#and the story also totally lost momentum. it was just a straight run to the finish now

[art-heap]

Does anyone know any sea-themed podcasts?

I was wracking my brains and realised I only know The Bridge

#and ssttl has some sea stuff but im really looking for the ships #tma has some fun scenes but that's about it #podcast rec #podcast #asks #there was skyjacks actually... but it was not the sea right?? #i still need to pick up on that. and i never finished wolf359. and i never finished unwell. and oldgodsofappalachia #i think silt verses is ongoing too. i never finished rqg but i got put off because of the stuff behind the cast and crew #and the story also totally lost momentum. it was just a straight run to the finish now #but i really would love some sea shenanigans

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, so here we go!  Chapter 1 of “No Regrets”!  

There’s a few things I want to point out about this chapter, because both visually and textually, we get a lot of information about the Underground and Levi, and his relationship with Isabel and Furlan.  So I’ll just go through it.

The first thing that really caught my attention for this chapter was the opening page, which is a retrospective shot of Levi after he’s joined the SC, thinking about how he can’t ever know what the results of his choices are going to be.  He says here “I trusted in my own strength... I trusted in the decisions of comrades who had earned my faith...”  And this quote from Levi is really important in later understanding why he makes the choice he does, at the end.  He says he trusted in the decisions of comrades who had earned his faith, and that tells us that Levi believes in Furlan and Isabel, that he believes in their strength and their capability, that he believes in them enough to let them choose for themselves and trust in their judgement.  We’ll obviously delve more into this as it becomes more relevant to the story.  But moving on...

The next thing to catch my attention is the panels of the Underground we see.  These are probably the best shots of this place we get in the whole series, as it really depicts a place that is totally run down and dilapidated, with buildings falling apart and crumbling in disrepair, filth ridden streets with literal sewage water coming out of drain pipes, and a actual cave cover overhead, complete with stalactites, blocking out all sunlight except for few and far between pockets which break through holes in the rock ceiling.  The most telling panels though are the ones which depict the violence and poverty of the place.  We see a panel of a homeless man passed out on the street, painfully thin looking, and under him, two men in a fight, one beating the other violently.  And the next panel shows us a little girl, sitting barefoot on the ground between two men who have just blown each other’s brains out with guns.  Truly, this is a violent, dark, poverty-stricken place that breeds crime and depravation.  The pages before this say that BECAUSE of the splendor of the Capital city above the Underground, this place exists, and that’s accurate.  Because of the excesses and decadence of the rich and well off above these people rejected by society, that means fewer resources for the less fortunate.  It’s truly tragic.  

Alright, now I just want to move on to some small, but telling moments here while Levi and the others are being chased by Erwin and his crew.  

When Isabel is bragging about how the MP’s never learn, referring to how they’ll never be able to catch their gang, she asks Levi if what she said was cool.  Levi tells her “Don’t be stupid.”  This might seem like Levi just blowing her off, but the way I read it, it seems more to me like Levi is warning her not to be cocky, not to be over confident, because that’s the kind of thing that can get you killed, or caught.  Big Bro indeed!   We also see how mindful Levi is here as a leader, when he tells them they can’t afford to lead the soldiers following them straight to their hideout, and clearly they have a plan in place for just this sort of thing.

More importantly, Levi is fast to realize these aren’t ordinary soldiers after them, which shows his great instincts, but what’s really interesting is his internal thoughts here.  His logic is telling him regular MP’s wouldn’t work this hard to catch them, and that their skill with the ODM means they must be SC.  But Levi doesn’t really believe it which, given what we later find out about the deal with Lobov, and Lobov warning them of Erwin’s plans, tells us that Levi never really believed the SC would come after them.  He’s clearly surprised here.

Further, after informing Isabel and Furlan and confirming his suspicions, he tells Furlan that he’s got no intention of getting mixed up with “these guys”.  This tells us Levi never wanted to go through with Furlan’s plans, never wanted to join the SC, never wanted anything to do with any of it.  There’s further evidenced in this very chapter, which I’ll get to in a moment.  But it tells us a lot about the dubious feelings Levi had from the start, and how he probably would have simply been happiest to stay in the Underground with his friends, even though it was a hard life.  

Alright, so, this next part is a big deal, and it’s an overlooked detail which speaks volumes about the kind of person Levi is.  I didn’t even notice this the first time I read it, so I want to talk about it.  Levi separates from Isabel and Furlan, and takes Erwin and Mike on a wild chase through the back alley’s and narrow passages of the slums.  He really tries to give them the run around here, until he flips over a door, into another area.  What’s really important here is Levi’s dialog.  He says first “... Lost ‘em, huh?”  And then he says, “That got a little crazy...  I hope... none of them crashed.”  This is kind of amazing.  Levi is showing actual concern for the two soldiers who’d just attempted to catch him and his friends, who were doggedly pursuing them with obviously bad intentions of some kind.  And Levi, after having to resort to some serious ODM skills to shake them, says he hopes that none of them crashed.  He doesn’t want Erwin or Mike to get hurt, he just wants to get away from them.  Considering he doesn’t know either of them at this point, they’re just nameless, faceless military dogs trying to mess things up for him, that shows remarkable character.  

Of course, things go downhill from there, when Mike crashes through the door and tackles him.  All bets are off then, because Levi’s life is now in danger, and when that happens, he’ll resort to physical force.  Still, he only throws Mike off of him and once again attempts to get away, only for it to be Erwin who swoops down and cuts Levi’s cables.  This was actually really dangerous.  Given Levi’s momentum and position, he crashes hard into a nearby wall before falling to the ground.  So we already see some of that ruthlessness from Erwin here.  Of course, that spurs Levi into violence himself.  I have no doubt that when Levi lunges for Erwin and knocks his blade away, bringing his knife to his neck, he truly intended to kill him in that moment.  Levi’s compassion for these soldiers can only go so far, considering the desperation of his own circumstances.  If Mike hadn’t been there to stop it, I think Levi probably would have ripped Erwin’s jugular right out, and that would have been that, lol.  And then, it’s important to note too WHY Levi stops.  Not because Mike was able to physically restrain him, but because he tells Levi to look around himself, directing his attention to the fact that Furlan and Isabel have been caught.  That immediately stays Levi’s hand, and once again, we’re shown how Levi puts the wellbeing of his friends above himself.  He could have ditched Furlan and Isabel right then and there and escaped on his own.  Instead, he allows himself to be restrained and cuffed.  He refuses to abandon them.

Now the next scene is hugely important to a lot of stuff.

Erwin’s got Levi and his friends down on their knees, in the sewage, questioning them about their ODM skills, and the three of them stay silent, obviously defiant.  We really get a good look at Erwin’s abilities as a manipulator here.

He’s pulling the whole good cop/bad cop routine on Levi, when he tells him “I’d like to avoid any rough treatment if I can” before looking to Mike in a clear signal for Mike to pretty damn violently tear Levi’s head back by his hair before smashing his face into the sewage on the ground.  And this really IS sewage.  It’s not mud.  If you look at the panels, we see this brown muck coming out of drain pips attached to the surrounding buildings.  This water is probably, literally, dirty with feces, and Erwin has Mike put Levi’s face in this and hold it there.  Now let’s remember something important about Levi.  He’s a clean freak.  He obviously cares deeply about keeping both himself and his environment clean.  Erwin couldn’t know this about him at the time, but nobody of course would be happy about having their face shoved into literal shit.  But for Levi, I can only imagine this had to be tantamount to a kind of torture.  Erwin keeps questioning him, looking down at him without any kind of emotion, and Levi remains stubbornly silent, despite how awful this must truly be for him.  We get a close up of Levi’s eye in one of the panels, paralleled with Erwin’s own, and Levi’s expression really strikes me as one of awful humiliation.  He goes from looking up at Erwin in rage, to looking away, staring straight ahead, while Erwin keeps looking down at him.

Still, Levi says nothing, and it’s Isabel who finally cracks, telling Erwin that they didn’t learn to use ODM from anyone, with Furlan further explaining that they taught themselves as a means of survival.  He remarks that “anyone who doesn’t know what sewage tastes like couldn’t understand!”.  Clearly, both of them are really upset to see this being done to Levi, and I have to imagine it’s at least in part because they know how awful an experience this has to be for him, given that they know how much he desires to stay clean.  Their shocked expressions when Mike first pushes Levi’s face into the sewage says as much too.

But still, Levi remains silent as Erwin then demands to know Levi’s name.  What Mike does to Levi in the next panel is even worse.  He pushes his face into the sewage and holds him there until Levi literally starts to choke in it, for long enough that, when he finally does pull him up, Levi is gasping for breath.  I really don’t see people talk enough about this scene, but, well...

It’s a torture scene.  Erwin is ordering Mike to torture Levi here.  It may not be the most extreme form of torture, it isn’t the type of physical violence we typically think of when we think of torture, but that’s what it is.  It’s causing Levi both physical and mental degradation, as well as physical distress.  

Even with this though, Levi’s still silent and refuses to answer Erwin at all.  

It’s only when Erwin literally threatens the lives of Furlan and Isabel that he finally talks.  This is such an important detail.  Levi was willing to take what to him must have been truly horrific treatment, but as soon as Erwin gives the signal to the other two Scouts who have hold of his friends, we see Levi’s expression shift from defiant rage to wide eyed fear as they put their blades to Furlan’s and Isabel’s throats.  

Finally Levi talks, calling Erwin a “bastard”, to which Erwin simply asks him again what his name is, and after a slight hesitation, Levi finally gives it.  

I think this entire scene is vital in understanding WHY Levi was so violently pissed at Erwin, to the point of wanting to kill him.

I think it’s a combination of both the humiliation and torture he puts Levi through here, and, worse still, the fact that he threatens Isabel and Furlan’s lives.  Levi already feels looked down upon by Erwin here, he already feels humiliated and embarrassed and as though he’s being treated like he’s worthless, because Erwin IS treating him like that here.  All while Erwin stands there, expressionless, making statements like he doesn’t want to have to use any rough treatment, etc... while at the same time ordering Mike to do just that.  Already, Erwin is sending Levi the message that he’s a liar and a manipulator who thinks nothing of putting another human being’s face in shit.  And then, to top that off, he shows Levi that he’s willing to hurt, maybe even kill, his two friends to get what he wants.

Is it any wonder Levi hated Erwin as much as he did at the beginning?  After a lifetime in the Underground where, from the time of his birth, he had to deal with him and those he cares about being treated like worthless trash.  It would be a miracle if Levi DIDN’T want to kill Erwin at this point.  To have to then submit to him willingly, after all of that, must have been beyond humiliating for him.

Erwin continues to be manipulative here too, when after Levi gives his name, Erwin’s attitude suddenly shifts, and he smiles at Levi and gets down on one knee with him, in the filth, his entire demeanor seeming to shift into an abruptly friendly one as he offers his deal to Levi.  Again, that whole good cop/bad cop thing.  At the same time, he continues to threaten Levi by telling him if he refuses his offer, he’ll hand them all over to the MP’s and that, given their crimes, they shouldn’t expect to be treated with any kind of decency.  What’s kind of funny about this statement from Erwin is that up until now, Erwin and Mike have done anything but treat Levi decently. 

Okay, one more important point to make about this chapter, and it goes back to what I said earlier about Levi not wanting anything to do with the SC, and how that tells us Levi really didn’t want to go through with Furlan’s plans.

After Erwin makes his offer, we see Levi look over at Furlan, who’s giving him an intent look, and in the next panel, we see an almost surprised, or astonished look on Levi’s face, like he can’t believe Furlan is asking him to do this, before he grits his teeth in obvious frustration, and then accepts Erwin’s offer to join the SC.  What this tells us is that Levi only takes Erwin’s offer because Furlan wanted him to.  Because this was all part of Furlan’s plan, to go through with Lobov’s commission, to get caught by the SC, etc...  It’s clear Levi never wanted this, and he’s upset at having to do it.  But the fact he agrees after looking over at Furlan and seeing him implore Levi with his eyes tells us, once again, that Levi is willing to sacrifice his own desires for the desires of others.  That being his two friends.

For them, he’ll join the Survey Corps, even as every one of his instincts is probably screaming at him that this is a bad idea.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the first chapter of “No Regrets”.  There’s a lot more to unpack in this manga than I think people realize.  I hope whoever took the time to read my long ass post found it at least a little worth while.  I’ll be moving on to chapter two next!

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #No Regrets #acwnr #Levi Ackerman #Furlan Church #isabel magnolia #meta #snk analysis

[zosonils]

Crossover you say 👀

OKAY SO. SONIC COLOURS/MEGA MAN CROSSOVER

i don't have much in mind story wise, but i'm thinking it takes place under the same conditions as worlds collide, which i insist on believing also happened nearly identically offscreen in the game timeline because nobody can tell me otherwise. fairly basic setup of eggman and wily teaming up to cause problems on purpose and sonic and rock working together to stop them, and now there's wisps in the mix >:O i'm sure i could think up a fun excuse plot for why sonic colours happens twice and also mega man is here now, but mostly this was just an excuse to put the special interest in the hyperfixation and come up with some fun weapons for rock based on my first and favourite sonic game

each robot master is based on a wisp from either version of the original colours, which causes a little confusion given that you end up with two burst men and drill men but these ones have different EWN-XXX serial numbers and are entirely unrelated to their canon mega man counterparts. i haven't actually drawn the robot masters yet or thought up designs or personalities, just come up with their weapons and what stage they'd inhabit, but maybe i'll do that sometime. the robot masters are something like this

EWN-010 BURST MAN - weak to drill dash, gives bursting blaze, sweet mountain stage

EWN-011 ROCKET MAN - weak to cubic satellite, gives rocket jump, terminal velocity stage

EWN-012 DRILL MAN - weak to spike spin, gives drill dash, tropical resort stage

EWN-013 HOVER MAN - weak to rocket jump, gives hovering shockwave, starlight carnival stage

EWN-014 LASER MAN - weak to frenetic void, gives prism laser, aquarium park stage

EWN-015 CUBE MAN - weak to prism laser, gives cubic satellite, wii game land stage

EWN-016 VOID MAN - weak to bursting blaze, gives frenetic void, asteroid coaster stage

EWN-017 SPIKE MAN - weak to hovering shockwave, gives spike spin, planet wisp stage

i wrote up some really detailed information on how all the weapons work but i'll put that under a cut to prevent this post from getting too long! if you don't feel like reading massive paragraphs of game design ideas, here's the microsoft paint scribblings i did of all of them [sonic is there too]

BURSTING BLAZE

a chargeable attack that blasts out a sphere of fire to deal damage. charging it longer sends the fire out further and increases its damage output, but costs more weapon energy. without any charging it's a pretty standard low-range attack, but at maximum charge it functions as a screen nuke on par with the likes of rain flush, tornado blow, or astro crush. if rock takes damage while charging bursting blaze, he'll automatically release it at whatever charge level it was at when he got hit. in addition to the obvious usefulness of a fucking screen nuke, a less- or uncharged bursting blaze can be a handy way to quickly get some personal space in a tight situation.

cost: 1 unit when uncharged, 7 when fully charged [28 uses uncharged or 4 fully charged from a full gauge]. has five in-between charge levels costing 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 units from least to most powerful.

i came up with this name first because i wanted it to have blaze in it because i fucking love blaze the cat.

