#waiting for the ‘art will never be fun again’ part of the art cycle to wrap up again

[ottosbigtop]

envy

[kendyzzlewp]

We’ll Keep Trying

pairing: art donaldson x fem!reader

tags: husband!artdonaldson, angst, domestic, married life, failed pregnancy

____________________________________________

You sat there defeated.

The negative pregnancy test seemed to mock you and your dream of starting a family. With a heavy sigh you tossed the plastic wand into the bin.

You wanted this so bad, not only for yourself but for Art as well. He finally slowed down his career, retiring from playing competitively, focusing on coaching and commentating on a couple of sports channels. The time seemed right. You both discussed it and were ready.

You’ve waited so long for this moment. The time to finally get pregnant and have a baby with the love of your life. Especially after supporting his career. for the better part of a decade. Joining him on tour when you were able to, never missing a game, eating the same diet as him in solidarity, working out together…you did everything a good wife was supposed to do.

God, you’ve waited enough and now that the time is right, your body won’t cooperate.

It had been months of constant disappointments for the both of you. One negative test after the other, one cycle after the other. Sex wasn’t even fun anymore. It was a job that had to be done in a specific window.

You missed the spontaneity. Having Art bend you over the kitchen counter, or over the dining table, or a chair or even a balcony railing. He loved bending you over anywhere he could but now, most of the time, sex consists of laying on your back with your legs raised

It’s still good. Art has always been generous with your pleasure but you miss the fun. The hair pulling, the ass smacking, the choking, the public rendezvous.

“Negative,” you announced as you walked into the primary bedroom. “Again.”

He was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. His biceps bulged from the sleeves of his gray shirt. His brown eyes were filled with concern but you still saw the disappointment flash through them.

“We’ll keep trying,” he promised, his tone determined. “It’ll happen.”

You smile sadly, climbing into bed with a heavy heart. “I don’t think I can keep doing this,” you admitted.

Art crossed the room and sat beside you on the edge of the bed, his presence a reassuring anchor in your turmoil. He reached for your hand, squeezing it gently.

"I know it's hard, sweetheart," he said softly. "But we’re in this together. Remember that."

You nodded, tears welling in your eyes. "I just feel so...tired. Like I'm failing you."

He lifted your chin, forcing you to meet his gaze. "You're not failing me. This isn't your fault. We have to believe it will happen when the time is right."

You took a deep breath, trying to draw strength from his words. "What if it never happens, Art? What then?"

"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," he replied, brushing a tear from your cheek. "For now, we’ll keep trying naturally. Then we can explore every option. IVF, adoption—whatever it takes. We'll be parents someday."

His unwavering support warmed you, easing a bit of the heaviness in your chest. "Thank you," you whispered.

He leaned in, kissing your forehead tenderly. "We'll get through this. Together."

[jasmines-library]

Hii! Sorry idk if your okay with this, if your not, feel free to ignore! <3

So I was wondering if you could do youngest batsib reader, who’s not really part of the family yet? Okay so, they’re a criminal like catwoman, they only steal from people who deserve it and just kind of a troublemaker around Gotham. They have electricity powers. They’re parents died at a young age and they ran away from the orphanage because they didn’t want to get adopted. They’re actually really smart, and know a lot of martial arts to help them get by. Anywaysss, I was wondering if during a place they were trying to rob, blow up for some reason. And it lead to them being knocked out and injured. Someone from the batfamily came across them and instead of turning them into the police, they take them to the batcave and patch em ip before putting them in a cell. They wake up and the batfam interrogates them, they find out they’re a kid and knows their secret identity (because he’s really smart) and after a bit, Bruce offers to take them in, and train them to be a vigilante. Reader is reluctant and doesn’t really trust them but they’re getting really tired of sleeping on the streets so they reluctantly says yes.

My Way Home Is Through You

Note: This was fun to write, thanks for the request anon!

Warnings: Minor undescribed injury, theft, none really, fluffy found family fic.

Word count: 1.7k

⛤ BATFAM MASTERLIST ⛤

You slunk along the sidewalks, clinging tightly to the walls as though a small child might do to their mother in a crowd of people. Hiding away in the shadows was nothing new to you, you had been a nobody for years. Constantly running, never settling in one place for too long before you were slinking off again and finding a new corner of Gotham to call your home for a few miserable days before the cycle started again. At first you had tried to cling onto the last shreds of your parents that you had left. You hung onto your name but soon that began to get you into trouble when the orphanages kept trying to pursue you and ‘bring you to a new and loving family’, so it was back to being just another face in the crowd. Just another ordinary kid trying to navigate their way through a big city.

Except…you were more than that. In your time alone you had discovered you had quite a knack for stealth. It started off when the nights became too cold and the growling in your stomach was so overbearing that it drowned out all other senses. You were still small, which you used strongly to your advantage, weaving in and out of the sea of faces before slipping small pieces of food under the hem of your raggedy sleeve that was far too long for you and dangled below your fingers. After that it soon became easy enough to steal other things. Just enough to get by. A ring here, a gold watch there. Small items from the cruel and the unworthy that you could pawn off for a little extra cash. 

There was something else about you though that helped out just a little bit. It was one of the reasons that you had spent so long trying to hide away. See, when you were young you discovered that there was something different about you. When you focused hard enough, you could feel the electricity channelling through your veins and sizzling at your fingertips. You learnt to manipulate it, to bend it to your will and it quickly became very useful when picking locks. You used it to fry them seamlessly before sneaking in and if worse came to worse, you could stun the police when they came thundering after you shouting profanities and threats and they ran, never to catch you with your nimbleness. They had tried to set the vigilantes on you more than once and you knew very well that their eyes were always on you, following your every move just waiting for the perfect moment to strike because you had seen them. Sometimes in the uniform. Sometimes not. As much as they tried to be they were much less subtle than they thought. 

When you reached the complex it was dark. All of the lamp posts nearby had flickered sporadically before burning out completely, so you hopped up the steps blindly before crouching down in front of the locks. You then outstretched your hand and took a deep breath, letting your body relax to feel the current dance in your veins and settle on your fingertips. You then directed the current towards the lock watching as it fried before swinging open. You darted in pushing it shut behind you and then set to work around the house. It was small and shabby with mould growing in some of the corners by the windows. It crawled up the walls, a darkened stain that emitted a putrid smell when you got a little too close. The floorboards cracked and groaned as you moved around the plot, weaving in and out of the furniture that had been strewn across the room. It was clear that someone had left in a hurry. You were shuffling around the unmade bed, reaching for the safe when you heard it. 

Tick. Tick. Ticktick. tickticktick.  

The sound was daunting, getting faster and faster as you scrambled to find the source, overturning chairs and throwing them to the floor as though they were nothing then tearing up floorboards. It was too late when you found it ticking away impendingly. The timer blinked by quickly as it neared zero and you were neft with no choice but to try and get as much distance between you and the weapon. The meagre metres you had out between yourself and the bomb hardly made any difference at all as it ignited flinging you across the room. Wood splintered around you as the concrete cracked and crumbled in heaps which you skidded to a halt on. You felt like you were going to hurl as your head thudded against the debris with a sickening crack that made your vision swam before all of the colours merged into one and you knew nothing more but a dark and heavy silence. 

~~~

“Move it! Go!” 

Nightwing shoved his little brother rather harshly in the shoulder to urge him forwards. Word had just reached them that a small house on the outskirts of the city had suddenly exploded and the number of casualties was currently unknown. Dick always seemed to get a sudden adrenaline rush whenever an emergency came in and not matter how fast he moved he always felt as though he could never get there fast enough even if he was hurtling through the city at an alarming speed. 

He had to swallow back his alarm when they skidded to a halt at the scene. There was nothing really left of the building besides a few odd shaped pillars of concrete and pipes that were strong enough to survive the blast. The rest of the building was a dismal load of ash and dust that rose in ribbons as the wind lifted up the pieces that were small enough and carried them away into a cloud of sky.

Nightwing pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered and ducked under the police tape despite their protests. His heart nearly stopped when he inched his way around what used to be a bed but was now a cluster of broken timber buried under a pile of rubble because he spotted your figure sprawled out across the floor. He skidded to the ground and began to pull the pieces of clutter away from you, grimacing at the sight of the blood that came away on his fingers.

Red Hood dropped down beside him just as Dick Grayson brushed some of the dust from your face and sudden recognition washed over him.

“Hood.” He said over his shoulder. “I think you better call B.”

~~~

Your head felt like it was going to explode when you woke up and there was a stabbing pain in your side but when you moved your hand to slide the hem of your stop up you were cut short by a metal handcuff securing you to the wall next to the bed you had been placed in. Shuffling around awkwardly you managed to push yourself up into a sitting position to gauge your surroundings better. The cell you were in although small was rather well lit and surprisingly homely. Too bad you had no intention in staying. You had planned to use your powers to fry the handcuff, but when you tried to summon the electricity you were left high and dry when nothing happened. 

“That’s not going to work.” A figure you hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room told you when you began to try again. 

Frowning at him, he folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Power suppressing cuffs.”

Rolling your eyes you slumped defeatedly. You should have figured as much. 

“What were you doing in there?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at you from behind his infamous cowl. 

“That’s none of your business.”

“I think it is, kid.”

You turned your gaze away from him and picked at the skin around your thumb. “It’s not that I wanted to be in there. It’s what I had to do.”

The vigilante stepped forwards and took a seat next to you. “Go on.”

“I needed the money. I can’t go to anyone so I have no choice but to find my own way around problems. I was gonna pawn the jewellery off. And besides it’s not like the guy owned it in the first place. He was the one that stole it from the jewellers last week.”

“How’d you know that?” Batman frowned. That information had only been revealed recently.

“I get around a lot.”

He pursed his lips. “What else do you know?”

You could have grinned like the cheshire cat right there and then as you began to list things you had learnt. 

“I know that you still haven’t caught that guy who escaped from Arkham last month. I know that you’ve all been watching me. Oh and I know that you are Bruce Wayne.”

The man faltered. “What? How?”

“You’re less subtle than you think.”

“Or maybe you’re smarter than you think. What d’you say your name is kid?”

“I didn’t.”

He sighed, watching you in silence until you eventually gave him your name. 

“You’re something, Kid. I’ll give you that much.”

“Thank you…?”

“How would you like to stay? We would train you to become a vigilante like us.” The question was so sudden that it made your head spin.

“I can’t ask that of you.” You told him. It was more of an excuse really. You weren’t sure if you could trust him or not.”

“You’re not. I’m offering. A warm place to stay, a family to care for you.”

A smile twinged at the corner of your lips. That was something you had longed for for so long but had never seen that it had slipped to the back of your mind forgotten. 

“So, what do you say, Y/N?”

“I think I would like that.”

[christmasjade]

My thoughts on Married in Red+ My general thoughts on Studio Investigrave !

So I really like this game

It was fun to be able to play it on my own with no help from Youtubers and stuff ^^

The game has 1 ending, though you can have 2 different kinds of game overs lol (I'll get to that later)

The mc (Bok-su) and her relationship with the bride (Da-Jeong) is sad , but not shocking lol. You can kind of tell from the promotional art (and the theme of atonement said in the itch.io description) that Da-Jeong and Bok-Su are not on good terms.

I like that Bok-su was able to get her revenge on Da-Jeong. Obviously her way of doing it is horrible, and the groom (Myeong-hoon) being a main part of her revenge is sad, because he had nothing to do with this.

However, I dont feel that bad for Da-Jeong at all. Yeah, two wrongs dont make a right, and people panic, but she essentially ruined Bok-Su's life and reputation to save her own ass, so I really can't bring myself to feel too bad for her.

Sure you can argue that the situations are different, with Bok-Su purposefully killing Myeong-Hoon meanwhile what Da-Jeong did was a mistake, but I personally am a firm believer of getting your lick back, so 🤗..

I also like how the deaths and reactions are the exact same lmao.

The patient Da-Jeong killed was a man, and his mother said something along the lines of like.. "You killed my son" (I dont exactly remember, depsite me literally just playing LMAOO) and Myeong-Hoons mom literally says the same thing/something adjacting to that too Da-Jeong.

Da-Jeong runs off and during her break down says "I didn't do it-", which is what Bok-Su says when shes retelling the story of what Da-Jeong did to her.

Bok-Su had to goal of getting her payback to make Da-Jeong atone and she accomplished it. And the crazy thing is, despite everything that happened, Da-Jeong never said sorry.

