#somehow getting twisted into making them sound like these mustache twirling villains going

[ineed-to-sleep]

Just saw somebody trying to justify their shitty use of generative ai by saying "commission artists only say that ai isn't valuable because they want you to believe you don't have value as the commissioner" and I just wanted to crawl out of my skin. Like WHERE did they get that idea? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever had to read with my own two eyes

Let me tell you, as an artist who does commissions, yes you have value! Obviously the art that I make will be very different depending on the instructions you give me and having good material from the start will make the result much better. When artists say that AI isn't as valuable as a real artist, they're not saying you don't have value as the person giving instructions, they're saying that they have value as well, being the person who went through the process of spending hours carefully drawing the ideas you've given them. When an artist says "AI isn't going to do as good of a job as an artist", they're defending the value of their own work, not dismissing the value of yours. An artist defending their own value should not be twisted and villainized like this like jesus fucking christ that was such an asinine take I had to say something

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

As promised, here is the Nygmobblepot fanmix I mostly put together this fall. (See the end of the post for links.) I’ve come across a few very nice fanmixes for them, but not a lot of the ones I found had rock music, and since Nygmobblepot is such a hard rock sort of couple I felt like the need to make a more rock-heavy playlist for them. (Plus, it’s just the sort of music I listen to most often, and so these are the songs that come to mind for me.)

I focused mainly on their season 3 arc, especially the angst. I tried to put the songs in a sort of narrative order, so it starts out with songs that are a bit more focused on their love; Lydia is meant as the turning point where the Isabella murder happens and things start heading south, and the songs thereafter are more focused on their darker dynamic in the latter part of season 3 (though they’re all on the dark side; this is meant to be an angsty playlist). Not every song precisely follows this arc; Bloodfeather, for example, leans towards that darker side of things, but it also fits them so well that I wanted to open the playlist with it. I think it works as echoing the foreshadowing of their relationship in season 2 as well. 

1. *Bloodfeather by Highly Suspect: “In the name of love, I’ll follow you. And if my body’s dead and cold I died for you; in the name of love I’d kill for you.” “You’re fatal but I love who you are. Be my death or my forever; you’re my little bloodfeather.” (Our Penguin does tend to get his feathers bloodied... Granted, that’s not what a bloodfeather is, but the image does fit.)

2. Song 3 by Stone Sour: “If you take a step towards me, you will take my breath away, so I’ll keep you close and keep my secrets safe. No one else has ever loved me, no one else has ever tried, never understood how much I could take. There’s a darkness down inside me that I know we’ll both enjoy. Did I save you? 'Cause I know you saved me too.” 

3. I’m Not Alright by Shinedown: “All messed up and slightly twisted. Am I sick or am I gifted? Maybe it’s me, I'm just crazy; maybe I like that I’m not alright.” (Honestly this one fits Gotham in general--”all dressed up in a white straight jacket” is actually a very Jerome line--but I figured I probably wasn’t going to get around to making a general Gotham playlist and it suits Nygmobblepot’s mutual madness, I think.)

4. Little Monster by Royal Blood: “Hey little monster, where’ve you been hiding, and can I come this time? Heartache to heartache, I’m your wolf, I’m your man. I say run little monster, before you learn who I am.” 

5. Glycerine by Bush: “We live in a wheel where everyone steals, but when we rise it's like strawberry fields. I treated you bad; you bruised my face. Couldn't love you more, you’ve got a beautiful taste. It could have been easier on you, I couldn't change though I wanted to. Should’ve been easier by three; our old friend fear and you and me.” 

6. Possum Kingdom by Toadies: “I’m not gonna lie. I'll not be a gentleman. Behind the boathouse I'll show you my dark secret... Do you wanna die?” (I’ve heard and thought of many interpretations for this strange, dark love song, but somehow or another, they all seem to fit Nygmobblepot.)

