#the built to scale patterns are like. all five beats i think

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

not remix 8 more like counting to five a bunch: the remix-

[greenninjagal-blog]

Deja Vecu

Hello, its been a while!! Please accept this release of the unpublished scene from Chapter Two of Deja Vu. Its basically 4k of Remus being gay for a stranger he keeps seeing die, and ain’t that a mood? :)

Summary: The Missing Scene in chapter 2 of Deja Vu, in which Remus agrees to help a stranger rob a casino.

Words: 4397

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

At twenty-one years old, Remus finds out that robbing a casino is a lot less fun than Ocean’s Eleven led him to believe. It’s almost ridiculous the amount of security that went into protecting the chips and the cash on hand: following the path of the cash box from earlier, there’s two hired security guards framing the employee’s entrance, neither of whom like being touched nor can be persuaded to leave their posts together. There’s a card reader locking the door which despite looking like walnut wood, is actually steel with a clever paint job. And that’s just the first level.

“Predictable,” Dee says from where he had made himself comfortable on Remus’s bed with the complimentary note pad the hotel had supplied him. He had left his suit jacket on the desk to avoid the wrinkles but lounged on the foot of the bed without taking off his shoes. Remus had tossed himself down next to him, stretching out to gather all the pillows and built a throne for himself like he was eight instead of twenty-one.

Dee had watched him, back to wearing the face of the man who had approached him in the casino. Remus thinks he looks nice like that: hansom enough to please anyone who looked his way and charming enough to disarm anyone who might have seen him as out of place and forgettable enough that Remus couldn’t remember if they had gambled together previously.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Remus had pointed out. “I know what the real you looks like.”

Dee’s pen digs into the paper a little harder than necessary and Remus pretends he hadn’t noticed. The smile he receives is light and joking but it doesn’t meet his eyes at all. “I happened to like this appearance.”

Remus hums, “Lame. The scales are cool.” But he had let it drop in favor of twisting the purple casino chip between his fingers.

Dee taps his pen on the comforter in thought, his borrowed blue eyes distant as he mulled over Remus’s reports from futures that won’t happen. “What else did you notice?”

“Tessa isn’t your wife anymore, Danny.”

Dee snorts, which, by all means, should not be as graceful and elegant as he makes it seem. There’s a fluidity to the way he dips his head and scribbled on the pad of paper that makes him looks dignified. Or maybe that’s just the angle that Remus is looking at him with. A lock of his dark hair slips into his eyes and he brushes it back with two gloved fingers.

Remus falls back against the stack of pillows he had built around himself, breathing deeply and settling himself. The air smells like the lemon cleaner that the hotel staff had used to clean his room earlier when Remus had been out and about, but there’s hints of something else—something sweet and spicy with an undertone of wood.

--Dee blinks at the question, shifting so that he’s lying on his stomach, his head resting on his palm. “I wonder,” He says, with eyes so bright and blue and innocent that Remus feels like he’s stuck in them, “if you mean the Cardamom scent from my aftershave.” And Remus’s heart beats just a little faster, a little harder, a little more.—

“When I ask what else you notice,” Dee says, drawing Remus back to the present, “I meant your other senses. You’ve told me about what you’ve seen. What about sounds? The smells? You said you experience this as a first-person thing, correct?”

Remus waves a hand. “Its both. I’m there in person but I’m also having an out of body experience, too.”

Dee squints. “Doesn’t that…get confusing? How can you interpret all the stimuli at once?”

“Stimuli! What, are you a scientist in your free time?” Remus mocks, but Dee’s shoulders tense at the insinuation.

“You don’t have to tell me.” He says, “I was just curious.” He’s not, though. Remus isn’t quite sure how he knows, but Dee’s curiosity is more than just a simple question. It feels like it’s more, like he’s gathering information and sorting it away for later, like he’s making decisions based on Remus’s answers that have nothing to do with the how they are going to get into a Vault protected by a six digit code that only three people have and then get back out with more money than they can physically carry.

“Shame,” Remus says, feeling the shift in the bed as Dee’s shoulders unwind. “If you were a scientist you could dissect me for all the goodies inside! Of course, you can do that without being a scientist, too, but it’s not as fun.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

Remus flips the coin in the air and catches it with the same hand. It comes up heads. “Why, does that scare you?”

Dee watches him, the pen absently twirling in the air between them. Remus can feel the weight of his gaze like a physical thing, pressing on his chest and making him self conscious of exactly how many breathes he’s been taking. The cotton comforter has a square pattern on it that he hadn’t noticed before, but he can count only three squares between the two of them. For some reason that information feels important.

“No,” Dee says after another moment passes and the air simmers. “I supposed it concerns me.”

Remus swallows the urge to laugh at his face.

“You just seem to be a useful person,” Dee continues, defensively. “I would hate to see that usefulness be squandered.”

This time Remus does laugh and it’s a bumbling bubbling burst of noise in their quiet world. His lungs shake and his heart hurts, but he laughs and something about it makes Dee’s smile softly too. The air is light, but there’s an underlying tension there, lurking in the shadows and reminding Remus that for all the dashing good looks and the semi honest expressions, the man before him is a stranger wearing a borrowed face and absolutely no one would miss him if he disappeared.

He flips the coin again, watching it roll over itself too many times to count, bounce off his hand and then flop to a stop direction between the two of them. Dee pokes it with the butt of his pen, like he was expecting it to get up and walk away.

“To answer your question,” Remus says, breathing in deeply enough to smell his cardamom aftershave and wondering why no one else in his twenty-one years of living had thought to ask him. “Seeing the future does get confusing. But it’s whatever. It never causes anything worse than a nosebleed.”

Dee hums and scribbles something down on his notepad. If Remus sat up just slightly, he would be able to see it, but he finds he likes the mystery more. Was it notes to use against him? Or was it things to think about in the future? Or was it still the colossal list of numbers they weren’t even a fraction of the way through?

--They manage to draw the guard’s attention away with a faked emergency: Remus never put stock in his own acting skills so he stumbles and falls on another patron and lets his head crack against the corner of the a craps table just far enough away that the guards are drawn the few steps over to check on both of them. Remus doesn’t bother responding to any of their prompts until Dee with the face of Tim the dealer swipes his borrowed card and lets the door behind him close. They had radios from the same place where Dee had procured the keycard from, and Remus thinks he could fall asleep listening to Dee’s breaths.

“Left, right, or center?” Dee asks.

“Left,” Remus hums, watching the casino patrons around him. A woman in her thirties just won at a baccarat table and tried to kiss the dealer. “There’s a camera at around the corner, but it roves. Your future self said to wait five seconds then go.”

Remus waves down a waitress and orders a mojito while he waits. Dee gives soft laugh at the concept and Remus tries to calm his nerves.

“You’re so uptight,” He says softly, almost to the point where Remus can’t hear him over the chattering of other people. “Relax a little, Remus. It’s just my life.”

“The Elevator code is 7-1-3-2,” Remus tells him. “And you’re going to want change your pretty little face to someone of a higher ranking on the casino hierarchy unless you want Terry Benedict to know what we’re up to.”

Remus holds his breath as the elevator dings, and then as Dee repeats the code as he types it in, and then as the doors rumble closed. He twists the glass of his drink when it comes as he listens for the subtle clues on how far Dee is inside the belly of the beast. It takes him a moment to realize that Dee is humming softly, and his lips twist into a smile without his permission.

There’s some garbled conversation on Dee’s end, pleasantries and greetings and nice things that Remus never bothered to memorize. Dee glides through the conversations with ease, deceiving and grifting like he had been born to do it. And who knows? Maybe he had been. Polite conversation gets them through another three doors, including a hall wracked the cameras and the final elevator that can only be opened with two keys and a pin code graciously provided by an aware high-level friend that followed them in and was still chatting about their Perfect Child’s first steps.

Remus sips his mojito and watches the girl at the nearest roulette table eye the betting board. She’s still going to lose so Remus finds himself more entertained by trying to extract the lime from his drink than from watching her pout yet again when the ball lands on the red 36.

“Ah yes, the vault code,” Dee’s voice says, dragging Remus back to the mission at hand. He’s casual, loose, and ready, and Remus doesn’t understand how he does it. He glances down at the piece of paper in his hand and reads off the six-digit combination that was next on their list.

“5-1-3-2-7-6,” Remus presses a hand to his earpiece, listening as closely as he can. His breath shortens with each second, crafting infinities out of each passing tick. He can hear Dee’s laugh and his he listens closer he can make out the guard that’s next to him still chattering away. Each button bings when Dee presses it in, soft and charming and not at all like a guillotine that’s cut their mission off a hundred-some times before.

“Hey man you, okay?” The person with Dee asks, less out of curiosity and more out of suspicion.

“Yes sorry my finger slipped,” Dee says quickly and punches in the next number in ascending order out of blind hope that it might be the correct one but it isn’t and Remus knows it because that’s when the person next to Dee asks him to back away and demands to know who he is and Dee’s placating answers are never enough so he tries to shift but bullets are faster than he is and Remus rips out his ear piece right before the gun goes—

“Another bust,” Dee sighs, drawing a snake on the corner of his paper. “Somehow I feel like we could win more playing on the casino floor than doing this….” He trails, off eyes distant again, thinking more about money than about the number of deaths Remus has witnessed.

It seems strange, that Remus would care so much more about that then he does, but in a way that doesn’t surprise him. Its Death with a capital ‘D’ and in Remus’s twenty-one years of experience, the only people who feared death were those who were aware of how close it was. Remus was practically best friends with Death, with the taste of the asphalt on the highway, with the feeling of a free fall, with the awkward fit of a hotel bathtub. He’s familiar with the cold silver of fear, but it doesn’t make him any less afraid.

Dee knows he keeps dying, though. Dying alone, deep inside a labyrinth of a building and Remus wonders if he should stop this while he’s ahead. He knows once that half hour mark hits in the future there’s no more Dee to be waiting for, no pay out. Just the pain of seeing a swarm of S.W.A.T. officers covertly weave between the patrons and leave with a human sized black bag. But Remus still waits and watches, holding dutiful vigil over a fruitless endeavor and letting hope build just for it to shatter with reality.

“Why does this mean so much to you?” Remus asks, somewhere between the fifteenth and the hundred fiftieth casino themed wake procession. His eyes burn a little, and he tries to tell himself it’s just the brightness of lights.

“Money is everything,” Dee marks the next two number off his list on his notebook and talks without listening to his own words. Its not fair that he sounds so convinced it’s true, when his mouth moves like he’s practiced this in the mirror. “What about you? Why do you continue to watch?”

Remus sinks back on his pillows, holding on to that faint scent of wood and spice and the feeling in his gut that comes from every time Dee listens to his advice from the future, from every time Dee listens and adheres, from every times Dee just believes.

Remus wonders how so much trust could be from this stranger who’s known him for an hour or two, and yet Roman had never been able to just accept what he said without an argument. He sounds crazy when he talks about what will happen, but Dee just nods and lets his lips twitch into a smile when handing him a roll of toilet paper.

Remus rips off another length the cheap paper and folds its in half before shoving it on his face. There’s blood in his mustache, which is frustrating and tastes just as gross as all the other times he’s had blood dripping down his chin.

“Remus,” Dee says, without looking up from his notepad.

“Yes, dearest stranger taking up half my bed?” He inhales hard.

“This is a fourth, at most.”

“Tomayto-tomahto.”

Dee shoots him a look that he can just barely make out around the clomps of flimsy paper he’s holding to his face. He looks like he’s trying not to be amused. Which is funny! Because, well, Remus can’t remember the last time someone who wasn’t related to him was in his company long enough to find him amusing.

“Why are you doing this?” Dee asks. “Other than the money, which we agreed would be a fifty-fifty split, regardless of how much we manage to walk out of here with….but somehow I don’t see money being enough for you to watch me die over and over again. Otherwise you wouldn’t have stopped me from lunging for that cash box.”

Remus is twenty-one when he shrugs and says, “It’s something to do.”

Dee huffs another dazzling laugh and for a moment Remus thinks he can see a flash of sharpened teeth in that smile, fangs like a vampire come to life, but it’s too fast for him to be sure. “Ah, I see we’re both liars tonight. Ready for the next attempt?”

Remus wonders if it’s still lying when its technically the truth. He’s doing this because its time spent with this shapeshifting sham, this enlightening enigma, this confusing con artist who lies as easily as breathing. Remus has a hard time believing anything personal he says is true, and yet he finds himself eyeing the three squared spaces on the comforter again wondering if it would be too much to make it two, one, none.

For someone who trusts Remus to see the future seven billions times as they try to figure out the vault code, who follows every direction Remus gives without hesitation, who continues to act as if Death is not something that can happen to him, he is extraordinarily hard to trust in return. Words are meaningless because he flaunts them, and Remus grew up watching Roman practice lines enough to know when someone was acting. Dee probably isn’t even his real name.

But Remus…Remus hasn’t been seen the way that Dee sees him before. Isn’t that enough for him to want to spend as long as he can with this stranger? Regardless of the danger Dee is running straight into? Regardless of the slight thrill that he gets from the prospect that they might get away with this?

-- There’s some garbled conversation on Dee’s end, pleasantries and greetings and nice things that Remus never bothered to memorize. Dee glides through the conversations with ease, deceiving and grifting like he had been born to do it. And who knows? Maybe he had been. Polite conversation gets them through another three doors, including a hall wracked the cameras and the final elevator that can only be opened with two keys and a pin code graciously provided by an aware high-level friend that followed them in and was still chatting about their Perfect Child’s first steps.

Remus sips his chocolate martini and watches the girl at the nearest roulette table eye the betting board. He knows from all the other times he’s watched that she loses, although as he peaks over at the numbers she’s never far off. It must be that excitement of the near win that keeps her there.

“Ah yes, the vault code,” Dee’s voice says, dragging Remus back to the mission at hand. He’s casual, loose, and ready, and Remus doesn’t still understand how he does it.

“5-1-3-3-4-1.”

He can hear Dee’s laugh and his he listens closer he can make out the guard that’s next to him still chattering away. Each button bings when Dee presses it in, soft and charming and not at all like the bells of victory when the code is right, holy shit. The Code was right. Dee’s breath catches in his throat, and Remus nearly drops his martini on the floor. His heart races in his chest with an emotion that he can’t quiet put a name too.

They did it.

They…won. Remus makes his way towards the doors where they were set to meet back up, and Dee continues a casual conversation with the armed guard about children as he fills both his briefcases with as much money as he can fit. By the breathless excitement in his voice, Remus can guess there’s more money in front of him than he expected to be able to get. He invites the guard over for family dinner next night because he’s an asshole and Remus finds that quality admirable.

He waves down a waitress to get a second drink, Dee’s celebratory drink, because as soon as he got past the doors they were home free-

“Hey! Hey! Stop him!” A voice yells in Dee’s ear and the shapeshifter curses.

“Remus!” He yells, “The executive is in the halls! He-!”

There’s a gunshot and a thud and Remus rips out his earpiece and screams loud enough to make all the nearest games freeze in their tracks—

“Let me guess,” Dee says, rolling over, “Another bust? The next numbers ar—”

“No,” Remus throws himself into a sitting position, and blindly grabbing for more toilet paper. The back of his throat is slick with a metallic taste and his head spins a bit when he tries to stand up. “No, Dee!”

“No?”

“Dee, we did it! That’s the code,” Remus says, pretending like his knees don’t buckle when the floor rolls under his feet. Dee is there in a moment, hands under his arms and holding him up completely. Its almost like a hug, Remus thinks distantly. He’s twenty-one and he can’t remember the last time someone hugged him even as a joke. His skin itches at the contact, blistering and burning at the warmth of someone else being so close to him. The cardamom scent is so strong, but Remus thinks he might be okay if that was the only thing he smelled for the rest of his life.

“Are you…okay?” Dee asks. “Why are you…?”

Remus uses the back of his hand to wipe away the stream of blood from his nose and inhales hard. “You died again. The executive you choose to impersonate is in the building and you run into him right before getting out with the cash.”

“Who was it? I can change into someone else.”

Remus shakes his head. “Oh no. I’ve got no clue, but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s get someone’s attention.”

Dee grins, “You certainly got mine. What are you going to do?”

Remus slides his weight back and manages to stand on his own legs. Remus’s heart does a dance routine in his chest, moving like if it slows for even a second Dee will lunge forward and rip it from his body.

Remus tells him, “I’m going to go make a girl win at roulette so much they think she’s cheating. With a hundred thousand dollars on the line that should have their attentions, right?”

It’s not really a question. Remus knows from experience that the more games in a row that you win during a game involving so much luck, the more interest people start to take in it and you. He just needs to convince the girl to bet only where he tells her to, and then bet as much as she can.

He knows how to do it, too: simply walk up to her and offer her a free Barney if she bets on the square he tells her too. Once she wins, he tells her the next one, and maybe she puts a nickel down, or a quarter, just in case he’s wrong. When she wins again, he’ll tell her the next number, and she’ll put more on it. Then more. Then more. She doesn’t even need to believe that he can see the future. She just has to reap the rewards.

“Oh,” Dee says staring at him. “Oh.”

Remus isn’t sure what he’s looking at. He just knows that Dee’s eyes are as blue as the ocean and deeper than anything he’s ever drowned in. He’s looking at Remus again, like this is the first time he’s seeing him in this lighting, and when he smiles, his teeth are definitely sharper than before.

“I do believe,” Dee says, “we could make the best team of thieves there is out here.”

“You’re just now figuring that out?” Remus asks. “Come on. I didn’t listen to you die nine hundred times just for you to chicken out now.”

He grabs his jacket, and buttons it. With a swipe of his hands he’s hair sets back in the position before, like some type of magic act. If Dee’s the magician, Remus thinks he would be honored to be in the front row every time he performs.

“So, you’d be up to doing this again, correct?” Dee asks, with his hand on the doorknob.

“They won’t fall for the same trick twice,” Remus says, “And what makes you think that this is something I enjoy?”

“I didn’t ask if you enjoyed it. I asked if you’d do this again. Not here, but somewhere else.” Dee glances at him, side eyeing him in a way that makes the hair on the back of Remus’s neck stand on end. “You still owe me.”

“What?” Remus turns to face him, and if there’s a spark in his chest, a nudge of excitement, well who can blame him? People don’t usually want him to stay around.

Another step in the hall. “We made a deal, unless you’ve forgotten. You said that if I could figure out how you were cheating, you’d do one thing that I want you to do.”

Remus snorted and motioned between them, “What do you call this? What we’ve been doing for the past hour?”

“This?” The man gives him a shark-like smile, “You did this of your own volition!”

“I seem to recall you asking,” Remus challenges.

Dee shakes his head too innocently. “Not in this timeline.” He pulls out his pale-yellow handkerchief and offers it to him, “You still have blood on your face by the way.”

There’s something nice about the way that this man is looking at him, the way he’s still looking at him, like Remus is something more than a nuisance, more than a distraction, more than an unwanted, frustrating intrusion. It makes his knees weak and the back of his throat taste like blood again and he so desperately wants to look to the future but won’t let himself do it.

“What do you want?” Remus says, because the uncharacteristic fear in his chest is slowly turning all his organs to butterflies and he never goes back on a promise.

“Well, you did say anything I wanted right? Anything at all?”

Remus nods, rolling his finger over the snake design on the stolen poker chip. Suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough air in the world, and he’s afraid if he inhales too deeply trying to get more, the whole reality will shatter.

Dee’s form shimmers, shivers, and dissolves into Tim the dealer as they wait for the elevator to take them back to the casino floor. It’s an entirely different person but when he looks at Remus all he can see is Dee’s expression.

“Well, Remus,” He says, “After we finish up here, I want you to come with me. Work with me a bit. Let me help you amass a bit of a fortune. Strictly professional, of course. I won’t ask about your past and you don’t ask about mine. We don’t even need to be friends! Just…”

Dee offers out a gloved hand to him. “Business partners?”

