#marker man misadventures

[thewhumpcaretaker]

do you think sébastien lacroix has went into torpor against his will and had to relive some distasteful memories of being in a war as a young adult

Why yes! I do. Be forewarned, I had a long week and got a little overzealous so this is like 90% hurt and only 10% comfort, oops. I was BRUTAL.

Image Source | TW: claustrophobia, starvation, war PTSD, animal death

⚜ FAILED INVASIONS ⚜

The attempt on the Paris crown was the first real mistake LaCroix had made in his unlife. More than a mistake – a whole misadventure.

Things had gone decently up until that point. He had travelled widely, networking all the while. He’d accumulated allies, and leverage, and servants, all of whom were formidable but none of whom he trusted, as was only wise. But this city was too big a leap in power too soon, even for him. He made one too many enemies in addition to all those friends, and his little coup was revealed. In the end, the would-be Prince of Paris was separated from his followers and forced to flee, hunted through the catacombs under the city for two nights and days. The local Nosferatu knew those tunnels better than anyone, of course, and he never really stood a chance.

It was only because of one particular Nosferatu’s bitterness towards him that he happened to survive. The man found him already wounded and nearly bloodless, cowering against a wall. He seemed to enjoy hauling Sebastian around by the frills of his collar (the height of fashion at the time) while he begged desperately. “Non, non, je ne t'épargnerai pas. Mais vous êtes un véritable fléau avec vos intrigues depuis une demi-décennie maintenant. Ce ne serait pas amusant de te livrer à une mort finale rapide et agréable. [No, no, I won’t be sparing you. But you’ve been such a pest with your scheming for half a decade now. It would be no fun just hand you over to a nice quick Final Death.]” And, grinning wickedly with his uneven fangs, the man threw LaCroix into a secret side tunnel, and locked the entrance.

So there he was, trapped. He was in total darkness, but by feeling his way along the walls, he could tell he was in a narrow, claustrophobic, low-ceilinged tunnel, hardly more than a crawlspace between two larger rooms. The doors on either end were heavy slabs that could only be lifted by an apparatus on the other side. A few hours of examining the walls told him with more or less total certainty that there was no way out. Even trying to dig would be futile, as the walls were solid stone. The ceiling was too low to permit standing to his full height, yet there was nowhere comfortable to even lie down for the day, just dusty, cold cobblestones.

Well, no matter – he had no real desire to sleep anyway. His dreams lately had been even worse nightmares than usual, no doubt intensified by the stress of his plans. And now all that stress had been for nothing, too. He sighed, settled gingerly onto the floor with his knees curled against his chest, and waited.

It’s alright, he tried to tell himself. It won’t be long. People are coming for me. Definitely. Some of them are backstabbers, but someone must be loyal.

But as the hours turned to what must be days, he felt a creeping dread take hold. There were no markers of time down here, but it certainly felt too long. Maybe that man had told everyone he was already dead. Maybe he’d shown off some random heap of ashes and said it was LaCroix. Or even told them that he was alive and locked up, and they all thought it was a good joke. Times came when the frustration and humiliation inside him burned so terribly that he just started flinging himself at the door, threatening whoever might be outside that if they’d didn’t let him out soon they’d – they’d…they’d what? He was totally powerless, and eventually sank down again, defeated. Other times came when he just couldn’t take it anymore – the total darkness, the closeness of the walls, the abject misery. He pounded against the doors then too, begging for release, promising anything in return.

But it seemed that this area of the catacombs was not commonly frequented even by the Nosferatu, or else they heard him and didn’t care. There was never even the smallest sound in answer to his.

A bigger problem was already at hand: he was getting hungry. He hadn’t fed in a while even before this whole debacle began. And now the ache in his stomach was turning to an ache in his veins as his body spent up its blood on healing his own starvation. He felt sluggish. Tired. He would have slept but his mind was so frazzled that he didn’t think he could take the awful dreams it would produce. By that point, he’d been awake for many, many days. He just needed a drop of blood for energy, just a drop. He would eat absolutely anything, he thought.

What was most maddening was that he could hear things moving around him in the dark, squealing and skittering, presenting a plentiful source of blood. Rats. They smelled foul. They seemed to come from the door on the north end of the passage, from a small crack in the stone that they were just tiny enough to squeeze through (lucky bastards). They came and went as they pleased, and he was alternately disgusted and tempted by their presence.

He was quick enough to grab one once, and even held it up to his fangs, mouth open. But it smelled so repugnant he was almost sick just from the scent, and in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to bite. He just let it patter its way back through that little crack. With a whine of disappointment, Sebastian slumped over onto his side and let himself cry. Or he almost cried. There was no water left in him, he realized. He was just making pitiful, dry-throated keening noises without tears and he was too miserable to care.

In the last hours of his awareness, he was still lying there, on his side, staring into the blackness. His muscles had already ceased to cooperate, lacking enough blood flow to flex as they should. Something about being this hungry made the cold of his undead bones seem even more unbearable. A memory flickered through his mind, a familiar bone-deep cold... Such an unpleasant memory that he shied away from it physically, managing to jerk his head slightly. Don’t think about that. Not now. Please. Think about warmth. Anything for warmth in his veins… He almost wished his undead body would shiver, and eventually it did – from fear.

Torpor was almost upon him, he could feel it. He’d never experienced it before, nor talked to anyone in detail about what it was like. Would it be dreamless? He hoped so…

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷

No dream had ever been as vivid as this. No nightmare. There were no distractions. His body was not at the edge of his consciousness grounding him, waiting to welcome him back again. No, there was only the memory, encompassing him on all sides. It was ancient and familiar and forever. Some part of him always lived in that time…

It was cold, a cold that painted itself across the horizon in icy blue-grey as the sun descended over the retreating Russian campaign. Where the black trees gave out onto white fields, sky and snow merged into one along that horizon. And why shouldn’t they? Why should the Earth and heaven be separated when so many of the sick and starved and freezing hovered on the point of crossing over? Didn’t he too, hover on the point of crossing over? It was cold, and Sebastian was so hungry, and not for the scraps of half-rotten smoked meat on which he had been surviving for so many weeks now. He felt the hideous weakness of his body driving him towards some survival frenzy. No, no, I am not on the point of death. Defiantly he turned his eyes to the sky, half grateful that the tears froze on his lashes before they could fall. I will be a general. A general does not die like this. I will be important. Too important to die.

He struggled with the terrible feeling that rose up in response: a feeling of just wanting to lie down somewhere warm and be held. He didn’t feel at all like a general. He was barely 18. Two years ago, he was a schoolboy at the École Militaire, marveling at history paintings of old battles. His Maman wouldn’t have wanted this for him, even as she wished him glory. She didn’t know. He didn’t know. How could anyone comprehend this without experiencing it?

But here he was, and there was nowhere warm to lie down for a hundred miles, and no one to hold him. Already, he had been promoted when his own commanding officer fell in Smolensk, and again when the next officer above him fell in Moscow. He was alive, and they weren’t. That was what mattered. His determination, it was all because of his own determination. Because of that, he had a horse and they didn’t. There weren’t many horses left in their column. Most had been eaten in desperation for food. But Sebastian had one, because he was high enough ranked, and so he kept his strength instead of marching.

It was then that a shot exploded from the distant trees. Chaos. Everyone scattered, screaming. “Cossacks! Cossacks!” There was hardly any hope of returning fire. They were already so devastated, and the Cossacks knew the terrain perfectly. He had to take cover.

But Sebastian couldn’t move. He was facing the open, white sky. He didn’t know how he got there. But his horse was sideways, on top of him. In a moment, he realized it wasn’t moving either. He’d been thrown a little ways into the snow, far enough that his legs weren’t fully crushed, only an ankle. But he couldn’t feel any pain. Some sort of total shock had dulled everything. He dragged himself out, wondering why he was shaking now, when his shivering had stopped hours ago. Wondering, as he sometimes did during battles, if any of this was real. He couldn’t hear himself speaking as he shouted at the mare to get up, shaking worse by the second.

It’s not enough to earn a place on a horse. It’ll be shot out from under you the moment you allow yourself to enjoy it. It’s not enough to attain power. One must maintain it, too. He came to himself and staggered away from the mare, shouting orders now. Leading. Miraculously, he was not hit today. Not yet. But it was coming. He knew it was coming if he let his guard down for even a moment.

Onward they marched, scattered and vulnerable on the open plain, into the blank of winter without end.

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷

There was blood in his mouth. Warm, fresh, real, honest blood. Someone was pressing it to his lips, hand-feeding him. Sebastian felt the heat seep gradually through his limbs. Even when his body felt strong enough to move, the relief, the gratitude, and the lingering horror that still lurked at the edges of his mind overwhelmed him, and he lay limp against the rock, with someone’s enormous hand resting gently on his shoulder.

When he was finally able to open his eyes, he would see five drained blood bags scattered around him. He would learn that he’d been in a torpor for over a month, reliving the horrors of the Russian campaign again and again while his rescuer secured a complete map of the catacombs and then searched them systematically, refusing to believe he was dead. That person was an associate he had met during his travels, one of many he employed and the only one who did not defect from him when the coup failed. And he would one day be LaCroix’s new Sheriff.

The man could have killed him. He could have brought LaCroix’s shriveled body to the Prince of Paris, and earned a handsome reward. Instead, he lifted LaCroix in his huge, tree-trunk arms like a precious doll, snuggled him safely into the folds of massive coat, and carried him safely through the catacombs, out of the city, and out of the country to begin the next chapter of his life in London.

There were so few moments in which Sebastian LaCroix ever felt that the world might show him mercy, that anyone at all could keep him safe if he late his guard down. But that rescue was one of them. A part of him would always live in that moment, as eternal as any memory of hunger and cold.

[dangraccoon]

Let's Live

Day 31 ~ survivor's guilt ~ (alt. prompt)

Crosshair

Word Count: 1008 Content: references to The Outpost and Plan 99, self-sacrifice, guilt, survivor's guilt

He wasn’t sure if it was the violent shivers that rolled endlessly through his body or the sharp cry of the ice vultures but Crosshair found himself awake and sitting upright in the early morning hours. 

A soft, warm breeze fluttered the curtains of his open window. He could hear the sound of the tide coming in, splashing against the rocks near their cozy home. The sun was far enough from rising that the moonyos weren’t even starting to chitter yet.

Crosshair groaned, using his remaining hand to pull the blanket up over him as he flopped back down onto the too-comfortable mattress. 

He knew about phantom limbs, of course–Echo had grumbled about it enough to pique his curiosity–but it didn’t stop the frustration that rose in his chest as his body insisted that his right hand was shaking again. He shoved the end of his arm under his pillow, praying for the “out of sight, out of mind” mindset Wrecker had long used as an excuse for his forgetfulness.

It never came. Groaning once more–as though acting like a petulant child might make him feel better–he shoved the blanket away, swinging his legs over the side of his bed.

Their house was an older one on the island; one of the elder residents had expressed that they wanted the batch to have it as she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law. “It was good enough to raise five kids in, so I’m sure Miss Omega can handle you lot in it.”

He walked through the house, idly thinking he should visit Mrs. Neawick soon–she was one of the only residents that could match his snark and she made sour hard candies that she pretended not to realize Crosshair loved–while stepping around the occasional creaking boards. He knew Hunter could hear him, but the least he could do was not make the disturbance worse.

He made it to the kitchen, noticing the caf maker’s timer starting the machine up. He scowled at the flimsi tooka calendar attached to the fridge. Omega had insisted on picking out different colored markers for each of them to write their various activities. “This way we can plan things together, too!”

He followed the sloppy orange scrawl that indicated Wrecker’s schedule and it made sense. Although Wrecker hated caf with a fiery passion, he’d come to rely upon it–mixed with an ungodly amount of cream, sugar, and whatever syrupy flavoring Omega had picked out, of course–for his early morning fishing trips with a fisherman he’d befriended.

Crosshair felt a little guilty that he couldn’t recall the man’s name, especially when he found their symbiotic relationship so amusing; the short and skinny fisherman had someone who could pull the lines up easily and carry their haul, and Wrecker had someone that never tired of his boisterous retellings of their missions and misadventures.

While he waited for the pot to finish brewing, he moved to the window, looking out over one of the lower sections of the island. Dawn was still an hour or so out, but the sky was just beginning to glow with the idea of first light. The various light-sensitive lamps still lit lined the walkways and outsides. He had to admit the view was… nice.

“Cross?” Wrecker hummed. “You’re up early.”

Crosshair glanced over his shoulder at his brother, who was wiping the sleep from his eyes. He shrugged.

“You okay?” Wrecker asked, joining him next to the window.

“Fine,” he murmured, though he could barely even convince himself of it. Wrecker would see right through him.

“Thinking about Tantiss?”

Crosshair winced. “No.”

“If you don’t tell me, ’m gonna go wake up Omega,” Wrecker shrugged, nudging Crosshair’s shoulder. “She’ll make you talk.”

Crosshair eyed his brother, almost trying to call his bluff with a glare.

“Alright,” Wrecker said, his tone shifting from sleepy concern to somewhat irritable. “That’s fine, Cross. Don’t talk about it. You’ll feel great keepin’ it all to yourself.”

Wrecker went about preparing his caf, pointedly ignoring Crosshair as he wrestled his unruly pride.

“Fine,” he growled, stalking over to the kitchen counter next to his brother to lean against it. “I had another nightmare. That’s why I’m awake.”

Wrecker’s facade of indifference fell almost immediately. He nodded, prodding him to continue.

“Not about T-Tantiss this time,” he continued, face twisting into a scowl at the way he struggled to push the words out. “Barton IV and… Mayday.”

