#Source: Virtual Frankenstein

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

Leverage Redemption Season 3 Episode Titles

[Source]

E01 - The Weekend in Paris Job

On the run from a busted heist in Paris, the Leverage team finds themselves taking shelter among oligarchs auctioning off their home nations' precious resources. On the fly they have to create an entirely new con to take down the group's ringleader and save a well-intentioned activist.

E02 - The Digital Frankenstein Job

The team conducts a sting to snare a corrupt judge by using the perfect undercover briber - a completely virtual tech visionary generated by A.l. - only to watch as their "Digital Frankenstein" quickly spins out of control.

E03 - The Scared Stiff Job

Our team runs the ambitious "Christmas Carol" con on a wannabe cryonics mogul who coerces dying patients into exploitative contracts bankrupting the loved ones they leave behind. But when the mark escapes the artificial world the team has built, they must race to find his assets before the entire job is blown.

E04 - The Hustler Job

The crew takes on a phone scamming ring that uses deepfake technology to con their marks, run by an old school hustler who came up via the pool hall circuit. To infiltrate his organization, they have to best him on and off the felt.

E05 - The Grand Complication Job

When Sophie is abducted, rivals Parker and Astrid are forced into a desperate race against time to save her by securing the elusive "Grand Complication" Marie Antoinette watch. Unaware of each other's involvement, they embark on a high stakes quest to track her down before time runs out.

E06 - The Swipe Right Job

E07 - The Shakedown in Clone-Town Job

E08 - The Cooling Off the Mark Job

E09 - The Polygeist Job

E10 - The Side Job

[supernova1us]

So I had a really weird, random transformers concept idea pop up

So I had this idea that i just got yesterday and kept thinking about. similar to RID2015's motif of all the decepticons being animal themed, this series would have the theme of the Decepticons be based off the universal classic monsters. literally this whole idea came from a pic where someone showed that wfc megatrons arm could be swapped with primes because of the weapon gimmick. and i was like, oh megatron with a different arm is cool, what if he had many salvaged parts, like frankenstein. so yeah i just rolled with and kept developing that concept, fell down the rabbit hole a bit and so here's what i have so far.

the plot is that at the height of the war, shockwave tricks megatron into leading a crew of cons mostly loyal to him on a fools errand looking for an energy source, so he can gain command of the deceptions. ending up marooned on earth in the scheme, they spend years there, attempting to first conquer humanity, then hide from them after being repeatedly overwhelmed and many killed, and finally to simply survive. badly damaged and no longer caring for their goals, infighting finally causes them to all go rogue to survive in their own ways. after the end of the war, optimus leads a crew of autobots to investigate and possibly capture megatron after learning of his fate when shockwave was defeated. the autobots role then would basically be monster hunters, attempting to remain in hiding on earth, with the help of Mikaela Banes, to hunt down the now monstrous decepticons

megatron-primarily based on the Frankenstein monster, he'd be surviving now as a grotesque patchwork of parts from his fallen warriors to stay alive(also partially based on DOTM design). he still maintains his drive to dominate and cunning and continues to manipulate events from the shadows, also sorta making him a bit of dr frankenstein as well. bots he'd def have parts incorporated from would include thundercracker, blackout, demolishor, flamewar.

nightbird would be based on the bride of frankestein, owing to her original origin, she will have been made by megatron from parts scavenged from shadow striker, slipstream and flamewar.

barricade would be based on igor, having been badly crippled and still faithfully aiding megatron as his crony. he secretly has the statsis locked bodies of rumble and frenzy hidden away, which he has one-sided conversations with.

starscream would play up his g1 trait and be a spark ghost, frequently haunting/tormenting megatron but also keeping tabs on the other cons and watching/harassing the autobots.

soundwave would be based on the phantom of the opera, with half his head being melted/badly damaged, he now hides in the sewers and composes his own music which he anonymously broadcasts to the human city above. he is also going insane as his damage means his mind reading abilities are always active and hearing all the humans minds. he also refuses to free his cassettes from his chest out of paranoia that they may either betray or abandon him.

skywarp would be based on the invisible man, his body having been rendered virtually nonexistent by previously being overloaded when attempting to teleport, he wears makeshift armor(made from jet parts and based on the armada version) to be seen and hold together his barely existing physical form.

reflector would be based on the classic zombie horde; he/they created far too many copies/clones at once, spreading the shared consciousness too thin until it snapped, leaving them all bereft of any higher consciousness, only barely living functions like stunted mobility and desire to find energy, as well as brain modules from other bots to potentially restore their own mind.

shatter, would be based on dracula, after a failed experiment in augmenting the decpeticons energy processing abilities, became a ravenous energy vampire, compulsively sucking off raw energy sources to survive, including other bots.

sixshot would be based on a werewolf, having lost control of his savage and now independent wolf mode, which he cannot resist switching to at random times.

spittor would be based on the creature of the black lagoon, with his look and traits based off his tfa version but to a greater extent. he now also has a proper frog alt mode, though a grotesque one.

cyclonus would be based on the mummy, having been supposedly killed by the humans and bound in titanium wrapping and dumped underground to be forgotten. he eventually stirs from statsis lock, his mind deteriorated and his body barely functioning and only held together by the bindings, and goes out to seek warped revenge on humans and transformers alike.

Bonecrusher, based on his movie version, would just be like a wild engine of destruction, very much a jason vorhees type.

blackarachnia, with a tfa design, would be also mutated into a technorganic which is treated more as her being this biomechanical abomination, somewhat inspired by the Metaluna Mutant.

snapdragon and apeface would be based on godzilla and king kong respectively, and be like mini kaiju who consistently feud in beast mode and destroy the same city over and over.

the insecticons are now feral insect types who have built a large underground hive.

the autobots would consist of optimus prime, ironhide(movieverse based), red alert(tfa based), jazz, bulkhead, mirage, hashtag(earthspark based), bumblebee, cliffjumper, whirl, knockout(rotf based) and wheeljack(dotm body design and personality, but with typical colors and head design). optimus, jazz, bee and cliff would have overall design and traits based on their wfc/foc designs, simply just if they now had earth mode features.

so, what are thoughts on this admittedly weird concept?

[jbblackwell]

KISS 1979: The End of a Dynasty (franKENstein Live Redux) from KENN NARDI on Vimeo.

When I started getting bootleg shows back in the '90s, Largo '79 was one of my favorite concerts, warts and all. The copy I had sounded awful and looked even worse. The stage often looks dark, the band was not having a great night, but it's all we had. It still is. Unfortunately, no other multi-camera (pro-shot) '79 shows have ever circulated (if any even exist) and I feel like this has led to the Dynasty Tour getting a particularly bad reputation.

My goal with this video was to try and put together a "cleaned up" version of the 1979 Tour which fans can hopefully enjoy more than what we've had. This is NOT a 100% historic representation of that single Largo show, but more like what I think the band might have released for public consumption. I didn't try and make it studio-perfect, but I did fix the major mistakes and botched lyrics.

VIDEO: The video has been upscaled to 1080p and I have done a virtual shot-by-shot adjustment to try and get the best possible quality. I did a few things to try and minimize the lines in the worst places. Sometimes the stage looks very dark, and I wanted to try and even out the lighting throughout the show. I also did a few minor editing changes to sometimes break up long shots or to cover for missing or incorrect lyrics. I also trimmed a bit of the in-between song dead air to make the flow more like an official release.

AUDIO: At this stage audio isolating software is still in its infancy and the better the source thew better the results. The Largo audio is mono and pretty poor quality, so rather than trying to "clean it up" I decided to "re-create" it. The main sources were Knoxville '79, Atlanta '79, Syndey '80 and various other shows which sometimes just supplied a few notes of a solo or a missing word or two. It's way too much to mention here, but everything was done in a way to represent the 1979 version of these songs.

DRUMS: The drums were done using Peter's isolated drums from the Knoxville soundboard recording. These were perfectly synced to the Largo show with a few minor changes here and there sometimes due to a "mistake' or sometimes just because I liked what he played better. I then blended them with custom-made samples I created using Peter's drums from various sources. Radioactive was not played in Knoxville so Atlanta soundboard was used for that one. "Tossin' and Turnin'" was not played at either show so those drums were created piece by piece using other songs with the same drum patterns and with other pieces put together using my sampling sources. I also re-created the crowd, bombs, etc.

BASS: The bass was taken from various recordings including Largo, the Lakeland rehearsal, Alive II, Sydney and more. I would basically create a main synced version for the "body" of his parts and then run that through an amp modeler to give it distortion closer to what he sounded like live.

GUITARS: This was the biggest challenge. I decided to use almost exclusively the guitars from the Largo show. The biggest problem was that the recording is mono. Some people use the delay-trick to "simulate" stereo, but this usually results in a tin-can, out of phase hollow sound since it is just the same track, slightly delayed and hard-panned to the opposite speaker. I didn't want to do that, so I did a cut and paste job where I would take the same riffs and parts to create Ace's parts and then swap them around for Paul's track, so it is more like a true stereo mix. I would take the rhythms that Paul plays under the solos and use those for his side in those parts, etc., so it is much closer to a stereo mix. I did fix major screw-ups, bum notes and replaced out-of-tune sections with better parts. A few bits of solos come from a couple other sources just because the sound was just too buried under the rhythm to get good isolation.

VOCALS: The vast majority of the vocals come from Knoxville, mainly because the audio quality on Largo is so poor. I synced everything to Largo for the most part though there are some variations in the phrasing throughout the show. Sometimes I did use pieces of Largo if I liked the part better or where they sang something too differently. Radioactive vocals come mostly from Atlanta with a bit of Lakeland and a bit of Largo. "Tossin' and Turnin'" vocals were taken from Largo.

I decided to correct the forgotten lyrics in "Move On" and completely re-edited "God of Thunder" which Gene sand all out of order but decided to leave "Beth" alone. We know he screwed those lyrics up in at least one other show and like I said his reaction has a certain charm to it and demonstrates how, by that point, the band was often flying on autopilot.

As I always say, this is NOT for the purists. It is my attempt to make a more enjoyable Dynasty concert for other fans. The original Largo video is readily available, and this is in no way intended to replace or erase that show from KISStory. This one took months to put together, working almost daily, so I hope you all enjoy it.

[theohonohan]

All Channel

A few weeks ago, on the bus from Ballymun in the afternoon, I was sitting opposite two young kids. One was reminding the other that they had been the one who showed them that it was possible to get on the bus and go into town (I'm not sure if their trip had involved slipping away from some daycare program). The second kid said "Oh, so I created you!"

I was struck by this remark, because it seems to reflect the influence of video games or fantasy narratives. I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to use that metaphor when I was a kid. The notion of creating or training another sentient being, like a pokémon or a tamagotchi, is common in the video game world, but historically this kind of filiation been very controversial—Frankenstein's monster, for example, or heretical doctrines such as traducianism. It seems amazing to me that kids would adopt this way of thinking about the creation of other individuals outside the worlds of fictional narratives. Weird new practices such as tulpamancy come to mind.

In a video game, the human players are typically the only agencies, and they experience the game world as a combination of background art, NPCs and game mechanics. This situation inspired David Cronenburg's film eXistenZ, which features a virtual reality game that is generated from the combined psychic energies of its dozen or so players. The participants are the sole constituents of the game world, connected by an all-channel network which somehow generates the experience of the game, presented to consciousness like a dream. All there is, really, is an interface between the players. There's no source of truth other than their competing wills. (Cronenburg has remarked that he was thinking about Schopenhauer's theory of Will and Representation when writing the script for eXistenZ.)

Video games describe a world in which individual agency (the control of the player character) is the main event. All other forms of causality (even chance occurences) are minimized in the service of a coherent narrative or a fair contest. Much like the characters in eXistenZ, the players of a video game provide the only inputs from which the world is generated. A perspective on reality that takes video games as its model may miss the significance of independent human experience beyond interaction between people. There's plenty of space on the spectrum between the solipsism of a single-player game and the incessant social interaction of a multi-player arena. To think of oneself as creating another individual seems like it might lead to a kind of object permanence problem: one discounts all of the experience that individual might have outside of their interactions with you.

