#but not a big enough fan to remember synthesis exists???

[dichromaticdyke]

oh my god why do i keep seeing people saying, "FINALLY a version of 'bring me to life' WITHOUT THE RAP."

girl what the fuck do you mean finally did you forget this came out six years ago:

[patrick-yates]

Forefront - The Legend of Korra

Today I shall be revisiting one of my favourite animated shows ever, The Legend of Korra. The show’s inception falls just outside of the 5 year recency bracket, first airing in 2012, but the dramatic 3rd and 4th seasons and season finale debuted in 2014, and I regard it as one of the most well realised and successful Western animated series of recent years.

fig 1. a shot from the show’s opening sequence, featuring Korra herself

This show, alongside its parent series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), is one of my greatest animating inspirations, and so I wish to take a look at what makes it special, and try to relate it back to how I wish to incorporate that inspiration into my own work. Many of these points are mostly relevant to the narrative and storytelling side of animated film, but as this is a big part of my practice, my love of the form and my career aspirations, I want to take a look at each of them. There are a great number of reasons why I count this show as one of my favourites, so many that I feel I may have to list them in bullet point form as a primer: 1. The well-written characters, and character-driven narratives. Variety, humanity, humour, flaws, emotion, the works. 2. The worldbuilding and lore. As fantasy series go, this presents an extremely well-rounded synthesis of real world philosophy and culture with fantastical elements, complete with political discourse, personal/emotional problems, and often obscure and interesting presentations of morality. 3. The plot itself. Spanning 4 seasons or ‘books’, each one explores a different philosophical conceit, eg. power, change, balance, often through the decisions and successes or failures of the eponymous lead Korra. In many ways it is a coming-of-age story about her personally learning to deal with responsibility, while developing relationships and self-sufficiency too - and saving the world, of course. It is a deeply relatable story, told through a ridiculous lens. This is one of my favourite narrative modes, and one at which animation excels. 4. The animation. While mostly impressive for the superbly choreographed fight scenes (which always make exciting and inventive use of the rules of the world and the characters’ abilities, drawing on real world inspirations), there is so much to love about the sense of scale and style in this show, especially in the award-winning 2 part miniseries ‘Beginnings’ from Season 2. 5. Representation. This is increasingly a strong feature of modern media, and one I am very excited to see personally, but I remember having such a wonderful experience watching this show and thinking to myself, midway through an episode, how many strong and unique female characters took the lead of much of the story, but how it felt so natural I never even noticed. Not only that, it features many characters of different skin tones, religious denominations and philosophies, and sexualities, none of whom are ever reduced or reducible to those characteristics. It’s a very human and very powerful way of writing characters, and something for which I will always appreciate this show. It would be a dream come true to have the chance to work on a show half this accomplished, as it has meant so much to me personally. But what aspects of my own practice can I relate to it, and what elements of it can I learn from? Let’s go back to these bullet points.

1. CHARACTERS. It has been taken as given, as part of my creative heritage in writing, that characters form the crucial basis of any powerful story. They must be complicated, sympathetic, dynamic entities that can exist outside of the page or screen, whose reactions to situations we as readers could anticipate as if they were our friends or family. I hold these ideas central to any narrative process I undertake, and often keep in mind the strong sense of character shown in shows like Korra. I also make it a priority for the stories I wish to tell to be character-driven - for narrative advances to be made based on how characters react to what they are given. As character often forms the strongest basis for relatable story, so it follows the importance of individual personalities in narrative decision-making is difficult to overstate. The very best stories tie this into a larger schema involving several characters, their relationships, their circumstances, the wider politics of the world and its central themes, while staying true to their respective tone. It’s a difficult thing to do, but if it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it.

2. WORLDBUILDING. This is generally only relevant to fantasy and sci-fi storytelling, but given how many animated films and series focus on these genres, I esteem it a big consideration alongside character in creating an effective undertsanding of animated storytelling. The Reality Effect is something discussed by writer Roland Barthes in his essay of the same name: it deals with the presentation of minutiae in storytelling, often needless or tangential to the plot, in order to achieve a greater sense of realism - the idea that the film world is not only comprised of an interlinked tapestry of character and plot, but of a thriving ecosystem completely independent of the narrative thread. Korra/ATLA establish world on a massive scale, incorporating nations, culture, history, food, wildlife, religious praxis, politics, technology, etc etc. All of this, whether helpful to the plot or not, builds a great impression of what this world would actually be like, and has the effect of increasing the viewer’s overall investment in it. When writing any scenario, I try to include as many tiny hints and illusions to the broader idea of that world. I am reminded of a famous quote from Ernest Hemingway, someone of whose work I am not a massive fan personally, but was undoubtedly a great creative force:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. (fig. 2)

3. PLOT. Korra is a wonderful story because, as discussed, it combines many different tenets of great storytelling, but (almost) always manages to tie together its many threads and come to a satisfying conclusion. Above these superficial successes, however, I am a firm believer that the duty of a storyteller should be in telling stories that need to be told, which Korra manages to do all the time. It tells grown-up stories about trust, about change, about growth, depression, pain, belief, abuse, parenting, sexuality, fascism, and it communicates them all to a young audience without ever being consdescending or reductive. This kind of balance is something I hope to achieve in my own stories, but am still getting the hang of. Something I am always considering is, who will receive the messages I am trying to communicate? How ‘difficult’ should I make my narrative, and how do I ensure I strike that balance? What choices will impact the tone of my work, and what aspects of the story should I focus on making the most prominent? It’s a real balancing act, but I am hoping practice will make perfect.

4. ANIMATION. This one is slightly more pertinent to how I am learning at the moment: how can I make characters’ feelings and personalities shine through movement? Korra has a very strong sense of body language, partly because it ties very strong links between spirituality and physicality: the martial arts practised by each character, and the way in which they move their bodies to use them, almost always reflect in some way how that person thinks, an in some sense how they might react to a personal problem rather than a physical one. In some ways I realise this is hyperliteral and relatively specific way of approaching physicality, however I think engaging with the subtlety of body language is one of the great tools both actors and animators have at their disposal in telling a story, and something which can be largely lost in literature. Here are a few examples of how characters in Korra may be understood by their body language:

fig 3. Korra and Opal bond with ‘airbending’. Their smiles, open positions and relaxed lines show us they are content in each other’s company

fig 4. Lin, hardline chief of police, stands cross armed and wary, yet clearly demonstrates emotion in her face and movement. She is personally attached to this interaction

fig 5. Child of the streets and pro-fighter Mako is guarded yet quick and efficient. He has the air of someone deteremined yet cool under pressure

Hopefully these examples demonstrate some of the admirable ways in which character is presented in Korra (as well as the relatively quality and conciseness of movement, which I also love about this show’s style).

5. REPRESENTATION. At this juncture, I have yet to attempt any broad stories, or even any with more than 2 characters. I am also aware of the dilemma of faithfully representing characters of different backgrounds than myself. Yet I believe in a world of colour, variety and synthesis, not renditions of the same experiences over and over, and animation, as a radical form and as my chsoen art, is as good a place to enact those beliefs as any. I take Korra as a prime example for reasons already mentioned, and hope to refer to its wonderful, dynamic world as often as possible in my own work, and keep diversity and representation politics at the front of my practice both on-screen and behind the scenes.

References

1. Korra

2.  Hemingway, Ernest. Death In The Afternoon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. pp. 316

3. http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Opal

4, 5. Tumblr

[aion-rsa]

Mass Effect 3 Alternate Endings Show What Could Have Been

https://ift.tt/3tH2zJa

There’s a degree to which the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition lives under the shadow of Mass Effect 3‘s controversial ending. If you somehow didn’t know, Mass Effect 3‘s ending is a big part of the reason why some consider it to be one of the most disappointing games of all-time. Even the “Extended Cut” version of the ending BioWare eventually released as DLC has done little to change its reputation as one of the most disappointing finales in any medium.

