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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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Ranking Zelda Water Dungeons

@thehylianbatman asked for this, and I’ve been sitting on this idea for something like two years now so I figured it’s a good a time as any to pull it out. Water dungeons in The Legend of Zelda have collectively garnered a bad reputation, with some of them among gaming’s most standout representatives of all the annoyances that come with Down the Drain levels. Because I like to be contrary watery environmental aesthetics are typically among my favorites however I have a particular fondness for many of these dungeons, and so I’m giving them a bit of time in the limelight (while also acknowledging that some of them nonetheless really are terrible, even if they’re pretty). Also note that I have not replayed any of these games to make this list, so I’ll be going entirely from memory. While that’s hardly the most accurate way to do something like this, it’ll be helpful in gauging which dungeons leave the most lasting impressions.

First off, a list of dungeons I will be excluding from this ranking because they don’t meet my personal requirements for what constitutes a water dungeon.

Any mini-dungeon, ex. Pirate’s Fortress from Majora’s Mask or the water-based shrines in Breath of the Wild

Dungeons where the name and/or location is suggestive of a watery theme but the experience itself fails to deliver, ex. the Palace on the Sea from The Adventure of Link, Catfish’s Maw from Link’s Awakening, the Ocean Temple from Spirit Tracks

Dancing Dragon Dungeon from Oracle of Seasons, because a waterfall entrance and some short swimming segments do not a water dungeon make.

The Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker, because only the first floor is even partially water-based and it’s just the tide going in and out which is both uninteresting and rather frustrating to play around. I thought about including it, but it would be very low if I had.

Skyview Temple from Skyward Sword, as its swimming segments are also brief and come more in the odd return visit for a midgame fetch quest than for the initial run through.

Now for the ones that made the cut:

#13. Water Temple (Triforce Heroes)

This one just barely made the list, and my decision to include it in the end is mostly on account of the novelty factor. Of the three stage select-style Zelda games, Triforce Heroes is the only one with any notable water levels and even dedicates a full world to the theme. It’s too bad that I can only really count the last level in that world as a dungeon, because this Water Temple is just a knockoff of the Swamp Palace from A Link Between Worlds adjusted for three Links. There are tektites and octoroks and you play around with water levels and this game’s iteration of the hookshot before fighting a version of the OG water dungeon boss Arrghus. Much of TH feels like a quirky theme park version of a Zelda game, and unfortunately this particular example does little to elevate the concept and as a result feels uninspired. The rest of the Riverside world fares better, especially in its use of the new water rod item, but its last level is a dungeon only because it has to be.

#12. Jabu-Jabu’s Belly (Oracle of Ages)

If I had to choose one dungeon as an example of what people tend to hate about this group on the whole, it would be this one. Less infamous though it may be coming from a handheld title rather than one of the 3D games, this version of a dungeon inside a giant fish suffers precisely because it is not 3D, or more specifically not Ocarina of Time. It combines aspects of both of OoT’s water dungeons and fails at each of them because of the limitations of the game’s format; the unpleasant environs of being inside a digestive tract don’t come across well on the Game Boy Color, and raising and lowering the water level is harder to visualize in only two dimensions. Combine this with bland visuals that make it easy to get lost, a dungeon item that’s only a length upgrade of an item you already have (also like OoT’s Water Temple), a droning musical track, and the less fluid swimming controls that come with OoA’s mermaid suit “upgrade,” and there’s not much saving this one. The boss is sort of fun I suppose, but it’s a bioelectric aquatic monster...hmm, now where have I seen that before....

#11. Swamp Palace (A Link Between Worlds)

I did want this one higher, but it’s so short. That’s true of all but two of the Lorule dungeons really, with them being streamlined and in many cases more thematically pronounced rehashes of the Dark World dungeons from A Link to the Past, but because the original Swamp Palace is already solid (see below) this one just doesn’t have much to do. It adds some raft puzzles and marginally more complex changes to the water level, but that’s about it. The boss is also almost identical, which isn’t saying much because “monster with a single eye that is also its weak point” describes most of the bosses on this list, but here it’s just Arrghus again. I will say that I was grateful for how short this dungeon is in my single run of this game’s Hero Mode, because it holds the valuable defense-boosting Blue Mail. Imagine the developer trolling that would have been leaving it where it had been in LttP: in this game’s equivalent of the Ice Palace.

#10. Lakebed Temple (Twilight Princess)

As the first 3D entry on this list I suspect this may be a bit surprising, but I have to say I’ve never liked Lakebed much. A big part of that is how there’s relatively little water inside the dungeon despite it being on, you know, a lake bed. It’s a shame too, because Twilight Princess has the second-best underwater controls of the 3D games and even underwater bombs. Have fun using them in maybe three rooms. It’s also an uninspired experience beyond that, with drab visuals - despite its reputation for being gritty and brown TP can do good visuals, just not here - a music track that’s more atmospheric cave music than identifiable melody, a structure that resembles what would come from welding the two tower climbs of Ocarina of Time’s Fire Temple to the central structure of its Water Temple, and a tedious backtracking segment in the middle if you want to get all the chests (and all the stamps in the HD remake) which of course I do because 100% completion. Redirecting multiple currents and using them to flood the central room is admittedly neat, but I can’t give Lakebed too much credit for what the clawshot does to distinguish itself from the standard hookshot when much of the difference here comes down to hanging from slowly rotating platforms. Whee. Morpheel is also a joke, initially a riff on OoT’s Morpha that looks genuinely impressive when its leviathan main body emerges for the second phase...and then dies in a minute while posing next to no threat to the player as it swims around aimlessly. The frog mini-boss leaves more of an impression for striking an odd balance between goofy and gross...but why is a giant frog at the (partially dry) bottom of a lake? Gah.

#9. Angler’s Tunnel (Link’s Awakening)

Easily nabs the award for best glow-up in a remake, and indeed this ranking owes itself mostly to the Switch version. The original deserves some praise for being the second water dungeon in the series while not copying too much from the first, and it’s the only one on this list where Link can’t swim at all until he acquires the dungeon item meaning for the first half he’s got to avoid water like it’s lava. Still, the remake massively ups the aquatic ambiance between the cool blue lighting and environmental pieces and the remixed music (with bits of the original Game Boy chip tune left in, as with most of the soundtrack). It also buffs the boss so it dies in thirty seconds instead of five - go marginally threatening Angler Fish! Less than half of the dungeons in Link’s Awakening have traditional themes, instead preferring such odd motifs as bottles and keys and amateur demolition, but Angler’s Tunnel is one of the few that does so I’m happy to see that the development team for the Switch version really leaned into that distinction.

#8. Divine Beast Vah Ruta (Breath of the Wild)

I struggled considerably with ranking this one, and even now I’m still not satisfied. On the one hand this ought to be easy; everyone knows that the Divine Beasts are a low point of Breath of the Wild, small and monotonous with few enemies and similar boss fights and puzzles that are only slightly beefed-up versions of those found in shrines. On the other though BotW more than any previous game blurs the definition of a dungeon with its multitudinous shrines, lengthy (or not) quests leading up to the entrance of each Divine Beast, and Hyrule Castle providing an open-world dungeon experience like no other. In this regard Ruta is easily the best of the Beasts, as the sequence of events leading up to it involve a mostly linear narrative and geographical progression (helped by Ruta drenching the area in constant rain and preventing Link from climbing over everything like usual) that organically follows from the story progression near the start of the game and concludes with a thrilling mini-game in which Link rides Sidon smashing ice blocks and shooting targets mid-air after being launched from the top of a waterfall - and also forever blessing the internet with more gay shark cocks than it could have ever needed or wanted. Ruta’s interior has a few points in its favor as well; the obligatory dungeon movement mechanism only shifts the aim of the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk which is less disorienting than the equivalent mechanics in the other Beasts, and Link has a rune (Cryonis) naturally attuned to water/ice puzzles which somewhat makes up for BotW’s bizarre lack of underwater swimming. So yeah, lots of pros and cons and Link the DP’ing fish fucker bottom, so I’ll have to settle for sticking this one just below the middle.

#7. Jabu-Jabu’s Belly (Ocarina of Time)

It seems strange how everyone accepted it at the time, but Ocarina of Time’s initial trio of dungeons keep the training wheels firmly on. All of them are fairly short and straightforward, none of them have locked doors, and the first two are as aesthetically generic for their respective themes as it gets. Then comes Jabu-Jabu, which is still short and key-less..except you’re inside a giant fish so here that makes sense and we’re all better off not thinking about how the barred “doors” work. As I alluded to in the entry for the inferior Oracle knockoff, this dungeon sells it on the nastiness: Link’s footsteps make squelching sounds, the walls appear to pulse (and have live cows in them serving as switches in the Master Quest revamp...again, don’t ask), glowing white growths serve as slingshot targets, there are mysterious tentacles everywhere and not the sexy kind, and the boss is a swollen mass of viscera that explodes in a shower of green goo when it dies. Extremely gross all around, but then you are inside a giant fish. Funny too that Jabu-Jabu throws a hitch in the usual dungeon pattern in the form of an escort quest of all things, but thankfully Link has to carry Ruto around instead of waiting for her to follow with dodgy AI. I also have to give credit for this dungeon making extensive use of the boomerang you find in its depths, easily one of the most fun items in OoT that goes criminally underutilized since only young Link can use it and it comes right at the end of his portion of the quest.

#6. Mermaid’s Cave (Oracle of Ages)

Oracle of Ages makes up for its counterpart’s lack of water dungeons with two of its own, and Mermaid’s Cave is by far the better of the two. It stands out as the only dungeon in either Oracle title to make use of its game’s defining gimmick, which in this case means that there are past and present versions that have to be explored separately. Ocarina of Time had earlier featured a dungeon with a similar concept in its Spirit Temple, but as with time travel in OoA more generally Mermaid’s Cave takes it a step farther with major structural and environmental differences between the two versions. The water source at the base of Rolling Ridge dries up over the course of four centuries, leaving the dungeon partially flooded in the past but mostly dry and ruined in the present, and doing some things in the past Mermaid’s Cave will affect the dungeon in the present as well. Unfortunately the novelty is somewhat undone by the dungeon item, the clunky mermaid suit that I’ve previously complained about. It leads to the game’s first fully underwater segments and plays a major role in the boss fight which alternatively engages you above and below the surface, but the letdown that is this dungeon’s namesake keeps me from placing this one any higher. Well, that and the fact that you have to do two Goron trading sequences to get inside, because of course you need a key for each era. OoA loves little annoyances like that.

#5. Swamp Palace (A Link to the Past)

While you’d be hard-pressed to call it the most iconic anymore, this is without a doubt the ur-water dungeon of the series - and I don’t only mean that it’s the first one. It’s got raising and lowering the water level, swimming against currents, redirecting channels, electric enemies, the hookshot as a dungeon item, randomly unintuitive nonsense (flooding a canal in the Light World does the same in the equivalent Dark World building because...?), and a squishy boss with a giant eye. As I did when I was ranking the games I had to bump this dungeon up a few spots specifically for how important it was in inspiring future dungeons, but nevertheless I believe the Swamp Palace holds up on its own even today. It’s notable that, in the game that arguably has more dungeons than any other in the series depending on how you count them, this is one of only a handful to even have a clearly identifiable theme - and that so much of what’s on display here has been iterated upon in so many future titles. That’s some classic Zelda stuff right there...and funnily enough this isn’t among the most annoying of the Dark World dungeons. Safe to say that a certain later title was the one to acquire a bad reputation for this dungeon type...ahem.

