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trillgutterbug · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus 😊 thanks friend!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

64! only five more to the magic number ayyyyy and then i’m legally obligated to never post another one.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

289,575 apparently??? which seems way way way higher than i ever would have guessed, wow. who knew!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

31 on ao3, although that’s lumping, eg, all marvel subfandoms together. but i have a ridiculous amount of wips in all kinds of other fandoms that i haven’t/won’t post, soooo.... more than that! and i don’t want to list them all bc that’d be a long boring read!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

it serenely disdains to destroy us, a magnus archives fic that, i somewhat vainly note, has been orbiting in the top few top kudosed fics in the tag since i posted it womp womp.

concerning flight, because we all thirsty for thor/loki+gender and i for one support us.

untitled porny snippet (yes that’s actually what it’s called), because same as above. (i see u, kudos-to-comment ratio and i aint mad but.... i see u. all you dirty birds out there shamefully yet silently jerking it. kudos to YOU.)

an experiment in posthumous subsistence, a batman/joker zombie au i wrote fucking TEN YEARS AGO ALMOST. why???? why is this fic so popular?? i’m barely a good writer now and i sure as shit wasn’t one a decade ago! the terrible title alone should disqualify it from being read, but i guess the people want what they want. and what they want is batman and joker handcuffed together, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

all good things, some stucky hydra trash party-adjacent smut regarding piercings. i stand by this one 100%, it deserves every kudo(s?) tbh.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i do, depending on the comment! i don’t think comments like “loved this!” / “thanks for writing!” are written with the intent to receive a response (or at least, when i write them on other people’s fics, i certainly don’t expect one). they’re like an extra kudo(s?), and i appreciate them a lot, but they’re not really an invitation to Discuss. whereas if someone clearly has put a lot of thought into a comment, or asked a question, or made some observations that i jive with, or just seems like they want to engage, then hell yeah i jump in there. love that shit.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i guess arguably thine own self, which is some hydra husbands abo. laugh all you want, it’s one of my fave of all my fics lmao. probably specifically bc of the unpleasant/open ending.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

probably moderation is a memory! since it, unlike 99% of all my other stuff, isn’t just total smut, and the whole point of writing it was to wallow as deep as possible in the sauce of giddy teenage infatuation, it got the opportunity to have an actual emotional arc (more or less). furthermore i could not possibly bring myself to break johnny lawrence’s tender little heart ever, that would hurt me far more than it would hurt him.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i only realised while answering this question that apparently.... no i don’t write crossovers! which is not at all a deliberate choice, i guess a compelling enough one just hasn’t occurred to me yet!

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

shockingly no! by some accidental miracle i’ve managed to fly under the radar so far, despite some of the really buckwild stuff i’ve posted. however, considering some of the stuff i’m probably ABOUT to post.... that clean track record might soon come to an end lmao.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

lmao. uhhhh. almost exclusively, and i guess??? all kinds? this is clearly a question composed by someone who does not write smut.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of, and i wouldn’t really care if i did.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think a few....? a number of people have asked anyway and i always say yes, so probably there’s at least one floating around out there somewhere.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have! just once, and we really made it count. it’s called a reptile dysfunction, which should tell you all you need to know.

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

thorki, probably. i always have and always will come back to it, no matter what. it’s got such a ferociously timeless staying power and so much potential variation, i don’t think i could ever get bored of it, regardless of what level of marvel-exhaustion i might feel at a given time, or what tropes, kinks, or stage of literary pretension i’m at. truly the oh tee pee.

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

ohhhhh all 836575927 of them, but. there’s this one thorki fic i started almost ten years ago as an experiment with a new-to-me style, which turned out over the intervening years to become my main style, and looking back on that fic, which for many years was a touchstone of writing-to-aspire to for me, it’s actually Not Very Good lol. but i still love the core concept, which is a canon divergence berserker thor au, but not only is it a somewhat inaccessible (admittedly less so since the deadpool movies came out, which was a hilarious pipe dream back when i started writing it) x-force comics crossover, but i wrote myself into a bunch of corners and have yet to dig up the energy to write myself back out of them! i go and reread it every year or so and think “hmm... maybe now...” but tbh it’s just not really good enough to bother! perhaps someday i’ll repurpose the best elements of it into something new.

16) What are your writing strengths?

man, it’s so hard to say. in much the same way that you can spend hours every day staring at yourself in a mirror, yet be utterly incapable of picking yourself out of a lineup, i spend a lot of time eyeballing my writing, but stepping back it seems like a chaotic mass of nonsense with few cohesive throughlines. i’m good at writing smut, i know that much! and in that vein, i think i am good at smut bc i am very good at committing to the bit, as it were. getting into the nitty gritty of experience and sensation (physical or emotional) and rendering largely abstract internal concepts in fairly comprehensible ways. i think my prose is quite decent on a sentence level too.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

utterly incapable of finishing anything! or plotting anything! can’t mange a cohesive emotional arc! write myself into overly structured corners or out onto a vast plain with no structure in sight! all the macro elements of storytelling totally elude me, which is very frustrating when i have all this tasty fleshed out micro-level character stuff, but no narrative skeleton upon which to drape it.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? don’t! unless you are very sure you know what you’re doing, and the other language bits are a) very few, b) easily contextually understood, and c) actually adding something other than a weird flex that you know google translate exists.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

11yo me wrote spock/kirk/janice rand and thought she invented the concept of a threesome. brand been stronk since day one 🤘. (the vulcan salute is right next to the devil horns in my emoji list, so....)

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i love the (ongoing) better with you series very much, not least because i’m still absolutely flabbergasted that i wrote something that long. i think it’s actually pretty good all things considered and it’s very dear to me on many many levels. but the fic that i just viscerally adore, that i love the style of, and that i had such a transcendent, invigorating, organic Experience writing, is temper its strength, adding honey until quite cold, which is a terror fic with the inexplicable pairing of edward little/hartnell, featuring crossdressing and gender stuff. it just burst out of me fully formed one day and i don’t think i’ve managed to top it yet!

lowkey tagging @lingua-mortua @pitcherplant @kaasknot @froggy-babyy @deputychairman @nomercyonlytears @clockheartedcrocodile

#writing meme #whoops it's 3:30am #excellent life choices courtesy of: yours truly

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whump-town · 4 years

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Criminal Minds AU: Zombie Apocalypse

Warnings: Amputation outside of a hospital, Whump, Hotchniss but you really have to squint, Hurt Hotch :(

Despite David Rossi’s thick walls and a floor’s difference in location, Hotch’s pained screams echo through the house. The noise cuts through Reid’s palms. No matter how hard he presses, his knuckles going white and skin hurting, he can still hear the hitch in Hotch’s voice. The way his breathing falters and breaks. Reid rocks his body, muttering to himself in hopes to drown out the sound.

Until the screams stop.

“This is exactly why you have the gun.”

Hair plastered to his pale skin, arm raised above his head, and lethargic with fever those were the last words spoken to any of them. Hotch had already succumbed heavily to the infection running through his body but the conviction in his tone as he’d reminded Reid that there was a reason they do things the way that they do.

Dave swings an ax. Derek has a crowbar. JJ has a bedazzled crossbar. Emily and Hotch have bats.

Spencer gets the gun.

The others can handle hand-to-hand combat. They’re stronger than they look and even if they aren’t someone always has their back-- that’s why Hotch never lets them leave without a partner. Zombies are dangerous, he reminds them like somehow they’ll forget, but they need to be reminded. Morgan has too many close calls and Emily won’t leave a man behind.

But they fall into routine and routine in the apocalypse are unnervingly dangerous.

“No, splitting up.” Hotch’s voice is raised just above the sound of the lightning cracking across the sky. “No, going back.” His eyes scan across them, eyes pinched as the scent of death becomes waterlogged and the strong summer wind sends the scent wafting past them. “You do not stop. No matter what.” He’s really talking to Spencer and Penelope.

He’s seen the damage JJ and Emily can do. Derek is relentless, Dave fearless… What he knows is that it’s going to be impossible for all of them to make it out. And, as long as he can help it, they will make it home. Even if that means he doesn’t.

He rises to his feet, door hinge knees creaking as he’s reminded he’s getting too old for this. The scent of death is thicker the higher his head peaks up and as his eyes land on the undead around them, he pulls in a shuddering breath. They’re surrounded, a death sentence-- if it were anyone other than his team of federal agents. Well, they’re not federal agents anymore but it’s the thought that keeps them together.

“Hotch?” If she’s being honest, Emily’s feeling a little unnerved. “If--” she bites her lip, correcting herself. “When we get back… wanna have that smoke?” As a part of her reckless, we’re all gonna die anyways mentality, Emily had picked up smoking. On more than one occasion, usually a little tipsy or more sleep deprived than normal, Hotch would pick one of her cigarettes up between his trembling fingers and ask her to remind him to try one of these one day.

Now, facing death in the face… he can’t help but smile. He ducks back down, his blood aching at the sound of the growls around them. “Emily--” that’s how they do things now. No last names. Last names and formalities are for the other world-- the living world, “-- have one waiting for me?”

She smiles back at him, “you got it boss.”

He lets the rain overhead wash the smile off his face. Leaving behind his thundering heart. “If we don’t…” his voice deepens with the thick emotion swelling in his voice. “If we don’t make it out of this,” his eyes trail over each of their faces. Forcing each detail to remain present in the back of his mind. In the initial outbreak, there was a medical examiner with a theory about the way the infection was spreading through families. “I want you to know that you're the closest I’ve ever come to family. I-I-”

Infected mother’s and father’s were not killing their children. Some even seen herding them along, hunting and gathering food for them long past the point of present mind. Now, as Hotch stands before them, the only thing separating them from death, a thin wall, he hopes that if death comes to him, he’ll remember.

Even dead. He’ll know they’re family.

JJ reaches out, squeezing his fingers. “We know,” she promises. “We love you too.”

Hotch nods his head, lowering his eyes to the soaked ground beneath his feet.

Emily chuckles, a deep dark sound. The kind of morbid humor that they’ve all acquired. “So,” she smacks her hands together. “We gonna do this shit or not?”

It’s now or never.

It would be an epic battle in the rain if they could let out battle cries as they race into the street. Noise draws out more of them, though. So as Hotch approaches the edge of their protective wall, hand raised over his head in a clear stop, fingers spread like a high-five. His jaw clenches, they radiate that energy. Fist clenching around their weapons. With a nod he closes his fist.

Go.

Training and reflexes, it’s what keeps them alive.

Common sense helps too.

Hotch keeps up a moderate jog as he leads them. His legs are longer, meaning he travels the ground faster. As he squints through the rain, blinking blood and water from his eyes, he glances back for them.

A man, face actively rotting off with the rain, comes running at Hotch. With a grunt, Hotch swings his bat up into the underside of his jaw. There’s a nasty crack, the man’s mandible falling off onto the ground. Before the man can even gain his footing, Hotch finishes him. Bringing his bat down on the man’s neck, cracking his head open against the ground.

He doesn’t so much as blink at the corpse on the ground. The corpse whose blood has splattered across his clothes.

He makes eye contact with Emily across the street, sharing a bloodied smile with her.

A piercing scream pulls their attention away.

“Spence!”

Reid jerks, caught off guard. He looks up from the floor, brushing his sleeves across his wet face. “I-I’m-” he forces himself to his feet. His knees shaking beneath him. “Wh-What? Did he- Did he make it?” His eyes track every moment in JJ’s face, looking for any sign of a micro expression that might break the news to him now rather than later.

But this life has hardened them in ways that are incurable.

“He’s alive,” JJ tells him but he knows that’s not forever. For right now, amputation has slowed the infection. With something more than luck-- be it Dave’s God or Hotch’s stubborn ass-- the infection might be stopped. No Hotch Zombies, yet.

Reid sniffles, rubbing at his eyes again. “What- What can I do?” His eidetic memory has never been more helpful. When the outbreak first occurred, they would bring back books with the food they scavenged. Reid is as close to a medical doctor as they have.

Although, Emily’s stitches are clinically even. Unmatched.

“Emily speculates jaundice,” JJ’s voice is even where it once trembled. “His eyes…” her head shakes as she finds herself unable to communicate the medical garbage explained to her before. Just like in their previous life of crime fighting, they each have things that make them valuable. Things they know.

Emily and Spencer have steady hands and are sponges to water with medicine. Their impromptu medical team. Derek is a fast learner, good on his feet. He scavenges. Dave’s ability as a team player makes him Derek’s right hand man. Old or not, in the field, he and Derek are precise and merciless. As technology around them dies away like the humanity in their bones, Penelope feels desperate. She needn’t worry about her place on the team.

There are days when they come home-- home to Dave’s house, to each other-- covered in blood with hunger in their eyes. They’re not even human anymore. They kill. They scavenge but they are not human.

Penelope. She is human. Her brightly colored butterfly clips in her hair and the way she laughs without abandon.

She is human and they are not.

It’s how there was no thought, no hesitation when Hotch turned back.

“Penelope!” His voice is a crack of lightning, his rage streaking across the sky. He raises the bat high above his head, height ever the advantage as he runs back into the carnage. Someone calls out his name but he has no fear. It’s just rage. “Move!”

The kills come naturally, blood sprays and he doesn’t so much as blink. It’s merciless, it’s nasty.

“Go!” For a moment, Penelope sees a flash of her old boss. The man who wore suits and red ties. He’s gone with a swing of his bat. Replaced by the man who’s seen too much. She loves him, irregardless, but she wishes the pain came for less.

He pulls her to his feet, eyes scanning for injuries. “Run,” is the last thing he says to her.

It takes half an hour to find him again. Soaked to the bone in blood and gore, Emily smiles shining white teeth at her old boss. “Any bites,” she asks, with a nod of her head. Before she steps closer, she makes sure they’re clear. Her back to the wind.

Exhausted and sick with the feeling of the infection spreading through his veins, Hotch raises his right hand. Dying is… it’s so fucking cold. “One,” he answers, showing her the necrotized skin on his forearm. A death sentence.

A scarlet letter.

Emily steps closer. For anyone else, she would never be so naive. Minutes after the first bite the victim becomes deadly. A killer. But this is Hotch and she does and always has trusted him with her life. She presses the back of her hand to his cheek, feeling his burning body. He’s fighting the infection. “Can you stand?”

He nods but his throat is too dry to say much more. There’s a plan. A promise. She’s supposed to kill him. Press the barrel of a gun to temple and--

With a barely contained cry she forces him to his feet. They shuffle.

“Aaron,” Dave finds them next, a hollow inflection in his voice. Hotch will be the first loss.

Reid curls his nose as he enters the room, swallowing thickly against the scent of cigarette smoke.

His mother did her best to raise him. As far as life goes, Emily and Hotch have taught him a lot. They’re old enough to be his parents, they could be his parents and in many ways have been. So to see the two of them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a bed sharing a cigarette is both strangely familiar and weird.

“JJ said you needed me.”

Hotch’s hand trembles as he pulls the cigarette away from his pale lips. Emily takes it, not even commenting before placing it between her own lips. Under their shared scrutiny, his heart thunders in his chest. “You broke protocol,” Hotch’s voice is softer than normal. No strength behind the words that are accusatory and should pack heat. He’s too weak to be mad.

It’s because of this-- knowing that Hotch isn’t actually mad-- that Reid can nod. Confirming. “Yes, sir.” His hands are pushed down into his jeans, his eyes on the floor. It was his idea but he didn’t do it.

Reid’s eyebrows pinch as he comes to a conclusion that seems too good to be true. “The infection,” he says dumbly, recalling the red sharpie outline Emily had drawn around the infection upon finding Hotch. When Emily nods Reid knows his eyes haven’t deceived him. “It’s a snake bite,” he tells them, “in theory.” In the 1800s, aside from treating the wound with ammonia, the only other treatment was to cut around the wound. Cut the infection out.

“You want to cut his arm off,” Derek crosses his arms over his chest.

Reid nods.

There’s a rumble of disapproval and all around unease. Emotions get in the way and right now that’s not something they can spare. They’re working on borrowed time and it’s beyond luck at this point they haven’t lost more. But Reid is right.

