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phoenixyfriend · 4 years

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The Naruto/Frozen Crossover

So I was planning on just doing an image ID thing for this post, but apparently the formatting on desktop is such a mess that it’s easier to just make a new post that’s text only. I can also like. Bulletpoint it so that it can be a little neater. All ideas were made with @firebirdeternal‘s help, because they are the most efficient enabler I have.

Also I added some bits at the end.

Under a cut, because it’s Long As Heck.

I originally had two options: either Mid-teens Elsa and Anna being transported to ninja land sometime pre-canon and running into Haku and Zabuza... or just like. Born as a Daimyou's daughters.

Spoiler alert, we’ve got nukenin and I’m a sucker for an intrusive crossover, so transported to ninja land it is.

Suggestion from Birdie:

Mechanism for crossover: Elsa ices over a Wishing Well by accident after having Wished for someone else who understood her, Anna and her fall in and get Ice Mirror Portaled to Ninjaland, falling out of an iced over pond near a shrine that Haku recently prayed at for similar lonely child reasons?

Which I like! They don’t end up there soon enough to run into Haku, because I want a dramatic chase first, but I like it.

Obviously, Anna is forced to learn about Elsa's powers because it's the only thing keeping them safe

Or at least alive

(Elsa will do ANYTHING to keep Anna safe, and if that means she has to get her hands dirty...)

...neither of them knows Japanese, so, you know. There’s that.

I'm thinking that they end up in/near Kiri at first

And they aren't FAST ENOUGH to get away so Elsa panic-enchants a giant reindeer made of snow to run away across the suddenly-frozen ocean.

She and Anna have to ride and Elsa is probably crying the whole time.

Oh shit this is like. RIGHT after their parents die, I forgot. So that’s a thing! They are in mourning and all that fun stuff.

Point is, they use the powers for a Self Defense thing and BBY Haku is just !!! "Master can we rescue them for Ice Cousin reasons?" Zabuza: Yes, and only for those practical reasons and not because I collect endangered children like people collect pokemon cards.

I imagine that maybe they track rumors of a Yuki-onna down, or the Giant Snow Reindeer rides by and Haku’s just like Wat

The girls just tag along with Zabuza because. Like.

Do they like him? No. Do they trust him? No. Do they enjoy the fact that he considers them pathetic civilians? No.

However, Haku is Baby.

Zabuza is REALLY annoyed at them being Useless Civilian Royals “but Haku likes them so I guess they can stay.”

Age at meeting, three years pre-canon:

Zabuza - 23

Elsa - 18

Anna - 15

Haku - 12

Elsa is 90% anxiety/depression master combo BUT if Zabzua protects her then she's WILDLY dangerous so like. Whatever

Elsa's bingo book nickname options, uninspired:

Winter Witch

Winter Queen

Ice Queen

Snow Queen

Something about a Yuki-Onna maybe

She's Very Stately and kinda breakable but Winter is her Bitch

I mean like, the fact that, if protected, she can shut down the agriculture of a fucking country? That's an S-rank even if she's not that useful in a fight.

She's like. Jinchuuriki-level destruction. Generally speaking she wouldn’t. But she could.

Elsa: What the fuck is a chakra? Elsa: my snow monsters are self-sustaining. Elsa: I'm gonna build us a house.

Zabuza has NO idea how her powers work and it is INCREDIBLY frustrating but “there’s no chakra cost to keep these things going and we have shelters on demand” is too convenient to question after a while.

Haku: Delicate, deadly, incredibly fast ninja work. Elsa: I can't dodge a kunai but watch me wreck your entire country's ecosystem in under a day.

Elsa is a siege weapon.

Meanwhile, Anna is really, really into the physicality of ninja practice.

She's clumsy and she's not very good at ninja stuff, but she sure is determined!

Anna also gets on Zabuza's nerves because she keeps insisting that Haku get to be a kid.

Anna: Let's make flower crowns! Zabuza: No, he needs to train, not- Anna: FLOWER CROWNS

Consider: Haku saying Elsa-nee-sama and Anna-hime.

Or just calling Elsa “onee-sama.”

Anna is also younger than Elsa and way more Fun so she probably gets adjusted to Anna-chan or Nee-chan.

If Zabuza calls Elsa “Hime-chan” or “Elsa-hime” or, Sage forbid, “Elsa-sama/dono” then he’s VERY MUCH making fun of her and he’s probably getting his soup frozen that night.

At one point, Elsa... tries to like. Convince herself to have a crush on Zabuza or Kakashi or something until Zabuza just puts a hand on her shoulder and asks "do you even like men?" "...that's an OPTION?"

Zabuza urging her to try and ask out a Cute Kunoichi and Elsa's like.... I can't decide if she's bright red and a useless lesbian or uncomfortable and ace.

I am SO invested in the siege weapon thing.

SHE IS THE SQUISHIEST WIZARD.

It's not her fault that every single other combatant on the continent is Massively Dangerous in melee! She took a very traditional back-line build!

Enemy: Doesn't it GRATE to protect someone so pathetic, Zabuza? Zabuza: She literally froze an entire castle of enemies to death because they harmed her sister, so. No.

Most Ninjas: Sharp Knife. S-Rank Mega Ninjas: Gun. Elsa: High Yield Explosive Rocket Launcher. Literally loses fights to the Knife People, because she can't bring her power to bear on that scale. But if you can give her Time and Prep? No contest.

Long distance AoE

Like you know how Nagato is literally dying of starvation due to illness and can't walk, but he's also capable of leveling powerful villages more or less on his own?

Elsa is the same Vibe.

It’s like sealing a bijuu in a civilian.

She's honestly both more and less powerful? Like it'd be hard for her to kill everyone in Konoha in the snap of a finger? But also, she could starve out the Country of Fire in a summer.

She WOULDN'T, but she could.

I always read Elsa as gay or ace but my brain keeps trying to ship her with dude ninjas and I have to yank it back on a child leash.

People insinuate that Zabuza is interested in Elsa and he's just "What? Ew she's like five."

"I'm eighteen."

"Five."

BUT

Elsa! Might mistake trust and companionship for a crush!

I can see THAT happening despite gay/ace.

Also like. I don’t think Zabuza is straight.

So mlm/wlw solidarity?

And Haku is probs genderqueer.

So Anna is THE TOKEN STRAIGHT.

Anna is like, the Straight Friend who will go to the mat for her queer friends. Like vicious. In-your-face barking like a mean dog at people who were being bigots.

You know how Elsa in the second movie uses her powers to make toys for kids out of ice?

Okay, so her practicing by making things with Haku.

But yeah, Elsa can't really do "throws ice senbon," but she can do Delicate Geometry Things since she apparently, canonically studies math for fun and loves fractals.

Haku: I can trap you in a prison of ice mirrors, and you are at my mercy. Elsa: LOOK AT THIS CASTLE I MADE???

Haku wants to do Pretty Things like Elsa

OH.

Elsa makes... snow bunnies..

For the ninja distraction reasons but also because it's a Soft Thing that makes her feel better about, uh, everything. And Haku likes bunnies.

Zabuza still takes The Dirty Missions but Elsa gets upset when he does something that hurts innocents and Nobody wants Elsa upset. Even Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset.

When Elsa gets upset, overnight accommodations are suddenly Very Uncomfortable for everyone except her and Haku.

And then Anna gets upset, which makes Elsa even MORE upset.

And then things just keep getting colder.

Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset for many reasons, not limited to: "Is actually capable of killing me from outside of Sword Range if she's mad enough, even if it’s not that easy" and "the Small Children would be unbearably sad if she died and honestly so might I."

She's more of a friend than a ward and he's not entirely sure he's okay with that.

Zabuza: "Ew, friendship."

He has absolutely no idea how to have a social interaction with people he isn't Bullying, Raising, or Threatening to Kill.

Elsa and Anna have no trouble convincing people they're related, at least. Different coloration with almost identical bone structure.

A tendency to burst into song when they feel emotions.

Identical weird accent that nobody can place.

FOOD

The girls are royalty, they don't know how to COOK.

But they also want food from HOME.

It's a lot of trial and error.

More error than not, since they have both no knowledge and also a language barrier to overcome. It probably takes YEARS before they can describe things like Unfamiliar Flavors well enough for people to say "OH that sounds like spearmint."

When they run into something they know that’s familiar, it’s life-changing.

Chocolate is more common in the elemental nations than in Arandelle and Anna may or may not cry about it.

Anna is loudly bossy, even at Zabuza.

Zabuza is gruffly commanding, to everyone.

Elsa doesn't actually like being in charge, but when she talks, people LISTEN.

(Haku is just happy to be here.)

Elsa radiates two things: Anxiety, and Natural Command, and she basically just fluctuates between those.

"I don't want to be in charge but also I'm vetoing this."

So, obviously, the main reasons that Zabuza keeps the girls around is that Elsa is a living siege weapon and he thinks she could be convinced to help him run a revolution in Kiri, and also that the Ice Queen schtick is like. Really good for Haku and Zabuza can’t really say no to the kid.

HOWEVER, Anna is clumsy and messy and all that, so Zabuza starts training her in Ninja stuff. Elsa joins in on the “I need to know how to Run Fast to get away from fights I don’t want to have in the first place,” but Anna’s the one that’s like “TEACH ME HOW TO SWORD.”

It’s honestly not that hard to teach her, she’s just really, really, REALLY enthusiastic.

Once or twice someone asks why she’s so bad at this yet running around with an A-rank nukenin and Zabuza’s just like “I’ve only had her for a year and a half, shut up!” because it’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s that she was a very pampered civilian until like a week before he met her.

He should get a MEDAL for even getting her to low Chuunin.

Zabuza: I'm taking a job from Gato Elsa, who has Training in economics and politics and bureaucracy: I have a better idea.

This is actually not entirely what I’d do but I wanted to make the joke first ANYWAY here’s an actual plot or something.

Oh, also by this point everyone is Canon Ages so Elsa’s 21 and Anna’s 18 and Zabuza’s 26 and Haku’s 15.

Elsa is getting paid to keep the water from interfering with construction, by way of....

ICE COFFERDAM

Elsa with Haku as her Guard while Zabuza is off running his own mission? Which Anna begged to go on because Cool.

Elsa also kind of keeps her involvement on the ice front semi-secret by claiming she’s there as an engineering consultant.

LISTEN canon made her like geometry, I can ENTIRELY believe she’d be excited about the bridge-building.

Gato has hired someone else on the danger level of Zabuza, who is Threatening to Team 7 + Haku? But then when things look bleak Anna and Zabuza arrive and then Scary Sword Man is on our side and oh dear that's a lot of blood.

Which, you know, fun!

Birdie suggested Raiga which I’m not feeling but I do feel the need to bring up as an option.

It’s also not Kisame BUT

Kisame: [giant lake dome filled with sharks]

Elsa: uhhhhhhhhhhh...

Giant lake dome: [is now a giant ice dome]

Anyway

Gato: I'm hiring an army. Elsa: [giant ice wall around his compound] Gato: ... these guys can walk up walls! Elsa: [adds snowman guards] Elsa: ... Elsa: [adds a ceiling]

Just puts Gato's entire mob in a fucking snow globe.

Zabuza shows up twenty minutes late with (Throwing) Star(buck)s just like "Oh, they dead? No? Want 'em to be? Okay cool I'm gonna go pick up Haku, I'll be back in like an hour."

Anna would... LOVE Naruto

ENERGETIC FRIENDLY GOOFBALL

"I found us a baby brother!" "No, we already have Haku." "BUT LOOK AT HIM."

Anna is only a year or two older than Itachi.

OH RIGHT

I wanted to make a joke about how Naruto also vibes with her because he's less judgmental that she can't really... talk properly.

Sasuke is Judgy and Kakashi is Paranoid and Sakura is Uncomfortable.

Meanwhile Naruto is just like "And I Shall Scream."

Anna, who learned Japanese from Zabuza (rude) and Haku (uber polite): WELL FUCK YOU, GOOD SIR Naruto: YEAH WELL FUCK YOU TOO, LADY Elsa, overly formal: I am... so very sorry.

Anyway, generic missing nin fights and all that.

Elsa gets injured in the process and after a variety of arguments, Naruto manages to convince them to take her to Konoha for medical attention.

Elsa is... usually the one getting injured.

Zabuza and Haku are FAST and Anna is at least learning (even if she’s only been doing it for three years), but Elsa is The Squishy Wizard.

If someone throws a kunai... she can’t... really dodge...

So yeah, gut wound.

Normally they find a nukenin medic to patch them up but Konoha is reasonably close and has some of the more skilled medics on the continent and they DID technically help the Konoha nin so like. Gah.

That’s Zabuza’s final thought. Gah.

Just “Fuck it, let’s save the ice queen.”

Elsa ends up in a half-literal-ice stasis state on the way there and it’s happened before (it is not the first time she’s been stabbed), but it’s always terrifying.

Especially to the Konoha genin who are just like WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.

So they get to Konoha, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about extradition treaties and “you are bringing a literal WMD of a woman into our town” and “we can’t just let MOMOCHI ZABUZA in.”

Anyway, it ends up being that Zabuza has to wait outside the village while Elsa is treated inside, and one of the Teenagers goes in. Obviously, it’s Anna, because Zabuza is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with letting Haku enter a village that’s known for having lots of bloodlines, and anyway, Anna’s the sister.

Bunch of stuff, she’s healing, etc, and then one day Anna comes in and is told “your sister had a bad reaction to the anesthetic, we couldn’t save her, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”

She flips out, gets shown the corpse, flips out MORE, gets escorted out to the village walls where Zabuza and Haku are waiting.

Horrified reactions

Zabuza doesn’t want to admit that it’s EMOTIONS because this is his FRIEND, he is clearly just upset about losing the living siege weapon.

Haku is just super confused and goes “But she’s not dead.”

“What.”

“She’s not dead, I can feel her, I can always feel her, it’s like sensing but just her, because we’re both ice. She’s alive, somewhere over... there?”

And points right in the direction of the Hokage Mountain, which for the purposes of this fic and also Drama is where ROOT headquarters is.

YEP we absolutely have that plot point.

Is Danzo overused as a plot device? Probably. Am I going to diabolus ex machina him anyway? Ye.

They kick up enough of a fuss that the Hokage gets called down.

He wouldn’t, normally, he’d leave it to a couple of skilled jounin and call it a day, except Naruto got involved so like. You can’t. Ignore that.

There’s lots of shouting.

Just like. A lot.

And then part of the mountain explodes!

AS ONE DOES

Elsa comes flying backwards out of the hole, catches herself on a spontaneous ice slide, gets to her feet.

Girl is swaying like MAD.

There are absolutely ANBU (both fake and real) coming after her.

At least one of them gets speared through by an ice spike.

Anna runs up to her, tries to hug her, gets batted away.

Elsa’s staring at her in sheer TERROR and starts muttering something about how Anna died years ago, this isn’t real, etc.

Nobody except Anna understands most of it, but Haku picks up enough to translate when Anna’s freaking out.

Elsa starts doing her Ice Castle thing in the middle of Konoha as a coping mechanism, mostly so she can get Up and Away and Shielded By Ice.

This is not a good look.

Especially because she’s singing, which Zabuza always thinks is a bad omen because it means shit is getting real and one or both of the girls are about to get a powerup or be beaten even harder than otherwise. When they start singing, things get More Dramatic And Extreme).

(Zabuza does not like Disney Musical Rules)

Danzo shows up.

There’s a bunch of arguing.

All the medics insist that nothing she was given at the hospital should have caused amnesia, psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, etc.

It’s. Not hard for Hiruzen to guess what happened.

Namely that Danzo, upon finding out that chakra dampeners didn’t do shit since none of Elsa’s powers come from chakra, decided to keep her drugged up and start using genjutsu to make her more malleable.

Because like. An injured WMD just showed up in your village. What are you supposed to do, not try to kidnap her and turn her to your side? Like, come on. What was he supposed to do?

Not that, Danzo. Literally Not That.

IDK how it gets resolved, probably Anna getting to her with the power of love, because Elsa is ultimately Super Disney.

I also don’t really know where to go from there other than “Maybe Jiraiya can get you home, but also I’m pretty sure Zabuza wants you all to get the hell out of here and take over Kiri” but who knows.

Also

IMAGINE ELSA MEETING GAI.

Imagine Ino getting a puppy crush on Elsa.

IDK that’s it for now.

#Frozen #Naruto #Momochi Zabuza #Yuki Haku #Zabuza #Haku #mini fic #Phoenix Babbles #Crossovers #Phoenix Posts

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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 3 years

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God of War (PS4) Review: Kratos’ Postal Grief Beard Versus Norse Mythology

Once upon a time, a man was born by the name of Cory Barlog and thus a coin was flipped. Would he become a videogame developer or would he take up guarding the Mines of Moria by pulling wizards into a precipice? Those really are the only two options with a name like Barlog. Anyway, apparently the Mines of Moria were a bit of a commute, so the world gained a talented Auteur developer with a unique vision for a game series about going postal in ancient Greece. Fast-foward a number of years specifically calculated to make you feel old and ancient Greece is a distant memory. Norse mythology is where all the cool kids hang out nowadays, and that’s where we’re going in today’s review.

As you might have guessed, I’ve just finished playing God of War (PS4), which is fun to say because it rhymes. It’s a very good game that should be a very bad game. When considering modern media artefacts, I’m often prompted to ask the question ‘what went so wrong?’, but this may be the first time I’ve had to ask the question ‘what went so right?’.

Let me explain: God of War 4 (I don’t care that they don’t put the number on the box art, that’s what it fucking is) makes a single, monumentally stupid creative decision that should ruin the entire enterprise, but doesn’t. And that creative decision was- wait for it- a stab at maturity.

The last time we saw Kratos- the world’s angriest mythical being- he was finishing his battle with the Greek gods in God of War 3. There was a moment in that game which, to me, typified what was so great about the series. If I recall the sequence of events correctly, you kill your way through an ocean of expendable goons and critters who are just trying to defend their home on Mount Olympus, dripping with blood and screaming furiously, then wander into the bedroom of one of ancient Greece’s sauciest goddesses and play a sex minigame that you win by fucking her so well that her handmaids orgasm too. Then you toddle outside again and, head cleared, solve an incredibly complex and cerebral puzzle involving non-Euclidean geometry and perspective manipulation that takes bloody ages. That, in a nutshell, was the core identity of the original God of War: a gleefully unrestrained and immature approach to sex and violence coupled with a grouchy willingness to make unsuspecting players feel like fucking idiots for no reason whatsoever. It was awesome. In contrast, God of War 4 picks up many, many years later with Kratos hiding out in Midgard of the Norse mythos and, for once, he hasn’t got a nark on and he’s not trying to stick his cock in someone with cartoonishly huge knockers. He’s just sad because his missus has passed away, leaving him and their young, impressionable son alone in a big, scary world full of trolls and ginger psychopaths. ‘Sad’ isn’t a completely new emotion for Kratos, but, up until this point, he was usually sad in a way that resulted in five hundred people getting their spines broken in a very colourful manner. Now he just wants to cremate the remains of the woman he loved and carry her ashes to the tallest peak in the nine realms so he can scatter her in accordance with her final wishes. And that’s what he does, with son- Atreus- in tow. It’s a twenty-plus hour game in which the objective is very simply to honour someone’s preferred funeral rites- nothing more, nothing less. It’s very modest by Kratos usual standards. Remember that his stated goal in the previous game was to punch freakin’ Zeus so hard that his face would go all concave and then repeatedly stamp on his corpse.

We never actually find out much about what Kratos was up to between games or how he met his wife. However, he’s a bit thiccer than in previous instalments and seems to have lost the use of the ‘jump’ button outside of context-sensitive environments. On that evidence, I choose to believe he’s been running a small but successful family restaurant called ‘Kratos’ Potatoes’ and enjoying it all a bit much. And why not? He beat up Zeus- if he just wants to create and sample homely yet exotic Greco-Norse fusion cuisine while growing a ridiculous straggly dad-beard, I say let him crack on. Actually, is it a ‘dad beard’ or is it a ‘grief beard’? I think they send them to videogame characters in the post whenever a loved one dies so they can signal to the world how sad they are through the medium of angsty facial hair. But where was? Oh yeah: cracking on with it.

Y’see this is where the plot comes in: the Norse gods won’t let Kratos crack on. They’re determined to make him bow before Odin- especially Baldur, who is way too invested in having a fight with Kratos for reasons that won’t become apparent until very late in the game. They just keep turning up and trying to break Kratos and his increasingly like-him-but-not-as-good-at-it son Atreus. This time around, our heroes commit heinous acts of violence to defend themselves, not enact revenge, as they travel, inexorably, to the top of a lonely mountain through landscapes of stunning natural beauty and many, many hostile creatures.

Of course, Kratos taking his son on a hiking holiday with added troll-murder and the occasional slap-fight with Norse mythology’s biggest killjoys doesn’t sound as interesting as the original games. After all, those were basically a production of Kill Bill in which the part of Bill was played by a guy with the power to summon lightning bolts and access to a seemingly unstoppable army of monsters and demigods. The ‘fun factor’ even seems to have taken another downgrade, in that Kratos no longer operates with the entertainingly demented passion of the insane: he has been tempered by time and love and managed to turn himself into a paragon of serious self control. So why is God of War 4 so bloody good? Partly, I suspect, the answer lies in the constantly evolving relationship between Kratos and Atreus, which gives the story an unbelievable amount of heart and always manages to feel very organic. Kratos never learned how to be a parent, and we essentially watch him do it in real time, forming a bond with his son that seems impossible at the start of the game and inevitable by the end. Partly, the games greatness lies in the characters you meet along the way, who range from bickering dwarves to talking, decapitated heads who prattle on like laid-back tour-guides. Partly, it’s in the beautiful, epic landscapes that make the journey across the Realms to the highest peak feel epic and significant, even while it is small and personal.

But a videogame is nothing without gameplay, and it is here that God of War 4 really shines. I loved the original God of War trilogy (especially the third instalment), but I rarely felt like I was playing as, y’know, a god of war. Kratos might not be an uncontrollable whirlwind of fury any more, but he feels truly powerful for the first time in the ongoing series. In fights, every punch feels like it could crack stone; every axe-throw like it could rend the sky; every chain-whip like it could legitimately start a forest-fire. Out of combat, Kratos moves around the environment with the stolid grace of a man who knows his movements are inevitable; irresistible; an imposition on the environment that can’t be denied. You climb and complete elaborate, complex traversals knowing that the satisfaction you feel isn’t just the satisfaction of finding the correct route or solving an obstacle, but the satisfaction of a being forcing his way through a landscape that resists him at every turn but cannot stop him. The puzzles- of which there are many- strike the perfect balance between conceptual trickiness and ease of execution to remind you that Kratos is smart as well as determined; that his mind is as indomitable as his body. Then there are the little touches involving heaving huge stone pillars and similar unnecessarily over-the-top efforts. In short, the gameplay is interwoven with who Kratos is- with what he is in way that seems completely unprecedented. Even the RPG elements feel appropriate: they reflect the protagonist’s growing confidence in a skillet he hasn’t used in a long, long time.

Do I miss the uniquely juvenile, over the top identity of the old games? Absolutely: I’m a great fan of gratuitous gore and scantily clad women with big fuck-off swords. Usually, I find the desire for maturity in games to be a silly, pretentious trend that foolishly eschews anything obviously ‘fun’ for no reason other than courting the respect of people whose respect isn’t worth having. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here- at least, not entirely. The developers of the God of War games are clearly artisans and craftsmen of extreme talent: their attention to detail is superb and their ability to weave a good tale from a simple premise is actually a little daunting for someone who considers himself a bloody good story-teller. It’s worth remembering that the de facto head of the studio, Barlog, became a father himself before commencing work on this game about a father learning to bond with his son. It feels personal and meant because it is. Other games might reach for superficially mature themes like family and redemption for altogether cynical reasons. God of War 4 does it because such thoughts are clearly much on the developer’s mind. I asked already ‘Do I miss the identity of the old games?’ and the answer is still yes. But that question deserves a follow-up: am I willing to embrace the identity of this new, quieter God of War anyway? And yes, yes I am.

