#so. yeah that was pretty effective. plus if those two catch hunter she probably will never have to deal with him again

[moonfurthetemmie]

So Hunter won’t really change all that much in the funky magic au thing. The main difference is going to be his mental and emotional states because

His bitchass brother is 100% gone, never to return

And

He gets to hang out with Byte again!!!

They’re not friends. They used to be, but not in a very, very long time.

He also was still being a stalker because he couldn’t just let go.

Their friendship ended well before Byte was Queen, and she only found out he’d been following her around the day after she became Queen. And only because the guards were so thrown off by this whole thing that they weren’t in their normal places, and he got caught.

He admits to all of it, and he seems to think she won’t mind, for some reason. He also admits to having snuck into the castle a few times to follow her even when Pluto invited them in

Slash and Pluto are like ‘can we kill him? Just a little?? Please??’

But Byte knows already that he’s a slippery little fucker and is very likely to escape before they can execute him. Even if they did it right then and there. She’s seen some Houdini shit from him okay. She’s real sure the only reason the guards were able to bring him to her at all is because he wanted to see her.

And that, along with the fact that he completely flew below her radar for this long, is why she decides to make him useful.

Hunter gets so excited when Byte goes “Actually I think I have a better idea”

She makes him her personal spy. Espionage, sabotage, intelligence operations. Whatever.

This also means she probably won’t have to worry about him trying some shit as much; he gets to ‘hang out’ with her again. That seems to really be all he wants. She’s not discounting other possibilities, but that’s what she has Pluto and Slash for. And 5000 other guards now.

So…yeah. He works for her. And he’s doing such a good job it’s scary. Pluto and Slash are just as suspicious of him as Byte (if not more), but they can’t deny he’s doing a good job.

Byte just barely tolerates him. She absolutely has not forgotten why she ended their friendship, and she’s not going to. But she’s taking some petty revenge by making him work for her. She’s paying him less than he should be getting, too, but it’s not like he knows what a royal spy’s usual pay is.

He’s pretty much the only one though, because even if she could lower the castle staff’s wages without them going “Whoa whoa hold the fuck up”, she has no reason to.

anyway here he is. He's still being paid a fair bit more than his old job so he's got some rather nice clothes, but he's gotta pretend he's not directly affiliated with the crown. so he's still bloo. normally

While he uses his familiar for the most dangerous stuff (who absolutely has a name, which i can't figure out rn), he still has to go in himself sometimes. And even if he doesnt, if his familiar finds something he thinks Byte would want, there's a good chance someone will try to follow the little (magic) rat. So he has to make goddamn sure no one can trace him back to Phrikeh at all; and especially not the Queen. Which they almost definitely will if he's caught, unless he can prove somehow that he's just a silly little thief guy.

Byte gave him the mask, and swords, but gave him pretty much free reign to design his own disguise. He can use the swords, but not very well. They're mainly for intimidation. They've got SKULLS on them!!!!! Don't mess with him!!!!!!!!

He never tried to create a familiar before Byte 'hired' him, so its form is a leetol rat specifically because he needed a little guy to sneak around for him.

[friendlylocalwhumper]

Alex is @whump-sprite ‘s oc.

Lux has always been on the outside. He never expected to fit in at school - dreamt of it, but didn’t see it as possible; he never expected to have a job, or a big house with a happy family. Some warlocks, like Anders, find a way to fit in like that, somehow. Not that Anders is a shining example of a healthy way to live. But he does have a job, and a house, and a car that isn’t stolen. He buys whiskey, he doesn’t steal it. He lived long enough to figure out how to get all those things. Lux had never believed that he’d make it past the age of sixteen.

But here he is, still kicking, with at least friends and safe places to crash. And he’s got about twenty kids, give or take depending on the safehouse he’s visiting, calling him Mister Lux.

They’ve all suffered, these kids, and they’re all alone in one way or another. But they’re protected by the Resistance, since they’re children of the war that non-mages are blind and numb to. And they get to be taught magic, simple light magic. That’s Lux’s job. He visits the safehouses with kids, including this one that’s all kids, and he teaches them what he knows.

