#but I was wondering if it was a foreground issue earlier | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

idrellegames · 3 years

Note

So I had a coding question that I've been trying to find the answer for, for a while. I've tried searching up information online and such but haven't been able to find anything.

I was wondering though how exactly someone would go about creating a main menu screen with the whole being able to create a new game, load one or change the settings? Like I said I've tried searching it up but haven't been able to find anything except for information on creating a transition screen.

You’re going to need an understanding of CSS for this, but I’ll do my best to walk you through it, alongside some basic functions of the UIBar and UI APIs. Also, like pretty much anything to do with coding, there is more than one way to do something (and there may be a more efficient/effective way than mine).

Like all of my tutorials, this is written for SugarCube 2.34.1. Since this one mainly deals with CSS, I’m sure you could adapt it to another format, but I’m not familiar enough with Harlowe, Snowman and Chapbook to add specifics.

Additionally, I use the Twine 2 editor version 2.2.1. This tutorial can be used with later versions; some of my example images may look not look exactly like what you have because later versions of the editor launch test files in your default browser (the 2.2.1 version creates its own mini-browser).

Making a Main Menu Page

Step 1: Hiding the UI Bar

If you want a clear main menu page without the UI bar, you can hide it in several ways.

<<run UIBar.destroy();>>

This will remove the UI bar completely from your game. Not recommended unless you have an alternative way of adding access to the Save, Settings and Restart functions.

<<run UIBar.stow();>>

This stows the UI bar. It will still be partially visible on the side and the player can interact with it to open it. The UI bar can be unstowed manually (without needing the player to do it themselves) on the next passage with:

<<run UIBar.unstow();>>

If you don’t want the UI bar to show up on your main menu, but you want to have access to it later, you can use:

<<run UIBar.hide();>>

To bring it back, you will have to use the following on the passage where you want the player to have access to it.

<<UIBar.show();>>

You may want to use the stow/hide and unstow/show functions together. Hiding the UI bar only makes it invisible; it will still take up space on the left-hand side of your game. Stowing and hiding it makes it a little more even.

To use them together, you can do this:

On the passage you don’t want the UI bar:

<<run UIBar.stow();>><<run UIBar.hide();>>

On the passage you where you want to restore the UI bar:

<<run UIBar.unstow();>><<run UIBar.show();>>

TIP 1: Using <<run UIBar.stow (true)>> gets rid of the slide animation as the UI bar collapses/restores, so you may want to use this so you don’t have any weird animations when you menu passage loads.

TIP 2: If you main menu is the first passage of your game, you can run the scripts for storing and hiding the UI bar in your StoryInit passage and it will run it when your game loads.

TIP 3: You can also use the Config API to have the menu bar be stowed automatically when your game starts.

Pop this code into your Javascript:

Config.ui.stowBarInitially = true;

However, if you have any links that navigate back to the main menu without restarting the game, the UI bar will be in whatever state the player left it in last. If you can only access the main menu by launching the game or hitting restart, don't worry about this.

If you want to double-check the SugarCube documentation for these functions, see here.

Step 2: Tagged Stylesheets

If you want to create a menu page that has a different appearance to your game’s default look, you can do so by using a tagged stylesheets. When using a tagged stylesheet, every passage with the same tag will have its appearance overridden to match what you’ve adjusted in your Story Stylesheet.

Let’s make one called main-menu. You can tag passages like so:

You can also tag the passage a different colour to make it special passages like this one stand out.

Step 3: Adding CSS

Now that the passage is tagged, you need to add a new CSS class to your stylesheet to change its appearance.

To change the appearance, you need to decide which selectors to target and what about them you want to change. Every default SugarCube game has the same set of selectors (you can find them here in the documentation). The most important ones are:

body – the body of the page. You can use this to change the foreground and background colours.

.passages – the element that contains your game’s main text. This is where you can change things like the colour that displays behind your game’s text, the font family, line height, letter spacing, all that stuff.

For the sake of this example, I am going to use the default SugarCube stylesheet and edit it from the ground up. You can find the code for SugarCube’s built-in stylesheets here.

In your stylesheet, you will want to use the tag you created earlier as the new class name.

.main-menu

Put this with the selectors you are going to change.

Let’s start with the body.

body.main-menu { color: #fff; background-color: #000; overflow: auto; }

The color property controls the colour of the font. Here I’ve set it to the hex code #fff and the background-color #000.

So now I have a black page when I start the main menu passage, and thanks to the code for the UI bar I put in earlier, the UI bar is gone.

Adding a Background

Now, we might want to spice up the background with an image to make it more interesting.

To add an image to the background, you need to use the background-image property.

body.main-menu { color: #fff; background-color: #000; background-image: url("images/main-menu.jpg"); background-attachment: fixed; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: cover; -webkit-background-size: cover; -moz-background-size: cover; -o-background-size: cover; background-position: center center; overflow: auto; }

You can read more about the different background properties and what they do here on W3Schools, but the code above will center your background image in the middle of the page and also make sure that it covers the entire container.

IMPORTANT: If you intend to upload your game as a ZIP file containing a .index HTML file (this is recommended if you have a lot of image assets or don’t want to link to an outside host, like imgur), you will need to use relative paths with any image URLs in your game.

Relative paths mean that the file is relative to the directory it’s in. In the example above, you can see that the background URL is "images/main-menu.jpg". This means that when the file is uploaded to itch.io, it will find the file—main-menu.jpg—inside the images folder, regardless of where the images folder is located.

For reference, this is what my game assets folder looks like for Wayfarer:

Relative paths are different than an absolute path, which begins with the drive letter. For example, the main-menu.png may be stored on my personal computer in a path like this one: C:/game/images/main-menu.jpg.

If I use this absolute path in the game, the image asset will not show up for players once it’s uploaded to itch because the image is not hosted on the player’s device in C:/game/images/main-menu.jpg.

This can cause some finnicky issues with the Twine 2 editor because the editor cannot find and display images from relative paths (unless you’ve put the editor in the same directory as the one you’re storing your assets in; I haven’t bothered to try this, so I’m not sure).

While working on your game in the Twine editor, you may need to use an absolute path to see what your asset looks like while you're editing. When it comes time to publish, make sure you switch it back to a relative path, otherwise the image will not load for players.

Step 4: Adding & Styling Links

Now that we have a background, we’ll want to tackle the links themselves.

Adding Links

You can link to the starting passage of your game using your preferred method—the [[ ]] link markup, the <<link>> macro, etc.

But for Saves and Settings (and also a Resume Game link, if you’re using the autosave feature), you’ll need to manually call the functions for accessing those dialogs. You can do that with this code here:

This will add a Load Game link that opens the Saves dialog when clicked.

<<link 'LOAD GAME'>><<run UI.saves();>><</link>>

This will add a Settings link that opens the Settings dialog when clicked.

<<link 'SETTINGS'>><<run UI.settings();>><</link>>

This will add a Resume Game link that loads the player’s last autosave.

<<link 'RESUME GAME'>><<run Save.autosave.load()>><</link>>

TIP: To enable autosaves on your game, add this code to your Story Javascript:

Config.saves.autosave = true;

This will autosave on every passage.

Config.saves.autosave = ["bookmark", "autosave"];

This will autosave on passages tagged bookmark or autosave.

Styling Your Game Title & Links

So this is where you can get get fancy with your CSS. For now, we’re going to keep everything within the .passage element (which is where any text inputting into the editor goes), but I will show you how to move the links and title to wherever you want further down.

Importing Fonts

First, go font shopping.

Google fonts has a very large library of free-to-use fonts that you can import directly into your game via your Story Stylesheet. After you browser Google fonts for the fonts you want to use, scroll down to the Use on Web section and click @import. Google will automatically generate the code you need to import the fonts you want to use.

Ignore the <style> </style> and copy everything else inside it and paste it in the top of your Story Stylesheet.

For this example, mine looks like this:

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Almendra+Display&family=Nova+Cut&display=swap');

TIP: If you are importing fonts that a bold weight and italics available and intend to use bold and italics, make sure you import the bold weight and the italic versions of the font as well as the regular one. This will stop your fonts from having weird printing issues when you use bold and italics (especially on non-Chromium browsers like Firefox).

Below the import button, Google will show you the CSS rules for each font family. Keep these in mind, you’ll need them later. Mine, for this example, are like this:

font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive;

Basic Styling

In your stylesheet, you’ll want to target the .passage element with the .main-menu class.

.passage.main-menu { background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: center; }

Make sure there isn’t a space between .passage and .main-menu, otherwise it won’t work!

Here, I’ve changed a few properties.

font-family – this changes the font to Nova Cut

font-size – this changes the font size. I’ve used the unit em, which is relative to the element size (you can read more about CSS Units here)

text-align – this centers the text to the middle of the .passage element

I have also added:

background-color: transparent;

This makes the passage background transparent so you can see the background image. This is only necessary if you’ve added a background-color to your default passages.

Now, for the links.

Links have their own separate selector.

a means is the link as it usually displays

a:hover is the link when the player hovers their cursor over it.

It's generally a good idea to use different colours on the links—one for the normal display, one for the hover—so the player can visually see that they are hovering over a clickable link. If you don't want to use different colours, you should consider using some other visual cue to make that differentiation.

.passage.main-menu a { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; color: #C57C25; text-decoration: none; }

.passage.main-menu a:hover { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; color: #dcb07c; text-decoration: none; }

I’ve added an additional property here:

text-decoration: none.

This gets rid of the underline that happens on all default links in the default SugarCube stylesheet. Currently, this only targets the links on passages tagged main-menu; if you want to get rid of the text-decoration on all links, you can change the styling of your links like so:

a:hover { text-decoration: none; }

Choosing Colours

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to picking hex codes, color-hex.com is a really helpful site. It gives you related tints and shades of for every hex code, which makes it a lot easier to find colours that are slightly darker or slightly lighter than your base hex code.

For choosing colours initially, there are plenty of hex code colour palette generators available online. One of my favourites is the one on Canva, which lets you upload an image and then it creates a colour palette from there. You might not want to use the exact colours it pulls, but checking the colours on color-hex can help you narrow down something that works for your aesthetics.

This is what our template now looks like:

Giving the Title a Unique Style

Right now, the title is styled by the .passage.main-menu selector and it’s default font size and font type is the same as the links below it.

If you want to style it differently, you can make a new class for it. In this case, I’m going to drop the .passage.main-menu and make a class called .game-title.

.game-title { font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; color: #ca893a; line-height: 1.0; font-size: 1.8em; text-shadow: 1px 1px #dcb07c; }

Because the font I selected didn’t come with a bold version, I cheated a bit a used the text-shadow property to bulk it up. I also had to adjust the line height. SugarCube’s default .passage styling gives everything a line height of 1.75 and there was too much space once the new font family and font size were applied.

To add this styling to your title, go into your main menu passage and wrap your game’s title in a span, like so:

<span class="game-title">GENERIC FANTASY GAME</span>

It now appears like this:

TIP: If you want to play around with your appearance, you can use your browser’s Inspect tool to see the page’s CSS and play around/edit it. Either right click and hit Inspect or hit CTRL + SHIFT + I to open the Inspect tool. Once opened, you can go in and adjust things. If you make and a change and like it, remember to copy the code over to your stylesheet before you close the inspect tool.

Placing a Title & Links Outside the .passage element

If you want your game title and menu links to be elsewhere on the page, you’re going to need re-write some of your CSS and add some additional CSS.

The first thing is that you’ll want to remove the styling from .passage.main-menu. I’ve left background-color to transparent, but you’re not going to be using this to style your game title and menu links.

.passage.main-menu { background-color: transparent; }

For the title:

I’ve created two elements, one called .main-title and one called .main-title-item.

.main-title creates a container that will hold the title. This is what I use to tell it where on the page to appear.

.main-title { display: block; justify-content: space-evenly; position: absolute; top: 10%; left: 4%; }

.main-title-item styles the actual text.

.main-title-item { font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: normal; font-size: 6.5em; line-height: 1.0; text-align: left; color: #cf944d; text-shadow: 1px 1px #cf944d; }

To apply this to the game title, go back to the main menu passage and apply your new elements to the game’s title:

<div class="main-title"><span class="main-title-item">GENERIC FANTASY GAME</span></div>

For the menu links:

Here, we’ll do something really similar—a container to hold the links and a separate element to style them.

.subtitle { display: block; flex-wrap: wrap; flex-direction: column; width: 60%; justify-content: space-evenly; position: absolute; top: 46%; left: 8%; }

.subtitle-item a { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-weight: normal; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: left; color: #cf944d; line-height: 1.3em; }

.subtitle-item a:hover { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-weight: normal; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: left; color: #dcb07c; text-decoration: none; }

Go back to your main menu passage and apply the elements. Because all of the menu links will be in the same box, you only need to open/close the .subtitle element once.

If you want to change where the title and menu links appear, you can use the Inspect tool to figure out different percentages and spacing until you find something that works for you.

There are a lot more things you can add (like animations that appear when you hover your cursor on the link), but I’ll leave it there for now.

Additionally, if you intend to make your game mobile compatible, you’ll want to read up on media queries and learn how to adjust font sizes and any other units of measurement for different viewports. This is how you shrink things appropriate to fit on small screens.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, please let me know. I’m still a newbie at CSS (so I’m sure there are ways of doing things more effectively), but these are some of the things that I have helped me along the way.

#coding in twine #coding help #twine #twine game #interactive fiction #resources #answered #long post

101 notes · View notes

oparker-animated-world · 2 years

Text

Spirited Away 1/11

I think two of the biggest issues Spirited Away tackles is the over importance of appearances and overbearing presence of prejudice, and the virtue of selflessness in a greedy world. The visuals of the various characters in Spirited Away make for a viewing experience of wonder and amazement, but I saw these outlandish characters as an important commentary on how quick we are to judge people, with Kamaji being the shining example of the film. His design by itself sounds horrifying, a humanoid with arachnid features who lives in the boiler room and has a crotchety disposition seems like a nightmare to encounter, yet he is one of the most caring people who Chihiro encounters in her time at the resort. He can be seen covering for her presence by lying that she is his granddaughter when she is found, though it has no benefit for him. His appearance contrasts with Yubaba, who has the appearance of an old woman which is normally associated with comfort and care, but she is anything but that, only looking out for herself and her business. Kamaji’s treatment of Chihiro also demonstrates how the film confronts how greedy people can be, as he had nothing to gain from protecting her yet he did out of care for her. Likewise, the hypocrisy of greed is shown when Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs earlier in the film for eating food meant for guests, yet the entire staff and Yubaba all dote after No-Face, the embodiment of greed, when it starts spouting out gold when they had previously been averse to its presence. Chihiro’s own selflessness accents these undertones further, as she puts herself at great risk to help Haku, and more importantly is pitted against the incredibly greedy Yubaba. I think the messaging about appearances struck me, as I witness our world’s focus on how we present ourselves all too often particularly with social media. It feels like everyone always judges off appearances, with no chance to get to know somebody if they have been deemed unsightly or in some way strange, like how Chihiro was by most of the resort staff because she was human. The theme of greed also resonated with me and reminded me of some speech or post I had seen, where a person had discussed how they will always try and give a person on the street a few dollars if they ask for it. They discussed how people often warn against this assuming that the person is trying to scam or buy drugs but make the important point that it says a lot more about one’s selflessness to give to somebody who would use the money for such things, instead of being suspicious of bad intentions with everyone. The recent reading from Lamarre, particularly in reference to compositing animation as opposed to the single shot of real-life film, affected how I watched the movie. With Ghibli movies, I think the animation style accentuates the difference between the foreground of the characters who are moving around and the vibrant settings they are present in. Lamarre’s discussion of animation compositing increased my awareness of these layers and I often found myself noticing the shift between background, secondary characters in the shot, and the primary focus at any given moment.

2 notes · View notes

theworldbrewery · 3 years

Text

DM Tool Review: Inkarnate

The site is inkarnate.com, you can find them on Twitter at @inkarnaterpg

I started using Inkarnate in the early fall of 2020. This is a map-making tool, designed for RPGs but flexible enough to be useful for fantasy writers as well. If you opt for one of the paid versions ($5 a month or $25 a year), you get literally thousands of art objects to work with, such as bridges, trees, skeletons, potion bottles, rugs, broken chairs and beds and walls; and they’re constantly updating with new art objects.

[image ID: a map I made using Inkarnate, designed to look like a vertical cliff side down which the PCs could climb. There are holes in the cliff side for a monster to burrow through and ledges for creatures to stand on. The ledges have snow on them. The cliff side looks like rock in different layers at a slight slant. end ID]

There’s a bit of a learning curve on Inkarnate, as you learn how different features function. The “masking” tool is the first one you’d use, and it creates the “foreground” on top of the “background.” On a combat map, the background might be the rock walls of a cave system or the chasm the players must cross, while the foreground could be the stone towers they’re hopping across or the floor of the caves. On a regional or world map, the foreground is usually your landmass while the background is the rivers, lakes, and oceans.

I recommend using a mouse or a drawing tablet to create your foreground/background, and to paint these features with the textures you want; doing it with a trackpad or a touchscreen can be slow. Inkarnate can also use a lot of bandwidth, and it gets laggy if you haven’t saved your progress in a while. If you don’t have a strong processor, this might not be for you.

That being said, if technology isn’t an issue for you, this can be a huge time-saver for a DM who likes a detailed map. The art objects especially have been wonderful for me, as I always want to establish where players might have cover, hide little set-pieces where they belong, and so on. I have, however, run into issues of scale from time to time; I often want a wall to be much longer than it is, but no wider; Inkarnate only adjusts the size of the art object proportionally. I can’t make a wall longer without also making it thicker. Also, if I’m working on a very large map for an entire dungeon, I often find I reach the lower limit of an object’s size before I get the object to scale, such as a potion bottle taking up half a 5-ft square. Granted, some of this is due to the limits of pixels, but I must admit I still find it frustrating.