Remus is twenty-one and he thinks there might be a timeline out there where he says no, but he doesn’t even entertain that thought.

“Business Partners,” He says and shakes on it.

[believerindaydreams]

Girl!bonding turned into wlw Veronica/Carla, cos apparently Carla has the Cherchez La Femme perk in addition to sewing skillz. My character now Obsidian :)))

I suppose this would be crossing at dawn 2.5, come to think of it

It isn't what Veronica's holding out, a beat-up rad counter that probably predates the war; it's the way she's offering it, with a soft protective look on her face. Anytime you wander into the engine room she seems eager to see you, glad to explain. And you seem to be wandering in there quite a lot.

"How much? We have a few caps..."

"I wouldn't charge anyone with a baby on the way for one of these."

"...that's not very Brotherhood, is it?"

Veronica screws up her face in a mock frown. "I've been reprimanded for much worse."

You both laugh; but it doesn't sit well with you, being indebted. "There must be something I can do for you, though. I'm a seamstress, I make fancy hats, any clothing you want that needs repairs..."

She goes unusually silent, absently wiping condensation on a panel with the cuff of her sleeve. "Okay. There is something I would absolutely love...if it isn't too much trouble for you. A dress. Just one sleek, gorgeous number I can put on sometimes and feel good about, because these Scribe robes? Great for punching and repair work, but sometimes you just want to be...a little more feminine. You know?"

"I can have one finished before we reach DC."

The sparkle in Veronica's eyes says that this'll be more than fair recompense.

*****

First order of business, you have to size her.

Which is where any lingering impressions that this might stay strictly on the barter level go up in smoke, because she giggles when you touch her, and your hands stray into the silky dark hair she won't let the boys see, and a tape measure winds itself coyly around your legs.

"Your husband won't mind? Only- I'd like to know if I'll be doing some punching later-"

"He's got two sweethearts bedding him already, and they don't even like girls. We're fine."

She nods and kisses you tenderly, lips that don't know five o'clock shadow brushing against your own, and it's like adolescence all over again, finding shadowy corners in the vault to try things out.

It isn't. She's responsive to your condition, letting you set the pace and moves, so careful not to give you the slightest cause for worry. You've fought and fretted and hiked over half the Mojave with your precious burden, because needs must; but with her it isn't like that, there's nothing you have to prove yourself equal to. When she caresses you in gentle protectiveness, it's like nothing else can hurt you.

Not that it's really like that, only for this little while, but- today and tomorrow, that's enough.

The dress starts to take form, pieced together from the best materials you have- she'll appreciate them like few of your customers ever have. Lining from a sexy sleepwear, because there's nothing on prewar fabrics for something that's easy on the skin but won't hold dirt or smell; you use a purple one, just right for undertones and perhaps an underskirt glimpse, if the voyeur peeps hard enough.

"Do we stop here?" Veronica asks, looking at herself in a sheer slip that would be outrageous for a Gomorrah stripper.

You laugh and bop her on the nose. "Not yet."

Over that goes the dress proper, simple enough, just fine NCR linen dyed a darkened red like Pinoy wine. Not skin-tight, you want it to be breathable for her, unrestricting if she wants to throw punches in it. Equipped with two deep pockets, trimmed with braided fire gecko hide.

That's not the best part. The best part is a hide that you've been saving, bought from a hunter who confessed he had no idea what it was he downed. Something like a coyote, but shot through with scales, and the fur had a way of rippling into transparency in a dim light.

You help Veronica put up her hair, build the hat around that and use what's left for dress trimmings, collar and a bit of the back. It's reckless; there's only this one hide, any mistakes are made for good.

Snip, snip. The days fly by in work and stitches, the nights in a glory of fulfilled desires.

"I miss Christine so much," Veronica admits one night. "She does things for the Brotherhood nobody else could, I'm so proud of her...but I miss her. She'll drop out of my world for months at a time, and I don't know what happened."

"That's why I'm not letting the boys go anywhere without me. Besides- if they would hesitate to take me, I don't want them running the risk either."

Veronica sighs, rolls closer towards you; you trace little patterns across her breasts with the tips of your fingers. "Sometimes I think I should be with her all the time- but this train, it's like I was built to tend the Pacific Flyer. Nobody could look after her like I do, and there's so much that still needs doing. I want to build a mobile workshop, I want to see if I can connect the station with the NCR lines...so I have my work, and Christine has hers, and we only get the moments in between. It's all right. But I miss her."

You kiss the hardened muscle of her punching arm, and feel glad it hasn't come to that with you and Boone.

*****

"There's something you should know about the station elevator, at DC. I know it works, but- I'm not sure you can get back. Or if it'll come back down again." Veronica tosses maize into Cow's manger, which is accepted placidly and without complaint.

"It's okay. We can't...we can't return to the Mojave. Whatever's there, we have to live with."

"I know. I'm just warning you." She puts the shovel down, picks up the muck rake. "You'll never get everyone plus a Brahmin in that elevator, so who gets left behind?"

It's an impossible question. Boone, your baby's father, the mere hope of whom gave your the strength to come back from the hell called Arizona. Manny who found you when you'd given up, flamed a street of slavers into the ground to save you, carried you back to the river. Arcade, who's giving your boys something they need and never knew to ask for, who's sacrificed everything he ever had for the safety of your group.

"Cow. I can't dream of any of us losing each other."

"I'll tend her for you, then," Veronica says; but with a heartbeat too long a delay, and you know she was offering you something more. A kind way out, life in this craft of sturdy metal like the vault that nurtured you.

It's an offer you can see someone else taking. Just not you.

"She likes being scratched behind both ears at once," you explain; and the rest will have to go unsaid.

*****

Manny whistles when he sees Veronica in the new dress; Boone admires the hat, awkwardly; Arcade doesn't seem to notice at all and pesters the engineer to help him with the specs for his holorifle.

Nobody here really sees how beautiful she is in it; but never mind. She knows.

And you know.

[geezerwench]

QAnon Woke Up the Real Deep State

To the QAnon community, and others involved in storming the Capitol:

The Deep State is real, but it’s not what you think. The Deep State you worry about is mostly made up; a fiction, a lie, a product of active imaginations, grifter manipulations, and the internet. I’m telling you this now because storming the Capitol building has drawn the attention of the real Deep State — the national security bureaucracy — and it’s important you understand what that means.

You attacked America. Maybe you think it was justified — as a response to a stolen election, or a cabal of child-trafficking pedophiles, or whatever — but it was still a violent attack on the United States. No matter how you describe it, that’s how the real Deep State is going to treat it.

The impact of that will make everything else feel like a LARP.

The Real Deep State

I’ve been teaching college students about the Deep State for years, and have interacted with it on occasion. By “Deep State,” I’m referring to executive branch agencies populated with unelected officials, especially those involving national security, law enforcement, and intelligence. The non-nefarious name for it is “the federal bureaucracy,” with the subset that includes the military, CIA, and FBI known as “the national security state.”

In 2017, conservative writer David Frum quipped that if you replaced “Deep State” with “rule of law,” you’d have a better understanding of Trumpist complaints.

There’s some truth in that. Federal agencies and their mandates were created by law, their annual budgets are determined by law, and they’re overseen by elected officials. Their main job is executing U.S. law, and one reason they’ve clashed with the White House is being asked to do things outside their legal abilities, or to not do things that are legally required.

So rule of law is part of it, but it’s not that simple.

The president appoints and the Senate confirms top officials, from the Secretary of State to the five members of the Arctic Research Commission, over 1,200 in total. Every other executive branch employee — over 4 million if you include the military, over 2.7 million if you don’t — is hired or recruited, not elected or appointed. This means that the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, the intelligence community, and federal law enforcement are staffed with people the agencies hired themselves.

Their mandates are broad. For example, the FBI is supposed to “investigate federal crimes and threats to national security.” While there are laws giving the FBI certain powers (e.g. to arrest people) and limits (needing warrants), a lot is open to interpretation, especially regarding national security threats.

It’s fair to say the FBI, CIA, IRS, CDC, and other federal agencies have, to some extent, taken on lives of their own. So has the military, and the larger defense-industrial complex. They’re under control of elected and appointed leaders, but also not, acting according to established laws, established regulations (many of which they wrote themselves), and individual judgment calls. You could call that “the Deep State.”

National Security

If you want to understand the real Deep State, the biggest thing you need to know is it’s institutional, impersonal, and operates on a national scale.

The law enforcement-intelligence-national security bureaucracy doesn’t really care about a lot of the little things people think it cares about. It’s mostly focused on terrorists, serial killers, narco-traffickers, and foreign governments. Threats to the nation.

Previous QAnon activity wasn’t on that scale, but the Capitol attack is. I don’t think this has sunk in yet. It wasn’t 9/11, but it was bigger than, for example, Benghazi.

Americans storming the Capitol to prevent Congress from carrying out election law hasn’t happened before. When four Puerto Rican nationalists shot at Congressmen from the House balcony in 1954, they were rightly called terrorists, convicted in federal court, and imprisoned. And that was just four attackers, no one died, and it wasn’t encouraged by a losing presidential candidate to disrupt the peaceful transition of power.

The Capitol attack was a unique event in American history, something they’ll teach about in high school. National security analysts are comparing it to last year’s FBI-thwarted plot to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, which came a few months after armed demonstrators forcefully stopped business at the Michigan statehouse. There have been armed post-election demonstrations at multiple statehouses, and reports of plots to storm them next week.

It’s a pattern. And after the Capitol attack, the Deep State is going to take it seriously.

U.S. code defines “sedition” as using “force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” That’s what you did. And the legal process you tried to stop is one of the most important in American democracy.

Five people are dead, and it could’ve easily been more. You beat a police officer to death and injured others. You set up a gallows and chanted “hang Mike Pence.” While some goofy attention-seekers attracted the most focus at first, it’s increasingly clear that some who stormed the Capitol, likely members of far right militias, were searching for Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other national leaders, and would’ve killed them if they had the chance. That’s terrorism, fortunately thwarted by Capitol security and luck.

Compare that to, for example, riots this past summer. Looting is bad, but it’s a problem for police and insurance companies. Trying to burn down a police station or courthouse is worse, but that too is a law enforcement problem, perhaps one requiring federal assistance. Storming the Capitol, forcefully hindering the execution of U.S. law, and trying to kill top elected officials is a national security problem.

What you did was on another level, and the reaction will be too.

After the Capitol Attack

By “you,” I don’t mean you personally (unless you were there), but your movement as a whole. QAnon’s fingerprints are all over this.

A 35-year-old woman named Ashli Babbitt, shot by Capitol police as she climbed through an opening near where elected officials were hiding, was a QAnon believer who thought she was taking part in the prophesized “storm.” The guy in the horns who traipsed through the Senate chamber is known as the “Q Shaman.” QAnon slogans and hashtags, such as “where we go one we go all,” can be seen on shirts and signs at the riot, and on tons of related social media posts.

This means that, for the first time, the Deep State cares about you.

No matter what anyone’s told you, Deep State operatives weren’t spending their time messing with your internet discussions. That’s below their radar. It wasn’t until May 2019 that an FBI intelligence bulletin warned of the potential for terrorism from “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” using QAnon and Pizzagate as examples. But it didn’t become a law enforcement or counterterrorism priority.

I should know — I’ve been trying to get them to take QAnon more seriously. This past August, after Trump publicly acknowledged the movement, I warned of the potential for election violence in a national security publication called Defense One:

Win, lose, or too close to call, Trump will be in a position to activate the violent subsets of QAnon, deliberately or inadvertently. The president has been insisting, without evidence, that the election will be rigged, blaming an ambiguous “they” or a rotating cast of villains. The conspiracy-minded QAnon community makes for a receptive audience.

If Trump starts tweeting things like “RIGGED! They’re trying to take your country. Don’t let them! THIS IS IT! Second Amendment!” — let alone if he uses QAnon lingo like “the Storm is upon us” — there’s a risk that some violence-embracing QAnon followers decide to act. And if some do, it could encourage others.

That’s basically what happened. If anything, I think I guessed low.

But now that QAnon was involved in violent sedition, the national security state is paying attention. Arrests of people caught on camera storming the Capitol have already begun. Prosecutions will follow. Big tech companies — who, while powerful, are weaker than, and have a healthy fear of the government — are now treating QAnon almost like how they treat ISIS. A giant federal apparatus built to fight al Qaeda will shift some capacity to fighting you, especially the white nationalist and anti-government militias in your orbit.

You cheered on lawyers who said they’d release the Kraken. But now you’ve poked Leviathan.

This is what you need to absorb: QAnon and “stop the steal” are forever associated with a violent attack against the United States. Maybe that’s not what it’s meant to you, maybe you think that’s a misread of last week’s events, but that’s how the real Deep State, a lot of elected officials, and much of the public sees it.

If that isn’t what you signed up for, now would be a good time to get out.

https://arcdigital.media/qanon-woke-up-the-real-deep-state-72bbfcb79488

[the-knights-who-say-book]

Star-Scales

They still told stories about Axaria’s dragons. How huge they were, how terrifying. How they blotted out stars and planets, and made a new aurora with the light of the sun glancing off their opalescent scales.

They still told the stories, even though they had killed every dragon they could get their hands on. They had the gall to pass those stories around like the jeweled scales and razor-sharp tusks that they passed around the black market, more valuable with each passing year since Axaria’s dragons had been eradicated.

It made Sol furious just to think about it, so she would have avoided them. But unlike the exorbitantly expensive scales and tusks, the stories weren’t hard to come by. They followed her around.

Some of the stories were fiction.

An example of a lie: the tusk of an Axarian dragon retains its powerful strength even after its death, and can be ground up into a medicinal powder to transfer that strength.

But some stories were true.

An example of a legend: the Axarian dragons had always been a nervous and skittish species, as prone to freeze during danger as they were to fight, and had long depended on a handful of trusted humans to guard them from human threats.

Sol heard mostly lies as she navigated the thronging marketplace. Lies about great battles and knights who faced down ferocious dragons one on one. Lies about stolen girls and the princes who saved them from the dragons’ clutches. Lies about how the Jasparian king had wiped out the dragons to prove that he was god-touched and god-chosen, that he would rule forever on his throne carved from dragon bone, kept alive and strong by powdered tusk looted from the battle fields.

Sol knew that the powder tasted like ash and did nothing of the sort. The king had probably also figured out as much by now, but that didn’t stop the Jasparians from passing the story from mouth to mouth.

She preferred to keep her distance from the Jasparians who had settled in her valley to make a living out of the death that still marked the landscape, scavenging what bone and fang and scale and tusk they could from the battlefields to sell to the wider world, turning up less and less each year. Soon the remains would run out and this town would no longer be fed by the sluggish blood of slaughtered dragons. But it would still be built on their ruins. Long after the townspeople finally began sowing the battlefields for crops instead of corpses, the stains of a bloodier past would linger.

She preferred to keep her distance, but she couldn’t always. She had hungry mouths to feed, not the least of which was her own. When supplies she couldn’t hunt or gather herself ran low, she took herself into town.

A thin layer of snow crunched beneath her feet, grinding between heel and cobble. The first fall of the season, the townspeople’s terror. Thick snow would make their scavenging work hard. Frozen ground would make it nearly impossible. They rushed to beat both.

Those who ran businesses and did work that didn’t relate to the dragon fields had less to fear from the coming winter. Their income was steadier, more predictable. Those who relied on the dragon fields’ yields had the opportunity to strike rich, but they might not strike at all. As the hardest season bore down on them, scavengers worked with a quiet frenzy and the last merchants made preparations to depart as soon as the haul came in. They would take the treasure to Jaspar, loudly auction off tusks to the king’s men or perhaps quietly to his enemies, sell glimmering scales to ladies who would wear them in exquisite patterns on their skirts or to apothecaries who would concoct miracle “cures” out of them.

Winter was dangerous for Sol too. Living outside the town left her vulnerable, and heavy snowfall might trap her in the caves for days at a time. She needed to stock up on supplies. Only this relentless practicality could drive her into town.

Like other merchants, Carrion did business out of the rooms he rented while in town. A wooden sign that hung out his window, bearing the symbol of a crossed pen and dragon tusk, indicated he was still open for business.

Her boots left wet prints down the entrance hall to his door. She had ignored the rug on which she was supposed to wipe them, which was woven with the image of a green dragon with a pen in its mouth, its delicate thread-work smeared with the mud of countless other feet. Carrion did not comment on this when he answered her knock. As usual, all his attention stayed on her pack from the moment she entered his room, even when he clasped her hand and when he poured them tea, which she wouldn’t drink, and asked her polite questions, which she wouldn’t return.

His greed was absolute and undisguised. She appreciated this about him. It made him the most trustworthy merchant she’d ever met. He would never spread awareness about the strange Axarian girl he did business with, for fear that she would do business with anyone else if they found out what she could offer.

In this they understood each other, though her understanding of him was somewhat more complete than his understanding of her. They knew what each other wanted. She took things from her pack and set them on the table. Delicate scales no bigger than the pad of her thumb. Chips of tusk. A talon the length of his pointer finger, though equivalent to an adult dragon’s pinky nail.

“You have a talent,” he said gleefully, examining her offerings. It wasn’t a compliment, more an expression of his own luck. Her talent for finding remnants of quality fed his greed. He fingered the smooth fronts of the scales, their rough backs, examined rippled edged. “I’ll give you five copper pieces each.”

“One silver each.” She didn’t enjoy haggling, and resented him for making them go through it each time.

“Ah, but they’re so small. I cannot give you the same price I would give for one of those.” He waved one hand to scales stacked on his desk from previous dealings, some as large as dessert plates, but his eyes never left her scales.

“Mine are higher quality.” They shone nearly as clear as mirrors, and had the perfect flexibility to be used in embroidery. Larger scales came from older dragons, dulled and stiff with age, edges ragged. They would need to be sanded, top layers excruciatingly peeled off, before they were used in jewelry or decorative armor.

“One silver piece for every three scales,” he conceded, which was the price they both knew was warranted and expected. They moved on.

The sky was taking on the purple tint of evening by the time Carrion had paid out and she had spent half her payment to load her arms with furs, long-lasting foods, and an ax blade to replace one that had melted. The snow that had crunched pleasantly underfoot earlier seemed to slow and dampen each step she took home, lugging her purchases and sweating under her cloak.

The slit-entrance to her cave was nearly hidden in the dark by the time she got there. Dragging a boulder away to make the entrance wider, she was almost bowled over before she could drag everything inside. Rigel launched himself into her arms with the intensity of one who had been abandoned for a year rather than half a day, keening loudly into her ear.

“Stop it, stop it,” she mumbled, trying to keep hold of his wriggling body while fending off his siblings. Pollux and Altair crowded around her legs, threatening to trip her with their constant shuffling. Altair snuffled the hand she used to push his snout away from the food, and let out a dissatisfied series of clicks and caws.

She stroked their heads and long, elegant necks, knocking a loose scale from Pollux. “You couldn’t have lost that this morning?” she asked. Pollux stuck her snout in the snow to sniff her own scale. “Take,” Sol told her. “Take. There you go. Inside now.”

Pollux gently took the scale in her mouth and scampered inside, Altair chasing in case she knew something about food being inside that he didn’t. Rigel stuck close to Sol’s legs as she gathered up her purchases and came inside, letting out irritated chirps when she failed to hurry.

Inside, Pollux climbed the single chair to reach the bowl on the desk where she dropped the loose scale, flapping her thin, undeveloped wings for balance. Rigel made anxious noises at her too, causing Altair to pick up his whining, in case he ought to be worried as well.

