#the most ambitious artwork i have done so far

[softkeychains]

WHERE IS A KNIGHT WHEN I NEED ONE????

[saladscream]

And here's the second and last part. Because apparently my brain wasn't done with this silly ficlet. Again, huge thanks to @discessio for creating such inspiring artworks.

@melodymeddler@orliththedragon Here's the end of the ficlet. Thank you for your comments. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing/posting this second part if not for them. ❤️

Title: Opportunity (sequel to Misstep)

Pairing: Merlin/Arthur

Rating: mature

Warning: sappy, fluffy, unbetaed

Wordcount: 1873

Arthur blinks, confused.

One might say it’s a chronic affliction where the Prince is concerned. Confusion seemingly became his middle name the day Merlin became his manservant. But what’s confusing him at the moment is the too-close-for-comfort juxtaposition of two conflicting worlds that were never supposed to meet, much less overlap. Ever.

One minute Arthur has dreamMerlin under him, welcoming his princely ardours with wanton abandon and very encouraging noises, and the next, realMerlin is hovering mutely above him looking culpable as hell while Arthur’s cheek tingles with what feels suspiciously like a leftover imprint of lips.

Arthur is experiencing time and space disorientation like never before.

“What the…?”

“I can explain,” Merlin promises breathlessly, utterly flustered and clearly looking like he’ll never be able to explain anything in a million years. “You were having a nightmare.”

And for a very fraught heartbeat, Arthur considers saying “No I wasn’t” but then realises that he’d then have to be forthcoming about the real nature of his reprehensible dreams. So he decides now is the time for some cunningly strategic counteroffensive.

“Did you just kiss me?” he blurts out in disbelief.

Merlin makes his who-me face and, when that doesn’t work, proceeds to descend into a number of contradictory facial expressions that only serve to prove just how irredeemably guilty he is.

“And what on earth are you doing on my bed?” Arthur asks pointedly.

Now, it is common knowledge that Arthur loves riling up Merlin. He loves needling and prodding him and teasing all sorts of reactions and emotions out of him, ranging from mirth to sarcasm to annoyance all the way through to positive outrage and pig-headed disagreement. It’s even more entertaining than pranking Leon.

It is also common knowledge that Merlin is a master bullshitter. He will absolutely attempt to talk himself out of the direst and deepest of troubles with the most convoluted excuses and harebrained lies man has ever heard – with a mitigated success rate.

And right now, Arthur can’t wait to hear the kind of rubbish his inventive and very much cornered manservant is going to invent. The Gods only know what Merlin’s real motives were for sneaking up to Arthur’s bed in the bloody middle of the night and pecking Arthur’s cheek the way he did, but whatever those motives were, they’ll never be as laughably implausible as what the man will conjure up.

Arthur counts down to bullshit in his head.

He has but a split moment’s notice to brace himself when he sees an ominous Ooo-I’ve-got-an-idea expression flit across Merlin’s all-too-readable features.

“Eh… but this is all still a dream, my lord,” Merlin breathes, making his voice soft and low and distractingly sensual.

Oh for heaven’s sake. Merlin pretending to be a figment of Arthur’s imagination – that’s a new one. Where does he get all this crap?

Arthur resists cracking up. Barely.

“Really?” he says, almost encouragingly.

And Merlin, warming up to his own nonsense, gets ambitious. Always a reliable sign of dreadful things to come.

“Yesss… All a dream,” he nods slowly – aiming for dreamlike, but achieving awkward.

Oh but this is too good to pass up.

“Aren’t you a little overdressed for this to be one of my dreams?” Arthur arches an eyebrow.

“Yesss. Overd… Um, what?”

“Yeah, the whole jacket, tunic, the trousers. You do sometimes keep the neckerchief, but you usually wear far less clothes in my dreams.”

“I do?”

Merlin’s dry gulp is indecently loud, and Arthur is enjoying this. Far too much. He pokes Merlin with a finger and pushes him back until he’s lying on his back by Arthur’s side on the bed. The phrase ‘knock him down with a feather’ has never been more fitting. But damn, the sight of Merlin’s raven head of hair on his pillow makes something shiver deliciously inside him.

“And you don’t talk so much,” Arthur piles on.

“Ah.”

“Well, it’s generally more moans and grunts. Sometimes roars if you’re feeling feisty and we’re going at it vigorously.”

“Uh-huhhh.”

“You’re a bit of an animal when you get going,” Arthur smiles indulgently. “A demanding animal.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I don’t mind,” Arthur promises. “I’m always happy to provide the good hard pounding you cry for.”

Merlin opens his mouth, but no sound comes out – a first. He closes it with an audible click.

Meanwhile, Arthur is on an exhilarating roll.

“We don’t rattle the headboard every single time, mind you. Sometimes a sweet bit of languorous ravishing is all a man needs.”

And so, to sum up, Merlin is now lying on his back, gazing up at Arthur – sweating buckets and going slightly cross-eyed – seemingly seconds away from spontaneous combustion, and Arthur wonders why the idiot hasn’t admitted defeat and called an end to the charade yet. The prince knows that his manservant has a competitive streak a mile wide, but this is pushing it. The pretence seduction is going full swing and they should both be more careful before someone gets hurt. Arthur’s fingertips have loosened the front laces of Merlin’s tunic and are poised to slip inside and glide along an elusive collarbone – the one that Arthur has licked and kissed so many times in his dreams.

“This is still a dream, right?” Arthur taunts, his voice a little hoarse.

And once again, Merlin swallows and wets his lips – he does a lot of that and it’s not good for Arthur’s heart condition.

“Undoubtedly,” Merlin croaks. Arthur isn’t sure where he found enough spit to say such a long word. Gods but the man is infuriating.

The situation of Arthur’s feelings where Merlin is concerned is not a simple one. Arthur likes Merlin. Unthinkingly. Idiotically. Abysmally. And worse, he trusts him. He trusts him more than he’s ever trusted anything or anyone. He trusts Merlin on a level that’s as visceral as it is incomprehensible. The blood in his veins trusts Merlin. The marrow in his bones trusts Merlin. Every bloody inch of his carcass trusts Merlin.

And all of this wouldn’t be so damning if Arthur didn’t find the man to his taste (read, positively edible). That’s the real nail in the coffin of Arthur’s sex life. Merlin is bewitchingly attractive, but sadly, there’s no way Arthur will ever make a move on him. The prince is too scared of fraying the subtle bond between them and ruining their unique friendship.

What makes it so galling is that he’s pretty sure no one would bat an eyelid if he shagged his oddly alluring manservant.

His own father once seemed to imply that it would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you bedding your manservant?” the king had asked rather benignly, in between popping his last bit of cheese into his mouth and reaching for a pear in the fruit bowl. With the same detachment as if he’d been asking whether Arthur had seen the first foal of the season.

Arthur had swallowed sideways and coughed up a lung before answering a wheezy but determined, “No?”

The king had looked at him funny and carved into his pear, a faint frown on his brow that seemed to suggest there might be something slightly wrong with his son. Of all things.

And let’s not even mention Morgana or the knights. Arthur’s pretty sure they have a betting pool going on as to when and where the prince will use his droit de seigneur on his charming but gormless manservant.

But really. It’s not like that. Arthur cares about his best friend. Truly. Deeply. And somewhat madly. So much so that he’d rather limit himself to the company of his commiserating hand than disrupt the fine balance of their friendship. Arthur never quite loses sight of the fact that he’s Merlin’s master and that this tiny bit of administrative fluke will forever stand in the way of any frolicking. They’re simply not playing on a level field and no sort of carnal relationship they could invent for themselves would ever be fair to Merlin. So Arthur is resigned to lose out. It’s all right. As long as Merlin stays his friend, he’s willing to bear it.

But it doesn’t mean Arthur’s going to let this opportunity go to waste. It is too tempting a gift.

He brings a gentle hand to Merlin’s cheek. He’s actually dreamed of doing this. Of brushing his thumb over the sharp cheekbone. In his dreams, Merlin usually leans into the caress and smiles at him sleepily. And tonight, Arthur’s heart crashes against his ribs when he feels his friend lean into the touch. Not with the same abandon as dreamMerlin (for that one’s a bit of a flirtatious trollop), but with a shy hint of neediness that echoes painfully in Arthur. 

“Merlin?”

“What.” Merlin’s voice is but a breathless whisper.

“If this is a dream, I can do whatever I want without there being any sort of consequences, right?”

“Ye-es.” There’s an inkling of worry in Merlin’s blue gaze, bless him.

“So I can do this, and it won’t matter,” Arthur murmurs, dragging the pad of his thumb gently over Merlin’s soft lips.

Beyond the parted lips Arthur sees the tip of Merlin’s pink tongue, and for an insane second he thinks his manservant is going to lick his thumb. Trouble is, if Merlin does that, Arthur is a goner. One of two things will happen: either Arthur comes on the spot (and let’s not forget that he was already halfway there when Merlin woke him up), or he kisses the living daylights out of Merlin and comes on the spot. Either way, it won’t be pretty or dignified and it certainly won’t reflect well on Arthur's stamina.

Fortunately, the tip of the little pink tongue remains wisely where it should and Arthur is saved a world of embarrassment. But damn, those lips are soft. Arthur watches his thumb rub ever-so-gently over Merlin’s heart-shaped mouth, and it’s just about the hottest thing he’s ever experienced.

“Are you going to admit that you’re a silly, reckless prat who’s in over his sizeable ears, or do I have to go all the way and shag some sense into you?”

End of the game.

Merlin winces, then sighs self-consciously. He gives Arthur that look. The contrite, I-need-to-do-what’s-right kind of look.

“I really thought you were having a nightmare,” he mutters by way of explanation.

“But I wasn’t.”

“No. You seemed to be having a good time.”

“I was.” With you, turniphead.

“Yeah.” Is it Arthur’s imagination or does Merlin seem a little bitter.

“Not that it’s any concern of yours,” Arthur advises.

“Obviously.” And now Merlin scowls, looking miffed.

Arthur can’t resist it. He ruffles the black hair with a tenderness that he seldom allows himself to display.

“Oh Merlin. What am I ever going to do with you?” He shakes his head fondly. He’s so ridiculously besotted with the man that it probably shows on his face by this point.

Merlin relaxes and smiles, and the dimples even make a furtive appearance. Then Arthur notices the cheeky glint in Merlin’s jewel-like eyes.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a bit of ravishing,” Merlin says, apropos of nothing. “If you could see your way clear to that.”

Oh well, when the man asks so nicely.

***the end (for real, dammit)***

[skeletoninthemelonland]

i hope things are going alright with you so far starbs! managing a lot of stuff can be difficult and i hope nothing but the best for you. as for regarding whatever might happen with BTC, we'll respect whatever decision you'll make as your well being is honestly way more important than anything, you're an amazing artist but also an incredible person. you've done so much for the community and have inspired so many artists and people with your artworks and how you interact with your community in general. your works are astounding and I can't even describe how much I adore what you've done for all of us, even if you might not know it.

i apologize for this sudden ramble and pop up in your inbox but I just needed to write that out, i hope you're having a wonderful timezone and that everything is going well ! hoping college goes well for you

Thank you so much, and thank you for the time taken to write this message for me. Truly hope things are going well for you too.

One thing that I'd like to mention. It's been really fun to feel excitement surrounding an ambitious project like Behind The Codes. I never expected it to become so popular, even though all I had to show were old concept art pieces, a few disorganized comic pages and some character designs. It still is something very important to me, because beyond its popularity, Behind The Codes helped me a lot with mental health. I was so glad when people enjoyed it as much as I did, I felt like it was becoming a new community altogether.

So, I have a suggestion! You there, artist (writer/digital artist/musician) that's currently reading this. If you ever find yourself starting a new project and wonder "should I really do this?" or "am I skilled enough for this?", it's absolutely fine to feel discouraged by the amount of work, time and effort you'll put into something. It's okay to take breaks from it, to be disappointed with results, to give up and let go of personal projects you desperately wanted to finish. Don't be so hard on yourself, just remember to have fun, and to do what you love. No one is pressuring you to do the most perfect piece of work in the world, except yourself. If you ever decide to show it to the world, don't be discouraged if it doesn't get as much attention at first.

You have all the time in the world to do the things you want, just keep going!

[clinical-space-podcast]

First progress update:

[Writing] I have completed the first drafts of six episodes (which will need various degrees of editing / rewriting). I was going to get some more writing done this week, but due to current events it turned out to be a better week for poetry than for fiction. The current plan is four seasons with 20 episodes per season. We'll see if that's too ambitious.

[Art] I have made new versions of the artwork, including a thumbnail, profile, and banner. Officially consulting my graphic designer is on my to-do list.

[Casting] I have a couple of roles tentatively filled, including the main voice. A friend and fellow writer has the perfect voice profile for how I imagine Dr. Graves, we've had a conversation about taking the role, and I have high hopes for it working out. Several recurring voices remain wide open, as well as virtually all single-episode voices.

[Production] I have a demo introduction, and a demo pilot episode that will never see the light of day without major rewrites. Still considering whether to have the intro music just re-instrumented or professionally composed from scratch. The latter would cost a lot more money.

[Marketing] I have this blog, and so far that's it. Potential word of mouth among interested friends, and one friend willing to help promote posts, etc., when the time is right. I had an idea the other day to film a few semi-canonical scenes as tiktoks purely for publicity. I'm not a huge fan of most other video-based social media, and I'm a bit concerned about how long tiktok will remain available in my country. So we'll see.

The plan (or pipe dream, likely) is still to finish writing by the end of 2024, begin recording and producing in January, and publish S01-E01 in April 2025. It's improbable that both this plan and my expectation of a twenty episode season will survive, but who knows, maybe I'll gain a new level of motivation and executive functioning for no reason at all.

Submit report.

[saladscream]

And here's the second and last part. Because apparently my brain wasn't done with this silly ficlet. Again, huge thanks to @discessio for creating such inspiring artworks.

@melodymeddler@orliththedragon Here's the end of the ficlet. Thank you for your comments. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing/posting this second part if not for them. ❤️

Title: Opportunity (sequel to Misstep)

Pairing: Merlin/Arthur

Rating: mature

Warning: sappy, fluffy, unbetaed

Wordcount: 1873

Arthur blinks, confused.

One might say it’s a chronic affliction where the Prince is concerned. Confusion seemingly became his middle name the day Merlin became his manservant. But what’s confusing him at the moment is the too-close-for-comfort juxtaposition of two conflicting worlds that were never supposed to meet, much less overlap. Ever.

One minute Arthur has dreamMerlin under him, welcoming his princely ardours with wanton abandon and very encouraging noises, and the next, realMerlin is hovering mutely above him looking culpable as hell while Arthur’s cheek tingles with what feels suspiciously like a leftover imprint of lips.

Arthur is experiencing time and space disorientation like never before.

“What the…?”

“I can explain,” Merlin promises breathlessly, utterly flustered and clearly looking like he’ll never be able to explain anything in a million years. “You were having a nightmare.”

And for a very fraught heartbeat, Arthur considers saying “No I wasn’t” but then realises that he’d then have to be forthcoming about the real nature of his reprehensible dreams. So he decides now is the time for some cunningly strategic counteroffensive.

“Did you just kiss me?” he blurts out in disbelief.

