#the pact 1999

[the-halfling-prince]

@freddy-owo it's fucking uhhhhhhh Those Two time (we need a ship name for them.)

[freddy-owo]

It's so funny to me that this is the poster they decided on for this movie, because this particular poster makes it look so much like a horror movie—

Like, this original (?) poster (I feel like) portrays the general plot better just from a quick glance at it

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

TIL: zephyr abilities + cholwejnia = Chair Orb

[madeline-kahn]

Dancing in Film: Prom dances

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) dir. Kenny Ortega Pretty in Pink (1986) dir. Howard Deutch Blockers (2018) dir. Kay Cannon Not Another Teen Movie (2001) dir. Joel Gallen Jawbreaker (1999) dir. Darren Stein Back to the Future (1985) dir. Robert Zemeckis Lady Bird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig Prom Night (1980) dir. Paul Lynch The Prom (2020) dir. Ryan Murphy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) dir. Gil Junger Footloose (1984) dir. Herbert Ross Twilight (2008) dir. Catherine Hardwicke Valley Girl (2020) dir. Rachel Lee Goldenberg Never Been Kissed (1999) dir. Raja Gosnell The Spectacular Now (2013) dir. James Ponsoldt Carrie (1976) dir. Brian De Palma The Prom Pact (2023) dir. Anya Adams Napoleon Dynamite (2004) dir. Jared Hess To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before: Always and Forever (2021) dir. Michael Fimognari She’s All That (1999) dir. Robert Iscove

[david-talks-sw]

More George Lucas debunking misconceptions about the Prequel Jedi:

"Anakin killed the Jedi in retaliation. They failed him, betrayed him and didn't allow him to have a relationship, so he killed them all."

"[In Revenge of the Sith] The controversy is going to be that people expect some horrible, horrific thing to happen to [Anakin] that caused him to [become Darth Vader]. It's much subtler. It's something that everybody faces— when you're looking at yourself, you can see your good and your bad, and say, "Is this a selfish choice or is this a compassionate choice? And once I get something, what would I do to keep from losing it? Would I make a pact with the devil to keep it?" - Entertainment Weekly #785, 2004

"… some of the people had a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. [...] They wanted a real betrayal, such as, "You tried to kill me so now I'm going to try and kill you." They didn't seem to understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge." - The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 188

"The rest of the Jedi have dogmatically forgotten how to love out of fear of having attachments, Qui-Gon is the only one who knows that you can love people selflessly, without getting possessive."

"The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can't hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn't willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he'd have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn't have this particular connection as strong as it is and he'd have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them. But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padmé and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

"Obviously, it’s a progression. But in [Attack of the Clones], you begin to see that he has a fear of losing things, fear of losing his mother. And as a result, he wants to begin to control things, he wants to become more powerful. And these are not Jedi traits. And part of this is because he started to be trained so late in life, that he had already formed these attachments. And for a Jedi, attachment is forbidden. You can love people, but you have to love them unconditionally, in terms that you can’t hold on to them." - CNN, “Countdown to the Clones”, 2002

"The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth. They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people - in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death." - The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 213

"Ultimately for a Jedi Knight, it’s very easy to give up. One of the things they give up is marriage. They can still love people. But they can’t possess them. They can’t own them. They can’t demand that they do things. They have to be able to accept the fact, one, their mortality, that they are going to die. And not worry about it. That the loved ones they have, everything they love is going to die and they can’t do anything about it." - Celebration V, Main Event, 2010

"The Jedi in The High Republic are the Jedi in their prime/heyday. By the time of the Prequels, they've become political and dispassionate/prohibitive."

"[In Phantom Menace] you see the heyday of the Jedi, when they are the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, sort of like the old marshals out West. And there's thousands of them." - Vanity Fair, 1999

"We've actually never seen real Jedi at work, we've only seen crippled half-droid half-men, and young boys that had learned from these old people. So to see a Jedi in his prime fighting in the prime of the Jedi, I want it to be a much more energetic and faster version of what we've been doing." - The Phantom Menace, “Fights”, 2001

"Jedi Knights aren't celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships." - BBC News, 2002

"[When Obi-Wan talks to Anakin about politicians, we learn about] the Jedi’s disenchantment with the political process, due to the corruption and the ineffectiveness of the Senate." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

"The Jedi aren't really allowed to be involved in the political process. They're [present in the Senate when Palpatine is given emergency powers], but they can't suddenly step up and say, "No, no. You can't do that." They have to let the political process go." - Attack of the Clones, Commentary Track #2, 2002

[iamanhero]

pictures of andrea garrett and jeff miller, two students who committed a suicide pact at their school on january 8th, 1999

[r--c]

School Shootings that happened the same year as Columbine.(specifically, in united states.)

(BEFORE)

Central High School Suicide Shooting Pact.