Eager to halt the litany of dragon cries sooner rather than later, Sol pulled strips of meat from the hooks that hung out of the dragons’ reach and clicked her tongue for their attention. They gathered quickly, jostling each other. Sol fed them in birth order: Pollux, already growing telltale female ridges above her eyes; Altair, whose tail was still more thorny than spiny; and Rigel, who hadn’t even begun to shed his baby scales yet.

While their sharp teeth were busy with food, Sol took the opportunity to examine them at their most distracted and least scratchy. Pollux’s talon was regrowing nicely from her ill-advised tussle with a boar. Sol wished she could have kept it as a keepsake. It hurt her heart to think of Pollux’s talon set into a silver hilt to make a souvenir dagger for some Jasparian noble—someone who would think nothing of it except as a remnant of some ancient beast. Not a battle-sacrifice from her little Pollux with bright eyes and hot breath, who was currently making a valiant effort to keep ahold of her dinner with one less talon than her brothers.

No one deserved these pieces of her dragons. But they were what kept them all in provisions as Sol waited these long years for the hatchlings to grow up.

Sighing, Sol levered herself up from the cave floor, leaving the dragons to feast alone, and went to poke at the fire. The great egg at its center smoldered with more heat than the flames, and a dark shape within it moved restlessly as she stirred the coals. “Soon, little one,” she crooned. “Soon, soon.”

It was the last dragon egg left. She’d nearly thought that it was dormant, that it hadn’t survived its mother’s death on the battle fields. But life still simmered inside it, taking its time to coalesce. She hadn’t dared name the others before they hatched for good, but she called this one Saiph, as if it needed to hear a name to know she was waiting.

As she hummed to the fire, Rigel came and sprawled out on the floor with his head on her lap, and she stroked the smooth ridges of his back, the soft membrane of his growing wings. At her touch he stretched them out, his eyes closed trustingly. She traced his narrow snout and tiny tusk nubs.

If the king had his way, his men would dig the tusks from each of her dragons and grind them up so the king could have another spoonful of ash. All for nothing but his reputation. But he could build himself a fortress of lies if he wanted—once the hatchlings were grown and he had to match his lies against legends, the walls would come crumbling down.

Altair settled next to her, his solid warmth small but concentrated, sitting right on Rigel’s tail with studied innocence. As Rigel chirped in annoyance, Pollux plopped herself onto the hatchling pile and leaned her head on Sol’s shoulder. Between dragon-warmth and the fire’s heat, the cave glowed hot as a beating heart.

Soft clicks came from the egg, as if Saiph was pecking experimentally. The dragons and the dragon-guard waited patiently.

[believingbrook]

taakitz hanahaki, 5

He spends the evening and subsequent morning trembling more often than not. His sister is quick to help whenever his body racks with coughs, steadying hands on his shoulders, his chest, his cheeks. The weed-killer concoction Merle whipped up tastes absolutely foul, but it tastes better than literally dying, so Kravitz will take what he can get.

In truth, he breathes more easily than he has in weeks. But the attacks only grow steadily more frequent as the hours wear on, and by five in the morning the next day Merle tells Raven gruffly to lay off the weed-killer or she’s going to tear holes in his stomach and then he’ll start coughing up blood for real.

Kravitz can’t convince her to sleep, though he tries, plaintively, for three hours. He’s a big boy, he points out, a wry twist to his lips, and besides if he needs anything he has Merle; even still, he wins only by pointing out that they’re out of groceries and he’d like to not die of nutrient-deprivation before the disease gets him.

“An hour,” she promises, keys in hand. “I’ll just be gone an hour. Hold — hold on.”

“Holding,” he says, and smiles for her as best he can.

As soon as she’s gone he slumps back against the couch and stares at the ceiling. He’d traced the pattern of whirls on their ceiling hundreds of times when he was child, but it’s different now; the graceful swoops seem shorter, their ends more abrupt.

He tries his best not to read too deep into that.

Ten minutes after Raven leaves, he tries to sing.

He’d put on musicals, when he was a kid. Stupid songs he’d improvise. He was all of the characters at once; a healer and a fighter and a wizard sometimes, a Grim Reaper the next, Death incarnate with apologies on his lips. His vocal range was small but he pretended it wasn’t, warbling his way through melodies best left for sopranos and ruffling through bass-parts.

Later she bought him a piano, a tiny thing held together more by tape than wood, but the keys worked and Kravitz was entranced. He’d spend hours, hours that Raven needed to study, to work, plucking through melodies and making his own music.

She never complained, not once. He smiled so freely, pulling beauty from keys of fake-ivory and hard plastic.

She loved it when he sang. Raven would never say it — lies are not her way but obfuscation is, because she would never hurt him — but she misses them, he knows. She put up with some ten years of truly horrendous singing — he knows, because she took videos on shitty phone cameras she purchased secondhand from the sketchy store below their flat — before his voice matured into something pleasant.

Songbird, she called him. The only nickname she’d ever given him.

He hasn’t heard it in three years.

He starts with an easy note; a low C, perfectly middle range. It scrapes and shuffles along his throat and he clears it, ignoring the pricking at his eyes. He can do this. He can. He’s going to sing for her, one last time.

It comes out as a puff of air. He tries something higher, a G; he thinks he’s got it, briefly, and hope flares in his chest until he realizes that it’s an octave up and not his voice at all, but the whistle in his throat.

Okay. Okay, he tells himself; he can do this. He clears his throat, reaches for a drink of water — it’s warm, and he’s grateful, because cold water freezes a singer’s vocal cords and makes control of vibrato difficult — and tries again.

He tries the whole scale three times over. Twenty-one notes. Not a single one sounds anything like music, the farthest thing from a songbird’s lilting melody.

One last time, he thinks, crumpling over himself. He cries, quietly; he just wanted to sing, one last time. Just for her, so she’d have something happy to remember of him.

By the time he’s finished his eyes are red and swollen, his nose running, and he’s grateful at least that Raven wasn’t there to see that. Maybe he’ll steal the camera she keeps the video on — he knows where she keeps them, they’re in her room, and it’s not hard to find because both of their rooms are tiny — and send it to her, sometime this week. He doesn’t want her to forget that there were good times, before all...this.

He heaves himself onto one elbow, grasping blindly for his phone. He finds it, unlocks it, pointedly not thinking about his passcode, and dials a number with shaking fingers.

“Hey, Kravitz!”

“Julia,” Kravitz says. Only in comparison to hers does he realize just how awful, how spindly and cracked, his own voice sounds. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course. You sound like hell, my dude.”

“I know. Hey, listen, Julia, there’s, uh...” he trails off, clears his throat. “I’m spitting up flowers.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, shit.”

He grins. “Oh shit is right.”

“You’re this bad already?”

“Hey, fuck you too,” he says, slipping on a dumb accent. It earns him a disgusted groan, as he knew it would, but the sound makes him smile.

There’s a beat of silence (and he wonders, briefly, again, as he has so often as he stared up at the ceiling; how many of Taako’s heartbeats would fit into this silence), and then she says, “How long?”

“Three years.”

“Huh,” she says. There’s a shuffling as she stands — Julia always needed to be moving, did awful on those standardized tests, the ones that stretched for six hours because she could only stand every other hour — and he hears her pacing. “You need me to come over?”

“No,” he says. “Thank you, but I just — wanted to talk to someone, I guess.”

Another silence. Her footsteps clack through the phone. Her whole house, the one she and Magnus built together, is made of wooden floors, polished and lacquered. “This sounds late-stage.”

Kravitz clears his throat. He hadn’t expected her to realize. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Couple days at most.”

“Huh.”

Her footsteps have stopped. Kravitz listens to her breathing, faint though it is; it’s strong and uninterrupted and for the first time he feels over-conscious of his own. He sounds thin and reedy and frail and he itches with the need to get up, to do something other than lie around and wallow in his ineffectiveness —

“I ever tell you how me and Magnus met?”

Kravitz snorts. “Only about six times, Julia.”

“Hey, it’s a good story.” He can hear her smile through the phone. “But you never heard the full story, bone boy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, oh.” A lull, then a whoosh of air as she sits; probably the red armchair, the one by their fireplace. That one’s her favorite. When Kravitz visits her, her and Magnus, he takes the purple one, so close their feet brush. “Listen, all of us have got secrets.”

“At least yours aren’t life-threatening,” he mutters, before his mind catches up with his mouth. “Oh, shit,” he says. “That sounded, uh, shitty — ”

“No stress. You’re dying; that sucks.”

In some ways, Julia is even more blunt than his sister. Where his sister keeps secrets, sometimes, Julia is an open book. “Yeah.”

“Tell me if you need me to come over,” she says. “So I was in the mountains, that part was true, about two hours out west.”

“And you met Magnus in a pub.”

“Not quite,” Julia laughs. “So you know how I go hunting.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, out west is bear country.”

“Oh my gods.”

He can hear her shrug. “Good hunting, Krav. Anyway, so I killed this bear — ”

“It didn’t kill you first?” he interrupts, swallowing down his own laughter. He doesn’t want to irritate his throat any more than it already is, but he feels lighter. Julia makes him feel better.

“Not a thing on this earth that could kill me.”

“Except, you know, the passage of time.”

“No, I’m gonna be immortal,” Julia says. “Stop interrupting, you want the full thing or not?”

“Sorry, please go on.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m not at all,” he snickers.

“You’re a wonderful person, Kravitz, but sometimes you’re awful. So: me, holding a dead bear. I had to haul it down the mountain, because I didn’t bring a cart and, y’know, you gotta take those things with you somehow. So I string it up over my shoulder and head on down the trail. Now this thing’s all rocky and muddy, buncha branches and stuff, but this is where Sherpa training came in handy ‘cause I hopped right over that stuff — oh hey, Mags.”

Faintly he hears Magnus’s voice through the receiver. “Yeah,” Julia says. “It’s Kravitz.” A beat, then, “No, he’s got hanahaki.”

Kravitz lets his head fall back against the pillow, phone pinned between his ear and the pillow. “Three years. Yes, for Taako. Hey, Kravitz?”

“Hmm?”

“Taako called you?”

Kravitz swallows, hard. “No,” he says.

Julia hums, relays this to Magnus. Then, “I’m telling him how we met, babe,” she says, then, “I’m putting you on speaker ‘cause Magnus wants to talk too, except just remember that he’s a lying liar that lies.”

“I’m an honest country man!”

“You led a rebellion,” she says dryly.

“So did you!”

“Besides the point,” she sniffs. Kravitz listens to them, smiling and aching at the same time; their easy banter reminds him of — of himself and Taako, before Taako emerged from his bedroom carrying a jar full of petals. This could have been his, if he’d been better. If he’d been more honest, more like Julia and Magnus; if he’d just reached out harder.

Maybe Taako deserves better than him.

Either way, Kravitz thinks, it’s a moot point now; he won’t last long enough to find out. He hopes that, whatever happens when he’s gone, Taako finds happiness in someone.

Magnus’s voice crackles through the phone. “Kravitz.”

“Yeah?”

“You all right?”

“Peachy,” he says, then winces. That’s Taako’s word. “I mean — fine, I’m doing fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Horseshit,” Julia says. “But okay, we’ve got your attention now. Anyway, so I’m coming down the mountain, bear strung over my shoulders, and this buffoon — ”

“ — hey! — ”

“ — walks out right in front of me, a knife and wooden duck in his hands, and we collide and everything in our hands go flying. The bear carcass in my hands impales itself on Magnus’s tiny knife — ”

“ — it was a big knife,” Magnus protests. “I have big knives.”

Julia snorts. “Your knives are lovely, dear, but I’m talking about the physical, actual knives. This call is a no-innuendo zone.”

“Oh.” Magnus considers this, and Kravitz can almost see the sheepish smile stretch across his face. “Okay then.”

It takes them ten minutes to wind their way through their tale, and Kravitz finds himself laughing. Their harmony is so easy and natural, and even though Kravitz envies it he relishes in it, too. They’re lights; they’re the perfect harmony to a melody that wrote itself.

Embarrassingly, he does have to cut them off, once, to hack the newest blooms out of his throat; but when he returns to the call, neither of them comment, and for that Kravitz is grateful.

Later that evening Raven helps him wash, re-dress, and sits him down with beeswax and a fine-toothed comb.

She sections his hair smoothly, twisting her comb through each one. For half an hour Kravitz loses himself in the motion of her fingers, the gentle tug of hair against his scalp, the nape of his neck. His sister’s fingers are long and calloused but with him, she’s always been gentle.

He can hear Merle, snoring away in the other room. It had been the dwarf who’d told them both, with a sensitivity that Kravitz had never expected from the bawdy man, that Kravitz has started spitting up blood — here he’d pointed out a stain on the roses’ petals, nearly indistinguishable from their normal scarlet coloring — and he needed to stop with the herbicide or he’d bleed out before the obstruction in his airway could get him.

To tell the truth, Kravitz isn’t sure what they’re waiting for. He’s good as dead already. But Raven refuses to let him stop; keeps him breathing in the small hours of the morning when he just wants it to end, he just wants to breathe again, wants to get rid of the persistent ache in his chest from not enough air. He’s stubborn but he’s never been able to match her in stubbornness.

Besides, he can’t leave her. More than anything, he fights for that.

He checks his phone without much hope, and each time sees the same thing: his background, empty. He wonders if Taako even checked his texts, listened to his voicemails, or if he blocked Kravitz altogether. It seems silly, to die for a love so clearly unreturned, but more than anything Kravitz knows he could not live without loving his sister and his dearest friends.

Julia and Magnus hadn’t spoken another word on his condition during their conversation, a fact for which Kravitz is devoutly grateful. Though toward the end he couldn’t say much to them, it was nice to pretend, even just for an hour or so, that everything was okay.

His sister finishes the last of his twists and stops, and something curious happens: she spreads her fingers over his temple, then Kravitz feels a forehead press against the back of his head.

“Raven?”

“I’m okay,” she whispers.

There’s a quiet sniff from behind him, and Kravitz freezes. He does not turn around. One of her hands leaves his scalp to clap over her mouth, her shoulders tensing, and Kravitz reaches up to cover a hand with his own.

“No tears for me,” he says gently. “I will be okay.”

“I know,” she says, her voice as unsteady as Kravitz has ever heard it. If he doesn’t look back he can pretend she’s not crying. “I know you will be, and I know that it’ll be happier than — than this, but Kravitz, I....”

“I love you,” he says. “I love you. I’m sorry I have to leave you alone.”

“It’s okay,” she says. Her second lie of the evening.

“It isn’t.” Tears be damned, he shifts to his knees and embraces his sister, lets her head fall to his shoulder without complaint. This time he rests a cheek on the top of her head, fingers threading through the small hairs at the nape of his neck. “It isn’t okay, and it’s allowed to not be okay. Just — talk to someone, okay? When all this is over? Merle, or Julia, or Sloane. Someone.”

For the first time, Raven doesn’t protest that there won’t be an end. Doesn’t urge him to keep fighting for a nebulous continuation he’s not sure he even wants.

“I will.”

“Promise?”

She huffs a broken laugh. “I promise, Kravitz.”

He musters all his strength, that evening, to tuck her in bed, turn out the lights. His chest is on fire the whole time, like he can feel his ribs splintering, but he kisses her forehead and turns out the lights and stumbles back to the couch, catching himself heavily on the arm. Wincing, he slides his back against the cushions and stares at the ceiling.

Even in this, a relatively good moment, it hurts to breathe. He can’t get quite enough air and it drives him mad, that anxious tension always below his sternum. He can’t breathe, his hands shake, his eyes water of their own accord and dehydration headaches are his constant companions; not only because he cries out what he drinks but because the damn roses take it to keep themselves alive.

Again he traces the aimless patterns on the ceiling with his eyes, then shuts them with lips pursed.

For the first time, he lets himself get angry.

It’s not a sensation he feels often. Justice is his shtick; normally when he’s angry it’s at an abstract concept, like capitalism or the disparity in wage gaps between all sorts of people. When he was younger he wanted to be a lawyer; he’s training to be a doctor, now, for the idealistic notion that he could save people.

At first that anger directs toward himself, deflecting from its true target because how stupid, how childish and naive, to think that he could save anyone else when he can’t save himself. How foolish to think he could coax life back into his patients when he couldn’t even coax love into the one person who mattered the most.

Then he takes a deep, steeling breath and thinks no; this isn’t his fault.

He can’t blame Taako for not loving him but the fact of his absence sits bitterly on the back of Kravitz’s tongue. He hasn’t called, he hasn’t texted — no one’s so much as spoken his name in the past three days, and for the first time since Raven proposed it Kravitz considers: maybe he really didn’t care.

Maybe, those ten years, Taako didn’t care at all.

The thought makes him feel sick so he shelves it, willing his breathing to calm, and tries to go to sleep. His throat aches so hard he thinks perhaps he’s going to die tonight, Merle in one room and Raven far away in the other but figures, when the time comes, he’ll work it out.

[creative-frequency]

Connor|RK800 x Reader: Ocularity Ch. 8

Word count: 2588 Warnings/Categories: Rating up to explicit, romance, friendship, fluff, light angst, bad language, uncle Hank Notes: Right now it’s hard to find time to write, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely with each chapter.

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August 15th 11:54 AM

The anatomy of androids is divided into five categories: Body structure, muscle systems, sensory systems, power source, which is Thirium 310 for all current models in production, and the central computing unit, for which CyberLife has coined the term “the mind palace”.

External testing of the body structure is done mostly empirically by inspecting the android’s structure. For instance, the seams need to be correctly welded with no leaks, and there can’t be any tears or gashes on the surface. Thermal and other methods of scanning radiation can be used if there is a need for deeper examination.

The testing of muscle systems is oriented towards challenging the physical abilities and functions of the android, but it’s impossible to completely separate it from the body structure. It’s better to examine the android as a whole and test all of its capabilities as one working machine unit. One popular method is to push it to its physical limits while overseeing the results.

The sensory systems of an android contain the same main categories as a human’s senses: Sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. It’s crucial in order to achieve a humane design for androids to have and use these abilities. To increase their humanization, the sensory systems cannot be limited to the five; sense of balance, temperature, proprioception and in some models sexual stimulation, though it works differently from humans, are important.

In most areas, androids’ senses, especially where they’re not based on any specific sensory organ, are superior to humans. Their perception of time, agency and familiarity does not rely on the fragile human memory. The memory components are just computer parts containing information, ones and zeros, that can be copied, extracted and even manipulated like any data.

Without special equipment it’s difficult to test how an android receives the information about its body and the surrounding environment, but it’s easy to measure what information it receives.

The bulk of the physical level in your testing schedule with Connor consist of the muscle and sensory systems. Everything else will overlap with them in some way. After he is clear on the physical functionality, you’ll focus on the social modules, which is more or less your specialty.

“So that presentation about the physiology of androids is what made you pursue a career in the field?” Connor asks, dissipating the cloud of memories in your mind.

You focus back onto his brown eyes. You have only just returned to your office from the company cafeteria where you and Connor were instantly swarmed by eager colleagues. He was not fazed at all by the amount of people who wanted to congratulate and wish good luck to you both. In truth, you were the one who wanted to just grab the cup of tea and run back upstairs.

“Well not entirely… It was more about how he seemed to think that only boys could like robots.” You flash Connor a winning smile, feeling pride of your pettiness decades past.

“I see,” he replies and sets to sit down, “Your colleagues seem to think highly of you. They were eager to see what becomes of us.”

His choice of words entices a tense chuckle out of you and warms your face. You make yourself busy by leaning over the datapad on the desk and start skimming the social relations module list to see if there is anything to mark as checked based on the cafeteria visit. Connor just sits still, slightly looking around with a neutral smile on his face like the perfect plastic sculpture he is.

“Alright, let’s move forward…” you say and straighten your back.

Paragraph seven, physical functions.

