#to everything in the story + the future

[beedee-wans]

PALPATINE FUCKING SURVIVED MAUL SURVIVED EVERYBODY BUT TECH GETS REVIVED

[puppppppppy]

I can teach you how to be just like me

crying all night, sleeping till three

[newwavesylviaplath]

was having a shitty day then remembered evan peters as quicksilver

[markantonys]

i'll be interested to see if this holds true for WOT s3 since the s1 finale had so many extenuating circumstances and can't really be included in the comparison, but based off of the s2 finale, i believe that season finales tend to bear the brunt of "It's Different From The Books!" ire because they are the culmination of all the smaller changes made throughout the season.

this turned into a bigger analysis post than i expected lmao par for the course with my blog! read on for exploration of how the 2x08 conclusion of each season-long arc is the the most emotionally satisfying conclusion and/or the most thematically appropriate conclusion possible based on the show's particular version of the story, plus a bonus tangent on the nature of adaptation.

for a finale episode, the writers' prime concern 100% has to be "wrapping up all the season's arcs in a way that feels satisfying with everything that's happened in the first 7 episodes, using the book version of the finale event as the framework" rather than "recreating the book version of the finale event exactly as it is with all the same scenes and themes". the nature of storytelling inherently means that every single person who tells the same story will focus on different themes (just think of how many versions of the hades & persephone story there are), and a good adaptation knows that being internally consistent with its own Emphasized Themes is more important than copying-and-pasting scenes from the source material without making any changes to account for the specific way this adaptation is telling the story.

(but a lot of people can't even get past this first point because they don't understand that this is how adaptations - how storytelling in general - work. like, person B literally cannot tell the exact same story that person A told without putting their own spin on it. it's not possible! unless they're simply reading out the exact words that person A wrote, which can't be done when putting 14 massive books into maximum 64 hours of tv. so many readers like to meet this point with "but why does the books' version of the story need to be changed at all?" which is just a non-starter because a) medium differences require a ton of changes, and b) even if no changes were *required*, they would happen anyway because that is human nature when it comes to storytelling. when it comes to story-listening too! ask a hundred different book fans what WOT is about and you'll get a hundred different answers. rafe & co can't possibly make an adaptation that captures every single reader's idea of What WOT Is About, and nobody in the world could ever re-tell the story of WOT in the exact same way that RJ told it, not even the most die-hard book fan; all rafe & co can do is focus on making sure the show honors the core of the books' story while also telling a good story in its own right, independent of the source material.)

i was a classics major, okay? it gets to me! anyway, corralling myself back on topic.

for 2x08, it's very telling just how far Minority Reader Opinion deviates from the general audience opinion. general audiences fucking LOVED this episode (it's the highest-rated on imdb out of the entire show, currently at a 9.0; most episodes are in the 7-8 range), but a bunch of readers call it disappointing and one of the worst episodes of the show. if it was actually a poor quality episode of television, the general audience ratings would reflect that too (as they do for 1x08, currently at a 6.4 (i personally think 1x08 gets way more hate than is deserved and i thoroughly enjoy that episode, but i accept that's just me)), but they don't.

so what does that mean? to me, it means that 2x08 is objectively a very good episode of television which general audiences found satisfying, but which some readers disliked because it prioritized the emotional & thematic needs of its own version of the story over the exact nature of the falme events in the source material. which is exactly what a good adaptation should do! if you forget the books and just look at the show (which the vast majority of viewers are doing), then every resolution that happens in 2x08 is the most satisfying resolution possible and/or the only resolution that was thematically permitted for that particular season storyline.

egwene: her season arc was about learning to stand on her own two feet and not cling onto her mentor figures or compare herself unfavorably to others. thus, her freeing herself from the a'dam is the most satisfying possible conclusion to her season arc. nynaeve and elayne freeing her in the books is nice, but in the show version, thematically, it would've undercut egwene's Overcoming Impostor Syndrome arc to go "yeah actually it's true that she's not good enough on her own and when it comes down to it she does always need nynaeve to help her out". that version worked in TGH where she didn't have an Overcming Impostor Syndrome arc, but it wouldn't have worked in the show where she did. (but, yes, egwene learning in 2x08 that she doesn't have to rely on others is a double-edged sword, which nicely sets up her later-series struggles with trying to shoulder too much herself and not letting even her friends or partner help her.)

