#Or possibly just being so far in the closest Narnia calls

[123pixieaod]

"I care, I care, I care"

The weirdest brainrot pairing I've ever gotten lol. Set in the aftermath of the sprint today. Please enjoy this Oscar/Logan fic

You ’ll get it soon.

Unspoken words, hovering above his head. Like a lightbulb in a cartoon, just waiting for the idea to strike. Talent finally awakening. Light flicking on.

James, telling him that he’ll get it soon. The car is different, it’s new, and it’s a beast which Logan still needs to tame. But soon. Soon he’ll get it, whatever it is. The ability to finish, to get out, to smile. To be something other than an embarrassment, a pay-in, a stupid American.

“You’ll get it soon baby,” Lacy runs her fingers through his hair. He hums, scrolling through Instagram. Blue light, burning his eyes. Mindless. Anything not to look up, to not see her pity. She’s two years younger than him. A part-time student, full-time model. Oscar had raised his eyebrows at Logan when he first saw her. Blond hair as straight as rain, skin perfect, tight white tea with a neat skirt. Ticking all the boxes. An influencer and he’s a driver, and they look so good together, everyone says it.

“You sure caught yourself a good one with her, didn’t you?” He joked later. Elbow knocked into Logan’s side, and he forced himself to look up, offer a small smile. Wait for the joke, the barb tangled into his flesh.

“Lucky”, Oscar had simply said. A quick wink, as if it wasn’t just the two of them.

Who? Logan had imagined saying. Cut his tongue out. No need for words in a car anyway.

“You’ll get it soon,” his mother tells him. Voice soft, even over the line. About two continents and three oceans between them. Lacy still beside him. Updating her own Instagram, and Logan watches her edit the photos. Manicured nails in the pattern of a chequered flag tap on the screen, zooming in and out. I’m surprised you even know what a chequered flag looks like.

“Thanks,” he says. She zooms in on her skirt, dragging her finger over the material, instantly smoothing out the wrinkles. Saturation turned up slightly. In other life, I think I’d like to be an artist, he had once said. Laughter. Turning to look at him, eyes bright even in the darkness. Why wait for another lifetime? Why not this one Loge?

Maybe when I’m older, he had conceded. But for now, I’m too busy winning races to bother with sketching.

Don’t you mean too busy losing to me? Oscar giggled. An arm out, hand playfully pushing him in the darkness. Night heavy. Thirteen, heart too big in his chest.

“It’s just unlucky,” his mother continues. It’s dawn back home. He wonders has she slept at all. “Quali set you back, and the car isn’t good overtaking in circuits like these. You couldn’t do anything else, Logan. The car isn’t good with grip, you’re just getting the hang of it. It’s unlucky, could’ve happened to anyone.” He nods, even though she can’t see him. Lacy is now zoomed in on her face, softening her skin texture and smoothing the imperfections away. Filter only her lips, brightening them.

“Are you tired?”

He nods again, and then feels stupid when the silence stretches. “Yes. A race is always tiring, you know?”

Of course, she knows. She’s the one who stood with his dad at the side of every race, every go-karting competition. American wind and American rain and American sun. Home saturated on the track, accents matching his own.

“Yes, sweetheart. Are you going to the after-party?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Logan pretends not to notice how Lacy stills.

“Really?” His mother tries to keep any inflexion from her tone. “Not even with Oscar?”

Logan huffs a laugh. “Oscar will be way too busy mom. He won the sprint.”

“I know, that’s what I meant. Not even to celebrate his first podium?”

He swallows, looking down at his trousers. Thumb fingernail trailing up and down the seam, made to perfection. India, China? Mass-produced, workers whose names he’ll never know. He wears and uses and discards their work, move on to the next thing to taint with his touch. Always new shirts, new trousers.

Oscar wrinkling his nose. Eleven. Carting academy in Brexton/ Brixton. Both are the only non-Europeans there. Locked as roommates, these foreigners who speak English differently. Logan’s first time sharing a room. Oscar’s first time meeting someone like Logan.

“That’s a waste,” he told him, watching as Logan sorted through his wardrobe. His parents had left him to unpack. His father telling him he was growing up, he was taking the first step in his career. His mother’s tight hug, promising to call every night, promising that he can come home whenever he wants. “You don’t need all those clothes.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Incessant. Australian accent foreign and harsh against his ears. Bouncing through tones. Up and down. Higher-pitched than Logan’s.

“I don’t have half as many clothes as you have, and I’m fine,” he continued. Logan just shrugged. “I keep my clothes until they fall apart.” Proud, and Logan couldn’t help but turn, nose wrinkled in disgust.

“What?”

Oscar nodded, happy to finally have his attention. Cross-legged on the bed, skin still warm from Australian weather. Freckles. Front tooth missing, young for his age. “My mum even stitches them, if the tear isn’t bad. It’s a waste. It’s bad for the environment. Why buy new things when the old things are working fine? Plus, it’s an easy way to save money.”

Saving money. As if money was a finite source, something to be counted and hoarded and saved. Saving time, saving face, saving money.

Logan had never thought about that before.

“Tell him we’re happy for him, will you?” His mom is continuing. “I remember when he was just so small I just wanted to put him in my pocket.” She laughs, and Logan wrinkles his nose.

“Whatever mom.”

“I’ll text his mother too. She was always nice to us. Don’t tell Daddy, you know what he’s like.”

Another laugh. Like it’s nothing, just a joke. Logan continues to run his thumb along the seam of his pants.  His mother always the one to ring him after the races. DNF, fighting with HAAS for the bottom three places. An investment. That’s what his dad used to call it. Carting is a creature surviving on a steady diet of money, and his dad is always there to provide for it. Up to F1, and success brushes against his fingertips before racing away.

“You made it to the family fridge,” Oscar once told him. Grinning, tone pitched lower, finally broken. Spots and acne. Seventeen and on the edge of something great.

“Oh yeah?” Logan replied, smirking. “Nicole couldn’t get enough of me, could she?”

Oscar laughed, pressing his side against Logan’s. A wall of warmth, his gentle sandalwood aftershave lingering in their shared space. Then pulling back, telling him he’s an idiot, the smile shaping his words.

“You’ll get it soon,” his mom says, the quiet stretching. She always had a knack for knowing what he was feeling, even though he’s lived away for longer than lived with her.

“Yeah,” he says, still picking at his jeans. “I better.”

Part 2

#logan sargeant #oscar piastri #I literally don't even know their ship names #osgan??? #Logcar??? #Logcar lol #my fic #lotsa angst here folks #and a splash of internalised homophobia??? #Or possibly just being so far in the closest Narnia calls

[dirt-cup-draco]

Edmund x Reader - Meant To Be

hello bby!! can I request an edmund x reader in which they fall in love with each other in narnia but both think it's unrequited? the pevensies come back to england and ed doesn't know that reader also isn't from narnia, so he's really relieved when one day they both meet by accident on the streets or something like that?? I don't want to sound demanding, so sorry if I did :(( I love your writing, have a nice day, love!! 

After another failed date you were certain you would never be able to fill the gaping hole in your chest. You had lived lifetimes that no one would ever be able to understand. You were wise beyond your years because you had already lived your future but fate had been wicked and you had been taken back to your civilian life. Every single day your heart ached for your true home, Narnia. 

Yet, it was more like your heart had been left behind in Narnia and now you were only a shell with a hollow cavern for a chest. Existing and pretending it was living. You loved your parents and your friends, that couldn’t be denied but you had found love in Narnia that rivaled anything you could ever possibly feel again. 

Edmund Pevensie was the being that held your heart in his hand and you hadn’t asked him for it back before you were back- in the past or future you couldn’t say-your parents calling your name and rousing you from sleep to get you ready for school. You walked down the streets, the England skies dark and clouded, the wind picking up a piece of discarded trash and discarding at across the busy town. 

It was hard during times like these to keep your emotions in check. You didn’t feel right in England, you didn’t feel right knowing you were but a child again, all of the meaningful years you had spent as a guard for the Queens and Kings of Narnia gone. Did the Pevensies miss you? Did Edmund miss you? Your greatest regret was not telling him how you felt when you had the chance. He had grown into a wonderful man and king and you had loved him every step of the way. You were his best friend and he yours. But you were never to see him again it seemed. You sniffled and sat heavy on a bench as you waited for the train to pull into the station.

--

Edmund scowled as he walked two steps behind his siblings. It had been his constant expression since he had arrived back in England. This wasn’t where he was suppose to be, where any of them were supposed to be. They ought to be back at Narnia, ruling their kingdom with the skills they had fought hard to earn. He was a soldier and a statistician, not to mention a king. He was no student. Edmund Pevensie was a Narnian and that couldn’t be taken from him. 

Nothing had been right since coming back. He had gone from being a man, grown and intelligent, having faced all sorts of wonders and horrors to going back to being a boy who couldn’t get an ounce of respect from the kids around him who didn’t know what it meant to have a kingdom on their shoulders. Edmund couldn’t say he had been alone in his endeavors, he had learned how to be a man from his brother. He had learned to cope properly with loss from Lucy, and admittedly Susan had taught him the manners he had lacked. 

You however had taught him the thing that had strengthened him and kept him from collapsing under his own self doubts. You taught him how to love with every ounce of his heart. You were his rock back in Narnia. His heart ached. Did you miss him? You must think he was dead, but did you care? Edmund knew you would, you were his closest friend, but that’s all he was and you would inevitably move on and learn to be okay with his absence. 

Edmund couldn’t say the same. He didn’t feel whole anymore and he knew it was because he couldn’t remember the sound of your laugh or whether your left or right eye twitched when you were annoyed. It was little things that he was loosing hold on that made him feel like he was loosing his reality. 

Edmund was thrown from his thoughts as his little sister had stopped abruptly in front of him. If it wasn’t for him reaching out and grabbing her shoulders she would have toppled over from him running into her. “Lucy what was that about?” He scolded as he narrowed his eyes at her but she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Edmund looked to Susan and Peter, hoping they would shed some light on the absurdity yet they were frozen on the spot as well, small but hesitant smiles on their lips. 

“Come on guys, what gives?” He begged for information, growing irritated, something he hadn’t quite mastered. 

“It’s her isn’t it?” Lucy asked, looking at Susan as his older sister nodded slowly. 

“Well it has to be, doesn’t it?” Susan said, voice nearly a whisper.

“But how?” Peter asked. “I suppose it makes sense we weren’t the only ones but she never said anything-” 

“Neither did we,” Lucy butt in. 

“Excuse me, I’m still here!” Edmund demanded the attention of his siblings but his outburst drew in more than just their eyes. 

--

It must be a dream, you told yourself as your head snapped to the gang of teens you loved so dearly. You had heard someone holler, a voice that had been familiar years ago in Narnia, when he had just been a boy and you just a little girl. You supposed you were those children again but you had never thought you would hear his voice again, let alone see him. 

You weren’t sure what to do as Peter and Susan looked at you with odd expressions and Lucy helped Edmund relax from his sudden outburst, pointing him towards you. His already fair skin paled impossibly more and his knees quivered imperceptibly. He felt shaken to the core. 

The both of you seemed at a loss as you were glued to the spot, the bench underneath you feeling as if it would give way any moment as your world was flipped upside down. Edmund had one leg in front of him but he paused, hands in tight fists that turned his knuckles white. “This isn’t real,” He choked out as you stood on legs that felt like jelly, taking one step forward.

“It can’t be him,” Your lip quivered as he mimicked you, legs carrying him at a snail’s pace. The realization snapped within both of you in the same instant, tears welling in your eyes as he broke into a special grin that was reserved for you and you alone. You sprinted through the throngs of people trying to get to past you. Edmund nearly stumbled as his legs were suddenly tugging him forward, taking long strides as he made his way to you.

“Ed!” You explained as you got closer, the hope in your chest now swelling as tears welled in your eyes. 

