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fluffleforce-mysdrym · 1 year

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@citrusbunnies

Summary for The Enigma of Amigara Fault beneath the cut!

So as that post says this earthquake reveals a fault line with all these people shaped holes in them.

And it’s broadcast on the news all over the world because it’s WEIRD af, and the protagonist sees the news and he’s strangely drawn to the fault.

So he goes there and there are hundreds of people there, all wandering, looking at the human sized holes.

The holes seem to go on forever and dropping things into them or shining light down them does nothing because there’s just no end in sight.

As they’re looking, this other guy freaks out and climbs up to one of the holes, throwing his clothes off so he’s just in his boxers. When they tell him to stop, he yells, “This hole is made for me!” And he goes into it. He fits perfectly. However, the hole is made in an odd way so that he can go forward, but they can’t pull him back. He disappears into the hole.

So then people are freaking out and slowly others are going into holes ‘made for them’, too.

There’s a girl that the protag meets, and they find her hole and fill the entrance with rocks so that she can’t go in. They camp out, and he wakes up, and she’s gone, and he goes to her hole, and she moved the rocks in the night and entered it.

People are like, compelled to find and enter their holes. Once they see their hole, they cannot stay away from it.

And then the protag finds the one made for him.

He goes into it, and he can move forward, but not back, like the other guy, and it just goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

And as he inches forward, he sort of dreams that this was once a punishment for people who had done terrible things, ages ago.

As he goes, he can feel like his arms and legs and neck are starting to stretch and twist, but he can only go forward.

The story ends with people finding another fault on the other side of the mountain, with these strange, twisted shaped holes that barely resemble humans at all.

And as they discover this, they can see something moving toward the exit of one of the holes, and we readers know it was one of the people, twisted and stretched into something unrecognizable.

It ends before they emerge.

#the enigma of amigara fault #summary

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ifeelalot · 3 years

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idontlikemanga · 2 years

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#the enigma of amigara fault #junji ito #short story #manga boy #dialogue #vintage #mountain #mystery #rock #weird #manga #manga and stuff #manga cap #mangacap #manga aesthetic #manga panel #manga art #black and white #b/w

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bikerboyfriend · 2 years

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halloween reccs

here's some shit you can watch/read over halloween. i got 4 asks in the past week about this so heres a quick list, if there's anything specific you're looking for you can send me

AMIGARA DANSOU NO KAI by Junji Ito—You've heard of Uzumaki, Gyo and Tomie but have you read Amigara Dansou No Kai? A boy named Owaki, and a girl, Yoshida, meet on Amigara Mountain, where an unsettling discovery has been made. Human shaped holes are scattered across the mountain, and it soon becomes clear that the holes are "calling" to the people they are shaped like. So what happens when they enter the hole?

SOUL EATER—THE Halloween Anime. Set in the Shinigami's technical school for weapon meisters, Death Weapon Meister Academy, the series revolves around 3 groups of each a weapon meister and a human weapon. Trying to make the latter a "Death Scythe" which is the highest title for a weapon and thus fit for use by the Shinigami, they must collect the souls of 99 evil humans and 1 witch.

0.0mhz—A group of young people tormented by ghosts join hands to find a scientific explanation for their paranormal experiences – and a way out of them. In their desperate quest, they visit a haunted house and encounter a terrifying, blood-thirsty ghost with a tragic past. Will they come out alive? Or will they too become possessed by demon spirits?

HELLSING ULTIMATE—The summary is too fucking long but basically you can watch Big Bad & Cool Vampire Alucard kill people and it's really fun. Warning for Nazi imagery due to Nazis being the villains in the series.

DISTANT SKY—This shit is horrifying <3 Gangnam in complete darkness… "Am I the only one alive? What’s going on?…" A boy wakes up to find himself in a building full of dead people. No cars, no electricity and no stars in the sky… Not only Gangnam, but the entire city seems deserted.

SWEET HOME—I'm assuming you've heard of the show I strongly recommend the webtoon. You can think of the show as...a series based off the webtoon rather than a faithful adaptation since they changed 90% of the shit that happens in the webtoon! Anyw. I HIGHLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY recommend this shit, it's amazing, the monsters are great, the characters r phenomenal and yeah...yeah! Warning for s*icide.