But if we could have a few more women with enormous knockers and Kratos going properly batshit just once or twice in the next sequel, that would also be welcome. I mean, let’s try to strike a balance here, people, for pity’s sake.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #God of War #God of War 4 #god of war sequel #Kratos #Zeus #norse mythology #greek mythology #videogames #game review #games

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felinisfeloney · 4 years

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Thoughts as I watch Scum Villian Part 4

so another week another episode of scum to talk about. This episode was really just one long fight scene and that is perfectly okay. let’s get into details and talk about this from a writing/animation standpoint and a production standpoint because there is a fascinating aspect that is brought in by the choice of 3D and why 3D isn’t always cheaper or easier to work with despite what you may be thinking.

tl;dr i can think of no way this is cheaper in 3d but also just because it is cheap do not call it bad. they are working within their budget and also there many aspects from a writing and animation standpoint i love

1) so it should be stated the choreography for the fight with Hammer Time is well done even if it is a little awkward in places where follow through or continuity just hasn’t been kept. For the most part it’s not noticeable unless you’re looking for it. I liked the inclusion of the original Shen QingQui’s abuse mixed with Shen Yuan’s kindness and how it has shaped in Luo Binghe’s mind at this point. It’s a fun exploration for what can be added in adaptation if you try to read in moments between text and add on what’s there. They could have easily left this out and had us finish the fight entirely with the retreat of the demons easily but instead expanded nicely upon the text. When I talk about good versus bad adaptation and changing for the medium this is what I mean when I say CQL has a problem with how it adapts the book as it is written this is what I mean. Always adapt with a mind for getting the emotion and the story in the most economical way (and do not give me more than one episode of JC crying in a bed as everyone repeats the same five scenes essentially)

because we no longer restricted visually to just SQQ’s head and narration we can explore new emotions and angles that were previously unavailable.

2) I have been thinking this for awhile, but I am certain the reason the time spent in the cave changed from a few months to 3 years was because the staff new in later episodes how inherently bad Luo Binghe’s model would look having to do multiple physical interactions where the height is apparent. Because Luo Binghe’s model does not look like a child. It looks like they scaled down adult Luo Binghe and moved his eyes down and scaled them up. If you look at any shot where our boys share the screen with their bodies in view you’ll note that proportion wise Luo Binghe looks like a really tiny adult. The proportions between the two times are the same the model just scaled up and the eyes got smaller. it would not surprise me if this was dealio. It both gets around the age gap and looks less weird in animation for scenes where they have to may hug and such.

3) The big thing that this show proves to me as a reason 3D just seems like a bad idea for something that doesn’t have the time/style/budget is seeing that sword pierce through the hand. It doesn’t look like impact and a blood mess but instead the sword just phasing through the geometry of the hand which it is. This was once I read the book the big thing that made me go ‘oh this show is gonna have problems’

Let’s talk about blood effects in 3D because in my last scum posts I talked a lot about modeling and style but I haven’t really touched on blood. See liquids in general are hard to make look right in 3D even with how many presets and tricks that are available because unlike 2D where stabby violence can be difficult because you have to figure out the motion and then draw wokring in 3D requires you to spend a lot of time figuring out how to make particles and geometry move correctly without breaking everything. For the senior film that I worked on a huge element was both figuring out how to make a lava spurt along with making the blood effects natural. We spent a few weeks on and despite having out professors help and tons of resources it still wasn’t without a lot of flaws. If given more time we could have done better but you only have so long to render your work out.

Still liquid is relatively easy. But liquid in motion presents a specific problem of needing to be handled case by case. Cheap 3D often avoid liquids or fire as much as possible because of this aspect. The particle and smoke effects and everything look nice though because there is a large amount of preexisting effects and aspects in software you can use without overdoing it on your budget and labor time. Also smoke and particles tend to not stand out as much since they are so loose in their nature. The big thing I want to taken from this is blood is a hard aspect to work with especially if it’s gonna be up close.

I genuinely was annoyed that I didn’t get to see SQQ get stabbed and it was just off screen and there wasn’t even blood or visually indicator he was stabbed. In the book the moment comes off as bloody and violent. Here it just isn’t anything...

4) So, what do I mean by things not being cheaper. I’ve heard people talk about this being a cheap production and in many ways I agree in others I have no idea where they are saving money without just throwing quality out the window. For context I recently graduated back in June 2020 with an animation degree where I focused mostly in 3D production usually in some sort of producer capacity. A thing that you learn almost immediately is that 3D is only cheaper in small areas that don’t add up long term that mostly come with taking perceived shortcuts in preproduction. The main difference between the workflow of a 2D production and a 3D production is ultimately how much time is spent in the preproduction and production phases.

3D for the most part is spent most of it’s time in production phase because unlike 2D once you get your bases down and layouts you can head straight into animating even as your texture artists are working on the UVs. Pre-Production for 2D on the other hand is working everything out on the start and then getting done an animatic which lets you move straight into refining your animatic into animation. The process sound the same but emphasis is where most your effort goes. 3D animations shortcuts don’t add up when you take into account the amount of time that will be focused simply on animation and lighting. Lighting is sooooo important and it is a bitch. Also the moment you add in big effects suddenly you have to slow that to make sure that works and that’s going to take a lot of time and money to work out without looking jank.

Because here’s the thing without styling things and working around the textures and effects cheap in 3D is painfully apparent and awful in much the same way cheap animation that doesn’t work around this creatively is. The crowd shots and minor characters look awful because they are clearly using a default skin tone that hasn’t been painted on to make it look more natural and is a lower resolution. Yes less effort goes into make repetitive motions and such but it’s very jarring.

The backgrounds look decent but they are clearly default textures made from presets. The show is constantly trying to work around the cheapness with how it’s doing it’s editing and the distance the camera holds and where it shows itself but it’s clear that isn’t able to do a lot of what it needs to.

3D is something that needs a lot of effort and money to look good when trying to be realistic so if you’re going to have a low budget you need to work around that.

2D honestly... would have been cheaper and would hide the low budget better. What they are saving on is essentially is drawing sets because the animation budgets doesn’t really change to much from a pure motion standpoint. The animation and expression is hindered in 3D because the models are so realistic and such. The designs for the outfits are pretty and they don’t have to constantly worry about the details being draw right in 3D but honestly you wouldn’t do these overly complicated outfits anyway.

You would simplify them and have a version that was easy to work with and allowed for better expression and zany movement. This from a budget standpoint would actually help to save money because if there is one thing animation history teaches you it is that cheap animation works really well in 2D especially comedy as long as you understand how to style it and make it look like it belongs. MDZS works around it’s budget by getting around lip flaps by using the environment or the reaction of the other character to the dialogue. If you pay attention to what is animated and how it is given focus and such it becomes clear what kind of budget MDZS had to work with. Not a new trick but a classic for saving on animation. 3D effects and backgrounds are also incorporated into 2D all the time and most cases people neither care nor complain (or notice). So those particle effects they can make work. The money saved in sets you can make back by being clever with your character animation and the sets that will get drawn it should be noted most sets are designed in 3D anyway so that 2D animators can figure out how work animation and backgrounds from different angles.

also the 2D would elevate the comedy so much and we would have more meme faces. That said I do see a lot of wonderful effort put on screen and even if it is cheap it is not bad. This show is not badly animated. It is merely cheap and styled for a video game instead of a show. The actual animation for the characters and such is lovely and cheap never has to mean bad. A lot of wonderful and great animations are cheap and a rule of thumb is to remember to account for context and recourses.

#fel speaks #svsss donghua #svsss

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archiveofprolbems · 3 years

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The Sounding Image: About the relationship between art and music—an art-historical retrospective view by Barbara John

Since the early days of Modernism, the interplay between art and music has given considerable impetus to the development of new art forms. [1] This essay will examine the pre-history of this modern synergy. In comparison with other contributions to Media Art Net, the historical framework here is considerably larger. This is justified by the nature of the subject matter: artificial images and sounds have been created since the dawn of human culture. Therefore it is quite right that many texts refer back to prehistory, or at least the ancient world. But a great deal remains speculative here, and often history is reinterpreted, or even written, from an entirely modern point of view.

The approach in this essay will be different. Theoretical statements by artists that have come down to us will be used to show, from a short review of Western culture, how this relationship, which began in very different conditions, changed over the centuries from an art-historical point of view and led to all the arts working together on an equal footing. The route will lead rapidly from antiquity and the Middles Ages to the transition from classical artistic techniques to the beginnings of media art.

Art and music - an unequal start

In the Christian West music was one of the seven free arts, the so-called artes liberales, whereas fine art was seen merely as a craft activity. [2] Music's high standing was based on the philosophy of Pythagoras, who explained musical theory in terms of mathematical laws that were interpreted cosmologically in the Middle Ages. With arithmetic, geometry and astrology, music made up a quadrumvirate working on a mathematical basis within the artes liberales, and it was allotted a special function as a hinge between microcosm and macrocosm.

But even Plato recognized a special connection between eye and sound. Synaesthesia (Greek: sharedsensitivity) has been an epistemological topic since the days of ancient philosophy. Since the Baroque era in particular is has also been an experimental field for inventors of machines and theoretical speculators, like Pater Castel, for example. But this essay will not deal with individual aspects so much as synaesthesia in its full cultural context.

Medieval sacred art and music

The Western roots of a direct interplay between art and music lie in Christian liturgy. [3] The structure of the church building as the place where mass is celebrated emphasizes the special significance of music through the choir, which is immediately adjacent to the altar. Music is an indispensable part of the celebration of mass, and the artistic decoration of the altar is essential for the ceremonial process. Ostentatious medieval piety required staging that appealed to all the senses, like a religious Gesamtkunstwerk: the act of worship climaxing in the raising of the host is accompanied by singing, incense and the glow of candles - with the altarpiece as a pictorial setting. The variety of artistic contributions ranges from the decoration of the musical instruments via the miniature painting in the hymnbooks to panel painting.

The liturgical order determined the content of the art and music programme. The fixed Christian festivals in the liturgical calendar do not determine the choice of liturgical singing alone, they also affect the iconography of the altarpiece. This applies particularlyto the worship of Mary and saints that was widespread in the Middle Ages. This led to an expansion of the iconography of Mary in panel painting, and in liturgy to an increasing number of hymns venerating the Mother of God, which were sung on the appropriate feast days. One especially striking example of saint-worship is the altar painting by the Cologne master Stephan Lochner for the altar of the Three Kings.

In contrast with the Latin hymns, which ordinary people did not understand, and the theological content of the altarpieces, which had to be explained to laymen, a much more vivid way of conveying religious messages developed with the rise of mysticism. Mystery plays, particularly the Easter Passion Plays, emerged from the 12th century, and proved a fertile field of activity for painters, sculptors and musicians. They stimulated new musical and pictorial compositions. Performances required musical accompaniment, and at the same time new ritual figures were designed, like for example the Passion ass for the Palm Sunday play and the sculpture of Mary to be raised in the nave for the feast of the Assumption. Both music and art helped to stage a popular spectacle with religious content.

Book-, wall- and panel-painting count as important pictorial evidence of the history of popular and instrumental music. But they were not intended simply to illustrate, but also to instruct. David with his harp, Salome's dance and the host of angels playing musical instruments are particularly familiar Biblical themes. [4] In secular images we find the singing troubadour, round dances or the personification of music.

Renaissance - the arts in competition

Social changes started in the late Middle Ages: painters, sculptors and architects began to be classed as artists. In the early days of the Renaissance, the arts started to compete with each other. Until then the fine arts had been subordinate to the artes liberales like music, but this was questioned by universally talented artists like Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). One key reason was the discovery of central perspective. This led to a close link between art and mathematics, as artistic composition was now subject to mathematical rules.

Alberti and Leonardo studied perspective intensively, and demanded enhanced status for thefine arts in their writings, particularly in relation to music.

Alberti was principally concerned with the arts' competition between each other. He felt that painting should be allotted the highest status. As a humanistic scholar he insisted that painters should not just have artistic talent, but should also be taught all the free arts, above all geometry. In his theoretical treatise on painting «De Pictura» of 1435/36 he writes: «Hence painting enjoys such high esteem that its exponents, given the admiration accorded to their works, are almost inclined to think that they are to the greatest possible degree similar to God. And is it not further the case that painting should be deemed the teacher of all the other arts - or at least their outstanding adornment?" [5] And Alberti goes on to write: «So: this art gives pleasure, if it is cultivated; it ensures esteem, wealth and eternal fame only if it is so cultivated that it reaches a high standing, Given this - as painting turns our to be the best and most honourable adornment of all things, worthy of free men, beloved equally of the learned and the unlearned - I require all the more emphatically of youth that is eager to learn that they may turn their efforts towards painting, to the greatest feasible extent.» [6] Alberti, who rose to considerable fame as an architect in particular, applied musical numerical proportions to architectural construction. Famous examples are his designs for the churches of S. Francesco in Rimini (1453) and S. Andrea in Mantua (1470). [7]

Leonardo raised the argument to a higher plane. He doubted the superiority of the artes liberales as opposed to the fine arts. His exemplary comparison of art and music led to a demand that art should enjoy equal status. As a universal scholar, he was knowledgeable in all fields. It is said that Leonardo even designed musical instruments, for example a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head for Prince Lodovico Sforza in Milan. He is also said to have been an outstanding musician. For his famous portrait of the Mona Lisa he arranged for music and singing during the sittings, to encourage the subject to look cheerful. [8] In his now famous treatise «Il Paragone», Leonardo wrote in detail about the relationship between painting and music: «If you say that the non-mechanical sciences are the intellectual ones, that I say thatpainting is intellectual and that it, just as music and geometry consider the relationship between the continuous quantities, and arithmetic the relationship between the discontinuous quantities, painting considers all continuous qualities of the relationship between light and shade and with perspective, those of distances.» [9] And further: «Music can be called nothing other than the sister of painting, as it is subject to hearing, as sense that comes after sight, and creates harmony by combining its well-proportioned and simultaneously appearing parts, though they are compelled to emerge and to fade away in a single or several tempos. These tempos enfold the wellfitting quality of the elements from which the harmony is composed, no differently from the way that the lines describe the elements of which the human beauty is composed. Painting towers over and dominates music, because it does not fade away immediately after it is created like unfortunate music, but, on the contrary, remains alive, and so something that in reality is nothing but a surface shows itself to be a living thing. Oh wondrous science, you keep the fragile beauty of mortal man alive, and it thus becomes more lasting than the works of nature, as these are subject to the remorseless changes of time, and of necessity become old. This science (painting) relates to the divine being as its works relate to the works of this being, and for his reason it is worshipped.» [10]

The particular significance of mathematics as a common basis for music and fine art was addressed above all in marquetry work. From the late 15th century, the wooden cladding of choir stalls and scholar's studies showed trompe-l'oeil-like still life compositions made up of mathematical instruments, musical instruments, books and views of architecture.

Artists vitae, like that of Giorgio Vasari, dating from the 16th century, repeatedly report on the musical talents of individual artists. One of these is the Venetian painter Giogione (1478–1511), a passionate lutenist whose divine singing and playing of music was held in such high esteem that he was invited to prestigious events staged by the nobility as a musician. [11] He addressed music in his painting as well. Music is the central theme in one painting by Giorgione, the «Concert champêtre» (c. 1510, Louvre, Paris). The pastoral scene shows a lutenist resting in a meadow,turning to face a shepherd, and also nude woman playing a flute. On the left-hand edge of the picture a second naked woman is holding a jug over a stone trough. Giorgione, who was himself a passionate musician, is addressing the pastoral landscape as a place of musical inspiration here, where the urban musician is being given artistic inspiration by the divine muses and the shepherd. [12] Another example of the secularization of music as a theme takes us to Rome and the late 16th century.

Baroque - secularization and illusionism

In the course of the 16th century, music increased in popularity as part of a process of increasing secularization, but also as a topic of tangible refinement of sensual delight in life. In painting, the theme tends to crop up as an allegory of fleeting, transient existence. It quickly became a favourite subject for the genre painting that was emerging at the time.

The Italian painter Caravaggio (1571-1610) offers an early example. For his Roman patron Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, with whom he lodged for a time, he painted a half-figure Group Portrait with Musicians. The youth playing the lute in the centre is surrounded by three other young men, including Caravaggio himself, who is placed behind the lute player on the right and looking at the viewer. He has a horn in his hand. In the background on the left it is possible to make out a winged cupid with a vine. A fourth youth is completely absorbed in studying sheet music. Even if one assumes that these are portraits of musicians from Cardinal del Monte's entourage, the ancient costumes also suggest an allegory, similarly to Giorgione's picture. As well as the homoerotic nature of the piece, its significance includes the allegorical reference to love and music. [13]

In the next century, further development of secular themes led to the emergence of the music still life. Musical instruments depicted alone appear as individual pictures, but also in an allegorical cycle of the human sensory organs. Old inventories record that cycles of this kind were arranged in Baroque chambers of art and curiosities, the predecessors of the modern museum. Rooms of this kind displayed a microcosm of paintings and sculptures, stuffed animals, herbariums,minerals, optical instruments and much more. Music still lifes do not just depict a whole range of the instruments of the day, the idea of vanity makes them instruments of the vanity of sensual pleasure, indeed quite simply into an allegory of man's short life.

Musical instruments occur in the context of depicting a loose life in countless Baroque genre pictures. Music being played in an inn, at a lovers' tryst or in a society salon becomes the symbol of a morally dubious approach to life.

In Baroque churches, architecture, painting and sculpture enter into a symbiosis under religious conditions for the last time. This aimed to merge all the genres, but also posed the threat of making religious content too superficial. As a response to the Counter-Reformation, Catholic church interiors were redesigned to enhance religious edification: high, vaulted naves, colourful painterly and sculptural decoration, highlighted with gold, an organ. The Catholic Church reacted to the Protestant ban of images with a new and sensual pictorial strategy that was not content with presenting a single image, but included the whole church interior. All the design elements worked together on the basis of the Baroque sense of emphatic sensuality and overflowing emotion, but also the idea of transience. The church interior was seen as a reflection of heaven, and an attempt was made to dissolve the boundaries between this world and the next with the interplay of architecture, sculpture and illusionistic wall painting. The nave was intended to open out as it rose, and the believer's eye was to be turned towards heaven and the welcoming saints, all to the sound of the organ. The 17th and 18th centuries are celebrated as the heyday of organ-building. Regular organ landscapes were created, driven by different architectural and liturgical requirements: it was only in liturgical celebration that musical orchestration and artistic decoration of a space could merge. This was to influence one of the guiding intellectual forces of Modernism - Richard Wagner - to some considerable extent.

Early Modernism - Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk

In the course of the 19th century music acquired outstanding status when compared with the fine arts. Music's expressive resources could successfully reach awide public that was listening to a new language - especially that of Beethoven - after the Enlightenment, revolution and a war that had raged all over Europe. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer remarked on this: «Music is the true common language that is understood everywhere…. But it does not speak of things, rather of nothing but wellbeing and woe, which are the only realities for the will.» [14]

It is not surprising under these conditions that it was a musician who tried to bring the arts together, naturally with music in prime position: Richard Wagner (1813-1883). In his essay «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft» (The Art-Work of the Future), he conceived an interplay of the arts as a Gesamtkunstwerk: «The great Gesamtkunstwerk that has to embrace all genres of art, in order to consume, to destroy each one of these genres to some extent as resources for the sake of achieving the overall purpose of them all, in other words the unconditional, direct representation of perfect human nature - this great Gesamtkunstwerk it (i.e. our spirit) recognizes not as the arbitrary possible deed of the individual, but as the necessarily conceivable joint work of the people of the future.» [15]

Wagner identified the composer Beethoven, the hero of «absolute music», as leading the way in this movement. He describes Beethoven's symphonies as «redeeming music from its own most particular element to become general art. It is the human gospel of the art of the future. No progress is possible from it, from it only the perfect work of art of the future can follow directly, the general drama, to which Beethoven has forged the artistic key for us. Thus music has produced from itself something that none of the other separate arts could do.» [16]

Wagner believed that he had received this artistic key himself. He strove towards the Gesamtkunstwerk he so desired to achieve by building the Festspielhaus in Bayreth, reserved exclusively for performances of his own works. The musical staging, with the orchestra in a concealed pit that concentrates the audience's attention entirely on the interplay of music and stage setting is seen as a precursor of cinematic performances.

Wagner's ideas were not without their effect on the fine arts. One of the outstanding examples of hisenormous cultural influence is provided by the Leipzig artist Max Klinger (1857- 1920). Over 16 years, and at a cost of over 100,000 marks he created his polychrome «Beethoven» sculpture.

Classical Modernism - the early days of abstraction

Wagner's synaesthetic ideas became the starting-point for one of Modernism's fundamental developments: abstraction. The simultaneity of acoustic and visual perception, made reality by staging at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, became a new challenge for those who were preparing the way for abstract painting. As well as Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), Mikalojus Ciurlionis (1875-1911) and Francis Picabia (1879-1953), these included the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Looking back on his early days on Moscow, Kandinsky remarked: «But Lohengrin seemed to be to be a perfect realization of this Moscow. The violins, the deep base notes and the wind instruments in particular embodied the whole power of the evening hour for me at that time. I saw all my colours in my mind, they were there before my eyes. Wild, almost mad lines drew themselves in front of me. I did not dare use the expression that Wagner had painted <my hour> in music. But it was quite clear to me that on the other hand painting could develop the same sort of powers that music possesses.» [17]

A key experience for the synaesthetically inclined Kandinksy was contact with the music of the composer Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951). With Franz Marc, Alexei Javelensky, Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriele Münther and other members of the <Neue Künstlervereinigung> he attended one of Schönberg's concerts in Munich on 2 January 1911. The programme included a string quartet that introduced Schönberg's atonal period and the opus 11 piano pieces. This concert gave Kandinsky an important boost on his way to abstraction. His 1911 painting «Impression 3» was created as a result of this musical input. [18]

Abandoning perspective and also detaching colour from the objective motif took Kandinsky straight into abstraction. Even though he had taken the first steps in this direction in 1908/09, he had needed the crucial musical experience to help him risk the decisive step. Just as Schönberg had liberated himself from the constraints of the rules of musical composition,Kandinsky was trying to extricate himself from the dictates of imitating nature. Thus the end of central perspective in painting coincided with the loss of a binding key system in music. Composer and painter met at a turning-point. Kandinsky immediately tried to get in touch with Schönberg personally, who also painted, and made him a member of the «Blauer Reiter». In his first letter to Schönberg, he wrote: «You have realized something in your works that I was longing for in music, admittedly in an uncertain form. The natural movement through their own fate, the personal life in the individual voices in our composition in precisely what I am trying to find in the form of painting.» [19]

Unlike Kandinsky, who was decisively inspired towards atonal music by Schönberg, for the French painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) simultaneity and hence temporal perception shifted into the centre of his artistic output. He used the rules of simultaneous contrast to create vibrations in the eye. Time became a new category within artistic creativity, taking over from the meaning of space with a central perspective to a certain extent. Rhythm created a particular affinity between art and music. Delaunay's pictorial motifs started to move, they were even intended to lead to insights into the world over and above the optical effect. His friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, poetically called this way of painting «Orphism.» A piece of Paragone seems to flare up again when we read this statement by Delaunay: «The eye is our most highly developed sense; it is most closely connected with our brain, our consciousness. It conveys the idea of the vital movement of the world and this movement is called simultaneity.» [20]

In Delaunay's case, painting became time-based colour composition. Perception was no longer based on the classical perspective composition of a rectangular framed picture. In his 1912 series of «Window Pictures» Delaunay composed imaged that were metres long, representing the perception of the picture subject as a time sequence, like an excerpt.

