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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

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Three Strikes [you're out]

It was his fault, really.

Wearing that jersey at Citi Field practically required Nina to hate the mass of muscle sitting in front of her on sight. Plus, he didn't know how to score a baseball game. So, honestly, it made sense. To hate him. Ardently, even. To push buttons, metaphorical or otherwise. A game within the game.

And, if, she found herself having fun, well, that was neither here nor there.

———

Rating: T, with sports and kissing because of who I am as a person Word Count: 9.1 K, also because of who I am as a person AN: I don’t know, guys. I got thoughts. I got feelings. The only way I know how deal with either of those things is to write about them with sports and kissing. Did I suggest that being a Mets fan was a bit like being Grisha? Perhaps! Perhaps, I did! If this is out of character just...don’t tell me.

Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll

———

The suggestion that an idea was capable of boiling a person’s blood, even in the most abstract and metaphorical sense, had always appealed to Nina. Not in a particularly violent way, of course. More in regards to the visual.

Conjured up all sorts of possibilities.

Little bubbles beneath her skin, searing emotion through her veins that inevitably led to tufts of smoke pouring out of her ears. Like one of those old cartoon characters, she could now only dimly remember. In moments like this, especially. When she wasn’t quite boiling, but certainly racing toward the vast and admittedly surprising precipice of abject hatred. Directed almost solely toward the mass of muscle who dared to wear a Chase Utley jersey to Citi Field on a Thursday in May.

He needed a haircut, she thought.

The muscle. Not Chase Utley. She couldn’t possibly care less about the state of Chase Utley’s hair. Unless he was choking on it, somewhere. Obviously. Then Nina cared very much. About Chase Utley. And this guy. With too-long strands that she was starting to believe fell almost artfully across the back of a vaguely golden-skinned neck, as if they existed solely to torment her.

On a Thursday in May.

Sitting there, with a seat digging into the middle of her spine and her frustration threatening the enamel on the back of her teeth, Nina was loath to admit, even to herself, that she couldn’t stop staring at him. Partially because of the hair. Which looked very—pushable, really. As far as her finger’s potential went. But mostly because of everything else. Watching the muscle was a bit like watching a statue at the Met, waiting with bated breath for it to actually surge to life because when she was that same kid who watched cartoons on weekend mornings, she rather strongly believed that the statues at the Met were wholly capable of smiling and turning and living. Artwork prone to the mystical and potentially magical.

She blamed Ben Stiller for that, honestly.

Amy Adams to a slightly lesser degree.

Robin Williams would suffer no criticism in this argument, naturally.

The muscle shifted.

Twitched just a hint in his seat. Altered the angle of his, frankly, impressively wide shoulders. Rolled his neck between them. The seat was too small. He was too big. That jersey must have been ancient.

And, really, when it came down to it, Nina hated him most for the pencil. Tucked behind his right ear, it looked comically small whenever he pulled it between his fingers, scratching across a legitimate scorebook because in the thirty-seven minutes or so she’d spent observing this fascinating specimen of humanity, she’d noticed it was, in fact, a scorebook.

Not a piece of paper.

Not a printout.

Not even the one she was only vaguely confident they handed out in the rotunda downstairs.

An actual scorebook.

That he brought with him to Citi Field.

She glanced down to make sure she had not actually burst into literal flames in section 205. Row F. Seat 27. No such luck. Weird.

The pencil was back in his hand. One leg crossed the other, leaving his knee propped in the air, and there was just so much of the muscle that it was a rather small miracle of an exceptionally narrow field of science that it didn’t collide with anyone around him. Instead, it provided a built-in desk, that stupid scorebook propped up against jean-covered skin and even more muscles, pushing against fabric like they were personally offended by the concept of the blue-colored prison.

Nina bit her lip.

Tried to keep breathing. Because fires required oxygen, and there could be no boiling without fire and—

“‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me, ‘scuse me, just trying to—” Blood flooded Nina’s mouth, making it impossible for her to open that same mouth and let out the laugh already pushing against her lips. There were at least four little wrinkles pinched across the small expanse of Jesper’s nose, two boxes of popcorn clutched in either one of his hands and a soda between the slight bend of his elbow. He tiptoed his way around disgruntled fans, glaring at a few red jerseys for good measure. As if he actually wanted to be there. Nina kept biting her lip. “Just trying to get back to my seat,” Jesper finished, “won’t bother you again, rest of the game, absolutely, one-hundred percent guaranteed.”

Nina’s lips tilted up.

Scrambling to her feet, she couldn’t quite balance on the edge of the seat that immediately swung back up. Something sticky stuck to the bottom of her shoe and eventually, she would find herself wondering why she didn’t simply move into Jesper’s seat. For a myriad of reasons, she assumed.

Some of which might have mystical and potentially.

Goddamn, Ben Stiller.

“Accommodating sort of group, isn’t it?” Jesper mumbled, pushing past her and Nina had to applaud his dexterity. Not a kernel lost in the battle.

“Should have waited ‘til the middle of the inning. This is just bad form on your part.” “And miss all—” He waved an imperious hand toward the field. “What am I missing, exactly?”

Opening her mouth, Nina was certain she’d come up with a reasonable explanation for the romantic nature of baseball, only she was a little busy. Keeping her head connected to the rest of her body.

Snapping to the left, her breath caught. In that dramatic sort of way that always seemed like the perfect soundtrack to any great sporting moment. Eyes wide and fingers digging into her palm, hope mixed with the bubbles and the boils, and she barely noticed the awkward angle of her bent knees. Or just how close she was to—

Him.

The muscle.

She heard his pencil drop, she swore.

Oh, Gods, but he had blue eyes. Sharp and staring right at her, Nina resisted the very real urge to let herself melt right there. In section 205. Row F. Seat 27. Well, in front of seat 27, technically.

Pulling her knee back did not do that same knee any favors, muscles almost audibly objecting to the force of Nina’s split-second reaction, but then she forgot about the pain and the concept of depth perception. The yell tore itself out of her lungs, found its way to the rest of the noise circling the stadium, wrapping its way around people until the hope of that one, singular moment settled on the tips of her eyelashes and the backs of her heels and she wasn’t sure if she heard him at first.

No one should be capable of possessing a voice quite so gruff, that’s why.

“Not going to make it.”

Glaring at the monstrous mass of muscle and questionably good hair wasn’t so much as a decision as something far closer to instinct, pulling her brows together and letting her tongue push at the bottom of her teeth, and he—

Looked. Right at her. And her tongue.

Shoulders tensing, a hint of nervous energy appeared in those same ridiculously blue eyes, gone almost before Nina had a chance to realize it was there at all and she didn’t see the play. Heard it, though. The groans and the grunts, complete despair, and the first shreds of desolation drowning out the hope and pulling it from a grip that was always a little tenuous.

No home run. No hit. Just a run-of-the-mill fly ball in center field.

One side of the muscle’s mouth tugged up.

“Told you.” “Oh, fuck off.”

Surprise, she thought, was a very good look on him. Most of them would be, she imagined. But right then, on a Thursday in May, with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, Nina relished the surprise.

And sat back down.

To be a Mets fan, was to believe in the impossible.

The amazing, even.

It was right there in the slogans. The advertising campaigns. On a variety of shirts, both legitimate and those sold at the bottom of the 7-train stairs. To accept the amazing, to wish for it, even, was part and parcel of the history of an organization that relished its underdog status. Thrived in its role, the second team in a city that toed the line between excess and restraint.

Winning with this team was unexpected and unpredictable. Came without much pomp. Certainly no circumstance. Only a few trades that drew national eyes and back page headlines. More often than not, this was a team that discovered amazing when it simply should not exist.

Misfits who created something wonderful. Who sparked something among people who, at least for nine innings, believed orange was a worthwhile color to wear. Who smiled at a mascot with a massive baseball for a head. And his wife, who sported some rather impressive eyelashes, actually.

To be a Mets fan, was to understand heartache.

To accept being the butt of jokes across decades.

Every year, the knowing smiles came. Paying goddamn Bobby Bonilla. Cracks about pyramid schemes and owners who couldn’t find their way out of a money-based paper bag, team antics that occasionally drew those headlines, and players who fell in wayward ditches on their farms, ending their season before it ever really began.

Winning didn’t come often, but it was loud when it did. The crack of a bat and a ball finding the back of a glove, shoulders slamming into the left-field wall with its massive M&Ms ad. Feedback from a microphone as David Wright thanked the Seven Line Army, in all their orange-clad glory, memories of that near-perfect October and what could have been imprinting themselves across a generation.

To be a Mets fan, was to live and die with each pitch. Each hit. To hold your breath and wait for magic that lingered beneath skin and forced its way into bloodstreams.

To be a Mets fan, was to hate anyone wearing a Chase Utley jersey.

“Stew, stew, stewing, a rather hearty beef stew.” Nina narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?” “You are stewing,” Jesper said pointedly, as if it was an obvious affliction and they both hadn’t casually descended into madness caused by extra innings. Putting a runner on second was supposed to help avoid all of this. Runs were meant to be scored in extra innings. Nothing had happened yet. “Any more and that little divot between your eyebrows is never going to disappear. Then what will we do?” Answering would only acknowledge that the divot was more like a rather obvious ravine now, and the little half-moon circles left by her nails were going to be permanently etched into Nina’s palm.

He was still keeping score.

How he hadn’t run out of columns in his scorebook was beyond her, but Nina figured if the muscle was someone willing to purchase a scorebook, he probably made sure it was one that also included, like, fifteen innings on each page.

If they made it to the fifteenth inning, she would cry.

It would be embarrassing.

Jesper probably wouldn’t come back for the rest of the series. If she cried, that was. And she needed him to come back for the rest of the series. Sitting anywhere else wasn’t all that appealing, even if it might have been warmer up there now.

She wrapped her arms around herself. Better to stew with, that way.

“Do games normally last this long?”

Nina shook her head.

Jesper groaned. Loudly, complete with his head thrown back for extra emphasis and even clearer frustration and she didn’t think she imagined the way the muscle tensed. Staring at him was becoming something of a pastime in the middle of a more acceptable one. Light didn’t quite reflect from the hair she was starting to become just a hint obsessed with, but it certainly appeared determined to try, and his ability to hold so much tension in the region directly surrounding his jaw would have been impressive in any other circumstance.

As it was, Nina was a little concerned about the state of the muscle’s back molars.

It was why she didn’t react as quickly as she should have. Or so she would argue for the rest of time.

Once she got the popcorn off her feet.

A waterfall of butter-coasted kernels landed on her shoes, a few bouncing as she did, thrust out of her seat like a canon. Whatever bit of her heart that existed solely to document the ebbs and flows of the New York Mets success flew into her throat, where it immediately took up residence directly in the middle. Wide eyes immediately started to water, which brought her straight back to the entirely metaphorical cliff of her potential embarrassment and the muscle was leaning forward.

With his own brand of emotion.

No obvious tension, just that steady sort of hope born among the din of baseball-type sounds and, even more importantly, baseball-type feelings and Nina was mumbling.

“Turn ‘em, turn ‘em, turn ‘em, two, two, two, two, get the—” Suggesting she screamed made it seem as if she weren’t in complete control of her faculties. And despite the potential of extra innings insanity, Nina was just as lucid as ever and just as capable of throwing her hands in the air, while also screaming.

Undeniably so.

As soon as the ball jumped over the outstretched glove at short, Francisco Lindor’s lanky and overpaid body stretched out across the infield grass. Curses flowed from Nina’s mouth, some of them sharp enough to make even Jesper choke on whatever bits of oxygen he was able to gulp down, and she didn’t stop. Kept screaming and shouting, increasingly mobile hands and dexterous shoulders, miming her own throw home because whoever was playing left field was not moving quickly enough for her.

He didn’t make the throw.

Not in time, at least.

Dirt flew into the air as a leg stretched over home plate and the umpire’s arms were nearly as impressive as Nina’s. Marking the runner safe and giving the Phillies their first and only lead of the night.

Frustration mingled with out-of-place despair, far too early in the series and the season to be feeling quite as desolate as Nina suddenly was and, really, she wasn’t sure why she looked. Something about magnets, or simple curiosity, but her eyes drifted and her head tilted and she felt her jaw drop as his stupid, little pencil scratched out E6 in his scorebook.

“What the hell, man?”

He didn’t turn. Figured. Screaming was becoming her base setting, so Nina wasn’t entirely surprised that the muscle didn’t acknowledge it, but then she was moving and leaning and tapping on a shoulder that somehow seemed sturdier when she had kneed it several innings earlier.

“That’s not an error.” Moving in slow motion only made sense if the man was, in fact, a piece of marble. Strands of hair stuck to his forehead, acting as little paths toward his eyes and they were still blue. Good, that was good. Bad, that was bad.

Jesper wasn’t even trying to contain his laughter.

“Excuse me?” “Not an error,” Nina repeated, careful to pause between each word for emphasis. The muscle didn’t flinch. Stared at her incredulously, though. “Did you not see that hop?” “I saw your multi-million dollar man throw his arm out without much regard to actually making a routine play. Is that what you’re talking about?” “How is that possibly an error?” He lifted a shoulder. She was boiling over. “Should have made the play.” “It was impossible!" “C’mon now,” he chuckled, and the good fought with the bad. A symphony of contradictions blaring between Nina’s ears. Neither of which were steaming, it seemed. “Nothing is impossible in baseball.” “That was!” “Might need to come up with a better argument.” “Home scorer is not going to give Francisco an error on that. He had to dive!” “Maybe he should have been in better position, to begin with.” “The shift was on.” “Well, the shift is ruining baseball, so—” Nina gagged. Let her tongue push between rows of teeth that she couldn’t believe were going to survive the rest of the night if the acid churning in her esophagus was any indication. He looked. Again. Whatever heat lapping at the base of her spine was only marginally distracting. “A baseball purist cannot possibly wear the jersey you are wearing.” “I wasn’t aware of the rules, but, please, go on.” “Fuck. Off.” “Getting less and less creative.” His eyes hadn’t moved. As if he was documenting each twitch of her lips for his own personal posterity. Nina found she didn’t mind the idea as much as she should.

Jesper was going to crack a rib.

“Chase Utley is an asshole who doesn’t know how to slide.” “Ok.” “An asshole!” “I heard you the first time,” he said, losing the war with his lips. Curled up, they cut across the serious mask his face had become in the world’s least serious conversation. It was nice that Jesper ended up crying before Nina, honestly. “And he wasn’t a Phil when he hurt your guy, so I don’t think that should count at all.” Nina did not know what noise she made. Wasn’t human. Hurt a little. “Did you just call him a Phil?” “Guys,” Jesper mumbled, but she couldn’t be bothered with something as menial as the bottom of the inning when the muscle in front of her kept doing that thing with his eyes and his hair and—

Reaching out, she managed to bypass his rather impressive reaction time, grabbing the pencil before he could stop her and the crack of it between her fingers was as loud as any grand slam this slightly ugly ballpark had ever witnessed.

Not that Nina would ever admit she thought Citi Field was slightly to moderately ugly.

It was the color scheme. Way too much green involved.

She gave herself exactly seven seconds to relish the look of pure amazement on the muscle’s face.

“Use a pen,” Nina sneered, “at least stand by your scoring convictions.” “Chase Utley is going to be in the Hall of Fame.” “As a Phil?” “World Series champion.”

His ability to emphasize words with meaningful pauses was far better than Nina’s. “It wasn’t an error.” “You’re paying that guy more than anyone in the world deserves to get paid, if he’s going to lay out for a liner, then he should be able to make the play, don’t you think?” Nina bit her lip. Boiled. Stewed.

Ah, damn.

Her silence was an answer in the middle of a sea made up of equally disheartened fans. Who all suddenly remembered how terrible they looked in orange. Always worse after a loss.

The muscle nodded. Once. Exhaled. Through his nose. As if he’d won, and not just his team, and Nina didn’t offer to replace his pencil.

On a Friday night in May, Nina genuinely believed that he wouldn’t come back. Hoped for it, even. And something else almost akin to the exact opposite.

Both were very strange feelings to feel contained in one human, body. Draped, even as it was, in blue and orange and New York City’s less famous pinstripes. With PIAZZA splashed across her back, Nina felt as if she were obligated to sit a little straighter. As if slumping in her seat — by herself tonight because Genya was not at all interested in sitting in the stands and Zoya would have laughed at the suggestion, and Jesper had to get back to the Crow Club — would somehow tarnish the reputation of a name that didn’t belong to her.

Didn’t it, though? Just a little. Wasn’t that how sports worked? Throwing yourself into the camaraderie with both feet and occasionally flailing arms, willing to sit in an uncomfortable seat that she’d have to mention to Nikolai at some point because these were starting to feel a bit like torture devices masquerading as plastic, and a piece of paper floated onto her lap.

He’d folded the piece of paper.

The muscle. Not Nikolai. Who was sitting in the owner’s box, in fact. Nina assumed those seats weren’t rising up in revolt against him.

The muscle wasn’t wearing a jersey this time. A cup of what smelled like over-brewed coffee, though, was held tightly in his left hand, while the right clutched his scorebook as if it were made of gold. Nina’s tongue swiped her teeth.

He watched.

Documented.

Kept track.

“What the hell is this?” “Is that your favorite curse, you think?” “Why are you throwing paper airplanes at me?” Lifting shoulders appeared to be his default form of response. “Felt just quirky enough not to be overtly threatening.” “Because of the guns generally associated with fighter planes?” “What do you know about fighter planes?” Rolling her whole head did not get her a smile. Or even a hint of such a thing. It did get him a few grumblings of frustration from those whose view he was blocking. Because there was so goddamn much of him. Imposing, that was the word for it. Taking up space and settling into the seat with a near amazing amount of grace, practically folding in on himself, like he was made of smooth lines and crisp edges, capable of soaring through air in a way that belied that flimsy nature of paper airplanes, and there was that word again.

“Always liked the ones that had painted teeth on them,” Nina said, somehow fully prepared for the huff of laughter that fell out of him. He pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket.

To hand to her.

“You would.” “What is that supposed to mean, exactly?” “It means,” he said, nodding at the pen when she kept gaping at it, “that in my limited experience with you, Ms. Met—”

“Thought we covered lack of creativity last night.” He ignored her. Eventually, it might be a good idea to learn his name. Where that might also be the worst idea in the history of the world. Maybe Nikolai could track him down. Like through ticket sales, or something. That seemed like a breach of power, though.

“You do have a rather impressive set of teeth on you, yourself.” “Oh, that’s an insult.” “Should unfold the paper airplane.” Most of her wanted to crumple up the piece of the paper, toss it back in his face and then possibly stab him with his own pen. But Nina also didn’t know the muscle’s name, and cold-blooded murder on a Friday night in May required a certain sense of personalization that they hadn’t quite reached yet. So, there was no crumpling. Her fingers didn’t shake. Her heartbeat held steady in her chest.

Unfolding the paper with his eyes on her, Nina did hold her breath. For eight straight seconds, approximately. Until it all rushed out of her, entirely amazed and perpetually annoyed because the paper airplane left creases between the boxes of what was very clearly her own personal scoresheet.

With provided pen.

“This is a trick.” “That not being a question gives me pause,” he said, but it sounded like an admission. One tinged with regret. Presumably for Chase Utley’s tendency to be a complete and utter asshole. Prone to injuring Mets’ middle infielders.

“Is it not?” He shook his head. And the pen in his hand. “Get to stand by the convictions of your scoring actions.” “Errors occur only on routine plays.” “Yuh-huh.” “You’re here by yourself.” “Also not a question.”

“Or an answer,” Nina pointed out.

“Where’d your friend go?” “What do you put in your coffee?” “Nothing,” he answered, “seriously, where’s the friend?” Something lingered on the edge of the question. Something Nina didn’t want to notice, but couldn’t possibly ignore. Not when it came with concave shoulders, curling toward her like they were preparing themselves to block wind and glares in equal measure. The second of which was really a more pressing problem at the moment.

“Had to work.” “As a stand-up comedian?” “Hardy har har,” Nina grumbled. Leaning back against the force of his ensuing smile was as natural as wearing a Mike Piazza jersey and searching for the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. What she was less prepared for was the ability of that same smile to twist its way between her ribs, lighting another new and imaginary fire and if her mouth dried just a bit, then that was neither here nor there.

Between her and the baseball gods, fickle as they were.

“You don’t put anything in your coffee?” He shook his head. “Sugar makes me nauseous.” “God, what a depressing way to live life.” “Eh, there are things that make up for it.” “Chase Utley?” “I think you might be obsessed,” he said, dropping into his seat so as to avoid being pelted with cheese fries from Shake Shack. The guy three seats away looked real serious. “Going to write him a letter asking for a game of catch?” “You’re making pop culture references.” “Not a question, either.” “No, a stunned statement of fact.” She wanted that laugh on loop. Wanted it to play as the soundtrack for the rest of the night and the rest of the series and quite possibly the rest of her life, lingering softly in the background of everything she did for the rest of forever.

Matching in perfect rhythm to the predisposed nature of her blood to boil.

“Where are all your friends, then?” Nina asked, almost desperate to change the direction of the conversation and her internal dialogue. The blue evolved. Right there in his eyes. Darkened until it looked like the sky before a storm and that was ten-thousand times worse than any other drivel she’d come up with so far.

Licking her lips was idiotic. Naturally, that’s what she did.

“Not here,” he replied, “but I know the hitting coach.” Strictly speaking, that should not have been quite as awe-inducing as it was. Nina hadn’t paid for her tickets, after all. Had no intention of paying for tickets ever again, if she was being honest. So, really, seeing how caution swept the muscle’s face was kind of a dick move.

On her part, specifically.

“Should I be impressed?” Shoulder lift, right on cue. “I knew him in college. Was, uh—” “—Wait, did you play baseball?” Color didn’t rise on his cheeks. Not in any romantic way. Nothing about it was swepping, which was good because the Phillies had won the night before, meaning any sweeping would also guarantee Mets losses. It arrived in splotches. Bits of pink and nearly-red, tiny pinpricks of unregulated emotion that immediately affected the ability of Nina’s pulse to stay even.

She grinned.

Wide and honest, ignoring the strands of hair that fell in her eyes when she let her head fall.

He didn’t look away.

She’d think that was important, later.

“You contain multitudes, Muscle.” “Insulting,” he grumbled. “Quite possibly the tallest man I’ve ever encountered in the flesh.” “That can’t possibly be true.” “You don’t look like a baseball player.” Back to the correct shade of blue. Just for a moment. Disappearing in the haze of a 90 mile per hour fastball. Right up the middle. But Nina had always been fairly good at tracking pitches, and she might not have been a former baseball player, but picking out the slider amongst a never-ending stream of heaters was like her personal superpower.

“So I’ve heard.” “From scouts?” “Sometimes, yeah.”

“Of the professional variety?” “Every now and then.”

Letting out a low whistle, Nina’s spine relaxed. Tension that had taken root between her shoulder blades loosened, watching the face in front of her and the mask it was so obviously clinging to. Kept slipping, though. While staring directly at her.

It was, she would argue, why she did what she did. Without mumbling.

“You wanna sit?” “With you?” “Rude. You threw paper at me.” “It was a well-constructed airplane,” the muscle argued, “so you could also score the game. This was a nice thing I was doing.” “Past tense.” “Am doing,” he corrected. “Currently.”

“That mean you're going to sit?”

She counted. Seconds. Moments. Breaths. Dug her teeth into her lower lip. Against the side of her tongue. He nodded.

And climbed over the seat.

So, that was only going to marginally mess with her brain.

“Alright then,” Nina said, doing her best to flatten her paper against the bend of her knee, “tell me everything about your baseball tale of woe.”

He didn’t.

At least not at first.

It took until the fourth inning for them to begrudgingly agree that mowing patterns in the outfield was an abstract art form that did not often get the credit it deserved, before deciding, in no uncertain terms, that the NL East boasted some of the better uniform options in all baseball, even if that was mostly because of the Marlins and—

His hand moved to his shoulder.

The right one. More than once. Gently massaged the muscle there, a slight grimace that Nina only noticed because she was sitting squarely in the middle of objectification and she didn’t even know his name. Yet, she reminded herself.

They’d get there.

They didn’t. Not in that game, anyway.

A Saturday afternoon in May didn’t present the same sort of chill that required scalding hot coffee with absolutely nothing else in it, but Nina was playing with hope and resting on her not-so-cautious expectations. Seeing how wide his eyes could get was extra.

Sugar on top, if you will.