ROCKET JUMP

an explosion that launches rock much higher than a normal jump would take him, about the height of one screen. in addition to the explosion at the bottom dealing damage, rock's body deals contact damage until his upward momentum stops, which tears through enemies with low health or a weakness to rocket jump but doesn't protect him against bulkier foes or stage hazards. while he can still move left or right while rocketing upwards, the only way for rock to stop moving upwards is to either naturally run out of momentum, hit a ceiling, or take damage.

some platforms can only be reached by using rocket jump.

cost: 3 units per use [10 uses from a full gauge]

obviously a joke based on the rocket jump technique in a lot of video games, lmao. rock blows himself up and ragdolls so hard he clips out of the interstellar amusement park and sonic watches as he falls past every kill plane and into infinity forever

DRILL DASH

a dash attack slightly faster than the slide going straight down, sideways, or diagonally down-left or down-right, similar to the pile driver but shorter and without upwards reach. has fairly low attack power, equivalent to two mega buster shots, but pushes surviving enemies back, allowing them to be hit again and again with a chain of drill dashes. underwater, it moves significantly faster and further, and can be fired up as well as down, unlocking eight-directional dashing.

if rock hits a solid wall he'll bounce off of it, but if he hits certain types of dirt-like walls he'll drill into them, which can uncover helpful items like health and weapon refills and occasionally 1-ups or e-tanks [probably in scripted locations].

cost: 2 units per use [14 uses from a full gauge]

i've never played mighty no. 9 but i've seen footage of like the dash thingy he can do? because it probably looks kinda like that.

HOVERING SHOCKWAVE

fires a shockwave that doesn't hurt any more than a standard mega buster shot [unless the enemy in question is weak to it], but stuns most enemies and has a fairly decent range. if you fire it in midair and then hold down the attack button, rock's falling speed will decrease dramatically, and he'll continue to float until either he hits the ground, the attack button is released, or he takes damage. hovering will cost additional energy, and if hovering shockwave is used in midair it can't be used again until rock hits the ground at least once.

cost: 1.5 units per use [19 uses from a full gauge], plus an extra 3 units per second of hovering, for a total of a little under 9 seconds of hovering taking the initial shot into account.

this one's pretty directly lifted from the hover wispon in sonic forces.

PRISM LASER

a laser projectile that either bounces off or goes through anything it hits a set number of times, maybe three to five. if it destroys an enemy its movement is unchanged; if it hits a wall or an enemy that doesn't immediately die to it then it bounces instead. can be fired in all eight directions, but once fired its trajectory is out of the player's hands. basically imagine gemini laser, then imagine it being obscenely better in every conceivable way. best used in enclosed rooms where it can bounce around a lot and doesn't have much opportunity to get lost offscreen.

some rooms have prisms in them like the ones in colours that automatically redirect prism laser, guiding them to destroy enemies blocking paths and the like.

cost: 6 units per use [5 uses from a full gauge]

cyan laser was my favourite colour power when i was a little baby because haha bright colour funny sound go wheeee. prism laser is probably overpowered because of this bias lmao.

CUBIC SATELLITE

summons four [?] orbiting cubes that shield rock from one hit each. they deal damage to enemies they touch unless said enemy is immune to the power. standard shield weapon, blue cube is a lame overly situational gimmick and i couldn't think of anything better. rock can still fire and charge his mega buster while shielded, but obviously can't use any special weapons. every time a cube is destroyed, the remaining ones spin faster, looking something like the tubinaut badnik from sonic mania. that's just a visual effect i don't know what else to write here it's a shield weapon.

cost: 3.5 units per use [8 units from a full gauge]

i think i'd like shield weapons more if i knew how to use the attacking ones to actually attack. i used leaf shield about 3 times in mega man 2 and every time i flung it in the wrong direction and got hit anyway.

FRENETIC VOID

sucks in any enemies that rock is facing for as long as the attack button is held down, drawing them to a point just in front of him. when released, the blasters on his arms [which in this form morph to look like the purple frenzy mouth] crunch down in front of him, dealing slightly more damage than a charged mega buster shot to anything that's been pulled in close enough and knocking back anything that isn't destroyed. rock can't move while using frenetic void, and if anything hits him while he's vaccuuming he drops the move without the finishing bite or knockback. this move can also draw in most types of bullets, which are absorbed and disappear if they reach the void, or continue in whatever direction they were pulled in if the move ends before they get there.

cost: 3 units per use [10 units from a full gauge]

i thought it'd be cool to combine purple frenzy and violet void somehow. i used void for the robot master name because i believe in sonic colours ds port supremacy, but the decision was ultimately pretty arbitrary.

SPIKE SPIN

what top spin wishes it was. a close-range attack where spikes emerge from rock's body as he does a speen, giving him a somewhat bigger hitbox. when he hits an enemy, he bounces off of it in a manner similar to the way sonic bounces off of everything he hits. the move lasts as long as the attack button is held down, draining weapon energy over time, and rock can still walk and jump while speening. some projectiles will bounce off of spike spin [generally small bullets like those from mets or sniper joes will bounce off while anything stronger will still hurt], and holding the move makes rock immune to spikes, allowing him to walk over them safely until his weapon energy depletes.

some items may be tucked away in places that are difficult or impossible to reach without walking over spikes, requiring the use of spike spin to reach them.

cost: 4 units per second, for a total of 7 seconds of spinning from a full gauge. the first unit is depleted the moment the button is pressed so the move can't be scummed into lasting longer.

honestly now that i'm thinking about this i might change spike spin to act a little more like how pink spike spindashes, but i was overcome by a desire for justice for top man.

i don't know how to end this post lmao but i've been thinking about this crossover for days on end. i know damn well it's a pipe dream but right now i'm in just the right mode of hyperfixation that if sega and capcom announced a sonic/mega man crossover in a video game that isn't smash lmao i would ASCEND

#i had so much fun drawing those shitty microsoft paint mega men lmao #just fucking whatever #mega man #sonic the hedgehog #sonic colours #mega colours #that's what the .txt file i'm writing this all down in is called so that's what i'm tagging this crossover as in case i post about it again #i have a whole bunch of other miscellaneous ideas for how this'd go but the main thing was coming up with funni weapons #i could apologise for making such a long post but i am not going to i think. i used a readmore i have no excuse to feel bad about dash clog #can't wait for all the speedrunners to go for drill man first and spam drill dash for the entire game #sonic forces me to answer questions #aprofessionallurker

[bearterritory]

Garbers & Golden Bears Roll Past Oregon State

Cal QB Throws For 3 TDs In 39-25 Victory

BERKELEY – Chase Garbers threw three touchdown passes – including two to tailback Christopher Brooks – and the Golden Bears knocked off a heavily favored Oregon State team 39-25 on Saturday at California Memorial Stadium. This despite several scoring opportunities lost (dropped pass in the end zone, TD call overturned, time running out in the first half) which would have actually put the score at 53-25 or perhaps even 60-25.  Regardless, the Bears were in full control from the very first play and never looked back; they had a two TD advantage for nearly the entire game.  This despite some key injuries on defense, including Cam Goode out for the game.

Oregon State, although not ranked in the top 25 was coming in at 5-2 and at the top of the Pac-12 North.  They had just upset the ranked Utes in Utah the week before and had the #1 offense and most rushing yards in the conference and nearly everyone predicted an “easy win” against the Bears.  But Cal  stopped OSU cold and man-handled them all afternoon on both sides of the ball. Garbers completed 17 of 25 passes for 262 yards without an interception while also rushing for 58 yards and a score, as the Bears (3-5, 2-3 Pac-12) won back-to-back games for the first time since winning three in a row to close out the 2019 season. "We knew the team we had," Garbers said. "We knew what we were capable of. We lost some close games early in the season – one or two plays here or there and our record is a different story. We knew what we had talent-wise and scheme-wise. We just had to put it all together." Brooks had 123 total yards from scrimmage while wide receiver Trevon Clark caught five passes for 90 yards and a touchdown. The Bears forced three Oregon State turnovers, including interceptions by linebacker Nate Rutchena and safety Elijah Hicks. It was Hicks' second straight game with an interception. Cal also got a blocked punt by special teams guru Nick Alftin. "We're certainly improving," Head Football Coach Justin Wilcox said. "There are some guys that are developing and making some big plays in the game and kind of coming into their own a little bit. The margins are so slim at this level of football and in our conference that there are going to be a handful of critical plays in the game that we have to find a way to make. There were some good ones today in every phase. The Bears dominated for most of the first half before the Beavers managed to finally score a late touchdown to cut Cal's lead to 17-10 at halftime. The teams traded touchdowns in the second half, with Brooks' second scoring catch giving the Bears the final margin of victory with 5:36 to play.  There was another score in the last minute that briefly put  Cal up 45-25 until the referees overturned it saying the receiver missed the end zone pylon.  Careful review of replays however, showed he had not and the score should have stood.  Despite the botched call, Garbers & Co. continued to control the ball and wind down the clock to win the game. On the opening series, the Bears stole the game's momentum immediately when linebacker Marqez Bimage forced and recovered a fumble on the first play from scrimmage, and Garbers scored on a 2-yard touchdown run six plays later. It was Garbers' 10th career rushing touchdown, a new school record for a quarterback. Cal had an important scoring drive to begin the third quarter, converting two third downs and eventually scoring on Garbers' 38-yard pass to a wide-open Brooks down the right sideline. After the Beavers cut the Bears' lead to 24-17 with 2:55 left in the third, Alftin later blocked a punt by OSU's Luke Loecher and Cal took advantage immediately on Garbers' 38-yard touchdown pass to Clark. The Beavers got their closest with then crept within 31-25 on a touchdown and two-point conversion with 11:23 to play, but the Bears answered once again with the drive of the game – an 11-play, 75-yard possession that included three third-down conversions, the final resulting in Brooks' second touchdown catch from 2 yards out. Brooks ran in the two-point conversion, and Hicks came up with his second interception in as many games on the first play of the Beavers' ensuing drive. "All I know today is that we showed out. I'm proud of my guys," Hicks said. "We are going to watch film and get back in the lab and get ready for Arizona (next week). That's just my mindset and my teammates mindset. We're just hungry for more. We're not satisfied and we're not done." Sophomore Isaiah Young had four pass breakups for the Bears in the first extensive playing time of his career, including one tipped ball that led to Rutchena's interception. The Bears scored their most points in a Pac-12 game since a 49-7 victory over Oregon State in 2018. Cal is back on the road next week to take on Arizona on Saturday. Kickoff is set for noon on the Pac-12 Network.

#Cal #Go Bears #UC Berkeley #Bear Territory #Chase Garbers #Golden Bears #Cal Berkeley #Marqez Bimage #football #Oregon State #Christopher Brooks #Nate Rutchena #Elijah Hicks #Cal Bears #Nick Alftin #Justin Wilcox #Trevon Clark

[oswincoleman]

Here is another great interview with Jenna Coleman. By now there are so many interviews with her, I am only sharing the best ones that provide some new insights, and are not just repetitions of stuff she had said before already. 

AR: The dark role might be a departure for Coleman, but it’s one she relished. Playing Leclerc gave her the chance to portray a complicated character whose deeds divided observers in real life, fans of the TV series, and even the actress herself. Here, Coleman tells T&C about what drew her to The Serpent and why dark characters can be so thrilling to play.

JC: Reading the script for the first time, I had an instinctive response, and I don't think I moved for six hours. The tension in the series and also the character was so fascinating. I felt like I was so drawn in by the character and found her so complicated and enigmatic, the story absolutely blew my mind and sent me down a research worm hole. It was just a complete no brainer.

AR: You’ve also played Queen Victoria. Is there something different for you about playing characters who were real people?

JC: It's twofold, but I love it because I love research. That beauty was there with Queen Victoria, too; I've spent so much time at Kensington Palace now, and I got to touch her real-life shoes, walk around the palace, touch the banisters, and walk down steps where she saw Albert for the first time. Your imagination runs wild because these things really happened, and it really existed. We were filming The Serpent in Bangkok, where this story really happened, and the real-life people like Herman Knippenberg and Nadine Gires, they came to set and watched us filming and told us that their experiences of meeting Charles abroad and the real-life story. There's something so thrilling about that and also recreating something that has happened.

AR: What part of playing her was the most challenging for you?

JC: I felt like I was on a roller coaster, since we had so many stops and starts with filming [during the pandemic]. I've never felt so much energy and momentum, and then suddenly we went home for five months when the coronavirus hit, and we were waiting to tell the rest of the story. We went from the height of being on this adventure to suddenly being on the couch, and then back on set getting straight into it. There’s a scene in episode eight that feels like her Lady Macbeth moment, when she has totally hit rock bottom. She’s a woman who’s completely become undone and there’s something really thrilling about arriving at that point.

JC: The reaction here in the UK has been very interesting, because some people are like, “Poor Marie-Andree, what a victim. She was lost in love.” And other people are like, “She's such an accomplice, you were playing such a dark murderer.” There's been such a range of reaction. I feel conflicting things about her, but I adored exploring her psychology.