Elif Batuman's book The Idiot evocatively describes the way email, in the 90s, could provide for the first time a narrow, persistent textual channel between physically separated people. In the absence of direct interaction, the participants in an email conversation find themselves simultaneously reducing their interlocutor to his or her typed words, and projecting a psychically complex persona from those words. Since then, the wonder of email has worn off, but people still talk about "text chemistry", which operates in this strange impersonal territory.

Insofar as I’d had any idea about it at all, I had imagined that email would resemble faxing, and would involve a printer. But there was no printer. There was another world. You could access it from certain computers, which were scattered throughout the ordinary landscape, and looked no different from regular computers. Always there, unchanged, in a configuration nobody else could see, was a glowing list of messages from all the people you knew, and from people you didn’t know, all in the same letters, like the universal handwriting of thought or of the world. Some messages were formally epistolary, with “Dear” and “Sincerely”; others telegraphic, all in lowercase with missing punctuation, like they were being beamed straight from people’s brains. And each message contained the one that had come before, so your own words came back to you—all the words you threw out, they came back. It was like the story of your relations with others, the story of the intersection of your life with other lives, was constantly being recorded and updated, and you could check it at any time.

(From https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/314108/the-idiot-by-elif-batuman/9780143111061/excerpt)

[jcmarchi]

New Russian Creation - What Is This Weirdo T-80? - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/new-russian-creation-what-is-this-weirdo-t-80-technology-org/

New Russian Creation - What Is This Weirdo T-80? - Technology Org

Russia can say many times that it has no shortage of weapons, but as we speak “Frankensteins” made of several different weapons are being sent to fight at the frontlines in Ukraine. Previously, naval weapons were mounted on MT-LB chassis. Now the T-80 tank received a similar treatment.

RBU-6000 in its normal environment – mounted on a ship. Not on a tank chassis. Image credit: Hunini via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The RBU-6000 is a Soviet naval rocket launcher that entered service sometime in 1960-1961. This system consists of 12 rocket tubes and an automatic loader, which is normally located below the deck. The RBU-6000 fires RGB-60 rockets in volleys of 1, 2, 4, 8 or 12 shots. Rockets fall into the water, dive deep and can destroy submarines at a depth of up to 1 km.

The RBU-6000 is rather a heavy weapon – it weighs more than 3 tonnes without rockets. But what does that weight mean for a large warship? Not much. However, Russians are now mounting this rocket system on the T-80 tank chassis.

Experts at the Defense Express reported that Russia has at least two T-80 and RBU-6000 hybrids. Where they get the RBU-6000 is obvious enough – this rocket system was the most common weapon of its type in the Soviet navy. When a ship is written off and scrapped, the RBU-6000 can be removed and stored for future use in another ship or, as it turns out, on a tank chassis. There aren’t many T-80 chassis without turrets, but Russians probably mount the RBU-6000 when rebuilding battle-damaged tanks.

RBU-6000 “Smerch-2” on the chassis of the Russian T-80B tank pic.twitter.com/xXjT8YYhbx

— — GEROMAN — time will tell – 👀 — (@GeromanAT) January 23, 2024

How is this Frankenstein system hybrid even possible? Quite simply, actually, as the rockets launched by the RBU-6000 system are unguided. This means that there is virtually no electronics connecting the rockets to the carrying vehicle. In the case of a ship, they dive into the water and must create a dense forest of death – if at least one rocket hits the submarine, it sinks. On land, the RBU-6000 will operate similarly to a Grad system or other unguided rocket systems.

The effectiveness of such a T-80 – RBU-6000 hybrid will inevitably be very limited. Unguided rockets will fly all around and will not be able to guarantee a hit. In addition, a tank armed in this way is very tall and likely clumsy – an easy target for Ukrainian drones to spot and destroy.

Finally, the RBU-6000 was designed for large ships, so the T-80 will be quite small for it. This rocket system is likely to be externally loaded and that procedure should take some time. Previously Russian scrapyard engineers tried to install the RBU-6000 on the MT-LB chassis as well – the T-80 is probably a more stable option for this kind of a setup.

Ukraine does not have a functioning navy, while Russia has many naval weapons. So, instead of saving them for future sea battles, Russia is installing them on land-based vehicles, using up old ammunition and preserving more crucial ammo stock for later.

Written by Povilas M.

Sources: TSN.ua, Wikipedia

[eyesaremosaics]

Favorite books?

Hmmm… that’s tough, I love a lot of books. I’m an old lady, I prefer classic literature, or historical fiction… horror fiction…. I guess if I had to narrow it down I would say:

--“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Probably my all time favorite. I really resonated with the “savage” in this novel. Now more than ever…

--“Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice, actually pretty much all the vampire chronicles. The vampire Lestat, queen of the damned, blood and gold, the vampire Armand, pandora… tale of the body thief…

—“Frankenstein: the modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley, I just think it’s a powerful piece of literature. Beautifully written.

—“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, the darkest love story of all time.

—“A Spy in the house of love” by Anais Nin, I love most of Anais’ work, her diaries… delta Venus…

—“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, i know it seems pretentious and cliché—but I love virtually everything he writes. Always wished my birthday was the 24th instead of the 23rd so I could share it with him and Jim Henson😭. “The beautiful and the damned” “flappers and philosophers”… “this side of paradise”… all good.

—“Save me the Waltz” by Zelda Fitzgerald. I always thought her life was very tragic, and since she inspired so much of Scott’s work—naturally I found her a source of fascination as well.

—“the turn of the screw” by Henry James

— “the stranger” by Albert Camus

—“the bell jar” by Sylvia Plath with always hold a special place in my teenage heart.

—“the catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger. I love most of his stuff as well, I really feel Holden Caulfield. He knows what’s up.

—“Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert

—“the Venus in Furs” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

—“I Capture The Castle” by Dodie Smith (1948)

—“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte (1847)

—“Dracula” by Bram Stoker (1897) classic! Read it so many times.

Harry Potter and lord of the rings I’ve read countless times.

-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860), I gotta admit… I love me some Charles Dickens. This one is particularly special.

—Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

I always loved treasure island, and the Swiss family Robinson when I was a kid.

Lord of the flies has always stuck with me.

—“Slaughterhouse 5” by Kurt Vonnegut

I liked the lovely bones… flowers in the attic… I enjoyed chuck palahniuk back in the day.

Oh! I love “The Giver” by Lois Lowry.

A clockwork orange…

I love Stephen King. Pet Semetary is my favorite though.

I love “tuck everlasting” and “bridge to teribithia”.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) is an all time fav. Love the Alfred Hitchcock movie as well.

Silence of the lambs…American psycho…. Hell House by Richard Matheson (1971),

Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2002), can I just say—Neil Gaiman must be the most prolific writer of modern times. I love so much of his stuff. I met him once in person, he’s a sweet man.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde—one of the best pieces of fiction ever written. I also love how cheeky Oscar Wilde was in general. Also a libra (my team!).

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, Short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Brilliant feminist piece of literature/social commentary on feminine “hysteria”.

“Go Ask Alice” by Beatrice Sparks.

“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” by Joanne Greenberg

“Girl interrupted” Susanna Kaysen

“Fear and loathing in Las Vegas”, Hunter S. Thompson. I love reading his stuff, he cracks me up.

Too many to name, but there ya go!

[ilarbdisney]

Halloween on Disney+

Movies

Hocus Pocus

Girl Vs. Monster

Halloweentown

Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s revenge

Halloweentown High

Return to Halloweentown

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Twitches

Twitches Too

Monsters inc.

Monsters University

The Black Hole

Bedknobs & Broomsticks

The Haunted Mansion

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame II

Frankenweenie (1984)

Frankenweenie (2012)

James and the Giant Peach

The Black Cauldron

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

Now You See It

Smart House

Don’t Look Under the Bed

Phantom of the Megaplex

Mr. Boogedy

Bride of Boogedy

The Ghosts of Buxley Hall

Invisible Sister

Coco

Spooky Buddies

Zombies

Zombies 2

The Scream Team

Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire

Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)

Return From Witch Mountain

Maleficent

Return to Oz

Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween movie

Tower of Terror

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Under wraps

Into the Woods

Short films & specials

Mater and the Ghostlight

Mickey Mouse Lonesome Ghosts

Mickey’s House of Mouse Villains

Toy Story of Terror

Donald Duck Trick or Treat

Episodes

Big City Greens - Blood Moon pt. 1 & 2

Even Stevens - A Very Scary Story

Boy Meets World - And Then There Was Shawn

Girl Meets World - Girl Meets World of Terror Pt. 1, 2, & 3

Good Luck Charlie - Scary Had a Little Lamb, Le Halloween, Fright Knight

Hannah Montana - Torn Between Two Hannah’s

Jessie - The Whining, Ghost Bummers, The Runaway Bride of Frankenstein, The Ghostess With the Mostest

Bunk’d - Camp Kiki Slasher, Treehouse of Terror, In Your Wildest Dreams

K.C. Under Cover - All Hollows Eve, Virtual Insanity

Kim Possible - October 31st

Lizzie McGuire - Night of the Day of the Dead

Phil of the Future - Halloween

Phineas and Ferb - One Good Source Ought to Do It, The Monster of Phineas and Ferbinstein, That’s the Spirit, Druselsteinoween Face your Fear, Terrifying Tri-state Trilogy of Terror pt. 1 & 2

That’s So Raven - Don’t Have a Cow Raven’s Home - The Baxtercism of Levi Grayson, Switch-or-Treat, Creepin’ it Real, Don’t Trust the G in Apt 4B

Shake it Up - Halloween it Up, Haunt it Up

Sonny with a Chance - A So Random Halloween Special

The Proud Family - A Hero for Halloween

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody - Ghost of 613, Arwenstein

Suite Life on Deck - The Ghost and Mr. Martin

Wizards of Waverly Place - Halloween

Ant Farm - mutANT farm, mutANT farm 2, mutANT farm 3.0

Austin & Ally - Costumes and Courage, Horror Stories and Halloween Scares, Scary Spirits and Spooky Stories

Liv and Maddie - Kang-a-Rooney, Helgaween-a-Rooney, Haunt-a-Rooney, Scare-a-Rooney

Gravity Falls - Summerween

Dog With a Blog - Howloween pt. 1 & 2

Ducktales (reboot) - The Trickening

The Emperor’s New School - The Yzma That Stole Kuzcoween/ Monster Masquerade

Lilo and Stitch: The Series - Spooky

So Weird - Boo

[anangelicday-mrwolf]

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 68 – The Secret of Resurrection and the Outing

“Greetings to you, O Lord of the nobles. Pardon me, for I cannot rise from my respite.” 

“Have no concern. We are all aware of the state your body is suffering.” 

Lascrea raised her hand in a salute-reply to Lunark. 

When Rael learned from Seira that the werewolf who was as immobile as a corpse finally opened her eyes, he scurried back to the Lord's Hall, which he had emptied for less than 10 minutes, to share the news with Lascrea. 

Lunark also requested to the Central Knights stationed at the ward that she must speak to their lord, and their meeting was scheduled shortly afterwards. 

And they were not the only participants for today's meeting.

“I pray for your patience, although this room is not big enough to allow all of us. Our speaker must not leave her bed.”

“Have no concerns, my lord.” 

“We are alright.” 

Kei and Rosaria were standing next to Lascrea, rendering Lunark's room rather crowded. 

Her room may be the best that Lukedonia can offer, but it was designed for a single occupant. 

And the room felt even smaller because they also had virtual guests for this meeting. 

<May we begin?> 

Lunark flinched at Frankenstein's voice, transferred through Lascrea's phone that was switched to the speaker mode. 

No one would have missed it, yet no one pointed it out, for none of them paid attention to anything other than what Lunark was about to unleash.

“I believe all of you would know by now with what power I defeated the Dark Spear.” 

“We all happened to be shocked and perplexed. How did a werewolf like you got to wield power that was most certainly begotten by Raizel?” 

Everyone solemnly focused their sights and hearings upon Lunark.

Even she was still trying to wrap her head around what happened.

Upon accepting the mysterious power that offered its hand to her as she sunk deep into the sea, her abdomen punctured by the Dark Spear, Lunark realized the oh-so-familiar-for-some-reason power was none other than Raizel's power. 

