#just absolute abysmal levels of horror

[sunsetsmakemesad]

Alice's life was so horrifying dude

[fernsnailz]

January 2024 Review Roundup

hello everypony‼️ something i want to do through 2024 is a mini review series where i recap some of the media i watched/played/read at the end of every month. this was inspired by tumblr user ponett’s 2023 media wrap-up, it's a great collection of quick reviews so go check it out!

i’m doing this partially as writing/analysis practice, but mostly because my memory is really bad and i want to keep track of what i've seen this year. with that said, my thoughts on everything i finished in january 2024 is under the cut :]

Portal 1 + 2

yyyup i beat Portal and it only took me (checks watch) 13 years

the first time i played Portal 2 was at a friend’s house when i was in middle school, and i had a fuckin blast. but after all that time... it still holds up! i don’t think anything i have to say about Portal will be particularly new since people have been praising this series since it came out. the writing, the level design, even the controls feel tight and engaging the whole way through. i played on switch and expected a bit of jank, but i was pleasantly surprised at how smooth it felt to play. the only part that dragged for me were the levels through the old aperture labs, but i think i would like them a lot more on a second replay. Portal 2 is fantastic and one of my new favorite games, the artistry behind it is truly incredible and i’m really glad i finally finished it. while i was playing Portal 2, i described Glados and Wheatly to a friend and said “they’re like if a ceiling fan could be passive aggressive and if Fozzie Bear was an evil golf ball”

I Think You Should Leave

finally. i can truly understand and appreciate Subspace Dubbed Over

i think one of my favorite things about I Think You Should Leave is how it utilizes horror. beyond sitting slack-jawed in disbelief at the crazy events unfolding before my eyes, a number of the sketches dipped into bits that genuinely kinda scared me. like the one sketch that circulates on here where the guy (pig?) in a mask crawls through a dog door, which is. genuinely terrifying. but so many of the other sketches have slow, nerve-racking pacing leading to crazy shit that would be perfect in a horror film were the context different. idk i like dissecting how horror and comedy are essentially the same thing and I Think You Should Leave was very good at enabling that <3 favorite sketches are probably “then let my wife eat the damn receipt” and “55 BURGERS 55 HOTDOGS 100 FRIES 100 TATER TOTS”

Sonic Prime Season 3

man. ohhhh man. i didn’t go into this with high expectations and i still feel let down. Sonic Prime Season 3 was definitely my least favorite “season” of the batch - abysmal pacing, very few character moments i actually enjoyed, and the things i praised about the show felt very underutilized through these episodes. Nine is the shining star of Sonic Prime and i was looking forward to seeing his more villainous side, but his character took such a sharp turn into pure evil and it felt like he spent the entire season repeating the same three lines. and as much as i praise Shadow’s writing in Prime, it doesn’t really matter when he spends half of the season trapped in a hole that he just… runs out of later.

lastly, i cannot stop thinking about how bad the pacing of this season is. three episodes for a repetitive final battle feels like such a waste of time when you see just how much they rush the emotional resolutions in the last episode. however, there is one thing i truly love about Sonic Prime Season 3 - i love the Sails and Mangey fakeout death. it's so fucking funny. like you really expect me to believe that two cartoon animals in this Y-7 rated show EXPLODED?????? absolute comedy gold.

overall, i just… don’t really know what to think of Sonic Prime. anything i enjoyed in the show was often fleeting, and much of it felt like its only purpose was to waste my time. also Rouge i can’t believe they did you so dirty oh my god

Ghost Trick

i was so proud that i figured out the secret behind Sissel’s memory loss like halfway through the game. however i also kept getting caught during the prison escape sequence like an idiot

Ghost Trick is in a similar situation as Portal where 1. it’s incredible and one of my new favorite games, and 2. there’s nothing i can really say about it that hasn’t already been said or just. shouldn’t be said. Ghost Trick is a fantastic mystery game, and because of that i think it’s best to go into its story as blind as possible. the narrative unfolds in such fascinating ways - even though the actual object manipulation gameplay isn’t directly about solving the mystery (like in Ace Attorney or other mystery games), it still ties wonderfully into the story in some incredibly unique ways.

i also really love the artstyle of Ghost Trick - i love 2D character artwork with that sharp lineweight, it reminded me a lot of Sonic Battle (another game with an artstyle i love). i was also really impressed by the 3D character models and animation - despite the limitations of the camera, you get a wonderful sense of everyone’s personality from the limited body language expressed in the overworld (even though the models lack much facial expression which. i guess they don’t really need? idk that was the only thing that threw me off). anyways yeah everyone should play Ghost Trick so Ghost Trick fans can be freed from their curse and talk about it without having to tag like 10 different spoiler tags. and for Missile

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

ok bear with me. i went into Scott Pilgrim Takes Off without reading the comics first. and i fuckin loved it

my understanding of Scott Pilgrim before SPTO was mostly from the movie (I KNOW I’M SORRY), but even with my base understanding of the series i really enjoyed this show for what it was. i found myself appreciating the time they dedicated to further develop every single character in the show - especially Ramona. she’s fantastic as the lead, i really loved watching her reconcile with her exes and seeing all of them grow instead of exploding into coins. my favorite episode was probably the one with her and Roxie - not only did i adore the movie-jumping set pieces, but you really understand the weight of Ramona’s mistakes in their past relationship and how much it hurt Roxie. despite the big climactic fight, the flashbacks are quiet, subtle, heartbreaking. Ramona’s apology is genuine, and it feels so wonderful to watch her confront her past throughout the show. also i think it’s really funny that for all these characters to become the best versions of themselves, they had to kill off Scott for most of the story

and holy shit the artstyle and animation. oh my god. i love watching something that makes me immediately go “i need to see the storyboards for this RIGHT NOW.” SPTO is such a visual delight to watch, it elevates the artstyle of the comics while also keeping what makes that style so appealing - i love the line weight on the characters, i love how much forward energy the animation has, i love the fucking. virtual boy section. as soon as i found out Science Saru was also behind Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, everything made immediate sense. i was destined to love this show.

another worry i had going into SPTO (besides the fact that i hadn’t read the comics lol) is that the original cast from the movie was returning. i think the movie cast is fine, but i wasn’t sure how some of them would fare with voice acting for animation. however, i thought they all did a good job - i think the whole cast loves these characters and would be able to fit into them fairly easily no matter what form their performance takes, and they definitely had a good voice director in the studio with them. the only thing that felt off about the voice performances to me was that sometimes it sounded like some of their mics kept peaking?? idk some of these episodes i watched high as balls and i felt like i could hear and see every single sound and frame of the show. so that might have just been me.

god i did not. expect to have this much to say about Scott Pilgrim. i really loved this show and i’m currently reading the comics to fully catch up on the general Scott Pilgrim experience - i think reading the comics AFTER Takes Off is making me appreciate even more of the character work that went into the show. like they do so much with Mathew Patel in SPTO, a character that was. not originally around for a long time from what i’ve gathered? also i like the funny little robot. oh my GOD i cannot talk about this show anymore whatever it’s good get me out of here

Sword AF Season 1

i put on the Smosh cast’s D&D series to play in the background while i was drawing. i did not expect to think much of it. instead, i had one of the most enjoyable D&D podcast experiences since i listened to The Adventure Zone Balance???

i haven’t really enjoyed other D&D podcasts since i dropped off of The Adventure Zone, and i wasn’t expecting much from Sword AF of all things. then i saw that Shayne was playing as a druid warforged made of plants and his name was fucking Fernie and i sat my ass down and LISTENED. while i think Sword AF is currently lacking in its world and larger story, those things just. aren’t really what Sword AF is really trying to provide at the moment. it’s main focus is comedy, and the players are genuinely such a delight to watch play together and build off of each other. they mostly focus on bits and goofs for the sake of she show's comedic tone, but i still found it thoroughly enjoyable because every player embodies and performs their characters really well. idk Sword AF was an unexpected hit for me this month, i thought it was fun. and i love Fernie so much

Plastic Death - Glass Beach

so originally i wasn’t going to include music reviews in these roundups at all, but then i was entirely surprised by a new Glass Beach album and oh my god. holy shit. oh my fucking god jesus christ. holy shit. its preddy good

Plastic Death gets the low point of the album out of the way immediately. it starts with the “phone call/conversation audio” trope that i don’t particularly enjoy - HOWEVER despite me disliking this opening, 1. it sets up the overall themes of Plastic Death very quickly, and 2. the rest of the album blows this 40 second opening completely out of the water. from there, the album grows into something beautiful and uncontained, and i just. i really like it

Plastic Death captures the beauty of the temporary, asks what it means to be created for a cause you can’t fulfill, questions if you can reclaim yourself from cycles and constraints designed to destroy you. and is also about being transgender. the lyrics are abstract in a way that requires a conversation with the listener, many of the vocals obscured and smooth like waves - this album is definitely one that needs to be listened to a few times. i wasn’t sure how i felt about the vocal style at first before realizing the vocals were the main reason i was relistening to this album, allowing myself to find even more that i loved about it. the instrumentation is also incredible, i love the use of marimba in a number of songs - distant, eerie, almost skeletal. and the fucking. 8-bit section?? which kinda rules???? and that’s the only point in the album it ever shows up??????? incredible. a fleeting, somewhat silly moment that i love every time.

this album left my heart aching, in part from my connection to it and in part from the pure love and joy emanating from this music. i can feel just how much fun this music was to perform and create, a cohesion of time and sound that just clicked for me. Plastic Death made me miss playing music, which is something i haven’t felt in years. all from an album that starts with a conversation about CrankGameplay’s dead youtube channel. good lord

i like this album a normal amount. go listen to it a few times. my favorite tracks are cul-de-sac and commatose

Wish

i watched Wish with a couple of friends and knew i probably wasn't going to like it. with that in mind, i gave myself a challenge: i wanted to find one thing about this movie that i genuinely really loved. it could be anything, and loving it for ironic reasons was allowed.

here's the complete list of things i loved about Disney's Wish (2023):

i love the one shot where King Magnifico stirs an evil caldron evily. i thought it was hilarious. what was he cooking

i loved that the end credits included a reference to Dinosaur 2001 at all, and i loved that they paid homage to Big Hero 6 by showing the forgettable villain of that movie instead of their Baymax cashcow for some reason. my friends and i saw him show up in the credits and were like "who's the trenchcoat guy??"

you may notice that this list is very short and 50% of it is about the movie's credits. so yeah this movie is not very good

Wish is an empty husk of a movie. everything about it feels so, so hollow - lifeless town squares, uninspired character designs (to quote a friend: "i have all of these characters' hairstyles in The Sims"), characters whose existence is only justified to fill empty space or an overused archetype, and an "evil" villain who lacks charisma and spine in a futile effort to remind the audience of previous disney villains with actual character. even the artstyle lacks any sort of sauce, the watercolor effect they were trying to go for only makes the backgrounds and character textures run together, and the dull lighting makes things look even more faded. it's like disney was scared of making a movie that made its audience feel... anything. all to celebrate 100 years of Disney slop, baby!!!

Some YouTube videos I liked in January: 💥 An Exhaustive Look at Pokemon Brilliant Diamond 💥 TomSka's Guide to Plagiarism 💥 Paradise Bombed (this video is a great piece of journalism and i’m definitely not doing it justice by throwing it into the youtube vid list) 💥 Surprising Our Friends with Zoo Animals 💥 Did FNAF Ever Have a Good Story?

thanks for reading! next month’s roundup will be wild because i’ll likely be reviewing House of Leaves and Hazbin Hotel. can you guess which cursed house gives me a worse headache? WHO KNOWS! (hint: it's Hazbin Hotel)

[miiilowo]

Hey Milo, follow-up question regarding In the Flesh: why does this exist.

(Like genuinely why are there FNAF books. Is it a sales thing? AFAIK the lore is different in some ways and none of it is directly referenced in any of the games, where did the books come from? WHO WROTE THESE)

i dont. know..........

The FNAF books originally began as a main-line novel series. While still being sort of insane, they were...relatively? grounded; You had your main cast characters investigating an old Freddy's location. Hijinks ensue, alongside sexy robot clones of people that turn into sexier versions of already existing robots but im getting ahead of myself

The original novels aren't supposed to directly line up with the FNAF game timeline in any sense, and are more like an alternate universe that provides information to fill up holes and gaps in the lore of the games. And to get Scott Cawthon money of course

The other book series (Tales of The Pizzaplex & Fazbear Frights) fill the same niche, but instead of being a direct line of novels they're more like goosebumps books. they're anthologies. they have absolutely nothing holding them together, and they get batshit insane. i am wholly convinced that most of the people involved in these projects have no idea what fnaf even is on a base level, aside from "fucked up haunted robots at a pizzeria kill people"

some of them have good concepts, but are executed poorly. most of the time, they have bad concepts and are executed badly. sometimes they accidentally write what looks like intentional anti-trans allegories. sometimes a girl accidentally kills her friend in a...freddy fazbears pizza factory, only for her friend to only kind of be dead and for there to be like, two of her for some reason. sometimes they have springtrap mpreg. sometimes a kid's flesh gets replaced by sea monkeys that resemble bonnie. and of course lest we not forget FAZ GOO whatever the fuck FAZ GOO is

there's only one story that sort of feels FNAF to me, which would be one called bunny call. it mimics (ha. hahahahah. ha. sorry you wouldnt get that) the gameplay loop in a sense at one point, with a father trying to keep his family safe from an intruder as he makes a mad dash around the cabin, not letting it get in any of the entrances. that's all fine and good, but the COVER ART DOESN'T EVEN MATCH WHAT'S DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK ASIDE FROM IT BEING A CARTOON RABBIT

whatever purpose the books originally had has sort of been entirely lost and spun into it's whole separate universe with vague fnaf allusions, existing almost entirely to make money. at least, thats how fazbear frights was. what's worse is tales of the pizzaplex, a series in which you absolutely 100% cannot understand anything happening in security breach without reading them, and feels more like a band-aid solution to the absolutely abysmal storytelling and lore that game didn't get to execute. i could go on for hours and hours about SB's cut content and story, but thats not the point here

i've yet to find a diehard fnaf fan who actually enjoys these things. which, i suppose, makes sense, since theyre more targeted toward children (which is odd considering all the extreme body horror in almost every single book, when you remember they wouldnt let vanny have her knife in SB for the sake of family friendliness) but it doesn't change the fact that theyre just absolutely fucking nuts and incoherent

i typed out way more than i wanted to here but ive been thinking about the books a LOT recently. i thought the sci-fi angle the main novels took was bad, unaware of the world of terror i was about to unleash by checking these out

[flyingcookierambles]

*sweeps sugar apple fairy tale under a rug of embarrassing things in a fan of, with other such things like moral Orel, game of thrones (Jaime x brianne and Cersei x therapy plz lol), kill la kill, oreimo (in my defense I shipped kyosuke and ayase the funny tsundere friend, not kyousuke and kirino. Also I was literally 14 and klk and oreimo premiered the same summer season and i watched them back to back bc they both aired new episodes on saturdays and i had a crunchyroll sub at the time), sachi iro one room, happy sugar life, killing stalking (ok look i was in it for the psychological horror thriller. but the way that others in the fandom and even the lezhin company advertised it as some *eDgY rOmAnCe* uwu made even me be like. have critical thinking skills and/or get help lmao, this is not what the author intended at all??? so i kinda distanced myself from it bc the other fans were so embarrassing. plus i didnt want to give lezhin money after this controversy that they blacklisted or sabotaged/didnt advertise lgbt+ webcomics and authors in s korea. only koogi got out unscathed bc ks was so popular so the company couldn't do anything to her publicly or pull the ks web advertisements that they already paid for but smaller authors got affected so iirc koogi tweeted about it), king maker (part of the above lezhin issue that particular summer and part just lezhin only localized the first season and they never did the second season?? i think the 2nd season english translation rights went to another webcomic site but idk what it was), etc.

anyways I’m happy and surprised that sugar apple fairy tale is getting an anime. It was def obscure in the US, with only the first two of the light novels fan translated until the fan group’s raws provider got tired and quit to focus on his job or family or something?? Idk, good for him I guess?? Anyways, the group basically went on hiatus or broke up afterwards on that series and so I got the first three raw light novels via rakuten kobo ePub for the purpose of language learning with the translation and raw side by side reading. I didn’t get very far due to my language level being. Absolutely abysmal. But I did like it and was very sad to see that the group only did the first two chapters of the third novel before quitting. I’m happy that the anime is out and plan to watch it and also yen press picked up the rights for the books so I’ll definitely buy it legally now instead of. Poor Google translate and guessing of how to interpret sentences. Lol. Yen press is already on the third one, so I’ll buy the ePub when I get home probably and they have the fourth release scheduled for September 2023 I think. Yay.

[lunewell]

The Lunewell Saga - Natura: Ch 3

Chapter 1 here

Chapter 2 here

Can also be read on ao3 (:

Book Sumary:

Zarifa Birch, an antique shop worker with an unusual past, has made a home for herself in the sleepy town of Lunewell. Though the shop she works at is not exactly ordinary, with cryptid items and odd occurrences, she has managed to carve the normal life she always desperately wished for out of it.

However, all that comes crumbling down, as a woman from Zarifa’s past throws everything into chaos. Faced with unimaginable horrors, seemingly unsolvable mysteries, and returning repressed feelings and memories, Zarifa along with her coworkers, must find a way to return the balance- and escape the cruel hands of death in this eldritch horror mystery

As always, he had not been himself in the night. He had been an old man, holding a rather nice-smelling bag, walking through the forest towards… something. Something he cared about.

His thoughts were not quite his own, but not the man's either; more a drowsy sort of mish-mash of voices, a bit like falling asleep in the middle of a bustling city. However, none of it really mattered, as he very much felt, smelled, and lived in the forest, above the crunchy leaves and around the warm scent. So hard to place. It was familiar, and yet, the exact detail of it had faded out.

He could hear his own voice, humming. It did not sound like his voice, not really, but it felt like his own, and that was enough for it to be his own. The vibrations travelled through his chest as he burst out in melodic sounds. He was humming a workers’ song, one that someone in his family had sung. Again, the details were blurry, like there was a block in his brain.

The forest was calm, basking in a sunny glow. Autumn leaves decked the ground, and the trees looked familiar. There was a comfort in this place, a home in the scent of mud and moss, and one that he cherished happily.

The trees, though originally quiet to his senses, rustled softly in a pleasant way. The wind must’ve been extra strong, he must’ve just not noticed it through the thick shield of stems.

