#as shining examples of the third type /

[reorientation]

Sometimes I like to imagine that every fakeboy has an invisible meter tracking how many loads of cum it'll take before she admits what she is.

Some of them are long and half-full: for the girl whose boyfriend will spend months or years fucking her bare and gently pushing her along, telling her that she should try stopping T just for a little while, just to see how it feels, and that of course you're a boy, babe, but that dress would just look so good on you...

Some of them are shorter, and empty until they're suddenly filled: for the kind of girl who'll take her first load and instantly crave more, until she realizes that she was made to bounce on a cock rather than have one.

And some are so small they're barely there: for the virginal girl who'll someday find out that she's so susceptible to the rush of a man's cum inside her - from a malleable mind or a fertile womb - that it just takes one load to erase her dreams of manhood forever.

[explorastro]

RANDOM ASTRO TAKES #1

HAPPY START OF THE YEAR ! 🥳

I will start with the relationship btw the signs with the derivative 12H of each, well see in some words :

Aries is 12H of Taurus bc they break precious objects

Taurus is 12H of Gemini bc if they don’t want to talk, they can be silent for a while

Gemini is 12H of Cancer bc talking too much is emotionally stupid

Cancer is 12H of Leo bc they can see btw the lines of their acting

Leo is 12H of Virgo bc they’re cool..

Virgo is 12H of Libra bc perfection issues had ruined everything in the relationship

Libra is 12H of Scorpio bc your psychoanalysis can’t be made by yourself

Scorpio is 12H of Sagittarius bc occultism is secret third thing of religion

Sagittarius is 12H of Capricorn bc free will breaks free from bad fate

Capricorn is 12H of Aquarius bc society limits your individuality to conformism

Aquarius is 12H of Pisces bc water bearer spreads illusions and truth to those who channeling

Pisces is 12H of Aries bc healing come from rest, isolation and calm.

Astrology guides you not only to religion and spirituality, but also to history, mathematics, geometry, sociology, psychology, occultism, and finally to the divinatory arts in general. It's a complete package for life.

Big bang theory is so astrologicaly accurate, like we’re all (Moon) one (Venus) in a structure (Saturn) so intensely dense (Pluto) that the expansion of universe (Jupiter) is intrinsically linked billions upon billions of years into the time (Saturn).

The house where Uranus resides in your chart might shows the type of genius abilities you have.

Example :

1H : genius in general

2H : money maker genius

3H : genius talk shit

4H : intuitive genius

5H : creative genius

6H : genius worker

7H : relationships genius

8H : occult genius

9H : religious genius

10H : reputation of a genius

11H : genius friendships

12H : loner genius

12H of 7H is 6H bc virus and bacterias spreads by socialization but 6H is sextile 8H, who is the house of rebirth, bc immune system glows up with them.

Now, a quick cheat sheet of the 8 Moon’s phases ⬇️

New Moon: birth of the project

First crescent: project foundations

First quarter: first obstacles

Waning Gibbous Moon: project progress

Full Moon: project highlights

Waning gibbous moon: project takes shape

Last quarter: project finalization

Last crescent: project lessons

The sign and house of your Saturn can shows who and how people in your life have lacks. But it also represents peaks that you want to reaching.

The aspects of your Saturn can deeping the meaning of lacking in your life. What restrains, restricts, limits you ? But also what and who can helping you to achieving yours goals.

The houses ruled by Saturn (Libra, Capricorn and Aquarius) are a areas of your life where lacks are here, but with discipline, isolation, healing, responsibilities, you can overcome this by being more mature.

To better understanding signs, use the exaltation lord in your interpretations, for example :

Aries shines a lot for what they do bc of the Sun

Taurus craves so much intimacy with the Moon

Cancer are just too much like Jupiter

Virgo are hyper analytical as Mercury

Libra are justice makers with Saturn

Capricorn are heavy with Mars

Pisces are mesmerizing artists with Venus

[rel124c41]

THE LOST ART OF KEEPING A SECRET. jade leech & floyd leech

The aquarium receives new additions perhaps once every two weeks; usually they are cute little things with rainbow fins and gem eyes. These two are not cute little things; they're huge and they have human faces. "Well I've got a secret, I cannot say" - Queens of the Stone Age, Track 2 on Rated R. a gift for @hallowed-father; based on their beautiful fanart 💕

tags: aquariums, late night conversations, captivity, situational humiliation, dehumanization, mutual pining, dubious ethics, kidnapping, vivisection, nursery rhyme references, eventual happy ending

word count: 12,668

The first two times you try seeing them, all you see is your reflection. 

It makes sense unfortunately. With the lack of any light, you are going to have a hard time seeing them. Cloudy black settles over the skeleton and hair shaped vegetation. You can turn your head on a swivel (which you do on the second try) but there is no way to discern what swims through darkness. Instead, all you see in the aquarium tank’s water is your face. 

Each uniquely human feature of yours squints in the nebulous, oscillating dark. To an observer, it would seem that you think if you flatten your eyes into pressed almonds something will reveal itself to you. Nose scrunching, you squint in a grandmother who lost her glasses way that is simply laughable. 

There must be something inside the exhibit.

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection. 

On a small plaque, the words no use of flash photography wags a censure finger at you. Besides the cerulean halo on the corners where the wall meets ceiling, the room must remain dark at all times. Even during operating hours – or so you have heard from Deuce – they refuse to allow any other light in the secluded room. 

Besides the ultramarine ouroboros, the oval-shaped room is dark beyond dark. An extreme that is on another level than what you are familiar with. As a nightguard, you are familiar with the dark. Quite familiar. 

For example, there is one aquatic animal that you managed to see that other people cannot find nine times out of ten. In the shadows, spider crabs hide. They call their environment interestingly enough: the twilight zone, a part of the seafloor that gets little light and is very cold. With only three crabs in a sizable aquarium, it is understandably hard for others to find them. While the guests that linger after hours or closing staff puzzle over their location, you find them with ease. Behind the ship, by those bones, in the left corner no no higher in the left corner;  your eyes have long since adjusted to the nocturnal proclivity of your job. 

(One of the closing staff employees joked you were like a cute, little opossum. You think he meant it as a flirt; you found it insulting. Pressing your shades higher up on the bridge of your nose, you clocked in with your head down, vexed.)

However, in the tenebrous depths before you, you are like a disgruntled archaeologist standing in a desert of Swiss-cheese holes. Unable to locate anything. Tilting your head in a slightly different direction, your eyes squeeze into petite slices, searching. 

The flashlight in your hand is a heavy temptation. If you just raise it, the absence of light will readily receive it. Melted pinks and greens of vegetation will pop, brown and amber of decorative rocks will shine, and whatever colors lie on these new fishes will certainly look like a gorgeous splendor under visible light. It would take the smallest wrist motion. Your reflection held in black water stares back at you, glaring daggers. ‘C’mon, do it,’ your reflection urges.

Light slugs over your sneakers, contemplative. ‘Perhaps not,’ you think with regards to the penlight. You know that you loathe having any type of light in your face; do unto others as you would have done onto you. The button of your tool clicks off. By now, you should already be down by the stingrays. 

‘Third time might just have to be the charm,’ you think with a frown. 

In the fishbowl glass, mummified with shadows, your reflection mimics that childhood disappointment.

‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Turning to leave, spine to the aquarium tank, you miss the first instance of light emerging out of dark. 

It pulls upward like an ember blown skyward out of a campfire pit. The movements of it are languid. Flickers of yellow orbit in a whirlpool, lazy like they have just woken up. That clean circle becomes distorted, shrinking and growing like window-shades are being maneuvered over it. Then, a twin of yellow joins the first, a hair keener than the first. Both circles of light hang in the shadows, not brightening or shining beyond an intensity that is noticeable. Shrewd with their intentions.

When the door to the oval room clicks close, the window-shades pull down like a blink and the aquatic water changes from being speckled with playful yellow back to tenebrous black.

As it turns out, the phrase ‘third time's the charm’ holds an eternal merit. Because the next night, which is the third time you look into the aquarium tank, your wish is granted. 

The unluckiest charm; the unluckiest wish.

The aquarium gets new deliveries once every two weeks. As the nightguard, you are not kept on the up-and-up unless Deuce Spade is working. And as an honor college student, Deuce is usually scheduled – during daylight hours of course – on the weekends when exam season is not keeping him occupied. So, you missed the news about this new delivery initially. All you knew about them was from the very insightful texts of Deuce Spade (two in total):

The new deliveries can’t be around light. Think it's anglerfish? 

and

Apparently not anglerfish, those have to live under pressured water. Why do people act like that’s common knowledge to know??

Your available information is: they are not anglerfish. That is all.

You really are left with no hints to what hides in murk. After two weeks, no plaque detailing the species is nailed to the wall or statued on a slanted board. The room is void of identification. Perhaps that is the reason your body seems so magnetized towards deciphering this mystery. No identification by now is unusual. Plus, night shifts drag like limping feet; why not try to stall off boredom?

This time around, you power off your penlight before entering the room. Instead of letting the light stamp a circle of itself on the ground, you enter pure darkness. Blue vibrates above you. Not complete darkness, you correct, stepping on the path that limited blue illuminates. 

The room and tank resemble an egg with a cut-off top. The room is oval shaped but missing a quarter of its full shape, the top half knifed off to make room for a tank full of about five hundred gallons of water. When you reach the wall, the length is forty feet, this sliced egg-top, you place determined hands in your slacks pocket. 

And squint until the muscles in your eyes quiver with strain.   

Penguins must be kept in cold waters. Vents are constantly blowing cold air into the exhibit to keep it under forty degrees. As your breath comes out in a puff of frosty air, you wonder deeply just what kind of species can be kept in such frigidness. Deep sea penguins? That would certainly be interesting. 

Your reflection challenges you with a mimic of your squinting. Keep dreaming, it says. No matter which way you look over tenebrous shadows of vegetation and rocks, nothing is making itself clear to you. This time you risk inching closer. From this distance, you can count the vertebrae-esque leaves of a winding ludwiga. Ice seems to heartbeat off the glass, kissing your features. 

What can you see?

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection.

That is until a little organic lantern – small like a dragonfly– comes alive in the water. Despite your excitement, you keep yourself frozen and still. Your tiny gasp bleeds out your mouth and hits the glass gradually. The dragonfly powers on and off in two blinks. Morse code for ‘I’ but you doubt this animal knows that – you just happened to take a college elective for Morso code. You watch this single, pinprick lantern with great interest.

‘I think it really is an anglerfish. I mean, it makes complete sense. Deep sea water temperatures. The utter lack of light. Maybe, the researchers found some way to replicate the pressures, and the staff just doesn’t know yet. That would be revolutionary.’

Then, a second dragonfly joins the first. On a black-emerald and black-turquoise torrent, the ember dips down low. Glittering like a sun-rays on water, it slithers closer with curious intent. It was leagues keener than its twin, metaphorically hexagonal instead of circular. This dragonfly too powers off and on in quicker blinks. Four blinks which is ‘H’ in Morse code … useless knowledge. 

Anglerfish cannot communicate. The entire ecosystem of a brain from fish to human is different, like trying to compare a tropical amazon to a winter wonderland. Just far too different to understand one another.

But, it is impressive that the aquarium was able to get such a deep sea creature to survive in a simulated habitat. 

“Hi there.” You wave your fingers. Pressing yourself closer to the glass, you wait for your eyes to adjust and register the razor teeth and fat jowls of an anglerfish brown face. Cold air starts to swim under your jacket, your body’s tilt causing the material to slip. Then, you make eye contact.

Eye contact? Eye contact. Turns out those lantern-shaped dragonflies you are looking at are not the bait anglerfish have attached to their bodies. It is not a hunting evolution you openly leer at. Rather, you look them in the eye. 

All the fire of your wonder extinguishes like a pinched match.

As if the vents are working overtime, a sudden chill falls over you. Goosebumps settle over your shoulders. You jump back and misty gray air (your gasping breath) explodes in front of you. It is not your desolate reflection that swims in front of you. Someone else’s face is in there.

There are creatures in there; that is undeniable. What fights to make itself conclusive in your reeling mind is the image of the creatures. Creatures – so completely alien when compared to the mixture of muscles that make up an anglerfish– with human faces. Human features. A nose. A pair of lips. A pair of squinting eyes, staring right back at you. 

One of them throws their head back in laughter when you fall to your ass, reeling inward and outward. What the fuck is a human – two humans! – doing inside an aquarium tank at 2 A.M.!

You climb back up to your feet with all the grace of an injured crab. Your left arm feels longer than your right; you feel like the ground has morphed into quicksand and is suckling on your right boot; all of your world has become disoriented. In your jacket, your penlight weighs down your left side like a brick. Pulled by a mental riptide, you wrestle until you finally stand on two (trembling)  legs like all bipedal humans should. Earth tilts as you watch the one who laughed move forward, blue blanketing him. 

He taps the glass. Exact over the bullseye point of where you stand, reeling, in the glass from his point of view. In intelligent acknowledgment of you.

You two lock spheroid eyes, analyzing each other with hell-bent resolve. Mapping the features of each other in your brain’s fusiform face area so you can recognize each other at later times. His human features settle like all the others before him in your cerebrum. Packaged in the inferior temporal cortex, packaged in the fusiform gyrus. The human visual system that specializes in recognizing faces accepts him. 

‘That is a face. I will recognize it later and recall it as one thing only: a face.’ Just like that, your brain, your fusiform gyrus mails you the annotation. 

A part of you wants to cry and the other wants to puke. You do neither. You react with a different system of your body.

Muscles press your flashlight’s button on and muscles move it up quickly when the second one starts to move closer to the glass. You do it out of fear. And with strange, instant regret. 

The one closest to the glass folds into himself, seething. A webbed, tooth-white-with-green-gradient hand covers his eyes in agony. His other hand slams the tank in a tight fist. It knocks the world back into orientation. You flee the scene with your flashlight swinging wildly back and forth with your sprint. 

