#this was obviously only the concept art and not the finished Product but i really like it

[strawbebbiesart]

downstream 🫧🪸

[lucabyte]

obligatory ramble about postcanon loop ask

also your art is amazing

Hiiiiiiiii :D thank you :)!!

and thank you for the excuse to post the. just absolute wall of text that i truncated down to form the tags of that post. (i did,,, hit the tag limit. i forgot tumblr had one of those...) so let me just paste that and tidy it up a bit...

I am putting this under a readmore because it's a bit long. but:

This is like. The General Context for all* of my postcanon doodles? (Except AUs obviously) Like this is the base idea I've been drawing them all in. So, feel free to backread with this in mind. I've basically had this 'postcanon' timeline set in my brain since finishing the game...

My general thoughts are that I like the idea of Loop (even if through dubiously ethical means) being able to slowly reintegrate with the party as a whole new person, because they are, in fact, their own person.

It's a muddle of thematic threads im pulling on and "wouldn't it be fucked up if", but. (at its core, it's powered by the fact that like, while narratively isat's theme of 'the only person who can truly take the first step to help you is yourself'. (wrt: loop helping the party help siffrin in act 5) which i LOVE AND IS GREAT NARRATIVELY…. would be super fucked up irl to learn that your friend 'learned as a lesson' while you stood by kinda uselessly. I know i'd be upset about it. but thats mostly background here. doesn't really come up. at least not until loop has to explain who they are and the party realises they had to fall back on literally themselves again for help, but i digress,)

The real core concept is: Occam's razor. It is like, inherently, a buckwild thing to accuse a person of being somehow a clone or copy of your friend. Even if they start vaguely alluding to a backstory it's far more likely they were some other person before all that. (I still think Odile has that theory in the back pocket but she's rational enough to know it's a really long shot without a solid explanation. and i think Loop deep down knows this, and would, if cornered into confessing, turn the situation around to go J'ACCUSE and make HER explain it instead. Ever longer dodging being direct with their emotions...)

And the party are nice! And if someone has changed and wants to keep stuff secret it's kind of not their business? (Though it's hard not to speculate… see: the main joke of the doodles) And they seem important to Siffrin so they just try to accept them abrasive quirks and all. And eventually the question of their prior identity just fades away since, well, they're Loop. Their friend Loop.

but yeah. personal headcanon is that a few months/weeks after picking up and getting aquainted with Nille** (since that was presumably the IMMEDIATE TASK postgame), Loop reappears (either after a literal period of nonexistance, or just spending a few months wandering the french countryside alone being attacked by wild dogs). Since Siffrin has had a while to be therapised by the party they're doing mostly okay, but Loop showing up and still being agitated/aggressive pulls them both into a bit of a backslide behaviourally and puts the party on the back foot again.

Hooowever, I do think that due to no longer being literally stewing in the worst pressure cooker of all time together, the two do mostly actually sort themselves out with productive conversation. (Via a cycle of: genuinely distressing argument -> weeeird lovebombing -> ok we're good -> repeat, that gets less intense over time)

Thus, allowing the party to just. Integrate loop as a new person. They and Siffrin shuffle into different ecological niches (Loop taking over stuff Siffrin is now too squeamish for, etc (see: hunting, mostly)), and while it's not exactly what Loop wanted they generally get that beggars can't be choosers and it's a pretty good deal. And the rest of the party does straight up just like them as a friend, especially when Loop quits trying to actively antagonise them after a few weeks of being around them, since they just can't keep up being mean to people they like forever.

As for how I think the truth eventually drags itself out. This is where I invoke The Isabeau Torment Nexus™. So its gonna get shippy here for a bit hold on.

Which is, I think giving them time before Loop reappears long enough that Siffrin and Iseabeau actually manage to become established, Isabeau has to be the one to nudge the pair of them and go. "Hey. You know we're in Vaugarde right. I'm okay with polyamory if we all communicate." Before Loop and Siffrin actually even acknowledge that whatever the fuck they have going on kinda looks a lot like a relationship of some kind. (or have already been agonising about that via fighting and arguing, depending) (Obviously this comes after Isa "Emotionally intelligent enough to keep a lid on the jealousy" Beau has managed to use that big brain of his to Not just go Scream somewhere on the daily because oh godddd they keep talking like theyre suicide-baiting each other jesus chriiist. is it overstepping his boundaries to bring that up?? god)

This, taking a bunch of the tension out of Loop and Isabeau's relationship (Since I imagine Loop is a. being weird for the obvious reasons and b. feeling kinda guilty about 'getting in the way of' Siffrin and Iseabeau), allows them to actually get close in a normal friend way. (I think an interesting turning point could be Isabeau actually taking Loop's side in an argument vs Siffrin, which would absolutely break Loop's brain. Especially if it's an argument that matters. Like what do you mean he isn't just going to play favourites. What?)

Then Isabeau, just actually open minded and charmed by Loop (and maybe even somewhat at Siffrin's suggestion?) tries to close the final open side on the polyamory triangle here and that's the final straw for Loop on "This lie by omission is too unethical to keep up, this is just actually sick and wrong. I can't do this while he doesn't know who I am." Though. Obviously it probably goes. Very poorly with emotions high like that. And the added element of several months of deceit. Getting dark here for a second but that dagger is going MISSING and so are THEY for a hot minute.

Then yaaay everything works out in the end 👍 yippieee!! all it took was maybe a lot of harrowed recontextualisation of all the weird shit your new friend said and did when it turns out they're your old friend. It's fine.

But yeah. this is basically the context all of my postcanon doodles have existed within? And those exist to give other people something to chew on. So this does too.

I suppose TL;DR: Imagine if sloopis almost fucking happens before isabeau knows who loop is. can you fucking imagine. can you imagine having to navigate that. nightmare.

*Yes this includes the implied cannibalism comic. Uhh. Comes part and parcel with headcanoning that Loop went way off the deep end similar to A5 Sif But Maybe Worse before giving in. Add weepy half-asleep confessions to murder wherever you see fit in your mind palace. 👍👍👍

**Re: Nille footnote. I don't have anywhere to put this besides here! I have some thoughts on Loop and Nille having an odd dynamic. I don't imagine Nille to be super gung-ho on trusting a bunch of adults (even if they are majority around her age) given their implied backstory. It's probably a big shock to the system, especially since Bambouche is a good couple hundred Kilometers up north from Dormont and these guys don't seem to have trains. She would've been unfrozen and without Bonnie for some time....

Which is to say: I think she's suspicious of them. I think she may be looking for excuses to distance herself, keep Bonnie safe. SO.... A new guy showing up? And antagonising the party? What do they know that I don't...? I should find out.

And since... Loop didn't ever know Nille, they have no ammunition or real reason to be cruel. Plus, if they're trying to stay on Bonnie's good side (SINCE... if Bonnie thought Loop was cringe they may as well kill themselves. In their mind.) they SUPER have no reason to antagonise Nille.

Mostly, they might be able to open up to each other easier than they can the rest of the party?

I feel like this resolves with Loop feeling compelled to apologise for what they and Siffrin let happen to Bonnie, though... Hmm... Depends on how you interpret Nille that they'd be glad nobody else had been told about that yet, or furious it had been secret this long. I lean toward the former.

[tongues--and--teeth]

Fuck i fucking love your art smmmm

Berserk boi

QUICK GIVE ME ALL YOUR BERSERK CACAOO HCSSS

Oh my god! Thank you so much! This totally made my day <33333

I'm so sorry this took so long, I've been really busy lately :(

(TW for gore mention)

So actually I headcanon that his berserk form is connected to his soul jam. Kind of like a little side effect. Y'know what use is a sword if not to harm others? If not to shed blood? (and also this sword hurts its owner too!) and it's the soul jam of resolution which is also dictionary definition, literally a firm decision that you're unwavering in. If Dark Cacao ever goes back on his decision to take the sword, guess what! He goes berserk until it consumes all of his life force and kills him. woo. 

He used to be able to control the berserk form a little, being able to turn partially into it to fight and stuff. He did lose the power to do so as he got older. Turning into his half-form and full form basically torturing him every time he tried to use it. It also completely removes pretty much all mental capacity for intelligent thought, so he can't use it in a "productive" way even if he wanted to. Basically just blind destruction with no distinction between friend or foe. 

(^that's actually the concept for the drawing you saw)

Personally, I have his berserk form more or less as kind of an allegory for illness, a physical manifestation of internal pain. He was making it a fuel to keep going instead of actually confronting the “bad stuff” that happened. He was taking how it hurt him and using that to keep going, instead of confronting it head-on and getting it to stop hurting him. Eventually, he couldn't keep doing this, it was destroying him and he was losing control. So now, he couldn’t use it for anything, aka, his pain isn't useful anymore. Anyway, he does still transform into his berserk form (albeit unintentionally) but only during times of extreme stress and triggers like certain sounds, textures, and tastes. It's also triggered through more physical means, if he stands too long his legs start turning to smoke, if he fights too long his eyes glow white, it's torture every time. In very special cases (Pomegranate Cookie) he goes full berserk, it usually takes him out for weeks, unable to do much, hardly able to take care of himself, much less able to make himself useful as a king or as a warrior.

Actually, after he stopped going berserk back in book 14, I think he was cut open pretty much everywhere underneath his armor. His guts were spilling out, and were barely contained by his armor. It basically cut him almost completely in half. He still managed to fight afterwards, obviously at great personal cost, but he was still able to fight. Weeks after, he could barely move, he was stuck in bed, and even small things like sitting up were a huge struggle. The only reason he's not dead is because of his soul jam, the same reason he was cursed in the first place. His immortality at the cost of eternal suffering and the like.

After book 14, he forces enough energy to attend the council of heroes (AKA Cookie Odyssey chapter 1) but the smallest things keep setting him off, turning him slightly berserk every time. He is spending every second he can lying down in his tent. It prevents his wounds from healing, and it also keeps him from thinking clearly. When he tried killing Clotted Cream the, admittedly very little, healing that was done was immediately reversed. He ended up barely functioning, with the only reason he was able to continue with the council was because Hollyberry noticed him limping and had Pure Vanilla heal him. Which only did so much, because it’s…A curse that's both caused by and stopped by his immortality, and you can't just fix that without probably killing him instantly. So, he doesn’t have a permanent solution, and he’s stuck with this until the end of time.

Thank you again for the ask. It was really fun to do! Sorry again for taking so long to finish it :(

[ozwuv]

I would like to draw more but I find myself overthinking it and then losing motivation. So, I was wondering if you ever had a similar issue and if so what do you do to stay motivated and not overthink?

Really good question actually!

What nipped the overthinking for me was just completely dropping the planning stage of drawing. I don't put much thought into composition, colors, etc. I don't have any solid ideas of how I want things to look before I begin. Obligatory disclaimer that this is from my perspective as a hobbyist and therefore not practical for an aspiring professional, & this is gonna sound like BS but hear me out lol

Most of the time the only things I have in mind are 1. What character(s) I want to draw and 2. A vague idea of the atmosphere I want the finished product to convey. And "finished" can mean a lot of things -- a messy sketch can be finished, a fully rendered piece I spent an entire day could be finished. A common pitfall people fall into is having an impractically rigid idea of what a "finished" drawing is and subsequently what they want their art to look like, all the bells and whistles etc, when realistically your art is never going to look exactly how it did in your head. But is that really such a bad thing?

I guess the overarching concept is to just fall in love with the process and enjoy the journey rather than the destination. This obviously sounds easier than it is in reality, but imo people focus way too hard on what they're producing rather than how and why they're producing it. Other people loving what you draw and praising it is wonderful, but if you don't enjoy the process, what was the point? Drawing (and I would venture to say most other forms of art in general) becomes a chore with that mindset applied.

A lack of planning may very well mean you wind up drawing a lot of stuff that doesn't seem interesting, maybe haphazard, difficult to parse, etc, but this is all your perception. It's cliché, but there is always going to someone out there that adores something you think looks like a dumpster fire, and that applies to the things you draw too. Over time, just doing whatever you want and enjoying the process has this trickle effect that will improve your output. In the same vein, constantly overthinking will also inevitably trickles into your output. You can often tell when someone enjoyed the process of something they drew vs when it was just a slog for them to get through (at least relative to their other works).

I would venture to say that you could spend your entire life studying and could be the most technically knowledgeable person about illustration ever in the world, but if you don't genuinely love the process, your work will never be as good as it could be if you did.

If you finish something and think it looks like shit that's always a bummer, but if you had fun with it, I think that was time worth spending. I've said this before, but most of the time I only truly dislike something I've drawn when I spent any part of the process frustrated with how it was going. It's counterintuitive, but I really think that placing so much emphasis in how you want the finished product to look is what ultimately is going to make it look like shit to you.

All that being said, once you do get past that initial overthinking phase, you can start to get more specific with planning and whatnot. The key is to just stop holding onto the idea of what you want and allowing things to develop as you go. Your art will naturally improve this way since you're actually enjoying it. To me, that's what people mean when they say they can tell something was made with love.

Side note: Let go of the need to be consistent/have a developed style. Just let yourself be inconsistent. You don't need strict consistency unless you're like an animator who needs to keep characters on-model or something. Experimenting is not only way more fun, but leads to improvement and discovering new things to implement into your process/style at large.

Tl;dr just get a lil silly w it :3c

[hummingbird-games]

Dev Diaries

June 15, 2023

Y’all it wasn’t (just) my asthma out to make me see the pearly gates...it was COVID ☠️ it zipped through everyone in my household, and unfortunately me and my mom got the full punch to the face. I was already pro-mask + pro-hygienic practices, but now I’m extra pro-mask complete with a death glare directed at all the uncalled for commentary from strangers.