They got very wide. Frozen, even. Stuck halfway down the row, still no jersey, just his dropped jaw and slumped, possibly injured shoulders, ignoring the jabs from nearby season ticket holders who were starting to believe this mountain of muscle existed solely to block their sight lines.

Nina figured that’s what it was, at least.

He smiled.

That smile. Her smile. When she’d begun to claim it, she couldn’t begin to pinpoint, but it might have been six and two-thirds innings into last night’s game when his left arm had bumped her right, just enough warmth wafting off him to be noticeable. To leave goosebumps in his awake, too.

“There’s no sugar in it,” she promised, “so you don’t have to worry for the state of your stomach.” “I didn’t once think you were trying to poison me.” “High praise.” “Deservedly so.” She flushed. Ducked her eyes. Tried not to chew her tongue in half, or allow the burning-hot blood racing through every single one of her extremities to burst its way out of her skin. That would be off-putting. And traumatic.

“Here,” he added, tugging another folded piece of paper out of his back pocket, “for you.” “Are you printing these off in the hotel?” “Should be a private investigator, Ms. Met.” “Did your coach make you stay in Queens, Muscle?” The hand that landed on her waist — to move her, just to move her — was warm and blistering and those were two very different words with a pair of very different meanings and even more jarring consequences, and he sat down next to her.

Huh.

“Been taking the train in from Grand Central.” “Ugh, he’s making you stay over there? There’s no good food in that part of the city.” “Quiet, though.” Sticking her tongue out when she gagged continued to be one of Nina’s less impressive traits. “I blew my shoulder out my junior year of college.”

One of Nina’s knees buckled. Only one. The right one, actually. She refused to believe that was a sign. From baseball gods, or otherwise. “Hitting?” “Throwing. Probably because of the hitting, but the blowing out actually happened on what was considered by most in the know to be a pretty routine throw from left field. Hurt like hell.” “Yeah, I bet.” “I don’t remember a ton of what happened right after. Might have yelled? Quite possibly blacked out. Definitely heard something snap, which admittedly terrified me, but then there were a bunch of people talking and walking me down the tunnel and more lights and tests. The phrase never the same again was thrown around with alarming regularity.”

Cold. Nina was cold. Freezing beneath a mid-afternoon sun, one of those May days that tease of summer yet to come. They smell like cotton candy and potential, of a distinct lack of responsibility and SPF 70.

She had sensitive skin.

“Were you by yourself?” Asking questions she somehow already knew the answer to was equal parts cruel and unusual, particularly when asking it of a man whose name never got to back pages. Or her ears, it seemed. She swallowed whatever was sitting in the back of her mouth.

“Brum was there,” he said, but it sounded like an excuse. A practiced line that had started to reek of insincerity. “My—well, my parents had been gone for a while. Same old sob story you always hear, y’know? Kid loses everything, finds salvation in the dogma of sports, gets pretty good at it, and then—” “—Loses it all again?” Nina finished. She thought she did. Whoever was talking didn’t sound like Nina. Sounded like someone who had painstakingly refolded her paper airplane the night before. To keep on the nightstand next to her bed.

“Some of it, yeah. They wanted me to stick around. Stay on staff. Coach. But that was—” He clicked his tongue. Distant eyes stared past that goddamn M&Ms ad, and Nina didn’t think. Wasn’t that how the best athletes were, though? All instinct and lightning-fast reaction times. Responding to a situation before the rest of us mere mortals could even begin to fathom the circumstance.

He didn’t push her hand off his.

The coffee was going to go cold.

“Very maudlin way of approaching things.” She chuckled. Tried not to cry, for entirely new reasons. “Impressive vocabulary for a jock.” “Keep workshop'ing your insults, Ms. Met.”

“Brum, he just got hired by the Phillies, right?” She knew that answer too. “Is this the first game you’ve been to?” His eyes slid to hers. In that same slow motion as before, and that couldn’t possibly have been less than seventy-two hours ago, but life had a tendency to be weird like that and good like that and, well, you can’t predict baseball, Suzyn.

“Why the Mets?” It wasn’t the question she expected. Felt far too big and more than a little terrifying, jumping into the deep end of the pool from the highest diving board. But that same pool was always crystal clear, the sort of blue they wrote songs about. Summertime and the living was easy. That sort of thing.

“Because there’s something wonderful in a team that defies every bit of sports conjecture. That breathes in the chaos and spits out something that, every now and then, is absolutely beautiful. That lets me be bigger than myself for nine innings and a minimum of one-hundred and sixty-two games. That takes all my shortcomings and accepts them because one time this team claimed there was a raccoon fighting with a rat in the dugout tunnel. Because they don’t play The Imperial March during lineup announcements.” Something, something—she needed better sunscreen.

So as to not get burned by the force of his sun-like smile.

“I think a raccoon could probably take a rat, don’t you think?” “I don’t know,” Nina wavered, “I own a fair amount of Staten Island Pizza Rat merch.” His hand flipped. Fingers curled around hers and held on with an ease that settled her acid and cooled her blood, finally finding that middle ground between frigid and fission.

“Explain the single seating.” “I had a friend here on Thursday.” “And he had to go back to work. Where does he work?” “Bar in Jersey.” Curiosity flashed in the blue, but then it was gone and Nina must have imagined it, looking for more common ground and mutual understanding. Her fingers looked minuscule between his.

“If I told you that I know the new owner of the Mets,” Nina started, “because I went to college with his girlfriend, and he’s been listening to me talk about this team for the better part of a decade now, so he decided to spend some of his inherited millions to buy it, and now that same girlfriend is sitting up there perpetually confused why I like to be out here, do you think you’d hate me on principle?” One blink. Two. Head tilt. Jaw clench. His lips popped when they opened.

“No.” “No?” “No,” he echoed, “Nikolai Lantsov shouldn’t have spent so much money on your shortstop’s contract.” “Wasn’t an error.” Both shoulders lifted.

“Nina Zenik,” she said, a tardy greeting that should have happened well before the hand holding. The hand holding continued.

“Matthias Helvar.” “Did you bring a pen?” He pulled another one out of his jacket pocket.

They disagreed on no less than half a dozen calls. Impressive, since they didn’t actually start paying attention to their separate score sheets and books until early in the third inning after Nina had barely cleared the cheese sauce off the corner of her page.

Introducing themselves made it feel as if they’d crested another level in whatever the proper term for this not-quite relationship was.

Jabs weren’t nearly as sharp, but elbows brushed and noses scrunched. Makeshift disdain blurred against subtle infatuation, sunshine in his hair and pressing against the barrier of Nina’s consistently reapplied sunscreen. They talked. Laughed. Shouted and screamed, standing at different times. Much to the chagrin of everyone around them.

She didn’t bother asking about the Chase Utley jersey. Knew that it was as much a part of Matthias’s fandom as the Piazza jersey was to hers. Connecting him to something that was only partially his, because no matter how much this sport might be capable of sweeping over them, of bringing them along with the current, there was a riptide always threatening just below the surface. Capable of drowning and filling lungs, leaving them both taking on water and hastily constructed metaphors.

Plus, they both hated the Yankees. So, they talked about that.

Talked about places in the city they liked to go, Nina’s knowledge of hole-in-the-wall restaurants leaving his eyes as wide as she’d hoped they could be, tiny pools she was more than willing to dive into. With perfect form.

Laughter became the new normal for the pair of them, chancing glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking. They always were. As if those magnets were real and forceful, leaving them both grinning like idiots whenever they were caught in the act.

Once an inning, then.

Matthias didn’t sing during the seventh-inning stretch, but Nina was loud enough for the pair of them. Especially when she was standing on her seat, a hand flat on the small of her back.

“So you don’t fall,” Matthias explained, and the words immediately branded themselves on that corner of her brain where Nina kept good things.

They shared a plastic helmet of swirl ice cream. With rainbow sprinkles.

He called them jimmies.

She made fun of him.

And then—

It was over.

No drama. No walk-off hits. No extra innings. Just a Mets win that didn’t require the bottom of the ninth. And she was happy with that, she was. Less so with the way her stomach dropped as soon as her knees bent and her chin lifted, barely tempered hope and the sort of want that did not require magnets to direct her gaze.

Matthias loomed above her, casting shadows and the desire to finally push her fingers into his hair was nearly too much to ignore. Nina did. In favor of what came next because she knew what came next, and this was not that serious. Sitting on opposing lines of a flimsy at best baseball rivalry did not mean she couldn’t push up on her toes and catch the mouth of someone who no longer felt like a stranger. Until that same mouth inevitably opened and she got to do whatever she wanted with her tongue.

Only—

One of the season tickets started grumbling, and the sea of fans pushed forward and the only way Nina stayed upright was because of the arm around her waist. Matthias’s nose ticked her skin along the back of her neck.

“Told ya,” he mumbled, and if he saw the goosebumps, he didn’t mention them.

That was nice.

He was nice.

She was—

A mess, at best.

Mostly because there was no kissing. Almost like they were nervous of what would happen if they did. Of shattering this tremulous understanding and shaky alliance, but Matthias’s fingers squeezed Nina’s hip before he said, “See you tomorrow.”

She did not see him tomorrow.

When tomorrow was tonight and now and Zoya and Genya kept doing circles around the room.

Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN required a certain amount of protocol and it was the first broadcast with Nikolai in the owner’s box, which meant plenty of shots at the owner’s box, and Nina sat in her very plush, decidedly warm seat, with only minimal argument.

There was champagne, so. That helped.

Plus, she figured she’d— “Is it a guy?” Genya asked without preamble, propping her chin on her hand. “Is that why you don’t want to hang out?” Nina sighed. “You know me better than that.” “Sure, sure, sure, looked real cozy down there, though.” “Are you spying on me?” “Nah, Zoya was.” Frustration clawed at Nina’s consciousness. Surprise did not. This was par for the course and several other out-of-place sports cliches.

Zoya finished her drink before adding, “I didn’t leave this suite all afternoon, yesterday, the security guards that Nikolai knows in that section though…” “That’s splitting hairs,” Nina argued. “And they were just doing their job,” Nikolai added, shouting in a way a multi-millionaire absolutely should not. Zoya rolled her eyes.

“Whatever they were doing,” Nina said, “they didn’t need to be doing it. What if someone got robbed while they were watching me?” “You think people are getting robbed in broad daylight inside this stadium?” “Maybe!” “Were lots of Phillies fans here,” Genya pointed out. Laughter clung to her words, quiet snickers from the rest of the assorted peanut gallery. Before they noticed that Nina wasn’t lacking. Might have paled, if the matching expressions she was met with were any indication. “Oh,” Genya exhaled, “good looking Phillies fan, huh?” Nina grit her teeth. “He knows Brum.” “The bastard,” Nikolai sneered.

“Most people don’t like him.” “Because he’s a bastard, yeah.” “How’d the Phillies fan know Brum?” Zoya asked, and it wasn’t like Nina wanted to tell them. Words poured out of her all the same, excitement carving its way into the conversation because even if she could rationalize the lack of kissing after a three-day conversation and occasional argument, none of her friends could understand how she didn’t get his number.

Neither could she, quite frankly.

“This is either disgustingly romantic,” Nikolai said, “or it’s exceedingly dumb. Of both of you.” Genya clicked her tongue. In agreement, Nina figured. “Second one, for sure. Do we have to go arrest him for something? Bring him up here, nervous and scared—” “Same sentiment,” Nina mumbled. “—Only for him to see you, awash in a sea of moonlight and outfield lights, and then you live happily ever after despite your baseball allegiances?” “He hates the Yankees too.” “Something, at least,” Zoya said, but it was missing the edge. The acid. The anger Nina had almost prepared herself for. “You going to go down there, or….”

Finishing the sentence was pointless when Nina was already standing, Nikolai’s laugh ringing in her ears as she did her best to push her finger straight through the elevator button. She bobbed on the balls of her feet, impatience skittering up her spine and there were too many buttons and too much laughter, but that was likely a good thing, and the security guards didn’t stop her.

From running into the section.

Only to find two sets of empty seats. His and hers. A weird, depressing, matching set.

Nina waited. Stood at the top of the section stairs, waiting for a flash of familiar hair or those eyes that she probably hadn’t dreamed about the night before. Never came. The goosebumps did, for an entirely new and even more depressing reason.

The security guard asked her to leave. Twenty-eight minutes after the last out.

Matthias hadn’t been at the game.

To be a Mets fan, was to wait.

For wins. For David Wright’s body to heal. For that same rush that came in 2015, only this time, it also came up with a World Series championship attached to it.

Nina wasn’t very good at waiting.

Summer crept forward. As it was apt to do. Going back to the ballpark was second nature to Nina, but the Mets were on their West Coast swing, and spending a week and a half with Zoya and Genya touring the greater California coast wasn’t entirely appealing. So, she was in New Jersey.

Leaning against the bar of the Crow Club, Nina watched the crowd. Most of them saturated with fruity alcohol, drinks that never came with those little umbrellas because the thought of such a thing would have set Kaz’s teeth on edge, but this was Atlantic City and that required a certain level of nonsense to be met consistently.

Plus, Nina knew Inej liked those drinks.

And that was that, for Kaz. As they say.

Heads turned at tables while she watched, conversations that only occasionally acknowledged the baseball games on TVs hanging above them, others recounting beach exploits from that afternoon and plans for the rest of the evening, a steady din of noise and humanity that somehow made it easier for Nina to breathe.

It smelled like salt when she did.

“Looking awfully thoughtful,” Inej said, appearing out of nowhere to grin knowingly at Nina. “Give you a nickel for them.” “They’re not worth that much.” “What about one of those tokens from the casino down the boardwalk?” “Does Kaz know Jesper went to play there again?” “Absolutely.” “And?” “And what?” Inej parroted. “Who are you looking for, exactly?” “No one.” It was the wrong answer. A telling answer. An answer Nina didn’t realize she was capable of providing until the very moment those five letters in that specific order passed between lips in desperate need of ChapStick. And kissing. Gods, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t kissed him.

“Our dear, darling Nina is pining,” Jesper explained. Drink in hand, the soft clink of casino tokens was as absurd as it was not, a mix of youth and age and responsibility and not. The perfect blend of summertime status.

Nina took a sip of his drink before he could offer. She assumed he would offer.

“For that,” Jesper hissed, “I’ll tell Inej the rest of the story.” He did. Spared no expense, really. Recounted scorebooks and shouting matches, although some dramatic license was taken at that point, drawing a small crowd that included a guy Nina had never met before, staring openly at Jesper like he’d hung the moon. She’d make fun of him for that. Maybe. After the story. Probably.

Inej was a rapt audience, taking in details and occasionally letting her eyes flit toward Nina. Who never once disputed anything. There was nothing to dispute. The goddamn paper airplane was still sitting on her goddamn nightstand.

“And you just never saw him again?” Inej asked. Nina shook her head. “That’s tragic. Not—maybe not grand scheme, world level, but tragic all the same.” “No kissing either,” Jesper added.

Nina’s heart dropped. Shattered at her feet. Like one of those plates, you could shoot at in the arcade. “How do you know that?” “I didn’t, until right now. Simple assumption, though. Who could pine at your level if there’d been previous making out?” “Two different things,” Inej murmured.

Jesper hummed in agreement. “And Nina wanted both. Fraternizing with the enemy.” “He hated the Yankees, too.” “So, what? The enemy of my enemy is my friend? My good-looking friend?” “He was good-looking, right?” That earned her another hum — and got Jesper a look of passing consternation from the guy at his side. Nina desperately needed to learn names in a more timely fashion. Determined to remedy at least one situation, she took a deep breath and immediately, very nearly died.

It was very dramatic.

Sweeping, even.

Because the door opened and she knew the music didn’t stop and the Earth didn’t pause mid-rotation, but it felt like her center of balance had been inextricably altered and that wasn’t the bad thing it should have been when Matthias Helvar took his first step into the Crow Club.

Not falling over really was a rather monumental miracle.

If she decided to move, Nina did not remember it. Could not bother with something as menial as cognitive reasoning or the ability of the neurons in her brain to properly fire, not when she was twisting around tables and reminding herself of all the very important properties oxygen possessed. In regard to continued consciousness.

He didn’t move. He waited. Watched. Documented her, it felt like.

She wasn’t entirely opposed.

Their shoes nearly brushed.

“Huh,” Matthias breathed, slumping slightly to get into her eye line. Or just closer to her. The specifics didn’t matter. “I was right, then.” “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “You said your friend worked at a bar in Jersey.” “This is a bar in Jersey.” “Yeah, we might be going in circles, actually.” “What are you doing here?” Nina was dimly aware of Jesper shouting something, but the buzz between her ears was far too loud and even the concept of pulling her gaze away from Matthias’s made her want to grit her teeth together until she ground them down completely.

She licked her lips.

He smiled. “After I got hurt,” Matthias explained, “I didn’t know what way was up. So, I went...up. Best as I could, really, up the Shore.” “Is that a joke?” “No, I thought your friend looked familiar. Was driving me nuts, honestly.” “How?” “Twenty questions, Ms. Met.” “Matthias!”

Her voice cracked. Her foot stomped. Air crackled and the world very likely did shift because the hands on Nina’s cheeks were warm and perfectly sized to pull her that much closer and she was legitimately proud of herself. For not stepping on his feet. He didn’t really give her the chance.

Rocking against each other, there was a joke about tides and current to be made and Nina pushed them back, down or up, and direction didn’t matter and time didn’t matter. Sports allegiance was the least of her worries. Not when Matthias’s arm found her waist and there was something to be said for the stretch of his upper body. Capable, as it was, of lifting her up and he was ten-thousand times better at any tongue thing than she could have possibly imagined.

Tracing her lips and twisting around her own, like he was taking a very personal and detailed inventory. One of his thumbs brushed against Nina’s cheeks, but she honestly couldn’t figure out which one. Everything was sensation and feeling, a bases-clearing double that kept the rally alive and the roar in the background wasn’t the crowd at Citi Field, but Inej perched on the edge of the bar and Jesper balanced on the rungs of a rickety stool, and they only broke apart to fall back together.

Nina closed her eyes.

Better to remember, that way.

To let her breath catch whenever Matthias’s neck dipped again, the sort of angle that sonnets were written for, and epic romances documented. Right side up and cross dimensions and Nina’s eyelashes fluttered. Open, closed. Once, twice.

He was still there.

“You go down the Shore, everybody knows that,” Nina whispered, still somehow sounding like herself. Good, that was good. And only good, that time.

“I think you’re getting paid by the disagreement.” “I liked shouting your name.” His eyes—

Sparkled, maybe.

She didn’t even hate herself for thinking that.

“Probably about as much as I enjoyed hearing it,” Matthias said, “and I’ve been here before. Spent that summer drinking at,” his head jerked toward the corner where Inej waved, “that corner. This was as far away from school and baseball and everything I thought was gone as I could find.” “Ah, the scorebook makes sense now.” “Does it just?” “You know baseball isn’t often predictable nor nearly that organized. That’s the appeal, so people claim.” “They do,” Matthias admitted, “but I—is that demon-looking guy still working here?” “Kaz owns this bar.” “Of course he does. You know everyone, don’t you Ms. Met?” “Impressive like that.” Humming wasn’t really her favorite of the audible, non-word responses, but Nina heard something different in that sound than she ever had before. Almost like hope and something worth waiting for, if only because the waiting found her first.

She kissed the bottom of his chin.

It was all she could reach.

“I really wanted you to be here, Nina,” Matthias said, “and I’m sorry I wasn’t there Sunday. For that game, I—that wasn’t part of the plan, but...well, Brum had set up this whole interview with a college team in the middle of nowhere, thinking I’d be good with that and—” “You weren’t good with that?” His hair shook when his head did. “Not really, no.” “Did he kick you out of your hotel?”

“Smart too.” “Total package.” “Yeah,” Matthias said, a note of awe that made Nina’s skin prickle, “anyway, I’m pretty much in New York full-time now, but trying to find you there seemed impossible.” “So you figured you’d try a bar in the middle of Atlantic City?” “I leave a very strong impression,” Jesper yelled, practically jumping off the stool when Kaz glared. Inej’s smile was hypnotic.

“Something like that,” Matthias agreed, “so this is the part where we actually give each other our phone numbers and then—” His arm tightened again, finding a bit of space that certainly hadn’t been there twelve seconds before. Just enough to make sure Nina heard him mumble I like you before he kissed her. Or she kissed him.

Either or, really.

They went to Yankee Stadium on Labor Day weekend.

Nikolai pulled some strings to get them suite seats with complimentary well drinks and never-ending popcorn and both Matthias and Nina wore wholly out of place jerseys. Supporting neither of the teams on the field. Just each other, maybe. At least without much argument. They had better things to do, anyway. Fingers laced together, Nina shouted at the field and Matthias stared at anyone who dared glance in their direction and it was weird and wonderful and exactly what sports was supposed to be.

Caring about something beyond reason, something bigger and better than any one person was alone.

#matthias x nina #helnik #helnik fanfiction #nina zenik #matthias helvar #soc fanfic #insert shrug emoji here #every now and then i have these like...five hour bursts where i write all these words at once #this is the product of one of those

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365days365movies · 3 years

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March 12, 2021: Jason and the Argonauts (Review)

We gotta revitalize the mythology epic film.

I loved this movie...mostly. I’ll get to the “mostly” of it all, but I need to first say that I love the idea of this film. I desperately want more films based (faithfully) on Greek mythology. Please. PLEASE. And I know, I know, Paramount made a Clash of the Titans reboot in 2010, and it was...

...bad. It was really bad. Also probably ended Sam Worthington’s career, because dude VANISHED into the aether of Hollywood after this movie, and its equally bad sequel, Wrath of the Titans. I know, OK? But I still desperately want Greek mythology films.

And yeah, this would be an...OK start, but there’s so much potential! We’ve had Troy to cover Homer’s Iliad, and Troy wasn’t terrible, but we NEED an Odyssey movie, for the love of GOD. Do you know how much goddamn potential there is for an Odyssey movie?

And I’m fully aware of O Brother Where Art Thou, but it’s loosely based on the story at best. We need an Odyssey movie, is all I’m saying. Not just that, though. We need a new movie about Hercules (non-Disney, and NOT starring the Rock), a movie about a normal Greek dude navigating the complex world of the gods, maybe a movie about Theseus or Perseus (again, yes, I know), and, of course, a Jason and the Argonauts movie.

I need this. I need this more than I can express. Oh, and I really want these films to be accurate, not the fast-and-loose approach to mythology that 1963′s film incarnation played. And oh...let’s get to THAT, shall we? Check out Part One and Part Two of the Recap for more on that, if you’d like more details!

Review

Cast and Acting: 9/10

Much to my everlasting surprise, the acting in this film is actually pretty good! Yeah, it’s definitely got that stereotypical 1960s flair, but it actually makes sense for an epic film based on Greek mythology. It all feels very epic, very grand, and the actors definitely help to contribute to that feeling. Up top, of course, you’ve got Todd Armstrong playing the noble Jason...kinda. Yeah, we’ll get to that, but he only played the character physically, while his voice was overdubbed by Tim Turner. Which...yeah, again, more on that later. But Armstrong is backed by some good support, especially Honor Blackman, Laurence Naismith, and Nancy Kovack, whose turn as the future murderer Medea actually shows her potential villainy in her sparse performance. Seriously, I was impressed by her characterization! This movie surprised me in terms of its acting. Although...Nigel Green as Heracles is only OK, and I’m a little chuffed that he only lasted through some of the film. Of course, that harkens to my BIGGEST issue...

Plot and Writing: 7/10

...OK, look, I know in my heart-of-hearts that judging the story of this film, adapted by Beverley Cross and Jan Read, as based on The Argonautica by Appolonius Rhodius, is unfair. It is. I’m aware of this, don’t worry. But that said...it’s not as good as the original story. Or, at the very least, it makes some weird choices that could’ve been changed. I went through the major inaccuracies in my Recap (too much, at that), so I won’t touch on most of that here. BUT, I do have some points to get through. Bear with me (or just skip this section, let’s be honest).

Missing Argonauts: Literally, the only major Argonaut from the story that actually gets to do something is Heracles, and he DOESN’T GET TO BE HERACLES. Dude is the most famous demigod of all time, and he never gets to do anything more than hold open a door and piss of Talos. Yeah. Disappointing as HELL. But that’s not THE WORST of it. Sure, Atalanta can be unused, as she wasn’t in many versions of the myth anyway. But the Wind Brothers? They’re necessary for defeating the Harpies, but they’re nowhere to be seen. Castor and Pollux? Oh, they’re in the movie, and they don’t do ANYTHING. Orpheus? ORPHEUS? YOU DIDN’T INCLUDE ORPHEUS AT ALL? Orpheus is arguably the most important of the Argonauts outside of Jason and Heracles, and he’s just...nonexistent. That’s just patently offensive. You really couldn’t give Harryhausen the chance to make Sirens? That would’ve been amazing! Speaking of them...

