#like is this a normal level of ‘hooray new friends’ or is it like ��ah yes i’ve been accepted. i’m getting a good grade in Personality’

[miss-morland]

my main goal is for everyone to like me is that wrong

[transient-winds]

HI YES HELLO I’M ALIVE and the yapping is back (it never left)!!

Just when the summer bbq is concluding. 🥹

Uhh looking back at this post, it’s highkey a sako character analysis post in disguise. Spoilers Ahead for Wind Breaker Chapters 160 & 161! (as promised with doodles)

This last panel with everyone toasting to each other feels like the end to the Summer BBQ event, at least to me. *shakes and wails off into the corner*

So many friendships being strengthened, healing/healed and being made in this one event is making my heart do somersaults. GAHHH!! I would’ve loved if we stayed in this wholesome moment a little longer if it is the last but oh well at least these recent two chapters have given me two things to brainrot about for a while. 🤧

Sako Kota and his relationships

Hooray!! We finally get to see the (much needed) closure of HiraSako’s *gestures wildly* everything, in that moment my spirit synced up with Inugami. 

I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to point out Sako had an unhealthy dependency towards Hiragi from when they were kids up ‘til the Shishitoren arc. On the surface level, Sako’s reasons for getting back at him may seem very immature and they are but I also see where it stemmed from. Hiragi was essentially the first to take a chance on him when he was at his lowest and gave him a chance to better himself.   Hiragi to him was the pinnacle of strength and security, his guiding light (Chapter 15). He likely thought that even when things change, he would always be by his side because with him, he’s safe—with him, he’s strong. Stronger than he was before, someone who wouldn’t let bullies trample over him.

So when the latter told him he was following Ume and that he should follow his own path, which is normally very inspiring, Sako took it as abandonment. In his eyes, his pillar of strength was no longer holding up the weight of his (Hiragi’s) own roof but rather someone else’s (Umemiya’s’) and he was left in the ruins (dramatic ass analogy I know but it works).

“If Hiragi had been the source of his strength, then if he beats Hiragi that means he’s reclaiming that strength as his own right?��� was what probably went through his head when he started picking fights and joined Shishitoren.

His reliance on Hiragi was still there but now it was twisted and he likely started hating himself for having been content with remaining a follower. If you asked my personal thoughts about this, I would say it was unfair. Not just for Hiragi bearing the weight of his unreasonable expectations, but also for Sako himself whose helplessness as a child manifested into the ugly beast that is emotional dependency. 

Deep down, he was still the same hurt child who couldn’t fight back against his bullies and needed someone to support him. When that support came and fell through, he thought defeating Hiragi was his way of proving to himself that he can stand on his own without relying on others. The point when things finally climaxed (aka the Hiragi vs Sako fight) was the moment when Sako had begun letting go of his heart demons. Turns out he just needed to have a talk or two with Hiragi. Communication and respect are the keys to any healthy relationship after all, even if said communication is thru fists but they are delinquents so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

With that tangent on Sako’s previous ideologies out of the way, another thing I noticed in his official apology was that he called Inugami “kohai” and also like other things he said, but mainly that part. Maybe I’m reading into it or im late to the party, but me thinks he was somewhat of recluse in Shishitoren. Like sure, he wouldn’t be outright hostile but he wouldn’t be actively making friends either.

When Inugami first appeared and was very comfortable talking to him, it made me think “ah this is Sako’s new bestie when he came to Shishitoren, it’s good someone was there for him while he was gunning for Hiragi”.  But with this new context, in my head it makes sense if he only joined because he wanted revenge so he likely wouldn’t have reached out if he was so fixated on his goals. And with the whole uh pre-Shishitoren arc Choji and Togame thing going around, yeah I wouldn’t also be eager to make be friendly with them too. But somewhere along the way he got attached to them, he just didn’t realized it at the time.

After Bofurin bulldozes in with their life changing fists and kicks, Sako leaving wouldn’t have been a hard decision for him to make since (1) he’s got presumably no friends and (2) he wants to wallow in self pity alone for a good long while. Then comes crashing in sweet boy Inugami and honestly? I don’t blame Sako for spilling his entire backstory on the guy. I mean look at his face!! 

He’s Sako’s emotional support dog. 

Anyways, in my heart I’d like to believe Inugami was the second person to reach out to him. Offering him another chance to lean on support and start anew on learning to be okay with accepting a hand or two but not to the extreme. Trusting others and letting people in again, but also learning to trust in himself too.

And so far, things are going pretty well for him. Found family within Shishitoren, got someone who’s unafraid to keep him in check and repaired his relationship with Hiragi & his other childhood friends! Throwing all the confetti and sweets for him <3

HOO-WEE THAT WAS SO FUCKING LONG 😭😭 

I wanted to add more to this latter half of this discussion but the Sako-brainrot took over, so i’ll just briefly cover my thoughts on Sakura’s progress.

Two words: SAKURA’S GROWTH! 

HE IS BLOOMING IN THE SUMMER HEAT OF JULY, HE’S RADIANT AND HIS SKINS GLOWING AS HE SMILES, IM SMOTHERING HIM IN A PILE OF FLOWER BOUQUETS -*ahem*

Sakura really has come a really long way from the person he was 4 months ago and it’s a real tear-jerker. Even if he didn’t say it to their faces directly, he called his class his friends and he hangs out with the others (their allies) on his own whenever he has the time. Sakura’s getting comfortable with all of them and I cannot believe that after 160+ chapters this is the first canonical mention of the “stray cat” analogy. His first year and he already won the hearts of so many people, deserved really 🙌. 

Honorable mentions:

The Kanuma and Suo reunion I’ve been waiting for 👏👏. But it’s not enough,, so I’m gonna post a doodle of their mini interaction to satisfy my craving for enemies to friends and/or lovers suonuma 🏃🏃

!!Togame and Choji apologizing to Kaji!! I almost forgot Choji completely trashed him and other Furin students on his way to the school.  

This panel is my everything, it’s so sweet like y’ALL I’M HERE THINKING ABOUT WHO KNOWS HOW LONG YANAGIDA AND MATSUMOTO HAVEN’T SEEN AND TALKED TO THEIR CUTE KOHAI WHO FOLLOWED HIRAGI AROUND LIKE A DUCKLING. IM UGGHHH- *stumbles to the ground and wails pathetically*

Sugi? Sweet boy, what are you contemplating about 👀? If you asked me, I hope it’s about Sakura AND/OR will be relevant to the next arc of the series because my body is simultaneously ready and not ready for new antagonists.

—

Once again singing my praises to Nii-sensei, their team and the official english translation staff. My head is constantly in a spin for these characters and their interactions with one another. And thank y’all for being patient with me for this post and for reading til the end.

[jumukus]

A3! Translation: Kazunari Miyoshi’s R [Midsummer’s BPM] - DDR Showdown!

Kazunari borrows a DDR console from his friend in order to practice dancing for the upcoming play. (Thanks to @/cIoveries on Twitter for recording the backstage!)

Kazunari: Ta-da! Look at the thing I've borrowed from my friend~! Don't you think we can use this as a practice for our play!?

It's called "Dance Dance Deluxe"! C'mon, guys! Let's play this together!

Tenma: A dance game, huh.

Izumi: I think I've seen this game before. This used to be popular, right?

Kazunari: Yup! But this one is the latest edition that just came out last year! They've got a lot of songs here, you see, so there might be songs that you'll know.

Muku: Wow, really? That sounds fun.

Misumi: I wanna try it~!

Yuki: I'll pass. I don't play one of the dancers, after all. I'll just watch you all.

Kumon: I'm pretty sure this mat here is the controller, right? The one that has arrows on it.

Kazunari: Yep! All you've gotta do is step on the arrows that are shown on the screen!

Misumi: I see~!

Kazunari: Alright, now, let's try playing the intermediate mode first as a test!

Misumi: This is so fun~!

Izumi: You're amazing, Misumi-kun! You make it look so easy.

Yuki: As one would have expected from Triangle Alien. You're really good at things that require jumping. Only at jumping, though.

Kumon: It's pretty hard to match the timing!

Kazunari: Ooh.. oops! I missed!

Muku: Who… whoa! I'm stumbling over my feet…!

Tenma: But it might be good to train your legs with this.

Kumon: Yeah, I agree!

I wanna do it again!

Muku: Kyu-chan, wanna play together?

Kumon: OK! Let's try the two-player mode and decrease the difficulty. Here we go~!

Muku: ~♪~♪

Kumon: ~♪~♪

Kazunari: Wow! Kumopi, Muku, you're doing better than before now! This is so IG worthy so lemme film you guys!

Misumi: You cleared the song! Both of you are good~.

Kumon: We did it!