Inkarnate has some wonderful features, such as the ability to select all “stamps” (the art objects) from the same category at once, flatten stamps to the foreground or background (so they are permanently fixed there), and adjust the size of a texture so I can make the wooden floorboards smaller or larger in relation to the size of an area. Altogether, it’s much faster than drawing detailed maps by hand, and I truly love the art-styles for the different types of maps, including their stamps. While there are occasional technical snags, I’m overall very happy with the paid subscription.

However, it may or may not be worth it to you to use the free version. You only get 10 maps at a time, and you have a much more limited selection of stamps. You also export at a lower resolution than if you have the paid version.

I almost exclusively use this for battle-maps, but as I mentioned earlier, it has features for cities/regions and entire world maps. There’s definitely a learning curve--the first few maps I made were cluttered and pretty ugly-looking, sadly--but as I got used to the interface I also got better at placing important features and using the paint tool effectively.

In general, I’d compare Inkarnate with Dungeonfog to determine your needs and what’s worth it to you. Inkarnate Free offers 10 maps to Dungeonfog Free’s three, and doesn’t leave a watermark all over your maps, which Dungeonfog does; it also has more assets and more types of maps (Dungeonfog is for battlemaps only, from what I understand). Inkarnate’s paid version is also more affordable; 6 months of Dungeonfog is ~$35, while you can get a year for $25 with Inkarnate. Dungeonfog has more assets and features like Dynamic Lighting, so the increased price may be worth it to some DMs.

[Obligatory statement that I am not sponsored by Inkarnate, Dungeonfog, or anyone else.]

#d&d #dm tools #review #dnd #dungeons and dragons #inkarnate

23 notes · View notes

weirdcanucks · 3 years

Photo

For today's feature film, we look at Kevan Funk’s critically-acclaimed debut feature Hello Destroyer. The film swept Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle, winning 5 awards including Best Canadian Picture, Best BC Film, and Best Director. I've compiled a bunch of reviews and filmmaker interviews on the institutionalized violence, hockey culture, the craft of filmmaking and the Todd Bertuzzi case.

Synopsis

A young junior hockey player Tyson Burr’s life is shattered when a routine hockey play goes bad. In an instant his life is abruptly turned upside down; torn from the fraternity of the team and the coinciding position of prominence, he is cast as a pariah and ostracized from the community. As he struggles with the repercussions of the event, desperate to find a means of reconciliation and a sense of identity, his personal journey ends up illuminating troubling systemic issues around violence.

Where to Stream

CBC Gem if you are in Canada

Keep Reading for

Directors Guild of Canada post screening Q&A: does the Todd Bertuzzi case inspired the film?

Aggressively Canadian: An interview with the director Kevan Funk

Hello Destroyer explores the thin line between hockey menace and model

Review from Josh Cabrita of VIFF

More filmmaker Q&As

Content Warning: Violence

🎤 DGC Post screening Q&A

Audience: I grew up in BC. I remember in high school, the Todd Bertuzzi case was hung over the news of the city for a while. And I was just wondering if that's something that inspired this film at all?

Funk: Yeah. Todd Bertuzzi is my favourite hockey player of all time. So, yes definitely. I grew up in Banff, but I was a Canucks fan. The Todd Bertuzzi thing was something that I found remarkably frustrating at the time because I remember it really well too. I remember the hit on Steve Moore ahead of time when he hit Naslund, and I remember very well there was this intense bloodlust in Vancouver for retribution. And I don't mean just like among the fans. (There were) literally editorials about being like "we get pushed around too much, we need some identity. You can't let this happen, blah blah blah." And Todd was that guy. I still think Todd certainly deserves to be held responsible for what happened as an individual in that incident. But again, like that moment in terms of thinking about cultural culpability and how the idea of an act of violence extends beyond just a perpetrator of a crime and the victim and how a much broader group of people are implicated. I'm I really don't believe this idea of good and evil is something that really exists. There's like a select handful of people who we might be able to define as evil. But I think most violence that exists has a lot to do with social or cultural conditions around the people who are involved in that.

The Todd Bertuzzi thing was definitely something that informed it. I was hesitant to talk about it earlier before the film sort of got its own life and took out its own legs because I didn't want it to be "the Todd Bertuzzi story" because it informed it. But so did Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, a lot of these guys. And to be honest, the fundamental thing that started me on writing this film was Errol Morris's film Standard Operating Procedure. It's about the prison guards at Abu Ghraib who were busted for this despicable torture. He does this incredible thing of holding them morally responsible for what they did, but also showing that they're victims of a system that essentially asked them to do this and then throw them all under the bus to wipe its hands clean when it becomes public. So that came first. But certainly heavily informed by Todd Bertuzzi. I mean, his name is Tyson Burr. You know, there're some strong hockey knots in there.

🎤 Aggressively Canadian: An interview with the director Kevan Funk

NOTEBOOK: You’re a Canadian filmmaker making a film with hockey in it, so there’s an impression that the film is about hockey. But from watching the film there’s a sense that it’s not the game, necessarily, that interests you, that if you were working in a different setting, you’d have made the same film, but about, say, football or the military instead of hockey. Would you say that that’s an accurate assessment?

KEVAN FUNK: Yes. The inclusion of hockey has much more to do with its presence as a cultural institution, because the film is very much about institutionalized violence. I have this frustration with English[-language] Canadian cinema’s lack of boldness in terms of embracing our identity and placing ourselves in Canada. So I knew I wanted to make something that was very Canadian, and so hockey just sort of ended up being that.

Hockey movies are super interesting in that they’re associated with being very Canadian, but most of them—the majority of them—are goofy comedies that say very little about either Canada or the sport of hockey itself. So again, even though Hello Destroyer wasn’t a film about hockey per se—certainly more the setting than the subject, having that locker room culture be reflective of an actual reality was very important to me, because I don't think that it’s represented properly in most work.

📄 Seventh Row: Hello Destroyer explores the thin line between hockey menace and model

In major junior hockey, players must walk a thin line between what their coaches deem acceptable and unacceptable violence. If players avoid violence, they risk being seen as “soft” by their teammates and employers. At a home game when the team is trailing, the coach, Dale Milbury (a name referencing two notorious champions of hockey violence, Dale Hunter and Mike Milbury), demands that the team “protect the house”. Eager to prove his worth, Tyson throws an illegal check that slams an opposing player face-first into the boards, leaving his opponent with broken vertebrae and a brain hemorrhage.

Televised hockey tends to glorify cheering for violence but provides no explicit reminder of any physical consequences. Hello Destroyer breaks this convention and does not sanitise the violence. In Funk’s hands, a fight is not heroic, gladiatorial combat, but sweaty, desperate grappling, conveyed through the thudding of fists, cries of pain, and, loudest of all, the cheering crowd. Funk frames the fights themselves in claustrophobic close-ups, frequently shifting focus, and never quite providing a clear view as the punches connect. The effect is alienating, and it forces an audience familiar with hockey fights to confront their brutality. Funk implicates fans for enabling violence by foregrounding the pleasure on their faces and the players’ pain through the physical ugliness of the fight.

✏️ Review from Josh Cabrita of VIFF

Kevan Funk’s debut feature, Hello Destroyer, is not only a perceptive exegesis of Canada’s colonial history and cinematic representations of hockey, but also about a myth that all children who play the game grow up with. Funk has stated in interviews that if the film was made in another country, it might’ve been set in the military or a different institution, but the fact that Hello Destroyer -- one of very few Canadian films to grapple with the sport’s hypocrisy -- takes place in the world of junior hockey makes it hard to deny the specifics for the allegory. The buzzing sounds of the overhead lights in a vacant rink, the dress code of having a black suit and tie for every game, the anger expelled at a hockey stick during a coach’s rant: these are all textures and details I’m firmly acquainted with. Yet it’s these same environmental observations that form the basis for a critique of hockey culture's contradictions and hypocrisy: contemplation and belligerence, civility and violence, alienation and ‘community’.

But, above all else, this is a film about culpability: the role complacency, the status quo and generational exchanges play in redirecting guilt to maintain a corrupt system of power. Tyson may not be the main perpetrator against the opposing team’s player (for guilt requires free will - something the film posits is out of his hands), but he’s most certainly guilty of contributing to a culture that normalizes the root causes of such an action: how he willingly shaves his own head after his teammates buzz it in a ritualistic hazing, how he remains silent when a lawyer fills in his voice, and how he stands by as a teammate is awarded the player of the game and parades a traditional indigenous headdress around the dressing room.

🎤 VIFF Post screening Q&A

#change hockey culture #film

19 notes · View notes

randomvarious · 3 years

Video

youtube

Gladys Knight & The Pips - “Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me” Soul Decade: The Sixties Song released in 1967. Compilation released in 1990. Soul

From Gladys Knight & The Pips’ 1996 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction essay, written by Dave Marsh:

Although they are best known for their great recordings at Motown in the late 1960s and the ballad hits they scored in the early ‘70s, Gladys Knight and the Pips, in fact, have had a career that encompasses the majority of rock history. Indeed, Knight is one of the few Hall of Famers who have continued to make hits from the ‘60s until the present day.

The key to this success is Gladys Knight’s voice, one of the more remarkable instruments of the rock, soul and R&B eras. A perfect blend of grace and grit has allowed her to record such masterpieces of balladry as “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),” “If I Were Your Woman,“ “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “Every Beat of My Heart” while also making such funky dance numbers as the original “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “The Nitty Gritty,” "Friendship Train,” “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” and “Love Overboard.”

Missing from that list of masterpieces, however, is a criminally slept-on classic, “Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me,” recorded in the earlier days of the group’s tenure at Motown. “Take Me In Your Arms” originally appeared in 1967 on Gladys Knight & The Pips’ Motown debut LP, Everybody Needs Love, and while the single did rather well in the UK, peaking at #13, it fell surprisingly flat in the US, managing to only grace the upper reaches of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

So, why did that happen? Well, there appear to be a few reasons: one, Berry Gordy really ran the Motown label in a tiered structure. While some artists that Motown spent less of their attention and money on were able to squeeze out a gigantic hit here and there (Martha and the Vandellas and The Marvelettes, for example), most of the label’s resources (session musicians, promotion, and their best songs) were devoted to the acts at the top of their pyramid, like The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and The Temptations. And Gladys Knight & The Pips simply were not ever in Motown’s top tier, even though they certainly deserved to be. Case in point, before Marvin Gaye wound up selling four million copies with his own rendition of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Gladys Knight & The Pips’ original version, released subsequently after “Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me,” managed to sell two and a half million copies, becoming Motown’s bestselling single at the time. And still, despite that awesome accomplishment, Knight & The Pips continued to play second fiddle at Motown.

And the reason for all that shunning might actually lay at the feet of Diana Ross’ own politicking. Gladys Knight claims in her autobiography that Ross, out of fear for her act being possibly upstaged, actually ordered Knight & The Pips kicked off of a Supremes tour in 1968, simply because their performances were just too good. It’s possible that Berry Gordy didn’t want to upset one of his cash cows by giving more attention to Knight & The Pips, who could’ve ultimately ended up usurping Diana Ross & The Supremes’ status as Motown’s top female-led group (and the same could hold true for all of Motown’s other numerous girl groups, too). Knight also claims in her book that it was actually she who suggested Berry Gordy sign The Jackson Five, but in transcribed Motown lore, Diana Ross is the one who is usually credited with discovering them. Needless to say, regardless of whether it was mutually felt or not, there was clearly bad blood between Knight and Ross, and after Knight & The Pips’ contract expired with Motown, they jetted on over to the Buddah label, a move that enabled them to really spread their wings and have their talent properly nurtured

Another reason why “Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me” might have failed to succeed stateside is the song’s lyrical content. The words in this one may have been just a tad too sexually suggestive in 1967 for radio DJs to take a chance on. I mean, just look at some of these lines:

This feeling is too strong to hold Any second now I'll explode Now's the time, now's the time Take all of this love of mine

If you knew that playing this sexy song about sex on the radio could possibly land you in hot water and cost you your job, would you still spin it? Probably not, right?

And although I was personally unable to find any trace of the following allegation, a censored version of this song apparently originally appeared on the Everybody Needs Love LP, and ended up really messing with the song’s overall flow, both musically and lyrically, reducing it down to a forgettable tune whose obvious and sloppy editing was worthy of an incredulous eyeroll. But it appears that the original unedited version has been restored on issues of the album for years now because I’m unable to locate a deliberately censored version of this song on YouTube.

There’s also the fact that Berry Gordy was someone who sought to sell his records to as broad an audience as possible (read: white), and a black woman freely expressing her sexuality so transparently in 1967 might’ve ended up ruffling some feathers and causing some unwanted blowback for Motown, which is something they probably had no intention of inviting for a second-tier act on their roster. But if that’s the case, one has to wonder why the song was recorded with those lyrics intact in the first place. Although a watering down of the lyrics would’ve caused the song to partially lose its intended impact, they still could’ve just tried to sell it that way instead of taking an axe to its entire structure for the album cut, no? The sound of the song would’ve been just as good, but its lyrics would’ve been compromised. And that’s clearly better than changing both the flow of the music and the lyrics, right? Something just doesn’t add up with this whole line of thinking to me.

Either way, the song somehow managed to slip past the censorious ears of the UK’s pop culture gatekeepers and went on to rightfully succeed there instead. And that’s why this track is included on UK soul retrospectives, like Soul Decade: The Sixties, and not US ones, despite the fact that it’s clearly such a good tune.

“Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me” is really just a piece of late 60s Motown soul perfection that more than deserved to be a top hit in America. It was produced by Norman Whitfield and he would then go on to become a frequent collaborator with Gladys Knight & The Pips at Motown, including with the group’s following single, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” And Whitfield’s production on this particular song is really nothing short of sensational.

“Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me” comes with wonderfully slow and carefully crafted build-ups, and is chock full of different instruments, including a harpsichord, an acoustic guitar, horns, snare drums that guide the music’s overall intensity by alternating between a calm heartbeat and a bouncy thump, and high-pitched strings that creep from the background to the foreground to match Knight’s own vocal melody at the end. And speaking of Knight, she is of course an indispensable piece of this song, too. Her vocal “blend of grace and grit” that Dave Marsh alludes to in one of the paragraphs quoted above is on full display here as she shows her ability to go from a soft, irresistibly inviting tenderness to a loud, exhilarated passion in a split-second’s time. Knight is singing as if she is in the midst of an extended, ecstasy-inducing sexual experience and that’s what she, Whitfield, and The Pips were going for all along.

Really, just one of the most underrated songs in the history of Motown. It’s a total shame that it didn’t perform better in the U.S., but that appears to have been for a confluence of reasons that were ultimately out of Gladys Knight & The Pips’ control.

#soul #soul music #music #60s #60s music #60's #60's music #60s soul #60's soul #60s soul music #60's soul music

3 notes · View notes

multsicorn · 4 years

Text

book-and-show

My preferred mix of the two canons is basically ‘The Untamed, but Wei Wuxian lost control of his zombies by his own goddamned self, and also plot/logic holes are taped over by explanations from the book when needed and possible. And we know that wangxian are together and will be married, but we're left with spaces to fill in the details.’ (One of the cool/interesting things about having multiple versions of a canon is that one can mix and match!) But there are definitely things that I prefer, separately, about each.

[two very long lists. all of which are all about personal opinions/preferences, and none of which are looking to start discourse!]

Eight Things I liked better about the show:

1. "Who am I to you?" "I had thought, that you were the one who knew me for my whole life." "Still, I am." is *twenty zillion times* more romantic than a stolen blindfold kiss, in a way that pretty much encapsulates why I so much prefer show to novel wangxian overall. And in this TED talk - I mean, in another post, hopefully, in not too long, I will.

2. Lan Wangji's explicit questioning of and overturning his understanding of 'what is right, and what is wrong,' rather than simply being motivated by 'if loving Wei Wuxian is wrong, then screw everything else.'

3. Introducing so very many characters earlier in the chronological timeline, and showing us more about them and their relationships prior to Wei Wuxian's death - and outside of the key moments in which they're involved in the plot. Wen Qing and Wen Ning, Jiang Yanli, Mianmian, Songxiao, Xue Yang, Meng Yao - this list could also be its own post.

4. More focus on the Sunshot Campaign and its aftermath, pre-death, specifically on the period when Wei Wuxian is the feared necromancer, and he and his loved ones are dealing with that, against a background of war and then possibly more war. It's by far my favorite part of the narrative, just because of my preferences re: genres, so I appreciate it being foregrounded rather than just a backstory that's shown in flashbacks.

5. The successive confrontations between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji over 'leaving the right path'! In the courtyard, when Lan Wangji pulls Bichen on Wei Wuxian to make him listen; in the sad umbrella rain, when Wei Wuxian holds Chenqing out in front of him, defying Lan Wangji's efforts to rein him in. These things probably fall under the umbrella of the TED talk from the first point, but they're the beating heart of WHY I LOVE THIS STORY. And they're not even in the novel...! I thank the CQL team for my life.

6. Also, THE COMB STORY. I'd never have thought either that 'how do we improve an m/m romance novel? By adding a het romance subplot, of course,' but the fact is that I love the dimension it adds to both Jiang Cheng's and Wen Qing's stories. Highlighting their shared loyalty to their clans - except not shared, because they're from different clans! - but their shared *understanding* of what righteousness, justice, etc., is, and the way it leads to their tragedies, and the way it's a counterpoint to Wei Wuxian's and Lan Wangji's different and ultimately shared understanding of 'what is right' and the way *that* brings *them* together is just... so good. I am getting over it approximately never, and, again, it's show-original.

7. And I think the last big thing - other than, the acting's wonderful, imo, the visuals are great, (even the 'bad' special effects? I like 'em kinda ridiculous?), and when the prose-in-translation of all versions is iffy at best, (not judging MXTX's prose! or the scriptwriters'! but I unfortunately cannot read or understand it) it's REALLY NICE to have other major dimensions of the story that aren't lost or diminished in translation. Honestly, I am only watching cdramas and not reading cnovels (I only read MDZS so I'd know what's in it) for that reason alone. But in terms of *story* stuff -

8. I think that censoring wangxian's relationship down to the '(really really loud) subtext' level counterintuitively also makes the rest of the story seem considerably gayer. If wangxian exists in hints and looks and narrative parallels etc., then likewise, so do the 3zun and Yi City triangles. Not as much as wangxian, but they're more minor characters, and they're on the same continuum... to the extent that I legit thought that songxiao and xiyao would also be novel canon. (They are not.) If Wei Wuxian shocking Lan Wangji by showing him gay porn in the library, and commenting on Lan Wangji's beauty, is because he is actually into guys, then maybe Nie Huaisang lending Wei Wuxian that same porn, and also commenting on Lan Wangji's beauty, means the same thing, if that's all we have to go on. etc.

