#and with a number of endings comparable to the Lord of the Rings

[turtleations]

Pink Cloudy Sky, P.S. To the Beginning of the End (Summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 07 Part 1 Part 2 Final Chapter

From the cloudy sky, as REM sometimes remembered, the warm rays of the spring sun came down.

A somewhat lazy afternoon in late spring. REM was leaning against the wall of the clinic’s waiting room, feeling the weight of the guitar in his knees as he went through the setlist of tomorrow’s live. During practice that night, he would do the final checks. He’d have to plan the timing of the MCs, the finale, the arrangement of the new songs…

Suddenly, his eyes fell on the list of that afternoon’s appointments. There were a few more patients than usual for a Saturday. Maybe he could take a nap first…

No, before those appointments, he had to practice scales.

What was to become of him and SAVER TIGER from now on, no one could say.

He was nervous about it, and impatient. Claiming anything else would have been a lie. The one thing he could say was that leading SAVER TIGER now was the most fulfilling period of his life so far. The one year in which he had put everything into fulfilling hide’s dying wish.

He could not even dream of paying back all he owed him.

But maybe this was enough?

Everything after this, he should do for himself, REM thought.

The SAVER TIGER of those days was over. This was the SAVER TIGER he had breathed new life into.

There was no point in dragging the past forward.

The end of the century, rock music, and SAVER TIGER. Those were the only things that mattered to him in this moment.

Just that, and keeping up the creation of good music, continuing to perform.

He could play the guitar like this. He could feel the strings under his fingers, feel the melody in his ears, feel the music with his whole being.

There was no greater happiness than that.

-

In the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees, the pick REM was holding in his right hand fell to the floor with a small noise. In his dream, his soul kept sliding over the fingerboard.

-

From autumn 1998 onwards, the new SAVER TIGER continued to go on tour: Starting on the 1st of November 1998 in Yokohama, they had six performances in Yokohama, Yokosuka, Meguro, and Takadanobaba until the 15th of April 1999. Then, in May, they performed in three locations in Yokohama and Takadanobaba.

The second part of their tour started in early August and took them to Osaka, Tokushima, Yokosuka, Yokohama, Chiba, Machida, Meguro, and Kumagaya in 11 shows. The final one was planned for 13th December 1999 in BAYHALL in Yokohama.

REM expresses how ecstatic he would be if those who read this book would listen to SAVER TIGER’s music. And while they are at it, they should check out their official website.

Speaking of which, it was hide who first got into the internet, and used it to communicate with the fans in a meaningful way.

And with this feeling carved into REM’s chest, he wants to put down the pen.

Appendix

Study of the dental pattern of patient Matsumoto Hideto.

At this point, REM want to attempt an examination of patient Matsumoto Hideto as a dentist. The following is based on a dental model he made, as well as things hide told him.

It was a model made for the purpose of examination. That day, it became a special thing for REM: The only memento he had of hide’s physical form. Every time REM sees the model in the waiting room or touches the examination table where hide had been sitting, he wants to talk to that white, inorganic thing.

That is why he is sharing the report on that medical examination now, resigning himself to the criticism of the other people from his field.

It would probably be terribly unreasonable to reach conclusions about hide’s entire body just from that model, the state of his oral cavity, and what he told REM. Moreover, it would be rude to hide, one might think. Others would be of the opinion that it is okay to do it, of course. REM thinks it’s reasonable enough.

But REM’s honest feelings are these: It is not a bad thing to disclose a little bit of hide’s personal matters to the public. In this moment, as his friend and as his fellow guitarist from a band called SAVER TIGER, REM wishes to do all he can for hide, utilizing his means as a dentist.

Therefore, REM informs that the following is not a true patient’s chart nor an actual medical report. It reflects only the personal opinion of one single dentist.

[Patient Matsumoto Hideto] 1) Main complaint (the patient’s acutely perceived subjective symptoms for discomfort) .. Sometimes his jaw joints are hurting. It also happens that he cannot open his jaw. Also, severely stiff shoulders. 2) Medical history (past illnesses and current systemic ailments) .. Arrythmia 3) History of present illness .. Observations of grating sounds and irregularities of temporomandibular joint at times are ambiguous

Psychologically, systemic problems are ambiguous. 4) Current symptoms .. Abnormally stiff shoulders

Since long ago, many cases of clenched jaw, jaw muscles are stressed.

Palpation of temporomandibular joint not particularly abnormal, movement of lower jaw is not irregular or restricted. No palpation of muscle occurred. 5) Symptoms concluded from model of the mouth cavity .. Extensive wear of all teeth, corresponding low occlusion.

This is what REM got from what he heard from hide and the examination of the dental model.

One week after his visit at REM’s clinic, hide went to L.A. again, with no follow-up appointment planned, no clarity on when he would be back in Japan, and with the symptoms of his jaw not being acute, REM did not interview him too extensively. He also notes that there was no time for photographs of the oral cavity or X-rays.

At this point, REM talks a little about temporomandibular joint and how it works. Compared to other parts of the body, it is extremely complex in its movements. With its position between the upper and lower jaw and before the ears, it executes a lot of movements when speaking, eating, or even during sleep for some people.

Very roughly said, there is complex movement when chewing or opening and closing the mouth: Up, down, left, right. In contrast, the abnormal occlusion comes from a way of chewing that differs from the ordinary. Damage to the teeth can also be caused by accidents and violent fights. In any case, if the teeth are worn down by chewing or grinding, the height doesn’t match anymore, which leads to irregular chewing patterns.

If that irregularity is particularly bad, it leads to pain of the temporomandibular joints and overall discomfort. This, caused by emotional stress in the first place, can lead to muscle pain, which in turn leads to more tension.

Opening and closing the mouth can create various problems. This is called temporomandibular joint disorder. Of course, when it comes to hide, REM can’t diagnose that for the aforementioned lack of examinations and tests. But between what patient Matsumoto Hideto told him and the information provided by the study model, it’s a conclusion he finds definitely possible.

The model shows that from the front to the back teeth, all the pointy bits had been worn away so that the teeth were essentially flat. This must have been caused by the teeth grinding hide had told REM about. But for the wear to be so extensive all over, the grinding and gritting must have been extremely strong and have gone on for a very long time.

Teeth grinding is a phenomenon that happens unconsciously in times of required self-control or nervousness and stress. If the grinding goes on for a long time, it often happens that normal chewing is no longer possible. This disturbs the entire system of the jaw muscles and joints and causes pain. If it gets worse, the pain can spread to the surrounding muscles, then the shoulders and fingers and even the back and legs. Also, this affecting the muscles is often the cause for stiffness of the shoulders.

According to the model, the size of hide’s jaw (the gap between the upper and the lower jaw) when chewing was a lot lower than it used to be due to the wear, and the bones inside the joint no longer fit the normal position. The wear is so extensive that REM assumes the pain spread past the environment of the jaw to parts of the body far away from it.

And thus he concludes this meagre investigation.

Finally, there is one more episode REM wants to add in line with this report.

This is how he remembers it:

That day, hide asked him, “How do I get my teeth back to their original shape?” after he came to REM’s office for consultation.

After the examination, they had, of course, gone for drinks, and this is when hide brought it up. REM said, “For that, I would have to fix all your teeth, I think. There is no time for that now, and there is a risk that the shape of your face is going to change. One day, when we are both old men, and there is time to spare, and visuals no longer matter, I can fix them for you.”

Hide said, “Since my teeth are one source for my stiff shoulders, I want to have them fixed. Just, right now, there really is no time for it, but please do it one day. After all, you are to be my attending physician for the rest of my life.”

As attending physician, REM could have been of some help. Even now, that thought sometimes shoots through his mind.

Afterword (1)

With the irresponsible reports and information going around after that certain day, REM wants to detail his days with hide as precisely as possible. And he wants to let as many people as possible know the truth.

That kind of thought is always with him.

“Hey, REM! Please.”

Every day they have this conversation inside REM’s mind, when he listens carefully for hide’s words from beyond the sky and replies, “Hey, hide. How can I help you, so you can rest easy?”

This is a book that has been created as a joint project by REM and Nakamoto-san of Yokosuka, who goes by the name of BENZO, over the course of half a year.

The aim was to write as accurately, truthfully, and diligently as possible about REM’s life as a musician, the historic band SAVER TIGER as made by hide, as well as REM’s irreplaceable days with his sword friend hide, and the enthusiastic rock scene of Yokosuka.

He was aiming to be accurate, but there are probably points where his memory is off, or his perception differs from others. In that case, he is sincerely sorry.

In the light of the close bond he shared with him who has gone beyond the sky, he hopes it can be forgiven.

Finally, he thanks a great many people, starting with hide’s parents, his younger brother, the people from his office, the former members of X JAPAN, the past members and staff of SAVER TIGER, the members of UNITED, AMIT, Doppel Ganger, LAFERIA, and 4th Dimension, Kuriji-san, and then the people of Zushi Dental Clinic, Takeshi-san, Arakawa-sensei, Nakano-san, Someya-san, and many others. Above all, BENZO, who has become a drinking buddy for life and without whom this book would not exist in this form. All these people have helped him greatly, and he takes this opportunity to express his deepest gratitude.

He dedicates this book to his mother, who went to heaven first and may have met hide there, his father, who is still practicing as a doctor on Shikoku, his older sister and his younger brother, his wife Miwa, and their son.

And of course, he wants to dedicate this book, and the next words that come from his heart, to him, who has gone beyond the sky.

“hide, thank you.”

-

1999-05-02   His first birthday above the sky.

-

Afterword (2)

28 October 1999, Thursday, cloudy sky, 10:30 AM.

The night before, REM drank with his bandmates in their usual place, “99”, but their condition wasn’t bad. The window was wide open. Feeling the comforting wind and the morning’s aroma from his fingertips to his hair that once again reached his shoulders, REM went down the national highway No. 134 southwards, towards the coast of Miura. There, on a small hill, different from the rest and seemingly removed from the reality everyone else is living in, is hide’s resting place.

REM wondered if he was plotting new ideas in this place of rest, and if those were now flying around freely through the air…

As always, REM reported about live performances and new songs, and the state of the band, and then made his way back home along the coastal road. There was one tiny thing he noticed:

As REM was talking to hide, a feathered life-form about the size of his little finger’s nail (some kind of insect) was flying through the air around him and the others. At that time, they didn’t particularly care… And now, that life-form was inside the car.

There was no telling if it was the same creature from before, but form and size were identical.

REM calmly closed the window and, without thinking anything, he turned on the car stereo and stepped on the accelerator.

When he got home and left the car, the line between the ordinary and the extraordinary was crossed again.

Several days had passed since then.

It’s the 6th of November now, and with the image of this feathered little life-form flying freely around in his home, REM decides to let the story come to an end.

[screeching-bunny]

Yandere! Jock pt. 2

Warnings: Obsessive Behavior, Yandere Thoughts, Bad Writing, Stalking, Possessive Behavior, Reader is Referred as ‘You’

Pt.1

Yandere! Jock was in a really bad mood today. First off you didn’t answer his good morning text or show up to school. He’s been worried about you all day! He honestly can’t stand being away from you for this long. He just feels so lonely without your presence. The entire time he’s ignored and neglected his jock friends due to his thoughts of you. No amount of coaxing from his peers can get him out of the mini depression that he is currently in right now.

Right now, he’s in his last class staring at the clock and ready to storm out of the school doors. His foot tapped with the rhythm of the ticking clock. Honestly, where could you be and the audacity of you to just ignore his barging number texts! He looks so lost without you and has been moping around the entire day.