She never said sorry. Not when Bok-Su showed up to the wedding, not when the two of them where alone in the garden, and damn sure not when Da-Jeong had "enough" of Bok-Su being there.

She never said sorry, not even when she pointed the blame onto Bok-Su. In fact, Bok-Su repeats a line that Da-Jeong said to her when (I'm assuming so anyway) the incident happened. Da-Jeong told her that she didnt have anything to worry/be mad about.

The ending of the game, obviously, isnt really a happy ending. Bok-Su gets her revenge and makes Da-Jeong go through what she did but 10× worst. So sure its happy for her,but its still horrific lol

Which is why I love endings for the games that Studio Investigrave makes. With the exception of Cold Front, all of the endings across all the games arent truly happy ever after kind of endings.

With Dead Plate, Rody either has to kill Vincent after finding out his ex was killed and turned into food by him AND after he tried to do the same to Rody.

Yeah Rody makes it out alive, but theres still a horrible and traumatic incident that happened. He knows why Vince did it, and was able to get rid of him, but it doesn't erase the fact that Manon is still dead. (Or with the other ending he leaves the restaurant and never find Manon, because shes in the fridge "missing".)

With Elevator Hitch, the cycle repeats for Protag. When he finally gets the chance to leave the Elevator and the building, hes stopped by some..guy ?? (Who looks like an alternate lmao) and is convinced that he needs the job. The exit doors then open up into the elevator again. He never leaves that building, and is probably stuck in a time loop.

With Eloquent Countenance, Angelica either gets the ritual redone on her by the cult, or is stuck in the cult with the knowledge that shes not the only one in her body. But that she shares it with an angel pretending to be the dead wife of the cults pastor.

Yeah, she lives, but she has to wait until Forcas can fully save her from her possession by said angel. The ending, like Dead Plate and Married in Red, is horrific.

And then with the other ending of Cold Front , if you push Winnie off the stairs, he dies in the crash and Auggie takes his place. It's a happy ending for Auggie, sure, but he never gets the closure or the realization that Winnie was never the wicked and mean person he made him out to be in his head. Its disturbing how content he is with it, with the fact that his former best friend is dead and how he replaces him.

But yeah, erm... the game was fun, 10/10 ^^

[asksythe]

FGO Fes 2024 "CHALDEA Treasure Hunting" Oberon Edition Experience Video (Earphones recommended / Low volume recommended) Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dElTAHf0m0

Disclaimer: the translation is rushed, so there's probably room for improvement. I'm just posting this here for personal keeping since similar videos have been taken down from Youtube in the past.

Note: The context for this part of the event storyline is that Ritsuka is sent on a treasure hunt for a lost Holy Grail (as it goes) by Goredorf. She gets to choose one among several servants (Aesclepius, Takasugi, Tiamat, etc...) to go with her. Only one though. This video is the Oberon choice. Yes, it is very otome game-esque. 😁

--TRANSLATION--

Come on an unforgettable adventure with me, the Fairy King Oberon!

“It’s a steam town!”

You…you’re a 20th-century kid, aren’t you?

You should be used to this kinda thing, shouldn’t you?

Ah, well, I get how it can be so exciting. It’s just as consumeristic as your era, but this atmosphere does have a certain romance to it.

It’s an era focused on industrial design that exposes its mechanical insides.

It really is the strength of humanity to imagine such a contradictory world.

Ritsuka Choice 1: “Thanks for taking me here.”

Ritsuka Choice 2: “You really are a dependable partner!”

What are you on about? Of course, I am! With such an invitation as yours, I, Oberon the Fairy King, will spread my wings and come flying your way!

Ah, my time really has flown though. Would you be able to bend the rules a bit? What shall we do on this chance adventure! Gotta look your best though, eh! 😉 Now then, according to this steam clock, there happens to a Blessed Holy Grail located underground! If we find it, we’re bound to get a bunch of QP, am I right? Let me repay my debt to you!

However, for this city looking so mechanical, there really are a lot of stairs…Not a single elevator to be seen! Well, let’s just get over with and go down. If only we could fly, but as you know my wings are a mere decoration. Perhaps I should ask DaVinci to make me some, then? Ah no, [rest of question to self not very audible]

Ritsuka Choice 1: “Oberon…! Wait!”

Ritsuka Choice 2: “I can’t see anything!”

Uh…did you say something? Sorry sorry, my attention must’ve drifted elsewhere.

Oh…our faces must be close, aren’t they?

Are you alright?

Man, you should look at your face! It’s a shame it’s so dark. If I had a camera, I would’ve taken a picture. Oh no, I meant nothing by that. Really though, it’s just I’ve never seen your face like that. It’s not your nerves in battle, nor the fear of death! Don’t look at me like a child there…ah, never mind. Putting it into words just takes the fun out of it.

More important than that, it’s that the two of us are alone down here. No fearsome enemies to be seen. Just us two enjoying a trip on this road together. The path seems to get narrower from here. Grab my hand and let’s head in! Don’t get too far from me, okay? Come on, give me your hand.

It’s really dark now. This must be the lowest level. Just one way to go now. I think it should be quite simple now!

Mm? Hmm? That’s what? From the back? Oh no, something unexpected happened again! Quick, Master!

This is a stubborn one! And it’s gaining on us to boot!

Ah the light’s starting to come through! Keep going!!!

There’s no way forward!

Get down, Master! Your hand!

Master and Oberon hold onto each other as they fell down.

To the bottom of the deep, deep darkness they went.

Sigh…the artist drowns in his art. Good grief. Who would’ve thought the road would be destroyed. Well, guess I’m just used to falling. It’s just a little [something] more than usual now.

O-----www.. Ah Master, are you alright?

After all that, there are an unbelievable amount of flowers here, aren’t there? More than enough for a lifetime! Flowers are always blooming somewhere you know? Water. Sun. Flowers. Bugs… Green. It’s all a cycle.

Yep, that was me who set the grail there. Let me know when you go an adventure, okay? Ah, the request itself was true! It’s just…you weren’t as calm as I thought you’d be so it didn’t go exactly as planned. Today is a very blessed day for you. That’s import-

Marine Nemo: Captain! I found Oberon! [We found him!]

Prof. Nemo: I believe Oberon is continuing to reject our transmissions~

Capt. Nemo: Ah, we finally connected! Oberon, is Master alright? When you went down, our signal got cut off.

Oberon: Oh my, I didn’t know about any of that! Master is alright and has even taken a Holy Grail! It’s no problem at all!

Eng. Nemo: ‘n that case, get yer ass back ‘ere already! After that, spill yer guts! Nurse Nemo: If either are injured, I can attend to you, so please feel free to ask.

Capt. Nemo: Everyone! Be quiet for a moment. Oberon, Master, above all else, I’m glad you’re safe. I really do want you to take your time to enjoy the town. If you would be so kind, could you take some photos for future reference? There must be so many vehicles in the Steam Town, certainly.

Oberon: Yep! We’re happy to bring souvenirs to you, Captain! After all, we gotta lift the engineer’s spirits too eh!

Eng. Nemo: I-It’s not like I’d want a motorbike or anything! Well…I have been thinkin’ ‘bout some extra parts for my Penguin Potter, so…

Oberon: Okay then! I’ll be right on the lookout for it! Well then, see you at Chaldea then.

Bakery Nemo: I’ll be baking a warm basket (of bread) for you then!

Oberon: Well right then. Let’s go back to the surface and let’s stroll around the town til the sun goes down! So messy and covered in grease and full of all kinds of shady shops it may be though. They’ll all become beautiful memories though. After all, as long as there are unknown worlds about, that means there are wonderful adventures to be had, right?

[crispycreambacon]

Ending April with a small parting gift. I’m gonna miss this.

Anyways, an announcement of my own.

The short of it

I’m leaving the Watcher fandom. Don’t worry, I won’t be unfollowing anyone, but I will be ceasing the creation of art for Watcher and interaction with the community at large. Thank you all for this short but meaningful ride. Feel free to unfollow me if you were here for Watcher art, and for those who stick around…

Thank you :]

I hope to not disappoint with this new era of mine.

The long of it

It’s been a couple of days since a certain channel dropped an announcement that imploded its fandom. It was… a mess. A lot—and I mean a lot—of us didn’t handle the news well, and we made that known to everyone. The impact was so massive that YouTubers, who are nowhere near the niche that Watcher operates under, covered the situation, and some of them explained very well why the decision went over so poorly. Meanwhile some of them made fun of the situation, and some were just there for the clicks, but that’s the cycle of YouTube drama for you.

With the amount of ears waiting for even a peep out of their mouths, Watcher couldn’t ignore the backlash any longer and released an apology video three days after the announcement. By all accounts, it was a pretty good response. The reception was mixed, but it was definitely more well-received than their first video, and they actually listened to their fans who gave them valid criticism over the sudden shift to a streaming service.

However…

For as much as I appreciate their response, I still can’t find it in myself to continue following Watcher. I really mean it when I say this disaster soured any enjoyment I had for them. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch them again for a long time without thinking about this situation or remembering the people they have hurt, even if unintentionally, through their poor execution of a business decision.

Do I believe they could’ve pulled off moving their content to a streaming service? Absolutely. However, so many factors doomed this decision and their announcement from the start from them believing that $5.99/month was “affordable to everyone” (seriously?) to them insisting that this was for the fans even though the fans have vocalized that they were never there for the high production value. They were there because the three guys who run Watcher were enjoyable!

I feel like if they had been honest about the fact that the TV quality they are aiming for was more for themselves than anyone–hell, it’s the mission statement in their About page, and, I don’t know, considered the idea that $6 is not cheap, especially for international fans, people wouldn’t have gotten so angry at them. Now, there are still numerous issues plaguing this business model, but to go through all of the arguments would require a separate post, and I’ve already expended too much energy on this situation. Needless to say, Watcher has burnt their bridges, and it will take a while before they can build them back up again, let alone get people to trust them enough to cross them.

On the other hand, I can’t blame Watcher fully for my departure. Despite my heavy disagreement with their initial decision, I understand why they thought this decision was a good idea in the first place as YouTube is a very unstable career path, and it would rather hurt its creators with its relentless demonetization, censorship and restrictive guidelines than give up just a tiny amount of its profit. Besides, they’re in control of their content, and they could do what they want with it even if their fans disagreed with them.

Speaking of the fans, my god. The situation revealed a side of the fandom that I never thought I would see, but in hindsight, I should have seen it coming. To see fans resort to anti-Asian racism and death threats so quickly was extremely heartbreaking, and as an Asian person, it made me feel very unsafe and unwelcome in the community.

Moreover, using Steven as a scapegoat to absolve Ryan and Shane of any wrongdoing was unfortunately a very common response. Yes, he is the CEO, and yes, his series being centered on traveling and eating expensive food really doesn’t paint him in a positive light, but need I remind you that RYAN AND SHANE ARE GROWN ADULTS. They’re the founders of Watcher, and they both have to agree to the initial plan for it to be implemented. You can’t assume that Steven was a boogeyman terrorizing your precious little boys just based on a 15-minute video. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.

All of this to say that the initial announcement combined with how the community reacted violently to the announcement really nipped my interest in Watcher in the bud. It was a shame too because I really did love Watcher, and I still do. Had it not been for the time I invested in following them, I wouldn’t have made great friends, regained the joy in creating art–even reviving a hobby/skill that I assumed was long dead, and had a reason to be able to laugh or smile even in terrible days. I truly am grateful for Watcher, and I do not regret ever getting into them at all. However, I think it’s time for me to go.

Thank you all for this weird and wonderful ride, but at some point, you’ll have to hop off. I just didn’t expect to hop off it so soon.

[stale-cornflakes]

Beady Eyes MAP- Part 7

Process video ↓

AYYYY back at it with another Rainworld map! I had a lot of fun figuring this one out! When I first started this I had no idea how to draw scugs and it definitely showed through the lost it all map." But this gave me a great opportunity to experiment with some squash and stretch in a few shots.

Deep dive into the process under cut!

Walking into this I expected the part to be about 5 seconds long. It ended up being more than double at 13 seconds-

This Map was a blast to work on. My fellow participants are a pleasure to work with, and communication between everyone is top tier. Everyone is so nice, and it's an overall pleasant experience. As for the creation of my part itself: My part is to line up with the previous. Due to this, I started the intro with Survivor's side profile last on the storyboard. That way, I waited till the part 6 owner had at least a sketch or storyboard down in order to line them up.

