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anangelicday-mrwolf · 4 years ago

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Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 30 – Wrong Start

“I give you 10 seconds for you to confess, whoever it is.”

Muzaka’s statement resonated in the air, left unanswered by his closest and most trusted warriors.

None of the four warriors could fancy what was in their lord’s head, and they were busy exchanging looks among themselves, until Garda, as the most experienced of all warriors, decided to be the vanguard.

“Pardon me, my lord, but... I am afraid we have no idea what you want to discuss with us.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I mean, can I make it any more obvious?”

Muzaka sighed from the bottom of his guts, as if he just encountered the gravest tragedy he has ever witnessed.

“Don’t you hear that? Our little girl throwing a raging, hissy fit as we speak.”

Oh.

No mouth in the area ever moved, but an identical sound rang in their heads in synchronization.

In fact, questions had been ringing in their heads even before Muzaka summoned them.

‘What on earth had happened to Lunark?’

‘Why is she so mad?’

‘Shouldn’t we stop her? At this rate, she’ll blow up at least 10% of our land.’

By the time damages caused by Union’s biological weapons were almost as good as gone, out of the blue thundered new cacophony undeniably from a work of destruction.

It turned out Lunark was to blame, slashing and trashing like a bull that has spotted a red flag, as reported by two rookie warriors that were dispatched to find out the cause of it.

And she was doing one hell of a job, so vicious that they could not even get close, let alone ask her what was wrong.

“But it seems her reasons are still functioning. She’s wreaking havoc at that infamous forest. But really, does anybody have any idea what’s gotten into the girl? Whether it is condolence or understanding or reprimand that she needs, I’ll be able to choose one only when I find out why she’s doing... All that. Anybody? Please?”

Nobody moved a muscle to Muzaka’s inquiry-slash-request, for they were just as clueless as he was.

That is, all except one.

Garda learned about Lunark’s rampage from new warriors, who were already throwing a talk party of their own regarding the grey-haired warrior’s behavior, and she ran to the spot right away to check what was going on.

And she could pick up Lunark’s voice even before reaching the forest, from which the former usually stays away.

“Aaaaaaaaaagh!!”

She managed to catch a glimpse of the younger warrior from afar, who was screeching an array of unrecognizable vowels and syllables, with her hands shifted into battle stance as she was hurling towards whatever she could reach, air, trees, or leaves afloat.

Garda had no choice but to retreat, partially because she got scared for her own life, and partially because she was beyond puzzled, never having seen Lunark so unbridled.

Luckily, she could spot Lunark’s face right before she turned away, which left a concerning impression in her head.

‘It looks to me she isn’t mad. She’s whipping up embarrassment from the depth of her soul. Just what could mortify and set her off like that?’

*****

Few days later, Frankenstein’s island

‘Just what did he do?’

The white-haired man had been asking himself ever since the lord of the island returned at last.

He did remember that Frankenstein said he would be visiting wolfkind; however, he was wondering whether he ate the Dark Spear on his way.

Because the atmosphere from the blonde human was so dark, so violent.

That was when 3rd Elder’s experience with mind games from Union kicked in, and he attempted to analyze Frankenstein’s mental state based on what he could make out of his islemate’s facial expressions.

As a result, he could identify a number of emotions: extreme irritation, fury just as extreme, remorse greater than either of the two, and, most importantly, self-hate.

Because of which, 3rd got highly conscious of his every breath and step, despite the fact that he was lodging on this island upon Frankenstein’s permission and consent.

On the other hand, unbeknownst to the scientist, he terrified that the former could have noticed his alliance with Helga.

So he ended up asking Frankenstein if there was something troubling him, ready for a lethal slap in the face.

It’s nothing.

Came a reply with a face that THERE IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING, before the speaker fled the scene.

That did not do any good to relieve 3rd Elder of his fear, but at least he was convinced that the reason behind Frankenstein’s foul mood lay not with him.

When he walked away, Frankenstein’s steps were immediate, rushed as if he never wanted to talk about it ever again.

‘That just made it more curious for me, but I guess it’s none of my business, whatever it is. What matters is that Frankenstein knows nothing about my deal. Speaking of which, looks like the recorder and tracker in me really didn’t work.’

He already knew the answer; had they worked properly, upon his return Frankenstein would have cornered him almost as if he were going for a round of a full torture.

So all in all, regardless of what had taken place with the wielder of Dark Spear, 3rd Elder could not deny that it was all good for him.

It was so good to know Helga’s promise came with a reason.

It was very good to find out her accomplice was truly talented.

‘And I’d say she’s also talented, having discovered and won over such competence, especially considering the original alliance of the said competence.’

Though Helga did relay to him the course through which her accomplice had agreed to act as an accomplice, 3rd Elder was still mystified.

‘Anyways, I’d say nobody knows about my ‘betrayal.’ Which means I should focus on my job and do it right, on the day she mentioned.’

*****

Time never stopped its magic, and at last came the day marked on everyone’s calendar.

“Haha, amen to both of you.”

Tao, who had found himself in front of computers for once, laughed at the screens hosting virtual conversation with four recipients at once.

Nonetheless, the man’s face held a hint of anxiety, and Adne somehow detected it like an X-ray.

<Mr. Tao, was it...? There’s no need to be so anxious.>

“Haha, was it that obvious? How embarrassing. And I have been calling myself an expert, with tons and variety of experience when it comes to computers.”

Tao laughed, scratching a side of his head, when Adne offered a word of comfort.

“My, I’m starting to feel small in your presence. We should be calling you the real expert.”

But I wanted to be one.

Tao blinked, wondering if he had just heard the werewolf doctor whispering.

Before he could ask if he had said something, however, Adne beamed in satisfaction.

“Aww, come on, boss! You should really stop being a proud daddy.”

Tao felt his body turning rigid as a biting voice speared his eardrums.

So did Takio and M-21, watching the scene right next to his chair.

Frankenstein’s face, lighting up an entire monitor that was assigned to him, was brimming with annoyance.

“Aww, don’t be so mean, boss. There’s no way we’re leaving you out for the grand premiere of the event.”

Said Lascrea, who had been listening like a rock until then.

Because she was standing next to Yuhyung, who decided to be the operator for Lukedonia, only part of her face was visible.

The only one who has not spoken was the doctor from KSA.

Or rather, he decided not to speak, overwhelmed by the presence of werewolves, nobles, Frankenstein, and a group of people who had shared with him blood and sweat in battles.

But of course, that did not mean KSA would be left unspoken for the duration of the event, though it was because Tao directed a word to everyone at the scene.

“So, are we all ready? Status report, please.”

<Yep! All set!>

<Uh, same here...>

<...I believe we are ready as well.>

Adne was the last to send an okay, after a bit of delay, to which Tao responded with a nod completely void of a smile.

“So, shall we begin?”

Right on cue, Yuhyung took the invisible mike from Tao.

<Now, please follow the instructions I had left for you. First, run the program I installed for you.>

Tao’s fingers danced across the keyboard, for he had fully memorized Yuhyung’s instruction manual; and Adne and KSA’s doctor followed suit.

The two humans provided feedback whenever things were lost or stuck in the middle, and they reached step by step closer to the initiation of the QuadraNet.

By then M-21, Takio, and even Lascrea were having a hard time hiding their excitement.

“Okay, we’re almost there! Just a little bit more!”

Tao’s encouragement fueled everybody to the last stage.

<Now, once this file is activated, all four servers will be linked. And like I told you a number of times, we must activate the file at the exact same moment.>

“On a count of three. One... Two...”

Three.

Four fingers stabbed the enter key in unison, and not long after they held their breath in waiting, pleasing hum of machines and blue light began their duet.

<...Well? It looks like things went okay here.>

Asked a voice from monitor connected to the KSA’s headquarter, somewhere between anticipation and concern.

<W-w-we’re okay!>

<Uh, same here...>

Came voices wild with wonder, and Tao was about to laugh in reply, when an eerie whirring noise, pitched so high and so ominous, began to bore through everyone’s ears.

The fact that it took place just when they were literally less than an inch away from completion was horrifying enough, but they had yet to realize the real horror was yet to reveal itself.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep-beep-beep-beep.

BEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!

Monitors linking Lukedonia, KSA, and wolfkind also emitted similar noises, and soon Tao found his screens being painted with tiny numbers and alphabets one by one.

“Tao? What is it?”

“What’s going on?”

Barked Takio and M-21 in alarm; they did not define themselves as computer-friendly type, but they had enough knowledge to tell that such phenomenon takes place usually when there is a technical issue or its sort.

Not to mention Tao’s face was all they needed to see that something has gone terribly wrong.

“No, no, no...! Our server...!”

Tao yelled as he was slamming the keyboard with his entire fingers.

And right then Murphy’s Law decided to spit in their faces.

Pzzt...!

Everyone’s face blinked off as if promised, and instead the monitors were refilled with noises that made the RK’s eyes bleed just by staring.

“What the heck is going on...?!”

*****

“Tao? Mr. Jang? Doctor? Dr. Adne?”

Frankenstein was almost wailing for everyone’s name as well.

To no avail, of course.

“What is it? Just tell me what the hell it is!”

Frankenstein’s cry scattered into an echo unreciprocated, as he was clutching onto his monitor.

So he had no idea there was a pair of blue eyes watching him from his back.

‘Stage 1 is complete.’

Cause disturbance with everyone’s server the moment QuadraNet comes alive.

Therefore, make sure no one can pay attention to anything other than the sudden technical chaos, including what he and Helga will stir up in the future.

It was not an easy task, but they made it.

The 3rd Elder silently removed himself from the back of the stage, his mind winding back to the face of their accomplice, who happened to be featuring on one of Frankenstein’s monitors just a while ago.

(next chapter)

Perhaps it would feel a little rushed to bring about trouble so soon, when the previous chapter featured Frankenstein and Lunark’s first kiss, but now things will start taking the wrong turns. I mean, it’s no fun if there are no troubles or challenges in a fic lol. By the way, I started adding links on each chapter that can take you to previous/next chapter (you can find the link to previous chapter at the top, and the link to the next chapter at the bottom). I’ll add the links to all previous chapters very soon!

#korean webcomic #korean webtoon #noblesse #frankensteinxlunark #frankenstein #lunark #wolfsbane

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antiques-for-geeks · 4 years ago

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Game Review: Aliens

Electric Dreams / 1987 / C64

Also released on Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, MSX and C16

With one eye firmly on Halloween, we’re going to review some games that used to make us breathe heavily, grasping our joysticks tightly in our sweaty palms...

Based on James Cameron’s sequel to the archetypal sci-fi body-horror Alien, Aliens is possibly one of the most panic-inducing games of the 8-bit era. It goes without saying that it’s hard to actually scare anyone on an 8-bit computer, unless blocky, jerky and flickery graphics bring you out in a cold sweat. What you can do, however, is force the player into having to make a series of quickfire decisions under stressful conditions, juggling resources and trying to keep order in the face of the impossible, like an air traffic controller in a power cut.

Aliens is played from a first-person perspective, and at first glance seems like a fairly simple game. You start in the middle of the operations room in LV-426, in control of Ellen Ripley and a team of 5 space marines who’ve been sent to find the alien queen and rid the base of her menace. You get a cross-hair, which is where your bullets will go. You can look around to the left or right, and you can step through a door to another room with a press of the space bar.

Nothing much is happening right at the start of the game, but don’t worry, it won’t stay that way for long!

The queen sits in a room right in the depths of the base. You use the keyboard to select individual team-members, but you can only directly control one at a time. Each member is represented by a nice little image and a stat bar showing how tired they are. There are no practical differences between each team member, which is a bit of a wasted opportunity, but the images are still a nice touch if you’ve seen the film, and help the player identify with their soldiers. Your team grows weary if they move too far without a rest; they’ll be unable to move and will aim more slowly until given time to recuperate.

You can issue orders for any team member to move a number of rooms in any compass direction, and they’ll carry out your instructions to the best of their ability once you switch out. On the way you’ll encounter alien warriors, eggs and face huggers... or they’ll encounter you as they’ll actively try and hunt down your group.

When one of your characters is in the same room as an alien you’ll hear a warning noise. This is a sinister beeping when you’re not controlling the character directly, and a panic inducing klaxon when you are. What ensues next is a desperate fumble to find the correct key to select the character who is in trouble, followed by an anguished pan around the room in search of the invader. Obviously you’ve only got a limited time to do all this, and the warning tone gets quicker and increasingly agitated to make sure you’re well aware of this fact.

I see you!

Once you spot the alien, you’ve got to line him up and blast him before he gets to you. One head-shot should do it, but you won’t get a clean shot, because by now your heart rate is sure to be through the roof. He’ll run right at you too, making you waste a bunch of (limited!) ammo on him.

If you’re super lucky, several team members will be attacked at the same time, which is probably more tense than doing a driving test naked with a wasp in the car.

If the alien gets you the warning tone will change to a forlorn peep. That signifies your character being bundled up for immediate xenomorph oral impregnation. You’ve got a short time to get someone else to the room to take the alien out, but if you don’t get there in time you’ve lost them for good. Their little picture will disappear and you’ll get nothing but static if you switch to their screen.

Another nasty twist: if you blast an alien in front of a door it’ll leave a pool of acid blood which will kill your character outright should they try to exit that way.

There are a few things you can do to keep yourself alive. You can shoot out the control panels next to any door, which will prevent aliens coming through for a time. This is a one-time only deal, because you’ll have to blow the door open if you want to use it again. You can also re-stock a team member’s ammo at a specific room in the complex. This is useful, because running out of ammo is as good as a death sentence. You’ll also need a map. There’s no in game map provided, though the room number each character occupies is shown next to their image. The full price release provided a fold out map in the box, and you’ll need this. Make sure you have a copy handy, because the game is almost unplayably hard unless you have one!

