#its just a neverending cycle of 'one piece one piece one piece one piece one piece one piece one piece'

[p2ii]

this is all my brain is good for anymore

[sorenblr]

What was it like when games had "Replay Value" and "Fun Factor"? Why are games today designed to have "'Neverending Play'" and "Salt Factor"?

Games have been pretty much dogshit since they stopped prioritizing "Fun Factor"...

But yeah, it just wasn't as viable to try and hold players in years-long compulsion loops before widespread online functionality and the design/business practices that this enabled: patching, microtransactions, GaaS/Gatcha structures etc. It's not that this wasn't always the desired outcome- the industry even in its nascency attempted to monetize "Neverending Play" with arcades and the design philosophies that formed around coin-based play- only the overhead cost was far greater and the potential for direct profit piddling compared to modern practices. Even MMOs required a relatively large investment in digital infrastructure that ensured only a few could achieve long-term sustainability- Gatcha games similarly come and go every quarter, but the buy-in is a fraction of whatever it took to get The Matrix Online off the ground.

"Replay Value" meanwhile found joint expression with "Neverending Play" in the Roguelike genre. This is critically one of the few pathways to commercial success for indies that lack access to massive digital infrastructures or lucrative IPs- a way of suggesting hundreds of hours of compulsive play (notice how often the phrase "gameplay loop" is deployed to describe specifically player compulsion cycles) with a relatively modest asset base. The same ethos of variety-within-scarcity underlines the popularity of deck-building mechanics and makes their inclusion attractive to developers forced to appease arbitrary ideas of hour-to-dollar value, to slip past the refund window on Steam etc.

Sorry if this was a more serious reply then was merited, but the gaming industry is just a constellation of profoundly evil business practices and the modern notion of the "forever game" (i.e. a single piece of software that extracts attention and capital from an audience in perpetuity) is one of its supreme expressions. It would be good if the earth opened her mouth and swallowed the entire Embracer Group executive suite tomorrow.

[emotsper]

re: the fe szai au mini ramble about manaketes immortality (shizuku)

i probably wont do much about this au??? unless i get inspired enough. anyways

okay so theres a bit of uncertainty about manaketes immortality. like we dont kinda know if they're a true immortal (lives on until the heat death of universe) or semi-immortal (can be killed/die at some point)

but for me. immortality by itself is a terrifying fucking subject . this one is fully personal HAHDHSG

anyways. to the shizuai. i was thinking. if shizuku is a true immortal. what if airi is instead "reincarnated" after her deaths? its not a perfect reincarnation bc each iteration of airis are different people. sometimes the airi will remind shizuku a bit too much of her airi, and sometimes the airi will feel like a brand new person. but shizuku will always know that its her old friend.

airi may not like that she has to leave shizuku early and doesn't know about the reincarnation thing, but for shizuku who has experienced countless departures of her friends, its enough. as long as an "airi" exists in the world, theres still a piece of the airi she fell in love with Existing alongside her in her neverending lifespan.

sometimes the new airi appears as a friend, sometimes a stranger, and sometimes an enemy. there may even be a whole life cycle where the airi just straight up didn't meet shizuku! but shizuku still thinks that its good enough. maybe shes not so lonely after all.

[stevetown]

Signalis

Playtime: 8h50m Completed: October 27, 2023

My initial impression of Signalis was...mixed.

Its classic survival horror PS1 aesthetic was exquisite in its presentation. The UI and blocky character models were all spot on, retaining the chonkiness of CRT-era games of yore while making the whole package just more accessible and smoother to play. The lighting in particular is masterful, bringing bloodstained hallways and derelict spaceships to new horrifying light in ways original hardware couldn't.

All the pieces of a survival horror classic were there, which is why the game frustrated me with its neverending references to other horror titles. The rugs in The Shining making a few appearances. Direct dialogue from Silent Hill 3 was injected into the game that served no purpose other than to be a reference. Some sound effects come right from Alien. The game can be anchored down by being a homage to everything that came before it.

I suppose this had a purpose. Like the mangled memories of the anime androids we were unearthing, these references are made to reflect the memories of the players back at them, intentionally invoking a feeling of "wait...have I been here before?" I'm sure there's no shortage of spilled ink about these references and the games overarching themes of cycles and memory, but I had very little interest in that dead-end commentary as I was playing the game.

Instead, when the game does attempt to make something new, it almost always succeeds. The radio-based puzzles were fresh and unnerving, and the handful of boss encounters are clearly well thought out. The presentation, which almost too often had an air of unearned pretentiousness, still manages to make the game stand out and resulted in a few chilling sequences.

When I think back on the game after it's distilled in my mind, those unique moments are what float to the top. Signalis is overall great, certainly one of the best survival horror games of the last few years. I just wished that it pulled more on its own unique style instead of being stuck in the past.

Also it made me lose it every time the game would cut from gorgeously rendered 3D scenes like this:

To C-tier anime art like this:

Just took me right out of the game...

[townhulls]

that SPN s1 visual motif with the ominous, ambiguous silhouette of a demonic intruder in the dark makes me craaaazy. i just heard recently for the first time that the figure in the nursery when they filmed the pilot was indeed played by JDM?! insane. weirdly validating.

so we've got the pilot, the callback you mentioned when John shows up in Shadow (heh), the whole trauma literally replaying itself in Salvation (and then figuratively in Devil's Trap when John and the YED are actually in the same body, reinflicting Mary and Jess's wounds on Dean and doubling down on recruiting Sam)...

but i swear there are subtler instances too - we first see John in Dead Man's Blood as an indistinct prowler in the dark, stalking the brothers from the woods outside the cabin! later in the same ep we end up watching him as a literal shadowy intruder in the vampire couple's bedroom. maybe a reach but i also see an echo of it in the s3 finale, in that shot of Sam's silhouette through the bed curtains, standing in the nursery of a demon-touched child with a knife in his hand. and then of course there's the "vampire Dean watching Lisa sleep" shot in 6x05...

idk it just makes me feel shrimp emotions that s1 was *so deliberate*, right from the opening sequence of the very first episode, about visually conflating John and the demon he's devoted his entire family's lives to hunting. the insinuation that maybe *the* demon that ruined their lives was never entirely distinct from *John's demons*. and then the show sustains that right up through the season finale! it's crazymaking. it verges on some Twin Peaks shit. it opens up cosmic-brain gothic horror readings of s1 and every season sexy enough to revisit those themes. and it's an implication that lives entirely in a single, wordless, repeated visual.

(this is shinelikethunder on main, lol, continuing to be Extremely Normal About It)

aaa sorry this took me so long to respond to! i was trying to organize my thoughts lol. i agree so completely! one of the things i really like too about the pilot is that dean’s introduction in sam’s apartment sort of indirectly mirrors that shadowy silhouette image too — dean’s both an incarnation and a victim of john, where sam is both an incarnation and a victim of azazel. s1 does such a good job of blurring the lines between what has been inflicted on the family and what the family has inflicted upon itself, like you said!!

and the fact that all of it plays out through a visual motif is so interesting, too — this idea of internally perpetuated cycles of violence is unspoken by the winchesters, so it remains unspoken but visually available to the viewer as well. one of my favorite facets of supernatural is its own unreliability. i’m not sure how much of it is intentional on kripke’s part, but the show is itself something of an unreliable narrator. it does a lot of saying one thing and then showing the inverse: very simply distilled into that one post that’s like “supernatural looking directly into the camera: this is a father” re: john's appearance in shadow.

the boys can never come to terms with john’s (or their own) hand in their neverending trauma, because doing that would be to admit that revenge is only a half-baked attempt at an answer, and that azazel is more of a scapegoat than a true, intentional villain. so they will never admit it to themselves, but everyone close to them is given all the visual clues they need to piece together how circular this family's violence is.

idk!!! i love readings of spn that center on how cosmic forces are constantly recreating and reenacting the winchesters’ family drama not in order to torture them but because the winchesters cannot stop reenacting their own trauma, and the cosmic forces are more of an allegory than anything. something something they woke up and it was all a dream induced by one of sam’s therapy sessions. to me.

[whumperfultime]

Whumpril 2024 Day 11: Can't Sleep

@whumpril

My last scene for the event! Thank you all for being sweet and supportive for my first time participating <3 I was so nervous going into this since I'm not used to sharing my writing but I think I might participate in other events in the future!

Contains: Insomnia/sleep deprivation and platonic comfort. Honestly this piece is more fluff than whump whoops.

~

The steady hum of the Azaphia’s air circulation system was the only sound in the darkened cabin. It was well into the night – or at least, night according to the clocks, as there was no day/night cycle out in the void of space. There were no screens lit up or playing sound. No alarms going off to signal issues with the engine room.

And Dace still couldn’t get to sleep.

Every time he drifted off, reaching the brink of unconsciousness, he jolted awake again. Dragged back to life by his own frustration in a seemingly neverending cycle. It was getting worse with each passing night.

He was just beginning to doze when the jolt came again, though this time it came in response to a high-pitched noise. His hand immediately went to the tablet on his bedside table, instinct expecting an alert from part of the ship, but no more noises followed. In this silence, his exhausted brain finally caught up. It must have been the door to Matago’s cabin opening – he kept meaning to oil the damn thing, but with everything else going on, it kept slipping his mind.

The frustration set in again and he flicked on the bedside light with a sharp sigh. It was clear he wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. What was the point of lying awake in the dark for another hour or two?

He was using his tablet to check up on the ship’s computer system when a soft knock sounded at his cabin door. “Come in.”

As Dace expected, it was Matago. Judging from the water bottles and boxes of nuts he carried, he’d gone to the kitchen for a snack. “You’re up late again,” he remarked, closing the door behind him.

“Can’t sleep,” Dace grumbled in reply.

Matago set one of the bottles and one of the boxes on his nightstand. A wordless offering. “Anything in particular?”

Dace sighed. “A little of everything.”

He was pretty sure he knew where the insomnia was coming from. Their last job had taken them a little further away from Garal than they were typically comfortable with. The flight out was smooth, but things started going to shit once they landed. First was the cheap fuel that Dace bought, with chemical fumes so strong he wound up too dizzy to stand for a few minutes when he went to refuel. Then the job itself had its problems, with Kalei unexpectedly having to bribe a couple of police officers and the client trying to renegotiate their fee at the last minute. The latter kept them grounded for longer than planned, so they were unable to avoid the hailstorm that damaged the cockpit’s windshield.

Ever since that storm, it seemed like the Azaphia was on the verge of falling apart at every moment. Dace spent the vast majority of their flight time replacing small parts and doing whatever he could to maintain what he couldn’t fully fix. It wouldn’t be such a problem if they weren’t still a day and a half’s flight from home. Even as a natural optimist, he couldn’t help but wonder if they would make it that far.

All of the stress kept piling up with nowhere to go, so it settled in his mind and body, keeping him awake every night no matter how exhausted he felt.

Matago sat on the edge of the mattress and Dace reflexively scooted over to give the other man room to get comfortable. It wasn’t the biggest bed, making it a snug fit for both of them, but Dace didn’t mind. When you spent half your time on a three-person spacecraft, you learned to adjust to sharing limited space with other people.

“Kinda hard to fall asleep when I’m worried the ship is gonna fall apart the moment I pass out,” Dace explained.

“We’ve survived worse than this, y’know,” Matago replied, pausing to pop a handful of food into his mouth. “You practically had to rebuild half the engine room when we crashed on Uros and we survived the flight home just fine.”

“Uros had land, gravity, and breathable air. Space has none of that. If something breaks down, we’ll just drift off course, or suffocate, or-”

“Or call one of the several service stations in the system for help,” Matago interrupted.

Dace couldn’t really argue with that. There were multiple service stations within range no matter where you were in the solar system. He’d considered if it would be better to just stop there and let them do a maintenance check-up for him. But the Azaphia was his ship. It always felt somehow wrong to let other people take care of her, unless it was someone he already trusted.

Of course, the more pressing issue was simply the risk a stop like that would involve. Service stations got federal funding, which meant tighter security and an obligation for the staff to report anything suspicious. The police had probably asked them to keep an eye out for the Azaphia and its passengers at some point. Even getting close to one of those stations brought the threat of being arrested by the Ontian government.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t get to that point,” Dace mumbled.

“Would it help if I hung out in here? If any alerts come through, I’ll at least be able to tell if they’re urgent or not. I can wake you if that happens.”

“Sure, I guess. It’s not like I’m gonna fall asleep anytime soon, so the company is nice.”

Dace spent the next several minutes venting about the specifics of the mechanical issues he’d been dealing with. Matago didn’t say much, but he knew enough about the basics of the ship’s inner workings to follow along. Obviously ranting about it didn’t make the stress go away, but it felt good to let some of it out. (It helped that Matago made a few dumb jokes to keep the mood lighter.)

At some point the conversation began to shift to whatever came to mind. Matago launched into a series of stories about a mechanic he knew in flight school and Dace was content to simply listen. He sank deeper beneath his blanket, resting his eyes and occasionally chuckling at the other man’s rambling. A calming haze washed over him and this time nothing yanked him out of it.

Matago smiled as he watched him drift into a peaceful sleep.

