#ive been eyeing this grim print forever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

timeshuffles · 5 years

Text

i. if they know him at all, the people of cinderellasburg know drust as the son of the giant-slayer. as the story goes, a wicked giantess descended from the sky to plunder the little kingdom that would become auradon's most charming province; and were it not for the four heroes who lured her into a trap and slew her, she might have destroyed the whole land. drust's father, fabius baker, had struck the killing blow, and so became a hero. thus as a child, drust receives a level of interest and admiration that peasant boys seldom see — though among his peers, this attention has a tendency to wither when they learn he lives with his mother alone.

ii. everyone knows the story of the wicked giantess and the brave baker. it is printed in history books and taught in schools, the fairytale prelude to cinderellasburg's admission into the union of auradon. more attentive students of history will know, too, the story of the evil witch who aided the giant, laying curses upon the heroes who fought against her and sowing the magic beans that grew into vast beanstalks, stretching like ladders all the way up to the airborne kingdom of the giants. wicked giant and evil witch were both banished to the isle of the lost forever, and all has been peace and happiness since.

but drust knows a different version of the tale: one in which the witch and the bakers lived in neighborly peace for countless years, she buying their bread and they fresh vegetables from her magnificent garden. in this telling of the tale, his grandfather stole a handful of beans from the witch, and in turn she laid a curse of infertility upon his house and took his firstborn daughter as her own child; years later, convinced after years of amicable coexistence that fabius baker was not the selfish brute his father had been, she offered to lift the spell in exchange for a simple favor. into the woods his parents had gone, and the quest had tangled their fates with princesses and giants.

in exchange for a cow, they had sold the stolen magic beans; and a boy called jack had thrice climbed into the kingdom of giants to steal a particular house he found there. caught the third time, he had fled with a giant in close pursuit, and killed him by chopping down the enormous beanstalk as the giant climbed down to retrieve his stolen possessions.

the giantess, then, had not come out of wickedness, but in search of the boy who murdered her beloved. many had died, it was true, and many villages had been trampled beneath her feet; but to the four who had been there, her killing was not a story of brave and noble heroism. it was a story of grim, exhausted survival and a weight they would carry forever more.

“we did what we had to to survive,” fabius will say, averting his gaze, if drust asks to hear the tale. “it wasn't nice. it wasn't good. and it wasn't right. we murdered her to save the lad who murdered her husband. that's all.”

iii. no one wants to hear a tale of ugly, desperate skirmishes in the dark. auradon is a nation of shining heroes and clear dividing lines, and saying that witches can be right or giants can be good is an efficient way to land oneself in detention. drust learns early to keep his mouth shut and his questions to himself whenever the subject of the giantess comes up; if anyone asks for tales of his father’s daring exploits, he shrugs and tells them fabius doesn’t talk about it much.

iv. elaine baker, his mother, sometimes tells him of the woods. of how she once spent three nights and three days wandering the twisting dark paths of a wild forest so vast it covered almost all of what is now cinderellasburg, all to gather the ingredients the witch needed in return for lifting the curse of infertility upon the bakers' household. of how, a year later, the giant trampled through their village and sent them all fleeing into the woods once again, and how elaine cradled drust in her arms—for he was then hardly a month old—and felt braver and stronger than she ever had in her life, so great was her determination to keep him safe.

but his favorite tale of the woods is the tale of her narrow escape from death at the hands—or heels—if the giantess; of how she felt the ground heave and tremble as the giantess drew nearer and heard the cracking of massive trees as they broke like mere twigs beneath the giantess's feet, and how at the last moment—as the shadow of one immeasurably vast foot turned the whole wood as dark as pitch—his mother leapt into a deep ravine, not knowing what awaited her at the bottom but hoping it was better than being crushed like an insect beneath someone's feet. a dense thicket softened her landing, saving her life even as its thorns left her scratched and bleeding. she has lain dazed in the thicket so long, and so hidden from sight from the lip of the ravine, that all the others had thought her dead; afterwards she had wandered, disoriented and lost, and might yet have died had she not been found and guided home by the witch several days after the killing of the giantess.