The moment he hears the final school bell ring he just books it. From a distance you can hear someone shout to him “Where are you going? We have practice today!” Yeah, he was definitely going to get an earful from his coach when he got back. He’s been ditching practice so much lately just to hang out with you. To the point that his teammates and his coach force you to watch him practice so that he could stay.

Moving back to Yandere! Jock, he was currently on his way to your house. If he knew that you were going to skip today he totally would have stayed at your house with you. Nothing compares to the pleasure of being near you 24/7. That’s basically the only reason why he goes to school everyday.

When he makes it to your house he takes out a spare key that you have given him. He’s been to your house so often that your parents no longer get surprised when he stays over for weeks on end. As he goes into your home he likes to fantasize that the two of you are a married couple and say dumb cheesy things like “Honey, I’m home” Hearing no response from you he quickly makes his way to your room and knocks on your door.

On the other side of the door he can hear the faint sound of you shuffling out of your bed and getting up. He almost starts to coo at the sight of you rubbing your eyes and the sight of your red little nose. Turns out that you were sick and sleeping for the entire day. His heart starts to melt due to the sound of your sneeze and small voice.

Soon it finally registers on his pea sized brain that you were sick. WAIT, YOU WERE SICK!!! Oh no, Yandere! Jock goes into complete panic mode and it’s literally code red for him. He’s treating your common cold as if it were a fatal disease. He is instantly ushering you back into your bed and scolding you for not texting him that you were sick. If he had known, he would have dropped everything just to take care of you for the entire day.

He immediately starts massaging your temples in hopes that it would decrease your headache and lord forgive that you tell him that you haven’t eaten lunch yet. He was honestly about to have a heart attack when you first said that. He’s already down back into the kitchen ready to make a 5 course meal just for you. In order for his darling to be healthy, they first need a balanced meal.

The minute he finishes cooking, he starts spoon feeding you, your meal. It doesn’t matter if you protest that, he is not letting you move a single limb. Besides, what if your muscles are too weak to properly hold a spoon and you hurt yourself? He is absolutely taking no risks no matter how dumb they may seem. Everything that you need will be taken care of by him. He’s even willing to carry you over to places in your house. Honestly, if anything that is just for the benefit and satisfaction of himself.

After lunch, Yandere! Jock lays in your bed and proceeds to watch a movie with you by his side. It just feels so in place to be snuggled up with you under the covers as he rambles on about his day. He feels so at peace and can’t stop looking at how adorable you are. Believes that he is the luckiest man alive to be blessed with your presence on a daily basis.

As the movie comes to its climax he can feel your body relax and snuggle deeper into him. The peaceful look on your face is so wholesome to him and makes him think that maybe you getting sick isn’t such a bad thing after all. I mean, if everyday is like this then he doesn’t mind if you get sick more often.

The minute that you recover from your illness he is getting sick the next day. You’ll have to take care of him or else he’ll whine the entire day about you needing to return the favor. It is honestly such a win for him. It feels as if he’s just died and gone to heaven. Would totally get sick on purpose next time so that he can get the same treatment again. Too bad he’s going to have a lot of homework to make up for.

[bookshelfdreams]

ofmd wasn't "profitable" enough but I didn't even get the feeling hbo wanted to make money off of it. They didn't promote it when s1 dropped, and the promo for s2 was erratic at best. They don't sell merch. Or physical copies. There's no bts documentaries other than what actors (shoutout to Samba ilu) make themselves in their spare time.

It took more than a full year for me to be able to watch s1 legally! I still can't access s2 legally anywhere! It's not that ofmd is unprofitable, it's that hbo refuses to profit off of it, because - well, because profiting off of it would mean investing work and money into it.

And like. Of course, when you compare it to the juggernauts hbo holds rights to, like GoT, ofmd is small fishes. But.

How on earth do these clowns think cult classics happen?

A Game of Thrones was first published in 1996 and didn't make it on the NYT beststeller list until 2011. The first edition of the first Harry Potter book was 500 pieces. And yeah, TV shows are different, but if you look at today's media landscape, would things like Star Trek, or Buffy, or Doctor Who stand the slightest chance? These things take time, is my point. A piece of media doesn't become a massively profitable, beloved classic over night. It takes time and effort to build that kind of franchise.

And the thing is! Nobody who makes these decisions even likes stories. I'm convinced that whoever is in charge at hbo, at amazon prime, even at disney, thinks storytelling is dumb and for idiots. They think it's enough to just slap the name of something people love on whatever garbage they spit out, for it to be profitable. They think it's the brand that sells: Look this has "Lord of the Rings" on it! Look, this one has "Game of Thrones", you like Game of Thrones don't you? Watch my show, boy.

But this isn't how this works. It's not the name that sells (unless, I suppose, you're the MCU, and even there one gets the impression the trick is finally stopping to work), especially not when the product is bad. People aren't idiots.

But it's not about making something good. It's not about making a meaningful piece of art, or telling an engaging story. ofmd served its purpose; it drew in all the subscribers it ever would, so there's no point in letting it go on. Even in the s2 that we did get, this is evident: the penny pinching is palpable, it's clear that the studio didn't want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary on it, and then cut the budget by 40%.

It's not about art. It never has been.

And it's not even about profit, because to be profitable eventually, stories have to be allowed to thrive first. You tell a good story first, and success happens later, often much, much later.

And ofmd was incredibly, astonishingly successful. It was the most in-demand series for weeks after the s1 finale. But even that wasn't enough, it's never enough, ofmd could have made record-setting profits and it still would have been cancelled, because -

Well, I don't know. Because we live in a bad time for art. Because Orwell was right, and stories have become commodities, like shoelaces. Because. Well. It's not about telling a story, is it?

What's the point of a story? What's the point of making something for the joy of making it? What's the point of a piece of art, existing, if it cannot be transferred into numbers for the stockholders?

idk how to end this. I hope David Jenkins finishes the story he wanted to tell, even if just for himself. I hope, against all odds, that weird, fun, heartfelt, beautiful little stories like ofmd continue to happen.

But goddammit.

[atelierwriting]

so you want to build a character 102

written by popular demand of nicole @seasteading’s cat meowing into the mic

so you’ve got a story idea, and now you need to populate it with characters—where do you begin? or perhaps you have the vaguest idea of a character in your mind, but you need a little help figuring out their story. characters are absolutely vital in the story you want to tell, because they’re your readers’ eyes into the world. they experience the story as your characters do. you might even hope that your readers will get attached to them and send you a million all-caps messages crying about the fate of said characters. 

whatever your goals are, here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin.

TRIED AND TRUE RECIPE FOR MAKING THE PERFECT CHARACTER (run them through the mary sue litmus test)

don’t write characters, write character arcs. characters are not static. throughout the story, there will be conflict that should—and will—change your character. the character arc can either compliment the main plot or be that plot. many conflicts are resolved by characters overcoming their own personal or mental battles, or developing in a way that makes a solution possible. the person your character begins as at the beginning of the story will not be the same as the person they are at the end.

think of lord of the rings and how frodo ends up at the end of the story as compared to the very beginning. the struggles he went through ended up changing who he was, and he realized that there was no way he could return to how he was before his journey.

point a to point b. this is one method that i use to write character arcs. i first figure out who my character is and what their situation is like at the beginning of the story. then, i come up with how i want them to end up at the very end. once you have these two points, you can work on how it is possible for them to develop from point a (the beginning) to point b (the end).

along the way, there will be a lot of intermediate points. you can flesh these out as you come to them, and even discover more things about your characters. point b can eventually become point z, or point 1000. how did we go from letters to numbers? who knows! but the journey of character development doesn’t happen immediately. it is a gradual shift.

conflict. pay attention to how your character responds to conflict. conflict can be used as a catalyst for change for your character. when coming up with conflicts, it is important to keep in mind your character’s values and limits. in order for the conflict to feel worthwhile, these two things need to be challenged. it is an ideal situation for development, and even a little angst, if you want that.

character relationships. how does your character view the rest of the cast? if you’re working on the previous point, how might they come into conflict with them? relationships between characters allows the readers to understand more about nearly everything in the story—the plot, the world around them, and in turn, the characters themselves. the way they treat each other can reveal a lot about their own backstories. think about all the ways that they can play off each other, and how this may change as the story progresses, especially when the characters each branch off and develop.

character-driven narratives. if your story is character driven, it becomes even more important that your character motivations are solid and progress in a believable manner. they are the ones enacting change around them—specifically, they will be the ones moving the plot along. think about the ramifications of your character’s actions: how it affects those around them and how it affects the larger picture. then, think about where your character will go from there as a reaction to the things their own choices have caused.

the plot doesn’t just happen. even if you are writing a more passive character, the plot doesn’t magically part for them like the red sea for moses. there are other factors, such as other characters within the story, or perhaps your own character’s desires. of course, this all depends on where you want the character to go from here. you might consider what would make a more passive character less passive, or how else you can ruin their lives to force them to act. either way, plot is something that moves the story forward, not something that just happens to characters.

fundamental character traits. we’ve been talking a lot about how the characters change, but we also need to keep in mind that in some ways these characters must also remain the same. they each have fundamental character traits that will remain by the end of the story. for example, kaz is still the bastard of the barrel at the end of the duology—but he’s opened up more to the crows. the changes a character goes through must be proportional to the events of the plot. they might change a lot, but they must still be recognizable at the end of the story due to the things that they have gone through.

flaws. last but not least, make sure your character has flaws! these can be their weaknesses, things they work on throughout the story and eventually improve upon, or even just character traits that aren’t exactly the best to have—simple facts about them. people aren’t perfect, and your characters shouldn’t be either.

[schismusic]

Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile (and me) at 25

It turns out it's very hard for me to talk about Nine Inch Nails on this blog. Not only because it's a band whose catalogue I explored in a very, very weird manner (essentially anything after 2005, barring Hesitation Marks, is terra ignota to me, a guy who fucking shelled out fifty euros as a fourteen-year-old to go see Trent Reznor perform live as his first ever paid gig) but also because what I do know about them has indelibly altered how I function, not just as a musician but as a person as well. Issue is: The Downward Spiral turned thirty last March. Your usual suspects and I ended up giving it another whirl. I hadn't heard it in full in, at that point, a good five years if not more – my memories of it were confused at best. Of course, hearing the whole thing after so long reminded me of the absolute paradigm shift the record was for me (and, doubtless, for many others as well) which led to me finally biting the bullet.

There is another Nine Inch Nails record hitting a special anniversary this year. It perennially exists in the shadow of the other two "classic" NIN records, mostly due to its perceived length, width of scope, breadth of intent, intensity. I'm not a Nine Inch Nails historian, despite the profound interest the band has always sparked within me. I will not pretend to have any special insight to offer within the recording process, the songwriting, the psychology behind any NIN release at all – and especially not a release as personal, as layered, as complicated, and ultimately as definitive as this one. Anyone with ears will however have to agree with this: sure, it might not have singles as iconic, it might not be as concise, it might not capture the zeitgeist as well as its predecessors, but The Fragile hit its twenty-fifth anniversary with what we can only assume to have been the same grace as works like Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Homer's Odyssey, Nintendo R&D1's Super Metroid. It's not even a contest. Pretty Hate Machine, barring a couple of incredible songs that would be absolute standouts in any other discography, is mostly just cute and quite unfocused in a number of crucial ways that make it breathe stilted compared to what's to come. Broken and The Downward Spiral still hit like a truck with very little rough spots – they remain lean, efficient pieces of slaughter machinery – but, as acutely noted by recurring blog guest Francesco Farabegoli, their reliance on heavy guitars seems to be more a byproduct of historical coincidence than that of genuine affection, on Reznor's part, to that specific brand of aggression. As such, it's easier to see them retrospectively as double-bound to phenomena like the Seattle sound's overnight success, or the surprisingly big following garnered by genres like death metal and projects like Ministry. None of this applies to The Fragile. Every single sound design decision in The Fragile stands as well alone as it does within the context of the whole NIN discography up to that point – including the Quake soundtrack, which (if not for its inherent ties to an external vision, not directly pertaining to anyone in the band) might actually be its closest peer in a number of ways.