While it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not time has healed those wounds enough to allow fans to reappraise Mass Effect 3 and its ending, it’s also worth noting that Mass Effect 3‘s Extended Cut isn’t the only “alternate ending” that exists. In the nine years since Mass Effect 3‘s release, we’ve heard stories about other endings to Mass Effect 3 that just never became the canonical conclusion for one reason or another.

From fascinating ideas pitched by former Mass Effect writers to a DLC story that some consider to be a more than satisfying finale, these are four of the most notable Mass Effect 3 alternate endings that show us what could have been.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Drew Karpyshyn’s Dark Energy Ending

Before we dive into this one, it’s important to explain who Drew Karpyshyn is and what his role was in the Mass Effect franchise.

While Karpyshyn worked on Baldur’s Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights, he really made a name for himself as a scenario and dialog writer for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. His contributions to that legendary game led to him becoming the head writer on the first Mass Effect. As head writer for that game, Karpyshyn was responsible for (among other things) ensuring that the contributions of the game’s various other writers felt consistent. He worked on Mass Effect 2 in a similar capacity (based on what we’ve heard about that game’s development).

However, Karpyshyn eventually left the Mass Effect team to work on The Old Republic. He’s not credited as a Mass Effect 3 writer, but Karpshyn has indicated that he participated in early discussions regarding that game’s plot and ending. He has also made it very clear over the years that plans regarding ME 3‘s ending were “vague” in the early days of the franchise and that there were a lot of ideas being tossed around at that time. It’s not like there was this clear-cut ending the original writers created early on that was just abandoned along the way.

Having said all of that, Karpyshyn has talked about a possible ME3 ending that he worked on at one point, and it is fascinating.

Karpyshyn’s ending (although we hesitate to call it that) would have followed up on the “Dark Energy” subplot briefly mentioned in Mass Effect 2. You should really hear him talk about the specifics, but the basic idea was that dark energy has been spreading throughout the galaxy and that the use of Mass Relay technology was accelerating that spread. Considering that dark energy is capable of destroying stars and other life-giving resources…well, that’s bad news.

The idea was that the Reapers are actually meant to purge the galaxy every 50,000 years or so and “save it” from being completely destroyed by dark energy. Their hope is that someone in the next 50,000-year cycle will find a way to stop the dark energy spread altogether. A draft of this ending even suggested the Reapers believed that humans might have the best shot at stopping the spread of dark energy.

In one version of this ending, players would have had to decide whether or not to help the Reapers essentially destroy humanity in order to create a human/reaper hybrid or to bet on humanity being able to find an alternate solution to the dark energy spread.

Now, there are a lot of plot holes to address when talking about that ending (as well as some thematic concerns regarding the idea that humanity is the galaxy’s savior), but it’s again important to remind everyone that this was never really a fully formed idea. It was just a vague concept in the writers’ minds that they hoped would have touched on some of Mass Effect‘s main themes and plot points.

Still, it’s a fascinating concept made all the more interesting by the implication that the writers may have been softly setting the key components of this ending up in Mass Effect 2. More than a few fans over the years have supported some version of this ending over the ones we got.

So why was it “cut?” Well, you have to remember that it doesn’t sound like this ending was ever really set in stone at any point, so it’s not possible to talk about it being cut in such a simple way. I’ve heard that Karpyshyn’s departure from the team and a possible leak of an early version of the Mass Effect 3 script may have also contributed to this idea being scrapped, but it sounds like the bigger culprit here is the complicated process of writing an ending to a story this big and how things get lost along the way.

Chris Hepler’s Superweapon Ending Still Sees Shepard Die

As previously mentioned, a lot of people worked on Mass Effect over the years, and a lot of people are responsible for your favorite (and least favorite) parts of the franchise. That said, one of the names you hear most often whenever anyone talks about the series’ strongest creative voices is “Chris Hepler.”

Hepler’s role on the Mass Effect team changed quite a bit over the years, but some on the team eventually referred to him as the franchise’s “loremaster” due partially to his work on Mass Effect 2‘s codexes and a lot of the other in-game storytelling devices meant to flesh out the universe and tie a lot of complex concepts together.

So far as that goes, Hepler has previously said that elements of the original Mass Effect 3 ending are indeed lore-friendly and may be more complicated than they sometimes get credit for, but he also acknowledges that people clearly weren’t happy with it and maybe shouldn’t have been. While BioWare worked to address some of the more obvious problems with the Extended Cut ending, Hepler again seems to understand why some fans still weren’t entirely satisfied with that outcome and the plot holes it did address.

So what would Hepler have done differently? Well, he says that one idea he had early on would have cut the “space magic” concepts from the actual ending pretty much entirely in favor of a story involving the Crucible being turned into a Reaper killing superweapon that would have saved humanity. While the weapon would have primarily targeted Reapers, Shepard (who was rebuilt with numerous cybernetic parts) would have also been destroyed by the blast. Hepler says the idea was inspired by the plot of a sci-fi book he was reading at the time called “Probability Moon.”

There are a lot of unanswered questions about that ending (including the implication that it would have offered a universal finale rather than multiple choices), but since Hepler never even got to pitch his idea for Mass Effect 3‘s conclusion, you probably won’t ever get answers to many of them. According to Hepler, the game’s designers decided on a rough version of the actual Mass Effect 3 ending while he was still working on his “alternate” ending, so it never really made it that far into the creative process.

Interestingly, Hepler has also mentioned that he feared BioWare could be sued for using a variation of that ending as it was clearly inspired by another work. Again, though, he never really got the chance to have someone look over the full legal ramifications of its implementation since the whole idea was never even formally pitched.

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The Indoctrination Theory’s “Dream” Interpretation Divides the Mass Effect Fanbase

While it’s certainly a little strange to talk about a fan theory when discussing alternate endings (pretty much every piece of fiction ever has an alternate ending thanks to fan theories), the Indoctrination Theory has always been special. It’s not just an interesting idea; it’s an alternate interpretation that’s been embraced by many Mass Effect fans and even discussed by some of the game’s developers.

First off, it’s hard to summarize the Indoctrination Theory without hosting a TED Talk. There are 100+ minute YouTube videos that try to explain what it’s all about, and even they leave many viewers more confused than they were when they started them.

The long and short of it, though, is that the Indoctrination Theory is a fan theory created to explain what some considered to be the unexplainable events of Mass Effect 3‘s ending. A very basic version of the theory argues that the Reapers managed to gain control of Shepard’s mind at some point in the trilogy. When Shepard is forced to make that infamous choice at the end of Mass Effect 3, he’s essentially experiencing an elaborate fever dream partially triggered by his mind’s attempts to free Shepard from the Reaper’s control.

If Shepard chooses the “Control” or “Synthesis” options in Mass Effect 3‘s ending, that means that the Reapers have successfully gained control of him and used him to execute their plan. If, however, Shepard chooses the “Destruction” ending, that’s meant to convey that he has broken free of their grasp. The theory also suggests that’s the reason why “Destruction” is the only ending in which Shepard lives (assuming that you met certain pre-ending requirements).

You can look into the specifics of this theory if you want (it’s worth a look if you’re into that), but the bigger talking point has always been how it has divided the Mass Effect community.

See, there was a time when some people didn’t consider the Indoctrination Theory to simply be fan fiction. They argued that it was actually what happened in Mass Effect 3. They considered it to be a legitimate alternate ending that you could embrace as canonical if you chose to view the game’s on-screen events in a certain way.

