#i feel like most actions have tangible steps that precede them

[royalarmyofoz]

i love how i’m(trashcan) in this shot with them!

[punkpandapatrixk]

New Moon in Aquarius 🐞🐍⛲🐝ALL SIGNS

With the elements/signs of the zodiac, you can freely use your Sun, Moon, Rising/Ascendant, or even your Stellium (❗️)

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'Another cool thing about Ravenclaw is that our people are the most individual—some might even call them eccentrics. But geniuses are often out of step with ordinary folk, and unlike some other houses we could mention, we think you’ve got the right to wear what you like, believe what you want, and say what you feel. We aren’t put off by people who march to a different tune; on the contrary, we value them!' — Ravenclaw welcome letter

New Moon... New Moon... New Moon. A time of release and starting anew with fresh eyes~! Did you sleep a lot? For some reason I couldn't sleep much at all for having so much anticipation for the new things I'm about to get on with. -why does this feel like Prof Lockhart talking to his students?! Well, the spirit of Ravenclaw, I guess-

👆🏻That's the overarching energy of this Aquarius New Moon, by the way...

Main theme for 🐞Aries Leo Sagittarius

Alright, let's get down to business: you know what you want, right? That's not even a question and you know that. This New Moon is a period of gaining momentum. In the following days you should have an abundance of inspiration, so prioritise you heart's calling and don't be afraid of any perceived obstacles!

Even if challenges present themselves as you try to change lanes (in regards to your life, career, and creative pursuits; but it can be anything you resonate with) they're fleeting at best. Those challenges aren't there to stop you but to strengthen your resolve instead. Or in some cases, they're there exactly to help you build a strong foundation for whatever wonderful pursuit you're going after.

Soul Cleansing for Fire Signs🔻❤️

Try to have a routine that takes into account your physical and mental health. This should help you accomplish more within a day whilst preserving energy. Anything you do with a relaxed mind, or attitude, should require much less energy than when you're stressed out, or feel extra burdened. Remember, time is relative and reality is malleable at best. From now until the next Full Moon, try to build this new habit that prioritises your happiness and mental wellness.

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Main theme for 🐍Taurus Virgo Capricorn

Please don't hate me for saying this, but... If you expend your energy only on forming ideas in your head, if you spend so much time daydreaming without tangible actions, where's that gonna take you? Of course, as witches and wizards would tell you, this world is after all only a dream, so it's wonderful to start with having beautiful/amazing dreams.

But this physical world also requires effort. And in your case, your dreams require courage. Why? Convention, convention, convention. As stereotypical as it may get, Earth influences can tend to make a person cowardly only when it comes to following their own rhythm and breaking free from convention. That's why the intro of this Aquarius Full Moon was there. That Ravenclaw welcome letter.

Sakamoto Maaya has this crazy amazing song called Sanagi (Chrysalis). My most fave parts of the lyrics go like this:

one morning I opened my eyes/the ringing in my ears had stopped and I was reborn/this isn't something taught to me/my cells simply remember!

shattering copied images/breaking precedence/I'll be the one to complete myself/it's not like I'm seeking admiration nor do I need sympathy/I can follow my own rules!

Soul Cleansing for Earth Signs🔻💚

See, you are a powerful individual. It's a given, Earth energies are powerful. Majority of the time, you may have focused all your energy on creating a reality that doesn't totally agree with your heart. Or like, everything you do and have done, you've done for other people—family, society, country. Now let's pause and wonder if you've done anything for YOURSELF.

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

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Main theme for ⛲Gemini Libra Aquarius

'Our house ghost is the Grey Lady. The rest of the school thinks she never speaks, but she'll talk to Ravenclaws. She is particularly useful if you're lost, or you've mislaid something.' — Pottermore

Isn't the Grey Lady selective when it comes to who she wants to entertain with her time and energy? -So weird to say cuz she dead, honey.- But anyway. There's this huge New Moon message about really really really reconsidering your priorities and setting healthy boundaries so you can magickally create an endless stream of good fortune. Let me explain.

Think resonance and you'll understand how other people's energy and thought patterns affect your own energetic field. That's why they say you become like the people you surround yourself with. Easy to understand, right? Now it's just a matter of your having enough courage to cut through the illusions of fear. You fear being disliked or falling out of other people's favour yada yada yada... But is falling out of favour from the people who make you suffer really a loss? Tsk tsk tsk...

Soul Cleansing for Air Signs🔻💙

With the VIII Strength Rx here, I've got to say this... Honey, the more you postpone becoming brave, the longer you hold on to whatever is causing you distress (people or job or whatever)... the narrower the path becomes and before you know it, your life has ended. This is a major arcana, too, so it's like saying,

'Keep going down that road, keep holding on, and there's only ONE result available to you: continual loss of power.'

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Main theme for 🐝Cancer Scorpio Pisces

'Speaking of eccentrics, you’ll like our Head of house, Professor Filius Flitwick. People often underestimate him, because he’s really tiny and he’s got a squeaky voice, but he’s the best and most knowledgeable Charms master alive in the world today.’ — Pottermore

You really can create a world of your own if you set your mind to it. Yes, the world is often cruel, ugly, and harsh, but as all Water dominant folks ought to know: you are all powerful magicians who can create a world of your own just by vibrations. Like, Neo from The Matrix? I'm sorry I don't know what that movie is about LMAO

At any rate, realise that it's because there are ugly things in this world that you can learn beauty. Because there are cruel people, we can indulge in the idea that we're better people LMAO So, although there are frustrating things about this world, that's also the force that makes us appreciate comforting things. This world is made of polarities.

-I have a new segment coming up that will be all about reality creation! Punk Panda Magick! Stay tuned, Water babies~-

Soul Cleansing for Water Signs🔻💛

Why is the above message necessary? What's it all about? The expansion of your mind, and subsequently, the way you perceive the nature of Earth reality. Your emotions, gut feelings, your spiritual force are so powerful they literally create your realities. That's why currently it's important that you learn to manage and master the currents of your I AM energy. It all begins in your heart and needs to be filtered/refined in your mind. Take advantage of this amazing Aquarius New Moon energy.

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Feel free to support me on Patreon if you love this kind of content🍑I create stories and tarot readings that calm the mind & heal from within🍒

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[happymetalgirl]

Black Lives Matter (adapted from previous post)

I was finishing up my April albums post but I honestly couldn’t write about the albums I needed to without getting this out there first, and (as usual) it ended up being really long, so I separated it and made it its own post here.

I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about anything else with all all of what is going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my assorted privileges have allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs. As I write this in the midst of a respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in the United States has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT OKAY, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism when there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like …And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief.

[ocehans]

9 Essential WEB SITE DESIGN Methods for DIY Beginners

Let’s get right down to it, shall we? Below are a few of the very most useful styles and guidelines to learn when building your first website:

1. SET ASIDE the Mouse, GRAB a Pencil

Your site may already exist as a lovely, complete entity in your mind which is the reason why you immediately leap into Photoshop (or worse, an internet browser and HTML) to plan it out. Whoa, whoa-cool your jets for another! Don’t place the cart before the equine. First, get out a pencil and pad of paper and start putting your ideas into something easily tangible. That is an important stage to map out the framework of your site using only rectangles, doodles and influenced ideas (categorized as wireframing). Things can be very tough at this time; no one’s heading to view it nevertheless, you.

It is more easily at this time to alter designs you originally thought works however now discover are cluttered and confusing in writing. This can save you many hours of disappointment instead of making the same finding after the site is coded and in a web browser. Plus, it can help significantly to create a web page when you have research at hand to seek advice from rather than moving in blind.

2. Follow a Hierarchy

It’s an undeniable fact that a lot of web surfers tend to only check out webpages rather than take time to read everything. You should be ready because of this by placing the most crucial content first. This means that a consumer can break down the most essential information on a full page all in a single screen on preliminary load, and never have to focus or scroll. That is, of course, easier said than done. Here are some tips to help you better understand the significance of the design theory:

Keep Content “Above the Collapse”

We call that preliminary display of loaded content “the fold”-and everything below it that must be scrolled to be observed is considered supplementary. Generally, your most significant information rests “above the collapse”. The crucial thing to perform within this area is to entice a consumer to do this or generate the motivation to scroll down further.

Utilizing a “Hero” Image

A common trend in web site design nowadays is to fill this “above the fold” area using what is named a “hero” image or banner. They are full-screen history images with very succinct and to-the-point overlaid text messages, usually combined with a call-to-action button. Feasibly the whole purpose of the net web page could be included within this banner area, although it also acts as a great primer for this content to follow.

“The Collapse” May Change With regards to the Device

Here’s where things become complicated-and why you shouldn’t overburden yourself attempting to match everything above this marvelous line. Concerning the user’s device, the display screen sizes could differ greatly. A jaw-dropping 5K screen has a vertical quality of 2880 pixels, whereas an iPhone 5 has not even half of this. This means that mobile users just aren’t heading to have the ability to fit as much content to their display real property. (More upon this later.)

3. Typography Is Your Design

Unless you’re owning a photography business, the text is the solitary most important component of any website, so it’s important to get this done part right. Your web page’s hierarchy is greatly reliant on the typography you select: how your headings, subheadings, and body text message follow an all-natural circulation and stay aesthetically distinctive in one another

Make sure the written text is legible (avoid flowery fonts!) and large enough (usually around 16px for your body).

Stick to only two fonts-and make sure they set well together!

Give your paragraphs some room to inhale between one another, and arranged enough top cushioning or margin on your headings to symbolize clear breaks in content.

Avoid long lines of text. It’s easier on the eye for paragraph lines to be approximately only 15 words long-and a little significantly less than that for mobile displays.

Serif fonts are usually best only in print-unless they may be found in large headlines on the net

4. Colors & Comparison Are Crucial

We’ve discussed color mindset at length, however, the idea bears duplicating. The colors you select for your website play a massive role in how users understand your brand, as well as how motivated they could feel in taking action (i.e.: buying things) through your website. Why? Well, every color evokes certain feelings, and either for their natural character or by social fitness, these colors have grown to be associated with certain types of businesses. If a children’s toy company or a financial consultant painted their whole website in the stark dark, it could send the incorrect indicators with their meant viewers. Around the flipside, a shiny orange or an enjoyable blue, respectively, would catch the perfect firmness and consciousness for his or her customers.

If you’ve already established the colors of your brand, use those on your website then. It’s best, however, to keep it at only three colors for your site; like fonts, you don’t want to overdo it here or your site could finish up with multiple personality disorder. Also, be skeptical of way too many splashes of color across your website; our eye is attracted to them like honey traps, plus they could interrupt the natural movement of your articles. Use color only once it is most needed, such as links or control keys.

In contrast, your text message must stick out from the backdrop. Using light greys, yellows or greens for your fonts will likely render them unseen on the web page. Black on the white background is the foremost combination of comparison and is normally what you ought to stick to.

Additionally, you want your text message to pop against background images. Using very occupied photos can distract from the written text, to avoid this issue either use less comprehensive photos or use an overlay of, say, rgba(51,51,51,0.5)to help soften the image within the text.

Contrast also is important in how users are attracted to certain important elements of your site. Your most significant call-to-action control keys must get attention through the use of contrasting colors. A blue “Buy Now!” button manages to lose its urgency and well worth it when it's swallowed by a niche site that uses blue everywhere-but a red button on that same web page grabs a user’s attention by shouting “Hey! Click me!”

5. Using Pictures

Deciding on the best images to use on your website partly boils down to your artistic aptitude, but there are also intellectual considerations to consider that should assist with your selection process. First of all, avoid embellishing your site with extraneous photos because they could look nice. Instead, think of how each image you utilize serves its purpose, and how it functions as content. A well-chosen picture can convey your brand, service, product, or audience a lot more effectively than words. Use photos to help your users understand something, to evoke feelings, or even to inspire trust and self-confidence; with them solely for visual reasons should be supplementary.

Understanding Document Types & Compression

There can be an extra step that must be taken for using images on the net. Those elegant photos you have from sites like Shutterstock and iStock could be very substantial (5,000+ horizontal pixels and 10+ megabytes in proportions) which is okay for printing, but they’re unfit for websites. Not everyone has superfast Dietary fiber Internet, and that means you must decrease the size of your images to support for launching times (not forgetting 40% of site visitors will leave if the website takes much longer than 3 mere seconds to weight!). Typically, you want to keep each of your images at no more than 500 kilobytes in proportions, though your average quality should of times be around 100 kilobytes.

JPEG is the typical format for photos. It is a lossy format, this means its image quality is reduced when compressed. If you’re utilizing a JPEG for a full-width history image I quickly recommend keeping its horizontal quality at a minimum of 1200px. For general purposes, stay away from any image with significantly less than 600px horizontal quality, as it'll likely show up blurry on modern displays.

PNG is the most well-liked choice for images or for images that want transparency. It is a lossless format, which is ideal for keeping image quality but may also greatly increase document sizes. Generally, you’ll use PNG images for illustrations, symbols, or smaller images that may be stacked together with other elements for their transparency. You’ll hardly ever need a PNG to be bigger than 1000px.

SVG (Scalable Vector Image) is a more recent format that is changing GIF and even PNG in some instances. SVG wonders that it could be as large or as small onscreen as you will need it to be, all while keeping perfect clearness and crispness (but still be a little quality). You should think about using SVG for just about any logo design, icon, or vector visual on your website; as high DPI shows are becoming commonplace, the sharpness of SVG provides the best image quality.

6. Mobile-First Design

We’ve now reached a period where most people consume online quite happy with their cell phones rather than on the desktop computer. As a total result, there is much larger precedence in web site design to tailor specifically to the mobile experience, which has resulted in the “mobile-first” design viewpoint.

This means that essentially, throughout your initial sketching and planning phase in some recoverable format, it is best to focus on the site’s mobile layout first. Only the most crucial content necessary for the functioning of your site will be displayed on smaller screens. This causes you to simplify your design and slice out any distracting elements immediately. Think back again to your “above the flip” content: if you first ensure that the important info can fit on the original screen of the phone, then you’ll know for several it'll fit on bigger displays. Once you’ve nailed the fundamental mobile layout, you'll be able to start adding in embellishments or bigger images for desktop displays.

Your mobile layout assumes a far more vertical design that inspires scrolling, as opposed to the wide landscape of the desktop. If, say, your product web page displays entries in a grid of 3 across on desktops, then usually your mobile layout will display them as only a single column.

Yes, which means that you essentially need to produce several layouts for every web page of your website. Fortunately, a worthwhile website contractor should provide reactive templates that change these designs automatically so you’ll then just need to fine-tune them.

7. Keep Things Aligned

When elements appear sporadically laid across your site it is often due to an alignment issue. Imagine your website on the sheet of graph paper. Individual it into even columns by sketching, for example, six right lines. You now want to ensure that the remaining sides of your elements are distributed and aligned to only these six vertical lines.