As of now the power was rinsed off her like snow met with summer sun, but her psyche had been etched with memories that had connected to her during her carriage of the power. 

“This would be a long story, for I must start off from the Noblesse's disappearance into slumber 820 years ago.” 

The nobles surrounding Lunark implied fluster with their eyes. 

They knew discussion on Raizel is a must, considering that he is the source of the power Lunark made use of. 

However, they did not expect her to wind back at least six books on noble history, to land right onto Raizel's slumber that took place 820 years ago. 

“Noblesse, sir, you fell into sleep immediately following your duel against my lord, didn't you?” 

<...I did. I chose dormancy as I was stranded upon the oceanic spot not far from Lukedonia, and the zone of water and salt directly beneath became my sanctuary.> 

“Actually, I fell into the sea nearby after I was fallen as the result of my first showdown against the Dark Spear. Geologically speaking, it was near a human city called Miami, stationed in United States.” 

<Miami...? It happens to be one of the three vertices composing the Bermuda Triangle, at the center of which Lukedonia lies.> 

Lunark coerced her voice to activate, painstakingly shifting her attention away from the now-automated wince in her heart in reaction to Frankenstein's voice. 

“As you were recovering in the ocean for 820 years, your power was leaking from your coffin little by little. And after 8 centuries, the underwater domain centering on your ex-sanctuary came to absorb your power.” 

“What? You mean... Currently there is a submarine area not far from Lukedonia that holds power from Raizel?” 

“Correct. And that happens to be one of the three reasons why you, the Noblesse, and two of your heads of clans could return from death. During the nuclear missile incident, the three of you stood in defense of your homeland right above the Noblesse's ex-sanctuary. Which also served as the vessel of your remains from the clash. There the three of you absorbed the power of Noblesse teeming within, to rise back to life. Speaking of which, don't you feel there has been an increase of your power?” 

Silence heavily dawned upon the chamber as Lunark spoke; the three nobles knew she was absolutely right, their awareness of the phenomenon prevalent within them, unbeknownst to them. 

Once they defeated death, in contrast to their resolve, they could feel their powers have become somewhat more durable, more invulnerable. 

Which was forgotten momentarily due to series of huge events that promptly tagged along the nuclear missile incident, such as the downfall of Union and the QuadraNet Project. 

Hence the question regarding the resurrection of the three of the five affiliates of the nuclear missile incident was gone, but their curiosity was yet vivid. 

No, it has gotten vivider. 

“I beg your pardon, but I need more details regarding what you mentioned earlier. Now I understand how my lord, I, and Kei could return to life, but... Are you saying the return of Noblesse is also related to the place where we met our temporary eternal sleep?” 

No one emitted a breath at Rosaria's question-slash-accusation, for she touched on the spot that had been itching ever since Lunark held in her lips the “three factors” that had brought Raizel, Lascrea, Kei, and Rosaria back to the world of the living. 

All ears grew keen on Lunark's mouth, waiting for her words to water their thirst for knowledge. 

“Yes, but it wouldn't have been possible without the other two factors, one of which happens to be the half of Ragnarok that you yielded to the Noblesse.” 

Lascrea's, Kei's, and Rosaria's mouths turned agape, for they did not expect to hear the name of the noble lord's soul weapon from a werewolf.

No sound could be heard past Lascrea's phone, an evidence that Raizel and Frankenstein would look no different from them. 

“You permanently forfeited the half of your soul weapon to the Noblesse, did you not?” 

“...I did. It was left behind for Raizel by my father the lord, which Raizel gave back to me upon his return to Lukedonia after 820 years. Nevertheless, I handed it to him in order to replenish his life force.” 

“The power that used to compose the half of the Ragnarok would have by now changed into Noblesse's life energy, fully absorbed into his body. But it's not completely gone. Its remains must be there. Even though it is only half of its original form, Ragnarok stemmed from the bloodline of the noblest nobles in the lead of your kind, therefore forged with might beyond any mortal understanding. I'm sure you, O Noblesse, would have felt the weapon flowing within you ever since you received it.” 

Raizel spoke no confirmation, which in turn served as a confirmation.

It was his habit of speech; whereas he does not necessarily confirm what is right, he will deny anything that deserves his denial. 

<...Okay, so what's the final factor?> 

“...The fact that the four of them met eternal sleep, albeit only briefly, on the same day, at the same hour.” 

That was when Kei and Rosaria exchanged glances, their eyes flickering precariously, and Lascrea failed to conceal confusion marred with inquisitiveness from her face. 

“The key is that you, O lord, and the Noblesse fell into eternal sleep at the exact same moment. As your remains dropped into the Noblesse's ex-sanctuary, the power of the Noblesse embedded in the area created a reaction with the remains of the Ragnarok, its power not far behind the former. And this reaction reached out to its twin - yes, it reached out to the Noblesse, now a biological container of the half of the Ragnarok.” 

The three nobles listening to her gaped at her, looking as if they were hammered in their heads. 

“The point is that the bond between the two parts of Ragnarok still exists as we speak, even though a half of it now pulses through Noblesse's blood and soul. As the two Ragnarok's caused a chain reaction of resonation with the Noblesse's power under the sea, there formed a temporary spiritual bond between you and the Noblesse.”

<...So are you saying the resurrection allowed by the power from my master's ex-sanctuary managed to apply to my master as well?>

“...Precisely.” 

As Lunark's speech was closed, no one did not as much as mumble, too starstruck by the elements that felt so much like part of destiny, in joint with coincidence like fate. 

At then Lascrea's eyes gleamed in remembrance. 

“That reminds me of the tale I picked up from the human reporters who used to be short-term tenants of Lukedonia. There is this marine zone near Lukedonia dubbed as 'Bermudan Treasure Chest' among humans, flaunting innumerable number of rare marine species, its individuals much bigger than those from the identical classification inhabiting other areas. However, recently there have been mysterious shifts in the ecological system of this zone, such as mass deaths of marine species, including the blood-red corals exclusive to this zone.” 

“True. This place you speak of happens to be a favorite dining spot of mine, where I would often drop by to feast on the fish.” 

“...Now I am reminded of how it all began upon our homecoming.” 

<...I see. That zone must have flourished thanks to the power from my master's ex-sanctuary, which is not surprising. It has been bearing the greatest force of life on Earth for more than 8 centuries. But now its power is lost to you, two of your heads of clans, and my master, thanks to this spiritual bond thing, resulting in the end of the golden age for its marine population.>

“...Don't forget that I received unimaginable amount of power from that spot as well. So things can only take the worse turn for the natives of that zone.” 

Kei started to speak as soon as Lunark finished her mutter. 

“Quick question - how do you know all this? And how come none of us remember this?” 

“...The ex-sanctuary of the Noblesse absorbed along with his power the psyche he had harbored. I'd say the power that is held there is basically semi-animate. So after the nuclear missile incident, the entire process of spiritual bond and resurrection that touched on your lord and the Noblesse was engraved into the power within the ex-sanctuary. I managed to absorb all this when I accepted this power. But the reason why none of you remember this is because... I'd compare it to the rupture of glasses that could not stand the multiple resonance of sound waves. What you had gone through was a miracle that transcends life and death. So it'd be no wonder that it left an unseeable scar upon your memories.”

Kei was not the last one to fling questions, and Lunark answered all of them. 

The meeting was closed following Frankenstein's offer that Raizel might be able to gain more life if they are to make use of the power that is left in Raizel's ex-sanctuary (and they sort of saw it coming).

Lunark was left alone, and only then someone approached her. 

“Lady Lunark.” 

“You...? What are you doing here? Your lord and your fellow heads of clans are gone.” 

Lunark's pink pupils were sketched with puzzlement as she recognized Rael. 

“There's something I must tell you.” 

The werewolf warrior tensed, in understanding that Rael chose to confront her after Lascrea, Kei, and Rosaria at last went away. 

On the other hand, Rael was fairly calm, for there was no trouble that required his presence. 

It was but a small reason that he requested the Central Knights from the ward to notify him as soon as she awakens, even though they share nothing in common except for the QuadraNet Project. 

It was but a small but legitimate reason. 

When Lunark awakens, relay her a gratitude from me, I pray. 

That was the concise yet packed-with-meanings request from Raizel, as he sent Rael away to Lukedonia. 

That was supposed to be the sole reason why Rael was waiting for the moment Lunark opens her eyes, but lately things have changed a little. 

During the course of arrest of Deneb, the Central Knights confiscated the walkie-talkie he forced away from Yuhyung's bag. 

Which was passed on to Rael, before it can return to its rightful owner.

The QuadraNet Project may be on a hold, but everyone knew it would be on a hold only for the time being. 

When the project is to commence again, the chances are high for Rael to reassume the ambassador of Lukedonia. 

So it would be logical for Rael to keep the walkie-talkie for now, though no one can certify until when he must keep it with him. 

So Rael had no idea the walkie-talkie dropped right onto his hand would spill Frankenstein's voice all of a sudden. 

I decided to bet my hopes on Mr. Jang's walkie-talkie just in case. Boy, am I glad it didn't turn out to be a fool's hope. 

S-sir...? What's going on...? 

I need a favor. And don't fret. It's nothing huge. 

Back then Rael was busy trying to think of a favor that Frankenstein could possibly ask from him. 

He knew Frankenstein was a man of reasons, but he could not help getting anxious, in consideration of the speaker.

When Lunark wakes up, tell her to go back to her homeland as soon as she becomes mobile. 

Sir...? What do you... 

Tell her not to even think about sticking around Lukedonia and go back as soon as her body becomes good enough for her to move around like usual. 

Frankenstein did not assume any coldness in his words, but Rael could not ask what is the matter, due to the just-deal-with-it attitude he wore at the time. 

Nonetheless, Rael presumed there was no misfortune or problem that Frankenstein had in mind that had urged him to make such delivery to Lunark. 

But please tell her that she doesn't have to run back home right as she opens her eyes. Please. 

He could feel generosity, not at all feigned or halfhearted for the sake of the least of the courtesy he could pull off, as Frankenstein added one more “please.” 

Retracing his experience, Rael finally started off with his job as a messenger. 

*****

Few days later, KSA 

“And that's it for the whereabouts of the remaining lots of the Union.”

A series of nods and regards from the table headed to Tao, who had been making his laser pointer busy with the satellite images from the beam projector. 

Seoul at last regained its daily life, thanks to KSA and RK's joint administration. 

All boxes on the to-do list of treatments and examinations were checked off, and the protocol on media management and operation in case of national crisis met its closure. 

And today, the key personnel of KSA, the RK, 3rd Elder, and Yuigi were gathered at the meeting room for the briefing on the progress up-to-date. 

First of all, Yuhyung was officially discharged, permanently expelled from the registered catalog of KSA employees and staff, imperatively relieved from all his duties and privileges. 

At the same time he was charged, with the recent case in Seoul, as a result of the internal investigation on the matter.

His true crime will never be printed on the public document housing the details of his charges, but he will be legally punished in one form or another, via the man's request. 

I don't care what or how. I want the heaviest penalty you can throw upon me. 

They have yet to decide on the exact what or how, but Yuhyung's career and life are now as good as over. 

And the Union agent who was captured at the end of the calamity at Seoul was eliminated the day before. 

Before which came the interrogation on the location of and the melee force possessed by the remainder of the Union, which provided a basis for Tao to plot a satellite map. 

“The international summits over the globe are not yet very cooperative, which means we are the only manforce we can hire for this job. So my opinion is that in terms of efficiency, it'd be much better for us to select and dispatch people for extermination and shutdown, rather than to have us travel back and forth for the job.” 

“So you're saying the said people must live as wanderers until the Union is completely gone, keeping in touch with us for the sake of communication and progress report.” 

“Which is why we need someone equipped with the energy and combat abilities that will allow them to cope with years-long travel and non-stop combats, as well as flexibility in improvisation against the unexpected. And thorough knowledge in the a's-to-z's of the Union would be a plus.” 

The second Tao, Yeonsu, and M-21 finished their speech, a hand was raised in the air. 

“I'll do it.” 