On January 8, 1999, a suspected suicide pact shooting took place at the school. Students Andrea Garrett and Jeff Miller were found shot in a girls bathroom with a .22-caliber pistol nearby. Garrett was taken to the nearby Tanner Medical Center where she was shortly pronounced dead. Miller meanwhile was airlifted to Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta. He died a day later. An investigation by the Carroll County Sheriff's Office pointed to an intended suicide plan with Central High students recalling Garrett speaking of suicide weeks before. The sheriff's office also concluded the pistol belonged to Andrea's parents and speculate a scenario where Miller shot Garrett before turning the gun on himself due to the weapon being found nearer his body.

Notus Junior High School Shooting.

A teenager (Shawn Cooper) who fired two shots inside Notus Junior-Senior High School with a shotgun he wrapped in a blanket and carried from home on the school bus was described as mentally disturbed. No one was seriously injured, but teachers barricaded themselves in a lounge and school administrators hurriedly evacuated students across an open field as the teen stalked the foyer.He blasted the floor outside the principal's office and soon afterward blew a 3-inch hole in a steel gymnasium door, narrowly missing three students. Teachers saw him reloading the shotgun after firing the shots, and deputies later found three live shells in the gun.

(AFTER)

Heritage High School Shooting.

15-year-old student Thomas "T.J." Solomon Jr. wounded six students at Heritage High School. A 15-year-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition, and the other victims suffered from non-life-threatening injuries. Solomon initially faced up to 351 years of prison if convicted of aggravated assault and other charges. In 2000, he was found guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced to 40 years in prison and 65 years of probation.

Deming Middle School Shooting.

13-year-old Victor Cordova Jr. fatally shot 13-year-old Deming Middle School schoolmate Araceli Tena. Cordova said he had intended to commit suicide but was jostled by others and his gun moved. He could not be charged as an adult as he was under 14, so he received the maximum sentence for a juvenile: a minimum of two years in prison, with a maximum of being held until his 21st birthday. In December 2003, he was released to his aunt and uncle to live with them in Colorado.

Fort Gibson Public School Shooting.

On December 6, 1999, 13-year-old middle school student Seth Trickey shot four classmates with a Taurus PT92. 12-year-old Savana Knowles, was shot near her right ear, the slug exited without hitting vital organs. 13-year-old Billy Railey, was shot in his right leg. 13-year-olds Cody Chronister and Brad Schindel were also wounded. Another student received slight bruising. The victims were taken to area hospitals, there were no fatalities.

[stari-hun]

Limbus Maxxing

My live rambles on limbus company as I play (I like Mili so imma play for them).

Prologue rambles under the cut

TRUCK KUN?!

Ok Kaalaa Baunaa ass

Oh great so our name is Dante and we just made a pact with some unknown entities who are vaguely ominous and homosexual

-

Faust: Wassup dawg ur now leader of the squad

MC: what squad??? WHO ARE YOU???

Faust: Not the people killing you

-

OH GOD WHY DOES THE BATTLE MECHANIC LOOK SO SCARY-

Oh god I’m not understanding shit. Can’t wait to overlevel and just be op

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Panther: 0 stars on Yelp, shit theatre kid performance, will not be going back

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Ah yes a clock with a time gimmick very unexpected much wow very woah

-

The CG art is so cool, fully how it’s different than the sprites

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MC is fr deciding trust purely off vibe checking people

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MC: why is everyone calling me Dante?

Faust: It’s your name

MC: Nuh uh

Faust, ignoring MC: You’ll get used to it

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Gregor: ay Buddy just to start off with, I’m not judging with anyone’s representation and what they decide to do with their head yk? Your body ur choice

-

Mmm delicious immoral actions and expectations from a higher organization in control the group is forced to rely on. I eat it up every time. Constantine would thrive in this world

-

Ishmael: All of your introductions are disappointing as hell. You do know this is us introducing ourselves to a superior right? We’re working right now.

Also Ishmael: I’m Ishmael

LIKE LMAOO????? All that and she also gives an informal introduction. Also the similarities in the way the intro cards treat Sinners and how Arcanists are treated in hit game Reverse 1999

-

Heathcliff: Yeah I don’t care about trying to please you or fitting in (proceeds to give one of the only proper self introductions)

HELLOOOO???? If he gets angry we contact HR lmaoooo

-

Ok Tsukasa move it on

-

Ah yes, the token autistic member, I see you Hong Lu

Ignoring that lady-

Ah another autistic, this time one with an unfortunate but definitely gendered name. Love me a character who just wants to do their job then clock out

Oh ew Dante is French /silly

-

MC: wow Meursault you’re really one of the polite people here :)

Meursault: This is the normal reaction for this situation

MC: :)

MC’s thoughts: Something’s deeply wrong with him.

-

Outis going on this long chuunibiyou like rant to MC while they have no clue what’s going on still

Outis: I vow to serve you with unrivaled devotion, Executive Manager. My blade is yours to wield.

MC: here I thought you’d be one of the normal ones….

-

MC: I mean I want my head back but eh….. eH

Vergilius: smh, I tell you to go to hell and you hesitate? Smh.

