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vex-bittys · 4 years ago

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In Your Dreams: A Horrortale Story

Raffle prize for @purplesangel. When your life is a living nightmare, is it any surprise that your dreams are just as bad? Thankfully a dream-walking human has arrived to help, but will she still want to help Axe when she finds out what he’s done to stay alive?

WARNING: character death mention, language, blood mention, some disturbing imagery including cannibalism (no details)

READ ON AO3

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Life in the Underground was an endless nightmare for Axe. During his waking hours, he checked his traps and hunted in the forest, often returning home empty-handed only to see the disappointment and desperation in his brother’s sockets. Supply trains became frantic riots as too many monsters competed for their share of too little food, and the sharp pain of hunger lingered even after the skeleton brothers’ meager meals.

Madness seeped in through the hole in his skull, distorting reality. He clawed at his skull, trying to release the pressure of the frenetic energy that consumed him. He could feel the darkness lurking, waiting for him to make a misstep, some seemingly trivial mistake; that’s when it would strike, shredding his thoughts and shattering his focus. There was no escaping it, and Axe knew that one day it would swallow him up.

Sleep provided no reprieve. In his dreams, Axe continued to suffer. He watched his brother fade away to nothing from starvation. He felt the gnawing emptiness of his own unsatisfied hunger. Feasts appeared before his single working eyelight only to transform into grains of sand that slipped through his fingers when he reached for it. He ran through the shadowed forest outside of Snowdin, fleeing an unknown terror in the night while thorny tendrils of a deeper darkness caught him, slowing his progress, dragging him down, and allowing his madness to suffocate him.

Days dragged on into months, and months melted together into years. Waking life remained bleak with monsters still struggling (and at times failing) to survive. Food sources dwindled, and the gathering of other resources fell by the wayside as every creature in the Underground focused on filling their stomachs as best they could. Everything stagnated in its state of destitution and decay… everything except Axe’s dreams.

Axe’s nightmares repeated themselves night after night until slowly, they began to change. It started with the appearance of a new character- a human that Axe didn’t recognize, though he thought it might be a female. At first the human only observed the horrors that lurked in the sleeping world of Axe’s mind. Gradually, though, she began to interact.

It all started during one of Axe’s nightmares about his brother. Crooks would turn a pleading gaze to his brother, mouthing a soundless plea for food. Axe would fall to his knees, sobbing and pounding his fists into the ground. Crooks slowly collapsed, and the gradual dissolution of his body sent his dust drifting towards his brother, filling Axe’s mouth and nasal cavity until he choked himself awake… usually. This time things turned out differently.

“I’M SO HUNGRY, BROTHER,” Crooks’ voice came from the air around them and not his mouth, the teeth there long since broken or knocked askew from gnawing away at non-edible items simply to assuage the need to chew.

The human appeared, but instead of observing the unfolding scene, this time she glanced around until her eyes fell upon Axe.

Since the very first time you’d stumbled across this heart-breaking nightmare scenario, you’d worked hard to return to it. Dream-walking involved focus, practice, and a bit of luck, and in this venture, the fates were on your side. You’d walked this collection of now-familiar nightmare images many times, slowly working out which participant it belonged to and why the skeleton with the broken skull kept replaying these torturous situations in his sleep.

Now, you were ready to interact and hopefully restore some peace to the sleeping world of the monster in front of you. You extended a tentative hand towards him, unsure if he would welcome your touch as a form of physical comfort. He just stared at your outstretched hand as if it would bring some new and unfathomable horror to his disturbingly familiar nightmare. You let your hand drop. Words would have to suffice then.

“It’s not real,” you told the stocky skeleton firmly.

His sockets narrowed suspiciously. “what do ya mean, ‘not real’?”

“This-” you gestured to the vague, nondescript surroundings and very crisp, well-defined figure of the tall, starving skeleton behind you, never breaking eye contact “- is not real.”

The skeleton with the broken skull laughed, a harsh and humorless sound that grated against your ear drums. You sighed, frustrated but determined. It rarely improved a situation to reveal yourself while dream-walking; most dreamers forgot their nightly travels when they returned to the waking world anyway. Those who didn’t merely discarded your presence, along with any advice you might give, as part of a nonexistent scenario that could not influence their waking lives and should thus be ignored.

Normally, you resigned yourself to this and walked through dreams as a silent observer, but this skeleton’s torment tore at your heart and brought forth a tenacity within you to help him in the only way you could: by walking through his nightmares and defeating them, one by one, until nothing remained but peaceful slumber.

The skeleton with the broken skull scoffed. “you don’t know nothin’,” he growled obstinately.

“I know that your most frequent nightmares involve food, madness, and losing this other skeleton-”

“my bro,” the skeptical skeleton clarified.

“Losing your brother,” you amended with an edge to your voice, “to starvation.”

“it’s not like you’re some expert investigator piecin’ together the clues, pal. we’re all starvin’ and dustin’ down here,” he said, dismissing your observations. You frowned. Was there some truth to these nightmares? Often dreams represented thoughts and fears in a metaphoric manner, but maybe this skeleton didn’t have room in his troubled mind for subtlety.

Regardless, you would do what you could for him in the only place that you could reach him.

“I don’t know what your life is like in the waking world,” you conceded softly, “but this? Everything around us now? It isn’t real.” You continued in a rush before the skeleton could interrupt you again. “You’re asleep, and your mind is processing your fears… and your reality… into nightmares.”

The skeleton inhaled, obviously ready to argue again, but you stopped him by making a sweeping gesture towards his brother. Had this nightmare been reality, the taller skeleton would be dust by now. Instead, the image was frozen in place thanks to the stocky skeleton’s change of focus. “Look,” you ordered boldly.

Axe begrudgingly allowed his single eyelight to stray from you to his brother. While it was true that nothing had changed in the scene since he had turned his attention to his unexpected visitor, the moment he looked back, the scenario resumed. Flakes of dust drifted loose from his brother’s body, floating away on an unfelt breeze to disappear as they dispersed until nothing remained except the unbearable weight of guilt and his brother’s ghost of a voice whispering “Why?” over and over again in his head.

Why didn’t you save me?

“It’s not real,” you whispered solemnly behind him, but honestly, that didn’t matter. Watching his brother die of starvation that he should have prevented sent jagged pains through his SOUL whether it existed solely inside of his mind or not. Your next words, however, carried a much greater impact: “I can teach you how to change it.”

The most frustrating part of dream-walking was the inability to change the contents of people’s dreams or nightmares yourself. While you could view the unfolding events, you possessed no real power over them. Only the dreamer could affect their dreams. Thankfully, unlike dream-walking, lucid dreaming is a skill that can be taught.

As with every teaching experience, some students learn more quickly than others. Axe, as he eventually introduced himself to you, was not one of those students. The most difficult aspect of lucid dreaming for him happened to be the very first step to lucid dreaming at all: accepting that what he experienced while he slept was a dream instead of a warped reality that lived inside of his cracked skull and broken mind.

“These images all come from your thoughts,” you explained again. “You can control them, but first you have to accept that you can control them.”

You knew that the dreams involving his brother were far too emotionally charged to make good fodder for lucid dreaming practice, and you preferred to steer clear of the choking darkness since you had no idea what effects such a powerful and overwhelming negative force could potentially have on you, even as an observer within someone else’s troubled subconscious. This only left the dreams of an untouchable feast to practice on… and practice was not going well.

As with your many previous attempts to gently guide the stocky skeleton towards seizing control of his nightmares, the lesson had quickly devolved into a squabble. You insisted that Axe could learn to control his subconscious surroundings; Axe stubbornly insisted that he could not. You would point out that this was his dream, and his mind; he would attempt to discredit your existence as just another piece of the complicated web of nightmares that plagued him: a human offering him false hope in a bleak and hopeless world.

It did bother you a little bit that Axe considered you- a (mostly) patient and helpful human- to be nightmare fuel. Only monsters lived in the Underground since the long-forgotten war, so why would Axe’s guilt-riddled dreamscapes include humans?

You decided to save the questions for another time.

“Try again,” you told Axe, who only answered with a weary, frustrated sigh.

Irritation swirled through Axe’s excessive magic, though it was aimed more at himself than at you. Every night you tried to help him take control of his dreaming mind, and every night, despite your calm instructions, he failed. You made it sound so easy, so why couldn’t he just grab a stupid spider donut off of the stupid table and shove the stupid thing into his big, stupid mouth?

“Try again,” you told him patiently as he brushed the gritty sand from his finger joints. He uttered a weary, frustrated sigh.

“i am trying,” he grumbled, biting back a deluge of unhelpful comments and curses. He touched another piece of food, a french fry, still steaming though it had been sitting on a pile of its doppelgangers since the nightmare began. The entire fry stack crumbled to sand before he’d even lifted one free; Axe’s patience dissolved along with it.

“if this was as easy as you claim,” he shouted, letting his anger overflow into sharp words, “then i’d be able to pick up these plates and smash them on the floor like i want to!” Without any conscious thought, Axe lifted one of the plates in question and hurled it at the ground. It shattered, leaving silence in its wake as Axe and the dream-walking human stared down at the shards on the ground in awe.

Axe gave an entire stack of plates an experimental shove, sending them cascading over the edge of the table and onto the ground where they created an inharmonious symphony of destruction. You applauded the spontaneous mess and squealed with glee, and Axe swept you up into a quick celebratory hug, spinning you around once before setting you back on your feet. As soon as he set you down, he grabbed a donut and crammed it into his mouth. Chewing, his sockets narrowed in utter bliss, he picked up a second donut and offered it to you.

Nothing tasted as sweet as victory… except for maybe a spider donut.

You didn’t want to dampen the skeleton’s joy by telling him that you wouldn’t be able to taste a donut in his dreams, so you took a bite, your head still spinning from his sudden show of physical affection. With a promise to see him the following night, you stepped out of his nightmares. You felt content that you’d taken the first big step on a journey to giving Axe the power to sleep peacefully without constant, horrific nightmares plaguing him.

The next lesson would be more difficult; you intended to guide Axe through banishing nightmares of his brother’s death. Out of consideration for Axe’s privacy, you had never asked him why he had such specific nightmares about his brother, but nightmares involving a sibling death as vivid as Axe’s hinted at some very dark and complex situations existing in the skeletons’ waking world. Those hints aside, Axe had outright stated that things were terrible in the Underground where he lived. Maybe working through his dream would give him some insight into fixing his real-life situation, at least the one he faced with his brother.

You hoped so. During the nights you’d spent helping Axe learn how to lucid dream, you had come to consider him a friend. You hated the thought of him suffering. You especially hated that you could only reach him during his nightmares. You wished you could do more, but how? Those were thoughts for your own waking world.

Tonight you wanted to focus on Axe’s progress, and once he’d gotten some practice at lucid dreaming, you’d work on changing the heart-breaking nightmare of his brother.

Sweat beaded on Axe’s skull as he waited for you to appear. He could feel himself slipping towards darker dreamscapes, and he fought to stay in the safe in-between place like you’d shown him. He told himself that the tremors in his bones were caused by his unstable magic and not by fear. What if his previous successes were a fluke? What if he failed when it mattered the most?

Thoughts of failure sent him spiraling into the guilty nightmare of his starving brother. After all, his failures in reality led to this, and the dire consequences that he saw unfolding in his subconscious lurked only a step behind him in the waking world. Soon his real life would become this very same nightmare, and he would be left as powerless to stop it there as he felt to stop it here.

Thankfully, you appeared within seconds to chase away the grim meanderings of his mind and help him focus on the task at hand- Crooks.

Axe’s brother loomed in front of him, eyes pleading, begging for something that Axe could not give him. He watched the image of his brother twist and reshape itself, growing alarmingly large, the bones stretching from an influx of magic that still somehow managed to provide almost no nutrition. He whispered his brother’s name, frozen in place and unable to remember what he was supposed to do to stop the scene unfolding in front of him.

A small hand slipped into his; he had forgotten about you as his familiar fears swamped him. You looked up at him with a calm expression and nodded, encouraging him.

“You can do this.” Your words bolstered his courage. He dragged his panic back under control and turned to face Papyrus… or what had become of Papyrus under his inadequate care: the monster now known as Crooks.

“You know what you need to do,” you whispered.

Axe stepped towards his brother, focusing on Crooks as he had seen him last: tucked into his bed, the blanket no longer quite long enough to cover his lanky frame, wishing Axe a good night and sweet dreams and promising to see him in the morning. Keeping that image locked in his mind, Axe let his lone eyelight travel over his brother’s altered frame. Sure enough, not a single mote of dust rose from the other skeleton. Crooks simply stood there, watching him through sunken sockets.

Though he’d brought his brother’s recurring death to a halt, the words that swirled and echoed around him continued, too faint at first to make out individual words or phrases. His brother’s voice whispered accusations like poisoned arrows that pierced his SOUL. A chorus of questions, all beginning with “Why…?” slowed, sharpened, and gained clarity. Crooks spoke, though his mouth never moved and the words seemed to thrum within his very bones, tangible beyond mere sound.

Normally Crooks’ omnipresent voice asked him why he would allow his brother to starve, but this time the question differed, though it still sent chills to the very marrow of Axe’s bones.

“WHY DID YOU MAKE ME EAT-”

Axe quickly hushed his brother, stealing a glance at you to gauge your reaction. You simply made an encouraging gesture as if to say “Go on, you’re doing great.” He wondered if you’d feel the same way if you knew what Crooks’ next words would have been.

“i couldn’t let ya starve,” Axe spoke softly, tilting his head to maintain eye contact with his much taller brother. “i’d do anything to keep you alive.”

“EVEN-”

Axe nodded, nearly choking on guilt. “yeah. even that.”

“BUT I TOLD YOU I DIDN’T EVER WANT-”

Remorse softened Axe’s expression, and his gravelly voice hitched. “i couldn’t let ya dust. i had no choice. i’m so sorry.”

Without warning, Crooks slumped, but he wasn’t collapsing into dust. Instead, he crushed his brother against his ribcage in a tight hug. You sensed a loosening of the guilt and remorse that gripped this particular nightmare so tightly. Things weren’t resolved yet. Nightmares could rarely be banished in a single lucid dreaming session, but you’d given Axe the tools he needed to seize control of his sleeping world.

Only one challenge awaited you now: fighting the suffocating darkness of the final nightmare. You made plans to tackle that monumental task once Axe felt satisfied that he could manage this current nightmare on his own. Working through the tangle of emotions that his brother’s death awakened would take quite a bit longer than satisfying himself that he could eat his fill of dream donuts, but you were willing to go the distance to help Axe.

You actually wanted to do this, no matter how much the slithering darkness terrified you. Axe just meant that much to you.

“I think we’re ready for the final nightmare,” you declared after a dream session in which Axe showed off by summoning various items for his brother to eat.

In the lucid dreams about Crooks, his dream-brother mostly stood or sat nearby providing companionship and support as Axe practiced controlling his consciousness. Axe enjoyed the time with his brother, despite the knowledge that this version of Crooks existed only inside of his mind. It gave him a tentative sensation of hope that perhaps someday he could experience this type of peace with his brother in the waking world, free of the constant mad scramble for survival.

Your words shattered fragile, fleeting calm. Sweat beaded on Axe’s skull. The final nightmare contained his deep, dark fears, his madness, his guilt. Tendrils that reeked of his unspeakable crimes dragged him down into the cesspool that used to be his SOUL. He didn’t want you to see that part of him. He didn’t want you to know what he was truly capable of.

You’d never come back, and he’d be left alone with the echoing, blossoming psychosis that suffocated him. It would be worse now though. You’d shined a light into his life, and now he risked that glimmer of goodness being torn away… torn away because of what he’d done.

The punishment would fit the crime of his continuing survival.

You stepped into Axe’s dream world, excited and nervous at the prospect of facing the unknown horrors of this last nightmare that plagued him. The endless grey limbo that surrounded you came as quite a surprise when you expected inky vines of darkness encased in the thorns of Axe’s painful emotions and memories. Axe refused to meet your eyes when you approached him. Something was off about the whole situation.

“Is everything ok?” Maybe Axe wasn’t ready to face the darkness of the upcoming nightmare. You didn’t mind; you weren’t going to push him towards something that he didn’t want to do. You weren’t exactly eager to face it either, and besides, you thought you might enjoy just spending some time with Axe.

When he raised his head to meet your eyes, you couldn’t suppress a gasp of fright. Goosebumps erupted along your arms, and you shivered.

Axe’s single red eyelight… it glowed with an eerie flickering light, seeming to swell until the socket could barely contain the vortex of its power. Axe tilted his head at an unnatural angle and laughed at your reaction. You forced yourself to stand your ground despite your fear. This was not the monster you knew. Axe now embodied the darkness of his own inner turmoil, and it froze the blood in your veins.

“nothing is ok!” Axe’s snarl dissolved into sinister chuckles that made his broad shoulders shake. He lifted a hand, phalanges curved like claws to scrape at the hole in his skull. You lunged forward to pull his hand away before he caused more damage to himself, and he shoved you roughly away.

The hurt and confusion in your eyes filled Axe with dark satisfaction. You needed to know just what kind of monster he was. You needed to fear him, to run away and never come back. Instead, you offered him your compassion yet again.

“Let me help you.” Tears filled your eyes. His madness must be breaking your sweet, loving heart, but he drove home his depravity because if he let himself care, you’d find out the truth eventually anyway. Losing you would hurt more if he actually had you first.

This time when you reached out for him, he dodged, letting your momentum carry you to your hands and knees on the floor. He loomed over you, oozing menace like a thick fog.

“help me?” Axe’s scornful laughter echoed around the empty landscape. “and why,” he asked cruelly, “would you help a murderer?”

“Murderer?” You repeated the word as a question, as if you weren’t completely sure you knew what it meant. Your eyes widened in shock as tendrils of darkness climbed Axe’s arm, sliding over his bones like living tattoos until they pooled in his hand, taking on the shape of a huge meat cleaver.

“how do you think i’ve survived so long, little human? i hunt, and i kill.” He grinned, his mouth stretching into a disturbing parody of joy. “humans mostly. honestly, did you think the blood on my hoodie was mine?”

You admittedly hadn’t thought much about the blood stains on the hoodie. Maybe they were his. Maybe they were ketchup. Maybe in his dreams he wore the stains of his brother’s imagined death. Dreams and nightmares created their own reality with its own details pulled more from a dreamer’s mindset than accurate memories. It shocked you to think that Axe truly wore a hoodie that had once been soaked with fresh blood.

Human blood.

You trembled. Axe began to circle you like a hungry wolf, casually swinging his gigantic cleaver.

“Do you regret it?” you finally asked in a tiny voice.

Those four words penetrated the armor of madness that Axe was using to push you away, and they struck him like a well-timed attack. He reeled, reaching for some lie to keep you from seeing the truth and pitying him.

He found nothing.

The meat cleaver fell from his shaking hand. Axe sank to his haunches, covering his face with his hands, trying to hide from you and your perceptiveness. He wanted to scare you away before you could judge him and abandon him, but you shot your question straight to his SOUL, refusing to believe the worst of him.

“every fucking minute of my life.”

This time, when you tentatively reached for him, undaunted by his previous rejection, he leaned into your touch. He hated himself for his weakness, but every second that you stayed, even if you left eventually, was a second he would cherish until time wore away even the memory of his dust.

With his first admission, however poorly he’d delivered it, out of the way, Axe couldn’t stop himself from confessing even more of his transgressions and regrets. “i lied and told my brother it was meat from an animal in the forest. he didn’t want to eat humans, but i tricked him. i couldn’t let him starve” The words poured out of him; he feared that as soon as things went quiet, you would realize what an irredeemable abomination he was and flee. “i shouldn’t have done it, but i didn’t know what else to do. we were so hungry… and it messed up our magic. there’s no way to hide what we did. no way to undo it.”

Axe’s words stumbled to a halt, and you sat for a moment in the heavy silence of the grey dreamscape, contemplating them. You hated what he had done, but you also understood that his only other option would be watching his brother starve to death. The circumstances didn’t allow for any winners, and Axe suffered with the knowledge of the things he’d done.

“You were trying to survive.” Your voice nearly cracked on the final word. You could not fathom the desperation that drove Axe to his decision.

You remembered all of the heart-breaking stories that Axe told you about the Underground: the human who’d stolen the SOULs that the monsters had gathered and fled, taking the monsters’ hope with them, the death of their monarchs at the human’s hands, the Royal Guard Captain’s ascension to a throne that she didn’t possess the skills to manage, and the unbearable suffering of monsters starving to death or falling down because of an unshakable despair.

You raised your eyes to meet Axe’s eyelight, expecting to see softness there once more, but instead his horrified expression stared back at you. You didn’t need to puzzle out the cause because a moment later, barbed shadow vines lashed you, wrapping around your legs and dragging you towards a puddle of oozing darkness near your feet. You struggled against the thorny tendrils, and they tightened, driving each wickedly sharp thorn-tip into your flesh.

Pain seared your legs, real physical pain… in someone else’s dream. Panic washed over you, and you fought harder to escape, causing the barbs to rip deeper into you.

You screamed.

Shaking off his shock at the sound of your scream, Axe lunged forward. He wrapped both of his arms tightly around you and wrenched you away from the grasping vines. A writhing mass of them rose up behind him, swarming over him like living things. Staggering a few steps forward, Axe set you on an empty bit of space, but the vines quickly pulled him off of his feet and into a kneeling position. More tendrils rose to wrap around him, and the inky darkness of the puddle rose up to meet them, slithering up his body and swallowing him up in the darkness.

“i can’t protect you here… i can’t keep you safe from me, from my mind.” Axe choked out the words through the darkness consuming him. He couldn’t let you come back. He wouldn’t allow you to be in danger because of him.

This had to be good-bye.

He focused his mind.

“don’t come back.”

You jolted awake, that one last glimpse of Axe’s red eyelight, brimming with pain and regret burning in your mind. He had kicked you out of his dreams and told you not to come back. You couldn’t dream-walk in a mind that wasn’t open to your presence. Your throat constricted, and you felt tears sting your eyes. What if you never saw Axe again?

When you tossed back your blankets, you half expected to see scratches on your legs where Axe’s negative thoughts and emotions had touched you, but your skin was unbroken. You’d never experienced a nightmare so vivid and intense, but you breathed a sigh of relief that it couldn’t reach you in the waking world. If only Axe would let you come back, you could tell him that despite your panicked reactions, his dreams had no power to harm you.

Instead, he would continue to face the torment of his past mistakes all alone… for now.

Because while you had been helping Axe deal with his nightmares, you hadn’t neglected the appalling circumstances of his reality. If you could make your waking project work, you would be able to truly save the skeleton that you cared for so deeply.

I won’t let you push me away, you vowed.

Axe settled himself on the bench of his sentry station, taking a break from prowling the forest for potential meals. The barren snowscape left him all alone with his thoughts, and he hated it. In one bout of unhinged boredom, he’d created a sign for the outpost: “Head dogs, 5G.” It made as much sense as anything else in the Underground. Besides, there was no such thing as a hot dog in this frigid wasteland.

The narrow lines of dead tree trunks shifted if he stared at them too long, and the wind that howled through them carried voices whose words he could not quite arrange into coherency. The windblown whispers rose in volume until the roaring of innumerable voices filled his skull. The blazing white of the snow surrounding him only added to the sensory overload. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see.

“shut up, shut up!” Axe chanted, clawing at the hole in his skull. Reality warped, the passage of time quickened and slowed, and nothing made sense anymore…

… and you were standing in front of him.

Axe recoiled in disbelief. How could this be happening? He hadn’t fallen asleep… or had he? Maybe you were a cruel hallucination conjured by his loneliness. He refused to accept the vision of you even when you reached out in that oh-so-familiar way to calm the scrabbling of his phalanges against the jagged edges of the hole in his skull.

Axe’s hand shot out as quickly as a striking snake and grabbed your wrist. He yanked you forward until you were partially bent over the sill of the sentry station. He raised his massive knife high above his head; his eyes held no recognition, no clarity, no sanity.

You held completely still, unflinching. The meat cleaver hovered threateningly above you, but it did not fall. You and Axe were frozen in the moment, but despite the madness that absolutely radiated from him, you trusted him not to hurt you.

“you’re not real,” Axe accused you in a gravelly whisper. You weren’t even sure if he meant to speak aloud at all.

“Are you going to kill me?” Your voice didn’t waver, and you kept your eyes locked with his single eyelight, calm yet firm.

Axe lowered the knife. Real or imagined, starving or not, he would never hurt you. You knew him too well. He released your wrist, hoping he hadn’t hurt you by grabbing you like that. He wanted to ask how you’d gotten here, but other matters demanded a higher priority.

