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humanrindswrites · 8 months

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scary movie

pairing: kirk hammett x female reader

summary: kirk's girl is a hardened horror veteran, just like him, but even veterans have their limits.

warnings: fluff, mentions of gore (they’re watching horror movies)

word count: 859 words

a/n: little factoid about me is that i love really gory movies but sexual violence is where my tolerance for extremity ends. also, if you've never seen cannibal holocaust just know that it has real scenes of animals being killed just for the sake of it. it's not a movie for the faint-hearted.

“So, what did you say this movie was called again?” Kirk asked as his girlfriend set up the VCR in the living room.

“Cannibal Holocaust,” she said once the machine was turned on and ready for the tape. “It got banned in England recently and the director got arrested in Italy because they thought he actually killed the actors.”

“Sounds gnarly,” he said as he took the videotape box from her. “Everything gets banned in England these days.”

“That’s true, they’d probably ban a movie because somebody got a paper cut.”

When Kirk first saw her in the video rental store, he thought maybe she was a beginner looking for something tame to watch with friends and could maybe find something that would get her jumping into his arms like a little lamb. Instead, he found out that she was just as much an expert as he was and liked her movies gory and borderline upsetting.

It was pretty much love at first sight for him.

She had her finger on the pulse for all the wild new movies coming from Europe and which ones were getting banned in Europe for being ‘harmful to children’ or some other ridiculous shit that some old people were saying. He was more versed in the classics but finding these scandalous new videos was something that he never really had the time to do anymore.

They made popcorn in the kitchen while the trailers played at the beginning of the tape, making it back just in time for the movie to start. The screen showed a beautiful sweeping shot of the Amazon rainforest set to a lush orchestral score, as if it was a nature documentary or a romance, lulling them into false security of what was to come.

When she’d originally told him that the movie was a nasty one, Kirk thought that she was just exaggerating. He’d seen some gory movies before but they’d never been as grisly and realistic as this. The two of them watched in stunned silence as people were killed, raped, beaten, and animals were slaughtered before their very eyes.

The videotape’s quality added to the horrifying visuals before them, making the carnage so much more disturbing than it likely was; the poor turtle’s exposed innards were spread across the screen as the eerie soundtrack screeched. Kirk had never expected her to jump into his arms during a movie, but he could feel her tense up and her fingers curl into fists against his chest with every brutal blow.

But no matter how extreme the scenes became, neither one of them could take their eyes away from the screen. Blood was spilt, brains were exposed, bodies were hacked to pieces, women were raped, and people were eaten. She’d promised Kirk a gnarly time and that was exactly what they’d gotten.

I wonder who the real cannibals are, the television said before the camera swept up into the New York City skyline and the credits rolled. They were both quiet until the tape stopped and Kirk picked up the remote from next to him to turn it off.

“You feeling okay?” he asked her. She usually had something to say once the movie had finished, but this time she was stunned into silence. “Hey, it’s only a movie.”

“I didn’t think they were going to kill real animals,” she said, her voice quiet. “I knew it was going to be gruesome, but nobody told me they killed the animals.”

“Aside from that, did you like the rest of the movie?” Kirk asked as he ran his hand up and down her arm.

“I don’t know. It’s something I need to think about. But I know I don’t want to watch it again.

“It wasn’t a Frankenstein flick, that’s for sure.”

“Nobody got raped in any version of Frankenstein as far as I remember.”

“Did you not like that part either?”

“No,” she said, a little louder than she’d intended. “I hate seeing girls get raped in movies. It’s why I hated The Last House on the Left.”

“Mm, that one was intense.”

“At least all of that was fake, not like this,” she said as she sat up and went over to take the videotape out of the VCR. “No wonder it got banned.”

“Are you saying you support movie censorship?” Kirk teased and stood up to help her clear away the dishes that had accumulated on the coffee table.

“I’m not saying that,” she said and playfully slapped him on the arm. “I’m just saying that I can see why people had such a strong reaction to it.”

“Maybe next week I’ll pick the movie so that we don’t watch poor turtles die.”

“What’d you have in mind?”

Kirk took her in his arms and thought for a second, humming in her ear and tapping his fingers on her shoulders for comedic effect.

“How about I Spit on Your Grave?”

“Okay, now you’re just teasing me,” she said as she broke out of his arms and took the dishes into the kitchen.

“Hey, you’re the one who always picks the hardcore stuff, I thought you’d like it!”

#kirk hammett x reader #kirk hammett fanfiction #kirk hammett fluff #kirk hammett imagine #metallica x reader #metallica fanfiction #metallica imagines #metallica #kirk hammett #real person fiction #rpf #x reader #reader insert #*my writing #self ship

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lelet-draws · 3 months

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To people who are complaining about Husk being drawn as white or young please be civil about it.

Lots of people don’t know the appearance of the voice actor. Lots of people are basing his appearance on the fact that he was confirmed Russian (or at least having a Russian background).

Don’t go pointing fingers because a lot of these artists are beginners and a lot of them are minors. They need proper guidance not harsh words from a complete stranger.

The internet is already a tough place for artists, so don’t be an asshole when it comes to expressing your concerns.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin husker #hazbin husk #huskerdust #vivziepop #vivzieverse

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youremyheaven · 9 months

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Astrology Masterpost

Tropical Astrology

tropical astro observations

tropical astro observations pt 2

another mini observation post

yet another trop post

here's another one

woop another tropical post

another one baby

astro notes where i talk about 8h lives

me spitting factzz <3

damn another one

i had no idea i made these many posts

for real

wouldnt be an astro observation post without me talking about pisces/12th house thingz 😎🥰

voice, 12th house, synastry

sex, romance and freaky behaviour 💀🥵🔥😩

sex astrology

the astrology of voice 🎶🎧

relationship astrology

Random Astrology Observations

Vedic Astrology

my first vedic post :-)

mongoose yoni, hasta girlies and retro vibes 🐀💃🏼👯‍♀️

bimbos, venusians and mermaids 🧜🏼‍♀️👭

blackpink vedic analysis

a cool vedic post about symbols and motifs

snakes, scorpios and sex workers 🐍🦂

serpents, trophy wives and nose jobs 🐍🤰🏼👃🏼

angel imagery in vedic astro 👼🏼🧚🏼‍♀️

Jupiter & Notoriety 💀

simple observations

vedic analysis of singers, fairies and cougars 👀 🎶🧚🏼‍♀️

BTS rising sign speculation

BTS & their celeb crushes

butterfly motif and vedic astrology 🦋

the astrology of big boobs and mistresses 🌕🌕

courtesans and great actors🥵🎭

actors, desirable women and muscle daddies 🎭💃🏼💪🏼

why are cancer girlies so in demand 🦀♋

muscle men and ingenues 🤪🧚🏼‍♀️😩

the spectrum of femininity seen through cancer rashi

beauty & the beast: the path of venus 😍🔥

nice guys, loners, unhappy childhoods 🤓🥰

Rosalia's Mrigashira influence 🐍

Abstract Art & Artists 🎨✨

Jupiter Influence on Korean Actors 🌟🧚🏼‍♀️🦋

The Astrology of Appearance

The Astrology of Appearance pt 2

The Astrology of Appearance pt 3

Decoding Venus

Beginner's Guide To Vedic Astrology

Pisces Influence on Kpop

Ashlesha: The Villain Nakshatra

The Cinderella Story

Mars & Sex

Hourglasses: The Astrology of Body Types ⏳🥵💃🏼

Astrology of Appearance: Yoni Animal Edition

Astrology of Muses

Cancer Girls & Baby Voice

Doll Beauty in Astrology

Jupiter vs Moon

Revati's Magic

Moon conjunct Ketu relationship dynamics

Nodal synastry moodboard

The Dark Side of Jupiter

Tomie Kawakami is a Punarvasu

Wealth giving naks & Revati's kinky side

Appetite in Astrology

Mars, Sex & Celibacy

Why Venus exalts in 12h

The Absorbent Nature of Venus

The Ugliness of Venus

Houses in Astrology

The 12h & Its Vibes: A Detailed Analysis 🦋🧚🏼‍♀️

The 8h Saga 🌹✨🦇🌌

#astrology notes #vedic astro notes #astrology observations #astro notes #astro observations #sidereal astrology #astrology #astroblr #kpop astrology #vedic astrology #astro community #nakshatras #spirituality

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german-enthusiast · 1 year

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You are learning German and are at least mildly interested in history?

Let me put you on something:

Ernst H. Gombrichs: Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser

The author wrote considering that if you really try, you can explain absolutely everything to a child and specifically does not want his book to be seen as something you have to study (memorize dates and names etc) but as something you should enjoy. At the same time, he hugely respects children ans understands how much they can learn and does not talk down to them but instead uses cool metaphors to explain grand concepts to even the smallest children.

Bad news: I cannot find a free copy/pdf anywhere online, I am sorry (please anyone let me know if you do!)

Good news: There is a professional recording on Spotify!!

Part one: Von den Anfängen bis zum Mittelalter

https://open.spotify.com/album/51QjgeOikJ5jvbuwoqB64U?si=N5rfxmWUR_el0aFkHAMf_g

Part two: Von der Renaissance bis heute

https://open.spotify.com/album/5xe9blTtuxY8TOpNOfnS4t?si=MQVanUmRT52QjUlGOI7q0w

EVEN BETTER NEWS: It is read by Christoph Waltz.

You don't know who that is? Maybe you do, actually. It's one of the austrian-german actors known in the US. For example, he plays the Nazi Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds, and he's Bond's antagonist in Spectre.

Anywho, Christoph Waltz is a man to behold and his reading of the Kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser is absolutely marvelous.

I've loved the audiobook since I was little,

when I got together with my partner I showed it to him and he loved it too,

and we still listen to it to fall asleep in the evening.

I know listening to a book in German as a beginner or even intermediate might be scary but I implore you to try. No one says you can't start over again and again, no one says you have to understand everything. You can simply listen to Waltz's calming voice and be proud everytime you understand a word.

Listening to the book has always been such a magical experience for me and I hope it might be one for you as well.

#german #history #learning german #langblr #deutsch #german learning #language learning #german language #deutsch lernen #Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser #Ernst H. Gombrich #christoph waltz #audiobook #Hörspiel #german listening #german resource #foreign languages #language #language learning resource

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sixty-silver-wishes · 3 months

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blown away at the response to caligari reanimated so far!! I’m thinking that based on the amount of people who are interested in participating, we’ll vote on the scene to recreate in like a week? so excited :D

again, discord is here for anyone interested in signing up! even if you’re not an animator, you can do a live action scene, so actors, cosplayers, puppeteers, etc are welcome, along with video editors! the project is open to all skill levels, so whether you’re an experienced artist or a beginner, you can check it out!

#caligari reanimated #the cabinet of dr. caligari #animation #art #animation collab #reanimated collab

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zombiepillar · 5 months

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I NEED YOU!!!

Recently, I have gotten the brilliant idea to make my OC project (MIoD) into an audio drama!! its the simplest form I can come up with that would allow me as a highschooler to focus on my studies and keep sane without stress

but I of course need VAs

youtube

(This is my youtube channel, and that right there is the YouTube video of my ocs voice claims)

if you’re interested in helping out this project, whether you are a beginner voice actor wanting to expand your reach or a professional voice actor who decided to take pity and bless this high schooler, please DM me

Check out this document for audition information on any of the characters (including 2 that I haven’t added in the video)

thank you for all your support!!! To my lovely followers, please share this around, I want people to have fun with what I make, and I so desperately want to share my oc stuff in a way everyone can enjoy!!

thank you again my friends!!

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heartricky · 1 year

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hello👋 can i please request zb1 reaction to their s/o being a producer? like they didnt know that their s/o had produced alot of hit kpop songs or like that😌 (esp imagine gunwook’s s/o produced hot by svt😫) ty in advanced!

omg anon you're so smart, yes, here you go!

this isn't proof read so I'm sorry if there any any mistakes!

word count: 1163

𝐣��𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠

as an actor, jiwoong knows all about being constantly busy, so when you suddenly went radio silent to work on a secret project, he couldn't help feel curious about what had gotten you so busy. it was only when he heard the sentence in an interview, "oh and you know y/n l/n? the person who produced the title soundtrack for your new series?" did it make sense as to why you would lock yourself in your office for days at a time, unable to contact him often.

to say that jiwoong was shocked would be an understatement, but the shock was quickly replaced by pure pride, he couldn't believe he had such a hardworking and talented s/o. he definitely helps you get onto producing zb1's title track.

𝐡𝐚𝐨

considering you had never been much of an instrument lover, it shocked has that you knew so much about music composition when he played a new piece on the violin that he had been working on for the last couple of weeks. so upon asking, he found that you had been producing songs every now and again for fun, liking the way that certain instruments and keys worked well together.

he was so impressed, falling even more in love with you, wondering how he had managed to bag such a badass babe.

𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐛𝐢𝐧

hanbin had a feeling you were a producer, talking about how layers of tracks on songs blend together and being able to pinpoint where a new section of recordings had taken place when listening to a song in the car with him, but he decided to let you tell him in your own time, he didn't want to pressure you into telling him. he knew what it was like wanting to keep something big about you secret incase of people who wanted to abuse the information.

but when you did tell him, boy, did he give you the biggest, most warmest hug filled with many compliments and temple kisses. you both listened to all of the songs you had produced after that.

𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐰

as an avid music listener, matthew had always wondered what it would be like to produce some songs, especially now that he would be debuting. it felt like such a cool accomplishment to be able to say you helped produce your own group's songs. so when he mentioned it in passing to you, and your face starting glowing when telling him how to get started and how to download certain softwares that would be most useful when being a beginner.

poor matthew had missed when you told him you were a producer when you first met each other, so he asked "how do you know so much about producing?" giggling you replied, "because its my job? matt, I told you this on our first date". *insert matthew surprised pikachu face*

"oh. I'm sorry I must have missed that. can we listen to the songs you've produced? wait no, let me guess them!"

𝐭𝐚𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐞

taerae had his suspicions when listening to a song, where the producer tag sounded a bit too much like your voice, so the next time you both saw each other, he decided to play detective and put on one of the songs he thought you had produced.

the way your face glowed with pride when hearing that taerae liked the song you had produced enough to play it in front of you told him everything he needed to know. eventually, once the song finished, he asked the question, and when you nodded your head, taerae couldn't help but feel amazed, "wow, you're so cool do you know that y/n?", "you're even cooler taerae".

𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐲

when you had mentioned that you were saving up for a specific type of headphone set for your birthday to ricky - which was definitely not cheap - he asked you why you wanted it so badly. telling him why, that you had picked up producing a few songs as a hobby and had wanted to get some more professional items to help boost your career, he bought them immediately, getting them customised to your favourite colour as well, so you could spend the money on a well deserved treat instead.

you had decided to pay back your boyfriend for the kind gift with a couple's trip to see this musical he had been wanting to see for a while, where you both stopped at a strawberry field on the way and ate the delicious berries watching the performance.

he was so proud of you and couldn't believe how hardworking you were, he definitely bragged about having such a cool s/o to his yuehua friends - poor ollie and had didn't hear the end of it for months.

𝐠𝐲𝐮𝐯𝐢𝐧

gyuvin always wondered why you stayed in the music rooms at school for much longer than you realistically needed to as a music major in the high school. so when he walked into the room one day with a chocolate milk and sweet bread as a snack for you, did he discover the tracks and arrangements of vocals on a large desktop.

after telling him that you had been offered to work on a few songs for some extra money, he gave you the biggest hug ever, telling you how talented you were, jokingly suggesting that you help produce a title track when he debuted.

𝐠𝐮𝐧𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐤

after saying that he would dance to "hot" by seventeen in the star level test, he was shocked when hearing "ahh, yes, did you know y/n l/n produced this song and 'ash' as well, on this album, they worked with woozi directly! at such a young age, they're so talented already."

gunwook went and googled the listed producers on the title track when he finally got access to the internet in the dorms, surprised that your name was there, it only boosted his ego that he had a musically talented and academically talented s/o, just like him.

he definitely interrogated you when he talked to you on the phone later that night, jokingly pouting when you had to rush to tell him that you were under a contract not to tell anyone when helping produce the song, but your worries were quickly brushed away when he told you how much he loved you, and how much he loved the song as well.

𝐲𝐮𝐣𝐢𝐧

you were one of the producers for 'say my name' on boys planet, so when he saw you in the room for recording the song, he was both equally shocked and amazed that you had been behind the catchy song he was performing to later that week.

he dragged you out into the corridor after recording the song's vocals, kissing your cheek lightly, holding your hand as he told you how gifted you were in music production.

imagine his surprise when you told him you were also producing the title track for when zb1 debuted after the final.

#zb1 fics #zb1 imagines #zb1 reactions #zerobaseone #zb1 #boysplanet #boys planet imagines #boysplanet fics #zhanghao #kimjiwoong #kimtaerae #kimgyuvin #ricky #shen ricky #park gunwook #seokmatthew #sunghanbin #hanbin #hanyujin

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night-at-the-musian · 8 months

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the beginner’s guide to the natm fandom

hi i’m ian, local voice actor and sweet tea fanatic. i’ve been part of this fandom for about a year, and i’ve learned a lot. i’ve noticed some new and younger folks joining bc of the new movie (and the owen wilson fandom will never die) so i’ve made this lil guide for what the heck people are talking abt in the tags.

this comic by madguth. went viral in 2021. now part of the classic pride posts that make the rounds every june. (the other pride post, 2023 edition)

any weather. arguably the most popular natm fic series of the modern era, and possibly the most popular overall. spawned a lot of tropes that everyone assumes to be canon (aka fanon). examples: everyone’s got a backstory from their period of history, adding new dios at will, and other tropes i can’t think of but trust me you’ll know em when you see em.

the 2020 cast interview.

this jedtavius comp of the live-action era.

the natm search. i run this project, helps find stuff related to the franchise that’s been lost or made obscure.

all caught up? ok sick. welcome to history hell, hope you like cowboys.

#natm #natm fandom #night at the museum #go read any weather. it good

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glittertomb · 8 months

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Nobody asked but these are some of my favorite podcasts!

I’ve gotten really into podcasts the past couple of years because of social isolation, my knitting addiction, and because they really help me get through tedious chores like folding laundry and washing dishes (this is honestly my favorite adhd hack, besides turning on instrumental fantasy music so I can focus when reading). So I’ve definitely cultivated a little mind garden of spooky, magical, and informative podcasts that I wanted to share with you. Some are more mainstream, some are a little more obscure, but all of them are dear to me and have comforted and nourished me during dark days.

National park after dark~ my current favorite podcast is hosted by two new englanders with backgrounds in conservation, animal care, and park exploration who share stories about dark happenings, mysterious sightings, perilous treks, and deadly experiences at national parks across the globe

Your magic~ an inclusive and open-minded modern magic podcast hosted by popular author, tarot fanatic, and lifelong witch Michelle Tea that features an amazing lineup of diverse guests including scientists, musicians, actors, social justice advocates, fledgling magic practitioners, and people who were practicing magic without even realizing it

Pleasing Terrors~ hosted by a former tour guide of haunted locations, this podcast explores morbid histories, creepy folktales, and unexplained circumstances from the perspective of a person who has devoted their life to researching and sharing ghost stories for over 20 years

Out There~ this queer host with a voice like melted butta tells dramatic tales about the encounters with, descriptions of, and theories about the cryptids that haunt our imaginations (the podcast used to include a weird club segment at the end where they would invite their hilarious friends to discuss the believability of the featured cryptid, but it’s been missing for a few months and I hope it comes back 🥺)

Lore~ most people are probably aware of this delightfully spooky podcast about frightening folklore, but I had to include it because this is one of my go-to podcasts for when I’m taking a nighttime bath by candlelight and need a good spooky story to soak to, because I’m a little weirdo like that

The Strange and unusual podcast~ intoxicating and beautifully-told macabre stories that range from dark fairytales, mysterious murders, tainted histories, and hand-woven tales crafted by the host herself (it’s accompanied by melancholic music and the occasional low budget sound effects of people grunting/dying lol)

Morbid~ my emotional support murder podcast 😭😹. I was never really one to follow true crime, but I discovered this popular podcast when researching the haunted past of lake Lanier and I fell in love with these girls and their wonderful storytelling, hilarious banter, and thoughtful perspectives. Plus, getting extra insight from Alaina’s autopsy background is fascinating to me. And who doesn’t love the delightful nonsense and off-the-cuff witticisms that spout from Ash.

Cults~ this is the podcast that got me into daily listening! I was a big fan of welcome to night vale since the beginning, but Cults is the podcast that truly got me hooked on podcast listening and I even fall asleep to it (I guess listening to horrifying stories about mass manipulation is… soothing? Am I okay?). The podcast has unfortunately been on a year long hiatus but it has an ton of archived episodes that will thrill and chill you. Now I guess I need to start a new cult so they can have more content 🤔🤫

Coffee & Cauldrons~ this podcast is hosted by two professional tarot readers with mentoring personalities who want to make the world of magic accessible to everyone. Their show includes book recommendations for beginners, insights on how to practice during different lunar phases, tips on creating your own altar, and stories about their personal practice.

Spooked~ the latest podcast I’ve added to my very long list is hosted by a black creator who shares ghost stories from the first-person perspective. I really like this podcast because it’s produced by a team of people who are very diverse in race, age, gender, location, and background, and the guests they feature on the podcast to tell their own stories are just as varied.

If you made it to the end, thank ya and love ya! Happy spooking! 💜🌸👻

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spacehostilityy · 9 months

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NNT Rewatch s2ep1-6

(This was written weeks ago but was in my queue. I am moving back to my college town Saturday so busy days are to come but now I have things to procrastinate 😈)

So YAYAYAY time for season 2 (my fave season overall) !! I’ve rewatched this one before, so i actually remember some of this lol

Ban: I quit

Meliodas: your face is the only joke we can handle

HE GOT HIS ASS DAMN

i love both of diane’s orange fits, but s1 leotard hits different

i have thots abt the introduction of power levels that will be told beneath the cut

i mean it’s all very dragon ball (which i love, but in a very different way). I feel like they are just better executed in manga format, because saying the numbers out loud just kinda breaks up the flow of dialogue and action. Plus the numbers never stay accurate since the characters are always powering up and nakaba lowkey just stops using them at one point. so like assault mode!Meliodas has a power of 142,000. BUT he defeats enemies with powers higher than that and is shown to gain even more power. But this is the highest number we have for him. Overall, theyre clunky, not updated enough to be accurate, and just kinda cheesy :/ I feel like plot could have been added to justify and explain the eye of Balor (AKA Drole if i remember correctly) but it’s just used as an excuse to quantify the characters’ strength since this season is mainly focused on physical and emotional growth, as seen by the Ishtar Arc (one of my fave arcs hehe)

merlin’s friendship with hawk is actually so cute tho

so Meliodas’s beginner stats (still missing his powers) are magic 400, strength 960, spirit 2010. The way I see it, his insane spirit strength could mean one of two things: bitch is just hella determined in his quest to end their curses and protect his friends (likely) or merlin taking away his power only affects his strength and magic since spirit has to do with your mind (also likely) anyway what do y’all think?

how the fuck is gowther’s strength 500??? The average person who can lift 50-100 lbs has a strength of 30. HOW IN THE FUCK?? IS GOWTHER SECRETLY SWOLE????

Meliodas being like “no idk who the ten shadows could be haha” when he and merlin literally formed the sins to fight them and HE WAS THE LEADER OF THE 10 COMMANDMENTS is so funny like so tru king lie to their faces

the first thing Zeldris says is “3000 years... please tell me that he’s still alive” which tells me two things: 1) he doesn’t know about Meliodas’s curse, which could explain why estarossa kills him when he’s just going to come back a rival to the throne of the demon king and 2) the listed life expectancy of 1000 years for demons is probably not accurate lol

maybe it’s driven down due to number of battle deaths like the mortality rate of the middle ages lol

we are introduced to a demon who hopes mel is alive, shares a voice actor, AND HAS THE SAME FACE yeah the brother coding is very thick

AJSDBJKBHJEBFNWKFH YESSS THIS IS MY ALL TIME FAVE INTRO SONG AND ANIMATION

ban’s refusal to get jericho’s name right makes me laugh every time

Jericho: is scared and runs to Ban

Ban: 🤨 yeah. i don’t remember asking you to grab my arm🙄

im sorry but king rlly was a bad fairy king like mans didnt even know the forest was there 😭 its ok tho i love that for him

King hating Ban at first bc he “killed elaine and destroyed the fairy kings forest” only for Ban to pull THE BIGGEST uno reverse on him will never not be funny

wait does that mean ban is technically the 4th fairy king and king is both the 3rd and the 5th bc that would be rlly funny and does happen quite a bit historically

I love how as much as a smug asshole Ban is, he’s not rubbing it in King’s face and is showing him he’s still his friend

so if Gil is Margaret’s guard and Griamore is Veronica’s, does that mean Howzer was Elizabeth’s ?? bc that would be so fucking funny

Helbram got King’s ass with “and you’re short”

KASBDFNJBSDKF HE LOOKS SO GOOFY😭

MY BABYGIRLS ARE HEREEEE

Best girls Melascula and Derieri fr

i love that they said slader is gay, how can we let the audience know and then gave him the smoothest, gayest voice imaginable

merlin calling og gowther a great magician when we know he was the one to train her is actually so sad, i want to give baby merlin a hug

slader is hot, thanks for coming to the ted talk

how the fuck does he walk like this tho??

is there a reason i just don’t remember why they never really bring up albions again or do they just ~disappear~ conveniently from the story lol

So the whole concept of sacred treasures is really cool to me because they are clearly something unique to the Sins, despite all of the sacred treasures being very different and made of different materials. I mean Gowther’s is straight up made of light Still, them having weapons that serve as a constant and grow with them as they become more powerful is just a neat concept to me. I just wish we could have seen Ban use Courechouse more than just a few episodes. There really isn’t a plot reason he couldn’t have had it beforehand.

Gerheade being a bitch to Ban bc he’s a human makes literally no sense when we learn her backstory with Rou. Like NO sense at all lol

I honestly love that Meliodas destroyed the albion on his own. Like yes, he is my OP blorbo BUT he’s also supposed to be incredibly powerful in canon, which we haven’t seen him go all out with an enemy yet. Not only does he know all about albions (bc he’s a demon), but as leader of the 10 Commandments, he probably was on the controlling side of the golems. Then, as a member of Stigma, he fought against them. Not to mention, this is when he finally gets Lostvayne (the DEMON sword) back. This moment for me is when he gets to show off the perks of him being a powerful and high ranking demon. Might fuck around and do a full post later on Meliodas’s relationship to his own race and what/who he is lol

Ban screaming “you bitch!!” is... a wonderful experience

Yass king (hehehehe get it? bc his name is king? hehehe)

Galand petting Gloxinia is actually so cute lol

Merlin covering Arthur’s eyes 😭😭 she’s his mom fr

“its been a while meliodas” oop galand just let the Meliodas is 3000 years old cat out of the bag ehehe

(stay with me bc im about to get delusional) WAIT so galand says “to think that after all this time has passed youd still be in that form” in this essay i will prove that Meliodas looks like a young teenager because he essentially is biologically young for the demon race. Galand doesn’t know Mel was cursed, so he would think that he had aged in the past 3000 years. Plus, I think the demon king’s possession of Meliodas AND Zeldris can be (somewhat) compared to Sariel’s aging up of Solaseed. Anyway, i feel like this can support my hypothesis of Zeldris and Meliodas are just babies who will eventually look like adults. Also, I think them being super young just enhances the angst quite well.

everyone is fucking terrified of galand but hes just a silly foolish little fellow to me lol

ban and king being brothers-in-law makes my heart happy like theyre so cute

Ban threatening Gerheade and actually being pissed and serious has suddenly reminded me that if i saw a grown ass man who couldn’t die and was a 7 foot tall violent alcoholic i would be fucking terrified

like a demon 14 year old? creepy ig but not a 7 foot tall masochist with an 8 pack

I love how hard Diane always goes for the ones she loves, she’s just so devoted and passionate Best Girl tm behavior

*Merlin being incredibly confidant and nonchalant starting a proposition*

Meanwhile Merlin’s thoughts: SHIT SHIT I HAVE 10 SECONDS TO THINK BEFORE EVERYONE I LIKE DIES

Meliodas doing the same thing Hendy did by reattaching his fucking arms using Darkness and the sins still being like wait?? is Meliodas?? a... demon ??? 🤨

okay so we DO see him in this mode again. But what is it called? and why does he become no thots head empty? its not like he died. and even in assault mode, he has thoughts and emotions (when they’re not stuck in purgatory)

Im ngl, i forgot everything about this episode entirely lol

obvi i hate that derieri died, but at least the souls she fucking ate got returned lol

do we think arthur has a tiny teenage gay crush on meliodas? Discuss.

(the answer is yes ehehe)

gowther walking around with his dang a lang swangin hehe

Gil crying in annoyance and defeat as griamore and howzer bicker is literally so hashtag real

HENDYYY MY BABYGIRL IS BACK BAYBAYYYY

very suddenly realized that Hendy’s probably only like in his 30s. Mans is just not that old

exactly 3 seconds after I had that though Howzer calls him old man LOLLL

i forgot about hendy’s childhood trauma. damn. thats actually rlly sad :/

look how cute he is tho 😭😭

hendy and dreyfus are in love. thanks for coming to another one of my ted talks

so do we think dreyfus is half druid (and zaratras is full) or zaratras is half druid? i mean they’re half brothers but only one is a called a druid sooo

IM SORRY BUT THIS IS THE FUNNIEST FUCKING SCREENSHOT ASDFFHSLDH elizabeth scandalized, meliodas accepting his fate, slader leaning in closer and blushing ITS JUST SO GOOD

The ass shot of Diane 🤨😑

Damn Idk how i never realized that all of them pretty much only call Meliodas captain. Merlin, Ban, and Elizabeth are the only ones who will call him Meliodas, but even merlin and ban typically go with captain.

“im a giant, why arent you afraid of me?” hes a fucking demon. lol

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talenlee · 1 month

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Game Pile: The Beginner's Guide, Midjourney, and Praying to Coda

The Beginner's Guide, Midjourney, and Praying to Coda

Watch this video on YouTube

This is a rebuild and expansion of my article on The Beginner’s Guide from back in 2018, with a newly developed thesis about authenticity and access to artists.

And below is the script I worked from!

The Beginner’s Guide

The Beginner’s Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. The game was released for Linux, OS X, and Windows on October 1, 2015. The game is Wreden’s follow-up to the critically praised The Stanley Parable, his previous interactive storytelling title that was initially released in 2013.

The game is narrated by Wreden and takes the user through a number of incomplete and abstract game creations made by a developer named Coda. Wreden challenges the player to try to come to understand the type of person Coda is from exploring these spaces in a first-person perspective. Wreden has stated the game is open to interpretation: some have seen the game as general commentary on the nature of the relationship between game developers and players, while others have taken it as an allegory to Wreden’s own personal struggles with success resulting from The Stanley Parable. When the game sold, a reviewer – at least one, but I can’t find records of more than that – made a bit of a stir by suggesting that the fiction presented in the game is true, and that therefore, the game was built out of stolen material, and gamers buying it could hypothetically, get it refunded if they felt that were in any kind of moral quandrary.

This is, as best I understand it, the ‘story’ of The Beginner’s Guide, the entity in media, the confluence of reporting and reactions to a game. And now, in that same disjointed way of The Beginner’s Guide, I want to tell you about s1m0ne.

S1M0NE, stylised however you wanna, is a 2002 Al Pacino movie about a dude who creates a virtual actress. That’s not even how the movie goes in full, it’s way more involved than that and it includes bestiality, and it has this nasty kind of undercurrent about the fundamentally exploitable nature of women in media spaces. It’s an interesting film.

I didn’t say good.

Anyway, the thing is S1M0NE’s central premise is the virtual actress, Simone. In-movie, she doesn’t exist. To reinforce this, she isn’t credited as having an actress. The movie does do an extensive cgi sequence, showing Simone being constructed digitally, but it was… let’s say it’s very 2002, and leave it at that. Anyway, a bunch of people including representatives from the Screen Actors Guild believed it and they started a fuss about it. I think. It’s hard to find sources about it now, but I remember a fuss.

I mean it stands to reason, if you’re a union you want to oppose things that hurt the interest of your members, and that’s a perfectly valid concern to be worried about around about now with things like deep learning technology allowing us to transplant faces and details across multiple media works and the complex relationship between motion capture and voice actor and fully integrated action – like, if you weren’t aware, motion captured faces are not a 1:1 acting thing, they’re a structure for animators to work from. Gollum is not ‘Andy Serkis is amazing,’ they’re Andy Serkis and the fifty people doing all the rest of the work are amazing, and yes, Andy’s ability to disappear into the role and do the physical acting element is impressive. That’s a real conversation.

But it’s not the conversation they were having in 2002.

There were some people, in late 2002, who genuinely thought that an Al Pacino movie with Winona Ryder and a budget of $10 Million had successfully replicated the human form with complete authenticity, and that the much cheaper and easier tack of using an actor wasn’t more likely. Then they thought it’d involve, y’know, pig-doinking.

Simone was played by a Canadian actress, and the movie otherwise glanced over its very interesting questions of identity and artificiality and technology to instead tell a story about a dude who was very, very anxious about his inability to control women. The real story of the movie, then, is less about what the movie wanted to talk about and much more about the fact some people couldn’t tell where the movie was fiction and where it was fact. The boundary of the diegesis confused people, and there were some critics who were genuinely unsure of how confident they could be about dismissing the fears of people who thought the end of actors had come.

This comparison is because, yeah, it’s kinda stupid that videogame criticism was duped into believing that maybe an author stole all their work and then recorded themselves having a nervous breakdown then edited that nervous breakdown and cleaned up the audio and packaged it up and sold it on Steam without at any point considering that the art was stolen, it’s not like videogames are unique in this regard. We have a history of people not knowing the boundary between art and real and sometimes, when people play with that, especially in areas of new technology, people make mistakes. But also, like, yeah, we are now living in a time when the idea of ‘someone tried to sell entirely stolen assets on steam for $15’ isn’t even a joke or punchline, it might just be a fact of a thing that happens regularly.

As a game experience, The Beginner’s Guide is fine. I like it as a game because it needs the medium of games to make sense, complete with the idea of incomplete games and the way games are made not from a coherent single point but a sort of constantly exploding set of interconnected steps. Like, you couldn’t make this as a book because this isn’t how a book would look when you’re exploring its dismantled bits. The Beginner’s Guide, if it were a book about books and making books, would look like collected pieces of paper in different hands, with a sort of formalising hand over it all.

Funnily enough it’d look a bit like the book of Genesis.

(There’s a long reach of an academic poke)

It’s a perfectly interesting work about imposter syndrome and emotional boundaries and creative processes and a lot of other things you can see in your own inkblots. It’s an artistic piece that tells you a narrative in a really blunt way, but it uses its framing to create a blurred diegesis. It uses real world markers to confuse you about the actuality of its narrative, or it did at the time.

There’s a forking challenge here; on the one hand, I want to berate videogames, as a culture, for being so woefully ill-equipped to deal with meta art as to be convinced that the narrative presented in The Beginner’s Guide was actually real and have at least one actual journalist be so unsure of the reality of the presented narrative as to hedge their bets and mention seemingly unironically that refunds for this game were an option. On the other hand, it’s not like we’re drowning in meta-aware fiction and a cultural discourse that can treat this kind of thing seriously. Since the Stanley Parable and then Beginner’s Guide, the most recent big ‘oh everyone talks about it’ meta-game in my space has been Undertale, and I hate that.

Since the Beginner’s Guide’s original appearance, things have moved on a bit, and particularly, the word ‘parasocial’ has fallen to the common voice. People with platforms use the term to describe the behaviour of people who don’t have platforms, and the people without platforms follow their word, and now ‘parasocial’ has a sort of loose use around it, the idea that it’s pretty much just anything that annoys you about other people on the internet, especially if they’re talking about media. Then we got ‘plagiarism,’ which is, I understand, ‘mostly vibes.’

I want to compare Davey Wreden to Fred Gallagher, the author of Megatokyo. Megatokyo if you’re not familiar with it, is a webcomic that started in August 2000 and has never officially stopped updating since. It’s updated twice this year, which puts it ahead of the same time last year. What Megatokyo is about is not important here, what is is that Megatokyo was enormously succesful, incredibly popular, and has never once had an update schedule its authors were happy with.

I wrote a lot about Megatokyo last year and I still think that article is worth restructuring and presenting in some kind of long form read way. In the end my conclusion about it is that I don’t think ill of Fred Gallagher as a creative, as much as I think that he got to suffer a unique kind of problem that only capitalism can cause, where you can be too successful to handle your own success. That is, both Wreden and Gallagher made something that led to people having assumptions and expectations that don’t make any sense, because the value of what they created was associated with capital, which is to say, money, and rent, and food.

There’s this idea we’re all circling around right now on a platform that is probably by now mostly procedurally generated – not just the stuff made in the past few years by tools like Chatgpt and the midjourney thumbnails and all, but rather that the algorithm of youtube made a lot of people make media in a way that shaved the non-formulaic parts off it, until there was nothing but hash tag con tent. The stuff you like is a small egg floating on a vast and turbulent sea of piss. It’s now that people care a lot about a kind of authenticity from work which separates it from what I’m going to call Generative Media, and which other people are going to insist on calling ‘AI.’

The conversation around generative art is a real struggle sometimes because it feels like sometimes when people are talking about ‘ai art bros’ they’re dealing with a small pool of obnoxious people, and sometimes I can even tell the specific dickhead they mean. It’s Shad, it’s Shad, so often they mean Shad, and yeah sure, Shad sucks. But the conversation around generative media is so often structured in these really weird ways that seems to imply low-quality images don’t exist until generative media gets involved. That nobody cranks out bullshit, or that art is a transferrable property of a human agent, or that in the great days of the internet, nobody’s using pictures they didn’t draw to illustrate articles they wrote. In this very video I’m using gameplay footage from a game I don’t own, and the reason you’re not seeing the footage from S1m0ne to reinforce that point is because a robot would get mad at me and block the video if I did.

I’m even in defensive crouch saying this stuff here. Look: I think generative media tools have applications, particularly in zero-value situations. Nobody in the world is having their pocket picked if I copy art of Rin Matsuoka and use that for my D&D character. Similarly, someone with less image editing skill than mine using generative media to generate pictures of things they weren’t going to pay for in the first place are not hurting anyone unless you believe in a literal cosmic value of these things. In that case, you��re basically just like the generative media people who are functionally, praying to chat gpt. If you’re rapid prototyping, if you’re making a game and need temporary assets to give yourself tools to build around, if you need a powerpoint presentation for class, all of this stuff represents no lost value. This is a perfect place to put generative media. I’m sure purists will disagree, and I just do not care. But there’s my stance: Generative media is an interesting toy that should be used as such, and if it can replace your job, your job probably sucks and you should be doing something cooler and better that people value more. That’s a problem with jobs, and how we give people money to feed themselves, not the software that generates anime tiddy on demand.

Now, here is where things get tangled up.

It seems to me that generative media is being attacked right now by people I generally like and agree with on most things, because of very high concept, seemingly contradictory positions. People who dislike copyright law busting it out to attack midjourney, and people who hate Disney praying for them to fight Google. Ideas about the inherent nobility of art and stick figure illustrations being better than generative media on websites dedicated to sharing unsourced artworks of definitely not stick figures. People don’t have reasons that make a lot of sense for why these things should not be tolerated, but they are very real about their emotional hatred of them. Which, you know, given the people who defend generative media, makes sense, a lot of those people suck and are incredibly obnoxious. Particularly it seems a lot of them are the losers of the NFT wave who are trying to get in ground level as ‘prompt engineers’ as if the ecosystem they’re entering will value them at all.

One of the most sterling arguments against generative media, and one I personally like, is the idea that these tools represent potential precarity for artists who are already struggling to pay for things like, again, rent and food. Potential, in that, largely commission-based artistic survival under capitalism seems to be a bit of a dice roll as it is. My solution to this is not to shame people who weren’t going to pay for art for failing to be able to support a commission economy they weren’t partaking in in the first place, though, it’s things like massive overhauls of income inequality and universal basic income, but also I can understand how my idea is hard and yelling at strangers in hyperbolic language is really easy.

The pressure that created the Beginner’s Guide is also the pressure that meant someone talking about an artistic work of anxiety media couched it in terms of fucking refunds so people didn’t feel they’d ethically mis-stepped by buying fiction about exploitation, a thing that nobody otherwise does, and it’s the same pressure that means ‘someone is making cheap bad art with an exploitative method’ is a threat to the livelihood of a small number of people who have managed to make an extremely precarious living doing art in the first place. As if money is why artists make art, as if we aren’t all struggling in exploitative systems, as if the existence of bland corporate art pumped out in huge troves to pad resume drawers isn’t

Since these past few years, writing academically, a habit I’ve gotten into is always trying to attribute where I get ideas for. Sentences that are referring to someone else’s idea, with the little note of ‘hey, this is that person, at this date.’ It’s a thing that can create the habit of also starting sentences with ‘Wreden says this’ or ‘Gallagher’s work shows this,’ which creates in casual conversation an impression of a very specific kind of authorial access. Certainly here on Youtube, I don’t want to give you the impression because I’m pointing to their work that I can tell you what they think or feel. The idea that I can connect to these authors through a particularly big brained reading of their work is similar to how Christians think they can read god’s mind because they read the book of Daniel, and like, Fred Gallagher exists.

I don’t know what Davey Wreden was thinking about the Beginner’s Guide when he made it. Even if I asked him now, I won’t get an answer, I’ll get the answer of what he remembers of what he was thinking, which may be the same thing but can’t necessarily. I can try, and that’s a way to get at this authenticity, but it’s not a way to guarantee it.

The Beginner’s Guide is still an interesting game to me, because the conversation around it, and around ownership of work, and of unsourced material and exploiting artists hasn’t changed that much but all the people engaging in it have gotten new things to have to try and fit into their models. We are no closer to Coda.

Those opening paragraphs of this article are from from wikipedia.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Game Pile #Games

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