Following up on the more abstract moments of Quake, for starters, The Fragile by and large foregoes the grid-like structure that even The Downward Spiral still abode to. As a result, most of the album's songs retain a surprising "live" feel to them; however, it has to be noted that the sounds themselves are imprecise, artisanal, acoustically coherent to their own reality, believable within the context of a hypothetical recording space: somewhat damaged, in most scenarios. The irony of saying this about a record whose singles include, among other things, humongous-sounding digitally distorted walls of electric guitars and actual breakbeats does not escape me, of course; but tracks like The Great Below (one of the album's thematic centerpieces) are ultimately so enhanced by the unnaturally warbled synth strings, the alien-sounding acoustic guitars or whatever that fucking pluck even is, the single-tracked lead vocals that it's actually impossible to unhear it, once you've heard it. In other words, The Fragile's ultimate superiority lies within its decision to sound – plain and simple – like it is dying.

What most popular rock and rock-adjacent acts of the 1990s made finally clear is the inextricable connection between grief and anger, mourning and fury. On average, the more personal the record, the clearer the connection between the two. In Utero, Dirt, the more politically charged branches of emo, the bands that most openly associated themselves with the nu metal image all end up converging onto an angst-filled paradox of vehement depression, or abulic bloodlust, if you'd rather. This is also the case with The Downward Spiral – a record that conveniently expresses its sad moments in the form of exactly that: sad moments (A Warm Place and Hurt, to name names). I am also conveniently leaving aside the more overtly sexual side of all the records and movements mentioned – but ultimately, bloodlust and appetite are not just metaphors of destruction, if you catch my drift. All of this somehow ends up actually coalescing into virtually any given second of The Fragile's hour-and-a-half runtime. The irony is that this exact coincidence of sounds and feelings looks a lot like your average sixty-year-old who takes up the habit of looking at obituaries posted on the streets and put in local newspaper – an exquisitely Abruzzese habit, from which I am not exempt.

Pointedly enough, a couple of tracks on the record openly tie into the then-recent demise of Trent Reznor's grandmother Clara, the woman who encouraged him to actually pursue a serious career in music. It gets particularly grim when you realize the instrumental I've just linked above this paragraph – candidly titled I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally – has one single thing written under its title in the CD's booklet: the chilling epigraph "for Clara". I spent a lot of time in a cemetery on November 2nd, 2024, as my family and I waited for the Day of the Dead mass to start. Everyone in town had reunited in the graveyard, with the hilarious result that the place in question was more populated – and noisier, regrettably – than the actual town itself. A literal necropolis, then: a city of the dead, as in quite literally built with them: the little family mausoleums and the big structures comprising multiple assorted burial recesses, if you squint, look like condominiums, late nineteenth-century roofed avenues, suburban villas. Then, those who populate these areas, of course very much alive, speak of things pertaining mostly to people who are alive – and boil with the self-destructive rage pertaining to people who are still alive (self-destuctive, that is, only insofar as other people they know no longer are alive).

I was born on July 11th, 1999; as such, I am about two months older than The Fragile. The fact that this particular record would turn twenty-five the same year as me imposed a redde rationem of some kind: finally face this behemoth, advertised to be more depressing, more horrifying, dirtier and more suffocating than any other NIN record was. And so I did. Mere days after the record's anniversary, my girlfriend would tell me she wasn't feeling the spark anymore. As usual, she'd called it right – neither was I, as hard to admit as it was. Grandpa stays buried, much to everyone's chagrin, and I am nowhere closer to making my own Russian Ark than I was when I posted my last piece on here. I fumbled a cute-looking girl a week ago and while on the one hand I knew this was gonna happen and I was going to take it in stride, on the other hand this very much did not happen, which led me to finally listen to Justin Broadrick's Jesu (more on this in another post: it's probably gonna be a fun time, unlike this one). A couple of other things happened – a British girl hit on me after my band played a local underground music club, and then forgot to actually follow suit with her actual plans, luckily for me seeing as she looked to be quite drunk already – but the point still stands: I am the one looking at obituaries, blindly reading on, recognizing last names with a grimace, refusing to engage with my own fallibility.

So twenty-five years on, we have to face the music. Reznor has, so far, never made anything as intense and personal and calculated and brutal and perfect in the etymological sense of the word as The Fragile. Doing so would, in all likelihood, kill him. With Teeth is a record that admits a form of defeat: I'll take a quiet life, I'll take a rock quartet with synths, I don't fucking care about perfection any longer. Hesitation Marks deals in different forms of anxiety, more befitting for a man (at the time) nearing fifty, with a wife and children and an Academy Award or two sitting on his shelf somewhere. Both are mostly cute – I will go so far as to admit I have an actual soft spot for Hesitation Marks, making it the only NIN record outside of the classics that I willingly go out of my way to listen to in full – and ultimately inconsequential. I guess I can certainly aspire to be as inconsequential and cute as these records are, knowing there will forever be a record like The Fragile somewhere behind my back, hiding in the shadows.

[arisloverrs]

Mafia AU.

A first meeting.

Word Count: 3.5K

(What have I done, I wanted to write 2K, what happened.. Ending is rushed but I do not give any fucks no more.)

“Hey. Ari, I need your help with Dress to Impress.” Deimos’ voice rings through the headset making the woman on the other side flinch as she stops in her tracks, her gloved hands gripping the door handle. 

“Shit what the fuck- you bitch- fucking warn me before you do that.” Ari hissed, pulling away and grabbed onto the wall of the alleyway, making sure that no-one else was around before she sighed. There was the sound of shuffling on the other side of the receiver. ‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ the woman thought as she rubbed her weary eyes, trying her best to stay awake.  

Fuck it was so late, and the lord knew she’d much rather be in bed cuddling her pillows compared to roaming around alleys that reeked of piss and spray paint at some ungodly hour. 

“You want me to give you an announcement every time I decide to speak to you? That sounds sorta dumb. You’re dumb Ari.” Deimos yawned, making Ari roll her eyes in annoyance. “I hope you get impaled by a dildo.” Ari mumbled in response.  

Deimos made a high-pitched moaning sound on the line which made Ari wince, quickly turning the output volume down, making sure that the deserted hallway did indeed - stay deserted. “Ahn- yes please daddy!!” 

“Fucking kill yourself.” Ari growled as she squeezed her eyes shut. God fucking dammit - she was getting nowhere. 

“Pshhh, rude. You’re rude Ari you’re mean, you’re being mean to me and I’m literally just a little guy. You know baby seals yea- I am literally a baby seal. Visualise a baby seal right now. That's who you’re telling to kill themselves right now.” Deimos began, making Ari sigh. “A poor old baby seal. How could you be mean to a baby seal. Anyways Ari, there's this girl on Dress to Impress right now, some eight year old with like - no fashion sense and she has the audacity to yell at me about my outfits!” 

Ari frowned narrowing her eyes, “Why are you playing Roblox, shouldn’t you be working right now-”  

“Shush Ari, I’m speaking. And don’t worry about it. Anyways, like I was saying before I was rudely interrupted - I was clearly cooking. And it’s obvious that this girl has watched too much brain rot because I am not fucking with you right now, it's literally frying her brain cells, Ari.” 

Ari sighed and rubbed her forehead, trying to quell the inevitable headache from forming. 

“That’s why she can’t differentiate between peak and actual ass. So, I want you to come home right now - it’s fine, the mission can wait, this is more important anyways. Okay so, Ari I’m going to have to get you to kill this failed abortion-” Her voice rang out from the receiver and Ari automatically began mentally tuning out every word that spilled from her best friend’s lips. 

Her gaze was sharp as she carefully observed her surroundings, there was a door to the left - probably leading her to some room, most likely a meeting room of some sorts. It sounded quiet, there was no noise coming from the inside so it was most likely empty.  

The chances of there being any information regarding the Itadori Mafia group’s future plans was defiantly low.  

Low, but never zero. 

Ari bent down to pick at the lock. “Oi Deimos.” Ari cut her best friend off in the middle of her lecture about how people with no fashion taste shouldn’t be playing Dress to Impress in the first place.  

The woman on the other end of the call stopped speaking and went silent, listening for any instructions.  

“Hit me with numbers, when was the last time Sukuna’s mafia group had any sort of contact with anyone? Groups, individuals… anything big y'know? You sure we got anything on the records?”  

Ari pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and focused on picking the lock in front of her as the sound of Deimos’ fingers quickly typing away at the keys echoed around her control room. It was common knowledge in the underworld that the mafia group were in a bit of a financial struggle at the moment - and that they could barely afford security to prowl their halls.  

But knowing their leader - Sukuna - there was no doubt in Ari’s mind that they were planning something. 

Something big. 

Something that might change the black market and the way things operate in the underworld as a whole. 

Some plans that would pay a hefty price at the next auction if she could get her hands on any files - any documents - anything. 

The sound of Deimos’ voice snapped her out of her train of thought. “Uhm... A few weeks ago… by the looks of it, Sukuna reached out to Toji Zenin for something… and this was uh... after he broke off from the Zenin clan I think – but we still don’t know why he did that, nor why he would ever pair up with someone like Sukuna…” Deimos’ voice trailed off before she spoke up again, “I mean… it’s not like Sukuna has anything right now… no money no power... nothing other than a reputation…” Deimos’ shrugged, “I mean,Toji is a valuable asset though I can’t lie about that much.” Deimos went silent, presumably to either continue doing some research, or go back to playing her game. 

A sharp shiver ran down Ari’s spine at the mention of Toji Zenin’s name and her fingers stopped, the pin slipping from her hands and clattering on the floor - the noise echoing around the empty hallway.  

The blood drained from her face, and she bit her lip, the taste of iron exploding on her taste buds making her wince. 

“Didn’t you know…  it’s rude to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation.” 

Ari whispered. 

“...Oh yea? Is that so baby?... Didn’t you know that it’s rude to talk about someone who’s always listening.” 

Cold metal pressed against the back of Ari’s scalp. Deimos’ voice came out sharp as she yelled at her for updates. “Take the fucking mic off so I can get your full attention ma.”  

Toji’s voice was smooth, like melted butter as he pressed the cool barrel of the gun against Ari’s head. Her hands shook, she could feel the pounding of her pulse in her throat, the throbbing in her head as she reached up and brushed her finger against the smooth plastic of the receiver. 

She cursed under her breath and squeezed her eyes shut as she threw the receiver on the concrete floor, drowning out the sound of Deimos’ yells as she begged Ari to update her on the current situation. “Good girl. Honestly… it really is rude to talk about someone behind their back y’know?” the sorcerer killer grinned, pulling the gun away from her head, making Ari sigh. “What do you want Toji- actually, better yet, why are you here?” She whispered as she shook her head and dusted herself off.  

“What do you mean, I’m here for the same reason as you ma.” he shrugged. 

Ari raised an eyebrow and Toji scratched his head with the gun, humming. “You’re here to… steal documents on your business partner’s next moves and sell them on the black market?” She crossed her arms, confused his antics and motives. 