DOROHEDORO—In a city so dismal it's known only as "the Hole," a clan of Sorcerers have been plucking people off the streets to use as guinea pigs for atrocious "experiments" in the black arts. In a dark alley, Nikaido found Caiman, a man with a reptile head and a bad case of amnesia. To undo the spell, they're hunting and killing the Sorcerers in the Hole, hoping that eventually they'll kill the right one. But when En, the head Sorcerer, gets word of a lizard-man slaughtering his people, he sends a crew of "cleaners" into the Hole, igniting a war between two worlds.

BERSERK—Surprisingly not a frequent horror recommendation? Lmfao... His name is Guts, the Black Swordsman, a feared warrior spoken of only in whispers. Bearer of a gigantic sword, an iron hand, and the scars of countless battles and tortures, his flesh is also indelibly marked with The Brand, an unholy symbol that draws the forces of darkness to him and dooms him as their sacrifice. But Guts won't take his fate lying down; he'll cut a crimson swath of carnage through the ranks of the damned—and anyone else foolish enough to oppose him. Warning for everything just read at your own risk.

PROMISED NEVERLAND—...If you haven't read or watched it trust me on this. Watch Season 1 and then read the manga. If you only watched Season 1 or saw S2 and were disappointed...read the manga :).

BONUS: GOLDEN KAMUY—Phenomenal story, amazing artwork, hilarious, amazing fight scenes, very rich in knowledge & history etc....genuinely amazing I 10/10 recommend this, u see how I gassed it up? 💀 Its also homoerotic 🤷🏾‍♂️ It makes it on the list because of the horror elements in the manga. And usami's face lmfao. There's an anime too but it's a lot more censored.

HONORARY MENTIONS

Anything you haven't read by Junji Ito. Personal favourite & most popular would definitely be Uzumaki.

Another. It's not even necessarily that good it's just that everyone & their mother has heard of it.

Tokyo Ghoul (only season 1, and only manga series 1)

Ajin Demi-Human

Watch some Resident Evil 7 or 8 gameplay, not even joking 🤷🏾‍♂️ I recommend JazzyGuns or Berleezy. ok thats all bye

#moon reccs #ok that was 2hrs of my life. AND SCENE #no cut bc this took me 2 hrs...fight for ur life

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lynxgriffin · 3 years

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-Sees Lancer's perfectly shaped Lancer hole in the mountain- -immediately thinks of the enigma of Amigara fault-

#PT ask #ask lynx stuff #Anonymous

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jayalaw · 3 years

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Drawtober Cattober Day 2: The Enigma Of Amigara Fault With Cats

Hey all! This is day two of my Cattober challenge! This one has a reference to The Enigma of Amigara Fault.

The Enigma of Amigara Fault is a short manga story by Junji Ito, artist extraordinaire when it comes to creating horrific images and stories. It's also the most famous one from the creator. All you need to know about it is that after an earthquake, scientists uncover human-shaped holes in Amigara Mountain. People are drawn to hike to the area, and claim they find hole shaped like them. They strip and go inside, some more reluctantly than others. You can see the gist of the story at Scans Daily. It tells what fate awaits those that do enter the holes, and it's not pretty. I was thinking that if the subjects of the story were cats and not people, the horrors would be lost. A cat is good at entering a hole and leaving it. They would look on the situation as a bit overly dramatic and fussy. After all, we humans are very silly with our fears. So this cat has found his or her hole...and is chilling. Cat is fine, knowing that the fur body fits, so they sits. There is nothing for them to fear, and they can get a chance to nap while they're at it.

@evilwriter37 @ashleybenlove @kingofthewilderwest

#cattober #drawtober #drawtober2021 #cattober 2021

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bixbiboom · 3 years

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Soooo, that entrance is just Amigara Fault style hole in the mountain?

This is the worst possible thing you could have said. 😧😧😧

#critical role #ask bix

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eggsanwtch · 7 years

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as a person who read The Enigma of Amigara Fault, Steven Universe’s On the Run ep is....... HORRIFYING TO SAY THE LEAST OF MY GOD

#PERSONAL #stevenuniverse #su #The Enigma of Amigara Fault #manga #if u like horror movies/ mangas you'll LOVE this one BUT IT'LL STAY WITH YOU FOREVER!#I LAST READ IT 3/4 YEARS AGO AND I STILL GET TERRIFIED AROUND MOUNTAINS

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sadoeuphemist · 4 years

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Human-Sized Hole

“This is a communal hole!” he said. “Come on in! It was made for everyone!”