#4. Water Temple (Ocarina of Time)

Here it is now, possibly the most frequently maligned dungeon in the entire series. For the N64 version I absolutely understand it: the layout is unituitive and forces a lot of backtracking if you don’t know exactly where you’re going (especially with that block in the central tower...you know the one), most of the rooms look similar so it’s harder to memorize the locations of each, needing to open a slow-loading menu to take the iron boots on and off repeatedly is exceptionally tedious, movement and combat options are awkward and restricted underwater making enemies more annoying than they should be, Dark Link can be a nightmare of a mini-boss if you don’t know the flaws in his AI, the dungeon item is merely an extended hookshot, Morpha can kill you very quickly if you don’t know the even bigger flaw in its arena design...it’s one big mess, and little wonder it’s about the only dungeon to actually be easier in the Master Quest. All that said however the 3DS remake fixed around half of these issues including the iron boots and some of the navigation woes, and it’s a much smoother experience overall in that version. This Water Temple still doesn’t crack the top three for me though, in large part because I view it largely as bringing the ideas of the original Swamp Palace into three dimensions rather than creating something truly unique and memorable - or memorable for the right reasons anyway. There’s also the curious aesthetic choices in this dungeon that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone discuss before. Between the music, the pagoda in the middle, the serpentine dragon statues everywhere, and Dark Link’s room there’s a distinctive East Asian flavor to the temple that I don’t quite know what to make of. It’s nowhere near as pronounced in any of OoT’s other dungeons or major set pieces, so it all feels quite random.

#3. Temple of Droplets (The Minish Cap)

Heavy bias factor here, because ice is another favorite gaming aesthetic of mine and this is somehow the only Zelda dungeon to combine it with water (Phantom Hourglass’s Ice Temple doesn’t count for the same reason that neither DS game appears on this list: Link can’t swim in those games, so how could there be water dungeons?). That aside however the Temple of Droplets is just delightfully creative, as is typical for this game’s dungeons. It starts with predictable ice block puzzles that lead to a fake-out with the boss key, but then it opens up to a diverse blend of lily pad “boating,” diving, melting ice with sunlight, burning ice and webs and lighting dark rooms with the lantern, and still more ice block puzzles. It’s so many different elements mashed together and enhanced even further by The Minish Cap’s unique shrinking gimmick, because this is one of the two dungeons to be fully Minish-sized. The mini-boss is an electrified Chuchu, and the boss an ordinary Octorok with a weird floral growth and separate water and ice phases that make defeating it much more of an ordeal than such a basic enemy normally has any right to be. I believe I mentioned in my game ranking that TMC is one of the more underrated titles, a creative sleeper hit that still manages to pack in tons of references to earlier, better-known 3D games. That’s certainly true of this dungeon, which throws in a quick little puzzle reference to earlier 2D games’ habit of designing their dungeon maps in particular shapes. The similarly-shaped Bottle Grotto wishes it was this good.

#2. Great Bay Temple (Majora’s Mask)

Notwithstanding that it’s in my favorite game in the series, Great Bay Temple took a while to grow on me. At first I was skeptical that an anachronistic waterworks was the right fit for a dungeon in the grim and apocalyptic Majora’s Mask - I’m always leery about fantasy media injecting random bits of other genres such as this dip into (sort of) steampunk. It didn’t take long however for me to fall in love with the place, with its rapidly-paced dynamism and brightly-colored plumbing a stark contrast to the slow and plodding Water Temple of the previous game. It perfectly accentuates Zora Link’s speedy swimming, and while the ice arrows slow the second half down a touch I’m just grateful that at least they have a point in this game unlike in Ocarina of Time. The enemies are hit or miss, although I say that less about Gyorg and more about Wart, the mini-boss that thoroughly demonstrates why Arrghus is an exercise in tedium in 3D (which is even less forgivable in a game where you’re always on the clock). Still, that doesn’t detract from how fun it can be exploring while redirecting water currents and getting all of the colored pipes flowing, and this isn’t even too frustrating with the water pushing you through the areas you need to be in sequentially. What does detract from all this somewhat is the 3DS remake; Zora Link’s infamous swimming nerf isn’t so bad in the dungeon’s narrow corridors and I can live with the more restricted ice arrows (creating icebergs in random places isn’t my idea of fun, so I don’t feel like anything was lost), but the changes to the Gyorg fight make it longer and more RNG-dependent than it should be. It’s not the only boss in the remake to become worse apparently out a desire by the developers to waste more of your limited time with them *glares at Twinmold*, but Gyorg hits worse in my minimal cycles runs on account of where Great Bay Temple falls in my scheduling.

#1. Ancient Cistern (Skyward Sword)

I didn’t want this to be #1 - it’s just not fair. The Ancient Cistern is more or less the only entry on this list that escapes the water dungeon stigma, and in fact gets consistently ranked as the best dungeon in all of Skyward Sword. Everyone loves this place, and it’s easy to see why. The aesthetics are gorgeous, it’s decently challenging but not labyrinthine, the whip is fun to use, Koloktos is awesome and unique and mildly disturbing, and the whole thing is wrapped in an explicit allusion to a Buddhist fable that comes across in the environmental details and in the dungeon structure alike. I wouldn’t call this a perfect experience, but my objections feel like nitpicks. The underwater swimming controls in SS suck...but you’re not underwater much, and there’s a much more infamous section for that later in the game. The dungeon is only half water-themed, with the basement being more of a shadow dungeon and (unlike with the Temple of Droplets) little being done to blend the two...but that plays into the fable reference and at a key point the feeling of ascending a thread from death/hell into enlightenment. The Buddhist trappings are extremely overt particularly with the shape of the boss key and the giant statue that is the dungeon’s central structure...but if the presence of that in the Zelda universe isn’t immersion-breaking to the developers for whom Buddhism is a present cultural reality then it would be petty of me to consider it more than a curiosity. None of that was enough for me to place Great Bay Temple over it, especially in light of the mild downgrade that dungeon got in its remake. Here’s to hoping that when/if SS ever gets a port or updated rerelease that the Cistern will be as good or even better than it is now. They can take the motion controls off swimming, for starters....

#The Legend of Zelda

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simonsaidthat · 4 years

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First Time Reading All of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, 4th Best

Trying to catch up on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure so that I can even the playing field with my friends, I’ve decided to list off which Parts I’d be genuinely interested in seeing the Anime versions of. So far my ranking includes:

8th Place: Phantom Blood (Part 1) 7th Place: Battle Tendency (Part 2) 6th Place: Stone Ocean (Part 6) 5th Place: JoJolion (part 8)

I said this one was a toss up between itself and JoJolion, but ultimately I think having a less bizarre continuity than Part 8 helped tip the scales in it’s favor.

Part 5: Vento Aureo/Golden Wind

(Because this one is the latest to have an anime adaption, and I have at least one friend who has not finished watching the series, I’ll try to keep spoilers to an even greater minimum.)

One of the problems I had stated concerning Stone Ocean was “it’s reverence for Part 3″ trying to be a direct sequel to Part 3 or at least try to elevate the “Legacy of Part 3″, which burdened itself onto the story of Jolyne Kujo who had nothing to do with DIO or his posthumous plans. It isn’t even really about Jolyne reflecting on the relationship with her father. The entire story is kinda weighed down by the continuity of being a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Part 5′s Golden Wind on the other hand strangely isn’t. It’s not trying to be a sequel to Part 3. It just... kind of ends up being another Part 3.

You’d think that that the story of Giorno Giovanna, the son of the major antagonist for 2 separate JoJo Parts would have a greater focus on his complicated legacy, being technically a member of the Joestar family. Or for there to be one character who had met DIO somehow recognize Giorno as the vampire’s offspring, resulting in a brief period of mistrusting the main hero.

But nothing really comes from being DIO’s son. There’s lip service to the audience about “Nature vs Nurture”, but ultimately as far as I can tell, the sole purpose of having Giorno be DIO’s son, is solely for the Audience’s benefit and for the Author’s justification of having a Joestar protagonist without skipping too far into the future.

And to be perfectly honest, Part 5 is all the better for it.

The lesson I learned through reading Part 6 was that too much continuity causes a lock-out for potential new readers if they just want to jump into any one of the individual 8 parts. So the less continuity there is, OR the less the story actively cares about the continuity, the quicker it’ll be to just enjoy the ride.

(References are safer and not the same as continuity).

As far as the Continuity of Part 5 is concerned, it starts with a cameo from the previous entry to serve as the point of view until the story is comfortable focusing in on the protagonist, then the cameo character is completely dropped, never to be seen again. Giorno is the son of DIO but his lineage is never meaningfully brought up in the story, and the Golden Arrows established in Part 4 as a means to grant Stands to individuals are brought back to justify an entire organization spread out across the country to have enemy Stand Users.

Incidentally the application of the Golden Arrows are fairly straightforward in Part 5, with a great “initiation” ritual that makes the organization feel grander, but I still think the Golden Arrows as a concept are a step in the direction of “over-thinking things”.

(While there are explanations for Stand Powers in Part 7 and 8, the origin becomes less of a focus and people can “just have stands” for narrative expediency. I’m sure by Part 9 or 10 we’ll finally just have X-men “mutants”).

The last thing I’ll say about Continuity is that Golden Wind probably fairs best among the entire JoJo Anthology (second only to Part 2 being a direct follow up on the story of the Stone Masks and Vampires as established in Part 1), and even though there are few characters with direct connections to previous Parts, it treads through familiar enough ground to become probably “the best version of itself”, or at least the “best sequel series”.

What I’m trying to say is: Part 5 is an argument in favor of advancing the continuity of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure... but Part 6 is an argument against it, resulting in the Part 7 soft-reboot.

But even if Part 5 is the “Best version of itself”, maybe even the “best JoJo”, if we’re talking the culmination of all these stories from Parts 1-5; I don’t know if I liked any of the characters.

When writing about Part 2, I said that Joseph, Caeser and Lisa Lisa had the best group dynamic/personalities, and I said that Part 8 had my favorite Stand Powers, but I think Part 5 has the best “Team of Stand Users”. To be clear I’m not saying I like any of the individual members of the Hero Team, or that the Hero Team has a better dynamic than the Trio in Battle Tendency; but as a group, a gang, a unit, a party, an armed force, a team, the hero cast of Golden Wind might be the most strategically cohesive and complimentary group of mercenaries of all 8 JoJo’s.

Like most JoJo’s will have a dedicated healer in the Party, but we’ve also got 2-3 Fighters, 1 Extreme Heavy (that was so broken that the Author had to kick the character out of the story) and 2 different Support/Reconnaissance members with their own unique fields.

They display the best visually engaging teamwork during combat, but outside of it I thought they were kind of “amusingly obnoxious”. Their dynamic/relationship to each other kind of reminds me of the O.G. Ninja Turtles from the 80′s Cartoon (this was probably the best compliment that I could have given them when it was sort of intended to be a criticism).

Also, and I feel like this is kind of a cheap shot, but I think their clothes are dumb. Granted Josuke of JoJolion is still the silliest looking JoJo, but Giorno is definitely a close second.

