#i just cannot believe. just based on the actual technical writing. the physical writing skill. that anyone still thinks blink is well done

[lesbiandonnanoble]

the subtype of moffat fan that replies to any criticism of moffat not by defending him but by instead attacking other showrunners to prove that he's 'at least not the worst' or something.. they ALWAYS love to pull the 'moffat wrote the best eps in RTD era anyway' card and then they without fail point to blink. and i'm really sorry but you actually think an episode that had the unironic line "sad is happy for deep people" (like. we weren't supposed to laugh at that???) and was a very blatant & transparent excuse to shove the black main character completely out of the narrative with barely 5 mins of screentime and shove in moffat's genuinely embarrassing little white girl OC is better writing than midnight?? like you're not even coming close to making ME believe that blink is better than midnight, im fucking struggling to believe YOU actually believe that blink is better than midnight.

#when people call blink one of the best dr who episodes i wonder if they haven't seen it since they were 13 or something #like truly and i'm really not saying this to be hurtful it's just the only way that claim makes sense to me #like cos i get how that ep would seem good if you were 13 #anti moffat #or whatever i really dont care #i just cannot believe. just based on the actual technical writing. the physical writing skill. that anyone still thinks blink is well done #doctor who #my stuff

[alienside]

hi and also hello. may i please hear everything about seia i would like the seia breakdown please and thank you <3

seia breakdown!!!! seia my beloved <3

the short version is that seia is 95% of keldan's impulse control. long version under the cut

okay in my head i picture seia as being from like a mountain village whose primary economy is mining-based. this is almost completely irrelevant to the actual story but i planned out everyone's backstories like three years ago so you're getting it. seia's naturally smaller than most people from these mining villages tend to be but he was also more sick than the average kid (which did not help) so growing up he was sort of on the frail side. that being said there was absolutely zero like "gender role" expectation that he would ever have to work in the quarries, because his culture doesn't really have Gender the way others do, and thus don't have gender roles either; everyone just contributes what they can to make sure the household runs smoothly, which means seia grew up helping out with stuff like finances, gardening/animal tending if he had the energy for it, sewing/mending clothes/weaving, other stuff around the house that's less physical labor. (btw this cultural view of gender is also why seia's nonbinary; he literally just cannot be bothered with translating his experience for others, and the first person who spoke to him in another language assigned him he/him pronouns and seia was like "whatever".)

anyway. there's some imperial/war-related stuff that happens next. crown soldiers show up, "this land belongs to this nation now", and they ship off basically everyone who's still school-aged to boarding schools in the empire proper. (two notes: first, i haven't named like most of the places that are relevant to backstory. yes i've had this wip for years. move on. second, i am assuming you've heard of cultural genocide. that's what's happening here.)

seia ends up rising through the ranks so to speak and gets a lot of attention for his knack for languages. he ends up in service of the crown that kidnapped him (this is probably around age 16 or so), as a translator/interpreter, and after a couple years ends up sold/traded to the highest bidder (melati's father, the king of. yet another name i haven't thought up yet.) they use nicer words than "sold/bought", because "slavery is illegal", but i'm not going to pretend seia had any choice in what's happening.

he does use his essentially-free access to royal libraries to do a LOT of reading, both before and after the trade. he teaches himself a lot of stuff, including More languages and some "applicable" life skills. (read: forgery. he gets terrifyingly good at forging official documents. he doesn't use this until after he joins up with keldan, because he's afraid of what will happen if he gets caught, but with keldan he's a bit of a loose cannon lmao)

also. MOSTLY irrelevant to the story but seia has like one friend, who was the youngest son of the first king seia worked for. they made it work alarmingly well despite the power imbalance thing, and the prince teaches seia how to swordfight. seia later trades that in for a dagger, saying it's more his style, but in a pinch.... absolutely deadly. they keep in touch after seia gets traded off, they write letters to each other in varying languages and use code names. the prince's real name is kazik tho.

also also. working for melati's father and spending like 90% of his free time in the library, seia's seen her before and she's seen him. they've talked more than once and melati would even loosely call him a friend at this point in their lives. being a princess she doesn't really question the exact terms of his employment. it's not really malicious, it's just that in her mind, the palace is kind of the best gig anyone could hope for, and she has a daughter's trust in her father (for now) and believes he'd never hold anyone against their will. and while technically he's not holding seia prisoner, seia has nothing and no one on the outside, and nowhere to go, and a contract a mile long that he doesn't know the exact terms of but surely there's a clause in there about abandoning your post before your term is served (there is. seia ends up breaking it anyway).

anyway. seia meets keldan on a diplomatic trip to okskiy, where keldan lounges around the throne room despite his king's best efforts to get rid of him before the party starts. (this is like almost immediately post-aderyn-breakup btw). seia doesn't get much time off during the actual meeting/negotiations/dinner, but once everyone's drunk and happy seia gets to slip away from his interpreter role, and he and keldan make small talk for a while and seia commits his face to memory because it feels like he's the first (second?) person to ever actually look at seia. it's complicated.

they end up meeting again on seia's "home turf"; keldan's delivering something on behalf of his king, and seia's the only one who speaks a language keldan understands, so they get plenty of more-or-less one-on-one conversation time. call it bonding or whatever. later, keldan's wandering around the castle (read: snooping) and happens upon the king propositioning seia (this is compete chance here. keldan's the only person i know who's obnoxious enough to have even the opportunity to stumble in on this conversation), which seia does not want but can't exactly say no to without risking. yknow. his life.

the king fucks off w/ keldan's arrival (not that keldan understood what was being said exactly but the postures... expressions... yeah) to avoid suspicion (does not work) and keldan's like. "fuck that guy." seia replies "he's my king." keldan says "what if he wasn't though" and then gets to play white knight for seia for about thirty minutes (the time it takes them to get back onto keldan's ship) before keldan really starts to get to know seia and realizes he is WAY out of his depth here.

they're more or less business partners after that. it's weird because seia definitely is not considered part of keldan's "crew", but keldan's operation is able to expand thanks to the breadth of languages seia can speak, seia travels everywhere with keldan + has his own cabins on the ship that he never uses bc he's always in keldan's, they read each other's minds and gaze longingly when the other isn't looking, but if a crewmate asks whether they've slept together keldan is like "why would we do that". they're a hot mess. seia forges like 90% of keldan's documents, whatever he needs (the other 10% are, technically, legal), and literally asks for nothing in return. keldan's always putting gold coins in with the rest of seia's stuff or trying to slip him payment some other way. seia stashes his collection of inks and fancy pens and parchments under keldan's bed.

the really sticky part is that neither of them really talk about their pasts. granted keldan can't talk about his childhood without getting into stuff that would make him sound crazy ("turns out there is stuff below the continents" crazy), but neither of them know where the other is from, they don't communicate w/each other in either person's native language, seia doesn't even know keldan had a partner before him.

keldan's also a bit insane. so he gets all these random ideas for all kinds of things (business, ship repairs/additions, fanciful vacations, you name it) and then seia's the one who filters it down into something doable. half the time seia is then also the one who implements it, whatever it is. keldan will be like "lets do a vacation on one of those waterfall islands" and seia will be like "what if instead we just spend a couple weeks off in okskiy" and then also schedule that time off into their calendar. this is more or less because seia is wayyyy more organized but also a little bit because even tho keldan has the big ideas, he wouldn't actually be into them. he would hate the wet humid nature of the waterfall islands and seia knows that and talks him out of it, and keldan wants seia happy so he agrees readily when seia suggests okskiy instead. they make it work somehow and everyone's like "how have you not broken up yet" and they're like "broken what up?"

so. that's where they're at at the beginning of the story, and then aderyn and melati walk onto their ship as a unit and everyone collectively is like. "what the fuck" for a whole host of different reasons. the plot of sky sea is like 50% character-driven conflict in the sense that while aderyn and keldan are trying to reconcile their old history, aderyn's guilt, and keldan's anger, seia's also insanely jealous but doesn't understand why and almost flat out refuses to talk to keldan about it. aderyn and melati have the whole "we're only in this together because both our lives are in danger" on top of the whole "you said no one would know who you were" "how was i supposed to know that the one person who could possibly still be alive to recognize me would be on this boat" thing. seia and melati have a little bit of a guilt/anger thing happening too; it's sort of "logically i know it wasn't her fault but emotionally i need someone to blame and she should have known something was wrong". keldan and melati are pretty much the only pair NOT fighting, but they do bond over being generally obnoxious and high-maintenance. when aderyn and seia aren't trying to kill each other over extremely minor arguments that are actually metaphors for much bigger issues, they're complaining about "royals. ugh". keldan's crew wants to quit sooooo bad except that they also find the drama highly amusing. one guy on the crew is like 'man i always wanted to be part of a high-speed chase' and boy does he get his wish.

#.txt #ttotss #truly i have no explanation for what's happening here but i love you #seia is like. my darling my beloved. like i try not to play favorites but god. #also didn't mention this in the main post but i do want there to be some part of the story to involve seia having the chance to go home #and taking it only to realize he's been gone for so long and he's changed so much that he doesn't fit there anymore #like they would make space for him to fit if he wanted them to #but despite the drama and the danger he has something that makes him happy now that isn't a faded memory #home is an actual place (read: person) and not a concept he can never go back to #also untouched in the main post but im getting into it in the tags now: huge huge themes of sky sea are belonging and family #because it's me so of course they are #it's all about these misfits who have never fit in anywhere discovering that they fit with each other #despite their rough edges and tangled histories #or perhaps because of them!! #anyway. thank you for asking i'm kissing u on the mouth rn

[blindbeta]

I just saw someone asked about making a character blind in their novel and you responded about ways to avoid it being portrayed poorly. I wanted to ask, could it also help if part of the arc is the character accepting becoming blind?

Like, even if it happens in some kind of accident, or like them becoming blinded as a sacrifice for the team, would it be a bad portrayal for part of the character's story to be realizing it's not the end of the world, that being disabled doesn't make them completely useless, etc?

Or is that sort of arc also ableist?

[Note: I used the words non-disabled and abled interchangeably here. Both refer to people with no disabilities. After a conversation with some of my followers, I decided to make an effort to be clearer about who I referred to when I used words like able-bodied, because able-bodied may, for some people, refer to people without physical disabilities or without any disabilities at all. There are times when the distinction matters, even when people said they can usually tell based on context whether or not able-bodied is meant to include them.]

Writing About A Character Accepting Being Blind After Going Blind - When You Aren’t Blind Yourself

An arc about a character accepting becoming blind doesn’t feel good to me and I’ll try to explain why.

I’d rather read a story about a character who happens to be blind, in whatever way that happened, than read a story where a writer who isn’t blind tries to write about a blind character accepting being blind. I just finished a similar book and it did not go well. There are some things that research cannot teach you. There are some stories that aren’t yours to tell.

I don’t want to read about a non-blind author, especially a non-disabled author, writing negative things about my disability.

A character starting out feeling overly negative toward their blindness already feels bad to me. Why? Because the author has to write negative, sometimes completely wrong things about being blind. When I read stories like this, I am bombarded with stereotypes or myths which are rarely corrected by the narrator, who is usually traumatized and somewhat isolated as they heal. Many of the things they think or say are not checked or revisited. Mean things other characters say or think about them are often internalized by the narrator. Things that, in real life, are said to blind and otherwise disabled people as truths. As tough-love. As part of the supposed -Real World-. As bullying. As ignorant, innocent questions. As rude comments.

All of these things are not even coming from a personal place. The author writing these things- while they probably don’t agree with them, of course- is still not blind at the end of the day.

Readers who aren’t blind may not understand the nuance of why some of the things they read were ableist if it isn’t called out in the narrative in some way, which can sometimes happen when the narrator says something negative about their new disability. This isn’t to say readers shouldn’t do their own research or examine the story more closely. This isn’t to say the author is at fault for the interpretations of readers who refuse to think beyond what is laid out for them. When I say this, I am being realistic. Not all readers are going to be proactive. Not all readers are going to approach a book about a person going blind from a good place.

Most of the time, this is just something the author needs to accept. It is impossible to anticipate the strange interpretations of every reader. However, this narrative can be dangerous to a reader who has never met a blind person. Keep in mind, most people aren’t doing what you all are doing. They just read what is given to them. And if what is given to them is a helpless or self-loathing blind person, they might believe in that image. That book may be the only expirience they have with a blind person and they may not read any other books with blind characters.

Another thing I thought of was that non-blind authors sometimes don’t understand how hobbies and skills translate to blind people. For example, in a story I read once, a character who was going blind practiced playing piano and typing on a keyboard blindfolded so they could learn how to do without sight. However, blind people can already play instruments even if they were born blind. Blind people can also easily type on regular keyboards and, technically, correct keyboard technique means typing without needing to look at the keyboard.

Authors who don’t understand what it is like to go blind often don’t get the nuances of what that person is losing and not losing. And it often shows. They also don’t often include the aspects of blindness that are actually challenging. Why focus your worry on typing on a keyboard when you can learn how to use assistive devices in the kitchen or learn to cope with anxiety you anticipate will get worse after losing vision? Why not try to find accessible copies of books you have or scan or Braille sentimental letters? Why not organize your closet so you can find things more easily?

Obviously this is related to characters who know they’re going blind, though.

It favors non-disabled readers, which is ableist.

Another reason this type of story bothers me is because it is so common. Or at least people expect it. This type of story is one abled / non-disabled people can swallow and feel inspired by. Showing the blind person accepting their blindness also favors non-disabled readers in ways I may not be able to articulate well.

Accepting disability is an arc non-disabled people are comfortable with. It is a feel-good type of story that usually doesn’t challenge people too much, other than to remind them not to bully people. Already, this story is not even for disabled people, or in this case, blind people. It exists to introduce people who aren’t blind to the idea of becoming blind, to blind technology, to inspirational ideas about how blind people actually can do things. Stories like this guide abled people along and prioritize their ideas about blindness. Because the narrator is almost always previously abled, the story is about adjusting to blindness in a way that caters to non-disabled people.

How does a story with this angle benefit blind readers? Even if a blind person has also recently gone blind and wants to see a character who on that journey with them, what can a writer who isn’t blind say that blind writer couldn’t say? Or say better? Or say with more power? With more nuancel? With more personal experience?

And it may seem like saying this arc is ableist is too much. Keep in mind, ableism isn’t just about being rude to or excluding disabled people. Ableism favors those who are able-bodied or neurotypical over those who are not. It favors those who are not disabled over those who are. This story is just another way of doing that. Often, people are ableist through what they consider kindnes. Authors are not exempt from that.

Disabled authors should tell their own stories

This is where I will get some pushback. (I already received some here if you think it will be helpful to know what this is like.)

There are a few parts to this.

First, I want everyone to know I am not telling you what not to write or that this type of story, at least with elements of this narrative, can never be done well. However, the more care you take when writing it and the more you know about why it can be ableist, the better you will be able to write it. I’m still not sure I would want to read a book that is dedicated to this topic of accepting blindness, but who knows?

I also might feel more open to this narrative from a writer who experienced becoming disabled in some other way and was open about it. While they would still need to research blindness, some of the issues I named here could be avoided through having prior personal experience that non-disabled people simply don’t have.

If, however, you find yourself upset or feeling excluded by this post, consider what I wrote again. Consider why you think you are the best person to tell such a story with this particular arc.

I am also not saying that non-disabled writers could never write this topic well. I just question, again, what they can add to the topic of accepting blindness that blind people can’t already add. This is also assuming they were able to avoid some of the issues I listed above that might come up. Which would be difficult on top of doing all the other research they need to do in order to write a book. Why make it harder for themselves?

Now that I’m done with the disclaimers, accepting blindness should be something mostly left up to blind writers. This narrative is so closely tied to the trauma-based / incident-based blindness that it can be hard to separate them, but I feel like the readers of the blog have thought hard to suggest ways to improve or subvert that trope and the problems that go with it. Maybe they can do the same here. Maybe not.

Anyway, the reason I think it should be left to blind writers is because of the personal experience I mentioned previously. Acceptance will come from a more authentic place. Anything that comes before the acceptance will also come from an authentic place and blind writers will know how to deal these issues a little better.

Blind writers will know how to write this topic well. They can center blind readers in a way that many arcs like this don’t.

As a side note, blind writers also need more recognition and attention. This arc is specifically about or mostly about accepting blindness, which blind writers are intimately familiar with. Their stories should be prioritized in this area, at the very least.

If a non-disabled writer decided to do this topic, I think it would help to read and public ally promote books and other works by blind people.

Thank you for asking this question.

This was a really great question and I want to thank the anon for asking. I really appreciate the chance to discuss this topic. If anyone wants to expand on this question or figure out ways to subvert this arc, feel free to ask. Also, remember that I am not authority on stories about blind people, but I feel this opinion in shared by many of us and it should be known so writers can be aware.

Suggestions for alternatives.

1. Include only brief instances of acceptance and / or make it only related to blindness instead of accepting blindness as a character arc.

It will depend on how you do it, but brief, less direct instances of acceptance could be done well. One thing I’m thinking of is Toph challenging her father in The Blind Bandit. This could be seen as a form of self-acceptance for Toph, one which is related to her blindness without being the entirety of her need to accept part of herself, which gives her the courage to disrupt the view her parents have of her. Toph doesn’t struggle with being blind. She struggles with something related to being blind, which her parents being over-protective, limiting her freedom and expression, and putting her a gender role box.

The rest of Toph’s story wasn’t completely about being blind either. The writers, who weren’t blind as far as I can gather, handled this part well, and so I wanted to include it as an example.

Obviously, this can also be done badly, but that’s what beta readers are for. I personally would prefer the acceptance arc only be tangentially related to blindness, especially when combined with the trope about going blind through trauma / incidents / accidents.

2. Start in a different place.

You could start the story or character arc in a different place, rather than starting directly after going blind. This could be years later. After they already adjusted to the bigger parts of being blind. This saves you the need to figure out how to get around it.

Some parts of this ask might help.

3. Focus mostly on the practical stuff rather than the emotional side.

Focus on things like cane skills, adjusting to using screen-readers or needing to increase font sizes to read. Focus on learning to cook. Make the arc less about emotional stuff and more achieving goals. While I can understand how this might bother some blind people, I think it can work if blind readers are consulted, especially readers who went blind later in life. I wanted to include this as an option just in case people are determined to include going blind in the story. I think, if the author is careful, it could go well. A few narrative justifications for not writing the typical acceptance arc include:

-the character was already blind in some way first

-the character has a blind sibling, parent, or friend they grew up with

-the character got counseling or the story mentions they are getting counseling

Alternatively, you could also focus emotional difficulties on the traumatic incident, if there is one, and not the resulting blindness.

4. Write different stories - expand what stories about blind characters look like.

Writers have so many opportunities! I don’t see why they would feel the need to write a story primarily about going blind and learning you aren’t useless now after all, when they could be writing about a blind mermaid challenging the Mer Queen and falling in love with her instead. When they could be writing about blind space pirates creating new technology for other blind people. When they could be writing about a blind witch reclaiming their sexuality and also learning to dance to make their coven less worried about their social life after going blind.

See this post for more ideas about expanding the typical stories.

If you are creative enough, none of my claims that certain topics being best left to blind writers should stop you. If you feel limited, you might be trapped in the idea that blind people only have one narrative: trauma, sadness, helplessness, and just maybe, acceptance. If you don’t feel limited, you are in a good place.

Blind readers want other types of stories, too.

I hope this helps some of my followers. Thanks for the interesting question, anon. If anyone has any questions or would like me to clarify something, feel free to ask. I wrote this at night when I was tired. I have missed some things.

-BlindBeta

P.S. The ideas I pitched at the end are free to use if you feel inspired by any of them.

#writing blind characters #blind characters #blind people #ask #anon #acceptance narrative #trauma narrative

[a-edgar-allan-hoe]

The Last Chthonian

Bucky x Reader, Sam x Reader, Zemo x Reader

Part 10

A/N: I can’t believe I’m already on part 10 for this series and to be honest it’s fun to write. And in all seriousness, the tumblr mobile app needs to allow you to put a read more link. But anyways love you all and let me know if you would like to be added to the tag list! Mwah! 🖤🖤🖤

Summary: Imagine being Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, the night and the moon, doorways and crossroads, creatures of the night, and ghosts and necromancy. You stumbled upon Earth many centuries ago and since then have resided on the foreign planet. During the recent years you created an alias for yourself to hide your true identity, and after the war against Thanos you chose to live out your days in the Scottish countryside, until a certain trio appear at your doorstep one day.

Warnings: language, some violence, and blood

“Im sorry, did you just say Madripoor?” You blinked at Zemo, dreading the destination ahead of you.

“What’s up with Madripoor? You talk about it like it’s Skull Island.” Sam questioned, looking between you and Zemo.

“Imagine Mos Eisley from Tatooine but without the aliens and blasters.” You tried to make an analogy. “In other words, a shithole. And to be honest, I’d rather be in Mos Eisley.”

“It’s an island nation in the Indonesian archipelago. It was a pirate sanctuary back in the 1800s.” Bucky explained to Sam.

“It’s kept its lawless ways.” Zemo added before turning to James. “But we cannot exactly walk in as ourselves. James, you will have to become someone you claim is gone.”

You had a feeling Zemo would suggest all of you going in with different identities, and being the only woman in the group, you already had a wild guess you weren’t going to be ecstatic about yours. You looked to Bucky with a frown on your lips. You knew what Zemo had meant towards him, and you didn’t know how it would affect him to transition back into the person he tried so hard to deviate from. Bucky saw the sympathetic smile you gave him, and he returned it with a look that reassured you that he would be fine.

“Y/n.” Zemo now spoke to you, tilting his head to meet your eyes. “I’m sure you are aware of the conditions.”

“Zemo if you...” Bucky trailed off as he glared at him, silently warning him to watch what he says next.

Sam and Bucky kept their eyes on Zemo, waiting to hear what his suggested persona for you was and ready to beat his ass if he dared to suggest something that would be demeaning to you.

“No way in the pits of Tartarus. I am not going in as an escort.” You voiced with a clenched jaw. “And if it’s eye candy you need, you have Sam.”

Sam gave you a surprised look from your comment, flattered to have you recommend him to be the designated eye candy before going back to the topic at hand. “Hell no Zemo. You’re not having y/n pretend to be an escort.”

“I’m afraid Sam is already going as someone.” Zemo sat back with his hands folded in his lap. “And don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on having you go as an escort, it isn’t befitting of a baron like me. Plus, I figured it would be uncomfortable for you, so I was going to suggest you act as my fiancé, if you are willing of course.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, pondering on the subject. You were a bit relieved in all honesty. But to pretend to be Zemo’s fiancé and be in close and almost physical proximities with him?

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to y/n.” Sam uttered to you.

“I’ll do it.” You confirmed.

“Are you sure?” Zemo asked you again, making sure you were comfortable with acting the part.

“I thought Zemo might step out of line with this one, but we don’t want you to do something that will make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m sure. I’ve had to do things I wasn’t comfortable with plenty of times in the past.”

Once you had all landed, Zemo decided to stop by a place so that you all may get dressed. You had already packed a dress and a pair of heels with you just in case for situations like these, since this wasn’t the first time you had to dress up for a mission. The dress you wore was a black, burned velvet silk slip-like dress with the velvet print being dark red roses. The dress wasn’t too tight to be constricting of movement and fit perfectly around around your curves. If the situation should arise that you needed to defend yourself, you needed the freedom to be able to move. Going down, the fabric flared slightly at your hips, brushing barely against the floor with your heels on. The skirt was slightly sheer from the bottom of your thighs and down with the floral velvet print, and had a slit going up your right thigh, perfect for kicking and concealing your dagger. The top torso portion of the front of your dress was a spaghetti strap cowl neckline that stopped just above the curve of your breasts, allowing for just a bit of cleavage. Your back was left bare, stopping at your mid back with thin straps that came across in a pattern. Your dress almost had a Grecian/witchy look from the way it draped over your chest and hips. It wasn’t too formal or too scandalous, it was elegant and classy, and showed just the right amount of skin where it wouldn’t be too revealing.

Even though you completely loathed and detested heels of any kinds, your heels were fairly simple, made of black velvet with straps that came across your ankles and toes. You dreaded heaving to wear them but at the same time you’d stick out like a sore thumb if you wore your docs with these. Perhaps you should’ve brought your nicer sandals, but it was too late now. You kept on your mother’s necklace and wore a set of amethyst drop earrings, throwing on a silver cuff bracelet on each wrist. Your hair was let loose to conceal your short sword that you hid on your back underneath your dress, the hilt resting right between your shoulder blades. You prayed that having your hair down would cover the scars and the sword you had on your back. But you were mostly focused about the scars, you failed to mention them to the guys about it since it was something that was hard for you to share. The only makeup you had on was some eyeshadow and mascara to darken your eyes, very little blush, and a lip tint.