Merlin makes his who-me face and, when that doesn’t work, proceeds to descend into a number of contradictory facial expressions that only serve to prove just how irredeemably guilty he is.

“And what on earth are you doing on my bed?” Arthur asks pointedly.

Now, it is common knowledge that Arthur loves riling up Merlin. He loves needling and prodding him and teasing all sorts of reactions and emotions out of him, ranging from mirth to sarcasm to annoyance all the way through to positive outrage and pig-headed disagreement. It’s even more entertaining than pranking Leon.

It is also common knowledge that Merlin is a master bullshitter. He will absolutely attempt to talk himself out of the direst and deepest of troubles with the most convoluted excuses and harebrained lies man has ever heard – with a mitigated success rate.

And right now, Arthur can’t wait to hear the kind of rubbish his inventive and very much cornered manservant is going to invent. The Gods only know what Merlin’s real motives were for sneaking up to Arthur’s bed in the bloody middle of the night and pecking Arthur’s cheek the way he did, but whatever those motives were, they’ll never be as laughably implausible as what the man will conjure up.

Arthur counts down to bullshit in his head.

He has but a split moment’s notice to brace himself when he sees an ominous Ooo-I’ve-got-an-idea expression flit across Merlin’s all-too-readable features.

“Eh… but this is all still a dream, my lord,” Merlin breathes, making his voice soft and low and distractingly sensual.

Oh for heaven’s sake. Merlin pretending to be a figment of Arthur’s imagination – that’s a new one. Where does he get all this crap?

Arthur resists cracking up. Barely.

“Really?” he says, almost encouragingly.

And Merlin, warming up to his own nonsense, gets ambitious. Always a reliable sign of dreadful things to come.

“Yesss… All a dream,” he nods slowly – aiming for dreamlike, but achieving awkward.

Oh but this is too good to pass up.

“Aren’t you a little overdressed for this to be one of my dreams?” Arthur arches an eyebrow.

“Yesss. Overd… Um, what?”

“Yeah, the whole jacket, tunic, the trousers. You do sometimes keep the neckerchief, but you usually wear far less clothes in my dreams.”

“I do?”

Merlin’s dry gulp is indecently loud, and Arthur is enjoying this. Far too much. He pokes Merlin with a finger and pushes him back until he’s lying on his back by Arthur’s side on the bed. The phrase ‘knock him down with a feather’ has never been more fitting. But damn, the sight of Merlin’s raven head of hair on his pillow makes something shiver deliciously inside him.

“And you don’t talk so much,” Arthur piles on.

“Ah.”

“Well, it’s generally more moans and grunts. Sometimes roars if you’re feeling feisty and we’re going at it vigorously.”

“Uh-huhhh.”

“You’re a bit of an animal when you get going,” Arthur smiles indulgently. “A demanding animal.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I don’t mind,” Arthur promises. “I’m always happy to provide the good hard pounding you cry for.”

Merlin opens his mouth, but no sound comes out – a first. He closes it with an audible click.

Meanwhile, Arthur is on an exhilarating roll.

“We don’t rattle the headboard every single time, mind you. Sometimes a sweet bit of languorous ravishing is all a man needs.”

And so, to sum up, Merlin is now lying on his back, gazing up at Arthur – sweating buckets and going slightly cross-eyed – seemingly seconds away from spontaneous combustion, and Arthur wonders why the idiot hasn’t admitted defeat and called an end to the charade yet. The prince knows that his manservant has a competitive streak a mile wide, but this is pushing it. The pretence seduction is going full swing and they should both be more careful before someone gets hurt. Arthur’s fingertips have loosened the front laces of Merlin’s tunic and are poised to slip inside and glide along an elusive collarbone – the one that Arthur has licked and kissed so many times in his dreams.

“This is still a dream, right?” Arthur taunts, his voice a little hoarse.

And once again, Merlin swallows and wets his lips – he does a lot of that and it’s not good for Arthur’s heart condition.

“Undoubtedly,” Merlin croaks. Arthur isn’t sure where he found enough spit to say such a long word. Gods but the man is infuriating.

The situation of Arthur’s feelings where Merlin is concerned is not a simple one. Arthur likes Merlin. Unthinkingly. Idiotically. Abysmally. And worse, he trusts him. He trusts him more than he’s ever trusted anything or anyone. He trusts Merlin on a level that’s as visceral as it is incomprehensible. The blood in his veins trusts Merlin. The marrow in his bones trusts Merlin. Every bloody inch of his carcass trusts Merlin.

And all of this wouldn’t be so damning if Arthur didn’t find the man to his taste (read, positively edible). That’s the real nail in the coffin of Arthur’s sex life. Merlin is bewitchingly attractive, but sadly, there’s no way Arthur will ever make a move on him. The prince is too scared of fraying the subtle bond between them and ruining their unique friendship.

What makes it so galling is that he’s pretty sure no one would bat an eyelid if he shagged his oddly alluring manservant.

His own father once seemed to imply that it would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you bedding your manservant?” the king had asked rather benignly, in between popping his last bit of cheese into his mouth and reaching for a pear in the fruit bowl. With the same detachment as if he’d been asking whether Arthur had seen the first foal of the season.

Arthur had swallowed sideways and coughed up a lung before answering a wheezy but determined, “No?”

The king had looked at him funny and carved into his pear, a faint frown on his brow that seemed to suggest there might be something slightly wrong with his son. Of all things.

And let’s not even mention Morgana or the knights. Arthur’s pretty sure they have a betting pool going on as to when and where the prince will use his droit de seigneur on his charming but gormless manservant.

But really. It’s not like that. Arthur cares about his best friend. Truly. Deeply. And somewhat madly. So much so that he’d rather limit himself to the company of his commiserating hand than disrupt the fine balance of their friendship. Arthur never quite loses sight of the fact that he’s Merlin’s master and that this tiny bit of administrative fluke will forever stand in the way of any frolicking. They’re simply not playing on a level field and no sort of carnal relationship they could invent for themselves would ever be fair to Merlin. So Arthur is resigned to lose out. It’s all right. As long as Merlin stays his friend, he’s willing to bear it.

But it doesn’t mean Arthur’s going to let this opportunity go to waste. It is too tempting a gift.

He brings a gentle hand to Merlin’s cheek. He’s actually dreamed of doing this. Of brushing his thumb over the sharp cheekbone. In his dreams, Merlin usually leans into the caress and smiles at him sleepily. And tonight, Arthur’s heart crashes against his ribs when he feels his friend lean into the touch. Not with the same abandon as dreamMerlin (for that one’s a bit of a flirtatious trollop), but with a shy hint of neediness that echoes painfully in Arthur. 

“Merlin?”

“What.” Merlin’s voice is but a breathless whisper.

“If this is a dream, I can do whatever I want without there being any sort of consequences, right?”

“Ye-es.” There’s an inkling of worry in Merlin’s blue gaze, bless him.

“So I can do this, and it won’t matter,” Arthur murmurs, dragging the pad of his thumb gently over Merlin’s soft lips.

Beyond the parted lips Arthur sees the tip of Merlin’s pink tongue, and for an insane second he thinks his manservant is going to lick his thumb. Trouble is, if Merlin does that, Arthur is a goner. One of two things will happen: either Arthur comes on the spot (and let’s not forget that he was already halfway there when Merlin woke him up), or he kisses the living daylights out of Merlin and comes on the spot. Either way, it won’t be pretty or dignified and it certainly won’t reflect well on Arthur's stamina.

Fortunately, the tip of the little pink tongue remains wisely where it should and Arthur is saved a world of embarrassment. But damn, those lips are soft. Arthur watches his thumb rub ever-so-gently over Merlin’s heart-shaped mouth, and it’s just about the hottest thing he’s ever experienced.

“Are you going to admit that you’re a silly, reckless prat who’s in over his sizeable ears, or do I have to go all the way and shag some sense into you?”

End of the game.

Merlin winces, then sighs self-consciously. He gives Arthur that look. The contrite, I-need-to-do-what’s-right kind of look.

“I really thought you were having a nightmare,” he mutters by way of explanation.

“But I wasn’t.”

“No. You seemed to be having a good time.”

“I was.” With you, turniphead.

“Yeah.” Is it Arthur’s imagination or does Merlin seem a little bitter.

“Not that it’s any concern of yours,” Arthur advises.

“Obviously.” And now Merlin scowls, looking miffed.

Arthur can’t resist it. He ruffles the black hair with a tenderness that he seldom allows himself to display.

“Oh Merlin. What am I ever going to do with you?” He shakes his head fondly. He’s so ridiculously besotted with the man that it probably shows on his face by this point.

Merlin relaxes and smiles, and the dimples even make a furtive appearance. Then Arthur notices the cheeky glint in Merlin’s jewel-like eyes.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a bit of ravishing,” Merlin says, apropos of nothing. “If you could see your way clear to that.”

Oh well, when the man asks so nicely.

***the end (for real, dammit)***

“Let’s have you ‘Lazy-Daisy’”

[finalfantasyix]

Meet The Team Working On A Final Fantasy 9 Remake You’ll Never Get To Play

Final Fantasy 9: Memoria Project is a fan homage like nothing we've ever seen before. “It is no secret that fan projects get shut down all the time,” Dan Eder tells us about Final Fantasy 9: Memoria Project, a fan-driven love letter to the classic JRPG. It isn’t aiming to be a playable remake of the epic adventure though - instead, it’s an aesthetic homage to its timeless world and characters.

It’s somewhat anomalous in the world of community creations, but Eder wants to use this distinct identity to craft something truly special, even if many obstacles stand in the way of making it a reality. But the team keeps moving forward: “Without a doubt, some of the most frequent comments we get from naysayers is ‘have fun with it while it lasts’ or ‘cease and desist incoming’”, Eder explains. “People are understandably skeptical of the longevity potential of yet another passion project. The key difference is that, unlike those projects, Memoria is essentially an elaborate piece of fan art, nothing more - it will have no actual gameplay, will never be released to the public, and is nothing more than a ‘what-if’ scenario. [It’s] no different from any other fan-made piece of artwork. We have never, and will never, make a single dollar out of this project, and are basically doing this for the personal gratification of the fans.”

The genesis of Memoria Project dates all the way back to Eder’s younger years, with dreams of a potential FF9 remake entering his imagination soon after the original game’s launch. That’s no great surprise - millions still regard Final Fantasy 9 as the series’ finest hour. “While it's true that the project really started to pick up steam a few months ago, it wouldn't be a stretch to say I've been planning it since high school,” Eder explains. “I remember scribbling ‘FF9 remake’ on my notepad during classes and writing imaginary new features and battle system mechanics, starting online petitions to remake FF9 for the PS2, sketching drawings depicting scenes from the ‘FF9 sequel’ and whatnot. I could confidently say that my life would probably have been completely different had my older brother not borrowed this game from his friend in the summer of 2000.

“As a non-native English speaker who had never played an RPG up until that point, my first playthrough was a challenging experience to say the least, and I can honestly say that I understood literally nothing of what was going on the first time I finished the game (how I even managed to beat it is a mystery in and of itself). It didn't really matter to me though, since I was absolutely enamored with the incredible cast of characters, jaw-dropping FMV sequences, mesmerizing music, thrilling gameplay, and just the overall atmosphere and charm it exuded at every step. My unconditional love for this game persisted throughout my entire childhood and adult life, and it is one of the central reasons why I chose to become a 3D character artist in the video game industry. In short, this project is my way of thanking this game for everything it has done for me over the past 21 years.”

Eder’s passion for this game can be found across several industry professionals who grew up with games like this and wanted to replicate them, or create something entirely unique to live up to their brilliance. This is very much how Memoria Project found its feet, beginning life as a trivial side activity before blossoming into something infinitely more ambitious. It still has a long way to go, but there’s little urgency to reach the finish line, so the team can take their time and just enjoy the nostalgic indulgence of it all.

“Memoria actually started unofficially as a side project when I reached out to Colin Valek [of] Sucker Punch Studios in early 2020 after I came across his fanart of an environment from FF7,” Eder says. “I had already modeled Princess Garnet, and thought it could be a fun idea to combine our talents to reimagine the opening area of Alexandria. Initially, it was progressing at a snail's pace - we were slowly chipping away at it for over a year without making a lot of progress. While Colin continued modeling the buildings, I created another character - Vivi.”

This glacial pace received a resurgence of sorts in January when the Alexandria scene was finally complete, with Eder and company finally being able to see how much potential the project had if it was opened up to a larger range of creators. “When I posted that WIP screenshot, the response from fellow FF fans was overwhelmingly positive, more than we could have imagined,” Eder remembers. “Very quickly, other people from the gaming industry started reaching out - environment artists, animators, riggers, concept artists. That's when I decided to turn this side project into a full-fledged modern reimagining of the original game, while always making sure to emphasize the fact that this is a non-playable proof-of-concept, since we never have any intention of doing anything to violate Square Enix's copyright. Four months after officially announcing the project, we've grown from a couple of FF fanboys to a huge team of over 20 industry veterans working collaboratively to honor this masterpiece, fueled by our love and adoration for the source material.”

Now, the project has over 20 developers from Sucker Punch, Ubisoft, Rare, Unbroken Studios, and more all diving into this labour of love in their spare time, with composers and voice actors also contributing their talents to help make this glimpse into the world of Final Fantasy 9 worth celebrating. But Eder is aware of being overly enthusiastic, knowing that fan projects like this often doom themselves by undertaking something that isn’t feasible with so few resources.

“One of the most common traps for these kinds of fan projects is being overly ambitious,” Eder says. “Since all of us are actively working in the video game industry, we understand the importance of milestones, short term goals, and taking things one step at a time. For now, we are focusing our efforts on the opening sequence of the game, which mainly revolves around Vivi and his exploration of Alexandria. Where we go from here is still being discussed, but one thing I can say for sure is that Vivi will not be the only main character we're planning to include.” I’m told that Memoria is aiming to look indistinguishable - at least from a graphics perspective - from something you’d see in a triple-A blockbuster, and it seems the team has the pedigree to back that claim up.

Visuals are the entire point after all, since turning this project into a playable piece of media would require far more resources to create. By narrowing its focus, Memoria is able to deliver something special while also hopefully avoiding the ire of Square Enix. “The fact that this is a non-playable project definitely makes it easier for us to tailor the experience in a way that would truly allow the audience to be fully immersed in the world without having to worry about technical limitations,” Eder tells me. “Creating actual functional gameplay is a completely different ball game, one that we never had any intention of even discussing given the copyright limitations. This gives us a lot of leeway with how we are going to portray the world of Gaia in terms of character interaction, camera movement, [and] scene transitions. We have a lot of cool plans for the near future - please look forward to it!”

As for the sad truth of fan projects like this often being wiped from existence by publishers throwing out cease and desist letters, Eder is confident that Memoria occupies a niche where this won’t happen. It’s not a commercial or even playable product - it’s a piece of fan art, albeit an endlessly elaborate one. If the tides were to change, Eder believes companies should welcome the enthusiasm for experiences like this.

“If I were to be completely honest, I think it could be a potentially brilliant decision by Square Enix to do something wildly unexpected and invest in a project like this,” Eder states. “There's a considerable amount of hype, talent, motivation, and pure, unadulterated passion behind it. It's not something I would expect, but I think it could be incredibly helpful in regaining some of the trust and reverence that this legendary company was known for during its golden years.”