-

Imagine losing ur head and memories and non-binary company takes you, dies, gets revived, and tells you to literally go to hell

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Faust: Ur strategy game is clearly shit so let me tell you how to improve

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Vergilius: enough useless chatter

No???? Knowing how to revive people is actually incredibly useful?? I need to know how to be doing that

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WE HAVE A FUCKING SANITY BAR??? NOOOOOOOOOOO

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Oh god the designated driver is a speed demon-

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Yeah Kagamine Rin, speak ur truth

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Vergilius is such an antiyapper. Get bro some noise cancelling headphones with the way he hates background dialogue

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Charon: Damn. A missed chance to run someone over.

-

AYYYYYYY MILI SONGGG WRAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

-

Oh damn it really is a bus and not a train- though to be fair it is like the outer look of a train just compressed into one car

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Lockerbie

The BBC and Netflix have announced casting for Lockerbie, the forthcoming factual drama made by World Productions.

The six-part series is based on the real events surrounding the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the joint Scots-US investigation which sought to bring the perpetrators to justice. Lockerbie. The flight disaster of Pan Am Flight 103 was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

Pan Am Flight 103 was a flight of a passenger airliner operated by Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, after a bomb was detonated. All 259 people on board were killed, and 11 individuals on the ground also died. All were killed, along with 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

What seemed at first like a horrific accident was soon proven to be the result of a terrorist bomb planted in a radio cassette recorder inside a suitcase in the forward cargo hold.

Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, after protracted negotiations and UN sanctions.

In the year 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in direct connection with the bombing.

Megrahi was found guilty of playing a central role in the bombing

In August 2009, he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012 as the only person to be convicted for the attack.

‘Lockerbie’: Lead Cast Of BBC & Netflix Series Patrick J. Adams, star of Suits — is returning to Netflix. He will star opposite Connor Swindells of SAS and Netflix’s Sex Education, Merritt Wever, two-time Emmy winner, for Netflix’s Godless and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, the leads in the BBC and Netflix six-part limited series.

The cast also includes Ozark alum Peter Mullan, Tony Curran (Mary & George), Downton Abbey‘s Phyllis Logan, Eddie Marsan (The Pact), Lauren Lyle (Vigil), Andrew Rothney (The Undeclared War), Parker Sawyers ( P-Valley), James Harkness (The Sixth Commandment), Khalid Laith (Vigil), and Amanda Drew (Wolf).

Congratulations to Tony Curran and Lauren Lyle for Lockerbie a new drama series alongside the Oscar winner best actor Colin Firth’s competition.😊 Both of you are in good company.

Posted 6th March 2024

#Lockerbie #TheLockerbieBombing #BBC #Netflix #truestory #bombing #Scotland #PanAmflight103 #DumfriesandGalloway #disaster #filming #newdrama #series #plane #Libyanterrorists #terrorism #airdisasterinUK

@castlemaine123 Wait until you see “Lockerbie” with Colin Firth which began filming last February in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@castlemaine123 Yep! ! The actors are in interesting projects. The wait for Outlander 7.2 and season 8 is losing interest. BOMB's new actors will surprise, showing that SH is not the only Scottish actor in Scotland as his fans think. He may continue to make profits in his new career as a door-to-door alcohol salesman and posing as a barman.

[warframeinfested]

If I draw my sona/..blog mascot, seriously this time and not just an oodle, wearing a maid outfit, cat ears and a cat tail; I wonder if it's enough for someone to gift me the 1999 Gemini pact skin thing LMFAAAAO

[tofueggnoodles]

Saiyuki Novel by Minekura Kazuya/Misagi Hijiri (published by G-Fantasy / Square Enix in 1999): Introductions and links to translations of the Drama CDs

This post was inspired by @miss-fiery’s musing on Sanzo’s seemingly unlimited supply of bullets. 😁

As stated on the Saiyuki fandom wiki page, the novel consisted of three volumes. Interestingly, I have always thought of each volume as a separate novel.

Why? The plots are independent of each other. To understand and enjoy the stories, you do not need to read the novels (or volumes) or listen to the Drama CDs in order.

Now, on to the introductions and my brief thoughts on each volume.

Volume 1: Kaen no Zanmu

Goku rescued a baby in a wooden crate floating down the river (sounds familiar, right). Hakkai got rid of a salamander youkai who turned up to claim the baby as his prize. On closer examination, the Ikkou discovered that the baby possessed red eyes and hair.

They entered a nearby town, only to be greeted with hostility by the townspeople. It turned out that the town had a pact with a youkai, a different one from the youkai that Hakkai had killed. Each household were to send a member as a sacrifice to this youkai. Otherwise, the town would be attacked by the youkai.

The Ikkou met the baby’s young aunt, Rikei, who told them that she intended to send her nephew to the youkai again. The penalty for not sending a sacrifice was a wholesale massacre of the household. Moreover, since the baby’s parents were dead and she was his sole surviving relative, she reasoned that the baby would not survive anyway if she were to offer herself as the sacrifice.

The Ikkou, or rather, Goku, came up with a ‘brilliant’ plan to save both the baby and the town.

The hanyou baby served as a plot device and to highlight Gojyo’s and to a lesser extent, Sanzo’s pasts.

Translation of the Drama CD by KonnyakuHonyaku can be found here.

Bonus: Horiuchi Ken'yū played the unfortunate salamander youkai who met his end at Hakkai’s hands.