The last thing to do was to put on some perfume, so you spritzed on your favorite oil based one that you had from Olympus on your pulse points. The scent was filled with incense-like scents like dragon’s blood, sage, crushed red roses, sandalwood, ghostly white musk, absinthe, almonds, and heady gardenia. It wasn’t as harsh as the common alcohol based ones, this one was more earthy and ancient, and every time you wore it, the scent lingered and heads turned. You gave yourself a once over when you were done, taking in a deep breath before heading out to join the others.

You became nervous as you saw them gathered together, talking amongst themselves as they haven’t noticed you yet. You rarely ever wore dresses these days, especially of the kind you were wearing now which left you feeling bare and exposed even though the dress wasn’t at all much revealing. So as you approached them, you couldn’t help picking at your fingers in anxiety.

The men turned at the sound of your heels clicking against the ground, and when they laid their eyes on you, they couldn’t help but gawk with their mouths parted open, as if they had seen the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth. You chewed on the inside of your cheeks as you saw how they stared at you.

“Wow.” Sam was the first to say something. “You look like a million bucks.”

“What? Never seen a woman in a dress before?”

“No, I’ve just never seen you in a dress before.” Sam answered. “You’re always dressed like some hippie/librarian, with your bands shirts, sweaters, plaid pants and jackets.”

“Haha vary funny.”

“Also since when did you have muscles?” Sam noticed as he poked your bare arm. “And since when did you have a tattoo?” He observed the mark you had on your upper right arm, right below your shoulder. It was the mark that was given to you to signify your Olympian status and what you represented. It was about the color that henna left behind after you wiped the paste off your skin, the color of ginger and bronze. The center of your mark was a lightning bolt, which represented a child of Zeus. Below that was your symbol, the torch and the triple moons.

“Since when did you start asking so many questions? But yeah, I’ve always had muscles Sam, I was trained in combat since I was, you could say 9 years old in human years. Also, technically everyone has them, it’s what allows us to move and lift things. And that.” You pointed to your tattoo. “Is my goddess mark, not a tattoo. Every Olympian god has one and they each have their personal symbol that represents them.”

“Wait, so you’ve been trained since you were a kid?” Bucky looked at you to clarify what he heard as they all started to head out.

“Technically, everyone on Olympus starts training that young. Then, when they become of age, a tournament is held to display their skills, following a ceremony after, to celebrate their victory.” You explained as you walked beside them.

The four of you were currently walking on the bridge that led to Madripoor. You could see the city’s skyline out in the distance, the cyberpunk like buildings lighting up the night sky.

“Do you need my coat?” You heard Zemo say beside you, making you look at him.

“Sorry?”

“Do you need my coat?” He repeated himself, referring to how your arms were bare against the cool night. “I wouldn’t want you to get cold.”

You stared at him, stunned from the kind gesture as you tried to form words to say. “Oh uh.....I appreciate the gesture, but I’m fine actually. I’m not that cold.” Though you didn’t want to admit it, you actually would’ve liked to try on his coat, because in all honesty it was a damn nice coat.

“We have to fix this.” You heard Sam say with irritation visible in his voice. “I’m the only one who looks like a pimp.”

“Only an American would assume a fashion-forward black man looks like a pimp. You look exactly like the man you’re supposed to be playing.” Zemo mentioned as he pulled out his phone to show Sam. “The sophisticated, charming African rake named Conrad Mack, aka the Smiling Tiger.”

“He even has a bad nickname. Hell, he does look like me, though.” Sam observed the photo.

“You smell this?”

“Yeah, what is that? Acid?” Sam sniffed the air as you did the same.

“Smells rancid.” You scrunched your nose at the smell.

“Madripoor. No matter what happens, we have to stay in character. Our lives depend on it. There’s no margin for error.” Zemo instructed as a black car pulled up in front of you. “High Town’s that way. Not a bad place if you wanna visit, but Low Town’s the other way.”

“Let me guess. We don’t have any friends in High Town.” Sam remarked as he opened the door for the back seat.

“Y/n. A moment please, if you will.” Zemo uttered to you.

You stopped in your tracks, seeing Bucky and Sam stand on either side of the car doors, looking between the two of you and especially Zemo, with caution. You nodded your head at them, signaling you were fine and that they can get seated. And though they sat themselves inside the car, that didn’t stop them from keeping their eyes glued to Zemo to make sure he didn’t pull anything stupid.

“What’s the issue?” You turned to Zemo, giving him your attention.

“Since you will be portraying my fiancé, there’s a certain key element you will be needing to complete the image.” You watched as he pulled out a ring from his coat pocket, displaying it in front of you. “If I may?”

You stared at Zemo blankly before nodding your head and holding out your left hand for him. You knew this was only for a show, but you couldn’t help but stiffen as he delicately held your hand with his gloved one before slipping the ring onto your ring finger.

“There.” Hi smiled softly at you, his hand still holding yours. “Now you look the part.”

The two of you stood there for a moment, his thumb brushing against your knuckles, leaving behind a trail of warmth as he gazed down at you. Zemo swore he could have gotten lost in the violet swirls and gold flecks of your eyes forever, which now sparkled against Madripoor’s lit up skyline, the neon city and the places he’s visited not even coming close to the beauty he held before him.

You tried not to blush under his gaze as you gave him a polite smile before slipping your hand out of his. “I should probably change my eyes huh.” You remembered, changing your eyes to a normal color known to earth. “Should I hide the scar?” You asked him, referring to the one on your face.

“I think you should leave it. It suits you, and besides, you never know who might recognize you without it.”

Nodding your head at him, you headed to the car and settling in beside Bucky as Zemo followed, getting in the passenger seat in front of you. In the car ride there, you glanced down at the ring Zemo slipped on your finger, it was definitely a beautiful elegant ring, with a rose gold band and a pear cut garnet in the center that had diamonds that accented the bottom. Once you arrived in the city, you walked through the neon lit streets beside Zemo while Sam and Bucky followed behind. You loosened up your body as you went, swaying your hips slightly as you tried your best not to walk like a bodyguard and look threatening as everyone’s eyes followed the four of you strolling through the streets.

“Here we are.” Zemo announced, stopping in front of a bar before speaking to Bucky in Russian. “Ready to comply… Winter Soldier?”

As you went in, Zemo leaned in to whisper in your ear, his warm breath tickling your neck and startling you as he spoke in a hushed tone. “I want to apologize in advance, forgive me.”

You looked at him with furrowed brows to question what he meant until you felt his gloved hand slide across your back before resting on your waist, pulling you closer to his side. You noticed how his hand fumbled after brushing across your sword as he gave you a questioning look. What was that on your back? Did you really conceal a full on sword on your back underneath your dress? On your way to the bar table you saw people stare as you went through, some of them gawking in surprise at Bucky, or the winter soldier as he was now portraying, while the slimy men in the area roamed their eyes over your body hungrily. Zemo noticed your uneasiness from the way your muscles tensed, though your face didn’t show a sign of it, and glared at the men who dared to lay their eyes on you, only pulling you closer to him to prove that you were with him while Bucky and Sam noticed this as well and positioned themselves where you were blocked from the view of your peers, allowing you to breathe a little better as you approached the bar.

“Hello, gentlemen.” The bartender greeted you all. “Wasn’t expecting you, Smiling Tiger.”

“His plans changed.” Zemo answered for him. “We have business to do with Selby.”

“The usual?”

Sam nodded his head.

“And for the lady?”

“Um Something fruity.” You answered with a flirtatious smile, silently hoping they had something like that on the menu and that you hadn’t blown their cover by ordering the wrong drink.

The bartender handed you what looked to be a pineapple martini and you internally thanked the gods for your sheer bit of luck, taking the drink and thanking the bartender with another smile. You watched as he went to work on Sam’s drink, pulling out of a jar what definitely was a snake. You gulped, your stomach feeling nauseous as you saw the bartender cut open the dead snake, taking out its guts and throwing it in the shot glass. You were mortified to say the least, snakes were one of your symbols and you had owned plenty of the gentle little creatures. You shot Sam a sympathetic look once you saw his expression.

“Cheers.” Zemo held up his glass while Sam stared at his before gathering the courage to drink it all in one go. If Sam wasn’t going to throw up, you were going to do it for him.

While your eyes were trained on Sam’s expression, you felt someone breathe over your neck before feeling a clammy hand graze across your ass.

“Hey baby-“

Your eyes widened before you grabbed the wrist of the man behind you in one quick motion, twisting his arm to an unnatural position as you yanked it away from your body, causing the sleazy looking individual let out a yelp of pain. You would’ve crushed his wrist like crumpled paper if Zemo hadn’t put a cautionary hand on your arm as he whispered to you. “Careful now.”

You let go of the man’s wrist before shoving him aside like a pile of garbage. If their identity wasn’t at risk of being revealed, Zemo, Sam, and Bucky would have gone over there and beat the guy up after you were done with him.

“I got word from high. You ain’t welcome here.” You watched from behind Zemo as a bearded man approached him.

“I have no business with the Power Broker, but if he insists, he can either come and talk to me…” Zemo gestured towards Bucky.

“New haircut?”

“Or bring Selby for a chat.”

The man glanced between Zemo and Bucky before leaving.

“A power broker? Really?” Sam turned to Zemo.

“Every kingdom needs its king. Let’s just pray we stay under his radar.”

“Do you know him?” You asked.

“Only by reputation. In Madripoor he is judge, jury, and executioner.”

Another man was approaching in your direction, most likely to kick you all out or worse, and after following your gaze, Zemo turned to Bucky, speaking to him in Russian just as the man laid a hand on his shoulder. “Winter Soldier. Attack.”

You stood back, watching as Bucky grabbed the dude’s arm and twisted it back. You refrained yourself from intervening as Bucky took down the men that fought against him.

“Didn’t take much for him to fall back into form.” Zemo commented to you and Sam.

Bucky slammed one of the men down on the counter. And as you heard the clicking of guns being loaded, your defensive mode nearly kicked in as you almost reached for your sword before Zemo stopped you.

“Stay in character or the whole bar turns on us.” Zemo whispered to you both before turning to Bucky and speaking in Russian again. “Well done soldier.”

You let your arm drop back down to your side, not a single change in your expression as you eyed everyone around you.

“Selby will see you now.” The bartender spoke up after getting off the phone.

Zemo gave him a thanks, nodding you over and holding out his hand for you to take as you went to his side again, Bucky and Sam following after you. You went through a back door, going down a dark corridor with Zemo’s hand on your back as he guided you through.

“You should know, Baron. People don’t just come into my bar and make demands.” You heard a woman’s voice speak, turning your head to see an older woman in a suit with short white hair lounging back on the coach with her security around her.

“Not a demand. An offer.” Zemo sat down on the couch before waving you over when he saw you standing near Sam. “Come sit schatzi.”

You straightened up, plastering a smile on your face as you went over to him. Selby’s eyes followed you curiously as you placed your hand in his, your eyes rapidly moving in nervousness for what area would be the most appropriate area to sit. Were you......were you supposed to sit on his lap? Is that how couples work? No, that would be inappropriate. Before things got awkward, you quickly plopped down on the empty spot next to him, crossing over your leg in a way so that it draped over his, leaving your thigh completely exposed from the slit in your dress, save for the dagger that still remained hidden. Sam and Bucky widened their eyes at what you just did, while Zemo stiffened at this sudden movement from you as you also draped one arm around his shoulders, bringing yourself closer to him. Were you even doing this right?

“A lot has changed since you were here last.” Selby observed the two of you before her eyes landed on your ring. “Who’s this pretty little thing?”

“This.” Zemo looked at you with a loving look, throwing an arm around your waist to draw circles on your bare back, while his other hand rested on your thigh, leaving behind a trail of goosebumps on your skin as you felt shivers go down your spine. “Is my fiancé. Gorgeous isn’t she?”

How long has it been since you were this close and personal to someone? The last you could remember, women still wore corsets and people still rode carriages. You felt your body heat up from being this close to him, and from the way he stroked your back. How was a mortal man able to leave you feeling like this? If he was able to send shivers down your spine with the mere touch on your back with his gloved hand, you wondered how it would feel to have his bare hands on you, just skin to skin. And if you were being honest, you never really were a fan of cologne but his smelled of a deeper earthy tones with hints of musk, and you were surprised and almost ashamed to say you liked how he smelled. You returned the same loving look to Zemo, trying to make it as believable as possible as you ran your fingers through the hair on the back of his head before placing a kiss on his jaw close to his ear. Sam and Bucky couldn’t believe their eyes at the scene before them, the same you who preferred to be a hermit and didn’t go on dates because it involved human interaction, was cuddling up to none other than Helmut Zemo himself. Zemo’s breath faltered a bit from from your touch as he swallowed the lump in his throat, struggling not to break character. Being this close to you, he was able to get a whiff of your perfume and my goodness, Zemo felt as if he could drown in your scent, you smelled like the heavens, not overbearingly sweet, but dark and luxurious and even seductive. Is this what vampires and sirens smelled like when they lured people to their deaths? You raised a brow at Zemo, your heightened senses were picking up on his breathing patterns and heartbeat. Was he getting nervous?

“Extremely.” Selby commented, smirking at the two of you before roaming her eyes over your body. You could feel her taking you in but you kept your eyes trained on the side of Zemo’s face. “Where did you pick this one up? She looks like a fighter.”

“As they say, why not get a woman who can do both. She was part of the Sokovian armed forces, I met her through there.”

“By the way, I thought you were rotting away in a German prison. How did you escape?” Selby added after finally taking her eyes off you.

“People like us always find a way, don’t we? I’m sure you’ve already figured out what I’m here for.”

“You’re taller than I’d heard, Smiling Tiger.” Selby turned to Sam with a flirtatious grin, using her hand in a claw like manner as she let out a purr. “What’s the offer?”

“Tell us what you know about the super-soldier serum.” Zemo got up off the couch, going over to Bucky and holding his chin between his fingers. “And I give you him, along with the code words to control him, of course. He will do anything you want.”

“Now that’s the Zemo I remember. I’m glad I decided not to kill you immediately. Yeah, you were right to come to me. Arrogant, but right. The super-soldier serum is here in Madripoor. Dr. Wilfred Nagel is the man you wanna thank. Or… condemn, depending on what side of this you’re on. The Power Broker had him working on the serum, but… things didn’t go as planned.”

“Is Nagel still in Madripoor?”

“Oh. The bread crumbs you can have for free, but the bakery is gonna cost you, Baron. And before you get all cute, don’t think you can find Nagel without me. But.....” She turned you with a sly smile which made your insides turn. “Throw her in with the package and you have yourself a deal.”

Zemo, Sam, and Bucky turned to look at you with dread upon hearing her words. This wasn’t at all part of the plan.

“No, no no. That wasn’t the deal.” Zemo stepped over to where you sat, blocking you from her. “She’s not for sale.”

“Why not?” Selby raised her brow at Zemo. “I’m pretty sure a man like you could pick up someone else to be your plaything or fiancé or whatever. I like this one in particular.” She turned to you again.

“That’s not-“ Zemo started before he was cut off by Sam’s cellphone vibrating.

You breath was caught in your throat and it felt as if the room had dropped in temperature. You could feel the tension floating around the air as everyone’s eyes were trained on Sam now, making you sit up straight and uncross your legs so that they were planted firmly on the ground. Your hand rested on your thigh just above where the hilt of your dagger was as your eyes darted around the room, watching each and every person like a hawk about to swoop down on its prey. You had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

Tag List: @girl-obsessed-with-things @aerynchromie @sunshinepower17 @viviace @kakimakiloh @thebivirgin @gambitsqueen @spookycereal-s @lulu-yuming @mochminnie @gabitanaka47 @s00nhi @vanteguccir @tomhollandsslilslut @dracoxxyoflam @suchababie @uhhhcrypticbastard @on-my-way-to-erebor @thewinterrbucky @mylifeispainandiloveit @fillechatoyante @padmoonyfeorge @montypythonsholysnail

#bucky imagine #bucky fanfic #bucky x female reader #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #sam wilson fanfiction #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x y/n #zemo fanfic #bucky fluff #bucky fic #bucky x you #zemo fluff #zemo imagine #zemo x reader #zemo x you #zemo x y/n

[aiyoarts]

This was morally so based off on a creepypasta fanfiction I read called Slendermans Guarddog.

General Info:

Name: (Shackles)(Mutt)(Guarddog)(Y/N, up to you) (Demi)

Physical Desc: Dark Skinned, Uncoordinated colored eyes(you'll see this often it means the eyes change in colors, itll make sense later), Straight, White, Uncoordinated Hair, Plus sized, +++ Sized(I have a weakness), Golden Shackles accompanying her hands, feet, and neck(these do change most of thisll make sense later in the story.) Inches taller than Tim but that's because of her boots. Shorter than Toby and an inch close to Brian's height.

Attire: Overly dressed, even in the summer. Baggy and big clothes so that her figure may not be shown in spite of the fact of the Slendermansion being filled with rapists and others of the sort. Full faced gas mask and her hair is always hidden not a strand is ever seen. Giant winter coat. And boots that get her to 6'2 height or 2 inches near Ej's height.

Weapon: Very unspecified. Is quite skilled in whatever she has her hands on. Although further in the story weapons are specified.

Backstory/Background: There isn't much to her. Although she was the first and I mean the very first to follow upon slender. The first proxy if you would. Despite that she cannot or refuses to fight back against Tim and his remarks against her, even knowing shes technically above him. "But you mustn't hurt slenders right hand man." Satan forbid.

Extra: She does not speak until later on in the story. It's not like she can't its just... she can't. She doesn't understand fully in how humans talk. Her english is really proper or formal do its confusing. Usually expresses in grunts or movement. The only one who really understands her is Ej and sometimes hoodie(A lil secret) She thinks in a sort of Hell like way like instead of God. "Satan forbid" not "God forbid" Most deem her personality as stuck up or like she believes shes above them all so they treat her like what she is, a guard dog. Although quite the opposite, in most cases shes hella confused if it's not an order. A bit too straightforward and honest at all times. And quite protective of all of them despite their rude advances towards her. She wants to communicate and don't worry that'll come to soon. But for now it's pretty quite.

Also shhh...

She does have history with Ej and Hoodie. And yes it's actually not history its ongoing. But she made a promise to slender that she has to keep until something happens, something she fears but knows is inevitable.

Thisll all make sense soon cause I'll be making the other creeps headcannons for this story soon. Yes I take the old ones and make them brand new not that toxic shit. Someone will already have theirs done, others given during the story and most of em update through the story. (Seeya soon!)

(And hell no this is only number one. Each one unless said otherwise have their own different au, sometimes even the mansion or setting will change. And yes my time will be unkempt as hell but I will try my best ta finish em cause I hate forgetting my favorites so I usually write em down first, even draw some. Anyways byye)

#creepypasta x reader #hoodie #creepypasta fanart #hoodie x reader #eyeless jack x reader #creepypasta

[elliepassmore]

The Never Tilting World Review

4/5 stars Recommended for people who like: fantasy, multiple POVs, goddesses, magic, demons, LGBTQ+ romance, strong female leads, kick-ass women, women engineers, disability representation, mental illness representation, characters of color, complex morality I will say that for the most part I really enjoyed this book. The concept is fascinating and the characters and world were splendid. I took off a star because, as nice as it is sometimes to not have every detail of a world explained, with something like magic, it does have to be explained to a certain extent. By-and-large I understand how the 'gates' work, but we're dropped right into the terminology within the first couple of pages without explanation and it was a little confusing and took me a few tries to get at it. Then, I just wasn't a huge fan of Odessa and it does take away from the book a little when you just don't like one of the MCs or narrators, but I'll explain more about Odessa when I get to her. Lan, Tianlan, is the first narrator, so I'm starting with her. She's what's called a Catseye (also something whose we had to figure out figure out ourselves), which means she can heal people or inflict sickness upon them in a form of dual magic. Two sides to every coin, right? I really, really love this idea and think it's a fantastic spin on the typical 'healer' character you see in fantasy. I suppose, theoretically, healers could always turn their magic to use by harming people, in fantasy books healers are relegated to only healing, save for here and in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha and Six of Crows trilogy, where healing and harming are seen as two sides of the same magic, though a person typically has more strength in one than the other, so it doesn't come out quite like it does here. I enjoyed being in Lan's POV because she's caught between wanting to do the right thing by the world that's been plunged into eternal night and also wanting to keep Odessa, her lover, safe. I also thought that Chupeco writing Lan has having PTSD after a pre-book incident was refreshing considering the number of books that just skip over the psychological effects events have on characters. This was also an area where Chupeco turned the 'healer' trope on its head a little, as Catseyes can work with physical illnesses and injuries, but also mental ones, taking on the role of healer and therapist (though obviously not for themselves), so not only do we get to see Lan experiencing PTSD, but we also see her coming to terms with it and seeking therapy-like treatment for it, which is pretty unusual in most novels. Despite being in the 'healer' role and having magic that can infect and destroy if she wishes, Lan is also skilled with a blade and hand-to-hand combat and has something of a quick temper. She's definitely the 'protector' type more than anything else and is striving to make sure everyone comes out alright in the end. Odessa comes next, because I'm grouping the characters based on where they're from and Lan and Odessa are both from Aranth. Odessa is one of the daughter-goddesses in the novel who is unaware her twin is alive. She has some kind of chronic illness that prevents her from being very active without tiring out and that Catseyes have been able to treat but not cure. In the beginning Odessa seems like she'll be a pretty good character, a little too doe-eyed and teary for my tastes, but has plenty of potential. Then she starts to get bratty and doesn't seem to have the ability to logically think things through. From a writing standpoint I really appreciate how complex Chupeco makes Odessa and I think within the plot it's super fascinating. It's even explained to us toward the end why Odessa made the sudden turn from teary-but-okay-princess to brat-with-little-rationale, so I appreciate the cleverness of how the reason was woven throughout Lan and Odessa's chapters for us to find but maybe not pinpoint exactly. However, the great reasoning behind it doesn't stop me from not liking Odessa. The weird power-imbalance Odessa has going on with Lan and their relationship that I'm not a huge favor of. They love each other, great, fantastic, I believe that and I actually think they make a great couple in the beginning of the novel. They certainly have a better set-up for a romance than Arjun and Haidee do, though their 'love' is only marginally slower moving, but I'm just a teeny bit uncomfortable with the power imbalance of Odessa being a goddess/princess and Lan being the person assigned to guard and protect her. It's one thing when Lan is serving the crown in some general 'technical' sense and the two of them are in a relationship and it's another thing entirely when Lan is serving Odessa and her mother directly. It would be better, I think, if Lan wasn't serving directly under Odessa or it was like Lan's previous relationship where both girls were rangers. While Lan has no issues disregarding Odessa's commands, the imbalance is still there and becomes a bit of a problem later, but is never fully addressed, so I'm not sure how I feel about that or about some of the scenes with Lan and dark!Odessa. The relationship has the potential in the beginning and it is, for the most part good, but then once the difference in rank and power becomes clearer and Odessa becomes darker I get just a little uncomfortable with it. Haidee is the other daughter-goddess and she lives in the Golden City on the always-day side of the planet. She's what's called a 'mechanika' in the world, but what we would classify as an engineer. She's quick on her feet, fiery, stubborn, and extremely empathetic. In one of her very first scenes she's crying over a days-dead whale, if that's any indication. As much as I love her determination, smarts, and stubbornness, her ignorance of the world and optimistic attitude do grate on my nerves at times. She's just a bit too happy-go-lucky in some instances, though it largely works out for her. I will be fair, Haidee is one of my favorites, but I feel like Chupeco set things up so that Haidee would always have things work out for her and it seems a bit too obvious at times. Despite my dislike of Odessa, things go wrong for her, sometimes very wrong, and while things do occasionally go wrong for Haidee and seem like they'll be bad, I don't ever really get the full-on sense of dread like I do with Odessa. Arjun and Haidee meet by the whale and their first scene involves them trying to kill each other. Naturally, he becomes her love interest. Arjun is, hands down, the funniest person in the entire book. He has a very dry sense of humor and can be extremely sarcastic. He follows along with the idea of prophecies and with Haidee's ideas a little to mellowly for what I'd been expecting given our introduction to him, which I think says more about the whole 'everything works out for Haidee' but than about him. I also enjoy that Arjun decided to go with a prosthetic magical rifle after he lost his hand (not a spoiler, it happened pre-book). I don't know how they engineer the things they do in the desert, but I just found it amusing that instead of engineering a hand or hook or knife or something they went with a rifle that could channel his fire magic. It really fits his personality, honestly. While Arjun's and Haidee's romance is definitely more power-balanced than Lan's and Odessa's, there are still some holes in it. Mainly that they meet and fall in love within the span of the book, which I'm pretty sure takes place over, like, a month. I love fantasy and dystopian, and sci-fi, but oh my god I am getting sick of the quick romances. Chupeco did a decent job of showing why they fell in love and how they respected each other and became friends before they fell in love, but it's still only been a month. Sorry, but I know 19-year-olds, being one and being in college, and I'm just really not certain that your 'month to love' romance is gonna last. There are different depths to love and you can love more than once, but the insta-true-love, will-survive-anything has just, for some reason, been getting on my nerves lately. Maybe in a couple months or years I'll be fine with it again, but right now I'm just not a fan, even if I do like the characters together. The mythology and general world-building in the book is also something I enjoyed. Chupeco keeps the ideas of duality, sacrifice, and "a demoness is what they call a goddess that men cannot control" going throughout the book. It centers around two young goddesses whose mother(s) are goddesses and a world that somehow stopped spinning and split into only-night and only-day, so there's obviously a lot of mythology and magic going into the base of this book. Since the 'Breaking,' as they call it, neither mother-goddess has really told the twins much about previous generations of goddesses. Odessa gets more of an education about it than Haidee does, but both are still largely left in the dark about their world's mythology, which allows Chupeco to reveal it to the reader in a way that feels natural without info-dumping. There's a lot to do with goddesses, prophecies, and rituals that starts to get unpacked in this one, but which mainly sets up for the sequel. I'm super interested in learning more about the goddesses and rituals in the next book and have plenty of theories regarding them. The duality piece of things is interesting, because you don't necessarily recognize it in the beginning or even halfway through the book. It was more toward the end that I began to see what Chupeco was doing with the night-day, ill-healthy, healer-'plague-giver' sort of balance. The goddesses are twins, as all goddesses before them have been, and that set-up is a fantastic literary device for setting up dualities. You can have the good twin vs. the evil twin, the knowledgeable vs. the ignorant, and so many other varieties, and Chupeco plays with a bit of each in each twin. Odessa knows more about their past from the start, but it's Haidee who learns more about it and their world on the way. Odessa starts out as the chronically-ill sister, but Haidee ends up drained and exhausted. Odessa becomes more and more morally complex and dark but still has soft spots, Haidee is blindingly optimistic but has moments of destructive rage. They're set up to mirror and foil one another, yet each still comes together in the end and finds strength in knowing their twin. The girls are quite similar even though the book sets up a lot of their differences. Without giving too many spoilers I can say that this is 100% reflected in where the plot takes us and the things that are revealed. In terms of world-building I thought Chupeco gave us very distinct settings, creatures, and peoples. The night-side of the world is described as very rainy and cold, with threats of storms, kraken, and icebergs. Though Lan and Odessa are only in the city for a short period of time, I remember the impression I got of it. Old bookstores, tall buildings, dreary because of the rain. This is set against the next setting Lan and Odessa experience, which is the borderlands near the Abyss. While these lands are still dark, there's more foliage described as well as eerie lakes, currents made of air that are strong enough to hold ships, and creatures of darkness and shadow. It is also here where the sky begins to lighten as they move closer to the Abyss and the always-day side of the world. This is even more different from the settings Arjun and Haidee encounter. The desert is vast and deadly, full of dangerous scorpions, an acid sea, and a sea of sand complete with sand-dolphins and sand-sea creatures. The desert is full of raiders and nomadic clans instead of shadow people, but the former can be just as deadly. The Golden City is more steampunk than the night city, Aranth, is described to be. It also seems to be full of snootier people than Aranth does, and all-in-all, despite it being a city run by a twin goddess with a twin goddess daughter, Haidee's city is a very different city from the one Lan and Odessa left. Then there's Inanna's Temple and the Abyss itself, which remind me of dawn and pure darkness, respectively, but still have their own distinct feelings and descriptions. It's very easy to get immersed in the world Chupeco has created here and it's one of those rare world-building experiences that makes me wish I could see it artistically rendered. The Never Tilting World is a good book with unique, distinct characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses that are explored throughout the book. Chupeco writes the characters relatively realistically, meaning they deal with physical and mental trauma as well as tough decisions they sometimes respond to poorly. The Arjun-Haidee romance felt kind of rushed and the Lan-Odessa romance felt like it had a power-imbalance I wasn't 100% comfortable with. Since there is another book, however, and since the Lan-Odessa romance had a lot more promise in the beginning than the middle and end, I'm hoping it'll get itself sorted out. I also dinged the book's score because of terminology that we're left to figure out for ourselves that really would've been better if it had just been explained outright. Definitely think it's a good read, though and would recommend picking it up if you enjoy fantasy.