“Like this, Mister Lux?”

“Mister Lux, look! Look!”

They’re eager learners, and every time they call him that, he smiles. “You don’t have to call me mister, just Lux.”

“Okay, Mister Lux!”

They giggle, at being mischievous, and he laughs. Then he teaches them more. Not magic that can destroy, nothing complicated. And nothing they can hurt each other with. He teaches them how to make light, and to find lost things, and to move things around without touching them, depending on their abilities. Every magic user is better at some types of magic than others.

There’s one little girl, who doesn’t have any magic, but whose non-magic parents died trying to make change for warlocks. Lux makes pretty lights in the air for her to admire, so she doesn’t get too sad about having no magic of her own. So she doesn’t feel too lonely. She gets really excited when Lux stops by, even though every other Resistance member who watches over the kids tells Lux that she doesn’t talk around them at all.

Today, Lux and Alex are visiting, to a chorus of “Mister Lux!” and “Mister Alex!” The kids run up and hug them. Silly and happy, for a bunch of kids that can be hauntingly mature and serious sometimes. Alex, Lux tells them, is a healer, and he’s really good at making people feel better. He’s really strong. Plus, Alex is a great Resistance member - he’s super helpful.

Lux never touts the Resistance, doesn’t advertise it to the kids. He’s not in the business of recruitment. But they all admire the Resistance anyway, because it’s what saved them and protects them. So now, they all look up at Alex in awe.

“Mister Alex, can you heal a thousand hundred people?”

“Mister Alex! I can do healing magic too!”

“Mister Alex, did you ever gotta be with the Hun-ter?”

Lux is used to the occasional stray question about the Hunter. He doesn’t react poorly. But his smile falters, and he thinks hard about what to say, so this time, another kid pulls the sleeve of the one who asked that, and whispers, “Don’t make Mister Lux sad.”

Lux presses on, unphased. “Guys, let’s sit down and start, okay? You can ask Mister Alex questions if you’re very polite.” Lux nudges Alex with his elbow, smiling at his new title. All the kids, twelve of them today, sit on the floor criss-cross-applesauce in a circle, chattering about the older warlocks sitting down with them.

“Who are our telekinetic learners?”

Two kids raise their hands. One of the group whispers to a friend next to them, gives a little “oh!” and raises her hand too.

“That means you can move stuff with your magic,” Lux offers, and two more kids raise their hands.

“Okay, so you guys are gonna show me how well you practiced that spell you learned last week. Eddy, Sam, Marta, you three have psychic powers, you been trying them out together? Asking first every time, no surprises?”

“Yeah!”

“Yes, Mister Lux!”

Lux goes through each type of magic, addressing each kid, until he’s seen to them all. “Alright! Good job everybody, you can show me all the cool stuff you figured out while you were practicing in a bit. Now, if anyone wants to ask - Mister Alex any questions, raise your hand.”

All the hands go up.

These kids don’t have magic-using role models to look up to, not enough - and they had even less as a guiding example before they came here. They ask upsetting questions, sometimes, and they have trouble fully grasping some things, but there is nothing more important than giving them the chance to ask, Lux thinks. Nothing more important than letting them feel safe enough to talk about magic aloud. When Lux first started visiting them, at Anders’ suggestion, some of the kids would hide if Lux said a word about magic aloud. The rest would fall dead silent.

Now, they’re learning, and they don’t flinch at the mention of their powers.

“Alex, you wanna pick who to answer?”

Alex looks around, leaning back with his palms to the floor behind him, smiling. “Somebody said they had healing magic?”

One of the little boys waves the hand he’s thrown into the air. “Me!”

“What do you wanna ask, little man?”

Frankie - that’s the boy’s name - he’s about to answer, when something flies through an open window and clanks on the wooden floor. Lux and Alex’s eyes shoot to it. A metal canister.

Alex yells something, and so does Lux, their words jumbling. They’re already moving. Alex grabs three kids’ sleeves and yanks, pulling them away from the canister, and Lux scoots the rest of them across the floor with a sweep of magic that doesn’t send them knocking into anything.