This time there is no laughter.

You rush out like they are chasing you, laughing over your shoulders. With a harsh crash to the ground, panting in disbelief, you pull trembling knees towards your stricken face. What the fuck – what the absolute fuck! A carapace cloak falls over your brain to ignore knocking thoughts and rationalization. Wordless beyond three words, they swirl in your head. What the fuck – what the fuck.

Your spine lies on another exhibit. Stingrays lie underneath the aquarium’s sand, sleeping and unaware of you. Part of you knows you will not be able to sleep in the morning. 

“What the fuck.”

You unlock your phone with your face when you get home. 

The lamp glows, allowing your phone to register the face identification. As quickly as the string is pulled on, it is tugged off. Dawn rests against your black-out curtains like zombies pounding on doors sheltering food. Brightness on the screen is kept down to the lowest possible setting. You type the name of where you work into your phone.

‘There has to be information on them. You can’t just have that’ – pale-green faces with matching gold eyes – ‘that living in an aquarium. And if it’s in an aquarium, shouldn't that aquarium be like inside Area 51 or the Oval Office. Anywhere but nowhere!’

You click on the website of your place of employment. The types links are highlighted in white bubbles: GET YOUR TICKETS, WAYS TO SAVE, and ANIMALS UP-CLOSE. Your finger follows the last tab and you come across a Let’s Get Started sheet, asking if you are a member and, if not, to start booking. A colorful curse parts your lips.

You return to the home page. Take in the organization again. Okay, there are some links above too: Visit, Animals & Exhibits, Learn, Research & Conversation, News & Events, Support Us, Shop. 

Gravitating towards Animals & Exhibits, you watch as a list unfurls like a scroll. None of them are unusual animals. From beluga whales to steller sea lions, you are looking at a dead-end list of regular animals which you have passed multiple times on your nightguard route. Aquatic animals whose features do not turn your entire morning full of sleep into restless pacing. 

This is nauseating. For piscine features to be manipulated like that. Sea creatures come in a variety of features that are unique to them; eyes that reveal the innate instinct to survive above compassion or companionship, dorsal fins that branch off their body like tiny mountains, or those puckering lips that circle to suction fish-feed from the surface of their tanks. Those features you can compartmentalize with the aquarium you work with well. They belong there with the other undersea creatures. Your heart pangs in disgust.

This is immoral. For human features to be manipulated like that. A face you might see walking out of a movie theater, hand in hand with his girlfriend. A face you could have the possibility of getting to know if you were not a college dropout; someone in your biology or english elective or calculus class that would ask for help with a certain question. Staring into that man’s left umber eye and right gold eye, you realized how all those features made him human. Your heart pangs in sympathy. 

This is? You take a tranquil breath that soothes you like medicine from an inhaler, and the next thought sets your world back on the correct axis. This is out of your paygrade.

You return because, fucking, of course you do. A job is equivalent to a life. You experience less hardships when you have a good job – which you thankfully do. You have a good job that you must keep.  

One: legally, graveyard shifts pay more than others in your state. Two: it was ideal for the degenerative disease you have. Three: “I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money –'' There have certainly been better mantras sung in your car; though, this melody keeps you sane. Most importantly, it keeps your foot steady on the accelerator. So with three very good reasons – really just two overlapping ones and a single unique one – you return to work the next day like nothing is wrong. 

Thus, you are going to ignore it. Thus, “I’m going to ignore it,” you tell yourself. Thus, you are going to stand in front of the oval-shaped room’s door for the larger half of thirty minutes, studying the steel. Ah, this is far from ignoring it.

It is just … absent of sentimentality, you know that they are only fish. Fish that you see on guys’ dating profiles, fish that you eat with a medley of dipping sauces, fish that shit in the very water they swim in. You are no PETA advocate that will say fish are like the monkeys of the ocean, learning to use rudimentary tools and are sophisticatedly smart because they form social groups. However, despite this, there is a tiny pebble in the river that manages to disrupt the entire flow; the pebble wants you to apologize to them.

Which is outlandish and pure insanity!!

Which is really why you should not push the door open with your hand. And, which is why you glare at your traitorous fingers and listen to the creak of an opening door, bemoaning how utterly stupid you are to be opening this Pandora box of possibilities.

You let the flashlight sway once in an overarching cut across the room. Then, you point it at the ground and squint at the aquarium again. Besides a few layering shades of ebony speckled with blue, there is really not much for you to distinguish in the stomach of shadow. Putting yourself on an even playing field, you flick off your flashlight and step forward. 

Feet shuffle inch by inch. Looking straight, your acuity of vision decreases bar by bar. Gravity shifts like a restless faultline has awoken under your feet. You want to run away while you walk forward.

When you touch a hand to the frigid glass, you finally feel steady again. Once more, your exhale makes itself physical in a small cloud on the tip of your nose. The temperature is graciously grounding. 

“I’m okay,” you remind yourself. You blink to stabilize your vision.

Apologize to the fish then you can finally leave. Simple enough.

Yet, as you wait and squint, no glowing eyes emerge in the dark. You hold yourself there, waiting for just a flicker of motion in what seems like everlasting comatose. 

This is pointless. Why am I even here? I doubt they remember my face, much less hold a grudge over it. Fuck, why did I let myself get sentimental over some eldritch homunculus that is an affront to biological evolution! Why aren’t they at Area 51 or the Oval Office – why did faith push them here?

Inner seething concluded, you turn your flashlight on and the room brightens. For a split second, your face lies its reflection on glass with a resentful aura. You maneuver light towards the door with determination. Your body follows, making a hasty turn towards your exit. There are rounds around the aquarium to be made, iced frappuccinos in the breakroom you want to drink, and momental, life-altering plots to be ignored forever.

Until the glass behind you thuds in tension-raising noise like when a bird hits window-panes with little to no warning.

Breath caught in your throat, you whirl around to make eye contact with him. He wears such a handsome face, one that could belong to a heartthrob actor if not marred by the fins replacing his ears and the mossy green hue of his skin. His playful inquisitive eyes are entirely human in shape and structure; the black pupil and then the color ring of an iris. Too bad they too are disfigured by rare and nauseating colors, olive-umber and gold. 

That right eye reminds you of lighthouses on the coast. Captains are not supposed to stir towards lighthouses; they avoid the light, even if it carries a certain warmth. Why is he looking at you so warmly?

Somehow, you just manage to catch out of the corner of your eye the motion of his hand. An acute nail points down at your beaming flashlight which imprints a halo of light on the carpet floor. Then, he raises his hand up to around his shoulder. His fingers move in the starting shape of someone about to play thumb-war before he starts to move his thumb up and down. Clicking an imaginary button, signaling for you to turn off your flashlight.

Stunned, you numbly do. Light is pulled and magnetized back into the pen’s surface, like an object beamed up into a spacecraft, at a speed unseeable to the human eye. The eye contact between you two is almost an intense lip-lock that both of you cannot part with. 

This is one you shined the flashlight at. Right into those encapsulating eyes. The right one is yellow like liquid spilling out of a pineapple. Bright and playful.

“I- I uh,” you fumble with your apology. He probably won’t understand a word. You purse your lips nervously. Are there any words in the English language that can package up your sympathies from homo sapien to fish; is opening your mouth even worth it? “I wuh-wanted to –.”

Your apology withers when the eel-mer starts to tap on the glass. 

Intentionally, you listen. Yet irrationally, you expect to see or hear more Morse Code. Perhaps it is his anthropoid features that misled you to the conclusion that he might know the coded language. With a needle-hook nail, he taps a rhythm. 

It’s nothing though? The letters are gibberish, with even the number 5 sitting pretty between an O and a C. Of course it is not a code. Coming to your senses, you doubt he could even understand your apology if you gave it to him. There is a fine line drawn in the aquarium’s sand: fish and humans are not equal, one is more intelligent.

With some infinite patience, the fish taps the glass again. You listen and recognize it as the exact same taps and pauses from before.

“This is ridiculous,” you mutter under your breath. You hold eye contact, scrutinizing him. So used to having zero company, you surmise aloud, “I must be so sleep-deprived and loopy that I dreamed you up … A piece of undigested beef like Scrooge said.” As if to solidify his independent self and independent thinking in your solipsistic world, he taps the rhythm again.

This time – you think because of the repetition – you finally understand why he is tapping. It almost sends you flat on your ass once more. 

Oh. You throw a hand up to your mouth, faintly covering up a disbelieving laugh of joint horror and amusement. Disbelief crystallizes itself in the air; a tiny cloud of your reeling mind dissolves in front of you as you drop your numb hand. “Hah.”

The fish taps a nursery rhyme. One you know from kindergarten. One you would clap the rhythm of with your hands. You remember vaguely the pattern you’d move your hands to play with another child. The vague lingering sense of being hushed and secretive while playing your little singing games, giggling in the back of the classroom, bites your goosebumped flesh. 

How appropriate for a man trapped in an aquarium to know the nursery rhyme A Sailor Went to Sea. He does it again, the lyrics plucked from the cobwebs of your memory: A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what she could see, see, see; but all that she could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. 

You don’t know fully how well your sight would fare in the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. Still, with a hesitant squirm, you approach the frigid glass. The man inside the aquarium waits this time rather than launching right back into tapping.

Raising your arm, you make certain to dig your nails into your palm. A little reality-checking pinch never hurt anyone. One of those pallid nails rises up and taps back. Feeling like you are the spinning ballerina, you listen to the melody of this Pandora box plays unchained and uncaged in the ice cold air:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea

To see what she could see, see, see

But all that she could see, see, see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea

There is no way to get around it. The third shift is lonely. Here in this aquarium? They only require one person to clean all the tanks, turn off decorative filters, and supervise aquatic life. That sole person has been you. With an iced frappuccino and penlight as your pirate’s sword and hooked hand, you have managed the task of protecting this vessel well.

Just because of your longevity of working as a third shifter, it does not make it come easy. Two tabs in your eighteen open Safari tabs are on articles about coping with night work. Coping with solitude when the entire world works in the opposite of you. One article details trying to stay on top of social interactions. All these shifting hours have been mistakenly used up. As you move through hallways like a haunting shark, you roll in your mind all the lost opportunities and all the regrets of having people in your life that you could’ve formed relationships with but never did.

Your metaphorical ailment has been sleep apnea. Eye scorned. Unable to catch your breath. You've been awake for years with no company. Along with being alone, you have been so achingly tired. Circadian rhythms in a body never change.

Your friend plays well in rhythms. The instrument of his disposition is easy to read after a month of ‘knowing’ each other. He has the attitude of a drummer. 

It is hard to get yourself used to his existence at first; he remains uncaring to your fretting. Lacking melodies or harmonies, he seems like the type that would rather keep things easy and simple than embellish. 

You come to visit? He wants to play. You’re too exhausted to play? He can entertain himself. What you have is very plain sailing and hardly involves any talking unless you start it. Besides, he is still just a fish and thus cannot converse with you. 

He really enjoys tapping on the glass. He plays a variety of rhythms; ones you do not know then, very strangely, some that you do know. As night by night moves along in time’s steady march, you grow comfortable enough to play back. He will play a rhythm only once, you copy it back with aid from your memory. You have even started to show him music on your phone, seeing how quickly he can pick up on certain beats and mimic them for himself.

Sometimes though, all he wants to do is simply listen. Which is activity the two of you share in tonight, absent of that third member who you are sure is hiding deeper among the burrows and the oscillating, five ribbed kelp. That distant drummer in your phone floods the cold room with music.

A small booklet covers your heart as you lie wistful. The floor is rough cement. There is no better place to lounge though. Underneath your head, a furry gray seal pup you borrowed from the toy store acts as your pillow. You try to think of yourself weightless like you are in water as you remain close-eyed and contemplative.

Like a siren call, music slithers out of the bottom of your phone’s speakers. Legs crossed over one another, you briefly tap your foot along to the rhythm that you are sure your friend is enjoying. “Look for reeeflections, in yo-our face; canine devotioo-ton, time can’t erase; Out on the cor-ner or locked in your room; I never buh-lieve them and I never assume-uh!”

Speaking of your friend, you have not bothered to check on him in a while. One of your diseased eyes peels open. Face held in a wink, you estimate if your friend is close enough to the glass that you should be able to see him clearly enough despite all the darkness. 

You do not expect him to be lounging right there beside you. It gives you a little shock of surprise. A moment passes by and that feeling suddenly intensifies to a shock of the heart. Not in a romantic way but in the way of a death row prisoner being electrified to death. 

You bolt upright, skull and hair flying off the seal pup plushie. Prescription sunglasses tilt down from their forehead perch, landing crookedly on your nose. The creature waves a sharp set of gradient-covered claws in your face. The only reason that your electric heart runs above its normal BPM is because that glowing lighthouse-esque eye is on the left side rather than the right.

“It’s you.” The creature, who you have not been becoming friendly with for an entire month, smiles at you and your shocked voice.

Though you are certain he has been watching you – not just while you were resting your eyes on the ground for a much needed cat nap, but for the entirety of these thirty-one nights – his eyes still flutter around the space where you sit in observation. He takes in each individual item around you like trying to find certain objects in spot-the-difference puzzles. After a moment, you ask while pointing to your phone, “Do you not like the music?” His wandering eyes are magnetized to your face when you address him.

Hell, they are intense. Intenser than any eyes you have really looked in before, rivaling even the strictest teachers you had or the meanest secretaries you have known. The colors in his gold and umber iris swirl like tiny galaxies of brown dust and broken stars. Intelligent eyes like those are daunting and, thus, terrifying to level your gaze with.

Despite knowing you will not get an answer, you march on in your one-sided conversation, “I get it that music isn’t everybody’s thing. Does it disturb you?” You wait. The newcomer does not talk either. “Ah, not a fan. I get it.”

You may receive no verbal answer, however you sense he does not want to play patty-cake through a sheet of reinforced aquarium glass. “Whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell anyone; whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell –” The song cuts off as you press the pause button.