Nine Things I liked better about the book:

1. There's something about Wei Wuxian's narrative voice, the running commentary that he gives about others and most of all himself that is... funny? Yes, it is, but that's not the part I love. It's hard to pin down, but the pattern of the things he judges and the things he doesn't judge at all, even though maybe he should, but he really has so much empathy - in the literal sense, I mean, as well as the magical - is very specific and endearing? He's exactly like that in the show, too, but we hear much less of it when he's not telling the story.

2. Getting to hear A-Qing in her Empathy fleshes out her cleverness and her bravery, again, in a way that's not easy to replicate seeing it from outside of her head. (I think we may have more of all of the ducklings/juniors, actually, but I'm just not all that interested in their friendly banter. Not when there's life-rending trauma in the OG of the same story!)

3. From the chronological start of the story, the Wens' domination and power-hunger is portrayed in a realpolitik way that's both more interesting and fits the rest of the story better, with the Jins later filling that same vacuum, and fearing Wei Wuxian's potential to do the same sort of thing to them, etc., as chronologically following and competing different takes on the struggle for power, without any need for the flat fantasy mcguffins of the Yin Iron or the 'spirit snatch.'

4. Wei Wuxian ~appreciating~ Nie Mingjue's dead body parts is hliarious. I love him hanging out with the corpse girls. I love the Wens risingout of the blood pool for him ;___;. Overall his relationship withthe corpses that he magics is such a cool weird fun part of the book,that is missing in the show except his friendship with Wen Ning for'let's make a show about necromancy but pretend it's not' reasons.

5. The fact that Wangxian don't split up and go their own ways at the end of the story, even temporarily! I could go either way on 'Lan Wangji becomes Chief Cultivator' - I like the way that it moves into 'the future will be better than the past, and we'll work to make it that way', in the same way that 'the kids are alright' does, and the fact that Lan Wangji hates diplomacy and is bad at it can make for good amusing stories! But I also approve of the fact that the personal win condition for so very many of these characters is to peace right the fuck out of sect politics, (like Mianmian our true hero does <3), and I believe in that as a happy ending.

6. Wei Wuxian's and Lan Wangji's complementary ~ravishment~ kinks. I don't like the exact way they're written in the novel (and extras), but I *will* take and run with the existence of them, nevertheless.

7. The post-resurrection plot makes, um, sense? Let's not forget the importance of that! (But, honestly, 'must a plot make sense'? It's not all that important to me, lol.) Going from one place to another to collect the pieces of 'our dead friend's' body rather than seemingly at random makes the journey feel purposeful rather than direction-less, and gives an indication of progress that's not simply 'amount of the story read as per chapter count.' Though it's still not clear to me why the juniors squad needs to be in Yi City!

8. It has more of Wei Wuxian's inventiveness. Whether founding the Diabolic Path rather than 'just' inventing some tools and talismans within and also outside of it, or figuring out/explaining how some sort of magic works, whether lecturing to the juniors or working it out for himself, or something like that one night-hunting extra where he's being a supernatural consulting detective... it's fun to see more of his ~mind at work,~ in a way that doesn't fit as well either into an audiovisual medium or under the constraints of 'what is happening? definitely not corpse magic!' that censorship imposes.

9. The structure of revealing what happened in (what I can't help thinking of as) the main portion of the plot - who Wei Wuxian is, what his life story is, and Lan Wangji's part in it - through interleaved and not even necessarily in-order flashbacks is... so interesting? Unfortunately I can't tell how well it would've worked for me in terms of changing my understandings of characters etc., because I watched the show before I read the book, so I came to it knowing the outlines of the story. But it's a cool idea, and I wish that I could experience it properly! (Though I would never have read the book without watching the show first, I would've failed out at the start due to translation issues and then if I'd persisted past that due to all the gay chicken stuff.)

#the untamed #this is sufficiently show-slanted #i believe #that i'm not gonna put it in any of the other tags....

14 notes · View notes

kaiowut99 · 4 years

Text

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episode 56 Subbed (Finalized)

Shou VS the Bug Girl! Insect Princess (The Gang Witnesses an Evolution (ft. Misawa)

A promotion for Shou to the Yellow dorm has come up, and the condition Chronos has prepared for him is to defeat Ran Kochou, a young woman from the Blue dorm, in a duel. Shou’s frightened about it, but words from Judai and the others begin to motivate him. Shou uses his Vehicroid deck to battle, while Ran uses her Insect deck. Ran spreads ants onto Shou’s field, raising her Insect Princess’s ATK to 2900 by destroying them. Shou battles on, deliberately not using Power Bond, and combines three of his Vehicroids to summon his Jumbo Drill...

rip misawa

Here’s finalized!56, folks! Overall, one of my favorite episodes because it starts off a thread of character development for Shou that we touch back on here/there in Season 2 (when we don’t meander too far from the plot) but really comes through more in Seasons 3 and 4. I love how he takes issue with Ran’s calling him just a “flunky” and acknowledges that, yeah, he’s chased after people out of admiration, but as of now he’s choosing to walk with them instead. It’s a neat moment, and Judai watching his evolution is the cherry on top. i end up having big Shou/Ryou feels by Season 4′s end Also, Manjoume’s new room is finally ready after two episodes, and Asuka’s crashing at Red for now because of Chronos/Napoleon antics. So, Red’s kind of the place to be, it seems.

The only gripe I have here is that this episode starts off the season’s trend of forgetting about Misawa. Which, that it happens in-series, is probably the writers acknowledging that they’ve forgotten him, but... no wonder the dude ends up trying to join the Society of Light later.

Thankfully, there weren’t any card fixes to handle here, but I did do some quick quality-of-watching fixes, including one big one at the end that... lifted me off my seat when I saw it, haha. Also, quick translation note included. List below the cut, as usual.

Enjoy, folks! I’ll be getting started on prepping for 57 soon to make up a bit for the gap between 55 and 56, with some occasional work on 5D’s “Dub-Uncut” #28 splashed in for variety (I actually managed to whip something up for the beginning Rua/Ruka bit with Turret Warrior, lol). Once I do 57 and knock out 5D’s 28, I’m thinking I’ll try to handle 58 and 59 together; it’s the first serious duel between Judai and Ed, and it was the first series of episodes from the Japanese version that I ever saw way back when--so, needless to say, they’re some of my favorites.

Fixes/Translation Notes!

Ran’s name is a pun based on kochouran (胡蝶蘭), the Japanese name for a moth orchid--hence, the Insect deck. Can’t exactly say the dub respected this in... Missy’s name...

As Napoleon asks Chronos about the star-finding project they’re working on, right after Chronos tells him not to worry and he moves his head down as he pulls out a photo of Shou, his mouth sort of glitches up for a second in 1-2 frames; to fix this, I took the next frame of his head moving where his mouth looks natural and copied it in above those frames in Sony Vegas.

As Manjoume hears Judai ask his question about Asuka and her dress, he turns to tell Judai she has it as proof that Blue’s gotten bad--but the shot starts out with Manjoume missing his mouth! To fix this, I took a frame of Manjoume from a few seconds earlier (since it’s a recycled shot [there’s a bit of that this episode]) and just used Sony Vegas to mask his mouth in before he turns.

As Shou sends Submarineroid into attack against Ran, who looks around in fear not knowing where it’ll resurface from, she loses her mouth in a quick frame or two as she quivers; I masked in her closed mouth from the next frame over it in Vegas to quickly fix that.

This one was the tougher one. As Shou surprisingly shows up at Red post-promotion, and Judai and co watch him quibble with Kenzan, the animators did us a solid in... forgetting to put the long wooden benches under Judai and co who are clearly sitting... lol. To fix this, I first stitched together the panning shot here and created a bench in Photoshop, using layers to outline it and fill it in based on the one bench that’s visible wayyyy in the foreground of the shot and tweaking the perspective accordingly to match the table’s, and then adding some shading around Kenzan’s butt--once I did that, I repeated it for Manjoume’s bench and Judai’s bench, tweaking the bench I made for Kenzan accordingly and masking in Judai’s legs and Manjoume’s jacket/butt/thighs over them. Once that was done, I went into Sony Vegas and just recreated the pan (as it was a straight linear pan, I didn’t have to keyframe every single frame [phew]), then masked the fixed image so that only the new benches were visible over the original footage. Came out really nicely, I think!

#yugioh #ygo #GX #yugioh gx #ygo gx #Shou Marufuji #my subs #gdi why is tumblr and linking so broken #also why does misawa become a meme

7 notes · View notes

llynprintonnarrativedesign · 4 years

Text

Alto’s Odyssey: Analysis

Alto’s Odyssey is a game released in February of 2018, it is the sequel to Alto’s Adventure of 2015. The game is an endless runner/snowboarding/sandboarding with mechanics centered around performing tricks to increase your speed and gain points. Beyond that the player must complete quests for trick combinations to unlock characters, new areas, and powerups.

The worldbuilding of Odyssey is all atmospheric, with no text or voice elements to convey it. The game takes place in a large and unpopulated desert, aside from scattered plants, a few birds, and yourself, the game is devoid of life. There are ruins of temples and hot hair balloons, but the builders and operators of these elements are not shown (at least in as far as I got). The background of each area is shown as a vast landscape with the sun or moon overhead in a rotating cycle. The music is soothing and calm, and the overall aesthetic is mellow and relaxed. The player has a scarf which trails behind them in arcing curves and the movement of the player is made in serene and sinuous motions.

The first similar game that this reminds me of is Journey, which also follows a scarved traveler in a large and mostly empty desert, though in Journey the reason for the emptiness of the desert is explicitly explained, and far more serious. While in Alto’s Odyssey the ruins are presumably just ruins, with no great tragedy tied to them, just the march of time, Journey explicitly has the player start the game in a giant graveyard, with tombstones dotting dunes as far as the eye can see. Oyssey takes the isolation of the desert and turns it into a calming and soothing experience, while Journey adds in desperation and sadness. Additionally, the gameplay of Journey is quite similar, mostly being about building up speed and jumping ability to get around large areas, with some sections having the player slide down immense dunes. The games share many mechanical and aesthetic similarities.

Odyssey in some ways reads as a mobile/2d version of Journey, especially if the player assumes the worst behind the reasons for why there are no other people shown in Odyssey. Though there are several playable characters, you never see more than one at the same time (again, as far as I got in the game). Though one of the items is a radio you can use to make another character drop an item for you, the builders of the ruins and pilots for the air balloons never show up. This, in my reading, emphasizes the calming and meditative elements, there’s no real plot so much as there is basic exploration of finding the different areas, there are no real set backs aside from the one to two second space between a mishap and restarting. Alto even has a ‘zen mode’ which eschews challenges and failure states and is simply for the pleasure of the player, to allow them to soak in the atmosphere through the music, backgrounds, and movement of the game.

The minimalism of Odyssey's world building furthers its own goals, without major distraction, even in the non-zen modes the player is able feel wonder at the visuals of the desert, while the elements themselves are presented simply, they are executed with care. The simple flowing movements are timed well to build the serenity of the desert, and as stated in part earlier, the simplicity of it all assists with the desired calm of the world being shown.

The once issue that I could primarily find would be the mechanic for jumping over rocks that occasionally appear in the player’s path. Some of the background and foreground objects can resemble these rocks (and vice versa) sometimes causing the player to either not jump, which disrupts any tranquility they may have achieved, or it can cause the player to jump unnecessarily, which can potentially result in a game over from other obstacles further along the trail which similarly disrupts any calm they may have attained.

All in all, the world building of Alto’s odyssey is simple and mostly effective, while there may be some issues brought up by the mechanics of the game itself, it remains evocative of the feelings and mind state (that I assume) it was the player to be in. It is comparable to Journey, one of the better atmospheric world building games that I’ve had the pleasure of playing, and it is only praise it gains through that comparison. The foreground and background elements paint a calming picture of a vast and beautiful desert, and the simple controls and slow looping arcs of movement only help to draw the player into those far off sands and stars.

#worldbuilding analysis #alto's odyssey #journey

8 notes · View notes

cipher-fresh · 5 years

Text

Requiem for a Starmaker

Crowley helped build the stars in Heaven. He still thinks about them, sometimes.

“Oohh, I helped build that one.”

It was scary, admittedly, when the sun went down for the first time. It shouldn’t have bothered Crawly, he could see in the dark, but it wasn’t like being a demon constantly made the sky blue-. Colors were just more distinct for him and his eyes were fashioned to be much more efficient at taking in light to see. None of this was spelled out for him helpfully in a You’ve Just Fallen From Grace: 5 Amazing Tips to Love Your New Despicable Place in God’s Plan! brochure. Brochures that were handed out included tourism of the crater created when the Morningstar fell, and pools of superheated sulfur. Crawly had put it down after reading the first four lines, and stood in a large cavern before he was told to Get Up There And Make Some Trouble. Fortunately, he hasn’t seen very much of Hell. What he has seen was very close to the ground.

There hadn’t been a conception of anything the opposite of Holy, not until the Fall. Corporations hadn’t been a thing, everybody paraded around with vaguely-humanoid bodies, or wheels of fire and multitudes of eyes, their wings and all other manner of limb and face. Corporations worked like this, see. There was a horrible, infernal lava-filled pool in Hell (holy water water fountain and waterfall in Heaven) where the paperwork would be sent to the computer, scanned and digitized, and the Pool of Energy would churn out a body. It would rise eerily (peacefully and relaxed, in Heaven’s case) and lifelessly, much like a perfect corpse, from the bottom of the pool, where the incorporeal(1) form of the being would walk into the body and claim it.

When Crowley Fell, his body had burned in the sulphur pools, his nerves already alight from the feeling of his body being compressed into a snake- one of Her last gifts to him. It wasn’t like losing his limbs was a help, as if less of his body would be in pain- his snake form was much bigger than most other snakes of Her creation. Not only did he have the memory and constant existence of being a demon, he had slitted yellow eyes, scales on his body that he hid with long sleeves and trousers, a brand on the side of his face, a forked tongue, and constant, desperate search for warmth wherever he could find it.

Well, Crowley supposed, the warmth thing wasn’t specific to snakes, Hell was always on fire and burning to counteract the ice in one’s heart after being rejected by Heaven. Crowley specifically got spit in his, well, eyes- he wanted nothing more than to fit in with humans, to be popular, or even accepted- and he was the one cursed by God Herself.

You know how magic is often based off belief and imagination? Crowley imagined that his car was fine, so it kept driving to Tadfield. It’s kinda like that. Aziraphale had spent six thousand years on Earth in a Micheal Sheen-esque human corporation, and he didn’t view his true self as the biblical description of an angel with eyes and wheels and limbs galore, but as gayer-than-a-treeful-of-monkies-high-on-nitrous-oxide, grandfather-looking english professor from the 1890s. (Otherwise known as a human being. You aren’t healing nanogenes from an intergalactic war, so please don’t think all humans look like Micheal Sheen. It would be nice if they did, I think, though.) So, Aziraphale imagined himself, even when lacking a corporation, to look like the person Crowley called ‘angel’ and fed ducks with. All the other angels in his platoon right before they were ready to fight before The-Apocalypse-That-Never-Was had already been given human corporations and they paraded around in heaven in them. Angels (and demons!) could technically do paperwork on computers in their True Forms (ultra-fast, slim, high-tech touchscreens in Heavenly cases, nineties-esque Apple II color computers in Hellish cases.

The animals scampered when dark came. They’d gotten used to it, it had happened for three days or so, and Crawly looked up as the sun went down. He wondered, did Adam and Eve know about the Fall? The stars in the sky? Did the moon scare them? It was a full moon tonight, hanging in the air, in full view. The desert they’d walked through together, being watched by an angel and a demon, both looking solemn, and straight ahead as the angel covered the demon with his wing, the first rain opening from the first cloudy skies.

The rain had dissipated after fifteen minutes. When the angel lowered his wing, a bit awkwardly, Crawly said “I guess I’ll be, uh, off then.” he shifted back into a snake, and went to leave, before pausing-. “...thankssss.”- and slithered down the side of the wall.

And, now, here he was. The sun going down, the real darkness, nothing stormclouds could manufacture. Crawly, still a snake, looked up. Twinkling lights, they looked so close while in Eden. What was the word for those things? They were on-fire balls of gas, Crawly knew, he’d helped make them, along with nebulas and galaxies and planets. What was the word? Not...oh, Crawly knew it had an ssss sssound, sssstellar, something like that. Crawly had built so much in Heaven, and he missed it dearly. Here he was, admiring them with physical eyes, from behind an atmosphere and the void of space and insurmountable distance, but it was his creation. One of his little marks on the world. He’d done something beautiful, and he could admire it.

Crawly didn’t even get to admire his own creations in Heaven, he’d make them, then be told very forcefully to get work done on the next planet.

Turning around, his view was blocked by trees and forest. A very determined snake-demon, Crawly slithered back up to the spot where the angel had been- the angel long gone, of course, who had nipped back to Heaven, probably to tell the Heavenly Host that they needed to collectively smite a single demon who had snuck into the Garden, tempted the humans and got them unfairly punished.

Finally pulling up the rest of his sinuous body to the wet ground he had been standing on earlier, Crawly had a better view of the sky. A much better view, the sky almost illuminated blue from the imposing view of some nearby(2) nebula. Crawly wondered what it would look like if the earth rotated a bit more, the moon would rotate with it and, hopefully, if things matched up, the moon would be full, and in view of the nebula. It would be a pretty sight, such a striking white from the moon illuminating the night, the foreground in front of a stunning blue pattern, accented by all those little things in the sky. Crawly watched as some blinked into existence, some had been created at the end of the first week, and their light was just now arriving.