The canister bursts into heavy billowing smoke with a loud hiss, and chaos erupts. A door bangs open, and surely, men with guns are going to file in - Lux raises his arms and shoves his hands toward the doors, the front one and the back one, unsure with one was just breached, unable to see past the smoke. The front door slams shut with his magic. Sounds like it catches a gunman, because someone cries out in frustration. Lux shoves his magic harder at the door, and there’s a crunching, then the yelling jumps to a new octave.

He keeps one palm facing that door, keeping it shut. His other hand swirls in the air, using magic to clear the smoke from the center of the room and shove it up against all the walls swirling thickly so nothing can be seen from the windows. For now, the space will hold secure.

Alex has got half a dozen kids around him, clinging to his shirt. Lux has got one little girl on the floor with her arms wrapped around his leg.

He stoops down to pick her up, keeping the magic on the front door. He bounces her gently on his hip.

“Alex, the bedroom over there. Hidden space under the floor. Well all need to hide in there,” Lux whispers, and they both start ushering the kids toward the hall, which is far less exposed. There’s yelling outside, and something trying to smash into the bolted back door.

Before they make it to the hall, the back door splinters and gives way. It’s exploded, sending shards of wood flying everywhere, and thicker, heavier sickly yellow-brown smoke fills the room.

Some of the kids are screaming, Lux registers over the cacophony, and as his eyes begin to burn and water. He grabs the nearest kids, remembering where they were, and pushes them toward the hall. Alex is ahead of him. He’s got to be sure all the kids are with them - Lux sweeps away the smoke by the floor, and sees no little feet behind him.

Into the hall, into the bedroom not filled with smoke, and into the hidden space, locked shut with magic now.

The kids are still crying. Lux can’t see, so none of them can either. Alex is trying to get everyone to be quiet.

Lux presses a hand over his own eyes, gives a short teary chant, and his eyes stop burning. He brushes the reflexive tears away, and looks at everyone in the dark. Reaches over to Alex, whispering that it’s just Lux, and presses a hand over his eyes to clear them too.

Lux counts, probably ten times, all the kids. Every one of them’s here. He tries to soothe them as he clears all their vision, and if they’re coughing from the smoke, he nudges them gently over to Alex.

“Can you heal them a little, please? I think their lungs are irritated by the smoke. Just a little should help them breathe better.”

Alex doesn’t hesitate to rub some magic into the fingers on his casting hand, and press a little healing magic gently into the chest of each heaving kid.

Lux lays a hand on top of each kid’s head to count them - until he reaches the ones who are huddled up on the floor. He thought they were just scared.

They’re hurt. From the door exploding.

“Alex,” Lux hisses, and looks up. The kids are crying into their hands, trying to keep quiet. They don’t want to be found.

Alex finishes clearing the lungs of the others, and hurries over in the small space. His hands deftly roam across the injuries. “I need to fix these, now,” He mutters with urgency to Lux. Then, to the kids: “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. Don’t look, alright? I’m gonna heal you up, you’re gonna be fine. It’ll hurt a little bit more for a second, and then it won’t hurt at all. Ready?”

He sets to pulling out shards of wood from the weeping kids, and healing up the damage. They’ll all live, they'll be okay.

Alex starts coughing hard, and Lux realizes he hasn’t cleared his own lungs, and he’s making his magic work fast, which can’t be good for it - then, Lux’s eyes start burning again, and the other kids are making quiet high-pitched pained sounds, clutching at their faces.

The gas they were exposed to, can its effects only be fixed for a fleeting minute? Is it magic-resistant? Alex is still working as his vision deteriorates, he’s still comforting the kids and trying to take their pain away.

There’s banging and crashing, up in the house. If they find this room, this space, somehow, they’ll kill Alex and Lux and the kids, or take them prisoner. Or they can just burn the place down and smoke them out. Lux closes his eyes and lets his hands rest palm-up before him, as he sends magic up into the house. The gunmen must have gas masks - Lux tries to find them, individually, sensing where they are, marching around up there. His fingers twist and jerk inward, and all those gas masks break.