#book #book recommendations #book review #fiction #ya fiction #fantasy #scifi #multiple pov #rin chupeco #disability representation #women of color #lgbtq #lgbtq representation #lesbian characters #magic #grey morals

[yallreddieforthis]

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Richie

Fandom: It (2017)

Pairing: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier

Rating: T (for language)

Words: 2.7k

Pre-relationship. Movie canon-compliant but not book. Also posted on AO3

The Greater Fool Series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 4.5 (NSFW) | Part 5

It seems impossible that a person can be both that shitty and the shit at the same time but like...it’s Richie. And since Richie doesn’t give a single fuck about following any kind of rules, Eddie guesses the ones that govern Eddie’s emotions don’t apply to him either. Greaaaat.

Sometimes Eddie can't believe it's Richie.

Maybe even most of the time, like when everything out of his mouth is your mom and my wang and it's just words, it's not even funny, and Eddie can only tune him out or try to talk over him. Richie cannot shut the fuck up for one goddamn second. And it's not even like Eddie can pin it to anything specific—like, oh, Richie talks more when he's angry or nervous or excited—because he does it when he's every one of those things and any other thing besides. The tone may change—the subject matter even—but the talking. Never. Stops.

Eddie doesn’t really consider himself a beacon of cultural knowledge, but he does own a TV. So he at least has a vague idea of what a British person might sound like, which is more than he can say for Richie. Richie also owns a TV, and yet his British Guy impression is so god-awful that Eddie has to assume he’s basing it on someone’s description of a fever dream they once had about a London street urchin from the eighteen hundreds. This only applies to the actual words though, not the pronunciation—which is pretty much indistinguishable from just Richie being Richie—and that’s across the board for all the voices, not just the British Guy. For someone who loves imitating other people as much as Richie does, it’s unbelievable how remarkably all his Guys sound like they’re from Derry, Maine. Because shouting out mangled phrases he half-remembers from the time he watched Mary Poppins six years ago—in the most American voice imaginable—is still somehow Richie’s interpretation of a British accent.

That isn’t even the worst part of The Voices though. The worst part is that Richie seems to have a sixth sense that alerts him to the exact moment at which it would most infuriate Eddie for him to do one, and invariably it’s as if a little light goes off in the least-developed part of his brain that says Time To Be Italian! (or Southern, or German—he has a constantly expanding, but not noticeably improving, repertoire) and it’s like he just has to do it right then. Sometimes it makes Eddie want to scream at him. Sometimes Eddie does scream at him. But screaming makes no difference; Eddie knows perfectly well that Richie will absolutely do it again the second the urge strikes him, no matter how inappropriate the timing or what Eddie does in reaction.

He's fucking gross too. Not necessarily grosser than the rest of them, but he certainly subscribes to the teenage boy brand of hygiene that dictates that he only really has to shower when Eddie finally shoves him away with a you smell like a sweaty nutsack. Of course then Richie inches closer and it's all how would you know, huh? and Eddie has to be like because I have nuts too, dipshit, and if you never wash them you'll—

And then all his warnings about bacteria and fungal infections are drowned out in the your mom and my wang and vague, half-heard rumors Richie repeats about people from school that Eddie knows aren't true, and he's pretty sure Richie doesn't even believe himself. Fuck him and his terrible, nasty-ass jokes.

Some days he thinks Richie purposely doesn't shower specifically so that he can torment Eddie with his unbearable boy stank. Or how he'll like, step in dog shit and just sort of shrug and wipe the sole of his shoe in the grass and then keep going with whatever he was doing like he's not literally tracking shit everywhere. If Eddie were to step in dog shit—which he wouldn't because he watches where he's going like a sane person—it would bring his entire day to a screeching halt. He gets that he's in the minority when it comes to these kinds of things, but he doesn't get why.

And then Richie has the audacity to suggest that Eddie's just as bad as the rest of them—when he says things like you’re convinced your shit doesn't stink, or it’s the smell of your own breath wafting back in your face—like he thinks Eddie is kind of gross too. Which shouldn't bother him, but it does. Somewhere very, very deep down in his gut he has a nagging suspicion as to why that might possibly be, but he's hell-bent on ignoring it at least until the inevitable destruction of the planet Earth, if not even longer. And that’s going like...pretty well for him. Reasonably well. Maybe a little less well than it used to be, but he's almost fourteen now and he thinks he should probably have a solid handle on the whole thing within the next couple of years.

But even if Richie wasn't either of those things—annoying, disgusting—there's nothing really exceptional that he is. It's not like he's a genius; the gigantic, goofy glasses make him look smarter than he actually is, and he gives as few shits about school as he does about anything else. Eddie is sure that Mrs. Tozier has never been to a parent-teacher conference where she didn’t hear the phrase if he only applied himself, and he’s equally sure that every one of the teachers who said it knew that they were wasting their breath. If Mrs. Tozier—or anyone else—stood even the slightest chance of motivating Richie to care about pre-algebra, there would have been upward mobility in his GPA long before now. Eddie has to assume he does at least some homework—if for no other reason than because he hasn’t been held back yet—but as far as he can tell, Richie bent over a textbook at home is a sight as yet unwitnessed by mankind.

Richie’s not athletic either—by any definition of the word—at least not until they decide to make Competitive Talking an Olympic sport. He’s really good on his bike, but that’s a skill he developed out of practicality because the alternative is being stuck walking all over Derry, and it’s not like being able to ride a bike is something to brag about because even Eddie can do that. But Richie’s not a fast runner. He can’t do a push-up unless it’s the kind that only count as push-ups when girls do them, knees on the ground. He can’t even throw a spitball into a trash can from three feet away (his performance in the Rock War against Bowers and his goons was a crazy, adrenaline-fueled exception)—and like, okay, the bad aim can probably be chalked up to his horrendous eyesight, but even beyond that there’s this general, overall lack of coordination. Eddie has what amounts to a universal pass that effectively excuses him from participating in PE for his entire school career, so he’s never been physically present for what goes down on the yard, but he can pretty much piece it together from the scrapes and bruises all over Richie’s arms and legs. It doesn’t matter what unit they’re on—dodgeball, baseball, soccer, tetherball—Richie plays only one position: target.

He doesn’t fare any better in the kind of extracurriculars that teachers and parents care about, like music. Richie is an aggressively bad singer—a fact Eddie is forcibly reminded of every time anyone has a birthday because Richie always makes a point of sandwiching Eddie between himself and someone who won’t run away (usually the birthday kid’s mom) while he belts out an eardrum-shattering rendition of Happy Birthday at the top of his lungs. Richie seems to interpret birthday party invitations as personal challenges for him to sing louder and worse, challenges he has so far risen to spectacularly on every occasion. The song gets longer each time too, because he never forgets to include Frankenstein on channel nine and the big fat lady on channel eighty and whatever new, ruder verses he’s scrounged up out of nowhere between the last birthday party and this one. Richie’s singing is actually one of the most obnoxious things about him, in Eddie’s opinion, which is really saying something.

He is so unrestrainedly, deliberately awful that Eddie could honestly imagine some idiot adult who doesn’t know Richie listening to him screech the chorus of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go over and over in Eddie’s ear (the newest sabotage tactic he’s been deploying at the arcade to try to make Eddie lose at Street Fighter) and thinking wow, maybe that kid actually has a beautiful singing voice but doesn’t want anyone to know because he’s worried people will make fun of him. They would be wrong, of course, because even when he’s not actively trying to suck, Richie can’t sing for shit. Eddie doesn’t have to know anything about music to be able to tell that Richie’s real singing voice—the one he almost never uses—is flat and off-key. And forget about instruments because whenever someone makes the mistake of letting him get his hands on one, he immediately tries to shove it down his pants—or worse, Eddie’s pants—and pretend it’s a wang.

There’s art—and Eddie has noticed that being a really good artist can absolve someone of the sin of sucking at everything else. Bill, for example, is talented enough with watercolor pencils that if he drew people’s attention to his sketches, he could probably get away with not knowing how to write a half-decent thesis statement or multiply fractions (even though Bill does know how to do those things) because people would just affix the tortured artist label to him and stop giving him shit about the stutter. And Richie actually draws a lot—probably as much as Bill if it’s purely a question of quantity over quality—it’s just that the only things he seems to be interested in drawing are dicks, and the places he chooses to draw them are all technically the property of the Derry Public School District. Also, his fine motor skills are at least as bad as his gross ones, because his handwriting looks the way his singing voice sounds, and the dicks he draws make Eddie question if Richie has ever even looked in his own pants before.

And yet, despite all of the incontrovertible evidence that Richie is actually a walking disaster, there are other times that Eddie can't believe it’s not Richie to everyone else. Or even like anyone else.

It could be argued that it’s almost inevitable due to the sheer volume of jokes he tells, but every so often Richie will get one absolutely, unassailably right. His timing, his word choice—the heavens open, the planets align, and suddenly everybody around him is laughing so hard they can't breathe, Eddie included. His eyes usually end up watering when it happens, but he squints through them to look at Richie because in those moments, Richie glows like nothing else. He tries to act like it isn’t a big deal that everyone is pissing themselves from whateverthefuck he just blurted out of his incessantly flapping mouth hole, but Eddie can tell how thrilled he is when people actually find him funny. It's happening more and more often nowadays, enough so that Eddie sometimes wonders if maybe Richie is wasting his time at school after all. And who needs sports or music or art anyway?

And he could be a whole lot worse about Eddie’s germ thing if he wanted to be, like how some people give him hell about the pills and the inhaler and the hand washing. Richie doesn’t have detergent hands but he sure as shit will mouth off to anybody who gives Eddie a hard time about his. He can’t say Richie doesn’t at least try to look out for him, in his own weird way. Or Bill, or Stan, or Mike, or any of them. It causes more trouble than it’s worth more often than not, especially because Richie doesn’t have any discernable muscle with which to back up his shit-talking, so it probably would honestly be better if he would just like...not. But Eddie can’t really help appreciating it all the same.

But the hardest thing to ignore about Richie—and Eddie wouldn’t admit this to anyone, even under threat of death by clown—is that his memories of what Richie did for him over the summer have become a kind of personal, private shield against fear. They all try to avoid thinking about It as much as they reasonably can (which isn’t much; it’s not like you just go and forget about the time you and all your friends climbed down a haunted well so you could almost get eaten by a demon clown in the sewers), but Eddie’s positive he isn’t the only one who lies awake at night when the sound of his own pounding heartbeat is making him too nauseous to sleep.

The lights are off because it’s almost worse when they’re on. Maybe if he can’t see It coming, it’ll just eat him real fast and get it over with before he even knows what hit him. Still, he doesn’t want to die—instantly is preferable to slowly, but even better is not at all. So he’s developed a set of dozens of little rules for himself to follow—like no turning over, no breathing too deeply, no limbs outside the covers, no long, slow blinks (quick ones are okay; otherwise it’s eyes all the way closed or all the way open). Realistically he knows that not a single one of these rules means jack shit to anyone outside his own brain, but somehow no-ing himself into what amounts to a vegetative state eventually bores him to sleep. Okay, usually it does. More like occasionally. Actually it’s only worked like twice, but whatever. He’ll take what he can get at this point.

Sometimes Eddie thinks he has it worse than anyone else. Well, maybe not worse than Bill. But the rest of them—he isn’t sure if any of them can really understand exactly how fucking useless he felt down in that god-forsaken lair with his arm in a cast. Bill and Beverly were awesome, Mike was like a goddamn soldier, Stan was great after he’d finished crying and even Ben, who Eddie basically thinks of as the most inoffensive kid on the planet, was tough as balls. And Eddie felt like a worthless piece of shit. He hates his arm for being broken, and he hates his nightmares for always including the broken arm. It’s coming at him—just him—and his arm is hanging limply and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do—

And that’s where Richie comes in. Only when he thinks about Richie bitching Bill out for getting them all into this shit situation while inching toward the mountain of broken toys, Richie grabbing a baseball bat and saying now I’m going to have to kill this fucking clown...only then does the terror that surrounds him all through the night start to ease up.

And then he thinks a little further back about when he fell through the floor and broke his arm in the first place, about how all his friends were crowding him and freaking the fuck out, and Richie just looked at his arm and said he was going to set the break and snapped his bone back into place while Eddie shrieked at him to do not fucking touch me. Just like, grabbed his arm where it was dangling the wrong way and fucking did it.

Sometimes… Sometimes Eddie is positive that if It were to show up in his house on any given night, Richie would immediately come crashing through his bedroom window, swinging a baseball bat. Because somehow Richie would know if It returned, would know It was coming for Eddie, would show up in time. He’d show up and keep his shit together while Eddie couldn’t. He’d probably sometimes miss with the bat, but Eddie kind of suspects that it wouldn’t matter. Richie would stand between Eddie and It and just sort of suck all the scary out of the room with his endless, pointless trash-talking. And when Eddie thinks about it that way, it’s like you know what? Screw John McClane; Richie Tozier is Eddie’s hero.

And then Richie sticks his sweaty armpit in Eddie’s face and goddamn it Eddie can’t believe it’s Richie.

#it (2017) #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #my fics #pre-relationship #the greater fool #sorry i'm an old person and it took me a million years to figure out how to post fics on tumblr

[andranikolayi]

Gxrls Can’t Mix - misogyny and discrimination in the electronic music world

originally appeared online in Romanian for Revista Cutra

A brief note about this translation

I initially wrote this text in July for Romanian intersectional feminist mag CUTRA and they published it mid September. The focus was supposed to be on events that did take place locally, however, this summer there’s been a constant stream of tweets from female-identified and enby djs/producers about their horrendous Boiler Room experiences.

I wanted to shine a light on that and the endemic kind of sexism that boiler room is constantly facilitating and refuses to take any responsibility towards, as well as share some of the horrors from the Romania scene that nobody wants to talk about because we still live in a very homophobic, racist and sexist environment. As a local queer artist myself, I do believe it is our duty to speak up on these issues even if it may negatively affect our social/professional life. The local community leaders do know what they need to do in order to create safer, more inclusive spaces yet prefer to use a superficially woke discourse that looks good online, yet they would never take direct action or present an unpopular opinion.

Having spoken to Ceci after their Boiler Room and their scary bad experience (including receiving multiple death threats), it became increasingly clear that this text needed to exist in the world. Also running into Lakuti last week in Berlin and hearing how traumatized she still is after her experience playing in Romania, I was all the more motivated to translate it into English and make this available for everyone.

It may be sprawling at times, but I think it’s important to present a translation of the original published material, as it appears on the CUTRA website. Please keep in mind that CUTRA is not a music/dj-specific publication so certain aspects of the industry come with very ELI5 explanations.

First I thought she was just messing with us, but now i m starting to think that this girl doesn’t know what she’s doing

This is boring room not boiler room

Are they trying to put us to bed and broadcasting Schumann resonances?

She would have been better at spinning pizzas than records

Go back to the kitchen!

 These are just a select few from the over 2000 comments of the very first Boiler Room live stream taking place in Romania. Said comments appeared on the initial Facebook live post. The event took place in July 2016. At the time of writing this article [na – july 2019], all the comments are still publicly visible on their page.

I could probably write a thesis on misogyny in electronic music, but for this particular piece I’d like to focus on the following question: why do we saying that gxrls can’t mix?

I would also like to ask the follow up questions: should we be surprised that colleagues from the Romanian club industry would say that a female-identified person is a sick DJ but „a little too homely” to play a certain club? Or that another person I used to consider a close friend would tell me during a b2b set that because he just took some MDMA I looked like „a juicy piece of meat” to him? Or how when Electronic Beats Romania did their first feature on local producer Admina and they didn’t even know who to contact from the magazine to moderate the deluge of hateful comments? Or how nobody even bats an eye at the way industry men here always tend to grab you by the lower waist when talking to you in the club as if it were the most natural thing in the world? Try to explicitly say something and you would be instantly labelled an „unchill bitch”.

The answer is a resounding yes. We should be surprised, as well as angry and concerned enough to start actively doing something about this.

Miss I’s Boiler Room

 On July 6th, 2016, the promoters behind the Interval event and festival series put together the very first Boiler Room in Romania. For those of you less familiar with the club world, Boiler Room is a platform that organizes events specifically designed to broadcast a live video stream of the club experience. Think DJs mixing or musicians doing live sets, while also making a point in filming the audience and their reactions to the music. Since its inception in 2010, Boiler Room has become a global phenomenon, with immense pull in the industry. The project is equally revered and reviled to the point that there are parody YouTube channels (see People of Boiler Room). For most artists, being on Boiler Room is a make or break moment, sort of like a calling card highlighting your skill as a DJ.

Promoters, fellow DJs, agents and ravers all follow Boiler Room religiously. The platform’s increased popularity and growing volume of videos produced per week may have slightly decreased its influence due to sheer oversaturation, being on BR is still the highlight of many up-and-coming artists’ career. Unlike a mix, the BR videos don’t just physically show off your mixing skills, but they also document the audience’s reaction in real time. Oh, and as a DJ you only get 60 minutes to give it your best. Or, as with Miss I in the following example, you’ve just been asked to open the very first BR broadcast ever from your country. Miss I is one of the most beloved local female DJs, also responsible for opening the first vinyl only record store in Romania and highly appreciated in the minimal/deep house scene, so you know there’s gonna be eyeballs. But no pressure, u do u grrrrl.

For every Boiler Room event, the broadcast is livestreaming on their website and Facebook page. Reading the live reactions on the chatroom and Facebook comments is intricately related to the experience. On that humid summer afternoon in a rooftop garden in Rahova, the comments that started pouring just a few minutes into her set were absolutely shocking. The level and volume of vitriol had greatly surpassed the BR staff’s expectations. About 40 minutes in, the host publicly posted a call out comment.

However, while researching this article, I was surprised to discover that most of said harmful and sexist comments were still up online. There were no attempts on behalf of the BR team to warn or ban users. Hell, there was no moderation. But maybe there should have been.

The Boiler Room Effect

Part I - San Francisco Pride, 2019

This story took place in 2016. We could easily justify what had happened by claiming we don’t like to talk about gender politics at the club or how, generally speaking, the Eurominimal/tech-house scene the event was catering to is notoriously populated by aggro cishet bros who worship Villalobos. Unfortunately (surprise surprise!), this has not been the first, nor the last online scandal Boiler Room has been responsible for.

During the writing process for this material, initially meant to focus mainly on Romanian issues, I started paying attention to the comments on recent BR livestreams. This process, coupled with the increased number of artist friends talking about the backlash in the comments following their BR streams I was seeing on Twitter lead me to believe in the dire necessity of live moderators for the entire BR social media. These comments are not just mean spirited or unfunny trolling, they can be incredibly harmful and have a lasting negative effect.

On June 1st 2019, Boiler Room organized a Pride-related event in San Francisco where an artist I not only appreciate but happen to occasionally work with made their debut. Ceci aka CCL is a DJ, producer, co-founder of queer collective TUF and [at the time of publishing] agent working for Discwoman, an NYC-based talent agency created to boost womxn and non-binary artists. CCL identifies as non-binary and uses only they/them pronouns. Being AFAB and feminine presenting, they are often misgendered due to their presentation, even after clearly stating their preferences.

In the beginning of the video, the host does use their correct pronouns, but most people in the comments were still referring to them by using she/her pronouns. This might seem like a minor inconvenience compared to the bulk of the discourse happening below the stream, mostly comprised of people complaining about the music, ranging from how weird the selection is, whether or not that sound is a faulty cable and how bad their technical skills were. Later Ceci confessed they even received actual death threats. All this was happening at a Pride-related event in one of the gayest cities in the world and with a line-up specifically tailored for the occasion.

Being misgendered is always a bad experience, but when it happens during what is supposed to be a career-defining moment, the effect is even more traumatic. Besides, a torrent of sexist and negative comments cannot have a positive effect on anyone, regardless of their gender or sexual identity. Especially with BR, this only seems to happen when female-identified or non-binary artists are concerned. In CCL’s case, the misgendering may have not been the most atrocious part of the online response, however we do need to start implementing such habits as not assuming one’s gender or choice of pronouns. It may seem like a small step, but it does make a world of difference.

What Boiler Room continuously refuse to do is acknowledge the influence it carries in the industry and the responsibility that comes with that. BR could have avoided causing a lot of damage by simply adding a little blurb about the artist’s preferred pronouns in the description of the Facebook live video, for the users tuning in later or not familiar with their work.