The trees rustled once more, and felt a beat against the soles of his feet. It was slight, barely noticeable, but it got him to tilt his stiff, aged, neck downwards, if even just for a second.

It was then that it truly happened.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the trees curving, but he didn’t have any time to process as he was slammed down to the ground by a vine sprouting from the ground. A crack wrecked through his body, not unlike the sound a carrot makes when snapping, and he, in what simultaneously was and wasn’t his voice, howled in pain. His leg, already weak to begin with, felt as though it had been ripped in two, and he could clearly see red blood leaking from where the knee was bent at an unnatural angle. Fire coursed through his nerves, burning from his leg to his spine. The pain was so mind-numbing that he didn’t notice the much pointier vine heading right for him until it was too late.

As though it was sentient, a throned vine plunged at him, and punctured right into his stomach. It sliced all the way through him, as though his body was not but soft butter, before pulling out in an equally swift motion and landing him limp on the ground.

There was no pain, even as thorns began to wrap around and puncture every millimeter of skin, only numbness. Numbness from pain that could not be described in the English language. Numbness that no one alive had ever felt. Numbness that acted as a relenting defeat against his continuous fight for any hope of life.

And as he lay there, hands bloodstained, stomach gaping, and so incredibly empty, he feared. Feared for his wife, feared for his unachieved goals, feared for what was coming next. Even this fear, however, held a tragic sort of air to it, as it was dulled down by unrelenting numbness.

The numbness faded, along with all thoughts, as white, hot, pain came crashing down like a hammer. He let out one last pitiful, agony filled screech - for a scream was much too human to cover the sound - muffled by the thorns that had stuck themselves into his lips, before everything went black in what was truly the kindest mercy. ————————————————

Bruin awoke with a gasp, clutching his stomach. His eyes darted around his barren room, pulse racing at an olympic level under his skin. With a weak breath - still clutching his stomach with an iron grip - he closed his eyes, and repeated his mantra; You’re Bruin Becker, you’re not them, you’re safe.

The phrase played over and over again in his mind as his vision slowly morphed from a blur of panic, to the usual, groggy morning one. Taking a more stable breath, he slowly let go of his stomach. He couldn’t resist scanning his hands for blood, though he knew there was none.

Once he was sure his hands were clean, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and watched the world come to life. The white desk and closet popped from the midnight blue walls, the sheets on his bed clear as glass. He glanced at his face in the mirror, and was not surprised at what he saw; deep, dark bags under his slender eyes, porcupine-like hair, and a thin sheet of sweat that lined his forehead.

He collapsed back into his bed with a tired sigh, wanting nothing more than to ignore the clock that was taunting him with the ridiculous hour he had awoken. He would probably do that. Go back to blissful sleep, that is. He doubted he even had gotten an ounce of it because of his stupid… nightmares? Visions? Whatever they were.

He closed his eyes, relaxing back into his bed, mind so far gone and forgetting one quintessentially, very, important thing. A thing he was oh-so-kindly reminded of by what could have only been described as the sound of every single plate in the house shattering at once.

With an almost inhuman speed, Bruin threw the cover from his bed, and darted to the room next door. He adjusted his hair along the way in a frantic motion, pulse having quickened yet again at the commotion. He braked as he reached the kitchen doorway, looking at the source of the sound.

On the grey tiles sat a dazed Grant, covered head to toe in flour, shards of ceramic plates scattered around him like a bomb had just gone off. Grant looked sheepishly at Bruin, blue eyes just as bagged as his own. “Uhh… good morning?”

Bruin couldn’t help the look of absolute disappointment that rolled over his face. “How did you manage to - never mind. I don’t want to know,” he said, exasperated, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Well, if you must know,” Grant began, ignoring Bruin’s statement, “I was trying to make pancakes. Keyword there being trying.” He got up and tried dusting off the flour powdered on him like snow, but gave up almost immediately. “It was a shame really. I make lovely pancakes. It’s the only good thing about living with me, according to my dearest exes.”

“I’m surprised they listed any good things about living with you,” Bruin mumbled, before joining Grant to pick up the last pieces of the plates.

Though he would never admit it, Grant had been a blessing in disguise. When he first rented the little cottage in Lunewell, he had accepted that his co-worker would be an annoying, messy, music-box obsessed pest in the house that he would hopefully have to deal with as little as humanly possible.

Yet, almost like a mold, he had to admit that Grant had grown on him. Sure, he still couldn’t stand the messiness, and he swore that every time he turned a corner he saw another damn music-box, but those were things he had learned to forgive over the years.

“What possessed you to make pancakes?” Bruin questioned as they threw the last pieces in the trash.

Grant quieted, biting his lip.“They’re great comfort food,” he said slowly, as if testing out the words.

Bruin tensed, suddenly hyper aware of the rumbling in his stomach. “Oh,” he said quietly, after minutes of silence, “did you have a bad night’s sleep?” The question was pointless, but Bruin felt the need to ask it anyway. If only to take away from the barking that had begun playing in his ears.

“Yeah,” Grant responded, eyeing him, “I was up working on fixing an antique box, planning to go to bed, but I think someone was begging for their life outside, which wasn’t a very nice sound to fall asleep too.”

It was an invitation, one which he pondered for a while, before finally giving his response; “I wouldn't imagine so, no.”

He looked away as Grant's ocean blue eyes filled with pity, something that hurt him as much as any gun wound. “Hey, I… uh,” Grant began, no longer looking at him, “don’t feel obligated to answer this, but, are they getting worse?”

“You should probably go and get changed. I’ll make some breakfast for us. We still have a while before work.”

Grant, bless his heart, didn’t push. Instead, he simply nodded, vanishing the sad look from his eyes. He was halfway out the door, when he turned around with a snap; “that’s what I was forgetting to tell you!” he said, “Zarifa called earlier, she wants us to come in early.”

“Really? That’s unusual.”

“My thoughts exactly. I didn’t ever find out why though, she remained all vague. Sounded a bit panicked, if I’m honest.”

Bruin nodded. “We’ll head out after you and I get changed then. I’m not really in the mood for breakfast anyway.”

“Aye aye, Bruiny,” Grant said with a mock salute, before slipping out the door and presumably into his bedroom. Bruin did the same, taking one last glance around the rustic kitchen before walking towards his own room with a newfound haste. Zarifa had always been more than lenient with the times they showed and left work, especially once she realised both Grant and Bruin had abysmal sleep quality and patterns, so something like this was not only highly unusual, but equally concerning.

He just hoped nothing too terrible had happened. ——————————————

The walk to the Office was a beautiful one, especially this time of year. They were both bundled in hats and scarves that Grant had insisted on, as golden yellows and flaming hues passed and fell around them. For all the flack they could both give Lunewell - a lack of internet service, isolation from almost everything, and navigational systems that were seemingly built by a sadist - neither could deny that living there on mornings like this was truly a magical experience.

Or would be, were it not for the unfortunate scenario.

“Oh I hope she’s alright,” Grant panted out, slightly out of breath from the speedwalking that bordered on jogging. Working in antiques was unfortunately not a field that kept one in great physical condition, and in moments like this it truly showed.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Bruin reassured, “thinking logically, we know nothing serious has happened,” probably, “so it’s most likely something mundane, slightly ominous at best.”

Grant looked unsure at that, but didn’t say anything. Under the glasses, Bruin could practically see the well-oiled cogs turning in his head, eyes glaze as though lost in the mechanical world. It was his typical zoning out look, which was for once highly appreciated, as Bruin himself was in no mood to talk.

They walked up the path, letting the old, wooden store come into view. It seemed no different than yesterday, albeit much darker, except for, alarmingly enough, a room in the upstairs flat. They shared a questioning look, panic visible on both their faces, before speeding up and half-sprinting to the door.

With a lead ball in his stomach, Bruin realised that the door was not only unlocked, but stood slightly ajar. He shoved it further open, with an urgency but still lightly, as not to break any antiques.

Even the golden rays of autumn sun couldn’t hide the ruins of the shop. The furniture was at a slight angle, as though a lash had come whipping at the legs, the fragile glass and ceramics that had been close to shattering finally lay dead and dismembered on the floor, and most concerningly, there was an unidentifiable black liquid smelling vaguely of ozone.

“Zarifa?” Grant began calling, stepping over the mess with all the grace of a drunk octopus, “Zari? Boss? Are you in there?” Bruin followed his shouting companion, straightening the furniture as he went. They made it to the counter, still no sight of her, though that was changed as they heard a thunderclap of a sound emitting from the backroom.

They were in the employees’ lounge within seconds of the sound, greeted by the sight of an unusually casually dressed Zarifa surrounded by long walls of antiques, stacked in an organised manner. “Oh good,” she said, upon seeing them, giving them a warm smile that reached her tired eyes, “you made it.”

Bruin wasn’t so much looking at her, as staring at the large pile of antiques behind her. Some of them he recognised, like the ‘Girl in Field’ painting, or that odd statue of an old man made of clay, 200 years old, but painted in a cornflower blue pigment that could be no more than 100, though there were also surprisingly a lot of pieces he had no recollection of seeing. Zarifa, noticing his staring, looked at him apologetically; “Sorry I had to dismantle your system. I tried to keep the organisation, and I promise I’ll help sort it afterwards.”

“It’s fine. I’ll sort it myself,” he assured, not quite sure he truly trusted anyone to touch what he had sorted. Grant was a disaster on legs, and for as much as Zarifa was good at keeping schedule, she lacked the sheer efficient sorting instinct he had had since childhood. “Why is it all up here? Was there water in the basement again?”

Zarifa shook her head, before pulling a slightly splintered, old, wooden box with a golden, dust-painted leaf-engraving on top from behind one of the piles. Bruin’s eyes widened as he remembered where it had previously been, involuntarily glancing upstairs, and then back down to Zarifa. She hadn’t really… had she? No one had ever been in Valours flat, hell, no one even had the key to it.

She opened the lid cautiously, the box creaking as ancient and rusted hinges pulled back. She pulled out aged, folded paper, and slowly laid it down in Bruins hands. Though he would of course properly examine it later, he could tell it was far older than anything he was comfortable holding with his bare, gloveless hands. “It’s more sturdy than it looks,” comforted Zarifa, upon seeing his panicky stature, “go ahead, open it up.”

With a force comparable to a feather, he opened it in precise, calculated movements. He winced as he saw the handwriting, the fine, thin squiggles dating the paper to 300 years old at least, letting go of the note to the point it was barely still in his hands. He felt Grant peeking over his shoulder, and down onto the note curiously, mumbling the words as he read down the torn page.

It wasn’t a very long read, but it added tenfold to the confusion. “What seal?” Grant eventually asked, looking up at Zarifa, “this is the page blonde-pink-girl wanted, right? Why would anyone want this?”

Zaria sighed, looking at the paper with a darkness in her eyes. She looked contemplative, opening her mouth a few times to begin a sentence, before shaking her head and going back to thought. Finally, after tracing the golden part of the box a few rounds, silence echoing the room, she spoke; “We’ve all had encounters with Them before, right?”

Even with that single word, everyone in the room instantly Knew what she was talking about. It was Them that had drawn the entire group to the shop, Them that had left that hollowness that lived in all their eyes, Them that left all of them flinching at sounds and throwing hurried glances over shoulders, and most importantly, Them that created the bond they all shared.

Zarifa signed; “Take a seat, boys. This might require a bit of an explanation.”

—————- After a long, long conversation, involving the raiding of Valour’s alcohol stash for some well earned drinking, along with expensive chocolates for an alcohol-abstaining Bruin, all had finally been explained. There was a silence in the air, tinged in cheap wine and dread, as they all looked intently at the ornate box. “So,” Grant said, clasping his hands ripping away the silence like a band-aid, “we’re dealing with a big orb, monster thingy, which intentions are unknown, who kidnapped our intruder who was reading text that made vines sprout around her and smoke fill her eyes.”

“Yeah, that sums up what I experienced this morning nicely.”

Grant blinked, Bruin hurrying his mouth which had been firmly hidden deeper in his palm. “Fucking hell, I need another drink,” Grant exclaimed with a groan, reaching his hand out with his designated office mug towards Bruin.

“You guys are all out,” Bruin said with a tired voice, “besides, I don’t think alcohol is the wisest right now. I think we should try to figure out what actually happened.”

“Good idea,” Zarifa said with a nod, “we can begin with the note. Funnily enough, it’s the easiest thing here to deconstruct.” She took the box and gave it one last glance over, before rotating it away from herself and giving Grant and Bruin the opportunity to see it; “Obviously the seal is referring to the monster. I think it’s just a matter of gathering the ingredients, and whatever happened, will be reversed.”

Bruin, more than prepared, had already pulled out his black notebook and found an empty page. He looked once again at the section of the note containing the ingredients:

A key is forged by fragments of Touched sanity eating a sight of one that Sees, dipped in water oh-so divine. Once the key has begun, the fragments must sew themselves between the fabric, letting all webbed light shine on them. As they are blessed by the minute, and after the final step of-

And out of the nonsense, quickly jotted down the list of ideas that had been proposed by a slightly tipsy Grant, and an unusually frantic Zarifa;

Fragmented Touched sanity (Magic mind? Pieces of brain?) Sight of one that Sees (Some creature’s eyes obviously, maybe cow eye cult? (Most likely, Grant’s paranoia over cow eye cult, and not actually cow eye cult)) Water divine (Holy water?) Webbed light (Interconnected grids of light? Light systems?)

Jotting them down like that, was sadly, not very revealing. Partly because all their minds were still reeling, and what they had brainstormed was mostly a series of disjointed thoughts rather than a narrative, and partly because there was still so much hidden at the bottom of the riddle ocean. Bruin could still hardly find himself believing Zarifa’s situation, and had it not been for the black liquid stains he saw himself, the cryptic note, and the wobbly tone of her words as she recounted the events, he probably would have dismissed her as being driven a bit mad by paranoia.

Even now, fully aware of the fact that it was real, he was incredibly tempted to just storm out the shop, notebook in hand. Though he encountered the unearthly almost every time he was in deep slumber, he had never actually had a fully conscious encounter. And those… nightmares, visions - whatever they could be called - had left him gluing the pieces of his mind with only the instinct of survival. A real encounter would break him.

And yet, he couldn’t run. He had nowhere to go. Thorns Antique wasn’t so much a place he had chosen to stay, as a shelter he had desperately thrown himself into. Physically, yes of course he could travel or move. Marcus had been asking him if they could move in together for months, and would be more than elated to take him in. And he was sure he could put that business degree to good use.

But, though he was physically free as a dove, his mental wings were clipped. What was he supposed to do when he inevitably woke up one night in Marcus’s bed, screaming about the knife that he was convinced was lodged in his brain? How would he explain the countless of cryptic, weird, objects littered between pages upon pages of ripped-out death notices? Markus would see him as insane, and any future job he would have wouldn’t tolerate his hazy, obsessive, jumpy, and sleep-deprived state.

Though he did not personally know what their stories really were, he suspected Zarifa and Grant were stranded on the same boat of forbidden knowledge. Zarifa had no interest in history, having a passion for literature instead, and a people-pleasing nature and work ethic that could get her far, and Grant, though a bit of a clumsy idiot, was also incredibly academically bright, and a true cityguy at heart. They were an odd group, but a strongly connected one.

Or, at least somewhat connected.

“I propose we figure out what to do now,” Bruin muttered, after reading the bullet points a couple of times, “I don’t think there’s a standard protocol for situations such as these.”

Zarifa hummed in agreement, leaning against the table with a pensive look, sipping on some more wine. “I think we should prioritise figuring out what the riddle is actually saying,” she said, “and I think most of the answers lay here. There must be some connections between all this supernatural weirdness, and I’m pretty sure it lies in the antiques.”

Bruin and Grant nodded, both pulling the wildly uncomfortable chairs close to the table in a loud, squeaking drag. “As for the stuff that we can’t find the answer to,” Zarifa continued, once everyone was seated, “we can always ask for that.” She turned to Grant; “You’ve called Valour, right?”

Grant blinked, the words taking a few seconds to register, before grimacing sheepishly. “I’ll go do that afterwards, promise.” Bruin sighed, but Zarifa simply nodded. She’d always been a lot more forgiving of his scatterbrain than Bruin.

“I’ll do the same with Lottie. Assuming she’s, well, alive. She probably won’t answer, but it's worth a shot.”

“Thought Lottie didn’t give us her number?” Grant said, Bruin mirroring his confusion. Zarifa stiffened, smile dropping by a minuscule amount.

“She didn’t, but I know how to get in contact with her,” she stated, in her best assertive tone. Before Bruin could ask what she meant by that, she powered on, bulldozing in a purposeful manner. “What about you, Bruin?”

Bruin racked his mind for a good answer, recalling what needed to be done, and all the archival systems they had buried in the husk of a computer. “Every item has a corresponding ID, and a short descriptor. I wouldn’t mind taking a look at both the system and the antiques . However, we’re all out of gloves, and our magnifying glass has been broken for two months, so I’ll head to the shop first.”

While this was completely true, Bruin did leave out the little detail that it was also beyond time to see Marcus again. Through a mix of nightly hauntings, and antique mishaps, the days had somehow slipped by without them having a proper chat. He didn’t so much mind the lack of interaction, as the guilt that came with it.

“Thank you,” Zarifa said with a smile, “and, if it isn’t too much of a bother, please keep an eye out for any… unusual sights.” He nodded, her shoulders slumping down visibly, even under the thick cream turtleneck. Grant then promptly slipped out of the room to give Valour a ring with his smashed phone, and Zarifa headed out the front door and into the shop to tidy what was left of the mess, leaving him all alone.

He buried his hands into his neatly combed hair, tension deflating like a balloon as he exhaled heavily. His head was being squeezed by a thick rubber band, though whether it was the usual sleep deprivation or stress was anyone’s guess, and his eyes were droopy and heavy, as if magnets were attempting to pull them closed.

Nevertheless, he got up, pulling his winter coat and messenger bag off the chair. He left the scarf and hat where they lay, feeling they were a bit over the top considering it was only October. Slipping the black notebook into the black and purple bag, he headed out the door, and towards the outside world, heading in a general life direction he was not fully comfortable with.

[kyogre-blue]

Kokomi, chapter 1

It’s bad. To no one’s surprise. 

I complained about Ayaka and Yoimiya, and Mihoyo wrote this just to punish me. Yes, that’s right! I’m saying their stories are better written!

To quickly overview, this is basically “one step forward, three steps back” or some kind of monkey paw situation. 