(source)

[sol-futura-est]

My father gave me stories of life on the Mephisto. On each deck, of which there were two hundred and twenty three, were a series of residential quarters, on the rear second mile of the ship, in what we all called the bulge of it, before you lead into the neck and later the head. In the bulge, there was artificial gravity, solariums, and an abundance of social areas, but you could not do so much as breathe without being heard. Finding quiet places to be intimate, to do something as small as share secrets, took planning and know how that made it near impossible. One story he had was about how one deck had a case of common cold, and essentially had two thousand infections in less than six hours before the quarantine was called. I couldn’t even infect ten people out here, unless our territory decided to have a harvest festival at the end of game season. Even then, not all of us would be there, and I might not even meet two thousand. It’s hard for me to fathom being able live within five miles of millions upon millions. Men could get stabbed in alleys, but for me, I don’t think I would ever see an alley for myself. Not for a long while at least.

    For the record, my mother and father are still alive. They live on Elysium, a normal sized rock with a prominent city where the liveship made planetfall, the Mephisto. On their capital district, you mostly find trading offices staffed by clerks of all kinds, but just like the Mephisto, you need mechanics to keep things running. That’s his job, but my mother is mostly content to meet my older brothers grandchildren and help around the neighborhood. Last I heard, she had taken up gardening, and had asked me how I do it out here. You’d be surprised how easy it is doing something man has done for over ten thousand years when you start. 

    However, even with my warm tea, the northern sun rising, I find a familiar face coming up the road from the south. This was my nearest neighbor, Jules. Her family was aboard the Capra, another liveship just like the Mephisto.

    “Early riser, I see. How’s the tea Cadmo?”

    “Those traders who came through gave me more than enough,” standing up, I walk over to my stone fence and seat myself next to her. “However, it’s still going to be great whenever we can grow our own.”

    “Tea plantations? You’re ambitious for sure. You’d think the Sikhs kept that to themselves.”

    “I met a few when I was a kid. I don’t even think they’d think twice about it. We’re all friends now, after all. We’ll trade more with ourselves before we get whatever psychoactives the Herastins like taking. Do you think they take it in their exosuit, or do they huff it?”

    “Oh come on, definitely in the suit itself. Bathe in the glow and the mind opens. I’m sure they’re more interesting up close.”

    Two or three times now, I would ask people if they met any of those outworlders, but everyone says no. Lieutenant Azul actually told me he only met one or two in fifty years of service, but it’s expected to go up. Maybe that was just a recruiting tactic.

    “Jules?”

    “Mister Banat.”

    “How’re your crops running?”

    “Same as always, enough to live off of and a little bit to sell. Just enough.”

    “I still can’t get over it all honestly.”

    “Get over what?’

    “I grew up a bit farther away, right? But when my older brother took me all the way out here and gave me this cabin it was like I was meant to be out here, you know? Something drew me here for more than just the sights.”

    “Are you gonna talk about going into the gate again, or is this something different?”

    Although I was still forever content to explore the wilds, you could never disseminate from me; every time I watched the sun rise in the north, within your sight, just a little to the left, was the gate. You saw it every day. How exactly was anyone, much less someone like me, going to ignore it?

    “How can you not be curious Jules?”

    “I like living, and I don’t want to see what lives down there just by myself.”

    “You could get ten of us and go down.”

    “We would be better asking the legion.”

    “No doubt, but then what? Are you gonna join?”

    “I’m not keen on nursing or clerk duties, you might get sent to fight the brigands too. We might not get what we want. I don’t think the corvids plan on going down there.”

    She was right, you know, even if it didn’t shut off my curiousity.

    “Trust me Jules, I won’t go there any time soon, but I’ll be curious.”

    “I hope so. Is there any tea inside?”

    “Yeah, the water is on my stove still boiling, just be careful with it.”

    I trusted her verbosely with my abode and her sentiment was shared. Out here, you know almost every face that comes up the road, you know the cars, you know the horses, and occasionally still, you know the flyers in the sky. 

    Back on Terra, I’m told at least, there was a plethora of life and a majesty in what could be done, how every landscape known to man was never far. Scorching desert, rainforest, and titanic stone mountains could exist within miles of one another. Out here though, it’s most of the same. Our bucks came from Terra, so did the things we farm. We made our new homes almost like imitations of the old than trying to make ourselves too much like the new places. We didn’t try to live in steel homes or prefabs, but found building our homes with our own hands cemented the idea that this was permanent. We were not passing ghosts without a home, but men and women and children who would wield daggers in our teeth for this land and end any who decided to try and take it. One thing our empire was, was militaristic. We had relied on the legion on Terra for nearly a millennium, and so forth, here we are. 

    Even if it might seem like it, we don’t actually get taught much about our life on Terra. We try to put our education into a scope so we can actually live new lives here, not have people obsessing over the past. There was enough to learn here that actually finding out about our ancestors three thousand years ago would be trivial, especially since we don’t sit above them anymore. 

    “How much did that bag of tea actually run you, Cadmo?”

    “Fifty denarii.”

    “Really? Not expensive at all.”

    “I think he had to get rid of it before he got offworld. Quotas or something by the trading company.”

    “So you haggled?”

    “He tried me for two hundred denarii, but I wasn’t gonna give him that much for tea, not when I could buy a tea sapling of my own for that much.”

    “Maybe you should’ve gone for it and made this place the empires tea capital, rather than the Khalistani world.”

    “I’d still have to ask them how to grow it and tend it, though. Not much tea out here.”

    Jules had a streak of pride for the empire. She saw it as order, discipline, and freedom therein. All of that was ultimately true too, but I was always more concerned with this place. Not just the gate, but the ocean, the hills, the mountains. There was an unconfounded beauty in it. When you went to the capital city, when you walked the avenue full of statues of the greats before us, it lost that beauty, even though it was essentially the same stone trimmed down. Something was separate when you saw fields of flowing grass without even one hint of mankind. Nature could conquer land without even lifting a finger, but for us, it was a thousand men at the oars just to move an inch. Our land was not just an endless stretching mystery our hearts resided on and in, but an artwork made by divine hands we could not comprehend. One who lives here, within that great machination, the air, the earth, the sky, does not question that machination. Whenever I saw the glimmering polished giant of the emperor at the head of the forum, I remembered still, both him and the statue were born of Terran stone. 

    Nevertheless, perhaps each nature and man makes his own artwork, for just like we make poison, at times, so does nature, but in the end we appropriate it each. Perhaps in some ways, that gate was a poison for us, a burning curiousity that infected our dreams.

    “When was the last time Lieutenant Azul stopped by your house?”

    “Azul? Probably last month. Why?”

    “I still think about the corvids. Just being able to see everything out there, all the pieces of nature. That’s why we’re out here, right?”

    “I’m trying to be a pioneer, but yeah, I can’t lie about the beauty of this place. Not many better places, there can’t be.”

    “It’d be a nice thing to confirm that.”

    “So join.”

    Something was stopping me, an apprehension I couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it was a fear of winding up mostly on a ship, fixing an engine that never seemed to stay fixed, manning cannonades to blast rock, or even the devilish endless monotony of navigating a starship, from wake to wink. 

    “Maybe when the time comes I will. Nothing but time.”

    Long lived youths, still, we remained.

    “When’s your next hunt, Banat? Today?”

    “Should be, yeah. So that means you have to plow some, and when I get back, I have to do the same.”

    “Don’t get hurt out there, will you?”

    “You know I don’t like to get hurt.”

    “Then I’ll see you in a few days

[bltngames]

Review: Lloyd the Monkey 2

Back before TSSZ News imploded, I would often do write-ups for many of the games at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE). SAGE is an annual online expo that I started all the way back in September of 2000. I personally ran SAGE for over a year, and remained deeply hands on for at least another two years as it continued to grow. The main focus of SAGE was primarily to showcase fangames, in particular Sonic fangames, but the event never limited itself to any one type of game. It's never been uncommon to see original games appear in the lineup -- especially now, given the modern indie scene. 

One such original game was Lloyd the Monkey, a bit of a strange game, written in Javascript of all things and run through a webpage. That by itself was notable enough to stand out from most of the games at SAGE, but Lloyd was also a completely original product created by someone who possibly seemed to be young and new to game development. Making games is no easy feat, especially when they’re written in Javascript and you’re doing tons of original artwork yourself. Taken as that whole, the game impressed me, even if it was more than a little rough around the edges.

Now we have Lloyd the Monkey 2, written in Unity. The developer, Noah Meyer, sent me a Steam key in order to review the game. Up top, I just want to say how I think it’s kind of brave to go all the way in putting the game on Steam and everything. It felt like just a few years ago, newer indie developers sort of had to work up to releasing their game on Steam, usually getting a few releases under their belt first. People view games differently when they’re asked to pay for them, and critics may not be so willing to let circumstances influence their review. It can be a harsh world out there for a beginner.

Lloyd 2 is a much bigger, more ambitious game than the first. Whereas the original Lloyd didn’t even have sound effects, Lloyd 2 introduces voiced cutscenes, some of which are full-on animated cinematics. Quality is about what you would expect -- I would assume the developer sought out friends and acquaintances to voice characters in Lloyd 2, leading to wildly varying audio quality due to differences in recording hardware. Lloyd himself sounds fine, but some of the other characters are a bit quiet, while others have clear background noise. Nothing I heard was unlistenable, however. 

The story is also a little hard to follow. Not much is done to refresh our memories as to who anyone is or what’s going on, we’re just kind of thrown into the middle of things and turned loose. On one hand, it’s nice that the story doesn’t slow the pace of the gameplay down too much. On the other, you’re given a map screen with different objectives to clear but there’s very little context as to what you’re doing or why. At one point I made my way to the end of a Power Plant level only to confront what appeared to be an evil monkey. Despite a whole cutscene involving a conversation between four or five different people, this evil monkey never seemed to say a single word. He just stood there in total silence with a sinister smile. Then I killed him.

I suppose maybe I missed something, however. With greater ambitions comes a number of unfortunate bugs in Lloyd 2, one of which happened not long after our monkey and his crew landed on planet Grecia. I entered what appeared to be a castle to talk to the Queen, but I think the game expected me to take a lower route, where I was apparently meant to overhear the Queen making secret preparations before my arrival. Instead, I took the direct route straight to her chambers, and triggered the cutscene with Lloyd standing in front of her while ominous music played, even though the camera was still clearly focused on the next floor down. I apparently still had some amount of control, because midway through her dialog I touched a teleporter that sent me to the game’s map screen before she was done talking. If that cutscene was meant to give context to what I was doing, I didn’t get a chance to see it.

That was one of the more harmless bugs in my time spent playing Lloyd 2. Harder to ignore was the fact that, within the first 30 seconds of getting control, I soft locked the game. Lloyd 2 opens with a short prologue section where you play as a man with black hair. If you decide to ignore the obvious and go left instead of right, you quickly run out of solid level tiles and begin falling indefinitely. Later areas feature invisible walls presumably to prevent this exact scenario, but for whatever reason they weren’t implemented in the prologue. 

For the most part, Lloyd 2 seems to be a co-op game. Many levels see Lloyd teamed up with an alien princess named Lura, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Mega Man X crossed with the tag mechanic from Sonic Mania’s Encore Mode. At the touch of a button, you can switch between the Swordsman Lloyd and the more projectile-based Lura… assuming your partner is still alive, I guess. While playing alone, your partner is controlled by artificial intelligence, but it’s incredibly basic and prone to accidentally committing suicide. That wouldn’t be such a big deal (considering Tails in Sonic 2 never acted in self-preservation either), but once your partner dies, they stay dead. Your only option to bring them back is to either restart the stage or hope another cutscene triggers, since they’ll magically spring back to life in order to say their dialog (though, again, usually only seconds before they fall back into the next death pit). 

This might not be much of a problem, depending on your viewpoint. There’s not much incentive to switch between Lloyd and Lura, so once you pick whoever you think works the best, chances are, you’ll just stick with them. You do unlock special team-up attacks after beating each boss, but this just reinforces the idea that Lloyd the Monkey 2 is meant to be experienced with another person holding a second controller, as most of the team-up attacks require both characters to do something specific that the single player artificial intelligence usually can’t interpret. Regardless, the team-up attacks never seem strictly necessary to progress, so they can be safely ignored if you’re playing solo.

I understand this is a pretty negative review I’ve written here. Lloyd the Monkey 2 aims high and tries to the best of its ability to get there. I assume it was a struggle to get even this far. Making games is hard work, and like any skill, takes practice to get good at. Just because this is Lloyd the Monkey 2 doesn’t mean Noah Meyer, its developer, is automatically an expert. I'm sure he's doing his best, and, quality aside, this game has a lot of heart put into it. This isn’t something cheap, quick, or lazy. It’s really, genuinely trying, and that matters. 

I’ve said a few times here and there that I see pieces of myself in the releases of Lloyd the Monkey, and I still see them here. I remember, for an early SAGE event, I was working on a fangame project of mine called The Fated Hour. I was probably already a year or two or maybe even three deep in the game by now, and after a lot of hyping up the community, this was their first chance to play the game. I spent months and months coding this iteration of my engine, and by my standards back then, it seemed like bleeding edge technology. I felt like I was going to blow everyone's minds. 

It was a mess. Few were impressed. Even worse, the game straight up didn’t even run correctly for some people. What followed was multiple patches, and even rebuilding some entire areas from scratch. My ambitions got the better of me and I unintentionally cut corners -- not because I was trying to cheap out on doing proper development, but just because I simply didn’t know any better. I may have done the best I knew how to do, but I was running faster than my body could keep up with and I stumbled.

When I see things like the missing invisible walls in the prologue, or how easily partner characters commit suicide by accident, I think back to that demo for The Fated Hour, and how I've been in this exact place myself. There’s even a side quest in Lloyd 2 where you have to track a floating girl as she drifts through a level -- there was a nearly identical set piece in The Fated Hour, where you were chasing a robot. It’s a very strange feeling to see something like that and think, “I’ve been here before.” Like looking through a window at a younger version of yourself.

It’s true that I stumbled, but I didn’t let that stop me. I learned by doing. I kept going. Three years later, a game of mine was featured on TV, leading to more than a million downloads. The mistakes of past projects did not weigh me down and I soldiered onwards, newfound knowledge in hand. 

So where does that leave us with Lloyd the Monkey 2, then. Well, it's not exactly a game to compete with Super Mario Odyssey, but given the circumstances in which it was created, I don't think that's necessarily the point. As a learning experience clearly made for the fun of its own creation, I think it's a success. And who knows what awaits in the years to come?

[historicalfightingguide]

Wiktenauer needs your help! (Not your money, your actual help.)

“BACKGROUND

I've put quite a lot of effort over the past ten years into assembling the clearest, cleanest, highest-resolution scans of our fencing manuals that I could find. This approach has characterized a lot of our work on the research side of HEMA—finding or fabricating clean, attractive scans, and transcribing and translating them to be as accessible to modern readers as possible. This work is important, but far from the only way that we can learn from the treatises.