#jenna coleman #jenna louise coleman #interview #town and country mag #the serpent #netflix

[allamericansbitch]

well since y’all asked

everything will be below the cut so people can just ignore this lol

the wild thing is like... everything everyone was saying from both sides makes sense. the good and the bad. i’ll start off with a pro and cons and then do a short track by track

pros:

i agree with what people are saying about how well this style suits her voice, it perfect. it’s smooth and calming but also doesnt stick her in a box and will allow her to kinda move with it and change things up as she sings, which i know she loves to do.

the production is exactly her too. it’s r&b beats with classic strings... liek that’s completely ariana grande. it’s so interesting and it weirdly works well? 

i feel like you can tell she was just in her element making these songs. i feel like she tapped into something that can be so endless for her and new ideas will be constant.

idk if it’s just me adjusting to hearing her sing but her pronunciation is getting a lot better

every song has at least one good and attractive part to it... there are no songs that i am so completely confused as to why it’s on the album.

it’s for sure my favorite era for her in terms of style

also her best album cover (but sweeter is close second) 

cons:

okay... there is a pattern with this album. every song had a really solid start. so many times i was in love with the verses and the melodies she was singing but... my god are the choruses weak. it’s just one line... repeated... like 4 times... then we move on... and i was sitting here like ‘oh that’s what we were building up to?’ and it happened with every song. so i completely agree about it kind of falling flat most of the time.

it’s so repetitive. besides the choruses mostly all being weak, the themes are all the same. like the 14 songs on the album are all about two things: her being horny or her being in love. that’s it. why did we need 14 songs to tell us two things.

another point: why were there 14 songs? so many filler tracks that just add nothing to the album for me. she could’ve honestly made a solid 10 track album and it would’ve been a good clean piece of work. 

the lyrics... oh my god the lyrics. the one thing i saw people saying, both fans of the album and not, was that the lyrics were really bad... liek they had to prepare people. and my god. there were some points that straight up sounded like 14 year old stan accounts arguing on twitter... ‘you sound dumb... shut up’ SHE USED THAT LYRIC AS A HOOK... she thought it was so good it deserved to be the hook like? and also there’s a lyric that just straight up says ‘read a fucking book’ lol. the good or tolerable lyrics are basically ones she already used before on other songs? like how many time's has this woman sung about fucking while watching movies... 

she needs to stop putting out albums so frequently. a lot of the complaints i see people having is just that it doesnt feel finished or polished enough to be an album. like she should have waiting a few months and refined things. it feels like a stepping stone rather than a destination. she doesnt have a clear vision, narrative or purpose driving the album at all. 

track by track

shut up: this was the first taste of bad lyrics like this is the song about being dumb and i fully was like omfg this is the whole song isnt it. i dig the production though.. this might have the best production of the whole album for me. 

34+35: i felt like i was listening to a horny 13 year old boy during the chorus lol. it just felt really immature at some points... like the giggling every time she alluded to 69 wasnt necessary. also the end where she says ‘mean i wanna 69 with ya’..... sweetie you didnt have to tell us we know we can add. i did like the melody of the pre-chorus. the ‘i’ve been drinkin coffee, i’ve been eatin healthy’ is really catchy and good

motive: god i had such high hopes for this. it first started and i loved the production and the prechorus worked really well... but again that chorus weakness really fucked it. and doja’s part doesnt really fit the song for me? it feels out of place and like she should’ve been put on a more upbeat song

just like magic: first song i actually liked and added to my library! i finally heard a good chorus that didnt feel like it completely slowed down the momentum of the song and helped move it along. and the lyrics are cute. i think for me she needs to improve on the difference between a cute lyric and a cringy lyric... like cute: ‘middle finger to my thumb and then I snap it’ and cringy: the rest of the album. also one thing there’s a lyric about her listening to music she wrote and like girl you had 34 writers on this album... what are you listening to two words? every time she brags about writing it’s kinda embarrassing like.... at no point am i impressed

off the table: this production would have been so good.... if it actually did anything else or went anywhere. it stayed the same the entire time.... for 4 minutes. also stop letting men on women’s music because it seriously never works. her vocals are really pretty though.

six thirty: i really like her vocal delivery in this... like kinda dropping off at the end and just starting to talk? it’s interesting. also the chorus really had potential because it actually got bigger and more layered and interesting but again with the one lyric ‘are you down’ repeated like 3 times then the chorus is just over it’s like... oh okay

safety net: again amazing verse delivery and melody... IF SHE TOOK IT ANYWHERE it would have been great. and again with the male features... not necessary. the bridge is cool with them both singing but other than that it feel flat for me. 

my hair: that smooth electric guitar intro is everything. and this sound of this song is so good.... but.... am i the only person who kinda feels weird about ariana, a white girl, being like ‘you can run your hands through me hair... dont be scared’ like?? why would they be scared... your hair is straight lol. it just toys with the whole idea of ‘don’t touch a black women’s hair’ for me. idk it could totally be a me overanalyzing thing. but god is she sang about anything else this would be my favorite song. second song i added to my library.  

nasty: if i had to pick one song that was my exact expectations for this album before listening to it it would be this one. the electronic hip-hop beat with the harmonies and vocals, all paired together for a song about her being horny (again), like yeah this all fits. it feels lost in some places though. like some points i feel like i have no idea what part for the song we’re on or what’s happening and we’re just treading water. and another weak chorus with 1 lyric repeated over and over again. (also random side not that intro of her talking reminded me of when she gave that billboard interview and people were mad at her bc she starting talking with an accent even though shes white... like thats what i thought of i was like ma’am you are a rich white theater kid form florida you do not speak like that)

west side: the production in the beginning is so cool? where is sounds like a tape rewinding kinda? love that. but other than that like... no point to this song being included on the album... it’s 2 minutes and it falls flat pretty early on.

love language: this was the one i saw most people agreeing was the best one/most hyped. i expected to be a ballad but it’s one of the more upbeat ones and honestly thank god. a chorus that actually has structure and goes somewhere? wild. good and creative lyrics? WILD. anyway the production is great and reintroduces that kinda 70s vibe from motive but in a refreshing way. really good tie in. third song added to the library. 

positions: i honestly didn’t even listen to this when it came out so i really had no idea what to expect. again the strings and orchestral pairs so well together... one of my favorite instrumentals on the whole album. i 100% see why this was the lead single and i agree with it completely. the most catchy chorus and it moves the song forward WHAT A CONCEPT. also very good placement on the tracklist because it was really refreshing. at this point it kinda started to drag on a little but this picked it right up. it also kinda threw me completely off balance because i was so familiar with the pattern of good verse weak chorus good verse weak chorus, but this is the opposite? weak verses but amazing chorus. forth song added to library.  also i am genuinely curious why it’s the album title? it doesnt really fit the theme of the album but then again one of my complaints is that it doesnt really have a theme to begin with so... 

obvious: the imagery i got when the music came in was like a dark 80′s lounge with dark wood furniture and i loved it lol. the same thing with positions, a surprising and refreshing combo of weak verse but good chorus which was nice. i can see it easily getting me stuck in my head, especially that hook. fifth song added to my library. 

pov: this is the other song off the album i heard everyone generally loved. i would say this has the best theme and story of the entire album. it has an interesting concept that isnt overly used and the whole song is pretty good decent verse and decent chorus. i love the end where she gets powerful and has more grit in her voice and we get more emotion out of her... wish she didnt wait until the last 30 seconds of the whole album to finally deliver with that but sure. sixth song to be added to the library. 

overall i was pretty surprised at how much i enjoyed it? i really expected not to the way everyone was talking about it. i think it is a good album with just some clear flaws, that could have been easily fixed if she didnt rush the album out so quickly. better lyrics and better judgement/deliberation of which songs deserve to be on the album and it would have been so solid. i would give it an overall rating of 6/10. 

here’s my current ranking:

#text #send me asks about yalls opinons too!!

[prokopetz]

So (like many, people) I absolutely adored Hollow Knight - but I don't think the Metroidvania format was a huge part of it. I feel that the game had a level of polish that's pretty rare in any form of media, let alone indie games - and that polish combined with the world-building and the pacing to make it much more immersive than I find a lot of games. I've picked up a fair number of games since, and enjoyed them but haven't found anything that quite scratches that itch. Any recommendations?

That’s a pretty broad brief, so I’m going to narrow it down to relatively slow-paced games with gothic or melancholy aesthetics, exploration focused gameplay, and complex backstory or worldbuilding that you have to piece together from scattered fragments of exposition. I’m also going to limit myself to one Metroidvania rec, or else we’d be here all week!

FAR: Lone Sails - A nonviolent side-scroller about the lone survivor of a civilisaton-ending apocalypse navigating landship across a dry oceanbed in search of others like them. It starts out essentially as a walking simulator – you just gather fuel for your vehicle and watch it go – and gradually introduces light platforming puzzles to clear obstacles and basic engineering-sim elements to keep the landship running.

GRIS - A linear side-scrolling platformer that manages to be fairly exploratory in spite of the on-rails progression, this one casts you as a young woman making her way through a series of increasingly surreal landscapes to escape a shadowy monster.  Like the previous title, this one is totally combat-free, though not necessarily non-violent; nothing can actually kill you, but you can be hurt.

The King’s Bird - A momentum-based precision puzzle-platformer in the mode of Celeste (which I trust requires no introduction). I’m partly breaking the “slow paced” rule here; you’re free to putter around exploring as you like in this one, but when the action gets going, things move fast. Like, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast – not one to pick up if your reflexes aren’t up to snuff!

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight - This is the one Metroidvania I mentioned up top. It has a similar premise to Hollow Knight, in that you’re storming a fallen kingdom to punch God in the face, but the gameplay is much more deliberate – there’s not a great deal of twitch here. The morph ball equivalent (which sadly comes rather late in the game) lets you turn into a housecat.

Open Sorcery - A hypertext-driven interactive novel with occasional audio cues, this one’s exploratory in a somewhat unconventional sense. The actual gameworld is a single small neighbourhood, but you can really drill down into it – the territory is deep rather than broad. Setting-wise, you play as a fire elemental bound to serve as a spiritual antivirus program, and the worldbuilding just gets weirder from there.

Pyre - A hybrid visual novel/arcade sports sim that resembles nothing so much as Dante’s Inferno meets Space Jam. Your character has been banished to a literal underworld for the crime of literacy, and joins up with a crew of freedom-seekers who hope to escape their exile by conducting a mystical rite that just happens to resemble three-on-three basketball. This premise is played completely straight.

The Swapper - A sci-fi puzzle game where you’re equipped with a gun that can create duplicates of yourself and “swap” your consciousness from clone to clone. Far from being a gameplay conceit, the story delves into the existential implications of what exactly you’re doing with that gun in quite a bit of depth. Manages to pull off an ending that’s both the obvious outcome of the established worldbuilding and a total brainfuck.

Whispers of a Machine - You knew I was going to sneak at least one old school point-and-click adventure game in here. This one’s a classic investigative murder mystery scenario, with the gimmick that your character’s adaptive cybernetics grow new upgrades based on your personality; in game terms, you get different puzzle-solving tools depending on your dialogue choices.

In terms of forthcoming titles that fulfill similar criteria, you might keep an eye on any of Ghost Song, Inmost, Lost Ember, Omno, Radio the Universe, Sable or Stela.

#gaming #video games #video game recommendations #violence mention #death mention #swearing #bobafloutist

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Sequellish to Fern Flower (it’s somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag) - a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series. I just wanted to, originally, try my hand at semi-Slavic mythos and rituals. Kind of part 1 since the thread is ongoing, when I find time.

Warnings: Violence, giant bugs, and I think that’s it for the moment.

The woman in her chemise leaning over the brim of the wooden tub struggles to her feet with fright when Jack barges into the room.

"You didn't pay for the other one," she mutters and runs past Jack with the skirts under her arm as if hell itself is on her heels.

"She took off with the lace," Jack observes, stripping off his shirt and throwing it promptly on the ground, fingers undoing the strings of his pants.

"That's what I carry it for." Gabriel leans back in the water.

"Maybe I should try it myself, one day."

"Maybe you should."

"Tempting," Jack grins, slipping into the tub and sending water sloshing over the brim. For the briefest of moments, his eyes flash the black of bottomless desert wells and he leans forward brushing the tips of his fingers against the leather pouch Gabriel wears by his medallion.

"For all the wrong reasons." Gabriel mutters, and Jack snorts, spraying him idly with water with a flick of his wrist.

"While you were getting entertained, I'd been gathering information, now I don't know if I should tell you anything at all."

"Are you pouting?"

"Am not, little cub."

"You are," Gabriel laughs, throwing his head back.

"Hush. Or I'll bite you. And, am not."

"Whatever you say. What's the story?"

"So, it's a big bug, and I hate bugs," Jack rolls his eyes. "From the woods."

"Did it escape, or the dryads let it go?"

"Either way, I haggled up to three hundred, so you owe me." Jack rubs absentmindedly the scar on his neck. "You could wash my back."

"Does it still hurt?" Gabriel straightens and covers his fingers with his own, mindful of Jack's amused stare.

"This one is here to stay, cub."

"So you're saying."

"I'm also saying you could wash my back," Jack retorts, watching him get up and out of the tub. "It's a big centipede, as I gathered, so it's venomous, and so far it got cows, a dog, though I think the mutt just run away, and a horse from under a local guard."

"From under?"

"Well, it got the poor sod too, left him half-digested when it vomited on him, but first, it got the horse. According to the witnesses because there were some, apparently. They ran away with utmost bravery."

"Anything else?" Gabriel dries himself with the cloth.

"I think they were lying about the number of the cows, but that's to be expected," Jack stretches in the tub, getting more comfortable. "And also, wash my back," he adds when he hears Gabriel moving behind him, and for a moment Gabriel considers the request in the earnest.

At least, until he puts his palms on Jack's shoulders and pushes, dunking him under the surface of the water, cutting short the beginnings of a shrill shriek amidst flailing hands.

"Washed."

"You asshole!" Jack spits out the water, almost snorting. "Stop smirking!"

"No."

"I'm going to bite you, that's a promise!"

*

"You could help me," Gabriel mutters through gritted teeth while kneeling over the slightly bloated goat with a drawn dagger.

"No. Suffer. You're baiting the bug, and I'm going to stand here, upwind."