To spare us all a lot of drama, I’ll make it clear right now that the Indoctrination Theory isn’t canonical. Not only do the events of Mass Effect 3‘s extended ending disprove key elements of the Indoctrination Theory, but Mass Effect‘s developers have stated that the details of that theory simply weren’t in their mind when they were writing the games.

However, many Mass Effect team members have praised the creativity of the theory over the years. Chris Hepler has even somewhat embraced the ideas of the theory even if they’re not canonical.

“The Indoctrination Theory is a really interesting theory, but it’s entirely created by the fans,” Hepler said. “While we made some of the ending a little trippy because Shepard is a breath away from dying and it’s entirely possible there’s some subconscious power to the kid’s words, we never had the sort of meetings you’d need to have to properly seed it through the game…We weren’t that smart. By all means, make mods and write fanfic about it, and enjoy whatever floats your boat, because it’s a cool way to interpret the game. But it wasn’t our intention. We didn’t write that.”

That’s the real value of the Indoctrination Theory as an “alternate ending.” The specifics of it may be inaccurate, but it’s important to once again mention that it sounds like the creative process for Mass Effect 3‘s ending was a bit of a mess. A lot of people had a lot of ideas about how the game should end, and that includes the fans. Maybe some of that wiggle room for interpretation is the result of plot holes and oversights, but maybe it’s also largely harmless for people to suggest or even subscribe to their favorite interpretations of what was indeed a “trippy” ending.

Mass Effect 3’s Citadel DLC: An Alternate Ending Hiding in Plain Sight?

This one is also a little weird to talk about for the simple fact that Mass Effect 3‘s Citadel DLC obviously “happened” as it was released in February 2013. It was the last major piece of DLC BioWare released for Mass Effect 3.

Actually, that’s what makes the whole thing so interesting. Some fans not only insist that Citadel was meant to be an apology for Mass Effect 3‘s original ending but that there’s a way to interpret the events of the DLC that makes it easier to view it as the canonical ending to the trilogy.

The final sections of the Citadel DLC story see Shepard and the Normandy crew finally enjoy some shore leave. They throw parties, go to the casino, and spend precious moments catching up with each other and reflecting on their adventures. The DLC’s lighthearted tone and “fan service” nature turn some people off, but many players love the DLC for exactly that reason.

In fact, some people love the DLC so much that they consider it to be the game’s true ending. In case you’re wondering, that’s not strictly true. BioWare has advised playing the DLC before the events of Mass Effect 3‘s ending (either one), and some lines of dialog in the DLC make it clear that the events of the game’s actual ending haven’t occurred quite yet. Some fans have modded the game to remove those lines and frame the Citadel DLC as it takes place in the aftermath of Mass Effect 3‘s finale. However, that was seemingly never its intended timeline.

However, there’s a fascinating theory that suggests the Citadel story was written as an “apology” ending that was perhaps based on one of the alternate endings for Mass Effect 3 that was abandoned along the way.

Try as I might, I can’t find a quote from any Mass Effect team member that confirms the team specifically designed Citadel as an apology or even as a way to bring one of Mass Effect 3‘s scrapped endings to life. It really feels like it was meant to be this fun side story that allowed the team to do things they couldn’t easily do in the main game. It’s a lot like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon in that respect (which was actually released the same year).

Yet, as the final piece of content released for the Mass Effect trilogy, it’s hard to deny that it isn’t, in some way, meant to be the series’ curtain call (not counting Andromeda and whatever comes next, of course). It feels like a celebration of the entire franchise that ends on the kind of high note that is almost guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Hilariously, some of the DLC’s final moments even see you throw a party that’s based on your decisions and optional character interactions: two of the role-playing elements that many fans felt were missing from both “canonical” Mass Effect 3 endings.

Much like the Indoctrination Theory, the conversation about whether or not the Citadel DLC is Mass Effect 3‘s real ending is less interesting than the idea that many have embraced Citadel as the conclusion that reminds them of the good times they had with the Mass Effect trilogy and the thing that they love to look back on when they picture their final moments with what many still consider to be some of the greatest games ever made.

The post Mass Effect 3 Alternate Endings Show What Could Have Been appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/33Jlx7C

[nightmare-deer]

I’m probably just supposed to make my own maybe and not reblog? But I’m just relogging with my answers 

Fav song from Fallen: Going Under. It was the song that really introduced me to the band. I still rememeber the little ads on launch (it was yahoo’s music site before YouTube) 

Fav music video: I feel like I’ll change my mind but right now I really like Call Me When You’re Sober because I liked when they did more story based videos and Marc Webb is a fantastic director. He also did a lot of my favorite MCR videos. 

Song that makes you sad: Probably Lost in Paradise   

First song you’ve ever heard:  Probably Bring Me To Life because I remember that summer in 2003 when it was on the radio all the time but I had such a hard time learning who the song was by and for awhile thought it was just a rap song with a female vocalist which was really common at the time. Once someone told me it was plumb. It wasn’t until I saw an ad for the Going Under video and loved it that I checked out their other video and I was all “it’s that song!” 

Fav song from TOD: The Only One 

Song you’d play at your wedding: It might not be an Evanescence song. It might be Amy’s version of Love Exists. 

Song that brings back memories: I mean I have a lot of memories in general with the band because it was my childhood. I’ve been a fan since I was 14. I guess My Immortal because the video came out a little after Ben shocked everyone by leaving and then you watched the video saw that separation and I guess it reminds me of the peak of the drama with the band.  

Song that reminds you someone: I mean, I’ve thought about a lot of people who were hurting when I’ve listened to Imperfection 

Fav song from Origin:  Field of Innocence

Fav lyric:   Time to let it sleep/Oh, the damage was real/But nothing cut me so deep I could not heal from Hi-Lo

Song that reminds you of your friends: The Change

Song that makes you happy: Sweet Sacrifice. Just the joy in burning bridges and walking away. 

Song that mentions a number: I could only thinking of Going Under. 50 Thousand tears I’ve cried. 

Fav song from Synthesis: Lacrymosa, End of the Dream, Never Go Back, and My Immortal (the latter has that voice break in that last chorus when she sings “all of your tears” and I love it and it makes it the superior version for me) 

Song that breaks your heart: I kinda wanted to say My Heart Is Broken to be funny. But really, Far From Heaven. 

A song you relate to:  Imaginary 

Your fav live:  that I’ve seen or in general? I love the combo of the Synthesis and Evanescence version of End of the Dream in their recent tour. In general I love when she did the AOL acoustic sessions. I love piano and cello so whenever she strips down a song like that I’m in love. 

A song that makes you dance: Yeah Right

Fav song from Ev3: It changes all the time. Right now I’ve really been feeling Sick. 

A song to drive to I don’t drive because I have anxiety. Maybe Lose Control. The loosen up. 

Your go-to karaoke song: I would never try to sing Amy Lee karaoke. I think maybe Good Enough could be brought down to alto range. 

A song related to a season: Haunted reminds me of Halloween

Fav break up song: I like Cloud Nine. 

Fav first song on an album:  That’s really hard because Going Under is the song I connect with the band the most. It was my discovery of them. But I also remember when AOL was streaming The Open Door and hearing Sweet Sacrifice and being so excited at how good the album was already. Also I loved Artifact/The Turn because it was a different starter because it wasn’t a big song. It was very moody and electronic and soft and kind of pulled you into the album and built up. 

Fav song from Lost Whispers: Even in Death. I just love that she made it into a piano and cello piece. 

Favorite Unreleased: I really liked Before the Dawn. It’s very Romeo and Juliet. And Evanescence sampled the Romeo + Juliet movie left and right when they were kids so I kinda like that they also lyrically have a song that really connects to that story. It’s very fitting for Amy with her angel wings. 

