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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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Thoughts on Chapter 314 (and surrounding events)

Being a loose summary of several things I thought about in relation to the leaks, what they say about the series as a whole, a bit of new operating headcanon on the Peerless Thief, and a dash of how fandom is responding to the revelations. Spoilers, obviously.

This chapter makes it quite clear that the HPSC absolutely would have gone in and eliminated the PLF quietly, lethally, and wholly unlawfully if Hawks hadn't reported back the numbers that he did. The only reason the raid involved non-Commission-affiliated heroes at all is because the PLF's manpower was simply too much for the Commission to deal with via their usual methods. I'm both appalled that the disregard for human rights in HeroAca Land is somehow even worse than I thought it was and smug that that tiny little piece I recently posted criticizing the PLF's treatment has turned out to be totally justified and supported by the canon.[1] (Note that this does not absolve Horikoshi of the responsibility to, himself, treat the PLF better than paper dolls tossed into the incinerator of Plot Irrelevance when they cease being convenient to his story.) The fact that the Commission was forced to involve heroes might mean Re-Destro, Mr. Compress and the others are somewhat safer than might otherwise be the case. Because of the involvement of the unsuspecting stooges law-abiding heroes, and because the botched raid became such a huge disaster, there’s far more public scrutiny on this than would otherwise be the case. Of course, "accidents" can still happen,[2] especially in a chaotic environment, but the factors above (combined with Clone!RD murdering the bejeezus out of the Lady Prez) do, I think, suggest that there probably isn't an organized push for quick solutions going on behind closed doors.

I don't think Nagant has been around for a terribly long time or that there was an uptick in vigilantism in recent years—I think the scene where she mentions vigilantes becoming accepted as heroes is just in reference to the early history of heroism. It's in keeping with what Tsukauchi Makoto described in Vigilantes, and forms the basis of the current system—the current system that Nagant was a single cog in a big machine grinding away to preserve.

Speaking of Nagant and the system, it's interesting to me that one of the groups Nagant apparently targeted at the HPSC's behest was corrupt heroes—those who colluded with villains or specifically goaded/incited civilians into using their quirks illegally, thus turning civilians into capital-V Villains in the eyes of the law. One might easily say that targeting corrupt heroes (albeit using a much broader definition of "corrupt") was Stain's whole shtick, but it actually puts me more in mind of the Peerless Thief, Harima Oji. Harima punished greedy or corrupt heroes with theft, and presumably with a measure of declaration and exposure,[3] then distributed their money back to the streets. Someone who ridicules those who abuse their power, and gets away with it for long enough to build a reputation: that right there is a recipe for a folk hero. The HPSC, in whatever form they existed at the time, obviously couldn't let that go on—such repeated humiliations would weaken peoples’ faith in (and obedience to) the system the HPSC was trying to build. At the same time, though, it would also weaken faith in the system to openly acknowledge that system's flaws, to acknowledge that some pretty awful people had found their way into the heroics business specifically for the power and ability to abuse it that the title of Hero afforded them. Public trials would make it a matter of record that some heroes—and, accordingly, heroes at large—did not deserve the public's unquestioning faith. Obviously in a system that was built from the ground up on faith, that was unacceptable. And so Harima was branded a supervillain for exposing the system's flaws, while the corrupt heroes who embodied those flaws to begin with were—and continue to be—quietly disposed of at the HPSC’s discretion.

There's a lot of talk around about how Lady Nagant is stupid, or hypocritical, or delusional, or whatever other dismissive adjective people want to use, because she expresses a preference for AFO's rule over the HPSC's. Firstly, I think it's dubious Lit Crit to fault a character for not being a Paragon of Rationality, especially when they're under the cascading stressors Nagant has been under since she was, what, 13? 14? Forced to live this dichotomy of smiling gallant hero and ruthless covert assassin, had her life threatened by the man who'd taken her in,[4] probably dumped in Tartarus until such time as her trial could be held,[5] and kept in those ghastly, dehumanizing conditions for who knows how long? How shocking, that her objectivity might be somewhat compromised! Secondly, it's not like she's saying that AFO's rule would be a sunny walk in the park. The kanji she uses doesn't even mean "better"; while it can mean serene or tranquil, her more likely meaning is clear/transparent. Her phrasing indicates that she's aware it would be pretty bad; she's simply of the opinion that at least his rule wouldn't be a sham, a pretty lie. It would be bad, but everyone would know it. No one would have these comforting illusions they could lose at any time; if you stepped out of line and got shot in the head by an assassin, well, at least you would probably know you that being defiant was running that risk, rather than never seeing it coming because you'd been told all your life that Heroes Didn't Do That To People. Again, this is a woman whose life was shattered no less than three times by the duplicity of the highest acting authority in this comic.[6] She doesn't have to be Objectively Correct By The Standards Of Ethical Utilitarianism—nor do you have to agree with her choice that because she doesn’t want to live in the Matrix, no one else should get to either—for her opinion to make sense from her own perspective! Thirdly, while I think it's fair to say that the HPSC and AFO actually use fairly similar methods to recruit followers and punish dissenters, we have no idea how much Nagant herself knows about AFO's recruitment tactics other than her own brief experience of it. And while AFO is a controlling and manipulative bastard, at least in his case it's coming from a man who openly styles himself as a Demon King, not an organization positioning itself as lawful regulators of the protectors of society at large while secretly training child soldiers to flagrantly violate every law protecting the human rights and due process of that society's people.

Overhaul's presence is delightful, and yes, he is a victim of Hero Society, if only because Hero Society could have put him in some kind of prison-based rehab facility after Shigaraki was through with him, but chose to dispose of him in Tartarus instead, for absolutely no justifiable cause. I suspect it's only due to Horikoshi not being very interested in the harsh realities of the trauma caused by enforced isolation[7] that Overhaul is the only Tartarus escapee that talks to himself and has dissociated from reality almost completely. Overhaul's maiming was not the fault of Hero Society, nor did Hero Society force him to torture Eri and repeatedly commit cold-blooded murder. But his madness? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable laying that one at Hero Society's feet, actually. I can’t wait for Deku to have to face the victim that Chisaki Kai has become due to levels of systemic cruelty and negligence that really ought to be criminal—and which, if this were real life, would be.

--------Lately, footnotes are really popular with us!--------

[1] Lady Nagant: *talks about how the Hero Society everyone believes in is illusory, a thin fake over a brutal reality, and that returning to the false simplicity of that status quo will only cause history to repeat itself* Me, two weeks ago: Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

[2] Yes, I'm still highly suspicious of the "Destro committed suicide in prison" claim.

[3] Compress tells us Harima “preached reformation,” but regardless, you don’t dress up in a modified kabuki costume and waltz midair through nighttime cityscapes raining cash out of the sky if you’re trying to keep your activities a secret.

[4] And her family situation couldn't have been much better than Hawks', if she was targeted by the HPSC to begin with. I would guess she was an orphan in the childcare system, easy to move from whatever alternative care arrangement she was in, be it an orphanage, a group home, or simply mature enough despite her relative youth that she lived alone on government support payments—that kind of thing isn't as unbelievable in Japan as it is in the U.S.—to the HPSC's care.

[5] And given what we learned between this chapter and 297, I doubt she was even allowed to be present for it. Japanese law states that everyone by default is supposed to be present for their own trial, but as in the U.S, that right can be waived if the defendant proves themselves to be a threat to the safety of the judge, court staff and other attendees. And of course, what a threat the HPSC could have painted her as being!

[6] At least until Hori deigns to show us a damn Diet session.

[7] To say nothing of the physical consequences of spending six months stuck in a tiny room with no natural light while frequently being strapped into a straitjacket, of which there should also be several.

#bnha spoilers #bnha 314 #boku no hero academia #hero public safety commission #paranormal liberation front #harima oji #lady nagant #overhaul bnha #my writing?

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dvplicities · 4 years

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and i'm back to my ways 'cause i'm heartless — — a evan sinclair task.

one. what is your biggest secret? you wouldn’t know it just by looking at him: what with the cars, the mansion, the three perfect kids and devoted girlfriend by his side; a conglomerate corporation that consistently posts profits instead of losses. but seperate to his perfect, carefully constructed life: is a criminal empire of epic proportions.

approached by an old family friend at one stage, he spoke of a lucrative industry that was currently untapped. he’d cut evan in on the profits, but all he had to do was look the other way. evan happily did so. from there, it only grew: now, it encompasses drug import and exports, illegal gambling dens; protection rackets, loan sharking. name it, and evan and his empire, have probably had a hand it in at some point.

two. how long have you been keeping this secret? it started roughly a year after emily left the family, making it now, seventeen years or so.

three. does anyone know about it? if so, did you tell them or did they find out on their own? family wise, only evan. --- outside of that? the people involved in his business. less than savoury characters who have proven their loyalty over and over again, and who evan doesn’t trust with anything other than his criminal exports.

four. why is it so important that it’s kept a secret? to be kept out of prison, mostly. evan would thrive in prison, of course, but he has no intentions of going. his family’s name, and it’s legacy, secondly. his family’s safety and sanity of his children --- who have already suffered so much and lost even more thanks to emily’s actions. evan won’t be someone who adds his name to that list.

evan’s crafted an image of himself for the world, and that image is true --- mostly. the rest of his is reserved for his criminal activities. it is messy, bloody, thankless work, but it’s something he takes a sick, twisted level of pride in.

five. what do you think would happen to you if it got exposed? for sure, evan would be arrested, probably be denied bail and held for the biggest criminal trial of the century. it wouldn’t be pretty --- evan would quite literally loose his everything. his girlfriend, his children, his company. his friends, his life, even. the worst case scenario is the only scenario.

six. are you scared of what your friends and family would think of you if it did? i don’t think evan’s... scared... so much as he is worried. he adores his children, and he knows they adore him. there’s a level of fierce devotion between all of the sinclairs, especially in how they closed ranks after emily left. he worries what will change and how it will change if it all comes to light.

more than that, he worries what vera --- and their unborn child --- will think when it comes to light. he’s incresingly aware that vera’s got an image of her in his head, and keeping secrets is going to harm what they have in the long run. ( it’s especially going to harm the ring he keeps in his safe, waiting for the right moment to ask. )

seven. would you change what you’ve done/you’re doing? no. he wouldn’t. there was a black anger in evan after emily left --- and he never quite dealt with it in a healthy way. he was the perfect, doting dad at home; but when it came time to go to the office, he was self-destructive and depressed, developing a drinking problem and caring little if his life went up in smoke.

he needed an outlet and he needed to do something --- to prove to himself just that he could. but also, to prove emily right. if evan was so horrible that she was forced to leave and abandon their children, well. he’d make it come true.

eight. do you think your life would be different if you did? how? i don’t know if evan would have left the kids, per-say. he’s not built for that, and when you’re apart of his family, it stays that way for life. but i think there would have been a period where evan wouldn’t have been able to take care of the kids, lest he cause them serious emotional harm, or more problems then they already had.

he would have probably turned out more like his own father --- bitter and twisted, distant and emotionally cold. laughing in the face of their dreams and their pride. the kids would have come to be a source of resentment for him, reminding him of the day emily left and the day he was never good enough. and he certainly wouldn’t have vera and the family they’re building together.

nine. what would you do if your secret got exposed? evan would go to his children first, because sinclairs for fucking life. he’d explain the situation, why it is what it is; how it happened, every single last detail. he’d expect the kids to turn their backs on him, and evan, would... honestly understand. he’d do the same with vera, and hope she’d stay. everyone else could have whatever the media says about him.

from there, evan would arm himself with lawyers --- and hope for the goddamn best.

ten. how far would you go to keep that from happening? evan’s already killed people who threatened to expose him; who threatened to harm his children or tell them the truth. he’s bribed cops and politicians to look the other way. in short, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep the truth from seeing the light.

eleven. do you believe enmity knows about it? if so, how do you think they found out? no. enmity doesn’t know. enmity can’t know, because there’s a severe culture of secrecy around evan’s activities and how they operate.

#hillston.task #hillston.task02

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ranger-report · 4 years

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Thoughts On: Mortal Shell Open Beta

I want to start this off by stating up front that I am not a fan of Dark Souls in any way, shape, or form. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Dark Souls is bad per se. I actually really like the world the games have built up. I watch videos on the lore, the environments, the bosses, and I find it all thoroughly fascinating, it's just that when I play video games I like to enjoy playing them, and playing Dark Souls is like bashing my head against a wall repeatedly because I'm using my forehead in lieu of a hammer and these goddamn nails just won't go in the wall. Oh, I've tried to get into it; I've put in two separate six-hour runs, along with diving into Bloodborne because I'd heard that game rewards players who are more aggressive vs the measured style of Souls, but no matter what, I just don't have the patience to be punished over and over again by a game that actively hates me. So imagine my surprise when I not only got into Mortal Shell, but actually persisted to play through the entire demo.