I’ll say this though, Part 5 character designs might be the most... “Araki”, of all 8 JoJo’s as well (lending further to the idea that Golden Wind might be “Peak JoJo”), and even I’m not entirely sure what that means. Like, all the Men have transitioned from being impossibly bulky to androgynous thin, everyone wears some degree of revealing clothing, their gunman in tiger pants looks like he’s wearing a ball of Ham on his head, it’s kind of distracting.

Of the characters that I might like, the closest I can think of is Bruno Bucciarati and Doppio, the former being the cool-headed, mentor type (the Piccolo of the group) and the latter for... okay I genuinely like Doppio, but he might just barely be spoilers for the production of the English Dub of Part 5, so I won’t say any more.

I like their pet turtle-and-living room.

I’m admittedly a little disappointed in the main villain though. He’s perfectly functional for getting the story where it needs to go, but I kind of wish there was more to him than what seemed to be just a reveal of what he finally looks like. And honestly outside of his hair colour, I wish the villain looked more like Trish, maybe even being a female villain or Trish herself. I don’t know, something to help justify why his paranoia locked himself away so completely that no one knew what he looked like, only for the audience to finally see his true form and... it’s just another dude. A JoJo, androgynous dude sure, but still just a dude.

Golden Wind might be the most Clever, most Cohesive chapter in the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Anthology.

...it’s just not as fun as some of the other entries.

(Also could we maybe not have a stand that impregnates a woman to manifest a robot baby to attack the hero when your stand could instead be, I don’t know, a robot baby that attacks people without the r*pe?! Is that so hard to ask?)

#jojo's bizarre adventure #vento aureo #golden wind #giorno giovanna #part 5

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johnnymundano · 4 years

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Giallo (2009)

Directed by Dario Argento

Screenplay by Jim Agnew, Sean Keller and Dario Argento

Music by Marco Werba

Country: Italy

Running time: 92 minutes

CAST

Adrien Brody as Inspector Enzo Avolfi

Flavio Volpe as Giallo

Emmanuelle Seigner as Linda

Elsa Pataky as Celine

Robert Miano as Inspector Mori

Silvia Spross as Russian Victim

Giuseppe Lo Console as Butcher

Luis Molteni as Sal

Lorenzo Pedrotti as Delivery Boy

Daniela Fazzolari as Sophia

Valentina Izumi as Keiko

Taiyo Yamanouchi as Toshi

Sato Oi as Midori

Maryann McIver as Girl In Bookstore

Barbara Mautino as Nurse

Massimo Franceschi as Coroner

Liam Riccardo as Baby Yellow

Anna Varello as Butcher's Wife

Giancarlo Judica Cordiglia as Desk Sergeant

Nicolò Morselli as Young Enzo

Farhad Re as Designer

Patrick Oldani as Officer Gian Luca

Andrea Redavid as Officer #1

Linda Messerlinker as Girl Victim

By rights Giallo should be called Marrone. As in brown, as in crap. I’m not saying it reflects poorly on Dario Argento’ skills in 2009 but…but you could have an art installation in the Tate Modern with one screen playing Deep Red (1975) next to a screen playing Giallo and just call it “Time’s Cruel Hand at Play”. Okay, I am saying Giallo reflects poorly on Dario Argento’s skills in 2009. What is most surprising about Giallo is not learning Adrien Brody sued the producers but learning that he didn’t do so because the movie was so bad. (He actually did it because they hadn’t paid him all his fee; which is also a really good reason to sue them.) Giallo is a giallo called Giallo, directed by the modern master of giallo himself, Dario Argento. And it’s not very good. Some of Giallo is excruciatingly bad in fact, admittedly like much of the wayward genre of giallo itself. But one expects better from Dario Argento.

In a listlessly lit but still visually arresting Turin young, beautiful foreign ladies are being abducted, tortured, killed and dumped. Even in bawdy Italy this behaviour is frowned upon, and maverick, rogue, loose-cannon cop Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) is on the hunt for the maniacally sadistic killer. When young, beautiful, foreign model Celine (Elsa Pataky) is snatched, her visiting slightly older, slightly less beautiful, equally foreign sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) badgers Enzo remorselessly until he has no choice but to have her accompany him on his investigation, completely contravening every procedure in the police manual. But Enzo is a roguetastic maverick, so there you go. Can the mismatched duo find Celine in time? Will love blossom? Will the torture of young, beautiful, foreign ladies make you feel a bit seedy? Will sense play second fiddle to style? Will the killer’s set piece demise be a thing of ridiculous beauty? How daft will the clues be? Yes, the usual giallo questions apply. Unfortunately the answers are less satisfying than most giallo by quite some distance.

Which is a shame. I don’t want to overstate this but if we can’t rely on Dario Argento, of all people, to provide a decent giallo then what’s the point of us having left the oceans for the land in the first place! Anyone, as am I, familiar with Argento’s movies up to Opera (1987) will likely be unimpressed at best by Giallo. (Getting hold of his movies after Opera in the UK requires effort, effort which I’m not entirely sure their quality will repay. See: Giallo) The awfulness of Giallo is utterly mystifying unless 1987 to 2009 was a period of implacable decline for Argento. I mean, it doesn’t even look very good. The first thing anyone associates with Dario Argento is his weird need to film his daughter in the nude, but the second thing is: style. Giallo, the genre, is all about style, unfortunately Giallo, the movie, has very little style. It has some style; Argento can’t entirely avoid picking the odd good angle, or visually interesting location. But mostly it’s lit in a really underwhelming way, it all looks a bit TV, in short. And the torture is a bit much too; it’s as though Argento has taken all that sado-nonsense like Hostel (2005) as a challenge. Unfortunately, it’s a challenge Giallo lowers itself to with unseemly haste and distasteful success. These grubby interludes puncture any of the necessary dreamlike surrealism a top tier giallo requires.

Every now and again Giallo does try for the necessary operatic ambience though. Mainly in the flashbacks to Enzo’s violent past. These are so good, so stylish and so startlingly direct in their violence that they seem like refugees from a different movie, one Argento is far more interested in. He certainly seems decidedly more apathetic about the rest of Giallo. It all, presumably, is intended to build to a shocking climax between Enzo and Linda which deliberately kneecaps any nobility the viewer has lazily projected onto our cop protagonist. Unfortunately this crucial scene is filmed with such a lack of energy that it merely evokes a disgruntled wife shrieking at her husband as he stalks off to the pub instead of washing the car like he’d promised.

The best thing in Giallo is Adrien Brody. But not because he’s good. Although, he is quite good as the cop, Enzo Avolfi, with his mannered walk and Bronx rasp. Brody’s acting really hard here, and in his head you can tell he’s acting the part of a physically much bigger man, which is quite entertaining to watch. He’s only a slight fella after all. (!!SPOILERS!!) Unfortunately he also plays the totally separate role of the killer, Giallo by name, in a move which can be most generously described as misguided. I mean, I get it, I get the rationale. They, the cop and the killer, are two sides of the same coin. (I didn’t say it was original). So why not get the same guy to play them both? Conceptually that’s quite smart and partially atones for another plod through familiar “There but for the grace of God…” territory. But, hoo boy, does Brody misplay Giallo. I mean, woof! I mean, woof! Woof! First of all he’s hampered by a big yellow prosthetic face, a curly wig and a poorly judged sweatband. That, obviously, isn’t ridiculous enough so Brody adds a cod-Italian accent more suited to a lightly racist 1970s sit-com about foreign students learning English. “Prreeeteee! Bee-yoo-ti-fowl! Pretteee!” he chirrups repeatedly, but the nadir is when he hisses “Shuduppayamawf!” as he injects a struggling woman’s tongue with a sedative. Essentially Giallo disembowels itself by having a killer who resembles a melting Sylvester Stallone waxwork and talks like a homicidal comedy Italian waiter.

So, yes, Giallo is entertaining but for all the wrong reasons. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the misfires in wait, I wouldn’t want to kill all the pleasure of Giallo. But I will mention that Emmanuelle Seigner acts throughout the movie as though someone has told her that if she moves her face it will crack into a thousand pieces. Oh, and…but, no, enough. Trust me, Giallo isn’t a good movie, it isn’t even a good giallo. From Dario Argento that’s a shame, but, hey, we’ll always have Deep Red.

#Movies #Horror #giallo #Italy #Dario Argento #Adrien Brody #Emmanuelle Seigner #2009 #The 2000s

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astarryon · 6 years

Text

Hard Feelings Part 8

Pairings: Bucky x reader

Warnings: None

A/N: Okay, so it’s finally done! Bucky’s out here being reclusive and Wanda has suddenly become this relationship’s biggest fan, so needless to say writing this update was definitely interesting, but I’m happy with the result! Next update we’re tackling Valentine’s Day, so make of that what you will. As always, if you enjoy this chapter or have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way! I seriously appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my work, you’re all amazing!

Part 7

—

Vulnerability was weakness. Bucky knew this, had had the idea drilled into him for decades, over and over and over again. Connections led to vulnerability, as did things like love and compassion. Even the smallest bit of affection could cause a crack in the armor which was so melded over his mind and body. Emotional ties led to vulnerability, and vulnerability got people killed. This was the thought process under which he had operated for years, the one Hydra had assaulted him with until it had become a way of life.

Only, Bucky wasn’t a Hydra asset, not anymore. He was not the Winter Soldier, he was James Buchanan Barnes. He was not a machine, but a man who had had something terrible done to him and his humanity forcibly stripped away. He was not an object, but a good person struggling to find himself once more.

He was not a monster without feeling; he was a man who had begun to feel, for the first time in a very long time... romantic affection.

Or, in this specific instance, the affection was liable to be yours and not his, but for the life of him he couldn’t seem to shake it once it had been introduced into his mind.

You had kissed him, drunkenly and suddenly. Not only had he been totally unprepared for it, but he had also been completely helpless to do anything once you had. It hadn’t been romantic or overly touchy or anything like that; all things considered, it had been little more than a mildly prolonged peck, and had been incredibly chaste in nature. Impressive, really, for how drunk you were. You had gone on to remove yourself and then lay your head down on his chest, giggling like the happiest of children and mumbling something about traditions, and had shortly fallen asleep afterward, leaving Bucky to sit there, cradling you in his arms and feeling like the entire universe had been shifted upside down.

A midnight kiss. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember whether that was something he’d experienced back in the thirties. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had, he supposed; all of that had quite literally been a lifetime ago.

Something had happened, when you’d kissed him in that incredibly drunk, friendly way. You’d mentioned earlier in the night that you were numb to your powers due to your intoxicated state, but that hadn’t negated the fact that others could feel your emotions by way of physical contact; you just weren’t able to feel theirs. So, when you had kissed Bucky, mischief and amusement so clearly evident in your gaze, you had opened the pathway to your emotions to him, allowing him a look inside your head.

He found affection there, and longing. A willingness to bare the soul and offer compassion and care in any way possible. He found lighthearted attraction, and a wholehearted desire to act upon it. A bright, shimmering light which was indicative of fondness and companionship.

Romantic attraction.

The issue was that Bucky wasn’t sure if your powers were showing him your emotions during that innocent kiss, or if they were forcing him to take a look at his own. And on account of the fact that you were now passed out and would be much too drunk to answer any inquiries even if you were awake, it looked like he was on his own in determining which option was the truth.