Edmund reached you first, arms encircling your waist as he lifted you up, spinning you in delight. “God, Y/N, how is this possible?” He laughed in disbelief as you clung to him. 

Your hands were in his hair, his soft curls held no resistance as you explored him with your touch. “I-” You started but were at a loss for words as he set you down and you cupped his freckled cheeks in your hands. He was so young and beautiful and you felt like you had been thrown back to Narnia, a stubborn and scared King unsure of how to rule a kingdom. Yet in his eyes was the look of a man who had grown and learned how to be his very best. 

You stared at each other as people moved around you, sparing questioning glances as Peter, Susan and Lucy were pushing their way through the traveling people. 

Edmund couldn’t see anyone but you as you held him as tenderly as he held you. The wonderment in your eyes had him choked up and he stroked your cheek. He pressed his lips against yours, not having the words to convey what he needed to. “I’m sorry I-” He pulled away, embarrassed. I missed you, I love you, I meant to tell you but then I was gone. I thought I’d never see you again. 

You shook your head, kissing the corner of his mouth as your chest rose and fell against his. “No, I know,” I’m not myself without you, I love you too. 

Peter’s voice shattered the moment but Edmund grasped your hand as his siblings pulled you into hugs. He wasn’t ready to let go of you yet. “Our best soldier,” Peter had greeted you and you squeezed Edmund’s hand that held yours so tight it was like he was scared you were still only a figment of his imagination. 

You had to suppress the urge to bow to the people you respected endlessly. “My kings, my queens, I’ve missed you all,” You said in a low voice, just for the five of you. You had all missed the train, people now cleared out as you all sat on a bench, waiting for the next one to come in. 

“We’ve missed you too!” Lucy said cheerfully as her legs swung beneath her. “Edmund probably thinks he missed you most though,” 

“I think it’s safe to say you missed him most too,” Susan teased referring to your still intertwined fingers. “You both should talk, we’ll give you a moment,” Susan added, giving Peter and Lucy pointed looks as they got up and gave you some space. 

“Lucy’s right, I don’t care what they say, I missed you more than anything,” Edmund declared without a hint of doubt in his voice. He brought your knuckles to his lips as he had done a thousand times before and just as before your heart skipped a beat. 

“I was so worried that you were in Narnia, not knowing what happened to me, or fearing I abandoned you,” You admitted, the guilt you had carried with you starting to fade. 

“I feared the same, if I had known I would have said goodbye... Most importantly, I would have told you how I felt,” Edmund blushed, his shyness was something he could never truly leave behind. 

“I would have told you I felt the same,” You said, voice watery as you teared up again, brushing your lips against his once more as he sighed into your mouth. 

“It’s a miracle that we are both here,” You added as you sniffled, trying to make your tears vanish. You were far too happy and it was having you bursting at the seams. 

“I don’t think it’s a miracle,” Edmund said honestly as he tenderly tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “I think we are meant to be here, right now, together. I think we’re meant to be,” 

“They should have called you King Edmund the Romantic,” You teased as he kissed you again, hardly believing you were here but having just a difficult time processing that you felt the same. 

“Only for you,” He said quickly, “Just you, for as long as I live,” Edmund knew it was bold, you were still so young but you had grown together in another lifetime and he had no fear anymore. It was clear you felt the same as you agreed. 

“I love you,” You finally spoke aloud, relishing in the way Edmund’s eyes lit up, your free hand was pressed against his chest and you felt the way his heart picked up it’s pace. 

“Lovebirds! The train is here!” Peter called and Edmund growled.

“I’m gonna kill him,” 

“As much as I hate being interrupted as well, he’s right, we can’t miss another train. We can talk on the ride,” You assured as Edmund nodded, following you as you guided him to the train. 

Just earlier everything had seemed so... hopeless. Yet here you were, Edmund and his siblings surrounding you as you all sat together and talked of better times, times that had been and times that would have yet to pass. 

Edmund leaned over his seat and kissed your temple as Susan told another story. 

You were both finally whole. 

#edmund pevensie #edmund pevensie x reader #edmund x reader #fluff #ask #request #anon #anon ask #hi #i dont hate this #like #dare i say that i am proud of this fic?

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

👀 spare a WIP for a weary traveller

This isn’t going to happen for a LONG TIME but spoilers, eventually in Lucky Star, Christopher gets a little more human, and finds a hobby that he rather likes.

“You’re reading one of his?”

“What?” Ripley bent the mass market completely in half, setting it upside down on the coffee table. Samuels winced.

“That author,” he specified. 

“Oh, yeah. I’ve read the whole series so far,”

“I didn’t think high-fantasy interested you much.”

“Not usually, but I’m over the shoot-outs, military lit, and what generally passes for fantasy anymore. Retro science fiction only goes so far too,” she shrugged. “But I kind of like this guy, he’s got a…I don’t know, his perspective is weird. I like it. Except that thing in this one, where they brought in the wyvren hatchery, the way they move…Reminds me too much of shit.”

“I like what he did with them though; dragons are far too beloved of a feature to demonize at this point, especially by a newer voice.”

“You read them?” Amanda perked up.

“…Technically.”

“What did you think?”

“I want to know what you thought—“

“Nope, you first.”

“I think they could have been better,” he began. “Too many instances where you can tell the author is merely reciting a scene instead of creating one. I think several conversations between the knights and their lords are taken from his own experiences,” there’s more he could pick apart, so much more, but Amanda looks crestfallen as it is, and he’s a little confused by it.

“Yeah but I don’t think he was wearing armor, or talking about a surge of monsters in real life.”

“Well, you never know,” he said with a slight grin. 

“What do you mean?”

“You know that I’ve met many, many people through the company. I could have possibly seen him one day,”

“There’s no fucking way that you’ve met McClaren,” Amanda crossed her arms.

“Why not?”

“He lives in Scotland, for one; two, he’s probably ancient, so what would he be doing in the HR office of Weyland-Yutani, on Luna?”

“I don’t know, but I am familiar with him.”

“You’re lying,” she didn’t bother biting back her smile—she never bothered to around him.

“I’m not lying, and I’ll prove it to you,” she didn’t ask him to elaborate further, and he vanished for a short moment to his office, returning with a hardcover of the second novel.

“So you own a hardcover?”

“Open it,” he said, handing it to her. Amanda raised her eyebrow at him, flicking through the pages, before falling back on something strange on the title page that she missed in her copy of the book.

“holy shit. He signed it for you? The guy never does signings!”

“How do you know he doesn’t?”

“I looked him up once...read a lot about him. I thought you’d like the series, and I was going to try to find a boxed set of it for a gift for you, and see if I could get it signed. But then I found out that a) he doesn’t fucking sign anything ever, b) no one knows what he even looks like, and c) there’s another book left."

“There’s at least one, but knowing him he’ll probably drag it out for another two. He isn’t exactly...aware of human time and space.”

“Wait...Are you still in contact at all?”

“Yes but you can’t talk to him. I’m afraid to lose you to him,”

“Shut up,”

“I am though; he’s no older than I am. And is…apparently, your type.”

“I have at least three types.”

“He’s…much like me.”

“Then I’d rather keep you, not the updated-famous-writer-you. But I just want to ask him-- I’m mad about the alchemist—how could she not know what she was doing? If the king was using her work to help breed the wyverns, she had to know something, she couldn’t be that blind.”

“Perhaps she thought her work would help someone she loved.”

“That’s a whole other thing, that weird statue-hexed-to-life thing by some fuck up of hers? It doesn’t have a soul or a thought of it’s own and it’s...It’s creepy. She never even questioned it. And as far as her research for the wyvren hatchery—how would she think that the king gave a fuck about her science project sex toy—“

“That is awfully cruel, she really thinks that given enough power he might be able to live outside of her study, to be a person.”

“She fucked him though. Without knowing that he can’t say no to her. It was skeevy.”

“We were sleeping together nearly a month before you realized that—at the time—I couldn’t tell you no—“

“Again different story—“

“—is it? And why do you like the character so much if everything she does bothers you that much?”

“…She’s on her own. She came from nothing and now works under the king, not at the big castle of course, but still.”

“I don’t think she thought she was helping the king’s project; or that he was trying to breed monsters in the first place. Her father died in a dead-end battle for him, but…it happens all the time. Accidents. Mishaps. She doesn’t know—“ “Wait, did her dad die at one of the dens?! Oh my god it’s too long until the next one. And shit, if--” Amanda stops herself. Samuels isn’t going to call the guy up just becuase she wants spoilers, but--, well. Actually, that’s the exact kind of thing that Samuels would do.

“She does find out; and her ‘sex toy’ finds the record of her father’s death.”

“How do you—do you have an advanced copy?” he leaves the room again, and she half expects another treasure, an early release with a note in the front, maybe? Instead, he returns with the notebook she had bought him for Christmas. 

“I’m…getting to the point where it’s beyond something that I can…bend out of my own experiences. I don’t want to lean too heavily on folklore but for now it’s the best I can do to avoid just copying out Beowulf.”

“…….You wrote a fanfiction?”

“Amanda, I wrote the whole series.” His partner is silent, and he’s wondering if she hasn’t already guessed it in the past, but she’s clearly in shock. “The author’s first two initials are ‘C. S.’ and that didn’t—“

“I thought it was a Narnia reference!”

“How didn’t you figure out you’re a main character—“

“……I’m the creepy alchemist?! And--she’s like…minor royalty. And pretty.”

“I think you are,” there’s a moment when it clicks in, the secondary character, her hair color, her attitude, her lover, her missing parent, her drive, her lover’s tender affection towards—and it clicked. And other scenes clicked too.

“You wrote and published a sex scene about us?”

“….I’m sorry? It was a fade-to-black though, nothing happened on the page. In the moment it felt like that’s...where they wanted to go.”

“When were you going to tell me about this? Not--not the alchemist but all of it, how did you even keep this a secret???”

“I started…writing memories. Then I could change them. Slightly, and eventually I could reset them entirely and even add and take things and…I figured out how to make things up. As for how I kept it a secret, well, I don’t require a fraction of the rest that you do, and while I do enjoy relaxing with you, I like feeling as if I’m accomplishing something.”

“Look at you figuring out how to be creative,” she did look proud of him, and she was, even if it would take a while to fully comprehend it.

“I’d appreciate it...if no one else found out.”

“People love you—“

“They love a thing that I made.”

“And you by extension—“

“I’d lose my royalties, copyrights, and probably my waking job too if I was exposed on a large scale.”

“You’re being dramatic—royalties?”

“…I…I’ve been saving them.”

“For what? I mean you make a decent check at the meteo center, and the flat’s paid off so what—“

“If you ever want to try--the genetics laboratory on Titan.. We’ll need tickets, lodging for multiple months. Supplies. Medical—it’s…not—don’t think that you have to make your mind up if you aren’t ready--only if you did I thought having the funds ready would...”

“I’m the one that brought it up, but I think…Another day we’ll talk about it but—spoil it for me,” she changed the subject. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”

“You can read it.”

“…You did’t write another sex scene did you?”

“….Yes but not for publication. There’s one that I was going to include but—it was too tasteless, it didn’t suit the rest of the story, and I thought it unnecessary. They arrive back at the main group the following afternoon, walking closer, touching more. Readers will know something happened.”

“But you did write it.”

“…I did. I also wrote another six hundred pages of plot and character development aside from it.”

“I want to read it,”

“Read the actual story first—please I don’t know what I’m doing with it, and it’s overdue to the editor—“

“I’m sure it’s perfect—“ she remembers the dedications at the opening of each book perfection’s closest being, love of my eternity. “The dedications… I’m…I’m the woman they’re all for. All those thank you’s and acknowledgements and—“

“There’s no one else,” he means it in honesty and love. Of course there’s no one else. So few friends and so few confidants. If there were more, she’d still be the one they’re dedicated to, but as it stands, there is quite literally no one else. 