I always jot down my first thought on ibis with my finger and animate on a separate program. You can see it in the process where the aspect ratio is all off, haha. The first iteration is always rough; never taking more than an hour.

In this version there are 2 key differences.

1: Monk shakes their head and follows after Surv.

2: There is a Karma bump from a successful cycle. Monk then wakes up from hibernation, signaling that this was a dream.

While I was thinking of using this, I did not for a better flow.

Once this was completed, I actually took a week break off from art and animation to prevent burn-out. However, with that the wip check was coming up. I was not concerned about it because I had work to show. But, Cioror (the host) was so amazing as to compile everyone's parts into a proto-map for the wip check. I was not aware of this and spent the day sketching out the second sketch with proper dimensions. I posted the adobe sketch 2 minutes before the video premiered, so there was still the small dimensions of Ibis there lol.

Onto the line art and coloring. There is a reason why in the process video I did not separate those two. It's because when working on Lost it all, I found that putting the two on separate layers is HORRIBLE. ABSOLUTELY GOD AWFUL NEVER AGAIN. So, instead, I would go straight to the line art and make fill lines out of frame to color.

This resulted in some frames getting a little messy behind the scenes.

Another thing I considered was rather than the characters being in a void, they would be in The Void. Complete with an animated background. This was quickly stopped in order to save my sanity, and to line up with the previous part.

In my animations I almost NEVER let a character stay completely still. When Idle I always have them alternate between at least 3 frames. It makes it feel like the character is breathing, and not just a static image. It also just feels right to do that. 'Tis my animation style.

The final stretch was cleaning up the lines and making sure the scugs were on model. During this time, Monk's face became wider, and their head sharper. This is also the part of the process where most of the squash and stretch was applied.

Finally, was simply adding the filter gradient on multiply. Basically, wrapping the animation up in a little bow 👍

overall, I've been working on and off on this project for two months.

[braintapes]

The Hotel Podcast Season 3 Analysis: Part II - The Lobby Boy

(Time to blow out another candle.)

Welcome back! Part I was allll about the Manager's arc, covering episodes 3.1 - 3.4. We saw the Manager as she was repeatedly killed by a pale, gibbering creature, we watched the darkness consume her and the lobby, and we also witnessed the Hotel being built, in a way.

The Manager's been killed again by the gibbering creature. Now we see from the Lobby Boy's perspective. Well, we will see.

As I said in my previous post, S3 is simultaneously the old crew's origin, end, and a place/time/series of events they intermittently return to. This means that we're seeing the staff in a very specific, raw state of being. A different a lens to understand them through.

(Time to make a wish.)

This season functions as a collection of character studies showing us how the old crew responds to inevitability. The certainty of death. There is no release for these three, as there may be for the guests. There is only dying to wake up to die again.

The Manager's arc emphasized the certainty. The Lobby Boy's arc will showcase the cycle.

As always though, this is only my own personal read on the text/audio. Analyzing the art and stories I like in this way is a creative fun outlet for me, and my hope is that this can prompt more discussion for other people too. I love getting to see other people's perspectives and bring up stuff I hadn't considered!

Enough preamble though, let's get right to it. (Do get comfy though, because this is nearly 7 full word pages long)

(It's almost my birthday.)

To properly set the stage for the Lobby Boy's arc, I need to talk some more about the Manager first. Who is the Manager? What drives her?

I'm going to go by Season 2 here. I believe S2 is another, though different, look at these characters. There, we see them as raw as raw can get. They're a mixture of ingredients sitting in the pan waiting to be put into the oven. Whereas in S3 they are freshly baked and piping hot. And also still being baked. And speaking of food metaphors…

The idea of hunger and satiation continually shows up in the Manager's stories. Burger Baby is, uh, fairly obvious and speaks for itself, I think. Mrs Bones is interesting because again we see her thirst as this primal need inside the Manager, a desperate instinctual urge that drives her forward. This also happens in 5.1 Merp and Burble, where she. Well. She merps and she burbles.

In these altered states of consciousness, she has an animal-like nature. She is concerned only with satiating herself. But even when she gets what she's looking for, it's never enough. She can never truly be content.

This shows up in 3.2, when the laborers' deaths satiate the Manager. They even build her/the lobby as they perish one by one. But of course, of course, the fullness doesn't last. This is one of my absolute favorite aspects of the Manager's character. It makes her so distinct from the other two.

The Manager's response to the inevitability presented to her is to allow it in. She neither fights it, kicking and screaming, as the Owner would, nor does she run from it, as the Lobby Boy will. She accepts her circumstances and adapts to them. She takes to everything the easiest of the three.

So, she dies. So...she dies. So what? She's dead now, and will remain so for the rest of the season. What's done is done, until the Hotel wills it otherwise. They serve at the pleasure of the Hotel Herself, after all.

(Do you remember how to die? I'll remind you.)

The most distinct difference between the Lobby Boy and the Manager is that the latter seems to relish in her job. Not in the way the Owner does, as a title to preen and puff up over. She gets nothing out of lording her position over the other two. She does what she does because it's in her nature to do so, and it's a form of sustenance. Her job is her life is her nature. Literally hashtag ultimate girlboss, y'know?

The Lobby Boy, on the other hand, does NOT relish his duty. He is deeply intimate with death and dying and the horrors that lurk inside the Hotel in a way that the other two simply are not. He constructs nearly every awful thing in the Hotel and personally delivers the guests to those things.

As the gibbering creature continues to beat (and then starts to consume) the very dead Manager in 3.4, the Lobby Boy notes the "pulsing and bruised" walls of the Hotel. Something is deeply wrong here and he can feel it. The way he's seeing everything is not how he normally would. He says:

"It's not supposed to look like that, I think. Not to me. Maybe to the guests, but to me it only looks like...I knew underneath and behind and through everything was something awful and vast watching, but I could still look at the facade and know my place here."

The Lobby Boy has, off the top of my head, seen the Hotel in this way two other times. Well, one of this times was in a bonus episode and so doesn't really count, but it's one of my favorite bonus episodes so I'm going to talk about it a bit anyway. Feel free to skip that part.

First, in 4.12 X - X, during the big fight between the Owner and the Lobby Boy, the two go sailing and flying through the Hotel. They crash through lobbies and halls and rooms. The Lobby Boy SEES everything in the Hotel. He sees everything he has built and everything he hasn't yet. He sees the guests dying. He sees himself, burning. And he hates it. He decides to look away, to try to not remember.

In fact, the Lobby Boy's active avoidance of witnessing his own work is THE big reason the Owner hates the Lobby Boy and picks that fight with him in the first place.

In the bonus episode The Hotel, the Lobby Boy has a dream in which he is entirely alone. He examines the lobby before using his cool powers to rise up through the Hotel in such a way that he can see it all. He keeps going, pushing aside and shaping and conducting the Hotel's form until it reaches a crescendo of swirling color and shape and fervor...Then, of course, he remembers that he's not alone, not really. He's never alone in the Hotel.

Like I said, that lies in murky non-canon-ish waters so feel free to ignore it. I personally consider it an interesting supplemental to the other two examples. The point is, the Lobby Boy isn't an idiot. He's very well aware of what the Hotel is. What he is and what he does.

3.4 ends with this:

"In the Hotel there is only death. Only ever death. But still I run to the second floor, where the deaths don't matter so much. The floor with the guest rooms."

He sees the darkness consuming the lobby, the Manager, everything in the Hotel lobby. He knows what's happening. Still, he decides to run. He chooses to look away. To not think about it, if he can.

He runs to what he knows best: the guest rooms. The familiar forms the Hotel is supposed to take. The facade he can try to lose himself in, knowing all the while that it's a lie and he will face the horrible truth that envelopes and underpins it.

(Here comes another one, don't miss it or we'll have to start over.)

Now, it's time for 3.5 The Lobby Boy Dies.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest, but the elevator is empty.”

The Lobby Boy is alone as he walks down the endless hallways. The lights wink at him as he passes by. We'll see the Hotel Herself flicker her lights at the Lobby Boy other times, like in 4.10 Audrey Burns. It's one of her cheeky and fun ways of communicating with him! The Hotel is absolutely playing with him like a toy in this arc. I mean, that's true of every arc but this one especially feels so delightfully cheeky.

He refuses to look back behind him. He's seen the guests look back and it's never saved any of them. Then he spots a different kind of light – a candle by an empty guest room.

“I...the candle wants me to stare into the flame. It wants me to go inside the room. The door matches the key ring in my hand... Why-”

But the Lobby Boy knows what's happening here. He drops his keys and continues walking. He avoids looking at anything but straight ahead of him, down the hall. With each room, door, candle he avoids, another one shows up until every room is an empty guest room with a candle. For him.

He wants to refuse. He doesn't want to go in. Tells himself he won't, he CAN'T. But the Hotel pulsates in the background and he starts to imagine what it would be like if the walls caught fire...the fire spreading...Chasing him...He runs!

But why? Why avoid the flames and the burning and the smoke when he knows he can't, won't escape them? When he knows he'll end up dying anyway?

There's a few ways to look at this. One is that it's part of his nature – he doesn't want to face death, not necessarily in a human way but because it - like basically everything else - makes him squeamish and uncomfortable. If he runs, he doesn't have to face it. If he runs, he can pretend:

"The doors seem to turn towards me as I pass now. Stretching, almost reaching out. Presenting to me, showing me the sweetest lie: Safety. Safety from what is behind me. Safety from the end ahead."

“The flames behind, the fire ahead, I will pretend not to know what is beyond the door and know relief for a sickening, hopeful, instant.”

[Bolding mine]

The Lobby Boy is aligning himself with the guests here. He is a guest in this episode: he has a room he will go and die inside of. He knows the guests aren't saved by their pretending, but he does it anyway because the tiny glimmer of light inside the Lobby Boy is hope. Is wanting. In this case, it's wanting the comforting lie that he'll be okay, somehow.

Another part is that this is technically new to him, new and frightening. His nature is fearfulness, so of course he runs. He's still a fresh-out-of-the-oven Lobby Boy at this point! All of this that's happening doesn't gel with whatever knowledge was baked into him from the Hotel. He hasn't had a chance to acclimate yet!

He enters his room and sees, just before the door closes, himself stepping off the elevator in the hall. He stands in the dark for a long time until the candle appears again.

“I stare into the flame and I can hear the Hotel around me.”

He's transfixed until the candle falls over and the whole room goes up in flames, burning him to death. He doesn't accept it, he screams and tries to run and tries to open the door he knows will not open again. He dies just like one of the guests.

(You were there too.)

Since the previous Lobby Boy is dead, the Lobby Boy who we just saw step out of the elevator is our narrator for 3.6 The Lobby Boy Tries Not To Die.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest, but...there is no guest. I'm alone.”

Last episode, we saw the part of the Lobby Boy that identifies with the guests, the part of him that's just as trapped as they are. But there's plenty more layers and sides to the LB we've yet to peel.

The Lobby Boy lies to himself and attempts to convince himself that the guest he saw at the end of the hall definitely did not have his face. It for sure wasn't him. Totally. He slips back into his role, what he knows he should be doing. But everything's wrong, still. He continues down the hall and passes rooms full of smoke and burning and screaming.

Occasionally, his voice reverberates. Notably, it happens when the ceiling is full of soot. He says:

“I don't want to fall up into that void. I don't know if I'll hit the ceiling, or just fall forever. (forever, forever.)”

[Formatting taken directly from transcript]

In my last post, I talked about how the darkness – the Hotel – is inextricable from the Manager/the staff. The idea returns here with...Well, with the smoke and soot, obviously, but ALSO with these vocal effects. It's one of the Lobby Boy's things, sometimes if he's particularly worked up he'll get effects like this in his narration.

As it's applied here, it feels like something directly tying him to the Hotel. A part of him that is like it. These reverberations come back at the end of the season both with the Hotel Herself's narration and the staff's response to her. They are not separate entities, but a strange splintering and amalgamation of each other.

The Hotel's pulsing starts up in the background. The Lobby Boy continues walking but his steps become wet and squishy as the floors become coated in, um. Melted Lobby Boy soup leaking out from the room doors. It pools and congeals into a gory sticky mess that clings to him, hinders his running. The desk bell dings and something is chasing the Lobby Boy and screaming at him and his immediate instinct is to run away.

The slurry of himself enmeshed in the floor shows that the part of the Hotel that is the Lobby Boy is this second floor. The same way the Manager is the lobby and we saw her being built, the Lobby Boy is every endless hall, room, door, ceiling, floors. He is both the facade and the horrible truth at the end of it.

What he runs from is himself, literally, in this episode, but also from...himself. You know what I mean?

“I run faster. I want the soot black ceiling to take me. I want to sink into the cold bleeding carpet. I want grey walls and nothing else.”

(mood man I hate being yelled at too.)

They're both screaming now, his pursuer and himself. Just...screaming. I LOVE the distorted layered yells here. Something visceral and miserable about the sounds perfectly encapsulate the Lobby Boy, I feel.

He runs and every door turns into an elevator. He ends up, of course, back at that door. That room, with the smoke and the fire and the other burning Lobby Boy already inside of it. He looks back and sees himself clearly this time. He's terrified. He'd rather burn to death than be caught by himself. He closes the door “a little faster” before the other him can get inside.

And so the Lobby Boy Fails To Not Die.

(Did you see him? Was it too fast for you?)

We are roughly two Lobby Boys down as we head into 3.7 The Rooms Are Filled.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest. The guest steps out and into the hallway.”

So now there's two of them in the elevator. One must be the guest, if one of them is the Lobby Boy. But then...? They walk together and the other lets our viewpoint LB into the room.

Once again, this opening sequence involves the Lobby Boy following his standard routine. Bring the guest to the room. Ask if they need anything. Our narrator gives a quick rundown of the room but then the fire starts consuming everything again. Instead of running away from each other, the two Boys struggle pathetically over each other to get out. One of them escapes, the other remains trapped in the room.

He heads back to the elevator and goes to another floor.

“There are so many buttons twinkling dully at me. I like to stare at them on the way.”

Bringing up this quote just to say I'm putting a pin in it for later in this post. Bear with me, there WILL be a payoff to this. I just wanted to make special note of this line in particular.

The elevator doors open and the cycle continues, repeats. One Lobby Boy brings the other Lobby Boy to his room and he dies there as the Lobby Boy goes back to the elevator to do it again. Again. Again. Every time the Lobby Boy dies, a light in the elevator goes out. Slowly, they burn to darkness every hall in the Hotel.

He's not running the same way he was during the last few episodes. He's settling in. Getting acclimated. The way he gets through this is by not thinking about it. If he doesn't think, he can hold out the sliver of hope within him that he won't be the one to die. But he'll still die.

He sounds so utterly exhausted as he relives both the walk from the elevator to the room and the burning to death inside the room. So strained, bordering on anger almost.

“Why do I look so afraid, if I'm not the one who has to burn? But I am the one who has to burn. And the one who has to close the door. I'm the only one here.”

Okay to be honest you could just ignore every single thing I've written here and just look at these lines because this is the crux of it all.

The sound gets...weirder from here. The elevator door dings wrongly. The Lobby Boy doesn't hold the door open for the guest. We hear the Owner's scream for the first time in a while, though this comes immediately after the line saying, “The rooms are filled with my screams.”

Hmmmm...

But I can't talk about that yet. I need to talk about this:

“The halls are filled with smoke and mess. I don't know why The Manager only had to die once and I have to die so much. So much. Too much.”

[Bolding mine]

Does this line sound familiar? He sounds envious here, almost...resentful, in a way that reminds me very specifically of 2.2 Cracker Man:

“Why do they get to be in the house? Why do they get to be young and happy and beautiful? Why does it hurt to watch them live? I don’t know why but it does. Every smile stings.”

The Manager's S2 episodes showed us her primal instinct as one of her core traits. The Lobby Boy's S2 episodes show us his envy and rage. He's portrayed as a stalking figure in both Cracker Man and Frozen Figures, something that watches from the outside before going in for the kill. Yeah, technically the Owner and Manager do this too, but it feels personal for the Lobby Boy.

Why do THEY (the guests) get to live? Why do THEY get to pretend, to have the luxury of not knowing what's going to happen to them? Why did the Manager only have to die ONCE instead of being stuck in this endless cycle? (She didn't, she died at least like 4 times, but I suppose he doesn't know that). Why is he stuck here and they're not? WHY CAN'T HE D--

“There are so many buttons twinkling dully at me. I like to stare at them on the way.”

That envy and his feelings towards the guests are also why I think the Lobby Boy likes staring at twinkling lights. I mean, there doesn't have to be anything deeper to it. I do think it is just...a thing he likes and that's that. But if there WERE deeper meaning to it, I would say part of him wants what the guests have. He wouldn't know what, exactly, he wants. But he knows they're different. They have something else. Maybe something nicer. Maybe. He admires the shimmering light until it turns into a desperate flame that eventually burns to soot and ash.

His envy collapses and gives way to the rage tucked deep inside him in Cracker Man. Here in 3.7, he taps into that and chases down the other Lobby Boy. Once again, he becomes the pursuing monster. He is the rooms he built. He is the guests he brought to them. He is the horror that will kill them inside the rooms. The screaming effects layer beautifully again.

“Every room is getting filled. Endlessly. We put ourselves here because we did. Never a thought to why or where. He runs so I'm running. He burns so I'm burning. If I could catch him, if I could touch him, could we burn together?”

I have nothing to add to this, I just want to sit and appreciate these lines for a minute.

The chase continues. This Lobby Boy can see into the elevators lining the hallways. Behind the both of them, “the void spills out” and chases them. No matter what direction they go, he'll always end up back in that darkness. Whether he's inside the burning room or out in the hall. He still, still, holds onto that tiny sliver of false hope that maybe, just maybe, he can catch him this time.

But the Lobby Boy sees him and closes the door a little faster. And the Lobby Boy is brought to a void by a trillion lights.

(The guests were never meant to come this far.)

There's...a lot more I'd love to say. I could go on and on in endless circles about this arc. It would be fitting, but this is already so long and I still have the Owner and the Hotel Herself to talk about!

So for now, let's see what happens to the Lobby Boy in the cleverly titled 3.8 A V O I D.

The Lobby Boy doesn't actually...do much here, since this episode is meant to start us on the Owner's arc. LB sits in the void, afraid. As familiar gibbering/Powers That Be noises follow after him, he panics.

“The worst it can do is kill me. Again. And Again. Forever. WHY CAN'T I DIE?”

[Formatting taken direct from transcript]

One last time, there's the crux of the Lobby Boy's despair. Why is he trapped like this when he's so, SO afraid? Why? Why why? The hopeless wailing and thrashing shared by the guests in their last moments.

We proceed listen to the Lobby Boy having the worst time he's probably ever had when he whimpers and begs “No no no no please no.”

His question is answered by as he's brutally killed by the gibbering creature the Hotel.

(He seems to be dead now though.)

And then the Owner chimes in with the fucking funniest possible line, “Thank you. Dispatching that creature has been long overdue.”

Thanks king. So glad to see you on your hater streak <3

Anyway, that wraps things up for the Lobby Boy's arc. I've never seen a more literal version of the “Man Vs. Self” style of conflict as this, as he grapples and struggles and fights with himself across time.

We get to see the fearful core of his being on full display along with the reasons why he'd be so afraid compared to the other two. Neither the Manager or the Owner are as down in the dirt with the guests, so to speak, as the Lobby Boy is. He embodies the most important aspect of it, the rooms and the killing.

It seems the only way he can get himself to function in that endless cycle is by avoidance, turning himself away from it all. The Owner just doesn't get it. Even though they have so much in common...

Well, that'll be for next time to delve into. See you then friends. Thanks again for reading! :-)

[siyuri]

Wanted to write some stuff so why not here. It appears it is kinda fun to forget about some social media and then like 10 years later pick it up and read stuff your past self wrote. So for the future me.

Hi! Like...you know how everyone always have this habit at the end of every year to be angry at it, feel this bad summury of the feeling for everything that happened and forget any good things? So...fuck this, I had an amazing year. After covid, after mother's cancer, after her death, after my long four years of existing fuck knows how inside all that I had an amazing year. And just wanted to apreciate it and not look for bad things, but celebrate great ones.

This year started with me living in an amazing faetales world - I kinda have this problem... Myself from April to October is hyperactive person. I need to be outside ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I will camp, I will cycle, I will run, walk, crowl but everything should be outside. And my creative part of the brain is silent for half of the year. And then I have Myself - November until April. My creativity just wants to do EVERYTHING. Draw, lern some musical instruments, readreadread, paint glass, do toys, make ANYTHING. But for the love of gods don't look outside (I hope future me knows how to balance them). So, when I have a more than million words fic to let myself live into, I will do it. And when I can't think about anything but it, it is the best thing that can happen to me in this period. So, after like month of pure drugs, I watched some bad play in my city theater, and it was the last straw needed to me FINALLY go to Saint-Petersburg for an amazing theater they have there. Last time I was there, it was with mom, so it was hard to start. But. Then...oooooh! How many amazing things I saw! One of them - I was on 8hours long play "And Quiet Flows the Don" Sholokhov. And it was so epic - couldn't process it like for a day, just didn't talk and was in this happy drug creativity mode again. Then comes March! I had this dream...kinda long time ago, 8-9 years, when life was... good I guess. I wanted to do Cami de Cavalls track around Menorca...but life. And finally, this year!!! I have a wonderful job, I have stable income, I have powers and I can do it. So, comes April and i am walking 250km around Menorca on foot, and one and only dream I had is fullfiled. So... Then I am back and it is the hardest drop I had in a while, but who cares, we are here talking about good things. Then SUMMER! I am finally on good foot with my sister again, I have a friend, I have my bicycle again, I have the sun and everything is GOOD. And after 1.5 years of struggling our grave is done and it is the coziest fucking place in the world!! And then it is tents on the beach, sunrises, good food and seaseasea. And then it is Austria and Wachau and me, walking again and blue happiness at the horizen, because I never saw such mountains up close, and 250km on foot up down up down, and this drop wasn't even bad!!! So I am back home and it october and Larian is waiting for me, and this is just AMAZING, because I LOVE when good people do good things and get recognised for it. And then Palmarosa, it is like full circle, because outside me already asleep and the other one READY TO MAKE THINGS! And I make them and I even LIKE THEM!!! And aside of all transition problems and shitty things aside... like... who cares about them when yesterday I had the artist who is inspiration for me reblogged my art with inspiration tag? Like... WORLD JUST FEELS WHOLSOME!!! and I don't want to remember any bad shit from this one.

[arrowpusher]

Book Review #4: Everything is Fucked, A Book About Hope (by Mark Manson)

For a long time, I had wanted to read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, but it's always checked out at the library. I read the author's other book which also has good reviews.

I've heard of the concept of "caring too much". It sounds narcissistic, but I feel like my perfectionist mindset makes me OCD and uselessly stress over the tiniest details. I thought this would be a good read for myself.

I read ~3/4. It was the only entertainment I brought while waiting all day for a concert, but still, I got bored and couldn't really bring myself to finish it. While some parts were interesting, most of it either felt like it was rambling or got too philosophical.

The basic premise of the book is that, realistically speaking, problems are inevitable.

"Hope doesn't care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose."

"You blame yourself for failing to live up to your God Value, regardless of how ill-advised that God Value is. You can see this same cycle of desperation play out in all sorts of other areas. Fitness and diet plans, political activism, self-help seminars… the message is always the same: the more you do it, the more you're told you need to do it to finally experience the satisfaction you've been promised. Yet that satisfaction never comes."

"Human pain is like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Every time you knock down one kind of pain, another one pops up. And the faster you whack them, the faster they come back."

It delves into why and how we feel hope.

"To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. 'Control' means we feel as though we're in control of our own life, that can affect our fate. 'Values' means we find something important enough to work toward, something better that's worth striving for. And 'community' means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working on achieving those things."

"Here's the funny thing about value hierarchies: when they change, you don't actually lose anything… That's because 'fun' is the product of our value hierarchies. When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun or interesting to us. Therefore, there is no sense of loss, no sense of missing out when we stop doing it it. On the contrary, we look back and wonder how we ever so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing, why we wasted so much energy on issues and causes that didn't matter. These pangs of regret or embarrassment are good; they signify growth. They are the product of our achieving our hopes."

"Experiences generate emotions. Emotions generate values. Values generate narratives of meaning. And people who share similar narratives of meaning come together."

It also explores feelings from a psychological angle.

"Some people's Thinking Brains have ignored their Feeling Brains for so long that it takes them a while to learn how to listen again."

"This whole 'teach your Thinking Brain to decipher and cooperate with your Feeling Brain instead of judging him and thinking he's an evil piece of shit' is the basis for CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy)."

"Equalization is present in every experience because the drive to equalize is emotion itself. Sadness is a feeling of powerlessness to make up for a perceived loss. Anger is the desire to equalize through force and aggression. Happiness is feeling liberated from pain, while guilt is the feeling that you deserve some pain that never arrived."

More specifically, it analyzes how your upbringing affects your outlook on life.

"Our identities snowball through our lives, accumulating more and more values and meaning as they tumble along... The longer we've held a value, the deeper inside the snowball it is and the more fundamental it is to how we see ourselves and how we see the world. Like interest on a bank loan, our values compound compound over time, growing stronger and coloring future experiences. It's not just the bullying from when you were in grade school that fucks you up. It's the bullying plus all the self-loathing and narcissism you brought to decades worth of future relationships, causing them all to fail, that adds up over time."

"...the longer we've held onto these narratives, the less aware we are that we have them... Despite being arbitrary and completely made up, they seem not only natural but inevitable."

"The only way to change our values is to have experiences contrary to our values. And any attempt to break free from these values through new or contrary experiences will inevitably be met with pain and discomfort. It's why it is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be."

"Ideologies, because they're constantly challenged, changed, proven, and then disprove, offer scant psychological stability upon which to build one's hope."

It goes further into different stages in life, how experiences are processed, and how that leads to frustration or satisfaction. It's simplified in a diagram: Child -> pleasure. Adolescent -> principles -> pleasure. Adult -> principles

Children who are abused or coddled often end up stuck in their childhood value system. "Instead of predictable failures, his experience is just random and cruel… Therefore, no lesson is learned. No higher values are produced. No development takes place. The child never learns to control his own behavior and develops coping mechanisms to deal with the incessant pain." "People get stuck in the adolescent stage of values for similar reasons that they get stuck with childish values: trauma and/or neglect… A person who has been bullied in his younger years will move through the world with an assumed understanding that no one will ever like or respect him unconditionally, that all affection must be hard-won through a series of practiced conversation and canned actions."

"Adolescents need to be shown that bargaining is a never-ending treadmill, that the only things in life of real value and meaning are achieved without conditions, without transactions.

"Making the leap of faith into a virtuous adulthood requires not just an ability to endure pain, but also the courage to abandon hope, to let go of the desire for things always to be better or more pleasant or a ton of fun. Your Thinking Brain will tell you that this is illogical, that your assumptions must inevitably be wrong in some way. Yet, you do it anyway. Your Feeling Brain will procrastinate and freak out about the pain of brutal honesty, the vulnerability that comes with loving someone, the fear that comes from humility. Yet, you do it anyway."

And this random witty quote that I have mentally bookmarked in case I ever need a catchy snappy comeback phrase.

"I think your mind is so open your brain fell out." --Carl Sagan

I think the biggest takeaway was the concept of amor fati (This is also the name of an Epik High song; now I'm curious to look more into the lyrics).

Amor fati is "love of one's fate". "Amor fati... meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness. It meant loving one's pain, embracing one's suffering. It meant closing the separation between one's desires and reality not striving for more desires, but by simply desiring reality."

"Hope for nothing... Hope for this. Hope for the infinite opportunity and oppression present in every single moment. Hope for the suffering that comes with freedom. For the pain that comes from happiness. For the wisdom that comes from ignorance. For the power that comes from surrender. And then act despite it.

"To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better."

My critique in a nutshell: this book laments existential crises while unfortunately tripping the reader into them.

[dsi-os]

Meanwhile, in another project: A small 4 part stupid answer about where they go once inactive.

Hello!! I'm DSi.OS (also known as my very very very outdated name, sayah66.) I'm an artist who is "known" for MANY projects. "BUT DSI!!" you say, "WHERE ARE THOSE PROJECTS!! I DONT SEE THEM!!! ARE THE PROJECTS IN THE ROOM WITH US???" and to that i say.

yes AND no.

and heres what i mean! if you care to read, of course. tldr is available at the finish too! (WARNING: I'm making this as one big oneshot "essay" at 5 AM with no sleep. This may not make any sense, but. ENJOY!)

Part 1: The ITCH to create.

Personally, we're an artist of MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY stories and characters. including fun little aus of course. ...But. on the internet, it could be very difficult for an artist like me, because I THRIVE off of attention and interaction, just as my projects do. Most, if not ALL of my projects require some sort of interaction point. And on that note... Heres something of me and my creations, the little thing I call "The Graveyard"

All of these are blogs we've created throughout the years, excluding tests and throwaways. And. all of these would sadly be counted as "DEAD". (hence the graveyard bit. haha - get it?) Though, in reality. We wouldn't count this as dead... more like-

PART 2: THE SLEEPING UNDEAD

ALL of these blogs aren't really dead... just... sleeping! very, very heavily. "BUT WHY IS THAT?" you may ask, and thats because:

LACK OF INTERACTION

They are FAR FAR from dead, they just aren't getting any interaction or traction, and hence, they slow down to a stop. When a story REQUIRES interaction to move forward, you can't just leave it hungry! But sadly, in turn, this does even more harm to the project, because due to the lack of posting (from the lack of interaction) all traction stops! And so, its almost like a painting or a vintage piece left in an attic. It gets covered in dust and left to be found later. Or! You could compare it to a train! The interactions are coal to fuel it...

PART 3: WHAT DO I THINK?

Personally, I just wait until they get interaction again, and. While that most likely won't happen, I remain hopeful. Of course, even I drift away from it slowly, and it becomes a beautifully archived piece of media for myself, and maybe somebody else, to enjoy! Its a big cycle of throwing stories to the internet and making something new, and, while it can hurt, its also a great experience! Without the graveyard growing, I wouldve never moved on from story-writing mistakes, among many other things. Its a real big experience!! Its fun for it to happen while it can.

PART 3.5: .....AND?

okay fine youve caught me. Besides just waiting for interaction, sometimes I update my old works slowly, in a way that lets new interactions come in. and, especially for the OSHAVERSE blogs, there are BIG BIG ideas I still have for it! As said before, not dead, just resting! Inching like a slug. I'm also planning to completely reboot some blogs, or start new events on others! I'm no professional, but I'd say it helps quite a bit. And it can be fun* to meet back up with old friends from those eras! (hiii osha people!!!) *not a promise

PART 4: WHAT CAN YOU DO?

YOU can help a lot! This is information EVERY artist says, but. well. its the truth! What you can do is share, interact, and enjoy the content! See a cool art? Reblog that. See a neat creator? Follow them! Cool story? Share it to others! Needs asks? Send asks!! Sitting on the sidelines sadly won't do much, and, believe me, I know that it can be difficult to get out of that sometimes, but you will not BELIEVE how much it helps. All your love, all your sharing, all your enjoying, makes all the stories you know and love go round. infact, it makes the internet go round! SHARE YOUR WORK, AND SHARE OTHERS WORK TOO!!! HAVE FUN!!! as long as no ones getting hurt, and theres no harmful content, this is always the way to go!!!

RE:INTRO

Hello!! I'm DSi.OS, I'm a mentally ill, currently homeless artist, and I need your help, not just for my situation, but for my work too! Sharing artist's work can help get them commissions, which. help an UNBELIEVABLE amount!! and hell, if you see a cool artist out there, maybe try to save up to buy a comm for them! If you can't, you can always support them in MANY different other ways! from donations to gifts, to even interaction! share the artists you love, share your love to the artists! I'm DSi.OS, Creator of very, very small, but cared for projects. Many of them, maybe too many! But all your love keeps them going, even if it goes a bit slow!!! :D

TL;DR:

THE ANSWER TO THE INTRO: my projects are on permanent "freeze", or sleep-mode! no interaction = no going forward in the story. THE BIG MESSAGE OF THIS: support artists, keep stories alive, share the work you enjoy! with YOUR interactions and love, you can keep many blogs, stories, projects, and other things going!! MY SAY: i know this is a super stereotypical artist message, but not only is it correct, its the answer to where they've gone. not dead, just resting.

now! i cant wait to read this later. its now 5:30 am and i have no clue what ive typed. maybe its something super meaningful, maybe its silly. who knows! itll be a surprise for future me.

you guys promise to tell me if this sounds stupid right? okay. good. love you guys goodnight /HJ

[hankwizard]

Pieces Of Media I Consumed Recently

because i have accepted i cannot, for the life of me, do this in an organized fashion lol

CHAINSAW MAN('s anime)

I read the manga obsessively the moment I heard the premise. I grew up in the era of self-referential, masturbatory, whedon-istic media where no show or comic could just be unapologetically itself without getting weird and "haha isnt it DUMB we're making this?" the whole time. A manga about a guy turning into a chainsaw that is absolutely about a dude who turns into a chainsaw fucking appeals, okay?

Anyways. This is about the anime. The anime almost feels like a film at times- the characters move very.. Realistically. Very on model, which worked in some ways but made it a bit less expressive in others. It didn't have the punk charm of the manga, but otherwise? Steller presentation. I like how the anime further emphasizes that Denji is a kid- giving him more childish mannerisms (such as the infamous scene with himeno) that really hammers home the point of his character- that he's just a manipulated kid who wants some kind of normalcy and, most of all, love.

CHAINSAW MAN('s manga. part 2)

It makes me feel like the absolute joker watching how well thought out Asa is as a protagonist. Traumatic experiences can strip us of our identities- make us feel like all we've done is survive, and therefore, that's all we can do, so watching Asa fret over being a bore and be unable to connect to others without worrying about how things will crumble down is just a delight. I love her. Denji is also great so far! He's just so tired. This part's art has so much subtle improvement and once again Fujimoto is delivering bangers. Yoshida is never beating the yaoi allegations.

FEAR AND HUNGER: TERMINA

The fun thing about autism is that it forces you to enjoy things in the most "yeah this is my life now" of ways, which is fine when your interests are something normal you can explain to people like "dungeons and dragons" or "sailor moon" and not Termina, a game that makes you genuinely debate not if you should sever your enemy's leg, but which one.

Termina is crazy. A survival horror rpg where death is punishing, limbs can be lost AND trans women can do necromancy? It's great and it's terrifying. There's literally an entire area that I avoid because it freaks me out so bad so I GENUINELY take the long way everywhere to avoid it every time.

It's one of those games where any enemy can not only kill you, but maim you in ways that fundamentally change how you play the game. Dealing with enemies is a puzzle: how do you approach them? Do you deal with them now so you never have to deal with them again? Do you run around so you can wait until you're stronger? Do you shoot them from afar or save the precious ammo for something even worse?

It's a special kind of satisfying, but definitely not a game for everyone. I'd recommend reading the content warnings, as it's a dark fantasy with dark fantasy themes. It's also a game for adults only, no exceptions. Feel free to message me if you want to know about any content in the game that isn't listed out in the warnings on the store page. I might make a larger blog post about it later.

SHAMELESS

Ok, at first I really liked it! It's very funny, the characters are very well written, and it's very captivating... But I'm going to be real, the amount of Leering Shots Of Teenage Girls in what I watched of this show is enough to drive me bananas. I don't want to look up the sixteen year old girl's skirt, netflix, I'm ambiguously in my mid twenties. The show's insistence on making me look at karen naked ruined it for me. It didn't even feel like it was saying anything? It just kept happening!!! Anyways, tl;dr, shameless is not for me.

VELMA

So, listen. I need to admit something: I've been deep in the Western Cartoons Discourse Trenches since I googled "My Little Poney Forums" as a young teenager. I never really participated, but I'm aware of the cycle of Discourse that happens whenever a show Like This comes out- a show with marginalized characters that isn't very good, or at least is perceived as such.

I watched Sacrificial Trash and you should too

What generally happens is an outpour of outrage and criticism that's 10% warranted, 30% nitpicky and 60% literal actual bigotry. You end up with a lot of video essays of Yelling Men With Glasses that makes me, a contrarian hipster, really interested in proving the internet wrong and actually Enjoying The Thing.

After watching all of Velma, my verdict is:

I Enjoyed Watching It But Would Not Recommend It To Most

The show is funny! It's visually incredible! It has a fun plotline! It has a lot of nods to older Scooby Doo cartoons that I, as a Child Born After 1960, Enjoy! And I like basically every main character and most of the side characters...

Except... It has two massive, glaring issues in its writing. Two major themes that not only make the show nearly unrecommendable to most people, but also revolve around the worst character in the show, Velma herself.

To start, this show has a massive, gaping problem with self-hating anti-indian racism.

Every time Velma's ethnicity is brought up, it's made out to be a gag!! It's to make fun of her!! She's called an ugly gorilla constantly!!! She's made fun of for being hairy!!! And it's never addressed!!! It's just a running gag that Velma hates being Indian and so does everyone else. It's very uncomfortable. I was hoping it'd tone down but it doesn't. The show doesn't even seem all that aware that her self hatred about her own culture and her ethnic features is... a bad thing? It's very strange. I know a lot of south asian people who refuse to watch the show or didn't continue past episode one because of this and MAN. I get it.

The show also has a bit of a misogny problem, which is weird because it tries to be feminist at times? With Fred learning to appreciate women for more than their appearances, which was nice, but the amount of times femininity and appearance gets conflated with being dumb and vapid is... a lot. And the show seems half aware that this is bad while also just. keeping on doing it. And Velma is usually the one being misogynistic throughout the show, and while they kinda try to develop her past it, it doesn't feel like the show takes it seriously as a theme.

Anyways. If you watched and went "man, this show was very well produced and beautifully executed in its visuals!" like a huge nerd, please know that Amy Winfrey, creator of Making Fiends and a director for both Tuca And Bertie AND Bojack Horseman was the supervising producer and I highly advise checking her out.

PS: Glenn Howerton should do more voice work

[centrally-unplanned]

I come at this from a bit of a different angle but I think it arrives in pretty much the same place - and ofc these things are subjective and I am not a FE3H hater so much as a mixed-bagger. You can have a lot of combat mechanics, that can be very fun in different ways. It is fine if they have very small or niche impacts - like modern Feh characters have personal skills right? But if that personal skill is "crit rate 20% when using a sword", you just give them a sword and never interact with it again, it's no cognitive load. Others can be more impactful, but can still be clear - I like games to be different, so some games having open class changing can make sense. If you had a "accumulate X Teaching Points and you can swap a class" system you would do that 1-2 a save file per character, clear choice with concrete decision trees. Even gambits, infrequent-but-powerful abilities, that can be a ton of fun.

Three Houses is just so inefficient with all of its systems, and has so much crud. How many battalions do you accumulate? It is like a million, you get SO many, and you use barely any of them! They have their own levelling system, and ranking system, very unclear UI for showing relative strength, etc. If you got rid of 90% of the battalions *and* 90% of what they do (the battalions giving you Stride could give you absolutely zero stat buffs and still be OP for example) they would be clear systems with far less cognitive load that actually play identically.

Why do you tutor students every cycle? Most of the time it doesn't do anything? You have to go to a UI, press buttons 8 times, just to make Lysithea's Tome Rank go from 25% up the A ranking to 55% up the A ranking. Tutoring students sounds fine and aesthetic, just let me set a priority for their studying and have it autopilot- oh wait you already also have that you just have two parallel systems. The entire thing could have its quantity of button presses cut down 90% with again identical outcomes.

And so on - most combat arts aren't useful, others incentivize you to check every attack if it will hit HP thresholds, and they incentivize you to carry multiple weapons that you use to burn maintenance points which you now have to track and replenish. Just give everyone 1-2 over the course of the game, usable once a battle or something.

Isn't it funny how the narrative tells you Crests are connected to specific Holy Weapons, and are the sacred properties of individual houses? But then you get them and 80% of time the "match bonus" with specific crests is useless and so you just pass it around to any crest holder, contradicting the narrative? And now you have to ask yourself who needs the Lance of Ruin today? You normally don't bother ofc, just like you often don't bother with combat arts, but knowing you can is more cognitive load. Just give characters a signature weapon if you want to do that, that they can use sometimes! And if you are doing that, maybe you don't need combat arts, a signature move that they can use sometimes? Maybe these can be one system guys?

So yeah, stuff like that. Three Houses does need to be simplified, for sure, but I also think you could keep 80% of the systems as a concept but radically economized for way more player friendliness. Not that that is some binary line of course, that absolutely is system reduction in its own way.

At least no one can deny the Three Houses FUCC scores are sky high, we can keep that part.

Thinking, how many combat-relevant mechanics does 3H have? This is a main part of why I dislike it.

Unlockable skills

Switchable classes

Crests

Holy Weapons

Combat arts

Gambits

Crafting

Combat support

White magic

Academy instruction and seminars

Follow-Up Critical Coefficient

Compare to Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4):

Skills are locked from inheritance and classes

Classes only rank up

Holy blood

Holy weapons

Weapon triangle

White magic

Or Thracia 776 (FE5):

Skills are locked from inheritance and classes

Classes only rank up

Weapon triangle

White magic (which has major emphasis here)

Scrolls (which just boost your growths, marginal)

Follow-Up Critical Coefficient

Or Fates: Conquest (FE14):

Unlockable skills

Switchable classes

Crafting

Pair Up (offensive and defensive)

Weapon triangle

Or Shadows of Valentia (FE15):

Switchable classes

Combat arts

Combat support (minimal)

White magic (moderate emphasis)

Crafting (sort of)

FE5 is notably considered the most technical game in the franchise, but mostly because of the major use of Warp spells and intricate map design.

I've been a Three Houses hater since it came out and this is why I don't like the gameplay. There's too much going on and the result is a mess, and this part of the design philosophy leaks into the storyline as well.

Three Houses even tells you exactly who enemies are going to attack on their turn complete with damage and hit percentages, which in other games you have to guesstimate on your own. And they need to, because that would be just another piece of cognitive load in an already overcomplicated combat system.

[togglesbloggle]

A Review of my Memories of the Film "Memoria"

Memoria is an art film written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with Tilda Swinton in the starring role.  I’ve always been a fan of her work, so I let the boyfriend bully me into watching the sort of movie I don't have much experience with- the ‘high art’ kind.  I’m holding myself to an unusual rule on this one, for reasons that have to do with the film itself: I’ve waited about six weeks after watching it to do a writeup, and I’m not allowed to look anything up.  In other words, this isn’t a review of Memoria, this is a review of the imprint it left in my head.

The headline is: Memoria as I remember it is not an experience designed for fun, entertainment, or relaxation, and you probably won’t walk out of the theater with any new blorbos.  But it’s also, I think, an excellent choice for a ‘baby’s first art film,’ if you’re curious about that as a different category of experience.  You don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of cinema or anything; it’s thoughtful about the nature of movies, but you’re not watching part twelve of a dialogue between different auteurs.  And while it’s not fun, it is by design very beautiful, so there’s moment-to-moment rewards for the sustained effort of attention, instead of just a bunch of sad black and white clowns or whatever most art films do.  

Everything hereafter is spoilers.

The narrative retained in my memories, such as it is, centers around an expatriate florist living in Honduras, as she attempts to solve a particular mystery: she hears, or seems to hear, a particularly vivid noise at irregular intervals, one that nobody around her acknowledges.  I recall the narrative moving incredibly slowly, to the point of being totally discarded for tens of minutes at a time; in one early scene, I remember a parking lot full of cars, in predawn gray light, all activate their alarms at the same time, and the film just let the camera sit on this event until they all cycled through the full length of their sirens and then went silent again.

The cinematography was damn weird too- it took me a few cycles until I figured out what it was doing.  The scenes all took a particular form, featuring a particularly vivid object (usually d’arte, often sound or music) as a centerpiece, with Swinton’s character seen conversing with others, investigating her mystery, or just passively having the experience.  I remember strange camera work; the camera was often pulled very far back, to the point that the protagonist would almost drown in the scene  Which is a fairly… bold… use of an A-list actress really, since it was often a struggle to see her face.  Events in one scene were sometimes subtly inconsistent with events in another, and at other times very boldly so, and eventually it became clear we were watching them out of order as well- though you could sometimes try to track the timeline by how good Swinton’s Spanish was.  Often, the film devoted time to things that didn’t seem to advance narrative or character in the slightest- from what I recall, the third(ish) scene was just Swinton moving through foot traffic on the sidewalk when she saw an attractive young man run all-out for the bus, never to appear in the film again.

I remember that particular one extra well because that was when I figured out what was going on.  The scenes were, textually, intended to be the protagonist’s memories.  Instead of constructing a movie as a way to convey the narrative of Swinton’s quest for answers about the noise, it has been constructed as a representation of how that protagonist recalled the journey, as distinct from what an outside observer would see.  Retroactively, the artistic focus of the scenes became a kind of characterization- Weerasethakul’s choice of setting and scene was guided by how he thought his character would experience events and which of those experiences she would retain, rather than simply what he thought would convey narrative meaning to me.  Which is trebly why the camera acted so oddly: because she was remembering her experiences and not herself, because she understands herself to be small and passive and uninteresting within the world, and because she feels very lonely and lost.

(I’m quite sure about this interpretation, for the record, and not just because of the title- as the mystery opens up, we get more and more of an emphasis on the nature of memories and their role in identity and communication.  I’m less sure about the characterization, which is probably deliberate.)

This means a few things at the same time.  One, it was genuinely difficult to watch at times, in the sense of being more ‘work’ than ‘play’.  Tools to delight and entertain were conspicuously unused.  But it was also, perpetually, enthralling, because the protagonist was a woman of good taste, and the things she remembered were often captivatingly beautiful.  Shockingly for a movie I only watched once, I think I can remember a large fraction of the individual scenes very vividly (because that’s the core of their creative existence), and I could probably reconstruct large fractions of the film from scratch.  “Oh, yes, the dinner scene, then the dog in the park, then that jazz quartet,” though of course, both my recollections and the protagonist’s themselves would both be out of order pretty often.  It’s genuinely fascinating to have this thing implanted in my head that was created specifically to be remembered, and at the same time to be a commentary and exploration of the nature of memory.

The experience seems to have been built with this in mind, and I genuinely don’t think you can actually get the full experience without going through a few rounds of fridge logic.  Example: we learn, from a few different memories, that the people around her don’t seem to hear the sound that she does.  But remember that scene with the car alarms going off that I told you about?  The people may not have heard, but the environment sure did.  I think that one took me about three weeks to catch; other people might be faster or slower on the uptake than me, but I’m pretty sure the movie never really moved it into view directly, and it manages presentation order such that most people won’t be putting two and two together immediately.  But there’s another layer here, of course, which is that I don’t actually know whether she noticed it or not!  All the film really conveys is that she didn’t have a particularly vivid memory of discussing it.  So it’s a slow burn on top of a slow burn on top of a slow burn, all in service to a cluster of questions about the limits and meaning of memories.

The final third (?) or so of the movie pivots hard, when she reaches a possible source of the mystery, and what follows is a single conversation (in Spanish) that lasts a good thirty minutes or so.  Textually, the conversation here is about the capacity of memories to share meaning, not just retain it, and what the limits of that enterprise might be.  Which is to say, it’s when the film starts thinking about itself and its limits, and it (almost) abandons the usual tools of spectacle and sound in favor of the older arts of verbal storytelling.  That, naturally, is followed by the most brazenly, screamingly supranatural scene of the entire film (it’s the only time it resorts to CG or special effects, really), which is correspondingly the most vivid image I retain as well as the most narratively suspect. Each for the same reason: because the damn thing stood out like a sore thumb.  Note, again, the brilliant (if latent) commentary on the nature of memory here, how the strongest memory is the one that disrupts the narrative I’m participating in, inviting me to understand the world and myself mostly through our exceptions.  And you can chew on that bit of cleverness for quite a while, which is a sublime way for the film to distract you and keep you from noticing that a half hour conversation remembered in perfect detail is every bit as supranatural as anything a green screen can give you. And so on, and so on. It's constantly doing this.

Anyway, I think my overall point here is just how impressed I am that the remembered film continues to be changing and unfolding after all this time, and in fact that the meat of the experience really is in the remembering.  If you decide to give it a go yourself, just keep in mind that actually watching the movie is only step one.

[megthemewlingquim]

someone new.

summary: there's an art to life's distractions.

pairing: eventual hades! loki x persephone! reader

warnings: implied smut, alcohol consumption

a/n: here it is, the first part of foreigner's god. as said in this fic's masterlist, these will not be chapters, but rather short stories and one shots that can be read separately or as one whole piece. it's up to you.

i plan to base each part off of one or two hozier songs. this is inspired by "someone new".

is there a right way to fall in love?

    that’s what loki asks himself every day — well, every night — when he spends his free time at bars and gatherings. populated widely with fellow gods, goddesses, and spirits of many colors and passions; these bars are perfect places to find someone new.

    being the god of death, however, puts loki at a bit of a disadvantage. yes, the stereotypes are, unfortunately, true. loki is dark, a little antisocial, and very quiet. beautiful in appearance — death is seductive, at least to the willing.

    ‘the willing’ being many a spirit, many a dryad or goddess or creature who wants bragging rights, or a little nightly thrill. ‘that’s right,’ they say, ‘i had a little dance with death last night.’

loki doesn’t mind the mornings when his temporary partners talk about the nights, but he always cringes when they mention that accursed french phrase — la petite mort. it’s a joke to them. a mockery.

   yet, they stay, and sometimes, they come back for another little death.

    the spirits and goddesses never make a big impact on him. he is with one for a night, then another for a night, and so on. he falls in love every day with someone new and it’s a bore. a bore and a drag.

    dark caresses don’t do much to numb the pain: the pain of loneliness and solitude. the ache in his heart is constant, tearing at his mind whenever it can. alcohol can't do much either — all gods have a very high tolerance. mead was made for them.

   so loki is left with no escape besides those that come from the willing. little deaths. they make him feel loved.

   no...

   no one loves death. some crave him. but they don't love him.

   that’s the common theme running through loki’s head every time he takes someone home with him, or goes upstairs with them to the top floors of the inns he’s at, where the bedrooms are. it’s a distraction.

   however, the cycle ends when, while pointlessly wandering around his usual bar, he sees someone new one night. you.

   you radiate this... this warmth that he’s never felt before. everyone around you seems to be affected by it too - they don’t treat you as the life of the party, but they do gravitate towards you like birds to a nest. 

    and you’re quite shy, but infectiously happy and cheerful. you’re so beautiful, with your bright eyes that he knows are wide and filled with wonder, and your lovely skin that he knows is so soft. and your smile that he knows is so comforting to all who see it.

   to everyone else, you feel like they’ve just wandered into a happy memory, or a sun-lit room that’s pleasantly warm and golden. you feel familiar. ordinary, but lovely all the same.

   to loki, you feel... feel like something he’s only experienced in dreams. so, really, he’s never felt it before in his immortal life: something warm and alive and... and anticipatory. like there’s new things about to come up to the surface — flowers, new animals, maybe. you give off a sense of... he can’t describe it well. a slow and joyful awakening something.

   and you also feel completely and utterly powerful. unstoppable. he’s terrified of you, and yet he’s drawn to you. you’re so fascinating, strange. not as if you could end the world, no, that’s his own job. but it’s as if you can bring the whole world to life, raise it back up again after the chaos fades.

   you feel like spring. like rebirth. like new life.

   and that’s when it hits him.

   persephone. he’s heard the name passed around before, but before now, he has never seen the face behind the name. something about this sparks some fear in him: how would persephone, goddess of spring, daughter of demeter, react to seeing anyone even remotely like himself?

   for a moment, he’s grateful that you’re not looking at him; you’re actually looking at the table, at the drink you’re sipping. there’s a look on your face that isn’t bored, nor afraid. maybe... observant.

   people are around you still. not crowding, but not interacting with you either. it’s like you have a bubble around you, keeping everyone from getting too close. maybe it’s your doing but maybe it’s theirs. honestly, you’d think that dryads and gods and goddesses and spirits of all forms and colors and subjects would be more accepting.

   he pities you. you seem lonely.

   loki takes a few steps forward, betraying his own fear. like the red sea, the crowd parts. some are bold and unafraid, and they give loki varying looks: disgusted, seductive, snarky. you don’t notice him until he sits down in front of you, at the other end of the table.

   “hi,” he says calmly. he manages a small smile. “you’re new here, aren’t you?”

   your eyes lift to lock with his own. immediately, you recoil just the slightest bit. he knows what you’re thinking: wait, that’s hades! god of death... wh-why is he talking to me?

   “it’s alright,” he soothes. “don’t worry. you’ve probably heard of all the stories: gods kidnapping and doing terrible things to goddesses and spirits and dryads. i’m not here to do any of that. i promise.”

   with a single, somewhat confused blink, you nod. “m-my mother has told me a lot about that stuff,” you say slowly, as if saying anything too revealing will somehow alert demeter and get you in trouble. “she’s... she’s terrified...”

   “what is she terrified of? that those terrible things might happen to you?”

   “yes,” you say. “she’s told me that she’s had nightmares in the past. specifically about you. how you’ll kidnap me and take me to hell to live with you.”

   he laughs at that - a rich, amused laugh that takes the shivers out of you. “that’s bullshit. overprotective mothers, yeah?”

   you shrug. “she loves me.”

   “and are you afraid of me, princess?” the last word is whispered. his voice extremely soft - it’s a curious question.

   he notices how you lick your lips. “no,” you say. he notices how your eyes flick all over him. “no, i’m not.” and you seem truthful.

   “smart girl,” he says with a grin. “i hate liars. there’s not a god on in the world that’s ever been truthful. well, besides jesus. yahweh. whatever you wanna call him.” loki leans back, crossing his hands behind his head and bringing his feet up to the table. “your father, though... he’s the worst of ‘em. having children with other women, including your mother, while hera has to sit by and watch, and then lying about it.”

   “we’re gods,” you say. “i'm not trying to justify things but... we’re far from perfect.”

   “damn right we are. we’re fucked up. good. we can agree on something. most days, people think us gods are... perfect things. role models. and, maybe some are. but not us. not the gods of olympus.”

   he pauses, takes a swig from a beer bottle that was not in his hand a few seconds ago. “i was wondering if you wanted to do what humans do.” loki winces at the awkwardness. “when they're... y'know. interested in someone.”

   “you're interested... in me?” you ask, incredulously.

   “yeah, i am.” one sip of beer has loosened his tongue. or maybe that's just his confidence soaring now. “maybe this hasn't been the best introduction to things but i would love to take you out sometime. show you things.”

   “my —” you swallow. “i'd get in trouble.” you shrink away just a bit.

   his smile fades and it's replaced with a sadder, more sincere look. “the best things in life have risk to them. it's time i show you that.”

   and really, he does feel sorry for you. it's your first time at a bar, you're lonely. no friends as far as he can tell. an overprotective goddess mother.

   “think of it this way. i think you're very pretty and i like your honesty. i would like to help you see the world, and to have a little fun, since your mother has obviously never let you do anything in your very, very long life.”

   “i'm twenty—one.”

   “and now i'm wondering if demeter actually has you tell people that, as if you're a teenage mortal.” loki shakes his head, disappointed. “that's pathetic. you're a bajillion years old. you're a goddess! you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want, right?”

   when there's no answer from you, he sighs. leans forward to sit normally, putting both of his elbows on the table and pointing his hands at you. “alright. i'll roll with it for now. you're twenty—one. i guess. you can drink. you can go out alone to bars and other places. you can meet new people. you're an adult. think about that.

   “so, again. i think you're very pretty and i wanna show you around. get to know you. would you like to do that with me?” he raises his eyebrows a little, waiting for a response.

   it's an eternity before you can win a battle in your mind. slowly, you nod, giving him a smile. “yeah,” you whisper. “yeah, i would. thank you.”

   “don't thank me just yet, sweetheart. i haven't shown you anything yet.” he gets up, pushes his chair in.

   before he leaves, he winks at you. “call me loki. it's... not as dreadful... as hades. and... what do i call you?”

   you say your name, your voice quiet.

   “much better than persephone, i think. it suits you. we'll keep in touch, ok?”

   “okay,” you say. butterflies are flying rapidly in your stomach.

   loki leaves you there. he'd much rather take you back to your home himself, but that would be too risky for the time being. for now, he walks out of that bar feeling like the king of the world.

[fernpost]

Cycle 0 - Interviews

[read on ao3]

[next]

Taako Taaco. 114. Elf. Wizard; Specialization in transmutation and inventive magical applications.

Previous experience: Top of class at Tredore, Academy of Magics and Technology; recently graduated.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of petty theft.

Davenport likes to think of himself as calm and composed. It’s hard to throw him off. He has to be in order to have gotten this far in his mission as fast as he has.

But when he turns around from shutting the door to see his interviewee with his feet kicked up on the table, twirling a wand through his fingers, he’s a little shocked. He’s been doing these interviews for two days now, and even the more relaxed and confident people have held a bit more sense for decorum.

It’s a bit rude.

It’s also a little interesting.

He sits at his desk, pulling the elf’s papers away from his boots (shiny, and though they look expensive he can see they’re worn down and well taken care of) and glances down. “Tell me, Taako Taaco, what makes you want to explore the planerverse?”

“Bored.”

If the feet on the desk threw him off for a second, that floors him entirely. “Bored?”

“I’ve got nothing else to do on this plane, why not, you know?”

“No burning desire to go further than any being has gone before?” That’s one of the normal responses, the well-planned out speeches he keeps getting in response to his opening question.

The elf crosses his feet, leaning back somehow further into the provided chair. Davenport worries for a second that he may fall as he continues on, “that’s cool too, I guess. But I figure, why wouldn’t you want the great Taaco name aboard your ship.”

Davenport picks up a pen from his table and makes a small note on the paperwork, “no offense, Mr. Taaco, but you’re rather cavalier about this interview that determines whether or not you’re accepted into a program that may redefine our understanding of the world.”

The elf shrugs and takes his feet off of Davenport’s desk, flashing him a smirk, “you’ve seen my sister’s paperwork, yeah? No way you’re not going to accept her, and we’re a package deal. Says it right there in bold at the top of my application, my man.” It does, in fact, say that at the top. Cursive words noting how he refuses to accept any position on the ship if his sister isn't there too. When reviewing who he was interviewing today, he saw similar words on Lup Taaco’s paperwork.

“You’re very confident in your sister’s abilities.” Davenport begins, pausing for a second as he notes the way the elf begins to tense up before continuing, “however, I wouldn’t sell yourself so short. You also graduated top of your class, and excelled in the art of transmutation multiple times. One of your letters of recommendation even noted how you made many spells easier to cast, somatically speaking.”

“What can I say, I’ll find any short cut I can.”

Davenport makes another note on his paper. “Now, I do need to ask about your record of petty theft.”

“Oh, natch.”

Lup Taaco. 114. Elf. Wizard; Specialization in evocation and applied magic regarding planar research.

Previous experience: Top of class at Tredore, Academy of Magics and Technology; recently graduated.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of petty theft.

“Lup Taaco, it is nice to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Captain.” The woman in front of him smiles. The resemblance to her brother couldn’t be more clear, and though her demeanor is quite similar, she at least doesn’t have her feet on his desk.

Not that his desk is anything fancy, but the point stands. “I’m not technically the captain yet, you know.”

“Potato, potato.”

Davenport is fairly certain that’s not how that phrase is used. “You did research into the planes at Tredore, correct?”

“Quite a bit, yeah. I’m sure my brother told you?”

The slight tilt of her head and lit of her voice tells Davenport this is some sort of test, which is confusing and a bit disconcerting, considering he is the one conducting the interview. He checks a quick box on his papers. “He talked you up a bit, yes. But this is your own interview, and I wanted to discuss your own knowledge with you, personally.”

She smiles, a touch more warmth to it than her previous attitude. “Oh, of course. Did quite a bit of studying at Tredore. First real school we attended. Kinda boring at times, you know?”

“If you’re accepted into this program, it’s going to be four intense months of studying and teaching you the more complex workings of the ship. Plus the two months of actually being on the ship.”

“That’s the fun stuff. Not a third semester in a row of another language I already figured out most of years ago.”

“How many languages do you speak, Ms. Taaco?”

“Including common, five languages.”

“Impressive.” Davenport himself only speaks three. “Now, I would like to ask you about your criminal record, if you don’t mind?”

Her smile grew sharp as she laughs.

Honestly, he isn’t surprised. Her explanation is the same as her brothers. Grew up on the road, needed food and other items on occasion. Didn’t always run fast enough. Davenport can’t fault them, and certainly won’t hold it against them.

He glances down at her paperwork, about to ask another question about her education, when she speaks up. “I’ve got a question for you, Captain.”

“Oh?”

“The ship- we’re really going with the name ‘The Starblaster’?”

Davenport sighs. He knew this question was coming, but he was expecting it to come during a press conference from a reporter, not a potential shipmate. “Yes. To be fair, it was a communal name we put to a vote from everyone who worked on building the engine.”

Ms. Taaco smiles. “Dope.”

Barry J. Bluejeans. 37 years old. Human. Wizard; specialization in applied magic regarding bonds and planar research.

Previous experience: Current assistant professor at Duffman University of the Arcane, part-time employee at the Institute of Planer Research and Exploration.

Criminal Record: Previous altercations regarding necromancy; no crimes against the nature of life and death ever committed.

Mr. Bluejeans is an interesting man. By the look of him, you’d expect to see him fumbling his way through a PTA meeting for his two kids. Instead, Davenport is staring down the word ‘necromancy’ on his paperwork on an application regarding literal planar travel on a ship called 'the Starblaster.'

So far, the interview has been going well. He’d listened to the man explain his research into the arcane, and he’d understood planar travel as well as any of the current scientists and engineers at the Institute. He was called in often for conferences and meetings about the bond engine. He’d seen the man walking around on occasion. They’d never been in a meeting together before, but he’d seemed nice.

But he also had a history of necromancy.

Now, Davenport doesn’t like to judge people. However, being in an enclosed space with someone who needed to specify he had never technically committed “crimes against the nature of humanity” isn’t the most comforting.

But, he was a smart man. Easy to get along with, too. So far. Necromancy notwithstanding.

Best to get it over with, “so, Mr. Bluejeans. I do need to ask about your criminal record-”

“Oh! Yeah, I never killed anyone. Or un- killed anyone. Uh, resurrected, I mean. Just did lots of studying into the application of necromancy and necromantic spells. Got in trouble because I toed the line of ‘research’ and ‘bringing my cat back to life,’ but got a stern talking to. Didn’t try it again, and don’t plan on needing to deal with those types of authorities again.”

Okay, normal enough answer, far as the situation applies-

“My current research into it has stayed purely theoretical, and it won’t interfere with the mission at all.”

So the man is still into necromancy.

Davenport glances down at the man’s file, thick with it’s attached papers Bluejeans has done on planar research. He’s not even stuck up about his level of education, and that’s extremely rare for the field.

Holding back a sigh, Davenport asks, “Can you explain the paper you wrote on the outer planes interactions with the inner planes for me?”

It was a really good paper.

But the man is still into necromancy.

Lucretia. 20. Human. Chronicler; Specialization in journalism.

Previous experience: Due to multiple NDA, she is unable to give us the exact number and titles of books she has written, but she sent letters of recommendation from Duke Rensburg, Lady Norabelle, and Warren of the Seatree Clan.

Criminal Record: Acquisition and attempted use of a false ID.

“So, Ms. Lucretia, I understand you cannot provide us with most examples of your works, but from what you have provided, you seem to be very, very good.”

“I like to think so, yes.” The young woman in front of him seems polite. She’s quiet; he saw her waiting outside with a few others before her interview, and while most of them were engaged in some awkward small talk, she sat away from them. Likely partially due to her age- she is much younger than the people outside- but she also simply seems quiet.

Which wouldn’t be the worst quality in someone you would be sharing a small, enclosed space with for an extended period of time. But, if she couldn’t bond with the others sufficiently, the bond engine won’t work.

(Hell, the bond engine was already finicky, they figured out the tech only a month ago, and they only have four months to bond an entire crew to pilot it and-)

“Can you explain to me why you acquired a fake ID and tried to use it at a, uh,” Davenport glances down at the records in front of him, holding back a chuckle, “at the forbidden section of the Library of Runar?”

Lucretia looks uncomfortable for a second, and he’s sure if the lighting in the room were better he would be able to see her flush with embarrassment. She gives him a hesitant smile, “I can’t get into the explicit details, but I was working on a book for an older client whose memory was becoming patchy, and I wanted to confirm some details before I put their name to it. They wouldn’t allow me into the section without the proper documents, but my client refused to agree that I should double check his work, even though I was almost certain he was wrong, so I simply… found a way to get past their guard. I wasn’t going to steal anything and I was going to use the proper equipment to read through the documents.”

Davenport smiles, “pursuit of knowledge and truth is important to you, then?”

“I don’t think spreading lies, especially in that context, is very honorable, no.” Her hands are folded in her lap now, and she seems a bit more relaxed.

Considering the others he is planning on accepting, he may be wrong about her getting along with them. Anyone willing to break the law just to prove an old man wrong would at least get along with him. Davenport refuses to have any pushovers aboard his ship.

Magnus Burnsides. 19. Fighter; Specialization in protection fighting and mechanical engineering.

Previous experience: Current bouncer at Apex Club. Currently enrolled in Gallier’s Fighter Academy and College.

Criminal Record: One count of assault and battery, appealed for defense of another person present. One count of indecent exposure and public intoxication.

Davenport will be the first to admit it can be tricky to follow human aging patterns, but he knows he’s not mistaken in thinking the man in front of him is barely out of “child” territory. Nineteen is a very, very small amount of time to be alive. Also, a very, very small amount of time to learn important things, like how to run what is basically a ship right out of a science fiction novel- complete with breakthrough technology.

Despite this, it’s hard to not find the young man in front of him to be endearing, and mostly knowledgeable in the things they need him to be.

“Magnus. You’re very young, one of the youngest applicants we have. What makes you think you’re qualified as the head of security of the ship?”

The young man in front of him- Gods, he really is young- grins and lifts his arms to flex, a show of pride and ego almost unbefitting of an interview setting, “Have you seen my muscles? I’m very strong, and a very good fighter.”

Many of today’s interviews have been quite different than he was expecting.

“I was referring more to job experience.”

“Oh!” Magnus shifts in his seat, fingers drumming against the table as he thinks. “I worked as a bouncer for a club while I was in college and did, if I must toot my own horn, a very good job. You should have a letter of recommendation from the owner-” He leans forwards, reaching a hand out as if to look through his own files to show him the letter.

“Yes, I did read through it. She was very thorough in stating how eager you were to help.” Davenport glances down at the papers in front of him, holding back a sigh. It truly was a glowing review of this young man. While his grades from the aforementioned college weren’t the highest, especially in classes one might consider important for an institute of planar research, the two letter of recommendations he submitted from teachers of his explained how Burnsides was very persistent when he wanted to learn something he didn’t know. He also had taken quite a few classes regarding vehicles- not enough to claim the young man was an expert but enough to provide a solid basis to show him how things worked and could be repaired on the ship.

The kid’s attitude was something of a breath of fresh air in this place. However, there was one glaring concern.

“I was also a bit concerned about the criminal record we have on file for you. Assault and battery as well as the indecent exposure and public-”

“In my defense for the second one, I was drunk with some friends and maybe thought it’d be funny to streak in the lake. Who hasn’t been to a party that gets a little out of hand.” He holds his hands out as if to say “am I right?”

Off the record, Davenport is inclined to agree that he was right. On the record, he is choosing to ignore it. “And the assault and battery? The file says it was in defense of a young person.”

Burnsides grins, “that’s how I got hired as the bouncer!”

He waits a moment, expecting Magnus to continue. When it seems the young man is assuming that is enough explanation, he prompts, “by beating up a man outside the club?”

“Yeah! He was harassing someone outside, and I was walking home and passed by. I told him to step off, and he didn’t. So I decked him, and he was out right away.”

It lined up with the records he had, and honestly, seeing someone so ready to step up to the defense of a stranger was a good quality. Better than some of the older applicants who were much more… formal in their training. He wonders briefly how Burnsides would react to an altercation against someone with magic.

Glancing down at his records, he guesses he would run headfirst without thinking.

Stifling a small grin, Davenport continues, “Now, tell me. Assume we’re up in space, and something goes wrong with the bond engine. What would your course of action be, Mr. Burnsides?”

Merle Hitower Highchurch. 214. Cleric; Specialization in botany, religion, and medical treatment.

Previous experience: Current botanist at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration. Professor of botany at Narvick’s University for four years.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of loitering.

The door is pushed all the way open before Davenport can even call out the next person.

A short dwarf slides into the room with a wide grin, “hey Dav!” A mug of tea is pressed into his hands.

“Hello, Merle. You do know this needs to be at least a little formal, yes?”

“Formal schmormal. Ask me your silly questions already, bud.” Merle Highchurch, resident botanist at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration, plops right down in the seat he’d taken to commandeering once a week, for the past three weeks.

Davenport had seen him around before, but a botanist in an institute designed for exploring other planes that had little capabilities to actually go to those places yet was rarely busy, and even more rarely called upon. He still barely knew the guy, but after the day they’d gotten stuck in the elevator for ten minutes when it broke down, the dwarf had come to his office for tea each Wednesday.

It was a bit strange, but the tea was good.

“Tell me about your work experience.”

Merle laughs heartily, “they barely have me do anything around here, ‘cept tend to the couple of plants they’ve grabbed from the ground plane.”

“It’s the Elemental Plane of Earth, and don’t sell yourself short, Merle. This is basically a job interview, you know.”

Merle slurps loudly at his own mug, “aren’t you planning on nepotism hiring me, because we’re buds?”

“That isn’t even what that word means, Merle.”

“Isn’t it?”

Davenport stares into the tea, “is this made from the Earth plant?”

“Maybe?”

Davenport. 276. Captain and navigator; Specialization in mechanical engineering and arcane components combined with contemporary technology.

Previous Experience: Crewmate on the Lady Blue for twenty years. Graduated from Grensville University. Current staff at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration.

Criminal Record: Unlawful resistance of orders from captain, raising of commotion on board ship while employed.

Davenport handed the six files over to Selune, “These are them.”

The halfling woman flips through them, eyebrows raising higher with each one she sees. “You’re sure you grabbed the right ones? A few of these I understand, but you do know we had the Issaiah Broler apply.”

He folds his hand in front of him, nodding. “I also know that during the interview he made me want to pour my tea on his lap. There’s no chance of getting the bond engine going with him. These are the six I picked. They’re all qualified- and the ones that are less educated in the specifics in the field I’m sure will pick up on the important information quickly. The Taaco twins already will give the bond engine a huge boost. Ms. Lucretia will ensure we have everything chronicled, something I’m sure you can appreciate, Selune. Mr. Bluejeans previous work shows he will thrive given the opportunities awaiting us. Mr. Highchurch is an educated man, and I trust him to keep the crew healthy and provide ample information on anything botany related we encounter, and I’m certain Mr. Burnsides will provide ample help in any task we show him how to do.” He sighs, glancing out the window of her office. There were a few people lingering outside in the courtyard of the Institute. “We have been given a tremendous opportunity to explore beyond what we can imagine, Selune. The last thing I want is to be bogged down by people stuck in their ways, who have been working in this field long enough to have their preconceived notions about what to expect and who will react badly when they’re proven wrong. I trust my own judgement in picking a crew, and I hope you trust my abilities to get these people ready to set sail in four months.”

What he doesn’t say is that he doesn’t want a bunch of stuffy jackasses on his ship. He’s not even sure picking all the over-qualified people would pass through the higher-ups' inspection of the crew. The people he picked were qualified enough to get a quick sign-off, but not too much. Anyone “overqualified” would probably get rejected. The ship had been built in basically six months. It’d get them off the ground, sure. It wasn’t going to explode on them once they got up there, but it wasn’t safe. There was a reason Davenport was the captain at all.

The six candidates in those files didn’t have a name for themselves as “important” to any stuffy scientific group or noble family. These people he picked were just that- people. A group of people who he believed deserved this opportunity. If anyone was getting the chance to make a name for themselves- to have the chance to redefine everything they know about the planar systems, he wanted to make sure they deserved the chance. A dangerous chance, sure. But what was science if not a little risky.

She sighs, opening the file on top. Her hand reaches for her pen, “Davenport, I got the final say on the name of the ship, I suppose the least I can do is give you final say on the crew.” She begins to write ‘approved’ at the top of the file, flipping through each one before giving him a pointed look. “But when I get angry calls about how you approved a bunch of nobodies and two people not even old enough to drink, I’m transferring them straight to your crystal.”

“And I will not be answering a single one.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Captain.”