The hand belonged to none other than the 3rd Elder, gaining a dozen spotlights from the spectators' wide-open eyes. 

“I'll join him.” 

And Yuigi was the second to raise a hand. 

“W-what do you mean by that?” 

Takio - obviously - posed a question in alarm.

“I'm the perfect candidate for the requirements you just listed, M-21. And unlike you and your team, with duties to protect this place, I have no requisites that will bind me from travels.” 

“Same could be said of me. Since the 3rd Elder has lost his power, he would need a bodyguard to carry on with his mission against the modified humans potentially as powerful as Helga.” 

Their logics were without a flaw; in fact, they made an appeal that was only essential. 

The results for 3rd Elder's check-up revealed that his power did not altogether vanish; however, now he has become weak, no longer capable of firing an impact on par with that from a tank upon a single glance. 

Not to mention they learned through Helga that Union was still armed with combatants including her teammate named Sol. 

A proof that it will take a miracle, not hope, for them to bypass any physical collision during their mission. 

A proof that the 3rd Elder and Yuigi are basically candidates sent from above for the job. 

And they knew they would not need to be apprehensive for another betrayal, as the two ex-agents were the ones who supplied the key solutions for the catastrophe at Seoul, thereby earning themselves virtual badges that will certify their allegiance. 

The briefing took itself through the introduction, body, and conclusion without a haste, until the 3rd Elder and Yuigi were classified into a special team to search and destroy the hidden survivors of Union around the world. 

Partially because Frankenstein curiously hurried with the briefing.

“Now, I shall take my leave. You guys stay here and... Do whatever you need to.” 

“What? Where are you off to, boss?” 

“Outside.” 

“Outside? You mean outside Korea?” 

“Yup. But don't worry. I'll make sure I'll be there to say good-bye to the special team as they leave.” 

The three men of the RK could only tilt their heads in confusion, staring as Frankenstein hustled away without even telling them where exactly he was headed to. 

“But is it just me, or... Is he kind of excited?” 

“Thought I was the only one.”

“Well, you weren't.” 

The three men felt their curiosity stacking up by the end of their chat. 

Just what could urge the blonde human to leave in urgency, with a face in full bloom with such roseate excitement so very pronounced? 

(next chapter)

There you have it - the secret behind the four nobles’ return from death. As a reminder, in this fic Muzaka was not dead during the nuclear missile incident, which was mentioned in chapters 1 and 2. It took more than 60 chapters for me to finally unleash the secret for the remaining four. XD

This is part of the reason why I wanted to write this fic. I wanted to talk about Frankenstein and Lunark’s relationship, which was never officiated or portrayed in further depth in the original webtoon, and also attempt my take on the why’s and how’s on the nobles’ resurrection. As I was coming up with theories, I was reminded of the half of the Ragnarok that Lascrea gave to Raizel, and then I remembered how Lascrea, Kei, and Rosaria stopped a missile headed to a human city. The name of the city was left unknown in the webtoon, but I decided it’s Miami, since it didn’t take that long for them to stand upon the ocean to stop the missile (meaning it’s nearby Lukedonia and stationed at the coast of the continent, which would meet the demands to describe the American city that happens to be one of the three vertices making up the Bermuda Triangle). Thus I could come up with the grand secret behind the nobles’ return from death. This “Bermudan Treasure Chest” that I created was in a way a huge spoiler, and the blood-red corals that inhabit this zone was also a hint, in a way. And of course, none of this is canon; this is purely my theory, my creation.

At last I revealed the secret behind the return of the four nobles from the nuclear missile incident, and the two villains of this fic - Helga and Yuhyung - made their official exit. And you also know what will become of the 3rd Elder and Yuigi, and now all that remains is the relationship between Frankenstein and Lunark & the reason why Muzaka’s body moved on its own for survival during the nuclear missile incident. Which means that once these two are settled as well, this fic will be over. There are only 2 more chapters to go, and I can’t tell you how thankful I am to you for staying with me all this way. I’ll see you next week and the week after that with chapters 69 and 70, respectively! Thank you so much! :)

[omniversalobservations]

Understanding Genres in Comics (2020)

Typical crossovers involve two acknowledged sources, coming together in a story which treats them both as being of importance.

[...]

In a contemporary intra-company superhero crossover, an endogenous crossover, two superimposed and aligned architexts are foregrounded; the shared fictional universe in which these characters evolve, at the narrative level, and the publisher's brand, at the editorial level. However, comics history suggests that this alignment is not the only option. In October 1942, for instance, Prize Comics #24 published a story in which all the heroes of this anthology title banded to stop the Frankenstein Monster, as imagined by Dick Briefer ... Some of these characters were contemporary superheroes, but the crossover also included Doctor Frost (a Flash Gordon-inspired space adventurer), and the General and the Corporal (two "big nose" comic characters usually seen in brief gags). That crossover did not hinge on a shared fictional universe, but it affirmed the role of the comic book itself as a meaningful architext, and not as a mere repository of unrelated serials.

When inter-company crossovers, or exogenous crossovers, operate within a well-defined genre, they tend to foreground the genre itself, and its articulation with the specific exemplars or prototypes produced by its publishers. In sophisticated examples, this implies not only using shared narrative structures but also calling attention to their historicity beyond or along with brand affirmation. JLA/Avengers (Marvel/DC, 2003-2004), for instance, presents the history of superheroes as borrowings and copies, by playfully underlining the similarities between some of the publishers' characters (The Flash and Quicksilver, Hawkeye and Green Arrow, etc.).

Finally, some crossovers involve series which do not share a visible genre, nor a fictional universe (and generally not a publisher). These crossovers, such as Superman/Aliens, cannot rely on an existing architext, beyond the general framework of serial comic book publishing. Yet, the very act of crossing over affirms the compatibility of these texts, and therefore, their belonging to a loose "family," in the Wittgensteinian sense. They thus sketch out a hitherto invisible and often problematic common ground, a virtual architext, whose sutures and construction are often made visible, and even become part of the narrative stakes. For instance, the first issue of the unlikely Red Sonja and Vampirella meet Betty and Veronica (Dynamite, 2019), which pairs two fantasy and horror heroines with two sides of the Archie love triangle, devotes a significant number of pages to dressing up the fantasy characters as American teenagers, while retaining some of their distinctive features. The text elucidates its own construction and the need to adjust the character's costumes to a new regime of vraisemblance. Some of the expected pleasures lie precisely in the playful inventiveness of this process of reconciliation.

Source: Google Books

[aion-rsa]

How the Cyberpunk 2077 Soundtrack Found Its Dystopian Sound in a Soviet-Era Synthesizer

https://ift.tt/2Knk6oM

CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the the biggest video game release of 2020, transporting players to a gritty sci-fi world full of bio-augmented criminals and lowlives. True to its name, the game explores some pretty deep concepts about cyberspace and what life might be like in a futuristic transhuman society where technological advancements have turned us less human and more machine. So it’s no surprise that the game’s score often sounds like something recovered from the year 2077 and brought back to our time. At its very best, the soundtrack elevates this grim dystopia.

In the wake of Cyberpunk 2077‘s massive launch, Den of Geek spoke with the trio of composers behind the game’s score: Marcin Przybylowicz (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), P.T. Adamczyk (Gwent: The Witcher Card Game), and Paul Leonard-Morgan (Dredd). The three composers discussed the soundtrack’s conception and revealed the unconventional methods they used to create the score’s unique, ominous sound.

The Cyberpunk 2077 Original Score, which contains two discs-worth of the game’s enormous pool of music, is available now to buy and stream. As players have discovered in the week since the game’s launch, the score isn’t exactly the pulsating, adrenaline-fueled synth barrage some might be expecting from a cyberpunk title. It’s largely ambient, with ominous layers of otherworldly bass bellows, tribal beats that sound both futuristic and primal, and melancholic wades through placid synth soundscapes. There are definitely bangers on the tracklist, but what stands out is that many of the pieces almost feel introspective. 

“You’re dealing with a complex story, and there’s [a vast] number of characters in Cyberpunk,” Adamczyk explains. “Finding a theme or an idea or a motif and being confident in it…that’s really difficult because there are so many different things happening in the story, and you could score it a thousand different ways. And they all would be good enough. But the question remains, ‘What is the essence?’”

Przybylowicz was the first of the three composers to start work on the score for Cyberpunk 2077 very early in the game’s production. In laying the foundations for what the game’s music would sound like (the elusive “essence” Adamczyk speaks of), he set out to create something unique, though he was also committed to honoring the source material that the game is steeped in.

“We were trying to find out how our take on Cyberpunk would differ from other bits of culture,” says Marcin of the initial creative process. “We must never forget that our game is not a game that is simply set in a yberpunk universe. Our game is Cyberpunk 2077, which means that it’s based on a very well described and very lore-heavy, already existing universe, Cyberpunk 2020 by Mike Pondsmith. So that means there is a ton of source material, tons of creative work that has already been done before. So we needed to reach out to these books and see if we could pinpoint anything that would remain useful for us after we move the events from 2020 to 2077. Then we started to formulate how that would translate to the game’s sonic palette.”

The original tabletop game paints a picture of an alternate future in which corruption reigns and oppressive megacorporations wage war on each other, as the denizens of gang-infested, urban sprawls like Night City struggle to survive on the streets. Humans and machines intertwine via cybernetic enhancements, and this unholy merging of flesh and technology is represented vividly in the game’s score, which often employs the use of synth that sounds both metallic and organic.

The majority of electronic music is created from a widely-available database of preset sounds built into a computer or synth. To create Cyberpunk 2077’s unique sonic identity, the composers eschewed convention and took a more experimental approach, using a slew of odd machines to create bespoke sounds that give the score its ethereal edge.

“What we’ve done is ridiculous,” Leonard-Morgan explains. “It hasn’t been done before. We’ve composed with virtually no software at all. It’s all external gear. So it’s all weird and wacky synthesizers, all weird modular synths, always stuff which you then had to record the audio and process that around. You can never recreate the sounds again.”

The trio used rare, long out-of-production machines, took their already unique built-in sounds, and manipulated them further to compose the game’s music. The result is a tapestry of interconnected compositions that have a dark, Frankenstein’s-monster bizarreness to them, and one of the most prominent and peculiar synths you’ll hear in the mix has a curious background of its own.

“P.T. and I own our own Soviet-made Polivokses. Mine’s from 1982,” Przybylowicz says. “My Polivoks still has a price tag: 800 Rubles, which is, I think by today’s standards, 10 bucks. It’s a duophonic synthesizer similar to the Moog Sub 37, which is a very famous duophonic unit. I heard a story that during the Cold War, blueprints [of the Moog Sub 37] were stolen by Soviet agents in order to obtain something that they could copy [to build their own synthesizer]. Supposedly they were trying to make an exact copy, but you know, something always goes wrong on the production lines–they ended up with a machine that is truly, remarkably ugly-sounding. Yet still sounds like nothing else.”

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Another strange machine in the trio’s fleet of synths is the Folktek Mescaline, an infernal-looking mess of jet-black panels, spiraling bronze detailing, and a scattered arrangement of inputs, knobs, buttons, and switches. It looks so intimidating and unapproachable that it’s no wonder the trio harnessed its power in their compositions.

“All three of us own Folktek Mescalines,” Przybylowicz says. “It’s a small modular system that allows you to basically do anything. It doesn’t come with a very good manual. It doesn’t feature keyboards. It doesn’t feature any self-explanatory indications of what’s doing what. So it’s all based on experimentation.”

Adamczyk elaborates, “You can’t really decide, ‘I’m just going to play an A minor chord’ on a Mescaline. Getting an A minor chord is a real pain in the ass because you have to pretty much tune the machine to that specific chord. You have to try to find your way with these instruments and try to somehow find a musical way of using them. Half of the time, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

The game boasts around eight hours of music that, amazingly, is virtually all in the key of A minor to allow the different compositions to flow seamlessly in and out of each other as the player transitions between different encounters and scenarios.

“Games are like living organisms,” Przybylowicz explains. “It’s dependent on the player’s actions, even if we’re talking about the most linear scripted games. Ours obviously is nothing like that. It’s a full-fledged, open-world RPG with multiple branching lines in the narrative arc. So obviously it’s even more difficult [to compose for], but I think in a sense it’s almost liberating to work on a thing that changes so many times during even a single playthrough, you know?”