Missing and Misplaced Perils: Yeah, OK, this one’s a little unfair, because I don’t think putting Talos in here was a bad idea AT ALL. It’s actually my favorite part of the film, not gonna lie. But yeah, he was present on the return journey, not the journey to Colchis. But OK, whatever. At least we have the Harpies, the Clashing Rocks, the Sirens, the...oh wait. Where are the Sirens? I guess with no Orpheus, there are no Sirens, but...we really should’ve had both in here, come on.

Acastus: Yeah, here’s a weird criticism, but Acastus really was misused in here as well. He was actually one of Jason’s Argonauts, and came back from the journey on good terms with him...until Medea manipulated and tricked his sisters into cutting their father into pieces in order to gain promised immortality and boil those pieces for consumption. Yeah. Medea’s evil as SHIT. But turning Acastus into a heel-turn villain was...unnecessary, I think. Not that bad, though, so I guess this is a nitpick. I guess I would’ve liked to see the group return, and have had Acastus side with Jason against Pelias. I think that would’ve been neat. And speaking of Pelias...

The Ending: WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THE ENDING? Really? No conclusion to the story? What happens on the journey back? What happens with Pelias and Jason? Does Jason become King of Thessaly, now that Acastus is dead? Come on, man, what the hell! I HATE how that film ends so much, because there’s just nothing. Jason escapes by jumping off a cliff, the soldiers are still around (and are probably gonna kill the Colchian soldiers out of bloodlust), and Jason and Medea kiss, AND THE MOVIE ENDS. GAAAAAAAH

...Yeah, the plot could use some work, I think. But the worst part is...it’s still not a bad version of the story. Yeah! Despite all of my problems with it, most of the changes narratively make sense, outside of the original Argonautica. So, all things considered, I’m probably being too harsh on this film for personal reasons. What can I say, I love Greek mythology? But, I can still admit that this film is well-plotted out...for what it is.

Directing and Cinematography: 8/10

Is it the most groundbreaking direction by Don Chaffey, or the best cinematography by Wilkie Cooper? Well, no, but it’s still good. There aren’t exactly any amazing and groundbreaking shots here, but I also have no complains about either of these categories. So, yeah, not bad, guys. However...

Production and Art Design: 10/10

...the film still LOOKS fantastic. Because the production, set, and art design of this movie are all fantastic. From the costumes, to the Argo, to the authentic-looking sets, this movie looks great. And, of course...there are the effects by Ray Harryhausen. Which deserves the biggest chef’s kiss I can muster. Some of you may be thinking, “I dunno man, those effects don’t fully hold up.” To which I must remind you, that this film is 57 years old. FIFTY. SEVEN. Look, for the time period, this is groundbreaking, and it honestly looks pretty good today, even with the advent of better technologies. And the fact that these are technically physical objects does make this film look more...well, real, to be honest. It all looks pretty real, in a way. And they’re even pretty well-integrated with the live-action actors, much to my surprise. Gotta say, I love it. Antiquated, maybe, but also authentic. I love it.

Music and Editing: 9/10

Music, done by Bernard Hermann, is stellar and BOOMING. It’s an epic score for an epic story, and I also love it. As for the editing by Maurice Rootes, it’s also pretty great. Except for the sound editing. Yeah, um, the sound-editing for this movie isn’t great. It’s not bad, but it definitely isn’t amazing, especially in the base of dubbing for Jason and Medea. Oh, yeah, she’s dubbed over by Eva Haddon, forgot to mention that. And it’s pretty obvious. It’s a weak point, is what I’m saying.

88%, which might be a little...biased.

I love Greek mythology (he said for the eightieth time), and that may have colored my perception of this film. And yet, I do still really like this movie! It’s a classic film, and I’m looking forward to the other film of it’s caliber coming in a few days!

For the next one, though, I’ll have to do something non-Greek myth based. I mean, to continue the previously established trend...back to Japan for 3 HOURS? Oh...oh shit. I may have to break this next one up.

March 13, 2021: Kwaidan (1965)

#jason and the argonauts #don chaffey #ray harryhausen #todd armstrong #nancy kovack #honor blackman #gary raymond #laurence naismith #greek mythology #argonauts #argonautica #apollonius rhodius #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #movie review

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How Ted Lasso Sneakily Crafted its Empire Strikes Back Season

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This article contains Ted Lasso spoilers through season 2 episode 8.

Perhaps you’ve heard, but Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso was the subject of some dreaded Discourse recently.

Since the Internet is infinite and we privileged few in the media have nothing but time, a handful of features came out weeks ago essentially questioning what Ted Lasso season 2 was even all about. Many of these features were well-written, well-argued, and fair, but when filtered through Twitter’s anti-nuance machine (i.e. Twitter itself), every feature boiled down to the same reductive take: Ted Lasso season 2 doesn’t have a conflict.

In some respects, this take was the inevitable reaction to the metanarrative surrounding Ted Lasso in the first place. Despite drawing its inspiration from a series of somewhat cynical NBC Sports Premier League commercials, the first season of Ted Lasso was all about the transformative power of kindness.

Or at least that’s what we critics declared it to be. And I don’t blame us. Awash in a flood of screeners about antiheroes, dystopias, and the end of the world, the simple kindness of Ted Lasso seemed revolutionary. They made a TV show about a guy who is…nice? They can do that? But the inherent goodness of its lead character was always Ted Lasso’s elevator pitch, not its thesis.

There’s been a darkness at the center of Ted Lasso since its very first moment, when an American man got on a flight to London in a doomed attempt to save his marriage. And, as season 2’s brilliant eighth episode rolls around, it’s become clear that that darkness is what the show has really been “about” this whole time.

Season 2 episode 8 “Man City” (the title is referring to AFC Richmond’s FA Cup match against opponent Manchester City but also stealthily reveals that this installment will be all about men and their respective traumas) is quite simply the best episode of Ted Lasso yet. It also might be the best episode of television this year. Near the episode’s end, right before AFC Richmond plays a crucial FA Cup match against the mighty Manchester City, coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) finally comes clean with his coaching staff. He’s been suffering from panic attacks of late. His assistant coaches hear him, accept him, and then head off to the pitch where Man City absolutely obliterates their team.

Man City destroys AFC Richmond. They annihilate them. Embarrass them. Stuff them into a locker and steal their lunch money. The final score is 4-0 but it might as well be 400-0. The coaching staff is rattled but the players are hit even harder. Richmond’s star striker and former Man City player Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) is forced to endure watching his scumbag father cheer for his hometown team from the Wembley Stadium stands at the expense of his son.

After the game, Jamie’s father, James (Kieran O’Brien), enters the locker room where he drunkenly accosts him for being a loser and demands that Jamie grant access to the Wembley Stadium pitch for him and his scumbag friends to run around on. When Jamie refuses, his father pushes him, so Jamie reflexively punches him right in the face. James is dragged out of the locker room by Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), leading a stunned and traumatized Jamie Tartt standing in the middle of the room, as if in a spotlight of pure pain, surrounded by teammates too afraid to even approach him. And then something amazing happens…

Here’s the dirty secret about television: there’s a lot of it. Due to the sheer number of TV shows released each year, even the best of them are destined to become little more than memories long-term. Sometimes all you can ask from multiple episodes and seasons of television is to provide you with one moment, one line, or one warm feeling to carry with you into the future. I don’t know how much I’ll remember from Ted Lasso 30-40 years from now when I’m immobile and reclined in my floating entertainment unit, Wall-E style. But I know I’ll at least remember the moment that Roy hugs Jamie.

The great Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) – a character so disconnected from his own emotions that some fans are convinced he’s CGI – embraces the one person in the world he is least likely to embrace. As Roy and Jamie wordlessly hug, it’s hard to tell which man is more shocked by the moment. Ultimately, however, it might be Ted Lasso himself who is hit hardest. Shortly after seeing Roy play father to the younger Jamie, Ted quickly exits the locker room and calls sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles) on his Apple TV+-apporved iPhone.

“My father killed himself when I was 16. That happened. To me and to my mom,” Ted says, weeping.

And that, my friends, is what Ted Lasso is all about. Pain. And dads. But mostly pain.

None of us can say that Ted Lasso didn’t warn us it was coming. To go back to the discourse of it all real quick – I don’t blame anyone for not picking up on the direction that this show was so clearly heading in. Ted Lasso is, first and foremost, a sitcom. The beauty of sitcoms is that you welcome them into your home to watch at your own pace and your own terms. If having Ted Lasso on in the background so you can occasionally see the handsome mustache man who smiles while you fold your laundry is the way you’ve chosen to engage with the show, then great! Just know that season 2 has been operating on a deeper level this whole time as well.

Let’s take things all the way back to the beginning – back to before season 2 even began. You’ve likely heard the old philosophical thought experiment “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well Jason Sudeikis’s interviews leading up the season 2 premiere beg an equally as interesting hypothetical “how many times can one man mention The Empire Strikes Back before someone notices??”

Sudeikis referred to Ted Lasso season 2 as the show’s “Empire Strikes Back” multiple times before the premiere including in his local Kansas City Star and his technically local USA Today. The show even explicitly mentions the second Star Wars film in this season’s first episode when Richmond general manager Higgins (Jeremy Swyft) tells Ted that his kids are watching the trilogy for the first time. Sudeikis (who co-created and produces the show) and showrunner Bill Lawrence clearly want us to take the idea that Ted Lasso season 2 is The Empire Strikes Back seriously. And why would that be?

Think of how ESB differs from its two Star Wars siblings in the original trilogy. This is the story that features arguably the series most iconic moment when Luke Skywalker discovers his dad is a dick on a literal universal level. It also has the only unambiguously downer ending of any original trilogy Star Wars film. Luke is thoroughly defeated in this installment. Having one’s hand chopped off by their father and barely escaping with their life is definitely the Star Wars version of a 4-0 defeat.

The Empire Strikes Back can safely be boiled down into two concepts:

Dads are complicated.

Everything sucks.

When viewed through those two conceptual prisms, so much of Ted Lasso season 2 begins to make more sense.

Episode 1 opens with the death of a dog and then leads into a classic Ted Lasso speech that could serve as this season’s mission statemetn. After recounting the story of how he cared for his sick neighbor’s dog, Ted concludes with: “It’s funny to think about the things in your life that can make you cry knowing that they existed then become the same thing that can make you cry knowing that they’re now gone. Those things come into our lives to help us get from one place to a better one.”

Things like…a father who you didn’t have nearly enough time with? Following episode 1 (and following just about every episode this season), Bill Lawrence took to Twitter to assuage viewers’ fears about a lack of central conflict this season. He had this to say about Ted’s big speech.

Look, Merrill. It was thought out, but the speech he gives after (Written by Jason himself – I loved it) is the core of the season, but we knew some people might bum out.

— Bill Lawrence (@VDOOZER) July 27, 2021

Sorry, truly. Ted’s speech after (which I love, but am obviously biased) is a big part of the season. But it sounds like you had a crappy thing happen recently.

— Bill Lawrence (@VDOOZER) July 28, 2021

It’s not. But Ted’s speech has big relevance. Stick around!

— Bill Lawrence (@VDOOZER) July 26, 2021

He also had this to say about dads.

Effin Dads, man. Love mine so, but he’s struggling a bit.

— Bill Lawrence (@VDOOZER) July 27, 2021

“Effin dads” and our complicated relationships with them are all over Ted Lasso season 2. In the very next episode, Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh) tells Ted “You know, my father says that every time you’re on TV, he’s very happy that I’m here. That I’m in safe hands with you.”

Ted smiles at this bit of info but not as warmly as you might expect. Because to Ted, a dad isn’t a reassuring presence but rather someone you love who will just leave when you need him the most. That’s why he’s been trying to be the perfect father figure this whole time. That’s why he did something as extreme as leaving his family behind in Kansas while he heads off to London. If giving his wife space was the only way to preserve the family and remain a good dad, then he was going to give her a whole ocean of space.

Moreover, Ted hasn’t just been trying to serve as a father figure to his son this whole time but to everyone else as well. Sam’s comment to Ted reminds him that not everyone has a good dad, which encourages him to bring Jamie into the fold in the first place.

As time goes on, however, the stress of being the consummate father to everyone in his orbit begins to wear on Ted. Throughout the entirety of this season, Ted Lasso appears to be trying to be Ted Lasso just a bit too hard. His energy levels are too high. His jokes go on too long. The same life lessons that worked last year aren’t working this year. AFC Richmond opens with an embarrassing streak of draws before Jamie’s immense talents set things straight.

It all culminates in this season’s sixth episode when Ted has his second panic attack in as many years. This time it’s in public during an important game. The experience sends Ted running through the concourse of the stadium until he somehow ends up in the dark on Dr. Fieldstone’s couch, instinctively, like a wounded animal.

It’s certainly no coincidence that this panic attack occurs on the same day that Ted received a call from his son’s school asking him to pick him up, not realizing that he’s an ocean away. In that moment, Ted can’t help but remember what it’s like to be left behind by his own father and subconsciously wonder if he’s doing the same.

Though the shallow waters of Ted Lasso season 2 may have appeared consequence free for half its run, beneath the surface was a tidal wave of conflict. Just because the conflict wasn’t taking place between a happy-go-lucky football coach and a villainous owner doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

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Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin is terrible at meeting deadlines but great at writing. According to him (and William Faulkner, from whom he borrows the quote), the only conflict worth writing about is that of the human heart with itself. That’s something that The Empire Strikes Back understood. And it’s something that Ted Lasso season 2 does as well.

The post How Ted Lasso Sneakily Crafted its Empire Strikes Back Season appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3E4eqHF

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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miloscat · 3 years

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[Review] Conker: Live & Reloaded (XB)

Let’s see just how well this misguided remake/expansion holds up. This will be a long one!

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is my favourite N64 game. It’s cinematic and ambitious, technically impressive, has scads of gameplay variety with fun settings and setpieces, and when I first played it I was just the right age for the humour to land very well for me. A scant four years later Rare remade it for the Xbox after their acquisition by Microsoft, replacing the original multiplayer modes with a new online mode that would be the focus of the project, with classes and objectives and such.

First, an assessment of the single-player campaign. On a revisit I can see the common criticisms hold some water: the 3D platformer gameplay is a bit shaky at times, certain gameplay segments are just plain wonky and unfair, and some of the humour doesn’t hold up. It’s got all the best poorly-aged jokes: reference humour, gross-out/shock humour, and poking fun at conventions of the now dormant 3D collectathon platformer genre. I also am more sensitive these days to things like the sexual assault and homophobia undertones to the cogs, or Conker doing awful things for lols. Having said that, there’s plenty that I still find amusing, and outside of a few aggravatingly difficult sequences (surf punks, the mansion key hunt, the submarine attack, the beach escape) I do still appreciate the range of things you do in the game.

As for the remake, I’m not sure it can be called an improvement by any metric. Sure, there’s some minor additions. There’s a new surgeon Tediz miniboss, the new haunted baby doll enemy, and the opening to Spooky has been given a Gothic village retheme along with an added—though unremarked on—costume for Conker during this chapter based on the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing flop. Other changes are if anything detrimental. The electrocution and Berri’s shooting cutscenes have been extended, thus undermining the joke/emotional impact. The original game used the trope of censoring certain swear words to makes lines more funny; the remake adds more censorship for some reason, in one case (the Rock Solid bouncer scene) ruining the joke, and Chucky Poo’s Lament is just worse with fart noises covering the cursing.

The most egregious change, and one lampshaded in the tutorial, is the replacement of the frying pan (an instant and satisfying interaction) with a baseball bat which must be equipped, changing the control and camera to the behind-the-back combat style, and then swung with timed inputs to defeat the many added armoured goblings and dolls carelessly dumped all throughout the game world. This flat out makes the game less fun to play through.

On top of this, all the music has been rerecorded (with apologies to Robin Beanland, I didn’t really notice apart from instances where it had to be changed, such as in Franky’s boss fight where the intensely frenetic banjo lead was drastically reduced as a concession to the requirement to actually play it in real life), and the graphics totally redone. Bad Fur Day made excellent use of textures, but with detail cranked up, the sixth generation muddiness, and a frankly overdone fur effect, something is lost. I’m not a fan of the character redesigns either; sure Birdy has a new hat, but I didn’t particularly want to see Conker’s hands, and the Tediz are no longer sinister stuffed bears but weird biological monster bears with uniforms. On top of all this you notice regular dropped details; a swapped texture makes for nonsensical dialogue in the Batula cutscene, and characters have lost some emotive animations. Plus, the new translucent scrolling speech bubbles are undeniably worse.

I could mention the understandable loading screens (at least they’re quick), the mistimed lip sync (possibly exacerbated by my tech setup), or the removal of cheats (not a big deal), but enough remake bashing. To be fair, the swimming controls have been improved and the air meter mercifully extended, making Bats Tower more palatable. And some sequences have been shortened to—I suppose—lessen gameplay tedium (although removing the electric eel entirely is an odd choice). But let’s cover the multiplayer. Losing the varied modes from the original is a heavy blow, as I remember many a fun evening spent in Beach, War, or Raptor, along with the cutscenes setting up each mode.

The new headline feature of this release is the Live mode. The new Xbox Live service allowing online multiplayer was integrated, although it’s all gone now. Chasing the hot trends of the time, it’s a set of class-based team missions, with the Squirrel High Command vs. the Tediz in a variety of scenarios, mostly boiling down to progressing through capture points or capture the flag. Each class is quite specialised and I’m not sure how balanced it is, plus there’s proto-achievements and unlocks behind substantial milestones none of which I got close to reaching (I don’t think I could get most of them anyway, not being “Live”).

The maps are structured around a “Chapter X” campaign in which the Tediz and the weasel antagonist from BFD Ze Professor (here given a new and highly offensive double-barrelled slur name) are initially fighting the SHC in the Second World War-inspired past of the Old War, before using a time machine, opening up a sci-fi theme for the Future War. These are mainly just aesthetic changes, but it’s a fun idea and lets them explore Seavor’s beloved wartime theming a bit more while also bringing in plenty of references to Star Wars, Alien, Dune, and Halo; mostly visual.

Unfortunately the plot is a bit incoherent, rushed through narration (unusually provided by professional American voice actor Fred Tatasciore rather than a Rare staffer doing a raspy or regional voice like the rest of the game) over admittedly nice-looking cutscenes. They also muddle the timeline significantly, seemingly ignoring the BFD events... and then the Tediz’ ultimate goal is to revive the hibernating Panther King, when the purpose of their creation was to usurp him in the first place! It expands on the Conker universe but in a way that makes the world feel smaller and more confusing. It’s weird, and also Conker doesn’t appear at all.

On top of this, I found the multiplayer experience itself frustrating. To unlock the full Chapter X, you need to play the first three maps on easy, then you can go through the whole six. But I couldn’t pass the first one on normal difficulty! The “Dumbots” seemed to have so much health and impeccable aim, while the action was so chaotic, obscured by intrusive UI, floating usernames, and smoke and other effects with loads of characters milling around, not to mention the confusing map layouts, the friendly fire, the instant respawns, and the spawncamping. Luckily I could play the maps themselves in solo mode with cutscenes and adjustable AI and options.

I found some classes much more satisfying than others. I tried to like the Long Ranger and the slow Demolisher, but found it difficult to be accurate. The awkward range of the Thermophile and the Sky Jockey’s rarely effective vehicles made them uncommon choices. I had most success with the simple Grunt, or the melee-range Sneeker (the SHC variant of which is sadly the sole playable female in the whole thing). You can pick up upgrade tokens during gameplay to expand the toolset of each class, which range from necessary to situational. But ultimately it’s a crapshoot, as I rarely felt that my intentions led to clear results.

Live & Reloaded is such a mess. The Reloaded BFD is full of odd decisions and baffling drawbacks, while the Live portion feels undercooked. I’d have preferred a greater focus on either one; a remake is unnecessary, especially only four years on, but a new single-player adventure would have been ace. And a multiplayer mode in this universe with its own story mode could be cool if it was better balanced and had more to it than just eight maps. As a source of some slight scrapings of new Conker content I appreciated it to some extent, but I can’t help being let down. I guess it’s true what they say... the grass is always greener. And you don’t really know what it is you have, until it’s gone... gone. Gone.

Yes, that ending is still genuinely emotionally affecting.

#review #conker #conker live and reloaded #Rare Ltd #xbox

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dhwty-writes · 4 years

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Zutara Week Day 4 - Celestial

Great, I fell behind... I’m sorry for the late contribution, but at least that means two stories today. Again, I advice you to check out the previous parts before reading, otherwise this won’t make a lot of sense. Have fun!

Read on AO3

"This has gotten out of hand," the Avatar chided and all Katara could do was try to stand tall and proud. "Katara, what in the names of all spirits?"

"I was just here to help," she defended herself. "Not once did I initiate the violence."

Aang sighed and leapt off Appa's saddle. "Where's the governor?"

"Technically that would be me." She hoped that she hadn't jumped too much upon hearing Zuko's voice next to her, his hand softly on her back to steady her. "But if you mean the man responsible for all of this, you better hurry to save him from Toph. She's having a field day."

"I will," Aang announced and brushed past them to get to Yozin.

"That was odd." Katara looked up to see Zuko frowning.

"What was odd?"

"Oh, I-" He glanced down and Katara could have sworn to see him blush. "Don't take me wrong, I just thought there would be a warmer reunion between you two." He looked away. "Not that it's any of my business."

She frowned. What on earth did he- oh. "Aang and I aren't a thing anymore," she stated matter-of-factly. "I haven't really seen him since."

He winced and took a hurried step back. "Oh. Um. Sorry. I didn't know."

She smiled and pat his cheek affectionately. "Go listen to the palace gossip a bit more. It's been public knowledge for a year now." She yawned and her shoulders slumped. "I guess I really should get some sleep."

"You can stay here!" he blurted.

Katara quirked an eyebrow.

The blush on his cheeks rose higher. "I mean, since the hospital got destroyed and all. I'm sure there's a room to be found where you can rest."

She smiled. "Thanks, Zuko. I'd appreciate that."

He smiled too and wandered off in search of one of his guards to show her to a room. Shortly after she collapsed on a rough futon and slept.

Katara slept for hours and when she woke, she found a plate of rice and a teapot beside her bed as well as a bowl of water. After the meagre meal and a quick waterbending bath she decided that she should better go and look at the havoc they had wreaked in the previous night, check on her rebels, treat the injured-

She was wandering through the abandoned corridors of the ship when she heard the yelling. 'Oh no,' she thought, sprinting in the direction of the noise. She wasn't feeling nearly well-rested enough to go through another battle and she doubted that Zuko was either.

She burst through the door onto the deck and dashed to the railing. But instead of attacking firebenders she only saw a pavilion where the old Team Avatar had sought shelter from the sweltering humid heat and Zuko and Aang seemed to be engaged in a ferocious argument. And while Sokka and Suki at least tried to calm them down, Toph stood idly by, apparently observing the clouds passing by.

Katara sighed. She wasn't sure if she hadn't preferred firebenders.

Calmly she walked over to them. "Hi everyone," she greeted them with a smile. "What did I miss?"

Aang scowled and crossed his arms, looking more like the twelve-year-old she had once broken out of an iceberg than a twenty-two-year-old avatar. Zuko huffed angrily and also looked to the side. He looked terrible, she noted and privately asked herself if he had slept at all. But that was a concern for another time.

"Sokka?" she prompted.

Her brother just shrugged and crossed the arms.

Before Katara could huff in frustration Toph answered: "Sparky and Twinkletoes are having an argument about whose responsibility this whole thing is. It's stupid."

"It's childish," Suki added.

"It's beside the point," Katara decided.

"Oh, sure, take his side," Aang muttered and it felt like the temperature dropped a few degrees.

Katara had to close her eyes and take a deep breath before continuing. "I am not taking any sides, Aang, I didn't even know what sides there were. But I've been here for three months, I think I know more about this conflict than most people."

"She's got a point," Sokka muttered.

Aang scrunched his nose. "Alright. So, let's hear the story."

She nodded and started telling the same story she had related to Zuko already. Well, mostly. It was a lot more matter-of-factly and less emotional. She didn't even know why she had felt the need to tell Zuko the other story. She didn't even know why she couldn't tell the others the true story. But when she was finished Aang and Zuko had both seemed to have sufficiently calmed down.