Wrecker’s eyes lifted to look at Crosshair. He didn’t let a single noise slip, terrified that if he did Crosshair would retreat. Where Wrecker had always been open, Crosshair was the opposite. He’d been skittish around emotions since they were barely out of the tube.

“Mayday was the commander at the Outpost,” he elaborated. He’d only mentioned Mayday to Omega before, and that was only because she asked. “There was only him and two others left from his squad. They’d been there over a year guarding… stormtrooper equipment. Getting picked off by raiders. The lieutenant I– I killed sent us off to track the raiders. After we found and… eliminated them, there was an avalanche. I would’ve been killed if he hadn’t pushed me out of the way.”

Wrecker couldn’t help but notice the way Crosshair shivered.

“I carried him back to the Outpost. He was hurt a-and by the time we got there, that lieutenant… h-he wouldn’t get a medic. Mayday…”

A shaking sob crawled up his body and he was quickly encircled by Wrecker’s arms. He was powerless to stop the tears rolling down his cheek.

“He should’ve lived– it-it should’ve been me th-that–”

Wrecked shushed him. “Don’t talk like that. He gave his life for you to live, Cross.”

His hand clung to Wrecker’s shirt helplessly. “I… I owe him everything.”

“I know, vod. But we can’t get stuck in all the shouldas,” Wrecker whispered. “We owe it to them to live our lives ‘nd be as happy as we can, right?”

Wrecker didn’t say who he was thinking of. He didn’t need to. Crosshair nodded.

“Then let’s live. For them.”

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Thanks for reading! - River

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[gay-jesus-probably]

@imma-dragon53 Mr Dumbass (who I have described in the script as Lord of the Dumbfucks right now) is not a trail marker; his body was found in his tent on the North Col by a proper expedition the year after he died, and the body was buried by being pushed down a crevasse; they also recovered his journal, which is how we know most of his misadventures on the mountain. His death site is a landmark, just... not because of him; North Col was the site of Camp IV for the early expeditions, and in the modern day it's Camp I on the Tibetan route.

Also, Green Boots is not a trail marker either anymore! His identity was never confirmed, but was likely the remains of Tsewang Paljor, who died descending from a summit during the blizzard of 1996 (or it's the remains of Dorje Morup, one of Paljor's teammates). Either way, in 2014 a Chinese expedition moved the body off the trail; it's apparently still exposed, but extremely hard to find. Paljor's family believed the remains to be his, and were glad to hear he'd been moved, though they weren't pleased to have learned about it from a journalist interviewing them about him years afterwards.

Another notable landmark body that's been hidden is Sleeping Beauty, aka the remains of Francys Arsentiev, who died during her descent in 1998. Her identity was never in question; multiple other climbers had risked their own lives trying to save her, including her husband Sergei, who was last scene ascending for a rescue attempt. A British man, Ian Woodall, gave up his own summit attempt upon finding Francys on the verge of death in the morning, but she was too far gone to assist in her own descent, and she died while he was still attempting to rescue her. Woodall was understandably shaken by this, and in 2007 he returned to the mountain for the purpose of laying her to rest, giving her a brief funeral service before pushing her off a cliff. She was survived by her son, who wasn't thrilled that Woodall didn't contact him about it, but he understood why Woodall felt obligated to lay her to rest himself, and didn't think to look for her relatives first.

Also the remains of Sergei Arsentiev were found in 1999, ironically by the team that was specifically looking for the corpse of that one specific guy I mentioned from the very first expeditions (and a second guy who died with him, but he's still MIA. which is unfortunate, because that guys body should have their camera, and historical experts with Kodak say the film might be preserved well enough they could still develop the pictures)

So awhile ago my sibling suggested that I should make a podcast, because I really like infodumping at people, and that's a good way to subject an audience to my wild ramblings. And I'm not saying I'm definitely gonna do it, I'm just saying there may or may not be a word doc with a big stack of ideas of things I could totally infodump about for a large amount of time. And it's entirely possible there's a script for an episode in progress that's like already at 6k words.

It's about the history of climbing on Mount Everest. For context on how unnecessarily in depth this thing is, I ramble for 2k words before anyone gets within a hundred kilometres of the mountain in question. The 2k words of rambling is necessary okay, I need to explain why the mountain is called Everest, so that I can then explain why I'm not calling the mountain Everest.

Also there's a non-zero chance that at one point in the script I inform the audience to remember one specific guy that I've just brought up, he's a major part of this story, and later we're gonna examine his corpse, it'll be great.

...I swear to god, the corpse thing is important, that one dead body came with some very exciting revelations. The dead are treated with respect in my still theoretical podcast.

Okay fine, they're mostly treated with respect, there might be an entire section dedicated just to making fun of one specific guy for dying on the mountain like an idiot, but trust me, I cannot possibly speak about that guy with respect, the entire sequence of events that brought that guy up the mountain to die was so batfuck wild. It's too funny to be sad, okay, everyone else gets treated seriously. Just not the guy that was 100% certain he could reach the summit first without any assistance, mountaineering experience, bottled oxygen, equipment, or food. His first plan was to crash a plane directly into the mountain and step off onto the summit. It was 1934. There's just so much going on there, it's great.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 11

Okay, where am I now? It looks like some kind of dream world. Everything is purple, there are stars and sleepy clouds in the sky and the background music feels as calm as the last world's background music. Speaking of, this one is the biggest offender in terms of the beat count. You thought the 7 measure loop was bad? The following numbers are my best guess as to what the number of beats in each measure are: 2,4,4,2,4,3,4. That is a total of 23 beats over 7 measures. My head is hurting just listening to this song. Please, make it stop.

It's a long way down, so watch your step. The man eating houses are back, so that's fun. On the one horizontally moving platform, you can make it to the right wall using a momentum jump when the platform is moving right. There is a lot of space to move around here, so try and not to get lost.

Sad Cat

A sad cat that roams around being sad. If you touch it, it will meow and scratch you for 10 damage, given that this is world 10.

I actually cannot believe this. I checked every part of this level multiple times over. I think the developers straight up forgot to add a coin here. There is only one coin in this level as far as I know. I have no idea where the two coin exit takes me. Of course the game doesn't let me have the satisfaction of knowing every route in the game, but I guess if the second coin was never programmed in, then it's technically not even a route. How infuriating.

LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT THIS LEVEL. As I just from this one platform to another, all of a sudden a star appears from the top of my screen, smashes down into me, and before I could even process what happened, I died. It killed me instantly. I had to go back and check what in the world happened at that moment. THE ENEMY IS PART OF THE BACKGROUND. PART OF THE BACKGROUND OF HUNDREDS OF OTHER STARS IN THE SKY. It's teaming up with the yellow house and trying to assassinate my progress. Go on. Collect that marker. It's totally not bait. The sound of collecting the marker is also totally not going to take priority over the sound of the star falling completely. Stupid dumb falling star level.

Alright, I feel better now.

Falling Star

These will destroy you. 10 damage per frame, and can seemingly fall from the sky at any time, there is little indication for when one is coming. They are differentiated from the rest of the stars in the background from its frown, and from its occasional blinking. If you hear a stock falling sound effect then that means you better take cover immediately because it's coming to smash your head in. They disappear after a bit.

That's not even the worst part. The worst part is in order to know when they're coming, I have to have the sound on and listen for the falling cue. And that means listening to the horrid background music.

This level is pretty fun to speed run. Just watch out for the stars, as they hang lower to the ground in this one. Go over the holes and enter the hallway where the coin is from the right side to avoid all the spikes.

This one, on the other hand, is not fun to speed run. Almost half of the length of the level involves just running right. Then you have to deal with the mess that is everything above you. Too little to do, followed by too much to do.

One of the stars will happily greet you after you climb up a wall. At this point you have two options. Either run backwards and have a line placed where you will land so you won't take possible fall damage, or quickly draw a line above you so that the star bounces off your head. I'd assume the star would bounce off the line and not kill you. I didn't try it. Just saying, in case you're the one person in the world who has the game and is going through this guide. Oh, that person is me? Great.

Hey it worked. Just thought I'd say that. Okay, moving on.

Raccoons are falling from the sky! The biggest danger is falling enemies. Otherwise, it's a pretty mild level overall. Go left on spawn to get the coin first.

I have a pro tip for myself. The timer that determines when the star disappears continues on pause! This means that you can avoid harm from a star once it jumps out by pausing for about 5 seconds. It will disappear on unpause.

This poor raccoon keeps walking to the right, and the bouncy wall keeps pushing it away. Stop doing that, wall. It's trying to get to work. I was worried that the one exit that is impossible to get to leads to the bonus level, but this one has the exit to the bonus level. It seems like I am able to access every level so far. Maybe that impossible exit goes to a level I already visited. Maybe it doesn't go anywhere! I guess it doesn't matter now.

Bouncy Wall

Even though it looks like this will kill you because it has ridges around all the edges, it's harmless. It's a moving wall that has high restitution. Anything it touches will be bounced away.

I think this is a strong contender for the worst marker man level so far. The majority of the level is simple platforming, and the only enemy type is the spiky wall. The middle section of the level is ridiculous. You have to jump from one moving platform to another moving platform, and the platforms change directions in different frequencies. This means there are times where you can make the jump and there are times where you cannot, and you have to be able to tell the difference, often while the platform to jump to is out of view. The first time this happens is at least systematically manageable, but the second time there is a spiky wall column introduced! That wall has its own movement pattern and can stop marker man from making the jump to the other platform. That specific jump is almost impossible unless you do what I did.

On the stationary platform before the twin moving platforms with the spiky wall in between, pan the camera to the far right until you see the spiky wall. If you place a line just above the ceiling and when the spiky walls are at its highest point, then you can barely get the shape to be sandwiched between the walls and the ceiling, preventing the walls from coming back down for a little while. You have a ten second time frame at this point to make the jump from one moving platform to the other. The last jump in this set is to the stationary platform, which can be blocked yet again by the spiky wall that gets in the way. You have to time your jump so you can land on that safe area before your line disappears, or else you have a good chance of getting hit by the spiky wall that was trapped from earlier. Absolutely insane. Hope that extra life was worth it.

Search. Find. Collect. Dodge. Jump. Exit.

These coins are getting pretty tough to find. However, if you're insane like I am, you can try using the cool shortcut to get the coin instantly. Get on top of the structure you spawn in, and just jump off to the left. You'll have to try to not hit the falling star or miss the platform, and draw something under you so that you won't die from fall damage. It's pretty risky, but it's so much fun. These stars are always inconveniently placed everywhere, and they still scare me when they jump out.

This has been the most difficult world for mapping yet. The platforms are scattered around so there are a ton of paths one can take. I often mess up the scaling of a path when it finally joins with an earlier visited segment. It sucks. Also help me: I'm running out of ideas for level titles.

I can feel my soul draining.

No enemies, and basically no pickups? How many of these levels have even been reviewed? I didn't play this game to appreciate the architecture of the levels. I expect an actual game to be here.

Yep. My soul's gone now.

Beware of the large amount of stars in the beginning segment. Just watch out for stars no matter where you are. Except for this bonus level, of course. Wait, what? Another bonus level? This is the same world, right? Please don't be as bad as the previous bonus level...

I am so relieved. The ending part is slightly tricky because you cannot ramp over the cake because the line you create will just slide off. Just build from the last platform in the air so that the slope is shallow enough not to slip.

Another really annoying level to map out. The middle area has 4 to 5 different layers of platforms, all pretty separate from each other. Just... one more... level... to go.... Get me off this wild ride.

Oh no..... oh noooo..... THERE ARE INVISIBLE WALLS IN THIS LEVEL. THEY ACTUALLY MADE INVISIBLE WALLS A THING. I'M SO SCREWED.

The grey lines indicate invisible walls. As you can imagine, they are SO MUCH HARDER to draw than regular walls because I have to make a ton of checks just to accurately figure out the length of one platform. And that's assuming I can find them. Just imagine a regular player trying to beat this level! First, they have to find the second coin. The only way to find it without blindly jumping to your death is to hold the camera down control while on the moving platform. The coin will be barely visible for a moment. Then they have to get down there to realize that there is an invisible wall in the way. THEN after they figured out that theres a hole in the top that also leads to a spike pit they have to build their way out. Building your way out of that tiny hole is not easy, even if it was all visible.

So how do you build out of the coin hole? You cannot build a line up hugging the wall because it will either fall through the hole or it will be too steep for marker man to not hit the ceiling while climbing up it. You have to build a perfect rectangle. A perfect rectangle is pushed all the way to the left of the hole and has a height that will barely get it touching the ceiling. This makes it so that the rectangle will not move once the line gets built underneath it. A circle is not ideal, but is possible to use as well. There is a huge chance you will accidentally give marker man a power. Honestly, if you have the markers to give marker man a power up, just give it super jump and bounce out of there. Build to the moving platform, minding the invisible ceiling, and escape this monster of a level.

There is a good chance that the next world is the last one. There is also a good chance that this might be the world that breaks me. I have no idea what it has in store, but if this level is any indication then I am in trouble. Wish me luck.

This world is so massive that the developers felt the need to add two bonus levels. Probably. I don't know what they're thinking. I can guess that they were not thinking about how much they enjoy making levels for this game.

[axlaida]

Based on this prompt~

I decided to upload this here too because it’s dumb and short and I want to try to be a bit more active with my writing on Tumblr, so enjoy!

٩(*ゝڡ◕๑)۶♥

~Support me on Ko-Fi!~

The Misadventures of Yuri Plisetsky

Summary: Yuuri wondered if he just didn’t want to believe it. It didn’t change anything – well, maybe it frightened him just a little – but Yurio was his son. He and Victor adopted him with the excitement to start a family, so who cared if Yurio was the antichrist?