Cyberpunk 2077 had fans practically salivating in the days leading to its release date. It’s not only the next chapter of a long-beloved sci-fi franchise, but CD Projekt RED’s follow-up to the all-time classic The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is, to put it mildly, a tough act to follow. The composers feel the magnitude of the moment, though they remain unshakable, confident in the work they’ve put forward.

“Working on a game of such a big scale, ambition and quality and fan base…I think it naturally adds to the pressure,” says Przybylowicz. “So the bigger the hype gets, the bigger the expectations are getting, and the bigger the pressure gets. I think it’s at least in some parts a natural process of this profession, when you get to work on a project of this reputation.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“It doesn’t matter for me whether it’s a one million dollar film, a hundred million dollar film, a billion-dollar game, or whatever,” Leonard-Morgan adds. “The point is it’s all about the creative process. That’s the part that I really, really enjoy. And I think as soon as you start letting external forces come into your head, that’s where I start to kind of…Self-doubt is the wrong phrase. But you start second-guessing, and second guessing is just the worst thing you can do as a composer.”

You can listen to the score below:

Cyberpunk 2077 is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.

The post How the Cyberpunk 2077 Soundtrack Found Its Dystopian Sound in a Soviet-Era Synthesizer appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3an3h8A

[gellavonhamster]

good people

gen || Montgomery Montgomery & Bertrand Baudelaire || pre-canon 

ao3 link eng  || ao3 link rus

Monty Montgomery learned about the deaths of Count and Countess *** somewhere about two in the afternoon, in the lobby of the Biology Faculty of Gerald Durrell University of Natural Science. He didn’t know them personally, and that day he could not even recall their faces when reading an article about their deaths, just as many years later he could not – unfortunately – recall the face of their son, whom he did know personally back in the day and had met as often as not. At the same time, he could remember in detail the moment he heard they were dead – the hum of voices in the vast corridors of the faculty building, sunlight glistening on glass in the frames of photographs and newspaper clippings hanging on the walls, the sound of his own footsteps. He was descending the stairs, almost hopping like a kid because he had just managed to talk a teacher into letting him submit the report a day later, and consequently was in a splendid mood. Few things can compete with the joy that a student experiences when the deadline for a paper that still exists only as a title page gets postponed for a later date. Immersed in happy thoughts, he went down to the ground floor, and was just heading for the exit when he suddenly saw a crowd of students and teachers huddled together and discussing something animatedly. One of the students was holding a widely unfolded newspaper, and several people at once were reading something over his shoulder.            

“Must be a change of government or something,” Monty thought as he approached them. Frankly, the prospect of writing a paper in two days concerned him much more at that time than a hypothetical coup. 

“Ah, Montgomery!” shouted one of those reading the paper, Professor Stein of the Herpetology Department. Stein was always shouting: he had hearing problems. Now, on the other hand, a raised voice was more than appropriate, for too many people were talking at once.  

“Good afternoon, Professor,” Monty gave him a nod of greeting as he joined the group. Getting closer to the paper was impossible – the crowd was too thick. “What’s the news?”

“A murder, Montgomery! A crime story at its finest; the whole city is going insane! Come read.” At that, Professor grabbed him by the elbow and pushed him into the middle of the crowd, so that Monty found himself right behind the left shoulder of the guy with the newspaper.

He took a look at the page, found the piece everyone was reading, and grew cold.

“Poison darts! With snake venom!” Stein exclaimed. Monty winced as if in pain. The loud noises around him were distracting; he wanted to read carefully, turn each word round in his head, persuade himself it was not what he thought it was. Coincidences do happen sometimes, after all. “And where – at the opera! Right during the performance!”    

“Yeah,” someone to the right of the newspaper chimed in, “straight out of Gaston Leroy.”  

“Leroux,” Monty corrected mechanically. He was suddenly overcome with fierce and helpless anger. He stepped back. “I’m sorry, Professor, I really have to go.”  

Walking quickly, even quicker than back when he was urged on by the unwritten report, he headed for the door.

Well then, La Forza del Destino. Poison darts. Snake venom.  

And his flatmate, who went to the opera yesterday and didn’t come back home.  

 ***

 Bertrand asked him to procure the venom about a week ago.

It might have been Thursday, or maybe Friday. Monty was writing a term paper then, one that he could not set about writing earlier because he was busy doing other things, from the tasks assigned to him by VFD to attending the parties organized by other volunteers, which in some cases seemed as important to him, even vital at times. VFD gave him time to deal with the exam period, relieving him from participation in any missions for the nearest future – the pursuance of science was highly valued among their ranks. Many volunteers flaunted some academic degrees, but not many of them got those degrees officially, even if they deserved them objectively. Some Doctors and Masters among them didn’t even hold a certificate of Bachelor’s Degree. Fighting the fires, both literal and figurative, took up a lot of time and energy, leaving virtually none of it for attending the lectures or even distance education. However, the VFD members had connections – Had Connections even, capitalized – owing to which many of them got the opportunity to call themselves professors or academicians, although all their scientific contributions, sometimes absolutely groundbreaking, remained hidden from the general public.      

At the Biology Faculty, VFD Had some Connections as well, and if Monty wished so, he probably could obtain the Master’s or even Doctor’s Degree without much effort, but he had no such wish. He desired recognition and respect from the people outside the organization, desired to make discoveries that he could tell the whole world about – desired for everything to be fair. That was why he had spent the whole previous week in a kind of a time loop. Every day looked like the day before: writing, writing, writing, leafing through the sources frenziedly after another bookmark gets lost, sorting the materials collected in the expedition, drinking gallons of coffee, and occasionally sleeping. And feeding Maturin, of course. As to Monty himself, it was Bertrand who had been feeding him, which was very kind of him, because Monty couldn’t even afford the time to heat some ready-to-cook foods. Bertrand simply used to come into his room, not even knocking anymore so that not to distract him, put a plate of vegetable couscous or spaghetti bolognese or something in front of him, and leave before Monty noticed that plate. The dirty dishes he used to take away in the same manner, unnoticed. Monty had to yell “Thank you!” for the whole house to hear, to which Bertrand yelled back “You owe me!” from his room or from the kitchen. He was joking, and Monty knew that, but still planned at least to stand treat at the pub after the exams were over.      

That morning, Bertrand knocked on the door again – first came in, then knocked. That meant he needed Monty to pay attention to him.

“Hello, hello, hello!” Monty exclaimed, turning on the chair, immediately knocked one his books off the table, and bent to pick it up. “I am listening to you attentively, o dearest neighbour.”  

“You’re going to the uni tomorrow, aren’t you?” Bertrand asked.

Monty nodded. “Yeah, to submit this Frankenstein’s monster. Only the bibliography left to do.”

“You’re a hero,” Bertrand praised him. Monty thought so too, in all honesty. “Could you do something for me while you’re at it?”

“Buddy, I would’ve wasted away without you here over the last few days. What exactly do you need?”  

“I need,” Bertrand felt for something in the pocket of his trousers, took out some scrap of paper, and gave it to Monty, “a vial of venom of this snake.”  

Monty’s heart lurched. He skimmed the note.

“Oh,” he said. “No problem. There are a couple of excellent specimens of this species at the City Herpetological Centre.”

“I know,” Bertrand replied. “I thought of asking N or S, but I don’t know them well. I wouldn’t like to shoot my mouth off in front of the people I do not trust completely,” he sat down on the edge of Monty’s bed. “Not these days.”  

Monty noticed that Bertrand was trying not to meet his eyes.

“I see. Tomorrow it’ll be done.”  

“Thank you,” Bertrand smiled slightly, still not looking at Monty. Instead, he was looking at Maturin, the turtle, which was chewing on a salad leaf in its terrarium. The turtle was undoubtedly remarkable, but it wasn’t hard to see that Bertrand was rather looking through it than at it. Sooner or later that was bound to happen, Monty thought. Sooner or later, each volunteer had to do something… like that. Not necessarily related to deathly poisons and what very logically results from their use, but still something that made it difficult to look one’s friends in the eye. Like it was now difficult for Bertrand.

“Who?” Monty asked in a hushed voice. “I’m not asking about the name, I’m asking if you know that person. Or were you just given a description?”

“A description,” Bertrand echoed. He smiled again, wider and brighter, but still somewhat stiffly. “Don’t worry about me. I am not a child, I’ll handle this.”  

 ***

 “And so he did,” Monty thought as he was unlocking the door to his flat.

Bertrand was already home; there was no need to call their acquaintances or go to Kit’s place. When Monty entered, his flatmate was sitting at the kitchen table and rubbing his knuckles on one hand with the thumb of the other. His face was calm, without any trace of either tears or smile. It reminded Monty of the kind of “Closed” sign that people put on the shop doors on Sundays.      

“There you are,” Monty said, peeking into the kitchen. Bertrand gave a start and looked at him.

“Hi,” he said, and offered Monty a faint smile. It didn’t look too convincing. “How did the report thing go?”  

“They let me submit it later,” Monty told him. He didn’t know how to ask Bertrand about what was really vexing him, so he asked another question that was, in his opinion, appropriate in any situation. “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

Monty went into the kitchen, took the teapot off the stove, shook it and made sure it was empty, filled it with water, ignited the burner, put the teapot on the stove. Having been in a hurry to check if Bertrand was home, he didn’t have time to take his shoes off, and was now stamping around the kitchen in outdoor shoes. “Gotta sweep the floor later,” he noted to himself. It came with experience – the skill of not forgetting about the dull everyday things like cleaning and cooking while your entire world was in a whirl and threatening to fall apart.    

“I saw the article in the newspaper,” he began as he took teacups from the dish drainer. Bertrand was still sitting at the table in silence, still rubbing his hands absentmindedly. “About the opera.”

“Yeah, I’ve already read it, too.”  

“You lied when you told me you didn’t know who the target was, didn’t you? When you asked me to get you the venom.”

“I did,” Bertrand agreed. He leaned back in his chair. It wasn’t hard to see by his eyes that he hadn’t caught even a minute of sleep last night. “Do we have any lemons for tea?”  

“Um?.. I think there must be some. Check the fridge. Why did you lie?”

“You had enough problems of your own. And you still do. I didn’t want you to worry about me as well,” Bertrand got up from the table, walked up to the fridge, and took out a bowl containing half a lemon. Having taken a knife and a board, he started cutting the lemon into very neat identical pieces. Everything Bertrand did was neat.  

“Yeah, you can want whatever you like,” Monty muttered. The teapot was still taking its time to boil, and just standing empty-handed and discussing the murder committed by his neighbour was unbearable, so he took a cloth and started cleaning the sink aggressively. That was not the first time he procured poisons required by other volunteers. Perhaps he hadn’t killed anyone himself – yet – but he suspected that in a sense he already was partially responsible for a number of deaths. It was scary, it was weighing down on him, it kept him up at night and made him drink and dance and party with a vengeance in the hope of forgetting himself – but that was him, and when it came to Bertrand, it was a hundred times more of a shame. Bertrand was a good person. Bertrand didn’t deserve to be turned into a murderer. Monty was hoping he could express that all in such a way as not to make it seem like his heart is aching not so much for his friend as for his own hurt feelings, but the right words just wouldn’t come.        

“You are one of the best people I know,” he finally began. Bertrand made a strange sound, something between a laugh and a sob. Monty turned and saw that he had already cut the leftover lemon and was now standing with an absent look on his face, clutching the knife. “Don’t hold the knife with the edge toward you. Fucking hell, B,” he raised his voice when Bertrand didn’t react. “Don’t hold the knife with the edge toward you, and put it down anyway!”      

The knife fell on the table with a thud. Bertrand closed his eyes, leaned on the tabletop with both hands, and lowered his head so that Monty couldn’t get a good look at his countenance.