“I should have been more considerate,” you apologize, able to steadily carry on this solo because you have grown used to it. You do talk a lot to the other fish. Almost in the same way one can carry on an unbalanced conversation with a pet cat or dog. “You just swim over to let me know and I’ll turn it off. I would never want to disrupt anyone’s sleep.”

‘Just like I would never again want to shine a light in anyone’s eyes.’ You still regret that with each fiber of your being.

For a silent moment, you two observe each other. Though you are a hundred percent certain this is not his first time scrutinizing you. You realize his hair is a mirror-flip reflection of the other fish’s just as he raises one of his hands. 

Maybe he is like the other fish. Despite not giving the impression of a drummer, he might still want to play that rudimentary game of patty cake where you two match and copy each other’s rhythm. Perhaps it is all their fish brains can comprehend. Even though his eyes might seem intelligent, he is nothing more than a piscine creature. However, that thought stalls when a single, black-dyed claw reaches up to his own throat, tapping it delicately.

“Hm?” You tilt your head curiously. 

In response, he takes his index and middle finger and taps once more his own throat. Then, he takes those fingers and depresses them over the reinforced sheets of glass. 

“Do you want me to,” you trail off, eyes stuttering over the items at your disposal. “I can’t sing if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m no singer.”

 Eyes, one of them full of shattered stars and the other full of blown-up planets, stare on. Unchanging and showing you no inclination of what he wants you to do. The other fish will at least whine, squint, or show joy if he thinks whatever words your vocal cords stretch into will entertain him. “Though, I could,” you trail off again.

Trailing off is an awful habit of yours. You rarely can make full, complete conversation after almost half a decade of night shifts. However, those intense eyes encourage you to go on. “I could read to you?” Your fingers point towards the booklet that had fallen off your chest. “If you want?”

Once again, no answer. But, at least you are not staring alone at your desolate reflection. His figure behind the glass – the yellow eye on his left side watching each of your body’s movements – is so very real and alive. At least, you are not alone this time. Though, the company is unorthodox biologically.

“Reading … I can do that.” Only for a little while though. Eventually, your eyes will start to blur at the tiny scripture. However, as you pick up the book and place it in your lap, the first line is big enough that you can read it easily, “Once upon a time –”

As a wedding gift, Pandora received a box from Zeus. Though gifts by definition are simply something given from person to person, the word gift carries with it a subliminal, secondary definition. Gifts are to typically be opened.

Acting against that thought, Zeus warned Pandora to never open the box. You never understood that. 

Why would one dangle temptation in front of another’s face? Why even plant an apple tree in the Garden of Eden? Why even craft a box if it should remain shut evermore? Temptation is a seductive thing. It slithers up into a body with shining honey eyes and lures like a hook. Because of this, it is best to keep it under lock and key.

If Zeus really did not want the box opened, he should have kept it as a hidden secret underneath thousands of layer crusts in the mountains.

As the story goes, curious Pandora opens her wedding gift. From it, the four horsemen of Judgement Day leap and gallop out, thick plumes of disease rattle out of the box in shaking coughs, and envy and greed claws their way out with black, knife fingernails, raping Pandora of her beautiful face and stealing her glittering necklace. Bleeding scratches upon her cheek and lungs filling with disease-ridden smoke, Pandora slams the box shut with a regretful hack. 

Only one thing remains in Pandora’s box. Hope remains trapped inside the wedding gift. Alone, hope paces the perimeters of the box in their curiosity. Marveling at how much room and space they have to stretch out, hope takes a long, peaceful nap for all eternity.

You wish you could take a long, peaceful nap. You have a lot of trouble managing to fall asleep fully without waking up in intervals. When you work against your body’s natural circadian rhythm that is simply what happens.

Today, you have what Doctor Safari’s helpful tabs are telling you is a third shifter headache. To alleviate them you take no pills. Far too smart of an idea to take those. Instead, you take an iced frappuccino out of the break room’s fridge and turn off every single light in the aquarium, down to the blue LEDs that snake on the ceiling.

“Much better,” you sigh to yourself in relief. In nebulous black, your feet carry you to the place where company awaits and has been awaiting for about two months now.

It has been a slow trail of companionship. Progress is not fully linear. Part of you has forgotten how hard it is to socialize after years of isolation. 

To be honest, you feel like a man who has lived up in the mountains alone for years, living and hunting by nomad methods, only to be shown a cellphone as soon as you reach the mountain's descent. However, they must feel the same way. They have lived down in the ocean for years, living and hunting in aquatic methods, only to be brought up and shown the eye of a penlight shining in their face. The three of you are all just struggling along in finding how to make companionship work. 

But God, does it work. You hesitate with it, suddenly remembering the fins as placeholders for ears or the tails under their belly-buttons. Yet, human eyes and smiling lips will restore your content in the next moment. Something about them solves your loneliness.

They may never speak. However, you often have trouble navigating the maze of words.  In the end, you consider them friends in an unease definition of the word.

By the time you make it to Pandora’s box, your coffee is drunk down to the last drop and you use the chilled glass container as an impromptu ice pack across your forehead. Where you come through is not the typical oval-shaped room. Instead, you venture up a tongue of metal steps to the top of their aquarium tank. It is a circle-shaped room. Designed largely like a pool, the only lighting is three spheres on each wall. The room consists of a gaping black hole of water and a slight drop in floor elevation so staff can stand ankle-deep while feeding or caring for them.

At least, you assume. Because the first time curiosity lured you to the top of their tank, your fingers had been nibbled at. Nothing extreme and more like dogs cobbing to show affection, but it still surprised you when the right-gold-eyed one took your hand in his.

Now, you carry along with a plastic bag of treats and tread into the water without hesitation. Walking in the familiar steps of your companionship as you have done night after night. They are eager to see you it seems.

Too bad the world tilts and you are suddenly no longer looking down on them but eye to eye. You realize what has happened with gritted teeth. A careless trip of unbalanced feet, now you sit on hands and knees in inch-deep water.

You also realize something with more horror than before. The prescription sunglasses that were perching on your forehead have been knocked off and are slowly slipping inside the tank’s depths. 

“No, shit!” You cry out before, with one-track-mindlessness, you duck your head underwater like a hungry mallard. 

Your eyes fly open as soon as you submerge yourself. You watch as languid sunglasses drift lower and lower. Ribs tight on the cement floor, you spear out your arm in a panic, missing the edge of the glasses by a finger’s width before they go down further and further.

No, no, no! Those glasses cost a fortune! 

Stupidly, you consider the idea of diving right into the rest of the tank before you realize another thing. It paralyzes you, shocking and binding your heart. The entire sight of the tank is so easy to see. The bottom of the ocean floor is as clear as crystal, enough where you pick out each gradient of sand. It is comparable to being a person putting on their prescription contacts in the morning, everything clearing up with the right correction lens. 

Usually, your vision is always mildly blurry. Enough where you can navigate night to night without any serious medical aid. But that lingering, splitting-headache pain behind your irises dulls like a blanketed sound. 

It allows you to watch clearly as delicate, black fingertips scoop up your ebony pair of sunglasses. 

Relief fills you as the fish with upturned eyes gently brings them up to you. You surface from water just as both fish break the surface too. It dawns on you that you haven’t been this close, eyes parallel to one another with you on your knees. 

No reinforced aquarium glass separates you this time and yet, calmly, you say, “Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough for retrieving those for me.”

A giant grin grows on the one with downturned eyes. Though you hold a hand out to the other, this one seems to think your gratitude is for him for he loops his arms around your neck, squeezing you. He starts to pepper kisses on your cheek, which you suppose resembles how dogs like to lick their owners.

Your outstretched hand never receives the glasses. Instead, the fish with upturned eyes takes to placing your sunglasses back on the perch of your head. The temple tops fit snugly behind your ears. You watch as the fish with shrewdness in his eyes starts to move the tendrils of wet hair out of your face. 

As your hair is tucked and your cheek is kissed, you wonder just once more why faith has brought them to you.

“(Name)?”

You smile at Deuce’s surprised gap. Today, you wear Noir sunglasses. The lenses are as dark as vantablack, refusing to allow any light touch your retinas. Even the artificially colored lights of an aquarium during operating hours is too much for you. 

Deuce is in charge of the photography printing booth today. Twenty or so different families, couples, groups of teens flicker in rows across the screen he stands in front of. 

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“No, no, not at all,” he rushes to amend. “Just haven’t seen you out in –”

“The sun?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Even a vampire needs a change of pace.”

Like an examined showhorse, you show off your plain teeth. No fangs or shark teeth to be found. 

“I’ll tell you though. Driving here? A complete nightmare.” And, it really was. Usually you drive one handed. Your right hand lies on your thigh, tapping along to the rhythm of the radio’s drums. Today, you had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.

“Well, it is a summer weekend after all. Sucks to get stuck in traffic. ” Deuce nods his head in sympathy.

“Ah,” you look to the side. “Actually it was kind of just weird driving with other people on the road.”

Deuce’s eyes brighten in particle understanding. He might not entirely comprehend it but he still goes, “Oooh. Because you’re so used to driving at night.”

It is not that entirely. “Yeah,” you give a small, lying smile. When you remember driving, you remember it like a dream. You drive in a single lane, all alone in your white truck. Bordering you, two lanes of heavy, steady traffic move in succession towards the opposite direction. Going somewhere you are not. 

Your isolated Chevrolet Silverado was so high up on the ground that you felt a bird. The width of your truck was so wide that you felt you were shouldering your way through a crowd. That is only what felt like happened, not reality. “I just felt a little disjointed.”

The photographs on the monitor keep changing in flickers. Your eyes fall on them. Mother with daughter. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Father and mother and only son. Three girl best friends. Grandfather with two girls and one boy. Blank. 

“Did you get your photo taken?” He asks. He must have noticed your gaze. Has to do his job after all. 

“Ah no.”

You look at the empty block of spotlighted blue. Dark cobalt around the edges and white in the center. How many photos do you have of yourself? You feel in that moment … if you ran away somewhere, no one would notice; there’s no photographic evidence that you exist.

“Nah; had to fight to let them let me pass. Oh, it’s just mandatory. Completely free of charge. And then, they started thinking I was insecure or something so they started complimenting me. Had to explain,” you tap the side of your sunglasses in reference, “and then, finally they let me go. So much fuss for just a photo.”

“They’re really that insistent on it?”

You nod. 

“So what brought you out into civilization anyways?”

“Wow, rude.” 

Deuce laughs. You smile strained. Every time you speak, it feels wrong. You are being too mean or not engaging enough. God, why can’t you just talk to someone like a normal person and carry a conversation smoothly? There is no desolate reflection for you to spy on the laptop, just an empty space of spotlighted blue.

“Visiting some friends.” is your reply.

The publicity on them is quiet and hush. So much so that you feel the world has already known about them – two merman pulled from the bottom of the deep sea, sea, sea. It is entirely possible. With how disjointed you are compared to 99.9 % of the population, it is not so far-fetched to think that they have been in the public’s eyes for a long time and wonder over them has died down. 

However, this exhibit is still listed as the first one. Out of how many? Well, you suppose you will find out later if more are to come, if this is going to be a big success. You only found out from working the night shift, seeing the date on the break-room calendar. 

COME SEE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON! That is the first message you spy on the aquarium walls, following along with the crowd. Must have been put up by the morning crew. In bright letters, strung underneath party streamers, a multitude of phrases bounce and shout. Instead of being in awe over the pictures of them, your mind focuses on each line detailing: unprecedentedly new; for the first time; never seen before!

Yet, no one shrieks in terror at the sight of them in the posters. Even when you and others are filed into the aquarium auditorium, the crowd murmurs to themselves softly instead of shouting. Under the hypnotic spell of voyeurism, everyone seems more anticipatory than agitated.

You fixate your glasses tighter to your face as you scale up metal stairs, looking over your shoulder at the water. This is where they do the sea lion or seals show. You have not seen a single one in an entire decade. Under the shadowed surface, you can spy two serpentine lengths flowing through currents. 

“Bet this whole thing is a scam. We should go back to Disney in Florida next year; it’s warmer there. More stuff to do too.” You cast a glance at the daughter in her early twenties sitting next to her mother before moving further up.

You do not pick the top row but you do pick an isolated section. Sandwiching yourself next to a stone pillar, your butt lands on the rickety metal bench. Just as you are about to readjust your glasses, making sure that sides of the lenses are atom to atom on your skin, you are interrupted by a loud, consecutive ‘woah’ that you are not a part of, that swims through the crowd.

But, you manage to see a glimpse of it just in time.

You are not sure which one of the two it is. Yet, all the same, you watch entranced as one of them breaches that ink pool. Bioluminescence tints his body in glittering blue topazes. It is like watching a shooting star suddenly fly across the dark night skies. 

The porcupine quills of black that make up his fins bend and the dragon tail of sapphire that makes up his lower body arches. Aerodynamic, he flies through the air and manages just in time to snag the large, squirming spider crab that hangs from a ceiling beam on a metal wire. He disappears with the same speed as his appearance, taking with him into the black hole of water his meal.

Yet, before anyone can close their hanging jaws or the water can stop rippling with the impact of the eel-mer diving back under, music blares from the speakers, moving spotlights suddenly slide over the water and crowd, and a man comes out of the backroom and onto the stage.

You are just done wincing from the bright flash of a spotlight surfing over the bench you sit on when the man suddenly exclaims, “How are we all doing?” You stay tight-lipped as the crowd cheers. “C’mon, you can do better than that! How are y’all doing today?” The crowd cheers, claps, and responds in a long Goooood! 

Cringing with shut lips, you suddenly remember why it has been a decade since you watched an aquarium show. The script is always a bit childish. 

“We have two very special guests for you today. The strong guy you saw just a few moments ago was Flotsam. His brother, Jetsam, is here too. Jetsam, why don’t you come out and say hi to everyone.”