Delaunay wrote as follows about his «Window Pictures«: «The choice of ‹Window Pictures› as a title is still a reminder of concrete reality; but the new form the expressive resources are taking canalready be seen. These are windows on to a new reality. This new reality means nothing other than spelling out new expressive resources; these create the new form purely physically, as elements of colour. Among other things, these pictorial elements are juxtaposed contrasts that build up pictorial architecture, a complex, similar to an orchestra, developing like movements in colour. […] The series invokes only the sujet, the composition and orchestration of colours. That is the origin, the first appearance of non-representational painting in France. […] The colour is its own function; all its motion is present at every moment, as in musical composition at the time of Bach, or good jazz in our day.» [21]

Delaunay's reflections about the meaning of colour, linked with the loss of perspective and the new pictorial order analogous with musical composition are reminiscent of Kandinky's ideas. In fact the two artists met at the first «Blauer Reiter» exhibition in Munich in December 1911, in which Delaunay also featured. Correspondence between them from autumn 1911 to spring 1912, when Delaunay began his «Windows Series», has survived. [22]

From painting to the moving picture

Alongside Delaunay's painterly approach, artists also tried to compose colour rhythms as real movement. Leopold Survage (1879-1968) designed over seventy studies for his film project «Rhythme Coloré» in 1913. This was a colour-rhythm symphony that was unfortunately never realized. Survage summed up his aims as follows in 1914: «After painting had liberated itself from the conventional objects of the outside world, it conquered the terrain of abstract forms. Now it has to get over its last, fundamental barrier - immobility, so that it can become an expressive resource for our sensations that is as rich and subtle as music. Everything that is accessible to us has duration in time, which manifests itself most strongly in rhythm, activity and movement […] I want to animate my painting, I want to give it movement, I want to introduce rhythm into the concrete action of my abstract painting, rhythm that derives from my inner life.» [23]

As well as Survage, the Swedish painter Helmuth Viking Eggeling (1890-1925) and the Dadaist and film pioneer Hans Richter (1888-1976) worked on this subject. The two men met in Zurich in 1918, and worked together for several years in their search for a universal language. Richter described this period as follows: «Music became a model for both of us. We found a principle that fitted our philosophy in musical counterpoint: each action produces a corresponding reaction. So we found a suitable system in counterpoint fugue, a dynamic and polar arrangement of conflicting energies, and we saw life as such in this model. […] Month after month we studied and compared our analytical drawings, which we had prepared on hundreds of sheets of paper, until we finally came to see them as living creatures that grew, and then passed away […] Now we seemed to be confronted with a new problem, that of continuity […] until - late in 1919 - decided to do something. Eggeling made one theme of elements into the <Horizontal-Vertical-Mass>, on long paper rolls, and I made one of the rolls into <Präludium>. [24] The results of their experiments with form on long paper rolls took Richter and Eggeling directly to film. Their abstract formal studies became the basis for film scores. They and Walter Ruttmann (1887-1941) count as pioneers of the abstract film. [25]

The Bauhaus was a special place where the different arts could develop symbiotically. Many of the masters teaching fine art there were extraordinarily interested in music, like for example Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, (1888-1943) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Paul Klee (1879- 1940) also repeatedly included motifs from music in his drawings and water-colours. He discovered a relationship between painting and music at a very early stage. He put it like this in his diary: «The main disadvantage for the observer or re-creator is that they are faced with an end, and seems to be going in the opposite direction as far as genesis is concerned. […] Musical works have the advantage of being taken up again in the sequence in which they were conceived, and on repeated hearing the disadvantage of being tiring because of the evenness of the impression they make. For the ignorant, creative work has the disadvantage being at aloss about where to begin, and for the intelligent the advantage of varying the sequence strongly while taking it in.» [26] Klee perceived space as time, like Delaunay, to whom he had been introduced through Kandinsky in 1912. Instead of the concept of simultaneity that Delaunay had introduced, Klee used polyphony: «Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that temporal qualities are more spatial here. The concept of simultaneity merges more richly here. To illustrate the backward movement that I think out for music, I remember the reflection in the side windows of a moving tram.» [27]

Klee also claimed the category of time for painting. Differently from Leonardo, he sees time as the element that links the individual arts. His water-colours produced around 1921, which include «Fuge in Rot» (Fugue in Red), greatly influenced experiments with light projections taking place in the Bauhaus.

Abstract sounds - multi-media performances

Klee's colour compositions stimulated Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893-1965), who was still registered as a Bauhaus student at the time, to conduct his first experiments with light projections. [28] His first ideas for the so-called «Farbenlicht-Spiele» (Colour-Light Games) date from 1921/22. The abstract play of coloured forms was performed at the Bauhaus in 1923, accompanied by piano music. Several fellow performers were needed to realize the score the artist had devised. The colour forms emerging from the darkness of the projection room are directly reminiscent of Klee's water-colour compositions, they are painting translating into movement. Hirschfeld-Mack said of his light projections: «…we are aiming for a fugue-like, strictly structured play of colours, always derived from a definite colour-form theme.» [29]

The Hanover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (1897-1948) did not work with colours, but with words. His so-called «Merz art» includes all artistic fields, from architecture via painting to poetry. According to Schwitters, the word «Merz» means «bringing every conceivable material together for artistic purposes, and technically the fact that the individual materials make the same effect in principle..» [30] Perhaps it was by chance that the first Merz work happened to come into being in association with music: Schwitters had his subject,a doctor-friend, play the piano while sitting for a portrait. When the man started to become agitated over Beethoven's «Moonlight Sonata», Schwitter intuitively glued a beer mat on to the cheek in the portrait! His first Merz poems were written around 1919, like «An Anna Blume» (To Anna Blume), for example. The «Lautsonate Merz 13» (Sound Sonata Merz 13) appeared on a gramophone record in 1924, and the «Ursonate» (Sonata with primeval sounds) was composed over a long period in several versions from 1922 to 1932. Schwitters wrote as follows in the magazine G in 1924: «It is not the word that is originally the material of poetry, it is the letter.» Thus he claims letters, or sounds, as the raw material for his poetry, like the rubbish he found in the streets and used for his material collages. Schwitters summed up his intentions in «Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Künstler» (The Artists' Right to Self-Determination) in 1919: «Merz poetry is abstract. Like Merz painting, it uses complete sentences from newspapers, posters, catalogue, conversations etc, as given elements, with and without changes. (That is terrible.) These elements do not need to fit in with the meaning, as there is no more meaning. (That is also terrible.) There are also no more elephants, there are only parts of the poem. (That is dreadful.) And you? (Draws war loan.) Decide yourselves what is poem and what is frame.» [31]

Fine artists increasingly frequently took part in avant-garde plays or even wrote their own pieces in the 1920s. Known works are Kandinsky's drafts for Mussorgsky's «Pictures at an Exhibition» (1928) or Oskar Schlemmer's «Triadisches Ballett» (Triadic Ballet), 1922/26.

An early example of composers and artists working together is provided by the Russian Futurist Alexei Krutschonych's opera. Michail Matjuschin set the libretto of his opera «Sieg über die Sonne» (Victory over the Sun) to music, and Kasimir Malevich designed the costumes and stage set. The piece had its world premiere in St. Petersburg in December 1913. The piece's trans-rational language was made up of incomprehensible word coinages, and came to express the so-called new reason that replaced the old values, symbolized by the sun. The opera was also of lasting importance for artistic development in Russia: Malevich deployed elements of Suprematism for the first time here. The Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky (1890-1941)takes up the theme again in 1920/21. He designed mechanical figures as a «three-dimensional design for an electro-mechanical show» for a planned new performance of the opera «Sieg über die Sonne» as a multi-media spectacle.

Lissitzky explained his aims himself in the foreword to an edition portfolio containing a selection of the stage designs: «This material is the fragment of a work created in Moscow in 1920/21 … We build a scaffolding in a square that is accessible and open on all sides, that is the show machinery. This scaffolding makes it possible for the show bodies to move in absolutely any way… They glide, roll, float up, in and over the scaffolding. All the parts of the scaffolding and all the bodies involved are set in motion using electro-mechanical forces and devices, and these are controlled by a single person. This is the show designer. His place is in the centre of the scaffolding at the switchboard for all energies. He directs the movement, the sound and the light. He switches the radio megaphone on and the din of railways stations rings out over the square, the roar of Niagara Falls, hammering in a rolling mill. Beams of light follow the movements of the bodies involved, refracted by prisms and reflections…The sun as expression of the old world energy in torn down from the sky by modern man, who can create his own source of energy because of his technical mastery. This idea in the opera is tied into the simultaneity of events. The language is alogical. Individual poems are sound poems.»

The classical artistic techniques like instrumental music and painting have already been gradually overcome by Survage, Viking-Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann, Hirschfeld-Mack and replaced by new media forms like film, light and sound apparatuses. A new totality is designed that no longer operates as a individual work of genius, but is intended to be an event for the whole of society, in the political context of revolutionary Russia. Here the imposition of technology on human beings and sound has finally consumed Wagner's vision of the divine composer in favour of a world of apparatus that confronts the artist with a completely new set of tasks.

[1] For an introduction see Karin v. Maur (ed.), Vom Klang der Bilder. Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985; Helga de la Motte-Haber, Musik und bildende Kunst, Laaber, 1990; Frank Schneider (ed.), Im Spiel der Wellen. Musik nach Bildern, Munich, 2000.

[2] M. Bernhard, »Musik«, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. VI, Munich, 1993, column 948-955.

[3] Johannes Tripps, Das handelnde Bildwerk in der Gotik. Forschungen zu den Bedeutungsschichten und der Funktion des Kirchengebäudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Hoch- und Spätgotik, Berlin, 1998.

[4] H. Braun, «Musik, Musikinstrumente», in: Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 4th vol., Freiburg 1994, column 597– 611.

[5] Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, 26, quoted from: idem, Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. by O. Bätschmann/Ch. Schäublin, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 237.

[6] Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, 26, quoted from: idem, Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. by O. Bätschmann/Ch. Schäublin, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 245.

[7] Cf. Leon Battista Alberti, ed. by Joseph Rykwert/Anne Engel, Manuta, 1994, pp. 224-241.

[8] Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. by G. Milanesi, vol. IV, Florence MDCCCLXXIX, pp. 28, 40.

[9] Leonardo da Vinci, Il Paragone, LV 31c, quoted from: Leonardo da Vinci. Sämtliche Gemälde und die Schriften zur Malerei, ed. by André Chastel, Munich, 1990, p. 135.

[10] Leonardo da Vinci, Il Paragone, LV 29, quoted from: Leonardo da Vinci. Sämtliche Gemälde und die Schriften zur Malerei, ed. by André Chastel, Munich, 1990, p. 146.

[11] Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. by G. Milanesi, vol. IV, Florence MDCCCLXXIX, p. 92.

[12] Cf. Gabriele Frings, Giorgiones Ländliches Konzert. Darstellung der Musik als künstlerisches Programm in der venezianischen Malerei der Renaissance, Berlin, 1999.

[13] Cf. The Age of Caravaggio, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1985, pp. 228–235.

[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, Paralipomena § 218.

[15] Richard Wagner, «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,» in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Leipzig, 1907, ( pp. 42–177), p. 60.

[17] Wassily Kandinsky, Rückblicke (Berlin 1913), 3. ed. Bern, 1977, p. 14.

[18] Cf. Schönberg, Kandinsky, Blauer Reiter und die Russsche Avantgarde, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 1/2000, Vienna, 2000.

[19] Quoted from Matthias Schmidt, «Arnold Schönberg und Wassily Kandinsky. Biographische Annäherungen,» p. 19, in Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 1/2000, pp. 16-32.

[20] Robert Delaunay, «Das Licht,» in Hajo Düchting (ed.), Robert Delaunay. Zur Malerei der reinen Farbe, Schriften 1912– 1940, Munich, 1983, p. 125.

[21] Robert Delaunay, «Das Licht,» in Hajo Düchting (ed.), Robert Delaunay. Zur Malerei der reinen Farbe, Schriften 1912– 1940, Munich, 1983, pp. 36-37.

[22] Cf. «Wassily Kandinsky – Robert Delaunay: Ein Dialog im April 1912. Rekonstruktion», in Robert Delaunay. Sonia Delaunay. Das Centre Pompidou zu Gast in Hamburg, Cologne 1999, pp. 186-191.

[23] Leopold Survage, Document Nr. 8182, July 29, 1914, Académie des Sciences, Paris, quoted from: Karin von Maur (ed.), Vom Klang der Bilder. Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985, p. 228.

[24] Quoted from Standish D. Lawder, «Der abstrakte Film: Richter und Eggeling,» in: Hans Richter 1888–1976. Dadaist. Filmpionier. Maler. Theoretiker, Berlin/Zurich/Munich, 1982, pp. 27–35, here p. 30.

[25] Cf. the essay «Sound & Vision in Avantgarde & Mainstream» by Dieter Daniels and the source text by Walter Ruttmann, «Malerei mit Zeit.»

[26] Quoted from Christian Geelhaar, Paul Klee. Schriften. Rezensionen und Aufsätze, Cologne, 1976, p. 173.

[27] Paul Klee, Tagebuch Nr. 1081, quoted from Christian Geelhaar, «Moderne Malerei und Musik der Klassik – eine Parallele», in: Paul Klee. Das Werk der Jahre 1919–1933. Gemälde, Handzeichnungen, Druckgraphik, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1979, pp. 31–44, here p. 37.

[28] Cf. Holger Wilmsmeier, Deutsche Avantgarde und Film. Die Filmmatinee ‹Der absolute Film› 3. und 10. Mai 1925 (diss. Heidelberg, 1993), Münster ,1994, pp. 7–16. Anne Hoormann, Lichtspiele. Zur Medienreflexion der Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik, Munich, 2003, pp. 116–120, 159–166.

[29] Quoted from Anne Hoormann, Lichtspiele. Zur Medienreflexion der Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik, Munich, 2003, p. 165.

[30] Kurt Schwitters, «Die Merzmalerei,» (1919), quoted from Kurt Schwitters. Ich ist Stil, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, 2000, p. 90.

[31] Kurt Schwitters, «Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Künstler.» 1919, quoted from Dietmar Elger, Der Merzbau von Kurt Schwitters. Eine Werkmonographie, Cologne, 1999, pp. 17–18.

Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/image-sound_relations/sounding_mage/

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kdtheghostwriter · 4 years

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New Blade Runner Fic

And I mean Brand New!

Yes, this is one of the ideas I’ve had slamming around in my head lately. And before we go further I must must MUST give a shoutout to the righteous @future-geometries for being a source of inspiration.

You see, we both have an on-off, intermittent fascination with the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049. It has a tiny but passionate fandom that still produces content to this day. (That includes a great fic written by J.)

We were in the midst of one of our convos about this flick when they pointed out how tragic K’s arc was and how disappointed they were that we haven’t had a “satisfying, low-stakes AU” yet. Now, this was over a year ago at least and perhaps I underestimated how much people love putting K on the Whump Train because we still haven’t seen it. So, what else is the guy who rewrote Dawn of Justice to do?

This is a rare look into my process as you get to see a very skeletal first draft. The final version will be three chapters with much more detail about the characters and the issues they face in a modern-adjacent setting.

I had to get this out into the Ether because I know it will be ages before I can get back to finishing this. I still have to finish The Batman. I still have to write JL3. Between those I’ll be writing my [REDACTED] rework. And a neat idea I have for Atomic Blonde. Then maybe I can finish this.

Until that fateful day, join me under the cut if you will...

Title: Dead Slow Ahead Word Count: 2415 Category: Gen Fandom: Blade Runner Characters: K, Rick Deckard, Ana Stelline Rating: T+ (some thematic elements and Deckard’s salty language) Summary: A tragedy in the life of Officer K begins a slow spiral that leads to his resignation from the LAPD. He now finds himself in the home of another former officer named Deckard, as he begins the slow march back to stability. A snapshot of a recovery in progress.

He drops the badge and gun on her desk without a word. She doesn’t look up at first, until she notices him still standing there. He stands there in silence for several seconds longer before he takes the seat in front of her. He’s looking down and away, then up and to the left. Anywhere but ahead into her sight.

“Is that it?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Think what? I don’t read minds.”

“I think I’m done.”

She pauses at that. Not out of surprise.

“Kinda figured. Life’s put you through the shit stain recently.”

“…Yeah.”

Another pause and she opens up a drawer to drop the badge and gun into. She snaps twice to get his attention. He maintains eye contact for the first time.

“I don’t have to tell you but…this isn’t normal protocol. It’s usually a two-week notice. Two weeks that you’re still expected to show up and do your job. But I like you. We’re not friends but I like you. You’ve done good work for this department. So, I’m going to do you a favor.”

She holds up two fingers. One from each hand.

“Two days. Forty-eight hours. However you wanna think of it, I don’t care. You get two days leave to figure out whatever this is. You come back in two days and I give you your gear back. If you don’t, I clear out your desk and I don’t see you in this building again. That’s fair, right?”

“Very fair. Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiles very slightly. “You were always so polite. I know I’m a smartass constantly but I do appreciate that.”

“I know.”

“Hey.” She sits up straighter to cross her legs. “Before you go.”

“My baseline?”

“If it’s not any trouble.”

“Not at all.”

He’s been in her office for meetings before. He doesn’t have to see behind her desk to know her finger is hovering above a silent call button. Whether he left the precinct under his own power or under restraint depended on his performance.

He closes his eyes, swallows the emotion and looks forward to recite the words.

“And a blood-black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem. And dreadfully distinct, against the dark, a tall white fountain played. But in the case of my white fountain what it did replace? Perceptually was something that, I felt, could be grasped only by whoever dwelt in the strange world where I was a mere stray.”

She places both of her hands flat on her desk. She visibly relaxes. He does not.

“Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Constant K like always.”

“Always a pleasure, Madam.”

-------------------------

K jolts awake to slam on his brake, throwing his arm out to the seat space next to him. He expects the paper grocery bags to go flying. What he finds instead is his front bumper flush against the garage door. Asleep in the driveway. Embarrassing but not dangerous. He backs up slightly and kills the engine.

Almost a year removed from his last day finds him in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He’s staying in a house for the first time since finishing high school. It shows as he drops his keys while fishing from his pockets. He grumbles as he bends down to retrieve them, hearing the door open.

“Deckard,” he says. “I know I’m late but I got some extra-“

The face in front of him isn’t who he expects. It’s much younger and the smile is still visible from behind the clinical mask.

“I suppose you aren’t wrong.”

“Ana. Hello.”

She answers with a wave. “I’m making my weekly visit. May I?”

K without protest hands over one bag and pockets his keys. Once inside, he slips both shoes off and drops into the near recliner with the bag still in his lap.

“About time, boy.” Deckard speaks gruffly while scrolling his phone.

“Kept you waiting, huh?”

“Not me.”

A scruffy Shepard mix brushes up against K’s leg and he repositions the bag to give it a petting.

“Ten years I’ve had Bo, he’s hardly ever that friendly. Good-looking stranger walks in and he acts brand new.” Deckard places his phone down and takes the bag Ana is holding. “You get everything?”

K answers non-verbally through a yawn.

“Feels that way. Oh! Look at this. Four whole bell peppers? I think Miss Consuela likes you, Joe. Joe?”

The latter man is asleep with the second bag still upright in his hold.

Deckard claps once. “Joe! Huh. New gig is doing a number on him.”

Ana pads quietly across the room and stops near the chair before reaching out to touch his shoulder.

“K?”

This perks him up. He looks back at Ana and down to the dog.

“Was I asleep just now?”

“Out cold,” Deckard responds. “You’ve got a bed, you know.”

K hands the bag to Ana. “You don’t need help with dinner?”

“I do, but that can wait until you’re rested. A stiff in the kitchen won’t do me any good. Get.”

K gives Bo another head pat, then shuffles down the hall to his room. While holding the bag, Ana joins Deckard on the sofa to help him with the groceries.

“What’s that you called him?”

“K.”

“Like the letter?”

“Like his badge number. KD6-3.7.”

Deckard scoffs, putting his reading glasses on. “The hell kind of serial is that?”

“It’s his.” Ana says this while inspecting a pack of tomato seeds. “Was his.”

“I’m not calling him by his damn serial.”

“You don’t have to, Deckard.”

“Oh yeah?” Deckard is out of his chair and she follows him into the kitchen. “Why do you?”

“He asked. And I feel like K is a bit more interesting than Joe. Don’t you?”

“Eh. Seems like a lateral move, to me.”

Deckard sits at the table with both bags before him. Ana remains standing, drawing her hands into the sleeves of her pullover.

“Will he be alright?”

“You’ve got three degrees. You tell me.”

This is meant to be a joke, but if the frown outlined by her mask is an indication, Ana does not find this funny. Deckard frowns back to remind her where she got it from.

“Don’t give me that. Physically he’s fine. Beat up maybe but fine. Mentally? Emotionally?” Deckard removes his glasses and his gaze softens slightly. “He won’t be ‘alright’ for a long time. You know that like I do.”

Ana circles the chair to embrace her father. She isn’t taller than him but while he’s sitting, she can rest her temple on his.

“It was nice of you to help him.”

“It was necessary. Kid has no family and I know what the force does to people. Wasn’t gonna let him go back there.”

Ana stands up straight when her phone sounds from the other room. She’s reading the message silently as she walks back in. Deckard is busy separating the canned goods from the perishables.

“Oh,” she says.

“Gotta go?”

“I do.”

“Fair enough. Scoot, then.”

“Very well, Detective.”

“I told you I’m not-”

Deckard is cut off by a quick peck to his cheek. He fights a smirk as she slips away.

“Hey! Mask on, you hear?”

-------------------------

When K wakes up his room is dark. Several hours have passed since he left Ana and Deckard in the living room. This is about when dinner gets prepped, but Deckard hasn’t come looking for him. K walks past a napping Bo in the hallway to see what the status is. Deckard is at the table, peeling potatoes.

“You started.”

“You were sleep.”

“Could have woke me up.”

“Could have. But that would be rude. You’re here now, so get started.”

He tosses a peeler in his direction that K catches easily.

“Yes, sir.”

They stay like this for several minutes, peeling in silence. K is a great help with menial tasks like this. He doesn’t complain, nor does he get distracted. After a time, though, even Deckard gets a bit antsy.

“Talked with Ana earlier today. Before you got here.”

“How is she? She usually stays to eat with us.”

“Busy, Joe. It’s always around springtime her workload gets heavy. She can manage but for a few weeks it’ll be tough.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, she told me you had your eye on a place?”

“Found one, actually. Studio in Los Feliz. I move in next month.”

“Not bad, kid. You know there wasn’t a cutoff date on this arrangement.”

“I know.”

“I mean I get it. Shacking up with an old man ain’t exactly exhilarating.”

Deckard’s teasing works as K holds up his peeler in protest.

“No, no! It’s not you. I like being here. I’ve…honestly needed to talk to you about this for a while.”

“I got nothing but time, Joe. Just keep peeling, huh?”

“Right.”

K doesn’t speak again until he’s finished peeling his current potato. He also doesn’t see Deckard roll his eyes.

“I never lost the place. I put all my stuff in storage. Been subletting for months. I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I only went back today because the office called me.”

“Is that what this is about?” Deckard reaches into the seat of a neighboring chair and pulls out a copy of the Vladimir Nabokov novel Pale Fire. “Found this under the eggs.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“You mentioned this before. Your girlfriend. What was her name?”

“Joy.”

“She was a reader, huh?”

“No, she hated that book. She liked to hear me read.”

“How long you stay after?”

“Too long but it’s not like I was ever there.”

K closes his eyes and counts before he continues.

“After Joy died… You’d think my work would suffer while I was bereaved but it was the opposite. I was more driven than I’d ever been. I was sleeping in the station barracks. I found a lot of people that didn’t wanna be found. Destroyed them. Got destroyed myself. In my storage unit, there’s a box of awards with my name on them that I got for running and fighting and kicking ass.”

K grabs another potato. He isn’t done and Deckard knows so he doesn’t interject.

“This sounds crazy now but I didn’t even consider leaving.” K drops his peeler and wipes his hand to pull out his phone. “Not until I found this up on my door.”

He passes the phone as Deckard slips on his glasses. Once he sees, he whips them off and returns the device.

“Fucking hell,” he spits out.

“Didn’t matter that my life partner was dead,” K started. “Didn’t matter to them that she was Spanish and not Mexican. It didn’t matter that she was a legal US citizen. Only thing that mattered to them was my badge and my gun, when I knocked on their door and told them exactly what would happen if they bothered me again. That is when I knew.”

“This sounds familiar.”

K exhales. “Bet it is.”

“Well, you were nice enough to share so I’ll do the same. I was with LAPD way longer than I was supposed to be.”

“I thought you quit.”

“I did! Life has a funny way of happening.”

“You too?”

“Rachel was her name. I was already one foot out the door when I met her, so there wasn’t really a decision to be made. And with the ink dry on the previous marriage I felt like the stars were lining up for once.”

“What happened?”

Deckard lays down his peeler to ruffle the fur of Bo who has joined the pair at the table.

“The good news, if you can call it that, is that we weren’t taken by surprise. I was never interested in kids. Rachel wanted one so I wanted one for her. We tried and failed and on the way to failing, we were told in fairly explicit terms that a pregnancy, should we succeed, would likely be fatal. We traveled the country after that. Maybe it was my youth but I was damn prepared to live in that RV in Vegas forever.”

