#fading beats

[felixwylde]

Art of Turning

There’s a certain peace in simply letting go—like slipping from the clutches of an off-key melody forced upon us by self-anointed conductors. Their insistent beat fades, the dust they stirred settling at last.Politicians are deft in their craft, skilled at luring us to pour out what’s ours—our time, our breath, our guarded trust. They arrive as saviours, noble on the surface, yet each plea draws…

[zarnzarn]

(check the tags for more and also the tag for other fics in the story!)

athena, scowling as she gets bullied into marrying the people she pined over for the last 1000 years, suddenly realising something: wait a minute

odysseus: what?

athena, frozen: wait a damn minute you know what this gives me rights to do

penelope, also realising: oh fuck yes

odysseus: I don't like the sound of whatever's happening here what are you two fucking talking about?

athena, grabbing the marriage wine and tossing it back, then kissing her new wife and husband and handing penelope a spear as she picks up a mace: we'll be back shortly, you can start celebrations without us.

penelope: do u have anything that can start a fire

athena, pulling out an old contract and scanning it before throwing it over her shoulder: yes. are you scared of heights or can we fly.

penelope: fucking bring it I've waited years for this moment

zeus: where are they going

hermes, picking up the contract: they're going to... Ogygia? Oh fucking shit they're going to fucking kill Calypso- hey, hello, WAIT-

[wanderingibon]

a flock of birds, a crow family — everything aside, despite viago's frosty, stern demeanor I think both he and teia care about rook like family, in a way that goes past the pretenses of being a crow or just part of house de riva, they're literally found family to meeeeee

and while you have time, please consider finding a family on op. olive branch 🍉 and supporting / sharing their campaigns, especially the ones with low funding <3

[pwippy]

song: skyfall by adele

this is the fastest edit ive made so far guys im improving my editing skills ! not to mention for the last half there is 0 editing. THE TIMING MATCHES UP SO WELL IM ACTUALLY SCREAMING sad doomed silly guys :/

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[sulky-cabbage]

The sukugo fight can't get animated any sooner I'm craving sukugo tiktok edits

[pisswizard420]

[willowve01]

The fact that I spent almost 10 hours on this— within a span of two days— is underwhelming XD

I honestly didn’t have the energy to put a background in.

But anyways, here’s some more ep. 8 Raine.

[butchofthewilds]

I’m so concerned about Morrigan re: her wearing what is almost definitely Mythal’s headdress in that one trailer clip…

Morrigan-mancing Wardens just do not get a fucking break. Post-Inquisition, The Warden returns from their quest to cure the Calling, presumably hoping to finally get a fucking break (I know that’s what my Warden was hoping for!) only to find out that his wife got possessed by her abusive mother.

[psi-hate]

what the fuck happened to my touhou imperishable night

[vigilskeep]

oh it’s GOOD to be a mage

[luck-of-the-drawings]

AHAHAHH FINALLY ANOTHER NEW DOODLE PAGE. A COLLAGE OF OLD DOODLES, NEW DOODLES, DOODLES WITH MINIMUM EFFORT, AND DOODLES WITH ALOOOT OF EFFORT. SOME DRAWN ONA TABLET, MOST ON A MOUSE, BEEN IN MY WIPS FOR AGES JUST TTAAAAAKKEE IT BRO I CANT LOOK AT IT ANYMORE. ANYWAY HHEEELLLOOOOOO CHIPS GROWTH OVER 100 EPISODES CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT?? BECAUSE I SURE WILL. IN MY TAGS.

[hellafluff]

Picture this: after the figures from the Fade rocket off to end the world, Rook and Harding approach the place Solas and Varric stood and find nothing, save the broken Bianca. They're assumed dead or vanished. Everyone mourns and continues on to save the world.

Later, in the obligatory Fade level late in the game, all hope seems lost, but then through the green mist steps Hawke, Varric, and Solas, all battle scarred and badass, ready to save you, head home and kill the gods. Also the Hero of Fereldan is there for some reason for me specifically to be happy

[fowlblue]

More Consequences fic scribbling! Equally messy but have another Spiro.

Jon's in pretty poor shape when he first gets picked up by Butler- lots of small injuries that take some time to fade. It only adds to his initial defensiveness, but hey, he’s been through it. Having to accept the help of your enemy is a lot for a proud man like him.

(for those who haven't read the fic and don't have context- this is an AU where post-TEC, Phonetix's CEO- my OC Valentine- takes Jon hostage when the man still refuses to hand his company over. Bad thing happen there until Butler crosses his path and takes some pity on him... hurt/comfort and eventual shippenings ensue!)

[craykaycee]

ough,,, I miss choir

[sulky-cabbage]

My love is forever ~

Just like the day I met you ~