If they were his emotions, he could deal with it. He’d been wondering when those kinds of feelings would come back to him, if he could even feel things like romantic love and sensuality anymore. Obviously he could identify if he found someone physically attractive, but that was all superficial. Feeling genuine affection for you, though, affection that went beyond just physicality and lust... he could handle that. You were a smart mouth, sure, and way too empathetic for your own good, but Bucky liked those things about you. He might’ve even loved them, as terrifying as the mere thought was.

If the feelings were yours, though, that was a completely different ballgame. That meant Bucky had no control over how the situation played out, and that only served to further terrify him. Would you pursue him? Would you be willing to share your thoughts and feelings, to admit to him the candle you held despite how he’d treated you previously? Would you stand before him, heart racing as his was at the very thought, and show him honest affection? Would you let him kiss you, as had crossed his mind from time to time? Would it be as easy to open up to you as he seemed to so desperately want it to be?

Or would you push him away, unwilling to stick around to see if he could give you what he couldn’t give himself?

—

The headache was present and pounding at the walls of your skull before you had even fully realized you were conscious. Your muscles were stiff and sore, the mattress beneath you harder and stiffer than normal. Pain danced at the edge of your senses, taunting each and every inch of your body at even the slightest movement, and so you did your best to stay very still. God only knew the vertigo which would present itself should you even make an attempt to function normally at this point in time.

For fuck’s sake, what had been in Thor’s cup and why did he drink that shit for fun?

“You seem like you’re regretting some of the choices you made last night.”

One of your first impulses at the sound of a voice which had come out of nowhere had been to scream, and you might have done so if you weren’t convinced that the effort would end you. The words had exploded into your mind, the volume causing color spots to fill your vision as your eyes flew open in fright, the majority of your surroundings tinged pink with the amusement of whoever had spoken.

“Jesus fuck,” you muttered, a hand flying to your forehead. Whatever had been in your cup had done a good job of numbing your power, as it was now coming back to you all at once, manifesting itself visually as opposed to its more typical form. That happened every now and again when you were particularly in tune with and conscious of your senses, as was typical in your current state. You were sensitive to everything when you were hungover. “Lower your fucking voice.”

“Sorry, doll,” the voice breathed, offering a low chuckle. Forcing yourself to just barely squint an eye open, you took in the form of Bucky, his eyes shining in the light of the room and the auras dancing in your field of vision. No wonder the mattress had felt so stiff when you had woken up; you’d been laying on Bucky’s chest. “Didn’t realize.”

Each word he spoke was like a knife digging in to the base of your skull. No amount of Advil in the world was going to be able to help you along with this hangover. You were going to kick Thor’s ass the moment the damn thing passed.

It took you a few moments to process your situation, and you had already closed your eyes and rested your head back down on Bucky’s chest before reality had hit you. It was probably on account of your raging headache that you were currently acting so nonchalant; normally you would have been a nervous wreck, all blushes and stuttered sentences. At the moment, though, you were so fucking beyond over it that it was almost comical. “You slept here with me?”

“I tried to leave,” he whispered. You could feel the fingers of his metal hand tracing your temple, a blessed balm of cold against your warm skin. “But you weren’t having any of it, and I would’ve felt guilty if I left before you woke up. Decent to stick around after a night like that, isn’t it?”

Not for the first time, your eyes flew open in shock, and you were immediately greeted with the pink auras once more, dancing across your vision as your eyes locked on a pile of black fabric on your floor, halfway across the room. Just looking at it made your anxiety kick into overdrive.

Your dress.

What had you done last night?

Ignoring the ache of your body and the disorientation brought on by your rose colored surroundings, you pushed away from Bucky to sit up. Blessedly, miraculously, mercifully, you remained clothed, swaddled in a large tee shirt and cotton shorts. It didn’t necessarily guarantee that what you were thinking hadn’t come to pass, but it did make it a little less likely.

“We... slept together?” you choked out, turning back to look at Bucky. He was still in his clothing from last night, but his tie was missing and his over shirt was gone, probably having found a home on your bedroom floor along with your dress. His hair was unkempt and wildly tousled, but it only served to make him look like he belonged here, with you, in your bed. Admittedly it wasn’t a bad sight, but if he’d... if the two of you had...

Fuck.

“We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you’re asking.” It was exactly what you were asking and the shit eating grin he wore said he knew that good and well. Prick. “Give me a little more credit, Y/n. I would never let you take advantage of me like that, even if you spent the night calling me pretty.”

Relief washed over you like an ocean wave, a balm to your anxiety. “Thank god,” you breathed, shaking your head. On top of everything else you were going to have to deal with during this hangover, a drunken one night stand with Bucky would have pushed you over the cliff that was your composure. “No offense, but that would’ve... I don’t do stuff like that, usually. It just would’ve been... I don’t know.”

Bucky blinked a couple times, seeming to take something in. The light in his eyes appeared to be dying, shifting into something you couldn’t name, and the rosiness of the world was bleeding away, becoming a distinct shade of amber with the shift in his mood. He’d gone from amused and a little uncertain to... disappointment? Was that what amber meant? It had been quite some time since you’d had to deal with physical manifestations of emotions, and you’d never preferred them.

“You don’t remember anything from last night?” Bucky asked you. It was strange; you could so clearly see his emotions shifting and winding down, but his face was painting a picture of humor and happiness. He was schooling his features, trying to fake you out; he had to have been. “Nothing at all?”

Well, that was a little subjective. You remembered certain things clearly, your memories leading up to your encounter with Thor being easiest to grasp onto. Asgardian alcohol, that was what you’d had to drink. You weren’t familiar with the stuff, but after chugging that cup Thor had looked at you like you’d just pounded three Jaeger bombs back to back. That explained why you remembered everything being doused in white light, you guessed; you weren’t drunk often, and when you were the effects on your mind were always so strange.

Steve had been present, that much you knew, and you could remember that he had helped you in some way. You’d been numb to it at the time, but the emotional entry your power had made from Steve while you were busy being wasted told you that he’d been worried, exasperated, and amused while with you, sometimes all three of those concurrently. Snapshots played when you thought about it, showing pictures of you leaning against him and patting his face, spending much of your time drunkenly looking up at him in wonder. How he’d dealt with that, you hadn’t been sure.

Wanda and Thor’s interactions with you had been less frequent, if you remembered correctly. In fact, you were pretty sure you had interacted with the two of them for a fraction of the time you’d spent inconveniencing Steve. Poor guy; you made a mental note to thank him whenever you managed to eventually drag yourself out of bed.

And then there was Bucky, acting so uncharacteristically strange in the little time since you had woken up. Though you could feel that you had been the most emotionally invested in him last night, you couldn’t remember much of your interactions together, which felt strange, considering you’d woken up to him in your bed. What you could place when it came to him were feelings of warmth and serenity, or at least you had been able to before he’d gotten all weird. You wanted to think that meant the two of you had somehow bonded through your intoxication, but you couldn’t just assume that, especially with how he was suddenly behaving.

You shook your head, having to let go of your curiosity at the sudden mood change in an effort to keep control of the nausea that was beginning to come over you. “I just remember a lot of light,” you answered truthfully, using what little left over attention you did have to carefully keep an eye on the colors surrounding you. The amber was becoming more concentrated, tinged with hints of dark orange. Try as Bucky might to conceal the truth, you could easily see that your words were upsetting him. But why was he so sensitive all of the sudden? He had just told you the two of you hadn’t slept together; why should it matter, then, if you couldn’t remember anything? “It’s all really foggy for me. Although... did I compare you to the Sistine Chapel?”

In spite of his intense emotions Bucky laughed, a loud, genuine sort of thing that made his chest shake as a result, a bright smile dominating his features. For fuck’s sake, the guy managed to look perfect no matter what the situation was. “Wasn’t the exact term you used, but yeah. Who knew alcohol turned you into such a flirt?”

“I did,” you sighed, raising your eyes to the ceiling. Getting drunk hadn’t been your goal in the slightest; you’d just been looking for something to take the edge off. “Which is why I was only going to have one drink, but then that one drink turned out to be a whole cup of alien alcohol and I swear, I have never been so far gone in my life.”

“Not hard to believe,” Bucky teased, once again eyeing you in that oddly piercing way of his.

Something strange was happening to the auras as you gazed at him, something which your brain was much too scattered to focus upon at the moment, and which ended up being nothing more than a fleeting though in your hungover brain. It was just... a specific shade of royal blue was dancing along the edges of your own body, lining your fingers as you splayed them apart. This wasn’t your aura, as you had believed after seeing it for the first time. You were getting visuals of Bucky’s emotions, so the deep, vibrant, nearly purple layer of blue clinging to your fingertips was indicative of how he viewed you. That couldn’t have been right, though, because that specific shade of blue... that was romantic, you were pretty sure.

Loving.

You shook your head, writing the whole thing off as a defect in your power on account of your raging hangover.

“You look like you’re in pain,” Bucky stated. Comical, considering the fact that he was pointedly looking anywhere but at you. That same humorous look was still plastered on his face, and you got the sense that he wasn’t aware just how disingenuous it seemed when you had the emotional reading to support that he was feeling the exact opposite of how he was presenting himself. He moved to stand, stretching and popping the joints in his arms as he did so. “I’ll let you get some rest, okay? Don’t worry about training today. We can skip that and therapy until tomorrow.”

“Bucky.” Maybe it was the desperate tone in your voice, but you actually got him to stop in his tracks. He eyed you hesitantly, seeming to check to make sure you were okay, his eyes telling you everything that his face wasn’t, and you silently willed him to answer honestly as you went on to ask, “You’re sure nothing happened last night? I didn’t do anything to upset you?”

His face softened, and you saw the blue hue lining your body grow the tiniest bit brighter. This time the small, fond, unbothered smile Bucky offered you was just as genuine as it could have been, and the amber color cast over the rest of the room was beginning to fade into rosiness once more. “You’ve never done anything to upset me.” Truth; you could feel it clear as you were seeing it. Truth was everything his words encompassed. “Now get some rest. I’ll come back to make sure you aren’t dead later.”

With that, Bucky left you to yourself, and your hangover took the absence of a distraction to worsen your headache, momentarily forcing you to drop the subject and do as Bucky had suggested.

—

Halfway through January and no one was fessing the fuck up, which was majorly beginning to piss you off.

Everything had been normal at first, nothing too much out of the ordinary. Your daily routine remained the same; you woke up, you trained with Bucky, you showered, you went and held your unorthodox therapy sessions, you logged the session and sent the report to Nick Fury’s email, and then the rest of the day was yours to do with as you pleased. Sometimes that meant you sat with Tony up in his lab and watched as he handled technology far beyond your comprehension, other times it meant you volunteered to do some grocery shopping with Clint and Natasha in an effort to get a change of scenery.

Lately, though, your free time was entirely taken up by your mind obsessing over what had come to pass between you and Bucky in your bedroom the night of New Year’s Eve. Maybe you would’ve been able to drop it if he hadn’t been acting so god damn weird around you, but the anxiety which had resulted in the last few weeks due to Bucky’s treatment was far too great to ignore.

In the weeks since the party, Bucky had grown distant. Which was understandable, you supposed. He was obviously working through something and the fact that you could bump him at any moment and accidentally feel the source of why he’d been so withdrawn was more than likely motivation for him to stay away from you; hell, you weren’t even allowed to hold his hand during therapy anymore, and that sort of killed you on the inside, sort of felt like the trust he’d placed in you had been rescinded, but you understood. You were adamant about not pushing him for anything that would make him uncomfortable, knew good and well that he would come to you and express himself if he wanted to.