I stood at the entrance of the hole, squinting into the darkness at the faint silhouette that raised a hand and beckoned me to follow. It was a guy’s voice, relatively young by the sound of it, but I could make out nothing more of him than that. There might have been more people even further down, echoes that sounded distantly like laughter, but at this distance it was impossible to be sure. The hole itself simply went on and on without end, a rectangle of the deepest and most unadulterated black.

“Hey, where does this even go?” I called out to him, and I heard him laugh and I thought I could see the silhouette shrug, the edges of its outline shimmering in a bobbing motion as it grew smaller and smaller and disappeared into the darkness entirely.

I hesitated, thinking about that one Junji Ito comic, and then I followed him in.

Of course, this was nothing like that. The Enigma of Amigara Fault, that was the title. With the holes in the cliffside shaped like people cut-outs, and everyone compelled to find their matching hole and climb in, wriggling their way ever deeper into the all-embracing earth.

No, this was a hole carved into a mountain, human-sized just like in the manga, but that was the extent of it. It was just a normal rectangular hole, probably some industrial use, like maybe a side shaft or something leading into a mine. I’d passed it hundreds of times without ever thinking anything of it. It was just that this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone going into it, and that had been enough for me to pull over for a minute and check it out.

Inside, it was spacious, very roomy, more of a long corridor really, the ceiling a good several feet above my head. The floor was smooth beneath my feet, almost polished, no stray rocks or loose dirt. I remembered what the guy had said, and the words ‘wheelchair accessible’ popped into my head. It got dark quickly the deeper I went in, dark enough that soon I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of my face, but there was nothing to bump into, no uneven ground, no twists in the path. All you needed to do was keep walking straight ahead, and if you veered off to one side or the other you’d eventually brush against the wall and be able to reorient yourself, or you could just walk with one hand touching a wall at all times, which is what I did eventually. There were no obstacles here. I could turn back any time I wanted.

“Hello?” I called down into the hole, my voice echoing, and from far ahead I could hear maybe the indistinct murmurs of people. It wasn’t quiet, I realized. There was a sort of background hum, like at an airport or something, no one talking to each other at the moment but everyone on their way to someplace else. That was comforting to me. I liked that.

In the darkness I thought I could feel a slight incline to the floor, the sense that we were descending, and I could stretch my hand up and not touch the ceiling and I wondered why I’d ever thought of the hole as ‘human-sized’ to begin with. It was a doorway, that was all it was. Was a doorway a ‘human-sized’ hole? Weren’t they supposed to be bigger than that, to allow for accommodation, for example bringing furniture in and out? But of course, thinking again of wheelchair users, there were also humans who were unusually tall, seven feet, eight feet, nine feet tall, or however tall the tallest person in the world had been, and of course a human-sized hole would have to accommodate them too. How far would they have been able to travel down this passage having to stoop the whole time, having to force themselves to fit? So of course it had to be much larger than me, to take them into account.

I had a thought. Experimentally, I stopped moving, stood firmly in place with my left hand extended for my fingertips to brush against the wall, and I waited. Yes, there it was, the subtle friction between my fingertips and the wall. The floor was inclined and marble-smooth. Even without walking, I was moving gradually downwards.

So even mobility was not necessary. I was thinking in extremes now, of people so morbidly obese that they were confined to their beds or sofas, incapable of carrying themselves under the stress of their own weight. The walls were certainly spaced wide enough. They would not have to exert themselves. Even people incapable of getting around under their own power, all they would need to do was make it past the threshold, and then gravity would do the rest. I bent down and touched my fingertips to the floor. Was it that smooth? I had not felt in any danger of slipping while I walked. Or was the floor like a conveyor belt, carrying me forward imperceptibly? I felt a light vertigo, a seasickness. The sensation of drifting free in space. I was on solid ground. Or was I?

In the darkness, I might have been one of many, a ceaseless crowd of people politely flowing around me, each on their way to work or school or wherever. I wanted to call out, and at the same time felt certain that it would be impolite. We were all just trying to get through this passage, get through our day, and no one particularly wanted to interact with a stranger. In my mind I had populated this hole with all the extremes of humanity, in height and breadth and dimension, accepted how big this hole needed to be for us all to fit. This was a human-sized hole, truly, larger than me, empty as far as I could extend my hands, but I had the sudden premonition that we would all end up here eventually. All the people in the world gradually finding their place in this perfectly accommodating human-sized hole. Deeper down the passage no doubt were all the people who had come down this way before, hallways and corridors full of them, growing more and more populated until people were shuffling heel to toe, brushing gently against each other and yet ferried gently deeper still, all the way down until the end.