You lean forward, enraptured with the sight. Serpentine coils cut through the water, water jetting up with the force of how quickly he swims. Onto the wayward platform that bobs in the black hole, Jetsam pushes his body up onto it. Instead of a pair of flippers, he waves his clawed fingers to the awestruck audience. 

“Flotsam and Jetsam are both eel-mers. Found and rescued from the northern waters, they are the first of their kind and are very excited to show you all what they can do!” Thus, the spectacle begins.

They go through a variety of tricks. From doing a few figure eights in the water, shooting balls into hoops, and even a freeze dance to the music blaring through the speaker, the mixture of tricks they do feels almost infinite. When the staff member rolls out a clownfish mailbox, announcing the birthdays of a few children in the audience, you wonder how long they must have been training. Days upon days of practice drilled into their memory. 

Birthday children come up to the auditorium’s yellow line as the eel-mers hand out little high-fives to them. One child even proclaims, “Ew sticky!” before his dad tickles him under the arms and picks him up, returning to their bench. Even though it is their first show, Flotsam and Jetsam seem so well-versed in social etiquette. 

However, you cannot help but find it a little demeaning. It seems so beneath them to have to perform like this to a leering audience. Sure, the rewards for each trick is generous, a stocky Japanese spider crab tossed and crushed in their razor sharp jaws, but it feels so ignominious. 

Despite the horrified joy swimming through everyone’s gasps and aws, your heart is so sad.

Another round of tricks starts up. This time it involves a dual pair of bongos. As the staff member picks up a squirting spider crab from the cage onstage, he speaks into his echoing earpiece, “Now, our here, Flotsam is an exceptional drummer. We often find him playing something new every morning, completely of his own free experimentation.” Flotsam swims and props himself on stage as the staff member continues, “Today, we’re going to have him show off a skill to you fine folks!”

Your heart buries itself deeper and deeper into sadness. Perhaps, he never was intelligent. Perhaps, he is just another dumb fish. Canine obedience hammered in through reward and punishment, rhythms only learned because it is trained in him. As you two lock eyes, you cannot find anything that would dispute this theory.

You wait, as does everyone else, for Flotsam to start drumming away as promised. In addition, you wait for his eyes to flicker away from your unrecognizable face hidden by your sunglasses. Neither happens.

“A little indecisive today. I understand, there is just so much good music in the world,” the staff member stalls for time. He rips off a crab leg, holding out the reward by Flotsam’s suddenly demure face. “Why don’t we start off with something easy, buddy. A bit of the musical scale. Do-Re-Mi?”

‘You want to watch out for his teeth,’ you think, rubbing your fingers over the little scars you have from his nibbling. They really are such sharp instruments to break through the shell of a Japanese spider crab.

Thoroughly entrenched, the audience watches the repercussions of a box that was supposed to remain closed being opened.

Disbelief ripples through the crowd like one subtle wave. It is the only sound you participate in. Finally, in sync with the crowd of awake people. Someone to your left moans out of a low groan of phantom pain. The volume of interlocking disbelief grows when the staff member raises his hand up into the light. His trembling red hand hovers in front of his face to verify the view, his ring and pinkie finger bitten clean off. 

Poor bastard’s wedding ring is probably sinking down to the bottom of the tank alongside the crab leg that Flotsam spat out.

Volume pitches and rises. A woman screams. Naturally, that rouses up the attendance like puppet strings. The staff member falls on his bottom then crawls backwards. Crawling away from Flotsam like one, big stumbling crab. Since the seatmate to your right is a stone pillar, there is no one to trip over your feet in their rush to leave but you watch hypnotized many individuals shove and trip their way through bodies blocking the stairs leading down to the exits. Then, calmly, you stand on your metal bench to overlook the crowd. 

Flotsam’s eyes are wide as he stares at you. Reminds you of two tunnels branched off in a cave’s stomach. His fusiform gyrus lights up like newly plugged in Christmas lights, recognizing you. The little pea that makes up your fusiform face area– that clocks in every night to a job rarely done, cobwebs on the cubicle's laptop and dust as a seat covering – recognizes him too. 

It already was recognizing him, seeing him as what he really is. Your lips crack open, “Flo -.” Then, you start barreling down the metal steps. 

Weaving in and out of the disjointed crowd, you race down, sometimes landing on the cement floor and sometimes landing on the metal benches in your hopping steps.A shoulder jostles you so harshly that your sunglasses fall off your face. Between rows of benches, they dive to the floor. You trip, trying to make the leap onto a metal bench. The sound you make as you fall onto metal is so tiny in the cacophony. 

The world goes white. It is like flash blindness from a nuclear explosion. 

Tears pour out your eyes. You clap a hand over them in shame and to hide from the bright … too fucking bright … lights. 

When you finally pick up your sunglasses, marks of shoe soles stamped like tattoos on your upper arms and hands, the auditorium is empty of a single soul. Not even they remain swimming in the tank. Someone must have sedated them and dragged them out. You are alone once more.

That night, you dream a dream that is more memory than a mystified fabrication of wonders or terrors. 

Tender like a newborn, you lie on a wafer-thin sheet of paper that unrolls itself from a cylinder like one big, white wave. Perhaps an iceberg is more appropriate. Hospitals are as cold as the arctic. On the paper iceberg, on the fence of girlhood and the fated teenage years, on the tongue of a vivisection, you balance with broken ankles. Under your thin gown, flowing air and goosebump-freckled skin collide. Blue tints your bottom lip.

You are laid down, anticipating future pain.

“Lay down and I will be with you two shortly.” He had said this and nothing more.

The scent at the doctor’s office is ozone with a hint of vanilla. Near your toes, the long neck of a giraffe stretches skyward, painted on the bricks. Under bright, too fucking bright, light, metal tools glitter like slick seashells. You can feel the prescribed numbing droplets in your eyeballs slowly seep in.

You pinch your eyes shut, feeling like there is a cement block lodged and scraping between the bones of your temple. Why wouldn’t they give you something for the pain? When you open them, they are held open by a speculum and hooks like you are nothing past being an animal in a zoo doing your daily checkups. 

Oh, and you are sitting upright on the paper iceberg now.

Must be the dream’s altercations. Time skipping forward in intervals. 

Dreams are always like a pile of bones. The skeleton all jumbled up and disorganized that you move from femur to ulna. You are not graced with a lot of time to think on the analogy as a very big kitchen knife leans towards your pried open eye. 

The muscles in your cheek twitch when it cuts. With the skills of a head-chef slicing an egg, your eye is cut perfectly down the imaginary midline. Both sides are even. 

He scoops out one side of your eye like a person pulling back from a whole cake with a single slice. It is more inky black and sickly gray. The hues of your eye-cake that is. Far from the bright blue or pink frosting of a cake, it stays saturated in montone hues. You always thought an eye would look like the diagrams in school, colorful with reds and blues, but it is a sickly ebon and ashen gray.

The cornea is hard as a freshly cut nail and the half globe of retina slimes in his gloved hand like glue. Now looking at it, it appears the flesh inside an eye reminds you more of a bruised plum’s insides. A muted hue of purple-black rather than full ebon.

It is the lens of your eyes that really captures the doctor’s attention. He takes the half-cut marble in a pair of tweezers. Between those lobster claws of thin steel, your lens which makes up a pupil is rotated back and forth in observation. 

An eye, though entirely soft and vulnerable, has only one hard bit inside like the tough seed of a peach. It can be cut but it will give resistance. With one good eye and half of your other, you watch the hard material between the lobster claws be pinched in and out to test the give and resistance of itself. Steadfast, it does not bend under the squeezes. 

That half-cut pearl glitters.

Time skips again, moving bone to bone like switching channels. Instead of smells and sights, sound takes over the scene. The faint buzzing of the air conditioner as it breathes over the giraffe’s neck. Water oscillating back and forth over rubbing soapy hands cries loud in your ears. Though, faintly, you can hear the blood from your eye that slips down your chin hit the pad of the paper iceberg you sit on.

The tissue in your hand crinkles softly in sound as you wipe away blood tears. In a chair that might as well be across the globe of Earth, your guardian sobs in intervals with a trembling chin. “Guuuh … gah … hu-hu-hugaaah.” You keep soaking up blood, dabbing the tissue against your face as it whispers in light friction. 

After he finishes washing his hands of your sanguine, the doctor intones two words like a priest giving the final prayer at the start of Armageddon, “cone dystrophy.” That is the last sound your ears can bear to hear before you jolt awake.

Your current doctor has given you exactly twenty-one little sheets. Ishihara tests; multiple circles with a number made of circles in the center. They are tests for color blindness. 

That morning, the colors red and orange permanently fuse into one shade. 

You took three nights off work. A little mini-vacation. The first was so you could spend the daylight hours watching the show with Flotsam and Jetsam; the second was so you could attend your doctor’s appointment; the third was so you could clean up what has been neglected in your apartment. Vacations are supposed to relieve the average worker of stress. You find yourself an outlier, once again.

“Blind by thirty? Blind by fucking thirty?” You bundle up the graphic shirt you were trying to fold into a circle and punch your mattress. The pile of already folded shirts tilts and falls in an arch to your right. “That fucking asshole,” you sneer.

Unraveling the graphic-tee-ball, you straighten your hunched posture with a deep sigh. No use taking your frustration out on innocent clothes. The wrinkled shirt joins the tower once you rebuild it. You reach out and grab a pair of socks. Foolishly, you thought organizing your apartment up for a very overdue spring cleaning would help to organize the disorder running rampant in your head. 

Forlorn and desolate, you look at the laundry mountain. Too bad that is far from happening. 

It is just … A person takes a guess at jars full of jelly-beans or what they’re significant other might have made for dinner, those are the true purpose of guessing games. The audacity of a person to guess when someone else is going to blind. You almost tear the sleeve off your cardigan when you pull in from the mountain’s maw. How dare your doctor estimate your finite health with such casualness. 

You suppose it makes sense. The Salvador Dali-esque dream you had the night before, coupled with losing the ability to differentiate between red and orange; all of these were just the bad omens setting up the stage for your doctor’s appointment. 

Mostly a homebody and not a frequent traveler, there aren’t many sights you are dying to see. However, the idea of losing your sight causes you to grieve it prematurely. Mourning the death of yourself. To just wither up inside this box-shaped apartment as a tomb, the thought of that is odious. You shudder and fold a towel.

Across the mattress, you look at your CRT television cloaked in a thin, see-through blanket to dim the lighting. On the square, a blue pick-up truck punches through metal and wooden gating. Even though the movie wrongly uses the sound effect of glass breaking, it is still impactful as you watch the pick-up truck reverse into an open boating harbor connected to the ocean. The whale and little boy harnessed to the back slowly sink in. 

Freeform is playing Free Willy. To be honest, you are just biding time until the Harry Potter marathon starts up. Thank God, this movie is nearing its end because it is putting dangerous thoughts in your head. You just want to see little Daniel Radcliffe under the staircase and be interrupted by commercials every twenty-five minutes.

The orphaned boy pushes the orca whale out to sea. You fold another article of clothing, unsure if it is orange or red. The hope that Pandora kept in her box begs for freedom.

It is an open secret now. That is a little contradictory, if you do say so yourself. 

However, it is the truth. The public now knows them without embellishment. With the shining gandour and seductive metaphorical-lingerie, it comes to their attention that predators are still predators. No matter how human they may look. 

The thought saddens you. Slowly and unsurely, you have been starting to humanize them in your mind. When you wrestle with the locked doorknob of the oval-shaped room, you grow sadder. 

It makes sense though. Flotsam and Jetsam? They should have been kept in the Oval Office or Area 51; instead they were brought to an aquarium in the middle of nowhere, used for publicity. The crux of humanity rears its ugly head. Sharing each fetish and body part to the audience is the sin of being a curious human. Everyone is a voyeur for something. No one can keep their mouth shut nowadays, always needing to post about their lives. So, they brought Flotsam and Jetsam here to do the exact same thing.

To think there was a time when you were disguised by their humanity. And now, it's all you hope to preserve and keep safe. Ascending the stairs to the circular-shaped room, you contemplate if there could ever be an inch of humanity in an animal. As a set of honey eyes peer at you from across the black hole water, you wonder if it is only canine obedience in their faces. 

Two against one, you all take a moment accessing each other. There are no plastic bags of yummy treats hanging from your arms. No thumping rhythms of songs echo on the walls. Instead of familiar friendliness and comfortable companionship, you all seem incredibly wary of each other. 

“Ya can come closer … We wouldn’t hurt ya, Shrimpy.”

Who the fuck said that?

Frozen in disbelief, you can do little besides watch the black hole ripple in violent sprays. A harsh slap echoes off the wall as a clawed hand breaches water only to grab the face with a right gold eye. Both drop under the water as your mind reels, spinning around options like a broken, juiced-up carnival ride. 

You are tired! You are so tired that you must have hallucinated that! Being awake for so long on the night shift … Why, it must be entirely possible to hallucinate every once and a while! An evolved headache of sorts! 

Yes. You grab onto that thought. Those words were hallucinations. Too bad your grip on the thought grows flimsy when Flotsam breaches the water, snarling, “I wanna talk to Shrimpy! Jade, lemme go! Get off!” A clawed hand grips the back of his hair and pulls him right back under.

A vivid hallucination you are having. Yes! A paragon of hallucinations and headaches after so many night shifts!

Despite the fear, you stay rooted in your spot. Not close enough to where the spilling water of the tank touches your shoes but close enough where you can watch the water steadily. Every once in a while, the sound of rocketing water echoes in the room. Dragon tails of green-blue fracture the surface. A clawed hand will rise up like a zombie breaking dirt only to disappear in seconds. Water flies in turrets and towers. 

Maybe because of the fear, you stay in your exact same spot and watch. Things start to calm down eventually. Bubbles pop on the surface like they are conversing under there. But, that is impossible because fish cannot speak.

‘Don’t backtrack (Name),’ you think to yourself. ‘Their entire existence is impossible. It’s been impossible since the beginning. This is just another step into that twilight zone. Another unorthodox secret brought to the surface.’ The thought makes you feel disjointed like a pile of bones.

