#cutting mention//

[gallusrostromegalus]

Move To A Darker Place

This is a story of Man Vs. Machine.

---

Last March, my father attempted to file his Taxes.

My beloved father is a Boomer. Unlike most Boomers, my father is rather handy with technology because he was one of the people that had a not-insignificant hand in Developing a hell of a lot of it. He was studying Computer Science at Cal Poly before the computer science degree existed. I have many fond childhood memories of skipping through the aisles of various electronic and computer part warehouses while Dad described something that either terrified the staff or made them worship him as a God.  He taught himself how to use his smartphone.  Internationally.

So when he saw the option to file digitally with the IRS through the “ID.me” program, he leapt at the chance to celebrate the Federal Government finally entering the Digital Age.

It was all going swimmingly for about six hours, until he was ready to file and the system told him that it needed to verify his identity. 

“Very Well.” said my father, a man unafraid of talking to himself and getting something out of the conversation. “It wouldn’t do for me to get someone else’s return.”

The System told him that it needed him to take a “Digital Image ID”.

a.k.a: A Selfie.

“A-ha!” Dad beams. Dad is very good at taking selfies. He immediately pulled out his phone, snapped one, and tried to upload it.

Please log into your Id.me Account and use the provided app to submit your Digital Image ID. The System clarified.

“Oh. You should have said so.”  Dad pouted, but used his phone to log onto the ID.me account, do the six security verification steps and double-checked that the filing looked the same as it did on the desktop, gave the IRS like nine permissions on his phone, and held up the camera to take his Federal Privacy Invasion Selfie.

Please align your face to the indicated grid. Said The System, pulling up a futuristic green-web-of-polygons approximation.

“Ooh, very Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry would HATE this!” Dad said cheerfully, aligning his face to the grid.  My father is a bit… cavalier, when it comes to matters of personal information and federal government, because he’s been on FBI watchlists since the late 60’s when he was protesting The Vietnam War and Ronald Regan before he’d broken containment. Alas.

Anyway, there is very little information the federal government does not have on him already, but he’s as good at stalking the FBI as they are at stalking him, and had worked out a solution:  He has something approaching a friendship with the local Federal Agent (Some guy named “Larry”. Allegedly), and got Larry hooked on Alternative Histories and Dad’s collection of carefully-researched “there is very likely buried treasure here” stories, and Larry is loath to bother his favorite Historical Fanfiction author too much.

But I digress.

After thinking for a minute, The System came back with an Error Message. Please remove glasses or other facial obstructions.

And here is where the real trouble began.

See, my father wears glasses that do substantially warp the appearance of his face, because he is so nearsighted that he is legally blind without them. His natural focal point is about 4 inches in front of his nose.  While Dad can still take a selfie because he (approximately) knows where his phone is if it’s in his hand, he cannot see the alignment grid.

He should ask someone to take it for him! I hear the audience say. Yes, that would be the sane and reasonable thing to do, but Dad was attempting to do taxes at his residence in Fort Collins, while his immediate family was respectively in Denver, Texas and Canada.  He tried calling our neighbors, who turned out to be in Uganda.

He looked down at the dog, Arwen, and her little criminal paws that can open doorknobs, but not operate cell phones.

She looked back at him, and farted.

“Well, I’ll give it a try, but if it gives me too much trouble, I’ll call Larry, and Larry can call the IRS about it.” Dad told her. 

She continued to watch him. Arwen is an Australian Kelpie (a type of cattle-herding dog), going on 14 years old, deaf as a post and suffering from canine dementia now, but she still retains her natural instinct to Micromanage. She was also trained as a therapy dog, and even if she can’t hear my dad, still recognizes the body language of a man setting himself up for catastrophe.

So, squinting in the late afternoon light next to the back door, Dad attempted to line his face up with a grid he could only sort-of see, and took A Federal Selfie.

The System thought about it for a few moments.

Image Capture Failed: Insufficient Contrast. The System replied. Please move to a darker place.

“...Huh.” Dad frowned. “Alright.”

He moved to the middle of his office, away from the back door, lit only by the house lighting and indirect sunlight, and tried again.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“What?” Dad asked the universe in general.

“Whuff.” Arwen warned him against sunk costs.