Above the floorboards, sudden raucous yelling and coughing is loud enough to cover the crying and coughing of the kids down here. Lux clears his own eyes, then Alex’s, then those of each kid. Alex is busy fixing up those kids hurt by shards of wood, so Lux tries to heal the kids’ irritated lungs, shushing them gently.

“I need you to be brave, okay?” He whispers to two girls crying, and they ask to be held, so he hugs them briskly. “It’ll be alright,” They’re promised, and the Lux is over at Alex’s side once more. He’s finished the healing, and he’s making sure everyone’s breathing alright.

“We’ll have to keep healing them, it’s not gonna stop,” Alex informs grimly.

“I’m gonna - I can make it stop,” Lux answers, and raises his hands again. He needs something big and fast, to drive the threat away.

His hands lower. He can’t do it without seeing what it’s like up there. He needs to see where the men are, what they’re doing.

Alex is coughing harder, because while he’s not healing massive injuries, he is constantly healing twelve kids that make pitiful sounds if they’re not seen to right away. That’s Alex’s magic being used up twelve times faster than just healing one person, and even healing one person can tire him out sometimes.

“All of you stay quiet down here with Mister Alex, okay?” Lux instructs, grimly, and then shoves at the trapdoor above him, crawling out and sealing it behind him with magic.

Blinded by the gas that’s spilled into the room and breathing roughly, he stumbles out into the hall and heads toward the sound of heavy boots on the floor and yells of “Find them!” and “They’ll drop like flies, with the gas, get more canisters in here!” Voices muffled behind gas masks. They must have had extra.

Eyes watering, stifling his coughs, Lux moves to each combatant and incapacitates them in some way. Melts their gun and crumbles their backup mask, maybe knocks them out or makes their neck snap loudly. There’s the cracking sound of gunfire, but Lux feels no sudden pain, so he keeps moving. He works through them one by one, wheezing harshly, until there are no more yells, until all the guns are ruined and all the bodies are shoved into a spare room with magic, so the kids won’t have to see them.

Lux tries to clear his eyes, but it won’t work. His lungs, either. He disappears all the gas - he knows it’s gone because he can keep breathing, and he doesn’t feel the stinging mist on his skin anymore. He slips to his knees, blindly repairing the front and back doors with a spell, hearing the wood weaving itself back together and setting itself on its hinges. What else? Lux unseals the trapdoor hiding everybody, from this room, with a wave of his hand. It takes two tries, with his rapidly dimming magic. He should go tell Alex and the kids that they can come out now, they can come out and get brought to a more secure place, one that won’t be infiltrated by an assault team.

Instead, he slips to the floor, rasping painfully, unable to see anything but a fuzzy darkness, and passes out.

[epsilonlaylay-blog]

Why I Hate The Paranormal Activity Franchise

I hate the Paranormal Activity franchise. Someone actually accused me of hating them just because they are popular, which I can’t tell if that’s sarcastic or what. If I hated found footage movies just because they were popular then I wouldn’t like Blair Witch or REC or well there’s countless others. I don’t hate movies based on how popular they are or not I hate movies based on how bad they are, popular or not. I like movies based on how good they are popular or not. Doesn’t matter. A lot of people hate Blair Witch. A lot of people hate the new IT movie. A lot of people hate a lot of things that I like and are also GOOD movies. A lot of people like really BAD horror movies like It Follows and It Comes At Night and A Quiet place. How popular a movie is or isn’t will never, EVER be how I judge movies. That being said, since someone does think I hate those movies just because they are popular which is a stupid idea, I’ll explain why they are, in actuality, very bad movies.