It’s this kind of thoughtfulness and concern for the actual scenes they feature that is consistently lacking from their approach.

Part II - The Sherelle Incident

 In March 2019, a different incident took over both the online and offline music discourse – for approximately two whole weeks, all you could see on Techno Twitter were reactions to Sherelle’s Boiler Room. In short, there was clip of a POC female-identified DJ from the UK playing bass and jungle to a packed room going totally berserk until someone from the audience touches the CDJs and the music stops. This unwanted intervention coming from an unidentified hand created a meme-worthy WTF reaction. To nobody’s surprise, this snipped was the one Boiler Room chose to use as their preview advertising her set online. All of a sudden, her startled face in the clip was all anyone could think of, not the incredible atmosphere she created. Yewande Adeniran  wrote a thoughtful piece on the implications and how said “accident” took the discourse away from a moment that was supposed to be just about Sherelle and her skills as a DJ.

Following the incident, the Twitter community managed to ID the person who caused the hubbub, who turned out to be infamous UK DJ Riz la Teef, who was also playing the event. Online, he’s been bombarded with accusations of racism and misogyny to the point of having to delete his account. However, a wave of reputed DJs and producers jumped to his defense and justified his action. Keeping in mind that most of what we call Techno Twitter is comprised of people from/who live in North American, their argument was that his unwarranted intrusion was in fact a very common practice from the UK grime/bass culture. 

Known as a wheel up or to turn up, it consists on moving the jog (the little CDJ wheelie thingie) to rewind the track playing and increase the hype. It’s traditionally considered a sign of appreciation and supposed to be very flattering when your friends/fellow DJs perform it. Think of it as a hands-on rewind. Only in this case his attempt failed and the only thing he managed to accomplish was create a whole lot of confusion. Plus, they were friends and earlier in the clip you can see him come say hi and hug her. In true Internet fashion, think pieces from major publications followed, educating the poor American kids on the wheel up, as well as photos with the two hugging and making peace, telling everyone it’s time to chill out. As for Sherelle’s part, I’m actually curious what else was she supposed to do than say something along the lines of “OK, fine, let’s move on”? It’s already hard enough to break through in the industry as a queer black woman, the last thing you want to do is be that unchill bitch who can’t take a joke.

Our Daily Misogyny

Going back the shitty things that happened in Romania chapter, I want to talk about an incident that happened in October 2016 at a Queer Night party in Guesthouse. To give you a little context, Queer Night is a series of queer parties, the first of its kind, co-run by local choreographer/dancer Paul Dunca and DJ/singer Cosima von Bulowe for over a decade. Guesthouse is a club mainly associated with the Rominimal/tech-house cult, with a pretty cishet, homophobic audience. However, they occasionally host the odd underground event, like DJ Stingray or Lena Willikens. This particular event was a collaborative effort between Queer Night and the Interval (the people responsible for the Romanian Boiler Rooms – na) curatorial teams, who invited queer womxn DJ couple Lakuti and Tama Sumo to do an extended back to back set. Lerato Khathi aka Lakuti is an incredibly talented DJ from South Africa, who also runs the label and talent agency Uzuri and Tama Sumo has an extensive DJ career and also books for Panoramabar.

As Lerato was mixing, a guy standing in front of the booth reaches towards the turntables and touches the record that was playing and the music glitches. Lerato simply froze for a second but continues to carry on mixing. A few minutes later, said guy suddenly appears behind the booth (access to the booth and the backstage area requires a separate bracelet) and tries to get her attention and starts touching her. In that moment, Tama rushes in and extracts the person from the booth. In spite of his highly inappropriate conduct at event that promotes safe spaces, the security staff refused to kick him out of the club for a fuzzy array of reasons – friends with the owner, being a “house regulars” and my favorite “he didn’t beat up anyone” line. Considering the organizers’ credo and position as community leaders, they could have done more than simply trying to minimize the incident.

The rest of the night went well and their set was lovely, but talking to them the next morning, the entire experience didn’t sound like just a minor incident of a someone being an asshole: Lerato confessed that even though she traveled and played all across the globe, she’s never experienced anything remotely similar.

I’d love to be able to say that these stories are just rare occurrences. Unfortunately, being in the music industry reflects a much more grim reality of endemic sexism. Let me suggest a little exercise – take for example any Boiler Room video on Youtube where there are female-identified performers and within the first dozen comments you might something along the lines of “she can’t mix”, “great selection but her technique is lacking” or “X guy did this so much better in the ‘90s”.

Perhaps we all know by now that commenting on a womxn’s appearance is a no-no. Yet I still constantly hear various industry men making comments that womxn like Peggy Gou or Jayda G only got where they are now just because they’re hot. (How come nobody calls out Marcel Dettman for looking like a model I ask you?). Unlike jabs at someone’s looks which are easy to dismiss as harmful, commenting on someone’s “skill” and “technique” are seemly OK because they refer to an objective (they say) variable, easy to judge and quantify. I ask you this – doesn’t this all sound terribly familiar? Perhaps using the same arguments as those right wing Youtube personalities that post videos with titles such as „X DESTROYS feminists with FACTS and LOGIC”?

Consequences of the systemic sexism are starting to pop up everywhere, from Resident Advisor closing down their comments section due to the amount of harassment related to their recent focus on female artists to the petition against Giegling’s Konstantin. For a quick reminder, German DJ Konstantin used a bunch of “biological determinism” arguments in an interview trying to explain why he believes women don’t have the right kind of brain for mixing. In 2018, Konstantin was booked to perform at three major parties during Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), a key annual gathering for the electronic music industry. A petition signed by thousands of fellow DJs, music journalists and electronic music artists circulated online to have him blackballed due to his comments and half-assed apology that followed. Unfortunately, the only result was the ADE organizers offering him even more exposure by inviting him to talk about his actions on a live panel.

This kind of discourse is very dangerous, as by accepting and normalizing it we’re offering it unwarranted legitimacy to the point that opinions such as Konstantin’s start being reiterated by the press. After this year’s Movement festival in Detroit (the birthplace of techno), a journalist in a local newspaper writing a piece on the women’s rising visibility in electronic music, cited a “veteran DJ” who claimed women lack the technical capabilities to mix and rely on laptops and software in order to do their job. Despite this not being the author’s argument, he chose to offer a platform to a blatantly misogynistic opinion. These positions are not just wrong and should be called out for their obvious sexism, but perpetuating them in the press further increases their destructive power. The more we will continue to validate them, the more present they will become.

And still, why do we keep saying gxrls can’t mix?

Are girls really all lacking in the rhythm department? Commenting on one’s ability to mix is still one of the most widespread forms of criticism that AFAB and female-identified persons get. Why is it so widespread?

Through mixing, the art that defines the modern dance music DJ, most people understand creating a story through a continuous body of variegated music but particularly having no pause between the tracks. When industry people talk about mixing, they usually refer to beatmatching, which is usually means blending two or more tracks, often of different tempos or keys. The overall tempo of the DJ’s mix can remain constant or experience subtle increases across their set. This style of mixing, using long transitions, no tempo changes and working within the same musical subgenre throughout is particularly appreciated in Eurominimal and tech-house, which is also the most lucrative part of the industry in places like France, Germany and Romania. As many talented DJs have proven over the years, from legends like Larry Lavan or David Mancuso and their cosmic or loft deeply personal, eclectic styles, the perfect blends same tempo school is by no means the only “right” way to think about a dancefloor.

At a time when dance music has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry, the “perfect mix” paradigm became the dominant style. In this climate, to be a DJ is synonymous with knowing how to mix, otherwise you don’t exist. Or at least that’s the androcentric perspective. And once you frame things like this, the comments on womxn’s “technical skills” stem from the same sexist pool as saying womxn are not good at math/science/driving or other “men’s” activities. After all, they’re just being objective, right? “Oh my god it’s not like I said she was fat or something!”

Mixing is a learned skill that requires practice to be perfected. The portion of the population who is encouraged to learn skills that involve music and technology, who is not discriminated against and has access to often costly equipment (be it controllers, CDJs or turntables) is overwhelmingly cis, straight and male. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the “I don’t have a mix online/nowhere to practice because my ex bf had all the equipment” story. Or gxrls saying they never learned how to mix because they didn’t have access to equipment. Or the supportive “nice guy” story who invites you over to “teach you how to mix” but quickly loses his interest once you reject his sexual advances.

It’s refreshing to see groups like Room 4 Resistance, No Shade or Discwoman not only organizing events, but also putting together free mixing workshops for womxn and non-binary people. People are also trying to change things in Romania, with groups like Corp. or Queer Night trying to tilt the gender imbalance locally, only unfortunately their efforts are lacking the infrastructure, institutional support and ideological consistency.

 Where to Now?

 We’re in 2019. DJs like The Black Madona, Josey Rebelle or Octo Octa and Eris Drew are some of the most in-demand people in the circuit. They all approach the dancefloor differently and bring unique views of what a DJ set can be. Yet straight white boys are feeling threatened by their success and are constantly looking for arguments to delegitimize their success. “Yeah, but this person is getting booked everywhere just because it’s cool to be trans now” – as if anyone would go through the intense process of forever altering your body just because queer is “in”! “Oh if I had tits I would get more gigs” – another male DJ I used to call a friend told me when I started playing more in Bucharest. I’ve heard phrases like “but why do women only book other women?” or “how can the super talented boys ever breakthrough in this environment if women are getting all the attention?” more times than I can recount.

Straight white boys need to shut the fuck up! For decades, the vast majority of people in charge of running/booking clubs were straight white men who would only book other straight white men. Yes, there we certainly do see more womxn in line ups, but just as female:pressure cares to remind us periodically, the percentage is still predominantly male. The healthiest path towards building a more diverse and inclusive music world is not having the old gatekeepers trying to educate themselves and perform acts of tokenism, but make space for marginalized people in decision-making positions, because nobody could make more informed, coherent and inspired choices than a person who is deeply involved in the community. Just see Discwoman’s Frankie miracle work over at Bossa Nova Civic in NYC. And it is very likely that with the right people running the show, incidents of abuse and harassment will diminish as well.

Womxn have been so used to be touched without consent and constantly harassed that we’ve been programmed to dismiss such indiscretions as minor inconveniences, something that “comes with the territory”. In order to see an improvement of this state of affairs we have to become more radical in our attitudes against sexism and discrimination. We absolutely need to learn to speak up whenever we encounter misogyny, racism, homo and transphobia and, most importantly, believe womxn when they come forward with a story of abuse of boundaries crossing because whenever we brush it off with things like “he was drunk”, “it was just a joke” or “there are two sides to every story”, we become complicit and contribute to this toxic culture.

The good news is that we can all contribute to changing things. And no, you don’t have to go to a march or join an organization if you want to help out. Change starts in your own immediate community by simply calling out your friends when they say something sexist, not supporting the known abusers and problematic people in the industry and just coming out to see one of the local womxn artists.

We will continue to play, to defend the DJ booth as sometimes the only safe space we might have at the club, to record our music however we can and become ten times better than all male DJs who told us we don’t know, we can’t or we “don’t have the necessary biological conformation”. But, most importantly, we’ll keep making people dance.

images, in order of appearance

queer night at apollo 111, 2017

miss i boiler room, 2016

edited screengrab from comments in the miss i boiler room facebook stream

crowd at miss i boiler room, 2016

ccl at rewire, 2019

all photos courtesy of the author

#gxrls cant mix #cutra #boiler room #sexism

[marxistduboisist]

An open letter to Scott H. of MassLine.org on Marx’s value-analysis

Scott,

I really appreciate your efforts as an archivist. Nevertheless, I think that you’re badly mixed up about Marx’s theory of value in your posts here and here. You seem to simply ignore Marx’s claim that the value-analysis is an explanation of human social relationships, into which only humans can enter. This is a central point, but one that you seem to never acknowledge. Indeed, you repeatedly wonder why Marx says that machines cannot create value, as if he had not repeatedly said in the first chapter of Capital that value is a social relationship among people, not a natural relationship of people to things. It is as though you had criticized some person A for saying that democracy is basically a relationship between human beings by saying that voting machines and the physical locations of polling places matter, too, and therefore person A had failed to explain why voting machines are not participants in a democracy—it’s just self-evident that they are not participating in the same way that humans are, even if they have some role.

I’ll go into some more detail. As a preliminary, I should say that Steedman’s book, which you refer to as definitive without actually citing it or reproducing the argument, is based on a misunderstanding of Marx’s transformation tables. The “values” on the left-hand side of the transformation table are intended to be cost-prices, not values. With that change, the entirety of Steedman’s argument comes crashing down. See Fred Moseley’s book Money and Totality, or the appendix to Shane Mage’s dissertation. There is no serious conceptual proof given in Steedman; it’s purely algebraic and the algebra, though in itself correct, is based on a misunderstanding of Marx. Let’s set that aside because Moseley’s argument is extremely clear and he can argue the point better than I can in a short letter.

Next, I want to address your claim that machines can create surplus-value. First, I want to note that your retention of any language of value or labor is inconsistent with your analysis, so you should simply drop the language of value entirely. To say that a machine produces more value is nonsense from Marx’s point of view since he believes that value is by definition the representation of validly-social human labor in the form of the product of another human’s validly-social labor; value is the capitalist equivalent of someone receiving a work-credit or chit in a socialist society: a horse or an espresso-machine cannot receive a work-credit in a socialist society, and neither of those classes of non-human thing, nor any other non-human thing, is paid in capitalist society for its role in production. They do not engage in value relations. If you accept that this point is correct, as anybody should, then you can see why it is true to say that a machine literally cannot create human labor: because it is not a human with the right [0] of self-determination and obligations. It can work in a physiological sense, but it cannot labor in a way that will be recognized as human labor; that’s why we do not pay machines or animals or natural resources money for their (physiological) work. Let me try to make this point clear with an analogy. If you were to observe someone voting in an election or telling a friend “I love you”, you would see someone engaging in a social act and also expending physical energy in a particular way. Now, you could tell a computer voice program to tell someone “I love you” or program a machine to draw a check-mark on a piece of paper next to someone’s name, but it is obvious that the machine, though expending physical energy in the same way and at the same task, would not actually be expressing love or voting. [1] Those actions are not socially accepted as being the activity of human beings, even if it bears some resemblance to human activity. They’re cases of a machine imitating a human. That’s not a distinction that I or anyone else is coming up with from out of thin air; that it is a meaningful description of human society and the way that it works. Even if you choose to believe otherwise, it is a fact that society sees a difference.The physiological motion might be identical to that of a human, but the social meaning is totally different. Humans, just like any mammal, have certain relations that they share only among themselves; this is part of what it means to be a species.

When you give that long list in your follow-up letter to Frank S of reasons why human labor is not physiologically unique, concluding that labor surely therefore could not be the only source of surplus-value, you come so close to understanding this point, but you seem determined not to understand it. Let me again have recourse to an analogy: it is absolutely true that, for example, a wolf is no different from a lion in the sense that a lion and a wolf are capable of many, perhaps all, of the same sorts of physical activities. It might take some careful investigation to figure out just what makes them different, and they may have virtually the same set of skills or physical capabilities anyways. Is it then correct to argue that therefore there can be no difference between a lion and a wolf? Of course not, according not only to biologists, but also lions and wolves alike. It’s a sin of an extreme “naturalistic materialism”, of the sort which Marx rejected explicitly, to slur together these things simply because they are alike in some ways. By analogy, you forget that not only is it only humans who create surplus-value, but more importantly and more fundamentally, they are the only beings who can create value. Marx says that price is just an expression of a social relationship; humans are the only kind of creature who can engage directly in a social relationship. It’s just that simple; in fact, your understanding of this point lags behind those bourgeois economists who attribute to “human creativity” or “entrepreneurial drive” a central role in the economy; they at least understand that the economy is a social thing in which non-human things play only a mediating role. You simply obliterate the difference between people and machines and suggest that machines are capable, at present, of directly entering into social relationships as human beings. This is false. A machine, at present, does not engage in the process of receiving credit for participating in the social division of labor; nor does it want to; nor do people desire to so credit it. Assume a simple market society: when you buy a dowel rod from you neighbor, you pay her for her labor and the labor that went into her tools. You do not pay the tools. It’s just that simple.

Let’s go further and discuss your misconceptions around surplus-value. The above is somewhat polemical in that I am guessing that you would say that you also agree that human labor is different socially from non-human labor, although you do not correctly follow this difference to its conclusion (or else Marx’s argument about the sole source of surplus-value being human labor would immediately be apparent). Your misconception that machines can ever create value is the root error. But, you also make several separate, if related, errors in your analysis of surplus-value. These errors are actually things that you explicitly, rather than implicitly, communicate, so I would like to investigate these since this might appear fairer.

The second central mistake you make is the claim that Marx gave “no good answer to this question” of “[j]ust what is so special about direct human labor when it comes to creating surplus value”. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re revealing your own unfamiliarity with the source texts here: it’s fine to say that you think Marx’s answer is wrong, but intellectual honesty demands that you at least acknowledge that he gave an answer and that you, if you are reviewing his work, reproduce it accurately. You sneer at people “who read their Marx years ago, and have long accepted Marx’s labor theory of value”, but you yourself do not bother actually giving an account of Marx’s argument and then giving a precise, clear criticism. You don’t even explicitly relay what Marx’s argument is! [2] Even worse, the version that you imply is Marx’s argument is a complete and utter misrepresentation; not a technical mistake or a terminological goof, but a true piece of misrepresentation.

You first suggest, as noted above, that someone might think that “this special property of human labor is due to some special characteristics of human beings themselves”, in the sense of their properties such as “intelligence, ingenuity, creativity”, before rejecting it. This is correct, but it also exactly Marx’s point. What allows human workers to create surplus-value is a social relation between them, not a special physiological property of humans as against other inputs into the production process.

But you also imply (albeit earlier in your argument) that what allows something to create surplus-value is the property of not-being-used-up in the production process, in other words, not being physically destroyed or transformed into some other physical substance after one round of production. You write: “Marx’s version of the LTV claims that only human labor can create surplus value (i.e., value beyond that which is used up in the production process)”. That you hold this conception is made clear when you write that “even the most simple tool may well [produce surplus-value] (assuming it is itself not invariably ‘used up’ (destroyed) in the production of each new commodity” and then go on to say that

[n]ot every commodity used in the production process can contribute to surplus value, however! The raw materials that go into the commodity being produced are used up in the process, and—as Marx said—only contribute as much value to the new commodity as is already incorporated into them. Raw materials, despite being commodities, do not contribute to surplus value” (my bolding).

Unfortunately, you completely fail to understand Marx in this regard and you confuse use-value with value. Use-values may be used up in the sense that it is completely obliterated when it is done being used; value is transferred and cannot be “used up” in this sense of being destroyed or dissipated (you seem to understand this in one place above but you also say above that surplus-value is only created if more value is “left over” than what is “used up”; this difference is absolutely essential). [3] Value does not disappear. What this means in more prosaic terms is that a capitalist charges for the input price of constant capital. The consumer pays that price; it is not that the price is “used up”, but the physical material of the constant capital. Value in Marx’s sense cannot be “used up”; [4] it can only be amortized, or transferred to the product and paid by the consumer. This is important to note because it is in this sense that constant capital is all the same, whether it consists of circulating or fixed capital (raw materials or machinery and other tools): both have their value transferred to the final product by workers, whether they are totally used up after one round of production or not. The only difference is the length of time which it takes to be transferred.

This leads us to the most flagrant mistake you make, which is that you say of Marx

[h]e is right in claiming that no more than the value embodied in the machine can be transferred to any single commodity produced with the machine, but he forgets here that the machine can be used over and over again to transfer a certain amount of value to each of a great number of output commodities

I have to be honest here: you simply do not know what Marx said about this. I don’t wish to be needlessly rude, but when you’re accusing someone “on your side” of a mistake that would be so truly child-like and idiotic, you should make sure that you have a firm ground to stand on. Marx clearly says that the cost of a machine (its value) is amortized over the total amount of commodities that can be produced using the machine over its lifetime, not amortized across a single, individual commodity only. This is detailed at length in Section Two of Chapter 15 of Capital. The fact that you say that you “haven’t looked up the passage [your]self” and therefore have not even double-checked (or possibly not even read) the material which you claim contains a truly idiotic mistake is evidence of sloppy scholarship. You are simply wrong about this textually. Marx does not say that the entire value of a machine is amortized across only a single commodity which can be produced with the machine, but the entire body of commodities which can be produced with the machine. It therefore cannot create surplus-value. The longer-lasting the machine, the more products over which its value is spread and the less value it contributes to each.

But let us finally discuss your theory’s implications, although the fact that you so badly misunderstand Marx’s own argument is already grounds for dismissing your criticism. First, let’s deal with some of the most immediate implications. Why, in your theory, would a capitalist who produces the machines which can create surplus-value not simply charge more for them, knowing that they are worth more than the value for which they are presently sold? There is only one social agent which cannot charge for the full value for the use of its commodity, which is workers. This is because workers are structurally-marginalized; they have no other options than to sell their commodity at the going rate. That is why workers can be a source of surplus-value. But why would machine-making capitalists be in the same position? You don’t even pose this (obvious) question, much less solve it.

Let’s also note that on your view, some odd results emerge if we consider the implication that a machine might end up adding more cost to the good than it entered the production process with (which is what it means to produce surplus-value). Let’s say that I have a lemonade stand and that I charge $50 for 100 large jugs of lemonade I made using an hour of labor at the going rate of $15 and $30 worth of raw materials; let’s assume that the $15/hour which I pay myself is not a reflection of all of the labor that goes into my production, and let’s say that I can sustainably charge, on top of that $45, $5 worth of “surplus” labor since the average rate of profit is around 11 percent (≈ 5/45)—effectively, I exploit myself at the rate of 33 percent (=5/15). Let’s say that the industry changes so that now all producers use a machine that lets them produce just as much lemonade with the same raw materials and only a third of the labor-time. Let’s say that the machine costs $14.99. So, according to Marx’s theory, I can now produce 100 jugs of lemonade ($30 of raw materials plus $5 of labor plus $14.99 of machine) for $49.99. The price has fallen, as has the rate of profit, assuming the rate of exploitation is the same. But, on this theory, the machine will be introduced by the “first mover” because it gave her a temporary super-profit; all producers must follow suit in order to remain competitive, even though the rate of profit overall falls. What does your theory say in regard to the same situation? I can’t tell how you think the rate of surplus-value on machines would be set, but let’s assume that in this case, at a minimum, the machine must produce in this scenario one unit of the smallest currency unit we have, so a penny on top of $14. In such a case, the price of the lemonade will fail to fall ($49.99 + 0.01 = $50, the price we started with), and if the machine rate of surplus value is anything larger than 0.01/14 (which is basically zero), then the price of the lemonade will actually rise over time, even though it has become cheaper to produce in terms of its cost. If a machine necessarily produces surplus-value because it allows us to reuse human labor, the producer can’t possibly charge anything less than what she charged before, even though her money-costs have fallen. But this would drive consumers away! Somebody working with the old machinery would actually make more money by selling at a more competitive price and the machine would fail to be introduced. Obviously, my example involves certain assumptions, but the point is that in the real world, the logic of the market would require producers to introduce the machine on my (and Marx’s) assumptions, but on your assumptions, the producer would fail to introduce it unless the machine actually did not add surplus-value (you might say that we should assume that the machine added less than 0.01 cents of surplus-value, but if it cannot be realized in price, it cannot be realized as surplus-value—you have to assume, at a minimum, that if someone produces surplus-value, they at least produce one cent of it, or else it is an economically fictional category). If what you’re saying is true, then capitalists would face a very strange set of incentives: they have an incentive to push down workers’ wages as far as possible (i.e., to raise the rate of surplus-value as much as possible for people) but they had better be careful in making sure that machines do not produce too much surplus-value or else the price of the good will actually rise (since the cost of a machine cannot be reduced, since it is what a capitalist paid for it, and that’s that).

In summary, you fail to understand that value is a social relationship among humans, just as is gender or feudalism. You incorrectly argue that Marx thinks that constant capital transfers all of its value to the product in one round of production, which simply and openly contradicts his own words. You mistakenly draw the inference, therefore, that machines are somehow capable of creating additional human labor, which is an overt category error. And, finally, your theory oddly predicts that capitalists would actually want to minimize the surplus-value that machines produce (because it might make a new production technique less cost-efficient than an old production technique), which contradicts what we know about capitalists. [5]

I appreciate the work that you do on your sites, but I wish you had read Marx more carefully and considered these points before posting such a lengthy set of articles.

— Seratsky, 15 July 2019.

[0] This is meant in the practical sense of “right”, not only in the juridical or legal sense. 