Enough about being sick LOL, I’m making this because I want to talk about games, also sometimes I cope with humor.

Current WIPs

I know y’all sick of my shit (me too), but as far as I’m concerned, Crushed is coming out this summer!! Really!! I will make it happen even if I have to do a few updates post-release, so help me God. I want to move on to other things and I’m so antsy and pitiful looking at a nearly-done-but-not-quite-yet-project 😭

And I know Sundays and Tuesdays have been super light on content recently but I feel like I don’t have enough to share once or twice a week? (And the stuff I do have is too boring 🙂) I’ve been told to reblog older posts but as you see, the only thing I reblogged was the pinned one lol. (I promise to do better with consistency on HBG Project #3) 

(ALT text isn’t working for me right now, so below is the concept sketch for Ariel!! Obviously you see her on the key art buuuuut I originally planned to share this with y’all anyway!)

Ariel’s role...evolved during the production of this game, for lack of a better word. When I sought out to tell Corey’s story and decided against a kinetic novel experience, there were certain things I wanted to bring attention to (and certain decisions I wanted to leave in the player’s hands). This discussion will get dangerously close to spoiling the content of the endings SOOO we’ll put a pin in it!!

(The below image is a screenshot with Corey, Florence, and Jacob. The text reads “I kinda forgot she was standing there too...”)

This scene was written and coded with the rest of Corey’s friend group being off screen, but eventually I got sprites for Keegan and Oke. But I can’t help reimaging this scene with either of them and it makes me laugh so hard! That being said, I don’t imagine what you see in the demo will change in the final build buuuut who knows??

Randoms

I hinted waaay back when that I planned work on an HSDJY sequel this year. To my dismay, it’s still in the throwing spaghetti noodles at the wall stage. My ambitious ass lowkey hoped I’d have a finished draft for at least one of the routes by end of the year--because self-made deadlines 🎉, but I’m stuck in outline HELL!!!

That being said... it’s okay to work on other things, I am giving myself permission to work on other things, and I’ve been eyeing game jams. But the low stakes one where I won’t jeopardize my sanity. There’s Yuri Jam, which I participated in last year, and then there’s Once Upon A Time VN Jam WHICH LOOKS LIKE SO MUCH FUN???? 

I’ve been doing a lot of reading while recuperating (which probably means nothing because I’m always reading??? Unless I’m in a slump. Or playing viddy games. Dude. Don’t get me started on the pitfalls of being a game developer + bookish content creator. Time management?? We broke up) and the beginnings of an idea are starting to gel! I want to make another short project, and I’m curious if I can come up with something that fits the parameters of both jams. Fingers crossedl!!

Conclusion

I...don’t have anything else to add. 

But go check out the games and projects I’ve reblogged posts about recently!!

Some are fully released, some are out soon, some have Kickstarters, and/or some are WIPs!!!

(Oh, and I guess check out High School Daze: Junior Year to see my humble beginnings)

- Gemini ✌🏾

[molly0611]

Introduction

My name is Molly, and I am very interested in animation history, mainly because I plan to go into the animation industry after I finish school, but also because I really enjoy learning about art history and the different perspectives it gives to events we already have a basic understanding of. Aside from that, animation in general is something that has interested me for about as long as I can remember, and it is something I am excited to understand more in depth.

Some of My Favourite Animated Things

Portal 2 is a game that stands out to me as a sort of turning point in my interactions with media in general but also animated media in general. I first played through it in grade 9, and was I believe the first if not one of the very first times I felt a piece of media connect with me in such a deep and important way. That is not to say that there weren't other things I feel closely connected to from that time in my life, just that portal 2 was the first one I recall immediately grabbing me in the moment. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the basement of my house at the time watching the final credits roll by with my mouth hanging open. I was devastated that the experience was over and at the same time caught up in how the story I had just finished was. Not only was this game so well crafted, but it was also told in a way and in a world that was so connected to the mediums of video games and animation. Portal 2 would obviously never work quite the same way as a movie or tv show, but more importantly I do not believe it could exist in the same way outside of the medium of animation, like so many things that are animated, it is so much more for leaving behind the constraints of reality.

Double King is a very interesting piece of animation. From everything I can find, it was created entirely by one person over the course of about two years, is beautifully made, and tells a very interesting story along its near ten minute run time. It has held a special place in the long list of media I enjoy not only because of its one-person creation team, but also because of the way it worked around the constraints of that. The absence of voice acting meaning all the animation had to be done in a way that fully explains the story going on, the single person team meaning it took a long time but was able to stick completely to the creator's vision, and the soundtrack, also created by the same person, adds so many more layers on top of this already outstanding film. while none of these things on their own are particularly groundbreaking, they all come together in a way that has been very inspiring as someone intending to become an animator as an example of how free form and powerful the medium is.

Mad God is... odd, to say the least. A stop motion film in production for 30 years on its own I believe would be enough to talk about here, but Mad God is so much more. Most importantly, at least in my opinion, is the way it exists as much less of a linear story and instead almost more like a work of abstract art, albeit a very visceral one. I hesitate to fully label it as abstract art, as it is laid out in a way that you can understand, and with characters and concepts that make sense, but it is so unlike conventional animation that I would consider it close to abstraction in concept if not in form. In my experience - coming to this program from a different school and a contemporary art program that I did not feel much connection to or understanding of - I feel torn on the ideas and motives behind abstract and contemporary art. It is a tricky subject and one that i do not always feel well equipped to handle, but things like this movie, that are so clearly made with skill and care in their medium regardless of clarity of story or messaging or how many times a small human figure made of cotton is ripped apart in a surprisingly gory fashion, make understanding this branch of art a bit easier and I greatly appreciate it for that.

[keefwho]

April 24 - 2023

9:24 AM

I feel like there’s some kind of stigma against sticking with the people you love. At least around where I’m at. It’s almost like everyone is expected to up and rush off to their career or dream or whatever and are meant to leave everyone behind to meet new people. I got that treatment and still do. Personally I have old plans to live in the same town as my childhood friend when he gets back from the air force but when I tell mom that, I get “Are you just gonna copy him your whole life???” Like, no, I just don’t have anything keeping me tied to one place so I have the luxury of following someone important to me. If I wasn’t moving near him, I’d be staying around here with my family or moving to live near another friend. I don’t want to partake in this “leave everyone behind” mentality that was pushed on me and others since high school. I’d prefer to think people are more important than careers or personal dreams to an EXTENT. Obviously people should follow what they want to do in life but for people like me who aren’t quite sure or are content with what they are doing, it’s best to stick with my friends. 

Really this rant is all about expectations put on me by others. Basically me and everyone in my class were told “Go to college at all costs. You will be leaving everyone you know behind but don’t worry because you will make new friends :)” I didn’t even WANT to go to college, but I did. And guess what, the friends I made there were gone as soon as college was done and I was left with NO ONE but the friend who decided to stick with me because maybe he too realized how important it was to stick together. 

Or maybe it’s all about not giving up even if you get separated. I know there are some people I would never give up on under any circumstances. But I’m a loyal person. 

Its a bold claim but I think depending on each other is underrated. Not in an unhealthy way, I think it’s a delicate balance to “depend” on someone in a healthy way but it is possible. Normal even, because that’s how we used to be not even that long ago. It’s part of that tribe-like mentality. 

5:00 PM

I’m very aggro today. I don’t like how angry I can get sometimes at seemingly nothing. Not that I do anything with it. But I end up feeling like a bad person with such baseless negative emotions. Well I guess they aren’t baseless, they all have a root in something. Right now I think it’s jealousy and maybe a bit of being fed up with having to put up with people in general. 

11:56 PM

Today was mid. I was productive at least. During stream this morning I was having a ton of trouble with the commission getting the colors right and more or less gave up for the day because I have all week to do it. I figured it would be best to stop until tomorrow. Other than that I worked on some sketches. I really wanna get all the sketches on my desktop finished as fast as they get replenished. I have some minor fear though that it might be weird how many of them are of a certain horse but I shouldn’t feel like that at this point. I shouldn’t have ever felt like that. The fact is I have commissions and then things I actually WANT to draw. If I didn’t have commissions then I would probably have more art variety with my personal drawings but at the moment I only have enough creative energy to work on what’s most important to me and that is art of my own OC and the bestie. In my heart thats what I want to draw and I will not limit myself because of some silly thoughts. I know what I’m doing is welcome. 

I did everything I was supposed to today and got very tired. The afternoon didn’t have as much relaxing as I’d liked but it was okay. I mostly just watched MoonMoon and then finished the night off with some Mother 3 in call. 

I’ve really been struggling developing that elusive sense of self. Probably because it’s a fairly obscure concept. But I know something is wrong because of how I perceive myself and how hard it is to relate to others. One of my biggest goals is to form more meaningful connections but it’s hard to do that when I don’t have myself figured out. There’s too many points to go over in detail but I know I need to work on being more present rather than caught up in my own thoughts, and I need to work on seeing myself and my interactions with others as being current and dynamic rather than a sort of pre-scripted event. I know that line of thinking comes from my personal belief system that I and the others around me are pre-determined characters. I always think things should go certain ways with certain people. For instance, if I speak with someone I haven’t seen in a long time, I would likely think that they must be doing so much better than me and I should be humble in their presence. They probably want nothing to do with me and see no value in who I’ve become. It would be wrong of me to even think otherwise. That obviously not true but thats the kind of way I think about myself sometimes. I can’t see certain situations going any other way than I’ve pre-determined for my character and it’s extremely limiting to how I operate and the kind of friends I can make. I’d probably consider this one of my biggest flaws and something I’m still only beginning to tackle. 

This might have something to do with my environment. It doesn’t help that I feel like I’m in a place that is completely unchanging. I don’t get out and see people actively doing things with their lives. My parents seem to do the same things over and over. The house never improves. It’s like I’m stuck in time sometimes. I have to constantly seek out and make note of actual changes like an online friend’s schedule or how my art is doing or new games coming out. Small things like that are the only sense of change I get but I don’t think it’s enough. But thats why I’m trying to get off the property if only I can keep finding a good reason to. 

[white-tulips]

Hello. I have a question. I saw a post you made a while ago about queerbaiting in Omori, and I've been driving myself crazy trying to think of any instance of it in the game itself. Maybe I'm blind and I missed it? Or was it something Omocat said that I'm not privy to? Could you explain?

 ah, yes, of course! sorry in advance if this ends up seeming a bit jumbled, I’m not very awake right now aha,, I’m also planning on making a much more fleshed out post about it at some point.

I’ll put this under a read more because this might end up getting a little long (spoilers ahead)

(edit: I just finished typing up this post and,, it’s pretty long)

[disclaimer: this is mostly going to be about Basil and Sunny, but none of the facts/opinions I talk about are me trying to say people have to ship them. or any ship I mention in this post]

[EDIT: 6/14; despite writing this all the way back in february, I started getting so much flack for this post recently and I just wanna say you don’t have to agree with anything I say or give this post any attention if you don’t like it bc the amount of harassment I got for one post I typed up while half asleep is absurd. this post barely had 100 notes at the time and it only has like 150 now and yet people were really acting like it was some huge deal. this is merely my own thoughts, opinion, and analysis of something I’m personally passionate about and I don’t care if you don’t care. don’t read or comment on my post then if you’re not going to be civil about it. if you weren’t baited by OMORI, that’s great! I’m glad you didn’t have such a negative experience like me and other people I know! this is just my own experience that I wanted to analyze and put into words so other people could relate to, or at least see where I’m coming from]

I think before talking about the game itself, it’s important to look at things from a pre-release perspective, and consider promotional stuff along with OMOCAT’s general content over the years.

along the time of production, Basil has always been presented as a plot-important character, especially in regards to his relationship with Sunny.

(2013)

(2014)

(2016)

and the 2020 release trailer was really highlighting it too-

anyone that watches the trailer would know that these two characters are connected somehow. obviously that doesn’t necessarily mean romantically, and there’s a lot more depth to it than that, but I think the framing of everything is still really important. (the thumbnail is two boys holding hands!!)

now I’ll be fair, I can’t deny that a lot of promotional art is also of Omori and Aubrey, but much more explicitly with romantic undertones.

(2014)

I have a lot of thoughts about this though, my main one being that I never thought much of it, or thought it meant anything. of course, it’s an opinion, but I’ll explain why I feel that way.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with presenting child Aubrey as being attached to, and even having a small crush on, Omori. it’s fine, and it can be cute, but in promotional art, and even the game itself, it always came across to me as being one-sided, and just a bit superficial. I’ll try to go more in depth on that later.

[EDIT: 6/3; looking back I didn’t mention some things I wanted to (I didn’t edit this post very well) anyways. there actually is a fair bit of older OMORI promo art/concept art of SunnyAubrey which is fine! they’re OMOCAT’s characters and she can ship her ocs as she pleases, but what grinds my gears about it is that when you look at all of these old concepts that show that these two were probably going to be a Thing, it makes it 100% worse that at the last minute all of the promotional framing was about Sunny and Basil. only for everything in the game to become about SunnyAubrey in the end out of nowhere. hmmm smells like queerbait, OMOCAT!]

still on the topic of Aubrey though, yes there was a lot of art of her with Omori. but then there’s also these-

(2014)

(2019)

OMOCAT, how do you expect me to look at these and not think this is supposed to be gay.

and actually, I’ll throw this in here too in case I can’t find a place for it later-

(2012)

I would love an explanation. 