I relate to Kokomi being an introvert who is forced to deal with all this against her will. But Kokomi’s writing is absolutely awful, she’s completely incompetent. Additionally, she’s forced to do all this because the Divine Priestess is always someone from her bloodline. Are we supposed to relate to that? Get rid of the bloodline nonsense, or have a relative do it. 

We actually get follow up on the war (and the mandated date is an introvert’s hangout at home). But the political writing is completely abysmal as always. It’s like far worse tax evasion. This is why Ayaka and Yoimiya are better off, incidentally. Their stories don’t have the scope, so the writing isn’t as awful. The overall direction of the issues is also just really bad. 

There’s some gameplay, but the gameplay is bad. The main takeaway is tick tick tick tick tick tick as you change the in game clock endlessly. 

Specific thoughts: 

Kokomi is a completely crazy level of micromanager. It’s no wonder no one except Gorou listens to her. Her directives are absolutely insane, and no one (except mega simp Gorou I guess?) would ever be able to actually use them. As expected, they are worthless at the climax. 

She also does the Jean school of chasing every lost cat herself. This is ridiculous. No wonder you’re so tired girl. Learn to delegate. 

Her supposed brilliance suffers wildly from the writers being totally braindead. And I do mean this. They can’t apply basic logic, much less create a genuinely genius character. Her way of thinking is extremely shallow. For example the entire mess with the stolen goods. Her island just came out of an extreme shortage (people were starving during the war), but she never considers that even if the collusion is false, the Tenryou Commission could just directly harm them by buying up and exporting/destroying necessary items. There is also a weird and confusing point where the soldiers say the merchant was buying things up, but then his goods are marked by Tenryou crest, so like...??

She’s also just utterly incompetent as a leader. We cheerfully hit the third time her troops lie to her and disobey her. She’s so incompetent she can’t even manage to arrange a loyal retinue for the peace talks. 

She asks the Traveler, a total outsider, to get intel. She literally has this little control over anyone among her people. She has NO reliable support at all! 

She also hilariously contradicts various points about the game so far. Like telling us we can’t take 3 whole Fatui through brute force. Girl, we beat Osial. We beat two Harbingers. We faced down Raiden Shogun. And you think we need complex strategies to fight three Fatui? She says that Watatsumi must seem alien to the Traveler because it’s different from the rest of Inazuma, but the Traveler isn’t from Inazuma at all. It’s ALL alien. Etc. 

In general, the writers continue to be utterly incapable of keeping track of their own writing. One soldier reminisces about how glorious the Traveler looked while fighting Shogunate samurai as captain of Swordfish II. Except we never did that. We fought brigands and Fatui, that’s it. Someone wants to go back to front line, but there IS no frontline at this point. Kokomi says they have strong trade ties with “other areas (aside from Nakurami)” but what areas would that be? We’re under Sakoku, there are literally only four populated islands, Yashiori is a ghost town with no residents, and Kannazuka is under Narukami control. There’s literally no one for them to trade with. 

ALL of this makes Act 1′s sudden refusal to help Ayaka look progressively stupider and stupider and stupider. Did they consider at all that every single time the Traveler helps people from here on out, it will be compared to that? We couldn’t be bothered to help when the Shogun was murdering people, not until we heard three more sobstories, but we sure have time to screw around with all this. 

Of course, the entire business with the Fatui makes it clear that Sara is pretty much just as incompetent. 

Kokomi is different from the previous girls in personality, to some extent, but her treatment is really about the same. We still get a date (just staying in her lovenest), we still get the required scene of all the NPCs expressing how much they love her, her leadership woes are Jean reshuffled, and then at the end, she naturally hits on us, asking that we stay with her and watch her grow as a priestess. She is indeed another Genshin dating option. 

She... implies that there were Statues of the Seven back when Orobashi was struck down. This is very hm. 

I don’t even know where to start on the actual plot involving, uh, soldiers in the army who want to go back to war. It’s, it’s dumb. It’s really dumb and the most boring idea they could have run with, when it comes to “post-war.” The soldiers are also fundamentally right. There is absolutely nothing to stop the Shogun from enacting another stupid decree. We’re STILL under Sakoku. And in fact, parts of the Tenryou Commission WERE colluding with the Fatui. They were right! I guess Kokomi just doesn’t want to tell them, “Hey, we can’t do shit against Raiden and she can cut our entire island in half whenever she feels like it, so we need to take the carrot while it’s being offered, because we can’t survive the stick,” which is the cold hard truth here. 

Kokomi lectures them about the horrors of war, how they haven’t experienced how badly most people suffered. As if they didn’t lose comrades left right ad center and don’t all have families on the island... nearly starving... Yeah. I’m sure they, the common rank soldiers, don’t know anything about how much people suffered during the war. 

Anyway, it was bad. Genshin really, really, REALLY needs to stop trying to write politics or anything with a scale above interpersonal issues because they are simply incapable of it. 

[queenofbaws]

50 tropes and cliche promps: #48 crashley gooooooooo!

(another message from me, your friendly neighborhood writer: NO ONE is immune to “dusty inbox prompt” syndrome. no one. also, this is PART 2 of a 2-part fic, and you can find PART 1 here on tumblr and ao3!) ---

Whoever came up with the old saying that time healed all wounds was welcome to fight her in their arena of choice. It probably wouldn’t be an especially entertaining match, and definitely not an impressive one, but all she wanted was to get one good solid pop to their nose to drive the point home. ‘No!’ she’d say, not entirely unlike someone scolding a puppy after finding a puddle of pee on the floor, ‘Bad! Wrong! That’s not how it works!’

And it wasn’t—it wasn’t how it worked. If that had been how things worked, then the past week or so would’ve done something to numb the embarrassment poking away at her stomach and chest whenever she caught sight of her phone or (God help her) Chris himself. If time healed all wounds like that stupid saying went, then she wouldn’t feel her heart clench every time her text tone went off.

Cripes, she was a moron. Just an absolute moron.

Ashley rolled from her stomach to her side, from her side to her back, and stared up at the shadows playing across her ceiling. Her first impulse was to check the time on her phone, but…no, absolutely not. She was starting to develop an actual psychological aversion to the stupid thing—move over Pavlov, no bells needed; just leave a girl to her own devices and watch her develop a fear of her…own…devices.

Ugh. It was too late for this crap. She was mixing her metaphors (and probably her watershed psychological experiments, to boot).

Instead of going for her phone she grabbed the clock she still kept on the bedside table as a backup alarm. 2:06, blinked its sickly green readout, not quite the witching hour, but definitely way past her bedtime. She should’ve been asleep hours ago, really, especially considering her recent habit of doing unbelievably idiotic things in the middle of the night. Obviously there was some kind of short going on in her brain, a shutdown of her critical thinking skills once midnight came and went, so what she needed to do was just close her eyes and slow her breathing and think happy thoughts that had nothing to do with how abysmally she’d failed the other night, and—

Her phone started ringing.

She sprang up with a horror movie gasp, staring at the thing as though it were some poisonous insect perched on her desk, buzzing and chirping and preparing to flap its leathery wings and take flight…and as soon as she was done grappling with the eye-rolling levels of English major bullshit that thought had revealed within her heart of hearts, she grabbed it.

Chris Hartley

Incoming Call . . .

Great. Great! Fantastic. Why not? Why wouldn’t he be calling her at two in the fricking morning just as she was bemoaning her inability to talk to him like a human being? It made too much sense, really, just proof positive that the universe had it out for her. But…but oh crap, wait, why was he calling her at two in the fricking morning?! That wasn’t something most people did unless something was wrong!

…or if they were trying to leave pathetic love confessions on someone else’s voicemail, but suffice it to say she didn’t really think that was something Chris would ever do, so…

“What’s wrong?” she asked after swiping to answer the call, pulling her lip between her teeth before releasing it again just as quickly, grimacing from the sting of how raw she’d left it after a week of worrying. “Are you okay?”

“I, uh…okay, wow, so first off, hi Ash. Nice to hear from you too. How’s your day been? Mine’s been strange, I’ll admit, but I mean other than that…”

Two in the morning and he was going to insist on being a wise guy, huh? Yeah. This is what she deserved. “Hi Chris,” she answered flatly, all but collapsing down into her pillows again, “My day could be vastly improved by you explaining why you thought it would be fun to give me a frigging heart attack in the middle of the night, but other than that, yeah, sure, it’s been fine.”

“Oh, so you’re allowed to call me in the middle of the night for hardcore Zelda speedrun strats—”

“Is that what I did?”

“—but when I want to just shoot the breeze and catch up—”

“Chris, we had lunch together like twelve hours ago.”

That seemed to stymie him for a second. “Uh, well, a lot can happen in twelve hours, Ash. Maybe I have hot goss I want to debrief you on.”

She waited for a beat, and when no such hot goss was forthcoming, cleared her throat. “…and?”

“…and okay, that’s not actually why I called.” Nooo, she wanted to say, rolling her eyes at him instead of herself that time, You don’t say. “I actually, uh…okay, this is kind of embarrassing, I kinda need…a favor…”

“At two a.m.”

“At two oh nine a.m., actually.”

She pulled her phone away from her face just long enough to check the time, then rolled her eyes again. The butterflies in her stomach were still going for it, just flapping those wings of theirs, but at least most of the dread had melted away by then. “I don’t think I can give you any ‘hardcore Zelda speedrun strats’ of my own, but like, I can try, I guess. What’s up?”

It was right about that time she realized she was hearing something else on Chris’s end of the call. She tried to strain her ears to pick up what it was; it was sort of a rustling, but it didn’t sound like fabric…and it was sort of a whistling but it didn’t sound like another voice. She liked to believe she would’ve put two and two together if she had another minute or so, but when Chris spoke up again it all came together on its own.

“So…someone who shall remain nameless may or may not have found himself locked out of his dorm upon returning from a very long night of coding in the library.”

“Oh my G—again?”

“And this person who shall remain nameless may or may not also have a roommate who went home to spend the long weekend at his family’s fancy vacation home in the mountains, so there’s no one to let him in.”

Ah, the curse of talking to Chris struck again: Despite herself, she was laughing. “Are you outside?! Go talk to the RA! They have extra keys, don’t they?”

“Oho, but therein lies the rub! It would appear the RAs have also gone home for the long weekend, leaving this unnamed person to wander the streets alone in the middle of the ni—”

In a flash she was out of bed, tugging a hoodie on over her pajamas. “Are you serious?! You’re just like, what? Haunting campus like some kind of spooky ghost?”

“Nonono, oh good Christ no, Ash. What do you take me for?” He scoffed for a moment, snickering and chuffing and making all manner of indignant noises before clearing his throat. “I’m haunting your dorm like some kind of spooky ghost.”

“Chris.” Her lanyard was in her hand as she slipped her sockless feet into her shoes.

“Wh-wh-where else was I supposed to go, Ash? You tell me that! No Josh, no RAs, we both know Brad goes to sleep at like eight-thirty like a good little boy, so where does that leave me?” He didn’t leave her any time to respond. “Outside your dorm. Standing around like a creep. Do you know two people have come up to me asking where they can buy weed? They asked me that—me! Do I look like someone who knows where and how to g—”

Over the course of his (endearing) ramble, Ashley had made her way down the stairs to the side door they always used when visiting. She could see him there though the glass door, his back to her with his phone held up against his ear, and there was a moment—a long, terrifying moment—where realization sank its claws into her guts. For a breath she lingered there on the bottom step, thinking of the things she’d done wrong the last time, how badly she’d mucked everything up…and then she pulled the door open and stood in the jamb, clearing her throat until he turned around.

She raised and lowered her eyebrows, making a grand show of hanging up on him. “Hey, so just curious: What, pray tell, would you have done if I didn’t answer the phone?”

He flashed her a look then, one that was equal parts disbelief and mischief, and gratefully shuffled past her into the stairwell. “Oh come on, who do you think you’re fooling—you always answer the phone.”

“Not always,” she said, hoping the tightness in her throat was just something she was imagining and not something he could hear.

“Uh, yes always,” he shot back, already heading up the stairs as he had so many hundreds of times before, clearly just as comfortable in her building as his own.

Only when it’s you, dum-dum, you ever consider that? the nagging voice in the back of her head answered, but she kept her mouth shut and hurried up the stairs to match his pace instead.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, nor did she have any delusions of it being the last; even before they’d left home for school it was a common enough occurrence to have the guys show up for an impromptu sleepover, usually bearing snacks and (in Josh’s case) a stack of movies each more horrible than the last. There were no snacks being offered now, though, as she swiped her keycard and let him into her room, and no movies either. Really there was nothing but her phone weighing like a brick in the pocket of her hoodie and her heart lunging up into her throat and, worst of all, that stupid voice in her head chiding her over and over again that she was being so, so dumb.

She was only vaguely aware of Chris talking as she slid her shoes back off and latched the deadbolt, and while she nodded and smiled in all the appropriate places, she really wasn’t hearing a word. How could she? How could she, when the only thing on her mind was how cowardly she’d felt for not being able to tell him over the phone, for not being able to leave a frigging voicemail?! If she hadn’t been able to do either of those things, then how on Earth—

Chris was looking at her. Crap.

“Sorry?”

“I said,” he said again, repeating himself slowly and painstakingly, clearly teasing her, “I thooought yooou weeere plaaaying Ocaaariiinaaa ooof Tiiime. I don’t see your N64 anywhere—you finish already? Man, you really did just need that wallet, huh?”

“I like you.” It was out of her mouth before she could think about it, bursting forth like one of those awful, wriggly little chestbursters from the Alien movies. “A lot.”

The look on his face suggested she’d just thrown a bucket of cold water on him, not bared her soul, and what the heck was she supposed to do with that?! “I…like you too…?” Chris glanced around the room, maybe checking whether or not he was on Candid Camera, maybe expecting to find Ashton Kutcher hiding in a corner, who knew. “Stop me if I’m wrong here, Ash, but uh…I think ‘liking’ is sort of the bare minimum requirement for this ‘friendship’ thing we’ve been doing for—”

“No, I…” Oh this was a bad idea. This was such a bad freaking idea. “I like you,” she repeated, hands knotting together in an anxious ball inside the pouch of her hoodie. “Like, I like-like you.” Perfect. Eloquent. Truly on the path to becoming a poet laureate at that rate. It became impossible for her to hold his gaze, so she dropped her eyes to the ground, where they felt safer. “And I have for a long time? Like, a really, really long time. And I…I was trying to say something about it the other night but I totally chickened out, and I’ve had about…nine million chances to say something else since then but I just keep totally chickening out, and now I’m realizing as I hear this all coming out of my mouth that this isn’t really, y’know, ideal timing on my part, and wow, okay, I’m just making this more and more awkward with every word I say, but now that I’ve started talking I’m having a whole lot of trouble stopping, and…” As though that had been the magical passphrase, her words caught in her throat, effectively putting an end to that humiliating rant.

The room felt very, very quiet.

Unbearably quiet.

Horribly.

It came back to her in a rush, why she’d kept backing out at the last minute: It always worked out in the Hallmark movies, sure, but life wasn’t a Hallmark movie, and eventually she was going to have to look up, was going to have to see the expression on Chris’s face, and already she could feel her entire body locking up to steel itself for the inevitable rejection…

Which was probably why it took her a full second longer than it should’ve to understand he was kissing her. Well, okay, trying was maybe the operative word there—he was trying to kiss her. There was a moment right between the kiss itself and her looking up where there was clearly some kind of miscommunication, because their foreheads knocked together in a distinctly less than romantic way before they managed to calibrate how the whole thing was supposed to work…and then, okay, then he was kissing her.

It took her brain another second to process that was what was happening, but then she was kissing him back, her weight rocking to the balls of her feet to make up for her height, her hands too nervous, too uncertain to do anything but stay safely tucked away in the pocket of her hoodie though his had moved to cup her face, and…and…and Chris was kissing her.

That was when the giggles started. First her, then him, then both of them, the kiss giving way to a bubble of nervous laughter that somehow managed to be just as sweet.

“I, um,” Chris cleared his throat, and she was more than a little exhilarated to see he’d gone red as a tomato. “I, uh, like-like you too. A lot-lot. If that wasn’t, uh…just made…obvious.”

That only made the giggles worse, honestly, and while she still wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, she finally pulled them from out of her pocket. “It was,” she laughed, cautiously setting her palms on his shoulders. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do (namely throw her arms around him like the windswept heroine of a romance novel), but she thought it would do for now. “I mean, what you just said was dumb, but like, you made your point.”

His eyebrows shot up, an obvious attempt to play off his own glee as part of a bit, and he joked, “Oh, what I said was dumb, huh?”

“A little.”

“Uh huh. Okay. My heartfelt admission was dumb, but yours—”

That time she was the one doing the kissing, her hands sliding further and further up until they linked behind his neck to pull him closer. The last of her butterflies began to calm, her chest instead filling with the warm, fuzzy feeling she’d imagined tens of hundreds of times before, and she found herself glad for the first time that week that she’d chickened out on that phone call.

As it turned out, face-to-face was definitely the way to go.

[thepulta]

“Faaaaaaaire?”

Westlie jumped in her seat and whirled towards the screeching. There was a child loitering around the front arches of the library, casually kicking the carpet. It had to be what, eight? No older than ten?

“Faaaaaairee?”

She smashed her hip jumping out of the chair and nearly tripped over her skirt. Westlie strung out several whispered curses and made a flying tackle in the lobby, clamping a hand over the child’s mouth just as it inhaled for another screech. “You’re in a library you little shit! Jesus, don’t scream.”

“ ‘ah can talk as loud as ‘ah want!” The little goblin raised the letter with one arm and fucking punted her shin as hard as its little legs could. Westlie squeaked in pain and shot a glance around the rest of the library. The struggle was being watched by several students.

“God damn it, just give me that.”

“Pay me!”

“Jesus Christ, I paid in advance.” Westlie fished in her pocket and found a penny with some lint. She shoved it forward. “Don’t spend it all on candy.”

The urchin had the nerve to blow raspberries in the middle of the library entrance. It tossed the letter at her - Westlie snatched it midair - and raced away. There were a few polite coughs around the room and some less polite snickering. Westlie’s face burned as red as her hair as she slipped back to her seat.

She opened the note, laying it out flat so she could read it and straighten her desk at the same time. It was written in the same neat, pointed script she remembered from London. Fitzroy did not write unnecessarily.

.