“Oh what- that's why you’re here?” He mumbled, looking confused. Ari shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No, I'm actually here to fill the halls with glitter and give Sukuna this flower crown I got him- Of course that's why I’m here!” Ari seethes, balling her fists and glaring at the man who simply shrugs in response. “Well, I’m sorry for trying to call your bluff ma.” 

Ari rubbed her forehead and sighed. “Oh my god. Why are you here? What do you want?” She asked dryly. Toji merely sighed and shook his head. “I was more or less guardin’ the area… making sure you-” He pointed the gun towards her chest, “- couldn’t get your dirty little mitts on important information that doesn't belong to you.”  

Ari goes silent, a frown etched onto her lips. “I thought you would never let anyone order you around.” She mumbled under her breath.  

That was Toji’s whole ‘thing’.  

That was how he operated - he refused to do anything for anyone unless money was involved. And there was no way Sukuna had enough money to pay for the likes of Toji’s security.  

Toji laughed and shook his head. “You’d usually be right ‘bout that ma - but I’m afraid the only way I can care for Megs and his boyfriend is by stickin’ with these guys for now. It’s in my best interest. Business y’know?” 

Ari shot Toji a confused glance, ‘Megs? Who’s- Oh. Megumi. His son… right.’ Toji sighed and shook his head. “Oh, and by the way… ‘m sorry for this ma.” He whispered under his breath. 

There was a sharp crunching noise as the head set was crushed under someone’s foot, the line between her and Deimos was effectively cut as Ari jolted in shock. A fist collided with the side of her face and she winced, grabbing the arm and attempting to flip the perpetrator over. 

Bright red eyes gleamed like rubies as Sukuna grinned at the girl. “Look what we have here. Little, thieving, bitch.” He hissed, his knee coming into contact with her stomach, making her double over in pain, clutching her gut as tears pricked in the corners of her eyes, bile rising from her throat and spilling from her lips and onto the floor.  

Sukuna huffed, and looked aside to someone that Ari couldn’t make out from where she laid on the floor. Her face pressed against the concrete, Sukuna’s boot dug into her head and made her whimper out in pain, blood dripping from her nose and onto the ground, staining it a pretty shade of ruby red. 

“Tie her up Choso. She’d make a good ransom. Don’t let her escape.” Sukuna grumbled as Ari weakly opened her mouth to protest, a small noise of pain escaped her lips before her vision went blurry, and then faded into darkness. 

She had effectively passed out, at the foot of the most dangerous man of this decade. 

When she woke again, her body was bound against a chair. Her hands and feet were duct taped together. There was a blind fold over her eyes and her mouth was taped up, stopping her from screaming out and alerting someone from outside. “Well, well, well… someone’s up.” Sukuna’s voice came out low and menacing. “Choso, pull down her blindfold and take the tape off her mouth.” Sukuna growled at his younger brother, who looked much too frightened to be working in the sort of place that warranted this sort of lack of sympathy. 

Sukuna grinned as his little brother bent down, his careful fingers brushed against her ears as he delicately undid the knot on the back of her head. The blindfold came off, dropping from her face and Choso carefully took the fabric from the woman. The harsh lights hanging overhead made Ari wince out, blinking rapidly, trying to accommodate to the glaring, harshness. “Let’s see how you’ll weasel your way out of this one hm?” Sukuna stood in front of her, now that she could see again, she could make out where she was. 

Ari was in the very same meeting room she was attempting to break into before. It was clean and empty too by the looks of it at least - and there was no way Ari was going to crane her head to look around when the likes of Sukuna, Choso and Toji stood in front of her.  

By the looks of it, Toji was the only one holding a weapon – his finger was wrapped around the same gun he had pressed against her head a few hours earlier. However, Ari knew that Toji and by association - that gun wasn’t the what she should be worrying over at the moment. 

Sukuna was empty handed, but if the rumors that travelled from ear to ear, from mouth to mouth, from agent to agent - were true - than his hands were the most dangerous weapons in this room. 

There were tales of him snapping necks with his hands like celery sticks, stories of him tearing at the flesh of the unlucky with his nails and sucking the blood of those who dared to cross him after.  

Consuming his victims like a leech. 

Sucking the blood from the bone marrow, biting on the intestines boiled into a soup, drying out the skin and chewing on it like beef jerky. 

Ari’s face morphed into an uncomfortable grimace.  

Yea, there was no way she wanted to be anywhere near that man any longer. 

And then there was Choso. 

There wasn’t much on the record of him in the first place, he seemed to prefer staying hidden compared to the likes of his brother who basked in the attention of others. 

But the fact he was working with the likes of Sukuna was enough to raise a few red flags. 

Choso met Ari’s eyes. “I’m really sorry for this.” He whispered under his breath, giving her an apologetic look before grabbing the tape and pulling on the side of Ari's cheek, making the skin taut.  

Ari screwed her eyes shut and braced for the inevitable pain that would quickly follow. 

Choso tore the tape off Ari’s mouth before he winced when some of the skin on her lips peeled off along with it, making ruby droplets form on her lips. “I’m sorry- oh my god! I’m so sorry! I really didn’t think it would make you bleed! Oh god-!” He squeaked and pulled away, looking around for something to apply pressure onto her lips in an attempt to quell the swelling of the skin. 

Ari turned her head and spat on the floor, a mix of blood and saliva dripping from her wet lips as she licked them, ignoring the way Toji’s eyes flickered down and the way his gaze carefully watched her tongue collect the blood beading on her lips. “I don’t remember booking a free fucking face waxing session but thanks. I’ve been meaning to clean my upper lip for a while now.” She grinned.  

Sukuna glared at the woman, before stepping in front of her. “Watch your mouth fucking mouth brat. I can have you killed right now if I wanted.” He hissed, eyes glaring down at the girl who merely shrugged back. 

“You? Kill me. Oh, I’d like to see you try.” She tipped her head back and laughed. “You and I both know I’m far too valuable for you to merely kill off. All of this information in my pretty little head and you want to put a bullet through it.” Ari shook her head and sighed. “Men these days... always jumping to violence I’m afraid, such a shame. Such a waste of good potential and talent.”  

Choso’s eyes widened and he took in a sharp breath, hands trembling.  

This all made sense now. 

Ari’s nervous smiles.  

Her false confidence.  

Her talking.  

She was buying time. He knew he had to say something - to warn his brother about her but he had never seen Sukuna so angry before, and he really didn't want any of that anger directed in his direction at all.  

“So. What will you do? Kill me now, or see what I have to say?” Ari smirked; a bead of sweat dripped down the valley in between her breasts. She was really hoping to God - praying to God up there, that Sukuna would call her bluff.  

Where the fucking hell are you Deimos? 

She obviously had her location, the uncomfortable feeling of the tracker sewn onto the inside of her bra digging into her skin was obvious proof of the fact that they hadn’t stripped her down to check if she was carrying anything. 

And that would most definitely be their first mistake.  

Carefully, Ari reached for the small blade she kept in her pants.  

Any minute now any two different scenarios might play out.  

Sukuna would take the bait and ask her for some information - information that she very clearly didn't have.  

Or. 

Sukuna would tell Choso or Toji to blow her brains out on the concrete floor.  

Shit. 

A plan. 

She needed a plan. 

And given the way Sukuna was looking at her, she wasn’t getting out without a fight. 

Fuck where was Deimos??? 

Ari quietly tore the duct tape binding her arms, keeping eye contact with Sukuna. “So? What will it be, Mr. Mafia man?”  

Sukuna shot her a disgusted grimace. 

Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw.  

“Shoot her.” 

That would be mistake number two. 

Ari tore the tape off her hands and quickly sliced through the tape binding her feet. Before either Toji or Choso could reach her, Ari’s fist was already colliding with Sukuna’s face. But this wasn’t like every other fist fight she had the luxury of partaking in, this time she respected her opponent. 

This time she knew he would win. 

This time she knew she wouldn’t be leaving alive. 

Sukuna staggered back, touching his cheek and his eyes narrowed, anger began to bubble up in his chest as he reached for Ari, his fist collided with her cheek and Ari winced, spitting out blood on the floor as she fell to the floor. “You- Bitch-” Sukuna spits out before Ari’s fist meets his face, making Sukuna growl in annoyance. 

Choso reaches out to tug on Toji’s sleeve, “What… do… we do…” He whispered while watching the fight with wide eyes. How did someone- some random person he’d never heard off, have the guts to go up against the likes of Sukuna? She looked terrified, a nervous smile on her face as she threw punches against the most feared man in the underworld. If anything, her drive and confidence should be admired. Wow… I could never do that. Choso thought to himself, gazing longingly from the sidelines. 

A loud explosion makes both him and Toji straighten up and look around for the source of the noise. Ari and Sukuna both freeze on their assault on each other. “Ahem. Hey everyone it’s the penis blaster here ready for another penis blasting video. But before we get to the blasting, I would like to send you one message. Please release my snookie snookie boo boo bear immediately!” The sound of Deimos’ voice through a megaphone came out from outside the meeting room. Toji turned to shoot Ari with a grimace. “Snookie snookie boo boo bear?” He whispered turning to look at Ari.  

Who was nowhere to be seen. 

“And chat, before we get to the penis blasting, here is your fun seal fact for the day- Did you know- That seals sleep underwater and they usually come out to hide from predators. And of course, here’s your daily squid fact- big fin squid are in the genus Magna Pinna, which means “great fin” in Latin. They get their name from the fact that their fins stretch to about 90% of the length of the mantle, or the main body of the squid.” Deimos shouted into the megaphone, a shit eating grin on her face as she clung onto the beam of the helicopter.  

Any minute now… and Ari would be with her… and they’d go back to headquarters where they would bully Sune and play Roblox to bully his taste in clothing. 

Sukuna stepped outside, looking less than pleased about being interrupted. “What do you want?” He barked, stepping back to avoid dirtying his clothes and hair from the smoke and dust the blades of the helicopter would throw up at him. Ugh. First a little bitch running around his headquarters and now this?? Ridiculous. 

“I want my snookie snookie boo boo bear Mr. Very Sexy Mafia man. I promised to talk shit with her tonight and it’s a girl's night so you kinda have to free her otherwise you’re sillyphobic and I’ll get you cancelled on Twitter.” Deimos shrugged, stepping back and discreetly throwing a ladder out of the back of the helicopter. “There’s no way I’m letting you take-”  

Toji coughed and tapped Sukuna’s shoulder. “Uh... dude. She’s uhhh… gone.” He mumbled. 

Sukuna whipped his head around, glaring daggers into Toji’s face, “What the fuck do mean ‘She’s gone.’ Weren't you and Choso supposed to be watching her- how did-” He stepped back and stared at the empty room. “What the fuc-”  

“See ya sorry asses you cunts!!!” Ari shouted, grabbing onto the handle of the ladder, holding onto papers, a smug grin pasted on her lips. “Suck my clit!!” She laughed as the helicopter slowly lifted into the air and flew away. 

Sukuna’s hand twitched as he tried his best to contain his rage. 

Choso stared off in awe at the sky as the duo disappeared into the sky. His heart fluttered. “Wow…” 

[deathbydarkelves]

How do you handle travel time in Azeroth for your writings? The game lets you take a ship or zeppelin to a whole other continent faster than you can fly a hippogryph to the next city lol

I handle it realistically, or as realistically as the story needs.

I don’t know if we have a canon size for Azeroth (regardless the in-game world isn’t to scale lol), but when laying the groundwork for my AU I wanted to size it up to my own preference anyway. So I semi-arbitrarily decided modern Kalimdor is slightly smaller than South America (roughly 4,000 mi/6,400 km north-south, compared to S. America’s ~4,700 mi/7,500 km), and I use that as my general reference for the other landmasses.