rand: his season arc was about learning to lean on others and not isolate himself or try to protect his friends by withholding his burdens from them. thus, him failing to defeat ishamael until all his friends come to lend aid in various ways is the most satisfying possible conclusion to his season arc. rand defeating ishy singlehandedly in the books is nice, but in the show version, thematically, it would've undercut his Learning That Strength Is In Numbers arc to go "yeah actually it's true that rand is capable of winning his biggest battles all by himself and thus it's no problem for him to push his friends away". given the themes that s2 emphasized for rand, the only appropriate finale outcomes were either success with his friends' help or total failure on his own, and they chose the former. (that being said, rand pushing his friends away is a continuous issue for him throughout the series, so i doubt he's perfectly learned his lesson after 2x08; we shall see!)

interesting to note that rand and egwene have inverse arcs in a way (foils!) and that some elements of their book falme climaxes were swapped, and that the way the show has done it subverts the expected gender roles. typically, men are expected to be Lone Wolves and women to be Team Players, and the WOT books absolutely play into these stereotypes throughout the series (sometimes intentionally as social commentary, sometimes unconsciously as an accepted truth of the world), but 2x08 and s2 more broadly did the opposite with our yin-and-yang co-protagonists. it's egwene who has the arc about learning to be a Lone Wolf and rand who has the arc about learning to be a Team Player. and imo these subconscious gender role expectations are a part of why some readers (esp reddit) got SO heated about "how come egwene can succeed by herself but rand can't", because it feels Wrong to them and Not How Things Are Supposed To Work (they've never questioned why rand can succeed by himself but egwene needs her friends' help in TGH, or all the other times in the books when men succeed by themselves and women succeed by relying on each other). but it's a totally apples-to-oranges comparison because egwene and rand had totally different season arcs and focal themes (but many paralleling & foiling moments within that), and so they each get a conclusion tailor-made to their individual stories.

mat: his season arc was about realizing he's a good, worthy person, finding the inner strength to overcome his worst impulses and temptations, and coming through for his friends after leaving them at the waygate. thus, him getting his Big Damn Hero moment with the horn of valere, getting validation that he is literally a hero, and overall spending the episode doing all he can to support his friends is the most satisfying possible conclusion to his season arc. (but stabbing his bff just as he was flying on a confidence high and trying to save the day was a downer note to end on, so we've complicated his relationship with heroism and set up some more internal issues for him to wrestle with next season.)

perrin: his season arc was about learning to acknowledge his inner wolf but also coming to regard it with fear and to believe that wolf & human sides can't coexist and he must Choose One (.......suddenly being struck by the bisexuality metaphor of it all. nice!) thus, him giving into violence to murder a human to avenge a wolf is.....well, it's pretty upsetting for him and serves to reinforce his growing belief that his two sides can't coexist, but thematically, it's fascinating and sets him up for some really great internal (and external) conflicts in s3. he's just gotten what he thinks is pretty strong evidence to corroborate ishy's claim that embracing his wolf side means embracing the shadow, so he's set up for a season 3 of deep-diving into his relationship with violence and his inner wolf. it's also a neat parallel with 1x08: there perrin's avoidance of violence allowed fain to escape, whereas here his embracing of violence has traumatized him (again), so our poor guy is really feeling conflicted in the pacificism-or-violence question because both sides seem wrong to him right now. huh, i guess perrin's full-series arc is about finding a middle ground rather than one extreme (pacifism/tuatha'an/human) or the other (violence/aiel/wolf). i feel like i've just had an epiphany lmao this is why i love the show! it tells the same story as the books, but tells it in a different way that makes me think about it differently and gain new insights!