“you aren’t safe here,” the skeleton scolded gruffly. “didn’t you listen? monsters here kill and eat humans!”

“Good thing I found you first then.” You tried to diffuse the tension with bravado, but you had to admit that your choice to come to the Underground was a risky one. Axe’s eyelight travelled over your body, searching for injuries while surreptitiously taking in the sight of you. His obvious concern for your safety filled you with warmth and determination.

“there’s nothing good about this,” Axe growled though he had to admit that seeing you again definitely felt like a good thing to him. That little bit of goodness could be snuffed out in a hurry though if another monster saw you and attacked. “i’ve got to get you out of here.”

Axe lumbered out of his sentry station, glancing furtively around the barren landscape, though it wasn’t entirely clear whether he expected to spot an enemy or an escape route. The skeleton stopped right next to you, attempting to block you from prying eyes. You found his protective stance rather charming, but you weren’t here to be charmed. You were on a mission.

You slipped your backpack from your shoulders, swinging it around into Axe’s line of sight and opening it. Seven clear canisters sat inside, each with a brightly-colored heart shape inside of it. Axe’s mouth dropped open in shock.

“are those…?” Axe sounded almost reverent, and with good reason.

“Human SOULs? Yes. I gathered these from willing donors who wanted to help set the monsters free.” It had taken dedication and time, but you’d meticulously interviewed potential donors until you tracked down all seven SOUL types that you needed. Now, only the path to the Barrier stood in your way.

Without warning, Axe swept you into a crushing hug, then proceeded to spin you around. Your feet actually left the ground, and you laughed softly at the thrill of it.

“you’ve got to meet my brother, then we’ll smuggle you into the Capitol.” For once you heard excitement and hope in Axe’s voice. His eyelight gleamed with resolution as he reached for your hand. You placed your hand in his without hesitation. Axe’s declaration that he knew a shortcut still rang in your ears as the world spun beneath you and everything went dark.

Disoriented, you tried to take in the scene around you. You’d been outside, standing in a forest choked with dead trees and carpeted in snow, but suddenly you found yourself in a house. The loud colors of the bowling alley style carpeting had long since faded, and the couch had obviously seen better days. Everything in the house was touched with the same look of elegant decay: faded colors, worn fabrics, the yellowing of book pages, and the subtle musk of disuse.

A fine film of the dust of time spoke volumes about the life of two monsters who devoted so much of their lives to simply surviving that they were forced to neglect the basic upkeep of their home. The house looked so long abandoned that the presence of life within it seemed almost surreal. You couldn’t find words to break the silence that permeated the house, soundless echoes of what it had once been.

Movement caught your eye; a lanky figure detached itself from the shadows and stepped in the dust-mote-filled light. Your eyes travelled up and up, an impossible height despite the figure’s hunched posture, until you found facial features that you recognized from Axe’s dream. The vivid colors of Axe’s subconscious bore the same washed-out appearance here that characterized their home, but you knew this must be Papyrus, now known as Crooks due to the effects of his recent tragic diet.

Crooks wrung his hands shyly, awaiting your reaction to his somewhat terrifying appearance. His teeth were crooked and broken, caked with something red that you tried not to think about too much. His nervous actions tugged at your heart, and you offered him a gentle smile which he responded to with a smile of his own.

“I’D OFFER YOU SOME OF MY SIGNATURE SPAGHETTI AND EYEBALLS, BUT WE’RE ALL OUT OF PASTA.” His apologetic tone did little to distract you from the fact that the skeleton brothers were short of pasta but not eyeballs.

“That’s alright. Really.” You didn’t hold out much hope that Crooks had misspoken considering Axe’s earlier admission. The sooner you got these monsters out of their Underground prison, the sooner they could return to normal healthy eating habits.

“my friend here wants to help us get to the Surface. they’ve got plenty of pasta up there. we just need to talk to ol’ Queen Undyne first,” Axe interjected, using a light tone to dispel the awkwardness of his brother’s offer.

Crooks perked up at the mention of Undyne. “UNDYNE WILL BE SO RELIEVED. I DON’T THINK SHE LIKES BEING QUEEN VERY MUCH…” You clutched your backpack and its precious cargo of SOULs, unzipping it slightly to show the mingled glow of seven vibrant colors. Crooks peered at them with a mixture of curiosity and delight.

Axe shifted uncomfortably. “yeah, relieved,” he mumbled, refusing to meet your eyes. You didn’t have much time to wonder about the skeletons’ very different reactions to Undyne because Axe extended a hand to you and Crooks. As soon as your fingertips brushed his smooth, warm bones, everything went dark again.

In the few seconds it took your eyes to communicate the view of a once-opulent throne room to your poor confused brain, a glowing blue spear appeared and slammed into the ground so close to you that you felt the force of the impact thrumming up the shaft of the weapon. If Axe hadn’t yanked you backwards, you would’ve been impaled. Where had it even come from?

“UNDYNE WAIT! THIS HUMAN IS A FRIEND!” You followed the direction of Crooks’ voice to see an armor-clad monster with a wild mane of crimson hair. She held another glowing blue spear, and her single yellow eye focused on you with murderous malice. You staggered backwards from the force of her glare.

“No human is a friend to monsters,” Queen Undyne roared, launching a volley of her spears at you. You resigned yourself to your doom, regretting that your rescue attempt had been such a short-lived failure.

A wall of bones erupted from the tiles of the floor, blocking the attack. Crooks and Axe both stood next to you, arms outstretched to summon the defensive maneuver. More spears struck the bones, causing them to shudder, but they remained standing. You turned wide, panicked eyes to Axe, searching for some explanation or reassurance.

“can you hold her off?” Axe asked Crooks, who nodded somberly. The stocky skeleton grabbed your arm and dragged you down a hallway of soaring pillars coated thickly in cobwebs and floor to ceiling windows of cloudy, cracked glass. Away from the immediate danger, you began to tremble. Tears welled up in your eyes.

Axe pulled you close, wrapping you in the safety of his arms and gently rubbing your back. He made soft shushing sounds, and you realized that your tears had turned into terrified sobs. Your body shook, and you hiccuped, trying to catch your breath. Axe held you until the overwhelming wave of emotion subsided.

“i’m so sorry. i thought maybe we could talk some sense into Undyne. she and my brother used to be really close, but the last human who came through here… well, that human killed a lot of monsters and stole the SOULs that we had collected towards breaking the barrier. they left us with nothing but despair and dust, and Undyne blamed herself for not stopping them. it… affected her.” Once again, Axe looked guilty.

“How can we convince her that I’m trying to help?” You gripped your backpack with determined hands. You didn’t gather these SOULs for nothing, and you didn’t plan to leave the starving monsters in the Underground without at least making an effort to save them.

“you aren’t going to convince her of anything.” You opened your mouth to protest, but Axe laid a phalange against your lips to silence you. “i want you to get out of here. it’s not safe, and i would never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

“What about breaking the Barrier?”

Loud crashes sounded from the Throne Room. Axe shot a quick glance over his shoulder before pushing you further down the hallway. “i need to go help my brother. if we can convince Undyne to trust you, i’ll meet you at the Barrier to break it and free the monsters.”

“What if you can’t?” More sounds of destruction threatened to drown out your whispered words, but Axe was close enough to hear you over the cacophony. Sorrow filled his single eyelight.

“i won’t put you in danger.”

“That doesn’t answer my question!” Actually, it did answer your question, and the implications left you frantic with worry for him. You wanted to explain how you felt about him, why his plan tore your heart to pieces, that you couldn’t just leave him behind, but the sounds of battle were approaching quickly.

Crooks slid backwards into the pillar-lined hallway, kicking up dirt. He held bone attacks in his gloved hands, and he used them to deflect wave after wave of spear attacks. The barrage of attacks drove him backwards again, closer to you and his brother. Axe stepped between you and the sound of Undyne’s war cries.

Turning, he cupped your cheek in one large, bony hand. His eyelight drank you in as if to memorize every feature of your tear-streaked face. He leaned forward and kissed your forehead. “go,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to yours.

Then he was gone, teleporting to the entrance of the hallway to join Crooks with bone attacks flying.

If you stayed, it would only distract him. He wanted you to go, to be safe. It took every bit of willpower in your body to walk away, to step through the Barrier without him, knowing that he never would’ve fought Undyne if it wasn’t for your meddling.

You waited.

And waited.

The seconds stretched out, each one lasting a thousand excruciating years.

You waited.

Axe curled up on the couch, full to bursting from a delicious dinner prepared by his brother. Yawning, he rested his skull in your lap, and you gently stroked his scapulae, smiling as he began to doze. He no longer feared nightmares. In fact, he rarely dreamed at all anymore. After all, what would be the point in dreaming?

Life on the Surface far surpassed anything that his subconscious could fabricate, and he already lived that dream every single day, with you.

INDEX

#vexy writes #horrortale #horrortale sans #ht!sans #horrortale papyrus #ht!papyrus #horrortale undyne #ht!undyne #horror!sans x reader #fem!reader

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k-s-morgan · 4 years ago

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Hannigram One-Shot from ‘Ravage’

It just occured to me that I’ve never shared my ‘Ravage’ contribution online! Big thanks to @lovecrimebooks for organizing it and letting me be a part of it.

The story is a short Hannigram AU that takes place in the world of Dante’s hell. My circle was Lust. Hannibal is a literal Devil here; Will is a supernatural being that represents Desire. A story of two deadly forces, obsession, and intricate manipulation.

Black for Death, Purple for Lust: Colors to Capture the Devil

“To this torment are condemned the carnal damned. Those for whom desire conquered reason.” — Virgil

The flickers of darkness were tightly entwined with splashes of gold, red, and white. All dominant colors seeking to represent every being that had chosen to participate in this mockery of a meeting.

The Ball of Highest Powers was an event that Hannibal had always found appallingly primitive. And yet, being the Master, the Devil, he was forced to attend each one. To watch the emergence and the disappearance of his old and new acquaintances. To reinforce his inevitable presence.

To instill fear. Because he was no longer a Lucifer, God’s fallen angel, trapped for all eternity. He was a Hannibal, the name he had chosen himself, a rightful owner of Hell; the Devil reborn, reclaiming his agency.

Recently, God began to avoid Earth more and more, and Hannibal was only too happy to take control over it.

They knew it — these beings proudly calling themselves the Highest Powers. They knew that if they displeased him, they would be gone. Anteros, or Anthony as he preferred to call himself these days, his oldest source of annoyance, the only surviving representation of Love. Margot, a recently emerged Goddess of Grace. Mason, his supposed ally, reflecting Perversion. And many, many more.

Not everyone attended the Ball, but it was the only opportunity to become aware of how many of them continued their existence, what new reflections had come to life.

“Will you be putting a crown on anyone today?” Anthony asked him, holding a glass of crystal liquid and watching the masses swirling in a dance. Hannibal measured him with a disinterested gaze.

As one of the most ancient beings, Anthony was the only one who dared to engage him at least in some way, despite knowing the extent of Hannibal’s contempt to him and to what he represented.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Hannibal replied mildly. The crowns. The tradition that all of them followed faithfully. Every color had its own meaning. Anthony tended to put a red crown on one of these poor souls every year, expressing his fleeting affection.

The only crowns Hannibal used were black ones, symbolizing instant elimination and oblivion. He had the power to destroy those who no longer amused him, which made Anthony’s boldness all the more surprising.

“Don’t look at me,” Anthony said half-jokingly, and Hannibal’s lips twitched in distaste.

Before he could answer, though, a strange hush fell over the hall. More and more beings went silent, staring somewhere, and involuntarily, Hannibal felt a weak pang of curiosity.

Some creature emerged from the crowd, moving at a leisurely pace, staring at him.

Moving to him. Or perhaps to Anthony, which was far more likely?

But no. The blue eyes were fixed on him, and Hannibal blinked incredulously. His bewilderment changed into disbelief and then stupor when he finally noticed what this newcomer was holding.

A crown. A purple crown.

A crown of lust.

Lust. Everyone knew Hannibal’s feelings toward it, the dark satisfaction he received in keeping lovers apart, separated by vast, rocky chasm in their special circle of Hell.

There was no misstep that Hannibal despised more. Other sins were delicious, deserving the most exquisite torment, poisoning even the most strong-willed people. Lust, though, this bleak, faded semblance of emotion was shared only by crippled weaklings. Hannibal readily engaged in other sins, but not in lust — never in lust.

And this new… creature was carrying a purple crown? Heading toward him? He was. One step closer to him, then another. Then he broke into his personal space, and Hannibal remained frozen, paralyzed by a strange, unfamiliar feeling.

He had never seen this creature before.

He would remember him.

Blue eyes were studying him intently, framed by dark lashes. Pale face, chocolate curls, pink mouth. A classical beauty.

The being smiled at him and Hannibal’s lips parted. His breath caught in his chest, his hands grew horrifyingly clammy, and he distinctly felt his pupils getting wide, his eyes glazing over.

The scent hit him then — strange, enticing. The scent of innocence and death. Hannibal shuddered, inhaling it deeply, his nostrils flaring in attempt to get more of it.

And then the smiling creature reached forward and put the purple crown on his head, and he still did nothing. The silence stretched, both of them staring at one another, Hannibal’s fingers twitching, aching to touch, to feel.

The strange creature tilted his head, watching him, let out a thoughtful sound, and then turned his back to him and disappeared within the crowd.

The silence was deafening, and Hannibal was still rooted to his spot, unable to move, utterly confused by what had happened and by the fact that he was now wearing a purple crown, with no instinct to take it off.

Conversations resumed eventually, and Anthony, who was still standing nearby, chuckled.

“Well, that was unexpected,” he said, amused. “Did you honestly like Will, or are you already plotting his demise?”

“Will?” Hannibal echoed.

“Will. Desire,” Anthony’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You didn’t recognize him? He’s not exactly new. It’s just that he has never visited the Ball before. Few of us know him personally, but I thought that you, for sure—”

Hannibal stopped listening. Because while the name Will was new, he was indeed aware of Desire. The cunning, ubiquitous being that found entrance everywhere, slipping equally into the most romantic souls, enhancing their desire for affection, and into the violent ones, feeding their desire for war and destruction.

And now he seemed to slip into the Hell itself. Into Hannibal’s domain, into his very mind. Leaving him humiliated, with that purple embarrassment on his head.

Suddenly infuriated, Hannibal tore the crown from himself and clenched it in his hand, wishing only to crush it.

Foolish Will — to challenge the Devil himself.

Hannibal would put an end to it, and to him.

***

The cold darkness of Hell was soothing. The shadows were whispering to him, the souls were moaning, begging, but for some reason, it brought no pleasure to him.

Restless, Hannibal moved along the line of entrapped lovers within his circle of Lust, staring into their glassy faces, the longing and thirst reflected there as they kept looking over the chasm, trying to get a glimpse of their partners. He wasn’t some weak-minded creature like them. And he certainly didn’t experience lust. Such thing was beneath him.

But the image of blue eyes and lips curled up in a smile kept haunting him, his mind greedily recalling every bit, savoring it, filling his body with strange, buzzing sensation.

A purple lighting storm swirled around the chasm — the soul of Alana rising to see what was happening.

Alana was one of his human lovers, one Hannibal had seduced out of amusement, one he had been driving mad with lust until she killed a man in attempt to protect him, falsely thinking that Hannibal was about to be attacked. She had died in that confrontation as well, and since there was no lover Hannibal could position her against in the circle of Lust, he had chosen to turn her into a lighting storm here, trapped between two sides of the chasm.

Hannibal paid her no mind, but Alana whispered something, trembled, and suddenly, an image of Will appeared, huge and stretched through the entire chasm — shocking and ethereally beautiful.

Hannibal stared, a sharp rebuke freezing on his lips.

Will, Desire, was moving slowly through some forest, his eyes focused and curious, alight with intelligence and intensity that Hannibal found breathtaking. He made a strange movement, his eyebrows rising, and then he smiled, and Hannibal was lost.

Before he could stop himself, he materialized in a flash of smoke in the same forest, in the same place, several inches from Will.

Will stopped and strengthened slowly. Then he said without turning, “Now *this* is not the moment when I expected to encounter you.”

“I am faintly disturbed that you expected to encounter me at all,” Hannibal replied, watching his back, his eyes narrowed.

Finally, Will turned, and Hannibal’s breath hitched uncontrollably. His mind swam, his limbs went shaky. Desire crashed into him, enveloped every part of him, and he nearly snarled in frustration.

“Stop this,” he hissed, and Will blinked.

“Stop what?” he asked, as if genuinely confused. Clarifying would require more than he was ready to sacrifice, so Hannibal gritted his teeth and said nothing. Will tilted his head, an amused look crossing his features.

“Did you come here for me or are you interested in artful death as much as I am?”

“Artful death,” Hannibal echoed. Now, for the first time, he sensed a familiar smell of approaching decay, and he glanced at the ground, at an arched wrist that was protruding from it.

“Someone is killing people and burying them alive to feed the mushrooms,” Will said, also watching the ground. Hannibal would be taken aback — humanity still had the power to surprise him with the things they did, crazy as they were, but currently, he was much more interested in other matters. Specifically, in one standing before him.

“Do you get the souls quicker when they are buried alive?” Will asked, and Hannibal considered his question, surprised at the novelty of it.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “But the difference is slight, barely worth mentioning. Why are you here? Do you entertain yourself by helping those who can be saved?”

“No,” a frown marred Will’s forehead but somehow, it made him even more beautiful, and all thoughts left Hannibal’s head once again. “I told you. I’m not interested in life — only death captivates me. Well… now, at least.”

“This person is not dead yet.”

“But he will be,” Will shrugged. “I existed long enough to understand the beauty of it. Death is comforting. Pity not all of us have the privilege of experiencing it.”

“You will,” Hannibal told him, trying to sound calm, to hide the breathless notes in his voice. “If you keep provoking me.”

Some dark shadow flickered across Will’s face before it smoothed out, an amusing glint returning to his eyes.

“How am I provoking you?” he wondered.

“The only way you know how… Will. Or do you prefer to be called Desire?”

“Not in the least,” Will told him. “And I cannot deliberately affect you, no matter how hard I would try. I affect people only, slipping into their minds, evoking and enhancing their desires — for various things. Desire for love. Desire for destruction. Desire for revenge. What do you desire, Hannibal? To the extent where you would hope to blame it on me?”

Confusion and rage and something else, something heavier and much more intoxicating, swirled within him, and Hannibal crossed the distance between them in several short steps, crushing their mouths together, clenching Will’s hair in his fist and pulling at it violently.

Will let out a surprised sound — as if he had the right to be surprised after everything he had done, after his purple crown at that ball. Then his mouth opened wider, accepting him, and Hannibal kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, breathing faster and faster, until he felt dizzy, until the air he didn’t even need started to be lacking, until his consciousness darkened and faded. He craved him. He needed him, desperately.

Everything happened in a mist — him tearing Will’s clothes off, pushing him against the tree, taking his fill of him, Will’s soft moans breaking the silence, his compliance sweet and maddening. However, it all changed quite suddenly. Hannibal paused, regaining his strength, ready to take him again, but Will turned quickly and before he could say anything, he found himself pushed against the tree in return, Will’s nails piercing his skin to hold him in place, painful and sharp.

It was madness — everything that was happening. Hannibal didn’t understand it, couldn’t understand what was running through his veins, so hot and powerful, so intoxicating that he felt drunk on it. On Will. Later, when they both fell in a boneless heap right onto the ground, in the middle of the graveyard of those still living, Hannibal continued to touch him, to breathe in his smell, to stare at him in greed and never-ending confusion. He wanted him. He wanted him still.

Will reached out, his nails and the tips of his fingers red with Hannibal’s blood, and drew something on his arm — a small stag.

“To remember me until you want to forget me,” he said. Hannibal stroked his neck, thoughtfully, almost kindly.

“I am going to kill you,” he said, and Will nuzzled into his shoulder, a blissful smile touching his lips.

“I’m counting on it,” he murmured. “After all, this is why I have given you that purple crown. I expected to get a black one in return.”

Hannibal pulled away sharply, surprised and wishing to hide it.

Who could want a black crown? Highest Powers feared death more than humans. The idea of not existing terrified them, shrank their vanity and drowned their feeling of superiority.

Hannibal was the only one who had nothing to fear in this regard, and yet for some reason, Will’s dark words made him uneasy. He’d seen suicidal humans, held their souls, but those of the Highest Powers?

He couldn’t bear the burn of this confusion any longer. In an instant, Hannibal melted in smoke, with his last glimpse being Will, watching him with all-knowing, mysterious eyes.

He found himself back in his least favorite circle, under rebuking and hating stares of those trapped here for the very sin he was now wearing as a coat around himself.

Lust. Was that what it felt like? Why now, when Hannibal had given up hope on understanding and relating to it? He knew how to use lust, how to evoke it, but he had never been its target before. It was humbling — and infuriating. But still, not as bewildering as Will’s desire for a black crown.

The next days passed in brooding. Hannibal knew every corner of his domain, had his most and least favorite places, yet now, he felt restless wherever he went. The urge to see Will again, to have him, to listen to the troubling things he said was growing within him like a living being, coiling and hissing as he refused to succumb to it.

The stag drawn with blood was still sitting on his shoulder, with Hannibal wanting to erase it but finding himself unable to.

Maybe later.

When his resolve finally broke and he sought Will out, he was once again sent into stupor.

Will was in Lithuania. Near a painfully familiar grave. And he was busy arranging the bodies of some men around it.

Absolutely confounded, Hannibal found himself reaching for him, materializing just a step away, unable to believe his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered. “How do you know about this place? About her? No one does. No one was ever supposed to know.”

“Know that you have a weakness?” Will adjusted his hair, which seemed longer today, looking at Hannibal from under his lashes. The already familiar shock of desire ran through him but Hannibal was too stunned to act on it.

Something else was stopping him, too.

Despite his flirting gestures, Will looked sad. Full of that strange, ancient sadness that was all too familiar to Hannibal, but which he had never seen on anyone else before.

“How do you know?” Hannibal asked again, and this time, Will smiled mirthlessly. He touched the bodies he had arranged almost lovingly, moving them a little, so a grave would be directly in the center.

“This is where the only source of light in your life has died,” he said quietly. “This is where Mischa was buried. This is where I was born.”

When Hannibal just stared at him blankly, Will sighed.

“You have existed for the amount of time that no other being can comprehend,” he murmured. “I shudder when I try to imagine it. Endlessness. Emptiness. Boredom. But four centuries ago, something happened. Something changed. You were playing human again, as you do whenever boredom strikes you, and you got attached to a little girl. By accident, I’m sure, because you would never willingly let yourself feel. Perhaps the whole experience was amusing to you at first, but then you started to actually feel something. Everyone would think that a human girl protected by the Devil would be coddled to death, as safe as she could possibly be. But you got distracted — another unruly soul that had to be handled, another instance of unrest. You were gone and during this time, she was murdered — and whatever light that had started to grow within you was extinguished. You found her body here and decided to bury her in this same place… and you summoned me.”

Hannibal’s lips refused to obey. He licked them, strangely nervous, staring at Will and having no idea what to feel.

“Summoned you?” he clarified carefully.

“Yes,” Will looked away, glancing at Mischa’s grave again. “All Highest Beings appear to reflect emotions of large clusters of people. Some of them die by your hand and new, synonymous ones appear in their stead. They are all proud to represent the Highest Powers but they forget that they were created by humans. When similar emotions are experienced by a big number of people at once, a representative of this emotion is born — and this process is endless. In my case, though… my creator is you.”

“This is a lie,” Hannibal snapped. “I destroy. I do not create.”

Will’s lips curled in something too frightening to be called a smile.

“Maybe,” he said. “Therefore, I am your mistake. Your single lapse of judgment. After you found Mischa’s body, you held her. And you willed the time to reverse. You willed it to return you to the past, so you could save her. You willed it to return you to the moment of your first encounter, so you could never approach her again. Of course, your wishes weren’t granted. They never are, not even when the Devil himself is asking for it. Instead, I was born here. Yet another variation of Desire… only this time, your desire. Summoned by the strength of your pleas.”

“You are lying. I have never even seen you before that last ball!” Hannibal snarled, but the chill in his bones told him everything he needed to know. Will wasn’t lying. Will had witnessed his embarrassing descend into the most human emotions. Will had seen what Hannibal had spent centuries on trying to forget.