Each body part of an android has a specified list of functions – movement area, rotation, strength and so on. It’s the part you’ve been least looking forward to. It’s mechanic, pure numbers that can be measured in pre-defined scales. You just have to order the machine to execute and see does it achieve the promised figures.

Being the most advanced prototype built so far means Connor’s physical abilities are remarkable. He is optimized for strength and speed, and the ultimate limitations derive from the size of his body. The literal heavy lifting part will have to wait for a more suitable environment, but checking the baseline, such as the rotation and angles of joints can be done in your office.

Toes, feet, knees, legs, hips, joints, joints, muscles, more joints… Mostly it’s a boring list to go through, until one sentence makes you so flustered you wish you could clip through the floor.

Why on earth would a detective android need a fully functioning–

“Doctor?” Connor asks when you fall silent. His LED is blinking.

Your gaze jolts up from the datapad and you can feel your ears warming alarmingly.

“Uh, there must be a mistake on the list. I-I’ll notify my superior about it,” you splutter hastily. You try think back to the assembly, cursing why you didn’t pay attention to such details. You were too charmed by the face to even look… down.

How the hell are you supposed to test that?

Looking at the earnest, tranquil smile and the dark depths of the brown eyes in front of you, you know exactly what it would take to conduct a test. The thumping of your heart beats in your ears covers every other sound.

You clear your throat awkwardly and resist the urge to fan your face with something. “Moving on to the next part.”

Connor nods.

“Fine motor skills – wrists, hands and fingers. At this point we’re just looking for flaws in the flow of the motion, so we’ll know your parts are functioning correctly.”

“I understand.”

You move to stand closer to him, realizing you have been unintentionally keeping a distance, when his pleasant scent hits your senses again.

“P-please pick this up using your index finger and thumb.” You hold out a small bead on your palm. The same test is used for infants and judging by the look on Connor’s face, he knows it too.

Is he releasing pheromones? You wonder as your eyes scan the curve of his mouth and dart to the strand of hair on his forehead. Each inhale brings his scent into your lungs and it doesn’t seem to dissipate as it should. It’s annoying and making you woozy. Your feet feel light and refuse to move even when Connor ends the test after using each of his eight different fingers and both thumbs in all possible combinations to carry it out.

You didn’t look at the motions at all.

“Very good, Connor.” The huskiness of your voice surprises you and you try to clear it out. You need to take a step away and use placing the bead to the desk as an excuse.

Next you ask Connor to weave his fingers in the air, to tap them down in a flowing pattern that goes back and forth one at a time.

Connor follows the instructions without even looking, but after he finishes the first motion, you both are staring at his hand in a perturbed silence.

He does it again. And again. An unnerving sensation bloats in your throat.

Fuck.

There is a small, unnatural twitch of his fingers, only a slightest disturbance in the pattern. His expression twists in focus and confusion. It shouldn’t be there.

“Can you feel it?” you ask.

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

You watch him do the motion again.

“There might be a nerve attachment issue,” you suggest.

“I think so too,” Connor agrees.

You don’t want to tear apart the whole android for such an insignificant mistake, but the problem may lie anywhere between Connor’s spine and fingertips. The nerve endings are flexible like rubber bands that are constantly flexed and relaxed. An important part of the system is the durability: The proverbial band can be flexed over and over to ease certain motions. It works just like human’s muscle memory; motions are easier after repetition. In theory, that is.

The problem might occur only in this small gesture, which would make it easily repairable. You can always replace the hand or the whole arm if the issue persists, but it won’t be cheap and so it shouldn’t be your first option. It’s probably just a slight calibration mistake in the assembly.

You need something to force the nerves, like physical therapy.

You walk around your desk to grab your purse and take out your wallet.

“Try with this.”

Connor looks at the coin on your palm before taking it. His LED spins as he is making the curious connection between finger movements and a coin.

The object supports the motion and forces the fingers into the right position. At least that’s how it works in theory, so you hold your breath as Connor tries the motion again. After each clean weave, you inhale just a little and the tight know in your throat loosens.

“It works,” Connor says. The speed of the coin flipping through his fingers increases rapidly.

Calibration is the key. A light huff of relief elates from your lips.

“Don’t sound so surprised.” Even though you do yourself.

Connor looks up from the coin in between his fingers. The smile on his face rivals the sun that is tinting the room with light. He looks… impressed, you think in the lack of a better word.

“Interesting solution. Thank you, Doctor. I said it before, but I really look forward to completing these tests with you,” he says in that bewitchingly earnest tone that has your heart make a few extra leaps.

“N-not at all. I’m just doing my job.” You strive for a smile, but it requires the response of too many muscles to work. You’re still booting from being blinded by his smile.

As much as you’re interested in seeing what will come in the future regarding your work with Connor, there is a dangerous tingle in the pit of your stomach you can’t put out: The sizzling embers of a feeling you’re scared to recognize, unwilling to consciously think of. It’s warm and Connor’s smile only makes it glow and itch.

Professionalism with androids can have nothing to do with feelings of any kind. You can’t afford to have your judgment clouded. If the RK800 model turns out to be defective, you need to be ready to make the call. A lot of other people’s work, hopes and money are riding on it.

For the weeks to come, you’ll have to brace yourself for infinite meetings with software engineers, psychologists, and other AI experts and researchers. Soon your calendar will be filled by consultations with specialists of different areas. Hopefully the morgue and some officials of Detroit Police Department will agree to have Connor for a visit. It will be good for him to get to show off his skills before actually joining the Detroit Police.

Now you just need something to keep your head in the game and douse the perilous warmth pooling inside you.

September 14th 10:23 AM

Your boss Ethan’s face peeks from the doorway and he knocks with his knuckles on the open door.

“Got a minute?”

Connor turns to look over his shoulder and you roll the chair away from him. “Of course. What is it?” you say.

Ethan steps inside your office and quickly takes a look around. “I gotta go to a meeting so I thought I’d stop by to make sure you’re coming tonight? It’ll do good for your career.”

Oh shit.

“U-uhh, yes.” Your tone makes Connor turn back to you and eye you suspiciously. “I’ll try.”

Ethan smiles. He knows you hate events like the one in question. He folds his arms over his chest and walks closer, each slow step widening the smile on his face.

“So. Is mister Three going to be put on show tonight?” He downright grins as he takes the tone of a co-conspirator.

“Nope. I broke it off,” you reply hastily and try to ignore Connor’s slightly tilted stare. As long as you’re working with Connor, Three, Four or anyone else is not a topic you wish to bring up in his company. Just to avoid any awkward inquiries concerning your love life.

Ethan rests his hands on his hips. “Oh shit. I’m sorry. What’d he say?”

“’Necessary evil.’” you roll your eyes to the ceiling and glance at Connor. “What does that make me? Doctor Frankenstein? Jeez…”

Ethan shakes his head but can’t help the amused twitch of his lips. “Not the answer you were looking for, I take it?”

You nod once. Connor’s curious brown eyes are still examining your expressions as he listens to the conversation between you and your boss intently. You absent-mindedly wonder does he understand any of it. Can he comprehend the topic and your objectives behind it?

Or who knows, maybe he understands the answer you’re looking for better than you do yourself.

“Well in any case, you won’t have to be alone if you decide to come,” Ethan continues.

Perhaps it’s your worst quality or your boss’s best, but he always knows when you’re not entirely honest with him.

“Yeah, like I said, I’ll try to come”–you give him a weak smile–“No promises, though.”

“Good. I’ll see you there, then!” With that and the smile that has turned into a teasing one, Ethan leaves you sitting in the middle of the room with one confused android.

You lean back in the chair, staring at the ceiling and groan. “Whyyyy…”

Connor’s head tilts even more as you drag your palms down your face. His LED circles a few rounds. You can see the “adapting to human unpredictability”-code flashing in his eyes.

“Doctor, if I may ask, what’s this evening?” His tone is perfectly polite.

You huff and focus on him. “A conference, I guess, but it’s a synonym to ‘boring’. Lots of people I don’t know, and I just have to try to smile and greet everyone.” You heave a sigh. “I’d much rather stay home and… stare at the wall.”

Connor’s brows crease. “Are androids allowed?” he asks.

“I… don’t know actually. Last year I told Ethan I wasn’t feeling well and left early,” you say, completely without shame and hope Connor never brings it up with your boss.

The RK700 model, Connor’s predecessor, was exhibited in the previous year’s event, but it looked really different at that time. You could’ve never guessed you would be the one to ultimately initiate it into production.

“I could accompany you,” Connor proposes.

You seek shelter from his chocolate eyes in the display on the desk. The list of untested social modules is open on it – behavior patterns, adaptation and improvisation, to name a few.

“I know you’re more comfortable in the company of androids,” he continues matter-of-factly.

“Rude, Connor.”

“I’m sorry. It’s what I’ve gathered from observing you these past four weeks.”

You stare at the screen for a moment, thinking, almost letting yourself get excited. You don’t even have a dress because you never were going to go. The occasion is fancy; it’s the highlight event of the year amidst people working with AI. The dress code dictates cocktail dresses for ladies and suits for men.

You would need to rent a suit for Connor, then.

Connor, the most handsome and advanced android model ever created, in a suit.

“Okay then,” you finally say, “but it’s better if we don’t tell anyone you’re an android.”

He smirks and nods. “Got it.”

Next Chapter

Tagging (lmk if you want to be tagged or not): @sevansheart​ @precursor-ao3​ @gberryb​ @owlwrites​ @lucianhuntress​ @singlebecauseofthechocobros​ @bleucommelhiver​ @sherniwrites​ @n-ulll​ @mccastle-boi​ @toastyfiction​ @touzokukana​ @imaginovator​ @avispate​ @kuolematkorjaavat​ @caladheil​ @lusiifer​ @shadows-echoes​

[batkatbrown]

Beyond the Sea C21

Read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13837683/chapters/34053087

Thank you Joseph on my Patreon for this chapter!

[[ Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven| Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen | Part Fourteen | Part Fifteen | Part Sixteen | Part Seventeen | Part Eighteen | Part Nineteen | Part Twenty ]]

Sweat dripped down Hanzo’s face as he hiked down the long, rocky trail to the beach. The sun burned against his back but it was worth it to hear Jesse getting more and more excited. The tiny merman wriggled in the makeshift sling over Hanzo’s chest.

“I can’t wait to be back in the ocean.”

“It is close to where you came from?” Hanzo huffed out as he jumped from rock to rock down a steep hill.

“Not too far from here, i think at least?” Jesse’s tail slapped against Hanzo’s chest, right over his heart. “Things got kinda… weird when the curse happened. I’ve seen this shore before. I know I have.”

“Maybe things will be clearer once you are in the saltwater?” Hanzo cupped Jesse tighter to his chest before leaping into the open air. His stomach swooped and his heart fluttered before he landed with a bounce on the warm sand.

Tall grass waved gently in the breeze on the dunes. The sand shifted under his feet and he took to the more stabilized land. The ocean was a silver of silvery green spreading out forever towards the horizon.

“We’re almost there.” Hanzo adjusted Jesse so that he was high enough to see out.

“It’s… beautiful.” Jesse’s voice cracked and tumbled to a rocky landing. “I can hear the song, i can feel it.”

“We’re almost there,” Hanzo picked up his feet and ran for the shore. The water splashed and danced with sparkling light. It welcomed them closer. The tide was out and a myriad of pools shimmered safe from the wild current of the open ocean.

Hanzo fell to his knees in front of the closest one. Sea life wriggled through the clear water from delicate plants to the scuttling of tiny creatures. There was nothing big enough to hurt Jesse, at least not that he could sense and he lowered the merman into the water.

-

Jesse hollered wild and free as he dove into the water with barely a splash. A sharp wave of his tail and he zoomed down to the bottom of the pool. Wings of sand burst around him as he dipped his finger tips into the bottom of the pool. It stirred up the scents and he took a greedy breath. His gills fluttered and expanded to take it all in.

Diving to the bottom, he raced through the water. Each little cave he darted into to explore and taste the fresh sea water. He nabbed a minnow and crunched through it with a satisfied smile. He darted down a tunnel and popped out in another tidal pool. He dove to rub his belly and tail against the sand.

Dead scales and bits of artificial sand slide off. Jesse wriggled into the bed, almost covering himself. It was filled with the minerals and salt of the sea. Of a place near his birth that he had been missing for so long.

He could taste the far off waves that lapped against coral reefs and spiralling palaces carved from the bones of the ancient sea gods. His own little cave tucked away in a remote outcropping of stone where the predators wouldn’t bother to look.

The call reverberated in Jesse’s bones and he turned to stare. His gaze went passed the tidal pools walls and through the hundreds of connecting tunnels and caves to the wide open ocean. Swirling passed wrecked ships and schools of fish to where he had once made his home.

A shadow flashed across him and Jesse dove for the cover of a rock overhang. A razor sharp beak cut through the water where he had been and darted away with only sand for its efforts.

That was different than before. He had once been enough to scare off most creatures and patrol his territory with ease. Pain lanced through his left hand and up his arm. He clutched at the missing limb and curled forward around the pain.

The witch had taken this from him too.

His jaw throbbed as he clenched his teeth and he lashed out. The end of his arm caught on the rock and blood flowed, he ripped into the stump with his teeth. It taste was foul like sulfur and greasy as black either. He was not made to be left unwhole. He was part of the sea. Part of the waves and a the being birthed in the heat of the underwater volcanoes.

Jesse roared and the water around him churned. He sucked in the song of his home and it bellowed from inside him out. Scales burst out of the bloody stump and raced down over a framework of magic. It seared and burned the water. Blinding light turned the tidal pool into a shimmering haze but Jesse watched, chest thundering in time to the beat of life.

Thousands of tiny scales built upon themselves, thickening as his arm was created of the magic his people all controlled. Red and gold, they flashed and swirled as his wrist was created and then his hand. It burned as nerves connected and white energy slashed across him. He bucked and rolled, clutching at the water, the sand, the seaweed.

It ended with a flash of golden light and Jesse collapsed on the bottom of the tidal pool. Chest heaving, Jesse blinked spots out of his eyes. They formed strange patterns, like veins branching out and the willowy billow of soft fins.

Jesse raised his left hand up to his face. It was not like his right. It was different. Heavy claws extended from his fingertips and armored plating of thick wide scales fanned around his forearm. He scratched it with a nearby shard of rock and laughed as it bounced off. He flexed his new hand before slashing at the coral next to him.

Chunks fell to the floor, perfectly sliced from the formation. He hummed to the sea’s tune as he picked up the pieces and ran his real hand over it. The slight kerf marks confirmed that it had been sliced and he shifted to touch the new claws.

He was whole again.

Tiny.

But fully himself for the first time in… he wasn’t sure how long he had been this way. Now that he was in the sea, everything was fresh and clear and real in a way that cast the past in muted tones.

The scent of a hermit crab caught his attention and he veered to hunt into the dense vegetation. The thrill of the hunt burned in his lungs and he charged after the new freedom. He could balance and turn easily, no longer slowed down and twisted by unequal power. The crab was near. In another pool and he darted into a narrow tunnel. He reveled in the speed. Nothing was like the water’s embrace as it slide past his powerful shoulders and tail.

Fins expanded to slow him as he circled for the spot where a tasty little treat had disappeared. His fangs pushed out further and his jaw unhinged in preparation. He would feast and reclaim his position of power in this tiny terrain.

“Jesse?”

The merman looked up, through the waving green fronds and through the bubbling water to the surface. Hanzo’s distorted face hovered near the edge of the tidal pool. Eyebrows bunched and drawn over his nose, mouth a sharp frown and hand in the water.

His darling Hanzo was worried. He couldn’t let that stand.

He kicked off the bottom with his tail and launched himself to fresh air. “Hanzo!” he laughed, waving his arms. “Hanzo, I’m right here.”

Hanzo cursed sharply in japanese and all the tension went out of his companion’s face and the man crumpled to rest both hands inside the water. The sprig of his bangs floated over the surface and a shaky laugh bubbled out.

“Are you… Hanzo, are you okay?” Jesse kept himself up with his tail and reached out to touch Hanzo’s forearm. He pet over the dragon tattoo there, looking up at the man who had done so much for him. The bloodlust fell away and was replaced with concern.

“I couldn’t find you and I saw the heron dive--”

A tear splashed into the water and ripples flooded out to knock gently on Jesse’s side. “I am just… i feared this would be too dangerous.”

Jesse cooed softly, humming aimlessly as he stroked Hanzo’s forearm. He was careful of his new armored hand. “I’m not gonna get caught by some bird. Definitely not with this.” He held up his arm, spreading his hand to show off the shimmering red.

“How?”

“This is my type of magic, darlin’. And the Witch had better watch her back.”

[[ Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven| Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen | Part Fourteen | Part Fifteen | Part Sixteen | Part Seventeen | Part Eighteen | Part Nineteen | Part Twenty ]]

Fund the Next part on Ko-fi.com HERE

[theritualofourexistence]

The Mountaintop

This spring my brother wrote a poem. My family has always felt and appreciated the weight of history and this spring, as we recognized the passing of the 50th year since Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, it’s hard to keep from wondering how the world would be different if his light wasn’t so tragically and abruptly extinguished. It is hard for me to use the word “anniversary,” because an anniversary is meant to be a celebration of sorts. This is no celebration. Below is the poem written by my brother, memorializing the man who faced the world, boldly determined to change it, while honoring his students facing that same world, still undeniably against them.

---

April 3rd, 1968, 7PM

Quote.  “Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world.”  End quote.

A thunderous rain is beating down on the roof of the Mason Temple, not far from downtown Memphis.

It’s the type of storm that feels like it wants to tear everything down—one of those storms that you can’t see through.  Where it feels like there is more water than air.  It feels like the water will crush everything—pull everything towards the earth with destructive force.

A man is speaking inside the temple.  He speaks about the promised land.  He speaks about death.  He speaks about hope.  And he speaks about the world he’ll leave behind.  His voice is louder than the rain battering everything down.  The voice of the water overhead screeches and volleys barrage after barrage of sound.  But the man is still heard.

Quote.  “I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” End quote.

April 4th, 1968, 6PM

Quote. “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light.”  End quote.

Evening sunlight falls on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.  The only sound is of the men on the balcony talking and laughing.  Their dark suits stand out against the pastels of the walls behind them—a perfect scene to capture in black and white.

The man with the patterned tie calls down to the man in the parking lot beneath them.  He requests a song that he wants to hear that night.  “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”  It’s his favorite hymn, and he wants it to be played like never before that night.  The man looking up at him promises he’ll do just that.

A harsh popping sound cuts across the sky.

Quote.  “When the darkness appears and the night draws near, and the day is past and gone, at the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand.” End quote.

March 29th, 2018, 10PM

There’s a young boy at his standard spot—a store he finds himself in almost daily.  The only light a block in any direction comes from stores like this one.  They’re like lighthouses; the neon light from the signs out front commingled with the grainy, fluorescent light from inside pulses constantly—off-white streaks of light across a sea of darkness and concrete.  The only sound on the street is of the humming of the lights.

The boy is feeling bold.  Mostly thirsty though.  He grabs a can and runs.  There is a chase.  A chorus of pops erupts into the darkness of the night—flashes of light and sound signalling some warning to the lighthouses on the block.

The signal isn’t heard.  The boy is left to die.  It rains on his wake a few days later.

April 3rd, 2018, 9AM

We’re writing stories about people watching speeches in Creative Writing class.  Some folks will use the MLK anniversary as inspiration.  Some won’t.  That’s fine.  As long as they create a picture of whatever story they tell.

We watch clips from the Mountaintop Speech.  I tell them the story.  You know the one.  There was a terrible storm.  They thought no one would show up.  But hundreds did.  So the speech was given, with no preparation or writing ahead of time.  