Dad ignored her and went into the bathroom, the natural habitat of the selfie. Surely, only being lit by a light fixture that hadn’t been changed since Dad was attempting to warn everyone about Regan would be suitably insufficient lighting for The System.  It took some negotiating, because that bathroom is “Standing Room Only” not “Standing And Holding Your Arms Out In Front Of You Room”.  He ended up taking the selfie in the shower stall.

As The System mulled over the latest attempt, Arwen shuffled over and kicked open the door to watch.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move to a Darker Place.

“Do you mean Spiritually?” Dad demanded.

“Whuff.” Arwen cautioned him again.

Determined to succeed, or at least get a different error message that may give him more information, Dad entered The Downstairs Guest Room.  It is the darkest room in the house, as it is in the basement, and only has one legally-mandated-fire-escape window, which has blinds.  Dad drew those blinds, turned off the lights and tried AGAIN.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move To A Darker Place.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO PHOTOGRAPH MYSELF INSIDE OF A CAVE??” Dad howled. 

“WHUFF!” Arwen reprimanded him from under the pull-out bed in the room. It’s where she attempts to herd everyone when it’s thundering outside, so the space is called her ‘Safety Cave’.

Dad frowned at the large blurry shape that was The Safety Cave.

“Why not?” he asked, the prelude to many a Terrible Plan.  With no small amount of spiteful and manic glee, Dad got down onto the floor, and army-crawled under the bed with Arwen to try One Last Time. Now in near-total darkness, he rolled on his side to be able to stretch his arms out, Arwen slobber-panting in his ear, and waited for the vague green blob of the Facial grid to appear.

This time, when he tapped the button, the flash cctivated.

“GOD DAMN IT!” Dad shouted, dropping the phone and rubbing his eyes and cursing to alleviate the pain of accidentally flash-banging himself. Arwen shuffled away from him under the bed, huffing sarcastically at him.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“MOTHERFU- hang on.” Dad squinted.  The System sounded strange. Distant and slightly muffled.

Dad squinted really hard, and saw the movement of Arwen crawling out from under the bed along the phone’s last known trajectory.

“ARWEN!” Dad shouted, awkwardly reverse-army crawling out from under the bed, using it to get to his feet and searching for his glasses, which had fallen out of his pocket under the bed, so by the time he was sighted again, Arwen had had ample time to remove The Offending Device.

He found her out in the middle of the back yard, the satisfied look of a Job Well Done on her face. She did not have the phone. 

“Arwen.” Dad glared. It’s a very good glare. Dad was a teacher for many years and used it to keep his class in order with sheer telepathically induced embarrassment, and his father once glared a peach tree into fecundity.  

Arwen regarded him with the casual interest a hurricane might regard a sailboat tumbling out of its wake. She is a force of nature unto herself and not about to be intimidated by a half-blind house ape.  She also has cataracts and might not be able to make out the glare.

“I GIVE UP!” Dad shouted, throwing his hands in the air and returning to the office to write to the IRS that their selfie software sucks ass. Pleased that she had gotten her desired result, Arwen followed him in.

To Dad’s immense surprise, the computer cheerfully informed him that his Federally Secure Selfie had been accepted, and that they had received and were now processing his return!

“What the FUCK?” Dad glared. “Oh well. If I’ve screwed it up, Larry can call me.”

---

I bring this up because recently, Dad received an interesting piece of mail.

It was a letter from the IRS, addressed to him, a nerve-wracking thing to recessive at the best of times.  Instead of a complaint about Dad’s Selfie Skills, it was a letter congratulating him on using the new ID.me System.  It thanked him for his help and expressed hopes he would use it again next year, and included the selfie that The System had finally decided to accept.

“You know, my dad used to complain about automation.” Dad sighed, staring at the image. “Incidentals my boy!  My secretary saves the state of California millions of dollars a year catching small errors before they become massive ones! He’d say. Fought the human resources board about her pay every year.  I used to think he was overestimating how bad machines were and underestimating human error, but you know? He was right.”

He handed me the image.

My father was, technically, in the image.  A significant amount of the bottom right corner is taken up by the top of his forehead and silver hair.  Most of the image, the part with the facial-recognition markers on it, was composed of Arwen’s Alarmed and Disgusted Doggy face.

“Oh no!” I cackled. “Crap, does this mean you have to call the IRS and tell them you’re not a dog?”

“Probably.” Dad sighed. “I know who I’m gonna bother first though.” he said, taking out his phone (Dad did find his phone a few hours after Arwen absconded with it when mom called and the early spinach started ringing). 