7. *Lydia by Highly Suspect: “I am the hungry shark, fast and merciless. But the only girl that could talk to him just couldn't swim, tell me what's worse than this. Your eyes alive in pain, black tears don't hide in rain, and I tied you to the tracks; when I turned around, I heard the sound, I hit the ground, I know there's no turning back.” (It’s particularly interesting how Oswald circuitously killed Isabella with railroad tracks, echoing the old mustache-twirling villain trope of tying the damsel to the train tracks that this song also references. Although if Isabella had had the presence of mind to realize that even if her breaks were out, her steering wheel was still working, she probably wouldn’t be dead, but that’s a rant for another day.)

8. I Only Lie When I Love You by Royal Blood: (the title says most of it but) “Go ahead, pull the plug; broken finger, sticky trigger, now I can't get it off my chest... you know I’m up to something.”

9. Roll Me Under by Stone Temple Pilots: “Do you believe in something beautiful between chaos and the light?” (harks back to their earlier romance, but) “Roll me under, I'll pull the trigger for you. Do with me what you will. Hold me under, the water running over...” (harks forward to the first dock scene. Really I could’ve put this later in the mix but I also put it here to keep the hard/soft balance of the songs cycling back and forth just for auditory balance. Narratively it probably should’ve been #11.)

10. *House on Fire by Rise Against: “I’m in over my head and she's a high tide that keeps pushing me away. I thought we would build this together, but everything I touch just seems to break. Am I your sail or your anchor? Am I the calm or the hurricane?” “Till then I’ll hold you like a hand grenade. You touch me like a razor blade. I wish there was some other way, but no. Like a house on fire, we’re up in flames. I’ll burn here if that’s what it takes.”

11. Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins: “Disarm you with a smile. Cut you like you want me to. The killer in me is the killer in you, my love. I used to be a little boy; so old in my shoes.” 

12. Say You’ll Haunt Me by Stone Sour: “I will give you everything to... say you'll never die, you'll always haunt me. I want to know I belong to you; say you'll haunt me. Little soft pulses in my dead, little souvenirs of secrets shared, little off guard and unprepared.” (Basically Ed to Oswald in s3e15.)

13. Let it Die by the Foo Fighters: “Did you ever think of me? You’re so considerate. Hearts gone cold and your hands were tied; why’d you have to go and let it die?” (To clarify, I don’t by any means want to suggest that the ship is dead by ending my playlist on this note; I still have hope for Nygmobblepot in season 5, and if nothing else I think season 4 very clearly showed that the ship didn’t die for good in season 3. I just love how powerful and raw Dave Grohl’s voice is at the end of this song and I wanted to let it linger, to let that sound be the note this playlist ended on. Like I said, it’s an angsty playlist.)

Here are links to the playlists. I made two because the songs I’ve marked with an asterisk all have the f-word in them; in the case of House on Fire, it’s only once, but it’s several times in Bloodfeather. If you’re alright with that, here is the playlist with the original, uncensored songs. 

If you would prefer clean versions, here is a version of the same playlist with clean versions of those three songs. 

Fun fact: there was no clean version of House on Fire by Rise against on youtube, so I made my own using a handy editing trick. I probably could also have made better versions of the clean edits of the two Highly Suspect songs (no offence to the original editors but they’re not perfectly smooth and Bloodfeather has a weird gap at the end) but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If you would like me to make different edits of those, though, let me know and I’d consider it. I should perhaps also mention that Possum Kingdom does use the name of Jesus, but as long as you read the singer’s request as sincere it’s not taking it in vain. But, I do admit that it could be interpreted that way, for the sake of fair warning. 

So, I hope you enjoy this dark, angsty, rocking season 3 Nygmobblepot playlist! Here’s to hopefully some great Nygmobblepot scenes in season 5.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Synchronicity 12

F.E.A.R.!AU. We get to the testing facility. Finally. The plane in question is Shaanxi Y-8 gunship variant, a nice thing for moderate PMC outfit. There’s a mention of suicide. Gerard gives exposition in twirling-mustache-villain-fashion. Also, introducing core mechanic.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

(...)“The plane,” Jack chuckles, looking at his hands. Inadvertently he rolls his sleeves up to see the faint lines on his wrists, hardly raised anymore. “When it lands, he dies, that person dies, gets his throat somehow slashed, not just cut, slashed, and he knows that, relives it, but he still… refuses to acknowledge it?” Dark tendril uncurls around his arm and brushes against the scar, lingering on the discolored flesh, and he tries to keep the stinging tears back. “I don’t even remember,” he laughs. “I should know better. If you want to die you don’t do it like that. It gives them too much time to force you to live.”(...)