In one sense, a treatise is an abstract entity, a collection of ideas divorced from any particular copy of it. But each individual copy of that text is a concrete, very real object, a *book*, which was owned by *people* and hopefully used by some of those owners for learning or teaching. And it is books *as* books that we are going to talk about today.

Manuscripts, of course, are generally unique works of art, either commissioned by a specific buyer, or created first and then customized and completed to the buyer's desires. The history of printed books begins with similar expectations—moveable type was viewed as a labor-saving device for scribes, and the same level of artistic embellishment that went into manuscripts was applied to books after the initial printing.

The 16th century ushered in the age of cheap, uniform texts sold as-printed, but the desire to make a book one's own continued long after. The way readers customized and used (and even defaced) their books is a fledgling field of study that has only begun to be recognized in academia in the past couple decades.

The first printed fighting manual seems to have been De Dignoscendis Hominibus by Pedro Monte, printed in 1492. There is one other possible 15th century treatise (the Landshutter Ringuch), and then about three dozen in the 16th century. We are familiar with the text of these earliest printed fencing manuals, but we know much less about the context that they existed in and the people who bought and used them.

If these books were purchased by fencers, as some of them must have been, then all manner of treasure might have been scribbled into them. For example, in Göttingen there is a copy of Hans Wilhelm Schoeffer's 1620 rapier treatise which also contains a massive hand-written treatise on fencing against left-handers, starting on the book's 23 blank leaves and continuing onto 22 extras that were bound into it—an 88-page manuscript fencing manual hidden inside a 900-page printed book.

The knowledge that may be lurking in the margins and blank pages of copies of 15th-16th century fencing manuals has been on my mind a lot in the past year. Our early manuscripts have a tragic lack of substantial additions by later owners, as people who have attended my lectures recently have heard me lament. But most printed fencing books from this period have never been systematically examined.

* * * * *

PROJECT

Roger Norling stated in a lecture he gave at Meyer Symposium this year that one of the tasks the MFFG should take on is cataloging every surviving copy of Meyer's work. Afterward, he and I discussed some of what's stated above, and agreed that finding even one extensively-annotated copy of Meyer would be a major game-changer.

So, STEP 1: Find all the Meyers

What we've done so far:

- Sarah Barsness shared with us a spreadsheet she'd been working on for some time, in which she took all of the entries in Worldcat and winnowed them down to actual, physical copies (eliminating more than half of the results). - Several members and friends of the guild helped her expand the catalog to include copies that we knew of outside of Worldcat. - Additional copies were discovered in Thimm's fencing bibliography and the Universal Short Title Catalogue, which were added to the list after being verified in the catalogs of their respective institutions.

Master list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TSFg3VQVWrVWYZPwLV_AniN5JjLPngCy37RBZLO0v6o/edit?fbclid=IwAR0J7FHi-qswPCRLE6eVdWTOkiEt3L9wYKoqItgrx79EgEbRTQcyM2aZtII#gid=0

STEP 2: Examine all the Meyers

What we've done so far:

- We've looked through all of the copies on Sara's list that have digital scans available, searching for use marks. - London Darce photographed use marks in the copy in Austin, TX. - I ordered scans of the copy in Olomouc, Czech Republic, whose catalog entry indicates that it has an extra page of "fencing rules" (šermířské regule). - Volunteers from local clubs have agreed to try to gain access to the copies in New York City, Washington DC, and London, to examine them in person.

STEP 3: Write up all of our findings

When we've exhausted all leads and feel that we have enough material to draw some conclusions and lessons from, Roger and I (and probably others) will publish the results (and all of the raw materials) for everyone to study and learn from. The format will depend on how much we find, but anything from an article on HROARR to a paper in Acta Periodica Duellatorum is possible.

* * * * *

HOW YOU CAN HELP

STEP 1: Find all the Meyers

Copies of Meyer have ended up in many unexpected places. There's one in the New York Public Library. There's one at the University of Texas - Austin. There might be one in your backyard. We've gone through Worldcat, but only 72,000 libraries subscribe to Worldcat, and not all of them have put their special collections catalogs online.

Check the catalogs of public libraries and university libraries in your area. Even your state or national libraries, if you have them. A small group of us simply cannot check every library in the world, but if enough HEMAists get involved, we could take a big bite out of the problem.

Meyer was published in 1570 and 1600, and there are historical references to printings in 1610 and 1660 that we've never found confirmation for; any of these might be in your library. Search for "Joachim Meyer" and "Meyer, Joachim" around those dates. Search for keywords like "fechten" and "fechter" (which often also turns up other gems). If the library catalog is not digitized, you may have to email a librarian or even go in person.

Do you have connections to people with private collections of rare books? Ask them too!

And if you find a Meyer not on the list, let us know!

(If you're feeling very ambitious, we'd also be interested to know about copies of Andre Paurnfeindt, Christian Egenolff, and Fabian von Auerswald; if this goes well, that will probably be the subject of a similar project.)

STEP 2: Examine all the Meyers

If you live in one of the cities on the list, then find out if you can access the special collections of the institution that owns the book. Maybe even see if you can go with other interested members of your club, to give everyone a taste of history (and also to avoid overwhelming the library with requests).

If you can get access to the book, go through it carefully. Take pictures of any writing in the book you can find, even if it's just an owner's mark. Write down places with underlining or circles. If the artwork has been colored, that's also useful to know. (If they don't allow photography, note down any pages with writing so that we can order official scans of them.)

If they won't let you view the book, and you don't know anyone who can, then at least try to open a conversation with a research librarian at the institution. They are often willing to go flip through books on behalf of patrons, and might even already have the information you need in a file.

If you have the skills, volunteer to transcribe or translate the pages with writing that we find. There are already a few pages of notes that need to be processed, and hopefully there will be many more!

STEP 3: Write up all of our findings

We'll know more about how you can help with this step when steps 1-2 have proceeded further.

CONCLUSION

We've already found some interesting things just be checking the low-hanging fruit. See the gallery below for examples. With your help, we'll find much more.

Thanks!”

P.S. Happy pride to all!

[jddesignsuk]

27 ways to land your first job in Graphic Design + How I did it

How I broke into design

“Why haven’t you done your maths homework?!” That’s what I’d be asked most evenings during my formative years, when I’d rather create new Transformer characters, or design new Nike Air shoes. The ability to create something from nothing and then give it personality and style was what captivated me.

During the last years of secondary school, my art teacher would let me skip other classes so I could perfect my sketching and design skills.

Thanks to being the youngest of three children (and thus being a master manipulator), I always had an excuse ready for when other teachers would ask why I’d missed their lesson.

“Although I had a wide range of interests, a career in art and design was my destiny. Until I met a careers advisor…”

My grades across all subjects were slightly above average, apart from Art & Design, where I excelled and would transform into a miserable brat if I ever achieved anything under an A grade. Although I had a wide range of interests, a career in art and design was my destiny. Until I met a career advisor…

On one particular day, pupils were invited to meet a careers advisor who would help us choose the right path when going out into the big wide world. I was ushered into a small room and met by a very bland looking middle-aged man, with a dull grey suit and a tone of voice to match. To me, my path into design was clear so I didn’t expect much help. Despite hearing my obvious enthusiasm, he dismissed my life ambition as quickly as he could roll his eyes. He told me – with absolute certainty – that I’d be wasting my time pursuing design as there weren’t any jobs or money to be made in the industry. He and other influential figures in my life proclaimed that I should follow my Sister, who excelled at all things academic, and become a manager at a leading bank in London.

And just like that, my entire career had been decided for me.

I decided (with rose-tinted glasses on) that I could make money in a standard business role and fulfil my creative dreams during my evenings and weekends. Oh, how naive I was.

I secured my first job as a production coordinator at a food and beverage trading company overlooking Tower Bridge. On my first day, I arrived wearing an ill-fitting grey suit and a carrier bag containing a just-ham sandwich and a grey umbrella. My careers advisor would’ve been so proud.

It became clear pretty quickly that there was no future for me in this industry. Any idea of fulfilling my creative dreams during my evenings and weekends were dashed by a job that drained my creative juices and demanded late nights to meet deadlines. The final nail in the coffin came when the MD would regularly send me away to a tiny, dark room alone to gather samples of citric acid which could be used to clean his yacht.

My time wasn’t completed wasted though. Not that it didn’t feel like it at the time, especially when I was being made to earn my stripes through some excessive delegation from senior colleagues who spent their afternoons in the pub. But thanks to a good work ethic and actively seeking advice from mentors, I climbed the ranks and became a manager soon enough.

Whilst I was busy wondering what education I was missing at university, I developed important, real-life skills in the workplace, where it mattered. Managing and motivating colleagues, building relationships, meeting deadlines within set budgets and problem solving helped build the foundations for running my own business later down the line.

Despite the promotion, I remained unfulfilled and I decided that my job would have to suffer in order to achieve my dream. I enrolled at the London College of Communication and took a series of courses in the evenings that would span across 3 years.

My eyes were opened immediately as I stepped through the university doors. Incredible designs, created by students, adorned the walls and provided me with a huge sense of inspiration and purpose.

“Each of us had experienced an unfulfilling career and were desperate for change.”

I met other students in a similar position to my own, who wanted to escape other careers and venture towards something creative. We shared a drive stronger than many students who take the 3 year degree in graphic design; each of us had experienced an unfulfilling career and were desperate for change.

It was during these classes that I learned the fundamentals and principles of good design. I’ll forever be thankful to the amazing lecturers, particularly to Paul Chamberlain for his seemingly unending wealth of knowledge and his willingness to share it, both in the lecture hall and in the pub.

One of my finest moments as a designer (even to this day) came during the end of year exhibition, where the best designs throughout the year were showcased to the university and public. I was shocked to find my poster layout promoting the London Olympics given a feature, receiving praise from some respected figures at the university. My work was now adorning the same halls that had so inspired me when I began the course three years prior.

That sense of achievement and pride was nothing I’d felt before; I wanted more of it!

I gave in my notice (a bit too proudly) and quit my role in food and beverage distribution and looked to the future with excitement and eagle-eyed focus.

I deleted my very corporate CV designed in Microsoft Word and set about creating a CV and portfolio that would attract a creative director. Whilst some recruiters were confused and possibly put off by my unconventional career path, I landed a role in production and design at a leading promotional merchandise company in Shoreditch.

It felt like I’d been adopted by a family rather than enduring the standard awkward greetings on a new employee’s first day. This friendly, outgoing and ambitious team, coupled with a creative role gave me unbelievable satisfaction. Plus, there were wasn’t a grey suit in sight!

Starting a design job in a promotional merchandise company wasn’t a conventional route into a design career. But then, I hadn’t followed a conventional designer’s career path. However, creating artwork and managing the end-to-end process developed that sense of responsibility for managing the client’s needs. I had the opportunity to produce innovative designs and creative promotional merchandise for major clients that helped develop my role into a senior creative and management position.

“I created my own degree”

Despite being guided to a different career path and some long hours learning graphic design, I’m thankful that I went the extra mile to achieve my dream. It wasn’t the conventional or recommended path. In a sense, I created my own degree through learning key soft-skills in the workplace during the day, whilst mastering graphic design in the evenings and weekends.

The common advice is to encourage young designers to enrol at university, which I wouldn’t argue with. My point is that there are other ways to be successful in design, especially in the modern age. Some of the largest global businesses are recognising that candidates with hands-on experience through online courses or similar methods can make the same impact as candidates with a degree. Google, Apple and IBM are amongst an increasing number of companies who no longer require applicants to have a degree. Having that work-place experience, becoming multi-skilled, developing people and management skills will help future proof your career in an age where gains in technology are at such a pace that great design skills alone won’t stop you from becoming obsolete.

An easier and more effective way of reaping the same benefits of my journey is to apply for an internship, whether you’re at university or not.

One incredible reward of an internship is that you have the opportunity to learn on the job, with an experienced designer to guide you. Learning by ‘doing’ is quicker, easier, for most of us and means that repeating the same skill next time isn’t as intimidating. You’ll feel a greater sense of achievement completing a real-life project and grow in confidence with every successful task. Becoming a skilled, reliable and integrated team member could even bring you paid work from that company, or at least a glowing reference.

Sometimes you don’t know how far you’ve come until you look back…at your Inbetweeners haircut whilst listening to some garage classics. The journey is different for us all, but the secret to achieving my dream was pretty simple. It just takes an open mind, a passion for creating, perseverance and above all, self-belief!

27 ways to land your first job in Graphic Design:

Deciding who you want to be is often not an easy decision for most of us. You may have a passion for design, but how do you go about making the jump? If you’re a budding designer, here’s my advice to securing your first graphic design job:

Starting from the bottom

There is no golden ticket into this saturated field: you must have a strong work-ethic, with the passion and imagination to get yourself noticed.

Career Change: if you’re thinking about switching careers from an industry that seems completely untransferable, it’s not too late. You may be unaware of several skills that’ll help you in design, which may put you ahead of other candidates, such as the ability to confidently pitch to clients.

Understand Graphic Design: well duh! There are some great courses on Udemy and Skillshare at amazing prices. There are also plenty of free tutorials available on YouTube.

It’s ok to be rubbish: be prepared to be absolutely useless when starting something new. This’ll help you develop patience and appreciate the mastery you’ll pick up in the long term.

Buying design equipment and software is a necessary evil: fear not! There are savings to be made. You can save around 65% on the Adobe Creative Cloud Student Subscription. Also check out Quidco for cashback on Adobe subscriptions and stock images.

Mean business: if you pursue a university degree, find courses or mentors who can teach you key business skills that’ll help you transition into the workplace.

Get organised: with so many channels available to promote yourself, organising these promotion tactics can be daunting. Set yourself achievable goals and give yourself a deadline for each. For example, learn a new software skill by the end of the month. Use a notebook to write down your plan of action, or setup a free account with Trello to organise tasks.

Create Pinterest boards: create your own Pinterest boards with designs that’ll help with inspiration for your next project. Examine what makes it a good design to help you understand the principles of design.

Look around you: Don’t rely solely on the internet for creative ideas. Look for inspiration everywhere you go and from everyone you meet.

Break out of your comfort zone: mastering one skill or piece of software is definitely a good thing, but getting out of your comfort zone and learning something new will develop confidence and provide more opportunities for future employment.

Get out there: the self-taught route can be a lonely experience. Join local groups and find other designers who can share experiences and skills. An accountability partner is a fantastic way to keep you motivated and on course.

Build on the relationships you already have: send a DM to your social media contacts and look for opportunities. Be friendly, whilst getting to the point.

Imposter Syndrome: most of us encounter this, normally early in our careers and especially if, like me, you haven’t followed the traditional route into design. Take a moment to appreciate what you’ve achieved, the positive feedback you’ve had and stop comparing yourself to others.

Understand User Experience (UX): as a designer, it’s important to put the customer first, by knowing how to design products with good usability and user pleasure.

Create a portfolio: To land that first role in design, you won’t get anywhere without a portfolio. Display only your best work, explain the challenges you encountered and the process of how you reached the final design. Proof-read the portfolio and covering letter and ask someone else to check it as well.

Free work: A very controversial topic, of which there are many opinions. I believe that whilst you’re starting out and developing a portfolio, it’s OK to offer cheap or even free work. However, make it clear to the client that you’ll be charging your standard rate for future work. As you start to show your worth and your demand rises, don’t undervalue yourself or your time.