I don’t pull out my calculator every time there’s a timeskip between chapters or a travel montage, because that’s a lot of extra work that really doesn’t add much in my style of writing. I go for semi-realism, not hard realism. But when drafting, I do look at the average speed of whatever modes of transportation my characters will be using, compare that to an estimate of the distance they’re covering, then add a little more to their travel time to account for physical and plot obstacles they’ll run into.

I also look at other adventure-fantasy stories and compare the scale of the story to the time it took. The entirety of Lord of the Rings takes place over about a year. So I sort of... compare the scale of my stories to Lord of the Rings and go from there, as one more way to guesstimate time taken. I'm very bad at visualizing numbers, so I gotta find workarounds lol.

The end result is that an on-foot trip from, say, Stormwind to central Duskwood will take about a week to a week and a half. In my AU hippogryphs, gryphons, and similarly-sized flying creatures can reach top speeds of 45 mph/72 km/h, so that same trip in a straight line, going at max speed whenever possible and accounting for necessary rest stops, would take VERY ROUGHLY three to five days.

When it comes to the sailing ships, I just use the irl speed of those as well. Traveling between the E.K. and Kalimdor via ship takes two to six months, give or take depending on your ship, the winds, weather, and the season. Zeppelins are a lot faster, but considering this is WoW and we’re working with… not-WWII-technology… I do considerably slow them down in this setting (to maybe a max of 40-60 mph/64-96 km/h, ROUGHLY). So the same trip between the E.K. and Kalimdor would take anywhere from a week to two months. Again, depending on the ship, winds, etc.

When it comes to that sort of intercontinental travel you do have to keep in mind everyone has to avoid the Maelstrom, which adds gods-only-know how much more travel time lol

So TL;DR it’s whatever feels best for the story, informed by real-world equivalents to the modes of transportation my characters use :)

[abbiistabbii]

Lord of the Rings Headcanon: Smeagol/Gollum got the ring before Potatoes reached the Shire and it also explains why he speaks like that.

Ok so, Gollum/Smeagol at time of death (end of Return of the King) was 589 thanks to the ring extending his life. Just for context, he is as removed from Frodo and Sam as the artist Jan van Eyck is to us.

Now Potatoes are really popular today in Europe but they are a New World Crop. They were first introduced to Ireland (roughly the group of people JRR Tolkein based the Hobbits on) in the 1530s or there about but likely weren't grown in large numbers until much later.

So that scene where Gollum asks Sam what Potatoes were (and both Sam and Frodo looked at him funny) was because, well, because he genuinely had no contact with Potatoes, they didn't have them when he was in the Shire.

Oh, and how does that explain the way Gollum speaks? Well here's the thing. Languages shift, but we don't know how Hobbitish shifted in 589 years. All those weird linguistic quirks of Gollum/Smeagol could just be how Frodo and Sam heard and interpreted his speech.

Compare "Forsooth the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters" (Genesis 1:2 from the Wycliffe Bible) with "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (New International Version). Gollum was basically talking like they spoke in the Wycliffe Bible. Not Shakespear (late 1500s/Early 1600s) which is at least somewhat readable but closer to Chaucer! GO READ CHAUCER AND YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH OF A MINDFUCK GOLLUM WOULD'VE BEEN!

Like imagine you are going through a forest in Scotland and you see this little crackhead saying shit in Old Scots. They find your crisps in your bag and are all "Wit be these?" This little crackhead then tells you a retelling of things he saw and you realise he witnessed a battle that happened during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms at a place that is now a fucking Golf Course near the Airport.

[alexiusgoesrogue]

Status Update: Day Ten

Today was not a very big day. But although it can’t be compared to the first days of this adventure, it was fun nonetheless.

First thing Bee and I went out for some drinks and snacks. They got themself some pineapple juice, and I got raspberry licorice. Never thought I’d ever like anything containing even the word licorice, but here we are.

With no actual plans on our agenda, we headed for a few last rounds of Taiko no Tatsujin at Timezone. It was once again really fun, but did quite a number on my right wrist (no idea why this one in particular and not both).

We took another break, which included food again, because of course it did. This was the first time of me trying anything from KFC ever. And while it was tasty, it was not really something I’d see myself craving someday in the future.

Our ideas on what to do for the day ran thin, so we decided to just head back to the hostel. The walk back was quite funny though, as it was really windy at times.

I used the time I had to already pack up some of my luggage to make it easier for tomorrow. I also finally finished my halo book (hooray me!), technically. I read all main chapters and the epilogue. The adjunct files were just a bit.. too boring. I’ll just get back to that some other time.

Additionally, I took some more time to get back into traditional drawing. The pictures will be posted someday (hopefully) to the respective blogs they belong on (90% are CJ and Darnell related, because what else would they be honestly).

Nothing much happened since then. I spent time in my room watching YouTube and downloaded more videos on Netflix for the long flights. I thought the night would end with a ‘short’ viewing of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, but that didn’t end up happening due to technical difficulties.

My alarm is already set. My shower towels are dry and in the suitcase. All left unpacked are toiletries (because I was too tired to do it now), some valuables in the locker, and my bluey plushie of course.

Tomorrow will be quite a day, and I don’t know if I’ll like that. But just like the day when I began this journey, I’ll get through this.

Sponsorships of the day: KFC lunch, several rounds of Taiko

***

Note: I refuse to fight with the wifi again, so same as with my previous post, I will not share any pictures here and simply add them in a reblog at a later point in time, when better wifi is available to me.

[sio-lokistiel]

Hi!! So I'm a fairly strong chuck won believer (i have been given some Extremely convincing evidence and I think its interesting to think about so) but I saw a post you made about how that theory disregards cas and jacks arcs and I was just wondering if you could expand on that? I'm super open to interpretations lol and I'm really curious to hear the other side (i haven't seen too much anti chuck won stuff so I dont know the arguments)

Okay, oh boy. I guess part of it is what exactly you mean by “Chuck Won” because I understand it on a censorship level. Yes, Chuck was representing the network. Yes, the network meddled and cut Dean’s reciprocation and we ended up with that garbage finale with pages of [OMITTED] in the script. So, if that’s all you mean by “Chuck Won” then yeah, whatever I guess.

Idk, some people probably feel it’s a legitimate theory simply because Dean died. It seems a lot of the fandom thinks death = bad…and that’s just not the case now that Jack freed the souls. I mean, I can throw quotes from The Mummy and Lord of the Rings at you about how death is the next step in journey. So while I’m no longer upset about Dean dying in general, especially because it was foreshadowed, the way he died was so fucking dumb. That doesn’t mean I think it has anything to do with Chuck.

Cas’ arc was all about self-actualization. His speech in Gimme Shelter explains a good part of it with how he found purpose having a family and becoming a dad, BUT him also realizing that having himself is important, too. Then, oh goodness, we reach the culmination in Despair (The Truth) when he realizes happiness is in the saying, in accepting your truth, both the good and bad bits of yourself. The Empty comes and he reintegrates with his Shadow to become whole and saves Dean, the world, and himself in the process. Yes, that’s a whole bunch of Jungian psychology stuff and it’s a lot to process and I’m probably not doing the best job of explaining it. Most of the Chuck Won theory stuff I’ve seen ignores all that and seems to ignore the canon that Cas IS in heaven. I understand the disappointment of Cas and Dean not reuniting, YET. Corporate fuckery (and Covid) kept it from happening in the finale with the original Roadhouse ending that was planned and then scheduling conflicts and Jensen and Misha agreeing Cas needed more than a cameo kept him from being in The Winchesters.

And Jack. Jack was literally the whole goddamn point. The two big things are he’s possessed and sometimes dead because of this, or he is corrupted somehow. I have never seen a convincing damn argument for either of these things. There’s one post that tries to compare some his mannerisms to Chuck, but is filled with so much straw grasping and reaching I’m surprised the author didn’t need a doctor afterward. Another is that some people project on the poor boy so much and just they don’t like his arc, they want to think something is wrong. There is a lot more Pagan stuff about Jack and the number of mythologies where some god is brought down by being a power hungry dickhead and that comes back to bite them in the ass as a grandchild in Jack’s case removes them from power. There are better people to explain all the Pagan imagery surrounding Jack; my tag #jack is the orphic egg should get you to some really good stuff. I’m also not down to argue about how the last 3-5 seasons are meant to read with a Pagan lens. There was one group who predicted the end of the mothership months in advance and then all of The Winchesters and it wasn’t the people clinging to some white Christian reading.

Last thing, I just personally find the theory really lazy as well. I would legitimately be so disappointed in Jensen and whoever ends up writing the next chapter whether that’s Robbie or someone else if they went that route. Luckily, they are all smarter than that and I can see them seeming to lean into it, but then having the most fabulous rug pull! This is very long, oops.

[magnorious]

Can somebody explain Jon Snow to me?

Not that this fandom is dead or anything. I went down a rabbit hole of the last ten years or so of filmmaking where the general motive for story decisions seems to be “if the fan theories correctly anticipate the direction of the plot, change it at all costs to keep the suspense”. It was about Star Wars, but reminded me of Game of Thrones.

I didn’t watch seasons 7 and 8, only saw clips here and there and watched the whole thing for the first time earlier this year. I’m well aware of the fans’ loudest complaints but one just doesn’t make sense to me: Being pissed that Jon Snow didn’t end up on the iron throne.

From a storytelling perspective, I can understand the frustrations. He fits the archetype of the long lost heir, thus is story should end with him assuming his birthright as the ruler of the land. That checks out.

Problem is, Jon Snow as a person independent of this archetype never once gave any indication that he has aspirations of royalty. So everyone mocking his “she’s muh queen/I don’t want the throne” is, again, understandably frustrating for the meta reasonings, but… Jon isn’t exactly being out of character here, from what I saw when I watched the show over the course of two weeks or so.

This dude is humble to a fault and just keeps bad-lucking into critical plot beats that demand he flex his nobility and loyalty to his friends and his own beliefs, to a point where they get him killed. I don’t recall a single conversation Jon has where he longs for a station of power and endless riches and the respect of kingship, and the mortality rate of the leaders of Westeros don’t make it that appealing to someone like him anyway.

He never talks about how he would change Westeros or what about him he thinks would make a better leader than the inbreds. No other characters talk about how he’s really going places beyond the Night’s Watch and that he’d make a great king. Why?

Because for 90% of the story, Jon has no idea he’s the long lost heir. Since this IP is constantly compared to Lord of the Rings, let’s compare him to Aragon on only a “long lost heir” basis, and I’ll use Movie Aragorn, who’s much less gung-ho about his birthright, for familiarity’s sake.

When we meet him, which isn’t until almost an hour into the first movie, we have no idea who he is other than a competent Ranger who knows stuff the heroes need to survive, and that his name is Strider. Then without much fanfare, the revelations of who he actually is comes in waves. Arwen has an unremarkably dramatic conversation about how Aragorn hates being in Isildur’s shadow and how it gives him imposter syndrome—as in, there’s no dramatic pause for the audience’s sake for gasps of shock and awe. It’s just played straight. Then you get the big dramatic reveal for the rest of the cast during the Council of Elrond for a more concrete establishing of this long lost heir and what role we can expect to see from him.

Because we know from very early on in the story, and Aragorn and everybody he meets knows, too, his arc is constantly framed around how competent he is on a leadership level, and as a friend. He’s given spotlight after spotlight to show his prowess in battle and leading large numbers of troops in infantry and cavalry, is a solid tactician and strategist, and is the first boots on and last boots off the ground whenever he can be.