One last thing. The aliens spread a sort of fungal growth around the rooms, which can cover doors and must be blasted away. There’s a generator room somewhere in the complex, and if the walls there get covered by alien fungus the LIGHTS WILL TURN OUT!

I can’t emphasise enough what bad news this is, because hunting for aliens by shadows alone is probably about as much fun as falling into the sharps bin in an STD clinic.

Film licenses had a pretty bad reputation for the discerning 8-bit gamer, tending to be shoddy and quickly thrown together efforts. Aliens is both an excellent game in its own right and perfect at evoking the tension and atmosphere of the film. There’s also quite a bit of tactical depth here too. Do you keep your group of soldiers together? Move as quickly as possible to the queen chamber? Maybe try to fan out and secure the generator room and armoury?

Ripley is looking a bit off colour today.

It’s also worth mentioning that there was also another Aliens game released for 8-bit micros, developed by Activision in the U.S. This takes a different approach to the license, presenting the film as a series of mini-game levels such as landing the drop-ship, fighting your way through the base to save Newt, the last surviving colonist, and the climactic one-on-one mechanical loader duel with the alien queen. This is also a good game, and well worth seeking out if you're a fan of the franchise, though for my money not quite as well conceived and executed as the U.K. version.

Playing it today

If you don't want to follow the obvious route of emulation and you’ve got a real C64, Amstrad CPC or Spectrum to hand, this should be easy to pick up for a few quid online. If you fancy something slightly more polished, there’s a fine looking windows PC remake ‘LV-426’ by Derbian Games that can be downloaded for free.

Commentariat

Tim: Ah, Aliens. Back when the franchise was actually scary and not a pastiche of itself.

As I suspect many others, I bought this on budget when it appeared on the Ricochet label from Mastertronic. This release really lacked the one thing that helped gameplay. A map.

The full price release had pull-out one included with the game; Mastertronic however, probably decided that including a separate sheet for just one title would have cost too much. And been yet another inlay for the staff at Menzies in the Clydebank Shopping Centre to lose. Zzap 64 published one for those of us without, but as I didn’t have that issue, I was in the dark. Quite literally, as it was more fun to play with the lights off.

Life is too short to make maps, so instead I ended up creeping about the complex, not really knowing where I was. Sounds dull, right? Well, no. The game oozes atmosphere; the graphics are tight and well executed, and though the C64’s SID chip is hardly taxed, the sounds that are there do the trick. The throbbing noise when an alien approaches, your exhausted marine out of ammo but still you frantically pull the trigger of their Pulse Rifle in the vain hope that maybe, just maybe there will be one last shell in there to give you a fighting chance. What I particularly like though is the freedom of gameplay, choosing to use your team as individuals or cooperatively as squads, investigating the different parts of the base separately. Pretty cool, when you consider it’s all done in just 64k.

Do I have fond memories of it? Yes. Would I play it again? Absolutely.

Meat: This game is an intense experience, likely to elicit some strong swear words if you’re not in the right mood for it. It’s certainly engrossing stuff though, and tough to beat. One thing though. Which genius decided that the ‘m’ key should restart the game? You know, the one next to the ‘n‘ key you use to tell your soldiers to move north? Nice one.

Pop: I played this a few years before seeing the film, but in retrospect it’s a very clever use of the license. It was also a really tense experience for an 8-bit game, particularly later on when your soldiers are assaulted by wave after wave of aliens and face huggers. Like many games of the era, it’s perhaps a little arcane for today’s audience, what with having to use the keyboard to select the different team members, but still playable and still enjoyable today. It’s the kind of game I can imagine working perfectly on a VR helmet, though that might be a little too much immersion for comfort!

Strangely enough, one of my strongest memories of this game was actually waiting for it to load off cassette tape. The Mastertronic re-release copy I played (borrowed off Tim, of course!) had a neat game of space-invaders that you got to play while waiting for the loading process to complete, accompanied by some very atmospheric music. This ‘invade-a-load’ appeared on a few C64 tape games, but in my head it’s always tied to playing Aliens.

Score card

Presentation 4/10

Very basic indeed. No intro screen, title crawl or music. The box contained a map, which is essential and should have been a part of the game itself.

Originality 8/10

An extremely novel use of a film license. The mix of first person perspective, team management and light strategy elements put this in a class of its own. Sadly, most licensed games of the 8-bit era tended to use cookie-cutter gameplay which was usually executed better elsewhere.

Graphics 7/10

Very clear and atmospheric, you’ll have no problem working out what everything is. The images for the team members are well drawn and clear for an 8-bit system. On the down side, rooms are drawn predominantly in a single colour and a little more variety in the room designs would be nice. The aliens walk like they’re going for a relaxing afternoon stroll, but the animation when they rush your position is very effective.

Hookability 7/10

Immediately intriguing, but the use of the keyboard and advanced controls for commanding team members require the investment of time to enjoy.

Sound 3/10

Played in near silence, except for gunfire and the alien warning siren. This actually makes the game more atmospheric. A title tune would have been nice.

Lastability 7/10

A decent challenge, it seems impossible until you form a good plan on how to tackle the assault on the base. Like many other games of the era, how much you get out of this game depends on how much you’re willing to put into working out how to play it effectively.

Overall 8/10

A fine example of how to compress the tension and drama of an action film into 64K.

#review #halloween #AFG #antiquesforgeeks #retrogaming #c64

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quakerjoe · 5 years ago

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Usually, comparisons between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany come from cranks and internet trolls. But a new essay in the New York Review of Books pointing out “troubling similarities” between the 1930s and today is different: It’s written by Christopher Browning, one of America’s most eminent and well-respected historians of the Holocaust. In it, he warns that democracy here is under serious threat, in the way that German democracy was prior to Hitler’s rise — and really could topple altogether.

Browning, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, specializes in the origins and operation of Nazi genocide. His 1992 book Ordinary Men, a close examination of how an otherwise unremarkable German police battalion evolved into an instrument of mass slaughter, is widely seen as one of the defining works on how typical Germans became complicit in Nazi atrocities.

So when Browning makes comparisons between the rise of Hitler and our current historical period, this isn’t some keyboard warrior spouting off. It is one of the most knowledgeable people on Nazism alive using his expertise to sound the alarm as to what he sees as an existential threat to American democracy.

Browning’s essay covers many topics, ranging from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy — a phrase most closely associated with a group of prewar American Nazi sympathizers — to the role of Fox News as a kind of privatized state propaganda office. But the most interesting part of his argument is the comparison between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Paul von Hindenburg, the German leader who ultimately handed power over to Hitler. Here’s how Browning summarizes the history:

Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril. Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule. Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyperpolarization of German politics.

Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions. Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.

McConnell, in Browning’s eyes, is doing something similar — taking whatever actions he can to attain power, including breaking the system for judicial nominations (cough cough, Merrick Garland) and empowering a dangerous demagogue under the delusion that he can be fully controlled:

If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings. ...

Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.

This is the key point that people often miss when talking about Hitler’s rise. The breakdown of German democracy started well before Hitler: Hyperpolarization led Hindenburg to strip away constraints on executive power as well as conclude that his left-wing opponents were a greater threat than fascism. The result, then, was a degradation of the everyday practice of democracy, to the point where the system was vulnerable to a Hitler-style figure.

Now, as Browning points out, “Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism.” The biggest and most important difference is that Hitler was an open and ideological opponent of the idea of democracy, whereas neither Trump nor the GOP wants to abolish elections.

What Browning worries about, instead, is a slow and quiet breakdown of American democracy — something more much like what you see in modern failed democracies like Turkey. Browning worries that Republicans have grown comfortable enough manipulating the rules of the democratic game to their advantage, with things like voter ID laws and gerrymandering, that they might go even further even after Trump is gone:

No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.

I’ve observed this kind of modern authoritarianism firsthand in Hungary. In my dispatch after visiting there, I warned of the same thing as Browning does here: The threat to the United States isn’t so much Trump alone as it is the breakdown in the practice of American democracy, and the Republican Party’s commitment to extreme tactics in pursuit of its policy goals in particular.

We are living through a period of serious threat to American democracy. And Browning’s essay, a serious piece by a serious scholar, shows that it’s not at all alarmist to say so.

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kneesheee · 5 years ago

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Little Devil

Warnings: references to torture. references to murder. mentions of death. canon typical fighting.

|eight|

Damian didn’t know how to feel. It felt like millennia since he stepped foot in Nanda Parbat. Even though he knew that it was temporary. He knew that it wouldn’t last. He knew it was only for a moment.

It still felt like home.

He watches silently as the mountains call for him. His mother. His cousin. His sister. His… his brother. He sees how Queen and Lance seem to relax. Yes, Nanda Parbat. A place of healing and enlightenment. And yet, its shadows are coated with enough blood to fill the red sea.

His mother stands before them as she looks upon their home. His brother and cousin flanked her sides. They looked like the perfect warriors that they were born to be. His mother turns her head to glance back at him. He suddenly feels wrong. He had been raised to be the one by his father’s side as his partner. It was his destiny. His heritage to take over the mantle in the future. And yet, here he stood as Robin and he felt wrong.

She smiles at him knowingly, and suddenly, he’s unpinning the Robin emblem. His pulls his sword from underneath the seats of the Bat plane. He tugs his hood over his head. It isn’t much, yet he feels more like himself than he has in long time.

His eyes glow in a way they haven’t since his birth.

He stops denying who he truly was.

Robin. Heir to the Demon. Son of the Bat. The Demonic Prince. A Dark Knight. An Al Ghul. A Wayne.

Damian.

Athanasia watched quietly from the rafters as The Forgotten One’s guards patrolled the cell areas. She had received word earlier that her mother was planning to a raid. Right now, she had to help her mother’s most trusted escape from the cells that her aunt through them in. Lady Shiva. Lord Ubu. Lord Wilson and his daughter Rose. Lord Lawson was also here.

She dropped from the rafters in the middle of guard change and quickly pick the lock to Lady Shiva’s cell. When the next guard came, Lady Shiva was already moving to take her down as Athanasia moved on to free the others.

She bowed deeply as she apologized, “I will like to formally apologize on my mother’s behalf for the offense my aunt has dolt out. This should have never happened, and she will pay dearly for her crimes.”

A small smirk pulled at Sandra’s lips as she waved away the apology, “Thank you, Athanasia. Your manners are impeccable as always.”

Mr. Lawson leaned against the wall, “Where is your mother anyway? How did Nyssa get the drop on her to be able to do all of this?”

She sighed deeply. Troubled. “Mother had been compromised and needed to be sent away for her safety. These past two months have been troubling, but all is well now. She had her a few days of recovery and she’s on her way here to take back what it rightfully hers.”

Lord Wilson chuckled a little bitterly, “Good ole Talia. Can always count on her to come.”

Athanasia tilted her head to the side before she turned away, “Yes, Mother will do anything to make sure Grandfather’s legacy doesn’t end up in Aunt Nyssa’s hand. She also quite determined to make sure my brothers and I don’t end up in her hands. Otherwise, who knows what could happened. Mother would do anything for her children.”

Lady Shiva stood tall. Her back ramrod straight as she gazed upon her, “She didn’t have you bust us free just to stand around. What’s the plan?”

When she turned back to look at them, her eyes were glowing green.

To Jamila, the world was tinted green. She felt at peace. She felt like herself. She was home. A place she has spent many years running from. From where there hiding in the forbidden mountains, she could almost see the area where she dumped her grandfather’s body after she had killed.

A small shudder ran through. She could still feel his blood on her hands. She can still the see the way the light fades away in his eyes. She hears Lazarus roar in her head. She feels how his body slackens. She sees how proud he is. It’s like being under water and just barely hearing his words as realizations crashes down upon her.

You are the Demon Head.

A manicured hand lays gently on her face. She comes back to herself. She’s no longer staring into aging face of her grandfather. Her aunt is staring at her in concern. Again, as she had many times before, she wishes the woman before her was her mother.

“Are you with us, my love,” her aunt’s voice soothes. She gives herself a mental shake. She could deal with her emotions and the ghosts of her past later. Right now, she has a mission to complete. And the mission comes first.

She nods her head once before she is once again turning away. She stares at the compound in which she was raised.

You are the Demon Head.

No. She wasn’t. She wasn’t the demon head. She wasn’t the demon head’s heiress.

She was the Death Demon. She was the Demon of Death. She was an Al Ghul. She was a Wilson. She was Nyssa Raatko’s daughter. She was Slade Wilson’s daughter. She was Talia Al Ghul’s niece. She was Damian and Anthanasia’s cousin. She was Jason’s cousin. She was Ra Al Ghul’s granddaughter.

She was the League’s hope.

Huh. Maybe she is the demon’s head.

She was Jamila Al Ghul.

It was time her mother learned that.

Jason didn’t know how to feel. He hadn’t stepped foot here in a long while. But now?

He could hear the mountains call for him. Standing beside Talia and he felt like a fifteen-year-old boy again just finding out that he died and came back to life. Finding out that his father let his killer roam free. Replaced him.

It was almost enough to spark an aged old bitterness in him. He steps away as Talia comforts Jamila as she deals with her own ghost of this place. Nanda Pardat, a place of healing and enlightenment. He inwardly snorted. This place only picked at old wounds that he thought that time had close.

His team move to his side and feel the burning heat as Kori’s hairbrushes against him. It didn’t bother him. He had been stoned cold dead on the inside for years. If anything, it reminded him that he had much to live for.

He squeezes Kyle’s hand when it slips into his. After this, he should do better by this man. He seems determined to stick around him no matter how hard he pushes him away. Roy catches his eyes and nods at his best friend. He flashes a small smile at Artemis and something warm fills him as she scoffs lightly but he knows he’s not imagining the smile on her face. He pats Bizarro on the shoulder instead of going for a hug.