“Could you read it to me? The whole thing. I want to hear it, if it’s so important to you.”

“That’s a lot of –“

“Just a little! Each night a chapter or two. I want to hear it from you, how it was meant to be heard.”

AAAAAND that’s all you get. This is a stand alone bit inside of my “bad AU ideas” file that often ends up getting chopped up for later chapters of LS. This is likely to happen but the thing with Titan isn’t (a genetics lab, the sense being that they’d eventually have a kid/science project of their own). Maybe a one-shot becuase Samuels fretting over an infant is ridiculously cute but it’s not gonna fit the final version of them in Lucky Star.

#sunnyhomes

[banditthewriter]

Make Your Choice [Caspian X] 1

An anon requested a fluff+smut Arranged Marriage AU with Caspian and basically my mind was like, hey, political intrigue mixed with arranged marriage mixed with The Bachelor? This has exploded into a 24ish part series. You guys have listened to me talk about this story for a few weeks and here it is! 

(Also decided to post it earlier than I was going to because I’m just too excited! Surprise!)

Tags are at the bottom. Let me know if you would like to be added to one of my tag lists!

Enjoy!

Next Part

***** The breeze rustled the sheets that hung from the line. It was a beautiful day with a cloudless sky. The weather was perfect and you were taking advantage of that. With your feet tucked under yourself, you leaned back against the tree trunk and flipped the page of the book that you were reading. In the basket beside you there was a few snacks and a bottle of something to drink. With that and your book, you were content to stay the day outside. Life had a different idea. Just as you were getting to the climax of your book, you heard your mother's voice calling from the back of the house. "Y/N, come inside dear. Your uncle has news from the palace." News from the palace? While you packed up your basket, you wondered what that might mean. Your uncle Amell was an adviser to the king, sure, but that wouldn't have any connection to you and your mother. As you made your way into the house, you smiled at your uncle and made your way to kiss his cheek. He gave you a pat on the head before he turned away to face your mother who was dicing vegetables for dinner. "What news from the palace?" "As I was telling your mother," he said as he gestured at her, "the king has reached an age for marriage." "Oh," you said, feigning interest. "Well that will be an interesting event." Amell rolled his eyes and turned to face you completely. "Before the king was the king, he was a prince of a country that had very little future. That being said, his parents weren't in a place to be too picky about his options for a future bride and alliance. It was between three young girls but his father passed before he could make a decision and his uncle didn't think his future bride was very important." Amell made a lazy gesture at you, his mouth twitching a bit as he said, "You are one of the three young girls." You looked over at your mom and saw the smile she was giving you. When you looked back at your uncle, he was simply staring at you as he waited for you to react to his news. "What does this mean?" "It means that by decree of King Caspian the tenth, you and the other two young ladies are to travel to the palace. While nothing had been agreed to before, the king has yet to find love on his own and therefore has agreed to marry one of the three of you for the betterment of the kingdom." Startled and unsure, you looked away from his bored face to your smiling mother. She moved over to your side, touching your face and then grabbing your hands. "I know this is a lot to take in," your mother said carefully as she shot a look over at her brother, "but this is what we have been preparing your for your entire life. We always knew that there was a chance this would come back up and we wanted you to be ready." How was that possible? The parts of history that you remembered said that the King's parents died years and years before, so how could your mother have known to keep you prepared to maybe one day be queen? And did you want to he queen? You had been taught how to run a household and about politics and military strategies, but you had never given much thought to marriage or rising in station. You believed wholeheartedly that you would live and die on the land where you currently resided. "The king wants the women at the palace as soon as possible. We are in luck because we live closer to the palace than the others." "How do you mean?" Your uncle gave you a look that clearly said he thought you were an idiot. "This is a contest for the hand of the king. If we arrive before the others, that gives you just a little time to try to gain the King's interest before the contest truly begins." Something cold and slimy seemed to settle in your stomach at that. What your uncle was suggesting sounded crude and not fitting someone who would one day potentially become queen. As if sensing your unease at the situation, your mother gripped your hand tightly and forced you to look at her. "Listen Y/N, because I do not want you going into this with any hesitation." She poked her finger into your sternum, keeping pressure there as you met her gaze. "This arrangement, while not ideal, gives the king a chance to fall for one of you three ladies. On the chance that love is not a possibility, he will undoubtedly go for which of the three is best for Narnia." She gestured over at your uncle but neither of you broke eye contact. "Your uncle has done as much research as he can on the other two and has concluded that our estate and wealth puts us in a higher stance which means that if love is not possible, he would be more inclined to pick you. However if love is possible, obviously that is better." She pulled back and went back over to the counter where she continued to make dinner. Your uncle stood off to the side, looking as grim as a man could look when faced with the word love. "You are a beautiful woman with a mind as sharp as a blade. This is what will save you," she said as she pointed the kitchen knife at you. "You will marry the king because it is the best option." "The best option?" The words tripped off your tongue, confusion in your voice as you tried to make sense of it. "The best option for him and for Narnia," your uncle stated as he crossed to stand in front of you. "You will join me at the palace and we will present you to the king. He has requested at least a month to get to know the three of you before he decides so you will have that much time to make him see that you are his best option." With that Amell gave you a nod and headed towards the study, calling to your mother to let him know when dinner was ready. You turned to face your mother who simply smiled and pointed at the bread on the table. "Be a dear and begin slicing that please?" As if everything was normal and they hadn't just sprung on you the fact that you were to meet and try to win the hand of the king. While you worked on the bread, you tried to remember what you could about the king. He was a Telmarine that stumbled into the role of King when he had helped the Kings and Queens of old defeat his uncle and return Narnia to the Narnians. Since his coronation he had committed several strides to reunite Narnia under a common flag. And from what you could remember of stories and a few drawings or paintings you had seen of him, he was younger and attractive. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be married to the king. ------ The horses were restless, pacing in the stalls as a helper made sure they were all fitted with the finery of your house's station. Where they had found the velvet cloths with your family crest on it, you weren't certain, but it made the carriage look even more elegant. That was something that had surprised you. Amell had called for a carriage rather than just to ride a horse as he usually preferred to do. You could only assume it was so that you looked the part of wealth and elegance to make a good first impression. "Is mother joining us?" "If I feel like you might be picked, I will send for her at once. No use getting everyone's hopes up," your uncle said as he dusted off the seat of the carriage. "We can be at the palace before dinner if we leave soon." You gave him a nod and hurried back to the house to check on what your mother was packing. She had packed a trunk with your clothes, a smaller chest with your jewelry and anything else you might need. One of the helpers was dragging the trunk out of your room as you got there. 

"You will have plenty of funds if you think that you will need a new wardrobe. Uncle is fully aware that us living out this far has made us separate from the trends of the palace." She dusted a hand over her dress and gave you a smile, linking her arm with yours as she led you back towards the barn. "You will listen to your uncle and do whatever he tells you to do. He has your best interests in mind." The siblings did little more than nod and smile at each other before you were being helped into the carriage. The ride would remove some of the stale air and dust. You settled in as much as possible, fixing your gown and hoping that the ride would not be too uncomfortable. Amell followed suit and shut the carriage door before your mother could do more than wave you off. "To Cair Paravel," you uncle demanded of the driver. As the carriage lurched into movement, he cast a look at you and sighed. "Would you like for me to give you a rundown of everyone at the palace that you might meet at any given time?" "Uh," you began but his glare told you that there was only one acceptable response. "Of course uncle." "Wonderful. Let's start with the King's closest advisers." It was going to be a long ride.

X

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[blcodyhell]

What happened: the truth, not word of mouth.

                My initial post was one where I stated the simple truth of the impossibility of me being racist or phobic of any sort; that remains, but ever since this whole issue broke out, three people maturely approached me to clarify things, to tell me EXACTLY what it was that I had said that offended them instead of calling me things out of assumption,  &  I was able to have some mind-opening conversations, which was exactly the thing I had wanted from the beginning,  &  the reason I had been so angry  &  disappointed at everyone: because everyone went to a third party  &  spread slander about me instead of maturely coming to me to talk.  But what is done is done,  &  all I can do is  a d d r e s s  what those three people have told me  &  the truth it reached at. 

NUMBER ONE: ‘forcing diversity’ 

                Boy did I word that wrong; it did not in ANY way mean that I thought casting PoC was wrong, it did not meant that I wanted everyone to stop doing fancasts with PoC in them, it did not mean that I hate PoC  ( that would mean hating myself,  &  I no longer do, haven’t for years )   &  it did not mean that I hate representation, at all. What I meant by the words forcing diversity was that, as an actress myself, I know there is a thing going on in the movie/tv world where people are cast ONLY for being different, someone I spoke with called it ‘the Token role’  ( they said ‘girl’ but for the sake of this post I’ll include all genders ),   &  that is exactly what I meant.  Example: if they’re making a new version of Legally Blonde with the mask of an open casting  &  they tell me        ‘Oh yeah, we’ll hire you, you can be the next Legally blonde. Having a Latina Elle would bring us so much more money because it would get people talking’         I would HATE that so much, I would decline the offer, because I refuse to be USED for my differences.  BUT if they told me,        ‘Hell yeah, you can be the next Elle, you bring up her personality so well, no one else has done it the way you have, we’d only need you to die your hair blonde for the sake of the character.’          THEN I’d be like !!!!!!  ‘YES THIS WILL MAKE SO MANY PEOPLE THAT LOOK LIKE ME SEE A HERO ON THE SCREEN OMFG YES YES YES YES, I’M IN.’ 

                THAT DOES NOT MEAN I DO NOT LIKE TO SEE DIVERSE EDITS AROUND, OR THAT I WANT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD TO STOP MAKING THEM BECAUSE ‘IT’S WRONG’. That is what got lost in translation; first of all I never said         ‘this is just wrong, it shouldn’t be done’,          because I don’t think it is wrong, how can it be when it makes people happy?  I do not discourage edits  ( hell, I didn’t know I even had that power ),  I do not want ANYONE to stop making them, because I know that making those edits makes some people feel included in such a way that I didn’t understand before I had some conversations  ( I will go into further detail on this specific point a little later ),  nor did it mean that I think PoC should never be given opportunities or roles, or anything of the sort, if it did, then I’d be putting fire on myself: I   a m   a PoC actress MYSELF, it only meant that I won’t make any, me, alone. 

                But you said the friends of Narnia should only be white and it was wrong to make them anything but,    Yes, well, I also worded that wrong, VERY VERY wrong, I was not paying attention only to that conversation so the words were placed horribly around  &  it made me sound like a twat.  No, what I meant was that I have  &  always will think going against the author’s word is not right to me; I will always hold the author’s descriptions  &  their decisions about the world THEY created  ( except for J.K’s ‘cause let’s be real, she’s reaching so fucking far )  over any other opinion,  &  that is why I couldn’t see the Pevensies or any of the friends of Narnia as anything but white; but that is what I saw when I read the books when Lewis called them   ‘fair skinned  &  fair haired’,   we all have different imaginations  &  that’s what’s amazing about books.   It was very  w o n d e r f u l l y  pointed out to me, though, that white can also be PoC that pass as white, or that have very pale skin as well,  &  though I hadn’t thought of that, yeah, that would also work very well, but just like I said above: as long as these people are cast for TALENT  &  not the Token rule. 

                In conclusion to point number one: a) I would love the world to always cast for talent, not for differences.  b) All the opinions expressed are about what I as a solitary independent person would do, not what I want everyone else to do, I promise I never meant to make anyone think I discouraged them or disapproved or thought them anything but valid. 

NUMBER TWO: ‘I don’t see the point of the term pansexuality’ 

                I never understood the reason I got so much hate out of that sentence, when it was literally me asking for help so the term pansexual could be explained to me; it now has,  &  for it, I can finally speak up about this. 