"Asshole."

"Only as much as you are." Jack flicks a fly off his sleeve. "Now, hurry up, I want this over so we can go talk with the dryads about keeping their pets on shorter leash. Besides, that was your idea."

"Because you're being an ass and refusing to find it."

"I hate bugs therefore I'm not going to talk to it."

"Sombra's rubbing off on you." Gabriel starts to carve the goat and the stench coming from its guts is nigh unbearable.

"I can feel my eyes watering from here. My condolences," Jack quips, too entertained by the whole ordeal.

"I'm far from being inclined to believe it's honest."

"It's not." Jack settles down in a spot under a tree trunk, sheltered from the side by brush and fallen branches. He rummages through his sack in search of something as Gabriel finishes preparing the bait. "Come here."

Gabriel wipes his hands on his pants ignoring Jack's empathetic sounds of disgust and slowly walks to him.

"Shit. You stink now," Jack extends his arms to pull him closer and let him nestle back between his legs. "Here," he presses a handkerchief to his nose and Gabriel inhales.

It's moss, resin, and musk, drowning out the reek of the carrion. Fingers in his hair trace whirling shapes and he closes his eyes, one hand resting on the hilt of the sword lying across his thighs - until his senses curl and fold in rhythm with the forest breathing.

Only the hand moving away from his eyes - fingertips brushing over his eyelids - and a small flask pressed to his lips bring him to the present. Jack indicates the direction with a slight shift of his shoulder and Gabriel nods, the liquid burning in his throat and veins.

There will be a price to pay. There is always a price to be paid, sometimes in advance.

The forest speaks as he raises with the hand on the hilt of his sword, listening to the sounds of the disturbed undergrowth. The bait had worked, too well even.

Gabriel leans back.

"Two."

"I noticed," Jack hisses back.

"You could've talked to them."

"Excuse me for not wanting to feel like something's crawling all over my thoughts for the next month or so."

"Tell me that after it eats me."

"Now I'm hoping one of them does eat you for real."

"You don't."

"Well, I'll settle for a nibble and a bite now."

Jack moves behind, and Gabriel takes off in the opposing direction while the both centipedes start to hiss and butt their carapaces over the goat's carcass. As long as they're busy, the odds are favorable.

Which, of course, means shit, because as soon as he moves into the position, the one closest to him starts to slowly back off, maneuvering its segmented body with meticulousness of something that cannot simply reverse. Even as he tries to still, it gives out another kind of hiss.

There is a certain pitch to the whizz of pressurized air, the pattern to the clicks, and the tone to chitin plates scraping against one another. A male, and that would make the other one, now moving over the bait in his direction, a female. A breeding pair, together.

"Distract the noisy one!" Gabriel, running, shouts over the hiss.

"Me and what army?" Jack screams back from the other side, actually managing to nail one of the creature's eyes twice with an improvised pinecone - and Gabriel would sympathize, if not for the fact it's a centipede

And Jack always had a penchant for throwing objects, especially at other sentient creatures, but that was a thought better left to explore when not being charged by a giant bug steadily gaining in speed. At least he managed to gain the attention of the male.

"I hate bugs!"

"I know, you don't have to repeat yourself all the time!" Gabriel forms Aard around the hilt - aiming at the ground, and giving himself more momentum for the jump as the female bears down on him - to land on its back just behind the head.

Also, to slip on the smooth carapace.

The centipede is slow to react but it still twists after him, leaving him thrusting the blade between the segments to keep himself from falling, not even upright but awkwardly leaning sideways, almost half-sitting with one leg curled up.

"You good?" Jack sounds breathless.

"Yes," Gabriel screams over the loud clacking and hissing, pushing the blade deeper into the tissues. He's missing all the vital organs at this angle, but with any luck he might nick one of the sacks holding the digestive acids. The centipede bucks and swings back under him.

He lowers himself - almost lying flat against the carapace - when the mandibles flap above him, the interlocking segments of hard chitin preventing the female from actually reaching him.

Until it does something seemingly too clever to be intentional.

Its whole body smashes against the tree trunks, and Gabriel barely avoids having his arm pulverized between the wood and the centipedes bulk - the impact itself sending waves of aftershocks along his nerves and loosening his grip on the sword.

He can only let go, pushing with his feet against the carapace to give himself more momentum and gain distance as he lands, rolling immediately away from the female's legs hitting the ground in a frenzied rage.

He's at disadvantage with his sword lost, the daggers useless now.

"Coming through!" Jack calls from much closer than before, and only a second later Gabriel feels another body crashing into him, sending both of them flying from the path of the male barreling straight into the other centipede as it fails to correct its course after its prey.

Gabriel spares a glance at Jack springing back to his feet. His chest heaves with the exertion and his lips are parted with the beginnings of an excited grin, the tongue slightly pushed forward and nostrils flaring, as if he is a wild animal scenting the forest air.

And it's captivating each and every time, this feral abandonment Reinhardt tried hard to subdue and extinguish with training even when Ana told him not to bother with it.

"I get your sword back, you wash my back for real this time?"

"Deal," Gabriel mutters under his breath.

"Deal." Jack smirks at him. Under the moonlight his eyes appear to run black but it's only the pupils blown as wide as the irises are, and Jack takes off towards the centipedes swiping and biting at each other as they fail to disentangle without becoming more and more aggravated.

Cautiously, Gabriel moves back, fingers ready to form a sign if it comes to this, and Jack weaves between the swinging legs, his palm finally curling around the hilt. He pulls hard, but the angle is wrong, and the female notices the tug, hissing in distress. The male reacts.

"Fuck!" Jack evades the first strike still keeping his grip on the sword, almost thrown over to the other side of the female but loses his balance and shrieks in pain when a mandible catches him in the face spraying blood on the bark. Gabriel finishes forming the sign.

The resulting blast of magic is enough to throw Jack back and confuse the centipedes. Still, the idiot refuses to let go of the hilt even when hurt, and, luckily, this time the blade dislodges. He hits the ground with a crunch of breaking branches and another shout of pain.

It doesn't stop him from getting up and lobbing the sword in an arc over the beasts. It embeds in the undergrowth in front of Gabriel.

"See, I got it," Jack calls from the other side. "We have a deal. So let's finish this."

"You're a goddamn fucking moron!"

#sometimes I write #r76 #reaper76 #totallynotwitcher!AU #murder-deer

[imdoingthismspaintadventure]

Worm 2.4 - In which Emma and her friends are utter monsters

“Nobody likes her.  Nobody wants her here,” Julia said.

“Such a loser.  She didn’t even turn in the major project for art, last Friday,” Sophia responded.

“If she’s not going to try, then why is she even coming to school?”

Ooh goodie! This chapter is already starting out fucked!

Despite the way the conversation sounded, they were talking to me.  They were just pretending to talk to one another.  It was both calculating in how they were managing plausible deniability while at the same time they were acting totally juvenile by pretending I wasn’t there.  A blend of immaturity mixed with craftiness in a way only high schoolers could manage.  I would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it, if it hadn’t been at my expense.

Wildbow captures the malignant pettiness of high school bullying so well. This is already making me mad with how ..real it is. The crude but effective phychological abuse.

The moment I had left the classroom, Emma, Madison and Sophia had crowded me into a corner, with another six girls backing them up.  I was unable to squeeze past them without getting pushed or elbowed back, so I couldn’t do much more than lean against the window, listening while eight of the girls were rattling off an endless series of taunts and jibes.  Before one girl was even finished, another started up.  All the while, Emma stayed back and stayed quiet, the slightest of smiles on her face.  I couldn’t meet the eyes of any of the other girls without them barking a fresh torrent of insults directly to my face, so I just glared at Emma.

I bet Emma is just relishing in all the social power she has here, letting her minions do everything for her and just looking amused at Taylor’s expense

Social hierarchy is such a cancerous thing in high school.

“Ugliest girl in our grade.”

They were barely thinking about what they were saying and a lot of the insults were wildly off the mark or contradictory.  One would say I was a slut, for example, then another might say a guy would puke before he touched me.  The point wasn’t being witty, being smart or being on target.  It was more about delivering the feeling behind the words over and over, hammering it in.  If I’d had just a moment to butt in, maybe I could have come up with retorts.  If I could just kill their momentum, they probably wouldn’t get back into the easy rhythm again.  That said, I couldn’t find the words, and there weren’t any openings in the conversation where I wouldn’t just be talked over.

They are taking the approach of trying to land as many hits as possible, without even bothering for coherency or effectiveness. Just a nice way for them to say to her how much they fucking loathe her.

Lovely

While this particular tactic was new to me, I’d been putting up with stuff like this for a year and a half, now.  At a certain point, I’d come to the conclusion that it was easier to sit back and take it, when it came to most things.  They wanted me to fight back, because everything was stacked in their favor.  If I stood up for myself and they still ‘won’, then it only served to feed their egos.  If I came out ahead in some way, then they got more persistent and mean for the next time.  So for much the same reason I hadn’t fought Madison for the homework she had taken from me, I just leaned against the wall next to the window and waited for them to get bored with their game or get hungry enough to leave and go have their lunches.

Ugghghghghghghg

The whole situation is just horrible. If she fights back they would call her crazy or dangerous or pathetic and they will intensify their abuse. But just taking it like this can’t be good for her psyche, with all the constant and relentless aggresion.

“What does she use to wash her face?  A Brillo pad?”

“She should!  She’d look better!”

“Never talks to anybody.  Maybe she knows she sounds like a retard and keeps her mouth shut.”

“No, she’s not that smart.”

No more than three feet behind Emma, I could see Mr. Gladly leaving his classroom.  The tirade didn’t stop as I watched him tuck a stack of folders under one arm, find his keys and lock the door.

“If I were her, I’d kill myself,” one of the girls announced.

Mr. Gladly turned to look me in the eyes.

First off, that kys comment made me considerably even more disgusted

Second, Mr Gladly, you can see it happening, right now! Please do something! Even if it is just breaking this up with your presence.

“So glad we don’t have gym with her.  Can you imagine seeing her in the locker room?  Gag me with a spoon.”

I don’t know what expression I had on my face, but I know I didn’t look happy.  No less than five minutes ago, Mr. Gladly had been trying to convince me to go with him to the office and tell the principal about the bullying.  I watched him as he gave me a sad look, shifted the file folders to his free hand and then walked away.

GLADLY YOU INCREDIBLE PIECE OF SHIT

Way to prove how ineffective the school system would be, with just a single action

Most friendly and approachable teacher? More like most utterly spineless coward

I was stunned.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around how he could just ignore this.  When he had been trying to help me, had he just been covering his own ass, doing what was required of him in the face of a situation he couldn’t ignore?  Had he just given up on me?  After trying to help, in his own completely ineffective way, after I turned his offer for help down twice, he just decided I just wasn’t worth the effort?

I really hope Gladly isn’t just rationalizing this as being fine because Taylor refused his help. Because that ISNT HOW THAT WORKS

YOU’RE A GROWN-ASS ADULT, YOU SHOULD KNOW NOT TO LIMPLY WALK AWAY FROM A GROUP OF STUDENTS ABUSING ANOTHER STUDENT TO THE POINT OF CALLING FOR HER SUICIDE. EVEN IF SHE REFUSES YOUR HELP, IT IS YOUR DUTY AS HER TEACHER AND AS A FUCKING HUMAN BEING

“You should have seen her group fail in class just now.  It was painful to watch.”

OH AND YOU ALL CAN ALSO GO TO HELL WITH THE ASSIGNMENT BULLSHIT

I clenched my fist, then forced myself to relax it.  If we were all guys, this scenario would be totally different.  I was in the best shape of my life.  I could have swung a few punches from the very start, caused a bloody nose or two, maybe.  I know I would have lost the fight in the end, getting shoved to the ground by force of numbers and kicked while I was down, but things would have ended there, instead of dragging on like they were here.  I’d hurt physically for days afterwards, but I’d at least have had the satisfaction of knowing some of the others were hurting too, and I wouldn’t have to sit through this barrage of insults.  If there was enough damage done, the school would have to take notice, and they wouldn’t be able to ignore the circumstances of a one-against-nine fight.  Violence gets attention.

But things didn’t work that way here.  Girls played dirty.  If I decked Emma, she would run to the office with some fabricated story, her friends backing up her version of events.  For most, ratting to the faculty was social suicide, but Emma was more or less top dog.  If she went to the principal, people would only take things more seriously.  By the time I got back to school, they would have spread the story through the grapevine in a way that made me look like a total psycho.  Things would get worse.  Emma would be seen as the victim and girls who had previously ignored the bullying would join in on Emma’s behalf.

One of the reasons why psychological abuse is so much more insidious than phisical abuse in  many cases. It is so much harder to fight against.

“And she smells,” one girl said, lamely.

“Like expired grape and orange juice,” Madison cut in with a little laugh.  Again, bringing up the juice?  I suspected that one had been her idea.

Madison, fuck off

It seemed like they were running out of steam.  I figured it was just a minute or two before they got bored and walked away.

It seemed Emma got the same impression, because she stepped forward.  The group parted to give her room.

“What’s the matter, Taylor?”  Emma said, “You look upset.”

Emma, fuck off

Her words didn’t seem to fit the situation.  I had maintained my composure for however long they had been at it.  What I’d been feeling was more a mixture of frustration and boredom than anything else.  I opened my mouth to say something.  A graceless “Fuck you” would have sufficed.

That Taylor is so jaded that this doesn’t even affect her that much is so fucking depressing

“So upset you’re going to cry yourself to sleep for a straight week?” she asked.

My words died in my throat as I processed her words.

.....You just pulled some psychological bullshit didn’t you?

Almost a year before we had started high school, I had been at her house, the both of us eating breakfast and playing music way too loud. Emma’s older sister had come downstairs with the phone.  We’d turned down the music, and my dad had been on the other end, waiting to tell me in a broken voice that my mom had died in a car accident

....Oh no. No no no no

I see what Emma might have just done and it is fucking evil

And this confirms that her mom died instead of her and Danny just breaking up...Fuck

Emma’s sister had given me a ride to my place, and I bawled the entire way there.  I remember Emma crying too, out of sympathy, maybe.  It could have been the fact that she thought my mom was the coolest adult in the world.  Or perhaps it was because we really were best friends and she had no idea how to help me.

