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danielgenhal · 3 years ago

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Different derivatives of Cyberpunk and what ideas I can give on writing in them

Good time of the day, whoever you are and wherever you come from. In this post, I will explore some of derivatives that have appeared after Cyberpunk gathered traction.

First of all, let's have a somewhat introduction into Cyberpunk:

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of Science Fiction, where the primary focus is on the dystopian future, a mix of lowlife and supreme technology and social commentary. My personal favorite example is the movie "Blade Runner", showing dark, depressive streets and tough lives of everyone involved.

If you plan to write in the Cyberpunk genre, remember - it's bleak, hopeless and depressive. You can make everyone miserable! You can create cities filled with ads everywhere, overpricing, housing problems etc. Explore modern societal problems, but on the Dark Future scale. However, if you are trying to show Cyberpunk in a positive light, read ahead. Later in the post, I will talk about Cyberprep.

Cyberpunk has influenced a lot of authors, the entire Science Fiction and writing in general. The biggest result that matters to this post: birth of subgenres of Cyberpunk (so that would make a subgenre of a subgenre?-)

The first one is the most well known: Steampunk.

Steampunk is a retro-futuristic genre that is influenced by the Steam Age, ranging from the late Regency era (1795–1837; when the Industrial Revolution began) through the Victorian era (1837–1901) and the Belle Époque (1871–1914).

When it comes to Steampunk, you have to remember that it's heavily based on XVIII-XX century and it's views on life and society. However, it doesn't mean you have to follow all of them. Don't be afraid to make extraordinary decisions in adventures, detective, action and even horror stories!

Adventures in Steampunk should be filled with cool steam-powered machines, maybe even hot-air balloons and airships (aka blimps)! Try to imagine something strange and outstanding! The same can be implied for action (just add more explosions and mustache-twirling villains/heroes!)

When it comes to detective stories, try to incorporate the Victorian architecture and it's cramped streets, shady workers and corrupt aristocracy.

Horror in Steampunk would be less about monsters (unless you are mixing it with Fantasy, which is also a very cool thing to do, experiment with it if you want more complexity) and more about bad people. Like, a serial killer ala Jack The Ripper.

Also, if you don't like Steam, a good alternative would be Clockpunk.

Clockpunk, a subgenre of Steampunk, reimagining the Renaissance period (14th–17th century) to include retro-futuristic technology, often portraying Renaissance-era science and technology based on clockwork, gears, and Da Vincian machinery designs.

Some people describe Clockpunk as "Steampunk without steam", which is also a very interesting vision of this kind of technology, but with a twist. The game "Syberia" is a good example of the genre!

Dieselpunk is a genre and art style based on the aesthetics popular in the interwar period through the end of World War II into the 1950s, when diesel displaced the steam engine. The style combines the artistic and genre influences of the period (including pulp magazines, serial films, film noir, art deco, and wartime pin-ups) with retro-futuristic technology and postmodern sensibilities.

Dieselpunk is all about rust, dirt, fire, explosions, flying using early fuels... And more fire! Big Iron flying ships loaded with WW2 age weapons, solid fuels and dirty people fly over rusty cities, where crisis is never ending. Though it's not always like that, this is a very cool vision of this genre.

When it comes to writing, there are two paths I see: writing about injustice, war and destruction, or recovery after the first thing. This is a very good way to grow into other genres! Characters can climb the social ladder to the top, or even come crashing down to the very bottom. Your story may be about mercenaries, armymen, politicians or just about random people.

Decopunk, also known as coalpunk, is a recent subset of dieselpunk, centered around the art deco and Streamline Moderne art styles, and based on the cities of New York, Chicago, and Boston around the period between the 1920s and 1950s.

Decopunk is... A strange one. It's this chrome, clean version of Dieselpunk, but a darker and grittier version of Steampunk. I can't give any new ideas about this, the ones from Steampunk and Dieselpunk would apply pretty well.

Atompunk (also known as atomicpunk) relates to the pre-digital period of 1945–1969, including mid-century modernism; the Atomic, Jet, and Space Ages; communism, Neo-Soviet styling, and early Cold War espionage, along with anti-communist and Red Scare paranoia in the United States; underground cinema; Googie architecture; Sputnik and the Space Race; comic books and superhero fiction; and the rise of the American military–industrial complex.

So, this is a good genre to look at the 50s America, or even 50s Soviet Union (I recommend making some alternative version of it though, because the anturage of this part of the world is very different from most European, Asian and American countries).

I think detective stories would work the best in this genre. A rough detective with his sidekick (I'm sure both of them could be male or female, but remember social constructs of the time) try to solve a murder, a grand robbery or a cult event of sorts. This would also fit elements of horror well, especially fear of technology. Elements of comedy would also fit greatly, as a lot of people were a bit... Awkward back then. Or you can at least make it that way!

Steelpunk is a genre that focuses more on technology that blossomed in the late 20th century. It doesn't go into cyber yet, instead it focuses on hardware over software and MEGA-TECHNOLOGY over nanotechnology.

A good example would be The Terminator. Giant computers, super robots and big vehicles! That's the vibe you need. Another example would be... Mad Max. Earlier Mad Max movies, to be precise. Or Robocop!

As for my suggestion - make everything big, complex and a computer. Exclude virtual reality and just make super cool technology the size of a skyscraper (just don't create AM from "I have no mouth and I must scream"...). Maybe an action story would work the best, but techno-horror also works. Machines going out of control and sabotaging the life of people.

Cassette futurism is a subgenre of cyberpunk that reimagines early 1980s aesthetics as popularized by the IBM Personal Computer and imitators, regardless of the real time setting of the media. Notable elements of cassette futurism includes loud, bright, contrasting colors and geometric shapes, a tendency towards stark plainness, a lack of powerful computers and cell phones, and the prominent usage of 1980s or 1980s-inspired technologies such as: magnetic tape data storage, cathode-ray tube displays, computer systems reminiscent of microcomputers like the Commodore 64, freestanding music centres, small, monochromatic LCD displays as opposed to full color screens, floppy disks, and analog technologies. The internet, or some analogue to it, may exist in a cassette futurism work, but might be used less frequent in data exchange than physical media.

I think this description alone already sets up a few ideas on what to write. An adventure story would work GREAT here, as characters have to rely on all technology available to them, while also spending time playing on old computers and maybe even using the internet for a quick reference.

Cyberprep. A cyberprep world assumes that all the technological advancements of cyberpunk speculation have taken place but life is utopian rather than gritty and dangerous. Since society is largely leisure-driven, advanced body enhancements are used for sports, pleasure, and self-improvement.

The word is an amalgam of the prefix cyber-, referring to cybernetics, and preppy, reflecting its divergence from the punk elements of cyberpunk.

A cyberprep story is revolved around the success of humanity, and it's technological achievements. If you want to write something about how cool life can be on Earth, this is a good genre for that! Can't give many more suggestions, but you can try to make a story about a person finding help and hope in the world around them.

Biopunk or Genepunk - a subgenre of Cyberpunk, in which the focus is shifted toward bio-engineering and biological weaponry.

Basically, it's very similar to Cyberpunk itself, but it cares more about biological development over cybernetics. So, maybe, you're a fan of cool flesh monsters, or you like the idea of an arm growing back instead of it being replaced with a mechanical one. All the ideas from Cyberpunk can be used here, I believe.

Nanopunk - a genre with a focus in nanotechnology.

I can't add much more about it, but I can recommend a good source of inspiration - Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

Salvagepunk is more of a post-apocalypse setting, where the value has been moved from money to physical usage. This subgenre reflects the problems of modernity - overpopulation, consumer society, social stratification, ecology and waste recycling. Salvagepunk depicts a polarized world where false dreams of a bright future are often built at the expense of the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised against the backdrop of crisis and impending catastrophe. The world does not end in a large-scale tragedy (nuclear explosion, alien invasion, natural disaster), but collapses slowly, exposing the depletion of the Earth. At the same time, a utopian idea is traced — the hope of being able to restore the destroyed world with the help of the fragments and debris left from it.

I absolutely love Salvagepunk. Deponia and Railsea are great examples of salvagepunk - everything is rusted, everything is trash, but there is still hope for a better future.

And Hope is the primary motivation and morale of stories in this genre. No matter how bad things will seem, they can get better. And that should be your focus in writing. Characters are in deep trouble, but they can get out of it.

Elfpunk is subgenre of urban fantasy in which traditional mythological creatures, such as faeries and elves, are transplanted from rural folklore into modern urban settings.

This one is the easiest one to mix and match with any other. Just add mythical races into ANY of the genres I've listed before this one. And, hell, you can just make ANY story using Elfpunk. The possibilities are great!

And now, my favorite - Skypunk or Aeropunk. Flying ships. I can't begin to tell you how much I love flying ships. The entire point of Skypunk - everyone travels by air. Either because all land is in the sky, the sea is too dangerous or it's just easier, people built airships or just... Flying ships.