It felt like space was hanging over him, the Garden of Eden being grabbed from the Earth by an invisible hand and lifted into the true astral void. You couldn’t describe space as empty or black, there was the presence or a stellar celestial being or the glitzy colors of a galaxy an impossible distance away. The sight of seeing his creation nearly brought Crawly to tears.

Being an ex-heavenly being, Crawly knew that the Earth was a sphere. He understood gravity, he understood atmosphere and oxygen, he understood that the ssss things he’d made were very distant. The closest things were the sun and the other planets in the solar system, and the moon. He couldn’t see the sun, for obvious reasons, and still staring at the blue nebula, the moon wasn’t in his peripheral vision. His eyes couldn’t spot any of the planets that he knew existed nearby, a result of their orbits, and his snake eyes being more even less well-suited for looking into the vast deep of outer space.

However, Crawly knew EXACTLY what was out there. Massive spheres of gas, burning, held together by gravity and God’s Will, or something. Other planets, physical places to walk and exist on on human corporations. Not that Adam and Eve would go there, obviously, but if Crawly couldn’t visit the stars, on account of his job on Earth, not in the atmosphere. He really hoped, one day, humanity would be able to visit his stars, for him. He wanted another look at- stars! That was the word. STARS! Crawly had made stars!

And, and, Crawly had helped with everything out in space. He’d built so much of it, and he was blessed proud of it! Stars, illuminating the garden, even if there wasn’t much light in general, there was still more there because he had built them. Crawly also liked to think that they were free of Heaven and God’s ridiculous rules, even if they had been punished for it. They would be better off. He had done that. He’d freed Adam and Eve, he’d built the stars…

Please wonder. Please question. Please be curious, Crawly hoped. Adam and Eve were destined to be fruitful and multiply. Hopefully one of them would send passing thoughts to the stars.

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

1957

Public education was always in interesting idea. He’d clearly never been in a school to receive an education like he was thinking about now, but he got by, humans never questioned him about his past. If they did, he could lie very smoothly. It had never been an issue, but Crowley thought it would be good to get an insider’s information, receive a child’s education. It would be funny if there was something that the British Government decided was important enough for good patriotic kids who served for King and Country to know, but Crowley, a 6000 year old demon, did not. Incredible, it was, from the days of feudalism a few short centuries ago to today, with taxpayer-funded education for all the kids to learn their maths and times tables.

Schooling like this had existed for centuries, developing over time, but Crowley had never imagined things turn out the way they did. Hell said the United States was the Place To Be. The States gave him a sour taste in his mouth, despite promising beginnings. He’d visited twice. Once after electric lights were invented(3) and he didn’t stay long. Crowley supposed it was better than when everyone was dying of the plague and stuffing flowers by their noses to stay immune. Second, in California during the summer in 1941. He didn’t do much, just a few one-on-one temptations for petty theft and fights, but he received a commendation for Korematsu vs United States a few months after the case, several years later.

Shapeshifting was an ability Crowley had acquired after the Fall. He was above shapeshifting into a child and faking a family, but he’d still like to know what little kids learned. Corrupt them early. If he felt ambitious, he could have some sort of law in place so kids had to learn about something to help corrupt them, though Crowley wasn’t sure what. It would require a lot of effort, though, something he wasn’t feeling up to now.

Maybe he’d just find a position in a school and watch silently from a corner as a snake.

Anyway, it was the beginning of an idea. He’d have to hammer it out sometime else. And, he had other business. Not Beelzebub zzemself, but somebody lower in the foodchain had determined the States was the place to be. Things like child labor and the Great Depression had been good business. He could do a lot of work there. And that plan about ‘putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade’ had promise.

Something bibliophilic and prim kept him from being in the right place, right time to take credit for God Bless America’s sins. For the Arrangement, of course. Got to keep your hereditary enemy in check. Aziraphale had settled in London almost four hundred years ago, and Crowley liked the place. He didn’t need to go anywhere.

The events of the war still fizzled in Crowley’s memory. He hadn’t visited either of the places the americans bombed in Japan, but he had visited the country in the 1620s. He went to pay his respects after the bombs in Japan in 1947 after the war ended.

And, so, he’d headed to some school in London, miracled up an ID for one Anthony Crowley, with a PhD in childcare or something, to be a guidance counselor, just as the school year started in September. A month later, Sputnik 1 was launched.

It wasn’t like Crowley spent a lot of time thinking about the atmosphere of the Earth. Of course not. There were five layers or something, the stratosphere weather one, a couple in the middle, and then the exosphere, where the air thinned out more than 6,000 miles from the Earth’s surface. There wasn’t a specific place where there Was Air and Wasn’t Air, it just thinned out until you lacked the ability to breathe. He knew this mostly because of an education of Earth given to him in Heaven, which he recalled vaguely, and sitting in on a lecture in a university. That’s where he got the 6,000 mile statistic.(4)

He’d love to say he did incredible, in depth research by going in a plane or hot air balloon, or better yet, with his wings, but since the Fall, his wings had always bothered him. He’d learned to not have his wings out in Hell after returning from the Garden from his chat with the angel, some demon had attacked him for ‘showing off’ his intact wings. They had turned black, as standard during the Fall. He was lucky, other demons lose their wings entirely, or were reduced to little ones that couldn’t fly. Crawly was feebly going to ask someone to groom his, and in return he’d groom theirs, because discrepancies in their wings proved to feel bothersome and sometimes painful.

Vulnerabilities were bad in Hell. Crawly was taught this very quickly. Luckily, he was assigned to Actively Permanent Earth Assignment- Human Temptation and Soul Corruption, so the only one he would have to worry about be attacked by for being different was humans.

But, a space launch, something piercing the atmosphere from inside it and going out instead of the other way around was astounding. There were very few things that could say they’d broken the Earth’s atmosphere, that had started on Earth. Meteor showers and all gave the title of ‘breaking Earth’s atmosphere’ a bit less impressive than it sounds. Nonetheless, as the children chattered about the upcoming Halloween at the end of the month when they should be memorizing vocabulary words (Crowley was hiding as a snake from the ceiling, listening intently to conversation in a class of second-years), they were also getting the demon to think about Halloween.

And, suddenly, Crowley had an idea.

Crowley tried to be an optimist. His usual problem was turning from a human to a snake when he was overwhelmed or processing a lot of things, but he was already in his snake form, so he wasn’t going to do that. It was unlikely he’d accidentally turn human, because turning human required concentration. Despite that, Crowley calmed himself down in the vents above a classroom in the form of a snake, because he had wiggled around excitedly when he had gotten an idea.

He wiggled back through the vents and into Mr. Crowley’s office. A venus flytrap sat in a pot on his desk, a gift from a student who he would be a guidance counselor to this year. He wondered if she gave all her teachers venus flytraps at the beginning of each school year, or it had just been the one with sunglasses and a snake tattoo, but he liked the plant. Whether she had or not, she seemed perfect for his plan. She was that type without a lot of friends, not much to do, and could be easily swayed to something with a sparkly sign. She had already somehow found that plants were something she liked, and venus flytraps specifically. If she liked ‘scary’ plants that ate insects, she’d be a perfect candidate for his plan- acting as a substitute one day and teaching kids how to use a ouija board.

Bless, maybe he should have just become a substitute teacher. They would be given the things the kids needed to learn. He’d have to find another time and place to do it, but the substitute teacher thing was a good idea.

The girl, her name was Annabelle, was in year six, and had some odd fondness and likely a place to grow venus flytraps, unless she bought Mr. Crowley a venus flytrap. Either way, she’d be perfect to make into a student of the occult. She’d probably confide in it due to her trouble making friends and acquaintances in school. The pieces were falling together. Now, the question was, what class of hers to make the teacher take a leave of absence from? Probably whatever class she liked the least, she’d hate to see her favorite teacher replaced. They’d already been in school for a month, she must know who the teachers she’d liked most were.

Only problem was, who did she like most? Crowley wasn’t the type to put feelings in people’s minds like Hastur, the whole point of temptations is that you make something look good, and the human makes the choice. Forcing them to do something defeated the whole purpose. It wasn’t a temptation, it was a command. Crowley rather liked humans’ whole Free Will thing. He couldn’t go around putting thoughts in her mind, or changing what teachers she liked. He wasn’t even doing the substitute teacher thing, right? His train of thought was a jumbled mess.

This was going to take some work and effort. Maybe he should have just forced the Main Office in the school to include a unit about hedonism, or something.

The schedule in the school had changed during the summer, unexpectedly. Crowley had joined, and he had the schedules altered to add a study hall. Maybe he’d start a club about the occult, get people excited for the Unholy And Evil Holiday That Was Halloween, and he’d have plenty of tempted souls by the time either he got bored of school or the project was a bust. He’d wind up doing something later.

The plan was set up, and Crowley went to speak to Anabelle one of the days before the fourth of October, 1957. Although this wasn’t the only date like this, Crowley looked at his life as a series of Befores and Afters. There was Before the Fall, and After the Fall. Before meeting Aziraphale. Before realizing he could lie on reports. Before he realized he was looking for Aziraphale in the thousand years between Eden and Noah’s Ark...and After. Before Christ and After.

Before ‘Holy Water Insurance’ and after.

There was a new event, although those listed do include quite a bit more. Before humans breached the atmosphere with Sputnik 1 and After.

Sputnik 1 is usually a footnote, nowadays, no, not a footnote, it does get some mention, it marked the beginning of the Space Race, the way we affectionately refer to it as, so it’s not a footnote, but it’s otherwise hardly mentioned. Believe me, it’s worth the google.

Since our current 1957 Crowley isn’t aware of things that get more attention, he qualifies Sputnik 1 as a significant event. Maybe, one day, humans will go in their little spaceships like Sputnik, fitted for human life, like good movies from earlier in the decade, where humans travelled the stars...here the humans were, right now, with a real space probe.

Even if Crowley couldn’t see his creations without a telescope, maybe some of those cosmonauts would. Humans were smart, with maths and science, they’d figure it out. Something more pessimistic in Crowley said they’ll figure out mutually assured destruction first.

He didn’t like thinking about that.

Alone in his office, sitting in his designer chair, which he preferred to stand on dramatically instead of sit on, he put his hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying because humans were going to see the stars.

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

Summer 1958

Occult Club was a bust. Crowley expected that, honestly, but it hurt now that it was the end of the year and he’d hardly accomplished anything. Well, he says he didn’t accomplish anything- he acted as a substitute multiple times throughout the year and ignored the lesson plans, teaching kids how oujia boards worked and the pleasures of spending other people’s money. He also had an incredible Halloween, where he dressed up as dragon and tempted children to steal candy from other children. They wound up giving him most of it, so Crowley was satisfied. He had also made progress with Anabelle, who had moved at the end of the year after summer started. She had gotten interested in the occult, but also into snakes and reptiles because Mr. Crowley had a pet snake. That’s why he had the tattoo, no other reason.

The last day of school, Crowley, with no mortal possessions other than a venus flytrap he’d acquired at the beginning of the year, stayed in the building to cause trouble with other teachers who were moving their supplies. He’d accidentally convinced one of the teachers in an unexpected therapy session to tell her husband that she didn’t want kids, she’d been scared to the whole time because her husband wanted them. He wished his coworker the best and helped her move things to her car.

He waved as she drove off, and looked back up at the sky, which was dotted in stars. On the first night he’d been on Earth, there weren’t constellations. Well, they existed, but they hadn’t been identified. Crowley sat down in the grass for a little while and stared at the sky. The school was pretty far from any major city, so there wasn’t any light pollution to get in the way. Just him, the atmosphere, and his creation hanging above him.

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

March 1969

Hell had never really given up on the Move to the States! Thing, and he couldn’t exactly tell them that moving to the United States was quite literally the last thing he ever wanted to do. One, humans were sinful enough, and the States were a perfect example of how humans could do horrible things, without demonic temptations. And, Aziraphale didn’t live in the States. Oh, and another reason, God had a stupid american accent and he refused to live anywhere where he’d constantly hear people who sounded as annoying and stuck-up as Her.

Reading the words manned spacecraft in big black letters in newspaper headings and on telly hadn’t sunk in when he first read them, but he thought for a couple of hours and stared at his television set when he woke up two weeks ago. Crowley, being a very odd snake-demon-man, liked to avoid the cold months by sleeping them off. He didn’t always do it, but he liked to escape the cold sometimes and ‘hibernate’ from November to February. The BBC had done a TV special recapping the events of all human activities in space, from intercontinental missiles in 1957 to the recent Apollo 8 entering the moon’s gravitational orbit.

Humans were gonna see the stars. Please don’t let me down, Crowley hoped. Humans, you’re so smart. Use that big brain of yours for something productive, something good.

Despite the bit with the apple, Crowley didn’t like to think of himself as some loving hand guiding humanity with every step. He was more like their uncle that gave them a million-pound check and told them to have fun.

So, March 1969, Crowley staring at the telly he had in his flat. Watching an odd news broadcast recapping the history of the space race, even if it wasn’t called that yet. One of his projects in 1967 was still paying off, so he wasn’t in a hurry to do any work, he didn’t need to jump out of bed and do anything. When the helpful recap by the BBC finished, he flicked through some channels. He could go and do a temptation on some unsuspecting human, but he didn’t feel like it, and it was still cold.

Something else he could do was reassure his presence to Aziraphale, show that he hadn’t killed himself with the holy water. Not that Crowley had even thought about it, but Aziraphale had been so scared. They’d exchanged phone numbers in 1941, Crowley dropping Aziraphale off, and doing everything he could to get Aziraphale to invite him inside. He’d turned the car off, got out of it, and rested his arms on the top and continued the awkward conversation they’d had in the car. It hadn’t worked, and Aziraphale gave him the strangest, most pained look, and headed inside the bookshop, closing the door.

So much for olive branches.

Of course he’d still hold a hand out for Aziraphale if he ever decided to turn up. But Crowley wasn’t going to wait for him to come crawling back. Crowley had an immortal life to live, people to tempt, movies to watch and places to be. He absolutely would be Aziraphale’s friend again if the angel wanted.

He wasn’t, absolutely wasn't going to focus on you go to fast for me, Crowley.

He’d be going slow by staying away from him, but leaving his hand out, right? Thinking about his, uh, affectionately named Driving Speed Problem was upsetting, so Crowley decided he didn’t want to think about it.

Cool! Crowley wanted a new thing to think about. Something that wasn’t Aziraphale. Clearly failing at this, Crowley walked over to his safe, looking at the numbers 4 and 0, the two numbers he’d need to hit to open the safe. The tartan-patterned holy water thermos was in there.(5)

No. I don’t want to think about Aziraphale. Maybe I should do some temptations- that got him thinking about the Arrangement.

Breathing heavily, and growling like dog, Crowley impulsively kicked over a potted plant in anger. The ceramic pot shattered, and the soil in it spilled, the recently planted seeds spilling out as well. Seeing the result of his little tantrum, the anger that had built up in Crowley dissipated like smoke in the wind. He snapped, and it was a pristine, perfect little ceramic-potted plant. The pieces disappeared and the soil was perfect now. Crowley would love to say his miracle to fix the plants also got rid of the sudden tears in his eyes or solved the problem if his little tantrum.

Very unbecoming of a demon, Crowley sighed, the weight of the world clearly on his shoulders. He wiped his eyes, he hadn’t cried much. Human corporations were cruel and swift, so Crowley’s head started to hurt. He decided, very masculinely and in a way that didn’t compromise his cool-guy look, that he didn’t need aspirin or need to try miracling it away.(6)

Ever since the Driving Speed Incident, and Crowley ‘decided’ he ‘didn’t need Aziraphale’, although he was 100% willing to be his friend again, Crowley decided to be his own demon. He had a bookshelf of books he liked, some of them gifts from Aziraphale, some of them gifts from author friends, some stolen, some purchased. Two years ago, Crowley put the books in storage, and made his bookshelf another wine cabinet. There was wine you didn’t need to refrigerate (Crowley thought) so he kept his non-refrigerating wine in the ex-bookshelf.

Books and reading were for nerds who liked books and reading. Crowley wasn’t a nerd who liked books and reading. Not very demonic.

Something that was demonic, and it wasn’t because Crowley made the stars in Heaven, and he liked outer space, no sir, something that was demonic because it might lead to WW3 and could do plenty of temptations for him, was space exploration.

The astronomy-enthusiast demon bought a ticket to Orlando, the closest city in Florida to the Kennedy Space Center that very same week. It would be his third time to America, and he was a demon on a mission. Not one to pass up an opportunity like this, Crowley very helpfully informed Hell of his upcoming trip to the States. Pencil-pushers in Hell could probably check off a box on a checklist, and Crowley had an idea. He wasn’t moving there, but a plan was forming in his mind.

Two Weeks Later, Mid-March 1969

ORLANDO, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES

The snake-demon-man should have considered himself lucky he’d only visited the warmer parts of America. California, Georgia, and now Florida. He’d always fancied the idea of visiting New York, especially since he received a commendation for the chaos caused by the Prohibition. He didn’t like the city until the country allowed alcohol again, but since the 21st amendment, he hated the States slightly less.

The point was, the three states he’d visited now, were some of the warmer ones. Despite the time being March, it was always agreeable temperatures. He’d struck up conversation with some american on the plane, and they’d said to him some meaningless Fahrenheit garbage about seventy degrees even during the winter. He resisted the urge to make fun of him for using such a poor system of temperature measurement, but he smiled and thanked the man.

Look, Crowley thought. If it is seventy degrees outside, everything is on fire. Nothing was on fire when he left the plane, but being a demon, fire still on his mind, made one of the wheels catch fire unexpectedly by the time everyone had already left. It would cause some delays and people would be tempted into Wrath. See? It all works out.

A bit sad to leave his beloved Bentley behind, Crowley had assured himself the temporary absence of it would be better than the trouble of moving it to a foreign country for a temporary visit. He stole a car from long-term parking (he didn’t feel like talking to anybody today to get a rental. The plane had drained him of energy for social interactions for things as horrible as humans.((It’s always planes that show the best and worst in humans, innit?)) Having to hear another person talk to him today might make him snap.) and so the demon made his way to Kennedy Space center.