Emily nods her approval, “then we’ll cut his arm off.” Her conviction is so strong that the attention of the room goes from heated and aimed at Reid to confused tension. She shrugs, “ does it matter? We leave his arm on, he dies. One of us has to kill him.” And that’s not a job she wants but if that’s what it comes to it’s the job she’s getting. “We cut his arm off, we kill the infection or maybe we just slow it down but that gives us time.”

A chance.

Emily Prenitss is tired of losing people she loves.

Derek raises his head from where he’s staring a hole into the ground, knowing the answer to his question before he even asks. “Who’s going to tell him that? Who’s going to cut his arm off?”

Emily just looks at him and Derek understands.

He nods solemnly, resigned.

“What if--” Garcia’s voice trembles, her eyes red and puffy. “We don’t have blood transfusions or-- or medical equipment!”

Emily nods, “we don’t.” She shrugs with a shake of her head, “but it’s this or…” zombie Hotch. No Hotch. Ever.

No grumpy grunts as greetings in the hall.

No more thick and dry jokes that take them by surprise, causing choked laughs and tear stained eyes.

No heavy hands on their shoulders, the silent reassurance that he’s there. He has their back.

“What if…” Reid feels the sudden burden of his plan settle on his sternum as dead weight. “What if he doesn’t forgive us?”

Dave, who had left them to debate in favor of sitting at Hotch’s side, grunts as he comes down the stairs. There’s an odd cut off laugh falling from his lips as he shakes his head. After all this time and they’re still a mystery to one another. He settles a crooked, sad smile on Reid. “Son,” he whispers, affection dripping from his mouth like blood. “He wants to die. A part of him is already dead but he’ll forgive you.” His voice softens, his tone shifting. “Forgiveness is all we have left.”

But, as the past few years have proven, you can never be certain.

Emily and Derek cut Hotch’s arm off. They tied him down. Secured his legs to the sides of a pull-out cot, strapped his chest down with rope, and shackled his left above his head.

The whole time, hallucinating from the fever, Hotch had talked them through it. Reminding Reid over and over again that it was okay. Everything would be okay.

Reid was by his side when Emily cleaned her saw, the same saw Hotch uses every winter to cut down branches from trees for firewood. A simple carpenter’s tool. By the time she drags it across the joint in Hotch’s right shoulder, Reid is downstairs. Hands over his ears as Hotch’s agonized screams tear through the walls.

Mercifully, as she tore through the back of his arm, his eyes had rolled into the back of his head. The screaming stopped.

Now he’s leaning into Emily but, for the most part, sitting up. The bloodied stump of his right arm is covered in thick gauze and topped off with old t-shirts. His face is still pale, recovering from the blood loss is going to be hard, but the pain is agonizing and as long as he’s awake he won’t allow anyone to sneak out of the house in search of painkillers.

“Thank you,” he rasps. He looks bad, like the living dead and he very much is, but as far as Emily can see, as far as any of them can see, there is no more infection.

Reid looks to the floor, he can’t handle compliments but it goes beyond that. He needs Hotch alive. He can’t lose anymore people.

“Knock, knock--”

Reid turns, and behind him at the room’s door, is the rest of the team. They’ve got dinner, it looks like what Penelope calls Everything Soup-- it’s exactly what you think it is. The room fills, everyone pilling up on the bed until no one’s standing but Reid.

Hotch looks queasily at the bowl offered to him.

Emily shakes her head at the bowl offered to her. “I just cut off my friend’s arm,” she reminds the room, with a smirk. “I’m not all that hungry right now.” Her face breaks out in a contagious smile as she starts losing her shit, bending over herself with hysterical laughter. It’s like she’s lost her mind.

“What?”

“What is it?”

Emily shakes her head, covering her mouth as she snorts. Finally she manages, choking on her laughter, “I just thought about job recommendations and-and-” She bends back over herself, shaking the bed with her laughter. “Hotch how would you rate my skills? Enough to still write me a recommendation letter?”

Hotch rolls his eyes with a huff. He’s feeling dizzy and cold, the after effects of his blood loss. “Emily,” he admonishes, softly, shaking his head in disbelief.

The world as they know it can come to an end. She can perform a medical procedure outside of a hospital with tools not equipped for surgery. They can survive countless Zombie attacks. A sentence, he should never have to think let alone know is true and yet…

Emily Prentiss still tells bad jokes.

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #spencer reid #emily prentiss #david rossi #derek morgan #penelope garcia #jennifer jareau #zombie #zombie apocolypse au #whump #hurt

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

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RP Meme from "Chapter One: Shoots and Canes" in the Children of Gaia Tribebook from "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" Part One of Two

Sure he’s not a ringer?

I freaked bad.

A wonder the humans here weren’t really bad-tempered. Yet.

It was just scary and fucked when it happened.

No fires, no grills, no nothing, they said. This sucks.

No shade either.

If I have to I’ll eat it with my hands.

Any who wishes may tell a tale tonight, but the tale may last only as long as one log takes to burn.

This is the oldest tale. It is about today. It’s about

yesterday too.

I speak only for myself; that is all anyone can do.

I am myself, and that is all I can be.

We are all brothers and sisters from the same Mother

Even when we do not fight, our division cripples us and makes us seem weak and foolish

We should be examples to them, not a laughingstock

I lay this blessing upon you.

That guy had the stones!

Maybe I can help. I don’t know.

You think success spoiled us?

Still left me out.

The Left got as much done as it could, maybe, then threw it all away on the drugs and stupid hippie crap.

Rock and roll was cool and it still is, but it didn’t help anyone get jobs or places to live, protection from discrimination.

The parties, sure, they were great.

The leathermen were so drugged they didn’t even care. Drugs--look, I hate the laws too. But I hate people fucking up their lives and their brains even more.

We stopped doing stuff that was helping and started to do shit that made everyone mad and didn’t help anyone.

You don’t just get something and have it forever. You gotta take care of it and guard it.

I mean, look at the ’90s, when the basic idea of political correctness — which, at its heart, was nothing more complicated than ‘try to consider the feelings of those different than you’ — got pushed too far, and then a backlash hit. ‘PC’ became a dirty word; suddenly the ‘cool’ thing to do was to show that you weren’t ruled by political correctness by busting out all the crap talk.

I mean, can’t you see something’s wrong with that?

The moderates stopped listening to what the radicals had to say, because the radicals proved they had no interest in moderation.

We didn’t consolidate our gains, and a lot of us stopped caring.

She never gave up, never burned out.

She can inspire anyone

As discouraged as I get, she’s all it takes.

Time eats what we believe, what we are.

Time takes; does it ever give?

We all talk of peace, and how best to achieve it. I come to talk of the alternative. I speak of war.

We know what happens to anyone unlucky enough to even stand too near a war.

Scientists vivisected human beings.

Guns slew soldiers and civilians indiscriminately.

That is war. That is the worst in humanity, and everything we fight against.

I've seen these things first-hand.

It’s even enough to make one lose all hope in ever achieving peace for the world, for even a generation’s time.

Right motivation, wrong idea.

Those that are ill beyond healing, and will hurt others if left alone to do so, people like that can’t be forgiven.

If we all have to give our lives to prevent something like the World Wars from happening again, it’ll be a small price.

We have to be better than the humans were.

We have to treat our defeated foes with enough mercy to keep them from rising again — but we cannot lose to them.

Who was that guy?

No sorrier state of affairs has ever plagued our race.

I’m damn proud to relate that many others did what they could to reconcile the two sides, and in a few places, it worked.

When the need is truly there, we will be one again.

He’s from one of the old families. . . very conservative in a lot of ways.

Humans do outnumber us, you know, and they are pretty creative.

We are more than spectators, parasites or victims.

A discussion with a market fruit seller, a book left on a leader’s tea-table, a sermon or salon attended by a few chatty ladies — all can do a lot to bring the right ideas to the right people.

You hear boasts of battles and wars from many tribes, but this was true heroism. To spring men from the trap of money and class, to feed the poor with honest work.

This was a time of confusion and violence

We had tried to convince the rebels around us that it was a chance to begin anew and work for peace, but they were out for blood.

The fear arose within us that another reign of violence and butchery was about to begin.

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay memes #roleplay meme #roleplay starters #children of gaia #world of darkness #werewolf the apocalypse