“You deny my very existence,” Will tilted his head, and despite vehement words, he didn’t sound angry. There was just that same sadness in his voice, one that he carried around himself at all times, which was wrapped around him like a cloud. “I am used to it by now. Since the moment of my appearance in this graveyard, with you burying Mischa, I saw only you. But you never even glanced at me. Not once. At first, I thought I was too weak to materialize properly. That is how I tried to explain your blindness. I tried to approach you many times after that — years after years. For centuries. But no matter how hard I tried, you never saw me. And it was killing me as the connection I feel to you is overwhelming — it reduces me to a ball of clingy, desperate emotions, all of which you despise.”

Hannibal stepped away before he could stop himself, disturbed by the genuineness and warmth he could feel emanating from Will.

He didn’t know if he liked it. He had never felt… this, directed at him. Will noticed his instinctive retreat, but instead of acting hurt, he dared to laugh.

“I live for you,” he said easily, and Hannibal stared at him, unable to comprehend how anyone could be so open, how anyone could say this to him.

Despite sugary words, Will didn’t act as if he was swooning in his presence. He hadn’t acted like that in the forest as well — he positioned himself as his equal. He had more grace than the majority of Highest Beings.

It was impossible to understand him.

“I’ve spent all my life in the hope that you will finally see me, learning everything I could about you, becoming your shadow,” Will continued. “Others don’t touch me — it is you whom I crave, whose attention I seek, whose company I desire. But recently… I realized that I could no longer pretend. I was a mistake that you’ve made once — that’s all there is to it. Knowing that my goal was futile, I chose against continuing my existence. At that ball, for the first time, I approached you not with love and desire, but with death and lust. And you saw me. After all this time. Because even though you loved that little girl, even though your love and your desire to change the past created me, these are not the feelings that you can recognize. Mischa was an anomaly. What you do recognize is death, which you sow, and lust, the circle of which you control. Lust is the closest you can feel to affection… I think. So this was the only time when you could see me.”

“I can see you now,” words escaped by themselves, before Hannibal could stop them. A flash of surprise crossed Will’s face before he chuckled.

“Of course you can,” he said almost gently. “Because I still intend to die. You can feel it on me. And that is why I hope that you will gift me with oblivion. You are the only one who can do that — not to mention that it will be as overly dramatic as you like. Symbolic. Dying from the hand of someone who made me.”

Hannibal’s thoughts were uncharacteristically jumbled. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, confused, at a loss, bewildered. Will was confounding. When he looked at him, even now, Hannibal could feel the dryness of his own mouth, the fevered hotness of his skin — lust, thick and powerful, mindlessly pushing him forward, his fingers trembling with the urge to touch, to caress, to bruise. Even this alarming revelation hadn’t changed it — he still wanted Will.

But he was also scared of him. Another new feeling, the flavor of which Hannibal tasted with interest, wondering if this was what others felt in his presence.

There was something else that bothered him, so, licking his dry lips, Hannibal asked, “You said you approached me with death and lust. Does it mean that your previous feelings no longer exist?”

“Nothing and no one can change them,” Will replied, still serene, still smiling. “You’ve made me. I will be always attracted to you — even I can’t fight it. But I am not a mindless bundle of desire. Before, having you see me, talk to me, was a dream. My most cherished fantasy. Once I decided to disappear, death became my biggest wish. When I managed to subdue my brighter feelings for you and pushed death and something as primal as lust to the front, you saw me — but even then, you refused to give me what I want. I didn’t get my black crown. Even after the forest, you still haven’t granted my wish. I don’t understand why — you have executed others for much, much less. Coming to Mischa was my last idea. Everything started here — it would be prudent if everything came to an end in this same place. Don’t you agree?”

Hannibal touched him, then, tracing the contour of his face, moving to his lips. Will closed his eyes, shuddering, tilting his head in such a sensual way that for a second, Hannibal’s vision went black with absurd, maddening desire.

“Wasting centuries over me,” he whispered. “How foolish.”

Will opened his eyes, frowning, but when he wanted to move away, Hannibal tightened his grip on him.

“I will grant your wish,” he promised. “But not now.”

Will looked at him expressionlessly. Hannibal was the one to step away, and his eyes lingered on Will for quite a while before he dissipated in the darkness.

He spent the next days lost in thoughts. He would kill Will — that was undeniable. He couldn’t tolerate the existence of someone who knew him from such a side, someone who dared to feel emotions to him that Hannibal despised.

But something was stopping him, making him delay that inevitable moment. There was something irresistible in realization that he was the one to create Will, that he had his very own Highest Being — unique, not like the others. Beautiful and tragic and deadly. Will had quite a list of souls he had been playing with. He wasn’t simply seducing people’s minds — he was driving them insane, whispering and poisoning them once they were sleeping, making them want things they would never dare to want. Hannibal checked, and in all his time, he had never seen such a vicious and cunning version of Desire.

Secretly, he wondered if Desire was even the right name for Will. Considering how tightly it was interconnected with lust, it formed a deadly combination that affected even him.

Because he wanted him. Was aching for him. His madness was intensifying, urging him to locate Will and to have him again, whether he wanted it or not. Hannibal prepared a black crown — stunning and regal, fitting for his creation, but he still struggled with making a decision. He continued to think. To wonder. His thoughts came to a halt when he suddenly felt a strange, vague whisper of alarm. Hannibal narrowed his eyes, listening attentively, frowning when the stag Will had drawn on him, one that Hannibal couldn’t force himself to remove, heated abruptly, as if coming to life.

‘At this point, nothing would actually surprise me,’ Hannibal thought, but before he could look at the picture on his arm, another pang of alarm pierced him — this one much stronger. Hannibal tensed for a second, and his lips curled in a snarl when he realized that someone had entered Hell — someone who had no place here.

His kingdom was being… invaded? Who could possibly be as foolish as to…

The wall glimmered under his glare, its shape softening to a well of images. Hannibal quickly found the circle where the intruder was — Lust, and he wanted to scoff — but stopped as he saw the whole picture.

That same rocky chasm. And Will, standing on its edge, with his back to it, looking directly at Hannibal — as if he knew where he was, as if he knew where to look. His lips began to move and Hannibal stared at them, reading the words they formed.

‘Thank you for not removing the stag. I wasn’t sure you would keep it. My entrance to Hell… the last piece of my plan. It’s true, only you have the power to kill the Highest Beings, but the place where you reign has the same ability. I know you well — too well, perhaps. Such a curious creature like you wouldn’t be able to make a decision, torn between wanting to keep me and wanting to destroy me — wanting to toy with me. So, I will make that choice for you. Good-bye… Hannibal.’

Hannibal’s eyes widened when he saw Will take that last, small step — and disappear within the chasm.

“No!” he cried before he could stop himself, suddenly, unexpectedly terrified. He wasn’t thinking as he threw himself into the pile of smoke, disappearing and reappearing in the middle of the chasm, thinking in forgotten, suffocating despair, ‘It’s not too late, it can’t be too late, it can’t…’

It seemed like even in his unexplainable panic, he had managed to calculate the distance correctly — a second later Will landed right into his waiting arms, looking calm, as if he hadn’t been one step from death.

Hannibal clutched him with awful, bewildering tenderness, burying his face in his dark, curly hair, inhaling its scent deeply.

“You are mine,” he murmured, not fully understand his own words. “I created you, so you belong to me.”

He was drowning in this — this confusing affection, these warmth and greediness and possessiveness he had never felt before, didn’t know what to do with.

Now that he was seeing Will, he wasn’t sure he could stop.

Mindlessly, he kissed Will’s temple, then his face, his neck, still holding him, trembling with desire to tear into him, to leave him a shaking, bleeding mess — and then to tend to his wounds, to lick them clean and start everything over again.

One who had witnessed his emotional downfall. One who existed solely for him. Who wasn’t scared of him. One who… understood him?

“You are mine,” he said again, leaned back and froze, seeing a victorious, malicious smile on Will’s face. However, it disappeared quickly, and Hannibal was back to cradling him, feeling strangely, unexplainably complete.

The violet lighting storm swirled around them — Alana making her presence known, but Hannibal didn’t pay her any mind. His eyes were glued to one specific being in his arms, one that he didn’t intend to let go, even if he had no idea what to do with him.

Hannibal kissed him again, following a foreign, heated impulse. As he continued to shower Will’s flawless skin with kisses, he heard a soft whisper, “What about my crown, Hannibal?”

“You cannot rule Hell with me. Why would I give you a crown? Even I don’t wear one,” Hannibal retorted, too distracted to look up.

He heard a satisfied chuckle, and then the violet storm ensnared them both, carrying them back to the surface.

“Mine,” Will said, his voice frightening in its triumphant deadliness. Hannibal didn’t understand what he meant, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

He would think about it later, when this haze was over.

If it would ever be over.

#hannibal #hannigram #my fics #ravage #hannibal lecter #will graham

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demonfox38 · 4 years ago

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Completed - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Oh, my language is going to be vulgar on this one.

So, I'm a crusty millennial who likes old garbage. Most of the media I like is old enough to drink and be a member of the US congress, but probably couldn't be due to the country that produced it. Now, I'd like to think that I've got good reasons to like older media, particularly when it comes to video games. It's a bit hard for my NES to bug me for microtransactions/DLC and emanate the screams of children and man-children alike. But, as much as I like my retro junk, there's one thing I'm very, very happy about regarding modern video games. The variety of game types now-a-days is a blessing. It's rare that someone is stellar at all game types, and I sure have my weaknesses.

It took me a long time to realize that I could be good at video games, and I wholly blame the glut of 1980s platforming games on that.

Look, platforming is not a forgiving genre. Particularly, back in the day where you had characters dying in 1-3 hits before factoring in death pits. It existed then for the reason that fourteen million instakill indie horror games exist now. Instantly killing the player is a lot easier to code than, say, having to track a health bar or their new position as an enemy swats them into a different room. Sometimes, a coder's gotta do what they can to keep themselves sane.

But, from a player's perspective, this style sucks!

Getting good at a platforming game requires practicing the same levels over and over again, developing a sense of your character's inertia and limitations. Without a save state or a warp to narrow in on a particularly troublesome location, it's hard to get learning to stick. You could lose a lot of games and time trying to put it all together. And some poor little character is always suffering because of your ineptitude! Such failure feels like a fork in an electrical socket. Succeeding in these circumstances requires a great deal of emotional resilience and a contrary attitude. And you know what? That's just not something I had as a kid. In fact, one could say I had my aggression and competitive drive scolded out of me. I'm just now getting that back.

So, yeah. I had a little trouble with "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link."

"Zelda II" is part of a trifecta of NES games that get routinely shit on by retro reviewers. Like its peers "Super Mario Bros. 2" and "Castlevania II", this game is generally considered an inferior game due to an extreme change of gameplay and appearance from its predecessors. And you know what? That attitude sucks. I'd rather have a variety of different games with a cast I like than have them pigeon-holed into one genre. In "Zelda II"'s case, however? The game mechanic shift was so extreme that I can easily see the ire it raises. Hell, I felt it. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's the worst Zelda game ever, but man, does it have structural defects.

In "Zelda II", Link's goal is to save an ensorcelled Zelda from eternal slumber by picking up a Triforce chunk that was pitched into a fuck-off palace way at the edge of Hyrule. (No, not the Zelda from the first game. Another Zelda. Same Link, though.) To do that, he's got to slap six gemstones into various temples across the countryside. Naturally, that includes picking up his trusty sword, leaping into battle, and then maybe straight into a death pit.

That's right. This Zelda is actually a Mario.

Further complicating the matter is a sharp switch in battle style and item accruement. While the previous Zelda game was about room management and ranged combat (or at least, as much as that was allowed), this game is all about jamming Link's dinky sword into an enemy's face and running off as fast as he can. Now, Link can learn a few tricks to help with the slash and dash, like directional stab mechanics and spells. But, as far as getting new weapons to help you? Sorry, bud. No bombs or boomerangs here. Well, except for the assholes throwing boomerangs at you, anyway. You just can't steal them.

The game encourages polishing the player's skill with Link through a level system. After acquiring XP through good ol' fashioned monster murdering, Link can cash his points out, improving his life, magic, or attack power. As the player levels him up, stats become more costly to improve. If Link gets a total game over before you use your XP, it is wiped out. Alright, fine. Fair, I guess. But, I wouldn't recommend looking at Japanese footage of this game if you don't want to give yourself a migraine. It turns out that as a part of some rebalancing, the level-up system was stacked to try and keep players from dumping all of their points into a single stat early into the game. Particularly, attack. Considering how painful and annoying enemy logic gets in this game, it's such a drag to learn that Japanese players literally could cut their way right out of that struggle. Thanks for dicking with the game design again, American publishers.

I guess we got better looking sprites and sound effects out of the deal? Hooray for wiggly Barba.

Even with leveling mechanics and a handful of heart and magic containers, this Link feels much frailer than the original Zelda's Link. Like, it's hard to believe he's supposed to be the same guy. Even at max health and defense, you could get Link wiped out with 8-32 hits (as opposed to 16-64 hits from the first game.) Exacerbating that is a life system that can yoink those health bars at any pit's whim and Link's range/health restoration being tied to a limited pool of magic. It feels like you're playing with a ceramic replica of the original character. You can make it work in a fight, sure, but you'd rather have a sword than a shard of a broken teapot.

If you don't have a bushido-level acceptance of death, you're not going to make it very far in this game. I'm not being hyperbolic. You have to accept that you are going to kill Link. You're going to watch that little fairy boy fade to black as the world flashes around him, and you're going to see that a lot. You're going to toss his bitch ass into the river to get a game over and restock your lives because fuck if you're going to wipe out inside a dungeon and have to start your bitch ass back at Zelda's temple again. That little counter on the main menu isn't how many times you have wiped out. It's how many times you've clawed your way out of the abyss with a middle finger raised.

Oh. Minor epilepsy warning on boss and Link deaths, by the way.

Having gone full bleak there for a moment, there are a few pieces of knowledge that can help slow down the cycle of life and death:

There are towns with nice ladies in red dresses and orange robes that will heal your ass for free. You should talk with them a lot.

There are classes of enemies that will drop items after they have been killed six times. Most of the time, this is a magic bottle that restores MP. Sometimes, it's a bag of experience. No monster will drop anything to heal your HP.

Also, some enemies are literal rat bastards that steal your XP. Some also give you no XP on killing them. Yeah. I know. Annoying.

The Life spell is in Saria. The downward stab is in Mido. (I realize these are very strange sentences if you're more familiar with "Ocarina of Time.") Getting these can make a night and day difference in surviving the game. So, keep that in mind.

You do get a spell that will turn you into a fairy. You can use it to game pits and sneak past lock doors. Just don't abuse it too much. It's expensive.

The dungeons have this little statue in front of them that you can whack with your sword. In most locations, it'll drop either a magic bottle or an Iron Knuckle. Game entering and exiting a dungeon as much as possible to restore yourself to full vitality.

You can get into random fights on the overworld (represented either by a little black blob or a more threatening human-sized blob.) Staying on gold roads will mean these encounters produce no enemies.

Also, you can use those random battles to override forced platforming sections. Not that I would recommend cheating in such a fashion. 😉

The game will give you a level up after you plug a gemstone into a dungeon. If you're close to leveling up anyway, turn around and grind up to the top, cash in what you've got, and then go pitch that gem.

Link has a crouch, not a duck. You think pressing down on the D-pad will evade projectiles aimed at your face, but it does not. Crouching is only good for blocking floor-level garbage. It's best not to think of the down button as much as possible, really. Only use it to pick up crap off the ground and cheese the final boss. Otherwise, jump.

I know that I said earlier that "Zelda II" is mechanically like a Mario game, but you know what other perspective might help? Try and play Link as a Metroidvania Castlevania character. There's an attack style in games like "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" and "Aria of Sorrow" where you walk, jump, and attack in such a way that you never stop moving forward. That's what you've got to do. Walk, jump at an enemy, bonk on forehead. (Depending on how fast you press the attack button, you may need to delay swinging your sword just a teeny bit. At least, I had a bad habit of swinging too early.) With any luck, when you hit the ground, you will be able to keep on moving. You do not want to get stuck playing "poke-the-hole" with your enemies, particularly with how turtle-y some of them can get.

So, the game's a brutal bitch, but I don't want to spend the entire time shitting on it. Let's talk about improvements.

Honestly, I like the sprite style of the side-scrolling sections better than the previous game. Everyone/thing has more room to be rendered, so they look clearer. I can't say the monster or dungeon design here is my favorite, but hey. Easy to see. Yippie. Could have used a map though. Maybe some more tile textures in the dungeons?

NO. STOP. BE NICE.

There are more people around that want to help Link out. Like, whole towns filled with helpful healing ladies and dudes that will teach you magic and the occasional sword strike. Most of their conversation makes sense (although, there's a memetastic fault in translation regarding a character being named Error instead of what I'm assuming should have been Errol.) People good. Want to help people. People help me.

Except for towns where some of the people are monsters, and one of the times they overlapped a healing lady to get text box priority, and then they killed me. Boo.

I'M SORRY. I HAD A HARD TIME.

The music variety is pleasant. Only a few tracks have escaped the game to go into use elsewhere, but there's only one that I'm really iffy on. The NA release did a fine job transposing what they could using a different sound chip, and there are striking uses of the sample channel being used in ominous situations.

But…like…I struggle to see where fighting through this game is worth it. And maybe it comes down to the final boss. Like, the penultimate one? Absolutely cool. A bitch to fight, but I can't knock how massive and intricate its sprite is. But, the final boss? I suppose it comes down to personal tastes, but I find mirror matches/rivals to be exceedingly dull. Like, good for you. You know how I fight. I do too. Come back to me when you know the weaknesses of my style and use a fresh set of skills to throw at me.

Like, it's not the worst ending in the Zelda series. (My vote for that would go to "Link's Awakening.") You do get Zelda saved. But, given that the final boss is some kind of dark clone of yourself…it begs a lot of questions. Was there any concrete plan for the forces of darkness in Hyrule, or were various monster tribes just scuffling around, being dicks without any overarching plan? Were some monsters trying to keep you out of the Great Palace for a good reason? Would there have been any threat of Ganon reviving at all if Link just…sat on his ass behind a castle for the next century or managed his anxiety in a different way? Why does the manual bother to separate Zeldas and the game does not? Oh, wait. The Japanese intro correctly distinguishes this and the American one does not. Why am I not surprised? What's the difference if you don't see the Zelda you saved from the first game, anyway?

This game is a lot of work. I had to psych myself up to play it every time, and by the end, I was rattled enough by my nerves that I literally camped in my bathroom for a few minutes just to make sure I didn't get sick on the couch. Very stressful. And I'm not sure that stress was worth it, frankly. Life's hard enough as it is right now. I literally have a stress rash on my neck from the shit I'm going through in real life. No, you did not need to know about that. But maybe you need to know that I've been having a hard time lately, and this game did nothing to alleviate me from the stresses of reality. And what's the point in checking out from reality if a fantasy world is just going to make me miserable, too?

There are better games to play in this style. Hell, there are better games on the NES in this style. You know what you should go play? "Faxanadu." It's uglier than "Zelda II", sure. An absolute idiot when it comes to basic mathematics. But it's very chill about platforming and death. And maybe I just want to chill the fuck out for a while.

#post game evaluation #zelda ii: the adventure of link

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calliecat93 · 5 years ago

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(Part Two)

Another volume, done. God, I feel like I just survived a whirlwind. To say that this has been a very eventful volume of RWBY would be a /huge/ understatement. We had so, so much happen. New characters, uncovered truths, political battles, murder and chaos at every turn, just… a lot. But we once again made it to this point folks. We made it to the end and we can take it easy as we await Volume 8. But with the volume now over, how did it fare? Was it a success? A failure? Or somewhere in between? And how does it measure compared to the previous six?

We have a lot to go over folks. So much that I had no choice but to make this a two-parter. Yeah, that long folks. The last two-parter I did was twelve pages long, so… yeah. In this section, we will cover Animation/Visuals, Audio, and the first half of the Character section (mainly the Atlas characters and villains). Part Two will cover the rest of the Characters (RWBYJNRQO), Story, Volume Stats, and my Final Thoughts. Everyone got all that? Good! With that said, let’s conclude this year’s RWBY Reviews with the biggest one of all: the full Volume Seven Review.

Animation/Visuals

Perfect as always. The design work once again proves perfect. CRWBY described Mantle and Atlas as based on different industrial ages, and it shows. Mantle is a big, but worn down city. It has some major New York vibes. Heck, maybe even some Gotham City with how bleak it is. The people are down-trodden and the place just looks dirty. It is a relic of the past, while Atlas represents the future. Clean, shades of blue and white to show how pristine it is, fancy locations like Atlas Academy or the Schnee Manor. Atlas is the future. A representation of the greatness that humanity can achieve… at least it looks that way. The two cities contrast so much, and it’s just so well done. When you compare to how we sadly saw so little of Mistral in comparison seeing this much with Atlas was a real treat.

Character stuff continues to be great. All of the new outfits of the heroes look fantastic. Even Jaune’s dumb hair ended up better in actual animation than it did in the still they showed at NYCC. Every character looks fantastic. Expressions are once more on point. One of the best cases is Ironwood. You can see how worn down the man is at every single turn, but also the steely determination. You can just look at him and you get the sense of strong authority, yet plain exhaustion all at the same time. In Chapter 11 when he goes from exhausted relief to full-blown horror, you feel it. Oh God do you feel it. You feel what all of these characters are feeling. Ruby’s despair in Chapter 11, Blake and Yang’s confliction in Chapter 7, Nora’s growing rage about Mantle all throughout the volume. How broken Ren feels in Chapter 13. The pure coldness from James form the same chapter when he shoots Oscar. The character animation was just on point.

The effects are also well done. I mean the Salem apparition in Chapter 11? Horrifying. Fria’s Maiden-charged blizzard was the best though. Powerful, yet somehow haunting beautiful. There have been some updates as well, like Neon’s rainbow trail and Neo’s Semblance look a lot better. Some new Grimm designs like the Saybers and the pterodactyl thing. There’s kind of a dinosaur/Ice Age theme with the Grimm, which fits with the Antarctica-esque environment of Solitas. The fight scenes were very well done, especially in the final chapters. The Ironwood vs Watts fight was freakin’ excellent and we finally got to see the Anti-Gravity biome! RWBY vs Ace-Ops was amazing on all fronts, both with the choreography and on a symbolic level. The best fight imo though is Cinder vs Penny and Winter, especially when it gets taken out into the open air. Pure epicness. Seriously, every fight was freakin’ fantastic, even minor ones like JNRO vs FNKI or the Bees vs Robyn. Even some that I wasn’t into, like Tyrian vs Qrow, CLover, and Robyn were fun to watch~

Overall, the animation and visuals were excellent~ Five starts!

Audio

If I went over every voice acting performance, we’d be here all day. Every actor was excellent. The regulars were excellent. The newbies were excellent. Everyone was excellent. We get people that we haven’t heard in a long while, like Taylor McNee (Penny), Elizabeth Maxwell (Winter), and Jason Rose (Ironwood). None of them have lost their touch. Taylor still captures Penny’s innocent charm beautifully, and her performance when Penny is just broken after being framed was heartbreaking. Jason was /especially/ good. He still carries the General’s strong authority while adding more weight, but when he becomes utterly unhinged? He did a masterful job with the performance. We also let Chris Sabat and Josh Grelle do more with their characters and it’s wonderful. Josh as Tyrian has always been great, but getting to hear Chris do more Watts? Excellent. I’m so used to him being the brute guy, like Vegeta in DBZ or Zoro in One Piece. But he does the calculated egomaniac very well and you can tell that he’s enjoying every single scene. Excellent job sir~ Jessica Nigri ended up stealing the show though, giving by far her most insane performance as Cinder yet and she 100% killed it.