“Hey Larry!” Dad announced to the local federal agent. “You’re never gonna believe this. My dog filed my taxes!”

Larry considered this for a moment. “Is this the dog that stole my sandwich? Out of my locked  car?” he asked suspiciously.

“The very same.” Dad grinned.

“Hm. Clever Girl.” Federal Agent Larry sighed. “I figured it was only a matter of time before she got into tax fraud.”

---

I'm a disabled artist making my living writing these stories. If you enjoy my stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi or Pre-ordering my Family Lore Book on Patreon. Thank you!

[inkskinned]

having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!

there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.

[hinamie]

"I'll show you every day that choosing to live was worth it"

some of my favourite scenes from @hijinks-n-lowjinks' fic things i would miss from the other side . this fic tore my heart out fr but like in a good way and i wanted to pay it homage the only way i know how <3

[somerandomdudelmao]

Part 1!

..of an episode that reveals that if something looks like a space horror and sounds like a space horror, maybe it is a space horror.

Who would've guessed?~

Previous Next

Masterpost

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton’s awkward family reunion in FNAF 3,,

[skymantle]

glados saying "once testing starts, im required by protocol to keep interaction with you to a minimum. this will be our only chance to talk." during the beginning of portal 2 only to immediately talk to chell during every single test is funny on its own but that along with the cut scene where she stops the elevator between tests to ask if there's "anything you'd like to say to me? anything at all?"...she's so lonely and desperate </3

[puppyeared]

au where asriel comes home early

[quicksilversnails]

Making a post compiling some of my thoughts on the new Pristine Cut music broken down by chapter because I have. many thoughts and thought maybe people might find them interesting!

The Cage's whole sound was so instantly memorable to me. I love all the different metallic percussion used: perfectly in-theme for a world envelloped in chains

There's soft yet eerie metallophones like the mock birdsong of chains, clanging bells like a death knell

It's mixed with shrill strings: reminscent of the scraping sound that plays in All Eyes On Me as the Prisoner cuts her head off, but quiet and distant, like a haunting memory that repeats itself in your mind

I also love the way the sound echoes - giving the impression of the emptiness of the woods & cabin

An Open Door pulls at my heart: the soft piano and drawn out sound stands in contrast to everything leading up to it

It plays whether you break the pattern by leaving or perpetuate the pattern and watch your dance, so the contrast of it feels representitive to me of a shift in perspective (either the Princess realizing her own control, or you realizing your lack of it)

Our Happy Ending is so damn evocative I need to break it down

It's so. drawn. out. Every note drags, with every instrument coming in at slightly different times

It has a really hollow sound to it: where Damsel's tracks have piano, strings, and woodwinds, Our Happy Ending is reduced to only the strings. There's a lot of full and rich music out there written for strings, but this (intentionally) isn't one of them.

Instead of playing every note in each chord, the instruments frequently double the same notes (just in different octaves) and omit other notes, making the sound even emptier

The arpeggio of the Princess' motif (which is prominent in Damsel's tracks) does appear around 1:30 in, but for a lot of the track the melody is very static, mostly stepping between a few nearby notes, as if it's too exhausted to do anything more complicated

It doesn't even loop smoothly in-game: there's a record scratch and a few seconds of silence before it continues, like it's forcing itself to keep going through the motions

It all sounds serene when the chapter begins but the more you listen the more deeply lethargic it becomes. It did so much to make this chapter even more viscerally uncomfortable for me

And then there's I Meant It. What is there to say. (Actually I do have some things to say)

It's noticeably in 3 (which I think is unique to this track), giving it an appropriately dance-like feeling

While it starts beautifully simple, the embellishments added to the theme as it goes on bring a sense of playfulness, reflecting the energy that grows in your dance the longer it goes on

The Princess & The Dragon!!! I speculated about this one when it was teased a few months back and it was so gratifying to hear it in context! I was very wrong about the route it plays in but I absolutely caught onto how it's an inversion of the typical setup!

The biggest example of this is how the main melody of the theme is the same as The Princess' main theme, but played in reverse! (and with a different rhythm)

The piano also plays descending lines, as opposed to the ascending lines usually heard in other tracks in this game (a good example is in The Unknown Together)

This all reflects how the chapter itself reverses the setup of the game by putting the player in the perspective of the Princess (maybe this is the melody she's used to hearing?)