Skill wise, he’s shown to be an excellent swordsman and archer, or whatever weapon he can get his hands on in an emergency—but not OP. In the fight in the Mines of Moria with the troll, he gets knocked out by the troll.

He’s humble and friendly and always looking out for the little guy, always makes sure to act with the utmost respect to everyone he meets, even when they don’t deserve it, and is a leader who leads by example, on the battlefield in the mud on the front lines.

His entire arc is growing into these massive shoes he has to fill and accepting that he is the one true king. He goes from his scruffy Ranger outfit to the livery of Gondor for the final battle in all his shiny armor and velvet and gives his first real big speech to his troops—a true king to rally behind.

—

I did enjoy following Jon Snow as a character. He had a ton of depth and nuance and was constantly put in harrowing situations that kept testing his morals and beliefs and he has a lot of the same traits as Aragorn: Humble, respectful, charismatic, a bit of imposter syndrome, etc.

But since we spend more than six out of eight total seasons with the entire cast of characters, including Jon, completely unaware that he’s the long lost heir, there is zero development on that front. Personality wise, Jon is amazing, they pulled out all the stops, but his arc is just one long chain of act-and-react to the next obstacle in his way without much agency from him on what those actions are.

He doesn’t start his story on page one with a clear goal or aspiration in mind beyond to survive another day. A problem I found with a lot of GoT characters—they’re all just waiting around going on their side quests in the interim until the writers want to pull the trigger on huge plot set pieces, like the White Walkers.

By not having the understanding on page one that there is in fact a long lost heir (that wouldn’t just get murdered by these bloodthirsty savages), Jon is aimless, going wherever the plot demands because we don’t know where he wants to end up. Or at least, I don’t know.

He’s voluntold to campaign as the lord commander of the Knights Watch, he doesn’t actually want to do the job until he has no choice. He doesn’t want to be crowned King in the North after liberating Winterfell, it just happens to him and he has no choice.

And you’re telling me that somewhere in these unfilmed script pages is eight seasons’ worth of desire to be King Of The Whole World left on the cutting room floor?

So is everybody just mad that Jon didn’t fulfill his destiny as is written by the archetype taped to his forehead? Because wanting the iron throne was never anywhere as part of his aspirations. I’m mad he didn’t get it because it seemed they were doing so just to “subvert expectations” and not to provide a satisfying, unique end for his arc, not because I thought Jon got snubbed at the Westeros Oscars.

And if the answer is “it was in the books,” not good enough. HBO spent millions producing this show and for the first four seasons, it had incredible writing. They could have fit an explanation somewhere in there.

With the way they show ended, and I’ve only seen bits of 7 and 8, they could have still done so much with this character even with the late reveal of his true parentage. They could have had Jon reframe his entire worldview on whether or not he wants to risk his neck by going public with his claim to the throne, but he never did, all we have is what was written. There was still time to save this long lost heir arc.

So, yeah, somebody explain Jon Snow to me. I love him but he’d get eaten alive by Westeros politics and nothing can convince me any of these honorless backstabbers wouldn’t just poison him and call it an accident. There is no competent justice system of checks and balances in place. He’d just die in this cynical parade of grimdark misery.

[didsomeonesayventus]

Okay, I trust you as a source for all things Fire Emblem - can you please tell me if Fire Emblem Engage is worth getting? It's a lot of money, and I've seen a real mixed reception for it. I've read reviews that call it uninspired and shallow, storywise, and that some characters are difficult to enjoy. Is it actually worth it, or am I better off just replaying Fates? I am TORN over here.

SO! Good news in brief: if you liked Fates I'm fairly certain that you've got a good chance of liking Engage. I honestly see Engage as Fates 2 with a much better focus on what it wants to be and do! In fact if I HAD to pick a previous entry for fair comparison/vibe similarities, I'd pick Fates, maybe Sacred Stones (though I've yet to finish that one).

Engage is right now my favorite entry of the series.

MORE DETAILED ANSWER UNDER THE CUT (I have only played thru once on normal + casual as of writing)

I still maintain it's a good game and worth it, but you HAVE to be open-hearted about it. It's going to be silly. It's going to be hammy and subtle as a sledgehammer. It will even say the most cringe ass shit with it's whole heart. It's just about the farthest from 3H you can get on the fire emblem scale to the point you could have it sitting next to Kingdom Hearts and I, personally, love that for it, but feel like comparing it to 3H's darker tones is the thing most negative reviewers fall prey to.

Is it simple? Yeah. Absolutely. Terribly predictable, even. Is it heartfelt? YES! ABSOLUTELY! Engage has no time for "wow that was cheesy" because it LOVES cheese and it wants you to know that LOVE IS THE MOST POWERFUL THING EVER. It knows it's running a trite and cliched story and it doesn't care about that so much as trying to hit its notes with just the right vibe- and I argue it does a majority of the time, but can concede some things are rather silly. It's full steam ahead with the power of love and friendship and it does that with about as much reverence as a Sat. A.M. cartoon. A good Sat. A.M. cartoon that you're still thinking of years down the line that was a formative childhood joy.

And it's not about romantic love, actually! Hardly at all! There's a lot more focus on familial and platonic love than romance!! There are explicit "I love you"s regarding family bonds and multiple sibling relationships that make it clear they would do everything for their family. The only romantic aspect is whoever you choose to have Alear S-Rank (the game calls it a ring rank for Reasons but its essentially an S-Rank), and everyone else's supports end at A. Even then there's room in a fair number of Alear's S-Ranks to get interpreted as Really Good Friends, as the focus is not on "I Love You" but moreso the fact Alear and the blorbo in question have a deep, deep bond (though there are S-Ranks that are romantic-tinted and some who will explicitly say they love Alear, and regardless of gender picked! wow! diversity win!). If you were looking for pairing up your sexy chess pieces and getting paired endings, though, there'll be a bit left to be desired.

Again if you like Fates, or Kingdom Hearts, or stories that are cheesy, simple, cliched, but heartfelt, you're going to like this one. The cast is wonderful, and the story has some surprisingly good emotional beats. Oh, and also some of the FUNNIEST supports I have seen. Ever.

Alear in particular has become my favorite lord of the series, just barely scooting ahead of Corrin by virtue of having a more solid characterization and arc that Fates didn't quite let Corrin have. Which, yes, you can rename Alear and give them their own birthday, but there is NO question that Alear is their own character; hats off to Laura Stahl and Brandon McInnis for bringing stellar performances that are essential to the character. Frankly hats off in general to the voice cast as a whole they really bring a charm to the game that cannot be ignored.

I will say that supports are pretty hard to grind out, though, requiring units to be adjacent, and the leveling curve leaves a lot of... wonkiness? It's VERY easy with the rate of receiving new units + leveling funk to have units fall behind, or your army to feel underleveled, if you're like me and mostly skip the side skirmishes (bad gamer, I know). I hear the skirmishes are also kind of wonky and scaled to Alear's level which. Can Be A Problem if you're trying to level or support grind weaker units. Though I will say that playing Normal + Casual playing straight through the main story, while it occasionally made me sweat, it did not make me have to completely redo a map (or, if it did, it was probably only once or twice and I've simply forgotten about the inconvenience). Just made unlocking supports irksome as units fell off and/or made it hard to keep some characters off the bench.

There's also an OBSCENE amount of freedom in what you can do with your units. Go crazy go stupid try not to die. Resource management can get tricky, there's not quite enough gold or bond points to do everything, but you can do a lot of stuff, especially if you find a favorite to focus in on. As for the Engage mechanic: very powerful, but not to the point of sapping all the challenge out of things, and fairly balanced. The Break mechanic introduced I think is a great addition to the weapon triangle mechanics and adds a nicer layer of consideration to unit placement + weapon diversity in your army than before.

Also, if you're worried Engage overly relies on it's intent as an anniversary celebration, don't! Engage still is doing its own thing, and moreso uses references to past entries as spice or flourishes of color. They add some fun easter eggs and flavoring to the story, but it doesn't rely on the emblems or any throwbacks to tell the story it's trying to tell. Are Firene and Brodia a 1:1 for Zofia and Rigel? Yeah! Probably on purpose! They literally got the guy who voices Duma in FEH to do King Morion! Do you need to know anything about Shadows of Valentia to appreciate that? Nope! Just nice to know. Corrin's ring is found in a Northern Fortress, to further help illuminate the cute nods involved.

If you're on the fence, totally get that, especially since dropping 60$ on a game in this economy- ~90$ if you wanna add DLC -is a lot of money to ask for. But I've thoroughly enjoyed what Engage has to offer, and currently am hopping along through playthrough #2 and trying to tell myself to S-Rank someone who isn't Alcryst (I will probably S-Rank Alcryst again). I'd suggest looking into the first few eps of a playthrough if you're still not quite sure, and, frankly, imo there's no shame in just purely enjoying it from a "watched a playthrough" perspective, if you have to.

and, if none of this has persuaded you, please direct your attention to Zelkov and this Honest-To-Alear real support exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_lsOLB68g

[insert-witty-user-name-here]

Fic Origin Story

Thanks for the tag @loki-is-my-kink-awakening! See their wonderful origin story here.

What was your first fandom (reading and/or writing)?

I grew up on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Star Trek from my mom. So the nerdom has always been strong with me 😂❤️ But the first two fandoms that I actively consumed fan creations for was Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

First fandom I wrote for and engaged in was the Loki series

What was the first story you ever wrote (even if it was never posted) and what made you decide to write it?

Oh gosh, I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. I couldn’t tell you the first story I ever wrote.

As to why I write, I don’t know either! I’ve always been one lost to daydreams. It’s just always been a part of me. Some days writing/day dreaming feels as natural as breathing. (Other days not so much lol).

What's a piece of advice you would give to your younger fic-writing self?

Write down that idea- even if just a little sentence. And, don’t delete your work. You never know when a seed of an idea might finally come to fruition, could be years later.

What's an early fandom interaction that stuck with you (be it a nice comment, a friend you made, a fic that got a lot of feedback etc.)?

Complicated question. Harry Potter was my first fandom. I vividly remember going to midnight book release parties. To be cliche, they were truly magical. A lot of my childhood and some of my most treasured moments with my family were shaped by Harry Potter.

But now it feels like all those happy memories are tainted by JKR She Who Must Not Be Named’s hate and bigotry.

So instead, I’ll say nothing will compare though to the first few comments I received- or hell the first kudo when I posted my first fanfic in 2021.

I had no online presence (still don’t really lol) and felt like I was just throwing a bit of my soul into the void of the internet. It was is scary! I had no idea who would even read it, let alone enjoy it. I truly treasure each and every comment and kudo. 🥹💖

Post a sentence or two from one of your older fics, and a sentence or two from a newer one (if you want).

First paragraph from my first fic, Rising From the Ashes (Aw, nostalgia)

MOBIUS SIGHED, rubbing a weary hand over his face before answering the terrified looking analyst. Greg? Grant? He couldn’t remember. Something with a G or maybe a J. Hell, with the amount of sleep Mobius had received the last two standard weeks, Mobius could hardly remember his own name.

And the last paragraph from my most recent published fic, Becoming His Mobius, Part 2:

Mobius and Loki didn’t know just how much chaos awaited them in their future. But they never looked back. Not once. All of it- the ruined furniture, the ghastly choir recitals, the last-minute science projects, the innumerable number of pranks pulled by their minions of chaos- it was all worth it. To the end of their days Loki and Mobius would never waver from what they decided the day of Frigga’s birth. They were the luckiest people in the multiverse. And from a certain point of view, they were. The impact of their love would flourish throughout the Timelines for long after they’d gone; for all time, always.