Kazunari: I'm going next, then!

Say, Director-chan, wanna play together?

Izumi: Huh? Me?

Hmmm, while I do want to do it, this looks difficult. Besides, I feel bad for disturbing your practice…

Kumon: You're not disturbing our practice at all!

Tenma: How about trying it once, then?

Izumi: Hmm, alright. Kazunari-kun, I'll be in your care.

Kazunari: Hooray! I've got to dance with Director-chan!

Since you're still new at this, let's set the difficulty to beginner mode.

Muku: Good luck, Director-san!

Kazunari: ~♪~♪

Izumi: ~♪

Kumon: Wow! Kazu-san, you're awesome! Perfect!

Yuki: You too, Director. You're better than expected.

Misumi: Yep! You're good~!

Izumi: Thank you. I'm still far from good compared to you guys, but I had fun.

Kazunari: Glad to hear that! Let's do it again if we feel like it!

Izumi: Yep, sure.

Tenma: I'll go next.

Misumi: Do it with me~!

Kumon: Fighting, you two!

Kazunari:  ~♪~♪

Banri: Kazunari has been playing that game a lot these days.

Izumi: Yup, he plays it every day.

Kazunari: Phew. Guess I've gotta take a short break!

For some reason I've got so into the game and had so much fun~!

Izumi: And you've been playing the more advanced mode these days, right?

Kazunari: Yeah. I've gotten used to it. I've been playing the hardest mode now.

Banri: Heh. Way to go, man.

Kazunari: I'm so looking forward to the day I'll be able to play the hardest level song flawlessly~.

OPTION 1: Seeing you having fun makes me feel the same.

Izumi: Seeing Kazunari-kun having fun playing the game makes me feel the same.

Kazunari: Hehe, seriously?

I mean, I could play happily like that because I'm wondering if you watch me, Director-chan.

Say, let's play together again, Director-chan!

Izumi: Sure. Shall I have you teach me some tips?

Kazunari: Leave it to me! From A to Z, I'll teach you everything!

OPTION 2: You've also been doing your best in the dance practice for the play.

Izumi: Kazunari-kun has been doing his best both in the game and dance practice for the play.

Kazunari: Totally! I mean, I get so pumped up whenever I dance with them all!

Whether it’s about the game or the play, I'll show you my increasingly cool side!

Izumi: Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

Banri: By the way, I remember the arcade has this kind of game as well.

Kazunari: For real!? I've never really been to the rhythmic games section at the arcade so I've never noticed it!

Banri: Wanna stop by on our way home tomorrow?

Kazunari: Let's go! I'm so looking forward to it~!

Izumi: Arcade… Now that you mention it, I feel like I have something to do there...

Izumi: Oh, yeah! Kareko-chan!

Banri: Huh? Kareko-chan?

Izumi: It's an adorable curry mascot character.

She's one of the prizes at the crane game, so I want to get it.

Say, can I tag along with you two?

Kazunari: Of course! Let's go together!

Banri: Then, I'll call you once our class is over tomorrow. Let's meet up after that.

Izumi: Okay, got it!

Izumi: Hmm, the crane game is…

Ah, found it! They have Kareko-chan as well!

Kazunari: And there's only one left! You're so lucky, Director-chan!

Banri: Dude, I've never known it's that popular…

Izumi: Alright! I'll try it.

???: Ah, found it! My Kareko-chan!

Izumi: Huh?

Punk: Hey, you chick, move out. I've been keepin’ that one. I just went for a while to exchange the money.

Kazunari: But it doesn't seem like you've been playing here?

Punk: Bullshit! Y’all are just misunderstandin’ it.

Banri: But you said, "Found it!" before.

Punk: I didn't.

Kazunari: We can put our money here, though? One normally would not be able to do it if you've clicked the keep button.

Punk: Ugh… I knew it! Y-Y'all must have un-pressed the button!

Banri: The fuck did you just say? There's no way we'll do that.

Punk: ...Ugh!

If, If that's what you want, let's have a showdown with Kareko-chan doll on the line!

Izumi: (He's pointing out at… "Dance Dance Deluxe"!?)

Banri: Haaah? The heck are ya sayin', shithead? You've just said what you want despite comin’ here later.

Kazunari: Settzer, calm down!

I'll fight you, then.

Banri: Hey, Kazunari, you ain't need to listen to what this bastard sa…

Kazunari: It's fine, man! I'm good at that game, after all! Leave it to me!

Punk: Hah! Just lettin' ya know, I'm one of the top rankers at the DDR competition. Fighting the likes of y’all is just a piece of cake. 

Izumi: (Top rankers!? To think that he's one of the top rankers…)

Punk: For the difficulty, of course it's gotta be the hardest one.

Kazunari: Alright. That's fine with me!

Izumi: Good luck, Kazunari-kun…!

Kazunari: Thankies! I've got so pumped up after receiving your support, Director-chan!

I'll work hard for your sake today.

That's why just sit back and watch today.

Izumi: Okay!

Kazunari: Game starts!

Izumi: Both of them flawlessly cleared the game without any miss! But Kazunari-kun has higher scores…!

Kazunari: In other words, it's my win!

Punk: Fuck…! I'll remember this!

Izumi: You're so awesome, Kazunari-kun! Thanks.

Kazunari: Hehe, you're welcome. I'm happy if you're happy.

Banri: Grats, Kazunari.

Here you go, Director-chan.

Izumi: Huh? Kareko-chan…! When did you���!?

Banri: I went to get it since I was convinced that Kazunari would win.

Kazunari: That's Settzer for ya!

Izumi: Both of you, thank you! I'm so happy.

As a thank you, for today and tomorrow's dinner…

Banri: Nope, I'm good. I did nothing but get the Kareko-chan, after all. You can just give 'em to Kazunari who won the showdown.

Izumi: No need to hold back.

Banri: I'm not.

Izumi: Is that so? Then, I'll make Kazunari-kun's favorite curry as a thank you!

Kazunari: It has to be curry in the end!? Not the one I really want!?

Izumi: Since this is related to Kareko-chan, I want to use all my skills making curry. Is that a no?

Kazunari: ...You have a point. Since today's protagonist is Kareko-chan, of course it's gotta be curry, right!

Izumi: Thank goodness. Shall we shop some groceries before going home?

Banri: What the hell, man? It's curry in the end…

Kazunari: It's fine, dude. Director-chan seems happy, after all.

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Gou Liveblog: Episode 18

WAIT A SEC THAT LOOKS NORMAL! Why is Rena just smiling happily and there?! Are we doing some kind of flashback episode explaining everything- but wait, this is a new arc, isn't it? Are we just ignoring what happened with Satoko?!

Wow we really are just completely breezing by the thing with Satoko. I kinda feel sorry for whoever's new to the series, this bit with Takano must seem like it's coming out of nowhere.

Oh, maybe this arc is an explanation of what happened between the end of the last series and the beginning of this one.

Wait, this scene with Tomitake is dragging on longer than usual. Is this how Takano was redeemed, because she dimly remembers this conversation? Or are they just extending it because they want to, or it was like this in the visual novel?

"We'll always be together, right?" "Of course!" AH. You can see the exact moment everything starts to go wrong, 'cause they sure as hell didn't say that in the original.

Okay, so we are doing the intervening years.

Why is Rika staying up late? Studying for that Catholic school?

KEIICHI LOOKS SAD THAT HE DOESN'T GET TO SEE MION AS OFTEN. HE WANTED TO VISIT.

KEIICHI THAT'S NOT A RULE. STOP MAKING UP CLUB RULES.

I don't think I’ve said this before, but I super don't like how clingy they're making Satoko. She won't even let Rika leave early from school without coming after her. It's not- they were best friends, but Satoko was never this codependent on Rika before in the anime OR the manga as far as I know. This whole ��we’ll be together forever and I’ll be dangerously heartbroken if we don’t” came in out of nowhere and did a double-backflip to announce itself. 

WAIT IF THEY CURED SATOKO THEY CAN FIX SATOSHI. BRING BACK THE BEST BOY.

Okay so Hanyuu opening up to people lowered everyone's Hinamizawa Syndrome by like one metric level. That's so sad and so funny all at the same time.

WHAT IS RIKA PLANNING TO DO AT THE FESTIVAL.

Is this like a general "everything's okay now and there won't be a curse anymore" speech?

It is.

Oh yeah she must've been staying up late to study to go to the school. AND THIS WAS THE BIT THAT WE SAW IN A FLASHBACK EARLIER, HOORAY! 

[whyamiinopmhellagain]

Diamond in the Rough, Chapter 1

First (real) post! Hooray!  Akane and Kaede belong to @asquiyze. I was that anon messaging for you. This is for you friend. I hope you enjoy!