They still loved him, no matter who he was.

Words: 2431

They had thought about telling Yakov for some time now. The coach deserved to know the true origins of their son, even if it was bizarre and somewhat hard to believe, but they trusted Yakov would try to understand. Victor reassured Yuuri of that.

But as they sat across from Yakov at the kitchen table, having just told him the truth, Yuuri found Victor’s reassurance hard to believe.

“What do you mean you’ve adopted the antichrist?”

They shared a look, uncertain how exactly to answer Yakov’s question.

“Well…” Victor cleared his throat. “We adopted a child who so happened to be the antichrist.”

Yakov’s mouth hung open but no words came out; trapped in the back of his throat as he tried to process their words. Yuuri could understand his disbelief, or even his bewilderment. It was a lot to take in. He only hoped that Yakov would be understanding of their son who was different to other children.

“You mean to tell me…” His eyes closed as his head shook, lost for words until he asked, “what gave it away, exactly?”

There were a few things that gave it away.

They probably should have seen it coming after his name was changed from Damien to Yurio before he was adopted, but neither Victor or Yuuri thought much of it at the time.

He was just like any other kid his age; maybe a little strange, but he was good.

“Well, he used to turn all our picture frames upside down every night,” Yuuri mentioned, but as Victor pulled a face as he shook his head, he too realized that wasn’t the beginning. “But at the time, we thought he was trying to be funny. We were just happy he was settling down nicely.”

“I think it was when he began to draw what we noticed something wasn’t right,” Victor suggested.

Yurio liked to draw.

He'd draw little scribbles on the table and napkins; intricate designs of symbols he made up. Yuuri would smile and ask him what they meant, but Yurio never told him. He’d stare for a few moments, eyes glistening before turning back to his doodle. They praised his creativity, but after he began drawing in red marker on the walls, they didn’t necessarily discourage him from doing so, but instead, suggested he’d stick to a drawing book instead.

He was a rather good artist too. One morning, he tugged Yuuri’s sleeve to show him a drawing he had done. It was a picture of a goat-faced man draw in red crayon with the word ‘father’ written above it. Yuuri was… somewhat concerned to say the least, but who was he to judge what his child decided to draw?

“Is this for me?” Yuuri asked him. Yurio nodded mutely. Although it made his stomach twist with nerves, he was taken back by its detail. He couldn’t deny it was a good drawing. “It’s wonderful, Yurio. Victor! Come look at this!”

He showed the picture to Victor, who patted Yurio’s head for his efforts and put it on the fridge.

“Now everyone will see it,” Victor grinned.

They hadn’t taken it down since.

“He’s a very talented artist, even if he likes to draw pentagrams and goat-men,” Victor smiled proudly. Even Yuuri couldn't deny that he was proud, regardless of what Yurio chose to draw. “We’re not going to discourage him from the arts just because of what he draws. He’s good at it and he deserves the recognition.”

“Vitya…” Yakov sighed hard. He stormed to his feet, snatched the drawing Yurio did from their fridge and slid it across the table to show the two. “He’s drawing the devil.”

Now that Yakov mentioned it, Yuuri could see what he meant. He wondered how he didn't notice that a long time ago but it didn't change anything. "It's a good drawing too," Yuuri beamed as he picked up the picture, showing it to Victor who held a smile wider than his own. "Look at how talented he is, Victor! He could be a famous artist if he wanted.”

“You two are completely out of it!” Yakov bellowed.

They shared a glance again with a small smile on their faces. They knew exactly the thing to tell Yakov that’ll drive the coach insane, but the question was whether they should let him know. He was already stressing too much about the situation, and Yuuri wondered perhaps they should go gentler with the man. It was a lot to take in.

But it seemed Victor had other ideas.

“That’s not all he did.”

They went to the park.

Yurio didn’t want play with the other kids. He was happy to sit on the ground and rip the grass from the earth. He even actively ignored any of the kids who came over and wanted to be his friend.  He was more interested in other things, and soon found enjoyment in picking daisies. Yuuri thought he was going to make a daisy chain and nudged Victor to have him watch too, but when Yurio was done, he held them out in his hand. He stared intently, eyes narrowed until a fire sparked in his hand and the daisies burst into flames.

Yuuri had never seen anything like it. He shared an equally startled look that Victor held when their eyes met.

“Did he just-?”

“He did.”

That night, they celebrated with chocolate cake for dessert and reminded him that fires should be set in a controlled environment. If he wanted to start one, he should ask an adult or do it out in the garden.

“He can set fires by will…” Yakov sighed, falling down to his seat with a thump. He scrubbed a hand across his face. “You do realize how dangerous that is for a child?”

“We are very well aware of that,” Victor stated. Yuuri was a little insulted that he’d assume they wouldn’t be aware of the dangers of fire. “Which is why we taught him how to be safe around a fire and ask an adult before he sets anything alight. We found it’s safest for everyone if he keeps the fire in his hand until it burns out. It doesn’t hurt him either. How incredible is that?”

Yakov didn’t share the same amazement. He continued shaking his head, exhaling heavily whenever they mentioned something he didn’t quite agree with. Again, Yuuri understood his incomprehension. It was a lot to take in that their son was the antichrist. They went through their own worry themselves, spending too many nights wide awake with questions and uncertainty in their mind, unsure what to do or how to care for a son who was different.

Yes, Yurio was different than other children, but they realized it didn’t mean it had to be a bad thing.

“And what else can he do?”

“Well, we soon found out that he speaks Latin,” Victor began, holding out a finger as he counted. “He also hates the taste of salt which… didn’t alarm us that much until we discovered he’s the antichrist, so that made sense. He also asked us if we could adopt a hellhound, but we didn’t know how to get one.”

“And you two never spoke about this?” Yakov asked frantically.

“Do you think he was abused by bad people?” Yuuri asked with a lump in his throat and his stomach twisting in despair. He couldn’t dare imagine anyone doing that to his son. “There must’ve been a reason he was put up for adoption.”

“They said he was found on their doorstep, so if he was, it’s unlikely he’d remember it,” Victor replied. It spread relief through his bones but didn’t shake his unnerving feeling. “But I do agree with you. There’s something different about him.”

And as Yuuri sat there, trying to piece the puzzle pieces together, he couldn’t come up with a logical conclusion.

“That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing,” He shrugged.

“No, but I think for his sake, we should find out soon.”

“We did.”

“We concluded that we didn’t want to try to change him,” Victor continued. Yuuri nodded along, ignoring Yakov’s bug-eyed glare. “This is who he is and what kind of parents would we be if we tried to change him?”

“Appropriate,” Yakov stated.

“We’d be terrible!” Victor gasped, startled that Yakov would even suggest such a thing. “We're not going to be mad at him for something that he is. We're going to encourage the good he does, even if his powers aren't so good."

As much as Yakov was huffing and shaking his head at them, Yuuri believed they were getting through to him – or at least, he was beginning to calm down. It was a lot to take in, even for himself and Victor; they were still learning something new about Yurio every day. It wasn’t an easy task to care for the antichrist, but all they needed was some extra help, or even acceptance from other people. If Yakov could accept Yurio for who he was, perhaps this could help him begin to open up to others as well.

That was the idea, at least.

“Alright, it seems you two have really committed yourselves to this,” Yakov sighed and raised his hands in defeat. “So, what was it that made you realize he was the antichrist?”

They looked at each other.

“When he summoned a hellhound.”

The morning was young as they sat in the kitchen, watching Yurio through the window as he played in the garden.

He wasn’t doing much. He did what he enjoyed; burning daisies and grass in his hand. That was nothing new to them. They trusted he’d stay safe while doing so, but they watched him cautiously, just in case.

What startled them was when Yurio jumped to his feet. He quickly ran inside and past them, bolting up the stairs with an excitement neither had ever seen from the boy before. They shared a curious glance, brows furrowed heavily.

“Yurio!” Victor called as they heard thumping from upstairs. “Yurio, what are you doing?”

But as Yurio came rushing down the stairs and past them again, coloring book and red crayon in hand, he ignored Victor’s question.

They watched him through the window as he sat on the grass. He began scribbling symbols in his book with his tongue stuck out and concentration in his eyes. It wasn't unusual for him to make sudden choices before. They'd seen it when he'd quickly grab his coloring book and begin drawing a new symbol. What was unusual was his excitement. They'd never seen him with such happiness before - even when they adopted him!

When he closed his eyes and began muttering under his breath, Yuuri turned to Victor as they shared a curious look, and asked,  “what do you think he’s doing?”

Victor shrugged, “I’m not sure.”

But as they looked back, their hearts stopped as they jumped to their feet, both pressed against the window as they watched the scene unfold in front of them.

A dark portal rested by Yurio’s feet. The world turned dark, the sky went black, and they watched as a creature spawned from its depths. It climbed from the portal and into their world, and what stood in front of their son was what appeared to be a dog. It stood taller than their son; its fur was black and mangled with eyes that were glowing red, and the strong smell of burning brimstone filled the air.

The portal then disappeared. The delighted squeal from their son took them back, but what surprised them even more was the dog-like creature pouncing on the spot, tail wagging as Yurio picked up a nearby stick and threw it across their garden. The creature chased after it and safely returned it to Yurio who continued the game of fetch.

“Victor…” Yuuri gulped, “have you pondered the possibility that we may have adopted the antichrist?”

Yakov didn’t blink for thirty seconds – at least.

“And…” He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. “Is – is this thing still around?”

They said nothing as they pointed to the window behind the man. He turned, watching Yurio play outside in the garden with a dog – a hellhound – that chased after the stick held in his hands, leaving behind burnt pawprint marks on the grass where it had walked.

Yakov said nothing as he turned to sit back down in his seat. His face was white. His eyes had bulged wide, clearly alarmed by the hellhound that was now their pet. Yuuri had expected such a reaction – their own wasn’t too different – but when Yakov cleared his throat, he was hopeful for the man to say something. He waited, but nothing seemed to encourage him to speak. His voice was lost – trapped as he could do nothing but stare.

“We understand it’s a lot to take in,” Victor explained calmly, “but we wanted to tell you because we want him to flourish as a person. We don’t want him to be ashamed of who he is or what his future might hold. We believe if his family is accepting of him, he’d have a brighter future. His life would be better.”

Yakov’s eyes closed as he exhaled a long breath. He still didn’t say anything, but when Yuuri caught movement to his left, all three eyes turned to their six-year-old son, Yurio.

“Papa…” He walked towards Victor as he tugged his sleeve, wanting his attention. “Papa, Makkachin wants to meet Uncle Yakov.”

At Yurio’s words, Yuuri caught the way the coach’s eyes dazzled as a smile appeared on his lips, and it encouraged Yuuri’s own to show too. He watched as the man crouched to his knees as a cautious and careful hellhound – Makkachin, so Yurio called it – slowly walked towards him. It sniffed his trembling fingers.

Yuuri understood Yakov’s terror. It was a scary creature at first glance, but they learned it was as harmless as a bunny. Yakov came to realize that too as Makkachin’s tail began to wag and allowed Yakov to pet it, excited to meet a new person as it barked a deep and growling boof!

It was then that Yuuri wondered perhaps asking Yakov to accept Yurio into the family wasn’t what they needed to do, but for Yurio to accept Yakov into the family was.

“Well…” Yakov said, clearing his throat as he stood to his feet. “If you need a babysitter, I wouldn’t mind the job.”

And as they smiled, Victor nodded. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

Read it on AO3!  Support me on Ko-Fi!

[emeraldnebula]

Motor City Comic Con 2018: The latest art acquisitions

It's been a week since Motor City Comic Con, and an insane work week (plus another misadventure in cooking for the workplace) delayed my posting about it, but hey, better late than never, right?

Highlights of last weekend include, but are not limited too:

- wowing both Neal Adams and Trevor Von Eeden with Mark Texeira's 2015 He-Man pencil sketch...and freaking both of them out over the $100 price tag it came with

- treating Lobo co-creator Simon Bisley to Thomas Edison's 1910 film adaptation of Frankenstein, which both enthralled and terrified him

- confusing several people over Jeff Wayne's 20+ years of hijacking the international rights to War of the Worlds in an effort to force Hollywood to adapt his musical (30 Days of Night's Ben Templesmith was especially stunned as to why the book hadn't been public domain until just last year)

- surprising Star Trek Continues star Todd Haberkorn with the Star Trek Complete Comics Collection DVD-ROM...and the wacky Peter Pan Records comics which merged Uhura and Rand AND Sulu and M'Benga into the same characters

- running into a fellow Dearborn High School ‘97 graduate by pure chance on Saturday...and I hope she's feeling better after her leg surgery (going around at a con on crutches and/or a wheelchair is not fun -- I know from my own experiences)

- meeting one of my all-time favorite comic book artists and a guy I regularly commission, Tom Grummett (best known for his work on Superman)

- finding out that my disdain over DC's self-destruction with "Rebirth" and Marvel's ongoing idiocy is shared by fans and comic book pros alike (but said pros still need to make a living, so they have to go along with it anyway)

- discussing the current ThunderCats Roar controversy with some of the artists in attendance, and debating whether a humorous approach is inherently bad or if the real problem is the showrunners ripping off Steven Universe right down to the visual style

And of course, for me the chief appeal of any comic con is getting sketches. And I got me some good ones, including the grand finale of a jam piece started in February and getting a new, much bigger one started. I also made a point this time to go full-tilt classic sci-fi/horror for the bulk of my collection, most of it stuff the artists hadn't drawn before. So here it is now.

This jam piece was started in February at Great Lakes Comic Con, with pencils by Keith Pollard and Darryl Banks. The final inks were done at MCCC by Jason Moore.