Share your work: whether it’s on your own website (which we’d highly recommend), Behance, Dribbble, social media or Youtube, get your work out there. This is a great way to build followers and get seen by employers.

Give value: this may be difficult when you’re starting out, but simply sharing your process can inspire others. We have a free stock photo section on our website, providing free images for blogs, social media and anything else. This increases traffic on our website and increases engagement with customers.

Are you listening?: before you start creating what you think will be a great design for your portfolio, take time to understand the brief, how the design will best connect with audiences and ask questions if you’re unclear.

Sign me up: subscribe to blogs from brands that you love: Take note of why you’re attracted to them and what elements of their marketing make you want to engage with them in the future.

CV: Businesses advertising for designers often receive hundreds of applications, so it’s vital that your CV is on point. Keep it within a double sided A4 sheet. Ensure to include the following details – Full name, Job title, Contact, Objectives, Skills, Work Experience, Clients, Achievements, Qualifications and Interests. There’s no need to add your age or photo. Spelling check it, then save it as a compressed PDF and ensure all the hyperlinks work.

Don’t blanket-mail portfolios: Decide who you really want to work for. Tailor your portfolio and covering letter to the job you’re applying for. Applying for a designer role at a magazine company? Showcase your best layouts and demonstrate you understand typography. If there isn’t a contact name on the job description, phone the company and find out who will be managing the vacancy. It adds that personal touch and will help you get noticed.

Internships: As mentioned in our blog, internships are a fantastic way to develop your design and soft-skills under the mentorship of experienced professionals. Check out The Dots, Rate My Placement and Inspiring Interns for the latest placements. Once you’ve secured an internship, make yourself indispensable by doing everything asked of you. Roll your sleeves up and check if there’s anything else you can do to help the team. Going above and beyond will help you stand out and make you a valuable asset. Your team will know you’re there to learn, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.

The big interview: Before an interview, exceed expectations by doing your homework on the company and the person interviewing you. Go the extra mile by thinking of ways in which the company can improve. For example, is there a section missing on their website that would really benefit their business. And of course, arrive early, look the part, sit up straight, speak clearly, be polite and ask questions.

Tell your story: The presentation of your portfolio needs to be clear and engaging, whilst explaining the challenges, the process and outcome. Rehearse this at home in advance, as this’ll help your story flow on the day and help you gain confidence in your story. You need to believe in your own work – no one else will if you don’t. It may sound obvious but make sure that everyone can see your work during the presentation – this is your time to impress. Above all, be yourself!

Sh*t happens: There will be some obstacles along the way. Clients or employers will reject your design or application. Stay calm, keep trying and learn from your experiences. Remember, design is a very personal preference and you can’t please all of the people, all of the time.

Prove it: you’ll want to promote your soft-skills within your application or interview. It’s all well and good mentioning that you’re a troubleshooter, or team-player, but this’ll mean nothing without good and relevant examples.

Congratulations…you’re hired!

We’ll be sharing more super helpful tips and resources to help fellow creatives and businesses promote themselves. Simply subscribe here.

[saladscream]

And here's the second and last part. Because apparently my brain wasn't done with this silly ficlet. Again, huge thanks to @discessio for creating such inspiring artworks.

@melodymeddler @orliththedragon Here's the end of the ficlet. Thank you for your comments. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing/posting this second part if not for them. ❤️

Title: Opportunity (sequel to Misstep)

Pairing: Merlin/Arthur

Rating: mature

Warning: sappy, fluffy, unbetaed

Wordcount: 1873

Arthur blinks, confused.

One might say it’s a chronic affliction where the Prince is concerned. Confusion seemingly became his middle name the day Merlin became his manservant. But what’s confusing him at the moment is the too-close-for-comfort juxtaposition of two conflicting worlds that were never supposed to meet, much less overlap. Ever.

One minute Arthur has dreamMerlin under him, welcoming his princely ardours with wanton abandon and very encouraging noises, and the next, realMerlin is hovering mutely above him looking culpable as hell while Arthur’s cheek tingles with what feels suspiciously like a leftover imprint of lips.

Arthur is experiencing time and space disorientation like never before.

“What the…?”

“I can explain,” Merlin promises breathlessly, utterly flustered and clearly looking like he’ll never be able to explain anything in a million years. “You were having a nightmare.”

And for a very fraught heartbeat, Arthur considers saying “No I wasn’t” but then realises that he’d then have to be forthcoming about the real nature of his reprehensible dreams. So he decides now is the time for some cunningly strategic counteroffensive.

“Did you just kiss me?” he blurts out in disbelief.

Merlin makes his who-me face and, when that doesn’t work, proceeds to descend into a number of contradictory facial expressions that only serve to prove just how irredeemably guilty he is.

“And what on earth are you doing on my bed?” Arthur asks pointedly.

Now, it is common knowledge that Arthur loves riling up Merlin. He loves needling and prodding him and teasing all sorts of reactions and emotions out of him, ranging from mirth to sarcasm to annoyance all the way through to positive outrage and pig-headed disagreement. It’s even more entertaining than pranking Leon.

It is also common knowledge that Merlin is a master bullshitter. He will absolutely attempt to talk himself out of the direst and deepest of troubles with the most convoluted excuses and harebrained lies man has ever heard – with a mitigated success rate.

And right now, Arthur can’t wait to hear the kind of rubbish his inventive and very much cornered manservant is going to invent. The Gods only know what Merlin’s real motives were for sneaking up to Arthur’s bed in the bloody middle of the night and pecking Arthur’s cheek the way he did, but whatever those motives were, they’ll never be as laughably implausible as what the man will conjure up.

Arthur counts down to bullshit in his head.

He has but a split moment’s notice to brace himself when he sees an ominous Ooo-I’ve-got-an-idea expression flit across Merlin’s all-too-readable features.

“Eh… but this is all still a dream, my lord,” Merlin breathes, making his voice soft and low and distractingly sensual.

Oh for heaven’s sake. Merlin pretending to be a figment of Arthur’s imagination – that’s a new one. Where does he get all this crap?

Arthur resists cracking up. Barely.

“Really?” he says, almost encouragingly.

And Merlin, warming up to his own nonsense, gets ambitious. Always a reliable sign of dreadful things to come.

“Yesss… All a dream,” he nods slowly – aiming for dreamlike, but achieving awkward.

Oh but this is too good to pass up.

“Aren’t you a little overdressed for this to be one of my dreams?” Arthur arches an eyebrow.

“Yesss. Overd… Um, what?”

“Yeah, the whole jacket, tunic, the trousers. You do sometimes keep the neckerchief, but you usually wear far less clothes in my dreams.”

“I do?”

Merlin’s dry gulp is indecently loud, and Arthur is enjoying this. Far too much. He pokes Merlin with a finger and pushes him back until he’s lying on his back by Arthur’s side on the bed. The phrase ‘knock him down with a feather’ has never been more fitting. But damn, the sight of Merlin’s raven head of hair on his pillow makes something shiver deliciously inside him.

“And you don’t talk so much,” Arthur piles on.

“Ah.”

“Well, it’s generally more moans and grunts. Sometimes roars if you’re feeling feisty and we’re going at it vigorously.”

“Uh-huhhh.”

“You’re a bit of an animal when you get going,” Arthur smiles indulgently. “A demanding animal.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I don’t mind,” Arthur promises. “I’m always happy to provide the good hard pounding you cry for.”

Merlin opens his mouth, but no sound comes out – a first. He closes it with an audible click.

Meanwhile, Arthur is on an exhilarating roll.

“We don’t rattle the headboard every single time, mind you. Sometimes a sweet bit of languorous ravishing is all a man needs.”

And so, to sum up, Merlin is now lying on his back, gazing up at Arthur – sweating buckets and going slightly cross-eyed – seemingly seconds away from spontaneous combustion, and Arthur wonders why the idiot hasn’t admitted defeat and called an end to the charade yet. The prince knows that his manservant has a competitive streak a mile wide, but this is pushing it. The pretence seduction is going full swing and they should both be more careful before someone gets hurt. Arthur’s fingertips have loosened the front laces of Merlin’s tunic and are poised to slip inside and glide along an elusive collarbone – the one that Arthur has licked and kissed so many times in his dreams.

“This is still a dream, right?” Arthur taunts, his voice a little hoarse.

And once again, Merlin swallows and wets his lips – he does a lot of that and it’s not good for Arthur’s heart condition.

“Undoubtedly,” Merlin croaks. Arthur isn’t sure where he found enough spit to say such a long word. Gods but the man is infuriating.

The situation of Arthur’s feelings where Merlin is concerned is not a simple one. Arthur likes Merlin. Unthinkingly. Idiotically. Abysmally. And worse, he trusts him. He trusts him more than he’s ever trusted anything or anyone. He trusts Merlin on a level that’s as visceral as it is incomprehensible. The blood in his veins trusts Merlin. The marrow in his bones trusts Merlin. Every bloody inch of his carcass trusts Merlin.

And all of this wouldn’t be so damning if Arthur didn’t find the man to his taste (read, positively edible). That’s the real nail in the coffin of Arthur’s sex life. Merlin is bewitchingly attractive, but sadly, there’s no way Arthur will ever make a move on him. The prince is too scared of fraying the subtle bond between them and ruining their unique friendship.

What makes it so galling is that he’s pretty sure no one would bat an eyelid if he shagged his oddly alluring manservant.

His own father once seemed to imply that it would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you bedding your manservant?” the king had asked rather benignly, in between popping his last bit of cheese into his mouth and reaching for a pear in the fruit bowl. With the same detachment as if he’d been asking whether Arthur had seen the first foal of the season.

Arthur had swallowed sideways and coughed up a lung before answering a wheezy but determined, “No?”

The king had looked at him funny and carved into his pear, a faint frown on his brow that seemed to suggest there might be something slightly wrong with his son. Of all things.

And let’s not even mention Morgana or the knights. Arthur’s pretty sure they have a betting pool going on as to when and where the prince will use his droit de seigneur on his charming but gormless manservant.

But really. It’s not like that. Arthur cares about his best friend. Truly. Deeply. And somewhat madly. So much so that he’d rather limit himself to the company of his commiserating hand than disrupt the fine balance of their friendship. Arthur never quite loses sight of the fact that he’s Merlin’s master and that this tiny bit of administrative fluke will forever stand in the way of any frolicking. They’re simply not playing on a level field and no sort of carnal relationship they could invent for themselves would ever be fair to Merlin. So Arthur is resigned to lose out. It’s all right. As long as Merlin stays his friend, he’s willing to bear it.

But it doesn’t mean Arthur’s going to let this opportunity go to waste. It is too tempting a gift.

He brings a gentle hand to Merlin’s cheek. He’s actually dreamed of doing this. Of brushing his thumb over the sharp cheekbone. In his dreams, Merlin usually leans into the caress and smiles at him sleepily. And tonight, Arthur’s heart crashes against his ribs when he feels his friend lean into the touch. Not with the same abandon as dreamMerlin (for that one’s a bit of a flirtatious trollop), but with a shy hint of neediness that echoes painfully in Arthur. 

“Merlin?”

“What.” Merlin’s voice is but a breathless whisper.

“If this is a dream, I can do whatever I want without there being any sort of consequences, right?”

“Ye-es.” There’s an inkling of worry in Merlin’s blue gaze, bless him.

“So I can do this, and it won’t matter,” Arthur murmurs, dragging the pad of his thumb gently over Merlin’s soft lips.

Beyond the parted lips Arthur sees the tip of Merlin’s pink tongue, and for an insane second he thinks his manservant is going to lick his thumb. Trouble is, if Merlin does that, Arthur is a goner. One of two things will happen: either Arthur comes on the spot (and let’s not forget that he was already halfway there when Merlin woke him up), or he kisses the living daylights out of Merlin and comes on the spot. Either way, it won’t be pretty or dignified and it certainly won’t reflect well on Arthur's stamina.

Fortunately, the tip of the little pink tongue remains wisely where it should and Arthur is saved a world of embarrassment. But damn, those lips are soft. Arthur watches his thumb rub ever-so-gently over Merlin’s heart-shaped mouth, and it’s just about the hottest thing he’s ever experienced.

“Are you going to admit that you’re a silly, reckless prat who’s in over his sizeable ears, or do I have to go all the way and shag some sense into you?”

End of the game.

Merlin winces, then sighs self-consciously. He gives Arthur that look. The contrite, I-need-to-do-what’s-right kind of look.

“I really thought you were having a nightmare,” he mutters by way of explanation.

“But I wasn’t.”

“No. You seemed to be having a good time.”

“I was.” With you, turniphead.

“Yeah.” Is it Arthur’s imagination or does Merlin seem a little bitter.

“Not that it’s any concern of yours,” Arthur advises.

“Obviously.” And now Merlin scowls, looking miffed.

Arthur can’t resist it. He ruffles the black hair with a tenderness that he seldom allows himself to display.

“Oh Merlin. What am I ever going to do with you?” He shakes his head fondly. He’s so ridiculously besotted with the man that it probably shows on his face by this point.

Merlin relaxes and smiles, and the dimples even make a furtive appearance. Then Arthur notices the cheeky glint in Merlin’s jewel-like eyes.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a bit of ravishing,” Merlin says, apropos of nothing. “If you could see your way clear to that.”

Oh well, when the man asks so nicely.

***the end (for real, dammit)***

This was too good. Couldn't resist. Here's the short nonsense fluffy ficlet this artwork inspired. Thank you @discessio !! ❤️

Title: Misstep (crap title, I know)

Pairing: Merlin/Arthur

Warning: sappy, fluffy, cliffhanger, unbetaed

Wordcount: 1377

The first time it happens is by complete accident, Merlin can swear it on his mother’s life. Well, it’s an accident that turns into an opportunity, really. Let’s say it’s half-accident, half-neediness. And let’s keep Merlin’s mother out of it.

What’s for certain is that the first time it happens, it’s definitely not on purpose. Merlin doesn’t engineer it. He simply reacts instinctively and freezes the course of time in order to avoid the loud, inevitable clatter of the falling tray. Arthur’s still fast asleep and Merlin knows the prince’s sleep has been a little elusive over the past few weeks, so really he stops time for all the right reasons.

He picks the suspended goblet, plate and cutlery from their arrested tumble, mid-air. Accident averted. Gaius wouldn’t be happy with this, but again, at no point did Merlin actually think it through. He merely reacted. There’s a surreptitious lick of unease down his back as he realises he is somewhat playing with fire here.

But Merlin wants to concentrate on the positive outcome – Arthur’s uninterrupted and much-needed sleep.

In a rare show of self-indulgence, Merlin stands by the bed for a moment, gazing at his prince. His sweet, brave, arrogant prince who’s such an insufferable clotpole but also the most important person in Merlin’s world. The most aggravatingly beloved man in Merlin’s guarded heart. The most forbidden idol in Merlin’s unmentionable fantasies.

Merlin blinks himself out of his nebulous and slightly lascivious thoughts.

And finally realises he hasn’t unfrozen time, lost in contemplation of the darling bane of his existence as he was. It’s just that Arthur is so pretty when he’s asleep, all tousled blonde hair and soft lips and peaceful features. It’s such a rare occurrence to be able to look upon him being so care-free and utterly safe.