"And tonight?" Aang asked. "What happened?"

She frowned. "I'm not even sure. Ask those who have attacked us."

"Katara..." he pleaded.

She rolled her eyes and continued with her report: "It was just past midnight when I heard some unrest in the street. I sent two of the people staying at the hospital-"

"The rebels?"

She gritted her teeth. "The rebels. Anyways, I sent two of them to see what was going on. They returned half an hour later with burns all over their bodies. They had encountered about six guards in the streets, harassing the people in their houses. Ten more set out, I guess they got caught in fights somewhere along the line. I stayed back healing the injured and was just minding my own damn business and then they started attacking the hospital. I went out, stood my ground, Zuko showed up an hour or so later. I guess you all know the rest of the story."

Aang said: "Governor Yozin-"

"Yozin," Zuko interrupted him, "he's no governor anymore."

"Yozin," Aang admitted, "said that some of your rebels were causing unrest. Ignoring the curfew. Attacking the guards."

She quirked an eyebrow. "And you believe that."

"I am obligated to listen to all sides of the conflict."

"Aang, I can't believe you're this gullible! You know the drill; they will say anything they can to make us look like the bad guys."

"I know, Katara, and I also know that that's a two-way street."

"Even if that was true," Zuko chimed in, "Yozin had no right to command the guards. I had stripped him of his offices already. Besides that, he tried to declare he was ready to kill me this morning. He committed high treason."

"You asked me to come here, Zuko. So, I am here, let me do this my way."

"I asked you to come here when I thought this was a petty squabble. Things have changed. This is a Fire Lord problem now, not an Avatar problem."

He snorted. "No, I think this is exactly an Avatar problem! This has gotten out of hand."

"I know, Aang! But there's nothing you can do here. There's no conflict you can resolve because the only possible resolve is removing the cause. There's no gap you can bridge because that gap is far too wide. There's nothing the Avatar can do because what's needed here are politics. And that is a Fire Lord problem."

"Maybe we should try talking to Yozin-"

"Aang, I really don't want to overstep," Sokka said with a sigh, "but I think we're way past that point."

"Well, then why didn't you call me weeks ago, why didn't you-"

"I tried," Zuko said the same time Katara answered: "You know why."

All the eyes shifted to her and Katara looked away. "I'm sorry. I should probably go and see to the wounded." Before anyone could say anything, she bolted.

She found Ni in the town square that bore the evidence of her rampage last night and nearly winced. All that she had built up in the last weeks and months was destroyed and then she wasn't even there to clean up the mess.

Instead Ni had stepped in, relentlessly ordering the poor townspeople around that looked just as exhausted as Katara felt.

"I don't know why you even needed my help," she said in a poor attempt at a joke.

"Katara!" Ni exclaimed and her face lit up as she ran over to hug her. "I was so worried."

"Don't be," she tried to calm her down. "I don't go down that easily."

She smiled. "I didn't expect you to."

Katara tried to smile, too, but it came out as a grimace more likely than not. "How can I help? Any wounded?"

The woman gave her a critical once over. "I think you'd help best if you got some rest. You won't be much help if you're about to keel over."

"I'm fine," she insisted. "Everything's fine now. The Avatar's here after all. And I'd like to take my mind off things."

Her face hardened as she took the hint. "Right. And I guess that went just swimmingly." Katara looked away in an answer. Ni sighed. "Didn't think so. The injured are just two streets in that direction, the only house left standing. Your little earthbender friend didn't take kindly to firebenders hiding in the others."

She nodded and went on her way.

"But don't think I won't be keeping a close eye on you!" Ni called after her, finally drawing a tentative smile from her.

Healing was just what Katara needed now. It was tiring and trying with the hot sunrays boiling her flowing power until nothing was left but fickle steam. Oh, how she hated the days in the Fire Nation where she could barely feel the pull of the moon. But that way she had no other choice than to focus completely on the task before her. That way at least she didn't have to think of Aang and the unpleasant break-up a little over a year ago.

Ni came around when the gruelling heat of the sun just started to let up and brought food and tea Katara took thanking and ate quickly. Some of her rebels had nasty burns that not even Yugoda could heal. Still, she was glad that she had returned to the healing hut and the old master after the war. As much as she loved fighting, loved the feeling of her blood simmering and boiling with the thrill of the battle, the icy fear when a hit was just a bit to close, the war wasn't in need for warriors now. It was, however, in desperate need of healers. And she would never turn her back on people who needed her.

She just turned around a corner to get some bandages for one of the guards to wrap up his frost bites and of course - of course - that was the moment when Aang showed up.

"You should rest," he said.

"You don't have to tell me what to do," she replied stubbornly.

Aang sighed. "Please, Katara. You fought an entire night, slept half a day and spent hours now healing people. You're overexerting yourself."

"I am more than capable than knowing my limits, thank you very much."

"Katara, please," there was an agonised look on his face. "I just want to talk. Please."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was alright. She could be an adult about it. She could handle this conversation. They were bound to have it at some time, after all. "Okay," she said.

"Okay?" he repeated.

"Let's talk." She fixed her with his gaze. "But not here."

"Anywhere's fine by me." He sounded relieved.

She jerked her head towards the door and they stepped outside, where the heat still made the air flicker.

"So," she asked.

It took a while before he answered. "Katara, that was really reckless."

She didn't have to ask what he meant. "I know, you don't have to tell me." He could be talking about anything - coming here, staying, stepping in, stepping up. She knew that he didn't approve.

"Then why did you do it?"

"Because I was selfish, alright Aang? I was selfish and I wanted to prove that I could do something like this on my own. I have done it on my own in the past. I never meant for it to get out of hand."

"I know. I know that you couldn't have left for your life. And I'm sorry, too. For lashing out at Zuko and you, that wasn't right."

"Hm," she said.

"I'm also sorry for how things ended. I get it now. It's better if we're friends. The world needs us as friends. And I do, too. I'd like to be friends with you again, Katara."

She looked up at him smiling. "I'd like to be friends with you again, too, Aang." Then she pulled him into a tight hug.

When she let go, she felt like she had just shucked the weight of Appa off her shoulders. "So," she said and bumped into his side. "How's life?"

"Oh, you know. Calmed a spirit down in the Earth Kingdom. Opened an orphanage in the Southern Air Temple. Rode the unagi."

"Again, Aang? Why on earth would you do that?"

"I lasted almost five minutes this time! That's-"

"Two less than last time?" She shot him a grin and he pouted. Then they both laughed.

They started walking together, swapping stories watching the sun make its way across the sky until it set and it felt like they were really friends again.

"Right," Aang said as they reached the harbour. "I'll be staying with Appa. Good night, Katara."

"Good night, Aang," she answered and stood slightly lost on the quay.

"You're back late," Zuko's voice cut through the humid air of a Fire Nation night from where he stood at the railing of his ship. She hadn't even seen him standing there.

She crossed her arms and quirked and eyebrow. "Well, you're up late."

"Couldn't sleep," he answered as she drew closer. "Too much on my mind."

"Hm," she agreed quietly and stepped on the ship. "Have you slept at all?" she asked leaning on the railing beside him.

"A bit," he deflected her question. "How'd it go with Aang?"

"Alright, I guess. It seems like we're friends again."

"Is that- is that what you want?" he asked tentatively.

Katara sighed and looked up at the stars. "I don't know," she admitted. "I think it was good to get some distance. Maybe we needed that to get to know each other again. Sometimes that's just how it goes."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him avert his gaze. "I guess so," he murmured and she wasn't even sure if she was meant to hear it.

"That's not what I meant," she answered regardless, "that's not- That between us- these four years-" She scrunched her nose, not really sure where she was even getting at. "I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I regret it. And that I'm sorry."

"There's nothing you have to be sorry for," he said quietly and when she turned to look at him there was a hesitant smile dancing around his lips.

"I still am. We lost four years of our... relationship." She closed her eyes, just relishing in his presence. "And... I missed you. I really did." Then she leaned against his side, placing her head on his shoulder.

He hummed lowly. "I missed you, too," he whispered against her hair.

They stood silently like this for a while until Katara moved. "What now?" she asked.

"I brought something to drink," he answered. "If you want."

"Oh, keep talking," she joked.

He didn't. Keep talking, that was. Instead he turned and slid down the railing, laying his cloak out and patting the space beside him in invitation. Katara took the offered seat and the offered bottle and took a deep gulp.

"Did I ever tell you how much I hate your summers?" she asked and bent a trickle of sweat from her brow.

"You haven't." He quirked an eyebrow. "You're welcome to go back to your frozen wasteland any time you like."

She scrunched her nose. "Maybe I will. At least there the stars are right."

He hummed. "I remember. When I first started travelling, I was very confused. No-one had ever told me that the constellations changed."

She snorted in surprise. "You were in the navy."

"Not really but that's beside the point. I wasn't trained for the navy. The first year or so was a living hell while I tried to figure out how navigation worked."

That made her laugh and spit out half of the undoubtedly expensive alcohol they were drinking. "What I'd give to have seen that."

"As if you would've done any better," he grumbled.

"Excuse me? Of course I would have. We're sailors, for the spirits' sake. Our whole history is written in the stars."

"It is?"

She nodded.

"Tell me."

And so, she did. She told him of the polarbear-dog she had always seen at home that guarded the south and her cub that had wandered too far from its mother and got lost in the east. She took his hand to show him where it had left small footsteps in the sky. She told him of the boomerang that had shone brightly in the night sky when Sokka had been born and the penguin-seal and the whale and the sea-snake. She told him of the spirits dancing in the sky in the north and of Tui and La. Of balance and opposites and push and pull while they watched the moon travel across the sky - Yue, she told him, Sokka's first girlfriend who had sacrificed herself after the siege of the north.

"Wait-," he slurred, "he hadn't been joking? His first girlfriend really turned into the moon."

"Of course," she frowned. "How would you make something like that up?"

"You guys have been through some wild shit..."

She scoffed. "Tell me about it."

They were silent for a bit while Zuko drank again. "'S wrong, you know?"

"What is?"

"The moon's not with the sea. He's in love with the sun."

"No, that's not true," she protested. "I just told you. It's the moon and the sea, Tui and La-"

He groaned and covered his face with his hands. "No, don't you see? 'S the moon and the sun. Round and round and round they go, always chasing each other but never touching."

Her face fell. "That's sad."

"Yeah," he looked up at her, "it is."

Katara shrugged and drained the bottle.

"What now?" she asked again.

"Go to sleep? Morning'll come soon."

Her heart felt suddenly very heave. "And when morning comes?"

He shrugged, too. "I'll go back home. I've been away longer than I meant to. And longer than is advisable." He shook the empty bottle. "What about you? Off to the next revolution?"

"I think I've had my fair share of revolutions for some time." Katara sighed. "Still, there's so much to be done here."

"I know," he agreed. "But the fighting has died down. They have food and water. The healers are arriving tomorrow morning. Governor Yozin is on his way to a nice prison and I have appointed an interim governor until I find someone up for the task. Our work here is done."

"But it is not enough!" she protested.

"No, of course not. But the rest will be decided in stuffy council chambers not in dirty town squares."

"I don't want to leave them."

"And I'm not going to. Neither do you have to."

She turned to look at him and furrowed her brow. "What are you saying?"

He smiled sheepishly. "Come back to Caldera with me? Finish what you started?"

She hesitated. She probably shouldn't. She hadn't been home in quite some times and she didn't particularly care for the Fire Nation. Sokka would be taking off come sunrise headed to the South Pole. She could maybe get back to teaching for some time. Build a few houses. That would be fine. But she didn't want to.

Because even though she didn't particularly for the Fire Nation, she happened to care for the Fire Lord. Quite a lot, actually. Probably more than was good for either of them. And so, before she even knew what she was saying, she answered: "When do we leave?"

#zutara #zutara week #zutara week 2020 #day 4: celestial #zuko #katara #aang #toph #sokka #suki #my writing #the whole gaang

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eastofthemoon · 5 years

Text

This is both part of my Witch Allura AU and also part of @gentronlegendaryfriendships for the prompt Hanahaki Disease. Couldn’t resist writing this once it got into my head.

Petals

Rating: G

Series: Voltron Legendary Defender

Part of Something Familiar

Summary: Shiro would be the first to admit that as a witch’s familiar, one had to expect the unexpected. Yet, every now and then, something would throw him off. Coming home to see scattered flowers on the floor wasn’t exactly bizarre, but it wasn’t normal for their home either. He raised an eyebrow as he followed the trail of petals into the living room.

Shiro would be the first to admit that as a witch’s familiar, one had to expect the unexpected. Yet, every now and then, something would throw him off. Coming home to see scattered flowers on the floor wasn’t exactly bizarre, but it wasn’t normal for their home either. He raised an eyebrow as he followed the trail of petals into the living room.

Someone coughing as he entered. More petals were spread in disarray across the floor and in the centre of it all was Lance, in his cat form, hacking non-stop.

“Lance,” Shiro asked in concerned as he kneeled, “buddy you okay?”

The cat froze, slammed his mouth shut and attempted to raise his head as if nothing was wrong. Shiro narrowed his eyes. Lance didn’t seem to be in dire stress, but Shiro recognized a guilty look when he saw one.

Shiro crossed his arms as Lance seemed to struggled to keep inside whatever it was he had in his mouth.

“Alright, what’s going on?” Shiro asked.

Lance tried a meow but then began to hack again. Then, suddenly a blue daisy dropped out of his mouth. Shiro blinked dumbly as Lance sheepishly tried to hide his face behind his paws.

“Did..did you just cough up a flower?” Shiro asked.

Being cats, it wasn’t uncommon for them to cough up a hairball or two, but everyone tried to do that kind of thing in private and clean it up afterwards. Coughing up a whole flower...that was new.

A sigh was heard from the other room. Shiro raised his head as both Hunk and Keith entered.

“Lance, I thought Coran told you to say stay in the kitchen,” Keith scolded as he kneeled to scoop up the flower.

“Yeah, no offense but easier to clean up if you stay in one spot,” Hunk said as he patted Lance’s head.

Shiro frowned as he stood back up. “Okay, could someone tell me why Lance is coughing up flowers?”

Keith and Hunk both glance to Lance like they were wondering if he would speak up, but when he didn’t Keith volunteered. “Lance got himself cursed.”

Shiro blinked. “What?”

“It’s a weird curse that apparently causes people to cough up flowers,” Hunk continued.

Shiro raised and then lowered his hand. “How did he get himself cursed?”

Seriously, Shiro had barely been gone an hour. There were days he swore he couldn’t his eyes off the other cats for five minutes.

Keith pointed over his shoulder at Lance. “SOMEONE had the grand idea of going exploring in the attic.”

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose. Oh, now that made sense. “And I’m assuming that someone accidentally set off a magical item from Alfor’s old collection?”

They had a good reason to avoid the attic. Allura’s father had a huge collection of magical artifacts. Some were useful, but most were weird due to the curses that was attached to them. Walking in there could be equal to walking into a magical landmine.

Lance’s fur went up before he swiftly changed into his human form and tossed his hands in the air.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Lance cried. “I was just trying to find a spare game controller to play that game Pidge found when I just happened to touch this dumb amulet by mistake.”

“Why would we have a spare game controller in the attic?” Hunk asked.

“Hey, Coran is always tossing old junk up there,” Lance argued. “I figure there was a chance that-”

A cough came. Lance covered his mouth as he continued to do so. Instinct taking over, Shiro patted his back until another daisy tumbled out.

Lance took a breath as he glared at the flower. “This..is so gross.”

“Just be glad you’re not coughing up roses,” Keith said as he crossed his arms. “Those would probably have thorns.”

Lance grumbled just as Allura, Pidge and Coran entered. Allura held one of her spellbooks in her hands as she looked to Shiro.

“Oh, you’re back,” she said as she shut the book. “Lance has-”

“Been cursed, yeah I just heard,” Shiro finished as he approached her. “Do we have a way to break it?”

Pidge adjust her glasses. “Technically we have two ways, but it’s a bit tricky considering how this curse works.”

“What’s so complicated?” Lance said as he slumped on the cough. “I am vomiting up plants.” Another cough came and another daisy dropped to the floor. “See?!”

“It’s called the ‘hanahaki curse’,” Coran said as he sat next to Lance. “It causes it’s victim to have flowers grown inside them and then forced to cough them when they experience unrequited love.”

Lance’s scowl vanished as he tilted his head. “Huh?...Unrequited…” He pointed to himself. “But I’m not in love with anyone.”

Hunk raised a hand. “Uh..don’t you have a crush on that movie star you like?”

Lance blushed. “Well, yeah, but I’m not in love with her. That’s just a plain old crush.”

“That doesn’t matter to the hanahaki curse,” Allura said as she flipped through her spellbook. “It seems the curse lumps crushes and actual feelings of love as one thing.”

“WHAT?!” Lance said as he jumped to his feet. “But that’s not fair!” He clearly wanted to yell more, but kneeled over as more daisies fell from his mouth. “I am so sick of this.”

“Calm down,” Shiro said as he gently forced Lance to sit down and looked to Pidge. “You said you had a cure?”

“Well, we got a couple of options,” Pidge said as she paced. “First one is to get the person to also feel romantic love to Lance...but that’s not an option for obvious reasons.”

Shiro nodded. He couldn’t even imagine how to get a movie star interested in Lance, even if he was actually in love with her. “What’s number two?”

Allura cringed. “Um...according to the book we could either try to remove the flowers by magic or even by surgery.”

Lance paled. “What?! You’re going to cut me open-”

“Calm down, we’re not doing that,” Allura said as she patted his head, but then sighed. “I could try my magic but I rather not.”

“Why not?” Shiro asked. Allura was usually chomping at the bit to use her magic.

“That would be because there’s a high risk of Lance losing all sense of his emotions if not done carefully,” Coran said.

Lance paled again. “What?!” His hands shook. “So...are you saying that I’m doomed to either no longer feel any emotions or to cough up flowers until I’m old and grey?”

“No, no, of course not,” Coran said as he patted his shoulder. “The roots of the flowers would tangled up in your throat and kill you long before then.”

Lance’s jaw fell as Shiro, Hunk and Keith exclaimed in unison “W-what?”

Shiro paled as he looked to Allura. “Is that true? We can’t let-”

“It’s true, but it won’t happen,” Allura cut in briskly as she shot a glare at Coran, “because we have a reasonable third option.” She pointed to a page in her spellbook. “There’s a potion we can make and give to Lance that will cease the flowers blooming.”

Colour returned to Lance’s face as his hands stopped shaking. “So...I just need to drink some weed killer?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Allura said as she chewed her bottom lip. “The only issue is that this potion is beyond my skill. We’ll need to call in an expert on the matter.”

“An expert,” Shiro muttered, but then the meaning dawned on him. “You’re not suggesting-”

“That we call Slav, yes,” Pidge said with a nod. “That was what we were thinking.”

In other words, Slav would be coming here. Shiro would have to deal with his annoying antics and criticisms face to face again.

Shiro went quiet as he turned to Allura. “How high of a risk was it again for you to use your magic?”

“SHIRO?!” Lance called out.

Shiro sighed as rubbed his neck. “I know, I was just joking.” Well...he was mostly joking.

0808080808080808080808080808080808080

Slav and Sven weren’t able to arrive until a few hours later. It meant they would have to spend the night at their place. Shiro wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but he was willing to put up with it if it meant to cure Lance.

Even if Slav did complain the shade of blue in the walls of the guest room. Yet, Slav seemed to be in an oddly chipper mood as he watched Lance cough up another flower.

“Fascinating,” Slav said as he wrote in his journal. “Truly fascinating. I have read about this curse, but to witness it is a sight.”

Lance growled as he wiped the petals off his lips. “Yeah, yeah. Can you please just cure me already?”

“Working on it,” Sven said as he read over Allura’s spellbook. “Although, we will require to boil some of the ingredients listed here.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “And how long will that take?”

“Including boiling the potion itself, a couple of hours.”

“Great,” Lance moaned as he buried his face in hands.

Shiro gave a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “It’s just a bit longer.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. “Easy for you to say, you’re not gagging on petals-” Another cough came and another flower instantly popped out.

Slav scratched his chin. “Truly intriguing. I will have to take some notes in the meantime.”

Lance twitched an eye. “I’m glad someone is getting some use out of this.”

0808080808080808080808080808080

Lance swished the blue potion in the cup. “You sure this will end the curse?”

“Yes, yes, but stop shaking it,” Slav scolded as he seized Lance’s wrist. “Honestly, you’re as bad as Shiro.”

Shiro rolled his eyes as patted Lance’s shoulder. “The only way we’ll know is if you drink it Lance, but this is the field Slav is known best for.”

“Worst case being poison is probably better than choking to death,” Keith commented with a smirk.

“Oh, ha, ha,” Lance glared before he sighed and held up the cup. “Bottoms up, I guess.” He braced himself and poured it into his mouth.

Surprisingly, it had a sweet taste to it, but it did cause his tongue to tingle and the sensation continued to do so as he travelled down his throat. Once the cup was empty, Lance smacked his lips as he leaned back.

“How do you feel?” Allura asked.

Lance shrugged. “Nothing, I feel-”

Suddenly, he felt another cough come. He slammed a hand over his mouth as he coughed non-stop until he felt something fall out of his mouth. Lance felt Shiro pat his back as he stared into his hands. There were no flowers, but his hand was covered in tiny white specks.

“What are these?” Lance exclaimed as he pointed. “I thought that potion was suppose to cure me.”

“It did,” Sven said as he pulled back Lance’s hand to check. “The potion stops the flowers growing and they turn into seeds.”

“And now all you do is cough them up which you will only have to do at least two more times, or a ten percent chance a three times,” Slav said as he brought out a small bottle. “If it’s fine with you, I would like to collect these seeds. I imagine these flowers will make excellent ingredients for my research.”

“Sure, fine, fill your boots,” Lance said, but was stopped as Shiro took his hand.

“You can take most of them,” Shiro said with smirk, “but we’ll want to keep a couple.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “And why do we want to do that?”

“To plant in a small pot,” Shiro said as he crossed his arms. “Maybe if we put some of those flowers in Allura’s room you’ll remember why you shouldn’t go in the attic.”

Everyone gave a laugh while Lance blushed. He was not going to look at flowers the same way again for a long time.

#gentronweek #vldgen #witch allura au #voltron #my writing

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highlevelencounters-blog · 5 years

Text

Call of Cthulhu: an over long analysis

In trying to give any video game a fair review, one faces difficulties, because games try to be and to do such a varying range of things. I think this is especially true of Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu. There are so many metrics by which one could measure the game. Is it engaging? Is it scary? Does it do what it does well;? Is it well made? Is it true to its Lovecraft source material? Is it true to its roleplaying game source material? Is it worth the price? If you are short of time, and I would not blame you if you were, then very quickly: yes; no; yes; depends what you mean but no; sort of; yeah and that depends but probably not. If you are not short on time, then let me explain myself (in very great detail) by taking these points in turn. It is difficult to appraise the game without spoilers, but I will warn you when they are coming. If you do not want them, skip to the next heading.

Is Call of Cthulhu engaging?

Yes. Not the most engaging game, mind, but its story, characters and general sense of intrigue carry the game. There are technical problems with the writing that I will deal with below, but those are the video game equivalents of bad grammar and spelling errors (of which, while we are on the subject, I noticed a bit in the subtitles and item descriptions). Despite the animation problems, also mentioned below, the characters are well fleshed out both through direct speech and context. The graphics are nothing sensational, but are definitely good enough to create a world you want to explore. One of my favourite things, though, is that the game does not treat you like an idiot, nor does it leave you behind. My problem with the few investigation-based games I have played before is that they are determined to leave no man behind, so they bash you around the head with everything that they have lying around. Call of Cthulhu does not do this. Cut-scenes and mandatory conversations make sure you know what is going on even if you are not paying attention to anything else that is around you, but if you are looking at the details in the world, even the ones that are not in any way highlighted by the big buttons that appear over everything that you can interact with, then you can start to piece together why things are happening, as opposed to just finding out that they are happening. Intelligence, time and exploration are rewarded with details, but none are essential for understanding the gist of the story. It is difficult to say much more without spoilers, so here are some SPOILERS:

While Officer Bradley was clearly the best character, standing out from most modern video game characters you see today by being wonderfully human, but not in a broken, flawed way, I want to prove my point about good characters by pointing to Charles Hawkins. While this character is never explicitly explained, we know he has been in on everything since the beginning. He is literally a wife-beating monster and definitely a villain of the piece. But he is also conflicted and caring. He genuinely wants what is best for Sarah, even if that means abusing her. He is a bad, angry man, but he is trying to do right. And the beauty is that the game never actually tells you this. It shows you. No one really ever says anything about Charles’s character, but reading into what he says and watching what he does really gives you a feel for his character. Which is impressive for a character with such little screen time.