It wasn’t the only Batman/Catwoman sketch I had done. Ken Wheaton of Popeye took his own whack at it.

Next we have Pop Mhan, who was one of the people responsible for He-Man getting his well-earned happy ending with the DC New 52 series. But rather than having him do yet another He-Man sketch, I engaged him to do a Ralph McQuarrie Darth Vader instead.

I did, however, leave He-Man in the very fine hands of Anthony Marques...

...and the Minor Brothers, who started a massive Masters of the Universe jam piece to be completed later. Jake did the layouts and penciled He-Man himself, while Matt drew Skeletor. The remaining brother, Kevin, has first crack at coloring it once it’s finished.

For anyone wondering, the remaining characters to be plugged in are Evil-Lyn, Raqquil the Beast Man, Kronis the Trap Jaw, Mer-Man, Tri-Klops, and He-Man’s Bizarro double Faker. Three local artists -- Will Jones, Erik Hodson, and Scott Zambelli -- already staked their claims to which characters they want to do for this, so that will have to be tended to as time goes on. (I’ll also have to pick an inker to bring this whole thing together when it’s completed. Decisions, decisions....)

Moving away from He-Man, we get to the really good stuff. Here’s Arvell Jones’ take on Count Orlok from Nosferatu.

Had time permitted, Dexter Vines would have inked this, but the sketch was finished too late and Vines was too swamped with other sketches. But he did express interest in inking a blueline version of this, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Next we have Jay Fosgitt’s take on the Thing, James Arness Edition:

Katie Cook’s rendition of the Edison Frankenstein:

Adriana Melo’s version of Inspector Burke/The Man in the Beaver Hat from London After Midnight:

The Fly (1958 version) by Andy Bennett:

Frank Sinatra doing Die Hard (the original, intended casting, per Sinatra’s earlier film The Detective), by Dan Dougherty. But since Bruce Willis is so stamped into that role now, Dougherty played Sinatra-as-John McClane/Joe Leland for laughs.

On a more serious note, we next have Tom Raney’s take on the Maria Robot from Metropolis:

The Invisible Man, by Buzz:

And last but not least, the big showstopper of the con: a War of the Worlds marker sketch by Dave Aikins. Some people couldn’t believe it wasn’t a painting, others wanted to buy it even though the sketch had already been pre-arranged.

All in all, not a bad round-up. Lot of off-the-cuff stuff and artists stepping WAY outside their comfort zones. Here’s hoping August’s Michigan Comic Con is just as fruitful!

[thephantomcasebook]

The Bonny Light Horseman: Chapter 9 preview

It had been when their Donk had gone to London on Parliamentary business, and he had left George in charge of the house. It was after much negotiating with the unwilling and unhappy teenager who would not easily leave Crawley House for Downton after ten years of exile from its halls, even for just a couple of weeks. Rather than having a room made up for him, and rather to needle Donk, George simply claimed Lady Grantham and her bed as a ‘price of conquest’. Their Granny had humorously agreed, claiming to her annoyed husband that even an Empress might bend to a Barbarian Warlord for the sake of Rome. Though frowned upon by everyone else, at first, it had been a rather fond memory to the girl. Their Granny had prepared herself for a deluge of bedtime silly nonsense, her bed to play host and so suddenly fallen upon by her two eldest grandchildren and their hijinks. But Sybbie didn’t think she had ever seen a woman so happily laying between two people before in her life. And of course there was a prescribed amount of comedy and silliness that came with the duo’s misadventures, but what Sybbie remembered most was the late night conversations that had spontaneously erupted in the dark.

This moment, this battlefield, had reminded her of one such of these things. She had remembered being awoken by the sound of thunder at the cusp of another nightmare. There she found herself comfortingly snuggled to her Granny’s breast, the woman’s arm slung lovingly and protectively around her young beauty. She was only vaguely aware that their granny had asked something of George lying on her side of the bed. Both women knew that George still had trouble sometimes falling asleep on beds, after years of sleeping on hard surfaces since fleeing New York. So it was in such comfort and warmth, that the teenage kid took longer to convince himself to let his guard down in such an alien environment to sleep, even in the soft and sweet smelling refuge of Lord and Lady Grantham’s bedroom. He often played his insecurity of security as a joke, saying that he still didn’t trust that Lady Mary, down the hall, didn’t eat her young. But yet, hardened blue eyes spent many of those nights looking up at Lady Grantham’s canopy with his hands behind his head, listening intently, in sentry, for noises outside the door of a room that held two people he loved most in the world.

By the time that the girl had gained her consciousness, she had caught George’s answer to their granny’s question. In it he explained that some of the most beautiful things he had ever seen were also some of the most awful. The two weren’t mutually exclusive, but still, some of the most terrible things that a human mind could picture also had a certain beauty and mystical quality to it that was hard for most to coincide.

He then spoke of the haunting images of lynched bodies of a secret wedding party swinging from cottonwood trees one Mississippi night. A Catholic man and a Jewish woman, determined to bind their frowned upon love, with the help of her parents and his cousins. George and his companions had heard the ambush on the road to New Orleans. But by the time they came upon the scene it was over. The men wrapped in white hoods and robes were gone and left in their wake were the lonesome swaying figures silhouetted by the golden hue of the winter moonlight. Dozens of fireflies danced in synchronized and hypnotizing patterns around the creaking shadows of the dead in beautiful silken gown and tailed finery. The elegance of the lights seemed at dance to some wedding waltz in honor of the murdered lovers that never had their chance.

He remembered seeing the last sunbeams of a cold late autumn afternoon reflected off the sea. There shimmering light shone brightly through the broken and frail windows of an abandoned and forgotten ballroom in the ruins of a Newport manor house. A hardened teenager, on the long road home, looked upon a dusty and grime filled dance floor littered with moldering and half skeletal corpses. Older women wore their ancient Worth evening gowns of their heiress days in bloom, their daughters in debutant silken Edwardian cuts, and their young granddaughters still in ribbons and bows. The men, old gentleman and ruined youths, wore tux and tails, their dusty top hats slouched over sunken skulls. Even the servants, footmen and maids still in livery, lay dead on the floor. The young mercenary, looking for some shelter to camp for the night, had come upon the remains of the last ball, the last hurrah, of the new money swells of the American Gilded Age on the day that the Stock Market crashed. They had all thrown one last lavished party in honor of the last sixty years, before all, young and old, killed themselves. None there wished to face the dawn on the blackest eve of a Great Depression that the wandering adventurer had survived seven years of hell in.  While the youth observed grimly the old and rotted sight from the top balcony, the frigid sea breeze had made an ethereal chime through the warped remains. The change in air pressure caused the tinkling of the keys of an abandoned dusty self-playing piano that lay crippled next to a fallen and shattered crystal chandelier. And for just a moment, lit by the last light of the fall day, the music of piano, accompanied by the song of the sea through the gaps in the windows, brought to life the long forgotten ballroom that sparkled in lively splendor as it had once, long ago.

Then there was his desperate trek through the Smoky Mountain wilds in the dead of the early Tennessee winter. There had been a surprise and sudden snow storm from the east that covered the mountains for three weeks without pause. He remembered a ragged young boy held up against the storm by a long walking staff, deathly cold, barely alive, trying to make it to a small town just west of the Cumberland Gap. But when that boy, the last Heir to the House of Grantham, got there just as the silver storm came to an end, he found nothing but an open field of thick and deep powder. He couldn’t understand it … the town was there according to all of his charts. But, then, he saw the first rays of sunlight in a month, and in that morning light came a reflection of a golden cross that jutted forth from the harden frozen tundra underfoot. The reflection of that bright golden light wreathed the silver powder in a shimmering effect that made it seem as if he were standing upon a field of glowing diamonds. But even in that wondrous sight, in the deepest quiet and dreamlike stillness that earth could provide, a Lonesome and worn young boy slowly, in defeat, slipped off his hat in respect of the grave yard he trod. Slowly, he leaned heavily on his walking stick when he knelt in front of the golden marker, crossing himself, hanging his raven curled head in bitter sorrow. For underneath him laid the town he sought and all of her people, buried alive with no hope of rescue. Now, all that remained was the golden cross that lay atop the church’s steeple. There the cross sat as a lone grave marker to a town and all her frozen dead, destined to wash away in the spring as if it, and they, had never even been there at all.

Afterward, George had said no more, only drifted off into his own thoughts and memories of people and places far away, as he usually did in the night. But in the dark Lady Grantham and Sybbie were left haunted by the sights and things described to them in such detail that it was as if they had been there themselves with him. Their minds invaded by the majesty of the great calamities that were beautifully painted on the misshapen canvas of life. Sybbie remembered seeing their granny shed a single tear that she quickly wiped away in the dark. The girl was never sure if it was for all the things described to her which she could see so vividly in her own mind. Or the fact that it was one of her children which had seen and experienced such harsh things of the world without a person who loved him by his side to comfort and protect him from all things he couldn’t understand.

For Sybbie she could not comprehend what it must have been like to see such wonder and terror in the same breath. Nor what kind of man lay in bed across from her who had survived such things to return with such treasures of sight and tale of people and places far from the Country House comforts of Aristocracy. They were things of wonder and horror that could never be recreated but in one’s own hazy imagination. They were stories and experience of a young man that loomed large and shamefully over the whole of the Crawley family for years since. But even in Sybbie’s fascination and love of the young man who had done and seen so much in their young lives, she had been sure, in her world of evening gowns, dinner parties, and high society, that she would never live to see such a sight of her own. And it was the contentment of her heart to experience such things vicariously through the stories that George told in bed as she snuggled to him closely.

Story inspired by the Tale of “The Children of Hurin” by JRR Tolkien

Get Caught Up Right Here

[arplis]