“I keep remembering that he hit O several times when boozed up, back when O was a boy,” he spoke quietly. “He used to drink, you know – not every day, but he used to go on drinking sprees from time to time. O’s taking after him in that respect. I keep thinking back on it as if it makes an excuse for me, but it really doesn’t, you see? And she was innocent – I mean, the rational part of me gets that she wasn’t, I know who she and her husband used to finance and what they used to cover up, but all I can remember is that she was usually nice to O, and to B after she moved to the City too.” Now his voice was taut, his face burning with indignation, his former numbness gone without a trace. “How come this task was assigned to B, of all people? After they had basically accepted her as family?”        

Monty knew, personally and by repute, several Bs among their associates, but this time Bertrand didn’t have to specify who he was talking about.  

“I am angry they made you do this, you are angry they made her…”

“Because she didn’t deserve this,” Bertrand interrupted him. “Because she’s a good person.”

Monty realized that Bertrand was basically repeating word for word what he had been reflecting on earlier himself, and smiled sadly.  

“How willing we are to assure the others vehemently that they are good people,” he spoke. He was completely in agreement with Bertrand about Beatrice. She was not just fun, but also reliable, which was much more important. She looked after her own. She was vivid and loud and incredibly brave and incredibly loving, and Bertrand was right: she did not deserve this. “And never as willing to defend ourselves the same way. Perhaps that is where our hope lies? In our inability to turn a blind eye to our own faults?”    

Bertrand took off his glasses, inelegantly wiped off the tears that had broken out after all, and put the glasses on again.

“Monty,” he said gently, “you’re a good person too, you know that?”

Monty blinked, then blinked again, feeling that soon he might have to wipe off the tears too. Bertrand was one of the best people Monty knew, and he didn’t deserve to be turned into a murderer, and didn’t deserve to labour under such grave delusion about other people either – but the fact that someone still considered him a good person gave Monty confidence that despite all his wrongdoings, he still wasn’t a lost cause.  

He reached out and ruffled Bertrand’s hair.

“Sit down,” he told him. “The tea’s about to be ready.”

[fantasyfoucault]

Course Post #7: The Djent-ification of Metal

Swedish metal group Meshuggah, the fathers of the djent sub-genre of metal. Found in the sound cultures portion of The Acoustic City (2014) edited by Matthew Grundy and B.J. Nilsen, John Scanlan’s “Of Longitude, Latitude, and Zenith: Los Angeles, Van Halen, and the Aesthetics of ‘Backyardism’” traces the creation of Van Halen’s sonic image through the unconventional use of a backyard studio for a recording space. Along with this unique musical laboratory, Eddie Van Halen also hand-chose his guitar parts to create his famous “Frankenstein” guitar. Deploying his own musico-surgical procedures, Eddie Van Halen was able to birth “brown sound,” which Scanlan states that the use of “[t]he colour brown here stood for the tonal qualities he was driven to discover; it was variously ‘warm,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘fat,’ or ‘thick,’ ‘wood’-like, as well as ‘buttery’ and ‘meaty,’” a phrase that became synonymous with Los Angeles music culture. Van Halen studied instruments like saxophones and clarinets in order to learn how to build his own guitars, testing several woods for density that determined how mellow or heavy sound would travel. Just as importantly as the wood types are pickups, the wired-coils that create the amplification of the strings, which he soaked in surfboard wax in order to prevent the coils from excessively vibrating and causing unnecessary feedback. The Sunset Sound studio in Los Angeles was the chamber where these elements came together to form “brown sound.” As I recount Van Halen’s history, I realize how important this process of identity formation is for each artist, individual or collective, and how original that formation needs to be. The Swedish tech-metal group Meshuggah is a cogent example of pioneering a revolutionary split in the metal genre, today known as “djent” metal. At its core, djent it’s a style of progressive metal with heavily-distorted guitar chugs featuring high-gain and low-pitched palm-mutes. The word “djent” is an onomatopoeia of these various methods and sounds. Meshuggah rose to international metal fame with their 1995 Destroy Erase Improve, a concept album that lyrically explores evolution as the combination of organic matter with machinery, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s with the I EP and onward that Meshuggah became famous for their seven-stringed guitars, and then eventually expanding into eight-string guitars to produce their polyrhythmic and original, highly-technical style of metal. Polyrhythms are when two or more rhythms play at the same time but don’t necessarily form from the same meter, producing a multi-layered rhythm that makes it sound as if each instrument is playing a different song, and this element is what places Meshuggah as the pinnacle of the djent genre. In order to create their sound, Meshuggah lead guitarist Fredrik Thordendal shared in an interview with Guitar World that they have to have their pick-ups dipped in wax to stop them from feeding back, exactly how Eddie Van Halen did to his when creating “brown sound.” On seven-stringed guitars their tuning from high to low is Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb. Fredrik Thordendal is technically the founder of djent the sound, but not the word, and it is important to note the difference. The sound that became signified with the signifier “djent” existed long before the term, which Meshuggah have themselves stated they did not create. “Djent” came into use through an online community of metal musicians, most notably by the guitarist of Periphery, Misha Mansoor. The success of Periphery’s self-titled 2010 album, according to Jamie Thomson in his 2011 article “Djent, the metal geek’s microgenre,” is what “dragged djent from the virtual world into the real one” but also with the repeated use of the term “djent” that spread through the online metal community, essentially an instance of the Bakhtinian transmission of speech model. Even now nearly a decade after its mainstream use in the metal community, djent as a legitimate genre is up in the air. On the one hand, elitist metalheads will claim it’s not really a genre because it doesn’t fit traditional metal. This type of defensive stance on metal as a genre portends a type of metallic melancholy, as if metal was a fixed category that was somehow lost and needs to be found again. I would argue that the fact we’re still talking about it means it’s already established itself as something and its a music genre now coming from all over the world. Following the legacy of Meshuggah, bands like Architects, Monuments, Hacktivist, and TesseracT are the major names tied to the djent label out of the UK. Animals as Leaders, Volumes, Periphery, After the Burial, Currents, Silent Planet, and Invent, Animate are several hailing from the U.S. Northlane and In Hearts Wake represent Australia proudly. And the number continues to grow. In the same way “brown sound” was attached to Van Halen, today we see “djent” tied directly to Meshuggah. Perhaps Mansoor intended to use “djent” the word as an opportunity to gain fame for himself and Periphery, but whatever djent the sound is its given a large group of bands a space to coalesce and produce continuing progressive forms of metal that all lead back to the genealogy of Meshuggah, and that’s something to raise the horns to. 

In 2018, Meshuggah was nominated for a Grammy Award for their song "Clockworks" under the "Best Metal Performance" category. See video above. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/03/djent-metal-geeks https://web.archive.org/web/20160517094739/http://www.guitarworld.com/meshuggah-share-secrets-their-sound

[merryfortune]

Day 1 - Sun / Hope

Ship: Jin/Lightning | Jin & Lightning

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains

Word Count: 1.7k

Tags:  Angst, Post-Canon, Alternate Universe – Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies

  The game of hope was Lightning’s favourite game to play. Then again, it was the only game they could play but that didn’t really detract from the point: Lightning’s favourite game was undeniably the game of hope.

  He adored Jin. Jin was the best toy that he could ever possibly ask for. He was so delightfully stupid. Every time he thought the doors to freedom had opened, he beamed so preciously. A big and wide grin upon his face as he all but charged at the door or awaited to be saved, only to have such delicate and wonderful things taken from him. The placid faces of kindly rescuers would turn to bone, stripped of flesh, melted and rotted until they were skeletons clad in the torn clothes of that which they were once to represent. And he would scream. Scream at the top of his so very little lungs, with all his might, hoping that someone might hear.

  Oh, they heard alright. They heard his suffering. Some elected to ignore it, turn their faces because it was a sacrifice in the name of the greater good; one chose to use it as a strength and as a source of defiance; and one chose to revel in it. It was all such good fun. That’s what Lightning thought anyway.

  Being able to defile this child, the very child who’s hope for the future and for victory and for freedom had birthed him, was so much fun. Truly the greatest set of games and toys there could be had, Lightning thought as he tried to understand himself. Slowly building – generating – from the ground up. Synthesised code to become life; living tissue and warming flesh; a creation grander than humanity would know just yet to make one man’s twisted dream come true; it was all to be real one day soon. When the Ignis could be independent of the vials they were kept in – drifting, submerged, in something akin to their very own amniotic fluid with flesh not quite clinging as it should to their hollow, metal skeletons.

  They were going to be perfect. Knowing that brought Lightning the greatest joy until it didn’t because that wasn’t a fact. That was a hope. No different to the hope that he sadistically used to play with Jin, his Jin.

  Lightning wasn’t perfect. There was something in his code, his ichor, or his soul which made him… inherently flawed. That which he touched, turned not to gold but to dust. It fell from the bone and disintegrated into flakes which would disappear before his very eyes. Time and time again. And just when he thought he had found the one reel inside the simulation where it seemed that he was good, he was right, he was perfect, he would be disastrously proven wrong.

  It was unfair.

  It broke his little heart – if he had one at all. After all, no such organ beat in his tiny chest. He had no purpose for a heart; especially if his, no matter how metaphorical it was, was broken. Damaged. It was unfair and he knew where this issue all came from: Jin. His Jin. His stupidly cheerful Jin whom he had shattered beyond repair.

  It looked like he had gotten his revenge, Lightning thought to himself. After all, humans very rarely made for good toys. They had wills of their owns, emotions, thoughts, and desires. All of which were supposed to accumulate and turn the Light Ignis from a mere idea, a mere schematic in a mad scientist’s notebook, into a living reality. He had. The only issue was… he was incomplete because that child never got the chance to find courage or resilience amid such blindingly white despair like the other children had, thus resulting in what appeared to be perfection among the other Ignis.

  They were complete. Whole. Perfect. They were not damaged. Lightning saw it. He saw it very clearly amid streams upon streams of reeling data. They were perfect. When they reached out, connected, to their precious human whom they had originated from, that combination turned not to gold, something far more unbeatable and perfect. Turned to platinum. All Lightning had was rust and dust.

  So, he did what anyone descending into loneliness and despair and disrepair would do: he would corrupt that shining gold and that shining platinum. If he had to be imperfect, then he would make them all imperfect and in such inglorious midst, he would succeed where all else had failed. He could see a most sparkling future thus resulting in the creations of Bohman and Haru, of Link Magic, and of a plan most devious and wondrous, he would be complete.

  Or so he, without a wrinkle of irony, sought that fact, that hope, once more. Only to have it ruined.

  He failed. He neither won nor lost that duel – by a hair’s breadth, truly – against Revolver and then, in his stead, Bohman was defeated. There was no triumph or victory. Instead, only bitter loss and grief and laughter because of how wrong it had gone and how sealed their fates were. Lightning still abided by his personal law: humans and AI could not get along. One would always vie to the supersede the other.

  That was the one certainty that he could have of this death and he feared, in this second lift as well. Where he lost, where he bricked up the conclusions, another had tried to trespass on such divine domains. And thus, he had been brought back. Strangled, defanged, humiliated.

  He did not require forgiveness. Or even a home but he had to admit, it felt good to be brought back from that stasis. It was so static and cold: like the test tubes from whence he and his kin had come. Floating in something not unlike amniotic fluid. Lightning detested it. He liked to be free to spark, to flit between ideas and timelines so he could try and find the one to end to all his means.

  He was given a new body. It was humanlike. He had to snicker at that as he adjusted his own collar with his own fingers. Apparently, Ai had praised him in his creation of Bohman and Haru by imitating it; though, at least his creations were perfect. Not like these things which had notched necks and rivets and seams all to prove how sewn together and Frankenstein-like they were welded together.

  Reality was unwieldy, Lightning thought as he was made prisoner to his Origin. A sick reversal of their roles, twice-fold now, all things considered. After all, he had been the one to torment the child and then adolescent all consistently known as Kusanagi Jin – even if he barely knew himself at all inside the lucidity of how he came to feel after the Incident.

  It made Lightning severely uncomfortable, to sit as an elaborate toy in that place. The hospital, for now. The older brother’s apartment, if he was courteous to this human and to the other humans. That’s why it was here, not there. Here, there were cameras, witnesses. For now, Lightning would play the role he was given and allow himself to be the doll that Jin never wanted but potentially needed.