8. Keep It Simple

It is said that the best web site design moves unnoticed; it is a poor design that phone calls focus on itself. As stated earlier, the main facet of any website is merely its text message. If you can offer outstanding typography that is a joy to learn, you won’t do much more. Wanting to overdesign your site will just mess and complicate things.

Are the package shadows necessary? The crazy, ornate patterns? A large number of colors? Not probably.

9. Big Open up Spaces

Your articles need room to breathe. White space is the prevailing design choice for modern websites: wide, open up areas of nothingness to pad areas between content. It’s a far more pleasant way to process information, looked after stimulates you to eliminate superfluous text messages and images to keep carefully the site clean.

Get more advice Thought Media is a leading Chicago web design providing professional website development services, and one of the top SEO companies. The agency has worked with hundreds of clients all over the world! Creating high converting website designs, providing reliable website hosting, and successful Search Engine Optimization Marketing campaigns!

Conclusion

Web site design can be considered a sprawling field of technology to learn, ideas to practice, dialects to review, and artistry to understand. Only with experience will all of these components start to make sense, however, you already are well on the way simply by grasping the basics of why is a good website work. I am hoping that guide acts as your launching-off point, which offers you the self-confidence to consider your website into the own hands and build it just how that only a business proprietor knows best.

[humbae]

Whumptober 10: Bruises

The forest was initially dominated by coniferous trees, but as I neared what I estimated would be the coastline, I saw more maples and birches and willows. At least the vegetation proved that my sense of direction had been accurate during the parts of the drive I was awake for, and I had a rough idea of where I was. The bad news was that my feet were taking me further away from civilisation. There were beaches near the suburbs, but outside of them there were only rocky shores and marshy forest beyond them. A beautiful place to live in, and lovely for a Sunday stroll, but for trying to reach any sort of authorities as fast as possible, not so ideal. I had no shoes, no phone, no wallet, and I was wearing green pyjamas made of the thinnest material I had ever rubbed my skin against. I suspected it might even be paper. Not the best guard against the elements. The autumn wasn’t particularly cold, but my bare feet were starting to feel the cooling of the ground quite acutely, in addition to every pinecone and scraggly root that hit my path.

I ascended a wide rock that sloped gently, climbing higher to hopefully get a better view of the environment. As I cleared the tops of the trees, I saw the sky more clearly. Many stars, and the moon hanging near the horizon. I wasn’t savvy enough to tell whether it was rising or setting. It made little difference to me anyway: either I had the whole night in front of me, or could expect the dawn soon. The night would help me stay hidden for longer, though I hadn’t heard Tom take pursuit. But at least in the dark I could see the lights from the suburbs better.

I would probably head towards the houses. If I was careful, I could slip past Tom and the doctor in case they were keeping watch. I doubted anyone in the neighbourhood knew what they were up to. Knock on the nearest door, ask for help, go rescue the person they were keeping prisoner. It sounded like a simple enough course of action. I took my bearings from the rock and started descending towards the lights. They were some distance away, I must’ve run in panic for longer than I realised. I was still sore from grappling with Tom, and the not-at-all-yet-healed stab wound was aching fiercely. My knees were also bruised from the tumble down the stairs by the front door. The material of my pyjama pants was torn away at the site. I looked down at the blood on my knees and missed a step. I tried to regain my equilibrium, but I had too much momentum already. The rock took a turn for the steeper, and I lost all ground beneath my feet. Making an alarmed squeak, I dropped off the edge.

The rolling and bouncing seemed to last forever. I managed to wrap my arms around my head, leaving my elbows to bang against the unyielding surface of the rock. I felt each jolt in my spine, and gave up completely on my poor knees. As I went faster, I started to fear the impending impact with the ground, but I finally caught a bit of luck. What broke my fall was the ocean, further softened by moss and ferns and seaweeds. But after I realised I was alive, I scrambled up in pure shock as the freezing water assaulted my senses.

Gasping for breath, I climbed up from the shallow water, grabbing tufts of grass and sapling trees to pull myself up. When I finally reached firm ground, I lay on the hard rocks and just breathed. And shivered. I knew I had to get out of my wet clothes before they chilled me further, but I was too sore to move. Every hurt of the day and night and preceding week caught up with me in that moment and I had to fight back tears.

My greatest ambition was to help others. It wasn’t very complicated. My life was quite boring on the surface: go to work at the finance department of a medium sized company every day, come home and cook dinner. Maybe watch a bit of TV, train my body, or play a computer game in the evenings. Repeat the next day. What broke the monotone, brought excitement and an element of unpredictability was my additional sense. Whenever I felt something amiss, I would follow it and go see what I could do. I met many different people that way, some just needing someone to talk to at their moment of despair, while others had more tangible problems. On occasion I would invite trouble for myself as well, but so far I had been able to deal with it. It all went wrong when that one person had a knife.

It had seemed like an ordinary evening. I was just going about my day when I felt such a spike of fear that I knew something was happening. I ran to the location and saw a man in the alleyway. He was looking around in utter terror, yelling at the walls. I suspected drugs or psychosis and approached with care. He seemed to calm down when someone was connecting with him, and I relaxed. The knife came out of nowhere. When it sank to my side, we both were looking at each other in surprise. He pulled the weapon out and ran away, while I dropped to the ground and tried to keep my innards in. And that was how I met the woman who called Tom to pick me up.

I dabbed at my side. The wound was bleeding again. It had most likely been stitched shut, but my activities that night had ripped it open at some point. At least there was a bandage around my torso. I kept my hands off it and pulled the shirt over my head. I tried to remember if having the wet garments cling to my cooling skin was worse than having nothing at all to protect me from the nocturnal breeze. I wasn’t much of an outdoorsy person. I enjoyed nature as much as anyone, but I didn’t go on long hikes or any other expeditions. Had I possessed the skills, I would’ve made a fire to dry myself as I was so deep in the forest that I wasn’t worried about the smoke being visible in the night. But as I had no tools, a fire was beyond me.

Rubbing my arms vigorously, I started walking towards what I reckoned was the right direction to reach the houses. My knees were hurting quite a bit now, as were all the other parts of my body. I wondered if I had hit my head tumbling down the rock, but there was really nothing to do about it if I had.

“Try not to die,” I whispered to myself. A bird replied to me with an ugly squawk, which in turn made a flock of smaller birds take flight. I followed their path across the sky, tiny black dots visible against the stars. How easy it would be to spread one’s wings and soar to safety.

“Definitely hit my head,” I muttered to myself as I stumbled on. I considered fashioning some sort of footwear for myself, but again I ran into the problem of not having any materials on hand. Unless I gathered a pile of leaves and tore my pyjama top in half to use it as twine to wrap around them, but I was still hoping to be able to put the shirt back on eventually. The night was getting colder and colder.

[anearthstruckalien]

Giegue & George - viewpoint

As implied (or rather –outright stated even) by its title, this headcanon post will attempt to succinctly discuss how Giegue feels towards George and more importantly, why he feels this way about him.  To this end, the following points will be discussed specifically:  what kind of parent George was and the ‘base feelings’ that resulted from this; the influence of the Psions and how this impacted these ‘base feelings’; and how Giegue feels about George in the present-day.  The main content of this post is under the cut as per usual.

GEORGE AS A PARENT & BASE FEELINGS

It goes without saying that Maria and George were nothing but loving parents (even with some initial misgivings due to the circumstances surrounding their encounter with Giegue) towards Giegue and made sure he knew it in their own ways.  George specifically was the kind of parent that encouraged inquisitiveness and critical thinking… –to question things rather than just taking them at face-value, to seek out answers to unknowns, and to understand the value of accumulating knowledge.  There was this emphasis on getting one to seek and figure out the answers to their own inquiries rather than blatantly giving an answer upfront (where possible of course) whether that be a simple matter of curiousity or gaining an understanding of why what he did might have been wrong; some amount of guidance might have been offered at times, but ultimately it was up to the individual to obtain answers.

As a result, this made for a more adaptive and open-ended kind of parenting that could be rather stern at some points BUT ultimately was never harsh and especially not void of affection.  In fact, though George did spend a good chunk of his time attempting to learn about and better understand the Psions (aka the very aliens that had abducted himself and Maria) which itself culminated in the theft of vital information from them… it certainly wasn’t all-consuming of his time.  Rather, despite the circumstances surrounding all of this to begin with, George made sure to participate in family life which (relative to Giegue specifically) ranged from playing games to indulging Giegue’s creativity to even letting Giegue observe or help out (in small ways) whenever he would engage in his hobby of invention; all of this and more were forms of affection that stood apart from more ‘obvious’ manifestations of it such as hugs or verbal expressions of such a thing.

Altogether, this produced positive experiences with George (prior to his escape which itself is discussed HERE) for Giegue and thus allowed for the formation of a genuine emotional attachment to him.  In short, though he always was closer to Maria (even before said escape), Giegue still grew to love George for the time spent prior to the escape.  In fact, it is unconsciously because of George that Giegue even bothered with learning about how to build things –how to engineer them, despite it not being a part of the purpose set out for him.  And those knowledge-seeking and critical-thinking practices that were encouraged have continued to persist into the present.  George might not have been as significant as Maria was to Giegue, but he was still important to him nonetheless.

INFLUENCE OF THE PSIONS

And so, suffice it to say… after the events of George’s escape from the research facility (when Giegue was 4-5 years old), to say that Giegue was merely upset about it would have been a massive understatement.  In fact, that entire sequence of events left him feeling rather hurt, betrayed, and a little heartbroken thereby also becoming one of the worst memories that he has and is associated with the research facility… among various other negative experiences that he endured at said location.  AND while initially, the impact that this had on Giegue’s feelings towards George were somewhat mitigated by Maria’s continued love, support, and affection during his subsequent time spent in quarantine (as briefly mentioned on this blog’s EARLY HISTORY PAGE), the pain that George’s escape had caused ended up re-emerging when Maria was removed from the experiment (when Giegue was 10-11 years old) which itself was painful and heartbreaking in its own right.

This in turn, made it easy for those feelings of his to become distorted by both his own unresolved and utterly disregarded (no Psion has ever shown any empathy towards him) pain and heartbreak over these events AND the independent influence of the Psion species themselves.  There are several ways in which this influence manifested and worked to alter Giegue’s feelings towards George from their ‘base’ form, but the manifestations that are most worth noting for their impact in this context are as follows:

a. the consequences of George’s escape; from being stuck into quarantine to Maria’s eventual removal from the experiment (that is, she was killed by the Psions) and right down to even the intensive surveillance and control of Giegue’s activities during his integration into society—which is mentioned on this blog’s EARLY HISTORY PAGE—the consequences of Giegue’s own role in George’s escape were designed to make a point that would not easily be forgotten by the one experiencing them.

In other words, the Psion superiors (and other relevant parties handling this) ensured that 3 key goals were established by doing what is ‘rational’ and enforcing these consequences:  ensuring that Giegue knew and understood why that his own actions were ‘wrong’; ensuring that Giegue adequately understood how dangerous the implications of George’s successful theft of information is (as further discussed in THIS POST); and serving as a way of deterring Giegue from stepping out-of-line in such a ‘dangerous’ and ‘irrational’ way again.

These were unpleasant experiences for him (without a doubt) and as a result, Giegue ended up being hurt as well as bitter and resentful of George’s actions (and thus George himself as well) preceding the escape (learning something that he shouldn’t have and stealing it) and during its progression.  That is, Giegue ended up associating George himself with these consequences whereas the strongest George-consequence association was that of Maria basically being killed off by the Psion species.  And this in turn, made it rather difficult to feel any way about George that didn’t involve bitterness and resentment mixed into it.

b. distortion of his own views on humans; because Giegue was exposed to mostly positive experiences with humans from a very young age and through his adoptive human parents, his opinion of humans as a whole used to be notably positive (in a naive kinda way due to his age at the time)… –BUT after everything with his adoptive human parents fell apart and left him alone in Psion society, this opinion was slowly warped to almost its precise opposite.

In general, Psion society viewed the human species as ‘weak’, ‘irrational’, and ‘inferior’… –as ‘lower life-forms’ whose only potential danger lied in simply how determined humanity could be in conjunction with a capacity for going to extremes (as further elaborated upon in THIS POST).  However, George’s successful theft of important information from the Psions made what might have otherwise been just a potential danger into something that could more tangibly occur.  Humanity became something that ‘deserved’ to be wiped out for its own ‘nature’ alone and that doing so would in fact equate to ‘doing the universe itself a favour’.  AND Giegue himself became someone that attempted to eradicate the entire human race for these very reasons; to stop a potential threat before it actually became one.

That is, because Giegue was rather intensively exposed to this negative viewpoint of humanity from a young and still-impressionable age for approximately 90 years, his own views of humanity ended up being distorted from their original form and into something that over-emphasized and focused in on what’s bad about humanity and why they ‘deserve’ to be wiped out for it rather than trying to view humanity in a more fair and objective way instead (as he is now trying to do in the present-time of this blog).

As a result, when those feelings of bitterness and resentment mentioned in the previous point intersected with this negative viewpoint of humanity, because George is a human… –these feelings ended up being notably amplified and further entangled in Giegue’s ‘base feelings’ towards him.  Before concluding this point entirely, I think that it is worth noting that much like the alterations in how he feels about George, this distortion of his views on humanity DID NOT entirely toss out what he felt before --rather it all just mixed in and subsequently twisted into something that is both negative and marked by an inner-conflict (deep-down and only truly pulled to the forefront of his conscious mind in Mother 1) over this negativity at the same time.

c. the pressures of Psion society; as implied by this point’s title, Giegue was pressured and influenced by his own species (the Psion superiors especially) to conform to their standards and expectations (the extent of this is elaborated upon in THIS POST) while emphasizing a loyalty to the Psion species above all else, no matter who else is out there.  And because Giegue was rather generally sensitive to the opinions and standards of others, he also ended up being especially susceptible to this and thus tried his best to conform accordingly (as alluded to in THIS POST).

The end result of this was that in becoming more so like the other members of Psion society (or trying his best to at least), Giegue was also inadvertently distanced from non-Psions in general.  That Giegue was eventually tasked with eradicating the human species on Earth only further drove-in that distancing from non-Psion species, George included.

PRESENT FEELINGS TOWARDS GEORGE

Through the sequence of events that occurred in both Mother 1 and Mother 2 as well as the time that was spent thinking everything through in Magicant afterwards (post-Mother 2), Giegue has effectively learned from his own mistakes with those being:  suppressing his own emotions rather than permitting himself to entirely feel and address them accordingly; and conforming to gain social approval and make others happy to the point of ignoring and suppressing a truer sense of self.  And because he has also come to the conclusion that the Psions were wrong and that he was tricked by them, Giegue has resolved not only to self-improve and move beyond what he used to be BUT to also be more fair in how he views and treats humans –to see the good in them rather than just the bad.