Your Personal Anthem: well I’m queer and a have religious trauma so I love The Only One 

Fav Movie Soundtrack: I really like the Made of Stone Renholdër remix from Underworld Awakening. 

Favorite Cover: That’s a good one. Amy has done a lot of really good solo covers. For the band specifically I think I’d pick Across the Universe because I remember how gorgeous it was seeing that in the Synthesis tour with the blossom background. It’s such a good cover and it obviously means a lot to Amy. 

Favorite Evanescence song ever: The Only One and Imaginary and Lost in Paradise are the most personal songs for me. But also Going Under. Favorites change and I’ve had different songs pop up and really mean something to me in different times of my life. 

+bonus row: there’s no Fav TBT song yet! so: Feeding the Dark and it was the one song from the album they didn’t play on tour! 

evanescence 30 days song challenge

i found this idea posted by Rev on evthreads, and i fried my brain for an hour :D https://evthreads.proboards.com/thread/2917/evanescence-songs-choices-game

ooff well. i thought this might be a nice tumblr evedit/evgif challenge after (if) i finish (uh) the previous one (haha). turns out that the sole decision process is so complicated that i almost set myself on fire lol maybe i will change some of these values later. kindly add "for now" for each of these because it keeps changing all the time.

Fav song from Fallen: for now...  My Last Breath

Fav music video: for now it's Lithium - director's cut. Love.

Song that makes you sad: Hello

First song you've ever heard: BMTL, spring 2003. 💕

Fav song from TOD: Like You and Snow White Queen

Song you'd play at your wedding: Far from Heaven, Across the Universe, Secret Door

Song that brings back memories: haha, almost all of them connected into my life through the years, one after another. let's say: Your Star ✨ and Thoughtless

Song that reminds you someone: ditto; almost all; close ones and also parts of me. for now, Eternal

Fav song from Origin: Lies

Fav lyric: right now, Broken Pieces Shine. "I'm not fine, I don't know if I will be alright, But I have to try. I know you're with me, so what if we do fall apart? Give into all that we are - And let all the broken pieces shine"...🌈

Song that reminds you of your friends: Broken Pieces Shine

Song that makes you happy: Made of Stone  💜💜💜

Song that mentions a number: Cloud Nine obviously, and "50 000 tears I cried" in Going Under!

Fav song from Synthesis: End of the Dream, Lacrymosa

Song that breaks your heart: Missing, Breathe No More

A song you relate to: as in 7., ditto - almost all of them connected into my life... for now: The Chain & Blind Belief. EPIC !!!

Your fav live: i can't pick one.  Take Cover, Disappear, End of the Dream... for now.

A song that makes you dance: Made of Stone, Cruel Summer 🌙

Fav song from Ev3: e.g. Made of Stone, Lost in Paradise

A song to drive to: Imperfection

Your go-to karaoke song: as a shower karaoke pro, i say Whisper

A song related to a season: October

Fav break up song: hands down Call Me When You're Sober

Fav first song on an album:  Haunted from Anywhere But Home

Fav song from Lost Whispers: Even in Death

Favorite Unreleased: Untitled (I Must Be Dreaming), Before the Dawn

Your Personal Anthem: "Fear is only in our minds" - Sweet Sacrifice

Fav Movie Soundtrack: Lockdown from Aftermath by Amy Lee

Favorite Cover: Imaginary Spain Radio Promo Single, Missing single

Favorite Evanescence song ever: i'm unable to pick one... probably Snow White Queen for ages, Breathe No More, Made of Stone 

+bonus row: there's no Fav TBT song yet! so: Blind Belief, Take Cover, Far from Heaven 🌈

LOVE OVER ALL.

https://neverlostmycrown.tumblr.com/tagged/evanescence%20songs%20challenge

ok and now i want to see yours.

[redantsunderneath]

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run (an autobiography)

This is going to be more exorcism than exegesis – this book is odd, and I can’t stop thinking about why. The review line here is that this recent Springsteen autobiography is worthwhile enough if you are somewhere north of a casual Springsteen fan but if you are looking for a single Springsteen historical document, you’d be better served with the Dave Marsh biographies.  Superfans will of course love it, the curious will find it entertaining if they wind up with a copy, and the odd people like me who are obsessives without being real superfans will, well, find it peculiar but involving.  

 Bona fides: I’m an obsessive in that I’ve listened to every Springsteen song, legally released or leaked, up to 2006-ish, have read many of related books, filtered through ephemera, had the concert experience numerous times at different stages of his carrier, and have intermittent year long bouts of compulsively listening/getting moved/thinking about the whole Springsteen enchilada.  What really attracted me to him as an artist was that, unlike chameleons such as (Bruce fan) Bowie who committed to one thing at a time, he seemed to carry a bunch of different influences simultaneously, the skills of which he was proficient in, and would combine and project them - the arena rawker, the street party leader, the acoustic poet, the rock and roll revivalist, the RnB review, the storyteller, the piano balladeer - often capturing several in the space of a song. He also had such great phenomenological and artist-as-story interest: I had seen this with Elvis, but this was more complicated and comprised the sum of on stage relationships, story content, song preoccupations, personal life leaks, and attitude towards fans coalescing into a legend of an avatar of the American working class and underclass, coming in with a bunch of buddies who together were a family, to redeem something in the American spirit, all on the shoulders of some incredible will and discipline.

 So why am I exiled like Moses, able to see the super fan promised land but never enter? First (and this is not restricted to Springsteen) I find the fan ethos offputting.  It combines a deification I loathe with a fake chumminess that makes me nauseated.  More importantly, though, I really don’t like much he has produced since Tunnel of Love marked his most significant career transition.  I note only one great song (“Terry’s Song”) written since the Chimes of Freedom EP which marked the end of the ToL tour, his first marriage, and the initial E Street Band run.  This includes a take it or leave it attitude towards current concerts on my part (the spark isn’t there for me) and wariness about where the Springsteen “story” has gone. One of the greatest things about him early on was the mastery of basically every corner of rock and roll, and his attempt to incorporate new elements and stay fresh are kind of embarrassing (I like Rage Against the Machine too, but the weak link there is Tom Morello’s guitar, and Springsteen hired him to “rejuvenate his sound”.  Ugh).

 So, why is it weird? I don’t read many autobiographies (only one I can remember finishing is No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish) so maybe it’s par for the course, but this isn’t a sculpted recounting of history but a chain of 80 or so “stories” like extended versions of the ones he would tell on stage, and are concerned more with internal rhythm than an external sense of pace or continuity.   There is a lot of backtracking where the reader needs to “match” events. This story approach extends to frequent use of his stage voice(s), where he will go into revival preacher or beat poet mode, do stream of consciousness riffs, and recount back and forth embellished dialogue (without quotes, but with interjections like ‘Marone!’) like he is arguing with himself.  The good news is you can truly hear his voice in the semi-poetic prose. The bad news is it doesn’t flow well, leaves strange things out, cuts back and forth, and the story seems incomplete.

 The best thing about the book is an authentic third angle on the Springsteen legend that I legit had never heard before.  The Springsteen myth is heavily curated by the Boss himself and has always painted a picture, as I noted above, of a rock’n’roll family bringing a fun redemption to the world. This had to be resolved with journalistic and tabloid information that challenged the story, but there was always a fan synthesis that incorporated the info and left the godhead intact.  My memory of rec.arts.music.springsteen (one such recounting was called “a good man,” gagh!) is that Juliana Philips was seen as “a mistake of exposure to big success” and “a vain actress,” and he soon realized that what he needed was a good Jersey girl (which resolves how the marriage never fit fan image of him and sands the edges off of the inconvenient timing of the affair). Springsteen’s recounting of this is a good example of the value of his non-filtered point of view.  He goes out of his way to demonstrate the small town authenticity of Phillips and describe her as wonderful and loving.  The problem was that he was impossible to get along with for anyone after a couple of years and his mishandling of the separation (not wanting the press to know while he began another relationship and got caught) is the biggest regret of his life (because of how it impacted his then-wife).