Arplis - News: Bugging out is a central tenet to prepping

You cannot count on staying where you are! The best laid plans, the most fortified location, all of it could be rendered moot, even dangerous in the wrong situation. That could be from bad luck, a bad plan or just something you could not have predicted. No matter the reason, you need to get your BOB and get to safer territory, by foot if required. But I have observed something of a disturbing trend among otherwise well-intentioned and motivated preppers. People are ready to bug out, with bag packed and set handily by the door and a destination in mind, but they don’t really know how they are going to bug out. Sure, they know they have a long and likely arduous journey ahead of them, but aside from “get from here to there” that is all the advance work they have done on what is probably one of the most difficult and potentially harrowing phases of their survival plan. That needs fixing, pronto. In this article, I’ll share some tips and hard-earned wisdom for practicing and executing a bug-out by foot. Risks of Bugging Out I’ll assume we are all more or less acquainted with why you’d be bugging out: some terrible disaster, be it man-made or natural, or the aftermath of said disaster has rendered your current habitation unsustainable or unsurviveable, or quickly exceeding your acceptable risk parameters. You need to get out and get away, ideally to a pre-prepared or at least preselected bug-out location, or BOL. Additionally, you can probably easily think of a half-dozen reasons that would make travel by motor vehicle either impossible or unadvisable, leaving the oldest mode of transport, foot, your best option. Time to strap on your BOB, pick ‘em up and set ‘em down. Simple enough in practice. Simple, not easy. Chances are high that you’ll be undertaking significant risks by bugging out on foot. You’ll be leaving behind everything you worked so hard to prepare that was supposed to keep you safe. Things like ample stored food and water, shelter, protection and so on. If you are travelling any distance, especially along remote or scarcely traveled paths, you’ll be solely dependent on yourself to provide all of the above. Consider also that you will be at risk of any natural disaster effects that sent you running in the first place. Lingering bad weather in the form of snow, wind, rain and more. Smoke and flames from wild fires. Tainted air from industrial accidents or volcanoes. The list goes on and on. You will of course be at risk of running afoul of evil or desperate people through choice or circumstances who will want what you have, at any cost. There is usually safety in numbers, and staying in your home, whatever it is, always gives you an edge on defense. You won’t have that any more when setting off on foot. Your skills and the equipment you carry will be your lifeline, literally. Exposure is a constant killer of the unlucky and the foolish. Loss of equipment or inability to make use of your survival skills can be a literal death sentence when your survival is completely dependent on your ability to provide your needs. I mean real needs: Air, Shelter, Water, Food and Security. The Wild will suffer not the weak or ill-prepared to live. Even in ideal circumstances- you are as hardy as an ox, fit, skilled, trained and equipped, you might still run afoul of a mistake or misadventure and die. You can become lost in the woods you have “known” your whole life. Underestimating your consumption of vital resources sees you dehydrate and incapacitated. A simple accident cripples you, far, far away from anyone who might hear you, and not one single soul in the circumstances knows where you are. Urban dwellers are not immune. Cities will so often turn into centers of bedlam and chaos during SHTF events. Escaping a city, or just to a safer side of the city, on foot can turn harrowing indeed, as you’ll be surrounded, hemmed in on all sides by desperate humanity. Can you negotiate the expanse of the concrete jungle to safety? This and more is what you are up against. This will be no time whatsoever for winging it, figuring it out as you go or calling an audible. You must have a plan. You must prepare. You must ensure that your plan remains valid and then be able to execute that plan rapidly and as safely as possible. Nothing else will do. Now that I trust I have disabused you of the hike-through-the-glen fallacy, let’s talk brass tacks. Route Planning for Bug Out Success Even if you know the way to your BOL like your own beating heart, you need to commit that route to a map. Trust me on this. Stress does funny things to the mind. Beyond that, do you know by heart 3 or more separate ways to get to where you are going? I don’t mean sorta-kinda know. I mean know… Didn’t think so. But you must, and you must have them committed to paper in case your mind takes a lunch break when you need it in its chair the most. More on how you should map it out in a minute. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so you will not hang your chances of success on just one route. When choosing alternate routes, account for things like seasonal changes, effects of weather, effects of time, likelihood of additional human traffic, and more. Anything at all that could impede (or improve) your travel must be accounted for and noted. These routes need not be completely eccentric. You might have two separate routes that begin along the same leg, fork off somewhere between, and hook back up later on to finish the journey. You might decide on completely separate, discrete paths. You may even include one that detours well out of the way before doglegging back in to your destination in case of a danger in the area of your primary route. Implementing Multiple Routes In the military, there is a concept for planning communications that is called PACE. It stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency. This allows multiple, redundant means of accomplishing the same thing, with the first two being the most efficacious, the third being a viable if less effective method, and the later being often the least desirable but still effective method that can get the job done. You should endeavor to utilize a similar system for your bug-out routes. That way any kind of mishap or detour will not completely derail you and leave you stranded in a half-way posture. Advance Work – You Must Know What You Are Getting Into! Way too many preppers are guilty of phoning this in. They know the route, know where they are going and how to get there, yadda yadda. They’re “ready.” Yeah, they are ready alright, ready to get out there and get smoked out of their socks or get dead. I’ll say this as succinctly as possible: If you have not actually traveled your routes by foot you do not truly know if they are suitable for use, period. A highway is awfully different by foot with a BOB on your back than cruising along by vehicle. The woods you have played around near your whole life get a whole lot more menacing and confusing the deeper you go. A pleasure hike feels like a death march when you are heavily laden. The point is, you need to do dry runs, both to properly assess the route, and yourself. Changing seasons or weather can make some routes more difficult to traverse, significantly so in some cases. The same may also completely close some routes or open others. Time alone will have an effect, with rarely travelled trails becoming totally overgrown in short order. Old disused logging roads can vanish. Urban paths may disappear with construction or become dangerous due to declining neighborhoods. If you aren’t scouting your routes, periodically at varying times and varying seasons, you are working off stale intel. Stale intel gets people killed. Always remember that a route, even one made from stone, is not set in stone, so to speak. Your chosen paths will not stay viable seasonally or over time. It is up to you as a prepper to periodically travel them, however long and arduous it might be, to verify them as best you can if you want to depend on them when the chips are down. Marking and Mapping Your Routes You’ll first need a map of whatever type and whatever scale makes sense to you for your objective and your area. If you are a city slicker, that will be a detailed road and block map of your town and perhaps a road atlas or map of the surrounding region. For suburban and rural denizens that will mean a topographical map if you are heading over wild country. You can use home printed and assembled maps for this and you need not spend a fortune, but you must have a map that is durable to survive the rigors of SHTF survival and one that is, ideally, waterproof. Now that you have your map, grab some markers, pens, pencils, anything that works for you. I like to use a variety of colored markers to indicate separate routes by type as well as other points of interest that we’ll talk about in a second. Try to keep bleeding to a minimum, and it is in your best interest to make sure you can still see the details of the map below your markup, so choose your implement carefully. Make sure it cannot wash off the map easily, so that means no dry or wet erase, etc. First select a color for your primary and alternate routes. I like to use a dark shade for the primary and a lighter shade of the same color for the alternate. Mark them down carefully on your map. I use blue and light blue. You might choose to denote any short detours that could pop up with a dashed line of the same color coming off the main routes. Since you have been diligently travelling your routes, you should know where potentially hazards and no go areas are. I use orange and red to denote no-go areas and hazards or potential bottlenecks respectively. In a city, this might be hazardous industrial areas, a rough part of town or part of town soon to be made rough by whatever you are running from. In the country, this is ground that is dangerous or hard to travel through, swamps, steeper terrain etc. Mark it with an orange border and a few thin slashes with a small note as to the nature of the hazard. Obstacles, potential bottlenecks and other hazards directly on the routes should be marked up with your red pen, and a small note indicating what they are and the time frame they are most likely to be in effect, if applicable. This can be trees that could fall and block your path, rockslides, bridges, river crossings and so forth. Situation ally dependent hazards I mark with brown. This can be things like chemical storage plants, flood plains, or dense woods if I am facing a wildfire. Anything that is nominally not a problem but could be in the wrong situation gets noted in brown. It isn’t all doom and gloom though. Any place will have places you can go along your routes that offer safety, or are at least safer, than others. In cities this could potentially be friends and family dwellings, out of the way places to rest, or potentially government and society installations like police and fire departments, hospitals, etc. In the country, this is good places to make camp or natural shelters, access points for water, observation points, etc. Don’t Forget the Compass! Now that your maps are marked up and you have a real plan for getting to where you are going, keep your maps tucked away where you will have them with your BOB when it is time to bug out. Having the map is only half of a proper navigational system. To reliably find your way in all conditions, you’ll need a compass too. For short overland forays or city dwellers a small button compass is adequate, but you’ll be best served going cross country by a good field or lensatic compass. Be sure you learn how to use both properly to orient yourself and navigate to your destination. Don’t neglect redoing or updating your maps as conditions and your situation changes, either! Getting Ready One of the biggest failure points in a bug-out plan is the prepper themselves. A lack of physical and mental preparation being the chief flaws of that particular component. The good news is that you have ample time, now, to start remediating both. The latter and some of the former can be mitigated by simply scouting your routes as I have urged. Nothing boosts confidence for any stressfully physical task like having done it before, rain or shine, strung-out tired or bright-eyed and bushy tailed. You must not fall in to the trap of neglecting your fitness while depending on ever greater and more capable technological wonders of the early 21st century. When the rubber meets the road, literally, you will be sorely tested. A good hike, even on flat land is taxing. Add some weight on your back and it gets much harder. Now add rough terrain, elevation changes and even more weight, plus life-changing stress, and you’ll be taxed like you never have before. Dehydration, exhaustion, blisters and cramping will all serve to wear you down and immobilize you. The only prevention for any of the above is putting in the work now. You must maintain a high degree of muscular strength and aerobic capacity. Speed counts. You need to make good time to get where you are going if getting overtaken by events can mean peril or even death. Make it part of your life to stick to an exercise regimen for general fitness and ensure you make rucking, or walking with your pack, a part of your workouts. Carrying a load will work and strain muscles you never knew you had, and adds extra stress on feet and joints, so you must start toughening them up now. Start light, slow and short, and gradually increase all three metrics as you progress. This is also the ideal way to test your BOB and yourself. Any major problems with stability, chafing or durability and the like can be detected and ruthlessly eradicated during practice before you do it for real. Once you attain a good operational level of fitness that ensures you can both do what you set out to do and be reasonably sure of injury prevention, it is time to do a trial run of your route/s. File a flight plan with a trusted friend or two explaining where you are going and when you expect to be back and a deadline that they should get an all-ok from you. Hey, laugh if you want, people get into jams and nearly die on easy day hikes all the time. If you are going any distance or any time from home see to it that you have an insurance policy you can count on: file your plan, timetable and route. Don’t deviate from it! Now is not the time for improvisation. This will be the true test of your capability, mind, body and equipment. Take along a little prepping journal or notebook and write down any useful observations, thoughts or feelings about the route, your BOB, your mindset and anything else that could stand improvement or meditating on. Executing – Bugging Out for Real As with all of prepping, after you have done all of this advance work, gotten fit, ran your routes, accounted for obstacles and implemented backup plans, you may be surprised to find that the real thing is easier than the practice. At least that is what we hope for! Nonetheless, there are a few things you should add to your pre-bug out checklist. 1) You should always have your BOB packed and set handily where you can access it and don it quickly. Time may be of the essence. 2) Rotate any perishable supplies in your BOB as part of your usual ongoing maintenance checks. Things like food, water, batteries, etc. Check all contents for mold, wear and other degradation. 3) Never, ever, never set out with shoes or boots that you don’t know intimately and have broken in. Your feet are your way out. If your feet break down, you are stranded. Severe blisters and other hotspots can stop you in your tracks and leave your feet infected. That happens way out somewhere, you are in it deep… Always have footwear that is plenty broken in but well cared for with plenty of life left as your go-to bug-out footwear. No exceptions! 4) Consider leaving a note or trying to send word to anyone who might be expecting you or heading to your place as their response. This is a touchy subject, as some folks don’t want to leave behind anything that could compromise their backtrail or reveal their BOL. But with a little forethought and discussion with people that might reasonably try to come to you or reach you in a crisis, you can mitigate this. You can label potential BOL’s or rendezvous points with numbers, or even nonsense names that are otherwise meaningless but easy for you all to remember. You could direct your friend or relative who finds your note to your cabin near a clear-running river and cave system with a message like, “Chris, heading to Beaver Creek. Should be there in 2 days, 3 latest. Dated…” This simple system can convey ample information so the people you care about can make their own intelligent decisions. If they arrive to find you not there, at least someone might be able to look for you, or have an idea of where you might have had to go instead. 5) Plan for pace and timing. You need to know about how fast you can move and for how long to calculate your rate of travel. When you have your ideal pace dialed in, try to stick to it. Don’t double time it unless there is imminent danger as your risk of injury and exhaustion will skyrocket, potentially moving you further behind the eight ball. Don’t sprint if running will do, don’t run if walking will do, and don’t walk if you can stay where you are. An abundance of caution is warranted in times such as the one you’ll be bugging out in. Conclusion Bugging out by foot is often central to many preppers’ emergency plans, but few give this risky endeavor the attention to detail and preparation it deserves itself. Don’t let your bug-out plan be a one way ticket into despair and death. Start today and take the time required to ensure that you, your equipment and your on-foot escape plan will endure the chaos and confusion of a SHTF event. The post Preparing and Executing a Bug Out on Foot appeared first on Survival Sullivan. #BuggingOut

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/bugging-out-is-a-central-tenet-to-prepping

[autodidact-adventures]

World War I (Part 67): Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) was the third of six children.  His mother's family was aristocratic but very impoverished, and his family was a respectable one.  As a child, Ludendorff was obsessed with cleanliness, avoiding games that might dirty his shoes.  He was a talented student and diligent (especially in maths), but he was unable to make friends.

His father had been a cavalry captain, and Ludendorff was also drawn to a military career.  When he took the entrance examination for cadet school, he did so well that he was advanced to a class of boys 2yrs older than him.  He did extremely well at cadet school, except in gymnastics, which he was very bad at.  He was always on the outside, because of the age difference, and the fact that he was never interested in the adventures and misadventures of schoolboys and junior officers.

After receiving his commission, he did the usual rotation of assignments, constantly distinguishing himself.  In his late twenties he was selected to enter the War Academy, which was an honour that only the most promising young officers could receive.  The commandant at the War Academy noted his intelligence and results, and singled him out for eventual assignment to general staff headquarters.  This was the ultimate recognition.

By the age of 40, he was a Major, and working in Berlin.  He worked closely with the Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, and came to regard him as “one of the greatest generals who ever lived.”

After Schlieffen retired, Ludendorff was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and became a protégé of Schlieffen's replacement, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger.  He helped Moltke to turn Schlieffen's plan for an overwhelming envelopment of the French army into settled German policy.

At this point, he was still single, and very lonely.  By at the age of 44yrs, one day while walking home after work, he noticed a woman stranded in the rain, and offered to share his umbrella.  The woman, Margarethe Pernet, gratefully accepted.  She was unhappily married, and had three young sons and a daughter; she was beautiful and lively.  The two connected, and married as soon as Margarethe was able to divorce her husband.

Ludendorff kept his usual strict routine – leaving for work by 7am, and expecting meals to be served exactly on time by the minute.  But he was happy in his new family, and so were the children.  His career flourished – he became an influential member of Moltke's new planning staff.  He pushed hard for an expansion of the army in anticipation of war.  However, he made powerful enemies as well as important admirers, and his enemies claimed that he pushed too hard for the army expansion.

In 1911, he was promoted to Colonel, and in 1913, he was given command of a Düsseldorf regiment.  Less than a year after that, he was promoted to a one-star general in charge of a brigade.  When war broke out in late 1914, he was immediately given a second star, and appointed Chief of Staff of the Second Army as it prepared for the invasion of France.

However, before he could take up this new position, he was detached for temporary duty with the special forces created to capture Liège. In this operation, he distinguished himself greatly – the plans for attacking the Liège fortresses were mostly his work.  He received Germany's highest military honour, and was reassigned with Hindenburg to the East Prussian front.

His stepsons were following in Ludendorff's footsteps, preparing for military careers, and they joined the war eagerly.  The eldest, Franz, was almost as intelligent as Ludendorff, and far more popular with friends.  In 1914, he suffered severe grenade wounds, received the Iron Cross, and was declared unfit for further duty.  But he applied for the Flying Corps and was finally accepted (possibly with Ludendorff's help).

Franz's two younger brothers followed his example, and soon all of them were pilots, flying combat missions on the Eastern Front.  Franz had a crash-landing and suffered a concussion and broken hip, but went back into action as soon as he'd recovered.  In September 1917, he was shot down over the English Channel and killed.

When Ludendorff found out, he hurried to Berlin to tell Margarethe himself.  He was extremely upset (and possibly felt guilty for helping him achieve a flying career).  Margarethe herself was shattered by the news.

The youngest of his stepsons was also called Erich, and he was the closest to his stepfather.  In March 1918, Ludendorff received news that Erich (who was still a teenager) had been shot down behind the British lines, with his fate uncertain.  Not long later (while the troops were advancing in Operation Michael) Ludendorff was told that a fresh grave had been discovered, with its marker stating in English, “Here rest two German pilots.”  Ludendorff went to the grave and had it dug up; one of the bodies was Erich's.  It was temporarily re-buried at Avesnes, and arrangements were made for its transfer to Berlin.