Mortal Shell, developed by Cold Symmetry, is a Souls clone and proud of it. Currently, the open beta is available to download via the Epic Game Store. Pre-purchase is up and running for $29.99. The first trailer was released on April 1st of this year, but make no mistake, the game is no joke. Far from it. For those coming in late to the party, Dark Souls's gameplay revolves around slow, methodical combat in which the player has to read enemy patterns in order to know when to strike, parry, dodge, etc. Any enemy in the game can potentially be a bad time, meaning that if the player gets a little too cocky and impatient, a solid run can so south pretty fucking quickly if they're not paying attention to timing. That's literally what the game is: a massive, calculated game of timing, fueled by trial and error. If you die – and you will, frequently – you're sent back to the last checkpoint you camped at or visited or lit up. You'll have one chance to forge your way back to the point where you died, and reclaim all the currency you worked so hard to accumulate, but if you die again before you do, all of it is lost. So essentially we're working with a complex risk and reward system, in which any fight could be your last, any moment could turn ugly, and your character is having the worst fucking day they could imagine.

Mortal Shell takes this formula and puts a bit of a spin on it. Sure, you've got the health bar, the stamina bar – which depletes any time you attack, dodge, or run – the quick items, and the ability to parry and commit heavy attacks if your timing is right. But what it does differently is the character system itself. Most Souls games involve the player creating a character and slowly leveling up as time goes by. You could become a super beast depending on what you choose to invest in. Shell puts you in charge of a Foundling, basically a nameless/faceless lost spirit, who can inhabit the bodies of fallen warriors it comes across. Each warrior – called a Shell – has different attributes which can be leveled up. Some Shells are faster, some are tougher, and each one has their pros and cons to fit your play style. In the beta, we get two, named Harros and Tiel. Harros is a well-rounded fighter, your basic bitch knight class, while Tiel is more of a rogue, which a much higher stamina bar but can be hurt a lot quicker. Regardless of which Shell you choose to inhabit, you're carrying around what has to be one of the most badass swords I've seen in a video game in quite some time. Called the Hallowed Sword, it's two handed and looks like it could ruin pretty much anything if you put your mind to it. It has a secondary attack where it turns into a goddamn spear for massive damage. There's another weapon in the beta, a hammer and chisel, but I somehow missed that in my playthrough. I'm eager to dive back in and find it, but for now we'll focus on the sword. Sweet Jesus, that sword. If a fantasy game had the equivalent of a double-barreled shotgun, it would be the Hallowed Sword.

There's also a catch to hitching a ride in the Shells: if you take too much damage, the Foundling will be knocked out of the Shell, vulnerable and weak. You'll have an opportunity to get back into the Shell, and if you do, it's an instant HP refill and you're back in the fight. Your Shell can die twice, but if you're knocked out of the Shell a second time, it's game over and back to the checkpoint. This is inventive because dying isn't immediately a punishment, and it's also neat because the Foundling can still carry the Hallowed Sword while trying to get back to the Shell. I have a feeling YouTube is going to be full of No Shell Runs in which players go hard as only the Foundling, chopping, parrying, dodging, somehow escaping damage. And make no mistake, the naked Foundling will die in one hit without a Shell. Having a safety net like this automatically makes gameplay more forgiving and also more intense. Say you fuck up and get knocked out of your Shell early on, leaving you with just one more chance to get through to the next checkpoint knowing if you get knocked down again, you're done. That's a rush unlike many I've played in video games. Also the frantic panic of running and dodging as the Foundling, surrounded by enemies, trying to get back to your Shell, desperate to stay alive, is shockingly effective.

However, there's another weapon in the Foundling's arsenal: the ability to Harden. Pressing the left trigger instantly turns the Foundling into a rock solid statue, unable to move, but also unable to take damage for one single hit. Once the hit lands, the Harden goes away and the Foundling starts moving again. What is absolutely wild about this are the potential combat tactics that can arise. Because if the Foundling is moving or attacking when the Harden goes into effect, they will immediately resume what they were doing when the Harden is gone. So say you're going in for a light strike, followed up by a heavy strike, and before you can land the heavy strike the enemy goes into attack animation. You hit the Harden, freezing mid-swing, and the enemy connects – and then your heavy strike animation resumes, smashing into the enemy, staggering them, freeing you up to either dodge away or get in another attack. Some enemies will be staggered just from hitting your Hardened form, so even if you're not mid-swing, you'll have a window of opportunity to get in and sucker punch. But Harden has a cooldown period, so if you use it at the wrong time, you'll have a wait a minute before you can use it again. And come out of it at the wrong time, you could be facing the business end of a bad day.

What initially drew me to Mortal Shell was definitely not the concept of a Souls game, but rather that Cold Symmetry cited old-school first person shooter Quake as one of their influences on the game. By and large this comes across in the aesthetics: browns, grays, armor textures, otherworldly pagan imagery, skulls and bones and dark caverns, it's all over the place, and it's lovely. Grimy industrial atmosphere permeates everything. Enemies range from brutish bandits with swords and pikes, to imp-like creatures that poison you when they strike. And the monster design is a visual chef's kiss, craggy and awful and menacing. My personal favorite is the Pincushion Warrior, which I've dubbed because it looks like a goddamn pincushion. Walking around with an eyeless helmet and multiple fucking swords sticking out of its torso like, well, a meaty pincushion, when it notices you from afar it will pull out one of the swords and throw it you. It'll keep doing so until you get into melee range, at which point it pulls out two swords, one for each hand, and come at you fast and hard. Do enough damage to it and it will attempt a kamikaze maneuver, in which it rips off its fucking head to throw at you and release a poison cloud which does massive damage over time. Seriously one of the most metal things I've seen, and I cursed the fuck out loud when I saw it the first time. But the showstopper, the truly most outstanding beast in the beta, is the Enslaved Grisha, a lumbering monstrosity that looks like a combination between Silent Hill's Pyramid Head and BioShock's Big Daddy. You fight it in an icy cave, and its attacks are so thunderous it will shake loose stalactites from the ceiling which can fall on top of you for damage. It's fast, brutal, mean, and intimidating, and beating it was such a terrific rush that it made me wonder why I've never gotten into this style of game before when it feels this rewarding to win against a tough enemy. Maybe it's because Soulsborne games are vicious and unrelenting in their assault on the player as they slowly attempt to crawl their way through the environment. Here, it seems like there's just enough stacked in the player's graces to save them that it's simultaneously more forgiving and more brutal. With the Harden ability and the different Shells as combat style options, the choices presented to the player are unique enough to offer a deep challenge, but one that players themselves can modify depending on how they want to play.

There's a couple other mechanics that I want to touch on briefly while I'm here: Resolve, and Familiarity. Resolve is essentially a limit break with multiple uses. When you're attacking enemies, you're building Resolve, and can keep track of how much you're gaining via the meter above your health. But while it builds through attacks, it slowly goes away unless you fill a whole bar, and each Shell will have a different number of bars to fill. For example, Harros has four bars, Tiel has only two. Once a bar is filled, you'll be able to use the Resolve in one of two ways. The first is parrying; you can attempt to parry if you don't have resolve, but in my experience it worked better when I had a bar built up. If you've got the Resolve when you parry, you'll do so with greater success, but it'll also open up a window for you to hit the attack button immediately after. Time it right, and you'll do a powerful strike which will regain a large portion of health, which is handy as fuck when you don't have healing items, but also uses up a lot of Resolve. This can hinder you a little bit if you want to use your special strike. Remember how I said the Hallowed Sword has a super strike where it turns into a spear and does a fuckload of damage? Yeah, you need to fill up at least one or two Resolve bars in order to use it. I'm not sure if you need one bar, two bars, or a full load, haven't done as much experimenting with that as I'd like. Some things in the game are still obtuse, relying on trial and error to discover, which brings us around to Familiarity: picking up items in the game world at first gives only a brief guess at what the items will actually do, so you have to use them to figure out what their effect is. This can be positive, or negative, but the more you use said items the more familiar the Foundling becomes with the effect. Each item has a different number of times you need to use it to become completely familiar with it, but once you do, it'll unlock bonus side effects. For example, the weltcap mushrooms restore 40 hit points over the course of 60 seconds (the regen shrooms I mentioned earlier). But use them often enough, and the Foundling will get a bonus effect of being able to dodge once without using any stamina to do so. Meanwhile, using the tarspore mushrooms – which infect poison damage – will eventually make the Foundling immune to poison damage for 120 seconds. For me this is one of the more revolutionary parts of the game, which requires the most amount of trial and error and experimentation. Of course you're not going to want to use the poison mushroom again after it killed you with poison, but if you take it enough, next thing you know you're immune to poison for two minutes? This is wild when confronted with Imps that deal poison damage with each strike they land, or the fucking Pincushion Warriors and their suicide poison bomb. But at the same time, this could be a bit frustrating when the player gets rare items that are hard to come by, which may have huge bonuses, or massively negative effects. I love it, but also kind of hate it, though where Harden and Resolve add complementary aspects to the combat, Familiarity throws in the gamble of figuring out whether a consumable will do you harm, or make your day.

Mortal Shell has already impressed the hell out of me simply by being a Soulsborne game that I can play and not feel vandalized by, but also through sheer innovation and attention to detail. The atmosphere is thick and luscious, the combat is deep and so are the RPG elements, and there's a genuinely terrifying obtuse story being played out. I did have a few issues with my playthrough, notably the two times the game crashed, one of which forced me to force restart my desktop. A few other ragdoll glitches notwithstanding, the beta is a resoundingly solid experience which is promising great things for the full game. Something which, to my unending surprise, I have already pre-purchased based on this demo. May wonders never cease.

#ck burch #rubyranger #thoughts on #mortal shell #cold symmetry #dark souls #bloodborne #quake #soulsborne #soulslike #review #open beta #epic games store #ranger report

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controloffandoms · 5 years

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Other Ways to Have Fun (T.O.)

Prompt: For Jordan’s Title Challenge, “Other Ways to Have Fun”

Pairing: Thor Odinson x Stark!reader

Words: 1995

Warnings: Slight Endgame spoilers, Past!Major Character death, slightly depressed reader for a while

Notes: Not Thor centric at first, but it will get there.

You were tasked with watching the teenager that was brought on to the team, Peter Parker. After Tony had sacrificed his life to stop Thanos and everyone had been brought back from being turned to dust, the Avengers had been reinstated with new and old members. The only thing with the new members was that they needed to be watched and trained, especially a certain teenager. That’s where you come in. Sam had asked you to watch over the young Spider to make sure he didn’t get into too much trouble.

Not only were you watching over Peter Parker but the mighty Thor. Yes, Thor could take care of himself, but after half the population had been turned to dust (you included), he had fallen into a deep depression and gained lots of weight. It was you job to help him get back into shape. Now, you may be thinking how in the world do you keep watch of both of the heroes...well, the answer is simple, you live with them.

You had built the new Avengers compound where the heroes would come to train and meet up for missions. You had built bunk areas and a monument to Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, and Steve Rogers. The bunk areas were more like apartment areas. How did you do all of this, you ask? When Tony died, you and Pepper became the beneficiaries of the money he had made throughout his life-not to mention the money you were gifted after your parents died. Why did you become a beneficiary? Tony was your older brother. He taught you everything you know about engineering and inventing.

You stepped back from the stove in the common area, sighing. You wiped the tears that fell. You had just gotten back to Tony and then he had to stupidly sacrifice himself before you could even hug him properly. You didn't even know you had a niece until after the battle. Morgan...she looked exactly like her father. While you loved seeing her, you couldn’t help but feel depressed knowing that her father, you brother and best friend, was gone and was never coming back...finally resting.

“(Y/N), you okay,” you jumped at the voice, turning to see Peter.

“Hey kid. I’m good, just having a little think about things. Your Aunt May still coming by for lunch?”

“She said she was bringing a pie because she didn’t want to feel like a freeloader. Morgan and Pepper on their way?”

“Should be here soon. Is Thor up yet?”

“Yes, Lady (Y/N). The delicious smell of what you are making has drawn me from my quarters.” You turned to look at Thor and gave him a small smile. He was losing weight, slowly but surely. You were proud of him.