....What happened to you Emma? What made you so fucked up? How did you change so much. You cried about her mom, you were or at least seemed decent once!

I didn’t want to think about the month that had followed, but fragments came to mind without my asking.  I could remember overhearing my dad berating my mother’s body, because she’d been texting while driving, and she was the only one to blame.  At one point, I barely ate for five straight days, because my dad was such a wreck that I wasn’t on his radar. I’d eventually turned to Emma for help, asking to eat at her place for a few days.  I think Emma’s mom figured things out, and gave my dad a talking to, because he started pulling things together.  We’d established our routine, so we wouldn’t fall apart as a family again.

Knowing Danny he probably blamed himself more than he blamed her. And he shutting down like that... oh god.

And the fact that Emma was a shining light in all this is just so... twisted

Now Taylor doesn’t even have the moments of respite and support from that anymore. When Emma betrayed her, she betrayed her completely and utterly. These memories are retroactively tainted because of her

It was a month after my mom had died that Emma and I had found ourselves sitting on the bridge of a kid’s play structure in the park, our rear ends cold from the damp wood, sipping coffee we’d bought from the Donut Hole.  We didn’t have anything to do, so we had just been walking around and talking about whatever.  Our wandering had taken us to the playground, and we were resting our heels.

“You know, I admire you,” she had said, abruptly.

This sad and beautifully bitterweet memory, absolutely corrupted

“Why?” I had responded, completely mystified about the fact that someone gorgeous and amazing and popular like her could find something to admire in me.

“You’re so resilient.  After your mom died, you were totally in pieces, but you’re so together after a month.  I couldn’t do that.”

Past Emma makes me rage and fucking cry.

She honesly seemed like a good friend and isn’t that terrifying? That a close friend, a trusted friend, could backstab you like that?

I could remember my admission, “I’m not resilient.  I can hold it together during the day, but I’ve cried myself to sleep for a straight week.”

That had been enough to open the floodgates, right there.  She gave me her shoulder to cry on, and our coffee was cold before I was done.

AND THERE IT FUCKING IS

Emma you fucking monster

How dare you

Now, as I gaped at Emma, wordless, her smile widened.  She remembered what I had said, then.  She knew the memories it would evoke.  At some point, that recollection had crossed her mind, and she had decided to weaponize it.  She’d been waiting to drop it on me.

You’re so fucking repulsive

Fuck me, it worked.  I felt the trail of a tear on my cheek.  My power roared at the edges of my consciousness, buzzing, pressuring me. I suppressed it.

“She is!  She’s crying!”  Madison laughed.

Angry at myself, I rubbed my hand over my cheek to brush the tear away.  More were already welling up, ready to take its place.

“It’s like you have a superpower, Emma!” one of the girls tittered.

You all better be thankful you’re not bug food at this point

I had taken off my backpack so I could lean against the wall.  I reached to pick it up, but before I could, a foot hooked through the strap and dragged it away from me. I looked up and saw the owner of the foot – dark skinned, willowy Sophia – smirking at me.

“Oh em gee!  What’s she doing?” one of the girls said.

Sophia was leaning against the wall, one foot casually resting on top of my backpack.  I didn’t think it was worth fighting her over, if it gave her an opportunity to continue her game of keep-away.  I left the bag where it was and shoved my way through the gathered girls, bumping an onlooker with my shoulder hard enough to make him stumble.  I ran into the stairwell and out the doors on the ground floor.

Ok Sophia you can go die as well.

What an absolutely horrible group of people, holy shit.

I fled.  I didn’t check, but chances were they were watching from the window at the end of the hallway.  It didn’t really matter.  The fact that I had just promised to pay thirty five bucks of my own money for a World Issues textbook to replace the one that had been soaked with grape juice wasn’t my top concern.  Even if it was pretty much all the money I had left after buying the pieces for my costume.  My art midterm was in my bag as well, newly repaired.  I knew I wouldn’t get any of it back in one piece, if at all.

God this feels so hopeless.

The school is watching this and seeing how it’s making her miss classes and violate deadlines and they do nothing

No, my primary concern was getting out of there.  I wasn’t going to break the promise I had made to myself.  No using powers on them.  That was the line I wasn’t crossing.  Even if I did something utterly innocuous, like give them all lice, I didn’t trust myself to stop there.  I didn’t trust myself to keep from offering blatant hints that I had powers or spoiling my secret identity just to see the looks on their faces when they realized the girl they had been tormenting was a bona-fide superhero.  It was something I couldn’t help but daydream about, but I knew the long term ramifications would spoil that.

That is a sweet revenge fantasy, but yeah, compromising your secret identity isn’t worth it. There’s already a crazy dragon who wants you dead if he ever escapes

Perhaps most important, I rationalized, was keeping the two worlds separate.  What use was escapism, if the world I was escaping to was muddled with the people and things I was trying to avoid?

I feel you there, Taylor.

Even without any problems like you have, I would cringe if my different worlds (university, family, friends, online...) collided

Before the thought of going back to school had even crossed my mind, I found myself wondering what I was going to do to fill my afternoon.

...You’re totally going to consider TT’s proposal right now, aren’t you?

#Worm #Worm liveblog #worm parahumans #parahumans #parahumans liveblog #wildbow #Worm 2.4 #Arc 2

[themagiciansreccenter]

The Great Blank Spot: @hoteldestiel

So much goes into creating fanfiction even before the first words hit the paper. And in-depth spotlight on our writers and the process behind their work.

Tell us about your current project.

Peaches and Plums is my take at a canon-divergent run through of the second half of Season 3 as well as an exploration of all the pieces of the mosaic timeline we didn't get to see. Really, it's my super self-indulgent excuse to dive deep into Eliot's insecurities and darknesses and how they align with/interact with Quentin's. And write these two falling deeply, madly in love with each other as they deserve.

The fics are finally posted from The Trials. Did you participate?

I didn't! I wasn't in deep enough with this fandom until after that challenge was over but I would love to participate in the future!

What is your current word count?

With the draft of Chapter 5 I need edited before I post, I'm at 15,389

Do you try to write daily? Do you have a word count or other goals you try to hit for each writing session?

I do! Not always on this project, I've got a lot of things rolling, but I have been very serious this year about making writing fiction a daily habit for me. Right now my word count goal is 750 words for my 39 Graves timeline and then whatever else I feel like rocking on top of that. Lately I've been averaging around 2k per day.

What was the inspiration for this fic?

A Life in the Day is basically a fanfic writer's dream, really, with all the blank spots waiting to be filled. One of the first things that pulled me into this show was Quentin and Eliot's relationship, and getting to see that in such a powerful way in 3x05 inspired the heck out of me. I also just really wanted a chance to dive into Eliot's head more. I love that chaotic good trauma baby ok??

How do you stay motivated between chapters/stories?

I read (novels, other fanfic, you name it), I work on other projects, I consume other art (music, tv, movies, gifsets lbr those are ART) and I bounce ideas off of people in the fandom, geek out on headcanons, rewatch episodes and meta the heck out of whatever comes my way. Having the daily writing habit helps a lot, it's hard to lose all motivation when you know you have a standing date with your keyboard.

Did this fic require any research? How much research do you typically do for your fics?

So far my only research has been referring back to the second half of season 3 and consulting the Magicians Wiki when I get stuck. If a fic requires me to do some googling (like this idea I have brewing in the back of my mind probably will) I will gladly google whatever I need to to make sure it's right. Usually, though, I don't research until I run up against the thing that needs clarification. If I get too in my head about the details, the prose doesn't come as easily.

Do you typically write ahead or post as you go?

I post as I go! Write a chapter, get it edited/betaed, and out into the ether it goes! I usually sit with it for a couple of days after it's drafted and edited before I publish it, but that's about as close to writing ahead as I get.

How much planning and outlining did you do before you started putting words on paper?

For Peaches and Plums, almost none. I had the idea, and I was driving home from work when the first sentence of it came into my head clear as day. I repeated it to myself the rest of the drive home so I wouldn't lose it by the time I got there, walked through the door and immediately sat down to start writing. I jot down notes for future chapters as they come to me but it's been pretty go-with-the-flow so far.

Has it been pretty smooth sailing or rough waters? When things get rocky, how do you handle needing to rewrite sections or scrap scenes entirely?

It was smooth sailing (punt intended, thanks Muntjac) until Chapter 5. The plot had a pretty clear direction and I knew where I wanted it to go, but Chapter 5 is an all-mosaic chapter and I struggled with that. It stalled me out for a couple of weeks, and the first version of that chapter straight up doesn't exist anymore. I've been writing for a long time so I'm less precious with my writing, I'll cut huge chunks out if I feel they don't really serve the story, and I'm totally okay with rewriting. The biggest thing I try to keep in mind when I'm rewriting is that it can't happen in a vacuum. When I'm done with the rewrite, I make sure to read the whole chapter/piece over again because sometimes it gets messy and confusing, or repetitive without trying. Rocky, for me, is running out of plot steam or being unsure of where to go next, but I think I've got a pretty clear direction of the next few chapters so I'm excited to have some momentum again!

Teaser

“That’s bullshit!” Q said, stepping closer again, reaching Eliot’s side before he had time to do anything drastic.

“You’re right,” Not-Eliot growled. “You can end this, don’t let him talk you out of it.”

“No, Q. It’s not bullshit. It’s smart. The rest of you can figure this out without me,” Eliot said, his foot still perched on the rung.

“Not like you were really much help anyway,” Not-Eliot added, “Quentin didn’t even figure out the mosaic until after you died.”

Eliot shook his head. God, he hadn’t thought of it like that. It made sense. He gripped the rung tighter, willing himself to shift his weight upward.

“No!” Quentin shouted, placing his hand over one of Eliot’s. Eliot stopped.

“Why not, huh? Can you give me one good, legitimate reason? Not some shitty reason about how the quest needs me or how I’m some great magician if I can just stick it out until we get magic back, or how Fillory needs me. That’s all so fucking flimsy, and we both know it. Give me a real reason, Q.”

Quentin was quiet. Eliot took it as an answer. He brought his other foot to the rung, hoisting himself up once more.

“I already lost you once, El, don’t make me lose you again.”

The Great Blank Spot is an in-depth spotlight focusing on the writing process and previewing in-progress fics for our fandom. It is meant to be an organic, ever-evolving feature. Previously interviewed fic writers can reach out to us here, to have a specific work featured. If you’d like to have a work featured but haven’t done the author spotlight, reach out to us to get started. If you have suggestions for questions you’d like to see answered, shoot us an ask!

#the magicians #the magicians rec center #the great blank spot #author spotlight #author spotlight: hoteldestiel

[deltastorm101]

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst - A (critical) love letter.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of “a review I thought I could never write because I’m way too emotionally attached to this game which I know insanely, almost creepily well”, mixed with a healthy dose of “I should do everything but write this review because I want to finish school at some point but I have to use the surge of inspiration while it lasts”!

Today we will be talking about Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which was released 2016 as a prequel-ly reboot (saying it like this because for the longest time I’ve thought it to be a prequel but turns out it’s a lot more like a reboot... my bad) to the first Mirror’s Edge from 2008 (which, by the way, still looks fantastic today considering its release year). I will occasionally throw in references and aspects from the first game as well, but this will primarily be about Catalyst.

Time for game 👏 review 👏!

And as always - warning: spoilers. I’ll try to keep the really huge ones out of this or at least mark them well, but going off and playing for yourself first is recommended.

To start this off, I want to say that I initially loved the first Mirror’s Edge - however, only after playing Catalyst, I realized how bad the controls and bugs in it actually were, which is another way of saying Catalyst is a miracle when it comes to naturally flowing controls and crisp and polished looking environments. The city it takes place in, “Glass”, is breathtakingly gorgeous, period. Shiny, clean, it is just on point and one of the biggest reasons I consider it to be my favourite game from the day I first played it, hands down. Not even one of the new Tomb Raider games or one of my childhood-reminiscent games were able to top it and that means something.

The game takes place in an open world map complex under a totalitarian government, drawing parallels to George Orwell’s “1984” – big brother is watching you, all that. A dystopian world if I’ve ever seen one. The open world aspect is one of the best decisions the developers could have made; I have no words to describe how beautiful the different city districts are, and being able to run in freeroam through the city of Glass like parkour runners are meant to feels so much better than being trapped in closed-off levels like it was the case in the first game.

When I first wrote down some key aspects for this review while I was playing it once more, I noted that apparently, you only truly understand the game’s backstory and the protagonists’ origins if you’ve bought and read the comic, Mirror’s Edge Exordium, and that I think it’s not that important because you can well understand what’s going on at the beginning without it – the game starts with Faith, the main protagonist, getting out of jail/a sort of juvenile detention, making her way back into her old circle of friends and family and, of course, old unresolved and new unconsidered problems and conflicts. The comic basically explains what has been messed up by who to make her end up in juvie in the first place and, as I said, it’s not really necessary to know. But, after having bought it now after literal years of consideration, I can say that it’s definitely very nice to know, and totally worth it. There are a lot of elements from the game carefully and lovingly worked into the comic and vice versa (I don’t know what was written first, comic or game, but they fit together very nicely), and just having more reasons, more answers, a larger overview and even partly some explanations for the first game feels... right.

The voice acting is good overall – not strikingly awesome but definitely up there, especially during emotional cutscenes. Sometimes the controls are a bit wonky and Faith might not immediately do what your fingers tell her to but that could definitely be on me - in games where fast reaction is important, quick time events can go wrong occasionally, nothing new. There are some passages you could consider a QTE but they’re being displayed early enough for you to be able to mentally prepare for them as far as I see it. And in my book, that’s a massive improvement from the first game, where you were able to press a button perfectly in time even while having reaction time (= a temporary slow mode) activated, and still watch Faith gracefully fall down the side of the building while flailing her arms in fear because she didn’t grab onto that perfectly grabbable practical white ledge. Why, you ask? I don’t know, ask Faith. Oh, you can’t, obviously made clear by the nasty sound of her hitting the road and her neck being snapped apart. Seriously, I cringed to the moon and back when I first heard that ugly sound. Which is another thing they improved in Catalyst; now all you hear is her quick, raspy, fear-filled breaths and a blissful silence paired with a white death screen after you’ve hit a death barrier. Not the ground, a death barrier. There’s a shitload of them. Which is a pity regarding the fact that a whole lot more out-of-bounds areas would be reachable and playable if there weren’t. Honestly, I find it kind of disappointing that there’s this many invisible walls, fall-through grounds and death barriers. I can see why, conserving computing resources to avoid loading screens, blah blah, but still... let me go off the map, dammit. The game is about a group of people living “off the grid”, why can’t the player actually do that? Hm? Hmmm?