If I were to analyze any differences it would be I’ve really given into my indulgence of let’s just keep that sentence or sentiment going. Editing who? 😂 and that’s okay with me.

Most certainly double tagging writer friends but that’s because I’d love to be tagged in your answers and read your fic origin stories if you’re up for it! So tagging @mirilyawrites @dewdropreader @mimisempai @rins-love-wins @lgwilt @starport-seven-five @queen-of-meows ❤️

[l-1-z-a]

Leo Hourvitz's notes from SIGGRAPH 2004 which relates to The Sims and The Sims 2

Summary

This year's themes at SIGGRAPH:

Real-time graphics continues to be a larger and larger part of the conference

People continue to figure out a lot of cool things to do with GPUs

A large number of the high-end production sketches ended up having direct applicability to real-time graphics

Course: The Making of "Lord of the Rings": Massive

This part of the Weta mastercourse covered their crowd animation software, Massive. I had never seen a demo of Massive before, and to me (and most Maxoids in the readership!) the most interesting thing was comparing the way Massive works to the way we use Edith to control virtual characters. Although I hadn't really thought about it beforehand, the problems are remarkably parallel.

Massive is trying to make sure a huge cast of background characters behave in a plausible, but not necessarily completely predictable, way. It incorporated a lot of "sensing" information about what that particular virtual character can see at any time. And like Edith and The Sims, it had a lot of very funny outcomes (the first time they turned it loose on one of the big attack scenes, the outnumbered army turned and ran. Logical, but not very good for the film's script!).

One thing they did that's very applicable to a current tools discussion within Maxis has to do with the separation of animation state versus AI. They had a very complete separation of the animation state editor (where you define what animation states are possible and how to get in between them) from the AI (which spent a lot of time dealing with the sensor loop and what other simulated agents were doing).

A great hack for locomotion they put in to make the giant battle scenes tenable was that they could paint flow fields on the terrain. The massive agents would then flow along the prescribed field unless something dramatic happened nearby (like them getting attacked). This was used for many of the large-scale shots in the second and third films.

If you haven't heard about it, Massive has now been spun out of Weta as a separate company and is selling the software on the open market.

Sketch: Practical Real-Time Hair Rendering and Shading

This sketch from ATI was about how the rendering Ruby's hair in their new "Ruby: The Double-Cross" demo. Frankly, I wasn't super-impressed with the hair in that demo (I think a lot of our Sims 2 hair looks better). The one thing that was kind of nice is the anisotropic hair shader they implemented, but in fact that still had it's limits because it caused them to use overscale hair follicles. Much of their sketch concerned an attempt to resolve polygon ordering; they hadn't thought of using the a-priori poly ordering we use on Sims 2 until the plane ride to the conference!

[none-ofthisnonsense]

I posted 11,485 times in 2022

That's 11,396 more posts than 2021!

347 posts created (3%)

11,138 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@junkyard-gifs

@lunesta-rose

@i-havenothingelsetopost

@thegentlemanstar

@csae

I tagged 1,764 of my posts in 2022

#cats the musical - 146 posts

#cats - 143 posts

#resources - 126 posts

#useful - 106 posts

#ask - 79 posts

#lotr - 71 posts

#csae - 66 posts

#come back to this later - 59 posts

#lotr newsletter - 55 posts

#save for later - 55 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#...........................................................................................................................................

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

(This is Roxinnaxu btw!) OH NO SO SORRY FOR SPOILING SPIES FOR YOU but also ohhohoho you are in for a treat

I actually love spoilers (they make the story SO MUCH MORE INTRIGUING) so I don't mind that much (I was reeling though attention the time)

I'm not quite at the end of Act 1 (I think I'm at Part 8) but IT'S SO GREAT and there's canon rep??

13 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

#4

clearly im except from the ask limit and this website's favorite

strange that i didn't get any asks after that

13 notes - Posted June 26, 2022

#3

I am 15.

I am 13.

I am all of the ages and people and places that have composed me.

The birthday party when I was 7.

The theatre when I was 12.

I am a shell made of the glowing pieces of all that I have left behind.

I am a fractured mosaic of collaged memories.

A mother's cries for a lost child

A daughter weeping for a past she cannot know.

Diligent screams of families of children past.

Unfulfilled conditions to lead to futures that cannot be.

Choices gone back too late after the unescapeable consequences

Responsibilities ignored in favour of a gilded cage of freedom

Ambiguities fallaciously interpreted into wrong rights

I am 7, and I have not yet known loss.

I am 11, and my life has not quite begun but the beginning that's started is unbearably joyful.

I am 14, and things once gone cannot come back.

I am one and a half, and life-changing events have affected me without my knowledge.

I am all of the ages and places and people that have composed me.

---

@thegentlemanstar this is it 👉👈

15 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#2

anyone have any profile picture suggestions?

18 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

There’s a strange number of people active in both Cats the Musical and the Lord of the Rings fandoms, but I wouldn’t change it for the world! (It’s very fun to see this incredibly specific crossover be so popular (compared to the size of the Cats fandom) since it’s not immediately obvious. But I love it!)

31 notes - Posted October 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[captainsspnanon]

C2E67 - Beyond the Eyes of Angels - rewatch

Fair warning, this one is loooong and rambly.

Well, while I still greatly enjoy CR, it’s clear that my hyperfixation stage of it has passed. It lasted a good two years before it calmed down, so that’s good! But it means that these rewatches end up going a lot slower, because I’m not binging 2 to 2.5 episodes a day. It also means that I jump between lots of media now, which is fun. :) I’ll be starting my re-read of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings soon. I last read the Hobbit probably around 25 years ago? And LoTR was 21 years ago. I loved the Hobbit, my mom read it to me as a child. LoTR was a big struggle for me at first, I kept trying and giving up within the first book of the first book. I only ended up finally reading it all once the Two Towers movie was released, and binged them very quickly. Turns out it’s ONLY the first book of the first book that was a struggle for me, the rest was easy. So I’m really looking forwards to seeing how my interpretations of the story will change after two decades. (not going to be posting it, don’t worry! That’s just for me)

Oh wow. So this is the ad bit where Sam says he’s too depressed to do a bit, so they have a pre-recorded generic version – which is him acting like he’s dead and it’s his will. And after, I don’t know if I noticed this before!, Liam actually got hit pretty hard emotionally! I actually went back a few seconds to check, and it doesn’t look like he’s playing it up? I wonder if he had other stuff going on behind the scenes, or if this is just Sam’s particular ability to always seem to grab Liam by the emotions. (If I remember, he gets choked up both during the five year song, and the pandemic welcome back.)

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Codependent!Caleb. Even though Nott ended up still being invisible so the scene doesn’t work, I do like Liam having Caleb looking panicked and stressed flicking between Nott and the team, Nott and the team, until he goes after Nott. As much as I joke, I do wonder why Caleb is so stressed about Nott being separate at the moment. We know that he has faith in her, and she’s gone on ahead before a number of times. Is it because of the atmosphere of the tomb? Is it because Nott is sober, so he thinks she’s more likely to make bad decisions? I wouldn’t call it a regression in behavior, but it is a bit jarring compared to how he’s been interacting with the entire team for a number of in game months. ...Well, maybe not. The last time, I THINK, was in episode 54, when they split up the rooms and Caleb didn’t realize that he was going to be separated from Nott. Looking at critrolestats, I think that’s only a difference of 20 in game days.

OH GOD THIS IS THE SPIDER ROOM ISN’T IT I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THIS AAAAAAAAA (i’ll find out in a few minutes if I’m right, but Matt describing things stuck around the wall, and one of the words he used was ‘sacks’, so I’m pretty sure I’m right) Interestingly, I WAS actually just the other day thinking about rogues in dnd – I’d seen some post talking about how rogues actually were bad at dealing damage unless the sneak attack critted, and I remembered Nott’s exciting sneak attack crit that basically took out the entire baddie. Of course, I couldn’t remember what the baddie WAS, but this brought all the memories rushing back.

One BS comment I have seen way too much of online is Laura being ‘entitled’ with her spells, being ‘whiny’ when things don’t go her way with spells, and trying to get as much out of Matt as possible. And here we are – with Laura specifically bringing up to Matt that the Bless that she cast would have faded by now and so not have been present with initiative. Something that had she not brought up, Matt might not have caught. No whining, no complaining, just playing fair. *sigh* I’ve gotten off of those places (aka reddit forums), but still some of the shit I saw just DIGS.

Poor Travis. I am very lucky that while I am thoroughly freaked out from bugs, I’m not bothered by situations like this. The figures don’t bother me, nor do the descriptions. I’m pretty good with seeing them in movies and such as well. It’s only 1) in real life, especially if they’re close to me or move fast, 2) if they are ON ME – my actual literal phobia is them somehow getting inside me (nose, ears, mouth), and 3) some of the really freaky videos you can see online where someone brushes a dark clump and it spreads out into a million spiders.

Beau attacks, misses, Matt barely starts to speak before Marisha rolls again, then she apologies and gives him the go ahead, he gives her the go ahead, and then she tells him he can do his description, which he then does, but keeps it short. A good sign of a good table, a player recognizing when a DM wants to speak and giving them the space to do so, AND a DM recognizing that a player may want to just get the attacks out and is willing to forgo the usual flavor speech. You love to see it! Mutual respect!

(coming back to this at the end of april) wait I’m only half an hour in? I thought I was way further than that!

OH WHAT. We have the red Ashton lopsided 6-sided dice here with Tal!!! I totally thought those were c3 only, I don’t recall seeing them before! Clearly he’s had them though.

ROGUE CRIT!!!!! I love how Sam is so astonished by it too. Are rogue’s the best class to get a crit on? I’d assume paladin would be up there as well with smite…. 20th level rogue can get 60 sneak at max, so 120 per CR rules, then plus weapon damage. Divine smite has a max of 6d8, so max of 96 plus weapon damage on a crit. Wait, does improved divine smite and another d8 on top of that? So 112? but do smite spells add to a smite, or replace? Like, if it was banishing smite, would it add 5d10 on TOP of that? Or INSTEAD of that? I’m thinking way too hard about this, especially considering I prefer spellcasting to melee for my own personal play. EITHER WAY – badass moment!

...I got distracted just watching it. There’s something so comforting about the humor in C2, the feel at the table is different than it was in both C1 and C3, and sometimes I prefer it. Don’t get me wrong, the balls to the walls punchiness at the table in C3 is great and leads to a ton of laughs, but there’s a nice balance in C2 that almost lends itself to the PCs as much as it does to the cast. I’m doing a horrible job of explaining it, but it’s pure comfort food for me.

Anyhow, yay for spell scroll for Caleb, but also I’m glad that it’s not some super amazing spell. It’s something where Liam wouldn’t feel like he was missing out or punished if he never found it, but it’s a nice bonus to have to where he feels rewarded for looking.

Once again my grumbles about the table attitude towards a rogue though. Caduceus wants to move forwards, but Tal/Cad has to tell Sam/Nott to search for traps. Jester wants to open the door, but Laura/Jester has to tell Sam/Nott to search for traps. There are times that I really would like to get into Sam’s head and see what his choices were for this. If he’d known how it would have gone, would he have picked a different class for Nott? Was he deliberately making a rogue who wasn’t particularly good at what she did, not because she couldn’t but because she forgot and didn’t care a lot of the time? It would fit with the housewife picture, but it’s a sense of almost spiting the class for the roleplay. I feel like with C1 and C3, Sam was able to explore his roleplay within the confines of the class, whereas C2 it feels like the roleplay just has the class slapped on top of it. *shrugs* It’s hard to say, because she does do a lot of sneaking around during combat, but it always feels a little forced. It’s much more Liam/Frumpkin doing early exploring than Nott, a lot of the time.