Volume 2: Kyouka Suigetsu

A bloodthirsty mass-murderer seemed to be making their way toward Chang’an. Several nearby villages had already been wiped out at the start of the story. Because of the gruesome way the victims were killed (torn apart as if by a youkai’s claws) and Hakkai’s past, the monk-enforcers tasked with investigating the murders considered him the prime suspect.

Goku befriended the sole witness to one of the mass murders, a boy called Yoku, who seemed to still be in shock. Yoku had no idea how the murderer looked like. He only remembered hearing the unseen murderer utter the word ‘Kanan’....

Meanwhile, Gojyo had to deal with a hostile new housemate whom Hakkai had brought home one rainy night. Sanzo was away on a mystery mission from the Three Aspects, a mission apparently unconnected to the case of the mass murders.

Hakkai’s past is the focus of this volume, which also explained how he met Hakuryuu/Jeep and why our lovable little dragon seemed to have two names.

Translation of the Drama CD by Anthey Oom can be found here.

Note about this translation: There are places that did not make sense to me until I listened to the corresponding sections in the Drama CD and realized that those translations were technically correct, if one were to substitute the phrases with their homonyms. My guess is that the translator did their best in a pre-jisho.com era. Although their grasp of Japanese did not seem to be as good as KonnyakuHonyaku’s. the mistakes are understandable, since Japanese is rife with homonyms.

[As an aside, virtually all subtitling projects of Japanese (TV) Dramas today employ Japanese subtitles, which can be machine-translated to English and then checked manually. One has to be very brave and foolish (or a die-hard fan) to translate by ear these days. I am still looking for a machine-translator that can handle Drama CDs and do not require installations on a Linux/Unix machine or expertise in Python. DeepL and Google Translate might work with short sentences but not an hour worth of dialogues. Until then, I am slowly translating some favorite BL Drama CDs in my free time, averaging 1-2 minutes worth of dialogues each night....]

Volume 3: Rasen No Koyomi

Having run out of bullets, Sanzo asked Hakkai to make a detour to a small town, where an old blacksmith acquaintance lived.

During the drive to the town, we hear a juicy tidbit from Hakkai about how Gojyo narrowly escaped a forced marriage. Later, we get more insight into why it is a bad idea for Gojyo and Goku to room together, at least, bad for the proprietor of the inn.

The flashbacks reveal an adventure of Kouryuu’s not long after he left the Kinzan temple. Wounded after an encounter with some youkai and having lost his consciousness, he woke up in the dwelling of a strange man, who sardonically replied to Kouryuu’s curt question of “You are?” with: “What do you want to know about me? Age? Name? Or my type when it comes to the ladies? My three sizes?” 🤣

Back to the present, after an apparently humdrum walk, Gojyo returned to the inn with a guest. The problem is, only Hakkai and Sanzo were able to see the guest, at least in the beginning....

The focus of this volume is obviously on Sanzo, but 39/93 fans will enjoy the tender moment between Sanzo and Goku near the end.

Translation of the Drama CD by KonnyakuHonyaku can be found here.

You can download the Drama CDs here, courtesy of @seiten-taisei.

[the-halfling-prince]

Watching The Pact again and I swear it's like when they hand Rider Strong the script for anything, they have to give him a basketball too. Please he doesn't know what to do with that.

[the-halfling-prince]

Literallyyyy i watched it just because Rider Strong was in it, expecting a mediocre movie and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. I moved on but then the entire next week I could not stop thinking about it. Lenny and Spence are so....

Literally about to write The Pact fanfiction istg

FINALLY SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THE PACT

I'm so normal about that movie lmao

SIDNSIDDJSPGKSJGKDOGJDOGNDOFFMDKGMXKFNSOFNDPFJDGPSNFODNFKXNDKDNFKDOFNDOGSNGKSNFKCKFNDKGKDNRODGKDKGNDKGSNFKCJDONDODMFODGMDORMDORNDFODJFKVMEMFKDOCFJDNFIDKMFKXNFSOVKDKFNDKFJDJJDFKNDDODMFKSKFND (/vvvvvvvvpos)

I LOVEVTHE PACT I LOVE IT SO MICH ITS SO GOOD

i forced my brother to watch it with me a couple days ago and it's been the only thing I've thought about since—

I just love it so much the concept is amazing, (obviously) the acting is amazing, but like the execution is awesome, I love how it mainly shows you instead of telling you things, you figure out the character's inner most thoughts on ur own, and (as a film nerd) the way that they centered each scene and recorded it it just had such great visual balance and they had such cool shots of the characters and like I never felt dizzy watching it but they also had like the right amount of shake cam it just is so so so so cool I love the pact sm fjdodjfowndkakdjfk

It's so awesome and I am SO attached to Lenny and Spence and (though to a lesser extent) Paul I just love them all so much they're wonderful and so great and jfsjjefksmdkfjskfksjfkskdkfkskdmfksmfmf I'm so normal about this movie—

And just everything about the movie is so cool like I need to analyze it to its core just to stop thinking abt it constantly (/pos)

[battlestory]

How “Battle Royale” Took Over Video Games

With a simple, ingenious formula, a Japanese novel has inspired some of the most successful games in history. By Simon Parkin

In the mid-nineteen-nineties, Koushun Takami was dozing on his futon on the island of Shikoku, Japan, when he was visited by an apparition: a maniacal schoolteacher addressing a group of students. “All right, class, listen up,” Takami heard the teacher say. “Today, I’m going to have you all kill each other.” Takami was in his twenties, and he had recently quit his job as a reporter for a local newspaper to become a novelist. As a literature student at Osaka University, he had started and abandoned several horror-infused detective stories. But the well had long since run dry; he had left his job with neither a plan nor a plot in mind. The visitation wasn’t a haunting; it was an epiphany.

