#reflection maps

[toonlets]

REFLECTION PROBE MAPS

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Nobodies

[apparitionism]

Court 2

Hi @amtrak12 —here, on the occasion of the B&W-meeting anniversary, I have the next part of your @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift, which is turning out overall to be a slower-than-slow unspooling that has something to do with lawyers and arguments and ownership. Herein, the plot thickens. Or maybe just clots, or perhaps congeals. Anyway, events—or “events”?—occur. Following, sort of, what happened in part 1. (Contributing to my usual sluggish pace is the fact that it’s been a rough several months, for me at least. I hope everyone’s holding tight to whatever helps...)

Court 2

Leena stumbles. She is sitting in Artie’s Warehouse office, waiting for Claudia to finish some database update or other, and yet her entire being manages to lose its footing. To stumble.

“Are you okay?”

The question from Claudia startles Leena out of her first response to the lurching sensation: trying to ascertain whether she should have been more attentive, all day, to the background hum of artifactual grumbling. They always want attention, artifacts do, but has today been—and is this moment in particular—about attention? Or has some hapless item found itself in genuine distress?

“Seriously, are you okay?” Claudia asks again, again startling Leena, enough that instead of what would usually be a measured “yes,” she voices an awkward “huh?”

“You look like somebody kicked your puppy. Or wait...” Claudia squints. “More like your puppy did a thing and you don’t know if you should give it a treat or say ‘bad dog.’”

“You do cut right to it,” Leena says, because Claudia has.

“I’m discerning.” She squints again. “Is that what I mean? Myka would know.”

“Even if it isn’t, you are. And yes, she would.”

Claudia beams, likely on both accounts. “Thanks! Probably. So what’s up with your puppy?”

“I can’t tell,” Leena admits. “Something dramatic. And the real question is, which puppy?”

“I can’t help here. First, because I don’t know what we’re talking about, and B, because I was never one of those kids who wanted a puppy. But mostly because my helping skills are pretty much always under construction.”

Don’t run yourself down, Leena would admonish, but whatever those artifacts are up to is the more pressing issue, and anyway Claudia generally shrugs off explicit direction to acknowledge her value... unless, interestingly, it’s Myka who delivers it. So she goes slightly more opaque and functional: “Come with me. We can both figure out what we’re talking about, and maybe you can hammer at those skills.”

“Where are we going?”

Leena closes her eyes and concentrates on the disquiet, trying to orient. “Container aisle,” she determines. “Can’t narrow it down more than that.”

They reach the floor and walk for a bit. Then Claudia says, like she’s been thinking about it, “Container aisle? I’d rather go to the Container Store.”

“Need more organization in your life?”

“In Pete’s life.”

Leena waits for it.

Claudia delivers, “Because when I go to steal DVDs and games from his room I’d like to able to find them.”

It’s not the best. Leena waits again. This time, Claudia doesn’t deliver, instead saying, with a little mournful pout, “What’s the container aisle for, anyway? Boxes? Bottles? Tupperware?”

“Some of all of those. Generally, artifacts that hold. Catch and hold, or just accept to hold.”

“Hold. Hold... stuff?”

“Yes?” Leena isn’t sure what Claudia means by “stuff.” She’s often a little unsure about what Claudia intends words to mean, and she suspects she’s not the only one. Except for, perhaps, Myka? And possibly Steve? Still, Claudia does flummox Steve...

“But everything holds stuff,” Claudia says. “It’s what makes a thing a thing. A thing is just a stuff container.”

“Philosophy. Impressive.” Leena says it quietly, so as to keep Claudia’s ego in check, yet she’s delighted. However: “Things are stuff containers mostly by an accident of metaphysics. The aisle stores things designed for holding.”

“So this is the aisle we’d put the Warehouse itself in. If we could do that kind of freaky recursion function... or does that only work the other way, where it’d be recursion for the Warehouse to hold the containers?”

“The aisle’s already itself holding more than one Joseph Cornell box. That’s enough recursion for me.” Leena keeps her tone casual, but she’s further delighted that Claudia is so obviously thinking. Seeing connections and associations: it’s what she’ll need. For the future... Leena stops herself; she doesn’t want to be disturbed, today, by the future. There’s enough to puzzle out in the present, given her stumble, given what now seems to be an increasing disgruntlement in the artifacts’ hum.