[EDIT: 6/14; I keep coming back to edit this post for some reason. anyways my point here is that if OMOCAT wants to draw ship art of her own characters that’s all fine and dandy, but why draw gay art of your characters and then not have any explicit gay rep in your game?? why set the expectation of “oh so some of these characters might be gay” and then not have anyone be gay I just don’t get it]

I think anyone that’s followed OMOCAT for a while knows that she isn’t a stranger to making queer content. I don’t feel like looking for every tiny example bc it’s mostly irrelevant, but what is relevant is the general knowledge that OMOCAT makes gay things, sometimes. hell, one of her most well known characters is Pretty Boy-

(2013)

(it’s pretty easy to find Pretty Boy content so I won’t link it all)

[EDIT: 8/9-8/13; with Pretty Boy I think it’s also worth noting that at the time it got popular, OMOCAT was profiting off of their fujoshi/fudanshi merch, and generally had cultivated an audience that was made up of a lot of fujoshi. something that’s interesting to me is how in this interview, OMOCAT states they don’t read BL manga because they find smut “distracting” (presumably from the plot). the interesting thing about that to me is that OMOCAT has said that one of their inspirations for OMORI was Oyasumi Pun Pun, which from the 60 odd chapters I’ve read, is a plot heavily revolving around sex and sexual discovery. idk, I can’t help but feel like the thought process here is “media about sex is okay, but nono not if it’s about gay people” or that media about gay people is inherently sexual. and treating gay people like they’re dirty and only focused on sex is homophobic rhetoric that’s been around for fucking ever... when I read this interview it sounds like someone saying “I’m going to make a gay story that’s Better because it’s going to be Pure and Romantic, because No One has Ever done That before.” it’s just weird to me. and, idk, when I think about how OMOCAT’s content tended to cater to fujoshi it’s just. kind of strange]

so to round out what I’m saying so far, we have OMOCAT, a creator who sometimes makes queer content, making a video game where the plot seemingly revolves around two boys and their relationship with each other, and also drawing some wishy-washy gay art of the characters in the game. not to mention it being an EarthBound inspired game (EarthBound having an explicitly gay character, and other EarthBound inspired games also being very LGBT positive, and generally attracting large gay audiences). maybe it was just me, but all of this together already gave me expectations that OMORI was in some way, going to be at least a little gay.

and throughout most of the game, I was actually pleasantly surprised because it felt like it was. the entire game’s plot revolved on their importance to each other, to the point that it even describes it’s own narrative as a string of fate-

and the game spent so long hammering in how close they were, and how important they are to each other, to a degree that wasn’t done with any other character.

I don’t even have screenshots of everything I could add, but, my second point here is that going through this game where the most important relationship is between two male characters, while also keeping in mind my point from before, it feels safe to say that thinking it was going to end at least ambiguously gay, or not having any confirmed relationships at all, isn’t much of a stretch.

however, there was so. so much gay-coding with Basil. I don’t think my words can explain how apparent his crush is better than the game itself so-

this doesn’t even come close to the amount of stuff I could put in, which really goes to show how much this game was pushing Basil’s feelings. his entire character can be summed up with “I’m gay and willing to risk it all” which. he quite literally did do everything because he cared about Sunny so much. ofc it’s normal to care about your friends, but can anyone say that a straight person with platonic feelings would do/say half the things Basil does.

[EDIT: 6/3; to add to Basil’s gay-coding, he’s also a very quaint, effeminate boy who has a lot of non-masculine hobbies. obviously not every gay man is like that, and there are plenty of non-masculine men in real life who aren’t gay, but please think about how gay men are usually presented in media to begin with. Also literally exactly how OMOCAT made Pretty Boy. there’s a pattern there. it’s also a kind of painful coincidence that both Pretty Boy and Basil are bully victims. OMOCAT are you trying to say something here]

[EDIT: 6/9; coming back to this specifically because I’ve gotten a couple comments on it and people seem to not know how to read properly and I guess I have to spell everything out. there are existing gay stereotypes in media. OMOCAT uses these tropes with her gay/gay-coded characters. I see this, and I immediately assume Basil is also going to be a canonically gay character. I’ve said before in other posts that I wouldn’t have an issue if things were left ambiguous, however, there Are existing romantic subplots in this game, and all of them are heterosexual. that’s what upsets me, and you don’t have to share my feelings]

another point I want to add here, going back to EarthBound for a second, is something a friend of mine brought up to me when we were talking about queerbaiting a while ago. she was telling me about the gay character in EarthBound (Tony), and how Basil reminded her of him. she then did some deep diving and found-

(2011)

so then our gut reaction was “okay so Basil is based off of this canonically gay character, right? right?” not to mention, the other character in this drawing looking very suspiciously like Omori. (the Omori Boy blog was originally created in 2011)

... but that is just a theory.

in any case, Basil is a clearly gay-coded character. and I wouldn’t have a problem at all with him and Sunny not getting together in the end, because that’s fine. if the game was left ambiguous with no one getting together I wouldn’t mind all that much because all of that gay-coding would still be there. but, I wouldn’t call this game queerbait if that’s all that it was, because unfortunately there came a point where there was a switch.

I really did not like this.

I said before, I didn’t mind if child Aubrey had a little crush on Omori/Sunny. I also said I never even got that big of an impression in the game itself that she did, let alone that Sunny had any kind of feelings for her. at the very least it felt more one-sided.

getting through this entire game, where we have a string of fate narrative between two boys where at least one of them is heavily gay-coded, only to be met at the very end by the gay-coded character asking his crush if he has a crush on their female friend, all coming out of seemingly nowhere, felt like the biggest punch in the gut.

[EDIT: 8/13; many people say things like “oh, you’re not supposed to take that line seriously! they’re kids!” and like. yeah, I can see if that’s the case, that we’re not supposed to think too hard about that kind of one-off line. but. that’s not... accurate to how most people tend to think. if you present a line like “you have a crush on her” then people are gonna take that and run with it. and they do. people use this kind of line to hold it over people’s heads whenever anyone tries to argue about the possibility of character’s being lgbt. whatever way it was intended to be read, it’s just straight up bigot fodder]

and then we’re supposed to continue and finish the game as if this was how it always was.

... where was this, exactly?

of course we know Sunny and Aubrey were close as kids, all of them were close with each other, but throwing this in when we haven’t seen that level of closeness at all between them in the entire game felt so superficial to me. I love Aubrey, and she and Sunny have a very good friendship, but this all felt like a huge disrespect to her, as well as gay people playing this game.

we’re meant to suddenly act as if this was her and Sunny’s relationship all along but......... this was him and Basil. since the beginning of the game, and for the entire way through, that was what their relationship was shown to be as.

I was just so shocked. Aubrey and Kel had more chemistry throughout the game than whatever this last minute pull was. this isn’t me trying to start shit with ships, I’m just looking at the game’s writing itself.

despite their bickering, Kel and Aubrey were shown to be extremely close friends, and then OMOCAT wants me to believe that her and Sunny were always the closest out of nowhere. okay, sure.

anyways, after I finished OMORI, it hit me that there are no explicitly gay characters, despite everything I talked about before. sure, Pretty Boy makes a cameo appearance, but it doesn’t really count for anything. and yes, Space Boyfriend is canonically trans, but he wasn’t even created by OMOCAT, and you could play the entire game without even knowing he’s trans, so it doesn’t really seem like it counts as good representation either (I am cis, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.)

[EDIT: 6/14; this is a bit of a tangent unrelated to queerbaiting, but I wanted to address it here. I got a lot of harassment for what I said about Space Boyfriend and I didn’t respond to any of it bc I didn’t want to argue with a bunch of teens on the internet but I’ll just say what I want to here. I’m not saying Space Boyfriend as a standalone character is bad rep, I think it’s great he’s canonically trans. what I mean here is that OMOCAT chose not to have any explicit LGBT rep in her game, including not representing an actual trans character that originally belonged to someone else. I never gave any opinion on how trans rep could have been done differently bc why would that be my place. I wouldn’t even have said it seems like poor rep in the first place if Jami Lynne didn’t say it was sad herself. but if even that is too out of turn an opinion to have as a cis person, then I’ll recognize that]

an entire EarthBound inspired RPG game, made by a creator known for her LGBT comic characters, that had a string of fate narrative between two boys, and in the end didn’t have a single explicitly gay character. it feels quite bad, frankly. 

and that why the queerbaiting makes me so upset. because even though Basil is so gay-coded, because of him asking Sunny if he has a crush on Aubrey, all of his feelings can be completely overlooked. this is why people can say “Basil isn’t gay” and it can’t be disproven with canon evidence. a game doesn’t need to have a character say “I’m gay” or “I love you” for them to be canonically queer, but. OMOCAT decided to use that line to write off any possibility of ambiguity.

and then. post-release art of them.

(2020)

(2021)

....that last drawing reminding me of-

(but maybe that’s a stretch?)

doing all of that after releasing your game... thanks for pretty much nothing, OMOCAT.

[EDIT: 6/9; about that last one in particular, I guess people don’t know kawoshin anymore which is wild so I really have to keep spelling things out for people. they’re a really influential gay pairing and have been at the forefront of “are they canonically gay?” debates for decades, but are generally accepted as being queer-coded. referencing them is like a flat out saying of “this is gay, but we’re not going to actually say it.” so for OMOCAT to de-canonize all of Basil’s implied feelings at the end of the game, only to draw sunnflower as kawoshin a few weeks after the game’s release, is the biiiiiiggest slap in the face]

anyways... I think that about covers most of my thoughts. this ended up being longer than I thought it would be ahhh,,, thank you for reading if you made it through this. I hope my thoughts make sense, and that you see where I’m coming from a bit more clearly now!

EDIT: a couple more thoughts here!

[EDIT: 3/3/22; might be a bit late to add things to this post again but w/e. here are some more thoughts here and here]

[EDIT: 6/3; also gonna slap this post here at the end because I hate OMOCAT and this is the cherry on top to all of the shit I just talked about. OMOCAT queen of heteronormativity]

[EDIT: 3/3/22; wow, how could I forget the ACTUAL cherry on top to this entire post:

every time I remember they said this I want to tear my hair out lol. it doesn’t make me feel any better to see LGBT teens on twitter finding this every few months and being like “omg gay people in OMORI is real” like. no. noooo nono. it makes me upset cuz OM*CAT knows exactly who their audience is lol. honestly more food for thought, bc I mentioned post-release art being a lot of Sunny/Basil, and it just. keeps happening. so much post release art is Sunny/Basil adjacent, even though the game pushed so hard for Sunny/Aubrey?? maybe there isn’t a real answer, but I don’t trust OM*CAT one bit. anyways thank you for reading all my tin foil hat ramblings]

[path-of-my-childhood]

‘Willow’ Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto Didn’t Know Taylor Swift Had a New Album, Either

By: Claire Shaffer for Rolling Stone Date: December 14th 2020

When award-winning cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto started working on the video for “Willow” with Taylor Swift in November, he didn’t know that it was a part of her new surprise album, Evermore.

“I thought maybe it was a video for the previous album. I didn’t even know what the song was at our first meeting.”

Prieto wasn’t the only one in the dark about the new record; Swift dropped Evermore last week with a very similar rollout to her previous LP Folklore, complete with a self-directed music video released at midnight along with the album: “Willow.” The video serves as a narrative continuation of the story in the “Cardigan” music video — which Prieto also worked on — featuring a ton of visual references to tracks from Folklore.

As with the “Cardigan” video, Swift, Prieto and the production team not only had to keep the shoot under wraps, but also find innovative ways to film the project under Covid-19 safety protocols without endangering the lives of the crew. Prieto spoke to Rolling Stone about the production this time around, and how the team brought Swift’s witchy vision for “Willow” to life.

How did the “Willow” shoot differ from “Cardigan”? It looks like you guys were able to have other actors on set this time around, but how did that change the safety measures you had to follow?

It was still very, very strict. A big part of it was the whole testing protocols, which we also did last time. But when we were doing this video, we knew more [about the virus], and the safety guidelines were more specific. We followed the same ones the DGA has done, that my union Local 600 has done, SAG — they’ve all put in place these protocols that we did follow, and were very careful about it.

For instance, in the scene with the choreography around the tree and the clearing, you know, with a sort of dance around these magical orbs, there was a limit on how many actors and dancers we could have there. That was created by visual effects, actually — they added in more dancers. I think the actual number was 10 dancers when we were filming, and they all have masks on, actually. We can’t see their faces, and that’s partly because they have masks.

There’s only really one moment, in the cabin, where she’s in close contact with [another actor], with the man that she’s been missing at all these different moments. But, of course, both were tested, and they’d only take off their masks in the moment where we’re actually shooting. Everyone else would always wear masks on. And similar to last time, anybody who was in the immediate vicinity of the scene had to have a red wristband — it was all color-coded, in terms of who could be close to the scene and the actors. And certainly, it was very important to have not only a mask, but a face shield whenever we were anywhere close to Taylor or any of the other actors or dancers.

I still used the remote camera on a crane, so there wasn’t even a camera operator close to anybody. We were still following all the guidelines very closely, but now, it felt more relaxed in the sense that we have more information. We could just follow all these protocols. And we knew that we’d be safe because it was all pretty strict.

You mentioned last time that communication could sometimes be difficult on the “Cardigan” set because everyone had to kind of yell at each other or point to things since they couldn’t get in close proximity. Was Taylor able to be more hands-on in her directing this time around, like she was while you were shooting the music video for “The Man?”