I felt the first sensation like panic. I felt that if I turned around, I would see only a mass of silhouettes blocking off the entrance to the hole, a long line formed behind me, and then there would be no way back; I would be obligated to once more turn towards the darkness and continue down the path.

But there was no one there. The hole, though distant, was a rectangle of light calling to me.

I ran. I did not slip or fall. I just ran, hearing my footsteps slap against the stone, hearing my own breath heaving in my chest, until I was outside again, my back pressed against the side of the mountain as I looked up at the sky and the sun. The hole, when I backed away to look at it, was still deep and dark and rectangular and perfectly patient, nothing ominous or compelling about it at all. It was just a doorway in the side of a mountain. A way in.

I got back in my car and started driving.

I checked my dashboard clock. I had somehow been in the hole for almost three-quarters of an hour, and now I was definitely going to miss my first class. I could make up for that though; it was the trig exam in the afternoon that I definitely couldn’t miss. But as I pressed down on the gas I couldn’t help the building panic, the maybe-irrational fear that now my whole schedule had been thrown out of whack. I was disoriented. After the dark of the hole the sun seemed too bright, the world too full of distracting objects. I’d planned to get in a last minute cram session before the exam, and to print out my history paper in the library after finishing off the last few pages, but now it felt like I had knocked over all the dominoes prematurely and I could no longer rearrange them in a sequence that made sense, and on an impulse I made my exit one turnoff too early, just veered right and let the chips fall where they may.

I no longer knew where I was going. I’d never been this way before, but I knew that all the roads and all the highways would all connect together eventually, that everywhere led to everywhere else. I drove for quite a while. There weren’t very many cars on the road at this time of day, and for stretches of time it would be as if I was gliding effortlessly along a wide black stretch of asphalt, the sky open and spacious above me, just a human-sized hole stretching far as the eye could see.

#fiction #repost #junji ito

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usagichanp · 3 years

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WHAAAAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING

THAT LOOKS LIKE THE THING THAT COMES OUT OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN IN THE ENIGMA OF AMIGARA FAULT

B R U H

#body horror #re 8 spoilers #body horror tw #junji ito #seriously tho wtf #usagi plays games

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yaspup9000 · 3 years

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About the joke in the Animal Crossing post: It's referencing a horror comic by Junji Ito called The Enigma of Amigara Fault, where people have personal holes carved into the mountain for them, for spooky reasons

Ooooooh it's a junji ref okay thank you!

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markusblogbois · 3 years

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Image 1:

In this panel, it shows a boy attempting to enter a hole in the mountain that happens to be his exact measurements. Junji Ito is very good at using line work to add atmosphere to some of his panels as evidenced by how in this image the facial expressions the boy is making is emphasised by the several lines that make up the shadows of his eyes. Ito doesn’t draw out the eyes and instead uses the lines to make the shape of his eyes.This adds to the moment as it helps shows the desperation in his eyes and how he isn’t thinking clearly. Within this piece/novel Ito comments on the desperate need as a society to fit in and how it can sometimes be our downfall. He shows this by telling a story about people climbing into human shaped holes that happen to mysteriously be their exact measurements, and once they were in, they would be consumed by the darkness that laid further in the hole disfiguring them. This physical and metaphorical darkness is illustrated through Itos use of lines and cross hatching seen on the panel, the further the hole goes the thicker the hatches get eventually being a solid black. On the last panel it shows the boy entering the holland in doing so the reader can see that it's a perfect fit, a small crack can be seen between the hole and the boy. This creates a certain uneasiness as it reminds the reader of the unknown void that they are about to enter, almost showing us the tiny hope of the boy returning, decreasing as he goes further. Another strong theme that is explored in this piece is ‘compulsion’, this is evidenced throughout the novel as once a person has found the hole with their exact same measurements they are suddenly taken over by this desire to want to enter it despite knowing the danger it provides.

image 2:

In this panel the characters seen cowering from the giant heads are currently being attacked by balloons that resemble the people that they target. In this page Ito has the top half of the panel showing the heads from a distance making the reader feel that the characters are safe staying in the house but in the last panel a close up of the heads is shown, showcasing the serious threat they impose to the characters shown in previous panels. This is Ito effectively using the layout of his panels to increase the tension in the scene. In this book Junji Ito explores the fear we have as a society of being assimilated into the masses and being forgotten as individuals. The balloons also started appearing at the time a student at a school hangs herself, the balloons heads representing the villages inflated feelings towards wanting to forget the student who had committed suicide. In the last panel the crooked smiles and widened eyes can be seen clearly and given a closer look, all the eyes of the balloons drawn to be pointed at one point of the page, this gives the effect that they are staring directly at the reader, feeding more into the unsettling nature of their appearance. Junji Ito also decides to only shade using the means of lines and mark making techniques like cross hatching. This helps add to the creepiness to the already terrifying imagery as it’s simplistic line work helps emphasise certain features whilst not adding too much to the image. An example of this can be seen through the eyes of the balloons, everything on the faces are drawn with very deliberate thin lines whereas the eyes are very thick and the patterns made up by the lines are more complex. This helps create a focal point on the faces helping the reader notice that the eyes look like they are staring right at them.

image 3:

This particular panel is from one of Junji Ito’s most well known work ‘Uzumaki’. A town is cursed with the obsession with spirals, to the extent that even the residents purposefully deform themselves to create a spiral formation as seen in the picture. Junji Ito is a master in body horror, using his skill in mark making and precise inking, he is able to bring to life these images that would otherwise be too distorted to believe would be possible, to the point where you wouldn’t find it scary. What makes this panel so effective is the sheer amount of detail put into the face and body using his knowledge of inking skills. Despite being in what seems to look like a perfect spiral, you can still tell that what the reader is looking at, is a man. The horror is further emphasised in the facial expression, eyes rolled over making it clear he is no longer alive and his tongue out of his mouth, showing that his insides are clearly in the same sort of state as his body. Ito’s effective use of shading captures the suffering in the man’s face quite well, with every wrinkle and shadow looking realistic enough to identify yet distorted to give use this horrifying imagery show in the panel. In this novel Junji Ito explores heavily on the themes of inevitability, even visually he explores this with the spiral shape, no matter where you look on the shape it always leads to the middle where the spiral converges on. Just like how in the story, no matter what our characters do to avoid and stop this curse, it is inevitable for the village to fall under the influence of the spiral dooming the residents.

image 4:

This panel is picked out of Junji Ito’s Black bird, this story follows a hiker that has fallen down on a hike and broken his leg, unable to move he stayed in the forest for days. What kept him alive was this woman with extraordinary features who kept feeding the hiker with flesh that was taken from an unknown source. Later it is revealed that the flesh that was given to him belonged to himself from the future. What is perhaps the most unsettling part about this story is the woman’s design. Ito draws her with plain eyes with no pupils, this adds a lifeless feal to her face, giving the reader the idea that even though on a surface level she may resemble a human, she is in fact far from it. This is further explored by how her mouth and lips are irregularly large and puffy and how she uses her mouth to feed the hiker the flesh that sustains him just like a bird. Black clothing and darker colours in general come off as quite monotone in the pages, the bold colours add impact to certain objects making it harder to miss. This can be seen with the blood that pours from the hiker’s and woman’s mouth, this is quite effective as even though the sight is quite gruesome and disgusting visually it is hard to not want to look at it as the colours, in contrast with everything else, are quite bold. This story plays off of the fear of being completely helpless, this is clear with how the hiker, unable to move from his injury, has no choice but to succumb to being fed by the woman as it is his only way to survive starving until help finally arrives, this theme is further explored later on the story when the woman starts to attack the hiker in the future once he is able to walk again.

image 5:

This page is taken from Junji Ito’s novel ‘My dear ancestors’. This story comments on Japan’s obsession with familial pressures that society puts on themselves and how it can not only affect their children, but their spouses as well. This particular panel/page is seen when the reader flips the pages revealing this grotesque image of one of the characters Shuichi’s father laying in bed ill. Manga writers like Junji Ito utilize the page turn well and this is one of the cases where it adds more to the experience of a horror manga, this is because it forces the reader to have to voluntarily turn the page that conceals the horror that can be seen on the other side. It turns out that in shuichi’s family when the eldest die their scalp falls off and attaches onto the head of the next oldest in line within the family, creating a form of hive mind. This explains the story behind the design of this iconic example of body horror in manga. The horror that the design provides is partly due to the patterns of the scalp and how something as normal as someone’s forehead can be turned into something that looks monstrous and completely unnatural. This is done by have the thin lines on the forehead quite prominent and by having it repeat without any sort of differentiation in it’s pattern, it creates this uneasy visual which is almost hypnotising when you look more into the image. Which is in my opinion quite genius and is a example of why horror is so interesting in novels, as even though the imagery is horrible and disturbing, we can’t help but keep looking due to curiosity. This is also because the more we look the more things you can find horrifying about the image, for example if you look closer, the heads spanning out makes it look like a centipede, which is further enforced by the fact that the hair on the multiple heads look like little insect legs. The cross hatching on the walls compliment the image well as it helps give this gritty and gross atmosphere. The lines are also quite close to each other giving a more darker tone which helps to emphasise the father as there are a lot more whites present on the figure, making it harder for the reader to try to ignore the horrific imagery.

sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-q7xFs7f8&ab_channel=CJMac

https://thecomicwonk.com/index.php/2019/10/22/the-enigma-of-amigara-fault-the-horror-genius-of-junji-ito/

https://imgur.com/gallery/ceWVQzq

https://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/words-and-pictures-horrific-geometries-in-junji-itos-uzumaki-2/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy1xO07Ui70&ab_channel=CJMac

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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 13

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because we gotta convince Tavra to go on a quest for a magic flute! Wait, is this opera suddenly?

Last times in book: Kylan, Naia, Tavra and Gurjin visited Aughra on High Hill to get her help in warning all Gelfling that Skeksis were Bad. She doesn’t help but does give Kylan a random book. The random book (BY RAUNIP!) has a story in it about a magic firca that lets you write multiple things at a time. Also, Gurjin ditches.

Chapter 13

Tavra very, very, very, very reluctantly gets on board the sidequest train. The group finds some caves.

Kylan wakes to Tavra and Naia arguing about Gurjin and considers just pretending to still be asleep until the argument blows over which has to be the second most relatable Kylan moment!

“He left this,” Naia said, showing Tavra a flat stone with a dream-etching in it. Gurjin might not be literate, but he had marked it with a symbol most Gelfling knew, whether they could write or not: his clan’s sigil. The sign of the Drenchen was the whiskered muski, which seemed fitting in trade, since Neech had gone with Gurjin, as they had planned. “It must mean he’s going back to Sog. To my family. He’ll be safe there!”

OKAY wow! Apparently dream-etching is a power that any Gelfling can do! So its not that that keeps people from learning to read and write but so few do that I think maybe the Gelfing just have a super complicated writing system? Since they don’t have to physically write it?

But lets add the ability to psychically burn pictures and words into surfaces as a ability that all Gelfling can do, even if they don’t actually know how to read.

And even if they don’t know how to read, the ability to just burn dots or a clan sigil into things, is incredibly useful.

So Gelfling are all psychic and can all burn stuff into surfaces. And half of them can fly. They’re not quite as hax as Moers’ Wolpertingers but they do get a lot of neat abilities.

Tavra doesn’t buy the argument that Gurjin is safer back at the Sog because it presupposes him managing to reach the Sog and doesn’t buy Naia’s argument that traveling separately makes it more difficult for the Skeksis to capture them all.

But also he has too much of a head start to find so all Tavra can really do is complain, and complain she do.

Also, her wings buzz in irritation. More wing body language!

“We can only hope he will make it to the place he says he will. We’ll have to get him later. Now, come on, get up. We’re making the Black River by nightfall, or so help me.”

Naia crossed her arms and planted her feet.

“No,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

HA! I feel a little bad for Tavra who (spider or not) is trying to herd protagonists like cats when they keep darting off after whatever shiny sidequest they see instead of sticking to the main plot.

“I want to reach Ha’rar, of course, but Rian’s already far along on his way there. In the meantime, you’re not the leader of this traveling party, and I’m tired of you treating us like children you’ve got to watch. Kylan found something in the book Aughra gave him, about a magic firca that might be able to send the message to the Gelfiing. So that is where we’re going. To the Caves of Grot, to look for the firca.”

Tavra gets mad (and her wings spread in anger, body languuuuuage) and throws in Naia’s face all the two times she’d had to rescue them recently but Naia replies “We didn’t ask for your help, and we’d be happy to thank you for it if you weren’t being such a salty kelp-sucker about it.”

Dang, Naia!