I tell them to pay attention to the weather tonight.  It’s supposed to rain.  If it does, let the rain remind them again of what happened fifty years ago—coincidental weather complementing prophetic words.

April 3rd, 2018, 10AM

Quote.  “What do you think about it, Mr. Rosenberger?”  End quote.

We’re talking about the boy who was shot.  There is confusion, pain, and exhaustion.  We’ve had a lot of conversations like this one this year.

Quote.  “‘What do I think about it? I get scared for y’all.  And I love you.’

‘We love you too,’ you replied.”  End quote.

April 3rd, 2018, 8PM

Quote.  “What dreams may come, both dark and deep, of flying wings and soaring leap, as I surrender unto sleep.”  End quote.

I’m sitting at my desk listening to this song that always makes me cry thinking about the past few days.  I’m thinking about what I didn’t say when you all asked me what I thought about the shooting.  What I didn’t say… or couldn’t say… is that I see each of your faces in his face.  And I imagine the phone call.  And the name I recognize—as opposed to the name that becomes one of the other names.

The name that gets added to the list.  The list that doesn’t stop growing.

One day I see your name at the bottom of that list.  And the next morning I see his name.  And that evening I see her name at the bottom.  And as sleep overtakes me that night, I see their names appearing there too. We’ve built this indescribable thing, this strange, dark, ugly, towering structure.  We crafted it rapidly at first.   But now, we’re building it more slowly—moving to hidden sections, nooks and crannies, any place away from prying eyes.  We expand it.  We undo sections only to change them slightly and hide them in harder to find places. It’s raining on this thing—this building—we’ve built.  And after each storm.  After each surface, crag, and protrusion has been wiped raw by the force of the rain, the new names can be seen—etched in order following the others—the ones that have always been there—and the ones that just appeared after the latest storm.

Fifty years ago, Martin was jolted to sleep by popping and tearing, metal and bone.  And his name was added.  Five days ago, Dorian was jolted to sleep by popping and tearing, metal and bone.  And his name was added.  Each storm passes, and these people pass too.  The water disappears, replaced by their names.

It’s raining tonight too.  Tonight and on every night like this one, this city will hide its tears in the rain.  That’s what it’s been doing for as long as it can remember.  And it’s been raining that whole time too—harder on some days but still.

Quote.  “‘Is that the universe?’ you say.  ‘It’s not nothing,’ I reply.”  End quote.

---

Today I challenge you to take stock of your privilege. Then, and most importantly, use your privilege to balance the scales.

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Star

Arthur C. Clarke (1954)

It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’s handwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.

I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The facts are there for all to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can, and I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.

The crew were already sufficiently depressed: I wonder how they will take this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me—that private, good-natured, but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist: Dr. Chandler, for instance, could never get over it. (Why are medical men such notorious atheists?) Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights are always low so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the heavens crawled slowly around us as the ship turned over and over with the residual spin we had never bothered to correct.

“Well, Father,” he would say at last, “it goes on forever and forever, and perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special interest in us and our miserable little world—that just beats me.” Then the argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in silent, endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation port.

It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position that cause most amusement among the crew. In vain I pointed to my three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I would remind them that my order has long been famous for its scientific works. We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers. Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It will end, I fear, much more than that.

I do not know who gave the nebula its name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one that cannot be verified for several billion years. Even the word “nebula” is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous clouds of mist—the stuff of unborn stars—that are scattered throughout the length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a tiny thing—a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star.

Or what is left of a star. . .

The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was all the Universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine has failed to do?

You gaze into the distance, Father, but I have traveled a distance beyond any that you could have imagined when you founded our order a thousand years ago. No other survey ship has been so far from Earth: we are at the very frontiers of the explored Universe. We set out to reach the Phoenix Nebula, we succeeded, and we are homeward bound with our burden of knowledge. I wish I could lift that burden from my shoulders, but I call to you in vain across the centuries and the light-years that lie between us.

On the book you are holding the words are plain to read. AD MAIOREM DEI

GLORIAM, the message runs, but it is a message I can no longer believe. Would you still believe it, if you could see what we have found?

We knew, of course, what the Phoenix Nebula was. Every year, in our Galaxy alone, more than a hundred stars explode, blazing for a few hours or days with hundreds of times their normal brilliance until they sink back into death and obscurity. Such are the ordinary novas—the commonplace disasters of the Universe. I have recorded the spectrograms and light curves of dozens since I started working at the Lunar Observatory. But three or four times in every thousand years occurs something beside which even a nova pales into total insignificance.

When a star becomes a supernova, it may for a little while outshine all the massed suns of the Galaxy. The Chinese astronomers watched this happen in A.D. 1054, not knowing what it was they saw. Five centuries later, in 1572, a supernova blazed in Cassiopeia so brilliantly that it was visible in the daylight sky. There have been three more in the thousand years that have passed since then.

Our mission was to visit the remnants of such a catastrophe, to reconstruct the events that led up to it, and, if possible, to learn its cause. We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out six thousand years before, yet were expanding still. They were immensely hot, radiating even now with a fierce violet light, but were far too tenuous to do us any damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become—a White Dwarf, smaller than earth, yet weighing a million times as much. The glowing gas shells were all around us, banishing the normal night of interstellar space. We were flying into the center of the cosmic bomb that had detonated millennia ago and whose incandescent fragments were still hurtling apart. The immense scale of the explosion, and the fact that the debris already covered a volume of space many millions of miles across, robbed the scene of any visible movement. It would take decades before the unaided eye could detect any motion in these tortured wisps and eddies of gas, yet the sense of turbulent expansion was overwhelming.

We had checked our primary drive hours before, and were drifting slowly toward the fierce little star ahead. Once it had been a sun like our own, but it had squandered in a few hours the energy that should have kept it shining for a million years. Now it was a

shrunken miser, hoarding its resources as if trying to make amends for its prodigal youth.

No one seriously expected to find planets. If there had been any before the explosion, they would have been boiled into puffs of vapor, and their substance lost in the greater wreckage of the star itself. But we made the automatic search, as we always do when approaching an unknown sun, and presently we found a single small world circling the star at an immense distance. It must have been the Pluto of this vanished Solar System, orbiting on the frontiers of the night. Too far from the central sun ever to have known life, its remoteness had saved it from the fate of all its lost companions. The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster. We landed, and we found the Vault.

Its builders had made sure that we should. The monolithic marker that stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried in the rock. Even if the pylon above the Vault had been destroyed, this would have remained, an immovable and all-but eternal beacon calling to the stars. Our ship fell toward this gigantic bull’s eye like an arrow into its target.

The pylon must have been a mile high when it was built, but now it looked like a candle that had melted down into a puddle of wax. It took us a week to drill through the fused rock, since we did not have the proper tools for a task like this. We were astronomers, not archaeologists, but we could improvise. Our original purpose was forgotten: this lonely monument, reared with such labor at the greatest possible distance from the doomed sun, could have only one meaning. A civilization that knew it was about to die had made its last bid for immortality.

It will take us generations to examine all the treasures that were placed in the Vault. They had plenty of time to prepare, for their sun must have given its first warnings many years before the final detonation. Everything that they wished to preserve, all the fruits of their genius, they brought here to this distant world in the days before the end, hoping that some other race would find it and that they would not be utterly forgotten. Would we have done as well, or would we have been too lost in our own misery to give thought to a future we could never see or share?

If only they had had a little more time! They could travel freely enough between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the nearest Solar System was a hundred light-years away. Yet even had they possessed the secret of the Transfinite Drive, no more than a few millions could have been saved. Perhaps it was better thus.

Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we could not have helped admiring them and grieving for their fate. They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their worlds were very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of man’s. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes—a group of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children play on Earth. Curious whiplike trees line the shore, and some very large animal is wading in the shallows, yet attracting no attention at all.

And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness.

Perhaps if we had not been so far from home and so vulnerable to loneliness, we should not have been so deeply moved. Many of us had seen the ruins of ancient civilizations on other worlds, but they had never affected us so profoundly. This tragedy was unique. It is one thing for a race to fail and die, as nations and cultures have done on Earth. But to be destroyed so completely in the full flower of its achievement, leaving no survivors—how could that be reconciled with the mercy of God?

My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in the Exercitia Spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light of their shrunken sun. They could have taught us much: why were they destroyed?

I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to Earth. They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.

Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to justify His actions to man. He who built the Universe can destroy it when He chooses. It is arrogance—it is perilously near blasphemy—for us to say what He may or may not do.

This I could have accepted, hard though it is to look upon whole worlds and peoples thrown into the furnace. But there comes a point when even the deepest faith must falter, and now, as I look at the calculations lying before me, I have reached that point at last.

We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached the Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn.

There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

[anycontentposter]

Review: The Defakto Transit is a Modern, Minimalist Watch From the Ickler Family

Defakto is a small watch manufacture based out of Germany. Founded in 2009 by Raphael Ickler in Pforzheim, Defakto specializes in high quality, minimalist watches. If the Ickler name sounds familiar, it should. They’ve been precision machining watch cases and components out of the same city since 1924 and have several brands under their umbrella (most notably: Archimede). Defakto as a brand stands on its own, in part because Raphael has drawn from his family’s experience in the watchmaking world to create a reliable and well-built watch.

Today, we’re looking at the “Transit,” a model created to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the brand. This minimal design is easy to read and wear, with a strong dial:bezel ratio inside a slim 40mm case. The Transit’s design DNA is clearly cut from a similar cloth as the rest of the lineup, but when talking about minimalist design, it’s the little things that matter. Let’s take a closer look at all of the intricacies of Defakto’s Transit. First, some specs:

$860 Review: The Defakto Transit is a Modern, Minimalist Watch From the Ickler Family Case

Stainless steel

Movement

ETA 2824-2

Dial

Matte black convex dial

Lume

Indices, hands, and minute markings, Superluminova

Lens

Domed sapphire

Strap

German-made black leather

Water Resistance

3 atm (30m, 100ft.)

Dimensions

40mm x 48mmmm

Thickness

9.8mm

Lug Width

20mm

Crown

Push/Pull

Warranty

Yes

Price

$860

Case

For a 40mm case, the one on the Transit wears smaller than its size suggests. That’s thanks to the comparatively short lug-to-lug distance of 48mm. This translates to small lugs, and positioned to angle down dramatically toward the wrist. The resulting effect is that your focus is drawn to the circular shape of the watch.

Running around the outside of the dial, there’s a small brushed bezel that slopes from the crystal to the side of the case. You’re left with a wide open dial with a small border surrounding it, making the Transit open, airy, and legible. On the right side of the case, you’ll find a small push down crown with deeply cut grooves in its surface that make winding and time-setting a breeze. 

Given the Ickler family’s 100 years of case making experience, it comes as little surprise that the case on the Transit is clean and sharp throughout. The design is simple, but executed well and I really like the finishing technique. While it’s probably easy to just call it a brushed case and walk away, there’s a bit more going on here when you look closer. There are at least five different brushed surfaces, all at different angles.

On the bezel, the brushing pattern follows the circular shape of the bezel itself. The sides of the case both feature horizontal brushing, while the space in between the lugs is brushed vertically. On top of each lug, the brushing is vertical, and finally the flat surface of the crown features radial brushing. Each transitional surface is nice and sharp. As you rotate your wrist, you’ll notice the light playing off each surface in a different direction adding a subtle, yet interesting visual effect. 

Dial and Hands

A matte black, curved dial adorns the face of the Transit. The curve is gentle and hard to notice at first, especially under the curved sapphire. Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that the long minutes hand features a curve at the edge as well. From the top-down, the hands and dial appear to be flat which go well with the minimalist design of the watch. The indices are made up of a series of Super-LumiNova-treated lines that feature a gently rounded edge. They’re actually more like long, flat ovals. There’s a longer oval at five-minute intervals with shorter ones in between. The rounded markers play well with the overall design of the watch. If they were squared off, the Transit’s dial would leave a different impression entirely. The rounded accents throughout counterbalance the sharp edges of the case and lugs with something softer, and I like the resulting effect.

Pointing to the time, there are three hands: white hands for the minutes and hours, and a contrasting red hand for the seconds. Mirroring the shape of the indices, each hand is a long thin rectangle with a rounded end. The minutes hand extends fairly far towards the edge of the dial, hitting about halfway through the minute marker scale. The hours hand is a fair bit shorter, falling just short of the inside of the longer hour markers. Finally, the red seconds hand is the longest of the bunch, reaching all the way to the outer edge of the dial. On a minimalist style watch, these small differences in details go a long way. The hand set on the Transit is balanced and easy to read — just how it should be. Another thing that jumped out at me is the base of the seconds hand. It sits at the top of the hand stack and is wide enough to cover the origination points of the hours and minutes hands. It’s another cool little detail that makes the Transit look that much cleaner. 

All of the indices and hands are treated with Super-LumiNova, giving the Defakto a neon light-like vibe in the dark. The red seconds hand has a different color of lume, so in the dark conditions, the seconds hand still has a similar pop like it does in the light.

Worth noting is that there are two dial variants for Transit: Standard and Inkognito. The former has a logo, and the latter is without one.

Movement

Through the display case back, you’ll have the pleasure of watching an ETA 2824-2 beating away inside. The 2824-2 is a reliable Swiss-made movement that beats at 28,800bph, sending the red seconds hand around the dial with a smooth sweep. Defakto uses the stock movement, so there’s nothing too fancy to look at inside. There’s no date display on the watch, so the functionality is limited to telling the time. For a minimally designed three-hander, a workhorse movement like the ETA 2824-2 makes sense. There’s some basic info laser engraved around the ring surrounding the display back. Admittedly, the quality of the engraving could be better. The edges of the text are a little soft and it’s not very deep into the surface. 

Strap and Wearability

The Transit ships on a German-made black leather strap. It’s on the thinner side, but that doesn’t affect the overall quality and comfort of the strap, and the thinness complements the case well. I liked how the strap was comfortable to wear right out of the box with no breaking in. A matte black signed clasp (admittedly a weird choice as this watch isn’t black, but it leaves the strap looking very unassuming) keeps the watch secured to your wrist and two slim leather keeper loops will hold onto any extra strap you may have hanging around. I did throw the Transit on an ADPT strap in forest green with the red accent stitching in hopes to match the red seconds hand, but something about the whole look just felt off. Since the watch head is slim and svelte, it felt out of place with a beefy nylon strap. I much prefer the look on the included slim leather strap. If you were to swap out the strap, something slim and leather would probably be your best best. 

On the wrist, the Transit wears like it’s not even there. The 9.8mm case sits really close to the wrist, and I’ve found it to be very comfortable during daily wear, no matter what I happen to be doing. The Transit seems best suited for a mix of weekend and business casual office wear — the watch easily slips under a cuff, and the classic profile of the watch, with a silhouette curving from the top down, is inherently refined. I’m sure you could dress it up, but the playful indices and red seconds hand don’t exactly scream “formal” to me. However, I think that’s what I like the most about the Defakto. It’s unassuming, yet remains interesting when you take a closer look. The minimalist design is minimal without being too sparse. It really strikes a nice balance of being refined, classy, casual, and fun all at the same time. 

Conclusion

Defakto’s Transit is well-made, well-designed, and well-wearing. It’s also the winner of the German Design Award for 2020, pretty much for the reasons mentioned in the review. It’s a versatile little watch that sits slim on the wrist, and the rounded details throughout set it apart from other “stuffy” minimalist designs and bring something new to the table. I’ve enjoyed my time with the watch quite a bit. It’s my first extended test of a slim minimalist watch and the Transit has made me a convert. It’s nice to have something on your wrist that’s so effortless to wear. Defakto

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[dicloniusgames]

My Top 5 Best Bosses In Dark Souls Remastered

From the bullshit to the best, Dark Souls Remastered has some good boss battles if you can get past the bad ones that make you never want to play these games more than once. 

The good trumps the bad in boss battles as far as their qualitative construct, but before I dissect what I think are the 5 best boss battles in my experience with DSR, let’s see what fight just missed the cut. 

Honorable Mention: Four Kings 

Located in the New Londo Ruins (AKA Ghost Town), the Four Kings are one of the mandatory four bosses required to beat in order to reach the final boss. 

The run to the boss can either be scary easy or rage-inducing difficult depending on if you have a load of Transient Curses in your inventory. If you do, farm those Casper the unfriendly ghost beings, if not, prepare to run to the abyss. That’s right, the Four Kings are located in the abyss and you need to equip a ring to get there. 

The fight itself is a bit of a mislabel. The kings share a collective health bar but even destroying four may not be enough. It may take five or six dependent on build strength, and even then, this misses the top five because of one simple fact.....IT’S A DPS RACE. That’s right, don’t kill one king, another shows up and up to four can be on screen at once, so if you’re under leveled, prepare for a controller-smashing gang fight. 

#5: Chaos Witch Quelaag

Quelaag is an interesting early/mid-game boss. Depending on your skill level, you can either go after Quelaag immediately, or wait until the story steers you to the hell known as Blighttown. While this barely makes the top five, the fight itself isn’t something to be underestimated. 

Blighttown is a nightmare. The run to Quelaag can be a nightmare, but an easily conquered nightmare. Finding the shortcut to Blighttown allows players to avoid 90 percent of the horrors of Blighttown and a semi-direct path to the boss. I say semi because the path to the boss is traversed with a guaranteed poison status getting to Quelaag. 

The fight with Quelaag is not only skill dependent but choice dependent. If she’s your first boss, prepare to stick & move, but if you’ve built up experience, and you’re in human form, this is an easy handicap fight where she’s focused on the phantom and you can get easy hits for days on her. 

#4: Seath The Scaleless 

Starting out as one of the endgame tests of your abilities, Seath The Scaleless is a tough but good fight. Problem is, you’re scripted to die to him the first time. When you come back to him through the crystal cave, Seath is one of the more superior mandatory four bosses (the other being Gravelord Nito). 

Going through the caves can be a little difficult traverse-wise. With invisible paths with only snowflake crystals guiding you where to go, the run to the boss can be a tad difficult, even for overpowered and experienced players since you’re dealing with the same crystal enemies you dealt with in Darkroot Basin only stronger. 

The fight with Seath The Scaleless is a wonder. The arena is mystifying and the fight is tough, but fair. The concept of smacking the boss from behind is somewhat key but one major attack Seath has is his stalagmites. These can pop up almost outta nowhere but can be avoided if you know where to stick to. Overall, Seath is a great semi-endgame test of what else is to come as you inch towards the final boss. 

#3: Great Grey Wolf Sif 

Ah Sif. Great Grey Wolf Sif is one of those bosses that will leave you wondering if PETA will come after you when you kill him. That’s right, the fight with Sif has the potential to leave you with compassion for him. If you find him in the DLC, he can help you along the way. In the main game, it’s a mid-game fight that tests your ability to dodge roll effectively especially since he wields a huge sword with his teeth. 

Throughout Darkroot Garden, you discover a door with no keyhole or no way to open it by normal means. What you’re supposed to do is locate Andre the Blacksmith and buy the Crest of Artorias from him for a whopping 20,000 souls....that’s right 20K, so get your overalls, your shovel and your back hoe and start farmin’. 

Once you have the crest, the area to Sif will be open, but prepare for a tough run to him unless you just bolt it to Sif, which in that case, good luck. The area’s filled with rooted flower-like enemies, a spell caster and other sword-wielding tough enemies that can gang on you if you’re not careful. 

The fight with Sif is not only majestic but makes an attempt to be heartwarming which succeeded in my opinion. While it took me a few tries to get his patterns down, following the simple rule of staying under his legs and attacking can make this fight a cakewalk and possibly bring some tears to your eyes. 

#2: Gwyn, Lord Of Cinder 

It was difficult deciding between number 2 and number 1, but even at number 2, Gwyn, Lord Of Cinder is still an excellent boss. Located in the final area of the game, the boss is pretty much littered with half a dozen enemies, but once you cross the fog. The real fight begins. 