“Until you weren’t.”

“She was with child, Joe. It was every fucking emotion all at once. The happiness, the relief, the fear. I took her home and was back working full time within the week. I took as many cases as I could. Maybe deep down I knew, but I never stopped long enough to think about it.”

There are three potatoes left to peel at this point. K will finish the job, of course; before that, there’s something hanging in the air between them. K goes ahead without looking up from his work.

“Did Rachel get to see her?”

If Deckard doesn’t appreciate this question, he doesn’t let it show. “You never know with that kind of thing. The nurse said she did. Could you blame her? You’re facing down a widower holding a newborn in his arms. You’d say the sky was turning pink.”

K isn’t sure how he should react to this, so he stays quiet for a long time.

“Feel better?” Deckard asks.

“Sorta.”

“Did any of that make sense?”

“Some of it.”

“Good, cause I’m not repeating it.”

The older man rises from his seat and lifts a harness off the wall. Bo takes this as the cue to follow his lead.

“Taking Bo for his night walk. When you’re done there you can get dinner started.”

“Are these for dinner?”

“Nope. They’re for tomorrow. Dinner’s in the oven. All you gotta do is press the ‘Start’ button, big guy.”

K is alone again. He had been rather sluggish and heavy for days up to that point. Moving into his own place once again obviously wouldn’t be the end of his relationship with Deckard or Ana. What it would be is the first extended time he’s had alone with his thoughts. Is he ready for that? Does he have a choice? What is his relationship with these people exactly? He feels better than he was, but there are still more questions than he’d like.

K picks up one last potato from the container. With no one to hear him, he begins to recite the lines he knows so well.

“And a blood-black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells. Interlinked within cells. Interlinked within cells. Interlinked within one stem. And dreadfully distinct, against the dark, a tall white fountain played…”

#br2049 #KDTumblr #officer k #rick deckard #ana stelline #j doesn't promote often #but you should read cotb #it rules and they worked very hard to finish it #thanks again!

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niteshade925 · 6 years

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EMH and House of Leaves Pt.1: References/Details/Parallels

WARNING: If you haven’t at least seen the Night Mind summaries of EMH or read HoL, and don’t want spoilers, then please stop reading now. I won’t be spending a lot of time explaining HoL either (too long), so it would be best if you already read HoL.

************MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**************

(I’m probably just reading too deep into it. If I sound like I’m talking nonsense, that’s probably true.)

Not a lot of people have touched on the many, many references to House of Leaves (HoL) within the series, so I’m going to just point out all the connections I can catch.

And just to clarify, while I do think there are connections and parallels, I think the parallels only apply to a degree: just to some characters, some aspects. When you look at them both as a whole and try to compare them, then it doesn’t really make sense.

Meaning of House:

It’s pretty well established now that the “Leaves” in the title of HoL can refer to paper, making the “House” the book itself. In “Bridge to Nowhere” (Tribetwelve), HABIT’s sarcastic “let’s run from him (HABIT) in his own house” can very well be interpreted the same way, but with this “house” being the EMH show. However, I do not think the “house” here is truly his, and I will come back to this later.

The Growing and Shifting of the House/ Impossible Geometry:

In HoL, the House on Ash Tree Lane contains an impossible dark maze that changes its layout constantly (presumably based on the changing mindset of the person trapped within). In EMH we experience this first hand in the video “The property”, where Vinny goes to different houses just by walking through them, as if the house was changing its own layout and appearances.

The METAness of “Authorship”:

Self-explanatory. Either way you look at the theories in HoL, they all theorize that Zampano, Johnny Truant, or Pelafina is the author of the entire book, when in fact it is Mark Z. Danielewski who is the actual author in the real world. EMH is the same, except as of the latest video, the possibility that HABIT is the editor and director in-universe is being called into question.

Iterations and Mazes:

Everyone knows how the iterations work in EMH so I’ll skip to HoL. In HoL, there’s no iterations, but there are mazes. And what’s more, the maze IS the house. Remember that the book is the house? “a=b=c, therefore a=c”. The book is also the maze. The entire fiction is the maze where the characters wander about, progressing their story. EMH is the same. The iterations repeat, always ending in Hamlet-esque tragedy (“everyone dies, the end”), like a tragic play production performing over and over again, with small bits tweaked here and there each time, except the characters are trapped inside. The EMH series, the EMH “house”, is a maze. It’s also a maze with ash-colored walls. Which brings us to………..

Ashes, Ashes everywhere:

Oh boy is it everywhere. In EMH there's Ashen wasteland (presumed to be Centralia after the mine fire disaster), Ashland (an actual town just south of Centralia), and “half acre of ash” (first brought up by Stephanie and now the title of a video).

In HoL there's Ashtree lane (where the house is), there's the ash-colored hallways of the ever-changing maze within the house, and there's the Yggdrasil mentioned at the very end, which is an ash tree. Personally, I believe the “ashes” in EMH is more of a clue that we should look to HoL for direction, but nothing more, since it does not have the connections to ash trees like HoL does.

Found Footage/ Cinema Vérité:

Page 4 of The Navidson Record (TNR) in HoL:

“The Navidson Record did not first appear as it does today. Nearly seven years ago what surfaced was ‘The Five and a Half Minute Hallway’--a five and a half minute optical illusion barely exceeding the abilities of any NYU film school graduate. The problem, of course, was the accompanying statement that claimed all of it was true.”

That is basically a description of the found footage horror genre. Read the beginning of House of Leaves and you will find that its description of TNR is stunningly similar to EMH. To quote bits from the first chapter:

“Where one might expect horror, the supernatural, or traditional paroxysms of dread and fear, one discovers disturbing sadness, a sequence of radioactive isotopes, or even laughter over a Simpsons episode” (HoL page 3)

“The structure of ‘Exploration #4’ is highly discontinuous, jarring, and as evidenced by many poor edits, even hurried. The first shot catches Navidson mid-phrase.” (HoL page 5)

“There are several more shots. Trees in winter. Blood on the kitchen floor. One shot of a child (Daisy) crying.” (HoL page 5)

So, jarring structure. Sometimes continuous shots. Sometimes all jump cuts. Very documentary-like to give a realistic quality. Home video-esque feel. Disregarding the different plot/story, stylistically EMH is practically TNR brought to life. And when you add in the ARG element of EMH, it becomes more interesting: perhaps EMH is just like TNR of the book. And I will be expanding on this idea in my theory.

Fictional Sources

This is more of a META aspect thing. The Navidson Record in the HoL world was said to be nonexistent, 100% fiction. The characters, the interviews of the characters in TNR…...also pure fiction in the HoL world. Now think about the Corenthal papers, the articles…...they are a part of the ARG, and therefore also 100% fiction.

Unreliable Narrators

Also self-explanatory. In EMH, neither HABIT nor Vinny are completely honest with the audience in their videos. And in HoL there are three: Johnny (lies, mental illness), Zampano (if he’s the author), and Pelafina (mental illness, and if she’s the author).

L’esprit de L’escalier

It’s a French phrase for “spirit of the staircase”, meaning thinking of the perfect response but it’s already too late. In the EMH episode titled with this phrase, Evan met Vinny as himself (temporarily released by HABIT) for the first time after the killing spree happened. In HoL, the phrase comes in page 72 of TNR, in Johnny’s footnotes:

“Now though, I realize what I should of said--in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase--

‘Known some call is air am’

Which is to say --

‘I am not what I used to be’”

This quote comes right after Johnny’s account of his first major panic attack from fear, where he accidentally made a mess at the tattoo shop he worked at because of his panic episode. Curiously, something (presumably the monster whose presence he felt) also put a long bloody scratch on the back of his neck. When asked, he said nothing, but the above quote was what he think he should have said, in retrospect. This matches up exactly with the meaning of the phrase.

The phrase also appeared in page 618 in original French, but I can't see any connection there in terms of plot or meaning.

And although the phrase didn’t make a lot of sense to me as the title of the EMH episode, it does now. The connection here is the line “I am not what I used to be”. That was the whole gist of what Evan wanted to tell Vinny. At the time of the episode, Evan has now become the “danger” due to being HABIT’s favorite human puppet, has already committed atrocities under HABIT’s control, and received the healing factor that made him unable to die. Evan is not what he used to be.

Guns, Rifles, and Insanity

I don't think I've seen HABIT actually use a gun except that clip where he pointed one at the back of Vinny's neck. HABIT’s thing has always been about blades: knives, saws, chainsaws, etc. But now a gun is becoming relevant. Two characters in HoL also resorted to guns as their sanity deteriorated: Holloway and Johnny. The former accidentally shot and killed one of his two companions before he killed himself with it, and the latter’s fate is unknown. There are two theories: Johnny died, though not by the gun; and Johnny lived because he’s finally freed from the burden of putting the book together.

The North Star.

North Star has become prominent in the latest videos of EMH. And it is also present in the book. The cover of the book has a red and yellow symbol (probably a compass rose) that looks like a North Star. Page 29 mentions the North Star by name, calling the lamp in the children's room the North Star. Vinny found the North Star drawing within Fairmount, where the Mining Town Four spent their iteration as kids.

Page 545 of the book has a more alarming message, however:

“Stars to live by. Stars to steer by. Stars to die by.”

And by “all good things”, this has been confirmed. HABIT and Vinny both died in this iteration by the knife and gun with the North Star branded on them.

So is it a coincidence that the EverymanHYBRID symbol looks like a North Star? I don’t think so. The EMH story was meant to end in tragedy all along.

The Radiation Detector

Yes, in TNR, Navidson also had a radiation detector that ticked . And the following quote:

“Navidson turns to the time telling tick of radioactive isotopes to deny the darkness eviscerating him from within” (HoL page 381)

Evan doesn’t really try to “deny” the darkness (HABIT) within him in “Sigma”, but of course, there’s still purple duct tape on his bandage.

The Quote Jeff Circled

“Why did god create a dual universe?

So he might say,

‘Be not like me, I am alone.’

And it might be heard” (HoL page 45)

This quote, by itself, is confusing as hell. One has to put it in context of the chapter to make any sense of it, just for the book alone. The chapter it appears in, nicknamed the “Echoes chapter”, is one of the most important chapters of HoL. Basically it explores the concept of echoes, what it is, what it implies, in various different aspects. Echoing is indicative of a closed, finite space, and there are no echoes in infinite space. Echoing can also create a sort of illusion that someone is there, repeating your words. So the quote above can mean the loneliness of god, the duality that comes with echoes, the universal need for social interaction, the universal need to be individuals,.........etc etc.

The “be not like me, I am alone” part also came up on Steph’s blog.

This quote, I haven’t quite figured out what it really means in the context of EMH, but I have a guess.

Leaning Against a Tree

Just an interesting bit I’ve noticed that might have some significance. In the end of HoL, if you believe Johnny died, then he died leaning against an ash tree. Holloway also died leaning against the ash-en walls of the maze, by gun, although it was suicide (the book also talks about Holloway suffering for a minute after he shot himself). Both HABIT and Vinny died leaning against a tree in “All good things”. Hmm.

Apartment 3103 and the abyss

In the climax of TNR, Navidson is trapped within the endless abyss of the maze, where the ashen walls and floor disappear gradually until he’s on a small platform, with only a book to keep him company. Navidson was literally in an endless isolation chamber. Sounds very much like Vinny when he was trapped in Apartment 3103 for two years.

Can You See The Words

This one has been covered by the EMH wikia. CYSTW does have a formatting style similar to HoL.

Water, Drowning, and Insanity

In earlier videos (hidden videos), Evan has been shown to be drowning in water. There were also clips of flooding. In HoL, the person who talks about drowning and the hopelessness of it is Johnny. As Johnny spirals downward mentally, both the number of times he mentions drowning go up, each time with greater detail. Water here is symbolic of madness.

Interestingly, water is also crossed out in CYSTW, similar to passages about the Minotaur in HoL. The Minotaur is the imaginary monster in the house/maze. This gives weight to the theory that HABIT was just Evan’s insane alter ego.

Falsity of Images

Page 527 of HoL has the following quote:

“they (images) may be heartwarming but what they imply rings false.”

As of “All good things”, this quote becomes very interesting when applied to Vinny.

CYSTW and The Whalestoe Letters

Steph’s blog is very reminiscent of The Whalestoe Letters section in HoL. The cryptic messages, the way her character feels like Pelafina.

Finding Fairmount/ Finding Whalestoe

Johnny’s journey to find Whalestoe (HoL pages 503-504) is very similar to Vinny’s journey to find Fairmount. Whalestoe was a mental institute, where Johnny’s mother, Pelafina, use to live. When Johnny got there, however, the institute has long been abandoned, with graffiti on the walls. Just like Fairmount.

“This is no longer their game. Consider yourself marked.”

This message could only be found by tilting the screen while looking at Steph’s blog. In HoL, at least one of Pelafina’s letters are entirely in code, and one letter leaves decoding instructions.

And finally, a note on the META aspect

In HoL, TNR is discussed among scholars who wrote works after works arguing over details in the film. Taking into account that EMH is like TNR…..and everyone who took part in the ARG or discussed EMH theories, including me and this post, also becomes part of the story. It’s pretty crazy.

#emh #house of leaves #part 1

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jeremystrele · 3 years

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16 Talented Artisans That Deserve Your Undivided Attention

TDF Design Awards

by Lucy Feagins, Editor

Lucy Tolan pieces. Photography – Shelley Horan. Art Direction and Styling – Both.

Alison Frith ceramics plinth. Photo – Tania Bahr-Vollrath.

Lucy Tolan, Seams

The objective of Seams by ceramicist Lucy Tolan was to investigate technique and form through the construction and deconstruction of the vessel. The body of work explores the textile qualities of clay and convergence of materials through accentuated joins – seams.

See our feature on Lucy’s practice here.

Alison Frith, Ceramic Plinth

Inspired by the need for function yet the desire for considered design, Alison Frith created the Ceramic Plinth. Made entirely by hand, each plinth is wheel thrown, with composite pieces formed and joined together.

Precise attention was paid to weight and form to ensure the final piece could serves as a functional side table or a standalone sculptural object.

Georgina Proud ceramics. Photo – Georgina Proud.

Eun Ceramics. Right photo – Isabella King. Left photo – Jess Brohier.

Georgina Proud, Flotsam//Jetsam

Flotsam//Jetsam is a collection of clay vessels featuring embedded materials to create unique and distinct surfaces. In making the collection, ceramic artist Georgina Proud experimented with materials found on beaches throughout Victoria such as pebbles and sea glass, and investigated how these react to the ceramic process.

Eun Ceramics, Curved

Eun Ceramics’ Curved collective is an observation on societal norms. Irregular curves meeting the narrow neck opening, representing our individuality being suppressed or shaped to fit a status quo.

The unique style of ceramicist Jess Choi means each angle carries a different form and texture, creating new perspectives in the unusual clay bodies.

See our feature on Jess’ practice here.

Oh Hey Grace ceramics. Photo – Jess Brohier.

Oh Hey Grace, A Place To Call Home

A Place to Call Home is a collection of sculptures made from mid-fire glazed ceramics using a combination of sculpting, hand-building and wheel throwing by ceramicist Grace Brown. Sculpted utopian cityscapes and dwellings were developed in response to the often dystopian reality outside, particularly during 2020-21.

See our feature on Oh Hey Grace here.

Hamish Munro rings. Photo – Peter Ryle.

Left: Bioregional Rings by Kyoko Hahimoto. Photo – Kyoko Hashimoto. Right: Bioplastic Vessels by Jessie French. Photo – Pier Carthew. Art Director – Thalia Economo.

Hamish Munro, The Joan Series

The Joan Series by jeweller Hamish Munro consists of interchangeable, genderless rings designed around the precise geometry and angled position of individual stones. Pieces explore the removal of surface area within the ring, instead ‘subtracting’ from the classic form of a band and creating a dynamism between stones.

This collection represents a deviation and expansion on Hamish’s previous jewellery pieces as he broadens his experience with technique, process and familiarity with stone.

See our feature on Hamish’s practice here.

Kyoko Hashimoto, Bioregional Rings

This series of rings by Kyoko Hashimoto presents materials that can be found and processed locally in Sydney Basin bioregion. Raw materials include Hawkesbury sandstone conglomerated in the earth 250 million years ago, and coal from the Illawarra Coal Measures that formed in geological strata several kilometres deep below the sandstone.

The body of work intends to define a region by its environment and earthly yield rather than the borders imposed by humankind.

Other Matter, Algae Bioplastic Vessels

Tempering aesthetic beauty with future thinking, Other Matter has generated a collection of bioplastic tableware made using algae polymers and pigments. These aesthetically striking pieces reminiscent of glass are recyclable, biodegradable, and can be composted in a home system.

Other Matter is the studio founded by artist Jessie French. Her solo practice explores speculative futures and material boundaries through work with algae-based bioplastics. Her research into seaweed supply chains has taken her from artist residencies in Morocco to group shows in New York City.

See our feature on Jessie’s practice here.

Left: Liam Fleming glass. Photo – Josephine Briginshaw. Right: Jenna M Lee works. Photo – Henry Trumble.

Liam Fleming, Post-Production

Glassworker Liam Fleming’s practice combines mould-blowing and cold lamination. In Post-Production, he subjects objects to a rough surface treatment, fusing them at high temperatures in a kiln, then joining them in a manner at odds with the precision of cold lamination. The glass slumps and warps, collapsing under its weight and expanding with pressure.

The body of work was created as part of ‘Preliminary Strcutures’, a group show of seven designers curated for Melbourne Design Week 2021. The makers represented contemporary glass and ceramic work, displaying non-traditional and interpretive structures for their media.

Jenna M Lee, Body Language

Jenna M Lee is an artist and graphic designer living in Melbourne, whose highly symbolic work seeks to reclaim agency over the historic representation of Aboriginal people in Australia.

Using pages from the colonial text ‘Aboriginal Words and Place Names’, the artist created three dilly bags embellished with red silk thread and glass beads. The paper-based pieces in the Body Language series explore the relationships between cultural objects and adornments as an extension of the body; the body itself as an extension of Country and language; and Country, language and body as elemental factors of connection and healing.

Left: Sarah Rayner + Sophie Carnell works. Photo – Greg Piper. Right: Jan Vogelpoel ceramics. Photo – Jan Vogelpoel.

Sarah Rayner + Sophie Carnell, Florilegium

Porcelain artist Sarah Rayner and silversmith Sophie Carnell collaborated to create 42 small handcrafted sculptural works inspired by the complexity and richness of native flora. The duo’s chosen materials of porcelain and silver have been morphed from inert matter into 3D works.

Initially driven by a passion for the natural environment and the process of collection, the pieces en masse represent the poetry of flowers. The series is tactile, sensual and compelling.

Jan Vogelpoel Ceramics, Future Curve, Space Cadet and Curve

These three ceramic pieces are inspired by the curves of the Glebe House designed by Chenchow Little, and the Taal monument designed by Jan van Wijk. Restrained forms allow the form, curves and clay to work their magic without overworking or overthinking the design or the process.

Jan Vogelpoel‘s forms are undulating, organic and honest.

See our feature on Jan’s practice here.

Left: Photo – Polly Wright. Right: Photo – Ferro Forma Studio.

Erin.k jewellery + Koorie Tales, Source of Life + Essence at Dusk

Jewellery label erin.k jewellery created two collections featuring artist Holly McLennan-Brown of Koorie Tales’ artwork. Pieces convey elements of Holly’s Yorta Yorta culture, with the intent of making Indigenous art more accessible.

5% of sales from pieces in the collection are donated to Koorie Heritage Trust.

Alison Jackson & Dan Lorrimer, Flow Form Vases

Flow Form Vases by Alison Jackson and Dan Lorrimer (now Ferro Forma studio) blend small-scale metalsmithing production techniques with one-of-a-kind artwork processes to create a series of unique tableware objects. Complex hydraulic pressing tools allow the initial tubular form (in either brass or stainless steel) to be pressed repeatedly along its length, each time changing the surface.

Once formed, a multi-step finishing sequence layers the surface of each piece with a unique patina.

Left: Artist Alycia Marrday with her work. Photo – Marrawuddi Arts & Culture. Right: Erraarnta (red-tailed black cockatoo) by Rona Rubuntja of the Hermannsburg Potters. Photo – Hermannsburg Potters.

Alycia Marrday of Marrawuddi Arts & Culture, Baladjdji (Backpack)

Artist Alycia Marrday independently created this woven backpack with the support of community arts centre Marrawuddi Arts & Culture. Combining both ancient and traditional methods, the large and bright piece is an example of phenomenal weaving mastery. All materials are natural including Kunngobarn (pandanus) and Kala (natural dye) collected on Country.

Alycia says: ‘Maybe my kids give me idea, Anita. My kids really love the backpacks weavings. I look at the backpacks my kids have and try weave same pockets. I just used it from my own mind, I get the kala (colour) from my partner’s homeland.’

Rona Rubuntja of Hermannsburg Potters, Selected Works

Rona Rubuntja of the Hermannsburg Potters’ joyous style is distinctive, humorous and imaginative. Rona is a deaf and non-verbal person, and uses the medium of pottery to tell stories of her life. Each of these works emanate joy while depicting contemporary life in Ntaria (Hermannsburg community) and speaking to Western Aranda values.

The Hermannsburg Potters are an artist collective established in 1992 and has grown to nearly 20 artists. The artists paint stories of the surrounding Country, community, animals and memories of family onto the surface of their hand-built terracotta pots, topping each piece with a figurative sculpture. The works are vibrant, cheeky, purposeful and original, displaying a deep knowledge of Country, and a playful, vivid view of contemporary desert life.

See our feature on the Hermannsburg Potters here.

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amillionsmiles · 7 years

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want your bad romance (Keith/Shiro)

Summary: Lance takes Keith to the spin class he’s teaching. Keith falls mildly in love with one of the regulars. There are casualties. A/N: I took my first spin class yesterday and it basically went exactly like this except I didn’t wipe out quite so dramatically and I didn’t find love

[Read and review over on Ao3] or continue under the cut.

“No, no, no,” Lance says, grabbing Keith’s water bottle out of his hands before he can set it down to claim his space. “Newbies sit up front.”

“Lance.” Keith swipes at it, then decides it isn’t worth his energy and crosses his arms instead. “Don’t make this more unbearable than it already is.”

After weeks—weeks of incessant begging and cajoling—he’s finally agreed to attend one of the spin classes Lance teaches at the local fitness studio. Already, Keith has his doubts. There’s a cultish air to the whole thing; Lance had to type in a code and lead him down a flight of stairs to get to the training room, for one, and in the dim lighting the rows of stationary bikes look like sentries. Maybe they’re guarding the secret to a healthier, happier life, per Euphoria’s tagline. Who knows.

“Look, that way I can help you in case something goes wrong, okay?” Lance defends.

Keith raises an eyebrow. “We’re going to be sitting. On stationary bikes. For 45 minutes.”

“It’s harder than you’re making it sound! And keep your newbie wristband on!”

“I don’t understand why I have to wear this! You already know I’m a newbie.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you,” says Lance. “So you can identify the other newbies and bond with them. Also, it glows in the dark.”

Keith pulls at the rubber wristband, which, sure enough, glows a faint blue. “It’s stupid,” he mutters.

Lance brings his palms together and down in a slight chopping motion. “Okay, first rule of spin class? Positive attitude. Now, I’m going to go change into my costume, and you’re going to find a seat.”

“Costume?” Keith asks, but Lance has already zipped away.

Resigned, Keith trudges his way toward the front, where he picks one of the bikes on the left. Other people have begun to trickle in. The difference between the newcomers and the regulars is clear, not just from their wristbands; the newcomers loiter by the cubbies while the regulars make a beeline for the bikes, adjusting seat heights with practiced precision.

A short girl with a blonde ponytail and gray athletic t-shirt materializes by Keith’s side.

“Do you need help being clipped in?”

“What?”

“Do you need help being clipped in,” she repeats.

Keith conducts a rapid scan of the room. There aren’t harnesses of any sort.

“I…don’t know what that is.”

“Your shoes,” the girl explains patiently, to her credit. “Here, go ahead and sit on your bike.”