                I am a bisexual girl,  &  because I grew up during the time in which only three terms existed for sexuality  ( heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual )  I was taught that the ‘sexual’ part of the words had nothing to do with anything but the sex organ the person had, the two being vagina   &   penis; it is why I was always against the term pansexual because I kept thinking that people using that term were saying that trans people were not real women or men!  I was so absolutely outraged at the fact because, to me, it seemed hypocritical of them to claim that ‘TRANS MEN  &  WOMEN ARE REAL MEN  & WOMEN!”    &   then call themselves Pansexual in such a way that it excluded trans people within the man  &  woman spectrum!  I was so honestly outraged because the thing in capital letters is exactly what I believe  &  know: trans men  &  women are as real as non trans men  &  women. 

                Since then, though, not only have I learnt of the term intersex   &   how awfully I called those people hermaphrodites before, but I also learn that in present time the ‘sexual’ in any of the orientations have NOTHING to do with the sex organ itself, but the gender, for which I know there are many, many, many options.  Yes, I have never been entirely comfortable with all the options in existence because I think it makes already phobic people even MORE phobic  &  thinking that we’re doing it for attention; I KNOW we are not doing it for attention, but I know that that is what phobic people can think.  But, again, that also got lost in translation into making it sound like I simply didn’t understand or accepted all of these new labels being created, because, how can  a n y t h i n g  that is making so many people feel at home  &  identified be wrong?  I don’t think it’s wrong, hell, I encourage it!  Find your label, feel at home!  I went exactly through the same sort of thing for my religion, when I called myself Aztec; many people call that just polytheist, but to me that could mean I believe in Norse, Greek, or any possible array of Gods,   &   no, I am AZTEC because I believe in the Aztec gods, nothing more.  So having gone through that myself I understand why it can be important to find your label; it IS important,   &   it’s a wonderful thing.

                I am terrified of those people that can think we’re creating all these labels for the sake of attention, because I know what being told that can do to a person, but that in no way means I discourage it, or don’t believe in it, or think anyone who chooses a label in the Queer spectrum of the LGBTQA+ is not valid; literally, never once did I say that.  I love humans without caring about differences, I literally think ANYONE is valid as long as they don’t hurt others; I worry for those who are not at home with themselves being told ‘you’re doing it for attention’ because I  k n o w  what that feels like, I always worry about everyone else when I know that things don’t or are not going to fall badly on me. 

                In conclusion to number two: a) I understand the term pansexuality now, b) I think everyone is valid with any label they feel at home in, c) I encourage people to find their label  &  find their home. 

NUMBER THREE: The thing I didn’t understand because I forgot about my past.

                One thing you need to understand about me is that I don’t ever think I have any power over anyone, thus I failed to understand how people could be so absolutely offended by stuff I’ve said when I’m only a person on a computer that they’ll probably never even meet irl; if some stranger comes at me and tells me       ‘you are disgusting, your sexuality is not real, you’re only doing it for attention’,         I literally laugh to their face  &  tell them       ‘It’s sad that that’s your opinion, I wish you would learn a little more, good thing you won’t be invited to my wedding, whomever it is to.’       Why?  Because I am confident in my own self, I love my self,  &  I don’t need anyone’s acceptance or validation other than my own; I believe very strongly in what I believe in, so I don’t need everyone AGREEING with me about it, I am enough; the only opinions that truly matter to me are those of my parents  ( who I am lucky see the world the way I do: differences are as important to know as horoscopes, you don’t go around telling everyone ‘I’m a libra!’ Human is human )   &  my closest, closest friends.  People online can call me things   &   they literally fall off my shoulder like dust.

       I made the most enormous  &  horrible mistake of forgetting that not everyone is like me. 

                You see, I wasn’t born like this, I wasn’t confident always, I, too, at some point needed validation from the world in ways that are very personal  &  I refuse to put in public,  &  I forgot that, I forgot that there are some people that have so much self doubt that one stranger not saying outright ‘you’re valid’ can literally have a big effect on them, I know that feeling, I lived  &  felt that feeling from the moment I was born until I was about 14-16, which was when I found my ability to be confident in what I believe in,  &  because it has been so long since I have felt it I simply  &  horribly forgot that other people may feel it still,  &  for that, with my heart completely in my hands I tell you: I’M SORRY. It was really dumb of me to state my opinions so undetailedly  &  with loose words when not being specific could do what has been done here, hurt people, in ways I simply forget could be done.  Blame my age if you will, but I genuinely didn’t think such things could be done online, only with people face to face or close to you; I  f o r g o t  what it felt like, I forgot my past,  &  I hurt people in the process, so I am sorry. You can be sure that from now on I will pay more attention to what I say for this reason. 

               Thus my conclusion about this is simply a genuine feeling in the direction of all those that I either hurt, or that have nothing to do with this situation but are reading this post: I am deeply  &  wholeheartedly sorry, you ARE valid, important, beautiful  &  wonderful people that I thought I had said endless enough times to make it clear I thought so, but I won’t ever make that same mistake again. I will  r e m i n d  you of how wonderful all of you are whenever I can, because you ARE wonderful  &  important,  &  valid in any way you are  ( as long as you’re not hurting anyone ),  you really are.  &  I love you, for all those people who are awful  &  have made you doubt yourself, I love you,  &  I’m sorry. 

NUMBER FOUR: The request. 

                It is exactly for that, the heaviness  &  power that words have, that I most humbly ask you to be careful what you say to people;  &  that includes the very things I have been called.  Yes, I am very confident in myself,  &  I don’t need the internet’s approval, which is why I’m able to be sad about this whole situation for nothing other than the fact that I lost some friends because they didn’t let me explain things; but just like I have discovered, you have to realise that not everyone is like that.  Some other person you call a racist  &  phobic CAN end up feeling as awful as you felt when I didn’t validate what you thought in outright words.  Racist, Nazi  &  Homophobic are VERY powerful words that tumblr has made seem like nothing,  &  they can hurt, so, I say, for the sake of everyone else, instead of  i m m e d i a t e l y  accusing someone of bigotry, racism, or phobia, I ask that you approach them, speak to them outright with a simple question, because, for all you know, this same sort of misunderstanding of lack of caring about words could happen,  &  big bad words are hurtful, too.   If someone else in my position wasn’t so confident in themselves, they could begin to think of themselves as hypocrites or literally worse only because they didn’t word things right.  So please, be careful, just like I promise that I will be. 

                &,  again, I am most deeply sorry for all the hurt I have caused for my careless words; I love everyone, I assure you, I do,  &  from now on I will make sure any word I write says exactly that specifically.  Please do smile at least once simply because you can, you are important  &  wonderful,  &  I PRAY one day you are able to see such a thing for yourself as well. 

All the love, always ~Mel

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[stompsite]

Dreaming Of Another World

It was all Narnia’s fault.

I grew up in a deeply religious family, one that eschewed ‘worldly’ media for the religious variety. I remember Dad dragging us out of a showing of the Lion King one rainy September day--I think we’d gone to one of those theatres where the tickets were cheap and they only showed movies that had been out for a long time because my family was thrifty like that--because he was furious. Some time later, he explained to me that Disney was trying to brainwash us with “New Age Philosophy,” and he was angry at the spirit that tried to do it to us. Not a great birthday memory for me.

But Narnia? It had magic and monsters and demons and werewolves, and for whatever reason, we were allowed to watch it whenever we went to Grandma’s house. My parents drove us up to Independence, Missouri every few months for something called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, where we would stay with grandma and watch Narnia. EPD was an experimental allergen treatment that was banned in 2001.

I remember drinking water with bismuth in it and eating an awful meal that had the consistency of literal shit. This was supposed to help us get over our allergies, but I think the treatment was far worse. We weren’t allowed to eat many things, and most of what we could eat was disgusting, so most of the time, we laid around, sick, feverish, and vomiting, and we ate reheated french fries from Wendy’s (McDonald’s wasn’t allowed due to the oil they used), and we watched all of Grandma’s old movies.

My favorite one was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a movie about kids who escaped the horrors of World War II by traveling to another dimension where it was always winter and a cruel, monstrous witch ruled with an iron hand. Eventually, thanks to the help of the Christ-like Aslan, they overthrew her.

It was a dark movie, a far cry from the generally happy, low-intensity religious movies Mom let us watch. Aslan died, y’know. It was, to 8 year old me, the most incredible thing in the world. Later, I read the rest of the books, and I loved them too. My favorite was The Silver Chair, the darkest and least hopeful book of all. No one book had more of an impact on my artistic sensibilities than The Silver Chair. Real stakes! Real pain! Hope! Triumph! All the good stuff.

When I was 10, I found Digimon.

I was hanging out at Hyram’s place watching The Magic School Bus, a show that we weren’t allowed to watch at my house because of the magic. Hyram’s family, being Mormon, had a more enlightened--so it seemed--outlook on the world, being okay with sci-fi and fantasy stories that my parents forbade us from seeing. So there we were, watching The Magic School Bus, and the commercials came on, and Fox Kids aired a commercial for Digimon (Adventure 01, Episode 28, in case you were wondering--the one with the ferocious Devidramon).

Digimon was even darker than Narnia. It’s villains were literally Satan and a Vampire. There’s an episode where one of the kids is told her mother doesn’t love her and as a result, she’ll never be able to help her friends. There was drama, self-doubt, pain, misery, and, in the end, the kids overcame the darkness that opposed them and triumphed.

Over the years, I found increasingly creative ways to catch my Digimon fix, going to the church next door with a cable I’d found to connect to the TV so I could just barely catch Fox 24 when it was broadcasting. When Digimon stopped airing, I desperately searched for a way to download the show online, which led me to IRC, which took me to roleplay forums, which led me to Kotaku comments, and finally Twitter, which is where I know most of you from.

I realize this may all sound very self-indulgent, and I’m sorry for that, but I feel it’s important to establish the personal context here. I love these stories about going to other worlds and experiencing things that our worlds could never give us. The stories acted as a kind of meta-transportation, a way of letting me escape the frustrations of my own life.

When I finally made the transition from cartoons and books to video games, everything seemed to snap into place. Games were the closest thing I’d ever found to actually visiting Narnia or the Digital World. My friend Robert introduced me to Halo in his trailer home. My parents gave me Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it was like being able to fly planes in real life, so much so that when I eventually attended flight training, my instructors told me I flew like someone with thousands of hours under his belt.

Games let me go places.

Games let me see new things.

So, one day, in early 2007, I found a copy of PC Gamer with Bioshock on the cover in the Wal-Mart magazine aisle. I remember furtively browsing the issue, making sure Mom didn’t suddenly round the corner and catch me reading it. The game looked incredible, but I was focused more on roleplaying forums at the time, and I forgot about it until that fall, a few weeks after it came out. CompUSA was going out of business and was selling off their games. I couldn’t game at home--our computers were old Boeing surplus and ran the Half-Life 2 Ravenholm demo like a slideshow--but with a portable hard drive I’d purchased and hid in the ceiling tiles of my bedroom, I could play them at the university I was attending.

So I did.

First person games appealed to me because they let me experience the game worlds as though they were real experiences. It was the closest thing to going to another world; third person games didn’t elicit the same response, so I didn’t play them as much. I was a big fan of the Age of Empires: Rise of Rome demo that came with my copy of Microsoft Flight Simluator, though. But it was the first person games, the ones I found on Maximum PC demo discs, that really mattered to me. I’d played hundreds of hours of Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, and even Far Cry.

When I played Bioshock, everything changed. I had to get my own computer. Had to. I moved out in late December to go learn to fly at K-State Salina. Got really sick that spring--my illness was just starting to reveal itself--and I flunked most of my classes. I was so sick most days I couldn’t leave the house. Got diagnosed with severe social anxiety disorder later. Only left the house at night unless I had classes, when I could make it to them at all. I’d earned enough money the previous fall to build myself my own computer.