***

(…)

There's time on the wall, but no one around

His will is numb, he's half in the ground

If all we are is all we were

Then he'd soon pass on without a whisper

(…)

 The whole structure is coming apart around him, metal catwalks adjacent to it on this side scream and twist, portions of the construction break off and fall below. Jack follows the way down where the exit must be – the cavern’s ceiling is a flat surface of rock as far as he can see it. The masquerade is working in his favor, someone pats his arm and points in the direction of the evacuation route, or what is left of one, more likely.

But then the Beast tugs at his arm and he turns to the other side just as the metal bridge groans and rips in half under falling rocks, taking with it an unfortunate soldier. The man flails in the air descending to his death, and Jack observes him idly as he himself catches the outer sides of a ladder and grinds the soles of his boots into steel enclosure, then he merely slackens his grip and slides, landing on the platform below just in time for the whole upper part to sway and start collapsing on itself.

The ladder snaps, the whole portion of the catwalk looms above falling in slow motion. Jack clutches the railing, bracing for the impact, hunkering down. He only manages to drag in one breath before the crash jostles him, it feels almost like his arm gets torn out of its socket, and then he is falling.

He doesn’t register the moment his body smashes into the concrete, only the darkness whispering it will take him with it when it goes.

A jolt of pain to his ribs wakes him up. He cannot feel his hands behind his back. Someone barks a command at him in French. Moroccan accent. Get up. Profanities follow. Another kick catches the inside of his thigh and with a gasp, he manages to roll himself to rest on his side. Water.

He thanks whoever listens for the mask stopping him from aspirating the liquid and sits up. The twisted canopy of bent metal elements above groans dangerously.

“Fuck.” Doesn’t feel like anything broken, the memory of phantom blows is only that, a memory, something dredged up from god knows where. He should be dead, the fall from that height should have killed him, there is no way he could have survived it even encased in a metal cage. And even if, by an uncanny stroke of luck, when he moves his arm, it does not protest, not more than usual – the joint works perfectly.

“Lucky you,” with a short derisive laugh that sprays blood the blonde apparition looks him straight into eyes, the voice familiar, grating, decidedly unfriendly. Jack inhales sharply at the image. “Get the fuck up.”

“You aren’t like the others.”

“Give the man his cookie, he earned it,” his doppelganger glares, lips curled up into a sneer. With each word more clotted blood spills and mingles with murky water. “I’m not going to repeat myself again. Get the fuck up.”

“Little restless, aren’t you, Sunshine?” The Beast caresses the side of his neck as Jack makes his move to stand up, stopped in mid-motion when the wraith reaches out and its fingers make contact with the black mass. Apparition’s face softens, becomes almost vulnerable with a tragic melancholy – desperation – written on it.

“I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you so much… You didn’t take me with you,” the doppelganger whispers. “You left me.”

“Did I, Sunshine? I am here, after all, I am always with you,” the Beast murmurs back as the apparition flickers and dissolves in the faint lighting filtering in from above. “I am a part of you, Sunshine, always were and always will be,” it laughs, the sound bubbling under its surface, breaking out in waves, covering surroundings in rainbow-tinted luminosity that stretches the screech of metal into an unbearable low whine. “There will never be a point of return.”

“There will never be a point of return,” Jack, lifting himself up, repeats after it. The same kind of radiance that bathes every surface of an encompassing area follows in the wake of each of his movements. Something is wrong with how the water he wades in behaves, very wrong, like the surface tension does not want to give under his soles and sticks to his boots. He passes droplets almost frozen in the air – light refracts in them lazily painting space in pastels – and every breath he takes sluggishly flows between his lips, trickles down his throat like molasses.