He squeezes Kyle’s hand one more time before walking back over to Talia and Jamila. His cousin looks like she dealt with her own ghost. His flaming daggers are pricking at his skin.

“Everything ready, T,” he questions as soon as he nears. The two women turn to look at him. Their piercing green eyes run over his form before his aunt gives a sharp nod. She gestured everyone else over.

“Yes, everything should be in place by now. We’re just waiting for---”

The southeast corners (the forbidden quarters if he’s remembering correctly) blow up in a cloud of smoke. Jamila’s laugh rings loud into the night.

“That. We’re waiting on that.”

Damian is staring at his mother with wide eyes, “Mother, weren’t those Aunt Nyssa’s quarters.”

Jamila’s laughter makes much more sense. Talia waves his words away, “It matters not. I’ve been meaning to redecorate. Come now. This way. We’ll be moving through the secret corridor in Father’s old quarters. I thought that it’d come in handy one day and I was right.”

Jason spared a small glance back at his comrades, “Let’s go.”

They were smart enough to know not to mention his gleaming red eyes.

It was surprisingly easy to get throw the compound filled to the brim with rogue soldiers. Talia can admit that. Though she was greatly appalled that these were the warriors that her sister assigned for her own protection? She honestly feltlike she was in one of the martial arts classes’ that Jason used to drag her to. The ones were the martial arts teacher obviously had no idea what they were doing. Black belts? More like on the brim of blue and purple.

Hardly good enough to stop her.

Jamila’s already pulling a hidden tablet from the floorboards right outside of Father’s offices. She hands the device over to Talia and her fingers fly over the keyboard as she shuts down the system.

Feet are running in their direction and Jamila’s flickering her guns out. Her ponytails bounce as she stalks into the hallway. Her Beloved moves to follow her. Probably to stop her from killing like the rest of his brood have done since they’ve entered the building.

“I will not hesitate to put right through your dick, Batman,” Jamila growls without turning around. “Back off.”

And then she gone around the corner. The sound of gunshots and metal hitting flesh is heard. Laughter so dark and ugly. Screams of pain.

Talia is searching the security systems and cameras trying to pinpoint Nyssa’s location. Trying to make sure she doesn’t have her daughter.

“Please. Please. Don’t kill me. Let me go. PLEAS---”

Pointed silence met Jamila as she walked back into the room. She scoffed lightly, “There still alive.” Only Talia heard the for now in the air.

Standing back to full height, she turned towards them. Her gaze was still on the tablet in her hands. “She’s recalling all of her men to her. She will no doubt have my nephew at her side. We will cross through Jason’s quarters and then take the long way around through Damian’s old quarters then make our way into the throne room. I’ll send off word for our inside team to meet us at the crossways between mine and Jamila’s quarters.”

Talia paid no mind to whisper of Jason’s lover questioning the others of just how big the compound was. She’s already moving, and her strides doesn’t stop as she snatches one of these lowlifes’ thugs’ guns off the ground as she heads towards her sister.

Its time to end this.

Maybe she’ll plunge her into a Lazarus pit over and over and over again until the only thing she knows is pain and angry and green. So much green.

She’s moving on autopilot as she takes down any assailant coming her way. A part of her that stills there keeps from killing them at that moment. If they just so happen to die from their wounds, well what’s one less worthless piece of trash in the grand scheme of themes.

She’s tossing some man the size of Ubu over her shoulder. Her heels click as she continues down the hall. Jason and Jamila jump out in front of her and take down more men. Damian is spinning through the air as his sword twirls alongside him.

Her stride never breaks.

They were almost to Jason’s quarters. She didn’t even blink when a glowing green starblast hit someone square in the chest. She casually stepped of the way of a glowing green hand pulling men up from the floor.

She nodded her head at the Amazon as she swung her battle ax through the air. She accepted the hand from the clone as he flew her over some women looking like pincushions from various arrows.

She’s fighting back to back with her beloved. It felt like old times before everything went to hell. Before the world turned green. Green with jealousy. Green. Green. Green. She remembers Nyssa. Her sister. And it hurt so bad. The green. It hurt her.

She smashes some man’s head into the glass table.

Talia keeps on walking.

A scream pierces the air and a man close flying through the window.

They’re almost to the crossways.

She reloads her gun.

The barrel of her gun is pointed at a mask face. Jamila has one pressed against a wall with a knife pressed tightly to their throat. The green fades away as a hand clasps her shoulder. She blinks and she’s looking into an orange and black mask. Ubu is once again by her side. Jamila releases her sister.

She can’t see it, but she knows that Slade is smiling mockingly at her. Its out of character for her. At least to Bruce and the rest of his brood and allies. But she’s laughing and punching Slade on the shoulder lightly.

“The Princess is storming the castle,” he jokes lightly and she’s laughing again. “I have to protect the crown.”

He’s stepping out the way and gesturing down the hall, “Well don’t let me stop you.”

“You won’t.”

And then she’s turning towards her daughter. She hugs Anthanasia tightly and run her hand over her daughter’s face. She sees small wounds and bruises appearing on her skin. Anger lights up her entire being. Jamila is behind her placing her hand on either side of Anthansia’s face before turning her head side to side. She captures the girl into a hug.

Talia doesn’t look back to see the shock on her beloved’s face. Now is not time. She’s moving again and she doesn’t have to look back to know that Jamila and Ubu and Anthanasia and Jason have all blocked Bruce’s access to her. Sandra is at her side and she could feel amusement dripping off her friend.

They’re moving together again as they take down the last of the stranglers. Both flipping through the air wrapping their lips around their opponents’ necks.

Ubu pushes the doors to the throne room open forcefully. Its basically an army standing before. Talia holds up the tablet in her hands. She types in the code to the prison cells without looking knowing that all her agents were in there.

The exiled warriors’ part like the red sea. She sees her nephew first. Standing at the side of the throne like she did many years ago at her father’s side. He looked so dutiful. So, brainwashed by the ideals that were not his own. She will save him.

Green meets green.

“Hello, sister.”

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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 5 years ago

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Stress, Picard Prequel & E-Scooters

Here we come, washing over the net, getting happiest looks from everyone we know. Hey hey it’s the Nerds! We are back once again with a brand new episode for your entertainment pleasure. This week we have another fun filled episode for you, and we promise not to sing. First up the Professor continues his series on Game Developers with a lot of information on some funding support that is available. We also look at the negative side of crowd funding with the keyboard warriors and trolls being their useless selves. So if you are interested in becoming a games developer and have been listening in on the rest of the series you are sure to find this helpful and interesting.

Next up we urge you to grab yourselves a cup of Earl Grey, hot, and prepare for some awesome news from the Star Trek universe. There is news that some Picard prequel comics and novels are on the way. At present we aren’t expecting to see a young Picard running around the vineyards in France breaking hearts with the wind blowing through his hair. That sounded like bad fan fiction, sorry. Anyway we are certainly looking forward to this fabulous news material.

Buck has word that e-scooters are not as green friendly as is first suggested. That’s right, Buck is unhappy with the misperception of those zippy little shared e-scooters littering up the city. Apparently a study has shown some data that questions their usage, let alone the materials used in the manufacture of the various components. Then there is the issue of the scooters ending up in water ways. That’s right, some idiots are throwing e-scooters into rivers, creeks, lakes and other various waterways. Some people are seriously troubling in the level of stupid they present to the world.

Next as usual we have the various shout outs, remembrances, birthdays, events of interest and the games we are currently playing, minus one host who was abducted. Was it by aliens, the CIA or someone else we may have insulted? You will have to listen to find out who; then we think we will see who comes up with the most interesting answer. Let us know what you think. As always, stay safe, take care, look out for each other and stay hydrated.

EPISODE NOTES:

The Stress of funding - https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1157298020691644416?s=09

Picard prequel comics and novels revealed – https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/star-trek-picard-prequel-novel-and-comics-on-the-way/

Shared E-scooters - https://phys.org/news/2019-08-e-scooters-green-options.html

Games currently playing

Buck

– Company of heroes 2 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/231430/Company_of_Heroes_2/

Professor

– They Are Billions - https://store.steampowered.com/app/644930/They_Are_Billions/

– DOTA 2 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/570/Dota_2/

Other topics discussed

Epic Games Store exclusivity helps Phoenix Point achieve 191% return

- https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/1999-11-30-epic-games-store-exclusivity-helps-phoenix-point-achieve-191-percent-return

Epic Games will fund the cost of Kickstarter refunds for Epic-exclusives

- https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-07-03-epic-games-will-fund-the-cost-of-kickstarter-refunds-for-epic-exclusives

Video games blamed for shootings

- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/trump-violent-video-games-studies.html

International Game Developers Association defend industry following President Trump's accusations against "gruesome and grisly video games"

- https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-08-06-igda-igdaf-issues-statement-on-weekend-shootings-in-the-us

Ooblets dev received thousands of "hateful, threatening messages"

- https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-08-05-ooblets-dev-received-thousands-of-hateful-threatening-messages-over-epic-exclusivity

Steam takes down Devotion

- https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18239937/taiwanese-horror-game-devotion-gone-steam-removed-winnie-the-pooh-meme-china

Screen Queensland Announces Successful Recipients of the 2018-19 Game Development and Marketing Investment Program

- https://screenqueensland.com.au/news/on-screen/screen-queensland-announces-successful-recipients-of-the-2018-19-game-development-and-marketing-investment-program/

Applications now open for the Game Development and Marketing Investment Program 2019

- https://screenqueensland.com.au/news/on-screen/applications-now-open-for-the-game-development-and-marketing-investment-program-2019/

Screen Queensland (SQ) are inviting applications from Queensland game developers seeking finance for games with a global audience. Applications open – finance for games

- https://screenqueensland.com.au/news/apply-now/applications-open-finance-for-games/?utm_source=Social%20Media&utm_medium=Organic&utm_campaign=GamesFinance19Rd2

Brisbane International Game Developers Association (brIGDA)

- http://www.igdabrisbane.org/

Una Mcormack (British-Irish academic and novelist)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_McCormack

Star Trek's Jeri Ryan Had A Hard Time Finding Seven's Voice for Picard

- https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/08/star-treks-jeri-ryan-had-a-hard-time-finding-sevens-voice-for-picard/

Jeri Ryan in Seven of Nine costume

- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/SevenofNine.jpg

Star Trek: Voyager (1995 Star Trek series)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager

Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek character)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Janeway

Star Trek: Nemesis (2003 film)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Nemesis

Lead–crime hypothesis (proposed link between elevated blood lead levels in children and increased rates of crime)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis

Huffing: Getting a high from aerosol cans

- https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/the-hills/teens-risk-death-huffing-cans-of-deodorant/news-story/595989e970947a6f6d33537c56b1d653

Submerged Share Scooters Out of The Water

- https://www.pedestrian.tv/tech/share-scooters-water/

Lime scooter helmets

- https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/183700245006_/Lime-Scooter-Helmet-NEW-Size-XL-EXTRA-LARGE.jpg

Elvis Lives (TNC podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/elvislivespodcast

Shoutouts

5 Aug 1914 – In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed. - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-electric-traffic-signal-installed

5 Aug 1966 - Beatles release single "Yellow Submarine" with "Eleanor Rigby" in UK - https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/08/05/uk-single-eleanor-rigby-yellow-submarine/

5 Aug 1936 - American athlete Jesse Owens wins 200m in world record time (20.7), his 3rd gold medal of the Berlin Olympics - https://www.olympic.org/news/jesse-owens-completes-the-hat-trick-with-200m-win

5 Aug 2010 - Copiapó mining accident, also known then as the "Chilean mining accident", began with a cave-in at the San José copper–gold mine, located in the Atacama Desert 45 kilometres north of the regional capital of Copiapó, in northern Chile. Thirty-three men, trapped 700 meters underground and 5 kilometres from the mine's entrance via spiralling underground ramps, were rescued after 69 days. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiapó_mining_accident

Remembrances

4/5 Aug 1962 - Marilyn Monroe, American actress, model, and singer. Famous for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $2 billion in 2018). More than half a century later, she continues to be a major popular culture icon. Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. Her second and third marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, were highly publicized and both ended in divorce. She died from overdose of barbiturates at the age of 36 in Los Angeles, California. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe

4 Aug 2019 - Stu Rosen, American voice director and voice actor. Rosen voice directed many cartoons and commercials for television, including Fraggle Rock, the first episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 TV series), Biker Mice from Mars and many more. Other such shows soon followed: Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men,Spiderman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series directed by Andrea Romano and Phantom 2040 also directed by Rosen. He died from cancer at the age of 80 in Los Alamitos, California. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Rosen

5 Aug 2000 - Alec Guinness, English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations, Fagin in Oliver Twist, Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia, General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago, and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India. He is also known for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards. Guinness won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Tony Award. In 1959, he was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989. He died from liver cancer at the age of 86 in Midhurst,West Sussex - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Guinness

Famous birthdays

5 Aug 1862 - Joseph Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities. He was first exhibited at a freak show as the "Elephant Man", and then went to live at the London Hospital after he met Frederick Treves, subsequently becoming well known in London society. He was born in Leicester - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Merrick

5 Aug 1930 - Neil Armstrong, American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also anaval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the mission's command module (CM). When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. He was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong

5 Aug 1889 - Conrad Aiken, American writer, whose work includes poetry,short stories,novels, a play, and an autobiography. Aiken wrote or edited more than 51 books, the first of which was published in 1914, two years after his graduation from Harvard. His work includes novels, short stories (The Collected Short Stories appeared in 1961), criticism, autobiography, and poetry. He was born in Savannah, Georgia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Aiken