“Do we know of anyone else who’s planning on coming? I want to make sure there’s enough food for lunch.” You went back to the stove, putting the finishing touches on one of the dishes being made. “Did Valkyrie get back to you, Thor?”

“She is busy running Asgard and will be unable to get away. Barton and Barnes are out on a mission. Sam is who knows where. The others are all out, I believe,” Thor and Peter began to set the table.

As the food finished, your other guests arrived. “Auntie (Y/N),” Morgan launched herself at you. Thankfully you had prepared for her attack.

You gave her a bone crushing hug, swinging her around for good measure. “Little Light,” you exclaimed, “I’ve missed you, Bug.” You set her down, bringing Pepper into a hug as well. “You’re looking good. Everything been alright?”

“It’s still a work in progress. I miss him as I know you do, but we get by and Morgan gets me through the day most days.” You nodded as she gave you a small, sad smile that you reciprocated. “How are your charges,” she asked as she looked to the two playing with Morgan.

“Thor’s doing really well. I know it’s still hard for him, but he’s pushing through. I’m proud of him.” You took a second to send Thor a genuinely happy smile as he looked over at you and Pepper, which he returned. “Peter at least listens to me. He took T’s death pretty hard, but I think we both sort of helped each other with it. He doesn’t go off on his own and cause trouble and I usually accompany him on patrols just to make sure.”

“You look like you’re settling in well. The building looks great...the statue of Tony is-it’s beautiful.”

You and Pepper looked at each other for a moment, both caught up in memories. “I imagine this is how T felt after the kid and I turned to dust six years ago...but this feels more finalized,” you sighed, “there’s no chance of getting him back.” You turned back and walked into the kitchen, fighting back your tears. You wouldn’t cry...not today. Today was supposed to be fun.

You wiped a stray tear away as you heard Peter’s excited chatter and assumed either his Aunt had arrived or he and Morgan were having a debate. “Wow, this is a beautiful facility. I’ll have to visit more often,” May called from the entrance of the kitchen.

You gave a soft chuckle, turning to her and giving her a hug. “You can visit any time you like. I know Peter would enjoy that.”

“Oh Hon, no tears today unless they’re happy tears. I know this is the anniversary of that day, but we all decided to do this to celebrate his memory, not mourn,” she brought you back into the hug, and you gladly accepted it. You sucked in a breath, willing the dam holding back your tears to not break.

You let out a shaky breath as you separated from the hug and gave her a small smile. “Let’s celebrate. Tony would be making fun of me by now.”

________________

Four Hours Later

You hurried back down the hall. You had all of the videos in your hands. You had finally found all of the outtakes of Tony when he was building the Iron Man suit. “Okay, I have been compiling these since last year. I thought that we could watch Tony as he tested out the Iron Man suit sixteen years ago.”

“You found them? I thought he’d destroyed the evidence,” Pepper laughed.

“Nope,” you smirked. “I’m his sister, of course I have backup files.”

You set the first one in, smiling as you saw Tony interacting with Dumm-E...you missed the little robot. He had been both yours and Tony’s best friend for the longest time. You sat back down next to Thor, leaning into his embrace. He was the only one able to give you the strength to get through the day. He happily pulled you closer, setting a kiss on your forehead.

Thor’s laughs completely shake you which makes you laugh even harder. Thor allows his hand arm to lower to your waist, bringing you even closer to him. You couldn’t deny that it made your heartbeat a little faster. You’d always had a soft spot for the god. He was caring, fun, hilarious, and good looking-even if he had gained some weight.

You placed your arm over his chest, snuggling into him even more. He sighed with contentment. You smiled and watched as Tony blasted himself into a car. You winced in sympathy. When you had been making your glider-which was essentially a hoverboard-you had the same result as Tony in you trial runs.

You had to laugh at the face Tony made when Dumm-E rolled over and started to spray him with the fire extinguisher even though there was no fire. “Morgan, that robot was named Dumm-E, he was your father’s best friend for the longest time. He was always dependable and he did make mistakes but he was always there when Tony needed him.”

“What happened to Dumm-E?”

Your smile dimmed. “Tony relocated Dumm-E and a little while after he did, a bad man blew up the facility where Dumm-E was located.” You sighed, “I half expected Dumm-E to come out of the rubble with a fire extinguisher, but he had been crushed.”

“Do you think we could build Dumm-E-II,” Morgan asked as she looked at you with big eyes.

You felt yourself nodding before you came up with a verbal response. “Sure thing, Bug.”

_________________

The Next Day

You carefully removed yourself from Thor’s embrace. Everyone had ended up falling asleep watching home movies of you and Tony along with some later videos of the Avengers and what not. You paused the television, smiling sadly as you looked at Tony’s bright smile.

You wiped at your eyes, determined to not cry. You had planned to have a relaxing day filled with fun activities, but looking at the picture of your brother on the screen, all you wanted to do was be alone and cry your eyes out.

Slowly arms encased you from behind. He rested his head on your shoulder. “There are other ways to have fun today, Lady (Y/N).” He knew your plan for today. It was packed so you wouldn’t have to think much about your brother.

You turned in Thor’s embrace, wrapping your arms around him and resting your head on his chest. “I don’t want to disappoint anyone,” you mumbled.

“You will not disappoint anyone. It is not just them that are in pain, but you as well. Stop putting everyone else ahead of your own needs.”

“I’m not good with that thinking, Thor.”

“Then I will help you much like you have helped me.”

__________________

Halfway through the day, Thor had gotten you away from everyone else. He wanted to show you something. You followed him blindly...you trusted this man with your life. He brought you out of the compound and down a path through the trees. After walking a short distance, he turned to you, a huge smile on his face. “I am going to have to ask you to close your eyes. I promise to not let you fall.”

You did as he said. He came behind you and carefully led you a couple more feet. Slowly he took his hands from your eyes. “Open them.”

You gasped as you were met with a clearing full of beautiful flowers. “Thor-how-how did you find this?” You waded out into the flowers, smile getting wider as the time ticked on.

“I was out on my daily walk and stumbled across the clearing. I thought that you would like it here and that it could give you some happiness today.” He walked over to you smiling. He wrapped his arms around you as you looked at all the beauty.

“I don’t need flowers to make me happy Thor. All I really need is to have you around. You never let me stay in a bad mood. Simply seeing you with a smile on your face makes me happy,” you whisper as if talking any louder would disturb the peace and tranquility of the clearing.

A kiss was pressed to your cheek and he carefully turned you around. “You make me the happiest I have ever been, Lady (Y/N). Seeing you each day brings a smile to my face. I hope I am not being too forward, but would you allow me to take you on a midgardian date?”

Your smile brightened at his words. “I would love to go on a date with you, Thor.” You leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “And thank you for sharing the clearing with me.”

He leaned in and pressed another kiss to your lips. “Anything to bring that smile to your face.”

“Keep kissing me and there will be a permanent smile on my face.”

“I see you are taking my advice that there are other ways to have fun.”

Forever Tags

@miraclesoflove @avengersss-assembleee @way-ward-whale @gracearchives @san-penedo

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fantroll-purgatory · 5 years

Text

Luhnor Muhcob - Troll Victorian Gothic

(Second image is to only show other eye, I really couldn’t decide on which eye I should use, so I did both :))

Oh man, both eyes are so GOOD… I think the left eye is a lil doll-like, which doesn’t quite fit her vibe, so the half-lid right eye is definitely the better choice, but they’re both…. excellent.

Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?

Alternia, Hiveswap era.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why):

Luhnor Muhcob, Luhnor comes from Lenore from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, as well it also looks like Manor, which are often used as the rich places in horror, and Muhcob is straight forward six letter spelling of the word Macabre’s pronunciation.

This is Great.

Age:

8.5 sweeps, or 17 years old.

Strife Specibus:

Umbrellakind, just start whacking with a little lacey umbrella.

O sweet parasols.

Fetch Modus:

Idk tbh, not all canon trolls have known Fetch Modii either…

That’s fair enough! Lots of characters just have unknown modii, so it’s not always necessary to have one if it won’t be relevant to your character’s story. Since goth clothing is often very Victorian-Inspired, she could even just have good ol’ Victorian Pockets. Victorian dresses tended to have separate tied on pockets beneath the petticoats and some women wore pockets large enough they could fit a whole chicken inside (not recommended), so she could just wear something like that and avoid the whole fetch modus hassle.

Blood color:

Teal.

Symbol and meaning:

Libsces (Derse + Life). Sign of the Enhancer.

(if you cannot see her sign, it’s on her hair-clips)

Ooo, clever place to put it. Though with a sign as swoopy as this I think you could also put it in place of her neck bow if you really wanted… I still think the hair-clips are a Fantastic place to put it.

Trolltag + Grype

cynicalGrimm. (Unused unless time shenanigans I guess)

Allseeinglight (Y'know how light is Alternia’s equal to darkness? Yea, also with that light = evil and goth all that, I did try to make her with a lighter color scheme and it honestly looked ugly :/)

I love that idea! But from what we know about Alternia, goth trolls do still favor black, but… more importantly, edgy trolls tend to favor the color Red. So we’ll see if we can put some nice clashy red in her design and make it look #Gothic.

Quirk:

She speaks in rhyme… no matter the time…. no caps only dots…. to show her quiet spots….

The rhyming is definitely a good idea, but if you want her to be Creepy you should probably try to follow the same rhyming scheme of The Raven- which is one that’s built to induce tension. It’s an ABCBBB rhyme scheme, using repetition to create an eerie feeling. Repetition does WONDERS for building a creepy character.

Special Abilities (if any):

Does staring without blinking for three minutes count or is that concerning?

It’s certainly a vibe.

Lusus:

A raven, obviously, she uses it as a messenger.

Personality:

Deadpan, quiet, she lacks emotion to others, she’s blunt and serious, she tells the truth straight up, no lies, she can get very harsh and not apologize for it, however she can ramble about a subject she’s knowledgeably at if there is a starter topic or question, the only time she’ll get is excited is when someone asks to look at her art, then the deadpan part immediately drops, she’ll get all perky and jumpy, but it is to be concerning if the person she’s showing her art to is lower than her, they might end up dead or really injured, as their blood becomes her paint.

How wonderfully creepy. The fixation on life and death is definitely interesting for her being a Life Player, too. Pinning her as a seer of life means over the course of the story she needs to come to Understand the value of life and growth rather than cessation and death.

Interests:

She enjoys watching public executions, her favorite being the be-headings from the guillotine, she also enjoys reading, it’s common to find her in the back of a library, her favorite subjects being cosmic horror and art history, and with art history, she also likes to paint, and circling back, she paints the guillotine executions.

How Morbid. And fun!

Title:

Seer Of Life.

Land:

Land of Trials and Constitution.

Dream Planet:

Derse.

That is all I have for my lovely gothic girl, hope you like her :)

I like her a lot! Thank you for sharing her. Now onto the design, which I probably won’t have many notes for:

Now forgive me for the sloppiness because my laptop Is still broken so I’m bound to mouse and keyboard, but I just wanted to give you an Exaggerated example of what I meant by the use of red instead. The pop of color gives a contrast and deviance from usual highblood attire that makes her look counterculture. I also did the little neckbow change to Demonstrate.

But all around, I love her design and wouldn’t change much at all.

-CD

#digimonfan-1934 #tealblood #luhnor muhcob #luhnor #muhcob #review #cd review #submission

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scripttorture · 6 years

Note

Hey, I've got a character for a little novella that's pretty thoroughly tortured using forced drug abuse and whatnot, but I've been toying with the idea of having his eyes stitched shut for sensory deprivation purposes. Any thoughts on long-term effects of a few months with your eyes sewn shut? Psychological or physical, I'm just not finding a lot out there about that SPECIFIC torture given (I imagine) how excessive and 'extra' it is when there are other methods.

To be honest I’d generally suggest changing to torture methods that aremore commonly used.

Torturers do experimentoccasionally but more often- they’re creatures of habit. They tend to do moreor less exactly the same thing to everyone they encounter. That allows us tobuild up torture trials and it allows Rejali to describe ‘NationalStyles’.

Forced drug abuse is very very rare in a torture context. That’s partlybecause it is easy to test someonefor drugs, partly because of expense, and partly because it’s often moredifficult to force someone to take a drug than use another method. In mostplaces where torture occurs drugs are not hugely readily available and theirpresence would need to be explained.