And as he enters the concrete tunnel the time collapses into itself, the whine becomes a shrieking wail of roaring destruction when all the precariously balanced debris sink under their own weight; stones, concrete, and metal coming down with a delayed fury of gravity finally taking a jealous hold on its regained domain. Jack glances back – the way behind him is definitely blocked now.

He forces down nausea at the realization mere seconds – maybe even less – separated him from being crushed under the rubble. It also comes with a heady kiss of adrenaline that threatens to split his brain in two, and the hum of the rushing blood in his ears dampening any other sound into an indistinct echo. Jack licks his chapped lips. Probably around twenty-four hours since he ate anything. Or drunk. Or took the pills, damn pills, that have him shaking with every mention.

“Such a disturbing notion, Sunshine, isn’t it, every little dirty secret buried under the poison you willingly take crawling back out of the woodwork?” The Beast’s voice cuts through the haze. Jack walks the only direction available, away from the rubble, left hand raised and fingertips trailing the concrete of the tunnel. It’s grounding, in a way, helps with the tremors. “And who knows where the lies end?”

“You know, for being me, you’re fucking vague,” Jack chokes out a stifled chuckle.

“Where would be the fun in it being any other way? Just remember, Sunshine, we will kill them all, we will carve every nerve from their muscle, we will suck out the marrow from their bones, I promise you.”

“Yes. We will kill them all.” Bizarrely, the sentiment, and the words, bring some satisfaction, enough to curl up the corners of his mouth, it’s not a smile, not really, but the noise in his ears slowly dies down replaced by the sound of splashing water and whizzing air somewhere beyond the tunnel’s exit he’s nearing.

“And every step of the way I’ll be with you, Sunshine.”

“I know. I know.”

The area Jack enters has a different feel than the pretend hospital and the labs housed in the underground complex now entombed under tons of rock behind him. No, all the pretense is dropped here unceremoniously – everything speaks of industrial design and purpose. On the left, there are two elevator platforms, one of them broken and tilted to the side, the other seems stable.

He walks to the ledge and stares into the darkness below trying to come up with something, anything, that could be there in the cavern, deeper, so they would need to haul cargo, enough of it to warrant the elevators. It doesn’t matter. He can always come back and check.

As if to answer the possibility, the intact platform trembles and breaks off in a shower of sparks, plummeting down with a ripped off part of the rail. He waits for the sound of impact, counting. Almost fifteen seconds. Above one klick down.

“Shit.” So that leaves only one possible direction, another tunnel, and the only light he can see is at the entrance, above him. With uneasiness, Jack steps into the darkness, and a light warm breeze brushes his skin.

He glances at the aircraft flying low, dark under the crimson sky, reflective surfaces glinting menacingly. Four engines. Shaanxi. He doesn’t really bother with thinking what would be the reason to use Chinese plane other than smoke and mirrors, all the plausible deniability shtick, doesn’t buy into ‘the best for the best’, it’s not his area of expertise anyway.

What he does know, observing as the craft circles lazily to make its approach, is that when it touches down, something happens, something that has him freeze in apprehension, and turn towards the tarmac hidden behind the tall swaying grass where two shades walk side by side.

No. He has to warn them because when the plane lands it happens – whatever that it is – and they are there, oblivious, just walking – talking – like everything is right but it is only an illusion and it will happen. It. Will. Happen.

Yet before he can move one of the silhouettes turns around and red eyes pin him in place, leave him breathless and faltering. Scared of the wrath and visceral hate gleaming in them, and with a snarl the darkness rushes at him, the grass divides and flattens under chittering onslaught screaming murder with a multitude of one voice simultaneously.

It smashes into him – goes through him – and Jack hits the wall, thrown, shoulder painfully colliding with the solid surface. Gasping for precious air. He rips the mask off his face and stares into space.

Reaper is trapped. He is trapped, in those moments, memories possibly, he realizes, and he pulls him under into them with him either consciously or unwittingly, into a place that doesn’t exist but maybe parts of it did, the tree, the airstrip, the grass, and Jack is an intruder there.

He can imagine what it does to anyone when the pain of the blade and the smell of burnt meat, the screams, and the thunder, they are always lingering just at the edge of his own awareness, never entirely gone, the Beast stinging behind his teeth, looking through his eyes, whispering in his ears.