The impact that this has had on his feelings towards George is that the bitterness and resentment (as mentioned in the previous section) have faded away somewhat, but still remain to an extent due to the unresolved nature of the feelings surrounding George’s escape.  In fact, the best way to describe how Giegue currently feels towards George would be that his feelings are split right down the middle; there is a strong inner-conflict centered around a struggle between two different perspectives on the events that occurred during George’s escape.

To elaborate, Giegue rationally knows and understands that above all else, George meant no harm with any of his actions (whether it be that which preceded the escape or the events the ended up occurring during its progression) and that perhaps it was the rational thing to do… –to leave Giegue himself and Maria behind when a good opportunity for getting away arose, especially since this followed an instance where he was almost killed by a Psion guard at the research facility.  Giegue knows that he has little cause to be so bitter or resentful of George in this light BUT at the same time, he cannot simply ‘brush-off’ how hurt he felt (and still feels) about that entire situation.

It isn’t really possible for Giegue to truly ignore the feelings of betrayal, abandonment, and slight heartbreak attached to the end result and following consequences of George’s escape.  And because these feelings are so intense and have been sitting unresolved within him for so long, it’s quite difficult for him to move beyond it.  He wants to move on, but as of now cannot manage to do so yet.  There’s a lot of other emotional issues that he has and make it difficult to even begin to address something that’s so heavily emotionally-charged let alone disentangle and work through it all.  However, at the core of it all Giegue does still care about George and because of that will eventually manage to move beyond this in the future; it is because of what was that he wants to move on and through the sheer force of his own determination will eventually manage to do so.

[aion-rsa]

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 6 Review: Foresight

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This My Hero Academia review contains spoilers.

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 6

“It takes time to create something big…”

Imposter syndrome is a real condition that takes over people and it seems like it’d be incredibly prevalent in a world like My Hero Academia where the population is conditioned to become heroes from a young age. My Hero Academia frequently shows characters grow stronger, but it’s not often that it dwells on their inner turmoil on whether they’re worthy of the praise and status that society gives them. “Foresight” centers around Momo Yaoyorozu and Itsuka Kendo, two strong-willed heroes from Class A and B, who both experience moments where they question their abilities. Yet these doubts are exactly what push them to work so hard and prove that they are the very heroes that they aspire to be. Patience is the ultimate virtue here, whether it’s through the use of Momo’s Creation Quirk or the much larger game of chess that’s in motion.

This season of My Hero Academia is even somewhat framed about Hitoshi Shinso, a prospective hero student who’s spent most of his time lost in data and strategy rather than tangible experience out in the real world against villains. There’s debate over whether Shinso “belongs,” yet his perseverance has already started to pay off and prove that he’s just as likely to win this competition as anyone else. “Foresight” is a My Hero Academia episode that’s more concerned about strategy and preparation than any other entry from this season and it produces an absolutely electric battle that’s full of surprises until its final moments.

I was initially apprehensive over “Foresight” and how it might have just felt like the extension to the fight that was started back in “Operation New Improv Moves.” Battles that are drawn out over several episodes have a lot more to prove, but “Foresight” quickly differentiates itself from the previous episode once Class B fully moves into “Phase B.” The central players shift and this feels like a completely different showdown.

Momo Yaoyorozu has always floated in the background of My Hero Academia and she hasn’t gotten to headline many missions, despite the extreme versatility of her Creation Quirk. “Foresight” is the Yaoyorozu celebration that the character deserves and it quickly becomes one of her best episodes. Yaoyorozu wrestles with her own insecurities as well as Class B’s perception of her, which fuels her to extensively plan the perfect strategy for this battle. However,  Class B’s Itsuka Kendo is equally equipped for whatever Class A throws at her and her team. The collective foresight from both of these characters technically leads to the outcome of this battle visualized and determined before the first strike even gets thrown back in the previous episode.

Shihai Kuroiro previously led Class B with a strategy that was dependent on darkness, but Kinoko Komori and her Mushroom Quirk turn to an approach that thrives on light. There’s not much to this character, but her design and the chaotic energy that she exudes just works on every level. “Foresight” becomes an excellent opportunity for the new character to really let loose and make a strong impression. My Hero Academia is never a slouch when it comes to obscure character design details and Kinoko Komori is such an embodiment of mushrooms that even her eyes are designed like the caps of fungi. It’s excellent. She needs to be put up against Himiko Toga so that the madness between the two of them can just fly.

Komori’s powers create a “ground is lava” type epidemic where most of the environment becomes infected with fungi. Previously valuable Class A contenders like Tokoyami need to temporarily recede into the background, although it’s entertaining to see Invisible Girl gain some sort of shape because she’s covered with mushrooms. Class B’s Manga Fukudashi also adds more lunacy to the mix with his highly unusual Quirk that produces destructive onomatopoeia. This leaves Class A on the defense for most of the first act as they struggle to adapt to both Kinoko and Manga’s invasive Quirks that pollute the battlefield. 

Komori and her Mushroom Quirk do a lot of the heavy lifting here, but “Foresight” really emphasizes the value of Kendo on her team. She’s the mastermind behind these different strategies and the fact that she even considers such a robust Plan B demonstrates how seriously she views this competition and that she’s not the type that just rushes into battle. It’s become a regular occurrence this season, but it’s still effective that Kendo actively thinks back to Yaoyorozu’s performance in season two’s Sports Festival as precedent for how she’ll respond to pressure. So often this series can turn into a brute display of powerful Quirks and so it’s deeply appreciated that every battle in the Joint Training Arc has heavily revolved around strategy and not which Quirk is strongest, but rather their smartest application to create the perfect counterattack.

This philosophy fuels the second half of the episode once Class B successfully isolates Yaoyorozu from her team. Kendo rightfully identifies Yaoyorozu as their biggest threat, which makes this a smart strategy, but also one that works against Class B since it also acknowledges just how dangerous Yaoyorozu can be. She feels a certain level of insecurity as she clashes against Kendo, but it becomes the necessary catalyst to push her past her breaking point. Their encounter becomes much more personal, both in terms of the intimate nature of their blows as well as the pride and reputation that’s attached to Kendo and Yaoyorozu’s statuses at school.

Yaoyorozu and Kendo trade physical blows, but their fight is more a battle of the minds as they try to get one step ahead of the other in order to cultivate the winning strategy. This fight boils down to a game of chicken in regards to how destructive Yaoyorozu will go with her plan and if Kendo has underestimated her opponent in this department. “Foresight” again defies expectations when Yaoyorozu launches support items for her team out of her cannon. It’s a development that’s so much more creative and exciting than if she were to launch a barrage of artillery at Kendo. It’s the perfect resolution that doesn’t just reflect Yaoyorozu’s intelligence, but it’s also a strategy that values her entire team, supports Tokoyami and Hagakure, and eliminates any ego from the equation.

Read more

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Yaoyorozu’s plan is brilliant and it would be enough to win in most scenarios, but Class B manages to turn the tables on everyone in what’s a fitting example of Kendo’s intense perseverance. It ultimately feels right that it’s Class B that secures the win and gets their first victory of the Joint Training Arc. Everyone remains so impressed with Class A’s abilities, especially in regards to Yaoyorozu, that they still get to bask in some of their opponents’ glow. Class A aren’t the victors, but they certainly don’t feel like losers either. No one is left disappointed with the team’s performance and if anything they now have even more confidence in Yaoyorozu’s ability as a natural leader. 

“Foresight” is a surprise delight and an early highlight of My Hero Academia’s action packed fifth season. There’s certainly a level of fatigue that can set in with episodes that largely revolve around combat, yet “Foresight” proves that this isn’t a problem when there’s enough creativity around the execution of battles and how these characters come together and confront each other.  This is another satisfying installment that allows underserviced supporting characters to shine and it effectively shares the wealth with its heroes. It’s a strong testament to the importance of teamwork and how no hero from either team is infallible. My Hero Academia is still early into its Joint Training Arc, but there’s bound to be new pressure on the next episode’s showdown now that the score is tied between Class A and B. 

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[yeoldontknow]

Saturn: Parallels

Author: @bread-jinie as part of The Heavens - a series of ongoing one shots with @knockknocksoosthere and @iwonchubebe Creative Content Contributors: @everybodykpops (who is creating GORGEOUS moodboards for the series) Rating: PG Genre: angst Word Count: 2,341

In the center of Saturn’s hexagonal storm, on the crystalline platform of Aevum citadel, Kyungsoo sits in front of Aetas Gate and listens. For now, he is alone, and he prefers it to be this way. When he can exist like this, solitary and uninterrupted, he lets himself age backward and forward, born from nothing and no-when.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been kneeling, eyes closed and palms turned upward, but the joints in his knees have pushed beyond the ache, numb now to most things, even touch. Each gust of wind from the storm sends time dust cascading over Kyungsoo’s skin, makes the hair on his arms stand on end as if reaching up to collect it and gather it into the temporal atlas mapped along his pores.

Cursed to live at such great heights, he is often asked what he sees. The citadel extends high above the clouds, its spiral staircase leading down and down into the earth making the time chamber itself appear to hover above the rocky terrain, exalted. Being able to see above the storm, they say, must be magnificent. Can he see beyond Titan? Can he see beyond the ice rings? Surely, the sky itself must be awe inspiring, the sight of each moon glorious and breathtaking? All of this is true. Visually, the true terrain and atmosphere of Saturn is unprecedented, perfect in all its imperfections, and, indeed, he can see it all.

He can see, but instead, he listens.

Areas Gate is impossibly tall and equally as wide, imposing and almost threatening in its stature. The doors are golden, glistening and often blinding in the light of the sun, and inlayed with the story of Kyungsoo’s creation. Along its sides, hundreds of keyholes are carved into the stone, each lock forbidden to be turned and each bringing about a threat more heinous than the last.

One to turn back time, one to stop it; one to move time forward, and one to make time cease to exist at all. In this way, it is not so much the gate that he guards as the locks, preventing anyone from opening the doors at all.

For beyond the gate lies everything, the frayed strands of time itself; a void consumed with choices made and choices ignored, tangential timelines in both the past and future tense. It’s loud behind the these doors, cacophonous, terrifying. Every wh- question lives and dies behind the gate, constant, cosmic accidents extending onwards into infinity. The din of the void is impossible to ignore, though some moments are louder than others: the Big Bang resonates as a deep, unruly baritone; the tails of comets spitting debris as a high pitched whistle; the endless scream of the flames from near and distant stars.

The day Franz Ferdinand died.

The day you said you loved him.

The day Yixing begged for a different past.

Today, that is what he hears the loudest, echoing over all the rest. Kyungsoo scowls, furrowing his brow at the sound of Yixing’s pleas. It takes focus to make sense of them, the sheer noise of the words difficult to bear and challenging to decipher. Perhaps, most bewildering of all is that he’s heard them too many times, and often not from even from Yixing’s tongue.

Today, they belong to Yixing, but yesterday they were Jongdae’s wild words. The day before that, Baekhyun had screamed them into citadel, carving his desperation into the glass with the sharp knife of his tongue. As the voices blur together, Kyungsoo wonders if it is time that bends around Yixing’s actions, or, perhaps, if it is his own guilt that makes this moment both horrible and seemingly endless. The problem, he knows, is that it could have happened to anyone.

The problem is that it could have happened to him, but his answer still would have been the same.

Even with his eyes closed, Kyungsoo could feel Yixing behind him.

Usually, Yixing was a strong presence, the kind that looms out of the dark and demands attention. Usually, his presence was a comfort, oddly warm and gentle for someone pushed so far into the black of space. That day, Yixing felt menacing, a decaying shadow of turmoil seething behind his back. Broken, he thinks now, shattered beyond repair, by back then the feeling of it was still raw, still tangible.

Back then, he could still be fixed.

‘I rarely have guests,’ Kyungsoo said calmly, turning his head to eye his brother conspicuously.

The even intonation of his voice wasn't strong enough to pull Yixing’s eyes from the door, his gaze hungry, panicked, and rendered speechless when confronted with the unbearable greatness of eternity.

Kyungsoo brought his gaze back to the door, brow furrowing in scrutiny. Rarely could he see it with his eyes wide open. ‘Yes,’ he began, hoping to put into words all Yixing could not, ‘I daresay there is something terribly...uneasy about it, isn’t there?’

A heavy handed statement, he knew, but a balm nonetheless.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing it,’ Yixing said, stepping to come beside his brother, expression stricken.

Cocking his head to the side, Kyungsoo considered this statement. ‘I don’t think it’s meant to be a comfort,’ he mused with a smirk. ‘Perhaps that’s why I always regard it with my eyes closed.’

Finally tearing his eyes from the gate, Yixing looked down at his feet and released a heavy sigh. ‘You must know why I’m here, brother.’

‘I’ve drawn my own conclusions, yes,’ Kyungsoo nodded, unafraid to continue gazing at his brother.

‘So you’ve heard the whispers?’ An imposing question, one heavy with meaning and implication; a question that made Kyungsoo sad.

‘From beyond the door?’ he clarified with a soft frown. ‘No, it is forbidden to listen to one’s own time.’

Yixing glanced at him then, ashamed. ‘But you know?’

‘Only because it’s not hard to guess,’ he said, offering Yixing a sympathetic smile.

A tense silence fell between them, one that smelled like the iron of bloodshed and the salt of tears. The room became heavy with it, with the knowledge and the memory of war compressing them into unrecognizable shapes.

‘I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t desperate,’ Yixing whispered eventually, eyes boring into Kyungsoo’s with all his unasked, and unanswered, questions.

Even with his eyes closed, he sensed it. Yixing’s desire preceded him, entered the room long before he did, while his weary body was still climbing the stairs. Kyungsoo knew it was agony for Yixing to even ask, felt burdened by thought, but still he would try.

Out of love and hope, he would still try.

‘You must know I consider your bravery unprecedented,’ he said, bringing a hand to Yixing’s cheek in comfort.

Yixing reclined into the touch, perhaps the first loving connection he'd had in months. Still, he frowned in confusion. ‘Bravery?’

Kyungsoo hummed in response, regarding the totality of his brother with a torn heart. The light had gone from Yixing’s eyes, the once sparkling brown irises now a sickly, gangrenous black. His bottom lip was red, too red, the kind of red that comes from anxious teeth and a clenched jaw. Kyungsoo didn't dare look at his brother’s hands, unable to bear witness to what rested beneath his fingernails.

‘To have suffered so much loss,’ he explained, words warm and free of judgement, ‘yet still are willing to risk everything that is left. Coming here. Asking me to break a taboo.’

Yixing scoffed, a metallic and empty noise that turned him momentarily into something grotesque. ‘Some would say this is merely survival. The frantic act of an animal driven to the brink of extinction.’

‘No,’ Kyungsoo affirmed, suddenly serious. ‘You still cling to faith. That’s very brave.’

Once more, silence befell them, and Kyungsoo lowered his hand to fondle the chain of keys cinched around his waist. A nervous habit, one that rarely brought comfort, one that felt like fondling time itself, yet was impossible to break just the same.