nynaeve: her season arc was about learning that she, on her own, as she is today, is not enough to protect her loved ones. this is a tough pill for both her and the audience to swallow! but it's needed for her character, and we see it in the books too. nynaeve has an incredible amount of power, but she's terrified of having that much power and wants to pretend it doesn't exist. she's resistant to change, she's used to being in charge, and she's very "my way or the highway". these are all things she needs to grow out of (or moderate, at least) in order to be able to step up and do her part for tarmon gai'don. she has to learn how to embrace her power instead of being afraid of it or being too stubborn to let other people guide her and teach her, so s2 shows her what happens if she doesn't, first hypothetically in the accepted test (everyone she loves dies because she's blocked and refused channeling training) and then for real in falme (she couldn't help elayne fully or rand at all because of her block). so her 2x08 conclusion being Total Failure is not emotionally satisfying, no, but it's thematically exactly what she needed and will goad her into facing her block head-on next season. thematically, like rand, nynaeve only had 2 options for falme: break her block and succeed, or retain her block and fail, and it was too soon for the former (we gotta let her cook a while longer, plus the story will become too easy if nynaeve, or rand, reaches supernova capability too soon), so it had to be the latter. if the show had gone with a third option of her succeeding without breaking her block, then that would've taught her and the audience that it's fine to leave the block in place and she doesn't need to challenge herself to grow as a person, because when it TRULY matters she can always get around the block.

other characters get appropriate resolutions too! moiraine and lan get to work together to succeed after being at odds and failing on their own all season (rand foils!). elayne gets validation that she is an essential and trusted part of the friend group after feeling like somewhat of an outsider earlier in the season. ishamael getting vanquished and lanfear betraying him only to be betrayed by him in turn is exactly where their mutual mistrust was leading them (and it shows us why it's so important that Team Light be able to work as a team rather than as self-interested individual operators; the contrast between ishy & lanfear looking at the seals together while plotting to betray each other vs. rand standing on the tower with all his friends behind him makes me cry your honor. imagine hating that ishy's defeat was a team effort, could not be me!)

(it's also worth noting that the characters who had the least individual success/victory in 2x08 (nynaeve, rand, perrin) are the ones who will have the biggest individual storylines in s3 (tanchico & moggy, waste arc, two rivers arc), whereas the characters who had the most individual success/victory (egwene, mat, moiraine, lan) are the ones who will be taking a bit more of a backseat (of course they all have their own stuff to do, but none of them is *the* lead character of their TSR/s3 traveling group). this is intentional!)

so there you have it. 2x08 is adored by the general audience, and it's because of this: it gives us some damn satisfying conclusions to all the season arcs (and some exciting and visually stunning battle sequences to boot), and all the viewers who AREN'T beleaguered by "But The Books!", which is most of them, recognize that for the good storytelling it is. i for one will always care far more about the show telling a good story within itself than the show being identical to the books, and rafe & co will too, as they should.

the only downside to the episode is that, yes, it is quite cramped for time because there are a lot of arcs to wrap up. this should be less of an issue in future seasons when the season finale isn't "every single major storyline converges in the same place at once". for example, judging by the "goldeneyes" episode title it seems s3 might split it up so that perrin's conclusion in the two rivers is in 3x07 while other conclusions in other locations are in 3x08, giving each more breathing room. whereas 2x08 had no choice but to stuff everything in that episode into that specific episode because it's not like perrin could just do his falme stuff an episode early and take a nap while everyone else was doing THEIR falme stuff in the next episode, nor could the full falme sequence have been split into 2 episodes since that would have disrupted the flow of the story. the only solution would be for 2x08 to be extra long, which is nice to imagine, but we all know that streaming shows almost never deviate from their set episode lengths and so there isn't much point sighing about "this episode should have been 90 minutes long!" because that just is not on the table, never has been, and never will be. the first step to being able to jive with an adaptation is making peace with the limits of its particular medium!

plus, the only things i might deem "missing" from 2x08 are non-essential (ingtar darkfriend reveal - that is NOT important fight me, it's only important in the books as our first example of a morally-gray shadow-aligned person but the show has already been doing that in spades) or will likely be included in 3x01 (the gang spending some time together to breathe and process and catch up). at the end of the day, the show is always going to need to be paced very very tightly with not as much breathing room as those of us accustomed to entire books dedicated to reacting to the previous book might expect. and 2x08 did manage to pack in a LOT of character work amidst all the action and did a good mix of resolving s2 arcs while leaving some unresolved to carry into s3 and introducing some new arcs/issues/conflicts, all within 70 minutes, which i find pretty impressive. in conclusion, 2x08 my fucking beloved <3