Merlin releases the flow of time.

And immediately wishes he’d used the suspended pause to stroke Arthur’s hair.

Merlin gets to touch Arthur in many rather intimate ways throughout the day, but he’s never been at liberty to simply indulge in a fond ruffle or a gentle caress – for obvious reasons. He’s always wished he could. He can’t help it. He’s a tactile kind of person, though it may not seem like it. To him, touch is a crucial, under-used language that conveys love and affection like nothing else can. And he finds there’s never enough of it in his life. He’s made his peace with it. It is what it is.

But he wishes he’d thought of reaching out and stroking Arthur’s hair while time was frozen. No one would’ve been the wiser, yet it would’ve meant so much to him.

Merlin presses his lips into a resigned line and resumes his morning duties, delivering the offending tray safely to the table.

And that’s the first time it happens. Complete accident. Missed opportunity. Bittersweet musings.

The second time it happens… Merlin’s again caught wrong-footed. The knife that’s just slipped off the plate is about to stab through his boot, and so everything stops for the almighty warlock. Merlin huffs an annoyed breath, puts down the plate and grabs the suspended knife. The damn thing is sharp and heavy as hell, and Merlin scowls at the hole it would’ve punctured into his boot – and possibly his foot.

And then he realises he’s done it again. Caught Arthur in the bubble of frozen time. He should feel terrible – and he does – but he also feels something else. Like, just a frisson of euphoria. A guilty thrill of elation at being given a second chance.

His hand shakes just a tiny bit as he places the forgotten knife on the bedside table, but he then takes a steadying breath and turns to the bed’s occupant.

The prince is arrested in slumber, slack-jawed and slightly drooling on the pillow, and alright, he looks more ridiculous than dashing right now, but it is this very vulnerability that makes the knight so absurdly dear to Merlin.

Merlin reaches out and his fingertips brush, feather-soft, over the tangled blonde mess of hair. It feels wonderful. Intimate. Illicit. There are shameless butterflies dancing in Merlin’s belly as his fingers caress their treasure. He pushes an errant strand this way and then that way in search of ultimate perfection, as he probably would if Arthur were his. Something in him trembles at the forward gesture.

But enough with these stollen familiarities. Merlin shakes himself out of his tender thoughts and releases time.

And Arthur gives an undignified snore.

The third time it happens… Well, much to Merlin’s own unease, the third time is deliberate. Nothing to startle him, no impending jarring threat, no excuse whatsoever. It’s just that… today was a close call and Merlin truly thought he’d failed his destiny and his prince, and Arthur looked so deathly pale as the poison crawled through his veins, and so now Merlin needs a bit of quiet time alone with the unwitting other half of his soul.

He just wants to look at him. He won’t touch Arthur, he promises himself sternly. It feels too terribly good to touch him – as well as a little wrong.

And so he freezes the course of time, and it feels odd and strained because he seldom does this voluntarily. His magic itches and writhes in discomfort but obeys, and now he can look his fill.

Arthur is still awfully pale and there’s a sheen of sweat dewing his face and throat. One that spreads to his shoulders and upper chest – and Merlin isn’t strictly touching him, just lifting a corner of the covers to check that the bandage hasn’t slipped. But Arthur’s alive. He’s safe now. And Gods, Merlin wishes he could touch him, if only to ground himself and chase the residual fear that lurks within his battered little heart. Just a caressing sweep of his thumb over the crook of the shoulder would do it. A reassurance. An offering. A blessing.

But Merlin has promised himself he wouldn’t touch and he wants to prove to himself that he has a measure of self-control and a modicum of decency. That he’s not one of those sorcerers who abuse their powers. The cover flops back down and Arthur is left to recover in peace.

The fourth time... Alas, there’s no good excuse for the fourth time. It’s the middle of the night and there’s something dreadfully fragile and needy to Arthur’s moans as he struggles with a nightmare. The prince’s chest is bare and heaving, his hands clutching and clenching, his whole sturdy frame restless in the throes of a distressing dream. And truly, Merlin has no other choice. He can’t just stand there and watch and do nothing. He kneels on the bed behind Arthur and leans over him, bracing a light hand on Arthur’s hip while the other rests on the headboard.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs very gently. “You’re all right, Arthur.” And before he can honestly help himself, he’s brushing a soft, tender, timid kiss over Arthur’s damp cheek.

He’s so anxious to make all the bad things go away for his beloved prince. So selflessly ready to do anything and everything to spare his beloved prince any ache of any kind. So damn in love with the clotpole and so unable to exorcise it any other way. The gentle rub of his lips over Arthur’s cheek feels pure and wanton, and tremors of pitiful bliss shimmer though him, miserable wretch that he is.

Which is when Arthur shifts beneath him, tilting his head up for more.

It is at this precise juncture that Merlin, this untold genius, becomes aware of two things.

First, it is not a nightmare. The dream is of a completely different nature, and it is not anguish that strains at Arthur’s features and rocks his body, it is lustful hunger – as the grunt of pleasure confirms.

Second, Merlin forgot to suspend the course of time. He is therefore kneeling over Arthur – pressing a kiss to the man’s cheek, for fuck’s sake – while the prince is having a very natural, very private and very pleasant dream. In real time.

Arthur opens blurry, confused eyes, gazing straight up into Merlin’s blinking, confounded ones.

Now this should be fun to explain.

*the end*

[supericonblog]

SUPER ICON NEEDS YOUR HELP

Our History So Far…

I began developing games back in the late nineties – Xtreme Racing on Amiga was my first game, and ever since then I have only ever worked at my own development studios.

Starting with Graphic State, which initially was a sub-contract artwork studio, later moving into handheld game development on the Gameboy systems. This then evolved into Icon Games, focusing on small-ish console games on Playstation and Wii.

I then founded Super Icon in 2012, with a focus on creating the games that I wanted to make, rather than trying to ride the coat-tails of current popular games or casual games. The focus was always trying to make great games, as good as we possibly can – games that people enjoy playing. Like many other small indie developers, we’ve had ups and downs, but I think the games we’ve made are the best of my career so far. Our first proper release was Life of Pixel on Playstation Mobile.

Back in 2016, after the release of Life of Pixel on Steam and our Battlezone type shooter Vektor Wars, we decided that it would probably be best to partner with a publisher going forward. Our sales numbers were low, and we failed quite badly at building any sort of interest in the games. They didn’t completely tank, but the numbers were bad, and not enough to sustain a business.

At the time we had just finished a Kickstarter for another game, Best Buds vs Bad Guys, and managed to get a little income in to complete the development. During the Kickstarter I started chatting to a great bunch of guys at a studio called Whitemoon Dreams, in particular its CEO Jay.

The upshot was I explained we were not having much success at selling/promoting our games, and they agreed to act as a publisher on Life of Pixel and Best Buds going forward, to take them over onto Playstation and Switch.

We worked together with them, releasing Super Life of Pixel onto Playstation 4 and Vita in December 2018. Also, during the development phase, we pitched another title we were making, called Platform Maker. After a fair few rejections, we finally found a publisher, pQube. We renamed the game to PLATAGO, and it was released onto Steam Early Access in 2018.

Fast forward to 2019…

  The Current State of Play

So, here we are. Unfortunately, despite most players seeming to enjoy Super Life of Pixel, the sales on Playstation have been DIRE. So bad, in fact, that Whitemoon have decided they are unable to continue publishing for the time-being. As such, in the first quarter of 2019, we have seen our income pretty much completely grind to a halt.

Our income wasn’t much before, and we have had several very tough times since the later Icon Games period onwards, where we’ve had little or no income for months at a time. This time though, it is all a little different, I’m kind of burnt out. I’m also getting on a bit, I’m 46 this year, with a family, including three great kids who are now that much older, and it is tough for them.

I think being a penniless indie develop is a younger person’s game! Certainly not conducive to maintaining a stable family life and keeping the wolves from the door.

  A Tough Decision

So, I have come to the decision that, unless this year things improve and we break this cycle, I don’t think I am able to continue making games.

I love making games, but there comes a time when you think if no-one wants to play your games, and you can’t support your family – perhaps it is time to re-evaluate.

Another thing I have done over the last couple of years is develop and pitch other games – the first a horror game called The Tower, the other an Action RPG called They Came from Beyond. The plan was to make sure we continued to maintain revenue once we completed the on-going projects.

I pitched both to various publishers, and they were both rejected. I stopped work on The Tower, as without funding it was just too ambitious. There is a blog for it (updated until I stopped working on the project):

https://thetower-game.tumblr.com/

I continued with They Came from Beyond, for the following reasons:

I love the game and believe in it

I have enjoyed every second of developing it

Although larger in scope than our other titles, it was still a realistic scope

It is my last chance, perhaps, to continue making games

You can download the in-development build for free from itch.io:

https://supericon.itch.io/they-came-from-beyond

Alas, I can’t get any interest in it at all, which kind of breaks my heart. I’ve also been working on it now for 15 months, completely un-funded, so there is a big personal commitment there.

So, there we are, but I do have a request…

  If You Like Our Games, Support Us

We need your help!!

If you like any of our games – Life of Pixel, Vektor Wars, PLATAGO or like the look of They Came from Beyond – can you help us spread the word?

Without more support and a much larger community of followers, it will be impossible for us to continue making games. We just can’t continue without income – and I’ll be honest, it is a constant gut punch to try and continue developing when everything you do fails.

So, if you can - spread the word – help get us a little more known. Join our community on Discord or elsewhere, tell other gamers, sites or anywhere you think might be interested in our games. Without more followers, and more people buying our games, we’re done.

This was a tough post to write, and I hope it doesn’t come across in the wrong way – I just don’t know where else to turn. If anyone out there plays and enjoys our games, and wants us to continue making games – well, we can’t do it without you now.

Richard Hill-Whittall, March 26

  Links

You can follow us in the following ways:

Website:                             http://www.supericon.co.uk/

Blog:                                    https://supericonblog.tumblr.com/

Twitter:                               https://twitter.com/SuperIconLtd

Discord:                              https://discord.gg/vPBTFtf

Instagram:                         https://www.instagram.com/supericonltd/

Facebook:                          https://www.facebook.com/SuperIconLtd/

Youtube:                            https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperIconLtd

[artmastered]

From Auckland to Sydney: my most ambitious trip to date

For anyone who follows my Instagram page, you may have noticed a recent onslaught of posts from my three-week trip down under. For those who don’t - and you really should - here is a round-up of my favourite artsy moments from what was easily the most exciting excursion of my life so far.

Tauranga Art Gallery

My adventure began in the New Zealand harbour city of Tauranga, where a great friend, and ex-colleague, currently resides. I had a few days here to recover after the gruelling 28-hour flight, before my friend’s wedding ceremony took place just outside Hot Water Beach, no less. The Tauranga Art Gallery was a small but progressive affair, at the time showcasing ten artworks that require visitor engagement to come alive in the Art That Needs You exhibition.

Auckland Galleries and Museums

I headed over to Auckland after my time in the Coromandel for five days of city exploration. I visited the highly regarded Auckland War Memorial Museum and the New Zealand Maritime Museum, which is located just next to the ferry terminal. I also spent a quiet weekday morning at the Auckland Art Gallery in Albert Park admiring the mix of international contemporary art - such as Limbo, 2015, above, by Judith Darragh - and traditional Maori painting. Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room has also been on show here since 2002, and allows visitors to add colourful spot stickers to an apartment-style room.

Sydney Galleries and Museums

As with Auckland, I had a long list of museums and galleries to visit once I arrived in Sydney, including the Australian Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the State Library of New South Wales. I have been familiar with the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales since starting ArtMastered, so spending time here was a major highlight for me. Located in the Royal Botanic Gardens, the gallery features some truly iconic works from Australia’s biggest artists. I also managed to fit in a quick stop at the White Rabbit Gallery on my very last day: this is a real gem of a location, featuring works from contemporary Chinese artists, such as Peng Hung-Chih’s The Deluge - Noah’s Ark from 2014, above.

Street Art

I have a real love-hate relationship with street art. Graffitiing public walls landmarks is not something I advocate in general, but when done well and respectfully, street art can be a beautiful thing. I saw some stunning examples whilst I was away; pieces that complemented their surroundings or brightened up an otherwise plain area of the city, like the colourful heart above from Auckland.

Please take a look at my Instagram page for more peeks into my trip, including pictures from my day-tour of Hobbiton!

[grigori77]

2018 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30.  MANDY – easily the weirdest shit I saw in 2018, this 2-hour-plus fever dream fantasy horror is essentially an extended prog-rock video with added “plot” from Beyond the Black Rainbow director Panos Cosmatos. Saying that by the end of it I was left feeling exhausted, brain-fried and more than a little weirded-out might not seem like much of a recommendation, but this is, in fact, a truly transformative viewing experience, a film destined for MASSIVE future cult status. Playing like the twisted love-child of David Lynch and Don Coscarelli, it (sort of) tells the story of lumberjack Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) and his illustrator girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough), who have an idyllic life in the fantastically fictional Shadow Mountains circa 1983 … at least until Mandy catches the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), the thoroughly insane leader of twisted doomsday cult the Children of the New Dawn, who employs nefarious, supernatural means to acquire her.  But Mandy spurns his advances, leading to a horrific retribution that spurs Red, a traumatised war veteran, to embark on a genuine roaring rampage of revenge.  Largely abandoning plot and motivation for mood, emotion and some seriously trippy visuals, this is an elemental, transcendental film, a series of deeply weird encounters and nightmarish set-pieces that fuel a harrowing descent into a particularly alien, Lovecraftian kind of hell, Cosmatos shepherding in one breathtaking sequence after another with the aid of skilled cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, a deeply inventive design team (clearly drawing inspiration from the artwork of late-70s/early 80s heavy metal albums) and a thoroughly tricked-out epic tone-poem of a score from the late Jôhan Jôhannsson (Sicario, Arrival, Mother!), as well as one seriously game cast.  Cage is definitely on crazy-mode here, initially playing things cool and internalised until the savage beast within is set loose by tragedy, chewing scenery to shreds like there’s no tomorrow, while Riseborough is sweet, gentle and inescapably DOOMED; Roach, meanwhile, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, an entitled, delusional narcissist thoroughly convinced of his own massive cosmic importance, and there’s interesting support from a raft of talented character actors such as Richard Brake, Ned Dennehy and Bill Duke.  This is some brave, ambitious filmmaking, and a stunning breakthrough for one of the weirdest and most unique talents I’ve stumbled across a good while.  Cosmatos is definitely one to watch.