This was somehow her home field, and personal hell at the same time. This is something she had done countless times before, and yet, her palms still sweat thinking about. She always felt like a rookie, even though she’s spent her whole life here, around the diamond. Her eyes dance over all the new field, bleachers, and her worst nightmare, her teammates. She recognizes them. From previous competitions. Even in the seemingly enormous crowd on a brisk, spring, day, she found one person that terrified her more than most. 

“Okay, Toshiko, play it cool. It’s just Akane, the only girl who plays baseball. She’s also amazing at it. She’s most likely their captain as well. If you wanna get along with them, you have to get along with her. You have to impress her. And everyone else too. But how? Will my fast ball be enough? What if I don’t? What if it isn't enough? What if she hurts me? She’s a powerful fighter! Wait, come on girl! Get out of your head, you’ve been walking towards everyone with that stupid look on your face!” 

Toshiko takes a deep breath, and drops her worn, teal bag on her exhale, on the next metal bench over from the team. 

“My glove! I have to get it quick! Crap, now people think I look like a loser! Where is it? Ugh, now I’ve ruined my chances with them.”  

“Sakurai!” She looks up from her bag as soon as she hears someone call her name. 

“Yes?” She quickly stood up and brushed the dirt off her pants. She knows the boys’ eyes are piercing through her neck. 

“We’re waiting on you.” A tall male twirls his pen between his fingers, his baseball cap shielding him from the sun.

“Oh-oh shoot, Coach! I’m-I’m sorry! I’m coming!” Toshiko’s head drops as she quickly walks over to the rest of the team, without her glove.

 “Everyone, get your stuff. You should know where to go.”

“Yes coach!” Everyone runs out into the diamond. Some sit on the benches, some grab their padding, and Toshiko quickly runs back to her bag, carelessly sitting in the outfield.

“Hey.” Toshiko whips around. 

“Hey, are you, by any chance, Akane?”

“Yea’. Just wonderin’ who you are, and why yer here.” 

“Um, I was invited to practice with the team,” Her shoulders shrug up a bit. “And-.” 

“Girl, speak up! I can’t hear ya!”

“Oh! Sorry, I was invited to practice with the team, and  I will be trying out for the elite squad.” She says, with her shoulders back, yet she only reached up to about Akane’s neck.

“What’s yer spot?”

“Oh! Pitcher!” She shows off her glove with a smile.

“Alright, if coach took you over here, you must be pretty good. ‘specially since yer a girl.” Akane grabs her right shoulder, boring her pupils into the smaller girl’s. “But, I’m warning you. We gotta good one already.”

“I’m aware.”

“Well, let’s see what you can do.” Akane sprints off towards home base. Toshiko stares off in awe at her sheer athleticism. She shakes her head as she rushes over to her starting place. 

“Alright, Toshiko, focus. You know what to do.” With cleats digging into the dirt of the diamond, and a stare boring into the starting batter’s skull, she claims the ball with her strong grip. 

“Hit him with your best shot.” With that thought, the ball launches from her left hand. His eyes widen as the ball wisses past him. 

“Holy.” Akane mutters under her breath, staring at the ball. This is something entirely new to her. Was it really? It must have been. A girl with her level of skill. A smirk graces across her face. 

“ALRIGHT, THAT’S ONE OUT! NEXT BATTER!” Another boy, twice Toshiko’s size,  steps up to bat. She gives him the same look she gave the last one as she flexes her arm muscles  a bit more than usual, which were the same size as the boy up against her at home base. 

“He does not scare you. I repeat, he does not scare you, Toshiko.” 

“HEY GIRL!” Toshiko turns her head towards the umpire. Akane is standing there, glaring, as she tossing and catching the ball in one hand.

“Catch.” Akane quickly whips the ball to her, but not as fast as she possibly can. Toshiko quickly whips up her glove, snatching it out of the air, and transferring it to her other hand. 

“She’s better than I thought.”Akane smirks to herself. “Let’s see what else she can do.” As the clock of the practice runs down faster than Toshiko’s record breaking pitches, there is one person left to bat. 

“Alright, girl,” Akane swings the bat over her shoulder as she squats into her stance. “show me what you can do.” Toshiko grunts in approval. Her hands are shaking a bit more than normal as she swallows thickly. She inhales as she takes her stance, and lets her breath and anxiety out as she chucks the ball straight ahead. Like it does for every other batter, the ball speeds right past the batter, before she even has time to react. Akane stands there slack-jawed, as her eyes dart from the ball, to Toshiko and back.  

“Come at me again, girl.” She growls as she swings her bat back into its starting place. Her eyes are glowing with grit. This ball IS GOING TO hit her bat, and get knocked out of the park. She just knows it. Meanwhile, about 60 feet away, Toshiko is squeezing the life out of the ball. 

“Okay, Toshiko, just two more pitches. Everything will be okay, just throw it.” Her arm was throbbing from consistent throws, but she takes another deep breath and launches it. Akane swings her bat with every ounce of rage in her body. The ball ignores her plea for success, since it came a split second too late. Akane growls at the ball as the umpire throws it back to Toshiko.  

“Okay Toshiko, you know exactly what to do. Just don’t overthink it. You say as you overthink  it. Come on girl, focus!” She gets into her staring stance.

“Focus on the ball.”  She picks up her leg.

“Focus.” She draws her arm back.

“FOCUS!” She throws the ball down the field. Akane has time to smirk as she crushes the ball straight out of the park. The bench leaps up in cheers and screams as Akane steamrolls her way through the bases. As she speeds through second base, her coach catches her 1,000 yard stare. Right as she speeds onto home plate, Akane catches her helpless eyes, something she thought this girl didn’t have. She cocks her brow, and accepts her victory high fives. 

“Alright, come it boys,” Coach shouts “and ladies, my bad. Tryouts are complete.” The coach marks a few things down on his red pen. “Results come out Monday. You guys are dismissed.” The teammates all stride over to pick up their bags, with Toshiko pulling up the rear. 

“Okay Toshiko. You only made one mistake. That’s great. But you looked like an idiot when you got caught. Congrats failure. You failed. You blew it. Now everything thinks you’re-”

“HEY! GIRL!” 

“Ah, Akane, sorry, I just-”

“Girl,” Akane rolls her eyes. “two questions. What’s your name, and did you play for Hua Hoshi academy?” 

“Ummmm, my name is Sakuari Toshiko.” She answers quickly. “and, yes, I played there.”

Akane turns on her heels, “Walk with me.” Toshiko wordlessly follows. 

“You’ve got a lot going for you on the field.” Akane, while still moving, quickly turns to face her.

“Thank you.”

“You’re in room 104, right?”

“Yeah.” She glances off downward in the other direction. They walk in silence across the bustling hallways of the school. The floors and walls were immaculate, and students were running back to their classrooms for the rest of their after school lessons, or to go home. They pour down the hallways, chatting with their friends, or rush out the door. After going against the flood of people, they stop at a large, wooden door, with a small window about a third of the way down.

“Well, this is your homeroom.” She holds the door open for her new classmate. Toshiko quietly shuffles in. “Sakurai.” 

“Yes?” She picks her head up.

“You have to pick a desk.” Akane slaps the deep, brown surface of her desk, in the back left  corner, right next to the window. “This one is mine. Put your bag down on your favorite.” Toshiko glaces around the room, at the clean bookshelves, empty blackboard, and desks with chairs neatly pushed in. Her eyes wander over each desk in the neat rows of five, until she reaches the desk directly to the right of Akane.

“I’ll sit here.” She sets her well-loved teal baseball bag on the desk. 

“Huh, not what I expected from you. You definitely ain’t who I thought you’d be.” 

“Oh.”

“Oh no! Did I pissed her off? What did I do? Did I say something? Do something? Oh god, I hope-”

“I have to pick up my little brother from his afterschool stuff.” Akane grabs her backpack, which she grabs off the back of her chair. “Anyway, I’ll see you around.”

“See you!” She smiles and waves goodbye. 

“Wow, Toshiko, you blew it. You fricking blew it.” She thinks to herself as she watches her friendship fly out the door.

As Akane is leaving her classroom, her phone buzzes. She wrestles it out of her pocket, to find Kaede appearing on her screen. She presses the green button, and throws her phone up to her ear. 

“Hey, where you at?”

“I’m outside on the curb by the front entrance. I’m sitting with my partner.”

“Alright, I’ll be there in a few.” With that, she hangs up. 

“I hope he’s not with who I’m thinking.” She grumbles to herself as she storms out the door.

Well, I hope you enjoy! I’m so sorry for the wait. There should be a new chapter sometime soon, but, ugh, school. Thank you for reading, and I hope you love my content!