In the novel that followed, an instructor sends forty-two junior high schoolers to a deserted island. The kids awaken to find explosive collars secured around their necks. They’re ordered to collect a backpack containing a map and a random weapon: a gun or an icepick, if they’re lucky, a paper fan or a shamisen banjo if they’re not. The students must compete to become the last person standing. The winner will leave the island with a lifetime pension; if there is more than one survivor, the collars will detonate. Some of the students choose suicide over submission. Most, eventually, comply and fight.

Takami was a fan of professional wrestling. He particularly enjoyed matches that involved wrestlers who made fleeting, mutually beneficial alliances, a style traditionally known as battle royal. There could be only one winner in a battle royal, so pacts were inevitably broken, lending each match a wary frisson. Takami saw a similar dynamic in adolescence, when friendships were easily formed and revoked. Forcing a group of classmates to destroy one another was provocative, but also strangely relatable. When he told a friend that he planned to call the book “Battle Royal,” his friend, confusing the term with a coffee drink, café royale, replied, “You mean ‘Battle Royale’?”

The novel proved controversial. In 1997, the judges of a Japanese writing prize passed on the manuscript, because it was too reminiscent of a recent murder, in Kobe, in which a fourteen-year-old boy impaled the head of another student on the gates of a school. But, in 1999, Ohta Publishing, a company known for provocative titles (it later published the memoir of the Kobe killer), released the book. It became an international best-seller; Stephen King named it to his summer reading list. In 2000, “Battle Royale” became a hit movie, starring Takeshi Kitano as the schoolteacher. Quentin Tarantino later called it one of his favorite films of all time.

Takami’s premise was well suited to video-game adaptation. The rules were clearly defined, the setting neatly contained, and competitive violence had been one of the medium��s primary currencies since the nineteen-sixties. Video-game technology, however, wasn’t quite up to par. In the early two-thousands, very few computers could simulate, in 3-D, the behavior of dozens of characters doing battle across an island, and very few Internet providers could calculate whether a banjo hurled by, say, Bob, in Kansas, would strike the head of Sven, in Stockholm.

Soon, though, such games would be more than possible: they would transform the industry. In 2020, Warzone, the Call of Duty series’ take on “Battle Royale,” attracted more than a hundred million active players, generating revenues of about three billion. The same year, Epic Games reported that Fortnite, its candy-colored, kid-friendly spin on “Battle Royale,” had three hundred and fifty million accounts—more than the population of the United States. (A recent lawsuit revealed that, when Fortnite was available on Apple devices, the game generated an estimated seven hundred million in App Store revenue.) Today, countless games, along with hit TV shows such as “Squid Game,” bear the stamp of “Battle Royale” ’s influence. Takami’s blueprint, drawn from a dream, has become one of the dominant paradigms in entertainment.

The story of that rise might begin in 2013, in Brazil, where Brendan Greene, an Irish Web designer, was living while saving up for a plane ticket home, following a divorce. Greene, who is assiduously private (his online moniker is PlayerUnknown), grew up on the Curragh Camp, an army training center in County Kildare, where his father served. He and his brothers played on the family’s Atari 2600 console “until it fell apart,” he told me, but he later fell out of love with games, which he felt were becoming too scripted—more like movies than the tests of skill and cunning he enjoyed. In Brazil, Greene was browsing Reddit when he read about DayZ, a punishing, survival-based video game that appealed to his desire for challenge. It was the first game he bought in years, and he quickly became obsessed.

DayZ was a mod, a new game built from the parts of an old one—in this case, a military-combat simulator called Arma 2. Mods, which are usually made by amateur enthusiasts, can be arcane and scrappy, but the scene is a hotbed for experimentation. DayZ’s game play fascinated Greene, who, despite lacking technical expertise, began to make his own mods to the mod. He added a fortress in the middle of the map; players would enter empty-handed, scavenge for weapons, then fight to the death. Unlike most competitive video games at the time, in which characters respawned after dying, Greene’s mod radically gave each player a single life. When you were out, you were out.

The rules evoked “The Hunger Games,” a series of books that share a similar premise to “Battle Royale.” (The series’ author, Suzanne Collins, has insisted that she was unaware of Takami’s work when she wrote the books). One of Greene’s collaborators suggested the title “Hunger Gamez,” but Greene had worked long enough in marketing to know he was “going to get sued if we did that,” he told me. While studying fine art in Dublin, Greene had watched “Battle Royale.” Recalling the film’s poster, which showed two schoolchildren, one holding an axe, the other a shotgun, he mocked up an image that placed his game’s character in a similar pose, alongside the text “DayZ: Battle Royale.”