Events of Interest

5 Aug 1888 – Bertha Benz was the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, rigorously field testing the patent Motorwagen, inventing brake pads and solving several engineering issues during the 65 mile trip. That trip occurred in early August 1888, as the entrepreneurial lady took her sons Eugen and Richard, fifteen and fourteen years old, respectively, on a ride from Mannheim through Heidelberg, and Wiesloch, to her maternal hometown of Pforzheim. As well as being the driver, Benz acted as mechanic on the drive, cleaning the carburettor with her hat pin and using a garter to insulate wire. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen

5 Aug 1926 – Harry Houdini performs his greatest feat, spending 91 minutes underwater in a sealed tank before escaping. - https://www.historychannel.com.au/this-day-in-history/houdinis-last-stunt/

5 Aug 1930 – S. A. Andrée’s balloon polar expedition of 1897 was aimed to cross over the North Pole in 43 hours in a hydrogen balloon then journey on to land thanks to the financial support of the Swedish King Oscar II and Alfred Nobel. Andrée’s balloon lost much of its steering capabilities just after launch when a number of drag ropes fell from the craft and ballast sand was thrown overboard. The remaining ropes could be seen trailing in the water till the balloon vanished out of sight. And that was the last anyone heard or saw of the trio for more than 30 years. Discovery came on the 5th August 1930 when the Norwegian Bratvaag expedition found remains on White Island, on the Svalbard archipelago, of a headless body, disturbed by polar bears propped up against a rock. Further investigations by a journalist revealed the bodies of both his companions and diaries detailing much of their ordeal. A camera was also found, and 93 eerie negatives developed of their tragic journey. The remains of the expedition were brought home to Stockholm to a grand procession, where they were feted as national heroes. - https://www.onthisday.com/articles/strange-story-of-the-balloon-expedition-to-the-north-pole

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

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lechevaliermalfet · 6 years ago

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Seasonally Appropriate, part II: A Long Look at the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Series

In the early to mid-2000s, there was an odd trend of Japanese game developers farming out high-profile intellectual properties to Western developers. To the best of my knowledge, this began with Metroid Prime, though it really got going with the beginning of the first HD generation of consoles, and would go on to include DMC: Devil May Cry, Bionic Commando, Sonic Boom, Sonic Mania, every Silent Hill game from Origins onward, and probably a host of others I’m forgetting.

The reasons for this are difficult to pinpoint, and probably vary considerably from developer to developer. Some developers seemed to have been caught flat-footed by the sheer amount of personnel and time required to make a game in HD. Konami is said to have, at one point or another, pulled basically every single human being capable of operating a keyboard to work on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Others may have wanted to capture a larger audience (thanks to the increased expense of creating games in HD), and felt that their games looked and felt “too Japanese” to cater to a more international audience (a move that ironically would have angered many existing fans, and often did). Still others may simply have wanted a breath of fresh air, to see what a different design sensibility brought to the table. Yet others may have noticed the upswing in popularity enjoyed by Western games and developers, and thought the best way to ride that gravy train was simply to give their franchises to Westerners to handle.

At any rate, it was a thing that happened.

More below the cut. There will be spoilers.

If Metroid Prime isn’t the first example of this, then it’s the first big, high-profile example. Nintendo basically co-founded Retro Studios, along with some of the development staff that had made the Turok gmes, and said “Here’s a big pile of money. Cancel all your ongoing projects and make us some Metroid games. Try not to fuck it up.” This looked completely insane on the surface of things. Nintendo buying what was at that time a no-name studio and giving them one of their sacred cow franchises to develop seemed unthinkable at the time. But, as they often (though not always) do, Nintendo knew what they were doing, though their reasoning was opaque to outsiders.

On the more recent side of this phenomenon, meanwhile, we have the Sonic games. If I had to guess, I’d say the decision to farm the series out to a Western developer was motivated by some of the same factors as Metroid Prime for Nintendo. Like the Metroid series, Sonic has greater appeal for a Western audience at this point, I think, so Sega let that audience call the shots. This initially resulted in Sonic Boom, a multimedia blitz that consisted of a decent cartoon, a couple portable games of variable quality, and a WiiU title broadly derided as a buggy, broken shit-heap of a game.

But this really just amounted to what was at the time the most recent manifestation of the so-called “Sonic Cycle”. It seems to go something like this: Sega announces a new Sonic game → The fanbase collectively gets hyped for the game on the strength of some carefully vetted videos, screenshots, and assorted other promotional materials → The game comes out → Reviews and impressions come in, and the game is revealed to fall somewhere on a spectrum that goes from “okay, I guess” to “complete, total, utter, and absolute flaming garbage” → The fandom reminisces mournfully about the good old days of the 16-bit era → Sega announces a new Sonic game… The Sonic Cycle is basically the perpetual triumph of hope over experience.

The exceptions tend to be of the rule-proving variety. Miraculously, Sega’s next move was ultimately to farm the series out to yet another developer, who had the dangerous idea that perhaps the best thing to do – by process of elimination, since Sega seemed to have tried literally everything else by this point – was to give the fans precisely the thing they had been clamoring for since Sonic 3 & Knuckles (which, for those of you playing at home, was over two decades ago): A new 16-bit Sonic game.

Sonic Mania is great, by the way. Incidentally, it’s also probably the most widely acclaimed game in the series since the 16-bit titles it so lovingly homages.

There’s probably a whole thinkpiece to be written, right there: Contrasting Nintendo and Sega’s decision-making abilities. But you really only have to look at where the companies have wound up over the years to get the essence of it. Nintendo is still bravely, confidently, profitably soldiering along in the hardware business despite having been technologically outclassed on both the console and portable fronts since 2006. Sega, meanwhile, ended the hardware side of their business with neither a bang nor a whimper, bur rather with a sort of resigned shrug, a sigh, and a muttered “Fuck it, we tried.” They have since managed to defy expectations by staying in business. And they still keep churning out Sonic games, despite the Cycle, to an audience that seems to consist primarily of

Children whose grandparents bought them the games

Furries of a certain stripe

Deluded Sega fanatics who are probably still waiting for the promised day when Sega releases the Dreamcast 2 and we all go home to glory.

The rest of these Western-helmed sequels, reboots, and re-imaginings of popular franchises have had varying reactions from the fans. The phenomenon seems to be over for the time being, the causative problem either having been solved or otherwise rendered irrelevant. At any rate, I have gone far, far afield in a piece that’s supposed to be about the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow series.

I brought up all of the foregoing to lend some context, and it went to its own weird place, but it entertained me, and fuck it, it’s not like I have an editor. So…

Somewhere in the middle of all these Western-flavored farmings-out, we had Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. In terms of why it got farmed out to a Western developer, this one seems to descend from the House of Fuck If We Know What To Do With It; Let Someone Else Take a Crack At It. Castlevania 64 and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness tried to make the series work in 3D on the N64, and failed. There was a running joke for a while that Capcom had made 3D Castlevania work in the form of its Devil May Cry series, which must have incensed more than a few of the fine folks at Konami. Then Koji Igarashi, fresh off his successes with the Metroidvania games on the Playstation and the Gameboy Advance, was given a shot at it. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness were better games than the N64 efforts, but… well, you could make the argument that a good trepanning might be a better experience than those games. If anything, both were ultimately kind of shallow Devil May Cry imitators that lurked somewhere in the B tier of the PlayStation 2 library, far less than what the series deserved.

So, come the next generation, Konami decided to let Mercury Steam handle it, and assigned Hideo “Motherfucking” Kojima to keep an eye on the project from time to time.

It had been remarked by any number of industry wags that Capcom's Devil May Cry franchise was probably the closest we were going to get to a translation of Castlevania into three dimensions. This mostly amounted to a snide, backhanded swipe at Konami's troubles bringing the franchise into 3D on the N64 more than anything else. There are certainly some similarities at a surface level, such as the aesthetic. Like Castlevania, Devil May Cry is a horror fantasy that leans far more heavily into the fantasy side of its heritage. The horror imagery is less for actual scares, but more to project an easy sense of danger and menace. And like Castlevania had been in its 2D outings (Symphony of the Night aside), Devil May Cry was a pure balls-to-the-wall action game. But this is mostly where the similarities ended. Castlevania's pace, in the 2D games, was always more deliberate than many of its peers (contrasted against, say, Mega Man), though you still had to have nimble fingers and a keen sense of timing.

But perhaps the greatest difference was in personality. Devil May Cry's personality as a game was centered on its protagonist, Dante. Sarcastic, wise-cracking, brash, cocky, and irreverent, with his long red coat and his trademark giant sword and twin pistols, Dante was the epitome of badass. And that's before we get into all the crazy antics in his moveset. Castlevania, meanwhile, didn't as a general rule really have characters as vivid as Dante; in fact, the only real recurring character is its villain, Dracula. Its heroes, members of the Belmont clan of vampire slayers, tended to come across as grimly determined, muscular, sort of generic warriors who tore down all their enemies with a combination of skill and raw force, with a few straying into leather-and-fur-clad barbarian territory. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it does leave most of the characters lacking in personality. But it’s to be expected. The template for the series was created in the 8-bit days when any kind of personality was difficult to convey.

One of the most distinct features of the heroes of the classic Castlevania games (for reference going forward, "classic" is going to be shorthand for "the 8-bit and 16-bit games prior to Symphony of the Night") is the sense of pace and momentum. There was a sense of weight and heaviness to the various members of the Belmont clan who served as player characters in those games. Some of it came down to the way they moved. None of them were especially fast on their feet, as video game characters went, and the series was unique for not letting you control the direction of your jump in mid-air the way so many other video games did. It's realistic, of course, but was unusual for the time. There was no course-correction possible if you jumped wrong, no mid-air take-backsies if you misjudged your timing. If you got your timing wrong, then oh well. Don’t fuck up next time.

And the Belmonts' weapon of choice, the Vampire Killer whip, was also a bit unique. As a whip, it's got a bit of a wind-up to it. Not a huge one, but enough that you have to be aware of it. Your attacks don't land immediately with the press of a button. Castlevania III was probably the best early demonstration of this, where even though it only takes three frames, swinging that whip for the attack and pelting the morning star forward is clearly animated as a full-body action. It gives the attacks a deeply satisfying feeling of force, regardless of how much damage they do, but also means you have to pay attention to how you maneuver through the game, and have a keener sense for spacing and timing when facing an enemy.

This is another reason I feel like the assessment of Devil May Cry as the ideal for a 3D Castlevania is off. Dante is a fun character to play as, but when it comes to maneuvering him, he's constantly leaping, dodging, and rolling about. He's lighter than air. And that's fun, naturally. But he also doesn't really feel like a Castlevania hero.

After the first disappointing venture into the third dimension with the N64 titles, Konami came out with a second set of 3D Castlevania titles for the PlayStation 2: Lament of Innocence, which aimed to tell the origins of the Belmont clan and their eternal war against Dracula and everything else that goes bump in the night; and Curse of Darkness, which was a sequel/side story to Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. With Koji Igarashi at the helm, these fared somewhat better than the N64 entries, but still ultimately wound up climbing no higher than the upper end of the B tier of PlayStation 2 games. Which is kind of sad, really. Castlevania deserved better than to play second fiddle to the top tier of hack-and-slash action games. As a series that used to be a premier example of that kind of game back in the 2D days, it deserved to be on that top tier.

Really, you'd think all anyone had to do was just rip off Devil May Cry (which, given the accusations of Devil May Cry lifting liberally from Castlevania in the first place, would certainly seem justified if not terribly original), but the final products were ultimately lacking something, though it was difficult to say exactly what. The response from critics and fans alike was generally positive, but ultimately with a feeling that something was missing. The games were good, but didn't seem to quite live up to the legacy of their forebears. And so the idea of creating a 3D Castlevania seems to have gotten shelved again for the time being.

As the first generation of HD consoles really came into its own, it became apparent that the old total dominance of Japanese developers in that arena, at least at the upper end of technical and technological prowess, was on the wane. There are a number of different reasons for this, and the discussion frankly deserves its own write-up. The bottom line is that Western developers were quickly becoming ascendant in console gaming, where previously they had made up a small minority of the notable output. And so Konami got the idea to do with Castlevania what they had done with Silent Hill, what Capcom had done with Bionic Commando and what Nintendo had done with Metroid: give the franchise to a Western developer to handle.

MercurySteam was, in the beginning, basically a no-name outfit with nothing published under their own name. Wikipedia indicates that MercurySteam was made primarily of personnel from an older development studio called Rebel Act. They were notable apparently for just one game, and that had been back in 2001. What they did in the nine-ish years between that and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, if anything, is a mystery to me. Why they got chosen to work on one of Konami's classic series is likewise a mystery. But whatever; it happened.

Lords of Shadow was initially teased just by its subtitle, and first billed as a new intellectual property for Konami. This was done in part to avoid trampling the hype Konami wanted to build for Castlevania Judgment, a Wii-exclusive fighting game featuring multiple characters from different points in the timeline. This was almost universally dunked on and dumped on by critics and users alike, so it's questionable how much damage the announcement of Lords of Shadow could have done to it.

I can't pretend to know what the reaction was when Lords of Shadow was announced officially as a Castlevania game. To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention until near its release, though I picked up a copy near launch. I sometimes think that even without the impending release of Castlevania Judgment, Konami might still have teased Lords of Shadow without the Castlevania name for a while. At that point, it may have been easier to build hype for an all-new IP than for a new Castlevania game on console, given the baggage the series carried.

I was curious to see what a Western-developed installment of the franchise might look like. In terms of aesthetics, the classic 8- and 16-bit Castlevanias had always had more of a Western look to them, which made sense given the eastern European setting and backing history/mythology. If anything, this was one of the franchises where handing it off to a Western developer made the most sense.

(As a side note, MercurySteam later went on to make Metroid: Samus Returns on the 3DS, which now makes them the only developer of Metroidvania games to have worked on both a Metroid and a 'vania.)