Out of the gate, this will be a defensive fight requiring you to block and taking the few opportunities to deal damage given, but once he does, go to town on him. Havel’s armor set, while you can’t dodge with it, is best for this fight as it gives the best resistances and defense and if you have an above +10 weapon or even maxed out weapon, it makes the fight easier. 

The ambiance of this fight is great with a bit of a somber tone and an equally somber but finality sort of environment as you hours of grinding for souls feels like it will pay off, and it does in spades. The final moments of DSR also play into this fight as it culminates everything you’ve done up to this point and every agonizing boss battle you’ve come across and makes the experience worth it. 

The fight isn’t too difficult as long as you play defensive and take the openings he gives you and not get too greedy. 

While some would think Gwyn would be the best fight, there’s one that topples them all and it’s obvious to Dark Souls veterans which fight I’m referring to. 

#1: Dragon Slayer Ornstein & Executioner Smough

That’s right, Anor Londo takes the gold in what is the best fight in my opinion in Dark Souls Remastered. This fight has it all: the ambiance, environment, boss design and last but never least.....difficulty. On a scale of 1/10 difficulty wise, this can be probably at least a 50, if not more, but it’s not an impossible fight. 

The run to these two can be quite doable as there’s a blacksmith nearby as well as a set of enemies that can be repeatedly defeated for souls and levels if you’re a new player. You’ll need at least a +10 weapon if not a maxed out weapon to stand a chance against these two and 15-20 or so estus flasks as one hits fast and the other hits hard. 

Which ever one you kill first (I recommend killing Ornstein first), the other receives the buffs of the dead boss. This part of the fight can ramp up to the extreme but at least it’s a 1 vs. 1 right? Exactly. 

The environment and tone of the fight is both somber yet keeps you on your toes kinda feeling as being chased by two large hulking bosses isn’t something you’d expect, but when Dark Souls BS’s you, you BS back. 

O&S are probably the hardest, but most rewarding fight in the game, not in terms of actual rewards, but the feeling that you overcame the hardest, and what I consider to be the best fight in Dark Souls Remastered. 

There you have it. My top 5 best boss battles in Dark Souls remastered and get ready to tackle the same thing for Dark Souls II which is probably 90% bullshit and 10% greatness. 

[writerspink]

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2.1

paragraph weather window third believe discovered simple gone paint new store form cells matter follow perhaps cannot good means around line center kind reason move forest sentence return instruments beside represent wild study back farmers sum difference product quotient remainder mother animal land region record summer general caterpillar scratch modern adjust passenger promise equal creak almost croak book dainty song high every near add food between own below country plant last school father keep tree never start city earth eyes light thought head under story saw left don’t few while along might close something seem next hard open example begin life always those both paper together got group often run

2.2

misty poor caution pest phrase life startle squirm alone centaur rise mountain above illustrator footprint temperature decorate country sweat sometimes hair smiled everything began thick compass themselves enough took although splendid crowded second act attach sly talk wonder let’s whirl someone Africa borrow beat belong blink per fasten pain begin drenched bed shell free earth tiny slippery count factors important until children side feet car mile night walk white sea grow river four carry state once book hear stop without late miss idea eat face watch far Indian real almost let girl mountains cut young soon list song being leave family it’s

3.1

drowsy bashful hatch glad copy possible wicked grin sibling shovel run verb sail polish ride young steep case Indian laughed soil appear bolts costume melody narrow behave howl example flee together lot filthy alarm spiral selfish idea conductor fight rolled middle glacier tree dizzy gather sneaky already construct every miss lively metal couldn’t gold plant mask chat nation hear either bundle section near rescue face divide sob celebrate family loosen jealous crash chimney daily own cozy ripe cut son natural serious carry care paper broken cue within body music color stand questions fish area mark horse birds problem complete room knew since ever piece told usually didn’t friends easy heard order red door sure become top ship across today during short better best however low hours black products happened whole measure remember early waves reached

3.2

being instead ache exactly hard speed buy age late artistic close affordable fraction eyes appetite complain sleep seem eat below remove rusty grow glum stormy trust enormous scale open add grab upset weed denied expensive story terrified lead jumped died basket side bear bend list tomb while batch grateful father gleaming dress light sprinkle amount exclaim result yank leave cheat whimper angle outside remain heap champion surprise dodge moment fancy squeeze pretend village shriek city thunder rapid iron striped don’t attitude bell hat tug isn’t applause children honest cross spring freezing listen wind rock space covered fast several hold himself toward five step morning passed vowel true hundred against pattern numeral table north expert slowly money map farm pulled draw voice seen cold cried plan notice south sing war ground fall king town I’ll unit figure certain field travel wood fire upon

4.1

pattern cave hope mile group travel blush killed seed bottom hide important let ticket timid pounds restart silent cranky keep real bright quite curved repeat trip without dart consonant mountains quiet apologize roar grip groan bolt food injury century exhausted cabin atmosphere floor it’s scold transportation delighted giant hill something build fog method rough left everyone obey deserve speak therefore soon french switch until pushed state knob hobby between surround collect fire I’ll arrive road happened certain top order astronomy inches club catch farm nibble color yourself received connect told gaze check wear English half ten fly gave box finally wait correct oh quickly person became shown minutes strong verb stars front feel fact street decided contain course surface produce building ocean class note nothing rest carefully scientists inside wheels stay green known island week less machine base ago stood

4.2

round award crowd slowly yet products, goods, services vowel himself strange whose draw team hold feel flood sent save stood yard notice warn enemy deep please flap coast music wrote safe blast behind island lizard figure famous garden correct whisper listen joined clear share net thus calf maybe cried piece fold seen england decided bank fell pair control clean telescope trouble glass float morning horse produce course hunting rest step statement contain shouted filled zigzag accident cents instrument fly single express visit desert seeds chew dome experiment break gravity against branch size low plane system ran boat game force brought understand warm common bring explain dry though language shape thousands yes equation government heat full hot check object am rule among noun power cannot able six dark ball material special heavy fine circle include built

5.1

mark wealthy row feeling across attention ran map students inside design art mouth ring skill hot during shelter full till log (book) blossom discard bring quickly scientists party town covered wise early cram grain harm goal pause inform heal clue fame freeze badge pimple dim missionary diet dumb rod march agree stick government bulb mall ban greed skiing poison stove image grew fact material dangerous flow gap ago stack explain didn’t strong voice true drawing surface gift corner cloud since king dawn pulled dozen friends greedy burning upon knew insect decimal nervous pay foot weak smooth aware steady serve lost nonetheless beach front atlas questions less cost slight motor banner wire area carefully separate equation local minutes fast table plan fine waves fair sing dive suppose boat thousands shape among toward gas factory birds wait understand sure ship report captain human game history reflect special brave bounce though else can’t matter square syllables perhaps bill felt suddenly test direction center farmers ready anything divided general energy subject Europe moon region return believe dance members picked simple cells paint mind love cause rain exercise eggs train blue wish drop developed window difference distance heart site sum summer wall forest probably

5.2

include cage language base red brain building feast better built demolish excess leap tower ocean plains cold claw information scholar climbed woman worry strand heavy herd common ground damp pack choose president least increase half english invent class measure dash tremble object become doubt became bare wheels continued shiver engine core couple business stars week peak numeral brought nothing touch reached uncle symbols however rumor evening inasmuch (as) force curious heat career system valley dust flock spray robber practice lonely remember luxury warm heard calm rock frighten leader difficulty best gum cheer key support universe stream bit usually fish parade balance money note cliff stand proof you’re pale machine complete cool shown street today shy easy several search unit war power caught settle itself fuel mention fresh planet plane straight period person able direct space wood seal field circle lady board besides hours passed known whole similar underline main winter wide written length reason kept interest arms brother race present beautiful store job edge past sign record finished discovered wild happy beside gone sky grass million west lay weather root instruments meet third months paragraph raised represent soft whether clothes flowers shall teacher held describe drive appreciate structure visible artificial

6.1

afraid absorb british seat fear stretched furniture sight oxygen coward rope clever yellow albeit confess passage france fan cattle spot explore rather active death effect mine create wash printed process origin rose swift woe planets doze gasp chief perform triumph value substances tone score predict property movement harsh tube settled defend reverse ancient blood sharp border fierce plunge consider terms vision intend total schedule attract average intelligent corn dead southern glide supply convince send continent brief mural symbol crew chance suffix habit insects entered nursery especially spread drift major fig diagram guess wit sugar predator science necessary moisture park ordeal nectar fortunate flutter gun forward globe misery molecules arctic won’t actually addition washington cling rare lie steel pastime soldiers chill accordingly capital prevent solution greek sensitive electric agreed thin provide indicate northern volunteer sell tied triangle action opposite shoulder imitate steer wander except match cross speak solve appear metal son either ice sleep village factors result jumped snow ride care floor hill pushed baby buy century outside everything tall already instead phrase soil bed copy free hope spring case laughed nation quite type themselves temperature bright lead everyone method section lake iron within dictionary bargain loyal resource struggle vary capture exclaim gloomy insist restless shallow shatter talent atmosphere brilliant endure glance precious unite certain clasp depart journey observe superb treasure wisdom

6.2

prepared journey trade delicate arrived track cotton hoe furnish exciting view grasp level branches privilege limit wrong enable ability various moreover spoil starve dollars digest advice sense accuse pretty wasn’t industry adopt loyal suggested blow treasure cook adjective doesn’t wings tools crops loud smell frail wisdom fit expect ahead lifted deed device weight gradual respect interesting arrange particular compound examine cable climate division individual talent fatal entire advantage opponent wouldn’t elements column custom enjoy grace theory suitable wife shoes determine allow marsh workers difficult repeated thrill position born distant revive magnificent shop sir army struggled deal plural rich rhythm rely poem company string locate church mystify elegant led actual responsible japanese huge fun meat observe swim office chart avoid factories block called experience win crumple brilliant located pole bought conditions sister details primary survey truck recall disease radio rate scatter decay signal approach launch hair age amount scale pounds although per broken moment tiny possible gold milk quiet natural lot stone act build middle speed count consonant someone sail rolled bear wonder smiled angle fraction Africa killed melody bottom trip hole poor let’s fight surprise French died beat exactly remain fingers clever coast explore imitate pierce rare symbol triumph ancient cling disturb expose perform remote timid bashful brief compete consider delightful honor reflex remark brink chill conquer fortunate fury intend pattern vibrant wit

7.1

capture remark western outcome risk current bold compare resident ambition arrest furthermore desire confuse accurate disclose considerable contribute calculate baggage literacy noble era benefit orchard shabby content precious manufacture dusk afford assist demonstrate instant concentrate sturdy severe blend vacant weary carefree host limb pointless prepare inspire shallow chamber vast ease attentive source frantic lack recent distress basic permit threat analyze distract meadow mistrust jagged prefer sole envy hail reduce arena tour annual apparent recognize captivity burrow proceed develop humble resist peculiar response communicate circular variety frequent reveal essential disaster plead mature appropriate attractive request congratulate address destructive fragile modest attempt tradition ancestor focus flexible conclude venture impact generosity routine tragic crafty furious blossom concern ascend awkward master queasy release portion plentiful alert heroic extraordinary frontier descend invisible coax entrance capable peer terror mock outstanding valiant typical competition hardship entertain eager limp survive tidy antonym duplicate abolish approach approve glory magnificent meek prompt revive watchful wreckage audible consume glide origin prevent punctuate representative scorn stout woe arch authentic clarify declare grant grave opponent valid yearn admirable automatic devotion distant dreary exhaust kindle predict separation stunt

7.2

evade debate dedicate budge available miniature petrify pasture banquet pedestrian solitary decline reassure nonchalant exhibit realistic exert abuse dictate minor monarch concept character strategy soar beverage tropical withdraw challenge kin navigate purchase reliable mischief solo combine vivid aroma spurt illuminate narrator retain excavate avalanche preserve suspend accomplish exasperate obsolete occasion myth reign sparse gorge intense revert antagonist talon aggressive alternate retire cautiously blizzard require endanger luxurious senseless portable sever compensate companion visual immense slither guardian compassion escalate detect protagonist oasis altitude assume seldom courteous absurd edible identical pardon approximate taunt achievement homonym hearty convert wilderness industrious sluggish thrifty deprive independent bland confident anxious astound numerous resemble route access jubilation saunter hazy impressive document moral crave gigantic bungle prefix summit overthrow perish visible translate comply intercept feeble exult compose negative suffocate frigid synonym appeal dominate deplete abundant economy desperate diligent commend boycott jovial onset burden fixture objective siege barrier conceive formal inquire penalize picturesque predator privilege slumber advantage ambition defiant fearsome imply merit negotiate purify revoke wretched absorb amateur channel elegant grace inspect lame tiresome tranquil boast eloquent glisten ideal infectious invest locate ripple sufficient uproar

8.1

apprehensive dialogue prejudice marvel eligible accommodate arrogant distinct knack deposit liberate cumulative consequence strive salvage chronological unique vow concise influence lure poverty priority legislation significant conserve verdict leisure erupt beacon stationary generate provoke efficient campaign paraphrase swarm adhere eerie mere mimic deteriorate literal preliminary solar soothe expanse ignite verge recount apparel terrain ample quest composure majority collide prominent duration pursue innovation omniscient resolute unruly optimist restrain agony convenient constant prosper elaborate genre retrieve exploit continuous dissolve dwell persecute abandon meager elude rural retaliate primitive remote blunder propel vital designate cultivate loathe consent drastic fuse maximum negotiate barren transform conspicuous possess allegiance beneficial former factor deluge vibrant intimidate idiom dense awe rigorous manipulate transport discretion hostile clarity arid parody boisterous capacity massive prosecute declare stifle remorse refuge predicament treacherous inevitable ingenious plummet adapt monotonous accumulate reinforce extract reluctant vacate hazardous inept diminish domestic linger context excel cancel distribute document fragile myth reject scuffle solitary temporary veteran assault convert dispute impressive justify misleading numerous productive shrewd strategy villain bluff cautious consist despise haven miniature monarch obstacle postpone straggle vivid aggressive associate deceive emigrate flexible glamour hazy luxurious mishap overwhelm span blemish blunt capable conclude detect fatigue festive hospitality nomad supreme

8.2

exclude civic compact painstaking supplement habitat leeway minute hoax contaminate likeness migration commentary extinct tangible originate urban unanimous subordinate collaborate obstacle esteem encounter futile cordial trait improvises superior exaggerate anticipate cope evolve eclipse dissent anguish subsequent sanctuary formulates makeshift controversy diversity terminate precise equivalent pamper prior potential obnoxious radiant predatory presume permanent pending simultaneously tamper supervise perceived vicious patronize trickle stodgy rant oration preview species poised perturb vista wince yearn persist shirk status tragedy trivial snare vindictive wrath recede peevish rupture unscathed random toxic void orthodox subtle resume sequel upright wary overwhelm perjury uncertainty prowess utmost throb pluck pique vengeance pelt urgent substantial robust sullen retort ponder whim saga sham reprimand vocation assimilate dub defect accord embark desist dialect chastise banter inaugurate ovation barter muse blasé stamina atrocity deter principal liberal epoch preposterous advocate audacious dispatch incense deplore institute deceptive component subside spontaneous bonanza ultimate wrangle clarify hindrance irascible plausible profound infinite accomplish apparent capacity civilian conceal duplicate keen provoke spurt undoing vast withdraw barrier calculate compose considerable deputy industrious jolt loot rejoice reliable senseless shrivel alternate demolish energetic enforce feat hearty mature observant primary resign strive verdict brisk cherish considerate displace downfall estimate humiliate identical improper poll soothe vicinity abolish appeal brittle condemn descend dictator expand famine portable prey thrifty visual

9.1

stance vie instill exceptional avail strident formidable rebuke enhance benign perspective tedious aloof encroach memoir mien desolate inventive prodigy staple stint fallacy grope vilify recur assail tirade antics recourse clad jurisdiction caption pseudonym reception humane ornate sage ungainly overt sedative amiss convey connoisseur rational enigma fortify servile fastidious contagious elite disgruntled eccentric pioneer abet luminous era sleek serene proficient rue articulate awry pungent wage deploy anarchy culminate inventory commemorate muster adept durable foreboding lucrative modify authority transition confiscate pivotal analogy avid flair ferret decree voracious imperative grapple deface augment shackle legendary trepidation discern glut cache endeavor attribute phenomenon balmy bizarre gullible loll rankle decipher sublime rubble renounce porous turbulent heritage hover pithy allot minimize agile renown fend revenue versa gaunt haven dire doctrine intricate conservative exotic facilitate bountiful cite panorama swelter foster indifferent millennium gingerly conscientious intervene mercenary citadel obviously rely supportive sympathy weakling atmosphere decay gradual impact noticeable recede stability variation approximately astronomical calculation criterion diameter evaluate orbit sphere agricultural decline disorder identify probable thrive expected widespread bulletin contribution diversity enlist intercept operation recruit survival abruptly ally collide confident conflict protective taunt adaptation dormant forage frigid hibernate insulate export glisten influence landscape native plantation restore urge blare connection errand exchange

9.2

feasible teem pang vice tycoon succumb capacious onslaught excerpt eventful forfeit crusade tract haggard susceptible exemplify ardent crucial excruciating embargo disdain apprehend surpass sporadic flustered languish conventional disposition theme plunder ignore project complaint title dramatic delivery litter experimental clinic arrogance preparation remind atomic occasional conscious deny maturity closure stressed translator animate observation physical further gently registration suppress combination amazing constructive allied poetry passion ecstasy mystery cheerful contribution spirit failed gummy commerce prove disagreement raid consume embarrass preference migrant devour encouragement quote mythology destined destination illuminating struggle accent ungrateful giggle approval confidence expose scientist operation superstitious emergency manners absolutely swallow readily mutual bound crisp orient stress sort stare comfort verbal heel challenging advertisement envious sex scar astonish basis accuracy enviable alliance specific chef embarrassed counter tolerable sympathetic gradually vanish informative amaze royal furry insist jealousy simplify quiver collaborate dedicated flexible function mimic obstacle technique archaeologist fragment historian intact preserve reconstruct remnant commence deed exaggeration heroic impress pose saunter wring astound concealed inquisitive interpret perplexed precise reconsider suspicious anticipation defy entitled neutral outspoken reserved sought equal absorb affect circulate conserve cycle necessity seep barren expression meaningful plume focused genius perspective prospect stunned superb transition assume guarantee nominate