‘Kyungsoo,’ Yixing said, gaze falling to Kyungsoo’s anxious hand and the assortment of golden keys. ‘Please.’

‘Say it,’ he urged, watching his brother close his eyes in anticipation of his question - in anticipation of the pain. ‘You’ve come all this way with it behind your lips. Satisfy your heart.’

‘Touch another timeline. For me, Soo,’ he begged, words spilling out of him, unbridled and hopeful, using the cherished  nickname to will him into action. ‘Make it so Pluto was never destroyed.’

He surged forward then, hands gripping the collar of Kyungsoo’s robes, frantic and inconsolable. ‘Bring my people back,’ he whispered, words and eyes wet with agony.

‘I love you, Yixing,’ Kyungsoo said softly, resting his forehead gently against his brother’s. ‘But I cannot do this.’

They both died that day, he thinks. His refusal pulled at something in his heart, severed all that was good in his veins and forced him to bleed inwardly in grief. And Yixing, already dead in so many ways, started to watch the last flickers of hope fade before his eyes.

‘You made me stand here and beg? Yet still you refuse?’ Yixing whimpered, appalled yet unable to be angry.

Easing himself from Yixing’s grip, Kyungsoo stepped away with a sigh. ‘You knew before you even arrived what my answer would be,’ he said, voice tight. ‘I needed you to ask so you could hear it.’

Always, he knew, it is hard to reconcile time has a creation. Time itself is the gift of creation, but even creation has a partner in destruction if rules are not obeyed. As the guardian of time, it is his duty to protect it, foster it, nurture it. He can never touch it, never change it, never end it. These are his rules: three hundred taboos that must never broken at risk of destruction to all.

Yixing knew this, always knew this, yet still he would not give up.

‘You’re the only one who understands this solitude,’ he hissed, voice turning sour and spiteful.

‘I was born cursed for this,’ Kyungsoo countered, crossing his arms defensively. ‘I don’t think it’s the same.’

‘Am I not more damned than you?’ Yixing exclaimed, thrusting his arms in the air as he began to pace. ‘I’ve lost everything!’

‘And I have everything,’ Kyungsoo shouted, matching his brother’s tone, ‘but I cannot touch it! None of it! Neither time, nor my own land. I am forbidden to leave this door.’ At this, he thrust his fingers out towards the door in fury. ‘I get to have my reprieve only when we meet - a business meeting! Coming back here to continue spinning on in loneliness.’

From birth he had been fated for it, the lonely guardian of time and nothing else. Rarely did it bother him to toil away in loneliness, a man of ice on a planet just as distant and cold, but seeing Yixing this way reminded him of all the things he kept locked away behind the gate of his heart.

‘Then help me!’ Yixing pleaded, pressing his fingers into his chest in urgency. ‘I promise I will visit more -’

‘My brother,’ Kyungsoo snapped, cutting him off, ‘I can’t.’ Closing his eyes, he steeled his strength and softened his soul. ‘You know I wish I could. I never want anyone to suffer this loneliness, least of all you.’

Kyungsoo may never know what moved him then, but Yixing fell into him, crumpled into a broken thing against his chest. He held him then, while Yixing sobbed, ugly and hard, into the cloth of his robes. Grief consumed him, grief for the loss of his planet and grief for the loss of hope, and it was then that Kyungsoo saw his brother change. Yixing was hardening, withering, wilting and morphing into something he was never meant to be.

Even on the cold rock of Pluto, Yixing was always as bright as the Sun, and somehow even kinder, more welcoming. He loved at an impossible depth, nurtured his brothers and his people to impossible strengths - moving, is what the people called him. Someone who moved men to action and moved hearts to feeling.

In his arms, Yixing died. He died, and then he lived as he was never meant to: cold and empty and vengeful.

‘You know I would have been there had I…’

Kyungsoo’s sentence fades, a meaningless truism that felt more like a platitude than a comfort.

‘You still could,’ Yixing breathed into his shoulder, choked and hot.

‘I can’t,’ Kyungsoo sighed, holding his brother a little tighter as the air became tense with tenses. ‘You know why I can’t.’

‘Sir.’

Kyungsoo bristles, the sound of Turnus’ voice interrupting the noise of memory and time. For several moments, he remains completely still, letting the echoes of Yixing’s sob dissolve and fade beneath din. In his chest, his heart races, fights to be free and departed, off in a place that does not feel like a cage.

‘Are you listening to her again?’ Turnus asks, curious but attempting not to pry. Behind Kyungsoo, he shifts his weight from foot to foot, anxious to start his hours as guardian.

Kyungsoo smiles, straining his ears for your voice. You, a formless thing he hears only in the distance. Sometimes, he hears your wedding day. Other times, he hears your laugh of joy the day you learned to drive. Most times, he simply hears you breathe, existing somewhere and somewhen far away from him.

‘Not today,’ he says, trying not to sound sad. Idly, his fingers reach for his keys, stroking the skeletal shape of their bones.

‘You’ll be late if you don’t hurry,’ Turnus says, gently. ‘Your brothers will wonder where you are.’

Kyungsoo smiles, bitterly. ‘I have time.’

He means it as a joke, but his smile does not come. Instead, his features remain troubled, lines forming on his face as the din grows louder.

And even with his eyes closed, he can sense it:

Doom.

[lmhwanwoong]

★ STAR BRIGHT callback audition ★

KT Entertainment building || Park Jinwoo Rap: Nosedive || Dynamic Duo x Chen || 0:20-0:50 Dance: Collapse || Eminem (Esentrik Remix) || 0:10-0:38

Impossible was one way to say it, but it obviously didn’t apply to the actual facts of the current situation. Incomprehensible was a much more tangible and sensible word to use.

How someone had looked at what Jinwoo perceived to be his mess of an audition tape and especially the form preceding it was a mystery to him -- now that he thought back on it, hadn’t he in his desperation to make himself seem like he was worth more than he actually was added the most random special talents to make up for the fact that he practically had none? Why, honestly, why on earth had he listed his ability to sleep anywhere and at any time as a talent? What KT had seen in him and his idiocy, he wasn’t sure, but there had to be something, he supposed, and this time he was determined to not screw up even further.

Although he had listed NOVA as his dream company, maybe even found salvation and motivation in the poster from the company, when it came down to it, it didn’t really matter. The only thing he was vehemently determined on was that Triple Crown was not the company he would audition for, maybe out of a stubborn sense of pride to not follow the same path as the one who had inspired him to aim to become an idol in the first place. But if push came to shove and TRC had truly called him in for a further audition, who was he to deny it? He was small and insignificant and didn’t have the right to pick and choose as he pleased. He didn’t possess the talent that allowed him such arrogance. In the first place he had never even anticipated to make it past the first round, and some regrets of his actions in the past week were starting to form within him. But what could he do? He wouldn’t be able to face that person if he tried and screwed up. It was better that he didn’t know.

It was the first time he had ever been this close, and for some reason the KT building seemed so overwhelmingly big and imposing, and it felt almost terrifying to enter it.

Of all the things he expected to face on this day, certainly it wasn’t an awkwardness quite on par with this one. It only took a single glance to locate him, and although Jinwoo was at first surprised, he supposed it was always a possibility. He knew he fucked up. Big time. By god did he know. When Minhyuk’s eyes located him as well, he simply froze in his spot, uncertain of what to do; should he put up his usual carefree personality and go over to sit with the other? Pretend like nothing had happened? Or should he apologise for not telling the truth? Unfortunately a decision was made for him, the moment Minhyuk turned away his head, he knew that the other didn’t want him to approach. Despite how nervous he had just been, how the lyrics he had prepared had been filling his mind, how his dance steps were running on repeat within his mind’s theatre, for a second all of that came to a halt, and there was only one thing he could think of: Minjyuk was mad at him. And rightfully so. Jinwoo could do nothing but lower his head and seat himself in a chair some way off his friend, if he even had the right to call himself with such terms anymore.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that. As much as he wanted to simply go over and apologise, say that he had been an idiot, acknowledge that he should have been honest and just said that he went as well, he had no time to think about Minhyuk and no time to worry about the other either. His feet were hurting, his whole body in fact was aching, and he had to put a band-aid on the blister that had formed on his heel after he had invaded the dance school in the past couple of days. But if anything would have to pull this one home, it was his dance. He couldn’t rely on his rap to be anything but the opening course.

When his name was called, Jinwoo couldn’t really tell if his heart stood still or was beating with double its usual pace. It felt as though his awareness had left his body as he stepped through the doors, eyes yet again locking on his dance school friend, but this time purely subconsciously. His body felt stiff as he walked into the middle of the room and faced the crowd, a much larger one than he had anticipated, and a face he knew to be Katie Lee herself. FIrst thing first, he bowed two times, one left and one right, and then a third one straight at the company CEO. If he did this exactly as he had rehearsed, it would be all fine. He had to do this.

“My name is Park Jinwoo,” he introduced himself although they were most certainly already more than aware of his name by now. This time he couldn’t just be dismissed as one application amongst many, barely capable of standing out, because bar himself and Minhyuk he had only noticed four other people seated in or entering the room. But nonetheless it would be outright rude to not face not only his seniors in life, but also people of such a position without even bothering to inform them of his name. “I’m very thankful to have been called in today.” Perhaps a bit stiff and maybe too formal his words were, but they were truly how he felt. Until now he had solely been words, but now it was actually time to show them what he was made of, prove to them why they had made the right decision in picking him for a callback audition.

Was it the right decision? He couldn’t tell for certain, but he had to believe in it for now. The fact that KT Entertainment were known for having more focus on singing over rapping made him question why they had shown interest in someone like him who had explicitly made it clear that he couldn’t sing, as was it extremely nerve wrecking to have the people behind masterful dancers such as LC9 judge him, but he had to believe in them, and first and foremost in himself. “Since I was talking about both my rap and my dance in my interview, those are the two skills I will show you today. My teacher choreographed this dance especially for me over the past couple of months, and I will be showing a bit of it.”

He already knew the fact that it wasn’t his own work would probably count below other more creative dancers, but Jinwoo only really did in freestyle, and he greatly feared that if he went in without a plan, his mind would shut down and he would be standing there without anything to show. This was for the better. Connecting his portable speakers to his phone, he started the mix he had created especially for the occasion, precisely timed one minute with the silent shift he had edited in between the two songs to make the switch seem more natural and give him time to catch his breath again.

As the first few tunes of Nosedive began playing, he let out his voice for the bit he had carefully chosen. If anything, Jinwoo picked the songs he practised from their lyrics, and this small bit was the very part of the song that spoke to him the most. He firmly believed that the best performance was given with lyrics you truly believed in. With how sore his throat had been this morning when he woke up, he felt really confident in how smoothly the words came out. It was a slow beat that he had picked to calm down his nerves before the shift to the much more fast paced dance break took over.

“I don’t wanna break down Should I just endure and disappear? It’s the price of holding it all in”

Pouring his heart into the lyrics, Jinwoo exhaled and let the two second silence take over, keeping his eyes locked on the floor and his body still and relaxed. Shortly after the powerful sounds of Eminem’s voice remixed made their way into the room, and the dancer in him took over with his powerful movements to dominate the room. He was nervous. He was nervous as hell. But when it truly came down to it, it wasn’t the first time he had stood before an audience and a panel that would judge him, far from. Let it be KT or any random dance competition: no matter who, he was going to show them all that Park Jinwoo existed in this time and place.

At this very moment, he was himself, and not just one random individual flowing in the stream of the masses. He existed.

As the beat marked the end of his segment and the speakers went quiet, Jinwoo’s chest rose a couple of times in controlled breathing as he took a moment to gather himself. A dance routine of around 30 seconds was not going to be enough to sent him into disarray no matter how powerful, but he still couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by everything. But as long as he was in here, he couldn’t show his concern and insecurity. With another bow he finished off the segment they had allowed him, one single minute having felt like an eternity while it lasted, but now that it was over, it had passed in nothing but the blink of an eye. Time perception was a scary thing.

“Thank you for having me today.”

[lovehoperomance]

Farewell to the boy who broke my heart. You will not break my will too.

You are the phantom limb I never asked for. There’s no physical connection, no tangible memory of you to hold onto. I’m holding onto a gap in my life and not what was there when you filled it. I can’t even tell myself I miss you because I know it’s not strictly true. How can you miss a ghost? How can you miss somebody who flitted in and out of your whenever it took their fancy? You showed me I was special. You showed me I was worthy of your protection, your understanding. You took a lonely and distant non-believer and you turned her into a star just waiting to ignite. You gave me what no one had given in my life, you gave me a place to lay my thoughts down, no holds barred. A place where they would be safe and held dear until I was ready to return to them again. That place was with you. Those thoughts belonged to the two of us and the midnight conversations we had, the essays you cherished and the words you gave me, so simple, so perfect. As if you understood the pain that bled from my fingertips into my phone.  I gave you my soul and in return, you gave me your acceptance.

I can’t say you were my first love and I definitely wasn’t yours but there was something that drew us back to each other time and again. When I had long removed faith from my body and done away with trust, you installed it anew. When you had reached the end of your tether and decided you had no need of me anymore, I showed you how bright I could shine. I showed you how strong I could be when you needed me most. You weren’t in awe of me often but when you were, those were the moments I felt most alive.

Your music lived within me, your name was a constant promise on my lips. I thought we had a fate written in the stars and someday when everything aligned, you’d finally be mine the same way I’d always been yours. I used to think it was chemistry that held us together. We burned brighter than the sun in ways that no one else could see. We were the social outcasts, the isolated, the ones you invite to the party but never draw into the centre. We painted happiness on our downturned lips and found ourselves walking through life with fear controlling our steps. You understood it. The panic. The warped idea of self-worth. The guilt. You gave me a reason to get up, to get going. You showed me that I am a mystery to be unfolded, a pleasure to be enjoyed privately and not publicly the way I’d always dreamed. You told me which boys were worth my time and which ones weren’t. You valiantly offered to defend my honour once or twice and once or twice I misconstrued your actions as jealousy.

You were jealous. Once. The one time I found my wings and gently unfurled them. You saw the potential, the brightness of my being in its full capacity and you wanted. But cowardice shows itself in many ways and yours shone that very year. You took a vow of silence and broke it just in time to break my heart. “Someday” you told me as you admitted you’d moved on. As if you too believed that someday our fates would be just right, that eventually the time for us would arrive. I buried that promise in my garden and watered it every day for years, hoping against hope that if I just held on, if I just believed in the tiniest bud of potential, someday it would sprout leaves. Someday the sun would shine down upon it and it would finally grow.

But you kept me there, in your greenhouse prison, where nothing lived and nothing died, for years at a time. You never let go of my hand but you could never really seem to hold onto it either. I was your corpse of a bride, your ghost, wasting away at your side, waiting for you to come back and unearth me. Waiting for you to pull me out from beneath the new life you’d buried me under.