Ludendorff felt that the war had taken everything.  Margarethe was permanently stricken with depression, grief and fear.

Now, his staff noticed him slipping away from headquarters without explanation – an uncharacteristic departure from his usual unbending discipling and diligence.  An army doctor would later recall that “there were reports of occasional crying episodes.” Ludendorff was going to brood at Erich's grave, where he would sometimes cry.

Officers who served with him were worried about his ability to function, and were personally concerned for him as well.  They quietly arranged for Dr. Hocheimer, a psychiatrist who knew Ludendorff, to visit, but with trepidation, as they weren't sure how the general would react.

Ludendorff was a stiff, distant man, and had no visible sense of humour.  He had strong control over all his emotions, except for when rage broke out in some moments of intense stress.  But although he was impatient at being interrupted by the psychiatrist, he agreed to see him.

Hocheimer would later recall, “I talked earnestly, urgently and warmly, and said that I had noticed with great sadness that for years he had given no consideration to one matter – his own spirit. Always only work, worry, straining his body and mind.  No recreation, no joy, rushing his food, not breathing, not laughing, not seeing anything of nature and art, not hearing the rustle of the forest, nor the splashing of the brook.”

Ludendorff sat for a long time before he answered that Hocheimer was right in everything, and asked what he should do.

Hocheimer urged him to move from his cramped quarters at Avesnes back to Spa in Belgium, where the headquarters there were more pleasant. He recommended him to take walks, do breathing exercises, and change his routine in a way that would induce relaxation and the ability to sleep.  Ludendorff followed these orders conscientiously and even eagerly, and it helped him greatly.

Hocheimer's ultimate diagnosis was, “The man is utterly lonely.”

Erich Ludendorff (1915).

[humanoid-lovers]

You have to read this book I am a native Floridian and bought this book as soon as it was published. It is a wonderfully written, hilarious, truthful narrative of Florida and its people. I was laughing out loud over and over and read the entire book this weekend. Craig Pittman captures the irony, diversity, and bizarre stories of America's bellweather state. Great reading for anyone ! Go to Amazon

Educational and amusing. When I reached the last page, I wanted more. Go to Amazon

Should be required reading for all Floridians -- especially those with a sense of humor Craig Pittman's book should be required reading for all Floridians -- natives and transplants. Along with plenty of good laughs and oddball facts, the book lives up to its title and explains the many ways Florida has influenced the rest of the nation, right up to Supreme Court decisions. Some of the chapters explore Florida's unique history, development of tourism, Disney and Epcot, and NASA. Most chapters include snippets from weird news articles to support his argument. The book is well-indexed and good to read as a narrative straight through or by occasional chapter. From politics to true crime (or are they the same?), I found so many fascinating pieces of trivia, I ran out of sticky page markers. I've already bought two copies -- the first for a Kansas college professor who first told me all the weird news comes from Florida and the second for myself. I'm keeping my copy and rereading all my marked pages. Go to Amazon

Florida Like You'e Probably Never Experienced It I've lived in Florida for almost 40 years and I've always known we were weird and yet wonderful at the same time. Reading Oh Florida reminded me of how much I love my home state. Craig is an excellent writer and storyteller and I found that I couldn't put the book down. If you live in Florida, are thinking of moving to Florida, or simply plan to visit us sometime soon, I highly recommend you read this book. It's part history, part tabloid, part travelogue, part memoir, part sociological study, and part comedy. You'll laugh out loud, you'll be shocked, you'll do several Google searches to check facts (they're all true by the way!) and ultimately, if you've never been here, you'll want to hop on the next plane to MCO and spend some time in our great state. Go to Amazon

A Must Read for Floridians Florida is indeed a weird state, filled with idiosyncratic places and personalities. Oh, Florida presents the often confounding, perplexing, and sometimes shocking details of the adventure and misadventures of Florida Man and Florida Woman in a vivid and entertaining manner. Go to Amazon

Should be required reading to live here. I am a second generation Floridian with degrees from two of our state universities. I finished the book while on vacation in Islamorada. I still travel the state and am continually amazed at how diverse we are in background and experiences. Pittman touches on a wide variety of Florida fun and not so fun facts. A great historical reference book chock full of tidbits about Florida. I lived next door to one of the featured characters (he taught me how to sail) and roomed with the grandson of another character in the book while in college. The book is a must read for natives and wannabe natives to appreciate our special state. Go to Amazon

Great Stories, Even if you don't think Florida is weird When I was a park ranger at Everglades National Park I thought i had read every book about florida ever written. The topic of Florida as reading material had grown stale and I promised myself to never read another book about Florida again. For about four years I had no interest to read any book about Florida until I learned Craig Pittman wrote this book. While I never bought into Florida being any weirder than anywhere else, I do enjoy Mr. Pittman's writing and for that I read this book. Go to Amazon

Hilarious; Page-turner; Must read for all Floridians Pitttman is a fantastic writer. He draws in his reader and hold him hostage with anecdotal material that will make you shake your head in wonderment. A laugh-out-loud delight. The praise is from one who is a commercially published author, extremely fussy in what I choose to read. I wanna know this guy. Go to Amazon

It’s florida! Four Stars Read this if you live in Florida or visit often. Five Stars Oh! Just Buy It A good overview of life in FL and a preview for those who are thinking of a move there. Solid effort about weird, wild, wacky Florida and its history Funny Sunshine State Flori-duh

[artcenterstories]

Chris Do (BFA 95 Graphic Design) 

How do you define success?

Success is doing what you love in a way that is financially sustainable, doesn’t harm others, and if possible, helps move the human race forward. 

Do you have any superstitions?

Chris Do: No, I don’t believe in superstitious thoughts.

What’s the design cliché you’re most tempted to use?

Chris Do: Is Helvetica design cliché? Because I love Helvetica.

What’s the one tool you can’t do without?

Chris Do: My mouth.

What’s the first site you look at when you open your computer in the morning?

Chris Do: Probably YouTube. I deal with comments and questions from our audience.

Where do you go online when you’re taking a break?

Chris Do: Maybe Pinterest. Pinterest is dangerous so I try not to go on there too frequently. And the reason why it’s dangerous is because I’ll wake up and it’s like three in the morning like “What did I do? Where am I? What time is it?”

What do you do to detox form media and screens?

Chris Do: Workout. Hike. Get outdoors. Talk to people. I really enjoy talking to people now. I’ve had to overcome my fear of dealing with people, so that’ s helped me out a lot.

If you could trade job with anyone for a day who would it be?

Chris Do: I would trade jobs with Steve Jobs just to see what that looks like.

What book is on your bedside table?

Chris Do: Right now it’s the Power of Self-Confidence by Brian Tracy.

Who are the most interesting artists and designers working today?

Chris Do: I’d say that if you were to ask me that question 10 or 15 years ago the answers would be much clearer. I don’t actually spend a lot of time looking at designers’ work. So if you ask me that question and I’m rewinding, I would say I really look up to Stefan Sagmeister. I think his work is really smart; he has a point of view and he’s very bold in terms of putting his opinions out there. But these days I’m more influenced my philosophers, coaches, and people that aren’t even in our field at all.

Like who?

Chris Do: Well I watch a lot of TED talks. I listen to Radio Lab, This American Life, the StartUp Podcast. That’s where my mind is going today.

Describe a moment in your childhood where you first identified as an artist or designer.

Chris Do: Ok that’s easy for me. I think that was right around seven-years old. I didn’t know this about myself but my uncle gave me a birthday gift and it was a pad of paper and some markers. I was just in love. That was the best gift anyone could have given me. And it was like three dollars.  

 If you had superpowers what would that be?

Chris Do: The ability to function with little sleep.

What’s your most irrational or rational fear?

Chris Do: One of my philosophies is try to slay all your fears. So whatever you’re scared of move towards that. The greatest fear I have is actually public speaking, but I’ve made a lot of progress on that.

What’s your most prized possession? What brings you the most joy to have near you in your environment?

Chris Do: I think right now it wouldn’t be one possession, but my home office is pretty amazing. I get to design it just the way I want. Nobody gets to tell me anything so I just love sitting in my own office. My speakers. My books. Everything is just exactly where I want it to be. My wife isn’t thrilled about it but I have my own office and I love that. 

So that’s your man-cave?

Chris Do: It is my man-cave. It actually happens to be in our master bedroom. I believe in optimizing everything around me to be super streamline. I can have an idea, turn the cameras and the lights on, and be ready to go in five minutes and I could record an episode for our show.

 So this may be a bit of an overlap, but what is your happy place?

Chris Do: My happy place actually is when I have opportunities to travel with my family. I have two little boys, one is 13 and the other is 10; they’re not so little anymore. When we go out on an adventure, and I really mean an adventure like there is some potential danger, those are my happiest moments. In the moment you’re not quite sure but then when I reflect back on it I think “we could have gotten hurt badly.” One of which was when we were in Utah Zion National Park. My son was much younger then and we had hiked up to this point where a lot of people turned back. I was thinking that if he slipped or didn’t hang on to the ropes that would be the end of my son. I don’t even know what I would do. One son was too scared to go so he turned around so my wife stayed with him. But we have all these pictures and videos and we just had this moment to share and know that “yea…that was pretty stupid but we did it, it was cool, and we’re all still alive” So a lot of it is just overcoming rational and irrational fear. It was pretty awesome. It’s the misadventures of life that stick out.

 How would your closet friend describe you?

Chris Do: Probably as unbending, not willing to make compromise, stubborn. Maybe a little arrogant. Maybe giving.

 What’s your best piece of advice for an Art Center student who’s interested in what you’re doing or who are pursuing similar paths?

Chris Do: If you’re a creative person, I think you have to shift your mindset from being a maker/creator to being an author/content person. We have to stop thinking about how to work for people. We have to think about how to create jobs for ourselves and create our own economy. This is the future. I talked to a young man, a very bright guy who speaks multiple language, and he was telling me that there is going to be massive unemployment in 20 to 30 years because all this labor work is going to go away because the world is being eaten by software and robots. So you have to be in a space where you’re thinking and you’re a creative person and you’re in that space. As a creative person it’s easy to say “I’m automatically there because of the class that I’m in”. But if you’re in that class where you’re actually making things for other people then you’re in the making class, and we’ve got to shift over here. Sometimes I say this and people get really upset at me because they’re happy with what they do. If that is what you do and that makes you really happy and is the reason why you exist, that’s totally cool. I’m just saying that if you have a choice you need to be thinking about how to make content. I’m proving it myself. I’m not just telling you some theory I read in a book or regurgitating something; we’re actually making a really big shift here at Blind. We are a service company but I think in one or two years that part will not even be a thing anymore. The lines are blurring. The content we create becomes power to build an audience and people want our audience.

Check out the whole interview with Chris at his Santa Monica agency, Blind.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 13 (FINALE)

Welcome. This is the final post. What left is there to do since I already beat the game? Well, beat it again... and record it.

First of all, I need to find the fastest way to beat the game. A good approximation for that is figuring out the shortest number of levels to get to the end. Gee, if only I had some sort of mapping of all the worlds to figure that out...

Cool. The yellow squares are the levels that will lead to the smallest number of levels needed to complete the game, which is 102. There are 173 levels in total. I only need to play about 60% of all levels to beat the game. The red squares are also levels that could be played that will keep the total level count at 102, but were not played for whatever reason I had.

Now I never really speedran a game before, so managing to beat the entire game like this is an incredible achievement for me. This is the most fun I've ever had with the game. I wouldn't have been able to find the fastest routes without mapping them, and being able to look at all 102 maps (RIP my computer's memory) were a huge help to the run.

Here's the footage. Yes, it's a long video. It's a long game.

Total time: 1 hour, 23 minutes and 5 seconds.

I'm never playing this game again.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 12

This is it. This is the world that will truly test my abilities as a map maker. It's as if the game is taking my map making as the actual point of the game and is upping the difficulty to maximum. I will do what I have done since the very beginning when faced with a challenge: adapt and invent new techniques in order to get to my goal.

The soundtrack sounds mischievous and is 6 measures even.

I do not show it on the map, but the parts where the black platforms turn gray is a gradual effect. What that means is that in the game the visible platforms slowly fade away to invisible ones, and then the completely invisible ones are indicated on the map by the gray color. So, basically the entire level is invisible. Not exactly ideal when you're trying to figure out where the platforms are. Not to mention there is ZERO background art. It just looks like I'm walking on air and there are also items that are on air. I mean, I get it that you cannot have background elements or else this invisible theme wouldn't work but I feel like this is just a cheap way for the level designers to not have to care about making the levels pretty.

Fortunately that dumb grid that has existed since the very beginning of the game is still there, so I can use the squares on the grid as a reference of distance traveled. Basically, I'm drawing circles and pushing them to see how they respond to the environment in front of me. It's probably a good idea to do that even if I wasn't mapping the levels out because it will help find potential traps for me. Let's face it: the developers are cheap enough to do that. They did it in the last level of the previous world. Of course I'm going to check for traps.

The part with the bouncy walls is annoying because you have to build around it to climb up. Either use a super jump power up or figure out the reach of the bouncy blocks to make the appropriate bridge.

These levels take no time at all to load. GEE I WONDER WHY. Also, do not try to force shut the game when you lose your last life. Just like with that water world, you will lose all of your progress. The only difference is your save file is just straight up gone instead of glitchy. Perfect. Watch out for long falls, and always check where the edge of a platform is before building or making a jump.

It's like a combination of the previous two levels, only simpler.

You sort of don't know which pits are places you can go to or places that will kill you. It's a safe assumption that if a shape you draw in it falls outside your view then it will probably kill you. Another really dumb thing is that sometimes you can draw shapes inside walls. If you're just making random guesses it's not entirely clear whether the successful shape is placed in an area you can walk to or if it's inside a wall.