“Who isn’t a prisoner of their own past, Sunshine?”

“The plane,” Jack chuckles, looking at his hands. Inadvertently he rolls his sleeves up to see the faint lines on his wrists, hardly raised anymore. “When it lands, he dies, that person dies, gets his throat somehow slashed, not just cut, slashed, and he knows that, relives it, but he still… refuses to acknowledge it?” Dark tendril uncurls around his arm and brushes against the scar, lingering on the discolored flesh, and he tries to keep the stinging tears back. “I don’t even remember,” he laughs. “I should know better. If you want to die you don’t do it like that. It gives them too much time to force you to live.”

“No, Sunshine,” the Beast murmurs back, the sound deprived of its usual ridicule, “you can’t die yet, not until we kill our old friends, all of them.”

Somehow, with applied force, black tendril pulls his hand away from where it tried to grab the knife still strapped to the jacket. Jack slowly draws a breath, holds it for five seconds, and then exhales. The shaking stops after he repeats it several times.

“Good, Sunshine, now up. You have to go through the dome.”

He doesn’t question. To his right is gaping darkness, and to the left, the way ahead is buried under rocks, the ceiling caved in, but luckily the same occurrence crashed and bent the frame of another observation theatre. Judging by the thickness of the glass he wouldn’t be able to shoot through it. Below he can see screens rapidly flashing images in front of something that looks like a heavy reinforced platform crossed with a chair, something one would see in a cheap science fiction flick rather than in a laboratory or any industrial context. By the foot of it pools something that looks suspiciously like blood.

Three meters, give or take. He can’t roll, not really, not with all the shards littering the ground below. Jack positions himself cautiously, and jumps, landing on bent legs to the accompaniment of crunching glass. He bites back the groan in answer to his joints and muscles protesting the awkward pose and tension, draws the pistol, listening. Only the hum of machines.

Slowly he rounds the chair. In it, cuffed, sits the same kind of creature – human – he encountered earlier, emaciated, twisted, and very dead, with a part of construction stabbed through its – his – chest. Jack doesn’t know what he feels confronted with the sight, is it relief or pity for it – him?

The door further from his position is slightly ajar, one of the hinges broken, but he can glimpse the rubble behind it. No go. With glass creaking under his feet he slips toward the only other exit, a narrow short hallway that opens into a bigger area with strange half-finished construction bits, partitions with gaps that appear to mimic parts of buildings with doors and windows. There is a burned out frame of a car with most of its body intact to his left.

Training range. The recognition comes with the sound of a blaring alarm and his point of entrance being shut with heavy metal plate sliding into place. Jack lets the instinct take over and vaults over the nearest obstacle, a low brick wall, and immediately pushes his back against it.

The screen in front of him turns on, showing a chamber not unlike the one he was just in, but this time the chair’s occupant thrashes in the restraints snarling and hissing, more of a senseless animal than human.

“You’re turning out to be more trouble than you’re fucking worth, Morrison.” Gerard enters the frame from the right. “Or should I say, subject seventy-six. So, I was thinking we can run some test, see again how you fare against the newer models.” Jack can feel the anger, the hate, building up on his tongue, bitter seething thing thrashing inside. “Talon’s jewel in the crown, genetically engineered puppet soldiers, mindless cannon fodder, O’Deorain’s framework and Ziegler’s implementation, some fucking bullshit about telepathic command, that’s what you fucking get when you let fucking stupid bitches run things. But you see, turning one into a commander renders it fucking insane, useless, not really useful for a real military situation, but for now, it’s sufficient. Let’s run our little simulation.”

“Boss,” Rutledge’s voice coming from outside of the frame startles him, his fingers turning white on the grip of the pistol, “we had visual on our targets, six klicks away, covering a lot of ground.”

“Good. Finish it up. I don’t want anything on fucking Reaper, Replica or Harbinger getting out of here and linked with Talon. Have a nice die, Morrison,” Gerard snorts, stepping away from the camera. The alarm goes off again.