I really love how they discovered the stairs going down (this is the lightning one where Matt uses an hourglass, I think?), and I also love how they were able to so quickly and smoothly give the marching order. In the weirdest way, I do think the Nein ended up being the most smoothly combined group, which is very surprising considering they started out the most fractured. (also in fairness I really don’t have much recollection of this aspect of C1, so I could be totally wrong here)

LOL I love that Laura stands up and hits the mic, then Taliesin stands up and hits the mic, and then Sam stands up and hits the mic. They talk about how it had to be so loud for the audience, but either Chris the sound guy is REALLY good at his job, or no it’s not that loud at all.

(wait is this the episode where they have three encounters/maps and sam gets short [humorously] with the last dwarvenforge sponsor bit?)

(omg I’m only an hour and forty three minutes into this, we’re now in May. I don’t know why I’m watching this so slow, it’s SUCH a good episode!)

In the span of five minutes, Sam hits the mic AGAIN and Marisha, while bending down under the table, cracks the back of her head against in while coming up.

I have no recollection of the mist/wind spirit! I thought this was the electrical pulse! (I still think it is, and that’s what the timer is for, which honestly is a great method of using it. I know Matt used it a few times in C1, and I think this is the only time in C2, but I appreciate that while it’s punishing in an effect, it’s not massively punishing like they LOSE or FAIL if they can’t accomplish what they are doing in time. Especially because them asking Matt for clarifications eats away time, as well as Matt’s own turns. I’ve seen some detractors online wish that Matt pulled out the hourglass more, as a way to get the players to make decisions faster, but all I can think is that pulling out the timer means that it becomes even HARDER to think because now you have the external pressure as well as whatever circumstance you’re in. I can’t fully pooh-pooh the detractors as there have been a few circumstances where I have found that the players really dithered, either consistently during combat, or having ooc conversations during a quick event that took way longer than I thought Matt should have allowed, but I see people claiming this for so many things, including encounters where there may have been minor dithering but then moved smoothly, or one or two players turns took long but everything else was smooth.)

Beau jumping down = so fucking hot. Especially because she’s the first to break from the ‘run down and maybe action’ format which reveals the bottom tier allowing other players to start having more creative movement. (polymorph of eagles coming in five, four, three…) Hm, I trying to think now of how often Marisha is the red-button pusher. We know that Travis and Sam will go for it, Ashley’s pretty decent at button pushing, is Marisha the next one? ...I’m struggling to think of examples in all three campaigns, which could meant that no, she’s not, but it also could mean that I have a very shitty memory (well confirmed at this point).

Matt allowing Beau to both investigate and yank out the power source of the electric crystal is something that I think is a very table-specific decision. On the one hand, I love that he allowed her to do essentially two actions because she is a monk and able to do things very quickly (such as step of the wind, flurry of blows [I typed bleaus without even thinking what the fuck]), but on the other hand that can definitely feel bad at a different table with another player being allowed two actions where you may only be allowed the standard one. I genuinely am unsure of how I’d feel about it at my table, though that’s also because I have a really shitty attention-grabbing player at the table. If they were allowed the double action I’d probably be pretty annoyed, but if the really nice good player at the table were allowed it, I’d feel better about it. Breaking the action economy for a cool moment really only works when you have full trust at a table. Here, it’s a moment done well, with a group of players who fully respect the choice and decision (and are glad not to take additional damage XD), at a table like mine? ….I’d rather have taken the damage, tbh. (side rant, but last game I got to do some exploring as a water skimmer, DM describes to me what I see, players immediately start going off of the description and I’m like….alright, I guess I went back and transformed, lost my wild shape, and told them. Fuck me if I had other things I wanted to do, or even if I’d wanted to roleplay the moment.)

(also off topic, I read a chapter update today of a shadowgast fic that I’m enjoying, but Caleb is SO OOC it’s ridiculous, to the point where I’m like his canon backstory must not have happened in this fic, and coming back and watching canon Caleb is DELICIOUS. We’re not in an rp moment, but even the way Liam portrays using shield, the facial expressions and body language, it’s like YES this is the caleb I crave.)

There’s so many good tactics on display here. Fjord jumping with his held Misty Step, both polymorphs with Jester going back to grab the other party members, Beau investigating the door and finding the slot! There are small bits of metagaming that I just...eh. Would Jester have gone back for Nott and Caduceus if the hourglass had still been going? Maybe not, but that also can be explained by her seeing that the glow has stopped. Caduceus thinking that there’s no monster now? ...Honestly that just feels like Taliesin thinking ‘well we beat the encounter so we’re good now’. Usually I’m not too heavily bothered, even if I notice metagaming, but that bothered me just a little bit. I’m a tiny bit nastily pleased that the creature attacked again shortly after. ….I have a petty side, okay?

OH GOD IT’S THE START OF MAKING MY WAY. (I think someone found that it technically started in a one shot before this, but this is the first in game of a very very long running gag)

Interesting that Caleb flying down triggered an attack of opportunity from the creature, with Fjord, Jester, and Beau not triggering one. I wonder if Matt had specific ideas of where the creature was in the tower and this really was the first, or if he’s just been blanking because he was focusing on the electrical charge and this is the first time he remembered.

…..why does Sam want to know if goblins have tails? I want to know what he’s thinking! I can’t think of any mainstream depiction of goblins with tails, so it’s certainly a bit of an out-there thought.

For what it’s worth, while we all know and love Veth’s Big Naturals, I greatly appreciate and am entertained by Sam’s insistence that Nott also has Big Naturals, despite every piece of official artwork (presumably signed off by Sam) depicting Nott as smaller-busted.

I’m sure this was speculated about by the fandom at the time, but I wonder if Jester being so preoccupied with making sure that everybody gets out of the mist tower before she will leave ties back into her getting left with the young dragon back in the happy fun ball. I know Laura has talked about the impact that moment had on Jester, but unless I’m forgetting stuff (super entirely possible) I feel like this is the first time we’ve really seen Jester make an effort, putting herself at risk, to ensure that everyone else is safe.

Sam just did his usual bit when Matt went to get the map for the zombie room. I wonder what the section I’m thinking of is? To be fair, *I* don’t actually remember it, but I saw a post talk about it. AH – thank you CR Transcripts! It’s episode 79 “It's a fantastic company that makes a fine product and if you don't go to their fucking website, I'll kill you.”. Searching “kill you” under Sam worked. Based on context, rather than it being the ‘holy shit a third encounter’ that I thought it was going to be, instead it was just the pure stress and time crunch with Obann and the tree. Understandable.

I admit, I’m a bit exhausted with initiative. As much as I enjoy this episode (and I really really do!) three back to back combats, regardless of the tactical aspects of them, is just tough to watch. It’s the same thing for me for the really big episode long fights (Lucian, Vecna, etc). Four plus hours of combat is a LOT. I’m usually good if it’s two or less.

When Matt decides to just ‘roll with it’, it works out fantastically at the table. Jester casts Turn/Destroy Undead, which he has just impact the five undead that he had minis out for. After a bit of ooc clarification about the slopes and creatures on them, Laura asks if her destroy undead would have worked there too. In terms of the encounter, I’m pretty sure Matt saying yes or no wouldn’t have impacted the main combat at all, but he acknowledges the legitimacy of her point, rolls some rolls, and has a total of ten more get destroyed. Does it make the encounter any easier? It does trigger Caduceus seeing the glowing heart, but that would have happened fairly soon anyway, I’m sure. What it DOES do is it has the table let out a cheer at Jester being badass and destroying thirteen enemies with a single spell. It’s a feel good moment, rather than a numbers game moment, and even as a viewer it does exactly what it should do, it Feels Good. In comparison to the other GMs I’ve watched (Brennan on ExU and a number of D20 shows, Aabria only on ExU so far), he does roll with things a lot less, as he is a bit more of a stickler for the rules, so I notice the moments more. With Brennan a few times, and with Aabria in ExU a lot more of the time, I’d see Rule of Cool moments where, for my tastes, I would have preferred a harder RAW/RAI ruling. (again, no judgment to Aabria in Misfits and Magic or A Court of Fey and Flowers, I still have not seen those though I want to! Especially because I’ve heard her GMing style is very different in those other systems.)

Coming right off of Jester’s Feel Good, we’ve got Caleb’s Feel Bad. Very smart to do a fireball into the massive pit of undead, but then immediately after it fails to have any true impact at all. While I can understand the choice not to have it impact the number of undead spawning, I could see having that area be considered difficult terrain due to the flaming corpses, or simply just having no undead spawn at that specific area until the next turn – instead have them spawn on the other side. There was no actual benefit to Caleb casting the fireball, which is just a sucky feeling – especially with a third level spell. Especially because Caleb is the only one targeted by two undead, with anyone else only being targeted by one.

Double Feel Bad of Matt not letting Nott at least try to give the door a physical tug after expending her action using Mage Hand. It’s some inconsistent DM decisions this episode, considering Beau being allowed to inspect and grab and pull out the rod from literally just the previous encounter.

Granted, I don’t think any of the players are taking issue with this, or I’m sure they would always speak to Matt about it after game if it bothered them, but it’s things that I’m noticing that just feel just a bit sucky.

Off topic, but I’ve been seeing some complaints about C3 with the group talking over whoever is making the action in combat, and how rude it is and how it’s so bad in C3 and it was never this bad in previous campaigns. Meanwhile I’m watching the gang non-stop chitchat during the combats, I literally think the only difference is that C3 has better mic pickup than C2 or C1. I don’t think the group is being any more or less than they usually are, it’s just now sometimes we can hear them more clearly which covers up the audio of the main player at the moment.

LOL Marisha saying she’s never playing a wizard after seeing Caleb basically being the only one actually hit by the zombies. Double lol at Liam saying he’s only playing bloodhunters from now on.

It’s fun to see Sam clarify that Nott is running low on bolts, only six left! because we really only had one ranged combatant before with Vex who never needed to keep track of arrows – but only because she bought a thousand of them before the stream started. (I’m not counting Percy because he had to make his own ammunition versus being able to buy it in a shop.) I actually don’t think Nott ever runs out though, what with being able to collect them back after combat. Also interesting looking through the transcripts now that Nott/Veth always seemed to buy bolts in amounts ranging from 10 to 40. I’m not sure if Sam’s thought process was that Nott/Veth didn’t have a bag of holding for the bolts, or if it’s just the Mighty Nein vibe of buying what they need, as little as possible, versus the Vox Machina vibe of buying what they need and want in larger quantities than they may use. I love this little dnd-broke group so much. (also with all the transcript searching, bolt/bolts no longer look like actual words.)

...Did we ever figure out what caused the glowing hearts versus grey hearts? Critrolestats doesn’t know. I’m wondering if it was just DM fiat based on an estimated frequency.

One thing that I really love about M9 versus both other campaigns, this group somehow seems to perfectly convey that exhaustion and despondency. VM had a lot of grief, but it was always intense emotions, always a 9/10 or higher on the scale. M9 I feel is perfectly able to capture those days where you are deep in your feelings but it only shows as a 2/10. That’s such a horrible way of explaining it. It’s High Fantasy versus gritty realism, in a way. BH has it’s own frequency of emotions XD

IT’S BEEN SO LONG I literally forgot there’d be a Talks Machina after this!!!!!!! AAAH SO HAPPY.