It just seemed like lately, the only thing which made Bucky uncomfortable at all was you.

That was why you were heading to where you were now, looking over your shoulder constantly and feeling ridiculous each time you did so. There was nothing inherently suspicious about what you were doing, aside from the fact that you were making your actions suspicious. It was just beyond lucky that you were doing this while Bucky was preoccupied by a personal training session. Anyone else you could sweet talk into ignoring your strange, erratic behavior; Bucky would see right through it in a heartbeat.

“Wanda,” you called, throwing her bedroom door open and not even waiting for her scream of fright to die down before trudging over and plopping directly down onto her bed. She appeared to have been in the middle of tidying her things, and had been startled into knocking over a couple of the picture frames on her dresser. “Calm down, it’s just me.”

“What, you don’t know how to knock?” she demanded, throwing her arms into the air. Distantly you had the sense to feel bad, but you were beyond that at the moment. “I get that you’ve been mopey for the past few weeks, but like, common courtesy is still a thing, you know.”

“Mope— mopey?” you gasped, pressing a hand to your chest to show affront. “I’m not the one who’s been mopey.”

Wanda rolled her eyes, abandoning her task and wandering over to perch across from you on the edge of her bed. “Oh, please. You’ve been mopey and Bucky’s been skittish. Believe me when I say everyone is over it.”

Everyone? Had the awkwardness in yours and Bucky’s interactions really been that transparent?

Whatever. At least that confirmed that it wasn’t all in your head.

“Wanda,” you began again, resting your chin in your hands and sending Wanda a look which begged for sympathy. The great thing about being an empath? You knew how best to appeal to others. “Remember when you said that I was your best friend and that if I ever needed anything from you I should just ask and you wouldn’t hesitate to help, no questions asked?”

The dark haired girl blinked a couple times, processing. “Pretty sure I didn’t word it like that, but I’m willing to humor you. Does this have anything to do with a certain someone?”

She knew damn well who this had to do with, and you weren’t naive to that fact.

“Well, he’s...” How did you explain what you were about to ask Wanda to do without sounding vain and obsessive? “He’s being fucking ridiculous, okay? Way more so than usual. It’s like, he won’t even get within three feet of me because he’s afraid I’ll touch him and figure out what his deal is, and that’s getting in the way of our therapy progress, which is getting me bad feedback scores from Fury, and it’s fucking tanking my agent proficiency grade, okay? Bucky can be mad or cagey or whatever he wants to be, but when it starts getting in the way of my job, I’m not okay with it. And it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal if he wasn’t swearing up and down that nothing happened the night of the party, but he wouldn’t be acting like this if that were the case, right? Something’s got to be wrong. I know his normal feelings, and what he’s giving me aren’t those.” You exhaled a breath, not sure how long you’d been holding all of that in for. It felt good to get it all off your chest, in any case.

Wanda only stared at you, seeming unsure of how to proceed. Sympathy contrasting with humor rolled from her mind in waves, leaving a sweet taste on the tip of your tongue. Her emotions always tasted of honey, no matter how upset she was. “And... what exactly does all of this have to do with me?”

Oh, right. Your master plan.

“Well... assuming you’re willing to help me...” Wanda wouldn’t judge you, right? And even if she did, best friends were all but obligated to roll with it anyway. Right? “I need you to take me inside my memories so that I can see what all happened that night. I can’t remember what went down and Bucky says nothing really did, but he wouldn’t be acting this way if that were the truth. And I mean, I don’t wanna force him to tell me because he’s obviously uncomfortable with it, but I figure the memory is mine, so it wouldn’t be prying, would it? I have just as much a right to it as he does.”

Wanda shrugged a shoulder and gave a single nod of her head. “Okay. Sure.”

You arched an eyebrow, blinking in surprise. “Wait, really?” That had been way easier than you were expecting.

“Yeah,” Wanda answered simply. “I have nothing to do for the rest of the day and I’m nosy by nature. Pretty sure I’m just as curious as you are.”

Wanda Maximoff was a fucking saint.

She offered you a smile, and took your hand in hers, giving you access to her emotions and letting you know she found this all painfully amusing, though in good fun. “Close your eyes, and concentrate. I’ll try and get us as close to where you want to be, but let me know if I overshoot. I’m still not the best at pulling up specific memories.” And suddenly, the world around you faded away into nothingness, leaving you and Wanda sitting in a dark void, her eyes glowing a brilliant shade of crimson.

The darkness faded away almost immediately as it came, swirling and opening up, transporting you and Wanda onto a chilly rooftop, hundreds of elegantly dressed people bustling around the two of you. All of their faces were bright, almost as though a spotlight was being shined on each individual, and the decorations and view of the city skyline beyond it all were distorted, warped at the edges.

Beside you, Wanda let out a low whistle, blinking a few times as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. “You really were drunk, weren’t you?”

“Beyond,” you muttered, shaking your head. Just looking at the memory made you feel nauseous, and not just because of the disorientation that came with viewing it. It was entirely too east to recall how the alcohol you’d consumed had so totally effected you. “I think I’m—“

“I love Bucky! He’s like a marshmallow, right? He’s soft and sweet, but he has the potential to be even softer and sweeter. When’s he getting here?”

Your heart dropped in your chest out of embarrassment at the sound of your own voice, your eyes flying to the source of it. There, at a table placed in the outskirts of the seating area, were you and Steve, your head right in front of his as you cupped both his cheeks and stared him right in the eyes. For a moment you were caught off guard at how surreal it felt to see yourself as someone else, but the effect was lost on you as you observed. Jesus, you were right up in Steve’s business, weren’t you?

“We went too far back,” Wanda told you, chuckling under her breath as she watched the sight. “You and Bucky weren’t alone until after we all found each other.”

You nodded, cringing internally as you watched yourself continue to express to Steve just how soft his friend was. “Can you take us further in? Please?” God, you owed Steve the biggest apology.

Wanda simply nodded, squeezing your hand where she still held it and her eyes glowing crimson once more. The sight was mildly unsettling, but equally cool to look at. Your surroundings blurred, morphing into darkness once more before solidifying into the dim, lamp lit setting of your bedroom. The television set into the wall was on, showing images of the ball drop in Times Square with a countdown running in the bottom corner. Two forms were present on your bed, and it took you a few moments to process that one was Bucky, and one was yourself. You were curled into his side, your head tucked beneath his chin and your arm draped over his waste, your legs tangled together and Bucky’s fingers absently threading through your hair.

You gasped, taken aback at the purity of the affection bleeding into you from both parties you were observing. From your former self, you were picking up wholehearted content and bliss, and the smile present on your face as Bucky’s fingers whispered across your scalp spoke only of honest happiness. That was fair; you were definitely fond of Bucky, that was certain, and you had never been able to stop yourself from entertaining certain thoughts about him, even back when he’d been acting awful and calling you names. In fact, Bucky himself wasn’t naive to your attraction to him; he teased you about it constantly. Even if he wasn’t aware of the full extent of your feelings, he had to have suspected.

Your feelings, of course, you had been privy to; yours weren’t what were sending a thrill of shock and grudging hope through your chest.

Bucky’s aura was glowing. That was... that was the only way to describe the sight before you. At first you had assumed it had been part of the drunken air distorting your memories, but this scene was particularly sobering, and you knew very suddenly that your state of intoxication wasn’t the reason for what you saw. The ease with which his mouth tipped into a smile, the gentle caress of his fingers through your hair, the way his chin was so carefully perched atop the crown of your head — the way his eyes were shining, it was all so indescribably iridescent.

“You don’t hate me, do you?” your voice, quiet and timid, rang through the otherwise silent room.

Bucky’s brows furrowed in concern, and he brushed your chin with his thumb once before returning his metal fingers to your hair. “What kind of question is that?”

“... A good one?”

At that, he scoffed, and the tilt to the corners of his mouth was so wonderfully gentle that you almost couldn’t believe your eyes. Bucky had never been so openly and casually affectionate with anyone since you’d met him, least of all you. You considered him a friend, sure, but what he was doing with your former self went beyond that. “You’re drunk, Y/n. Just try and rest a little bit.”

Beside you, Wanda inclined her head, eyes flitting between you and the scene you both observed. “Was this it, do you think? Seems silly for him to get all worked up over some PG cuddling.”

“I’m not sure,” you answered, still not looking away from what you were witnessing. A certain lightness was settling over you, one which told a tale of uncertain longing. Was this yours, currently? Or was this what you could now remember picking up from Bucky? Why was it so difficult for you to tell? “I guess we better stick around a little longer. Just to make sure.”

But that wasn’t the only reason you wanted to stay. No, if you were being honest... you just weren’t ready to let go of the serenity quite yet.

Wanda and you watched, waiting to see if any major changes were to come, and listened as Bucky entertained your former self and her drunken musings. Huh; so the man did have a sense of patience and tolerance. Where did that go when he was teaching you combat?

The minutes ticked down, one by one, and you were beginning to think that perhaps you had overreacted. Maybe Bucky had been telling the truth, after all; maybe the excessive amounts of cuddling you two had partaken in had just unsettled him somewhat, and he hadn’t wanted to embarrass you over something you couldn’t even remember happening.

His aura in your memory, though, wasn’t showing you any discomfort in the slightest. His emotions were light, airy, content. Nothing was wrong here.

“It is now one minute to midnight,” Jarvis announced, voice bouncing off the walls of your room.

“Bucky!” you had exclaimed, readjusting yourself to look him in the eyes. The smile you saw yourself with was much more telling than you’d have liked to admit. “It’s about to be 2018! You have to make a wish!”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he told you, but you had already closed your eyes. A moment later and Bucky closed his as well, following your lead with a fine shake of his head.

“Oh my god, he made a wish anyway,” Wanda whispered beside you, looking for all the world like she was witnessing a real life soap opera take place. “That’s so fucking cute.”

You declined to respond, focusing intently on Bucky’s face. He looked peaceful, with his eyes shut tight and his arms wrapped around you. For a moment you wondered if this was what he had been like before, back in the thirties and with no knowledge of the traumas of war. It was easy to imagine the stars in his eyes which must have been present, the innocent wonder he would have expressed when talking of dreams and the future. In this moment, witnessing how serene he looked, you would have died in order to make this his norm.

You kissed him, suddenly. Or, not you, but your former self did, leaning up to press your mouth against his just as the last second to midnight ticked away. It was nothing passionate, nothing over the top or awfully romantic or sensual. The whole thing was over in maybe three seconds, but you could feel the surprise which had overcome him at your actions.

“Y/n?” he had whispered, glancing down at the top of your head as you settled it back down to rest on his chest. “What was that for?”

“Just figured it had been a while since you had one of those,” you had slurred, patting his shoulder. “And I thought if anyone deserves a midnight kiss it’s you, since you’re missing the party to take care of me when you could be kissing a pretty girl upstairs or something.”

A pause, and then he replied softly, “Well I just kissed you, didn’t I? And you’re plenty pretty.”

Wanda appeared to be having an issue containing her reaction to this, muscles tensing and her emotions telling you that her heart was melting for you.