Is Call of Cthulhu scary?

No. I do not play horror games so I am not the person to ask really. Or maybe I am the perfect person to ask. Either way, for what it is worth, I was not scared by this game. I hate being chased and a couple of sequences made me tense up in my chair, but I would not take that as a massive indication of anything. The same fear of being chased is what made me stop playing Mirror’s Edge and that game is very far from scary. In the game’s defense, however, jump scares are cheap and I hate them and this game seems to aswell. I counted exactly two and one of them was mostly just a creepy musical trill and the other one was so obviously coming it did not even startle me. So Kudos there.

Does Call of Cthulhu do what it does well?

Yes. What I mean by this is, if you boil the game down to what it actually is, it does that well. What that means, is that it is a very good walking simulator. If that is not what you want, do not play this game. This is a walking sim with some very light RPG elements and a few sections where, undoubtedly, someone higher up the chain came in and said “we need a stealth section!” or “we need a combat section!” or “we need a horror section!” or “we need an action section!” and the developers obliged, put in one instance of each and moved on. These sections, except maybe the fun but very basic stealth section, are by far the weakest parts of the game (oh my, that combat section!). The exceptions are the many puzzles, which, like the plot in general, do not treat you like an idiot. Except for one part of one, which honestly feels like the developers made a mistake (what is supposed to be the clue for where to look for the answer instead just straight up gives you the answer, despite the fact that all the stuff for actually reasoning out the answer is right there in the game!).

I only have one problem with the walking simulator nature of the game. There are a few sections which are clearly only there to pad out time. Most of the game is a pretty tight linear tour through the story, but occasionally you are given an adventure game style ‘puzzle’ that just boils down to, “walk around this area you have already walked around for ages until you find the thing that you have to poke to make the story progress”. Anyone who has played the game will know what I mean by ‘the bust bit’. And there is another section which might work as a horror piece, maybe, but just seemed to me to be “run around this same small area 5 or 6 times till we arbitrarily let you out”. ‘Lamps’ is the clue word for that one, if you’re curious as to what I mean. But these are nit-picks. Generally the game is an excellent walking simulator.

Is Call of Cthulhu well made?

That depends on what you mean. Games are hugely multifaceted, but what often differentiates a good game from a poor one is the ability of its developers to work to its strengths. It would be an unfair criticism of Indie darling Limbo to say that it had bad facial animations. It definitely did, but this is not a problem because the characters effectively have no faces. This seems like a facile point, but I think it is important to remember that Cyanide, the developers of Call of Cthulhu, have previously been known for the Styx games, a few Games Workshop titles, a buttload of cycling games and little else. Call of Cthulhu is not triple-A, but it’s not Indie either. The game, at least visually and narratively though, tries to do everything a triple-A title would attempt to do, as opposed to the usual Indie approach of making at least one aspect in some way minimalist. This is not an excuse, merely something to keep in mind as I say that the animation is some of the worst I have seen in games for a very long time. It’s not quite as funny as Mass Effect Andromeda’s, there is not quite enough going on for it to be quite as bizarrely broken. Dialogue lines would come out of characters whose mouths were shut, arms would constantly drift around like they had slightly confused minds of their own and I hope the ‘facial expressions’ were enjoying their trip to the uncanny valley.

The writing was a bit all over the place as well. Writing, mind, not story or character construction. There is a reasonable amount of choice in the game, but an annoyingly large number of the lines of dialogue do not seem to match up with the choices you make. In the first main scene, you can go straight into a conversation with someone and mention in one conversation branch that you know that a character is a big deal on Darkwater island, and then immediately choose another conversation option where you reveal you have never even heard of Darkwater island before. In a subsequent scene, a man told me he would meet me somewhere later, but then, when I got there, my character had several lines questioning why the man was there. There are numerous moments like this and it really takes you out of the experience every time it happens. A similar issue is present whenever you enter an enclosed space and your vision starts distorting. I only knew that this was a representation of the main character’s claustrophobia because the developers mentioned it in press releases. I did not notice any mention of it in the actual game.

A bit more nit-picky, but there are a few times when the game simply does not tell you something that would be useful to know. The most egregious of these is when they give you something which has limited uses but do not tell you either that it has limited uses or how many uses are left until you have used them all up. It is never a particularly large problem, but it would have been nice to know.

Still, looking at the game as a technical work, I must say that the graphics are nice. The art style has a Dishonored feel to it, which I personally have lots of time for. It is not quite as stylised, but the game is generally very pretty, which is a good thing too since you will spend a lot of time shoving your camera into every corner of it.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its Lovecraftian source material?

Ah, the fun question. The answer really depends on how much of a deep dive you want to do. But before I jump in, it is important to note that the developers explicitly said their game was based on the table-top RPG, rather than Lovecraft’s stories. What follows, then, is a piece of literary critique (read: w**k) and not necessarily a criticism of the game. It will also be absolutely riddled with SPOILERS:

Call of Cthulhu gets a lot right about the common conception of the Lovecraftian aesthetic: the green tinge that permeates everything gives it a distinctly Cthulhu-y vibe, the rural town is a common motif of Lovecraft’s (the game is very Shadow Over Insmouth here) and Cthulhu as an entity is almost used well. As I said at the top, SPOILERS! Cthulhu actually shows up, for about one second, in one of the game’s four endings and is presented as an unstoppable, maddening, world-ending force. This is doing Cthulhu right. There is no fighting Cthulhu: once he has been awoken from his fhtagn, the world will crumble around him. The only hope one has is to prevent that from happening, so it is appropriate that, if it is allowed to happen, the game gives you no chance to resist. The game also takes a good approach to sanity and curiosity. Fuller is the character who most explores the concept of curiosity and it is shown to warp and twist him as it opens his mind to new possibilities. This fear of curiosity is at the heart of Lovecraft’s writings. The game also plays with sanity, another of Lovecraft’s main themes, although most of the mechanical implications of that are better discussed in relation to the Call of Cthulhu table-top RPG.

However, there is one thing that the game gets seriously wrong about Lovecraft. In those moments when the game is scary, the story itself is not one of cosmic horror. Much horror is about holding a mirror up to humanity. It is about showing and exploring our darker sides. Werewolves explore our animal nature, vampires (at least traditionally) were an exploration of sexuality, serial killers explore human psychopathy, zombies represent rampant consumerism. The monster, at the end of the day, is us. This is not the goal of cosmic horror. Lovecraft is not writing stories about people. His horror is metaphysical. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents” is how he begins his story The Call of Cthulhu and this one sentence, I think, underpins all of his work. His protagonists go mad not because they saw something scary, they go mad because they saw something they cannot explain. Their very understanding of reality is thrown out of whack and they are shown that the safe, pedestrian, societal lives they thought they were living were facades: the ignorance that our subconscious chooses for us to protect us from realisations about the universe and our tiny, utterly insignificant part in it. His entities are often not even evil, they are simply so alien and disinterested that we matter as much to them as ants matter to us. This is why Lovecraft was so revolutionary, he moved away from the traditionally biblical kind of horror where the monsters are manifestations of our own sins and turned instead to the secular world of science for his horrors. “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little”, he continues in Call of Cthulhu, “but someday the piecing together of previously disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age”. I say again, Lovecraft is not telling stories about people. He is telling stories about the universe and our inability to understand or cope with it. The truth that science will one day unlock, Lovecraft seems to be suggesting, is that we do not matter at all. This is cosmic horror. But Call of Cthulhu (the video game, that is) seems to miss this. Pierce’s sanity (or insanity) progression comes the closest. I say more on this mechanic below, but the final choice that Pierce must make is the most Lovecraftian moment of the game.

There are four endings to the game, one default and three others unlocked through story actions, which is a system I like. On a very quick side note, I also really like how there is a save point just before the end, allowing you to go back instantly and replay the endings you did not choose, but only if you unlocked them (I unlocked three of the four endings on my first play-through). Suicide and accepting the ritual both present “go mad from the revelation” endings, each with a different but totally appropriate flavour of madness, while the ‘it’s over’ ending represents a flight back into a dark age, Pierce sticking fingers in his ears and yelling “la la la it’s all a dream!” I also like here that you have to unlock all but the ritual ending. I was annoyed with this ending until I found this out. The game does not really give you any reason to complete the ritual. The Leviathan and the cult have all clearly been bad the whole way through the game, there is not ever any good reason for Pierce to surrender at the last moment and perform the ritual. Having it as the default, though, makes this lack of motivation slightly more excusable, as it represents Pierce simply surrendering to what he has been told is his destiny, as opposed to having worked for the will to fight back in some way. The fourth ending, the counter ritual, is by far the poorest, which is a shame because it could so easily have been fixed. You know that Drake is planning something, but Pierce, or at least my Pierce, was never told exactly what that was. My Pierce would not logically even have known that there was a counter ritual, never mind how to do it and certainly never mind what it actually does (a point that I am still completely in the dark about). This is something, as far as I can tell, that the game never explains, even if you do choose this option. Just a little bit of exposition, probably delivered by Drake, would have cleared this all up.

But I digress. Call of Cthulhu is essentially a game about people. It is about a group of people who are more or less tricked by some powerful alien being into doing its bidding. And as I said above, it does this well. But in being about people and their struggles, it fails to focus on what Lovecraft himself actually focuses on. Now, a quick disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that Lovecraft was a racist and viewed minorities as ‘less human’ than white people (although there is evidence for this in his work), but I am going to assume this is the case, at least in some way, for what I am going to say. I think it is telling that most of the cultists in Lovecraft’s work are minorities, because this distances even his human villains from the (I think) exclusively white protagonists of his stories. This separation between the human and the alien is completely ignored in the sequences in which Pierce is visited by the Leviathan in prison. The fact that the Leviathan would take humanoid form and use human manipulation tactics to get Pierce to do what it wants is totally non-Lovecraftian. Where is the horror at our utter inconsequentiality here? Cthulhu is scary because it does not care about us, we matter so little there would be zero point in it or any of its ... associates (for want of a better word) attempting to use tactics to manipulate human kind. In The Call of Cthullhu (the story now, not the game), Cthullhu pretty much tells people to come and they just do. No need to take human form, no need to use psychological methods. Lovecraftian horrors use us like the dumb insects that, compared to them, we are.

Further the visions that haunt Pierce are visions of people, mostly, and the awful things that they do to each other. He questions his senses, but he never really questions his position in the universe or what it would actually mean if all the things that he is seeing were true. Lovecraft’s protagonists usually do believe what they see and this is what drives them mad, while Pierce is driven mad by questions about whether or not to believe what he sees. The biggest crime though, the moment that really made me feel that the developers had missed the point, is in the after-credits half of the ritual ending. Here we see the cultists all engaged in a murderous brawl, screaming with delirious madness as they punch and kick and bite each other while, presumably, Cthulhu gets on with the important job of destroying the world just off camera. But this is the wrong kind of madness. Sure, everyone would go mad as their understanding of reality snapped at the vastness and alien-ness (alienitude? alienosity?) of Cthulhu, but for all of them to just go kill-crazy? It doesn’t make sense. That does not seem to be the madness that comes of having your entire knowledge of reality shattered. It feels more like a madness that makes a flashy ending to a video game.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its roleplaying game source material?

Yes, broadly. Firstly, I am not a CoC (which is what I’ll call the rolepaying Call of Cthulhu, because this is getting stupidly confusing) expert. I have played and run a few games, but it is not my main game. That being said, I think I know enough to say that Call of Cthulhu does a good job of translating CoC into a video game. Its plot is a little more big-leagues (bigly) and showy than your average CoC game, but that is fine. It’s the same thing that happens when a film is made from a TV series. And in this regard, Call of Cthulhu is hardly a huge offender. This might just be me, but I really like stories that know how to reign in their scale and Call of Cthulhu does a pretty good job of this. With the exception of one particular sub-plot (which is by no means overblown just a little elbowed in (the whole painting sub arc, btw)), everything is pretty well contained and not much is thrown in to escalate things to stupid levels as the game progresses.

Call of Cthulhu continues the well-practiced trend of CoC games of being incredibly linear, but while this is an actual problem for roleplaying games, where the only limitation is imagination, in a video game, which is fenced in by budget and deadline constraints, this linearity is not so much of a problem.

An area where Call of Cthulhu differs from CoC is in its use of skills. The skill list for 6th edition CoC (which is the edition I know, so don’t pester me about 7th ed) is over 50 skills long. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, has 7 skills. This means you never have those horrible moments where you absolutely NEED a successful library-use roll or else-you-will-all die-in-the-next-encounter-because-you-did-not-know-the-monster-is-weak-to-salt-but-you-put-all-your-points-into-Fast-Talk-so-I-guess-you-are-all-just-going-to-die-and-no-I-am-not-still-bitter. This, I feel, is an improvement. It could be argued that it reduces the scope for roleplaying, but with the limited conversation options and the actually quite well written and characterised Pierce, you are never going to be totally in control anyway. Call of Cthulhu is also paced very much like a CoC game as well, with slow, social information gathering at the beginning, ramping up to more action/horror moments later. This does make some of the skills more useless later on in the game, but this is not a major problem and a difficult one to avoid (and certainly one that CoC games usually fail to avoid). Also like CoC, there is, I think, a clearly right thing to do at character creation, but while in CoC it is because some skills (I’m looking at you, operate heavy machinery) are simply pointless, in Call of Cthulhu character gen is the only time you can use experience points to level up Occultism and Medicine, something you are definitely going to want to do and something the game does not do a good job of telling you.

CoC’s main selling point, as a system, is its sanity mechanic, something that Cyanide obviously spent a great deal of time looking at when making Call of Cthulhu. I have heard that some people did not think it was used well, but I have to disagree. Sadly though, to explain why I have to make liberal use of SPOILERS!

In CoC, sanity is effectively your character’s long-term health bar. Your sanity level sticks around from adventure to adventure with very little you can do to raise it if it falls. It is, in many ways, your character’s expiration date. It goes down whenever you see something Cthulhoid, but there is a random element to it. Clearly, this would not work for Call of Cthulhu, not in the same way anyway. If Call of Cthulhu were a CoC game, it would take at most three or four sessions, and that is not really fast enough for a character to melt completely into a gibbering puddle of insanity. So Call of Cthulhu does something very different and I think it does it very well.

At the beginning of the game, you have some control over your sanity being reduced. The most clear example of this is when you have the option of whether or not to read the Malleus Monstorum. But as the game continues, you have less and less choice over whether you get to see sanity-breaking stuff or not. It basically just happens to you. This means that really, your loss of sanity is almost 100% controlled by the game’s story. Therefore the moment that you break mechanically is also the moment that weird stuff starts happening, by necessity, in the story. Pierce starts to have visions, some of them obviously fake, some of them much more plausibly real, and because his sanity has broken we know that we are in a situation where we should be questioning everything, as opposed to earlier in the game when the lines were much more clear cut. This is a co-opting of mechanics by story, which I have not really seen before in a game. The game gives you something that appears to be in your control but then slowly and subtly takes it back. You could see this as a reduction in player autonomy, because it really is, but I think this fits very well with the themes of destiny and inevitability in the story. It also produces an organic way to show the deteriorating mental state of Pierce without it being exposition-y. If we had felt, right from the beginning, that the sanity bar had nothing to do with our own choices, the moment when Pierce breaks would have felt contrived. But by giving us that illusion of choice we are engaged with the progression of that sanity bar in a way that we would not be otherwise and when it finally shifts from stable to psychotic, we do not see this as a simple narrative move, we see this as an organic part of the story and the choices we made in it, even if really it is not. I also love how the sanity manifests itself. It is subtly done and I think interesting debates could be had about what is real and what is not (I have strong feelings about when the last time we really see Colden is, for example). A brilliant example of this is how we shoot Fuller in what is obviously a dream-scape and then come back to what we think is reality and find we have shot him there too. But this, itself, is also shown to be an illusion when, in one of the ending sequences, we hear him talking to a nurse. It is all very Inception-y and I really like it. It was a nice subversion of expectations, as I was expecting the sanity meter, as a player influenced mechanic, to be able to affect only aesthetic things and maybe minor story elements. I noticed this exactly once (a painting had blood spatters on it which disappeared when I approached), but the way the game takes control of the mechanic and allows it to have serious narrative impact, while a removal of player autonomy, was very refreshing.

Is Call of Cthulhu worth the price?

At time of writing, Call of Cthulhu is selling for £40. It is not worth that. You can go and pick up Divinity Original Sin 2, a game that is basically empirically perfect, for £10 less than that and get at the very least ten times as much play time out of it. Where the price point of Call of Cthulhu should be for you is something only you can decide. £15 seems like a more reasonable price point to me. What I look for is usually a strong enjoyment/hour ratio as opposed to a good hour/money ratio, and Call of Cthulhu has a very good enjoyment/hour ratio, but this is certainly helped by its short length. At the end of the day, I would say that whatever you would be willing to pay for two engaging, thoughtful, just below Hollywood tier films is probably the right price for Call of Cthulhu. Especially since the game has basically no replay value. In many ways it is very average, but if you have a thing for walking simulators or Lovecraftian worlds, then this game is a must buy for you. But maybe wait until the price has dropped.

#Call of Cthulhu #Cthulhu #Lovecraft #Game Review #Essay #Cosmic horror #Literary analysis #Roleplay #HashtagsHaveNoSpaces

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pomegranate-salad · 6 years

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Seeds of thought : Wicdiv 1923 special

A belated happy new year to you all ! And for my first SOT of the year, I couldn’t have hoped for a better subject. There were a lot of different directions I could have taken this analysis in given how rich the material was, so I ended up going for what I thought would be the most challenging to explore. Get ready folks : we’re going to get philosophical for this one. Thoughts and opinion under the cut, not spoiler-free.

TOMORROW BELONGS…

As we reach the third instalment of the “pantheons of the past” specials, common themes and threads are starting to appear more clearly. Each special has taken us to very different eras and revolved around different stakes, each hiding a deeper reflexion on Art and artists : the value of creators for society in the 455AD special, their immortality versus their legacy in the 1831 one. But in none of them is that reflexion disconnected from the era in which it takes place ; moreover, there is always a relation between the two, as the debate on Art walks along the changing times. More specifically, each special takes us at a turning point in History, both in and of itself and in what it means to be an artist. The 455AD special took us not only to the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the hegemony of Christianity, but also at the end of Roman culture and its disdain for artists. Art would soon find a new breath either in the Byzantine Empire or in Christian art. 1831 sits at the end of the first Industrial Revolution and the beginning of nationalisms in Europe as well as the last years of the Romantics movement. As I’ve remarked before, despite Ananke’s claims that the pantheon’s role is to “inspire” and stave off the “great darkness”, more often than not the gods belong to the dying side of artists from which the new dominant form of Art is trying to emerge. This pattern of last breaths, of breaking points within the specials, really calls into question how much the gods can really affect the upcoming times and stir History in a different direction. As supposed representatives of the “spirit of the era”, the inner turmoil of the pantheon rather seems to reflect the boiling of the world around, pushing and pulling from it along the complex links that unite History and Art and the evolution of the two.

This theme is addressed more directly than ever in the 1923 special, which takes us to the Interwar period in a pantheon divided between proponents of the “high Arts” of the past and torchbearers of the “low Arts” born from technical discoveries. Here, the correspondence between the Historical context and the artistic evolutions incarnated by the pantheon is almost textual : we are “in between wars” the same way the gods sit “between” Art of the past and future, as poetry and literature will never reach the levels of popularity cinema and music will attain again. But I think one important thing to consider when analysing this issue is how much this perspective derives from our modern point of view : the upcoming future of cinema is as bright to us as the certainty of a Second World War. To the gods themselves, none of these two futures is yet written in stone, or even written at all. One thing that is lost to us as children of the future is how much a period of uncertainty and shift in culture the Roaring Twenties were – as it often is with eras on the heel of massive destruction. At the times, it truly felt like the future was anybody’s game, with new countries, new political structures for international relations, new cultural mediums and scenes. Except for the Cassandras of the era who probably saw in the Versailles treaty the seed of an approaching new conflict, nothing in 1923 must have had the fragrance of ineluctability. Or, for that matter, necessity. Indeed, if we read Ananke as the incarnation of the necessity she posits herself to be, the fact that every single member of the pantheon is still alive toward the end of the two years can very well be read as a testament to the uncertainty and changeability of the era, in which every form of art and artist has its place because the world has not yet determined what the future of art ought to be.

And so, it is not surprising that Ananke should use the inner tensions of the pantheon to lead it to destroy itself instead of acting mostly on her own as she does in the 2010s. Because the “spirit of the era” belongs to all of them, then some of them might very well be incited to seize it for themselves and stir it in their preferred direction. One form of Art threatened by another trying to orientate History for their own needs.

Now here’s an interesting question : has Art ever guided History ? It is commonly accepted that art accompanies the times and that societal change can often retrospectively be spotted within the works of contemporaneous artists. But to what extent can Art really pretend to shape the future ? The word Ananke frequently uses to describe the gods, “inspiration” seems to imply some kind of influence ; after all, “inspiration” come from the Latin “in-spiro”, literally “breathe within” – the same way Art would breathe into society the spirit of the future. However, this seems to get less true the further back you go in time : if a piece of art cannot be diffused further than a few royal court, or even a monastery, what kind of immediate influence can it hope to have on its own ? The first recording of an artistic movement marking a turning point in History would probably have to be Renaissance era, and even then, it found its sources in a scientific, philosophical and religious movement rather than a purely artistic one, and one that mainly touched the elite.

However, the 1923 pantheon might be different. After World War II, film critic and member of the Frankfurt School Siegfried Kracauer went back to the expressionist cinema of Weimar Germany and wondered if the seeds of fascism could be detected in these apparently apolitical pieces from definitely not-fascist filmmakers. He found out a pattern of dilemma between chaos and tyranny, with figures like Dr Caligari, Dr Mabuse, count Orlok, and of course, Fredersen and Rotwang from Metropolis. Films in which authority seems the only refuge against the invisible menace lurking in the shadows. In From Caligari to Hitler, he postulated that film, as a mass media, took a lot of people to make and was seen by a large number of people. As such, it couldn’t help but reflect the fears and desires of the masses, and be the cradle in which those same masses envisioned solutions to their problems. These reflexions gave birth to the cultivation theory formulated by Gerbner and Gross in 1976, according to which the media we consummate shape our worldview precisely because the masses are the source of the content of mass media. In their time, it was television.

But in 1923, at the dawn of the cinematic age, this may be the first time that the masses shape Art, and that in turn, Art shapes the masses. This is precisely what Baal and Set rebel against : “the masses are the quicksand of the soul” as the public is becoming the prism and the bottleneck of Art. Their solution is a mathematically obvious one : suppress the masses, so they cannot influence Art. As paradoxical as it can be, their plan to use Art to guide History aims at severing the link between the two. Which is also why their plan is a mortiferous one : they are supposed inspirations who wish to deprive the world of their light. Toasting each other’s brilliance is all they care about as they don’t view Art as inspirational but as internal : Art is self-sufficient, as it can progress on its own without exterior output.

In that regard it’s interesting to examine which gods join them in their pursuit. Skuld and Urdr represent the bad side of progressivism, the temptation of an ordered future which so often materialized in eugenic beliefs. “Woden” incarnates the pull of totalitarianism, a propagandist masquerading under the greasepaint of an art movement he didn’t create but of which he is co-opting the aesthetic. The Norns are manipulated by Baal and Set the same way progressivists were manipulated by the elite to maintain themselves in power under the guise of change, and the contempt of the elite for the masses was used by totalitarianisms to bring both under their thumb. Each of them aims to warp the zeitgeist in a different direction, yet they gather around the idea of manipulating their role as “inspiration” to influence society. The role they envision for the artist is defined by their vision of History : the Norns want Art to guide society, Baal and Set want Art to be cut from society, and Woden wants Art to serve society.