You doubt my ability to try and make every level's title some kind of pun or reference? Just watch me.

These levels got homogenized really quickly. I had to replay this level and I had no memory of its existence.

Markers are cool. I like markers. Please give me more markers.

So, the first spiky wall area has a little bump before you fully pass the obstacle. If you're me, this means you'll get stuck under the wall, and before you can register that you need to jump, the spike wall crushes you. Note that when you game over, you only gain one life back. So every time this game decides to pull a stupidly cheap trick on me I have to redo the whole world over.

Wow. We have a new contender for the most basic level in the game. Congratulations.

One strange thing is the area under the exit. You can draw shapes under your platform and watch them disappear after falling a bit. No need to worry about crashing your game, because the developers placed triggers under the map that will delete shapes drawn out of bounds. They did at least one thing right there.

It's a level with invisible blocks and things and stuff.

Snoop around enough and you may find the coin. Or a spike pit. Same thing, eh?

I should be more upset at how hard they're trying to hide the coin and exit, but I think I'm too desensitized at this point to care.

Oh... I figured it would take until level 150 or something before the game was over, but maybe it's ending early! If you manage to die here, just remember the trick with the water world when the game over glitch happened: let the game over screen appear, continue, reset, and load to be at the level where you died. Isn't it fun when you apply what you learn?

Oh yeah, the point of the level. The giant ball is back for another rematch, and you have to scale down the level pretty fast in order to beat it (unless you're using power-ups). It took me a few tries before I was able to beat it. Be careful with some of the drops, as they are enough to damage you. After making it to the bottom, stand on the blue platform and let the ball push the other one down, flinging you upward.

Do I... really need a world map for this one? Yes? Ugh fine.

No no no no no. Nope. I'm not waiting any longer. This game is going to be finished in this post whether I like it or not. It's time to end this.

The cutscene showed the dog and marker man jump into some kind of teleporter. The result is that we are now on some space rock or something. It looks like they stuck with the themes of space too, such as making the level vast, yet empty. Hmm, not really a theme specific to this world, but oh well.

Long Boy

WHAT DID THEY DO TO SHOE BOY? It now has an oval head. I guess it's supposed to be an alien. It's really funny how they attack because they rotate their elongated head when they kick, and it just looks funny.

Ugh, these types of levels are the worst. Huge open spaces with lots of emptiness and lack of features between the platforms. It makes the game boring and frustrating to map and play, so why do it? Especially the road to that two-coin exit. Why make the player walk so far to get there? The developers could've easily added a path down from the coin to the hallway.

Alien

A projectile-based enemy, just like all the other projectile-based enemies. This one has a scarily fast firing rate, making it a very dangerous long-ranged enemy. Its barrage of bullets can also make quick work of drawn shapes. Be careful. When trying to block its bullets, don't just put a single line over it, as the place the bullet spawns can bypass the line. Place like, 2 lines. I don't know. What's interesting is the developers actually managed to make the bullet spawn from the gun's barrel instead of the top left of the sprite. Good job. You're learning! It's a little late for that, but whatever. This does mean you may need to place lines completely covering the alien before the projectiles are stopped.

Same glitch as last world. Do not force stop the game on gaming over. Let it happen, continue, exit, then get back to the level you died on.

The spike walls move at different frequencies. I recommend activating super speed and just focusing on the bottom one moving out of the way. Seriously, you better have some markers coming into this world or you're in big trouble. Actually, there's an easier way to get past this part. When the bottom spike wall is hiding under the floor, lodge a line between the floor and the wall and it will get stuck there, allowing you to pass without doing anything ridiculous.

Pleeeeeease give me more markers. I actually have to conserve resources in this world and it's annoying. There's simply too much terrain that needs to be covered that will inevitably use up all my markers. This is different from the lava world because in the lava world there were at least interesting elements in the levels that made you think on how to approach the problem. In this world it's just a battle of attrition.

Speed Cheese

It's cheese on.. wheels? This is probably a reference to moon cheese. It quickly moves back and forth, simply knocking anything that touches it out of the way. It deals no damage.

I think I know why there are so many dead ends here. The game just really doesn't want the player to have any markers in this world. How rude. This is why people like me have to come in and bright light to the correct pathway to victory.

Oh yaaay. Another level where you just have to look everywhere to find the coin and exit. The part of the map where it says SLIDING has no friction. Marker man will not stop moving on that platform until a wall is hit. The exit is kind of dumb to get to. In order to even see it you have to either stand on the platform with the alien (which noone is going to do) or build up and then look up. I recommend just making a giant rectangle on the corner of the map and then building off of that to the exit.

This is the realm of the shoe boys. Their final congregation is at this location. They are planning big things. They already have presence in just about every world. Their plans to finally take over the world of marker man have started to unfold in this meeting area, and you are in the middle of it all.

This is pretty straightforward, isn't it?

Beware of the many dead ends in this level. You get one marker in here. Well, there is a second one, but it's in a trap so I'm not counting that one.

What. Why is the map so linear? Why is there a pointless dead end to the right with a moving platform? Why is the map small? Why is there large stretches of nothingness? I don't understaaaaaaaaand. Maybe the devs want this game to end as bad as I do. Fair enough.

We all want this to be over! Just walk down this straight pathway, hug the left, and you'll get your coin, and you'll get your exit right above the coin. It's that simple. We even went ahead and put the useless parts of the map all on the right side so you don't even need to travel there. I'm doing you a favor, but don't tell my boss I'm doing this. These are supposed to be the hardest levels in the game. Go forth!

Uhm. What. WHAT.

This is the final level. There is no indication that this is the final level. There is no dog seen anywhere, and the level number didn't jump to the range where the dog levels appeared. I simply walked into the exit, my level got reset to one, a cutscene played, and the game is over. I think it's really fitting that the background track that plays throughout the cutscene and the credit rolls is the game over music, because did I really win by beating the game? Everyone's a loser for trying.

But hey. I get a star next to my save file now. I guess any recognition of me going through this torture is better than nothing. I was curious to see if this star meant some sort of change in the game, like a new game plus, but it doesn't seem like it. My markers and lives left carried over from the previous game to this one, but that's about it.

And.... that's it. The game is done. I mapped every level. Here is the final world map.

Thanks for reading. However, there is still one final post to make...

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 3

Alright! Time to branch out here and see where all this goes.

Not much to say here, other than this was a pain to draw all out. I recommend just taking the low path to the coin and then taking the high path on the way back to the exit.

Holy heck this level is big. It is in fact so wide, that I had to increase my canvas size to 1600 from the usual 1200 px. I'm honestly not sure what kind of message the developer is sending by creating a stupidly deep hole with no escape, yet part of the ground is walkable and there's a marker down there. The marker is clearly useless because you're going to be dead, so maybe it's some kind of additional insult to the player for managing to fall down there and live. Then again, the player should definitely die due to fall damage, so maybe it's for players intentionally trying to get down there? I don't know. Someone else can figure it out.

This game really likes two-coin exits that take you backwards in the game. Whatever. You are basically required to use the jump power here, as the game is a very vertical level. Expect lots of waiting around to try and get your jump height high enough to reach another bouncy platform. Because of all of the bouncy platforms, if you manage to land on the corner of one on the way down, you'll start flying sideways hilariously. It will be funny for a moment until you realize you're probably going to die from the fall damage. I hope I never have to see this level again.

It's just been shoe boys and rabbits for all of these levels. They're hardly even different: one bounces and one doesn't. Also, there's so much space between everything here. It is very difficult to map everything out correctly. I see the trend of spending two coins to take you back to level 15 continues here. Not much else to say. The only strange thing is that the spawn is in the middle of the map. Ooooh how rule-breaking.

You know what's funny? I thought shoe boy only did one hit point of damage this whole time. It actually deals two hit points of damage! Funny, isn't it? ......I'm so bored. It seems no matter what, every path will take you to level 20. I'm having high expectations for this level 20. I probably shouldn't, but I do. Hey, let's check out the bonus level!

Can you believe that this level lags? This level lags a LOT. In fact, some of the earlier levels start lagging if you even put down a few shapes. Is the physics in this game really that complicated or just unoptimized? I guess the 10 moving platforms in this level were just too much for the poor system to handle. What's funny is in the top right platform with the two chocolate bullies if you get them moving towards each other, which you can do by touching them from a certain side, then they will collide together and never separate. Now that's true love.

The coin is guarded in some sense because you can drop down to get it but not really come back the way you came, which means going to the left and having to face the bully on the small platform. You'll just have to pro jump over the thing. And OH WHAT DO YOU KNOW, IT TAKES YOU TO LEVEL 20.

Chocolate Bully

Similar to the buff triangle, in that it deals no damage, but just pushes you around.

Oh, uh okay. This level is very short, and very simple, save for the slide of doom on the right side of the map. Other than that, you can't really die unless you try. It's a nice break level, as you get plenty of markers in the room at the bottom for free. I'll take what I can get. It's also pretty difficult sometimes to determine the enemy spawns because the stupid rabbits like the jump off the ledges. I found one of them stuck in the corner of a couple boxes at the bottom of this level. Poor thing.

In case you didn't know, everything interactive has a hitbox, including the markers and the coins, despite being pick ups. This means that you can accidentally slide off the platform the coin is sitting on in this level because the coin is round and will slide the character off. I should probably stop putting those beehives on the map. They really don't do anything. These ones don't even have bees!

I'm also noticing a trend here! Just like with the last world, this world started off with a linear path, diverged into multiple paths, one of which had a bonus level, and then eventually all converged back to linear levels, the last section being easier and giving more markers. I wonder if this pattern will continue in future worlds.

WHAT. The bunnies here do two damage! What is going on here? I swear they did one damage in the previous world. Maybe their damage increased in world 2? Interesting. Also, I wasn't really paying attention to my lives, but I died on this level due to curiosity and had 3 lives when I respawned. Did I gain a life at some point? I thought that was impossible. I have so many questions right now.

As for the double spikes on the far left, you can just barely scrape by them if you place a long line on top of the bottom layer of spikes.

Uhh there's trees.

The second dog level! This one is interesting because it is timed! A giant boulder starts rolling at the top of the screen, and you have to race it to the bottom. Fortunately, you don't even need the super speed power up, as there is enough time to just walk to the exit; just watch out for the spikes. The boulder eventually lands on the yellow platform and gets stuck there if you don't make it in time. But, if you step on the platform, it will disappear and the boulder will hit the blue platform instead (seesaw platform) and push it into the water. You can choose to follow the boulder but it's a one way trip to a water section and you're not going to escape it. I have no idea what the purpose of the other yellow platforms is. 

Well what's with the other route? There's a tall section upwards that you cannot really climb and a blue platform that starts at the bottom. Once the boulder lands in the hole, it will push that blue seesaw platform which causes the one in the far left to climb up, so you have to make it all the way to that platform, destroying the yellow platform, before the boulder falls in order to beat the level. And that's world 2!

Boulder

Big Rolly Boy.

I have a feeling world 3 is going to be relatively exciting. World 2 was pretty boring. Anyways, here's the world map. Notice that you cannot play every level in this one.

Next time... world 3.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 6

This is the desert zone. The background music plays for 7 measures before it repeats and it makes me irrationally upset that it's a prime number. It sounds WRONG. Whatever. Desert things!

I regret drawing the map larger than usual. Anyways, there's lots of new enemies! Well, I guess it depends on what your definition of "new" is. There are reskinned enemies. You will benefit a lot from using the speed and jump powerups. In particular, the choke point where the cactus walls hang out is almost impossible to get through without getting hurt unless you use the speed power.

Cactus

A stationary (wow what a surprise) cactus that will deal 5 damage when touched. The damage isn't on every frame, so it's more like 10 damage per second when touching the thing.

Antlion

These enemies are VERY difficult to see, because their sprite is almost completely hidden in the ground. Combine that with background textures and you'll inevitably run into one of these. They do the same damage output as the cactus.

Shoe Cowboy

Reskin of shoe boy. Since this is world 5 it deals 5 damage, just like everything else so far.

Cactus Wall

Reskin of spiky wall, only much sadder.

The platforming segment to get to the coin is particularly nasty, so my recommended strategy is to go left as early as possible and jump off the cliff on the left side and approach the coin that way. Afterwards, just swim to the right side and climb back up.

There's also a really weird platform, noted on the map as "slippy". You cannot wall climb that ledge, and the edge of that ground is slippery, as in if you run and stop at the edge you will just slide right off. I have no idea how this happened, but this concerns me for the future because this game is capable of adding slippery terrain. Here's hoping it's just a bug!

Cactus Snowman

Two questions: why make another cactus enemy and why make this one deal 5 damage per frame? I know not the answers. I just know that this thing hurts.

Despite trying really hard to be symmetrical, there are only 3 exits. I wonder if there's some technical limitation as to why there are never 4 exits. Also, I learned something new about this game, which I am very surprised that there is anything new to learn at this point. There are different types of triangles you can make! I've been making the isosceles triangles, but you can actually make right triangles as well. The right triangles are very.... strange. Sometimes when a right triangle is drawn, it cannot receive torque, or angular momentum. This means the triangle cannot be rotated. Here is a photo demonstrating this anomaly. A shape with the inability to rotate could prove to be very useful...

Mini Cactus

Okay, seriously? Another cactus? It is functionally the same as the cactus snowman. If there's enough background noise you might run into it on accident and die before realizing what happened.

The only nice thing I have to say is that there are a lot of markers. I messed up so many times trying to get the proportions correct and aligning all the platforms together. It's dumb.