[hopeswriting]

daily life arc miura haru. does anyone know who i'm talking about. do you guys remember her. i still can't believe what happened to her 😔

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The world if people stopped applying their understanding of "conservatism" and "religion/christianity" through a very modern, deeply American view onto Death Note (a manga from the Early-mid 2000s which is very much set in the cultural and societal context of early-mid 2000s Japan and all that entails):

[momentomori24]

[This has been sitting in my draft for a while lol]

When it comes to Curly's failings, I always see people bring up his obvious failure to protect Anya and him prioritising Jimmy, who was the rapist in that situation. Which is completely valid btw and we should rake him through the coals for that alone even more. But I also see too many people saying that Curly "didn't enable Jimmy" or playing softball for his actions. And I could maybe see where that comes from if that incident was the only thing we had to point to-- but that wasn't all he did, is it? Curly being indifferent or not taking Jimmy's mistreatment and belittlement of Anya seriously was hinted at so much earlier than that.

Namely, the very first time we play from Curly's point of view. Let's just skip the fact that Curly was putting everyone in danger by not taking his psych evals seriously and simply giving the same answers to pass them even tho he was shown literal minutes after this scene being clearly not-sane, and go straight to the point I actually wanna get into. Which is this:

These scenes in isolation wouldn't be that bad. From his pov, it's played off as comical and it is. Jimmy being a brony (not really lmao) and getting playfully dragged over it is funny. But unfortunately this is the first example out of many for Curly's complacency. Anya is complaining about Jimmy not taking his psych evals or her seriously, which is easy to believe considering how much he rags on her for "not being a good nurse" (she kept Curly alive on hopes and dreams how dare you). So he keeps making her do silly and inappropriate reports she clearly doesn't wanna do, which is kinda shitty (also borders on harassment). But rather than actually saying something about Jimmy's behaviour or even acknowledging how it sucks he says this:

Mate, that's not a good thing 💀 He's clearly aware that the problem is Jimmy's lack of respect for Anya specifically. He knows that if he, his friend and a man in power, were the one doing the evals Jimmy wouldn't try that disrespect. But it's Anya, a meek woman who ranks lower than him so he thinks he can get away with it (which he DOES), and Curly's shown as comfortable in knowing that. He doesn't chew Jimmy out for making Anya uncomfortable nor does he reassure her that he will do something about it. All he does is take it off her hands this once and helps Jimmy power through it to get a good diagnosis (even tho we know he's DEFINITELY not sane either). He doesn't even mention Anya's discomfort or confront him on his inappropriate behaviour, just teases Jimmy in good fun instead because he doesn't think of it as anything serious. It's subtle and pretty minor in comparison to everything else, but I think it's worth pointing out. Especially because this convo takes place after Jimmy had assaulted her, which makes this so much worse.

If you need any more evidence of Curly being an enabler you need not look further than Anya herself. And I'm not just talking about the way he failed her here-- I'm talking about Anya's own view of Curly and the way said view influences her actions.

Just look at her choice of wording. "What would you have done". This is in response to him saying that she could've come to him if she were feeling stressed, which she-- in his eyes-- didn't. The question itself implies that she had no faith in Curly to actually help despite his insistence that he would've, which I think is significant because it shows that she's very much aware of Curly's shortcomings when it comes to her situation AND it's one of the first (or the first time) she actually verbalised her lack of trust towards him or anyone directly. Prior to this scene she had told him about her rape and the rapist, presumably because she trusted him to handle it. And he dismissed her because the rapist was his best friend, and that evidently deeply scarred her. Enough so that she secretly took the gun and hid it someplace else and didn't even tell Curly were that was, because she knows that if Curly has access to it there's a so much greater chance Jimmy will have too, insinuated by the line "the least I can do is make sure he never gets it either". Speaking about the gun:

It sucks so bad that this perception of him isn't even inaccurate nor unjustified. That despite everything Jimmy had done to her and everything he could still do to her, he'd very likely still not allow her access to the gun for protection. Because that's exactly what he didn't do anyway. He didn't attempt to keep her safe from Jimmy, instead he just pretended that nothing was wrong and still let Jimmy's belittlement of her pass. He didn't give her the gun after the incident, because she wouldn't have hid the case if he had. Despite his desperate reassurance that he'd do anything, he did nothing but make it worse for her and she KNOWS that. It's so frustrating knowing he entrusted the axe to Swansea when he needed it but not the gun to Anya when she needed it too. Also this:

The fact that his knee-jerk reaction to her admitting that she's pregnant was "Who would you--" is so fucked, especially considering she's already told him what happened. "Who would you" what? Who would you fuck? Who would you have sex with? That choice of wording drives me up a wall-- SHE wouldn't and didn't do anything or anyone. That was JIMMY. The potential sentence implies that she had any choice or agency in her pregnancy. She didn't. And the fact that Curly had to ask "who" insinuates that he's been putting Jimmy's action out of sight and out of mind the whole time, choosing to not think about them or what happened to Anya at all. And considering he still made her do Jimmy's evaluations despite being able to do them himself and literally didn't even think of making sure she gets psych evals done too--especially AFTER getting sexually assaulted--that might actually be the case (I haven't seen anyone make a stink about that piece of info so I'm going to because what kinda colossal fuck up IS that??).

I vaguely had a post like this in mind but seeing so many people be like "well Anya did some wrong stuff too like leaving Curly alone with Jimmy but you don't get mad at HER for that so why is Curly not doing anything about Jimmy being alone with Anya so different??" actually makes me want to blow some people up. Jimmy's an abuser, sure, but Anya has no real reason to believe that he'd actually harm Curly. From her perspective, they were close, close enough that Curly would not only let Jimmy continuously disrespect her but also get away with assaulting her too. That, and she knows that Jimmy was closer to Curly than anyone and more likely to be civil around him than he ever was to her. She has barely any reasons to suspect Jimmy would harm Curly when they're alone. Curly, on the other hand, has every fucking reason on the planet to think Jimmy would harm her when they're alone. He knows he raped her (likely in her room at night too). He knows that he sexually harasses her. He knows that he doesn't respect her at all. And that was BEFORE the crash. Anya tried insisting on giving Curly his medicine, only for Jimmy to keep aggressively insisting that he'll take care of it despite her protests. Curly didn't try to keep them separate at all even though he was the Captain and had the power to do so. And this should go without saying, but leaving your rapist alone with his best friend that he was close to and enabled/protected him and leaving your friend alone with the woman he raped (and might have repeatedly assaulted given his free access to her) is NOT THE SAME and I'm going to start chucking some people down a waterfall because what the fuck is that argument 💀 Actually leave it to the fandom of the game where the rape of a woman is the catalyst for the events that unfold to use her trauma to defend the guy that enabled it in the first place. Bloody hell.

The reason why this whole Curly discourse pisses me off is because it-- from what I can see-- ONLY brings up his failures 1-0 days before the crash and the Dead Pixel scene (or all the discussion around other points are drowned out by those two). Those scenes, while important to talk about, are not the only things he's done, and focussing on those as the only things is a mistake that comes short of understanding the issue. When it comes to Curly the main defences I see for him are "he was trying not to escalate the situation" and "he was trying to keep things under control the best he can" and "he was waiting for the right time to help Anya", but those don't work when you look at the bigger picture of everything he's done.

He half-assed through his psych eval despite clearly not being sane (and KNOWING he's barely sane, he literally admits it to Jimmy's face). He still continued to task her with Jimmy's psych evals. He brushed over Jimmy's sexual harassment of her as a joke. He didn't think about making sure she got psych evals done herself after being raped. He gave Swansea the axe but didn't give Anya the gun despite it being for "unrest amongst the crew" (whatever the hell THAT means). He let her assault slip his mind that she had to remind him. He's literally a blond man. He took no action to hold Jimmy responsible for anything, and prioritised how his violation of Anya would affect him rather than her. He ignored her demands for him to get rid of Jimmy. He still allowed Jimmy free reign of the ship as co-pilot even after he was openly fantasising about killing everyone and had a major motive and the means to do just that. He was potentially thinking of making her miscarry to cover up what happened. He was so accustomed to her sucking up being disrespected and disturbed that he didn't even notice a difference in her behaviour until she hid the fucking gun. There's so much other shit he's done and hasn't done, and not talking about them or glossing over them makes it so easy for people to argue that he isn't actually an enabler or just minimise the severity of his neglect.