That was still was the case — especially when you have a mask and a face shield, and you’re six feet away, you have to be a little louder to be heard. So we did maintain that protocol. But she was still very involved. I would stay at my monitor at the DIT [digital imaging technician] station, because it was the best image, but everyone would all be kind of looking at it from a distance, from six feet away.

But there was one moment that was unforgettable. And she actually has mentioned it, which was, just as we were starting to film on November 7th, we got the news of the election result. We were both looking at the monitor at the DIT station, and she got a text alert or something like that. Obviously, at that moment, we were all working on the video, but in the back of our minds we’re all like, OK, what’s gonna happen? And she was the only one who could actually look at her phone, because in fact, everybody had to relinquish their phones in the beginning so that nobody would take photos of anything, except for a few people like myself, who could sometimes use our phone to take a photograph as reference. And I was only using it very, very sporadically for that sort of thing.

So Taylor ended up being the messenger for the election results on set.

Exactly. So, she’s next to me — six feet away, but she was next to me. And she got this text, and she showed it to me. So I learned of the result from her at that moment, and what I told her was, “I will never forget this moment,” both because it’s such a historically important moment and because she was the one who showed me this information, you know. That was pretty special. Yeah. I felt like celebrating and doing a little dance, but I didn’t — we’re professionals and we’re working and also, I wanted to be respectful of anybody who had voted differently. But it was a very incredible moment, and just the beginning of a three-day shoot that turned out to be an adventure.

This video makes so many references to songs on Folklore and older songs from Taylor’s discography, both obvious and hidden. How did she lay out her vision to you?

The first meeting was talking about the story and the ideas. I still didn’t know the song, but the first thing was figuring out that it’s a continuation of the previous one we did together. At that moment, she was still kind of developing her ideas and trying to figure out exactly what was going to happen — for example, the ending wasn’t quite clear yet. She knew that she wanted to finish again in the cabin and that [the man] would be there, right. But during that meeting, we decided to have them both leave the cabin. That was an idea that came to us as we were talking as a team.

And then we went back and forth — at first she thought it should be night outside because it’s always been night, and then she changed her mind and said it should be daytime, so we were like, OK, what does it look like out there? Is it just the limbo? And then Ethan Tobin, our production designer, said it should be this sort of autumn forest. She was very much appreciative of that and really listened to everybody’s ideas.

There was also discussion about that moment in the clearing, about whether it should be a bonfire or not. First of all, with production, we would have had to shoot it outside and that would have been very complicated. But also she felt that, even with special effects, it was not a good thing to show with all the wildfires going on in California. So she came up with the concept of some type of orbs, something more magical, and Ethan Tobin came up with a bunch of different reference photos for that. That was the way we developed these concepts — even with the willow tree, Ethan sent some images and ideas, and one of them had these magenta leaves on the ground, which was weird and magical. Taylor and I loved that. It was that kind of back-and-forth in the pre-production phase, before we even heard the music.

It’s amazing how you were able to pull this off under such complicated circumstances — communicating back-and-forth over Zoom, and then with the actual video shoot itself.

It’s pretty tricky to get such a complicated and really technically challenging shoot off the ground, but we planned it all beforehand. Ethan Tobin was working with his art director Simon Morgan on designing the sets over Zoom. So, it was all overhead plans, and then you have to go to the set and map it out. For that clearing scene, for instance, Simon Morgan and myself, and my gaffer Manny Tapia and my key grip Donald Reynolds, we went to the soundstage first and taped the space in the center where the magic orbs would be. And then we measured the distance to the background with the blue screen, and taped where all the trees would be, and then figured out where all the lighting would be for there and the carnival set — everything had to be very, very precise, and the distance had to all be worked out. It really helped when we were actually shooting, because it went very smoothly. So, that’s how we made it.

[astermacguffin]

The semantic logic of AMVs

I finally finished the post I promised to @katebushstandean , so here's my contribution to the blossoming field of spn amv studies.

In this post I made about fanworks and intertextuality, I argued that AMVs can be referred to as a "discourse between discourses." What I meant by that (and I elaborated on this in the post) can be summarized in this argument structure:

(1) AMVs are typically a dialogue/discourse between a song and a show/film.

(2) A song is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between music and lyrics).

(2) A show/film is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between the visual and auditory elements of the show/film).

(C) Therefore, AMVs are typically a discourse between discourses.

I want to push this argument even further and argue for a more generalized theory of meaning that should (ideally) be applicable to any piece of media.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

Let's start by analyzing at least just one medium at a time. Take music, for example. Without lyrics, how does music convey meaning at all? Now, I won't go too much into either music theory or the psychology/sociology of music (since I don't think I'll be able to give these subjects any justice anyway), but I want us to look at music more structurally/linguistically. (I am certainly not a linguist, but I am a training logician and I think it would be interesting to extract the logical/semantic relations that occur in music if we treat it as a "text".)

If we want to break down music into its smallest possible units of meaning (the same way we break down language into morphemes in morphology), then we would probably end up with notes, beats, and chords as our basic units (among other stuff, like timbre). Obviously, we cannot subject music to the same reductionist approach we do with either natural or formal languages (e.g. breaking down language into morphemes/propositions/subject-predicate relations/functions).

This is due to the fact that music doesn't really agree that much with the principle of compositionality—that "the meaning of the whole is a function of the meanings of its parts and their mode of syntactic combination." (If you disagree with Montague semantics, you might even argue that the same is true for natural languages and that only formal languages are truly compositional, but I digress). Generally, there is "more than the sum of its parts" when it comes to music; the meanings of a chord don't solely depend on the meanings of the individual notes that make up the chord.

Anyway, back to music and meaning-making.

Yip Harburg has this interesting quote on songwriting, which Adam Neely references here at this mark (15:29–16:10), a quote he originally got from Ben Levin. The quote says: "Music makes you feel feelings, lyrics make you think thoughts, songs make you feel thoughts." I think this quote best encompasses what I mean when I argue that songs are "discourses" of their own.

But even without the lyrics, music on its own is already "discursive." A single note played once doesn't really "mean" much, in the sense that we can't really gather as much meaning out of it alone. The note's relationships with other musical elements is what opens up the realms of meanings that we can attribute to it. (This concept is explored much better in here.)

The same thing is true with natural languages. Morphemes and words have meanings on their own, sure, but they don't really say that much on their own until you place them in a specific order with other morphemes/words. A single sentence is already a discourse between the units of meaning that compose the sentence.

I have been using the term "discourse" a lot, but what do I mean when I use the term? Without spending too much time explaining my own theory of discourse, let's define a discourse as a "series of discursive units." A discursive unit consists of two parts: a prompt and a response. What's important to know about responses in a discourse is that you won't really be able to fully grasp what they mean without knowing what the prompts are (i.e. what they are responding to).

When I describe song and lyrics as "discourses", what I think I really mean is that they are "discourse-like" (hence the description, "discursive"). The words of a sentence treat each other as their own prompts/responses; they're not as meaningful alone, but when taken together, meaning emerges. The same goes with music.

Taking this to a more macro scale, we can treat each episode of a show as their own discourses, and each episode "responds" to the others in some way. The harmonies, tensions, and contradictions that emerge from the "conversations" between these episodes are what we often respond to when we make fanworks (fanart, fanfics, meta, and the likes).

Generally, there are two kinds of "conversations" that happens within and among pieces of media:

The intra-discursive (the conversations that happen within a single text, like how a show's episodes converse with each other), and;

The inter-discursive (also called the intertextual, or the conversations that happen between different texts).

Now that we have established these terms and concepts, we're FINALLY talking about AMVs.

THE DEAL WITH AMVS

I've already touched upon this in my intertextuality post, but it's worth repeating. What I believe AMVs do is reveal the intra-discursive using the inter-discursive. What this means is that by making the subject text converse with other texts (e.g. by making clips from Supernatural "dialogue" with a song of your choice), you are somehow extracting the implicit discourses present in the original text.

When we talk about fanworks (and transformative works in general), we often talk about it in terms of recontextualization, as well as adding something new that wasn't there in the original text (e.g. fix-its). But a neglected aspect of fanworks that I believe AMVs bring to light is the revelatory power of fanworks, like the way it makes the people (may it be the audience or the original creators) confront the implications and implicit meanings already present in the text.

(Learn more about the semantic logic of AMVs below the cut)

Another interesting thing that AMVs do is that it often makes the subject text subservient to the song. More often than not, it's the show that has to adjust to the song; it's the show that has to be sliced and diced in order to fit the song. This is simultaneously a form of violence and a form of liberation—violent in the sense that goes against authorial intent (with "author" here used loosely to refer to the forces that brought the piece to life, may it be a single person or an entire production team) and liberating in the sense that the latent or supressed narratives are brought to light.

Even before the AMV is done, this discursive process is already made explicit by the act of editing. In most editing softwares, you get to see the timeline of your material and an explicit divide between the audio and the visual elements. The audio stream is already a discourse of its own, and the same goes with the video stream.

When you vertically slice these juxtaposed streams and cut out a portion of it, you now have what I call a "semantic moment" locked in time. We can imagine the audio being divided into these little semantic moments (e.g. the chords, a key change, a shift in dynamics or tempo, etc.) and something similar can be said with the video (e.g. vital scenes in the show). Now, a semantic moment doesn't have to be special or eventful; in fact, most of them aren't. In fact, all of experience is nothing but a series of semantic moments (i.e. moments of extractable meaning).

Now, imagine an AMV playing in front of you right now. Let's represent the audio as a series of semantic moments from A1 to An and do something similar to the video, from V1 to Vn. If we represent the flow of time from left to right, then we can talk abstractly about experiencing an AMV like this:

A1-A2-A3-A4-A5...-An

V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...-An

Every moment of our experience of the AMV can be divided into a series like this. AMVs are art objects that unfold over time: they are temporal, and therefore we cannot immediately access all parts of the semantic "discourse" of the text all at once—we have to wait for them to happen.

Let's say I want to analyze Semantic Moment number 6 because something interesting happens there: the chord suddenly shifts into a minor key while at the same time, the video shows a character turning their back to the camera. Now, there are three possible ways to handle this (none of which are mutually exclusive; we usually perform these modes of analysis simultaneously):

Vertical analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V6. What meanings are brought up when we take these two elements in conjunction? What associations do we have with minor keys, with people turning around, and how these associations influence the other?

Horizontal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and its earlier counterparts, A1-A5, or between V6 and V1-V5. Earlier, we have discussed that a single chord or a single word on its own doesn't mean that much; it's their relationships with other elements that bring out their "meaning space." What "narratives" or "metaphorical gestures" are brought upon when you consider these semantic moments as discourses/texts as a whole?

Diagonal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V1-V5, or between V6 and A1-A5. Here, you make the semantic moment converse with the "history" of its counterpart. What are the events that happened in the earlier parts? For example, knowing that the earlier parts of the song were in major key before the turn-around scene might influence our reading of it. Similarly, knowing that the earlier scenes depict a happy relationship might influence how we read the minor shift.

Again, we often do these analytic slices as quick as possible (and often simultaneously); it's not something that we often do consciously (unless the subject text is actually that dense and difficult). It's instinctual to us to bring up these comparisons and engage with the explicit and implicit discourses of meaning happening with any kind of text we interact with.

Now, here's where it gets more complicated. Unless the AMV in question is just a scene lifted from the show and overlaid with a song, it would usually involve a bunch of cutting and joining between different scenes/episodes. What this means is that you're taking an already temporal object and reassembling it into a new order in time. This means that we might've initially thought of as V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...Vn might actually be V3-V1-V6-V19-V8...Vn or some other permutation.

Again, this process is simultaneously violent and liberating—violent because you are destroying its intended order, and liberating because you are negating the tyranny of linearity and contiguity. What I mean by this is that people tend to focus on the discourse of the semantic moments depending on how close they are in space and time. For example, we might focus on how V1 is in dialogue with V2 and how V2 is in dialogue with V3, but the farther the semantic moments are, the less likely we are to notice their discourse.

What AMV editors do is rebel against the tyranny of this habit and bring into light the connections that might have gone unnoticed without the intervention. We often talk about how certain fanworks are more analytical than transformative (e.g. fanfics that function more as character studies and meta analyses of the source text), and there certainly is a spectrum of this among different genres of fanworks. I believe that AMVs, no matter how transformative they are, cannot help but invoke a certain analyticity in their production and reception.

And that concludes my AMV essay. I'll probably add more to this when I gather more thoughts (like how these three posts are related in some way).

Lemme know if y'all wanna hear more about my theory of discourse or something else related. Support your content creators and reblog!

[agentnico]

Free Guy (2021) Review

“Don’t have a good day, have a great day!”

Plot: When a bank teller discovers he's actually a background player in a brutal open-world video game, he decides to become the hero of his own story - one that he can rewrite himself. In a world where there's no limits, he's determined to save the day his way before it's too late, and maybe find a little romance with the coder who conceived him.

Last time I watched such a hyper-actively positive film I was seeing little LEGO figures jumping about on screen with Morgan Freeman hanging off a string in ghost form. Yes, The LEGO Movie shares a lot in common with Free Guy, not just in its opening sequence where Ryan Reynolds’s loveable Guy is starting off a perfectly good day every day with a nice cup of coffee and wishing everyone not a good, but a great day, goes to the job at his bank and goes back home, and rinse and repeat. But the character of Guy himself is basically Chris Pratt’s Emmett from The LEGO Movie - full of sunshine and innocence and taking everything that comes with child-like excitement and energy. You can also treat Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” song usage here like “Everything is Awesome” with how many times its played, but damn if it isn’t catchy! And the film comparisons don’t end there. You wouldn’t be faulted for seeing references to Ready Player One with all the cameos and Easter Eggs and pop culture references thrown in the mix, to The Truman Show based on the general concept and obviously certain video games such as Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row and even Sims due to the video game open world that the movie creates. 

