grinned widely, “I have a beautiful fiancée, who I am going to marry.”

Geno and Error looked at each other, surprised. Then Error asked, “Well, where is she?”

Alaina walked next to Fresh, lifting her hand up the show the ring on her ring finger. Error was shocked, because he thought that Fresh would never find love. But, that was before Fresh got emotions. While Error was shocked, Geno was very happy. He knew that once he got emotions, Fresh would soon find someone that he would love to spend the rest of his life with.

Fresh smiled, saying, “And don’t worry. You are all invited to the wedding, including Ink. Where is he anyways?”

Geno smiled, saying, “He’s out of town, selling his art.”

“Oh, okay.” Fresh said.

Then, they started talking about what had happened after Fresh left. Apparently, after finishing his treatment, Geno went back to school. It took a while to catch up to everyone, due to having been sick before. But even when he caught up, he kept going, getting straight A’s, and even skipping two grades. He also competed in the math competitions, and now he has a job as a Mathematician.

For Error, it was a bit harder. Error kept blaming himself that he had made Fresh run away, and after the police said that they couldn’t find Fresh anywhere, and had to stop searching for him, Error locked himself in his room. He refused to get out, he wouldn’t eat, and when CQ finally got inside the room, she saw his body hanging from his strings. She quickly got him down, and took him to the hospital.

Error had survived from a broken neck, but he was in a coma-like state, due to the doctors giving him a long surgery to fix his neck. While they waited for him to wake up again, Geno had a dream where he was in front of the hospital bed, but he was in the bed, not Error. When he saw himself start to dust, he woke up screaming. CQ had rushed in, since she had heard his screams, and asked what happened. After telling her the dream, CQ said that they would go to Error’s room once visiting hours start.

When the finally got to Error, they saw that he was awake, though he was groggily, due to the pain medicine he had to take. Since he woke up, They doctors had kept close watch on Error, and once he got out, they put him on antidepressants, and gave him therapy sessions. When he saw that neither were working, Asy started taking Error fishing. It had a sense of peace and quiet, and Asy knew that Error could feel a little bit happier when he finally caught a fish or two.

After finishing their dinner, the now completed family went to CQ’s house, where they had fun watching movies and playing games. When no one was looking, Fresh sneaked upstairs, and went to the door of where his bedroom was. Opening the door, he looked inside, and saw that nothing had changed. Everything was tidy, still filled with all the 90’s stuff he had when he was a kid. He looked at his dresser, and cringed when he saw his old furby. Now that he thought of it, it was kind of creepy.

Next to the furby was all of the Pokémon plushies he had gotten; from Pikachu to Ekans to even a Sandshrew. He even saw that everything was in its place and everything was clean. It was like he had never left.

“Hey.”

Fresh jumped, turning around to see Geno. Geno smiled, saying, “Sorry I scared you.” Then he looked in the room, saying, “Error wouldn’t let us turn it into a guest room. He wouldn’t even let people in there sometimes. He really did miss you, you know that?”

“Yeah.” Fresh said. “I… guess it took a while to miss you guys too.”

And it was true. Since he left, different emotions would just pop out, like when you would put Mentos in Diet coke. The first time he felt happy was when a woman had said that he could spend the night in her house instead of on the streets. He was so happy that he had actually started crying, which had confused him so much. The first time he was angry was when a guy tried to rob someone. After he saw this, he ran harder than he had in his entire life, catching the guy and calling the police on him. But, since he didn’t want to be noticed, he left the man to someone who could hold him down, before Fresh left the scene.

And the first time he felt homesick was about a month after he had met Alaina and her family. He was in the living room, watching TV, when he saw Alaina’s mom started knitting with blue yarn. Immediately, it reminded him of Error, and he had broken down crying. They had tried to calm him down, and they did after several hours. After that, he started going to therapy sessions. He didn’t tell the therapist everything, but did tell them that he felt homesick, and that his emotions were out of whack.

The therapist said that he had emotional overwhelm, and gave him coping methods to help with the emotions. They also said that, if he wanted to, he could write a journal, about what he was feeling, and why. Fresh agreed, and after going to the store to get a journal with a lock, he started writing all of his feelings in it. Soon enough, his emotions stopped being so extreme.

“Hey.” Geno said, putting his hand on Fresh’s shoulder, “It’s going to be okay. I mean, you just started getting emotions after you left, right?” Fresh nodded. “Well, you have emotions now, and you’re with your family. That’s all that matters.” Then Geno started pulling Fresh, saying, “Now come on! It’s your turn to pick a race!”

Fresh laughed, following Geno downstairs to the living room. Sitting down on the floor, he grabbed the remote from Alaina (who was playing for him) and picked the Shell Cup. While playing, he thought of what Geno had said before, and he was right. It only matters that he was with his family in the present, and not how he left them in the past. He had such loving families, and he wouldn’t leave them, never again. And his previously small and broken family had become a big and happy family.