We got some new people as well, and they were all great. I was so happy to see Cristina Vee getting cast and she does such a good job as Robyn. Playful but also determined. The Ace-Ops cast was good with Chris Wehkamp (Clover), Anaris Quinones (Harriet), and Mick Lauer (Marrow) being the stand-outs. Caitlin Glass got one episode as Willow, but she did an excellent job portraying how broken she is but also has just a spark of fight in her. She only got like… three minutes, and she did it perfectly. David Fennoy was a surprise to hear considering he was already in Grimm Eclipse, but it was a wonderful surprise. He perfectly portrays Pietro as this Gepetto-esque father figure who I fell in love with immediately. Then, of course, we have Jason Liebrecht as Qrow. To say that the guy was put into the not so flattering task of taking over due to the circumstances with Vic’s firing is putting it mildly. But he pulled it off. By the second chapter alone, I was already sold. He did an excellent job portraying Qrow and imo, already surpassed Vic. Like everything in Chapter 12? Jason /nailed/ every single emotion right on the head. I’m greatly looking forward to hearing more of him in the future~

The main cast as I said, were excellent. Some got it a bit easier this year, like Miles, Arryn, and Barbara. They still did great, but they took a bit more of a back seat and we’ll go more into that in Character. Neath and Aaron, while their characters stuff is more subdued, did an excellent job with their respective character’s viewpoints. Sam Ireland /finally/ got to do more with Nora outside ‘bubble and energetic’ with Nora’s anger about Mantle and her conflictions about Ren. She did it beautifully. Kara got much more with Weiss compared to last year, and she portrays all of Weiss’ worries and conflict perfectly. Especially in Chapter 4 when she tells her father off. I cheered so much. Lindsay with Ruby was perfect. She got a lot more serious moments with hr compared to the past, but she handled them all excellently. She goes through so many emotions in Chapter 11 alone and she hits every single one right in the head. She and Sam are tied for the standout among the mains, but all of them did an excellent job as always.

Then what’s RWBY without its soundtrack? Once more, perfect work. The scores were all excellent. Penny’s letimotif, instrumentals of songs like The Path to Isolation and Trust Love, the haunting violins at the end of Chapter 9, even the three-second bit of Indomitable in Chapter 10. Alex Abraham once more does an amazing job. I still remember the kickass guitar during the first fight in Chapter 1 and I was immediately pumped. Every score added to every scene and added so much more to them. But they also knew when to just let scenes be quiet, and it added so much weight. Once more, quality sound work.

But then we have Jeff Williams. What do you want me to say that I haven’t been saying since Volume 1? The man is a genius. He did amazing. Casey did amazing. I got nothing new to add. The songs this volume were freakin’ excellent. The opening, while kind of a tone contrast to the volume, was an excellent song and perfectly expresses the themes of the volume. Then we have things like the uplifting rock ballad Brand New Day, the badassness of Hero featuring Caleb Hyles, and the credits song as per usual. Speaking of Caleb though, it was nice to hear some new vocalists with him, Santi C, and the quartet in War, though of course, Casey remains flawless as ever. I loved all of the songs. IDK if it tops V6’s soundtrack yet, but it’s up there. Now, of course, my favorites will likely change when the full tracks are out, but here is the current ranking:

War (Chapter 12)

Hero (Chapter 11)

Fear (Chapter 13 Credits)

Trust Love (Opening Theme)

Brand New Day (Chapter 5)

Until the End (Chapter 13)

Touch the Sky (Chapter 3)

Let’s Get Real (Chapter 6)

Celebrate (Chapter 6)

Audio-wise, the volume was great. Great voice acting. Great sound effects. Great music. Just great all around~

Characters, Part One (Villains and Atlas)

There are… so many characters this volume. So, so many. Hence why I had to divide it up. We’ll cover the villains and Atlas characters here, and we’ll focus on the mains in Part 2 of the review. Since the villains won’t take too long we’ll start with them and go from there.

Not too much to say about Tyrian. He’s as terrifying and crazy as ever, and even moreso after Chapter 12, but it was nice to get some more details on his history before Salem. Him being a serial killer makes sense, as is his undying worship of Salem since she both saved him and she’s the manifestation of every twisted thing that he believes in. I think Chapter 12 also helped re-ignite his threat level with his brutal murder of Qrow, which reminded me even more than Chapter 6 of how terrifying the man is. Still, he was just there to be cray and murderous, and he did so. Watts thought was more interesting. We got some more background, like how he was a former Atlesian scientist who created Mantle’s security network and he joined Salem essentially because he felt like Ironwood put him down and he got jealous that Pietro’s project was chosen over his. It’s petty, but all the villains are petty. It helps him stand out though and he’s certainly one of the more interesting of Salem’s cult due to it. We also see that he does have some combat still, which is nice. No idea what happens with him now, but he served his role in this volume very well.

But then we have Cinder and Neo. Neither of which I was expecting anything major from this volume. Well, guess I was wrong. Cinder as of late has attracted a lot of hate… I mean yeah we /are/ supposed to hate her, but people just hate her as a character. The main thing seems to be how we don’t know Cinder’s motivations, and I get that. But really? I think that she was excellent here. Unlike in Mistral, she is once more in control and thus her smug personality is back in full. She’s only in four episodes, and she uses that time masterfully to turn everything on its head. The way she broke Ironwood alone with just a glass chess piece. She clearly learned from Salem well. I mean the way that Salem broke Ruby by just mentioning Summer’s fate? That is some master class psychological warfare. Something that Cinder has clearly mastered and when she isn’t running off rage she can pull it off excellently. But of course, at the end, she again failed to get the Maiden powers. With how she became more and more insane throughout the fight, I fear that she’s going to become even more callous than ever before.

I’m also really starting to grow fond of Neo. She started off as an overhyped character (imo) that was brought back for mere fanservice, but they are clearly trying to use her as best as possible. And I think that they’re doing a great job. Neo has an agenda against Ruby and knows that Cinder can easily obliterate her, which is the only reason why Neo is dealing with this. You can tell that unlike Emerald and Mercury, she is not happy following Cinder’s orders. She’s only following her to both get at her target and to live, not out of gratitude or feeling like it’s all that she has due to her upbringing. It’s nice to see someone who Cinder has no control over, yet Cinder can still over-power her so she has to go with it for now. But it helps give Neo a character and compared to before where I just didn’t get why she existed, I’m legit excited to see what happens with her next.

Now we can cover the Atlesian Military. They are… a complex bunch. Fitting, considering who their general is. James Ironwood has always been a very complicated character. On the one hand, we’ve seen through volumes 2-4 that he is genuinely a good person who wants to protect the people and do what’s right. But the problem with him has always been that he makes all the wrong choices. He didn’t heed Ozpin warnings in Beacon about showing off his military might, and it leads to the Fall and Atlas being made out as the villains. He hasn’t gotten any better. If anything, he’s gotten worse. He’s still well-intentioned, but as the old saying goes “The pathway to Hell is paved with good intentions.”, and Jame is the living embodiment of it.

We see that James did genuinely want to trust the heroes. He gives them the Lamp back, he gives them their license, he has them train with his best. He was sincere and he just wants to protect people. But his own paranoia and flaws as a person have overwhelmed him. His TSD has deteriorated his mind and since he isn’t getting proper help, it’s making him lose it. He’s terrified of Salem, so much that once he saw that Black Queen chess piece and doubt was placed into his mind, he snapped. He went from taking RWBY’s secret-keeping well and keeping focused on what was important, to turning on them and leaving a city that he is just as responsible for as Atlas to die. It’s a truly tragic tale. You /want/ James to do the right thing. He’s not a bad person, and you can see the logic with all of his decisions. But they are the wrong decisions not just on a logical level when you really think about it, but especially on a moral level. You can see that he knows what he’s doing is wrong and that he isn’t happy about it, but he still does it and now hundreds will die because of it. He has gone from a flawed but heroic man, to no better than Salem herself which he seals by shooting Oscar with no hesitation. It is a sad tale, but it is a well-done arc and just shows how excellent of a character James is. I am very pleased with his character here.

The Ace-Ops are decent additions. We don’t know a lot about them, but they have personality. Clover is the nice guy leader, Harriet is the confident and competitive second-in-command, Marrow is the out-going rookie, Elm is the out-going bruiser, and VIne is the calm, logical one. On the surface, they are heroic people… but like with James, it’s more complex. None of them are bad people, Marrow especially considering his Faunus status and he is fully aware of Atlas’ bigotry/messed up class system. But they were trained to not care about emotions or relationships. Priority Number One is obeying the general’s orders without question, and if they do, to go against those urges. It’s harsh because you can see that the five are good and friendly people, but once Ironwood lost it, that conditioning came into full effect.

You can tell that RWBY’s ‘betrayal’ hurt them. Harriet, despite saying that none of them are friends, clearly felt hurt and enraged. Same with Elm, though unlike Harriet who was practically going for the kill, Elm seemed to be trying to force herself to do so. Vine tried to solve it peacefully, clearly not wanting to fight, but no one else was willing to follow. Marrow was the biggest example. His heart was not in the fight, and I think he honestly did agree with RWBY. He tried to push himself otherwise, but it failed. Then Clover, who has stood by James’ side throughout even if he seemed unhappy with it, tried to arrest Qrow on the spot even when Tyrian re-entered the fray. That blind devotion sadly cost him his life… and I wonder how this is going to affect Ace-Ops. Despite what Harriet said, they were still all allies and I can see this messing them up. It either makes them want payback or see the light. Regardless, they were a good bunch of side-characters and I look forward to seeing what happens next.

A bigger, and much sadder, example of this Atlas conditioning is Winter. She is loyal to James because due to him and the military, she got out of her abusive home and a shot at a better life. But the sad reality is that she's really in no better position than she would have been otherwise. She’s been groomed to become the Winter Maiden and despite her choosing it to make it her own, it's still pretty much someone deciding her life for her. She internalizes her feelings and continues to obey James, despite knowing and feeling that it is wrong. Just like she was trained to do. The only person that she makes an exception for is Weiss, which seeing how much she cares and is proud of her sister and even taking her to the Winter Maiden facility was super sweet. But even then not only does she still keep a composed demeanor around Weiss, but she still stood by James even after Weiss became wanted. But hopefully, with the Maiden destiny not off the table and Weiss a fugitive, this will give Winter the chance to accept her own emotions and begin to carve her own destiny. One not chosen by anyone but herself.

But of course, the one we can blame for Winter’s state, along with James, is Jaques Schnee. I didn’t think I could hate him anymore than I already did, but I got proven wrong. The man is ambitious, willing to do anything to keep his business (well… the business he stole) running and himself in power. He runs for Council pretty much just to get rid of the embargo and takedown James. He’s despicable and I hate him and I hope he rots behind jail. Whitley doesn't really have anything new, just a bit more hammering down that he is the way he is due to the abuse and his sister’s leaving him behind. Willow though? She gets one episode, and I feel horrible for this woman. While her shutting down pretty much ruined her kids' lives, you can see why and feel sympathy for her. His is a woman worn down, and while the smallest spark of fight is in her as she gives Weiss the key to burying her father, it’s so clear that she’s broken. It’s going to take a very long time for her to recover if she does. As for Whitley, his father may be gone. But the control he had over his son is likely still firm. Which can only mean bad things for Weiss.

Opposing Atlas is Robyn Hill, Mantle’s Hometown Hero. She is very much the anti-Ironwood. She’s devoted to Mantle and wants to do what’s best for them, even if it means breaking the law. But she’s not unreasonable either. She was very friendly to Clover and Marrow, only becoming antagonistic after Penny got framed for murdering her supporters. And even then, she listened to Blake and Yang and was willing to give Ironwood a chance. One that he blew sky high. But Robyn comes off as a good person who sees the injustices with Mantle and once making a change the legal way became impossible, she resorted to the illegal route. And even then, she and her Happy Huntresses never hurt anyone and were trying to help the people that James was making suffer. Just as her inspiration of Robin Hood. She’s a very likable, inspiring character though I do wish we got some more backstory for her. But hey, she’s a good person who didn’t fall into Atlas’ conditioning trying to help those who need it, and you don’t need a motivation to do the right thing.

This brings us to Penny Polendina and her father Pietro. I’m so, soooo happy to have Penny back. I have some issues with her return, mainly in that she and Ruby never talk about what happened, But that’s more for when I get to Ruby. But aside from that, Penny was excellent. She’s still the same quirky, sweet girl that we met back early on, but we get much more of her this time. She’s been made Mante’s protector, and it is a duty that he is full-heartedly devoted to. She wants to understand feelings more, like how to balance the things she wants to do with her duties and is confused about how Winter can shove her emotions aside to do what is clearly wrong. Penny may be a robot, but she is by far the most human of the Atlesian cast. It made how broken she was when framed by Tyrian and Watts hurt so much, as well as Ironwood’s comments about how she’s under his control. He talks as though she’s just another robot soldier, and you can see how much that hurts her. But at the very end, she proved how goodhearted she is when she calms/comforts Fria in her final moments, and due to it, Fria chooses her to be the next Winter Maiden. A title that she absolutely deserves.

We can probably thank Pietro for Penny being a good person. He’s just as lively as she is and clearly loves her with all of his heart. I mean he’s given up chunks of his Aura in order to bring her back. That is love, people. While I wish he had more of him (and Maria for that matter), Pietro was so much fun and a welcome addition to the supporting cast. He’s a genius responsible for much of Atlas’ technological achievements, but he also takes time to help those in Mantle. He wanted to create a savior with a soul, which I think says a lot about him as a person. While I wish he and Penny had more interaction, that loving father/daughter bond is there and it helps them both stand out among a cast slowly losing their humanity. I worry for them, especially with Salem having Grimm Monstro on her side, but doesn’t change how happy I was with them here.

Then we, of course, have our main cast… but that is something that we shall cover in Part Two. Stay tuned~

#rwby #rwby7 #rwby reviews #callie reviews

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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Sympathy for the Devilman: The Legacy of Go Nagai's Magnum Opus

I've always had a thing for villains. Unlike my brothers, as a kid I'd always choose the "bad guy" action figures. If they went for the ninja turtle Leonardo, then I'd go for the uber-buff Super Shredder. I personally identified with villainy because of how it connected to the idea of "evil." I personally see evil as a generalized concept that expresses antagonism toward violent and dominant societal structures. Due to a coercive religious upbringing, I now see how my younger self unconsciously found ideologically-oppositional comfort in "evil" art. This eventually led me to one of my most cherished pieces of fiction: Devilman.

Devilman has left an indelible mark on manga and anime creators over the last few decades, inspiring major industry heavyweights such as Hideaki Anno, Kentaro Miura, and Kazuki Nakashima. The series was created by Go Nagai, a manga auteur also responsible for Mazinger Z, Cutie Honey, and Violence Jack (which is a Devilman sequel). Although Devilman retains much of the explicitness native to Go Nagai's usual fare, it uses these graphic elements uniquely to deliver a haunting, unforgettable, and compassionate message.

Let's explore the surprisingly relevant political and social significance of Devilman, along with a few of its animated offshoots. Read on but be forewarned, this article contains major spoilers!

Devilman (original manga, 1972)

via Seven Seas Entertainment

The Devilman manga is a dark antiwar narrative in deep contrast to the standard monster-of-the-day, "evil fights evil" set-up of the anime (which ran at the same time as the manga). Ryo Asuka — who turns out to be Satan, the leader of all demons — helps convince the world that anyone dissatisfied with the status quo could turn into a demon and needs to be killed. Every nation starts a war with each other, and Japan creates the "Demon Busters" to murder anyone suspected of being a demon. This plot twist is the most explicitly political angle in Devilman and a clear critique against the genocide of marginalized peoples. One page features a taste of the global hate brewing around the world: a collective white desire to murder Black communities, the renewal of German anti-Semitism, and hatred for any protestor. There are also many moments that display the horrors of historical genocide when Akira and Ryo travel through time.

Devilman builds additional nuance around this theme with Ryo's character. In the manga's final scene, Ryo describes how demons were once oppressed by God, and that they in turn preyed upon humans in the same way that God preyed upon demons. Ryo recognizes that he continued the same cycle of genocidal hate and marginalization he once suffered. This is a striking moment that functions as a cautionary warning against abusing imbalanced power dynamics, and how even once marginalized groups are still capable of enacting horrors against those with less power.

via Seven Seas Entertainment

Ryo's character also made a groundbreaking stride in the representation of marginalized gender and sexual identities. His true form as Satan is easy to interpret as trans, possessing emotional, mental, and physical traits that defy the standard gender binary. The manga also makes it clear that Ryo considers Akira more than a friend, and is actually in love with him. Amazingly, Go Nagai does not use Ryo's trans-coded self or his queer love for Akira as fodder for insulting or disrespectful commentary from other characters. Ryo's gender-variant form is certainly mentioned, but it's never negatively framed or conflated with his murderous attitude toward humanity. Additionally, the manga never suggests Ryo is evil because of his romantic feelings for Akira (a simple, yet important distinction). It feels all the more impressive when you remember that this was made in 1972. Devilman's subversive portrayal of non-normative gender and sexual identity could still be considered groundbreaking even by today's standards.

Devilman OVAs

The first OVA, The Birth, covers Ryo and Akira's discovery of demon existence, with a very brutal early sequence that shows the bloody survival-of-the-fittest origins of life on Earth (which beautifully expands upon and mirrors the same sequence from the manga). It concludes with a gore-soaked finale where we see Akira's fateful transformation into Devilman. The sequence is filled with face stabs, top-notch body horror, and decapitations galore as Devilman rips apart demon after demon in a nightclub setting.

The second OVA, The Demon Bird, had the same crew that worked on the first OVA and contains a very similar feel. This OVA is more action-oriented than the first since it doesn't spend time on the build-up and exposition leading to Devilman's initial appearance. The animation and art design is probably even better than the first episode, which is most notable during the fight with Sirene. On a side note, the Manga Entertainment dubs for these first two OVAs are absolutely essential if you're seeking a fun evening with fellow anime nerds with a decent sense of humor. Their typically sleazy dubs — where Manga Entertainment excessively hyped up the seedier, more "adult" side of anime in order to market their products as wildly different from cartoons for kids — contain an assortment of unnecessary profanity and generally crude dialogue compared to the Japanese source material, to great comedic effect.

The third OVA, Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman, is based on Amon: The Darkside of Devilman manga, an alternate-universe offshoot by Yu Kinutani. This OVA contains a reworked version of the end of Devilman and has a much darker edge compared to the first two OVAs. This entry in the series has an ugly, grim quality to it – such as the horrific depiction of Miki and her brother getting slaughtered by an angry mob — that initially felt off-putting to me. I started to enjoy it more on subsequent viewings however, when I remembered that, well, the entire Devilman mythos is pretty damned bleak in general. I think the desolate mood would have been more bearable had Akira felt like the compassionate, tragic hero of the manga.

Actually, overall I'd say that Akira's portrayal is one of my biggest complaints about these OVAs. He displays a cold lack of care for human life — like in the Demon Bird when he unconcernedly tears through an airplane while fighting Sirene and allows its passengers to presumably plummet to their deaths — that for me, offsets one of the biggest strengths of Devilman's core: that although Akira has the body of a demon, he never loses the tender heart of a human. With that in mind, let's explore Devilman Crybaby.

Devilman Crybaby

Devilman Crybaby is my favorite animated incarnation of Devilman, period. I might be in the minority with that opinion, but I think there's a lot to love. Masaaki Yuasa is already one of my favorite recent anime directors — Kaiba, Mind Game, and Lu Over the Wall are highlights — so it's no surprise I'd be head over heels for his take on a classic Go Nagai story.

Yuasa impressively shifts the '70s setting of the original into modern-day Japan: The group of surly highschoolers from the manga are replaced with rappers and smartphones are everywhere. In the hands of a lesser writer, a modern setting would be no more than a cosmetic, surface-level change of scenery to an already-written narrative. In contrast, Yuasa avoids this trap by using the modern setting to make incisive social commentary relevant to our times: social media is the means for both horrendous and beautiful moments in the show. It leads to Miki's murder when she posts on Instagram to defend Akira, but also serves as the online catalyst that unites Devilmen across the globe (in contrast to the original manga, where a set of demon-possessed psychic monks unite the Devilmen). Yuasa explained this in a 2018 Japan Times article:

"Today's situation is a lot closer to 'Devilman' than it was when Nagai wrote it in the '70s," he says. "The popularity of social media means people are a lot more connected, for good and bad – like someone getting shot over a video game. We learn about unarmed black people being killed by police, people being tortured and the rise of nationalism in politics. In Japan, too, where a lot of problems are openly blamed on foreigners.

"But it can also help spread good that we wouldn't otherwise know about. We see people coming out as gay or trans on social media, and there's a greater opening up and acceptance of different opinions and lifestyles."

Another beautiful aspect of the show is how Yuasa amplifies the queer elements present in the manga. Ryo and Akira's relationship feels even more loaded with romantic undertones, and Yuasa also introduces two queer characters unseen in the original manga. One of the characters is named Miki Kuroda, initially portrayed as a jealous antagonistic foil to the Miki we all know and love. Miki Kuroda changes as the episodes progress and she becomes a Devilman, and we eventually see her sacrifice herself in an attempt to save Miki Makimura, who she confesses her love to before dying. It's refreshing to see a queer woman represented in a story that previously had none, and incorporated in a way that feels organic and thoughtfully integrated within the larger narrative.

In contrast to the Akira of the OVAs, I absolutely adore this incarnation. Yuasa did a stellar job showing not only Akira's horny goth-jock side but also his compassionate traits. As the name implies, there's a lot of crying in Devilman Crybaby, and Akira is responsible for at least half the tears throughout the brief 10-episode series. Akira evokes such intense compassion and cares for people around him, which is a noticeable deviation from his cold demeanor in the OVAs. The human heart at the core of Devilman is on full display here, taking the emotional elements from the original and turning the volume up to 11. Though the art style and setting might be drastically different from what you'd typically expect of a Devilman remake, Yuasa did a masterful job honoring the source material while injecting it with fresh life and even fresher modern resonance.

What other aspects of Devilman — or its many incarnations — did you find important or interesting? Let me know in the comments below!

Do you love anime? Do you love writing? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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atamascolily · 5 years ago

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lily liveblogs “terminator: dark fate”, part 3

Sarah Connor knows how to make an entrance.

(parts one and two)

This is in the trailer, and it's just as epic here. The focus on her boots. Then rising up to her face--complete with bulletproof vest, shades, and GIANT GUN as she opens fire. YASSSS, MY QUEEN.

The human-looking part of the Rev-9 runs for Dani but Sarah shoots him off the bridge before he can get her, then drops the gun, switches to AN EVEN BIGGER GUN and fires at the skeleton who is doing that same inhuman back arch to lurch to its feet, and he goes flying in an explosion and lies still. Then she tosses THAT gun away, and goes to peer over the edge for the first half, where the Rev-9 is impaled and twitching and already regenerating. Then she tosses the grenade over the edge, says "I'll be back," in a badass monotone and walks away as Grace registers wtf just happened and pulls Dani away from the explosion, shielding her with her body.

Sarah pulls out YET ANOTHER GUN as the grenade explodes, and keeps on walking without breaking stride. FUCK YEAH.

"Who the fuck is that?" Dani rightly asks.

"I don't know," says Grace, who is hyperventilating and red in the face, and quite deservedly tired. "But we have to move!" And she runs to pick up Sarah's discarded gun and steals her SUV. I’M HOWLING.

Dani is like, "maybe we shouldn't steal this scary woman's car," and Grace is like, "gtfo or die," and they drive away. Sarah is about to dispatch the REV-9, but sees them driving and stalks off in a huff as the REV-9 re-congeals out of the fire.

(I honestly wonder what would have happened if Sarah had taken the time to dispatch the REV-9 ‘properly’ but then this movie would be very, very short, so I’ll give it a pass.)

Grace is dehydrated. Dani's have a breakdown. Grace breaks the news that her father is dead. "It needs physical contact to copy people and they don't survive." Is that an inherent part of the process?? I don't think so, because the T-1000 copied Sarah and she was fine, it's just because they usually KILL THEM AFTERWARDS, it's not a REQUIREMENT or anything. But I give Grace a pass for not going into the details because Dani is already traumatized enough.

The skeleton stalks down the highway past a dude who looks SO CONFUSED while EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE and the fleshy-looking part starts walking in front of the skeleton and then they MERGE holy SHIT THAT'S CREEPY and there's STILL NO EXPRESSION on his face OH MY GOD.

Grace starts crashing (physically), which is bad because she's driving, so they almost crash for real. Grace faints, so Dani has to drive, oh, wait she can't, yep that ended badly. Dani stalks off to go to the police, while Grace is SO RED and can barely walk, until Grace explains that’s such a bad idea, and all the cops will die. She ends up putting Grace in the back seat and says she'll figure out the driving bit, FUCK YEAH. did I mention I love her?

Grace robs a pharmacy for her meds, much to Dani's surprise and chagrin. Grace collapses, so Dani has to grab the gun before anybody else can and finish the job to get them out. PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE FIRST TIME DANI HAS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW REAL AGENCY*, AND SHE MAKES THE CHOICE TO SIDE WITH GRACE INSTEAD OF LETTING THE AUTHORITIES TAKE HER AWAY. The assistant helps her haul Grace out, and Dani makes a split second decision to trust him which turns out to be justified, because he doesn't try to hurt them.