I generally suggest that people don’tuse this because it’s used so often in fiction and (outside of people smugglinggangs) it’s rarely used in reality.

Sewingsomeone’s eyes shut isn’t sensory deprivation.To meet the definition more than one sense has to be restricted. Sensorydeprivation generally masks or removes at least four senses; sight, sound, touch and smell. This is next toimpossible to do without a purpose built set up and it is almost non-existent in reality.

Which is a good thing because sensory deprivation is so hugely damagingthat depending on the method the ‘safe’ time period is probably somewherebetween 24 hours and three. Sensorydeprivation for more than one day is extreme.The longest recorded period of sensory deprivation a victim has survived is 35days.

Victims of sensory deprivation for extreme periods of time also suffermuch more severe effects than virtually any other torture. Follow up studies ona small group who’d been experimented on found memory loss in 60% ofsurvivors that ranged from six months toten years worth of missing memories. Some of the survivors had lost theability to recognise faces and ordinary objects. Three quarters essentiallycouldn’t socialise with others. The vast majority were hospitalised.

There’s also never been arecorded case of sensory deprivation being used to torture. It has been used in unethical experimentsbut the number of experiments and victims was small.

This has never been common, it’s not what you’re describing in your askand honestly it’s best avoided.

As for sewing someone’s eyes shut-

I’ve never heard of thathappening in a torture case. Scarring tortures are rare now generally butsomething that obvious- I’m having to trouble thinking of anywhere it could happen.

In every country I can think of where scarring torture still occurs italmost certainly wouldn’t happenbecause if the torturers wanted to blind their victim they wouldn’t worry aboutdoing it temporarily. They’d just attack the eyes.

And well- in the minority of places where scarring torture still occursit looks completely different to what you’ve outlined.

We’re not talking drugs andfiddly things that might possibly be fixed one day. We’re talking shatteredbones and pulled teeth and extensive burns. Hell in parts of Nigeria one of thecommon occurrences is shooting someone in the leg or the hand.

Basically torturers either care about being found out (and hence makesure the victim won’t show anyobvious signs of abuse) or they don’t. And if they don’t then there’s no reasonfor them to take precautions.

Sewing someone’s eyes shut is more complicated than cutting them out andboth are obvious and scarring. If a torturer doesn’t need to worry about scarsI really see no reason why they’d be worried about whether or not the victimmight recover their eyesight later.

To me this seems a little…confused because it almost seems to beimplying that the torturers care about the victim’s long term survival andability to recover. In which case why are they torturing at all? If they wantto keep their prisoner alive and non-disabled torture would go against thoseaims.

I’d strongly suggest re-thinking this. Both in terms of the torturetechniques used and in terms ofthrowing around things like ‘sensory deprivation’ when that’s not what you’redescribing. Because at the moment what you’ve picked is a very long way fromreality.

Having said all of that- there’s nothing in what you’ve written whichsuggests torture apologia to me. And I do know somewhere you might be able tofind out more about eyes being sewn shut.

I haven’t seen it in torture cases but I have seen it in protests. Refugees and asylum seekers in Australianand British detention centres have sewnboth their lips andeyes shut at various points in protest at their treatment. These sources contain pictures.

Sewing up the mouth appears to be more common, presumably because it isless risky.

The practice usually seems to be accompanied by hunger strikes andthreats of self harm or suicide, sometimes by self immolation. It’s a desperate,last ditch attempt to get someone in authority to pay attention to the protest,often when the individuals involved seem to have lost all hope of survival.

I’ve also heard of it being used occasionally in some groups that practice forms of body modification for spiritual purposes. I don’t have a deep understanding of these groups or their religions so I’m going to leave that there.

I’ve never heard of someone having their eyes sewn shut for such anextended period of time as you’re planning. Most of the accounts I’ve seendescribe days, perhaps a week. I’m not sure it would be possible to have acharacter’s eyes sewn shut for months and recover eye sight later. Which seemsto go against the presumed purpose of sewing the character’s eyes shut in thefirst place.

I couldn’t find an extensive list of side effects so what follows is mybest guess based on my knowledge and what I did find.

Infections of the eyelid, tear ducts and cornea all seem extremelylikely. Damage to the surface of the eye seems extremely likely, possibly tothe extent that it could be described as scarred.

It would impair the ability to remove contamination from the eye surfaceand it’s likely the stitching itself would introduce contamination andirritants. The entire eye could swell up for a variety of reasons (unable toremove irritants, infection).

Beyond that I’m not sure. My level of medical knowledge isn’t reallygood enough for me to be sure what else this might do. Losing both eyes toinfection seems very likely though.

As for psychological effects those do not generally depend on the typeof torture technique used. Youcan find out more about them here.

I hope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #scarring torture #tw scars #eyes #blinding #sewing eyes shut #sewing mouth shut #Australia #UK #refugee crisis #drugs #behaviour of torturers #Anonymous

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oliverphisher · 4 years

Text

Will Kostakis

Will Kostakis is a writer of all things, from celebrity news stories that score cease and desist letters, to tweets for professional wrestlers. That said, he’s best known for his award-winning YA novels. His first novel, Loathing Lola, was released when he was just nineteen. His second, The First Third, won the 2014 Gold Inky Award. It was also shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year and Australian Prime Minister’s Literary awards, among others. The Sidekicks was his third novel for young adults, and his American debut. It went on the win the IBBY Australia Ena Noel Award.

The First Third By Will Kostakis Buy on Amazon

As a high school student, Will won Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year for a collection of short stories. He has since contributed to numerous anthologies, including Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

The Whole Business with Kiffo & the Pitbull By Barry Jonsberg

The Whole Business With Kiffo And The Pitbull by Barry Jonsberg. I read this when I was in high school. The voice was so authentic I thought an Australian teenager was talking directly to me. I knew that if I was going to be a YA author, I wanted to write a book like it.

Notes from the Teenage Underground By Simmone Howell

Notes From The Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell. After first meeting my publisher, I was given a stack of books to read. This was one of them. From the first page, I knew I was going to be a life-long fan of Simmone's writing. She gets straight to the point, and her prose is so sharp it cuts to the truth of everything.

Witches Abroad (Discworld) By Terry Pratchett

Any Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett featuring the witches. I've read Pratchett since I was 12, and he is the benchmark. If I become half the writer he was, then I'll be content with a life well spent.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

A subscription to Audible (which might add up to more than $100 over 6 months, but if I ignore my credit card statement, it doesn't). The time I used to waste listening to political podcasts is now spent immersing myself in worlds that inspire me to create.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

My first book underwhelmed commercially, and after it disappeared from store shelves within months, I set out on the road with a box of books to connect with prospective readers myself. It was a baptism by fire, but I came out the end of it with so many skills that still help me to this day.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

Julia Cameron's concept of "filling the well" (via YA author Dhonielle Clayton) is something that I've come to live by recently as I try to write more often:Art is an image-using system. In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. We've got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish-- an abundance of artistic fish to fry. As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem.If we don't give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked. Any extended period of piece of work draws heavily on our artistic well. As artists we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them-- to restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well. (https://ift.tt/3hq6Meg)

What is one of the best investment in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

Nothing beats the trusty pen and pad that I keep in my bag. Sure, sending emails to yourself from your phone is a great way to jot ideas down anywhere, anytime, but nothing beats what I produce when writing by hand. It sounds weird, but my brain just works differently when I do.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

My unusual habit is, when I don't feel like I understand my character well enough, I record audio with my phone and waltz around the apartment, talking in character about my wants. I discard 90 per cent of it, but I almost always discover something about them.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

One new belief: 'Your prose doesn't have to be perfect, it has to connect.' Sometimes, a grammatically perfect sentence isn't what you need.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

As somebody who was intent on publication at 12, driven to send novels to publishers way before I was ready, I would tell them to wait. I know the desire to be an author can feel all-consuming, but having the desire doesn't mean you're ready. I wasn't ready when I signed a book deal at 17, I wasn't ready when that book was released when I was 19, and it showed in my work, I think. Take the time to find your voice and what you want to use it for. Achieving your dream sooner isn't necessarily better.

They should ignore any advice that doesn't work for them. The wonderful and frustrating thing about creative writing advice is, what works for one person might not work for another. Accept every piece of advice, trial it, but if it doesn't work for you, it's okay to discard it.

What are bad recommendations for aspiring authors, that you hear in your often?

It isn't really a bad recommendation but ... there's an entire industry built around aspiring authors. Just know that you don't need to pay to get published. You don't pay a publisher to consider or publish your work. You don't need to have your work professionally edited before you submit. Join a critique group! Swap manuscripts with a friend! Read a lot! Download free podcasts! You. Don't. Need. To. Pay. To. Be. Qualified. To. Create. Art.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

Unpaid labour in all its forms. I am still open to providing my services for free for deserving causes, and I still do, but there's nothing like having to pay rent in Sydney to force you to stop seeing payment in exposure as anything other than exploitation.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

"Buy my book, buy my book, buy my book!" on social media. It doesn't work. Never has. Use social media to connect with your readers personally. The hard sell is irritating. If you don't like it when someone does it to you, don't do it to others.

What new approach helped you achieve your goals?

Setting realistic goals. No longer setting the massive "write 2000 words today" and then feeling disappointed. Aiming to write 300 and being satisfied and inspired to write more ... usually results in writing more.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

Whenever I'm blocked creatively, even if under an intense deadline, I walk away and go do something (usually gym or play Pokemon Go), something that forces me to have some distance from my work, so when I return, I'm better able to tackle the problem.

Any other tips?

Read! Read! Read! Read! Be an active member of the literary community. Go to book launches. Listen to authors speak. Read! Read! Read! Read! Recommend books to others. Buy books for others. Fill your well!

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/will-kostakis

#Writing WriteMotivation WritingAdvice

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evilrevan · 6 years

Note

For the meme. Tiamat: 2,4,6,13. Reyvanna: 3, 17, 19, 20. Vahita: 5, 8, 9, 25.

Describe Your OC meme

Under readmore because holy shit this is long.

Tiamat:

2. Their smile

Tiamat’s smile is wide and… toothy thanks to her reptilian genetics. It’ll be slightly lopsided as she can’t quite get the whole smiling thing humans, dwarfs, and elves do right. She tries. Often times her smiles do come off as creepy with rows of her needle-like teeth sticking out like she’s about to tear into someone’s arm. Doesn’t help things when she tries to joke about humans, dwarfs, or elves tasting like gravel.

4. Their insecurities

Given her upbringing and past with her kin, Tiamat is heavily insecure being around others of her species. Many are high ranking individuals and even ones who are merely servants or slaves hold a higher standing than she does. Rejected even before she broke the shell, it shattered her self-confidence and self-worth. When faced with her kin she’s wary, guarded, and coarse. At least on the outside.

Inside? She’s a mess bubbling with nervous energy. Always fearful someone will figure out she was nothing but an unwanted hatchling.

While it isn’t an insecurity she does have survivor’s guilt as well. Both from being the only one of her clutch to survive and surviving the Hall of Echoes (with a select few people).

6. How they deal with grief

She doesn’t cry. Like many of her kin born without tear ducts. Instead, she pretends the pain isn’t there. Laughs, smiles, and tosses jokes around like fish leaping out of a quiet little pond. If they saw her in high spirits they would ask if she was ok. Wouldn’t suspect the pain carving her beating heart into bloody chunks beneath her scaled hide.

Only the people who know her best will be able to tell she’s hurting, seeing the signs long before she ever puts her pain into words.

13. An embarrassing memory from years ago

Tiamat had limited exposure towards other species and therefore, would always find herself perplexed by their customs, lifestyles, and reproduction.

While in her youth she robbed treasures from the houses in the Empire as well as liberated poorly treated slaves whenever she could. In the heat of things she never questioned the extra bits on the females’ chests. The weird protrusions the males had between their legs- or the fact both species could be both extremely hairy and smelly.

However one night she had a breather as she escorted a small group of slaves to a contact of hers who would see them safely out of the Empire’s domain. Having arrived with plenty of time to spare at the meeting spot, Tiamat found she couldn’t quite keep her forked tongue in her mouth- especially when she saw one of the females had a far larger, rounded stomach similar to her kin expecting a clutch.

It began innocently enough. How many she expected. How long her hatchlings took to grow, and if they had any teeth or claws. She found out, rather swiftly humans/dwarfs/and Elves normally had one offspring (which to this day she doesn’t understand why they do or why ONE causes a female’s stomach to swell that much), spent sixteen to eighteen years with their parents, and had no teeth or ‘claws’ when they were born. And while Tiamat hadn’t asked she also found out babies, as they were called, were utterly defenseless and constantly needed food.