 This approach reveals him as a hard guy to know.  He describes himself as a narcissist and self-hater (cue Venn diagram of the overlap of narcissism and self-doubt being Art), and he tells story after story of the men in his life where he lengthily but gently drags them through the mud, then says “but we would die for each other and I love him.” These stories come off as whatever happens to passive aggressiveness after expensive therapy (and this book is therapy-speak rich), and often serves to make him look worse than outside data does (the Mike Appel story especially where Springsteen was utterly in the right and was maliciously kept from recording for several years, but here Springsteen does everything to make excuses for him, gives him a butload of credit, and still manages to come off a little petty, i.e. these stories tend to backfire).  He spends a lot of time recounting how he told the bandmembers that they just had to understand that he needed all the control and that he had all the power, so they needed to suck it up.

 The upbringing stuff is probably the best material and the most untrod ground. His family history is pretty compelling and I finally understand how his religious and ethnic background shaped his personality.  The sex stuff makes him look idiosyncratic and selfish: a monk sometimes, do anything that moves one year, but usually a serial monogamist with uncondoned cheating.   He comes off like a terrible boyfriend and worse husband (lots of lost weekend stuff), but this doesn’t really capture how odd the sex stuff is as much as that one passage about he and his dad went to Tijuana and he came back with the crabs.  He mentions prostitutes more times than he mentions groupies.  

 He picks several concerts to elevate to most important status that are not big ones in Springsteeen lore, but have some kind of multicultural underpinning.  To at least some extent, this is to craft a version of a guy who is in touch with human experience. He spends so much time on post Katrina, 9-11, and his hurt at the cops rejecting him after what he thought was the evenhanded “American Skin (41 Shots)” (the fact that he was surprised surprises me).  His talk about race and Clarence Clemons is fascinating – their relationship was molded on stage because he thought it was an important one to America both as an example and as an aesthetic statement.  They only knew each other in this context and rarely ever saw each other outside of stage and studio.  So their friendship, such as it was, was a Springsteen story performed into existence.  He is very conscious of (and calculated about) his cultural legacy.

 So much is left out, yet there are a lot of stories that are barely OK, but seem there specifically to mark time so that it’s not Born in the USA cut-to everybody starts dying (thinking of the horse riding stuff as an example). His discussion of his depression is very valuable, but asynchronously told and thus hard to follow.  The book is full of “aw shucks” enthusiasm, idiom, and showmanship, but is somehow unexpectedly unguarded about the inner workings of his mind. He comes off as someone driven and not comfortable in his own skin unless he is accomplishing something, but in a human, actually painful way, that I have only ever seen divulged by a celebrity once before (David Foster Wallace).  I had an idea of Springsteen as reasonably well adjusted, but after this if he commits suicide I would not be surprised.

 In the end, the book crystalizes in a new set for meanings of that old story of him ripping down the posters saying “the future of rock and roll” at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, 1975 – Springsteen is a control freak, most of all about what people think of him, crippled by self-doubt, with the constant need do something, anything, to reassert mastery over his art, his message, and his mind.  That this is at odds with the book’s willingness to go deep and spill stuff he would usually keep close and it is this tension (along with its storyteller-quilted nature) gives it its strange charge.  In the end, there is a grandiose humility that keeps it together and I’m glad I read it.

[project-two-five-zero-one]

Games I Played in 2016 - Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4)

I am what could maybe - generously - be called a modest Batfan. I don’t have any powerful childhood attachment to the character and mythos; I’ve only read a couple of the more iconic graphic novels; I hated the Christopher Nolan movies; even my exposure to the DCAU is mostly by way of sporadically catching Batman Beyond and Justice League on Toonami. But I do like Batman - if anything my appreciation for Batman is growing with age, and with appreciation for its symbolism. Of late I’ve developed a real fondness for the kind of tragic archetype epitomized by the darker, more ambivalent portrayals of Bruce Wayne: these romantic pop-cultural portrayals of tortured, duty-bound masculine identities borne out of trauma, individualist personae built in response to a world of random violence and chaos antithetical to their very existence. (see also: my resurgent fondness for Berserk, my crankish stubborn insistence that Death Wish is a misunderstood masterpiece about violence and grief.) Batman’s appeal taken at face value may be as some kind of quasi-fascist power fantasy, but his longevity comes from tapping into this deeper narrative of tragic masculinity. Also, he has cool gadgets. So it’s no surprise that demand is high for a video game that truly encapsulates the Batman Experience. 

According to The Internet, if I want the definitive Batman game experience I can do no better than the Batman Arkham (hereafter “BamHam”) series. Having played all of the first game, a bit of the second one and a large portion of the handheld spinoff, I can answer this recommendation with a resounding “fuck that”. BamHam Asylum is one of the dullest, most uninspired games I’ve ever played. The design is a hodgepodge of second-rate elements (combat, stealth, puzzle-solving, backtracking, skill tree progression) laid out with minimal cohesion across an endless series of gray industrial corridors. Rocksteady Studios almost certainly designed the game by coming up with a checklist of “stuff Batman can do”, developing a stultifyingly literal-minded mechanical representation of each bullet point, and shoving it arbitrarily into a likely pre-designated number of relevant points in the game. You have the Scan Visor from Metroid Prime, but with less diverse environments or interesting interactions; the environment-manipulating tools from Zelda, but with only the most superficial lock-and-key mechanics from those games (“there’s an X here, so use Y”); stealth like Splinter Cell or MGS, but without the deep toolbox of possible NPC and environment interactions that make those games interesting; storytelling via (*yaaaaawn*) audio logs because after BioShock came out every AAA action game on the planet was obsessed with audio logs; big stagey setpiece boss fights like Metal Gear, only again with far less mechanical depth and also less narrative depth too, because instead of developing any of the characters with interesting dialogue or a coherent narrative structure the game relies on the audience’s prior knowledge of these characters to fill in the dramatic gaps and takes near-constant narrative detours to force in one more iconic villain with a truckload of backtracking-based fetch quests to pad out the game length. The game’s most fleshed out and widely praised mechanic is its “free flow” combat system, and it’s a sham: one button to attack, mostly automated character movement, and a maddening facade of “difficulty” imposed by punishing the player for zoning out and mashing that one attack button eight times in a row instead of seven, or what have you - you know, the thing every beat-em-up constantly encourages you to do. Yes, it’s a truly masterful combat mechanic whose difficulty hinges on whether the player can resist becoming too mindlessly ensconced in its own repetitiveness to pay attention to their every move.   

I’m convinced that the widespread praise for Arkham Asylum, and thus the ensuing Arkham franchise, came from comic book fans so gleeful that a licensed Batman game - with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill in it and everything! - was merely MEDIOCRE rather than ATROCIOUS that they were ready to praise it on high as something it fundamentally was not. What makes this especially painful is that, narratively, the game doesn’t feel like a good encapsulation of Batman either, or at least any Batman stories that are actually good. Stripped of the five zillion pointless detours mentioned above, the basic plot is: Joker springs a trap. Joker has an eeeeevil plan in the works. Batman beats up a lot of guys. Batman beats up the Joker. The Joker’s plot is foiled. The End. No character development. No social commentary, subtle or otherwise. No deeper exploration of Bruce or Joker’s psychology. No philosophizing about law versus chaos. No zesty one-liners, even; the dialogue fizzles at every turn, and while it’s been too long since I’ve played to recall a specific example (suffice to say it’s not memorable) you can always go and watch the cutscenes on Youtube if you want proof. The writing equates “dark and gritty” with characters saying “bitch” and “hell” and Batman beating the shit out of people in slow motion and a bunch of nameless NPCs being slaughtered. The characterizations are trite to the point of being stereotypical: the thugs you beat up all talk with the same cartoonish Brooklyn patois and indicate no motivation beyond being “evil” and “criminal” in some intangible, essential, and - evidently - irrelevant way.   