Greene drew further inspiration from the film. He replaced his game’s fortress with a barn, and arranged twenty-four backpacks at its far end, each containing a grenade, a pistol, a bandage, or a chainsaw. At the beginning of a match, which lasted ninety minutes, the players arrived at one end of the barn. “If you were smart, you didn’t give a fuck about the backpacks and you just ran,” Greene told me. “But new players would rush forward. Someone would get the gun. Then everyone would be screaming.”

In Takami’s novel, portions of the island become off limits at regular intervals, forcing the classmates into smaller spaces. Greene wanted a similar way to narrow the field. Dividing the island into squares was beyond his programming ability, so he placed a tightening circle onto the map; if a player wandered outside it, their character would quickly expire. Each match now enjoyed a natural, exhilarating crescendo.

DayZ: Battle Royale went online in September, 2013. The game used six servers, which Greene managed by hand; he stayed awake for forty-eight hours at a time, acting as a virtual bouncer, allowing new players in and locking the room when it was full. An obscure nook of the Web became a coveted hangout. “People were waiting for hours, even days, to get in,” he recalled. Saqib Ali Zahid, a popular American video-game streamer known as Lirik, was an early player. “He kept coming back for one more game,” Greene said. “A guy of discerning taste like that . . . I was onto something.”

Greene’s mod soon caught the attention of industry professionals. On Twitter, he received a message from John Smedley, the then president of Sony Online Entertainment, who invited him to San Diego to design a battle-royale mode for H1Z1, a game in development. “Here was an opportunity to get my game in front of a global audience,” Greene told me. He joined as a consultant, but left after finding that the H1Z1 team had simplified his vision. Several other companies had become interested in making battle-royale games, and Greene worried that his idea was being wrested from his control. “I was, like, ‘Hello?’ ” he said.

In 2016, Greene received an e-mail from Changhan Kim, a game developer from South Korea, offering him the chance to make a battle royale to his specifications. That March, the day before his fortieth birthday, Greene immigrated to South Korea, and a year later his team released PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or pubg. pubg was based closely on Greene’s original mod, with a few elegant adjustments: a hundred players would now enter the map by jumping from a plane, allowing each to choose whether to head toward a popular area, for immediate tussling, or toward a more remote spot, to scavenge. The game was an immediate blockbuster, earning eleven million dollars in three days. In 2018, it passed a billion in sales.

To read or watch a battle royale is an intense experience. But to participate in one involves a different tier of exhilaration, which flings one between states of anguish and euphoria. The sense of being at once hunter and prey feels primal. The first time I played pubg, I forced my character to crouch in his underpants in a bush, hypervigilant for the sound of approaching footsteps. Eventually, having secured a shotgun and a few improving attachments, I trembled my way to the top of a hill, where I lay nauseous with adrenaline. After a while, another player stepped on my character. A brisk fusillade later, I was out.

“Often, in multiplayer games, you’re just running around, racking up points,” Frank Lantz, the founding director of the New York University Game Center, told me. “That works well, but it has a samey intensity, like a piece of music that starts out fast and stays fast. Battle royale has a built-in structure and dramatic arc.” In 2021, Lantz released a Scrabble-themed battle-royale game called Babble Royale, which he co-designed with his son. “In game design, you’re always looking for rules that interact in particularly interesting ways,” he told me. A battle royale’s steadily reducing map heightens a game’s intensity, and the fact that each player has a single life raises the stakes, making each victory unforgettable. “Every action matters,” the professional Call of Duty player Ben Perkin told me. “The closer you get to the end, the more invested you become on staying alive, for that rush of a win.”

Video games broadly fall into two categories: those which, like sports, emphasize competition, and those which, like films, emphasize storytelling. Battle royale is a rare harmonious combination, a mode that encourages both dynamic, dramatic vignettes and high-stakes rivalry. At Infinity Ward, the Los Angeles-based co-developer of the Call of Duty series, which has long established the template for online competitive shooting games, pubg was disruptive and divisive. “You could see it propagating through the office like wildfire,” Joe Cecot, the studio’s multiplayer-design director, said. “People were, like, ‘How do we make something like this? What would our twist on this be?’ ”

Introducing battle royale to a marquee series was a major risk. Call of Duty’s dominant mode had been Team Deathmatch, where two teams compete across small, carefully engineered environments, and where players can reënter the field a few moments after they’re eliminated. Battle royale, with its meandering combat and vast map, required a profound redesign. The team got to work on a new mode called Warzone, assigning six designers to build a large-scale environment using the game’s existing engine. (They loosely based the map on the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.) In order to introduce bullet drop-off over long distances, they rewrote the game’s ballistics system, and in the process realized that the series had sped up over the years, with characters running at about fifty miles per hour. In Warzone, this made it nearly impossible to hit a moving target at range. The animators installed a line of L.E.D. lights in the studio, which would trigger in sequence to show the speed at which characters ran; after attempting to race the lights, they reduced the top speed by twenty per cent, causing some on the team to balk. “One designer said to me, ‘Congratulations, you have ruined this game,’ ” Infinity Ward’s studio head, Patrick Kelly, told me.