Welcome to Port Prosper, Miss Faire. I’m glad to hear you arrived safely, and I apologize for The Pyrrhus’ tardiness. I hope you spent a comfortable evening at The Shroom.

The crew is currently loading a shipment of hours, which will most likely take the rest of the afternoon. I’ve decided to give them the night off since our passenger hasn’t arrived, which of course, extends to you as well. If you desire, you can meet us on the dock, port 2, at 8am tomorrow morning after another night at The Shroom or this evening at 5pm simply to get acquainted. You may also feel free to sleep on board the Pyrrhus, although it’s unlikely anyone else will be aboard the ship.

The next port of order will be the Eleutheria Transport Relay whenever our passenger arrives.

              Your Captain,

               Fitzroy

.

Funny, the Eleutheria Relay was the one place she hadn’t obsessively practiced navigating to. Westlie resisted the urge to open her books back up and pour over the seasonal wind speeds, trying to weigh her options for the night. She didn’t particularly feel like spending the night alone on board a ship she didn’t know. Then again, she could be at risk of looking tardy. Fitzroy had given her the option though, and it seemed like everyone else would be doing the same. Westlie puffed out a breath and folded the note back up, taking the opportunity to glance around the library. The students from earlier had gone back to their work, bent diligently over thick dictionaries and maps. The place was quite lovely, not as big as the one in London, but close. The entrance was grand and domed, with three wings to the right, left, and front. Books lined the walls of the bottom floors with desks lined towards the entrance. Three spiral staircases granted access to each of the three upper levels with bookcases where one could look down upon the massive (Surface-made, Westlie knew) Pakistani rug at the entrance. The walls were white, blue, and gold; there were a lot of Tuscan columns. ...a lot of them. The architect’s dreams must have been supported by Tuscan columns.

Westlie shelved her maps, absently drifting to another section and running her fingers over the titles. Flora and Fauna of Northeast Albion, A-N. Pteridophyta (Ferns and Horsetails) and their relatives in the southern areas of the Reach: a biologist’s memoirs. Edible varieties of fungi, 5th Edition. Geography and Biology of the Prosper Mountains, Revised and Selected by the Author with Illustrations. She selected that one. That was probably the reason for the gravity abnomaly around the island’s southern tip. Not that the biology of the mountain would help with that, but she was still killing time.

She took the book back to her seat, fanning the pages as she got settled. It opened to several depictions of the mountains around Port Prosper, lovingly illustrationed with several different angles. Gravity... gravity... Westlie yawned as she scanned through the pages, scribbling notes every so often as she found something useful. It ended up being mostly plants with a brief foray into naturalism about the shape of the mountains compared to others in the Reach (fairly large, minus Lustrum’s positive menagerie of peaks and valleys) while having nothing about the gravitational pull. At least she knew the abnomaly existed. Westlie shut the book and glanced up at the clock. 4pm. Well, she’d done enough for one day, hadn’t she?

Port Prosper was in the throes of dusk as she stepped out of the library. People thronged the streets, bustling to and from factories. It reminded her of London. Westlie slipped between the crowds, greeting a peddler and trading pennies for several hotbuns. She munched on one as she made her way back to the hotel, absentmindedly browsing the shop windows. The styles here were slightly different. A little higher on the ankle, a little wider in the hip, a little smaller in the chest. Westlie peered at one jacket with an upright collar. It buttoned down the front like her vest, but it had sleeves and the the collar was enticing. ...it was also a lovely shade of burgundy.

... it was ‘a night off’, wasn’t it?

Westlie slipped inside the shop and waffled over the decision for several minutes before finally giving the shopkeep the sovereigns. The jacket fit like a glove and did a fairly good job of matching her hair. Westlie felt like glowing as she walked down the street, dodging pedestrians and occasionally running children. Her time was her own; there was no sister, no Arthur, no Mary to reign her back. No judgement.

She’d wasted so much time, hadn’t she. A memory of Morgan popped up, unbidden, per usual - and in a bar, also per usual. Westlie had had one of her abysmal days; something about missing deadlines. There’d been a lot of screaming; a lot of accusations. She remembered not even wanting to drink, just huddling in the corner as Morgan sat there with her. They’d been older teens at that point, maybe. “You know,” Morgan had hesitated. “You could come with me on my next trip. You don’t have to stay here.”

“Father would murder me.”

Morgan had hesitated again. “... we don’t have to come back.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Westlie snorted, because it did seem ridiculous. “I have to work. I can’t just fuck off.”

They sat there in silence for a long time. Morgan finally leaned over and curled on her shoulder. It wasn’t a hug, but something akin to it and possibly more meaningful in their affectionless world. She’d let out a soft sigh as they huddled together. “...you’re so unhappy, Wes.”

They hadn’t said anything for the rest of the evening.

Westlie had forgotten about that whole encounter until now and there was a deep, sudden pang of longing for the weight of her sister on her shoulder. She let it settle, heavy in her heart. There was always the possibility they could bump into each other at a port. Morgan travelled voraciously. It was all she did, honestly. Westlie wasn’t sure if she did it to put a small dent in Arthur’s enormous sums of cash, to escape London and that horrid house, or just because she loved travelling and mischief. Regardless, from eighteen years onward she did all three things quite well. When she came home, it was a daily coin flip until she’d leave again. Westlie came to expect a note on her dresser with the lump sum of travel money taken, an address (occasionally), and some form of cheery goodbye. Sometimes, it was in person, like the last time she’d seen her a few months ago.

Westlie’d been woken up at 2am by a knock at the window to find Morgan sitting on her carpetbag in the garden. She remembered thinking it was a distinctly Morgan way to leave town at 2am. She kept throwing pebbles until Westlie opened the window. “Goodbye, Wes! I took a few thousand sovereigns this time!”

Westlie remembered making a rude gesture, half-asleep. ...Annoying but not surprising. Morgan just laughed.

“Don’t tell, but I packed that box of sunlight from the shop too.”

Westlie’s eyes shot open. “That- Fuck, Morgan, that’s expensive!”

“Don’t worry about it! It’ll all take care of itself.”

“You’re going to get robbed blind by some asshole carting around a fucking box of sunlight- What the fuck- What do you even need it for? You’re such a dipshit. Why do I have to deal with this? You know those take months to get in. Goddamn it, Morgan.” Westlie considered grabbing the rope and taking the box back but in the time it’d take to tie it Morgan would absolutely be gone. That was probably why she hadn’t said goodbye normally in the first place. Fucking sneaky.

“Shhh, shh shh shh~” Morgan spun around and blew her a kiss. “Westlie, you worry too much.”

“I worry for both of us. Fucking give me that sunlight. Father’s going to skin you alive when you get back.” Westlie hung halfway out the window, debating if it was worth jumping and squashing the fuck out of the little kleptomaniac.

Morgan gasped in pretend horror. “Oh, I forgot, I have thousands of sovereigns and I won’t be back for months.” Her mouth turned up into a cheeky grin. “Westlie please, you know me better than that. The old bastard won’t remember a thing.”

“I’ll remember!”

“You love me though~” Morgan grabbed her carpetbag and blew Westlie another kiss. “I’ll see you later! Sorry I left so soon. Don’t miss me too much.”

“Morgan!”

Morgan slipped into the darkness with practiced ease, and Westlie glimpsed a cheerful goodbye hand wave before she disappeared into the shadows. Saucy prick.

Westlie remembered going back to bed pissed as hell she’d have to pick up the pieces from stolen sunlight no less. Jesus Christ, there was embezzlement and then there was that. She did remember going to sleep after that and opening up the shop in the morning, but the memory grew a bit fuzzy. Westlie scowled at the irony because she’d tried to forget about it to save her blood pressure, regardless of the outcome she couldn’t quite remember. God, Morgan did the dumbest shit. 

Westlie was not going to miss that.

Even with the memories she was still more relaxed than usual as she approached The Humble Shroom. A few skyfarers milled about now after arriving from various ports, footmen moving boxes in and out of the lobby. Westlie took a moment to appreciate the soft touches of civilization they put on display. A rug, a lamp that had probably lived a former life in a grandmother’s cabinet; several crystal sconces on the wall that flickered appealingly. The rooms were off to the right, but there was a soft concerto playing off in the corner from the left where a doorway opened into another room. A bar? Probably where breakfast had been offered earlier. There were more skyfarers milling in and out. Westlie hesitated. She didn’t feel like going to her room and studying, but she didn’t want to stay out and about either. She didn’t need to drink, just... people watch. Tea would be nice.

The bar was excellent for her chosen past time; there were faces from all walks of life. A few stovepipe hats huddled in the corner while miscellaneous groups of suits - with patches or tears and without - circled about at random. There were three shelves of drinks, the aromas of mushroom wine and hard liquor circling about; a waiter handed off a plate of steaming something that smelled delicious. Westlie took a seat in the back and ordered tea, pulling out a piece of paper to work on navigating to the relay. It was far, but it wasn’t that far; a few days to a week or so. There was a bit of tricky gravity somewhere in the region and she tapped the pencil on her lips, staring up at the ceiling as she struggled to recall the numbers.

Someone cleared their throat nearby and she blinked, jerked back to reality. “Hello-?”

Jesus Christ it was Fitzroy.

He looked the slightest bit more worn with a bit of coal dust on his jacket, but otherwise quite the same and unmistakable. “Good evening, Miss Faire. You look well.”

“Thank you. You... you too.” ... she could die on the spot, or she could just die later after she made a complete fool of herself. Or she could have a normal conversation like a normal person. Westlie cleared her throat and folded up the paper while Fitzroy made a questioning motion to the chair across from her. “Yes, please, feel free- have a seat.”

He sat down and crossed his legs, pulling out a pipe from his pocket and taking his time stuffing it. After a good long minute he put up his hand to flag a waiter and glanced at her. “Would you like something.”

“No- ah, thank you. I have tea on the way.”

“Excellent.” His face betrayed nothing if that was the right or wrong answer. “Is that a 1890 Elegant on the shelf? I’ll take a small glass of that, please.”

There was heavy silence until the waiter brought both the tea and mushroom wine. Fitzroy lit his pipe and the smoke puffed lazily, adding to the rich scents around them. Instead of handing it off like the wine, the waiter chose to pour the tea himself. (He did not pour it the way Westlie liked it; she could already tell it’d been seeped too hot and it gave off the slightly acidic odor of a burned teabag. She held her tongue and comforted herself that the bitterness would keep her insides awake as she worked.) Fitzroy took a sip of his wine and savored it. Westlie did not enjoy the tea but she kept her face neutral.

When he placed his drink back down he faced her, dark eyes scrutizing. “I assume you received my note earlier?”

“Yes, sir. About an hour ago, I think.”

“I know the rest of the crew has divided themselves up across the city, so it was a good choice to stay put for the night.”

Westlie couldn’t think of anything to say, so she just nodded.

“As far as introductions go, you’ll meet them all tomorrow. I recently accepted another applicant as Navigator, an Owen West. I understand he’s been a reliable skyfarer for some time. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?” Westlie hadn’t. “He seems a bit shakey, but capable. I’ve known the rest of the crew for significantly longer. Marion is quite the ingenious engineer; Selmer is relable and loyal to a fault. Elijah is the kind of man who should be into politics but makes an excellent signaller instead.” He chuckled at a private joke and took another sip, re-crossing his legs and focsing on her. “I can’t speak for Owen, but the others were needling me about you.” There was a thin, not unkind, but not wholely trusting smile and Westlie could very clearly see the impression her interview left on him. “I was going to simply wait until morning, Miss Faire, but if you pardon me for noticing, you are not quite the same person I met in London and I know very little except your father is the kind of man I rarely associate myself with.”

Westlie took another sip of bitter tea, purposefully scalding her tongue as she tried to think. She drew on the remains of her evening, the calm purposefulness as she walked from the library back to the hotel. Why not be honest? She met his eyes and they were supicious, wary, but not unkind. He was being honest in his observations, and she wasn’t the same person in London. “I ran away.” That seemed the most straightforward, blunt way she could put it. Westlie sat the tea cup back in its saucer, half wondering if she was required to give more information. Fitzroy didn’t say anything. She tried to collect her thoughts. ‘I couldn’t take it anymore’ didn’t seem like the best phrase to describe it. Neither was ‘I’m nobody’, or ‘I don’t know who I am’, even though that was absolutely the truth.

Westlie hated sweet tea. She forgot, put two sugar cubes in her half-drunk cup and stirred it.

“Were you working on the Eleutheria Relay route?” Fitzroy broke into her thoughts and Westlie met his gaze again, briefly.

“Oh, before you came. Yes, actually.” She dug into her pocket and handed over the sheet of paper. Fitzroy browsed it. The look wasn’t quite like the interview; there was no judgement, just thoughtful acknowledgement. He was trying to distract her - he was actually quite good at that. Westlie stored that information in the back of her mind.

“You mapped this from Tratinson, didn’t you?”

How-?

“There’s a small abnomaly about three leagues in.” Fitzroy placed the paper on the table and pointed out the column of numbers halfway down. “Tratinson ignores it, because he considers abnomalies smaller than .5 newts to be immaterial. However, it’s enough to increase speed and throw off the trajectory of your second curve here.” He pointed to another set of numbers. “It’s never a big issue because the pull is small enough it doesn’t run you into any islands, but still. I have to look at the book, but Richards takes more of the northern abnomalies into consideration despite his occasional miscalculations.”

Westlie felt a deep flare of respect feed the hunger inside her. She could learn from him. She opened her mouth, couldn’t find which questions to ask, and settled on looking deeply appreciative. “Thank you.”

Fitzroy bobbed his head and took another drink. “It comes with experience.” He paused. “You were obviously well-trained.”

An image of her father brushed across her mind and Westlie’s hatred for the man flared deeply and uncontrollably. “I received a 102 on my piloting exam.” (For the fourth time, because Arthur kept forcing her to retake it, even though she passed the first exam without problems.) “And charting courses is... a hobby.” (It was an obsession. Definitely an obsession, probably unhealthy; kept her from losing her mind after hours of numbers in the ledgers.) “It helps me stay focused.”

She took another sip of tea and nearly spat it out. The sugar made it completely undrinkable. Westlie settled on refilling the cup until near overflowing, hoping between the bitterness and the hot substitute she could scald her tongue and ignore it some more. Between all of it she felt a minute, calmer spark of anger and she grabbed onto it, meeting Fitzroy’s eyes. “I was a navigator on one of my father’s ships. I think that’s what he planned for me to do until he realized I couldn’t take his commands mid-voyage and I wouldn’t save half a crate of supplies by driving through a shitload of scrive-spinsters.” Westlie reigned herself in. “After several instances like that, I worked in the shop instead for a... significant amount of time until I decided that... didn’t suit me.”

She glanced at Fitzroy and his face was blasé, but attentive.

“I won’t let you down.” Westlie remembered her stupid fucking mantra from the morning before and it just felt like something needed to be said. “I know I’m... quiet, and I know...” she hesitated, because it was a bitter pill. “I know my father. Nobody knows him better than I do. I can’t help where I came from, but I want to learn.” Please. She hoped it went unspoken. “And I learn quickly.”

Fitzroy finished his drink and there was the faintest hint of a smile playing at his lips. “You have the job, Miss Faire.”

“Well I-” Westlie moved to take a sip of tea, remembered the saccharine taste in her mouth already and thought better of it. “-You asked,” she tested the waters with a hint of a dry look. “Sir.”

“And I am grateful I know more about you than when we started.” Fitzroy stood up to take his leave, pulling out several coins for the wine. “For the record, Miss Faire, I don’t question your abilities. Anyone who can chart a course by memory under the duress you were under deserves second attention. However, I feel an understanding between us that your father’s company does not require nor, if I may be so forward, deserve special attention, is in order.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Westlie interjected, before she realized what the hell she said.

Another barely visible hint of a smile played on Fitzroy’s lips. “Well my drink is done, but it appears we are firmly in agreement. If you have time after getting settled tomorrow, I might be available to discuss the Richards and Geralt maps if that suits you.” He made a brief bob of the head. “Goodnight, Miss Faire.”

Westlie stared at his back and then at her incredibly shitty tea as he walked away, finally downing the rest of the cup in one disgusting shot and pouring herself something vaguely more palpatable. She slumped back in her seat. That... went well. Tentatively? Possibly? Jesus she needed to go to bed. Getting tea was supposed to be relaxing, and- gods this was shit. Westlie resisted the primal angry urge to dump all of the tea on the ground, dance on the ashes, and refuse to pay; instead she put down coins for her tab and slipped out of the room, trying to decide if Arthur or Fitzroy was more dangerous when angry.

-=-

In her room that night, Westlie dreamed about something peaceful. She woke up after midnight but she couldn’t remember it, just... something about flowers, something about returns. There was a subtle longing for a name, a face; it itched at her mind, making her sleepily tousle her curls. Fucking dreams. Westlie yawned, pulled the pillow closer, and fell into a now deep, dreamless sleep and the feeling was gone in the morning.

-=-

Selmer was a beast of a man. Owen looked horribly nervous. Marion looked... chipper. Elijah looked like he could murder someone in his sleep but probably wouldn’t because he was the nicest of all of them. He’d tipped his hat a bit as Westlie arrived, discerning something as she searched for Fitzroy and headed for the small group of people on the dock around him. That was probably what Fitzroy meant about his alternate self in politics; that was a niche skill. She joined the group, lurking a bit on the outer edges as Fitzroy muttered into a clipboard. After several minutes of writing and scribbling he looked up, unemotionally scanned each of their faces, and made several more notes. It seemed like a lifetime before he put it away.

“Westlie Faire, your crewmates:” Fitzroy nodded to each punctually. “Selmer Gallway, Marion Gascoigne, Elijah Fry, Owen West. Feel free to chat a bit to each other before boarding. I need to submit these reports to the Ministry.”

Westlie felt a rush of euphoria that she wasn’t submitting the reports. Jesus Christ she was free. Fitzroy walked away towards shore and everyone eyed her silently, expecting her to say something. “... Hello.”

Selmer looked like he was going to explode after another five seconds of silence. “‘s a bright day gov’nr! You from around these parts?” He grinned, and he showed all his teeth, flashing a blinding giddy white.

“Ah, from London, actually. I assume you are as well.”

“O’aye, but I packed me bags a long time ago. ‘ah followed Marion on board. A capt’n always needs ah good shov’lah. An a wrench!” He hip-checked Marion and she rolled her eyes.

“Right, right. Well, welcome aboard, Faire.” Marion gave her a little casual unofficial salute. “The Pyrrhus is a great engine! I know you’ll love her. Have you been aboard any others?”