I played games.

Bioshock had led me to System Shock 2. I pirated a copy of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl because I’d seen the disc at CompUSA (alongside Blacksite: Area 51) but only had the cash to buy Bioshock and The Orange Box without my parents noticing. I played FEAR and its expansions. All the Half-Life games. Crysis. Call of Duty 4. It was a great time to experience a lot of amazing first-person games.

System Shock and STALKER were the biggest influences.

When I moved back that summer, I scrounged and saved and used the last of my savings to buy STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis Warhead. I played them while living in the unheated camping trailer my parents used to own (it was cheaper than paying for dorms whenever we attended church camps). It was cold. I could see my own breath most days. I got a job at Office Max and used it to buy a copy of Far Cry 2. A few weeks later, I picked up Fallout 3.

If you’re familiar with these games, you’ll notice a lot of them have things in common. They do interesting things with the game world. Many are heavily systems driven compared to their contemporaries. STALKER’s world especially feels completely alive. System Shock 2 does a bangin’ job of making you feel like you’re really exploring an abandoned spaceship. Far Cry 2’s systems-driven gameplay is fascinating and influences designers to this day. Fallout 3 has one of the best ecosystems in a video game, with enemies who you can wound and terrify and allied characters who will come to your aid.

Even Blacksite: Area 51 was a fascinating game. It had this cool morale system that had your soldiers responding to your commands and combat prowess in ways that, at the time, felt believable and awe-inspiring. In Crysis, if you dropped an unconscious man in a river, he would die because he drowned. Incredible. It felt real.

The games that shaped my experience took me to other worlds, shaping my perception of what games could be in a very specific direction. As someone who’d grown up reading the old Microsoft Flight Simulator tagline “As real as it gets,” I felt right at home.

I tried other games, like Nintendo’s platformers or controller-centric spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry 3, but I didn’t like them. They were too obviously games. You got points. Everything was abstract. I was playing. I wasn’t going anywhere.

As my health declined, the importance of traveling to other places increased. The mark of a good game for me became one where I could forget about the world I lived in and exist in another world. I’m reminded of Lord Foul’s Bane, a book in which a writer with leprosy is transported to another world where he is healed of his leprosy. Games provided me that escape, especially the immersive ones.

Ah.

Right.

That word.

Immersion is nothing to be afraid of. Some people say that any game can be immersive, because one of the meanings of the word is roughly analogous to “engrossed,” but the English language is weird and tricky and sometimes two words share the same meaning in the dictionary but mean very different things.

To be engrossed in something is to have your attention completely arrested by it. To be immersed in something, well… when you’re immersed in water, you are literally, physically inside of it. You are a part of the water, as much as you can be.

I was seeking out immersive qualities in games without really understanding it. I would learn that some of my favorite games in the genre were literally called “immersive sims.” Some people will argue that they are not engrossed by those games, so they cannot possibly be immersive, but I’d argue that when you’re immersed in something, it surrounds you, you’re inside it. Whether or not it grabs your attention is up to you.

When a game is immersive, it might not grab your attention, but it’s doing its best to create a living, breathing world. When you drop an unconscious man in water, he drowns because that is what would happen in real life. When you perform well in combat, your allies rally around you. When you shoot an enemy in the leg, he limps.

An immersive game is one that does its best to represent a cohesive reality.

If you don’t believe me, go listen to Paul Neurath, a founder of Looking Glass, a studio that made games like System Shock and Thief, talk about why they made the games they did. Look at the cool attempts at simulation elements in games made by LGS alumni, like Seamus Blackley’s Jurassic Park: Trespasser, or Warren Spector and Harvey Smith’s Deus Ex. Emil Pagliarulo got a job at Bethesda and has a senior role (I forget what it is, exactly, sorry) on simulation-heavy games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

Heck, the Sega 2K Football games were praised as having some of the most sophisticated and realistic AI in sports games before the NFL decided it wasn’t cool with yearly games being priced at a sub-premium price point. Marc LeBlanc worked on the AI for those.

The way I heard it, Looking Glass made flight simulators with realistic physics (I believe that was thanks to Blackley’s background as a physicist). At some point, the folks at Looking Glass thought it would be cool to take Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop and make a game out of it, but instead of building something like the isometric Ultima, they’d apply the flight simulator logic to it. The whole thing would be first person, and you could treat it like you were really there. Their publishing partner decided this new game should be an Ultima game, so Ultima Underworld was born.

After that, Looking Glass made a mix of flight simulators, golf games, and weird first-person games that took you to other worlds. System Shock put you on a space station. Thief let you do exactly what it said on the cover. Terra Nova was… well, read this piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. All of these games were fascinating and transformative, even if they had weirdly inaccessible control schemes.

Eventually, the studio died. Sony and Microsoft passed on buying them, Eidos made some poor financial decisions and couldn’t pay them. Talent moved off to other studios. Eventually, they shut down.

A few developers tried to carry the torch. Ken Levine’s Irrational games released Bioshock, which was like the bro shooter version of System Shock. Ion Storm Austin produced Thief 3 and two Deus Ex games. Bethesda’s work has become increasingly Looking Glass-influenced over the years. Clint Hocking’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 clearly learned from Looking Glass’ games as well.

Over in France, a guy named Raphael Colantonio founded a studio called Arkane. They made a game heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld called Arx Fatalis. Then they made another one, called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, using a Ubisoft license.

As game tech got better, simulation elements became more pronounced. The German Yerli brothers unsuccessfully pitched a neat dinosaur game, but eventually managed to convince Ubisoft to publish Far Cry and EA to publish Crysis. Their games are mostly known for their graphics tech, but I’ve always been fond of their intriguing stabs at realism; on its highest difficulty, Crysis’ enemies speak Korean, making it difficult for most players to understand their callouts. Crysis lets players use the game’s physics to enhance its combat, collapsing buildings on enemies or leveling foliage to give them access to easier sight lines. I wrote about one of my favorite levels here.

Bioshock brought the attention back, though. Even though it wasn’t very simulation heavy, it gave players that sense of presence that so many had been craving. Some developers stumbled; Far Cry 2 is beloved by game designers but wasn’t the critical or commercial success Ubisoft hoped. STALKER was one of the buggiest commercial games I’ve ever played, capable of crashing if you so much as blinked, so it didn’t sell as well as THQ would have liked, and GSC Game World sought a new publisher for Clear Sky, then shifted to yet another publisher for Call of Pripyat.

Fallout 3 had more simulation elements than most of its contemporaries and, I’d argue, did a better job presenting a living, breathing world than any other game of its generation, but people were too busy being mad that it wasn’t a classic isometric RPG to notice.

So, this is where my head was at when I entered into the world of immersive sims. I was fascinated by simulation elements, in love with the idea of exploring other worlds, and, most importantly of all: I needed an escape from my health. Immersive games, some of them sims, some of them not, provided the escape I craved.

In 2011, I downloaded the leaked demo of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’d been mowing the lawn and was going to take a shower before sinking my teeth into it, but it was so engrossing that, before I knew it, five hours had passed and I’d played the entire thing. As soon as I scraped the cash together, I bought myself a copy. It was the first game I’d been able to afford in years.

I loved it.

The next year, Arkane roared back to life with Dishonored, which was one of my favorite games, not just because it’s really fucking good, not just because the world is fascinating and creative, not just because Harvey Smith, the man responsible for Deus Ex and Blacksite (he deserved better treatment from his publisher on that one; if they’d had more time, I think it would have been rightly hailed as a masterpiece; as it stands, it’s a fascinating thing that I love to pieces), partnered up with Arkane to make it, but because it helped me get my first writing gig.

If you wanna read my thoughts on Dishonored, check it out here.

And yet…

Something felt off.

Not about Dishonored, but about the conversation surrounding immersive design. I’d read posts by people who talked about the importance of design, who placed a weird focus on systems-driven design, who seemed to think that immersive games were stealth games and nothing but.

Before Dishonored and Human Revolution, I recall reading one of the foremost voices in immersive design discourse proclaiming the genre was dead because Looking Glass and Ion Storm had shut down. He argued, while Fallout 3 was selling millions of copies, that immersive sims were dead because they weren’t commercially viable. Many agreed with him.

After the apparent sales failings of Prey (Arkane), Dishonored 2, and Mankind Divided, I’ve heard those conversations picking up again.

I think they’re wrong, and I’d like to try to explain why.

I think a lot of the people who talk about immersive sims, focusing on immersive design and talking about what these games should be, tend to get hung up on Very Specific Details without looking at the bigger picture. Go watch the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter pitch video, and you’ll hear Neurath talk about how important it is to solve problems logically. Go listen to a lot of the immersive sim fans talk about games, and you’ll hear them talking about… well, other things.

One thing I feel like I see a lot is an emphasis on stealth mechanics. That’s great! I love stealth games. But I’d argue that stealth is not an important part of immersive games. Some people have told me that they don’t think Bethesda games are immersive sims because the stealth in those games is nowhere near as in depth as Thief. Maybe, maybe, but here’s the thing:

I think you could make an immersive game where you’re 12 years old and you’re visiting your grandparents at their farm on an island somewhere, and the entire game is just about being a kid exploring a little seaside town and making new friends. I think you could catch fireflies and go to the library and go fishing and do all sorts of things on an island that feels just as alive as STALKER, without actually doing any stealth.

But if you go play Dishonored or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or the Thief games, or whatever, you’re going to have the immersive sim community types talking about how important stealth is. Thief is good, but get over it. It’s just one manifestation of a broader genre. Stealth is GREAT. Dishonored so good I will buy any Dishonored game sight unseen. I would kill to get a job working for Arkane, even if it was like… as a janitor or something. I love those people and I love their games.

I think the emphasis on stealth is part of the reason a lot of these games have failed. I love stealth games for the same reason I love horror games; they’re high-intensity, high-stakes games that, when you play them well, make you feel like a real master. I’d also argue that stealth is exhausting. Maybe I’m more attuned to this than most due to the whole chronic fatigue thing, but like…

In a stealth game, success can feel like failure. You’re constantly feeling the pucker factor. If you are seen, you fail, even if the game doesn’t actually have an instant failure state. When I get seen in Dishonored, I have to fight. Fighting is really fun, but getting caught means I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to; I messed up. I’m a failure. A lot of stealth stuff ends up feeling like constantly being on edge and failing because you had to kill like 5 dudes who saw you. I played Hitman last night and every time I killed or choked out someone who saw me, I just wanted to start the whole thing over.

I’d argue that most people feel this way when playing stealth games. They don’t like the stress. A little stealth is nice, especially in a game like Far Cry 5 where you can approach a base with a sniper rifle and take out like 6 dudes without them noticing you, but getting into a firefight afterwards feels fun and purposeful too, so you get a nice mix of occasional stealth and action. I think that’s probably why Far Cry 5 is the best-selling video game of 2018 so far (Red Dead releases tomorrow).

I love that we’re making stealth games with immersive elements, but I think we’re making a mistake when we assume that immersive games must be stealthy ones. There are so many games that claim to learn from immersive games--Mark of the Ninja, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Wildfire, Quadrilateral Cowboy--and they do, but they’re also so very focused on stealth (the ones I’ve played are all among my favorite games, by the way! Please don’t think of this as a knock against them!). I can’t think of any game that claims to be influenced by immersive sims that doesn’t have stealth.

Stealth is a verb (short version: game design speak for ‘thing you can do’). It is not the genre.

Then there’s the whole “design” thing. Mario games are exceptionally designed. Each level is a unique, bespoke challenge, stacking mechanics on top of mechanics and helping you develop your mastery over the experience. This design comes at the expense of… well, I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll just say that Mario Feels Like A Game.

That’s not a bad thing, but, like, you’ve got this for, so you know what I’m about. You can see why that might not appeal to me personally.