Stories in this genre are DEFINITELY all about adventure stories. It's probably the main focus usually, but you can experiment. Add a giant flying monster, a political battle, a murder on a pirate ship, something! You can pull a lot of things here!

Wow, you've actually read all of that through. I didn't expect that, because there was a lot of text. Thank you! As a reward, get a few more Ideas, but they are a bit more fun and short:

- Nano-vampires. Are they small nanomachines consuming your blood cells, or actual vampires, drinking your blood FOR nanomachines?

- Bio-werewolves. Creation of a bio-experiment gone wrong, or the creators OF bio-experiments?

#writing #writer things #steampunk #dieselpunk #many -punks honestly #writing ideas

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fallingwatcr · 4 years ago

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starter for @gallagherchels / trinity.

– GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING? for someone he vehemently avoids using the word ‘friend’ to describe, it’s a pretty fucking friendly thing to reach out to them in the middle of a family crisis, just wanting to hear their voice. he can already imagine the tone she’s going to take, that nonchalant, half-joking sort of way she speaks when a serious topic of conversation comes up – she’ll never say she gives a shit, but jem will wait to see it on her face anyways and that’ll make him feel better than if she’d said it. okay, so maybe it’s not that fucking friendly after all. the weirder part still is getting into his car, a rusted 2006 saturn, instead of the van that he and his mom pile into every summer, knowing there are going to be no more summers. at least, not in that same way.

there’s just this, completely final. ironic, considering jem had always been the one insistent that there was nothing to find about his dad anyway, telling himself that he was just humoring his mother – but maybe he’d been humoring himself a little too. he can hardly focus on the road for the next hour, swerves and drives erratically, drives on the line without realizing it. a few people honk at him, swear out their windows, but even his worst driving is kind of normal for florida.

thinking about his dad is a distraction from thinking about seeing trinity, but thinking about seeing trinity is a distraction from thinking about his dad. he’s not sure what he’s more comfortable focusing on, until he pulls up in her driveway and he doesn’t have a choice. of course he’s thinking about her – right, god, what is he doing ? because the house itself is ten times larger than his own, maybe more than that. his beat-up saturn looks out of place, and when he looks out the window . . . yep, he’s half-parked on the lawn, tire tracks in his wake.

he slams the door of his car shut when he gets out, hands on his hips like a middle-aged father looking over a grill as he looks back to assess the damage. there’s grass pulled up in clumps where the tire indents stand out across the lawn. jem’s so fucking out of it, he didn’t realize he’d pulled in like that. when he hears footsteps behind him, he turns, rubbing the back of his neck. “ um, shit, sorry – i’m usually BETTER at parking than that, i swear, but . . . i’m sure you’ve got something smart to say, so go ahead and let me have it. ”

#* 🎵 JEM / ⠀ 𝙁𝙄𝙇𝙀𝘿 𝙐𝙉𝘿𝙀𝙍 ⠀ ﹕ ⠀ ❪ ⠀ interactions. ⠀ ❫#02. jem & trinity

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lorienfae · 5 years ago

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Wept Corrosion

Regurgitated by the river, sediment eloquently deliberates an existential crisis — the kind where an iron heart has rusted, creaking like hinges of an ancient door that itself deliberates

whether to open or remain closed off, from the world — ever so desperate in its lonely dust-speckled solitude, wooden wrinkles creased in thought.

The heart weeps its corrosion

beside a water lily pond, witnessed by a lazy turtle and a couple of oddball koi, and nothing else of matter. Only

an old moss-tinged buddha half-hidden in the bush and age, weathering the seasons, snow to heat, as its own structure grows weathered — aging is but the norm of things.

Elsewhere, Adam stands frozen in awe of his Eve,

as her ethereal form, entwined in metal garnish, remains still in time, perhaps as forlorn as the rusted heart itself,

for each of the two can only stare at the other, so close and yet

so far. © Anna S., 2020

#poetry #love poetry #spilled ink #lit #free verse #poetsontumblr #poem #writing #writer #excerpt from a book i'll never write

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bigfan-fanfic · 6 years ago

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Everybody’s Favorite Stark 2 (Male!Stark Reader Headcanons)

*SPOILERS FOR SLIGHTLY FEWER YEARS OF MARVEL THAN BEFORE*

The next few years are gravy, honestly.

Researching and taking down Hydra bases, boosting your resume with what basically amounts to a high-level job at SHIELD.

Although something about working with the spy organization doesn’t sit well with you, though you can’t tell exactly what.

On a whim, you have JARVIS upgrade all Stark’s security in a secret update, protecting everything from SHIELD.

Your dad jokes that Fury’s backups have backups, but it makes sense to you to be prepared for anything

So many “I told you so”’s later :)

Then comes that mission in Sokovia.

And you get worried, because your dad comes back paranoid and secretive, and pushes you away, which he has never done before.

The reason Tony goes to Bruce to help him with Ultron instead of you is because you have told him in no uncertain terms that it is impossible, and indeed, shouldn’t be possible to “put a suit of armor on the world.”

So Ultron is born, and you are... well, you’re pissed.

But you work on repairing JARVIS

Unlike your father, you are capable of setting aside your anger when the situation calls for it.

After the Sokovia Crisis is resolved, you have a big argument with your dad that he can’t push you away like that.

You’re Starks. You’re passionate. You say things in the moment that you regret later.

So really, when the Sokovia Accords are drafted, things can go either way.

You’ve got to make a big decision. If everybody’s favorite Stark is on Team Cap, continue reading. If the Starks stick together, scroll on until you get to the Team Iron Man section.

Team Cap Ironkid - The Iron Knight

You and your father have disagreed often in the past.

What color to paint the newest suit of armor

Why he has to give Happy a raise instead of just an apology

Whether or not it’s worth it to fly to California for an In-N-Out cheeseburger or just stay in New York for White Castle.

Whether or not it time travel is physically possible

But this seems different.

And you can’t bridge that gap.

So when Steve asks you for your help in proving Bucky’s innocence, though it means defying your dad and the soon-to-be-signed Sokovia Accords, you show up in a pirated suit, painted rust-red and midnight black, and you shoot red lasers to intercept Iron Man’s blue ones

But other than that, you hesitate to engage with your dad.

And the Iron Knight is born.

Natasha and you work together to bring down T’challa, and then you, Steve, and Bucky head to Siberia.

You don’t learn until later that Uncle Rhodey was injured.

Tony is devastated, and he nearly kills Sam instead of knocking him out.

You’re jealous of Peter

How long has your dad kept a replacement kid on standby?

You might be the one to *accidentally* drop a building on the kid.

You sigh with relief when it seems that your dad has come to his senses. For a moment, it seems like all will be well.

But then you see that Hydra had the Winter Soldier kill your grandparents.

You’ve never met them. It doesn’t effect you as much.

And when Tony strikes, you are there to grab his fist.

You still can’t quite bring yourself to attack him, so you instead remote hack his armor to distract him.

FRIDAY does a good job keeping the suit functional, but you’re still able to briefly take control of the language settings and grant Steve some openings.

And when Steve disables the armor, you realize that you have made a decision that cannot be taken back.

You don’t piggy-back on Steve’s message.

You send no word to your father.

Instead he sees on social media that #DarkIronMan and #IronKnight trending, and there are countless videos of you in your stolen suit, using it for vigilante work.

And though he misses you dearly, and feels betrayed, he is still so proud of you...

Team Iron Man Ironkid - Alloy

Yes, you and your dad have fought in the past.

But you’ve always gotten past it, and this time is no different.

Even if you don’t agree with the Accords, what better way is there to affect change than from within?

So when your dad asks you to help him bring Bucky into custody so that an investigation can be conducted, you agree.

The two of you go to meet Peter.

You distract May while Tony talks to him. If you’re closer to Peter’s age, you claim to have visited Peter’s school and become friends with him. If not, you claim that you’re in charge of the September Foundation Intern and Scholarship Program (or SFISP, pronounced suh-fiss-puh) and recommended Peter for the internship from a large pool of candidates.

BTW, Peter has some level of hero worship for you, too.

The Y/N Stark is in his house!

Eventually, you will be a hands-on mentor to Peter compared to Tony’s distant approach.

“Peter, don’t call her Karen.”

“Why not? She sounds like a Karen.”

“...okay, but that’s besides the point.”

You’re a little leery about bringing young Spider-Man into battle, so you resolve yourself to protect him during the battle.

You get a superhero name - Alloy.

Not only because it refers to metal, and you know, Iron Man, metal?

But also because it sounds like Ally in a Cockney accent.

Iron Man and his Alloy = Iron Man and his Ally.

Blame Tony - he came up with it.