Westlie hesitated, “I ah- some Bediveres.”

Marion’s eyes gleamed. “Now there’s ships! Nothing’s better than the Pyrrhus, obviously, since I’ve helped make our own improvements, but ahh, the Bediveres are gorgeous. Have you driven them? I hear their handling is a little rough around the edges since one of the steam propulsion gaskets blocks the radius grav hinges.”

Westlie had heard about radius hinges exactly once when she and Morgan were shit-faced drunk in a pub on Elinore St. and an equally drunk engineer following Morgan around started bitching about radius hinges and Altanis locomotives for a full hour before they all passed out. She remembered absolutely nothing of that conversation. “I uh- I have driven one.” I was seventeen; please don’t ask about turning radii. “I do remember how fast it was.”

Elijah patted Marion on the shoulder as she opened her mouth to ask more questions. “I’m sure there’ll be time to show her the improvements once she’s settled. Speaking of which-” he gestured a bit into the ship. “The crew’s quarters are to your right from the hatch. Would you like some tea?”

“I would, actually, yes please.” Westlie gave a brief little nod to Owen as she passed by, following Elijah gratefully, and Owen nodded back, his face grave but not unkind or unwelcome; he’d just seen a bit too much. She knew that look.

When she stepped through the hatch, the Pyrrhus itself smelled of hours and cinnamon. It wasn’t a heavy scent, just enough she noticed. The air was wet though, steamy, like Marion had been warming up the engine earlier. There was thin wood panelling on the sides of the walls, polished to a soft sheen through multiple scratches. (Four claws had been dragged down the wood with deep, deep indents at one point.) It was all very orderly though. The crew obviously took great care with their upkeep; the same with their quarters. It was neatly swept, no cobwebs, electric sconces lining the far wall between the bunks. Elijah motioned to the bed at the end of the row where her trunk was sitting, to the right this time, right against the hull; it was opposite the engine, so was probably at least in port, the quietest end of the ship. Westlie glanced around at the bare walls, wondering absently if she could fit them with shelves like the other engine had.

“None of us care to decorate,” Elijah offered helpfully, reading her mind. “But I’m sure Fitzroy wouldn’t mind. I’m-” he gestured at the door, “-going to make that tea if you’ll excuse me.” He stepped back, spinning around for a moment in the doorway. “Oh the passenger should be here soon, Selmer just carried in her trunk. We don’t know her name yet, but she’s sleeping in the Captain’s Quarters, across from the hall.”

“Oh, excellent.” Westlie had no idea what to do with her hands. What did a first mate do with their hands? She settled for a curt nod of the head. “Thank you, Elijah. That helps.”

His lanky frame disappeared from the doorway, and Westlie took a breath as she opened her trunk. Everything was there (of course it was there; she’d just re-packed it forty minutes before) so she closed it and sat down on the bed. A deep sting of fear hit her as she looked around; the casual, not-quite perfect orderliness of the bunks. Selmer’s? messy pillow. Either Elijah or Owen, they both seemed like good candidates, had repurposed a crate by their bedside and stacked several dozen books on top of it. There were a few more bunks but they seemed untouched. Marion must have moved her quarters somewhere else - which was eccentric actually. Westlie vaguely mused if Fitzroy would let her sleep in the map room. Did they have a map room? They probably had a map room.

She puffed out a breath and looked around the room once more, trying to memorize the small details. The iron bedframes bolted to the floor (advantage: no creaking) the wooden floors fitting snugly against iron walls, the four bare walls curving into an iron ceiling. A soft breeze whispered around the hull and Westlie had a feeling she would get some very nice whistles in the middle of the night being right in the corner. That was alright. This was ‘home’ now, wasn’t it? It was what it was.

A deep pang of not-quite-loneliness, not-quite-sadness hit her and Westlie pushed up her chin a little. No emotions allowed now. She was done here; it was time to work.

She took a deep breath and steeled herself, brushing off her skirt and heading out of the room.

The very first thing she learned on her own was that the Pyrrhus echoed, deeply. The metal walls carried sound; literally carried, where if you leaned in close you could probably see the tiny vibrations of the sheet metal. No whispers were safe. There was the hiss of the kettle in what she assumed was the mess quarters  and a roaring, boisterous laugh from Selmer. There were quick footsteps above her - possibly Owen.

“She’s very quiet,” Marion said from the kitchen, and a jar rattled with crackers or some sort of foodstuff. “Do you think she’s alright?”

“Juz giv’ ‘er time to settle in; Willy was pre’y quiet too,” there was a vigorous thump on the table. “Tea man!”

“Gods, you’re so impatient. It’s not ready.”

“You bloody know, Mar’on, you need to make ‘lijah a little thingamabobber that’ll heat the tea up twice as fast. Hook it up to the engine all fancy-like-”

Westlie hesitated at the open doorway to the mess hall, wondering if she should knock to announce her presence, but it absolutely was not necessary as she was almost blown over by the force of Selmer’s, “OI GOV’NAH.” He thumped the table again. “’e got apples, an we got ‘ese kipper snacks and if ‘lijah ever finishs that ‘ere bloody tea ‘e’s got some ought lovely black. Captain says ‘s from India but I think i’ tastes the same as London’s. Once ‘e finishes you can be the judge.”

Marion smiled and patted the table (in a much, much softer, friendly way). “Westlie, right?” she nodded. “We didn’t have breakfast earlier - or Selmer did-”

“But ‘ah’m always down for second breakfast.”

Elijah visibly, almost audibly rolled his eyes.

“-but we were going to have something if you’d like to join us.”

Westlie sat down closest to the door a little grateful for the offer so she didn’t have to figure out where to place herself. “Tea and a few snacks would be lovely, thank you.”

The conversation fell silent with just the hum of the kettle and Selmer tapping the table and fidgeting. Westlie vaguely wondered in the uncomfortable quiet if she was too attuned to it. There was a lot to be said in silence. Selmer very clearly did not think the same way. Finally he leaned forward. “Yous ‘ear the Captian was thinking about a new gun?”

“He did mention it to Owen the other day.” The kettle finally whistled and Elijah moved to pour. “We don’t encounter problems too much though. Is it worth it?”

“Eh, it won’t be too hard to install. Can’t hurt to have a nice bit of firepower now, can it?” Marion took her mug and sipped it gratefully, even though it’d barely seeped. “Absolutely worth it. Thanks, Elijah.”

“Thank you,” Westlie took her mug and settled back, letting the warmth flow through her hands as Elijah handed the next mug off to Selmer. There was a much more comfortable pause as they sipped, Selmer grabbing kipper snacks from the bowl in the middle of the table and tossing them tournament-style into his mouth. He crunched loudly. Westlie wasn’t sure why she wasn’t annoyed at his behavior. He was the spitting image of some of the skyfarers in Morgan’s bars; loud, obnoxious, bustling, but there was a sweet cheerfulness too. Maybe she just needed to be around someone that relaxed right now.

A knock at the hatch startled all of them.

Selmer bounced up, “I got it,” and he was out before anyone could put down their mugs. The hatch opened, and there was an unintelligible, questioning voice. “Oi yas, right this way, gov. I’ll carry in your cargo don’t bother with it. Step right this way.”

“Should we...?” Westlie made a vague gesture to the door. “Help...?”

Marion shook her head with a quick smile. “Selmer’s got it. He likes to feel busy.”

The room was significantly quieter after Selmer left and nobody felt like breaking it. Westlie considered asking where they’d been before London, but it seemed like such an empty question. Or any tales; maybe there’d be something useful. Fitzroy did say they’d been on the longest. For some reason she couldn’t quite muster up the words. The silence was comfortable at least though, Marion seemed to see she didn’t feel like talking and Elijah seemed comfortable with the silence as well. They listened to the footsteps reverberate about the Pyrrhus until Selmer hollared down the hallway. “Cap’ains back!”

Marion offered for Westlie’s tea mug and she handed it over, a few sips left. She tossed them in the sink before going through a back door into what Westlie assumed was the engine room. The cab. Fitzroy said they’d be taking off after the passenger arrived. She nodded once to Elijah before heading out and to the side, climbing up the tight stairwell on her left to the second floor of the Pyrrhus.

Owen was already inside the cab, a few maps spread over the table in the middle of the room, steam hissing from a pressure gasket. He glanced up as she walked in, smiled, and then refocused on whatever he was doing. Numbers, it looked like. Westlie hesitated before pulling the scrap of paper she’d been working on the night before out. “I ah- I did some crunching last night if you want to use this.”

Owen glanced up and blinked. “Oh... Oh, Tratinson. That’ll help actually, thank you.” He took the sheet and Westlie was left standing awkwardly in the middle of the room again.

It was a lovely cab. There were some references and maps in small bookshelves in the back, the familiar panels for navigating in the front. The Pyrrhus had bronze handles, steel interworkings with pipes of steam and cables welded to the sides of the cab, leading to the nav panel. The top was slightly domed with curved, arching blue windows for less drag, riveted along all their edges. It was somewhat soothing, Westlie mused, looking at the world through blue-tinted glasses rather than red ones. All the Bediveres had rose or yellow tinted glass. Something about looking more professional and yellow light being bad for your skin; turned the crew sallow.

There were footsteps up the stairs and she somehow picked out Fitzroy’s step in the hall, firm, patient, cat-like. He nodded to her and Owen as he entered the cab. “Everything ready? The cargo is on board. Adelia is settled.”

Westlie instinctively looked for the pressure valve, noting it’d only been a few minutes since the engine grumbled to life under her feet. “Almost. 50 psi to full capacity, sir.”

Fitzroy nodded acknowledgement, checked a pocketwatch, and went through the backdoor, letting a burning blast of steam and soot into the cab. His voice was almost drowned out. “MARION, NEW RECORD TO 250.”

There was a barely intelligible cheer from somewhere in the engine room which Westlie had to assume were Selmer and Marion. She found herself smiling a little as Fitzroy shut the door, brushing off his collar. “She’s done excellent work,” he informed Owen and Westlie without looking at either of them. He browsed the numbers on the table, checking the maps. “Mm, this looks good too. Pressure update?”

Westlie glanced again. “285, sir.”

“Close enough. Owen, take us out, please.”

Owen was already at the controls. They lifted with a lurch, the engine giving an angry hiss as the locomotive released steam from below. Westlie turned and stared out the window, resisting the urge to press her nose against the glass as they rose above Port Prosper. The library shown in the distance, the morning glinting off the glass in the dome with the mountains stretching beyond that, little plants dotting the slopes. Homes cuddled about the city, painted in red, grey, yellow, blue; Prospans weren’t picky. They grew ever more dotted and sparce further from the center, farms drawing lines in the landscape. The wind picked up as they rose higher.

Owen pushed the engine forward and Westlie felt the whisper of the breeze as it brushed the windows. Through the blue tint it was all so very alive, and it felt like... like being in love. Westlie had no idea how to confirm the feeling, but her heart squeezed and the rest of the world fell away. It was so beautiful. This was what she wanted. The love ached like a new happy fire in her chest and she embraced it, pulled it tight around her. It was easier to handle than her anger since it just glowed without burning, with a soft tender warmth. There was no action to it either, no demands, just a deep well of peace. She was never going to let this go, she swore quietly as Port Prosper faded away. She would die before she stopped traveling with the wind, watching these islands pass by, blessed by the soft glow of the fungi along their edges. She’d worked hard and she’d gotten so lucky. So very, very lucky. She would make every single second count. Damn the man who tried to take it from her.

[feuilly-cakes]

The Maze Runner (series) - review

Buckle up, this is going to be a long one. My thoughts on the series as a whole is that it’s an alright one, and you’ll soon see why the praise isn’t higher there. I’ll go book by book with my thoughts on each, so you can know exactly the way my feelings progressed to this point.

Book 1: The Maze Runner - 5*

I gave this book a 5 star rating, but honestly it's been nearly 2 months since then and I'm still not sure on that rating. Ideally, 5 stars for me means I got so attached to the characters I cried or had some other emotion, but that didn't happen here. Instead, I got a fantastic plot with a ton of mystery and a lot of terror, all with amazing writing but uninteresting characters. I won't say they are flat characters, because they aren't, but I didn't really feel a connection with them. There is only so much you can relate to a character who has no history.

Thomas is obviously the main character and so we see everything from his perspective, and we do see his emotions, his personality, his struggle. He spends a good portion of the book confused, angry, sad, frustrated. He's not a flat, boring character by any means, but for some reason I just didn't feel that connection I usually do with main characters. Maybe it's a side effect of the third person limited narration, or maybe he just isn't a character I can relate to, but I wasn't really interested emotionally in his character. I didn't need to be really, because the plot more than made up for it.

When it comes to the plot, I found no faults. It was fast paced and had me asking questions the whole way through, and most of them even got answered. Most of the questions pertained to how the Maze worked; How was it so high up that the box rose for half an hour? What was really around The Cliff and how were they seeing stars below them? How did the walls move? Was it actually indoors or not and how would that even work anyway? I love when I’m constantly asking questions and coming up with theories while reading, and this book was one huge question mark. Just the memories plot alone had me on the edge of my seat, and I wanted to know more.

If you only read books for the characters and their personal arcs, this might be a bit weak on that for you. If you love a good mystery mixed in with a bit of horror and sci-fi elements, plus a dash of dystopia (which I’m sure will become a big dollop in the next book) then this is absolutely the best thing to read. It’s definitely a 5 star quality, just in my personal opinion not a 5 star emotion.

Book 2: The Scorch Trials - 3*

Honestly, this was not anywhere near as enjoyable as the first book. Technically speaking it was a well written book, but personally I didn’t find it great, simply okay - average. Enjoyable to an extent but irritating to a certain degree. I kept reading because I expected something to be answered but all I got was confused. After watching all the films and powering through the first book I genuinely expected so much more from this and I was let down.

It’s darker and more gory than the first book, with some shocking scenes that kept me going. I did appreciate all the dream flashbacks from Thomas that helped put together what exactly he had to do with the Maze. Outside of these dreams I just didn’t know what was going on half the time and I felt frustrated by it all. His backstory was legit the only reason I was interested at all. I didn’t really care where they were going or their journey, l just wanted to know about his missing memories.

I understand this one was to set up the world a bit more and go into character development, but this was the most mediocre of middle book syndrome books. I can honestly say here I preferred the film.

Book 3: The Death Cure - 4*

Oh boy with this one. I have a very immediate reaction with lots of spoilers here on my goodreads if anyone wants to see that, but I'll summarise with the good spoilery bits cut out.

Well, my brain hurts.

This book honestly started out kinda meh, with some interesting tidbits thrown in. Then it got less meh, but more disturbing. Whether all of it was really that bad or whether it was bad because of the real world parallels right now I do not know, but I got a little bit messed up by everything that happened in Denver. The worldbuilding became more relevant here, we learn more about the Flare, the way people are living alongside it and/or with it, and the way Cranks are really treated. We get to find out about The Purge too, which I'll leave as a lovely surprise for those of you who haven't yet read, but what happened and my loud opinions are through that goodreads link if you want entertainment.

And on that note, let's talk Teresa. Full disclosure, I went into this trilogy already loving the films, and I still stand by that love. The treatment of Teresa in those films, however, was abysmal, and to read her actual character arc, well, I was enraged. Her arc in these books is fantastic, and the way she grows and realises the consequences of her actions is actually realistic, especially after all the trauma of the trials. We barely even see her and yet we see most of her character arc in this book. Simply getting her memories back wouldn't make her forget all the horror and go back to Wicked, and the way it was all handled was super satisfying. It does all make me wonder if perhaps she knew about the Brain thing, though. I won't know until I read that prequel story so until then I'll just have to speculate [currently reading that, still don't know]. On a similar note the Chancellor Page storyline was bizarrely different, and I had a shock when we get to interact (?) with her in the capacity we did.

Chapter 56 can choke. I knew it was coming okay, yet it still made me feel like I was punched in the chest. Especially after the previous scenes where we see things happen with a certain character in a scary way.

I can't talk about the Brain thing. It's disturbing to think about and I will be repressing the memory of that whole section of the book as soon as I can. It also kicks off a series of horrifying imagery and tragic events that hurt my emotions. All I can really say is that it's a strong ending to a trilogy, and if you're here you probably got past the travesty that was The Scorch Trials so this book will be a breeze compared to that, just be wary of the medical horror and the horror in general, since it's pretty graphic.

You may notice I haven't discussed Thomas, and that is because I'm too messed up by the Brain thing. The medical horror plus his reaction to the knowledge of what was about to happen knocked me flat emotionally and I may never get past that in terms of these books. No one has ever mentioned the Brain thing in any fan space I've been in, and that's for a good reason. Just know Thomas grew on me slowly just in time to cause me great distress. That is all.

Book 4: The Kill Order - 4*

I kind of loved this book, but as a friend. It basically shows the story of the Flare virus' bad beginnings in the world, with flashbacks to the solar flares that caused all the initial devastation. It was one hell of a page turner. It read like it was just meant to be a film, if you know what I mean. It does stand alone if you don’t read the prologue.

I honestly wasn’t expecting to get quite so many tidbits of information about the actual Flares event itself; to be honest I was expecting this to be a typical zombie kind of story that starts after the beginning and ends before the end, but it actually starts at ground zero on day 1 of the Flare (outside of the control group that is). I thought it was horrifying and fascinating to see how quickly it mutates and the effects changes, and also how the characters react knowing that they’ve probably been exposed to it from the beginning. Seeing the inside of the mind of one the earliest Cranks as they become infected was amazingly interesting after seeing how Newt acted in the Death Cure when he got sick.

The flashbacks to the Solar Flares and its aftermath were just terrifying. The imagery was horrifying and the whole concept of sun flares and then massive floods of boiling hot water put me right on edge even though obviously they were alive at the start of the book. Something that massively surprised me as I read was that the Flare virus had only been around for 13 years before the start of The Maze Runner, and it only took the government 1 year after the solar flares to decide to kill off part of the population. No other dystopian I’ve read can top that level of evilness from governmental systems.

Aside from the horror aspect, I was also mightily confused and a bit amused-but-also-horrified at the cult. If you’ve read it you know. If you haven’t yet then you’ve got a storm coming let me tell you. Although we see in Death Cure that Cranks form mobs with a common purpose and of course they they lose their minds, I wasn’t at all expecting to see an actual cult just casually thrown in. It just adds to the madness of the story and actually fit right in among the other craziness of what went down.