It had hurt. The day of the show. You do not why but it had hurt to know they weren’t yours alone. That the secret had been open for some time and it was not just you and them. Thus, you stay and wait for them to breach the surface one more time.

They both do simultaneously. Water cutting the visage of the rest of their body from the shoulders down. Red returns to the scene, staining both Flotsam and Jetsam’s faces in thick scratches. You barely get a second to analyze the wounds before Flotsam shouts, “It was haaard, ‘kay? I wanted to tell them the pretty nickname I made for them! And tell them I liked the new rocks they put in our tank!” He pouts childishly. “It’s so borin’ not being able to talk. I got so bored! You’re boring.”

Even when Flotsam snaps his sharp teeth at Jetsam, he remains unpulsed. “Forgive me for trying to look out for your well-being, but both of us agreed in junction that we would under no circumstances talk to humans.”

“But Shrimpy’s different from the rest!”

“Under no circumstances, Floyd.”

“I knooow,” Flotsam? Floyd? whines. Then, his downwards angled eyes slide over your comatose form. An excited grin comes up to his face. “Doesn’t matter now though. Shrimpy!!”

You are barely given a second to gather your thoughts before Floyd barrels towards you. Spindly arms wrap around your neck and suddenly you are down on your knees in an inch of water. The kiss on your cheek this time feels much less like a dog licking to show affection; it resembles more a human kissing you on the cheek which causes you to fluster. 

“Truly, you make things so difficult at times,” Jetsam? Jade? tuts. The sound of him swimming through the water draws closer. His deep timbre sends a cardiogenic shock through your ribcage as he addresses, “I do apologize for my brother. He was a bit desolate without you here the past two nights.”

For some reason, you wonder how Jade felt in your absence too. Hands holding onto Floyd’s upper arms for a semblance of balance, you reply, “Uh, I took — I took a vacation.” The words feel like marshmallows rolling off your tongue. Gluttonous, fluffy, unreal with their texture. This really is happening, and you have to come to terms with it.

“Told ya it wasn’t because they were scared of us.”

“I never made such a connection. Merely hypothesizing.”

“Mmh, hypothesizin’ my ass,” Floyd grins as he turns to … sniff your hair?

Pushing him away to gain a bit of distance, you address the one you find the least distracted of the two. “You — You can talk? Why — Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” The companionship you had? Was it truly so fragile that you two had to keep secrets from one another?

“Well, you see, (Name),” — your name is so tantalizing coming from his voice that you feel like you are being resurrected from a heart-attack, defibrillator pounding away on your chest — “it was a matter of safety for my brother and I. If we were to say anything —.”

Floyd interrupts, “Everyone’s kind of a bigmouth buffalo fishy here so we keep ours shut.”

“The day to day conversations of the staff, the chatter from the people who visited us in the daylight hours, the unending gossip. We figured it was best to keep our lips sealed for the time being. Who knows how they would have reacted.”

“Nothing’s better than having a few tricks up your sleeve, Shrimpy.” Finally, you are done being squeezed as Floyd falls back into his tank. He rests his hands behind his head and floats buoyant.

“It is an epidemic, I fear. Fufu. Secrecy is such a rare trait to find nowadays.” Jade crosses his arms on top of the cement incline that you kneel in, looking at you sweetly. “Almost a lost art of sorts, eroded away after centuries of geological and evolutionary advances.”

Then, ping-ponging back and forth, they start to slip each secret (that others would probably want under lock and key) they’ve heard.

“Your manager’s wife is infertile thus he avoids conversations about children or preschool.”

“Lucas hit a guy with his car two years ago in a hit-and-run. Didn’t kill him but still.”

“Martha’s daughter just had an abortion. She gripes to Tatiana about how to possibly be supportive about this.”

“Ashley doesn’t like her boyfriend and they’re breakin’ up soon.”

“Deuce is going to fail his statistics class if he scores lower than a 95 on his next test.”

“Patrick is proposin’ to his girlfriend on December 1st.”

“We could keep going,” Jade says with a sly grin. “However, I think the point has gotten across.” He trails one fingernail across your thigh and smiles when you do not flinch. “All that useless prattle makes for some divine entertainment. Besides, matching up with more animalistic expectations can mean others are wildly underestimating us. Having the upper hand is better, always.”

Scrutinizing over his wandering fingernail, you ask quietly, “Is that why you attacked that man?” The question is meant for Floyd. Jade pulls his keen nail back all the same.

“Nah,” Floyd does not look at you as he answers, fixated on the ceiling. “It was humiliatin’. Being looked at that way by ya, Shrimpy.”

You blink in surprise. Shame is such a human trait. Born of social circles and social behaviors that are just uniquely tied to the bipedal species you are. The look on Jade’s face seems to agree with the consensus. You watch green-blue muscles glide through the water, simply drifting to a tame current. You watch black fingernails tap on cement in a tiny rhythm. 

Floyd continues, noticing your silence, “Shrimpy’s the only one that talks to us like people. Everyone else just treats us like a spectacle.” 

The heart in your ribcage knocks. You cannot Free Willy the entire aquarium. But, your Chevrolet Silverado has enough room in the bed for a kiddie pool or two.

Faintly, you recall a distant memory, when you read to Jade so many weeks ago, just as you open the oval-shaped room with the stolen key:

“The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to see why she was crying in pain. Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more. 

“All that remained in the box was Hope. It fluttered from the box like a beautiful dragonfly, touching the wounds created by the evil creatures, and healing them. Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.”

For the past decade, photographic evidence of your existence has been nonexistent. You have found yourself to be an outlier; the world operates to a different rhythm that you have not been able to copy, relicate, or even play along to. Living in perpetual sleep apnea of the soul, you have only found true connection with two other people.

The blue ceiling lights are off as is now the new normal. Without the aid of your penlight, you make your way into the space with confident steps. Sunglasses perched on your head, you find that what has been slowly developing has reached the summit of itself. An impromptu, unorthodox Free Willy plagiarism.

The dark is easier than ever to see through tonight. You smile back when they smile at you. 

Floyd is curled up close to the glass, calling for your undivided attention with his placement. Subdued yet stealthy as ever, Jade lingers behind yet close enough to be seen. Floyd crosses his body across the glass-canvas up and to your right. Jade crosses his body to your left, floating demurely lower. 

The glass-canvas is painted with a few smudges of handprints. Some are from yourself and others from the only and only drummer. He depresses his dominant hand on the glass, leaning in close. His right hand waves up in dark waters in a fervent, warm greeting. His excitement to see you is palpable. You raise your own. 

Both of their eyes shine like spotlights. The only light that you have looked into and found it does not hurt. Jade’s anticipatory smile slithers onto your face in a perfect mimic. You are going to rob the aquarium of those glittering gold dragonfly eyes. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for the staff or customers to find in nebulous darkness. 

Nothing. Nothing but their desolate reflection.

[aoflameandco]

GrimmNell: character study

Well-well-well, I mentioned once that my GrimmNel brainrot is far from being over - so here we go! What else's to analyze about them though? Well, this time we have a new subject to focus on... the Bleach personality quiz!

Yes, I know it's a bit questionable source for a character study, but let me explain! June 2011. The third Bleach Official Character Book UNMASKED was released in Japan. This databook was mostly famous for giving Ulquiorra a more detailed backstory and showing more of Halibel and her Fracción. However, there was another small tidbit for Arrancar's fans - the official quiz from Kubo - Which Bleach character are you? 

The quiz was extremely simple.  Add up the numbers of your full date of birth and don't forget your blood type. Voila! In the end you get a short profile about your Bleach "personality type", which highlights the key qualities of this particular character.

Now, y'all know where I'm going with this. So, what's like to be like Grimmjow- or Nel according to the databook? Let's check it!

And- Even without any translation, we immediately bump into the first problem. There's only Nel's profile. Not Nelliel's.

Well, they're the same person! It would be weird to separate them, right? But yeah... there's a solid difference in a way her kid and adult forms act.

So the question remains - can we apply this profile's info to the adult Nelliel? Let's read it to find out.

a bit messy not word to word translation's incoming, pls take it with a grain of salt

Cheerful and playful

Nel type!

Good at opening people's hearts. Very quick to make bonds, no matter with who - friends or foes. She is attentive and good at conveying information to those around her. But sometimes she says too much.

• works at her own pace • high sense of camaraderie • doesn't run away from difficulties • hero of justice

Ofc this info perfectly fits baby Nel. She quickly befriended Ichigo, even though he was a shinigami; she was a sort of his guide, explaining how Hueco Mundo works; also she is a big chatterbox, saying surprisingly harsh things sometimes. Her attentive side shined during the Ichigo vs Grimmjow fight, when she noticed Orihime's turmoil and gave her a good advice. She is surely down for justice, but it's a little bit difficult to fight for it in her small body. So the real Nelliel has to step up.

Same qualities but a different approach - that's what I would say about adult!Nel. And it's very visible when it comes to her later interactions with Grimmjow, esp in CFYOW.

But before giving some bright examples, let's take a look at his quiz profile as well - to understand the similarities and contrasts between these two characters.

Responsible but mischievous

Grimmjow type

There's still a bit of a boyish heart (shounen no kokoro) in him. But deep inside he's unexpectedly serious and has a sense of responsibility. He catches the information fast and adapts quickly, but his tendency to get bored could be a problem. If he'll improve this aspect, good fortune is likely to come his way.

• has a sense of responsibility • thrives in adversity • quickly adapts • gets bored easily

And - the quiz highlighted thrice (!) that Grimmjow is indeed a responsible person. Something Nelliel didn't expect as well. As a true hero of justice she was prepared to stop Sexta as soon as he starts an unnecessary violence. But to her surprise - Grimmjow was far from an uncontrollable beast and followed his own codex.

A sense of responsibility didn't turn Grimmjow into an obedient boy though. Him and Nel keep arguing due to their different perspectives - especially when it comes to handling the former enemies.

Nelliel easily bonds with anyone - quincy, Aura, etc., meanwhile Grimmjow picks a fight as a first option. This choice isn't just a result of his bloodthirst though. Grimmjow's survival instincts are strong, so he always stays on guard and doesn't trust easily. That's why he warns Nelliel that her pacifism might end up badly for them all.

Another proof that even though he acts as if he doesn't belong to the group, Grimm isn't as indifferent as he pretends to be. Very responsible of him, huh?

Yet there's another obstacle in their dynamic. Their pacing. Grimmjow is quick to adapt and quick to act, meanwhile Nelliel doesn't like to rush and prefers to gather as much information as possible.

Hard to say who's wrong in this case. Quick reaction benefited Grimmjow in general, but ofc Nel likes to remind him about Askin's incident, her favorite argument to cool him down.

And usually her persuasion works, surely Grimm argues back but still stops. When his stubbornness wins though- there's no way that Nelliel will just let him go. She'll do everything to find him, stop him and bring him back.

Nel complaints but doesn't give up on her fellow arrancar, no matter how difficult the other side is. Knowing Grimmjow's past, the sense of camaraderie isn't an empty word for him too. With creak he opens up to Nel, sharing his thoughts with her. Even though she is too bold with her words sometimes, it doesn't look like Sexta feels a grudge against her.

Grimmjow isn't a friendly type. He likes to fight, but a disappointed look quickly appears on his face, if his enemy doesn't meet expectations. He gets bored easily, he always needs some action. And yet- for some reason Nelliel got his attention.

There's no doubt that he sees her as a nice opponent, he even provoked her to fight with a smirk. He easily forgets anyone who didn't pique his interest and yet Nel's reiatsu is safely stored in his memory.

However, it wouldn't be correct to reduce Grimmjow's attention to a desire to fight, when we have several scenes of him watching Nelliel's peaceful shenanigans. He was calmly watching over kid Nel in anime probably wondering about the connection between this brat and the mighty Tres, he was dying of boredom, but still didn't take his eyes off her tea party in the novel. Even Halibel noticed it and offered him to join, but ofc he proudly refused.

So what did we confirm again? Even though Grimmjow and Nelliel share rather opposite views when it comes to socializing or making decisions, some of their character traits are surprisingly compatible. Grimmjow gained some respect points, when Nel started to notice his responsible side, meanwhile he opened up to her pushy yet reliable presence. Nelliel doesn't give up on her persuasion and he doesn't get bored of arguing with her. Covering eo's flaws they make quite a powerful duo, isn't?

So let's hope we'll see more of their rocky bond next season~

[emeraldthelynx]

Crossovers

So, I just feel like talking for a bit about my approach for crossovers. Crossovers are one of my favourite things to write, from two entries in the same franchise to two franchises that were never meant to cross, they're special to me. Allow me to present to you, Lynx's Unofficial Guide to Writing Crossovers! Buckle up, this is going to be a long read.

The first thing is to decide what kind of crossover it's going to be. I don't have names for all of these, so I'll explain the premises. The first option does have a name, Shared Universe. This works like a Pokemon AU. Elements from one world, Pokemon, exist in another world, say Sonic, but not too much changes in terms of world or story. We would simply see let's say, what Sonic would do with a Pokemon partner as he runs around bashing robots. These crossovers don't require a lot of lore to explain why the world is the way it is, although it can be interesting if they do. (Check out Bilsu Art on YouTube and his 'Linked Dimension' project. It's a good example of a lore-heavy Shared Universe.)

The second type of crossover is the kind you would typically see in a comic book or a TV show, like a 'Iron Man meets Spider-Man' or 'Sonic and Mega Man Worlds Collide.' This is also the crossover you usually see new fanfiction writers make. These kinds of crossovers have to be done 'just so.' You need a reason for the two to meet. If they already exist in the same universe, it's not a problem, but when they exist in different universes, you need a reason for those universes to meet. Usually it's in the form of the villain discovering the other world and meeting a villain there to team up with. (Sonic and Mega Man Worlds Collide, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.) These crossovers are often prey to what I like to call 'character overload.' It means that there are so many characters that they either don't get enough time to shine, or they get lost in a sea of other characters. Let's just call this kind 'Comic Book crossovers.'