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mama-m1na · 4 years

Text

Apocalypse: Chapter 5

~~~V~~~

The next morning, the group of four had woken up early for their mission; and luckily for them, Kerstin was hungover.

"This is what you get for drinking so much yesterday," Rhamina scoffed as she placed her hand on the younger female's forehead as her palm glowed a soft purple and as her bell gave a soft chime.

Kerstin merely groaned in response as Cloud and Sierra watched the interactions with expressions of disappointment.

"I thought you knew your limits?" the blond asked as the eighteen-year-old retracted her hand that had stopped glowing.

"Oh shut up, I'll be fine," the darkette huffed, feeling better already as her eyes no longer burned in the moderate lighting and as her headache began to subside, "This happens all the time."

'I can't believe you were this irresponsible before a mission,' Sierra thought, 'If Mina didn't know that spell, we would have had to leave you here.'

"That spell is eventually going to stop working on you if you keep getting like this," Rhamina reminded before she went to sit at the couch so she could lace up her boots.

"Nevermind that right now," Sierra sighed as she shook her head, "If everyone has their things ready, then let's go."

"Yep!" the ravenette chirped as she hopped up with a smile and the four loaded up into the elevator.

Once they had reached the ground floor, the group began crossing the lobby to reach the entrance with Rhamina walking towards the back when she was halted by a hand on her shoulder.

With the eighteen-year-old already in the mindset that their mission had started, she did the first thing her body told her to do.

Quickly grabbing onto the person's wrist and upper arm before lowering her center of gravity, the ravenette threw the person over her shoulder, slamming them into the ground.... Hard.

Everyone turned to face the commotion as Cloud noticed the person on the ground, gasping for air, was the male who was watching Rhamina the day before.

"Just what do you think you're doing, boy?" she asked in a deeper tone of voice, glaring right through him as the others drew their weapons.

No one in the room dared interfere with the interaction as they knew just how dangerous the female was despite them being able to out number her.

"That's a scary expression you've got there, Hasu," the male chuckled between gasps, still trying to catch his breath as he stood up.

The ravenette's eyes widened a fraction as he spoke before she shook her head, expression hardened once more as she asked, "Who are you?"

"Hasu," he started in an almost disappointed tone, "Do you really not remember who I am?"

"No, I don't," she spat as the others in her group came to her side, "And I would also like to know how you know that name."

"Rhamina," the male sighed with a sad smile as his shoulders slumped, "It's me... Kiran."

The female's expression quickly faded from a dark danger to surprise as her mind processed the information just given to her.

In a split second, she had rushed forward and wrapped her arms around the male, leaving her teammates confused as they slowly lowered their weapons.

"Holy shit, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed as the male returned the hug before she pulled back to examine his face, "You're alive!"

"Yep, and so are you," the male chuckled as he looked at the female with a nostalgic smile, "So, how have you been, Hasu?"

"Hasu?" Sierra asked as she brought a hand up to her temple, "What the actual fuck is happening right now?"

"This is Kiran," Rhamina introduced with a smile, "his family owned the studio I rehearsed in when I was a fan dancer."

"'Hasu' was her performer name," the Korean male explained as he faced the others, "It means lotus in Japanese."

"Oh yeah, I remember you talking about him," Kerstin said as she thought of memories from long before their world turned to shit, "Didn't he move away before the whole thing went down?"

"Yeah and we ended up losing contact, so I automatically assumed he was dead when the generators fucked themselves," the ravenette sighed before the male ruffled her hair, much to her displeasure.

Seeing the ravenette act so casually around the unfamiliar male left a bitter taste in Cloud's mouth as he placed the buster sword onto his back.

His displeasure only grew as the female continued her bubbly actions until he scoffed, turning away from the pair.

"Hate to break up this little party, but we have a job to do," the blond spoke as he crossed his arms over his chest with a frown.

"Right, well it was nice seeing you again, Kiran, but we're kind of doing something so I'll just talk to you later," she said, giving him one last hug.

"Wait, can I get your number before we go? Make sure we actually stay in touch this time?" the male asked as he held out his phone, earning a nod from the female as she took the device.

After inputting her contact information, the ravenette handed the phone back to Kiran and the group headed back out to their vehicles.

"Hey, Cloud, are you okay?" Rhamina asked as he placed his sword in it's spot on his bike, "You seem kind of tense."

"It's fine," he spoke bluntly as he got on the bike and lifted up the kickstand, "Don't worry about me, just focus on the mission."

"I will, but I hope you know that you can trust me, Cloud," she spoke with a sad smile, "I might not be the best at giving advice, but I'm always willing to listen."

The blond looked up into her dark brown eyes and saw that she was being completely genuine in her offer.

With the words she spoke, Cloud was able to understand her a little better.

He was about to respond, but was interrupted by the van zooming past them and towards the exit of the parking lot.

Rhamina gasped before her eyes narrowed, growling, "Kerstin's driving, isn't she? That mother fucker!"

"Get on," Cloud ordered as he started his bike, the engine roaring to life.

The ravenette complied and hopped onto the back of the vehicle without a word before wrapping her armed around the male's waist, her qualms with the bike seemingly gone as she focused instead on her annoyance with her younger sibling.

The blond was able to catch up with the van after a few minutes and pulled up to them, on their left side, at a red light.

Rhamina turned to glare at the darkette as she lowered the tinted glass, both females in the vehicle laughing as she did.

"Fuck. You," the ravenette said, flipping off her younger sibling as the seventeen-year-old began recording on her phone.

"Mina, you were taking too long," Kerstin cackled as she zoomed in on the female's pout before showing the blond who was driving the bike.

"I'm not helping you if you get fucked by a warper!" snapped the ravenette as she pointed a threatening finger at the female.

"Aw, Mina, you know you will," the teen cooed, causing the ravenette to let out a huff before the light turned green once more.

"Eat my ass!" the eighteen-year-old growled as she secured her grip around the male's waist while they raced ahead of the van, Rhamina providing directions before they made it to a parking lot, quite a ways from the actual plant, but still on Coronado Island.

"Any reason for parking so far?" Cloud asked as he got off to stand next to the ravenette as they waited for the van.

"While armored vehicles would be nice to get past the drones and turrets when confronted with mutant fish with mind magic, vehicles become the ultimate death machines," she explained while shaking her head, "Mesmers get inside and fuck with your head so that you basically fall completely under their control."

"How do we get past them then?" the blond questioned as the van appeared in the distance.

"We don't," the ravenette replied as it got closer, "I have a high enough resistance to their hypnosis so that I can still stay in control of myself, so y'all are going to keep the drones and turrets off me while I take care of the fish."

The male then nodded as the van parked next to them before the two Filipino females popped out with their respective weapons.

Sierra had an oversized sledge hammer made of dragon bone in her hands as her medium length brown hair was held back in two french braids.

"Time to fuck some bitches up!" Kerstin exclaimed with a confident grin as she placed her two flint-lock pistols in the holsters at her hips.

With everyone ready to go, they began walking down the road towards the looming building known as the Coronado Plant, the very cause of the dystopia everyone was forced to live in.

About halfway down the bridge from the island to the plant, they came across a large fish that seemed to be floating in the air.

It had a purple body and a teal mouth with four petal-like appendages attached to the back of its head that were bioluminescent.

They were far enough from the fish that it didn't notice them; however, one of the roaming drones did and began to attack the intruders.

Unfortunately, all of the noise drew the attention of the mesmer; so when Rhamina noticed it approaching, she left the others to run towards the fish.

Blue eyes flicked in her direction, but were quickly brought back to his present battle by a certain female shoving him forward.

"Don't even look at it, they can get you from this far," Kerstin warned as she shot at the drone, "Mina can handle them."

Meanwhile, the ravenette was running straight for the mesmer when the petals behind it opened to reveal the glowing patterns that it used to hypnotize its targets.

As soon as those petals opened, a small voice at the back of the female's head began telling her to just calmly approach the fish; but as she usually did with the voices in her head, the teen mentally sassed it before she ran straight up to the fish, using her fan to slice off its head.

Upon the animal's death, it let out a horrifying screech which alerted the other mesmers in the area.

"Well shit," the eighteen-year-old hissed under her breath as more of the mutated sea creatures emerged ahead of her.

With a low growl, the female ran straight towards the school of mesmers, ignoring the drones that shot at her.

A little ways behind her were the others who were drawing the attention of the drones and turrets while trying to ignore the light blue glow of the multiple fish.

The mesmers were quite easy to kill since their only notable defensive and offensive features were their hypnotic abilities, but there were so many of them and Rhamina could feel her head start to pound as more and more voices invaded her mind, telling her to put her weapons down and just succumb to the creatures.

It took about seven minutes for the other three to finish off the defensive machines sent by the plant; however, as they had just let their guards down, a soft blue glow had appeared out of the corner of the ex-SOLDIER's eyes.

Upon realizing what it was, he was quick to turn away, but it was already too late; a soft female voice had invaded his head, coaxing him into fully facing the creature.

Noticing that the blond had failed to meet up with them, Kerstin and Sierra turned back to see that the male was slowly walking towards a fish.

"Mina!" both girls called just as the ravenette finished off the school of mesmers that had surrounded her.

Brown irises locked onto the fish before she ran over and leapt up, doing a front-flip to gain more power as she landed right on the fish's head, crushing it.

Stepping out of the bloody mess she had made, Rhamina looked straight into the male's blue eyes to find them completely unfocused, a dead giveaway that he was still under the hypnotic effects.

"Hey, Cloud!" she called, snapping her fingers in front of his face before shaking him by the shoulders, but he gave no response.

With a sigh, the female cupped both of his cheeks, resisting the urge to squeal at how soft he was, before pressing her forehead to his.

Despite the pressure and lingering voices in her head, the ravenette let her magic run free and flow through the male.

As Cloud floated around in a void, being lulled by the soft female voice, he felt a familiar warmth wash through him as if he were being called.

Following the warmth, the male slowly began regaining control of his body and he blinked a few times, his vision focusing on the face that was so close to his.

"Welcome back to reality, Hun," the ravenette chuckled with a tired smile as she stepped back, "Do you get why we don't look at the fish?"

"Yeah," the male sighed as he moved his limbs, feeling weird as he regained complete control over his body.

As the two walked up to the door where Kerstin and Sierra were waiting Rhamina squeezed her eyes shut and brought her hands up to massage her temples.

"Mina, You good?" the darkette asked as the older female pressed her back against the wall of the plant before sliding down to sit on the ground.

"Yeah, that was a lot of them," Sierra added as she handed the ravenette a bottle of Thai tea from her drawstring backpack, "Usually there only like five or six, not seventeen."

"I'm fine," she sighed, taking the bottle with her head down, "I just need a minute. We can get going once the voices fade."

As the ravenette took some time to sip on her drink and recover, the others stood in front of her to block out the sun.

After about seven minutes, the teen downed the rest of the drink and stood up, saying, "Let's get this over with, my dudes."

The fights on the interior of the plant were similar to the one in the Abyss; however, this time there were warpers, mutated sea creatures that had the ability to create portals and warp enemies away from them.

This was especially dangerous when one would be warped to an extremely high height only to be met with no ground beneath their feet.

By the time they made it down to where the actual generator was held, everyone had taken some damage, but decided against healing at the moment due to them wanting to save energy for the final fight.

Upon walking out onto the suspended platform, the group was met with the sight of three armored individuals waiting for them, but before the battle could begin, the intercom came on.

"Welcome, street rats of the Abyss," the haughty male voice spoke, "Congratulations on making it this far, but you're far too late."

At that moment, the building started to shake as gears on the generator began to turn and the water surrounding it began to churn.

"They're starting up the generator!" Sierra exclaimed as she peered over the edge of the railing to see a green glow from beneath the water's surface.

"Oh no they don't," Rhamina growled as she dashed forward, letting herself get hit with a few bullets sent by the armored figures, some of them bouncing off her corset with with a metallic clang, before slamming into the one standing in the middle.

As their body hit the ground, the teen just continued forward to the control room without looking back.

"Well, we have our jobs cut out for us then," Sierra said as she brandished her hammer, the others getting in their battle postures as well.

As the three fought the armored beings, they could hear shouts, gunshots, and things breaking in the control room before a body was thrown through the glass window.

A few moments later, the generator powered down and the entire plant switched to its emergency power source.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" one of the armored beings asked as they blocked an attack from Sierra, "She took him out way too fast!"

"Man, I didn't sign up for this shit!" another one said as they stepped back to regroup while the door to the control room slammed open.

"Three rats left, huh?" the ravenette growled with a scowl on her face as she cracked her knuckles.

"We got what we needed, so we're done," the third figure said as they took out three glass orbs.

Quickly throwing them to the ground, the area filled with smoke as Kerstin let out a gasp and covered the eyes of her partners before closing her own.

"What is this?" Sierra asked as she sensed three powerful presences appear in front of them, gripping her weapon tighter in response.

"Keep your eyes closed!" the darkette ordered as the smoke began to lift.

"What did they just do?" Cloud asked as his eyes remained closed, the rest of him standing with his sword in a defensive position.

Before the teen could answer, they all heard a loud chime ring throughout the room as Rhamina exclaimed, "Execute!" from the other side of the platform.

All three of them felt a large surge of power before another form dropped right in front of them.

"Alright, you can open your eyes now," a familiar voice spoke, prompting them to do just that; however, when Cloud opened his eyes, it wasn't what he expected.

In front of him was Rhamina, but her dress was now a purple color with black sleeves and her corset was a clean silver color as it was a plated piece of armor.

Atop her head was a pair of black fox ears with three large tails moving behind her; however, the most notable change happened to her eyes that now held golden flecks in her chocolate irises that glittered with every one of her movements.

"Both of you need to get to the stairs and just wait there," the ravenette ordered as everyone looked ahead of them to see three basilisks hissing at them, "Kerstin and I can handle them."

"Right," the brunette agreed before taking the male's wrist and dragging him in the direction they entered from.

Once they had reached the stairs, Cloud looked back to see that Kertin's form had changed as well, her shirt changing to a red deep red from the black as he noticed that she had large, red dragon wings on her back as a matching scaled tail flicked behind her.

"What just happened?" he asked as Sierra stepped next to him to watch the pair fight the three large reptiles.

"Well, they're in their execution forms," she explained, "It's a form given to them by their bells, physically enhancing them so that their bodies are closer to what Death and War would have been like."

"They're fighting basilisks so it makes sense they'd use their executions," the female continued as Kerstin sent large waves of flames at one of them, "They have an ability that makes it so whatever looks them in the eyes just droops dead, but Mina had a nullifying ability in this form, so she took care of it... That being said, it would still be too dangerous for either of us to fight them with what we brought."

The fight was over in five minutes; but as both girls were floating in the air, Rhamina suddenly fell as she reverted back to her original form.

Before she could hit the ground, Kerstin caught her and landed as she too reverted back with a worried expression on her face.

"Hey, at least I ain't coughing up blood this time," the ravenette joked between labored breaths, "That means I stayed within the time limit for once."

"Mina, shut the fuck up," the darkette huffed as Cloud and Sierra ran over, "You shouldn't have done that, I could have handled them myself."

The eighteen-year-old gave a weak glare as Cloud took her from her younger sibling before saying, "You wouldn't have even been able to open your eyes if I didn't."

"Let's go, there are ice packs in the van," Sierra spoke as the ravenette's hearing started to get muffled.

The female slowly closed her eyes as it got harder for her to breath, the others already running up the stairs.

Cloud briefly looked down at the girl in his arms, feeling his chest tighten as he noticed that she had gotten pretty pale.

"Does this happen every time she goes into that form?" he asked as he looked to the females running right in front of him.

"Yes," Kerstin answered with no sign of hesitation, earning a look from Sierra, "What? She was going to have to tell him something."

The brunette let out a sigh before saying, "She'll be okay in a little bit, she just needs to rest."

The blond narrowed his eyes at their responses, but said nothing as they made it out of the plant.

He couldn't help, but feel as if they were still keeping something from him despite the darkette's blunt answer; if one ended up like this after every time they used something, then it couldn't have been healthy.

And why did it only happen to her when the seventeen-year-old went into an execution as well?

Once the three had made it back to where the van and bike were parked, they laid down the back seats so the ravenette had a safe surface to be rested as they activated and placed the ice packs under her neck.

As she was resting, the others sat by the opened back doors of the van, just catching their breaths and taking a break.

The twenty-one-year-old kept his eyes on the ravenette who's breathing seemed to have even out, just thinking about their situation.

"Cloud, I know you probably want more information on this, but it isn't our story to tell," Kerstin sighed, getting pretty uncomfortable with the tense silence that had emerged, "You can ask her when she wakes up, but there's no guarantee she'll answer everything you ask."

"Do you have any idea when she'll wake up?" he asked in response, mako contaminated eyes never leaving her form.

"Depends, but since she didn't go over her time limit, a few hours at most, but not less than two," Sierra answered as she took a sip from her water bottle.

"We should start heading back," she sighed before standing up, "I already texted Hana and she's letting us get in through the back."

"Yeah, we really can't let any of them see an Apocalypse leader like this," Kerstin agreed as she stood, "It would ruin our reputation."

"Just follow us like you have been and come get Mina when we park," the darkette said as she climbed in next to the unconscious Rhamina before shutting the van doors.

With a sigh, the blond placed his buster sword in its proper place before mounting his bike and following the van back to the hotel.

Upon returning, they parked in the back before Cloud carried the eighteen-year-old up to the back door where an employee waited, not looking at any of them as they entered.

Kerstin and Sierra went in first, making sure no one was looking so the male could stealthily make his way into the elevator with them.

Once they made it back into the penthouse, the blond set the female down in her bed before Kerstin slipped the ravenette's boots off and placed them next to her bed.

As soon as the three returned to the living room, the elevator opened to reveal the Japanese doll herself in all her monotone glory.

"So, she used it again," the fifteen-year-old spoke as she seated herself on one of the couches away from the others.

"Yeah, but we were able to take those fuckers out," Kerstin sighed as she took out her phone, "They were trying to start the generator up again."

The noirette's eyes widened for a moment before returning to her flat expression as she asked, "Were the results worth the cost?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes at this statement, but before he could question it a familiar voice said, "The results were most definitely worth it."

Leaning against a wall for support in the entrance of the hallway was Rhamina, tired looking, but most definitely awake.

"Mina, you shouldn't even be awake right now, what the fuck are you doing walking around?" Kerstin chided as she stood to help the ravenette, but was beaten to it by Hana.

"I originally got up because I wanted some food, but this discussion is way more important," the eighteen-year-old replied as the noirette helped her limp over to the spot on the couch next to Cloud.

"What kind of food do you want?" the doll asked as she took out her phone, walking back to her seat.

"Meat," the ravenette replied simply, "I honestly don't care what it is as long as it's made of meat."

She quickly shot a glare at Kerstin who snickered at her statement before saying, "But seriously I found out something important."

"The people were a part of Scyphozoa," the teen continued as she brought her legs up so she could have all of her body on the couch as she leaned on Cloud, "the same group that was messing with the plant back in the Abyss."

The male tensed up under the ravenette, but soon began to relax as a familiar warmth washed over him.

"Oh? And how did you come to that conclusion, if I may ask?" Hana questioned after she finished typing something on her phone.

"The guy I was fighting in the control room was really cocky so he just droned on about how they would pick up where the rest of the world had failed," the ravenette explained with a frown, "He was getting annoying so I yeeted him out of the window."

"I see," the young Yukitara replied with a nod, "Then I will deploy some of my units to guard the plant as soon as possible."

"Wait, wait, wait," Kerstin said as she leaned forward, "Did he mean that they're trying to open a god damned portal again?"

"I don't know, but probably," Rhamina said with a frown as she curled herself up further, "I tried to get anything I could on the group when they first popped up back home, but I haven't found anything."

"But moving on from that," she spoke, looking right at the noirette, "Were you able to find anything out about your father's whereabouts?"

"Unfortunately, no, so I'll have to turn this over to you," the fifteen-year-old sighed, "I will however, provide one of our rising members to you."

"He joined recently, but his skill range is quite impressive," the female continued as she placed both of her hands on her lap.

"So he's kind of like Cloud then," the ravenette mused with a small smile as she felt the male tense once more.

"In a way, I suppose," Hana replied, eyes narrowing at the blond as the two other females chuckled at his reaction to Rhamina's statement, "his name is Kiran Reyes. I believe you might have known him as a child."

"Oh, yeah!" the eighteen-year-old chirped as she sat up, trying her best to ignore the throbbing in her head, "I saw him in the lobby this morning."

Noticing the female's discomfort, Cloud gently pulled her back down so that she was leaning on him again as Kerstin said, "You literally threw him into the fucking ground."

"He should have known not to come up behind me without making himself known first," the teen huffed in response, "You sneak up on a fan dancer and you will get yeeted; literally or via fan."

It was silent for a few moments before a nostalgic smile crept onto the noirette's face as she asked, "You know, Rhamina, I haven't seen you dance in a long time... Would you do it again?"

"Maybe," the ravenette hummed with a smirk, "If anyone can beat me at a game of poker while we're here, then I'll show you a dance I have yet to perform."

After a few minutes, the elevator doors opened to reveal some hotel employees with food from a restaurant that was very familiar to the ravenette.

"Is that Goldilocks?!" she asked excitedly from her spot on the couch before spotting the familiar Filipino dessert that immediately brought her back to when she was a child, "And you even got Halo-Halo?"

"I thought you might like it since it has been a while since you last visited," Hana spoke as the employees cleared the coffee table and began setting the food down on it, "And since you're still recovering, we can just eat here."

"Yo, do you think we can play some Studio Ghibli movies?" Kerstin asked as her eyes lit up, "it's been so long since we could just sit down and enjoy them."

"Of course, which one would you like to start with?" the fifteen-year-old asked as she reached over to grab the remote to the tv that sat in front of them.

"Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are a must!" Rhamina spoke, already leaning forward to grab a plate and some utensils.

"Alright then," the younger girl spoke with a soft smile as she watched the excitement form on her friend's face.

The next few hours passed with the group watching the movies and enjoying their cultural meals.

Even Cloud stayed for it, though he was more busy watching the reactions of the ravenette than the movies themselves.

She was so animated as her eyes remained glued to the screen and as she took in the atmospheric soundtracks, but he also noticed a sort of longing in her eyes.

These movies were the first form of media that she was introduced to as a child; memories of drinking tea with The Cat Returns, exploring unknown planes with Howl's Moving Castle, falling in love with Asian folklore with Spirited Away, and wanting to pursue a career in music with Whisper of the Heart.

The ravenette loved the way each and every aspect of the creations romanticized the little things in life, even if there was no magic involved.

Sadly, as the world eventually turned into the wasteland they currently lived in, the teen would never get to see those childhood aspirations come true.

Instead, she had gathered her living friends as soon as the generator in, what used to be, Temecula exploded and formed a small gang that would later be known as Apocalypse.

She learned how to hone her predictive probability skills through gambling and negotiating with others.

She used her knowledge of her own, self-aware, broken mind and learned how to twist and break the minds of others.

She learned to separate her different faces and how to use them to her advantage, even if some of them slipped out unintentionally.

She learned to push aside her own well being as long as it meant the rest could continue walking forward, all the group had was each other.

She learned through betrayal and heartbreak that her trust was only for those that truly proved they deserved it.

Some things were easier to learn than others and they're what shaped Rhamina into the woman she was currently, but deep in her heart, past all of the want for adventure and survival, she longed to go back to when she was a child...

Back to when she could trust others without worrying about if they would kill her the moment she blinked, but she knew better than to think that it could actually happen.

Time only moved in one direction, forward and if this was what fate had in store for this world, then she knew that there was not way for it to be avoided.

She just considered herself lucky that the bells had chosen her group of friends to ring for, people she could trust as they all tried to survive in this hell together.

The day passed with the group just sitting in the living room watching all of the Studio Ghibli movies that were created; except for Grave of the Fireflies, none of the girls felt like sobbing their eyes out.

The atmosphere was light as everyone retired to their own rooms to go to sleep, Hana returning to her own home; but after about an hour of not being able to sleep due to her body aching, Rhamina rolled out of bed and grabbed the bottle of painkillers she always packed in her travel bag and started over to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

Small cusses left her lips as she limped through the darkened hallway, her eyes already used to the dark so she didn't have to worry about bumping into anything.

As soon as the female had reached the living room, she noticed that one of the lamps was on with Cloud just sitting on the couch by himself, thinking about something.

Upon noticing the female leaning against the wall again, the male let out a quiet gasp before helping her over to the couch.

"What are you doing up right now?" the male asked as he frowned down at the female with his arms crossed.

"I was going to get some water so I could take some painkillers," she replied, shaking the pill bottle she held for emphasis.

The blond sighed before walking to the kitchen and coming back with a glass of water for the ravenette.

Silence lingers in the air as the female tipped out two of the pills into her hand, popping them into her mouth before swallowing them with water.

Cloud let out another sigh,eyes panning down to the ravenette before asking, "What does that execution form actually do to you? You looked like you were on the brink of death."

The female's eyes widened slightly as he continued, "And why did it only happen to you and not Kerstin?"

"Cloud, I'll answer you questions when we get back to the Abyss," Rhamina spoke with a sad smile, "here isn't the place to discuss this."

The female then took the male's hand and wrapped her pinky around his before touching their thumbs together.

"I promise."