You’re the one to subdue Wanda while she’s occupied with Vision

“That’s for making my dad make Ultron!”

You and Peter have a tag-team move where he web attaches to your armor and you swing him around.

But Captain America and Bucky get away

And Uncle Rhodey is hurt. You take charge

You order Tony to get Peter and the others out while you wait for emergency response for Rhodey.

You are the one to clue Tony in to the fact that Zemo is up to no good

And you go with him to Siberia.

In an uneasy alliance with Cap and Bucky

Until you learn that Hydra had the Winter Soldier kill your grandparents.

You can’t blame Bucky.

You don’t blame the chemicals when they explode, you blame the dumb scientist.

So you do not attack him or Steve.

You try to convince Tony to stop, but to no avail.

You help Bucky get away from the battle after his metal arm comes off.

And you send Cap off with him.

Then you fly Tony back home.

He doesn’t agree with you about letting Bucky go, but he understands why you did it and respects you for it.

Because even though you’ve disagreed before, you always get past it.

He is so proud of you, and he thinks you might be a better mentor for a certain young man in underoos...

#male reader #stark reader #ironkid reader #avengers headcanons #avengers x male reader #marvel headcanons #iron man x male reader #headcanons

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fanboyscribbles · 3 years ago

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Second half of #Winter2022 picks. It took a while but here it is. Already tried other titles from my list and these ones I'm keeping. #RymansClub. This season's sports anime goes to the bandminton team of Sunlight Beverages. Salarymen by day, professional players by afternoon. In short, Badaryman! Haha! Tension's up already at ep 1 and chemistry's quite good like Sk8 and Bakuten. Lidenfilms did a great job with the pilot's art. Really liked this one and immediately recognized Junya Enoki. Hihi! 9/10 #ファ美肉おじさん (Reincarnated as a Pretty Fantasy Girl with a Middle-Aged Guy/Fabiniku). This just clicked because of the laughs. It's fun seeing Jinguuji (ouji-san) and Tachibana (reincarnated as a girl) go on an adventure while trying not to fall in love with each other. Haha! This stays for the comedy. 8/10 #天才王子 (The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt). We see how Price Weinn attempts to save his kindgom to make it more ideal to sell it off entirely. Being the genius that he is, he even ends up expanding his territory. Quite ironic and absurd but still funny as hell. 8/10 #SabikuiBisco (Rust-Eater Bisco). Set in a post-apocalyptic Japan where the air is infested with rust, causing illness among the community. Bisco and Nekoyanagi are now in search of a legendary mushroom to end the health crisis. This one's for Hanae Natsuki, and Tsuda Kenjiro as the antagonist. 8/10 #KoroshiAi (Love of Kill). A complicated relationship between a bounty hunter and a fugitive. The premise is quite interesting and the dynamics between Chateau and Ryang-Ha really give off a strong Moriarty-Holmes vibe. It's nice to see Shimono Hiro play a cool and collected character. 8/10 #MiyanoToSasaki. A BL entry this season. Something cute and light to follow. Waiting to see where it goes but so far, quite a chill watch. 7/10. #AttackOnTitan. Need I say more? 10/10 #TheCaseStudyOfVanitas. Not sure if this is a second cour or a second season but so far, I'm a bit on the fence since they're taking their time with the pace. Dialing this one down to 8/10 for now. That's it. Update: Already purged Orient, Futsal Boys, Rose King, and Tribe Nine. What do you think? :) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZV-dANM0jh/?utm_medium=tumblr

#winter2022 #rymansclub #ファ美肉おじさん #天才王子 #sabikuibisco #koroshiai #miyanotosasaki #attackontitan #thecasestudyofvanitas

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aittiadf · 4 years ago

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chapter 2

My eyes felt like screws after the seventh hour of manning the reception desk at New Ocean Hotel. My shift was almost over and every minute dragged itself over the slow blue sky. I went into the back bathroom, sat on the toilet and took a few hits from my vape pen. The high smoothed me over. I looked down at the checkered tiles of the bathroom floor and pulled out my phone. Samantha had texted me saying there was someone she wanted me to meet. This guy from her church who drank with her had just seen the lights for the first time. She described him as a sheepless shepherd who wandered around praying to a higher power. Aren’t we all sheepless shepherds I thought but then I realized maybe people had more meaningful ways of understanding their life.

She told me this guy was looking for a job and needed a place to stay. I didn’t really know how much I should care. Nothing really happened here and if some person wanted to be by the beach alone with an easy job then sure, he should come and stay for a while. If he had seen the lights at the very least it might give him some space to calm down. For me though it was boring. I’d worked here for over a year and only stayed because it gave me time to work on the free coding academy I had recently enrolled in. What I really wanted was to get out of this hotel and work for one of the startups in the bigger town to the south.

The only time the hotel got busy was during the summer. But even then, when tourist season was in full force, none of the rooms would be filled. But there was always a two-four week span when the fires forced people out from the valleys or the mountains and the rates would spike higher than they were the rest of the year. We would be filled to the brim during that time, having to deny people and everything. It was cruel to raise rates during an environmental crisis. Supposedly there was an algorithm that decided the prices for all the hotels in a thirty mile radius so the rates were always the same and there wasn’t any real competition. So it was all blameless. The mechanized blasphemous rate spiking that occurred when people’s houses were burning to the ground could be attributed to the cloud or some other unknowable piece of technology whose existence could only be hinted at and never named.

I walked back to the front desk and sat at the computer trying to decipher an error in the coding assignment I was working on. It was useless. My brain was fried and I wanted to walk out the door and go home. I couldn’t, so I booted up youtube instead. Fifteen minutes later, I was on my fourth video of this guy who had a hydraulic press. The niche of the channel was that he exclusively pressed food. Lately it seemed he’d been going to a lot of fast food restaurants. I stood there transfixed as I watched the steel metal cylinder pulverize doritos locos tacos, double doubles, fish filets and atomic chicken wings.

My manager walked in from checking on some of the rooms in the hotel and I told her to come and take a look. She sat there dazed for a while as well, occasionally offering some commentary.

“It's crazy to see food transform into such unrecognizable shapes”

“This is making me hungry”

“That actually looks kind of good”

I liked her. She wasn’t sympathetic to the owners. They directed most of their nastiness onto her and she remained nice to the employees. Sometimes though the stress from the owners overflowed onto us. But there was this mutual understanding we seemed to have of the hotel’s emotional economy. Which is to say that we were aware the owners were some real cretinous fiends who cared about nothing but the rates and money and caused people to teeter at the edge.

I think she knew I smoked in the restroom and she probably assumed I jacked off in there too, which wasn’t untrue. I indulged in what I was able to get away with. There was even this time me and this customer who I’d been chatting with locked eyes in the lobby when I came into work one morning. He and I went back into the bathroom and did all sorts of stuff. I think she knew about this too because we had security cameras but between us there was this tacit understanding that if you don’t have a big house with lots of dollars the coast in California is just a place where you go to dissolve into the sunset and burn off.

I told my manager I had a friend of a friend who needed a job and if she knew if we were hiring. She told me we weren’t but had seen that the steakhouse across the street was looking for servers. Both of us thought it was stupid that there was a steakhouse in this tiny little community. Apparently some silicon valley investor had got it in his mind that the real estate in this area would explode. The idea was that by developing some businesses and property in the area the energy of the coming boom would surge directly into his net worth. He had opened this all glass steakhouse, the type of building with exposed steel beams inside. So now, amid aging victorian homes and fields of wildflowers there was an all-glass restaurant that looked more like it made napalm than served ribeye. Maybe the meat was cloned. Either way, it had good reviews on Yelp.

I told Samantha that if her friend was really looking for work that it was available here at this pretty stupid steakhouse. We had this weird friendship that congealed around this time we did acid when we were seeing each other years ago. It was late and we were bored and awake so we decided to take a tab each and walk the couple miles down to the beachfront where we lived in central California. When we got there we took our shoes off and waded up into the ankles in the ocean. The wind was strong and the cold ocean water on our bodies began to feel like needles. There was this dingy beach motel by us with an iron gate that was rusted from the ocean breeze. It opened easily and we decided to take refuge in the stairway of the motel.

All night we stayed awake feeling the euphoria from the acid and having the full force of California beach kitsch weigh on us. I remember taking solace in eating a bag of popcorn we bought and staring at this dead fly on the windowsill. When the sun rose we walked outside and I remember Samantha made fun of me when I took a picture of the sunrise. I told her not to be an asshole, nobody is better than the sun.

On the sidewalk walking home we passed by subarus and lending libraries and stopped to look at the sky. There was a series of six orange lights high above us, moving fast and leaving a small streak of light behind them. We stood there walking with our heads fixed above. We watched them fly across the ocean and over the hills until they were far out of our sight. We didn’t even say anything to each other, we just kept walking by early morning joggers and freshly manicured lawns afterwards, staring at the sidewalk silently.