[1]  Let’s set aside your android hypothetical, since the existence of androids which are treated socially like human beings, with rights and all that, would be an entirely revolutionary stage in machines which we haven’t yet hit; your argument is just as much about the present and, indeed, the past, so it’s best not to complicate things—if your case doesn’t work without the android example, it fails on the level of generality which you operate. But the answer to your query is still very simple: if an android, or for that matter any animal or machine, were accepted by human society to be a person with rights and were also truly capable of acting, on their own, in the market, then yes, they could produce value. At that point, they are for all intents and purposes human.

[2] This argument is spelled out in Chapters Six and Seven of Capital (slightly poorer but acceptable translation found here) and in Value, Price, and Profit, Parts VI - X. The argument, in short, is that workers can live and reproduce if they are paid a certain amount of money x (that is, they consume some certain amount of the labor of one another) but are capable of working for a longer number of hours y. Since workers only have their labor-power to sell, they are compelled to sell it; like any market good, its average value is the labor-time contained in it (here assumed to be x), but capitalists may be able to force the workers to work for y hours. The difference y less x is surplus-value, which is the fundamental basis of profit. 

[3]  Although I should point out that the physical matter of raw materials also reappears in the form of the product or is dissipated into the atmosphere. In this sense, neither the value nor the physical matter of raw materials disappears in production.

[4]  Although it might disappear because of market-changes (this is not the same thing as being used up, though).

[5] Compare this to Marx’s different point about the unwillingness of capitalists to introduce new techniques. Marx says that they will be unwilling because it will devalorize their old capital but that they will have to do so in order to remain cost-competitive. That is, Marx draws the inference that competition might force capitalists to engage in actions which lower their rate of profit in order to remain cost competitive. By contrast, you have capitalists in a competitive market who would be raising costs in order to be profitable—this is what monopolies do, but we are here abstracting from this problem.  

#Polemic #Scott H. #BannedThought #MassLine #Maoism #Marx #Marxian #CritiqueofPoliticalEconomy #labor theory of value

[agent-kentauris]

Did one of those character development ask things for Michael, and boy was that difficult. I think I have a lot more to do to make him a better character, but I’m working on it. Anyways, thought I would post this. Be warned: it’s long.

questions source

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

No siblings!

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

One of love and trust, though he often chaffed at his mother’s reluctance to set any sort of disciplined boundaries. More of a throw seven dozen activities at you and see which one sticks kind of approach. Which when things got tangly would just lead to him sitting around refusing to do anything, and her ramping up the activities. Mom does not sign the report cards. Very perceptive when it comes to her son, but more of an Intelligence skill check than a Wisdom one. Has lots of parenting books, and when she got really mad, those came out. Does have lines in the sand – no swearing, he’d better practice French, you don’t have to like family time but you will be there, extracurriculars, chores, college.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Dad was the discipline parent, so even though he’s happier with structure, this one was slightly more turbulent. If people were verballing duking it out, it was them. Which, because his dad believed firmly in respect your parents, often got Mikey in trouble. Dad was less line in the sand, more quicksand patches you could get over if you were careful. Which Mikey quickly learned, like most kids, how to exploit. Dad’s order and discipline tempered by him actually being a softie, has to work hard behind the scenes to not overindulge Mikey. This occasionally led to him being a bit too hard on the poor kid. He would really get behind ron swanon’s don’t half ass two things, whole ass one thing mentality, but he tends to let Mom take the reigns on Michael’s school and extracurricular schedule. A good deal in part because he does not look forward to fights with her about that topic. He usually loses, even when he wins. Wisdom over intelligence. Michael comes to him before his mother with questions about friends and later on, coworkers, because he’s got good instincts about people. He was strongly, vocally, politically opposed to Michael’s career choices, and after the incident during mikey’s first internship, wanted to try and ban him from going for it again, but cooler heads – read: mom – prevailed. Still, he ended up proud of what Michael was (trying) to do. What of it he was told, at any rate.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Walked in on his dad trying to hold his mother and stop her from shaking during the aftermath of 9/11. They’d done their best to focus on the positives happening and conceal from him just how unsettled and frightened they’d been by the actions of some of their neighbors. Start of what later developed into his interest in current career. They didn’t know he saw it, and he never told them.

Mina’s larger mission

Events in Alpha Protocol I can’t talk about because I haven’t written them yet, but I promise I know what they are.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Well, if this was just an average day off work, usually only a wallet, phone, and keys. Sometimes loose change and receipts he didn’t bother to put back in his wallet.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

He’s not particularly good at remembering dreams

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Getting lost

Misremembered memories

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAyes.

If you mean ever, a small squirrel. His dad tried to take him hunting, though he wasn’t particularly fond of it.

If you mean person, that would be Unnamed Dude Number 5 during the internship incident. He missed, though, so there’s that.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Different, but not noticeably much one way or the other. His parents ran a business, and it did okay. Seemings as the CIA website will just flat out tell you any fact you might wish to know, the internet informs me that he’ll still be okay. The boy ain’t never been super broke, is the point, and I doubt he’s ever going to be super rich.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

That depends. If he’s talking to other people, he likes to be in something, not that he ever seems to care what it looks like (glares). But like a lot of people, home is a different matter.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

Dad calling him in the middle of class saying his mother was in the hospital, car crash and they didn’t know if she was going to make, and that he sent him a plane ticket and that he needed to get home right now

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

Not really, no. Except that it signifies someone’s got an injury that needs to be taken care of.

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Faces. Canonically.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Not really, though if I had to say one or the other it would be material possessions. His ambitions lie elsewhere and neither money nor material possessions have ever helped. Plus, his family and friends never did, and he never really absolutely needed either.

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

Success

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

As a child child, blocks and Spirograph

Magnets

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

Wisdom, by several factors

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Interwoven manipulation and self-justification of said manipulativeness

Oh yes it has. A fairly serious romantic relationship, in fact

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

Objectively, based on the results of other’s missions and stats and so on, for the purpose of (usually positive) self-criticism.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

That depends on when we are. At the start of Alpha Protocol, I’d say he’s more inclined to first think he was responsible, and then check if it’s true and if not, then, who? By the end, he probably internally believes he’s caused/deserved it, even if it isn’t true, while externally blaming others and trying hard to believe that. He’s a pretty fair person, though.

What does your character like in other people?

Empathy for those around them

Straightforwardness

Durability

What does your character dislike in other people?

Self-serving ambition

Indecisiveness

Inconsistency

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

Too damn fast. Especially for a spy.

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Naturally, too fucking slow. With training, tolerable fast. After Alpha Protocol, that’s going to depend on how bad things end up getting. Does this change if he is close with that person? Of course, he gets like five times slower. Stop trusting people. It’s annoying.

How does your character behave around children?

He likes them, but he tends to treat them like children, which, what kid has ever liked that? The depths of hell to which children will stoop constantly surprises him, no matter how many times he’s seen or remembers evidence of it.

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Resorts to training, and responses vary wildly depending on the situation and the desired outcome.

When not in the field, he tends to avoid unnecessary confrontations. If it’s inevitable, whichever way is the least likely to draw attention, be it the quickest or the get someone else in trouble-y-est or so on. If there’s already a spotlight, and there absolutely no way out has to has to be a confrontation, then whatever’s quickest or whatever’s going to get him back to one of the first two ifs as soon as possible.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

He’ll do it if it’s the fastest method to end the confrontation. If he’s really, really mad, then a hell of a lot quicker. In fact, if you seriously piss him off bad enough, which is pretty hard to do, its going to be a question of how serious the damage is, not how fast he decides to cause it.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

He wanted to be a travel writer

I suppose in a highly technical sense he both travels and writes, so…

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Henry Leland

I’m sorry. That was automatic

Queen ants, artichokes, bananas

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Falling asleep in the back of a staff lounge with a container of crappy takeout food next to him on the table and a stack of finished paperwork that just needs to be read over one more time sometime in the next day before receiving a new assignment and people in the front talking quietly over the (positive) news report they’re watching

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

When he knows something is very wrong but he simply cannot figure out what or why

For example, if someone who never uses capital letters texts him and adds a capital I, maybe, or capitalizes the first word in a sentence. Is it a message? An accident? Is something wrong? Double worse if he’s by himself and can’t ask anyone.

Like with Surkov

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

Willing to improve, provided its actual criticism

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

Apparently canonically I’m working with the first of these two, because no fewer than three no, actually, four of your plans involving walking right up to the Big Bad Place that contains the Big Bad Person, and multiple of those plans involves the actual idea that this is the best way to get to Big Bad Person. And, since this never turns out well for you, I can’t imagine you count at the later kind of problem solver.

How does your character behave around people they like?

Affectionate. Calls/messages them a lot, likes talking with them. If he likes you, more inclined to listen and let you vent/rant/bubble than talk himself. Marginally more honest, when he can be. Will bother you with book recommendations and if he thinks you’ll really like one, will just go buy it for you. Do not fall into this trap. He will buy you more. And interrogate you about them and your opinions with the full force of intelligence training.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

On a scale from coldly professional (esp if he needs something from them) → openly verbally antagonistic → removing/having removed said people from his life

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

What, you mean they aren’t the same things?

His status as an agent is forfeit, which he seems to accept in terms of status, but his honor as an agent he would be much more concerned over.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

In face-to-face confrontations outside of work, the later. But, generally, everywhere, the former.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

He got bit by a snake on a hike when he was younger. At the time, he – read:his best friend – thought it would be really cool to get a tattoo of a snake there, and he almost snuck out to do it, but didn’t

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Good. If it’s a place he’s likely to be seen again, he doesn’t like talking and will avoid it, even if it makes him seem a little tiny bit hostile. But if not, he has fun inventing responses to small talk questions.

How are you? How did I come to be? Well, when the asteroid hit the field about twenty years back, I emerged from the center of the rock and took over the farm, gaining my intelligence and sense of self. And that’s how I came to be, how I am, so to speak.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Earn it

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Yeah, his extended uncle. They don’t talk as much as they used to after Michael’s dad died, and then CIA happened, and a couple years later, Alpha Protocol, but this is more Michael’s fault. His uncle would love to hear from him, though he’s always suspected (for true or not) that Mikey’s more deeply involved in his career than his parents wanted to believe, and so he has vague assumptions that are even more vaguely correct about why Mikey’s been too busy to swing by home. He hasn’t actuallyy been told by any sources, official or naw, that Michael is officially considered dead. Which is good, because instead Michael’s only a rogue enemy of the state being tracked down by legit killers and power-hungry ceos. Much more reassuring.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

No

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Incredibly easy for him. Me, though, I’m allergic to love apparently so I have a hard time writing him into situations where he can say it. He’s that kind of person who even tells his superfriends that. He doesn’t like saying it without meaning it, but he can. And has. And not just on that one mission.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Well, his mother was a practicing Muslin until a few years after marrying Michael’s dad, and his father was Christian raised as a child but left that real fast, which causes a lot of tension between him and his family. They together raised Michael with semi-agnostic beliefs. Michael himself prefers not to think about it, though if asked he will self-ID as atheistic. Internally, he’s more of a mix between agnostic and atheistic. If he’s thinking about it, he assumes when you die that’s just it, akin to closing a book. I think if he sat down and really, really thought about it, he’d be more afraid of things never ending than things ending.

#one of the questions was #has your character ever fired a gun #well #good question #aptor michael thorton #oh i actually didn't have that tag until just now #huh #michael shoves books at you if he likes you #fun facts #i believe i technically say #he bothers you with book recommendations and will buy it for you if hes very serious #but same dif

[melonmaru]

Studio 6 - Statements

Contextual Statement

Most of the board games are designed for long-term usage. They can be used multiple times after bought. Also, there are many different genres and rules to fit them in different time, place and mood. This project, Ponto, tried a different way to approach the usage. It is not a one-off game but can be enjoyed lightly like eating a snack. And, it does not stay as a toy, and percolated through to the public and their daily life to extend the area of ‘play’. The meaning of ‘extend the area of ‘play’ is increasing the popularity of the board game, so people may have less interest in board games can enjoy the games. The McDonald’s Monopoly event is a good example. The Monopoly is called as a family board game, but the actual use of the game is set on groups of people who are interested in it. However, using board games in the marketing increases the sale. Moreover, the Monopoly event increases the public interest of board game and that affects on people’s diet. So, the Monopoly event extends the popularity of the board game to the public. Of course, McDonald has a higher awareness because of its name value. So, the influence of the popularity is strong compared to my project. It is one of the reasons that I choose the vending machine as the medium to communicate with the public. It is popular, convenience and easy to maintain compared to a shop and it helps to increase the public contact. Also, the vending machines coincide to the purpose of the project because the items selling in vending machines are mostly the daily essentials and foods such as snacks and beverages.

Japan has about 5.52 million vending machines in the country. They sell snacks and beverages as New Zealand Vending machines do. However, those 1.52 million vending machines are not filled with the food and beverages only, but they are selling umbrellas, books, neckties and rice and they also sell insurances through the vending machines either. When the number and types of vending machines increase, people do not need to face each other to buy a thing. Then, the communication between people decreases and it can cause the reduction of the sociality and lose the connection between communities. There is a problem already in the communications in the physical community. The increase of digital-based social media and the wide use of smartphone caused the social communication lean to the digital medium. The developed technology linked people who are not in the same place, but it disconnected the communication between people just next to us. So, Ponto tried to rebuild the physical community by using the existing technique, the board game.

The purpose of the project is to build a physical community and the place, playtime and the targets are important because the place will group the people and people will be linked by sharing the each other’s time. So, I could not say that my project is for anyone in any place. Because it is too broad and I needed a threshold point to reduce the production process and time.  As the threshold, I decided the train passengers as the target user. The reasons are; First, the number of the trains station and the route of train rail is fixed and the travel time is steady compared to other transports and they helped me a lot to set the average play time.  Second, the number of passengers that a train can carry at once is higher than other transports. The Higher number of passengers means there is a higher potential for the usage. In fact, the number of train passengers was increased. From the article of Our Auckland published on 6 April said that 19 million passengers made trips for the year to date by train and it is an annual increase of 19.4 percent. (OurAuckland, 2017) This statistical data shows the number of target users will be increased and the potential of the usage even higher than now.

The play time is also affected from the train passengers. A report of ‘The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain’ said that train passengers are spending their travel times on;

·       sleeping/snoozing;

·       reading for leisure;

·       working/studying (reading/writing/typing/thinking);

·       talking to other passengers;

·       window gazing/people watching;

·       listening to music/radio;

·       text messages/phone calls - work;

·       text messages/phone calls - personal;

·       eating/drinking;

·       entertaining children;

·       playing games (electronic or otherwise);

·       being bored;

·       being anxious about the journey (e.g. delays or where to get off);

·       planning onward or return journey; and

·       other.

The most important point on above list is the ‘window gazing and people watching’. In the report, the window gazing rated higher in people who journey of less than 15 minutes duration and they suggested that is a possible travel duration threshold below for doing something else. So, the play time of each game is less than 15 minutes because people may not get interested in anything else if they have something to do, and the threshold of the spare time is 15 minutes as the report.

Now a day, smartphones are using widely for killing time and my project may not be able to bring a big change to the world. However, I believe Ponto can build a different type of community compare to the online community. And the board game is not an electric and electronics fixed technology, so the project tries to escape from the ‘electronics jail’. Ponto has a vending machine to connect the board games and users, an Arduino is used in the vending machine and I coded the Arduino. However, the key item of this project is the board game. So, analysing the board game component and finding methods of building a community using a board game was the main research area. Extension of these, the emotions related to the components of the board game was very interesting and it will be a good future research area.

 Conceptual Statement

Ponto is a socially engaging board game to support users to build a physical community and it can be bought from a vending machine. The game is constituted of 3 different component. Each package contains one component of the game, not a whole game, so the user must find the other user who has a package of another component. It is a very inconvenience process. However, it is needed process because the purpose of the game is rebuilding a physical community. And this process will pursuit the new way of the community by meet, talk and play the game with others.

Each package contains one of dices, cards or tokens and up to 7 different games can be built by the pairing the packages. There is a short storyline to increase the relation between packages. The storyline is;

There are 3 little aliens living in a vending machine, and they are named as Rockie, Scizzy and Palate. Rockie loves cookies, Scizzy loves fizzy drinks and palate loves chocolates. When they fight, Rockie wins to Sizzy, but he cannot win to Palate. Scizzy always loses to Rockie, but always win to Palate.  

These characters came out from Rock-Paper-Scissors game. The story affects to the rules of the games.

The main target is the train passengers but it can be anyone who can access to the vending machine. The game is designed for playing during the travel time so it can be used as a travel game too.

A board game is a basic format of the social game that makes people face to each other, talk and enjoy. It is different to the online which has anonymity. So, their words, acts and emotion of a person is delivered to the opponent directly. It makes people take care of themselves and it helps to develop their sociality. While playing this board game, people in different religions, cultures, ages, genders group up with one common factor, ‘play’. And it can be a new culture and new community can be built within this new fresh culture.

Ponto in technical side tried to focus on breaking down the board game to its components and reflected each property of them.

Dice: Emotions delivered from rolling a dice such as tension, hope and so on.

Card: inference and prediction skills to win the game.

Token: A technique to get the advantage of the game.

There are only 3 components now, but the extension is possible and same components can be redesigned to a different rule. Now, only 3 games are ready to play, and all others are still under development. Each package of Ponto is the only half of a board game. It is nearly impossible to play with one package, and if it is possible to play with one package, players cannot enjoy much as the set. And, the game attaches the user to the community since the user starts looking for other users.

The main item of the project is the board game, but the vending machine is also iconic in this project. It is a bridge between the users and the board games because they only can get the games from the vending machine. The vending machine also reflects the ‘fast, easy and convenience’. The time taken on designing board games took so long, so I was planned to skip the vending machine production. However, the board game became more complex, so it stayed as a concept with few demos. Then, I built the vending machine to reflect that the start point of the project is the vending machine.

I am thinking of 2 different future developments. One uses existing Social Networking Services to find the opponents and they will build a new fused community of the digital and real world. It will extend the physical community to the digital world and also works on the opposite way.  So, the advantage of both types of the community will be reflected in one combined community. The other method is using the board game as a new advertisement medium. Like the McDonald’s Monopoly event, uses their own story with own models and build small board games and sell them in the real vending machine or use as a promotional material for the higher benefit. Or, combine the real food as board game components or use the package of the item as a board game, so it can build a community of ‘eat, enjoy and share’.

I learnt a really important point from this project. The idea of the initial project was a consumable board game, but it is developed to a social development tool now. And it also reflects the problems and became provided a solution. I did not think about this at the beginning, but it is developed well over the researches and developments. This project tells me how the research and developments are important.

References

OurAuckland. (2017). Record numbers of passengers using trains. [online] Available at: http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2017/04/record-numbers-of-passengers-using-trains/.

Lyons, G., Jain, J. and Holley, D. (n.d.) The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain. Under revision for publication in Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice.

#pontowk13 #pontowk12 #statements

[calleo-bricriu]

1981

(( Cleaned up thread with @everyheartbesure​ ‘s Albus. This took place within a week or two after the Potters and (allegedly) Voldemort were killed. ))

Calleo,

I’m afraid I have a troubling problem of a most sensitive nature.  While the rest of our world is taking the time for much-needed celebration, I find I may have made a grave error.  For too long, I have withheld trust from those I used to confide in, believing myself capable of holding secrets I felt no other should have to carry the burden of.  Worried, as I’m sure you can understand, that regardless of intentions, the world was in too dangerous a place to take the risk of people being compromised–of delicate information leaking into places and minds it ought not be.  

But now, my old friend, I have many great doubts about what others find such cause for celebration in.  Something, though I cannot be sure what, is simply not adding up in my mental calculations.  Somewhere, I must have dropped a decimal or shifted a digit, because I cannot understand how such a great and terrible man his disappeared so thoroughly.  The Potters, though undoubtedly skilled, did not have the support or preparation to end this war single-handedly, and with no body and not even a wand… I have to wonder if Lord Voldemort was even there at all that night, or if Mr. Black did the deed himself.  But where he might have gone, if he were not vanquished…

And of course, little Harry.  I believe I have made him as safe as I am capable, but I do not have the expertise you do and I do not know if my paranoia has simply put a child in the way of avoidable danger of another form. 

I do not know if you have any information that can help me, as I certainly have not been freely sharing with you these last years, but I hope, if you are willing, you can take the time to tell me if I have simply gone mad under all of the self-imposed pressure.  And, though I never have found the time to read the main body of your work, I am now holding out hope that there may be something within it that could aid me now–that could give me a clue as to what could have truly caused this respite.

Please forgive me for my long silence until now.

-Albus

He sent the letter away as a small flock of sparrows–a nod to their very first correspondences, and sat back to wait.

Calleo had been severely tempted to open with, “That does sound like you, yes,” but, as he continued to read the letter the temptation to put too much levity into a reply quickly faded.

He had, of course, known full well about the celebrations, the fall of that petty thug who’d been going around calling himself a Dark Lord for the last decade or so, but he had also assumed they’d found a body as confirmation that the man was dead.

No body was–alarming, to say the least. More than enough to raise a whole hell of a lot of red flags  in anyone who could stop celebrating for two seconds to realise that there was an entire body and wand missing and enough to cause someone who had been working in the Ministry’s Archives, largely dealing with the Dark Arts and everything to do with them since 1912 to stop cold and re-read what he thought he’d read several times to make sure he’d read it correctly.

The reply was sent as the seven, cheerfully hopping magpies that, by now, Albus could likely put back together with very little focus required. Still, they were complicated and secure enough that anyone intercepting would have a good deal of difficulty with it.

Albus,

Any grave error made here is on the part of the Ministry, to nobody’s surprise I’m certain, and on the part of those so mindlessly celebrating the death of someone when no body or wand was retrieved from the scene of where he was last known to be present.

Very few things these days cause me to come to a screeching halt in a manner of speaking.

That did.

There are various forms of magic, typically either straight Blood Magic or Blood Magic mixed with other high level curse work, that could result in–it’s difficult to describe without going on for several pages which I’ll likely do anyway, but a ‘partial death’ is the closest I can think of to condense it down.

None of it is legal, none of it is widespread, and all of it has horrific physical and psychological effects on the person using it; apart from–it’s more that–the thing here is–(he must be dictating)–when someone dies normally, regardless of the method, the end result is the spirit being severed from the physical body.

If the spirit isn’t intact when the original body dies, however…there is, of course, the possibility that he was not present and it was Black’s doing but considering how utterly brutal Crouch’s too-late crackdown came and how many people were swept up in his nets that should not have been, I have my doubts, especially if Black hadn’t been branded like the rest of the “Dark Lord’s” (the quill had, evidently, detected heavy, dripping sarcasm, adding the appropriate punctuation to convey it) chattel; they did check for that before kicking him off the island and into Azkaban, yes?

As for the child, one of the pictures in the Prophet– (his dictaquill must have attempted to convey a long delay in dictation)

I don’t need to ask if it’s assumed that Voldemort, forgive me, I won’t be using his self-granted titles, it gives him a level of legitimacy that he genuinely does not deserve, used a killing curse.

Partially because I suspect it’s one of only three curses he ever learned how to use effectively and partially because I both know its cast pattern and a cast pattern burn well enough.

The troubling part is that a cast pattern burn happens when a spell backfires, as you’re well aware, but it should burn the one who cast it not the intended target. If it was a backfire, something deflected it from him and onto the child.

And that loops back to what I mentioned earlier in this letter.

There is no blocking death in that form apart from using a physical barrier, but it can be cheated.

Have you, by any chance, seen his face? Relatively recently, of course, and if the answer to that is yes it would be useful to have that description, though I already have suspicions. If every siren that just went off in my head is accurate, he was there, and isn’t dead; as to where he’s gone, I’d have no idea specifically.

That said, if I am correct–and make no mistake, as much as I do enjoy being correct, there are times when I would prefer it were not the case–the part of him that was in Godric’s Hollow was dispatched beyond the veil.

The REST of him could be damn near anywhere attached to whatever took his fancy when he did it.

(There is an entire blank page of parchment. The quill is taking silence literally, it seems.)

The main body of my work, at least the one that’s most known by those who know where to find it, is on the Cruciatus Curse and its various  modifications, all of which make it exponentially worse with longer lasting damage and more than occasional death after a minute or so; there are other, older, and frankly more Unforgivable bits of magic I’ve written about as well. I use one of them for landscaping.

HE clearly never read any of them, nor did any of his followers.

That’s not a complaint, as an aside.

I have written–a bit about what I suspect is going on here, but nothing extensive as the various books that detail it detail it well enough.

Astarte’s wands, my blackthorn piece is from him if you recall, used a modification of one of the rituals; he called it 'soul binding’ to the wand but it’s Blood Magic at its base.