10.1

install reticent corroborate regretfully strength murder concise cunning intention holy satire query confused progression disillusion background mundane abrupt multiple enormously introduce emulate harmful pragmatic pity rebut liberate enthusiastic elucidate camaraderie disparage nature creep profitability impression racist sobriety occupy autonomy currently amiable reiterate reproduce cripple modest offer atom provincial augment ungratefully expansion yield rashly allude immigration silence epitome exacerbate somber avid dispute vindicate collaborate manufacturer embellish superficial propaganda incompetent objective diminish statistics endure ambivalent perpetuate illuminate phenomenon exasperate originality restrict anxiety anthropology circumstances aesthetic manufacturing conventional dubious vulnerable reality precedent entity success term critical repair underscore stepmother republican hesitantly classic wary contents prediction immediate invoke notorious implicit excluding input skeptical foster element punish frank humanity profound dessert orthodox substance disappear encourage neighborhood elder superfluous naive ascertain complacent resilient deafening military tend prudent glare acceptance skillfully induce monster beam gullible conciliate vessel petty cantankerous disclose archaeology anecdote disdain electronics substantiate subjective tourism advisable joyful incredible provocative psychological ruins discipline condone indifferent misfortune judgmental industrialize tasty assume astute mission mar protective definitely escape oppress shocked virtual zealous endorse qualification hostile eccentric abstract disparate geographical scrutinize generalization tolerate activity claim dogmatic influential obsolete extol implausible subsequent resource chronic benevolent improve confidential ambiguous seriously dearth perplex hatred throughout dine contemporary evoke essentially economic flagrant obscure alleviate eloquent dreaadful clumsy sympathy victim condemn vigor condescend spontaneous quell reprehensible substantially sleeve equivocal ironic decry errand articulate progressive eradicate refreshments elicit aspiration recently exemplary bribery theoretical disingenuous partisan revere particle nostalgia self-aggrandizement debunk tyranny rhetoric hierarchy warning whimsical venerate commend assert miserable awful vibe constrain undermine explicit differentiate compliment scrupulous contempt erroneous ideal refute imply cynical rash presume insight revival vary delay renounce indignant offensive temperate circumstantial export peep logo advertise suppress distort chunk convoluted denounce overwhelming fertility rigorous acquire arrogant university antagonize profitable indulgent strategic breathing idiosyncrasy profession frugal discern accommodation adversary incredulous disturbance digress social belie roam smug continual pertinent voluntarily elite subtle blame sincerity lick horror censure involvement candid infer futile impetuous exploit bewilder sustain diligent sincere protect sealed musical empathy callous parenthetical insure acorn sarcasm seize sacrificially allege emphatic irrelevant progress diplomatic stunned improvise deride reconcile meticulous deject scientifically incontrovertible pressure justify gloomy depict supplant endurance analogous diary bolster slip contemplate pesticide glow religious advocate negligent creator lament fundamental embrace throne inherent inferior valuable thrive trivial pretense reserved capricious refresh refusal flight boost explanation coherent prevalent tenacious official royalty assassin rub poach delete

10.2

warrant circumscribed somewhat explosive optimistic mandate previously detract opinion intuitive feasible intimate persistent humble simplicity tempt deliberate painful unethical fundamentals discrepancy remorse pessimistic possibility conclusion acknowledge impregnate soberly creation paralyze suitability oblige tranquil medal arbitrate pacify illusory susceptible vibrate vengeance infection democratic stressful grave speculative sample identification stifle obligation revenge organization namely mediocre practical scream weaken consensus affectionate deficient treacherous console isolation ingenious memory melodrama despair awestruck composition regret recommendation celebrity decision devoid opaque ornamentation longevity participate dread restore interrogate aid accordingly mislead embarrassment optimism domestic apt funds virtue geography fundamentally thoroughly press despite horrible chilling rental esteemed disappointment innovative contemplation assign popularize haunt deafen serene percent estrangement suffer extravagant throng estimate comment priesthood mass dreadfully promote periphery animated saying relate clarity triple derivative succeed distortion register suicide improvement discreet inquisition probable curative incident praise convenience baffle covet dreadful genuinely weary undisturbed disgruntled humility renown nonchalant monopoly comedy vague decisive inconsequential announcement fabricated nevertheless vigilant scarce neglectful hushed attainment tedious explode snatch pslm agency sentimental tension adhere meanwhile sacred avert conformity likewise challenger accessible responsibility peril contact event roast fallible catastrophic competitor violate resolute deceive exaggeration discredit intolerable approve paste dimly novelist demeanor norm politician satisfaction obvious vehicle reservation defer involve restoration crush audible assistant backpack attain inanimate commemorate confrontation emigration parasite disperse quantitative laughter policy vulgar occasionally repay effective eulogy starvation empty therapeutic overall immortal encompass inappropriate opportune engagement illustrate turmoil observatory classification expression reminiscence comedian invention depress remedy protagonist gesture texture diplomatic election prolong conducive emotional invigorate curiosity expressive %

K-12 Words was originally published on PinkWrite

[durenjtmusings]

The Great SPN Meta Scavenger Hunt: Round 2  - The Exclamatories, Expletives and Key Words/Phrases Listicle

(or TL;DR - “Suck as it may, our perky nipples are defcon screwed with signs of douchery, so shut your cakehole, you whackjob, before I make your posh spice ass have a code brown moment and use you for an angel condom. Asshat.”)

[No abstract here because writing them is hard and f*ck that sh*t it is 4 am.]

Introduction:

Thanks to @elizabethrobertajones​ for kickstarting my “SPN Character Voice Database” project with this challenge. The verbal creativity and qualities of each character’s “voice’ has always been one of the things that has greatly entertained me about Supernatural. So, in attempting to write SPN fanfic, I am pretty obsessed about making character’s dialogue *sound* right. @chiisana-sukima​  and I were chatting recently about our struggles to 'write’ the boys swearing convincingly (I make then swear lamely and she has to take swears out) and BOTH of us are struggling with making Sam swear right (tip – turns out, that’s because he doesn’t very much). [I think this is the presenting problem or sorta the research question, but again, 4 am and not getting paid so ;P]

In the spirit of scientific investigation, I have begun to address this problem in a typically “academic” way – I collected and analyzed unique character language patterns data for all 12 of the initial SPN episodes (using Excel and everything). Analysis consisted of *highly subjective* qualitative and quantitative methodologies using the rubric below (thanks to @k-vichan​ for the rubric framework from their “Dean the Action Hero” entry)

Review of Existing Research:

As far as I know – this research is unique in fandom – if someone has already done this, PLEASE let me know so I can do something ELSE with my time.

Definitions of Key Terms:

Exclamatory – ‘throw-away’ words which, if removed from the sentence, have no real effect – they are there for punctuation, character flavor, etc. and often start or end a sentence. Includes ‘pet words’ for people like son, boy, douche, Giraffe, etc. For my purposes, I did NOT count ah, well, alright or OK, because EVERYONE USES THEM ALL THE TIME in this show. Some words counted in this category ONLY if they were NOT used ‘correctly’ in context – examples (correct usage in brackets):  Hell (the place), God (the person/entity), hey (to get you to turn around), c’mon (to get you to come with someone) and man (to indicate a male person).

Expletive – swears, substitute swears and blasphemes (technically all exclamatories, but in a class by themselves). These were casually assigned ‘strength’ by how much I got in trouble for saying them when a kid (words like friggin’ were counted for strength as if they were the swear they replaced). We were not a religious family so blasphemes were all counted as lamer than more scatological swears.

Key Words and Phrases – Crack stuff said by characters that ‘define their voice’ – things that make them uniquely them. Fun phrases and sayings. Includes innocuous stuff like “Seriously?”, “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” and chick. Sometimes a colloquialism was counted, like ‘ain’t been’ because it seemed unique to the character. NOTE: Cas is a special case here – his entries tended to be overly formal words no one else ever really says OR cases where he starts to use human idioms at ALL.

Method:

Re-watched all initial episodes over the course of 5 days and recorded all entries in the above 3 categories by character, with extras grouped as a block. Then grouped all recurring characters of note in a “friends and family” group for easier analysis, creating 4 main groups: Dean, Sam, F&F and Xtras. These four groups were then analyzed in the following categories and assigned scores by one completely biased reviewer.

Quantity - actual # of items recorded across ALL characters. Repetitions were counted individually.

Variety - (scale of 1-5) measures how unique and interesting items are for this episode, as well as ‘strength’ of expletives.

Originality - 5 points per item that made me chuckle or raised my eyebrow the 1st time I watched the episode

Sam vs Dean - % of Sam items to Dean items as an integer. Sam hardly swears, so we want to give him lots of credit for when he DOES do so. This also serves as a measure of ‘balance’ in verbal creativity for the episode.

Family & Friends - (scale of 1-5) QVO (see above) across other core characters (+1 bonus point if Cas had ANY)

Xtras - (scale of 0-5) QVO across any Xtras

Impress me – 5 points per character whose performance REALLY stood out to me (purely subjective, don’t argue with the researcher)

Controlling for Bias: @chiisana-sukima and I also discussed how the writer for each episode had a lot to do with language, so we’ve included that data in the results. Other items that may affect the data include a) how much silence there was built into the script, b) how MANY characters appeared in the episode, and c) how plot affected the character (Demon!Dean, Demon!Bobby, Leviathan!Cas, dead-hallucination Bobby-in-Sam’s-head, etc.). For my purposes, if they LOOKED and tried to ACT like the character, their words were categorized for that character. But, essentially, I didn’t sweat this stuff and did whatever I wanted, because no one is paying me, so there.

Results:

SO – no surprise this is stupidly long and full of illustrative screencaps. Read below the cut for the Fun stuff! {Oh, and pre-emptively: “Screw you, my math is perfect.”}

1.1 Pilot (Kripke)

Dean: Whoa; easy tiger, are you kidding me?; hell, gig, dude, not bad, scored (got); do some digging (research), cakehole, check it out, c'mon, I betcha, here's the deal; dude, took a swan dive, "what the...", I'm super, chick, what a bitch (she is), I don't get it, no chick flick moments, bitch, hey man, dude, five-o, take off, crap, boobs, nice work (well done), saved your ass, screwed up, shag ass, whatever, helluva,

Sam: crap, hell, hey, c'mon, the damn thing, working overtime on a Millertime shift; man, dean; jim, jack and jose; I swear, man; kinda, hey, genius (deprecating), hey, jerk, hell, we got work to do.

F&F: John –hell, (sports reference) ; Mary - oh my God

Xtras: hell, smartass, hell, Hell

Quantity – 60    

Variety – 4    

Originality – 20  [cakehole; no chick flick moments; working overtime on a Millertime shift; jim, jack and jose]

Sam vs Dean – 18/35  or 51

Family & Friends – 1

Xtras – 1

Impress me – 10 [Dean, of course, made a strong first impression in this pilot episode, but comparatively this is one of Sam’s strongest episodes as well.]

          Total = 142

2.1 In My Time of Dying (Kripke)

Dean: man, c'mon, gimme, thank god, screw you, c'mon, lay some mojo on me, c'mon, what the hell kinda, hey, frickin', man, dude, full on Swazy'd that mother. What the…, get the hell away, now what?, sorta, you gotta be kiddin' me, god, I'll be damned, damn straight, I'm screwed, son of a bitch (angry), chick, far too laid back, hell, cut me a break, I'll pass, not into (x) chicks, what the hell, ditch it,  c'mon, c'mon,

Sam: I swear to god, you wanna bet, lay some mojo on, thumbs up our asses, I got it covered, hey, aw man, pissed (mad), what's going on?, go to hell,  hey, man, hey, c'mon, man,

F&F: John - our only card, meet up with, hey, pick it up (for me), hey, dude, buttin' heads, I seen; Bobby – you got it (yes), damn; Tessa - freaked, I'm dealing, flipped out; YED - get the hell out

Xtras: oh my god

Quantity –   64  

Variety –    2.5  

Originality –  5 [full on Swazy'd that mother]

Sam vs Dean – 15/34  or 44

Family & Friends – 2

Xtras – 0

Impress me – 0  [Really kinda banal, noting major happened verbally in this episode. Dean was lively, but not really inventive.]

         Total = 117.5

3.1 The Magnificent Seven (Kripke)

Dean: freaky, weirdo, bupkiss, drivin' me crazy, I aint sweatin' it, get this, spiffy, whackjob, stupidx3 (in one sentence), showtime!, sit here with our junk in our hands, send [him] packing, hell warmed over, poor bastards, chick, whatever it takes to get you through the night, goose chase, welch out of it, so help me god, tuff, whatever, sons of bitches, raise hell,

Sam: ah, god; beats me, man, my god, what the hell, good bet, stark raving psycho, bustin' my ass,  

F&F: Bobby - (double negative), pack it up, damn it, half-cocked, this joker, son (at Dean),

Xtras: "Hell's Bells", Hell, bastards, damn fools, man, rat's ass, piss poor, damn

Quantity –   47 

Variety –    3 [very little repetition, several new words by several characters]

Originality – 15  [whackjob, sit here with our junk in our hands, stark raving psycho]

Sam vs Dean – 8/25  or 32

Family & Friends – 1

Xtras – 2 [more quantity and variety than previously]

Impress me –  0 [ solid performances, but no one really stood out]

          Total = 100

4.1 Lazarus Rising (Kripke)

Dean: Preachin' to the choir, dammit, bad mojo, some [one's] bitch boy, badass, hell yes, damn,  douche her up, bit it (die), freaky, weirdo, crap, I'm game, bring it,  work him over, perky nipples, cut me loose (from Hell), tell you squat, "don't come crawling to me when they show up on your doorstep with vaseline and a firehose", whatever had the juice to, bad mofo, peachy, (serious) as a heart attack, bigtime [knife], get caught with pants down, helluva, "ring the dinner bell" (call up bad guy), get the hell out, I'm not buying (it - belief),

Sam: hell, they booked up here, thank god, what the hell's goin' on, hell,

F&F: Bobby - dead set on it, took off, what in the hell, aint been, sticky question, damn thing (2 x), kid (at Sam), you can't be serious; Pamela - Grumpy (at Sam); ruby: getting pretty slick

Xtras: damn, gotah Hell

 Quantity – 47    

Variety –   4 [Dean’s range alone here pulls this up from a 3]  

Originality – 20  [douche her up ; perky nipples; don't come crawling to me … vaseline and a firehose;  Grumpy]

Sam vs Dean – 5/29  or 17

Family & Friends – 2.5 [about avg quantity and variety]

Xtras – 1 [pretty lame]

Impress me – 5 [Dean really lit this episode up – back from the dead and spittin’ words!]

          Total = 96.5

5.1 Sympathy for the Devil (Kripke)

Dean:  What the hell, keep our heads down, whatever, hey, stupid bastard, asshat, sons of bitches, cram it with walnuts, ugly; two-faced douche, jack squat, you dicks, son of a bitch, hey, bitch blood, yeah, right wavy gravy; thank god, angel condom (vessel), son of a bitch, eat me, big dicks, what the hell, screw him, screw [them], crap (adj), give 'em hell, crap, a snowball's chance, hell, man,

Sam:  Jeeze, hey, ass, meatsuit (posessed human), hey,

F&F: Bobby - Romeo (at Sam), ass, kid (at Sam), damn, snot-nosed son of a bitch, kick your friggin' ass, we're boned, nine kinds of crazy, boy x2 (at Dean and at Sam), damn (adj); Chuck - x the crap out of him, oh God; oh crap, sucks ass; Nick (pre-Luci) - man, why the hell; Meg (dark) - pain in the ass; Zachariah - Chucklehead, screwing around

Xtras: holy crap

Quantity –  55  

Variety –   4 [nice range from both Dean and F&F]  

Originality – 25  [asshat; cram it with walnuts, right wavy gravy, angel condom, nine kinds of crazy]

Sam vs Dean – 5/30  or 17

Family & Friends – 4 [nice quantity and variety, with some originality and group participation as well]

Xtras – 0 [boring really]

Impress me – 15  [Dean, of course, stood out again, but also this was a standout episode for Bobby, and Chuck because like 50% of his total episode lines counted]

         Total = 110

6.1 Exile on Main Street (Gamble)

Dean: crap (adj), chicks, dig (like), man, freakin', how the hell, [?] what the hell, c'mon x2, you gotta be kidding me, god knows why, sue me, damn, sons of bitches, stick my neck out, whatever, you bet,

Sam: Hey, crap, go gunnin' for (hunt), that's nasty,

F&F:   Bobby - dammit, mi casa es su casa, damn  

Xtras: thank god, what the hell, my god, shook loose, helluva, oh my god, you son of a bitch

Quantity –   30  

Variety –  2 [softer curses, common, some repetition – generally blah]    

Originality –  0 [not an danged thing new]

Sam vs Dean – 4/16  or 25

Family & Friends – 1 [only Bobby and lame showing]

Xtras – 3 [Better quantity than everyone but Dean, decent quality]

Impress me –  0 [for obvious reasons]

          Total = 61

 7.1 Meet the New Boss (Gamble)

Dean: this is nuts, c'mon x2, ah well; stick your neck out, figure it out, off the deep end, pissed, pray to god, kicked in the daddy pills, scuzzy, piece of…, thingy, hear us out, (X) is our bitch, both of you put your junk away, really?, crap, piehole, out of the cards, hey x2,

Sam: I guess (yes), seriously?, hey, friggin', crap, hey,  

F&F:  Bobby - diddly, c'mon, kid (Sam), sport (Sam), son of a bitch, Jenga (eureka); Cas - genitals, cannot abide, atone, unpleasant; Crowley - bollocks, jig is up, bend them right over, come on, giraffe (at Sam), mash us like peas; Death - you're joking, shut up; Lucifer - long time no spooning, right on, yank the wool off of your eyes

Xtras: heck, oh my god,

 Quantity –  49  

Variety –      3  [pulled up by some Dean inventiveness and the variety in F&F]

Originality – 10  [kicked in the daddy pills; long time no spooning ]

Sam vs Dean – 6/20 or 30

Family & Friends – 4 +1 [more than DEAN! And. Of course, Crowley’s imaginativeness, And Cas HAD some!]]

Xtras – 0 [Frickin’ BOring]

Impress me – 0  [Crowley was a near thing, but not really]

          Total = 97

8.1 We Need to Talk About Kevin (Carver)

Dean: you son of a bitch, you bastard, keep your nose clean, dammit, my ass, things got hairy towards the end, in the wind, turned tail on, knee deep in god's armpit, bully for you, damn, no signs of douchery, So what? You dropped your peanut butter in her chocolate?; 31 flavors of bottom-dwelling nasties, dental apocalypse (vamp), lookin' for a soul train, hey, wow, come sniffing around, I got bupkiss, sweet mother of god, come again?, wipe the slate clean, bastard, Spanky, by a long shot, jackass, hitting the head, helluva lot, beat a dead horse,

Sam: what the.., frickin', right, I did not have a roadmap (no clue), hey, throw a bitchfit, check this out, dude, it sucks, might suck, what the hell,

F&F: Crowley - Heavens no, sky's the limit, throw me a bone, hullo boys, moose (Sam), last time we danced (met), chop chop (hurry), meatsuit; Benny - what the hell, jackass, hump my soul (carry), howya holdin'up?,  keep your nose clean; Kevin - hell, eat me x2, what the hell,

Xtras: dude, bitch, dumbass

Quantity –    62

Variety –      5 [avg to strong performances from ALL involved, even the xtras]

Originality –  25 [knee deep in god's armpit; no signs of douchery; 31 flavors of bottom-dwelling nasties, dental apocalypse; hump my soul]

Sam vs Dean – 11/31  or 35

Family & Friends – 4 [good quantity variety and strength.]