The call and response nature between the humming (done by Amelia aka the Shifting Mound vocalist!!!) & flute invokes the Princess & Dragon themselves: the melody would be incomplete without both parts

It's such a warm theme too - where The Princess has a quiet somberness to it, The Princess and The Dragon feels rich and vibrant - it feels right

The Life-Taker takes the new motif from The Princess and The Dragon and puts it in the minor key of the World-Ender (I also really like the way the names of these tracks parallel each other)

Like World-Ender it's tense and uneasy, but it plays at a slower tempo, with plenty of long pauses and empty space in the melody: it feels appropriate for the silent, staring body standing in front of you

It also feels more static to me than World-Ender does with its constantly moving piano, which is reflective of how little power you have in the scenario. As TLQ, you have to make the decisions, but as the Princess, the most you can do is watch and wait in suspense

Also this is more of an audio editing thing but I ADORE the way World-Ender cuts in when you switch back mid-chord - really hammers in how your perspective is being forcibly shifted right in the middle of the action

The reversed motif returning when you leave with the Princess or merge with her again is also very sweet: whether you're sharing a body anymore the connection and understanding you've gained remained :)

I love all the new Fury tracks! They're so gritty

I'm happy they kept a similar sound to The Fury's track in the base game because it has such a cool and unique vibe and I was mildly worried that the process of being unwound would just lead the droning sounds of TLQ (still cool, just less unique)

I like how the music still cuts out when you get initially unwound, leaving just faint buzzing - it keeps the shock of that moment from the base game but keeps you grounded in the present by denying you the silence of death. Where in the base game Fury denying you death barely mattered, now you can feel it down to the unwound yet still present soundtrack

I like how Hand In Claw (which plays when escaping the tunnel with Den) introduces this growling sort of guitar sound, rumbling like the sound of caving rocks

It keeps the fast, driving percussive elements of the other Den tracks but gives it a more obvious melodic shape, as you realize that there's more to her after all

It sounds totally distinct from the other Den tracks in general, and that makes sense since its respective path is also unique among the many, many variants of the chapter

The live rendition of The Apotheosis was a fun surprise - I heard it play and just went "...that's different right?"

I still love the way the theme begins as the Apotheosis herself unfurls from the cabin: it's just as breathtaking as it was the first time

I was wondering before release how this track could be expanded on when it felt like such a transcendent and insurpassable theme (it's also used for The Shifting Mound after all) - but the game actually doesn't build on it, just letting it play, only cutting from it in extreme moments. I think that's kind of nice: the power and awe of the track speaks for itself

Meanwhile A Tapestry Undone is essentially The Apotheosis without the piano, orchestra, or any of the instrumentals that give it its sense of power

The vocals sound hollow and distant - she seems farther away, her influence less overwhelming, whether due to dissociative pain or because in that moment you're compelled to lash out at her in spite of whatever godlike power she might have had over you

In-game, the drones of TLQ are also faintly audible, which makes sense since the Apotheosis is tearing at the walls of the construct (ie. you)

[thewiglesswonder]

Another thing I really have to give TF One credit for is the sheer amount of violence they got away with by virtue of all their characters being robots. Like, where else could our deuteragonist-turned-final-boss literally rip the villain in half on-screen and walk away with a PG rating?

[superbellsubways]

crackship with my own characters yepppp

lol

[bivampir]

Maurice girlies (gender-neutral) it's my duty to inform you that a Vietnamese LGBT movie channel have made a fan reconstruction of the 1987 movie, by adding all deleted scenes (which include establishing wayyyy earlier that Alec works at Durham's, establishing Alec's bisexuality, Maurice's beautiful ending monologue to Clive, and many more) resulting in a movie that's almost 3 hours long, and uploaded it to youtube (with English subtitles!) here!

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[hinamie]

noir

[solargeist]

xelqua's evo form, also known as grian's twin form, hes still clingy !

[citrusai]

taash said "they were doing it" and people ran with the interpretation of an npc that doesn't know solas or the history of the elvhenan even when bellara interjected and said, no, that's not right. that's not how it was for the elvhenan. they formed bonds before they had physical bodies. and people ran to doompost or create weird anti-solavellan shit even though mythal & solas refer to each other as old friends and when she releases him there is no tenderness or love in it. it is the act of unchaining a dog from his post, the stepping down of a general. but to each their own ig.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Words Collide

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