The car he’d stolen had personal items left in there. Crowley prided himself on his ability to drive, unaware most of the work was done because that’s how Crowley expected cars to work. He would just make his car (any car, really) drive magically as he took a nap in the backseat, but he liked the freeing feeling of driving. It was a middle-finger to Hell, in a way. Today, however, Crowley did feel like taking a nap in the backseat. Well, I say backseat, more like passenger’s seat. He climbed into the seat on the left and was very surprised to see the steering wheel on the passenger’s side. Right. American car.(7) Somebody had said to him american cars were screwy.

One of the personal items left in the car was a newspaper, which Crowley read as his stolen car fermented in Orlando road traffic. It drove itself to the Kennedy Space Center, ignoring any obstacles in it’s path. Crowley miracled up a newspaper from home (London) when he finished up the american one and read curiously about the transition to the third Doctor on that show on telly he’d heard about. The american newspaper had also included a section on the cancellation of Star Trek. He’d watched it since it came out, but he hadn’t watched Doctor Who. He had heard of it, though. It was supposed to be some kid’s historical show. Sounded dumb.

Kennedy Space Center. Something Crowley appreciated about humans was their ability to decide that something was somebody else’s problem. Crowley paraded up and down the halls of the imposing white building, an ID badge for the nonexistent job of “Apollo Project Upper Transfer Manager”. He wondered if he should do an american accent, and he’d tried to do one in the men’s bathroom in the mirror, but failed utterly. He stopped after that. Crowley didn’t feel like being embarrassed by doing an accent in an empty bathroom in Kennedy Space Center, he had a job to do. Before leaving the bathroom and theatrically readjusting his tie, he tried one more line in a failed american accent, thinking about a movie he’d watched: “Get your stinking paws off me you d- oh, no, I can hardly do that.” and “You maniacs! You blew it up!” before succumbing to embarrassed laughter, dropping the accent halfway through and giving up.(8)

Movies, Crowley had determined one time, were one of humans’ best inventions.

Speaking of movies, and maybe american accents, Aziraphale could do a scarily accurate one. Crowley had suggested being ‘Not Mr. Fell’ as a way to scare off customers, in 1803, when Aziraphale got his first not-customer. Aziraphale realized he didn’t want to sell his books, and having a bookshop was counter intuitive to this sentiment, but he’d already gone through the trouble of making it a bookshop. It wasn’t like humans were required to buy books, so Aziraphale would just make sure, on the odd occasion a human tries to make a purchase, that they don’t. Simple enough.

No. Crowley was not going to think about Aziraphale. He was his own demon, about to pull off the temptation of a lifetime, sometime before the americans put a man on the moon.

“Mr. Crowley. Nice to meet you.” A man had extended his hand. Coming back to reality, standing in the middle of the hallway, Crowley shook the hand of the gruff-sounding man in front of him. Crowley had left the bathroom and stumbled around, looking for someplace important. He hadn’t had a specific idea of what he was going to do when he got to the Space center, just that it should be enough to get Hell off his back.

Another thing that Crowley liked to think, was that he knew how certain types of people were, and this was to his advantage as a demon, a tempter, a creature of sin, who was in awe of all the fancy technology in the building. It’d be a shame if a group like this wouldn’t be able to do the projects they wanted. A big group of smart minds in one place.

Maybe the terminology should have been ‘cursing’ humans, because as much as he tempted humans into doing bad things to corrupt their souls, he also often did a lot of curses- cursing the bathrooms empty of toilet paper, which pissed people off and often made them late to places when the situation was dealt with. Making them lose their keys, the little things.

The man was very polite, and he laughed at a couple of Crowley’s jokes, told him he had a sexy accent, and may have been flirting with the demon. As lunchtime rolled around, he talked about how his father had fought in both of the wars, and it felt like World War 3 was just around the corner. They did bomb drills every week at his son’s school, as if the radiation wasn’t going to get you if you hid under the table.

Every day, for the whole month, Crowley showed up at the Space Center and clocked in, 9-5. He checked into a hotel, because you can’t plan something as important as Crowley’s current idea with six hours of sleep.

Well, Crowley said he was coming up with something. He had a dumb little notebook where he scribbled things into, including doodles of planets and stars. Words like tempt people into wrath by destroying projects?? Causing power-outs -flat tires to important people??

Ideas like that. Crowley could technically do worse things to slow down the project, he could tempt some of the workers to sleep with each other and hope that a jealous housewife kills in revenge, he could plant a fake soviet spy, since americans were so concerned about their size-measuring competition. Crowley could do all manner of horrible thong and curse the project, and people would definitely sin along the way. -But he didn’t want to. Beelzebub had suggested to ‘bring more of those atom-bomb thingzzz to zzpace and drop zzem from the zzzky!”

Nuclear threat sounded promising, but a lot of effort. Although, war with nuclear weapons now would mean Armageddon, though Crowley never pictured humans doing it without an antichrist. Something he remembered from yet another brochure he’d acquired, a brochure acquired in 1000, to celebrate the (rough) last thousand years of Heaven’s snivelling and miserable existence. The Earth would exist for six thousand years, and it shall end in fire and flame. The antichrist would be sired, and probably be able to use his powers on his eleventh birthday. He’d start armageddon, Hell would defeat those harp-pluckers up in Heaven, and it would be fire and torture for all the dead human souls.

So...Crowley would know if the antichrist was born yet, right? Had Hell not told him? He needed time before the end of the world, he had to unload long-term stocks, do a couple of things on his bucket list, lots of things. Unless Hell had told him the antichrist was born and he just forgot.

Uhh...can we mark that down as a possibility? ‘The antichrist has been born, but I just forgot.’ Crowley considered the possibility of that. Low chance, he determined. He was fairly sure the antichrist wasn’t born yet.

The realization that Crowley didn’t want to do any temptations, that he wanted everything to go right, for humans to land on the moon came at the end of March. George Victor, the friend, had invited him for a drink at a bar after work. Hesitantly, Crowley accepted. The only reason being because american beer wasn’t as good as british beer. Nothing else to do with drinking or what Crowley thought about or what he reminisced about when he saw a good 200-year-old chateauneuf du pape.

Crowley’s work at NASA continued.

Some, maybe most of his time, when he wasn’t ‘working’ was spent sleeping. He’d very much liked to have slept for another fifty years after the war and working for British Intelligence had been exhausting. Not that he regretted it, but it was exhausting.

Since Florida wasn’t in the same spot as Britain, you could see different stars when you sat outside on a clear night. Maybe he should have visited the States sooner, you could see this one collection of stars that he’d never seen with his naked eye on Earth before. Crowley was lying on the top of his stolen car, staring at the sky. Did the people he’d stolen the car from want it back? Likely, they expected to have their car back when they returned home. Where were they visiting, Crowley wondered? Orlando must be their home, or at least the closest airport.

Crowley wanted to go home. A month of work at NASA and he hadn’t done anything. Along with his goal of accomplishing some sort of temptation while he was there, and getting dangerously close to telling his friend about Aziraphale and his life ‘back home in England’, things hadn’t turned out the way he wanted.

In an impulse decision, deciding he had nothing to show for himself, Crowley erased George Victor’s memory of him. George had lamented his life to Crowley, about how he and his girlfriend had gotten into a big fight, broke up, and didn’t talk for months. As much as Crowley didn’t want to think about Aziraphale- he knew he couldn’t stay away forever. Crowley drove back to Orlando, parked the car back where he’d found it, cursed cars with steering wheels on the left, and got a flight back to London-Heathrow.

Well, technically, Crowley did have something to show for himself, but he wasn’t sure it would work. George had made a comment about how landing on the moon could backfire, it might be a show of dominance to other countries at the risk of pissing them off, and the nuclear bombs might start falling again. Crowley was fairly sure that if Apollo was successful, it wouldn’t be seen like that, but there was always this fear about it.

“Maybe you’re thinking about it the wrong way. Maybe the States need to be more aggressive. America should claim the moon for themselves, put the flag on the surface or something.”

Not that Crowley thought it would go anywhere, but George Victor must’ve told somebody else before Crowley wiped George Victor’s memory. Crowley would just have to wait to see it came to fruition. He hoped not, the idea of the americans ‘claiming’ the moon seemed odd, but he’d just have to wait.

JULY 15th, 1969, LONDON

A flight back to London, of course, and Crowley had learned some stuff about astronomy during his time, which was better than having gotten nothing done. He flattened some people’s tires before he left, a fantastically demonic and sinful act.

In a bar, thinking about how a temptation had gone wrong in June, Crowley mumbled to himself and looked around the building. He’d gone to see a movie earlier that day, and it felt like the movie was screaming out to him, TALK TO AZIRAPHALE. Maybe something had reminded him of George Victor. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get the angel out of his thoughts.

Being a mature and responsible demon, Crowley hid those thoughts deep down and tried not to think anymore about Aziraphale.

JULY 16TH, 1969, CROWLEY’S FLAT

Watering your plants while irritable wasn’t fun, Crowley almost wound up talking to himself in his empty flat. He kept turning the telly on and off, seeing if there was any news about the moon launch. When the time came, Crowley sat very still, on his uncomfortable couch, and watched the broadcast. He was completely silent, snakeskin boots on the couch, hugging a pillow. Sunglasses off.

Crowley had dreams about making the stars in Heaven that night, all those years ago.

JULY 20TH 1969

Any available telly had been crowded around almost every hour since the launch a couple of days ago. Usually, any bar that Crowley went to would be filled with loud chatter, but it was all hushed whispers as the BBC reported on three tellies in the building how the mission had gone so far, showed interviews from american scientists at NASA, and had a feature about the personal lives of all of the astronauts.

Poor footage from Apollo 11 was being shown. The talking got louder as time went on. Crowley was sitting in the Dirty Donkey, a pub he wasn’t a stranger in. Impulsively, Crowley rushed to a telephone box across the street and dialed Aziraphale’s number.

“Crowley?”

“Aziraphale, where are you? Actually, doesn’t matter. Find a telly. Any telly. Just a close one. You live in Soho, there must be one in a nearby. I don’t care if you need to break into someone’s house, but you need to find a telly.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand-”

“Aziraphale.”

“Okay. I’ll find a telly. What channel would I be looking at? I still don’t understand what I’m going to be watching.”

The demon in the phonebox took a deep breath. “Find the BBC, it won’t be hard. It’s the moon landing.”

“Moon landing?”

“Yes, moon landing!”

There’s some silence.

“I’ll find a television set, dear boy, and call you back.”

“Wait!-”

Aziraphale hangs up.

That hurt. Crowley walked back across the street, and sat down in a seat. Quiet as a mouse, Crowley watched the start of the landing at The Dirty Donkey. The nearest phone was the telephone box across the street, so he didn’t know if Aziraphale was watching it at all.

Entirely captivated by the low-res footage, Crowley didn’t acknowledge the hand on his shoulder. “Hey.”

Aziraphale.

“Mind if I join you?” This startled Crowley, suddenly looking up. Everyone in the bar shushed him, and Crowley patted the seat next to him welcomingly.

“I don’t mind at all. Sit down.”

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

1- “I’ll talk about this later. Hang tight. “

2- “Relatively. Couple of hundred astronomical units.”

3- “He hadn’t had any influence on Thomas Edison. Humans and electricity were a match made...somewhere.”

4- “ Heaven doesn't use measurements as stupid as miles.”

5- “Crowley was under the impression Aziraphale had never lied to him. There were moments like “We’re not friends!” or “I’m fine.” but Aziraphale usually said it in a way that was obvious he was lying. He would be stressed, or cold, and very unlike himself. But Crowley was 100% sure Aziraphale didn’t lie to him about important things. He had 100% certainty the water in the thermos was holy. This assumption (the first one) was wrong, Aziraphale had lied to Crowley with a straight face in the past and Crowley totally believed him. Aziraphale did feel bad about lying. Not because lying was wrong, but because he was lying to Crowley.”

6- “Crowley didn’t expect miracles to work on the headache. Therefore, they didn’t. He still tried, but he never expected it to work. Do the math.”

7- “You may be asking, if Crowley expected the steering wheel to be on the right, why didn’t the car behave accordingly? Some things are beyond demonic magic because they’re genuinely that horrible. This is a common theme in the United States. American things being ‘genuinely that horrible.’”

8- “Planet of the Apes is still, to this day, one of Crowley’s favourite movies. He doesn’t like it more than any of the James Bond movies, though. 21st century Crowley happens to like Tony Stark.”

#good omens #Ineffable Husbands #crowley #Aziraphale #I have the whole thing on a google doc and it didnt transfer that text was in italics so i had to go back and make things in italics

12 notes · View notes

per-ineptia-ad-astra · 5 years

Text

Star Trek Gold Key #30: Death Of A Star

Our story begins with an old woman doing something mysterious, which on its own wouldn’t be terribly foreboding, but of course, we can’t possibly start a Gold Key comic with anything less than imminent danger lest the readers feel they haven’t gotten their money’s worth, so she’s also about to explode. Or so Kirk tells us, anyway. How he came to this conclusion I’m not sure.

[ID: A comic splash page titled STAR TREK: DEATH OF A STAR PART 1. A narration box at the top reads, “Trapped on a veritable keg of cosmic dynamite, Captain Kirk and the Star Trek crew become an unwilling captive audience to the most shattering spectacle in all the galaxy: a star going nova! But the natural cataclysm takes on tragic overtones when a mysterious old woman’s life is mystically linked to...a strange cosmic force!” In the foreground Kirk and Chapel are holding their arms out, facing away from the camera and looking toward Spock and an old woman wearing orange and yellow robes, who is touching Spock’s forehead; swirls of red and yellow are spiraling away from the old woman. Chapel is saying, “Captain! What is happening to her?” Kirk is saying, “I’m not sure, Nurse, but I think she is going to explode!”]

Kudos to the narration box up there for its use of the excellent term “a veritable keg of cosmic dynamite” although “But the natural cataclysm takes on tragic overtones when a mysterious old woman’s life is mystically linked to a strange cosmic force!” sounds like a sentence that someone started out saying without knowing quite how it was going to end.

So, what’s the Enterprise crew done now that’s somehow resulted in an old woman spontaneously combusting? It begins, as usual, with a captain’s log. “Our mission,” Kirk tells us, “is to study and record, from a safe distance, the final death throe of the star Isis. According to our calculations, this gem of space has only 48 hours before it explodes, destroying everything for billions upon billions of cubic miles. Fortunately, its solar system is uninhabited!”

So a star is due to go supernova and they’re going to park somewhere at a safe distance and watch the fireworks. Cool. How close is a safe distance? At least billions upon billions of cubic miles away, apparently, since, sure, we definitely measure astronomical distances in cubic miles. I sure don’t know how far back you have to stand from a supernova to avoid getting turned into a cloud of nicely toasted atoms, but apparently the material being ejected from the star can travel at speeds up to 10% lightspeed, or about thirty thousand kilometers per second. Exactly how fast the various warp factors are is all over the place, but we know warp one is lightspeed. So the Enterprise can outrun a supernova, if it gets going in time. Let’s give a generous safety estimate and say it takes a minute to go to warp. At thirty thousand kilometers a second, in the space of that minute the ejecta, or in scientific terms, the Big Hot Cloud of Death, could travel about 1,800,000 kilometers, so theoretically they’ll be safe if they hang farther back than that. For comparison, one Astronomical Unit, defined as the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, is about 150 million kilometers. Astronomically speaking, they could get within spitting distance of this star and call it a safe point. I mean, they probably shouldn’t. But they could.

Anyway, while they’re hanging out waiting for the show to start, Sulu suddenly reports that he’s getting “readings of humanoid life-forms from Isis III!” Spock is dubious.

[ID: Two comic panels. In the first, Kirk is sitting in his captain’s chair saying, “What do you make of that, Mr. Spock?” Spock, standing next to him with his hands on his hips, is saying, “Highly unlikely, captain! Earlier, and much more thorough sensor scans suggest no such signs of life!” In the second panel Kirk is saying, “But you don’t deny that these readings are genuine?” and Spock replies, “Most likely a malfunction in the system, captain! The chances are 87.663125 to 1 in favor of it!”]

love Spock’s pose in the first panel there

Kirk isn’t having it. “When that ‘1’ may be a human life, I consider the odds even!” he declares, somehow jumping to the conclusion that because the life signs are humanoid they must be human, even though practically everybody in this galaxy is humanoid. Point is, he intends to check this out, so he tells Uhuru to get a fix on the sensor readings. Which is not her job, and also, not her name.

[ID: Kirk half-turning to Uhura, who is sitting at her station, and saying, “Lt. Uhuru, get me a fix on those readings!” Uhura says, “Roger!”]

THIS IS THE THIRD TIME, GUYS, COME ON IT’S JUST NOT THAT DIFFICULT

Kirk then orders Sulu to set a course for Isis III. Spock quite sensibly points out that even if the sensors are right and there are people down there, they can’t evacuate a whole planet in the forty-eight hours before the star blows. Kirk isn’t having that either.

[ID: Kirk pointing at Spock, whose ears are drawn abnormally large in profile, and saying, “We can try!” Someone off-panel is saying, “Captain?”]

“Captain, that statement is so ludicrous it made my ears stand up straight!”

So last issue, the scanners reported no life signs, so they sent a landing party down to check. This issue, the scanners are reporting life signs, which Spock says must be a malfunction, so they’re going to send a landing party down to check. I’m starting to wonder why they even bother scanning for life in the first place if they’re so determined to go down and check anyway.

Meanwhile, Uhura has a report on the upcoming planet. I’d question how she got sensor data at the communications station, but as this panel demonstrates, whoever drew this clearly never saw the actual bridge set, so perhaps it’s a bit much to expect whoever wrote it to remember what everyone’s jobs are. Or their ethnicites. Not only is Uhura white once again, they didn’t even color in her earring separately, which results in a somewhat disturbing image.