Now compare that to the “new gods” : their role seems much less determined by what they want than by what society wants. The cinema gods all seem both dedicated to and constricted by their need to perform : Minerva “struggles to get into character”, Susanoo fills up the role of the comic relief despite not being happy himself, but in order to make other people happy and, as the Morrigan hints it, because such role needs to be filled one way or the other. Amaterasu, if she doesn’t seem as affected by performance as her counterparts, is the only god in the special to perform, better yet, to do so repeatedly, to the point of getting tired. The vocabulary of working is frequently used to describe her performance : she may like performing, but it still requires work, experimenting, polishing, physical input. Their main concern is their public ; their role as artists, until their final sacrifice, doesn’t extend further than what society expects of them. None of them concerns themself much with “Art for the sake of Art”, or even with making a lasting imprint on this world – even their sacrifice isn’t about stirring it in their wanted direction but simply saving it from supposed total destruction. They may be artists, but their Art is neither about them nor about itself, nor is it a mean to a nobler end ; it exists only in relation to its audience.

The confrontation between new and old gods is not just about what society should look like, but what use should an artist make of their art, both as an artist and as a part of society. Meaning the gods don’t just differ in their art, but in the relation they entertain with it. Another member of the Frankfurt school, Walter Benjamin, expanded on Kracauer’s theory to consider the side of the artist : because art is now shaped by the masses and subject to mass production, a piece of Art has grown closer to a product, meaning it loses its intense relationship with its creator as the sole reflection of their individuality. Now Art was never disconnected from society in a way that would allow it to be a pure reflexion of the artist’s soul – this past only lives in Baal and Set’s fantasies. But the new scope of mass production and consumption means that the connexion between artist and art has become more tenuous than ever before, and the only way to truly ignore the public’s desire would be to retire from the world. But on the other end, it allows artists to be more than ever part of society, as their creations do not need to occupy their entire life. The 1923 special sees Amaterasu’s performances be appreciated by several gods who all show diverse degrees of fascination. Even in the main series where gods are openly “fans” of each other, only Laura has ever shown that level of entrancement with another god’s performance. In neither of the other specials have we seen the gods enjoying each other’s power. But in 1923, every god has something to say about the other’s Art, even openly employing this term, while the other specials and the main series were always careful to not pierce too much the veil of the metaphor. The gods of 1923 are as much producers as they are consumers of art themselves, both artist and audience.

In many regards, 1923 hits the sweet spot between the 1831 pantheon, which showed isolated gods only concerned with their art, and 455AD Lucifer, who rejected his power as an artist to don another role out of concern for his city.

This special shows the gods torn between existing as individuals and acting as inspiration, which incidentally might be why so many seem fused with the creations of their real-life counterparts. Should the gods exist primarily through their art or as individuals in the society they’re a part of ? This questioning is even voiced out loud in the special, as Neptune points out that “a god should be many things, but a man most of all”. If we follow the metaphor, “an artist should be many things, but a man most of all”. An artist cannot afford to stop being a man and a member of society. But they cannot free themselves of this duality either : they have to “inspire” while living this inspiration. Give as much as they receive. If they choose to stop being either man or an inspiration – well, we saw the results. The gods are all walking the line between losing their connexion to humanity while reaching deeper for the sake of Art, and being dissolved within the mass and at the mercy of the times. As it becomes clearer that Ananke’s purpose is much more complicated than simply letting History carry on, the gods dilemma regarding what to do with their power threatens every day to become irrelevant ; has they ever any power over History at all ? Every single pantheon has seen its era die with them and onto a new phase of Art and History. This could indicate that the pantheon means nothing, or on the contrary that their sacrifice at the hand of necessity is all about burying the past to give birth to the future – the same way Ananke seems to reincarnate within a young god in an unclear manner.

But all in all, isn’t that the fate of every artist ? If truly Art can fashion History, then once it is done doing so, it belongs in the past – unable to carry over in a world that it helped shape, and therefore cannot influence anymore. Only the artist can cross through, and maybe live in the world they inspired, within their own dream, their own spirit of the era, always nested within their creations, and so, never truly theirs.

WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE SPECIAL

Why do we love murder mysteries ? It’s a question I asked myself repeatedly while reading this special, and one I have to try and answer in order to explain why I didn’t like this one so much.

Before we get into that, I have to explain my metrics : I do understand that this special could be seen as much more than a murder mystery ; after all the “mystery” part only takes about half of the special – which is a problem in and of itself, but we’ll get into that later. However, this special is conceived and written using the codes and structures of the murder mystery, which is why when I say I don’t think it’s a very good one, this impacts my opinion of the special as a whole. It would be unfair to judge the 455AD special because it fails at being a war story, as the “war” part is but a device to a larger story ; it is not unfair to judge the 1923 special by how it fares at being a murder mystery, because this is what it was built to be and what it presents itself as.

So why do we love murder mysteries ? Now I think much smarter people than I must have weighted on that, but personally, I think their appeal comes from their most basic form : a puzzle. What is a puzzle ? It’s a perfectly self-contained form of entertainment. Its solution is within itself, not yet visible, but surely there ; there is no need to involve yourself in it further than to crack it, and once you have, it is done. A murder mystery functions the same way : from the very beginning, its setting, its characters, their history, are all part of one large puzzle waiting to be cracked, and reading further means slowly piecing it together and revealing its intricacies. But no piece is ever added, every element of the story is there from the start and each of them remains until having been completely explored. It requires just the right level of commitment from the reader, and can be done with once the book is closed.

So to me, 3 characteristics of a good murder mystery can be identified : a self-contained solution, a worthwhile progression and a fulfilling resolution.

With that posed, let’s now look at the 1923 special so I can try to explain why I didn’t find it satisfying, starting with the most debatable point : I don’t think this special is playing fair with us. There’s an inherent problem to it which is that some of what’s happening must be left unanswered in order not to spoil the main series. But that means that a good part of the story comes straight out of a magician’s hat, starting with the killing of Dionysus via the light system and onto the lighthouse-spirit-capturing-device-that-doesn’t-actually-work-yet-does-something-yet-unexplained. It was tolerable when it was about a machine in the main series since we knew an explanation would come later, but here it means we are supposed to get satisfied with what we get until we maybe get more in the main series. It is deeply unsatisfying to see a huge plotpoint come out of nowhere in that fashion : as nothing before it was introduced even hinted at it. And none of it really is never treated as part of a mystery : the way Dionysus was killed is explained in the page right after, meaning this intriguing way to kill is immediately spoiled and never matters again. So as a result of all this, I stopped early being involved with the mystery, trying to solve it along and trace out what could be going on and simply waited for what the special would dump on my plate next. This is what I mean when I say the solution isn’t self-contained : it doesn’t emerge naturally from its initial setting, it simply adds up more elements and then tells you this was what was going on all along.

The second thing that bothered me was the progression of the story. This is, after all, the most enjoyable part of a murder mystery ; otherwise, everyone would simply read the first and last chapters. We read to watch characters, their motivations and shared history unfold, while we learn more about the murder itself. As I said, the murder in the special may be beautifully drawn, but there is no mystery to them, bare the murderer. And it really pains me to say that, as I think character work is the best and most original part of wicdiv as a whole, but the characters in the 1923 special is really where it fails for me. Most of the characters are a little better than two-dimensional (I mean, can you name more than two character traits for either Baal or Amon-Ra ?) and worst of all, there is no evolution from the initial setting. I don’t mean character development, as it would be unfair to demand it from a single special, but simply the reveal of anything about the characters that wasn’t made clear from the start. Baal and Set’s elitism, the love triangle, Woden’s beliefs, Minerva and Ananke’s game, every single one of these was established in full in the first pages and never received more nuance or consideration. Yes, more stuff happened in relation to them, but would your description of them be different at the beginning or at the end of the comic ? Lucifer dies on page 12, while Amon-Ra lives until the end of the comic, yet I know no more about Amon-Ra than I know about Lucifer. I’d say the best-established device in the comic is the betrayal of two-thirds of the Norns, and even then, we’re talking about characters we barely know.

And that’s also a problem when it comes to the mystery part. There are three categories of baddies in the special : Baal and Set, Woden, and Ananke and Minerva. Or, to sum it up, every single character that we were told was unsympathetic from the start. We were on the lookout for Ananke and Minerva’s action from the start due to the main series, and the other bad guys turn out to be My other suit is even more racist, 100% authentic vintage Nazi, and Really bad place Tahani. Surprise surprise.

And all of it plays to explain why I found the resolution so unrewarding. In terms of structure, there’s a reason why at the end of an Agatha Christie the murderer calmly stays in a room while a little Belgian guy explains their crime to everybody and then doesn’t even try to run away : it’s because once the mystery is resolved, pursuing the story would be boring. Why would we care what happens next since everything that was introduced has found a satisfactory explanation ? And the special is no different, which is why it’s such a problem that the murder are explained halfway through the issue. Not only does this explanation rely on one of the most basic tools of the murder mystery writer arsenal – several murderers giving each other alibis – and implicating the most obvious characters imaginable, it leads to a whole second part whose point I struggle to find. It’s clear that the goal was to make it a triple-unfolding mystery, with Woden using his co-conspirators and Ananke having laid out the whole thing, but it doesn’t work because of what we know from the main series : we know Woden tend to be slippery, which is why I was instantly suspicious of his “death”, we know that Ananke and Minerva are playing a long game, and perhaps more importantly, we know how the whole thing end from the first issue of wicdiv. There is no stake to the lacklustre fight toward the end of the comic because we already know who wins it, somehow what happens next and who is behind the whole thing. There is no “subsequent” part of the mystery at play here : once the murderers are revealed halfway, then the special pretty much laid out all its cards, except the ones we’d really be interested in but are left for the main series to unveil. We simultaneously know too much and not enough about each character from the start, and nothing about that changes from beginning to end.

So this is why, to me, this special fails at telling the type of story it wants to tell : it uses the codes of a genre but doesn’t deliver a satisfying genre story. As for the rest of what the comic does in terms of formal device, i.e. the dual novel/comic/illustration structure, I’d describe it as incredibly frustrating. I’ve read a lot the word “experimental” thrown around in reviews of this special, but mostly what it tells me is that anything that remotely differs from your typical comic book is apparently experimental. Neither the prose nor the comic are used in a particularly novel way, bare the fact that they are both used here. And to me, this dual format is not put to very good use here. For starters, I fail to see the reasoning being doing one part in prose and the other in comic : at the beginning, comic comes at the end of a chapter with a few establishing panels and then a full page illustration of the murder. But as we get closer to the end, the comic parts start to appear for no apparent reason, and disturbs the rhythm of the whole piece. Why is the unveiling of the conspiracy in comic but the scene between Ananke and Woden is not ? Mostly, what part are relegated to prose seem to be the part that the author want to leave in the dark as much as possible ; but that’s another way that this special made me just wait out the next change, since I didn’t know if I’d get prose or comic on the page turn.

But really, what frustrates me most about the format is its wasted potential. The whole point – and metatextuality – of alternating between prose and drawing means that several forms of representation and interaction with the reader are available, but the opportunity to see them complete and play out each other is not seized. One example that was particularly egregious to me was Dionysus’ body experiments. They first appear in written form, and are first described as “difficult to explain”. But clearly it’s not so difficult to explain, given that an illustration of it is later given to us. Having both prose and comic should be the opportunity to describe what cannot be represented, and represent what cannot be described. Instead, prose and comic seem to seize the same material and simply deal with it in their preferred form. There’s no reward to having to alternate between prose and comic if the exact same story could very well be told entirely in one or the other format and not lose anything.

As for the prose and comics on their own, it’s not that either of them is bad, but I don’t find them particularly breathtaking either. Gillen’s prose loses a lot of its singularity from the comic format, especially in the non-dialogue parts. I think the problems of the dual format come in part from Gillen always thinking as a comic writer, even in his prose, meaning that when he writes he always has in mind how such a scene could be represented, which prevents his pure prose from ever straying far from the comic parts. As for the comic, the full page illustrations are always beautiful and I’m a sucker for a sepia palette. The parts where the panel mimic a filmstrip and use cue cards from silent films are the most novel thing this special does and I wish it had done more of it. Still, fight scenes and dynamic characters might not be Aud Koch’s strong point, meaning their choices to have most comic pages toward the end robs us of one part of her talent.

Really, what it all comes down to is : I’m disappointed. With the story, with the format and with the execution. With a premise as insanely perfect as “Ananke only has a few days to kill twelve – or eleven – gods on an island” there had had to be a way to tell a better story. With the beautiful art of Aud Koch, Gillen’s playful writing style and a meditation on multiple forms of art, the formal part should have knocked it out of the park. Instead, it just… is. Yes, what I said in the intro is still true : this is a rich issue, with much to discuss and many threads to pull. But the whole reason I’ve adopted this format for my SOTs is because I firmly believe something can be rich and profound while not necessarily being great on its own. I do think this special is better than the 1831 one where they were kind of figuring out the quirks of them, but in terms of story, character work, emotional involvement, the 455AD special is still my favourite one. Hey, they can’t all be winners for everybody. It’s just a shame that this one wasn’t for me.

#wicdiv #seeds of thought #1923 special

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doomonfilm · 3 years

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Ranking : M. Night Shyamalan (1970 - present)

Like most people, I was introduced to Philadelphia-native M. Night Shyamalan through the massive success of his debut film The Sixth Sense. I vividly remember him being labelled “the new Hitchcock” right out the gate, which even then I felt was a lofty title to appoint to a director who hadn’t even given us a follow-up film, which can usually be taken as an indication of how much potential range one will have over their career. His skill behind the camera was evident, and his first five years of output hammered home the fact that he had a knack for writing twist endings that in itself took on a meme-worthy life of its own. Nobody is perfect, however, but unlike most directors that are suddenly met with criticism after a span as wunderkind and critical darling, Shyamalan took things in stride and did not fold, and as a result, his career has seemingly lost little to no momentum twenty years in.

Ranking the films of Shyamalan is, at heart, an exercise rich in folly, as his ambition and diversity almost calls for the films to be previously grouped into sub-genres prior to being ranked. In my opinion, however, there is enough stylistic definition and clear-cut writing panache that makes his films definitively Shyamalan, so I hope that you’ll join me as we enjoy our ride on this fool’s errand.

11. After Earth (2013) They say always shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars. With After Earth, M. Night Shyamalan showed that sometimes you can shoot for the moon, miss it and the stars, and land somewhere in the void. Lots of post-apocalyptic flourish and setup is used for what basically equates as a side-scrolling quest, and the choices made for the characterizations are so distracting in their oddness that it’s hard to invest yourself in the movie in any capacity other than a surface level dissection of the accent and dialogue. Shyamalan does have a knack for building lore in his films, but he does way more telling than showing in After Earth. If not for the ties to Will and Jaden Smith, this film could’ve sunk the Shyamalan ship.

10. Lady in the Water (2006) I’m sure that M. Night Shyamalan had good intentions when he decided to turn a story he created for the enjoyment of his children into a feature-length film, but not every idea needs to be seen through into fruition. Many of the same issues that plague After Earth popped up in Lady in the Water, from the infinitely deep lore being smashed into exposition down to the extremely odd choices for characterizations, but unlike After Earth, at least there are recognizable aspects of the film that one can hang on to. There are a handful of surprisingly strong performances, given the ridiculousness of the content, but ultimately all other elements are shadowed by the sheer absurdity of the root narrative. I try not to pick on actors, but Bryce Dallas Howard just doesn’t do it for me in this flick.

9. Signs (2002) This is probably going to be the one that causes the most feedback in terms of position. According to the masses, this film is the true masterpiece in the M. Night Shyamalan canon, but as an aficionado of alien invasion films, Shyamalan seems to zig at every point he should have zagged. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix is an interesting coupling on paper, but if there is chemistry between the two of them as the film’s leads, it didn’t translate on screen. And for God’s sake, don’t even get me started on having aliens who are harmed by water choosing to come to a planet that, from space, is CLEARLY MOSTLY WATER.

8. The Happening (2008) While M. Night Shyamalan had presented “dumb” twists prior to The Happening (we’ll get back to that shortly), the sheer vastness of the revealed enemy creates a sort of inverse danger arc in regards to the journey we were presented… while there does seem to be destruction, and a sense of danger about what will happen next (and to whom) is built up, it pales in comparison when one realizes that nature is the enemy, and if this premise were true, the events seen more than likely would not have been so random in their scale, location and severity. Maybe I’m dumping a lot of speculation into this one, but when our male lead is doing what he does in most every film, and your female lead is given an uncharacteristically underwhelming performance, you get time to think about these kinds of things.

7. Glass (2019) All of the potential in the world was there for Glass to be a mind-melter. What felt like the biggest, most elaborate twist in the entire M. Night Shyamalan universe had been revealed in the form of a secret trilogy that took nearly two decades to present itself, but sadly the landing was not stuck. All of the grandness of the world built in Unbreakable and Split suddenly felt much smaller and less elaborate when our characters essentially found themselves grounded, and while we were sold the idea that all of what happened was some sort of elaborate group hallucination, the feats pulled off by Crumb are still sold to us as reality, leaving the lines blurred much more than what was likely intended. We are even teased with a storyline that feels like mockery of what could have been, but in the end, Glass was the tragic landing that undercuts the brilliance that preceded it.

6. The Sixth Sense (1999) This film is a tough one to place, because in terms of its technical prowess and execution, it is not only a brilliant film, but a stunningly impressive debut. The problem with this film, however, is the same that tends to plague even the best magic tricks… it’s amazing until the trick is revealed. In the case of The Sixth Sense, the first watch blows you away. The second watch, as a result, feels like a completely new movie, and is even more rewarding as it resolves itself once again. Any viewing after the second one, however, is plagued by a lack of surprise, intrigue or anticipation, and what we are left with is a good movie with no wow. Perhaps the best way to watch this film, at this point, is with someone who has never seen it and has somehow managed to avoid any spoilers, as it would be the closest one can get to experiencing this film with an uninformed eye.

5. The Last Airbender (2010) With a black cloud hanging over this film due to overwhelmingly negative backlash from fans of the Avatar animated series, I stayed away from it like one stays away from rotten garbage. Interestingly enough, I had no dog in the fight, as I had never seen any of the source material, and only had a layman’s understanding of it as a result, with no emotional ties to anything about it. I say that to say this… I can certainly understand how an adapted work can be met with brutal skepticism and aggressive analysis, and if even one stone of fan service is left unturned then the whole thing must be cast aside, but if taken on its own merits, this is a surprisingly strong film. It hits the bullseye in terms of being an epic kid’s tale in all the ways that Lady in the Water did not, and it has the big budget feel that was missing in Glass. Who knows... my thoughts on the film may change as I finally dive into the animated series, but as it currently stands, this film should be considered as a win in the Shyamalan collection.

4. The Visit (2015) What a truly bonkers movie. Watching M. Night Shyamalan’s take on the found footage film is surprisingly kinetic, and thanks to some of the best casting found in any of his films, we are given characters that evoke emotion and make us either care about them or fear them. There are probably even some who would claim that they “saw the twist coming”, and maybe I’m just a sucker, but when the curtain is pulled back on what’s really going on it feels like every loose string representing a question is suddenly pulled tight enough to choke. There are just enough games present in the writing that, while we question the crazier things we see, we can also shrug them off with “acceptable” answers. If you’ve managed to go this far without anyone spoiling the ending for The Visit for you, I highly recommend checking this one out immediately, as it is that vintage Shyamalan that many people are seeking out.

3. Split (2017) If this one were just a one-off, it would probably still sit extremely high on the list of Shyamalan films. Anya Taylor-Joy is good in most everything she does, and James McAvoy is putting on a clinic in terms of range and character variety. The film gets about as broad as it can without going over the top, and that size is translated in the tension that emerges from the captivity that Kevin Wendell Crumb puts the girls in, forcing them to his live wire and ever changing personality. With much of the film boiling down to a few locations, and a freight train of a premise that is seemingly headed in one direction, it is natural to anticipate a Shyamalan swerve, but it’s the button at the end of the film that makes you realize the sheer existence of Split in itself is the twist. For that feat alone, this film must be applauded.

2. The Village (2004) Remember when I brought up “dumb twists” earlier? I’ll be honest with you… this was the film I had in mind, despite it being my favorite (albeit it not my top ranked). Up until the moment of truth, everything presented in this film works : as a period film it is well-executed, the use of reds and yellows is iconic, the lore presented is actually shown and not left solely to exposition dumps, and Adrian Brody brings a performance level to his character that far exceeded what was necessary. I also tend to be hard on Bryce Dallas Howard, but she steps up to the plate when the story is shifted completely to her shoulders. The twist isn’t even actually all that bad, other than the fact that it may have been the most obvious premise for a twist, but I think that even a slight tweak in regards to the overarching location or the person who discovers Howard’s character would have greatly improved the execution of the twist moment. Even though M. Night Shyamalan had already made a great movie (which is coming up in just a moment), this was the one that brought me off the fence and into the camp that supports Shyamalan.

1. Unbreakable (2000) It’s quite rare in the grand scheme of things to see a director make light year jumps in his second film, especially when their first film reaches phenomenon status. Somehow and someway, however, M. Night Shyamalan did the impossible by topping a film on the Mount Rushmore of debuts with the film that feels like the most ambitious and well executed of his career. A cursory search of the Bruce Willis filmography will show that outside of the first Sin City film and Looper, M. Night Shyamalan got the last of good acting he was giving directors. The visual interpretation of the comic book world framing is so nuanced and subtle that, upon learning the context and intention of the film, each repeat viewing brings new attention to these very layered visual details. The presentation of Elijah Price was so phenomenal that it ultimately caused expectations that crushed Glass upon arrival. Even if the Eastrail 177 Trilogy didn’t quite live up to expectations, there is no denying that Unbreakable was a pitch perfect table-setter, and an impressive film to boot.

#ChiefDoomsday #DOOMonFILM #MNightShyamalan #TheSixthSense #Unbreakable #Signs #TheVillage #LadyInTheWater #TheHappening #TheLastAirbender #Devil #AfterEarth #TheVisit #Split #Glass

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mercenarypark · 7 years

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medic hcs

Em made a big hc post for heavy a few days ago [here] and ive been meaning 2 finally do the same w/ medic bcause im gay

note: while i try to be brief about the details, this post is about a gay jewish man in Germany during wwii. to set aside any initial worries, no, he is never kept in the camps- as a jewish person myself it sickens me deep in my stomach to even think of that possibility. but there’s still mentions of n/zism and antisemitism, as one would expect.

also, a fair amount of the details of my medic hcs for his childhood are based on the german side of my family, primarily my grandfather and his father. while i still only know a little about my family history[tm], details like medic’s last name, how his family were able to lay low, etc, are based on the little bits and pieces ive heard from my grandmother #antisemitism #nazism #homophobia #transphobia #satanism #long post #text heavy #tf2 #gore text #medical abuse #malpractice #experimentation mention

-Medic was born roughly around 1925- he’s in his early 40s around when the game takes place- to the name [redacted] Reichstein. the Reichsteins were reviled in their little town as mad doctors, which was at least somewhat true- they certainly weren’t shy to experimentation on body parts and [willing] subjects. but a good part of the hatred for them stemmed from Good Old Antisemitism, focusing their hate on the fact that they were an openly jewish family and saying that that must be influencing their occasionally morally dubious behavior

-for the longest time, though, people tolerated them- they were the only doctors around, after all. but as time went on, the disgusted glances turned to hate speech, turned to violent threats, and eventually, to violent actions.

-medic’s father, who had long since been debating on moving, finally packed the family up[against his wife’s wishes], and within a night, their home and lab were deserted.

-his father could tell that something terrible was coming. he brought down an ultimatum- they would have to abandon everything jewish about themselves in order to survive. medic was young, still, and didn’t fully understand the severity of why his father seemed so adamant that they never mention holidays they once celebrated, why their old family photos were torn and burned, why his mother was constantly reprimanded when her Yiddish roots showed through her accent

-medic’s father pulled a few favors, and before they moved into a new city, the family name was changed to Reich- a more acceptable, more German name. Reichstein could raise eyebrows, lead to questioning about jewish roots, but there have always been many Reichs in Germany.

-that’s also when Medic got his birthname changed to Ludwig, and he and his mother had to fight like hell for that. his father argued that the last thing they needed was another target on their back- if anyone found out that his son “wasn’t really a boy”, then that would bring the entire family under scrutiny and into danger.

-ludwig refused to take no for an answer. ludwig had always been someone who would rather die than pretend that he’s something he’s not, and this was one of the first signs of that. while he didnt fully understand his connection to judaism, yet, and thus didnt fight to keep it at the time; he DID understand that he wasn’t a girl, and by God did he refuse to pretend otherwise.

-eventually his father relented, though he never once forgot and throughout medic’s childhood, he would bring up how risky it was, how medic was potentially endangering them all.