Buuuuuuut… a lot of the newer, like… I don’t know, it’s weird to call them “design-focused,” because all games are designed, a lot of these newer immersive sim type games seem focused on that kind of immaculate design. Walk into the bank in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and you’ll see The Person You Can Talk Your Way Past If You Have That Skill, you’ll see The Lasers You Can Sneak Past If You Can Turn Invisible, you’ll see The Vending Machine You Can Lift If You Have The Strength Ability, and you’ll see The Air Vent You Can Crawl Through To Get To The Computer You Can Hack If You’re A Hacker.

Mankind Divided will give you The Most Experience Points for playing this without being detected and without killing anyone.

Suddenly, you are incentivized to treat the game like a game because it is objectively better for you to approach all objectives in a specific way. Heck, in Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, after you’ve nonlethally subdued everyone in a room, you can hack all the computers (even if you have a password) and crawl through all the vents (though there’s no reason to) for Maximum Points. It… it makes no sense. You’re not trying to be a part of the world. The game rewards you for engaging with it on a level that must recognize the game as an illusion.

It’s not the only game. I loved Prey, but I got the sense that I was being graded as I played, which meant I started playing more to the game’s expectations of me rather than how I felt I ought to act. Look, I grew up in a family environment where people were sneaking up on me to see if I was acting righteously. I grew up in a church where I was paraded in front of two hundred kids and told that I had The Devil in me because my pottery had shattered in their shoddily-built kiln and destroyed most of the rest of the pottery. I am so fucking tired of being judged, so exhausted of having to act a specific way to avoid being treated like garbage, I don’t want games to do it to me too. I just want to act in a way that feels appropriate.

In Eidos Montreal’s immersive sim games (and most immersive games, for that matter), I felt like I was running into The Metroid School of Design, in which a player is unable to progress through a level without the right tool, with one key difference: there are multiple tools you can use to progress. Four routes into the same room, every room, all the time.

This creates a sense of artifice. When I see a bunch of chandeliers and mysterious, architecturally suspect vents that show me an obvious route through a map, I see the designer’s hand. I see that the designer has planned all these routes for me. They have planned for any eventuality. They want me to sneak my way through this room, regardless of the skills I have at my disposal.

I can play their game in just one way. I can ghost-stealth it perfectly and get The Good Ending, or I can Violence Through It and get less progress points and The Bad Ending. If I am a hacker, there will always be a door to hack. If I am a fighter, there will always be a man to fight.

Oh, sure, the best games will give you a dozen tools that can be combined in really interesting ways, but someone has figured out what all those tools are and designed each level to perfectly accommodate every. Single. tool.

Every level is a puzzle, and puzzles are designed by a human with the intent to solve them. You don’t need to be creative--heck, sometimes, being creative is actively discouraged--because all you need to do is figure out what the designer wanted you to do and do it. Ah, I have tools X, Y, and Z? I know exactly where I’m supposed to deploy them. See, there’s the path you can blink through and the door you can bypass with a specific tool or the fish you can possess to swim through.

And… I cannot stress this enough:

It’s not bad.

It’s good.

It’s very good. I fucking love these games. They mean the world to me. They do.

But can you see how that might not be what I was looking for, and how I feel that’s… quite a long way removed from what Looking Glass was trying to do? Instead of solving solutions in a natural way, these games have created very nice puzzle worlds. As someone who loves puzzles, this is wonderful, but as someone who loved what Looking Glass and STALKER were doing… I can’t help but feel my own needs and interests aren’t being met.

I mentioned I was playing Hitman. I love it. I love it to pieces. I just did a Suit Only, Silent Assassin run and it was thrilling. But, like… I knew the route the guy would take. I knew The Device that I could interact with to take him off his path. I didn’t feel like I was improvising; instead, I was looking at one of several dozen ways the designers had very carefully placed in my path.

I can see you, designer. I know you’re there.

I couldn’t see the designer in STALKER. Everything felt natural to me. I woke up in a bunk. I met Sidorovich. He asked me to run a job for him. On my way to the job, there were dead animals and a wounded Stalker. He asked me for a med kit. I gave him the med kit. He became my friend. I joined a few Stalkers and we took out a bandit camp.

This will happen in every playthrough. It has been designed. I get that. But it wasn’t like a designer came in shouting PLAY YOUR WAY, ALSO THIS IS A STEALTH GAME, right? I could take out that encampment however I wanted. The more I play, the more tools I find. Sometimes, they randomly pop out of an anomaly. Other times, I find them on the corpses of people who died in a brutal gunfight. In Clear Sky, the gun you wield in the opening cinematic can be found right where you left it. It’s broken, but you can find a man to repair it, and later, you can get ammo for it by eliminating high-level enemies.

If someone says “hey, please help me take out this facility,” that’s all the direction you have. How you take it out is up to you. Stealth it? Sure. Lead mutants to it? Absolutely. Come in under cover of night or rain? You bet. STALKER’s verbs might be limited, but the game itself is so much more flexible. Sneak in through a crack in the wall or charge the front gate.

You play your way, but “your way” doesn’t mean four skill trees, it means “here’s a real, tangible space, with no hint of the designer’s hand. This feels real, like it actually exists in the outskirts of Chernobyl. There are bad men inside. Go get them, using whatever tools you have available to you.”

STALKER feels natural.

In fact, if there was one word I’d use to describe my ideal immersive game, “natural.” Would be that word. When I play Far Cry 2, I am playing a Designed Game. This is the Friendly NPC Zone. There are no friendly NPCs outside it. You can safely kill everyone because they’re bad. Everyone hits hard, so it’s best to snipe them. Make sure to go to the safe house, which looks exactly like all the other safe houses (and has the exact same supplies plus one unique bonus gun) to engage The Buddy System™, recharging your Buddy Meter® so your Buddy® will come to your aid when you go down One Time. If you go down a second time, he will die. This is how it always happens. It will never deviate.

In STALKER, I was caught finding bandits when a man named Edik Dinosaur passed by. He and I had met on occasion on the road. Edik Dinosaur fought valiantly alongside me, because he hated bandits and he liked me. I accidentally shot him during the encounter. He died because of me. That was way more impactful than Far Cry 2’s Super Obvious Buddy System, you know?

It was like I was there. I had to grapple with a sense of guilt at shooting blindly into the brush after a fleeing bandit.

I remember a story of someone playing an old Zelda game, I think it was Ocarina of Time, when their mom walked in and asked them what they were doing. They explained that, to cross a bridge, they had to get some item to unlock it. “Why don’t you just chop down a tree to cross the river?” came the reply. The storyteller said they rolled their eyes at this and thought their mom was crazy, but later, they were like “actually, yeah, why can’t I do that?”

Breath of the Wild let players do just that. It was hailed as a brilliant new Zelda game and seems more beloved than… basically every Zelda game in decades? This is a game where you can shoot a fire arrow, watch the grass catch fire, and use the updrafts to fling yourself into the sky, which lets you drop down on top of your foes for a powerful melee attack.

I have my complaints with the game, which you can read here, but I’m fascinated by the way its overworld avoids just outright telling you how to play and letting you figure out how to solve the problems it presents to you. Instead of being A Puzzle Game, Breath of the Wild’s overworld feels like a stylized yet real space. Its people are alive. Its spaces are not clearly designed to be exploited by specific mechanics. The Designer’s Hand is invisible.

This brings me to Bethesda.

Yes, sure, if you’re an RPG fan, Bethesda probably isn’t going to make you a happy camper. The writing can be stupid at times. They let you do anything, even though the narrative acts as though you’re on an urgent mission. The modular system design makes the world feel super artificial, and you can exploit the game’s systems in dumb, unrealistic ways, like putting a bucket on a person’s head (the AI has no sense of personal space and doesn’t mind) so he can’t see you steal things, or you can craft a million daggers so you can be The Best At Blacksmithing or whatever.

But… the thing is, when I hop into a Bethesda world, it feels relatively real. While you have a lot of skills that make you better at playing specific ways, like Unarmed or Melee or Rifles or Handguns or whatever, you’re never walking into a fight and seeing Five Specific Tool-Driven Routes and deciding which tool is The Best One For The Job.

I feel like too many immersive sims are specifically stealth-driven games with immaculate designer-driven puzzles that give you a dozen different tools to use How You Want (but, hint hint, there are a few very clear routes).

Bethesda games give you a billion tools and let you loose in the world, much like STALKER does. You can shoot someone so much they become afraid of you and run away, but some people are less afraid than others and will fight you to the death. Take out a guy with a good gun, and his buddy will run over, pick it up, and use it against you unless you can get to him first. Approach this fort aggressively, sneak in, talk your way in, do whatever. It’s going to depend as much on who’s in the fort as it is on you. Heck, I think in Skyrim, if you’re wearing Imperial gear, you can walk into an Imperial fort without anyone realizing you’re not an Imperial.

Bethesda games let you play how you want in the moment.

They let you formulate a plan based on what you feel like doing, and sometimes, you’re going to find places you can’t take on because nobody bothered to design a way for a specific character build to attack. Come back later or get creative. It feels more natural than most immersive sims because it’s trying to be a real place, rather than an artfully designed one. Yeah, Bethesda games have rough edges. They do!

And yet… they are immensely successful, and I think it’s because they’re actually trying to send their players to other worlds. They’re not demanding you play stealthily, they’re not giving you the same routes so that every player can play One Specific Play Style. They’re bringing a world to life and letting you live in it. In Skyrim, I can go save the world and become the boss of the Magic College, or I can be a simple elk hunter, peddling my wares.

I guess where I’m at is… we saw one studio trying incredible things in games, and they went under through little fault of their own. Their successors didn’t find the smashing success that the enthusiasts think they deserve, but I think that’s because… well… a lot of the enthusiasts are just looking at one or two games on the spectrum and refusing to make anything else. I think so many of the genre’s fans have a very limited, very specific view of what the genre can be, which is why none of them have managed to recapture the glory of Looking Glass; they’re not making the kind of games Looking Glass was, no matter how much they claim that they are.

There’s too much artifice in the inheritors.

Bethesda’s out there making billions of dollars because their games live up to the Looking Glass ideal more than anything else out there. These other games, this other design philosophy, it’s great. I love it. It’s wonderful and beautiful and fascinating, but when I see people arguing that “nobody wants immersive games,” because those games didn’t break sales records, I want to scream “how would you know? You’ve made something else!”

STALKER sold like 6 million copies. Skyrim’s up at like… what, 20 million now? Breath of the Wild has sold a bajillion copies. Red Dead Redemption 2 is poised to be the second best-selling game of 2018 after Black Ops IIII. Grand Theft Auto V made a billion billion dollars and it’s got some of the most sophisticated immersion elements in video games. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of the “could this realistically work?” games out there and it made a ton of cash. When you make a game that’s really about existing in a living, breathing world, you can make a shitload of cash.

When you make a stealth game with a lot of Specific Tools and Obvious Routes, you’re making a great video game, but you aren’t making an immersive one. That’s okay, but please don’t argue that we should stop making immersive games because your model didn’t work. The immersive model is thriving. You just made something else.

I just want to escape to other worlds.

[traitorinthemidst]

Nosce te ipsum - Know Thyself

He disliked being on the water. He disliked traveling away from the indulgences of Cair Paravel and that of which the surrounding areas held for him. With except in events of battles, great adventures, or something that allowed him to use his sharp tongue and mind, of course. But most of all Edmund Pevensie, King of Narnia, Duke of the Lantern Wastes, Count of the Western Marsh, and Knight of the Highest Order of the Table disliked having to travel without a companion to take along with him. However, if there was one good thing to come of this inane escapade, he wasn’t traveling to Calormen while alone. Edmund disliked Calormen more than he disliked being on the water. It wasn’t that Edmund loathed solitude; he actually found he was able to concentrate on his tasks better alone. The problem was that he often kept himself in seclusion too much and for far too long, cutting himself off to the point of overwork and becoming useless to even himself. Someone, or something, like Lucy or Peter or his favorite tavern, that held both drinks and people he enjoyed the company of, were always able to pull him away from his work. Being on a sea voyage meant that he only found amusement in what was there, and what was there was often predictable. Board games, the same conversations (that mostly consisted of gossip), and stories of lands and people he’d already seen were those predictable things found on the sea. And the young king preferred things that were a little more unpredictable.