[sirkdog]

I

Can’t

Seem

To

Sleep

Wide awake

Tossing

And turning

On this

Seemingly

Endless

Cycle

Of stir

Rinse

And

Repeat

Over

And over

Did

I

Accidentally

Drink

Caffeine

Am I

Lost

To the depths

Of my

Head

Again

No reprieve

No escape

No dreams

To fill in

All the cracks

Only

What ifs

And maybes

Rolling around

This endless space

The echos

Of what

Might have been

Cascading

Like

Church bells

The constant

Hymns

Of prayers

I plead to

Myself

The reflection

I feel

Combating

The image

They see

Full of

Light

Emptiness

driven by

Vague

And constant

Ache

Curiosity

Leading

Timelessness

Enticing

Bouncing

Unhurried

Lost but

Mainly

Exploring

The nooks

And

Crannies

Of

Cobwebbed

Corners

And

Undeveloped

Keys

Waiting

To be

Discovered

To unlock

The answers

To soothe

The uneasiness

Always

Lurking

Beyond the

Surface

Letting

Itself

Be known

But not

Touched

To be

Acknowledged

But not

fleeing

To stand it’s

Ground

Rooting

Inside

The stability

And

Constant

Companion

Of floating

Directionless

Searching

For that

Spark

Of

Recognition

In the

Mirror

Reflecting

The depths

While

Keeping

It’s

Distance

Bottomless

And

Hidden

Powerful

And

Suppressed

Lurking

And

Supporting

The

Fillable

Sack

Carrying

Everything

While

Revealing

Nothing

At first

Glance

And

Knowing

The

Minutia

Of the

Universe

Insatiable

In its

Cleverness

Expanding

Neverending

Suffocating

Comforting

In its

Dead

Weight

Exacting

In its

Forgiveness

Sarcatic

In its

Lessons

Slow

To anger

And to

Exposure

Resting

Resolutely

Unadorned

Multifaceted

Canyons

Between

Ridges

Free falling

Between

Steps

Turned

Inward

For

Outside

Answers

Rising

Ever so

SLowly

Taking

Two steps

At a time

But always

treading air

Breathless

To get somewhere

While looking

Down

For my

Next step

Still one

Fooot

In front

Of the other

Ascending

To get

A good

Look

On

What’s below

To capture

An aerial

Of one

Moment

In time

To see

The light

Shine

Different

Angles,

Refracting

The

Message

Left to be

Decoded

By

Another

Convoluted

Maze

Of

Misleading

Choices

And

Distracting

Dead ends

Endless

Loops

Of

Entertaining

Nothingness

All by design

To capture

And torture

The lack

Of progress

Exasperating

The need

Of a

Two dimensional

Savior

Too flat

To hold

Any baggage

So narrow

The

Balance

Beam

From

Now

To

Then

To maybe so

To never

Again

From yesterday

To tomorrow

The emptiness

pooled at

My feet

Reflecting

Lights

From the past

And blankness

Of the future

Too heavy

Dragging behind

It’s trail

Deeper and deeper

Leaving

A path

the drops

Streaming

Back

Hollow

And

Heavy

Perfectly

Lead

And

Utterly

Useless

In any

Sustenance

But

Collecting

Nevertheless

Trying to fill

But just

Dragging behind

The porcelain

Pieces, chipped

Dusted

Compromised

Hibernating

Healing

Confused

Considering

Unsure

Temperamental

Whimsy

Untethered

Bound

By my own

Weight

Bowed

Defiantly

Curious

A single

Dust mote

In the

Universe

Observing

Unseeing

Unabashedly

Feeling

Trudging

Through

Rivers

Of my

Own making

Pruny digits

Moving

Upstream

Headed

Again

To a high

Point

To

Catch

My bearings

And

Repeat

[zechleton]

Ranting and Raving About Magic in 2022

I haven’t written about Magic in ages, so what better way could there be to get back into the habit that a stream of consciousness spiel about the 2022 announcement?

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be long and poorly edited.

Actually, it’s not that long, about 1500 words. It might feel longer, though.

Neo-Tokyo or something idk

As one of the five people on r/magictcg that didn’t want to return to Kamigawa in standard set, I have to admit this one looks surprisingly awesome. The couple of pieces of art Wizard shared looked fantastic, as usual, and I’m a sucker for that blue/pink colour scheme. I’m not a huge fan of time travel as a story telling device but since the Magic story has always served the card game, using tropes I don’t enjoy is far from a deal-breaker. Yeah – I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.

Someone Made Elspeth an Offer she Couldn’t Refuse

Obviously, we know much less about this set. Still, it sounds right up my alley. I’m curious how Wizards is going to make Magic meets The Godfather work, but the good kind of curious. On top of that, I’d really like to have some more shard-based commanders on Arena for Brawl, and I assume we’re the “three-colour demon crime families” isn’t referring to clans (triome?) again after leaving Ikoria behind. Also, come on, how can you not love the sound of demon crime families?

Glory, Glory, Dom United!

There is a part of me that gets nervous about nebulous concepts like design space whenever we go back to an old plane again. All these crossovers (more on those later) take on a different appearance when viewed through an “are they running out of ideas” lens. Still, Dominaria was fantastic, by far the best “return to” set – though I’m hoping Innistrad claims that throne in a few weeks. With that in mind, I’m expecting Wizards to knock it out of the park with DU, just like they did with Dominaria.

The Nostalgia Wars

I might scoff somewhat at Magic’s storyline sometimes, but I’ve read the stuff that people think is good. I own both collections of the Artifacts Cycle. They all pale in comparison to good fantasy, but they’re not bad, and they hold a special place in my heart from when I was more invested in stuff like lore and story. The point of that ramble? 2022, more than ever, is Wizards’ mining the seemingly neverending mineral that is nerd nostalgia. It further adds to my “are they running out of ideas” worry, but I can’t say the nostalgia hit/psychological manipulation isn’t working on me. Hell, Return to Return to Innistrad has me more excited than any set for a couple of years now so I guess I’m part of the problem.

Uncaring

The phrase “not for you” is thrown around distrubingly often in Magic circles nowadays. Unfinity, however, is decidedly not for me. And that’s fine.

Dungeons And Dragons Battle for Baldur’s Gate Commander Legends I Think That’s The Whole Title But Maybe I Missed a bit I’m not Sure

Yikes, what a mouthful. I hate the title, both its length and unwieldiness. I don’t really have much interest in the set either. Commander Legends was a neat idea with a lot of flaws. Adding crossover flavour from another IP I have little-to-no interest in isn’t helping matters, though I appreciate that Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was super popular. For me, AFR was pretty much just a core set without any of the usual references to sets I do know and care about. Another “not for me” release.

Double Trouble

Hmm. I’m torn here. As a primarily limited-focused player, Masters sets have been some of my favourites ever. Original Modern Masters is still one of my in my top five sets of all time, and I have fond memories of almost all of the others, too.

Original Double Masters, though, was a victim of apathy brought on by the never-ending deluge of Magic product being released nowadays. I have never even seen a booster of this product, much less opened one. Without looking it up, I can’t even tell you if it was hurt by the pandemic or not, because there’s just way too much fucking stuff nowadays. I don’t know what else to say.

Oh, hang on. Was this the set with a $100 VIP Booster? Hahaha, fuck off.

Jump Around

The original Jumpstart was surprisingly enjoyable on Arena. I never wanted to play it more than a few times, and sometimes you got packs that relied entirely on your opponent getting mana screwed, but those few times I played it were pretty fun. I think putting stuff like obvious eternal format staples like Alosaurus Shepherd in a set like this is some extremely anti-consumer bullshit, but as a play experience it was an interesting mesh of draft and sealed. Not as much fun as either of those, but close enough that the novelty carried it into the “pretty fun, actually” camp. I expect more of the same – I’ll probably do a few runs if I have gems or gold spare.

Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K Commander et al

Really, this is the bit about all the crossover stuff.

Another vomit inducing title and one that has left me with some introspection to do. Like many people, I find a lot of this crossover stuff distasteful, but I can’t really say why. The fact that the Street Fighter one – an IP I have some amount of investment in – seems less egregious than Warhammer of D&D makes me think that I don’t necessarily object to crossovers on principal. Does my dislike come from the fact that, so far, all of the other crossovers don’t involve properties I care about? Maybe. Even the mechanically unique line of text that pissed off so many people when the Walking Dead set came out doesn’t bother me that much, because Commander is a format I can take or leave.

The Fortnite one rubs me a different wrong way, though. Partly, it’s the sheer fucking inevitability of it all. Of course a popular part of the nerd sphere will have a crossover with Fortnite because that’s just the world in which we live. Partly it makes me feel old, uncool, and excluded, like all the other crossovers I don’t care about, sure. But there’s something more visceral about Fortnite. It’s fucking everywhere and I resent feeling like I have to have an opinion about it. Still, I don’t really have strong opinions about most of the other crossovers, so why this one? I really don’t know. Maybe this is one “this isn’t for you” too many from a game that has been part of my life for over 20 years.

I haven’t bought a single Secret Lair, but I’m generally willing to accept that they’re a bonus product that isn’t needed by anyone but is wanted by some. Hell, if they put out Secret Lair: Snapcaster Mage with good art (at last), I could probably te tempted into picking one up. It would be against my better judgement, though. Something about all these “not necessary but also don’t miss out, aren’t they cool, spend more money please” products rubs me the wrong way. Playing Magic and hating capitalism are difficult interests to reconcile. That’s it. That’s the tagline for this article.

Oh, right, it’s just a blog. Never mind.

Oh, God. The Fornite Secret Lair is going to be the Snapcaster Mage one, isn’t it?

Then there’s Lord of The Rings. My pal Kristen will be thrilled about this, was my first thought. I’m less enthusiastic (shocker, right?), but at least LOTR makes sense as a thing to crossover with. I mean, apart from the obvious business sense. It doesn’t have any guns and it isn’t an obnoxiously ubiquitous battle royale FPS, so that already puts it ahead of two of the other three crossovers. Indeed, without LOTR, you can make a reasonable case that MTG would never exist in the first place. Personally, I view LOTR in the same way I view The Beatles – they were important, and worthy of respect, but have been surpassed in every way since.

And the movies are better than the books. There I said it.

Regardless, this one is fine, actually. I still don’t particularly care for crossovers in general, especially as the setting for a standard set, but at least it makes sense this time.

Shut up Already

Alright, I hear you. I know a lot of that was negative towards the end, but I want to reiterate that a lot of the stuff happening in standard sets next year is really exciting, if a little unoriginal. The crossover/sellout stuff and the interminable deluge of FOMO-driven products is worrying and disappointing, but I guess we just have to try and ignore the ever-increasing number of “not for you” products and focus on the stuff we do like. Seriously, Neon Destiny looks amazing, and I don’t even like anime.

[benevolentbirdgal]

A guide to 13 Jewish holidays / Jewish Writing Advice

Depending on how you want to count, there are theoretically 47 Jewish holidays, assuming you count all minor, major, and modern celebrations, both minor and major fasts, special shabbats, and each Rosh Chodesh (new month) individually. Since that post would be A) neverending, B) probably not useful in its entirety here, and C) really not applicable to most Jews you meet or write, I’m going to tell you about 13 celebrations (12 holidays plus the category of Rosh Chodesh and the category of special Shabbats), which will be plenty long enough. Maybe I’ll write a super-niche passionate post about the minor fasts or modern holidays later, but today is not that day. 

Usual disclaimers: I’m one me. The Jewish community is 14 million and super diverse. These are broad strokes and local tradition may vary. I operate from an American context and communal gathering/food sharing practices come from the Before Times (in some cases, the long before now times). 

I’m going to go in the order of the Jewish calendar, instead of likelihood of celebration, and note the most popular ones as I go. Three general notes as well: I will be using the most common transliteration/translation of the Hebrew names, Jewish holidays (and days in general) start at sunset and operate on a separate calendar that fluctuates relative to the secular Gregorian calendar. The Hebrew dates are listed with the months they generally fall in on the Gregorian calendar. Holidays marked with an * will likely merit their own list at some point. 

Additionally, how long many holidays last also varies depending on location. For some holidays (NOT fasts), diaspora (outside Israel) Jews celebrate an extra day for Jewish-diaspora-is-complicated-story-for-another-time reasons. I will note these holidays. 

*Rosh HaShanah (Tishrei 1, September-October): Jewish new year (well, one of four, but for the purposes of our discussion today, the Jewish new year). 1a. Typically celebrated by synagogue attendance, consumption of foods that are sweet and/or round (or have heads, like fish heads). Longer services than normal Saturday morning services but not by much, even when combined with regular Shabbat services. Big time to gather with families for a large meal. 1b. Lots of blowing of shofars at specific times, shofars, which are cleaned and sometimes painted ceremonial ram’s horns (we’re operating on 1200 B.C.E. tech here). Some of us are very good at blowing the shofar. Some of us are assuredly not.  1c. One of the most common holidays to celebrate, part of the “High Holidays.” If your character is remotely observant or has a very Jewish family, they celebrate this holiday.  1d. One day in Israel, two in the diaspora. 

Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10, September-October): The second holiday in the “High Holidays.” Yom Kippur is ten days after Rosh HaShanah, known as the “Days of Awe” (or the “Days of Repentance”). The Days of Awe, outside of orthodoxy and people who do prayers every day, aren’t really celebrated outside of asking people for forgiveness and tashlich (throwing away sins by yeeting small pieces of bread or other small foodstuffs into a pond). 2a. Yom Kippur is a 25 hour fast. Fasting on Yom Kippur means the following: No food. No water. Medication is typically okay (and most denominations are 100% okay with food/water necessary to accompany medication). No sex. This is usually extended to no sexual contact in general. No wearing of leather. You’ll see a lot of sneakers on Yom Kippur. No perfumes or lotions. Bathing/washing. This one is the one most people ditch. 2b. Jewish “adults” who are not health-impaired are expected to fast. Pregnant women, sick people, and the elderly explicitly get a choice and most of the former two do not fast. Lots of old folks do and have very strong opinions about it (I fast, but have gotten second-hand awkward watching a healthy 23-year-old explain why they aren’t doing so to an 89 year old survivor who is). There are young/healthy/not pregnant people who choose not to fast, but this is generally frowned upon. 2c. One day holiday regardless of location. Starts at beginning of sunset one day and ends at complete darkness (ideally with three stars in the sky) the next. Fasts are typically broken as a group over a large meal.  2d. It’s very likely that your Jewish character “celebrates” Yom Kippur and whether they fast or not is likely a point of contention with their family. 2e. There are a bunch of different services and they are usually heinously long.  2f. Shofars are also super important here.  2g. Wearing white is traditional in many communities.  2h. Napping is a popular way to pass the time, especially among less traditionally observant Jews.

*Sukkot (Tishrei 15-22, September-October): The Festival of Booths, basically the Jewish Harvest Festival.  3a. Fairly common to celebrate but not as much as the High Holidays, Passover, or Hannukah.  3b. Celebrated by building a Sukkah, which is an at-least-three-sided TEMPORARY structure with a natural roof (corn, leaves, bamboo) that you can see the stars through. People will eat and sleep in the Sukkah, and go “Sukkah hopping” to visit other families’ Sukkahs.  3c. In addition to regular guests, there is kabbalah and traditional mysticism that the a different guest from Jewish history will join you in the Sukkah each night, known as the Ushpizin. The Ushpizin  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David) are all male, and in the 20th century some Jews began the custom of honoring Ushpizot (female guests as well, adding Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Hulda, and Esther (although some obscure lists of Ushpizot date back to the 15th century). 3d. Your Jewish character may not have a Sukkah. Their temple will have a communal one.  3e. It is customary to shake a lulav and etrog, also known as the four species. Three leaves and a citrus from specific plants are held together and shook in all six directions after the recitation of a prayer. I like to call this shake-the-plant, but it actually has a ton of different spiritual meanings traditionally ascribed to it. There is also a processional in synagogue with the lulav and etrog. 

Shmeni Atzeret (Tishrei 22, September-October): In Israel, the one day after Sukkot and in the diaspora the last day of Sukkot and the day after. There are some extra prayers and it marks a seasonal shift in prayers pertaining to rain. Unless your character is particularly religious/observant, they aren’t going to do anything extra. This holiday’s functions were mostly relevant during the Temple Periods in ancient Israel. 

*Simchat Torah (Tishrei 23, September-October): Simchat Torah celebrates the restarting of the Torah-reading cycle and overlaps with the second day of Shmeni Atzeret where there is a second day. Unlike in some other faiths where the congregation or leader generally chooses the text of the day, Jewish congregations are bound by the Parsha (portion) of the week for formal services/readings (as opposed to other forms of study). The 54 parshas are read over the course of the Jewish year, and the resetting of that cycle is Simchat Torah. In synagogues during services readings from from Torahs, which are large, heavy, physical scrolls. This is relevant during Simchat Torah particularly.  5a. Two days in the diaspora, one day in Israel. Intermediate level popularity.  5b. Seven hakafot (professionals) are performed by dancing around the synagogue while members alternate carrying the Torah. This is considered an honor. Simchat Torah is usually the only day all the Torahs are brought out (or at least the ones that are in good enough shape to be carried). Dancing is mixed outside of orthodoxy and separated within orthodoxy. Only Jewish adults are permitted to carry the Torah. Outside of orthodoxy this includes both men and women. Within some orthodox congregations, women-only circles will also include Torahs in their dancing.  5c. There are also smaller not-Torah-but-still-Holy scrolls and Torah-shaped-stuffies that children will sometimes carry and dance with.  5d. After the dancing, the final parsha is read aloud. This is the only time we read Torah at night (from the physical object Torah - we read books of the Torah in other forms at any hour). The scroll is then rolled back all the way to the first reading. Reading the first or last reading is a great honor. 

*Hanukkah (Kislev 25 - Tevet 2, November-December): Hannukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the political and cultural oppression of the ancient Greeks in the 160s B.C.E. After the victory of the priestly-class-turned-warrior-bros over their oppressors, the Maccabees found the Temple seriously wrecked, both on a physical and spiritual level. They wanted to rededicate the temple, but only found one itty-bitty little jar of oil for the Menorah (seven-branched candelabra in the Temple), enough for one day. They figured it was better than nothing, and immediately sent out for more oil, which took eight days. That was the miracle of the lights, and where the Hanukiyah (eight-branched variant of the Menorah) comes from since the oil for one day lasted eight.  6a. Hanukkah is an immensely popular eight day festival. 6b. Religiously, Hanukkah actually isn’t super important. Religiously-significant practices for the holiday are lighting a Hannukiyah, telling the story of Hanukkah, and eating greasy foods.  6c. There are approximately a shabillion ways to spell Hanukkah, it’s not just  you. There are actually only two acceptable (really only one 100%) Hebrew spellings but transliteration is a bitch sometimes.  6d. Although not “Jewish Christmas” gifts on Hanukkah are a thing because of the proximity to Christmas. Hanukkah gifts as they now are are really a 1950s-forward thing because Jewish kids were starting to have Christian friends en-masse who were getting Christmas gifts at the same time a lot of the U.S. was experiencing an economic boom. Purim is actually the traditional gifting holiday.  6e. Related: Hanukkah parties are very popular, but much more cultural than religious.  6f. Dreidels have a weird AF history and their dubious origins (and half-dozen possible theories) truly merit their own post. In the U.S. they are played with chocolate coins or other not-money, elsewhere children frequently use their local equivalent of pennies instead. 

Tu Bishvat (Shevat 15, February-March): The Jewish new year/birthday of the trees. Functions like a Jewish Earth day - planting trees is popular. Fresh fruits are consumed in celebration of what trees give us. Some more religious families also do a ceremonial meal, a Tu Bishvat seder, but most Jews don’t. 

*Purim (Adar 14, February-March): Purim, an immensely popular holiday celebrates the survival of the Jews during the first exile period in the ancient kingdom of Persia. The text celebrates the strength of our community and the chutzpah of a Jewish woman, and is usually celebrated in practice like Jewish Halloween.  8a. The story really merits its own post, but the short of it is because shenanigans, antisemites, and booze-hound kings a Jewish lady named Hadassah became queen (hiding her Jewish identity and taking the Esther to do so), the king’s head advisor Haman wanted to kill-the-Jews-tm, Esther was able to prevent it by convincing the king that the Jews should be able to fight back, the Jews did so and won, Haman was executed, and Esther’s cousin/bestie Mordechai became the new advisor. [really, the full story is Hollywood-level drama, another post to come.] 8b.  Communities gather together to do communal readings of the book of Esther (in Hebrew or the lingua franca), it’s only about 10 chapters and takes an hour or two. The megillah is read once in the night and once in the day. Technically there are several megillahs for different books/holidays, but Jews are usually referring to Megalilat Esther (the book of Esther) when they say the megillah, definitely so on Purim. 8c. Costumes are donned by adults and children alike, both inspired by the story and otherwise. This is in honor of the hiddenness in the story (with both Esther and some other stuff we don’t have time for today). Synagogues often hold costume contests as a small break between chapters.  8d. Readings get ROWDY. It’s customary to boo and make noise using little noisemakers when Haman’s name is said aloud, as with the names of his also Jew-hating sons (which are traditionally said in one breath). There are also certain lines of the megillah read out loud together.  8e. It is a mizvah to give gifts (typically of food) to friends as well as to charity on Purim (two separate mitzvahs).  8f. It’s also a mitzvah to have a big special meal.  8g. It’s a common misconception that it’s a mitzvah to get so lit on Purim you can’t tell the difference between Haman the wicked and Mordechai the blessed. It’s not a Mitzvah, but there is some commentary in the Talmud saying that, so while not a commandment, “get lit to honor the party king goy who vouched for us and also because Jewish history requires drinking sometimes” is a historically-rooted take. Consequently, it’s very popular to drink a lot on Purim.  8h. Purim is, for all of the above, immensely popular with both children and adults despite being dark AF.  8i. Purim is the last holiday in the Torah itself (Hannukah is after).  8j. Purim is a one-day holiday unless you’re in a walled city (long story). 

*Passover (Nissan 15-22, March-April): Arguably the most important holiday, theologically. Passover celebrates the Exodus from Egypt.  9a. Families gather for Seders on the first night (Israel) and second night (Diaspora). The holiday is 7/8 days long and one of the most common to celebrate. In normal years it’s common for families to travel to have large gatherings together.  9b. In addition to regular kosher laws, “chametz” (basically leavened bread and bread-like things and most foods that bring joy). There are five grains that can make chametz, wheat, rye, barley, oats, and spelt.  Some communities historically forbade other foods that could be mistaken for chametz, like the Ashkenazi forbiddance of kitanyot (legumes, rice, corn, certain seeds), although that was revoked/voted on to be not an official custom by nonorthodox denominations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  9c. Seders are ceremonial meals with 15 steps, including the actual meal itself. The quickest Seders run maybe an hour plus the meal. The longest can run upwards of 6-8, depending on the denomination, family, and customs. It almost goes without saying that there’s a lot of food and wine involved.  9d. In addition to be prohibited for consumption, Chametz cannot be possessed or consumed on Passover, so Jews clean out their houses of Chametz, and temporarily sell it to a gentile friend or family member for the duration of the holiday.  9e. Passover-specific hanger is very real, especially after the post-Seder food-coma wears off. Especially if you already have dietary restrictions and can’t just do a meat-fast.  9f. During the Seder, the story of Passover is gradually told from Moses to the plagues to the Exodus itself. It is a fairly interactive telling/ceremony and the specific rituals to different parts of the Seder merit their own post.  9g. Synagogues also hold Seders, but at-home ones are very common. Whose home to go to for the Seder is often a very political choice. 

Lag BaOmer (Iyyar 18 for Ashkenazi, Iyyar 19 for Sephardi, May): The counting of the Omer is from the second day of Passover to Shavout. Passover is the leave from Egypt, Shavout is the getting of the Torah, the Omer is the in-between time. There are a bunch of restrictions during the Omer for long-story reasons, but  haircuts, shaving, listening to instrumental music, weddings, parties, and dinners with dancing are forbidden during the Omer. Lag BaOmer, the 33rd day of this count, is the exception. 10a. Consequently, for Jews who are abstaining from the aforementioned things, Lag BaOmer is popular to do those things.  10b. Many Jewish schools and synagogues will have counting activities for kids and prizes if they can count all the way to Shavuot on their sticker chart or equivalent.  10c. One day regardless of location.   10d. Bonfires are a super popular activity, usually accompanied by feasts. 10e. Not as popular as some others. 

Shavout (Sivan 6, May-June): Shavout celebrates the day Moses came down with the Torah and when the ancient Israelites in the desert formally chose to enter their covenant with God at Mount Sinai. It was also celebrated as an additional harvest festival in ancient times.  11a. Two days in the diaspora, one day in Israel. 11b. The “dairy holiday” because the Jews didn’t have any kosher meat and had just received the laws, including kosher.  12c. The book of Ruth is read on Shavout. There are several possible explanations, but the most popular is that she choose to be Jewish, just as the Jews did at Sinai.  12d. Torah studying all-nighters are traditional.  12e. Not as popular as some other holidays. 

Rosh Chodesh (varies, 1st of every Hebrew month): There are 12 Hebrew months, except for leap years which have a second Adar. The first day of each month is known as Rosh Chodesh. It is unlikely your Jewish character does anything for it, unless they’re very religious, work at a synagogue, happen to be at shul anyways for another reason, or go to a Jewish school. If any of those are true, their prayers will have extra prayers (especially on Shabbat or another holiday).  12a. Rosh Chodeshes are traditionally women’s time/a moment set aside to honor women. 

Special Shabbats (varies): There are eight special Shabbats scattered around the year right before or after a big holiday. Services are longer and special prayers are added, but unless your character goes to shul or is in another circumstance where they pray consistently, they likely won’t know/care/notice. 

Some of these topics are also totally their own posts, but this is a general overview of the most important/common holidays and already super long!

[mc-critical]

Pertaining to MYK2, it’s an observation of mine that as Kösem got older she grew more bitter, more angry, and felt overall more resentment towards the overall Ottoman lifestyle and dynasty which was a mere glorified prison for her. I would even go as far to say that her actions toward her children later in life were possibly due to her seeing them as an extension of her trauma and imprisonment in a way? I believe she only clung to power and titles the way she did because she truly believed it would be all she could have going for her and the only thing that could get her to be afforded basic human decency on some level in the enviornment she was trapped in. I especially see it towards the end when she has plans to dethrone her grandson and remarks “when one grandson goes the other comes” and you can see how she’s just..gone. There’s no longer a shred of resemblance to the innocent and life-loving Anastasia. She completely internalized the hatred and the death that surrounded her and became it..I’d even call it a cinematic parallel to Saifye. What do you think?