The first time I looked at you, I thought “nothing special.” I guess it set a precedent for us. I was wrong then and I was wrong when I thought you’d always keep me safe from harm. You protected me from everyone but yourself. It’s been three months since I told you goodbye for good and sometimes when I think on it really hard, I feel like my world has frosted over. But that’s the thing. I don’t miss you in the mornings, I don’t miss you in the afternoons. I miss you when it’s dark and quiet, when all that’s left are the thoughts I just can’t seem to run from.  And so I wonder if it’s you that I miss or the way that you made me feel.

Because you weren’t real to me, you couldn’t have been. The same way I never was to you. I spent my time avoiding your eyes, scared of what I might find there and you spent that time looking straight through me. You were my best friend in some ways, my biggest heartbreak in others but mostly, you were the first and only boy I ever trusted with the real me. The unfiltered, unedited, unapologetic me. You saw my insecurities and you watched me shed them. You heard my cries and saw my heart break way too many times to pretend that I wasn’t anything apart from irreversibly broken.

Once upon a time, a child masquerading as a woman thought that that might make you love me more, that it might make you love me the most in the end. I was fifty shakes of fucked up but so were you and I never pretended to be anything else. I was a train, almost always derailed but I got back on the tracks every time you came into view. I wanted to be someone who could inspire you, I didn’t want to be another woman in your life who drained of your vigour.

I guess, deep down I thought you could love someone with mercy, that you could love them just because they deserved it and it’s taken me this long to admit that I did; I do. I made myself the support person you needed me to be and I drained away the parts of myself that pushed you away in the beginning. I forgave you your faults and I tried to forget the ways you neglected me. I held onto that little bud of a plant, that hope of ‘someday’ and I became a better friend for it. To prove to you and perhaps to myself that falling in love with a hopeless friend isn’t so hopeless after all. I deserved your love, your attention and every moment I ever imagined in my head. I was good, I was kind and all I ever asked for in return was that you care. Even if, god forbid, it wasn’t anything close to what I was willing to do for you.

But I was your ghost and you were my phantom and we were never going to finish this tragedy with a transformative kiss. You always burned more brightly than me, you learned to find confidence in exactly where you stood. I’m not there yet, maybe I never will be but I didn’t have a hope of being anything so long as I was content to stay your corpse bride and your back up. I remember the day I sent you that message. My tears were a pulse in my neck, my regret was already stinging my eyes and still, through shaking fingers and a heavy heart, I said the last words I will ever say to you and your soul. The last words your eyes would ever read from me.

The first message I ever sent you was a risk and thankfully I reaped the rewards. I saw you through a bunch of girlfriends I wanted to eject the moment they entered your life and you saw me through many crises, the worst of them being the ones that began within me. We were each other’s first something, I hope. You were my first friendship without pretence and I hope I was yours. We never apologised for who we were or what we brought to the table, only the way it sometimes made each of us feel.

I remember the first time I realised I could fall in love with you. You were sitting on my couch, not even talking to me at that moment in time and I was completely enchanted. I’d only ever cared about boys because they cared about me. You, you were the only one that I cared about because you didn’t. You were kind to me, not because you wanted something of me, not because I was your only option but because you truly thought I deserved it. You saw me as worthy but when I knew you, I rarely felt like I was.

You were nothing to me in this world, in the one that everybody else lives in. No one else knows quite what we meant to each other. But in our world, in the one we shared together, we were a force to be reckoned with. I’m so glad I knew you. The boy with a heart of gold who gave it away too quickly, too easily and never asked for it back. But I’m so glad I lost you. The boy who drained me like sap from a tree, taking and taking until nothing but the barest bones were left. I’m so glad I gave you up. The boy who broke my heart. You are a blackened piece of my soul and there are pieces of it falling away every day, like ash fluttering out of a fire. You saw me shed my insecurities, only now you’re not around to see me shed you. Someday, you said and you were right. Someday the fates will align and I’ll meet the boy who fills my greenhouse with light. The boy whose light sinks right into my skin and finally allows me to ignite. You were a lie but I’ll wait for my promise. I know it’s just around the corner. Don’t look back, I remember thinking, as I told you goodbye and I thank god that I never did. My life is a stunning love story. It’s a success story you’ll never get the chance to be part of again. Farewell, my dear friend.

[takadasaiko]

Fallen Series:  Trust, Need, or Wyatt’s Own Ghost

FFN II AO3

Summary: Future fic. The last thing they can afford is for Bulshar to get his hands on Peacemaker.

Trust, Need, or Wyatt's Own Ghost

It had gone from bad to worse faster than they could blink. Fighting - and winning - against Bulshar was not a task to be taken on lightly. It took determination and planning. Not just one plan, but contingency after contingency to make sure they were ready for anything. Not that even that worked sometimes. Not when Wynonna Earp was at the center of it all. The woman was a living, breathing chaos magnet and, if he didn't know better, more stubborn than her great great granddaddy.

Right then it didn't matter. Not who was to blame or who should have listened to whom. It didn't matter what the plan might have been. It was all blown to shit anyway. They just needed to focus on getting out alive and preferably in one piece, which was looking less and less likely.

Bobo had gathered some of the Revenants to him, relying on old loyalties and fears instilled over the last nearly ninety years. It hadn't been enough to counter Bulshar's call for all of them, though, and those that had called him master had been given more power in exchange for losing even more of themselves than they already had. They were all bloodlust and madness, and while that made it easier to out maneuver in the long run, facing them head on was like facing a rabid beast.

If it had just been him it would have been one thing. He'd heal. Hell, if it had just been he and Wynonna he thought it would have been easy enough, but Waverly and Jeremy had been with them. Waverly was a deadly aim with a shotgun, but it only put them down so long and Junior over there was still getting tossed back on his ass every time he got a shot off.

Bobo loosed a dangerous snarl as he yanked one of the red-eyed Revenants back before he jumped the downed scientist. There was a brief flash of fear that made it through Bulshar's control as the Revenant leader slammed him hard into the ground, picking up a boulder with his powers and dropping it on the howling demon. "Stay."

"He was, uh… Thanks," Jeremy managed and Bobo shot him a half irritated look, ready to grumble at him - he couldn't have the kid think he was going soft in him, after all - when he heard Waverly shout her sister's name, drawing his attention away.

If things had already gone from bad to worse to shit, this was whatever followed that. Fear wasn't something Bobo was accustomed to very often anymore. When you couldn't be killed, there wasn't much that scared you, but seeing the Heir laid out, a hard blow taking her from her feet and Peacemaker lying closer to Clootie than Wynonna was certainly cause for concern.

Everyone had frozen where they were, terror sweeping through the little field they stood in, almost tangible from Waverly and Jeremy, and Bobo briefly wondered if his own fear was that evident. It didn't matter. All that mattered was keeping Wyatt's gun out of Clootie's hand.

He reached out and pulled. He'd called the gun to him before. It took considerably more effort than moving anything else of that size usually did. It was Peacemaker. Wyatt's gun that had killed him and the only thing that could send him to hell. He had held it more than any other Revenant, he would wager, and certainly longer before it decided to burn him. Now, though, he just needed to keep it away from their enemy.

Metal and wood flew through the air, fitting into his hand and Bulshar turned burning eyes on him. For half a moment the whole world slowed to a stop. Clootie and Robert stared at each other, Wyatt's gun between them, and Bulshar's lips twisted into a terrible, snarling smile as he lunged towards him.

It had been a long time since Bobo had had much use for guns and this one was more useless than others to him, but the impulse to protect oneself overrides conscious, logical thought at times. He leveled it, his mind recalling every lesson Wyatt had ever given him with that very gun. In that moment he could almost feel his old friend's hand moving to reposition his grip, his patient voice instructing him how to take the shot.

He hadn't expected anything when his finger squeezing the trigger. Just the click of it jamming on him. Maybe even the gun burning him. It was a fickle thing, after all, and Bobo Del Rey had not only dared to hold the Heir's gun, but to take the shot. The fact that it fired, the bullet riding out through the long barrel, the kick startling him enough to have to adjust his stance so he could remain on his feet, surprised both him and the creature rushing him.

Robert Svane had never been a great shot in his day, and the years hadn't made him any better. It clipped Clootie, but the fact that it had fired at all was enough to silence everyone in its wake. Bobo stood there for a long moment, still staring down the barrel of the gun aimed at his enemy, and Bulshar snarled at him as the Revenants that had been attacking the Earps, Jeremy, and Bobo started to ease back and away from them. "This isn't over, Robert."

"Didn't think it was," he answered, his voice much steadier than he would have anticipated.

Bulshar's Revenants started their retreat in earnest, turning and fleeing the scene. They knew what was supposed to happen when he touched it and had seen what had happened. Let them be terrified. Maybe they'd think twice before attacking them out of nowhere like they had. He finally let his arm drop, loosing a shaky breath as the last of them slipped away.

"Holy shit!" Wynonna half-yelped from her place back on her feet. "Did you just…? Holy shit."

Bobo flipped the gun around to hand it to her hand-first lest the thing start burning him.

The Heir took it, eyeing it suspiciously before turning her gaze on the Revenant. "How did you do that?"

He shrugged noncommittally.

"You shouldn't even be able to hold it, right?" Jeremy asked, excitement causing the words to tumble out a little faster than usual. Oh great. He had a new little mystery to solve. Bobo wasn't sure how he felt about being the center of it. There was plenty that most of them didn't know about him and he had no interest putting everything on the table. He snarled irritably as Jeremy tried to check the palm of his hand for signs of a burn. Even if he'd gotten ahold of him, he wouldn't have found any wounds there. The pistol hadn't even sizzled.

"It must have something to do with your connection to Wyatt," Waverly mused and Bobo shot her a look.

"You know, I've never heard that whole story. What-?"

He didn't let Jeremy finish as a deep growl escaped him and he turned to start back towards town, hearing the scientist's protests behind him. He kept his gaze fixed ahead even as Waverly jogged to catch up to his long stride. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"

"Woulda been better if it had been a shot that did something," he groused. Neither he nor Clootie had been expecting the shot to work and that was the only reason that the more powerful demon hadn't deflected it. If his aim had been better, maybe all of this would have been done and over with that afternoon.

Waverly's expression was still impressed. "You shot Peacemaker. I'd say that's something." He grunted a response and she nudged him hard in the side. "Maybe Wyatt hasn't really abandoned you after all?"

His step faltered just a little and he loosed the frustrated breath through his nose so he wouldn't snap at her that Wyatt Earp had had nothing to do with what happened that day. He'd been dead and in the ground for nearly a century, and if she thought some fluke in the curse… Blue eyes closed and he forced the admittedly irrational anger down. It wasn't Waverly's fault, and she had just decided to give trusting him a chance. The last thing he wanted to do was let his temper get in the way and spook her.

She had always been an intuitive girl though. "Or maybe you've just got the trust of the current Earps," she said slyly.

Bobo opened his mouth and then closed it, his teeth clicking together and a low chuckle finally escaping. "Maybe so."

She beamed at him and motioned back to where her sister was looking at Peacemaker like she wasn't sure it was the real thing or not. "If nothing else, you've really freaked Wynonna out."

His lips twitched upward. He did enjoy riling the Heir whenever time permitted. They watched her as she grumbled about how just anyone must be able to shoot her gun if Bobo was able to now, and Jeremy was rattling off possible explanations from what he knew about the curse and precedent that he'd seen in other curses that Black Badge had run across over the years. Waverly choked back a giggle that earned a glare of irritation from her sister and a playful wink from Bobo once Wynonna had gone back to her grumbling.

For the near disaster they'd faced, somehow the aftermath was more peaceful than he could have imagined. It had been odd, and once the Earp sisters let it drop it would change nothing for them, but for the Revenants that had chosen to side with Bulshar it would remind them why they should be afraid of their former boss. He was different than them. He always had been, even if they didn't know why. If the shot had gone off because of trust or need or Wyatt's own ghost, Bobo couldn't be sure, but it had, and even if he could never replicate the action, they'd remember it, and that fear and uncertainty wouldn't do Clootie any favours.

Notes: I've been very amused with the idea of Bobo accidentally shooting Peacemaker recently, so I finally worked it out into a story. Peacemaker seems to be able to choose to a degree. It allowed Wynonna to shoot it at 12, even though it should have jammed. It seemed to have trouble deciding between Wynonna and Willa when they were both of age and Willa came back, and it also allowed Waverly to shoot it to protect Wynonna. I love the idea that either Wyatt's faith in him or maybe even Wynonna's would allow him to take the shot in a desperate moment. That Wyatt saw Robert as family when they were both alive and human.

[happymetalgirl]

April 2020

WELL! I have been gone awhile, very busy, and look what happens when I slow down writing about metal: the world starts to fucking fall apart. But no, in all seriousness. I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about music with all the fuck shit going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my white privilege has allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’m probably going to repost this part in its own post, but I feel like I have to get this out of the way before I write any more about music. I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs that I am intentionally bolding.

As I write this in the midst of a fucking respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in my increasingly embarrassing country has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters in the United States, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT HOLY SHIT, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism, there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like ...And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief. So, with that said, let’s talk about the metal music that came out in the good ol’ days of April 2020. Wow. 

Well, April was a pretty big month. Lots of albums coming out, the whole music industry still the throes of the pandemic, it’s a damn shame we got what might be the best album I’ve ever reviewed on this blog in the midst of all this soul-crushing stagnance and financial despair in the music world. I mean, I’m certainly very glad to be getting such a great album among other great albums at a time when music is definitely helping me to keep going as well. It just sucks knowing these artists aren’t going to be able to tour in celebration of their great artistic achievements, and the first one on this list definitely deserves to celebrate.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi

I already reviewed the Finnish band’s fifth full-length in great detail, which I highly suggest checking out because I wrote a lot about that album and I wrote it quite enthusiastically. It feels weird in a way to make the rest of the albums on this list follow my recount of an album that I already detailed in great length to be one of the best albums I have heard in years, quite possibly the best album I’ve reviewed in this blog’s existence, but I have to make sure that it doesn’t get lost at the end of this undoubtedly long-ass post. Anyway, Oranssi Pazuzu have fucking outdone themselves on this one and in many ways, black metal in general. The band have been building their synthy, psychedelic sound for over a decade now, but Mestarin Kynsi is the crystallization of everything the band has been working toward, which I think last year’s Waste of Space Orchestra collaboration played a big part in catalyzing. The album is so immersive and in so many ways feels like it has a soul of its own, made possible by the band’s absolute chemistry and dedication to ego-lessly channeling this album’s transcendent ethos as a team rather than elevating themselves individually, and what they conjure on here is such a leap up from their already heady psychedelic black metal and out of this fucking world. Mestarin Kynsi is the kind of terrifying, yet transfixing light that pulls you in even as you know of its malevolence, because it is just too goddamn beautiful and compelling to resist. The score should be such a big deal, but I know that any time this kind of score is thrown out there it prompts all sorts of distracting question regarding the flaws of the album, but I stand by my original score. I love this album, and I don’t see anything about it that makes me think it’s any less.