And given the fact that the container aisle always gives her pause, for she does have particular friendships here. Certainly those Cornell boxes; artifacts that have true auras thrill her, especially when said auras have been so meticulously constructed. Leena wishes she could have met Cornell, could have sat him down so as to parse his ability to engineer these compact works of acquisition, accumulation: little Warehouses, all of them. Only a few are actual artifacts, but that’s more than most artists could dream of generating. If they ever did so dream... but it’s better that they don’t.

She also casts a regularly kind eye (and ear) on the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox, because it’s a favorite of Mrs. Frederic from her past, and any window into Mrs. Frederic’s (relative) youth is inherently interesting; this jukebox likes to play the Marcels’ 1961 “Blue Moon” unprompted, and Leena has never gathered sufficient nerve to ask if it might have been a tendency of Mrs. Frederic herself to select the platter that catapulted the constellation of record and container-player to artifact status.

And then there’s the—

“Oh my god,” Claudia says, loudly but more deadpan than seems warranted, given the... unexpected situation? absurdist tableau? catastrophic scene? that now confronts them, and Leena blames her rumination on her aisle-friends for having distracted her from the sensory tsunami of auras that threatens, in this overpowering instant, to drown her.

****

“The artifact currently belongs to a... let’s call it a museum,” Artie is saying. “Well. ‘Belongs.’ I suppose we should say, ‘resides in.’ Hence the case. The argument.”

“Is this about repatriation?” Myka asks. It’s what she associates with museum objects and court fights—but in the next instant she sees she’s let slip from her grasp the idea that she’s supposed to be waiting, inferring. She seizes, freezes. Can everyone see the “oh no!” thought bubble above her head?

Luckily, no one seems to notice, so she forges on: “If so, I think I’d be more convincing making the case for it. Than Helena, I mean.”

“Why?” Helena asks.

“Because you’re British,” Myka says, but she can’t stop there; a babble is building, and with no dam in sight, she burbles on, “so no offense, but there was a lot of honestly indefensible taking and holding of other cultures’ stuff. And you’d be likely to bring that whole thing to mind... so, really, it’s because you sound British.”

“English,” Helena corrects.

“A distinction without a difference,” Myka says, and this time she achieves a levee; she congratulates herself on for once being succinct. Clichéd, but succinct.

“Now I’m offended.”

Oh god. “All I meant was—”

“I’m teasing.”

Her smile fills Myka’s vision. And the prickly pleasure Myka finds in being teased, in being the object of Helena’s smooth humor, fills her soul.

Artie’s voice breaks in, a buoyancy-deflating puncture: “It’s possible she’d be more effective. Implicitly acknowledging the error—no, the criminality—of colonial ways.” He gives Helena another pointed look.

This one’s nationalized, generalized, and Myka tries to dispute it that way: “Americans aren’t angels.” She realizes—too late?— that she’s undercutting her own initial reasoning. No saving that now. “But also, arguing that whatever museum I’m pretending to represent should keep it? I’m not comfortable with that.” As the words leave her, a that’s right shiver—unexpected, unusual—ripples her spine.

Artie says, “And the Warehouse cares intensely about your comfort level, so... oh wait. No. It doesn’t.”

Pete glances at Myka, then says, “Let her off the hook, man. I’ll do it.”

It’s sweet.

But she wants to strangle him for it—because adversaries. She should have kept her mouth shut. A good rule to live by, as she thinks about it. Wait, but is saying she should have done something actually a rule? She can’t live by something she should have done, can she?

“You’ll lose,” Artie says... answering her thought? No, reproving—informing—Pete.

“So what?” Pete says. “Then H.G. wins and we all come home.”

“Let me rephrase: you’ll look like you intended to lose. Judges get tetchy about tanking.”

Claudia mock-gasps. “Oooh, might get disbarred.”

“And then I’d be crying.” Pete says, brushing away imaginary tears. “If I was barred in the first place.”

Artie says, “Your tears won’t move a judge, who might throw the case out entirely, and then where would we be?” He doesn’t wait for an answer: “Without the artifact.”

“If nobody wins, everybody loses,” Claudia intones, sounding like the Delphic oracle. Or Socrates? Something classical, obfuscatory. Obstructionary?

“Not the Elgin Marbles,” Myka says next. “Please, no.” Other than their classicality, she isn’t sure why she’s brought the  into the discussion... is it simply that it’s the biggest repatriation case she knows of—maybe even literally? Now as she thinks about it, though, surely it’s too big. Artie wouldn’t want to generate that kind of publicity, would he? She and Helena wouldn’t be able to fake their way into a case like that, would they? Then again, the two of them in the news... what news they would be...