Overall, I think you hit the nail right on the head.

The loss of innocence is the central theme of the show: we consistently see how it begins to flourish, all the little hints, all the big actions, and Kösem, being the protagonist, will of course be the epitome of it all. It's a given that everything she has experienced would lead to trauma sooner or later, a trauma that really brings hatred, bitterness and then again, misery, because when you look at it, she couldn't take a break even for a second. To me, Safiye killing her father, was namely where it began - Kösem, just like Hürrem, had to completely let go of her past to begin this new life, but unlike her, this character arc was quick and rushed and harder, and she didn't get the fullest time necessary to do it in narrative, for her to actually get used to it. Her past is quite a part of her innocence, of her previous being, and when people (like Safiye and Raihan Aga) tell her to forget about it, she resists so much more, because there is hope that things would be just like before. Say, Hürrem adapted so quickly and so efficiently, because there was a lot to win, but nothing to lose - everyone she knew was perceived as dead, she had nowhere to go, it was lost and it was gone and she had to move forward. (Nigar's advice and the dream with her parents highlight that.) And when Leo appeared, Hürrem had already adapted, already planted seeds in this empire and had found the man she truly loved. Anastasia not only didn't have this chance, she still had nothing to do out there, knowing she could return to her family once again (they didn't kill anyone when they kidnapped her, remember?), was fond of Ahmet, but that was it, and didn't have any heirs yet. What would she do there, why would she forget her home, especially when there was a person just as eager as her to return to his roots (Iskender), and we had someone who was the narrative culmination of her hope to put everything back to normal (her father)? I feel that her refusal to Iskender to escape with him was only an intentionally forced tool for her and Iskender's character arcs, she stayed only out of necessity back then and one could say that, she probably never truly adapted. When her father died, was just when she realized there is no turning back now.

When she symbolically became Kösem, she had fought many fights in her life: she fought because she wanted justice (her exposing Fahriye and Dervish/Handan), because she wanted revenge (against Safiye), she fought for her life. (post-E25 and season 2.) But she did it out of necessity, all the roles she had to take she took out of necessity, she represented the country, acted as a regent even when Murat took that away from her.. only out of sheer necessity. That's what she did in episode 7, she stood up to all these people in need, and when she did that, she was suddenly regarded as a hero, as this blessed angel who saved everyone and could do no wrong, but she obviously couldn't stay so. She perhaps could've gained some kind of a savior complex, to have something to protect out of obligation. And that something had to be connected with her "first act" and with her whole arc in season 1 - that is, the country. She took her whole life to represent the country and protect it. ("The country you talk about wouldn't exist, if it weren't for me!") It turned into the very meaning of her life, she merged herself with it and she had to fight for it. The fights she had throughout the entire show were very exhausting, draining everything out of her, because there were countless times where it was all about to be over. She had to face enemies much stronger, much sneakier and much more experienced than she herself was, and she knew very well that they wouldn't hesitate even for a moment to do what they had to do. They were brutal and they were ruthless, all of them. And they were against this very thing she cherished, the very power she equated to the country. She spent her whole life to fight and protect it, turning her heart into iron and stone, automatically realizing every threat and striving to remove it, no matter what it takes. That goes into her conflict with Murat and into the rest of her children (by that I mean Ibrahim), as well, once she feels they are a threat, she began removing them. But this isn't a facade that can be kept so easily, this isn't some worthy life, so it all bottles up inside of her eventually and she has no time to let it out, because this period, her life, is just so dynamic. All her enemies were tough and persistent, making something happen almost every other day, the revolts, the parental conflicts, the attempts, the traps, the intrigues, the backstabbing... All that including her daily duties and all the meetings she has to attend to to keep things running smoothly. It all takes a toll on her, and it's understandable why when everything falls apart, she just doesn't care. She took the very last strip of her innocence, her humanity, with sealing the pact to kill Ibrahim. And guess what? She did this only for the country, she did this because someone pushed that weakness, that pressure point of hers. All she fought for was doomed the second Murat took things into his own hands, and she realized it. By Murat's death, it was now or never, because the harder she fights for this position of hers, she loses what made her so remarkably human in the first place. It's going hand to hand, really.

There is a point to be made about the parallels S02 Kösem had with Safiye, because while their arcs hit many of the same notes, they divert from one another in quite a bit of ways. Safiye was everything Kösem fought against - she made the darker side of S01 Kösem what it was, because taking revenge on Safiye, what she took away from her, was the primary "shadier" motivator of her character then. Azis Mahmud Hüdai (I hope I'm writing his name right) even warned her to the dangers of power and the similarities with Safiye that slowly grew in her. And there is some irony in this, because Safiye also played her part in the tragic Osman storyline by manipulating him from the get-go that Kösem could act against him because she wasn't his real mother. And the guy she sent to manipulate him was there for a long time. What I mean to say is, Kösem and Safiye had that fight going until the very end, and Safiye openly gave her the thematic ring (тм), perhaps due to the similarities they share. Safiye had this desire for neverending power, she never gave up, even when all odds were against her. She became used to it after so many years and it as well became what defined her. On the surface, the same could be said for Kösem, as well. Both of them did the unthinkable to keep this prestige and these titles. Both loved their power, but in different ways: Safiye wanted power for the sake of power, she loved the very concept of it, to wake up in the castle, to prepare for the day, to issue orders and to eclipse everyone, for Safiye it wasn't something morally right, it was about her and her only. She would lose her life, but never her power. It was already something she had always had and losing it would mean they took something that was rightfully hers, without debate. Kösem had this power for the country she felt obliged to protect, to the point power and country became synonymous to her, whatever she did was for the country, but in her eyes, it was the right thing, for the state to live, for the people to be safe and sound, for everyone to have a tranquil life without imbalance. (in E47 we had this parallel act to E07, where she once again, stood up in front of the people, to calm them down after Murat's unexpected disappearance; we have her show Kasım to the people in E53? etc.) And she would lose her life, as well as her power. (the narrative delivered its own symbolic meaning with her death.) She thought it should be all hers for a long time, but not by right, rather through all she had achieved in her life. At the end, she realized this loss, and accepted it, symbolically giving the thematic ring to nobody, while Safiye did in her death after all, thematically continuing the cycle herself. She no longer gave a damn about the world and all she wanted was to die in piece.

There is also another key difference between Safiye and Kösem - Safiye kept her power through cunning and manipulation from the very beggining, while Kösem consistently reached out: to the people, to the Janissary, to Murat even. Safiye thought they misunderstood her, that you couldn't win this war by peace, while Kösem often tried to find the optimal, peaceable solution - she killed only as a last resort, only when she found out nothing else worked, it took her a whole season-long arc to realize that Murat wasn't worth it (and even in E60, it was hard for her to kill Ibrahim and it all had to come to Turhan's manipulation). Safiye, just like Gülbahar, who was the main enemy to S02 Kösem for a reason, had buried her conscience deep within, while Kösem, even with all she's done, still had the reflection of Anastasia in the mirror and in her head, no matter how much she tried to shut her up. ("Admit it, you liked having power!" - quoting by pure memory here.)

Thing is, what Kösem experienced, truly shaped up who she was, and just like so many, internalized that toxic way of living to a huge extent. And no matter how hard she tried to fight with it, she let it sink in and fully embraced it. And when she finally got out of it, what was done was done, and destruction ensued. But she probably found piece in her death, getting rid of this burden, plaguing her whole life.

[rhosinthorn]

sold my soul to the calling

Author’s Note: This is a piece that will probably be formalized and posted on AO3 before I start posting the sequels. It’s a bit of an experiment for me as I played with different ways to discuss the many names that fem!Harry takes on in the Steady is the Hand universe and some of the reasons behind them. Let me know if the experiment is successful!

She was born over and over again.

Harry Potter was born screaming into the world from Lily Potter’s efforts, and she died in spite of them as Voldemort levelled his wand at her. The Girl Who Lived was carried away from Godric’s Hollow and died again on the doorstep of Number Four Privet Drive. Freak was born in a cupboard and died on a stormy night on a hut on a rock in the middle of the sea, only for the Girl Who Lived to rise again.

Seeker. Champion. Victor.

Slytherin’s Heir. Cheater. Liar.

Goddaughter.

Chosen One.

Undesirable Number One.

Just Harry, daughter of James and Lily, goddaughter of Sirius, died in the Forbidden Forest.

The Girl Who Conquered rose up and killed Tom Marvolo Riddle.

The Master of Death walked away from Dumbledore’s grave, the Elder Wand returned to its rightful place for the time being, stone tucked reluctantly in her pocket, unable to give it up quite yet.

Auror Potter. Aunt Harry. Lady Potter. Lady Black. 

She smiled for cameras and drank herself down to the bottom of every bottle she could find. She rose high through the ranks of the Aurors. She fell down in the darkness of the alleyways outside clubs, seeking out something, anything, that would make the pain go away.

She was born again, gasping and heaving over the toilet bowl as she detoxed herself. As she learned how to be a functional human being again. As she remembered how to be Teddy’s aunt, and not look at him and remember that she was going to have to watch him die someday.

And some part of her died once more as the Ministry started turning against her, afraid of the parts of herself that she hated, afraid that their chosen one had lived long enough to become the villain. It started in the gossip pages and trickled into the halls of the Ministry, until there was nothing to do but make escape plans and strategies.

Harry Potter died on the street in front of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, wand whipping around to shield just a half second too late for three different spells to hit the portkey that she was in the process of activating. In the moment before everything went supernova, two more spells hit her wand.

Harry Potter was born gasping in the jagged canyons of the Ram Duath, holly wand a burnt stub in her hand, beyond all repair this time. Furious and frightened, she picked herself up and plunged forward, emerging battered and bruised, with several new scars and a wyrm tooth in each hand.

Harry Potter died in the Ram Duath, staggering out of the menacing black canyons with a wyrm tooth in each hand, covered in blood and dirt.

Bronach of the Trev Gallorg was born anew in the eyes of her people, around the fires of Aughaire amidst much merriment.

Bronach of the Trev Gallorg died, dumped outside of Donnvail, back in tatters from a whip’s cruel kiss.

The Ranger Thuri was born as she swore her oaths to the lady Gilrain in the hidden refuge of Esteldin, oaths tailored to her unique circumstances and the war that they feared would break upon them in the coming years, and Thuri died on the Fields of Fornost, shot down by orcish arrows as she bore messages from Tinnudir to Esteldin.

Holly Blake was widowed as she was born, with her wagon of belongings and a herd of sheep trailing behind her she settled into her small farm outside of Bree and quickly became a fixture of life around the village. She faded slowly as Thuri was reborn, until the Ranger remained and the widow disappeared.

Thuri Runil lived only in the histories, only in the stories of the mighty battle on the Pelannor, the flame of her grief the only thing noteworthy about her, utterly missing the woman underneath.

Baurion, Cennanial, Elain, Lilias...the cycle continued, birth and death in a neverending sphere. Yet she kept coming back to Aughaire, always returning, finding home as Bronach, until eventually Bronach she stayed, the others just masks to don or discard at need.

The cycle stilled, but not quite over. 

[snaileer]

Chips & Salsa Chp 2

He could already hear the ringing in his ears, the piercing screams that rose every time he stopped. Anytime that he rested, anytime he wasn’t fighting, hurting, killing for the Arena’s amusement.

It had been with a sense of dread that Lance had realized he’d become dependent on the fights. He waited for the next one, and the next, and the next; every muscle tightening the longer it took. 

Once, they’d waited almost a whole week between a fight. Just to see him struggle, to see him beg at the end of it.

“Ask to fight and you shall Paladin,” they’d told him. He’d refused, with every fiber of his being, he’d refused. 

At first.

Then days passed, the guards had barely fed him, and he could hear the ringing start in his ears.

But he could deal with it. He had 4 siblings and even more squealing nieces and nephews. He could push through the noise, he’d done it before. He would not break.

And then it had grown.

The ringing had grown from a high pitched hum, to a roaring yell. And they told him, “Ask to fight and you shall,”

He said no. He kept saying no. He screamed it at them, just to hear his own voice above the neverending scream in his ears. 

But he could tell his body was itching for the fight. Like an addict with a fix. 

Just one fight. Just to make it stop. Just to move, to do something.

But he denied the urge, that horrible darkness that screamed to be let out. He denied it until he couldn't anymore. Until it seemed to take up every single thought he had. Until he could barely think past the noise of it echoing through his brain. One thought could still get through.

“I’ll do it,”

“Say it again, Paladin,”

“I said fine! I’ll fight for you! Make it stop! Just let me out! Let me fight!”

Nothing.

“Please,” It damaged his soul just to say that one word. And yet, when they took him to the Arena and he fought, when he killed and the buzzing of his mind finally settled, he couldn't find it in him to regret it.

And now he could already hear the ringing in the back of his head. Could already hear it growing. Growing as he tried to rest for just one second.