[kog0ruhn]

A Layman’s Guide to Vincent (a.k.a. “If You Deadname Me One More Time, I Swear to God...”)

Vincent is actually a “fandragon” of sorts I made for an OC for a different fandom of which I am very heavily involved: Fallout. Specifically, he was my Fallout 3 character, who wasn’t the Lone Wanderer because I thought the story in Fallout 3 was boring. How did he get shoehorned into my Flight Rising den?

I don’t know. I saw a Skydancer on the AH who made me think of him. So, you know, here we are with a hoodie-wearing transman dragon who chain smokes and used to steal shit recreationally.

Vincent was born in the backwoods of Nature territory, which is impressive since the entirety of Nature territory is “backwoods” in some way. He was one of several children of some honest, hard-working dragons living in a tiny, close knit, and rather religious community. They weren’t very tolerant of things that went “against the grain,” so to speak, and Vincent always had a knack for doing just that, especially considering the fact that he had some pretty wild habits like “claiming she was a man” and “flirting with the neighbor girls.”

Basically, being transgender in a closed-minded community is hard.

He was always a headstrong guy, though, and rather than suffer being called “Dazzle” one more time, he packed up his things and decided he’d just go somewhere else. Anywhere else. He was young and woefully unprepared for how harsh the wilderness could really be, but fuck it. Being devoured by cannibalistic wildclaws was preferable, all in all.

Through a comedy of errors, he stumbled headfirst into a somewhat primitive tribe of dragons led by Chandra, a transwoman Guardian who took one look at Vincent and said, “I like your spunk. Welcome home.”

I have a desperate need for this dragon now...

Chandra taught him a lot of things: fighting, foraging, and the basics of survival. She taught him confidence and acceptance of one’s self and, once he was a right cocky jerk with the right tools at his disposal, set him loose upon the world. She expected him to do great things with himself.

Uh... about that.

He Totally Became a Raider

The problem with Vincent is just what Chandra liked about him: his desire to succeed. This is unfortunately counterbalanced by a Plague-like drive to survive at any and all costs, and morals tend to get thrown out the window in favor of convenient ways to make ends meet. Without his family or Chandra to guide him on a better path, he was quickly swept up by a band of raiding dragons called the War Dogs. They were a roving band of berserkers with roots in the Scarred Wasteland, but they were prone to wandering wherever pickings seemed plentiful. Thankfully for Vincent, they were in Nature territory at the time.

Hooray.

To be honest, though, he wasn’t only quick to join them because “easy money” and “oh, look, they have food.” His primary motivation was his untapped libido and the fact he developed the hots for one of their members from a distance. Her name was Sadie, and they could write songs about the wild adventures they had.

Don’t get your hopes up. This ends badly.

Sadie was the Batman to his Robin. The bacon to his eggs. They had a wild and passionate affair amidst a crime spree that spanned every northern territory in Sornieth. He would have moved heaven and earth for her, all the way until the War Dogs found themselves receiving a taste of their own medicine. Shortly after taking their act to Dragonhome, their raiding camp was, well, raided, and anyone who couldn’t make it away in time was killed rather brutally. 

Well, except Sadie. She just vanished into thin air. Vincent was adamant that this meant that she was alive and kidnapped, but none of his fellow War Dogs would pony up the resources to help him go after her. He decided to go at it with the one guy who’d throw him a bone--his best friend, Riot--but they lost track of the abductors and got lost in the deserts and badlands.

Riot vouched to find his way back. Vincent was disillusioned and refused to return. He went back to the old, destroyed raiding camp and plopped himself down, waiting in hopes the perpetrators would come back to scavenge.

They didn’t. So he just waited indefinitely.

Then Along Came a Spiral...

Vincent was eventually found by somebody who came stumbling across his camp, but it wasn’t Sadie’s abductors. No, it was just a clan of dragons called The Outlanders, led by this irritating green Spiral named Shriek. She wanted directions, he’d kind of learned his way around while foraging, and then she decided she didn’t want to leave him behind. While he wasn’t exactly looking for friends, she made the convincing argument of “I can feed you” and “we’re trying to make an alliance with some clans in a nice canyon to the north.”

Which... by that point, Vincent realized he was probably going to die in the desert before he found Sadie’s killers. After a life of huffing and puffing and fighting and struggling, settling down with three square meals a day in a place with commerce and resources seemed like a dream-come-fucking true. Sure, yeah, he’ll go with your band of misfits and live a cozy life.

Thus, he ended up in Irthskaar with The Outlanders when they were inducted into The Abandoned. Neat, huh?

Uh... No. Because Flauros Happened.

I know that The Flauros Incident is something I’ve beaten into the ground on this blog, but it’s big and important. Evil dragon used a Not-Dragon to try to take control of Irthskaar and kill off The Abandoned and yada yada yada. In all honesty, Vincent would have never been affected if not for the fact that his life of fighting and killing and stealing and sneaking and all that illicit stuff that is normally bad didn’t end up being very useful when fighting a coup. When Snap of Clan Elsewhere, self-appointed War Leader during the crisis, caught wind of Vincent’s special talents and dark past, she made him an offer he couldn’t refuse because if he refused she would kill him.

Thus, Vincent became an impromptu assassin.

What did he accomplish? A lot of underhanded murder.

What did this underhanded murder do? He’s not sure if it had any longstanding effects for the clans as a whole, but it sure pissed him off and left him exhausted.

And when the Flauros Incident ended, did he receive any recognition?

Uh, not really. Snap thanked him. He got payment for the jobs he completed. He went home bitter and rolling his eyes. 

Then Elder Happened.

... But thankfully Vincent wasn’t around to really deal with the rising of Elder and his minions.

You see, The Outlanders--who played a major role in the quelling and containing of Flauros--ended up on the bad side of pretty much everyone in Irthskaar because they refused to destroy Flauros. She became their leader’s little trophy pet, and everyone started stiffing them. When Elder showed up and began to wreak havoc, The Fifteen (and especially Snap) blamed Flauros for it without any proof, and The Outlanders were all convicted of treason and exiled.

So, while Elder was thrashing everyone in the canyon, Vincent was watching from a cushy seat on the outskirts, probably screaming, “Kick ‘em in the face!” every time he witnessed a skirmish.

Of course, when the siege ended and Elder was ousted and Flauros became a hero for her actions (whether or not she really understood them), The Outlanders were allowed to come on back home. And so Vincent... went home.

All in all, it was a very uneventful time for him.

So, What’s the Jerk Up To Now?

Well, he basically does mercenary work and hits on a Pearlcatcher named Lazarus from a new, exciting clan who recently came to Irthskaar and joined their alliance. The clan in question is a bunch of former raiders, too, which means he relates to them on a level not many other dragons can.

And he wants to relate to Lazarus. In bed.

H...hot?

Years have passed and he’s older, more learned, less impulsive, and a bit more restrained. He still has his acid wit, dark sense of humor, and dubious morals, but is in general a pretty easy guy to get along with so long as you play by his rules. He spends a surprising amount of time, when he’s not doing dangerous oddjobs, teaching members of The Outlanders how to protect themselves and survive.

Part of it is because he’s quietly become more like Chandra as he got older, and part of it is because if something new and awful happens in Irthskaar, he wants to be left out of it. They can defend themselves. Fuck you, Snap.

[momestuck]

Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim... volume 8!

Welcome back, apologies it’s been a good couple of weeks since the last one of these. Last time, we had a fun entertaining art heist and a fun horrifically traumatising mass murder! What are we in for next?

This episode is called Of Stresses, Song and Otherwise. Our trolls today are...

Tyzias and Chixie. Tyzias looks like a programmer (though so far ‘computer nerd’ stereotypes tend to be yellow bloods, not teal), while Chixie... not sure what her deal’s gonna be! (Watch as I get everything wrong again.) Not sure if Tyzias’s horns are naturally like that or if they’ve been cut.

Tyzias

Tyzias is written by Lalo Hunt, who has previously written Tagora - clearly someone with a thing for teals!

Tyzias’s theme kicks in almost immediately. As now seems to be standard for tealbloods, we have harpsichords.

Our narrator is starting to get the slightest hint of like... restraint about the ‘MUST BEFRIEND EVERYONE THAT MOVES’ attitude. They actually don’t immediately go for like... jumping on Tyzias and trying to forcibly befriend her, but walk past... unfortunately she falls over. Impressively, she keeps her coffee cup level despite tripping over a rock.

Her typing quirk seems to be using lowercase letters, and repeating all uses of ‘w’ and ‘m’ four times. OK...

The narrator convinces themselves that this is the prelude to some kind of teen romance where they’re the cool person who helps the fallen nerd. Uh huh. Our extremely cool protagonist.