The team also played with the established template. “We felt that battle royale was a bit too punishing,” Kelly said. “The fact you can randomly get shot in the head encourages players to hide until the herd is culled. That brutality promotes conservatism over action.” Inspired by a popular in-house mode, Kelly suggested that they introduce a kind of purgatory: eliminated players would be sent to a “gulag,” where they would take part in a one-on-one match against another loser, with the victor returning to action. This, too, was contentious. “We heard, ‘This is not battle royale—this is terrible,’ ” Kelly said.

The anxiety that Warzone would ruin the Call of Duty franchise was intense. One afternoon, Kelly was so preoccupied while driving home from the office that he ran into a stop sign, crashing his car. But when Warzone launched, in March, 2020, it became an immediate success, with more than six million downloads in twenty-four hours. “It was a transcendent moment,” Joel Emslie, the studio’s art director, told me. “It completely reënergized the franchise. Now the sky is the limit.”

One of battle royale’s virtues is its legibility: any onlooker can understand what’s happening, which is often not true with video games. On YouTube, the channel TopWARZONEMoments posts a daily twenty-minute-long highlight reel showing skilled or amusing moments of play. Within hours, each video attracts tens of thousands of views.

In the past, this straightforward voyeurism has occasionally been paired with political critique. Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” begins with a battle royale: a group of young Black men are blindfolded, then forced to fight in a basement for the amusement of drunk, wealthy white professionals. Even Takami’s book, though less overtly symbolic, uses the game to question the status quo. The novel takes place in a world where Japan won the Second World War, emerged as a Fascist power, and brutally suppressed any rebels; the battle royale is a military program meant to seed fear in the country’s youth. But Takami also targets the lure of conformity. His mother lived through the Second World War, and she told him that, though many citizens opposed Japan’s involvement, they feared the danger of protesting. “Even if a rule is clearly ridiculous, nobody will speak out against it,” he wrote later. In the novel, most of the students acquiesce to the game’s rules.

In the video-game medium, where players prize novelty—and, typically, not social commentary—the key to battle royale’s future may lie not in tweaking its rules but in deepening its story. In November, Activision released Warzone 2.0, which introduces some new mechanics. There’s now more than one safe circle, so players are herded into pockets of refuge, and it’s possible to interrogate downed opponents, making them reveal the position of their teammates. These embellishments add subtle points of difference, but it’s unlikely that they’ll energize the form. “Battle royale will now always be a part of the tool kit, in the same way that we’re never not going to have the fifty-two-card deck,” Lantz said. “But there’s not a lot of people making new games for the fifty-two-card deck. When a thirteen-year-old hears that there’s a new battle-royale game coming out today, it’s already a little bit boring. Like, you know, boomer stuff.”

[powdermelonkeg]

Wouldn’t one of the parents have to be a tiefling in order for the infernal heritage to pass down in such a way? Like it’s not a recessive gene scenario where both parents can be carriers, or a half-elf thing where it sort of splits the difference - if there’s infernal blood strong enough to show, it’s showing on parent AND child entirely. Elven parentage would get overwhelmed by the infernal half, so they’d follow normal tiefling rules

Counterpoint, Player's Handbook, 5e:

To be greeted with stares and whispers, to suffer violence and insult on the street, to see mistrust and fear in every eye: this is the lot of the tiefling. And to twist the knife, tieflings know that this is because a pact struck generations ago infused the essence of Asmodeus—overlord of the Nine Hells—into their bloodline.

Say warlock grandmum swore her blood to the devil she pacted with. Grandchild born after comes out as a tiefling. What then?

Counterpoint 2, Planescape: Torment, computer game from 1999, 2e:

Eh... She's a tiefling, chief. They got fiend blood in their veins, usually 'cause some ancestor of theirs shared knickers with one demon or another. Makes some of 'em addled in the head... and addled-looking, too.

Both counterpoints, whether you believe that a pact could cause it or if it's purely genetic, imply that there's several generations before the devil blood shows up.

[drarryspecificrecs]

H/D Wireless 2022 : (fics only)

@hd-wireless || official masterpost || AO3 || ∑ = 58 works (art, fic, podfic) The Mods : @candybarrnerd, @gnarf & @maesterchill Banner © : @iero0 (official banner) + @honeyrinee's sweet lips on my lips

★ The playlist : Youtube | Spotify

Across My Memory by @cluelesspigeons [E, 4k] ♫ Once Upon A December (2017) by Christy Altomare

Anymore by @famoustruth [T, 2k] ♫ Anymore (2021) by Jeon Somi

Away by @sky-is-torn [T, 16k] ♫ Sleep on the Floor (2016) by The Lumineers

Become a man, but I need a man by @somberraven [E, 5k] ♫ Stay with me (2015) by Sam Smith

Bright Side by @floydig [T, 2k] ♫ BRIGHTSIDE (2022) by The Lumineers

Butterflies in Winter by Justlikewriting [M, 19k] ♫ Suspirium (2018) by Thom Yorke