That was so long ago now and certainly before I came out and she became a Christian. We just had an unspoken understanding that we needed to head in different directions. So I moved further up the coast here and she got some tech job in the Bay Area. I remember getting these weird emails at the time from this place called Excelsior Corp about test piloting this hardware VPN product. The emails just had one line of text: “Looking for test pilots hardware VPN now” and pictures of this big black box I assumed was the hardware you would have to install to access their VPN. I always sent the emails straight to the trash but somehow they always bypassed my spam and ended up straight in my inbox.

But after some time not talking to Samantha I reached out. I was smoking my wax pen on my porch one night when I saw a bunch of shooting stars shoot over me in rapid succession. I thought of Samantha. I sent her a text asking how she was doing. She told me she’d been well but had been having these weird things happen to her. She mentioned all these emails she’d been getting and that she’d started seeing drones in the sky and lights every few months. I hadn’t seen the lights but I’d gotten the same emails. She was telling me about it and she sounded scared but also she said she was doing well.

“I’ve got a stable job and you know I go to church and stuff, and there are some really wonderful moments, just now I saw all these incredible shooting stars.”

She sounded anxious and I was worried for her. I asked her if she liked smoking dabs. She’d never tried one.

“It’s really chilled me out since that time we took acid.”

“I like my church and alcohol.”

I was happy though because despite her nervousness she seemed happy. I let her know I’d seen the same shooting stars and she was ecstatic. Since then we’ve texted and called about strange stuff we see, about weird things happening in our phones, about plans for the future, about her theories on the Greeks, about my times engaging in public sex, about the hotel, about god, and about other things. We were friends and I enjoyed hearing about her world, from the far reaches of the front desk of the New Ocean Hotel.

On the computer screen a wad of Chick-fil-A waffle fries were being squashed into potatoey dough. Me and my manager sat there watching until the steel cylinder had fully flattened the fries and the video faded to black.

My manager gestured at the steakhouse, “What do you think it's like working there? Surrounded by glass for everyone to see? I could never do that. When I worked in a restaurant the kitchen’s used to be closed off from the eyes of the customers. Now they leave it wide open, I feel like I’d go insane.”

I thought of the owners of the hotel lording over me and reprimanding me every time I looked at youtube. “I’d probably go insane too,” I said.

“I definitely would.”

When my shift was over I walked home and stopped at the convenience store to buy a pack of gummy sharks. I chewed on them while thinking about Samantha. I imagined her in church, with some ridiculous outfit on, sitting with her friend. I imagined them both listening intently to the words of the sermon, and getting up from the pews afterwards to fraternize with the other church members. I thought of how all that seemed impossible to me, making conversation to other people in a church. Maybe if I tried hard enough I could imagine it. I tried and my mind thought of being submerged in water. I thought of being in the womb. I thought of what it must be like to feel full. I thought of being in a congregation. What singing with others must feel like. I started to imagine myself there, sitting among the pews unable to join in with everyone’s song. I imagined what it would be like later on during the service, when the pastor gave his sermon. In my mind I listened to him while a stranger next to me reached for a bible on the shelf on the back of the pews and turned to the book of revelations. He placed the bible on my lap while I unbuttoned my pants and unfolded myself hard, smack dab in between the pages that talked about angels, blasphemy and a new Jerusalem. Then I imagined him stroking me while I listened to the sermon, my mind cascading through illuminated halos, until all that remained was a gold blur and me hooing softly like an owl, letting myself leak onto the thin paper pages and onto the carpet below.

It was funny to me that after that time taking acid Samantha started going to church and I got a hold on my sexuality. Too much of my life could be periodized around that trip and sometimes I felt at the brink, torn between the life I lived before and the life I was living now. But there was no actual break between the two, and they were both happening at the same time. I knew that in reality my life prior and my life after bled into each other, with experiences since then coloring the way I read the past and my life prior shaping the way I read the present. But a long black fissure stood there in my mind, dividing the two lives while they tried to congeal around the edges of the abyss. From that fissure too came not just me but Samantha, and maybe anyone else who had seen the lights. We sprouted out of it in different directions like vines, crawling out of black depths and over the grey plane of our existence, stretching into the bright orange line of the horizon.

My teeth smushed the blue-white body of the gummy shark in two. I chewed one piece and stared briefly at the shimmering half body of gelatin I held in between my two fingers. It would be possible for Samantha’s friend to find a job here. I even had an extra room in the converted apartment of the old Victorian house I rented. Then what? I suppose nothing, I would continue with my life, trying to learn to code and working at the hotel. Who knows what would happen when we met. There was this sensation I had though, that everyone who me and Samantha came in close contact with was somehow also sprouting out of the abyss, extending themselves over that grey plane and trying to reach the sun.

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whovian223 · 2 years ago

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Time of Crisis from GMT Getting a Deluxe Edition & Mini-Expansion

Time of Crisis from @gmtgames Getting a Deluxe Edition & Mini-Expansion

Even though I haven’t been able to get it to the table for quite a long time, GMT’s Time of Crisis (designed by Brad Johnson and Wray Ferrell) is still one of my favourite games. I was just browsing Boardgame Geek this morning when I saw somebody post the exciting news that the game is getting a new Deluxe Edition with a mini-expansion to boot! I’m assuming this will be officially announced in…

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#Brad Johnson #Deluxe Editions #Expansions #GMT Games #Time of Crisis #Time of Crisis: The Age of Iron and Rust #Wargames #Wray Ferrell

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xtruss · 5 years ago

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Michigan to pay $600 million to victims of Flint contaminated-water crisis

Workers load bottled water into vehicles waiting in line at a water distribution site in Flint in 2018. (Brittany Greeson/The Washington Post)

— By Kayla Ruble | August 20, 2020 | The Washington Post

DETROIT — Michigan will pay $600 million to children and families in Flint who were exposed to dangerous lead-contaminated drinking water in one of the nation's worst public health disasters, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Thursday.

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In a statement, Whitmer (D) apologized to residents for the "uncertainty and troubles" they have endured since 2014 and acknowledged that the healing "will take a long time."

"What happened in Flint should have never happened," she said, "and financial compensation with this settlement is just one of the many ways we can continue to show our support for the city of Flint and its families."

The settlement resolves a lengthy legal battle that began under her Republican predecessor, Rick Snyder, who was among the many public officials accused of ignoring or even denying the crisis in the poor, largely minority city of 95,000. The problems started almost immediately after Flint changed the source of its municipal water supply to save money, and they continued for nearly two years despite residents' increasing complaints and concerns.

Flint’s lead water pipes are being replaced as part of the remediation effort throughout the city. (Paul Sancya/AP)

Under the terms of the agreement, 80 percent of the monetary award will go to residents who were younger than 18 at the time of their exposure. More than half of that amount will go toward the children younger than 6 — whose age put them at greatest risk for lead poisoning and the physical damage and neurological problems that can result.

Between 18,000 and 20,000 children and adolescents lived in Flint during the water crisis, officials have estimated.

“The kids in Flint at every turn have been unnecessarily victimized by the circumstances of their life, poverty, a government that was dishonest with them,” said Corey M. Stern, the lead counsel for plaintiffs in the settlement, which encompasses multiple lawsuits and cases filed against the state.

“This is a crescendo moment,” he added, reflecting on the many obstacles that delayed justice. “To these kids, there’s been a hell of a lot of losses. And I don’t know of many wins . . . [but] this is a big win for them, and it’s beyond the money. It’s what it says.”

The remaining 20 percent of the payments will go to plaintiffs whose lawsuits pertained to other issues, such as property damage and loss of revenue.

Toxic lead, scared parents and simmering anger: A month inside a city without clean water

The deal follows 18 months of negotiations involving four attorneys acting on behalf of Flint residents and businesses, and court-appointed mediators overseen by U.S. District Judge Judith E. Levy. Talks escalated greatly in recent months amid the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Stern, the amounts awarded to each child will vary. The negotiating team constructed a grid with categories of claimants, with each category then broken into empirical levels of harm as determined by blood-lead tests and other data. The final total will depend on the number of children covered; before the announcement, 7,500 had legal representation.

“I do not think every kid should be treated equally, because not every kid is injured equally,” Stern said.

Florlisa Fowler, a mother of three who lives on Flint’s northeast side, learned of the agreement Wednesday evening through conversations and early news reports. As details emerged, some people were excited and energized, others dissatisfied. Fowler found herself on both sides.

“I was like, ‘Well, at least it’s something,’ ” she said Thursday. “And that’s kind of sad that we think that way because we’re worth so much more, but at least it gives some people hope.”

Even amid her skepticism, though, she felt relief. Her daughter was 12 at the time of the crisis, and tests detected lead poisoning. Now 17, the girl has cognitive issues as well as gastrointestinal problems that have been attributed to her lead exposure.