So we start helping her out and find she’s a lawyer. That’s like... every tealblood we’ve met now? Canon said they were also civil servants but OK, I guess everyone just loves Terezi. (To be fair, I also love Terezi.)

We get our first choice, prompted by the realisation that she’s a lawyer:

Tradition dictates that one of these is an instant-death option. I can’t help but expect that the ‘obvious’ choice, picking up more papers, will be the one that fucks us over.

...maybe not. We carry on going, and find out our dear friend Tagora has been talking about us, and he may be in a ‘group project’ with Tyzias here...

We spend some more time trying to get her papers together, against the best efforts of the wind. The narration emphasises just how tired Tyzias looks - quite the contrast from Tagora.

In fact, that carries us all the way up to the second choice. We can either suggest a breather, or trying to sort it somewhere else.

Let’s take a breather.

Insufflation sacks! Guessing that’s a narrator improvisation rather than actual Troll terms.

We take her to a ruined tower, which the narrator has apparently been spending time in when they’re not busily befriending every troll who survives long enough to get a portrait. This merits a new background.

She’s not hugely impressed by the idea of urbex (unrelatable tbh, if an alien appeared and wanted to take me to do urbex i would be there in a heartbeat), but the narrator actually shows some backbone and encourages her to climb up anyway. (I guess our broken ribs have healed some by now? I can’t honestly remember if we’ve fixed them all in this particular series of branches...)

Tyzias explains to us a bit about the political order on Alternia - that the Condesce rules, and this used to be a watchtower before she got higher-tech drones and so on. She doesn’t seem entirely happy about ‘her imperial bitchiness’...

We reminder that she’s teal, which uh... gee, narrator.

Looks like we’ve found an Actual Decent Person troll! Wow.

She’s particularly fed up with her whole role in the system, which she describes as the work to maintain suffering - because everyone is guilty, no matter what, and trials are just a formality.

Depressed, exhausted, horrified by her society... this troll is pretty relatable after all actually.

We ask about political parties (lol, good luck) and rebellious movements. She fills us in a bit on what we know to be the Signless/Sufferer’s rebellious movement, and the subsequent rebellion by the Summoner (which someone might have written up an infographic about for you... pssst).

Tyzias keeps going in a spirit of ‘ah, fuck it’. And gets more confident as she does...

Sounds like she’s got some kind of radical law project in mind. To me, the idea of changing the system within is like... kinda obviously never gonna achieve the substantial change needed, but I can totally respect it as a harm reduction measure.

this screenshot is going on my main

We get to telling her a bit about Earth. The protagonist tries to, well...

That’s a way to put it lol.

How romantic!

Damn, this episode’s a bit real lol

As a final kicker we learn that what she’s been drinking out of her mug is... just water. She’s putting on an act to give people a reason why she seems so depressed and tired all the time.

And with that, she takes a nap, and we get another friend.

D’aww.

Unfortunately, we lucked onto the best outcome on our first playthrough, so that means it’s all downhill from here. Which is a shame because I care about this troll.

First, for our instant death option, let’s stand around paralysed by the image of a gavel instead of helping with her papers. So rather than the bait-and-switch I was expecting, this plays out in the way most people would expect: she tells you to stop trying to ‘help’.

I thought it was a picture of a gavel, not an actual gavel! But OK. [treacheryofimages.jpg]

Now let’s try the other option: helping her organise her papers someplace else instead of trying to give her a break.

Unfortunately, in the process of sorting her papers, we lose one. I’m sure that’s not a Chekhov’s gun or anything.

This is a Very Good typing quirk.

The bookhive (library) turns out to have, what else, hexagonal shelves.

That’s cute but damn, not gonna be efficient...

This narration turns out to be read out loud. ‘wwwwowwww, harsh’ says Tyzias, but says that’s basically true. (I would motion that nearly every caste in Homestuck, at least going by the characters we meet, is a nerd caste...)

Tyzias mentions a few. Interestingly she says ‘goldbloods’ rather than ‘yellowbloods’.

We learn a bit about her legislacerator training project.

The narrator doesn’t want to hear this, but I’m kind of amused by the ideas of ‘scrolls of evisceration’. On Alternia, they know all to well that the ‘law’ is just a way of describing the ostensible legitimising limits to violence.

Tyzias mentions the difficulty of finding scrolls that haven’t ‘been scrubbed nice and fuchsia’. Which suggests that the Condesce, or another fuchsia-blood has been fiddling with the law?

The narration draws attention to some of the recurring tropes. But to be fair, we’ve only actually had to fight a highblood one time.

But no, it’s time for more interactions between our friends! Hooray!

Are we still wearing his bathrobe?

The guy seems to know a bit about what Tyzias is up to. Uh-oh.

I’m so glad our friends get along so well!

Anyway after Tagora pisses off, we get back to working. And that’s when the missing page comes up.

Figures. We’re in the shit.

Inexplicable product placement. This, of course, leads to a pun: ‘goregle docs’. But of course, that is monitored by the Condesce.

It’s actually quit easy to get onto at least some parts of the darkweb. There’s pages on the normal web which list the .onion addresses of various TOR hidden services. It’s pretty fascinating to have a look around at what’s up for sale for the kind of nerd who actually owns a bitcoin wallet.

Anyway, losing the page scuppers our friendship. She goes to retrace her steps - without us.

Anyway that was neat. Total shock: Bryn finds the exhausted, depressed nerd with radical politics relatable?

Chixie

Chixie’s route is by the ever-prolific Aysha U. Farah.

So what’s the premise for Chixie? Well, it seems to be fashion.

I guess we are still in a bathrobe after all. Also... I would quite like to see the protagonist in one of Elwurd’s jackets. They’d look ridiculous, but it would be cute.

Anyway, we could always go back to our highly fashionable friend Cirava, but I guess our protagonist has other plans.

We seem to have found the ‘Alternian nightlife’. The protagonist briefly speculates whether it should be ‘daylife’ instead, but seemingly not. We pop round the back of a club, which merits a different take on the whole ‘back alley and dumpster’ setting!

Chixie shows up, standing outside a door. The protagonist contemplates a disguise, and we get a joke about cosplayers...

It seems like she’s maybe trying to convince the people behind the door she’s propped open to let her perform. We have the choice of grabbing the door or standing there like an asshole. Let’s grab the door, since that seems like the obvious option. Of course, you never know with this game if the ‘obvious’ choice will cause you to fuck up and accidentally murder someone.

We are still wearing Tagora’s bathrobe. Haha.

So we let her in, and she says thank you... and goes inside, locking us out. Welp. Guess this was the instant death option lol.

So now let’s try the ‘stand there like an asshole’ option.

Her typing quirk is all-lower-case, and separating lines with slashes, much as you’d represent lines of a song. The narration describes her voice as musical.

It seems she is, in fact, a performer of some renown. She presumes we know who she is.

While we might be experts in moisturewave, whatever her genre is... not so much.

Speaking of moisturewave, Cirava gets a shout-out.

She uses ‘they’ pronouns for the protagonist, which is nice. Anyway, she takes us to visit her dressing room, and orders us to put on some actual clothes while she deals with harassment from someone who threw all her stuff out of the dressing room. Well, the ablutionrobe was nice while it lasted.

We end up wearing a dress.

This might be a kind of ‘fuck you’ to the earlier narration which seemed to implicitly mark the protagonist as male. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Anyway I’m all in favour of wearing a dress for the rest of friendsim.

So does the protag! Nice :)

Anyway, we learn what’s up with Chixie. She’s been kicked off the programme because a band with a purpleblood drummer showed up at the last minute. Well, that’s bad enough, but oh god guess who shows up next...

I literally shuddered.

Please can this be the arc where we absolutely beat the shit out of Zebruh? Please Aysha, I’m begging you.

The narrator determines that Zebruh is ‘not the kind of friend they want to hang out with’. Which is putting it mildly.

Zebruh, incidentally, has not changed one bit.

We get to our second choice.

Honestly anyone’s guess which arc is gonna be the positive ending here. But let’s try exploiting our connections, as utterly odious as they may be.

That was absolutely a mistake, lol.

He goes off to go and put her back on the programme. She’s like... for fuck’s sake, protagonist.

Anyway, what Zebruh does in response to our mentioning her missed performance is... literally buy the club out from under the owner, who’s ‘just’ a teal, and makes Chixie the headliner.

Of course, this is obviously him just trying to get sexual favours of some kind from someone who can’t say no. Like so obvious it probably doesn’t even need to be said.

There we go. Can we please put this fucker through the mirror or something.

Chixie knows exactly what this is and she’s understandably not pleased. We’re gone.

Yeah that’s like... pretty fucking deserved.

Now let’s try the route where we like... don’t do that horrific shit we just did. Hey, finishing on a happy ending... hopefully.