~~~Fin. Chapter 5~~~

Masterlist

#Apocalypse #Chapter 5 #Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy VII #FFVII #FFVII Remake #Cloud Strife #Cloud Strife x OC #Fanfic #fanfiction

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a-tired-birds-ramblings · 4 years

Text

Once More

A short story about Aeris, one of my favourite Fallout OCs that I’ve ever made.

The world is not kind.

Too often do I see people struggling to make it to tomorrow, terrified of their own shadows, living with the reality that every day could be their last. People who banded together to make the world a little less mean, only to be crushed and broken by the inhospitable wasteland. A world that used to be beautiful, and prosperous. At least, as far as we know.

But I don’t need to tell you that. You can learn that from walking down the street.

No, I want to tell you how the world is sometimes outright cruel. Fate being the devious bitch that she is, it can feel as if she’s out to get us. Like the world knows what our weaknesses are, what to do to get under our skin.

Exactly what our vices are.

I used to be a mercenary, working in the eastern Mojave desert. It was a dangerous job: dodging bullets almost as often as I let them fly, talking my way through fights I couldn’t win against Raiders and the tribes of the region alike. But nothing was more my enemy than my addiction.

I’m not going to hide it: I used to be addicted to a drug called Mentats. I found it stashed in some teachers cupboard, the first time I saw it. Little white pills, kept in a metal tin. One of em could make you feel like your ears could pick up sound more accurately, like you could focus so much better than ever before. I remembering vividly: I was stumped by a terminal that was keeping me out of a storeroom. I took one of the pills, and suddenly the password was so much simpler to figure out. So much easier, I wondered how it was even a challenge in the first place.

But the fruit of knowledge doesn’t come without a price.

After that one wore off, I felt like my aim got worse. My hands shook just a bit more than they did the hour before. So, right before I went off to hunt my next bounty, I popped another one.

And when that one wore off, I took another.

And another.

Before I knew it, I couldn’t go a day without it. I’d feel so tired and unfocused and stupid when I wasn’t hopped up on mentats. I became dependent on them to survive, to the point that I almost considered it a part of me as a person.

Then, I finally met the Followers of the Apocalypse.

There was a man among them, Arcade Gannon, who was there to study the Mojave desert, in the hopes of bettering it through the use of science. I won’t pretend to understand half of what he did there, but he immediately understood what I was going through.

We met through a mutual friend, you see.

After a few minutes in the same room together, he asked me “How long have you been using Mentats?”

I realized I couldn’t remember when I’d started, and told him as such.

“It shows.” He said. “I know it’s none of my business, but I’ve seen your shooting. You’re pretty good. That, and if our courier friend’s also seen something in you, then... I’d like to help you.”

After that, I felt like some kind of personal project of his. He tried helping me quit Mentats by keeping an eye on me, and regularly reminding me to not take them. I tried, truly, but that only got me to start taking them in secret. After a sudden intervention, staged by the aforementioned courier and Arcade, I finally agreed to get rid of my pill box, for good. I took a caplet of Fixer, thinking that would save me from the worst of the withdrawals. And it did.

But I never really felt the same.

My shooting always felt off, I missed details that I wouldn’t have missed before, I even felt a little bit duller at times. The toll that Mentats had taken on my body wasn’t easily reversed.

But almost a decade later, and a lot of personal changes, I thought I was finally free.

Several years ago, after the massive battle for the Hoover Dam, I made the mistake of chasing the Legion out of the Mojave, into their own territory. I was hotheaded, riding the high of having fought in the battle that killed Caesar. I thought I’d at least make a serious dent in the Legion before I’d have to go back to the Mojave, and maybe someday I’d see the last of those red bull flags burned to cinders.

I was wrong. The Legion don’t fight fair. They will use anything and everything to win, no matter the cost.

And in my case, that meant purposefully dumping nuclear waste into a cave that I was lured into. In hours, I felt sick. In a day, I thought I was going to die. Three days later, and I realized I wasn’t done yet.

My body changed. My hair fell out and my skin turned mottled and almost burned-looking. My voice became a rasp, and radiation no longer bothered me as badly, if at all.

I became a Ghoul.

I couldn’t go back to the Mojave. My friends didn’t want me to go after what was left of the Legion in the first place. I was ashamed of who I’d become, what I had let my anger do to me. I began to see this transformation as some kind of justice, for how bloodthirsty I was. I kept going east, in search of a place where no one would know my name.

A place to begin again.

And so, in what was left of Boston, I stood. It was claustrophobic at times, with no wide desert expanses to be found, but I eventually adapted. I made efforts to not attach myself to people by that point. One part of me chose to focus on the fact that I was immortal now, and I’d eventually outlive all my friends anyways. The other part of me secretly worried that my shit luck would pass on to them.

But when I saw a man trying to convince a kid-the boy couldn’t have been older than 12-to try Jet, I felt something snap. It was in broad daylight, in a town called Goodneighbor. I tried to get him to leave the kid alone by intimidating him. That evening, I found myself in an alley, having what felt like an old-fashioned standoff against him.

“Why’d you have to stick your neck where it don’t belong, ghoul?” He’d asked.

“None of your damn business.” I’d said.

I drew first, and he was on the ground.

Not one to waste ammo, I searched his body for anything I’d be able to use.

And I found a very full box of Mentats.

I don’t know what it was about that box: maybe the design, the slightly oppressive smell that came from it, or seeing those pills after so long, but I stopped in my tracks. I had almost been too slow in that standoff. Sure, I could have taken a bullet, if I had to, but what if I’d been quicker?

If I had just been a bit more convincing, a bit more charismatic, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to gun me down in the first place? Some kinds of Mentats do have that effect...

I didn’t take the box. I feel like I should tell you that right now.

But what hit me in that moment is this: I wanted to. I wanted to so badly and so desperately, I had to put the box in a nearby dumpster. But my mind was on that box for far, far too long. I kept thinking that I could, maybe, go back for it. That I would be more moderate with the pills, this time around. I could be smarter, quicker, keener again.

I never went back for those pills. I’m telling you this story so that you won’t ever start. Because once you start, it feels like you need those pills in order to survive. In order to be yourself.

And, because fate is cruel, chances are you’ll find yourself countless opportunities to start.

#Ghoul! Aeris #fallout: nv oc #short story #fallout: nv

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braindamageforbeginners · 6 years

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The apocalypse is here

Pictured above: Either the I5 North or the current political races. I’m no longer sure. So, this will take a bit of time to get to, but I promise it’ll be good. I guarantee that, I’ll be quoting directly from candidate statements/descriptions (we’ll get back to the abyss soon enough, and the time a DIY project almost killed/crippled Dad)(the man attempted an electrical project, I’d like to point I quietly though this was a bad idea). Anyway, I’m certain that decent, kind, honest, noble, and educated and mostly-human Congresscritters must exist - people do vote for them, after all. However, having met one Congressman and, being lied to the staff of another (pro-tip; no matter how pro-military or manly and awesome you like to think you are, it’s not a reassuring thing to your constituents if there’s an explosion on a large photo in your office. So I have rather low regard for them, as a group (I know, that’s baseless stereotyping).

So you can imagine my surprise at coming to rest in Daryl Issa’s old district, a man so loathed even by his own party that they quietly told him to go away. I’ve seen a lot of strange political events, but, believe me when I say I’ve never seen anything like this; a completely vacant Congressional seat that could be inhabited by a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or even some type of salamander (the salamander would’ve been an improvement over Jerry Lewis). Anyway, since there are also assorted state assembly judicial races at stake, they’re all included in this pamphlet (and potentially included in this oversized piece). As usual, I will be selecting choice quotes, and, remember, candidates may include an age and/or occupation.

Kistin Gaspar: “[...] A mother, small business owner, and the mayor of encinitas, she has the get-it-done approach we need in Congress.” Fantastic, just as I start to enjoy the peace and quiet of life without Larry the Cable Guy in the public light, there’s this call-back. Or so I thought, until I found out that the “Get It Done” app is used in our area to report “non-emergency problems to the city.” Now, I hate potholes as much as any American (possibly more, since I used to live in a country where drivers used them to help corner while going 80 mph on unpaved roads). Still, “Fixing potholes” seems a little below the pay-grade of a pre-conviction congresswoman.

Diane Harkey: Healthcare: Diane will worke for policies that increase choice, costs, and allow patietns and doctors to decide what care is best. No, no, she isn’t. Diane’s endorsed/puppeted by the American Independent Party, so she has about as much chance of winning as a large rock. But, more importantly, I’m pretty sure the AIP is only concerned with healthcare as a business that sends them money. The big take-away here is less what I say, and more the fact that third party-associated candidates with little-to-no chance of winning feel compelled to tell everyone their healthcare system will be fine, even if it won’t.

David Medway: “I want to protect working families from increasing taxes, healthcare bills, and gun violence (while protecting our right to bear arms). I want to prevent national catastrophes like pandemics (which I wrote a book about) and environmental disasters (such as protecting our coastline from nuclear waste and oil spills that would devastate our shores). I support women’s rights and the melting pot of cultures tha tmake up California. I support lower taxes, less government and the best healthcare and education in the world for all Americans at reasonable prices. Please define “reasonable,” sir, I suspect our answers will differ. Also, you’ll notice he’s making the classic math mistake - better, improved services at a mere fraction of the tax cost! Which is a bullshit political statement/proposal. You might be able to get a great vaccuum cleaner for a fraction of the name-brand because slavery is still totally legal in some parts of the world (meaning the company saves a lot on payroll), and wholesalers/transportation will give bulk purchase discounts. Unless your local police and firefighters are staffed by robots (always a possibility), imagine City Hall telling them that they now have to do the same job, only much better, and with a pay cut. Oh, and we’re firing one-in-three of their employees. Society tried hat in Silicon Valley (with choppy results), I don’t think you want to try it with ambulances.

Crag Nordal: “I am an Evangelical Christian who will defend and protect Israel, protect innocent human life from conception to birth, and to natural death, defend and protect marriage between a man and a woman, restore Christian and Jewish morals and ethics to our public schools, and protect religious freedoms. I vow to enforce and enhance border security, build that wall, protect and defend our 2nd Amendment as an NRA life member, and wok to shrink government daily and drain that swamp. I believe I have a conviction from God, to enter this race. I ask that you consider my moral character and conviction above any other experience or attributes. Nothing is more important in selecting our leaders in in the Congress of the United States of America. Our country is engaged in a spiritual battle between the guiding force of moral law and those that are working to remove God from every aspect of our society. We need Christian moral leaders to stand up and fight for the God given rights that our Founding Fathers based our Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In the creation of this great country God and His laws were relied on to form the greatest founding documents of any country ever formed by men, and thereby the greatest country ever conceived. The United States was formed to be God’s hammer in this world to contain and destroy evil.” Holy shit (almost literally), is there a lot to discuss - I included all of it because every time I thought I’d gotten to the funny/pertinent point, it went on, like a Harry Potter book . First of all, even though you get looney-tune candidates like this and parts of the GOP that always like to nod to the idea of instituting a theocracy, let’s get that out of the way; this is basic civics, First Amendment expressly forbids the idea of instituting a state religion. Speaking of which, even if that were legally possible, whose religion? When he simultaneously restores Jewish and Christian ethics to the schools, will bacon be allowed in those schools? You get a different answer depending on if you go to church on Saturday or Sunday (which is also something different Christian sects have different ideas on). For the purposes of brevity, I’ll have to just say, everyone’s welcome to their own religion, but the institution of a theocracy - while appealing in theory - would be horrific, brutal, and possibly genocidal (I’ll admit I like the idea of communism, in theory, but I’ve seen enough of the results in the real world to know it’s not a good idea). Also, I appreciate his desire to look after Israel, which is always a positive attribute when you’re voting for someone to look after your own country’s interests (I know there’s a tenuous Biblical connection, but, come on, guys, Isarel’s gotta start fending for itself)(the flip side of hat sentiment would be, “We can talk about Israel when every American has a job, home, and healthcare”). And there’s “I believe I have a conviction from God.” We all have convictions, maybe some of them come from God, but most are personal. Unless he means “I believe I have a mission from God.” Which is more grammatically correct, and, compared to the rest, no crazier or dumber. BTW, I feel like I have to put out a disclaimer about religion and say that I don’t really care if you’re religious, or, as long as it’s not hurting anyone to what extent your religion informs policy proposals (and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to determine exactly where one ends and the other begins; our minds just aren’t built that way) - there’s a massive difference between that and standing up in the middle of church (let alone Congress) and shouting, “GOD COMMANDS ME TO CAST OUT THE UNWORTHY.” I do like his demand that we judge him exclusively on his faith and not on what he says, does, or anything else that might involve objective reality. Oh, and that bit about “God’s hammer in this world” really upset me when I first read it, and I couldn’t figure why, until I remembered this quote, “ "I am the Flail of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you. “ which is attributed to Genghis Khan (even if you think the temporary stability and increased trade in Asia as a result of the Mongol Empire is awesome, remember that 40-60 million people died due to his campaigns and policies)(the Mongols tended to obliterate cropland, so whoever they didn’t kill usually starved).

Robert Pendleton MD, PhD - Surgeon/Biochemist/Small Businessman/Visual Artist: “ My name is Robert Pendelton Md PhD and I feel a calling to awaken the apathetic and unite disenfranchised moderates. I am an eye-surgeon, biochemist, small businessman, and visual artist, and the K9USA Party is my vision for a better world. K9 is a political party and philosophy of decision-making based upon the attributes of dogs that make “man’s best-friend” so special: Unconditional Love, Simple Needs, and Readiness to Defend. Adapted to national politics, international politics, and our personal lives, these attributes become the nine K9 principles: Socially Progressive, Fiscally Conservative, and militarily prepared (national, Altruistic, Sovereign, and United (international), and Loving, Lean and Strong (personal).2020 Application of K9 Principles yields the “six results” of Tolerance, Security, Health, Happiness, Peace and Freedom. My “2020 Vision” is for the K9USA Party to elect a majority of representatives (50% women) to the United States Congress and Presidency by the year 2020... Donkeys and elephants have failed. It’s time for dogs to lead.” I have only just heard of this man and I love him.

#quie

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samdukewieland · 4 years

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Stuck Inside Media Diary Week 2

New week. New movies I had never seen before. Only one was on the DVR so now it’s just like a glorified streaming guide and for that I apologize. There were three movies this week that I had seen before, but I’ve decided, because rules are important, that I won’t re-watch a movie until I watch a new one. Does this matter? No. But it has made me realize that I might be exposing my ass in the upcoming weeks, because we all lie about saying we’ve seen some movies when we actually haven’t. Not the case for this week, but it’s impending.