Am I asking too much from a video game plot? Have I been spoiled by my exposure to the Batman mythos coming predominantly from Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Tim Burton, and the writers in the DCAU who aren’t Paul Dini? Gliding off of rooftops and punching people repeatedly are prime examples of video game actions that can and should be fun - and there are plenty of other games to show us that (Just Cause and God Hand, respectively). But I’m pretty sure what draws people to Batman, as opposed to just any dime-a-dozen superhero, is the characters, the dialogue. There’s a reason, say, Joker is practically obligated to show up in each and every one of Batman’s myriad adaptations, and a reason those adaptations have ranged in style, tone and medium from the Technicolor Adam West camp sagas to last year’s R-rated cartoon adaptation of The Killing Joke (which I thought got more hate than it deserved, but that’s another discussion altogether). A video game defined primarily by traversing empty rooftops and beating indistinct hobos will only ever capture a small fraction of what Batman has to offer. So it’s been long overdue that someone should make a Batman game where narrative is the primary focus, dialogue and abstract choice-making the primary interaction, and the long legacy of Batman films and graphic novels the primary template. And it’s highly fitting that the developer for such a game should be Telltale.   

I’ve been a fan of Telltale and their reinvented brand of “adventure games” ever since I tried the first season of their Walking Dead series on a whim (it came bundled with my PS Vita) and got instantly hooked. I’ve heard frequent allegations that their titles aren’t “real adventure games”, that they’re mechanically shallow, that their much-vaunted systems of choice are illusory since the player can more often determine only HOW plot events happen and not IF they happen. Some of these criticisms likely carry some weight, but I can���t really bring myself to care. I’ve always been attracted to games with a strong narrative component (I’m juuuust old enough to remember when people’s choices for a narrative-driven game experience on consoles were JRPGs or bust) and I’m thrilled that there’s a successful subgenre now of games molded entirely around interactive storytelling, where the writing is actually the selling point, the developer’s most fleshed-out resource in the game, and not just secondary to the mechanics. More importantly - the writing IS the mechanics. This isn’t one of those David Cage abominations, where “cinematic” events play out on screen in accordance with one pretentious manchild’s stunted idea of quality screenwriting, and you occasionally get to press a button. Telltale games constantly bombard the player with active choices - they demand the player’s involvement - and if the majority of those choices are inconsequential, the cleverness of the games’ design lies in the fact that distinguishing the choices with long-term consequences from the ones that are mainly filler is often not an easy task, even in retrospect. (Assuming you play on Minimal Interface mode, as any true roleplayer should.) I played through their Game of Thrones series for the second time last year, and between in-game experimentation and looking in guides I found myself repeatedly surprised by discovering which plot points I could or couldn’t change, and how. Telltale’s products could be compared to Japanese visual novels (a genre that rarely attracts the same kind of backlash in the West, perhaps due to its niche audience), but really they’re more like Choose Your Own Adventure books by way of premium cable dramas - and as someone who has enjoyed the former as a kid and the latter right now, I’m not shy about embracing this inventive synthesis.   

Likely thanks to the lucrative backing of DC Comics and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Batman is Telltale’s most elaborate and polished effort to date. Up to now, even their big-label games have tended to be plagued with technical problems - choppy framerates, graphical glitches, shoddy animations and textures, outright bugs and crashes. Playing on PS4 in 1080p, for the first time I can see a Telltale running smoothly and looking… good. The cel-shaded graphics wear their comic book inspirations on their sleeves, with bold lines and saturated colors that actually look good in motion, and - at least compared with Telltale’s previous work - they’re not overly hampered by framerate problems and glitches. No more of those washed-out flat backgrounds used in Game of Thrones, that look like someone took a still-wet oil painting and splashed it with their own urine. Much is owed here, narratively and mechanically, to Telltale’s previous comic book-based effort The Wolf Among Us, also an easy contender for their best game so far.   

Mechanically, Telltale predictably don’t stray far from their Walking Dead template, but with each new project they take on they find new ways to expand and experiment within the confines of that formula, and Batman hints at some exciting new directions their work might take in future. New “detective” segments are light puzzle challenges which task the player with sussing out clues from a crime scene to reconstruct offscreen events, CSI-style; while they’re a bit lacking in flexibility and occasionally descend into monotonous pixel hunts, it’s a decent idea for a new kind of mechanic that might enable substantive game interaction beyond dialogue choices and QTEs. (Next time, Telltale, include multiple solutions.) QTEs also have some kind of grading system now, where optimal executions charge up a glowing blue meter that does… something. Seriously, I played all the way through the game and never figured out what this actually did. I like the idea, though! Again, if these games are already structured so that different dialogue choices can open up branching paths, what could be the harm in fleshing out the occasional action and puzzle sequences to enable similar flexibility? Any step toward making QTEs an inconsequential gesture meant only to facilitate the illusion of action is another step forward for Telltale’s design model. Already they seem to be pushing ever forward with the flexibility of their narrative structures, with choices in this game seemingly leading to far more diverse outcomes than previous titles - even if this occasionally leads to strange inconsistencies in character (I went out of my way to treat Harvey Dent like a friend, but when the inevitable happens Bruce’s attitude towards him seems to shift irrevocably on a dime). Every new project is another baby step forward for the Telltale crew, and I fully believe that the perfection of the narrative game subgenre they (re)invented is yet to come. The best idea for now: at the very end, the game evaluates not merely your key choices, but the overall tenor and characterization of “your” Bruce Wayne; “honest” or “cunning”, “collaborative” or “individual”, and more. The core exercise of the Telltale model - narratively, mechanically - is roleplaying, the way the player chooses to embody and express their assigned character given the options available. The more attention Telltale pays to reading and deepening this aspect of their games, the better they’ll be. Read how I roleplay, and respond. Evolve the story along the narrative trajectory I’ve chosen to see. Be a good dungeon master.   

So what about the actual story? Telltale takes a curious tack, distancing it as much as possible from previous Batman media and starting from square one in much the same manner as a Hollywood adaptation (from back in the days before the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned every superhero film into a stultifying morass of cross-brand continuity and pandering to comic readers). None of the characters are voiced by actors involved in any previous adaptation - the cast is led by a trio of Funimation veterans (Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, and the ubiquitous Troy Baker) which can make certain scenes feel more like some kind of Fullmetal Alchemist reunion special than the DCAU. A stable of familiar cast members - Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Selina Kyle, Harvey Dent, Oswald Cobblepot - are introduced as though the audience had never met them before, in newer, younger forms freed from the strictures of any existing canon. Bruce and Harvey are best friends (or can be, if you think it makes for a more interesting story); Harvey and Selina are romantically involved; characters may take on roles or become privy to knowledge that directly defies DC tradition. Without giving too much away - since making choices without full knowledge of their possible implications is such a large part of the fun - certain sacrosanct elements of the Batman mythos are fundamentally altered for the purposes of this story in this universe, which has no obligation to tie itself to any other piece of media but itself. Bruce is of the more talkative, emotionally balanced variety than I like him - Telltale goes for dark and gritty, but not to the extent of diving head-on into the Batworld’s central metaphor of fractured identity and trauma - but everything is carefully considered and deliberately placed within the particular vision of the Batcanon Telltale has imagined. Hell, the Joker doesn’t even show up outside of a minor role in the last two episodes, with only limited opportunities to truly ham it up, and if that’s not an indicator of writerly restraint in a Batman adaptation I don’t know what is.   