Please leave, Zebruh.

She seems to like... actually like us, which we haven’t really done anything to merit, but here we go. She even invites us to follow her chittr.

She admits we doesn’t know we aren’t creepy, and we assure her we’re less creepy than Zebruh, which like... low fucking bar!

Anyway, the band that scooped her comes on stage. The narrator muses on whether trolls are forced to dress in their blood colour by law or tradition.

Wow, that is cruel.

She sings along...

Apparently like... all troll lyrics are black metal lyrics?

We get a second branch! How extravagant.

So, because I’m curious, let’s try ‘you should do something!’ I see this going badly, but let’s give it a shot.

She goes and puts on a phantom of the opera mask, and grabs a mic - which I guess is wired in and has its levels turned up? I don’t know...

That is a raw look though.

Time to interrupt their set. I am hype to see this, even though we’ll probably end up getting culled.

And she starts a friggin... rap battle?

It’s a rap battle that’s also a limerick! Yeah. That’s something.

Anyway, Chixie does... very well at the whole rap battle thing. (Only the first five lines are a limerick). Makes me wish there was voice acting, if only for this bit!

I strongly suspect this is mostly a parody of like, existing rap songs, which I’m too culturally ignorant to see. All the same, the scene is well written and satisfying.

We escape outside, and Chixie freaks out a bit. And then gets simultaneously relieved and disappointed that she can’t be identified because of the mask. But, since she hasn’t changed clothes, someone catches her... and praises her performance.

Ooh, diamonds huh?

So that was in fact the good outcome. Which means after that epic rap battle, we now have to see the branch where we go to a bar and get miserable. Yep.

Of course, on Alternia, we don’t have alcohol... but Faygo.

And it actually makes her drunk!

She speaks on matters of fame...

And of course, this is mediated by blood colour. Lowbloods must be hypervigilant, while highbloods will get praise regardless.

Again, the metaphor layer is paper thin here.

Come to think of it, nobody does seem to have a job in Alternia. It’s like... fully automated luxury imperialism.

Anyway Chixie passes out on the pile of clothes and we get a... well actually it’s given a ‘victory...?’ label, but it’s clearly less victory than the awesome rap battle.

So yeah. That’s an outcome.

And there we go! That’s the end of the episode. I have a... perhaps unfair feeling that like... if Hussie was writing, this wouldn’t be nearly so on the nose about like, oppression. But who knows.

Fun episode I think. This game’s grown on me a lot now we’ve gotten used to the format. Or is it just that if you spend enough time with a massive sprawling multimedia webcomic, you get a little obsessed with it, even if it’s not actually... good?

[braindamageforbeginners]

Intermezzo: Free Solo Review

Pre-Cycle 11

So, first of all, for anyone wondering, I did get the go ahead from the warlocks on Tuesday to continue with treatment through Cycle 12 (assuming my blood tests come back okay), which is great news. And I’d normally write about that and how awesome it is (Hooray! More chemo!), but it’s been such a long, weird, event-filled week even by my standards (my car got hit by lightning)(that’s a dramatic exaggeration, but, like everything else in my life, far less of one than I’d like), that instead, I thought I’d review the fantastic (and - for me - utterly terrifying) film “Free Solo.” Also, that’ll enable me to put off trying to figure out my upcoming chemo schedule, which is somewhat less-predictable than others (I’d have to come in on Christmas Eve or Christmas according to my current estimate, which seems a little ghoulish even for me).

A bit of background. Even though I like rock climbers and have many friends and family in that group, and even though I have nothing but love for them, their utterly terrifying sport isn’t for me (and thanks to them for putting up with me long enough for me to figure that one out). Full confession; I’m not only psychologically unfit for it, I’m physically not a good candidate. Even putting my neurological issues aside (unreliable left leg, vertigo)(those are the lasting impacts of neurosurgery #3 and #2, respectively), I’m terrified of heights. And with good reason - I’m about 182 cm tall and 100 kg; if I fall, it’s a much bigger problem than if someone smaller/closer to the ground and lighter does. And I’m about 85% torso, by height. So, why would I see a film about a sport that frightens me? Simply put, Alex Honnold, who is possibly the world’s premier greatest living rock climber.

Many, many, many years ago, someone pointed out to me that everyone’s heard of LeBron James, or Colin Kaepernick; fewer people have heard of Royal Robbins (or Kelly Slater, for that matter), largely because the latter two exist in a weird sub-culture of extreme sports that’s not as profitable or plugged in to pop culture as main-stream sports (I’ve only heard of Honnold because I’m a big fan of the Banff Film Festival). So, one of the world’s most niche-sports-figure getting a film - even if it’s not in wide release - is really cool. Again, it means society, as a whole, is opening up to non-traditional people, and sports, and stories. Which, as a now non-traditional person (again, traditionally, people like me die within two years of diagnosis, and that annoying new gimp/cripple physical aspect makes life a lot less accessible than I’d prefer), is cool, and, more importantly, as a storyteller, it means more, different, and better stories.

The story of “Free Solo” is pretty straight-forward. A man works his whole life to perfect his craft, and then, at the height of his talent, decides to gamble it on a potentially lethal career high-point. Wait, what? Most rock climbers - and certainly my sub-par, failed attempts - use various safety equipment and climb with buddies and do other things to minimize risk. The downside is both minimized risk, and, from my limited understanding, some of these safety devices permanently “hurt” (or pierce, anyway) the rock. “Free solo” climbing eschews such devices, or, indeed, a sense of self-preservation. Says the guy who’s letting science use him as a lab rat for a poisonous substance. Again, when you’re desperate, you make odd choices. However, like me, A. Honnold points out that most free-solo rock climbs are calculated risks (to paraphrase him, “The odds of me actually falling are low, but if that happens, the odds of something really, really bad happening are high.”). Which brings us to El Capitain, the Everest of the climbing world. As I may have mentioned previously, this is the Holy Grail of climbing. If you ever go to Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park (and I recommend you do this before you die), you will not be able to miss El Cap. If you’re like me, you might even have to go lie down for a few minutes just looking at up at it (it’s terrifying even from ground level). Even though it’s been climbed by blind, deaf, and physically disabled people (it’s a long story; there’s an old Yosemite joke that El Cap is handicap-accessible), it has never been climbed (clumb? someone help me with these conjugations) without safety devices. Enter Mr. Honnold, stage right, and the codependent National Geographic film crew. To make a long story short, he climbs the mountain and survives, with the support of both the film-makers and his long-suffering girlfriend. Hooray.

The reason this film is worth seeing - and why I’m reviewing it - is that, for all that, it’s a very weird film (it’s a really good film, but it’s weird). First of all, the camera and framing devices need a little description. In every scene or shot of El Cap, it not only dominates everything around it, but they use some cool VFX devices at various points to show Yosemite valley shifting and swinging around El Cap. Which made me grip my seat rests, but also gave an interesting insight into how Yosemite is absolutely dominated by these staggeringly massive walls on all sides. Secondly, this is - as far as I know - the only character study of A. Honnold on file in video form. Even though he’s been prominently featured in the Banff Film Festival and other places, they don’t give a real sense of who he is - he’s just a sort of stand-in rock climber fantasy figure; a James Bond of the rock climbing world - in all the other films I’ve seen, he goes somewhere and climbs something impressive; there’s not a whole lot revealed except he likes to climb. And he’s pretty much fearless - according to a little background research (yes, I do read about my subjects before tackling them), Honnold isn’t known for being the most technically-proficient or skilled climber, but he is known for taking on risks and challenges that no one else in the climbing world does.  Qui audet adipiscitur and all that. This film delves a little more into that, actually following him into an fMRI (one of those specialized MRIs that shows which parts of the brain “light up” during various tasks and images. The science-person in me would point out that this test is so overly sensitive, it should be taken with a grain of salt (my favorite research poster of all time was one that used fMRI analysis to show which images a dead salmon prefers)(you read that correctly). However, in this case, it showed that Honnold’s fear threshold/tolerance was much, much higher than usual. The film also looks at what that looks like in a relationship, as they also follow Honnold’s girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, for some of it. In retrospect, she’s probably the real hero of the film, because she fully supports him in his near-suicidal ambitions. There’s also the weird aspect about how the world’s most recklessly brave climber gets... stage fright. The film actually documents this very well, about how Honnold doesn’t seem up to the task when everyone’s around, watching him; and it takes a series of hidden cameras and a tactical retreat by McCandless to force him up the wall. As someone who has, ah, “performance issues” when it comes to urine samples (I’d imagine that after a year of those, it wouldn’t be a big issue, like the IVs and neuralgia bother me less, but we all have our idiosyncrasies - I intend to ask the chemo ward to quietly move to a different floor next time), I weirdly get it. And I also sort of weirdly get how, in an extreme situation, sometimes the riskier, more outrageous path is also the safer one. Having said that, I still have to give the man props for a following through on a near-psychotic ambition and seeing it through.