I’d write the word down, but it gets automatically flagged and redacted, even more creative spellings of it–Level Seven works, it’s only this department’s senior and head allowed down there; there used to be a book in the Restricted Section, of all places to put a book like that, Magick Moste Evile, that mentioned them but did not go into detail. It specifically stated that it would not go into detail.

There are several texts that are not all that difficult to obtain from various sources that do, however.

Now and again, a book comes across my desk that’s less clever spellwork that makes an inanimate object seem alive and able to converse and more has roughly fifty percent of a person bound to it, can actually converse, is technically alive, and will try to push you out of your own mind so it can have a body again. I knew a few of them when they were properly alive, not surprisingly.

At this point, I just carefully disconnect them from the book and for awhile was just throwing them into an old teapot until it got too noisy and the teapot ran out of theoretical room; they’re all in the back of the Brain Room as I wasn’t entirely sure if it was strictly legal to technically kill them or not and I certainly wasn’t going to ask in this political climate.

They already think we’re all a touch mad down here and I haven’t got the time or energy to make, “May I kill this teapot full of partial souls or should I get a larger teapot?” sound even remotely sane.

And I’ve just realised I ought to have said that AFTER telling you that you haven’t gone mad because now I sound at least a bit mad and telling you that you’re not might actually come off as the blind leading the blind.

At any rate, you’re not mad (and neither am I, for the record); something isn’t right and I very much doubt that he’s fully dead.

That all said, there is nothing to forgive; I am more than aware of how you often work and keenly aware that very few would want to give people like me any information that might end up assisting the sorts I often get lumped in with.

Please don’t presume there is any bitterness in that last statement. I know how what I work with is viewed, how I’m viewed by proxy, and I know that the vast majority of the people who use the same sort of magic as opposed to studying it are viciously cutthroat and can’t be trusted as far as you could throw them without using magic.

I am nothing if not self-aware.

We should, perhaps, discuss it further in person.

The last thing either one of us needs is Crouch’s myopic tunnel vision focusing in this direction; I have no doubt he would go to any lengths he thought he could get away with to silence such talk.

I also haven’t got the time or energy to deal with the mess that would be and, I suspect, neither do you.

- Calleo

Calleo,

I do wish you had simply said I was mad and left it be. I might have believed you, and it would have offered me a great deal of comfort. What you are suggesting…

I do not know the details of Black’s case. I admit, I was deeply fond of the boy, and I had little interest in paying close attention to the aftermath of his betrayal. I don’t believe he was marked–he would not have been a particularly effective spy if he had been–but he was the only one in the position to do the damage that was done.

As for Voldemort’s face, I have not had the displeasure if viewing it recently. I did see him up close many years ago, and already, his association with dark magics had warped his features. Though the red eyes may have been an intentional, if unattractive, aesthetic choice, I have heard from others that he had taken on particularly snake-like features in recent months–pale and sickly and as though evil had been personified. I’m afraid I cannot offer a more precise description than that.

What you are speaking of is beyond anything I have intentionally researched. Splitting the soul… This is far graver than I ever could have hoped. It paints a grim future for us all.

I believe you’re right, yet again. It is time to leave my office before the self-pity drowns me where I sit. Perhaps I should come to join you for further discussion, though of course not at the Ministry.

Wherever you choose, I will come.

-Albus

He didn’t bother with any cheerful transfiguration or charms work this time. Solemnly, he asked Fawkes to deliver the message, leaving it neatly in Calleo’s lap. Then, when his companion returned, he only found the energy to stroke the bird twice before hiding his face in his hands in shame and exhaustion. There was so much more he could have done for Tom before any of this happened, if only he’d had the foresight.

Fawkes was certainly an unexpected delivery bird! Still, he’d always been friendly and he was a combination of colours that Calleo found relaxing.

It also usually meant things weren’t–well. When the letters came as sparrows, at the very least it was an indication that Albus was generally himself even if there was a concern over something.

When an actual bird showed up, especially Fawkes, it was almost never a good thing

Albus,

False comfort now would make it worse later, assuming I’m correct. I’d imagine the Ministry will be caught with its trousers down for the third time in a row because why would they bother to change now?

I don’t know much about Black myself, apart from his name and the fact that it looks like Crouch decided a trial wasn’t necessary which sets a terrible precedent.

If he was the only one who had the ability to find them, it’s still very possible he let Voldemort in; if Black had cast that killing curse, I doubt it would have ‘backfired’ in the way it appears to have backfired. I still don’t know why the pattern burn landed on the intended victim and not Voldemort and I definitely do not like the fact that they didn’t find a body yet have declared him dead.

That doesn’t sit right.

The thing about looks and dark magics is that they only warp one’s looks for two reasons. I’d like to think they haven’t warped mine too terribly much beyond always looking like I don’t get nearly enough sleep, which I don’t.

The most common reason is it simply being a side effect of an unchecked addiction; you can see examples of that scattered all over Knockturn, but they typically don’t have their eyes go red or look necessarily inhuman.

Personally, I think they just look a bit ill and in need of a good scrub.

Most changes that happen due to an uncontrolled addiction manifest in behaviour and psychological health. You see a lot of sudden aggression with little to no warning, paranoia, and the sort of anger that’s based in fear, which is usually where the aggression comes from.

Not only does the magic feed off of strong emotions of that nature, it’s easy to manifest them as the Ministry’s idea of treatment for that sort of addiction is either execution or Azkaban and many would prefer the former to the latter, so they’ll go out of their way to ensure anyone from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement feels they need to use lethal force.

The second and most uncommon reason can be found in several of the texts I hinted. Performing the ritual once will cause some visual side effects but nothing that looks much beyond a standard addiction or possible illness, but if you’re doing multiple splits and not splitting the split to make more and are splitting yourself again, you go from having 50% of your soul intact to 25% to roughly 12%, and so on.

The few I’ve known at 50% are unpleasant enough. In fairness, they were unpleasant at 100% as well, which is telling.

Someone who keeps slicing it in half repeatedly would be unpredictably dangerous after two or three rounds and very likely completely mad at anything beyond that. Whether they remain that way depends on how large the piece used in the resurrection rituals (as opposed to simply possessing someone else’s body and kicking them to the back seat of their own mind) is; could be anything from something utterly inhuman looking to someone who looks fairly ordinary.

I’ll pull the texts; nobody looks twice at anything I do anymore anyway and the assumption is always that I have strange reading habits or am working on a project. I can grab one of three I know if you’d like to examine one of the things in person; they do often wiggle their way past standard Occlumency, but I doubt you’d have any trouble adjusting defenses slightly to keep them out.

It’s incredibly obscure, viciously awful magic that most people wouldn’t even be aware of, let alone know exactly where to look to find how to do it–and those who do find it can often not manage to get through even reading the full ritual to the end.

My house is probably the safest place as I know damn well nobody can eavesdrop here. The security wards won’t bother you; you’ve had a key for decades anyway.

- Calleo

Included with the letter is a small, unremarkable, unevenly cut piece of raw black tourmaline that has been turned into a portkey.

Albus found himself feeling more than a little ill, contemplating what Tom may have done to himself. He’d always been a bit worrying, but despite his tendencies toward keeping people at a distance and delving deeply into dark magics, he was a well-reasoned young man. Albus hadn’t agreed with any of the ideas Tom supported since he was in his youth himself, but he at least argued them well at first. He seemed almost more of a political activist than a terrorist.

He gathered what information he had handy about Voldemort and the recent war efforts, then went ahead and took the portkey. He hadn’t let himself into Calleo’s home before, but it was far from the first time he had been there, and he was sure he could make himself at home to wait, should he arrive earlier than he was expected.

The portkey had been set to go directly to Calleo’s living room, bypassing the short hallway from the front door and that one book that always seemed to have a habit of lunging at anyone who walked past.

Very little in that room, or in the house in general, had changed over the years and if the majority of the old wallpaper hadn’t been almost completely obscured by shelves containing various books, artefacts, and miscellaneous nonsense that had, at some point, caught Calleo’s eye it would have appeared much more dated than it did. They were all heavily warded in a way that suggested the spell work was there for the protection of anyone in the room and less in place for protecting what was on the shelves.

Wood floors, at least, were relatively timeless.

If Calleo’s sofa and the one chair that sat off to the left of it had changed at all over the decades, it certainly wasn’t evident due to the fact that both were mostly covered with various loudly coloured and patterned quilts.

Calleo had been somewhere in the house when Albus arrived, mostly evident on account of him walking into the room a few seconds after his arrival. While he didn’t technically audibly say something along the lines of, “You look absolutely terrible,” the brief pause in his movement and the accompanying look Albus got for a split second before Calleo’s usual warm smile appeared likely said it clearly enough.

“I’d like to apologise to you in advance,” once he was close enough, Calleo laid a hand on Albus’ shoulder and steered him toward the sofa, “for a lot of things but chiefly for the fact that I’m about to go on about topics you likely never had any desire to learn the details of and will speak about them as though we were discussing what I finally wanted to replace the mostly hidden wallpaper with.”

On the coffee table in front of the sofa there were four books stacked (one being the common and easy to find Secrets of the Darkest Art by Owle Bullock), one book off by itself and under a whole hell of a lot of heavy warding (curiously, despite it not moving at all, it still somehow appeared to be struggling to break free rather violently),something that looked a lot like a vaguely unsettling stone paper weight, and a seemingly random book with a blank cover that gave them both a cheerful, “Good evening, gentlemen!”

“So, apart from the texts that detail those rituals–disarmed, by the way, the books, that is, figured you wouldn’t be all that keen on doing that yourself all things considered,” he offered a small, almost apologetic smile. “It’s up my street anyway, and I’m familiar enough with these four that I could probably do it in my sleep.”

“At any rate, apart from those, I’ve brought one currently forcibly silenced horcrux of someone I knew while he was alive and one of the slightly more mad–” Calleo paused and looked at the object next to the book on the coffee table that appeared to be little more than a stone paperweight, “–apologies, you’re much better off than you used to be but still the most prone to unpredictable mood swings than the others–” his attention turned back to Albus, “–victims of certain irreversible forms of Transfiguration as they can often seem extraordinarily similar if one doesn’t know what they’re looking at.”

“Both of them can hear me perfectly fine and are able to observe their surroundings; the horcrux can speak rather loudly and audibly when he wants to, which he often does, mostly to swear at me or anyone else willing to put up with it in two different languages. The other one can as well, but unless you purposely open up a connection using either Legilimency or Mensrapere–this one prefers the latter but will tolerate the former–you can’t hear them and all most people notice is an unsettling feeling that they’re being watched.”

“A lot of ‘haunted’ Muggle items are one of those. I’ve got six on my desk at work, and have never been successful in convincing the Wizengamot to let me kill them citing murder is murder and somehow evidently worse than leaving someone trapped in that state of relative immortality for what would amount to eternity without outside intervention.”

“Technically,” Calleo sighed, “a horcrux is similar in that regard with the significant difference being that the person who makes a horcrux very much did it on purpose and that it’s based in Blood Magic and not Transfiguration. When it’s the offshoot of Transfiguration, it’s not possible to do it to yourself, someone else has to have done it and if they’re dead, their victim is stuck.”

“This one,” he leaned forward to pick the horcrux up off of the table, “is what’s left of Victor Achleitner; I doubt anyone would mind if I destroyed it considering the other half of him was dispatched in 1944 but, I kind of want the book and he kind of still has four of mine squirreled away somewhere and I just haven’t had the time to drag the information out of him. Fully intend to reunite him with his other half once I’ve got them back, however.”

“I’d imagine,” Calleo began, turning the book over in his hands a few times and speaking as casually as he might if it were a little more than a copy of the Prophet, “that you can probably feel the difference between this and,” a nod toward the paperweight, “that without me having to let this idiot,” the book got a less than gentle knock on the cover and was now seething more than enough that it was obvious even under several layers of containment and silencing charms, “start talking and subjecting either of us to his unpleasant personality. I might have also told him you’d be visiting to make sure he was in a properly terrible mood so the difference between them all was more striking.”

“And that one,” Calleo set the horcrux on the arm of the sofa, leaning forward to pick up the book with the blank cover, “is an old book with some clever charms work on it that makes it seem as though it were alive; the longer those sets of charms get to run and the more conversation they’re exposed to, the more alive they seem. This one is from 1832, completely innocuous as it’s essentially a talking cookbook that can answer questions about itself, its author, and the recipes inside of it, and can give the impression that it’s sentient or at least alive–until you talk to it long enough or ask it something that requires complex thought and it runs out of responses that make sense.”

“Fairly easy to confuse the three if it’s not something you’ve studied extensively and it becomes dangerous if you mistake a horcrux for clever charms; the larger–in the sense of how much of someone’s soul is attached to it–they are the more capable they are of kicking you out of your own mind. Most of them will purposely come off as incredibly charming and play the victim toward someone who doesn’t recgonise what they are, and once they’ve managed to build enough of a trust with whoever they’re speaking with they’ll go from 'speaking’ to you inside your own mind to taking it from you. That’s the easiest, least bloody, least complicated, and most direct path to what amounts to resurrection.”

“He can’t do that,” Calleo nodded toward the paper weight, “but he can talk to you that way; in the case of those, it’s no different than speaking to anyone else via Legilimency.”

“You know, Albus,” He set the other book on top of the horcrux, likely just to annoy it further and turned to smile at Albus, “all of this is exactly the sort of thing I was so elated you never wrote me about, never asked about, and never wanted to discuss because it’s all anyone else ever wants to talk to me about.”

“I don’t even need to think about it anymore, it’s all just sort of automatic explanations. Probably what I deserve for carving out such a horrid little niche for myself though. Regardless,” somehow Calleo didn’t seem at all put off by any of it, “it is my horrid little niche and what I don’t already know I can typically find out or form a solid enough working theory from what I do already know and conversation on the topic.”

“So, if you’ve got questions, I’ve more than likely got answers. Can’t guarantee you’ll like the answers, but there’s a decent chance that I have them.”

Albus froze for a second, when Calleo came toward him then didn’t stop, then made contact. As though he were a deer in wandlight. But then the second passed and his brain resumed mostly-normal functioning. As odd as it was to be touched like that, it was hardly the first time Calleo had done so. Still, rather than conjuring his own chair, which, after his hair had turned entirely silver, Albus had found he could do without drawing complaint and he had since taken to doing in almost every situation, he simply sunk into the blanket-covered couch he was directed toward with a sigh. It had, truly, been a horrible week, and if Calleo had spotted the signs of it so quickly, there was little point in attempting to disguise his exhaustion further. Especially in the face of the sort of discussion that was likely to come. 

Despite all of his deep research into a great number of topics, Albus took great pride in the fact that his knowledge of the dark arts was still fairly superficial. He had avoided speaking with anyone on the topic in any great depth for the majority of his life, after that summer when he had fallen head-first into a great many dangers he had since kept himself firmly away from. And now, here he was, on the sofa of an old friend, preparing to delve into the deepest, most alarming and revolting, of dark arts.

He didn’t like it, but despite his horror, Albus stayed where he was and he listened. Because this was important, and self-imposed or not, he had a duty. He even listened to Calleo’s summary of the ministry’s confusing and worrying stance on these objects, which he would have to look into and try to do something about, and to his intentions to destroy the horcrux in his possession at some future point, which he would not attempt to prevent. There were many people who Albus would have tried to persuade to show mercy, feeling that he had some responsibility to guide them in positive moral directions. Calleo was not one of those people. Which was good because Albus was not in a good place for providing guidance.

He could certainly feel the difference between the objects, but he examined the magic surrounding each object with a critical eye, just to be sure he remembered.

“I know. I wish I didn’t have questions. I taught him. Tom was under my care for seven long years and I cannot help but feel as though I have failed both him and all of Britain for allowing this to happen.” He closed his eyes and took a slow deep breath.

“But alas, I do. You mentioned the possibility of multiple horcruxes. I can hardly imagine, and yet I can imagine far too well. Tom always was so sure of himself–so fascinated with symbolism and the power of numbers. Do you think he would have gone so far as to make three? One would be hard enough to track, and as the numbers rise… I don’t suppose there’s an easy summoning ritual to gather the pieces before they can do more harm?”

Calleo knew the kind of reaction that entire explanation would get. On some level, he always did when talking about any aspect of what he studied to most people on account of most people not having whatever disconnect Calleo’s mind had that let him detach himself from what it was and view it under a neutral light while explaining it.

He had been of the opinion as long as he could recall that the most prevalent issue with the Dark Arts was the fact that so few people knew how most of it worked, they just saw the after effects of the magic itself or what it did to those who used it without knowing how it worked and, by proxy, how to handle it with relative safety.

The trouble with changing that view in anyone was that it had a tendency to be steeped in centuries of what amounted to fear of the unknown and, stripped back to what it was, the majority of it were only charms apart from the places it branched into Blood Magic, Potions, or Transfiguration.

When approached the same way as any other powerful magic, there was little to fear so long as one remained respectful of what it was capable of doing in the wrong (or right, depending on your stance) hands. In the wrong hands, it was a twisted, ugly, unpredictable, malevolent thing that could only hope to be viciously addictive and destructive and that turned those who used it into a physical manifestation of what it was. That was what most people’s exposure to the Dark Arts ever was and what the most prominent uses of it that made a mark on history were.

Calleo would argue both that those people were unchecked addicts who were more in need of being taught how to manage their addiction and use it safely as addiction was never truly gone and less in need of being thrown into Azkaban or pushed to the edges of Wizarding society; the latter especially was exactly how people like Voldemort were able to gain the followings that they gained. Those who feel abandoned or hated by society will often cling to anything or anyone that offers them a sense of acceptance and belonging, after all and, when that comes bundled with an additional offer of striking back at those who’d cast them out it had a strong tendency to be an irresistible draw.

Still, Albus wasn’t there to get into a debate about that. Not this time, at any rate.

This was also the second time he’d used the name Tom instead of Voldemort and it caused Calleo to stop and think for a couple of minutes, “That odd kid who told you he could talk to snakes? He worked at Borgin & Burkes for a while, I think; only noticed because he was one of the few things in Knockturn that wasn’t largely incoherent. Had a strange cadence to his speech. A lot of pauses in there wouldn’t normally be pauses but, held up against the sorts of people one usually finds in Knockturn, he was pleasantly normal or could at least act it.”

“You can’t control what other people decide to do with their lives, Albus.” For someone who had just been casually talking about the rituals behind splitting one’s soul into pieces, Calleo’s tone easily shifted from the same one he used at work while explaining a particular piece of magic to something significantly more gentle.

“When you get someone who ends up having an interest in the Dark Arts and ends up left to their own devices in terms of how they go about learning them and from whom, they often do go off the rails despite anyone’s best efforts.”

The smile he offered was a strange mix of a little bit sheepish and little amused, “I did for a bit, and I had relatively formal education in it. That was a good–probably twenty years before you knew me. Don’t remember most of it, to be honest, just that it was…unpleasant and terrifying. It’s difficult to break free of it with a support system and next to impossible if you’ve surrounded yourself with people and things that feed it and encourage it.”

“Not an excuse, of course, it never is but, at the same time, it also–is what it is. Most people just end up quietly self-destructing but now and again you get one that manages to lash out spectacularly.”

At least this most recent one hadn’t really had a chance to spread much beyond Britain. Calleo had the sense not to say that out loud, if nothing else.

“And you taught him Transfiguration, Albus; you weren’t even his head of house! Even if you had been, it still falls back to the fact that it’s just not a realistic possibility to be able to control what someone else does. You can give someone all the information or support in the world but if they’re not willing to listen to it or accept it, there isn’t anything you can do.”

Well, you could use the Imperius Curse but that was generally frowned upon.

“A bit like how I could spend the rest of the ni–frankly, the rest of my life--explaining to you how none of this is your fault and your response would be to listen politely, nod, and tell me ‘Interesting theory, but also, it’s definitely my fault’ with a completely straight face as if you hadn’t heard a single word I’d said,” Calleo said that with all the affection one would expect to find present when speaking to someone he’d known for nearly half a century.

“It is a possibility, yes.” Back to the wildly unpleasant topic of horcruxes, “Slim one, but definitely one. Don’t think I’ve heard of anyone doing it multiple times before, once is usually painful enough on multiple levels that they don’t want to or are too afraid to do so.”

It wouldn’t do to admit that it would be highly interesting to meet or, even better, speak at length with someone who had done multiple splits, despite how dangerous it would also be to meet such a person.

“If it’s numbers he’s fascinated with, I’d disagree with three if only because I don’t–like that number for some reason; same with six, nine, or anything where threes are doubled or, worse, tripled. Threes in odd numbers of the worst sort of threes.” Calleo blinked a bit owlishly. That much he hadn’t  intended to say out loud as there was never a way to say it that didn’t come off as irrational.

“Numerology falls under the blanket of Divination,” he never had been able to fully remove the audible eye roll from his voice whenever that topic came up, “for the most part and I’m not sure either of us wants to look at the numbers that might be considered by someone who’d decided certain numbers were luckier or more successful than others.”

“Apart from my personal dislike of the number three, it would be a possibility; that number is typically associated with people who believe themselves to be almost superhuman or bringers of change,” Calleo shrugged. “The rest of its aspects don’t fit him though at least, not as Voldemort. Upbeat, youthful, generally happy, a lot of inner peace–not even close.”

“Four has a strong association with self-control and stability and he clearly didn’t have much of that.” Four had clearly been dismissed out of hand.

“Five is more of a fancy way to say 'probably a successful Alchemist and way older than any of you’, and he’s a great deal younger than both of us in addition to not being very successful.” Another dismissal and, with the way Calleo was talking, he hadn’t noticed the number steadily increasing.

“Six is–” before he could finish that, he all but dissolved into laughter for a few seconds. “Trust me, it’s not six. Nothing associated with healing, unconditional love, and nurturing would be anything he’d land on. I should probably mention that these numbers include the original bit that would have been left in the body the Ministry didn’t find.”

“Seven is one that even Muggles consider lucky overall and has its associations in someone who is curious and tends to like to dig up a lot of obscure, strange things but are only decent at relating to other people on a superficial level; usually sees them as means to an end and prefers their own company because nobody else could live up to their standards. Still,” another shrug, “it is considered a lucky number outside of Numerology.”

Calleo waved his hand at the horcrux on the sofa arm dismissively and it disappeared and made some passing comment about being tired of listening to it rant at him and it was either that or he was going to sit there talking while carefully ripping the soul off of the book and shoving it into the tackiest mug he could find in his kitchen; nice to be able to send things right back to the office like that.

“Eight is interesting though and–what are we down to?” He stopped talking again to make at least a cursory attempt at doing the math. One horcrux was fifty/fifty. Two were–well, the horcrux itself would always be fifty percent of whatever was left–twenty-five percent, then twelve percent at three, six percent at four, three percent at five. What the hell was half of three? One and a half percent at six, three quarters of a percent at seven.

“Well, at eight, he’d be down to having about, ick, three odd numbers. Point three-seven-five. Three and five both have some aspects that he’d likely find desirable and it does include that 'lucky’ seven. At any rate, the luck of seven aside, eight based on its shape alone represents what amounts to immortality, a mind of one’s own, and the ability and will to endure anything. That one would be my guess, if it wasn’t seven based solely on all the strange fixation of luck around that one.”

“If he did die at least once with that little left the upside is any piece he’d use, assuming he doesn’t try the possession of someone else route first which would probably keep him at that point three-seven-five, would make him significantly more human than he was when he was first killed. That’s a depressing thought.”

More accurately, it was a horrifying thought but that isn’t where Calleo’s mind had gone, evidently.

His tone went strangely and suddenly cold, “Nine is still locked in a tower of his own design as far as I know and there isn’t a comparison there anyway. Talent versus a tantrum from everything I’ve seen from the angle I usually see that sort of thing from.”  

As Calleo continued, his voice went back to its usual,“ From nine–it does go up digit by digit but the stronger ones, so to speak, jump to eleven, twelve, then twenty two and none of those seem terribly likely.”

“Two things bother me about that eight, however,” sometimes just listening to Calleo was enough to make his mind seem like it ran in the infinite loops of an 8, “the first being that I’d guess anyone doing multiples would stop noticing the negative side effects of that ritual after the first two or three, which leads to the second thing: The more you carve it away, the less human you’d become–and the more unpredictable and likely violent you would become.”

Calleo sighed at Albus’ last question which, for a moment, seemed to be his only response, “No more than you can easily summon an intact person with Accio, which is to say, not particularly. If you knew what he’d attached them to, you could easily summon that object but not the other way around. If he’s got a fascination with symbolism, it might at least narrow down what sort of objects you’d be looking for. It’d be incredibly surprising if all of them weren’t heavily cursed and designed to incapacitate one way or another as the latter would make possession easier.”