The debacle began when Flint stopped drawing its water from Lake Huron and switched to the Flint River. But state officials failed to ensure that corrosion-control treatments were added to the new water supply. Without them, rust, iron and lead leached from the city’s aging pipes and contaminated the drinking water of homes and businesses.

Residents started complaining of discolored and foul-smelling water and then worse — skin rashes after bathing — but their concerns were largely ignored.

Among some children tested in 2015 at a local hospital, the percentage with lead poisoning doubled after the switch in water sources. In some neighborhoods, it tripled. Rather than prompting immediate action, the test results were questioned, and the pediatrician who tried to highlight them was harshly criticized.

When the city and state finally responded, forced in part by the federal Environmental Protection Agency invoking its emergency powers, a massive effort got underway to distribute bottled water and water filters throughout Flint. Snyder told residents in a State of the State address that “government failed you at the federal, state and local level.”

‘If I could afford to leave, I would.’ In Flint, a water crisis with no end in sight.

Former lawmaker Phil Phelps (D) represented Flint at the height of the disaster and led legislative efforts to secure recovery funding for the city and accountability from state officials. On Thursday, he was struggling with a mix of emotions.

“There is no amount of money that’s going to be able to reverse the damage caused to the mental and physical health of Flint residents,” said Phelps, who worries legal fees will leave many children lacking.

Although officials have declared the crisis over and Flint’s drinking water no longer a health hazard, residents say they have little trust in what comes out of their taps. Most continue to use bottled water.

A criminal investigation by the Michigan attorney general’s office continues. Felony charges initially were filed against more than half a dozen local and state officials, but last year those were dismissed and the probe restarted.

Thursday’s announcement is just one facet of the city’s recovery. Since 2015, Flint has received tens of millions of dollars in state and federal funding to repair its devastated water system. More than 25,000 lead service lines have been removed and replaced to date. Roughly 5,000 more lines still need to be dug up.

And in her statement, Whitmer touted additional programs and aid. The state’s current budget allocated $120 million to water infrastructure investments aimed at cleaning up the city’s drinking water, and the upcoming budget will direct millions more to support various programs, including nutrition, health care and early childhood services.

Yet the financial settlement comes at a particularly timely moment as the country grapples with the impacts of systemic racism, exposed not just by the coronavirus pandemic but by the deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans during encounters with police.

“Flint is everything that people are out protesting about,” said Stern, who represents some 2,600 young plaintiffs there. “Flint is a microcosm of what our most underserved communities look like, and one of the reasons why the crisis reached the level it did was because people weren’t listening to the voices of those in Flint.”

Melissa Mays, a mother who became one of the most outspoken in demanding state compensation for the community, is feeling a measure of vindication.

“Today is day 2,309 since they switched our water and took away our clean water,” she noted Thursday. “So it’s a very, very long fight, and we have to keep telling ourselves we matter. This is what’s right.”

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mismaris · 8 years ago

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Luke had put it off for a while now. He told himself that he should keep his distance, to protect the girl. She needed to leave. Any sign of him giving in to the brightness, the _hope _that she’d brought to the island, the galaxy, to him, would be catastrophic. He told himself he would stick to his plan.

...But Skywalkers have never been very good at following rules, even ones set by themselves.

And so, as he watched the girl training on the cliff, swinging his old lightsaber with an ease he hadn’t been able to accomplish at her age- another reminder of the life she’d endured- Luke turned, and headed down the Jedi steps to the Millennium Falcon.

Chewie was outside, making repairs and adjustments. A small smile crept onto Luke’s face as he watched the Wookie pry open a hatch, only to discover a small family of porgs nesting inside. Chewbacca growled angrily, but the porgs merely chirped, their large eyes staring blankly up at the Wookie. Chewie growled again, practically yelling, and began to shoo them out of the hatch. Luke used the momentary distraction to slip past him, not quite ready to face his old friend yet.

Still, he couldn’t help but reminisce. The years in between the Battle of Yavin and Cloud City had been some of the best of Luke’s life. It was almost ironic, in a way. Back then, he’d felt like a hero- brave and invincible, fighting to save the Galaxy and become a Jedi. For just a moment, Luke was back on Home-1. He could see that freezing base just as clearly as if he had been there yesterday.

Chewie angrily growled something at Han, who scoffed and crossed his arms.

“I told ya, Chewie, ya gotta treat her well and then she’ll be ah, receptive, to your upgrades.”

A snort from somewhere below had Luke smirking as well.

“I hope your advice for repairing ships is better than your advice for dealing with women.” Leia said, and Luke took a quick look over his shoulder to see her lounging on a stack of crates. She hadn’t even lifted her head from her datapad, but the crinkle in her eye told him she wasn’t really reading it. Luke glanced up to Han, who rolled his eyes and straightened his shoulders

“Listen here, sweetheart, I’ll have you know that I can make any woman fall for me. In fact,” Han leaned an elbow on the Falcon, “I’m a wanted man on several systems, and not just for my smuggling talents, either.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Luke looked back to Leia, and saw her knuckles had turned as white as the snow outside, her fingers clenching around her datapad. She glared openly up at Han now, and when she shot Luke an angry glare as well, he quickly whipped around and buried himself in his own x-wing repairs. Artoo twittered a warning at him from the droid socket, and Luke wondered if it would be too obvious an escape if he suddenly powered up his x-wing for a “practice flight”. Thankfully, the crisis was averted as Threepio approached Leia with a request from Mon Mothma.

Breathing out, Luke was surprised he didn’t see his breath for a moment, before remembering where he was. This was Ahch-To, not Hoth. The memory of Han’s easy smirk almost chased him back to the cave he called home, but he forced himself forward. He owed it to Han, his brother in all but blood, to see at least this through.

It’s just a ship, Luke thought, finally entering into the main corridor. Nothing more than metal and wires.

And yet, with each step, Luke felt like he was walking into a living being. The Falcon was a creature that had been forged not just with mismatched parts, but with sweat and blood and care. He could feel the life flowing through each of her panels and compartments; the intricate inner-workings pulsing together. Han may not have been able to use the Force, but the energy the smuggler had put into his ship would live on long after him.

Luke had felt it, of course, the moment Han had been stabbed. The blinding agony of being run through not just with a lightsaber (the seam where metal met flesh and bone on Luke’s arm had throbbed in empathy), but also by a loved one, had brought him to his knees. And then, through whatever tenuous connection they still shared, Luke had felt Leia’s own heart shatter. Luke didn’t leave his cave for days. He didn’t cry, just stared at the cave wall. He’d wanted to disappear into that darkness.

The familiarity of being back on the ship had Luke’s muscle memory kicking in. His felt himself being pulled right, but he made himself turn away from the cockpit, heading instead for the storage areas. Everything was just as he remembered, the paneling on the walls, the dim lighting, even the constant beeping from one computer or another. All were there to help Han and Chewie’s smuggling business, and then later, the Rebellion.

After Ben had…left, Luke had too. He knew that eventually, Han would follow his example, but at the time it had been too hard of a truth to face. General Solo’s old nature had resurfaced under pressure, and the need to return to something normal, something familiar, that he knew how to navigate, had been what drove him away from Leia, Luke supposed.

The guilt of his own failings was what chased Luke up to Ahch-To, a place that had taken him decades to track down and to which, he’d believed, he’d be left alone to fade away. He’d taken whatever records of any sort of Jedi teachings with him, never to plague the Galaxy again. Luke refused to pass on what he had learned, not if it meant more families being torn apart by whatever prophesies of chosen Jedi, or Sith conquests, reared their ugly heads.

It had been time for the Jedi to end.

And then, one day, from the solitude of his cave, he’d heard the familiar whir of engines. A bright light had broken through the darkness he’d draped around him like a cloak. It was clear and strong, with a purpose. Luke wanted to turn away from it, but the light called to him.

She’d called to him.

Luke hadn’t needed her to come with the Falcon, or Chewie, or Artoo. Hadn’t needed this girl, with hope in her eyes and the sense of finally finding something lost, to hand him his old lightsaber, his Father’s lightsaber, which had called to her, Rey, this girl who was his—

Luke stopped that thought, clamped down on it like a blast door closing. He would not allow himself the realization, kept it firmly placed behind walls that had been there for so long, they had become a part of his identity. She could not know the truth. While Obi-Wan and Yoda had feared such a revelation would send Luke down a dark path, Luke feared the opposite for the girl. It would send her straight into danger, more so than she was already in.

Wouldn’t it be better, a familiar voice said, if she found out from you than from someone else? Do not repeat the past, Luke.

Luke shut him out, too.

The corridor rounded out, lights flickering on as Luke entered the main hold. Closing his eyes, he tried to center himself, but instead, found himself drowning in the sounds of long-forgotten memories.

A Jedi uses the Force, feels it flowing through him.