Speaking of the video game open world that is created, you could tell director Shawn Levy and the producers went through a lot of effort to research modern video games and all the tiny little details and quirks that exist. For example it was a lot of fun seeing characters tea-bag someone they just killed to then a character glitching out and jumping into the wall repetitively or the obvious inclusion of Fortnite inspired dance jiggles. You also get cameos from various real-life game streamers such as Jacksepticeye and DanTDM, and I found an interview on IGN where those guys spoke about in regards to how Hollywood can never seem to get video-game-to-film adaptations right, and how they appreciated that the producers of Free Guy went to them and asked questions and actually showed interest in wanting to create a realistic feeling video game in the movie and getting the terminology right. Evidently unlike other video game adaptations Free Guy manages to succeed from the fact that it doesn’t need to replicate a specific game from real life. There are nods to certain games as I aforementioned, but otherwise they’ve created their own entire game and as such there is no expectation to impress a certain individual fan base. So in conclusion what I’m saying is that I guess Hollywood should stop trying to adapt film versions of popular video game franchises and instead do their own original stuff maybe? Then again I do want to see that Ghost of Tsushima adaptation come to life, so yes, I’ll just go and kindly shut myself up.

Taking the video game matter aside for the time being, I found Free Guy to be an absolute delight from start to finish. Well, to be exact from 20 minutes from the start to finish. Honestly when the film began I was concerned if the movie was going to turn out to be the typical “I live in a simulation” story, and though as a basis it is exactly that, there’s so much goodness thrown into the mix with funny jokes to the cameos (the cameos are to die for!) to the visuals to the music choices to the performances - the movie is such a joy to watch. Speaking of the cameos and pop culture references, Free Guy is also an interesting film outside of its narrative. This movie was in production during the time the studio that was behind it - 20th Century Fox - was being sold to a certain little known company called Disney. As such, you can tell after the studio’s transfer to Disney was complete, this film underwent some additional reshoots and last minute changes, mainly in the finale because there are certain surprises at the end of the movie that will be a geek/nerd’s wet dream and were only made possible after Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, now known as 20th Century Studios. Personally I still have my qualms about Disney being the massive conglomerate business giant that is buying out all the other studios, but not going to lie even I got excited and jumped up like a kid in my cinema seat when a certain something happened at the end of this movie. Luckily only my lovely fiancée saw me like this as she was sitting next to me, and yes, I’m certain that me revealing my true nerd colours definitely lost me some attraction points from her, but nevertheless I don’t care, the Easter Eggs at the end of this movie are real fun!

The entire cast is top notch here. Ryan Reynolds does his usual shtick that he’s been doing ever since he found success with Deadpool, however naturally here he’s kept PG-13 and not swearing every other breath. That being said, his charm and sarcastic charisma really worked for the role of Guy, and he presented himself as really loveable and naïve and it was impossible not to like him in this film. Jodie Comer in her role has also been getting humongous praise from critics and reviewers alike, and yes, the rumours are true, she shares great on screen chemistry with Ryan Reynolds and also is proper cool and badass as to be expected. That being said I was told by a certain someone that they know someone who knows someone who knew someone who spoke to someone who said that they worked with Jodie Comer on the set of Killing Eve, and this was just some behind-the-scenes worker, and apparently in their experience they found Comer to be a real diva and challenge to work with. So that’s now me here spreading some gossip for no apparent reason besides causing a little stir and now I can move on. Joe Keery has a much bigger role in this film that the trailers made it seem, and I must say the lad has really been doing well for himself ever since his appearance in Stranger Things. Whenever I’ve see him in anything since such as Spree or Death to 2020 he’s always been wonderful to watch. Here in Free Guy he’s no different, getting to play a character who at first comes off as a villain but then is revealed to simply be a guy working for the wrong person. Speaking of that wrong person, the villain of the movie is played by none other than actor-director Taika Waititi himself, and his role is really interesting seeing as he plays the owner of this big video game business company who only cares about money and sequels over art, which I found quite ironic seeing as this movie is distributed by Disney that’s all about sequels, remakes and reboots. Just saying. Also found it funny how even though this movie marks a little reunion of sorts for Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi, they don’t share any scenes together which was probably for the best, as last time they worked together Green Lantern occurred. Anyway, Taika is as goofy and over-the-top as you expect him to be, and I can see him being very divisive. You’ll either find him hilarious or super annoying. However both opinions would work seeing as he’s the villain.

Free Guy is an absolute cuddly crowd-pleaser full of casual mayhem and crazy ideas, and is sure to be a welcome boost of fun in a summer that naturally lacked bigger blockbusters due to what’s happening in the world right now. However nonetheless, this and The Suicide Squad have really made a point that cinema is back, hopefully to stay.

Overall score: 9/10

[bananaofswifts]

When award-winning cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto started working on the video for “Willow” with Taylor Swift in November, he didn’t know that it was a part of her new surprise album, Evermore.

“I thought maybe it was a video for the previous album,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I didn’t even know what the song was at our first meeting.”

Prieto wasn’t the only one in the dark about the new record; Swift dropped Evermore last week with a very similar rollout to her previous LP Folklore, complete with a self-directed music video released at midnight along with the album: “Willow.” The video serves as a narrative continuation of the story in the “Cardigan” music video — which Prieto also worked on — featuring a ton of visual references to tracks from Folklore.

“Willow” starts off in the same cabin where the “Cardigan” video left off, and Swift is once again beckoned to go inside her magical, time-and-space-traveling piano. She follows a golden string (referencing the Folklore song “Invisible String”) and arrives at an autumnal forest clearing under a willow tree, where she sees the reflection of a man (played by her tour dancer Taeok Lee) and a woman in a moonlit pool. The string later leads her to a scene from her childhood, a carnival tent party where she performs inside a glass box, and a wintery seance in the middle of the forest. Eventually, the string leads her back to the cabin where she reunites with Lee.

As with the “Cardigan” video, Swift, Prieto and the production team not only had to keep the shoot under wraps, but also find innovative ways to film the project under Covid-19 safety protocols without endangering the lives of the crew. Prieto spoke to Rolling Stone about the production this time around, and how the team brought Swift’s witchy vision for “Willow” to life.

How did the “Willow” shoot differ from “Cardigan”? It looks like you guys were able to have other actors on set this time around, but how did that change the safety measures you had to follow?

It was still very, very strict. A big part of it was the whole testing protocols, which we also did last time. But when we were doing this video, we knew more [about the virus], and the safety guidelines were more specific. We followed the same ones the DGA has done, that my union Local 600 has done, SAG — they’ve all put in place these protocols that we did follow, and were very careful about it.

For instance, in the scene with the choreography around the tree and the clearing, you know, with a sort of dance around these magical orbs, there was a limit on how many actors and dancers we could have there. That was created by visual effects, actually — they added in more dancers. I think the actual number was 10 dancers when we were filming, and they all have masks on, actually. We can’t see their faces, and that’s partly because they have masks.

There’s only really one moment, in the cabin, where she’s in close contact with [another actor], with the man that she’s been missing at all these different moments. But, of course, both were tested, and they’d only take off their masks in the moment where we’re actually shooting. Everyone else would always wear masks on. And similar to last time, anybody who was in the immediate vicinity of the scene had to have a red wristband — it was all color-coded, in terms of who could be close to the scene and the actors. And certainly, it was very important to have not only a mask, but a face shield whenever we were anywhere close to Taylor or any of the other actors or dancers.

I still used the remote camera on a crane, so there wasn’t even a camera operator close to anybody. We were still following all the guidelines very closely, but now, it felt more relaxed in the sense that we have more information. We could just follow all these protocols. And we knew that we’d be safe because it was all pretty strict.

You mentioned last time that communication could sometimes be difficult on the “Cardigan” set because everyone had to kind of yell at each other or point to things since they couldn’t get in close proximity. Was Taylor able to be more hands-on in her directing this time around, like she was while you were shooting the music video for “The Man?”

That was still was the case — especially when you have a mask and a face shield, and you’re six feet away, you have to be a little louder to be heard. So we did maintain that protocol. But she was still very involved. I would stay at my monitor at the DIT [digital imaging technician] station, because it was the best image, but everyone would all be kind of looking at it from a distance, from six feet away.

But there was one moment that was unforgettable. And she actually has mentioned it, which was, just as we were starting to film on November 7th, we got the news of the election result. We were both looking at the monitor at the DIT station, and she got a text alert or something like that. Obviously, at that moment, we were all working on the video, but in the back of our minds we’re all like, OK, what’s gonna happen? And she was the only one who could actually look at her phone, because in fact, everybody had to relinquish their phones in the beginning so that nobody would take photos of anything, except for a few people like myself, who could sometimes use our phone to take a photograph as reference. And I was only using it very, very sporadically for that sort of thing.

So Taylor ended up being the messenger for the election results on set.

Exactly. So, she’s next to me — six feet away, but she was next to me. And she got this text, and she showed it to me. So I learned of the result from her at that moment, and what I told her was, “I will never forget this moment,” both because it’s such a historically important moment and because she was the one who showed me this information, you know. That was pretty special. Yeah. I felt like celebrating and doing a little dance, but I didn’t — we’re professionals and we’re working and also, I wanted to be respectful of anybody who had voted differently. But it was a very incredible moment, and just the beginning of a three-day shoot that turned out to be an adventure.

This video makes so many references to songs on Folklore and older songs from Taylor’s discography, both obvious and hidden. How did she lay out her vision to you?

The first meeting was talking about the story and the ideas. I still didn’t know the song, but the first thing was figuring out that it’s a continuation of the previous one we did together. At that moment, she was still kind of developing her ideas and trying to figure out exactly what was going to happen — for example, the ending wasn’t quite clear yet. She knew that she wanted to finish again in the cabin and that [the man] would be there, right. But during that meeting, we decided to have them both leave the cabin. That was an idea that came to us as we were talking as a team.

And then we went back and forth — at first she thought it should be night outside because it’s always been night, and then she changed her mind and said it should be daytime, so we were like, OK, what does it look like out there? Is it just the limbo? And then Ethan Tobman, our production designer, said it should be this sort of autumn forest. She was very much appreciative of that and really listened to everybody’s ideas.

There was also discussion about that moment in the clearing, about whether it should be a bonfire or not. First of all, with production, we would have had to shoot it outside and that would have been very complicated. But also she felt that, even with special effects, it was not a good thing to show with all the wildfires going on in California. So she came up with the concept of some type of orbs, something more magical, and Ethan Tobman came up with a bunch of different reference photos for that. That was the way we developed these concepts — even with the willow tree, Ethan sent some images and ideas, and one of them had these magenta leaves on the ground, which was weird and magical. Taylor and I loved that. It was that kind of back-and-forth in the pre-production phase, before we even heard the music.

It’s amazing how you were able to pull this off under such complicated circumstances — communicating back-and-forth over Zoom, and then with the actual video shoot itself.

It’s pretty tricky to get such a complicated and really technically challenging shoot off the ground, but we planned it all beforehand. Ethan Tobman was working with his art director Simon Morgan on designing the sets over Zoom. So, it was all overhead plans, and then you have to go to the set and map it out. For that clearing scene, for instance, Simon Morgan and myself, and my gaffer Manny Tapia and my key grip Donald Reynolds, we went to the soundstage first and taped the space in the center where the magic orbs would be. And then we measured the distance to the background with the blue screen, and taped where all the trees would be, and then figured out where all the lighting would be for there and the carnival set — everything had to be very, very precise, and the distance had to all be worked out. It really helped when we were actually shooting, because it went very smoothly. So, that’s how we made it.

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone

[baconpal]

talkin bout fuckig manga

hey it’s me, haven’t had internet for over a week and i’ve been sick and uni and blah blah blah time for a rant about manga

this time its about  "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru", tl;dr, good manga read it idk

lots of bullshit below the cut

Before anything I say gets too confusing or I go off on an insane tangent, just know my recommendation is that you read "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru". It's not very easy to find online since it has an official English release (which my recommendation extends far enough to suggest I might pick up in the future, just to have it, but I am very stingy), but there's an alright torrent of all the volumes on your local anime torrenting website, and is at the very least worth the trouble of reading as such. There is also an anime that gets better as it goes, but the manga is my primary recommendation. Beyond this point I'm not gonna give much regard to what I write, so get ready for anything, read the manga and see if you agree with me, or don't and see if I care:

BOUT THE ANIME: The SoreMachi anime is one of those rare comedy anime you find where the animation and overall production is just really extra the entire time. Hopefully you know what I mean because I won't really be able to explain it any other way, it's simply one of those shows where the jokes are decent and it's a fun time for the most part. Unfortunately, the anime makes a couple of critical missteps that kept me from getting far into it when I first tried watching it about a year ago, and in retrospect seem even less reasonable.

Starting with the good, as an adaptation it does a good job with most chapters it covers, it properly sources where each chapter comes from incase you intend to read the manga and skip around to catch up, and the anime adapts some sections to have additional jokes that fit very naturally in to the story. It also covers up some of those problems only manga can have like having a concert segment without any actual music involved, until they invent mp3-paper it's just something we'll have to live with. Translation work was pretty good (I watched the [WhyNot] release for those who care), which is extra important for something as difficult to translate as jokes from another language. The set of episodes they chose to end on was very good, and was expanded to be a lot more impactful in the anime. If it wasn't for the last episode being as strong as it was I may have given up on finding the manga when I saw it wasn't super easy to read online.