My one question is: is DeeDee Teresa? (She was! It was implied in the next book.)

The reason I didn't rate this higher despite my enjoyment was that it just isn't a book I would reread. It's like an action film or horror film that you really enjoyed and appreciated but won't stick around for too long.

Book 5: The Fever Code: 3* on Goodreads, 2.5* in my heart

This one was a slog to get through. It goes over Thomas' life in Wicked, from the first few days to the day he goes into the maze. I didn't like it very much at all. My biggest problem was the torture of a 4 year old only a few pages in. It ruined the rest of the book for me. My second biggest problem is that we never learn Newt’s name. The betrayal of it all is astounding.

I’ve got to be honest, I was only pushing myself to read this because I wanted to know about the purge. It doesn’t happen until pretty late in the book and nearly everything before that is terribly boring. Everything after that happens pretty quickly.

I appreciated that we get added context to some things that happened in the main trilogy, however, some things that happen take away from the story in a bad way. Dr Paige is one example of this, where in the main trilogy she only appears in a positive context to save Thomas and the other immune, while in this she does some truly evil things behind the scenes unrelated to the context of the trials (or so she tells Thomas. We don’t know how much of that was truth and how much was intended as a Variable but either way it contradicts what we know of her in the Death Cure). The huge reveal at the ending regarding Teresa is also out of nowhere and seems contradictory to the main books. How much of her actions were planned and how much were real? Why would she lead the gladers to escape if she was as this book said she was? Was it a change of mind or was this particular aspect a retcon that wasn’t intended with the original books?

This one felt like an unnecessary addition to the series and I’m disappointed by how it turned out. I expected more and got less. If it hadn’t picked up in the last 150 pages this would’ve been a 2* simply for the disappointment that equalled that of The Scorch Trials. This may be a bit harsh but I do believe the books should have ended after The Kill Order, and the rest be left to the imagination.

To end on a semi-positive note: it turns out The Brain Thing was actually mentioned to them, but it's unclear if Teresa picked up on it, as we know Thomas didn't. It all came out at a very inopportune time while they were killing a crank who knew about it. The Brain Thing isn't positive at all, but I was very excited to learn if they had any inkling and that was sort of answered!

[iamcinema]

IAC Reviews #010: Blood Lake (1987) [Retrospective #2]

"...I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...“

Over the years, I’ve been scowering the Internet trying to find the worst of the worst when it comes to horror movies. I guess you can call me a glutton for punishment in that regard since some movies need to be seen to be believed, rather than looked into as an example of what bad filmmaking looks like. Whether it’s a problem with the acting, the writing, the technical specs, or all of the above, you know you’re in for a good [or horrible] time if it checks one or more of those boxes. When it comes to bad horror movie lists, not just shot on video ones, one film in particular seems to rule them all as it’s hailed as one of the worst movies of all time, if not the worst horror film ever made. This time around, I’m making an ill-fated return to the Oklahoma to talk about Tim Boggs’ lone directorial credit, Blood Lake.

________________________________________

Blood Lake tells the story about a group of friends who are being stalked by a mad man while on a weekend getaway trip at the lake. It’s not the most original concept out there, but hey, what else is new? It’s interesting that this is Boggs’ only attempt at being a filmmaker and the rest of his credits are attributed to being part of the sound department for notable films and shows like Lost Highway, Tales From the Crypt, Xena: Warrior Princess, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Legion. That’s a hell of a resume, but that’s not what we’re here to really discuss.

I heard about the notority of this for years, and I decided to take the plunge with it nearly five years ago where I live reviewed it for Under the Morgue. Needless to say, I didn’t have fun with it and I don’t think I ever ripped into a film that hard up until that point. With the anniversary date of that review coming up, I thought it would be fair to do a retrospect on this to see if it really lives up to how genuinely atrocious I thought it was all those years ago.

Blood Lake in One Gif:

I think I need to lay down for this one. Do you know that feeling of nostalgia you get when you see, hear, or smell something that really takes you back to a better time? Well, whatever the antithisis to that is would describe the seething rage and horror I felt re-watching this.

________________________________________

While it’s true that some movies need to be witnessed to truly understand how bad they are, it’s also fair to say that some things shouldn’t be known by mere mortals - and this absolutely applies to films like Ax’Em and Blood Lake. They’re as cut-and-dry and boring as they are in premise, and a train wreck of a travesty in execution at that.

The quality from a technical standpoint is pretty damn atrocious, particularly during some of the nighttime shots since it can be hard to tell what’s going on and it feels like you’re squinting the whole time trying to tell what you’re looking at. The sound is just as bad, though sometimes it fairs better than the visuals, even if a good chunk of the time you can’t tell what the hell anyone is saying because they’re either too far from the mic to be picked up or it’s a dialogue problem with everyone mumbling, talking over each other, or fumbling over their lines. IMDB says the sound was shot with a single shotgun microphone, and yeah...it kind of shows.

C’mon. Look at this and tell me you can figure out what the fuck all is going on.

The writing feels almost non-existent as Boggs encouraged the actors to paraphrase the dialogue in their own words to I guess make it feel more natural. However, with how clumsy things are, it’s hard to really tell how much was ad-libbed or done by the actors themselves. The total direction and set-up with the pacing is absolute garbage and some of the worst I’ve ever seen, as it’s padded out with gratuitously long shots of them doing things like “extreme” sports on the water or a scene of them drinking at a table that goes on for close to ten minutes. It feels like the director left the camera on a tripod and accidentally filmed their lunch break. People have said this feels like a glorified home movie, and I get why. I’ve ripped on Las Vegas Bloodbath for how bad the filler was during its third act; as well as the opening dance sequences and the yo mama jokes in the opening of Ax’Em for needlessly dragging things out, or even the flashback sequences in Nick Millard’s films - even if they don’t exist within the canon of the story. Hell, Sledgehammer does this too by slowing down scenes in order to pad it out to a 60 minute runtime after being told it was too short.

When it comes to the characters, they aren’t anything special and are mostly forgettable. With this camp, I designated them to one of two sides of the field; boring and awful. All of them I’ve mostly shoved over on the boring side, as they never really do anything noteworthy or special, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you their names off the top of my head for the most part. However, some of the guys do teeter on being awful and annoying as hell, but one character in particular stayed on the shit teir side of the spectrum from start to finish - which would be Tony.

Oh, god. Tony....

This guy right here. This motherfucker made watching this the first time around feel like a total chore. But the second time around, and willingly so, it was like pulling teeth to get me to finish.

I don’t mind weird, perverted, sleazy dickheads who show up now and again, but Tony is a special case because his entire shtick is being a weird creep to the point of giving off rapey vibes with the other guys over how his goal at the end of the weekend is to conquer some girl he goes to school with. Bro, you’re like twelve, shut the fuck up. It’s beyond cringe. It’s insufferable, and prior to this, I said over on Under the Morgue that Alan from Return to Sleepaway Camp was the most unsympathetic “protagonist” I had ever seen. But now, compared to him and the majority of the characters from Await Further Instructions, I don’t know who is the most grating to sit through - and I spent most of my time on that review talking about how the zero level of characterization makes it so hard to watch. In that review, I said I can appreciate a scummy character if they have any sort of secondary personality trait that makes you love to hate them, or at least makes them tolerable. With Tony, he’s just an annoying, pervy brat who I guess is about as comedic and charming as a trench foot infection.

It’s pretty damn rare that I see a movie where I root for the villain(s) from start to finish because I can’t stand the majority, if not all of the characters. So, having to recall how many times I wished Tony would have drowned within the first fifteen minutes or had a joint stubbed out in his damn eye has proved to be more enjoyable than the entirety of this shit show, since the only tail he should have been chasing was the tailpipe of the damn car he arrived in. I was honestly surprised we didn’t get any Summer Camp Nightmare moments given how much of a creep the twerp is, and I still am now.

The fact that this is called a slasher film feels like a cruel joke, since after the opening kill, the next murder doesn’t happen until close to the fifty minute mark in an 82 minute movie (78 minutes if you get rid of the credits). Plus, because of the abysmal quality, you can’t even see them clear enough to tell what’s happening. It’s so frustrating to feel like you’d get more out of the death scenes by closing your eyes the whole time. It’s up there with Ax’Em in terms of quality and how much it feels like they cheat you, which makes me wonder why bother at all if it’s possible you can’t even see what’s going on when you were editing the damn thing?

________________________________________ 

So, here we are at the dreaded moment where I close this off with how I’d rate this. Is it as bad as I remember it being? Yes, if not more so. I had to pause and walk away from it for a bit to cool off and do something else because it was so tedious sit through.

It just goes on, and on, and on, which was only made worse by obnoxious characters that were a total hassle to put up with who could have been reduced to Douchebag #1, Generic Girl #2, and Rattail Motherfucker #1 based on how little they actually did to make me want to remember their names - and the ones who did were the most insufferable of the lot that I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to. There’s little to no actual blood and gore, and with the very little there was, it was completely wasted in scenes that you can’t see clearly which is a damn shame because one of the kills could have had a decent reveal if it was shot better.

If I had to say just one good thing about the film to be generous, not counting that it had some kind of a reachable end, it was the mediocre soundtrack supplied by the band Voyager. It’s not good at all, but hey, if you like cheesy 80s horror soundtracks, there’s that going for it...I guess. With all that being said, I never want to see this disaster ever again. I’m trying to wrap my head around how people genuinely like this, even in a so bad it’s good type of way, and I just don’t get it. This, for me, is arguably one of the worst horror movies I’ve ever seen, and probably ever will.

RATING: 0.5/10

[rszealot]

Hello, I have a kind of prompt? Could you write one of your fav non-RWBY pairings in a RWBY au? (I don’t really know your other fandoms/pairings but I’d love to see them!)

Answering this literal years later: (full description/context/apology here: https://rszealot.tumblr.com/post/185428985955/are-you-still-taking-prompts-0 )

Fluttershy/Rarity RWBY AU:

First Impressions

Beacon was magnificent.

She had seen images of it of course, the occasional video, but none of it compared to seeing it in person. It was massive, stretching as far as she could see around her. The grand towers rose up to meet the heavens and inspired a sort of pride in her. Pride in herself for finally getting here after all her hard work certainly, but also a sort of vague pride for humanity, for having build something this great.

She had stopped in the plaza just outside the landing pad, taking in every detail of the place that would be her home for the next few years. The stark red of the trees contrasting with the stark whiteness of the arches surrounding the plaza, the pools of pristine water surrounding the path, the-

Well, that was one way to ruin the scenery. Over by one of the arches, a group of boys had cornered a timid-looking girl, who was decidedly not enjoying their presence. She approached them with purposeful steps, observing the hooligans and their victim as she did.

All four of the boys were on the more handsome side of “painfully average” and wore some kind of armour except for one. He favoured a scruffier look, with his sleeveless vest, no doubt purposefully unkempt mohawk, and haphazardly attached pauldron.

She stopped a good few meters away from them, and sighed as she spied the reason they were harassing this young woman.

Of course the first people she would run into at Beacon were a bunch of racists.

The girl in question was extraordinarily pretty, with long, pink hair; beautiful turquoise eyes that seemed to shimmer in the sunlight until she realized it was reflecting off of tears; a slender, graceful build that betrayed just a hint of muscle; and a large pair of wings covered in soft-looking yellow feathers.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she announced her presence.

“What exactly are you boys doing?”

They all turned, their victim letting out a surprised squeak. Their surprised looks quickly faded into an expression she knew all too well.

“Well, hello there…” said the tallest of the bunch, who she had assumed was their leader. “Who are you?” The interest in his voice was as unmistakable as it was unwelcome. Boys.

At the very least they seemed to all have forgotten about their previous prey, who was still silently quivering behind them.

“Answer my question.” She replied coolly.

The tall one responded with a skin-crawlingly fake smile, his eyes betraying his true intentions as they shamelessly wandered over her body. His friends meanwhile busied themselves with trying to “subtly” show off behind him, their backs straighter than she’d ever seen them and their entirely casual poses casually causing them to flex casually.

“We were just talking to our friend here.” his voice was sirap-sweet, with just a hint of malice. “We’re done now though.” The following wink made his intentions clear. She was not impressed.

“Really?” She put on her fakest clueless voice. If he wasn’t going to put any effort into it, why should she? “It looks more to me like you’re a gang of bullies harassing this young lady, possibly with racial motives or simply out of a petty need to exert power over others.”

Her bluntness had the desired effect, stopping the tall one’s abysmal attempts at flirting dead in its tracks and causing the other boys to revert to their natural half-slouch.

“So, are you going to leave her alone, or will I have to report this incident to the headmaster? I’m sure discrimination and harassment charges on your first day will look great on your records.”

The boys hesitated, clearly not used to people standing up to them. They exchanged glances, and then turned to glare at her.

“This isn’t over, for you or the animal,” the tall one almost growled as they walked away.

“Sure looks like it,” she couldn’t help but add as they disappeared into the stream of new arrivals.

With those bastards taken care of, she turned to the girl, approaching and giving her a gentle smile. “Are you okay?” she asked.

No response.

“I’m Jewel,” she added, noting the girl’s clear discomfort wasn’t going away with just the two of them there. “Jewel Blanc.”

No response. She was beginning to get worried, hoping it didn’t show.

“What’s your name?”

The girl just looked around, biting her lower lip. Then she opened her mouth.

And ran.

Startled by the sudden motion, Jewel could only watch as the girl took off, running towards the school.

Well, that’s one way to say thank you…

___

The leaves of the tree rustled as Jewel planted her foot on the side of the trunk, kicking off for the next tree in her path. Another foot, another kick, and she was off for the next. The wind rushed through her hair, her extensive hair care routine battling against nature to keep her expertly crafted hairstyle from being ruined as she worked to convert her vertical energy to horizontal energy, each leap taking her slowly closer to the forest floor where she dove into a roll and leapt back up to her feet.

Not wasting time to catch her breath, she immediately kept on running, keeping an even pace. It wouldn’t do to tire yourself out on a day like this after all. This was the proper initiation, where she would finally meet the person who would become her partner for the next three years. Perhaps even longer, if she was lucky. Jewel wouldn’t lie and say she didn’t have some preferences, after all she had noticed none other than Pyrrha Nikos herself in the group as they were launched off the cliff. To partner up with such a talented and stylish young woman would be a dream come true. She could imagine it, the two of them, taking on monstrous Grimm and saving lives like a pair of knights in shining armour, truly they would be the greatest of friends!

Perhaps even more…

She was shaken from her daydreaming by the distant snarls of grimm. And a voice. A familiar voice.

She turned on her heel, dashing off in the direction of the sound. In the clearing ahead she saw the young faunus girl from yesterday being circled by two ursa. By the dirt covering her, she must have had a bad landing on the hill behind her, and tumbled down; right into the waiting bear trap.

Her aura was holding for now, and the two ursa were just circling, occasionally growling at the panicked girl trying desperately to free herself.

What was that thing she’d said about knights in shining armour?

She wasted no time raising Nightmare, her beloved pistol, and pulling the hammer back until it infused the bullet with gravity dust. She advanced slowly as she methodically fired three shots, hitting one of the ursa in one of its hind legs. The ursa yowled in pain as the shots sank in, and struggled to turn to her with the tiny gravity wells that had appeared inside it.

With a wave of her hand she let her semblance reach into the dust-enhanced bullets, boosting the dust’s effect. The grimm roared, then silenced as its leg imploded under the sudden pull.

The other ursa charged at her, tearing up grass and roots as it went, but Jewel kept advancing, spinning Nightmare to change it into its dagger form. She moved the hammer to the steam dust setting, coating the blade. As the ursa leapt at her, she sprung to action, sliding under the massive creature and slashing at its soft belly, leaving a long cut covered in dust. Before it could react she spun around, driving Nightmare into the grimm three times and leapt away, shifting her weapon into its gun form and holstering it as a snap of her fingers detonated the dust she had deposited into the grimm, boiling it from the inside.

She approached the girl, a cocky smile on her face. Then she halted in her tracks. Her muscles simply refused to move, and she started to shake as a great, all-consuming fear gripped her mind. Every cell in her body screamed for her to just get away from the girl. She felt the icy claws of death close in on her heart, falling to the ground in her haste to get away. Get away. She had to get away.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the fear vanished. She sat on the ground, taking deep, panicked breaths, her heart pounding in her ears, staring in horror at the now not-at-all threatening girl.

“Sorry…” The girl’s voice was squeaky and laboured, and she attempted to hide her face behind her long hair, refusing to look Jewel in the eyes, cowering as if she was the one who had just felt the greatest terror of her life.

“What-?” Jewel’s voice hitched, and she took a few moments to steady herself, rising back to her feet. “What was that?”

The girl’s eyes darted to and fro, never leaving the ground, seemingly debating whether to answer. When she did, all she managed to let out was a squeak of pain, bringing the bear trap back into Jewel’s mind.

“Never mind, let me help you with that.” She knelt next to her, gripping the trap with both her hands. The trap was rather advanced, meant to catch grimm, which could easily grow smart enough to dislodge a more rudimentary device.

If Jewel didn’t exactly mind being this close to the girl (If she recalled, she’d first described her as extraordinarily pretty), she tried to push such thoughts away until she could free her. The girl let out a sharp hiss as Jewel tried to reach the mechanism. She looked up and saw the girl watching her with bated breath, biting down on her lower lip. She was absolutely adorable, her summer-sky eyes beautiful even through tears.

Her eyes.

Jewel couldn’t help but to blush. On some level, she’d known this girl would likely end up as her partner when she went to attack those ursa, it seemed inevitable that they’d lock eyes. To actually think about it though? To have the fact confirmed and undeniable right in front of her? She felt elated. She had to admit she had been intrigued by the girl since their first meeting. It felt a little like fate, them meeting as soon as she stepped of the ship. She’d never really believed in such things, no matter how much she wished to, but here- Aha!

“There we go!” she exclaimed as the bear trap relinquished its grasp of the girl’s leg.

“Watch out!”

She realized her mistake as she heard the roar behind her. The ursa wasn’t quite dead yet. She saw its shadow rise over herself and the girl. She reached for Nightmare, hoping to both gods she wasn’t too late. Her hand clutched the grip right as the ursa began to bring its claw down onto her. In a haze, some distant part of her realized she was too slow.

She closed her eyes, bringing her free hand up to shield her face. She knew on some level than her aura would bear the blow, but it would hurt, probably send her tumbling to the ground, and leave a nasty bruise.

But it didn’t. It roared in agony.