It rose, screeching in his ears and still growing. And it brought with it only one word;

Fight.

x--x--x

Shiro stalked down the prison hallways of the Arena ship. The floor was littered with deactivated sentries, which their EMP had successfully destroyed with the rest of the ship’s controls. He kicked past the metal bodies. He checked every cell, ushering any remaining prisoners towards freedom. He was only looking for one prisoner. One very specific, very important prisoner.

Lance.

Shiro would tear apart the whole ship if he had to. To find him, to find that laughter, the personality that could lift the room, even in the middle of a war. They’d missed it more than any of the team would ever admit.

“Shiro, the Blades have cleared the battle room and prisoner levels one and three.”

“I’m already on level two, Pidge.” The battle room. A nice way of telling him the Arena was empty.

“What if he’s not-”

“Don't even say it, Pidge,” Hunk cut in from beside him, Shiro had almost forgotten the boy was even there. The lack of frightened comments and anxious rambling had made Hunk all that much more invisible. Hunk with no Lance was different too, and it was just another missing piece without Lance.

“Fine. I’m sorry. Be sure to check the room at the end of the hall. It looks like it’s the med-bay for the prisoners,” Pidge’s comm crackled as she ended the conversation.

She was right, the last room did look different. And it was definitely bigger.

But it was also definitely not the med-bay.

The knives and the blood on the floor told them exactly what it was used for. Torture. 

Hunk gagged beside him. Shiro scanned the room, blatantly avoiding the table and weapons, he didn’t have time to get pulled into a flashback. Not when he had a mission.

His eye caught on the space in the back of the room. Small, but enough space for a medical pod. He stepped towards it hesitantly, but his gut still squeezed.

“Hunk, I think-” But Hunk was already moving around the room and had found the pod too. “Shiro, there’s a healing pod back here! There’s someone in it but the EMP we used took down the systems.”

“I’ve got it,” Shiro shoved his own problems down and moved to help Hunk.

“I can't get it open, we’ll have to break the glass,” It was too opaque to be real glass and without power, it would stay that way. Still, it broke like glass when Shiro punched it with his prosthetic.

And Shiro’s heart stopped when the shards fell away.

“We found him,” Shiro vaguely registered Hunk say it, then yell it into the comms. “We found him. Guys, we found Lance! He was in a pod, but we found him, and-”

Shiro snapped out of his daze to catch Lance as he fell from the pod. He weighed almost nothing, looked like skin and bones and roughly refined muscle.

“He’s still asleep, Hunk, we need to go. Now!” If Lance was in a pod, that meant he was injured, that he was hurt badly enough that he would’ve died without it. And now that the pod was broken...

“Yeah, okay, let’s go! Come on, I’ve got the map to the hangar.” Hunk took off down the hallway, Shiro carrying Lance and running behind him. 

“Coran, we’re gonna need a pod as soon as we get to the castle. Lance might be injured,” 

“Is he okay?”

“I don't know, he’s still sedated. Shouldn't he be awake by now, Coran?”

“If the pod’s cycle was stopped early, he’s still going to be in stasis, but not for long. Get him here, quickly. If he wakes up with an injury, it could- .”

“We’re loading into the Black Lion now. Everyone get back to the Castle!” Shiro couldn't bear to listen to the possibilities of what could happen, “Allura, tell the Blades we’ve found him,” 

“Already done, Shiro,” Shiro paused when he had to lay Lance down in Black’s cockpit, only reassured when Hunk sat right next to him.

Shiro pushed Black’s speed back towards the castle. He could hear Lance groan behind him. “Hunk-”

“Shiro, he looks so different. He looks-”

“I know.” He did know, he’d seen the hardness in Lance’s face, visible only if you looked. His hair was cut differently too, it looked vaguely like an undercut, but it was old, starting to grow out of the style. Not even to mention the blaring difference of the prisoner rags, he could already tell Lance would’ve complained about how they clashed with his skin tone. Would’ve.

The moment Black’s feet touched the ground, Hunk was already carrying Lance down the ramp at a run towards the med-bay. Shiro was right on his heels the whole way.

Lance groaned again, and they could hear the pain behind it.

Coran was waiting for them the moment they burst through the doors. They were putting on the medical suit when the rest of the team came running in a moment later. Everyone stopped short at the sight of Lance. 

“Is he-?” Pidge started, her voice uncharacteristically sad. All of their eyes were drawn to the scars as he lay on the medical table.

“He’ll be alright, Shiro, help me get him in the pod.” Coran finished putting the suit on and lifted Lance’s body over to the prepared pod. He gave him to Shiro so he could turn on the machine.

They watched the pale cover slide over his body and the readings pop up on the screen.

Time didn't seem to move anymore. 

Because Lance didn't look like Lance. He looked like a shadow, an empty, dark version of their friend, of their teammate.

All they wanted was for Lance to be okay. For him to be playing a terrible practical joke. For him to finally break character, to laugh and as he talked about how “Oh you should have seen your faces! They were priceless!”

The last few months had been empty without that laugh.

To just hear that laugh. Just once.

But he wouldn’t

They had him back, finally. And yet, they doubted they would ever have that Lance again. The Galra would have crushed him, crushed every bit of his carefree spirit, every remnant of that amazing, loving person. And left nothing in its place.

Lance looked like he was in pain even in the pod. His face scrunched up and tension laced through his body.

“Alright, all of you, out.” Coran turned back to the team gathered around the pod, and time started back up again, “All of you need to rest.”

“I’m not leaving him here alone, what if something-” Keith started, his stubbornness rearing its head.

“Nothing’s going to happen, he’ll be okay,”

“Will he though?” Hunk was almost too quiet, his eyes pinned to the floor.

“What the-? Hunk, why would you say that?” Pidge whipped around at him.

“We all saw the scars. Some of those were definitely not accidents and we know he was in the Arena; Pidge, what if he’s gone? What if our Lance is gone? What if my friend is gone?”

“He’s not! We got him back! He’s fine!”

“Be quiet!” Both of the kids went silent at Coran’s parent voice, even Keith shut his mouth from preparing to enter the argument. “I’ll not have this team falling apart now, not when we are so close to being all together again. Lance would not want that. He wouldn't want you to be arguing, or working yourselves to exhaustion. You all need to eat and get some rest. Our boy is tougher than a Balmeran’s scat, so you’re just going to have to trust he’ll make it through this.”

“Coran-”

“No, Princess, I’ll not hear another word against it. I’ll stay here and monitor his readings until you’re all back in tip-toppity shape. So out! Out, I say!” He started motioning with his hands, shooing them out of the room and towards the doorway.

BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep

“What in the-” Coran stopped pushing them out and ran over to Lance’s pod.

“What’s wrong Coran? Why is it beeping? Is he okay?” Keith was the first to rush back in, the rest of them right behind him.

“He’s waking up! I saw his heart rate was a little fast, but he shouldn't be waking up, it’s too early!”

“Why isn’t the pod keeping him asleep? Is it malfunctioning?” Allura was pressing buttons on the pod’s screen cover, trying to figure out what was wrong with the pod.

“It should be working, but-” the woosh of the pod opening made everyone shut up, holding their breath as Keith moved in front of Allura to catch him. He caught Lance by the shoulders, expecting the weakness that often came with the healing pods.

What he got instead was a knee to the stomach. Lance was suddenly a whirlwind of punches and movement, each one hitting a surprised paladin. Except Shiro, Shiro knew what this was, he’d seen the glazed over look in Lance’s eyes. He’d seen it in himself, too.

“Lance!” Nothing, Shiro continued to dodge the blows, “Lance, you’re not in the Arena!” Shiro managed to land his own hit to Lance’s side, surprising him enough to bring him to the ground. “Lance, please, you’ve got to wake up.” Shiro held his wrists, pinning him down, “You’re safe, now. You’re at the Castle, you don't need to fight.”

That seemed to finally give him pause. Just for a second.

“The Castle..” His eyes cleared just a bit, enough to finally see the people around him, “Shiro?”

“Yeah, buddy, it’s us.” Just hearing the sound of his voice, no matter how rough, seemed to heal everyone’s hearts, just a little. “You’re at the Castle, we rescued you. You’re safe now.”

“I’m at the castle?”

“Yeah, Lance,”

“Really, actually here?” The way Lance said it troubled Shiro with the implications. Implications that he didn't believe he would be saved.

“Of course Lance. We saved you,”

“F*ck!” That was the last thing any of them expected Lance to say.

“What?” Hunk looked like he was in shock at Lance’s reaction

“Crap! Crap crap crap!” Lance started trying to push Shiro off of him again, “Dios mio, Shiro, get off of me. You’re like a ton of bricks,” For a ‘ton of bricks’ he sure got out of it quickly. But Shiro’d be lying if he said he hadn't missed those small jokes and the accidental use of spanish every now and then.

Lance jumped up from the floor and moved towards the medical cabinets in the room. Rummaging through them recklessly, swiping stuff off the counters and pushing things out of the cabinets. He was muttering and cursing under his breath, “Where is it? They’ve got to have one somewhere in here,”

“Lance!” And ignoring them apparently, too. “Lance!”

“Lance, stop it!” This time it was Keith who basically yelled his name as he stomped over and grabbed Lance’s wrist. Lance stopped dead in his tracks the moment Keith touched him.

Lance yanked his hand back immediately, and Keith stood just as still as the rest of the room. None of the team dared to move, afraid they’d scare Lance away like a frightened animal. Lance could be going into another flashback, they didn't know what any of his triggers were yet. They couldn’t help him yet. 

Lance’s eyes scanned Keith, catching on the hilt of his blade holster. 

“Finally!” Lance grabbed the knife in seconds, moving to a mirror with his hands wrapped around the blade’s edge. 

“Lance!” He lifted the tip to his temple as Shiro jumped up to pull the knife away from Lance. Keith helped hold him back, though it took both of their strength to keep him in place.

“Lance, please! You don't know what you’re doing! You’re hurting yourself!” Shiro tried to catch his eyes again to bring him out of it but they roamed across the faces of the team watching in horror.

“No, you’re right Shiro, that’d never work. I need….” He stopped at Coran, “A scalpel!”

“Lance, my boy, why don’t we just calm down for a second-,” Coran took a step forward, his hands up in a placating gesture. They needed to get control over this situation. Fast. It was spiralling downwards quicker than any of them could keep up with.

“Calm down?” Lance pulled against Shiro and Keith’s hold, “I can’t calm down! That’s like the last thing I want to do-! Ah! Mother trucker!” Lance stumbled forward, clenching his head in his hand. He looked like he was in pain. Yet he ignored the slash on his palm and the blood trailing down the side of his face from the scratch on his temple. The sudden shift in movement caused the brothers to move forward to try to support him, accidentally loosening their grip in the process.

Lance took the opportunity without hesitation, ripping himself from their hands with surprising speed and strength.

“I’ve got to go,” He started running for the door, “I’ve gotta get out of here,” Lance ran from the room, barely taking a second at the doorway to choose a direction.

Everyone followed after him, calling his name, trying to get him to just stop or slow down just for one second.

But Lance ran track every year in highschool and it showed. He sprinted down the halls, frantically turning corners and hastily choosing random directions.

“I can’t find it! Gah, I can’t f*cking remember! Where is it?! I have to get out!” He paused for brief second at an intersection before rushing down in the direction of-

Allura yelled on the comms as she chased after him, “PALADINS! Cut him off! He’s trying to get to the hangars! I don't think he knows what he’s doing! Be careful!”

Shiro ran through the hangar shortcut, pushing ahead of the group but still making sure everyone else was following him.

He reached the doors first, seeing Lance narrow his eyes when Shiro blocked the hangar entrance. 

But he didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow for a fraction of a second as he ran in a dead charge at Shiro.

He was a second away from tackling them both to the ground when Lance leapt to the side, making into the hangers.

Only to run straight into Allura. She grabbed him, harder this time, her alien strength easily gapping the difference. They couldn't afford to lose him now, not again.

Shiro saw the team come up the hallway behind him and turned to face Lance again, for all too many times in such a short period.

“Lance! Please, do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?” If Lance was having another panic attack, the team could agree that Shiro would be their best bet for getting him out of it.

“Of course I do, Shiro!” The hidden venom in Lance’s voice startled Shiro, “I’m stuck and lost in this freaking castle and I need to go!”

“Why? Please, Lance just stop for a seco-“

“I can’t stop! I have to keep going! Always! I have to keep moving and fighting and I can’t ever just stop! I haven’t been able to stop since you guys left me behind on that Galra ship 3 f*cking months ago!” He was breathing hard by the end of the yell, his words only seeming to catch up with him when the team gasped.

“Sorry Shiro, I didn’t mean-,”

“No,” Shiro hung his head a bit, “It’s okay, you’re right. We shouldn’t have left you behind.” They had all spent more than one night awake with guilt over what’d happened.

“Hardly, I chose to take that path and I chose to be on the other side. You did all you could.”

“Hermano, we should’ve-“ Hunk stepped forward with tears in his eyes.

Lance winced and grit his teeth, stumbling forward again before straightening harshly, “This is sweet and all but I’ve really got to go.”

“Why,” Pidge asked, her voice betraying the anger on her face for desperation, “We just got you back from the Galra and now you’re trying to leave! Why?!”

Lance’s eyes narrowed with a cold hardness to them, “Because they chipped me like a f*cking dog and I’d bet you they’ve already called Animal Control on my ass.”