There’s no such thing as luck.

Ben, why didn’t you tell me?

I shouldn’t have come.

It’s true, all of it.

Han must have known, or at the least, suspected, who she was. Leia, too, if she had been willing to let this girl complete the years-long search for her brother. Luke had felt the echo of his sister’s presence on the girl, could almost see her in purple robes, head held high, bidding the girl good luck as she headed off to find a man who did not want to be found. Did Leia know that about him? That he had come here purposefully? Maybe the map he had split, the pieces left with Artoo and Lor San Tekka, had rekindled hope that he hadn’t abandoned them.

That day he had arrived on Ahch-To had felt like a closing. An ending. The sun had been setting over the water, taking the light with it. Waves had crashed around the island, signaling a storm coming. Luke was sure that the ship he’d used to get there wouldn’t make a return trip. Though, he could repair it, could easily use its still functioning comms to call for help. Then he could undo what he had done, get off this rock and find—

No. He had to stay. It was better, easier this way. Luke had ensured he couldn’t use that ship again, hiding it deep where no one could find it. It would rust down there, and not even the Force could fix something like that. As he’d stood there on the cliffs, watching the sinking shadow of his ship, he swore he could hear someone calling for him to come back…

Taking a deep breath, Luke shook off the lingering echoes of adventures long past. The memories kept alive by this ship were everywhere. If he turned back the way he’d come, he would encounter the ghost of his old self, whooping and shouting as he shot down TIE fighters. To the left, in the cargo hold, was where Han and Leia had shared their first kiss, before being interrupted by Threepio. Should he circle the corridor once more, he would hear the whispers of the girl and her friend, frantically trying to hide.

With nowhere left to visit, Luke finally turned to walk forward. It was, undoubtedly, the longest walk he’d ever taken.

Entering into the cockpit was like…coming home. With a slight wave of his hand, the Falcon powered up, her sensors and datascreens beeping to life. Luke turned in a slight circle, trying to take it all in.

“I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole Galaxy.”

Luke whirled, thinking the girl had somehow found her way on to the Falcon while he wasn’t paying attention. But there was no one there. Just empty seats.

“That’s no moon.”

He turned again, and again was met with empty air. Luke felt himself grow frustrated. Why had he come here? What was the point in torturing himself like this? He couldn’t change the past, couldn’t rewrite what had already been written in stone. The Falcon had once been his home, yes, but now it was just a ship. A hollow reminder of what once was, and what could now never be.

Maybe this was his punishment, for his failure as a Jedi, a brother, a son, a friend, an uncle, a mentor and…and a Father.

Those shields he’d so carefully placed around him broke, just slightly. Luke sucked in a breath, trying to reform them, but it was too late. He slumped down into the co-pilot’s seat and, for the first time since the Jedi Temple had burned in front of him, Luke Skywalker cried.

“Hey, hey, kid, why the long face?”

Luke didn’t bother looking up.

“Luke, I’m talkin’ to ya, the least you can do is look at me.”

Shocked, Luke did glance up, and found Han Solo, as young as the day he had first met him, staring down at him. Luke didn’t know what to say, but the words seem to come anyway.

“I’m…torn, Han. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Luke sucked in a shuddering breath, clenching his hands on his thighs, “I was supposed to be all these things, and now I’m none of them. I’ve let down everyone.” With a glance to his left, Han sat down in the pilot seat, beginning to fiddle with the controls.

“Well, I don’t know a whole lot about that Jedi stuff, but what I do know is something about ships.” Wiping at his face, Luke frowned a bit.

“Please, don’t let this be another metaphor for women. If Leia hears—“

“She’ll what?” Han laughed, sitting back in his seat, “Fire me? Kinda hard to do that when I’m her only option for transport. Listen, kid,” Han turned towards Luke, leaning forward as if sharing a secret. Luke leaned in as well, “when you’ve got a ship that’s hard to fly, the best thing to do is to let it fly itself. Don’t try to shape its patterns or make decisions, ‘cause it’s just gonna fight ya the whole way. The only thing you can do is just be along for the ride.” He scratched the back of his neck, leaning back a bit. “I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s kinda like…like the force, I guess, right? How you have to let it…oh what did that crazy old man say…”

Luke felt a smile tug on his lips.

“Flow through you?” Han snapped his fingers.

“That’s the one. Yeah, you just gotta go with the flow. Don’t try to make the ship what you want it to be, it’ll tell ya.” Han patted the console fondly. “We can’t control the hand we’re dealt, but we can control how we live with it. You just gotta keep moving forward, and don’t look back.”

The two sat in silence for a moment, a rare bit of peace and understanding between them. Then it was shattered, as Chewie’s echoing roar came from somewhere in the ship. Han swore.

“Looks like Chewie needs my help, and if we wanna keep her Worship happy, I’d better see to it. You’ve got the controls, kid.” Han stood, ruffling Luke’s hair as he edged past the seats. He paused at the doorway, though, and turned to look back at him.

“Take good care of her for me.”

And then he was gone.

Luke sat there for a moment or two more, staring after him. Han wasn’t a Jedi, wasn’t even force-sensitive, and so he couldn’t come back like Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or even his Father had. It wasn’t possible.

And yet…

Something thrummed in the distance. Luke turned to stare out the cockpit window, up to the cliff where she was training. He could feel her light, but it was sharpened by grief and confusion. Without even knowing he was doing it, Luke reached out, parting the shields like pushing aside a curtain.

Instantly, she settled, finding some clarity to calm herself. Then a different sort of confusion blossomed around her.

--is that him why is he helping me now he didn’t want to before I don’t understand but—

Luke got to his feet, turning to leave the cockpit. He waved his hand, the lights powering down. As he walked through the ship, the echoes of the past were still around him, but he paid them no mind. He could not go back to them, but there was someone he could go back to.

Rey.

Walking off the boarding ramp, he heard Chewie’s surprised growl behind him. Luke turned, and raised a hand in greeting.

…Yes?

It was faint, like a child asking for permission to enter a room. She was young and untrained, and needed guidance. Luke turned to trudge up the Jedi steps.

Stay where you are. I’m coming back.

#Luke skywalker #rey #star wars #rey skywalker #the last Jedi spoilers #han solo #millennium falcon #I learned how to spell millennium while writing this #the force awakens #the last jedi #slight spoilers #Star Wars fanfic #fanfiction #writing #my stuff

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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Jason Rohrer on the Emergent Game Storytelling of One Hour One Life

One Hour One Life is one of the most fascinating video games I’ve played in years. It’s a multiplayer online game in a persistent world full of resources that players can harvest and craft into tools, not unlike Minecraft and similar games. But the twist is that every player (with rare exceptions) is born into the world as the child of another player and lives for only 60 minutes from birth to death. Together, players have collaborated across generations to build thriving civilizations, making use of a massive tech tree created (and updated weekly!) by the game’s solo developer: Jason Rohrer.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Rohrer (virtually of course) last week for an in-depth interview covering One Hour One Life and the philosophy that underpins his ambitious creation. Rohrer is fascinating in his own right. Since he made waves with his short 2007 game Passage, he has consistently pushed the boundaries of interactive storytelling and social video games. I first came across him through Sleep Is Death (2010), a collaborative story-making game played between anonymous online players. The Castle Doctrine (2014) explores Rohrer’s anxiety about home invasion by forcing players to turn their homes into death traps before setting out to rob the homes of other players. His work often feels paradoxical; at once inspired by Rohrer’s personal experiences and driven by a precise, highly analytical approach to game mechanics and player behavior. He’s also a somewhat polarizing figure, staking out positions on politics and the game industry itself that can be unpopular among his peers.

This article contains a transcript of roughly half of the full interview, since we ended up having quite a lot to talk about! In the transcribed portion we cover the connection between the COVID-19 crisis and One Hour One Life, the importance of true “social” gaming, the thought experiment that inspired the game, and the lack of player-driven commerce in the game world. In the full interview, available in podcast form for $5 subscribers on the Ani-Gamers Patreon, we go even deeper on all of these subjects, and even delve into a fundamental political disagreement between Rohrer and many of his players (myself included).

That’s more than enough preamble, I think. Enjoy!

Ani-Gamers: Considering world events right now, I wanted to start with how COVID-19 has influenced your thinking around One Hour One Life.

Jason Rohrer: I thought a lot about diseases in the game long before this. And of course now everyone is like “why aren’t there diseases in the game?”

Ani-Gamers: There’s yellow fever, which you can get from mosquitoes.

Rohrer: Yeah but it’s not communicable. It’s been a long time since I added that disease to the game and I did study it at the time and I don’t remember all the details, but I got the impression at the time that it’s a mosquito-borne disease and that it wasn't contagious from person to person so much. Although maybe I’m completely wrong about that.