“On the other hand, that’s looking at it from the perspective of how I’d do it if I were mad enough to consider chopping myself up into pieces; his thought process might have been entirely different and, admittedly, I don’t know what the thought process of someone who’d done it more than once would be beyond incoherently dangerous.”

“Yes,” he confirmed sadly. “That Tom.” Albus had guessed the strange way he spoke was due to continued, frequent use of parseltongue–a sort of accent. But he hid most of it when he decided he needed to sound important to his followers, as he had done when speaking to professors during his later years at Hogwarts. 

Calleo was right, of course. Albus had been about to nod. And he certainly didn’t believe anything that might absolve him of guilt in this situation, no matter that he could see the logic in Calleo’s argument. And despite how deeply touched he was by the kindness that drove him to say it. But rather than following through with his nod, he simply hummed thoughtfully and let Calleo continue speaking, as he generally seemed content to do until he was interrupted.

“I believe it was Arithmancy and magically-powerful number that he would be more inclined to base a decision like this in. I can’t be sure, of course. He did hold Divination in abnormally high regard, as far as I could tell,” he cut in before he could get too much farther.

Then, as Calleo went up through possible numbers and their connotations, Albus grew paler, worry and a bit of despair growing behind his eyes. There was very little chance of him successfully locating six or seven–or, heaven-forbid, eight–random objects. 

“Eight pieces, do you think? Or eight horcruxes? I don’t know if he would have counted the part of his soul still inside his body.” He couldn’t even bear to consider more than eight at the moment, though losing so much of his soul did explain the loss of rationality and coherence in his plans over the last years.

“Tom was collecting trophies even before he knew about magic. He may have been bright enough to use objects that nobody would think of and hide them well, but… I don’t believe he was sane enough. I think… Most likely, he would have wanted significant items, placed in significant locations. Still, that doesn’t narrow things much. I was hardly his trusted confidant in his school days and I have had few chances to even speak to him since.”

He put his face down into his hands, looking unbelievably weary, and stayed hunched over like that for a few long breaths before straightening back up.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fully understand how someone who had to work in a shop in Knockturn wouldn’t end up in a mindset of, ‘Yes, they all deserve this’; I only worked at Flourish & Blotts until I ended up at the Ministry and some days…” he shook his head, “not a real excuse of course, but I could see having to work there snapping someone who was only holding on by a thread to begin with.”

A muttered, “It’s just pattern recognition and lucky guesses” when Divination was mentioned but, Calleo didn’t push that topic further.

“Well, it’d be eight including the original one he was carving off of, which would mean if the original piece was what got kicked into the afterlife he’d be down to seven. The thing is, no matter how razor thin it became, it wouldn’t ever be destroyed entirely–apart from misusing Nihilus or using Excidium, of course–it’s worth keeping in mind that he is still a person.”

“May very well be a twisted, violent, unpredictable person, but still a person; I don’t like that narrative of only monsters do that sort of thing because that’s simply not the case, it further alienates someone who’s likely feeling that way to begin with, and creates this false sense of security that it can’t happen again because only a monster would do that and the monster was killed, imprisoned, or whatever was done with it–and that’s dangerous.”

Calleo listened carefully, both because it was an interesting topic to him and because he wanted to take care not to miss any little detail that might be important. “It narrows it down more than you’d think; if there were aspects of history he was fascinated with, or certain colours, certain places, certain object types, or if they might be objects that held personal meaning to him it could narrow it down a great deal. It’s helped by the fact that most people like him want their soul kibble found by someone because, at some point, the body they have is going to die and they’re going to need to find another one so they’d want the remaining bits relatively easy to find. I’d bet actual Galleons that at least one or two of his branded followers know where at least one is.”

When Albus buried his face in his hands, Calleo as he often did in those cases, rested a hand on his shoulder, not entirely removing it as Albus sat up again. “Maybe you weren’t, but people like him like to talk about themselves, it’s just a matter of finding if anyone he’d ramble at alive, mostly sane, and willing to talk.”

“I’ve known a decent amount of people like him over the years, and I can tell you this: They’re all extremely lonely people at their core. They will talk to anyone they believe will listen and won’t rat them out–and some become so confident in their own skills they believe nobody would dare say a word.”

“Do enough poking around in the right markets with the right people, and you’re bound to find interesting information here and there or–well, if I do enough poking around in the right markets with the right people,” Calleo shrugged lightly and moved the chattering cook book back to the table.

“You don’t need that kind of stress and I work with those people on a regular basis; they’d be more likely to speak with me directly than they would to you or even to me knowing I’d be reporting that information back to you–so they simply won’t know that part.”

“And don’t!” Calleo held up a hand, anticipating an objection or three dozen, “Tell me that you’ll take care of it on your own. Maybe you will eventually but right now? Right now you need to not–do that thing again when you work yourself into a trench and get stuck there. I’m not giving you that ‘on your own’ option this time, you had it last time and right now you look so entirely exhausted and miserable that it really is taking a massive amount of self control to not pull you into a hug, no matter how brief.”

“Take some time off,” he smiled gently. He remembered full well that that advice was likely not going to go very far; it hadn’t worked the last time Albus had gone and done the entire Ministry’s job for it, at least. “It doesn’t have to be months or years, even a few weeks would help, just some time off to do nothing but unwind a couple of ticks; let me deal with the groundwork of where to begin searching, and I do have things that branch outside of your usual channels; there are a good many people who avoid you because they’re still bitter about how the last war ended. That sort of thing is part of my job anyway, and they’ll talk to me, especially if I word it in a way that catches their interest.”

“You take a week or two at someplace unplottable. I’ve got a few suggestions if you can’t think of any offhand.”

“You’re at one of them!” That got a laugh! “And the other is kind of a back door into the Archives’ lower level; the director before the last director put in a flat so she could avoid having to leave work and also avoid having to talk to people. Has a stairway that leads right up to ground level, and I’ve got the keys for it; they wouldn’t let you out onto Level 7, so no worries there.”

‘Soul kibble’ earned him a brief, weak laugh. It wasn’t might, but there could, evidently, still be bright spots in the world, even after such great failure and with such looming potential doom. It was a good reminder.

After a moment of touch, Albus looked up gratefully, giving Calleo his full attention again as he resumed.

As difficult as it was to let go, Calleo was genuinely competent, and Albus knew he wouldn’t offer to help if he didn’t intend to follow through. The prospect of pursuing this problem with his friend by his side rather than doing it all alone was appealing. And reassuring.

“If it’s taking so much effort, do go ahead. I’d hate to have you distracted by something so trivial.” Assuming it was brief, he might even draw more from a hug, in that moment. He’d likely even bring himself to hug back with some enthusiasm, for a moment.

“It’s hardly an opportune time for a break, but perhaps I will excuse myself from the castle for the winter holidays. Scottish winters are hardly doing me any favors at my age.” And there had been so many academic concerns he’d been putting off in favor of handling political problems. He would truly enjoy a chance to ignore recent events in favor of meeting with some of the rising scholars in Japan he’s been meaning to reach out to. Or even visiting some old friends.

“Alas, it never seems to be a good time. Christmas abroad, however… I’m sure my deputy could handle the handful of students who stay behind for a few weeks. I will look into it. And I believe I will take you up on your offer of assistance. You make excellent points, and I do trust you to take care of yourself while making such dangerous inquiries. Will you at least keep me updated about your findings?”

“I’d like to amend one of my statements despite the fact that it might have gone unnoticed: When I said some become so confident in their own skills they believe nobody would dare say a word, I don’t mean about things that are horrible. More, if they have gone off on the sad, tattered, and largely self-inflicted disaster they turned out to be, I won’t say a word about that.”

“No problems betraying trust in the business, intelligence, or political arenas, but I don’t like to make that sort of thing personal. If I’m part of the scavenger hunt for the remaining parts of someone’s soul with the intent of them being destroyed or dispatched, I–” Calleo blinked and paused for a moment, “–that is the intent, correct? We’re not doing something with re-binding rituals or glue or anything, yeah? Anyway, if it is that, I’ll go about assisting that destruction professionally.”

He tilted his head in a vaguely bird-like manner, “It’s the perfect opportune time for a break, considering you and a handful of people who also decided the Ministry was next to useless and to do the entire Ministry’s job only to have Crouch prance in like the pin striped vulture he is and declare that the Ministry had saved the day yet again! That’s at least worth a four day weekend.”

“You’ll have to let me know what you think of any of those scholars though, I’d maybe recommend visiting old friends if you’d have to make a decision between the two–whatever you do just promise me you’ll at least try to relax and not worry about anything going on back here.”

“And it’s no effort at all!” That may have sounded a bit more cheery than Calleo intended, “That sort of information could be valuable in countless ways. Best part is, since I wouldn’t trust the Ministry to be at all competent? That’ll reel at least four I already had in mind thirty seconds ago without argument!”

“Will I keep you updated?” Calleo repeated with a laugh, “You’ve just given me implicit permission to write or visit as often as there are updates of any kind, and the kind of updates weren’t specified!”

“Albus, you will be kept updated to the point that you’ll at least be tempted to tell me to stop writing every couple of hours or at least stop sending owls to breakfast or, if not that, at least a bit curious as to just who in the hell I’m actually talking to.”

Calleo smiled broadly and, this time, lazily threw an arm around Albus’ shoulders. “We’ll start with updates now, because I spend a good deal of time in Denmark and both of the current iterations of Germany. The general feeling I got from some of HIS former–employees–started out as what I can only describe as mild amusement, a brief period of interest and then, by about ‘77, a very distinct and almost hostile disdain for Voldemort and his followers.”

“Tempting to try the legislate ‘Voldemort out of being able to function’ there route but that also feels like it’d land me in an unpaid second job if I did, and that sounds like it’d eat up a lot of my already limited spare time. It’d also be blatantly obvious, probably startle MACUSA, and--not really a good option overall.”

Absently, Calleo scratched the side of his head and paused speaking for a few seconds as he fished something out of his hair, “I’d wondered where I lost that!” He held out a copper hatpin topped with a setting that contained several small pieces of black tourmaline and lapis lazuli. “Must’ve fallen out then got left behind! That happens more often than you’d think when I wear it up!”

“Do you ever hide small things or quills in your beard so you can pull them out in front of students often enough that they think that your beard is a liminal space? I’d definitely do that if I had a beard.”

Calleo started to say something else along those lines when the conductor came back from its short break and switched Calleo’s train of thought back onto the correct set of tracks.

“Oh! Right, the–sorry about that, I don’t keep hatpins in my hair ordinarily. Now, then, it might be safer to aim at financial and always seeming to know what they’re planning and possibly take a few warning shots at making it socially humiliating to have it known you have views that agree with Voldemort.”

“Which shot would you prefer I take first?” He grinned, “If you haven’t got a preference I might go two, three, then one but two, one, and then three could likely work just as well.”

“I’m sure that is our only realistic option,” Albus confirmed, though he didn’t look happy about it. It was a minor relief, though, to hear the clarification that his friend was still willing to aid the world in preventing atrocities. He did wonder sometimes. Idly and infrequently.

“I will try, but I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my talent for relaxation in recent years. It may take some practice to recover the skill.” He smiled wryly, then rubbed his ear and leaned back more comfortably against the couch. 

“Despite your misgivings, I’m certain to find the constant communication more comforting than not in this case. It is an incredibly important task which I am unable to complete unaided, which I’m sure you know frustrates me. Hearing from you will allow me to feel as though I’m in the loop.”

He leaned into Calleo for a moment, resting a hand on his leg to let him know he was comfortable with the touch continuing. He smiled weakly through the diversion of the hat pin, not bothering to respond to the question about his beard since he was sure Calleo would continue without an answer. Which he did.

“I think two, three, and then one will work as well as any other approach, assuming I followed correctly and by that you mean you will target financials first, then social concerns, then possible legislation. I doubt legislation will do much good before the general mood has shifted to favor views opposing Voldemort’s ideals. And, legislation is the one thing I would be better suited for than you.”

“A paper trail could be a bit much or dangerous down the line. I don’t know–quite how to ask this without coming off as weird..er..than usual but I will preface it by saying it’s something I frequently do with people I need to remain in close and silent contact. It’s typically temporary, and everyone has their own little space, as it were.” He tapped the side of his head, “At the moment, it’s only Lagraff, Aldig, Koggot, and Braxford that have what I like to joke is a permanent flat in my head.”

“Instant and silent communication, and I’ve long since learned how to make it work over great distances as well!” Calleo’s smile was almost playful, “And I’m completely housebroken and don’t go snooping about as I have no interest in what's going on in someone else’s head. It’s never always on, and the other four would have no idea you were even in there unless I told them, which I wouldn’t as they’re not involved. You won’t even know I’m there until I start talking.”

“And Occlumency’s always been a basic job function; I’ve had nearly seventy years of building it up and fine tuning it and am completely confident in saying it would be an entirely secure method of communication–er–the Legilimency part, that is.”

That was a lot of rambling in an attempt to not seem completely awkward, which may not have worked at all. Then again, there may not be a way to not-awkwardly suggest someone have a seat inside your mind to make communication faster and easier.

“If it makes it less frustrating for you, do feel free to consider me–uh–hm,” Calleo paused to think, “an extension of you. For the most part, I’ll simply move as you move and move what I can move in the same direction, but I answer to you privately. I know you’re not fond of giving up control, and I do appreciate the significance of even a small piece of it being turned largely over to me.”

“Publicly, I may have to appear a bit distant, though I doubt I’ll be able to make a good case for even neutrality in the Archives after the way I dealt with it a few years back; if I’m lucky, I’ll be largely forgotten or thought of as irrelevant. If not, I’ll just make enough noise to keep the focus on me and not the other Archivists.”

“Regardless,” he smiled at Albus, “completely regardless of how I may have to present myself publicly, I am entirely yours in this. Financial aim will be easy,” the smile broadened into a strangely proud and somewhat sharp grin. “I spent years–close to twenty–tracking down any living relatives and in a few cases it had to go to mutual business associates as one or two entire families had been simply exterminated.”

“What that got me was a strong reputation of someone who honors a contract; when they died, the ones I had the contracts with, everything sold or given to me under those contracts needed to be returned to their family–if any were left. I managed to rebuild several very, very strong ties to incredibly skilled Goblins. If anyone can cause financial chaos for those who still support him, they can.” His statements were almost clinical in nature, but the excitement to do something that wasn’t managing a weird and terrible library was evident in his eyes.

“Especially since one of his intended platforms was to make life…difficult for them again! Goblins have long memories, as they should.”

“The social aspect!” Now his grin was back, matching the excitement that lit his eyes. If one arm hadn’t been draped across Albus’ shoulders, he might have actually clapped.

“That is going to be so, so interesting; I’ll aim for nobody actually being killed and it’s very difficult to die of embarrassment. Should be easy to tie it into the financial aspect. If nobody wants to do business with you because of your views on things, it becomes embarrassing enough that even if they still buy into it privately they’ll be hesitant to be public with it and I am already enjoying this.”

“Where legislation is concerned, that is almost certainly your strong point and you have the political capital to spend, so I’ve got no arguments there. I can, if you’d like, get you tie-ins to the contacts I have just to make sure you’ve got strong enough strings to pull when it becomes necessary to give them a good yank, though it may be best for me to set those up so they don’t know it’s you directing it all.”

“Some of them are still a little–let’s call it bitter; most of them will work with me and the ones who won’t I’m–not sure what to do about them yet, but I’d reckon we’ve got a few years to figure it out!”

He gave Albus a small squeeze, taking care to make sure it didn’t make him feel trapped on the sofa. “Regardless of how long it takes him to rebuild, if he wants continental Europe, I fully intend to make it my priority to see that he has to fight for every tiny scrap of it and aim to make it not worth the time, effort, and losses to attempt.”

“And if that doesn’t work out all that well, I’m amazingly skilled at causing chaos–not–you know, war level chaos, the sort that one doesn’t even notice from the outside; those types of people will eat their own, so to speak, if they become frightened enough that they’re being targeted.”

“I know the Unseen Market well enough to navigate it in my sleep, Albus!” If it were possible for a person to be almost vibrating with excitement, Calleo was that person.

“There are so many avenues that will be so easy to cut off because of all the years I spent making connections others kept telling me to avoid. Have you worked closely with Goblins before? In a situation where they’re not wary of your motivations? They are brilliantly and efficiently cutthroat and I know exactly which partners of mine to contact to get it started!”

“Don’t mistake, they’re not going to kill anyone–and neither am I–physically, just financially and socially.”

“You just take a holiday, here, somewhere else, anywhere, there’s no rush on anything you’d need to do here and what you’ll likely end up having to spend that political capital on will be better spent once any base support that kid,”  Kid. Not especially the way one would expect to hear someone use in reference to Voldemort but, in fairness, Calleo was roughly forty years older than him, “has left is a smouldering heap of embarrassment and financial ruin. It’s going to take a few years to get it to a point that it’s usable in that regard.”

Everything Calleo was talking about was so delightfully intricate–the exact kind of social maneuvering and manipulation and elegant design that had so entranced Albus in his youth. Had he been alone when such longing struck, he might very well have hidden his wand and taken a sleep aid. As it was, he simply closed his eyes for a moment, took a long, deep breath, and tried to remind himself of every reason he wasn’t allowed to trust himself with fixing the government. No, it was much better to leave Calleo to handle this–to leave this to someone who could be trusted to continue thinking of the people he was moving into place as people rather than simply puzzle pieces.

He ended up looking rather pained, until he worked his way back to the start of what Calleo had been saying. Then his eyes opened suddenly. 

“I’m afraid we’re going to need to take a step back and slow down, just a hint. What kind of bond, exactly, are you proposing?” He couldn’t handle a direct feed of all his friend was doing to fix this. Frequent reports would be one thing, but constant communication of the sort he was now imagining would be another thing entirely. Very likely, Albus would start to actually treat Calleo as an extension of himself, as though he were little more than a game piece. And he could not allow that to happen. Not at any cost.

“I do trust you. I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of handling this independently. As much as I enjoy being in charge,” he offered a small, amused smile, above all his inner turmoil, “I am capable of letting go, especially when others are more capable than I. And there are methods of communication that neither leave a paper trail nor require we take up residence within each other’s minds. Perhaps it would be prudent to examine those before leaping to whatever, specifically, it is you’re suggesting.”

 “Oh, nothing binding; it’s not a business contract, after all. Just–a key, more or less, and don’t mistake,” he smiled brightly, “If I’d rather not have someone in my head at any given point, I’m more than capable of putting up an ‘out to lunch, try back later’ metaphorical sign.”

 “It’s just easier, over distance, where owls aren’t practical and information needs to be exchanged quickly, to use legilimancy; and only legilimancy. I swear, I’m not going to use it to wake you up in the middle of the night and ask you want the difference between a raven and a writing desk is or anything equally frivolous and there’s no bond involved, if you don’t want to talk, you don’t answer–and vice versa.

 Calleo nodded, “We can discuss other methods certainly, especially if you’re not comfortable with legilimency; it’s just what I’m the most used to using so it’s something I don’t have to think about–pun intended–to resort to using. You wouldn’t see anything I wouldn’t want you to see, all you’d see would be things related to work and an occasional chat.”

 “Speaking of, it’s SO useful for silent conversation that makes other people you’re negotiating with think you’re far too clever to try and pull one over on! That IS business that would be relatively useful here.”

Likely a good idea to be prudent though,“ Calleo kicked his feet up to rest on his own coffee table again. It was his own house, he could do what he wanted in his own house! "You’ve always been good at that you know, tempering–to put it politely–me when my mind gets away from me and starts proposing ideas that may not be the best course of action. HA! And, Merlin, if you were accidentally just hanging about in there and taking a look around, you’d probably run into so many things you never wanted to know about me!”

 “Anyway, it’s good to have someone around who’s able to act as a stopgap,” his smile faded somewhat, but didn’t disappear, “I’d like you to keep in mind that you know this situation better than I do. Just give the leash a yank if you think I’m getting too out of line.”

“I know the people I need to contact, where to have them go, what to have them say, and to whom to get things started; I know where I have to move in the same capacity but it all comes back to you. Not entirely you, I’m not going to even suggest it’s all on you, you don’t need that kind of stress and whatever they do falls back on me as I know how these things work; you need to, for now, remain completely separated from it all to keep the Ministry from poking around where it needn’t be poking around.”

Calleo gave Albus another little squeeze, “I can move as swiftly or as slowly as you’d like. If nothing else, I am exceptionally adaptable!”

“What the Ministry doesn’t know won’t hurt them but if anyone has to fall on the proverbial sword, it’s going to be me.’

 Calleo’s smile returned, this time more warm than playful, “What you need are people around you who can help keep you from thinking you need to be the one to plan, execute, and accomplish those plans; it works better with groups you trust, you know. Two now is a good start, but it’d be a good idea to pick a few more people with highly specialised skill sets eventually.”

 “And maybe for nobody else it comes back to you directly, but it does for me; don’t mistake, though, if I think you’re making a misstep, you’ll hear about it and likely hear about it with a mountain of evidence.”

“AND a holiday. A holiday first while I get information gathering started and you relax wherever it is you choose to relax; if you travel, send photos, if you stay here expect to be mildly fussed over if you start looking like you’re having a rough time.”

 Albus was also extremely capable of keeping people out of his head, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to resist every scrap of information he might be offered.

He reminded himself that he had successfully avoided taking over the world for many years now, then quickly thought it over again, more rationally. "Alright. I will take all of that under advisement.”

It was more difficult than it had any business being, to adjust to the idea that this wasn’t entirely his responsibility, even if he was leading things. I don’t believe such a measure is necessary at this point, but after I return from my holiday,“ he smiled, a little bit sadly, "we can implement legilimancy-based communication. You’re right that there will be quite a few advantages inherent to that method.

"I would like to say that your calm confidence in both of our abilities is remarkably reassuring. Especially your confidence in your ability to knock me back into line. I don’t even doubt you.” He leaned more firmly into his friend for a moment.

“When are you planning to begin taking moves?”

 "Great! It does make things a lot easier when trying to run silent, as it were; and I will want to hear all about your holiday when you get back!” Anyone listening in at this point might have just assumed nothing more than two old Wizards having a perfectly normal conversation.

“And try not to worry, I’m not a horribly loud presence, despite my outward personality; I wouldn’t be noisy living in a flat with thin walls, and I tend to treat others’ minds the same way.”

Calleo positively beamed at the compliment that might have seemed utterly mundane to someone else, “And it’s actual confidence; learned long ago that trying to pass off arrogance as confidence never works out long term.”

 “You’re good enough at pulling me back into line,” he snickered, “I mean, the long hair doesn’t help in escape attempts either. Reckon the same applies to that impressive beard of yours too! Ah—” Calleo regained his composure, “but it is a good thing to know. I never care to work alone for that reason. It’s easy to go a bit off if you haven’t got anyone around to talk you down.”

“I have no doubt that you’ll do very well with this and I’ll have no trouble turning to you for advice or to discuss tactics.”

 As Albus leaned more into Calleo, Calleo pulled him closer, “Oh, Lagraff, Koggott, and Aldig started about a half hour ago. Lagraff’s excellent with the economics of things–and he’s my personal accountant–Koggot gets on well with those in the Unseen Market, and Aldig is positively amazing where politics are concerned; if anyone can make it politically embarrassing to have even a passing association with Voldemort, Aldig can.”

 “Between Aldig and Koggot, they’ll have enough in place within a couple of months so Lagraff can start cutting off economic roots; at the moment, he’s simply a,” Calleo’s smile broadened, “buyer for a private client.”

“Figured I’d start small then have those three how many of the Goblin based business and banks he can get to fall in line.”

“And once that’s done,” Calleo had started to absently braid Albus’ hair, much the same way he used to when they were younger, “that’s when I step in, call in a few favours and where I have no political capital, I’ll make it–or find it, one way or another.  I’ll have a better idea of who and where to target first after hearing back from Aldig and Koggot.”

He sat silently for a while, letting Albus relax and still absently and loosely braiding his hair. It wasn’t the nicest topic, of course but, avoiding such things only made them worse in the end.

 Calleo finally spoke again, “I’ve got this, I promise you that and I also promise that if I think I’m slipping or need additional or reallocated resources,  you’ll be the first person to know.”  "You focus on, first and foremost, you, then on the school, THEN the UK at large; I don’t think I can bring in anyone from the continent without MACUSA losing its mind but I could see if it would be possible for Lagraff to convince at least a few of the Goblins at Gringotts that they really don’t want to keep accounts on these people, and assets can be frozen on a whim.“

 "I know this is difficult for you, Albus” reminiscent of few times in the mid-to-late 1940s, Calleo turned just enough to give his friend a perfectly friendly kiss on the side of his head, “it’s not all that hidden, but I am impressed and proud of you for realising that you’d only run yourself straight into the ground trying to do this yourself.”