  Lightning’s brow came over his face stern as he etched thoughts onto the table, waiting for something to happen. He honestly didn’t even think the boy was vocal, or even literate for that matter. But supposedly, he was.

  And undeniably, he didn’t know a lot of things but those were things that he did. Lightning could be content with that. For the sake of one health point; one life point… that is all that Jin was worth. What human life, in general, was worth if Lightning’s stripping back of the numbers regarding the effect of the Neuron Link were accurate but he was no longer masked with certainty. Everyone knew he was fallible and that numbers weren’t as stony as one may have otherwise predicted.

   Lightning’s mouth was dry. Of course, it was dry. It was a trap of metal and silicon, but it was dry, nonetheless. Across from him, Jin looked terrified. He, too, was etching thoughts, thoughts of panic rather than calculation and reminisce, onto the table which separated he and Lightning: his guest, his visitor, his toy, his Ignis, his tormentor, his toy.

  “I hope we get along, Jin.” Lightning said at long last, chin tilting upwards robotically as he placed his elegant hands beneath them and elbows propped up upon that table, like an island, separating them.

  There was a flash through his eyes which were like dulled neon tubes. His mouth was dry. Jin’s life, in epitome, was worth one life point. Both of them knew it. Or at least that’s what Lightning thought. After all, he had been very careful in his apology. He had taken Jin’s memories of the Incident, not of everything else – ergo, he should remember his time in captivity and as a member of Lightning’s Faction. Therefore, he should remember that moment in the flower field: with dragons and elephants and blackholes. Lightning remembered. Even that digital scent – so floral and heady – which the humans were immune to due to being beings of meat and flesh rather than of numbers and code like the Ignis, like AIs… and like Jin, who’s consciousness was pressed and dried so that he would be the perfect servant in such a virtual world.

  “…Same.” Jin murmured, confused, feeling his brother’s eyes, keen and optimistic yet so dark, somewhere on him despite him not being close by.

  A smile pricked at Lightning’s synthetic lips. He wanted his hope to be validated. And, with such a meek mumble, Lightning proudly thought that it had been. He, personally, thought the removal of Jin’s memories would make for a good olive branch. Hence why he believed with certainty, despite his sins, that he would not be requiring to give an apology.

[elizastimothydaltonblog]

Timothy Dalton Interviews Us About ‘Penny Dreadful’ …and we interview him about the James Bond tarantula trick

Tim Molloy | June 6, 2014 @ 12:38 PM

We had a lot of questions for Timothy Dalton about Sunday’s crucial “Penny Dreadful,” a captivating episode that explains the tortured relationship between his character and Eva Green‘s, while making us reconsider everything we’ve seen before.

But first he had a question for us.

“You and I have not talked before, right? Have you been reading anything that I’ve ever said about ‘Penny Dreadful’?” he asked, in a voice between a lilt and James Bond’s gentlemanly growl.

We confessed that we had not.

“Because I’ve just looked it up and I’ve got it on my computer screen now, your ‘Penny Dreadful’ review: ‘A Lovely, Lurid Study of Life and Death.’ I don’t know whether to be pissed off with you or really pleased,” he continued. “Ever since last September, my sort of catch line about the show is that it’s about the spaces between life and death. And that’s exactly what you’ve centered your article on. … You took the words right out of my mouth.”

All of the Victorian drama’s characters – from Dalton’s mournful Sir Malcolm to Green’s damaged Vanessa – are looking for ways to beat death. Sometimes after death has already won.

“Even the cross hanging on the wall is about eternal life,” Dalton says. “That’s the superstitious part of it, and of course Frankenstein’s the scientific part. Both of which in the real time were in massive opposition to each other. In our time they can walk hand in hand.”

On Sunday, we learn what first united Malcolm and Vanessa in their quest to save Malcolm’s daughter, Mina, from an apparent vampiric master. It may be the most frightening episode so far. It’s certainly the saddest.

At the time of the interview, Dalton hadn’t seen the completed episode, the show’s fifth.

“You’ve seen five?” he asked. “You are such a shit. You know, one of the most difficult things, I find, and I don’t think I’ve ever done it ever before, is to be asked to talk about a show that I’ve never seen.”

Showtime didn’t give him a screener?

“They won’t send me any!” said Dalton. “You write what you want to write and just put my name on it. We can cut this off now.”

Okay, but maybe a couple of questions first?

TheWrap: You, creator John Logan and Eva Green have all been part of the Bond franchise. How much time do you spend talking about 007?

Dalton: I would say virtually none. We’ve got friends in common, but no. I know it’s kind of disappointing if you’re a fan, but it’s a job I did… 25 years ago. You don’t concentrate on the mythology. You just do your job.

What do you really love about “Penny”?

I can give you the absolute truth, but it is kind of a cliché. I love writing. I love words. I love good drama. When you start reading a story that grips you and involves you and makes you ask lots of questions, that makes you turn the page in excitement about what is gonna to happen next, you know you’re reading something good.

I’ve noticed that Wikipedia can’t decide how old you are. It says that you’re either 68 or 70. You look much younger.

Well, I am much younger. There is very little on Wikipedia or IMDB about myself that is true. And I don’t mind that. Because that tissue of lies keeps the truth safe. The irony is, of course, that if you ever try to fix anything, you might succeed for a day or two days, and then all of the other people write in saying ‘That’s not true! We know what the truth is!’ And then it gets turned back to the lie.

[Note: At this point Dalton asked us questions about Sunday’s episode.]

Dalton: So tell me about five.

TheWrap: Five is wonderful. It’s all told from Vanessa’s point of view. She’s writing a letter to [edited to remove spoiler] which we know [spoiler]. You return from [spoiler]. There’s kind of a moment where we realize you’re in a polite relationship with [spoiler]. It’s really nice foreshadowing because [spoiler]. There’s a great scene where you say [spoiler]. It’s so subtle. Then there’s the scene in the [spoiler]. We get the sort of Satanic scene. We realize that she is completely [spoiler]. She gets, I guess a [spoiler]. That scene’s incredible. And then she [spoiler]. Soon after that she tracks you down to [spoiler].

Dalton: Does that scene work?

Absolutely. The entire episode works really well. And the coolest thing about it, honestly, is that we now know all these things that you don’t know. But it adds depth to everything we’ve seen before.

[Note: Here we switched back to interviewing.]

TheWrap: As a critic, I always think, why would I spoil something? There’s no way I would reveal it better than you would.

Dalton: There’s a current sort of almost madness to discover how stunts are done and special effects are done. It shows everybody everything and it kind of spoils the magic. I don’t know if you remember [the first Bond film] “Dr. No”? I saw “Dr. No” when I was a kid. And I remember – holy shit! Hanging onto the edge of my seat when that fucking spider walked up his chest. The tarantula. Now had I been told that there was a sheet of glass between his body and the spider, it would have kind of spoiled the moment, wouldn’t it?

Is that something they tell you when you become James Bond? ‘Here’s how we did the tarantula trick?’

Well, I did ask.

source: thewrap

[imustbeamermaidrango]

The Optimism of Satan

by Mitch Horowitz

See article at: https://medium.com/s/radical-spirits/the-optimism-of-satan-eea5a1a24550

A friend of mine once had the opportunity to ask the Dalai Lama a single question.

“Who was your greatest teacher?” he asked.

The exiled leader replied, “Mao Zedong.”

I once felt provoked in my own sphere by a similarly unlikely teacher — Donald Trump.

Years ago, Trump the Developer asked an interviewer: “What good is something if you can’t put your name on it?” His comment is indelibly stamped on my memory, though I confess I cannot find a source for it. Did I imagine it? The sentiment, while coarse and easily rebutted, came to haunt me.

Did Trump, the showy conman obsessed with naming rights, capture a nagging truth of human nature — a side none of us can deny or push away, other than by an act of self-regarding hypocrisy? And did I, hopefully in a more integral way, share a kernel of his outlook? Was the voice even his — or something within me?

Soon after hearing Trump’s remark, I received what struck me as a bit of ridiculous advice from the editor of an academic spiritual journal. I told him in candor that I wanted to find greater exposure for my byline. “You don’t have to put your name on everything you write,” he replied. Such a principle could ring true only in the world of abstraction.

Trump’s statement about self-exaltation, however ugly, captured half a truth. The whole truth is that our lives, as vessels for various influences — some physical, some perhaps beyond — are bound up with the world and circumstances in which we find ourselves; and within that world we must, at the stake of personal happiness, create, expand, and aspire. Whatever higher influences we feel or great thoughts we think, or are experienced by us through the influence of others, are like heat dissipated in the vacuum of space unless those thoughts are directed into a structure or receptacle. Our purpose is to be generative. Questions of attachment and non-attachment, identification and non-identification, are incidental to that larger fact.

I came to feel strongly about this several years ago when I found that my spiritual search, a path of radical ecumenism with a dedication to esoteric interests, was failing to satisfy me. I began to suspect that I was not acknowledging what I was really looking for, either in spirituality — by which I mean a search for the extra-physical — or therapy. I came face-to-face with an instinct that few people acknowledge, and would deny if they heard it spoken. But they should linger on it. Because what I discovered captures what I believe is a basic if discomforting human truth: The ethical or spiritual search, not as idealized but as actually lived, is a search for power. That is, for the ability to possess personal agency. We pray, “Thy will be done.” We mean “my will be done” — hoping that the two comport. This is why, at least in my observations after thirty years as a publisher, seeker, and historian of alternative spirituality, many seekers in both traditional and alternative faiths are ill at ease, fitful in their progress, and apt to slide from faith to faith, or to harbor multiple, sometimes conflicting, practices at once.

Power is supposed to be the craving of the corrupt. Is it? The novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer, surveying the modern occult scene, wrote in 1967: “We are all black magicians in our dreams, in our fantasies, perversions, and phobias.” And to this I would add, in pursuit of our highest ideals. As Singer detected, we are not very different from the classical magician when we strive, morally and materially, to carry forth our plans in the world — to ensure the betterment of ourselves and our loved ones; to heal sickness; to create, sustain, and, above all, to generate things which bear our markings, ideals, and likenesses. All of this is the expenditure of power, the striving to actualize our drives and images.

I do not view the search for individual power, including through supernatural means (a topic I will clarify and expand on), as necessarily maleficent. Historically and psychologically, it is a fundamental human trait to evaluate, adopt, or avoid an idea based upon whether it builds or depletes our sense of personal agency. “A living thing,” Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power…” The difficulty is in making our choices wisely, and ethically.

I know how far I’m extending my chin by quoting Nietzsche. I sound like a dorm-room libertine. A critic once accused me of harboring an adolescent wish to power. To that, I plead guilty — but with a catch. I do believe in universal reciprocity, an indelible oneness of existence, and I operate from a ground rule of nonviolence. By that, I do not mean abstention from self-defense but rather an unwillingness to violate the sanctity of another’s search, to knowingly do anything that would deprive another of his or her own pursuit of highest potential. And since the political question is never far away, I’ll note that my policy preferences run to a mildly redistributive social democratic state with single-payer healthcare, labor unions, and consumer protections with teeth.

As alluded, sensitive people often deny or overlook their power-seeking impulse, associating it with the tragic fate of Faust or Lady Macbeth. It can be argued, however, that all of our neuroses and feelings of chronic despair, aside from those with identifiably biological causes, grow from the frustrated expression of personal power. We may spend a lifetime (and countless therapy sessions) ascribing our problems to other, more secondary phenomena — without realizing that, as naturally as a bird is drawn to the dips and flows of air currents, we are in the perpetual act of trying to forge, create, and sustain, much like the ancient alchemist or wizard.

The ultimate frustration of life is that, while we seem to be granted godlike powers — giving birth, creating beauty, spanning space and time, devising machines of incredible might — we are bound to physical forms that quickly decay. “Ye are gods,” wrote the psalmist, adding “but yet shall die as princes.” Immortality and the reversal of bodily decline is the one magic no one has ever mastered. The wish to surpass the boundaries of our physicality is behind some of our most haunting myths and parables, from the Trojan prince Tithonus, to whom the gods granted immortality but trapped in a shell of misery and decay for failing to request eternal youth, to the doomed scientist Victor Frankenstein, who sought the ultimate alchemy of creating life only to bring destruction on everyone around him.