[[*ok, technically, she showed agency before when she made the decision not to go to the cops, but there’s a big difference between that scene and pulling a fucking gun on innocent people during a robbery. And she only has like a second to decide if she’s gonna do it or not, vs. the conscious deliberation in the previous scene. This is the moment where Dani’s all-in, the moment where there’s no going back.]]

Sarah Connor is waiting for them outside. FUCK YEAH. and she is PISSED. She takes Dani's gun -- "give me that before you hurt yourself," as Dani just fucking STARES.LEGEND.

Cut to them driving through town with Grace sprawled in the backseat with her head in Dani's lap as Sarah drives, and her sunglasses are reflected in the rearview mirror. Dani claims she's just Dani... a nobody, and Sarah says she's got to be somebody for them to send whatever Grace is to protect her. Then she asks for Dani's phone and tosses it out the window.I cannot believe Dani didn’t see that one coming, but she’s had a long day.

Cut to a hotel room, dropping ice cubes on Grace, like you do. "We should have done this in the bathtub," Dani complains. "Have you SEEN the bathtub?" Sarah retorts. Also: a fuck-ton of Lay's potato chips.

"I keep my cell phone in a chip bag. The foil blocks the GPS so they can't track me." CHIP BAG. THE PUN HERE.

"I'm wanted in a couple states," Sarah admits. "Fifty, actually." (she means US, I assume, I doubt she's a wanted felon in Mexico, but...).

"Why ten bags?"

"Because I really like potato chips." I'M HOWLING.

(are there costcos in Mexico? Just saying.)

Dani grieves over how her father and brother will die unmourned and unburied and you can see the blankness on Sarah's face, how that's so far removed from anything she's ever known for decades. "Funerals don't help them and goodbyes don't help you. You just have to learn to live with it."

Which is a) the truest advice Sarah knows, and b) SO FUCKING SAD THAT IT'S COME TO THIS OH MY GOODDDDDDD.

Sarah pumping Grace with meds and just figuring it will all work out is so in character, and also a nice contrast to her first introduction to battlefield medicine under the bridge in T1. How far she’s come...

Time for a flashback from the future while Grace is unconscious and dreaming!!

God the future war scenes are so bleak and awful and barren and boring to me I can't believe people want a whole film like this, especially when we already know that humans win and the Commander can’t die, so there’s not a lot to milk for suspense.

The Rev-7 bursting out of another Rev-7 is so fucking CREEPY I can't even--

Hey, Grace is rescued and I love the medic (a black lady!) and Grace volunteers to be an augment! I legit thought she was going to say "tribute," lol.

...I don't understand how augmentation works, though. How can they have surgery so good and so clean when everything else is rubble? Are they literally cutting apart Terminators and wiring them into Grace? WHERE DO THEY GET THE PARTS?? I WANT TO KNOW and I don't think this movie's going to explain.

Sarah wakes up Grace by pointing a gun at her and gets disarmed, having locked Dani out of the room, but Grace lets her back in. Sarah's look is withering: "Sometimes, mommies and daddies have to have grown-up discussions." I'M HOWLING. EVERYTHING LINDA HAMILTON SAYS IN THIS MOVIE IS GOLD. Also, I like how neither Dani nor Grace denies this. Maybe they’re just too stunned? I know I would be.

(also notice how Sarah’s not smoking?? I guess potato chips are the new cigarettes)

Sarah explains some things. Her expression when Grace says she's never heard of Skynet--"Good."--is PRICELESS.

"Where's your son now?" OW OW OW OW OH MY HEART

"I hunt Terminators." RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINNNNNNNNNE AAHHHHH "And I drink til I black out."

Oh, Sarah. I'm so sorry. so so so sorry.

I'll have more things to say about the digital trail later, so this is just a placeholder for now.

That moment where Sarah puts her shades on. Hot damn. Interview and openness OVER indeed.

Grace threatens Sarah, who is unimpressed. "Great! I drive." DRIVING AS A METAPHOR, Y'ALL.

"Legion...an AI built for cyber warfare."

I've seen people pissed that Skynet was erased and replaced by a similar-but-different AI and maybe it's because I love parallel universes and AUs so much, or maybe it's because the Terminator movies represent our relationship with and fears of technology, but I think this was a valid choice and I approve. Because, as Sarah points out, "Those assholes never learn." No. No, we don't.

Sarah pulls off her shades to admit she gets texts from someone she doesn't know, WHICH IS FURTHER PROOF THAT THE SUNGLASSES REPRESENT SHIELDING FROM EMOTIONS/VULNERABILITY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Grace hacking Sarah's phone -- "future shit"-- is hilarious, thank you very much, and I love that the PHONE CONTINUES TO BE A TRACKING DEVICE THROUGH ALL THREE FILMS BUT FOR ENTIRELY DIFFERENT REASONS. But won't the gov't/terminator/somebody find her through it now that it's out of the chip bag??? How is she getting texts if her phone is always in a chip bag? When is it safe for her to take it out??

Grace has tattoos on her body - "in case I can't remember shit" AHHAHAHHAHAHA, that's hilarious.

Sarah was on America's Most Wanted?? I bet she was. She should add that to her resume, lol.

Ohhh, that's clever that the same plot device gets them to both Carl and Sarah. I like it.

crossing the border is not this easy, but I don't think American audiences can handle that level of realism, and this isn't that kind of film, so... *shrugs*

The Rev-9 is in the data center and it's so creepy. All he has to do is plunge his hands into the cables, and... facial recognition software does the rest. (I don’t think it’s ever stated directly, but I headcanon that LEGION IS A ROGUE AI MEANT TO CONTROL PEOPLE BASED ON FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, so it's totally in keeping with its nature.)

On the train, Sarah is eating potato chips. LOVE IT. I don't even like potato chips, per se, but it's a fun character detail and more culturally acceptable than smoking in films these days (the irony!)

flashback to bby!Grace seeing the plane crash and I'm all like I'VE SEEN THE TRAILER, I KNOW THAT'S CHEKHOV'S FLIGHT 3000 TO FORESHADOWING, more plane crashes are definitely coming.

Because the Terminator films reflect our own fears back on us, it's interesting to see how those fears have changed. Now the end of the world is more complex - technology suddenly going dead, then launching nukes and EMPs, THEN world war - fighting over food with humans WHILE being hunted by Legion. It's the same in outline and yet different from Skynet's quick and dirty nuclear war.

Sarah interjects to guess the leader of the Resistance is Dani's son, which is a) a reasonable guess under the circumstances and given the history of this franchise, and b) political commentary about what many Americans fear, namely non-white "Mexican" (as a catch-all term for anybody brown) immigrants and their children coming into their country. It also makes the inevitable subversion--that DANI is the leader, not some man--so much more pointed when it comes, as the franchise critiques ITSELF. still, I kinda wish they dealt with that here, instead of later, though.

Sarah also makes the "Mother Mary" comparison, which is so funny given the obvious overtones to her own son (his initials are J.C.!) and lampshading the fact this is the first time in-universe that anyone has mentioned the parallels.

Now they're off the train and in a truck, with Dani's head in Grace's lap, yay parallels. Poor Sarah is probably wishing Kyle had been augmented, then maybe he could be there too (why is Michael Biehn not in this movie?? sob).

I'm not sure how the REV-9 just up and assumes they're going to Laredo just because that's where the train goes, especially since they then jump off the train for this... side-quest? What's up with that?? Does the train not go to the border?

Oh, okay, this is where her uncle lives. Dani tries telling him the truth. It goes poorly. Grace slices a fly in half. Wow.

It's nice to see a black guy and an Asian dude on the border, but my relief lasts for ten seconds because they get sliced up by the Rev-9 posing as a woman of color, oi...

still creepy when he merges with the machine, and how does he know what he's looking for on the panopticon? can drones see faces at that distance? Can he?? I'm so confused.

Of course he tells the Border Patrol that Grace, Dani, and Sarah are members of a drug cartel and sets the authorities after them...

Of course there's a door underneath the wall. of course there is. Random dude goes first, which means he is dead meat. Oh, there was an ambush, but Dani makes the decision they're going to surrender, so I guess no one's dying here?

Sarah is lying to the authorities about being related to Grace, because of her medical condition. Good for her.

Grace senses the drone about to kill Dani and moves to save her! I guess it's going to take the Rev-9 a while to figure out she's not dead?

Dani is in detention and sounds like a crazy person trying to explain the truth. By the way, SETTING THIS SCENE AT THE BORDER CROSSING IS HELL OF A POLITICAL STATEMENT, FYI.

Grace is getting medical care, and they find her drugs. "Nice body search, fellas." Of course, they figure out she's an augment...is this going to influence the future in the same way that Cyberdyne’s discovery of the T1′s head and arm influenced Skynet??

Sarah and the other dude who got picked up with them have a plan. Good. Let the ass-kicking begin.

#terminator #terminator: dark fate

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agirlinhell · 6 years ago

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OKAY SO I’VE HAD A LOT OF ASOIAF / GOT RP BLOGS FOLLOWING ME LATELY AND I JUST HAVE TO LET YOU ALL KNOW THAT CLEMENTINE HAS SEVERAL VERSES, IN DIFFERENT ERAS AND IN DIFFERENT FACTIONS OF THE SERIES. I mostly follow book canon, as I’ve read all the books and I’ve watched all the seasons, but I am also show friendly, as well. I will be using Amandla Stenberg, Nyane Lebajoa and Indya Marie as her faceclaims. As this is A Song Of Ice And Fire / Game Of Thrones, there will naturally be explicit and mature content in a variety of different ways. She is bisexual, as in canon. There are six verses in all.

Although, they are not officially in my verses quite yet, allow me to elaborate them for you. Long post under the cut!

#1: Clementine is a skinchanger and a spearwife beyond the Wall whilst possessing greensight. She’s lived among the Free Folk all her life and was born near Hardhome. When she and the entire horde of the Free Folk are being driven south by the Others. she’s actually quite capable of defending herself even for a small girl, she’s taken out a few lone wights by herself. Clementine had faced the wrath of the likes of rangers of the Night’s Watch, slavers from the eastern cities, Hornfoots and Nightrunners, men and women of the Frozen Shore, men of the Ice-river clans who feasted on human flesh, snowbears, shadowcats and even other wargs. But worst of all the enemies she had fought were the wights, those moving corpses who only devoured the flesh of the living without a second thought. The girl had seen the likes of giants and mammoths, and she could see through the eyes of the beasts of the land and the birds in the skies, things that the girls of the south would hardly begin to imagine. Yet, at only age sixteen, she had managed to survive long enough to make it to The Wall. She wonders what the lands are like Beyond The Wall, survival is all she’s ever known. When the Free Folk are brought south of The Wall, Clementine is being taught how to read by Shireen Baratheon and the maesters at Castle Black. She has a shadowcat for a companion and can warg into it and take over its body as its host. The Free Folk both fear her and respect her, and several of the men of the Night’s Watch can say the same. Some think that she is descended from the Children of The Forest because of her golden eyes, but that is up to speculation. To put it very simply, this is her verse for any muses from the North or Beyond The Wall. I can easily see her being tangled up with Melisandre or the Boltons, perhaps she can possibly help Jeyne Poole escape Winterfell? She is age sixteen in this verse. This verse will be tagged as v; I MAY BE YOUR PRISONER BUT I AM A FREE WOMAN. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || THE FREE FOLK. )

#2: Clementine is a Princess of the Summer Isles. She serves Queen Margaery Tyrell as a lady in-waiting while serving as an intermediary between the Iron Throne and the Summer Isles as a princess of one of the isles and is one of their representatives so that trade between Westeros and the Summer Isles can continue further. Clementine is of Rhoynar, Summer Islander and Naathi descent. From a young age, she had been taught how to fight with a spear and shoot with her goldenheart bow and arrows that could pierce through even steel plate, as in the Summer Isles, women are considered equal to men. At age sixteen, she is well versed in many languages, the arts of love, music, song, dance and war. She leaves the Summer Isles on a swan ship to The Reach to broker a deal with the Hightowers at Oldtown at a young age while accompanied by an entourage of her own, and Alerie Hightower selected her to be one of ladies in waiting at Highgarden. Clem travels with Margaery and her relatives all throughout the events of The War of The Five Kings until they reach King’s Landing. When Margaery is betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon, Clementine is introduced in court, as well, and is seen as an exotic beauty by much of the court. She gets a lot of requests for marriage or simply sharing her bed from many lords of Westeros, including but not limited to Jhalabar Xho, Aurane Waters, Willam Wythers, Perros Blackmont and Daemon Sand, because many want the riches and treasures that the Summer Isles provide, and Clementine is an attractive young lady, something she will use to her advantage in court. ( **Note: this is what happens in my portrayal, if you portray any of these muses, this does not need to happen. )

She wears the feather capes that the Summer Islanders are known for and her loose silken diaphanous gowns from Naath, her hair is adorned with a myriad of butterflies and flowers in her hair and dressed in brilliantly colored feathers of exotic birds, silks, seashells and gemstones - rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls, along with the gowns and Myrish lace that Westeros provides when serving Queen Margaery Tyrell. Yet her heart always lies with her home. Afterward, she intends to venture to the Temples of Love in the isles and allow others to share her bed, as was expected of her and all other individuals on the isles, male or female, lowborn or highborn, as a way of worshiping her gods. She keeps to the gods of the Summer Isles and the Lord of Harmony of Naath and she’s been rumored to practice water magic, but this is debatable. She will protect her Queen with her life if need be.

Her fellow companions at court are Megga, Alla, Elinor and Leona Tyrell, Margaery’s cousins, Alyn Ambrose, Alysanne Bulwer, Meredyth Crane, Alyce Graceford, Taena Merryweather of Myr, Leonette Fossoway, Mira Forrester, Sara Durwell / Flowers and Septa Nysterica, a sister of the Faith. Through it all, even though she finds King’s Landing fascinating at first, she grows to yearn for her motherland… and learns that the capital is a pit of vipers. In A Feast For Crows, Clementine is accused of lewdness, fornication and high treason by The Faith and is arrested for crimes she did not commit. In a Dance With Dragons, Clementine’s currently awaiting her trial alongside the queen’s within the Sept of Baelor. To put it very simply, this verse is for King’s Landing and any shenanigans that may occur there, and it will be tagged as: v; YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || KING'S LANDING. )

#3:Clementine is a dragonrider, sorceress and noblewoman of the Valyrian Freehold, a daughter of the ancient House Targaryen, of the union of Aenar Targaryen and a princess from the Summer Isles. Keeping to the Gods of Old Valyria and the Deities of the Summer Isles, she finds herself praying to both deities, never truly having a preference of any of them over the other. One of the most striking things about her physical appearance are her violet eyes and her silver hair from her Valyrian ancestry, yet her skin tone is purely Summer Islander. It seems her lady mother won the genetics lottery. Clem has a good standing relationship with her half-siblings and most notably in Daenys Targaryen who would later to be known as Daenys the Dreamer renowned for foreseeing the Doom of Valyria twelve years prior to it’s fiery downfall. Clementine is dragonrider to the dragoness Zalliel. They practically grew up together from the time she was only an infant girl in her crib, as she’d been holding her egg to keep it warm. Zalliel, like her rider, had a thirst for adventure and freedom. Although not the warlike type, the dragoness would fight to the very bitter end to protect her rider. Her lord father, Aenar Targaryen, had paid a fine amount of gold for one of the best blacksmiths in the Freehold to make his youngest daughter a Valyrian steel sword, as Clementine had a intrigue for blades and the art of war, despite her calm and gentle exterior. Her lord father always knew that she had a fire burning in her heart. Clementine named this blade Dark Sister and so when she soared into the battlefield on dragonback, she would be seen fighting with it, as well as using one of her lady mother’s goldenheart bows and arrows. Clementine is a warrior through and through, and the blade has passed down to the future generations of House Targaryen, such as Queen Visenya Targaryen, Maegor Targaryen, Prince Daemon Targaryen and Lord Brynden Rivers, to which the sword is now lost to history.

Clementine was born - and grew up - within Valyria, and magic was at its height in the capital and in all the known world. At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center of civilization. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless, subtle, oftsavage struggle for dominance. She enjoyed much of her childhood and adolescence there, loving to soar around the seemingly topless towers in the city, or spending time with her family in Lys. She kept monkeys, apes, panther cubs, and parrots from the Summer Isles as pets. She was taught in the arts of love and war, in many languages and was taught how in the magical arts by several sorcerers and mages hired by her lord father and lady mother. She is of Summer Islander, Naathi, Rhoynar and Valyrian descent, and was a member of the Young Dragons faction of Valyria. House Targaryen at the time was not considered a powerful house, compared to the forty other noble families of Valyria, but Clem cared little for court politics, but she was seen as a beauty amongst the dragonlords. In the Freehold, dragons were usually tamed with dragonhorns, sorcery and whips, but Clementine disliked the cruelty and thus attached herself to Zalliel in other ways, by way of kindness and companionship. After Daenys the Dreamer prophesied that Valyria would be destroyed, Aenar sold his holdings in the Valyrian Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer, and moved with all his family, wives, wealth, slaves, and dragons, with House Velaryon and House Celtigar following behind them to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath the Dragonmont, a smoking mountain in the narrow sea. The Targaryens were far from the most powerful of the dragonlords, and their rivals in Valyria saw their flight as an act of cowardice. However, because Aenar had moved his family away from Valyria, the Targaryens were the only dragonlords to survive the Doom in 114 BC and the following Century of Blood.

Clementine, however, was unhappy with the whole ordeal, feeling as if her entire future was being torn away to rot and sit at the very westernmost precipice of the Valyrian Freehold - Dragonstone, especially near a place as foreign and strange as Westeros. She helped her family with their affairs in Essos, most predominantly in the wars of the Free Cities. After staying for a few years at Dragonstone, deciding to rebel against her father and refusing to stay any longer in the bleak citadel before she withered away, took all of her things and her dragon and soared away from Dragonstone to travel the known world. What happens to her afterward is still debated by the maesters of the Citadel to this day, and her adventures vary depending on the tale. Some say she had affairs with several Westerosi lords - and even ladies, others say she eventually united the Summer Isles under her rule - something that was uncommon amongst the islanders, while alternate sources claim she was a consort of a YiTish god-emperor. What is known, however, is that she’s had many lovers - both men and women - and several adventures in her life and eventually returned to Dragonstone by way of a ship and brought Dark Sister back to the ancestral home it belonged to, and that she lived a very long and natural life. To put it very simply, this verse is for any pre-ASOIAF / GOT characters before Aegon’s Conquest. The tag for this verse is: v; I AM THE DRAGON'S DAUGHTER. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || THE VALYRIAN FREEHOLD. )

( Note: Slavery, incest and polygamy are all a part of Valyrian culture, especially amongst the nobles. Her father had many wives and Clementine\s half siblings, as was common in Valyria, married and had children together. Incest is common among the noble families of Valyria and even then they’re often political with no romance involved and Clementine is a noblewoman, so it’s entirely possible she may have been betrothed. Slavery exists in this time period and Valyria profited off of slavery. Please keep in mind that I tolerate NONE of these things as a mun, but it is something that does happen and I will not be sugarcoating it in my portrayal, but I will always tag it when mentioned. )

#4: Clementine is a lady of Dornish, Summer Islander, Naathi and Rhoynar descent and owes her allegiance to House Martell. Although mostly underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of her verses, Clementine was born and grew up in the Summer Isles before being sent to Dorne as an older child as a negotiation agreement for trade, and she grows fond of Dorne while staying there. Eventually, she works together with Arianne Martell, the Sand Snakes and Arianne’s entourage to crown Myrcella Baratheon as true Queen of the Seven Kingdoms by Dornish law. In A Storm of Swords, she attends Ellaria Sand and Oberyn Martell and saw the consequences of the trial by combat go horribly wrong, with the Red Viper’s death having a critical blow on the Dornish. During the later parts of the books, she stays back in Dorne and attends Doran Martell with anything he might need, all while taking care of Princess Myrcella. To put it simply, this verse is mostly for interacting with characters from Dorne and mostly southern Westeros. The tag for this verse is v; SHE WHISPERS INTO THE EARS OF MEN. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || DORNE. )

#5: Clementine is a Princess of the Summer Isles, and was born and grew up in the isles. She was sent by her lord father to negotiate with the Free Cities on matters of trade... only to be kidnapped by Basilisk Isles raiders and to be sold as a slave in Meereen, first as a female fighter in the fighting pits, before being noticed by some of the Masters and being taken to the Temple of the Graces to be trained as a Red Grace - all of this against her will. When Daenerys Targaryen enters the scene, however, Clementine is one of the first women to raise the sword for the Dragon Queen. Daenerys frees her from her bondage as a slave and a Red Grace and Clementine has been loyal to her - and her entourage - since. This verse is used to interact with any muses of Slaver’s Bay or any individuals who are aligned with House Targaryen in the present time. It will be tagged as v; I'D RATHER DIE ON MY FEET THAN LIVE ON MY KNEES. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || SLAVER'S BAY. )

#6: Clementine is a young lady trained to become the next Black Pearl of Braavos, one of the most proeminent courtesans of the city. From a very young age, she was educated and trained in various cultural pursuits such as art, music, poetry, calligraphy, song, dance, history, literature and flower and fan language. She’s an educated girl of good social standing, who is oft present at festivals and entertainments, and is hired as a mourner at funerals. She, like her lady mother, enjoys high status and is famous worldwide. She, like every other courtesan, has her own barge and servants to work them, as slavery does not exist in Braavos. Her beauty has inspired many a song and she is showered with gifts from goldsmiths and craftsmen beg for her custom. Nobility and rich merchants pay her large amounts of money to appear alongside them at events, merchant princes pay royal ransom to have her on their arms at balls, feasts and mummer shows and bravos are known to kill each other in her name.

She is famous, respected and wealthy and enjoy a kind of celebrity status as well as a certain kind of mystique, and she is cultured and beautiful. She sleeps on rose petals and wears silken skirts that rustle when she walks, and great lords beggar themselves for her maiden’s blood. She can trace her descent through the female line to the daughter of Bellegere Otherys, a pirate queen who was the first Black Pearl, and King Aegon IV Targaryen, and thus the earlier generations of the Targaryen Dynasty as a whole, as well as having other bloodlines such as having royal descent of both a Princess of the Summer Isles and a Sealord of Braavos. She dresses in charcoal grey, purple, blues so dark that are almost black, and blacks as dark as moonlight. Clementine is age sixteen and is still in the process of following her mother’s footsteps. This verse is used for muses of Western Essos, moreso the Free Cities and particularly Braavos, but Clementine can easily travel elsewhere. This verse is tagged as v; THE BLACK PEARL. ( A SONG OF ICE & FIRE / GAME OF THRONES. || BRAAVOS. )

#( VERSES. )#OUT OF THE APOCALYPSE. ( ANGIE SPEAKS. )#( y'all know i had to do it to 'em. )

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zwoelffarben · 2 years ago

Video

Look at this supply and demand graph for housing that demonstrates the principle in abstract. Because housing is a complex good, it can't be modeled with just the standard supply demand graphs they teach in econ 101, but if the graph is simple to understand if you get an explaination for all the parts.

Pragmatically Finite Supply

In orange, we have the one supply which all our demands will be interacting with. The first supply model they teach you in econ 101 is the theoretically infinite supply, where for infinitely increasing costs you can always supply infinitely more widgets. This is a simple model for starting to understand how economics works, but it's the number one cause of model failure when applying models to our finite world.

You can only make so many widgets given our available resources; there comes a point after which building more housing in an area is fiscally and socially impractical: there is a pragmatically finite limit on the supply, represented by a vertical line. in grey you can see the two lines past their intersection points which can be useful for calculations, but the orange curve represents the pragmatically finite supply: there are no more house than the orange curve offers because the orange curve represents all houses in the market.

Elastic Housing Demand

The green curve is the elastic demand for housing. It's a normal demand curve that you learn about in econ 101. The more a good costs the fewer people will want to buy it, the less a good costs, the more people will want to buy it. Simple and to the point. The price and amount of a good purchased is determined where it meets supply.

This curve represent people looking to purchase a home to live in.

Inelastic Housing Demand

The blue vertical line represents inelastic demand for housing. These are the number of people who have to participate in the housing market or be homeless. They will pay whatever price they are able to so that they can participate in the market and not experience the negative effects of not buying the market good; things that you need to survive, like food, water, shelter, and healthcare are goods with inelastic demands.

The number of units sold is predefined by the inelastic curve, but price is determined by where the curve meets supply.

This line represents the people looking to rent a home to live in because if they don't at least rent a home, they will be homeless.

Commodity Demand.