“the king feared the woods,” elaine tells him, sometimes. “he fears all wild things. witches and wolves. magic. but it's better to go into the woods and find your way back again than pave them over and leave the fears to fester.”

v. some children never see the ways their parents' lives extend beyond their offspring. not so drust, who from a young age glimpses the life his mother leads when he is not around. swift conversations conducted in hushed whispers late in the night; patrons with grubby faces and strange gleaming eyes who buy bread with folded slips of paper instead of coins; petitions half-finished and scattered over the desk where elaine balances their ledger each night.

the petitions are for a controlled replanting of trees, to stop the swift erosion of topsoil that has plagued the land since king adam civilized the wild forest, but drust gets the impression that grander plans than that are afoot, some scheme in which the king is only a pawn. something secret. something strange.

he never asks, but in his wildest dreams he imagines it has something to do with magic.

#⌈ MOTHER CANNOT GUIDE YOU ⌋ ( hc : drust )#⌈ CHILDREN WILL LISTEN ⌋ ( v : descendants )#[[ ive been thinking abt this all day i just #hhhhh itw is the anti-auradon in that #its moral position is that there are no villains.#just people with complex desires & needs #that often conflict or clash.#so like? how do those characters respond #in a universe where sharp divisions btwn #''heroes'' and ''villains'' are encoded into law?#this is endlessly fascinating to me. ]]#[[ ( a post elaborating on just what elaine is up to is to follow #at some point #but the short version is im #taking the book concept that #unused magic has to go ///somewhere///#& running wild with it ) ]]

3 notes · View notes

nerdybookahs · 4 years

Text

Writing about my Top Games of 2019 was a bit too short-sighted, apparently. I have seen others talk about their games of the decade – most recently Rakuno’s post. And then I figured that I could add another “top games” post here. I mean, it is my blog and it has been filled with lots and lots of talk about games… not in the past decade, but close (I started in March 2011)!

So let’s see… which games deserve to be called favourite or even best games in this time span? Should it be the games that gave you the most hours of entertainment? Or should a game of the decade be one that surprised you somehow? That was breathtaking in graphics (or audio, etc.) or just so immersive, you still think about it? I’m not going to dwell on these questions for too long and will go with my intuition, which means that it will probably be a good mix of all of these points. There is no ranking of games as I did in my other posts. Each of them earns a spot in its own way.

I tried to remember what I did at the beginning of the decade. At that time, I had more or less stopped playing LotRO and Warhammer Online was about to close, but I had left that one much earlier already. Despite not playing either Rift or Guild Wars 2 anymore nowadays, both have been my MMO home for quite some time. Rift (launched March 2011) most of all for its open world events and its housing system. Guild Wars 2 (launched August 2012) also because of the open world events and the horizontal progression at endgame. Even though I found the living world season 1 to be too stressful with its content being available for 2 or 4 weeks and then disappearing forever, in hindsight I still think it was the best content they released (not every single piece of it, but taken everything together). If only it hadn’t been time-limited. But most of all, I love the game for the community. Being a part of Dragon Season (our guild) has given me the opportunity to get to know so many amazing new people and I remember many fun hours spent together, doing guild missions or our guild events.

If I go by time played, other than the MMOs, I will have lots of city builders and management games come out on top. In some cases, this is certainly fitting and these games belong in my top list. With others, the advantage of being a game that is built on taking a long time to play would be unfair. So, out of the long list of games from these genres, Tropico 4 (launched September 2011) immediately comes to my mind. The music, the humour, the gameplay. I love everything about it and it’s a game that I can still launch and play and have fun with today. Then there is Jurassic World Evolution (launched June 2018) which belongs in my top list simply because it amazes me how real the dinosaurs seem and when I think back to my early days of playing on the C64 and how amazed I was by printing out birthday invitations made on… the C64 or the Amiga, I actually don’t remember… It was certainly pixel art, that’s for sure… But let’s get back to the past decade: My inner child is still amazed by graphics like these! And my inner child who loved the first Jurassic Park film is also amazed that suddenly, she can create her own park on her PC!