The Eastern Sea was clear and smooth, and Edmund was thankful the journey was short—a mere 2 days at sea. They would land at the port town of Fecuria before night’s time, and Edmund could find the first establishment that served alcohol that wasn’t on the ship in his cabin. Just one drink was all he’d allow himself, but it would be a stiff one. After that he was to set about his business, meeting with the Duke of Galma, whom Edmund called “Your Graceless Cowson” when not in the company of the man.

The youngest of the Kings of Narnia had set sail to Galma Island to propose the increased export of horses readied for battle. Boring, yes, but Edmund had lost a round of cards with his older brother, High King Peter. In winning, Peter had set off to the front on reminding the giants who they had pleaded their allegiance to, and in losing, Edmund had set sail to Galma Island to engage in polite squabble with the Duke. In the end, Edmund knew Peter was better suited for the task of dealing with the less competent minds of the giants with his brute force, titles, and contract in hand. And the arrangement of getting the horses would allow Edmund a swifter journey back home to be home surrounded by the indulgences he enjoyed.

“Land Ahoy!” A call from the man in the masts was a welcomed sound to the King’s ears. Rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, Edmund stretched his arms over his head as he could feel the vibration of life from the crew almost instantly come into full swing as if no lull had gone by. --------

Docking at the port was a chore, as all Edmund wanted to do was stride off the wooden planks of the docks, onto the cobblestone streets, and into the closest tavern. But he was just as much a part of the crew as any of the sailors, and so he would only be the first off after all tasks were complete. Still, he’d already spied out the sign that read, ‘Port of Call’ which seemed to hold a bit of irony in the name, while tying off a rope on the starboard.

When he finally made his way toward the tavern, the young King crossed paths with a rather flushed man in court attire, the Duke’s valet. The man was heavier set, with stunted limbs, and held his hands clasped together as he approached and spoke to Edmund. Much to Edmund’s distaste, the words and actions pulled Edmund away from the doors of the tavern and he was following the valet toward the hideously, gaudy manor of the Duke. As the out-of-breath man spoke to Edmund, it quickly became apparent that the Duke hadn’t expected their arrival until the morning.

“The Duke is pre-occupied in his office with business, but I am having some tea and cakes brought out to the private seaside gardens and beach for Your Majesty.” The valet bowed his head lowly and Edmund had been reminded of the supposed cruelty of the Duke of Galma he’d heard through rumors. The most unfortunate circumstance was that neither Edmund nor any of his siblings had ever been able to properly catch such an acts of cruelty to deem punishment on the Duke. However, Edmund could see the tales of abuse in the deepness of the valet’s courtesies.

“Gin and cucumber sandwiches instead. It’s been a long trip, my friend.”

That was to say that Edmund hadn’t gotten his drink at the tavern, and wasn’t letting up on it. After making the short trip to and through the manor, Edmund was left outside on a grand patio overlooking a private beach, the sun setting under the horizon. He perched on the railing pondering over the possible distant lands stretched out over the Eastern Sea that no one had thus found. At that thought, he was thinking of what he could suggest to his siblings they might call the island or land. He then caught a glimpse of a silhouette on the beach. This was the Duke’s private beach. Who could have possibly been allowed the privilege?

“You there!”

Edmund called out, not forceful or sternly, but inquisitively. The person was too far out to be seen properly, but the clothing read as male from this far away.

@a-adventurer

#Narnia RP #The Chronicles of Narnia RP #Merline rp #historical rp #reign rp #asoiaf rp #ouat sp #Verse: [Splendour Hyaline]

[thegoldenage-roleplay]

TEREBINTHIA is a sovereign island-kingdom in the Great Eastern Ocean, in the exterior of the Bight of Calormen, the closest island to it being the island of Galma.

It is a large island, boasting of many natural resources, which makes it capable of self-sufficiency. Its infrastructure is strong, the society holding fast to old traditions and laws, which have kept it safe from internal conflict. To protect themselves from invasion and war, they have built the strongest navy of any kingdom, becoming rulers of the seas, as it is their first line of defense. They are the best of watermen, and before the White Witch, they made great riches off of trade, as they were the most informed merchants.

Terebinthia began as a settlement which came from a different world. Refugees of war in a land far off who sought a New World, where they could build lives without so much trouble. However, it wasn’t the New World they found after being blown off course upon the seas of their original world, it was an island, inhabited by sirens and merfolk, who told the pilgrims from far off that they were no longer in the world they began in, and that the beautiful isle they were now upon was called “Terebinthia”.

Trusting their words, and understanding that they had found a better place than they had hoped for to escape from the persecution of their lands, they set up the colony of Terebinthia under new human law, and a Lord was elected as overseer. In time, this Lord became King of Terebinthia, and his sons ruled after him. It did not take long for Terebinthia to make contact with Narnia and Archenland, a shipwreck of a merchant ship from Galma upon the islands shores informing the King that there was much more to this world than their island, and as such a group of representatives was sent from Terebinthia to Narnia, Galma, and Archenland, establishing trades and foreign relations with them.

When the Winter came, and Jadis took over Narnia and remained in threat to Archeland, Terebinthia did what they could to help the Narnian refugees which came their way. Realizing, however, that Narnia was now a threat with Jadis to both Galma and Terebinthia, Terebinthia strengthened its Navy beyond what would necessarily be needed. And it was not just the White Witch that caused a threat, but with the loss of Narnia as their ally, and Archenland constantly on guard, Calormen seemed much larger and looming to Terebinthias trade routes, stealing ships from the seas filled with cargo from the various isles further to the East.

And so, Terebinthia struck back, causing a rift between Calormen and Terebinthia which persists to now, as Calormen did not forgive, and Terebinthia does not regret.

As the Winter went on, Terebinthia became isolated within their country. Galma had sided with the Witch, Archenland became more and more concerned about possible invasion, and Terebinthia could only watch on baited breath to see what would become of the rest of the world while preparing for its own defense should it be required.

Spring could not have come a moment sooner, but being so used to its own isolation, it was not until the old king died and his son took his place that things began to change for Terebinthia. King Eodric wanted to once again reach out to the rest of the world, and with a strong Narnia now back in existence, it was not a hard thing to secure the beginnings of negotiations with such a strong ally.

And given the current political atmosphere, King Eodric believes it may be sorely needed in times to come.

A/N: Terebinthias culture is based off mostly English culture, given that the original colonists were British, and trying to go to the Americas in the 16th Century. There is a parliament of sorts in Terebinthia, which acts as the lawmaking body, though the King has the final decision on which laws will be adopted.

#worldbuilding #narnia worldbuilding #terebinthia #written by nana

[silentfcknhill]

And for the identity ask, 2, 3, 9, 14, 15, 20, and 30?

Sorry for the delay in responding to this! I wanted to wait until I got home from work so I could think about it properly. >.

2. Have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? If so, who?

I want to be vain and say Edgar Allan Poe because I think we have similar interests and I can relate to him personally. He is my favorite author and I even have a tattoo of him on my back. But I don’t think I am as good at metaphors and such as him. Realistically I would say the closest to how I actually think is Jostein Gaarder. He wrote one of my favorite books called Sophie’s World, an experience in philosophy from the eyes of a child’s imagination and that book seemed to apply to my life a lot. I really related to the juxtaposition of the intellectual, realistic tone and the child-like creativity that the knowledge is filtered through. That kind of duality exists at my core.

3. List your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

Well, I have so many fandoms, but don’t always have a character I identify with in each, so I’ll just list the characters that I identify with most from media that I love. Also, some are kind of embarrassing but I didn’t come this far to be in denial xD 

Pixel from Lazytown. Alice from Alice In Wonderland. Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. Brick Heck from The Middle. Amanda Young from the Saw franchise. Willy Wonka from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

9. Are you an artist?

Yes. A really good one? No. I’ve been drawing for years but I only have practice with pencil and traditional art, I’m still trying very hard to learn to create digital art with Photoshop, SAI, Corel, Illustrator etc. I’m also still struggling to find a personal style. I’m such a perfectionist that every time I draw something (usually faces, that’s what I’m more skilled at) it has to be hyper-realistic and I just get frustrated, start crying and stop drawing for awhile. I think with effort I could be very good, I’m not trying to sound vain, but I think that good art is learned rather than a god-given talent. Talent plays a role in creativity and being able to visualize what you want to see appear but technical skill with drawing is equal to the amount of work put in for the most part. Right now I am doing a challenge where I practice drawing a single bit of anatomy every day for an entire month, starting with what I’m worst at: hands. I start off using references, and then do it from memory/creation. I don’t post my art online much because it makes me self-conscious and I want to be better first.

14. Are you a musician?

No. I love music so very much, all types of genres. It plays a huge role in my life, but I am not coordinated enough to play an instrument and my singing voice is not good. Not awful, but not even decent. I wish I could sing. If I ever try to learn an instrument, it would probably be the drums. I prefer to enjoy other people’s music without the stress of having to create it, I don’t find it relaxing to practice and it doesn’t come naturally to me.

15. Five most influential books over your lifetime?

Well, as I said before, I was very inspired and slightly mindscrewed by Sophie’s World. But the most influential book in my life was probably the whole Silmarillion/Lord Of The Rings/Hobbit series because I literally became obsessed with it and still am. I guess The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich would count as well, because it’s really what inspired my interest in history in general and Nazi Germany in particular. It is a very large book so I’ve only read it twice, the first time when I was in grade 8, the second time in grade 9 when I did my English final essay on it. I also used it for reference in my Political Science exam/essays at the end of the year during grade 12. I’m sure many people thought I was a Nazi sympathizer when I carried it around at school, I would walk down the halls reading it and it has a giant swastika on the cover. It was one of many rumors about me that wasn’t true. One of the first books I remember becoming enthralled by was a book I read in elementary school called Behind The Attic Wall. It just struck me as really eerie. One of my favorite books I own is The Complete Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe. My grandmother gave it to me when I was 11 and it sparked my love of the tormented writer himself xD And one more bonus one because I couldn’t pick just five, The Mysterious Stranger (any version, even though none are completed) by Mark Twain is the creepiest and most existentially depressing book I’ve ever read. I ended up finding an animation of it online while looking for book reviews and I was kind of disturbed.

20. Would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?

Even though Middle Earth is my favorite, it is also very dangerous and I probably wouldn’t survive there long. I’m going to say Hogwarts, but only after the second wizarding war is over, Harry and co. have left and it is relatively safe again. There are just so many classes I’d want to take there.

30. Pick one of your favorite quotes.

Again, I have so many. This is really unfair so I’m defying the question and I’m going to pick a few v.v

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” Liked this one so much that I tattooed it on my back under Edgar himself.

And the quote that applies the most to me out of any single thing I’ve possibly ever read: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

#asks #thereichdoktor

[chaoticmagazineshark-blog]

Newest Android News.