But anyway, communicable diseases are interesting from a simulationist point of view. It’d be an amazing experiment to introduce communicable diseases into the game and see how people react, but I don't think on the ground it would be that interesting to the players because it would swamp all other aspects of the game.

Ani-Gamers: It would become a disease control game.

Rohrer: Yeah. If you go to this village and you see people with the visible signs of the disease — whatever it is — and then you interact with them and you come back to your own village and then people don’t let you in. It would just swamp everything. And then also does disease become eradicated over time and if so where does the new one come from? Do I as the god of the world periodically introduce diseases and watch as they run their course? Maybe it would be an interesting event for players, but it also feels like that’s not what the game is about.

Ani-Gamers: In terms of the response to COVID-19, one of the things I've noticed is that the lockdowns highlight how much of our lifestyles and production are social. I think the game does a very good job of showing that.

Rohrer: Right, right. A lot of what I’m trying to do in One Hour One Life is, ironically, especially with all the design changes I’ve made over the past couple of years, sort of force people to be social. Well, not social, because when we say “social games,” we imagine you have a game with a chat box attached to it, or you play the game on Facebook and your Facebook friends somehow play in parallel with you or you’re competing on a leaderboard with them.

Ani-Gamers: It’s latching onto an existing social network.

Rohrer: Yeah. It means “we’re going to be chatting in these games.” That's not what I mean by social. What I mean by social is that what other players are doing in the game matters to you in terms of what you're doing and that somehow they become actually important characters in the game that you're playing. Not just as chat partners, to get in there and talk about what's going on in the election or whatever in real life.

Think about it, the role of NPCs, non-player characters in most single-player games. Think even about a simple example that everyone is familiar with like Zelda. Not the original Zelda, but Ocarina of Time where there are a lot of NPCs around and a lot of quests and things that go on in the game that involve these NPCs. I don't remember the details of a particular quest because I haven’t played the game in so long but I’ll just make one up. Something about a guy who’s got a milk farm or something and there's some kind of horse racing thing. There’s something about having to bring someone some fresh milk. So you've got to go to some other NPC somewhere in the world and convince them. They’re sick and they won't come out or whatever and you have to bring them this medicine. Then they give you the fresh milk and this guy won't let you race unless you bring him the fresh milk and so that is a social interaction. That's social gameplay. Not that there's a real intelligent social entity at the end of it but it’s simulating the experience of “I need to interact with these people in the world in order to accomplish this thing that I'm trying to accomplish and sometimes they're angry or grumpy and I need to figure that out.” It’s very rudimentary, the emotional gameplay that's present there. This guy’s sick or he’s angry and I need to make him happy. It’s almost a key and a lock that's dressed up as some kind of social interaction.

So One Hour One Life has the potential to have that kind of thing happen, but for real. You’re not just looking for a key and a lock because the character you’re interacting with is a complex, fully intelligent entity who is another player. The problem is that it’s very easy for the game to degenerate into situations where those kinds of interactions aren’t even necessary. That’s sort of the default grain of this “multiple people in a world where you're crafting and building things” game. Players put blinders on and figure out how to build what they want to build and then build it.

Ani-Gamers: You mentioned in other interviews that playing Rust felt super individualistic.

Rohrer: Yeah there are all these other people around but they’re either trying to get you or ignoring you or whatever. There’s no social structure that built up. There's no sense of a neighborhood that built up. Every once in a while you would interact with one of your neighbors in some way, either a negative or positive interaction — every once in a while it was positive. But there wasn't a sense that we were banding together in any kind of way to cooperate or to trade or to build any kind of legal system or de facto way of doing things. We were all on our own little beeline quests passing like ships in the night, occasionally firing one across the bow at the other guy.

One Hour One Life has the potential for that, or that's what I was always imagining. You’re in these situations in part because you don’t just keep playing and playing and playing forever and ever and ever working on your personal project. Because you die after an hour you at least have to interact with somebody in the game, which is the next generation, to raise them. Because if you let all the babies die — that's the fundamental premise of the game — if you let all the babies die then everything you’re building in your lifetime is lost.

Ani-Gamers: Plus you have to interact with your own mother.

Rohrer: Right or you can’t get to the point where you can work on your own personal project. That little fundamental wedge in the game at least ensures some social interaction. But beyond that what I was seeing was literally you get to age three where you can feed yourself and the common thing — it’s almost risen to the level of a meme — was for your mom to say “glhf” or “good luck, have fun.” Slap a hat on you, make sure you're all set, maybe hand you a pie or something and say “good luck, honey.” And never see your kid again necessarily. You don’t really care what happens to them after that point, so much, as long as some of your babies survive. If every single one died then everything would be lost. Then players go off on their own beeline quests and don't really interact.

So a lot of the stuff I've been doing recently has been — it's a dangerous tightrope to be walking on where you’re like “the players aren’t doing what I want them to be doing. So how do I force them to do it?” (laughs)

A simple example more recently is the idea that you can’t learn every single tool in the game. There are 25 or 30 different things that are marked as tools that require some kind of expert skill to use. And you can only master so many skills in your life before you start to run out of mastery slots. So you have to pick and choose what kinds of things you focus on and if you’re building something more complicated, you're going to need more mastery than you yourself possess. And at that point you literally have to walk across your village and find the guy who knows how to use the tool you don’t know how to use to finish the thing you’re working on and say “hey buddy can you come and use this blowtorch.”

Ani-Gamers: How much of the game is an experiment where you see yourself as setting things up and seeing what happens, and how much are you trying to teach the players something? Are you trying to get the players to walk away having learned something about humanity or society or the way that production works?

Rohrer: It’s funny, I guess I’d say it’s neither of those things. I’m not interested in teaching anyone anything. Even going back through my career, it’s not really “hey I want to make you have this realization about your real life” as much as i want to provide you with this interesting, compelling, emotionally evocative experience. And some people apparently do have realizations about real life when they have that kind of experience, but if that’s your goal as a designer ... It’s sort of a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. You want to have this valuable experience that has a take-home message. (laughs) To me that feels less like art and more like a lecture or something. So I’m not intentionally trying to do that.

On the other hand I’m not intentionally trying to set up some sort of experiment and like a mad scientist, just see what happens. I’m more, as a designer, trying to almost predict or fashion this thing that will hopefully work in the way I want it to work to create the most interesting, rich kind of experience and situations that I can imagine a video game producing. So it’s more like me predicting, “ooh, if I add this kind of wrinkle into this situation it’s going to trigger these kinds of interactions.”

It's never as cut and dry as “walk over to this guy, tell him you need a sheep slaughtered and he just instantly goes over and does it.” Maybe he's busy, maybe he doesn't like you, maybe he’s got something else on his mind, or maybe this person just had a baby, or whatever. They’re too busy with something else. And so it's not as simple as just a key and a lock. If we describe the system in words and say “you only have a limited number of tool slots and if you need something else done you gotta get someone else to do it for you” that sounds kind of like you just need to go through this motion, walk over there and get this other person to do this thing for you, but it’s never quite as simple as that.

Ani-Gamers: Because they’re all real people.

Rohrer: Right.

Ani-Gamers: How does the goal of creating these emergent emotional player stories interact with or even conflict with goal of realism, of recreating how actual human development worked?

Rohrer: A lot of people think this is a civilization simulation game where it’s like “let's start with cavemen and get up to present day.” As far as I’ve conceptualized the game, that’s never been what it’s about. It’s more about this thought experiment of starting over from scratch. And what the reason is for why we had to start over from scratch is unknown. It’s unspecified that this is after a nuclear war or after some kind of cataclysmic climate event or pandemic or something. It's just “hey, what if we had to” and what if we were in the woods, essentially.

Ani-Gamers: Not “what if we didn't know that society was possible?” but that we already experienced it and had to restart.

Rohrer: That was a thought experiment I had been asking people for a number of years before I decided to make a game about this. It took us two to three thousand years, or maybe four thousand years depending on what part of the world you’re in, to get from caveman-level technology to where we are in the present day. From arrowheads to iPhones. And we kind of feel like that was primarily a knowledge acquisition problem. The reason it took so long is that we didn't know how to make iPhones 4000 years ago and slowly over time we figured all this stuff out and now we have the knowledge of how to do this. And then I say “well, what if we were instantly teleported back into the wilderness? How long would it take to have an iPhone back in our hands if we started from scratch from rocks and sticks?

So that’s the fundamental thought experiment. And a number of people had the kneejerk reaction that we’d do it within 10 years. (laughs) And I’m like, you realize you don’t even have a screwdriver. If you want a screwdriver you’ve gotta go find some iron ore, figure out how to make steel using no equipment, and then I don’t know about the plastic handle. Good luck with that.

Ani-Gamers: This sounds kind of like teaching, even though you said you’re not trying to teach. You’re trying to get people to think through that thought experiment.