It was around then with the face of shock and horror her contact decided to show up. Laughing loudly.

Reyvanna:

3. Their greatest achievement

In Reyvanna’s mind, her greatest achievement wasn’t when she slew Kyros. It wasn’t when she broke all of Kyros’ edicts. Nor the moment she managed to cause Graven Ashe to bow down to her and cede his control over his forces.

Her greatest achievement was staring down the Archon of Justice, her head unbound of their facial/head wrappings, proudly defending against the accusations aimed to drown her in a sea of blood, with ease. Kyros’ laws had loopholes. Imperfections. Things which allowed her to do what she did with immunity. Or at least, excused her actions.

When she challenged Kyros’ logic- her flawed justice Reyvanna half expected to be killed on the spot. It never happened. Tunon merely glared at her icily while stating if she were anyone else he’d have them condemned for treason.

Not guilty.

The Archon of Justice found her not guilty.

Reyvanna’s great achievement in that moment was turning Kyros’ symbol of her rule against her. The Archon of Justice backed her. Archon of Shadows, Bleden Mark followed her. Graven Ashe ceded his army to do with as she wished. And finally, she had the oldest of Kyros’ under her control.

When he bent the knee to her, Reyvanna found it hard to breathe. Harder to comprehend the situation as it swirled around her skull, knocking her senses out the door as realization slammed into her: He chose her over Kyros.

17. Their ambitions

During the Conquests, Reyvanna’s only ambition was to live. Having survived Mark’s trials, forced to see her second family slaughtered (beast tribe), and endure this new world under a false ruler- she wanted to live. To prove her will was greater than their’s and overcome all challenges before her. It was simple.

After the conquest, she wanted to tear down Kyros’ carefully built nation until nothing stood. The conquest scarred her. Tested her morals and allowed her to see the rot plaguing what everyone claimed to be a perfect empire. It was fetid. Filled with laws made of lies and half-truths.

Pre/Post Kyros Reyvanna wishes to be nothing like Kyros when her powers come to fruition. She wants to be better than her. To turn the people she forced into joining her against the overlord herself. Perhaps it is pride. Perhaps she secretly wants to be the one to bring Kyros out of hiding. Reyvanna doesn’t quite know the exact reason behind it.

All she knows is she feels a smug satisfaction when the Tiers fall under her control, the Edict of storms crashing over Kyros’ forces, stalling them for an undetermined amount of time.

19. Their reaction to betrayal

Angrily. Violently. Gorey. Reyvanna isn’t one to tolerate betrayals at all. She gives people one chance not to stab her in the back. If they refuse it or do attempt such a thing, their life is forfeit. No more chances. No mercy.

She’ll rip out their hearts and feed the bloody pieces to their accomplishes.

Depending on the severity of their betrayal she may kill them somewhat quickly. Or listen to them scream as she slowly wrenches every limb out of their socket, snap off their fingers knuckle by knuckle, cut out their tongues, or (and this happened once) dig her sharp fingernails into the skin of their throat and tear out of their vocal chords along with their windpipe. If she’s feeling merciful.

20.Their reaction to a mystery love letter

Reyvanna (depending on where on her timeline she’s in) would most likely consider a prank and promptly, throw it away. Or out a window if she’s within the court.. or any building really.

I’d be a waste of time given she truly only has eyes for Tunon (lustfully not really love based. Not yet anyway) and one else would simply be a waste of time. If they wanted to have casual sex, she’s all for it. Let off some steam. Get the blood pumping. Sure. Love? No.

Vahita:

5. Their shortcomings

Vahita has plenty of shortcomings given her nature. She’s impulsive, fails to think ahead, self-absorbed, and bloodthirsty. Compared to her younger brother Vulmyss, she’s highly unpredictable and extremely dangerous whereas he is more level-headed and more logical. Vahita has no logic. Fueled entirely by emotions and self-interest befitting the norm of most sith.

8. What they like to eat

Vahita tends to prefer spicy or sweet foods as they don’t upset her stomach. Sour or bland foods tend to leave her wanting to retch for some odd reason or another. Fruits and Meat-based dishes are the number one way to appeal to her… without getting stabbed in the gut.

9. Their theme

In general, she’s a psychopath. A bloody self-serving insane young woman born of two high ranking Sith (Darth Vowrawn and Darth Andraria) with a penchant to use force to get what she wants.

25. Why you enjoy them

When I tend to write or create characters I always try to make them not the assholes or the murderer. With Vahita she’s all of that and more.

She’s a sith so you expect her to be a dick. And she is. She doesn’t apologize for her behavior, doesn’t take any lip from those lesser than herself, and is openly promiscuous.

Vahita doesn’t feel anything for her family. Doesn’t care if they lived or died. Wouldn’t shed a tear if her mother was actually dead and not missing for the past five or six years. The only thing that keeps her from trying to kill them all was her mother’s warning. If anyone, Vahita or Vulmyss, decided to harm anyone in the family Andraria would hunt them down and personally ensure untold amounts of torture. While Vahita likes a challenge and gleefully delights in undermining others, she’s well aware her mother’s powers far surpass her own. So she ‘pretends’ to get along with her family.

All the while prodding her younger brother to get him to snap so he’ll be the one to die by her mother’s hands. Vulmyss knows better and frequently foils her plans to unravel his stoic, calm personality.

In truth, I just love how fucking batshit insane she is. She doesn’t even care if she’s screwing another alien so long as it has the parts to fuck. Vahita considered Kaleesh as fuckable. Trandosians. Bith…. I can go on.

If nothing else if she fails to ruin and ends up like the other sith lords who were too tyrannical to live, at least she knows she fell as she was, and not a lie.

#Anon #Vahita #Tiamat #Reyvanna viper #Swtor #DOS2 #Tyranny game #Reply #oc ask meme

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arceneades · 3 years

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A wreck

I finished Chapter 11 of my fic “Catran” (episode by episode rewrite of SPOP from the pov of a non-binary AMAB Catra and yes, Adora is still GAF, I’m not a monster) last night. It was a tough chapter. I’ve been working on it for a while.

I am an emotional wreck this morning. Like, listening to Phoebe Bridgers and half crying wreck. I don’t know if it’s relief or what.

I guess the thing about writing is that, even if you aren’t a great writer, you still have to try to imagine all the emotions and situations. I have to go through it in my head, even if I can’t get it across.

I’m a programmer by trade. There’s a tool we use called “containerization”. The very short version is that you run virtual computers on your own computer, so that you can build models of networks and stuff like that. It’s neat. You boot up this piece of software that pretends to be a computer and you can log into the fake computers and watch how they behaves.

Characters are a little like that. I boot up models of people in my head, and I can look inside them and see what they are feeling. I get to run my situations on the models and then try to get the feedback on how they feel, what they see.

But sometimes containers leak. The state of the virtual computer can affect the real computer. And my character building software, the stuff in my head, isn’t some brilliant open source project written by hundreds of people over years, all dedicated to making it as safe to run as possible. It’s some hacked together ad hoc system that I built myself by trial and error. It isn’t running on a computer, which is a system that the builders understand. It’s running in my brain, which no one understands.

So characters leak. I get pieces of their memories, parts of their feelings. I’ll spend hours walking through a situation that ends up taking me a paragraph or two to describe and I’m just so fucking hungover today from all the hormones.

I don’t know how someone writes some of the fics I read, I really don’t.

But I appreciate the work.

Also, there’s a teaser from the chapter below the fold. It’s about 700 words.

Somehow, they're in the simulation now. He's not just watching himself bring Adora to Octavia, he's there, next to her, feeling what he felt then, seeing what he saw. He sees Adora call Octavia a dumb face, and Octavia chases them, and he feels all the triumph of stupid six year old Catran. It's true though. He did protect Adora.

When he returns to himself, they're holding hands. Like they did when they were little. Like they haven't in a long time. No one has. He misses that touch so much, but he snatches his hand back like it's being burned. She's already hurt him. Why give her more?

They keep walking, throught the weird multicolored corridors. They reach a room with a huge chasm in the middle and a stone pillar collapsed conveniently across it as a perfect bridge. It looks a little too convenient, really, so they're probably still in a hologram. Predictably, Adora is focused on exactly the wrong thing, she's focused on herself, not on the situation, not on the danger they are clearly still in, and not on getting out of here.

"Why did you let me escape after Shadow Weaver captured us?"

"Not this again."

He heads across the bridge, hoping that the fear of a painful death will stop her from talking. It doesn't.

"It's the one thing I can't figure out. You didn't have to do that. You could have gotten caught."

Yeah. He could have. And she didn't see that at the time, didn't care enough to ask him to go with her. Not in front of her precious Sparkles.

Adora hops off the bridge too close to the edge. It crumbles under her foot and for a terrifying second Catran is afraid he won't reach her fast enough. He grabs the bridge with one hand and catches her flailing arm in the other. He could sob with relief.

"Did you really think I would let Shadow Weaver erase your memory like that?" He asks.

"I don't know. Probably."

He can't believe she can look at him and say that, while he's holding her a hairsbreadth from almost certainly simultated death. Why would she think that? Does she remember anything? Did she ever even see him at all, or believe they were friends?

Was everything she ever said to him a lie?

"Yeah, well, you never did have too much faith in me."

"Can you blame me?"

Yeah. He can. Unquestionably, he can blame her. After everything he did to protect her, he can definitely blame her.

Catran can't remember a single time he has ever intentionally hurt Adora. Training matches, maybe, but not outside. He's never attacked her. He's joked with her and teased her but that's always been mutual. They've shared a bed, shared food, shared dreams. And she thinks he'd sell her out to Shadow Weaver.

It's infuriating. He manages a weak chuckle and a "Not really" before turning away. He can't let it go, though. It's like having a chip in a claw, he just has to keep worrying at it until it smooths out or splits.

"It wasn't all bad growing up in the Fright Zone, was it? I mean, you still have some good memories, right?"

"Of course I do! But... it doesn't change the fact that The Horde is evil!"

Her eyes are wide with fervor. She's just so stupidly sincere that he can't stay mad at her. She's always been the one reliable way to get past all his defenses.

"I had no choice," she continues. "I couldn't go back."

He can't face her. Of course she had a choice. She could have come back. She could have asked him to come with her when it mattered, when it wasn't charity.

She nudges him. "Hey. I miss you too."

This is familiar ground and again he falls into their dynamic so easily. He protests, pushes her back, they circle, play fighting, like they've done all their lives. It's one of his favorite things.

So naturally, the stupid holograms start up again.

Well. That's interesting.

#writers hangover #spop fanfic #All I own is Stranger in the Alps what should I buy next

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

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Game 368: The Legacy (1992)

I bought the GOG version, which says nothing about a Realm of Terror.

The Legacy

United Kingdom

Magnetic Scrolls (developer); MicroProse (publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 3 June 2020

The Legacy is a rare horror-themed RPG. We’ve had a few, including Don’t Go Alone (1989), Elvira (1990), Elvira II (1991), and Waxworks (1992). I guess you could toss House of Usher (1980) in there, too. Most of these games are adventure-RPG hybrids and the one thing that they all have in common is that none of them are scary. They have horror themes, but none of them are truly horrifying the way a good Hitchcock movie is. I never screamed during any of them, the same way that no Dungeons and Dragons player ever screams at the appearance of a skeleton. The reason, I think, is that the RPG enemy exists specifically to be fought, and usually in large numbers. The ghost, zombie, skeleton, demon, or whatever in a truly scary film or game is something of a mystery. It’s unclear whether the protagonist will be able to defeat him with conventional means, or indeed any means. And the protagonist probably isn’t even trying to defeat it–probably didn’t even want anything to do with all of this in the first place. When the ghost appears briefly in the mirror, it’s a viscerally scary moment because you don’t know what it is or what it can do. You didn’t even get a good look at it. The RPG ghost, on the other hand, has a fixed number of hit points and can be defeated with a variety of spells or magic weapons as it’s spelled out in the monster manual–and you’re probably going to fight 20 of them. The horror RPG faces the same problem as the zombie film: you can make the first one scary, maybe, but not the fiftieth.

A shot from The Legacy’s opening cinematic. It’s a dark game.

I think horror also requires a certain attention to location and story that the typical RPG hasn’t provided through the current era. You can set a good horror game in a gothic mansion with 15 rooms, each full of lore. It’s harder to do this in six 20 x 20 levels of similar wall textures. It is thus not surprising to me that most famous horror games have been adventure games. You can take time to craft more thorough stories and locations with adventure games. You don’t need to supply dozens of foes because you don’t need the character to build skills or earn experience points.

