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gag-magazine · 1 year

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Protecting Your Peace, or Being a Pussy?

By Yellen Art by Raneem Iftekhar

Putting male comedians on a pedestal for so many years of my life was horrid for my mental health. I love their Jester’s privilege. Their pursuit of truth. Their ability to point out the negative realities people don't wish to acknowledge. True catalysts for justice.

Comedy insidiously slips in revolutionary critique in an extremely palatable manner, due to the very nature of its entertainment. The jokes, these necessary reality checks, hold immense power in reframing thought, twisting taboo into norm. If it’s funny, it’s funny. Audience laughter is visceral. uncontrollable. reflects an acceptance of the underlying principle of the bit. The beginning of a somewhat unconscious questioning—a shift in ingrained ideology, although potentially initially uncomfortable.

I wanted to be like them, but I just grew into a menace, playing my favorite sadistic game whenever possible. This favorite pastime involved going out of my way to make my moral adversaries as uncomfortable as possible, verbalizing the unappetizing elephant in the room. I know what you did last summer. No care for pleasantries: let’s let the dirt rise to the surface. I won’t let this blow over. Cunt. You aren’t hidden. As long as I’m here. I will corner you. Trap you into confession.

I was always searching for something or someone to trigger me so I can simulate judge and jury, desperately grasping to feel any sort of power or agency in guaranteeing justice. To instigate some revelation about their lacking morality. To catalyze their own self-reflection and potentially inspire real change. You don’t want to let them off hook, allow them to enjoy the party, same as you, living peacefully with what they’ve done. It feels so deeply wrong to settle with your own discomfort as perpetrators go free. Would you let Harvey Weinstein enjoy his meal at the table next to yours?

But it’s a flawed strategy. On par with cancel culture’s delusion that it actually serves justice. The only one being punished is yourself as you deep dive into a black tar pit. Stuck. bogged down by their darkness. All you are doing is fucking up your nervous system, extending the timeline of your own anger, letting it cramp in your gut. P.S. Comedians are infamously known to be such happy people! Maybe comedy has always been a medium to complain about the things outside our control…to poke fun at our powerlessness. Maybe it’s not this revolutionary instrument of social change you think it is, but merely reaffirms people’s values. You just romanticize being a dick because that’s all you know.

Protecting your peace isn’t overrated. Karma will get them. Remind yourself that real change comes from a place of love. You didn’t even make it funny. You just put them in defense mode, clutching their comfort zone and validating their own worth as their humanity is attacked. The opposite of your “intentions.” Self-disillusionment, the process of confronting the violence of your own automatic assumptions and reframing them comes from within…But your anger is righteous and what’s the alternative? Ambivalence? Complacency? It’s a difficult balance.

I’m on a painstaking journey to deconstruct my perfectionism and shift my judgmental lens in the name of self love. I’m typically the biggest victim and the most common target of my seething hatred. In attempting to free my soul from this negativity, I try to remind myself that firstly, it’s ok to fuck up. And secondly, not every moment is a defining moment…But is it, though? Life has this magic essence to it, this circular mirroring of sorts, in which specific microcosms reflect greater patterns. Life is full of fractal reflections between small and large instances: no matter how deep you dig, you arrive on a fraction of the same thing. I usually collect people’s words like trinkets to add to a comprehensive psychological file I reserve in my brain. I’m addicted to retrieving more data to fill in my mental picture. Yes, that data says something. But not everything is a part of a greater pattern. Remember that they are so much more than what you see or hear. You aren’t engaging in critical thought, you are just critical. Keep telling yourself it was always about them and not some grand overcompensation for your own self-hatred. Everything is a mirror, after all. Stop projecting.

Today it dawned on me how much I’ve really changed. I’ve been making an excruciating effort to be kinder to myself. But in turn, I’ve become a straight up pussy. Now we have arrived at the extremely stupid reason I wrote this piece: because of two petty instances of girls disrespecting me last week. One of them involved some frigid bitch rolling her eyes at me and then ignoring me when I introduced myself. I humbly asked for her name and ignored her cuntiness. The other involved some alt chick cutting me in line. I said under my breath with my head down, “Don’t you hate when people cut?” and the bitch really hit me back with a loud “Ya I fucking hate when people cut” as she cuts. Now, I just said nothing. I’ve never felt like such a narc loser in my entire adult life, even though the concept of a fucking line has to be one of the most basic forms of common curtosy to ever exist. But She won. Hands down. Honestly I can’t even blame her. I have to respect her and I kind of want an enemies to lovers arch for us.

But anywho, my past self would have paid big money to be awarded any opportunity to deliver some seething comeback her way. But I stood in silence and it’s been haunting me. I can’t believe I’m…chill..now. I stopped subtweeting for the most part on my instagram story because my compulsive desire to put people on blast has gotten me in trouble many a time. I’m growing up, choosing my battles, developing my prefrontal cortex. But I am still riddled with a deep sense of regret over my silence in both these dumb situations. Maybe I should have made a scene. Bowed down to her excellency and profusely apologized for entering her space in medieval english prose.

God, no one tells you that protecting your peace feels absurdly fucking lame. [redacted]

_________

The original ending to this piece involved me personally naming the bitches that briefly hurt my ego and telling them to go fuck themselves, ironically undermining the healing narrative I championed in this entire article thus far over such petty, insignificant situations cuz its semi-funnyish (at best) commentary on my tendency to revert back to my nasty id instincts no matter how much I try to self-help out of being a chronic hater. But ultimately, the clickbait title of this piece presents a false binary: silence or explicit aggression. But I’ve come to learn that protecting your peace doesn’t make you a pussy; it’s just the opposite.

Let’s take a look at your doomed track record thus far. You allow disrespect to tally up until you reach a breaking point that has almost nothing to do with the straw that breaks the camel's back. Then you continue to publicly pop off on an anonymous adversary on social media, with a shield of comedy and just enough vagueness to avoid communicating directly, promptly and vulnerably. Fighting behind a black screen without even really admitting you’re fighting. Championing plausible deniability to slither out of actually confronting the problem with the person head-on. Calling someone out for some dumb bullshit they probably don’t even remember in a published article where they cannot defend themselves…That’s what being a pussy looks like. Yes, I know: there are people in this world that deserve to be bullied, and yes, it’s a real shame they don’t experience debilitating shame on a daily basis like you do. But ever heard of the saying, “Misery loves company?” You are ohhh, sooo predictable—following the classic “bullied becomes the bully” character arc. So quick to condemn but someone calls you weird once and you crumble. Do you feel less weak now or more than ever? No, no, I’ve got it all wrong? You’re powerful? Extremely secure? Such conviction. Praise be.

#writing #prose #magazine #gag mag

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glass-expanse · 1 year

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hi there. I really do truly agree with what you said about online dating. For a long, long time I've felt and still do feel it's almost entirely so abhorrently shallow, self-centered, and self-serving, like flipping through a menu of people looking for someone to serve one's own tastes, lusts, and desires. (Especially the culture around it in today's society.) To me, that's abhorrently lacking in understanding of human worth.

I also really do understand your perspectives on it being a "desire for a relationship that maybe you just aren't ready for yet" and that we should "allow the right person to come into our life outside the screen." On the surface, there is admittedly some plain Christian logic to those sentiments. I'd like to offer a different perspective in meekness and love for just a minute, if I can.

In 2020 I moved from a well-populated area of Cali to an another state and again in 2022 to an extremely rural place in the same state--for several reasons, but I had to. I've dreamed of and longed for marriage and children with my whole heart since I was a little girl, with the understanding and ache for what I was longing for only increasing greatly over the yrs. I'll be 30 this yr. I've never had a boyfriend or courted anyone, never once been on a date, never once been asked out, never have even come close. I struggle to believe that all my desperate longings matters to God, though I know it does. I now find myself in an extremely, extremely rural place, where the grocery store is 45min-1hr away. I recently had a deer accident that wrecked my paid-for car, and am having to borrow one until I can save up to buy a new one on my small pay.

In January, I decided to try the free version of Christian mingle, which has been extremely difficult and sparse in itself. But the years are flying by faster than I can even blink. I've been trying to think of it as simply a mode of hoping and trying to meet someone, that's new to me. Because there are simply no people around, and I have little to no other recourse. My somewhat small-medium church has no other available men anywhere near my age. This gives me access to possibilities who are up to 500-miles away. And I can't move again, not for at least another few years. It wouldn't mean that once I met him in person I'd rush into anything, which is not any different than if I'd met him in person. I can filter through the guys who seem flippant or that I feel I need to be wary of and look for guys who seem serious and respectful. I don't think of any of them as only a possible date. I think of each profile as a real, valuable human man with all his own hopes and struggles.

It doesn't really matter; there's been no success. I just wanted to offer a moment of a different perspective. I'm in a v, v painful spot in life rn. I was recently told by a fellow Christian that, "I've been given the gift of singleness." In my head I could understand what she was trying to say, but that doesn't mean it didn't absolutely gut me & my hope, which I already intensely struggle in. It felt somewhat lacking in empathy & compassion for my deep sorrow and loneliness. It's begun to seem to me that many Christians expect other Christians who have these longings and struggle with prolonged singleness and being childless not by choice, to go about life completely as normal, simply waiting for something to happen, and then also accept the outcome when it doesn't. When we also have to watch our fellow Christians be given marriage and children every day, so easily, as a part of everyday life. It’s heart-rending.

I hope I don't come across angry or upset. I do really appreciate your perspective and am grateful to see a young Christian person on tumblr. Thank you for your faithfulness and for your presence here. God bless.

Thank you so much for your kind and gentle ask, anon! I won't lie after some other anons I've gotten I was bracing myself as I waited for the page to load, and this was a really pleasant surprise.

It definitely sounds like a hard spot in life right now! I'll be praying over your car situation and everything else. What I know: God will provide!

I will admit I'm not someone who fully understands the desire for marriage, which makes it easier for me to make observations about the trends I see. However I have come across lots of people in a similar situation as you-- single for so long-- when will it end--?

I really do believe that when it comes to marriage, that deep longing and desire is proof that you're not in the gift of singleness-- just in a (maybe very long) season of it. It's tone deaf of people to say that a season of singleness is somehow equivalent to the gift of singleness somehow-- when it's not. They're different.

I fully believe that God has given people desires like that in their heart, and that He has put desires and proficiencies and everything in us from the time we were created in order to use those as tools for His glory. I fully believe in His complete and sufficient plan for each unique person on the face of the earth. I also believe that His timing is exactly what we need for our sanctification, even if it seems like something will never end.

In the tags of my original post, I did include a little personal memo-- my parents met online in the 1990s. (I know that pretty much makes me a baby.) I believe God can and does sometimes deign to use things like online dating apps for His glory... but He also uses other, worse things for His glory also. Like maybe someone is rescued from a terrible fire that takes away all their belongings, but it is through that fire that they start going to church and build a beautiful community.

I'm not saying a dating app is a fire. Like anything, it's a tool. Unfortunately it is one that is developed with those bad habits in mind, and it is a tool often misused. Because of that, in my mind, it does have a dark atmosphere around it and I personally would never touch one with a ten foot pole. And it hurts when I see others using it poorly, in the wrong context, at the wrong time of their lives.

Now I also do believe in gender roles... which means that my personal conviction is that women shouldn't be pursuing men. That works for me, doing nothing. I believe that men should show their leadership and conviction of discernment through his pursuit of women. Which is another reason I don't think dating apps are a great idea. I'm not saying that you're doing something horrible by using one thoughtfully and carefully! It just is not something that lines up with my convictions on the subject.

So... from my worldview (which is admittedly colored by my very low desire for marriage rather than an active one, my belief in God's constant providence and perfect timing, and my conviction on gender roles) if I were finding myself in your situation, I wouldn't be using a dating app.

But I'm not in that situation! And you're not me. And that's okay!

What I know is this, however your life plays out, it is for God's glory and it is according to His perfect plan in your life. Who knows, maybe you'll find someone online. Or maybe someone will show up near you! Maybe your future husband will appear in the most unlikely of situations. What I do know is that God will put him in your life exactly when He intends for it to happen, and that He has already set things in motion for everything to happen at just the right time.

Thank you again for your kind message! I love how your sincerity and respect shines through. You definitely show more maturity than me. I hope when I reach your age I will show the same kindness and grace and control of my speech! I will be praying that God's providence will be abundant in your life, and that you will be led at the right time to the car God has set aside for you. He's got the whole world in His hands-- how blessed are we that He has chosen us as children!

#long post #nice anon #Christian dating

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dystopiandilfs · 3 years

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Dream's discord podcast. Basically him answering questions for 2.5 hours. This will sort of be in order but I fucked up my notes so it might not be in order completely. (From 13th May 2021)

For reference the photos at the end are: A prototype of fidget spinner merch as loads of people asked, a reference photo of his favourite merch and a photo he sent of his hair to prove he wasn't a brunette.

•He said his teeth are mostly straight but he's thought about getting Invisalign. He's never had braces. He has a tiny gap in the left side of his mouth and his canines are longer and sharper (vampire arc). He's never had teeth surgery so has his wisdom teeth still.

•He thinks pineapple on pizza is good.

•He likes seafood like lobster and crab. He had crab made in an air fryer last night. He like peas. He thinks quesadillas are good and likes most food.

•He hates Coffee and most drinks

•The Dream Shorts team is Ken who is his personal reminder (Ken's main job is to spam him with texts so he doesn't forget things as he's got a habit of reading texts and not replying) and also comes up with a list of sets for Dream shorts. The builder is a friend and munchymc builder "his talent gets wasted on Dream's shorts but we pay him so"

•His editors are currently Dizzy, Firesale and Mjcr. Willz doesn't edit for him anymore

•The mask animation isn't done but Mask should be released May 21st. He wants to release them together as "the whole song is a double meaning and the whole nuance will be lost without the animation" but no matter if the animation is done the song is getting released on the 21st.

•He and Sapnap eat together often.

•He and Sapnap prefer medium rare Steak

•He wants a home gym it's something he's willing to splurge on. They currently have a weight rack but they haven't even set it up.

•"Eat the rich? Shut up shut up" - Dream

•Talked about money basically saying "Most people don't understand how money works I don't have millions in my bank account it's in assets like merch, land and warehousing for that stuff" (He's not in his landlord arc)

•He's been debating Pride Merch because of Rainbow Capitalism. He doesn't want it too be seen as a money maker and if he does most proceeds would go to charity. He's currently super busy merch wise with Sapnap joining and George in the middle of joining. He did say "Only if the LGBTQ+ community in this community wants it" He thinks he's going to at least change the merch website to a pride one. Sapnap wants to make pride merch including a rainbow flame on his.

•He wants to create a charity that's centered around helping LGBTQ+ one day because he thinks that there's a lack of them. He mentioned that creating a charity was expensive and took a lot and was a complicated process including a board of directors but he wants to do it someday.

•He wanted to buy a bunch of houses in Florida which was a service to house mostly LGBTQ+ youth and people stuck in abusive households for free to get them out of bad home environments. But he didn't because he didn't want people thinking he was profiting of of abuse victims and LGBTQ+ community.

•He said he's terrible with time management and replying to people which is why Ken helps him (and also helps George and Sapnap). He mentioned how Sam messaged multiple times and Dream just forgot to answer but felt bad "I feel like people think I hate them..... Cause I'd be mad if people did that to me"

•He tries to reply to a few texts a day (community number). He also can't do birthday messages everyday because you can only reply at certain times so it's not abusing the system so if you get one it's special. He said he does try but it's got a weird time gap.

•Him and the manhunt winner are trying to come up with a good time to film

•He wants to stream this MCC on twitch and says his team is good.

•He talks about why he's not partnered with Twitch. Basically Twitch has a lock rate (in which you make money) and you legally can't stream on YouTube. So legally if Tommy wanted to stream on YouTube he couldn't. Someone then mentioned how Bad is a twitch partner but still streams on YouTube "Bad streams on YouTube but he has for a while and I don't think that he cares" - Dream

•He likes to reply to every donation he gets on stream and feels bad when he doesn't so he'll turn them off when he streams and wants a platform deal where he can be payed to stream (not twitch). If he gets a streaming partnership he will stream a couple of times a week. He looked in to Facebook but they don't have an alias system meaning you can see everyone's actual Facebook account and personal info, he doesn't like seeing real names on Facebook so it would require a lot of altering if he was to stream there so he's thinking it's probably going to be YouTube.

•He was asked about if his demographic was what he expected and he said he went in with no expectations, he didn't even know what stans were, wasn't really on social media so he wasn't aware of the fan culture. "You guys are a handful sometimes but it's worth it"

•He also mentioned how he and the DreamSMP changed the twitch audience demographic. It used to be male dominated in both streamers and audience and now it's almost split which is unheard on.

•He has 5 fidget spinners in his house. Two in his bedroom. Two in his office. One in the living room.

•He likes his Minecraft skin as he thinks the arm is cook and you never see the rest of his skin really. He says it's unique and different and "me". Dream: You can't even tell half the skins apart on MC.

•He's not lost the motivation to stream. Most of the times if he wants to stream he gets George or Sapnap to do it and he just turns up. It's more beneficial to them as they have donos and subs on. (Don't we fucking know it "can you say hi to")

•He has listened to Lovejoy. Says the ep was great and they're very talented and awesome. Doesn't know what his favourite song is but probably would pick One Day because the chorus slaps.

•RIP to acoustic Roadtrip. He said instead of acoustic Roadtrip we get Mask so no losses today for Dream stans.

•"With Roadtrip I went to Parker and I said Hey I have a story I want to tell through music. I have no experience with that can you help me" He said sure. He crafted the music and melodies and how things are formed where it's catchy. I have less comfort singing that. I love the song and it's my song, it's very representative of me and I'm sure I could sing it but it's a song I'd be kinds of scared to sing live, with Mask I basically did everything. I sat there the entire time and maybe an hour out if the 100 I wasn't in the call. Dream came up with the lyrics and main melody for Mask (First one he's ever come up with) "That was just notes in my fucking voice memos"

•The clip we heard of Mask was a prechorus not the actual chorus. He thinks he'd be more comfortable to do a mask acoustic and it's more melodic than Roadtrip. The chorus also has a lot of instruments similar to Roadtrip. Mask starts of slow and guitar with minimal reverb and is more raw.

• He doesn't want music to be his main thing. It's something fun to do and he's passionate about it as it's a way to express emotions. He wants to release mask then go from there. He wants to release at least one more song but has nothing on his mind currently. His two ideas were Roadtrip and Mask.

•He wouldn't quit his job to become a pizza delivery man.

•His favourite features on himself are eyes or freckles and he also confirmed that he does have eyebrows.

•He was told that Parkour warrior would be bought back some time in the near future and he got excited for it. "Even if I don't win, which I will, it'll be fun"

•Went on about his MCC team but I'm not going to put that in as we should be getting them today. He did say he wasn't on Pink but he did sound confused. (For reference he's always in Pink as it's the last team announced and keeps the hype up by announcing the biggest streamer last)

•Said he and his mum had the Mr Beast burger. He recommends because he likes the avacado. He mentioned how Mr Beast uses "Ghost Kitchens" which is basically where he gives restaurants permission to cook his food so it's restaurant quality food.

•His favourite piece of merch is the circle smile. (The pool photo on Instagram). He said the quality was bad (he worked with a different company and didn't have his own company) and it was elasticy feeling and he's planning on re-releasing it again but with good quality.

•He's started to send merch out in custom packaging. So his bags have the smile and will mostly be green. Sapnap's has the flame and is either black or white. He's also trying to make it so every order has the sticker packs for both him and Sapnap.

•He loves the coins as it's cheaper than a hoodie but still celebrates the milestones and will last a long time. He mentioned how the old coins are getting removed off the site and how if you have any of the coins your special because only a few thousand get made. He's kept around 100 of each coin that he wants to give away in person.

•He wanted to have a cool store where you could access computers that give you access to the DreamSMP in spectator mode. But it's too costly and would require too much time and isn't safe fight now. He doesn't think it'd be worth it financially.

•Most of the hoodie are black instead of multiple colours because of limited supply and covid. Getting the colours are harder because if the pandemic which hopefully won't be an issue soon.

•He wants to do a short meetup tour with Sapnap and George with a few locations in the US (and if others nearby want to join like Quackity or Karl they can). He also wants to visit Australia, UK, Canada, Mexico and Philippines and do something like that there but definitely at least visit with George and Sapnap.

•He's never been to the Philippines but his mum has. He wants to set up a place in the Philippines where he can ship merch in bulk and it would help to reduce shipping. However it would probably be big milestone merch.

•He's not got the vaccine yet but will get it when he needs to. He doesn't leave the house so he doesn't see the point.

•He's the ideas man. George's footcam video was Dream's idea. The T-shirt video was Dream's idea. Most if not all of the Dream Team's videos are Dream's ideas.

•Said he's got a similar/the same hair colour as Froy (Dream buddy at this point the only difference between you and Froy is that one of you is dating Richard Madden /lh)

#dreamsmp #dream smp #dreamwastaken #mcyt #georgenotfound #sapnap

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minettestan · 3 years

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Do you have a tag for games you recommend? I'm always looking for new games and my experience with point and click or 90s computer games is sorely lacking.

💕My favorite question💕 I took one of my old posts and updated it, so here!

💕 Personal Favorite

💀 Scary Content

👧 Female Protagonist

✨ Important to the genre’s history

📚 Tricky for new players, look up controls or a walkthrough to get started

❕ Difficult

👿 Potential insensitive content

The Colonel’s Bequest (1989) $5.99 💕✨👧💀❕📚

“It is the year 1925, and the roaring '20s are well underway. As Laura Bow, young college student, you've been invited to visit the Colonel's isolated estate. Watch as the Colonel announces his intention to bequeath his millions to all present!”

The classic Sierra murder mystery game, developed by the mother of the genre Roberta Williams. Laura Bow is a sorely overlooked female protagonist. The game works by navigating Laura and typing in commands, kinda of tricky at first. Tons of game overs are a hallmark of a Sierra adventure game so save often! If you play the GOG.com version you get the benefit of autosaves. This game runs a timer, the events of the night will unfold with or without you so stay on your toes and keep moving! The game can be found for free here, but imo the $5.99 is worth it for the easy of access.

The Dagger of Amon-Ra (1992) $5.99 👧✨❕📚👿💀

“Laura Bow, intrepid heroine of The Colonel's Bequest, is back! This time she's trapped in a huge, imposing museum in the dead of night, surrounded by socialites, miscreants, thieves...and a cold, relentless murderer.“

Roberta Williams is back! Iconic game, iconic heroine. It’s still a Sierra game so like TCB there are tons of (iconic) game overs, so save often. Solving puzzles in this one gives me a great serotonin rush. Unfortunately, this game has some racism issues, particularly with the characters Lo Fat and Ramses. While an important game in the genre take it with a huge grain of salt and maybe turn of the (kind of awful) voice acting and enable text-only mode and you’ll avoid some awful accents.

Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1993) $5.99 💕✨

“Sam (a canine shamus) and Max (a hyperkinetic rabbity thing) are hot on the trail of a runaway carnival bigfoot across America’s quirky underbelly in this deranged animated adventure!“

Sam & Max are truly my favorite characters in all of fiction. I have the box art to this game as my phone case. I have Sam & Max action figures, a plush Max on my bed, a print edition of Sam & Max Freeland Police Special #1 framed on my wall. From comics, to games, to cartoons I love these guys. Sam & Max: Hit the Road is a classic of the Lucasarts adventure games. That being said, it’s the least user-friendly of the Sam & Max adventure games and the slowest. I still love it to bits and it’s important to the genre’s history imo.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993) $5.99 💕💀👿

“The adventure of Gabriel Knight starts with gathering materials for his new book, and ends up becoming a fight for his very soul. He must now face countless dangers in New Orleans, Africa and Germany, each bringing him ever closer to unraveling the mystery behind suspicious voodoo murders. Haunted by nightmares, he won't give up until he reveals the truth. “

Another Sierra game directed by a woman, Jane Jenson. Gabriel Knight, voiced by Tim Curry, is one of my favorite adventure game protagonists of all time. This game is scary and gory so enter at your own risk! I love the gameplay in this one, I love the narrator, I love the puzzles. But it seems Sierra games have some problems with the representation of minorities. The game is set in New Orleans and focuses on a voodoo cult. Which means consequently the game's major antagonists are all black. Unlike the Dagger of Amon Ra, Sins of the Fathers actually employed black actors to play black characters. There’s a lot to be said about the ways in which white media demonizes voodoo and those who practice it. If you play this one, remain critical. And for the love of god, don’t play the 20th anniversary version.

Day of the Tentacle: Remastered (1993/2016) $14.99 ✨👧❕

“Originally released by LucasArts in 1993 as a sequel to Ron Gilbert’s ground breaking Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle is a mind-bending, time travel, cartoon puzzle adventure game in which three unlikely friends work together to prevent an evil mutated purple tentacle from taking over the world!“

Another classic LucasArts game! This was the first game co-headed by Tim Schaffer who would go on to make the outstanding Grim Fandango! This one is exceedingly wacky and the remastered version has made it more user-friendly than ever.

Toonstruck (1996) $9.99 💕

“Drew Blanc is a cartoon animator and the original creator of the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show.. Drew's boss, Sam Schmaltz, sets him the task of designing more bunnies to co-star in the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show by the next morning. However, the depressed animator soon nods off, suffering from acute artist's block. He wakes early the next morning to inexplicably find his television switched on, announcing the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show. Suddenly, Drew is mysteriously drawn into the television screen and transported to an idyllic two-dimensional cartoon world populated by his own creations, among many other cartoon characters.“

If you’re a fan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? you’ll love this. Christopher Lloyd is Drew Blanc (ha) trying to save a cartoon world through inventory item puzzles. Truly wacky, zany, and ani-mainy. I played Toontown as a kid so I’m predisposed to like this one. This is also the only game with Full Motion Video I’m putting on the list because FMV games can be an acquired taste.

Grim Fandango (1996/2015) $14.99 💕✨

“Something's rotten in the land of the dead, and you're being played for a sucker. Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. But there's trouble in paradise. Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation.“

Yesssssssss! I LOVE Grim Fandango! The iconic game directed by Tim Schaffer has received the best remaster I’ve seen a point n’ click receive. I cannot recommend Grim Fandango enough! Stick with it through the forest section, trust me.

The Last Express (1997) $5.99 ❕ 📚

“Paris, 1914. The world is on the brink of war and this train could push it over the edge. You are Robert Cath, a young American urgently summoned by your old friend Tyler Whitney to join him aboard the Paris-Constantinople express, departing from the Gare de l'Est on July 24th. Arriving late, you discover something has gone terribly wrong. Now you must untangle a complex web of political intrigue, suspense, romance, and betrayal. Every move you make could bring you closer to the truth or your own demise. Bon voyage! “

Ooooh I love a murder on a train! This game features rotoscope animation, which I love. Like The Colonel’s Bequest this game runs in real time, meaning the events of the game will unfold with or without you, depending on where you are at what time you’ll receive different information or see/miss different events. Very replayable with several different outcomes.

Sam & Max Save the World (Remastered) $19.99 💕

“ Sam is a six-foot canine detective with a love of justice. Max is a hyperkinetic rabbity-thing with a taste for mayhem. Together, they're the Freelance Police. And they're about to save the world.”

Sam & Max Save the World, originally released in episodes from 2006-2008 has been remastered and looks AMAZING! After LucasArts was shut down their game devs formed Tell Tale Games and produced three seasons of Sam & Max sequel games, all of which are great. But TellTale was shut down (and screwed over their employees) in 2018. Since then some of their devs have formed Skunkape Games and are currently remastering all of Tell Tale’s Sam & Max series (I’m thrilled). They’ve also adjusted some aspects of the game to make the game more inclusive and less **offensive. So imo it’s worth it to wait for the release of the other seasons to experience Sam & Max in pristine condition. Save the World is the only season out now, but you can get the non-remastered versions of Beyond Time and Space, and In The Devil’s Playhouse, here and here.

**I should note the “offensive” material in the original is not as egregious as say, The Dagger of Amon-Ra, but it’s just a nice change to see especially in a game I hold dear.

Emerald City Confidential (2009) $9.99 👧

“Explore the underbelly of Oz as Emerald City's most cunning detective! As Petra, you'll be lured deep into mysteries involving new foes and familiar faces; Scarecrow, Lion, and Toto included! This is Oz as you've never seen it before! Solve the mystery and unravel a conspiracy of magic and intrigue! Follow a case through five chapters full of puzzles, witnesses, suspects, and allies in this twist on a timeless classic! “

We’re moving out of the 1990s now. Emerald City Confidential is the Wizard of Oz meets film noir. I played this as 13 year old and have revisited it as an adult and I still eat it up. Wadjet Eye makes consistently good adventure games so check this one out!

The Blackwell Series (2006) $14.99 💕👧

“Meet Rosangela Blackwell, an embittered writer who just found out that she is a medium and that it’s her mission, whether she likes it or not, to assist tormented spirits and investigate other supernatural goings-on. She is assisted by the sardonic Joey Mallone, a ghost from the 1930s.”

Another Wadjet Eye game! I’ve seen these games recommended amoungst the Clue Crew before and I’ll just throw my own endorsement on the pile. Yeah I’m in love with Joey Mallone. What about it?

The Charnel House Trilogy (2015) $5.99 👧💀

“Witness The Charnel House Trilogy, the chronicle of one fateful night aboard a train bound for Augur Peak. Three thrilling, horrifying adventure games in one, from the depths of the Sepulchre.”

Plays like Blackwell, has a Blackwell reference at the beginning, okay you got me. This is a good, if kinda short, game. It’s very creepy, involves murder and has some gore/violence so watch out! I’m still waiting on the sequel Owl Cave!

Thimbleweed Park (2017) $19.99 👧

“A haunted hotel, an abandoned circus, a burnt-out pillow factory, a dead body pixelating under the bridge, toilets that run on vacuum tubes... you’ve never visited a place like this before.“

Made by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick the creators of the classic games Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island Thimbleweed Park is a love letter to the classics of the point and click adventure genre. Features 5 different playable characters, ala Maniac Mansion, who and how many you play is up to you! This one also has stand alone DLCs!

Unavowed (2018) $14.99 👧

“ A demon possessed you one year ago. Since that day, you unwillingly tore a trail of bloodshed through New York City. Your salvation comes in the form of the Unavowed – an ancient society dedicated to stopping evil.”

Okay I haven’t actually played this one, but I want to. Its a Wadjet Eye so you know it’s good. From the reviews I’ve seen this is the Blackwell Series meets Dragon Age. A point and click that incorporates RPG elements, I love that.

I also have a love of the more, strange, and unusual adventure games that I can't necessarily recommend with good conscience. So if you want bizarre 90s and early 2000s games of dubious quality hit me up.

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kitsoa · 4 years

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Ven’s Missing Memories

Mmm’kay. Thinking out loud here so I’m gonna focus in on one question from the April 2nd update. Gotta consider everything about this very strange murderer reveal happening.

Potential cause of Ven’s missing memories.

Trauma Induced Amnesia

Chirithy Did It

They Aren’t His Memories

1. Trauma Induced Amnesia

Ven has showed he’s no stranger to locking away trauma-memories as we’ve seen in BBS. If whatever happened was traumatic (and considering a girl is murderered I’d say it is traumatic) than Ven is the type to lock this kind of stuff out. This suggests that whatever Ven saw (or did) was appalling to him. He didn’t like what was happening which helps with his clearly innocent response to things. This means either:

Ven was a witness to Strel’s murder

Ven wasn’t in control of his actions but aware of what was happening

He’s blind to whatever happened, so much that he traumatically blocked it. The significance of this method would be that Ven can get these memories back. Just like with his Badlands memories in BBS. Simply going about this flashback or prodding his psyche in some way can push the truth out into the open. Meaning that we’ll find out soon what happened to these memories.

Considering the post-flashback scenes the momentum has dulled a bit narratively and psychologically. This variant is: Slightly Unlikely

2. Chirithy Did It

Chirithy’s are all about eating the bad dreams of the Keyblade War, it’s worth noting that something like this would definitely constitute as a bad memory to eat. Except of course: Union Leaders were the exception to this caveat. Ven has memories of the War enough to assume that his Chirithy spared him in that memory wipe even if he’s an impostor. This doesn’t remove the idea that Chirithy consumed this memory outside of their general programming.

Much like the Trauma-Induced Amnesia line of thought, Ven is either a witness or lacked agency as he is innocent. This variant changes the method of loss which impacts the retrieval process and potentially adds another external character in the process of loosing the memory. The Chirithy has the means to remove the memory but not always the ingenuity to do so. This suggests:

Someone commanded Chirithy to remove the memory. The only characters we can imagine to have that authority:

-Ava

-MoM

Chirithy chose to remove the memory to protect Ven

-This is the kh3 Chirithy which is a focused character in the canon allowing agency of choice.

-This Chirithy has an understandable and unwavered affection for Ven into the present so it would make sense and result in a them being a bigger player

Ven himself requested the removal himself.

-This then follows variant #1 in purposing and only changes the means of removal and therefore the ultimate retrieval of the memories.

Again, this ultimately changes how to get the memories back. We’d have to review if and how the Player character’s memories have leaked back into consciousness. This potentially makes it a more challenging retrieval. This variant seems: Inconclusive

3. They Aren’t His Memories.

If the missing memories are a result of them simply not belonging to him, then we have greater reason to believe that there is a force inside him turning off Ven’s awareness in a scene. This makes Ven a vessel for an independent personality. In the spectrum of his role during this missing moment, this leans him more towards being the perpetrator though he would not be in control because Ven is innocent.

Nature of Loss of Agency

External Force “Possession”

Internal Force “Split-Personality”

As an external force, that means that there is an entity requiring a physical medium to act. This also suggests that there is a greater agent trying to tip the scales of the Dandelion conflict. As there are no known concepts in the narrative that fit this need, we need to assume that it’s a new threat.

Note: Darkness as an abstract concept in need of a vessel.

The same shadowed figure in the original murder scene is seen in the story multiple times and dubs itself as Darkness. “Darkness” as a title is abstract enough to suggest the actual forces of Darkness at work fitting the external force. This would suggest sentience of an oft discussed force in the narrative, but it would constitute a new threat and bear the name the most literally. We know from Re:Mind that ‘Darkness’ does in fact reside in Ven’s heart still. This all but ties Ven directly to the actions of the character(s) claiming this moniker in khux. Yet the title is vague enough to bring this into hot contention whether the same ‘Darkness’ is being referenced.

As an internal force, that would mean that Ven created the independent entity at work in the missing memory. Ergo: Ven created a split-personality.

The premise of creating a split-personality, though unique to the KH narrative, can follow an easy ‘trauma suppression’ style of writing. Much like option #1, Ven’s tendency to avoid his trauma has been seen in his narrative already. He is illustrated clearly to avoid his problems and his darkness. Evidence:

Missing Ache Keyblade suggests suppressing heart ache

He frequently mentions loneliness and the bewildered sensation of friendship

He is painted as a weak outcast who can’t keep/find a party

He hates pointing his blade at fellows--Pacifistic tendencies

Reason for back-hand grip?

PvP is appalling to him

Vanitas confirms in Re:mind that he existed before Xehanort split them apart. This means that Vanitas was an aware presence within Ventus fitting him within the suspect pool of entities that could have removed Ven’s agency from the murder scene. It also correlates to the Darkness force residing within Ventus but that’s a cursory fact in this analysis. But if he is the force that took over Ven then Vanitas is:

Either external in origin

or a creation of Ven’s own making.

Note: Ven has one other moment of seeming memory loss in Khux-- the PvP passage. He reacts dramatically to the reveal of PvP to the point that the other leaders make a note of Ven’s lack of awareness. He honestly asserts that he read the book but he didn’t remember the one part of the rules that he clearly disagreed with. Almost like he suppressed it. This makes me believe that Ven’s escapist tendencies pushed his dark feelings of anxiety deep within him resulting in a selective memory.

Furthermore, he claims humility in his skills (i.e. not ranking) early in his introduction despite having a Proud mode keyblade. If his mystified sense of worth is honest and not humility at work, then he potentially has combat memory loss as well. As conflict is where dark feelings can spark, this would make sense.

This bright-side temperament stops being a character quirk and is then a willful pattern of behaviors. Out of the two sub-variants of blame for the missing memory, I believe that it’s an internal force that is the strongest correlation to Vanitas as a preexisting personality and the “Darkness” Moniker claimed in re:mind is more of a pre-christened identity of Vanitas.

From here the only way to discover this memory is to hear about it straight from the source. We will need a confrontation of pre-split Vanitas living in khux Ven.

---

There’s a chance that there’s a combination of forces at work in the moment. But independently the strongest to me is #3 with the specific split personality method having the most evidence. That being said, trauma has a clear role in the function of a split personality and the Chirithy is pivotal in the interaction of traumatic moments. Because who is to say that Ven is completely unaware of the controlling force? Perhaps he could remember what his body was forced to do but Chirithy spared him of that in mercy. That would make the outcome to be a combo of all 3.

Whew. I’m doing this to eventually place Ava in this scheme. Right now I think she struck a deal with Vanitas. I also think it’s logical to assume that a dark split-personality would be like Schrodinger’s Darkling therefore making Vanitas act in accordance to an actual force of evil in the game.

#kingdom hearts #kh meta #khux spoilers #khux speculation #kingdom hearts speculation #ven is the murderer #ventus #vanitas

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neoyi · 4 years

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I hope your okay with another ask! “:D I hope this is a simple enough ask; Any general headcannons for all the knights? (or at least your favorites?)

Simple ask indeed, but general enough for me to fill a textbook. Admittedly a lot of my headcanon is centered on either Propeller or Specter Knight because I’m not nearly as invested in the rest as I am those two. But still, what headcanons do I have? Okay, I’ll try and write one headcanon for each knight so I don’t go overboard.

1.) King Knight: ...is smarter and cleverer than he looks and acts, but has a problem of not applying himself because he’s so delusional and one-tracked in his goals. King Knight is very determined and we see in spite of a doting mother, he doesn’t lack independence. Look in his room and you can get an idea of what he does. He works out, he draws, and he’s handy with tools. He cares for his rats! They may be his subjects, but if his pets aren’t kept in good condition, then they’d be dead weight to him, so he knows how to properly care for his animals. It’s possible he likes animals; he shows more affection to spinwulves than he does anyone else. And of course, if you should choose, he can Joustus, a game that generally requires strategy. King Knight is kind of like that guy who has a degree in like engineering or something/ It he could just utilize it properly, he could get him a very good job, and a cushy life, but he rampantly chooses not to because he’s that much of a BONEHEAD. He’s dumb in a different way and it’s holding him back.

2.) Plague Knight: ....and Mona does not want children. They knew right off the bat and decided then and there once they were officially dating. They aren’t the type of people to be parents and kids are...well, little things running around ruining science experiments and throwing shit around. Besides, Plague and Mona already throw shit around, why should those little bastards have all the fun?

The closest the two come to having “kids” is creating imperfect clones of themselves as they get older. Most of them were merely tasked to finish what they themselves started and keep mad science alive. As centuries pass, the clones would keep creating more clones to continue their work. Each clones were a little less perfect than the other, and in time, they’ve more or less reduced to Blorbs. Specter Knight, still around centuries later, occasionally would check on them (if not at first to keep them away from the public since they carried Plague and Mona’s chaotic desire to raise Hell), but soon decided they were now harmless enough to be left alone to their own device.

3.) Treasure Knight... and Propeller Knight are rivals and they both haaaaaaaaaate the other’s occupations in the pettiest of ways. They’re pirates, so they automatically have a rapport, but Treasure Knight finds it insulting that Sky Pirates are A Thing. Pirates belong in the SEA. They fight giant squids and bury treasures deep in the heart of lost lagoons and islands. SKY Pirates? What the heck is even a SKY pirate? What does a SKY Pirate even do? Where’s the big ocean with all the Mystery and Scary Ass Sea Creatures? They fly with birds???? There’s Mountains?????????? They don’t even have GIANT squids, just medium-sized Sky Squids. And Floating Islands? That’s just cheating.

Every single one of their meeting inevitability end with the two having a pirate match to secure the most gold or engage in a duel. Sometimes Treasure would win some, other times Propeller would. They would keep this fierce competition until they died.

But

That doesn’t mean neither one disrespected each other. From Treasure’s personal perspective, Propeller Knight is many things - frivolous, fancy, and shallow - but he is still a PIRATE. Sky Pirates are Dumb, but they’re still PIRATES. Propeller Knight goes by his own code that Treasure personally doesn’t get, but he respects the hell out of him because Propeller sticks by it and uses his piracy to achieve his goals. When push comes to shove, they can, have, and will shake hands through mutual kinship.

There is one thing both Treasure and Propeller can 100% agree on though: Subterranean Pirates are the WORST. Why is that even a THING?!

4.) Mole Knight: ...is not just digging in the Lost City because he “claimed it” as his own nor because it’s a good place to practice his superb digging skills, Mole legitimately and genuinely is curious about the history behind it. He’s an archeologist; a man thirsty for knowledge. He knows a lot about history in general, but his expertise lies in the Lost City.

Post-Shovel of Hope, he learns to share his findings with others. His obsessive need to keep the ruins for himself dissipates over time and he learns the value of teamwork. There are others like him who shares his love for knowledge and past civilizations; Mole is incredulous to know there are other working theories he never considered! In the end, it is not his pride that mattered most to him, but his passion to uncover and preserve this beautiful, ancient world. After all, he has ancestral ties to the Lost City and the best way to keep that alive is by sharing his knowledge with others.

6.) Tinker Knight: ...once invited his friend Propeller Knight over to show him something he invented. It would be handy because he needed a way to record his many inventions. He shows off a projectile that displays a moving image on a screen. He calls it...”Moving Pictures!” Propeller is amazed; this could, indeed, store information in ways the written word cannot.

Propeller asks him after, “Tinker, my good friend, have you considered using this Moving Picture for purposes other than recording?”

Tinker is puzzled, “What more could I use it for?”

Propeller chuckled, “Perhaps you can devise a story out of it. Like a stage play, only using these, er, what did you call them? “Celluloid”, to capture a story. We could have words written on the screen after a person speaks since it’s silent.”Tinker is flabbergasted. No, he only intended it to be used to archive his inventions and ideas. Why would anyone want to make a story through his Moving Pictures?Propeller, not listening (of course) sighs, “And you cannot call it Moving Picture, it’s too mouthful. Come on, Tinker, you who speak so pragmatically, would know to shorten it. Perhaps we can call it “Movers.” Or “Mov ‘ems.” Oh! I know, “movies.”

“That is a bad idea. I do not like it at all.” Tinker scoffed.

“Well, it was worth a shot, “Propeller shrugged, “How goes that rocket blueprint of yours? When will my dreams come true; that I shall one day reach the Moon?”

7.) Polar Knight: ...My headcanon is that he is too secretive to have a past that could be told... Also I haven’t really thought too much about this guy. Get back to me when I play his story mode in Showdown.

I do personally believe he is NOT related to Shield Knight though. He likely knew her, but only through proxy from Shovel and Black Knight.

8.) Propeller Knight: ...has always had a beautiful face. He takes great care to ensure it looks nothing less than perfect. But living a life as a pirate comes with drawbacks. One day, during a time of great grievance in his life, Propeller Knight comes face-to-face with a foe most personal. The battle is horribly one-sided for Propeller was at his lowest. He lost concentration and with it, an eye.

The first few days wearing that unsightly eye patch was too much to bare. He had to readjust to his newfound vision for one, but his face - no longer perfect. He questions so many things in his life; he’s made so many sacrifices, so many enemies, and lost a few good people in his life under various circumstances. Him losing an eye seemed paltry in comparison, but it symbolized the decisions he’s made and he has to live with it. Who is he? A Pirate? A Prince? Neither or Both? Does he fight against the corrupted nature of the Rich and Powerful even though he once lived among them?

He can’t answer them now. All he can do is slowly let the scars heal. He will not take for granted the friends, family, and love he has in his current life. They will be his rock and he will carry them to the winds. Propeller puts on his eye patch and stands up. He can still look at the setting sun.

9.) Shovel Knight: ...I don’t think he’s a fish person. But I’m boring and think all the knights are human.

10.) Shield Knight: ....spent some time suffering nightmares. She would wake up and remember that she hasn’t been trapped for a while. The Enchantress is a distant memory, but the events are still recent that she still endures these horrid flashbacks. Shield Knight imagines she’ll never really get over them, but her determination is strong and she knows little by little, the nightmares are becoming less and less of a occurrence.

Recently, she’s been taken to gardening. Shovel introduced it to her. They don’t really have a home since the two are always on the go, but that little farm house Shovel vanished off to years back still remain. So they often return and plant new crops. Shield found it patronizing and difficult at first, unsure what Shovel saw in it and how it could help her. Now she finds it therapeutic.

Nowadays she can go alone and pick out fresh carrots and potatoes without Shovel at her beck and call (so she lets him sleep in a bit.) It feels good. It feels peaceful. She could get used to this.

11.) Black Knight: ....I imagine he’d be the type to sacrifice himself so Shovel and Shield can be happy. Maybe one day he does exactly that. It also meant saving the world as well. Black Knight regrets a lot of things, but this he does not...

12.) Specter Knight: ...”You will not remember me centuries from now,” He proclaimed one day. For one who was always sure of their relationship, this was a particularly alarming moment of vulnerability from Propeller.

“What?” Specter Knight tilted his head in confusion.

“You once told me you shall always carry me in your heart; that way you will remember me long after I’ve passed on,” Propeller elaborated, “But be real. Undead immortal or not, you cannot think to remember who I am thousands of years from now. It will be so long and you will have done so much by then.”

“Propeller...” Specter was incredulous and frankly, kind of hurt. Why would Propeller assume this of him?

“It is alright, you are not obligated to do so. I want you very much to live a wonderful life long after I am gone,” Propeller smiles, “Make friends, have adventures, help people....fall in love again. It is alright if you forget me because you will have a life fulfilled.”

Specter is silent and for a while, it seemed believable what Propeller said would be true. He lowered his head, then remembered he was sick of it, sick of feeling sad when it took years to learn how to be happy. He stared intensely at Propeller and sternly told him, “No.”“ Excusez-Moi?”

“I will help people, I will make friends, I’ll go on grand adventures, and yes, maybe I will fall for another centuries down the line, but you are a damn fool if you think I will forget you,” Specter clutched his chest, “Thousands of years from now, if I am still wandering this strange planet, I will still remember you.”

Propeller looks at his lover, stunned. He is touched. This is the kind of grand romantic gesture he lives for, but he tears up not out of joy, but somberness, “...I appreciate the thought, Donovan, but it’s alright if you cannot keep this promise. I’m just saying.” Specter sighs and wraps an arm around his husband.

~*~

Ten thousand years, the sun is red and the planet drying. Very little life exists, and Death walks collecting the last remaining souls. He eyes the massive star, forever looking like a malicious red sunset (he loved the sunset...) Soon, it would go supernova and perhaps, perhaps he can finally rest for good. Then he can be with his loved ones.

Wind is rare nowadays, but whenever he feels a breeze his way, Death knows who is watching him.

He has not forgotten him...

#shovel knight #specter knight #propeller knight #order of no quarter #neoyi talks

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marsandchariot · 3 years

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Mercury Retrograde through the lens of Reversals

No matter their ubiquity, Mercurial retrogrades always seem worth discussing—whether as a scapegoat for mishaps or as an invitation to subvert our typical approaches and modes of living in relation to communication, coordination and planning. Mercury is the planetary androgyne, ruler of Gemini and Virgo, and the messenger between the underworld and the surface world, facilitating an exchange of information between what is perceptible and what is not. Robert Hand describes Mercury as “neither the maps themselves, nor the languages, nor the mechanical media in which data is stored, nor…any of the representational signs themselves. It is the process of creating the maps or the languages, of storing the data or the signs, and of making sure that maps created in one medium correspond to the original set of experiences, ideas or signs that the map represents.” Beyond material practices, such as reading and writing, we might also see Mercury’s mapmaking technology incorporate psychic, spiritual, and mental health tools.

We decided to consider some principles of this retrograde through the lens of the Star—Aquarius’ equivalent—paired with the Magician—the equivalent of Mercury—in reverse. As in the case of retrograde versus direct, a reversal is not strictly the binary opposite of the upright position.

Looking at the Star and the Magician, it’s hard at first to see the similarities. But both have something to say about balance, given the positioning of their arms, the actions of their hands, and both figures are surrounded by verdure .

However, the way these figures inhabit their surroundings is quite different. In the Star, there is a sense of freedom and openness. Often this card conjures for me the image of Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost when she is drawn to and mesmerized by her own reflection in water (a moment that also makes me think of Lilith). She turns away because of the insistence with which Adam demands her attention, prescribing the narrative that she should be concerned only with his needs and desires.

But, within the Star, one is able to remain in that space of meditation and reflection in service of their deeper, at times imperceptible desires, and in doing so they are better able to attune themselves to the vibrations of the collective. An inner space in service of receptivity and attunement is an ideal space of creativity, where ideas can self-generate without judgement, and pour out, seemingly without end. Without disruption.

Here is where we see concepts of Mercury creeping in. The Star is about the free-flow of ideas, tapping into the unconscious to see and contemplate what is drawn forth, what fills the cups and fertilizes the earth (or The World, the card that seemingly “ends” the cycle before beginning again with The Fool’s leap into the unknown). The Star asks how these ideas might manifest in the material world. What kind of inner environment are our thoughts creating and cultivating? How does ideation contribute to expressions of our desires? Our highest selves?

And of course we cannot ignore the stars, the card’s namesake. Above the figure’s head, the cluster of stars in the light blue sky conjure up the ever-presence of the constellations and their mythologies. They genuflect to how and why we read our birth charts, a snapshot of the stars and planets in the sky at the time of our entrance into the physical world, in order to understand the influence and trace impressions left by archetypes in the makeup of ourselves.

The bird over the figure’s right shoulder (from our perspective in the Smith-Waite card) is simultaneously among the stars and sitting in a tree--either caught in the act of landing or preparing to take off. As Rachel Pollack points out in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom:A Book of Tarot, the bird “is an ibis, a symbol of the Egyptian god Thoth, who was considered the inventor of all arts, from poetry to pottery. Literally he taught the first artists their techniques, but on a more symbolic level, we can say that all creative action stems originally from the pool of unformed energy.” In the image of The Star, the figure simultaneously gazes into and draws from and disperses water, a symbol of this vibrant and unformed energy.

Somewhat similarly (but importantly different) the Magician has all their creative tools at the ready. Like anyone who practices an art or skill or ritual, the Magician has collected all the tools they will need and has set the table with them. With their Hermetic pose--“as above, so below”--the Magician calls to their muses or gods or guides, creating (both literally and figuratively) a bridge for communication. The card signals an understanding of this relationship between the physical and the spiritual, the inner and the outer, the importance of this connection, this communication (here is Mercury again).

However, where the Star expresses/embodies this relationship nakedly and mostly only via cups and water, the Magician has on layers of clothing and all the different kinds/methods of tools at hand (the pentacle = earth, the cup = water, the sword = air, the wand = fire). The Magician tells us we have the ability to create, that we have all the tools we need, but asks how we will use them. Will we use them? Do we know how to use them? Are we acting as a conduit? And if so, for what? Or are we skipping this important first step of opening lines of communication which the Magician is enacting for us, focusing on material means rather than psychic or spiritual cultivation?

It makes sense that the Magician is linked to Mercury. The archetype reminds us that all of our tools for communication/expression need a space at the table. All of them need tending. The cup represents our emotions; the pentacle, our material conditions; the sword, our thoughts/words;,and the wand, our actions. No wonder when this card is reversed (or when Mercury is in retrograde) we feel as if we are fumbling, that we have lost control of how we form expressions, as well as how we receive them. The tools we usually trust are overwhelmed by the frequencies they encounter. Even on our best days, it can seem difficult to align all these facets of our relationship with the world, being reversed (or in retrograde) makes it all that much harder.

We can also think of The Star in reverse. During a Mercury retrograde in Aquarius, as a collective we might feel even more psychically blocked, like all of our thoughts are stuck, or we are not easily understood; like we can’t get anything out of our head and materialized in the physical. We might feel unable to find the right words, create narratives that make sense; we feel we are disconnected from reality when what we are more feeling is a disconnection from our inner selves. Maybe we feel too much the demands of others, allowing ourselves to be distracted. Perhaps our thoughts are feeling more like mud than flowing water; instead of a reflective pool we see only the dregs of the earth.

Aquarius zooms out to look down, gaining perspective by separating and floating above. By this vantage, Aquarius seeks to understand and design solutions to meet the needs of the collective. But sometimes the presence of the collective looms larger in the imagination than it does in lived experience. You may feel a pull to perform or provide in a way that creates undue pressure on yourself and your individual activity. Even in solitude, you may feel a lack of time for yourself or energy for your own interests. When the demands of others resound louder for us than our own needs, and we lose track of what those needs are, we are vulnerable to injury and self-desiccation--mentally, spiritually, physically. Sometimes it is easier to imagine and respond emotionally to a lack of collective compassion than it is to cultivate compassion for ourselves. Wherever Mercury is transiting your chart, issues related to that house (and planets with which Mercury is copresent) are lighting up for you. Wherever this is occurring, it is likely that what’s needed is to unplug from whatever theater of others’ perceptions you are enacting in order to impose judgments on your own inner world. Once you disengage from this enactment, you may better receive the input provided by your feelings. It is this feedback--rather than the feedback of judgment--that can inform you on next steps to take in working through blockages imposed upon your activity at this time.

The Star can remind us to look at how Mercury is affecting us personally in our own individual charts so that we can productively work to counteract any “negative” responses or at least to prepare, like the Magician, with whatever tools are at our disposal, and, like the Star, in congress with the flow of energy within.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 1ST

It may feel difficult to transmit or communicate your needs in the way you’re used to. What strategies—especially nonverbal ones—that otherwise yield results are for these next few weeks falling flat; what you’re putting down isn’t getting picked up. Ask yourself what you are attempting to attract—is it assistance? Reassurance? Solidarity? Praise? Channels you usually trust to bring in important feedback feel blocked, or murky. You’re not being rejected; your signal just isn’t cutting through the fog right now. You may have to ask explicitly for what usually arrives naturally, or you may have to change the way you’re communicating the sense of gap or need you’re experiencing; it’s not as perceptible or legible as you think.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 2ND

You may experience issues in articulating professional or otherwise transactional boundaries. Things you’re accustomed to doing for others feel during this time like they outweigh the returns you receive. This retrograde might give you a sense of, “What have they done for me lately?” Instead of stewing in this feeling, consider boundaries for the future; don’t let moods determine what you’re willing or unwilling to do. Re-draw your contracts and commitments, and instead of centering your highest energy and capacity, take some consideration for days when your energy is low and your capacity is slim. If you set professional boundaries with these in mind, your commitments will not pose as much of a burden on the days when you would rather do anything but honor them. Our senses of personal injustice can make us feel incredibly alone. These boundaries will be your advocate when you feel unsupported, your proof when you are disbelieved.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 3RD

Generally speaking, since about this time last year, normal routines have been upended. You may be experiencing a specific or micro increase of this disruption. This could be anything—from finishing a TV show you were religiously watching to no longer having access to a regular medical prescription. You’ve reached the end of a supply of something nourishing—perhaps sooner than you anticipated. It’s okay to grieve even the smallest expirations of our daily rituals and routines; we can’t always predict how deeply felt these losses may be when they occur, and they can set off emotional chain reactions that feel much larger and more all-consuming than the ritual itself. Forgive yourself for reaching “the end” without something to take its place, and try to open yourself to whatever will next captivate your attention. Devote time to closing the gap between the end of one thing and the beginning of another, without putting pressure on yourself to immediately fill the gap. Time spent searching for something to do is as worthy an activity as the new task or routine that will eventually occupy you.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 4TH

You may be experiencing issues in regard to living situations. I think it’s important to consider this phrase not just in relation to the circumstances in which you currently reside, and the attendant issues of rent, roommates, etc, but also as it applies to childhood, memory, and permutations of wider-spanning political or ecological situations. In framing political stances or inquiries, we are often implicitly asking about our rights to life, and what the standards of living ought to be; we situate ourselves as one surface in a tessellation of needs that though theoretically fit together in congruence are necessarily different in expression. How is it that we can live with others? What is our past experience of others—living together or not—that informs the way we see ourselves as part of a community among them? 4th house issues may describe the ways in which we are haunted by childhood experience. When a cosmic body enters the 4th house, it is stirring up past or congealed—but not quite healed—topics. What feels irresolvable usually feels inexpressible; if something feels difficult to express it may be due to an attempt to express a vulnerable truth that in our past was not heard or was misinterpreted in some way. To be misunderstood and disbelieved by our family, in particular, plants the seed that we may never be believed or accepted by the people closest to us. It may feel easier to make an announcement to the world than to one close friend. How does our audience change the way we attempt to resolve our issues in language? Instead of seeking validation or consummate belief, to whom can you turn in order to feel heard? If there is not an individual in your life who fulfills this need, is there a way in the meantime to crystallize your language so that when a trusted friend presents themselves, you are prepared to share with generosity, lucidity, and confidence?

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 5TH

You may have to adjust your expectations for what you’ve been working on. Maybe things have been flowing easily and have now somewhat stalled. It seems like there comes a time, usually towards the 8th month, when a childbearing person can only utter the phrase, “I’m ready for them to be out of me!” 5th house Aquarius placements may feel a similar blockage in production, where they can envision this form that is fully articulate within them and yet not prepared to be in the world. It is extremely uncomfortable. To switch organisms: in the final stages of avian birth, the pores of the eggshell have expanded to allow entry to proteins that feed the bird embryo. This is to say that the stability of the shell is compromised in order to support the growth of the organism held within. Without this compromise, the bird could not be born. So, 5th house Aquarians, I offer two directives—firstly, hold on to what’s inside you, without seeing the discomfort as a failure to produce, trusting instead that the urgency you feel is itself part of the productive process; secondly, make sure you have not sealed yourself off from elements of nutritive change, even if you consider yourself in final or definite stages of your current occupation or project.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 6TH

You can justify taking time for yourself. You may feel as if you need to create structure to occupy your unstructured time, especially since opportunities to engage with others can suddenly feel few and far between, leaving us lonely or lacking in some way. Otherwise you may feel the need to fill time with a “productive” activity. But we cannot underestimate the importance of planned planlessness, even when it feels almost too abstract to defend from the invitations and schedules of others. If you are feeling overwhelmed, it is likely due to a lack of unstructured time—an important resource in our efforts to physically and psychically recharge. Your unstructured time is not a blank space in your schedule that needs to be filled, but an important period of replenishment, one in which those things to which you may not usually attend will float to the surface in order to be considered.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 7TH

Our conditions of estrangement are not set in stone. Who do you need to check in on, and how are you going to do it? Zoom and Facetime have gotten a lot of play as resources of connection in light of reduced ability to be together in person, but this may not be the way you want to communicate with everyone you’d like to connect with. Think about the people you have been meaning to get in touch with, and then consider the medium by which you would most like to reach them. Think about the people who are in your thoughts but for whatever reason—perhaps an anxiety of it seeming “too random.” Make a point of reaching out in some way to the person who’s crossing your mind but you’ve refrained from contacting due to ideas of communication only being normal if it’s consistent (though obviously respect the boundaries of someone if they’ve explicitly asked you not to contact them). Consider too your specific reason for reaching out. Honor the impetus for someone’s presence in your mind. You don’t have to reveal what might be considered pertinent information—if what causes you to reach out is a movie, book, etc. you thought this person might like, give yourself permission to make this the center of your connection.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 8TH

We might consider the illuminative potential of the retrograde as it sheds light on where we confuse judgments with feelings. While feelings offer feedback on our experience of circumstances in our lives, judgments preclude us from seeking alternative actions and reactions to circumstances outside of our control by entrenching us in cycles that confirm our judgments of ourselves and others. We lose touch with the way we feel and instead translate that feeling into an assumption of others’ negative opinion of us. Sometimes it is easier to either judge ourselves or to defend ourselves against this perception of others’ judgments than it is to investigate how it is we feel. We may seek to change ourselves as we imagine we are in others’ eyes, or perhaps we lash out at those by whom we feel judged. What is important to remember is that this emotional activity is something only we have access to--those against whom we defend ourselves cannot see the inner workings of our feelings and judgments. The 8th house can speak to a need to untangle oneself from the action of the interior, or to calibrate emotional experience to actions we can take rather than judging ourselves through the imagined perspectives of others.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 9TH

As in what’s potentially unfolding in the 2nd house, you may be sorely feeling a lack of returns for what you’re investing in the institution of which you are a part. But this isn’t quite speaking to an issue of money or professional work. It’s more like a situation where you are speaking to God and God isn’t speaking back--not a lack of support, or a lack of reward, but a lack of faith as its own reward is preventing you from feeling connected to both individual and collective purpose, or your individual purpose as it operates within the collective. Frustrations arise from an inability to derive your own reasons to continue participating or contributing. Maybe a community that was previously physical or in person has become excessively diminished by a translation, for example, to Zoom; or, by going on hiatus, a gathering that once provided stability has instead created instability through its absence in a way that feels unsolvable. The dedication you used to feel as a kind of moral directive, in short, is simply not there. Consider the nature of your faith; what does it need in order to survive? Does it need routine? Does it need an object or material representation? Does it need to create, nurture, revise? Faithlessness often contributes to cycles where we feel disinclined to invest energy in what we perceive as inauthentic structures, or structures that are not demanding or imposing enough that we feel the immediate effects of transformation. Remember that these structures cannot convince you of authenticity, and structures alone cannot work positively upon you without your consent; if you are waiting to be forced into alignment, it will not happen. Find opportunities to enter into ritual practices without objectives of self-conversion; decenter your own belief as a kind of challenge that practitioners have to meet in order to “win you over” or “convince” you. The point of faith is not to be scrubbed of your own skepticism--that’s not what truly compassionate institutions are designed to do. An institution that seeks to remove your powers of discernment is not truly interested in helping you to cultivate an individual purpose or process. What matters on your part within a worthy institution is a willingness to explore the options available to you, and to incorporate from those offerings however they feel useful in the project of daily existence.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 10TH

Similar to action in the 1st house, you may be experiencing a block in what you’re transmitting to others--not just socially, but professionally. You may feel your efforts, into which, due to this current stellium, you’re able to pour tremendous energy, are going unacknowledged or unappreciated. Remember that while your head is feeling heavy with a crown, others may feel this weight elsewhere in ways that are less visible and bring them to places of depletion. It is likely that in many ways your frustration is a version of what others are experiencing, but the way that you experience it in the context of a public or social role can make you feel as if you are alone and everyone is against you. This can feel extremely unfair. What’s needed here, however, is radical empathy, a recognition that your access to language to describe the unfairness you feel is something to which others at this time may not be able to access in their own situations. What you are perceiving as tacit criticism is in reality the general atmosphere of isolation and alienation as it influences the dispositions of others. If you are looking to see yourself reflected positively in the behavior of others, you will be disappointed. It may feel that your efforts are floating into the ether rather than manifesting in any material way. But this is the work of the Aquarian midheaven (which may be located here for you, if Aquarius is in your 10th house). To respond to the needs of the collective means often to work without evidence of efficacy or receipt. Trusting in these effects may help ease the pain in what you experience as invisibility.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 11TH

Here instead of an imagined collective you may actually be dealing with a group of people of which you are a part, perhaps a group you are even responsible for governing or organizing in some way. And the truth is it is difficult to continue to provide for people when the resources available to us are so lacking, even if we refer only to the resources of knowledge and information. You are at a loss to provide answers. You cannot give a date at which others’ lives as they know them will resume. You cannot tell people how to live. When you are called upon to offer guidance, try not to think in macro terms of how to live, but rather in the realm of dailiness, of what can be done in increments that build towards a practice rather than an outcome. Study your own habits for clues. Experiment in your own life with diverse and alternative strategies. By diversifying your own knowledge sources and practices, you will be better prepared to honor the unforeseen circumstances that arise among the collective to which you are offering support.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 12TH

In The Twelfth House: The Hidden Power In the Horoscope, Karen Hamaker-Zondag writes, “To immerse yourself in the 12th house, as if losing yourself in another world, is a process that creates much more inner balance than might at first be supposed.” She describes material creativity--as in a craft--as a way to lose oneself; this kind of creativity is not about designing a project or planning an outcome, but on losing oneself in the action or exertion in the shaping of material. This might be work with clay, or wood; it might be a textile project, or cooking. Beyond the acquisition and cultivation of technique, distinctions and evaluations have no place here; a surrender to technique is about a spiritual investment in the moment without the caveat of outcome. A retrograde here is asking for you to climb out from a place of numbness and into a place of tranquility, which is a state of calm that is not empty or anesthetized but closer to a feeling of unconditional attendance--which is a lot like love. To give rein to embodied practice is to accept the possibility of learning from ourselves, even when we don’t intend to reflect and derive meaning from our experience. The 12th house asks us to trust in the unconscious production of wisdom and knowledge, which a ritual kinetic practice can help us to evoke.

Decks used: Star Power Tarot, Pamela Colman Smith Borderless Edition; Many Queens Tarot

#tarotcommunity #tarotblr #astrology #retrograde #mercuryretrograde #themagician #thestar

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wintcrwinds · 4 years

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(me: matty is on break also me: here is a giant matty factfile)

The Basics

Name? Mateo Rosario Hernandez Moreno

Age? 26

Approximate height? 5′9

Hair colour? Dark brown

Eye colour? Brown

Do they speak with an accent? No

Where are they from? Zuzu City

Where are they now? Stardew Valley

Backstory

Who are their parents? Héctor and Jennifer Moreno

What is their earliest memory? Watching campy old superhero cartoons on tv with his dad, back at their old apartment. Matty would stay up late waiting for him to get home from his job bussing tables at their local diner, and would inevitably fall asleep before the show was over.

What did they want to be when they grew up? A costumed crime-fighter, a server at JojaBurger, or Tony Hawk, in that order.

What did/do their parents want them to be? They don’t really see each other enough to get into it on the job front, though Matty supposes it would’ve been nice if he’d’ve been a tech genius like them - carried on the family business or something.

Do they have siblings? Older or younger? Brothers or sisters? None, but he did have an imaginary older brother in the same way most kids have imaginary friends. Bit sad, innit.

Do they have or have they ever had children? How many? No, none, and never!

Do they or have ever had a significant other? Are they still with them? Why? Why not? Not a significant other - he’s dated a little, but his enthusiasm tends to scare people off.

Up until now, what’s the most noteworthy thing they’ve done? To them? To the people around them? Matty doesn’t really think he’s done anything noteworthy. Noteworthy things are for other, cooler people.

Tastes

What’s your character’s favourite colour? Red! No, blue! Wait, no, red!

Do they/would they choose to wear a scent? What would it be? Axe bodyspray, he’s rich but also basic.

Do they care about what things look like? All things, or only some? Not at all. His apartment looks like a college dorm crossed with Comic Con crossed with a dumpster.

What’s their favourite ice cream flavour? Phish Food!

Are they a tea, or coffee drinker? Or soft drinks, or do they drink a lot of alcohol? What kind? Doesn’t really drink tea or coffee because his palette is that of a ten year old. He drinks a lot of JojaCola, and only bothers with alcohol when he has someone to share it with. Which isn’t very often.

What kind of books do they read? What TV shows and movies do they watch? Matty doesn’t read anything except for graphic novels and comic books because focusing on lots of words is haaaard. In terms of TV he likes most popular stuff if it isn’t too cerebral, stuff like the Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, anything from the MCU...

What kind of music do they like? Do they like music at all? He likes pop punk mostly, it’s hype!

If they were about to die, what would they have as their last meal? Mexican feast, next question.

Are they hedonistic? In all cases? Or does practicality sometimes/always/often win out? Yeah, in a way! Matty doesn’t see the point in doing stuff if he’s not excited to do it!

Do they have any philias or phobias? Nah.

Morals, Beliefs, and Faith

Do they have an internal or an external moral code? Both?

To what extent are their actions dictated by this code? Mostly, though some things (mostly grafittiing and trespassing) are worth breaking the law for.

Do they believe in a God or Gods/Goddesses/Higher being of some description? Nah.

Are they superstitious? Not really, but he will call out stuff as being bad luck.

Do they believe in an afterlife? If so, what’s it like? Yeah dude, he believes in like... alternate universes. So you die, and then you start your life over again in another version of reality.

Do they have any specific beliefs that manifest obviously? No.

Are they respectful of the beliefs of others? To what extent? Yeah, but he’d rather not talk about it? He thinks religion is private and therefore awkward to talk about.

Have they ever had to stand up to criticism for being religious? Or not being religious? Nope!

Would they be more likely to act for the good of the one, or the good of the many? The good of the many.

Relationships

Do they make friends easily? Not really, in the past people have tended to find his personality too intense to handle, and he has been told frequently that he’s annoying.

Do they have a best friend? It’s Bartholomew, his butler. Bit sad innit.

Can they get people to do what they want them to? If so, how? No. Even bribery doesn’t really work.

Do they have a lot of romantic relationships? Serious, or short term? Matty hasn’t found anyone to tolerate him long enough for any kind of romantic relationship.

Do they fall in and out of love easily? Yeah, he’s a sucker for a pretty face and a kind word.

Do strangers and acquaintances actually like them when they meet? Historically, no, but he’s hoping that will change!

Do they have a network? Not really... his parents are too often absent to count, and Bartholomew can’t be a network on his own.

What is their relationship like with their family? BIT SAD INNIT. Matty really loves his parents, and he knows they love him too, but the physical distance between them has made a metaphorical distance too.

Are they still in touch with non-family people they were in touch with a year ago? Five years? Ten? More? No.

Do they like children? Do they want children of their own? He likes kids (and frankly they usually have overlapping interests), but Matty is more a fun uncle than a father figure, he thinks.

Physical Appearance

How does this character dress? How would they choose to dress, if all options were open to them? T-shirts, hoodies, jeans, converse, denim jacket, and probably a hat of some description. Matty has enough money to dress how he wants, but his tastes trend on the cheaper side.

Do they have any tattoos? What do they mean? None.

Do they have piercings? How many? None, but maybe he wants his nose pierced.

Do they have scars? Where did they come from? Yes, Matty is extremely accident prone and hurts himself a lot. Luckily, most injuries don’t phase him much.

Do they alter their appearance in some way on a regular basis? Nope!

Is there something they’d choose to change about their appearance if they had the opportunity to? His wonky chin? :(

Is there something about their appearance they’re particularly proud of/happy with? His hair!

Objectively, are they physically attractive? Fairly plain? Unattractive? He’s cute for sure.

Do they have an accurate mental picture and opinion of their physical appearance? Yeah dude, Matty knows what he looks like, and he thinks he looks fine!

How much time do they spend thinking about their physical appearance? It would be a lot less if he wasn’t so obsessed with his hair.

General Knowledge

Can they navigate their own local area without getting lost? To what degree? No, his sense of direction is absolute garbage. Without his phone he’d be lost like 90% of the time.

Do they know who the top politician or monarch is where they live? What about elsewhere? He knows Mayor Lewis, does that count?

Do they know if/where there are any major conflicts going on right now? No.

Do they know the composition of water? ... no...

Do they know how to eat a pomegranate? Carefully?

Are they good with the technology available to them? Average? Completely hopeless? Okay, tech is something Matty is good at.

Could they paint a house? Without making a mess of it? Paint it? Yes. Do it without making a mess? Absolutely not. He’s happy to be invovled though!

Could they bake a cake? Would you eat it if they did? No, and no, he’d try so hard, but he’s literally useless and would definitely give me food poisoning.

Do they know how to perform basic maintenance on the common mode of transportation? He can maintain his skateboard, but that’s it.

Do they know the price of a loaf of bread? How much can a loaf of bread cost? 20G?

Specific Knowledge

Do they have a specific qualification in a narrow area? The only qualification he has is his high school diploma, so no.

Is there something they do or know exceptionally well that most other people don’t? He’s actually a very good artist.

Do people often comment on a particular skill or area of knowledge to this character? Behind their back? Maybe on his lack thereof. Matty doesn’t really give the impression that he has any skills or knowledge.

Is there an area this character could be considered top of their field or a genius in? God no.

Have they deliberately sought to gain knowledge in a specific area? If so, why? No, he’s stupid :(

Do they speak more than one language? More than two? Why? He speaks an embarrassingly small amount of spanish - the white family butler literally speaks more spanish than him.

Does their cultural background effect what they would be expected to know? I mean, maybe his taste in Mexican food should be better than frozen burritos from JojaMart.

Have they ever been publicly acknowledged for being well-versed in something? Never.

Have they ever been bullied for knowing a lot about something? Yeah, he reaaaally loved superheroes as a kid, and got rinsed for talking about them so much.

Do they actively seek new knowledge, or let it come to them naturally? If anything Matty avoids knowledge.

Miscellaneous

What did they have for breakfast this morning? Dry cereal because his milk went bad and he was too lazy to go and buy more.

What ridiculous belief/s did they have as a child? ): I mean, the imaginary older brother was pretty silly.

Do they like marshmallows? Yeah!

Do they sleep on their side, front, or back? On his front, mouth open, snoring.

Do they work better with sound or silence? Sound! Music makes brain work faster.

Do they have a strange obsession with something minor? His hair? Superheroes?

Do they like art? Uhhhhhh, medium? He likes comics and stuff, but he’s not going to a museum anytime soon.

How fast can they run? Fast!

Do they prefer to sit on the floor or on a chair? Floor.

What do they want, right now? A breakfast burrito. Preferably one he didn’t have to microwave himself.

#matty: about

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blue-mint-winter · 4 years

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Caliban’s War and the Great Absent

As a fan that started my adventure with The Expanse series from the show, when I was reading Caliban’s War, the first thing that I noticed were the differences between the book and the show. The major story beats stayed the same and great moments from the book found a place within the adaptation and some were made even better. But what really hit me was how much the beginning differs between the two mediums. The first around 200 pages are a bit of a mess - and it’s not just a slow start kind of a deal. That part was less enjoyable to read, it felt disjointed, meandering almost. There was action, but it was sometimes hard to find a meaning to it, the characters were all clueless, and the general feeling I had was a dull confusion and waiting for the story to get to the point. Only when Holden went independent and decided to do better, the story finally found its groove back. The next two thirds of the book shifted tonally into a more exciting space action/political drama mode which was adapted much more closely by the show.

However, I think that first third is worth analyzing as it very much feels as a different story in tone and subject than what follows. First of all, things are bad for everyone. The common denominator is the trauma. Prax and Bobbie’s chapters are paralleling each other with their descriptions of the PTSD both characters are going through caused by the events on Ganymede. They both have episodes of “I’m not shouting”, both lose their minds and cause incidents, both are restless. For two very different people, a civilian botanist and a marine, they are quite similar. They are both coping with trauma and grief in broad terms and despite their circumstances being different, they are both still determined to continue. They won’t let the matter drop, they won’t give up. On top of that, the third POV character, Holden, is ALSO going through PTSD from Eros. He’s in a pretty dark place, becoming someone unlikeable, until Naomi decides to leave. So, 3 out of 4 POVs are traumatized people. Avasarala also had a traumatic experience with the loss of her son, but in her case it’s an old wound and it gives her motivation to go on. She’s someone that time already healed to some extent.

The 3 main characters not dealing well with their trauma in this part of the story brings me to the next point - The Great Absent - Joe Miller. Miller was absorbed by protomolecule on Eros, which would normally mean that he should be gone from the story, his arc was very satisfyingly finished in Leviathan Wakes, however Caliban’s War doesn’t let us for a moment forget him. It does it in two ways - most obvious is Holden frequently remembering Miller. Not only name drops, but actually Holden’s “dark times” is when he goes through “millerification”. He took the police job for OPA patroling and catching pirates with the Roci and it made him more jaded. He’s diagnosed with becoming like Miller and it’s apparently a terrible thing. Honestly, that kind of pissed me off, because it looked like characters chose only to remember Miller killing Dresden and “being like Miller” means “being a trigger-happy psycho that shoots first” which is NOT who he was. Naomi herself is the most concerned with this change in Holden and she was the one that agreed with Miller killing Dresden! So this dissonance in what Miller means to them all now compared to how they saw him in the last book really bothered me. It goes even farther within the book as in the second half Holden shoots Nguyen to get the transponder codes for the monster missiles and Amos kills Strickland. Both of those actions are showed in a very positive light, justice is served/for the greater good and Miller would be proud. Tell me how what they did is any different from killing Dresden which Holden was so mad about in LW. Can the author decide within one book whether being like Miller is a good thing or a bad thing??? I’m getting a whiplash here.

Third way Miller is still within the story without being there physically is more subtle. Just as Holden is doing his own police work and becoming a sort of a space sheriff, Prax has almost the exact storyline as Miller had in the first book. Prax loses everything, all his life’s work, and becomes a desperate man that only lives to find a lost girl - his own daughter. Some might say he’s the reverse Jules-Pierre Mao, which is also true, but more than that, he’s the second Miller. He’s even got an ex-wife! In general, Caliban’s War shares so many similarities in plot structure that it often feels like a repeat of Leviathan Wakes. Prax however got a much happier ending than Miller did, a second chance at life. He saved his girl from protomolecule and can rebuild what he lost.

The last way Miller (and Julie too) is still in the story is through Venus. Avasarala is closely monitoring the situation over there and protomolecule being active and building something on the planet reminds us too of the detective. It’s a less obvious connection, but it is there.

In conclusion, from start to finish, the book doesn’t let us forget about a dead character and then brings him back in the very last scene. I admit that was a brilliant way to end it. Julie Mao similarly is not forgotten, she’s mentioned every time her father appears. Mei is obviously the new Julie in this book. Julie’s beloved ship, the Razorback, is crucial to bring Avasarala and Bobbie to the Roci crew and then in the final battle.

Miller and Julie are the great absent ones in the book because the heart of the story is the protomolecule. Avasarala even comments on it in her frustration that the Mars-Earth conflict is just people distracting themselves from what’s really terrifying them - Venus. Just doing what they always did, what they know, so they can ignore the terrible unknown danger they can’t do anything about. When the vomit zombies showed up again, I literally thought: “A-ha! We’re back on track!” That’s because that’s the main story. And the first third of the book was the farthest thing from it. It wasn’t all bad, there were many highlights (Holden-Amos relationship gives me life, others had great moments too) but as a whole they were focused on the personal trauma and pain of the main characters while the plot was slower and put to the side as the characters struggled like fish out of water. The confusion of what was going on and the lack of the perspective on the big picture made it annoying for me to read, not to mention some redundant parts which the show very rightly cut, changed or streamlined. However, it’s fascinating to compare and contrast how the book’s beginning was edited and improved on the show. Besides, I personally think that the book’s focus on Prax and Bobbie’s inner lives and PTSD was very good for their characterizations. For me, Prax was the MVP of the book and I like him better than show Prax, and it wouldn’t be possible without that part when he loses it and gets into a fist fight with Katoa’s dad or when he accidentally starts a shoot-out because he undid the safety on the gun like in the movies.

#the expanse #caliban's war #joe miller #james holden #praxidike meng #julie mao #bobbie draper #my meta

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angelicorn · 4 years

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FFVII Remake Analysis Chapter 1 (1/2)

My sister was introduced to FFVII via my gameplay and reacted to it with fresh eyes which I’ve written down and posted to tumblr up to chapter 5–which I will continue posting some time in the future (I finished the game, but have looked towards another project in place of the reactions) The past couple weeks, she’s been playing the game while we stop every so often to dissect and analyze the mediums used in this game for story telling purpose. We analyze the music, blank/negative spaces, lighting, camera angles and shots, the introduction of characters, using characters to reveal information/reveal to us the lack of info the players know, etc.

Everyone is free to their own opinions. We just wanted to share our thoughts and understanding of the story and its characters through the use of rhetorical appeals found in the game that push towards a common narrative that all players of this game can agree on—what FFVII’s story is about. We are free to our own interpretations and preferences. The plot devices and rhetoric strategies used in this game are there for specific reasons and this is our (me and my sister’s) take on that. We hope you enjoy this lengthy analysis.

Spoilers, for those who have not yet played the game.

When you begin the new game, you’re introduced to dry and barren land. The first sign of life we see is a bird flying across the sky and towards a bleak looking city. The scenery is washed out with hues of gray, black, etc.—the city is filled with people in contrast to the rocky terrain we saw prior, but it still seems dry and barren in a different sense. The flowers aren’t even growing. A reflection of a washed out greenish light reflects in the eyes of a child playing at a park and it’s coming out of something steel and man-made. It doesn’t look welcoming—it looks ominous. The brooding music and the way this pale light doesn’t illuminate everything around it, but rather makes everything else in comparison, darker, tells us so.

The scenes fades to black and we are next shown a mysterious nameless girl who is perched in front of a pipe(?) with the same glow that we saw coming from the reactor in the last scene. She opens her eyes and the camera cuts to a side view of her. We don’t see her expression, but we see the green glow of the pipes flicker almost as if it’s conversing with her. We see a yellow flower and it’s a a call back to the dead flower growing by the curb in the earlier scenes. It makes us question whether the green glow is something that’s alive and not meant to be harvested to an extent that the flowers are dying. She stands up and looks away from the screen into something unknown to the viewers. We’re further intrigued. Maybe she isn’t meant to be near the green glow? We don’t yet know.

She walks out into the street and bumps into someone who doesn’t even apologize or excuse himself. She drops a few of her flowers. A woman glances at her but no one helps this girl. A man even tramples on one of her flowers. We don’t see her face, but she picks it up with two hands—she’s carrying it like it’s something precious to her. Yes—this steel city is empty of greenery similarly to the way most people depicted are empty of compassion towards life (the environment)

She looks towards the sky and we are left with a lot of questions as to what she is to this story we are embarking on. The camera pans out to a large city enclosed within walls and divided into sections like a pizza—a telltale sign of a society being controlled by a higher power/hierarchy. The sound of drums, wind instruments and the brass instruments gradually become louder and louder until a streak of pale green light shoots across from the upper right corner and strikes the middle of the screen like a meteor. The logo appears to the sound of brass instruments and drums overpowering the score and this crescendo marks the beginning of an epic journey: Final Fantasy VII Remake.

The music gradually quiets down and we pan closer and closer into another section of the city with cuts of a moving train and a mysterious man with a large sword on his back perched on top of this train. We can’t help but wonder why he isn’t inside the train like a normal person and we‘re left to wonder if he’s trying to sneak in undetected. The train slows down to a stop in front of 2 grunts whose faces we can’t see. A closer look at the train—it doesn’t look like it’s meant for people to ride in. It looks like a heavy duty train that’s meant to transport things.

The grunts get their asses handed to them by three characters that are introduced. They’re wearing attire that’s a bit similar to each other so we get the feel that they’re acting as a 3-man unit/team. The camera pans to a big guy with shades and a metal cylinder arm. The guy looks intimidating and to be quite honest, sketchy. Is he supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy? We’ll have to play on to find out.

The three headbands wait for this big guy to give the signal and when he gives them the ok with a head nod, they nod in understanding and turn around to get to their destination.

“Get down here, merc.” The first line is spoken by this big guy whose name flashes on the screen as Barret.

We see the same man with the big sword riding atop the train from before as he back flips onto the scene and coolly looks up at the viewers in true protagonist/hero fashion and this is where we know without a doubt, we are definitely going to be playing as this mysterious, fellow. The striking eyes and spiky-hair tells us so (lol).

The story begins in the middle of all this action. We don’t know this guy’s name, why we’re working for Barret or what their objective even is yet, which leaves a unique way of storytelling by piecing information together. We rely on characters around us and our interactions with them to figure out just wtf is going on.

I wanted to note that the music is quick paced while the brass carries a low melody which, together, evokes a sense of urgency and covertness. We get an idea that perhaps we will be infiltrating this place. Also, the chapter of the title clues us in on what we’re doing. We’re destroying a reactor—a source of energy—which we can safely assume is that green stuff shooting out of that structure from the intro and that it is supplying this walled city with power/electricity.

The player has control of this character and, as Barret puts it, “you’re up” and made to engage in a battle with the same type of grunts as before, all in tutorial fashion. We learn that this man’s name is Cloud. We learn from the first few battles that Cloud is a cocky little shit swordsman based on his scripted dialogue between himself and the grunts. (The grunts warn him that they’ll shoot if he moves and he challenges them with the line, Go ahead.) Our first level up isn’t level 1, it’s level 7, and he already has a few abilities and a spell, plus different fighting modes, so we know he’s has some kind of fighting experience already.

Additionally, the fighting modes are called Operator mode and Punisher mode. These are words that evoke a lack of autonomy. Operator suggests that a person must do something to make a tool or system function properly. Cloud is a tool to make another tool work. Punisher suggests that a person is inflicting damage, pain, death, etc.towards people who have committed grave crimes/sins —someone who takes away someone else’s autonomy.

We learn more about our main man through the other characters. Jessie and Biggs’ conversation reveals his full name, Cloud Strife, and that he was a SOLDIER which is stylized in all caps in the subtitles showing us that it may be more than just a title or occupation in this game. Biggs describes him as a professional in comparison to the rest of them. Professional in what specifically? He was trained to fight, what with all the abilities and fighting styles he has at this point. That leaves us with the question: what is a SOLDIER exactly, and why isn’t he a SOLDIER anymore?

His interaction with Wedge tells a lot about his character and gives us insight as to what the situation is and what his relationship to them is. Wedge gives a thumbs up—no words from Wedge—yet Cloud is moved to say this is a one time “gig” emphasizing his role as a mercenary and he reiterates it by saying when the job is done, their connection between himself and their group will also end. From a storytelling standpoint, this interaction leads us to separate ourselves emotionally from the rest of the group. To Cloud—the player—this is just another day at work.

Jessie and Biggs continue to talk about the player character, but you cannot interact with them at this point. As you approach Barret, he pushes you aside to watch over Jessie and Biggs. We get a stronger impression that Barret is a team leader of some sort—one that doesn’t seem to approve of your presence. Does that have anything to do with being a former SOLDIER?

Cloud isn’t interested in what Wedge thinks. Cloud is aloof and kinda fuckin’ rude. We wonder what made him this way?

Barret warns Cloud that he’d better be worth the money. He doesn’t even call him by his name. He calls Cloud merc, which further puts emotional distance between the two.

The fact that the player is left behind to fight the baddies alone while the rest make their way forward creates a distance between them as well. Cloud is working for them—not with them. A job’s a job.

Cloud takes the elevator alone and enters an area where we see Wedge is left behind while the rest of the group tells you to hurry and to pick up the pace.

As the player, I personally was annoyed that they aren’t more appreciative. I can’t keep up with you guys bc I’m left behind doing all the fighting keeping all of you from harm. However—fighting is what’s expected of the player—that’s what we were hired to do, right? I’m just being salty bc my efforts aren’t being noticed the way I want. Here, I feel inferior.

If you choose to interact with Wedge before going further, he tells you he will secure an escape route, asks you to keep his friends safe, and not to worry about him. Cloud may not give two shits yet, but as the player, I’ve begun to form an emotional attachment to Wedge. This guy is so caring! Cloud’s cold personality does not sway him! HOW can I not like Wedge?

We join up with the others and Barret asks him for directions to get to some bridge above mako storage. He then goes on in an increasingly aggravated manner and asks Cloud if he’s still a “loyal little doggy”. We can draw several conclusions from from this dialogue.

1. Cloud was once affiliated with some kind of power/company/force in opposition to Barret & co.

2. We are made to believe that Cloud left this company some time before for reasons we do not yet know.

2. Cloud was hired to help them infiltrate a building belonging to this opposing entity.

3. Barret’s lack of trust in Cloud correlates to his former affiliation with the opposing entity.

4. Mako is a source that this opposing entity has in possession. This building is huge. They must have quite a lot of it.

We are left with several questions about this character we are playing.

1. What is his objective?

2. What are his morals?

3. Where does his loyalty lie?

We lack this information, but we do know that Barret does not fully trust him because he’s a former enemy. So, can we trust Cloud too? Is he credible? Is he speaking the truth? Should we believe what he says? What if he’s a double agent? We have to play on as this character to find out.

Cloud experiences some kind of headache at the mention of “loyal little doggy” and it feeds us the idea that maybe he’s negatively triggered by it because it reminds him of something traumatic. This may be a clue that explains the reason for his departure from SOLDIER.

Barret calls him a mutt and exclaims “we can do this with you or we can do this without you.”

Cloud recovers from his headache and responds calmly. “Different reactor, different layout, depends when it was built. Never seen one like this, but I’ll manage.”

Barret’s use of “we” and “you” followed by Cloud’s “I” creates more of a separation between them.

Biggs gets the door open, but not for long. Cloud enters first—alone—Barret reaches his hand forward and shouts “wait!” and Cloud is left to fight alone while the others are locked outside of the room. When the fighting is over, Jessie chirps happily as she enters the room and makes a flirtatious comment which Barret tries to quickly shut down (lol).

Jessie gets this new door to open with her knowledge of passcodes through a friend. No one else at command will talk to them, but they must make due.

Now we know that this small team is a part of a bigger force, however, there isn’t a sense of unity as the command won’t socialize with this team specifically. Why though?

Biggs tells Jessie to be careful to which she responds with a smile. Cute moment showing Biggs’ concern and Jessie’s optimism/confidence—traits that may help us to understand their motivations and nature’s little more in the upcoming chapters.

If you talk to Barret, the first thing he tells Cloud is to be ready for the increasing security. “We can’t afford any more mistakes.” And he includes Cloud in this “we” this time around. It’s a subtle way for Barret to say they are a team and they should be working together. It also subtly reveals Barret’s soft and caring side. Classic soft teddy bear in a grizzly bear’s skin. You care, Barret—and the players care about you too, regardless what Cloud says.

Before getting into the elevator, Jessie asks about someone named Tifa and though it isn’t any of her business, she wonders if she and Cloud are close which is italicized to give an important emphasis on their relationship. Here, Jessie separates herself from the relationship between Cloud and Tifa, yet her interest in their relationship plus the flirting and comments on Cloud’s appearance hints that she may be interested in him ins romantic sense.

We hear and see a new name and for new players to the FFVII franchise, it’s common for people to consciously try to connect that name to a character. Tifa...Tifa... who is she? Why is Jessie asking Cloud about her? Wait, was Tifa the one who hired Cloud? Oh, is she the pink girl we saw in the intro?

The flashback sequence is important because it affirms to us that the pink girl from the intro is not Tifa, but an entirely different character. It is also worth noting that before the flashback, Cloud looks away from Jessie and willingly tries to remember Tifa. This flashback juxtaposes the quick flash of memories and migrain he receives when Barret calls him a loyal doggy. Those memories cause him pain when he remembers even bits and parts of it. The memories with Tifa are...well, we don’t quite know what they are to him yet, but there’s a stark contrast between how Cloud reacts towards the two memories.

The flashback reveals a town that doesn’t look like the city streets of the intro. We are experiencing this flashback through Cloud’s eyes. He looks at this tower hears Tifa call his name, and there we see she is surrounded by other boys. His focus jumps back and forth between her back to her surroundings. He turns away and Tifa asks if he is ignoring her. He focuses on her displeased face again and that is the last thing we see before the flashback ends—everything else in the background gets washed out with a pale green hue except for Tifa’s face. A hue of red is the only vibrant color left, and it’s centered on her face—we cut back to Cloud, and I don’t know if this the lighting effect was intended, but the red color on Cloud’s face is emphasized against a washed out background for a brief moment as well before the pale green hues face back into the regular color scheme. We also here what sounds like a heartbeat within the sharp static sounds? And so what are we left to think about this scene?

The music, mostly string instruments are played in a minor key that evoke mystery, nostalgia, and a sense of meekness. Tifa is the only one waving to him while the other boys rarely move an inch.

In the English version, he lifts his right hand with his palm open, a gentle gesture, and says “Tifa and I...” before he’s interrupted with the elevator buzzer.

We’re left with a sense that Tifa is someone from his childhood—a cute girl who is evidently popular among the other kids. The flashback initially leads us to think he wasn’t interested in being her friend as a child or that he was too shy/felt too inferior to all the boys hanging around her to accept her invitation...? The focus on Tifa’s face in his flashback, the redness in his face, followed by the subtle heart beat hints at a crush and that perhaps he may have been jealous/inferior to the other boys around her—thus, his hesitation when trying to explain his relationship with Tifa to Jessie.

An interesting fact that I noticed outside of my sister’s play through and discussions, the Japanese version has Cloud saying “oretachi” to refer to himself and Tifa. I looked into it, and basically—he’s trying to make himself seem more masculine and confident while also revealing that the relationship between he and Tifa is informal—implying that they are close.

It also shows subtle feelings of inferiority. He had to refer to himself like that to establish his masculinity right after a flashback with Tifa being surrounded by other boys. Way to be subtle about his feelings!

The English version, while less obvious, hints at his crush on Tifa in a different sense. The way he says “Tifa and I...” is a little less deep than how he usually speaks. Vocalization, hand gestures, facial expressions, music, and lighting and colorization in this short scene reveal a lot about Cloud’s feelings. His shyness in remembering this flashback reveal something tender in relation to this friend of his.

Just a fun fact that I personally wanted to share. For the sake of this analysis however, I won’t be talking about the Japanese dialogue and will only be referring to the English localization from this point on. Just wanted to share this info as it blatantly points towards Cloud’s characterization so early on in the story.in comparison to the English version.

Also note: the distance between Jessie and Cloud before the flashback and after. Jessie inches closer to Cloud and is the active participant in trying to close the distance between them, while Cloud stands still—a reflection of Cloud’s characterization and his relationship to others at this point. He’s seems to be socially stunted. While everyone else is trying to get closer to him, he’s emotionally and mentally not ready to make that connection.

There is so much to dissect in every chapter, but I’ve reached the image attachment limit and will continue this another time with screenshots attached as I believe it’s important to examine visual mediums while also providing images that are being examined in an analysis.

So... to be continued in another post... stay tuned.

#ff7r spoilers #FF7 Remake #analysis #trying to be unbiased #but there's def hints of cloti is you squint #not trying to play favorites here #but the narrative does point at cloud having some kind of feeling for a certain friend within the first few minutes of the game #aerith and cloud will have a relationship analysis in a later chapter analysis no worries...#cloti

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illegiblewords · 5 years

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Illegible FFXIV Story Status - UPDATED

I actually have a few stories finished, going, or in the wings at the moment for FFXIV! And people seem to like them which is very exciting and cool since it’s been a while since I was in an active fandom like this!

Normally I don’t do this kind of post but frankly I know what it’s like as a reader to be in that fidgety “WHEN ARE YOU DOING X” state haha, and I want to be considerate of that.

So I’m going to actually make a progress list this time. Also just a collection of stuff in case people are curious.

COMPLETE

From Umbra: This is the backstory for my main Warrior of Light, Cenric Asher. I essentially did a deep dive into lore for Thanalan, Ul’dah, and Nald’Thal because I love all of them to pieces and wanted to combine them to create a character who truly felt shaped by the environment. Cenric is probably delusional and thinks he’s the son of a god but most likely just has some Duskwight lineage and really bad luck.

Posturing: First story in a series of Emet-Selch/Female!Warrior of Light stories called Brief Our Moments, I literally wrote this as a personal challenge to see if I could do something romantic with an ambiguous WoL. It’s fluffy and has some humor. Warrior of Light is unnamed and only confirmed elezen so technically people can imagine their own Warrior if they feel like it. If you stop at this point in the series, The Dying Gasp has a kind of sweet undertone because the Warrior and Emet-Selch both get shown as sharing small kindnesses when they can get away with it.

Stillborn: Second story in a series of Emet-Selch/Female!Warrior of Light stories called Brief Our Moments, this is a continuation of my personal shipping challenge where I more or less went “okay but what would it take to get a kiss scene while being canon-compliant?” and discovered that the answer was angst. Can technically be read without Posturing but I wrote it with that story in-mind. Same deal on ambiguous Warrior of Light. If you stop at this point in the series The Dying Gasp is still bittersweet as per canon.

The Immortal Wound: Third story in a series of Emet-Selch/Female!Warrior of Light stories called Brief Our Moments, this the third part of my personal shipping challenge where I was all “m’kay so I know the price of a kiss what would it take to get a sex scene” and the answer was “blood sacrifice”. Very very angsty but also very very romance-y. Same deal as the previous two fics, you can technically read it all alone but I wrote it as a continuation. You can pretty much bypass The Dying Gasp with this one.

Stalemate: ANOTHER PERSONAL CHALLENGE SHIPFIC! I am a simple and easily distracted writer who occasionally needs to pause in outlining to tell more stories. This came into being for two reasons. 1) I saw someone say they wanted Warrior/Lahabrea shipfic and that’s something I’m perfectly happy to deliver 2) I saw another person lament the lack of M/M shipfics involving the Warrior of Light. I basically treat all the Ascians as bisexual anyway, so decided for Lahabrea I’d go with M/M. This is not a direct sequel to Eclipse but it is very much a spiritual successor in the sense that Eclipse can lend some context to the state Lahabrea is in here. Premise is that it’s not long after Haurchefant’s death and the Warrior of Light is both grieving and furious. Lahabrea, having not faced him since the Praetorium, takes advantage of this and antagonizes Hydaelyn’s chosen. Angst/Romance here, Warrior is unnamed but a midlander Dark Knight.

Appetite: I made a Vauthry fic for the 30 day prompt challenge. This was for “voracious” and it has cannibalism! Straight up horror story, I went stylistically trippy and played off some fun theories I saw with certain family dynamics.

Snuff: Another 30 day prompt challenge story, this one is basically a humor study on Lahabrea while he was infiltrating the Scions in Thancred’s body. He needs to go to bed. Tataru tries to tell him this and he ignores her. No one ignores Tataru and gets away with it.

Parched: And another 30 day prompt challenge fic, focusing on the Unsundered but mainly Elidibus. Humor, friendship, and bittersweetness here, basically none of them are functional people but the way Elidibus is non-functional is more subtle than the other two. Emet-Selch and Lahabrea conspire to get him smashed as a way to help with this. Pianos are involved.

Eclipse: Technically was also a 30 day prompt challenge fic. This one is from Nabriales’ point of view for the most part and explores his resentment and jealousy of the Unsundered as well as his specific animosity toward Lahabrea. It does not end well for Lahabrea. Angst and gen.

IN PROGRESS

Memento Mori: This is not online but I mentioned that I would be doing a sequel to The Immortal Wound and this is it! It is going to be very very big and AU and frankly the way I’m setting it up theoretically will allow me to adapt and keep weaving elements in as patch cycles progress. I have a lot of it mapped out already and did start the first chapter but I want to adjust certain bits in light of patch 5.1. I have some idea how I want it to end, but how will I get there? No idea. At this point I am caving and will be explicitly using my Warrior of Light Nivienne Leclair because 1) it is really difficult to keep he said/she said sounding clear and interesting even in shorter stories, let alone the monster this is bound to be 2) I have some fun references I want to make to the stories of Merlin and Nimue 3) at a certain point in a relationship you need to share backstories in explicit detail lol. So the last part (I think) for Brief Our Moments touches on the value of life as something fleeting and fragile.

Somnus: Elidibus-centric, this is essentially me slamming my hands on the table in a figurative sense and going “LET ME TELL YOU MY FEELINGS ABOUT DAD!ELIDIBUS.” It examines Elidibus’ dynamic with Unukalhai as well as the other two Unsundered, does a lot of backstory speculation, and explores difficulties all three of the Unsundered have with sleeping after the Terminus event. Technically Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, and kind of Family I guess? Worth noting that I’ve edited the bit that’s up since first posting in accordance with further information on canon. It’s probably AU anyway but oh well. I know more or less all the steps in this story, just have a bit of adjusting to account for my newer character interpretations. Plan to alternate it with Memento Mori.

Untitled Fem!WoL/Emet-Selch Shipfic Oneshot #1: Currently in cooldown mode from a medium-sized story, I put out requests for shipfic clichés as a fun scenario and got a request for Fem!WoL/Emet-Selch courtesy of @nipuni! I don’t know that I can do all of them given I wanna pop back to Memento Mori but two I think I can pull off haha.

Untitled Fem!WoL/Emet-Selch Shipfic Oneshot #2: Same deal as above lol, idk that I can do all of the prompts but two is pretty fair I think so gonna hit two!

Untitled Male!WoL/Lahabrea Shipfic Oneshot Sequel: This is an uncertain timing thing for me, basically I am a sucker for more optimistic endings when I can take them. If I can pull off a moderately small and optional goodish-end with the Dark Knight WoL from Stalemate, I don’t mind at all. And I do know how I’d do it. In case you haven’t noticed my impulse control is terrible and I have too many ideas for things.

Untitled Lahabrea/Emet-Selch Oneshot: Lmao this is literally “challenge accepted” for @strangefellows on an unambiguous, non-love triangle shipfic. Again, my impulse control is terrible. But I can totally do a oneshot for them.

Dead Language: Emet-Selch focused but follows the three Unsundered in the immediate aftermath of Terminus. I started this pretty early after Shadowbringers came out. At the time I knew where it was going, now I don’t and I might want to make a bunch of edits or even redo it depending. I still like bits of it, like the idea of Lahabrea obsessively reviewing his notes before summoning Zodiark so he doesn’t have to think about what’s going on around him.

With Good Intentions: A friendship fic, I decided to look at how Cenric specifically would relate to Emet-Selch because it stood out in an interesting way to me. It mostly has a bit of banter but I do have a planned direction and ending in mind that plays off the idea of conditional trust. Continues an idea I have with Cenric that he gets closest to people who treat him like he’s just a person, versus Warrior of Light.

Basically a good chunk of what I do is me going challenge accepted though lol. I honestly really love experimenting, and the whole “take X prompt and see what you can pull off” premise too. Right now I think I need to focus on what’s on my plate, but in-general I’m pretty happy to do requests!

#final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #Shadowbringers #ffxiv #ff14 #also this is part of why i am so slow with reading lol #i am working and responsibilities and vidja games and writing a bunch #and i have the attention span of a goldfish

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sugarmoonwitch · 5 years

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SEPTEMBER 2019 TAROTSCOPES

hey there! it’s time for some t-t-t-t-t-tarotscoooopes! if you want to get these types of posts quicker, I highly suggest following me over on Instagram or Twitter!

now, check your sun sign & your mars sign! keep reading for 5-card pulls + pictures + breakdowns~

ARIES

Big change is coming your way. In your heart, you are welcoming it. However, your actions don't reflect this. You've been so down on yourself; questioning your abilities, your value. This is keeping you from taking the necessary steps to ignite this incoming transformation. If you pay close attention to what's going on around you, you'll see that you've been overlooking things in different areas of your life. If you address these, as well as work on being more appreciative toward yourself, the coming change will happen gracefully & bring you a fresh start.

TAURUS

You need to get a grip on your finances. For real. You may think an indulgence here & there won't hurt because you're typically frugal; but these little treats add up. Take control of this situation & you will reach a happy medium again. However, just because things are stable again doesn't mean they will remain that way. You owe it to yourself to keep your newfound stability. Once this is out of the way, you can hone in on your goals. The Knight of Swords gives you the speed & drive you need to pursue, and the Ace reveals your success. Stay diligent & everything will fall into place.

GEMINI

You've been on quite the journey lately. Lady Luck is *finally* looking your way. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed. Your strong will & studious state have proven to be fruitful. While you were busy working on yourself & your goals, however, you've become disconnected from others; this is indicated not only by the Three of Pentacles but the Three of Cups as well. If you've been in Hermit mode, it's time to pull yourself out of that cave & nourish your social self. Get out of the house! Spend time with friends! Reconnect with the social butterfly that you are.

CANCER

September might be a little rough for you. There's a looming sense of failure...but it can be avoided if the right actions are made. The Queen of Wands is here to encourage you to stay determined in your pursuit of happiness. Things to work on are: taking your time, thinking carefully before you speak or act, & allowing yourself to indulge in simple pleasures. You've been antsy to meet your goals, causing you to behave hastily, leading to mistakes or even failure. This has got you discouraged. Your routine has become rigid & flavorless to avoid another incident like this, but it's not benefiting you. While it's important to be responsible, you must allow yourself some fun, as well as some risk taking. Don't let past failure cause you to lose sight of what's important, because that is how you will fail again.

LEO

So, there's some issues here. You've lost your way--not for lack of passion, but it's sort of an "all talk, no action" sort of thing. You're not putting in 100% of your energy, so you're not seeing results. Because you aren't seeing results, you're turning your focus to other things (most likely material) in favor of instant gratification. Your luck hasn't been great lately so that isn't helping you either. There won't be a divine intervention to light a fire under your ass this month. You have to do it for yourself. Hone in on your vision. Accept that anything worth working for will require patience.

VIRGO

Things are finally moving along for you. It's taken a lot to get to the starting line, but you made it. Unfortunately, there's a fair share of hurdles coming your way. It's very possible they'll be so big & impactful that they'll throw you off course. There's issues of bad luck, heartache, depression, & getting ahead of yourself. However, being logic-driven can be your saving grace here. When you feel yourself spiraling, stop yourself just a moment to analyze your feelings. Be straight-forward with yourself about the reality of the situation; don't allow yourself to dramatize it. By looking at your problems through a lens of logic, you can maintain levelheadedness. This will give you the clear mind you need to get over these hurdles.

LIBRA

A refusal to change your ways. That's the message I'm getting here. You're not seeing results, which has you feeling hopeless & depressed. Something about what you're doing or how you're doing it needs to change. Open yourself up to the opportunities that present themselves to you this month, even if you don't think they're truly meant for you. Avoid conflict this month as well as a means to keep all avenues for opportunities open. You're stifling your own growth by being so stiff & set in your patterns and routines. Try something new.

SCORPIO

You've been at a crossroads for quite a while. You feel so unsure, like there is no right choice. It's a matter of leaving something behind or holding onto it, hoping it will get better. The way you must make this choice is by listening to your intuition. This requires quiet meditation & deep thought. Use your inner-knowing to make the right choice for *you.* In your career during the month of September, you might find yourself feeling stagnant or frustrated. This is because you've been working diligently toward success, but have yet to see any rewards. You must have more patience; with the process, with yourself. Good things take time. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

SAGITTARIUS

You've got BIG TIME AMBITIONS!! They've been taking a lot out of you. If they haven't already, they're going to require both sacrifice & self-reflection. Your passion for the grind is so commendable, but you are leaving yourself at the wayside. This month, take some time to nurture yourself & your relationships. I promise, this time you're taking away from working is not a waste--ensuring that you're happy & healthy is a surefire way to accomplish your goals quicker. If you take time to stop & smell the roses, new connections will find their way to you.

CAPRICORN

This pull is so thematically interesting. ANYWAY! So I can see you've recently recovered from a betrayal...*mentally*. And only partly. For the most part, you've restored order to your life. Gained some independence back. You're mentally prepared to do what it takes to bring that order & independence into reality. This month, you need to focus on *the doing.* You can't just expect it to fall into your lap--you've got to work for it. You're less than motivated to take action, but you still expect change. That's not how this works, dear. Light a fire under you. During September, make concrete goals & affirmations, declare them, and let them go as you go about your days doing your due diligence to make them into reality. You got this.

AQUARIUS

You're refusing to let go of something, but for once, this is a good thing!! This is the right choice for you & you know it. The combination of knowing what you want with the passion you have has you truly ready for anything. September will bring you love & success as you continue to live your truth & come closer to your greatest & highest good. It's smooth sailing this month.

PISCES

There's a broken relationship here, but desire to reconcile for both people involved. I think this relationship has a history of being rather bumpy, but this time is different. You both are willing to put in the hard work to heal old wounds & forge a new future together. It's not going to be easy, but you're ready for it. Motivated to make plans together, to stay together. Harmony will come, just give it time. Eventually, it will be effortless.

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huntsman-ash · 5 years

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CAMO: Fall

(Apparently, it was asked for. And so, here it is. Be warned, this is violent and bloody.)

“Where the hell are you going? STAND AND FIGHT, DAMN YOU!”

Normally, Ash Vulcan’s “soldier voice” could be heard over damn near anything. He was the loudest member of his team, making up for inexperience and minor lack of self-esteem by speaking the loudest and the most aggressively.

For once, even he was drowned out. The sounds of unadulterated panic covered everything else.

Alone against the surging tide of Huntsman academy students, random tourists, off-duty personnel, and Atlas soldiers, the Hunter-Killer stood, facing the opposite direction the horde surged. A rock of solidarity and rage in a river of fear and dispair.

Ash’s anger only grew deeper as, instead of slowing and beginning to abate, the flow of fleeing humanity simply INCREASED. More students surged past, ignoring him, or simply bouncing off his shoulders.

Damn these cowards! Damn Vale and its soft training! This habitable weather and natrual boundaries had always made its people weak...this was just another case in point!

His hand shot out, grabbing a fleeing person at random; a human, a blond girl, her eyes wide and tear-streaked. A Huntress from the look of her clothes, Beacon atendee.

“Where’s your weapon Huntress? Why aren’t you doing your job?!” Ash’s voice snarled, spittle erupting from his lips in a spray that would have made his Drill Instructor shed a manly tear.

The girl, of course, did not answer, merely pushed herself free of him, tripped, rolled, and scrambled back to her feet to continue her headlong flight towards the ships at the edge of Amity Arena’s docking ring.

A rat. Fleeing a sinking ship.

“Pathetic. All of you. PATHETIC!” Unlike them, Ash was armed. All Hunter-Killers were. Standard orders. Now he drew his weapon, the firing rails of his coilgun Stone Wind snapping open with metallic clicks and sending surges of energy through the magnets within them.

It was obvious to Ash that there was no point staying here. There would be no glorious rally, no wave of humanity rising to face the Grimm. This attack had caught them entirely by surprise, and instead of manning up like people of Atlas would have done, grabbing whatever was on hand to slay their foes, they instead turned and ran for safety.

Imagined safety. Even as he thought this, the sky outside suddenly brightened, and a wave of read spilled across the star-streaked expanse. An airship, civilian, trailing flames as it plummeted downwards, Griffons smashing into its body and cockpit.

No. It was time to stand and FIGHT. But he needed something TO fight, and he wasn’t going to find one here...not when there were so many people around.

He needed his team. Coilgun gripped in one hand, his other pressed to the vox-bead screwed into his ear, Ash set off, glowering.

“2 to Lead, 2 to Lead. Come in, Lead, over.”

He ducked through an empty exit door leading back into the center of the stadium, figuring to use the mid-level passages that carved under and through the stadiums rows of seats. With luck those would be clear, all of the otherwise blocking cowards now crowding out the docking rings instead.

And, if he was lucky, there was a Grimm or two still in the center that he could kill. It would not do to stow his weapon unbloodied.

The vox-bead chirped and connected him to his team leader. Through it, Ash heard the distinct sound of a pitched firefight with the Creatures.

“Lead. SITREP, Vulcan.”

Ahh, bland and simple as always, Chrys...Ash couldn’t help but smile. Nothing phased his CO. Not ambushes, not punishment duties, and CERTAINLY not gigantic Grimm attacks backed up by White Fang members.

“Disengaged from an attempted rally of the plebs, boss.” He reported, pausing to vault over the edge of one of the viewing balconies to get to the lower level of the stadium. There was, frustratingly, no sign of any Grimm inside the stadium; at least, none living. The floor showed signs of impact (probably that Nevermore that had busted through the energy shield on the roof), and there was trash everywhere. His boot collided with something and sent it flinging off into the corner; an oddly shaped sword, green and trailing a severed wire.

“No response?” Chrys did not sound surprised. But then, he never sounded like ANYTHING. His voice, inevitably, was bland, dead. Logical. When you lost that much of your body to being eaten by a Nevermore...

“Nothing. We’re on our own here.”

“As it should be. Sending our coordinates now. Link up.”

“Yes sir.”

Chrys cut the connection and Ash was running once more, out across the empty stadium floor and into the doors that lead into the readying rooms for the festival contestants. A check to his TACPAD showed where he needed to go. The other side of the Arena, the northward docking ring. Three dots pulsed there; the rest of his team.

And, with luck, a fight.

The doors leading out were closed. A moment later, Ash’s boot fixed that, sending them banging off the walls as he rushed on through. From the look of the map, his path was a straight one.

As he readied to rush down it, he heard something behind him; the soft flap of wings, and the scrabbling of talons on metal. Half turning, not pausing, he glanced up.

Oh...MAGNIFICENT!

A Nevermore, medium sized, had settled itself down on the edge of the roof. It had noticed him and was sizing him up slightly, wondering if one human alone was worth the fight.

“Mantle Endures.” Ash muttered, stopping fully, turning and squeezing down hard on the trigger to Stone Wind.

There was a soft whirr as power built, then a noise like a dozen glass windows being smashed through by a church bell followed by a blinding flash of blue, dancing light streaming out from the open gap between Stone Wind’s rails. A line of sparks connected the end of the weapon and the Grimm for a moment, then vanished. The Nevermore flinched, then screeched in pain as the hypersonic “bolt” round that had just entered through its soft lower beak detonated, spewing a Dust/thermite/phosphorous mixture undergoing an exothermic reaction of well over 1500 Kelvin started to eat its way through whatever passed for a brain and nerves. It keeled over, not quite dead, but seconds away.

Ash fired again, just to speed it on its way, and his second shot literally blew its skull open. Black smoke surged out and the body began to fade.

Ash was already turning and walking, grinning to himself and drawing a small knife from the inside of his jacket sleeve to slash a mark onto the side of his weapon.

“One more down for the cause.”

And from the sounds of it, there were more up ahead; through the tunnel he could hear excessive gunfire, the distinctive noises of his team’s weapons.

“Save some for me, dammit!” His feet smashed into the metal of the deck plating, legs hammering as he sprinted forward, desperate not to get left behind in the glorious combat. One more set of doors barred his way, the mirror exit door to the one he had entered into the arena through, and his shoulder met it as he neared, bashing through with a sound of straining metal and flying pins.

On the other side; glorious combat, the kind not seen on Remnant since the Great War. Ash was struck dumb for a long moment, soaking in the aura of it all. His team, three Hunter-Killers strong, did as their kind has always done; hunted, killed, won.

Their foes were a flock of Griffons, backed up (oddly) by what looked like a quartet of malfunctioning Atlasian Knight security robots. Shocker their, Schnee tech was pathetic. All Atlas tech was pathetic. ATLAS was pathetic. Those four latter combatants suddenly ceased to be a problem as a screaming, fading Griffon was suddenly launched into them with enough force to take all four of them and itself through the security barrier on the dock ring edge and down, down down to Vale far below.

“You started without me! You know I hate it when you start without me!”

None of the rest of Fireteam CAMO, Chrys Anthym, Mark Black, and Olivia Drabe, made note of Ash’s outburst. All were too busy fighting to comment.

Not needing to be told, Ash joined them.

The violence reached a pitch that would have had the priests of the War-Cult of Mantle singing praises till their lungs burst and they collapsed from exhaustion. CAMO moved as a singular unit, operating under the connecting “Khala” web of Chrys’s electrostatic field, their movements linked subtly to each other through their commanding officer.

Chrys lead from the front, throwing bolts of lightning from his bare hand and firing with his handgun with the other, pausing only to grasp any Grimm that got too close and literally rip every volt of electrical energy that may be in its body, leaving behind a fading husk.

To his side, Mark covered them all, rifle set in marksman mode and extended magazine connected to his backpack. Headshot after headshot felled any Grimm beyond the reach of the rest of CAMO and kept those interested in sneaking up on them far away.

And Olivia was having the time of her life, a huge smile plastered across her face, green light surging through her tattoos as she grappled with Grimm four or five times her size and punched them to death with single blows, or tore off limbs and forced them into new holes she made through sheer brute force. Some of the smaller foes she simply hurled straight over the side, or back into their allies.

A swirling maelstrom of violence and death surrounded the Hunter-Killers, and Ash had to pause for a single precious second to wipe his eyes at the sheer beauty of it.

“If only Marasco could see us now!” He said, voice choked with emotion.

“Pontificate later, KILL GRIMM NOW!” Olivia shouted, crushing a Beowulf’s head with her boot and carving a foot-deep crater under it.

Well, how could he say no to that? Taking firing position next to Mark, Ash picked his targets and fired. He saved his bolt shells for the bigger foes; the smaller ones he felled with normal Aura-boosted ammunition and Mantle standard “Impaler” spike rounds, depending on how close they were.

Within a minute of his arrival, the swarm of Grimm that had been so keen in picking off this isolated group of humans realized they had bitten off more than they could chew, and flapped, ran, or scampered away towards more promising targets, leaving a few wounded Creatures behind. None of these lasted long; most were simply executed with headshots, but Olivia literally tore the head off the last Creep and tossed it aside, disappointed.

“What...thats it? Man, and I was just getting warmed up!” Her weapon was still slung over her shoulder; she had seen no reason to weild it.

Mark and Ash rose from their crouches, fresh magazines sliding into wells in almost perfect unison.

“Where to now, boss?” The faunus asked, glancing over at Chrys with hooded eyes. CAMOs leader looked as serene and quiet as he always did. His face didn’t really have the ability to show emotion any more.

“To the next fight.” Was all he said. Fresh grins split the faces of the rest of the team.

“Lots of stuff to kill out here. Talk about a target rich enviroment.” Olivia was looking out over the hole she had made with the Grimm and the four AKs, seeing the absolute hellstorm that the perfect, peaceful kingdom of Vale had descended into.

Ash joined her and smiled even wider.

“Who would have thought that Marasco’s dream would still happen, just 80 years later?” He noted. Mark snorted.

“Ain’t nothing human about this. Its just the Grimm, as always.”

“You heard that broadcast. The random slut said this was planned.” Olivia smacked her fists together as she thought. “I hope she’s still here, Im going to pull her ovaries out through her vagina!”

“Assuming she’s still alive. Priorities, CAMO.” Chrys pulled all of their attention back to him again as he glanced off into space aimlessly. Light flashed behind his cybornetic eyes as he accessed hundreds of gigabytes of data in seconds, getting a tactical picture of the battle within moments.

There.

“I have our new position; it seems the White Fang has joined in this fight as well. Bullheads controlled by them are deploying Grimm across the entire city.”

Wait...what?

“Run that past me again, boss? Did you say Grimm in DROPSHIPS?”

“Affirmative. No logical explanation available at this time. Most likely reasoning is desperation. Their landing site has been located. We will go and destroy it.”

Out of the fire, into the frying pan. One mission ends, another begins.

And Oum, how they loved it so.

“Lets kill some faunus.” Ash growled, shifting Stone Wind from its railgun form to its melee chainsword. Mark just glared at him for a moment before turning to Chrys.

“Yeah...so how are we getting down there?” he asked, looking once more over the edge of the stadium. This side of it was deserted; a trail of civilian and Hunter bodies leading to a crushed airship explained part of the reason for it.

Suckers, Ash thought. Unfortunately it also mean there was no way off for CAMO.

“Most of Atlas’s air support is currently tied up dealing with the situation and attempting to stop the Bullheads.” Chrys explained. “There has also been reports of one of the combat ships overhead initiating a blue on blue attack on the rest. Estimates indicate a 87.830574% likelihood that it is related to the prisoner aboard it, Roman Torchwick. Once we are done with clearing the landing zone, that will be our next target. We will have to improvise.”

He turned towards his team.

“Security footage from the upper levels of the arena indicate that there are four White Fang controlled Bullheads setting down on the loading bay level on the opposite side. Most likely they are headed for the Dust reactors and repulsor systems. We will steal one and use it to reach the landing zone.”

As with all of their breifings, there was no explanation; Chrys gave the orders and CAMO carried it out.

Ash didn’t mind it one bit. Even before Chrys was fully finished speaking, the team was stowing their weapons and securing anything they couldn’t rightfully leave behind. By the time their leader finished, they had formed up into a diamond wedge and followed him up and out.

Their passage was not a peaceful one, but none of the team would have wanted it too be. Ground Grimm prowled the abandoned halls of the Arena. All that crossed their paths with CAMOs ceased to exist moments later.

Harder targets appeared as they neared the lower decks; patrols of White Fang members. None important; merely masked grunts, armed with various stolen firearms. The amount of AK rifles in their hands surprised Ash. Surely ALL of the Knights in Vale hadn’t gone crazy...had they?

His chances to ponder the fate of the toy soldiers Schnee had built was limited. The White Fang was not here to set up house, they had a mission, and the Hunter-Killers were a threat to that, as the Fang was a threat to the Hunter-Killers. Conflict was inevitable, and when it happened, it was the stuff of nightmares.

Hunter-Killers, first and foremost, were made for one job; killing humans. They were the blade of Remnant, the scalpel that cut loose dead and diseased humans from the body of the whole. They did not fight flashy, or with the indivduality that many Huntsmen showed. They just fought, and they killed.

The first patrol to run into CAMO didn’t even get a shot off; they were three faunus to four Hunter-Killers and the HKs were upon them in seconds. No time for aura to activate, no time even for warnings.

Their leader died screaming as a million volts surged through his gun into his nerves. His two subordinates were riddled with bullets and fell with sprays of blood, the one Ash had fired upon practically torn in half. CAMO didn’t even stop, Olivia’s boot shattering the arm of one of the corpses as they surged onwards, every other footfall after it making a loud “squelch” noise as she ran.

The second group proved more robust; they were engaged in either stealing or sabotaging something on one of the large generators that powered the entire arena, and they had a bear faunus with them too. With no room to maneuver, and very little cover, both sides descended almost instantly into a melee.

Ash lost track of his team as they fought, each soldier standing their own against two or three White Fang members and maintaining the upper hand. The two that came for Ash were weedy, technicians perhaps. Rabbit faunus and some kind of lizard, scales across his arms and sharp claws where his fingernails should be. These reached out for Ash, searching for his neck or his face to rip and tear, and he ducked back, raising his chainsword. Flesh met osmium-tipped blades in a shriek of aura on metal. Metal won out; the lizard screamed in pain and horror as the teeth of the weapon ripped through his limbs and removed both hands in one go. Effectively disarmed, Ash swung down, teeth ripping once more into flesh and effectively severing the ribcage of his opponent. With a savage kick the Hunter-Killer sent his victim flying into his fellow in a cloud of blood and the steaming slimy coils of his own entrails. Turning for more fighting, Ash realized he’d been too slow once again; there rest of the group was down. Faunus bodies littered the deck, sundered in half a dozen ways, not a single one intact.

“Closed casket funerals for these poor sods.” Mark noted, wiping blood off his face. His kill steamed at his feet, a head-sized hole blasted in her torso from a point-blank anti-tank caliber round.

“They ain’t getting any funerals but a pyre.” Olivia was busy wiping blood off her hands. Her target was literally unrecognizable; what had once been a humanoid shape was a mangle of limbs and blood, literally torn apart by her force.

The important thing was that all of CAMO was standing, and that their way to a dropship was clear. The Bullhead the two squads they had just slaughtered rode in on sat on the landing pan outside, engines still turning over slightly.

“CAMO; we ride.” Chrys intoned, and as one the Hunter-Killers made for the dropship. No one was aboard; not even a pilot. He must have gone out with his teammates to ensure the mission succeeded and now lay among his allies in the Final Repose.

Chrys, unsurprisingly, was versed in dropship operations, and scrambled into the cockpit, shoving his metal fingers into the control panel and mentally powering up the ships systems. The Bullhead and Chrys were now one, the Hunter-Killer operating the dropship as if it was his own body. With a rumble and a groan of metal, the Bullhead lifted off and away from the stadium, engines flaring. Ash, Mark and Olivia hung tight to the grips on the roof of the open cargo bay, obsurving the scene as they decended down from the height of the arena to the burning remnants of Vale.

It looked like hell from afar; fire and Grimm across all of its surfaces, sparks streaking out from its repulsor engines. If Ash had to guess, it was going to fall sooner rather than later, and leave one HELL of a mess.

Ash found himself looking forward to it. The blast would be AMAZING. And a fitting end to the belief of Vale that not having any organized defense force beyond Huntsmen was a viable way to live.

Ash turned, intending to speak to Mark and Olivia and ask how their fight had gone, when something changed; the air seemed to suddenly go dead, still.

And then...silver light. Silver light like no one had seen in decades. A blinding wash of psychomanipulative energy that came to be known as the Vale Flash.

And from that moment till he woke up on the ground, being attened to by Atlas medics in a triage station, Ash Vulcan remembered nothing.

#world of remnant #my words #tw blood

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timeagainreviews · 5 years

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Doctor Who and Video Games

We live in the era of the franchise. Everything it seems is getting the franchise treatment. After the success of the MCU, everyone wants that sweet sweet money. We’ve got the failed Universal Monsters reboot, the Harry Potter extended universe, and endless Star Wars movies. However, some franchises, it would seem, struggle to grow further than their core narrative. Star Wars never strays very far from the battle with the Empire. Which is one thing you can’t really say about Doctor Who. Doctor Who has done fantasy, sci-fi, period drama, schlocky horror, whimsy, and utter rubbish. I’ve always admired Doctor Who’s flexibility as a property. It lends itself beautifully to a wide range of mediums, such as audios and comic books. But what about video games? Are there any good Doctor Who video games? Could there be?

Over the past week, in preparation for this article, I've completely immersed myself in the world of Doctor Who video games. I feel uniquely qualified to have an opinion on the subject. But before we continue, I give a word of caution. I'm talking directly to you, now. Never in your life, should you ever play "Doctor Who: Return to Earth," for the Nintendo Wii. It's not worth the £1.80 that I spent on eBay. You don't ever deserve to do that to yourself. I don't care what you've done, nobody deserves that. If like myself, you have played this game, you have my deepest sympathies, especially if you paid for it new.

It doesn't interest me to make a list of the worst Doctor Who video games, as many people have done this already. It's nothing new to say that Doctor Who has a video game problem. When I wrote that Doctor Who should be run by Disney, I don't actually mean it should happen. I was merely illustrating that Disney knows how to take care of its properties. I would venture that Doctor Who has always had a bit of a management problem. Merchandise from Doctor Who has always reminded me of Krusty the Clown merchandise. So much of it is some bullshit they slapped a Dalek on said: "10 quid please!" Barring the occasional home run or third-party licensing, a lot of the merchandise is pretty uninspired. Which is bananas, because the world of Doctor Who has so much colour and potential.

Video games based off of movies and television are almost always as bad as movies and television based off of video games. They're rarely breaking the mould in their new medium. Most of the time, tie-ins such as these are quick soulless cash grabs. You can see this a lot in the Matt Smith era. There are at least seven games featuring his Doctor, and then a sudden decline. Matt Smith was the Doctor during one of the show's biggest points in popularity. Never before had the show been embraced on such an international level. Of course, the Beeb wanted to push as many video games out as possible.

The problem is, they didn't throw a lot of money at it, and not one project seemed to get the focus it deserved. I won't pretend to know the motivation behind the BBC's forays into video games, but it seems to be a trend with them to overdo something, and then be scared of it in the future. They changed the 5.5" figurine set to a 3.75" scale and nobody wanted them. Because of this, we haven't seen nearly as many 5.5" figures since. They once put out a figure of Lady Casandra's frame after she exploded into gore. We used to get figures like Pig Lazlo and the Gran from "The Idiot's Lantern." Now we'll be lucky if we get everyone's favourite- Graham O'Brien. They also did it with the Doctor Who Experience. They make this brilliant Doctor Who museum with the OK'est walkthrough story, and then put it right in the middle of Cardiff. They wondered why it never made any money. I've been twice, and I gotta say- they should have put it in London. It would still be open.

This isn't to say all of Matt Smith's video games are bad. In fact, the Eleventh Doctor adventure games referred to simply as "The Doctor Who Adventure Games," are some of my favourite in the entire lot. And as much as I would like to blame the BBC for their lack of caring, the fact is Doctor Who is not easy to translate into video games. Even if they do care, they still need the right team on the job. Oddly, it's one of the Doctor's greatest charms that makes Doctor Who hard to translate into a video game, and that's the Doctor's stance on violence. If the Doctor could pick up a laser pistol and just frag some Daleks, we'd probably have an entire series on our hands. Unfortunately, most developers go one of two ways. They either ignore the pacifism or we get countless mind-numbing puzzles.

Puzzles are by far the worst element of any Doctor Who game. In the browser-based "Worlds in Time," there were a plethora of Bejewelled type mini-games and pipe matching puzzles. The puzzles got increasingly harder even if the player wasn't also getting increasingly better. Even the platformer "The Eternity Clock," was mired in constantly stopping to do puzzles. They pop up in the Adventure Games, but other than the infuriating "don't touch the sides," puzzles, they don't detract much from the gameplay. There were moments where I felt a bit like a companion because I was decoding a Dalek computer for the Doctor, which is really the money spot for a Doctor Who video game. Any time a Doctor Who game can make you feel like you're in Doctor Who is time well spent.

When asking my friends what kind of Doctor Who video game they would like to see, many of them mentioned they would like a survival horror type game. We sort of get this in many of the Smith era games. In "Return to Earth," the mechanic is sloppy and infuriating at best. In "The Eternity Clock," and the Adventure Games, it's a little more manageable. It's a nice way to add a challenge to a non-violent gameplay style. It would be interesting to see what a game team from something like "Thief," or "Resident Evil," might do with the sneaking aspect.

Another way the games have completely side-stepped the non-violence and puzzles is by having the Doctor act as a secondary character. The player is put in the position of the companion or perhaps a UNIT soldier as in the case of "Destiny of the Doctors." If you've not played DotD, I wouldn't blame you. I was hitting my head against the wall just trying to figure out what to do. The only real reason to play that game is for one last chance to see the fabulous Anthony Ainley reprise the role of the Master. He's in totally smarmy ham mode, even if it's a bunch of gibberish they shot in a day. You can find the entirety of the footage on YouTube and it's surreal.

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The problem with having the Doctor be violent is that it doesn't feel true to the character. Sure, Three did some Venusian aikido, Four broke that dude's neck in "Seeds of Doom," and even Twelve socked a racist in the face, but these are isolated incidents. The spirit of the Doctor is lost in 1992's "Dalek Attack," when the Doctor is forced to go full on bullet hell on a Dalek hover cart. It's funny then that one of my favourite Doctor Who games incorporates a violent Doctor. In the Doctor Who level of "Lego Dimensions," the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to make villains fall apart in a very safe Lego style violence. I can excuse this mostly because the game is not primarily a Doctor Who game at heart.

Funnily enough, the Lego game does something I've always wanted in a Doctor Who video game. I've always wanted to have a Doctor Who game where you could regenerate into different Doctors, and also go into their respective TARDISes. Sure, some of the games on the Commodore 64 allowed you to regenerate, but it was pretty naff in its execution. I tell no lies when I say I spent a lot of time regenerating and reentering the TARDIS to explore the Lego versions of their respective console rooms. Really, the biggest problem with the Lego Doctor Who game is that it wasn't it's own game. Lego Dimensions was its own failure. If TT Games would come out with an entire Doctor Who game, I would buy it yesterday.

The overarching problem with every Doctor Who game is the same problem Torchwood had- if it wasn't attached to Doctor Who, we wouldn't be interested. While I did have a lot of fun with the Adventure Games and Lego Dimensions, not one Doctor Who game has every element right. One has a good story, but poor mechanics, another has great mechanics but doesn't feel right. It's a bit of a tight rope to find the perfect balance, but I don't feel it's impossible

One of the reasons I would love to see a proper Lego Doctor Who game is that they have a history of good adaptations. They're not exactly beloved games, but I myself play a lot of them. One of the most impressive things I've seen them do was in Lego Batman 3, where they made each of the planets in the Green Lantern mythos a visitable world. Could you imagine the same treatment for Doctor Who? Visiting Telos and Skaro, and then popping off to medieval earth or Gallifrey? You could get different missions depending on which Doctor you were, or what time you arrive in. And the collectable characters! So many companions, and Doctors, and baddies, and costume variations to unlock! Doesn't that sound nice? You can buddy Jamie and Amy with Seven and Twelve and have an all Scottish TARDIS! A Zygon could ride K9!

The fact is, we probably won't see a very expansive Doctor Who game. I would be very enthusiastic for an open world Doctor Who game, but even as I type it, it sounds difficult to pull off. I may be able to say what doesn't work about the games, but saying what would work is admittedly, not as simple, but this doesn't mean I can't think of at least one good game. Piecing together some of the things I mentioned earlier, I think the best genre for Doctor Who is point-and-click adventures. I know I keep singing the praises of the Doctor Who Adventure Games, but it's because I think they were actually onto something. It's sad then that they scrapped any further developments to work on the inferior "Eternity Clock."

Could you imagine a point and click Doctor Who in the same vein as "Day of the Tentacle," or "Thimbleweed Park"? You walk around as the Doctor, pick up bits, talk to funny characters and solve complex problems. If you throw in a bit of horror survival, you've basically got the Adventure Games, which is my point- Do more with what they've already done. Grow the concepts. Improve the mechanics. A Doctor Who game should be jammed packed with Easter eggs, unlockables, and mystery. The point is, do more. Even their phone apps are abysmal. You know how much I would play a “Pokémon Go,” style Doctor Who game? You go around trapping baddies in cages you set off with your sonic screwdriver or something. I. Would. Catch. Them. All.

We still have “The Edge of Time,” coming to PC and consoles in October, and I'm pensively excited. While the graphics seem really top notch, in no way does it feel like anything more than a fun little VR experience. The game is going to remain exclusive to that small subsection of gamers that own a VR headset. Before it has even been released, it's closed itself off to yet another section of its very wide audience. Let's just hope that it doesn't scare the BBC away from making a proper Doctor Who game in the near future. And in the meantime, I'm going to have to borrow my friends' VR set, because of course, I'm going to play it. It's Doctor Who.

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Well friends, thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun “researching,” this article. Playing Doctor Who games all week? Oh no, twist my arm! Sadly, a lot of these games are no longer available from their original sources. I was able to find a lot of them on the Internet Archive. If you want to give them a go, I would definitely suggest it. A couple of them are even capable of being emulated on your browser from the Internet Archive. The game I had the hardest time locating was “The Gunpowder Plot,” but I was eventually able to find it after some digging. I didn’t play any of the text-based games because I’m not very good with spatial awareness, and so text-based games are usually a nightmare for me. Sadly, Worlds in Time is lost forever, but I remember my character fondly. I also discovered I’m pretty good at Top Trumps: Doctor Who. Go figure.

#Doctor Who #video games #tardis #bbc #matt smith #eternity clock #edge of time #mines of terror #return to earth #nintendo #wii #playstation #xbox #lego dimensions

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rosecorcoranwrites · 5 years

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Reader Viewer Gamer Spy

Ok, maybe not that last one, but anyway...

If you've hung around this blog long enough, you've likely noticed that I tend to talk about "stories" more often than books, and that I use games, manga, and movies as well as written works to discuss writing concepts. This is because I think all those stories, in whatever medium, have something interesting to say, or something worth examining. Yet there exists no decent word for a person such as myself, a lover of stories, if you will.

Labels and Categories

I'm not one to say "I don't like labels", but I do find them lacking sometimes, usually because there aren't enough of them, or they're not broad enough

For example, I'm obviously a nerd and a geek, in that I like nerdy, geeky things. I enjoy learning and research and school, which I would put under the "nerd" category, and I like superheroes and fantasy/sci-fi and comics, which are decidedly "geek". But these don't include my love of books—not all nerds are bookworms—nor my obsessive devotion to anime and manga in particular. I guess “weeb” might be a subsection of geek? I don’t know. Whatever the case, neither nerd nor geek are satisfactory to my quest for the perfect word to describe myself.

And what would you call someone who loves movies as much as a bookworm loves books? A filmworm? (Can we please just make this a thing?). There are terms like “film enthusiast” and “cinephile”, but I think these imply a knowledge of movie-making or a love of niche and cult films that I don’t necessarily have. At the same time, though, I’m not just a casual movie-goer. I really like movies, and thinking about movies, and talking about movies. Why isn’t there a word for that?

Stereotypes from Without

Perhaps the reason there isn’t a word specifically for someone who’s into movies or comics the way there is for those who love books is due to stereotyping. There are people who look down on us movie-watching, game-playing plebeians, so people have been trained to think that liking comics is dorky, or that liking movies is for filthy casuals.

Geeks, I think, have been fighting against this, reclaiming the word for themselves, so to speak. They’ve done a fairly good job at making geekery mainstream, and yet large numbers of people still aren't onboard. For example, the writers of The Big Bang Theory have long labored under the impression that liking Star Wars is a geeky, niche interest. Star Wars! Was that ever niche, even when it came out in the 70s? Even if it was then, it certainly isn’t now. Yet this stupid idea that Star Wars was only for geeks, specifically geek men, is how we ended up with the debacle that is Disney’s new trilogy aimed at a “larger” audience—by which they meant all seven people in the world who didn’t already like Star Wars.

A subsection of geeks fighting the good fight for more recognition is the gamers, and yet this group is not without its stereotypes. Sometimes, this is through innocent ignorance: my sister and I were geeking out over the plot of Okami in the break room of a Catholic school were she worked and one of the nuns asked, tentatively, “Video games have stories?”. She seemed happy to learn that they do, but this illustrates the point that not every non-gamer knows what video games have to offer, so of course they might not consider games in the same category as books or films.

Then there are worse stereotypes. A coworker of mine pooh-poohed video games because, amongst other things, they “don’t promote social interaction”. My coworker, remember, is a librarian... in a library... full of books. When you read a book, that’s six or more hours of being by yourself, reading. You might choose to go to a bookclub or talk to a friend about it, but that is hardly part of the reading experience. Games, on the other hand, often have two-player or online mode. My younger brother is constantly playing games and constantly talking to his friends over Discord while doing so. One time, he was playing a single player game while his friend from out of state was playing the same single player game, and they were talking to each other about it over headphones. Obviously, this isn’t true for all games and gamers (I myself like single-player, offline games), but to act as if games are socially isolating in comparison to books is just inaccurate.

Stereotypes from Within

Speaking of books, the label with the most baggage, in my opinion, is bookworm. It’s not non-bookworms who are the ones responsible for this stereotyping, but the book lovers themselves.

What stereotypes am I talking about? For starters, the stereotype that in order to be a bookworm, you should sneer at other types of media. “The book was better” is something often lobbed at movies. I usually agree with that; the movies of Harry Potter, Something Wicked this Way Comes, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Phantom of the Opera, Public Enemies, and every iteration of Sherlock Holmes pale in comparison to their source material. But some movies are just as good as the book they are based on. This may be because the movie captures the essence of the book, like The Princess Bride, Anne of Green Gables, or Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (the 1951 version), or it may be due to the movie deviating from the book but still being equally enjoyable, as is the case with The Secret of NIMH / Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and most of Disney's fairytale adaptations. And some movies—and I know my bookworm card might get revoked for saying this—are better than the books, including The Great Mouse Detective, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Last Unicorn, and And Then There Were None.

“Heresy!” cry the bookworms, but why? Aren’t people allowed to like and dislike whatever stories they want? And that’s stereotype number two, which is never encountering a book you don’t like. I usually find this with English majors, some librarians and library patrons, and bookstagramers who take pretty pictures of objectively bad books (I know I just said people can like what they want, but let’s be honest, nobody liked The Casual Vacancy, probably not even J.K. Rowling). It’s almost like, to be a bookworm, you can’t have a taste for certain books and not others. Or rather, you can’t act as if some books are just, you know, not good. Such bookworms fret about libraries weeding books from their collections, but as someone who used to do that as a volunteer, I can tell you, some books are bad. They might be badly written, or boring, or cringey, or whatever (and that’s why they don’t circulate for years on end, and that’s why they get weeded). The point is, it’s okay to not like certain books, and doing so should not make one any less of a bookworm.

The stereotypes go on and on, and I can’t relate to any of them. “Books are better than clothes”; but I really like fashion. “I can’t resist buying new books when I’m in a bookstore”; it’s nice that you have all that disposable income, but I’ll settle for borrowing books and scouring the free shelf. “I remember staying up late at night as a child with a flashlight under my covers”; I wasn’t a big reader as a kid, but that didn’t make me less into stories. And, of course, “I’d rather be reading,” not daydreaming, or watching movies, or getting lost in the world of a game, because you can apparently only get lost in a book.

I know I sound bitter, and that’s because I am. I love books, but books are not the height of human storytelling, nor its primordial form. Poems, songs, and plays all predated writing, and as for novels, those didn't come about until the 11th century in Asia and the 1400s in Europe. Sure, movies and video games are a lot younger, but that doesn't make them any less valuable, unless you believe that books are less valuable than plays and poems.

Let me say it again, in case my non-bookwormish statements have made any of you doubt: I love books. But I also love games. And movies. And comics. Basically, I love stories. I’m a story enthusiast. Why isn’t there a word for that? Daydreamer? Fantast? Storyworm?

I suppose the word isn’t as important as the concept I’m trying to explain. Books and movies and games and plays are all amazing, each in different ways. So why do we have to denigrate some forms of storytelling or act like some are better than others? I can see personally preferring one type of media to another, but if you totally eschew one of them because of some silly stereotype, I think you’ll miss out on a lot of amazing stories.

Thus, in the next few weeks, I’m going to try to convince you, dear reader, or viewer, or gamer, (or spy?) that each of the four main storytelling media—books, plays and television, comics, and video games—each have something unique to offer, and are worthy of a place in the hearts and minds of all story-loving people. Stay tuned!

#bookworms #geek #nerd #labels #bookworm #geeks #nerds #stereotypes #stereotyping #stereotype #gamer #gamers #geekery #self-identity #self-identification

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