For inspiration, Lords of Shadow seems to have turned to the God of War series. From the burly, muscular hero, to the chain-based weapon that allows the player to operate at some distance from the enemy (though in fairness, the chain whip has been part of Castlevania since way before God of War was a thought in anyone’s head), to the brutal take-downs, to the regularly occurring puzzle-solving challenges, to the quick-time events used to finish off bosses and major enemies, there is a lot of God of War in this game. But one of the first, biggest differences is in tone. The player character's brutality in Lords of Shadow is more utilitarian, more matter of fact and by the way, where God of War's Kratos explicitly relishes his violence.

Rather than a sequel, though, Lords of Shadow serves as a reboot of the series, which frustrated some. There had been talk by various characters in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, which take place in 2035 and 2036, respectively, about a conflict in 1999 wherein Dracula was finally beaten and destroyed once and for all. Fans had naturally been clamoring for the chance to play this epic final showdown pretty much since it was first hinted at, and had been repeatedly disapopinted when it failed to materialize. The forecast for said showdown appearing seemed to go from "unlikely, but stay hopeful" to "nope" with the announcement that Lords of Shadow was going to be a reboot. This kind of thing usually signals that the old continuity is done for good. And it effectively is, though that's mainly because Konami seems to have gotten out of the video game business entirely at this point.

As a story, Lords of Shadow follows to some extent in the series tradition, which is to say, it's pretty ridiculous.

We start off with Gabriel Belmont, an original creation for this reboot series. He belongs to the Brotherhood of Light, a group of holy warriors whose purpose is to eliminate supernatural enemies of humankind. Clad in their signature red outfit (probably a nod to the artwork for Simon Belmont in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest), he wields the Combat Cross, which is (or rather, will become over the course of the game) this continuity's take on the Vampire Killer whip.

It is medieval times, and Satan has cast a spell to seperate Heaven and the Earth, trapping the souls of the dead in the world of the living, and generally causing all sorts of supernatural shenanigans. Gabriel, at the behest of the Brotherhood, is after an ancient relic called the God Mask, which should enable its wearer to break Satan's spell. However, it's been broken into three pieces, each one held by one of the titular Lords of Shadow.

Said Lords are revealed over the course of the game to have once been members of the Brotherhood of Light themselves, who achieved such a degree of holiness that their spirits ascended to Heaven. However, they were so holy that they didn't even have to die for this to happen. Their spirits just... ascended, and left their bodies behind. Their fleshly, mortal bodies, which were now susceptible to all manner of vice and villainy and corruption, and lacking none of their former power. Thus were the Lords of Shadow born as dark reflections of their former holiness.

Along the way, Gabriel is occasionally assisted by another, older member of the Brotherhood, named Zobek. In addition to his passive observation, advice, and occasional hands-on assistance in Gabriel's quest (all meant to subtly goad him in particular directions for reasons initially left unexplained), Zobek also narrates between chapters.

Zobek is voiced by Patrick Stewart, but unfortunately, he just seems ever-so-slightly off in Lords of Shadow. He's not bad at all. It's just that he seems to always be a little off from what I think of as the right tone for the character and his lines. Robert Carlyle, who provides the voice of Gabriel, seems to be a bit more on-point.

Gabriel also has a dead wife to avenge, or ideally, to bring back to life, a feat he hopes to accomplish with the power of the God Mask. He also has (without his knowledge) a son, whose gestation and birth occurred during one of his long absences on Brotherhood business, and whose existence goes unmentioned until later entries in the series. The secret of this child's birth was deliberately kept from him by the Brotherhood and his wife (who was sworn to secrecy by them) due to some unspecified danger they saw in his future.

His journey takes him through the wilderness of a version of Europe that never existed, and then into the ruins of the ancient fictional civilization of Agharta, and to worse places yet. Background lore is dispensed by way of scrolls found on the bodies of fallen Brotherhood members that Gabriel encounters as he goes. All of this, as well as information about the various creatures Gabriel faces, items he acquires, and moves he learns, is kept in a tome he brings with him, which the player can read at their leisure. Most of it is stupidly, wonderfully overwrought.

Gabriel, we are eventually told, is God's chosen champion, empowered to confront Satan himself in order to undo his malevolent magic. Slowly but surely, Gabriel confronts each of the Lords of Shadow and retrieves their piece of the God Mask. This includes Zobek, we eventually discover, who is a necromancer of considerable power, and who is ultimately revealed to have escaped death despite his defeat.

Through the course of Lords of Shadow, Gabriel does indeed successfully beat up Satan and restore the world to its normal order. However, he is unable to resurrect his wife after all. Then the DLC gives him a new foe to face, and in order to do this, he must give up his humanity and become a vampire.

This culminates in him becoming the evil Dracula who served as the villain for the vast majority of the original Castlevania series.

Mirror of Fate, a spinoff released physically for the 3DS and digitally for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, occurs in the ensuing years and decades after Gabriel rises to become a vampiric overlord with ambitions of world domination.

We start off as Simon Belmont, who is unaware that Dracula was once a Belmont himself (in fact, Dracula is his grandfather). Simon is a fur-clad, muscular barbarian with very little in the way of characterization, who is aided from time to time (sometimes without his knowledge) by a pale, black-clad stranger running around the castle, who turns out to be Alucard, the son of Dracula. The two team up to stake Dracula, though as series fans already know, this isn’t going to be permanent.

Then the game shifts focus, and we get to play as Alucard. Alucard likewise has very little character growth or development. Then, when his section is finished, the game shifts focus again. We end the game playing as Trevor Belmont, Gabriel's son, a generation or so before Simon's time, and find out just exactly how bad Trevor's own mission against Dracula went.

When we come to the opening of Lords of Shadow 2, we find that Gabriel-as-Dracula is still God's chosen one, despite all the murder and blood-drinking and oppression that's just du rigeur for being a vampiric overlord. As such, he is immortal – virtually impossible to kill even by the standards of vampires.

But Lords of Shadow 2 proper begins in the modern era. Zobek, now a wealthy and powerful businessman with his fingers in a variety of pies, approaches Dracula in the cathedral where he has recently reawakened. But the lord of vampires persists in a diminished state. Weakened and desiccated, he looks like a walking corpse, a pale shadow of his former self, hating his eternal life but feeling compelled to go on with it in order to spite his enemies (Zobek, Satan, and God Himself). So he lingers.

Zobek offers him a way out. Satan's minions are increasing in power, gearing up for their master's return to the human world. As God's chosen one, Dracula alone is empowered to fight against him. In exchange, Zobek promises he can finally put an end to Dracula's life once and for all, as he has reassembled the broken Vampire Killer whip once wielded by Gabriel himself. And so, after a meal to freshen up (probably one of the most disturbing and problematic parts of the entire series), Dracula sets off through the city that now stands on the foundations of his ancient, massive castle from centuries ago.

Where the original Lords of Shadow was more plot-focused, Lords of Shadow 2 tries to be more character driven, focusing on Dracula's return to humanity – in spirit, if not physically. Unfortunately, the focus on story, not just in Lords of Shadow 2 but in the entire reboot series, is where it most falls flat.

The whole thing is difficult to take seriously much of the time. Granted, Castlevania as a whole is ridiculous and over the top. This has been true from the very first game, which was riddled with anachronisms (fighting Frankenstein's monster somewhere in the sixteenth or seventeenth century) and featuring Death himself as Dracula's right-hand man – well, right-hand personification of the abstract concept of the end of life – all throughout the series. Seriously, it isn't a proper Castlevania game if there isn't a boss fight against Death somewhere near the end, preferably one tough as nails. But that oddly makes a certain amount of sense. As a being who routinely flouts death by coming back to life once a century just as a matter of course (not even getting into all the times people resurrect him just because), Dracula might be expected to be on some kind of terms with the Grim Reaper.

But then the Lords of Shadow continuity introduces this whole Satan business, and I just...

No.

So the idea in the Lords of Shadow continuity is that Gabriel Belmont is for whatever reason God's champion, chosen to face down Satan and prevent him from taking over the world. And for some reason, I just have a hard time buying it. Having a character fight off lesser demons and mythological monsters? Sure, no problem. Having that character fighting off the servants of Satan in this world to prevent him from entering it, yeah, that's perfectly fine. But having a knock-down, drag-out with the big man, the capital-D Devil himself? Somehow, my brain draws a line there. Maybe it's because the game uses a generally Christian mythological framework, and Lords of Shadows' idea of Satan doesn't really mesh with that. You don't just throw down with the Father of Lies. I mean, yes, there are all sorts of folktales about conflicts between humankind and the devil, but none of them end in a brawl. That's just not how it goes; that's not what he's there for.

Which is a goddamn shame, because there are hints of something more interesting going on. Gabriel-as-Dracula in Lords of Shadow 2 has positioned himself as an enemy of God (he refers at least once to being a thorn in His side), mainly by going against God's stated purpose for him. The game opens pretty memorably with him in a conflict against the Brotherhood of Light, displaying his immunity to the holy powers they try to call down on him, screaming at one paladin in particular that his reliance upon God is his undoing, because despite Gabriel's defiance, he is still God's chosen one. There's also the idea that as Dracula, Gabriel is a necessary evil, that although he stands in opposition to God (over his anger at the fate God thrust upon him), he also stands as a bulwark against Satan, as well as Zobek, who has his own designs on the world.

And the games are gorgeous. All of them lean hard into a sort of quasi-gothic horror-fantasy aesthetic that I really would love to see more of. This is all quite apart from the technical capability on display, which is also top-notch. I love just running around in them, looking at the scenery and beating the unholy hell out of the monsters that come crawling out of it.

But it ultimately falls apart for being too self-serious. Castlevania has always had an odd silly streak. As mentioned, the original games took a bunch of mythological creatures and classic horror movie monsters, mashed them all together, and played the whole thing completely straight. They did this knowing how ridiculous it was, but doing it anyway because it was also completely fucking awesome. This is in the grand tradition of old-school video games, where the plot was less of a story that you got invested in and more of an excuse for all the things the game was going to have you do.

The problem is that this really works best when you do it in the style of those older games, when you don't draw too much attention to it or elaborate on it too much. I mean, let's break down the series mythology from the original continuity:

-- Since the Middle Ages, Dracula the vampire has been terrorizing Europe, returning to life once every century to do it. He summons to him all manner of creatures from myth and legend (and other fiction) in pursuit of this goal.

-- The Belmont clan, carriers of the Vampire Killer whip, are uniquely empowered to smite him. This they do, with as much reliability as Dracula's return, alongside a growing number of allies.

-- Sometimes there are cultists or other Bad People who resurrect Dracula for their own ends outside the usual once-per-century pattern, or other evil entities who borrow his power in some fashion.

And that's basically it. And it worked. It was simple, but it was effective, in the way that the stories of games like, say, Super Mario Bros. or the early Sonic the Hedgehog games were. It wasn't built to handle a lot of lore and characterization, and in fact it kind of falls apart under the weight of those things. You start trying to give Castlevania a really deep, involving story, and that just exposes how ridiculous the whole thing actually is, how shaky the framework, how unsteady the foundation is to build lore upon. You can hear its light, almost slapped-together framework creaking under the weight of all that load.

We see this happening in the original series. Symphony of the Night, and the portable entries that followed in its footsteps, crammed in just about all the story that the games were really set up to handle. Then we get to Lament of Innocence, which tries hard to justify Dracula's motives and tendency to return from death to fulfill them, the Belmont clan's struggle against him, and all the rest. And the real problem is that it's totally unnecessary, and the attempt to sell it as high drama with this inherent silliness in its premise just continually falls flat.

To a certain extent, I get the perceived need to do this. We seem to have left behind the era when major, big-budget games can be just fun. They have to be these big, trampling, sober, serious things now, all high stakes and serious business. Most of the games that revolve around being fun tend to find themselves in the vanishing B-tier of games, or else indie titles. Or the exclusive province of Nintendo. There doesn't seem to be room in the industry any more for big-budget games that don't take themselves entirely seriously.

So what does Lords of Shadow, as a sub-series, get right?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

Despite its missteps with the story, the world looks gorgeous. I'd love to see a remastered version that features the games running at 60 frames per second in 1080p, and maybe sharpens the textures up a bit, but honestly, it looks pretty much fine as it is. The characters and environments are nicely detailed, and I love the overall sense of design. Especially toward the middle of the first game, where the levels tend toward "Gothic, but totally over the top".

The beginning of Lords of Shadow seems a little questionable, mainly because of the focus on purely fantasy creatures: goblins, trolls, etc.; things that don't really have much to do with the horror imagery Castlevania typically goes for. It's not bad, it just doesn't quite fit right.

But as the game goes on, it dives more into horror territory, with werewolves, vampires, and more outlandish creatures still. Boss battles are giant setpieces which are plenty challenging, and usually end with a series of quick-time events that work you through an ultimately brutal but satisfying take-down of the boss in question.

The sense of substantiality, of heaviness, that I usually associate with the classic Castlevania heroes is present and accounted for. With his broad shoulders and muscular physique, Gabriel evokes the deliberate movements of the heroes of the classic Castlevania games. And his attacks land with a satisfying impact, again hitting that feeling of "considered and deliberate" that I associate with the classic titles. At the same time, he's actually quite light on his feet. While that still makes him a little different from the Belmonts of old, it makes sense with the way the game's designed. Unlike those classic games, most of the enemies don't die in just one or two hits. Like many hack-and-slash games, Gabriel's movement through the game's areas is very stop-and-go, stretches of travel and puzzle-solving punctuated by combat encounters with multiple enemies (or one major enemy), each of which takes some work to bring down. Faster and more complex maneuvers are necessary to avoid being obliterated.