“Pretty words from a pretty man,” your former self had mumbled, words muffled by Bucky’s shirt. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Well, do you trust me?”

“About as far as you can throw me. So, like, a lot.”

Bucky shook his head, gently leaning down to press his nose to the top of your head. “Just get some rest, okay? You seem like you could use it.”

“‘Kay,” you had conceded, eyes falling shut. After a few more moments of silence, you went on to say, “In case no one’s told you lately, you’re a good person. I hope you know that.”

Bucky shook his head, eyes wandering up to the ceiling. “Pretty words from a pretty girl, Y/n.”

But you had already fallen asleep.

The world around you and Wanda faded away as the memory ended, returning you to her room where you were both perched on her bed. It took your eyes a few moments to adjust to the brightness of everything, the light of the afternoon streaming in through Wanda’s windows and painting stripes of sunshine across your skin. Normally you’d have welcomed the warmth of it, but at the moment you would have given anything to get back to that memory, just to see the sight of yourself being lovingly cradled in Bucky’s arms, to see a softness to him which you hadn’t even known he’d possessed.

“I don’t get it,” Wanda told you, her eyes having returned to their normal shade of green. “He seemed like he was happy with you. If that was all that happened and if he liked it, why would he be acting so weird around you?”

Coincidentally, you were wondering the same thing. Nothing had been wrong just then, in your memory. You had been happy. Bucky had been happy, and more expressive than you could have ever wished for. Why would he have kept you at arm’s length? Why would he have gone out of his way to distance himself from you? Between falling asleep with one another and waking up the next morning to his teasing laughter all those weeks ago, what had changed?

You don’t remember anything from last night? Nothing at all?

“I have a feeling,” you sighed, rolling your eyes at yourself and trying to take a deep breath in an effort to calm your nerves. “Look, I’m gonna... I’m gonna fix this.”

Wanda scoffed. “Uh, yeah, I sure hope you are. If you don’t, I certainly will.” Enter Wanda Maximoff, your and Bucky’s apparent number one fan. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m not sure yet,” you admitted, shaking your head. The situation was suddenly so much more complicated than it had been before you’d entered Wanda’s room. Half an hour ago you’d been under the impression that you had just done something to embarrass your friend. Now you were conscious of the fact that feelings, both his and yours, were at play. “But I’ll figure it out. But, just... could you maybe not tell him about this? Technically we were rooting around in my head and not his, but I know he’ll flip.”

Wanda grasped your hand in hers, giving it a light squeeze as she offered you a kind, understanding smile. Arguably your closest friend in this tower, Wanda was. You were so thankful for everything that she had done for you. “Obviously I’m not gonna say anything, dork.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “Thanks, Wanda. And thank you... thank you for helping me get the memory back. It really means a lot to me.”

She only smiled and squeezed your hand tighter as she responded with, “What else are best friends for?”

—

Part 9

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fantroll-purgatory · 6 years

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Luscin Guisep

(Well, here we go! Alternian Troll #2! I’ve known roughly what I wanted to do with her since the moment I started writing her, but something has gone awry along the way, but I can’t place what? Submitting this through Mobile, so hopefully everything will stay in place.)

I dunno- reading through this, I felt like she has a really solid character! I’ll see if I can’t figure out what’s bugging you, but I can already tell it’s an ephemeral thing that’s tough to pin.

Universe: Alternia!

Name: Luscin Guisep

Luscin is really just the first six letters of Luscinia, which is a genus of smallish passerine birds, containing the nightingales and relatives, which is a sly reference to the fact that visually I based her off of Florence Nightingale. Guisep as a reference to Guiseppe Mercalli, the man who first coined the term “Vulcanian Eruption”, of which was suggested during Scoria’s review.

Age: Roughly 7 Sweeps, likely a tad bit older than 7.

Theme/Story: Have you ever met someone who seemed to be just surrounded by ghosts? Meet Luscin. She’s someone at one end fascinated by death, and someone who fears it in equal measure. For a purpleblood, she seems remarkably stable- quiet and serene, even. But that’s something of a facade. Due to intense self control (bordering on pathologic) and an overwhelming desire to right the wrongs of the past and present, Luscin tries her best to be everything that a Purpleblood shouldn’t be: a healer, a caregiver, a friend. She wants to change the society she lives in, starting with herself.

I think what you might need to pull together this theme, the Florence Nightingale reference, her purpleblooded nature, and her self restraint might be… a little more theology? That’s a weird suggestion, but Purplebloods are some of the only trolls with see with an actual explicit church/religious sense and Florence Nightingale wrote a lot about religion, religious reformation and acceptance, and mysticism.

You could give her some measure of interest in a reformed church. One that’s more open, accepting, kind, and that has a future focused on progress instead of destruction? As a reference to Nightingale’s criticism of how the English church was utilized as a tool to worsen the oppression of the poor, she could be critical of how the Mirthful Messiahs are used by the subjugglators as a tool to keep the lowbloods “in place”.

And she could rely on religious introspection and meditation as a way to keep herself calm. …Sometimes. Mostly. Those moments could provide some interesting opportunities for terrifying communication with the dead moments, too. Or little mental wanders into the astral plane.

Strife Specibus: Lanternkind

Luscin doesn’t like to fight, but when she has to, that Purpleblood malice comes out in all its unholy glory. She’s terrified of herself when she does it, and she hates herself all the more when she uses her lantern either to bludgeon someone to death, or use its uncanny light to lure someone into her Lusus’ jaws, but she’s surprisingly good at it.

Fetch Modus: Plague Modus

You ever play one of those pathogen Flash games? The ones where you try and breed a super disease (or make zombies, etc.) and take over the world? That’s Luscin’s modus in a nutshell. In order to get anything out, she needs to wait until that part of her Modus has been infected enough to eject the item. Each item has its own parameters for what kind of disease it would theoretically be, and that means its own infection rate. She often spends hours agonizing, waiting for whatever item she mistakenly put in to be available again.

Blood color: Purple

Unlike her Dancestor, Luscin doesn’t seem to be a Purpleblood at all. She’s too… nice. Too prone to patching up wounds, too focused on the plight of the less fortunate. But, what lies behind that painted face of hers lies a girl stressed to the point of breaking, who’s been trying her damndest to live to higher ideals. Truly, she’s a purple blood who’s single-minded devotion is to be the best person she can be.

When she snaps, clear out! Girl’s a walking emotional hydrogen bomb.

Symbol and meaning: As Purpleblooded Doom players who dream on Derse, the Guisep girls both claim the sign of:

CAPRIMINI, the PERILOUS!

Trolltag: Much like one of her good friends, Luscin uses two different Trolltags, each for different purposes.

tediferousGlimmer [TG]

This is her main account, that she keeps colored purple. “Tediferous” means “bearing a torch” which while a literal reference to the fact that she swings a lantern around, is an in-character reference to her own Ancestor. Not a reference that anyone gets besides herself, of course, but she thinks she’s clever. While “Glimmer” is another light reference (girl really likes her lantern), I really thought of it as a reference to Longfellow’s “Santa Filomena”

“Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.”

Which is in itself a sort of a reference to Florence Nightingale, once again. Also the word just sounds good. Fun word.

tenebrousTelesthesia[TT]

Much like one of her closest friends, Luscin has a specific interest in the heretical cult of the Signless/Sufferer, and she uses this hemoanon account when trying to dredge up info on the movement to better formulate her own opinions. “Telesthesia” is defined as abnormal impression of objects beyond the senses, which is a direct in-character reference to her hearing/seeing ghosts everywhere. “Tenebrous” is “dark, shadowy, obscure” as a reference to the kind of lore she’s looking for- ancient and outlawed revolutionary plans.

I love these both a whole lot!

Quirk:

[TG] On her main…. Luscin has a habit of…. Ominously putting ellipses after her thoughts… she thinks it makes her sound mature…. But it mostly just makes her sound really… passive aggressive… Sometimes, whenshesreallynervousshellforgettoputspaces and WHEN SHE FLIPS OUT SHE PUTS ALL PRETENSE ASIDE AND JUST YEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[TT] She actually uses the Sufferer Sym69ls correctly, and tries her best not to lapse into her habits… but it’s hard… y’know?

Special Abilities (if any): As a Doom player who actually embraces her aspect, Luscin can and does hear the voices of the dead (a la Sollux). She doesn’t actually know that that’s what causing it, and so believes that she’s under the Calciner’s Curse, suffering for deeds her Ancestor did. This drives her nuts and doesn’t do anything useful yet, but it’s fun.

As a Purpleblood, Luscin’s psychic powers are twofold, though they share a similar root. Both involve causing people to see ghostly hallucinations of her, though what they cause varies. In the first type (which she uses when hunting for her lusus) the image of her acts as a will-o-wisp, enticing whoever is unlucky to see it to follow it, usually to their doom. The second form causes the ghostly image of her to plague the victim, usually causing them to do whatever it is she’s been nagging at them to do. Neither of her purpleblood abilities force people to do anything, they just make doing what she wants to seem like a better alternative.

Poor girl having to put up with all this. I do like that she’s got these abilities that surround her in this torment as well as doing things like passively causing death and passively tormenting others…

Lusus: Luscin’s pretty sure she inherited her Lusus from her Ancestor, and she hates every minute of it. This is Alternia, so killing people to feed your Lusus is a well respected part of high society, but she hates every second of trying to feed this hell volcano-ocean-beast thing, somewhere between Salamander and Leviathan, which lives beneath the once-active volcano on which she makes her Hive. Really, her life would be a lot easier if the thing would just keel over and die already, but she’s not going to get that lucky any time soon.

Interests: Medicine and Pathology, Looking Ominous, Funerals and Death Customs, The Signless Cult, Failed Rebellions Against The Condesce

Funerals aren’t common on Alternia at all, to the point of being almost unheard of. Did she happen across some online information about it? Or just happen to locate some old ancient information about funeral practices while scouring the Rebel Web? I guess it’s not important, I just wanted to comment on it.

I do like these interests a Lot for a doom player, tho. And re: the stuff I mentioned earlier, maybe she could have a marked interest in lowblood folk religion? Trying to study the kind of regional theologies that pop up in various lowblood communities and introspection about how it relates to her own world experience?

Appearance: As much as it embarasses her, Luscin has a big love of fashion. Admittedly, her tastes are less “fashion forward” and more “young Victorian widow”, but it’s considerably more than your average troll. She’s a big fan of dramatic veils and long layered skirts, all in black. She wears her symbol in the center of her chest, as is custom. The wrought-iron lantern glows with an eerie green-red light, a reference to the two people she built it with. Her horns are long and curl down the ends, which makes wearing actual veils a problem, but she tries anyway just for the drama of it all. It’s hard to find her hair behind all of the black, truth be told, but it’s cut into a wavy, mid-length bob kind of thing that she barely keeps up with. Like many Purpleblooded trolls, Luscin paints her face, ringing her eyes with purple and using the usual grey and white paint to create an exaggerated skull design.

Neat, we’ll draft her up at the end like usual!

Personality: If you don’t know her well (and let’s face it, she doesn’t want anyone knowing her well), Luscin seems to be something of a doormat. She’s very quiet, almost timid, and she doesn’t make a big impression. Of course, this is all a side effect of her intense repression. She overdoes it a lot, trapping herself in her own head. Even to her friends, Luscin is known as the kind of person who you can talk to all day and yet hear very little from. She likes to be a listener, she likes to be the kind of person her friends can rely on to be stable, and sober, and rational. It takes a lot to get going, but oh boy, once you get her going, there’s no stopping her. Only her closest friends have ever witnessed what happens when you put a purpleblood’s aggression in a can and shake it until explodes. They don’t like recalling the stories.