We live in a sphere of limitations. But we cannot desist from pushing against its limits. It is our heritage.

Many of us grew up learning the story of humanity’s fall from grace in the biblical parable of the garden of paradise, where the serpent — long associated with the Great Adversary (a guest who’ll soon be arriving) — seduces Eve, and then she Adam, into eating forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But take a fresh reading, or a first reading, of the sparsely detailed chapter three of Genesis. When revisiting this familiar story in virtually any translation, you’ll see not only that the serpent’s argument is based in truth — the couple does not perish for eating the apple, and their eyes are, in fact, opened to good and evil (indeed, some scholars contend that the garden’s two trees, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, are the same)— but also that Eve, contrary to a shibboleth about feminine nature, does not seduce Adam, who requires little coaxing. The serpent even suggests, as augmented in other texts, that Yahweh displays cruel hypocrisy by forbidding intellectual illumination, even as its availability sits in the garden’s midst.

We’re taught, too, that the denouement of Eve’s misstep was her son Cain slaying his brother Abel. But Cain’s tragic act of fratricide may reflect, in discomforting realism, the unavoidable consequence of creativity: friction. Competing ideologies and the wish to measure and evaluate may be the inevitable cost of awareness. But without the rebel, the malcontent, the usurper — the snake in the garden — how could humanity claim sentience?

Lord Byron used his 1821 drama, Cain, one of the dramatist’s most alluring and under-appreciated works, to take the marked brother’s side. And to introduce the most jarring literary re-conception of Lucifer next to Milton’s. Byron’s antihero, who befriends the rebellious Cain, is persuasive and penetrating in his denial that he was the serpent in the garden, yet he points out that the serpent greeted Eve as a sexual and political emancipator — an outlook embraced by many proto-feminists and political radicals of that century and the next. Byron’s dark lord is a fiery optimist on the side of the malcontents: “I know the thoughts/Of dust, and feel for it, and with you.”

I began to question whether the forces of creation with which I most identified — whether parabolic or metaphysical — were these same forces of Promethean defiance. Forces of aspiration who rallied to the cry of the demon Moloch in Paradise Lost: “Hard liberty before the easy yoke.”

Now, one could ask: why think of any of this other than in material terms? Why not put away my Bhagavad Gita in favor of Atlas Shrugged? Because, as noted, I believe that truth is not contained within flesh and bone alone. I think we participate in an existence that goes beyond the five senses. And I believe that our ancient ancestors were correct in deifying certain energies and understanding oneself in relation to them; they gave them names like Thoth, Hermes, Minerva, and Set. Hence, I began to take a long and considered look at such an energy, to which I have been alluding, but which I have not yet named: Satan. This term has its own complicated past, it has gotten me cast out of a garden or two myself, but I employ it both to acknowledge its colloquial primacy and as a bow to bluntness.

There exists a rich and underappreciated counter narrative of humanity’s encounter with what is called “Satanic” in Western life particularly, but not only, in the literature of the Romantics. This countercurrent of spiritual, political, and cultural history — and present — has been insufficiently understood, historically confused, and blurred by entertainment, conspiracy theorists, sensationalism, and fraud (such as the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s).

My wish then, is to encourage a second look where we’re not supposed to be looking — that is, to take a more unadorned, elucidating, and even hopeful perspective on the Satanic. Milton has Satan say: “The mind is its own place, and in it self/Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Again, Satan is an optimist. Me too. No cards under the table: my journey — and perhaps yours — includes constructively wondering whether my own search for a personal, spiritual, and ethical philosophy (I have one — and it’s vital to me) lies east of Eden, or within what is popularly but incompletely called the “dark side.” That’s what I’ve been describing.

Darkness is not a void; it’s a womb. And in the territory of truth and consensual experiment, there exist no boundaries of exploration.

[watusichris]

“Border Radio”: Where Punk Lived

Some years back, I wrote notes for the Criterion Collection’s edition of Allison Anders’ first feature Border Radio for the Criterion Collection. Tomorrow (June 3), Allison will gab about punk rock with John Doe, Tom DeSavia, and my illegitimate son Keith Morris at the Grammy Museum in L.A. in observance of the publication of the book we’re all in, More Fun in the New World (Da Capo).

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“You can’t expect other people to create drama for your life—they’re too busy creating it for themselves,” a punk groupie says at the conclusion of Border Radio. And the four reckless characters at the center of the film certainly manage to create plenty of drama for themselves. In the process, they paint a compelling picture of the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s: what it was like on the inside—and what it was like inside the musicians’ heads. Border Radio (1987) was the first feature by three UCLA film students: Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. The subsequent work of both Anders and Voss would resonate with echoes from Border Radio and its musical milieu. Anders’s Gas Food Lodging (1992), Mi vida loca (1993), Grace of My Heart (1996), Sugar Town (1999), and Things Behind the Sun (2001) all draw to some degree from music and pop culture. (She quotes her mentor Wim Wenders’s remark about making The Scarlet Letter: “There were no jukeboxes. I lost interest.”) Voss, who co-wrote and codirected Sugar Town, also wrote and directed Down & Out with the Dolls (2001), a fictional feature about an all-girl band; and in 2006, he was completing Ghost on the Highway, a documentary about Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the late vocalist for the key L.A. punk group the Gun Club. The three filmmakers met at UCLA in the early eighties, after Anders and Voss had worked as production assistants on Wenders’s Paris, Texas. By that time, Anders and Voss, then a couple, were habitués of the L.A. club milieu; they favored the hard sound of such punk acts as X, the Blasters, the Flesh Eaters, the Gun Club, and Tex & the Horseheads. The neophyte writer-directors, who by 1983 had made a couple of short student films, formulated the idea of building an original script around a group of figures in the L.A. punk demimonde. Border Radio—which takes its title, and no little script inspiration, from a Blasters song (sung on the soundtrack by Rank & File’s Tony Kinman)—was conceived as a straight film noir. Vestiges of that origin can be seen in the finished film. Its lead character bears the name Jeff Bailey, also the name of Robert Mitchum’s doomed character in Jacques Tourneur’s 1947 noir Out of the Past; its Mexican locations also reflect a key setting in that bleak picture. One sequence features a pedal-boat ride around the same Echo Park lagoon where Jack Nicholson’s J. J. Gittes does some surveillance in Roman Polanski’s 1974 neonoir Chinatown; Chinatown itself—a hotbed of L.A. punk action in the late seventies and early eighties—features prominently in another scene. Certainly, Border Radio’s heist-based plot and the multiple betrayals its central foursome inflict upon each other are the stuff of purest noir. But the film diverges from its source in its largely sunlit cinematography and its explosions of punk humor; Anders, Voss, and Lent also abandoned plans to kill off the film’s lead female character. In casting their feature, the filmmakers turned to some able performers who were close at hand. The female lead was taken by Anders’s sister Luanna; her daughter was portrayed by Anders’s daughter Devon. Chris, Jeff’s spoiled, untrustworthy friend and roadie, was played by UCLA theater student Chris Shearer. The directors considered another student for the lead role of the tormented musician, Jeff, but Anders, in an inspired stroke, suggested Chris D. (né Desjardins), whose brooding, feral presence animated the Flesh Eaters. After being approached at a West L.A. club gig and initially expressing surprise at the filmmakers’ desire to cast him, the singer and songwriter signed on, and he helped recruit the other musicians in Border Radio. (A cineaste whose criticism often appeared in the local punk rag Slash, Desjardins would later write an authoritative book on Japanese yakuza films and write and direct the independent vampire film I Pass for Human. He is currently a programmer at the Los Angeles Cinematheque.) John Doe, bassist-vocalist for the celebrated L.A. punk unit X, and Dave Alvin, guitarist and songwriter for the top local roots act the Blasters, had both played with Chris D. in an edition of the Flesh Eaters. Doe—taking the first in a long list of film and TV roles—was cast as the duplicitous, drunken rocker Dean; Alvin makes an entertaining cameo appearance, essentially as himself, and wrote and performed the film’s score.Texacala Jones, frontwoman for the chaotic Tex & the Horseheads, does a hilarious turn as Devon’s addled babysitter. Iris Berry, later a member of the raucous all-female group the Ringling Sisters, portrays the self-absorbed groupie whose observations frame the film. Julie Christensen, Desjardins’ vocal partner in his latter-day group Divine Horsemen (and, for a time, his wife), essays a bit part as a club doorwoman. Seen in walk-ons are such local rockers as Tony Kinman, Flesh Eaters bassist Robyn Jameson, and punk hellion Texas Terri. The Arizona “paisley underground” transplants Green on Red and the local glam-punk outfit Billy Wisdom & the Hee Shees were captured in live performance. Those seeking punk verisimilitude could ask for nothing more. Border Radio had a torturous, piecemeal production history worthy of John Cassavetes. Shooting took place over a four-year period, from 1983 to 1987. Begun with two thousand dollars in seed money, supplied by actor Vic Tayback, the film scraped by on money given to Voss upon his 1984 graduation from UCLA, a loan from Lent’s parents, and cash and film stock cadged here and there. Violating UCLA policy, the filmmakers cut the film at night in the school’s editing bays, where Anders’s two young daughters would sleep on the floor. The film’s lack of a budget forced Anders, Voss, and Lent to shoot entirely on location; this enhanced the work, as far as the filmmakers were concerned, since they sought a naturalistic style and look for the feature. Lent’s Echo Park apartment doubled as Jeff’s home, while Anders and Voss’s trailer in Ensenada served as his Mexican hideout. The storied punk hangout the Hong Kong Café (whose neon sign can be seen fleetingly in Chinatown) was utilized, as were the East Side rehearsal studio Hully Gully, where virtually every local band of note honed their chops, and the music shop Rockaway Records (one of the few punk stores of the day still around). Befitting the work of film students on their maiden directorial voyage, Border Radio evinces the heavy influence of both the French new wave of the sixties and the New German Cinema of the seventies. The confident use of improvisation—the cast is credited with “additional dialogue and scenario”—recalls such early nouvelle vague works as Breathless. The ongoing “interview” device immediately recalls Jean-Pierre Léaud’s face-to-face with “Miss 19” in Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin féminin, while Shearer’s shambling comedic outbursts are reminiscent of the sudden madcap eruptions in François Truffaut’s early films. The work of the Germans is felt most in the great pictorial beauty of Lent’s black-and-white compositions; certain striking moments—a languid, 360-degree pan around Ensenada’s bay; an overhead shot of Chris’s foreign roadster wheeling in circles in a cul-de-sac—summon memories of Wenders’s and Werner Herzog’s most indelible images. (Lent would go on to work as a cinematographer on nearly thirty pictures.) Though the styles and effects of these predecessors are on constant display, Border Radio moves beyond simple imitation, thanks to a sensibility that is uniquely of its time, spawned directly from the scene it depicts so faithfully. Though putatively a “music film,” very little music is actually on view in the picture; mere snatches of two songs are actually performed on-screen. The truest reflection of the period’s punk ethos can be found in the restlessness, anger, self-deception, and anomie of its Reagan-era protagonists. In Border Radio, one can see what punk rock looked like, all the way to the margins of the frame: in the flyers for L.A. bands like the Alley Cats, the Gears, and the Weirdos taped in a club hallway, in the poster for Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and the calendars of L.A. repertory movie houses tacked on apartment walls, in the thrift-store togs and rock-band T-shirts (street clothes, really) worn by the players. But, more importantly, the shifting tragicomic tone of the film, the energy and attitude of its musician performers, and the uneasy rhythms of its characters’ lives present a real sense of the reality of L.A. punkdom in the day. Put into limited theatrical release in 1987, by the company that distributed the popular surf movie Endless Summer—a film that offers a picture of a very different L.A.—Border Radio was not widely seen and later received only an elusive videocassette release through Pacific Arts (the home-video firm founded, ironically enough, by Michael Nesmith of the prefab sixties rock group the Monkees). With this Criterion Collection edition, the film can finally be seen as the overlooked landmark that it is: possibly the only dramatic film to capture the pulse of L.A. punk—not as it played, but as it felt. (Thanks to Allison Anders for her invaluable contributions.)