-to clarify: his father DID technically accept his son being transgender, but he wanted him to repress it, ignore it, force it down and never bring it up, much like their jewish heritage. ludwig refused, and his father never liked that. [when ludwig grew older and became both openly gay AND became a practicing jew again, his father nearly had a fucking heart attack]

-ludwig was heavily isolated for most of his childhood after they moved, partially due to the war’s beginning, partially because his father was afraid of his son giving something away. he was homeschooled by his mother, and rarely left the house, instead spending most of his time playing with the family’s cockatoo, or in his father’s operating room, learning human anatomy

-this isolation[alongside his autism, and veritable cocktail of mental illnesses] helped contribute to medic’s general inability to understand how to interact with people- he is oblivious at the best of times, has no concept of personal space, rarely catches social cues, and has Awful attachment issues. he is overly affectionate with anyone he is even vaguely friendly with, he tends to ramble and talk about uncomfortably personal things without realizing its a bad thing, etc, etc, he is a mess and a half

-he does understand bits and pieces- for example, if he’s physically affectionate with someone, they tend to tense up, and try to get away from him, which means he’s doing something wrong. the problem is that he doesnt understand WHAT he’s doing wrong, or why it’s wrong[answer: he’s covered in blood and bird shit and holding at least one[1] human liver]

-speaking of physical affection, the first time engineer affectionately puts a hand on medic’s shoulder medic fucking freaks out because aside from his parents, NO ONE. no one has ever initiated Friendly Physical Contact with him. usually because theyre freaked out by him in some way. he has no idea how to cope with the fact that someone might actually think of him in a friendly manner to the point of expressing that physically [aside from sexually, which is a whole other story and a half]

-but im getting ahead of myself. the first time ludwig killed a man was when he was 17. a nazi soldier paid an unexpected visit to the Reichs. ludwig, scared for his family’s sake and overwhelmed with a boiling hatred for nazis that had simmered for all of his childhood, killed the man

-his father reacted violently, ranting that now they were doomed, but his mother helped ludwig destroy the body and evidence. by the grace of God, no other nazi followed up that visit- the soldier hadn’t told anyone where he was going, and there had been no witnesses to his visit. and germany was so chaotic at the time, that eventually the man's death was attributed to a previously unnoticed casualty in battle

-that was the first man ludwig killed, and also the first of many, many nazis. he spent a good stretch of his adult life hunting down nazis who had gone under the radar, trying to hide their past ties while still keeping the same disgusting views.

-as ive mentioned, in medical school, ludwig not only became openly gay, but returned to his jewish roots. no longer under his father's roof, and now that the war was over, medic saw no reason to hide aspects of himself any longer. and God help everyone who felt otherwise. especially once the most violently hateful dissenters, began to mysteriously disappear.

-throughout his adult life medic has had Multiple short term, non-serious relationships [including more than his fair share of one night stands], and maybe two serious relationships prior to heavy. neither of those ended well, citing ludwigs mental Fuckery as a big issue. speaking of, his mental fuckery has helped him get into at least a couple abusive relationships, which i wont detail beyond "he survived and healed".

-while he is Jewish, he is the kind of jew who criticizes god every step of the way. at least part of this is due to having to survive during the Shoah.

-the Shoah definitely fucked his mind up. the constant fear for his parents and himself, and the burning hatred for the nazis and everyone who agreed with them or stood back and let them take over, and just overall a horrible sense of helplessness, definitely contributed to a lot of his future mental fuckery, and to his feelings about God. as an adult, and as a doctor, he took the feeling of helplessness he had as a teenager, and flipped it around dramatically- if god didnt help him then, he’d have to become better than god. he would bring retribution where others didnt, and bring power and life to those god would not help.

-he sold his soul to satan sometime around his mid-30s. [this is a sentence that sounds really fucking weird if u dont know much about tf2.] there are a few reasons behind that, but im only gonna talk about one:

-as i've said, medic spent a lot of time murdering nazis who had tried to go into hiding. that's difficult when theyre trying very, very hard to cover up their past. medic struck a deal with satan- in exchange for the names, aliases, and locations of ex-nazis in hiding, he would kill them and send them straight to hell. his soul was just to sweeten the deal.

-ludwig does a Lot of experiments on captured and dead nazis, especially the painful ones. the ol' "removing a patient's skeleton" story was of a nazi officer medic had caught, and medical licence or not, ludwig would do it again in an instant

-medic's flock of homing pigeons, stolen from a wedding van, are like family to him. the original, stolen generation had more pretentious names, as named by their previous owner- mostly well known scientists and philosophers[Archimedes, Newton, Nietzsche, etc]. most of the pigeons he named himself have biblical, jewish names [Mordecai, Elijah, Rebecca, etc]

-ludwig is absolutely never prim, proper, or orderly. if he is wearing a coat that DOESNT have blood and bird shit on it, wait 5 minutes and check again

-he has a tendency to hyperfocus on something and forget things like "humans need food and water to live". heavy usually helps him remember

-medic snores. loudly. and it sounds fucking awful. heavy is, sadly, a very light sleeper. it takes a loooong time for him to finally be able to sleep through medic's snoring, and it winds up being one of the only things he actually CAN sleep through. god help you if you step on a creaky board halfway down the hall, though, because heavy will wake up in an Instant

-if tf2 were in modern times, ludwig's music taste would include a Lot of kesha, klezmer music, black metal, and so on. its varied, is what im saying

-medic, pyro, and soldier all get along surprisingly well together, because they all have a case of "same brain? same brain!", all of them have issues dealing with other people and have problems with processing/understanding things, have trouble w/ psychotic episodes and the like, overall their minds are all wired oddly but somehow they can understand /each other/

-scout accidentally becomes medic's unofficial adopted daughter and thats a whole post and a half on its own. suffice to say medic would do anything for her

-engie, demo, and medic are all Science Gays

-medic also does his best to help demo with his Absolutely Massive Amounts of Trauma and Self Loathing, by at least being a supportive shoulder to lean on when demo tries to drink himself unconscious to forget it all. hes absolutely terrible most of the time at actually saying anything to help, but he can be a good presence, and he has birds. birds help anything

-he has a very casual fling going with spy, since early on in their time at the base. its usually in a state of "on-again off-again", with the latter usually having something to do with how spy acts with scout.

-obviously theres a lot i could say about heavy and medic's relationship, but to put it briefly- theres a loooong time where both of them are "i dont understand social interaction" gays.

-medic is the "i literally dont understand how to act around people im attracted to or that me being extremely overaffectionate around you is due to the fact that im falling in love with you, i dont catch your vague hints towards the fact that you feel the same about me because you literally need to hit me over the head with something in order to get me to catch onto it" gay

-heavy is the "i have spent so many years repressing so much of myself and keeping quiet and not drawing attention to myself, that i physically cannot bring myself to be up front about the fact that im attracted to you. im also afraid of misintepreting signals and i am instead going to assume your over-affectionate attitude is platonic and i am misreading things" gay

-eventually they figure things out and its good and soft and gay

ok its 3 AM and ive been writing on this for at least an hour and a half and i told Em i would go to bed by now dhgfkhhj

#captain's log #ask to tag /#reblog if u want idc /#im tired hfglghjkhjh #tf2 posts

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expertdigitalmarketingthing-blog · 5 years

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How To Find Best SEO Agency in 2019: Best 5 Things To Look For

While thinking about how to find best SEO agency, confusion erupts as every SEO company claims it is the best.

In, how to hire the best SEO company or how to find best SEO agency issue guidance is required for clients in choosing the right SEO agency for online business growth. Choosing a reputable company to manage SEO is half the job marketing. But the hiring process must be free of mistakes. In the realm of how to pick the best SEO company or how to find best SEO agency, many pitfalls are involved. They include hasty decisions in selecting an agency to optimize the web site for search engines without a forward any planning. Hiring an SEO agency is a critical hire as it is important to a business. The choice of a company makes a huge difference in the targeted results and costs incurred.

Google is Not The Last Word in Finding a Good Agency

Now let us see how to find the right SEO agency. It is a flawed idea that a good SEO company will do a great job just because their name has appeared in search results with the local city name. When the thought comes, how to get the best SEO company or how to find best SEO agency the temptation is to go after readymade lists in search engine results must be avoided. They may be local as well as general lists. In “how to hire the best SEO agency” part understand that many agencies ranking well in lists need not be the best at work. They are folks mostly without any serious client work and spend energy on netting clients. Of course, some good guys might be there. But hiring from listings without a credential recommendation from a known source will turn frustrating in the long run. The best part to choose the right SEO agency will be the client’s comfort level and insistence on best return on investment. Most of the “best SEO” or “best SEO consultants” lists are offered by websites that are aggregators. Their business model is bunching a few agencies and ranking them. There is also list marketing in which well-paid ones will make it to the top ranks. So, the pay-to-play lists will not deliver consistent results for the hirers. However, lists like getcredo.com had been trustworthy and useful.

The Mistake of Exclusive Secret Sauce

In how to hire the best SEO agency or how to find the best SEO agency, never be fooled by “secret sauce” claims of any agency. Fact is that SEO techniques are open practices and no one has an SEO secret trick that can boost ranking or traffic. If anyone makes a claim of the secret proprietary process, that is bogus and a red flag too. Place priority for the past performance of the shortlisted SEO companies. Check associated client’s verdicts on websites. Go through the comments posted. Demand after delivery service support that responsible SEO companies offer.

What Are the Best Processes in Choosing an SEO?

Set The Right Goals: In how to pick the best SEO agency or how to find best SEO agency issues, first of all, be clear about the SEO goals you wanted to achieve. There are good goals as well as bad goals. They include high rank in unpaid search for some keywords. Regarding goal planning before how to find the right SEO company or how to find best SEO agency option, boosting revenue through sales in E-commerce is not a bad goal. Since SEO is a sales-driving channel, how to hire the best SEO company methodology must have sales growth as a genuine goal. Boosting downloads or increasing free sign-ups or free trials are fine goals. Hiking brand sentiments by seeking to change poor reviews with good reviews are the best goals. The Overdose of Commercial Goals Will Backfire But be careful that in choosing the right SEO company, if the goal is mere traffic growth that will be a mistake. On how to find the best SEO agency testimonials and references of an agency’s ability and strategy for high rankings can matter. Set Your Top 3 Goals For How to Find Best SEO Agency Certainly, you can pick and guide how to choose the right SEP agency by short-listing three to five folks in SEO and get the best from that list. Talk to them and dig into references. Also, take the feedback of non-competitive companies. Ask them for names of good agencies who gave them good results. While looking for how to choose a reliable SEO company, ask SEO companies the processes they follow in reaching the goals discussed. Ask about communication and reporting process. What metrics do they report on? What work and resources the client must commit internally? Define The Requirements Make the SEO team understand the needs of the business niche, audience, and marketing requirements. Doing local SEO is better compared to traditional SEO approaches that chase general markets. Cost Factor In the SEO directory, cheaper is not better. Certain companies charge more than the market rate and vice versa. It is worth paying more when promising results are in sight. Verifying certifications, achievements including Google partnerships, experience, the number of projects done will make a prospect more eligible for hiring. The ratings and reviews available at Google My Business, Yelp and other popular places can provide an idea of the SEO agency’s standing in the market. Currently, most SEO companies are providing services on a month to month basis. So, a long term contract process must be avoided. Month to month contract will help in judging their performance and can proceed if there are good improvements.

A Case Study of Perfect Hiring of an SEO Agency

The Limousine SEO Case Study shows the site’s marketability. It was raw with no keywords existing anywhere on Google. When the client hired an agency after a reference, he asked the agency to give a website audit report. It was found there was no traffic to the site despite better design and quality content. The owner had invested time and built pages with relevant information.

Keyword Analysis

So, Industry- relevant keywords had to be found. The agency worked on Keyword Planner from Google and Keyword Explorer from Moz. It generated competitive keywords related to the limousine industry. From it, the agency extracted high volume, high money keywords and analyzed with the competitor’s website and froze a few high ranking keywords. Based on high-ranking competitor’s keywords, it reworked content and added more unique content. Vigorous competition exists in the limousine industry. Money keywords were targeted on the basis of search volume ranging between 1000-10000 monthly searches. The SEO agency prepared a timeline and submitted.

Month -Wise Goals;

Month 1 Fixing Technical issues via Audit Tools and Lighthouse Fixing crawl and server errors Proper Page review Solving Webmasters Issues Work on Performance Optimization Month 2 Guest Posting Posting Blogs two times a week Updating articles regularly Month 3: Branding work Branding Guest Post Branded, URL, partial match mix Analysis with different tools Finally, the results turned out to be fabulous. The traffic surged as SEO brought more visitors and conversion happened. In 3 months they upgraded the rank of the site. The SEO agency proved good in creating a focus on what type of users it wanted and offered them the best content.

Need For Right Reporting in SEO

So, the first step is determining what you want to achieve. Outline current SEO goals in consultation with the client. The goal can include boosting rankings for select keywords, overall search visibility generating more inbound links. Explain how these SEO goals are important for the client’s business. Set tangible business objectives, such as “increase monthly revenue” or “drive more traffic to your online shop.” Simply saying work is on for increasing keyword rankings won’t help. Outline what is to be done and see the direction and timelines, manpower, costs, and returns. While hiring an SEO agency, it must be made clear that the reporting process must be in detail and should hold the leads to goal accomplishment in a transparent manner. Accomplishing client’s business goals through SEO is an agreed goal. But the client must be convinced that the main objective reflects in the documentation of the SEO report. The metrics analyzed must align with the client’s expectations and business goals. For example, if the brief is to increase overall organic search traffic to the site, reporting must show the progress in keyword rankings. The agency must tell the client which all keywords have improved in rankings and how search visibility has changed vis a vis the last report. For better transparency mention about those keywords that are not doing well and how low-performing keywords will be tackled, going forward. A model report is here. See how it explains nicely. “Although the rank plunged for 5 of your target keywords, the overall Search Visibility has increased 7%. It is evident that and you are ranking higher than the competitors for 5 of those keywords.” Such clarity will make sure only relevant and actionable information is passed on. A mention of the action plan in the coming week will also cheer a client. One example is here. “In the next week, I will be making sure that all pages have Meta descriptions so that searchers can determine if the site gets into SERPs. This will boost the overall click-through rate and add more traffic to the site.” In short, the matter of how to choose a reliable SEO agency or how to find best SEO agency boils down to best practices that lead to faster results and coordination between the client and hired agency. Read the full article

#HowtoChooseaReliableSEOagancy #HowtoChooseaReliableSEOCompany #Howtochoosetherightseoagency #Howtochoosetherightseocompany #howtofindbestseoagency #howtofindbestseocompany #Howtofindtherightseoagency #Howtofindtherightseocompany #Howtogetthebestseocompany #howtohireabestseoagency #howtohireabestseocompany #HowtohirearightSEOcompany #HowtohireanbestSEOagency #HowtohireanbestSEOcompany #HowToPickTheBestseoagency #HowToPickTheBestseocompany #HowToPickTherightseoagency

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lesbianrewrites · 7 years

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The Martian Chapter 9

*disclaimer* This is a project done for fun, and none of these characters/works belong to me. I do not claim to own any of the material on this page.

This is a Lesbian edit of The Martian by Andy Weir.

Chapters will be posted every day at 2pm EST.

Google doc version can be found here. The chapter can also be found under the cut. Enjoy!

CHAPTER IX

LOG ENTRY: SOL 79 It’s the evening of my 8th day on the road. “Sirius 4” has been a success so far. I’ve fallen into a routine. Every morning I wake up at dawn. First thing I do is check oxygen and CO2 levels. Then I eat a breakfast pack and drink a cup of water. After that, I brush my teeth, using as little water as possible, and shave with an electric razor. The rover has no toilet. We were expected to use our suits’ reclamation systems for that. But they aren’t designed to hold twenty days worth of output. My morning piss goes in a resealable plastic box. When I open it, the rover reeks like a truck-stop men’s room. I could take it outside and let it boil off. But I worked hard to make that water, and the last thing I’m going to do is waste it. I’ll feed it to the Water Reclaimer when I get back. Even more precious is my manure. It’s critical to the potato farm and I’m the only source on Mars. Fortunately, when you spend a lot of time in space, you learn how to shit in a bag. And if you think things are bad after opening the piss box, imagine the smell after I drop anchor. Then I go outside and collect the solar cells. Why didn’t I do it the previous night? Because trying to dismantle and stack solar cells in total fucking darkness isn’t fun. I learned that the hard way. After securing the cells, I come back in, turn on some shitty ‘70’s music, and start driving. I putter along at 25kph, the rover’s top speed. It’s comfortable inside. I wear hastily made cut-offs and a thin shirt while the RTG bakes the interior. When it gets too hot I detach the insulation duct-taped to the hull. When it gets too cold, I tape it back up. I can go almost 2 hours before the battery runs out. I do a quick EVA to swap cables, then I’m back at the wheel for the second half of the day’s drive. The terrain is very flat. The undercarriage of the rover is taller than any of the rocks around here, and the hills are gently-sloping affairs, smoothed by eons of sandstorms. When the other battery runs out, it’s time for another EVA. I pull the solar cells off the roof and lay them on the ground. For the first few sols, I lined them up in a row. Now I plop them wherever, trying to keep them close to the rover out of sheer laziness. Then comes the incredibly dull part of my day. I sit around for 12 hours with nothing to do. And I’m getting sick of this rover. The inside’s the size of a van. That may seem like plenty of room, but try being trapped in a van for 8 days. I look forward to tending my potato farm in the wide open space of the Hab. I’m nostalgic for the Hab. How fucked up is that? I have shitty ‘70’s TV to watch, and a bunch of Poirot novels. But mostly I spend my time thinking about getting to Ares 4. I’ll have to do it someday. How the hell am I going to survive a 3,200km trip in this thing? It’ll probably take 50 days. I’ll need the Water Reclaimer and the Oxygenator, maybe some of the Hab’s main batteries, then a bunch more solar cells to charge everything… where will I put it all? These thoughts pester me throughout the long boring days. Eventually, it gets dark and I get tired. I lay among the food packs, water tanks, extra O2 tank, piles of CO2 filters, box of pee, bags of shit, and personal items. I have a bunch of crew jumpsuits to serve as bedding, along with my blanket and pillow. Basically, I sleep in a pile of junk every night. Speaking of sleep… G’night.LOG ENTRY: SOL 80 By my reckoning, I’m about 100km from Pathfinder. Technically it’s “Carl Sagan Memorial Station.” But with all due respect to Carl, I can call it whatever the hell I want. I’m the Queen of Mars. As I mentioned, it’s been a long, boring drive. And I’m still on the outward leg. But hey, I’m an astronaut. Long-ass trips are my business. Navigation is tricky. The Hab’s nav beacon only reaches 40km, then it’s too faint. I knew that’d be an issue when I was planning this little road trip, so I came up with a brilliant plan that didn’t work. The computer has detailed maps, so I figured I could navigate by landmarks. I was wrong. Turns out you can’t navigate by landmarks if you can’t find any god damned landmarks. Our landing site is at the delta of a long-gone river. If there are any microscopic fossils to be had, it’s a good place to look. Also, the water would have dragged rock and soil samples from thousands of kilometers away. With some digging, we could get a broad geological history. That’s great for science, but it means the Hab’s in a featureless wasteland. I considered making a compass. The rover has plenty of electricity and the med kit has a needle. Only one problem: Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field. So I navigate by Phobos. It whips around Mars so fast it actually rises and sets twice a day, running west to east. It’s isn’t the most accurate system, but it works. Things got easier on Sol 75. I reached a valley with a rise to the west. It had flat ground for easy driving, and I just needed to follow the edge of the hills. I named it “Lewis Valley” after our fearless leader. She’d love it there, geology nerd that she is. Three sols later, Lewis Valley opened into a wide plain. So, again, I was left without references and relied on Phobos to guide me. There’s probably symbolism there. Phobos is the god of fear, and I’m letting it be my guide. Not a good sign. But today, my luck finally changed. After two sols wandering the desert, I found something to navigate by. It was a 5km crater, so small it didn’t even have a listed name. But to me, it was the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Once I had it in sight, I knew exactly where I was. I’m camped near it now, as a matter of fact. I’m finally through the blank areas of the map. Tomorrow, I’ll have the Lighthouse to navigate by, and Hamelin crater later on. I’m in good shape. Now, on to my next task: Sitting around with nothing to do for 12 hours. I better get started!LOG ENTRY: SOL 81 Almost made it to Pathfinder today, but I ran out of juice. Just another 22km to go! An unremarkable drive. Navigation wasn’t a problem. As Lighthouse receded into the distance, the rim of Hamelin Crater came into view. I left Acidalia Planitia behind a long time ago. I’m well into Ares Vallis now. The desert plains are giving way to bumpier terrain, strewn with ejecta that never got buried by sand. It makes driving a chore; I have to pay more attention. Up till now, I’ve been driving right over the rock-strewn landscape. But as I travel further south, the rocks are getting bigger and more plentiful. I have to go around some of them or risk damage to my suspension. The good news is I don’t have to do it for long. Once I get to Pathfinder, I can turn around and go the other way. The weather’s been very good. No discernible wind, no storms. I think I got lucky there. There’s a good chance my rover tracks from the past few sols are intact. I should be able to get back to Lewis Valley just by following them. After setting up the solar panels, I went for a little walk. I never left sight of the rover; the last thing I want to do is get lost on foot. But I couldn’t stomach crawling back into that cramped, smelly rat’s nest. Not right away. It’s a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the rover? First person ever to be there! Climb a hill? First person to climb that hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn’t moved in a million years! I’m the first person to drive long-distance on Mars. The first person to spend more than 31 sols on Mars. The first person to grow crops on Mars. First, first, first! I wasn’t expecting to be first at anything. I was the 5th crewman out of the MDV when we landed, making me the 17th person to set foot on Mars. The egress order had been determined years earlier. A month before launch, we all got tattoos of our “Mars Numbers.” Johanssen almost refused to get her “15” because she was afraid it would hurt. Here’s a woman who had survived the centrifuge, the vomit comet, hard landing drills and 10k runs. A woman who fixed a simulated MDV computer failure while being spun around upside-down. But she was afraid of a tattoo needle. Man, I miss those guys. I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet. Ok, enough moping. Tomorrow, I’ll be the first person to recover a Mars probe.LOG ENTRY: SOL 82 Victory! I found it! I knew I was in the right area when I spotted Twin Peaks in the distance. The two small hills are under a kilometer from the landing site. Even better, they were on the far side of the site. All I had to do was aim for them until I found the Lander. And there it was! Right where it was supposed to be! Pathfinder’s final stage of descent was a balloon-covered tetrahedron. The balloons absorbed the impact of landing. Once it came to rest, they deflated and the tetrahedron unfolded to reveal the probe. It’s actually two separate components. The Lander itself, and the Sojourner rover. The Lander was immobile, while Sojourner wandered around and got a good look at the local rocks. I’m taking both back with me, but the important part is the Lander. That’s the part that can communicate with Earth. I excitedly stumbled out and rushed to the site. I can’t explain how happy I was. It was a lot of work to get here, and I’d succeeded. The Lander was half buried. With some quick and careful digging, I exposed the bulk of it, though the large tetrahedron and the deflated balloons still lurked below the surface. After a quick search, I found Sojourner. The little fella was only two meters from the Lander. I vaguely remember it was further away when they last saw it. It probably entered a contingency mode and started circling the Lander, trying to communicate. I quickly deposited Sojourner in my rover. It’s small, light, and easily fit in the airlock. The Lander was a different story. I had no hope of getting the whole thing back to the Hab. It was just too big. It was time for me to put on my mechanical engineer hat. The probe was attached to the central panel of the unfolded tetrahedron. The other three sides were each attached with a metal hinge. As anyone at JPL will tell you, probes are delicate things. Weight is a serious concern, so they’re not made to stand up to much punishment. When I took a crowbar to the hinges, they popped right off! Then things got difficult. When I tried to lift the central panel assembly, it didn’t budge. Just like the other three panels, the central panel had deflated balloons underneath it. Over the decades, the balloons had ripped and filled with sand. I could cut off the balloons, but I’d have to dig to get to them. It wouldn’t be hard, it’s just sand. But the other three panels were in the damn way. I quickly realized I didn’t give a crap about the condition of the other panels. I went back to my rover, cut some strips of Hab material, then braided them into a primitive but strong rope. I can’t take credit for it being strong. Thank NASA for that. I just made it rope-shaped. I tied one end to a panel, and the other to the rover. The rover was made for traversing extremely rugged terrain, often at steep angles. It may not be fast, but it has great torque. I towed the panel away like a redneck removing a tree stump. Now I had a place to dig. As I exposed each balloon, I cut it off. The whole task took an hour. Then I hoisted the central panel assembly up and carried it confidently to the rover! At least, that’s what I wanted to do. The damn thing is still heavy as hell. I’m guessing it’s 200kg. Even in Mars gravity that's a bit much. I could carry it around the Hab easily enough, but lifting it while wearing an awkward EVA suit? Out of the question. So I dragged it to the rover. Now for my next feat: Getting it on the roof. The roof was empty at the moment. Even with mostly-full batteries, I had set up the solar cells when I stopped. Why not? Free energy. I’d worked it out in advance. On the way here, two stacks of solar panels occupied the whole roof. On the way back, they would be a single stack. It’s a little more dangerous; they might fall over. The main thing it they’ll be a pain in the ass to stack that high. I can’t just throw a rope over the rover and hoist Pathfinder up the side. I don’t want to break it. I mean, it’s already broken, they lost contact in 1997. But I don’t want to break it more. I came up with a solution, but I’d done enough physical labor for one day, and I was almost out of daylight. Now I’m in the rover, looking at Sojourner. It seems all right. No physical damage on the outside. Doesn’t look like anything got too baked by the sunlight. The dense layer of Mars crap all over it protected it from long-term solar damage. You may think Sojourner isn’t much use to me. It can’t communicate with Earth. Why do I care about it? Because it has a lot of moving parts. If I establish a link with NASA, I can talk to them by holding a page of text up to the Lander’s camera. But how would they talk to me? The only moving parts on the Lander are the high gain antenna (which would have to stay pointed at Earth) and the camera boom. We’d have to come up with a system where NASA could talk by rotating the camera head. It would be painfully slow. But Sojourner has six independent wheels that rotate reasonably fast. It’ll be much easier to communicate with those. If nothing else, I could draw letters on the wheels, and hold a mirror up to its camera. NASA’d figure it out and start spelling things at me. That all assumes I can get the Lander’s radio working at all. Time to turn in. I’ve got a lot of backbreaking physical labor to do tomorrow. I’ll need my rest.LOG ENTRY: SOL 83 Oh god I’m sore. But it’s the only way I could think of to get the Lander safely onto the roof. I built a ramp out of rocks and sand. Just like the ancient Egyptians did. And if there’s one thing Ares Vallis has, it’s rocks! First, I experimented to find out how steep the grade could be. Piling up some rocks near the Lander, I dragged it up the pile, then down again. Then I made it steeper, etc. I figured out I could pull it up a 30 degree grade. Anything more was too risky. I might lose my grip and send the Lander tumbling down the ramp. The roof of the rover is over 2 meters from the ground. So I’d need a ramp almost 4 meters long. I got to work. The first few rocks were easy. Then they started feeling heavier and heavier. Hard physical labor in a spacesuit is murder. Everything’s more effort because you’re lugging 20kg of suit around with you, and your movement is limited. I was panting within 20 minutes. So I cheated. I upped my O2 mixture. It really helped a lot. Probably shouldn’t make that a habit. Also, I didn’t get hot. The suit leaks heat faster than my body could ever generate it. The heating system is what keeps the temperature bearable. My physical labor just meant the suit didn’t have to heat itself as much. After hours of grueling labor, I finally got the ramp made. Nothing more than a pile of rocks against the rover, but it reached the roof. I stomped up and down the ramp first, to make sure it was stable, then I dragged the Lander up. It worked like a charm! I was all smiles as I lashed the Lander in place. I made sure it was firmly secured, and even stacked the solar cells in a big single stack (why waste the ramp?). But then it hit me. The ramp would collapse as I drove away, and the rocks might damage the wheels or undercarriage. I’d have to take the ramp apart to keep that from happening. Ugh. Tearing the ramp down was easier than putting it up. I didn’t need to carefully put each rock in a stable place. I just dropped them wherever. It only took me an hour. And now I’m done! I’ll start heading home tomorrow, with my new 100kg broken radio.