Another aspect tying into this is the social playing mechanic(s), which I found interesting but indeed totally unnecessary. We all know leaderboards of races and stuff, which were incorporated here as setting the best time in short, timed courses (“dashes”), which naturally have been hacked and cheated into ridiculousness. No, RunnerMaster69, I do not believe you ran that dash in three seconds and 420 nanoseconds, I just don’t. Upon completing a dash, you leave an ‘echo’, so basically a ghost other players can compare themselves to, and for you to see which route another player took. Nothing too groundbreaking on that front. There’s a way of tagging locations you’ve been to: so-called Beat Link Emitters (Beat L.E.s) are like little chips shining red in the world you can put down wherever you’re able to stand safely and have them appear in other people’s games to touch, which is a nice way of incorporating a way of saying “Hey, look where I was able to climb!” (And yes, I have abused this system; there’s a glitch making it possible for Faith to float down high buildings onto lower ones, which aren’t death-barriered but not reachable on a normal way. You bet I was a floating gurl putting down Beat L.E.s whereeeeever I could. So much fun. Sorry.)

The same goes for hackable billboards, which can also appear in your friends’ games, but they could have been designed a lot more interestingly. If you hack a billboard, your runner tag appears on it, which consists of a visual symbol, a frame around it, and a background. You can customize the tag in a companion app, which again I didn’t really find necessary. But it is pretty self-explanatory and a nice gimmick if you’re into that kinda stuff.

Maybe an irrelevant aspect: Faith is wearing the same outfit (almost) throughout the whole game. Only at the beginning while getting to the runners’ lair she’s wearing something different and I see missed potential there: let the player run in these clothes, or in the prison clothes, or in the clothes from Mirror’s Edge 1, or in some of the fancy clothes Glass’ high society is wearing, or generally different runner’s attire which still stays true to the style, or Black November garb... endless opportunities, missed. Not at all crucial, but in my opinion maybe better than some different-looking billboard...

Coming back to the (back-)story aspect once more; as with all of today’s big triple-A games, there’s a looooot of documents and recordings to find, to give the player a loooot of backstory, which I found terribly overdone. It always felt like there was too much to collect and too few actual story told; not to mention some story bits not being in either of the games or their collectables, but in a separately sold comic, well done EA, well done.

Additionally, a lot of the documents were about literal history of the state called Cascadia and the ‘conglomerate’ and Omnistat and the November Riots (don’t worry if you have no idea what these words mean, I don’t either...) and regarding the fact that I finished taking history in school with a D ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)... you can imagine I wasn’t that interested in the actual history elements. Give me story anytime, but get the hi- prefix outta here please.

Another thing that I just very recently discovered: Some of the performed parkour movements are inaccurate. Thanks to my new interest of binging parkour tutorial videos I’ve seen actual mistakes in movement (in both games), which I can understand sometimes because some of them have been implemented on purpose and for a reason. For example: A parkour safety roll is performed sideways, with one of your shoulders hitting the floor first and the impact being absorbed and reduced by your whole back rolling over the ground in a diagonal line, ending in one of your feet carrying over the fall’s momentum for you to be able to stand up and run right along, probably even faster than before the drop. In the first game, this was handled straight up terribly; not only did Faith not roll diagonally but straight on her spine, which fuckin hurts if you perform it after you took a fall and is dangerous as all hell, but all her momentum got lost as well - it didn’t make any difference if you took a hard fall, the screen flashed red and you had to build new momentum, or if it was a soft fall with a nice (hurting and dangerous) roll, her stopping dead in her tracks like “Oh wow, did you see that, I made a roll” and then continuing to build new momentum because it all got lost. BUT since this is about Catalyst: Faith is still performing a straight spine-hurting-dangerous-as-all-hell-roll, but at least she keeps her momentum when she does it. Regarding to what I said at the beginning of this semi-rant-paragraph because I’ve “studied” (emphasis on the quotation marks) parkour theory so much at this point, yet am not able to actually perform any moves because I don’t have the strength, stamina or willpower to- Uh, where was I...? Ah, yeah, the reason for the incorrectly performed roll. It’s obvious when you think about it: motion sickness, a gamer’s best friend when it comes to first-person perspective. If Faith was performing a correct roll, it would turn and shake the camera around too much, which could potentially make the player motion sick over time. Period. Look up some first-person safety roll footage on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. So, there’s a reason, and we should be thankful the roll is a straight gymnastics roll. Sorry Faith, looks like your spine and neck have to suffer a little longer. However, I can and will not understand why they have Celeste, a character from the first game, climb up ledges with her knees and elbows. No. NO. Feet first. If you can’t do feet first, then do one foot first and then pull up the rest. If you can’t do that, train more and don’t call yourself a runner yet, doing this for a living on top of I-dunno-how-high-rooftops.

My feelings are kind of ambivalent on the no-guns mechanics - all you can defend yourself with is your fists (and legs and momentum, of course), while in the first game, you could snatch people’s guns and start some weaponized combat. I liked both of these strategies, not really caring when they announced Faith not being able to do shootieshootie-pewpew this time around.

One thing I liked a lot considering the open world aspect is that if you die, you respawn exactly where you last stood on safe ground before dying (except in missions, of course). It makes freeroaming very comfortable because you don’t have to worry about respawn- and checkpoints; you can just try again when you messed up a jump.

They also changed the beacon- and navigation system (“runner’s vision”) a bit too, which was also definitely necessary for the open world (which they’ve praised as a lot less linear, but honestly? It isn’t really. I knew my way around in Glass pretty well after a mere month of playing), but they did include options for how much you want the game to help you. There’s normal runner’s vision, with a red streak appearing every few seconds, showing you exactly where to run; there’s classic runner’s vision, made to be like in the first game, with environmental beacons and indicators being coloured in red when coming close to them and without the red streak; and of course, you can switch it off completely, which I occasionally like to do to test how well I really know my way around in Glass.

The soundtrack is outstanding. Straight up phenomenal. It can empower and hype you up, but can also be relaxing during a relaxing sightseeing trip through Glass. And it’s also great to leave on as background music while studying (I’m making use of that when preparing for graduation exams), or driving.

There is dynamic day- and night time - I liked that a lot, it’s a good way of showing off the lighting at all sorts of times. Only problem I had: a night sky is supposed to be black, not royal blue.

Note: almost all the “problems” I’ve listed here have been made mods for (e.g. more exciting looking billboards, more outfits, a changeable day-night cycle and a black night sky). If I had enough experience with (and patience for) modding, I’d definitely try it myself but the ‘flaws’ aren’t grave enough for me to feel a desire to manipulate and tweak some game files.

Okay, time for a spoiler. Not a bad one, but one that could give you ideas if you know how Mirror’s Edge rolls, or if you’ve played the first game... which is basically a spoiler in itself too. Ahem, anyway.

Towards the end of the game, when I was profoundly convinced of it being one of my all-time favourites, I was like “Yes, finally a game that improves and learns from past mistakes and listens to their players and what they want”... and then came Noah. I bawled my eyes out and I will be forever angry at the devs for doing this. That’s all I’m saying.

That ultimately didn’t stop me from loving the game though. From an objective standpoint I’d say it’s an overall good prequel/reboot/requel/preboot. Faith’s universe became a bit more mainstream but also a lot more polished and they definitely listened to their fans to some degree. From the very subjective standpoint I have written this review from, I’m saying that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst holds a very special place in my heart and I am truly glad it saw the light of day, after everyone waiting 8 years for it to be released after the first game. (I didn’t wait quite that long; I got Mirror’s Edge 1 in January 2016 and was completely and utterly hooked and hyped for Catalyst in May 2016.)

And that concludes it. If you’ve read this far – thank you. I’m aware that this is a bit different from my other reviews tone-wise - I have put every ounce of sass I possess into this because I... felt like it :D I hope it was fun to read!

#and now please scream at me to study xD #mirror's edge #mirror's edge catalyst #faith #games #stefs game review

[zosonils]

about the sonic/mega man crossover, how would Sonic figure into it? would Sonic be like a player 2, maybe have his own separate side story, or what?

i was like 'hmm i haven't thought about it much so i guess this'll be a quick ask' and then the part of my brain that's thought about sonic level design every day for the past ten years awakened and i wrote so fucking much [and tragically it's not even illustrated this time] so this is gonna be under a cut again bhjfkngbkjg

there's a handful of ways you could go about this but i imagine it'd work like classic and modern sonic in generations where every stage has one act for sonic and one act for mega man that you can play in either order! alternatively the sonic rush approach where they both have their own story and you beat both to unlock the final boss could work. there's also the idea of doing it like sonic rush adventure or mega man and bass where you pick one character at the beginning of each stage and can go the entire game only playing as one of them, but this wouldn't really work for the same reason it didn't work in mega man and bass dialled up to 11 - sonic and mega man gameplay are so fundamentally different from each other that it's almost impossible to design a level that's equally fun and fair to play through for both of them. either sonic has to slog through a slow-paced level filled with enemies that can attack him from afar with no way for him to counter from a distance, or rock is constantly tripping over his own big ol robot boots as he stumbles through a level that's throwing shit at him from every possible direction faster than he can reasonably react

sonic's gameplay would probably function more or less identically to sonic colours, i'm thinking for consistency's sake it'd pull from the ds port rather than the wii version so that the entire game is a sidescrolling platformer. all the wii-exclusive wisps [cube, hover, spikes] work in two dimensions and two out of those three are exclusive to the 2d segments so there'd be no issues with squeezing those down to a purely sidescrolling experience, as opposed to the logistical nightmare of making up a way for every single colour power to function in 3d - sonic lost world on 3ds kinda did that for red burst if my memory is correct but it's just not as fun. also i think the thing modern sonic does sometimes where it switches between 2 and 3d mid-level is clunky but that's just me

the reason i talk about wisp logistics is that of course sonic's still gonna have the wisps. nearly all of them would function pretty identically to their ingame incarnations, but unlike in regular sonic colours where you can only use certain wisps in certain spots in certain levels, they'd act more like mega man's weapons where sonic can activate and deactivate them at will until an energy gauge runs out. [i say 'nearly all' because as i mentioned in the last post about this au i think blue cube sucks ass and that'd be even more apparent if you could use it whenever you want. keep some optional ring/cube puzzles for funsies, that's fine, but i'm envisioning a heavier emphasis on the ground pound aspect of it that the game sorta glosses over so that it feels less underwhelming]

just as rock unlocks a new weapon with every robot master defeated, sonic unlocks a new colour power. of course this means that even sonic's levels would have to be almost completely reworked so that you can beat any of them without a single colour power, since i wanna keep the near-total non-linearity from mega man, but honestly i think you could make just as fun a sonic colours experience treating wisps like this. side note, i think i heard a rumour or leak or whatever the kids call it now that sonic colours ultimate is leaning towards this approach, and i have no idea if it's true or not [after all the playable tails rumour [which i had a very vivid dream about while staying at my grandparents' house one summer when i was i think 9 or thereabouts, i wanted it to be real so bad] turned out to be not real :(] but if it is that'll fucking rule

also this should've gone earlier but i can't find a good place to insert it so i'm just saying that both sonic and mega man's gameplay styles will probably lean a bit closer to each other so it doesn't feel too jarring for fans of only one series. since i love both i could just rip straight from their respective titles and it wouldn't matter but unfortunately i care about game design. the core gameplay would be pretty identical for both of them, it'd just be little differences - mega man levels naturally flow faster and the punishment for charging in headfirst is a little more gentle, sonic levels have tighter platforming and encourage a slightly more thoughtful approach without sacrificing the momentum-based gameplay. sonic's stages are a bit trickier than usual [at least on par with the genesis games] and require deliberate skillful movement, mega man's stages are more forgiving and give you more room to breathe, striking a tough but fair balance between 'sometimes challenging but rarely distressingly so' sonic and 'for the love of god please help me' mega man. each character still plays distinctly like themselves, but with adjustments to make it easier for a fan of specifically one series to ease into the other's playstyle, and also so that the constant shifting between two different gameplay styles feels more natural and less jarring

really the biggest issue that this hypothetical crossover poses in terms of gameplay is bosses. of course the robot masters are gonna be the main bosses, but who's gonna fight them? rock could take on the robot masters while sonic fights his own guys, but sonic bosses aren't nearly as interesting as robot masters by nature of each series' core design [sonic is all about the levels themselves whereas mega man is pretty much defined by the showdown with each boss]. is the boss a separate, self-enclosed act 3 you can choose either character for? what's the point of a mega man level that doesn't end in a boss fight, though? is there a forced structure of act 1 as sonic and act 2 as mega man? do they BOTH fight the robot master at the end of their act? if so, how did he come back when he got beaten the first time, but not the second? i guess i'll go with they both fight the robot master and he just teleports away from whoever beats him first or something, but it feels like an incomplete solution and it bothers me lmao

obviously the boss issue only comes up with the robot master stages and the boss rush [would you even want to do a boss rush if you've already had to beat them twice] because the obligatory egg/wily stages at the end would be fine with more generic bosses - maybe the actual bosses from sonic colours repurposed for the final levels, at least on sonic's side of things. the true final boss would naturally have you switch between the two of them in a completely different gameplay style that you have to learn fast or die trying a la sonic adventure 2 or the rushes, and almost definitely is the nega-mother wisp from colours ds

#this devolved into word vomit so fast lmao whoops #i have something of a special interest in game design theory. if it wasn't glaringly obvious yet lmao #too bad i can't code. if i could i'd be making this game already #sega is clearly fine with sonic fangames and i think capcom officially stated that you can use their assets as long as it's not for profit #so if i COULD code this together i don't think any poor innocent corporations would be scared of my big scary fan project and c&d me lmao #just fucking whatever #sonic the hedgehog #mega man #sonic colours #mega colours #sonic forces me to answer questions #aprofessionallurker #op genuinely thank you for giving me the excuse to infodump paragraphs of absolute nonsense about the funny special interest crossover

[mytennisdiary]

US Open 2021 - Day 2

Sakkari vs Kostyuk

Early trade of breaks to open the match, 1-2. Big servers who are vulnerable on their seconds, Sakkari has more winners and errors so far, she’s the aggressor looking to come forward. Sakkari making and winning a high % of 1st serves, but she’s finding the net a bit too often with her forehand. Both players cruising on serve until 3-4, Sakkari was up 40-15 and let Kostyuk back in with a forehand error and double fault, then double faulted to give her a break point, but saved it with a first serve. Serve abandoned her a bit, but Kostyuk can’t do enough with the return against the kicker. Sakarri follow up with some solid defense to get a break point at 4-4, Kostyuk capitulates with a forehand error long.