ANYWAY… WEIGHT: 96 kilos CONCENTRATION: Not bad, but I’m also exhausted from a week of travel and holidays. Which reminds me, if I make it out of this alive, I intend to start hibernating from Nov.15-Dec, 25, which should make this sort of holiday seasonal travel a little easier. APPETITE: Good. I’m even starting to appreciate “fun” things, like non-vegetable or protein-based foodstuffs. I imagine that’ll definitely decrease as I get back into the grind and find my willpower renewed with... well, the same willpower that allows me to swallow pills that come in “biohazard” bags. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Good, but I’m still exhausted. SLEEP QUALITY: Okay. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Excellent; I even went to the gym yesterday without braces. MEMORY: Not bad, I still have trouble forgetting to complete long or multi-step tasks, but that’s hardly new.. PHYSICAL: Overall, not too bad. At the moment, I’m mostly tired, sore, a little cold, and hungry, which - if you haven’t had peripheral nerve damage or chemo-induced panic-attacks, might seem bad, but to have normal, every day physical complaints instead of my usual, hyper-bizarre ones... well, it’s deeply comforting, in an odd, slightly-masochistic way. EMOTIONAL: Good. I realize I just got a clean scan on Monday - I had to wait until Tuesday to review the findings, though - and after 24 hours of that sort of frenzied anxiety, the volume on standard emotional issues gets muted. SIDE EFFECTS: Tired. So tired. Which reminds me, based on my records, I’m pretty sure my limp’s tied into exhaustion/fatigue issues. Which gives me hope that, after the next two cycles (and possibly a six-month nap to catch up on my sleep) I might get something like consistent progress fixing that complaint.  CURRENTLY READING (For Donna): “A Monster Calls.” 

[islandofkiwi-blog]

Time’s Mirror Episode 6 - A Web Series by Steven Embers

Chapter 6

 Lacey and I went back down the spiraling staircase to the first floor and into the hallway. From there we found the stairs to the basement behind one of the very few doors in the house – I’m pretty sure that the Valentine castle, even though it was twice as big as the average house, had half as many doors. Upon opening the door, the sound of a dozen, whirring machines resounded up the stairs. It sounded like an entire factory of workers lived in the basement.

           When we reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs, I was surprised to see that there was almost an entire factory in the basement. Several, complex machines were sectioned off all along the walls of the room like the bookshelves in the library. In the middle of the ring were three long tables with expensive looking equipment organized neatly on each of them, but there was only a single, concentrated man who was wearing a white lab coat and was gliding back and forth between three different monitors with sophisticated looking software running on each of the screens.

           “Dad!” Lacey shouted across the room to get her father’s attention.

           “Just a sec, hon.” The man wrote something into a notebook, but I didn’t know how he could concentrate with the constant noise of the machinery running in the background.

           I looked around as we walked into the middle of the room. The ceiling lights were long, fluorescent tubes and the walls were painted grey. Two doors looked at each other from opposite ends of the room. The design was a lot less romantic than the rest of the house but it fit the atmosphere.

           “Hey Lace, did you ever manage to—Oh. Hello?” He turned to talk to Lacey and noticed a stranger standing with his daughter. I recognized him as the man in the photo on Lacey’s desk. Short, brown hair that was greying along the edges and distinct facial features; he looked just a shade older than the man in the picture. His posture was strong and he was only a couple inches taller than me, but as he came closer I felt small standing next to him.

           “Did you go hunting?” he asked Lacey. His voice was deep and rich and his smooth tone provided a small mask to the insinuation that I was a piece of game to be hunted.

           “Dad, this is Bailey,” Lacey said, avoiding the question.

           ��Lacey, we’re here to restock, we don’t have time for another Brooklyn incident.” he replied, and I started to sense an argument about to erupt.

           “Oh, come off it,” she said. “He’s a match.”

           “You found one?” He looked surprised, but after a moment he seemed to reconsider his emotion. “Never mind that, we don’t have time. Put him back where you got him from.” He turned around to continue working.

           “Come on,” Lacey prodded. “You know how lucky this is. He’s even on board.”

           He wheeled and looked his daughter in the eye. “You told him already,” he stated, accusingly.

           “Yes. But I thought you said you could finish the first part in a week.”

           “I can. But it would take another couple months to fine tune it. We can’t just take him with us.” His gaze shifted to me, his green eyes scanning. “Can we?”

           The awkward situation grew increasingly awkward as Lacey’s father began to examine me. I had to look away as he undressed me with his eyes. The standoff continued for a while before Lacey snapped him out of it.

           “No. We can’t,” she said. “But you keep telling me to worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

           “Hard to argue with myself,” he admitted.

           “Yeah. So you want to try that introduction again?”

           He looked longingly at his equipment and then back at me. After letting out a heavy sigh, he stepped over and typed some commands into the keyboard and the machines gradually stopped whirring. The silence that followed made me feel very exposed, comparatively.

           “Doctor Valentine.” Lacey’s father extended his hand. I shook it.

           “You’ll have to forgive us. This operation does not run as smoothly as it should.” He made a face at Lacey. “I didn’t catch your name.”

           “Bailey.” I said with moderate confidence. I was beginning to think I’d started a new chapter in my life where the people I met didn’t react when I introduced myself, but some things never change. Doctor Valentine’s response was subtle ridicule which told me he didn’t share his daughter’s filter.

           “Are your parents a spiteful sort of people, Bailey?”

           I considered the possibility for a moment, but I knew it couldn’t be true. “They thought it was important for me to overcome some trials early on in my life,” I said.

           He thought for a moment and then gave a lopsided smile that looked kind of like approval. “Oh, I smell another Brooklyn incident with this one, Lace.”

           “Dad! The job.” She sounded embarrassed.

           “Okay. Okay.” He turned his head to address me. “I don’t know how much my daughter has told you, but I’ll start with a short presentation. Excuse me while I set some things up.” He walked away and went to rummage through some drawers.

           Lacey faced me. “Sorry about him,” she said. “He’s a little crazy.”

           “Don’t apologize. You prepared me for plenty of crazy.”

           She laughed. “I suppose I should be sorry for myself then.” She looked almost bashful. “No more games here. I’m not going to try to make your mind up for you, but I promise that if you stick around you’ll have that adventure that you wanted.”

           She had a look in her eyes that made me believe that she was telling the truth.

           “I have some things to finish up so I’m going to leave you two alone for a bit, okay?”

           “You know, when I got in the car with you I thought you were trying to kidnap me. Turns out all you wanted to do was leave me in a basement with a strange man.”

           A smile broke her face, but she didn’t respond to the comment. Instead, she gave me a piece of advice. “Be careful around him.”

           I cocked my head. “Isn’t he your dad?”

           “Just keep your wits,” she cautioned. “He can be more persuasive than I can. And I have breasts.”

           “I find that hard to believe,” I said, thinking about the last few hours. “The persuasive part, I mean.”

           She smirked. “You’ll see, I’m sure. Just remember that it’s your decision, and it’s up to you to make sure it stays that way.”

           She disappeared up the stairs after that and I looked towards the doctor who was still preparing his presentation. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to both my parents that I was at a friend’s house. By the time I sent the texts, the doctor called out that he was ready.

           “Lacey left?” he asked as I approached.

           “Yeah. She said she had something to do.”

           He looked at me like he was studying me and I felt strangely aware of how I was standing. “Want my advice?” he asked.

           “Okay?” I said, but I wasn’t sure what he meant.

           “Be careful with her.” His voice was serious, but it felt like the standard dad-to-daughter’s-guy-friend protocol. But then he said something off script. “She’s not to be trifled with.”

           “Isn’t she your daughter?” I raised an eyebrow at him. This family was clearly not normal, but I had known that from the start.

           “Yes, and she makes me proud every day of the week. But you really shouldn’t mess with her, and I’m not just saying that as her father.”

           “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. Usually, when you tell a secret you’re not supposed to stop halfway through, because that means your secret-holder has to make up fanciful tales in his head to try to fill in the holes.

           “You’ll see, I’m sure.”

           I guess the common denominator between this father-daughter pair was their wanting to keep me hostage to a million unanswered questions. Doctor Valentine dismissed the subject and pulled out two lab stools, inviting me to sit next to him. He dimmed the lights from a dial underneath one of the tables. A white screen lowered from the ceiling in front of us and the blue light from an overhead projector lit up the screen.

           “Let’s start with what Lacey told you.” He said it plainly, but I didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a cue for me to answer until he was staring at me blankly.