Next Chapter: https://snaileer.tumblr.com/post/615697648649928704/chips-salsa-chp-3

First Chapter: https://snaileer.tumblr.com/post/613092735756402688/chips-and-salsa-chp-1

[star-anise]

Wait, what's bad about tilling?

I will explain but leave the googling up to you instead of hunting down sources to link to.

Tilling leads to soil erosion and nutrient loss! This is one of the things I’ve been pondering a lot lately–the plough is like, the FUNDAMENTAL technology upon which agriculture as the Western world knows it has been based since Mesopotamia in 3000 BC!  That’s how agriculture WORKS! You till the soil and plant in it!!!

But like… that means we’ve been on this merry-go-round for thousands of years where the moment you begin to farm a piece of land, it begins to lose topsoil and nutrients, so your land fundamentally becomes less valuable as you work it, so you will inevitably need to go out and acquire more land from somewhere. That’s why England became almost entirely deforested by 1800; the answer to the depletion of old land was to “assart”, or hack down some forest and convert it to farmland, until eventually they ran out of forest (tho Age of Sail shipbuilding helped too) and started getting their trees from Canada instead. So we have this neverending cycle of depletion of resources and conquest of new land. 

The cycle got slowed a little when European settlers to the Americas learned about Indigenous traditions crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing crops like peas or clover, and fertilizing the soil with fish carcasses or bat guano, and things got deeply weird in the 20th century when the use of artificial soil additives exploded–but not even chemicals can stop this process; if you add fertilizer to tilled soil, the vast majority of it won’t sink in and help the plants, it’ll wash off in the rain and go create algae in a nearby pond. If you want to improve the rate at which both water and chemicals are absorbed into your soil, you have to increase its organic content (vs plain mineral dirt)–which means not destroying all the dead plants in it, nor burying them underground, but keeping them around and relevant.

Meanwhile, certain Asian and Indigenous North and South American traditions do not use ploughs, and their land seems to be enriched the longer it’s worked? Because they’re not just preserving the soil, but continually adding nutrients to it? And I’m trying to figure out how much of a change this is–like, on what scale moving to new methods has the power to change Western agriculture and shake up its basic assumption. I’m not agronomist, and this isn’t @kawuli‘s specific area of expertise, but it… doesn’t feel like nothing.

So when I was a kid, this just showed up in the “zero till” technologies–farmers would harvest the crop but not till the soil, and use a vastly expensive air-seeder to inject the seeds in under the stubble and thatch of last year in the spring. But it’s starting to spread as people wonder about the other possibilities of this kind of thing–what if you do a controlled burn of weeds and stubble, thus reducing weeds but returning the nutrients in them to the soil as ash? What if you fight soil compaction not by “fluffing” it with a plough, but planting a thick tuber like a tillage radish and letting it decompose in the soil?

There’s kind of a split I can see in my local garden communities, where younger and less conventional people are very much anti-tilling and anti-bare-dirt, and prefer methods where you smother grass you want to turn into a garden plot with something thick and biodegradable like newspaper ten sheets deep or corrugated cardboard, and then top it off with fresh mulch of leaves or straw or wood chips. That, they say, suppresses weeds, encourages beneficial insects, helps plants overwinter, and keeps nutrients within the soil. Meanwhile, older and more conventional gardeners tend to be openly skeptical and contemptuous, or even feel like they’re being accused of having harmed the environment of their gardens all the time they’ve been tending them. I’m sure there are also people who are like, “Look, Europeans weren’t DUMB, we KNEW what mulch and compost were before the Columbian Exchange started,” and it’s like, technically yes, but on the other hand, also no.

I don’t fundamentally support “organic” farming, necessarily, because it basically says, like… “Anything created before this date (1800? 1850?) is okay, and anything created after is Bad.” Stuff gets a pass just because people know and are comfortable with it–vinegar is highly processed and extremely acidic, but we’ve used it to cook for centuries, so it’s Totally Natural and Definitely Better than some milder, recently-invented thing.

I don’t think you can simply and easily divide things into Good and Bad without taking a really intense look at their effects. Some “organic” farming methods are really shitty, and some artificial modern ones are really great.  I believe in looking at the evidence. 

But these days, well… I’m definitely leaning further away from tillage the more I learn.

[guyinlovewitheremika]

Oooh could you expand on why you liked the op?? I honestly don't know what to make of it yet, especially since it felt so different from other ops, but I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Absolutely will do!! This took longer than I wanted cause everytime I sat down to write I started getting distracted from the OP and just listening to it on repeat lmao

To start this off, I should add that throughout the week leading up to release date, I was following a couple of leakers on twitter who did drop some info on the OP; mainly that Shinsei Kamattechan were returning, the title, that it wasnt gonna feature any characters and instead be a metaphor for the “cruelty of war”. Knowing all of that had me pretty excited but also gave me the right expectations, so it wasnt too jarring to see at first. 

But, to jump into this, first of all, I just loooove the visual style in general. It mostly just being static shades of white and light grey, with these very washed out colors exploding and flowing onto the image...it’s absolutely gorgeous! Like I just really dig this color scheme. And it’s highlighted even further by the gorgeous, fluid animation...these explosions look so good! I’m also just a big sucker for familiar characters/entities being represented in a sort of timeless way...be it a portrait, a statue, a monument, whatever (think smth like this), so seeing Eren and the other titans at the end there was just an absolute treat. Whatever that thing is, I want some kind of print/purchasable piece of merch of it because that heap of titans looks amazing. 

The song also just bangs tbh. It’s such a weird agglomeration of instruments and vocals but I find it comes together really well. The childrens choir, the piano at the beginning, the distorted vocals and most importantly that E-violin!!! so fucking good! Honestly I just love the way this song sounds and Im more hyped for the full version than the ost release atm (even tho I love what we heard so far from that too). The combination of the visuals with the music too is great here...I’ve never seen a flamethrower used in combination with the beat of a song before (outside of mad max fury road I guess lol?) but goddamn its just such a cool fucking combination I cant get over it. 

I have some thoughts on the imagery and the symbolism and my interpretations of it all, and I wanna get into those too, but really, the main thing I absolutely love about this OP is how different it is. Just as the marley arc is probably the most different of all in the manga, just as the new studio has made a show that, in many ways, looks feels and sounds vastly different from the old Attack on Titan, the OP encapsulates all of that by just being this new thing and succeeding at it

I love WIT’s OP’s, I love Linked Horizon’s work on the show. But honestly, the “Linked Horizon hype OP” genre pretty much peaked with Guren no Yumiya for me. I still like all the others, but overall, OP 1, 2, 3 and 5 just feel a bit too same-y for me, especially given that I honestly don’t think any of the follow ups surpass the original. Heck all these other songs even reference GnY in some capacity--I cant help but feel like they could never let go of Guren’s success and never tried something else. Except for Red Swan of course, which is also my 2nd favorite WIT OP. It’s slower, it’s sadder, it’s melancholic, and vastly different from all the others, and I really appreciate that. It tries to be its own thing and it succeeded for me. And “My War” even more so feels like it has a very distinct, unique vision, goes all out in that way, and it just works beautifully.   

And it’s that distinct, unique vision that I wanna dig into lastly here, because, just as the marley arc does for this manga, I find that out of all the OP’s, My War most explicitely depicts and visualizes many of the core thematic ideas of Attack on Titan and brings them directly into the forefront. I’ve seen a bunch of cool interpretations of the song at this point, and someone may have somewhere already said all this, but I wanna throw it in here regardless

After countless battles, sacrifices, victories and losses, Eren and the survey corps were able to win the war against the titans that their walled world was stuck in for a hundred years. Their gigantic enemies were defeated, and freedom ought to lie ahead. But no, beyond the shores is just more...more oppression, more war, more death and more sacrifice. The history their king to from them is one of war and oppression, a never ending cycle of violence, spanning back 2000 years, continuing forward. One oppressive regime falls, only for the next to take its place. This has been the history of mankind since the dawn of man, and it continues on and on and on. 

This is what this episode shows us, another military battle around another walled encampment, and this is what this opening shows us...a world perpetually at war. Man’s hatred for one another leads to conflict, to war: it’s continued existence in history and continued technological advancements are the perfect visual representation of this. Man’s capacity for war breeds more war, and it takes lives and it takes freedom and it doesnt stop, it just keeps consuming. 

The Opening starts off with battleships, artillery fire, mortars, flamethrowers, nuclear explosions and a titan spine forming among them all, until the birds of freedom fall dead out of the sky. Neverending armies of soldiers march the streets, airships rule the sky, but all the soldiers, all the military craft, the marleyan military and the paradisian soldiers all fall to pieces and get destroyed. War and conflict rage on and all the pieces fall to the ground, littering the earth in nothing but death and destruction. And at the end, atop this mountain of corpses and mayhem, the titans arise, reaching forward, attacking. They are born from mankinds neverending cycle of destruction, the physical manifestation of our inner demons that lead us to kill each other. 

I thoroughly believe that this sequence of events most perfectly encapsulates all of attack on titan. Look at the marley arc: the years of their attempts to wipe out Paradis island lead the island and the attack titan straight to them, delivering a terrible blow to them during their declaration of war. 2000 years ago it was the warmongering, slave hording king fritz who had a girl hunted for sport who brought about the era of the eldian empire, creating a system to eternally maintain the titan’s ability to wage war and rule the lands that would wind up ripping humanity apart. Look at the final arc: all of humanities hatred towards the island devils birthed the final attack titan and his horde of demons who have come to trample the world underfoot. The titans have always arisen as the consequence of man’s tendency towards conflict and death. Eren’s titan first formed from inside a titan who just killed him, his last titan was born out of his own death yet again. Titans are man’s desire to kill given shape, and the more man kills and fights, the more titans arise. 

It’s a bleak and terrible look at the cruelty of the world, that I think the OP highlights immensly well. It’s a gorgeous looking and sounding 90 seconds, and despite its contents being essentially horrifying, its fun to look at and listen to. Isayama once said about Eren’s attack in marley that “what eren does here is the worst thing. but if you were able to feel just a little bit of excitement from it, then it was worth drawing manga all this time”. Somehow, one way or another, we’re drawn to conflict, despite how terrible it is. And I think this opening manifests this beautifully 

[sea-and-storm]

FFXIV WRITE 2020: Crux (#1)

Arukh had wondered no few times during the last few years of his life if there was a limit to how much a man could endure before he could no longer be called a man at all. No few times had he wondered just how far away from that nebulous line he himself lie after nearly four decades of having that which he held to slip through his fingers, no matter how tight his grip.

Such were the thoughts that lingered upon his mind now as he lie back amongst the blankets and furs of his bed, staring up without focus towards the ceiling of the yurt above him. 

He could remember a time before he knew loss's hateful touch. Those early years of his life had been few, but still full of vibrancy and warmth. He could remember clinging to his mother's skirts as she tended the cookfire, the smell of spices filling their home and the soft melody she hummed as she stirred. He could remember his father hoisting him up onto his shoulders as he went about his tasks for the day, tirelessly answering each and every question that had escaped from his inquisitive young mind. He could remember when his parents had explained to him that another would soon be added to their family, and the wonder he felt with his hand pressed against his mother's stomach.

Yet the memories of that time grew fuzzier at the edges with each passing year. He could no longer remember the notes that made his mother's song, nor all the questions he had asked his father much less their answers. Once, he had vividly remembered the sensation of the baby kicking against his tiny hand. Now, he struggled to remember if that had even happened at all or if it were simply a fabrication of nostalgic longing. The rest of his childhood memories had grown similarly fuzzy, if not forgotten at all. 

It wasn't merely the march of time that had robbed him of these glimpses into the past though, of that he was convinced. It wasn't that he had never thought back to them save for fleeting occasions moons or years apart. Rather, they were often on his mind, a safe respite that he had clung to in the storm-tossed sea of his life. He thought of those times when he closed his eyes, and when he slept he dreamt of what they could have become if only things were different. And yet still, as close to heart as he kept them, they too were leaving him.

It was a vexing phenomenon, but not one that defied explanation. If anything, the explanation was painfully simple:  loss, and his was a life marked by it. Cursed by it. 

First, he had lost his family;  not just his baby sister who had been taken from them, but his parents as well. After they had been forced to surrender Ghoa to the gods, they had never been the same. His mother's cheerful hums had been replaced with muffled sobs. His father's endless patience for his questions finally found its end, and he had grown quiet and distant. And of course, the baby sister he had been eagerly awaiting was stolen away from his future for reasons that he was too young to understand --- not that he truly understood them any better as a man grown.

Without a doubt, the sundering of his family was a deep wound, though perhaps it might have had a chance to properly heal in time had it been the only injury sustained. But his lot was to be born into a tribe for whom loss was an inevitability. Each year, as Arukh turned from child to adolescent to young man, he had stood by and watched as more were taken from him each time the Kharlu came to claim their due. Friends he had grown alongside. Aunts, uncles, cousins that shared his blood. Mentors that molded and shaped him into the capable young man he had become. So many people of significant importance to him had been taken, to serve as little more than battle fodder to soften the Jhungid assault for their newfound Kharlu masters.

And then finally, he too had been chosen, and what did remain to him of home had been ripped away as well.