As for what the anime fails in, some episodes feature some really blatant over-acting that doesn't really help make characters believable, and there's this obnoxious gag that continues the whole where through where most scenes have a few seconds long line from what is essentially a forced mascot character, which usually mean nothing and only serve to harm the pacing of many episodes (there isn't even any sort of equivalent bit in the manga so I really don't know why they did it, most of the anime original jokes are pretty good so I just really don't get it). The biggest issue the anime faces is that the source material is about 140 chapters, while the anime is only able to cover 24 chapters. This comes with a LOT of problems, the first being what I'd call the "required reading". SoreMachi is not a 1-note simple comedy where you can skip to any chapter and be completely okay; There are many small but meaningful subplots lying beneath, and characters have a fair bit of development throughout. What this means for the anime is that the first 3-4 episodes are just the first few chapters of the manga, which are a bit rough and not as good as the majority of the work, which is true of a lot of comics (god fuck I promise there will be more than a first chapter of my comic I promise it'll get better fuck). In terms of the anime by itself, I'd say episode 1 is decent, 2 is middling, and by 3/4 their still taking a while to introduce members of the cast, and I didn't immediately want to finish it. I put the show down for a long time until my internet started dying and I wanted to watch something fun. Slapping it back on at episode 5 I immediately had a great time and watched the rest of the show pretty soon after. While I understand the reasoning behind doing this, the anime does not pay off this structure, as beyond the first few episodes, the chapters start being presented out of release order and out of chronological order, kind of destroying any consistent throughline. This decision in and of itself isn't the worst, since the comic isn't always chronological, and the volume ordering is a bit different from the release ordering, but the inconsistency makes the first few episodes feel lessened without reason. The other large failure that comes with only animating about 1/7th of the entire work is that many themes and concepts that are core to the manga are not represented in the anime well at all. One of the biggest is the rare but unnerving supernatural chapters, of which only one is animated, and not a particularly good one. In order to talk about these themes I'll have to transition into talking about the manga itself, since they aren't part of the anime.

DA MANGA: So one last recommendation that you read the manga, the whole damn thing. Cus we're gettin into themes and character moments that take a long time to pay off, and obviously is all part of my interpretations, so if that stuff means anything to you don't let me ruin it for ya.

The title of the manga is, in essence, the entire manga's "punchline" in that every chapter could meaningfully end with simply the text "And yet the town still turns..." (My translation of the title, fuck "And yet, the town revolves" or "But the town moves"); by this I mean most chapters end in an anti-climax where a mystery is left unsolved, or a mystery is solved and undercut by the realization that life simply keeps on going without much change. This is used to essentially force your eyes open to all possibilities when reading, as the main character spends her time acting like a detective, and these mysteries end up as either misunderstandings, secrets, riddles, and sometimes something out of the ordinary happens that makes you unable to pin anything down firmly. Similarly, these endings aren't always read-and-forget scenarios. Several chapters come back in the form of a continued joke, a continued mystery, or contribute to some greater purpose later. Readers are properly rewarded for keeping everything they can in mind, while also tormenting such people with loose ends.

I enjoy Hotori as a protagonist due to her character being defined not in flaws and strengths, but in mindedness. Hotori seems like a simple "haha she's dumb" character to start, but consistently throughout she proves that her strengths are in memory, observation, and deduction, while lacking in some more common sense and abilities. Her brain works in strange ways that some people may or may not understand, such as her need to think through even the most trivial fictional scenarios, which I relate to deeply.

The art and paneling throughout are wonderful. Ishiguro Masakazu is one of those artists who draws very simple characters, but knows how to use details and depth to breath so much life into the artwork. He also clearly uses the occasional supernatural happenings as an excuse to draw what he loved, as all sorts of artistic depictions of the supernatural come out that simply look satisfying. These parts obviously meant a lot to him since he's been working on a primarily mystery-action manga that has a lot more of that stuff in it. (Also, as hindsight is 20/20, if you've read any of his new work you'll notice that the main character of it is eerily similar to a character who shows up very late in SoreMachi that the author obviously fell in love with, cus she just keeps coming back and even ends up with a really unsettling end to her character arc despite only being introduced as a component in a harmless mystery. Feel free to call me out for the same shit 30 years from now when I'll probably do the same shit)

I'd like to get into some of the major themes of this work, as a lot of them hit very close to my mind (which I guess is true of any theme you recognize for yourself, you wouldn't really "get it" if it didn't mean something to you...).

The simplest theme, again, comes from the title. The main character, Hotori, expresses a desire that the town she lives in continues going on, unchanged forever. This is obviously a fear of change, which ya know, same, but also an exploration of what it means to fear change. Hotori actively tries to keep businesses from closing down, keep friends from leaving, and keep relationships from changing, while simultaneously making all sorts of new relationships and solving mysteries. Hotori even comes to realize that simply learning the truth about something changes the world through your own perspective, and that such changes can't be undone. In spite of this, Hotori mostly gets her wish, any time she fears that a large change will impact the town, its resolved about the same as any other issue. Whether its a message that even time can't keep you from your loved ones and that change isn't worth fearing, or a concession that large changes to the setting would be a bad idea in terms of humor, I can't really decide. This theme reaches it's conclusion in what is one in a series of "ending" kinda chapters at the end of the series. Hotori is faced with a supernatural ethical situation, save her town from destruction at the cost of her existence, or live through the disaster, knowing her town and the people in it will forever be changed. While the actual result is that nobody disappears and nothing is lost, and the event may have simply been a strange dream, Hotori confidently decides that sparing the people in her town from a life altering event is worth giving up her memories with them. A kind of bold spit-in-the-face to the idea that change is okay, where we find that Hotori didn't fear change for herself, but rather for the people around her.

There's another major idea in this manga, which takes a very long time to pay off, and completes its arc at the very very very actual end of the series, the idea of "leading someone to be something". A character that rides that line between main and side character, Shizuka, is a writer of detective novels, who feels the best person to judge her works would be a version of herself without the bias of being the author. She tries to achieve this by leading Hotori to be interested in detective works (including her own) and generally be just like her, starting from a young age. The end result is a young girl dead set on being a detective herself (or at least another novelist), while Shizuka keeps her identity as an author secret. She then uses Hotori as a scapegoat for herself, attempting to see how she would solve various mysteries and use that as inspiration, and this is depicted as though Shizuka were some sort of villain, which she may feel like she is. The end result of it all, though, is that Hotori was likely already a detective-minded person, and that even if Shizuka pushed her down that path, it was Hotori's decision to continue down it, and the very end of the manga is a scene revealing that Hotori figured out Shizuka's secret at some point, and even still respected Shizuka and aspired to reach her, and the two accept each other for who they are. I enjoy this ending a lot, since as an artist I've worried that some of my love or aspirations for and from other artists came with an ulterior motive of wanting a better community for art to exist in, but people are people and will make their own decisions, and some day everyone may be able to become equals in a truly meaningful sense, where everyone is inspired by and guiding each other together.

So that probably didn't mean shit to nobody and I didn't even really talk about anything in the comic like most of the main characters or any of the shit goin on but ya know fuck you go read it, and thanks for reading this.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 33]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright, here we go again!

Chapter 12

There was something off about his readings. Clearly the time distortion was starting to pull at this place with the way the weather was flickering between storming and sunny, but he still couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact location of the source of it. He could, however, get that it must be somewhere on this side of the river more into the downtown area, so that’s the way he was walking, Pat close on his heels.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

Janus shot him a glare. “Elvis Presley,” he said.

Pat frowned, clearly knowing who that was. “There’s no reason to be mean.”

 “You did it to me first.”

“…Introduced myself as a famous musician?” he asked. Janus didn’t respond, and after a moment, Pat laughed lightly. “You really don’t understand time travel, do you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Janus said. “Name the three types of time distortions.”

“Just because I don’t know the names of things doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.” He stuck out his tongue. Janus was dealing with an actual toddler. “Unlike you who has a bunch of fancy words, but just caused a time loop.”

Janus scoffed. “I did not just cause a time loop.”

“Maybe not a big one,” Pat agreed, “but you did.”

 Janus raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never introduced myself to you with a musician’s name, but now you’ve told me that I will. So, at some point in the future I will have to, thereby making you think to say that now. Time loop.”

“That’s not… that doesn’t count.”

“Does too,” Pat claimed. “Like I have said once before and you may or may not have heard me say before, anything you do to me to get back at me for something I haven’t done yet, just causes whatever that is to happen in the first place.”

“But you’re still going to do it.”

 “Then take it up with future me. I haven’t done anything to you.” Then he paused and sighed. “…Which I guess means you’ve done nothing to me.” He seemed to mull this concept over for a long moment. “Well you were a bit crabby about me not knowing what a time distortion was, but I can forgive you for that.”

“And I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“Like I said,” Pat said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You also haven’t done anything to endear yourself to me either,” Janus grumbled.

“Hmm,” Pat said. “Fine.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “You’re obviously not having much luck finding whatever you’re looking for. Tell me what it is and I’ll help.”

Janus squinted at what was in his hand. “Is that… an iPhone 5?”

“No!” he said. “It’s super-secret time travel tech disguised as an iPhone 5!”

“We’re in 2027,” Janus said. “Not a great disguise. Those things have been obsolete for a decade.”

“Well I’ll keep in mind to have my tech disguised as phones from the right year next time,” Pat said, sticking out his tongue. “Now what are we looking for?”

“If my timepiece can’t find it, I’m certain yours can’t.”

 Pat rolled his eyes and tapped on the device’s screen a couple of times. “I’m going to guess it’s that,” he said proudly.

Janus leaned over to look at the screen. “Are you using google maps?” he sputtered.

“It integrates time relevant data like traffic conditions and local weather warnings with time travel technology,” Pat explained. “Something seems to be going on in a museum a couple of blocks that way.”

“I…” Janus said. That was actually a really good idea, usually unnecessary with scouts observing that data beforehand, and Janus wasn’t sure how good the accuracy would be considering whatever was taking it into account was automated, but still a good idea. “Well, I guess since we have no other leads, we can check it out.”

 Pat looked far too proud for having only used a piece of tech that hadn’t even been confirmed as accurate. “Then, let’s go,” he said right as a chilly wind started to pick up and a couple of snowflakes began to fall around them. “Before that gets worse…”

Janus let Pat lead with his iPhone. Janus’s timepiece still wasn’t picking up a clear signal for some reason, but it seemed to point in the same general direction as Pat’s. Strangely though, as they got closer to their destination, the signal started to get fuzzier. Pat’s tech seemed unaffected leading them closer to the museum.

 When they got to the Musée Fabre museum, Janus stopped. “What?” Pat asked. He was shivering slightly in the cold and holding his arms around himself.

“My timepiece stopped working completely,” he said.

“I’m assuming that’s weird?” Pat said.

“It is,” Janus confirmed, turning to squint at him suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not the one doing it?”

“If I was doing it, wouldn’t I have just knocked it out from the get go?” Pat questioned.

Janus pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “Would you have? Maybe it’s a trick.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed a bit on him. “Think what you want, but I’m freezing. Come in with me if you want.”

 He dithered from a few moments before following Pat inside. Pat had already struck up a conversation with the woman charging admission into art museum. She was looking at him, her brow knit as he spoke. Janus nudged him away from her getting a confused glance from him in return. He shot a smile at the woman.

“Two adult passes for the museum and the Hotel Sabatier d’Espevran, please,” he said, placing down 14 euro.

“Ah,” she said, still looking at Pat oddly. “Yes sir.” She gave them the passes and Janus quickly shuffled Pat away.

“What is wrong with your French?” he hissed once they were out of earshot.

 “What?” he asked, bewildered.

“You sound like you’re reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. No one talks like that anymore.”

“I’m a little rusty,” Pat defended himself.

“Two centuries?” Janus asked. Pat stuck his tongue out like a child once again. “Is that your only way to respond to legitimate criticism?”

“What does it even matter anyway? No one ever expects time travel, at least not for something so silly.”

“It’s not silly,” Janus said. “It’s a legitimate issue. The wrong person who’s watched too much science fiction notices and you’re putting the timeline at risk. Not to mention if there are other time travelers around that aren’t as nice as me.”

 “Are there a lot of time travelers around?” Pat asked, sounding intrigued.

“There are plenty, both legal and not.”

“Huh,” he said, “but what are the chances we’ll run into another one?”

“Considering the time distortion? There could be many. Opportunists wanting to capitalize off the chaos, people trying to stop it, like me, and not to mention the person who caused it.”

“Wait, someone made it happen?” Pat asked.

“These things don’t just happen naturally.”

“Huh. So, something like this has to be caused by a person?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “…Why?”

Pat smiled. “No reason. I think we should head upstairs. Whatever I’m picking up says it’s around here, but I don’t see anything. Maybe it’s a floor or two above us.”

“Which is why it’s ridiculous to use Google Maps.”

 “Would you rather use yours?” he asked sweetly.

“I’m still not convinced it’s not your doing,” Janus growled. “Why does your tech still work when mine doesn’t?”

“Probably the same reason the ring did,” he muttered.

“What?”

“What?”

“You may be the most aggravating being in the universe.”