           “Oh.” I stammered. “Well she said you were working on some genetic experiment and that she knew I was a match because she kissed me – she explained that part, but I’m still not sure what she meant.”

           “Ah.” He seemed excited. “The Clairvoyant’s Kiss: learn everything about your victim’s genetic history with a simple lipstick. Imagine a litmus test, you know that paper that changes color according to the – no wait. Don’t imagine that, it’s nothing like that. I don’t have time to explain it. It’s just a compound that responds to a certain genetic code.” He paused, and looked a little frustrated that he couldn’t explain his invention in lay-terms. “Is that all she told you?”

           “Yeah, pretty much.”

           “Okay.” He sighed. “Well I guess we start from the beginning. This is the presentation that I used for my pitch meetings, revised slightly, so some of it might be over your head.”

           “Good to know,” I said, sarcastically.

           “Don’t interrupt,” he said shortly. “We’re going to fill the entire basic genetics section of a college-level Biology course in thirty minutes.”

           I almost groaned before I realized where I was.

           The doctor pressed a button on a remote clicker that he produced and a dazzling picture of shining stars in outer space popped up on the screen.

           “Life,” he started philosophically. “The perpetual question. An inevitable product of the growing universe? the invention of an alien race? or the handiwork of a divine Maker? A million theories for a million observers. Ah, life.” He breathed, and I thought about his words.

           “That was the first draft of my introduction. Useless words.” He fake spat in disgust. “Let’s talk real. Life is super-duper. Fantastic miracle in the middle of a cruel cosmos: breathe, eat, have sex, die. Hooray. The real question is sentience. This thing.” He tapped the side of his head. “What are we doing here? Why can we, and why do we, feel the compulsion to observe? And why does it seem like humans are so damn special when it comes to this?” He clicked the button and a new slide of the double-helix shape that I recognized as DNA appeared.

           “DNA. It holds the building blocks of all life. It is the recipe for creating the proteins that make up every living thing on this planet. You want an almighty power that has a personal investment in your life? It is in your veins, in every fiber of your being, in every cell that lets you be the thing that you were born to be.

           “DNA tells a story. It holds the secret to your life and the secret to every living thing around you. It says what color your eyes are, and how big your ears look, and even estimates when you die. We call the indicators for these secrets, genes. And I want to show you how genetics can answer my question.

           “Everything that has life is made from DNA. That’s why some people believe that we have a connection with monkeys and dinosaurs and flowers, because we do. Life began from DNA, and life gave birth to intelligence, and intelligence sired the comprehension of morality and it breathes urgent fire onto curiosity. Which might make you think: if we go straight back to the origin of it all – right down to DNA – can we find where that curiosity comes from?

           “Have you ever wondered why humans were chosen as the bearers of conscious thought? Why can we fight our instincts when most animals have to obey?” He looked at me, a long shadow cast over half of his face with the other half lit by the blue light reflecting off the projector screen. His expression was curious, and he seemed to really want to engage me.

           He continued with a more intrigued tone, like he was bouncing an idea off me. “If consciousness really can be born from DNA, then maybe it was just a roll of the dice to see which species developed it first. Maybe instead of being a moody, teenage monkey, you could have been a moody, teenage fish attending fish university and discussing racial equality among plankton and rebel shark terrorism. Or maybe there is something uniquely special about human genetic structure; maybe sentience isn’t a product of genetics at all. To find the answer, we have to do science.”

           I saw a strange, ecstatic glint in his eyes, but it could have been a trick of the light. His instructor’s voice returned as he pressed his clicker, and the DNA on the screen transitioned and unraveled to form a straight line that cut the screen horizontally.

           “DNA is made of four, different bases which pair predictably to form a sequence. This creates the blueprint that makes up the living organism: two strands of identical data, with one just the inverse of the other.” The image on the screen was color-coded so you could see that red always paired with green and yellow always paired with blue; I was familiar with the concept from Biology class.

           “The order of these pairings determines what is made from the code,” he said, “and these four bases make up all DNA that exists or ever has existed. Four bases – four building blocks that, when you shuffle them around in a certain order, construct the entire skyline of the vast and varied Tree of Life. I see beauty in the fact that, over the history of all life, DNA has never changed languages; the recipe for creating life has consistently been passed down for countless generations spanning trillions of new species and different life forms.

           “I believe that if we can become fluent in this language, we can solve many of the problems that we have as individuals and even as a society in general. It’s a fairly new endeavor in the science community, only a century or two in the making, and technology has greatly helped our efforts in this field. But I have found a more dynamic solution to experimentation that I hope will forward development by decades.

           “Imagine a person who can freely modify his DNA sequence. This man would be able to lift the limit that contains the size of his muscle cells to gain super-strength; he could increase the number of photoreceptor cells in his eyes to have super-vision; he might even be able to boost his genetic immunity to diseases to live a longer life. He would be a super-man.”

           I could feel my heart start to race as I found myself fantasizing; I barely noticed that he was luring me in like a cultist lures his devout followers, enticing me into his way of thought with promises of grandeur.

           “Well, I have developed a safe and effective way of creating that super-man. I have created a device that will allow a person to manipulate his DNA just by thinking about it. This would let us dive into a human’s genetic code to isolate and modify genes that might answer my questions about sentience.

           “This is where you come in. You could become the super-man, and all I would want to do is observe. If you’re interested I can tell you how it works, but if you’re not I suppose this is just a waste of your time.” He looked at me, appearing very relaxed as he propositioned me. “What do you say?”

           This is one of those moments which I look back on and just feel silly for being so easily manipulated, but at the time I remember being so enthralled by what he had to say, and I wanted to know if he could teach me to shoot laser beams out of my eyes. I was like a child, snatching at a trinket you put just out of his reach with no regard to whether it’s safe or not.

           It barely took me a second to respond. “Tell me more.”

           Doctor Valentine smiled, and the shadow covering half his face made the expression look almost sinister. It only lasted a moment, though, because he turned back to the screen and continued his presentation.

           “Okay, then. Let me leave you with a little demonstration. I’m sure you’re wondering why we picked you, or how we picked you. Lacey told you that you were a genetic match for what we want to work with, but I’d go so far as to say that this project was made for you.”

           “What do you mean?” I asked.

           “Every person’s genetic sequence varies slightly,” he explained. “Tiny differences in the blueprint determine what you look like and other various nuances that make you a unique individual. That’s why DNA testing can be used for crime scene analysis, because there are indicators that are usually different in every person.

           “When I constructed my project, I used a baseline of a random sample of human DNA. I calibrated everything based on this specific sample, but that turned out to be a mistake, because to safely experiment, the genetic sequence of the subject would have to be nearly identical to the master sequence. I had no idea who supplied the DNA I used so I’ve spent five years looking for people who could be matches, and more importantly, matches who would be willing to volunteer.”

           He pressed the button on his clicker and the projected image dissolved and reformed. Then I was staring at my own face. Or someone very nearly identical to me. The peach-colored face was looking straight ahead against a plain, white background. He had short, light brown hair, lightly brushed to one side, and brown eyes stared at me as I studied the image. He shared my jawline, with steep slopes coming down to form my chin. The lips were pressed tightly, the edges curving downwards in a slight frown that seemed almost as natural as when I looked at my reflection in the mirror. The only noticeable difference was that I had a dimple in my nose where I’d broken it when I was a kid and ran head first into a flag pole and the boy in the image had what I assumed my nose would look like if I hadn’t broken it. I could tell it wasn’t just a computer edit of a photo Lacey could have snapped of me and prepared for this magic trick.

           I tilted my head as if to get a different angle of the flat image. “Whoa,” I heard myself say. “How did you do that?”

           Doctor Valentine explained. “This is the predicted appearance of the test subject we need. It’s calculated from the blueprint of the master DNA sequence, and it shows us an estimate of the appropriate test subject. The image is assembled from an elaborate database that I personally collected of reference images and genetic samples, and this is only one of the tools I created to help my experiment. It’s just the tip of what I have to show you, but I hope it helps you see that I’m not kidding about this.

           “Right now you have a choice to make. Lacey and I won’t be able to stay here for very long, so you will need to decide by tomorrow. But if you choose to join us, I can give you power beyond anything you ever dreamed of and together we can solve one of life’s greatest mysteries. In exchange you will have to fully commit your time and your body to this project. I know this is a lot to take in all at once, and I want you to really think about what we’ve talked about today before you give me an answer. You have the opportunity to be something great, because the core of this project is you. You can be the catalyst for revelation. You can reveal our past and provide a glimpse into our future. You can be Time’s Mirror.”

           Boy, did he know how to make a guy feel special.

TO BE CONTINUED