The third kind is when two characters just so happen to be in the same world. They were not really meant to cross, but it's not unusual for them to cross. (Grumpy Cat/Garfield.) These ones are more simple, since the characters can just run into each other without some sort of overarching threat. It does run into the issue of character overload as well.

The fourth type could be considered an RPG crossover, where characters from one series stand in for characters of another series or story. (The Sonic Storybook games.) These kinds of crossovers can either be amazing or terrible. Usually when they're terrible, it's when the canon dialogue, actions and motivations are pasted onto the inserted characters. They can be amazing when the roles are upheld alongside the new character's personality. There is a special challenge in writing these crossovers because you need to uphold the fine line of 'adaptation' and 'AU.' Personally, I would be more invested in the story if it turned into an AU. The premise behind these kinds of stories boils down to 'what would character A do if they were in character's B's role in B's world?'

Let's call the fifth and final kind (that I can think of) 'Borrowed Element Crossovers.' Theses are much closer to AUs than they are to crossovers. I did it myself with my story Pokemon Powered Up where I took elements from Mega Man Powered Up but it is still in the Pokemon World with Pokemon people and Pokemon personalities. This list is far from complete, and I often borrow bits and pieces from the different types to make crossovers.

All crossovers stem from the idea of different people meeting each other. There has to be a reason the two worlds fit together so nicely. (i.e., Digimon and Megaman Battle Network both have a Digital World or Sonic and Kaito KID both are free spirits with their own rules.) Sometimes they don't even need much in common. I once read a spectacular My Little Pony:FiM/classic Mega Man crossover and I can honestly find no obvious real element between the two series. I've also noticed that some series can cross over more easily than others. (I'm looking at you Harry Potter crossovers and I don't know the reason why because I've never read the books.)

The next step in crossover making is figuring out which world is the dominant world. Is it Sonic in Pokemon or Pokemon in Sonic. The difference would be if it was Sonic in Pokemon Sonic would be a Pokemon trainer and do trainer stuff but if it was Pokemon in Sonic then the biggest difference would be that Pokemon share the world with the characters and the characters themselves might even be anthropomorphic Pokemon. Sometimes the worlds can be pretty balanced in elements, but other times one world takes over all the elements.

The next question is figuring out who is meeting and how. Are they going to bump into each other at a gaming convention? (Secret Reverse.) Is a mysterious entity going to invite them to another world? (Smash Bros series) Will the villain(s) try to merge the worlds together? (Marvel vs Capcom Ultimate.) Some series will have a thing that makes it easier for crossovers to happen. Fullmetal Alchemist has the Gate from the 03 anime that canonically can send people between the real world and the FMA world. Sonic's world has the Chaos Emeralds, Pokemon has Dialga and Palkia, and Yu-gi-oh! has plenty of nonsense across all its entries. (My personal favourite crossover hotspot is Majora's Mask. It's incredibly easy to make crossovers with this concept, no matter the characters or world.) Other worlds might be harder to cross over. Detective Conan and Wild Kratts are both fairly firmly set in the the real world, and even in worlds like Star Trek where they seem to encounter a wormhole or multiverse every other season, they have particular rules of interaction that would make things harder.

The last rule is to have fun! Laugh as you think about what character A will do in this world. Groan as you realize what cultural norm character B will get wrong. Grin as you determine who will win and who will loose. That's the whole point of the crossover, isn't it? Find out 'what could happen' and make it happen!

[nectar-cellar]

hello, sorry to bother you. i saw you made a couple tutorials for sims 3 cc so i was wondering if you could please make one for how to convert makeup from sims 4 to sims 3, or if you knew of a tutorial for this. i am trying to do this but i can't find any tutorial so it's hard. if you dont want to thats okay. thanks and be well

hey 💗 i tried to write a brief tutorial here but it's so hard to explain in words and i don't have the time to write something in-depth :(

i'll explain the basics here and hopefully that'll help you get started. you can send another message if you want to include more info about what exactly you're trying to convert.

you can also open up existing ts3 makeups in tsrw or s3pe and have a peek at how their textures were done.

extracting ts4 makeup

use s4pe or sims 4 studio to extract the swatch(es) you want to convert. if you want to convert shadow makeup or eyebrows for example, you'll want to extract the darkest swatch. later, in photoshop, you can go to image -> adjustments -> invert to make it white and use it for your diffuse texture's alpha layer.

for makeup where you want to keep the colour/texture like lipstick for example, you'll want to extract a lighter swatch so that it can be easily recoloured in-game. a darker and more colourful base texture will be harder to recolour in-game.

cloning makeup

in tsr workshop, clone any type of makeup - eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush or lipstick.

you'll see the following textures:

diffuse - the diffuse is the base texture for the makeup. open it in photoshop. for things like eyeshadow and blush, this will usually be fully white. for lipstick, this might be a very light-coloured, greyscale lips texture (it needs to be light and/or greyscale so that it can be easily recoloured in-game). in the layers sub-menu, go to the "channels" tab and click on the "alpha" channel. the black background defines the invisible area of the texture. the areas coloured in white or grey define the visible areas of the texture on the face. the opacity of the white area also defines how strong the makeup appears on the face. white = fully visible, black = fully invisible, so most makeup's alpha is some shade of grey to look the most natural. the diffuse should always be saved as a dxt 5 .dds image.

control or mask - in ts3 you can have up to 4 recolourable areas in your makeup. anything in red defines the first recolourable area, then yellow and magenta define the second and third areas. finally, in the texture's alpha channel, the white areas on the black background define the fourth recolourable area. the control can be saved as a dxt 5 .dds image.

specular - this texture gives the makeup a plasticky shine which you don't want. you can leave this as a pitch black, 1024 x 1024 px dxt1 .dds image.

[simplegenius042]

"What Kind Of Love Are You?" OC Quiz & "Every OC List Got The ___"

Tagged by @adelaidedrubman @imogenkol @voidika @shellibisshe and @aceghosts

Tagging @socially-awkward-skeleton @noodlecupcakes @josephseedismyfather @inafieldofdaisies @icecutioner @derelictheretic @shallow-gravy @direwombat @strangefable @rhettsabbott @josephslittledeputy @cloudofbutterflies92 @skoll-sun-eater @cassietrn @carlosoliveiraa @g0dspeeed @wrathfulrook @afarcryfrommymain @strafethesesinners @turbo-virgins @raresvtm @softtidesworld @starsandskies @ladyoriza @la-grosse-patate @florbelles @titiagls @minilev @yokobai @thewanderer-000 @omen-speaker @justasmolbard @alypink @thesingularityseries and @nightwingshero + anyone else who'd like to join.

Four results for my OCs for this quiz and four OC Lists for four of my series.

JOAQUIN COBALT (THE UNTITLEDVERSE)

This feels accurate for Joaquin considering he begins The UnTitledverse as an adolescent, and the series follows his growth and youth to adulthood. Joaquin has the weight of the world (or rather multiverse) on him, but, he still has time to be a child, to be a teen, to be his own identity, with Maisie, Mario, Calvin and all his found family and friends to share the weight.

SILVA OMAR (THE SILVER CHRONICLES [FAR CRY 5 & FAR CRY NEW DAWN])

Religious themes (including the trauma) for Silva go brrr! Like what else is there to say?

HAOYU ANABUKI (LIFE, DESPAIR & MONSTERS)

Yeah this makes sense for them. Haoyu is someone who's not used to love and when it comes it is gonna be the most life-changing thing for them. For once something they will have to make a commitment towards keeping if they want it. Haoyu is also the type to go in a panic as well as overthink; including full-on denial.

MARISSA "RESS" BISHOP (A RADIOACTIVE CALAMITY OF LOVE, BOMBS & GORE [FALLOUT])

While this definitely suits Ress at her best, I don't think it encapsulates everything about her. Because while Ress' love is bountiful and ageless and endless... there's also the fear of losing it all, because Ress will outlive everyone she knows because her own natural mortality outlasts everyone else's. The only person that would be around the longest with her (and meet her at what would be considered old age for a hybrid species like them) would have been her older half-brother, Ore... but even that is cruelly taken away from her by their father Urias and his Occult. Yeah, so while this definitely does shine a light on the happiness and thrill Ress would feel with her lover (prime example being Piper), it doesn't acknowledge the grief she'd eventually have to face.

Now for the OC List, I decided to go with OCs from all four/five of my series; The UnTitledverse, The Silver Chronicles, Life, Despair & Monsters and a shared list with my Fallout series A Radioactive Calamity Of Love, Bombs & Gore and my original series An Old Ballad Of Chance And Ember Hearts Trilogy (which includes my Wings And Horns WIP that this trilogy spins off from). So yeah... enjoy! [NOTE: This will include art/doodles, reference pictures (for the art/doodles that I still haven't been skilled enough to draw) and faceclaims]:

THE UNTITLEDVERSE

Lisa Cobalt | Malcolm Darling | Mario Emmet Jester | Madame Callaghan | Lillian "Lena" Elliot Greenpeace | Allyson "Alice" Darling | Edward Carmine Calvin Dearing | Joaquin Cobalt | Rick Thompson

[My (Incomplete) Art: Malcolm Darling, Mario Emmet and Jester]

THE SILVER CHRONICLES

Oscar Lapis | Father Adam Omar | Silva's Third Eye Elsa Omar | Paul Yellowjack | Silva Omar Azriel Omar | Nadi Sinclair | Kamski Neon Alexander Khaos | Gavin Turquoise | Mercy Omar-Seed | Ezekiel

[My (Incomplete) Art: Silva's Third Eye (or at least what its spiritual physically looks like if you're potent in the Third Eye... or a certain New God shitting bricks at the sight of this hungry symbiotic cretin)]

LIFE, DESPAIR & MONSTERS

Yan | Frederick Rosemary | The Unity Hatter | Icarus Galatos | Hatsukami Hinode | Xavier Tulip | Haoyu Anabuki Rico | Eden "Evie" Bloodleech | Sonya | Sir Enigma Malvolio | The Court King Denise Redwood | Lora | Cecil Royce | Corvus Targaryen

[Image Reference Credits: Vecna from Stranger Things, The Stupendium in "The Toybox", The Core from Amphibia, an edited Mad Hatter from Alice In Wonderland, Kraang One's Exosuit from Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie and artwork of that Jester King done by CristianAC on Steam]

A RADIOACTIVE CALAMITY OF LOVE, BOMBS & GORE + WINGS AND HORNS

Elrand Brandt the Vault Dweller | Aggravor the Accursed | Arcane Urias Xiang Ba'al | Vega the Resident | Marissa "Ress" Bishop Alph Dolen the Lone Wanderer | Ryder the Courier Six | Discord the Mad Kin of Carnage Ortega "Ore" Brantley | Archangel Metatron | Finidy Mona the Chosen One | Nate Gust Sarid the Sole Survivor

[Image Reference Credits: Vecna from Stranger Things, Annihilus from Marvel Comics, Kagetane Hiruko from Black Bullet, LorenzoArt's Caedis from Instagram, NCR Veteran Ranger from Fallout: New Vegas and art of Archangel Metatron that I found posted on Quora]

[Faceclaims (which might or might not change): The UnTitledverse: Beanie Feldstein for Lisa Cobalt, Scarlett Johanson for Madame Callaghan, Elizabeth Gilles for Lillian "Lena" Elliot, Sean McLoughlin for Greenpeace, Anya Taylor-Joy for Allyson "Alice" Darling, Benedict Cumberbatch for Edward Carmine, Laurence Fishburne for Calvin Dearing, Isiaiah Stannard for Joaquin Cobalt and Aaron Moten for Rick Thompson. The Silver Chronicles: Mario Casas for Oscar Lapis, Brad Garrett for Father Adam Omar, Juliana Alves for Elsa Omar, Gabriel Garko for Paul Yellowjack, Mina El Hammani for Deputy Silva Omar, Aria Goodson for Azriel Omar, Aïssa Maïga for Nadi Sinclair, Andre Royo for Kamski "the Good Doctor" Neon, Taron Egerton for Alexander Khaos, Matthew McConaughey for Gavin Turquoise, Emily Tosta for Mercy Omar-Seed and Álex González for Captain Ezekiel of Security. Life, Despair & Monsters: Daniel Padilla for Icarus Galatos, Hatsukami Hinode & Xavier Tulip, Hikaru Utada for Haoyu Anabuki, Wilmer Calderon for Rico, Nathalie Emmanuel for Eden "Evie" Bloodleech, Rami Malek for Sir Enigma Malvolio, Odette Annable for Denise Redwood, Karen Fukuhara for Lora, Mia Goth for Cecil Royce and Daniel Radcliffe for Corvus Targaryen. A Radioactive Calamity Of Love, Bombs & Gore: Jason Statham for Elrand Brandt the Vault Dweller, Yvonne Strahovski for Vega the Resident, Beyonce for Marissa "Ress" Bishop, Sam Blanckensee for Alph Dolen the Lone Wanderer, Halle Berry for Ryder the Courier Six, Jessica Alba for Finidy Mona the Chosen One and Steven He for Nate Gust Sarid the Sole Survivor.

[pussyterminator88]

How drugs affect your personality: pt 2

Obviously drugs do things to us humans physically and psychologically. But I think the biggest part that’s being affected when taking the substance is your mind.

People who kind of already are naturally a little bit on the weirdo side, when they take a substance that part of their personality will really shine through even more when your on your peak or when you are on a certain drug. For example steroids is a drug that many people take because they want to enhance their looks or performance, and I know that for most men when they are on this become a lot more wild and unpredictable.

Im not saying that every person who takes drugs becomes dangerous that’s not my point my point is that a certain part of yourself becomes overly exaggerated, to the point that you maybe seem rude, annoying, selfish, loud, by other people even though you’re none of those things sober and would never associate those attributes to your personality. And for most people it’s really hard to catch yourself being over the top when on a substance or overall a negative personality trait that you may have.