Pat glanced at him with a bit of a smirk. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It would be a much bigger risk to the timeline than me speaking in French from the 1830s. But, I’m pretty sure the reason mine still works is just a software difference.”

“What the hell do you mean a software difference?”

 Pat opened his mouth, doubtlessly to supply him with yet another frustratingly cheeky and unhelpful answer. Yet, Pat did not have a chance to do so as, just as Janus stepped onto the second floor of the museum, the ground started to violently shake. Janus tried to turn to catch Pat as the other man’s foot slipped on the last step, but he couldn’t do so in time. Pat fell onto his hands and knees, sliding back a few steps and smacking his face into the stairs hard once and then a couple of times more after that as he slid.

 Chapter 13

The room stopped shaking after a moment. “Ow,” Pat said. He seemed a bit stunned but was still moving at least. He carefully maneuvered himself into a seating position. “Ouch. Owie.” He reached up to poke his own nose. “Ow!” Janus slapped his hand away when he got there. A bit of blood was already trickling from his nose and there was a small cut over his eye, but it wasn’t bleeding too much.

Janus pushed him so he was leaning slightly forward and produced a pack of time appropriate tissues from his pocket. He pulled one out of the package and offered it to him.

 He took it and pressed it up against his nose to try to stop the bleeding. He seemed mostly alright though Janus imagined he’d have plenty of bruises down the line. The power in the museum flickered and Janus looked up. Now that he was listening, he could hear people panicking in and out of the museum.

“We should probably get off of the stairs,” he suggested.

“Yeah,” Pat agreed. Janus helped him to his feet, and they climbed back up the steps. Janus looked around and found an employees only sign a few feet away. Usually he’d not risk that as it could get him into trouble he didn’t want to be in, but considering the earthquake that had just happened, he could probably play it off as panic.

 He ushered Pat into a small room and found a chair and table. He had Pat sit in the chair and pulled out another one of the tissues to dab at the blood coming from the cut over his eyes. “Here,” he said. “Hold that there. I’m going to go see if there are any bandages about.”

Pat took the tissue with the hand not already holding one to his nose. “Thanks,” he said.

Janus nodded and got to his feet. The lights flickered once again but didn’t stay off for now. He didn’t know how long that would last.

 He couldn’t see anything that might hold bandages in this room, but there was a second door. “I’ll be right back,” he told Pat, exiting through it.

The lights flickered once more as the door closed behind him and he cursed. When they came back up Janus’s eyes immediately fell on a man. They both froze.

“Remus!” Janus hissed the second their eyes met. “What are you doing here?”

Remus blinked at him for a moment. “Hi. Janus,” he said. “I… come to France for… tea sometimes?”

“There isn’t any tea back here.”

“So, there isn’t…” he said. There was a moment of silence. “Uh, so I actually cannot talk to you right now.”

 “What do you mean?” Janus asked. Remus grimaced in a way Janus had never seen from him before. It immediately set off alarm bells in Janus’s head. “Oh my god,” Janus said. “Oh my god. You’re not from the same time as me.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Remus mumbled.

“Holy shit, you’re looping?!”

“It’s… not looping if I wasn’t here the first time.”

“Remus, we spend more than 12 hours a day together most of the time. The only thing worse than this is if I looped back to this time myself.”

“…Yeah. Anyway, I need to leave now.”

“Please do.”

 He turned to go, but then stopped. “Oh, and,” he reached into his pocket and tossed something at Janus. Janus caught it.

It was Band-Aids.

“Oh, shit,” Janus spat at the clear use of foreknowledge. “I hate this. I hate you. I’m going to kill you the next time you see me.”

“Sure, Jan.”

“Go.”

He did, slipping into the next room while Janus took a deep breath and then turned back to the door behind him. He schooled his face before Pat looked up. “I found some Band-Aids.”

Pat nodded and Janus came over to squat next to him.

 Janus opened the box and Pat looked down. His eyes lit up with sudden joy so intense that Janus felt like he’d just gotten a punch to the gut. “Kitty Band-Aids!” he exclaimed. Janus bothered to actually look at the design on the container, only to note the cartoon cats on the front. Pat was almost vibrating off his seat. “Look they’re all so cute!” He grabbed the container from him to inspect the different designs printed on the back with glee even as a bit of blood was still trickling from his nose.

Janus took the box back gently and guided the wad of bloody Kleenexes back to his nose.

 “Which would you like?” Janus asked.

“Oh, they are all so cute,” Pat cooed. “Um, how about that one!” he pointed. “Or that one! Or that one!”

“Pat you only have one cut.”

“But they’re all so cute!” Pat said, tongue tucking into his cheek. He contemplated the box again. “Let’s do the black one,” he finally settled on.

Janus selected one of the Band-Aids with a black cat wrapped around a pink ball of yarn and staring back at them with wide green eyes. The think looked like it had partaken in one two many doses of catnip, but Janus didn’t mention that.

 Instead, he just carefully unstuck the backing from the Band-Aid and motioned for Pat to remove the tissue from his forehead. He smiled at Janus as he drew back.

Janus cleared his throat. “How’s the nose.”

“It’s slowing down,” Pat replied. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Janus replied. They met eyes for a second before Pat looked away back at the box of Band-Aids.

“Oh,” Pat said. “There’s a grey one. I didn’t notice.” He pointed to it. “I should have used that one.”

“Do you like grey cats?” Janus asked.

“I like all kitties,” he said, “but one of my roommates loves grey cats. He had one when he was a kid and thinks of them as good omens. Seeing one always brightens up his day.”

“A friend of mine has a grey cat,” Janus said. “She’s much more tolerable than him.”

Pat laughed a bit. “Don’t be mean,” he said.

“Oh, he deserves it, don’t worry.” Janus considered him for a moment. “Here,” he said, pulling out one of the Band-Aids with the grey cat on it. It did, actually, look a lot like Diesel Fuel.

“But I don’t…”

Janus just shrugged and stuck it on his cheek where there was no wound. Pat giggled and touched it with a finger. Janus stood back up.

“Can I have another tissue?” Pat asked.

“Sure.” Janus handed a tissue over to him and he crumpled up the bloody ones in his hand.

“I think I’m good to keep going,” Pat said, putting the new tissue under his nose. “The nose will stop soon.”

 Pat got out his iPhone and directed him back out of the room. They checked the second floor and didn’t find anything and so went to the third floor. The second they arrived in the room that Pat’s phone was directing them too, Janus knew that it must be right. There was a strange, distorted whirling sound and the entire room was shaking slightly like they were standing next to a railroad track.

“I’m guessing this is it,” Pat said.

Janus nodded and looked over his shoulder at the screen. They both cautiously walked towards where the little dot was on the phone.

 “Is that it?” Pat asked, pointing at a small device on the center column in the room. Janus reached forward to flip the switch on it. The whirling stopped and the room settled. Janus’s time piece vibrated as it came back online. They waited for a few moments. “I assumed… time distortions would be more…”

“They are,” Janus said. “This one is artificial.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a simulation,” Janus said. “It causes similar symptoms to a time distortion, but it’s not actually fracturing time at all.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Pat asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said. He took the piece of tech of the wall and carefully stored it in his pocket, “but someone’s trying to get our attention.”

 Chapter 14

Janus didn’t feel comfortable leaving France 2027 just yet, still weirded out by the strange turn of events. So, he and Pat ended up sticking around for a couple of hours. They looked through the art museum for a bit, but Janus was having trouble focusing on the pieces, and Pat eventually suggested they get some air. Janus agreed considering the museum would close for the night soon anyway.

They wandered around the downtown for a bit. The people seemed to jump back from the strange weather and earthquake that afternoon rather quickly, and there were plenty still about to blend into.

 Pat was snapping photos every so often like a tourist which Janus shook his head at but allowed because even with the outdated phone it almost made them blend in even more. It also might stop any questions about Pat’s weird way of speaking French. They could just say he was an overeager tourist who watched too many old movies.

“Ooo!” Pat said. “We should get crepes.”

“Why?”

“You can’t go to France and not eat crepes.”

“I assure you, you can,” Janus said dryly.

Pat shot a pout at him and the next thing he knew he was in a small crepe shop.

 For Janus, choosing something was easy. He just ordered the first thing he found on the menu which seemed to be a standard one with ham and eggs. Pat on the other hand seemed to be struggling greatly, and Janus had to gently push him to the side to let some other customers order first.

“What should I get!?” Pat asked. “They all look so good! I could do strawberry preserves or maple syrup or just sugar!”

“Or you could get one that is actually food,” Janus suggested mildly. “I don’t think you need any more sugar judging by how you are acting.”

Pat rolled his eyes. “You sound like Lo.”

 Janus made a note of the name ‘Lo’ even though it surely was a nickname.

“But, since you’re insisting, I’ll get something healthy. I’ll have the strawberry one. That’s a fruit!”

“It comes with a cream cheese filling,” Janus pointed out.

“And it’s fruit!”

Janus shook his head and stepped up to the counter. “One ham and cheese and one strawberry preserve, please,” he said to the cashier as he was not allowing Pat to order in French and accidently say something stupid. He forked over some euros.

“You don’t have to pay for me,” Pat protested when he saw that.

Janus glanced back at him. “I was afraid you’d try to pay in francs,” he said dryly.

 It looked like Pat was about to stick his tongue out at him, remembered that Janus had criticized him for that earlier, and then just scrunched up his face in displeasure as though that was any less childish.

They waited for their crepes to be finished and then went to eat them outside near a water fountain.

“I can pay you back for the crepe,” Pat said after they sat down. “I do actually have euros.”

Janus waved him off. “It wasn’t that expensive.”

Pat hummed. “Well, in that case. I insist on paying for a wish for you.” Janus raised an eyebrow. “In the fountain!” Pat clarified.

 Pat set aside his crepe to dig in his pocket for a couple of coins. “Here!” he said handing one over.

Janus glanced over at the fountain. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” Pat beseeched. “You have to want something. I’ll even throw it in for you, but you have to make a wish first!”

“No.”

“Please!”

Janus sighed. “Fine.” He popped the rest of his crepe in his mouth. “I wish for a crepe,” he said after swallowing.

“You just had a crepe, silly.”

“But I liked it, so I want another one.”

“We can go back and get you another crepe.”

“Ah, but I’m not hungry anymore.”

Pat crossed his arms. “You’re just being difficult on purpose.”

 “Not me,” Janus said putting hand over his heart. “I would never do something like that.”

 Pat glared at him, but then snatched the coin out of his hand. “Fine!” he said. “One crepe wish coming right up.” He hopped up with the two coins and darted over to the water fountain. Janus turned to watch him go but then happened to catch sight of something out of the corner of his eyes.

Pat’s phone.

He didn’t pause in his movement, completing the turn, but as he watched Pat close his eyes, presumably to focus on his own wish, Janus snuck a hand out and grabbed the phone without looking. He slipped it into his own pocket.

 Pat came back over after throwing both coins in the fountain and didn’t even seem to notice that his phone was missing, picking up his crepe to take another bite. Just to make sure, though Janus decided to distract him. “What do you think of your crepe?” Janus asked.

“I like it! It’s sweet, but not too sweet. There was a crepe place across the street from my apartment in college, but they always put a bit too much sugar in the dough, I think. I’d still eat them, but these are much better.”

Janus nodded and kept up the light conversation until Pat was finished.

21088

“Well,” he said then, getting to his feet. “It seems that nothing else is going to happen regarding the time distortion. I should be getting back.”

Pat hummed. “I should too. It’s movie night!”

“I probably should arrest you,” Janus noted.

“In the middle of all of these people?” Pat asked mildly.

“Touché,” Janus said.

Pat gasped and pointed at him. “Pun!” he said. Janus blinked at him. “Because we’re in France! That’s French!”

“…Goodbye Pat,” Janus said, turning to walk away from him.

“Goodbye… wait I still don’t know your name!”

Janus stopped to look back at him for a moment. “Like I said,” he replied. “Elvis.”

“Fine,” Pat said. “Au revoir, mon chéri.”

“You never stop, do you?” Janus asked.

Pat giggled. “Considering I don’t know what you mean, I imagine I’m just getting started.”

Janus actually left then, walking off towards the alley he’d first arrived in. In some ways, the mission had been a bust, but in others it had gone very well.

He felt for the weight of the phone in his pocket before pulling up the display screen on his timepiece to go back to the TPI.

It had gone very well indeed.

 Chapter 15

The first thing Janus had done when he’d returned to the TPI was hand over the timebomb to Khalid who sent it to forensics. Within the hour, forensics got back to them that it was the same timebomb as 2999 and that it had never exploded, but simply been diffused. Which meant, blessings on blessings, everyone got to go home that night.

 Not that Janus went home, no, he ended up falling asleep on his desk somewhere between 3 and 4am, but at least he wasn’t sharing his space with anyone. He’d been trying to hack the cell phone all night to see if it had anything he could use, but he honestly had no idea what he was doing. All it seemed he could do was play some annoying song over and over again about never giving someone up. At around 2am, he’d finally broken and sent off an email, though, he’d continued to try to mess with it after that.

 He got woken up by Lena coming into the office at 7am, and noticed he already had an email response asking when Janus wanted to come in.

“Now?” he sent back.

“…Do you sleep?” was the immediate response. “And yes.”

His wrist buzzed as an appointment in 5 seconds downloaded to his timepiece. He selected the coordinates and landed at Cultural Outreach. The receptionist blinked up at him and then back down at the screen on his desk. “Oh!” he said. “I didn’t see this appointment. I think Professor Eran is in his office.”

He didn’t stand to escort Janus this time, so Janus went ahead and went down the hall to Virgil’s office himself.