Paranormal Activity One:

Now, the very first one isn’t SUPER bad I mean it’s passable. Though 99% of the scary moments in the first one are jump scares, it was at least a somewhat original concept for the time. The acting isn’t super horrible, at least not from Katie. Everyone else seemed kind of just idiotic or stiff on camera I don’t know. For just a single, stand alone, found footage movie I can say it’s decent. I don’t hate it and I don’t love it. It was a novelty more than anything and had it just been that one movie then I wouldn’t hate the idea so much but it wasn’t just that one movie. It is the best one of the franchise other than the fourth one, I think? The Marked Ones? Which has nothing to do with any of the rest of them (seemingly) and though I wouldn’t call that one awesome either it was far easier to get through than the ones that dealt with the overall story.

Paranormal Activity Two:

This is where it already starts to fall apart. Especially since this family rigged up their entire house with super HD awesome security cameras with sound? Why? Then they have them running constantly to somewhere? Like where is all this footage being recorded and saved? The police found all of it, clearly and kept it. Not only did they keep it, they edited it down to support a full storyline narrative like in the first. All of the movies do this and start (or end) with some message that this is police archive footage or something like that. Why though? Like, if the police did have this footage and it was archived they wouldn’t have edited it into an actual movie that told a story. They may have the events in order but they’d literally only have the events. Stuff that actually happened. They wouldn’t have 90 minutes of pointless fooling around and stupid conversations that don’t pertain to the events at hand. They’d just have what was relevant to the case. If they would even hold onto it at all. The most important footage in each of these movies is when the people are murdered and that’s about it. The rest of it is irrelevant and it even seems by the events of the second movie Katie is wanted for the murder of Micha. Not a ghost. The police would have no need to keep hours and hours of pointless footage archived and edited in such a way that it tells a story to this level. We also start to get into the problem of them having to make shit up to cover their asses because they didn’t think there would be a sequel so a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense compared to the first movie.

Paranormal Activity Three:

This is the one where they flash back all the way to the 80s with Katie and Kristie as kids. The mother seems utterly unconcerned with most of it and the boyfriend or step father, though he has a crap ton of stuff actually recorded on camera to prove to the mother what he’s saying, he just never shows it to her? Like he brings up, repeatedly that something is going on in the house or there are ghosts or demons or something but he never shows her the footage of what he’s talking about. He always just shows her something else. Plus, it’s the 80s but he has like 8 different cameras, they are recording all the time, the quality is HD, I mean come on. He’d literally have boxes and boxes and BOXES of tapes if he was recording that much and if he was recording over other stuff that he already filmed the quality of the footage would in no way be as good as what was presented to us. Then we have that stupid ending where the girls are like getting married to the demon or something? And there’s a witch coven? Like you lost me there. It’s just getting dumber and dumber. At least the kids were decent actors (usually children can’t act for shit) so…I mean it was kind of watchable but it was more unintentionally hilarious than scary.

Paranormal Activity Four:

So then we have this one which starts out with a random family that seems to be totally not connected to the main story at all. Until you find out that the main girl’s brother is adopted and he actually is Hunter or something. The baby from the first or second movie, whatever, that Katie kidnapped from Kristie. For some reason. Like I guess he’s the Toby ghost or supposed to have Toby inside of him or get possessed by Toby or…whatever the case may be you can rest assured that it makes no sense. Once again we have the problem of cameras recording ALL the time, with no feasible way to save the footage. Then we have the problem of the family knowing this is the case and just NEVER CHECKING THE FOOTAGE. I mean at a certain point they just stop checking it. There, that’s it. They know there’s a ghost, the girl knows she has proof on camera, she just decides to NEVER show her dad and the dad NEVER wants to listen even though they all set up the cameras in the first place to catch this fucking ghost. Then at the very end the dad tells the girl to go get help and she literally carries her fucking laptop, while filming her, across the street, to get help…like UGH none of these people even act the way normal humans would act in this situation. Especially not carrying a fucking laptop with them to film something while they get help. Give me a damn break.

Paranormal Activity 5 (The Marked ones):

Okay to be fair I only saw this one once, like the others, and I don’t remember it having freaking anything to do with the main story. If it was a prequel or what. I don’t feel like looking it up either. It was about some hispanic (possibly Mexican) kids who were getting possessed or paranormally attacked by I guess the same ghost or demon or whatever that’s part of the main story. Works well as a stand alone and other than the first movie it’s the most decent one to watch but that’s not really saying much I just hate it the least out of all the rest of them. Moving on. If this does have something to do with all the rest of them and the main story, feel free to remind me or explain how because I really don’t remember them being connected to each other in any way and I fully admit right now I might be wrong.