There’s not much to argue here. He’s out of his element enough as it is; the only thing to do is oblige. So Keith gets into place, following her directions—twist all the way right, that’ll adjust your resistance; okay, now put your left foot here and stand up—

A clicking noise, and Keith’s left foot locks firmly in place, held by the spikes on the soles of the special shoes he had to change into. His right foot follows suit.

He has a brief moment of foreboding, like the sense of finality you get when the rollercoaster lapbar settles across your hips. There’s no getting off this ride anymore, not until the bitter end.

And it’s then—right when both of Keith’s feet are stuck fast to the pedals—that The Man enters.

A cosmic chime sounds. Keith forgets how to breathe.

The Man is six-foot-something of muscle, with a shoulder-to-waist ratio that should have its own annals in history, right next to the Golden Ratio or pi. A white lock of hair dangles artfully over his forehead, stark against the rest of his black undercut. He surveys the room, running a thumb along his jaw in thought, and maybe Keith would have done better in high school geometry if they’d studied things that actually made sense, like the planes of The Man’s face.

The Man stretches his arms above his head and the fabric across his chest stretches, too.

The Man starts walking.

The Man picks a bike.

The bike.

The bike right next to Keith.

“First time?” he asks, smiling as he bends to adjust the bike seat.

Keith blinks, then glances at the bracelet glowing around his wrist. Words, Keith. Use your words.

“Yeah.”

The Man nods. Finished with his adjustments, he grips the black metal handlebars and swings up onto his seat. It’s a power move, made with powerful thighs. Strong enough to—

Keith swallows. “I’m Keith.”

“Shiro,” The Man says, extending a hand. It’s a bit awkward to twist his torso and lean over to take it, especially with both his feet rooted in place, but Keith manages. Shiro’s palm slides against his. He has calluses near the top—maybe from lifting? Immediately after their hands break contact, Keith tries to wipe his against his shorts as subtly as possible. Damnit, he really should have worn his gloves today.

He’s already breaking a sweat and they haven’t even started exercising.

This is pathetic.

“You picked a good class for your first time,” Shiro says, bike wheels whirring as he gets started on some sort of pre-workout workout. “Lance is one of my favorite trainers; he really knows how to keep the energy going.”

Fucking Lance. How the hell had he neglected to mention someone like Shiro existed? Not to mention attended his classes weekly?

“Uh, yeah. Lance is—Lance is a really close friend of mine, actually. He’s great.”

Of course, this is the exact moment Lance waltzes back into the room, wearing devil horns, angel wings, and a red cape. And compression shorts.

Keith wants to shove all his earlier words back into his mouth.

“Allllll right everyone, I hope you’re clipped in and ready to rumble!” Lance calls in his announcer-voice, the same one he uses to obnoxiously narrate their Mario Kart games. “This is our Halloween session, and you all know what that means: things are about to get freaky.”

Lance punctuates this statement by flicking his cape behind him, arranging himself on the bike that’s front and center and straightening his headset. He fiddles with the iPad on the table beside him. On cue, the room darkens further, red mood lighting running along the ceiling, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” starting up. Overlaying it, Lance’s cheerful count: “Now keep the beat with your feet! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4—”

This is worse than the one time Keith took acid.

Beside him, Shiro says something, but it’s lost to the noise as Lance increases the music’s volume.

“What?” Keith strains.

“Enjoy the ride!” Shiro repeats, louder.

And winks.

“Elbows out! Now in! Now out!” chants Lance.

Keith gulps and puts his head down, pedaling faster.

They’re halfway through Ke$ha’s “Cannibal” and Keith wants to die.

It’s like being in a club—same stench of sweat, same amount of strange bodies all moving to the beat. The lights fade from red to pink to purple to blue, pulsing along with the music, and Keith is nowhere near drunk enough to be doing this. The sole redeeming factor is that, since he is sober, he can fully appreciate the sight of Shiro’s Adam’s apple bobbing every time they take a water break.

That, and the glistening sheen of perspiration across Shiro’s forehead, wiped away by the snow-soft towels provided to each of them. In the darkness, the motion looks almost erotic.

If this were a club, Keith would down a shot and muster the courage to ask Shiro: do you want to get out of here? But since they’re not in a club, he can only assume that the way to Shiro’s heart is through sheer athletic prowess. Balls to the wall, pedal to the metal. So for every count Lance makes, Keith works his legs twice as fast, hunched over the handlebars with single-minded purpose.

His vigor does not go unnoticed. Shiro glances over appreciatively. From his vantage point, Lance looks surprised at Keith’s sudden fervor—and then he glances at the man cycling next to Keith. Understanding dawns over his face, sly and almost feral.

“Great job, everyone! Keep it up, just like that!” As Lance speaks, he twists to the side, pulling something from the table. A plastic Cupid’s bow and a foam arrow, which he nocks at Keith mockingly.

Keith glares. It says: I’m in the middle of something important and if you fuck it up with your bullshit, our friendship ends here.

Lance’s grin widens.

There are acts of poetic justice. And then there are punishments that can only be wrought by the divine.

Lance fires his shitty foam arrow and Keith whiplashes out of the way—in order to, what, not catch feelings for the Adonis cycling next to him? Too late for that. In the process, his left foot jerks free of its clippings, but the pedals keep going, too much momentum, and Keith topples forward, still attached by his right foot. All of this as Tove Lo’s voice climbs higher and higher, belting: keep playing my heartstrings faster and faster, you can be just what I want, my true disaster.

His face slams against the handlebars, the immediate gush of blood from his nose warm and messy, and then everything goes black.

Small mercies.

“Keith? Keith? Oh thank god, he’s alive.”

Keith wakes up flat on his back, wooden slats of the bench pressing against his shoulder blades. They’re in the seating area where he’d changed shoes earlier; someone has done him the small kindness of sticking one of the orange ornamental pillows under his head.

Standing over him, Lance holds a crinkled piece of paper.

Keith squints. “Is that—is that my waiver form?”

“I just had to make sure we weren’t going to be held liable!” Lance explains. He points to Keith’s signature. “You signed this so you can’t sue.”

“I can think of other ways to settle,” Keith growls.

A hand on his arm stops him.

“Easy there, Keith, drink some water.”

Keith looks at the hand. Follows it to its wrist, then from wrist to arm, then arm all the way up to shoulder—

Shiro sits beside him on the bench, holding out a bottle. Gingerly, Keith takes it, suddenly self-conscious of the way he drinks, plus the deliciously wicked bruise probably already forming across his nose.

He puts the bottle down, wiping at the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How long was I out for?” he croaks.

Shiro checks his watch. “Three minutes, tops.” He settles his palm against Keith’s forehead, swooping close to stare into Keith’s eyes, and if that spiel about your pupils dilating from desire is true then Keith’s pretty sure he has two black holes in his face right now.

“Hm,” Shiro says. The single sound travels the whole length of Keith’s spine. “You don’t look concussed. It might have been dehydration.”

“Yeah, Keith never hydrates enough,” says Lance, like it’s Keith’s fault this whole thing happened. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to the others now and do damage control, but thanks for carrying him up here, Shiro. I’m serious about owing you a free session.”

“No problem.” Shiro dips his head in acknowledgement.

Meanwhile, Keith’s brain is short-circuiting at the implications of carried. Over the shoulder? Bridal style? How close had his face been to that chest?

He kind of wants to pass out again.

Lance leaves him to nurse these thoughts. Surprisingly, Shiro doesn’t go with him, opting instead to stay beside Keith. Running his fingers through his hair, he leans back against the wall and chuckles.

“What is it?” asks Keith.

“Tough break, for your first time,” says Shiro, smiling crookedly and nodding toward Keith’s presumably messed-up face. “Guess you’d be hard-pressed to come back here again, huh?”

There are special corners of hell reserved for people like Keith.

And right now, that corner looks a lot like an appointment booked for Revolutions: 5:30-6:15, every Friday.

“I—” Keith clears his throat, but his voice still comes out hoarse. A parched man dying of thirst. “I think it’s worth another shot.“

#vld #voltron #sheith #vld keith #shiro #keith #otp: good to have you back #my writing #fanfiction #ff: voltron

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Lovecraft Country: Bringing the Shoggoths to Life

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Contains spoilers for episodes 1, 2, 8 and 10 of Lovecraft Country.

Grant Walker is a monster person. “I’m a monster person, indeed.” He confirms. “It’s definitely been there since I can remember.” Raised on a diet of Clive Barker and ‘80s horror, The Lord Of The Rings and painting Warhammer figures, Walker is just fascinated with monsters. So as Framestore’s VFX supervisor on Lovecraft Country, in charge of bringing the shoggoths to life, he’s in his element.

“Misha [Green – creator] briefed us on the character of the shoggoth and it was basically supposed to be the ultimate guard dog. It’s a loyal creature. It’s a guard dog that’s supposed to be terrifying and fierce and powerful. The most important of those, I guess, is terrifying,” Walker explains. “Almost every element about the creature is supposed to be there to terrify you. Its teeth, all the weird eyes it’s got all over its back. It’s got a powerful anatomy. It’s got these little raptor arms for chopping up people and poking them.”

A creature originally described in H.P. Lovecraft’s mythology, Walker says he was still given plenty of leeway to make his shoggoth his own.

“I really wanted to push the teeth. That was the main thing. It was a big, powerful creature that was supposed to be absolutely terrifying, but also slightly otherworldly. It didn’t want to feel like it was just a monster from the zoo. While we base a lot of reference on existing animals like gorillas, big cats, sharks and things like that, it was supposed to have an otherworldly nature about it to give it some sort of eeriness and sit it into the Lovecraft world.”

Shoggoths make appearances in episodes one, two, eight and ten. A surprise ambush occurs in episode one, followed up in episode two when they’re in guard dog mode. Then in episode eight the shoggoth returns for a big gory action scene, while episode ten sees two shoggoths go head to head.

VFX explained

So how do you put a CG shoggoth into a live action scene interacting with actors?

“It is tricky,” explains Walker.

“What we do is we first plan it out with a pre-visualization, a very basic animation where we take a scan from the set so we can build the set in our computers, and we block out the entire sequence with all the actors, with the shoggoth, with all the stuff that’s happening

“That’s to really iron out what we’re going to film, because obviously when we get on set there’s no shoggoth. There’s stunt guys holding puppets but we need to know how fast the shoggoth can run, we need to know what he’s going to do, what he’s going to impact. If he bumps into a car, when do we nudge that car on-set, all those kinds of things.”

There’s no clear cut rules about what will be done with CGI and what will be practical FX, Walker explains. Instead it’s a case of trial and error and ensuring he always knows what can be achieved in CGI if they don’t get the shot. The scene in episode eight where the rampaging shoggoth tears off Office Lancaster’s (Mac Brandt) arm, for example, originally involved a prosthetic limb, but ultimately CGI worked better.

Molding the Shoggoth

Using the pictures supplied by the art department and with further direction from Misha Green, Walker set about sculpting the shoggoth.

“We basically built a digital sculpture of the shoggoth like you would in clay. Then you build a control rig for animation,” he explains. “On top of that you have to replicate all the anatomy inside [the creature]. We build a muscle system that works with simulation so we can simulate muscles bouncing around, flesh wrinkling and all that kind of stuff in a technical process.”

When he was happy with the musculature, attention turned to attempting to replicate the lighting on set, focusing on the skin of the creature and how it would absorb and reflect light.

“You have to paint all these textures and develop, what we call, shaders that react to light in the way that you would expect certain objects to react to light. You render it using the lights from the set and then at that point you should see your shoggoth sitting pretty much on top of the film plate,” he says. “Then you have a massaging process called compositing where you merge the two seamlessly together.”

This involves things like adding shadow, painting out bits of blue screen and working with environmental elements like the shoggoth kicking up dust as he runs which could be done via CGI or via a filmed element to really bring it all together.

Guts and gore

Lovecraft Country prides itself on not holding back when it comes to the grue, but this posed more challenges for the team when deciding what should be done in-camera and what would in-computer.

“There’s one significant shot in ep eight where the gore is a big feature that’s in-camera,” says Walker. “There’s this big blood exposure, it covers them. That is the one that I would hate to attempt in visual effects. It’s got too much interaction with the characters. That’s the one significant gore piece that is in-camera. Then there’s the set dressing, which is the blood, guts, arms, prosthetics limbs that are on the floor.”

Blood directly from and around the shoggoth – when it comes from the shoggoth’s gills or when he’s mauling people – was CGI and there were different types of blood they needed to simulate.

“It was surprising how many different types of variation of blood that we needed to do. Blood exploding was one type. Then there’s blood that landed on the ground. From a technical point of view there were probably six, maybe eight, variations of how to produce CGI blood for doing different things. If blood’s seeping into a jumper it’s a textural thing that has to change over time. We also have bits of blood protruding from somewhere and then landing onto something. Then it has to change from one type of data, which is geometry data landing to effect texture. That would turn into another thing. It was quite a complex setup. 90% of it is visual effects blood.”

You can tell monster-man Walker is here for it.

Real life inspirations

Walker got the concept designs from the art department which acted as a blueprint for how the shoggoth would look but Green gave him the greenlight to make tweaks where he saw fit and some of his reference points came from the natural world.

Take the teeth:

“I see all those teeth, but I’m like, ‘Is that the sarlacc pit? Is it just a round thing with loads of teeth in it?’ I want this thing to be able to churn up people’s faces rather than just shaking teeth around. That was one area I was like, ‘Let’s look at teeth that are scary.’

“I saw an angular fish that had these big pointy teeth that jut out at you. Then I looked at a shark’s jaws, because I knew that their teeth operated separately from the main cranium skull. Then we built these mandibles inside the mouth that could act like a food processor for people’s heads.”

Nice.

The shoggoth also has gills at the back of the head which inspired Walker in further grossness.

“When someone said, ‘He’s got gills back there and he eats people’s heads,’ I was like, ‘Oh, sure we can blast the blood out of the back of the head.’ I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to think it…”

Putting the moves on

The next challenge for Walker and his team was how to make the shoggoths convincingly move and for this Walker turned to primates.

“In terms of also making it move and be powerful, I looked at it and I’m like, ‘All right, it’s muscular, and looks like this it’s running on its knuckles.’ That’s the gorilla,” he says. With the animation supervisor they would look at other references and tweak the anatomy of the shoggoth in reference to the movement, adjusting the length of the arms and the legs and making tweaks until the anatomy matched the motion they wanted.

Eyes in the back of its head

From the original Cthuhlu mythos the shoggoth was covered in eyes but Walker wanted to adjust exactly where they were situated.

“We put their eyes on the head and the back. We removed them a bit from the shoulder. They felt a bit strange on the shoulder. We were thinking that maybe its brain is in its head. You can imagine that the spinal column might have some sort of optical nerve that might tie it all together. But to be on limbs as well pushed too far. I did feel I’d like to try to keep it around the spinal column at least,” he explains.

“In terms of how that affected the animation and the character was quite interesting because the idea is this creature can see in pretty much any direction. Most creatures hear or see something and they turn their head to look at it. Well, this doesn’t need to. How do you make the creature look at something without needing to turn its head? There was a bit of a trade off there. We did ultimately use the head and little looks, but there are some shots where it’s mainly in the eyes.”

Big mouth strikes again

With the eyes scattered around the shoggoth’s head and neck and the pupils not easily identifiable – they are either have slight cataracts or they’re almost entirely black – much of the shoggoth’s facial focus is on the mouth. As well as the teeth, the shoggoth’s tentacled tongue became an important aspect of the design.

One of the early animation tests of the face

“When you’ve got a mouth as big as this, you have to spend a lot of time controlling it. This one was a pretty big feature. We spent a lot of time working on where the lips should start and finish. I did do a version where the lips were closed over the teeth, which kind of looked a bit like a weird Kermit the Frog and became immediately less terrifying,” deadpans Walker.

The tongue was another big focus.

“There were a couple of concepts from our art department where they had a single tongue, double tongue, and a four tongue kind of thing but the ends of it were quite short,” Walker explains. He had his heart set on something bigger, a longer, twistier tongue that could feel like a weapon, with barbs down the side he says were inspired by the barbs on a cat’s tongue.

The shoggoth is a scary beast. There is also something grotesquely phallic about it.

“It’s weird you say that because I’ve done a number of creatures and it’s often a comment about creatures that I make. It must be something subconscious that creeps into these creatures. I don’t know what it means. I’m not going to analyze it too much. But yeah, I have no good explanation for that,” says Walker. We’re not going to push.

Under the skin

The skin of the shoggoth was another element that took work. Walker says the plan was always to make the skin slightly translucent which meant building the skeleton, muscles and vein system beneath the skin so that you can see into it a bit if you shine a torch at it.

Concept art of the shoggoth

“There’s some kind of red gnarly stuff all over his skin as well,” says Walker. “They’re supposed to be creatures that haven’t seen the sun or don’t like light. So the skin was always supposed to be a bit sickly. That scarring, also was an artistic way of creating variations. There’s a few of these, what we call white shoggoths, in the episode so we needed to have a few variations.”

The money shots

Walker says episode eight was the biggest challenge, in particular the sequence where the shoggoth goes on the rampage and bites Lancaster’s arm off.

“When a monster is interacting closely with a human being, you need to make sure it’s either moving that person or it’s physically affecting that actor, but also that it’s casting shadows correctly,” says Walker. Sequences like this are where the pre-vis comes into its own, he explains, “you’re filming all this action going on and there’s one significant thing missing, which is the shoggoth.”

Walker says they’d been working on this sequence for around five months, and that’s not including the pre-vis which they completed over a year ago.

Meet the Monsters of Lovecraft Country

By Rosie Fletcher

Lovecraft Country Episode 10 Review: Full Circle

By Nicole Hill

The shoggoths get a final hoorah in episode ten, in several sequences where you see it close up, not on the rampage “It’s more chill, it’s in bodyguard mode, it’s just following around and you get to see it in a bit more detail in certain shots,” says Walker, while there’s another scene where two shoggoths have a scrap (“he’s going to bob, with his little paws and he’s going to wait up and he’s going to throw a right hook…” boxer Walker describes acting it out for the animator).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Walker says the show’s been a joy to work on, and he’s even enjoyed watching it back, though he doesn’t always like to look at his own work – surely an indication of the quality of his creation. The show has been a success and while there is by no means any guarantee any sort of second season will materialise, if it does, we’d fully expect to see more of Walker’s supernatural guard dogs – for the merchandising opportunities if nothing else. Because after all, who wouldn’t want a shoggoth of their very own?

The post Lovecraft Country: Bringing the Shoggoths to Life appeared first on Den of Geek.

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pof203 · 4 years

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Rockababy OC: Rosa-Maria Montoya

This is my OC for Rockababy by c2ndy2c1d. I was originally going to add a picture, but I know I can’t recreate her art. So I’ll try to describe it as best as I can.

Rosa-Maria Montoya’s Story

She’s cute. She’s independent (but not above finding love). She’s strong. She’s kind. She’s helpful... She’s a witch.

To know her full story, click “read more”.

NOTE: Some elements of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Charmed (Original and/or Reboot), American Horror Story: Coven, Witch Craft Works, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and even Elemental Magick (The Donavan Coven) are present.

NOTE 2: I also like to apologize in advanced to all of the followers of Santa Muerte for using her in a way that they may find offensive.

Rosa-Maria Montoya is a young 13-year-old Mexican-American witch-in-training. She has bright-brown eyes, brown hair with braids, and has some marking on the side of her check that was put on her when she was baby to welcome her to the coven. She lives with her parents, both her grandparents, and their coven in El Paso, Texas. Her coven follows the ways of Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte (Our Lady of the Holy Death). Of course, each member has their own patrons they call upon, but Santa Muerte is their main patron. However, Rosa-Maria has yet to find her own patrons until she can discover what her skill, a branch of magick that she is best good at.

One day, Rosa-Maria was just laying around in the park with her father’s radio telling the news.

“... the comet, Wolfgang 90, will be passing over North America sometime this year. However, there is no guarantee that it will be seen in the El Paso skies. And now for the weather forecast. Skies are clearing thanks to some winds coming in from the west... There’ll be a beautiful full moon this even. So if you’re planning something special, tonight might be the night. Moving on to sports.”

Rosa-Maria turns off the radio and sees the forecast was right. The wind was blowing almost all of the clouds away. It is then that Rosa-Maria finally decided.

It is an old custom that when a witch turns 13, they have a choice to either train a year away from home or go to a school of magick.

She runs home to tell her family. At first, they were unsure as she is still young in their eyes. However, their coven’s supreme, Annabelle Sanchez, convinced them.

“I still think she should go to Magic School,” said Abuela, Rosa-Maria’s paternal grandmother.

“Or Miss Robichaux’s Academy,” said Grandma, Rosa-Maria’s maternal grandmother.

“Either way, you’d be safe,” said Grandpa, Rosa-Maria’s maternal grandfather.

“I remember when I turned 13,” said Annabelle with a smile. “They said I could become the Supreme of the New Orleans Coven, but their reigning Supreme at the time, Mimi DeLongpre, chose Anna-Leigh Leighton. But this is mainly because it turned out I was to become the Supreme of my own coven. I found my own path. I think it’s only fair you should let your daughter do the same.”

“Si,” said Abeulo, Rosa-Maria’s paternal grandfather. “But we’re still worried. Rosa-Maria barely knows how to fly. And I’ve no time to teach her how to mix potions like me.”

“Young people are all the same. They all want to do something different… But at least you get to teach her the potion that cures my husband’s Rheumatism.”

Later, Rosa-Maria got ready in her room. Her mother gave her a dark Goth-Lolita dress, though not too many laces.

“And now for the finishing touch,” said her mother, placing a black cape over Rosa-Maria and topped it off with a black pointy hat.

“Oh, Mom, this looks so… stereotypical.”

“It’s not important on what you wear, what matters is the heart inside.”

“Then I’ll try to be the very best witch that I can be, Mom. And I know having a good corazon is important.”

“Just follow your heart and keep smiling. And be sure to write home as soon as you’re settled.”

“Si, Mommi.”

As Mrs. Montoya leaves, Mr. Montoya comes in.

“Papi, did you say I could bring the radio? Mom, didn’t he say I could bring the radio?”

“Alright, it’s yours already,” said Mr. Montoya.

“Gracias.”

“Well now, you look certainly grown up, mi pricessa. You look just like your mother when she was young.”

“I’m glad about that. Papi, can you left me up high like when I was little?”

Mr. Montoya tries to pick up his daughter. At first it was hard, but he got to it.

“I can’t believe my Vision didn’t tell me that you were growing up so fast. But if things don’t work out, you can always come home.”

“And come back a failure? Ew, no way!”

They laugh.

“Will you write us if you have the time?”

She nods.

Later that night as the full moon grew higher and higher, members of the coven, their neighbors (witch, human, and otherwise) came to see Rosa-Maria off.

“But aren’t you worried about Rosa-Maria going off on her own?” asked a human neighbor. “She doesn’t even have a Whitelighter yet. Or even discovered her Skill. And there are a lot of things to worry about: Warlocks, monsters, witch hunters, other witches, and even…”

“Of course they’re worried,” assured his witch wife. “but Rosa-Maria will be just fine.”

Rosa-Maria was speaking to her friends.

“Do you think you’ll find a big city?” asked a Tigua girl.

“Or maybe a town?” asked a witch girl.

“Well, that’s what I’m hoping for anyway,” answered Rosa-Maria.

“Oh, you’re going to have so much fun,” said a jealous fairy girl.

“But I’m not going there just for a good time. In order to be a proper Workshop Witch, I have to train a year away from home.”

“Yeah, be sure to tell that to the vatos,” said a human girl.

The friends all laughed.

“Rosa-Maria, it’s time,” said Grandma.

“Okay,” she responded going over to the adults.

“That’s the broom you’re going to be leaving on?” asked Grandma.

“Si,” answered Rosa-Maria, proudly. “I just made it this morning all by myself.”

“Honey, it’s too small to be really safe. I’d rather you take my broom. I know it better.”

“But Grandma, that one’s so old.”

“And that’s why it’s good. You can rely on it time after time in any kind of weather. Now Rosa-Maria, do this for us, please.”

“But I put so much work into this one. Right, Mimi?”

Mimi looks up to her witch.

“Your broom is nice… But let’s take your grandma’s.”

“You’re no help.”

“Now, mija,” said Abuela. “Can’t you make yourself another fine broom when you get settled down?”