Horror games rely more heavily on graphics and sound than other genres. You could write a fantastic horror-themed text adventure, but I doubt you could make a player scream. The same goes for the primitive graphics of the 1980s. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that both graphics and sound (including music) advanced enough on the personal computer that developers could create true atmospheres in games and make a player really feel something in his gut. This is when we started to see an explosion of games that still define the genre: Alone in the Dark (1992), The 7th Guest (1993), Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet (1993), BloodNet (1993), The Dark Eye (1995), and others that you’ll undoubtedly fill me in on because this isn’t really my area.

The character approaches the mansion.

The Legacy comes out of this era, and the best I can say is that it’s about as scary as a horror adventure-RPG hybrid could be, which means not very scary. Sure, the first time you open a door and there’s a zombie, you maybe jump a little, but pretty soon zombies are just another thing to be killed so you can earn experience. The creators did a good job with the mansion except that, as with most RPGs, they made it a bit too big to plausibly be a mansion. The backstory is just a little too derivative of things you’ve already read or watched. It is horror-themed rather than horrifying. If you can get past that, it’s not a bad game. I had a very enjoyable first session. Mechanically, it’s not unlike a first-person Quest for Glory. The adventure side of the game has a mystery to solve and a variety of puzzles necessary to solve it. The RPG side has a selection of skills and attributes that increase through use or through direct allocation of experience points. There’s enough “extra space” with wandering foes to satisfy the RPG need for combat and character growth. These are the types of features you need for a true hybrid, and not just an adventure game “with RPG elements.”

The Winthrop Mansion, as given in the game manual.

The Legacy comes from U.K. developer Magnetic Scrolls, a relatively long-lived creator of graphical adventures, including The Pawn (1985), Jinxter (1987), The Guild of Thieves (1987; I vaguely remember playing this one in the 1980s), Corruption (1988), Fish (1988), Myth (1989), and Wonderland (1990). The Legacy is the company’s first game with RPG aspirations, although it uses the same basic interface as Wonderland. The commonly-given subtitle, Realm of Terror, appears only on some boxes and not, as far as I can tell, on any manuals or title screens, so I’ve left it off as per my policy. A lot of sites give it as a 1993 game, but plenty of reviews attest to a 1992 release in Europe followed by a 1993 release in North America.

It took me a while to get a screenshot illuminated by lightning. You can clearly see this is not the same house as in the manual.

The main character is the last surviving descendant of Elias Winthrop (1599-1662), who built the Winthrop Mansion in 1630. The style of house depicted in the manual was built nowhere in New England, probably nowhere in the world, until the mid-1800s. The manual tries to justify this with talk of “extensions,” as if it wouldn’t have been easier to just build a new house than to incorporate a First Period home into a Gothic Revival. Anyway, at some point, the mansion acquired some kind of supernatural curse; the manual claims that Edgar Allen Poe experienced it while visiting a friend, and that it clearly inspired his House of Usher. During his visit–in which the entire family had become sickly and insane–he saw an apparition that screamed, “Melchior! Free me! Perform the rite!”

The family tree from the manual is also given in a piece of paper in-game.

As the game begins, a newspaper clipping claims that three people are “missing” in some kind of undefined “tragedy.” These three are likely Robert Prentiss, his wife Catherine, and his mother Karen, as all of their dates of death are given in 1992 in the family tree included in the manual. Karen had married Nathan Prentiss (died 1964), a descendant of Elias Winthrop through his maternal grandmother. The game’s main character is given as a cousin of Robert, a descendant of Nathan’s sister Sarah, although a graphical “break” in Sarah’s line makes it difficult to determine how much of a descendant. The game comes with eight pre-made characters from which you choose one. Each has different levels of strength, knowledge, dexterity, stamina, and willpower. Those first three attributes each come with five related skills, such as “Brawling” and “Lift” for strength, “Electronics” and “Mechanics” for knowledge, and “Firearms” and “Throw” for dexterity. Willpower determines your magic ability and whether you start with any spells. The language of the newspaper clipping is slightly modified for each:

Brad Norris, a sophomore at New York University. Captain of the NYU ski team and member of the Debating Society, Norris is reportedly “planning a mondo party.” He has fairly even skills and attributes but no magic at all. I don’t have any theories to the origins of the name.

Brad’s statistics.

Charles Weiss of Bangor, Maine (yay!), a magician, astrologer, and student of the occult. He has a noodle incident called “the Arlington ‘sacrifice’ scandal” in his past. Balanced in most skills, comes with two spells. The name belongs to a founding employee at Oracle, but I’m not sure he would have been well-known in 1992.

Charlotte Kane, a New York businesswoman who may be planning to turn the mansion into a luxury hotel and conference center. Strong in knowledge-based skills and comes with “Crimson Mists of Myamoto,” a protection spell. No idea on the name.

Lucy Weston, a sophomore at UCLA, sorority girl, tennis and volleyball champion. Heavy in strength, dexterity, and associated skills; has virtually no knowledge and no magic. Her name is taken from the character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Professor Henry Jones, head of the Department of American History at Pennsylvania State University, authority on the Salem Witch Trials. Strongest in knowledge and its skills; not so bad in dexterity; comes with “Sight of the Walker,” which seems to have something to do with dispelling illusions. Naturally named after Indiana Jones’s father.

Jane Olson, a New York daily Post reporter. Strong in all skills but has no magic. Probably an homage to James Olsen of Superman fame given her profession.

Jane’s version of the newspaper clipping.

Major Robert “Boomer” Kowalski, retired from the U.S. Marine Corps after decorated service in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf. Strongest in strength and dexterity skills; has no magic. No idea on the name.

Isobel Gowdie, the most mysterious of the characters, described only as a “widow” with an ancestor who lived in the area. Balanced but weak in all skills and attributes but comes with both “Flames of Desolation” and “Sight of the Dark Walker.” Her name comes from the famous Scottish self-confessed witch of the late 17th century.

You can also edit one of the characters, change the name, and define your own. I turned Isobel into Irene, giving her enough willpower for “Flames of Desolation” and “Sight of the Dark Walker,” otherwise favoring knowledge skills but putting a few points into “Firearms.”

My character.

The game’s opening cinematic shows a car arriving at the mansion on a stormy night. Glyphs on the main gate posts glow as the gate opens to admit the car. As the approaches the front of the mansion, we see a light on in the cupola. (The mansion shown in the cinematic, it must be said, looks very little like the one in the manual except for the size and a certain dedication to symmetry.) The front door opens into an entry hall, and the view immediately goes up the split staircase and into a dead-end hall before the viewer is consumed by some tentacles coming out of the floor. Gameplay itself begins in the entry hall, and right away we see that The Legacy features some excellent period graphics. There will be banal, repetitive textures in some of the hallways and less important rooms, but when the game really needs to convey a sense of place like an “entry hall” or a “study,” the artists are up to the challenge, and I find myself wondering again why more era titles (e.g., Wizardry, the Gold Box series) couldn’t have offered this blend of the generic and the specific when the occasion called for it.

Gameplay begins in the entry hall.

The engine, known as Magnetic Windows, brings an Amiga or Atari ST-style windows GUI into the game. The windows for the character portrait, exploration, messages, and automap can all be moved, overlapped, and re-sized. Most actions are accomplished with the mouse, in somewhat obvious ways, for instance clicking on an object and dragging into to an open inventory space in the character portrait, or double-clicking on an object to use it. Right-clicking on things brings up a contextual menu, and right-clicking on the “desktop” behind the windows lets you save the game and adjust settings. I wish there were more keyboard backups for some of the actions, such as the “Hit” and “Aim” buttons in combat, but one thing the developers did anticipate is the difficulty using the mouse with the right hand while moving (as in most games) with the numberpad or arrows. Instead, they mapped movement to the QWEASD cluster, which works relatively well.

The various windows and game options.

The game uses tiles in which you can turn and face any direction. Occasionally, for an especially detailed room, you transition to a single-screen view in which you can’t rotate, but that’s rare. The entry hall is 3 x 3, and the game is spatially sophisticated enough to let you walk under the two upper parts of the split staircase. The front door is magically locked behind me. There are a couple of tables, a statue of a demonic creature behind a glass display case, and a painting from 1662 depicting “the burning of a warlock at the stake.” I am compelled by my history to note that if this was supposed to be a real event, it must have happened in continental Europe because there is no record of anyone accused of witchcraft having been burned in North America, and even England had stopped the practice well before 1662.

The painting in question.

There are also a couple of notes on the floor, and as I explored the ground floor of the mansion, I would continue to find more of them. The first, slipped under the front door, was from E. Croxley & Co. Realtors, welcoming me to the house and noting that some of the furniture had been sold to pay for the family’s debts. But the others are from a “Marcus Roberts of Boston,” who clearly preceded me in his explorations of the mansion and has presumably died there. His notes so far have conveyed the following:

The mansion’s various historical owners have been given to “vile depravities.”

Every 50 years, disappearances have been recorded in nearby towns at the same time that “strange lights [were] reported in the skies above the house.” The last batch was in 1943.

Roberts believed the house is possessed by an “infernal entity that is preparing to break through to our world.”

As he explored, Roberts discovered portals to other planes through which “demons and other monstrous beings” enter the house, particularly on the second floor. I also have him to thank for all the zombies roaming the ground floor, as he apparently released them from the mausoleum.

At some point, Roberts decided that it was necessary to find something called the Golden Torc, apparently in the lower levels.

One of the messages from the mysterious Marcus Roberts.

I started exploring using my normal “right wall” approach and soon found a zombie in a corridor east of the entry hall. Irene had begun the game with no weapons, just a spellbook, so I tried out “Flames of Desolation.” It took three castings to kill the creature. There were more zombies later on, and I ran out of spell power after killing three of them. Spell power doesn’t regenerate on its own. Neither do hit points. The manual is a bit cagey on how exactly you do regenerate these bars. I eventually found a first aid kit that helps with health. Spell points are supposed to be regenerated with meditating, but you apparently have to find some special crystals first. You otherwise do occasionally need to rest and eat, but you can only rest in rooms with a special symbol that I haven’t found yet.

I cast a fireball at a zombie.

As I ran out of spell points, I tried attacking zombies with my fists. This worked out for a few of them. For physical attacks, you just have options to “hit” or “aim” and then hit. Hitting temporarily depletes an accuracy bar, so you can’t hit a bunch of times in a row without losing accuracy with each successive strike. You can’t really do a “combat waltz” because enemies in melee range are in your square, not an adjacent one. Trying to side-step to another square requires passing a roll to escape combat first. But I did manage to somehow get one enemy stuck facing perpendicular to me, so I could beat him without retaliation. Later, I couldn’t replicate this. I’d really like to find a weapon, but I’ve got nothing so far. When you attack with no weapon, I’m not sure if the game treats whatever you’re holding as a weapon (e.g., a flashlight) or whether it assumes you’re temporarily dropping that object and using a fist. I didn’t notice that my fist attacks increased my “Brawling” skill, but my experience bar did increase. It seems to increase a little bit with almost every successful action, including exploring new areas, finding objects, and defeating foes. You can then spend the experience directly on skills or spell power, but I’ve just let it accumulate for now, I guess waiting for the first time I try to use a skill like “Electronics” and it goes poorly. I’ve been relying mostly on the auto-map so far. Based on it, I’m guessing that the main floor is 20 x 20. The automap annotates rooms and doors relatively well, but it doesn’t do anything with objects, stairs, or puzzles, so I’m probably going to restart and create my own maps, since I use the mapping process to annotate things like locked doors and unsolved puzzles. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve left the music on. The main theme isn’t really very melodic or insistent. It basically consists of three lugubrious bass notes, a pause, and then either a succession of percussive beats or a non-melodic flutter in a higher register. It has a clear “haunted house” vibe and sets the atmosphere well. I didn’t deliberately plan this, but it appears that I’m playing The Legacy along with my cousins at The Adventure Gamer. At least, I assume it’s still active. Voltgloss posted an introductory entry on 2 March 2020, but there hasn’t been a second one yet. Perhaps someone from there can clarify. Time so far: 2 hours ************* I had intended to return to Ultima VII for this entry, but it’s taking me longer to catch up to where the game glitched than I thought. I’m still devoting a portion of my playing hours to that game, so when I finally do catch up, I’ll stop introducing new titles and pick up where I left off.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-368-the-legacy-1992/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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theemichelleb · 4 years

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How To Get Away With Murder (Series Finale)

Woooooooooooowwwwwww

I just finished watching the series finale, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go check that out before reading.