Sunday, March 29

Warrior, O’Conner 2011 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

As a person who doesn’t really care about MMA or UFC or boxing or bum fights or bare knuckle brawls I went in under the impression that there’d probably be some kind of barrier in my way of enjoying it, despite knowing its esteemed reputation for being man-weep canon. Any movie that opens and closes with a song by The National is fairly transparent about the type of movie its going to be, despite having an extremely yolked Tom Hardy as one of the main characters. My first cry came at a very unexpected moment, especially because Frank Grillo had a significant role in making that happen (though I will say, I had no idea Frank Grillo was in this movie and about midway through I thought “man, that guy kinda looks like Grillo, but he’s kinda small and has a fashion mullet”). However, I’m a cryer, so I don’t want to set the expectation of you will cry at this you piece of shit! but you might and it’ll come out of a good place, because this movie doesn’t trick you into crying by manipulating you into it (okay, it does at one point, but it involves Moby Dick, so again, it’s kinda unexpected). It opens with “Start A War” and ends with “About Today,” a top 5 sad boy song by The National and I’ll be damned if I didn’t listen to it once a day all last week.

Better Call Saul

“Sunk Costs”, “Sabrosito”, “Chicanery”, “Off Brand”, “Expanses”

John Getz hive, assemble.

Monday, March 30

Working Girl, Nichols 1988 [as of now this is available on HBO]

Sometime in college, I think in a detective fiction class I took, we talked about knowing a reference to something before knowing what it’s either paying homage to or directly referencing. For example: the first time I read The Long Halloween (which is a Batman comic by Jeph Loeb) I had no idea that basically everything involving Falcone is just ripped from The Godfather, because I had never seen The Godfather at that time in my life; literally the first page of the book is “I believe in Gotham City.” Or in Django Unchained when they go to Mississippi and the title card moves across the screen just like it does in Gone With The Wind (Tarantino movies are generally just long homages and references to other things, so if you need another example, just look to really anything he’s ever worked on). There’s probably a German word for this feeling of recognition and I just don’t have the energy to look to see what it would be, but I felt it while watching Working Girl in two regards.

The first was that I didn’t realize that School Of Rock is essentially just Working Girl and when you have a realization like this, you feel kinda dumb, because you just assume everyone figured this out before you did. The second was that Joe Swanberg has tried to model his movies after Mike Nichols ones like his life depended on it and he just can’t or rather hasn’t. Also I’m not a person who was alive in the 80s and I’m sure there’s some modern day equivalent (potentially her daughter) who I defend out of some weird sense of contrarian obligation, but what’s uh, what’s going on with Melanie Griffith and her as actor?

Better Call Saul

“Slip”, “Fall”, “Lantern” [Season 3 finale]

BCS season 3 really stepped up to the heights of Breaking Bad and I think I might like it just a little bit better than it? I haven’t watched Breaking Bad in long time, I find it pretty difficult to re-watch (it’s very fire works factory for me) so I’m sure there are some BB highs that I just don’t remember fully, but that BCS can juggle being three different shows all at the same time and do it excellently really has me taken aback. It’s like watching the Coen Brothers jump from genre to genre and not be worried about the end result.

Tuesday, March 31

Say Anything..., Crowe 1989 [as of now this is available on Hulu]

I’m unabashedly in the can for Cameron Crowe, which is a semi-embarrassing thing to admit, but whatever. I saw Aloha in theatres and watched We Bought A Zoo when it was on FX once (in real time too, so that means with commercials-this was also the only time I’ve seen We Bought A Zoo, but I think I’d do it again); you can’t hurt me. I think I kept my distance from Say Anything... for so long, because it was one of those things that I’d be annoyed at because it’d resonate with me too much, because feeling that is kinda hacky and embarrassing, but if there’s one thing that Cameron Crowe movies put an emphasis on of importance on, it’s being sincere. And I sincerely loved it (hot, HOT take). Thanks to Russillo for recommending it on Simmons’ podcast last week.

Better Call Saul

“Smoke” [Season 4 premiere]

Wednesday, April 1

The Graduate, Nichols 1967 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

Sucks that this movie has been used by a certain type of dude who use it as a blueprint for their life and how they view relationships. Other than that, good job everyone. [I definitely thought it would be clever to watch this after watching Say Anything... because I just assumed Ben Braddock walked so Lloyd Dobbler could run-I was kinda right, whatever]

Hot Rod, Schaffer 2007

While April Fools Day means nothing to me I do try to watch a comedy on the day, because...eh, why not. Hot Rod is maybe a perfect comedy and I think I could spend hours talking about it. I don’t know how there hasn’t been some kind of programming that’s been done around The Lonely Island and their catalog, because it seems very obvious.

Hot Rod with Digital Shorts played before and after and then Wayne’s World

MacGruber and you play MacGruber shorts before and after and then whatever grotesque 80′s action movie you’d want, maybe Commando

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping with Lonely Island music videos before and after and then This Is Spinal Tap

The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience sing-a-long followed by The Lonely Island pilot and either a collection or the entirety of I Think You Should Leave

maybe this is all a lead-up to Palm Springs, a movie I have’t seen and know very little about other than they produced it and Samberg is in it

Thursday, April 2

The In-Laws, Hiller 1979

I wrote it as my letterboxd. “review” , but this thing’s 1979 funny until they go to South America and then it is actually funny. Falk is just gangbusters.

Better Call Saul

“Breathe”, “Something Beautiful”

Friday, April 3

You Can Count On Me, Lonergan 2000 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

I say this as a very big fan of his, but! Timothée Chalamet, consider yerself on notice for borrowing heavily from the Mark Ruffalo school of acting. Also, I get it now with Laura Linney, who I’ve liked before, but thought she might kind of be overrated by some people. Also, Matthew Broderick made this after Election (and also Inspector Gadget), so quite the infidelity streak for Brody, probably not a double feature.

Better Call Saul

“Talk”, “Quite A Ride”, “Piñata”

Saturday, April 4

De Palma, Baumbach & Paltrow, 2015 [as of now this is available on Netflix]

The definitive documentaries for the directors of this friend group are basically perfect in their own ways. That this is just De Palma talking about himself and his career and movies, sometimes being incredibly critical of his own work and others. He seems pretty self-aware, probably the most of that group of directors, while still coming across as incredibly cocky. De Palma is perfect for Brian De Palma. However, if anyone wanted to make a 10 hour documentary on Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma and Lucas in this style or it’s just the 5 of them interviewing each other moderated by like Fincher or someone, man....I could really go for that. (I mean if Michael Jordan can get one, why not these guys?)

The Other Director Documentaries

Spielberg, 2017 (HBO) [Interviews and retrospectives about Spielberg’s career, with personal highlights. It’s essentially Spielberg in a nutshell: big, flashy with a lot of time on particular moments that are more important to him than they are to you]

Empire Of Dreams, 2004 (Disney+) [Ostensively this is about Star Wars, and it’s made by a company-man, it says so much about Lucas, a man who hated how institutions told him what he could do so he unintentionally created one that has copied what he hates]

Heart Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, 1991 [A truly wild ride, tells you everything you need to know about Coppola]

Italianamerican, 1974 [While a new documentary about Scorsese is probably what I covet most, he’s a pretty open book about his controversies and he’d probably enjoy talking about other people’s work more than his own-catholicism’s a helluva thing]

The Godfather Pt. I & The Godfather Pt. II, Coppola 1972 & 1974

I don’t know if I necessarily endorse watching both of these back-to-back; I guess I’m glad I did it, even if the motivation was mainly to just see if I could. Obviously these movies are important and good and are about so much more than just gangsters and thugs, but a lot of the time it just feels like eating vegetables for me. I did not grow up in a household that emphasized the importance of The Godfather so maybe that’s part of it, but I’m definitely not as dismissive of these as I used to be (though part of that could be the mental Stockholm Syndrome Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey have given me). Once I finished Pt. I, I felt like I could re-watch it; once I finished Pt. II I felt like my eyes were melting out of my head and onto my hands (this could be because I had just watched 377 minutes of a story). I will probably never do it again, unless it’s the weekend after Christmas and AMC is just going for it-at least then I’ll have intermissions every 20 or so minutes telling me to go shop at Target.

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soulsplosion-cs · 7 years

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here is souls advice on making a popular species

i am not lying when I say Viscets were literally a social experiment that I made for the sole purpose of getting popular with effort & business tactics. I wanted to take a giant shit on the stereotype that popular species are entirely the luck of having a cute drawing style.

If you disagree with me that’s cool!!! I just want to throw my advice onto this hellsite before I frolic my way to sweet blissful freedom

- the lineart and stuff Obviously the appearance matters, but don’t let yourself believe that’s the only thing. The most common complaint I see is how making a popular species is the luck of striking something cute. I mean sure that’s a definite possibility, but viscets used to look like this!! That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!!! (no offense to anyone that liked them in that stage)

- cater to these sparkledog-loving children I don’t even like viscets!! I only own 1!! The majority of my species are demonic alien dragons, insects, and monsters. Viscets weren’t an “I have this cute idea and I want to share it with the world”-type species. I literally designed them specifically to what I thought the inhabitants of CS would like. Granted you don’t have to do that, but know that it’s a definite option. people on CS like: - cute and fluffy things - a brief and catchy name - some thing that’s recognizable (kalons have the tail shines, plumies had the trademark feathers, etc). Viscets have unique anatomy, but they also have the bottom mane and the top crest, so you can recognize the species even from headshots. There needs to be a few generic things that you know people were like, but at least 1 thing that they will easily recognize which will make your species stand out.

- Devote honestly you could throw everything else to shit but if you run the species for at least a year then you’ll pretty much be semi-popular by default. People won’t become devoted members of a community that they know won’t last long.

- Be a decent human being!!! You don’t know anything!! we’re all idiots!! One of the worst mistakes a species owner can make is saying ‘well it’s my species so I can do what I want’. no!! fuck you!! the phrase “the customer is always right” exists for a reason. it’s completely wrong. but it exists for a reason. Be kind to people. Discourage cliques. Make everyone feel included. No matter how much you want to hack the chickensmoothie site just to ban the idiot that’s asking you super obvious questions, always respond with smiley faces, patience, and fake friendliness while screaming inside. being a decent person is remarkably easy. i dont know what’s real anymore when in doubt make a vaguely-true excuse! if an art comp was full of buttshit-ugly designs I’d say “These are all beautiful so far! I’ve extended the comp a bit to allow some people more time.”

- Communicate!!!! Again with the “it’s my species I can do what I want”. no!! fuck you!! I carried out no major decision without first polling who it would impact, especially the staff. Whenever people complain I always try to peacefully explain the decision so that no one’s left in the dark. Most importantly, always be willing to apologize and go back on something. Tell everyone everything. Keep no secrets. Listen to all the feedback you get and use it to become better.

- Choose good staff!!!!! Another common mistake is when species owners hire people just because they’re popular or make cute designs. Your staff have to be a good team that understand how the audience functions, and you have to be ready to intervene on troublesome ones. All the Viscet staff I hired had moderating powers and I made sure to inquiry about that ability in the art comps. I passed several applicants solely because I didn’t think they’d be good at leading a community, and it makes me real happy whenever people praise the viscet staff because!! i did that purpose You also want staff who will be able to expand the community and share it. Staff who will engage with their characters of your species, make editables, etc.

- Prepare for shit !!! Prevent the apocalypse by making a plan!! At one point we had 2 archives and 4 archivists (5 including me). Once I corrupted the Viscet files and we had to make a new main thread from one of the artists’ adopts which happened to have all the lineart and ever since then I made sure to make a billion backups. I divided the workloads do carefully that I was able to shimmy out of there on the breeze. sometimes i’d disappear for 3 days and nobody would hardly notice

- Convince people they’re popular!!! Tbh viscets never even got popular, I just convinced people they were popular and then they started believing it and the lie took life. i am evil. Use whatever cheap advertising tactics you can: - ART is good because drawings in the Oekaki or commissions from Popular Artists are just free ads. a lot of the early viscets required art. You have to balance it out to accommodate those who can’t work with it, but use it whenever u can - i often went on the “Rate the Character” thread asking for feedback on my viscet designs. that is a lie. i was trying to show them off - DCAY was invented when i wanted to get art of my viscet. i literally made an entire forum game just for that. DCAY was a part of Viscet’s marketing - affiliate with as many people as physically possible!!!!!! that never held me back - REFERRALS. The Stub Shop was the Viscet babyboom. It put viscets Everywhere. they were Inescapable. And that made people think that that means they must be Popular. ding dong they were wrong but they made it right just by thinking that. it’s a paradox. this paradox is your friend - In the early stages sometimes I would specifically choose popular owners or artists that draw in the oekaki a lot because they were vital in spreading the word and jumpstarting species (but ONLY for the early stages--obviously if you always do this you’re just an asshole. it’s only a good beginning tactic. and still be fair about it ofc) Being a good person is important but never forget to be a merciless businessman

- cater the community to your intended audience the appearance ain’t the only thing that must be specifically designed. I also made sure to design the community to the kids I was aiming for, even against my own beliefs. Part of the experiment was to create a safe space for children, and specifically for children, so I made the rules as friendly as physically fucking possible. I outlawed NSFW because I know what my audience was. (I mean I personally love gore, but kids don’t, so I outlawed anything to do with it in the community, even off-site)

The community is what’s actually fun about species. anyone who’s devoted to a species is also devoted to the community, so making it a safe and friendly place is what’s most important.

If you’re catering to an older audience, you should have more formally-written rules, a more adult-orientated interface (not cute/cartoonish), and can be more free with having strict lore, which young kids generally won’t like

anwayys that’s a shitton of words and i probably wasted my life writing this but here u go. do what u will with my secrets

#chickensmoothie #chicken smoothie

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ouathinktank-metacommentary · 7 years

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As OUaT comes to an end (?) one can’t not wonder where did all go wrong? Was it you who criticized parallels with BTVS/JaneE transferring her penchant for writing/promoting abusive relationships and violent sexist “badboys” and their ships ruining female characters? Because Kitsowitz’s Hook boner ruined OUaT the same way Marti/Jane E’s boner for shirtless Spike ruined Buffy. And it’s sad, because both used to be shows about “strong female characters” and ended up as odes to manpain. (cont)

All that we’ve sorely missed on our TV? Riiight. As if. We’vebeen promised a “modern” fairytale, and we’ve been naïve enough to hope thatthe story about Saviour and the Evil Queen, redeemed through the power of love,family and hope would be it. Naïve to think that “Jane E was a part of Buffy,they gave us Willow/Tara, the first great non-fetishized love story between twowomen”. But all we got was queerbaiting, heteroenforcing and Hook, Hook and moreHook. (cont)

To the point of Emma Swan, former “strong female hero” being disfigured beyond recognition and fading into nothingness. And yeah. Six years of our lives called Once Upon a Waste of Our Time, while at least in Buffy we had five great ones, you know? :(

Not really sure that this is the end of OUaT, but generaluncertainty (the negotiations, as well as talks about a ‘reset’ and the needfor change they’re evidently desperately aware of) is a clear indication how much of a deep shit they’re in. And yet when it comes to reasons, they remain either oblivious orcareless? But speaking of those stolen borrowed things that came from BtVS… well, I am not sure. Wedid compare ships in terms of how they’ve been portrayed (Spuffy allegedlydeliberately as negative and harmful, while CS openly and directlyromanticizes same things) but… it’s true. The very same can be said about both, concerning the impact ofan unexpected popularity of a posturing, vaguely thuggish minor character in ablack leather jacket, turning a once-good show–into a really bad one. Because in television, as inlife, events tend to repeat themselves, but as proven so far–Brothers Dimshowed very little originality apart from the general idea (and S1, which Istill claim–was stolen and bleached bones of the original author are goingto resurface in Nevada desert at some point) and hence we got a whole premiseruined by Spike #2–Mr. quasi-redeemed-ex-rapist Killian Jones?