[ID: Uhura, colored with a pale Caucasian skin tone, looking out over the bridge, where Kirk is sitting in a bright pink chair, and in front of him two helm officers are sitting at a control panel. A viewscreen is visible at the end of the bridge, with several computer screens below it. Uhura is saying, “Class M planet, sir! Capable of supporting human life! Sensors indicate a massive life-force, suggesting a large population! I don’t understand how Federation probes could have missed them!” Her large hoop earring is colored the same as her skin, making it appear to be part of her ear.]

Man, gauges got kinda extreme by the twenty-third century.

Uhura goes on to report that she has a fix on the life signs, but it’s weird, because “All the life-force is emanating from one spot as if the entire population were on the head of a pin!” “Perhaps that’s why your earlier probes missed them, Spock!” Kirk comments. “They’re either midgets...or angels!” Spock then starts to give the odds against this before Kirk cuts him off. Yes. Hilarious.

Kirk tells Uhuru (sigh) to get ready to beam down with him and Spock, and to inform Chapel that she’s coming with too. “She has proven to be of invaluable assistance on past missions!” he explains, and I use the term ‘explains’ loosely.

The unorthodox landing party is soon ready to beam out, although that might prove to be difficult because apparently a terrible transporter accident has fused the bridge and the transporter room together.

[ID: Two panels. In the first, Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chapel are standing on the transporter pad, with Sulu and Scotty looking at some screens in the foreground. Kirk is saying, “Sulu, how much of a safety factor do we have?” Sulu replies, “24 hours, sir!” In the second panel, Kirk is leaning in and saying, “Scotty, I want you to wait precisely 23 hours, 59 minutes for us and then warp out of her immediately!” Scotty, who is sitting at what looks like one of the bridge stations, says, “Aye, aye, captain!”]

WHERE ARE WE

So...unless it took them twenty-four hours to get that landing party ready, they still have forty-eight hours before the sun goes nova. I’m not sure exactly what Sulu’s ‘safety factor’ means, but I’m guessing he means the buffer of extra time they’ve allotted to make sure they can get out of there before things get really dangerous. Which means Kirk is telling Scotty to leave...one minute before they have twenty-four hours before the sun explodes?

Having left those baffling instructions in their wake, the landing party beams down, and has the perfunctory exchange of comments.

[ID: Chapel, Uhura, Spock and Kirk standing against a dull purplish-gray sky with some foliage creeping into the panel on the right. A narration box says, “Soon…” Chapel is saying, “Wow! I’ll never get used to that sensation!” Uhura says, “Nor to the sight of a new world! Amazing! That sky!” Spock says, “Atmospheric conditions are caused by pre-nova solar activity!” Kirk says, “We’re not here to sight-see!”]

Wow, that sky. Breathtaking. Incredible. I’m in awe.

After reminding everyone that they are not here to sight-see, they’re here to save a WORLD! Kirk asks Chapel where they should be going, since their landing site is mysteriously devoid of all the people they were expecting to find there. Chapel says she doesn’t know because the atmosphere is scrambling her equipment. Dang Federation technology gets scrambled the moment you take it out of the packaging.

Uhura and Spock then have a baffling exchange in which she comments that she “feel[s] like we’d been plopped down on a “Doomsday Earth” movie set!” and Spock replies “For all intents and purposes, we have, Lieutenant!” I’m not sure if Spock understands what a movie set is. Or possibly I don’t understand what a movie set is, or at least what a “Doomsday Earth” movie set is. Ultimately it’s irrelevant though, because the conversation is cut off by Spock getting attacked by a giant cloud of spray cheese.

[ID: A tall panel in which Uhura is yelling, “Look out!” and pushing Spock out of the way of a beam of yellow energy strikes down from the sky in front of him with a “PHFFAZZZ!”]

Kirk declares that “Whatever we do, we better get out of HERE, fast!” and takes off running, but Spock grabs him and pulls him in the other direction; turns out that somehow in the past five seconds or so that Kirk was occupied, the rest of the landing party found a path. Which Kirk is pretty sure wasn’t there before, but there’s no time to deliberate on that, with more spray cheese energy bolts on their tail.

[ID: Kirk, Chapel, Uhura and Spock running through some woods with bolts of energy striking all around them, making “PAHZAZ!” “PHFFFZING!” and “PAHZOWIE!” noises.]

“Don’t ask, captain! Just keep moving!” Spock says. But Kirk, of course, isn’t going to let a little thing like running for his life distract him from asking questions. “I don’t like it, Mr. Spock!” he declares as they charge through the bolts. “This path from nowhere! These bolts just missing! It’s as if someone were herding us somewhere! But where?”

Fortunately we don’t have long to wait for the answer to that question, because in the very next panel Chapel points out a rather attention-grabbing landmark up ahead.

[ID: A full page containing mostly one large panel with two smaller ones, inset at the top and bottom. In the top panel, Chapel is pointing into the distance and saying, “Perhaps there, captain!” while Uhura, behind her, says, “Goodness!” In the main panel, the landing party is looking through a tangle of trees towards a large angular pyramid-like building with two flights of steps leading up to the top and a door inset under an archway in front. A yellow triangle with an eye symbol in the middle is hovering above it. Uhura is saying, “What is it, captain?” Kirk says, “I was just going to ask Spock that!” Spock says, “It appears to be a religious temple!” In the bottom right panel, the group has gathered around the door of the building. Uhura is saying, “It reminds me of ancient temples to the sun!” Chapel is saying, “Captain! My sensor’s going crazy! There must be an army inside there!”]

alright, who summoned Bill Cipher

I appreciate that Kirk’s first reaction to seeing this thing was going to be asking Spock, who has exactly the same amount of information about it as Kirk does, what it is. Which I’m not sure is a great idea in this case, because Spock’s over there leaping to some big ol conclusions. Sure, that could be a religious temple, but it could just as easily be a tomb, a dwelling, a government building, hell it could be an artfully decorated grain silo. There’s no way to know just by looking at the outside of it! Geez, keep this guy away from archaeological sites.

Kirk declares that they’re going inside the temple, since that’s quite obviously the intended way to advance the adventure. Chapel protests that they might be walking into a trap, but Kirk says they don’t have much choice—the path they came by has disappeared again. Oh, so this is definitely a trap, then. Kirk orders them all to put their phasers on stun and aim them at the door, presumably intending to stun the door into submission. But before anyone can fire, the door opens on its own.

[ID: Two panels. In the first, the landing party is gathered around the doors, which appear to be opening on their own, while a voice from within calls, “WELCOME! BEINGS OF EARTH...AND WATER!” Chapel says, “That voice! Like a light in my head!” In the second panel, we see through the doors to where an indistinct robed figure is sitting in a tall chair surrounded by curtains, saying, “Enter the temple of the sun! Home of the sun-god incarnate! Enter crew of the Enterprise!” Someone offscreen says, “Incredible!”]

Huh.

Foregoing all thought of this being a trap, Kirk strolls on in through the door, the better to put his hand to his chest dramatically and say, “You—you know us???”

“You are not the only ones with “eyes,” captain!” the robed woman replies, in a rather disconcerting use of quotation marks. “I saw you out there...watching! You were curious about me, so I, in turn, am curious about you!”

Kirk asks if she’s aware that she and the rest of her people are in some serious danger, but she’s not fazed in the least: “I know that my time grows short! As does everyone’s and every thing’s!” “But you don’t have to die!” Kirk says. “We can save you! We can take you aboard our...boat in the sky! And take you to a safe place!” Smooth, Kirk.

The woman only says that she did not summon them there to save her. “You wished to see me die,” she says, “I give you your chance!” This thoroughly baffles everyone in the landing party, since last time they checked no one summoned them here at all. Evidently they’ve missed something.

[ID: Kirk approaches up the steps towards the woman sitting on the throne, who is draped in a yellow cloak with a red head covering. Kirk is saying, “Look, I don’t know where you got the idea we came to watch you die, but maybe the rest of your people aren’t so eager! Where are they?” The woman says, “Alas, they left but moments before you arrived!”]

Or we could just decide the old woman is the one who’s wrong, that works too.

Kirk asks where all these people left to, and the woman points off somewhere and says, “There! From whence they came!” Helpful. Kirk wonders if this means they’re all dead and buried and the woman is the last of her race, but Chapel says she’s still picking up a huge amount of life-force from around the temple, more than one person could account for. I’m still trying to figure out how the heck their sensors are quantifying ‘life-force.’ I mean life signs, I could understand life signs, I could understand detecting, say, heartbeats or respiration or a thermal signature, but apparently Chapel’s just straight up got some kind of aura reader over there.

Kirk—very dramatically—asks the woman just who she is. She tells him.

[ID: The landing party stand in a line looking at the woman, who is extending her hands upward and saying, “I am the warmth! I am the light! I am the giver! I am the protector! I am Isis, the god of the sun!” Kirk is thinking, “You’re also a warp four loony!”]

Nice, Kirk, very diplomatic thought bubble there. The use of ‘warp four’ there also implies a scale of looniness that goes up to at least seven.

Kirk asks Spock what he thinks of Isis. Spock refrains from giving any rankings of looniness, only speculating that perhaps she was left here as a sacrifice. So we’re just dismissing the god theory out of hand, huh? Ordinarily that would be considered a reasonable enough decision, but you guys have already met several beings who may not necessarily have been divine from a theological standpoint but sure had enough power to make that pretty much a moot point. I’m just saying, if I’d personally encountered folks like the Metrons, the Thasians, Trelane and his parents, etc, I’d at least take a minute to hear out anyone else who told me they were a god, just to save any nasty surprises down the line.

But instead, Kirk tells Chapel to stay with Isis—not for any particular reason that he feels like explaining—while the rest of the party goes out to look around some more. “The other inhabitants must be around here someplace,” he says as they walk outside, “and we are going to find them!”

Uhura points out that the path is still gone, but this doesn’t bother Kirk. Not because it is usually actually possible to walk through woodland without a path (sometimes unpleasant, but usually possible) but because hey, they’ve got phasers, so they can make a path. He tells the other two to set theirs to ‘heat blasts. I didn’t realize that was an option for phasers.

[ID: Spock, Kirk and Uhura firing their phasers into a copse of trees with a ‘PHFFFIZZZZZLE!’ Kirk is saying, “Fire!” Spock says, “Captain! Nothing! Our phasers don’t fire!” Uhura says, “I think….we’re being….surrounded.”]

And evidently, I was right about that.

I don’t know what Uhura thinks is surrounding them that requires such heavy use of ellipses, but Kirk yells for everyone to get back inside, then throws his phaser at a tree for good measure. But once back inside, they find Chapel passed out on the floor. Uhura, who is not a nurse or doctor, and is using no tricorder or other medical equipment, nevertheless manages to instantly identify the problem as sunstroke. Kirk is so distraught by this that his hand starts mutating.

[ID: Kirk gesturing towards Spock with one arm bent in an unnatural position to put his hand on his head, his thumb inexplicably large and also at a wrong angle. Kirk says, “What’s going on around here??? Has this world gone crazy! Beam us out of here, Spock! Now!” Spock says, “I can’t captain! Solar flares are interfering with communications to our ship!”]

you okay there buddy

“I fear we are trapped here, Captain!” Spock declares. Oh, what a surprise.

[ID: A splash page titled STAR TREK: DEATH OF A STAR: PART 2. It shows the Enterprise orbiting a planet with a bright sun in the distance. A narration box at the top reads, “Captain’s Log, supplemental: While the Enterprise orbits helplessly overhead, due to interference from the near-nova sun, we are trapped on a planet marked for doom! Our desperate search for Isis III’s mysterious inhabitants has only led us to a strange old woman! But now I have a more immediate concern than saving the lives of the inhabitants—namely, saving the lives of the crew and myself!” Below that a smaller narration box reads, “On the Enterprise...” Two speech bubbles are coming from the Enterprise, one reading, “Are you sure about these figures this time, laddie?” and the other one, “I’ve checked and double checked everything, Scotty!”]

Part two begins with Scotty harassing Sulu in an exchange so generic you could probably stick the dialogue into a good half of all TOS episodes with barely any variation. “I hope you reach the captain before it’s too late for all of us!” Scotty says, to which Sulu replies, “I’m trying but something down there is interfering!” Having established this very important bit of information about what the people back on the ship are getting up to, we immediately leave them behind again and get back to the planet.

Kirk helps Chapel up, or at least, he kneels beside her and says, “Are you feeling better, nurse?” Yes, Chapel says, she’s fine now, but she doesn’t know what happened—she just fainted. No worries, low blood sugar happens to the best of us.

But Kirk isn’t satisfied with that. “You!” he shouts at Isis. “You’re behind all this, somehow, aren’t you?!” Unconcerned as ever, Isis replies, “You have come to record my death! So be it! But on my terms!”

Rather than make any effort to engage with her to figure out what she means, Kirk declares that this whole thing is hopeless-- “trapped on a sinking ship with a lunatic!” That’s what I love about Kirk, he’s so sensitive and respectful. But Spock has had an idea. Maybe, he says, when Isis said her people were “down there” she meant it literally. Perhaps they’re underground, in some sort of shelter. Wait...you mean, it’s possible that Isis could actually have meant what she said? I dunno about that, man. I mean, what she said didn’t immediately make sense to us, so I’m pretty sure it must be total nonsense.

But there’s not much else for them to do, so Kirk has Uhuru (sigh) and Chapel stay behind to try and get “some sense out of Isis” while he and Spock go looking for some kind of passage or tunnel around this joint. It takes all of one panel before Spock locates the incredibly obvious switch on the wall that opens a secret door.

[ID: Kirk and Spock standing in a long stone corridor, facing the wall. Spock is pressing on a large panel engraved with a triangle-eye symbol, which makes a CLICK! He says, “Captain! Come quick! I believe I have found a way to our “Lost Isisians!” Between him and Kirk a door is opening in the wall with a ‘HYMMMMMMMM MMMMMM’.]

For an extremely loose definition of ‘secret’, anyway.

While Spock and Kirk are off making their Perception checks, Isis, having finally gotten rid of that annoying guy who keeps shouting at her whenever she tries to say anything, leads Uhura and Chapel out on a walk in the garden, because “There is much yet to say and little time to say it!” As they head outside, some mysterious lights appear.

[ID: Chapel and Uhura flanking Isis, each with a hand on her back, leading her down a path through some greenery. A line of sparkling orbs is snaking around the three women.]

That’s probably fine.

Meanwhile, Spock is showing off his discovery to Kirk, when suddenly...uh, actually, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. I guess either the switch opened up the door in the wall and then a second door in the floor underneath them, or else they both just tripped and fell through the first door.

[ID: Three panels. On the top left, Kirk and Spock are looking at the door opening into the wall. A narration box leads, “Suddenly, while Mr. Spock investigates...” Kirk says, “What is it, Mr. Spock? What have you found!” Spock says, “Very simple, Captain. This “eye” seems to operate some kind of…..” On the right, a long panel shows Kirk and Spock falling into an abyss, Spock yelling, “...TRAP DOOOOR!” while Kirk yells, “WE’RE FLOATING! SPOCK!” On the bottom left, Kirk and Spock have landed in a cave. Spock says, “Though the odds were against it, there must have been a second passageway below our feet!” Kirk says, “Odds or no odds…..”]

What do you mean, the odds were against it? Spock, I don’t know if you’ve been playing too much Oblivion lately or what, but the architectural features of most buildings are not randomly generated. People either put doors in places or they don’t, there’s not just like a 30% chance of a trapdoor spawning in any given location.

But regardless of how the passage got there, they’ve clearly happened upon something significant. Or, as Kirk puts it:

[ID: Kirk and Spock look out through the cavern at a large underground city in the distance. Kirk puts his hand on Spock’s shoulder and says, “You’ve hit the jackpot, Mr. Spock!”]

Any hopes of locating a friendly NPC and getting some exposition about this weird place are quickly dashed, though, because closer examination reveals the city to be a thoroughly abandoned ruin. As they explore, Kirk wonders once again where everyone went, and why they left Isis behind. Luckily, Spock happens to stumble upon a room that has exactly what they need.

[ID: Three panels. On the top left, Spock is beckoning Kirk into a room that contains a pile of tapes and other junk in the corner. Spock says, “Perhaps these will tell us, captain!” Kirk says, “What have you got there, Mr. Spock?” In the right panel, Spock and Kirk look towards the tapes, each with a glowing spot on their forehead. Spock says, “They appear to be history tapes, captain!” Kirk says, “I can hear them, see them inside my head!” In the bottom panel, the light on Kirk’s head projects an image of a planet in space with a sun shining in the distance and a triangle with an eye hanging above the planet. A disembodied narrator says, “At first there was only “the eye”, Isis!”]

Well that’s an unorthodox method of data storage.

The tapes go on to explain how Isis—represented here by an Eye of Providence for some reason-- created life on the planet, inasmuch as the word ‘explain’ can be used to mean ‘somehow made things even more confusing than they were to begin with.’

[ID: Four panels. On the top left, a red sun is shining above a jungle, with the pyramid floating above it all. The narrator says, “And ISIS looked down on our world and saw that there was no light!” On the top right, the pyramid floats above the planet with a stream of tiny yellow eyes falling from it onto the planet, while the narrator says, “So Isis seeded the earth with her eyes!” On the bottom left, the eyes fall onto the ground, and a fuzzy red humanoid figure emerges from the earth. “And there-in rose up a people called Isisians!” On the bottom right, the figure looks up at the sun, which now has the pyramid in it. “And when they looked up there was light! For Isis now lived among them!”]

I’m...assuming this is some kind of metaphor, but it might make just as much sense either way.

Anyway, the Isisians (try saying that one three times fast) built the temple to house Isis, who proceeded to stay there to be with her children on the planet. Everything was great for a while, but “all things must pass! Even peoples! Even suns!”

[ID: A panel showing several figures gathered around the temple as the pyramid jumps up into the sky while the narrator says “And thus it came time for Isis to return to the sky, taking with her the gifts of life and light!”]