Spoiler Alert!

When the episode started I was definitely nervous about if it was going to close out the series good enough, but why would I ever doubt the wonderful Shonda Rhimes! She’s so amazing at what she does and truly has a gift for story telling.

I just want to acknowledge how amazing the character of Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) was in representing black women and the dedication we have to protecting the world around us at all costs despite the things that come against us in this world. The closing statement she gave was genius in laying out the horrors that attack us throughout our lives as black women that we don’t let overcome us or count us out of success.

But let’s not jump the gun, lol. I will say this series had some many twists and turns and honestly I don’t know realistic these situations are but I wouldn’t be surprised if things like this did really happen in real life. Starting this final season out, I didn’t believe we had experienced six seasons of watching her be a badass just to die at the end of it all, that was not acceptable AT ALL, so I was super excited to find out the funeral wasn’t present day and she had actually come out on top of it all!

It was nice to see the visual build of Annalise taking her “masks” off throughout the season. For 5 seasons she was this well put together representation of what the world thought she should look like and act like, but this season she embraced her natural beauty and truth. From the natural hair to embracing her passion, which the world often likes to misinterpret as anger and attitude. Up until her closing argument where she really lays her truth on the line and we see her accept that the world will either accept her as she is or not and there’s not much else she can do to inspire those opinions.

On to the little minions….

Michaela… Michaela, Michaela, Michaela… I admire the ambition she’s had for the series, but that’s about it. Her morals are complete and utter TRASH! I’m not really shocked that she loses all of her friends because of her dedications to only preserving herself and not including her circle in those decisions. I felt bad for how she had to carry the weight of killing Sam when that wasn’t her intention, but all of the noise she’s brought into the fold with her decision making was stressful, lol. I’m not sure if she was really built to be a representation of how Annalise was when she was younger, but baby needs some therapy and some real love in her life. Hopefully, her trifling daddy actually changes route and handles the future of their relationship better than he did in the past, because sweet girl is messed up in the head and needs SOMEBODY. Not that he’s an outstanding citizen or an exceptional role model to begin with.

I’m glad Connor had a conscious and actually wanted to do the “right” thing. Although, it was ridiculously late and poorly timed after lying on the stand already. I did actually like Connor throughout the series probably because his tragic white boy story was entertaining and expected, lol. I think Oliver was good for him, but equally Connor was BAAAADDD for him. I don’t know that I’m upset Connor ended up serving time but there’s a definite testimony of their love that they make it through and are still together all those years later at Annalise’s funeral.

Side bar… is it just me or were the kids really old looking considering Annalise was 53 in the trial and she died in old age, but the students are supposed to be in their 20s… age did not do well on them. Probably all that murder they’ve been living with, LOL.

Now, for Laurel. I’m proud she was the only one with a conscious. She was honestly just as trifling as the rest of them, but I commend her for changing her thought processes and really doing what was best for Kristoff at the end of it all. I wasn’t impressed with Wes becoming Kristoff though. I understand the purpose of it, I just don’t appreciate the blatant mislead that provided to making me think Wes was about to make so strange comeback from the dead after being dead for 3 seasons. I get it, it was a cute projection and nice representation of how his legacy has lived on in spite of his death, etc, it was just a little cheesy, lol. I wonder if Laurel was honest with him about everything that happened… especially the part about having her dad killed. Jorge definitely deserved it, but I just wonder how all of these truths from Laurel’s past would psychologically affect Kristoff, along with the lies that his father was emotionally unstable and of course, dead.

So, when it comes to Bonnie and Frank, I have to actually say how beautifully executed their demise was. Tragic love story of course, but definitely a play on the Romeo and Juliet story, which I LOVED. They were never going to be able to be together. I think Frank would have thought things through better if he would have known Bonnie would die as an effect of his actions, but again that’s the beauty of the Romeo and Juliet tragedy. Frank had some demons, but the truth of Sam and Hannah being his parents… that was just jacked up, and I understand why it cracked him. Bonnie would have gone crazy without Frank anyway so I believe the best way to close out her story line was to let her pass with her love. She already lost Ronald AND helped Nate cover that up… can you imagine Bonnie trying to move through life after losing another man she loved and couldn’t save?

Overall, the series was amazing! Super excited to see another series centered around a successful black woman run it’s course with her coming out on top. Really a great runner up for Scandal if you ask me, and they even had a great crossover before we laid our dear Olivia Pope to rest… I might go back and watch that series again. Truly phenomenal material.

Shonda Rhimes, never disappoints and I’m super excited for everything else she has going on and all of the outstanding stories still to come from that genius brain of hers. I’ve thought a few times about trying out Grey’s Anatomy, but I just can’t bring myself to go down that road, lol.

Welp check it out and let me know your thoughts! I know that was everything that could be addressed but I could literally ramble on and on about this show. Sad to see it end, but all good things do that.

Be D.O.P.E!

Series Finale: May 14, 2020 Where I watched: Fios

#Series #TV Series #series finale #TV #TV Shows #conclusions #TGIT #Viola Davis

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somar78 · 4 years

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A Brief History of the Brough Superior SS100 – The World’s First Superbike

A Motorcycle Superior to All Others

George Brough was a man who had a love of motorcycles and a social intelligence that enabled him to put his finger on the pulse of what would be attractive to Britain’s upper classes. This meant he was able to offer them a niche product that would sell well, despite being highly priced.

In the 1920s and 1930s British society was still very class conscious, something that the country has retained even until the present day. So George Brough set out to create not only a motorcycle that was actually superior to all others, but one that would be a fashion statement for his wealthy clientele. He set out to create the motorcycle equivalent of the Rolls-Royce, and he succeeded.

Brough Superior – No Humble Beginnings

George Brough’s father was William E. Brough and he had been in the motorcycle making business since 1908. This provided the young George Brough with a considerable knowledge and expertise base with regards to motorcycles, their use both as transportation and in competition, and their design and manufacture.

He worked in his father’s business and had begun in motorcycle competition when he was still at school in 1906. He won the London to Edinburgh and Back Trial three years in a row; 1910, 1911, and 1912, completing that last year by winning a Gold Medal and prize for best performance in the 1912 Scottish Six Days Trial using a single gear with no clutch and with sealed tool bags. So George had built for himself a well established name in motorcycling circles.

Above Image: A Brough (not Superior) motorcycle

As it turned out George and his father had an argument in 1919 and it proved to be sufficient for George to make the decision to leave his father’s business and set up a motorcycle manufacturing business of his own, which he did that same year. George and his father William had quite different views on what would be the best strategy to prosper a motorcycle manufacturing business.

William it seems had a penchant for flat tanks and the horizontally opposed twin cylinder engine much as used by British motorcycle maker Douglas. George on the other hand wanted to embrace the modern style of motorcycle powered by a large capacity V-twin: something like a Harley-Davidson but with extraordinary attention to handling and quality control to go with the power. In a sense George wanted to build bikes that were in some respects like the Harleys and the Indians, but aimed at the “Rolls-Royce” top end of the market.

It’s important to note that at this time Indian and Harley were building somewhat different motorcycles to what they make today. The Indian Motorcycle factory team took the first three places in the 1911 Isle of Man TT and both companies built board track racing V-twin motorcycles capable of over 100 mph – a heady speed in the 1910s.

Brough Superior and “Brough Inferior”

George began his business with a determination to build motorcycles that were “superior”, not only to his father’s machines but superior to every other motorcycle being made: when told that George was going to call his motorcycles “Brough Superior” his father William stated “I suppose that makes mine the Brough Inferior!”

Notwithstanding the family rivalry George was provided with £1,000, his share in the family business and he invested that in purchasing a suitable piece of land in Haydn Road, Nottingham, and on erecting a single story workshop on it.

Above Image: The Brough Superior works, George Brough is on the far left.

In 1919 George made his first Brough Superior motorcycle and then, in time for Christmas of 1920, began offering a model that was purpose designed to stand out from everything else on the market. This first Brough Superior was handmade, like a Rolls-Royce, bespoke, like a London “best” gun or double rifle from the likes of Purdey or Holland & Holland. This was a motorcycle created to appeal to the wealthy upper class, and made to become a fashion icon, having a 1920’s “coolness factor” even before the notion of “cool” was invented.

Its important to mention at this point that George Brough had well developed mature ideas as to what an ideal motorcycle should be: he had been riding in competition since 1906 and had learned a great deal both from experience and from talking with various competitors and makers, so his thinking was well developed. This meant that he had a strong knowledge base and expertise foundation on which to design his own machines. He built the motorcycles he would want to ride. He did not employ “market research”, he already knew what a truly great motorcycle should be whether the market wanted it or not. So he did not follow fashion, he set the fashion and left others in his dust to imitate and try to catch up.

He was fond of quoting from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mary Gloster”

“They copied all they could follow

But they couldn’t copy my mind

And I left ’em sweating and a’stealing

A year and a half behind.”

George Brough’s first Superior motorcycle followed the design specification he would keep close to throughout the two decades of manufacture. The main engine offering of this first model was a V-twin 986cc OHV JAP (J.A. Prestwich) as were used on a number of other rival motorcycles: the 1921 Coventry Eagle would follow this pattern for example. The JAP engine breathed through an Amac carburetor and was given its spark by an ML magneto.

George Brough had not yet completely settled on the JAP V-twin at that point however and also offered the unusual Barr & Stroud V-twin sleeve-valve engine of 999cc capacity. Although a sleeve-valve engine might sound like a curious option it is worth remembering that the exotic and prestigious Avions Voisin luxury cars of the 1920’s were using sleeve-valve engines because of their silence in operation. In addition to this Brough also offered the Swiss Motosacoche (MAG) IOE engine (Inlet Over Exhaust, which has an overhead inlet valve and a side exhaust valve: otherwise known as an “F” head) in either 733cc or 993cc: a Swiss engine could be sold on the idea that it was “made like a Swiss watch”. The gearbox was a three speed Sturmey-Archer and the bike’s tube steel frame was fitted with Montgomery front forks.

Over the period from 1919 up until 1922 George Brough’s business was still finding its feet and making a name for itself. Various models were made and offered including OHV and side-valve versions of his Mark I, Standard and Sports models of his Mark II, an OHV 500cc, a side-valve 680cc Junior, and a 750cc side-valve.

The observant will already have noticed that George Brough was using major components from other manufacturers, as were most of his lower priced competitors. What then was his justification for the high price of his motorcycles, how did he sell the idea that his bikes were indeed “Superior”?

George Brough was skilled at marketing and he put the effort in to have his parts made to special order, and would go to the extreme of assembling a motorcycle twice; the first build for testing and ensuring all parts fitted perfectly, then the bike was stripped down, painting and parts plating would be done, and it would be finally assembled and tested. His big selling point was superiority in quality control. Just as when you went to Rolls-Royce for a car, or James Purdey & Sons for a gun you knew you were getting the best that money could buy, that no expense had been spared in making it as close to perfect as human engineering can accomplish.

Enter the Brough Superior “Super Sports” Models

It had not been long after he set up his business that George Brough got to work on his ideal motorcycle, the bike that was to become his “Super Sports” model. In his development work he built a very lightweight low framed bike, and installed it with a JAP side-valve in a high state of tune.

He named it “spit and polish” (because he kept it spotlessly clean and polished) and took it to Brooklands where he proceeded to lap the circuit at over 100mph making this the first side-valve motorcycle to accomplish such a feat. Having won a five lap race he got going in a subsequent race but his front tyre parted company with the rim while he was going flat out with the result that George and the bike parted company and George reputedly set a new Brooklands record: that for the furthest slide on one’s backside. Happily for George it was the tyre that failed, not the bike, and he was able to walk away from the crash: as pilots say “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing”.

Undefeated, and now just a bit more famous, George built another even lighter bike, a bike so lightly constructed it needed external struts from ahead of the crankcase to the rear spindle to ensure it would not bend under engine power when the throttle was opened up. The little beast was nicknamed “Old Bill” after Bruce Bairnsfather’s cartoon character of the First World War.

The racing bikes served the purpose of making Brough Superior into a household name and helped launch the first of the production series, which was ready for production by 1922 and was introduced to the public as the Brough Superior SS80, the “80” denoting that it was guaranteed to achieve or exceed 80mph. Brough had his own in-house test riders who would take each machine out and ensure that it would make its advertised speed in a quarter mile.