One thing I do not like is side-scrolling games – except for Terraria (launched May 2011) where I think it works perfectly. I especially like how open the world feels despite being 2D only and how immersive it is despite the simple graphics. However, once Trove launched (July 2015), I more or less stopped playing Terraria. I know, Trove isn’t a Terraria-clone, but it fills the space of digging through the world for me. Part of the appeal of Trove is certainly having a lot of other players around. I just like seeing others around me, even if I usually play on my own.

Whenever I played Civilization, I kept whining that there is too much of a focus on war. I didn’t want to fight! Also, the stacks of doom in Civilization IV were annoying. I wanted to conquer peacefully through culture instead. And then I found the first Warlock game (Warlock: Master of the Arcane, launched May 2012)… and I conquered through war. And I loved it! The game has a sequel, Warlock II: The Exiled (launched April 2014) which I like even more. So, the game series as a whole is in my top list.

L. A. Noire (launched November 2011 for PC) is one of the first games I actually played through. And the immersion level has been amazing! I’m still not happy about the ending, but I guess that just shows how much I could identify with the main character. Another detective game is Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (launched September 2014). Ever since playing this game, I want more like it! Unfortunately, the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter, couldn’t win me over like the other one did. And then there is The Painscreek Killings (launched September 2017) where your task is to figure out who killed Vivian Roberts. Other than that, you’re on your own exploring the now abandoned village. I did not like the little extra play sequence at the end, but other than that, it was a really good game. There is no guidance where to go first and what to do next. There are no quests or missions and no direction. I did manage to figure out everything in the end and it was a very enjoyable journey.

Life is Strange (launched 2015) cannot be missing from my list. If I did any ranking, it would be very high up. I’m still pestering bookahnerk to pick up the game and play through it because I want to hear his opinion about this one moment (no spoiler!) where you need to make a certain choice. I think you only have this one choice in order to advance, so it’s basically not a choice. But I sat here with tears in my eyes imagining how I’d feel if I was ever asked to do something like this by a person close to me.

Last but not least, I haven’t listed any action RPGs (as you may have noticed, I did dig through my favourite game genres to detect all possible games). There is definitely Torchlight 2 (launched September 2012) followed closely by Grim Dawn (launched February 2016). In this case I say “follow”, because I feel that even though I’ve been playing it for a long time, I haven’t even seen a third of the content that Grim Dawn has to offer. And yet, it is such a strong game with an interesting world and very compelling classes. Torchlight 2, on the other hand, seems like a lightweighted action RPG in comparison. But it has the pet system and no matter which ARPG I’m playing, I always wish I had a little helper like that who I can send to town to sell all the items I found. It saves so much time and adds convenience, but not at the expense of immersion.

I’ve got one honorable mention: The Secret World/Secret World Legends (launched June 2012). I absolutely love the idea and the atmosphere of the game! However, I find the gameplay itself too clunky and I never liked how combat felt, including the character’s animations. So while it has something that makes it very memorable for me, I just couldn’t play it for a long enough time. Hence, the honorable mention. It tried, but it didn’t really succeed with me.

I guess that’s it – unless I forgot some game now which I probably did. There are so many more games that I enjoyed playing, of course. But these do stand out for one reason or another.

My Top Games of the Decade Writing about my Top Games of 2019 was a bit too short-sighted, apparently. I have seen others talk about their games of the decade - most recently…

#favourite games #games of the decade #grim dawn #Guild Wars 2 #jurassic world evolution #L. A. Noire #life is strange #pc gaming #Rift #secret world legends #sherlock holmes: crimes and punishments #Terraria #the painscreek killings #the secret world #torchlight 2 #tropico 4 #Trove #Warlock II: The Exiled #warlock master of the arcane

0 notes