The overall tone and narrative arc is most clearly influenced by the Nolan films, but the script blessedly has numerous advantages of not being written by the Nolans and/or David S. Goyer. There’s humor, wit and a modicum of self-awareness, for starters (you can crack jokes about the Batsuit and flirt with reporters); verbal exposition and speechifying are kept to reasonable levels, and there’s none of that horrible tendency to try and pass off meaninglessly vague pronouncements delivered in ominous tones as freshman-level “deep” dialogue - thank the fuck Christ. (“Sometimes… the hero… has to be… the villain… to be… our hero…” *BWAAAAAAAM*) Characters are allowed to have personalities - even female characters! Yes, Catwoman has motives and personally traits in this one, personality traits that are clearly identifiable and run deeper than “sexy”, “duplicitous”, and “butt”. (And “Batdick”.) She’s not even the only woman with a speaking role! How about that! So it’s like… if Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy were actually fun to watch, instead of a set of movies about a man in a bat suit punching a man in a clown suit that carry themselves with the portentous dourness of a fucking Bresson flick.   

Ironically, despite nailing tone far better than Nolan and Rocksteady, Telltale has miraculously been granted the freedom to go far grittier than previous adaptations. Some of the crime scenes are outstandingly gruesome; major decisions can result in characters being permanently maimed; Batman can brutalize his enemies to the extreme, if you so choose; and Bruce Wayne spends as much time navigating through seedy political entanglements as chases and brawls. In this monent of American fear and unrest, the mad crucible of Gotham feels like an especially cathartic funhouse mirror in which to gaze (no matter how little sense it makes that Batman’s America seems to have no state or federal government). With the episodic format and TV-like presentation, Telltale has taken the opportunity to fold the Batverse into its obvious match in the gritty crime procedural; no one will mistake it for The Wire or even Sherlock, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find video games doing this particular brand of genre fiction any real justice.   

There’s one more element to the game that I didn’t try, but I wish I did: a new “party mode”, where people can sync a mobile app with the game on console and vote for dialogue choices as a group. It seems like it would either be a dumb, hilarious clusterfuck or a fun and engaging group game, and a totally unique experience either way. For what little my praise is worth, I will always applaud a game for seeking out new ways to facilitate a social experience, capitalizing and expanding upon the inherently participatory nature of games that electrifies people such that millions of people are even willing to watch others play on Youtube (something I’ll never personally understand). The more I can share the act of playing a game, the better.   

So… what are the best Batman books? I’m taking recommendations.

[thelostcatpodcast]

THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 3: EPISODE 04:  EXPLOSION

SEASON 3: EPISODE 04:  EXPLOSION

Episode released 12th March 2017

http://thelostcat.libsyn.com/season-3-episode-4-explosion

I was darning my socks when I got a phone call from Nish, one of my oldest friends. She said there had been an accident at work. "Oh my god, are you OK?" "I’m fine! There has been an explosion in my lab." I said, "oh no!" "The explosion is currently three feet in diameter, and is expanding at a millimetre per second." I said, “what?”