10/10

Okay, now on to the unfortunate rest of April’s releases that had to follow this up.

Testament - Titans of Creation

Testament rode a pretty vibrant comeback wave with Chuck Billy’s beating cancer on 2008’s The Formation of Damnation and 2012’s Dark Roots of the Earth, but that hot steak came to an end on the rather droll effort they put out in 2016, Brotherhood of the Snake. Back when concerts were a thing, I caught them when they opened up for the rest of the stacked lineup of Slayer’s farewell tour; they put on a great show, and I was reminded of what made them, still, such a prominent force in thrash, hopeful for a rejuvenation on whatever record came next. And as much as I wish I liked this new album of theirs more, I just can’t get into it all that much for so many of the same reasons I couldn’t get into its predecessor. I’d say it has much brighter moments, but it suffers from much of the same recycling of thrash compositional tropes (with not enough elaboration) that Brotherhood of the Snake did. It’s the kind of album that at first listen will seem flavorful and engaging, but it loses it pretty quickly like a snack that isn’t that filling or easy to keep eating due to it’s overwhelming taste, despite its empty calories.

5/10

Abysmal Dawn - Phylogenesis

After six years during which I had thought they might have disbanded or been dropped from Relapse Records, Abysmal Dawn return from the shadows on Season of Mist with the tight, concise brand of modestly technical modern death metal that made them such a sell in the first place on their fifth record, Phylogenesis. Not deviating at all from what they know they do well, Abysmal Dawn stick to a direct death metal attack with no bells and whistles, relying on their speed and agility to guide them, and their strengths serve them well as they manage to highlight what makes death metal so appealing at its core.

8/10

WVRM - Colony Collapse

While not listening to Oranssi Pazuzu or straight-up depressive shit, I have had a massive hankering for filthy grindcore that has been graciously satiated in part by WVRM’s Colony Collapse. Airing heavily on the hardcore side of the genre, incorporating some slower slamming grooves and deep, dirty gutteral vocals into their otherwise true-to-the-genre grindcore, WVRM do indeed put forth a more intense slab of grindcore than your usual twenty-something minute LP, which is made possible largely by the dynamic that they inject with their willingness to incorporate so much tasty, hardcore riffage and nasty sludge.

7/10

Red - Declaration

After what I’ve now come to see as their worst album, 2017′s Gone, Red immediately bounce back onto the positive trajectory that Of Beauty and Rage set them on and back to the symphonic 2000′s alternative metal that they built their early reputation on, with their shortest, possibly most direct album to date, comprised of just ten tight tracks that focus their cathartic brand of alternative metal into surprisingly dense packages that undoubtedly include some of the best of the band’s whole career, like “All for You”, “The Evening Hate”, and the especially cathartic “The War We Made”. I can only hope every band that has stumbled so hard lately can pick themselves back up as quickly and convincingly as Red has on their aptly named seventh LP here.

8/10

August Burns Red - Guardians

I have to say, despite being a pretty standard slab of melodic 2010’s metalcore, this album has kind of grown on me a bit in the past few weeks of listening to it. The album shows that the band are doing well to keep an eye on what’s going on in metalcore, stylistically spanning old and new pretty well. And while we sometimes get cheesy Hot Topic melodicism on songs like “Lighthouse”, other tracks encapsulate old and new in the space of a single song with respectable tact. The track “Defender” for example features two metalcore breakdowns, the first of which is generic as fuck from the 2000’s, but the second is distinctly more creative and forward-thinking, showing that the band are aware of the genre’s evolution and their trajectory alongside it. I also have to point out the highlight “Dismembered Memory” is in the track list with its emotive, Gothenburg-style guitar melody mixed with some distinct Architects-inspired vocal melodies. The closing track, “Three Fountains”, also ends the album on a strong note with its powerful melodic vocals in particular. Again, most of this project is pretty unsurprising metalcore, but the band at least shows some sense of awareness of how to progress their sound, and the strength of the highlights here makes the album worth at least checking out to find them.

6/10

Benighted - Obscene Repressed

While it is a well-performed, well-produced offering, Obscene Repressed is little more than a competent modern horror/brutal death metal album whose campiness in its shots for grotesqueness and creepiness can actually end up working against it. It’s a fun enough death metal album for while it’s on with some impressive flashes of percussion in particular, but it’s memorable mostly for its goofy moments and much less for its songwriting.

6/10

Aborted - La Grande Mascarade

Well, three more songs of relentless modern brutal death metal from Aborted is surely hard to get worked up about, and that goes in the positive and negative direction. On the EP’s three tracks, the band basically just goes through the motions in a way that makes me question what the point of putting these tracks out on this EP as opposed to keeping them for the next album (and potentially grooming them further) was. I mean, I can’t complain too much, the band are solid on these cuts in all the ways we come to expect them to be, but what makes these songs unfit for the next album or really demands they be released on this EP?

6/10

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together & Ghosts VI: Locusts

I don’t want to knock Nine Inch Nails’ more ambient works, as I do think Trent Reznor has proven he has the chops to thrive in dark ambiance, but I just couldn’t get too excited about this watered down three hours worth of dark ambiance that he put out this year. It certainly works on the baseline level that all dark ambient music operates on an generally seeks to achieve, but it really doesn’t go above and beyond anywhere and it just kind of settles for the passing grade. At the most charitable, both are the kinds of ambient albums that exist solely to provide an eerie, droning sonic background with a few notable shifts coming from song to song, but that’s not enough to get me excited for either of them.

5/10 & 6/10

The Black Dahlia Murder - Verminous

I have to say, I’ve kind of softened in my earlier perception The Black Dahlia Murder being overrated, and Verminous is an album that really helps their case. Its name is pretty apt for the band’s blackened style of melodeath in general, but the dynamic between their delicious melodic side and their muscularly heavy side on Verminous is quite possibly at its most comprehensively displayed. I know that the band’s fans don’t really see them as having any misses in their catalog, though there seems to be some consistent favoritism toward Nocturnal, but I would wager that Verminous has captured their composition at its most advanced and their sound its most savory.

8/10

MASTER BOOT RECORD - Floppy Disk Overdrive

I’ve not been keeping up too closely with the prolific MASTER BOOT RECORD project, but I do regret missing and not covering the dynamic Internet Protocol EP that was released last year. Floppy Disk Overdrive, aptly named, is a bit more of the usual overload of synthetically instrumental, chiptune-seasoned death metal that keeps me from getting too excited about new MASTER BOOT RECORD releases. Once again, the focus is on solid production of the instruments and minor tricks with the sonic aesthetic, but composition again seems to fall by the wayside, and there isn’t enough intriguing stylistic diversity to make up for it.

5/10

Caustic Wound - Death Posture

More delicious, nasty grindcore to ravage my ears with in between listens to Oranssi Pazuzu and Okkervil River. The debut album by the Seattle-based supergroup of sorts is as pummeling as I would expect given the pedigree of the members involved. Death Posture is nasty, gutteral, and relentless in all the ways anyone could want their grindcore to be. The monstrously bellowing growls in particular make me feel like I’m listening to Primitive Man playing grindcore (which is a good thing). While I have been in quite the grindcore binge lately, Death Posture is more than just your standard, straight-line-through grindcore record, taking an old-school death metal knack for dynamic accents, tasty isolated bass lines, bursts of speed, bursts of thickened walls of sound, and wailing solos. It sounds sort of like if Morbid Angel was directing Primitive Man’s deathgrind adventure, also a good thing. I definitely love this one, probably my favorite grindcore album so far this year.

8/10

Khemmis - Doomed Heavy Metal

While we (if not just I) eagerly await the Colorado act’s forthcoming Nuclear Blast debut (and follow-up to 2018′s perfect Desolation), the band offers a little compilation EP to hold us over until then. Of the six tracks, only the first is new material (and it’s a cover song), two are songs from previous non-album releases, and the other three are live tracks. The band’s cover of Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” transposes the iconic keyboard part onto guitar in classic Khemmis fashion, and the vocal and guitar harmonies give the already inspiring song a new sense of melancholic triumph that I have come to love so much from Khemmis. It’s definitely worth checking out for the fresh take it offers to the Dio classic. As for the rest of the EP, the one-off single “Empty Throne” feels rather B-side-level by the band’s lofty standards, as does their odd, but enjoyable melodic doom rendition of the folk tune “A Conversation with Death”. The sampling of live cuts gets one great song from each of the band’s previous LPs, and the band sounds pretty true to their studio form for the most part, the vocals on “Bloodletting” being noticeably rough though.

Compilation in the Dark/10

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

The second album from Nergal’s folky satanic rock side project comes with a pretty star-studded line-up, and honestly it’s a pretty fun time and I don’t have many complaints about the concise, catchy tunes that Nergal and company are churning out. “Run with the Devil” is a brilliantly composed opener, “Burning Churches” is a catchy-as-fuck pub-type tune, and guests Ihsahn, Corey Taylor, and especially Matt Heafy showcase the versatility of their vocal styles on their respective features. It’s more a fun heresy-laden time explicitly not overthought than the usual heady blackened death metal that Behemoth pedals.

7/10

Medico Peste - ב :The Black Bile

Taking very apparent cues from black metal’s (and experimental metal’s) more esoteric figures like Deathspell Omega and even Tool, Medico Peste comes through with an at least very aesthetically intriguing listen, even if some of the compositions run kind of long without enough in the way of substantive musical ideas to last quite as long as they’re intended to. While the influences the band wears on their sleeve are at least quite respectably sonically pervasive, it can get occasionally uncanny. The main riff of “All Too Human” sounds like it could have come straight from the Ænema recording sessions, and “Numinous Catastrophe” even sounds like it pulls from Oranssi Pazuzu. But despite the influences on its sleeves, ב :The Black Bile is unique and diverse enough as a whole to sustain an exciting listen and one that I have enjoyed returning to.

7/10

Omega Infinity - Solar Spectre

I had not heard of Omega Infinity until this album, and out of the gate it really sounded like some cliché ambient black metal, but as the album unfolds, it really does reveal itself to be so much more than that. Hard to capture in a single word, the cosmos-themed album definitely captures the wide, chilling vastness of space through instrumental and compositional techniques that provide a fittingly alien, but not explicitly sci-fi, twist on the usual elements of ambient black metal, and it works wonderfully. 

8/10

Black Curse - Endless Wound

I heard a good bit of hype over this project, but I’m honestly having a hard time hearing what’s supposed to be such a big deal. We’ve got some solid performances and the occasional compositional flash of brilliance, but for the most part, Endless Wound is very standard blackened death metal with meek ambitions. Like don’t get me wrong, it’s not awful, and I don’t hate it. It just doesn’t depart nearly enough from the beaten, and crowded, path or really stand above the crowd on that path enough to get me excited. I kind of wish the band would delve more into the slower, sludgier, more savory sections of they dip their toes in, like that of “Enraptured by Decay” and the more eccentric takes on black metal dark ritualism on “Seared Eyes”. But until they really commit more to things they can do to get their head above the death metal crowd, it’s going to be hard to get excited about another Black Curse project in the near future.

5/10

Vermicide Violence - The Praxis of Prophylaxis

It was only a matter of time until the pandemic delivered unto us an at least partially coronavirus-themed medical deathcore album, which I am of course not complaining about the obnoxious, ridiculous prospect of. There is a lot of silly, gimmicky deathcore (and metal in general) out there that is pretty superficial, but also plenty that makes a lot of great use of whatever gimmick it’s applying. In this case, the natural grotesquery (if that’s a word) of medical practice does give Vermicide Violence just that little bit of extra tangibility and realness to the nasty deathcore they’re pedaling. From breakdown lines of “vaccinate your fucking kids” and “you only hear once so just buy fucking plugs” (a twist on Suicide Silence’s “You Only Live Once”) to songs about asthmatic asphyxiation, coronavirus infection, West Nile virus, and breast cancer, it’s at the very least somewhat lyrically fresh and fun for any medical metalheads to have a good time nerding out with.

6/10

Vatican Falling - WAR

So I found out about Vatican Falling through the deathcoredads meme page, don’t judge me, but I’m glad I did, because this album, WAR, is some deliciously disgusting deathcore with lots of different flavors. They’re not exactly pushing any boundaries for the genre, but WAR certainly does branch out into melodic territory more boldly and successfully than your average deathcore album, and with good results. It has its low points where some of the experimentation doesn’t work, like the annoyingly repetitive clean vocal sample on the title track, but for the most part, the band’s use of more tangible, cleaner melodies goes over well and supplements the music nicely with a sense of raised stakes. If anything, I wish they did more in that vein because the band’s deathcore grooves at the core aren’t as above average on their own. That being said, songs like “King of Vermin” and “Kill All Humans” show that the band can really raise their game at the base deathcore front and outcompete their contemporaries if they need to.

6/10

Ulcerate - Stare into Death and Be Still

Stare into Death and Be Still is the sixth album from sonically ambitious New Zealanders, Ulcerate. Continuing to push their brand of atmospheric, blackened technical death metal to further reaches of the unknown, guitarist Michael Hoggard’s fluid, multi-faceted melodic work continues to play a pivotal role in steering the atmospheric tone of the album, while Jamie Saint Merat’s impressive following of the music’s odd time signature shifts boosts the album’s energy with tasteful technicality while simultaneously not being too obnoxiously flashy and showcasing some flavorful technical drumming chops. The guitar work takes on so many different shapes and styles, but probably most often reminds me of the winding angularity of Portal with the primal humanness and ritual catharsis of later/current Behemoth, with some more ambient detours taken here and there that hearken to Isis and even more doom-oriented projects like Bell Witch. The swirling together of influences here is so seamless and immersive, and honestly some of Ulcerate’s best. This is not to discount Paul Kelland’s contributions of emotively harmonious bass lines and consistently bestial, yet also somehow soulful, death metal bellowing to the album’s sound; I think his contributions in particular are what help this album feel meaningful and human and not just like some soulless piece of experimental art with a little too much of its head up its ass. For an hour, this album feels like listening to the best aspects of several different styles of cutting-edge death metal, black metal, and doom metal rolled into one masterful super-album that still manages to strike a dreadful chord all its own. Yeah, this is a pretty damn great album.

9/10

Katatonia - City Burials

Honestly, the vast majority of this album feels like Katatonia going through the motions and just playing it safe, never really committing to any really bold performance or composition moves, just coasting off The Fall of Hearts. It certainly passes by the usual Katatonia rubric, but it certainly won’t be going down as one of the band’s most revered.