For example I have a friend and she is very kind almost too kind to others. So when she consumes a substance she assumes that everybody who wants to talk to her are doing it because they just want to be friends or have a regular conversation. She assumes everyone is a good person because she’s one. But when that substance kicks in there is no little doubt in her mind that she is standing and talking with a predator, because she has her best interest at heart and wants to give everyone a chance. So when she’s high she becomes naive I would say and because trust is so important to her she believes every word the other person is saying to her. She constantly becomes a magnet to such bad, creepy people because they know that this girl right here has a hard time saying no, declining, or pulling her self out a situation she doesn’t want to be in.

However that doesn’t mean that she has to be this way forever, yes she’s a very nice and caring person, and it doesn’t have to change either she just have to figure out the pattern that keeps pulling her into these situations and when she figures that out she’ll be unstoppable and much happier. Which she has I can already she her improving but also with a help of a person who she’s these types situations from a third perspective it’s a lot easier to give her insight and clarity. It was super hard for her in the beginning because she was also genuinely interested in what these people had to say which I would say is maybe a bit naive, and every time that “talk” it would end bad and uncomfortable because she genuinely thought this is a good person and she did so with everyone. So she started by saying no, and then by declining. She just had to harden that shell she always had to protect her from such creepy people.

Because we humans and everything around us strives because of a balance. We need that balance in order to survive, and I would say it’s like that when it comes to a over exaggerated personality, if you won’t learn how to control your emotional tendencies you will have a better chance of getting to know yourself better. But some people like to stay in denial because ignorance is bliss.

However that’s not how people should think because at the end there will be consequences sooner or later.

If a person like my friend goes by the motto ignorance is bliss in this situation they will end up getting a bad experience, getting hurt, taken advantage of and other very dangerous things could happen.

Or

If a person already has a little bit of creepy vibes and takes a substance that will bring out that part of them 10 times more. Which could end up being very scary and a threat to others. These creeps usually become stalkerish and just create a very uncomfortable anxiety feeling. These people if they stay in denial and wont try to understand that they have a problem will soon get a lawsuit possibly a restraining order or jail.

Like we all already have a personality which is our base to everything really. And substances will show you who you truly are when you take them, you will also dare say things that only dared to stay as a thought when you were sober. Because that mask or that filter that you put up normally when your sober will tear and go down. And the things that you’ve been internalizing will flow out because those feelings those thoughts are energy and it’s gonna come out through one way or another. So if that’s meaning your creepy fantasies or being just full of love but not daring to share it. That will come out when you’re on a substance, we become a wilder version of ourselves but they speak a big truth about who we are as people. And it’s up to you to make a change and be a better person.

I know some abuse drugs to escape themselves and their minds and here I’m talking more about substances that make you think more, gives you energy, stimulants, or psychedelic substances could also do the trick to of showing the sides of yourself that you’ve been internalizing and tried subconsciously pushing it away from yourself because that’s not meant to be apart of your identity

Hope you enjoyed this nonsense rant about whatever the fuck I don’t even know yet.

[lndslorepuzzler]

World Underneath: With Light

01: A More important Matter: Tara has taken on a bet with her supervisor, Andrew, that she can get notoriously asocial Nero go to go a team-building event. She's pretty sure she's got him convinced, when his "unwavering worship of Lumiere, the legendary hunter," manages to ruin her chances.

.

02: Sleepless Friday Night: Nero takes his dedication to Lumiere very seriously, to the point where he is the head of a Lumiere fansite. There's a poll to determine the top ten hunters in Linkon, and someone is trying to destroy Lumiere's chances of being at the top of the list. At the top of the site is a bad photo of 'Lumiere,' along with an article with a very inflammatory headline. There's a declaration that "the first sin is deception," along with video footage of a flash of light outside a florist; the man who appears there has "a face etched with wrinkles."

Nero takes his role as a 'Lightchaser' very seriously, and is thus determined to see what is actually going on. He ends up using some questionably legal techniques to access the raw footage from the security camera, and proceeds to post a breakdown of the evidence that proves the person in the video is not Lumiere: build, movement, and Evol particle readings.

.

03: The Introvert Bites Back: The next section of the article is about how "the second sin is pride," and uses the example of Lumiere not appearing at an event; Nero finds evidence that the rumor was spread in hopes of forcing Lumiere to make an appearance; he posts that information and proof.

In his youth, Nero had sent a message that he wanted to meet Lumiere, and received the response, "Instead of looking up to the light, why not become a light that illuminates the world for others?" This is what inspired him to become a hunter.

The next section declares "the third sin is sloth: shocking! Lumiere actually sleeps with Wanderers!"*1 There is a photo of Lumiere napping with a Herte Knave, an Intelligentia type Wanderer. Nero points out that the Wanderer is wearing light cuffs, and that its blade isn't shining, "indicating its Protocore Energy has been depleted."

The next three days last forever, and the negative evidence provided against Lumiere "(crumbles) under scrutiny." Lumiere is accused of hoarding and auctioning Protocores, in addition to hacking hunting leaderboards. The subway attack with the Tezcatlipoca was an elaborate hoax, etc.

During all of these shenanigans, Nero finds that the only common thread he can find is the involvement of one Shen Xinghui.

.

04: Has The Light Vanished? : The last section of the article contains a few documents (directly transcribed below.)

"...Light Evol has been detected. Evolver's Evol limit cannot be defined. Ant attempts to probe its limit triggers a special neck suppressor, which prevents the Evolver from using their full power. The techies can't explain it. No physical form detected, no scars, and the energy suppression field acts like a Protofield anomaly. After conducting a series of experiments in the lab, the techies finally unraveled the suppressor's mechanism. They boosted its threshold and got a basic understanding of some of its mechanisms."

Immediately following this is a "close-up of someone's throat, the Evol suppressor pulsating as a vicious, constrictive red ring of light. And then, there's a bit of silver in the corner. It's a tassel earring." Nero is so genuinely distressed that his Hunters Watch keeps beeping a health warning.

Shen Xinghui walks into the office and finds Nero; upon asking if he's alright, Nero shows him the photo of the captured Lumiere and announces that Lumiere could be dead. Shen Xinghui suggests he go home, but Nero's Hunter's Watch moves from beeping to giving off an alarm; Shen Xinghui gives him a paper bag to breathe in, and says that Lumiere is probably okay now, but Nero is despondent.

.

05: A Little Chat: Nero's online persona has been voted onto the 'Top Ten Hunters' leaderboards.

Nero finds Shen Xinghui and tells him that he "figured out one of (his) secrets." Despite Shen Xinghui's obvious confusion, Nero tells him with great confidence that Shen Xinghui is clearly Lumiere's biggest fan. Shen Xinghui doesn't say much in response, but Nero assumes he's right, anyway.

"Pinned by QuantumSocialite Lumiere is a beacon in the darkness, guiding us to forge ahead. And I believe, with unwavering certainty, that his light will continue to shine in the future. Because there's light everywhere."

.

.

*1, ....I thought I had words but I really honestly don't.

I really like Nero as a character; a sincere nerd is always nice to see. I also resonate with his reaction to the images and notes about the collar; I, too, was Extremely Distressed to find out that my assumptions/guesses about the collar were correct.

[pleuvoire]

ok. ranking all the outfits in this merch line actually

in first place we have nagi. no question. slaying. killing it. serving cunt. the snappy red on white? the HEELS? the LACE CUFFFS? the brocade? the single gorgeously contrasting touch of green? he literally used the slayper rifle to shoot the mother bullet into the head of john f cuntedy. ironic for a guy who never gives a shit about anything but we can only assume he has a stylist. again i cannot overemphasize: the fucking HEELS. they had to hide those things halfway offscreen because they were afraid of his power

reo taking second place because he can never be separated from his husband <3 i'm biased because i looove the color purple but i seriously think this fit is sooo cute. the old-fashion formality is kind of silly but moe in its own way (bro is wearing a cummerbund lol) and the blueberry themed accents really tie it together. not much to add but i really love it. my lil purple fancyboy <3

isagi's fit here is a close third and i was originally going to tie him with reo but my love of purple won out. this one is just solid all around and the light green is a nice color. the necklace is so cunty. however points off for the official merch making yet another attempt to convince me that isagi's image color is green. i will never accept this. i will never cede. look at him he's fucking blue

ok chigiri's fit is walking a fine line here for me. the concept is ADORABLE and i LOVE the strawberry theme but i feel like it would look better on a type of fashion more equipped to handle that kind of whimsy, for example a lolita dress. as it is it is still hugging the serious formalwear theme a bit too closely and so the whimsy ends up looking kind of clownish in that context, it's too goofy, it doesn't fit. kind of a miss for me but love the concept, please go back to the drawing and make it into a dress, let chigiri wear lolita, etc

ok well we can barely see bachira's fit here because of his fuckass pose but it's like, sure, ok, idk. i like the jacket but the pants are really a sticking point. the plaid looks goofy as hell but i guess that goofiness fits bachira but i still would nawt want to wear this. the boots are ADORABLE but tucking the pants into them like this just looks so weird. this is another thing that could have been fixed with feminization because if the plaid pants had been a plaid lolita-style skirt it would have been much cuter AND let the boots shine

in last place is rin. looks bad man. tell me you are not wearing polka dots rn.

[generalluxun]

What are your top 3 choices for bee, excluding the bee sisters (Chloe and Zoe)?

Excluding them? Hmmm...

For context we are still going with Subjection as the bee theme. Action is just dumb and makes no sense.

1)Kagami:Direct, forthright, intimidating, and a fencer. Perfect Bee.

2)Sabrina: No hear me out. She is the inverse. The Worker Bee. She needs orders, but once a 'subject' she is all attack. Especially in a situation where there are more kwami swaps, it would be a fun contrast to someone who is the 'Queen'.

3)Alya: (Hey, my type is Bee users I guess) The Bee easily fits into the ideal of the superhero. The shining forthright figure who charges in and makes bad guys cower. Alya allows us a third example of the bee concept. The subjection concept applied as a 'good triumphs over evil!' concept.

All three have their own built in 'villain arcs' if you want. Kagami becomes too wrapped up in the competition aspect and turns into a pragmatic 'win at all costs' person.

Sabrina comes under the sway of a persuasive manipulator(Lila?) And her effective 'follow orders/get it done' mentality is used for evil

Alya has her injustice arc. Villains fear her, so if you fear her you must be a villain. Everyone fears her. There are villains everywhere! She must maintain control to keep people safe!

Honorable mention: Some might say Alix, because of her no nonsense attitude, but no. Alix is pretty clearly anti-authority, even her own. She will gladly mock those in charge, but isn't interested in imposing herself on others (it's too much like work)

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 3

Translation notes:

So, uh. Elliot's name is rendered with two t's in the og game, but a single one in the GBA version. I had never paid attention to that at all until I had already edited all these pages, and I don't care enough to change it.

Cain's sword causes an explosion here. In the game, it is indeed capable of summoning flames.

This is a perfect illustration of how I feel about these names, but I do wonder what the actual intention was, since Cain is supposed to be already gone. The original image is even cut off weirdly in the middle of the text, and i don't think it's a problem with the scan, since every scanned page has a black border showing that the paper itself doesn't cut there. I wonder about the production of this thing, but i'll wait until i translate the author's comments before saying more.

The map in the previous chapter was very accurate to the beta map of the game. The smaller map here showing Rindo however looks off, the coast is different, and there seems to be a river directly to the north of Rindo, as opposed to the path to Shade Abbey. Perhaps fitting since Shade is skipped here.

Metaphaluna, huh? Needlessly to say, the country of the gods/Ancients is called only Metapha in the final game. Also, in this panel, it pops up as an alternate reading for 前世紀 (ancient times), not the name of a country specifically. I chose to romanize the last part as "luna" for three reasons. One is that the continent of Rune is actually rendered as Lune in at least two guides. I take romanizations from JP guides with a grain of salt since they sometimes look bad/unnatural, or are inconsistent (Pelle's name for example has been romanized as both Peil or Payle depending on the book). I checked though, and town names however are consistent in both the books I've seen romanizing things. The second reason is that the beta map used at this point has a fairly noticeable crescent moon shaped island right in the middle. In the final game, we can't know exactly where Metapha is, because you only teleport there. But I wonder if this island had something to do with it at some point. The third reason is simply I saw no better reason. Metaphalna and Metapharuna would be just as valid, but don't have any meaning to them.

The biggest equation next to Tao as she explains the magic types is very clearly a E=mc². Look close.

I've retranslated Elliot's scenes from the game thinking it would be relevant to these notes. Now I feel it really isn't, but you get more content so you should be happy.

My main point with that is that Elliot does not say anything about Cain in the game. In the GBA version, Balbazak does try revealing Max, Cain and Darksol's identities before dying, but that's not a thing in the og. So yeah I really translated a bunch of stuff for nothing this time! Except not because Darksol is awesome in that scene and everyone should get to see it.

Now let's talk about Otrant. I have mentioned before that Otrant's gender is never explicitly said, and they speak in a mostly gender neutral way (I feel like there's a few masculine patterns in some lines, but I'm not confident enough to say for certain). What I hadn't noticed is that they also use lipstick in the games, which is probably what sparked these observations to begin with, but i'm uh, occasionally not smart. In any case, if any of these aspects were done at this point in development the artist here sure ignored them, and drew a regular old man who gets called an old man. They hate to see an androgynous boss winning.

I don't recall Otrant's third eye being called "Eye of Truth" anywhere else, but the manual of the game does say it can see the past and the future.

Otrant's naming of the Shining Force is a bit more elaborate here, but the wording is very similar to the actual game.

Finally, let's play spot the cameo!

We've got Gong, Zylo, one of the birds, and probably Anri. Easy.