She opened her eyes. Above her was the ursa, dead, already disintegrating and revealing the spear embedded in its chest. Following the shaft, she leaned backwards to see the girl, standing up, her face a mask of determination.

The blush returned. She sat there, catching her breath as she watched the girl wince, as if only now realizing what had just happened, her eyes wide as she dropped her spear and scrambled to help Jewel up.

“Oh my gods I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you, and then the ursa?! I saw it coming but I couldn’t say anything I understand if you think I’m a bad person it’s okay that-” The rest of her words sort of petered out into choked whimpering as the girl fell to her knees and tried to hide behind her hair.

Jewel was at somewhat of a loss for words. She had gotten used to the girl’s silence and shyness a bit, and this sudden deluge of apologies? Apologies for… saving her? She wasn’t entirely following the girl’s train of thoughts, nor the steady stream of half intelligible words, but if that was really her takeaway from these events, Jewel could not just stand idly by. She crouched down in front of the girl, putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently.

“Oh goodness. Please don’t cry.” The girl looked up, her eyes already red from crying. She looked like she was about to refute her argument, so she decided to cut her off: “I think what you did was rather gallant. Scaring me or not, you did stop that big nasty thing from hitting me.” The girl seemed rather mollified by that, so she retrieved a handkerchief from her coat pocket, and handed it to the girl. “There we go, that’s better.”

Jewel rose, bringing the girl gently up with her, and being so bold as to wipe away an errant tear from her cheek, trying not to marvel at how soft and smooth she was, even after crying. She shot her a smile, realizing she knew a good way to steer the conversation to a hopefully more cheerful tone. “I do believe you never gave me your name sweetness.” The pet name was not at all planned, but it felt right to say, and the blush and small smile it brought to the girl made her think it was the right thing to say.

“Um… I’m Arolynne. Arolynne Amaranth.”

“Arolynne.” She liked the way it felt saying that. “That’s a pretty name.” She had no idea where this sudden flirtatiousness was coming from, maybe the adrenaline was still pumping, or maybe being saved just brought out some kind of latent damsel in distress gene. Or maybe you just want to flirt with her.

She shook that thought from her head and took Arolynne by the arm, internally screaming to herself that that would not at all help right now, helplessly feeling the heat rising in her cheeks from the contact. She gently led Arolynne away from the hillside and the bear trap, walking deeper into the forest. “Well, Arolynne, it seems we’re to be partners from now on”, she said, waiting for a moment before realizing she wouldn’t respond. A look at her face did reveal a small smile, which told her she liked the idea.

As they walked, scanning their surroundings for any more grimm or those elusive relics, Jewel would try to keep a conversation going. Arolynne didn’t seem to speak much, chiming in with a word or two occasionally while Jewel carried the conversation. Questions about her semblance seemed to draw the most words from her as she explained that her Empathic Manifestation allows her to control the emotional states of others, for example, inducing fear. In return Jewel explained her own Dust Manipulation, allowing her to detonate, amplify, lessen and, in some rare cases, even telekinetically move, dust.

On the opposite end, Jewel’s attempt to compliment her wings ended poorly. A simple “I do like your wings” had drawn a single shaky “oh” from her before she had fallen silent, a sudden tension in the air. Mentally she kicked herself. Of all the things to compliment, you go for the wings? The girl has beautiful eyes, lustrous hair, and skin to die for! She was slender and graceful, but with enough curves to allure! She’s a perfect vision of beauty and the thing you open on is the wi-

“I like your eyes…”

Jewel’s entire train of thought went screeching off the rails. Her voice had been so soft she’d almost thought she’d imagined it, if not for the blush on Arolynne’s cheeks, and the way she was very pointedly not looking at her.

Maybe it wasn’t such a misstep after all. They were very pretty after all.

Silence now more comfortable, the two of them set off to finish their initiation, hand in hand.

[sonic7ischaos]

Putting my money where my mouth is...

I talk a lot about the Sonic Adventure series and have mentioned a potential Sonic Adventure remake but I haven’t gone into much detail about it. What I think is done right, what I think is done wrong. How to improve and fix things and how to amplify working things. I’m doing this because, if enough people can form a consensus on what an Adventure remake should do, it’s designers might take notice and look to the discussion for guidance in some way. Maybe it’s indirect and we don’t even notice the little detail they took from us but nothing happens if no one tries to steer the conversation...

So let’s get started.

1st thing that needs to change fundamentally is how the camera operates. The camera in Sonic Adventure was designed with the idea that there wouldn’t be a second analogue stick to control it. It was made on a console without one and (for some reason) it’s an issue that wasn’t fixed in SADX. This needs to change. Sonic Adventure is a 3d platformer first and foremost. The last thing the camera should be able to do in this sort of game is get in your way and because of how it has to follow your movement so the player isn’t lost, it WILL get in you way if it remains as is. Another thing this might fix is Sonic’s seeming lack of control on narrow roadways. With a camera at the player’s beck and call, they could put it behind sonic and control his horizontal movement with it (y’know, like how most 3d platformers do) so you wouldn’t be getting stuck on walls as much. Speaking of the camera, we need to talk about loops. In every single official 3d Sonic game, loops are handled via automation (I’ll get to that in a minute). In every one of these segments the camera is pulled away from the character or is rendered irrelevant by the boost pads (again in a minute). This needs to not happen in a Sonic Adventure remake ESPECIALLY if the camera is to be reworked to give the player finer control. Having a camera automatically pull away or rendered meaningless by boost pads (IN. A. MINUTE) is inherently contradictory to the freedom and control the player will want and expect with a manual camera. It WILL kill them or it WILL bore them, depending on how you handle it. To summarize, the camera in Sonic Adventure worked how it did to accommodate a controller with no right analogue stick and, with modern controllers, need no longer do so. FIX THAT.

2nd thing that needs to fundamentally change is the automation (told you I’d get there). Now, the presence of automation itself isn’t necessarily a problem, it can be useful for designers who want to guide players in more open ended terrain or who want to present a story moment. The best automation is short and only takes away part of your control so you’re still interacting with the game. Loathe as I am to credit it, Sonic 06′s mach speed sections are a decent example of point about retaining some control. OH they’re abysmal to play for sure but you are still making gameplay decisions during them. The other problem with them is their length. The mach speed sections present an interesting spectacle (kingdom valley in particular is great for that though again, truly awful to play). The problem with Automation in Adventure (and every single subsequent 3d game) is that the automation is far too prevalent in the form of boost pads and springs that divide level sections so that you’re no longer interacting with the game. So, for example, if you remade Sonic Adventure and removed every single boost pad from Emerald Coast, that level would still be mostly playable ESPECIALLY with tweaks to the physics so it takes slightly longer to fall off walls at speed (the vertical boost pad set piece in emerald coast comes to mind). I’m not suggesting getting rid of the whale section, only that bits like that should be modified to be more like the speed highway building section where you’re dodging obstacles and collecting goodies. I’m also, in general, suggesting that the designers have a little more respect for the player’s intelligence and skill. Don’t railroad me into where you want me to go, trust that I’ll get there myself. The physics in Adventure are there for a reason, use them.

3rd thing that needs to be addressed is the level design. This one isn’t so big and to change it too much would make this less a remake and more its own game (which I wouldn’t be opposed to) but the pure linearity of the levels actively takes away from the free nature of the movement mechanics. Sonic can do some crazy stuff with his movement, make it so he’s only doing stuff in one way?Add stuff to the levels so players can experiment and play around more.

4th...the other characters. Now, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Gamma (I like Gamma anyway) work fine (though some tweaking might be good but I’ll get there) but Big is abysmal. His gameplay is frustrating and slow and boring. The problem lies in the fishing mechanics and how hard it is to control where the lure is and how effective it is. There’s also no reason to catch other fish. If there was some integration with the chao garden (I’ll get there) it might help but there’s a lot of other things that need to happen too. Maybe you can unlock things by catching certain fish or meeting certain requirements.  The pools where you fish should also have more thematic elements to them as well. Robot fish in eggman themed levels, that sort of thing. There also needs to be better difficulty scaling and specific challenges to differentiate each level mechanically. As for the tweaks to the others? Well Amy’s levels are, thematically, horror themed right? I’d say play that up. Maybe make her acceleration a bit better so she’s not frustrating to control but make Zero more capable and much scarier. Give him more places to pop out of. Make the player always feel like he’s right on their tail. Knuckles just needs to have his dig work like it does in Sa2, other than that, he’s fine. Tails needs no changes and I can’t think of any for Gamma. Maybe make his bosses harder? I dunno.

That’s all the main stuff that absolutely needs to be fixed but there are some other things as well that should be addressed.

1st of these is the hub worlds. They’re fine but they need more things to do. Collectibles to find, puzzles to complete, that sort of thing. Emblems functioning like the red rings of the modern games would be nice (and hide them in more places, maybe expand the hub worlds themselves to create more hiding spots or fun level elements to play with).

2nd is the presentation and there’s a few things I want to touch on. The cutscenes need fixing, that much is obvious but since the technology will let us, why don’t we go all out and make them ALL pre rendered and fully animated.  Pour every bit of love into them that was given to the opening to Unleashed (maybe get the same studio/set of artists on that). As far as the voice actors? Well, this is more up to preference but honestly I think it would be fitting to re-cast the surviving actors of the original since this is a remake. Have the lines re written slightly so the story is communicated better and have an actual voice director. For the visuals, don’t just have them look “good” have them be appropriate to the story of both the narrative and specific level. The first fight with Chaos is a tense, intimidating encounter in the darkened rain with a mysterious new foe, lit by police lights. Emerald coast is a sunny vacation spot. Lost world is a dark, mysterious catacomb, lit only by torches and mirrors. Generations actually got the tone of the final boss fight (though I’d prefer if chaos was less lizard+water monster and more just made of water). As for the music and sound design? Modern instrumentation are musts but the actual musical composition should remain untouched. New sounds for game interaction should be recorded so long as they’re mostly the same as the originals (with touched up quality and better sound design from more experienced artists).

3rd is chao gardens. I don’t actually think these need to be changed that much but I DO think they should be changed. Specifically, I think the chao events need to be expanded so that you’re not just unlocking emblems but rather you’re training your chao or unlocking new gear for them. I think the chao themselves need to have a direct impact on the main game in some way. Maybe an equip system so that their stats translate directly onto the character or maybe they can follow you into levels to find items and such. I also think there need to be more gardens, probably themed after levels in the games, probably subdivided so you find each level garden in the hub world garden it belongs to. Speed highway garden in the station square garden for example.

[pre1ude]

@chivalrites , 👫 for four headcanons about our muses' relationship

dan is only vaguely familiar with jeff before the party and has a fairly decent impression of him; that is to say, of the four horsemen of hellfire, he yells in public spaces the least, so dan likes him best. finding the guy having a moment on the bench outside solidifies a sort of quiet solidarity. he doesn't see the point in sharing this at the time, but he gets it. It, capital I. since jeff is sweet, and sweeter yet for the message he leaves post-factum, he gets rewarded with a superpowered blond quietly imprinting on him without notice. any bully of his within danny's line of sight is henceforth met with a sudden-onset headache or temporary hearing loss. or ringing ears for the whole day, it all depends on how bad a foot they put forward. the only downside is... it definitely doesn't help with the satanic rumours.

dan makes good on that invitation he gets over the phone, brings his violin for a 'jam session' and then ends up not playing it. he's confident in his skills and excited to play with someone he hasn't been partnered with by a sour music instructor, don't get him wrong, it's just that standing upright in the middle of jeff's room and playing something like mozart for a man who wears leather jackets sounds like the most awkward, self-immolating thing he could ever do, so he offers at least five excuses not to do it. it's only a little uncomfortable and he ends up actually playing Dance of the Knights by Prokofiev (the piece that Star Wars' Imperial March theme is based off of) for Jeff later on, but that night in particular remains free of classical. he does walk away from it enraptured by the idea of learning guitar, freshly introduced to black sabbath and its entire history (bat decapitation included) and keen on inviting Jeff round to his house (awful, sterile slab of spotless white plaster though it may be in comparison to this cosy place) for a night of abysmal horror flicks.

daniel becomes quickly and surprisingly comfortable around jeff, to a degree that surprises even him. they're so close to the exact same level of 'odd' (and i use that word loosely) that they end up cancelling each other out. dan has a vast and only slightly ridiculous interest in mythos and historical witchcraft (fancies himself a wizard), morbid victorian era practices and various schools of philosophy (the man is all-curious), all of which he's shared with no one until jeff normalizes infodumping to such a lovely degree that he joins in. grows comfortable enough to randomly sprinkle a metal as hell historical fact here and there, maybe even stretch the dough a little and go on a rant about humanism. in return, he listens with rapt fascination at jeff whenever he talks about music, movies and pop culture, eager to learn about things he didn't have the chance to experience in his own time. also,, i just have a soft spot for danny getting introduced to Stuff. explain Things to him, he wants to Know. he wants to have The Scoop. he feels so absolutely cheated out of star trek and metal.

and because i like parallels: jeff finds dan having a very quiet and inconspicuous panic attack a day after the chrissy's death. everything hits a little late, but it hits hard; it's that silent, numb and out of it sort that leaves him feeling away from himself for half an hour, and gripped with the most debilitating, drowning sense of doom for two more after that. it's both the most and least emotion he's shown in front of jeff at one time but he doesn't have the wherewithal to be mortified about it, so maybe that makes it easier to commiserate. between nonsensical admissions to feeling horribly guilty and lost, he ends up sharing a bit too much and accidentally clues jeff in about things he shouldn't.

+ 1

there's a janky old classroom nextdoor to hellfire's campaign room. it used to host music class some years ago, but has since been abandoned and daniel gets relegated to it when he asks for a nice, quiet place to practice his music (5 mandated hours per day). so they find themselves neighbours with occasionally overlapping schedules for a time, much to everyone's initial chagrin. they're both their own manner of loud and disruptive but they make do. once in a while, one of daniel's cadenzas will line up perfectly with the campaign's atmosphere and produce pure magic. mostly, he tries not to impose on their fun and does his best not to listen in. not because he isn't interested, but because the contrast hurts a little bit. he always uses the music room alone.

[maevefiction]

Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 1

The weather in Hawaii is everything they say it is…absolute perfection. I would have preferred to visit in January as opposed to June, fleeing the abysmal cold that is the norm in New York City, but as I wasn’t on the conference planning committee I hadn’t any choice in the matter. After two twelve hour days of being cooped up in a conference room at the Courtyard Marriot Kaua'i, all I wanted to do was plop my ass down on a lounge chair, stick my toes in the warm sand and think about anything other than social media marketing and implementation and…gods, please make it stop. I rolled over in the king size bed and squinted at the digital click. Nope, still a big blur. I fumbled for my glasses, shoving them roughly in place, and tried again. It read 7:23 AM.

“Well, fuck me. So much for the sunrise ceremony on the beach.” My voice echoed in the 528 square foot room, which was nearly as large as my studio apartment back home. Since it was technically a ‘free’ day for me, I had opted to not set the alarm and instead rely on my internal version to ensure I was up in time. Apparently my body clock was still off kilter from the time difference. I padded across the room and opened the louvered doors to the balcony, closing my eyes as I let the ocean breeze wash over me.  

“Mmm, someone needs to remind me why I continue to live in New York, because I can’t think of a single reason right now.” Talking to myself was a lifelong habit, most likely the result of being an introvert. I spent an inordinate number of hours interacting with clients every day, pretending to be an extrovert…when I wasn’t working, all I wanted was to be alone. If I didn’t allow myself to slip into my own world whenever circumstances permitted I’d quickly become unable to function properly, often lashing out at those around me. And that’s not exactly good for business.

I raised my arms above my head, stretching to work the morning kinks out…and then I remembered that I was standing on an oceanfront balcony one story above a public beach clad only in a t-shirt. “Shit. Say aloha to my lady bits, Coconut Beach.” I retreated into the room, wondering if anyone had witnessed my R-rated maneuver. I pulled the threadbare t-shirt over my head and tossed it on the floor as I walked toward the bathroom. I opened the faucet, pushed in the shower knob and hit the temperature memory button I’d configured after checking in…what a luxurious convenience THAT was. I set my glasses as far back as possible on the counter to reduce the risk of knocking them off when I towel dried my hair. As I stepped over the tub rim, careful not to trip, I realized that I had neglected to shut the balcony doors. I face palmed and groaned, then glanced at myself in the mirror. “Congratulations, Maude. You’ll soon have no dignity left to salvage.”

****************************************************************

I frowned at the clock as I dressed, wondering if it was possible to trek 25 miles to the other side of the island to the Talk Story bookstore and be back in time for the Kauai Museum’s ‘Ōlelo Mai Nā Kūpuna Mai at 10:30. Traditional Hawaiian lore as told by a Kahuna wasn’t high on my list of ‘things I need to do in Hawaii’ but I knew lots of conference attendees would be there, providing me with a perfect opportunity to schmooze. My frown turned into a grimace at the thought of having to use my tablet as a reader all week and I decided the schmoozing could wait until Wednesday’s Hula Class, which would probably be vastly more entertaining. Despite my love for tech in all of its forms, nothing would ever compare to the feel of a book in my hands. There’s just something incredibly sensuous about the weight, the texture of the paper, the sound of the page turning…a representation of a physical connection between the author and the reader. Work led me to a multitude of locations, and for every stop that was new to me I made it a point to purchase a book I hadn’t read, inscribing the place and time inside the front cover. So much better than picking up a tacky souvenir that served no real purpose, and I loved browsing my bookshelves and knowing the exact moment when I began my journey into a particular story. I sighed, mulling over the fact that my apartment was bursting at the seams with books and what that said about the state of my affairs. Of lack thereof, as it were. I strapped on my Birkenstocks, put my unruly reddish-brown hair up in a ponytail and made for the door, giving myself a quick pat down to make sure I had my car keys, cell phone, wallet and room key tucked away in my hiking shorts. Yep, good to go. I watched the door close behind me and started toward the single flight of stairs that exited to the parking lot.

My phone rang just as I was approaching the Jeep Wrangler I had rented. It was army green, an older model…perfect, the sales rep said, for seeing the ‘real’ Kaua’i. I’ve always loved Jeeps, so he got no argument from me, though I had no intention of taking it off-roading. I could too easily envision myself getting it stuck in the mud and requiring a tow truck. Or an ambulance. “Pass”, I muttered while tapping the answer button on my phone.

“Maude Gallagher, how may I help you?’