29.  THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB – back in 2011, David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s runaway bestseller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became one of my very favourite screen thrillers EVER, a stone-cold masterpiece and, in my opinion, the superior version of the story even though a very impression Swedish version had broken out in a major way the year before. My love for the film was coloured, however, by frustration at its cinematic underperformance, which meant that Fincher’s planned continuation of the series with Millennium Trilogy sequels The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest would likely never see the light of day. Even so, the fan in me held out hope, however fragile, that we might just get lucky.  Seven years later, we have FINALLY been rewarded for our patience, but not exactly in the fashion we’ve been hoping for … Fincher’s out, Evil Dead-remake and Don’t Breathe writer-director Fede Alvarez is in, and instead of continuing the saga in the logical place the makers of this new film chose the baffling route of a “soft reboot” via adapting the FOURTH Millennium book, notable for being the one released AFTER Larsson’s death, penned by David Lagercrantz, which is set AFTER the original Trilogy. Thing is, the actually end result, contrary to many opinions, is actually pretty impressive – this is a leaner, more fast-paced affair than its predecessor, a breathless suspense thriller that rattles along at quite a clip as we’re drawn deeper into Larsson’s dark, dangerous and deeply duplicitous world and treating fans to some top-notch action sequences, from a knuckle-whitening tech-savvy car chase to a desperate, bone-crunching fight in a gas-filled room.  Frustratingly, the “original” Lisbeth Salander, Rooney Mara, is absent (despite remaining VERY enthusiastic about returning to the role), but The Crown’s Claire Foy is almost as good – the spiky, acerbic and FIERCELY independent prodigious super-hacker remains as brooding, socially-awkward, emotionally complex and undeniably compelling as ever, the same queen of screen badasses I fell in love with nearly a decade ago.  Her investigative journalist friend/occasional lover Mikael Blomkvist is, annoyingly, less well served – Borg Vs McEnroe star Sverrir Gudnasson is charismatic and certainly easy on the eyes, but he’s FAR too young for the role (seriously, he’s only a week older than I am) and at times winds up getting relegated to passive observer status when he’s not there simply to guide the plot forward; we’re better served by the supporting cast, from Lakeith Stanfield (Get Out, Sorry to Bother You) as a mysterious NSA security expert (I know!) to another surprisingly serious turn (after Logan) from The Office’s Stephen Merchant as the reclusive software designer who created the world-changing computer program that spearheads the film’s convoluted plot, and there’s a fantastically icy performance from Blade Runner 2049’s Sylvia Hoeks as Camilla Salander, Lisbeth’s estranged twin sister and psychopathic head of the Spiders, the powerful criminal network once controlled by their monstrous father (The Hobbit’s Mikael Persbrandt).  The film is far from perfect – the plot kind runs away with the story at times, while several supposedly key characters are given frustratingly little development or screen-time – but Alvarez keeps things moving along with typical skill and precision and maintains a tense, unsettling atmosphere throughout, while there are frequently moments of pure genius on display in the script by Alvarez, his regular collaborator Jay Basu and acclaimed screenwriter Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Locke) – the original novel wasn’t really all that great, but by just taking the bare bones of the plot and crafting something new and original they’ve improved things considerably.  The finished product thrills and rewards far more than it frustrates, and leaves the series in good shape for continuation.  With a bit of luck this time it might do well enough that we’ll finally get those other two movies to plug the gap between this and Fincher’s “original” …

28.  ISLE OF DOGS – I am a MASSIVE fan of the films of Wes Anderson.  Three share placement in my all-time favourite screen comedies list – Grand Budapest Hotel, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and, of course, The Royal Tenebaums (which perches high up in my TOP TEN) – and it’s always a pleasure when a new one comes out.  2009’s singular stop-motion gem Fantastic Mr Fox showed just how much fun his uniquely quirky sense of humour and pleasingly skewed world-view could be when transferred into an animated family film setting, so it’s interesting that it took him nearly a decade to repeat the exercise, but the labour of love is writ large upon this dark and delicious fable of dystopian future Japanese city Megasaki, where an epidemic of “dog flu” prompts totalitarian Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura) to issue an edict banishing all of the city’s canine residents to nearby Trash Island. Six months later, Kobayashi’s nephew Atari (newcomer Koyu Rankin) steals a ridiculously tiny plane and crash-lands on Trash Island, intent on rescuing his exiled bodyguard-dog Spots (Liev Schreiber); needless to say this is easier said than done, unforeseen circumstances leading a wounded Atari to enlist the help of a pack of badass “alpha dogs” voiced by Anderson regulars – Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray) and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) – and nominally led by crabby, unrepentantly bitey stray Chief (Bryan Cranston), to help him find his lost dog in the dangerous wilds of the island.  Needless to say this is as brilliantly odd as we’ve come to expect from Anderson, a perfectly pitched, richly flavoured concoction of razor sharp wit, meticulously crafted characters and immersive beauty.  The cast are, as always, excellent, from additional regulars such as Frances McDormand, Harvey Keitel and F. Murray Abraham to new voices like Greta Gerwig, Scarlett Johansson, Ken Watanabe and Courtney B. Vance, but the film’s true driving force is Cranston and Rankin, the reluctant but honest relationship that forms between Chief and Atari providing the story with a deep, resonant emotional core.  The first rate animation really helps – the exemplary stop-motion makes the already impressive art of Mr Fox seem clunky and rudimentary (think the first Wallace & Gromit short A Grand Day Out compared to their movie Curse of the Were-Rabbit), each character rendered with such skill they seem to be breathing on their own, and Anderson’s characteristic visual flair is on full display, the Japanese setting lending a rich, exotic tang to the compositions, especially in the deeply inventive environs of Trash Island.  Funny, evocative, heartfelt and fiendishly clever, this is one of those rare screen gems that deserves to be returned to again and again, and it’s definitely another masterpiece from one of the most unique filmmakers working today.

27.  VENOM – when Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man saga came to a rather clunky end back in 2007, it felt like a case of too many villains spoiling the rumble, and it was pretty clear that the inclusion of bad-boy reporter Eddie Brock and his dark alter ego was the straw that broke that particular camel’s back.  Venom didn’t even show up proper until almost three quarters of the way through the movie, by which time it was very much a case of too-little-too-late, and many fans (myself included) resented the decidedly Darth Maul-esque treatment of one of the most iconic members of Marvel’s rogues’ gallery.  It’s taken more than a decade for Marvel to redress the balance, even longer than with Deadpool, and, like with the Merc With a Mouth, they decided the only way was a no-holds-barred, R-rated take that could really let the beast loose. Has it worked?  Well … SORT OF.  In truth, the finished article feels like a bit of a throwback, recalling the pre-MCU days when superhero movies were more about pure entertainment without making us think too much, just good old-fashioned popcorn fodder, but in this case that’s not a bad thing.  It’s big, loud, dumb fun, hardly a masterpiece but it does its job admirably well, and it has one hell of a secret weapon at its disposal – Tom Hardy. PERFECTLY cast as morally ambiguous underdog investigative journalist Eddie Brock, he deploys the kind of endearingly sleazy, shit-eating charm that makes you root for him even when he acts like a monumental prick, while really letting rip with some seriously twitchy, sometimes downright FEROCIOUS unhinged craziness once he becomes the unwilling host for a sentient parasitic alien symbiote with a hunger for living flesh and a seriously bad attitude.  This is EASILY one of the best performances Hardy’s ever delivered, and he entrances us in every scene, whether understated or explosive, making even the most outlandish moments of Brock’s unconventional relationship with Venom seem, if not perfectly acceptable, then at least believable.  He’s ably supported by Michelle Williams as San Francisco district attorney Anne Weying, his increasingly exasperated ex-fiancée, Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed as Carlton Drake, the seemingly idealistic space-exploration-funding philanthropist whose darker ambitions have brought a lethal alien threat to Earth, and Parks & Recreation’s Jenny Slate as Drake’s conflicted head scientist Nora Skirth, while there’s a very fun cameo from a particularly famous face in the now ubiquitous mid-credits sting that promises great things in the future.  Director Ruben Fleischer brought us Zombieland and 30 Minutes Or Less, so he certainly knows how to deliver plenty of blackly comic belly laughs, and he brings plenty of seriously dark humour to the fore, the rating meaning the comedy can get particularly edgy once Venom starts to tear up the town; it also fulfils the Marvel prerequisite of taking its action quota seriously, delivering a series of robust set-pieces (the standout being a spectacular bike chase through the streets of San Fran, made even more memorable by the symbiote’s handy powers). Best of all, the film isn’t afraid to get genuinely scary with some seriously nasty alien-induced moments of icky body horror, captured by some strangely beautiful effects works that brings Venom and his ilk to vivid, terrifying life.  Flawed as it is, this is still HUGE fun, definitely one of the year’s biggest cinematic guilty pleasures, and I for one can’t wait to see more from the character in the near future, which, given what a massive success the film has already proven at the box office, seems an ironclad certainty.

26.  SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY – the second of Disney’s new phase of Star Wars movies to feature in the non-trilogy-based spinoff series had a rough time after its release – despite easily recouping its production budget, it still lost the $100-million+ it spent on advertising, while it was met with extremely mixed reviews and shunned by many hardcore fans.  I’ll admit that I too was initially disappointed with this second quasi prequel to A New Hope (after the MUCH more impressive Rogue One), but a second, more open-minded viewing after a few months to ruminate mellowed my experience considerably, the film significantly growing on me.  An origin story for the Galaxy’s most lovable rogue was always going to be a hard sell – Han Solo is an enjoyable enigma in The Original Trilogy, someone who lives very much in the present, his origins best revealed in the little details we glean about him in passing – but while it’s a flawed creation, this interstellar heist adventure mostly pulls off what was intended.  Like many fans of The Lego Movie, I remain deeply curious about what original director duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller could have achieved with the material, but I wholeheartedly approved Disney’s replacement choice when he was announced – Ron Howard is one of my favourite “hit-and-miss” directors, someone who’s made some clunkers in his time (The Da Vinci Code, we’re looking at you) but can, on a good day, be relied on to deliver something truly special (Willow is one of my VERY FAVOURITE movies from my childhood, one that’s stood up well to the test of time, and a strong comparison point for this; Apollo 13 and Rush, meanwhile, are undeniable MASTERPIECES), and in spite of its shortcomings I’m ultimately willing to consider this one of his successes. Another big step in the right direction was casting Hail, Caesar! star Alden Ehrenreich in the title role – Harrison Ford’s are seriously huge shoes to fill, but this talented young man has largely succeeded.  He may not quite capture that wonderful growling drawl but he definitely got Han’s cocky go-getter swagger right, he’s particularly strong in the film’s more humorous moments, and he has charisma to burn, so he sure makes entertaining viewing.  It also helps that the film has such a strong supporting cast – with original Chewbacca Peter Mayhew getting too old for all this derring-do nonsense, former pro basketball-player Joonas Suotamo gets a little more comfortable in his second gig (after The Last Jedi) in the “walking carpet” suit, while Woody Harrelson adds major star power as Tobias Beckett, Han’s likeably slippery mentor in all things criminal in the Star Wars Universe, and Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke is typically excellent as Han’s first love Qi’ra, a fellow Corellian street orphan who’s grown up into a sophisticated thief of MUCH higher calibre than her compatriots.  The film is dominated, however, by two particularly potent scene-stealing turns which make you wonder if it’s really focused on the right rogue’s story – Community star Donald Glover exceeds all expectations as Han’s old “friend” Lando Calrissian, every bit the laconic smoothie he was when he was played by Billy Dee Williams back in the day, while his droid companion L3-37 (voiced with flawless comic skill by British stage and sitcom actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge) frequently walks away with the film entirely, a weirdly flirty and lovably militant campaigner for droid rights whose antics cause a whole heap of trouble.  The main thing the film REALLY lacks is a decent villain – Paul Bettany’s oily kingpin Dryden Voss is distinctive enough to linger in the memory, but has criminally short screen-time and adds little real impact or threat to the main story, only emphasising the film’s gaping, Empire-shaped hole.  Even so, it’s still a ripping yarn, a breathlessly exciting and frequently VERY funny space-hopping crime caper that relishes that wonderful gritty, battered old tech vibe we’ve come to love throughout the series as a whole and certainly delivers on the action stakes – the vertigo-inducing train heist sequence is easily the film’s standout set-piece, but the opening chase and the long-touted Kessel Run impress too – it only flags in the frustrating and surprisingly sombre final act.  The end result still has the MAKINGS of a classic, and there’s no denying it’s also more enjoyable and deep-down SATISFYING than the first two films in George Lucas’ far more clunky Prequel Trilogy.  Rogue One remains the best of the new Star Wars movies so far, but this is nothing like the disappointment it’s been made out to be.

25.  AQUAMAN – the fortunes of the DC Extended Universe cinematic franchise continue to fluctuate – these films may be consistently successful at the box office, but they’re a decidedly mixed bag when it comes to their quality and critical opinion, and the misses still outweigh the hits.  Still, you can’t deny that when they DO do things right, they do them VERY right – 2017’s acclaimed Wonder Woman was a long-overdue validation for the studio, and they’ve got another winner on their hands with this bold, brash, VERY ballsy solo vehicle for one of the things that genuinely WORKED in the so-so Justice League movie.  Jason Momoa isn’t just muscular in the physical sense, once again proving seriously ripped in the performance capacity as he delivers rough, grizzled charm and earthy charisma as half-Atlantean Arthur Curry, called upon to try and win back the royal birthright he once gave up when his half-brother Prince Orm (Watchmen’s Patrick Wilson), ruler of Atlantis, embarks on a brutal quest to unite the seven underwater kingdoms under his command in order to wage war on the surface world.  Aquaman has long been something of an embarrassment for DC Comics, an unintentional “gay joke” endlessly derided by geeks (particularly cuttingly in the likes of The Big Bang Theory), but in Momoa’s capable hands that opinion has already started to shift, and the transition should be complete after this – Arthur Curry is now a swarthy, hard-drinking alpha male tempered with a compellingly relatable edge of deep-seeded vulnerability derived from the inherent tragedy of his origins and separation from the source of his immense superhuman strength, and he’s the perfect flawed action hero for this most epic of superhero blockbusters.  Amber Heard is frequently as domineering a presence as Atlantean princess Mera, a powerful warrior in her own right and fully capable of heading her own standalone adventure someday, and Wilson makes for a very solid and decidedly sympathetic villain whose own motivations can frequently be surprisingly seductive, even if his methods are a good deal more nefarious, while The Get Down’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is more down-and-dirty BAD as David Kane, aka the Black Manta, a lethally tech-savvy pirate who has a major score to settle with the Aquaman; there’s also strong support from the likes of Willem Dafoe as Curry’s sage-like mentor Vulko, Dolph Lundgren as Mera’s father, King Nereus, the ever-reliable Temuera Morrison as Arthur’s father Thomas, and Nicole Kidman as his ill-fated mother Atlanna.  Director James Wan is best known for establishing horror franchises (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring), but he showed he could do blockbuster action cinema with Fast & Furious 7, and he’s improved significantly with this, delivering one gigantic action sequence after another with consummate skill and flair as well as performing some magnificent and extremely elegant world-building, unveiling dazzling, opulent and exotic undersea civilizations that are the equal to the forests of Pandora in Avatar, but he also gets to let some of his darker impulses show here and there, particularly in a genuinely scary visit to the hellish world of the Trench and its monstrous denizens.  It may not be QUITE as impressive as Wonder Woman, and it still suffers (albeit only a little bit) from the seemingly inherent flaws of the DCEU franchise as a whole (particularly in yet another overblown CGI-cluttered climax), but this is still another big step back in the right direction, one which, once again, we can only hope they’ll continue to repeat.  I’ll admit that the next offering, Shazam, doesn’t fill me with much confidence, but you never know, it could surprise us.  And there’s still Flashpoint, The Batman and Birds of Prey to come …