THE LOST CAT PODCAST SERIES 3, BY A P CLARKE, EPISODE 4: EXPLOSION

We had known each other since we were kids, but she had made some smart choices and was now a part of a think-tank of experimental scientists researching, as she said, the ‘kinky stuff’. This was a joke, as I discovered, on the idea that far from the nice, smooth realities at the centre of our existence, the realities at the far edges were full of kinks. They poked at the kinks. This sort of thing sometimes made her difficult to talk to, as the world she worked in, and the technology she used, had been way past my understanding for many years now. But she said she enjoyed talking to me, and I believed her. And they have some extremely advanced technology. Once we were having tea and she was telling me about an experiment I did not understand. I got a phonecall. I answered and it was her. She told me she had a chip that allowed her to access communication devices directly from her brain, so as not to disturb any conversations going on in biological space. I imagine I gawped, and the her in front of me broke off from what she was saying and laughed, gently, with kind eyes, and the voice on my phone said I was silly. She apologised for the slight synthetic quality of the voice, as it relied on translation algorithms that were not yet quite perfect. But then that’s the point of algorithms, she would say – they are our models of the world, so studying their failures is to discover the holes in our understanding of reality. We can see through the gaps in our world, she said, and then paused just long enough to smile mischieviously, and see the lights behind it. I, as I often did, nodded blankly, and had no idea to what extent she was joking, and to what extent she was not. She would say, "you know we can programme smaller mammals." I would say, "it wouldn’t be the same?" She was often very gracious with me. "The explosion just hit our battery store," she said, as I held my half-darned sock forgotten in my hand as her brain spoke to me through my phone. "The colours are beautiful – there’s blues and greens and pinks, and the individual shards are still reflecting light. They are spreading up the wall like water." "OK," I said. "I am sorry, but can you slow down? Where are you, and what is happening?" It was recogniseably her voice, but if you listened really closely you could just hear the slightly flat intonation of the modulated tones. "Alright... alright... I am sorry too." "Keep it simple," I added. "Imagine you are talking to an idiot." "I am in my laboratory with my two colleagues, Diane and Brian. At the far side of the laboratory, our experiment has just exploded and it is currently expanding at an incredibly slow rate in to the room." "Holy hell, will you be OK?" "Do not worry. Do not worry." "What were you doing?" She said, "we have been experimenting with synthesising quantum probability waves at a Newtonian scale. Using exotic radiations of rare metals super heated while under extreme pressures so as to exist in multiple simultaneous states." "Oh," I said. "We used lasers," she said. "We’re big fans of lasers." "Lasers are cool." "I know, aren’t they!" and she made a sound then, that I realised was the voice synthesis software attempting to recreate a laugh. "Alright," she said. "Alright. You know that stuff called Dark Matter?" "Yes, it's that substance that’s invisible to all scientific measurement, but has to exist for physics to make sense." "That’s the one. Well: it doesn’t exist, but what does has become unstable within the radius of the explosion. It has created what might be best described as bubbles of radical space-time distortion. Bubbles where space-time run at different relative speeds, and most of the room is in a flow of incredibly slow time. And thus we have an explosion that is moving at roughly one millimetre per second. "While much of my upper body is in a bubble of much more rapid, close to earth-normal, time,  my lower body has been caught in the main flow of slow time, and as such, I can not move. "My colleague Diane, over to my left, is fully inside the bubble of slowest time, such that she is entirely immobile from my point of view. Bill is over to the right, in a slightly faster eddy, but communication is still proving difficult. "The explosion is on the far side of the lab, climbing the wall, and also reaching out in to the centre of the lab space in a remarkably contained plume." "How is all this possible?" I asked. "Oh, it isn’t, but here we are. I apologise for calling you. I hope you don’t mind. I needed a control in base-reality due to the temporal fluctuations. I hope you don’t mind. I hope you don’t mind. Do not worry." "Well, at least your brain is in a bubble of normal time." "Well actually," she said. "It is running at around five times slower than earth-normal, but the efficiency of the communication chip still allows me to speak with you relatively normally. You are reading at about one half speed for me at the moment. Honestly, this did not seem so far from normal "well, if there's anything at all I can do to help." "Thank you. Well, everything is happening so slowly at the moment that we have a little time before there is any significant development. So, while we are waiting: how are things? What are you up to?" "Oh fine. Ticking along." "Tell me things! Are you still looking for your stupid cat?" "Yes, I am afraid so." "So silly. Maybe I could help you find him one of these days." "That would be great." "Cats make me sneeze. I considered a reptile, but I decided anything I had  to keep behind glass wasn’t really a pet." I said, "I miss him when he would sit on me." "Hmmm," she said. "My house has always been clean." And then there was a pause. "Interesting: the battery store ignition has created waves in the space-time distortion topographies. My colleague Brian is ramping up to a communicable speed, and I will be able to talk to him soon. Interesting. So: what did your cat do? Why did you like your cat sitting on you so much?" "Really?" "Please. Please tell me." "Oh well, I remember one time the cat had been out all day, and came and sat on me late at night, while I was watching a movie. I thought it must have been raining because he was wet, but when I raised my hand to the screen, it was red. My cat had fought something out there and lost. It sat heavily and loosely on me, as if it had no bones, and would not move from my lap, no matter what I did. It did not complain or meow or purr or scratch. It just really, really needed to sit on me. So I stayed there, with the cat sitting on me, for most of the night. The cat was nice to me for a good few weeks after that, too. Look, I am sorry for going on. " Nish said, "I like your voice. I like to hear you talking." "So," I said. "What’s happening now?" "Well, this is all quite exciting: the battery explosion has shifted the path of the explosion. Bill and I have been discussing this and running a few models. It is unclear how the explosion will proceed, for the materials are reacting in some as yet unpredictable ways with the room. However, unpredictability is usually a good sign of instability. We are currently expecting it will collapse in on itself once it hits certain valence horizons within the Newtonian space. Diane is still very much statue-ing, but Bill is really quite mobile, and will try blocking the path of the explosion." "Will that work?" "It depends very much on what physics is like at the moment." "What?" "Do not worry, It will be fine, do not worry." "OK, I promise. I won't worry." And, knowing we were going to be here for a while, I got up to fetch a bottle of wine. "Actually, could you stay?" came her voice. "Could you stay talking with me?" "Certainly," I said as I sat down again. "I must admit, This is all pretty weird, talking to you like this." "Thank you for doing this." "What would you like to talk about?" "Ummm? Have you been on holiday recently?" she asked. And I must admit I laughed a little at this. She left the real world a long time ago, as I said, and sometimes came out with such things "I don’t really get to have holidays, much," I said. "Oh, I am sorry. I was planning on going on a holiday, after this project. I went to this extraordinary conference where they spoke about the importance of keeping one’s sensorial sensitivity high through physical activity like walking, swimming, and massage, because the body is part of our brain and a lack of physical input will dull the efficacy of our abstract reason centres." "That sounds like a good holiday." "I think you would get a lot out of it too," she said. "I think it would help." "I think I would. I am sorry for laughing a little bit earlier." "That is OK," she replied. "Maybe you can take me sometime?" I said, jokingly. "I would like that. I would like that." "Then maybe it is a plan," I said. She replied, "thank you." And then there was a pause. "Alright... hold on... alright... alright, there has been a event in the explosion that has caused a surge, and a change in direction. Diane has been fully consumed. There was no discernable reaction in her either physically or through her links, which suggests she was not conscious of the event. The main body of the blast has shifted left and grown significantly in speed and volume. Given no further change, the explosion will continue on this new axis towards me. It is currently around four feet from my body. It has blocked Bill from my line of sight and... alright... alright. I can not communicate with my colleague Bill anymore." "What can I do?" I asked. "It is alright." "I can call the emergency services. Maybe they can get to you in time." "All this is taking place over less than a second, by Earth-normal time. There is no such thing as getting here in time." "Maybe I can read up on a solution, if you give me a pointer." "There is no reading up on this phenomena. It does not exist." "I could record things..." "The chip has recorded all possible data." "You seem really calm." "This is not my voice." She continued. "It has reached the electrics. It is running through the walls. It is beautiful. The speed is extraordinary. Tell me: are you seeing anyone, at the moment?" "No, no I am not.." "I hope you will find someone you feel you can be open with. I considered starting a sexual relationship with you, but decided against it. I think it was the cat. It suggests an over-dependency, I think. I hope that you can see that in yourself." "Yes, I think I can." "And that I think you will need someone. I have not had many relationships, and I can see that my choices have definitely biased towards work, over a relationship-life. But I can see where my choices have taken me. I have been in the room for such amazing things. I have seen, if you will, many worlds. I think, looking at the events in my life, that I am happy with what I have chosen." "I think you have made good choices, too" "Right... the explosion is rising up towards me. As my right arm is in front of me, it will be the first thing the explosion touches. it will be interesting to see how the explosion interacts with my watch. I think the small electronic charge will react to the explosion, possibly explosively itself. "Right... now. The explosion is touhing my fingers. It feels... tingly. It seems the transition between differing speeds of space-time is disrupting the body’s signals to my brain. The closest I can say is that it is like putting a battery on your tongue. it is a not unpleasant experience. The explosion is now almost at my wrist. This is all quite exceptional. "Ah, this is interesting... alright... OK, I believe my lower half is now unconnected to me. The legs certainly, but also the lower half of the trunk, perhaps to the second diaphragm. It is difficult to see, and the internal signals are not easy to translate, but a slight but steady change in my inner ear suggests I am now technically falling. The effect is, understandably, faint. "The explosion is rising at a slightly faster rate now. It is getting closer. And, while I can not move my head anymore, it is rising into my field of view. I can see my reflection in it. My hair is out. Like being underwater. The detail in the explosion is fascinating, with long slow discharges like lightning storms within. Everything is very bright. "The room is changing, through the explosion I can see the walls getting closer, but the furniture getting smaller. the physical dimensions of the space are warping. I... wait, no... alright... I think the heat is warping the tissue of my eye. "Everything is red... everything is yellow... everything is now white... I can see an horizon... I... I can not use my eyes anymore. Can you tell me about what has happened when you are looking for your cat?" And I paused. I didn't know what to say. "Please understand that I would like to hear you talking right now. I rather like your connection to your cat, despite my ribbing. I find it pleasing." So I said: "Once I travelled to an alternate dimension. And met hundreds of alternate versions of myself, and we had to work together to stop the breakdown of the mulitverse." "That sounds extraordinarily interesting! Is there any proof?" "Sadly once we fixed it, everything kind of went back to normal." "Yes, it is typically the way with base realities, that situations of alternate reality often display as a blank when viewed back from that base perspective. Tell me: how did you access this alternate reality?" "There’s an area down by the train tracks animals go to die. You can get there if you are careful to avoid the trains." "The trains still run where you are?" "Sometimes." "Magic is real," she said. "So I keep getting told," I replied. She said, "it feels like I am drowning. But I am spinning fast. It must be touching parts of my brain now. I was facing the explosion, so it will touch the front of my brain first, but it was also rising quickly through my trunk and neck, from below. I believe that will affect my sense of physicality... alright... alright... I have no sensory input at all now. It is difficult now to discern what even counts as an event. The spinning has stopped... alright.. I can see my old bedroom. I am in a field. I can walk down to the strea,. The sun is behind clouds. The glass will not break if you are slow. Who are you? How did you get here? The glass will not break if you are slow. It will not make a sound… alright... alright..." They let out a long low moan. They said, “I would like to stop talking now. Will you speak to me? Tell me a story. I like your stories. I am asking you to do this. Do this for me. Tell me a story.” I told her this: Once upon a time there was a leaf that blew about in the wind. It blew around with a thousand other leaves and made patterns in the air. The leaf did not know it was in the pattern. The pattern did not  know how the wind would shape it. The wind had no idea it was making a pattern with the leaves. And no one was there to see it. And the world span on and on. And in that world the air was full of patterns and in those patterns were thousands of leaves and in those leaves a single leaf blew about in the wind. When I finished the line was quiet. The explosion did not make the news.

THIS HAS BEEN THE FOURTH EPISODE OF THE LOST CAT PODCAST, SEASON 3, TITLED 'EXPLOSION', WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY A P CLARKE. COPYRIGHT 2017.

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