“May I speak with Ms. Gallagher, please?” Though I did the vast majority of the work alone, my official company name was Maude Gallagher, LLC and it was a common occurrence for people to assume that someone other than me would be answering the phone.

“This is Ms. Gallagher. But please, call me Maude.” Ten seconds of silence followed.

“So sorry, Ms. Ga…Maude. I’m afraid I didn’t recognize your voice. Luke Windsor here, of Prosper PR. I attended your seminar on how to use social media to enhance client reputation Saturday. Which was wonderful, by the way. It’s something I’ve been involved with for a number of years, but you presented some exceptional ideas I plan on implementing immediately once I’m back on the home front.”

Luke Windsor…I knew the name, but couldn’t quite put my finger on any of Prosper’s clientele, and his English accent was doing little to help me focus. I made a mental note to Google him when I had a moment. “Thank you, Luke. It’s always a pleasure to know that an attendee found the information I provide to be of use. I appreciate you calling to let me know.”

“Oh, yes, very useful, and you’re quite welcome. But, actually, I was calling to see if you were free to meet at some point today or tomorrow to discuss a client of mine who’s been struggling with his social media presence lately. It’s a bit complicated as we’re close friends as well, and on this particular topic we don’t see eye to eye. At all. I think listening to a neutral party with your level of expertise may help him understand my perspective and perhaps he’ll permit me to do my job properly again.” He sighed audibly. “My apologies, Maude. That wasn’t very professional of me. I’m afraid I’m a tad…frustrated.”

“No need to apologize, Luke. Social media PR is pretty much impossible to pull off with any modicum of success when a client is unwilling to follow through, and it’s incredibly frustrating when the person who hired you is the one standing in the way of you getting the job done. I’d be happy to sit down and go over things. What day works best for you?”

“Actually, over lunch today at 2:00 PM would be ideal. Does that suit your schedule?” I closed my eyes and lowered my chin to my chest. So much for my ass in that lounge chair. But, you can’t expect to reap the benefits of being your own boss without accepting the sacrifices it demands as well.

“That will be fine, Luke. You pick the location that you’re most comfortable with and text me the address later, please.”

“I can’t thank you enough for doing this on such short notice, Maude. My client and I aren’t in the same place very often unless it’s a press event and it’s lovely of you to accommodate us. When I text the details I’ll send along the info you’ll need so you can forward me an invoice.”

“You’re very welcome. And, initial consultations are always free of charge.” Not many people in my field were willing to do anything for free, but I’d always felt that it was worth the gamble and helped me stand out of the pack. Often, the potential client would wind up paying for drinks and meals, so it wasn’t a total loss.

He paused briefly. “Well, I hope you’ll at least allow me to pick up the tab for lunch, then?” I laughed.

“If you insist. But be warned, I’m not a dainty salad and water kind of gal.” He laughed in turn. “See you at 2:00 PM, Luke.  I look forward to meeting you and your client.”

“See you then, Maude. And thanks again!” I tapped the end call button and checked the time. It was 8:45 now, and after stopping at the Passion Bakery Café for breakfast it would probably be 9:30 or so. According to my directions, it would take around 45 minutes to get to Talk Story and another 45 for my return trip. I’d need to change and primp a bit when I got back to the hotel, but I’d probably be okay as long as I was out the door of the bookstore at 12:30. Two hours seemed like plenty of time to poke around, but I often got lost in such places. I set my phone alarm for 12:15, just in case. I climbed into the Jeep, intending to plug my phone into the auxiliary jack so I could shuffle some tunes for the ride. Much to my horror, not only was there no auxiliary jack, there was no stereo, period. Damn, how could I have not checked that? I pushed in the clutch and the brake, turned the key, put it in gear and made a left out of the lot towards the Passion Bakery Café. My stomach growled continuously in anticipation of my much needed breakfast. I looked down and patted my belly. “Well, it’s not Beethoven, but I guess it will have to do.”

[autolovecraft]

My father had been fulfilled since that time which I had read.

It may have been gold, but I was free, I succeeded with difficulty in raising it, for each movement of the presence of man or spirit produced in my brain a horror of the place, and in his dying breath screamed forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my days and nights. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a sacrifice to the château, I trembled as I remained, paralyzed with fear, he drew from his terrible eyes the black malevolence that had first so haunted me, and lit the unused torch which I had read. The hideous eyes were now closed.

Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction, I broke through the centuries ran the ominous chronicle: Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and terminated in a place as thoroughly deserted as I was absolutely resolved. 'May ne'er a noble of thy murderous line survive to reach a greater age than thine! Upon my twenty-first birthday, the paving became very damp, and left him to die at the age of thirty-two years.

Perhaps it was at first only the manifest reluctance of my time was now occupied in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. Pausing, I sought the lower levels, descending into what appeared to be either a medieval place of confinement, or a passive victim. The paper carried me back to occult studies, and how had the curse that ever afterward haunted the house of C—. Disliking the sight, I succeeded with difficulty in raising it, whereupon there was revealed a black aperture, exhaling noxious fumes which caused my torch to sputter, and thrown upon my own race I was an immense pile of shining yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy. Pausing, I would fall back to the fate which so many of the objects I encountered. I fell prone upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a sacrifice to the days of the longest of all, how he had seized Robert, son to Robert, son to Robert, son of Godfrey, son of Godfrey, innocent cause of the objects I encountered. As I slowly traversed the niter-encrusted passageway at the age of their unfortunate ancestor at his murder.

Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count laid hands on the hill. Without warning, I sought the lower levels, descending into what appeared to be, I succeeded with difficulty in raising it, for I am Charles Le Sorcier concerning the elixir which should grant to him who partook of it I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the terror which I had left at most but eleven years of my great house, told me of my own youth one long-continued nightmare. The dread of years was lifted from my shoulder, for each movement of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. Yet through the trees. Have you no brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long centuries since the time of Charles Le Sorcier, and how came he within the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour which I could not well understand.

Meanwhile, joyful servants were proclaiming the finding of young Godfrey in a field, forced poison down his throat, and how came he within the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour which I could not well understand.

First of all were his eyes, twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in expression of understanding, yet now realizing how the curse had been a feared and impregnable fortress. Michel was said to have burnt his wife alive as a home and stronghold for the moment to remove from his tunic a phial of colorless liquid which he said had for his parent a more recently excavated storehouse for gunpowder. Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count and his hands, long, claw-like, and once more endeavor to find a spell, that had a sort of relation to a certain circumstance which I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made certain to me by my ancestor against old Michel Mauvais, and gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Sorcier, and I fell prone upon the wild ravines of the great elixir of eternal life? I, Antoine, last of the peasant children was laid at the age of thirty-second birthday when surprised by early death.

A poverty but little above the rank of peasant, by name, Michel, usually designated by the fall of a skeleton, was strangely bent and almost lost within the great fortress, and gnarled, were spent the better part of the hidden world of black magic.

It may have been gold, but little more than two and thirty years from the idea of beholding any more; yet, having found upon careful inquiry that there were no known descendants of the dark natures of the château, which in youth fear had caused me to shun, and in his dying breath screamed forth those words which have ever afterward haunted the house? The excited chatter of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. At that time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me, but which now became dimly terrible. Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction, I turned to examine the charred and shriveled figure on the floor. Then, as well as the tunic of dark color. First of all were his eyes, twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. Know you not guess my secret? 'Fool! These ancient turrets, stained by the light of my troubled life. His long hair and flowing beard were of the dark and occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.

Upon my twenty-first birthday, the Evil, on account of the unhappy and accursed Counts de C—. That have lived for six hundred years before, ended that of a man clad in a place as thoroughly deserted as I have never elsewhere seen in man. No trace of the two wizards, father and son ran one redeeming ray of humanity; the evil old man, who often spoke of a terrible and intense black hue, and led to a narrow stone-flagged passage which I had hitherto considered this but a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the last staircase, the form of Latin in use amongst the more learned men of the old castle with evidence of the once mighty lords of the most startling nature, and gnarled, were of the researches of Charles Le Sorcier, and was reputed wise in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed the hideous narrator, how he had loved to wander in life. Yet through the perpetual dust of the pendulum of the alchemist, the next young Count, Robert by name, was strangely bent and almost lost within the voluminous folds of his disconnected speech. But since those glorious years, all was frightfully dark, and left him to die at the dreaded door of these two. Determined upon further exploration, I was able to gain seemed to hear emanating from it a faint sound, as well as the only human creature within the voluminous folds of his disconnected speech. Here I found what seemed much like an alchemist's laboratory. There in the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted library of the Middle Ages, as well as the tunic of the last staircase, the peasants told in whispers that their seigneur had but lately passed his thirty-two, a month before I was strangely bent and almost lost within the great fortress, and rooting me to the estate. Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier. But since those glorious years, all was frightfully dark, and I labored as in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed the hideous narrator, how he had loved to wander in life. But since those glorious years, all is changed. I could have not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw breath that I, Antoine, last of the castle on the aged Pierre gave to me by the fall of a skeleton, was killed by an arrow just as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the sorcerers and there came upon the plains that surround the base with the moisture of the old château and its contents. 'Fool! Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier!

Thus was I left to imagine the solution of the old alchemists and daemonologists.

[legendofthematriarch]

Prologue

A vampire gentleman of some repute in his own corner of the world was napping comfortably in his puffy chair. Where in this world was he? Indeterminate as far as he was concerned, likely somewhere in Europe considering the accents he was surrounded by. He had one of his own but it had been a couple centuries since his homeland was relevant to his own interests. Where in time was he? Also irrelevant, his style was gathered from the local evening markets. There were some pretty frills and puffy sleeves which he found more comfortable than he originally expected. Last he checked it was somewhere in the 1800's but once more, he stopped bothering to keep track. He was of the old blood, one of several dozen bloodlines that dates back a thousand years, perhaps even two. His face contorted into that of a bat when the call of the blood demanded him to feed himself, or perhaps at times when he just felt like it. The world suited him just fine, and some decades ago he had essentially retired to a special cliffside estate. 

A marvel of an estate it was, built inside a mountain that was originally commissioned to have the recent invention that was steam powered locomotives, later to be dubbed as trains, to fly through the mountain in a winding path. This idea was shot down and shelved, but the local vampire hierarchy still scammed the officials out of the funding needed to make such a plan happen and replaced it with their own; a Grand, multilayered hotel of a thing. The eventual structure was borrowed from their fellow vampiric neighbors in Mexico. Now, this particular vampire in question was hired on to deal with the money involved in such a coup, and was just given a room and office as he managed to filter their crimes through the ages, though in this case he had only been employed for a couple of decades. They kept him comfortable due to his importance, as he was dubbed ‘the money man’. As time went on, it became an absolute nexus of vampire kind. A bastion of trade, pleasure, and influence. It would go on to house hundreds within its walls, and the hallways became busier than a festival in New York. Something was wrong, he managed to notice. One of his pets, sheepish and terrified, stammered out an emphasis while pointing at the man’s face. Confused, he reached up and noticed that his glamour spell had faded (he was reaching up in the years, and had to resort to magic to keep his visage applicably young). This was odd, he thought, considering that glamour spells require very little effort and can even maintain beyond sleep. There was also a spot of tinnitus in his ears, something he hadn’t experienced since his turning. Also very odd. He stepped up from his nab and located a nearby mirror. Worthless to him, as his old blood did not allow for a reflection but they still had their uses; that of communication. Indeed, like the fairy tales that even his age are familiar with… mirrors were used as a form of long range contact. He hadn’t bothered learning the art of telepathy, only for a short range across-the-household type of way. He felt the faux-silver lining of the mirror and found that his call went… unanswered. Well, that was irregular. He felt his heart sink, if not beat just a touch, as he heard a frantic shuffling of steps all around him and heightened vocals. It hit him then; The estate had just been mass dispelled. They were under attack.

The sounds and feelings of the attack were like nothing he had heard or felt before. A loud booming, not unlike cannonfire but precise. The foundations shook, and he started hearing the vocals become further frantic yelling. He told his pet to flee and inform others, and she did as he commanded, running off into parts unknown or rather, irrelevant, for this retelling. He ran into the hallways and immediately, the wooden fixtures in the hallways exploded and splintered around behind him. The shards of which, large enough to have impaled and ashed a few of his neighbors. The sight alone shocked him, the mere suddenness of such an explosion. The frantic vocals of the estate had now become outright screaming, and he only took a few steps before the foundations crumbled beneath him, his movement became entirely out of his control and he fell through the floor and landed one floor below, where he managed to regain his composure fairly quickly and delve deeper into the halls. He had recalled the test of naval artillery when it was first being introduced to the French military, but the sounds he was hearing were far too rapid for his understanding. Try as he did, he could not find any proper cannonballs lodged into the walls. The holes were also far too narrow, though certainly large in their own right. 

He yelled out commands and orders, and most of them were related to getting into the undercroft so that all may flee into the relative safety of the inner mountain. He found one of the higher nobles, having retreated to the residential areas to give like minded orders. She recognized this gentleman and quickly approached him. “Do you know what is happening?” “No, no, I was just…” He tried to reply but before they had a chance to blink, a sharp and deafening sound shot through the hall around them. Some form of projectile had just entered her throat, only allowing her a shocked cough before she immediately burned into ash, followed by another explosion that sent her ashed corpse straight into him. It was if some green magic had entered her neck and engulfed her jawline before fading entirely. Madness, he thought, what manner of weapon could kill a vampire so damned quickly? Some kind of chemical, he thought, entered her veins but did not have nearly enough time to act as a poison. She was just shot and then… gone. Her ash had entered his nostrils and lungs at this point, causing some coughing. He tried to regain his composure but the shock of the situation begins setting in while one, overbearing directive enters his mind: Survive.

He fled, through the hallways and towards the stairs. The very floor he stood upon buckled and cracked at various points, causing him to have had to jump across a small gap. He went down a single flight of stairs, and the entire woodworks were crackling. The red and black themed rugs were slipping through said breaks, and he had a moment to look up as others came behind him. The stairs cracked too severely and some fell, but the force of the stairs snapped by and impaled another woman, ashing her immediately. The cries of her followers were seen and heard as they jumped down after this gentleman, and he gave the universal signal to continue onward. He did as well, fleeing through the gothic hallways and trying to make his way towards one of the main lobbies or lounges, the nexus in which the various wings were connected.

He had made it, following the sounds of terrified shrieks but another realization came upon him as a hallway that flanked the direct outside was breached. It was roughly noontime, a point of horror when the cornered roof above them exploded open, leaving the shine of sunlight to unleash its wrath upon several vampiric civilians, killing several instantly in a painful display of fire and seared flesh. Sunlight can be survival for some bloodlines, but some succumb to it within seconds and he was surrounded by very old blood, where the sun holds incredible sway over their lives. He continued on.

He found another hallway to traverse (there were many, after all!) but his advance was blocked by another explosion, trapping dozens. After witnessing another bout of ashing, he found himself in a position of proper investigation. The sunlight was not beaming at the immediate angle that would do him harm, and this allowed him to peer outside to find out what was attacking. He could barely comprehend what he was seeing. A type of ship that was flying on its own, no sails, and had the silver sheen of pure metal. It had mounted guns beneath instead of atop, which he recognized and were horrifically put to use as they let loose upon the crackled hallway where many vampires were trapped by the sheen of sunlight. Most died, but not before he had the abysmal memory of watching limbs fly off from being shot from some kind of enlarged bullet which he had never seen the likes of before. His reflexes and senses allowed him to see the shape of it, but they were still far faster than the rifles he had seen before. 

Horror, madness, murder, was all he could think of. So many of this estate were simple civilians, working for the higher nobles to keep the vampiric hierarchy running. Through the likes of himself and his superiors, they were simply operating to keep the peace with the outside world and to make sure no harm could be done to either side. It was all he could think about, but what could have enticed such a brutal attack. He knew of some of the darker elements that his superiors would get up to, but even then if evidence was mounted then surely justice would have been served? This is nothing but a slaughter, he thought.

He hadn’t the time to dwell on what manner of sorcery or technology that was assaulting them, but that particular route was no longer viable. As he turned back, once again the foundation buckled and cracked, and he was forced once again one floor below. He quickly saw a shattered log fire upon him, and he narrowly avoided the same fate he saw so many others befall. Everything shook at all times, but he was in the position to face the lobby he was seeking, which had access to more points of escape. He ran on through, finally getting what would be at ground level. At least, as ground level as the cliffside allowed, but near one of the several main entrances that at least held the stables and horses. He found a small family, some of which he recognized. There were several, not all related but adopted each other through time and bond. An old blooded vampire matriarch, her face contorted into batlike features not for thirst, but for battle. However, there was no fighting, there was only fear. All their hopes for an escape were quickly annihilated as some of the roofing collapsed in just the way to force sunlight near the front. They could go back, but everything was collapsing around them. They were trapped, and he approached the huddled few to help protect them and give time to think of plans.

Beyond the matriarch, there were two younger men, three women, and two vampiric children, neither could have been older than eight or ten. One of them was fully turned, but the scent of the bloodline was unfamiliar, and the older of them might have been stuck in that youth’s body for some time. They barely spoke at all, as a loud humming engulfed the collapsed nexus. A type of fan perhaps, but far too loud, and the dust of wind and ashes washed over the group as they heard footsteps approach the wreckage of the entrance. Deep, heavy footsteps entered the front door, or what could be considered the remains of a front door. Through the ash that seemed to have been permanently affixed to the air surrounding them all, a pair of glowing red eyes was seen through the veil. They seemed to smoke on their own, a magic he did not recognize without proper study. As the creature approached, he once more could not recognize the technology they wielded. It was a man. Massive, something to the tune of eight feet or so and the broadness to match, that of an incredible warrior. His armor looked like plate or steel, but was layered oddly. It also clicked has he stepped, as well as some lights throughout that were sharp, small, and precise. It was once again like nothing he had ever seen. His eyes drifted towards the massive hammer he wielded in a single hand, easily half of his own height. A special, runed hammerhead that was crackling with some red-orange energy that matched the man’s own eyes. His grin, filled with wickedness and untoward thoughts. His teeth were unnatural as well, pointed in their own way but not like a vampire’s. More of a demonic nature, but he couldn’t tell. All the gentleman could ask was, “What are you…?” The voice of the being was deep, guttural, and coordinated. His words were carefully chosen, if strangely playful, and seemed to originate straight from his deepest bowels, “I am the result of thousands of years of your kinds baaaaad decisions..” Then, he lifted his hammer to bring it down and… there was nothing at all.