Tavra tries to pull rank, being the daughter of the All-Maudra but Naia pulls rank BETTER because she’s also the daughter of a maudra but the direct successor and not a middlest child.

Kylan is uncomfortable that Naia pulled rank to win an argument since it wasn’t the most diplomatic tack but hey, it actually works.

“Fine,” Tavra said. “We’ll have it your way, Drenchen. Let’s go looking for a flute that probably does not exist, and in the meantime, likely be trapped inside a mountain tunnel. But it makes no difference to me. Let’s go to die straightaway!”

She’s incredibly passive aggressive about it though. And it almost starts a fight with Naia but Kylan steps in with the info that the Caves of Grot are conveniently just on the east side of the nearby lake.

Naia proposes the plan that they’ll go around the lake and into the caves. If they find the Grottan, they’ll warn them about the Skeksis and get their help looking for the flute. If not, they’ll look for it themselves.

“And if we don’t find the firca at all?” Tavra asked. “Will you agree to abandon this fool’s quest and go with me to Ha’rar?”

Still not the best attitude, Tavra. But Kylan agrees because if they don’t find it, then he’s really out of ideas and they might as well rejoin the main plot line. But he also adds that if they DO find the firca, they’ll go to Ha’rar right after.

“So either way, Tavra, we will go north. If you give us your help, I think we will be the better for it. Help us find the firca, and we will depart for the capital even sooner.”

Kylan really would prefer that Tavra help them, what with all the skills she has.

[Tavra] started taking down the laundry line. The invincible knots melted in her hands, falling away as if they had never been tied, and for a moment she held the loop of white cord as if considering tying the two of them up and draggin them to Ha’rar.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said.

Pfffft.

Kylan uses the maps in the book to navigate them around the lake. With some difficulty because of the scribbled instructions and blotted ink. And he even frets that maybe Raunip was a madman and that all of this was nonsense.

Naia tells him not to worry (about the difficulty in interpreting the maps, not how maybe this might be fake which he doesn’t mention, nor his anxiety that he’s just clinging to this sidequest to feel important) because they’ve got Tavra and Tavra will help them find the caves if its the last thing she does to get this over and done with.

Kylan wonders how much Tavra must have on her mind and maybe she’s exhausted and in pain after all the Skeksis put her through but Naia tells Kylan not to make excuses for her.

“All that may be true, but none of that means she has to be so rude or mean. Hard-talk is one thing. Treating us like dirt is another. I’m done with it, so if she wants to keep taking out all her hardships on us, she better be prepared for some talk-back.”

Kylan decides though that since Tavra chose to accompany them instead of ditching means that she actually cares despite her attitude.

“Aughra could have done well to be more prepared for talk-back, too, eh?” Naia asked. Kylan chuckled, though his cheeks warmed.

“That was an accident. It just came out like that.”

“I didn’t know you had it in you. I liked it. Someone had to say what we were all thinking.”

Kylan says he’d rather Aughra had given them something but Naia says Aughra gave them a reason to make their own way. But also the cool book. And jokes that she’s starting to get jealous of how much time Kylan is spending with it.

He jokes back that he had to spend his time somewhere while Naia was hanging out with Gurjin.

“Kylan! Don’t say that. If I had to pick between traveling with only one of your two, it would be the one who’s here right now.”

And despite Kylan’s anxiety that its because he needs protecting, Naia has a different reason.

“No,” Naia said. “Because Gurjin and I always see things the same way. If the two of us always traveled together, we would never make it. When I’m with you, I have someone looking out for me from a different perspective. That’s important to me.”

Awww! Best friends!

Oh, and the conversation gets interrupted because Tavra, like Naia suggested, has gone and found the cave just to get this show on the road.

At a place where the beach gives way to cliffs right on the water, there are a bunch of holes dotting the cliffface, even Gelfling-sized caves.

.... I hope to never see a Dark Crystal/Amigara Fault mashup by the by.

Tavra pointed to a place on the cliff above the nearest cave. Hidden under the drooping ferns and creeping water-ivies was a dream-etched Gelfling symbol. The animal pictograph was ancient, eroded, but unmistakable - a flap-winged hollerbat, sigil of the Grottan Gelfling clan.

!! Its the Caves of Grot!

Also, nice to establish that anyone can dream-etch their clan sigil in a casual way in the same chapter that that’s used as a plot point to show the characters are on the right track.

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #Song of the Dark Crystal #liveblog #Kylan #Naia #Tavra #updating the quest log

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