And while I'm already dragging Curly through the mud, I might as well just drag Swansea too. I've seen too many people being like "Anya should've told Swansea instead" and "Swansea was the one that actually took responsibility". Like, y'all realise he's not that much better than Curly, right? He already knew about what happened to Anya-- he admits it to Jimmy's face-- but he didn't do shit. He knew, but he still got completely shitfaced for months despite her earlier protestation to that (for very understandable reasons). He knew, but he still let Jimmy have the axe AND be alone with Anya while having it. He knew, but when Anya locked herself in the Medical and Daisuke and Jimmy asked for his help he didn't budge nor really showed any care. He knew, but the reason he finally decided to do something about Jimmy wasn't Anya, it was Daisuke. Her suffering and her eventual death weren't enough for him to take action either.

This game, on top of everything else, is a great depiction of rape culture. It doesn't just include the rapists, but the people (mostly men) that stay silent, do nothing, make excuses for and protect the perpetrator for whatever reason, and Swansea and Curly (Curly way more so than Swansea) are both active contributors to the environment that allowed for evil to flourish and continue unhindered until it destroyed them all. And while that arguably doesn't make them evil themselves or as bad as Jimmy, they are so much more a part of the bigger problem than the fandom likes to admit.

[Ok since this is kinda gaining a bit of traction please consider helping these guys out here, here and here. Thanks!]

[kinokoshoujoart]

oops all rock (springtime edition)

i’ll be able to draw digitally again soon! ;w; in the meantime i’ve been scribbling a lot on paper…

could not wait for Soon, so i resorted to coloring it using the markup tool in default iphone photos app (don’t do that ever again)

[jerys]

thinking abt merlin through the ages contending with the fact that arthur is still so present in the land. in mythology in legend in fairytales told to children in books and films and countless other forms of memory. throughout the world he is remembered still, and yes it isn't really him they're remembering, it's the legend of him, the myth, the heroic fool's gold shimmer of his legacy. but he's still here.

[captainmaxatx]

I feel like we are all sleeping on the fan fiction potential given to us from Deadpool and Wolverine using their bodies to make a circuit with matter and anti-matter

Who knows what that could do to a person, you could write a fic where that caused anything your heart could think up.

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC OR PAIRING.

Nathan and Ruben share a bond more powerful than most; mutual understanding through past experiences no one should ever have to go through, and through past actions so horrible they cannot be spoken of. Their grief and the blood on their hands binds them to the STEM technology they created, which has alienated them from the rest of the world— but they give each other the comfort they have both longed for so desperately for years, and that is all they need. They are each other's counterpart; you cannot imagine one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Through their pain, their grief, their desire, and their regret, they have become one.

anna akhmatova, the guest // bones; equinox // 'i won't become' by kim jakobsson // agustín gómez-arcos, the carnivorous lamb // by oxy // achilles come down; gang of youths // czeslaw milosz, from 'new and collected poems: 1931-2001' // 'extended ambience portrait from a resonant biostructure' and 'migraine tenfold times ten' by daniel vega // a little death; the neighbourhood // marina tsvetaeva, from 'poem of the end' // by drummnist // katie maria, winter // 'nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket' by james abbott mcneill whistler // micah nemerever, these violent delights // body language; we are fury // 'the penitent' by emil melmoth // chelsea dingman, from 'of those who can't afford to be gentle'

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[unreal]

My Name Is Kanaya Maryam

You Fucked My Wife

PREPARE TO DIE

[fantastic-nonsense]

maybe DC really did just need 4 or 5 years of wheel-spinning after Didio got fired to pull themselves together. like apart from all the Tom King announcements, most everything else they've been announcing over the past couple of months has actually been good???

[random-autie-fangirl]

Chara: I'm wanting everything to end instantly

Asriel: And I'm wanting to go on unchanging forever

🔥🔥🔥THE BEEF WITH LINEAR TIME SIBLINGS🔥🔥🔥

[whereserpentswalk]

Human space has always been large. Generations ago when ftl was first invented humans used it to create far off colonies, but then those colonies created colonies, and so on and so fourth, until nobody even knew where human space ends.