5/10

Trivium - What the Dead Men Say

I somehow missed out on the entire first half of this album being released as singles, but I sure caught all the hype surrounding the band’s ninth album leading up to its release and all the preemptive praise it was receiving, and I’m kind of glad I got to experience it as a whole without the experience of the singles because I feel like I can honestly soberly assess it and say that it’s definitely not the masterpiece it’s being hyped up to be. The band definitely have found their groove in the various melodic, proggy, thrashy alternative metal styles they play, but this album really just feels like the band are just feeling themselves, in the sense that they’re kind of playing it safe, but bold enough with what they know they do well to kind of mask that. The band’s ninth album is pretty noticeably a continuation of their eighth, The Sin and the Sentence, which had some of Trivium’s most potent alternative metalcore bangers to date, but also some of their most confusingly tepid compositions on the other side of their spectrum. What the Dead Men Say kind of just maintains the band’s trajectory on their previous album and narrows that range from high to low. The low points, like “Bleed into Me” and (to a lesser extent) “The Catastrophist”, aren’t as low, but the high points aren’t as high, and I don’t think I’ll be returning to the better parts of this album, like “The Defiant”, “Amongst the Shadows and the Stones”, and “Sickness Unto You” as much as I will the plethora of highlights from The Sin and the Sentence. Overall, it kind of just feels like Trivium coasting a bit, but the band is genuinely at that level of evolution in their sound where they have made a lot of gradual refinements over time to get here but haven’t just repeated themselves, so they can kind of get away with it. Even if it’s not my favorite Trivium album, it’s sure a hell of a lot better than anything Trapt has ever released.

7/10

[allyinthekeyofx]

Affirmation 4/5

Missing scene and post ep En Ami

Part one Orison here

Part two Per Manum here

Part three Sein Und Zeit here

This chapter contains possible TRIGGERS.  If you are at all unsure please PM me for clarification.  Scant fluff in this one - just raw, angry, hurting from Mulder’s POV

Four

I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt angrier at her,

In fact, anger doesn’t actually even go halfway to describing how I feel. Try hurt, disappointed, unimportant, insignificant even; incensed to a point where I was afraid to even fucking look at her for fear of what I might say as I braced myself rigidly against the door frame in my apartment, listening to the shock and disbelief in her voice as she tried to persuade herself that the risks she had just taken had been worth it. To her, to me and to the whole of the fucking human race, promises and assurances made to her by a man who has wrought more pain, more destruction and more suffering on both of us than should ever be reasonably possible; a man who has shattered our lives – her life – in ways that are unimaginable.

And yet she trusted him.

She fucking trusted him.

More than she trusted me it would seem.

I had received the call from her, finally received it when she was around an hour away from DC. Not when she got in the car to start the long drive back, not when she had put a reasonable distance between herself and that black lunged double-talking fucker who had duped her so effortlessly, not even when she had stopped to fill the car up with gas when she got halfway home. Instead, for reasons best known to herself, Scully had instead given me another five hours of frantic worry as my panic grew when Frohike reiterated for the hundredth time that they didn’t know how to find her, that she had covered her tracks so adeptly that for all intents and purposes, she had simply just disappeared. Ditching me far more effectively than I think I had ever managed during our long and chequered partnership.

In fact I don’t think I have ever felt a time when raw fear began to overtake me so completely that I literally began to fall apart from within. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function on any cohesive level as a million different scenarios flew through my mind, refusing to be quietened, refusing to be stilled, as I paced like a caged animal, backwards and forwards, trying to deny the unspoken truth that hammered at me relentlessly; that she was dead, that this time she wasn’t coming back. That the incomprehensible risk, the blind faith and blatant stupidity had sent her right to him, the fact that she had gone willingly the hardest for me to reconcile.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

And when she finally arrived at my door I couldn’t even bring myself to open it because for the first time since I have known her, I truly didn’t want to see her, afraid of how I would react, disappearing as I was in the destructive force of my own anger. Instead I ignored the sound of her knuckles against the wood, fucked if I would give her the satisfaction of seeing the relief that would surely emanate from every cell of my body just to look at her face, to see that she was indeed whole. She didn’t deserve that level of emotional exposure from me. So instead, after throwing me a bemused glance, Byers did the honours, greeting her in that soft, respectful way of his, that was this time, tinged with just a hint of regret that he was the one to welcome her back, that he knew it wasn’t what she expected.

But what did she expect? I mean really? 

Did she even have an inkling of what she’d done to me? She had started toward me, her eyes searching for mine even as I steadfastly refused to allow her that contact, ignoring her whispered imploration that wrapped itself around me as she spoke my name.

“Mulder”?

Instead I had briefly shook my head, turning away from her and heading into the kitchen; putting a distance between us, trying to calm myself enough so as not to wound her more than she would shortly be wounded.

Because I knew.

Oh yeah, I knew that she had been played. And that right then she didn’t.

And if I’m completely honest with myself, as I watched Langley reveal the truth that I already knew, that the disc she had risked her life for, risked our partnership and risked everything we had begun to discover about each other, was empty, finally speaking as I watched her plead with him to try just one more time, begging him with words unspoken to give her at least some tangible justification for allowing herself to be so truly and completely taken in. That she had behaved like a fucking rookie with no thought to her own personal safety, disregarded everything she knew, had been taught, had experienced at the hands of this power hungry lunatic, to blindly follow him; on a promise from a man who trades in lies.

“Enough”

And it was.

That one word, laced with more venom directed at her by me than I thought was even possible, was enough to stop her in her tracks, to make what little colour she had retained in the face of so much continued antagonism from me, drain from her countenance, as she abruptly closed her mouth and turned her eyes on me once again. Eyes that now glistened with unshed tears and which almost sent me across the room to crush her against me, to allow myself to forgive her for what she had done; for what she had risked.

Almost.

But I didn’t. I simply folded my arms against my chest and leaned against the doorframe, fighting myself to remain where I was, to not allow myself the luxury of telling her that it was okay, that everything was fine.

Because it wasn’t fine.

And it wasn’t okay.

In fact it was possibly the most heinous fucking thing she had ever done, even more so given the events over the preceding months that had finally been given voice and acknowledgment from both of us. The night in that dingy motel room where she had literally come apart in my arms, the aftermath of Pfaster threatening to tip her right over the edge, finally allowing ourselves to admit our own version of the truth to each other; a truth that had writhed and burned within us both for years and which had finally broken through the walls that we had so carefully constructed and kept patched up for so long.

The gunmen had certainly sensed the undercurrents; even Langley began busying himself with the equipment they had brought over at my request on learning just exactly what it was that Scully had in her possession – or rather what she thought she had – packing it away, unplugging leads, knowing that it was more than time for the three of them to leave before the storm that crackled ominously in the air finally broke. Because they knew that it was coming, oh yeah they knew.

Langley was the first to leave, almost running out the door in his haste to get away from us and under normal circumstances I might have found if amusing, but at the time nothing seemed very funny. Frohike was pretty quick to follow, but surprisingly, Byers paused, stepping right up to where Scully still remained standing, looking at that damn disc as though sheer will power alone would suddenly bring it to life in front of her, and he briefly laid his hand against her cheek, an awkward gesture of comfort given by this most reticent of men in response to my indifference of the circumstances and one which angered me and twisted something inside me in about equal measure. But I remained silent, non-reactive as he dropped his hand away and spoke the first gentle words she had heard since she walked through my door.

“I’m sorry Dana”

She nodded, before quickly turning away from him, a defensive action I had come to know all too well; a response precipitated by a desperate need to not show weakness when in the company of others. To close down any form of communication, be it verbal or physical that might elicit an emotional response from her.

And I ignored the pointed way he frowned at me as he paused in front of me, eloquently telling me to get a fucking grip before it was too late; to stop being so wrapped up in my own pain that I refused to even try to acknowledge hers. Because I didn’t need him or anyone else telling me how I should be feeling about the fact she had chosen to ignore the last three fucking months as though they meant nothing.

I remained in my position even as she stepped towards me, but now that we were alone I allowed myself to finally look at her, really look at her, watching her recoil as every emotion I had fought to keep control of must have shown themselves to her all at the same time, because I felt them, actually felt them break free from somewhere deep inside me, burgeoning, uncontrollable, destructive, forcing words from my mouth that snapped in the air like gunshots between us. In fact I think pulling my gun out and shooting her might have been easier on her.

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Mulder…”

I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear her excuses because there was a part of me that was afraid I would hear the same words coming out of her mouth that she had heard so often from mine, excuses given for all the times I had chosen to ditch her over the years. I’ve lost count of the amount of times she’s come after me to haul my sorry ass out of whatever proverbial creek I’d managed to get myself stranded in, what injuries I had sustained, how I had risked myself. But the difference, the fucking difference, was I had never once done any of it for purely altruistic reasons; unlike her, I had always taken one for the cause; not for myself or for my own selfish reasons.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

So instead of allowing her to answer, to give her the opportunity for justification, I simply turned away and grabbed at my coat from where it hung over the sofa back where I had thrown it earlier; when she was still missing; when I thought she was dead.

“You met him in offices in DC?”

Scully swallowed and nodded slowly, miserably casting her eyes to the floor, knowing now that it wouldn’t matter what she said, even if she counter-attacked with anger, that what she had done was wrong; and she at least had the sense at that moment to not challenge me on either my anger or my conviction.

“Let’s go.”

XXXX

I guess it was unfortunate that as my anger towards Scully started to fade, unable as I was to keep throwing verbal punches at her as the realisation finally began to hit her that she had been duped so thoroughly, hers began to build. Anger at me, anger at him, anger at herself, but mostly I think anger at this whole ridiculous situation; finding herself as she had, on the receiving end of my own desperate insecurities. Because it hadn’t been lost on me in the weeks since my Mother died that Scully was all I had left; my only safety net between myself and absolute freefall, that if I lost her I lost everything.

It had been a rough couple of months for us both I think – beginning with the whole Pfaster mess and my associated guilt which precipitated a strange period where once again, I was desperately afraid for her as she dipped and spiralled downwards as she fought against the way the whole experience had tainted her, finding then that even though she hadn’t fully healed, suddenly I was the one who needed saving as I fell apart piece by harrowing piece following my Mom’s suicide and the revelations brought to me that finally gave me closure on my sister’s fate. I had told her I had found peace and truly, initially I thought I had; until the guilt started right back up again, my dreams plagued by accusatory visions of those I perceived as having failed, Scully amongst them and I lost count of the amount of nights I woke up sweating and shaking; calling out to her in the darkness, bereft when I realised she wasn’t there with me.

But for the most part, despite ourselves, we had retreated from each other once again, neither one prepared to call the other into question as to what the hell had happened that we couldn’t seem to get past the final barrier that we had built up between us; denying ourselves anything more than the most minimal affirmation of everything we now knew we meant to each other; I have no idea as to our flawed reasoning and I know Scully has been as confused, as defeated as I have. And if I’m honest I know exactly why she chose to go with that chain-smoking bastard; because maybe by doing so she would finally deem herself worthy enough to be loved; finding affirmation that all the pain, all the hurt and all the sacrifice over the years might actually have been worth it.

That she was prepared to die for it; to give the whole fucking struggle some kind of meaning.

The knowledge makes me turn to stone inside; because this is Ed Jerse all over again. Only this time she really meant it; had been so intent on proving herself to be valuable, deserving of finally being able to make a decision that to her at least, actually meant something, that all commonsense just flew out of the window. And the fact I had been so wrapped up in my own misery, I hadn’t seen it coming; had lost sight of her somewhere along the way and the relief at her return had been so huge, so encompassing that I just couldn’t handle it and had instead turned it inwards, spun it on its head to give me justification for denying to myself everything she had come to mean to me, to rage at her when I should have been the one on my knees begging her forgiveness.

And I am terrified that my duplicity has now destroyed everything we fought so hard to build and which I sent tumbling down around us tonight when instead of actually listening to her, I waited until we were back in my apartment and then pushed her against the wall, blinded by a need to finally claim her, to take ownership, to wipe the thought of that cancer ridden bastard touching her out of my mind; grabbing her wrists in one hand while I roughly covered her lips with my own, running my free hand up and down her body, tugging at her clothes as she fought against me with a growing futility that finally stilled her as she began to cry, huge gasping sobs that finally, before I totally lost control, brought me to my senses as I dropped her wrists, stumbling away from her, appalled at such a monumental loss of control that I had only barely managed to keep in check.

And I almost collapsed when I saw the pain on her face as she dumbly turned her wrists over, seeing the fresh welts beginning to bloom against her pale skin caused by my rough, animalistic need of her; this woman who I would die for, who had only ever known or expected careful, reverent handling from me, stared at the fucking bruises that I had given her, inflicted upon her to add to the multitudes she had already received during her allegiance to me.

I didn’t even attempt to prevent her from leaving. Because what the hell could I ever say to make this right?

XXXXX

I can’t really remember getting to the bedroom; have no concept of when I decided to stop pouring the contents of the whiskey bottle down my throat. I keep it for medicinal purposes because really, I can’t stand the fucking taste of it unless it’s joined by copious amounts of lemon and honey, but tonight, since my mouth was tainted by the bitterness that can only be brought from the certain realisation that I had blown it; that finally I had succeeded in pushing away the one person on this earth who actually cared whether I lived or died, that I didn’t even taste it. I just wanted to sink in to oblivion for a few short hours.

I had almost called her, had almost called a cab to take me to her so that I might plead with her, to apologise; to seek an absolution I knew I didn’t deserve. But I didn’t. Because when it came right down to it I was just too ashamed to face her; afraid that she would just confirm my certainty that I had finally lost her for good.

The amount of alcohol I had consumed did numb me to a certain extent although I was painfully conscious that it was merely a temporary state; that tomorrow nothing would have changed. But it enabled me at least to sleep fitfully; to lose myself for a few short hours. But at some point I must have fallen in to a deeper sleep, because I didn’t hear her enter the apartment, didn’t feel the slight dip in the mattress as she slid in beside me, but I awoke to the feel of her arms around me, her body spooned against my back, one leg entwined with mine as I felt the soft hitching of her breath as she shed scalding tears that made me burn with shame; shame that she had found a strength to save us when I hadn’t been able to. Dana Scully, my light in the darkness and a thousand times stronger than I could ever hope to be.

And as I brought my hands to entwine with hers, silently thanking her for trusting me enough to be able to even do this, I knew that right now we weren’t okay. We were a million miles from being okay. But we were together. And maybe, just maybe, we would find a way to stay that way.

Concluded chapter five

[crosbysierra95]

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[entergamingxp]

Kentucky Route Zero review – haunting drifter’s odyssey comes to an end • Eurogamer.net

And so a meandering journey comes to an end. Kentucky Route Zero, “a magical realist adventure game”, was funded, modestly, on Kickstarter back in 2012. The first of its five episodes released in early 2013, the second a few months later, the third a year after that, the fourth two years later still. Now, following the almost exponential trend, after a further three-and-a-half-years, we get the game’s conclusion – alongside a new console edition of the entire series.

Kentucky Route Zero review

Developer: Cardboard Computer

Publisher: Cardboard Computer (PC), Annapurna Interactive (console)

Platform: Reviewed on Switch

Availability: Act 5 released 28th January on PC. Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition released 28th January on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One

If you’ve been following this game since the start, then, it’s been a long road, and perhaps an exasperating one. Not that this wasn’t a fitting way to experience Kentucky Route Zero’s tale of a band of misfits getting drawn into a truck driver’s quixotic quest to deliver his load of antique furniture to an address that seems to get further away with every step. Some made their peace with the open ending of the fourth act being as good a place as any to leave it – and they weren’t wrong. But I doubt they will be disappointed in the fifth act that releases this week. Strikingly different in style, it’s a gorgeous epilogue that finds resolution while resisting the urge to solve any of the game’s many mysteries.

If you’ve been on this long journey with the game, I envy you. I have played Kentucky Route Zero from start to finish in the space of a week – all five episodes, plus the four interludes that developer Cardboard Computer released for free – and I’m not sure it’s the best way to take it in. Essentially a beautifully illustrated and animated text adventure, Kentucky Route Zero is slow, whimsical, interior, elliptical and at times deliberately frustrating. It is as inspired by theatre and installation art as film or video games; it’s dense with memory, digression and fragmentary, half-remembered lore. It’s not long, but it has too little plot and too much story to be comfortably consumed in one go. Like a meal composed of dozens of dainty side-dishes, it risks leaving you stuffed but unsatisfied. Better to give each portion its space (though three-and-a-half years of space might be overdoing it), to savour the flavours that linger long after you put the game down.

Conway, the truck driver, asks for directions at a petrol station decorated with a giant horse’s head. In the basement he has the first of many encounters with people – ghosts? – who don’t seem to exist in the same timeframe as him. He is directed to the Zero, a secret, underground, extra-dimensional highway; it’s the only way to reach his destination. Getting to the Zero won’t be easy, but navigating it and the spaces – and people – it leads to will be trickier still. He acquires a travelling companion, Shannon, who loves to repair old TV sets and sees visions of her vanished sister in the white noise. (This game has a strong retro fetish for analogue technology: cathode ray tubes, radio static, magnetic tape, theremins. The suggestion is that these old machines left more room for magic and mystery than the digital world does – a tempting, if heavily nostalgic, point of view.)

Searching for the Zero, Conway and Shannon explore an old mine, where he injures his leg. They find the mystical road, but it only leads them into a bureaucratic purgatory of dead ends, odd characters and illogical institutions. They keep getting sidetracked. There’s a huge bird that carries houses; a game-within-a-game, running on an ancient mainframe computer, that tells the story of its own making; a tugboat navigating an underground river. An orphaned boy joins them, and a cool musical couple, and other lost souls drift in and out of the scene. No-one ever seems to be fully present, being constantly pulled back to their own thoughts, their own reality. The ultimate goal of the delivery is not so much sought as drifted towards.

This is what Cardboard Computer means by magical realism: a recognisably real world where fantastical things can happen and where dream logic holds sway. Kentucky Route Zero is clearly inspired by David Lynch, though not in the totemistic way other video games quote his hugely influential mystery-horror-soap, Twin Peaks. (You know what I mean: red velvet curtains, sharp-suited investigators, torch songs in roadside bars, creeping unease in placid Smalltown, USA.) Plenty of games have indulged in this while pursuing their own more or less conventional concerns, from Deadly Premonition’s outsider-art survival horror to Virginia’s elegant procedural. Kentucky Route Zero gets closer to the unsettling core of Lynch’s work, where the things that ought to make the least sense make the most – where the unreal and impossible has an awful, implacable truth about it. (It does also feature a torch song in a roadside bar, mind.)

In this world, a band of distillery workers appear as glowing skeletons; they make everyone uneasy, but nobody remarks on it. The laws of space and time seem easily pierced or folded, to which characters react with, at most, a vague bemusement. The images and moments Cardboard Computer conjures from this dreamscape have a haunting power. The trouble is that there isn’t quite enough reality in this magical realism. In Lynch, the surreal and horrifying lurch suddenly from a landscape of extreme, almost anaesthetised normality. In Kentucky Route Zero’s middle episodes, however, it plunges into head-spinning concept after head-spinning concept, taking each as far as it will go – a very video gamey thing to do.

At times this is almost alienating, which is a risk when your game gives the player such a slender toehold in the narrative. For all its oddity, this is a pretty linear piece of storytelling in which the choices you make are less about what will happen next and more about the inner lives of the characters: where their memories lead, how curious they are, the song lyrics that haunt them. You spend most of your time in this game reading. The script, by Jake Elliott, is good, with a compassionate humanity that balances the occasional excesses of surreal southern Gothic. I loved the passages when there was a sudden shift in perspective and a voice from a different timeframe would cut through – such as the scene narrated by a couple of bored office workers from the future, reviewing old CCTV tapes.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game of words, but it’s Tamas Kemenczy’s vector visuals for which the game will be remembered. It is extraordinarily beautiful. Small, fragile, hazy figures pick their way through skeletal spaces. The lighting is dim and suggestive, using silhouette and negative space to leave your imagination room to breathe, and there are some startlingly lovely effects. It often looks like a flat, paper-cut diorama until the camera slowly rotates, revealing its surprising solidity and depth.

The game has many obsessions: death, memory, the decline of rural America. There’s a rather heavy-handed subplot about the entire region being in hock to the electric company. But above all else it is fascinated by art. It is full of artworks: videos, songs, installations, poems, and that primitive, fully playable adventure game. Half the characters seem to be artists or frustrated artists. If this sounds dangerously self-referential, well, I suppose it is. It does seem rather preoccupied with the hipster bubble within which it is all too easy to assume the game was created.

Yet some of the game’s most persuasive moments take place within this art-within-art. I’m thinking in particular of two of the interludes (which you can download for free at the game’s site). The Entertainment is a play, experienced from the point of view of one of the performers, that introduces a location and characters that will pop up in the subsequent episode; Un Pueblo De Nada puts us behind the scenes at a tiny community TV broadcast during a torrential downpour, foreshadowing the final act. Both use a single fixed camera point to brilliant effect, creating a strong unity of place and giving a much-needed shot of reality amid the magic – despite the air quotes they appear in.

This trick is repeated by the game’s fifth act, which breaks formally with the fragmentary, collage-like approach of the preceding four. It all plays out in a single location, with a single camera floating high above the action, following the player’s focus (rather sweetly embodied in a gambolling cat). Characters are discovered in different moments and attitudes as the camera sweeps across them and we stop to hear what they have to say. The sun warms the scene and, for the first time, the world of Kentucky Route Zero feels tangible, whole, held together. After a week drifting through Cardboard Computer’s elusive dream of a game, this was quite a moment. I can only imagine how it feels after seven years.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/kentucky-route-zero-review-haunting-drifters-odyssey-comes-to-an-end-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kentucky-route-zero-review-haunting-drifters-odyssey-comes-to-an-end-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[mikemarko567-blog]

How Medical Marijuana And Health Insurance Works | Home

Ask any doctor, researcher, or even an ordinary citizen for their opinion of medical marijuana, and you’ll get mixed responses. However, no one can deny its efficacy in the help of easing the symptoms of multiple diseases and even helping cancer patients.

That’s why several researchers have run studies and clinical trials to prove that cannabis isn’t as harmful as many think it is. It’s partly due to their findings that policymakers are now starting to review the classification of marijuana as aSchedule I drug.

Schedule I drugs are ones not yet proven to have medical benefits and/or ones at risk for abuse. We know enough nowadays to question if marijuana is actually one of these schedule I drugs.

For the people who suffer from debilitating diseases, making cannabis legal for medical use would be a huge help. With certain states becoming illegal, they have found it is helping patients who need it. It would also have important effects on medical marijuana and health insurance providers’ policies.

Questions You May Have about Medical Marijuana and Health Insurance

If you’re one of the people who suffer from diseases like AIDS, MS, cancer, and more you’ve probably already heard about the wonders of medical marijuana when it comes to treating your symptoms.

So now you might be wondering: can my health insurance cover the cost of buying medical marijuanafor my condition? This and several other important questions on medical marijuana and health insurance will be answered here.

Is Medical Marijuana Covered by ANY Health Insurance Plan?

Straight answer: No, your health insurance will most likely not cover your medical marijuana purchase. This is due to insurers’ fears of having their license revoked since cannabis is illegal according to federal laws.

And it’s not just the purchase of the drug itself. Doctor consultations with the intent of asking for a medical marijuana consent form won’t be covered by your health insurance either.

This is even though both Medicare and Medicaid acknowledge the efficacy of cannabis in treating myriad symptoms.

To add to the irony, we also already know the drug’s potential economic benefits for healthcare. According to research conducted in 2017 by the Health Affairs journal, once they finally cover medical marijuana in their policy, Medicaid could save as much as $1.01 billion in fee-for-service prescriptions.

That’s because marijuana is cheaper to produce than many synthetic drugs. This makes it a better economic alternative for most people and for medical companies.

Still, most insurers won’t cover it, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for help with your purchase. What about a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) instead? After all, you probably bought them to cover the costs of medical emergencies that aren’t included in your health insurance.

Usually, you can use HSAs and FSAs to pay for your doctor’s visits to get a medical marijuanarecommendation. However, you may still have to check on the company to be sure.

You also still can’t use HSAs and FSAs for your actual cannabis purchase. It’s still illegal for them to cover that particular expense.

It’s not advisable to go behind your policy’s back here, by the way. If you do, you might end up paying theincome taxes of the misused funds and more due to penalties. In short, it might end up costing you more in the long run.

Is Medical Marijuana Approved by Doctors?

A fair number of healthcare professionals are still skeptical about the legitimacy of the numerous studies that show the benefits of medical marijuana. That’s why legislators and policy-makers can’t be confident yet about legalizing or when they do legalize it certain rules apply.

But there are others who’ve had a change of heart. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and one of the original opponents to the legalization of marijuana, changed his stance while creating the documentary entitled “WEED”.

Upon conducting his research for the film, he found that medical marijuana does have legitimate medicinal properties. He apologized for his antagonism about the subject through a CNN article.

Aside from Gupta, at least 70 other medical professionals have formally acknowledged the benefits of medical marijuana. They, along with the members of Americans for Safe Access, have made an appeal to remove cannabis off the Schedule I drug list.

It’s something they’ve been advocating for a long time.

Can We See Health Insurance Covering Medical Marijuana in the Future?

Americans for Safe Access filed an appeal for the reclassification of marijuana in October 2012. Despite losing the battle, the organization’s bold move sparked a discussion about the taboo topic.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the opposing party in the appeal, eventually opened an inquiry about reclassifying marijuana. It was four years after the dismissal of the petition.

Thanks to this and other developments, advocates of medical marijuana are hoping a change is in the wind. Recently, even the judicial system has been creating precedents in providing medical cannabis programs for injuries sustained in the workplace.

For example, in 2017, a New Jersey judge ruled in favor of a lumber worker who appealed that his company should cover the costs of the medical marijuana he used to relieve the neuropathic pain in his hands.

Are There Alternatives for Medical Marijuana That Are Covered by Health Insurance?

Yes, there are. There are FDA-approved drugs that contain synthetic Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary substance responsible for most of marijuana’s benefits. Dronabinol and nabilone, both generic names for cannabinoids, are drugs you can buy using your doctor’s prescription.

Dronabinol and nabilone can alleviate chemotherapy symptoms such as nausea and vomiting in cancer patients. They can also stimulate the appetite, which is helpful for people who suffer from weight loss brought by AIDS.

Because these are synthetic, side effects can occur. In the first few days of treatment, you may occasionally experience dizziness, abdominal pain, or the feeling of being “high”. To help counteract these effects, try to stand up slowly from sitting or lie down for a while.

Take note, by the way, that cannabinoids are  Schedule III drugs. Thus, there’s a good chance that your health insurance covers them.

Can I Still Get Medical Marijuana Elsewhere?

There are 33 states that have already legalized the use of medical marijuana, and as of now more to become legal. However, because it’s not yet FDA-approved, strict guidelines are set in place for sellers and buyers.

When looking for a dispensary to get your medical marijuana, you must look for the following documents to know it is a medical cannabis facility:

A seller’s permit – This signifies that they’re allowed to sell any product or service.

A cannabis dispensary license – This is obviously a given.

City or county license – This is authorization from the local authorities for the business.

State bureau license – This should be displayed by the dispensary if the state you’re in has in fact legalized marijuana.

A dispensary business has to go through a rigorous screening process to get these documents. Otherwise, their business will be considered illegal and unauthorized.

Getting a Medical Marijuana Card: What Makes You Qualified?

Patients who need to buy cannabis should also meet specific criteria. This may vary depending on the state.

Some states even require buyers to have a medical marijuana card. How can you get your hands on one of these cards? There are certain qualifications.

The Eligible Ailments

Each state has a list of medical conditions that a patient must have to qualify for a medical marijuanacard. Below are the common diseases that you can find on the list in every state:

Epilepsy

Cancer (particularly those that are in chemotherapy)

AIDS

Multiple sclerosis

Glaucoma

Anorexia

Crohn’s disease

Tourette’s syndrome

Some states have longer lists and may or may not include ailments like hepatitis C, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and muscular dystrophy in them, to name a few.

The Legal Documents

Some states require you to be 18 years old and above to obtain a medical marijuana card. Your document should have your birthdate plus proof of address to show that you’re a resident of that state.

For minors, a parent or legal guardian can apply for a medical marijuana card for the patient. They must also provide a document that certifies their guardianship of the child.

Tangible requirements may vary from state to state. Before applying, ensure that you have all the documents on hand first by checking your state’s requirements online.

The Doctor’s Approval

A licensed medical doctor should sign your medical marijuana form signifying that the substance is the only option you have at the moment.

This may be the most challenging step since not a lot of doctors allow this action. It could be due to fear of criticism from their colleagues, personal beliefs, or other reasons.

The Fee

It depends on your situation, but a medical marijuana form from a licensed doctor can cost. Remember that health insurance doesn’t cover it, after all.

So how much should you prepare to spend? Again, it depends where you are and what your doctor requires, but you may have to shell out as much as $300 for a legal medical marijuana card.

Final Thoughts on Medical Marijuana and Health Insurance

We’ve already noted that medical marijuana isn’t currently covered by health insurance. However, this doesn’t mean that it will stay that way forever.

Things may change in the future for medical marijuana and health insurance. One day, your coverage may actually extend to the cannabis you use to palliate your ailment’s symptoms.

Until then, you can either go for legal alternatives like dronabinol or simply pay for cannabis out of pocket. To do the latter, you usually need a medical marijuana card. This allows you to buy cannabis from an authorized dispensary in states where marijuana is legal.

Before anything else, familiarize yourself with the specific laws about medical marijuana in your state—the list of acceptable conditions, the requirements, the location of dispensaries, and the fees involved, among others.

AccuDoc Urgent Care clinic can also be of help. Aside from providing various healthcare services, we also give medical advice, recommendations, products, and other information related to medical marijuana. You can book a doctors appointment with us, which we will recommend you help and if needed a medical marijuana prescription. Which you then can take to get your medical marijuana card in Ohio, and purchase medical marijuana through a dispensary.