Lastly the purple line is another normal demand curve, but, it represents people looking to buy housing as an investment commodity, and because this demand has more capital, their curve is much higher than the green curve representing housing demand.

Theyll buy houses at the price where their demand curve meets the pragmatically finite supply. Calculating exactly how many houses they'll buy is a bit more complicated, and drawing that calculation helps you point to this graph and label homelessness, so lets draw so extra lines.

Dead Weight Loss

In pink, I've drawn the dead weight loss which is a price value defined by the price difference between where the elastic demand for housing meets the pragmatically finite supply, and where the commodity demand for housing properties meets the theoretically infinite supply.

This represents the abstract idea of the loss in utility to participants in the market, because commodity purchases don't get utility out of their investment properties and only gain monetary value, where as buyers looking for a home to live in would get utility directly from living in the house.

It's an abstract idea, but I really appreciate this video for showing the material consequence of this abstract idea to me for the first time. The unlived in interiors of the investedment properties that are barren and unfinished, and unlivable: If humans were living in those spaces, they wouldn't be so bleak, and the difference between that uninhabited investment property and an inhabited place is the manifestation of this abstract concept of dead weight loss.

Over-Exhaustion of Resources

In red, I've drawn the over-exhaustion of resource, which is a quantity defined by the difference between the pragmatic limit on supply and where the commodity demand for housing properties meets the theoretically infinite supply. This represents how many resources would be needed beyond what exists to meet the demand of commodity buyers (in additon to the demands of every other buyer). If you take that amount and reflect it over the pragmatically finite supply (labelled over-exhaustion of resources b and also in red) the commodity buyers will be buying that much of the market at their much higher commoditified prices.

But more importantly, is where that line crosses the inelastic demand for housing, because, the over-exhaustion of resources beyond the inelastic demand represents the number of people forced out of the market by the commodity buyers. In the housing market, this is homelessness.

And in an era where there are enough homes, the commodity buyers are the only economic reason homelessness exists.

#there are other sociological and political factors that contribute to homelessness #but they are dwarfed by the effect created by commodity buyers

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kbrown78 · 6 years ago

Text

My Thoughts: The Call by Peadar O’ Guilin

Yes, it's finally happening. As I promised I have finally written a review for The Call, which I have been talking about non stop. So this is one of the books that I was glad I reread, because most rereads I knew I was going to love and did or I ended up hating the book. This is one that when I first read it I thought it was okay, and almost gave it up in an unhaul. I decided to hold onto it and if I didn't like it with the reread I would than let it go. I'm so glad I did because I liked this book much better than I thought I would, and along with Star Touched Queen, helped pick me up out of the reading slump I had been in since reading The Defiant Heir (highly recommend all mentioned titles). It's a great YA horror novel, but it is a bit more adult due to the graphic violence and sex, and it's perfect for anyone looking for a good Halloween read and a good book featuring fairies (see my T5W for more picks).

Characters: There are multiple POV characters in this book, but because the majority of them only get one chapter (which they are usually killed in), I'm only going to be focusing on 4 of these characters: Nesse, Meghan, Anto, and Conor. Meghan is the best friend of Nessa, and she's a very extroverted character. She likes being a rebel (she literally says this), and that means she has a mischievous and curious personality. She's not afraid to question the adults when they're hiding information from the kids and gives Conor sh*t when he's being a jerk. Her death is the best way to sum up her personality. Before she's called, she's talking about her future with girls, something that's taboo but ends giving them hope. When she's Called she survives as long as she can and when that's no longer an option, she taunts the Sidhe with the one thing that truly breaks them, the beauty of her world. They take away her mouth to silence her, but her body gives the school warning that they're going to be attacked next. She's a loyal, optimistic person that knows how to push people's buttons and fights to the very end. She was a great character and I was sad when she ended up being killed. Next is Anto, and he's Nessa's love interest. He's different than the others because he doesn't like violence for the sake of violence, even in training, and doesn't let any superiors break that belief. This, however, doesn't mean he's weak. He will fight to protect himself and others. When he is Called, his kindness ends up being the thing that saves him because another student sacrifices themselves so that Anto will survive because he helped him earlier. Unfortunately, he gets caught and mutated with a giant arm. After that he is very reclusive, but he comes out to once again protect Nessa. So to sum up, he's a definite good guy how's overall sweet and protective. Then there's Conor, and he's definitely an antagonist in this story. He's a vicious kid who thinks everyone is beneath him. He survives his Call because the Sidhe are impressed by his sheer cruelty. He does have his group of toadies that he refers to as the “Round Table,” and makes it clear that he's a “survival of the fittest” type of person. In short he's cruel, entitled, and has a perfect ending. Finally I arrive at the character that is arguably the protagonist, Nessa. Where Meghan is more about living in the moment, Nessa is more about surviving for the future. She had polio when she was young, and became crippled as a result. I'll talk more about having a crippled character in the Writing section, but in this section I'll make it clear how being a cripple shaped Nessa's characters. Determined to prove everyone wrong and survive her Call, she works hard to become the best student, and it shows. While her legs are very weak, she does everything by the book to best prepare her for her Call, including cutting of her hair. She's also very studious and resourceful, figuring out how to use her surroundings to her advantage and cramming her head with as much knowledge as possible. She's also got a strong upper body to further help compensate for her weak legs. She's also a bit of a romantic, since one of the books she keeps with her is a book of poetry, and is willing to risk getting hurt to protect Meghan and Anto. She's very determined and smart, and while she's generally reserved she does care about those she considers friends. I really liked Nessa characters because she was a well written character but also, again relieving on her smarts to survive, as the kind of protagonist I love to read. All in all, I thought the characters that I discussed were pretty well written.

Relationships: From the beginning it's established that Nessa and Meghan are good friends. They grew up together and share a lot of history. But it isn't all good feelings between them. Nessa, several times, says that Meghan isn't the most productive friend and Meghan even thinks that Nessa is a bit of a spoil sport. Despite the personality traits that each dislikes about the other, they remain very loyal to each other and are always willing to protect each other. In fact Meghan helps Nessa realizes that she has more friends at the school that she originally though. There friendship really reaches it's peak when Meghan really helps Nessa come out of her shell and start talking about their hopes for after they survive their Call. Unfortunately at that exact moment Meghan is Called and doesn't survive. This is what causes Nessa to slip into depression and almost give up the fight, but after reading a poem and realizing Meghan would want her to live, Nessa works even harder to make sure she survives her Call. It was a solid friendship, and while the ending makes sense, it was still sad. From the beginning it's also established that Nessa has a crush on Anto, even though she tells herself that he's a distraction that she needs to forget. This clearly doesn't happen since she goes to the extent of scaling the walls of the boys dormatory to leave him love poetry. It's unclear for a bit if those feelings are returned but during Anto's Call, it's made clear that they are. Thinking about her gives him comfort. Also when she's in danger from Conor and his “knights,” that's what prompts Anto to come out of hiding so that he can protect her. Later she comes to his room and confess their feelings for each other, even though Anto has his giant arm. In the end, when they've both survived their Calls, they kiss and start thinking of having a future together. I liked the girl was interested in a romance with the good guy, cause it easily could have gone in the opposite direction. Nessa tries to avoid Conor because he hates everything she represents. As a cripple she's not likely to survive her Call but the nation insists to treating her like the rest of kids, using up resources that he believes should go to only the fittest children. He constantly ridicules her with his knights, but this is to help cover up his deep dark secret. He has a huge crush on her, and is always thinking of how beautiful she is (even when with other girls). He finally acts on those feelings, trying to force himself onto her. Instead of giving into this, and making a love triangle, Nessa sticks to her belief that he's a jerk (cause he is) and tries to fight him off. So now Conor is doubly pissed because she rejected him, which baffles him. This is his driving motivation, when he makes a deal with the fae, he promises them Ireland if he can kill Nessa, but when she's finally brought before him he starts lusting after her again. She uses this to her advantage and is able to kill him. It's a creepy dynamic that's well done, and again I'm glad Conor was never shown as a love interest at any point.

World Building: This story is set in an alternate Ireland where at some point in the recent past where the Sidhe (who are an ancient race of fairies that lived in Ireland) have managed to isolate Ireland from the rest of the world. So resources are limited and there's no hope of help coming or people being able to leave. Buildings are in shambles and from young age children are taught how to survive their Call. Various schools have been set up to help train students, and it's not just physical training but also records of survivors and the Sidhe's language that is taught. I could really feel just how much this world is holding on by a thread, even though some adults would deny that. There's a general sense of hopelessness and things falling apart. It's also set on an island nation and for some reason island settings always scare me. Something about them being small, surrounded by the ocean, and them being isolated. There's also the Grey Land, which is where the Sidhe live. There is no color in this land, as the name implies, but there are pockets of colors called windows. The Sidhe are the only beautiful thing in this land with everything else being humans that have been manipulated and mutated to the delight of the Sidhe. Much like Australia, everything in this world wants to kill humans, and in fact death might be the better option as opposed to letting the Sidhe get a hold of you. While there wasn't much elaboration of either world, there didn't need to be. The general sense of how things are was all that was needed and that was well illustrated. The human world is bleak and barley holding on and the Grey Lands are a death trap devoid of color. All in all, the atmosphere and descriptions were well done.

Writing: One of the best pieces of writing, at least I thought so, in this book was the discussion of Nessa being a cripple. I've already talked about how Conor hates what it represents, and he wouldn't be the only one that felt that way. Nessa also hates that she's a cripple, but she doesn't moan about it at every opportunity. Her feelings about it aren't in your face, except for when other people address it with her. She hates being a cripple because there are people that treat her differently. They're don't go as hard on her as they do her friends when she gets in trouble, and she hates it. She hates being pitied or viewed as delicate. So that anger from the disabled person's perspective is good to see, not only how she feels about it but also how that anger shapes her. It's also amazing to have a disabled protagonist in a survival story, since this is about the last place you would expect to read about one. It's also great that in the end, when Nessa is Called than captured by Sidhe, she asks to made fire proof so she can survive her return instead of being healed. So she starts the story disabled and ends the story still disabled. Real quick I'm going to explain what the Call is, just to clear some things up. When a teenager is Called, they are somehow transported to the Grey Land where they must avoid the Sidhe and survive for 24 hours (3 minutes in our world), and rely on only their wits and the surrounding environment. The fact that children don't really get to be children, because they have to quickly learn to survive, is a great way to not only illustrate how desperate and bleak the world is, but it also it really ups the creepy factor of everything. Like all the characters that I discussed are 14 years old. That means that there are 14 year olds being brutally murdered, 14 years olds considering murder, and even attempted rape by a 14 years old. Going back to Conor and his “Round Table” I want to further delve into that. The Round Table is taken from Arthurian Legend and they're supposed to be these chivalrous and noble knights. Conor talks about how they're all there because they are the best of the best. However, the teenagers that make up the Round Table are neither chivalrous nor noble and they get picked off like flies. In fact by the end of the book, 1 or 2 knights are the only ones left alive. So it's ironic that these knights were a complete foil to Arthur's knights and yet both still managed to be wiped out (granted in completely different ways). There's actually a lot source for discussion revolving around Conor and his knights. They see human life as a commodity that should only be given to those they deem deserving. But they aren't the only ones in the book that have essentially given up on the human race. There are a few character that made deals with the Sidhe because the Sidhe value promises (but they will always twist your words) and want to take back the human world while many survivors want to feel whole again or have just turned their backs on humans. Yes, the Sidhe are awful, tricky creatures but humans aren't always great either. There's a brief scene where one the teachers recalls that humans took over the land from the Sidhe and forced them into their grey hell. So there's the duality of wanting people to survive but at the same time acknowledging how flawed humans are. One last thing I want to talk about is Frankenstein, one the teachers at the school. There's rumours that go around of Sidhe spies in human form. No one believes this but Frankenstein leaves many suspicious clues, like how he looks and how he speaks. The real kicker was when he begged the headmistress to stay until a certain time period. Now at this point other schools are being mysteriously wiped out, and the fact that he wants to stick around until this time implies that he has something planned. As it turns out he was a Sidhe spy in human form (because apparently the Sidhe world and human world are getting closer which gives the Sidhe more control and easier access). The hints were subtle enough so that you could miss them if you didn't know what you were looking for, but there was always this building suspicion surrounding him. There are many POV's that switch, which some people may not like, but I was fine with it. Overall, I really liked the writing and I think the world and characters helped build up the suspenseful plot and some of the deeper themes within the book.

Dislike: There wasn't actually a lot that I disliked about the book. There were a few dumb character choices, like how was it not obvious to the headmistress that Conor and Frankenstein were both up to something and why would Nessa, who is so determined to survive, stay at the school and risk getting beat up or worse in the hopes that Anto will come back to the school. There was also that scene in the woods where Nessa maybe found a way to get to the Grey Lands without being called that could turn the tides for humans, but it isn't really discussed again. It may become more relevant in the last book, but I have no intention of reading that and because it wasn't that important to the plot, I'm fine with leaving it as it is. Other than a few out of character moments and some questions about how the Grey Land and human world converge, I didn't really have any issues with this book.

Final Thoughts: As I stated at the beginning I really liked this book and I'm glad that I gave it a second chance. The story is great and the characters are also really good. The entire world and magic feels very traditional but isn't something that I've really seen before in recent literature, which I found refreshing. I first read this thinking it was a standalone and I thought the ending wrapped things up well. Yes there were some loose ends and everything with the Sidhe wasn't magically fixed, but the tide was turning and that was a good place to end the narrative. Then a sequel came out, and if you've read my thoughts on Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle, you will know that the last time I thought a book should be left as a standalone I didn't listen to that voice and regretted it. I also looked at some reviews of the sequel and I did not like what I saw. So I'm definitely leaving this one as a standalone so that I keep my high opinion of it.

#my thoughts #book review #the call #peadar o'guilin

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kdenbibi · 7 years ago

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A little defensive

Bruce Wayne X Black!Reader

Summary: You’ve had your fair share of assholes to deal with so the snide and rude comments don’t bother you anymore, Bruce however? that’s a whole nother’ story

Warnings: Your favorite internet trolls, Bruce’s ability to be petty

Author note: This is my first request!!! I hope it’s what you wanted, this was my first time writing for the big bad bat himself so i’m sorry if its wack :’) Feedback is welcomed and encouraged and of course, requests are absolutely open so request away

tag list @mirajanestrauss1999

“Bruce Wayne can date who he want but at least make her pretty lol.”

“(Y/n) is such a strange choice for a fling, not to be racist but black is so not his usual type.”

“Interracial dating is low-key ugly lmao”

“She’d be prettier if she was lighter.” My eyes rolled hard at the keyboard warriors latest onslaught of bitter words directed directly at me, I knew I’d only work myself up but I couldn’t help myself, a sick curiosity possessed me to look through my mentions on Twitter.

I leaned into the warm sheets surrounding my body with a sigh, I weeded through the tweets for something actually relavent to me before tossing the device away from my reach, usually I wouldn’t be tempted to be on the device but Bruce wasn’t with me so I was left to my own devices. The rare moments Bruce and I did get together were spent just like that, together, away from the rest of the world and their problems. I smiled at the thought of the usually stoic man, today was supposed to be one of those sickly sweet days spent draped around one another like cling wrap, but he was pulled away to the office, some kind of emergency that required his presence. With some pushing fro me, he very reluctantly climbed out of the nest of blankets and pillows a few hours ago.

“Baby you gotta go.” “I think they’ll survive without me for a day.” He mumbled into my shoulder making no effort to get up, I felt him smile against my skin, his arm quickly latching around my midsection.“Nuh uh I see what you trynna do over there- no starting something till you handle your business.” He laughed as I pushed away from him. “Are you kicking me out of my own bed?” I pushed myself up on my elbows to look him in the eyes,

“Yes.”

He rolled over on his back with a sigh, I shamelessly watched his body stretch out, the muscles expanding as he moved.His body was more like a machine than anything, after so long of being the bat, scars were bound to litter his warm skin, sometimes I think he forgot he was human, that he wasn’t just a nameless figure of Justice who stuck fear in the hearts of his enemy’s, it took me almost two years to break the two identities apart, and now there was a fine line between the two, so fine even he could see the difference, the real Bruce Wayne had been buried under an endless quest to clean up Gotham, but now, he was beginning to shine through.

Like this moment for instance, as he begrudgingly got ready, pouting all the while. That was Bruce Wayne, despite being a grown man he had these rare moments where he acted like a teenager, almost like the lack of childhood peeked through from time to time. He fastened his tie in the mirror, meeting my eye in the reflection. “See something you like?” One of his thick brows arched, a playful smirk resting on his lips.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, what are you gonna do about it?” I spoke walking over to try and wrap my arms around his large form, he laughed finishing his tie before turning so we faced each other. I leaned up to rest my hands against his chest. “Now look who’s trynna start something.” He spoke breaking our stare off. I pulled away with a laugh, making my way back to the bed. “Hurry up and come back so you can finish what you started.” He grabbed his suit jacket, sliding the expensive material over his arms before leaving with a smirk and a quick kiss to the forehead. That was a solid two hours ago and he still had yet to return, as tempting as it would be to just lull myself back to sleep until he arrived, the bad taste those comments left in my mouth forced me up for the day.

Knowing Bruce, he’d give me that stupid glare he reserves for criminals if he knew what I did. See the thing is, he’s told me a million and one times to avoid all things social media, he knew how nasty the world could get, how lies spread faster than the truth and people would always believe what they wanted to, but I refused to run away from my life, I wasn’t about to let some close minded twats have that much of an impact on what I did, so I went through my morning routine of deleting all the negativity I could stomach to scan through on my timeline and slowly drinking some of Alfred’s famous tea to warm up my body.

When Bruce finally returned to me I was half way through a novel I borrowed from the manor’s library, it was an old annoyingly, spooky Stephen King novel so when the bedroom door slammed open I couldn’t fight the Yelp that left my mouth.“Christ Almighty you almost gave me a heart attack.” I laughed lightly putting a hand to my chest, my smile fell when I saw the expression on his face, his face was set in unmovable stone, almost as if he was still wearing the cowl, I shivered at the unspoken anger in his eyes. “Baby?” I asked hesitantly rising from my seat, I placed the book down on the nearby table and met his gaze. “What’s wrong?” Usually when something bad happened he would try to carry all the weight alone, not wanting to bother another with the responsibility of resolving whatever the problem was. One of the things we overcame with separating Bruce from the bat was this very issue, from the look on his face I couldn’t help but worry something happened between this morning and now so bad we’d end up fifty steps back. “Bruce?” He was silent as he pulled out his phone, he typed away before handing me the device.I scanned over the collective of negative headlines, all different but all surrounding me and him.Mostly me.I stared at him even more confused. “Baby that’s nothing, you told me yourself to ignore that kinda stuff.” He finally spoke. “The reason they pulled me in today was to talk about this- my PR representative showed me that and then some.” He scoffed leaning heavily on his knuckles against a dresser. “Did you know people were saying all horrible these things?"I sighed walking over to his tense form, I placed a hesitant palm on his shoulder,

"Well yeah-”

“How long?”

“Since we’ve been dating, but baby it’s nothing new, I don’t let it bother me.”

“Well it bothers me.” He hastily loosened his tie, tossing it somewhere off in the room, now beginning to pace the shiny marble floors. “I don’t care if they trash my name, or my company, but you?” He scoffed, anger shining through in his tense actions.“I won’t sit back- I can’t.” I watched him, my worry clear before I forced myself to calm down. I made him meet my eye, grabbing the sides of his face, stopping him in his tracks.“Hon I know- but you need to calm down, don’t act when you’re angry, you may do something you’ll regret.” His expression softened for a moment as he leaned into my touch subconsciously. “You’re one of - if not the most- incredible people I’ve ever encountered, you’re naively kind but all the same stubbornly intelligent, you’re what keeps me sane. So it’s hard to watch idiots who have no idea what kind of amazing human being you are judge you for something as ridiculous and trivial as the color of your skin.” He quickly worked himself back up so I wordlessly pulled him to his bed. He landed on his back with a huff, I pushed myself off of the soft mattress to get up and close the blinds, I took both our phones and silenced them, before putting them across the room. He stared at me with a face that asked what I was doing but I said nothing. I pulled his shoes off before kicking off my own. “What are you up too?” He spoke, the words were still serious as ever but slightly amused.I sighed with a sad smile. “Growing up- and sometimes to this day- it felt like a crime to be brown, anything and everything you did was wrong or not enough, so when the world got just a little too bleak for me to handle, I would shut it out for a little while and collect my bearings so I could face the challenges with a clear mind.” He stared at me as I climbed my way up his stupidly big bed until I made it to him. I hovered over his body, a small grin on my face as I stared at him. “We’re gonna shut the world out, because they don’t deserve our attention right now.” He said nothing but them smile growing on his face told me everything I needed to hear. His eyes turned soft, his body finally un-tensing and Bruce, had finally come back to me.

We laid there for hours, curled into each other’s bodies, hands never leaving the other persons as we talked about anything and everything, the conversation never had a direct direction but that’s what made it nostalgic, like we were both seventeen again, and our biggest worries were senior year.

The butterflies raving in my stomach never left when I looked at him, no matter how long we’d been together, I could always fall a little more in love with the man who laid before me. Thankfully, the drama from before was pretty much forgotten as we settled into the night, at least I thought it was. I woke up later in the evening searching for his warmth in my sleep but coming up empty, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes as I aimlessly walked down the manor’s extensive hallways until I found the door I was looking for. I’d been down in the cave a handful of times but I never got used to opening the secret door in his study, I always felt like James Bond afterwards. I made my way down the steps, my bare feet almost stung with every step down, I forgot how cold it could get in here.I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between one of the boys and Bruce. “Remind me again why I’m hacking into Twitter accounts on a school night?.” The loud sound of typing was heard before Bruce responded. “Recon.” The other voice laughed- I now realized who it was.

“Tim?” They both looked up, the younger man smiling at me.“Hey (y/n)! Fancy seeing you here, Couldn’t sleep?” I crossed my arms, trying my best to look intimidating in my robe and bonnet. “I was asleep, but my Bruce-is-about-to-do-something-stupid senses were tingling so I figured I’d come check it out.”

Tim barked out a laugh before covering it up with a cough at the Bat glare™ he received. He turned back to the computer with an awkward whistle. Bruce turned to me, removing his cowl so we were face to face.“You should go back to bed, I’ll be in later.”

“Oh I’ll go back to sleep, if you tell me what you’re doing over there.”

“That’s confidential.”

“He’s making me hack into some random Twitter accounts.” I could feel the glare he gave Tim all the way across the room. “Bruce!” “This is justice.” “This is petty is what it is.” He crossed his arms, smirk ever present on his smug face.“Cyber bullying is illegal, I’m just doing my job. "Tim peaked his head out from behind Bruce

"Wait who got bullied.”

“No one"

”(Y/n)”

Bruce and I spoke simultaneously, Tim made some sort of noise of acknowledgement before the typing noises intensified.“Yeah they got this coming."I sighed into my hands. "Tim not you too! You’re supposed to be the smart one.” He leaned back, satisfied with whatever it is that he did. “Exactly, that’s why these jerks won’t be bothering you or anyone anymore.” I sighed walking past Bruce’s smug figure to kiss Tim’s temple, “I don’t agree with either of y'all but- Thank you, I appreciate it.” I then leaned over to give a quick peck to Bruce and question him"Are you done being petty or do I have to worry all night?“ He grabbed my hands bringing them to his mouth for a sweet kiss."I’m done.” I squinted at him before shrugging and heading back to the warmth of his bed. “Tim, look up how much it would be to buy Twitter.”

“Dear god Bruce.”

#dc imagine #dc x reader #black reader #poc imagine #bruce wayne #bruce wayne imagine #batman imagine #batman #batman x reader #poc x reader #dc #imagine

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felipaynst717-blog · 5 years ago

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Wie erhalte ich kostenlose spiele von rtl und zahle nicht The Outer Worlds

Review The Outer Worlds

A year ago, Obsidian published The Outer Worlds on the say of dangerous complaint of Outcome 76. Today, when Bethesda no longer presents the quilt of the bad RPG release, things happen so attractive anymore.

From the beginning, a muted voice behind the skull warned us hostile to The Outer Worlds. That undertaken to convert myself that this game is not exactly what I became expecting – that it will not necessarily exist a new magnum opus from Obsidian Entertainment, value any volume of funds with any amount of times of your kick. The silent voice was not very well... but it became completely wrong either. The Outer Worlds walked away only a good game.