Rosa-Maria knew there was no escaping this. So, she hands her broom to Grandma and takes her broom. With that, Mr. and Mrs. Montoya wish their daughter safe. As do both her grandparents.

“Attention,” announced Annabelle. “Friends, neighbors, members of our coven. Tonight, a young witch is about to embark on a journey from childhood to adulthood. We wish her only the best of luck as she heads out into the world on her own for one year, only seeing us during our celebrations. Rosa-Maria Montoya, are you ready?”

“Ready, Madame Supreme.”

“Then… Take off!”

With that, Rosa-Maria mounted her broomstick. At first, she hovered a few feet of the ground… Then, she and Mimi zoomed off. She hit a few trees which bells were hanging off of.

“Aim your broomstick,” whispered Mrs. Montoya.

All was quiet for a time. Then, Rosa-Maria’s voice came in the distance.

“Adios, everybody! I’ll miss you!”

“Santa Muerta,” prayed Mr. Montoya. “And all of the patrons we call upon, please make sure our little baby be safe and well in the world.”

“I’m going to miss the wonderful sound of those bells,” said another neighbor.

Rosa-Maria and Mimi traveled the skies for many, many days. They would stop by at a motel from time to time. Though every town they have been to either already a lot of witches who were not so welcoming of them. She would move on.

One night, Rosa-Maria was so tiered of flying, she and Mimi settled in a train for the evening. The train then begins to move as the two were fast asleep.

NOTE 3: Now keep in mind, I don’t know where Rockababy took place, though I suspect it’s somewhere in the north west of America.

That morning, Rosa-Maria looks out of the train and sees a town.

“How lovely,” said Rosa-Maria, delighted. “I wonder if they have a witch there.”

“You know they may be a bad thing,” said Mimi.

Rosa-Maria and Mimi both get on the broom and take off into the air. Rosa-Maria was astounded by the view of the town.

“Look at the place,” she said. “It’s the kind of place I’ve always imagined.”

“But there may be some witches living here already,” said Mimi.

“And there may not be.”

Rosa-Maria then flies her broom around until she spotted a cliff that overlooked the town. She wondered if she could see the whole town from up there. As they arrived up there, Rosa-Maria just hovered near the cliff… She didn’t even notice a car pulling up on the cliff. Then, some greasers we all know and love come out.

NOTE 4: By this time, Richie and Ace are already greasers themselves.

“Finally, the weekend!” said a relieved Brick.

“Yeah,” said Boomer, places his arms around Brick. “Those tests were brutal.”

“Nobody said Senior Year would be easy,” said Ace. “Unlike Richie, he’s got it all made.”

“Aww, it wasn’t all that easy for me,” Richie said. “I think I got a wrong answer in Geometry.”

“’A’ wrong answer?” said a suspicious Bones.

“You really had to bring that up?”

“Chill, you guys,” said Shifty, adjusting his sunglasses. “We all have our own thing… And you’re gonna wake her.”

Looking in the back, Buttons was fast asleep.

Then, Bones notices Rosa-Maria flying near the cliff.

“What on earth is that?”

“Wait,” said Richie. “Broom and a black cat… And that hat… HOLY SMOKES, A REAL LIVE WITCH!”

Rosa-Maria heard Richie yelling. She turns around and sees the Bozos.

“Hello!” she calls out to them.

They greet her back.

“Do any witches live in this town?”

“No one has seen any around here in a long time,” answered Shifty.

“That’s great. Our trip is over. We’re staying right here. Thanks, you guys. Bye!”

With that, Rosa-Maria takes off.

“A real witch in our town,” said Richie. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“My father never liked witches,” said Ace. “He thinks they’re nothing but a bunch of old hags… Boy is he wrong.”

“I just wish I could take a closer look and get to know her. What are witches really like?”

Then, Shifty starts the car.

“Why don’t we find out?” he asks.

With that, the Bozos get in the car and drive into town.

Rosa-Maria then flew into town.

“They’re looking at us,” said a worried Mimi.

“I know,” said Rosa-Maria. “Smiling so we can make a good impression.”

Rosa-Maria was enjoying the attention so much. She closed her eyes to see how daring she is to fly without seeing.

“Yeesh,” said Mimi. “You’d think they’ve never seen a girl and a cat on a broomstick before.”

But then, they nearly hit a bus. Rosa-Maria managed to fly out of the way, but ended up causing a five car pile-up.

“Smooth,” said Mimi, sarcastically. “Very smooth. You definitely know how to make a good first impression.”

A cop comes and yells at Rosa-Maria. Fortunately, one of the Bozos managed to distract the cop for her to escape. Richie catches up to her and begins asking her a bunch of questions.

“Are you really a witch? How do your spells work? Did you come from a coven? How far can you fly on your broom? How do you even make it fly? Do you worship the devil or some other great being?”

Rosa-Maria was starting to get fed up and snaps at Richie.

“Thank you for getting me out of trouble. But I really shouldn't be talking to you, and you wanna know why? It's very rude to talk to a girl before you've been introduced and before you know her name.”

With that, she takes off on her broom.

Rosa-Maria and Mimi try to find a place to stay for the duration of Rosa-Maria’s training. They were unsuccessful. After wondering around town for so long, they arrive at the neighborhood of Richie and his mother, Dr. Cunningham. They saw the Bozos’ car coming up.

“They must live here,” suggested Mimi.

Rosa-Maria was thinking of taking off again, but Dr. Cunningham comes out with a teddy bear.

“Boomer, your sister and her daughter were visiting us. But when they left, they forgot your niece’s teddy bear.”

“That ain’t good,” said Boomer. “Lily loves that teddy bear.”

“Do you think you can take it to them?”

“That’d be hard. The in-laws don’t exactly like us. Especially me and Brick. And it ain’t just ‘cause we’re greasers.”

“Oh dear, I have some work to finish up, but I guess I better go there myself.”

Rosa-Maria could not stand the thought of a child being away from her favorite toy.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh, it’s you again,” said Ace.

“If you like, I can take the bear to them.”

“You would?” asked Dr. Cunningham.

“Just tell me where they live.”

“My sister and Lily live with the in-laws on Starlight Heights,” said Boomer. “But how-“

Before Boomer could finish, Rosa-Maria takes the bear and takes off into the air on her broom. Dr. Cunningham was amazed.

“I guess I better tell you,” said Richie.

After Rosa-Maria brought the teddy bear to Boomer’s niece, she returns to the Cunningham residence.

“I brought back her teddy. Her mother even gave me this note to give you.”

Dr. Cunningham takes the note and reads it.

Thank you for returning Lily’s teddy bear. Your new friend is really quite special.

“And thank you,” said Boomer.

“Well, I’ll be going,” said Rosa-Maria.

“Wait,” said Dr. Cunningham. “You should at least let us thank you for what you did for my sis and niece.”

They went inside in which Boomer made a great dinner for them all.

“Now stop me if I’m right,” said Dr. Cunningham. “I’m guessing you’re a witch-in-training.”

“That’s right,” answered Rosa-Maria.

“Like I told you,” said Richie, smiling.

“I really it here, but people don’t seem to like witches here. Even the lady’s parents-in-laws weren’t too happy to see me fly in.”

“Depends on the people,” said Dr. Cunningham. “Now take us for instance. I just met you and I know I like you.”

“Even though you’re a scientist?” asked Richie.

“True, as a scientist, I find stuff like this dubious. But the one rule about being a scientist is keeping an open mind. After all… We know anything is possible in this world.”

She winks at Shifty who winks back. Mimi is confused.

“So, where are you two staying?”

Rosa-Maria just looks down.

“I see. Why didn’t you say you don’t have a place to stay? We have plenty of room in the attic, you could use that.”

“You’d really let me stay with you!?”

“Of course,” Dr. Cunningham laughed. “But I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Clara (just made up that first name) Cunningham. As you now know, I’m a scientist. You’ve already met my son and his friends.”

“I’m Richie. Despite my new greaser look, I’m still interested in science.”

“I’m Boomer. Need anythin’ done in the kitchen, I’m your guy.”

“Just call me Brick. I just got my black belt.”

“Bones. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Ace. I should really tell me father how wrong he is about witches.”

Shifty goes up to Rosa-Maria.

“Shifty.”

They shook hands.

“Muy bien,” said Rosa-Maria. “I’m Rosa-Maria. Rosa-Maria Montoya. And Mimi is my very best friend.”

A little later, Dr. Cunningham and the Bozos lead Rosa-Maria to the attic.

“I’m sorry if the place will be dusty,” said Dr. Cunningham. “We haven’t been up there in a while.”

“I think I can manage,” assured Rosa-Maria.

They went into the attic which was indeed a bit dusty.

“This place could use a little cleaning,” said Dr. Cunningham. “If I already wasn’t busy with my work, I’d help you clean… But I’m sure my son and his friends can help.”

“I’m sure we will,” said Richie, nervously. “But I guess it can also mean I can ask you some questions.”

“You mean like if I worship the Dark Lord?” asked Rosa-Maria, sternly. “Well, I won’t deny it, there are a few Satanic covens in the world. Like the Church of Night. But don’t worry, I’m not a member of any of those covens. The El Paso Coven follows Santa Muerte. But each member does have their own patrons. Like my dad who calls on Apollo to help him with his prophecies. My mom invokes Athena for crafting talismans. Abuela calls Hermes for her séances. Abuelo calls Asclepius to help with his potions. And both my maternal call upon Demeter for their harvest.”

“And what patron do you call on?” asked Richie.

“I’ll know once I’ve discovered my Skill, the branch of magick that I’m best at.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’ve already said by my families’ patrons. My dad’s a fortuneteller who uses tea leaves and tarot cards. My mom crafts amulets and talismans. Abuela is a medium, aside from being able to see and hear ghosts like all witches do, she can call them even from the beyond and can even hear the voices of the gods. Abuelo is a potion maker, he made a killing with eye drops that can cure nearsightedness. And my maternal grandparents are good with Farm Magick. I’m still trying to figure out what my Skill is.”

“Well, I hope you find it,” said Bones.

“Now, if you need anything, just give a holler,” said Dr. Cunningham.

“Thanks,” said Rosa-Maria.

Rosa-Maria and Mimi stayed with the Cunninghams many weeks. Rosa-Maria continued to find her Skill. She tried Fortunetelling, but had little success. Her amulets and talismans may look pretty, but hardly produced results. Now, she was ready to try Potions.

“Potions, you say?” asked Dr. Cunningham. “One of the closest things witchcraft has in common with science. I hope you succeed.”

“Same here,” said Rosa-Maria. “It won’t be easy, though. One of the potions I’m making needs herbs that have more power when picked under the full moon.”

“That’s tonight,” said Richie. “Actually, me and some of my friends are going to the cliff area. That’s the place we first met you.”

“Why?”

“It’s just something we do… That, and I’m hoping to do some research.”

“On what?”

Richie smiles and says, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Oh,” said Rosa-Maria. “I suppose. Still thank you. I hope Potions is what I’m good at.”

“If not, you could always fly around on your broomstick and deliver stuff.”

“… I think that’s already taken.”

Later that night as the full moon rises, Rosa-Maria, Mimi, and the Bozos (except for Ace) go to the cliff overlooking the town. Richie was wearing his regular nerdy clothes (says it would be more appropriate).

“Thanks for bringing me up here,” said Rosa-Maria. “I could have flown up here, but after what happened when I first got here, better safe than sorry.”

“We just like it up here,” Shifty said coolly.

“I wonder why Ace isn’t here?”

“Family matters,” said Richie. “Something with his father.”

“I see. Sorry for asking.”

“It’s okay,” said Brick. “So, what are we looking for.”

“Richie helped me research some of the plant life that grow around here. Here’s a list of the things we can find.”

Rosa-Maria hands them a copy of a list of herbs and ingredients for the potion she is making.

“Some of these don’t look hard to find,” said Boomer. “Some of ‘em I use in my cookin’.”

“That sound great,” said Rosa-Maria in grateful glee.

“Just hope he knows to cover his ears if he finds a mandrake,” said a worried Mimi.

With that, Rosa-Maria goes off with Mimi and the other Bozos go to find the potion ingredients. Shifty decides to stay with the car. When he was sure that Rosa-Maria was out of sight, Shifty goes to the car and looks in the back to find Buttons just waking from her nap.

“I think we have time,” said Shifty. “Wanna see somethin’ great?”

Buttons squeaks in agreement.

Shifty takes Buttons and turns on the radio and places her on the car hood as the headlights shined. Then, Shifty takes a lollipop and holds it like a microphone and begins lips synch the song that was playing… Only You by The Platters. As he nears the end of the song, Shifty returns to his true alien form. The other Bozos who heard him couldn’t help but join in. What none of them knew before it was too late… Rosa-Maria and Mimi saw the whole thing. They were shocked.

“Rosa-Maria!” said a reeling Shifty, changing back to human form. “I can explain!”

But Rosa-Maria just screamed and she and Mimi tried to take off on her broomstick which she brought with her in case of emergencies. But Brick grabs a hold of it and yanks it from her. They try to run, but the other Bozos managed to stop her. Shifty, back in his human form tried to explain, but Rosa-Maria was too scared.

“You are a Demonic Shapeshifter, aren’t you?” she said with nervousness.

“I’m not,” responded Shifty.

“Then, you some kind of monster.”

“Maybe. But I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“What kind of monster can change into a human from some kind of lizard?”

“… An alien?” responded Richie.

“No way. Aliens can’t be real… Can they, Mimi?”

“Who knows,” said Mimi. “We know it’s possible to reanimate a corpse with science. Maybe they are real.”

Rosa-Maria thought for a moment. Finally, she spoke.

“Okay, so maybe you are an alien. How do I know I can trust you?”

Buttons came out of Shifty’s jacket and squeaked. Seeing her, Rosa-Maria couldn’t help but see the innocence in her eyes.

“I think you have your answer,” said Bones.

“Si,” said Rosa-Maria. “I understand. I’m sorry. Los siento.”

“It’s understandable,” said Shifty. “You probably never saw anything like this. I bet even witches would be surprised.”

“Actually, we have seen something like this. It usually scares us.”

“How?” asked Richie. “Does this have something to do with you calling Shifty some demonic shapeshifter?”

“Pretty much. But I’ll tell you later. Right now, it would be foolish just standing around here in the darkness. Let’s just finish gathering what we need and go.”

After gathering all the ingredients she needed, Rosa-Maria, Mimi, the Bozos, and Buttons all leave.

Back at the Cunningham house, Rosa-Maria got right away working on her potion. Ace had already returned from visiting his father in prison. They explained what had happened.

“So I guess the secret’s out now,” said Ace. “But I’m sort of on edge about what Rosa-Maria just said about these Demonic Shapeshifters. What’s that about?”

“Well, we witches have a lot of enemies and threats to us,” explained Rosa-Maria. “There are warlocks who wish to take our lives and our powers.”

“I thought warlocks were male witches,” said Boomer, confused.

“That’s a common misconception. A male witch is also called a witch. A warlock is a witch who has broken the Witch’s Code: An ye harm none, do what ye will. They only want power. Of course, it’s understandable why you would think that. Just as the majority of witches are female, the majority of warlocks are male. It’s a rare occasion if you encounter a female warlock. Other threats to us witches are witch hunters for obvious reasons. Monsters who would love the taste of flesh and blood. Especially humans. Extra flavor if it’s magical blood. There will even be targeted by other witches either because they’re Tower Witches, that’s what we call bad witches, or because I crossed into their or their coven’s territory. But the biggest threat to all of us witches and non-witches are… demons.”

“Demons?” asked Bones. “Like from Hell?”

“Pretty much. Demons only wish to bring death and destruction wherever they go. We Workshop Witches, good witches, are one of the many beings who have the power to stop them in order to protect the innocent and the greater good. Because of this, demons want to get rid of us.”

“I see,” said Richie. “That does sound bad.”

“It does. That’s why my family wanted me to go to Magic School instead of going out on my own. They said it would be safer. But it would also mean I would never them again for a long time. But they still wish I could go there. My banishings and vanquishings are not the best. I could barely handle a Lower Level Demon.”

“How so?” asked Ace, a little worried there.

“A year ago, a Lower Level Demon was giving trouble to one of our neighbors. I thought I could do it, but I failed. The spell to vanquish a Lower Level Demon goes: Hellspawn demon, creature of death, fire shall take your very breath. But I got the words mixed up. Instead of breath, I said bread and made all the bread in the house disappear.”

“What happened next?”

Rosa-Maria could tell the Ace was scared… for her… Could he be… She continues her story.

“Thankfully, our Supreme came, vanquished the demon, and saved me. After that, they decided that Demon Hunting is definitely not my Skill.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ace.

“Still think it’s a good idea to let me stay here with you?” Rosa-Maria was hoping they would say yes.

“We had to fight my father to save Shifty and Buttons,” said Ace in an almost prince-like tone. “I think we can handle whatever threatens you. Don’t worry, you can count on us… You can count on me.”

Rosa-Maria was almost happy to hear that. Hearing him say those things made her feel a little safer… and happier.

“Gracias, Ace.”

The two stared into each other’s eyes passionately.

“Don’t tell me their fallin’ in love,” laughed Shifty.

“They definitely look close,” said Bones.

“Maybe they’re Anon Cupla,” suggested Mimi.

“We’re not,” said an embarrassed Rosa-Maria. “… But then again…”

“What did your cat say?” asked Brick.

“Mimi thinks me and Ace maybe Anon Cupla,” she answered.

“Anon what?”

“In the witch world, we have witches who are bound to each other. They are Bonded Pairs. There are two kinds of them. The first is Anon Ceangal. That’s when two people choose to bound their souls together. Kind of like a married couple. It’s strong, but easily broken and undone. The second is Anon Cupla. That’s when two or more people share the same soul. It’s permanent and once bound, it can never be broken or undone. They’ll be part of each other’s lives for all eternity.”

“I see. That sounds… Really romantic.”

“No doubt about that,” said Boomer, happily.

Brick and Boomer hold hands.

“So you think we might be this Anon Cupla?” asked Ace.

“Well, that’s what Mimi thinks,” said Rosa-Maria. “It’s rare to find your soul twin. My parents are actually Anon Ceangal. They only unified to save my mother’s parents because they were poor, despite how good they are at Farming Magick. They said I was the only good that came out of it. And they’re real good friends. Of course, my family said I shouldn’t settle for Anon Ceangal and not give up hope for finding my Anon Cupla.”

“But how could it be me? I’m not a witch.”

“Our Supreme says that Anon Ceangal and Anon Cupla are not limited to just witches. It could be with anyone. My friend, Lila, her Anon Cupla is a werewolf. They’ve been together for 5 years.”

“I see.”

Though, Ace wasn’t sure. Rosa-Maria is pretty as far as witches go, but can it really work out? Only time will tell.

“But I shouldn’t focus on that right now,” said Rosa-Maria, going back to her potion. “Right now, I need to focus on my training. Love and romance can wait.”

“Okay.”

Rosa-Maria and Ace smile at each other.

“By the way, Rosa-Maria, what kind of potion are you working on?”

“It’s one of Abuelo’s. It’s the Butterfly Conjuration Potion. If I can get it right, it’ll conjure a swarm of beautiful butterflies.”

“And if you get it wrong?” asked Boomer.

“I’d rather not find out. Okay, now we just need a pinch of basil.”

“Here you go.”

Boomer handed Rosa-Maria the basil. She adds pinch of it to the pot and a puff of orange smoke came out.

“Now for the last ingredient. One whole milkweed flower.”

“Uh ho,” said Richie. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Rosa-Maria, but milkweeds don’t grow around this area. But I did find some blueblossums. They’re the closest to milkweed. Will that work?”

“Abuelo said that I shouldn’t use substitutes. But I guess this will have to do.”

Richie gave Rosa-Maria the blueblossums and added them to the pot which let out a loud bang and a puff of grey smoke.

“Odd. When Abuelo makes this potion, the smoke comes out white. Okay, now for the incantation… Llamo a los espíritus para que traigan mariposas para llenar el aire. ¡Concede tu poder, Santa Muerte!”

Then, in a loud bang and a puff of smoke the filled the entire kitchen, something came out of the pot… But it wasn’t a butterfly… It was a bat! Rosa-Maria and the Bozos all panic. Buttons just waved at the strange flapping creature she had never seen before. Fortunately, the bat vanished in a puff of smoke.

“I see what your gramps meant,” said Shifty, catching his breath and trying to maintain his human form.

“I guess Potions isn’t my Skill, either,” said a disappointed Rosa-Maria.

“Don’t give up,” said Ace with a smile. “I’m sure you’ll find it.”

Rosa-Maria smiled at what Ace said. She knows he’s right. She’ll find out what her Skill is before her year-long training is done.

What happens next? … Well, why don’t you guys decide that.

#rockababy #oc #orginal character

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returnsandreturns · 7 years

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i’ll put this up on ao3 if i ever flesh it out fully, but have some high school au that i’ve been poking at for awhile and want to abandon in favor of a wedding planning au maybe:

“I feel like I’m not holy enough to be here,” Foggy says, hushed, leaning close to Matt as they walk into the cathedral.

“I think you’re fine as long as you don’t catch fire at the entrance,” Matt says, smiling. Their voices echo nicely in the sanctuary, and Foggy’s warm at his side, bouncing on his feet a little as they walk towards the confessionals.

“Not even a hint of smoke,” he says, brightly. “Hey, can we do a joint confession, get it over with fast?”

“No,” Matt says, laughing. “You don’t have to do it, though. You can just wait for me.”

“Nah,” Foggy says. “If I’m here, I might as well confess my terrible, terrible sins.”

“Tell me some,” Matt says.

“Well, sloth,” Foggy says, agreeably.

“Of course.”

“I—cheated on a geometry test, like, two years ago.”

“That is pretty terrible.”

Foggy makes a low humming noise before he says, “Remind me, what’s the church’s policy on jerking off?”

Matt chokes on a laugh, letting go of Foggy’s arm to take a few steps forward by himself and say, seriously, “I think they just trust that our deeply instilled shame will make us guilty enough about it on our own. Do you want to go in first?”

“Might as well,” Foggy says, reaching up to tousle Matt’s hair as he walks past him. “I’ll make up some really good sins, get him warmed up for you.”

“Please don’t lie to a priest!” Matt calls after him, smiling too hard. He settles down on a bench outside and tries to listen to anything but Foggy talking—he really tries, but it’s kind of quiet and the noises from outside seem distant.

There’s nothing too shocking until Foggy says, “I’ve been having—is impure thoughts a good way to phrase it? I’ve been having those. For my best friend.”

Matt’s breath catches. Foggy always call Matt his best friend, but Foggy has—a lot of friends. He might not be talking about Matt. He’s probably not talking about Matt.

When Foggy comes back out, he says, “He’s all yours, Matty,” and immediately drops down to sit next to him, jostling Matt with a shoulder.

“Did you have fun?” Matt asks, smiling weakly.

“Yeah,” Foggy says, laughing. “Repentance is my jam. Hurry up and get it over with, I want to get coffee before we go back to your room to study.”

Afterwards, Matt doesn’t even remember what he says during his confession. He’s a little distracted wondering exactly what impure thoughts entails.

The sisters who run the orphanage tend to look the other way when Foggy ends up staying late in Matt’s room; Matt’s heard them talking about it, how they’re glad that he’s finally found a friend, that he’s not so isolated.

The first time Foggy came up to visit, he’d made a joke about how Matt was lucky to have a room to himself—how he could sneak up girls to spend the night. Matt might have let him believe that he’d done it before. Sometimes, it’s easier to let other people make their `assumptions.

Tonight, they’ve been studying for a history test for hours—or Foggy’s been studying, at least, and trying to talk the timelines out to reinforce it for Matt. Matt, who keeps drifting to the thought of kissing Foggy on the mouth, which is new.

“You with me, buddy?” Foggy asks.

“Hmm?” Matt asks.

“You left me all alone with Winston Churchill,” Foggy says, shoving gently at Matt’s knee. “What’s on your mind?”

“Uh, nothing,” Matt says, smiling and shaking his head. “Just—tests, you know?”

“I definitely know,” Foggy says, sighing before he suddenly slams his book shut and gathers all of their stuff up to put it on the floor. “I vote we give up.”

“I second that,” Matt says, gamely.

Foggy sprawls across Matt’s bed, stretching out, and Matt snorts and scoots back against the headboard to give him room.