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[102anni]

102Anni : Reading Rewind 30 things I learned from My 1st Festival Experience

I've been watching Reading Festival Highlights on TV for as long as I've been old enough to appreciate real live music. A lot of the individual events that fuelled my passion for music itself took place on that soil and -truth be told - I'm still quite enchanted by Paramore's impromptu Unplugged performance of 'The Only Exception' in 2014 and caught up in the incredible energy of Pulp's 'Common People' from 2011, or Baby-Faced-Arctic-Monkeys' 'Mardy Bum' in 2006. It is sets like those - a long with the obvious : (obligatory mentions) Nirvana in "92 and The Cure in 2012 which led my teenage self to believe that Little John's Farm in Berkshire, in the last week of August,  might just play host to closest thing to Heaven on Earth that my young mind could have possibly fathomed. This year, I finally got to experience Reading Festival first hand. In all it's glory. As it's intended. Unfiltered. Uncensored . Unedited. Au Naturale... Ultimately, what I learned is that this supposed 'Heaven on Earth' perpetually smells like Festival Loos and the floor looks a lot like a Rubbish Tip. I guess that was to be expected, though and it wasn't all bad. Far from it. Here are some of the things that I'll be taking away from my 1st Festival Experience (not including all the really really cute new hareem trousers and a bad case of Festi-flu) / Lessons in life, people, camping and music that I obtained over the weekend.

Pack lightly.

There really is no need to bring enough food to last the whole weekend because you'll be sourcing most of your rations from the shady-looking food stalls in the campsite.

Having said this, you should always leave room in your backpack for Banana Bread. There's always room for Banana Bread.

And plenty of Hand Sanitizer / Cleansing wipes. You can never have enough of those.

Festival food never tastes as good as you think it will.

High Spirits and the consumption of various other spirits means that a Festival campsite might just be one of the most friendly environments you'll ever step foot in.

However, you're not obliged to make friends with everyone around you. There are some people that you don't want to be mixing with.

Alan and Steve have a new friend. His name is Collin and he's just as sought after as his mates. However, this year they're all in a popularity competition with Pickle Rick.

There's no such thing as an "adventure" in a campsite. Stay put until you find your bearings or you'll end-up in a Narnia of identical tents. Have a specifically designated meeting point with friends in case you get separated.

Find a distinctive tent nearby and remember where yours is in relation to that one. This special tent will be your homebase and a welcome sight when you're stumbling back to your tent in the middle of the night, armed only with the light projected by the screen of a dying phone.

Battery packs: you get what you pay for and stocking-up on Poundland chargers won't see you through the weekend. Invest in a proper battery pack (preferably one that's solar powered) with at least 20,000 output.

Similarly, Tents: you get what you pay for! These are camping essentials, not price cutting opportunities.

Who says Reading Festival isn't sophisticated enough for DIY cocktails?

9am Wake-up calls aren't anywhere near as harsh when it comes to being up in time to see your favorite band.

Bringing a Polaroid camera into the Arena? That will set you back about two minutes with security. Not to be searched, but because security are gonna want to have a go with the camera.

Watching an entire Jimmy Eat World just to hear 'The Middle' - totally worth it.

Cheering at the mention of Snow Patrol during a comedy show won't do any favors.  They are the punchline and now so are you. #Justice4SnowPatrol. It takes a lot of guts to spend so long in the middle of the road

'Rick and Morty' might just be the only socially acceptable response when a stranger asks what your favorite cartoon is.

Crowds on TV that appear to stretch-back as far as the eye can see: Sometimes, it's all (incredibly well crafted) camera trickery. An Illusion. I learned this during Kasabian's set. What we were seeing in front of us was a half-arsed, unresponsive collective of a couple hundred people who couldn't even pretend that they were having fun. What we -and everyone watching from home- saw on screen was a nonexistent swarm of bodies clinging on the band's every word.

I am getting old.

People go to pretty extreme measures to sneak Pineapples into the Arena. If ever there's a crisis which involves hiding pineapples, I trust fellow Millenials with the future.

Humanity only has 4 years left after all the Bees die. SAVE THE BEES

Sun cream 10 / 10 should have been on my list of Festival Essentials.

Sometimes it's just gonna hit you that the guy from that band you love -who you previously thought was really attractive- bears a damming resemblance to that guy you hate. And there's absolutely nothing you can do other than accept the fact the band and their music will never be quite the same again.

No, that wasn't the actual Oli Sykes who you swore you saw watching oh wonder.

Bump into a High School Peer whilst you're in the midst of singing along to Neck Deep at the top of your lungs? Pretending you don't speak English isn't going to work.

Stay Hydrated !!!

The opening bars of 'I bet you look good on the Dancefloor' blaring through the speaker system in the NME tent between sets evokes a better response from the crowd than most headliners.

There still ain't no party quite like an S-Club Party

Got the Monday Morning / Hometime blues? Why add some fun to your day.Watching the onsite Fire Squad assemble around a burning abandoned tent is a lot more enjoyable when everyone sings the 'Ghostbusters' Theme tune.

[stacks-reviews]

Must Reads Part 12

Happy Friday everybody! This week we have children made of snow, a mysterious spaceship that has done nothing for three years, a feminist anthology, and more! 

--Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean by Kirsty Murray “Little Red Riding Hood is a teen who wears a protective suit and has to fend off a very human wolf. Girls and boys walking to school band together to turn the tables on catcallers. A MasterChef contestant goes time-traveling to secure fresh ingredients for her famous recipes. This collection of feminist fantasy and science fiction stories weaves together impossibilities, dreams, and ambitions to reimagine what girls - and boys - can be. Award-winning Australian and Indian authors worked together and separately to create stories that bridge continents and will inspire readers to open their minds and take a fresh look at the world we know. Travel to outer space with a boy who’s a space miner; find yourself cast adrift and rescued by a pirate ship manned by women; get lost in an eerie airline terminal where your mirror image - a perfect version of you - wants to suck you in. Every story in this collection will take you far from the everyday, to push past boundaries and explore new possibilites. When you eat the sky and drink the ocean, you embrace the world and are connected to all humanity.”

This anthology caught my eye because of the beautiful cover. And after reading the description on the jacket I knew I had to have it. I do own it but I have not had an opportunity to read it yet. Some of the stories are comics and at least one of the stories is a screen play.

--Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill and illustrated by Iacopo Bruno “In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. This isn’t most fairy tales. Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being - called the Nybbas - imprisoned in their world. The story cannon be true - not really. But then the whispers start. Violet and Demetrius, along with an ancient, scarred dragon, may hold the key to the Nybbas’s triumph...or its demise. It all depends on how they tell the story. After all, stories make their own rules. Iron Hearted Violet is a story of a princess unlike any other. It is a story of the last dragon in existence, deathly afraid of its own reflection. Above all, it is a story about the power of stories, our belief in them, and how one enchanted tale changed the course of an entire kingdom.”

There is a short preview up on Goodreads which I really liked. I really like how the story flows in that preview and its voice. The preview follows the storyteller of the kingdom as he recounts what Violet was like as a child and how she captivated the people with her own ability to tell engaging stories. It ends with how she meets her first friend, Demetrius. 

--The Riverman by Aaron Starmer “’To sell a book, you need a description on the back. So here’s mine: My name is Fiona Loomis. I was born on August 11, 1977. I am recording this message on the morning of October 13, 1989. Today I am thirteen years old. Not a day older. Not a day younger.’ Fiona Loomis is Alice, back from Wonderland. She is Lucy, returned from Narnia. She is Coraline, home from the Other World. She is the girl we read about in storybooks, but here’s the difference: She is real. Twelve-year-old Alistair Cleary is her neighbor in a town where everyone knows each other. One afternoon, Fiona shows up at Alistair’s doorstep with a strange proposition. She wants him to write her biography. What begins as an odd vanity project gradually turns into a frightening glimpse into a clearly troubled mind. For Fiona tells Alistair a secret. In her basement there’s a gateway and it leads to the magical world of Aquavania, the place where stories are born. In Aquavania, there’s a creature called the Riverman and he’s stealing the souls of children. Fiona’s soul could be next. Alistair has a choice. He can believe her, or he can believe something else...something even more terrifying.”

This is going to be a surprising dark children’s book (or so I assumed it is classified based on the characters ages) if what is mentioned in the first chapter is anything to judge by. It starts with talking about lost children either due to them running away, bad custody battles, or being taken by strangers. Alistair remembers his towns lost boy by the name of Luke, who’s body Alistair unknowingly finds after he had been missing. He just didn’t realize it at the time until years later. 

I’m already hooked. After that opening Fiona asks Alistair to pen her biography. And at first he says yes but then changes his mind. In part because it worried him and although not expressly stated, it could be because everyone thinks Fiona is strange and she does not appear to have very many friends. And it hints that she may be the next child who disappears in their town. It sounds like an enjoyable, dark read. And I’m sure there is an even darker story going on below the surface and I’m going to guess that the more terrifying truth Alistair will believe is an abusive household. I could be going way off rails here but it is what makes the most sense to me if the gateway isn’t actually real. What better way to escape that reality than by creating a world for yourself?

--The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey “Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart - he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone - but they glimpse of a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place, things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.”

Based off the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka or The snow maiden. I really want to read this on a purely nostalgia reason. Someone at work showed me this book and it immediately reminded me of a children’s book my grandparents owned about an elderly couple who made a little girl out of snow. The girl lived outside in a snow bed and made friends with all the other children. But once summer came she left and the couple were heartbroken until the next winter when their snow daughter returned home. I then told everyone at work about it and hunted down the one I remembered at my grandparents house. It was The Snow Child retold by Freya Littledale and illustrated by Leon Shtainmets.

In this book here, the couple believe that the little girl living in the woods is the child they made out of snow (in the children’s book the child is actually snow, in this rendition that is not the case). Or so the wife believes as she is familiar with the fairy tale as it is mentioned in the book. I doubt that the little girl is really made of snow. She was probably left to fend for herself for one reason or another. Regardless, I never expected to find a full length novel of a children’s book I had read long ago. I did not even know that the book was based off a Russian fairy tale back then. My grandma let me have the children’s book and it is now sitting in my room on a safe shelf. I was not the first to read it and I am pretty sure I wasn’t the last. 

--The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette “The world changed on a Tuesday. When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization, everyone freaked out for a little while. Or, almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years, the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door. 

Sixteen-year-old Annie Collins is one of the ship’s closest neighbors. Once upon a time she took every last theory about the ship seriously, whether it was advanced by an adult, or by a peer. Surely one of the theories would be proven true eventually - if not several of them - the very minute the ship decided to do something. Annie is starting to think this will never happen. One late August morning, a little over three years since the ship landed, Edgar Somerville arrived in town. Ed’s a government operative posing as a journalist, which is obvious to Annie - and pretty much everyone else he meets - almost immediately. He has a lot of questions that need answers, because he thinks everyone is wrong: the ship is doing something, and he needs Annie’s help to figure out what that is. Annie is a good choice for tour guide. She already knows everyone in town and when Ed’s theory is proven correct - something is apocalyptically wrong in Sorrow Falls - she’s a pretty good person to have around. As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.”

The first four chapters of this is available to preview on Goodreads. It is very detailed like the description here. I didn’t mind it. I liked the voice it was giving the book and it really gave me a feel for what Sorrow Falls is like. Everyone so far seems pretty laid back and friendly despite the fact that there is a spaceship right outside of town. 

I really want to read this because it makes me think of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (which was really good and is actually one of the few reviews I have written so far). Although the whole world knows about the alien object from the start and that this is classified as a teen book. And also makes me think of just a little bit of the great animated film, The Iron Giant. And as for theories. After reading the preview I’m guessing that either Annie is an alien from the ship but currently doesn’t remember it for whatever reason. Or the whole town is nothing but aliens forgetting what they are to better blend in with the populace. 

#eat the sky drink the ocean #kirsty murray #margo lanagan #annie zaidi #prabha mallya #samhita arni #justine larbalestier #priya kuriyan #mandy ord #alyssa brugman #isabella carmody #lily mae martin #vandana singh #anita ray #kuzhali manickavel #payal dhar #penni russon #amruta patil #kate constable #manjula padmanabhan #nicki greenberg #iron hearted maiden #kelly barnhill #iacopo bruno #the riverman #aaron starmer #the snow child #eowyn iver #the spaceship next door #gene doucette