“And don’t worry, I never fire the first shot so it’s always self defence in the eyes of the various Law Enforcement departments.”

 “Yes, I suppose it is.” He ought to have learned that lesson decades ago and stopped working alone so frequently himself, but he was grateful for the reminder. 

Hearing him lay out his plan–explain that it was already in motion–Albus was rather suddenly jealous of his network, regardless of how much effort Albus had put into purposely keeping his individual power in their community low. Then, of course, he had the realization that with them working together, Calleo’s network was his by proxy. And perhaps, that combined with what remained of the order and with his other connection and reputation… they might actually be able to make things work. 

“It is. You know me well. Shockingly well, some days. I will leave things in your very capable hands.” And he would trust all the reassurances. There was no good reason not to. 

Albus smiled and squeezed Calleo’s hand for a moment before shifting to put an inch or so between them. “I think I may stay for a moment. A better word might be hiding, but I believe an old man is allowed, on occasion.” And he did stay, not revisiting the unpleasant topics of war criminals or political maneuvering, for nearly half an hour, before he stood again to make his excuses. 

“And now, the school is calling. Always things to be done, you know. I wish you luck. But I do have a holiday to plan as well.” He smiled again, the sadness creeping back in, though it was certainly less prominent than it had been when he had first arrived, and again, took Calleo’s hand for a moment. “I know you know, but you shouldn’t get too set on handling things alone either.”

  “That does tend to happen after a few decades here and there if one is paying attention properly. It’s probably less fair to say you don’t hide it well than it is to say I’ve had to learn to be an almost paranoid level of perceptive for so long that it’s second nature.”

“And, make no mistake, it is often a paranoid level but, then, it has to be.” The smile he offered had a vague hint of sheepishness to it but, it was a smile nonetheless. “One often gets used to doublespeak, as it were, or needing to read between lines someone else would never tell you are there; missing even the smallest thing can have catastrophic results personally and professionally, and if you’re incorrect, the worst you typically end up as is a bit mental–but still alive.”

“The thing is is,” the sheepishness disappeared and melted into something that held the glint of a razor blade, “my dagger collection is made up of the ones I’ve pulled from my own back over the years.”

“If it’s hiding, I’ve been hiding since somewhere around 1916! I couldn’t do half of what you do even a fraction of the time; dealing with other people face to face is exhausting. There’s a good reason I bothered the appropriate offices for years to get them to give me a permit to make this place unplottable and I can sum it up with, ‘Unscheduled visitors outside of office hours stress me out even more than unscheduled visitors during office hours’.” He did, however, manage to not drift back to unpleasant topics for the duration of the conversation. One of the benefits of living in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by Muggles was that there had been, for all intents and purposes, no recent war anywhere near the place; it was all pleasant and quiet, even if the only reason had been that the Muggles weren’t allowed to know what had been going on.

“Does the school actually call?” Calleo tilted his head slightly, “It feels like that’s something it might actually do, which is mildly disconcerting.”

He smiled and not so much laughed as he did make an amused sounding little huff, “I know better than that; if I fall out of contact with either of those three for too long where personal business is concerned there’s a good chance someone under four feet tall will come looking for me and levitate a rolled up copy of the Prophet to go upside my head with for not answering in a timely manner.”

“You’ll have to forgive me in advance if I try to keep you away from needing to deal with some of the–sorts of people I’ll end up dealing with eventually for as long as possible. The ones I wouldn’t classify as dangerous are also the ones who are going to require a little,” Calleo paused, trying to think of a polite way to phrase it that didn’t make him sound horrible and eventually gave up and offered a resigned sounding, “persuasion, if only verbal, to even be willing to talk to you. The ones who owe me favours, which I will get from them one way or another, are more a matter of whether or not they’re currently aware that they owe me and have for at least the last four decades.”

“They’ll come around largely on account of me not intending to give them an option otherwise. If I can’t be charming enough, I can certainly be stubborn enough!”

“The rest are the sort I’ll likely have to take the route of falling in line with being on the, it’s not really an opposite side, yet is at the same time; the ones that need to think I find you to be the problem, not Voldemort.”

“Do try not to worry, though!” He perked back up, smiling brilliantly again. “You’ll know exactly who they are and what they say word for word; if you like, you’ll be able to hear and see them as well, should you want to be able to piece their words together with their tone and actions directly.”

“Finessing!” Evidently, it took Calleo’s mind a few minutes to catch up with the rest of him, “That was the word I was after! Persuasion sounds a hell of a lot more aggressive than I ever get.”

“It does, on occasion, though I’m being slightly less literal at the moment.  Generally, it’s only the wards or the elves who notify me directly that my presence is needed.” For instance, were students performing illegal magic in the corridors, or if the school were under attack, the wards would alert him. Thankfully, that was not the case now.  He didn’t think he could summon the energy to alert the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and coordinate the fallout from that at the moment. “This, thankfully, is much more of a pressing memory of obligations.  A nagging urge to continue keeping things in order, moving along as planned.” He smiled back, more than used to the way goodbyes could be drawn out by now.

“Ahh, keeping track. So few take the initiative to properly track their debts these days, assuming that others forget with time as they do. Yes.” He smiled wanly. “Yes, I’m sure you are more than capable of reminding. And finessing.

“I have full faith in you,” he reminded the both of them yet again. “And I’m sure I will get by just fine without direct memories, unless you find them particularly informative in a way a simpler retelling cannot be.

“I’m sure I will be hearing from you soon, my friend. When I do, I will be sure to inform you in turn of the progress I have made in planning my holiday.” He clasped Calleo’s shoulder fondly in an unusual affectionate gesture, then smiled yet again in a way he could only hope reassured.

#stories #everyheartbesure #hp rp #v: ftbawtft #v: first war #this was an amazing thread to write! #long post

[projectsuminda]

World Building June 2017 - Day 16: Magic

Let me just say that as someone who holds a strong interest and belief in magic, I have been looking forward to this topic for a long time.  Here we go...

Solevaille

As was mentioned on Day 4 (History), it was magic that changed the course of history in Solevaille.  The most important of these to the story was the way Queen Lucina Geppetto brought the dolls to life, which was dependent on magic.  The people of Solevaille view magic as an overall superstitious and almost taboo subject, and there is still a lingering belief that magic is the work of the devil.  Fortunately, though, the advent of living toys mitigated these fears somewhat - especially since it falls under “white” magic.  Odd as it may seem, magic in this setting is mainly black and white - that is, it can be used to heal, purify, and give life (white magic), or to harm, control, and bring death (black magic).  These types are invariably associated with light and darkness, respectively... but while the magic itself has these connotations, it is how one uses it that matters, as will be a message enforced throughout the story of Porcelain Wonderland.

Let’s talk about how the dolls were brought to life.  Life depends on the existence of a soul, which is the source of one’s identity, personality, and memories.  In humans and other “natural” beings, the soul is infused throughout the body from birth until death, though it is rumored that it is “anchored” in the brain and in the heart.  Those are rumors, though, so I won’t go into them.  More importantly, souls are made of an intangible substance called ether (not to be confused with the chemical).  As it is not made of matter nor energy, it defies the very laws of physics, and for that reason, although more powerful individuals are thought to contain more ether than others, this is false; ether does not have a truly quantifiable amount.

Whenever someone dies, their soul leaves their body and moves on into the afterlife, as I believe I mentioned on Day 9 (religion/cosmology).  Here souls are thought to exist on the “astral plane”, from which they can be contacted by mystics and even manifest as ghosts if they choose to visit the mortal realm.  Bringing the dolls to life involves crafting an artificial soul using ether from the astral plane, and giving it a blank slate from which new memories and a new identity can be formed - kind of like forced reincarnation.  Incidentally, a similar process is thought to happen when babies are born, and thought to be the job of God.  Naturally, there have been a few protests among particularly religious tourists (and residents) who say Lucina is breaking natural law by doing this... but as with anyone who gets in her way, Lucina just quietly disposes of these people, where eventually they end up in the Deathly Glade.

Okay, here is a prompt where I definitely have to talk about the Deathly Glade, as it is a construct of magic itself, magic of the blackest sort.  Specifically it is an alternate dimension, contained within a magic mirror and being filled with black mists that drain life and trap souls.  Anyone who gazes into this mirror for too long is in danger of being trapped in there, from which they cannot escape and will suffer a painful death, as a result of poisoning by the black mists (essentially an illness brought about by a curse).  So far, at the time of the story, only two individuals have managed to avoid being drawn inside the mirror this way, those being the Geppetto twins.  Sinistrina is credited with bringing this realm into existence in the first place, and presumably since Lucina learned about magic from her (hence why souls are involved in bringing dolls to life), she has not been affected either.  Originally only a small hand mirror contained this realm, but to further their practice, the twins have since enchanted two more magic mirrors, both full-length.  One is a duplicate of the original, functioning as a one-way portal to the Deathly Glade; the other contains white mists and forms a gateway to the astral plane, so that dolls can be brought to life by gazing into that, even when Lucina is not around.  Currently the former is kept in the throne room of Ludinberg Castle, and the latter is kept in the factory where toys are made.

One reason for the hierarchy to the dolls has to do with how compatible ether is with certain objects and substances.  The details of this are not too important (I don’t want this to end up like the midichlorians of Star Wars infame), but generally, the more complex the vessel is, the better its soul can function.  Porcelains and Ceramics look the most human-like, and thus end up at the top of the hierarchy, their souls being just like ours.  As it turns out, clay is an excellent container for ether, as is glass, stone, and (especially) crystal.  Metal is generally a poor container, but certain contraptions that contain it (clocks and mirrors especially) retain ether a lot better.  However, all those materials so far except for clay are generally not made into dolls, and unfortunately, Lucina has not figured out a way to fuse these materials into a doll to give them life.  The next best thing is wood, which is less than ideal because it used to belong to something alive (i.e. a tree); same goes for cloth.  Still, Lucina has found that woods hold onto ether decently enough to make “partial” souls that may not have as much personality or free will as those of Porcelains and Ceramics.  But because of their increased complexity, Marionettes turn out to have more free will than Woodies do.  Cloth, because of its delicate nature, tends to leak ether, and thus Ragdolls do not last very long and will periodically need “new” souls.  But curiously, the wood in Woodies and Marionettes does not decay on its own thanks to the ether, so they, along with all other dolls, are technically immortal.

Early on when the twins were experimenting with bringing the dolls to life, they got the idea to place the souls of people who have died inside dolls as a way of preserving them.  However, this did not go as expected.  When such souls were placed inside a Porcelain or Ceramic, the doll crumbled away, and when placed into a Marionette or below, they had no sense of their inherited identity.  Thus, at the time of the story, the twins have all but given on up on directly manipulating the souls of living people.

Now wait a minute, some of you may be thinking.  Sinistrina is a necromancer, correct?  And necromancy involves manipulation of souls, correct?  Well, having summoned forth the Deathly Glade, Sinistrina has the ability to channel its black mists even outside of it, which means draining and extinguishing life, bringing illness-based curses, and extracting and trapping souls.  In fact, she was the one who taught Lucina about magic in the first place, though Lucina had more of an aptitude for white magic, involving healing and bringing life, whereas Sinistrina’s proclivities were in black magic.  Later on in the story she would figure out how to preserve the souls of people inside certain materials, but the results would not be pretty.

Another thing some of you may be wondering is exactly how magic is obtained, and who can use it.  Theoretically, anyone can use magic given the right mindset, as at its core it is quite simple: a force of will, used by focusing on one’s intent and using a sort of visualization to make it happen. Therefore, one way to learn it is through study and practice, as was the case for Lucina.  Another way is through natural talent, as was the case for Sinistrina with regards to raising the dead.    And yet another way is through a supernatural entity or item - for example, a deal with the devil.  This is thought to have been the case for Krampus (see Day 4, History), who supposedly traded his soul to a demon in exchange for his magic, but that is just a myth. 

Most notably, though, is that once learned, one’s magical abilities are dependent on their identity - their personality, destiny, or whatever.  This is because the use of magic requires possession of a soul.  Therefore, it is the soul’s specific characteristics that determine how it manifests.  It is for this reason that is is extremely difficult to master magic outside one’s natural “element” - for example, white magic-user Lucina is not going to be able to place curses on people anytime soon, and try though she might, Sinistrina cannot heal people.  As Sinistrina once said in what I have written of Porcelain Wonderland so far, “control of one’s magic requires understanding oneself”.

For more details on the use of magic, refer to the Orenya section below, as there I describe the concept more generally.

Orenya

Naturally, as Orenya’s culture revolves around magic, I covered that topic in much detail in last year’s prompt.  Thinking about the topic more, I realized that the mechanics of the use of magic is practically the same in all of my universes.  This means that everything in the last paragraph of the Solevaille section applies to Orenya as well... and everything in this section will apply to Solevaille and all my other worlds as well.  This is because my magic systems are derived from actual real-world magick, which I have studied and practiced quite a bit (so it’s a case of “write what you know”).  But no world is this more evident than Orenya.

As I just mentioned at the end of the Solevaille section, magic is a force of the will, and its most important ingredient is intent.  While complicated rituals, sigils, incantations, and such do exist on Orenya, they aren’t really necessary, or even consistent.  In fact, most magic, especially the psychic techniques mentioned in last year’s prompt, is used through thought alone.  Many particularly skilled mages, such as members of the Miamin and Oradamin, use their magic this way, even for relatively complex spells.

But tools for focusing magic do help.  As was mentioned in last year’s prompt, incantations have no exact wording, the words simply helping to focus the intent needed for the spell.  But this segways into one magic tidbit unique to Orenya: the mechanics of written spells.  In last year’s language prompt, I mentioned how the ordering of words and use of certain suffixes is what distinguishes incantations from regular speech.  Therefore, if someone writes something down and words it like a spell, it is quite likely that doing so will actually cast the spell.  Underlining a phrase especially seems to increase this likelihood, whereas making an expression more wordy decreases it.  But on the plus side, this makes writing a very useful tool for consecration, especially with the advent of magic-based pens (see last year’s Technology prompt for how those work).  Also, since paper is naturally rolled up into a cylinder, a spell to flatten it out will often be written on a piece of paper; in fact, there are also consecrated charms that can do this temporarily.

Okay, now for a topic that definitely pertains to Solevaille as well:  soul work.  A couple of times I mentioned the Field of Souls in northwestern Zurem, which has a powerful curse upon it that aims to draw people’s souls out of their bodies and trap them in the crystals found throughout.  (So it’s the Orenyan equivalent of the Deathly Glade!)  Though it sounds scary, there are many instances of people exploiting this.  The most famous of these occurred during the Day-Night War, when at one point, a group of sunestre sorcerers embarked on a project to make automatons (more familiarly, golems) out of the trapped souls of their prisoners, employing them as soldiers that are harder to kill than people.  A few of them even used animating enchantments, up to and including artificial souls to achieve the same purpose.  Remind anyone of the dolls in Solevaille?

Of course, nowadays, such a practice is illegal - i.e. heavily regulated by the Oradamin.  The same goes for anything else done with the crystals.  I cannot believe I didn’t mention this in detail before, but there is a unique instrument on Orenya called the latria, which is notable for producing no sound, but rather an ethereal sort of music that plays directly into the mind and soul.  Creating one is an even more exhaustive process than what is needed for a staff and infuses particles from the magisphere, so, much like the Technology Tragedy (see last year’s History prompt), strict regulations led to there being only one latria present in the Modern Era - in the dry twilight town of Sharun.  However, during the Trading Era, many of these were created, and they were made with crystals from the Field of Souls.  Thus, a latria’s creation brings the danger of trapping the maker’s soul inside the instrument, which would kill them. Although, there have been a few sorcerers throughout history who have willingly gone into the Field of Souls to obtain a crystal for their own soul, as a form of immortality.  In the Modern Era, the Oradamin have apprehended many such sorcerers (more familiarly, liches), who, along with innocent victims of the crystals’ soul-drawing power, are brought to the Miamin to discuss what to do with the soul.

Most often, such trapped souls will be released, so that they can move on to the afterlife.  However, there are instances in which the trapped soul and their friends and/or family will come to an agreement to keep them around until they are ready to move on.  Or even for public service: one famous example of this is a necromancer brought to justice by the Oradamin who opted to have his crystallized soul power the very first “soul train” (see yesterday’s prompt on Technology for all your Orenyan train-related needs) as a public service.

#world building june #orenya #solevaille

[stack-of-shame]

Shamesplosion II: Regexance

Game #26: Legend of Kay, Neon Studios, 2005

Legend of Kay is part of a peculiar group of games from the waning years of “Character Action Games” (now known as 3D platformers). In some ways these games, including Kay, are some of the best in the genre. The industry had learned how to make controls feel good. Even more esoteric things, like combo moves, had been standardized to a degree. The camera, once nausea inducing, now seamlessly balanced between the gentle hand of the game and the user’s input. 

For all that is expert about Legend of Kay, it flies a bit too high. The cutscenes and conversations over-rely on generic, canned animations. I believe that all the voice talent in Legend of Kay were fine actors, but, searching the game’s credits, there was not a dedicated voice over director. As such the voice performances as a whole leave something to be desired. 

Why am I picking these nits? Because cutscenes demand a certain quality to justify their presence in a game. Unless they are very good, they drag the experience down. I think I’d have enjoyed Kay more if the conversations had been presented only as text. I don’t say that to be cruel, I honestly believe that the atmosphere would have been easier to establish. 

Game #27: Quadrilateral Cowboy, Blendo Games, 2016

Quadrilateral Cowboy vs. Jazzpunk is an amazing case study in game audio

Largely because, given access only to the visual elements of both games, you could easily be forgiven for confusing the two.

Both have an aesthetic that blends minimalist geometry and a honey-mustard color-sheme with 80s cyberpunk, both feature a main character who is sent on various "jobs" which involve traveling to an ambiguously virtual dimension to perform espionage, and both treat pre-digital and recently digital technology as a plaything in their world-building.

If, however, you were given only the audio of each game, you would never confuse the two.

On the blog for Necrophone games, they outline the absolutely bonkers lengths they went to to achieve the sound. Many of the noisemakers used for Jazzpunk's soundscape actually built from scratch, soldering and all, by the game's creators. Bringing that level of depth to a game's sound would be admirable for a sound designer, let alone someone who is also devoted full time to simply making the game.

The soundscape of Jazzpunk is like nothing else I've heard before or since, except perhaps in a Martin Denny record. It's a jangly, agitated mix of synths and old jazz records, a kind of James-Bond-cyber-mambo. The implementation is straightforward for the most part, though outright bizarre at times, with attention-grabbing samples coming it at inappropriate times, but because the rest of the game is so damn weird you forgive it somehow.

For everything that is bizarre about Jazzpunk, it relies on more traditional adventure puzzle mechanics, as well as callbacks (there's a quake clone hidden in a wedding cake). The puzzles are hilariously gratifying to solve, but Jazzpunk does not have many new skills to teach the player.

Quadrilateral Cowboy is, in some ways, more sophisticated than Jazzpunk, and I'm not just talking about their approach to humor. Cowboy's gameplay has something quite new to offer players, and something which feels like somewhat of a holy grail in game design; it makes it feel cool to write code. For a while it seemed like there were so many attempts to make games about coding that reviewers were declaring the effort itself to be futile. But Cowboy has done it.

When you look at the credits in Quadrilateral Cowboy, under audio, it simply says "Soundsnap.com" As such very little in Cowboy's soundscape really feels like it belongs to the game. Many of the sounds are appropriate enough. But they do not have that intangible sense of having somehow come from the game itself.

The implementation of sounds is just as puzzling as in Jazzpunk, but unfortunately it is to negative effect. Point-located sounds are at maximum volume when standing near them, and nearly silent when a few steps away. When the player character throws something, they often emit a cough, not the expected effort sound.

The music is completely diagetic, which can be a powerful decision. It is all licensed, and is used to build the settings and tell you things about the characters. All in all a strong point in the soundscape.

I adore both games, but y'all can guess which has been my enduring favorite.

Game #28: Snuggle Truck, Owlchemy Labs, 2012

This game has been in my library for five years, and I sorely regret not playing it immediately after buying it. Snuggle Truck smacks of the Indie Revolution. These kinds of games, centered around a straightforward-but-wiley physics-based mechanic, will always have a special place in my heart. I found myself wondering if this game would be able to stand out if it were released today. Perhaps it would, given Owlchemy’s outreach. 

But how Snuggle Truck would do in today’s market has nothing to do with it’s validity as a work of art, nor does it have anything to do with how deserving it is of commercial success. 

I think about the discussion going on in the indie game community, about the “indiepocalypse” and the “indie bubble.” I think it’s easy to forget that there was never a time when making a game was risk free. It was never a case of, “make game, get paid, onto day three of my indie adventure.” It has always been hell. Maybe the marketing wasn’t hell for a short while. Everything else has always been hell. 

Game #29: Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Double Fine, 2016

I don’t like admitting that I always kind of thought Broken Age invented the whole switching between characters thing. I’ve been touting myself as a fan of point and click adventure games for a while now, and it’s just embarrassing to think I had gotten the whole picture after having played only a tiny selection from what the golden age of this genre has to offer. Man there are a lot of these things. They are a huge time sink though, often designed to take 40 hours to play. I’m not gonna lie, as much as a I adore these games I have myself a good ol’ fashioned think before I choose to start in on one. 

Day of the Tentacle is great, by the way. 

Game #30: Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death, Rebellion, 2003

According to steam, I have played this for 13 minutes. I couldn’t tell you a thing about it because I have no memory of doing so.

Game #31: Elite Dangerous, Frontier Developments, 2014

Oh the deep, dark, horrible shame. My boyfriend bought this game for me at considerable expense in the hopes of giving us another thing to do together. As we booted up the game, he explained to me how we would do one simple thing to boost my cash reserves, and that we’d then be able to do some fun stuff together. He would give me some items, I would sell them. Easy. Would you care to guess how long this took? Trade and sell. How long? How long do you think? 

Three hours. It wasn’t because of our internet connection, it wasn’t because we were very far apart, it wasn’t because we had to do multiple runs, that is how long it takes to do all of the preparatory work in the 20 odd menus and locales you need to visit, then rendez-vous in space, then use a slightly smaller set of menus to open a thing, arm something else, send out another thing, there’s something called a limpet, (I’m assuming it’s named after a British cookie) and then I got the thing and then I could fly back to the station blah blah blah blah. 

I cried. I cried, people. I felt so much like a dumb failure, like a complete waste of my boyfriend’s generosity, that it honestly upsets me to write about it. He did his best to comfort me and assured me he wasn’t mad (yeah, he saw the cry happen) but we have never played it again. I still technically own it but I have hidden it from my steam library because the mere sight of it is disturbing to me, even now. 

Game #32: Mass Effect 2, Bioware, 2010

I have started using Mass Effect 2 to bone up on my German. It’s got full German language support. I only get about a 3rd of what they’re saying. It makes me chuckle how the made-up sci-fi words get pronounced with an American accent. 

Game #33: TRI: Of Friendship and Madness, Rat King, 2014

Exposition of any kind is a tough sell, especially in the fantasy genre. Unless you have Ian McKellen in your roster, almost any fantasy writing is going to sound silly when read aloud. Put another way, dramatic voice over in a game is one of those things that cannot be anything less than great.  I’m tempted to compare this to Journey. Both do a good job of building a fantastical world with magical architecture and a story that existed long before you arrived, but Journey does it better. They probably could have gotten a budget for voice over, but they chose not to use it, and I think it was the right decision. Even with the best voice cast and writers in the world, human voices would have made the world more familiar, to it’s detriment. 

And here’s the thing: in all likelihood, the team behind Journey wrote down just as much detail about the backstory of their game as Tri presents aloud, and a million times more. It may seem that choosing to tell your game’s story without voice over would save effort in terms of storytelling, but nothing could be further from the truth. To expose a world to a player without dialogue, you have to know how your world affects the walls, clothes, materials, gestures, decor, artifacts, absolutely everything the player encounters, because that is the sum total of what you have at your disposal to tell your story.  I’m told that there’s a real mind bender of a game waiting for you if you stick with it, so I may revisit. 

Game #34: Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball, Erik Asmussen, 2015

I am a chronic late adopter of multiplayer games, partially because I’ve never been able to afford them when they’re new. I’ve never joined one in time to get good at it at the same pace as all the early adopters. For my entire life playing games, I’ve found myself getting stomped by people who have hung on long after a game’s heyday, people who know every trick, and who’s patience for newbs ran out years ago. Which is a shame because this game is colorful and awesome. 

#too many games #stack of shame #gaben #steam sales #shamesplosion #day of the tentacle #snuggle truck #quadrilateral cowboy #jazzpunk #legend of kay #the world doesn't need another review of mass effect 2