There are also a few callbacks here and there to the previous series. Although Gabriel is a completely original character to the series, his design is clearly meant to evoke the look of Simon Belmont as he appeared in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Structurally, Lords of Shadow borrows from the more linear structure old-school, classic style of Castlevania games. The first Lords of Shadow follows in the classic mold more than either of its sequels in the rebooted continuity. Lords of Shadow 2 features a seamlessly interconnected environment, but in the end, the player is still directed through it in a mostly linear fashion, with the optional digressions being just that.

Mirror of Fate, meanwhile, is the least classic-like of the three, instead hewing much closer to the Metroidvania style, but it's pretty shallow as Metroidvanias go. It apes the style of Igarashi's 2D predecessors, but lacks much of the real substance. It's not bad, but it's sort of a letdown. It’s disappointing mainly in the way that it presents itself as a Metroidvania game, but then... isn't, really. The whole thing is so on-rails that most of the major backtracking feels forced, and the backtracking that isn't is so minor that you can safely skip over it. It's more of a straight-up action game dressed up like a Metroidvania, as if they did it because that's just what's expected of a 2D Castlevania these days. Which is a shame, becasue MercurySteam can make a good Metroidvania – they went on to do it with Metroid: Samus Returns (though, admittedly, they were working from the template of a pre-existing game).

Interestingly, one of the classic series features that doesn't get touched on in Lords of Shadow is the music. Over the years, the classic Castlevania titles have built up a variety of iconic pieces that people tend to expect to hear. "Vampire Killer", "Wicked Child", and "Bloody Tears" are just some of the more famous ones. These often get worked into the various sequels and remakes in one form or another. Lords of Shadow mostly lacks these, barring a music-box rendition of "Vampire Killer" in an unlikely spot. In fact, the soundtrack is mainly comprised of generic orchestral pieces which are nice – they swell and pound in all the right places to evoke the appropriate mood – but not really melodic or memorable.

A number of fans of the series were upset by the lack of classic tracks. While I can understand the general complaints about the soundtrack on its own merits, I do find it somewhat overblown. It would've been nice, sure. But plenty of other well-regarded games in the classic seriess, such as the particularly revered Symphony of the Night, did without the classic tunes from the series history, and nobody complained then.

Bits of original series lore also pop up here and there, recycled and repurposed to match the tone and style of the new continuity, as a wink and nod from the developer to the fans. But in the end, it almost feels more frustrating than anything else. These bits of the original series that poke up into view here and there seem to serve as reminders of the game that I wanted, bolted onto the game that we got. I was looking for something dark and grim and gloriously over the top, borderline goofy in its melodrama.

And that, I think, is most of my problem with Lords of Shadow, as a continuity unto itself. There are some great setpieces, and the combat is fine, and the games look about as good as it's possible for last-gen console hardware to get. And the story is gloriously over the top. It just... It takes itself too seriously. It gets in its own way, falls over itself, and just generally doesn't land right. It looks right, it just doesn't feel quite right. The tone is off, and it dwells on itself too much. Classic Castlevania would do something over the top and ridiculous and awesome, and then move on. Lords of Shadow dwells on it, lingers on it, and it’s neither deep enough nor solid enough to support that level of seriousness. I think most times that it really should have been its own intellectual property.

It's better than the 3D Castlevania games to come before it. But Castlevania still deserves better.

It's a shame that, with Konami being what they are now, we're probably never going to get it.

#halloween #castlevania #lords of shadow #lords of shadow 2 #mirror of fate #video games #games #video gaming #gaming

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sun-writer-blog · 7 years ago

Text

The Story

AKA The 3 Days Mike saw Eleven and the One day he finally asked her out.

Also this was definitely inspired by that one time the cast sung together

I hope you enjoy! I’ve been working on his for a little bit and it sort of got away from me but oh well. Requests are still open, and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

Day One

Each imperfection made her human. Imperfect, but uniquely beautiful.

Mike shifted his headphones but didn’t quit scribbling in his composition book. He needed to get the ideas out of his head and onto paper before they were lost forever. He hadn’t written anything in a long time - something that a creative writing major had a lot of trouble explaining to his faculty advisor - and this morning at breakfast he had finally found some inspiration. It came in the form of a girl eating waffles alone.

Quiet didn’t quite describe her well enough. There seemed to be a purpose in her quietness, as if she wanted to hide behind the background noise and blend into the crowd. Her eyes reminded him of a yule log burning in his mother’s fireplace and the smell of cinnamon at the Byers’ place during winter. He remembered how often authors wrote about winter negatively, and he imagined that they would have written about this girl in that way. But her coldness did not rebuke him. It was the coldness of snow gently falling and the entire forest taking a sigh after a long year of work.

Mike was with his friends when he saw her. Lucas and Dustin were arguing about forming a band and who would play what instrument. They both wanted to play bass, and had already established that Mike would play drums. Will wanted nothing to do with the band because he didn’t want to sing in front of people, but Lucas insisted because he was the only one who could actually sing. Mike had checked out of the conversation about halfway through it, instead watching this girl as she moved through the ridiculously long lines of half-awake college students trying to get a meal after a weekend of partying. She seemed to be the only one fully conscious. Her movements were graceful, and Mike wondered if she had ever danced ballet. His sister Nancy had been in recitals when she was younger, and Mike wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy.

Her gaze caught his as she was cutting into her waffle. Mike blinked and smiled sheepishly. The girl slammed her knife into the waffle while making direct eye contact, then smiled sarcastically.

“What do you think, Mike?” Lucas questioned suddenly, bringing him back into the conversation.

“Y-yeah. Let’s do it.”

“Well that settles it, Mike was the tie breaker.”

When Mike looked up again, she was gone. He left the cafeteria early and grabbed his brown book-bag hurriedly, nearly sprinting out of the building and towards his writing place. It was a tree in the nature park outside of the gates of his university - a place where lots of people went running. It was the kind of cold outside that hurt Mike’s bones when he pulled out his leather writing book and a purple pen. It was worth it to write this down.

Every year the majors had to show that they were making progress towards a portfolio of their own work, and so far Mike had only a couple of random short stories and half-hearted poems. He enjoyed fantasy - from all of the days of playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends as a kid - but he also enjoyed realism and romanticism. He had no idea how to blend all of these ideas, and the pressure and frustration had stopped him from writing anything new for weeks. All of those worries went away as he wrote.

Now, he had a muse.

Day Two.

When he gazed at the stars, she smiled at their beauty. When she smelled a rose, he breathed in its radiance.

Her hair was such a deep brown that it appeared black. But Mike knew that black was the absence of color, and that didn’t properly capture this girl. He had seen her again when they were putting up posters for the band’s first performance on the quad in front of the College of Arts. Armed with a staple gun, Mike had just returned from showing a rough draft of his first story to his faculty advisor, who had complimented his work. It was a sci-fi story about a group of kids who were looking for their friend who had gone missing, but instead found a girl who had been kidnapped and experimented on by the government. “Keep working and flushing out the ideas,” his professor had written. “I would love to see where this goes.”

That had been a week ago, and since then Mike’s nights were filled with music and creating costumes and thinking about that girl. He had asked Will about her - mostly because he knew that Will was the only one who wouldn’t make fun of him for asking about someone - and Will mentioned that her name was Jane and she was in his Abnormal Psychology class. He hadn’t seen her at breakfast since, and even if he did, Mike was sure he wouldn’t say hello to her. There were a million scenarios running through his head, but there weren’t any where he had the confidence to say hello. That’s why he wrote: to hide behind the pages of books.

The hiding apparently didn’t work well enough, because when Mike went into the coffee shop by his dorm to put up some posters and maybe try and write for a bit someone tapped his shoulder. “You have a band?”

Mike looked down and froze. It was her. She was wearing a black waitress’ apron and was armed with pen and notepad. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail but a single curl had fallen from her bangs. She tucked it behind her ear nonchalantly. He realized too slowly that he was staring and tried to play it off with a forced laugh. “Um, yeah! We’re called The Upside-Downs. I’m Mike.” He stuck out his hand to shake, and the waitress raised an eyebrow in hesitation. The corners of her lip turned up slightly as she greeted him in return.

“I’m Eleven. And yes, that’s a nickname.” Mike hadn’t expected that, but somehow it fit her personality perfectly. An odd name, an odd number, for an odd girl. A prime number for someone completely unique. “Why that name?”

Mike shrugged. “It was either that or The Party. Like, from D&D.”

“What’s D&D?” Mike must have looked hurt, because she started blushing and bit her lip nervously. “Should I know this?”

“Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a role playing game. It’s so much fun, my friends and I played it all the time when we were younger. We started a club on campus. You should come.”

Eleven smiled sweetly and pointed at the posters in Mike’s hand. “Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get me to go to your concert, not your club?”

“Oh! Yeah, you should definitely come to that, too.”

“Oh really? Why’s that?”

“Well, if you go, I’ll make sure to dedicate a song to you. Promise.”

The girl seemed to think that over for a moment, a pleased look on her face. “You got yourself a deal, Mike.” She started to walk away, and with his heart beating in his chest Mike called out to her.

“What are you doing tonight?”

She turned around and gestured to the shop. “Working, why?”

Mike hesitated for a moment, and it was just long enough for him to back out of doing something he really wanted to do. Instead, he smiled and waved like he did the first time he saw her. “Nothing. I’ll see you at the concert, El.” She smiled and raised an eyebrow at him, and he could have sworn she let out a little sigh as he left the coffee shop.

He went straight home to write all night. He never wanted to forget the way her voice sounded: like the quiet rushing of waves on a beach.

Day Three

I don’t think I decided her happiness was more important than mine. It was decided on my behalf, by a judge who obviously knew it was the most severe sentence.

The concert was that Saturday night. The previous day, The Upside-Downs had spent hours practicing together. They were just going to do covers to some popular songs since this was their first performance, but Will wanted to make sure everything was absolutely perfect. Classic Will Byers, the perfectionist. Lucas had finally decided he wanted to be the guitar player, which left Dustin as the bass guitarist. Mike had calluses from playing the drums so long, but Will was a cruel master and demanded they run through each song five times before the day was over. Each time, Mike focused a little more on the lyrics. He wondered which one he should dedicate to Eleven.

They set up on the small stage on the quad, but not without drawing the attention of everyone on campus. They were dressed in costumes of their D&D characters, which was apparently the tie-breaker that Mike had decided on. “You sure we shouldn’t abort mission?” Dustin whispered as they carried their instruments out into the cold October air.

“No way, man. This is our thing” Lucas reassured. “Trust me.”

The drums took the longest amount of time, but soon they got that set up and a small crowd showed up to hear what they had to offer. Mike searched through the faces, but there was no sign of his muse anywhere. Maybe she wouldn’t come. He wasn’t sure if that made him relieved or more nervous.

Then it was 9:00 and it was time to start. “Good evening! We’re The Upside-Downs and you’re in for an adventure tonight!” Dustin called out to the crowd. They had all agreed that Dustin was the best at introducing the band because, unlike Will or Mike, he wasn’t shy at all. “My name is Dustin, and i’m your warrior. Will the Wise is your singer tonight, and we have Lucas your ranger and guitarist. And last but not least, give it up for our Dungeon Master Mike on drums!” There was obligatory clapping, and Mike adjusted himself in his seat. This would be a long night if they didn’t like the music. “Let’s do it.”

The first song they played was “Rocket Man” by Elton John. It was a great ice breaker, because it proved that Will Byers could sing his heart out as well as play the keyboard. It started off quiet, but by the chorus Will had really found his confidence. It wasn’t very drum heavy, which was fine by Mike. He was too busy searching the crowd for a glimpse of Eleven, but there wasn’t any sign of her. He was glad for the next song, because Queen was one of his favorite bands and he could actually invest himself in “Don’t stop me now”. Mike thought about music a lot like writing a story. It took you on a journey, a little adventure away from reality for a moment. He loved that about it. Lucas finally got a chance to show his skills in the guitar solo and Mike had to admit, Lucas was great.

Now the crowd was getting pumped up, and The Upside-Downs switched to play “Livin on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi. This is when Dustin came most alive because he was the guy who got all of the synth-sounds to work. He had run all of the controls to a black box and pedal by his foot. He nearly stomped on it. The crowd went crazy on this song, especially when Dustin, Will, and Lucas all joined together to sing. After this song everything was quiet, and it was time for the “compromise” song. Since Dustin couldn’t play guitar, he got to choose one song all by himself. He chose “Carry on Wayward Son” specifically so that Lucas would have a hard time and Dustin would have to ditch his bass to grab an extra guitar. The group wasn’t sure they could pull it off. Will brought his keyboard and microphone over to where Mike was playing the drums and gave him a worried look as they began.

The crowd loved it. Lucas and Dustin had their own little performance in the front of the stage with dueling guitars. After the initial guitar session, Dustin grabbed his bass back from a stand, and proceeded to switch back and forth throughout the rest of the song. Will even had a little solo with his keyboard, and Mike was glad that they had practiced over and over again.

Then it was the final song, and Mike let out a shaky breath as Dustin introduced it. “Now this one is for someone special that our drummer has been talking to. It’s called ‘Every Breath You Take’, and we promise it’s not creepy.” The crowd laughed a bit - the song had been number one on every chart when they were kids, and everyone knew it. But it wasn’t until someone locked eyes with him that he felt the song was the right choice.

Day 4

Every moment with you lasted forever, and those forevers passed by like the wind through autumn leaves.

“Morning, Rockstar. What would you like to drink?”

Mike laughed. In the few days since the concert he hadn’t seen Eleven, and she had left right after the final song had played. He had gone to the coffee shop on a whim, holding a stack of papers helped together by three paper clips. It was a decently long manuscript - the first one he had produced for his portfolio. In purple pen he had written across the top “For El.” He handed her the copy and smiled. “Nothing right now, thanks.”

Her hair was down and in curls, and Mike wondered if the universe wanted to distract him on purpose. She looked down on the papers. “What’s this?”