“alright my children it’s been fun but I gotta bounce byyyeeeeee”

The narrator (do you think they got some famous Isisian VA to do this?) concludes by relating that “in the twilight of our race, we have groped blindly underground to make this our final resting place! Yet we are not bitter! We are sad! For one day Isis too must give up the eye and pass! Thus ends our story! Thus ends our race!” So, what, they recorded their entire history and just left it laying around on a tape in some random room before they all went extinct? Were they intending for someone to come find this someday as a last record of them or did they just do it for kicks?

Well, anyway, Kirk is impressed. “Am I correct in assuming, Spock, that we have heard the legend of a people long since extinct?” he asks. “25 million years extinct, Captain, if my estimate is accurate!” Spock replies. Your...your estimate? Your estimate based on what, exactly? Did you just look around the city and go “hmmm yeah this looks about 25 million years old” or what? Also, that is one hell of a sturdy record tape that’s still fully functional 25 million years later. Can I get one of those anywhere? Cause I’ve had this harddrive for like five years and it’s starting to go on me.

Back up on the ship, Sulu is being pointed at so dramatically he’s having to lean back to get out of the way.

[ID: A panel showing the Enterprise bridge, with a narration box reading “Meanwhile, on board the Enterprise...” Scotty is pointing dramatically at Sulu, saying, “Still no luck, Sulu?” Sulu, only his head visible at an awkward angle in the corner of the panel, is saying, “No sir!”]

Scotty proceeds to explain to Sulu, who presumably already knows all this, that “Ya got tah raise ‘em, laddie! When the captain beamed down we told him he had twenty-four hours! But that was a mistake! That blasted star could go at any minute according to our new figures! If we stay, the whole ship’s in danger! If we go….” That’s all in one panel, by the way—there’s barely room for his head left under the speech bubble.

Having delivered his exposition, there’s not much left for Scotty to do but tell Sulu to keep doing what he’s been doing. Meanwhile, we’re told that Spock and Kirk “returned to the surface via the transport tube.” Ah yes, the transport tube. The transport tube that was definitely clearly established before that panel. That transport tube. Oh, and Uhura tells them she no longer wishes to change Isis’s mind.

[ID: Spock, Kirk, Uhura and Chapel standing in front of some trees and bushes, while Isis stands in the right corner. Kirk is saying, “You what??” Chapel says, “We no longer wish to change her mind, captain! We respect her right to die!” Uhura says, “She has a kind of nobility, sir! A soul! I have a tremendous empathy for her!”]

What, did you not think she had a soul before?

Kirk, apparently, takes quite a hard line on the whole right to die debate, because he immediately accuses Isis of bewitching his crewmembers. “See if you can reason with Isis!” he tells Spock, having made absolutely no attempt to reason with Isis. “I give up!”

Spock says he’ll try, but “logic rarely works on humans!” He then confronts Isis on how she earlier claimed that her people left just moments ago, “Yet there have been no humans on this world for millions of years! How do you explain that?” Which is an odd thing to say, considering that the images of the Isisians we saw were quite clearly not humans, yet Spock’s first statement rules out the idea of him using ‘human’ as a catchall term for sapient lifeforms. Evidently Spock’s definition of ‘human’ is ‘everybody in the galaxy that’s not a Vulcan.’

“So you have heard the legend of Isis?” Isis says, still as unperturbed as ever. “What do you think of it?” “An interesting folk tale!” Spock replies. Evidently this was not the right answer.

[ID: Spock and Isis stand in the background, Isis with one hand on Spock’s forehead, as she says, “Your logic is a cage, Mr. Spock! Come closer and let me set you free!” Red and yellow swirls are extending out from her in all directions. In the foreground, Chapel, Uhura and Kirk are watching. Uhura says, “Captain? What’s happening to her?” Kirk, leaning away in alarm, says, “I don’t know! It looks like...yes! That’s it!”]

What? What is it? What’s happening? Is she...no, she couldn’t be...

[ID: A tall panel showing the pyramid of Isis at the top with red and yellow light/flames emanating from it as the four landing party members float in the air. Isis says, “Farewell! Kirk says, “ISIS IS EXPLO...”]

Hmm, still not sure what’s going on. Could we get that confirmed one more time, please?

[ID: A panel on the Enterprise bridge, with a narration box reading, “On the Enterprise...” Sulu is standing up from his helm panel, saying, “The planet is exploding right now, sir!” Scotty rises from his own chair and says, “Then it’s...”]

cool thanks

Before Scotty can get the bagpipes out for a funeral dirge, our brave heroes are whisked onto the bridge, remarkably unexploded. For another few seconds, at least.

[ID: Three panels. On the top right, a narration box reads “At that exact instant...” above Chapel, Uhura, Kirk and Spock appearing on the bridge in a flash of light. Scotty, in the foreground, exclaims, “Captain Kirk! Spock!! Uhura! Chapel! How??” Someone in the landing party says, “Oooo! What’s happening? Am I dreaming?” On the bottom left, Scotty throws out his hands towards Sulu, saying, “Sulu! Warp eight! Immediately!” while Sulu says, “It’s...too...” On the bottom right, Sulu yells, “...Late! Ugh!” as explosions rock the bridge with ‘OOF!’ and ‘EEEEEEEEE!’ sounds and the helm shorts out with a ‘BZZZZT!’]

well maybe we would’ve had time if Scotty hadn’t stood around shouting the names of every single person in the landing party

And then the planet explodes. Hang on, I thought it was the sun that was exploding? Man, supernovas are confusing.

Luckily for the Enterprise, it turns out supernovas are also remarkably like hurricanes.

[ID: A large panel showing the Enterprise caught in a stream of energy from the pyramid of Isis as rocks and flame explode out from it. A narration box at the top reads, “The Enterprise is buffeted like a paper airplane in a hurricane as the force of a billion atomic bombs washes over it! Yet, like a hurricane, there is a place of calm in the center of the violence and the Enterprise, as though guided by some unseen protector, rides out the storm...in “the eye” of the hurricane!”]

Or, to put things less poetically:

[ID: The Enterprise bridge filled with smoke, a narration box reading “Suddenly...” Scotty, looking up with a stunned expression, says, “It’s a miracle! We’re saved! We’re in some sort of space pocket!”]

is that like a hot pocket

Unconcerned by the smoke now filling the bridge, Scotty asks Kirk what happened down on the planet. “I’m not sure, Scotty!” Kirk says, speaking for the audience. He asks Spock what he saw when Isis touched his forehead. Spock replies that he “felt...er...admiration, captain! And I saw things...inconceivable things! And I saw that a star had taken on human form in its final hours, so that it could talk to us!”

“You mean that Isis really was Isis?” Uhura exclaims. “It does explain a lot of things, lieutenant!” Kirk says. “Like how she could use the planet’s resources against us! And how she was able to block communications!” ...does it explain those things? Can stars usually control planets? Did I miss that episode of Cosmos?

As the Enterprise flies off, Kirk wonders if this means that stars really are living beings. “From what I glimpsed, captain, they may be more “alive” than we are!” Spock replies.

[ID: The Enterprise flies away with star-filled space on its right and a blue sky with a large sun on its left. A speech bubble from the ship reads, “Mr. Spock, next time we’re in the vicinity, remind me to have a long chat with our “lucky ole sun”, will you?”]

I dunno man, it didn’t go super well when they tried it in that Doctor Who episode.

And so ends another issue, with yet another planet destroyed. There’s not gonna be many planets left by the time this series ends. At least they didn’t start any wars on this one first, although I’m sure if there had been more than one person down there they would have found a way.

#star trek #star trek gold key #recap tag #star trek gold key recaps #GK 30 Death of a Star

21 notes · View notes

mysteriousplanchette · 5 years

Photo

The Harbinger of Light is an Australian Spiritualist newspaper that ran from 1870-1954, and has always proved an elusive best for my peers and I at IAPSOP (that’s the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritual and Occult Periodicals, and yes it’s a real thing). Of that mind-boggling long run, our digital archives have only 27 issues, most from the mid-1870s, when medium William Henry Terry was the editor. But as elusive as the newspaper is, it was never *this* elusive, because apparently the organization manufactured a planchette that, until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know existed! And here it is: the Harbinger of Light Planchette & Ouija Board! That’s a bit of a misnomer, because the Ouija in this set constitutes little more than the instructional sheet on how to build your own, which I’ve included in the foreground, but the planchette itself is a wonderful little fellow, somewhat cobbled together, but serviceable enough. The wood is unvarnished, and in the decline of the writing pantograph’s popularity by the 1920-30s, there was no longer a source for those wonderfully stilted brass-and-bone-wheeled castors so common to earlier planchettes. So instead it gets some dubiously-fitted ball bearing furniture castors that are really ill-suited for this sort of thing, but manage to work wonderfully. The pencil is still included, but the rubber washer that once held it long gone and replaced with some book-binding tape, which is in itself fantastic in that it reveals my favorite discovery when acquiring a new planchette—it was *used*! A lovely addition to the collection, and a testament that there’s always something waiting that my research hasn’t yet discovered. #planchette #ouija #talkingboard #spiritscribbles #spiritualism #automaticwriting #ghostwriter #woodporn #pastpresentfuture #seance #occult #psychic #harbingeroflight https://www.instagram.com/p/BrkkRrqFj6c/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=w8aefxa82dxt

#planchette #ouija #talkingboard #spiritscribbles #spiritualism #automaticwriting #ghostwriter #woodporn #pastpresentfuture #seance #occult #psychic #harbingeroflight

17 notes · View notes

straykatfish · 4 years

Text

There are two main parts to this task, the first being to review all my landscape paintings to consider which have been the most appealing.

This is my collection from the current module and what strikes me is the colours; I am not subtle! With the exception of the hand sanitisers (group 2 – large image), the piece of wood (group 3, top left), and the two sea front pieces (group 3, top right and bottom left), they are all some way off naturalistic. The ones that appeal to me most from a visual point of view are the hand sanitisers because that was a re-purposing of an existing painting (Evening landscape with two men by Caspar David Friedrich c 1830/35); the rather other-worldly landscape from my own photo top left in the same group; and the final one (group 1, top left) because of the relatively close approximation to the reference photo but with a selectivity and palette adjustment I wouldn’t have made before. I’m quite fond of the first two swans (group 1, top right) too but that’s hardly a landscape!

I have often made two pieces in response to an exercise and almost always the second has felt better. Exceptions are the landscape in group 1, bottom right because I didn’t feel I had pulled off the impression I had in mind and ended up over-working it; and the fragmented piece using, literally, the palette I had used for the first (group 2, bottom left) which is so wildly different from the original that I don’t know how to classify it. Quite where this leaves me in relation to this assignment isn’t clear, but I know that every one of these pieces has built on every previous piece and I expect that will be the case for the assignment.

The second requirement is to make a landscape painting of ‘around 90 cm x 60 cm’ which is about the size of an A1 board (84 cm x 60 cm). This can be begun in situ, that is, outside and completed indoors, or it can be built from previous studies, reference photos, and notes. Working outdoors which would be an issue even without a pandemic but the size requirement is not an issue as many of my ‘sketches’ are A1. I am considering some way of addressing the ‘or larger’ component of the instruction; can I make a larger piece by painting a number of smaller pieces to be assembled, or maybe find a way to paint on a roll of wrapping paper taped to the door?

Searching my stock of photos, I came across some from 2015 that changed my ideas about what to do. They’re of the memorial flowers on the footbridge at Shoreham-by-Sea that appeared in their thousands overnight following the crash of a display jet onto the A27 which killed eleven people, and I wanted to go with that as the focus rather than an experimental effort.

The people, all men, killed were in their cars or on bikes at the traffic lights waiting for green. One man, a chauffeur, had let someone in ahead of him just moments earlier and that person got through before the lights changed to red. The drivers travelling east saw the whole nightmare played out before them.

I know these traffic lights well; just the week before at the same time of day I had been waiting there with my two newly adopted kittens going for their first vaccination boosters, their carrier strapped into the passenger seat. I still wonder what I would have done if I’d seen that jet in my rear view mirror; could I have got them and myself free and out of the car, would I have just saved myself, or would I have stayed with them because I couldn’t free us all?

The fifth anniversary will be on August 22nd.

This is a crimson/burnt sienna wash on a white gesso surface. The size is A1 cartridge.

The sky on the day was a deep blue, a perfect summer day, so my plan is to use that instead of this later, paler sky. I also want to manipulate the way the wooden structure of the bridge appears, to adjust the focus as it were and aim it at the area tight to the left of fourth gap which is close to the site of the crash. I may shift the whole thing down and left so that there is closer to two thirds sky and less bridge so that the glimpse of landscape – the Adur estuary – is in the where the eye falls even though it is quite distant. True to the spirit if not the actuality. I really don’t know how easy this will be. What I do know is that I need to get some background in before I start detailing anything in front of it.

Wandered temporarily into Munch territory a bit here. The intent was to get some colour into the sky areas and fix the bridge woodwork so that job is done. Phthalo blue which has a reddish tinge, and titanium white. Washed on and scrubbed with a flannel while wet to pull back into the red and the gesso base.

I’m really not liking this at the moment! Admittedly, it’s like being caught between track suit bottoms and no make up and your full-on posh frock and hair-do but still. What I want now is to make the bridge almost transparent, maybe even just a ghost and an outline, with the estuary and skyline the key features. That’s going to mean getting all of that painting to a finished quality before doing what would normally be the detailed foreground.

I may have gone full war artist now. The plane was a Hawker Hunter jet, ex-military, which may be how the sky has become almost populated with munitions, the estuary is a wasted landscape, and the bridge has vanished. This last was intentional prior to putting it back in as light lines but now I’m not sure about doing that. The colours are redolent now of the RAF.

Clearly the image is an imagined one, or at least the overlay is because I wasn’t there at the time. I have seen photographs but I haven’t used them for reference. I’ve also changed the directionality of my gestural strokes in parts of the sky, my usual as a left-hander being left to right downward, because I wanted marks reflecting the flight of the plane which was east to west – right to left. Because the first marks are still visible, this has left a crisscross effect which is really quite war time in my mind.

So, do the bridge and the flowers go in or do they stay out? Or do I just consider this a sketch and make another? My feeling is I have nothing to lose by making a second version, especially as my ‘seconds’ often turn out to be better.

First a semi-transparent border and a crop to tidy things up. Still a bit grim though; I’m not Turner yet, am I?

After a bit of reflection I think I can see why this is so problematic and the main reason is that it isn’t really a landscape, it’s an emotionally charged image, much of which I have had to generate mentally, and I am not up to the job of doing it justice. There are some odd moments that I quite like – parts of the sky and the estuary, and the stark line of the horizon – but the rest is something of an artistic wasteland. I need to find an image I am less invested in.

Meanwhile, and with nothing to lose, I imported this into Rebelle3 to try out some adjustments and additional layers. Again, imagined.

On the grounds that it’s impossible to ruin the irredeemable, I’ve followed the digital experiment and put in the bridge structure. There are no flowers because the jet has only just crashed. Tomorrow, an actual landscape.

I found another photo taken a few years ago; a classic country village scene which I would be aiming to brighten up as I had a previous image. I would also like to be selective about the scene but cropping it (this is an A4 print) changes the aspect ratio and would mean it then not translating to the larger A1 support in anything other than letterbox format, which would be smaller than that required by the task. Ideally, I would have the bottom quarter/third out, leaving the boat/bridge complex in the lower third of what remains and the expanse of bridge taking up the mid-ground. If I were taking this shot again (and also if I were a goat) I would be much lower on the bank near the water so that the boat, while still some way off, energises the centre right and lower area of the composition.

I wonder, by a process of elimination in that it would not be portraiture, figurative or abstract, does that window of boat/arch/banks/foliage qualify as landscape? That seems to me the most appealing part of this image and has the most dynamism. I’ll take the risk and go with that because it’s that part I can feel.

I think this has potential. White gesso + some pumice medium in the foliage area, Payne’s grey wash to key blocks. I wonder if I can keep it this loose and fluid.

Payne’s grey, Naples yellow, titanium white, Hooker’s green in mixed washes and more solid patches roughly applied and wiped when almost dry with a piece of flannel. I need to proceed very carefully now; this is a style I haven’t tried before and that has come about just by ‘getting some paint on the thing’. All the colours are dialled down and there are some ‘moments’ – the cottage tucked up against the left margin and the side of the house right of centre. Also some anti-moments – the house at the right margin and the edge of the bridge structure on the left. That’s over and above the fact that this is early in its development and there is a lot else to do yet.

Another day, another pass with dilute medium. I have really simplified this picture, leaving what detail there is to the foliage in the foreground, applied with a broad flat brush (sap green), a toothbrush (Hooker’s green/Payne’s grey), and a stencil brush (titanium white + Naples yellow). One of the background trees looks like a stereotypical mountain and needs fixing, as do some of the nearer trees that are lighter than the more distant one, but the building at the right margin is improved I think. The boat may be a bit smaller than it is in reality and possibly needs muting a little; and there’s a ‘glow’ at the end of the bridge under the house. I have trouble depicting light so before I un-depict it, I need to take a good look at how that happened!

Glow detail: unadulterated Naples yellow on white gesso.

Quite a lot of the structure of the bridge and the two banks is less than accurate so that locals would wonder where a wall or a cottage has gone. Nevertheless, there are parts that work and still some that don’t and I’m reaching the point where I will end up a mish-mash of inconsistent styles. I can see three even now. And the pathway to the right seems to be shot through with blood vessels. My plan is to tackle the glow, slightly un-mute the boat, deal with a gap between the bridge and the path on the left, and turn that piece of liver back into gravel. Then I will consider it done and think about whether or not to try again with a different style. I have to admit, finding out about the variety of styles and techniques and having them begin to influence my own work is a bit like being let loose with a dressing up box and trying not to end up with a tiara, rugby scarf, and wellies over your Nan’s old dressing gown.

I’ve seriously lost interest in this now; I think I prefer the very first iteration where it was just wash and gesso. Back to the dressing up box tomorrow.

Round three. I have painted this scene twice; it’s called Tin Pots Hill and I see it whenever I walk down the river path. I discovered later that the tiny dots on the horizon are pigsties and downwind of them the air is quite ripe so they are not very popular.