“Alright, girl talk,” Foggy says. “Tell me all your hopes and dreams.”

Matt really, really can’t do that right now.

He can distract Foggy, though.

“You go first,” he says, smiling down at him. Foggy’s heart beats a little faster, and Matt wonders what would happen if he just touched him—his hair, maybe. He thinks about Foggy saying impure thoughts and lets his hand drop down to brush over where his hair’s spread out on the bed, not even touching his head before Foggy’s heart picks up even more.

Matt pulls his hand back.

“Hope or dream?” Foggy asks, sounding a little flustered.

“. . .dream,” Matt says.

“Do you think the nuns know that I’m high?” Foggy asks, as soon as he walks into Matt’s room and shuts the door behind him. He sounds genuinely nervous.

“No,” Matt says, evenly, turning around in his desk chair to give him a serious look, “but God does.”

Foggy gasps softly then groans after Matt smiles at him.

“Don’t, Matty,” he says, climbing onto Matt’s bed and wrapping his arms around himself, making a sad face. “I think I smoked too much. Am I going to hell? How does that work?”

“You’re not going to hell,” Matt says, moving to sit next to him, cheeks heating up when Foggy immediately gets as close as he can so he can rest his head on Matt’s shoulder. “Who were you smoking with?”

“Brett got some but he was too freaked out about his mom finding it, so he gave it to me,” Foggy says, turning to bury his face in Matt’s shoulder instead so his voice is muffled. “Then I got worried about my mom and I smoked all of it at once.”

“How much?” Matt asks, somewhat worried.

“. . .all of it,” Foggy repeats, gravely, and Matt laughs and wants to kiss him again. The last week’s been composed of wanting to kiss Foggy and feeling borderline sick about it, but it’s worse now, alone and so close.

“Well, you managed to walk here all right,” he says. “I don’t think you’ll die.”

“. . .wait, can weed kill you?” Foggy asks, horrified, sitting up again.

“I. . .” Matt starts, hesitantly. “I don’t—think so?” Then, after Foggy makes an upset noise and shifts closer to grab Matt’s arm, “I mean, no, let’s say no.”

“I mean this in a totally cool and manly way, Matty, but will you please hug me?”

It’s probably a bad idea. No, it’s—definitely a bad idea, but Matt can’t possibly say no to that, so he opens his arms and smiles helplessly when Foggy moves in to wrap his arms around him. He’s practically sitting in Matt’s lap, face tucked into his neck, and Matt holds on tight and breathes against his hair.

“You’re okay,” he says, softly, rubbing Foggy’s back.

Foggy’s the only person he’s really hugged since his dad, so sometimes it still feels a little bit wrong. Like Matt’s not supposed to be the one doing this, even though he likes it. Especially now, when he’s figuring out that the warm dizzy feeling that he gets when he’s touching Foggy means something different.

Foggy’s heart slows down enough that Matt thinks he might be asleep until he asks, “Could I sleep here? I don’t want my parents to see me.”

“Or smell you,” Matt says, smiling when Foggy bursts out laughing, holding Matt tighter before he lets go and shifts back.

“Sorry, buddy,” he says, yawning. “I just—rubbed the weed smell all over you. I can go home if you want.”

Foggy should probably go home. Matt’s not sure it’s okay for them to sleep in a bed together, knowing what he knows about Foggy, knowing what he feels about Foggy.

“No, stay,” he says, standing up to see if he has anything that Foggy can wear to sleep in. “You have to go to Mass with me in the morning, though.”

“Only if you go get pancakes with me afterwards,” Foggy says, sounding happy.

Matt turns his head so Foggy can see him smile.

“Deal.”

When Matt wakes up the next morning, it’s to Foggy snoring lightly close to his ear and Foggy’s chest pressed up against his back, body curved around him with a warm heavy arm slung over Matt’s waist. He’s pretty sure that he forgets how to breathe for a moment, shifting back against Foggy to feel him stir and sigh and pull him closer while he’s still asleep.

He wants to kiss Foggy awake. He wants to do something about the erection tenting his pajama pants besides quietly dealing with it himself so nobody in the rooms around him hears. He wants to ask Foggy what impure thoughts means and if he thinks it’s okay that Matt’s more worried about never getting to touch him than what it might mean to the church if he has real feelings for a boy.

He’s worrying over that when Foggy wakes up with a yawn, making a curious noise before he says, “Oh, wow—you awake, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Just woke up.”

“Sorry, it was cold in here last night,” Foggy says, carefully letting go of him and scooting backwards—not much room to go in Matt’s twin bed. “Must’ve accidentally cuddled you for warmth.”

“I don’t mind,” Matt says, sitting up after Foggy climbs out of the bed, pulling the sheets around him to hide just how much he doesn’t mind.

“Oh,” Foggy says, and Matt’s sure that he’s said something he shouldn’t until Foggy continues, blithely, “Well, good, now we know you’re the little spoon. I think I might head home and grab something to change into for Mass that wouldn’t make my grandmother cry.”

“What were you wearing last night?” Matt asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Cargo shorts,” Foggy says. “Sex Pistols t-shirt. Both, if you remember, smelling strongly of marijuana. I’m changing back into them, by the way.”

“Okay,” Matt says, laughing and trying not to think about Foggy taking his clothes off in front of him—wondering what it will take to stop constantly thinking about him like that. “You can just go home, though—you don’t actually have to go with me.”

“I want to,” Foggy says, zipping up his shorts. Matt feels his dick twitch at the sound and frowns at himself. “Mostly for the pancakes, but I also want to see you in your element.”

“My element?” Matt asks.

“Yeah. I’m just saying—it’s important to you,” Foggy says, almost cautiously, folding the t-shirt Matt lent him and putting it on his dresser. “I want to know about what’s important to you, Matty.”

“Oh,” Matt says, surprised.

“I also want bacon,” Foggy says, brightly, moving close to ruffle Matt’s hair before he heads for the door. “I’ll be back. Don’t forget to brush your hair, you look ridiculous.”

He’s gone before Matt remembers how to really speak again.

A few days later, on a Friday, Foggy’s waiting on the front steps as Matt’s leaving to walk to school.

“We’re skipping class,” he says.

“Are we?” Matt asks, yawning, sitting his bag down before sitting on the step below Foggy and leaning his head against his arm. It’s too early to be alive. Foggy’s warm.

“Yes,” Foggy says, firmly. “We deserve a three day weekend.”

“I have a quiz,” Matt says, half-heartedly. He’s skipped class with Foggy a few times, and it’s always ended up being some of the best days of his life—easy and fun. He can make up the quiz for that.

“You’ll be fine, you have a 7.0 GPA,” Foggy says.

“I don’t,” Matt says, laughing.

“You have a 100.5 GPA,” Foggy continues, “and we’re going to get drunk in the park.”

Matt tips his head back to feel the sun, stretching his legs out in front of him.

“Do I have to talk to your weird uncle?” he asks. Foggy seems to have a family member in every business in the neighborhood, including one of the liquor stores. This one’s really into UFOs and seems to think that Matt went blind because of some extraterrestrial occurrence.

“Uncle Pete is eccentric,” Foggy corrects him, standing up, “and you can stay outside, if you want. Actually, you probably should, he’s been really into hugs lately. C’mon, I’m holding out my hand.”

Matt tries to give him a disapproving look but ends up smiling instead, taking Foggy’s hand and letting himself be tugged to his feet. Neither of them let go immediately, and it’s dumb what just the feelings of their palms pressed together can do to him.

“Alright,” Foggy says, almost nervously, squeezing Matt’s hand before he drops it. “Let’s go, we’re burning daylight.”

When he’s got his fingers curled around Foggy’s arm, he tries not to think too hard about holding his hand instead.

The weather’s just starting to get cool, but Matt’s warm from the whiskey they carried to the park in a water bottle when he kisses Foggy on the mouth.

It’s impulsive—it’s because he hasn’t stopped thinking about it since he heard Foggy in the confessional, and it’s spurred on by the sound of Foggy laughing and his body shaking where their shoulders are pressed together, sprawled out in the grass.

Foggy’s been thinking about him, and in the moment that it takes him to turn and push into Foggy’s space, the only thing Matt can focus on is making sure that Foggy knows Matt’s been thinking about him, too.

He’s not sure how long the kiss lasts, his hand on Foggy’s face and Foggy’s mouth open underneath his, but it seems like an eternity before he feels Foggy makes an uncomfortable noise and Matt’s nerves kick into high gear.

“God, sorry, I’m—” he says, blushing furiously and practically flinging himself away, stumbling over telling the truth. “I shouldn’t have, I’ve just been—I’ve been thinking about you.”

“About kissing me?” Foggy asks, quietly, sitting up.

It’s too late to try to pass this off as anything other than what it actually is. He drops his head so his hair falls in front of his face, turned away from Foggy, whose heart is beating so loud that it’s the only thing Matt can hear for once.

“Yeah,” he says, eventually, “and. . .touching you.”

Foggy’s breath catches.

“Matt,” he says, shifting in the grass but not moving closer.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Matt says, going for brisk and failing completely, voice shaking apart. “I won’t bother you anymore if you want that. Just don’t—don’t tell anyone. Please?”

“. . .what the fuck, Murdock,” Foggy says. Matt stiffens, tightens his fists at his sides. He thought Foggy might pity him or just never talk to him again, but he didn’t think he’d be angry. Foggy’s never been mad at him before.

“I’m sorry,” he says, roughly. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Don’t be sorry that you kissed me,” Foggy says, frustrated. “Just—do you really think I’d tell people? Do you really think that?”

Matt takes a moment before he shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“Good,” Foggy says, and then he’s crawling forward on his knees to grab Matt by the t-shirt and pull him into another kiss. It’s the best kiss that Matt’s ever had, which—is a short list, but he’s never felt like this before. Hot and desperate and laughing helplessly as he’s tipped over into the grass with Foggy’s arms around him.

“We can’t—Fog, there are people around,” he says, pulling away and grinning up at him when Foggy tries to pull him back in.

“Hey, you kissed me first,” Foggy says, kissing Matt softly, tracing fingers through his hair.

“. . .are your parents home?” Matt asks, breathlessly.

“Matthew,” Foggy says. “What are you planning?”

“I actually have—no idea,” Matt admits, but it makes Foggy laugh and kiss him again.

“They’re at work,” he says. “Let’s go.”

#mattfoggy #my fic #daredevil #there might someday be a sweet fumbly first time #possibly in matt's room #i was going to go into more religious guilt but i just want everyone to be happy

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mcmansionhell · 7 years

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McMansion Hell Does Architectural Theory (Part 3): British Palladianism

Hello Friends! Today we’re going to talk about a rather short-lived movement in late 17th, early-18th century architecture: British Palladianism, which is v “Palladio is great and I, an aristocrat, will only pay you if you design in reference to his style.” Of course it goes deeper than that, so, let’s begin!

Background

In previous installations of this series, we’ve talked about the Italians and the French, but what the heck was happening in Britain all this time? Well, the answer is:

Seriously. The dang Brits were at war all the time - colonializing everything, sinking all of Spain’s ships, creating their own cool church bc their king wanted a son etc.

Because of all this dang war, architecture in Britain for a long time was a messy hodgepodge of stylistic elements. Examples range from Henry VIII’s Windsor Castle Gatehouse (OG Tudor, though ostensibly Gothic) to the more classically-oriented but still rather Gothic Old Somerset House (completed in 1552) (demolished). According to Mallgrave’s Architectural Theory (a great anthology), most of the classically inspired elements on pre-17th Century British buildings can be traced to Italian or French artisans. Oh well.

Early English Classicism (Late 17th Century)

It wasn’t until the 17th century (v late) that classicism became a big deal in England. The first real-deal English classicist was the badass-ly named Inigo Jones, who actually went to Italy for a year (1613-14) where he encountered the work of Palladio for the first time -- which, needless to say blew his damn mind. Jones became the first British architect to have designed buildings in accordance to Vitruvian teachings and classical proportions.

The Dude Jones got into architecture through a weird angle: he was first a prominent set and costume designer for several English theatres. His Italian journey proved fruitful for him career-wise - many of the higher-ups were impressed with Jones’ knowledge of Italian aesthetics, and he was shortly appointed as the Surveyor to the Prince of Wales, before hella upgrading to being Surveyor of the King’s Works in 1615.

Jones’ earliest known architectural work (appropriately called Queen’s House), built for James I’s wife, Anne (who died before it was finished), was the first ever classically styled building in England. I mean, it’s great - just look at it.

Photo by Bill Bertram (CC-BY-SA 2.5)

While Jones would go on to design a smattering of buildings, a great deal of his work was lost both in the English Civil War and in the 1666 Great Fire of London. Despite these minor setbacks, Jones’ is still considered to be among England’s greatest architects whose influence would span two centuries worth of British architectural technique.

Get it? It’s lit? Because half of his stuff got torched? I’m sorry.

As far as architectural theory goes during this era of budding classicism, the closest clue we have is the work of Henry Wotton, the British ambassador to Venice, who got so hellaciously sloshed on Italian architecture while he was there that he decided to write a book about it called The Elements of Architecture (1624), outlining his special interpretation of classical architecture.

Wotton’s book was mostly a translation of Vitruvius with a little bit of Renaissance thought (a la Alberti and Palladio) thrown in. The most well-known snippet is his translation of the Vitruvian triad as “firmness, commodity, and delight” - an architectural catchphrase that often finds its way into contemporary architectural histories, though more accurate translations have been proposed:

Change in this line of thought came with Jones’ later successor, Christopher Wren. Unlike Jones who was rather rigorous in his classicism, Wren was a bit more...capricious. In fact, he even built in the Gothic style at the end of his long career (the dude built 45 churches alone) - a move that would have likely put Perrault and Blondel both in an early grave.

Dude doesn’t even need the sunglasses, he’s throwing so much shade in this pic.

Wren’s ideas about architecture, encapsulated in his Tracts on Architecture (1670s) are varied. In Tract I, Wren opens up with the ballsy af statement: “Architecture has its political Use,” - that is, buildings form the national identity of a country and inspire patriotism amongst its citizens. This itself is a hot take, but it gets even hotter.

Like Perrault, Wren’s ideas about beauty are split into what he calls “natural” and “customary” beauty. Natural beauty consists of geometry, aka Proportions, following in the Platonic tradition® of an absolute beauty or harmony, inherently pleasing to all of us. Customary beauty, however, is more vague - Wren describes it as: “the use of our Senses to those Objects which are usually pleasing to us for other Causes, as Familiarity or particular Inclination breeds a Love to Things not in themselves lovely.”

Basically, we like certain things for some dumb reason like feelings and stuff.

In his second Tract, Wren gripes about architecture being “too strick and pedantick.” This makes sense, because Wren was really into blending a variety of interesting styles together, which was perhaps problematic to some.

Enter the Moralists

One person who was particularly sick of Wren’s sh*t was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, in addition to being an Earl, was also a writer and philosopher. (He was notably taught at a young age by none other than John Locke, the guy you learned about in Civics class once.)

Shaftesbury hated (!!!) the Baroque stylings of Wren’s late work, as well as the next generation of architects including John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, deeming the pair’s Baroque-leaning Blenheim Palace “a new palace spoilt.” In fact, he wrote a very amusingly scathing essay in 1712 basically saying that Britain was literally *THE BEST* at all of the other arts except for architecture, after which he proceeds to take a huge dump all over the architecture of the day.

Photo by Derova, (CC-BY-2.0)

Shaftesbury tried to sniff out a philosophical basis for Platonic thought regarding absolute beauty and harmonic proportions. What he came up with is essentially moralism, claiming that in order to be able to perceive the naturally good and beautiful ideas in art, one must themselves be naturally good and beautiful on the inside.™ Good taste comes from good inner resolve® to be true to what we know is true beauty and not be swayed by the evils of fashion™ blah blah blah.

The Height of British Palladianism

This line of thought continued within what was now deemed British Palladianism (a movement whose discourse consisted mostly of wealthy Earls tutting at each other). British Palladianism saw several architects (Colin Campbell, Nicholas Du Bois, and William Kent, specifically) launch their own careers by releasing translations or new editions of works by Vitruvius, Palladio, and Jones, respectively with some pithy bits in the introductions haranguing the “ridiculous mixture of Gothick and Roman” of the previous generation thrown in for good measure.

Like all movements, the Palladian movement had its own shadowy figurehead, who funded the work of several of the architects working in the 1720s - Richard Boyle, Third Earl of Burlington.

Burlington was extremely wealthy, and spent most of his time being a total dilettante architect, traveling to Italy to collect manuscripts of Palladio and the like. In fact, Burlington fired Colin Campbell (the English Vitruvius!!) from working on his Piccadilly Villa because apparently Campbell’s classicism was **just not pure enough** for the good Earl, who decided he should just build his damn villa himself.

Burlington’s ruthless aesthetic commitment had a huge impact on the contemporary architects of the day, most of whom he fired. Of the ones he did not fire (aka he did not hire them in the first place), Robert Morris, the most prolific writer of the Palladian movement, is perhaps the most significant. Morris’s work chronicles not only the dawn and spirit of the movement but also its decline.

Morris’s 1728 essay “An Essay in Defense of Ancient Architecture” is about exactly what you would expect:

(((Tutting intensifies)))

The essay of course devolves from tutting critique to legit 17th century fanfiction:

I-Inigo-sama!!! <3

The End of an Era, I Guess

Jokes aside (yours truly used to ship historical figures back in my 7th grade fanfiction days and is not proud), Morris would take a rather different tone in 1739, in an essay commonly cited as a hint to the movement’s end, “An Essay upon Harmony.”

This essay breaks away from the Platonic ideas of absolute beauty, and instead breaks beauty up into several different categories - a relativist aesthetics coming from a contemporary movement (mostly in landscape architecture) called the picturesque, or picturesque theory, which will be the subject of next week’s post.

“In Harmony,” writes Morris, “there are three general Divisions, which may be distinguish’d by the Terms, Ideal, Oral, and Ocular.”

The Ideal is of course numbers and, duh, proportions. Oral harmony is how things are related to each other, with a v Plato allusion to musical harmony. Old news, right?

But it’s Ocular harmony that offers a glimpse into what will ultimately be a much more powerful movement, spanning (serious, not dilettante) philosophy, art, and of course architecture: the picturesque and the sublime, supported by John Locke & Co.’s empiricism (but we’ll get to that).

Ocular harmony is the harmony of nature in its natural state - both “Animate” (animals, insects, also beauty and perfection, apparently) and “inanimate” (hills, woods, valleys, scenery - “noble, rural, and pleasing.”)

Morris’ ideas are ones of subjectivity, blind sensation to what is and is not lovely, rather than dictated ideas of aesthetic morality. He later goes on to say that in architecture, “The Proportion should be with respect to the Situation; the Dress, Decoration, and Materials should be adapted to the Propriety and Elegance of the Situation and Convenience…”

If that’s not the antithesis to Burlington’s objective classicist purity, I don’t know what is. And so, the bell finally tolls on British Palladianism.

Photo by Chris Nyborg, (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

I hope you enjoyed this bit of (admittedly long-overdue) tutting. Stay tuned for Wednesday’s Maine McMansion, and next Sunday’s installment where I trash talk a bunch of dudes who are way too into gardens.

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store - 30% goes to charity.

Copyright Disclaimer: All photos without captioned credit are from the Public Domain. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email [email protected] before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

#architecture #history #architectural theory #palladio #philosophy #aesthetics #inigo jones #christopher wren #robert morris #england #british palladianism #classical architecture #classicism #traditional architecture #theory

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shavedjudomonkey · 7 years

Text

Let’s talk about history.

Specifically, how this chart here:

Is about as accurate as this headline here:

I’m gonna keep going under a cut, because this is gonna get ranty.

Now, I’ve seen...that chart (And I’m always just gonna call it ‘That Chart’ from now on.) floating around a couple of posts on tumblr. These posts tend to get tens of thousands of notes, which is honestly kinda depressing. I don’t think that many people here are racist. “I’m not racist!” You’re probably saying to yourself right now. If you’ve ever reblogged That Chart, you’re a bit more racist then you think. Putting aside the whole idea of ‘The Dark Ages’ for a moment (Which is a whole other rant we’ll have to come back to on another day.) That Chart acts like the only people who can advance science are White Western Europeans. Let’s start getting rid of that idea right now by introducing our first guest: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham.

He was not only the first person to explain that vision worked by light bouncing against an object and then entering your eye, (The oh so advanced Ancient Greeks believed you emitted light from your eyes like a flashlight), but he was also one of the first people to suggest that a hypothesis must be proven by experimentation using confirmable procedures or mathematical proofs. Did I mention yet that he lived during the late 900s CE till the early 1000s CE? Right in the middle of the so called Dark Ages? Speaking of mathematics, let’s introduce our next star: Omar Khayyám!

Omar was a genius in the field of mathematics, leading to what many believe is the first exact method of solving cubic equations. Let’s quote some of his work right now, shall we? “Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements.” And least you think these discoveries were limited to the middle east, let’s meet our next guest: Pope Sylvester II

Sylvester II not only reintroduced the concept of the abacus to medieval europe, he also introduced the idea of Arabic Numerals and popularized the concept of them. When did he do this you may ask? Oh, around the year 1000 CE. Basically, this is how that conversation went: "guys guys guys... check it out, an abacus and this whole numeral system thingy! It's pretty cool! The Muslims use it!"

But let’s not neglect the body sciences! And to that I bring you our next guest: Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī

This gentleman here has been called many things. A doctor's doctor is one of them. I personally prefer one of his other titles: “The Father of Pediatrics”. He was one of the first doctors to write a book specifically about the care of children. If that wasn’t enough, he was one of the first people to distinguish Smallpox and Measles as different diseases, requiring different treatments. You may be saying to yourself “Okay, so maybe that chart is more then a little inaccurate. But that bit about space travel is still pretty sound, right?” Well...no. See, now you need to travel to China and read a little thing called the Wujing Zongyao compiled from around 1040 to 1044.

Now, if you don’t read Chinese, you may be asking yourself what this page here is about. Oh, it’s simple really. It’s just one of the first real military formulas for gunpowder. That’s not the only thing in the book. They also have instructions on how to use flamethrowers (Using Greek Fire bought from the Byzantines), smoke grenades and rockets. You know, the things that explode and take us up into space. If That Chart were accurate at all, China would have a moon base and a Mars base by now.

CONCLUSION

I know some of you mean well when you reblog That Chart. You want to show how far we seemed to come before we stagnated. But science never ‘stagnates’. Ideas are shared across the world. One person takes a discovery and adds to it, letting another person across the planet make a new discovery, and so on until we really do travel the cosmos. And that’s a lot more optimistic then what That Chart says about us, isn’t it? I guess what it really boils down to is that science never stops, and we never stop learning.

But seriously. Fuck you if you think That Fucking Chart is accurate at all.

#history #science #bad science #bad history #the dark ages #medical history #don't know much about history #medieval history

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spring-of-mathematics · 7 years

Video

youtube

Mama loved Me to infinity ∞

Infinity … … it’s not big … … it’s not huge … … it’s not tremendously large … … it’s not extremely humongously enormous … … it’s

…Endless!

Infinity has no end. Infinity is the idea of something that has no end.

Infinity, most often denoted as infty(symbol:∞), is an unbounded quantity that is greater than every real number, is an abstract concept describing something without any limit and is relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics. In number systems incorporating infinitesimals, the reciprocal of an infinitesimal is an infinite number, i.e., a number greater than any real number. Infinity is a very tricky concept to work with, as evidenced by some of the counterintuitive results that follow from Georg Cantor’s treatment of infinite sets.

Georg Cantor formalized many ideas related to infinity and infinite sets during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the theory he developed, there are infinite sets of different sizes (called cardinalities). For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the infinite set of real numbers is uncountable:

Cantor’s diagonal argument:The best known example of an uncountable set is the set R of all real numbers, Cantor’s diagonal argument shows that this set is uncountable.