“It’s something I’ve been working on for a while. Talking to you gave me some inspiration, so I thought i should give this to you.”

El blushed a little and twirled her pen in her hands. “Is that why you were staring at me at breakfast?” Mike’s face flushed, but before he opened his mouth she laughed. “Don’t worry. I thought it was cute.”

Cute. She said cute. And now she was biting her lip and still twirling her pen. “What time do you get off work?”

“7 tonight. Why?”

“I have to teach you Dungeons and Dragons. You can’t go on not knowing what it is.”

Eleven considered that for a moment, and with a soft smile she agreed.

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castorre · 7 years ago

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The Quieting of the Castrum

A super self-indulgent fic I’ve been trying to finish. It involves the Garlean AU where Eclair and Mory are scientists working on the Resonance project, but Eclair decides to go with Aulus to Castrum Abania. This is based off of a certain ask meme.

Sirens wailed, signalling the breach of Castrum Abania’s innermost levels. Scientists of all kinds sought either the single remaining transport or attempted to flee into the underground bunkers.

Of all the things to happen, when Aulus had been called to Ala Mhigo to speak with the crown prince. How was she to help her fellow scientists? What was she to do except wait for her own demise? Eclair sat, curled into a corner, holding her knees to her chest. She would be found eventually. They would surely seek the servers for the Castrum, hoping to find the information abound about both the Empire and the experiments which had taken place there.

A small bleep of sound recalled Eclair to the one terminal in the small room. She tapped on the keyboard, entering the requisite information.

[Accepted]

[Cloud Upload Complete]

She breathed heavily, the heat of the servers stifling the room. The cooling had been one of the things necessary to disengage once the Alliance began pushing further into the Castrum. They had to reserve those small stores of energy.

[Delete Server Cache?]

[Accepted]

[Working....]

A loud bang startled the duskwight from the terminal. Yelling, more banging.

“Fuck me…” She glared back at the terminal, just as it reached completion. “Good, just a little more. Work with me.”

[Format Server Mainframe? (This will delete all data from the server storage memory)]

[Accepted]

[Working…]

The heavy metal door creaked. Another loud bang, sending flames sputtering through the small spaces between the wall and the door. Explosives? She would soon be found out, but all there was left was to pray, to whomever would hear her, that her task would finish before they found her.

She retreated to the darkest corner of the room, hidden behind a mass of wires and steel and magitek. She ran her hands through her coat carefully. Twas unfortunate that she had not been in the labs when the initial sirens sounded. She would have at least been able to arm herself with the multitude of acids or oxygen-aided explosives they had developed.

The door shook, finally giving way to whatever explosives they had used to splinter the metal. She shrank against the wall, hoping they would only give a cursory glance over the room before leaving.

“Well, what do we ‘ave here?” The distinct Ala Mhigan accent gave Eclair worry. She knew that meant trouble for her if they found her. After all, they would be blood thirsty after their victory over the Castrum.

“Suppose i’s some sort o’ terminal. Nothin’ real interestin’ except to the commanders.” A second man, one who stepped a bit too close to the long file of drives Eclair was hiding behind. She held her breath.

[Complete]

“Eh? Looks like someone was in here not long ago. Not that I know much about these Garlean junkers. But they don’ just do shite on their own do they?”

“It’s a magitek terminal, o’ course they do you utter dodo. Come on, there ain’t nothin’ in here to kill.”

“All these science types have been borin’ anyways. No challenge.” The two men’s voices faded away beyond the doorway. Eclair finally took several deep breaths, her trembling fingers fumbling to help her stand. She obviously couldn’t just stay in the room…

She peaked beyond the doorway, her eyes widening in horror at the mass of bodies lining the halls. The Alliance was pulling the corpses of the science staff out for disposal, most likely. Distant explosions, screams, yells, so many things that mired her senses. The stench of the smoke that hung around was not just that of explosives, but of burning flesh as well. At least the flame traps had worked as intended, she supposed.

The hall outside, besides the bodies, seemed relatively clear. Every now and again she would hear the distant footfalls of what surely must be Alliance or Resistance. She took a deep breath and stuck to the darker corridors, hoping to make it to any of the communication hubs deeper in the castrum. She knew the place intimately, and could surely outmaneuver any outsiders, who were likely to run into magitek sentries or other traps. She continued, ever alert, bound for the nearest safe room.

Meanwhile, none too far away, in the Ala Mhigan palace:

“Lord Zenos…” Aulus mal Asina appeared from behind the throne, removing his hand from the linkpearl at his ear.

“What is it, Aulus?” Zenos seemed preoccupied, his fingers dragging through the fabric at his waist.

“The mainframe has been breached..”

“What is the status?”

“She managed to delete it, my lord.”

“Good. Tis a shame that we will lose one of the few competent people we have, is it not?” Zenos’ voice remained ever the same. It was as if he was referring to a stranger and not someone who had helped the entirety of the aether and resonance projects.

“Most… unfortunate.” Aulus sounded more dejected than Zenos would have thought. Then again, he had always wished for the woman to follow him wherever he went. Perhaps he had found a kindred spirit, someone much like Zenos’ own Warrior of Light.

"Don't fret, Aulus. Should you perish, I'm sure you too will be promoted."

“My Lord.” Aulus’ voice wavered, “She asked if you intended to send rescue teams or units to assist the survivors here.”

“Hmm? Survivors... After the substantial losses in the fringes and the peaks, sparing the guard here would be most foolish, do you not agree, mal Asina? The Alliance will surely direct their forces upon Porta Praetoria next and set up their final charge against us. Castrum Abania is a lost cause.”

“... Very well, I shall relay that then, Lord Zenos.”

“Asina. Do also relay something else for me.” He peered up through darkened eyes, half-lidded, “I shall inform her little sister.”

“Yes, my lord.” Aulus found it hard to walk away without demanding his staff be given more respect than to leave them to die. Surely Zenos had known this was coming. Why else would the viceroy have recalled him so suddenly, and so conveniently?

He held his hand up to his ear, a sigh passing through his lips before he spoke.

“Eclair, Zenos has no intention of sending a search and rescue team. Nor does he intend to send even an escort for those escaping into the lochs. If you manage to find yourself through Porta Praetoria before the Alliance… you are faced with a invariably dangerous journey to the palace.”

“Aulus, I appreciate the concern… I will do my best to save those who are left in our team. I’ve seen things, terrible things, Aulus. I don’t know how many of us there are left, but I’ll open the gate to Porta Praetoria. If there is anyone left, I swear I will help them. I refuse to sit by and die.”

“I wish you luck, my… friend.” Aulus had never really had friends. If anyone were close enough to be called one, surely it would be his assistant of nearly a decade.

“Thank you, Aulus. If… if this is the last we ever speak, please take care of yourself. Don’t huff anymore of those spray chemicals, alright? They’re not good for you, you know.” She laughed before they exchanged their farewells over the linkpearl. If Zenos wouldn’t help, there was perhaps one more option she could try.

She keyed in a number that she had never had to call before, one she had been given only for an emergency.

“Your Radiance?”

“No, he is in a meeting at the moment. May I take a message for him?” The voice was one she recognized, but barely. Likely a scribe of some sort.

“No, is there any way you could call for him, for even a moment?”

“Absolutely not. The fact that you would even ask about such a thing- I will take a name and a mes-”

“No, I don’t believe it will matter by the time he’s out.” She ended the call before the other person could respond. Of course, in her last moments, she was being deflected by diplomacy.

Very well, if that was how it was going to be… She pulled her coat off, ridding herself of the useless weight. It held too little protection to be worth how much it weighed. She walked to the door, pressing her ear to the outside. Nothing. The shaft she had traveled down had been barren then. Though it was likely the alliance would come by the wing at any moment.

One last time on the terminal. She keyed out several numbers, connected to linkpearls. “Attention, this is lux E’vila. Is there anyone still out there?”

Silence…

“Once again, this is lux E’vila. Is there anyone still alive?”

The silence was deafening. There was no way she was the only one, was there? All of the people she had come to know, like a second family away from the capital. They were all…? That realization hit her like a mountain of bricks. Thank the twelve that Mory had stayed back home. She should have as well. She should have listened to Varis’ concerns, to Claudia’s. But she was too stubborn. She wanted so much to see the project to completion. And what had it done? Created a monster of a viceroy, killed far more than it aided, and for all of it… she was left to die by someone she considered family. How could he? She knew he wasn’t who he had been, but, to leave her there to die as if she were nothing.

A loud bang, and several more, shook the entire building. What exactly… no, a ram? To blast through the door leading to the final path to the Lochs, most likely. Had they already reached so far? She placed her hand against the pad of the door, and peered around the edge when it opened.

Alliance everywhere. How had she not heard them? Her eyes widened at the realization… the communications rooms were all sound padded. In her certainty that she could reach the outside, she had locked herself in a void, unable to hear just how dangerous the situation outside was becoming.

Loud voices came from right down the hall, and as she went to shut the door, all of the backup generators running the castrum finally died. Suddenly, she was lost in the pitch black. And just as quickly, she was unsure of how to progress from here. All of her peers were dead. The Alliance was breaking into the Lochs at that very instant. She shrank against the inside wall, her fingers trembling as she faced what was almost certainly the end. There were no survivors to the Alliance, not this time, at least. It was plain they were unforgiving, unwilling to even gaol the unarmed, opting to slay at will. Savages is what the Garleans called them. And, perhaps, Eclair agreed. For she had never seen a worse sight than that which she had quietly stepped through, holding in her cries of rage at the dead around her.

Despite all they had done in the resonance project, despite the experimentation - she had never meant to harm anyone. She hadn’t intended to. And she always worked to make sure the subjects were as comfortable as possible.

The voices came close, on just the other side of the wall. Eclair held her breath, choking back tears again. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a switchblade and releasing it to a prone position.

It was from there that everything seemed to slip from reality into a strange haze of action and consequence. She waited for the voices to go past the door, before trying to dart to the next hallway she could remember. The doors were locked. All of the doors would be inaccessible now, of course…

She let out a curse, perhaps a little too loudly. And found herself at the unfortunate end of a group of Alliance soldiers with the only exit past them.

“Well, what have we? A Garlean?” A light was shone on her face, causing her to squint.

“Hardly. I am blue and have pointed ears. Though I suppose I could pretend if you really wanted me to.”

“A traitor then? Even worse if you ask me.” A second soldier growled, already reaching for his weapon.

“You lot come barging in here, killing everyone. Not asking a single damn question. Killing unarmed people, killing people who were taken from their homes by war, killing people born to parents of annexed nations. Killing your own kin and blood just like the savages they say you are. Like they say WE are. And you’ve done naught but prove them right because you bastards slaughtered a castrum filled with mainly non-Garlean personnel. You killed the staff that was left when the Viceroy recalled the important purebloods back to Ala Mhigo.”

The soldiers glanced at each other through the dim light before drawing closer to her. The first glared at her, “So you are an Imperial then? You didn’t have to go spilling your guts like that.”

“Someone has to. Because, for some reason, your Alliance leaders have about as much wit between them as a spriggan. When they decide to raid the next castrum, maybe they can remember that there are people that never wanted to be there in the first place.”

“Traitor!” The soldier, a fellow elezen, lunged at her with his blade. She barely even tried to dodge it, taking the blade right through the viscera. Perhaps it was because she knew, even back in the mainframe, that this would be where she died. None of the staff had deserved their deaths. None.

“You’re right. I am a traitor, gladly. Because the best Eorzea had to offer me was beatings. And now you offer me what?” Blood soaked her clothing, spreading into her pants. A fast motion, unnerving in its silence, found Eclair’s switchblade in the throat of the soldier. He fell back onto the ground with a wet gargle. “Death?”

She stepped over the body, still with the blade through her abdomen. It seemed as if it phased her little at all. For some reason, the soldiers were backing away from her. Did she seem frightening for some reason?

The two others drew their blades, shakily. The woman’s eyes, was she one of those experiments like they saw in the bottom floors? Like the dead bodies that lay in mutilated heaps.

“What in the seven hells - kill her!” Even saying that, neither of the two were keen on lunging at the woman with a sword through her tip to hilt and eyes pink as a carnation. It was only when she finally stood within touching distance that they drove their blades into her multiple times. And yet, she took the hits without a sound, as if she were a phantom, unfeeling. A pool of blood formed under her, growing wider by the second.

“Ishgard… Gridania… all of Eorzea. A heap of garbage waiting for the incinerator. Just like my friends that you murdered.” Everything was suddenly quiet, when she had nearly pried one man’s head from his neck with the switchblade. The other ran, leaving his fallen comrades and his sword behind.

She walked back into the hallway she had come from. The swords hit the floor with a sharp rattling after she pulled them from her gut. It was strange, this new sensation. How was she still going? That should have surely killed her. And yet, her body felt more at ease than it ever had. For once, nothing hurt, her mind didn’t race. She had noticed, in smaller scale, that her wounds would heal much faster. That pulled muscles didn’t stay that way for long. But this was a totally different kind of resonance. Not at all like what Zenos or Mory had.

All at once, that feeling of euphoric calm left, and the shooting pain brought her to kneel. Had she run out of aether? It mattered little now. She had counted herself dead already, so what else was there to care about? She would be free. But that brought little comfort considering the shock her body was going through. Her instincts told her to fight. But there was no fighting this. Nothing left to aid herself with in the pitch black, surrounded by a legion’s worth of murderers.

There was only one regret. And as her eyes closed for the last time, she swore she heard Regula calling out to her.

#ask meme #long post #rp writing #garlean au

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digitalspheres-blog · 6 years ago

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4. the unavoidable troll

There is obviously a tonne of issues with online trolls and bullying, but my biggest issue is the almost normalisation of it all these days as its just. so. common. 40% of all internet users reported that they have experienced some form of online harassment, whether that be ‘harmlessly’ called a name or actually physically threatened. 40% is a huge number, especially when you consider the number, and range, of internet users.