Musetti vs Nava

Nava takes the first set in a tight tiebreak behind a nice serve and volley play and a huge forehand passing shot on the run. Very even, Musetti has more rally tolerance, Nava is the one who looks to go big and finish points quicker, also the one who makes errors. At 2-3, Nava played a few loose points and then Musetti hit an awesome defensive winner to get 0-40, Nava double faulted the break away. Musetti’s composure is impressive, baiting Nava into errors now. Musetti plays so far back. Serving for the set, up 30-0, Musetti totally collapses, errors and an unconvincing attempt to come in where he got passed on break point, 5-4 back on serve. Nava immediately gives it right back with double faults, 1 set all. Same story in the 3rd set, Musetti drawing needless errors from Nava, including a double on break point, to go up a break, 1-3.

Opelka vs Kwon

Opelka wins the 1st in a tiebreak behind a huge serve and a nice low volley pickup. Opelka serves out the 2nds, now up 2-0. Opelka served out the 3rd set to take it in straights.

Zverev vs Querrey

Querry serving big and hanging with Zverev, 3-4 in the 1st. Querrey totally capitulates with errors at 4-4, broken at love. Zverev serves it out easily, 6-4. Querrey double faults the break away deep in the 2nd set.

Sevastova vs Siniakova

Extremely tight first set went to Siniakova in a breaker. Siniakova has 2 break chances at 2-3 in the 2nd after a beautiful backhand pass, but Sevastova saves them with easy forehand power. Siniakova turns it right back around with a beautiful backhand winner and gets the break, 2-4 in the 2nd. It really is Sevastova’s awesome forehand against Siniakova’s great backhand.

McDonald took out Goffin in straight sets for a nice little upset.

Bencic vs Rus

Bencic is serving for the 1st set. Bencic won pretty comfortable in straights, her movement looks good.

Badosa vs Van Uytvanck

Badosa sneaks out a break at 5-4 to steal the 1st set.

Barty vs Zvonereva

Barty looks totally dominant, starts up 3-0. Zvonereva is a veteran, two time major finalist, but she doesn’t look to be moving well at all.

Anisimova vs Diyas

Anisimova up a set and had break chances at 2-3, finally capitalized on her 4th chance.

Berrettini vs Chardy

Honestly, the difference in this 1st set might be Berrettini’s slice backhand which he is keeping very low. Tight tiebreaker, both players had costly double faults but Chardy’s came later. Chardy had some great run-around forehands, but he lost it on one into the net.

Fucsovics and Carreno Busta lost five set thrillers when I was out playing basketball

Djokovic vs Rune

Djokovic was dominant in the 1st set, looking to come in and shorten the points. But then in the second set Djokovic got a bit wonky. He was broken at love, turned the set around and got up a break, only to then get broken back again. Rune has an impressive forehand and a good second serve, he really is able to make some impressive shots on the run. Djokovic played a pretty scratchy tiebreak and Rune took the 2nd. But then, in the third, Rune started to cramp and that was really the end of things. In the second, the crowd was really on Rune’s side, chanting his name. Novak didn’t really look too happy, or too comfortable at all after the first set. Kind of a strange start to the grand slam attempt. Djokovic didn’t do his typical crowd thanking post-match celebration, he thought they were booing him.

Muchova vs Soribes Tormo

Sorribes Tormo won in straight sets. She is just a brick wall and she continues her recent good form.

Brooksby vs Ymer featured a strange episode that I’ll likely learn more about going forward. Ymer threw his racket and got penalized but then got into a verbal exchange with the chair and refused to play, the chair docked him a game and Ymer called the chair a liar. This all happened when he was down 2 sets, but then he managed to win the 3rd. Brooksby gutted it out in the 4th.

Fritz vs de Minaur

Fritz has never won against Alex, he was trying to overhit and got down a break, but then he righted the ship. 1st set tiebreak, Fritz showed good patience and served well to get the set.

Andreescu vs Golubic

Andreescu broken first, but then she played an excellent return game at 5-4 to deny Golubic when she was trying to serve it out. Andreescu has now won 11 points in a row, totally taking momentum with some big forehands stepping into the court. Best game of the match by far at 5-6 with Andrescu slamming the ball and Golubic playing awesome defense, she really handles Andreescu’s power impressively and pulls these impressive down the line winners out off both wings. In the end it was a 14 minute game and Bianca got it on her 3rd set point chance, 7-5. Early in the 2nd Andreescu has called the trainer, it looks like she’s crying. Maybe nausea? This was a real epic battle all the way through the 3rd set, Andreescu was emotional after getting the win.

[brandysadventureblog]

Gifford Pinchot National Forest Loop (WA State)

8/2/20-8/4/20

Day 1: Cascade Locks to Trout Late (43.64 miles / 2,542 ft elev. gain)

Day 2: Trout Lake to Lower Lewis River Falls (40.31 miles / 2,491 ft elev. gain)

Day 3: Lower Lewis River Falls to Cascade Locks (49.43 miles / 2,805 ft elev. gain)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another reason I wanted to revisit this blog is because I wanted to write about the weekend bike trip I was able to do this past summer. It was really important to me and I’d been wanting to share my experience for a while but I didn’t because ~reasons~ (the same ~reasons~ I vaguely alluded to in the previous post). It also felt like I wouldn’t be able to accurately convey what this trip meant to me in words, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

After my first two bike trips, I set the goal of doing at least one major bike trip per year. Turns out being an adult with responsibilities isn’t the most amenable to that plan. Other adventures were had, but no bike trips lasting more than one night. This past summer, I was determined to change that.

I had first planned this route back in the summer of 2017.  Unfortunately, the weekend I planned to do it was the hottest weekend of that summer. Also, all of Oregon was on fire. I finished the first day feeling like I had just biked 40+ miles in high 90 degree temps while breathing in forest fire smoke... because that’s exactly what I had just done. I decided it probably wasn’t safe to continue on and I had a friend come pick me up the next day.

I attempted the route again in May 2019. This time I couldn’t even finish the first day. For various reasons, I was dealing with intense body fatigue and I could hardly even pedal on flat ground. Feeling defeated, I had to have my friend come and rescue me again, just six miles short of the campground.

This time around, I was determined to not fail a third time. I decided to actually train for it and began biking almost every day starting at the beginning of the summer. Even getting back into the training rides, I felt myself coming alive again. I didn’t realize how much I missed biking and it was so refreshing to get it back.

When the trip weekend came around, I was excited but nervous. I was in better biking shape than I had been in years, but this route had wrecked me twice before and there were some pretty big mental hurdles to overcome. I was shaking as I crossed over Bridge of the Gods to start, but as I rode further and further down WA SR-14, I started to hit my stride. Turns out bike touring is much like... riding a bike (sorry, I had to). The entire ride went pretty smoothly and, before I knew it, Day One was in the books.

Day Two was a completely different story. After an hour of biking straight uphill, my bike chain broke. I had a spare emergency link but I couldn’t get it to click. The only thing I could really do is coast back downhill to the general store to get to wifi and figure out what to do from there. Right before getting into town, I lost my coasting momentum and had to walk. A few minutes into the walk, I got approached by a couple who said they were also cycle tourists. They asked me what was wrong and how they could help. I told them I needed a new chain, but the closest bike shop was almost an hour’s drive away. To my surprise they were like, “Cool. Let’s go there.” It was a total faith in humanity restoring moment. They were the nicest couple and we got to chat about our past trips on the drive. After the new chain was installed, they dropped me off at the exact spot my chain had broken that morning and I was back on my way.

Or so I thought. All of a sudden, my bike wouldn’t shift gears. I realized there was something wrong with my bike derailleur. Luckily I was able to do some quick roadside bike maintenance and continue on with the climb. The first half of the ride was entirely uphill and the last half was entirely downhill. After the chain mishap, the derailleur issue, and a couple hours of straight climbing, I was looking forward to an easy end to the day. Turns out Day Two wasn’t done with me yet.

Shortly after I began my hard-earned descent, I started to come across some road closed signs. I figured there were maybe some downed trees that cars couldn’t pass by but that I could get around with my bike. I was right—there were a couple downed trees blocking the road. Turns out there was also a section of the road that had been completely washed out except for a tiny sliver just wide enough to very carefully walk my bike over if I took everything off. It took me a few trips to bring my bike across along with all of my gear, but I made it past just fine.

I loaded the bike back up and resumed speeding down the mountain. I zoomed around a hairpin turn where I discovered ANOTHER section where the road had completely washed away. This one was even worse than the other. I actually had to bring the bike down into the crater and push it up a steep incline to get to the other side. The loose gravel made it hard to get my footing and I definitely got close to falling into the abyss several times. For both of these situations, I want you to imagine it being precarious enough to be exciting but not so dangerous as to make you worry that I did something stupid (although it was admittedly probably closer to the latter).

Just as my bike and I emerged on the other side of the crater, a car came rolling around the corner. They had apparently also not been informed that the road had been yeeted down the mountain. I asked if the rest of the route had any more surprises for me and they informed me that, other than some potholes, the road was more or less intact. That was a huge relief as I had been contemplating heading back up the hill to the previous night’s campground because I was worried that I’d come across something even more impassable than what I’d already experienced. The car turned around and I loaded my bike back up. Once I was sure they were well out of earshot, I screamed at the top of my lungs like Jack and Fabrizio on the bow of the Titanic. (For the record, I did not scream that I was the king of the world, but I damn sure felt like it.) 

The rest of the route was pretty chill, but I was running several hours behind schedule. When I rolled into the campground, there weren’t any sites available. I decided to make several loops, looking as tired and hungry as I could, hoping someone would take pity on me and offer to let me set up my tent on their site. I must have looked pretty pitiful because it only took me two loops before a woman named Verna asked if I wanted to stay on her site with her and her daughter. Apparently she used to be an avid cyclist and was excited to see me roll up on my bike.

Day Three was comparatively uneventful other than I biked up a fucking mountain. I can’t remember if it was the most elevation I’ve covered in one day, but it was certainly done in the most condensed number of miles. My strategy was to bike for half a mile (slightly more if I could), wait for my quads to stop screaming, bike for another half mile, and repeat that until I got to the pretty viewpoint that let me know I had reached the top. While I was enjoying the view, a woman came up to me and socially distantly tossed me a pack of energy chews to help get me through the rest of the ride. She informed me that she was a cyclist (wtf does everyone bike here?) and that she carries around energy chews to give to anyone she comes across doing a long bike ride. She invited me to join her and her (making some big assumptions here) gaggle of older lesbian friends (I think she was also making some big, but accurate assumptions about me) on their hike. Any other day, I would’ve loved to join their gay little hiking crew, but my legs wouldn’t have appreciated it that day and I had to decline.

The rest of the ride was all downhill and there was nary another human in sight for a good chunk of it. I used that as an opportunity to sing Brandi Carlile songs loudly and off-key and shout various obscenities at the top of my lungs. When you have an opportunity to do that, I highly recommend not passing it up as it’s very cathartic. I took some obligatory, self-timer photos in front of the Bridge of the Gods sign (oh hey, Cheryl Strayed) before rolling back to my car in Cascade Locks, feeling prouder of, and more like, myself than I had in years. 

I’m not really a God person, but it did feel like something larger than myself was at work here. (Seriously, what are the chances that I would find the exact two people I needed to to take me to get a new chain and that a random car would pull up to a washed out section of a closed road to let me know that the rest of the route was clear??) Everything aligned on this trip just as it needed to. I wasn’t meant to complete that route the first two attempts. I needed to complete it at that very moment in my life. I didn’t quite know at that time that I’d be making some really important life decisions just a few weeks after the end of that trip, but that trip helped give me some of the strength that I needed to move forward with those decisions. There’s really nothing like a bike trip to help you realize your self-worth, to remind you that you can do hard things, and to relearn to rely on yourself while staying open to the help and support others are offering you.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Select: No One Can Hear You Scream

While i was writing my review for The Little Things and how much of a true January film it turned out to be, it made me recall several films that came out in this, the cinematic graveyard month. It was odd that this film, the first, real release of this wonky, post-2020, world, would be so aggressively mediocre. Just last year, we received several excellent films around this time, a few of which turned out to be brilliant sci-fi horror films. The More i thought about it, the more i realized just how much of this genre. Science fiction Horror, I've allocated to my all-time favorite films. I’ve seen a great many of these movies and wanted to throw a spotlight on a few that i think, are great example of the sub-genre.

10. Screamers

Screamers isn’t very good but it is a guilty pleasure of mine. I remember seeing this thing as a kid and thinking how great the concept is. The idea of Screamers, the evolution of artificial life rising to dominate organics, is always an interesting take to me. Some of my favorite films deal with that transhumanism and existential horror. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, are all favorites that kind of center on what it means to be human in the face of exceptional technology. They’re all also adaptions of Philip K. Dick stories, just like Screamers. The film is a bit different than the Dick story it’s based on, Second variety, but it’s an entertaining, high budget, B-movie with a great core concept. I think if this is remade today, with a decent budget, and an auteur director with great vision, Screamers could really be one of the best sci-fi horror films to every grace cinema.