Paranormal Activity Ghost Dimension:

This is the last one in the series, hopefully forever. I don’t even know how they got to 6 movies but this one did make the least amount of money and then Oren Peli (the guy who created this abortion of a franchise) claimed that this was how it was supposed to end and what he had planned all along and what he wanted and blah blah blah bullshit lip service. Which can’t possibly be true. If it is true then he’s admitting that he had a shitty nonsensical open ending planned the ENTIRE TIME. I think they just ran out of funding and the movies were tanking at the box office and he had to pretend this is the ending he wanted.

Once again this is seemingly a random family that has nothing to do with anything that they vaguely connect to the main story. It was also in 3D and I will admit the 3D effects were cool but that’s about all it had going for it. Like if you don’t see it in 3D and you don’t see it in the theaters I can’t imagine it’s any good. Like literally ALL of the rest of the films it relies heavily on jump scares and only on jump scares and of course the really cool 3D effects which only actually are cool if you can see them in a theater and in 3D and then there’s some stupid ending about the main little girl Leila and her mom going back in time and getting married to Toby the demon or something, the END.

So if it isn’t apparent why I hate these movies I’ll give it to you in summary:

1. They rely on the very cheap gimmick of found footage because they don’t want to work on an actual plot or really hire good actors. Low budget means higher box office profit.

2. 99% of every scare in every movie is a jump scare. They even use this low frequency vibration noise that is somewhat undetectable by most humans and makes them “uneasy” except if you’ve seen 1000 of these movies that only rely on jump scares then you can pretty much tell when a jump scare is about to happen so you are probably immune to that trick. I guess most regular movie going idiots aren’t so they are basically tricked into thinking it’s scary because of an involuntary response that their body has to low frequency noises. Yeah, if you need to jam that into your horror movie? It’s not good.

3. The only reason the first one got so big in the first place was the old “This movie is too scary for general audiences you can’t see this movie” trick where they made people DEMAND to see it via some website. Except that was all just a gimmick, as I said. The movie was scheduled for a wide release anyway. Once again, if you are relying on gimmicks to get people in the seats instead of the quality of your actual movie it’s not going to be a good movie.

Though the first movie is decent that’s about all it is. Decent. People complain that nothing happens in The Blair Witch project and that’s why it “Sucks” but even less happens in these movies and they’ve had 6 of them now. These are objectively worse than the first Blair witch and has much larger following. Why? I have no idea. The story lines in all of them are dumbed down for audiences to a high level. It’s clear that each time they got green lit for a new sequel they shat their pants and forgot what they even did in the last one and had to quickly make up for it by doing an awful rush job that barely held the movies together via a very paper thin plot.

I’m not even against telling a story in flashbacks if it’s done right and attention is paid to details and it makes sense. I mean as bad as the Saw movies can be in some areas and I will admit that, they at least tried a fuck ton harder to try to make them connect WAY more coherently than the Paranormal Activity movies. Whoever they hired for continuity for the Saw movies did their job. Whoever they hired for the Paranormal Activity movies was either high or didn’t give a fuck. I doubt the studios did either as this was a cash cow for them so as long as people went to see these movies they didn’t care how good they were.

At the end of the day, these are just really bad movies. They rely on gimmicks and jump scares. That’s it. If you need to be TOLD how scary a movie is, literally in the advertising, and once you get in there 99% of the scares are loud noises, then what has been accomplished? What have you just spent your money on? Long running franchises can be good and profitable if people actually put some kind of care into making them. That’s what makes the first 6 Saw movies really good together (and literally nothing after that they should have ended at 6). It is not impossible to make a good horror franchise that people love if you take your time and make sure everything makes sense. That was not done with these movies, and it’s obvious. I’m glad they are over now and have no foreseeable future because they don’t deserve it.