Cambridge Dictionary defines trolls as “someone who leaves an intentionally annoying message on the internet” with the intention of causing trouble and/or gaining attention, and in my opinion, someone who is also a ‘keyboard warrior’. Our lovely keyboard warriors are those who act tough and post aggressive threats online however would not perform or act the same in reality, whether that is due to physical weakness, fear/hate of confrontation or just a lack of bravery - they simply hide behind their keyboard.

source: https://gifimage.net/keyboard-warrior-gif-13/

Trolling is an impulsive form of online communication that makes the perpetrator feel powerful and the attention they can receive brings them a sense of status. When looking into the psychology behind trolls it is more often than not concluded that they are making up for superiority, emotions, and attentiveness that they lack in their real lives, searching for some sort of validation and an outlet for their built-up anger. Trolls find comfort in the anonymity of the internet, using their temporary loss of identity to give them the confidence to post whatever negative comment they wish as physical and real consequences are rare, at least for them.

This, however, is often not the case for those receiving the comments. A lot of the time troll comments can be dismissed as some lonely person with too much time on their hands just trying to drag others down to their level, but it is far from rare for such comments to also cause lasting effects. A 2018 study found that cyberbullying makes people twice as likely to cause self-harm and/or attempt suicide, and it was also reported that around 750 Aussie teens ages 13-17 committed suicide as a result of online harassment.

source: https://giphy.com/gifs/dylan-o-brien-phone-the-internship-qq10h0SiaHYas

Whilst I’ve never personally experienced trolls, I have definitely witnessed them, especially on large Instagram accounts and YouTube videos. Instagram is, of course, a very visual platform and one that frequently showcases personal images to the public, giving trolls a lot of easy-to-pick-at content. People often forget that celebrities and social media influencers are real people with real emotions and instead see them as two-dimensional characters, resulting in little to no guilt when posting rude comments on personal features, attributes or events occurring in their lives. YouTube is notorious for its comment section as trolls are regularly their most brutal due to the large scale and less personal account (as a viewer) side of YouTube. The platform is definitely a place where trolls easily get away with their actions as YouTubers dismiss these comments and rarely respond or add fuel to the flame.

source: https://gawker.com/you-suck-ass-drake-a-taxonomy-of-thirsty-celebrity-ins-1648733769

Staying on top of trolls and negative comments is almost impossible and at this point is hardly even attempted. I think the fact that we’re so accustomed and unaffected by constant negativity intentionally directed at people says a lot about our current society, but I, unfortunately, have no solution to the problem, except for relying on each platform to identify and delete these users - which I will give them credit for already trying their best to do.

#mda20009 #trolls #cyberbully #socialmedia

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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What They Left Behind: Toons, the Snurfer and ‘Macho Man’

Obituaries in The New York Times give account of the lives of the people around us — what they accomplished and how they lived — and reading them can be an exercise in discovering, or rediscovering, the marvelous things they left behind.

Here is a sampling of such legacies from recent weeks.

A World of Color

Carlos Cruz-Diez luxuriated in color. His installations, light constructions and paintings were suffused with rich hues that brought viewers into what this Venezuelan artist called “chromatic situations.” His work appeared on the hull of a ship, an airport floor, a Los Angeles crosswalk. He was one of Latin America’s most important artists in the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

An Early Snowboard

Sherm Poppen worked in the welding supply business, but it was by joining two pieces of wood that he made his most lasting mark. To entertain his rambunctious daughters on a snowy Christmas Day, he bolted together two of their child-size skis to create a stand-up board that they could use to surf the snowy sand dunes behind their lakeside cottage. Thus was born the “Snurfer,” which in a later incarnation developed by others became the snowboard.

A Photograph

Barbara Crane was a photographer whose eye transformed the ordinary — an apartment building, a scene of party chitchat, a fire escape — into an abstract image. Her work could evoke a spectrum of sensations, from the playful to the ominous. Over a 70-year career, she focused on Chicago, with one of her best-known series named after the Loop.

A Song

The name of the song is unprintable here, but the award is not: It’s called an Emmy, and Katreese Barnes won two of them. One was for a risqué parody of an R&B song that became a viral internet hit while she was musical director for “Saturday Night Live.” She and another musician wrote the music for the number, featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg. But she did far more in her career than write that one song. She played keyboards and alto saxophone, sang, composed, produced and worked with major stars, including Roberta Flack, Sting and Chaka Khan.

A Disco Sensation

It was late one night at the Anvil, a gay nightclub in Manhattan’s West Village. Henry Belolo, a music producer, and his business partner noticed a bartender wearing a headdress and loincloth and another patron in cowboy garb. “We said, ‘My God, look at those characters.’ So we started to fantasize on what were the characters of America. The mix, you know, of the American man.” They ultimately dreamed up the Village People, a disco group whose members represented a sailor, a police officer, a cowboy, an American Indian, a biker and a construction worker. Nothing screams 1979 more joyously than their songs “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.”

A Poem

The path to a child’s mind and heart, Lee Bennett Hopkins believed, was through poetry. He published scores of anthologies of verse directed at young readers. But he also wrote poems himself. One of them goes:

It’s poem o’clock.

Time for a rhyme —

tick-tock

ding-dong

bing-bong

chime.

Poems are

wistful

wish-filled

sublime —

Come.

Unlock a minute

for

poetry time.

An Installation

Nancy Reddin Kienholz, working closely with her husband, the sculptor Edward Kienholz, scoured junk shops and flea markets to harvest materials for elaborate installations and tableaux. The works were jarring, sometimes disturbing and often focused on society’s troubling issues — child abuse, sexism and racism.

Toons

The movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” released in 1988, drew on the traditions of film noir, but it broke new ground by mingling live actors with animated characters on the screen. The animated folk, some established and some new, were known in the movie’s universe as toons, and the man credited with their “performances” was Richard Williams. He received a special Oscar and shared another for visual effects.

An Illustrated 9/11

The comic book artist Ernie Colón drew Richie Rich and a warrior princess named Amethyst, but he stepped out of that mode to illustrate an adaptation of “The 9/11 Commission Report.” It became a best seller.

Sahred From Source link Sports

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maysoper · 6 years ago

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Setting The Record Straight

Since the CWHL closed its doors over a week ago, there have been many who have demanded that the NHL "do the right thing", step up, and fund women's hockey. Long before the CWHL closed its doors, the NHL and Gary Bettman have maintained they would not and will not get involved in the operations of either or any women's hockey league unless there were no other options available for women to play professional hockey. Including today, Bettman has held firm on his stance regarding women's hockey despite all the cries for them to help "grow the game" and whatever other catchphrases and colloquialisms fans use in their pleas for assistance. Deaf ears is all they're finding. Today, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman appeared on Sportsnet 590 and Rogers Sportsnet on a program called Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown, Stephen Brunt, and Richard Deitsch to discuss a number of issues including that of the status of women's hockey currently. Before we get to the interview, it's imperative that one be very aware that professional hockey is a business with the NHL being a very lucrative and profit-driving business. And like any other business, the NHL is not into giving out handouts or investing its hard-earned dollars into something it neither owns nor controls. This is how it remains profitable, and the NHL continues to invest in its own brand in order to ensure that year-over-year profitability. I have isolated the 7:20 of Gary Bettman speaking about women's hockey, and it is posted below. I'll let you listen as you read through the rest of this article. Before grabbing your keyboard and going full "online warrior" mode, you may want to slow your roll to gain a better perspective. Here's the interview.

I'll paraphrase a few comments here, but here are Gary's main quotations regarding women's hockey. 1. "We don't have a responsibility to fund the business of other leagues. They have investors. They have a business plan."

Gary is entirely correct here. This would be like asking McDonald's to fund your local mom-and-pop burger joint just because they both sell burgers. McDonald's, like the NHL, has zero obligation to put money into a business they neither own nor control, so they have zero responsibility to ensure its long-term success. The NHL has zero obligation to ensure the CWHL, NWHL, or any other women's league remains in business just as they have zero interest in ensuring the KHL, the SPHL, or any other non-affiliated league stays afloat. The business is NHL hockey which is owned in part by the owners of the NHL franchises, and that is to whom Gary reports and on behalf of whom Gary conducts NHL business.

2. "I don't want to be presumptuous or bully-like and say 'We're gonna start a league and put them out of business.' I don't think that's appropriate."

The NHL could likely crush the CWHL and NWHL like bugs on a floor if they wanted, but that's not going to win the NHL any fans nor would it be good for their brand. No-brainer here.

3. "If the NWHL is successful, great. That's terrific. I understand from Dani Rylan that we're their largest sponsor. I have told her that if she is successful, we will not interfere."

Again, the NHL isn't looking for trouble. They're simply staying out of the way. If Rylan makes it work, the NHL will continue to invest its annual $100,000 into the business. They're not looking to get into women's hockey to compete with anyone.

4. When asked if the NHL being the largest sponsor at $100,000 is concerning, Gary replied, "Draw your own conclusions."

To me, this answer reinforces Gary's statement that he believes the business models of the leagues were unsustainable. He's passively conveying that message by allowing Bob McCown and the listeners to draw their own conclusions regarding that amount of money. I think he made his point.

5. "I'm not here to kibosh that league. If they wanna make a go of it, great. If that suits the players' needs and feasibility-wise, ok. In the final analysis, I believe a sustainable model probably will require the resources and the platforms that the NHL has."

Again, Gary is allowing Rylan to make a go of this, but ultimately he feels that the NHL can give women's hockey the exposure and the resources - money, promotion, media - that it requires to become a self-sustaining model where ad revenue and network broadcast contracts keep the league afloat. He's likely right thanks to the partners and sponsors the NHL already has.

6. When asked about the WNBA-NBA model, Gary replied, "It's not self-sustaining without the NBA's support, and if we get involved we will not have the option of letting it fail. If that's our responsibility, there's a level of control we would have to assume."

Basically, if the NHL does get involved with women's hockey, it's going to work even if they lose money. That's the kind of dedication that one wants to hear with regard to the long-term future of women's professional hockey.

7. When asked about the NWHL's sustainability, Gary replied, "I don't want to cast dispersions on the NWHL. If they can succeed, they should. If they can't, we'll look at our options."

Gary wisely directs the focus off the sustainability by framing the answer as "we hope they are successful". This is smart bit of politicking here by Bettman.

8. "The highest profile the women's game has received in the last few years is because we were involved."

Of all the things Gary said over the last seven minutes, this might be the worst bit of gaslighting I've heard. His claim of not having the NHLers at the Olympics resulting in the women's game getting more exposure has nothing to do with the NHL being involved. In fact, there were a ton of other sports who directly benefitted with more viewers thanks to the NHL preventing their players from going. This is patently the opposite of involvement, Gary, so strike this one from the record. Second, the involvement in the All-Star weekend was never supposed to happen as per the NHL's mandate. Yes, the women were invited to demonstrate the events, but they were not supposed to be on-camera at any point in the evening's festivities. Had it not been for Nathan MacKinnon reaching out to Kendall Coyne to replace him in the Fastest Skater event, the women who participated would have been nothing more than a footnote on that weekend. Strike this one from the record as well because what Gary is saying had nothing to do with the NHL and everything to do with Nathan MacKinnon. Lastly, his claim of helping to get the Rivalry Series up and running has zero evidence at this time so there could be some validity to this contribution, but there's no definitive proof of how the NHL's involvement made these three games happen. At the very best, this one is unproven, so we'll have to take Gary at his word for now. In any case, he's one-for-three at most on his league's involvement in helping the women's game gain a higher profile.

The inevitable truths that one needs to take away from this are as follows:

The NHL is a business first, a business second, and a business third. The sport part makes them money, but the business side is what keeps the sport on the ice. Bettman's comments today leave little doubt that the NHL is all-business when it comes to the sport.

The NHL will not venture into women's professional hockey until there is no other option for the women. That means that as long as the NWHL is operating, if Graeme Roustan gets his league off the ground, and if anyone else decides to compete against one or both of these leagues, we're further from having the NHL and its vast resources available to help women's professional hockey than we are closer.

Asking, begging, demanding, and any other request sent to or made in reference to the NHL for any sort of financial support will be ignored. Stop demanding that they toss in money to "grow the game" because that's not their mandate. They grow their brand, they market their brand, and they protect their brand. Women's hockey, at this point in time, is not their brand.

The last thing that needs to be said is that Gary Bettman shouldn't be vilified for his comments. He's a businessman looking out for his business that has 31 governors on the Board of Directors who have made it clear that Gary's primary focus is NHL business. Professional women's hockey is not NHL business. As a result, Gary Bettman's statements about staying out of women's hockey until there are no other options falls directly in line with the NHL's view on the subject. Sorry, women's hockey fans, but help in any form from the NHL simply isn't coming until the NHL controls all aspects of the women's professional league. That's just good business. Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice! from Sports News http://hockey-blog-in-canada.blogspot.com/2019/04/setting-record-straight.html

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Browning, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, specializes in the origins and operation of Nazi genocide. His 1992 book Ordinary Men, a close examination of how an otherwise unremarkable German police battalion evolved into an instrument of mass slaughter, is widely seen as one of the defining work on how typical Germans became complicit in Nazi atrocities.

Browning’s essay covers many topics, ranging from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy — a phrase most closely associated with a group of prewar American Nazi sympathizers — to the role of Fox media as a kind of privatized state propaganda office. But the most interesting part of his argument is the comparison between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Paul von Hindenburg, the German leader who ultimately handed power over to Hitler. Here’s how Browning summarizes the history:

We are living through a period of serious threat to American democracy. And Browning’s essay, a serious piece by a serious scholar, shows that it’s not at all alarmist to say so.

Original Source -> A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany

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