Because where elsedo we place blame for general mediocrity? Was it the onslaught of random “whichiconic character do you want to see next” episodic storylines that, instead ofconnecting things from the background/flashbacks–only fragmented everything?Was it the overemphasis on irrelevant new characters, love-interests as well asvillains-de-semiseason–that they never developed enough for us to give a damnabout? Was it the decision to build entire seasons around different Disneycharacters/realms while putting on hold (at best) and backtracking on anddirectly contradicting (often even retconning, yes) the main characters that wefell in love in the first place–by creating complex convoluted storylines thatmade less and less sense? Well, that’s only part of it. Because we all agree,things were much better before that point when everything started evolving around Hook, his quasi redemption and his obsession and pursuit after Emma Swan. Which is now history repeating itself,like in BtVS where all problems could be traced to the moment when Buffyfound out that Spike, attempted rapist and current possessor of a soul, hadsomehow been killing people despite his souled status–and from that point on,the show has no longer been about Buffy and her friends, or Buffy and hermission, or anything that used to be interesting on this show–it was about Spike. It involved Buffy trying to find out why he was killing again, then she spent several pointless episodes focusing her attention on freeing Spike (instead on the impending apocalypse), then a new character had a vendettaagainst Spike so we got an entire episode devoted to filling out Spike’s backstory… and we sat through various other plot threads about Spike. Even when Spikeisn’t on-screen, characters were talking about him, so it was ALL about him. AndBuffy, indirectly, through their (fucked up, for her–character degrading) relationship.And that was about all.

Sounds familiar?

(cut, because we don’t pull parallels and metas with pretty gifs–but cold hard facts and words, which means–long textpost ahoy :)

So, yeah. The comparison… is there. Evident. Starting with potential, and… actual result. Because nothingwould’ve been as problematic if Spike got any brilliantly fascinating stories,but he never really did–despite the potential inherent in the story of an evilcreature trying to reform. Because at every turn, writers copped out on hisstory, whitewashing his past to the point of retconning with contrived nonsensethat directly contradicted all the previous vampire mythology on both BtVS andAngel (like, even when he was turned into a vampire he allegedly wasn’t initially avicious killer) and making no attempt to show that having a soulhas changed him in any way. So ‘souled’ Spike is still a wisecracking punk wholiked to hit women (he hit Buffy, Anya, Faith) as means of foreplay (he ‘pined’ after Buffy, had sex with Anya, flirted with Faith to make Buffy jealous) and isolate Buffy from herfriends. And yet we were still somehow supposed to sympathize with him, because…why, he got a soul in the hope that Buffy would forgive his attempt torape her and sleep with him again? Because except for a couple of throwawaylines, Spike has never been made to seek redemption for his crimes, he nevermade an attempt to even apologize to anyone… for anything, really. Not thatapologizing would ever go with his character (the one he had, previous to his Buffy obsession) but the assumption appearedto be that he didn’t really need to atone because what, having a soul made hima different and better person? But the writers haven’t shown us that, all they showed us was the same ‘cool punk’ frombefore, only without the viciousness that made him moderately interesting.

Same goesfor Hook. He could’ve had fascinating stories, but he isn’t because all that heis–is a selfish douchebag who is now trying to be a ‘hero’ because he sees Emma ashis reward, his happy ending. And as BtVS did, at every turn OUaT cops out onhis story–whitewashing his past (it was always an ‘unfortunate set ofcircumstances’, not the fact that he was spoiled privileged daddy’s boy whobecame pirate out of… spite, really?) and making no attempt to show us thathe’s really trying to redeem himself, that he wants to. You know, the way they showed us that they can write redemption storylines–on Regina’s example? So he’sstill doing things behind everyone’s back, especially Emma’s (the shears) andof course lying (yeah, omitting to tell the truth is still lying–and not a solid foundation for a well-balanced relationship, but tell that to Tweens and Twimoms) andisolating Emma from her family, her son, her friends, her destiny… by means of emotional blackmail, via suicide attempts toget her to ‘save’ him–all the way to leaving her now to show that he ‘feels’ theweight of the ‘guilt’ and… yet we’re still somehow supposed to sympathize with him, because… why?Because he didn’t hightail in order to leave the site of his devastating loss, not to punish Emma–but he… went on aquasi-quest (that he didn’t really want to go on, it was a childish ‘twist’ tokeep them apart) just to realise that he didn’t really want to leave her? Lol.Ooo-kay. But hey, when he comes back (by means of some random MacGuffin of sortsthat will inevitably happen) he won’tcome back as a changed man, he’ll still be the same self-serving douchebag who,except for a couple of throwaway lines (to… Belle, only? Because they made themsuch ‘solid’ friends too, at the cost of her intelligence–trusting him and all,to further whitewash him) has neverbeen shown to seek redemption for his crimes, he doesn’t even apologize fortrying to kill ANY of them for cryin’ out loud, let alone… persistently endangering Henry? The assumption appears to be that he doesn’tneed to atone because… being with Emma apparently makes him a different andbetter person? Only, we haven’t been shown that either, all that we keepgetting is the same self-serving pirate, only without gang/rape jokes, beatingwomen up and shooting them, which… made him moderately interesting because assexist/misogynist as it was–he was a villain with some personality, after all?

And thoseare only some parallels. Captain Swan gaveus absolutely nothing that we haven’t seen eleventy kazillion times before. Samelike any interesting stories about a vampire with a soul have alreadybeen told on both Buffy and Angel, and with Spike all we got is a lotof half-naked posturing. Like Killan Jones gave us only… quasi brooding and love shown as obsession.

But it wasn’t an overemphasis on Spike (as a character, or aLI… no matter how wrong and fucked-up as their ship has been portrayed, because‘feminist’ Whedon gave us a story of an abusive relationship meant to be assuch–only it supposedly wasn’t sexist and misogynist because Buffy was ‘abusive’ towardsSpike, too?) that was the problem. This was brought up numerous times before, it was the way this emphasis has betrayedone of the most appealing themes of the show: that it’s OK to be uncool. It wasabout social outcasts fighting symbolic representations of twisted embodiment ofhigh school coolness, because monsters on the show were often portrayed assuch. While Spike, the way he was introduced (as villain, mind you–before beingshoehorned into a role of a hero, never meant for him) was exactly the kind ofsmartass punk who makes high school a miserable place for geeks. Arrogant,cocky and contemptuous of anyone who wasn’t equally cool, he was a superficial,self-confident and deserved to besmacked down by awkward heroes–who arereally the coolest and most heroic of all? And similarly in OUaT, with the transformation of Hook intoa ‘romantic hero’ (not even a ‘lovable antihero’, like Spike) they stoppedcelebrating female empowerment, strong self-reliant women who despite comingfrom an extremely broken and fragmented past… showed us how to punch back andfight for ourselves. Strong individuals with a lot of self-integrity, asdamaged as they were? And the show started celebrating the cool pirate with‘roguish charm’, rape-culture personified who gets what he wants, because he’shandsome and white, and… needs to be saved from himself by the love of a ‘good’woman–Christian Grey style?

Bringing us back to the original point we’ve all been repeating ad nauseam. Watching season afterseason about Craptain Swan and Hook’s warped journey of ‘redemption’ where Emma has become a selfish arsehole who blatantly disregards even her son, where Regina became a trusty sidekick whose only role is to follow Emma to hell and back, repeatedly (and quite literally, what subtext has been abundantly abused for, too?) to help her “get her pirate back”, and I don’t know agoddamn thing about what Snow or Charming or Henry are thinking, or even who they areanymore, and what the ever loving fuck is Rumple doing now, chasing the new son because he lost the one everything started with because of Hook, again, and… we will likely never find out, and it kind of breaks my heart. The bond between these characters, as FAMILY was supposed to be the heart of theshow, more than anything else–wasn’t it? But now it seems that on a show where an unrepentant self-serving prick can be a hero, a ‘romantic’ hero at that–there’s no more room for a celebration of the power offamily, love, hope–or the nobility of strong female characters who didn’t need men to find their inner strength or sense of identification.

So, yes. Buffy was a better show in the first four years, beforeSpike fell in love with Buffy, before Spike started taking his shirt off inevery episode, and when the focus was on four uncool people and their quest torid the world of… well, of characters like Spike. Same like OUaT was a better show when it was about mothers and daughters, about finding your family and coming back home to it. And I daresay that yes, it was an infinitesimally better show when we had a glimpse of hope that it was going to be that ‘modern fairytale’, about two mothers being connected through their love for their son. But again… tell that to the two idiots.

#anti captain swan #anti killian jones #emma swan #deserved better #swan queen #will always be better #but tell that to the two idiots #hook vs. spike #cs vs. spuffy #btvs parallels (or theft if you will)#ouat shitty writing #anon #replies

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notsdlifter · 5 years

Text

Kill Hollows: Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE:

BHA-AAB

Robert Warrington’s Journal

Token-Oak, Winter of 1991

10,562 days before the Syndemic

________________________________________

When I say my grandma knew the apocalypse was coming, I don’t mean it in a general sense. She didn’t just foreshadow dark times on the horizon. I believe she saw what was happening: the burning cities, the collapse of agriculture, and corpses along the interstate piled like trash at a landfill. She felt it, too: The intense pressure of knowing ate at her heart and eventually killed her. The incredible weight of this bleak future smothered her before she could adequately warn anyone but me.

She died on a Tuesday right after the wheat harvest. Even in death, the family would say, she accommodated my grandfather's schedule. Grandma planned her own passing—thou the doctors said the aneurysm was a fluke—right down to what she wore to the hospital. One day, Gramps came home from the farm and found her on the sunflower linoleum in the kitchen convulsing. Yet she packed a bag, stashed a week’s worth of leftovers in the fridge, and paid the bills a month in advance. Grandma was spooky like that. She had the foresight of a Cajun mystic.

Grandma had these great big eyes, but she rarely opened them more than a squint. She hid them behind reading frames she bought in the plastic turnstile at the local IGA Supermarket. With her head tilted and her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, she dug into people with those eyes. She had this way of looking into a person, right inside their thoughts, like she was vetting them for trustworthiness suitable enough to be her confidant. Few met her standards.

Grandma was a collector, like many women from small towns, she had a “power animal.” She bought cookie jars, bric-a-brac, and mawkish paintings of her “power animal” that personified her best. For my grandma, it was owls: spooky ass, head-turning-180-degree-Exorcist-style, big-eyed, predatory, nocturnal, clawed, and sharp-beaked owls. The damned things filled her home, lurking in every nook, following you with their eyes. I saw my grandma in all those owls.

Grandma loved to scare little kids. Scare them in a way that was simultaneously welcoming and bone-chilling. Over a plate of fresh-baked cookies—chocolate chip that were puffy, crunchy on the outside, yet doughy in the middle—she'd offer you her “insights” of the world. The cookies lowered your guard and the way she spoke really sucked you in, always in a gentle coo. “You know, Bob, those black spots on BBQ chips? Those are boogers from people that work at the factory.” Or, ever so subtly, “I once filled a glass dish with Coke and submerged a metal spoon in it and left it overnight. In the morning, the spoon was gone … completely dissolved. Now, Bob, imagine what that stuff does to your stomach overnight? Have you been checking your poop for blood?” And, let's not forget her stories about chocolate, “that stuff is made from the coco plant, you know, that’s where the 'cho' comes from. Well, the plant is used to manufacture illegal narcotics. A little white powder called CHOcaine. There is something in the plant that pulls people in. Changes their brain. Every bit of ‘Cho’ you ingest is a step closer to being a drug addict when you’re older. A step closer to sleeping in gutters, having no teeth, and never wiping your ass with toilet paper. So, enjoy that Butterfinger, Bob, enjoy it real… slow.”

Yeah, I loved my grandma. Even though she was mean and wrong about a lot of things. I remember her stories because she conveyed them with a quiet passion. She was the only woman I ever met that could scare me to death and make me feel loved unconditionally at the same time.

Grandma grew up in the town of Token-Oak and stayed there her whole life. A town named for the prevalence of thousand-year-old oaks. In its heyday, Token-Oak was a Midwestern postcard town, picturesque in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. In the fall, the foliage from the deep-rooted oaks provided a pallet of Autumn colors so brilliant and varied that people would pull over on the interstate to take family photos with the hills in the background. In recent years, however, the oaks suffered a debilitating disease causing their leaves to fall. These hulking relics stand all over the town leafless and dying, their twisting fingers reaching out into space.

Before things went to hell, townsfolk talked about Token-Oak like a distant relative that once had a multimillion-dollar empire. They never mentioned that the relative spent the fortune on whores and coke only to wind up penniless and using the daily paper as a blanket. Token-Oakeans bragged on the oil booms and the new interstate and the influx of traffic as “progress.” They never mentioned the meth labs, violence, and the strange detachment that permeated the town. No one ever discussed the dark underbelly of Token-Oak, no one except my grandma.

Grandma and this will sound crazy, could predict future events. Perhaps not the exact time or outcome, but she could see the future. Frankly, all grandmothers possess this gift in varying degrees of intensity. Most grandmothers can look at a young man and tell you with surprising accuracy if a kid will be a success in life. In a moderately advanced form, some grandmothers can predict the downfall of a kid, but the advanced ones, women like my grandmother, could predict success, downfall, and the immediate steps necessary to correct the downward spiral. Grandma had the trifecta, the holy trinity, of grandmotherly prognostication.

Grandma knew where I was headed a long time before I got there. She warned me, and my life happened precisely like she said it would. You see, I was what many considered a smart kid, but one that was intensely troubled by emotions. Back in the Eighties, parents didn't throw around psychobabble. Today, I probably would have landed somewhere on the spectrum. In 1986, I was just a fucked-up little kid struggling through life.

Life was one hell of a struggle.

My dad overdosed when I was six. My mom, my brother—his name was Jacob—and I walked into our trailer on a Friday night after going to the County Fair. Dad was laying on the dirty carpet next to the couch. He had this white froth around his mouth, and one of his eyes was rolled back in his head. In his left hand, he held a hypodermic needle. Mom dropped me in the doorway and released a milk-curdling scream. Jacob and I just stood there, in the living room, looking at Dad.

The whole trailer park was around our house for hours. The cops took Dad away in a black sack and combed through the house looking for more drugs. They took buckets and bottles and dirty tubing out of our back room. Pretty much anything that could be used to make meth.

There was one thing that the cops missed. A few days later, I found a spoon under the couch. The backside was burnt black. The neck of the spoon was wrapped with electrical tape. The bowl of the spoon had a white film, and a piece of cotton singed to it, but it still shined. I’d lay on my twin mattress at the far end of the trailer and look at my upside-down reflection in the concave of that spoon for hours.

My mom caught me with it weeks later. “Where did you get this?” she said in a voice that was somehow a desperate plea and a rage-filled question. I told her that I found it under the couch, “underneath my dad.” And Mom cried so long I thought she might have died. But she left me with that dirty spoon.

The next day, Mom went to buy milk at the gas station. A semi-truck hit her car over the bridge by the tire plant. The driver that hit her was so high on meth that he never let off the gas. The roaring engine of the Freightliner slammed her Datsun hatchback over the guardrail and into the icy water of the Smoky River fifty feet below.

In a three-week span, I lost both my parents to drugs. That period changed my life, as you might imagine. Jacob and I went to live with our grandparents. It only took the better part of a week to figure out it was an arrangement that was doomed to fail. Grandma was always watching me, always warning that I couldn’t let my past ruin my life. “You drew a rough hand,” she’d say, “but you have to persevere. Use this pain, don’t let it use you.” She was always telling me to “put my suffering to work,” like it was a fucking mule that could till a field. She watched me with those huge eyes, like a predatory bird.

I still remember every detail of the afternoon Grandma warned me about the future. And that was decades ago. I was at her house on a chilly October afternoon around my birthday. I was shooting hoops with Jacob just before dinner. We had just finished watching the movie Hoosiers. Oh man, we loved to watch movies back then. The final scene was so inspiring to Jacob and me that we ran outside to impersonate the movie protagonist, Jimmy Chitwood. Hoosiers meant a lot to Caucasian farm kids in the Midwest. A good jump shot combined with “fundamentals and defense”—and a shitload of freckles—was all it took for your name to be whispered among the wheat stubble for all-time. It was all polished wood and step back jumpers against rowdy-ass opponents. They balled hard in Hoosiers, like the NBA in the early ‘90s, it was football in shorts.

I was ten years old back then. Jacob was twelve.

Jacob and I were adopted by our grandparents late in life. Both were well into their fifties, long past the age when they had the energy to deal with his shit. Jacob’s life was a cycle in three repeating patterns: (1) he received little attention, so he did something vicious; (2) he received a beating for his actions that made him worse, and the grandparents felt guilty; and (3) then they showered him with toys and freedom. Jacob was raised by television, and he returned to this well of knowledge again and again. He saw the world through a prism of movie montages and climactic scenes. In this cycle, Jacob developed an innate fixation for creating fear and causing pain. Even at twelve, he was growing into a “special” kid.

We were playing a game of one-on-one on Grandma's driveway. The rotted plywood hoop was just above the garage door. I was smoking Jacob pretty good. He was older, taller, and had the lanky frame of a b-baller but lacked athletic ability. I stole the ball from him regularly, and that really pissed him off.

“Bha-aaaaaaaab,” Jacob would say in this voice that drew out the vowels like a bone saw. It was a portmanteau word of my nickname and the sound that Jacob said I made when he hit me. There was something about that way Jacob said it, in this sotto voce hiss that was so full of sarcasm and hate: “Bha-aaaaaaab, don’t be a bitch.” Every time I showed weakness: “Bha-aaab.” If I displayed any awkwardness in a social setting: “Bha-aaab.” If I was too affectionate with my family pet: “Bha-aaaab.” If I flinched when he was about to hit me: “Bha-aaab.” That name, said in that voice, came to epitomize everything I hated about myself. It was as if all my adolescent self-reproach came to life when Jacob hissed that name.

Jacob had this weird thing about movies. He’d see it, and he’d do it. Sometimes, when a pivotal scene came on, I’d look over at him, and his face alone was worth the price of admission. His eyes wide, one eyebrow raised in curiosity, and mouth agape in utter fascination. He studied movie characters: their mannerisms, vocabulary, intonation, and style of dress. He lost himself inside that tubed box like no one I’d ever seen before or since. Then he’d head out into the world and imitate. Art became life. Fantasy became a reality. For Jacob, there was never a wall separating make-believe. It was like he existed in this alternate universe that mixed make-believe and real life like fuel and air into a jet engine. He soared into the deep recesses of the back of his mind.

The game, just like in the movie, degenerated into jail ball. It was all hip checks, and awkward curse words dropped by kids who didn't fully understand their meaning. "Nice shot, you damn gigolo" and "you play like you got a tampon in your ass."

Grandma was doing dishes in the kitchen and watching us through translucent curtains. The kitchen window was just up the stairs and overlooked the driveway basketball court. She often sat up there like a silent observer in a booth. I saw her silhouette every time I looked up. One time, I took the ball along the edge of the driveway towards the hoop and Jacob body-checked me into the garage door. The collision made a tremendous noise. Springs, plywood, and metal wheels erupted like a raucous crowd. I hit the pavement cursing up a storm. "What the balls was that, you fucking boot-licking gypsy?!"

I heard Grandma's swollen knuckles and skinny fingers wrapping on the window pane. Thomp, Thomp, THOMP! The curtains flew open, and we both saw her scowling down. She had wild eyes that trembled, though the rest of her stood motionless. I could see the air molecules around her head vibrating with energy. Her lips were pursed so tight they could cut through the metal of a spoon. It was a look developed through decades of parenting rowdy kids. It was her own version of the machine kill switch. Flip it, and everything comes to a complete stop.

At least for a while. The thin curtains slowly closed, and Jacob and I started playing again. A shot here. A few dribbles there. I grabbed the ball from Jacob and held it behind me while leaning forward. Both of Jacob’s palms faced toward me, his eyes on fire with rage. He looked like a mime performing the trapped-in-a-box routine.

Then we heard some sounds from the end of the driveway. It was the unmistakable clanging of empty gas bottles and the rattle of wrenches against the bed of Grandpa’s pickup truck. There was a nasal whine, a seething breath. Whatever it was, it sounded rushed.

I sat the ball down on the pavement and Jacob, and I tiptoed towards the truck.

A man was standing at the tailgate. His head down and his arms furiously rifled through the truck bed. He wore a beanie pulled down to the tips of his eyes. Open scabs dripped blood from his unshaven neck. The skin on his face sagged in loose pouches. His mouth was open, and his lips curled back on his teeth. His black, infected gums puffed outward. There was a filth to him, a layer of grime that indicated he hadn’t washed in a long while, maybe months. He wore the clothes of a younger person, but he looked like a haggard old man.

The man grabbed a canister of gas, removed the lid, and dumped out the contents. Gasoline vapors filled the air. Gramps had a 100-gallon tank bolted to the bed of his truck that he filled with anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer that he used during the growing season. The man grabbed the spigot of anhydrous and twisted it open. The repugnant stench of anhydrous overpowered the gasoline. Jacob and I were fifteen feet away, but even from that distance, the fumes burned my eyes and ignited a burn in my throat. The man coughed and growled through the caustic stench as saliva drizzled from his black gums.

The man wore fingerless gloves. He spilled some of the anhydrous on his skin and yanked a hand away, shaking. The caustic liquid ate away at his exposed flesh, but he did not let go of the hose and stood there until the gas-can was full of anhydrous. His eyes squinted hard as he held the can under the spigot. I could smell his flesh burning.

Whenever Grandpa handled the anhydrous, he wore thick rubber gloves and a respirator. Jacob and I must have had eyes as wide as saucers.

When he was finished with the can, he looked up and saw Jacob and me. A loud inhale turned into an animalistic hiss. He was clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw shook. There was a twitch inside him that crawled up from his waist and snarled up his back. His arms and head bobbed and contorted in inexplicable patterns. His eyes swam in their sockets as he tried to focus on us. He had the body of a man, but there was something very inhuman about him. He took heavy and irregular breaths, punctuated by desperate gasps of air. It was like he was fighting inside himself just to live.

He turned away from us as if he heard a sound in the distance. He broke into a run. His limbs stammering and shaking in a disjointed, yet frantic, gallop. He hit the end of the street—two hundred feet—in less than five seconds. The canister of ammonia sloshed caustic liquid in his wake. As he turned into the alley at the end of the street, another figure met him and then a third. They grouped together and disappeared over a dog-eared fence. We watched them run across the railroad tracks and sprint into the grass field by McClintock’s Tree Farm.

“What was he doing?” I said, looking up at Jacob. And Jacob had the TV face. His mouth was open, and his head was tilted to one side. His unblinking eyes watched the men disappear over the fence. “Jacob,” I said as I reached out to touch him.

Jacob’s trance disappeared, and he blinked slow. He turned his head and looked down at me. “He needed that stuff to take back to the Hollows… the anhydrous,” Jacob said.

“What was wrong with him?”

Jacob shrugged and looked back at the fence where the man disappeared. “I don’t know. Did you hear that fucker breathe? Sounded like a dying cow,” Jacob said. And he swiped the ball from me and turned towards the basket.

When we turned, Grandma was standing there holding a double-barreled Winchester. The gun was cracked open, and two fresh shells were resting inside the break action. The brass circles of the shells sparkled in the October sunshine. She stood for a long while intensely watching the men disappear into the tall-grass field.

She grabbed me by the neck and pulled me toward the driveway. I fell, and she kept pulling.

Once we were near the basketball hoop at the far end of the driveway, she let go: “If you were standing at the end of that tailgate, he would have killed you both. If you ever—ever! —see a person like that, you run. You get inside the house and lock the doors. There are things in this town, bad things. And don’t you think for a minute that just because you’re a kid, that thing wouldn’t open you up from belly button to Adam’s apple.”

Grandma took a long breath. She brought her hand to cover her eyes and let out a wobbly exhale. Grandma took me up and hugged me so hard I thought she broke my ribs.

“Why was he breathing like that?” Jacob asked.

Grandma looked back down the drive for a long while. She covered the sun from her eyes as she scanned the fences in the neighborhood. Then she looked at Jacob and I and shook her head. “He breathes like that because he’s dying. Been slowly dying for a long time. And one of these days, this whole damn town will be full of people like that.”

Grandma pulled the shells from the Winchester and snapped it shut. She slipped the shells in her coat pocket. She looked around and disappeared inside.

Grandma was a woman of idiosyncrasies. She had rules—live or die rules—that she never broke. She wouldn’t leave the house at night for any reason. She loved her two Alaskan Huskies, and listened to them like they were people. Responding to each one of their barks while in the house by looking out the shutters to inspect the neighborhood. There was a suspicious side to her, especially people in authority or control. I once saw her bolt from the Token-Oak hospital when a doctor tried to take her blood pressure. “I don’t trust him, and neither should you,” was all she ever said. It was like she expected the worst in people and searched for it everywhere. For a gregarious kid like me, that coldness was often grating. I could tell that beneath all Grandma’s issues, she loved us furiously.

Grandma and I butted heads like two rams on a mountain. She tried to keep me contained, and I was always busting out. She would correct me, and I’d fly off course. It was the ebb and flow of our dynamic.

After Grandma was inside, Jacob looked over at me. “Did you hear that shit? She is losing it,” Jacob said in a wobbly, effeminate voice, “the town will be full of people like that,” as he imitated Grandma standing with the Winchester. “She needs to be in a place for crazy people.”

After a while, Jacob and I were back to jail ball. Within minutes, I caught an elbow to the face and hit the pavement. I sprung up spraying profanities like a yard spreader. The curtains flew open, Grandma was standing in a dark kitchen. A vision of utter rage, she glared down upon us like the demon in Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain.

I was scared, but my anger outweighed my fear. What Jacob did was wrong, he was always wrong. I knew that she saw him, and yet she just stared. Grandma always cut him slack.

I waited until the curtain closed. Then it happened, the middle finger on my right hand extended and my arm shot up until my elbow straightened. Boom. There it was. I flipped my grandma off for only a split second. Turns out, that split second was enough.

Even Jacob, the twelve-year-old sadist, knew I’d made a tremendous mistake.

"You’re a dumbass,” Jacob said, “she saw that.”

“Whatever,” I said, holding the ball with both hands while leaning over.

I dismissed the thought and continued the game. Jacob began a new tactic, utterly uncharacteristic. He played softly, no longer pushing me around. It was like he wanted the game to end, just to see what would happen next. After five minutes of disinterested ball, we were done.

Jacob and I kicked our shoes off at the back door of Grandma’s house and stomped up the kitchen stairs. Grandma was standing at the sink and washing a set of dishes. Her back was facing me, and she did not offer her usual greeting.

I palmed the handle on the fridge door, yanking it open. A half-full container of cherry Kool-Aid was sitting on the top shelf whispering my name. I stood in the middle of the kitchen pouring the chilled, cherry goodness into a jelly jar. Grandma's back was toward me, her hunched shoulders wiggling as she scrubbed a pot in the sink. Jacob stood at the stove in between us. He had a subtle smile as he watched me.

As I took a drink of the cherry liquid, Jacob was the first to speak.

Jacob said, “Bob bent the garage door.”

This was such typical Jacob. His goal in life was to get people to lose it. He was gifted at this skill, like an aikido master throwing an attacking opponent off balance, Jacob knew just where, and how, to press. He kept memories of unhinged emotional responses in his mind like a running back keeps the game ball from a three-hundred-yard game.

"That's bullsh . . ." I said reflexively, only to be interrupted mid-profanity by Grandma's hand. She wheeled from the sink, flattened her palm, and threw a cat-quick right cross. It left the side of my face smashing my cheeks into my molars. All of this occurred in three-tenths of a second. Sometimes, life happens in a flash, but you remember it in excruciatingly slow detail. The way her fingers smashed the fatness of my cheek. How my lips curled as she followed through. The spinning jelly jar full of cherry Kool-Aid. Most of all, though, I remember the crime scene afterward.

Red Kool-Aid splattered all around the kitchen, in patterns so intricate that Jackson Pollock would've been jealous. The sunflower linoleum floor, the finger paintings hanging by magnets on the fridge, even the bubble screen on Grandma’s 9" kitchen TV were covered in the pitter-patter Kool-Aid splatter. The red stuff was everywhere, a fine mist of blood like someone’s head had exploded. I laid on the linoleum floor looking up at Grandma.

“It was Jacob… he did it,” I whimpered from the floor as I pointed at Jacob.

She towered over me with her right hand still cocked. Bending down, she calmed herself, and said the unforgettable words, “You can’t control yourself. It’s always someone else’s fault. And by the time you figure it out, I'll be dead."

Then Grandma leaned down and grabbed me by the collar of my T-shirt, pulled me closer, and said in a hissing whisper, “there is going to come a time, after I am dead when you’ll need Jacob. And he’ll be there. Family runs deep, and those bonds are forever. All this you’re going through is just training for what’s coming. And when it gets here, you’ll be thankful.”

Grandma wiped her hands off on a towel and walked out of the kitchen.

Jacob stood by the stove with an orgiastic smile. He had this look, an I’m-in-control-of-a-delicious-situation visage. His smile was so crooked and fulfilled, half his face looked like the Joker from Batman. It was a look that said, "told you so" and "eat shit" with seamless ferocity. The way his upper row of teeth glowed under his upper lip, the evil twinkle in his eye, even the way he held his head slightly upturned and to the side. For a twelve-year-old kid, he could play the douchebag card with uncanny skill.

“Fuck you, Jacob,” I said, sulking out of the kitchen.

I heard him laughing hysterically as I descended the basement stairs. He yelled after me, “Ahhh, Ba-aaaab, you going to need me someday. You’re welcome.”

The basement was the furthest spot in the house away from my grandmother, and she needed time to calm. The basement was quiet, had shag carpet, and puffy furniture. The house was not air-conditioned, but the basement was naturally cool. It was a place of respite from family dysfunction and summer heat.

At the base of the stairs, just to the left, there was my grandfather's office. A room unlike any other. Grandpa’s U-shaped desk had a glass top. He slid decades of old pictures and newspaper clippings under the glass. It was a tableau of his life and our family history. I sat in Grandpa’s office chair with my elbows on the desk, cradling my head in my hands.

Grandpa was a high school history teacher, county politician, and farmer. An avid democrat—the “party of the little people,” he always said—he believed in the common man and would rail against the machine any chance that he got. He supported inmates and single moms and small businesses. Most of all, he loved a good underdog story. After all, who is a bigger underdog than farming teacher with four kids and a penchant for taking on societal problems? He even ran for state senate a few times and lost. Badly. Through all his endeavors, he became part of the political machine. He wrote scathing letters to the editor in the local newspaper whenever he saw a person slighted by “big business, big government, or big bullshit.” People hated him or loved him. In his office, he kept mementos that he treasured dearly.

The history in that room was personal and honest. On the doorframe, all Grandpa’s children had penciled their height from toddler age to present day. Under the glass on the desk, there were hundreds of pieces of paper. One was an article about my great-grandpa who died when his arm was ripped off in a threshing machine. He bled to death in the wheat stubble of our home place field. His last note, scratched with a pocket knife onto a painted piece of John Deere green metal, read: “I love you all. I did my best.” There was a photo of my grandfather and Bill Clinton, where Clinton wrote so charmingly, “If I had supporters like you in every state, I’d be king.” There were the election results for state senate, where Gramps only brought in 27 percent of the vote, glued to the top of his campaign slogan that read simply: “I teach.” Grandpa was so proud of that slogan.

That room was Grandpa’s entire life, his sanctuary from the world. A physical manifestation of memories that told his story. There was not a single picture of my grandmother in that office. Other than the scribbled height of the kids on the doorframe, there were no pictures of any of Grandpa’s kids either. His story.

I sat in that office absorbing the history. My thoughts wandered to what Grandma had said about Jacob. I couldn’t envision a scenario when I would need him, the idea that I would be thankful for him was asinine. Just the thought made me clench my fists so hard that my fingernails dug into my palm leaving bloody imprints. I was so emotional, especially back then before the weight of time and responsibility largely suffocated my restlessness. I vowed to myself not to let Jacob get to me again, not to lose control, no matter what happened. I squinted my eyes hard—as if to force the goal into my head.