24.  THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI – filmmaker brothers Martin and John Michael McDonagh have carved an impressive niche in cinematic comedy this past decade, from decidedly Irish breakout early works (In Bruges from Martin and The Guard and Calvary from John) to enjoyable outsider-looking-in American crim-coms (Martin’s Seven Psychopaths and John’s War On Everyone), and so far they’ve all had one thing in common – they’re all BRILLIANT.  But Martin looks set to be the first brother to be truly accepted into Hollywood Proper, with his latest feature garnering universal acclaim, massive box office and heavyweight Awards recognition, snagging an impressive SEVEN Oscar nominations and taking home two, as well as landing a Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Picture.  It’s also the most thoroughly AMERICAN McDonagh film to date, and this is no bad thing, Martin shedding his decidedly Celtic flavours for an edgier Redneck charm that perfectly suits the material … but most important of all, from a purely critical point of view this could be the very BEST film either of the brothers has made to date.  It’s as blackly comic and dark-of-soul as we’d expect from the creator of In Bruges, but there’s real heart and tenderness hidden amongst the expletive-riddled, barbed razor wit and mercilessly observed, frequently lamentable character beats.  Frances McDormand thoroughly deserved her Oscar win for her magnificent performance as Mildred Hayes, a take-no-shit shopkeeper in the titular town whose unbridled grief over the brutal rape and murder of her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton) has been exacerbated by the seeming inability of the local police force to solve the crime, leading her to hire the ongoing use of a trio of billboards laying the blame squarely at the feet of popular, long-standing local police Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Needless to say this kicks up quite the shitstorm in the town, but Mildred stands resolute in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, refusing to back down.  McDormand has never been better – Mildred is a foul-mouthed, opinionated harpy who tells it like it is, no matter who she’s talking to, but there’s understandable pain driving her actions, and a surprisingly tender heart beating under all that thorniness; Harrelson, meanwhile, is by turns a gruff shit-kicker and a gentle, doting family man, silently suffering over his own helplessness with the dead end the case seems to have turned into.  The film’s other Oscar-winner, Sam Rockwell, also delivers his finest performance to date as Officer Jason Dixon, a true disgrace of a cop whose permanent drunkenness has marred a career which, it turns out, began with some promise; he’s a thuggish force-of-nature, Mildred’s decidedly ineffectual nemesis whose own equally foul-mouthed honesty is set to dump him in trouble big time, but again there’s a deeply buried vein of well-meaning ambition under all the bigotry and pigheadedness we can’t help rooting for once it reveals itself.  There’s strong support from some serious heavyweights, particularly John Hawkes, Caleb Landry Jones, Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish and Manchester By the Sea’s breakout star Lucas Hedges, while McDonagh deserves every lick of acclaim and recognition he’s received for his precision-engineered screenplay, peerless direction and crisp, biting dialogue, crafting a jet black comedy nonetheless packed with so much emotional heft that it’ll have you laughing your arse off but crying your eyes out just as hard.  An honest, unapologetic winner, then.

23.  RED SPARROW – just when you thought we’d seen the last of the powerhouse blockbuster team of director Francis Lawrence and star Jennifer Lawrence with the end of The Hunger Games, they reunite for this far more adult literary feature, bringing Jason Matthews’ labyrinthine spy novel to bloody life.  Adapted by Revolutionary Road screenwriter Justin Haythe, it follows the journey of Russian star ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) into the shadowy world of post-Glasnost Russian Intelligence after an on-stage accident ruins her career.  Trained to use her body and mind to seduce her targets, Dominika becomes a “Sparrow”, dispatched to Budapest to entrap disgraced CIA operative Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) and discover the identity of the deep cover double agent in Moscow he was forced to burn his own cover to protect.  But Dominika never wanted any of this, and she begins to plot her escape, no matter the risks … as we’ve come to expect, Jennifer Lawrence is magnificent, her glacial beauty concealing a fierce intelligence and deeply guarded desperation to get out, her innate sensuality rendered clinical by the raw, unflinching gratuity of her training and seduction scenes – this is a woman who uses ALL the weapons at her disposal to get what she needs, and it’s an icy professionalism that informs and somewhat forgives Lawrence’s relative lack of chemistry with Edgerton.  Not that it’s his fault – Nate is nearly as compelling a protagonist as Dominika, a roguish chancer whose impulsiveness could prove his undoing, but also makes him likeable and charming enough for us to root for him too.  Bullhead’s Matthias Schoenarts is on top form as the film’s nominal villain, Dominika’s uncle Ivan, the man who trapped her in this hell in the first place, Charlotte Rampling is beyond cold as the “Matron”, the cruel headmistress of the Sparrow School, Joely Richardson is probably the gentlest, purest ray of light in the film as Dominika’s ailing mother Nina, and Jeremy Irons radiates stately gravitas as high-ranking intelligence officer General Vladimir Andreievich Korchnoi.  This is a tightly-paced, piano wire-taut thriller with a suitably twisty plot that constantly wrong-foots the viewer, Lawrence the director again showing consummate skill at weaving flawlessly effective narrative with scenes of such unbearable tension you’ll find yourself perched on the edge of your seat throughout.  It’s a much less explosive film than we’re used to from him – most of the fireworks are of the acting variety – but there are moments when the tension snaps, always with bloody consequences, especially in the film’s standout sequence featuring a garrotte-driven interrogation that turns particularly messy.  The end result is a dark thriller of almost unbearable potency that you can’t take your eyes off.  Here’s hoping this isn’t the last time Lawrence & Lawrence work together …

22.  WIDOWS – Steve McQueen is one of the most challenging writer-directors working in Hollywood today, having exploded onto the scene with hard-hitting IRA-prison-biopic Hunger and subsequently adding to his solid cache of acclaimed works with Shame and 12 Years a Slave, but there’s a strong argument to be made that THIS is his best film to date. Co-adapted from a cult TV-series from British thriller queen Lynda La Plante by Gone Girl and Sharp Objects-author Gillian Flynn, it follows a group of women forced to band together to plan and execute a robbery in order to pay off the perceived debt incurred by their late husbands, who died trying to steal $2 million from Jamal Manning (If Beale Street Could Talk’s Brian Tyree Henry), a Chicago crime boss with ambitions to go legit as alderman of the city’s South Side Precinct.  Viola Davis dominates the film as Veronica Rawlings, the educated and fiercely independent wife of accomplished professional thief Harry (a small but potent turn from Liam Neeson), setting the screen alight with a barely restrained and searing portrayal of devastating grief and righteous anger, and is ably supported by a trio of equally overwhelming performances from Michelle Rodriguez as hard-pressed mother and small-businesswoman Linda Perelli, The Man From UNCLE’s Elizabeth Debicki as Alice Gunner, an abused widow struggling to find her place in the world now she’s been cut off from her only support-mechanism, and Bad Times At the El Royale’s Cynthia Eriyo as Belle, the tough, gutsy beautician/babysitter the trio enlist to help them once they realise they need a fourth member.  Henry is a deceptively subtle, thoroughly threatening presence throughout the film as Manning, as is Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya as his thuggish brother/lieutenant Jatemme, and Colin Farrell is seemingly decent but ultimately fatally flawed as his direct political rival, reigning alderman Jack Mulligan, while there are uniformly excellent supporting turns from the likes of Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Lukas Haas, Jon Bernthal and Kevin J. O’Connor.  McQueen once again delivers an emotionally exhausting and effortlessly powerful tour-de-force, wringing out the maximum amount of feels from the loaded and deeply personal human interactions on display throughout, and once again proves just as effective at delivering on the emotional fireworks as he is in stirring our blood in some brutal set-pieces, while Flynn help to deliver another perfectly pitched, intricately crafted script packed with exquisite dialogue and shrewdly observed character work which is sure to net her some major wins come Awards season.  Unflinching and devastating but thoroughly exhilarating, this is an extraordinary film (and if this was a purely critical list it would surely have placed A LOT higher), thoroughly deserving of every bit of praise, attention and success it has and will go on to garner.  An absolute must-see.

21.  JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM – Colin Trevorrow’s long-awaited 2015 Jurassic Park sequel was a major shot in the arm for a killer blockbuster franchise that had been somewhat flagging since Steven Spielberg brought dinosaurs back to life for the second time, but (edgier tone aside) it was not quite the full-on game-changer some thought it would be.  The fifth film, directed by J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, A Monster Calls) and written by Trevorrow and his regular script-partner Derek Connolly (Safety Not Guaranteed and JW, as well as Warner Bros’ recent “Monsterverse” landmark Kong: Skull Island), redresses the balance – while the first act of the film once again returns to the Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar, it’s become a very different environment from the one we’ve so far experienced, and a fiendish plot-twist means the film then takes a major swerve into MUCH darker territory than we’ve seen so far.  Giving away anything more does a disservice to the series’ most interesting story to date, needless to say this is EASILY the franchise’s strongest feature since the first, and definitely the scariest.  Hollywood’s most unusual everyman action hero, Chris Pratt, returns as raptor wrangler Owen Brady, enlisted to help rescue as many dinosaurs as possible from an impending, cataclysmic volcanic eruption, but in particular his deeply impressive trained raptor Blue, now the last of her kind; Bryce Dallas Howard is also back as former Jurassic World operations manager turned eco-campaigner Claire Dearing, and her His Girl Friday-style dynamic with Pratt’s Brady is brought to life with far greater success here, their chemistry far more convincing because Claire has become a much more well-rounded and believably tough lady, now pretty much his respective equal.  There are also strong supporting turns from the likes of Rafe Spall, The Get Down’s Justice Smith, The Vampire Diaries/The Originals’ breakout star Daniella Pineda, the incomparable Ted Levine (particularly memorable as scummy mercenary Ken Wheatley) and genuine screen legend James Cromwell, but as usual the film’s true stars are the dinosaurs themselves – it’s a real pleasure seeing Blue return because the last velociraptor was an absolute treat in Jurassic World, but she’s clearly met her match in this film’s new Big Bad, the Indoraptor, a lethally monstrous hybrid cooked up in Ingen’s labs as a living weapon.  Bayona cut his teeth on breakout feature The Orphanage, so he’s got major cred as an accomplished horror director, and he uses that impressive talent to great effect here, weaving an increasingly potent atmosphere of wire-taut dread and delivering some nerve-shredding set-pieces, particularly the intense and moody extended stalk-and-kill stretch that brings the final act to its knuckle-whitening climax.  It’s not just scary, though – there’s still plenty of that good old fashioned wonder and savage beauty we’ve come to expect from the series, and another hefty dose of that characteristic Spielbergian humour (Pratt in particular shines in another goofy, self-deprecating turn, while Smith steals many of the film’s biggest laughs as twitchy, out-of-his-comfort-zone tech wizard Franklin).  Throw in another stirring and epic John Williams-channelling score from Michael Giacchino and this is an all-round treat for the franchise faithful and blockbuster fans in general – EASILY the best shape the series has been in for some time, it shows HUGE promise for the future.

[yourlunarspice]

13. Do you listen to music while you write?  If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

36. What fic has been the hardest for you to write?

37. What fic has been the hardest for you to write?

71. Do you spend more time reading or writing?

13. Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

Of course! Music is my entire life and I always have music ready for any occasion. Recently, I created an album sorta inspired by this masterfully-written fic Virtuoso, which you can find here. It's a decent mix of classical music and creepy pop(?) songs that I think really encapsulate the theme of the fic. I've been listening to that almost constantly! But when I'm focusing on world-/character-building, I mainly keep the classical music running along with some other quiet instrumentals.

36. What fic are you proudest of?

The fic that I'm proudest of hasn't even been published yet! I've been working on a fic inspired by a beautiful piece of artwork for the past week and a half. It's definitely my most ambitious fic so far! I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that there's a lot of subtlety. I've been neurotically reading, rereading, and rerereading it just seeing if I've missed/overlooked anything. My beta reader has sent me so many analyses of this same story, I screenshotted them all and love to reread them. It's also super bleak, like really really bleak. I hope you'll give it a read when it comes out (Wednesday the 15th)!

As for the fic I'm proudest of that has already been written... I'm thinking probably Into The Shadows. This fic is a oneshot and isn't part of any fandom, but I distinctly remember getting inspired and letting the words just flow right out of me. I think it ended up being a great story (and I even mixed some creepy ambient music to play while you're reading it 🙃)

37. What fic has been the hardest for you to write?

Ooooof... Probably Those Damn Flowers. Because this story has been published for a while, I'm not going to worry about accidentally spoiling anything. As someone who deals with memory loss, writing about Shouta's memory loss (both from his perspective and Hizashi's perspective), I felt everything I was writing. It was really tough, writing how hard it was, how unsure it made Shouta, how Hizashi didn't know how to act around him anymore, etc. I even considered putting the story on a short hiatus while I recentered myself. All in all, I'm glad I didn't. I powered through and got the fic done and it was met with a pretty positive response!

71. Do you spend more time reading or writing?

I am definitely more of a reader. I've loved to read since I was a kid, and that has only grown as I've gotten older. My Marked For Later tab on Archive is consistently over 5 pages long (not counting how many are in my History)! But I also read some pretty great physical books too. Recently, I've read The Mystery Of The Masked Marauder, If We Were Villains, and I've reread Between The Lines (my favorite book!). I always have book recs fitting pretty much any genre!

Sorry this took a while to answer. I wanted to wait until Archive was back up, then my browser crashed, but we're all good now!

[sovietvalleyartworkfmp]

Evaluation - Media and Techniques

Soviet Valley is a simple farming game taking lots of inspiration from games such as Stardew Valley and Papers Please which are both pixel art games with extremely different settings, gameplay and story, we decided to simply take elements from both of them. I researched Stardew Valley heavily and gained an advanced insight into its mechanics and code further than I have ever done for a game before, this helped me really understand the goal of the artwork on a level that only the creator would, which really helped me create my own artwork for something similar. Papers Please has a very interesting premise that enabled me to think of wild and extremely random ideas that really helped bring the concept together. Personally I completely agree with people who gave me feedback and said that this project was very ambitious because quite simply it was, there was so much planned to be added and so much that needed to be done that there was genuinely no hope of it ever being completed. For strictly my side of the project being artwork and story I think that project has been amazing and I am very happy with the result, nearly everything I set out to do has been completed and to a high enough standard that I would publish it publicly online. For this project I used my favourite piece of software of all time called Aseprite, used entirely for pixel art based animation and general art. It is hands down the best tool for the job and I do not regret using it for the project at all. Although Aseprite is not as well known as Photoshop is, I would therefore mean that Photoshop has more tutorials and public knowledge. I would still much rather use Aseprite for its sheer versatility.  I spent most of this project focusing on something that I have never attempted before, UI design, it has come to be my favourite thing of this project and I am very confident in creating it. One of the main ways that me and my project partner Ryan communicated work and files with one another was through our public Trello, this allowed us to keep eachother up to do on how far we were with our currently assigned tasks and also allowed us to remotely share ideas and thoughts with each other in a simple and clean manor. We also have a shared Google account where we share Google Keep and Google Drive in which we put rough ideas and planning into the Keep and all of our files we need into the G-Drive, this was the main backbone of our entire teamwork together and has cemented itself for both of us as the most effective way to share important and crucial files with one another simply and effectively.