You were on an exploratory mission, and your ship ended up flung way further and faster out into the universe than you thought you could go, and ended up way past what you wanted to explore. You were lucky to still be in human space, but the culture was entirely unknown.

The first system you went to was filled with humans wearing hoods and masks, and clothing that covered their entire bodies. When they met you they made you wear the same clothing as them, and you quickly learned that in the local cluster of planets any skin being shown was completely taboo, even the smallest inch on any part of the body. The closest they had to revealing clothing were tighter fitting garments, and more humanoid masks. They started helping you repair your ship, but it would take a few years.

And while you were there it seemed strange at first. You felt sad for the mask wearers, knowing that people would never know the appearance of their closest freinds, their siblings, their parents. Even eating was strange, being done with the same privacy as a shower would be on your planet. It felt as if the masked people had lost some element of humanity.

As time went on, and as you got used to wearing their clothing it stopped feeling that way though. You had close freinds on those planets now, and you found it weird to want to see their faces, it would be weird to, perhaps it was better with them choosing how they looked. And soon the idea of someone having an exposed face seemed weird, at least it was when you left. Part of you wished they hadn't fixed your ship, you had a life there. But they did, and you left.

When you got to your ship again you spent months avoiding pirates and androids before getting to your next safe planet. When you got there the people looked strange, most of them had prosthetic body parts, many of them looking so cut up that they didnt even look human. You learned that it was the custom there in those local systems, to slowly remove body parts as people aged, until they completely lacked biological forms, and were purely mechanical beings.

The custom was horrifying to you for your first few weeks there. And you knew it would be awhile since your ship needed fuel. People celebrated their first amputation, discarded limbs would be preserved like baby teeth, and it was all so casual a mutilation. You knew a young woman there who would talk so cheerfully about how they were going to remove the bottom part of her face, and how excited she was. You couldn't bare to look at anyone.

But as months became years, and you had a job as a professor of far off cultures, you began to understand. Not agree but understand. They could live forever, and never be disabled by old age. Children could visit their great great grandparents. And soon the amputations that disgusted you became commonplace enough to ignore. You even agreed to have a broken arm replaced, as so few doctors knew how to mend one. But you left, and you wept as you left, for all the people you'd never see again.

It took you awhile to find a habitable planet again. You were lonely for a time. And when you found one again it was like a drowning person finding water. The people in the new planet you found looked strange, they were hairless and androgynous, many of them either underweight or chubby, or somehow both, and all with a softness to them. Pretty soon you found out that their civilization reproduced using machines, and removed their children's testicles or ovaries as soon as possible, never letting them go through puberty.

Even having seen many worlds these people disturbed you. Their bodies were so broken looking, being so obviously incomplete to you. They thought of you as an oddity but they didn't even know what was taken from them. None of them had or desired sex, their genitals remaining childlike and useless, and because of that they were naïve to any hint of sexuality, they'd shadow publicly, and it was normal for friends to kiss and cuddle naked. It felt as if they had lost so much of what made someone human, and like you had no way of telling them.

But as time went on it too became normal. Even though you told yourself it wasn't. Sex seemed weird and useless when nobody had it, and bodies seemed normal when they were the only kind around. You thought they were missing something at first but they just weren't, they were as human as you, they could still live full lives. And in time it was all ok. After spending years there you ended up with a wife there, and though you never were allowed to have sex you loved eachother. But you eventually left, you had to, even though your wife wept as you said goodbye, it was in your nature to leave after years as it was in their nature to castrate children.

You've come to your next planet now, and they seemed to be serving human flesh alongside all the normal meats like pig and cow. It's disturbing to your right now but your sure it'll all be normal in time. Everything is normal in time.

[wilsons-journey]

July finished the Core story and slayed her first dragon.

Some shots from the Mission:

And some Bonus Screens, because the game bugged in the mission and removed the fog - revealing some interesting Map details:

Floating giants, and one additional tired giant. He didn't even bothered to stand up.

A funny floating Island - so nicely shaped.

Zhaitans "Rock" - looks so odd without the dramatic fog.