“Agreed,” Helena says. “Please.”

Myka hadn’t expected the immediate backup—though she’s unsurprised to learn that Helena knows of those disputed rocks—but she’ll take it. She wishes she could reach out a hand and... what? Stroke Helena’s arm in thanks?

Well, why can’t she? Nothing classically obstructionary stands in her way.

So she does.

Helena slides a look her way, not with surprise (of course not); rather, with some cognate of the that’s right ripple.

Which in turn produces a recursive ripple, a catch-hold-echo of right... right... right...

“Artifactually inert,” Artie says as it fades. “As far as we know.”

“Better safe, though,” Claudia enthuses, “so let’s bring those babies in! Pete can carry ’em.”

Pete snorts. “Not even with these guns. Big rocks carved pretty are still big rocks.”

Since when does Pete know anything about the Elgin Marbles? But Myka is being uncharitable. Probably. And besides, she would rather let them have the dispute, for it lulls her back into her earlier reverie, that compelling scenario of she a judge and Helena an advocate... no: a supplicant.

Her reverie... but that not-really (if-only) supplicant interrupts it, saying, “So, not the marbles.” This makes it clear that Myka’s continued expressions of ignorance about “it” have not mattered in the slightest... apparently “it” was never identified? Neither Artie nor anyone else is holding a file, which Myka chooses to interpret as positive, for who could, in such absence, have read anything about whatever’s at stake?

Myka is safe.

And yet she’s not safe at all, for Helena chooses that moment to reach out a reciprocal hand toward Myka. It finds her right biceps, setting off electrical sparks and short-outs and terror—Artie will see! Pete will see! Claudia will see! and as the worst disaster: even Helena will see!—then trailing down to her elbow, fortunately a less sparkily reactive location.

Still. she is not safe at all. Because, among other potential catastrophes: what if Helena tries something like that in court?

****

Pete’s stalking the Warehouse aisles, looking for Myka; she’s been down lately, and he hates it when she takes off like this, like she needs to hide in a cave and lick some wounds she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t have.

But also: he has a vibe.

Sometimes, if a vibe isn’t too insistent, he can shove it onto the Vibe Bench. When he was a kid, he used to talk them away like that, saying it out loud: “Ride the pine, vibe!”

This one he can’t make sit down, and honestly? It comes down to how Myka-vibes sometimes remind him of Mom-vibes, the way they scream IMPORTANT!

Which is why he doesn’t really grok where he’s finding his way to, and that’s why he’s genuinely shocked, practically out of the vibe, by what he sees when he takes a hard turn into the aisle that’s clearly today’s Vibe Hub: it’s H.G., standing there like she belongs or something, like she’s never been gone, like she can just hang out and it’s no big deal.

But it’s definitely some kind of deal. “What are you doing here?” he demands.

She looks like she wants to bite him in half, but she wraps her arms around herself like she’s keeping that in check, like otherwise she’d actually do it. “Conducting a symphony,” she spits. “Weaving a tapestry. Piloting a dirigible. As if any answer could satisfy you.”

She’s totally not wrong. It’s almost funny how totally not wrong she is.

But then he notices that she’s unfolded her arms, that she’s gesturing at the floor. He looks down, down at that cold concrete Warehouse floor, and nothing nothing nothing is funny or even almost, because there, lying there out cold, is Myka. His vibe charges back into the game, and rage takes over: “What did you do?”

TBC

[mediumgayitalian]

will and 21!! (If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?)

i looooooove to make him have baby fat on his cheeks. its cute for starters but to me its like. yeah he might walk like an adult and talk like an adult and take charge like an adult but this one is still a boy. his face looks just like it did when he was three when he was eight when he was twelve and watched what was left of his family go up in smoke. you know

[strixcattus]

I really enjoy looking at this still from Slay the Princess:

In the midst of all the weird imagery from the first part of the Stranger route, you see for a moment—and it is cut off at the end, so I had to be quick with my screenshot—every route laid out in front of you, paired up as the game does elsewhere, and described, interestingly enough, from what I can only believe is the Voices' perspectives, or perhaps the relationship between the Princess and the Voice of a given route.

Consumption: The Beast (Hunted), the ribcages in the bottom right. Being eaten, alive or half so, is one way or another the outcome you face in the Beast. This one seems to be the least connected to its route's Voice, though I can still see it in a relational sort of way. Betrayal: The Witch (Opportunist), the nail-studded... I can't tell what it is, but it's at the top left. Betrayal on your part is the cause of the Witch's route, and it too is inevitable in some form once you're on that route—the Opportunist is very vocal about it.

Skepticism: The Prisoner (Skeptic), the chains at the bottom. Pretty clear analogue given the name of the Voice, but not to neglect—you reach the Prisoner by taking the blade (distrust of the Princess) but ultimately using it to free the Princess (you take the time to think critically about what you're being asked to do, and decide the Narrator is less trustworthy). Blind devotion: The Damsel (Smitten), the... I can only imagine locks of hair at the top. You reach the Damsel by immediately and wholly assuming she has no ill intentions, an attitude made manifest in the Smitten.

Rivalry: The Adversary (Stubborn), the spikes to the left. The Adversary route is, so long as you embrace it, about your probably-a-metaphor-for-sex-I-mean-the-Eye of the Needle-isn't-even-trying-to-veil-it eternal fight with the Adversary, with the Stubborn in strong support. Submission: The Tower (Broken), the stone columns to the right. One of the most clear-cut "this is about the Voice" examples—the Broken has completely submitted to the Tower's will, even though the player still has a few chances to resist her.

Terror: The Nightmare (Paranoid), the eyes in the upper right. Of course, the Nightmare is all about fear, and the Paranoid is the embodiment of your fear of the Princess—the fear that made you lock her in the basement and the fear that stopped your heart when she broke free. Longing: The Spectre (Cold), the wisps in the bottom left. This one is interesting, and almost made me second-guess my "Voices" reading, as the Spectre herself is clearly a creature of longing—but then what about "Submission?" The Tower is not "submitting" to anything. That's her whole deal. Perhaps this one is connected to your desire for something other than what the Narrator calls the "Good Ending..." or perhaps it has something to do with the Cold's interest in feeling something, which he expresses in a few routes (the Greys being the most obvious).

Pain: The Razor (Cheated,) the spikes at the top. She skewers you, and you die. Over and over again she skewers you, and you die, and it is painful over and over again. I'm not sure I have much to add to this one. Unfamiliarity: The Stranger (Contrarian), the abstract DNA-like strand at the bottom. You reach the Stranger by refusing to interact with the Princess, leaving her an unfamiliar blank slate whose actions you cannot predict and thus fracture into every possible image of her.

And at the heart of it all, an emotion that can only be described as—what? The Narrator doesn't get the chance to finish his sentence before you wake up in the Prisoner's basement, but I'd think the answer is obvious once you've finished the game.

After all, this is a love story.

[rowanthestrange]

Fear.

I get it now, the mirror fucks it up because it itself is a mirror. A mirror of the fear a person has of it, therefore the mirror would cause recursion: mirroring itself forever and it would explode.

So it had to do a big bang attack straight off the bat to create initial fear, but then what it would want? You don’t want to be big and obvious because that’s not actually scary, that’s a threat you can fight, to create the most fear you have to be as light a touch as possible. Just a flicker. Just a whisper.

It’s just Fear, like literally just Fear, the god of Fear, Fear consumed poor Aliss the cook, no skills, no baby, saw everyone die, had to kill her friend. That’s why she’s all Who Turned Out The Lights, Fear consumed her, ate her, like the Vashta Nerada. She’s a husk of Fear.

It might literally just be ambient to the planet, maybe it is the radiation.

And oh how it must have hated being in a reflective-diamond tourist trap - designed, quite probably by the Doctor themselves sometime in the future or a past lifecycle, to be the antithesis of Fear. The universe’s most beautiful Spa resort.

And maybe this was the plan: it had to slowly pare them down to one incredibly frightened individual in order to take over them (like in Midnight) building and building and building and building until it could take a permanent hold in her mind and- Wait. Wait for the inevitable other people to come. No sign of needing to eat, this cook that makes us question the food situation, just that she stayed sat there in the middle of a room, cus she’s already gone.

So what next? You build bigger, right? Well now you see, you don’t want to get too crazy with it like last time - you want to be Big but you also want to get off the planet to spread further. Cus what’s the goal of being Big? Fear breeds. And so by the time they’ve figured out the mirror thing, maybe because it’s an imperfect mirror or maybe because it’s big enough that it can’t be fully destroyed while what remains of the host(s) is still alive and ‘afraid’, it doesn’t get recursioned to death. Cus they’re still afraid, terrified as they run.