Had she any kind of self confidence, Luscin would be a meddler because she is always thinking of other people. She has a very deeply buried trickster streak, that sometimes surfaces when she needs to hunt for her Lusus. Whenever she really gets into a hunt, her mental discipline starts to waver, and when either her or a friend is in physical danger, it all goes to hell and out comes the cackling madwoman wielding a lantern. She’s absolutely disgusted with herself every single time it happens, and every failure to keep her cool just adds another level of stress for her to deal with.

Luscin’s prone to going on long, poetic rambles about the nature of troll and society and nature and whatnot, which comes off as really pretentious but comes from a place of sincerity. If there’s one thing that Luscin’s doing at any given moment, it’s thinking way too hard about things that are out of her control.

I… love her. I like the idea of her purpleblood nature taking over during the hunt and she hates it and feels guilty. Someone free her.

Ancestor: The Calciner [Scoria Guisep, The Heir of Doom]

The woman who last wore Luscin’s symbol was an infamous highblood. They say she lived at the center of a volcano, walked on lava and ate fire for fun! They say she once rode into battle on a sea monster who devoured an entire ship whole! These tales are probably exaggerated. But from what Luscin has learned, there are a few things that are certain. The Calciner lived up to her name- she hunted Lowbloods for sport, chasing them with flames and bludgeons, relishing in their torment before feeding their corpses to her Lusus. As a purpleblooded troll, she relished every second of power she had, and lived up to the Alternian ideals as much as anyone could. There were two specific lowerbloods that she found herself fond of, but they both became swept up in the Signless’ cult. While her heart was almost swayed by the woman she loved, her bloodlust got the better of her, killing one of the two and then she forced herself into a duel to the death with the other. Nobody got out of that event alive.

Luscin believes that she has been cursed with the Calciner as an Ancestor. She swears that the feels the ghosts of all the people she killed surrounding her at all time. No amount of light from her lantern can drive these shadows away. To her, the only way to quiet the shades of the dead (and her conscience) is to undo the harm her Ancestor caused, one day at a time. Luscin believes that while one does inherit the baggage of their Ancestor, they are not fated to become them. All it takes is a bit of intense focus and a desire to change.

Title: Sylph of Doom

Unlike practically any of her contemporaries, Luscin is kind of… already there growth-wise. She doesn’t need a huge challenge to her personality in order to grow into a better person or a better friend. She needs someone (or, in this case something) to push her into actually making the first step. Part of what makes Doom so agonizing of an Aspect is that there is inherently a threshold element to it- you can’t have Death without it. Rage is the destruction, the breakdown. It ends what is before. Void is what lies beyond Doom- nothingness and room to grow. But Doom? Doom takes a player and says “look upon this: it is gone, and it shall not be again”.

And, really? That’s the wakeup call Luscin needs all on its own. The final, the inevitable has surrounded her this entire time. As a Sylph, the potential is there for her to become all she ever could be. She may not be a healer of the sick, but of the dying? The dead? Therein lies her potential. It’s a sobering kind of potential, but there’s nobody better equipped to handle that than her.

I’ve been debating Maid for her as well, as they’re similar classes but I’m unsure which would be best (if either of these at all) to fit Luscin’s odd “semi angel of Death” theme going on here. Witch might also be an option for her? The Pele girls are just a “?????” of classes at all times.

I find this funny because Witch/Maid/Sylph are the ones I struggle with ALL the time, too. I like Maid for the Made of Doom pun as it relates to her, but… I think Luscin might benefit best from a Witch role? Because it is the active changer and I think that might be good for her. Doom is also about systems and structures- it relates to the state of things and their inevitable sputtering out. So her interest in rebellion could easily be reflected in her being a Witch. She wants to actively manipulate and change and shape.

That would also make her inverse Seer of Life, would allow her to have the passive understanding of the importance of life. That undercurrent of its importance, that understanding and knowing that there is something, something, something that could grow and change, something that could be better. And than she uses that knowledge to shape and change the nature of death, of demise, of the end, and of all the things that lead there.

Land: The Land of Hydrangeas and Strings

The sound of a singular string on a koto being plucked rings as Luscin’s feet hit the rough earth, her hive having crumbled into basically nothing in the transition. The sky is a stormy brown, and every path is overgrown by massive bushes,almost heart shaped leaves in dark green frame the horizon- panicle and globular shape inflorescences wave in the breeze, their colors varying even on the same plant. So much for that soil acidity.

Spiders weave webs somewhere in the dense undergrowth, and their eight legs make them masters of the koto, and the harp, and sometimes even the lyre. The sound of eerie, inhuman music haunts her every moment. They say Orpheus played his lyre for Hades, king of the dead, in exchange for the soul of his beloved. She knows in her soul that something is waiting, at the place where all of the roads meet, where all of the sounds of the spiders and the wind combine finally into a perfect harmony.

Luscin fears she might not have the strength to ask of it what she must.

You always have such good planet descriptions I Love this.

Dream Planet: Derse

In a manner that mirrors her Dancestor, Luscin can’t take anything regarding her caste, her planet, and her society lying down. To Luscin, her Ancestor did enough damage as it is that’s lasted until now. Everything to Luscin is a battle, even if she doesn’t realize it consciously. Dersites rebel, and what rebellion is more real than denying your own blood?

Perfect!

Hair: I know you said she doesn’t keep up with it much, but I decided to keep it relatively tame just so it wouldn’t pull too much attention. It still has some scraggly ends, but... maybe having neat hair is a sign of not keeping it together on Alternia? I mean, Equius the sweaty mess has straight hair so who knows.

Eyes: I kept them the same as Scoria’s, but made them less half-lidded, because it seems like dancestors often share eye shapes!

Mouth: I gave her a smaller frown, but I kept a few teeth I stole right from the Scoria sprite poking out there.

Makeup: I did the purple rings around the eyes and then did some frowny eyesockets in grey. I gave some wavy cheekbone lines, but I didn’t add anything else because I didn’t want it too cluttered.

Outfit: I based it vaguely off an outfit I saw Florence Nightingale wearing when I googled her. White neck ruffles and the rest in black. I had the skirt go down just far enough to cover her feet. No visible leggies here.

Thank you for sharing her! I love her... A Lot.

-CD

#persephoneanmystery #luscin guisep #luscin #guisep #purpleblood #review #redesign #cd review #submission

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Burnout Paradise Remastered on Switch is an Excellent, But Expensive Port

June 25, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Burnout Paradise Remastered has received an excellent Switch port, but the price of admission is way too steep for what it is.

Burnout Paradise Remastered on the Switch is excellent. It looks the way you remember it, runs like a dream, and offers a complete package with tons of things to do and cars to collect.

But it’s also a port of a two-year old remaster of a 12-year old game, which released at a $49.99 USD retail cost on the Nintendo eShop when the PlayStation 4 version currently costs $10 digitally and $5 on Steam.

By all means, Burnout Paradise is an arcade racer worth experiencing, and its remaster is the best way to go about it. But its other versions being drastically more affordable make the Switch one a tough sell.

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Like its initial release two years ago, the Switch version of Burnout Paradise Remastered is the complete edition of Criterion’s 2008 open-world hit. All the expansions — from the additional cars, bikes, and modes to Big Surf Island and so on — are included alongside the base game, which has been optimized by Stellar Entertainment to run at 60 frames per second in 900p docked and 720p in portable mode.

>>From The Archives: Burnout Paradise Remastered Review (PC, PS4, Xbox One)

It is a downgrade from its console and PC counterparts, which run in a native 1080p with 4K support, but it’s definitely not a dealbreaker. Visually, Paradise looked great when it first came out for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and it has aged remarkably well in the time since. Though it maybe isn’t running at the best fidelity possible, there was never a point where the Switch version of Paradise looked bad (on a TV or undocked) outside of a couple grainy textures or filters here and there that are barely noticeable when your car is zipping through the streets at top speed.

Perhaps more importantly, I never noticed a drop in performance. The game seemed to always stay at 60 FPS, and even if it did drop, it recovered fast enough before I could realize.

Paradise has also aged gracefully in terms of gameplay and structure. When Criterion was getting the Burnout series ready for its, at the time, true next-gen debut, the development team did so by transitioning it into an open world.

The end result was Paradise City, an expansive map that borrows bits and pieces from major cities across America to form a playground that plays to the series’ strengths and rewards exploration. The downtown area is filled with tight corners to drift around, construction sites to cut through to find shortcuts, and jumps that can either be used to your advantage in events or just as a means for faster navigation. The expressways, meanwhile, expand out into the mountains, letting you keep your foot (finger?) on the gas uninterrupted for long stretches of road.

Burnout’s main modes up to that point all made their way over too, in the form of events that are at every traffic light you come across in the game, and are started by revving your engine (holding in ZL and ZR at the same time). These events can be any of a standard race, Takedown (where you have to crash as many opposing drivers as you can within a time limit), Marked Man (get to a designated point in the city while other drivers try to total your car), Stunt Run (perform drifts, jumps, and other tricks to rack up the highest score you can), or a Burning Route (essentially a time trial).

Winning an event earns you a mark on your Paradise City license, the game’s main means of progression that starts as a learner’s permit with the goal of eventually upgrading it to a Burnout and then Elite level license.

As the wins pile up, your license improves and more cars unlock for you to try. It’s straightforward, and pretty simple, but it’s an approach that does its job in getting you from event to event, while giving you the freedom to do things at your own pace.

DJ Atomika, Paradise’s in-game radio host, put it best: “The best tip I can give to any new Paradise City resident who wants to compete is just cruise the city. Explore at your own speed, get to know the place. Finding the jumps, the shortcuts, the billboards, all that stuff is what makes you a winner.”

All the events are fun in their own way, and not only encourage different styles of driving, but also experimentation with different vehicles that carry varying stats.

While some races do keep you on a certain route through a series of checkpoints, I appreciated that a lot of them just require you to get to the finish line and don’t care how you do it. So you can take a complete detour from the rest of the pack and take a much quicker route, run all the opponents off the road, or take the standard approach of trying to outdrive them all. The game doesn’t care, first place is first place all the same in Paradise City.

Marked Man and Takedown, however, were my favorite events by far. I don’t know, something about running other cars one after the other into a support beam or off a ramp and into the ocean while Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” plays on the in-game radio is oddly amusing.

Speaking of, Paradise’s licensed soundtrack is stellar all around. It’s perfectly suited to an aggressive arcade racer like this, and even includes a playlist of original tracks from older Burnout games if you have any nostalgia for them.

Admittedly, the event types do get a bit repetitive after so many hours. And while there are more than 150 vehicles available in the game, the DLC ones are unlocked for you right from the get-go, which takes away from that aforementioned encouragement to experiment because for much of my play time I already had access to a car that could pull off whatever I needed it to.

The difficulty never really presented much of a challenge, either. I never needed more than three tries to complete a particular event, and more often than not, me failing was a result of my own mistake, like taking a bad turn or accidentally driving straight into a wall that I didn’t have enough time to react to. It was almost never the result of AI drivers outsmarting me.