There are some scary spikes underneath the moving platforms. The second one in particular is bad because you cannot actually see a non-spiked ground from that rotating platform circle. My recommendation is to place a line over the spikes and jump down from there, because the shoe cow boy at the bottom might mess up your line if you place it there instead.

I guess this level tried to be like a desert as much as possible, because there's a lot of empty space, pointless paths, and a cactus in the shape of a snowman hanging out in the sky. Imagine being me for a moment. I understand the pain may be too unbearable for your mortal body to handle, but just try your best. The reason why I am able to map the levels so well is because I use a lot of relative positioning. I see how far objects are compared to other objects, and if I can find multiple objects nearby that allows me to accurately determine how far away all those objects should be drawn. When you have a split such as in the middle of this level where you cannot see the other path at all, and when that path lasts for over half of the level, and the level is really long, then all those small assumptions about how long the ground is add up to an enormous error. That error is two-fold, because distances are off length-wise and height-wise. Once the path ends and merges back to the other path, I now have to draw the other path, and see how far I was off. Multiple adjustments have to be made before the map layouts are "synchronized". The only way to check if the path is correct relative to the other is by taking the bottom path, drawing a long rectangle, and then super jumping off that rectangle to see the upper path. I hate this level.

Welp. This has to be the shortest level in the game. I refuse to believe there is actually a level that takes less time than this one, excluding ridiculous speed running strategies.

There are cacti that are hidden fairly well in the bottom half of the level, so be aware of that. Otherwise, it's a stupidly simple level just rewards you for making it here before sending you off to the bonus level.

There's a pit and some sad cakes. Nothing else worth mentioning.

Avoid this level. Do not play it. It will end in tears. All of the places where the maps says "you can't" mean that it is very difficult to maneuver in this area, which is basically half of the level. It will take a lot of shuffling, multi-platform building, and jump timing to successfully go through the area. My recommendation is to jump into the water for the coin, then build up to the spinning platforms near the exit. Use a jump power up if possible.

I guess this world is over now! Be careful when trying to get the coin. Trying to drop down to it will land you in the spikes, so make sure to put a cover over them. A cool tactic for pressing the button is to delete the shape on the button as the platform is out of the way so that it stays out of the way. Some of the switches will not work with certain shapes because that shape cannot be drawn large enough to make the weight high enough to trigger the button, so use rectangles.

The other thing is that the other switch is hidden, and you cannot find or activate it without using the camera controls. Seriously, you should have learned this by now. The REAL mean part of the level is where you have to pick one of six different paths to fall down and pray they don't lead to death. It's the second one from the left. After that, the world is basically over! I'm totally fine with short worlds, because they keep the setting and enemy variation interesting.

Wow. Five worlds completed already. Well, no sense stopping now. Come back for world 6 soon. Maybe there's still more to learn from this game.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 1

This is the start of a journey that is most definitely not worth doing. I'm going to not only attempt to beat one of the most obscure DS games of all time, but I am also going to map out the levels and be the first person to provide a complete walkthrough of this game. The game is called Marker Man Adventures.

Expect all of the following: - bad game - bad drawings of bad game (not like you're missing out on anything anyway) - pro tips and strategies - game analysis - general displeasure

Welcome to... Marker Man Misadventures

In case you needed some incentive to actually finish this game, Marker Man has you covered. A riveting story between a stick figure and his dog begins when you start a new game. Some may call it captivating, inspiring, and even spontaneous. I prefer "confusing". The stick figure person plays fetch with its dog and throws a ball to the right. The dog chases the ball. The dog doesn't come back. The stick figure goes to find the dog. That's the story. If the player has to go through over a hundred levels before probably finding the dog, that stick figure has a throwing arm that puts the best baseball pitchers to shame. Anyways, I hope that story was enough to make you want to sit through all of this, because here we goooooooooo!

None of these levels have names, so I'll take the liberty of naming the level and labeling certain features of the map. Every level has these weird gloves that act as toll booths, where they will refuse to let you continue until you pick up a certain number of coins, indicated by the orange blobs on the map. The slanted orange lines indicate markers, which are essential to survival in this purgatory of a world. There are two colored platforms shown in this map. The pink platforms come in pairs but there's only one platform in the game. The reason why there's two is they indicate the position ranges that platform is allowed to move. They can only move up and down or left and right. The blue platforms also come in pairs but there are actually two of them in the game, and they act like a balance, where weight on one platform pushes that one down and the opposing one up.

It's a very simple level. You may learn some of the following during your first impression of the game: * rabbits bite * fall damage exists * platforming is extraordinarily glitchy * the game will draw a different shape than the one you wanted * buying this game is a mistake

In addition, there's this spike pit but with a platform over it so you can't actually kill yourself with the spikes. There is a Useless Button above the platform which you can draw a shape over to push it which forces the colored platform to move up, but there's literally no reason to do this. No extra items or platforms are available to you by doing this and you expose yourself to the spike trap so instead just walk past everything. Pay the hand the one coin you collected earlier and you beat level 1. I'm using a standardized syntax for describing what the hands do. The number on the left is how many coins they need before they let you pass the level. The number on the right is the level that the hand will take you. In this case, it's one coin to go to level 2.

This is our first enemy!

Rabbit

I swear I'm not exaggerating the drawing here; that's what it look like. Anyway, it's a rabbit and it is the weakest enemy in the game. Your Marker Man person has a life bar of 100, and this critter takes out 1 hit point every time you touch it. If even losing 1 HP is too much for you, there's a hilarious approach to neutralize this threat. In case you didn't realize by now, this game is all about drawing your way through each level. If you draw a circle around this rabbit, you put it into this bubble where it cannot do anything except be pushed around mercilessly. Doing this also doesn't spend your drawing power, so it is the only way to draw a shape for free.

Oh yeah, your drawing ability is tied to your health. This means that if your HP is low enough, whether from previous drawings or from taking damage, you won't be able to draw anymore shapes. That's where the marker pick up items come into play. They are useful for many reasons, but one of them is for replenishing your HP. The other way to restore your HP is to die and lose a life, but obviously that's not recommended.

I died to fall damage here because I forgot how brutal falling is. You only need to fall a few times your character's height before you take like 40 damage. This game uses a lot of vertical space so get used to learning how to cushion your fall.

In case you're actually playing this game and want to know the controls so far, it's A to jump and Y to use a marker to restore your health. You can use the stylus to draw lines to reach platforms, and other shapes with varying degrees of success.

There's actually two exits! This game loves branching paths. Each exit takes you to a different level, often skipping other levels. Cool, I guess. Not for me, since I NEED to play every level.

Shoe Boy

Basically the rabbit, only it kicks instead of bites. How rude. Bubble it and push it off a cliff or something so you don't have to worry about it.

Man Eating House

Of all the things I thought I would have to worry about in this game, I didn't think the background would be one of them. If you continue to the right exit that requires two coins, one of the houses in the background will come to life and eat you, killing you instantly. I don't think I've ever been so betrayed in my gaming career. There is NO indication or sprite difference between that particular house and all the other ones. However, no need to worry, because I have a solution. First of all, it's only the yellow houses that have a chance of eating you. Secondly, if you see a yellow house and want to check if it will eat you, draw a horizontal line over it. The houses that eat you have a hitbox on the left that collides with your shapes, so the line will hit some invisible block and end up slanted. You should be able to jump on the line and climb over the house this way. There is no way to kill the house.

The psychological damage this enemy has inflicted on me is astounding. Is there another background element that's going to kill me instantly too? Should I avoid that cloud with the smiley face over there? So many things have smiley faces in this game.

I understand that these level maps are not detailed and painful to look at, but if I put more effort into drawing them, they're going to start to look better than the actual game, and this game does not deserve that.

Also, it's only level 3 and the level already feels similar to the previous levels. There's hardly intent or theme behind so many of these levels; it just feels like the level creators haphazardly placed a bunch of platforms and enemies everywhere and called it good.

Oh yeah, also the exit I went to took me to level 5, so I had to start a new file so I could take the other exit to see level 4. I didn't realize that I may not be able to play every single level in a playthrough. Do you understand how frustrating that is for someone who's trying to play every level? I have to potentially play through the entire game multiple times before I find all the exits.

Dynamite

These things look so sad. Probably because they know that their pathetic lives will inevitably end in a violent explosion upon contact with anything. I touched one and it only did 5 damage, so I guess it wasn't that violent of an explosion. I touched another one and it did 10 damage. I guess the damage is randomized.

This level is so dangerous. I cannot believe this is level 4. There are spiky enemies everywhere, very deep chasms with spike pits, and bouncy blocks that prevent any structure from landing on it without being bounced off as well. In addition, bouncy blocks are an absolute pain in this game. There is no way to gain vertical height quickly with this. You just have to sit there while your maximum height increases by like 2 pixels on every bounce. But hey, at least you get a coin by going down there.

This is the level I learned that you can wall climb. It is probably a bug and not a feature but that's not important. If your character's head is over the top of a block you can just run into that block and mash the jump button to """""climb""""" up it. If you don't like that limitation you can draw a line parallel to the wall and place it right next to the wall. That line is climbable everywhere!

As if this level wasn't insulting enough, I took the ridiculous journey to get the second coin so that I can figure out what's in the two coin exit.... AND IT TAKES ME BACK TO LEVEL 3. WHY. There is no other thought process that makes sense as to why the developers did this except for: "The player sees a 2 coin exit with two very hard-to-obtain coins! They'll think this is a worthwhile journey, so we'll betray the player's trust in level exits just like we betrayed the player's trust with the background houses!"

However, I may have to take back the thought that it's impossible to get through every level in the game because previous levels can be revisited now. Imagine graphing out all those level connections...

Spiky Shoe Boy

These things are so much more dangerous than regular shoe boy. Touching them will deal a giant amount of damage (10 per frame?) by continuing to touch them. You can lose 100 HP in less than a second because of spiky shoe boy. And they are not bubbleable. And you can find them in areas with low ceilings. Fantastic.

Spiky Wall

An invincible moving block that will gladly pass through any terrain to pulverize your character. It's basically instant kill. Just find another path around if you can.

There's a little path to the south that leads to a dead end and has an extra marker after activating a platform through a switch. Don't go there. There's a chance the shape pressing the button will despawn and you'll just be stuck up there. There's also a totally fun platforming segment where all the platforms are moving and the momentum makes it frustrating to land on the higher platforms. After that are those paired platforms that move together. Dropping there is guaranteed death, and staying on the first seesaw platform will put you in a spot where you will most likely not be able to get out of.

If you are like me you probably have died enough times to get a game over at this point. This means you have to start from Level 1 again. There is a trick you can do to sort of prevent that from happening. If you have exactly one life left and you die, you can shut off your console (In my case with the 3DS, press the Home button and close the software). This will save your last life if you do it immediately after you die. Strangely, it does not work if you have more than one life left. You can do this same trick for quickly seeing what level you'll be transported to when you give the hand the coins to beat the level!

Raccoon

One of the few enemies in this game that looks cute to me. They are just like the rabbits: 1 HP damage and bubbleable. What a waste of potential. There have been like 6 enemies so far and half of them are functionally the same. I thought my disappointment in this game could not have gotten any higher, but well here we are.

There's lots of houses that will eat you here, so tread carefully; one jump in particular, if missed, could land you right on top of a man-eating house. There's also these rainbow-outlined blocks that disappear once you touch them. They are indicated by the yellow squares. There's no reason to go to that area, but a cool trick is to draw a line on top of the block and then step on that line so the block doesn't go away. One exit takes you back to level 5, and the other to.... level 151? Well this is a sweet shortcut. Because the level takes you to candy land. You can't see it's candy land by looking at my maps, so I guess this joke doesn't work. Anyways, it's advertised as a bonus level, so I will break the level order here to explain this level soon.

Chomper

Finally, an interesting enemy. These guys are bubbleable, but they can deal out 1 damage every frame instead of the rabbit-like enemies where they do 1 damage every couple seconds. They're hardly more dangerous since you can bubble them, however.

This place is just sad. It's decorated as a candy land level, but everything with a face is frowning. Also, the end of the level just takes you back to level 5, which means that the entirety of level 6 is a trap because every exit just sends you back to level 5. Great. This place is also really dangerous because there are no markers here. This means if you have 0 markers when you come here then you have to be extremely careful with how you use your life, because it will drain fast from all of the climbing.

On the plus side, the soundtrack has finally changed. I was starting to hate the background music because of how often it repeats. I even timed it to see how long the song takes before it loops, and it's about 16 seconds. It can drive anyone mad in a day. Too bad the soundtrack here is also extremely short (about 12 seconds).

There's also one spot in the level where it is almost impossible to get through. It looks like the end of the level, but you cannot actually reach this spot from the end of the level because it is way too high up to build. This is the spot underneath the coin. There is only one way to get to this spot that I know of. You must draw a really long line from the position of the coin underneath the character, and then support it with a rectangle to the right so the line doesn't tip over when you drop down. There is a cave entrance where the rectangle can be placed to lock the whole structure into place so you know it won't topple. Oh yeah, super pro tip: you can delete shapes by holding the left trigger and then clicking on them! You even get back some of your life when you do this.

Aaaaand there's nothing here. There's a gingerbread house and a pinata in the background and that's it. So much for an easter egg. I guess the fact that there's actually a detailed background in this area constitutes as something rare enough to be an easter egg, so I'll take it. Fortunately you can drop straight down from the ledge and hit the exit back to level 5.

I forgot to mention that light blue platforms are bouncy platforms. Anyways, here's the super secret fun area

Sad Cake

Basically the spikes. They deal a lot of damage on contact. Climb over them using the line shapes.

I think that's enough ridiculousness for now. I need a break.