#the martian #the martian andy weir #lgbt #lesbiansafe #lesbian rewrites

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thesteadydietofeverything · 7 years

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Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a welcome update to an overlooked series highlight

I played Final Fantasy XII, a bit, when it originally came out in 2006. I wasn’t playing games much in general at the time - as a junior in high school, it was the start of several years that lasted probably up until I graduated college where my experiences playing video games were few and far between. Still, the impact the Final Fantasy series had on me just a few years prior, when I put a thoroughly unhealthy amount of time into playing VII-X, roughly between the ages of 9 and 13, meant that I at least felt the need to check this new game out, as I have with every new single-player entry in the series. At the time, my reaction to it was even less enthused than my more recent reactions to XIII and XV, both of which I played for around 20 hours, essentially enjoying myself for that time, but being put off enough by their flaws to abandon them well before completion of a full playthrough. I probably didn’t even get past the first five hours of this game before giving up on it to retire to my room and listen to Pavement records and read anarchist literature, or whatever it was I was doing at that age.

I don’t remember many specifics as to why I quit so early, but upon returning to it over ten years later with the newly released Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age for PS4, it’s not hard to imagine. This game is a thorough departure from what the series had been so far - battle is no longer a random JRPG-style menu clicking affair, but a more streamlined approach not too unlike MMOs of the time. Not only that, but the main way that battle is done is through the game’s innovative and weird Gambit system, which allows the player to essentially program characters to perform a number of actions in particular situations by assigning them simple if-then statements. When your gambits are set up correctly, the game practically - as a number of critics at the time complained - “plays itself.” Grinding through the overworld or a dungeon can sometimes literally be as simple as pointing your party leader in the right direction and letting your well-trained team take care of the rest. At the time, such a system must have felt like a removal of many of the things that made Final Fantasy what it was to me; looking at it now, I can’t help but admire the daring deviation in a series that, for whatever flaws it undoubtedly has, has proven itself to be consistently unafraid of twisting its formula in unique and bizarre ways.

My newfound appreciation for this overlooked series entry, however, is not just a result of time and distance. The Zodiac Age changes the way the game plays in a number of really quite significant ways. One of these changes is with its License Boards - the means by which the player spends earned experience to learn new abilities, use new weapons and armor, gain significant amounts of HP and helpful skills buffs, etc. Though I never played the original game enough to remember how these Boards originally looked, they’ve now been modified to lock each character into two “jobs” of the player’s choosing - one at the beginning of the game, and another a few hours into it. Again, my lack of experience with the original prevents me from true comparison, but considering how open-ended and overwhelming these job-based Boards can be, I’m happy to not have to deal with the truly open approach of the original.

A much more clear and obvious difference in this new addition is the inclusion of a dedicated fast forward button. Literally. At any point while not engaged in dialogue or the menu, the player can simply tap R1 to make the game play either twice or four times as fast as its normal speed. This seems like a bizarre option at first, one that I wasn’t particularly keen on utilizing in my first couple hours of gameplay: the characters move at a decidedly silly, Benny Hill-esque pace at these speeds, and when just getting acquainted with combat, actions happen at a rate too fast to properly comprehend. But I soon came to realize that for large sections of the game, double time feels like a perfectly natural pace to move in, considering the size of some of the maps in the game and the rather laborious pace of the normal speed. Some of the more labyrinthian sections of the game can take hours to fully explore - the final dungeon, for example, took me nearly five hours to get through at double speed, and while navigating my way through such a massive and rewarding space was possibly my favorite sequence of the game, I imagine that if it had taken me practically twice as long, it would have worn out its welcome long before I had finished it.

The Zodiac Age, of course, also sharpens and clarifies the graphics of the original in a pretty impressive way - it’s not that it doesn’t still essentially look like the PS2 game that it is so much that it accentuates the striking potential still being squeezed out of the aging console at the time of this game’s release, mere months before the launch of the PS3. Additionally, the entire gorgeous score has been re-recorded. Despite my initial misgivings about this game being the first FF I’m aware of to use a composer other than Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto wrote truly some of the most lovely and iconic video game music I’ve ever heard with this game, and to hear it expertly performed in high quality audio is something that never failed to propel me through the several dozen hours I spent with it.

Lastly, one of the more subtle, but very important additions of this new version is the inclusion of an autosave feature. Again, sometimes I’d go an hour or two in double time between save crystals, and it wasn’t unusual to occasionally die in that time: the game contains these enemies called “Elementals,” eerie floating orbs that look not unlike something out of the new season of Twin Peaks and can utterly devastate your party in the early hours of the game. With autosave, it was easy enough to simply start a couple minutes before I encountered said Elemental and do everything that I could to avoid it, but if I had been forced to go back an hour or more to the last save crystal, I likely would have set the controller down for good out of utter disgust for a game wasting my time like that in 2017.

All of this puts me in an interesting position, considering that the last review I wrote was for the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, in which I struggled to grasp the point of a remaster/remake deviating from its source in a way that fundamentally changes one’s experience of the game. There are a few obvious differences here. First of all, when it comes down to it, this is still technically the same game. The N. Sane Trilogy was a bizarre exercise in attempting to completely remake a game from the ground up in a new engine, while attempting to give it as much fidelity to the original as possible. In practice, though, lazy or insufficient design meant that the game just didn’t feel like the originals, despite its obvious visual similarities. The Zodiac Age, on the other hand, is a more traditional remaster, but with a whole lot more: the additions and modifications may change the game in significant and meaningful ways, but the core game is exactly as it always has been.

Probably even more importantly, these changes actually improve the game. Granted, my limited experience with the original means that any nostalgia or endearing feelings I have for it are mostly relegated to a general affinity for the series rather than specific memories of my first time playing it. This is as opposed to, say, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, which I unequivocally played the shit out of as a kid. Still, the changes seem to stick to objective improvements: the ability to control the speed of play and the autosave feature make this game immeasurably more accessible to modern players, including those who, like myself, don’t necessarily want to devote the 60-80 hours of gameplay the original demanded in order to experience what the game has to offer. I imagine that even adventurous devotees of the original will be thrilled at an old favorite being given such a graphical and aural overhaul, not to mention the new play styles offered by the modified License Boards.

But all of these tweaks and improvements would mean little if, at the core, there weren’t already a great game worth revisiting here, and as a fan of this series, it’s a uniquely satisfying feeling to discover that this 11-year-old game is, indeed, great. While not exactly exempt of typical JRPG bullshit, it’s the strange, fascinating, and (relatively) mature game one would want out of a collaboration between Hiroyuki Ito (director of my two other favorite games in the series, FFVI and FFIX) and Hiroshi Minagawa (director of two other classics of the genre whose complexity precluded my appreciation at the time they came out: Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story; maybe it’s about time I revisit those as well).

It’s worth noting at the mention of Minagawa that this game’s setting of Ivalice puts it in the same world as his other games. The story, for as indebted as it is to Star Wars (and, unless I’m projecting, Game of Thrones, which is at the least interesting to note, given the exceptional pop culture phenomena that series has become since the show debuted five years after the release of this game), is engaging in its political intrigue and subtle character dynamics, especially compared to the melodramatic bombast of most of its PS2 JRPG peers, including Final Fantasy X. While all of these games, toward the end, are going to boil down to needing to save the world from some megalomaniacal evil and mystical jargon about crystals, and this game is no different, it at least boasts some of the best characters that have graced the series. Of particular note is the relationship between Balthier - think a demonstrably more suave Han Solo - and his partner Fran, a Viera (yeah, the sexy rabbit ladies) who has a mysterious connection to the magical Mist of the world. It’s hardly an original pairing - this game, as most games of its genre do, utilizes reductive archetypes - but through a combination of solid writing and particularly strong voice acting for the time, it just works.

What also works, and works shockingly well, is the aforementioned Gambit system. Though conventional wisdom might suggest that reducing the actions needed to be taken by the player decreases the player’s engagement in the game, the opposite, as it turns out, seems to be be true in this case. In other Final Fantasy games, typical combat transports you to a different game screen where the player, more often than not, continually taps the action button to attack until all enemies are dead, a marginally fun exercise that can become mind-numbingly tedious upon repetition - and if there’s one thing you can expect in a game like this, it’s repetition. By keeping me on the map and allowing me to assign rote moves to characters to do themselves, the game actually kept me focus on the more fun aspects of these moments - the Diablo-esque satisfaction of filling out a map and collecting loot, the colorful character and enemy animations, and tweaking my Gambits to make sure that I really am doing all of this as efficiently as possible. Very few games make grinding as gratifying of an experience as Final Fantasy XII.

Of course, as abnormally gratifying as that grinding is, there’s still a lot of it, and even with the fast-forward feature, the game still takes quite a while to get through - my final time was right around 45 hours. This was with doing a good amount of the side content the game has to offer, including many of the optional monster hunts scattered throughout the world (while I declined to do several of the late-game hunts, I wholly admired this system, which drove me deeper into dungeons I had already explored, revealing whole levels that I never previously realized existed); still, I’d imagine a more straightforward playthrough would only shave that time off by a handful of hours.

Even I, under different circumstances, would have likely gotten bored with this if I hadn’t played it at the time that I did. This game happened to be released toward the beginning of the summer session at the school that I work at, where I’d typically work twelve-hour days throughout the week. As it turned out, after coming home exhausted and yet oddly wired every night, putting a couple hours into running around this vast JRPG world was exactly the kind of meditative release I needed to relax me before going to bed and doing it all over again. I can pretty definitively say this game helped me survive the most stressful time of my work year, and as a result, I’m all the more happy I never discovered this game’s idiosyncratic charms until now. Now I do have a well of good memories associated with a particular time and place wrapped up in this game, and I have a new top-tier favorite in a series I will never be able to help but love.

8.5/10

#Final Fantasy XII #Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age #Square Enix #JRPG #Video Games #Games #PS2 #PS4 #retro #review #criticism #pop culture

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articlesofnote · 4 years

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hackernews and armchair social theorizing

So I read a lot of HackerNews, (a news aggregator reminiscent of early Reddit) because I’m a nerd and there’s a lot of good technical shit on there, AND there’s a pretty strong bias against “current event” type articles/stories so it’s nice to get some breathing room away from the facebook news feed from which I receive far too much of my information about the world.However, sometimes there’s academic material of a social bent because like any other group of engineers, the HN commentariat thinks that it’s smart enough to have a pretty good handle on any kind of problem - technical or otherwise. Today there was a discussion of post entitled “Riots and Political Theory: A Reading List” ( link: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/politics/news/2020/06/11-riots-and-political-theory.page ) which irritated me enormously. If I’m being honest, I was irritated mainly because I’m also of the engineering “every problem can be understood with sufficient kibitzing” mindset (one reason I feel so comfortable on HN, tbh) but I found that the discussion there (link: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24142649 ) rubbed well against the grain of my own thinking. So, in no particular order, some comments that I had opinions about:

> As with any destructive force, rioting is not a sustainable state of being. It is a blunt object to signal "Things are not okay" from societies whose frustration boils over in trying to achieve change through more articulate language. Rioting rarely affects change in the systems in the direction desired, as its methods are misaligned with desirable, sustainable values. Thus, it allows ruling classes to paint a harsh narrative of the rioters - leading in many cases to greater inequality and worse conditions. Riot theory seems like an interesting starting point to understand the socioeconomic climate in America today. A dialogue from which would naturally lend itself to survey the options that members of a community have in articulating opinions and criticisms of the systems they live within.

Seems like a wordier variation on “riots are the language of the unheard.” I was mostly annoyed by the second sentence - “rioting rarely...” - seems like a confident assertion of a trope without any actual analysis behind it. “Rioting rarely affects [sic] change... in the direction desired” is one of those statements that seems plausible - but the converse (i.e. that riots often effect desirable change) also seems plausible. I also wonder what OP thinks the “methods” of a riot are, that they are in conflict with “desirable, sustainable values” - also conveniently undefined. I’m also really annoyed by the assertion that a harsh narrative ascribed to rioters leads to “greater inequality and worse conditions” - again without any actual analysis attached to it! Maybe what bothers me is that OP isn’t actually adding any insight to the discussion? And/or the implicit assumption that other people take these assumptions for granted? I also see enough buzz-adjacent terms (”sustainable”, “inquality”, “dialogue”, “values”) that I suspect there’s not actually any depth to OP’s comment. So another possible reason that I’m irritated is that... not quite sure how to articulate... kinda, I take this seriously enough that I want to get to the bottom of it and reading this wasted my time? Or that I should have known better than to look to an HN comment for in-depth analysis? Or that OP is stating opinions as fact?

> A lot of people in this thread seem to have some false dichotomy in their mind - either you are peacefully protesting or you are rioting by burning random cars and destroying uninvolved storefronts. There is another option: peacefully protest but try to occupy administrative buildings and only use violence as a response to police violence.

There’s a good amount of discussion about the difference between “riots” and “protests,” and it was fruitful for me insofar as I started to think about both of these terms as post-facto labels applied for political ends. Particularly with the term “riot,” as some other commenters noted:

> There are very few clear, unambiguous riots. What is a protest that has a few looters or arsonists operating within it? I've seen plenty of events here in the Pacific Northwest that police have labelled riots that I would in no way call a riot. I think that the legal definition very much plays into the discussion, because it gives the police the power to tell the media that a riot occurred.

> The American revolution, the February revolution, the Red River Rebellion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Chech republic, Poland, do I need to keep going? All of them had violence inflicted on property, and most of them had violence inflicted on people. Were one of those events happen in your town, your police department, your mayor, your governor, and your president would without hesitation call them 'a violent riot'.

Another concept from the discussion that I found interesting was that, far from the riot being the “language of the unheard,” they can be thought of as yet another form of political theater:

> One reason thinkers usually place riots outside the discourse is because they are an artificial spectacle, and which are necessarily tolerated by a faction in the establishment who could easily suppress them with violence, but they don't because the effect of the riots supports their strategy for change in their institution. Situationism, and anarchist ideas like "the propaganda of the deed" covered rioting from a more earnest perspective, but in watching movements and protests for a couple of decades, there is always someone within the establishment in whose interest it is to tolerate rioting. This also explains the regular use of police provocateurs to break up peaceful protests by manufacturing riots, and instead of mere explanatory power, you can use it to predict how long an establishment will tolerate a spate of rioting. It's a ritualized performance and a spectacle.

I particularly like this comment because OP is willing to assert that this concept has some predictive power - i.e. that it is a testable, potentially falsifiable model. An implicit openness to the idea that one might be wrong? What an idea!

Another thread of thought relates to the role of media in (de)legitimizing protests/riots:

> Now riots and civil disorder are there to be exploited by the ruling class leading up to elections until the desired result is changed; they are in power.Just like the noise leading into 2008, complete with celebrity moms and widows, to protests and destruction of property, once the political goal was achieved the money behind these people are groups were removed along with any attention directed their way through the press. The press has sufficient numbers who operate strictly at the order of political influences, people vastly underestimate this influence.

Taken as a whole, the discussion thread puts out a lot of opinion on what constitutes rioting, how it contrasts with “protesting,” how both of those activities fit into the larger society, the relationship between rioting, police power, the media, and the ruling elites, and what constitutes legitimate vs. illegitimate public action. It seems to be taken for granted that riots are characterized by looting and destruction of property:

> Many of the current rioters are rioting because it's fun and/or a way to get free stuff. No need to make it more complicated than that. > The rioters are destroying one of the last remaining pillars of the middle class - small businesses. Sure, Walmart and Amazon will be happy to take over the niche, with a private security force to replace the defunded police. But what it will mean for regular people is less meaningful jobs, more poverty, and even less security. > I'm referring to clear, unambiguous riots, where people run around looting stores or burning buildings down.

There’s also a lot of distinguishing between violent and non-violent actions:

> The problem with riots is they often get co-opted by actors whose goals are not in alignment with the goal of the original rioters. Also, there isn't usually a singular person, group, or entity who will take responsibility of the riots and say "We are rioting for XYZ reasons". Contrast this with peaceful protests, where the reasons for and goals of the protests are laid bare by its leaders.

But enough of cataloging what other people think - what the heck do I think about all of this? At this point, I’m conceiving of both protests and riots, along with other public actions - eg. Occupy Wall Street or CHAZ - as attempts on the part of the body politic (the commons, the polis, the average citizens) to carve out a space within the broader society where they have relatively more agency than otherwise. The specific label that these actions get - protest v. riot seems to be the main dichotomy - seems to depend mainly on how the powers-that-be “feel” about the threat the actions pose to their continued authority and legitimacy. If the actions represent little threat to their legitimacy, then it seems more likely that the action as a whole will be called a “protest” - a registration of support for a political opinion on the part of a motivated collective that nevertheless assumes the legitimacy of the system within which it acts. I recall the Women’s March in 2017 as perhaps the most recent example of a public action that I assume* was almost universally described as a “protest:” a public rejection of (among other things) the recent election of Donald Trump.

A “riot,” on the other hand, seems to be characterized as such when, regardless of its other qualities, the participants assume the illegitimacy of the prevailing power structure. Riots can be anarchic (eg. the Watts riots) or organized (Euromaidan, perhaps?), violent (Zoot Suit riots) or non-violent (Portland) in actual fact; regardless of their actual nature, they will be characterized as anarchic and violent by agents of the prevailing power structure because it is assumed that the desire of the actors is to weaken or destroy that structure, whatever their direct actions may be. If I demonstrate in Portland saying that the police should not exist, am I more likely to be called a protester or a rioter by agents of the state? In this case I assume I would be called a “rioter” regardless of anything else I actually do, violent or otherwise. The view of the state seems to be that my attitude itself is “violent” - the thought and the deed are one. In a more condensed form: My perspective seems to be that the collective gathering and action of people in public spaces is labeled based mainly on how that gathering is viewed by the powers-that-be, which may or may not have anything to do with what the collective actually does. That which is viewed as an actual threat to the power structure (”law and order”) gets called a “riot” and that which isn’t is a “protest” or “demonstration” or something else. This fits nicely with the idea that rang true above, that these sorts of collective actions are at least in part (and perhaps primarily) fostered by agents of the state insofar as they advance extant political agendas, eg. police infiltration of protests to ensure that they become “violent” and thus provide “proof” that more policing is necessary. This specific idea cropped up in several comments: > It's not uncommon where I am from for plain clothes police to start riots. That delegitemizes the protestors and legitemizes violent action by the state.

> Additionally in the UK, the police often infiltrates protest organisations. They are often near the very top.

> Property destruction will be, by default, blamed on the protestors rather than police instigators. In this case the police were easily identified simply because they were sloppy and forgot to not wear police issue boots. So after clarifying my thinking, do I have any better answer for why I found the discussion so irritating? Why did it get under my skin? At this point, I think maybe because I saw my own ignorance and inchoate thinking reflected in the lack of nuance and outright vapidity of a lot of the comments. At the same time, it sure seems like all the threads of my own thinking were collectively there, and finally I felt compelled to pull them together in some way - hence this post! Certainly I was also turned off by the outright dismissive attitude of several of the commentators, as I apparently believe in the legitimacy of rioting as a form of political speech. It’s not just “fun and/or a way to get free stuff!” I mean, what the fuck? Truly violent rioting (eg. property destruction, direct action against police forces, etc) seems like it might be cathartic, but I don’t believe that it’s fun per se. By way of clarifying my prior assumptions, I believe that in general (with rare, rare exceptions) people have to be driven to violence of any kind - the average person is not going to choose violence as a first resort and most people won’t even adopt it as a last resort. If a “riot” is genuinely violent - if those participating in it are destroying property and/or lives** - then it likely became so because those participants had no other outlet. I also distinguish between violence against property and violence against people: property is replaceable but people aren’t. That is, I could not give less of a shit about broken windows or burned buildings, and frankly I think it shows remarkable restraint on the part of “rioters” to pretty much only damage property - buildings aren’t the ones making life worse for the proletariat, though they are certainly the tools of those that do. I also suspect that the argument about rioters destroying small businesses - “one of the last remaining pillars of the middle class,” as one commentator had it above*** - is a stalking horse for larger capital interests. A franchise Starbucks or a Target or an O’Reilly is not a “small business” and working for one is not a “middle class” profession; moreover, there’s evidence that genuinely community-member-owned businesses were left pretty much alone in the ongoing Black Lives Matter demonstrations sparked by George Floyd’s murder. Jeez, I’ve said a lot. This is one of the reasons I haven’t done much writing - once I get started, I find I have a lot more to say than I can keep straight. But you know what they say: practice makes perfect! Guess I’ll keep at it.

#riots sociology hackernews rambling protests protesting state power violence

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