9. Honeymoon

I caught this one on Netflix, early in the life of the streamer. Before they got super big, Netflix was a gold mine for smaller budget, indie, gems like Honeymoon. I actually saw this thing a few years later when that momentum started to peak but there was still a great deal of awesome to find. Honeymoon is all of that and more. I don’t want to spoil too much about the plot because it is, technically, a mystery but i had a fantastic time with this movie. It’s very challenging, very surreal at times, and never really gives you room to breathe with its story but the stress only adds to the viewing experience. This thing probably didn't have a kind run in theaters but it should have because, seriously, it’s pretty great.

8. Underwater

Underwater was the whole reason i decided to write this Select. This and The Invisible man. Both films were surprisingly excellent, though Invisible Man definitely skews more thriller than horror. Underwater, though? Yeah, that’s a horror. I was incredibly surprised by how good this film turned out to be. It boggled my mind why the Disney machine would release this thing in January and not October because it was, quite literally, one of the best horror films released that year. Obviously, this flick was a victim of that merger but it really should have gotten a better push from the Mouse House because it’s definitely a gem. Underwater cribs a great deal from Alien, the perfect movie to snag sh*t from for a film like this, but it does it in a way that pays homage, never imitates. That’s a fine line to walk. I wrote a proper review for this bad boy that you can search out but, needless to say, i had a great time with it.

7. Vivarium

Vivarium is a sci-fi horror in the strictest sense. This one feels a lot like Annihilation in that the horror comes from that familiar unfamiliarity. Everything is just off, but off on a fundamental manner. You know sh*t is wrong on a primal, survival, level and you know it from the second that couple walks into to the “Realtor” office. Vivarium is unnerving and disgustingly cruel with how overt it’s alien nature is toward the audience. It slowly ramps up the tension, never really letting it go, raising the stakes on the surreal and horrifying as the run time closes in on it’s climax. This film is a lot, especially if you commit wholly to the experience.

6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion has been remade several times over the years. This story if a staple of cinema and it really has the flexibility to be told so many times, in so many ways. One of my favorites is the Nicole Kidman vehicle, The Invasion. There’s this scene where one of the pod people tries to infiltrate Kidman’s home but can’t get in so it just spazzes. The f*cking thing just stops blinking and starts shrieking. It’s so f*cking horrifying, i had to leave the room the first time i saw it. It then just walks off the porch and into the night. That one scene, wigged me the f*ck out so bad. So why isn’t that version of this list? Because the Seventies take on The Body Snatchers narrative, has the same energy from that one scene, throughout the entirety of the goddamn film. It’s insane how much unrelenting tension that thing builds. It winds so tight and never releases you from it’s malevolent grip, even when the movie ends. It might feel tame nowadays but, when i saw it as a kid, it kept me completely hostage with that unrelentingly oppressive atmosphere.

5. Event Horizon

Where to even begin with this gothic nightmare? Event Horizon is an experience. It’s easily skews the most horror on this list and, yes, it earns that title with gusto. I saw this thing at the drive-in when i was, like, thirteen years old. I remember it was the b-movie to a brand new release, the only way i could have watched it because there was no way my ma would allow to see this thing otherwise. Horizon is a brutal watch. It hangs it’s hat on disgusting and disturbing visuals, coupled with this foreboding animosity in the set construction around these actors. The ship, itself, is pure malevolence and you feel it the second they step on the Event Horizon. This is another film that takes a great deal from Alien but it definitely does it’s own thing with those themes. Event Horizon is basically Hellraiser in space and that sh*t works beautifully. The most ridiculous thing about this film is the version we all have seen? The one released to the public? Yeah, that’s the toned down cut. The first cut has about thirty minutes of extended nightmare fuel but it was lost in a fire or something, never to be seen again.

4. The Thing

I’m talking about the original from the Eighties. That new, prequel is a pale imitation but the original? Yeah, that’s a classic. Everyone praises the effects because, of course they should, but my takeaway was the absolute dread which just infects all of this movie. The entire run time, you’re uncomfortable. Every single second of it. That opening scene with the dog running through the snow gets you off balance and the film never let’s you right yourself. You are forced to experience all of these surreal and horrendous events, from a compromised perspective. It definitely works out because, holy sh*t, but that is exactly why it works, why this film works. Without that initial pivot, this film wouldn’t have been as great as it turned out to be, f*cking master craft in effects and all.

3. Annihilation

Annihilation is f*cking brilliant and does not gt the due it truly deserves. Most people tend to check out because of how methodical this thing is with it’s narrative but that’s part of the experience. It is deliberate and very deliberate, very purposeful, with what it shows you and how it tells this story. I, personally, think it’s brilliant. This film is lousy with existential dread, bordering on straight up eldritch. These thing is saturated with the fear of that “other”, the fear of not being you. It’s insane how palpable that eeriness runs through this content and it real is a shame that most of the audience never gave it a chance to inflict that upon them. Plus, it’s f*cking gorgeous, man!

2. Fire in the Sky

This one is kind of a cheat. Sky is more of a sci-fi drama that horror but, there is one sequence in this flick that is just debilitating. This movie is based on the two-week abduction of Travis Walton. That demonstration of what happened to him in that fortnight was the most harrowing sh*t i have ever seen in my life. It viscerally disturbed me. Look, I'm an Eighties kid. We were raised on slashers and body horror. I saw my first Nightmare on Elm Street when i was three. I saw Cronenberg's The Fly when i was five. I don’t rattle. Fire in the Sky did much more than that. Admittedly, the majority of the film is completely absent of horror. It’s all about the disappearance and how that effects the people around Travis, then it shifts to Travis, himself, as he miraculously returns along with all of the fallout from that. That is, essentially, what this movie is at it’s core; a drama. But that one scene, though. Man, f*ck that one scene.

1. Alien

Alien is in a three-way tie for my all-time favorite film. It’s a near perfect film. Excellent acting, outstanding direction, and arguably the best effects work in cinema. Seriously, this thing came out in 1979 and still gives modern films a proper run for their money. Alien, as a film, is f*cking stunning. The plot is a little light but it’s more a framing device than it is a driving force. No, the real heavy lifting in this thing is definitely done by the actors, all of that solid character work, and the effects worm. Just he look of all that retro-future tech, the detail of the Derelict Ship, and the utter horror of the Xenomorph, itself, are f*cking timeless. I’ve written an entire review of Alien so if you need detail, you can look that one up if you like but, suffice it to say, Alien gets my highest praise and recommendation.

Honorable Mentions: The Endless, Pandorum, Mimic, The Astronaut’s Wife, Attack the Block, Dark Skies, A Quiet Place, Scanners, The Fly (1986), High Life, Overlord, The Mist, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Faculty, Slither

#Smokey brand Select #Sci-Fi Horror

[smokeybrand]

Smokey brand Select: No One Can Hear You Scream

While i was writing my review for The Little Things and how much of a true January film it turned out to be, it made me recall several films that came out in the cinematic graveyard month. It was odd that this film, the first, real release of this wonky, post-2020, world, would be so aggressively mediocre because, just last year, we received several excellent films around this time, a few of which turned out to be brilliant sci-fi horror films. The More i thought about it, the more i realized just how much of this genre I've allocated to my all-time favorite films. I’ve seen a great many of these movies and wanted to throw a spotlight on a few that i think, are great example of the sub-genre, itself.

10. Screamers

Screamers isn’t very good but it is a guilty pleasure of mine. I remember seeing this thing as a kid and thinking how great the concept is. The idea of Screamers, the evolution of artificial life rising to dominate organics, is always an interesting take to me. Some of my favorite films deal with that transhumanism and existential horror. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, are all favorites that kind of center on what it means to be human in the face of exceptional technology? They’re all also adaptions of Philip K. Dick stories, just like Screamers. The film is a bit different than the Dick story it’s based off, Second variety, but it’s an entertaining, high budget, B-movie with a great core concept. I think if this is remade today, with a decent budget, and an auteur director with great vision, Screamers could really be one of the best sci-fi horror films to every grace cinema.

9. Honeymoon

I caught this one on Netflix, early in the life of the streamer. Before they got super big, Netflix was a gold mine for smaller budget, indie, gems like Honeymoon. I actually saw this thing a few years later when that momentum start to peak but there was still a great deal of awesome to find. Honeymoon is all of that and more. I don’t want to spoil too much about the lot because it is , technically, a mystery, but i had a fantastic time with this movie. It’s very challenge, very surreal at times, and never really give you room to breathe with its story. This thing probably didn't have that kind of a run in theaters but it should have because, seriously, it’s pretty great.

8. Underwater

Underwater was the whole reason i decided to write this Select. This and The Invisible man. Both of these films were surprisingly excellent, though Invisible Man definitely skews more thriller than horror. Underwater, though? Yeah, that’s a horror. I was incredibly surprised by how good this film turned out to be. It boggled my mind why the Disney would release this thing in January and not October because it was, quite literally, one of the best horror films released that year. Obviously, this flick was a victim of that merger but it really should have gotten a better push from Disney because it’s definitely a gem. Underwater cribs a great deal from Alien, a perfect film to snag sh*t from for a film like this, but it does it in a way that pay homage, never imitates. That’s a fine line to walk. I wrote a proper review for this bad boy that you can search out but, needless to say, i had a great time with it.

7. Vivarium

Vivarium is a sci-fi horror in the strictest sense. This one feels a lot like Annihilation in that the horror comes from that familiar unfamiliarity. Everything is just off, but off in a fundamental manner. You know sh*t is wrong on a primal, survival, level and you know it from the second that couple walks into to the “Realtor” office. Vivarium is unnerving and disgustingly cruel with how overt it’s alien nature is toward the audience. It slowly ramps up the tension, never really letting it go, raising the stakes on the surreal and horrifying as the run time closes in on it’s climax. This film is a lot, especially if you commit wholly to the experience.

6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion has been remade several times over the years. This story if a staple of cinema and it really is that flexible to be told so many times, in so many ways. One of my favorites is the Nicole Kidman vehicle, The Invasion. There’s this scene where one of the pod people tries to infiltrate Kidman’s home but can’t get in a d just spazzes out until it doesn't. It then just walks off the porch and into the night. That one scene, wigged me the f*ck out. So why isn’t that version of this list? Because the Seventies take on The Body Snatchers narrative, has that same energy throughout the entirety of the film. It’s insane how much unrelenting tension this thing builds. It winds you so tight and never releases you from it’s malevolent grip. It might feel tame nowadays but, when i saw it as a kid, it kept me completely hostage with that atmosphere. The ending is kind of wonky though.

5. Event Horizon

Where to even begin with this Gothic nightmare? Event Horizon is an experience. It’s easily skews the most horror on this list and, yes, it earns that title with gusto. I saw this thing at the drive-in when i was, like, thirteen years old. I remember it was the b-movie to a brand new release, the only way i could have watched it because there was no way my ma would allow to see this thing otherwise. Horizon is a brutal watch. It hangs it’s hat on disgusting and disturbing visuals, coupled with this foreboding animosity in the set construction around these actors. The ship, itself, is pure malevolence and you feel it the second they step on the Event Horizon. This is another film that takes a great deal from lien but it definitely does it’s own thing with those themes. Event Horizon is basically Hellraiser in space and that sh*t works beautifully. The most ridiculous thing about this film is  the version we all have sen? The one released to he public? Yeah, that’s the toned down cut. The first cut has about thirty minutes of extended nightmare fuel but it was lost in a fire or something, never to be seen again.

4. The Thing

I’m talking about the original from the Eighties. That new, prequel is a pale imitation but the original? Yeah, that’s a classic. Everyone praises the effects because, of course they should, but my takeaway was the absolute dread which just infects all of this movie. The entire run time, you’re uncomfortable. Every single second of it. That opening scene with the dog running through the snow gets you off balance and the film never let’s you right yourself. You are forced to experience all of these surreal and horrendous events, from a compromised perspective. It definitely works out because, holy sh*t, but that is exactly why it works, why this film works. Without that initial pivot, this film wouldn’t have been as great as it turned out to be, f*cking master craft in effects and all.

3. Annihilation

Annihilation is f*cking brilliant and does not gt the due it truly deserves. Most people tend to check out because of how methodical this thing is with it’s narrative but that’s part of the experience. It is deliberate and very deliberate, very purposeful, with what it shows you and how it tells this story. I, personally, think it’s brilliant. This film is lousy with existential dread, bordering on straight up eldritch. These thing is saturated with the fear of that “other”, the fear of not being you. It’s insane how palpable that eeriness runs through this content and it real is a shame that most of the audience never gave it a chance to inflict that upon them. Plus, it’s f*cking gorgeous, man!

2. Fire in the Sky

This one is kind of a cheat. Sky is more of a sci-fi drama that horror but, there is one sequence in this flick that is just debilitating. This movie is based on the two-week abduction of Travis Walton. That demonstration of what happened to him in that fortnight was the most harrowing sh*t i have ever seen in my life. It viscerally disturbed me. Look, I'm an Eighties kid. We were raised on slashers and body horror. I saw my first Nightmare on Elm Street when i was three. I saw Cronenberg's The Fly when i was five. I don’t rattle. Fire in the Sky did much more than that. Admittedly, the majority of the film is completely absent of horror. It’s all about the disappearance and how that effects the people around Travis, then it shifts to Travis, himself, as he miraculously returns along with all of the fallout from that. That is, essentially, what this movie is at it’s core; a drama. But that one scene, though. Man, f*ck that one scene.

1. Alien

Alien is in a three-way tie for my all-time favorite film. It’s a near perfect film. Excellent acting, outstanding direction, and arguably the best effects work in cinema. Seriously, this thing came out in 1979 and still gives modern films a proper run for their money. Alien, as a film, is f*cking stunning. The plot is a little light but it’s more a framing device than it is a driving force. No, the real heavy lifting in this thing is definitely done by the actors, all of that solid character work, and the effects worm. Just he look of all that retro-future tech, the detail of the Derelict Ship, and the utter horror of the Xenomorph, itself, are f*cking timeless. I’ve written an entire review of Alien so if you need detail, you can look that one up if you like but, suffice it to say, Alien gets my highest praise and recommendation.

Honorable Mentions: The Endless, Pandorum, Mimic, The Astronaut’s Wife, Attack the Block, Dark Skies, A Quiet Place, Scanners, The Fly (1986), High Life, Overlord, The Mist, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Faculty, Slither