In its place, Arukh had found himself thrown into what felt to be the deepest pit of the hells. That first year a slave, surrounded by those who treated him with indifference at best, he had gravitated towards those who shared his plight for any scrap of comfort and belonging he could muster. He had been warned against it, of course, but he hadn't listened. Not until after the first battle, at least, when the majority of those whom he had called friends laid slain around him. After that loss, he had grown far more reserved and withdrawn.

Scant few had expected him to survive that first battle. Fewer still, if any, expected him to keep surviving them, year after year. Perhaps it was only natural after he'd thrown all of his time and energy into the honing of his skills rather than the makings of fleeting camaraderie and its inevitable end. But eventually, his capability and his stubborn refusal to die earned him the opportunity to rise above the miserable state of slavehood he'd languished in for what felt like a veritable eternity.

It had seemed like a blessing at first, as such typically do when one still possessed even the slightest bit of hope. He had earned the right to shed the title of slave and worthy of claiming himself as Kharlu, and he had been given the duty to prepare newly captured slaves for the battle ahead of them. Perhaps this was his chance to change things, he had thought. Those who had trained him upon his arrival hadn't even bothered to learn his name, such was their apparent apathy. They had cared not if he lived or died, but he would be different. He would pour all he had into shaping them and preparing them for what was to come. He refused to let them surrender to the hopelessness of their situation ere they ever heard the first bellow of the warhorn. He could do it. He could save them. He had to save them, because that was the only way he could still save himself.

What a naive ideal it had been, he had realized in hindsight as he had walked through the healers' tents set up after the war to tend to the wounded. A few of those he had trained had made it back, but far from a majority. Yet even of those few, almost half of those who had returned had succumbed to their wounds but days later. After all, the best healers and the lion's share of their resources could not be wasted on expendables such as they when there were those more worthy of treatment. 

After that, Arukh had realized just why those who had prepared him for war were so aloof. You had to be, lest the neverending grief drive you mad. No matter what he did, war was war. No matter how hard he trained them, his men and women were little more than living shields for the Kharlu warriors that followed after. For those on the front lines, skill was secondary to sheer luck, and the odds were stacked against them.

In the years that followed, things had eventually become easier. While he still worked diligently to prepare those in his charge for the battles ahead, Arukh no longer cared to learn their names or where they come from. He no longer sat around the cookfire with them, lending shoulders upon which they could rest their woes and worries. And he certainly no longer walked the healer's tents after each battle, hoping each bed held a familiar face come back to him. It had taken time and no small amount of hurt to master, but Arukh had gradually learned how to meet those that came to him and then silently bid them peace and farewell in the same breath.

But he wasn't ignorant of the fact that what had made these endless cycles of loss easier to weather was that each one carved out another piece of him as it passed. With less and less of him left, it was hard to muster up any manner of attachment at all anymore. Keeping everyone around him at arm's length, he had only a handful of acquaintances but none he would call friend. And while most others of his position and age had turned their focus to family, finding a wife and having children had never been thoughts he had even passingly entertained. Even his attachment to life itself was tenuous at best, with only the solemn sense of duty he felt to those in his charge keeping him from letting the chaos of the next battle take him.

One day, Arukh suspected, he would find the point he had long pondered the existence of when there was no more man left to him. When the next loss would become the last loss, because it had stolen away every lingering drop of his ability to feel anything at all. Maybe then he would no longer remember those days of his carefree, happy youth, but neither would he feel swallowed up by darkness and loneliness and hopelessness again. Truthfully, there was a part of him that had begun to yearn for that numbness, even if it meant letting go of what little light he had left to him.

But what if there was another way..?

That was the next question that haunted him now, echoing in his head in the voice of the very woman who had posed it to him but a few suns prior. Chakha had come seeking to recruit him into the small sect of conspirators who aimed to bring the yearly war to an end and thus peace to the coastlands. That she had chosen him for this had surprised him, especially given that he had tried to keep her, too, at a distance. Naturally, his first instinct had been to decline. But something had caused him hesitation. Whether it was the persuasiveness of her words or something long  buried deep inside him, he did not know, but he had finally told her that he would consider it and return his answer to her soon.

Now he stood at a crossroads. A crux that would set the course for the rest of his days:  whether he would reject the idea that the cycle of loss could ever be broken and resign himself to the inevitability of emptiness once there was nothing left to lose, or if he would choose to not only believe that such a miserable fate could yet be changed, not only for himself but for those who came after. 

It was agonizing, this decision. Surrendering was easier, and far more comfortable. He suspected it wouldn't be much longer until he reached that anticipated point of no return should he stay his current course. But to fight was to force himself to feel again, to force himself to hope again. It risked reopening all the ugly wounds that had taken years now to heal, and that to him was far more terrifying than any battlefield he had ever set foot upon. 

But again, he could not stop his mind from going back to those memories of the happy, bright-eyed boy he had once been. He could not stop thinking back to all of those he had lost across the years. Most of all, he could not stop thinking about those who would walk these lands after him and if they would find themselves walking the same miserable path he had forged because he had been too afraid to let himself be hurt again. 

Arukh finally squeezed his eyes shut, softly cursing the watery sting that rose to them -- a sensation he hadn't felt now in years of which he had long since lost track. It felt terrible and great at the same time, that rushing torrent of now unfamiliar emotion. 

And he knew his answer. 

[mwolf0epsilon]

Prompt Time: The Projectionist free-roaming Malice Angel's domain. Level 14 barely has any stimulating things, so wouldn't it be nice if he got to visit Heavenly Toys and got to feel all the nice soft plushies?

Summary: "The worst nightmare is the nightmare that continues even when you wake up." --Mehmet Murat ildan

Warning for character death, blood and mild!

[[MORE]]

---

No matter how much the hulking beast that was the Projectionist walked (or how far its warped mind perceived that it went), the one thing that it could be truly certain of was the neverending pain that permeated its skin and old bones, that followed every step with a diligent sort of precision.

A truly terrible and wretched notion indeed, as walking was all it knew to do anymore…

With a gaze lost to the expanse of the soundless halls ahead, and its thoughts long since seized from a lack of…Something...

A stimulus? A purpose perhaps? It had to be one of those, but it couldn't really recall which was correct.

It didn't know if it had ever known the answer to its plight at all.

But walking? Walking came easily!

Not that it wasn't a harduos task, mind you, just not so easy for the semi-mechanical abomination to forget.

One limb after the other, the creak of old joints and the sting of stiff muscles.

The dull ache at the base of its hips that sharpened as it climbed all the way to the base of its strained neck.

The painful throb of something squishy-but-not-quite encased in metal, and driven by the soundless clicking and blinking of things it could fix but not put a name to.

Walking was both easy and hard, but necessary.

If it could walk, it would be safe. If it could walk, it could keep an eye on its many projectors. If it could walk, it could defend itself and its many, many, responsibilities…

So walk it did, no matter how much the burden of it all hurt its patchwork body.

To anyone with a somewhat intact sanity, traversing the halls was a tedious and mind numbing act. Not that there was much that the Projectionist thought about anyway. It's mind was… Buzzing, but not with any musings of a past life. It was numb in a way its body could never replicate.

Fragmented after going so long missing a vital piece of itself. A soul stagnated from the splintering of its essence, as well as the nonsensically repetitive motions of a lethargic routine.

Long ago this creature was once told that madness was the act of repeating an action hoping to achieve different results. If that was so, then this wretched being was the maddest of them all.

Lost to a looping cycle of its own, doing things that it should no longer care for.

Because why tend to the projectors? Why hunt for intruders? Why search for a part that was floors above, well beyond its reach?

Yes, the Projectionist must be mad. So mad that it no longer could do much more than act out the same motions over and over again.

Couldn't do more than walk the halls and redo its tasks… A looping reel.

Following tired feet with a blazing light and aching muscles that never rested.

How tragically ironic.

An infinite paradox within another.

Until one day it got a breath of fresh air.

The lift was a tool of the horned angel. A contraption that it had once used, as the man it no longer recalled having been. To the Projectionist however, it was merely a source of annoyance.

A means for intruders to trespass in its corner of the studio. An heinous apparatus of mayhem and frustration.

It caused it to feel things that swelled in its empty chest cavity, until they became nothing more than a senseless rage.

The kind that made its hackles raise with territorial trepidation, which quickly became the distinct urge to fight over flight.

The Projectionist could not recall being a man, but it could instinctively recall being an animal.

A one of a kind apex predator that stalked the halls with reckless abandon. And anything that stepped foot in its pooling maze was fair game.

The things, miserable creatures that they were, tended to come from that hellish metal box.

It made the ink in its pool vibrate with such force that it flooded its senses in a most confusing way.

Overwhelming and unpleasant all on its own, but with the added dilemma of some half-baked critter crawling right in to seek out its most coveted treasure: Its many hearts.

The Projectionist loathed all who thought they could steal its heart twice.

Added theirs to the expanding collection dotted all around its many inky roosts.

Thus the lift was deemed an enemy spawning ground, one that the hulking semi-mechanical beast did not trust in the slightest, but one that it kept an eye on nonetheless… If just to have some peace of mind. As shattered as it may be.

Imagine then, how jarring it was, for a creature that did little else than roam, maim, and maintain, to find such a vile blight baring it's gaping maw at it in broad studio light.

For the first time in years, its routine was completely broken, with the Projectionist standing there just staring at the open lift with a stalling empty mind.

It did not know what to do. What to expect.

In a situation like this, what was there really to do? The distrust it felt of the lift coupled with its sudden and unexpected behavior was certainly quite troubling for a creature of the Projectionist's caliber.

So terribly dulled from its stagnant pattern that it needed time to even realize such an event was abnormal to begin with.

Once it clicked that, yes, the lift should not be in its domain and showcasing its hungry maw so pridefully, it did the only thing it knew to do to anything that offended it.

It shrieked aggressively and rushed it.

Now, once upon a time, a man by the name Norman Polk would have stared at this scene and bellowed with disbelieving laughter.

To see such a frightfully powerful beast struggle with something so mundane as an empty elevator… It would have tickled him positively funny.

Perhaps reminding him of this big old bully of a gator that used to sun itself near the drinking hole his old pops used to plant some of the best sugarcane in all of Louisiana (or so he boasted). Big and strong, enough so that it could snap a man's arm clean in half with just one bite, yet dumber than half a box of marbles.

That lump of gigantic muscle had gotten it's jaws stuck in so many crawdad traps that it was a miracle it had grown so big and strong at all. Lucky bastard that brute… the same could be said for the Projectionist.

If good old Norman could have witnessed this hulking horror struggle in the lift like it was fighting some battle of titanic proportions, he would have wondered how it hadn't gotten itself killed yet.

Sadly Norman could never question such things, as he himself was the abominable creature he would have likely found so humorous.

The mind was a fragile thing indeed.

One so incomplete as his, made the Projectionist truly seem like a dumb animal at best…

As the object-headed bruiser calmed down after its initial fruitless assault (in which it had toppled over and only further distressed itself), it began to attempt to right itself. Looking so pathetic like a turtle stuck on its back, until flailing limbs caught the bars of its source of frustration, and pulled with all it's might.

The thudding of heavy feet against the lift flooring sent vibrations that jolted its wires uncomfortably, making it screech at nothing as it turned to look for whatever was setting it off now.

Upon finding nothing it simply stood there, winded from the exertion of having to pull itself back onto its clumsy feet.

Not an easy task when one's head weighted so much.

Now that the few senses the Projectionist still had were not under any stress, the rage began to dissipate. The soothing silence pulled at its frayed sanity, both comforting and familiar in a world that had become so alien to its past self.

Boredom was sinking in quickly, beckoning it to move on back into its usual flow.

It lifted one leg, ready to begin the endless trek of the maze all over again, only to freeze when the lift door closed with it still inside.

The seconds trickled as it slowly processed the newest development to this earth-shattering event.

It was stuck. Trapped. Caged.

Another unholy screech left its ruined speaker as it began to thrash violently, trying to get out of this tight little coffin that tormented it so cruelly.

Calling out for freedom it thought it had.

A loud hum made the cage vibrate, and its shrieks only increased in intensity as it tried to protect its sensitive body from the droning it couldn't even hear.

Then the mobile prison began to ascend.

The Projectionist was no stranger to the levels above and below of its own. Sometimes it wandered up and down the stairs to check up on the myriad of hearts it had stored in multiple other places it had rested in, after chasing particularly persistent prey that didn't get the hint. Often it tracked ink that facilitated its navigation across these alien floors, as the vibrations of this substance helped it track down it's assailants (the footprints they left behind also helped).

It had frequent encounters with the doggish wolves it had seen strapped to tables. Most gutted before it could claim their precious insides itself, although some he found fresh and ready to put a meaty fist through.

There were also times where it had encounters with the thief that wore the grinning devil mask, often finding it near peculiar objects the fiend seemed to covet.

Tall necky things with sharp strings that hurt its fingers, round flat things that made a strange hum when it hit them with a closed fist, and big square things that had loose teeth that also made alluring vibrations.

The thief liked these strange objects, so the Projectionist made sure to track it through locating them whenever it could remember… If it could remember.

Thinking was much too hard when it had so much time just to roam and live inside its own empty head.

How strange was that?

As the tiny cage continued its ascension the burly beast fell to its knees and hugged them tightly to its chest.