The SS80 was powered by a side-valve 988cc/60.3 cu. in. JAP V-twin engine and was made in standard and “De Luxe” versions. The De Luxe SS80 featured rear suspension which was in some ways similar in concept to that which would be seen on the Vincent motorcycles of 1927 onwards.

But the SS80 was not to be the last word in Brough Superior motorcycles: Brough knew that 80mph was not going to be enough to keep up with the competition and thus that he would need to create a model guaranteed to be able to do “the ton” or 100mph.

It was in 1923 that motorcycle journalist H. D. Teague of “The Motorcycle” did a road test of an SS80 and in his article described it as “The Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles”. This was one of the nicest accolades George Brough could have hoped to receive and he promptly began to use it in all his advertising, although being careful to attribute the quote just in case the gentlemen at Rolls-Royce decided to get upset about it.

As it turned out the gentlemen over at Rolls-Royce were a bit miffed and let George Brough know of their discontent. George invited them over to have a look at how Brough Superior motorcycles were made and on the day of their visit the workshop was immaculate, and the Rolls-Royce men were greeted by the sight of nice young men in clean white coats building these “Rolls-Royce of motorcycles” with meticulous care. The Rolls-Royce men were so impressed that they said that George was welcome to refer to his bikes as “The Rolls-Royce of motorcycles”, and so he did.

The Brough Superior SS100

It was a combination of three men, George Brough, engine designer Val Page, and Swiss motorcycle racer and engine tuner Bert le Vack, who’s talents came together to create the next and greatest of the Brough Superior motorcycles. At this point in history, for four years in the early to mid 1920’s, le Vack worked with Val Page at JAP to build a large capacity V-twin, an engine to beat the American V-twins from Indian and Harley-Davidson. While Val Page was the engine designer le Vack was a tuning and fuel blending expert. The project was to build a “Yank Buster” V-twin engine with overhead valves. The resulting 1924 JAP 8/45 was a 986cc OHV V-twin which was tuned by le Vack to become the JAP “Super Big Twin”.

In 1924 Bert le Vack and George Brough put together a motorcycle around a specially tuned 867cc JAP OHV “Super Big Twin” engine. The bike was fitted with parts from other suppliers as were Brough Superior bikes generally including front forks that were straight out of a Harley-Davidson.

In order to ensure this bike would stand out as a Brough Superior George Brough ensured its was fitted with the trademark Brough Superior fuel tank so there was no mistaking what bike it was. This bike was taken by le Vack up to a crisp record breaking 118.93mph at Arpajon. George Brough now had an engine at his disposal that could propel a Brough Superior to at least 100mph, the SS100 was born.

George Brough worked on the SS100 prototype to ensure it was a bike that would handle and stop well. To this end the front and rear brakes were upgraded to drums with decent stopping power. The resulting motorcycle was a work of visual art as well as being one of, if not the, best handling and fastest motocycle’s the world had seen up to that point in history. The SS100 made its debut in the 1925 Brough Superior catalog and was described as being “an exact replica of the Brough Superior ridden by H. le Vack when capturing 9 world’s records including the fastest speeds ever accomplished on a motor cycle – 123 m.p.h. SOLO and 103 sidecar.”

Once the SS100 was established George Brough decided to try his hand at a world speed record. George got together with a man named Freddie Dixon and between them they built a special purpose SS100 on a shortened frame with the newest long stroke JAP V-twin. Freddie Dixon took it for an outing at Brooklands and managed 103mph for five miles. George then took the bike to Arpajon in 1928 to see what he could accomplish. He almost succeeded: he managed a one-way run of 130mph, making him the fastest man on two wheels, but on the return run a piston failed bringing his record breaking to an unexpected end, because to officially obtain a world record a two way run was required. The bike was taken back to Britain and re-built, and then Bert le Vack took it back to Arpajon the following year and achieved a two way run of 129mph, and a new world record.

Brough Superior SS100 – Models and Specifications

The Brough SS100 was offered in three main models; the SS100, the SS100 AGS “Alpine Grand Sports”, and the SS100 “Pendine”. All were fitted with JAP engines up until 1936 when Brough progressively made the switch to Matchless engines. JAP engined bikes continued to be made up until 1938.

The Brough Superior SS100 was fitted with four stroke, four camshaft, JAP OHV 50° V-twin engines from 980cc up to 996cc capacity depending on model variant. As all Brough Superior SS100 bikes were made bespoke to customer order there are many variations possible and it has been said that no two were identical. When a customer came in to order a Brough the process was very much like that experienced by a customer who went to one of London’s “best” gunmakers. The customer was measured as if for a custom gun or Saville Row suit. The shape, length and position of the handlebars and controls were custom fitted to the customer so the bike would feel as if it fit them “like a glove”, because it was made to do so. Other options included such things as an unsprung or sprung frame and various other fitments.

Three main variants of the engine were the JAP 980cc 8/45, the 996cc JTOR-JAP 8/50, and the 996cc JTOS-JAP 8/75 which was fitted to the SS100 Alpine Grand Sports beginning in 1934. The JTOS-JAP 8/75 was known as the “two of everything” because it was fitted with two magnetos and two oil pumps. The use of dual systems was quite common in the highest quality motor cars of the 1920s and 1930s and so such use in the Alpine Grand Sports provided it with an even higher degree of fail-safe reliability. The SS100 engine was mated to a “four stud” three speed Sturmey-Archer gearbox with chain final drive up until 1935 when the change was made to a Norton four speed gearbox.

The frame of the SS100 was a duplex cradle type with the option of either unsprung rear or a Deluxe model fitted with Brough’s patented sprung rear suspension. The front forks were Brough’s modified Harley-Davidson style Castle forks which he had patented in collaboration with Harold “Oily” Karslake.

Every SS100 came with a written guarantee that it had been ridden and tested to confirm it would do 100mph, for a period Bert le Vack was involved in tuning customer’s motorcycles and is known to have worked on some of “Lawrence of Arabia” T.E. Lawrence’s Broughs.

The model up from the standard SS100 was the SS100 “Alpine Grand Sports”. This bike was named after the Austrian Alpine Eight Days Trial and for the year of the SS100’s debut, 1925, George Brough along with Freddie Dixon and Austrian Champion Eddy Meyer competed on Brough Superior SS100’s.

The result of the 1925 Austrian Alpine Trial proved to be most satisfactory for Brough Superior with them winning no less than six cups including the one for “Best Performance”. The SS100 Alpine Grand Sports was fitted with a lower compression ratio engine to ensure it would happily cope with the variable quality of fuel that would be encountered while touring in the 1920s and 1930s: but these bikes were still guaranteed to be able to meet or exceed 100mph in a quarter mile.

The SS100 Alpine Grand Sports was offered with a number of optional extra cost fittings such as dual headlights and large pannier bags, but the sprung rear suspension was a standard fitting on this model as was a small fly screen and a pair of tool boxes.

The model of the SS100 for those looking for speed was the SS100 “Pendine”, named after Pendine Sands in Wales. Pendine Sands was a seven mile beach that provided a hard and almost perfectly flat surface better than many of the roads of the 1920’s. Pendine Sands was used as the track for the Welsh TT motorcycle trials from 1922 onwards and was also the site used by Sir Malcolm Campbell for his successful land speed record attempt in his 350hp Sunbeam record car “Bluebird”, in which he attained 146.16mph/235.22km/hr.

The SS100 Pendine made its debut in 1927 and was normally fitted with a rigid frame (no rear suspension), lightened for racing, typically with no lights, and with an engine in a higher state of tune with a high compression ratio that would require blended racing fuel. Each Pendine model was guaranteed to achieve 110mph in a quarter mile.

The standard engine for the SS100 Pendine was the 981cc JAP KTOR 8/45 twin cam engine with bevel drive magneto. Other engines were used however, the largest of which was an 1,150cc twin carburetor bike made to order for Eddy Meyer in 1927: the larger engine being permitted under racing rules in Austria where Meyer competed with that bike. A common engine for the Pendine was the 996cc JAP JTOR 8/50 producing 73hp @ 6,200rpm.

The Arrival of Vincent HRD, and the Final Version of the SS100

By the time the SS100 had been in production for ten years other motorcycle makers had not been idle. With the establishment of Vincent HRD in 1928 another visionary motorcycle designer, Philip Vincent, entered the scene and he was not one who was going to be playing catch up with George Brough, quite the reverse.

Vincent started out building motorcycles using Phil Vincent’s patented cantilever rear suspension with conventional girder front forks and he used JAP engines predominantly much as George Brough had done up until 1934. In that year Australian engineer Phil Irving joined the company and designed a new engine, resulting in Vincent making their own 500cc single cylinder engines. By 1936 Vincent had created their own in-house 998cc OHV V-twin engine and installed it in a motorcycle so advanced that it would take decades for others to catch up: the Vincent Rapide.

By comparison with the Brough Superior SS100 the Vincent Rapide boasted dual drum brakes front and rear as opposed to the Brough’s single drums, a superior suspension to go with its superior brakes, and a superior engine. The Vincent was built to just as high levels of quality control as the Brough which was not looking superior anymore.

That first Vincent Rapide engine featured external oil lines which led the motorcycle press to dub it “The plumber’s nightmare” and George Brough may have breathed a sigh of relief at that. But we suspect that with the arrival of the Vincent Rapide of 1936 George Brough realized that he was at risk of not being in front of the competition anymore, and that he would have to stop using his favourite Rudyard Kipling quote unless he could come up with a motorcycle that would be superior to everything else once more.

The 1935 Brough Superior SS100 made the move to a new engine, the 1,000cc Matchless V-twin OHV V-twin with a Norton four speed gearbox, but in other respects it was still faithful to the 1924 original. Only 102 of this last model SS100 would be built.

George Brough turned his attention to creating a motorcycle that would be superior to everything else once more and in 1938 unveiled his “Golden Dream” at the London Earls Court motorcycle show. The Brough Superior Golden Dream was powered by an “H” engine, which is essentially two horizontally opposed twin cylinder engines stacked one on top of the other with their crankshafts connected together by gears, this having the effect of providing perfect engine balance as the upper and lower banks of cylinders are counter-rotating. This 988cc engine was mated to either a three or four speed gearbox and shaft final drive.

The frame of the Golden Dream was essentially that of an SS100 but with Brough’s own version of a cantilever rear suspension replaced with a plunger type, while at the front he kept his familiar Harley-Davison-based Castle forks. It would prove to be an expensive failure and was not put into production.

The End of Brough Superior SS100 Production

By 1939 both George Brough and Phil Vincent were forced to turn their wonderfully creative minds away from building superior motorcycles because of the antics of a German with a Charlie Chaplin moustache who somehow managed to persuade the German people to give him absolute power. Lord Aston warned us that “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely” but perhaps because Lord Aston was British the German people did not take notice of his warning, but the British did. The result was World War II and Brough Superior found themselves making crankshafts for beautiful Rolls-Royce Merlin engines while Vincent were tasked with making munitions. The last ten Brough Superior SS100 bikes were made in 1940, and after that there would be no more.

By the end of the war in 1945 both George Brough and over at Vincent both Phil Vincent and Phil Irving, had been thinking about what they would create for the new post-war era. At Vincent the decision was taken to perfect the Rapide and improve on it which resulted in the creation of the Vincent Black Shadow, arguably the world’s first “superbike”, and a bike that was advertised as “the fastest motorcycle in the world”, and that it was.

George Brough took a different route and claimed that he could not find a suitable engine for his SS100, and so had to cease production. But perhaps there’s a story behind that claim: there of course was a British V-twin engine that would have been perfect for the SS100, and that was the Phil Irving designed Vincent V-twin that would power the post-war Rapide, Black Shadow, and Black Lightning. Vincent would very probably have been willing to build and supply engines for Brough Superior, they were willing to make engines for American motorcycle manufacturer Indian and built them a prototype. But George Brough knew that Vincent actually had the superior motorcycle and thus he could not admit defeat and get his engines from them. Instead he decided not to resume motorcycle production, and so the history of one of the most famous of all the motorcycles to emerge from Britain quietly ended.

Above Image: George Brough

Picture Credits: Brough Superior, Bonhams, RM Sotheby’s, JAP.

The post A Brief History of the Brough Superior SS100 – The World’s First Superbike appeared first on Silodrome.

source https://silodrome.com/brough-superior-ss100-history/

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oliverphisher · 4 years

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Will Kostakis

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