While I sat there in the basement, Grandpa came down the stairs and walked through the office door.

“Grandma tells me you shot her the bird . . .”

I nodded while looking at the floor.

“On the driveway…”

I nodded again.

“She tells me she slapped the holy hell out of you in the kitchen.”

I nodded again, still looking down.

“Well, she’s upstairs. Hands and knees up there cleanin’ up red shit off the cabinets. She must have busted you pretty good.”

“It’s Kool-Aid, Gramps.”

He laughed as only he could. “You left your mark on that room. Everyone will remember that slap and splatter.” And Grandpa walked over and patted me on the back. He told me to try to get along better with Jacob and “keep my head.”

Things repeated themselves over that year. So much that it was like living in a spin cycle. We were always together, Jacob and I, working the same dawn until dusk shift at the farm. Like too many familial relationships it was a forced shitshow that led to nowhere good. “Jacob and I” lit a neighbor’s pasture on fire and caused some damage to property. “Jacob and I” wrecked a farm truck. “Jacob and I” were caught stealing money from Grandpa’s wallet. “Jacob and I” stole beer from the fridge. There was always a lot more Jacob and a whole hell of a lot less of “I.” Though “I” was guilty by association.

Jacob and I never got along. I came to realize we never would. Jacob was drawn to pain and fear like an insect to bright light. He loved giving titty twisters that left scars for years. When he was really feeling froggy, which was often, he forced me to slap box him until my gums bled. You could never ride as a passenger in anything Jacob was driving, be it a four-wheeler, a pickup truck, or a bike. He would push the envelope of safety right up to the edge of death until you were in tears and begging to “make it stop.”

Grandma’s prediction about Jacob always hung in the back of my mind like a guilty thought. One of Grandma’s favorite sayings was that “everyone served a purpose.” Even Jacob. She was especially fond of reiterating that statement when Jacob got into trouble. I watched him deteriorate over the years—violent arrests, a stolen car, an arson charge for burning down a hundred-thousand-dollar grain elevator “just for shits and giggles.” Grandma kept saying “everyone serves a purpose. Everyone. Jacob slid so far into the abyss that even unconditional advocates like her began to wonder just what that purpose might be.

_____________

If there was a moment where Grandma realized Jacob would not be able to live a normal life, it was the pigs. That changed everything, that was it. Things went from dysfunctional to something more malevolent. It was the coup de grâce of Jacob’s sanity.

Jacob and I had just finished watching a comic book flick on the TV in the basement. A hackneyed yawner where the super-villain tied the hero to a post. The villain filled a trench with gas, and spent the last scene flipping a book of matches open and closed over the ditch while saying vague shit like “you think I wanted this,” “I’m a monster,” and “no one ever loved me.” The movie was boring and formulaic. Nonetheless, Jacob had “the face” while he mentally recorded the scene.

A few weeks later, he did it.

Jacob and I were playing near the pigpen. Grandpa had nestled the pen underneath a trio of thousand-year-old oaks right near the water pump. These trees were the oldest in the country. Massive oaks that had trunks so thick they were twelve feet across the middle Grandpa said the oaks were old even when he was a little boy and his dad had nicknamed them Comanche, Cherokee, and Apache after the warrior Indian tribes.

These three oaks were the centerpiece of the farm. They were so enormous, even in 1880, that the original homesteaders built the house so they could look upon the trees. They towered over the countryside each of them was over 150 feet tall and just as wide. They were never trimmed so their lower branches, thick as sidewalks, reached all the way to the ground. It was a rite of passage to climb to the top of Comanche’s tallest limb. We built a tree house about forty feet up, cupped by the branches of Apache like a father coddles a newborn babe.

As an adolescent, I read this short story from John Muir about riding out the fury of a thunderstorm in the peak of a tree. I climbed up Comanche in the middle of a prairie deluge. The branches dipped thirty feet in high winds. I clung to the trunk, my eyes glued to the horizon as lightening carpet-bombed the chalky hills along the Smoky River in an awesome show. Hugging that tree, I felt the power of nature and the delicateness of life at the same time.

I know this sounds clichéd and sophomoric. With my ear to the trunk of Comanche, I heard the call. It was the most invigorating experience of my life and lit a fire inside me I could never extinguish. I loved that tree since that day.

One summer, Comanche, Cherokee, and Apache started to die. They got an unknown disease that caused their leaves to fall off in the middle of summer. It happened fast, in just two weeks. The hulking relics stood there bald and naked, with three feet of green leaves piled up around them. I still remember Grandpa standing to look at the trio stripped bare and dying during the height of the growing season. They had, at least according to Gramps, been there for well over “five hundred years.” It was the end of an era that stretched longer from end to end than the American republic.

When those trees died, their leaves turned brown in a matter of days. The ground around the ancient trunks started to dry, and those poor pigs got hot. Even with the water pump dumping gallons of water onto the dirt, the ground began to flake and crack.

When Jacob dug his trench, that dirt was powder dry. He filled it with a line of red diesel. He stood over that trench for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette and flipping the box of matches open and closed.

“You think I give a fuck?” he said to me, imitating the supervillain from the movie with astounding skill.

He stared down into the box as if the answer was written in tiny letters along the side of a match. He finally pulled one and pinched it in his fingers, his eyes looking from the sulfur of the match-head to connect with mine. There was a flare in those eyes, a crazed glaze that was more akin to a rabid dog. He took a long draw off a cigarette he’d pilfered from Grandma. An inhale so deep, the smoke didn’t even come out when he next spoke.

“Grandpa always loved you more. You’re a soft little pussy. You'll hole up in the basement again. Eventually, he will come to pat you on the back.”

He took another long pull, this time letting the smoke drift out of his mouth only to be pulled back in two long tusks of smoke. He made his right arm wiggle forward as if it had no bones. It swung like Dumbo’s trunk. Only instead of a magic feather, there was a single wooden match.

“Ahhhhh,” he said with genuine satisfaction, “He will lose his goddamned mind. You can try to explain it. Just try.” He rubbed the back of his head with his palm and looked into the rolling hills of the pasture. Jacob had this look, kind of a contemplative stare into space where he’d raise his eyebrows and push out his chin. He would stay perfectly still while you looked at him. It was his I-am-a-deep-thinking-troubled-artist stare he probably bastardized from some B movie.

“I've enjoyed the pain,” he said. “Do you know that?”

I didn’t respond, that would have just made things worse.

Jacob lit the match then pinched it in his fingertips. His arm was completely extended. There was no bend in his elbow, Jacob let it burn slowly down without speaking. The flame of the match was, from my vantage point, perfectly between his eyes. Looking all the while past the flame at me.

“I love the fear—what’s crazy Jacob going to do next? Fear lasts. It stays with people. And causing it, creating it… Ahhhhh God, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

The flame touched his hand then. His eyelids squinted, and there was a moment I could have stopped it, maybe redirected his attention away from that trench filled with diesel, away from those pigs. I only could muster a single word.

“Jacob…”

He dropped the match with a theatrical snap of his wrist. The diesel lit with a low, blue flame that crawled across the ground. It slithered into the pigpen with silent grace, and when its tendrils touched the drippings on the grates of the pen, it went up with a whoosh. The flames tore through the cage, rolling across the pink bellies of the piglets.

The sound that came from there was unlike anything I've heard before or since.

It was a squealing cough full of agony. The smell of burning hair and shit was so harsh I had to cover my nose with my shirt. The sound of those piglets choking themselves as they tried to push through the square grates as they burned alive. That sound never left my ears. Every time I smell a pork chop or hear the grunt of an animal, the memory of that day comes squealing back.

Above the din of the burning pigs, I could hear the trees begin to burn. Those ancient oaks swaying violently as their branches scratched together like antlers of bucks fighting to the death. I looked up, and the trees bent and bowed as they began to burn.

The fire stretched from the pigpen to the base of Comanche. The trunk browned then blacked and popped embers as the fire licked up its branches. In less than a minute, the flames had clawed its way to the top and spread to Apache and Cherokee. The fireball was the size of a New York skyscraper.

I didn't try to run. When Grandpa came, I offered no explanation. I just sat there, eyes wide, as Jacob smoked Indian-style and leered. A single pillar of black smoke stretched from the blaze ten thousand feet into the sky. It was as if the arm of the devil reached out of hell to claw hands at the heavens above.

The grandparents committed Jacob to a mental hospital the very next day. There was no goodbye, no explanation. Just a silent sendoff that served as an acknowledgment of their fear of Jacob. He had progressively gotten worse. He had gone from general physical abuse to vandalization to animal torture to full-scale slaughter. In this linear progression, animals wouldn’t hold his attention much longer.

Looking back after all these years, I see that Grandma was right. Even a person as fuck-snap crazy as Jacob did have a purpose. There was a world where a kid that relished fear would have value. I didn’t know it then, but that world—with its suffocating nights and roving killing herds—had started to develop all around me. The seeds of the apocalypse had just sprouted, and addled roots of the dead oaks had just broken through the soil.

#Kill Hollows

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darkot · 7 years

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You know what’s something that I think about a lot? That if there was a zombie apocalypse, artists would be the first ones left behind.

You’ve got doctors who can treat wounds and keep you healthy. You’ve got police officers and hunters who can defend you and get you food. There are mechanics who can keep your vehicles running. Fishermen can bring fish to the table. Farmers can grow crops.

What the fuck is an artist going to be able to contribute in a zombie apocalypse?

The Walking Dead put it nicely. “Art isn’t about survival. It’s transcendence. Being more than animals. Rising above.” That really stuck with me. While you can interpret many things from that quote, one thing that I derived from it is that, art is only useful in a peaceful society. In this age we live in, art serves to educate and entertain. It gives us reprieve from the mundanity of daily, modern life. It paves the way for more profound thought--for societal change. But when there is a lack of society, what place is there for it? Who will value that skill, and the life of the person in possession of it, over somebody who knows how to scavenge, shoot, or heal? You could argue that an academic artist could act the part of an architect. They could oversee the construction of buildings to keep people safe. But even then, they would not be valued until the re-establishment of society began.

An artists’ vision today helps the blind see and the numb feel. They help shape a more civilized civilization, by lessening our ignorance, so that the world produces less bad people.

An artists’ vision in this hypothetical zombie world would help rebuild society. They could create plans for houses and cities to keep us safe, and keep the bad people (and zombies) out.

In both scenarios, artists help defend us from monsters. The difference being that one monster wants you to hate and hurt, while the other monster wants to eat your face.

It can be argued that artists are simultaneously the most valuable and most easily disposable members of society. The world needs them. But they are the first to be sacrificed.

...

So, that’s a little insight into the weird shit my introverted brain thinks of.

I have been thinking too much lately though, as I always do. As much as I try to work on getting out of my own head, I somehow only end up digging deeper and deeper into it.

Er.. I should probably clarify that all that zombie apocalypse stuff isn’t what I’ve been thinking so deeply on. I mean yes, I thought about it, but that’s not what is really on my mind primarily.

I just.. I’m having trouble moving forward. it’s frightening. I have no trouble admitting that I’m terrified of what’s to come, because the further I go ahead, the more responsibility I take.

I’ve spent all these years hurting and healing.. Now that I’m fully recovered, I’m at a loss as to how to proceed. I’m having trouble believing in myself, and that’s holding me back from becoming who I need to become.

I have a test coming up and.. I don’t know. I’m paralyzed with fear, for some reason. Subconsciously, I’m playing out how it’s going to go over and over, and.. I just can’t have faith in myself to do well. Which is weird, because I’ve only gotten graded at above 90% for all of my assignments in this course. I know the material, so I’m fairly certain that this is just about not wanting things to change as I move on from where I’m at now.

Ughh.. fell asleep halfway through writing this.

Anyways, Overwatch season 3 ended yesterday. I ended the season at 3070, with a season high of 3348. I completed my original goal of making it to diamond near the beginning of the season, where I started off in platinum. However, my goal shifted to getting to master when I saw the very real possibility of that happening. I made it more than halfway there--accumulating 348/500 of the points necessary to rank up. But alas, t’was not meant to be this season. I’m okay with that now, upon reflection, and once I realized that I met my original goal. However, along the way it was extremely frustrating. Just in the past week, I ran into a troll on my team who just kept throwing themselves off the map the entire game, a blatant aimbotter on the other team, and had internet issues that d/c’d me from two games. Between all of those things, I lost about 200 SR (I was already down to 3100-ish at this point. I started climbing again, but these were the last nails in the coffin marked “you are not getting master this season.”)

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Well, that may go without saying, since I do a lot of thinking about everything. But.. I don’t know. Overwatch is an amazing game. I love it to death. It is by far the best FPS that I have ever played. However, I can’t help but feel like I’m developing a useless skill here. More useless than art in a zombie apocalypse.

I had made a silent vow to myself that I was going to slow down on playing the game once I hit diamond, but I didn’t follow through with that. I really want to make it to master. I honestly believe that I play at a master level, when going back and analyzing my game play, and I’ve shown definite potential to climb to that rank in this season.

As much as I enjoy playing this game, the grind is a real bitch. It’s got me thinking about what really matters, and as much as I’d like this achievement.. in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t do me any good. I told myself that I’d NEVER get into professional gaming (not that this is professional gaming, but it’s getting into that far more serious realm), because the time commitment is too large for the amount of earnings, and it is too repetitive of a thing for me to stay interested in it. I’d have to constantly sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours into a game “gittin’ gud” at it, in order to keep my skills sharp and better than my competition. If there is any game I’d be willing to do that for, it is Overwatch (or maybe Smash Bros.), because of its immense depth and variety of characters. But even with Overwatch, I would get bored of that so insanely quickly. I’ve played less than 100 hours this season, and I got burnt out at a point or two.

To put things in perspective, who are the real “losers” in this situation? The pros, who get to play this game all day and be the best, but only make a moderate amount? Or the devs who don’t get to play their own game very much, and aren’t the best at it, but make infinitely more money? A pro can say to a dev that he’s better at the game than him, but the dev can say to the pro that he can’t hear him from the third floor of his mansion.

That’s more or less how I’m looking at things at this point. I could lifelessly devote all of my time to this game and become one of the best players of it. I could have that achievement of saying that I’m in the top 10,000 players in the Americas. But, my time would be much better spent honing a skill for my career. I could make a game of my own and be further off than if I made it to the top of the leaderboards in this game.

I’m still going to play it because of how much I enjoy it. But I don’t think I’ll continue to take it quite as seriously. I had started connecting part of my self worth onto wether I made it to master or not. I wanted to prove to myself that I could get there if I really tried. I have more important things to take care of, though.

An artist that I follow made a post on here of them hitting master, and saying that they were glad that they could put down this, as they put it, “time vampire.” And it’s true. That would essentially be what I’d do if I made it there. I’d have gotten that achievement under my belt, and wouldn’t devote nearly as much of my time to the game after that. If I get to master next season playing semi-casually, then cool. If not, that’s fine too. I’ve already made it to the highest rank that I can get to, where I can’t fall out of it. I'll always be diamond, but I could lose my master title very easily. Just takes one bad game after making it there to lose it, and a few more to get you far enough away from it that you really have to fight for it again.

At the very least, master or not, I have absolutely ZERO intention of trying to reach grandmaster. Fuck. That. As much as I think I’d enjoy that level of play, where everyone is coordinated and knows what they’re doing, the grind to get there would literally drive me insane (plus, I don’t think my own gameplay is at a grandmaster level to be honest). If I ever go back on that and start making my way to GM, I want someone to take a screenshot of this, print it out, roll the paper up, and slap me in the face with it.

There’s more to talk about. I started playing Fire Emblem: Heroes the other day. Watched Stranger Things finally. The Dragons of Ashfall release comes out for AQ3D tomorrow. But, I don’t feel like typing all of that up right now. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m really not sure what to do right now, though. It’s 3:30am. I guess I’ll try going back to sleep, but since I woke up not too long ago, I don’t know if I’ll be able to?

OH GOD, WHAT IF I CAN NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!?

Guess we’ll find out, haha.

#personal #ramble ramble ramble #masterfully artistic zombies or something like that?#I don't know man

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