It whined uneasily as it watched familiarity fade with each level that it passed, trying to ignore the hum that occasionally assaulted its sensitive cables and chords.

It whimpered louder when it felt like it should know what these distinct pauses against its inky flesh should mean.

Then, finally, the lift came to a pause and the doors opened up wide, showcasing its captive passenger for the world to see. Not that the Projectionist gave the world much time anyway…

As soon as it sensed an opportunity to be free, it lunged itself forward. The uneven weight of its patchwork form, causing it to trip up and tumble down onto the wooden floors.

It rolled a few feet, hurting its knees and cutting up it's right arm against a few steps of what appeared to be… A very wide space.

It had no clue what this place was, and the beady eyes staring down at it made the Projectionist right itself immediately and shriek in monstrous defiance of whatever harm the creature possessing them may wish it… only to stop and stare as nothing moved.

The strange thing that was staring at him was just a doll. A very large doll in the shape of the not-gutted-wolves it had previously encountered.

It cocked its head to the side ever so slightly, so as to not tip over, and grunted in acknowledgement that this was no threat to its existence.

Sure enough, gazing around, all the eyes that it could see were more of the drawings like the ones that its projectors played. A few of the flat devils that were strewn around, and a big devil doll to keep the wolf some company.

Letting out another grunt and a huff as it shook its head, the Projectionist turned to glance at the churning fountain of ink separating the two dolls, and promptly growled at it. Warning any of the vermin that enjoyed such things to keep well aways from it, if they did not wish a painful death to befall them.

The gross ink slugs were squishy, and hard to get out from beneath its nails. They stuck to its feet and made it feel icky and gross.

When nothing reared its ugly head out from within the fountain, the Projectionist marched on through this new strange place… Momentarily wondering if it would find more hearts for its collection.

The stimulation was doing wonders it seemed, if it could ponder such things.

Environmental awareness wasn't really a thing that it often considered while aimlessly wandering the halls. Its feet just took it wherever they pleased, gaze focused on nothing in particular, the patchwork bruiser just ticking by like a broken clock.

This newly discovered location was different, and brought with it new rules. The Projectionist was suddenly hyper aware and hyper focused on everything surrounding it.

The spacious expanse of this floor was interesting all around, truly a place where it could wander and get lost and just experience new things it couldn't in its maze.

Speaking of clocks, it whirred curiously as it noted all of the paraphernalia that was just everywhere. From limb swinging devil-clocks, to devil and wolf dolls of various sizes. At some point it found a bowl containing a squishy blob that jumped and changed shapes when it poked it out of curiosity.

The sudden movement had made the large brute shriek and crush the bowl with a powerful strike from its hand, but the blob had prevailed despite being surrounded by shards of ceramic that had cut into the large ink beast's hand.

Once established that it wasn't attacking him (and that the stinging pain was its own doing) the Projectionist let the bouncy mass be, and continued to just wander and take in all the three dimensional creatures that it was accustomed to see flat on the walls.

The room full of clocks and dolls was especially alluring.

There was a very big wolf plush like the one before in the spacy room with the fountain. The Projectionist fixated on it and approached, reaching out to pat the inanimate pooch's ears, and then reach up to pat its own round prongs in curious comparison. The toy was not taller than it, but certainly felt squishy where it was more solid.

It reached out to touch again, fingers sinking into pillowy fabric while it's palm ran over the new texture.

A strange little word crept up into its splintered mind: Comfy.

So soft it was to the touch… Would it feel good to lay on top of it?

Surely doing something of the sort would be against every survival instinct it still had keeping it going, right?

Walking was important!

Walking was surviving!

But resting… How its aching body craved to finally rest!

And look at just how inviting the plush's soft body was… it couldn't hurt to stop for a few minutes, right?

Against all odds, the Projectionist braced itself to a position where it would be less likely to hit its clunky head, then lunged forward. Practically purring as it felt itself sink into the comforting embrace of the false wolf.

Slumber, it would finally meet with it at last!

Without second thought, the Projectionist's light shut off as consciousness slipped away into the welcoming darkness.

-

Norman startled awake in bed, fumbling blindly as he tried to make sense of where he was at the moment, while kicking up his legs which were trapped under a mass of weighted blankets.

It was so dark! Why couldn't he see? He could always see in the dark halls, the light of the projector lens illuminating even the shadiest corners of the studio… He…

No. No he couldn't see in the dark?

And this place… He knew this place!

This was his and his wife's room back at their apartment.

A rush of confused thoughts flooded his frazzled brain, as Norman glanced around. His hand subconsciously reaching out to click on the bedside lamp, and it soothed him slightly when the darkness melted away under the soft yellow light that cast over the familiar scene.

He was home. But… how?

His bad eye darted about, refusing to focus as usual, while his good eye carefully surveilled his surroundings.

It landed on his bedside table, above the silly novel he'd recently picked up from the bookstore. There was a note there, waiting to be read by his curious eyes.

With a shaky hand, one much smaller than the brutish claw of the Projectionist, he took hold of the unassuming piece of paper.

"Went to the store to get a few things before dinner. Told the kids to behave so you could rest. Please don't overwork yourself ever again, you had a 102° fever dear. Love Maggie <3"

He read the words once, twice and then trice, heart hammering away in his chest as it all slowly sunk in.

Had it… Had it all been a terrible nightmare? Had he, in his feverish state, dreamt up all the horrors that he thought had really occurred at Joey Drew Studios?

Had he really conjured up all of the madness and pain in those hostile halls? Pictured his own gruesome transition into a mindless abomination that couldn't even remember it was a person? A monster that was too afraid to let others attack it first?

A dry and slightly choked up laugh forced its way out of his constricted chest as relief washed over him.

He was home…

He was home and he could think, and it didn't hurt to move his neck or limbs, and he was himself.

What a terrible nightmare his fever had gifted him, one that felt so real that he expected to find a monster when he slowly kicked the blankets off and rose up from the bed.

His bedroom mirror told a different story to what he'd thought he'd find reflected back. There he was, strong features, big round nose and lips, tired eyes (one moving about, never to meet the other's focus point since birth) and dark curly hair that was starting to gray.

He felt the stubble on his face and hummed softly to himself. He needed a shave, lest he end up looking like the photos of his Poppop Polk…

But first he desperately needed a glass of water. He usually had one resting beside his book, but Maggie had likely taken it back to the kitchen once he'd drained it throughout the night.

Not an issue. A leisurely walk around their home was a welcomed thing after he'd been so sure he'd be stuck staring at inky sepia toned (and slightly rotted), wooden panels for the rest of his miserable and dreadfully quiet life.

So that's what he did.

He put on some slippers and shrugged on his robe, and strolled out of the room at a very calm and deliberately slow pace.

It was honestly a little ridiculous how long it took him to reach the kitchen. He'd really had a grand old time of just listening to the background noises of the city, and admiring the house decor.

That really ugly vase his mama sent them as a wedding gift, where they kept a half dried up fern (he was terrible with plants and so was Maggie). The equally ugly rug his pops had found in a flea market and sent to them in the mail (ugly enough that his wife had begged him to burn it, so how could he not set it down so he could watch her purposefully scratch it up with her high heels, due to her pure and unadulterated hatred of the garish horror of checkers and polkadots?), the collection of child's drawings he and Maggie had taken to taping to the wall in proud display, as well as Aaron's many pictures (the kid really took the whole photography thing seriously since he'd bought him his own camera for his birthday).

Pictures… Oh how he'd admired the family photos so lovingly… Every portrait, every baby photo, every holiday he'd managed to document with his old battered camera that he hoped to fix one day.

That terrible nightmare had shook him up so bad that Norman genuinely thought he was never going to see those smiling faces ever again.

He passed by his children's rooms but thought better than to disturb them. They had classes tomorrow, and the clock told him that at this hour they'd be doing their homework, like he and their mother had stipulated early on.

They could do whatever with their time, but 18pm was schoolwork time.

Instead Norman carried on into the kitchen and breathed in the smells. A hint of freshly baked bread coming from the breadbasket they kept near the oven, as well as veggie soup that was cooling in the pot that was currently resting on the stove.

Fuck, he'd missed vegetable soup, and he hated eating his greens! How could a series of vivid images feel like such a lifetime when they were merely hours?

The mind sure was a mysterious thing, one much harder to understand than the projectors he maintained at the studio.

Shrugging to himself while taking a glass from one of the cupboards, the tired projectionist moved over to the sink and opened the tap without a second thought… It took a second for him to realize it wasn't water coming out.

The glass shattered upon being dropped by a retreating Norman, who stumbled back and away from the distressing sight as if he'd been burnt.

From the tap was coming out thick oily ink that smelled just as toxic as the deathly scent of the warped studio in his dreams.

No, this… this couldn't be.

It had been a dream! Hadn't it?

He was home! He was safe!

Except the ink pouring out of the sink contradicted this. So thick it was, like sticky tar, clotting in the drain and filling up the sink. It took far little time to begin overflowing and overtaking all it touched.

The color draining from everything the black substance came into contact with. Stretching out over the floor, crawling towards him, with liquid reaching fingers. Wanting to claim him.

Fearfully, Norman fled from the kitchen and down the hall. Not wanting to be pulled back by that demonic stuff.

The chemical smell was driving him nuts, burning his eyes and nose so terribly they were beginning to run.

He fled until his legs ached. But his tired stinging eyes found something quite concerning.

Norman hadn't moved an inch since getting to the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

It was as if he'd been slipping in oil the entire time. No traction to propel him forward, just a useless struggle against an unseen force.

And then a new smell hit him.

One that made his heart turn to ice in his chest. A coppery smell that hit the back of his throat, and made his mouth taste like loose pennies.

His hands felt warm and sticky and hurt to move.

Sheer terror of the familiarity of this whole scene made him feel absolutely nauseous. He knew he shouldn't look, knew what expected him once he did so, but he couldn't help himself.

Curiosity (morbid as it may be) was his mistress after all.

Norman looked to his left, where the doors to his four children's rooms greeted him, wide open. Inviting.

God...There was so much blood...

The mortified projectionist fell to his knees as he stared down in pure horror at what remained of his and his wife's beautiful children. His babies… all dead, torn apart by some heartless butcher.

The terrified look immortalized in their young and lifeless features making him sob openly. He shakily reached out to hold them close to himself, screaming in fright when his eldest son's hand shot out to grasp his blood covered hands.

Empty eyes that were once warm with love and childlike wonder, bore holes into Norman's own mismatched gaze.

"Why did you kill us daddy? Why did you take our hearts?"

The projectionist shook his head, tears and snot running down his face as he tried to deny it. Deny the atrocity the ghost of his son accused him of committing against his own kin. But no matter how much he tried, Norman couldn't speak over the lump in his throat.

Everything hurt, and everything was warm and sticky, his little ones' hearts still beat in his monstrous hands that had slain them without thought.

And then the click of the house key made his blood run cold all over again.

"Honey? Are you up?"

No… no no no no! Maggie! It wasn't safe! He wasn't safe! She'd die! He'd kill her too!

He tried calling out, to beg for her to run, but all that came out was the primal and blood-curdling screech of the Projectionist, as it turned and trampled over the corpses of its previous victims, rushing to claim another heart for it's collection.

Norman's very soul screamed upon seeing his wife's confused and then terrified face under the beast's burning gaze.

-

The Projectionist screamed. It screamed in terror and anguish as it kicked away from the comfy wolf it had decided to rest upon on a whim.

It screamed as it tried to force itself away from a person that was not physically there, thus safe from its violence.

It screamed, as Norman Polk was still very presently in charge of his mental faculties, after having had his "brain" so stimulated and overworked for the first time in years.

He screamed until the speaker lodged in his torso gave out, spluttering weakly as it temporarily short-circuited. The internal mess of organic and non-organic materials needing time to mend themselves once more into a semi-functional state.

Once finding himself incapable of producing sound, the Projectionist sat there, shaking and completely disoriented. Trying to make sense of reality and dreams that were cruelly senseless.

And then the weight of it all crashed down… He could remember.

He was a person, not a something, a someone.

A father… He was a father who could forget these things all over again, and hurt his loved ones. A father who couldn't protect his beloved and his children as long as he was this… Heinous monstrosity.

A monster who'd sooner dismember anything it came across than think twice about their identity. A menace to society.

With that knowledge Norman did the only thing he could think to do while he still had awareness.

He lashed out, letting the anguish and hatred of his situation demolish all that met with his brutish body.

Shelves broke, dolls were torn to shreds, the wolf plush was gutted, and the Bendy clocks shattered. All the while he screamed silently as he let the floodgates wide open to pour out all the torment.

Then, when there was nothing left to destroy, he cried.

Sobbing without a mouth or eyes to clear, hiding a lens into hands that could do cruel and devastating things.

Trembling inconsolably on his knees, in the darkness of a cold and dreary studio full of monsters just as odious as he.

Mourning what he'd become, until the memories faded back into obscurity. Letting himself fade back into nothing but an afterthought.

Above and well beyond out of sight, Susie Campbell wept as Alice whispered comfortingly to her in their shared mind.

The poor dear had only wanted her old friend to have a chance to be comfortable and rest. That, it seemed, had been a horrible mistake on her part.

There just wasn't anything in this cold and brutal world of theirs that could alleviate such misery as the one that burdened the Projectionist.