If the Fear is ambient, even if it can be stopped in one form, if it got Big enough then the scars are there carrying remnant. And Fear as a concept is ultimately unkillable just able to be made small. But they’re not making it small.

There’s a look of anger in Aliss’s eyes as the Doctor starts to laugh, confidently, because that is the antithesis of Fear. Thus a monstrous form must chase him, bring it back to him. And everyone else is still afraid.

And when it’s just the four of them they’re still afraid enough to coalesce the fear and build and build and build so by the end of even just a few minutes boom you’ve potentially now got another one. Cus Belief makes things real, and Fear is the purest manifestation of that.

And now what’s happened? Not only are you carrying potentially multiple sources of Fear on the ship, not only are there people leaving to tell other people to spread the Fear…

The Doctor told them to nuke the planet. Make sure everyone knows how dangerous it is.

That planet is now going to be a breeding ground for Fear for eons to come and they are the ones who will make sure of it.

[neverpathia]

Is the long quiet still British and is shifty still American in sactm?

Here's a thing I like to think about these two. The Long Quiet represents stagnation. Which means she also encapsulates inertia, and by extension, momentum.

I'll just share these quick doodles while I'm at it.

So the Shifting Mound undergoes numerous small but constant changes that make little difference as a whole, yet they perpetually occur nonetheless. Meanwhile, the Long Quiet experiences long stretches where she's essentially the very same thing, but when she does get changed, she changes hard.

Where was I going with that? Absolutely nowhere.

Quiet is British. All her incarnations. The Victim spits "blimey" and "bloody hell" at you. The Dame generously offers you tea and scones. Generally, the Maiden at least acts and sounds like a nice British girl.

The Mound is where things get interesting. He is the entire world map.

Yeah, the Voice of the Huntsman sounds American enough, but the other voices are more...diverse. Superior (Tower) talks like an Asian parent after you bring home a B in math. Revelation (Nightmare) has several different accents layered atop each other in some strange, clinking cacophony. Let's not mention Stranger.

As for the Narrator, he's still British. But not for the reasons you may think.

[allbeendonebefore]

i'll spare you the obvious joke but today in my research, one lesbian's road trip from Edmonton through BC and across the prairies in 1985 revealed that Regina had not one, not two but THREE dedicated lesbian groups in town despite being a quarter of the size of Edmonton, which only had one. So that indicates to me either a lot of need for groups or a lotttt of inter-personal drama lol

[filmap]

Reflections of Evil Damon Packard. 2002

Opening titles 131 S St John Ave, Pasadena, CA 91123, USA See in map

See in imdb

Bonus: also in this location

[martyrmarked]

have definitely talked about it before but just thinking of how much sidri likes looking at up the stars. she's always enjoyed the night even as a girl and her brother taught her about a variety of constellations, but during inquisition the early hours of the morning feel like one of the few times she's left alone.

she likes to sit and look up at the vast night sky, those twin moons and the gleaming stars above, and it helps her feel small again. being reminded of her own insignificance against the enormity of the world and its history comforts her, reassures her. on the road she can be found sitting out late at night & sitting far away from the fire so as fully let herself breathe in the sky, perfectly content to sit quietly and alone for a least a little while.

[silverrdagger]

Tbh I really think that more people should pay close attention to nature and their local environment bc I think there's really something special in watching the dynamics of your own ecosystem change over time.

[greyias]

I have gone down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what on earth is going on in 7.6's reflection maps. (C2-N2 looks like he's been spray painted with a matte finish, when he used to be SPER DUPER SHINY), meanwhile, my beloved blue boi still looks like he's been dipped into a vat of oil. No changes there. Odd.

Also, thanks to @keldae being the absolute best ever--

--this raccoon of a man finally has his officially official spelling of his name. No weird mangling, mispellings, or apostrophes needed!

[krissiefox]

Here's a video showing the strange water reflections on ONS-TopGun! Trippy stuff. :c

[sunshinetrinket]

explored an entire labyrinth in minecraft today with my friends today i'm literally so exhausted i dont want to do anything

[jgthirlwell]

11.01.24 Flora Laurentienne performs with a string quartet for Age Of Reflections at Church of Heavenly rest in Manhattan

[siffrins-therapist]

I wonder if I can get these guys into the gardening room for this chapter...