In his 1891 article, Cantor considered the set T of all infinite sequences of binary digits (i.e. consisting only of 0es and 1s). First, he constructively shows the following theorem: If s1, s2, … , sn, … is any enumeration of elements from T, then there is always an element s of T which corresponds to no sn in the enumeration. To prove this, given an enumeration of arbitrary members from T, like e.g.

s1 =(0,0,0,0,0,0,0,…)

s2 =(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,…)

s3 =(0,1,0,1,0,1,0,…)

s4 =(1,0,1,0,1,0,1,…)

s5 =(1,1,0,1,0,1,1,…)

s6 =(0,0,1,1,0,1,1,…)

s7 =(1,0,0,0,1,0,0,…)

…

He constructs the sequence s by choosing its nth digit as complementary to the nth digit of sn, for every n. In the example, this yields:

s1=(0,0,0,0,0,0,0,…)

s2=(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,…)

s3=(0,1,0,1,0,1,0,…)

s4=(1,0,1,0,1,0,1,…)

s5=(1,1,0,1,0,1,1,…)

s6=(0,0,1,1,0,1,1,…)

s7=(1,0,0,0,1,0,0,…)

…

s =(1,0,1,1,1,0,1,…)

By construction, s differs from each sn, since their nth digits differ (highlighted in the example). Hence, s cannot occur in the enumeration. Based on this theorem, Cantor then uses an indirect argument to show that: The set T is uncountable. He assumes for contradiction that T was countable. Then (all) its elements could be written as an enumeration s1, s2, … , sn, … .

Applying the above theorem to this enumeration would produce a sequence s not belonging to the enumeration. This contradicts the assumption, so T must be uncountable.

Calculus: Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of infinitesimal calculus, speculated widely about infinite numbers and their use in mathematics. To Leibniz, both infinitesimals and infinite quantities were ideal entities, not of the same nature as appreciable quantities, but enjoying the same properties in accordance with the Law of Continuity

Geometry and topology: Infinite-dimensional spaces are widely used in geometry and topology, particularly as classifying spaces, such as Eilenberg−MacLane spaces. Common examples are the infinite-dimensional complex projective space K(Z,2) and the infinite-dimensional real projective space K(Z/2Z,1).

Complex analysis: By stereographic projection, the complex plane can be "wrapped" onto a sphere, with the top point of the sphere corresponding to infinity. This is called the Riemann sphere.

In complex analysis the symbol {\displaystyle \infty } \infty , called "infinity", denotes an unsigned infinite limit. {\displaystyle x\rightarrow \infty } x\rightarrow \infty means that the magnitude {\displaystyle |x|} |x| of x grows beyond any assigned value. A point labeled {\displaystyle \infty } \infty can be added to the complex plane as a topological space giving the one-point compactification of the complex plane. When this is done, the resulting space is a one-dimensional complex manifold, or Riemann surface, called the extended complex plane or the Riemann sphere

Fractals: The structure of a fractal object is reiterated in its magnifications. Fractals can be magnified indefinitely without losing their structure and becoming "smooth"; they have infinite perimeters—some with infinite, and others with finite surface areas. One such fractal curve with an infinite perimeter and finite surface area is the Koch snowflake. [ Wiki: Infinity]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SONG: A Mother's dairy 母の日記 (日本語の正式バージョン- Origin of song , is in Vietnamese : Nhật Kí Của Mẹ ) - Here is English sub -

How many days I've been waiting for your coming to this world Cherished inside me, was there a laughter of an infant forming up? Suddenly I wake up, and then I see your tiny form like an angel You burst into tears, my eyes are red, thank you for coming to me. My lovely dear, do you know that I love love you so much. Looking at you in a cradle/ Your wide eyes, oh honey./ Looking at your Dad, he's happy And his tears are coming out, you can see that he's crying for you. One day i wake up and i can hear your whistle to me : "Mama" Your tiny lips suddenly sounded , this makes my heart jumping out. This is the ground, this is the sky, this is the place you were born. Then You toddle after your Dad, placing your first step in life. My lovely dear, do you know/ I love you, love you so much Keep walking, I am here, follow your every steps. Tomorrow, when you grow up, life is not like you still hope. Keep always standing up and moving on. The first day to class, I go with you, you go after my back. The cicadas in late summer, welcome you under sunshine... Day after day, you love your school, and friends and your kind teachers My lovely dear, be a good child, i am so happy inside. Oh my honey , do you know I love you most in this life. Many nights you stay awake, I feel so heart - rending. Then every exam follows, your childhood passes quickly/ I hope you will success tomorrow One day, I see you vague smile, a rose under the table There is a name in your letter, this must be someone you love. One day I see , you look so sad, the rose is still here for you, the leaves are green, the flower blooms, but I see your heart is blue. Oh my dear, do you know, I love you love you so much./ The first love of your life, it's not easy to forget. And the moon will cover you, sunlight comes after the rain./ Someone will love you more than I do. One day you grow up, you can decide, one day you have to leave me On your firm feet, face to the world, you spread your wings with freedom Day after day,night after night, I feel I miss you so much/ Miss your figure, miss your smiles, in every moment in life My lovely dear, do you know that I love you most in this world./ Wherever you go to, be assured I am still glad. Every letter with my love, I ask the clouds bring to you./ Wish you always be happy forever. How many days I've been waiting for your coming back to me./ Inside my mind, the memories of your innocent childhood. Suddenly wake up, then I see you still tiny as an angel/ My eyes are red from happy tears. Thank you for coming to me.

#Mathematics&Life

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kpopfanfictrash · 7 years

Text

Binary Star

Author: kpopfanfictrash

Pairing: You / Jaebum / Mark

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3,790

Summary: “In some cases, these close binary systems can exchange mass, which may bring their evolution to stages that single stars cannot attain.”

You and Jaebum have been dating forever when Mark Tuan shows up in your classroom. You’ve always been against change - a bit debilitating, being a writer - but for some reason this new kid has you thinking there might be an upside to chaos.

“What word rhymes with Jerusalem?”

Without looking up from your book, you shake your head. “No.”

“That’s not an answer.”

You sigh, setting book down and looking at your boyfriend. “Why do you need to rhyme Jerusalem at all?”

Jaebum shrugs. “I’m trying for a religious theme … in a worship kind of way. Not in an I-actually-attend-church-and-sit-in-a-pew kind of way.”

“Still.” You hide your smile. “Maybe take that bit out. Also, Hozier already wrote that song.” As you resume reading, a guitar pick hits you in the forehead. “Hey!”

Jaebum jumps on the bed, arms wrapping around your middle as he nuzzles into your neck. “You’re disturbing my creative writing process.” He growls, nipping your ear.

You swat him with both hands. “I was in the middle of a battle! Thanks to you, they probably lost the war.”

“My bad.” Jaebum kisses your forehead. “Apologize for me, will you?” He pushes himself upwards, grabbing his guitar before scooting back to drape your legs over his.

You snuggle into him. “Yeah, yeah. Gillian is an unforgiving heroine though.”

Jaebum smiles and resumes strumming. His brow creases, fingers faltering as he strikes the wrong chord. The pick goes back in his mouth as he bends to scribble something. Without quite realizing it, your book lowers to the bed.

It’s still shocking that you’re dating.

Have been for three years now. Jaebum could have chosen anyone, so why he chose you is still a mystery. He has this way about him. You don’t know if you’d call it charm, exactly. It’s more an aura he has, a way of presenting himself that makes people want to know him.

People, including you. In freshmen year Jaebum was the guy every girl had a crush on. He was cool, talented and lead singer of his band. Oh, and he was hot as hell. When Jaebum made eye contact, girls practically melted into puddles.

On Saturday nights he played at your local coffee shop. Which meant that every Saturday night, you attended the same local coffee shop. You brought your homework in the guise of being studious but really you just liked looking at him. Listening to his voice for two hours a week. It didn’t matter much that he wasn’t yours, just having him nearby was enough.

Until he noticed you.

You’d been going to Jaebum’s shows for a while at that point, two months at least. The band was taking a break – you heard Jaebum mutter something into the mic about getting water before he hopped offstage. The shop’s soundtrack resumed, as did the chatter of customers.

You continued to work on your geometry homework.

“Acute.” Jaebum said as he flopped into the seat across from you.

You froze.

“It’s an acute angle,” Jaebum repeated, pulling your paper to face him.

You lifted your head to look at him. “I know that.”

“Well you hadn’t answered the question.”

“I was getting there.” You frowned, glancing at your paper, then back to him. “Don’t you have a show to do?”

“Why?” Jaebum grinned. “Missing my music?”

The blush on your face was unavoidable. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t. But you’ve been here every night.” At your noise of protest, Jaebum laughed. “What, you think I haven’t noticed?”

“I – well.” You huffed, sunk lower in your chair. “No, I didn’t.”

“And why not?”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious… but between the two of us, I’m not the one people are looking at.”

Jaebum just smiled. “I’m looking at you. Doesn’t that count?”

The starkness of his statement left you speechless. “Well.” You cleared your throat. “You’d be the only one, then.”

Jaebum opened his mouth to say more but a voice came on over the loudspeakers. “Jaebum to the stage, please. Jaebum to the stage.” His bass player, Brian replaced the microphone, turning to laugh at something their drummer said.

“That’s my cue.” Jaebum pushed himself to stand. Before leaving he hovered, looking almost hesitant for a moment. “Can I call you?”

You answered so quickly, you thought he’d missed it. “Yes.”

“Great.” Jaebum turned to hide his smile. “See you after the show, then.”

You saw him after that show. And after the next. Pretty soon the two of you were inseparable, rarely one name mentioned without the other. His hand fit in yours, his thoughts fit with yours. For the next three years, everything you did was by his side.

“Stop staring,” Jaebum grumbles from beneath his hair.

You scoot closer. “As your girlfriend, it’s my right to stare.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s that written?”

“The official relationship handbook. Written by God, penned by me.”

Jaebum snorts. “Sounds like a best seller.”

“That’s the plan.” Your thoughts wander as you glance through your book. “Did you know she wrote this when she was twenty four?” Your fingers trace the cover. “Crazy.”

“Mm?” Jaebum looks up. “Really?”

“Yeah. Twenty four and already published.” You sigh. “That’s the dream,”

“Lucky. That’s all.” Jaebum strikes a new chord. “There are plenty of talented people, Y/N. Its luck who makes it and who doesn’t.”

“Well fuck.” You flop onto the comforter. “Guess I should kiss all my dreams goodbye then – when have I ever been lucky?” You’re half hoping Jaebum doesn’t hear you but he does. Of course he does. You listen to Jaebum setting his guitar down.

“Hey.” His hand slips beneath your shirt to trace circles on your back “You’re forgetting one very crucial, third element.”

“Oh really?” You know he’s just bullshitting now, but still you smile. “What’s that?”

“Hard work.” Jaebum gently kisses the top of your head. “You’re dedicated and persistent, Y/N. With that, there’s nothing you can’t do.”

You flip over to face him. “But…?”

Jaebum’s eyes flicker. “But… maybe you should think about if you really want this.”

You push yourself to sit, letting his hand fall from your back. “What?” Being a writer is all you’ve ever wanted. Ever since you discovered the stories you dreamt of could be placed on paper. “Of course I want this.”

Jaebum’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I just worry,” he sighs. “You care so much Y/N – which is amazing, but it means you get hurt. When you’re a writer you’ll have to deal with a lot of rejection. I don’t know if you’ve thought that through.”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“I know.” Jaebum frowns. “But have you ever stopped to think why you’re doing this? What if... the thing you’ve been dreaming of, the thing you’ve wanted your whole life, turns out to be nothing more than a pipe dream?”

Somewhere in his sentences, Jaebum has stopped looking at you. He’s staring down at his legs – staring at himself. Some of your anger dissipates when you wonder if he’s still talking about you.

You scoot closer. “I don’t think luck is as important as you think it is.”

“No?”

You slowly shake your head. “I think some people are born to succeed.”

As this he looks at you and, for just a second you see the Jaebum the rest of the world doesn’t. The Jaebum that even you only glimpse occasionally. The Jaebum not in control, the one seeking approval as much as you do.

Maybe even more so.

Your hands find his hair, twining strands between your fingertips. “I will be a writer,” you say. “Just like you will be a musician.”

A smile crosses his lips. “Stop reading my mind. It’s scary.”

“This is what happens when you’re old and married.” Flopping down across his lap, you draw your book into your arms. “Now let me finish in peace.”

Jaebum laughs. “But you were the one staring at me!”

“Shh, you’re delusional.”

“Crazy woman.”

“Madman.”

“Your madman.”

You slide down farther, allowing your book to grab you one more. “If you say so.”

Later that night Jaebum’s words revisit you. Despite your assurances otherwise, you do worry about the things he said. You worry you’re not good enough. You worry you’ll fail. You worry you won’t be able to pick yourself up when you do.

It’s Jaebum that keeps you awake, though. His voice repeating that one insecurity over and over.

What if this is all just a pipe dream?

School has only been in session for about a week, a short enough period where students are still excited about going and girls still care what they wear. You picked out your clothing last night: black skinny jeans, white tank and grey cardigan. You swing your messenger bag higher in the mirror, straightening your hair in an attempt at decency.

“Yuck.” Your younger brother, Robbie watches from your doorway.

Robbie is a junior and going through that phase where anything involving his older sister is of limited interest to him. Knowing this, you grin. “Robbie! You want a hug?”

Robbie vehemently shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Just one? C’mon, your face says you want a hug.”

When you hold out your arms, Robbie yelps. “BACK, WENCH!” His backpack bangs against his sides as he runs away.

You follow, laughing as your own feet thud down the staircase. At the bottom you grab the car keys, tugging on your jacket. “Mom, Robbie and I are leaving!”

“Okay!” Your mom pops her head from her office to wave. “Drive safe.”

“As always. C’mon Squirtle.”

Robbie groans, brushing past you to the car. “Don’t call me that.”

“Squirtle.”

“Rollie.”

“Hey!” You punch him in the arm. “Squirtle is because you looked like an adorable cartoon as a child. Mine is because I had seriously chubby cheeks.”

Robbie sticks out his tongue and you continue to bicker all the way to school, teasing in the way that only siblings can. In the parking lot you fall silent, stepping from your car to slam its door. “Another year,” you sigh at the brick stone before you.

“At least it’s your last.” Robbie yanks his backpack higher.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Rather than excitement, the thought fills you with panic. You know high school. You understand high school. You get good grades, are well-liked and things come fairly easily. College is a whole different ball game – one where you’ll be on the losing end. At least at first.

You hate losing.

Of course, this all assumes you actually get into college. Which is what this fall is about.

“Robbie!”

One of his friends calls and Robbie nods, punching you on the shoulder. “See ya.”

You wave goodbye, watching him disappear before heading to your own locker. Five minutes until first bell; just enough time to put your things away and head to science.

You wave at Maddie as you enter, plopping down in the seat beside her. When you yawn she laughs, holding out a thermos of coffee. “Still not a morning person?”

You accept the gesture, sliding lower in your seat. “I’ll be awake around ten, thanks.”

Maddie grins. “Nothing exciting ever happens before then, anyways. You’re not missing out.”

As though on cue, the classroom door opens. Someone you don’t recognize steps inside and slowly, you lower your mug.

The guy is of medium height, with ashy blonde hair and delicate features. You realize you’re staring when Maddie pokes you, hard in the ribs.

“Hey,” she hisses. “I don’t know him. Do you know him?”

You shake your head. “No. Maybe he’s new.”

“A new kid?” Maddie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Excellent. It’s been boring around here.”

You laugh as you look away. “Clearly, you’re too relaxed about college if you’re bored. Want me to read some of your essays?”

“Yikes, no.” She grimaces. “Maybe you’re too worried, Y/N. You have a perfect grade point average, a crazy score on the ACT and can basically get into any college you want. What’s the problem?”

From the corner of your eye you watch the new kid take a seat. “I don’t know. What if it’s still not enough?”

“Well. Is college really what you want, then?”

Her words echo Jaebum’s and for some reason your stomach clenches. Before you can open your mouth to respond, the bell rings.

“Good morning, students!” Mr. Davis takes his place at the front of the classroom.

You shrug and face forward. Saved by the bell. Maybe it’s silly, but you don’t want to talk about the future Saying it out loud makes it’s real. Means you’ll have to think about the words which have been buzzing in your brain all morning.

You twirl your pencil, lost in your own world as a new voice speaks. Blinking, you realize the teacher has asked the new kid to introduce himself.

“Hi, I’m Mark.”

He’s even better looking than you thought. Mark has those delicate, elfin sort of features which could easily look silly but on him, look like a model. Mark seems like he doesn’t belong in a classroom, that’s for sure. He should be on billboards or magazines, somewhere for the world to appropriately ogle his bone structure.

Mr. Davis flips over a piece of paper on his desk. “Where are you from, Mark?”

“Los Angeles.”

Mr. Davis doesn’t ask for elaboration, merely nodding for Mark to sit down. You aren’t surprised by this – Mr. David is blunt, as far as teachers go.

What is surprising is that you find yourself wondering. Where Mark is from, how he got here. Odd - you push these thoughts away.

The rest of the period goes by surprisingly fast. As you gather your things to leave, Maddie resumes talking. It appears she’s forgotten about her earlier question, which makes you grateful. She talks all the way to your next class, which is history - one of your favorites.

Mr. Heughan is one of those rare teachers who somehow never lost their passion for inspiring others. It’s why he’s your favorite – and why history is somehow enjoyable with him at the helm. Mr. Heughan is sitting at his desk when you enter, feet propped on the filing cabinet.

He waves happily. “Welcome!”

“Good morning, Mr. Heughan.”

You take a seat at the front of the classroom, organizing your pencils in a row on your desk. Black, blue, grey. There are still a few minutes until the next bell so you pull out your notebook, continuing the next chapter sketch you’re working on.

About a minute later, something hits your foot – a pen. As you bend to pick it up, your fingers brush someone else’s and you jerk backwards. Deep brown eyes meet yours, a sheepish expression crossing the face of Mark Tuan. He takes the pen from your grasp. “Thanks.”

Setting the utensil on his desk, he faces the chalkboard. The whole encounter takes less than a minute.

When the bell rings, Mr. Heughan stands. “Good morning! As many of you know, we have a new student in class. Please give a warm welcome to Mark Tuan.” Mark flushes as Mr. Heughan sits on the edge of his desk. “Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?”

Mark nods. “I’m Mark. I’m from L.A.”

Mr. Heughan smiles patiently. “And that’s all that you are?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s all that you are,” Mr. Heughan repeats, hopping off his desk. “Mark Tuan, from L.A. If I were to write this in a history book – would you be satisfied?”

“Well… no.”

“Good!” Your teacher smiles. “Now Mark. What is it that makes you tick – what makes you, you?”

Mark pauses. “Well, my dad is in the military, so we’ve moved around a lot. I was at my last school for three years – the longest I’ve ever been in one place.”

“Good.” Mr. Heughan nods. “All facts, though.”

“I’m an adrenaline junkie.” Mark shakes his head, embarrassed by his sudden declaration. “I, uh do a lot of high intensity sports, activities. Anything that makes me feel alive.” His jaw snaps shut, as though he’s said too much.

“Interesting.” Mr. Heughan nods. “Welcome, Mark! Now if you could just refrain from trying any of those high risk activities in my class, I would be eternally grateful.”

Mark smiles awkwardly. “Right.”

At your giggle he looks over, eyes connecting with yours. “Sorry,” you mouth. Suddenly compelled, you bend to scribble something on your sheet of paper. Mark watches, gaze warm on the back of your neck.

And then you’re sliding him the note, slipping it onto his desk and facing forward. Thankfully Mr. Heughan doesn’t see – he’s notoriously strict about students paying attention. You’re not sure what possessed you to do it, actually. Writing notes in class is very unlike you.

The paper lands on your desk.

Your own words are first: Don’t be too embarrassed – he makes everyone do that on the first day!

Beneath that, Mark has scribbled. Hm. Well, what did you say?

When you look up he’s not looking at you. Eyes studiously copying notes from the blackboard, though you spot a small smile at the edge of his mouth. Your pencil finds the paper.

I told him I’m a writer. Though apparently I lacked gusto, so he made me shout it five times from his window.

When Mark reads this, he snorts.

Mr. Heughan turns around. “Correct, Mr. Tuan!” He wipes a hand on the leg of his pants. “Napoleon was a very amusing figure. Now tell us three other facts about Napoleon Bonaparte to ruminate on.”

To your surprise, Mark answers. Mr. Heughan seems surprised as well, happily writing them down on the board. Mark look at you with a slightly smug smile and you roll your eyes, embarrassed to have been caught staring.

He doesn’t return your note.

At the end of class, Mr. Heughan faces the class. “Don’t forget next Wednesday is our field trip to the History museum. You must bring your signed permission slip or you won’t be allowed to board the bus. That’s all! Read chapters 10 and 11 by Monday.”

Mark Tuan is the first to leave but before he does, he drops a folded piece of paper on your desk. When you look up he’s already gone, absorbed into the crowd of people. You unwrinkle his note and stand, smoothing it over your pencil case as you exit.

Silly of him. Not all passion is loud.

You’re re-reading this when you reach your locker. Distracted enough for Jaebum to slip behind you and wrap his arms around your waist. “Hey.”

“Hey!” You whirl, heart pounding – which is crazy, since you haven’t done anything wrong. You shove Mark’s note into your pocket, smiling brightly. “What’s up?”

Jaebum’s brows quirk. “Not much. You?”

“There’s a new kid in school,” you say, opening your locker. “Not much else.”

“Ah, yeah. Brian mentioned. A military brat, right?”

“Something like that.” Pulling your books out, you shut your locker door. “So are you and the band ready for next week’s gig?”

“If by ready, you mean nauseatingly nervous then yeah – super ready.”

You laugh and slide a finger through the loop of his jeans. “You’ll be wonderful. You always are.”

Jaebum pushes a hand through his hair, clearly still worried. You press a kiss to his lips, meaning to reassure him until he kisses back. Your pulse thuds as what started off as gentle turns to something else. Jaebum leans forward, hand reaching for the wall –

And the locker door next to you slams shut.

Jaebum jerks back, your face hot as your head turns to the side. You really shouldn’t be surprised when you find Mark staring back at you. His eyes connect with yours before moving to Jaebum.

“Mark!” Quickly you disentangle yourself. “This is my boyfriend, Jaebum.”

Mark’s face remains expressionless. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Jaebum stares back.

“Right.” There’s a pause, one made even longer by the fact that you can’t think of a single thing to say. You open your mouth, unsure what’s going to come out when the bell rings. Your next class isn’t even close to here. Giving Jaebum a kiss on the cheek, you wave. “Catch you both later!”

You can’t help but look over your shoulder as you round the corner. Neither Jaebum nor Mark is there anymore though, so you shake your head to face forward. It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself – Jaebum doesn’t have to like your friends. Your friends don’t have to like Jaebum.

Still.

The rest of the day slips by uneventfully, until your last class. Creative writing, also known as the reason why you never skip out early. Of course Mark Tuan is in this class, too. He’s already seated when you enter, slumped in a corner to stare out the window.

You slide into the spot beside him. “What did your note mean?”

Mark turns. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Huh?”

“’Not all passion is loud,’” you quote. “What did you mean by it?”

“What I said.” Mark shrugs. “Some people show love through actions. Just because you don’t yell about being a writer doesn’t mean you’re not one.”

You think about this, turning his words over in your mind. Then you laugh. “In one sentence, you made about sixty percent of my anxieties disappear.”

“Only sixty?” Mark relaxes, a smile spreading across his face.

“Well, the other forty percent are pretty well seated. It would take more than a sentence to get rid of them.”

When Mark laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Adversity breeds creativity. Let that forty percent simmer Y/N, it’s good for your soul.”

“Huh.” You tilt your head. “I don’t think I told you my name.”

Mark’s eyes move to the corner of the room, the desk – anywhere but you. “Uh, no. I asked someone.”

“Did you, now?”

He turns to face you, eyes rolling at your smile. “Don’t be too flattered. I needed to know whose life I changed with my stellar advice, that’s all.”

“Oh, sure.” You’re unable to keep from laughing. “I’ll be sure to dedicate a page in my first novel to you in thanks.”

“Just one page? My advice was worth at least a foreword.”

“Life is pain, Mark.”

Before you can say more the bell rings and you reluctantly face forward. Today’s prompt is already written on the board and you grab your pencil, tapping its lead point against your chin.

In 1,000 words or less, write about a time you experienced doubt or anxiety.

You snort, glancing over at Mark. If only there wasn’t a word limit.

[Master List]

Playlist: Young Blood, The Naked and Famous; Aquaman, Walk the Moon; Sweet Disposition, The Temper Trap; Hold Back the River, James Bay; Reckless Love, Bleachers

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