Paradise Remastered also retained its online suite in the Switch version, allowing you to participate in ranked events or invite friends into Freeburn Online to drive around the city together and create custom matches. But in an attempt, albeit a limited one, to try out a few online races, the game couldn’t find me a ranked match to jump into. I’m not sure if that was a server issue, low player count, or something with Nintendo Online, though.

Burnout Paradise Remastered’s pros far outweighs its cons, and I’d argue that its cons, as far as the game itself goes, are pretty minor to begin with.

The big issue is that as good as the Switch port is, it really doesn’t make sense to pay $50 for it when there are far more affordable ways to get the exact same experience. Maybe if the Switch was the only platform you own, but even then, it may be better to wait for a decent sale unless you absolutely cannot hold off.

June 25, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/burnout-paradise-remastered-on-switch-is-an-excellent-but-expensive-port/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=burnout-paradise-remastered-on-switch-is-an-excellent-but-expensive-port

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newidaho · 5 years

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3. FuTech Virtual Home School

Don’t have the time/patience/desire to read with your eyes? Don’t have eyes? Well, have your friend read you this: You can check out the audiobook for free on Apple, Google, Stitcher, or Spotify. Subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday!

12 December 2054

This was one of the most beautiful classrooms Charlie had been in all year. The beach scene was especially nice considering it was winter in New Idaho. Of course, it never got too cold by the Jungle, but if he ever happened to visit the mountains on the edge of town, Charlie had to wear at least a couple layers. It was nice to be on a balmy beach in the middle of December.

Of course, most of the heat was in his head. Though his visual environment showed him sitting on a beach in a group of about 50 other kids, looking out at the sun reflecting off the crashing ocean waves, the actual temperature he felt was no hotter than the room he sat in. After four hours of class, however, it was easy to forget that this was a simulation—even though the sand underneath him obviously felt like carpet.

‘So, to recap. If you see a number next to a letter, what does that mean?’ Mr. Carlson stood at the front of the classroom, the dark-skinned math teacher Charlie had met earlier that fall. He had never met Mr. Carlson in person, of course, so it’s hard to gauge whether this was what he actually looked like. It was always easier, however, to just believe that nobody doctored their looks in the Virtual Environment. Charlie himself certainly hadn’t changed his avatar. Even if he had the money to spend on a decent app for that, none of the students at FuTech were allowed to alter their appearance. Technically, the same rule went for teachers. There were rumors, however, that some of the richer students were able to get around this rule. And it wasn’t hard to believe that the more popular teachers could get around it too.

‘Multiplication!’ The response was voiced with varied excitement by about 20 students. At FuTech VR HomeSchool, it was drilled into the students to be grateful for their opportunity to have an education, and especially to have an education at FuTech. After all, it was God’s Will that His children be educated, and the FuTech community was put here to train children and adults alike to carry out this Will in this next generation of Virtual Reality. What some might call “Displaced Humanity,” FuTech called “Empowered Humanity”. These new worlds, went the idea, were put here by the Lord Himself. The Devil was in these worlds too, of course, but FuTech vehemently denied that Satan had any but the smallest influence in any of their students or simulations (for they oughtn’t deny original sin). They prided themselves on their acknowledgement of God’s gifts. That’s why all the freshmen were trained to respond with vitality to all their lessons, even though many were quite tired after four hours of classes.

‘Great. That will do for today.’ Mr. Carlson started to put his belongings in order. Charlie always thought it was funny when Mr. Carlson cleaned up—he could easily

program his papers to organize themselves. Of course, part of the responsibility of Empowered Humanity was that they mustn’t forget the history of humans on Earth—Jesus had left them to act without such technological shortcuts for at least 2025 years, after all. Mr. Carlson put his papers into his briefcase and continued, ‘Why don’t we stand for prayer.’

With a smile, Mr. Carlson motioned for everyone to stand up. A breeze blew the palm trees around them, lending ambiance to the situation even if Charlie couldn’t feel it. He noticed, however, that a couple of the students around him shivered. This implied a couple possibilities. First, they were likely in a sensory chamber, whether rented or owned. Second, they had the money to rent or own a sensory chamber. Charlie knew jealousy was a sin, but he couldn’t help but wish he could have felt even more present on this beach.

‘In the name of the Father and the Son we join hands in the Other World.’ The students moved into a circle and joined hands. It wasn’t quite like holding hands in real life, but Charlie at least felt a pressure somewhat resembling a human hand due to his Lucid Gauntlets. His were a couple generations behind, but at least it didn’t feel like he was holding onto nothing.

‘Heavenly father,’ Carlson started, ‘We gather here today, blessed as ever, under your watchful eye. We thank you for this entrance into a whole new world, and we thank you for watching over us not only in this world that we share together today, but in the world that we all return to when we remove our Masks. We pray that we may stay ever grateful for this new opportunity for education, and as always, for these new tools that you have inspired humans to create. We thank you for the community these tools inspire and for the sense of belonging and kinship they allow us to feel toward each other and You. We ask that you may further guide us in our pursuit of knowledge and that we may continue to learn and prosper with these new technologies. We ask this in your name, and in the name of the Virtual Savior to come, Amen.’

‘Amen!’

‘We will have 15 minutes until the lobby closes. If you wish, please stay around and speak about what you learned today. I will be here if any of you have questions about the final.’

About a quarter of the students walked into the palm trees, out of sight. Another quarter dove into the waves. This representation of logging out provided a more realistic visual than the flash of light that might have been imagined by science fiction writers in the early century. The remaining half of the students either went to talk with Mr. Carlson in a small group or stayed behind to talk with each other.

Charlie already knew how he wanted to spend his Extra Time. As soon as the prayer circle finished, he had smiled and waved at a beautiful dark-skinned classmate across the circle, effectively welcoming her to talk with him when the day had finished. Charlie, at 13, was admittedly awkward around girls, but something about the simulation gave him some extra confidence.

‘Hey Gamma,’ said Charlie when they finally met.

‘Hi Charlie. How was your day?’

‘Oh, you know. It’s school. It’s not always fun, but the Lord provided this beautiful beach for us to learn on. And we get to use what we learn to do the Lord’s work. So it’s good.’

‘You sound like Mr. Carlson.’

‘Well, good! Mr. Carlson is very smart!’

Gamma smiled.

‘So what are you going to do the rest of the day?’ Charlie asked her.

‘My dad wants me to help him outside. It’s starting to snow, and he wants to put little sweaters on some of our trees.’

‘That’s cute.’

‘It’s a little silly—like, why have trees if they can’t grow on their own? Isn’t that something trees are supposed to do? But my dad tells me that even though God makes the weather we need, we still can’t assume it will be good for our trees. He says that he wouldn’t put me out in the winter without a sweater, and the tree is like another kid, in a way.’

‘It’s really that cold where you’re at?’

‘Oh, you know, it’s not that cold. But we get a little bit of snow around this time of year. Especially over on the other side of the valley. But it only really happens at night. During the day it hardly ever goes below 50 degrees.’

‘It’s not cold at all where I live.’

‘Oh, where do you live?’

‘&^%#))@$!.’ Charlie could feel his lips move, but what he heard was a symphony of computerized beeps and blips. It was one of the failsafe measures of the FTVRHS—you couldn’t swear and you couldn’t give away any personal information.

Gamma laughed. ‘Oh yeah? Sounds like a pretty tough place to grow up!’

Charlie laughed with her, but he had a feeling she could guess where he lived. Just as it was obvious to him that she lived on the edge of town. It made sense. Gamma was beautiful in that way that he had noticed rich girls generally were. And if she had indeed guessed he lived in South Jungle, he doubted he would ever have a chance. But maybe, if it was God’s Will….

‘Oh!’ Gamma said, ‘We’re getting the five minute warning! I think I’ll probably head out anyway. My dad is waiting for me on the other side. But it was nice talking to you, Charlie! Maybe we can hang out sometime if we ever get play-date permission!’ Gamma squeezed Charlie’s hand goodbye, then ran into the waves and dove into the ocean.

Charlie accessed his own in-simulation menu by holding his arms out straight in front if him with his palms together, turning them ninety degrees, and spreading his arms apart vertically. He placed his hand at the bottom of the menu, waving it over ‘Exit’.

Charlie’s screen went black and he removed his Lucid Mask. His room was a much less attractive backdrop than the beach, that was for sure. For one, he only had one small window—not much natural light. He had a small bookshelf in the northeast corner of his room and a desk in the northwest corner. His bed was leaned vertically against the wall, a measure he needed to take whenever he went into the Virtual Classroom. Otherwise there just wasn’t enough room to walk around. He slowly lowered his bed to the floor, lay on it, and looked at the ceiling, ready to contemplate the world.

Charlie had just barely begun his meditations when his mother simultaneously knocked and entered his room. Charlie’s mother was still rather young, but she looked older than her age. Though she had never been much for exercise, she certainly hadn’t treated her body well since Charlie’s birth, and at thirty, she was experiencing significant sagging in her gut and jowls. She had kind eyes, but a hardened demeanor, and it was obvious she hadn’t come into Charlie’s room to catch up on his day.

‘Hey mom.’

‘Hi Charlie. How was school.’

‘It was good.’ Charlie paused, planning to elaborate, but his mother continued before he could.

‘That’s good. Hey, take five minutes or so, but then I need you to play some Mineshaft before dinner.’

Charlie liked video games, but after four hours in Virtual Reality, his eyes were rather tired. Plus, even the most enjoyable activities feel less fun when they are forced upon you.

‘Hey!’ Charlie’s mom said. His face must have given him away. ‘How do you think we can afford a Mask for you in the first place? How do you think we pay rent in here so you have a roof over your head? And all I’m asking is an hour of your time, to play a video game. Do you realize how lucky you have it? This was not a thing when your grandfather was growing up, I’ll tell you that. You couldn’t get paid to play video games for an hour. But now that hour will buy us two nights of dinner. So be grateful. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Charlie said. ‘I am grateful, mom. I’ll see you in an hour.’

‘Okay,’ his mother said and walked out of the room. Charlie took a breath, tilted his bed back again the wall, and put his mask back on. In his home menu, located in a room Charlie had set to a Japanese Dojo, Charlie waved his hand over the green cube with a big dollar sign over it. The cube opened up, and three objects floated out. He waved his hand over the one shaped like a pick-axe.

The Dojo disappeared, and Charlie was in a dark mineshaft. About 200 feet ahead of him was a wall made purely of Gold. So that was what he would be handling for the next hour, he thought. A girl greeted him with a small cup of ore. He took the cup from her and passed it on to the girl behind him. He then received an empty cup from another boy behind him and passed it to the girl in front of him, who passed it up to the wall, where about 50 other individuals mined with pick axes. This is what he would be doing for the next hour. It wasn’t the most enthralling video game in the world, but at least he got paid for it.

Five people away, Charlie saw another boy remove a small sword from his back and decapitate a rat half his size as it pounced toward him. Charlie shuddered. There was something real about that aspect of the game. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill any rats today. He took another cup from the girl in front of him and thought about Gamma, out in the sun, wisps of snow around her, putting knitted sweaters around young trees.

#New Idaho #Ben Vizy #New Novel #Writing #WRiting Community #Novelist #Novel Writing #2054 #Augmented Reality #Futurism #Virtual Reality #Virtual Classroom #Private School #Religious School

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