But that project took every risk in the planet to be a great success. After all, Feargus Urquhart's group used the same framework as with the past games, with Pillars of Eternity at the forefront. They catch on the origin in the RPG genre – however, the beginnings of the Fight series – and gone work the same dish, according to the same recipe, maybe adding some more modern flavors, such as original imagination and using more modern hardware. The controls was conquered from the best people imaginable – Timothy Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, without to whom, the Tomb Boy would never get happened conceived.

Obsidian dropped the isometric perspective (their latest experiments proved that the growth for games with like perspective had stopped) and moved to a 3-dimensional environment. And that wasn't the first time he'd accomplished this – Fallout: New Vegas is still widely acknowledged with the followers of the RPG genre, most of which believe that the best part of the entire series. What might spread so wrong regarding The Outer Worlds? Unfortunately, lots of things – actually within the districts to should not present a problem to equally experienced developers.

Waiter! There's Borerlands in my Fallout!

You'd think, perhaps, to my analysis of The Outer Worlds would turn largely around the game's archaic technology. That's right, and I have a lot to say about it, but I'll choose a less noticeable, and simultaneously much more valuable element of the game. I'll focus on the deciding.

Don't get me wrong – Obsidian created a unique and gaining universe. The fierce border in the space, ironically titled the Arcadia, dictated next to a unpredictable, retrofuturistic company, is surely an interesting place on an adventure. Especially because creators allowed the head go natural and hurled in the lot of crazy ideas, finishing it happy with a little absurd humor.

Unfortunately, someone decided that this frivolous planet will have a very important story, with serious ethical dilemmas. Sounds somewhat like Fallout? Sure, it was unquestionably the plan of the developers – but they've seemingly needed this much; we'd ordered black tea, then understand Regent's Punch rather. The mixture causes a serious cognitive dissonance.

The world of Results was uniquely heavy, gloomy, and no sum of black humor from the game can difference to – absolutely the opposing, actually – that generally expanded the cold fact in the post-apocalyptic USA. The general format of the mark of The Outer Worlds – the struggle for survival of a colony faced with starvation – echoes some personal themes. The problem is the game is undoubtedly overloaded with jokes, as for such an important story.

Humor almost pours through the screen. The power of the company is absurd. By every turn, we are confronted with preposterous regulations and procedures, and the pioneers, every single one, are lots of helpless administrators and complete idiots, that lay their banal issues for the protagonist. Want examples? Just take a look at the screenshots within the text. Maybe it's amusing – but then how is the person supposed to heal the gossip really? And Obsidian ultimately care for their production to get selected seriously, since this carousel of enjoyment sometimes unexpectedly freezes, and we're facing a perfectly serious choice, such as whether to lose human energy in the designation of growth.

Participating in The Outer Worlds feels like looking at The Hitchhiker's Lead for the Universe, yet with quotes from Dune, The Foundation, or Solaris popping up every couple of leaves. Or, working a gaming analogy, it is like playing Borderlands, and then unexpectedly jumping to the many intense themes of Majority Effect, or maybe possibly the horror of Deadly Place every occasionally. The disagreement is hella strong.

New Vegas 1.1

Let's observe The Outer Worlds plays. In terms of gameplay, Obsidian Entertainment's latest development bares the dagger. It's a pure-blood RPG with a gameplay model in which inspirations of Fight are revealed much more clearly than from the setting. The character progress is mysterious and development, there's great liberty with participating in the task you want, the quests remain open and imaginative, as is the history itself – those are the bases in the game, and they prepare deliver a great exchange of entertaining.

The end of these be the most impression on us in The Outer Worlds. The voyage begins the moment the idol developed by the person, a element of the thousands-strong team of the lost colonization ship Dream, is got up from hibernation by the "mad scientist," Phineas Wells. He shows a rather bleak state to the character – the Meeting, a group governing the institution, is steer the Arcadia to their decline, having broken the promising grip of mankind into the undernourished hell plagued with red tape.

The only way to salvation, explains Welles, is to develop the best concentration of Anticipation, and bring down the Congress with their help. Now, you might reflect that the structure with the history gets lately become created, with the great with negative characters introduced. But the game quickly recommend a subversive thought: why not team up with the company, and allow them the fugitive scientist? Of course, the Congress is probably also aware of how serious things try the colony, and it needs a solution to that. Also the reason not solely ignore the entire affair and try to work with your own thinking to stuff with your own pockets? Or just drown the Arcadia with body, killing anyone at your way?

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The game isn't a straight sandbox, but the history of The Outer Worlds experience nearly quite bright sandbox (or rather: nonlinear) features. And even though we only have two simple endings (achieved through a progression of quests which occur essentially the same vision), the participants could accomplish much different effects depending in they way they choose to finish the objective, treat certain makeup, with manage different factions. The persons that enjoy changing the account with news may love it.

Do everything you have to do

Thus, we visit the back strongest aspect of the game, that is. the independence of solving problems. Obsidian doesn't also try to cover the foundation of the mechanics in The Outer Worlds – and especially the character development – is gained straight through Fallout's SPECIAL. On the middle are six capabilities that will govern over a dozen abilities, plus the abilities further revise the stats (they're an equivalent in the famous perks, but while there are only certain aptitudes, the organism isn't that making).

Yet, that provides player a huge liberty in answering problems during the quests. In addition to formulaic combat talents – melee weapons, fire, or blocking – you can spend statements in stopping, hacking, pressure, or sciences. And, what's much more interesting, we constantly come across the possibility of blending and applying these abilities. That's because there's almost invariably more than one way leading to any position, and earlier fighting hostile NPCs, the player's are always able to go and crack the dangerous condition with diplomacy. Do this to say that the campaign with the final boss (and the entire combat sequence preceding it) might be prevented through the use of combined logical and rhetorical abilities.

The independence to act a spirit regarding the mechanics goes hand in hand with the way conversations work. It is another aspect that will get waves of Fallout feel at home. Talks with NPCs are lushly turn out, present the participant a broad variety of possible actions. Just as you can eliminate any NPC, you can also just insult anyone you're talking to, be cruel fun of these, and appropriate their final money. In the word – acting like a complete asshole. And a new interesting fact here – having a character with really small intelligence opens a special, "children's" style in the dialogue. Not a very practical business, but this a nice addition.

The paradox in the next dimension

Up to this point, The Outer Worlds seems able to continue their ground being a very capable RPG, in which the greatest issue is the gimmicky world. Unfortunately, Obsidian do another strategic problem when designing the game – they gamble in three-dimensional graphics.

Despite numerous conflict avoidance decisions for nerds and representatives, TOW still puts a lot of emphasis on deal with. This becomes apparent just seconds after you dump the shelter with the location walls. The query of the not-so-big portions in the forests – even if done all along the chief routes – is regularly "diversified" in chance meets with units of enemies, whose sole purpose of existence is waiting for a chance to kill somebody. And that wouldn't be something in particular bad if the combat became as ordinary.

Eight days have crossed since launch of Outcome: New Vegas, and also the beat mechanics of The Outer Worlds seem like the experience was generated only a year later on. The clumsy animations, dumb AI-controlled opponents, and primitive weapon mechanics, which don't let you feel any influence with the weapon, make the entire experience largely similar to FNV, and seldom offer any satisfaction. And if you think melee weapons offer something greater, think again – it’s actually worse here. You can evaluate and choose designed for a quiet methodology with escape combat altogether (here, Obsidian tried to offer something up-to-date also begun hiding in tall grass), but it is not really cool either... Besides, sparing enemies doesn't yield XP, so there's no reward here.

Technical level – Obsidian

The retrograde technical layer is plain just from the start. Take area and shops, for instance – in many cases, these positions are filled separately, but they're not even substantial in mass. Details are remarkably base in the cities, disturbed with empty seat and miserable imitations of a living atmosphere in formula of tiny companies if motionless dummies (character activities is an additional concern – equally depressing). There's not enough background noise to supply the impact of being in the actual city. The previously mentioned wild areas and seem archaic – they're trying to discover being straight window without actually being really start.

If the above picture in the "technological wonders" presented in The Outer Worlds wasn't quality entertainment for you, let me talk about optimization for a while. Sorry – "optimization." I participated in on the decent computer with a Central i5-4570 (3.2 GHz), 16GB of THRUST, also a GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) at very high situations in 1080p motion, plus a constant 60 frames per minute was not anything I could enjoy frequently. The framerate often dropped to about 40fps for no apparent reason. As if that remained enough – even on an SSD – I frequently felt short freezes created by pile of data, then following getting to a new, larger field, the surfaces and purposes would pop-up right or my senses for a few seconds. It was grotesque.

On the other hand – in at least 30 hours of comedy, rarely encountered any major problem. The game of course incorporates a light total of glitches (like as bodies flying about), but a serious mistake occurred just the moment: At one feature, the game concluded that one of our buddy had expired – several seconds later talking to him, during a completely safe spaceship flight. But that was possibly a difficulty of bad luck. After all, we're referring to a game by Obsidian Entertainment.

Perhaps this completely doesn't matter?

"If Fallout: New Vegas survived a sensation despite many it is technical shortcomings, why must that vary with The Outer Worlds?" There are two things in play here. First, FNV isn't remembered as an outdated glitchfest simply because it allowed us a fantastic narrative. TOW doesn't get the same worth from the story – and the idea not just about the bitter-sweet, incoherent setting.

The game certainly has it's share of interesting journey and inventive jobs, but ultimately, it might get been there a lot better. The best way to illustrate this is with the staff. That a bunch of nice personalities, whose dialogues were produced with plenty of skill as to produce them think alive. Hier finden Sie weitere Informationen One would, still, require more charm from them – particularly by their own private threads, often quite brief, seeming rather forced. Same goes for many quests, even the main ones – plenty of them feels purposeless.

Another big difficulty of The Outer Worlds is that many has gone on in the RPG genre since the announcement of Consequences: New Vegas. We've witnessed a major convergence of the Act with RPG genres; self-identifying as role-play is no longer a free for crude combat mechanics. If we think about FPP games, there's not exactly the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, yet yet the poor Fallout 4, falling short of most real shooters, is miles ahead TOW in terms of gunplay.

All that contributes to the unhappy conclusion to Obsidian Entertainment just did not have enough money to generate The Outer Worlds the kind of game they'd meant. I believe the lion's bit on the budget went to recording dialogues (with a moderately successful answer) with the job of the designers who had to go Arcadia a unique think (that, used for a switch, gone away reasonably clearly). Aiding the Fantastic Engine was likely a dance aimed at but some money – this, theoretically, ensured nice graphics for a little price – further reduced with the deal with Epic Games Store.

However, the developers didn't have the means to enhance the mechanics, be the world a little bigger, and, above all, allow more head with explaining to the chronicle – making it longer, with more cut-scenes and poses. Do this to say that the ending from the primary plan can properly be range into moral 15 hours (side quests should produce another 15).

So, why the make? That's because The Outer Worlds should be regarded primarily as a traditional RPG – and really, if we assess that from this area, we have to admit that some really good craftsmanship. If you miss the good other evening of "rolplays," in which nameless heroes willingly hurried to help collect (or eliminate) the world for no actual purpose, and spent their own time about any trifle mission in the character of acquiring experience points along the way – The Outer Worlds can contract a grab of nostalgia from your eyes. Unfortunately, for everyone also, those will be mainly tears of trouble with grief – of the wasted potential.

#The Outer Worlds #PC Review

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comicteaparty · 6 years ago

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February 14th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on February 14th, 2019, from 5PM - 7PM PST. The chat focused on Earth in a Pocket by Jabbage.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB START!

Good evening, everyone~! This week’s Thursday Book Club is officially beginning! Today we are discussing Earth in a Pocket by Jabbage~! (http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/)

Remember that Thursday discussions are completely freeform! However, every 30 minutes I will drop in OPTIONAL discussion questions in case you’d like a bit of a prompt. If you miss out on one of these prompts, you can find them pinned for the chat’s duration. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is fun and respectfully appreciating the comic. All that said, let’s begin!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

perhaps not a full scene, but im really fond of this page in general http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/comic/2019/01/22 where the socio economic development stuff is broken down. theres just something so elegantly simple about how its shown. not to mention i appreciate the injection of humor, because i think it makes everything really grounded.

Delphina

The badger page is perennially endearing (http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/comic/2018/08/11), but I also like the most recent one where Little One is encouraging Halisi to be proactive and set up some long-term solutions for herself: http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/comic/2019/02/05

RebelVampire

im really curious why she thought of badgers at all. unless she had the badgers badgers mushroom song stuck in her head. XD

Delphina

@Jabbage please make that canon

Jabbage

makes it so

(Hi! I'm going to be here for a little while! :D)

RebelVampire

thanks for coming, Jabbage!

Jabbage

I figure that if you're on a road trip with a small child who is prone to ask a billion questions, eventually you're going to end up talking about badgers

Delphina

I just really appreciate how even after all she's been through, Halisi still has so much love and passion for her studies, and it's what she reaches to when she's looking for ways to console Little One and solutions for herself.

Kabocha

Hmmm, my favorite scene probably was the Witch bottle explanation http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/comic/2018/08/15 It was a good bit of information I hadn't really been aware of :D I also just... enjoy her interactions with the little jellyfish - even though she's in a bad spot, she's still taking time to tell him stories.

RebelVampire

i like the element of logic there is to it too. like she's not panicking, but using what she loves to calm herself down in a way. and i think thats a really great showcase of her character without needing to be told shes like that.

its a characterization via the action versus the telling

mathtans

Here for now, the little one seems extra fussy tonight. Yes, I call my baby daughter the little one. So comic was a bit surreal.

RebelVampire

hi math!

at least your little one isnt old enough to ask yet "are we there yet?"

Kabocha

Right? I mean, she could have just given in, accepted that she might die here... But nah. And she's still kind, even though this entire situation is awful

mathtans

The Witch bottle thing reminds me, I liked the way the art moved through the centuries on that one page, but with people who looked kinda similar. I thought that was clever.

True. Little one could save us some time by specifying what her issues are though. ^.^

RebelVampire

ironically though another of my favorite scenes is the one where halisi sets up the signal and kind of ditches her new jellyfish child to just go despairingly collapse in front of it. i like this brief moment of her giving into despair cause theres something really raw about it. like at first she doesnt say anything even, and i think it makes it really powerful because the silence just adds this immense weight to the sorrow. you know shes super suffering for that moment and feeling the weight of everything finally hit her.

Delphina

Yeah, the comic does a good job of showing a lot of conflicting emotions(edited)

mathtans

Yeah, honestly the very opening was a heck of a kick in the pants. Like, I have no idea what I'd do in that sort of situation. It's very problematic.

RebelVampire

yeah theres def a lot of stressful situations. but i kind of appreciate the lighter moments. like her trying to start a fire but ultimately failing. i mean its kind of scary and sad for her survival, but the way its handled is still pretty funny

also that moment where shes trying to fix the machine at the beginning and it just flat out basically bursts into flames XD

Jabbage

I'm pleased to hear that! I'm always aware that it could be quite a bleak story, but I want it to ultimately feel hopeful and positive, so the silly moments are important for that!

kayotics

I also liked the badger scene, but I think the scene that had the most prominence for me is when she finds out that someone else landed on the planet 80 years ago

i think that scene really set in how dire her situation is

khkddn

the portrayal of emotions really is great. it's really interesting to see someone going through such a crisis and only surrounded by beings who can't relate at all

Delphina

Oh god yeah, and the aliens just going "Something happened to the human we don't know what cause death isn't a thing that happens here???" was scary.

kayotics

"it's hibernating!"

G (Title Unrelated)

I felt something in the scene right after where they tell her dad "we haven't heard from her yet"

Delphina

collective tentacle shrug

kayotics

yeah i really feel for her dad

this isn't a scene, but I appreciate that all of the characters are middle-aged or older

RebelVampire

agreed. but i appreciated the realism of the ppl on the other line being like "meh its probably fine my dude" to the dad. cause that really uses reader knowledge to an advantage to create sympathy for him. because we know its not fine, and that he is right to worry. and that makes it sad hes the only one worried in that moment.

G (Title Unrelated)

Yes I agree

kayotics

Also agreed. It's a good example of dramatic irony

RebelVampire

although i like the most recent page with the followup where hes basically enlisted an army of students to find her. abuse of power, probably. but makes him the sweetest dad? yes.

QUESTION 2. Much of the comic revolves around Halisi telling stories based on things in her pocket. Which of Halisi’s stories impacted you the most and/or taught you something new? What do you think is to be gained from Halisi telling these stories to an alien race with no real connection to humanity? How do you believe the stories and knowledge she has might help contextualize her current situation for her? What, to you, does it mean to have “Earth in a Pocket?” Further, if you were in Halisi’s position, what objects would you pick in 10 seconds to represent the sum of human existence? Lastly, what other cultural or past history aspects do you think Halisi might bring up? How might they be contextualized to add a new viewpoint to Halisi’s situation?

Delphina

I liked the Dancing Plague story a lot http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/comic/2018/08/06

RebelVampire

this is the point where i say the witch bottle scene. I think it was beautifully illustrated, and as a story it was not a cultural thing i was aware of. but i like how suitable and unsuitable it was for the situation. but overall it just made me think about humans are weird and can make fear out of nothing at all if the minds decide it to be so.

unless the plot twist is there really was a witch in that bottle

ive always found the dancing plague fascinating because again, humans be weird. minds play tricks.

khkddn

the witch bottle scene is kind of like a story about the power of storytelling, pretty fitting i think

the idea of a witch meant so much to people, like how halisi's stories mean so much to the jellies

G (Title Unrelated)

so she's got a single seed, too, which is also super symbolic

kayotics

I really like the agriculture story, because, like it was mentioned before, it was very concise, but also it shows a lot about Halsi's personality and what she thinks is important about understanding humans on a basic level

mathtans

Back. Know what you can't do when you have a little one? Have a life sometimes. >.<(edited)

G (Title Unrelated)

I wonder what kind of seed it is

RebelVampire

oh man what if the seed wasnt even food. like she winds up growing a rose bush or something XD

mathtans

I was going to say, one of my fave moments was actually comedy, when Halisi first goes off with the inhabitants, thinking about ditching them, and they're all "we can see the thoughts".

RebelVampire

i appreciate the jellyfish didnt just ditch her at that point. cause i would not be as forgiving as them XD

mathtans

And yeah, the hope and sudden crash of the human who was there before was powerful too.

Delphina

I hope it's like... a nice fruit tree. She seems like she could use a nice fruit tree.

mathtans

The framing of the witch bottle scene was cool too. With the whole "not helping me be less afraid" thing (and asking for that term).

kayotics

i just really like the little jellyfish aliens, because they're written in a way that's much less human-centric. I like aliens that are just kind of weird for being weird and don't follow human conventions.

mathtans

Though props for the "pot-reon" in the agriculture bit too.

RebelVampire

yeah im really appreciating the jellyfish for that reason. theyre a nice blend between humanistic traits while still being super alien. its always nice to see when theres kind of a basic gap of understanding where the way each species thinks is quite different

anyway, for me personally though, while she does literally have some of earth in her pocket, i think earth is more about the stories that have traveled with her. because oral traditions reach immensely far back and is the main platform by which we teach and learn about ourselves as a species. so imo they are more representative of humanity than the objects. thus how she can fit earth in a pocket, even though she doesnt need the pocket.(edited)

G (Title Unrelated)

Yeah, I think you nailed it!

mathtans

Also, random question/thought. Halisi didn't have to dig too deep to get "well" water (I liked that one too)... yet was able to bury a guy? The water must be specific to locations or something?

Agreed on the alien-ness people have been speaking about.

G (Title Unrelated)

I mean it's an alien planet

mathtans

Good point about the traditions, Rebel. She's her own pocket.

It helps that she mostly just has to think things rather than even speak them aloud too.

Jabbage

AHAHA yeah, I realised that after drawing it. It's on a list of things i might tweak one day, although I do also like the idea that it is just an alien planet and it's strange and unpredictable like that. So much of our own planet would seem strange and random if we didn't understand a little bit about it's geology, the water cycle etc.

kayotics

on that note i like the idea of halsi going around trying to find ground that doesn't immediately fill up with well water

"okay let's try this spot. Hm, nope, that filled up. can't bury him here"

G (Title Unrelated)

haha!

RebelVampire

yeah it didnt particularly stick out to me just cause i wrote it off as like a change in elevation or something like that. but basically alien planet does alien things XD

mathtans

Fair point.

Could just drag dirt over from another place too, though I guess it would be raised more then.

kayotics

I think if it needs to be tweaked in the future, Jabbage, you could always just change it to a mound rather than a hole. same concept but it avoids going below the dirt

mathtans

Fixes the w"hole" thing.

G (Title Unrelated)

also digging a hole IS hard work

Jabbage

Yeah, or using rocks

kayotics

digging is a lot of work

mathtans

Also whistling while you use rocks, to get rock music.

I'll stop.

kayotics

if she plants that seed she may have to make a mound for that too, it would probably get too waterlogged otherwise

mathtans

I wonder if the soil has the right nutrients.

RebelVampire

yeah i was thinking that too

that her next challenge is finding a not well spot for that seed

cause unless its a crop that specifically needs to be waterlogged, shes gonna have a bad time

mathtans

The jellyfish said the mushrooms could talk, right? Maybe they know a place.

Does rice have seeds?

G (Title Unrelated)

I think if the planet has breathable air it might have a similar balance of elements and whatnot to earth?

kayotics

i think most rice is planted from splitting an existing plant, but i'm sure there's a seed that starts it all

Delphina

What do the jelly aliens taste like

kayotics

DELPHIE NO

Delphina

MAYBE THEY GROW BACK OR SOMETHING

Jabbage

Whether or not the mushrooms can talk is a fun thing that's not really ever going to get expanded on, but which I had in mind for how the jellies work. I figure that they don't have many ways of getting external sensory information about the world - no eyes, ears, sense of smell etc. They are psychic though, they share thoughts and ideas and information about the world. I figure that the mushrooms have some kind of consciousness and run through the planet, and the jellies can draw from that somehow to orientate themselves and know what's going on

G (Title Unrelated)

that's what I kinda assumed!

I mean, that is basically how forests work on earth. XD

RebelVampire

so basically the mushrooms can function as gps

Jabbage

@Delphina ~ I mean I'm sure Big One has some spare limbs... ~(edited)

mathtans

Oh, wow. Cannibalism-like issue didn't occur to me.

Jabbage

Me neither honestly

mathtans

I think the jelly was a bit broken and said she'd regenerate over time...?

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. Story wise, the comic deals with Halisi crash landing on an alien planet and all but being stranded. Do you believe Halisi will learn to farm with the little she managed to salvage and find a way to survive? What obstacles might prevent such an excursion on the planet? How will Halisi deal with the obstacles? Further, how do you think Halisi will deal with managing her mysterious illness, and what is she sick with for that matter? How might her actions be hindered or helped by the native alien life? In what ways do you think her actions will change how the alien life lives their own lives? Finally, do you believe that Halisi will be rescued at some point? If so, how will this come about?

mathtans

I like the mushroom consciousness idea.

RebelVampire

i do think the jelly child said as such.

G (Title Unrelated)

Q3: These are... all questions I have, myself. XD

mathtans

That illness thing is probably the immediate concern. Withdrawal itself is an issue, whether the pills were life saving or not

G (Title Unrelated)

I was wondering if they were antidepressants or something

RebelVampire

yeah for all the optimism in this plan, the pills are gonna be problematic. but i did wonder if they were antidepressants

khkddn

the flashback scene after she takes her last pill makes it seem to me like she was waiting for medical test results

kayotics

it's also a future time, so it could be a pill that prevents a life threatening disease from spreading.

mathtans

That's a good thought. The whole not accomplishing anything in her life is pretty bleak. Maybe that's a symptom.

G (Title Unrelated)

oh I didn't realize that scene was about her somehow

kayotics

my hope is that she's rescued well before she even needs to worry about this single plant producing any viable food options, since even if the plant grows, it's not likely going to sustain her

G (Title Unrelated)

yeah exactly

RebelVampire

not to mention depending on what plant it is it could take forever to grow. plant growth really varies a lot from crop to crop

kayotics

as for the pills, it seems like her illness has a vague timeline. Like a degenerative disease or something cancerous.

G (Title Unrelated)

P.s., I want some rainbow space maize.