First pass. Titanium white base (learning from where the mysterious glow came from in the earlier painting), then Sap green, Hooker’s green, cad yellow, Naples yellow, and Payne’s grey – some mixed with mixing white for tint. Tomorrow I may just even up the edges on the left, add some darker wash to the base of the top mound, and very softly lighten the tops of some foliage and deepen some shadows. Then, for better for worse I should leave the darned thing alone and decide which of the two should be the actual submission. Not the bridge, definitely not the bridge.

Today I have washed some darker pigment into the tree/shrub line just above the field and added a tiny amount of magenta to an area mid-right both to reflect a couple of trees at that point and also to create a slight diagonal down through the roof tops towards the lower left. I am calling this finished because I know if I fiddle any more with it things will just go downhill. No pun. The line across the centre on the right is a crease that was present in the previous photograph but seems more pronounced in this one, possibly due to the different light direction and intensity.

I have a strip of duck cotton left over so harking back to the good old days of pressing the ridiculous head gear nurses were required to wear, I took a risk that pressing this through the spare strip would remove the crease. It did, but this stuff has a memory and it springs back and I’ve caught it here just before it fully reappeared. Another lesson learned – iron this stuff before you start and make sure it understands resistance is futile.

Looking at all three paintings, each very different in subject, degree of adherence to a reference photo, and execution, I am choosing this one as the assignment submission. It may be significant that I’ve painted it before, and I’m pleased that this version, larger than the others, feels more studied but also less constrained. I like the middle tree line for its lack of definition, and the unembellished roof tops in the mid ground. I would have fiddled with those in the past. Similarly the hint-of-sheep in the foreground which previously I would have tried to render more clearly.

The top mound of the hill is too big and too high and some other aspect are less true to the reference than might be ideal. I think, though, that it would be recognisable to anyone who has stopped to look on the same path I’ve stopped to look so many times, and hope to again when the current threat is gone.

Finally, there should be consideration of what, if any, has been the influence of significant landscape artists on the work itself.

This is difficult because I have a tendency to absorb imagery without labels so it settles somewhere in my unconscious ready to exert its influence but without telling me where it came from. I can see some impressionism but none of the bold outlined German variety. Also, despite being brighter than the photograph, no hint of Fauvism which I had almost anticipated as being influential. It’s definitely contemporary; an essence of landscape rather than a documented one. Perhaps it’s a fusion; that confused state between trying to mimic other work and finding a voice of one’s own. A glance at the three paintings here probably show just how confused that is!

Meanwhile, I watched a video about Whistler by Tim Marlow yesterday and was surprised to find he liked to work much as I do, dragging medium across the support and building colour by mixing on the canvas itself. Personally, I’ve become a fan of the dirty brush where two, maybe even three colours, can be applied at once and either left to create lines of light or shadow, blended while wet, or left to dry and scrubbed back to leave intermittent patches of residue behind which make their own texture. I know I’ve seen some of Whistler’s work in various books; perhaps I picked up some of his ways of working and stored them for later.

___

2015 Shoreham Air Crash. Wikipedia. [online] Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Shoreham_Airshow_crash Accessed 7 June 2020.

Remembering Shoreham. Shadow by Lyn Jennings, Ducks in a Row by Suzanne Conboy-Hill. Audio and text. [online] Available at https://readalongreads.com/2016/07/31/remembering-shoreham/ Accessed 7 June 2020. From the anthology Let Me Tell You a Story 2014. Suzanne Conboy-Hill [ed]. Waif Sands.

Marlow, T., Great Artists with Tim Marlow. 2003. Amazon Prime. [online] Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B07FNT8TRH/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s2 Accessed 13 June 2020.

Part 4, assignment 4 – landscape There are two main parts to this task, the first being to review all my landscape paintings to consider which have been the most appealing.

#Assignment 4 #landscape #Part 4

0 notes

raygoodwinbaphotographyjournal3 · 4 years

Photo

PHOT303 - Mileage Mary Vary - 4/3/2020

I decided to swap out the Mamiya 7ii that didn’t work, for one that finally did! But this shoot didn’t go without an issue. Now that I had a working 7ii to use, I was excited to see what I was going to create. I decided to take it upon myself, to head back to using expired film to see that I could create. I have had very good success with expired Fujifilm stocks, and loaded up the 7ii with a roll of Fujifilm Superia 400, which expired in 2012. With this in mind, I over exposed the film by a stop by metering the film at 200 iso.

A Citroen C3 is parked at Morley Court. This is one of my favourite locations in Plymouth, as it feels so removed from Plymouth as a whole. It is a housing estate that is plonked in the centre of town, towards the end which is lower on the social/economic scale. I find it interesting that the location reflects on the conditions of the vehicles, as the lower the perceived class of the area, the condition of the vehicles worsen and the age of the vehicles also increase. This would mean that the individuals on lower incomes, can’t necessarily afford to have a newer vehicle and keep it in a better condition. I find it interesting to shoot in a variety of locations that seem to justify this by documenting what lies within the specific areas.

A Volkswagen Golf Estate MK4 is parked in the car park behind Lucky Star, which is on Raleigh Street. The whole area is an expansive network of grubby post-war buildings, which here are the backs of business and extractor fans. The particular Golf isn’t in the best of conditions, with missing wheel trims and an array of dents and scratches. I fell that this car manages to reflect on the nature of the surroundings. The 7ii also manages to pick up the small details, like the exhaust tube on a building to the left, forcing out a plume of blue smoke.

The eight generation Honda Civic was a far cry from previous iterations in terms of it’s design. Just like the MK3 Golf, it was a more more rotund compared to it’s earlier flavours. This immediately caught my eye, as the Civic managed to match the facade of Costless. I also did like the ‘Cost Less’ managed match the theory of the Vehicle Scrappage Scheme being used to boost the economy after the 2008 Financial Crisis. Again, the Mamiya manages to pick up so much detail within the scene, when the items within the shop itself. I also enjoy how I compose my work with this camera, as it does put me back into the mindset of capturing the scene, rather than just the vehicle being the main focus. Speaking of which, I didn’t even stop down past F4, which is wide open for the 80mm. F4 is a fairly wide aperture for 6x7, and can create some shallow depth of field once you get closer to the subject. yet as these distances, there is some subtle fall off between the foreground and the cars that are now in focus.

Something which used to be a familiar sight, a Toyota Carina. I remember seeing rather a lot of these when I was little, and they have disappeared from out road since, and most likely due to the Vehicle Scappage Scheme. It is hard to believe that this particular model was registered back in 1989, so it had been on our roads for over 30 years now. Yet, it manages to look rather well for it’s age, only really with some discolouration and some dodgy panel angles. This particular vehicle was parked outside a carpet shop in a side road that runs parallel to Ebrington Street. It was only later that it was pointed out the ‘Sustainability Award’ on the billboard above the Carina, which also coincides with the Scrappage Scheme. Just after I took this photograph and took the image of the Fiesta and the Mini, the potential owner came out of the building and was wandering his car and looking at me, almost inspecting. I assume he wasn’t all too pleased I was photographing his ancient Toyota.

A bloody Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow! I have seen this whilst walking near White Friars Lane, which runs adjacent to Beaumont Road. The old Roller juxtaposes the newly built housing, yet almost manages to mix well into the scene. The Silver Shadow exudes high class motoring, with leather, walnut and chrome spilling from all areas. Whilst they were pricey purchases when they were new, they have depreciated so much that they’re almost affordable now...until it goes wrong or needs a service and then the bills start to add up, and the purchase of the vehicle becomes the cheapest part. There is also a noticeable, yet small amount of light leak on the lower right portion of the frame. During the shoot, I noticed that winding on the film didn’t feel entirely right. It felt as if it wasn’t winding as it should, and as I wound the roll to finish it, and opened up the back, I noticed that the roll wasn’t as tight as it should be, and was noticeably fatter. I suspect that this was due to the age of the film, and a potential comparability issue between the film and the spool that was left in the 7ii when I collected it. This can happen with 120 film and sometimes there is an issue, despite this being the first time I had encountered the issue.

Here you can see the extent of the damage from the loose roll, with some light leak and fogging onto the last frame. This is the most affected image, but it is recoverable just by cropping. This photograph of a Nissan 300ZX advertising a window tinting company immediately looks like something Tom Westbury would have taken, with similar tones and composition. I am not sure how the 7ii does it, but the vertical distortion is always well corrected and always seems to by straight. It makes me wonder that all those times I wrote about Westbury’s work and the post production, it could have very well just been done in camera. I suspect that as 6x7 is such a large negative, it is easier to get the vertical lines straight as they should. The 300ZX is also an interesting vehicle, as it is a part of Nissan’s Z line of sports cars which also seemed to take a design change compared to the previous models. They are also a rare vehicle in this day and age, with many being molested by tuners or for the very few, kept nicely. I have never personally seen this car move, and this would be because it is currently SORN. With a quick check with the Government database, this is a 1990 model and was first registered in 2004, making this a grey import from Japan. This particular ZX is in a state of disrepair, with faded paint and a variety of dents and scratches. It also features some exhausts that the Channel Tunnel would be jealous of and some hideously dated alloys.

At last! A successful roll of film that resulted in some shots that I am proud of. It has been a long time since I had shot something and felt good about it. For a long time, I had become estranged from what I had shooting, and in all honesty, didn’t entirely enjoy what I was shooting for PHOT301. It wasn’t what I had envisaged and I am only just starting to get on my feet in regards to how I am making my work. And this is mainly down to using the Mamiya 7ii, as it puts me in the mindset of creating work and in it’s outcome, something that I really enjoy. The experience of using the Mamiya is great, and I cannon wait to see what else I can create this medium format beast. Yet I would like to be able to use different lenses, like the 65mm F4.

#PHOT303

0 notes

thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

Text

Why were we allowed to read Animorphs as kids, anyway?

It’s a question I see come up in this fandom again and again: How the heck did Animorphs books make it into school libraries and book fairs across the country to be marketed to eight-year-olds when they feature drug addiction, body dysmorphia, suicide, imperialism, PTSD, racism, sexism, body horror, grey-and-black morality, slavery, torture, major character death, forced cannibalism, and genocide?

To be clear, I don’t actually know the answer to that question. It is, admittedly, a little odd to consider, especially in light of the fact that Bridge to Terabithia gets banned for killing one character (much less several dozen), The Witches gets banned for having a character trapped in the body of an animal (without even going into issues of predation or body horror), The Chocolate War gets banned for having moderately disturbing descriptions of violence between teenagers, Bird gets banned for dealing with the realities of drug addiction, Winnie the Pooh gets banned for having talking animals, Harriet the Spy gets banned because the main character lies to her parents, and The Secret Annex gets banned because Anne Frank describes normal teenage puberty experiences throughout her diary. And yet Animorphs was marketed to children as young as six nationwide, and (despite selling better than even some classics like The Chocolate War at its peak) no one ever bothered to burn those books or cry that they would rot children’s minds.

If I had to take a wildly inexpert guess, knowing as little as I do about the publishing industry and the standards parent groups use to determine whether books are “moral,” I would venture to speculate that there were several different factors at work.

Grown-ups judge books by their covers just as much as children do. For proof of that phenomenon, just scroll through the Animorphs tag on tumblr, any relevant forum on Reddit, or any old post that uses that stupid meme. The book covers suggest that the stories inside will be silly, campy adventures about the escapist fantasy of turning into a dolphin or a lizard. People don’t look too closely at the books with the neon candy-colored backgrounds and the ridiculous photoshop foregrounds, especially not when they imply a promise that the novels themselves will be the most inane form of sci fi.

There’s no sex. To quote the show K.A. Applegate most loves to reference: "I guess parents don't give a crap about violence if there's sex things to worry about." The large majority of books that get banned from schools are thrown out for having sexual content: the freaking dictionary was banned from California schools for explaining what “oral sex” is, And Tango Makes Three was removed from shelves because apparently married couples are inherently shocking if they happen to be gay, and the list of most-banned books in the U.S. is full of books which explain in perfectly child-appropriate terms what puberty is and where babies come from. Animorphs, by contrast, never gets more explicit than Marco calling Taylor a “skank” or Jake and Cassie’s few stolen kisses. The only mentions of nudity are implied (and even then only when the kids are first coming out of morph), and the most explicit thing we ever hear about Rachel and Tobias doing is staying up late in her room to do her homework together. It becomes unbelievably obvious in retrospect that there’s a decent level of queer representation in the books (Marco repeatedly describing both Jake and Ax as “beautiful” or “handsome,” Mertil and Gafinilan, multiple characters casually morphing cross-gender), but it’s also possible to overlook the queerness if you don’t know it’s there. There might be explicit autocannibalism in this series, but at least it never uses the word “nipple.”

There’s no profanity. Again, there’s a strong implication of profanity—Rachel and Jake especially often “use certain words to describe things” in a way that makes it incredibly obvious what they’re saying, and context clues tell us Ax says “fuck” at least once—but given that the strongest expletive that comes up with any regularity is “good grief,” this can act as an obvious (if dumb) heuristic for parents that a book is appropriate for children. People love to count the swear words in Catcher in the Rye when describing why it should be banned (generally without, heaven forbid, reading the goddamn book). Other works such as To Kill a Mockingbird have been banned for using a single word, regardless of context. If a parent is looking to object to a single word or set of words as grounds that a book is inappropriate, the worst they’re going to find is half a dozen instances of “heck” and maybe a dozen of “crap.”

Some of the worst content is context-dependent. As I pointed out above, at least five or six different characters (Tobias, Arbron, Alloran, Tom, Allison Kim) attempt suicide over the course of the series. At least three or four species that we know about (Hork-Bajir, Howlers, Nartec) get largely or entirely annihilated. However, in order to understand that any of that occurs, you actually have to read the books. Not only that, but you have to read them closely. Cates pointed out that some of the most disturbing passages from #33 are, in a vacuum, just descriptions of blinking diodes and weird hallucinations. The description of Tobias attempting suicide is just a long list of mall venues that flash by as he zooms full-speed toward a glass wall. Even the passages with Rachel threatening David (or carrying out those threats) don’t make much sense unless you know how a two-hour limit on morphing works. For the parent skimming these books looking for objectionable content, nothing jumps out.

The books are, in fact, appropriate for children. This quality is what (I believe) prevented parents like mine from taking the books away from us kids even after reading several entire novels out loud to us before bed. The books contain violence, but they sure as hell don’t condone it. They touch on subjects such as drug addiction and parental abuse, but they do so from the point of view of realistic-feeling kids and don’t fetishize that kind of content. Most of the lessons contained within are tough—that there’s no such thing as a simple moral code, that people with the power to prevent atrocity also have the obligation to do so, that members of the hegemony aren’t actually all that special, that the world is a scary and violent place for most people who have to live in it—but they’re also important lessons, and good ones to teach to children. I would be comfortable with my own children (assuming I had any) reading these books at the same age I started reading them, in first and second grade.

You have to understand the fictional science to understand (most of) the horror. Trying to describe some of the most horrifying passages in Animorphs is like “and then they flushed the pool for cleaning, but the pool was full of slugs!” or “but she explained to her son that she had to have a parasite in her brain so the parasite’s friends wouldn’t be suspicious!” or “and then the hawk ate a rabbit, as hawks are wont to do!” while one’s non-fandalite friends stand there and go “... so what?” The laws of Applied Phlebotinum in the series turn those earlier moments into a war crime, an assisted quasi-suicide, and a loss of identity, respectively; however, you have to understand the laws of applied phlebotinum in order to know that. For anyone not reading closely, the horror can be overlooked. For those of us who are reading closely, phrases such as “host breeding program,” “fugue state,” “eight minutes too late,” and “the howlers are all children” (or any mention at all of people being injured while taxxons are in the vicinity, for that matter) are enough to chill your blood. But again, for that to happen, you actually have to read the books. Which we can assume most of the people skimming for curse words do not.

Some of those exact same premises wouldn’t be horror at all if handled by a different author. K.A. Applegate subverts the “wake up, go to school, save the world” trope; normally premises that feature teen superheroes fighting aliens are considered appropriate for all ages (e.g. Avengers Assemble, Kim Possible, Teen Titans) because they feature bloodless violence and gloss over the question of whether aliens are people too. The utterly arbitrary standard that kids should be allowed to see violence but not blood allows for justification of movies like Prince Caspian, Night at the Museum, and Ghostbusters to feature characters getting murdered in all kinds of ways in PG-rated movies. “Violence” and “sci-fi violence” are two different categories according to the MPAA rating system; guess which one gets a lower rating. Of course, there’s a crapton of science showing it doesn’t make the tiniest bit of difference to kids whether or not they see blood, they’re still gonna learn violent behaviors and potentially be traumatized, but again where the arbitrary standard persists. Therefore, if most of the premises of Animorphs books don’t sound horrifying, they must not actually be horrifying. Right?

The books are almost as light as they are heavy. Part of the reason I have comfortably loaned my copies of the early books to friends with ten-year-old kids is that it’s not primarily a downer series. Animorphs aren’t R.L. Stein books, which always end on (the implication of) the protagonist’s death. They’re not uniform horrorfests like Dolls in the Attic or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Applegate doesn’t fetishize violence the way that Cassandra Clare and Ransom Riggs do. The most-quoted passages from these books are the ones that are funny, not horrifying. These are stories about the joy of aliens discovering Volkswagen Beetles, about the wonder of being able to fly away from one’s life, about friendship and the power of love being enough to make the gods themselves sit up and pay attention. The whole saga tells the story of six kids sacrificing more than their lives to save their families, and of how that sacrifice brings down an empire. I suspect that many parents were either paying so little attention they didn’t realize these stories could be classified as battle epics or as kiddie horror, or else were paying so much attention that they concluded that this series is a battle epic worth reading.

Then again, maybe there was a whole other set of market pressures which accounted for the lack of censorship which I don’t know about. If so, the economics side of tumblr is encouraged to enlighten me.

#animorphs #marketing #body horror #kiddie horror #censorship #seriously tho WHY WERE THE SIX-YEAR-OLDS READING ABOUT AUTOCANNIBALISM IN THE 90S #what even was that

16K notes · View notes