A Case of You by @epitomereally [E, 97k] ♫ Blue (album) (1971) by Joni Mitchell

Closer by @pennygalleon [M, 5k] ♫ Something to Talk About (1991) by Bonnie Raitt

Delicate Dealings by @drwhoisginnyholmes [M, 11k] ♫ Delicate (2017) by Taylor Swift

Draco Malfoy Absolutely Does Not Need to Be Loved by Harry Bloody Potter by @nv-md [E, 18k] ♫ Midnight Sky (2020) by Miley Cyrus

An Emerald In The Sky by @corvuscrowned [M, 6k] ♫ Lost in Time and Space (2018) by Lord Huron

Everything We Have by @thesleepiesthufflepuff [E, 5k] ♫ Heart (2016) by Sleeping At Last

Eye of the Storm by @stargazing-enby [?, 26k] ♫ It’s Alright (2018) by Mother Mother

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not by @sleepstxtic [T, 5k] ♫ Careless Whisper (1984) by George Michael

The Heart and the Salt of the Soul by @cupofsquirrelfan [T, 23k] ♫ Like I Can (2014) by Sam Smith

I Wanna Be On You by @thebooktopus [E, 6k] ♫ Dance to This (2018) by Troye Sivan ft. Ariana Grande

I Won't Let You Fall Apart by @xanthippe74 [M, 49k] ♫ We're In This Together (1999) by Nine Inch Nails

I'll Be Loving You (Always) by phdmama [T, 10k] *restricted ♫ BWU (2016) by Tegan and Sara

if the world was ending by @talkingtravesties [M, 4k] ♫ If The World Was Ending (2020) by JP Saxe - Kurt Hugo Schneider cover

In Free Fall by @kbrick [E, 81k] ♫ Bonkers (2009) by Dizzee Rascal

The Island Assignment by @makeitp1nk [E, 10k] ♫ Yonaguni (2021) by Bad Bunny

Just Between Us by @phoebe-delia [T, 13k] ♫ All Too Well (10min vers. - Taylor’s vers. - 2021) by Taylor Swift

Kept in Cages by @sweet-s0rr0w [E, 76k] --- ART by @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm ♫ Dela (1989) by Johnny Clegg

Lights Down Low by @skeptiquewrites [T, 4k] ♫ Sign of the Times (2017) by Harry Styles

like freedom by @softlystarstruck [M, 4k] --- ART by @babooshkart ♫ Dead of Night (2019) by Orville Peck

Meet Me at Midnight by @the-starryknight [T, 56k] ♫ Sunlight (2019) by Hozier

Mens Rea by @lqtraintracks [E, 3k] ♫ Laid (1993) by James

Nothing compares by @maesterchill [T, 3k] ♫ Nothing Compares 2 U (1990) by Sinéad O'Connor

Open Fire by @slytherco [E, 38k] ♫ Lion (2017) by Saint Mesa

The Pact by @meandminniemcg [E, 12k] ♫ Deep Water (2019) by American Authors

Paper Rings by @lettersbyelise [E, 50k] ♫ Paper Rings (2019) by Taylor Swift

Plant your hope (rain down on me) by @bluesundaycake [M, 9k] ♫ Thistle and Weeds (2009) by Mumford & Sons

Put Some Time Aside (To Fall Apart) by @gryffindorhearts [T, 3k] ♫ Mansion Door (2018) by Shakey Graves

Say You Will by @janieohio [M, 3k] ♫ Grow Old With You (1998) by Adam Sandler

The Siren and the Sailor by @gracerene [E, 13k] ♫ The Siren and the Sailor (2010) by Kristin Allen-Zito

Staring Into Open Flame by @lumosatnight [E, 25k] --- ART by @kairennart ♫ Arsonist’s Lullabye (2014) by Hozier

Stuck Inside the Silence by @bunnimew [T, 2k] *restricted ♫ Papercut (2015) by Zedd ft. Troye Sivan

Take the Moon by @tackytigerfic [M, 15k] ♫ 4-Hour Store (2003) by The Handsome Family

taste you like a drug by @drarryruinedme7 [E, 3k] ♫ Daddy Issues (2015) by The Neighbourhood

Ties and Knots by @iero0 [G, 2k] ♫ Mr. Brightside (2004) by The Killers

To Make A Way by @cavendishbutterfly [E, 5k] ♫ chinese new year (2014) by SALES

To the dust again I fell by @steampunkserpent27 [M, 2k] ♫ Wishing Well (2012) by The Oh Hellos

Two Found Souls Swimming in a Fishbowl by @quackquackcey [E, 10k] ♫ Wish You Were Here (1975) by Pink Floyd

Wild Things by @coffeedrgn87 [E, 118k] ♫ Main Title (Wild Things OST - 1998) by George S. Clinton

You Don’t Owe the World a Thing by @orpheous87 [T, 17k] ♫ Celadon and Gold (2020) by Maggie Rogers

You Know the Feeling by @sorrybutblog [M, 12k] ♫ Official (2019) by Charli XCX

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✔ other fests in 2022 ✔ fests in other years ✔ H/D Wireless : 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017