RebelVampire

yes i second this

rainbow space maize for everyone

mathtans

It's a maize-ing.

khkddn

a few pages after she takes the pill she wonders "why are red pills better stimulants" and the pill she took was red. but then again if it were antidepressants i would expect a flashback that looked more like a therapists office than a doctor with results

Jabbage

Oh gosh I don't want to interrupt all the amazing discussion about Halisi's mysterious malady but I was so pleased to find out that there's actually multicoloured corn like that

I thought I made it up for a gag but it's reaaaaaal

kayotics

i have the link, if you'd like it

khkddn

oh i love the corn page

kayotics

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-rainbow-corn-is-the-coolest-way-to-eat-your-veggies (rainbow corn)

mathtans

It wasn't too corny.

kayotics

Honestly? corn, rice, and wheat would all be things I'd say should be brought to an earth colony.

G (Title Unrelated)

yeassssst. XD

unless there's naturally occurring yeast.

Man, we don't even know what it would be like to visit another living planet

RebelVampire

if we have rainbow corn, clearly were meant to go into space right now.

thats a good catch with the red pill, @khkddn

i actually hadnt paid attention to the pill color

mathtans

As to the question of Halisi being rescued, I foresee two possible outcomes. First, that she's found still alive, and she's learned enough about the planet natives to further space research or something, or second, that she's found dead, but the natives were so taken by her stories that her name will live on forever in the history books of first contact.

G (Title Unrelated)

I didn't associate the pill color musing with her situation but maybe it IS related!

RebelVampire

though i leave it open shes on some sort of mental health related medicine, i do feel its more likely its a degenrative disease of some sort. cause it makes her wanting to go to space make more sense. cause i feel its one of those things where youd be more willing to do it if you knew that you had a shorter time than most to live

math no, that second one is too dark

although not implausible

khkddn

if halisi is not reunited with her dad at some point i'll be so sad

or at least they speak to each other

Delphina

Yeah, I'm just gonna say I don't think Halisi's gonna make it back to Earth. I think we're probably looking at a "she finds peace and purpose with the remaining time she has" situation.

RebelVampire

im gonna believe in the rescue efforts cause her dad seems to be a determined dude. and tbf they probably know her flight path so unless she was super duper off course they can probably guess a reasonable area she might be.

mathtans

I don't know that it's necessarily dark... it's kind of a happy end, just not for Halisi.

Also, maybe the pills help her speak. But that's a thing she won't need with the jellys.

I do think that receiving a message from an 80 year old spacecraft is probably something worth investigating.

RebelVampire

thatd be mighty convenient. tho in some au shed get so used to the psychic stuff shed go back to live among humans and be like "oh shit thats right they cant just see my mind pictures"

mathtans

That's an interesting point, about readapating to civilization.

Crazy theory time: Eating the mushrooms constantly ends up turning her into a jelly-creature. When the humans arrive, they won't recognize her.

RebelVampire

i do think shell have some affect on the jellies though. cause i think at the very least shes gonna teach them the important of oral traditions and theyll start telling their own stories and collectively grow as a species. i think shes really setting the jellies on the path for this.

LOL

i was thinking earlier about what if the mushrooms are semi psychic cause thats what happens to the jellies when they die

they dont die and just come back as the mushrooms

mathtans

Ooooh, that'd be an interesting twist.

Like maybe Halisi gains some psychic powers too.

(Though we may have ended up back at cannibalism...)

G (Title Unrelated)

not to shoot down anyone's fun speculation, but it doesn't seem like that kind of story, tbh. XD

kayotics

haha

we don't even know if the jellies can die i mean, I'd think they would, since they apparently come into existence somehow

mathtans

Also they haven't overrun the world.

kayotics

maybe theyre very slow at growing

or they just become the water

G (Title Unrelated)

slow-growing seems very likely

mathtans

I figure before they die they just kind of stop transmitting. Maybe run off somewhere. So no one is aware.

(Maybe they're like lemmings?)

G (Title Unrelated)

(that is not how lemmings work, sorry. XD)

mathtans

(I would worry if lemmings could read my thoughts.)

G (Title Unrelated)

(the suicidal lemmings myth was created by disney)

mathtans

shakes fist at mouse

G (Title Unrelated)

(or did you mean something else lol)

mathtans

I free associate. I mean what you want me to mean.

RebelVampire

yeah ive been wondering if the jellies are immortal. although ya know what, we have immortal jellyfish on earth so thats not that ridiculous to imagine.

kayotics

man, jellyfish are messed up

mathtans

There can be only one! hands out swords

kayotics

i can only imagine that the Jellies in earth in a pocket feel the same too. I was able to touch the bell of a couple at an aquarium once and man, that was a weird feeling

G (Title Unrelated)

I've been watching PBS Eons on youtube, I wonder if they've done one about the origins of cnidarians yet...

RebelVampire

honestly im putting money on immortal just cause they didnt even know what death was. unless they do die and just dont understand the hibernating jellies are never coming back

QUESTION 4. One topic resounding throughout the comic is humanity connecting to the past while also embracing the future and expanding. In what ways do you think reconnecting with humanity’s origins have changed Halisi on a personal level? How might they continue to change her? Why do you think Halisi so strongly believes in bringing the past to humans as humanity expands into space? In what ways do you think she’ll think it will help humanity as a whole? How might Halisi’s experiences on this new alien planet change the way she thinks about humanity’s past? How might it change how she conveys humanity’s past to other humans? Overall, what do you believe the story has to show us in regards to balancing the past, the future, and why both are needed?

G (Title Unrelated)

immortal jellies make for a good contrast to Halisi's fears of her own mortality

mathtans

They can be injured though, like the one who had a thing fall on it. It'd suck to be immortal that way.

RebelVampire

that is true. and contrasts like that are good.

Jabbage

(imma point out, Little One also notes that they're going to get better one day, although Halisi is a bit incredulous about that)

mathtans

The connecting to the past thing makes me think of that society. Which didn't seem to have a lot of members. Also, it took them, what, ten years to decide on things? (I was amused by "say that to my face" because, um, I think that's what the person is doing.)

Delphina

Totally saying, if I had a bunch of tentacle arms that would grow back and my weird human buddy was dying, I'd let her eat a couple to survive.

G (Title Unrelated)

I assume their tentacles don't have stingers. XD

RebelVampire

for me itd depend on how fast theyd grow back. cause if i had to spend like 500 years waiting for tentacle arms to grow back, that doesnt sound pleasant

mathtans

If so, they must have turned the stingers off to crawl around on her.

RebelVampire

they probably wouldnt have stingers cause their planet seems peaceful. like none of the jellies are like "oh no predators who will destroy us" so theres no need for their evolutionary track to lead to stingers in so far as i can see

kayotics

in response to the question: There's a lot of parallels to humans expanding to other planets and our own planet's history of colonization. There's a lot of cultural pain that comes with leaving your home and leaving your country (whether by force or by choice), and reconnecting to that cultural heritage is something that decedents often go through to feel like they belong in the world. I can see that being a driving point for delivering some of these artifacts to other planets.

G (Title Unrelated)

IRL Jellies mostly use their stings for catching prey?(edited)

Delphina

Do we even know if they feel pain?

mathtans

Wait, do they eat?

khkddn

they seem to have difficulty understanding when a human is unhappy or feels pain

kayotics

they might not need to eat in the same way

they might just kind of absorb what they need

Jabbage

I'm not sure it's going to come up specifically, but I think they probably dont' feel pain like we feel it? Just because i don't think they have the same sensory capabilities. Little One is frustrated that they can't move around as fast as the others, but I don't think they're in pain as such

G (Title Unrelated)

yeah. I was thinking about the Question and I think... it's interesting how it's framed as this thing where they've decided the colonists NEED this, but like, they can't agree on what's actually important

mathtans

Maybe Halisi will make a tiny scooter for Little One.

G (Title Unrelated)

I think it's the stories, not the objects, that are important.

And like... All stories are important???

RebelVampire

i think that is true, that all stories are important. cause stories are subjective and whats personally important to one person isnt important to someone else

kayotics

i think a few cultural trinkets to go with the stories can help, like... like I remember being a kid and my family having a christmas wooden carousel from germany or something, which is where my family emigrated from, so it was like "oh that's my people" I think having something to connect to some of the stories is important.

RebelVampire

thus why its worth preserving them all and no agreeance is needed really. because any single story can have an affect on someone

Jabbage

@kayotics I really like your point about our history of colonization, and it's something that I've tried to be careful with and approach thoughtfully, because I think that IS a driving factor in Halisi wanting to share people's cultural heritage with them. One of the things that sparked this story is thinkign about how current issues with repatriating cultural objects and deciding who has control over them would translate into a world where we don't even all live on the same planet any more

Delphina

The beginning showed that humanity has VR technology to "experience Earth", but it's several very comfortable degrees apart. I like that normally, being so advanced would make the hardships of the very distant past feel less real (just vaguely amusing/educational) But having Halisi have to figure out how humans lived and survived kind of brings that back and grounds her in a way that establishing Cookie Cutter Terraform Colony Number 14792 wouldn't.(edited)

So in that sense, the physicality of it is important

RebelVampire

i do think @kayotics has a point. especially in this story because of that vr scene where they were touring the roman thing. cause its not like they dont already have stories and ways to view historical things. and the actual objects can really tie that together. but i also think the stories are just as important via the scene where theyre shown to be able to print 3d objects. in essence the object means nothing without the story, but the story is made more powerful by the object. its a symbiotic relationship in a way.

kayotics

I'm glad it's something you've thought about!

I can't help but think about how colonization has affected the planets that the humans have landed on, and how it'll effect the planet that Halisi has landed on as well, no matter how small.

G (Title Unrelated)

I was thinking about that, too!

mathtans

Maybe she'll want it purged from the records to preserve it. And since Dad was just using grad students, he can oblige.

Jabbage

I thought long and hard about what race to make my astronaut because when they were a random white academic, the whole thing had a very different feel. Landing on some planet and educating the rather silly native denizens. I also wanted someone who grew up around the earliest archaeology created by anatomically modern humans so it made sense to make her black and from South Africa anyway

but then I'm white and British and so... yeah, I've basically had a lot to think about and juggle on that one

mathtans

Jabbage: Well, damn. I hadn't considered that, but you make a good point.

At least she's not building churches and asking the jellys to worship.

Incidentally, speaking of growing up, I liked the flashback image with her and dad looking youthful.(edited)

RebelVampire

im interested in the idea of who has control over the cultural objects we deem important, especially in regards to technology. because the comic touched on it a bit with the 3d printing and it really starts getting into the ship of Theseus issues of identity for those objects

mathtans

"Fax me your statue. No, I'm not paying you for it, I'll display it on Planet X for the Xposure."

Jabbage

And is seeing a reproduction ever 'the same?;

Even if it's identical in every way?

mathtans

Probably not, which is why they haven't figured out teleporters.

kayotics

if it's identical in every way i feel like maybe it is the same

but... wait maybe not

mathtans

Just to sum, pretty grand scale for this one, and a powerful beginning. Here's to Halisi and the Jellies.

Sounds like a strange band name.

RebelVampire

see its a really interesting philosophical question to explore. is whether cultural significance relies on the exact object or if we can transfer that as humanity spreads into the stars

mathtans

(I wonder if we'll learn more about jelly civilization.)

G (Title Unrelated)

Also, what stories do we remember or forget...

kayotics

I feel like there's something to be said about the energy that we as humans put into things. Like there's something there in the reverence we give something. like when you see a giant statue that's been prayed to vs a huge statue to commemorate someone, those have different feelings.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB END!

Sadly, this wraps up this week’s Thursday Book Club chat for now. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and joining us! We want to give a special thank you to Jabbage, as well, for making Earth in a Pocket. If you liked the comic, make sure to support Jabbage’s efforts however you’re able to~!

Read and Comment: http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/

Jabbage’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/Y8Y8HEYO

Jabbage’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jabbageart

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percentmagazine · 5 years ago

Text

La Biennale di Venezia.

Art is Life.

Lets start with the fact that I love Venice. I love everything about it… except its bridges. There is nothing wrong with bridges themselves, but they all have steps, and I loath steps. So once we are done with my personal negativity, lets go for something much more inspiring and entertaining about that wonderful little city. Here is all about Venice Biennale — an international contemporary art exhibition.

Countries chose their best artists to represent their art and culture on the festival. In many ways Biennale is like a Eurovision, but much more global and with art. And when I say art, I mean all art: paintings, sculpture, music, performances, motion pictures — everything!.. even the most absurd stupidity that is regarded as "art" only because its mentally ill creators named it as such.

And here I should ask a question — what is art and why does it has such an important historic value?

Century ago art wasn't global and it wasn't for everyone. A commoner could never pick up a quill and write a poem. 90% of humanity worldwide couldn't even read their own name. They were uneducated, thus art was never a job for a commoner. And even if they wanted to write music, they had no idea about musical grammar, and if they wanted to draw, they could have never afforded paint or any other materials.

Yes, the native art always existed — and it is a pride of every nation — however in most cases it was primitive and simple. Yet the high art was also present! I'm talking about those fundamental master pieces that we see in museums. What is it? Why were they made? By whom? And most importantly, for whom?

Although art schools existed long ago, they were very limited, and in most cases artists could never find the job… there is even a Russian saying "Artists are hungry", because commoners had no need, nor interest in art… decor, clothes and music where the only exception. All other art forms were an intellectual thing, thus only intelligent and well educated high class society could appreciate it. Only 10% of world population that represents the so called "elite" could afford art. They were the church and the nobility. And when they were commissioning artistic pieces, they wanted it to reflect all the best that their society and culture had to offer, and by doing so they were underlining their own high class status. Supreme works of art for the superior individuals. There was no other way. Beethoven, Da Vinci, Dante and all the other geniuses of the past worked only by order of the church and the nobility, otherwise their masterpieces would have never been seen or heard by the masses and would have never survived to this day. All those stories about "self-made artists from lower class" are for the most part nothing but post-factum marketing schemes to raise value of their works. In reality all those biographies have very little to do with the truth. Art was made only for the elite and only by those who was close to the elite. Period.

But in nineteenth-twentieth centuries everything has changed. Schools have become available for everyone… and even mandatory. And now every single individual has become his own artist and critic… simply because they know how to read and because tools for creativity became much more affordable. Nowadays with the YouTube and Instagram culture everyone has become an art creator.

According to dictionaries, art is everything that exists due to human imagination and skills. Thus everything what is manmade can and should be considered "art". This text is an art, so is this web-site, so is your toothpaste and an asphalt outside the window. Even the garbage in the ocean that endangers hundreds of rare species and causes the environmental catastrophes can be referred to as an art form. Yeah, the global warming is definitely art.

Do you see the problem? No? If not, then Biennale is definitely for you to enjoy.

The purpose of this art exhibition is not to enlighten people and enrich culture with the beauty created by the skill and imagination of geniuses from around the world, like classic museums do, but to exhibit "art"… yes, all "art"… and word "exhibit" is chosen here not by accident, but to be associated with the idea of '"exhibitionism", since in most cases seeing the art on Biennale I experience the same emotions as seeing some of the most out of place acts of exhibitionism. I feel shame, disgust, a little curiosity (I guess) and an enormous wonder, asking myself "What were they thinking?" or "Did they even think?" and "If they didn't put a single thought into it, then why should I?"

You should be a total libertine pervert in order to enjoy the contemporary art presented on Biennale. And I'm not saying that it is a bad thing. It is simply a matter of taste.

What can Biennale offer?

I figured out that all art exhibited on the festival can be divided on four categories. There are always some exceptions, but like an old Hungarian proverb says "All exceptions straighten the rule".

The first category of art is what I call a "classic art". It doesn't mean necessarily that it has something to do with the historic classical art, but it tries to follow the tradition of a classical meaning of art. Creators really use their imagination and skill in order to make something nice and unique… something that you want to buy (whatever the cost may be) and put it into your personal art collection to admire. This category of art is quite rare, but it can be found on Biennale… and it is the only reason why I'm still visiting it.

The second category of art on Biennale is an atmospheric art. Installations. Countries, presented on the festival, turn their pavilions into an abstract space with certain decorations, ambient music and sound effects, lighting and even odours. This is hard to describe, since this art is not an art piece in a traditional way, it is not an object, nor a film, nor a play, nor a performance, but an atmosphere. Yes, the atmosphere is created with the help of objects and other tools, but they make no sense once they are removed from the context. For example there was a pavilion full of shells made of leather (Saudi Arabia’s Pavilion 2019). There were thousands, if not millions of such small shells. Every single shell was a form in itself, since it is man made — artificial, therefore art, but separately they doesn't mean much. Just a tiny object. However when you see them all in certain patterns in dark space with bleak lighting, those million of tiny shells take you into a different reality. Some of such atmospheric art transport you into pleasant realities, some take you straight to hell and some try hard to take you anywhere, but fail flat. However for the most part atmospheric art hits its mark with its installations.

Then there is the third category of Biennale art. Performances. Pavilions are turned into improvised theatre stages… some with decorations, some without. And mostly these acts become the most notable by art critics and audiences, because people have to wait hours in line to get in to see the show. Such action provides expectations, excitement, curiosity and hype. And when you see real people act in front of you, it gives much more authority and authenticity to the art. Unlike other pavilions, where artists provide their finished product — a product they worked hard on in their studios, that you never see, just like you don't see how they make their art pieces — performances are held live, and you see people act and work right in front of you. And realtime work always provides much more credibly and value, not to mention the quantity of actors. So many people can't do something pointless and stupid — you keep telling yourself, watching their acts. Or can they? Now that's the true Shakespearian question.

And then there is a forth category of art on Biennale… an art that I personally can't name as such by any means, since it has nothing to do with human skills and imagination. People just take pre-existing objects they find peculiar and put them on a stand. Those objects are not necessarily man made. For example a piece of stone, a tree brunch, a rotting leaf, fish bones and etc. Those objects are not artificial, therefore not art, however artist thinks that by putting a piece of nature in an artificial manmade environment it automatically becomes an art form, and you — as an audience — have to respect and appreciate the artistic individualism and genius behind such "creators". And sometimes these "artists" take the pre-existing manmade objects, like a bag, or shoes, or glass jars and put them in their stands as their personal art. Well, it isn't. It is the art of the original shoemaker, or that shopping mall that produced the bag, or that tomato jam company that creates the glass jars for their product. But since it was the "artist" who discovered the "artistic value" of these everyday objects and it was he who put them on the exhibition, then it becomes "his" work of art and he sells it for thousands of dollars. Genius! Andy Warhol would be proud!

And people look at this trash and desperately try to justify it, telling themselves that there has to be some deeper meaning in this, because they have already payed for the expensive entry ticket and don't want to admit that they are being conned.

Text: Jurii Kirnev

Omnifinery Editorial: Article 004

#art #venice biennale #venice #art criticism #omniyouomnime

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angrycollectordaze-me-blog · 6 years ago

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Paper代写：Paintings by Schiller

本篇paper代写- Paintings by Schiller讨论了席勒的绘画作品。埃贡·席勒是20世纪初期一位重要的表现主义画家，他的绘画作品最显著的特点是锐利敏感的线条表现以及有着变异和几何结构的带有压抑感的形象。席勒善于描绘非静态的人物和景物，无论是什么样的形态都像处在惊恐不安状态，恐惧与绝望的威胁交织成可怕的阴影，始终笼罩着他的作品。本篇paper代写由51due代写平台整理，供大家参考阅读。

Lines can reveal a painter's emotions and personality, and trying to hide them is never easy. In my opinion, learning to express a certain state of mind in the form of pure lines is also an ability that a painter should have. Lines are an important language of expression in Schiller's paintings and the tool that can grasp my thoughts the most. His use of lines is as naked and merciless as his grasp of human psychology, which even makes people prickly and anxious. That is to say, this "heart-wrenching feeling" drives me to understand Schiller and the unique charm of the painting language "lines".

In several years of teaching, my understanding of the basic elements of modeling was aroused. In painting creation I've been thinking about a few questions, how to understand the basic factors of the plastic arts - point, line, face, how to connect the social environment and the artistic creation, how to seize the heart the most soft the audience a point, arouse people's strong resonance, in a sense, Schiller's paintings is a key to unlock my confusion.

Schiller's paintings are characterized by sharp and sensitive lines and depressive images with variation and geometric structure. His works are not satisfied with the aestheticism, sentimentality and mysticism of symbolic paintings, but adopt a more rugged, bold and unrestrained artistic form and creative attitude, and his works have a strong expressionist style. Schiller is good at depicting non-static characters and scenes. No matter what form they take, they seem to be in a state of panic. Fear and the threat of despair interweave into a terrible shadow that always hangs over his works.

Schiller painting with thick, concise, line is the most primitive desire, impulse, expression form the transition from the traditional to the modern western agitated, his painting shows his swooning, fears, fantasies, and cruel torture yourself, painting often drawn on a base of blank characters, sometimes only draw the contour line, and the body stretched out of shape. His cold and handsome lines are thrilling, and the heavy lines in his works emphasize the clear external contour. However, in the anxious picture, we can clearly appreciate his passion for lines and his attention to the human mental state.

Schiller did not use many horizontal lines in his works, only relatively many for a very short period of time when his emotions were relatively stable. Horizontal lines have a sense of stillness and tranquility, and can be used to divide and stabilize the picture. Although Schiller used many horizontal lines in his works in this short period, what the picture conveys is not a pure sense of tranquility, but a state of alert under emotional repression. His landscapes felt crowded, as if a mentally disturbed person had been soothed for a while and would erupt again sooner or later.

If horizontal lines become unsettling in Schiller's writing, curves are his powerful language. When the curve is further emphasized, the picture becomes a strong emotional expression. The curvilinear space represents an imaginary universe or a vortex of uneasiness. Therefore, both the painter and the audience can create a sense of unrest. When we talk about the vortex of anxiety, the first thing that comes to mind may be the post-impressionist painter van gogh. Van gogh directly influenced Schiller from the perspective of painting. Although they have different styles of expression, they have been sublimated and recognized by the audience in the naked self-presentation, which is a complete self-expression of emotion. They paint in the simplest and most individual way, not content to express what they see, and bring us into their painful hearts, using swirl and wave strokes to express the storm of their inner excitement.

The provocative human body and erotic scenes in Schiller's paintings revealed people's psychology at that time, and depicted things that people wanted to do but did not dare to do, or were severely punished and forbidden at that time, or even dared not mention in the field of moral public opinion. Let people have a kind of psychological acne was stabbed, the heart of the secret is peeping at the feeling. As lu xun said: "dare to face up to the bleak life, dare to face up to dripping blood."

For Schiller to convey these emotions, he found a suitable, powerful and thrilling expression tool -- "line". His lines are as crazy as they can be, showing human nature and unpredictable potential, releasing great artistic energy in self-expression. Schiller's lines are direct and mysterious. A line is often thought of as a continuous symbol connecting two points. Lines can actually be formed by imagination. As long as the starting and ending marks are given, and some hints are given in the middle, the imagination itself will fill in the remaining gaps. This method enables the viewer to participate in the creative process. Imaginary lines can also highlight the atmosphere and add depth. It is more common in Schiller's works to give detailed descriptions of faces and hands and omit other parts of the body. Or just pick a part of your body and paint it. In this way, it is easy to draw the audience into his works and into his emotional vortex, so that people unconsciously follow his sometimes omitted and sometimes twitching lines and enter the spiritual world of the people in the painting. "Pain and happiness" is an appropriate description of his line.

Recall that the reason why their works do not resonate with the audience, the reason why the flow of mediocrity, the reason why people can not grab the attention, at least in the line can get a little inspiration. It is an effective way to improve oneself to analyze one's paintings with rational thinking. Because art itself is a constant cycle from sensibility to rationality, and from rationality to sensibility, it is also a process of constant perception of society.

The main reason why my works fail to resonate with the audience is that I cannot get rid of the bondage and fully express my emotions. Unable to face the rational life, old illness and death of people, do not dare to face. I disguised myself as a rational person. In a sense, Schiller may be more psychologically healthy. He is brave enough to face the lunatics in mental hospitals, the nature of human naked desire, the idea of death, and the psychology of pain, convulsion, struggle and sensitivity. Perhaps it is because of this "emotional camouflage" that we do not dare to use the "line" language to the extreme, until the degradation of the language can not be used.

Paul klee famously said, "take a walk with a line." "Line", the most basic modeling language, is a language we have been using since we first came into contact with painting, but it is also the language with the strongest expression and the deepest depth. I like and appreciate the lines in Schiller's works, and I have always been guided by the lines in his works. But as an artist, we should have our own way of expression. Especially in today's many works of art full of vision, "take on a new look" is the way works of survival. While trying to perceive and absorb the excellent elements in Schiller's works, I also insist on and find my own way of expression. I pay more attention to the "nutrients" in Chinese "line drawing" and intentionally ignore the depth in western oil painting. I hope that we can all experience online performance, online performance to find their own way of expression.

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