Xtras – 1 [pretty basic]

Impress me – 10 [Dean, absolutely on this one; & Kevin – for eat me x2 said with absolute conviction]

          Total = 142

9.1 I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here (Carver)

Dean: whatever the hell, pissed at, we'll work it out, man, screw it, with ears on (listening), jimmied ourselves out, man, all due respect, don't be a pouter (speak up), son of a bitch, what the hell, hey, pissed, what the hell, dammit, whoa, give a damn, bite me, what the hell, you kidding me?, no way in hell, what the hell, dammit, dudn't mean squat, hell, hell no, angelic pacemaker, whoa, handsy, hell,

Sam: seriously? friggin' crapfest, shuttup (no/negative), the thing is, I bet you get off on this, what the hell, crap, we got work to do

F&F: Bobby - hell yes, you didn't do jack, suck as that may, idjits, basackwards crazy, son (Sam) x2; Cas – devote; Death - not my bag;

Xtras: what the hell x2

Quantity – 51    

Variety –  3 [lotta repetitive hell in this one, most not terribly strong, either]    

Originality –  15  [angelic pacemaker; friggin' crapfest; suck as that may]

Sam vs Dean – 9/31  or 29

Family & Friends – 3 [on the strength of Bobby alone, really]

Xtras – 0 [dull, dull, dull]

Impress me – 5 [Bobby (or Sam, however you want to think about it) for a dead guy with a small part, he was pretty verbally lively]

         Total = 106

10.1 Black (Carver)

Dean: oops, bitch, douche, you sold me out, you all suck, two-bit skank, sure as hell, knock yourself out, whatever jam he's in, damn sure,

Sam: you got it (yes), get this, jumped the gun, kick his butt, son of a bitch, meatsuit, what the hell, look buddy, turn tail, army recruiting ad that spit you out

F&F: Cas - I'm sensing awkardness, like a million dollars, put up much of a fight?; Crowley - you're budgin' it, moose x3, what's eating you up, out of your depth, what tickles me, what makes you lose your chickens, good luck with that, demon chum, does the tin man have a sheet metal willie?, fetid petri dish of broken dreams and beer, out with the club circuit and in with the stadium tour, my bad, midwifing you back to life; Cole - chicken wing (arm in sling), ass over teakettle, hurt like son of a bitch, I'm karma,

Xtras: eat me, jackass, douche, code brown moment, your funeral, screwed up

Quantity –  58

Variety –      4.5 [only because I’d like to see the variety more balanced among characters]

Originality –  25  [army recruiting ad that spit you out; what makes you lose your chickens; does the tin man have a sheet metal willie?; fetid petri dish of broken dreams and beer, code brown moment]

Sam vs Dean – 10/10  or 100

Family & Friends – 5+1  [Crowley, oh dear lord, was masterful, plus Cole was fun too. And Cas HAD some!]

Xtras – 4 [the Gas and Sip counter guy Rocked]

Impress me – 15 [Crowley OMG; the Gas and Sip counter guy xtra OMG, Sam – for EQUALING Demon!Dean in verbal skills this episode]

         Total = 212.5

11.1 Out of the Darkness and into the Fire (Carver)

Dean: What the hell, easy buddy, stay cool, heyx3, is this like a Magic Mike moment?, whoa, take it easy, everybody goes '28 days later'?, hell, like a sunnofa bitch, dudn't it, sumpin' straight, untenable, bite us in the ass, horse sense, we broke it we bought it, where the hell, defcon screwed, shove x up his ass, hell yes, farting sawdust, frickin', no way, c'mon x2, godspeed (good luck), screwy, kick her ass,

Sam: seriously? we know jack, you were on a roll, these things have a shelf life, hey, our crap, only half of the bumper sticker, hey, sons of bitches

F&F: Cas – transgressions; Crowley - you excrement, old school it is, daddy's home;

Xtras:  freaking out

Quantity –  43

Variety –    4 [actually quite a creative episode, verbally, with little repetition and not a lot of boring exclamations]  

Originality – 30  [is this like a Magic Mike moment; everybody goes '28 days later'; untenable;  defcon screwed ; farting sawdust ; only half of the bumper sticker]

Sam vs Dean – 9/29  or 31

Family & Friends – 1+1 [Because Cas]

Xtras – 0  [I mean, really]

Impress me – 5 [Dean kicked it for me this episode]

         Total = 115

12.1 Keep Calm and Carry On (Dabb)

Dean: flat on his ass, be pissed (mad), c'mon, new duds, whoa x7, hell yeah, what’s his face, bitch, (freak),

Sam: screw you, accent in a pantsuit, screw you, Screw.You., go to hell, screw you

F&F:  Mary - come again?,  sweetheart,

Xtras: Holy Mother…, hold up (wait), no way, were a bitch, chick, psycho, fricking, (demons): busted bitch, dude, gross,  posh spice ass

Quantity – 24

Variety –  3 [and not a 2 purely due to the xtras]    

Originality –  10 [accent in a pantsuit, posh spice ass]

Sam vs Dean – 6/15  or 40

Family & Friends – 1 [and not a 0 only because the way Mary says sweetheart to Baby melts me]

Xtras – 4 [good solid showing here]

Impress me – 10  [Sam – because, well Duh, Screw. You.  And the xtras]

          Total = 92

Conclusions:

In general, it looks like writers wanted to keep to at LEAST above 100 on the “@Durenjtmusings Verbal Inventiveness Rubric” for decent verbal variety in a script. Both Carver and Kripke were pretty good at this. Dabb should take note.

Ranking of episodes:

Worst - 6.1 Gamble – 61  (note that both Gamble’s scores were low – not judging, just holding it up for ridicule)

12.1 Dabb - 92

4.1 Kripke - 96.5

7.1 Gamble - 97

3.1 Kripke - 100

9.1 Carver - 106

5.1 Kripke - 110

11.1 Carver - 115

2.1 Kripke - 117.5

8.1 Carver & 1.1 Kripke – 142  (Both good showings, although I like 8.1 better, personally.)

Best - 10.1 Carver - 212.5 (Aaaaannd, Crowley wins this episode the trophy – who is surprised? Plus someone hire that Gas and Sip counter guy - comedy timing gold. Also, of note, Demon!Dean talked less, and less creatively -  letting his sneering and violence say everything for him, evidently. Because of this, however, Sam EQUALLED Dean for verbal inventiveness this episode, for perfect brother balance. Yea for the Mark.)

Bonus: Results Presented Chronologically – in case you care:

1.1 Kripke - 142

2.1 Kripke - 117.5

3.1 Kripke - 100

4.1 Kripke - 96.5

5.1 Kripke - 110

6.1 Gamble - 61

7.1 Gamble - 97

8.1 Carver - 142

9.1 Carver - 106

10.1 Carver - 212.5

11.1 Carver - 115

12.1 Dabb - 92

Final Thoughts: I have begun to note a number of fun cross-episode meta things – like Sam tends to echo expletives that someone else has already said in an episode, Angels are REALLY boring verbally except for Zachariah, and Dean is way more verbally creative when he’s just come back from exile (hell, purgatory, etc.) – but I’m holding on to this until I have more data on the 250+ episodes I have left to analyze.

Extra Credit for the Obsessed Experts: Go back over JUST Dean’s collected words and see how much of the episode you can visualize from his verbal creativeness alone.

Also - this was fun and I am clearly a compulsive academic…someone please stop me before it is too late.

[waynekelton]

PictoQuest Review

Picross is an old grid-based family of logic puzzles, rather like a mixture of Sudoku and Minesweeper. You fill in boxes to create a ‘pixelated’ image based on the numbers marking each row and column. A ‘5’ in a row means there are five filled boxes, one right after another, no more, no less. The rules are simple but the consequences aren’t. Picross had some mainstream success over a decade ago when it became part of the Nintendo DS’s large and diverse catalog (while popular, it never had the breakout appeal or sales of say, Nintendogs).

It’s always been a solid option. By adding a generic fantasy theme filled with magical potions, a standard bestiary and youthful heroes, PictoQuest attempts to give Picross a facelift. It tries to give a great puzzle form some pizazz to lure in new players. Reader, even for a puzzle-lover, the results are mixed at best. PictoQuest is a mashup of many conventional videogame ideas shoe-horned into a classic puzzle format. It’s pleasant enough and mildly challenging for newcomers, but ultimately derivative.

The game is structured around short levels with different enemy types. If you were just looking at screenshots, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an RPG, or at least RPG-inspired, like PuzzleQuest was. (It isn’t either of these things, sadly). There are health bars for both you and the foe, but they are false symbols. A match is over when the picture is complete: the enemy is KO’d when the puzzle is completely filled in, no more, no less.

For your trouble, you get a little gold after each level. Any mistakes or long pauses mean the enemy attacks you, depleting your health bar. So in PictoQuest both speed and accuracy are important, which makes for a stressful learning environment. A little focus and concentration can make for better puzzle solving, but the real-time pressure can actually incentivize leaps of logic and deductive guesswork...which are punished by the skimpy, 3-heart health pool. Picross should be about the sure thing, the iron lattice of logic. PictoQuest can be beat with hectic tapping, magic items, and repeating a level over and over to just imprint the unchanging image grid on your brain.

The game’s different regions have pretty decent difficulty scaling, in terms of the raw complexity of the puzzle grids themselves. The purist approach dictates that logic puzzles should be approached methodically with an eye for chains of consequence. If a column says ‘8’, then the centermost six spaces must be filled. Most progress is made through the process of elimination, marking ineligible spaces X to narrow the field of possibilities. It’s the thrill of a crossword, or Sudoku, or any other activity where a mind can observe a pattern at work and unravel its consequences. There’s the vast wasteland of the empty puzzle at the very start, the slow build towards minor clues and victories, then as momentum peaks and the final few holdouts fall into place. Not exactly your typical gamer rush, but still a respectable and perfectly fun activity.

The puzzles themselves have been well-selected and ordered; the fancy ones come a great deal later. This smooth curve is undermined by the fact that the actual game mechanics are counter-intuitive and distracting. There’s plenty of stick and little to no carrot. It’s like asking someone to do as many pushups or squats in sixty seconds while turning a blind eye to their position and form. It encourages sloppiness and creates cognitive dissonance by tasking the player to improve at every metric simultaneously. Bosses will have progressively weirder twists and hit harder while the puzzle grid gets larger and the hints get less generous. It’s an ambitious challenge, but one that never actually feels hard. It creates obstacles and inconveniences rather than honing and refining the primary mechanic, and for this reason alone, PictoQuest is a letdown.

To enliven things, one-time consumable items can reveal tiles, restore hearts or freeze enemies, for a small gold fee. The game has no other tools to ameliorate the challenges it has set: it’s purely sink or swim. I can get behind a tiny set of rules, in the right circumstances it’s actually fantastically liberating (see: Miracle Merchant), but here the bonus effects feel hokey and tacked-on, as if someone tried to take a dollar-store puzzle booklet and make it come to life with the most hackneyed of video game tropes: a quest to save the kingdom. The fantasy theme and magic mechanics are merely window dressing, but also manage to be irksome and invasive.

There’s no great injustice in this: it’s not as if Picross puzzles are some holy grail, the pinnacle of the form which will tolerate no bastardization. Puzzles and high fantasy settings aren’t strange bedfellows by any means (see: Puzzle Quest and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes). But the limited gameplay makes the bare-bones nature of Picross puzzles feel a tad dated. For example, because each level is just a static layout, it could be brute-forced with a good memory and multiple failed attempts. It’s like two fun things decided to merge together haphazardly and the result is worse than either half separately.

The visuals are clean and bright, and the UI is nice, especially the greyed-out effects used to update the hint sections of the puzzle as they’re completed. The music strikes a clean balance between dynamism and peace: somewhere halfway between a battle theme and an elevator ditty. That, along with the note-taking system make for a thoughtful digital Picross experience, if only PictoQuest would stop pinging my character’s health bar. It also has critical hits and misses, for some god awful reason that is devoid of any informed statistics or player input.

PictoQuest is ‘gamey’ like microwaveable food is a meal: only just enough to do in a pinch, but never to be praised beyond the fact it is quick and cheap. Its sole saving grace is that all the gimmicks and stylish distractions are built upon a rock solid core of Picross, and the pixelated images do have some retro gamer appeal, if you’re feeling nostalgic or indulgent. Still, taken altogether, it’s a mightily mediocre experience, so in all honesty unless you’ve been craving this particular brand of puzzle, just stay away.

PictoQuest Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[lauramalchowblog]

Top 10 Reasons You’re Not Getting the Results You Want in the Gym

Good morning, folks. Today’s awesome post is offered up by Primal Health Coach Chris Redig. 

Are you struggling to see results at the gym? Has your strength training hit a dead end? Maybe you’ve noticed that lifting heavy things doesn’t automatically build muscle. It doesn’t automatically get results.

There’s nothing worse than putting in the work but seeing no benefits. Carving time out of a busy schedule to lift heavy things is already a Herculean effort. That time needs to be productive. So, if you’re struggling to get results, here are the ten most likely reasons.

1) You’re Not Fully Motivated (Yet)

Building a lean muscular physique takes considerable work. There’s nothing quick or easy about it. To maintain your motivation, it helps to remember the benefits.

Not only is it fantastic for your health and a great longevity strategy, but it’s arguably the best form of exercise to lose fat. A lean, muscular physique is useful, visually appealing, and built for adventure. Whether you’re climbing trees with your kids, portaging a boat or carrying someone away from danger, muscles help get jobs done.

Strength training checks all the boxes, and it’s hard to imagine a better use of your time at the gym. But it’s not always easy to make consistent progress. If you’re struggling to get results, your training may lack progressive overload.

2) There’s No Progressive Overload

How do you build muscle? The answer lies in the concept known as progressive overload. When you lift heavy things, you create a significant challenge for your muscles. In response to that challenge, they grow bigger.

So far so good.

But as they grow bigger, the heavy things stop being heavy enough. It may feel heavy enough. You probably don’t enjoy lifting it. But for your muscles, it has stopped being a reason to get bigger.

Consequently, to maintain growth you must strive to increase the challenge. The two best ways to do this are by either increasing the amount of weight you are lifting or increasing the number of reps you are performing.

In other words, if you lift the same weight for the same number of reps week after week and month after month, you are not building muscle. Progressive overload is central to success. To get bigger, focus on lifting heavier.

If you’re not sure how to maintain progressive overload, you’re probably not logging your sessions.

3) You’re Not Logging Your Sessions

But how do you know how many reps to aim for? How do you know how much weight to lift? Initially, the answers will depend on the program you’re following. But once you get started, the answers will be determined by your last session.

So, you need a log book.

First, a log book tracks your progress. It will record how many reps you performed and how much weight you lifted. This is how you know what to do at the gym at your next session. And this is how you know if you’re building muscle.

Second, having a log book will keep you honest. It will force you to train hard. You’ll know the numbers you need to beat. It will prevent you from putting down the bar and thinking, “Well, that was easy.”

Third, it will give you a record of achievement. It takes months to see significant results. That can seem daunting and discouraging. A log book brings those future results into the present. It’s a regular reminder that you’re getting stronger.

Finally, if you start keeping a log book, you may notice that you train inconsistently.

4) You’re Training Inconsistently

Habits first. Muscles second. Nothing short of time and consistency is going to get results. A single hard session at the gym isn’t going to cut it.

Therefore, it’s crucial to build some habits. Going to the gym should be on autopilot. First, this requires a different mindset and a shift in focus. The desire to get results should become an obsession to become consistent.

Second, a fitness journey needs to be sustainable. To be fit requires consistent work. If the work stops, the fitness slips away. Ask yourself, how many times per week do I want to go to the gym 18 months from now? Make gym time sustainable. Become consistent.

But with consistent training comes the risk of training too hard.

5) You’re Training Too Hard

As you progress and strive to beat your last session, you will start failing reps. Failing a rep is exactly what it sounds like. You hit a point where you simply cannot finish another rep without taking a break.

It’s easiest to experience with pullups. After a certain number of pullups, you hit a wall. You can’t get over the bar again without taking a rest. The purpose of strength training is to push that point of failure back further and further.

But you can train too hard. It’s probably not a good idea to constantly fail reps. The goal isn’t to feel wrecked the next day. And if you can’t do another rep, resist the temptation to cheat. Progress shouldn’t come at the expense of good form or range of motion. You don’t want to get sloppy to show fake progress. Your last pullup shouldn’t look significantly different than your first pullup.

Instead, always leave a couple reps in the bank. Stop one to three reps before failure. It’s okay to occasionally hit failure. But don’t spend a day at the gym training to total failure or getting sloppy.

If you’re training too hard, you might also be too focused on fatigue.

6) You’re Too Focused on Fatigue

You’re at the gym lifting heavy things. You’re pouring sweat, out of breath and about five minutes from total collapse.

Good workout?

If you want to build your mental toughness, work capacity or conditioning, then yes. But if your goal is muscle, then it’s questionable. The body adapts pretty narrowly to the stress you impose.

If you’re too focused on fatigue, your body will primarily get better at preventing fatigue. If you want more muscle, then you need to focus on stressing your muscle through progressive overload.

This means you should catch your breath between sets. You don’t need to jump straight from one set into the next just to keep your heart rate up. Take your time. Be ready mentally and physically to lift the weight. Be ready to give your best and most impressive effort each and every set.

Instead of pushing your endurance, try pushing your comfort zone.

7) You’re Stuck Inside Your Comfort Zone

The goal is to feel comfortable all over the gym. Maybe you’ve noticed there are specific areas where all the fit people train. They spend their time by the squat racks and deadlift platforms. There’s a reason they’re over there. Compound lifts work. They’re time efficient. They improve coordination, movement patterns and flexibility. And they’re useful outside the gym. It’s worth taking the time to learn the challenging lifts. Just take it slow, and do your research.

Owning the difficult lifts will also give your motivation a big boost. Few things are as motivating as stepping outside your comfort zone and mastering a new skill. Stay safe, but don’t stay comfortable.

Weighing yourself can also be very uncomfortable. But is it the right measure?

8) You’re Using the Wrong Measure

The scale doesn’t tell the whole story. Nothing tells the whole story. Progress is slow and hard to see. A fitness coach might ask for weigh-ins, measurements and pics, and even then progress can be hard to detect, until one day it’s obvious.

If you’re starting out or struggling, then you need to build a foundation of improved habits, health and fitness. This is the hardest and most important part of the journey, but it isn’t easy to measure.

Fortunately, it is easy to measure progress in your strength training. You can judge your training by your log book. If you’re getting stronger, then your gym time is productive. The visual results are coming.

If your progress is still stalled, you’re probably training too little.

9) You’re Training Too Little

When you first start strength training, almost any amount of lifting will produce results. Newbie gains are fantastic. You’re constantly setting new PRs and getting stronger. But over time the progress slows and eventually stops.

You could stop right there. Those initial gains are plenty to look, move and feel great. You could focus on other dimensions of fitness or active leisure. And if you have dialed in your diet and lifestyle, you will look completely beach-ready.

But for those who want more, the answer is often more volume. And at this point your training becomes a balancing act. On the one hand, you need to ask “Can I spend more time lifting? Am I recovering? Am I avoiding injury?” And on the other hand you need to ask “Am I getting stronger? Am I increasing my lifts or reps?” There’s no formula. It’s an N=1 experiment.

If you’re struggling to increase your volume of training, it may be time to look at your recovery strategy.

10) You’re Not Recovering

The central pillar of any recovery strategy is diet and lifestyle. As readers of Mark’s Daily Apple, you already know what you want to be eating. Now the hard part is doing it. If past efforts have been ineffective and you’re struggling, I recommend taking a slow approach.

Better and best are not enemies. Many of the benefits of eating a good diet are dose responsive. This means that small improvements in your diet provide real benefits. Plus, those small improvements become habits and generate momentum.

Eating well is a set of skills. And skills need to be practiced.

My own diet transformation was a multi-year journey. Over time bad habits turned into good habits. The good habits accumulated. And one day, my diet was on autopilot. It takes time. It takes consistency. It’s worth it.

Strength training is a key ingredient of looking, moving and feeling your best. I hope some of these recommendations help you break through to the next level. Thanks for reading.

About the Author:

Chris Redig is a health and fitness coach. He loves helping people move, look and feel their best by optimizing their nutrition, movement and lifestyle. He is a Primal Health Coach, a Henselmans Personal Trainer and a Movnat Master Trainer. He has lived, adventured and traveled in 20 different countries and holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs. In particular, he loves to help adventure-enthusiasts build ready-for-anything minds and bodies. He currently lives in Denmark with his wife and two kids. For online coaching or a free consultation, visit www.chrisredig.com. Or you can follow him on Instagram.

To learn how you can become a certified Primal Health Coach like Chris Redig, click the following link and download the free eBook How to Become a Health Coach: 5 Steps to Embarking on a Career You Love.

Thanks to Chris for stopping by the blog today and sharing his coaching wisdom. And thanks to everyone out there for reading today. Have a question for Chris—or a post idea our Primal Health Coaches can weigh in on? Let us know down below. Have a great end to your week.

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