Here, besides the obvious three who were actually introduced in the story, we again have a bird, Anri between Ken and Hans, Gong to the right, and Mae and Gort behind Luke. If you read the pre-release page you know that Gort was meant to be Mae's servant at some point, so this might be why they're together, or it's just coincidence because they still join around the same time in the final game. More importantly, to Ken's left we have...

Some guys. Who are these. They could be made up by the artist (there will be another case of this), but I find it curious that the artist had to do that when there are so many character to pick from, and he clearly wanted to depict official characters here. For one, there's evidence that Earnest was already designed at that point in development. However, that link also shows that Vankar didn't have a portrait by that time at least, and Vankar would have already joined by this point in the story. So could the bald centaur here be a beta Vankar, or the artist's interpretation of Vankar via unfinished art? Maybe, but just a guess in the end. Mostly I'm just fascinated by how detailed this guy is compared to even Mae and Gort's cameos. The other guy isn't so i don't think about them nearly as much.

[trelkez]

It's been a week since Ted Lasso 3.09. I have typed and deleted a number of things about it without ever committing to Thoughts or Feelings, but the new (63 minute??) episode drops in a few hours, so ... I guess ... let's get into it.

Because here's the thing: This episode changed me. I'm a Ted Lasso Doylist now. This episode cracked the fourth wall for me, permanently cracked it, forcing me to let go of in-universe meaning.

The tipping point was something relatively small: Isaac pulling his hand away from Colin's in the team cheer.

That moment has nothing to do with Isaac the character. It's entirely for the audience - a misdirect intended to make us think that Isaac is homophobic, that he doesn't want to get gay on him. That moment looked me in the eye and winked, and I said, quote, "nothing means anything!! I give up!!" And I did. Reader, I gave up.

They could have told Colin's coming out story any number of ways (and I wish they had), but I get what they were going for with this one: straight friend handles coming out poorly, makes it about them. (They managed this pretty well with Ted!) The problem is that they stopped at "straight friend." Does the story make sense for Isaac? Not really, but that doesn't matter, because Isaac is only there to provide conflict and narrative misdirect. The story doesn't really have anything to do with him; he's just fulfilling a role in it.

Ted Lasso has done an admirable job of leaping right past "is this believable?" to build an accepting, loving, emotionally vulnerable football team overcoming despite the odds. No one in that locker room is a homophobe? Great. Coming out makes you a better player? Sure. "The real football strategy is the friends we made along the way"? If you insist.

Have you ever tumbled rocks? You wear off the edges, erase all the surface cracks and texture, polish to a shine. AFC Richmond is one big rock tumbler. Roy gets emotionally vulnerable with the press now. Jamie Tartt is an actual cinnamon roll now! Isaac, who started out as a bit of a bully falling in line with Jamie 1.0's bullshit, has become a caring leader and a moral pillar of the locker room.

By the midpoint of the show's third season, the main cast has been so thoroughly healed and uplifted and bonded to each other that conflict (if it's serious conflict, and not "what do we do on our night off") has to be external for it to ring true. The "is Isaac actually a homophobe?" story doesn't land because we know he isn't. We know full well the show isn't about that, so the brief attempt to convince us otherwise for the sake of drama doesn't work.

Take Trent Crimm, for example: now that the AFC Richmond rock tumbler has taken him from Trent Crimm, The Independent to goofy nervous Trent with the rainbow mug, would it be believable if he betrayed the team in any serious way?

(I have a whole separate post about that, but - another time.)

The show has tried to address this problem at various points this season. Jamie has become too good, too pure to be a focal point for locker room drama, so they brought in Zava. Roy and Keeley aren't super believable in conflict with each other (as we saw in season 2), but that's fine, because now their relationship is abruptly over and Keeley has fresh relationship drama with Jack. All of Rebecca's divorce angst growth from seasons 1 & 2 is spontaneously undone so that Rupert can drive the action as a uniting antagonist. All of Ted's divorce angst growth from seasons 1 & 2 is spontaneously undone to bring in conflict with Dr. Jacob.

Those plotlines mostly don't speak to where their characters have been. Jack's class solidarity turn veered right into victim blaming, and it never once felt like that was something the show was going to address; it only happened to tell the audience that Jack is Bad Actually. Now we're watching Keeley sit by her phone waiting to see if Jack is going to - what, forgive her?

Remember when Roy was an asshole to Keeley about her sex tape? Yeah, me neither. That was a wildly out of character moment added for spice, and the show has dropped it and moved on, so I have too.

I haven't even gotten to how extra true all of this is for Nate yet, but if I started in on that I'd miss the baseball game I'm going to tonight, and unlike season three of Ted Lasso, I actually care about sports. I'll save that for later.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nothing means anything, and I have given up on in-universe meaning. Maybe tonight's episode will change my mind! It has an entire hour and three minutes in which to do so.

[nitrosodiumfmp]

Where to take the game next?

As of writing, I've finished the Docks, and while I was beginning work on a tutorial level, I didn't have time to get any screenshots. That's not massively relevant right now. I need to decide on Level 2, and what I'll add to the greater game.

My first thought was concerning smaller locations which could be put into a larger map. You'd start, and the first thing you'd see would be a gigantic Tesla coil-esque structure in the distance, pointing up into the clouds, various bits oscillating and rotating. Your next objective would be to activate a warped relay station at the foot of that Transmission Tower, though I have no clue why you'd need to from a lore perspective. The map itself would be roughly divided into two "atria", each one roughly the size of the Dock map; the left atria (from your spawn location) would be an industrial estate, and the right atria would be office buildings. You'd need to get a Train Ticket (acting as a third key type) from some kind of transit hub in the right atria, and then take it to a train depot in the left atria, which would take you into a third area mostly consisting of pipes, gears and big pistons, where you would enter the relay station and restore power to the underworld's electric mains. This does seem cool but most of it makes no sense.

Firstly, I'm a big fan of having "hubs" in games, perhaps stemming from my love of Half Life. In that game, you often get into a situation of entering a large open area, where you have a broad objective and multiple directions to go. Look at Office Complex, where you're moving further up through the facility while attempting to get topside, or Questionable Ethics, where you're navigating the xenobiology lab to look for a scientist to buzz you through the revolving door. They're almost like precursors to the sort of massive open-world levels you'd get in real immersive sims like Bioshock or Deus Ex. The issue is, in those games you could save, and in Sinister, if you die, it's alllllllll the way back to the start. This is ok with a relatively small map like the Dock, but if you're navigating a whole city district and you die without mid-level saves, you lose a lot of progress. To that end, the better result would be a lot of smaller levels with an over-arching objective between them. Like, my idea for the Transmission Tower arc could be three levels: get the train ticket, find the depot, and get to the relay station. Or maybe the train would be a static object with a Mortality Anchor it it, so it gave the illusion that you were moving around a larger metropolis.

I also had some ideas for switching up the formula. More enemies and more hazards. My first idea was implementing the Mozzie enemy in some capacity; if you don't remember, that was a perpetually-buzzing steampunk drone that would fly about to avoid me animating any sort of leg movement. They'd invoke imagery of mosquitoes, with long needles as their primary appendage. My new idea is to have them generate paranoia. They fly about in the sky, shining a spotlight down on the ground, and if you're caught in it, it would make the same sound as a Grave Digger noticing the player. So if you were walking in the open and you suddenly hear it, you'd panic, thinking you were being chased, and have to make sure it wasn't a false alarm. My next idea was traps, inspired by a suggestion by one of my playtesters. They'd be beartraps or maybe a mine, lying on the ground, and if you step on it, you die. They'd probably emanate a slight glow so they're not unfair; more of a navigation puzzle and a way to block the player in without obscuring their vision. (For example, want a player to see a cool visual but not block them with a big wall? Litter the ground ahead with traps.)

My central idea, however, was a new enemy type: the Assassin. It's just a codename for now. They'd be slightly altered Grave Diggers, with no light, and a very quiet alert sound. This would obviously make them dangerous to the inattentive player, but in the lore, they'd be tasked with setting the traps, like undead military sappers. The gameplay ramifications would be that Assassins would only be placed in areas where traps were located. So if you see a trap and avoid it, you're left with the lingering fear that whatever placed that trap is still in the area. It's hunting you. Maybe it's already seen you.

This is supposed to connect to a large story development I had planned for a while. Nharro's sleep was not random. The God of Death was incapacitated by the God of War - Khlor. Essentially, Khlor wanted to continue conflict in the mortal realm, by destroying the cycle of death; with nobody going to the afterlife, wars would continue endlessly. Khlor had specially engineered some soldiers of his own to infiltrate Nharro's realm and render the god unconscious; these soldiers were the Assassins. I still think the idea holds some water, though I don't know if I'll use it.

[bersergner-blog]

Practice 1_4.3 - Post-Mortem

3D

Stadium

First I dove back into Maya and put together this very rough Stadium. I never ended up connecting the Play area with the Stadium outer as I decided to go into a different direction.

Armour

I then threw together some basic Pauldrons as I thought it would save me time drawing them consistently from different angles, but I also didn't end up using these designs.

Gun

I also had this idea for a Quad Barrelled shotgun but didn't end up having enough time to finish. While I didn't end up using any of these designs it did help me get back into practicing 3D and dusting off my Maya skills.

Characters

Since part of the appeal of the Arena Shooter is the vast and interesting skins to play as I really wanted to get the diversity of the future across.

I set out to getting a lot of ideas blocked out for different looks that could represent different nations. For example the Imperium have designs inspired by classic medieval knights (B & I), the Tribes have bone and fur inspired outfits (A & F), the Bandits have mercenary and biker inspired outfits (C & J), Bio Mechanical armour types such as (K & L) attach and exist in harmony with the host, the Necris are undead cultists and wear all sorts of strange Gear (G & D), There are also Rebels (H & E) as well as robots (M & others not pictured until the final image, as I was running short on time). I wish I would have had more time to develope these characters further as some do feel a little half baked and generic in the final image.

Composition

Initially my plan was to do two separate images for the coloured and the black & white submissions. The coloured one would be a piece of Key Art showing a 'Match in progress'. After getting feedback from my Tutor we agreed that an engaging image for the black and white would be gladiators entering the arena. So I put some basic compositions together, working as I went and cutting planning shorter than usual as I knew I had just about enough time for what I'd planned.

I then worked out how my characters would feature in the composition, adjusted it, added my light source and set to designing the characters as I filled them in.

I wanted to add elements in the four intersections of the rule of thirds but also keep the eye drawn to the center. So I created this whacky sort of triangle/rule of thirds composition. I'd seen vertical, horizontal and diagonal compositions but never a specifically triangular one, so I was excited to see if I could pull it off. I used some gears in the foreground to 'cut off' the bottom sides of the image as there were lines leading the viewer's attention off-image so I wanted to hem them in.

I tried and retried the lighting a few times, adding darker shadows here and there and changing the hue, as well as reworking the colour scheme of the background to a royal blue and gold which worked really well with the purple and orange lighting. I also added cinders in the foreground with varying degrees of gaussian blur to add some visual flair as well as fully designing the background in it's full edgy 90's Arena Shooter glory.

Finally I tweaked some lighting, added extra shadows, lightened the background for more depth and added some fiery haze behind the pyramid in the front to help the main subjects pop. I'm quite proud of the resulting composition although a day or two more of fine-tuning could have helped it really come together.

Final Pieces

As I had run out of time by this point I was unable to finish the second image and simply chose to flatten and convert this image to black and white but it actually makes the value shine even better than the colour image. Which I was not expecting.

All in all, I was very happy with how this project turned out.

[tokiro07]

Cipher Academy ch.45 thoughts

[That's a Lot of Crap!]

(Contents: Yugata analysis)

Is there anyone in CA that gets more shine than Yugata? I mean, I guess Iroha does, but he's pretty consistently shown to win after either great struggle or by the skin of his teeth, but not only was this the first time that we've felt like Yugata might be on the backfoot, but by the end she made it clear that she was in control the entire time

We've even seen both Toshusai and Anonymity lose before, and both in a manner that shook them, but Yugata is completely unflappable. A lot of series have one character like that, someone who just never goes down to anyone other than the main character, like how Bleach had Kenpachi, Reborn had Hibari, Kuroko no Basket had Aomine, and now it seems undeniable that Yugata is taking that role in CA

Of course, Nisio isn't going to create a character like that without giving them some kind of handicap. Medaka Box's "always-bet-on-black" character, for example, was Kumagawa, who you could always bet was going to "lose" his fights, but only after utterly ripping his opponent to shreds first

In Yugata's case, she has extremely, one might say abnormally, bad luck. In the lipogram battle with Iroha, she noted that Iroha had much better luck on the draw than she did, but it makes sense that she would allow herself to be put at a disadvantage like that as she "doesn't like bullying the weak." In a battle of pure skill, Yugata is almost certain to win, so she consistently finds ways to hold back

But really, doesn't that make her cooler? Past a certain point, I always found overpowered bet-on-blacks pretty boring since they never had to push themselves to win, they just kinda did. Main characters who always win in the end usually do so with a foot in the grave, but that type of character is always uncontested and learns nothing from their battles, so Kumagawa and Yugata are refreshing subversions of that trope for me

It's also interesting that despite her strong reputation, Yugata has only actually won one battle so far, against Class-E's Hokiboshi. Of course, this is because she only technically didn't win the rest. First she tied with Iroha in the lipogram battle, wherein she bowed out so as to even the score from when Iroha declared he'd tied with Omamuro; second, she lost to Toshusai in the murder mystery, but of course she did; third, she lost to Iroha in the lipogram revenge match, but she clearly threw that match as she made no attempt to actually answer Iroha's question; and now, she's tied with Kubinashi despite being the one to challenge her with expulsion on the line

We know that Yugata isn't showing what she's capable of, and all of her "losses" speak to that in almost exactly the same way that Kumagawa's did in Medaka Box. There's weight to her actions and "failures" that make it clear that the moment her shackles come off, someone's really gonna be in for it

It's probably gonna be me when I have to reconcile between her and Anonymity as my favorite Cipher Academy character...