 He knocked on the door and while he was waiting for Virgil to open it, the infernal contraption once again started to play the same stupid song.

“I didn’t even touch you!” he spat, getting it out and tapping on the screen.

“Jonas Brothers dude again?” Virgil asked causally upon opening the door.

Janus shoved it at him. “Make it stop.”

Virgil took it and fiddled with it for a few moments before it stopped with the song. “Oh my gosh,” he said scrolling through something on the screen.

“What.”

“What maniac sets a custom alarm for every 30-60 minutes for a week that just plays ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’? Oh, and one ‘It’s Not Unusual’ on Saturday. He’s mixing memes at an alarming rate.”

 “Can you. Just. Make it not happen. Anymore?”

Virgil smirked at him. “Maybe.” He turned around to go back into his office.

“Virgil,” Janus growled following him in.

Virgil just laughed. “What do you want to know about it?” he asked. “Just a fair warning… the song means he… likely was aware someone would steal it.”

“Of course, he was,” Janus groaned.

“But I’m sure we can still get something out of it.” Virgil started tapping at the screen again. “Okay, let’s see. It’s an iPhone 5, and someone jailbroke it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Tampered with it so they could install non-company approved software,” Virgil explained.

“Well I figured that since he was using Google Maps to track time distortions,” Janus grumbled.

 “I think I have something,” Virgil said to himself while digging through his desk. “Ah ha!” He held up some sort of cord. “This will let me hook it up to my integrator.” He slotted the cord into the bottom of the iPhone and then crawled under his desk to fiddle around with some other things. “There we go,” Virgil said popping back up. “It might take a few minutes. Running the program any faster might overheat the phone.”

Janus nodded and sat back to wait. Virgil grabbed the phone and started to play around with it a bit even as it uploaded all of its information to his computer.

“Weird,” Virgil said after a moment.

“What?” Janus asked, sitting up straighter.

“There are exactly two contacts. Fewer than I’d anticipate for a regular phone from the 2010s. More than I would expect from one clearly not being used as a phone.

 Virgil glanced to the side, and it must have finished the download because he unhooked it from the computer. “I have a 21st century phone network adapter,” Virgil said. “It transfers call back to whatever date the phone says. Do you want to try calling one?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Janus replied.

Virgil dug back into his desk for a small device that he plugged into the same port he’d plugged the earlier cord. “Okay, which contact do you want to try first?” he asked. “One has ‘Ro’ with a crown, red heart, and a gold star emoji. The other has “Lo” with a book, blue heart, and Milky Way emoji.”

 “He mentioned a Lo,” Janus said. “So, try him first.”

Virgil nodded. “I’ll put it on speaker.” He pressed some buttons before setting the phone on the desk between them.

The phone rang three times before with a bit of a crackle, it was answered. “Salutations,” a voice said, voice sounding a bit scratchy as though he had only just gotten up.

Virgil motioned with his head for Janus to speak. “Are you ‘Lo’?” he asked.

The man hummed. “To some people.”

Janus… didn’t quite know what to say to that, or even what questions he should ask.

“I’m assuming you’re the man that stole my associate’s phone.”

 “Your associate?” Janus fished.

The man made an amused hum. “I believe you were calling him ‘Pat’ on your last adventure.” Janus could hear something being placed down on the other end of the phone. Before Janus could respond, he heard what sounded like an old keyboard being typed on. “Now,” Lo said. “I have to admit, I am surprised you were willing to oblige me so thoroughly by plugging the phone into your system. Let’s see…”

The screen on Virgil’s lit up bright blue all of a sudden. “…shit,” said Virgil.

“Well,” Lo said, “it seems you were clever enough not to plug it into the TPI system, which is disappointing, but…”

 There was more clicking on the other end. “Hmm, interesting music tastes for the 4000s,” he said.

“I’m an anthropologist,” Virgil spoke up.

“Ah, yes, I can see that,” Lo replied. “Virgil Eran, senior professor at Silver Mountain University, a vetted member of the Cultural Outreach program, and searched the phrase ‘How to eat sushi without making a cultural blunder and making everyone hate you and losing your job because what kind of shit anthropologist doesn’t know how to eat raw fish right’ which you then shortened to ‘How to eat sushi’ and proceeded to search 52 times in the last 48 hours.”

 Virgil went a bit scarlet around the ears. “Dude, did you really have to out me like that?” he hissed at the phone.

“My apologies,” Lo responded. “From my personal experience, don’t dip the rice parts in soy sauce, and don’t add too much wasabi. Overall, most people will be understanding of mistakes, and you will certainly not be fired or ostracized for handling food incorrectly. As long as you are not acting intentionally disrespectful, and I image you will not be considering your clear anxiety over whatever outing you are planning to attend, you will be fine.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Good point, but counterpoint, what if you’re wrong and everyone hates me forever?”

 “Is it the lunch meeting today at 11:30am?” Lo asked, “because I can see that a Professor Boris Laden has attended the event multiple years in a row. Considering he is a philosophy instructor, has no Japanese heritage that I can see, and I have found a photo of last year’s event wherein he has placed his chopsticks vertically in his rice, and he has yet to be fired or ostracized, I would postulate that your fears are unfounded.”

“Yeah but… okay, I really don’t have an argument for that one, except maybe I’m a piece of shit and everyone is looking for a reason to hate me.”

“Considering your many impressive accolades in your field, I would argue that ‘a piece of shit’ is not a good descriptor of you. Not to mention the fact that you are often a highly requested member for different committees in your department and outside of it.”

“Oh, but is that because people like me or because I’m an anxious mess and make sure events go off without a hitch?”

“From experience, disorder with people you enjoy the company of is far more tolerable than order with people you do not. Which explains my current living situation and the lack of finished dishes in my sink. Therefore, I would assume the former.”

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“A lot of assumptions,” Virgil commented, but he was smiling slightly.

“Assumptions based on data,” Lo argued back lightly.

“You really came in here, hacked into my computer and smacked my anxiety in the face, huh?”

“Glad to have helped.”

“Y-”

“Are the two of you finished?” Janus interrupted, finally getting sick of the two of them.

“Not nearly,” Lo said. “I have gained access to an entire network of a very large university and will be sorting through the data for a long time.”

“Ugh, right,” Virgil groaned, “and you got access through my integrator.”

“I doubt they’ll be able to trace it back to you if you don’t tell them.”

“Nice try,” Virgil said dryly, “but not likely. I’m telling them about you immediately so they can work to kick you out.”

Lo laughed. “Fair enough, but I’ve already gotten plenty of information at this point. Including the fact that you work with the TPI and scheduled an appointment with an Agent Janus Picani this morning set to start a few minutes before this phone call. So, hello Janus.”

“Bastard,” Janus shot back.

“And goodbye Professor Eran. It was a pleasure.” He hung up.

Virgil sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “This is going to be fun to explain to both of our bosses.”

  Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

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“Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

  Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

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Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

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“Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

[rpgmgames]

March’s Featured Game: acai cOrner

DEVELOPER(S): moca & Mitty ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Surreal SUMMARY: acai cOrner is about Mizuki, someone who has fallen into the sewers and who happens to find their favorite electric guitar! Upon obtaining the guitar, Mizuki turns into a magical girl who must defend herself against spooky sewer creatures using the guitar's magical powers.

Download the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *moca: Hi, I'm moca, a Starbucks barista aspiring to be a writer and game developer. I have been making RPG Maker games for about six years now, with my first two projects being a Pokémon fan-game and a Corpse Party fan-game. Those two happen to be my two favorite franchises as well! I have also created the RPG Maker game MOMOKA (IGMC 2018). I have founded a group called 'Team Shibu!' dedicated to making horror games! Our current project is a RPG Maker survival horror game named 'Katharsis'.

*Mitty: Hey there, I'm Mitty! I've been working with Moca on several games for a while now, helping with mostly graphics! Please support him, as he is very kind and hardworking!! I'm also the main developer of a game called "Marinette", so I hope you'll check that one out too, when the demo is released!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *moca: acai cOrner is an experimental spooky RPG Maker game that only uses 4 colors! You are a magical girl with a just-as-magical electric guitar that you use to fend off spooky sewer slimes and other weird enemies you find in the surreal sewer system. It's half exploration and half RPG battles. What inspired me to create acai cOrner initially was to actually get myself back into the groove of making games again. I had just recently came back from a hiatus and found myself having trouble getting back into the development of 'Katharsis'. That's when I decided to make a short, experimental game to get the juices flowing.

How long did you work on your project? *moca: acai cOrner was finished in just about under a month!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *moca: I had always wanted to make a Yume Nikki-like game and thought this was the perfect opportunity to try. So for the more surreal parts of acai cOrner, I took inspiration from Yume Nikki and a Homestuck random planet generator. Gameplay wise though, I took inspiration from a RPG Maker game called Ghost Suburb 0! I really loved how unique it was, especially with the timer and no dialogue aspect. I knew I wanted to do something with a timer, so I tried a rogue-like approach with the gameplay.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *moca: If you played any of my previous projects, you know that acai cOrner is vastly different than anything that I have ever done. I'm so used to using words to describe the violence in my games, so when it came to making the story, I had a lot of trouble. It wasn't until I looked deeper into why people like these types of games that I had realized that people like to interpret the story on their own, guided by exploration, to enjoy these games. After that, I let loose a bit and made something more open-ended. Another challenge was the difficulty. I was the only one playtesting the game, and since I knew the game front and back, and had no trouble getting the ending. That's why when I sent out demos to friends, I was really discouraged to hear that the experience was mostly frustrating and rage quitting-inducing haha. I worked closely with their feedback and made changes accordingly to make the experience less frustrating but still difficult. *Mitty: I think I was going through a weird artblock during the development of the game, so for some of the illustrations and backdrops for each area's fights, Moca sketched out the basic idea of what it could look like, and I just put my spin on it! It made the work much easier and faster!

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *moca: Well, the game was meant to be short so there wasn't room for any big changes. Sure there are a couple gameplay changes and enemy tweaks, but not anything mindblowing. I added in the idea of making four surreal worlds kinda last minute, if that counts, haha.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *moca: In the beginning, it was just me! I didn't think I was gonna need any outside help since this was supposed to be a relatively easy project to release, but the further in development I got, the more I realized the game needed pizazz. The four color limitation wasn't enough for my lack of graphical talent. That's when I contacted Mitty about helping with the games battle backdrops and sprite animations! She is also a member of Team Shibu!, but we have collabed together even before that. Her art really made the project shine and I enjoy working with them on games! *Mitty: Moca contacted me, and I wanted to help! We are working together on another game called Katharsis, so we are quite familiar with each other. I like working with other people, especially if I'm not in the lead, it releases a bit of the pressure I feel sometimes ahaha

What is the best part of developing a game? *moca: To me, it's seeing everything come together and just... working exactly the way you envisioned it. As a game developer, you section the game off into parts to make development much more organized and faster but seeing it all come together in the end. Pure bliss *chefs kiss*. *Mitty: I like a bit of everything, but currently I've been enjoying animating and spritework, as well as map assets' designs a little more than usual!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *moca: Mm... not really! I have an idea of what the engine can do, so when I do go out of my way to player other RPG Maker games, it's usually for writing inspiration rather than gameplay inspiration. Ghost Suburb 0 is something that I accidentally stumbled upon and immediately fell in love with it the minute I played it haha. (Fun fact: the developer of Ghost Suburb 0 is apart of Team Shibu! and is in charge of monster design!)

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *moca: There is a rat in the game that is internally called 'Ratthew' who leads you into a funky room. I relate them the most. *Mitty: I relate to the land sharks the most on a spiritual level. They are pretty much confused beans, and that's very relatable.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *moca: I wish I added more random spooky events and trap rooms. But the game was also supposed to be short and I knew that if I kept adding more and more things, development was never gonna end haha.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *moca: Well, by the time this interview comes out, there should be a new update for the game. The update should include 100% custom music by a talented composer, and a nerf in difficulty. As for sequels, who knows! The next time you see acai cOrner may be in 3D.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *moca: Definitely the fan reaction! The satisfaction of seeing your work being noticed by people and actually enjoying makes me happy. It's also the relief of just... finishing something! *Mitty: For this particular project I was obviously looking forward to seeing what people said about the little animations and such ahaha! I also was curious about the reaction to the timed difficulty mechanic, I had never seen anything like that before Moca presented it to me, so I had no idea on what people's feedback would be.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *moca: How people will handle the difficulty. The game isn't supposed to be completed on your first playthrough, but in 2-3 playthroughs. There are rooms and places that are meant to waste your time that you should ideally skip the more you play. By later playthroughs, you should be shaving time and be better. I understand that it's not handled as best I could, but I think the experience should still be challenging and hopefully fun! *Mitty: I was a little conflicted on the timed mechanic, I loved it because it's pretty original and helps set an interesting athmosphere of worry and unease, and also seems to tell a bit of the vague story; and at the same time I don't like it much because I prefer more story-driven games and the vagueness mixed with the mechanic feels different from what I'm used to playing! I think it's more of a personal taste kind of thing, it was an experimental jam game, after all!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *moca: Take it easy! Take short breaks throughout development. And most importantly, have fun. If it's a hobby and it's making you overly stressed, just take a step back!

Question from last month's featured dev @ressurflection: What would you say is the weakest part of your game development? *moca: Procrastination. I'm so bad at sticking to my own schedule, it's something that I try to keep in check when working with a team especially.

We mods would like to thank moca & Mitty for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out acai cOrner if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum