the underneath (1995) dir. steven soderbergh

#Happybirthday #ShelleyDuvall #actress #McCabeandMrsMiller #ThievesLikeUs #3Women #AnnieHall #Popeye #TheShining #TimeBandits #Roxanne #FaerieTaleTheatreTall #TalesandLegends #NightmareClassics #TheUnderneath #ThePortraitofaLady #MannafromHeaven #theforesthills

変形半プリーツ　ミニスカート　ロック　ユニセックススカート　スカート男子　エモ系　ヴィジュアル系　ビジュアル系　Ｖ系　パンク　バンド衣装　インポート　ゴシック　エモ　アナーキー　メンズスカート　黒

Greetings and Salutations from the UEF

This archive serves to catalogue the discoveries made in and about the Underneath as we know it and will come to know it.

It is, for some reason, also a blog. I (Recordkeeper Mal) am not entirely sure why Tristan set this up as a blog, but I suppose it will serve adequately for the purposes of what we plan to use it for. I will leave the "asks" button on for inquiries into The Underneath; as far as I have been told, the Underneath archives are open to the public, so public query will be open as well.

I will endeavor to update this archive as frequently as I can, but my work in the physical archives may keep me from updating this as frequently as I would like. While MAJ Tristan will also have access to this archive for such occasions, they are also quite busy with UEF business, and may not be able to post in my absence either.

And hi! Tristan here. Any time you see this color on the blog, you can safely assume that it's me making a post, whether it's me making a quick insert into a post or making the title yellow. I'll probably have stories and other things to say from my time in the Underneath and UEF. I may also share information about our own world, since from what I can tell, we're broadcasting to another world with this blog. Good ol' Underneath paracausal tech.

I and my sheepy friend sincerely hope that the knowledge we provide will be useful, interesting, and dare I say… entertaining?

Oh, and ignore the weird ramblings below this "Keep reading" text. A bit... deterministic for my liking and I'm just gonna ignore being "written" by someone. Must be a side effect of Underneath tech.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Hey everyone! This blog is going to be my in-character, in-universe "lorebook" for my setting, The Underneath and its connected world. To give you a quick rundown, I started making The Underneath as a way to satisfy my desire to explore worlds beyond our own, springing from the aftermath of the Backrooms going mainstream, overexplained and overpopulated. Instead, this setting is supposed to be explored!)

(The setting is not set in stone, and it's currently one that's very easy to add to. If anyone happens to want to submit characters, level ideas, and such setting ideas, the ask button is active; regular asks to Mal and Tristan will be answered, while lore-adding asks will likely be expounded on in their own posts and unanswered. Hope that's alright, this is my first time doing something like this! I'm more than happy to have this be a communal soup pot of a setting, but I've gotta screen the ingredients before they get added, y'know?)

(But yeah! Hope those who want to watch this blog have fun!)

(Also, yes, Tristan breaking the fourth wall is entirely in character due to the setting. The Underneath is weird. And always watching.)

A very happy belated birthday to Steven Soderbergh!

me when i'm reading the underneath and the alligator king shows up

Hey everyone what's your favorite mug look like?

RIP Izzy Hands. You were... complicated

look alive, sunshine

sorry that took like an hour i stopped to eat dinner heres my idea

STOP GIVING WEREWOLVES RIPPED ABS AND START GIVING THEM SOFT TUMMIES THIS HAS BEEN A PSA

Searching your eyes for the saint is an act of futility

something that's just been on my mind recently!

~II~

Night, welcome art thou to my minde distrest,

Darke, heauy, sad, yet not more sad then I:

Neuer could’st thou find fitter company

For thine owne humour, then I thus opprest.

If thou beest darke, my wrongs still vnredrest

Saw neuer light, nor smallest blisse can spye:

If heauy ioy from me too fast doth hie,

And care out-goes my hope of quiet rest.

Then now in friendship ioyne with haplesse me,

Who am as sad and darke as thou canst be,

Hating all pleasure or delight of lyfe,

Silence, and griefe, with thee I best doe loue.

And from you three I know I can not moue,

Then let vs liue companions without strife.

-Lady Mary Wroth, Sonnet 37(2)

Dani Hillsbrough, the real world human behind the Elizabeth Forrester avatar, suddenly found herself back in the warm, expansive, antiquated and comfortably familiar library that served as the main menu and entry/exit point for users of the SimuLife console. Shelves, overflowing with books of popular and obscure titles by renowned and unknown authors filled the library reached colossally high to a ceiling out of view and impossibly wide to an unseen horizon. Avatars of other players and fill-in background characters dressed in the various costumes of eras near and far, fact and fiction mixed with the avatars of staff, easily marked with the familiar blue/grey cardigan adorned with the NetNeurality (the mother company of the SimuLife console) logo and assorted non-player characters to form a bustling community of citizens in this ersatz commonwealth that was the SimuLife populace.

A young woman, in her NetNeurality branded sweater, approached Dani, “Welcome back. I’m Annie, an assistant here at the library.  I hope you enjoyed your time at Castle Tarleton. It’s always one of our more popular communities. Would you like to start a new adventure in Reinvent:Yourself!, start a new replay in Destination:Anywhere, continue a previous adventure or sign off?”

“Sign off,” Dani replied simply.

“Very good, “said Annie, “This way.”

With a wave of Annie’s hand, a door opened streaming a ray of intensely bright light from floor to ceiling, again impossibly high to see to the top. Dani stepped through. That same familiar melody she heard as Elizabeth was turning played in her ear. The words, “REMOVE HEADSET”, flashed red slowly in front of her eyes and a small timer counted down from five to zero underneath. At zero, the melody stopped and the screen on her visor went dark.

Dani removed her SimuLife headset and sat for a moment, reminiscing her time in the world of the NetNeurality servers. While the characters that she used more frequently within the confines of Reinvent:Yourself!, itself, were more a means to an end, Dani found that she looked forward to playing Elizabeth more than any other. It was without question her favorite avatar in SimuLife. Elizabeth Forrester, the demure, naïve yet wanton medieval vampires-in-training, was, surely, not one of her more profitable characters in the world of virtual courtesans and, definitely, not quite as adventurous as some of the more wild experiences she had on the NetNeurality servers. Elizabeth, however, brought out the vulnerable, playful side in Dani’s personality that she was never seemingly able to naturally break out enough in ‘the real world”.

The bread and butter for Dani, financially anyway, were the straightforward sex kittens like Oola, the amazonian princess who relished public humiliation and haughtiness and then publicly and privately humiliated and totured countless alpha male businessmen on Catalonia, the SciFi adventure set on the titular far away fictional planet, or Tiffany, the unattainable cheerleader that gave sneaky blowjobs in the back of math class in exchange for an “A” to the creepy older guys. They weren’t interesting characters. They were simple cardboard cutout caricatures. They didn’t have depth or a sense beyond what they were, online hookers. Elizabeth Forrester, on the other hand, was a pleasant change of pace. Elizabeth had… depth. She had a soul.

So, for as much as she loved Elizabeth, Elizabeth was a rare treat. Elizabeth couldn’t offer the pragmatic, economic success that those other one-dimensional characters could. Those quick regular sessions provided the extras that her day job couldn’t. They provided the upgraded apartment. They provided the upscale lingerie and undergarments. They provided the lunches and the vacations and the trips home to check on the family. Her day job covered rent, and utilities and car payments, etc.; but, the extras came from the likes of the dominant princess and the naughty cheerleader.

Shaking her fully awake and aware, an alarm sounded 7AM from across the room. With a heavy sigh, Dani said out loud to no one in particular, “Welp, guess it’s time to pay the bills.”

Rising up from her console integrated SimuLife bench, Dani crossed her room, shut off the alarm, and began the morning ritual in getting ready for her day. Though she lamented having to set aside Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s next adventure, she knew it would have to wait until notification arrived in her Bitcoin account that payment had been received from her mysterious client. Real life had called and her employer had a strict logging in policy. NetNeurality, with whom she was not just an avid customer but also a long time employee, had just promoted her as the newest member of their systems testing team. She was acutely aware of her need to “go the extra mile” in terms of following the rules and setting a high standard. Besides, today was the day they let her start her own test cases and she had some clever ideas for Destination: Anywhere testing and wanted to spend her Friday having them solidly put together and approved before running them on Monday.

Dani was excited about this new position. It was, coincidentally, within a few days of a sidetracked conversation with the man she knew as The Shadow that had started with setting up this morning’s meeting and ended up diverting into commiserating about unfulfilling and underwhelming career tracks and the lack of opportunity for improvement that Dani had noticed the posting for a new tester in NetNeurality’s job listings. She hurriedly and eagerly updated her resume and applied that same day. It had taken an excruciating few weeks of no real response beyond the form letter acknowledging receipt of her application before she got a call from an assistant she knew in passing requesting a scheduled interview. She quickly scheduled the interview and waiting for what seemed way too long before the day arrived. She worried and fretted the entire time. She worried about her appearance and she worried about her experience. She fretted about her knowledge and she over thought questions to non-existent anticipated questions. She changed her interview outfit at least four times. At the end of the day, though, she needn’t have worried. She passed that interview and the subsequent follow-up meetings with ease. The charisma that made her online avocation so successful worked face-to-face as well. Charming and self-assured, she was offered the position, and the healthy raise that came with it, formally at the end of her last interview. The onboarding process that started her time on the team had been a tedious and overly complicated two week course in non-disclosure agreements, training manuals, mandatory online job training and hypothetical processes that seemed unlikely to ever happen. While understandably necessary, these activities were boring and seemed exceedingly gratuitous and lengthy. More importantly they added a healthy dose of confusion that did nothing to boost her confidence. She had begun to worry she wasn’t up to the task after the training. It wasn’t until she began to learn one-on-one from a senior co-worker that the previously daunting and overwhelming duties in Dani’s future had been given a renewed sense of clarity. After regaining her spirit, she began playing in disposable training environments. She, in no time was building test cases and scenarios all under the watchful eye of her soon-to-be peers.

Today, though, it was time to get down to business. She was on her own and she wanted to look good and feel good even if she was working from her home and only visible on video meetings. Stripping casually as she made her way back across the master bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, she stopped to give final approval to the outfit she had picked out the night previous. She began humming that tune that had been stuck in her head since hearing it while lying in Elizabeth Forrester’s bed. It was easily recognizable as a melody, though something about it was off, thus leaving the name of it frustratingly just out of reach.

Entering the spacious shower, Dani turned the tap nearly fully toward the “hot” side. The water quickly reached a balmy appeasing temperature and Dani slipped in to let the warm steady stream flow over her. As the comfort of the water baptized her figure in soothing pacification, Dani ran her hands along her ample, voluptuous curves. She roamed that familiar path of her body replaying this morning’s encounter in her head. Starting with her full, substantial breasts that still stood relatively firm over her figure. Steam rose to envelope her fullness and she moved her hands further down to her soft round alabaster belly and moved further to her plentiful and much appreciated, even if silently, thighs, hips, and backside

Sudden thoughts of her mother’s words intruded the pleasant re-run of Elizabeth’s earlier adventure. ”You know, Dani you’ll never be a small girl, but you would be so beautiful, if you would… just have some discipline and lose the weight, “her mother used to say, “You’ve got such a pretty face that could have your pick of any boy in town to take care of you.”

The thought of any of the local hicks ‘taking care of her” repulsed her. Dani was not interested in some unsophisticated redneck taking care of her, especially given the candidates in her tiny rural town. She had bigger dreams than the boys of Fort Scott, Kansas. Fetching a beer and a sandwich while her ”man” talked the woes of  Jayhawk football on the porch to his equally as backwards friends held absolutely no appeal to her. She intended to make her own way. She wanted the pick of any man… in the world... on her terms. They were going to come to her, not the other way around.  She wasn’t potentially beautiful with some work and a diet; she was beautiful of her regard no matter what her mother said. More importantly she offered the strong intelligent mind that could had keep her strong in the face of the constant belittling. The words stung, sure, but she had heard them so many times as to be meaningless.

Shrugging to herself at her mother’s unkindness, Dani moved her cleaning down to her legs. The stocky full calves were still attractive and caught many an eye when the seam of a sexy set of nylons peeked from under a knee length dress. She ran across the slightest feeling of stubble. Time for a shave, she thought. Sitting on seat cushion that padded the molded shower ledge, Dani reached for the small-ish tin of Faena Tallow Shave Soap and the H.L. Thater shave brush sitting on the shower shelf. Dipping the badger bristled brush into the soap, she lathered up a goodly amount of cream and applied a fine layer of the cream, from ankle to knee, front to back to her right leg. Setting the tin and the brush back on the shelf she picked up a small teak box setting next to them on the shelf. Opening the box, she pulled the gleaming black and gold Kal Captain straight razor and folded it open. The sharpened blade shone under the fluorescent lights. The straight razor shave was a luxury and a ritual that Dani afforded herself as a concession to her own private vanity. It was something she learned in a previous relationship that ran white hot with elements of dom/sub play, but had burned out quickly. It was the one thing she kept from that time. Nevermore to return to the world of harsh chemical depilatories, plastic disposable blades or the electric monstrosities of shavers that didn’t seem to work anyway.

Humming the recurring tune that was perplexingly affixed to her subconscious, Dani took the keen edge to a practiced angle and slowly drew it up from the curve that was her ankle, across the breath of her shin to the dimpled knee, halfway up. She rinsed the excess cream from the razor and the front of her leg and inspected her work. Satisfied with the results, she repeated the process, on the sides and her firm round calves. With the same experienced rhythm, she disposed of any lingering leg hair there. After ensuring her right leg was entirely smooth, she moved to the left leg and restarted the very same process there with the same expert precision.

When the lower legs were completed, she applied a generous layer of foam to her inner thigh and ever so carefully ran ever so gently against the bikini line. Once again, feeling for any excess stubble she ran her fingers over the sensitive inner folds of her thigh and with a knowing smile, felt nothing extraneous.       

At once she felt a sting, Shit, she thought, I guess I did nick myself. Reaching back down, she found blood in, coincidentally, the same place as Elizabeth’s wound. This time, though, the blood flowed much more liberally. What are the chances of that? Hell I didn’t think I even got in that far with the blade, she wondered. She exited the shower to examine the cut. The blood streamed in a meandering rivulet down the inside of her thigh.

Covering the laceration with a dab of bacitracin and a small “dot” adhesive bandage, Dani continued her morning routine. After applying some scented oil to her freshly shaven legs and washed body, she styled her hair in a retro swept up style and applied some minimal accentuating makeup. Finally Dani slipped a delicate black lace demi cup bra around her ample bosom and a pair of black lace thigh high lace stockings that were attached to a satin garter belt she had picked up during a mall shopping splurge at Torrid the weekend previous. While pulling the entire under ensemble together with a pair of satin French cut bikini panties, she felt the Band-Aid already beginning to fail. She pulled it off to take a second look at the gash. It was larger and deeper than she initially had thought with blood pooling in the tender folds of skin. Upon inspecting further, the blood ran freely in a thin but widening stream down her thigh. She reapplied the antibiotic ointment and applied, this time, a somewhat larger dressing.

Picking out her work attire she went with a simple white collared blouse and grey sweater combination from Nordstrom Rack and slate gray skirt from Lane Bryant that betrayed the wicked temptation underneath. “Gotta stay business appropriate to the normies, “she said aloud, “They will never know what’s underneath.”

Slipping into a pair of shiny black leather heels, Dani headed to the kitchen for a French press of her favorite whole bean espresso roast coffee and one of the raspberry scones Mrs. Cannivale had made for her last evening. Noticing her supply of beans was low, she made a note to head down to the local coffee house for a fresh supply and to check with Mrs. Cannivale for anything she might need from the grocery that was on the way.

With a warm mug and pastry in hand, she went to her work desk in the converted office she had made of the second bedroom and logged in to the NetNeurality corporate servers with ten minutes to spare.

The Underneath Exploration Federation

Tristan here! I figured it would be a good idea to explain a little bit about the UEF.

The Underneath Exploration Federation is an internationally-funded organization tasked with the daunting feat of... well, exploring the Underneath. We do more than that, of course; besides cataloging the various levels, creatures, and cultures found in the Underneath, we're also tasked with maintaining good relations with the friendly denizens of the Underneath, such as the willos and artifactlings.

According to the custodians and friendly denizens we've been able to establish contact with, our world both isn't the first to come in contact with the Underneath, and is welcome to try and "tame" the chaos; according to them, "worse cultures have tried" and if we're at least civil and not exploitative of the Underneath and its people, we're allowed to try and make friends.

We've found remains of those cultures that weren't so civil.

So! You'll have seen references to LT Orchard as well as my own MAJ rank. Because of the unique circumstances of the organization, international law does require us to be labeled as a military organization in order to get the funding and resources required. Unfortunately, research grants don't account for armaments, so they kinda stuck a military organization around a research team, gave that research team the funding for actually researching, and gave the military around it the funding for the weapons and armor.

Hey, if it works, it works. Even if we're labeled as a military organization, we're not actually expected to be waging wars. That's kind of the opposite idea of what we're trying to do, anyway. And, because it's a federation, there's multiple smaller groups within the UEF, such as the research teams (also known as the Underneath Research Foundation) and the teams that scout for people who slipped accidentally into the Underneath (the Recovery Technical Team, aka the "Retroactive Traction Team" since they're anti-slip after the slip happens).

The UEF is... strange. Like, eccentric to a fault. I certainly don't help, but there's a lot of stuff that you wouldn't ever see in a military organization like this. For example, the standard armors here might be made of military-grade aramids, but they're all made in the style of "adventurely" tunics and robes like it's something out of a fantasy story. Hell, LT Orchard wears a full-ass set of plate armor, and some of the explorers opt to go for brigandine-style armor and jack-of-plates with metal plates too. It's, of course, all a response to the Underneath itself; you aren't likely to find monsters that fire bullets at you, so the safety of steel is just as good if not better against rending claws than combat vests and fatigues.

We've also been going back to melee weaponry! It's a weird feeling: after decades of guns, artillery, tanks and planes, and military-grade ritual casting, we're picking up swords and spears again and fighting small-scale. We still have some people using guns, but it's way easier to enchant melee weapons... guns are too complicated to carry enchantments, you have to do things like mass bless a box of bullets, and that gets expensive. The magic that we have access to is so good too, like, not only do we get some choice samples of spells from every manufacturer that donates to us, but the Underneath straight-up spawns new spells, basically. That's all I can describe it as, Lordedge discs and Gravitas tapes will just appear in dungeons and contain the weirdest and coolest bootleg spells that no one's ever heard of.

Anyway, I'm rambling on a bit too much. You've got a good slice of what the UEF is and how it works, so if you're interested in more, there's that shiny ask button to click on. I think. Did Mal set that up right? I think he did.

Well, this has been Tristan, signing off!

dying at wilson obliviously eating his sandwich while house is sitting there consumed with lust trying to use blatant homoerotic imagery to blast the idea of hot gay sex directly into wilson's brain

rage.