Rohrer: Well yeah. That was a fundamental premise of the game. And I think, as a provocation when I have this discussion with people, I say “I think it might actually take 2000 years again.” It wasn't actually a knowledge acquisition problem, it was a capital problem, a foundational problem. When we go to do something today, we’re standing on the shoulders of all the stuff that’s come before and we have all these resources available to us like going down to the store and buying a screwdriver. I think we’re at the point where things have gotten so complicated that no individual living person knows how it all works. Especially for a CPU or something like that. There’s the fact that every time you click something on the Web 30 million lines of code are in between you and the data that’s coming back. Nobody understands 30 million lines of code.

Ani-Gamers: I’ve played on and off for the past two years and seen how the civilization developed, and one of the things I thought I would see was commerce. But I have yet to witness any real commerce in the game.

Rohrer: Yeah and that’s been a huge thing that I’ve been trying to get working forever.

Ani-Gamers: Why do you think it hasn’t happened? I definitely expected it, like “oh yeah, soon we’ll see people start trading.”

Rohrer: That’s been a goal of mine for the game and always been something that has never actually happened no matter what I do. What’s the fundamental reason for it? It’s an excellent question. I think it’s still a bit of a mystery even to people who have been playing the game for a long time. Everyone has their ideas. “If you just made the biomes bigger there’d be trade.”

Ani-Gamers: It’s ironic it’s the people playing the game who aren’t trading and then they’re saying “hey you need to change something so that we’ll start trading.”

Rohrer: I don’t ever want people doing things just for the sake of doing it.

Ani-Gamers: Right, just to roleplay.

Rohrer: Which is just this pretend version of it. If you chase after your child saying “be careful honey, watch out for the wolves,” and you're just doing it because you’re pretending to be a mother and that’s what a mother would do in real life, and there's not really any good reason to give those warnings. If there weren’t any wolves in the game but you went and told every child “be careful of the wolves in the forest honey.” That’s the worst case of it, where you’re literally pretending something that doesn't even exist in the game, but if you have enough babies where each one stays safe but you still act like an overprotective mother anyway, just to fill your role.

That’s not that interesting to me. I’m much more interested in players behaving a certain way due to the mechanics, and the way that they end up behaving, which is the optimal way to behave, being thematically congruous. I feel like that's the best we can do in video games, because none of it’s real, and because it’s all repeatable and you can go back through and try different ways of doing it. Even within a game like One Hour One Life where everything only happens once, there’s still the sense that you can keep experimenting in a relatively safe sandbox with different ways of doing these things. Whereas in real life you only get one shot at it.

Ani-Gamers: The stakes are higher.

Rohrer: A lot of people try to shoehorn these emotional situations into their games, mostly through cutscenes or barely interactive narrative elements. That doesn’t seem to work because players hit rewind or go back to a saved game and try the other branch. And even if there is no branching it’s even worse because as you play the game a second time you see the same canned emotion over and over again and it instantly loses its [impact].

Where I’m at as a designer right now is that the best way to achieve that kind of result is by having what I call “real play.” That is, players are trying to find the optimal way of playing the game in this situation and, in doing so, behave in a way that makes sense from an outside observer’s point of view, or thematically, or emotionally. They’re behaving the same way they would if they had that emotion. They’re kind of going through the motions for gameplay reasons but hey, what’s the difference between acting desperate and actually being desperate or acting afraid and actually being afraid?

It’s always going to be pretend afraid. There’s never a monster that’s actually going to chew you up. But if you’re playing a game where you’re supposed to be afraid of the monsters and you just brazenly walk right up to them and don’t even care, that feels like it undercuts [the emotion]. It’s these fake rubber fangs, right? You know they’re not going to hurt you. But if you dive out of the way and actually scream in real life for gameplay reasons, then I guess I feel like that’s as close as we can get to the real deal.

Ani-Gamers: Back on the subject of commerce...

Rohrer: Oh yeah so getting back to commerce, I don’t want people pretending to be engaging in trade just for fun. Some people have set up little shops and this and that. It’s like playing house. They’ll put up a little sign saying “the pie shop,” and they’ll run around the village saying “anyone want to come and taste my wares?” (laughs) But that’s just like playing house.

In terms of why people don’t: well, trade has costs associated with it. Opportunity costs and time investment and all the other kinds of things that go into it. So players need to feel like there’s a good reason, like the payoff to engaging in trade is higher than the cost to engaging in it. Even in real life, if you go all the way down to the market the benefit minus the cost for getting the tomatoes from the market has to exceed [the value of] just growing the tomatoes yourself at home.

Ani-Gamers: Maybe going down to the market isn’t even the best comparison because really there is no market at all. The question is “should we make a market or should we just share all the tomatoes?”

Rohrer: There’s a number of things. First of all there’s a big difference between your children and my children from my point of view in real life. And if we’re in a situation where there’s only one tomato, if I have my preference I’d rather have my children get it. If the situation gets tense enough and everyone’s starving to death, then people actually will engage in violence to ensure that their own children get it. In a game like One Hour One Life I don’t think that people currently have that kind of feeling, aside from [making sure they themselves can eat].

There’s also a sense that maybe there are too many resources around so there’s not enough scarcity, and there’s not a real sense of my children vs. your children. People aren’t really paying attention to whose children are whose, because there’s not really a gameplay reason to do that. I do have this “genetic score” system in there but a lot of players just ignore that. It hasn’t really had the sweeping impact where everyone is suddenly caring about their babies and so on. So people don't really care about their own children vs. somebody else’s children, because the fundamental gameplay motivation for the next generation is just to have somebody here in the village who's going to carry things on. It doesn’t really matter whose they are.

There’s also the fundamental problem that even if you wanted to keep some food just for your own children, there was no convenient way to prevent other people from taking it. There’s these property fences that were added a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago that are available and very easy for people to make, and very easy to control ownership and so on. But people don't use them, because there’s still some cost to building them and people don’t feel like the cost is worth it.

Ani-Gamers: How often do you play the game yourself? How much of it is for testing? Do you ever just play it for fun to see how stuff is going?

Rohrer: There are times when I need to test a specific bug that someone's pointed out on the live server and in those situations I usually force spawn myself in as the Jason character from the trailer and pop in with my little boonie hat and outfit and everything, and I pop in at age 42 and I can control the coordinate I pop in at, so I’ll often try to pop into some village that I’m aware of and people see me appear and “oh my god, Jason’s here!” It’s like a sighting, you know? And then they’ll talk to me or whatever. But I’m also sometimes in there testing. And I’ll say hi to people and make funny eyebrows at people or something, and then put a hat on a little baby before leaving. Or they’ll try to kill me.

Ani-Gamers: That’s funny. They’re trying to kill God.

Rohrer: Because they want the hat, right? Somebody will start targeting me and then other people jump in the posse and before I know it I’ve got three people chasing after me and I try to run away. But I also have the ability to summon any object in the game, so every once in a while if people really make me angry I’ll summon a bear.

Ani-Gamers: In the times when you've played a life as a regular player, are there any stories that have stuck with you?

Rohrer: I have one that I still remember from months ago. I was trying to experiment with property fences because people hadn’t been using them very much. And I was like “I’m going to create a property fence in this village for myself and my children to see how it impacts my genetic score and so on.

It doesn't take very much to build a property fence. There's already a village there and I went a little bit outside the village where there was some open land and started building a property fence. And when I started having babies I said “this is going to be our property. We're going to make our own farm here.” I think we were trying to make a milkweed farm. The village was short on milkweed. I borrowed I think a hoe or something and took it in there and I think I left the gate open while using it. But someone came up and was angry that I was using the hoe in the private property. So they came and took it away and scolded me for taking it away from the town center. I said I was just borrowing it but I don't think they believed me.

Then I took a child with me and we went out looking and exploring. We went exploring way far to the south, and we found this abandoned village that was just filled with resources. But I don't think the people in our town knew about it. And then I started having a couple of babies down there. I explained to them, “we’re from a village to the north. It's full of people. We found this huge treasure trove of great stuff: tools, cards, all this stuff. We should bring it back and we'll use it to make our farm.” All my kids agreed and I nursed them and we were eating the food in this abandoned village until they got old enough to carry stuff and help.

We loaded up carts and baskets and carried them all back, and put it in our private property when we got back. But then this woman in the village came up and saw that we had all that stuff in there, this cart and all this, and she took it and stole it, and brought it back to the village center! I was like “hey wait a minute, that's our cart!” And she was like “no, everything is shared by all.” The classic scolding me about private property thing. I was like “no you don't understand, we didn't take it from the village, we found it ourselves. It's ours legitimately. We didn't steal it.” And she said “it doesn't matter, it belongs to the village.”

I tried to take it back in there and someone had cut a hole in my fence while I was away too, so I had to repair that. And then she got mad enough that she took out a knife and tried to chase me down and kill me. So I ran away, but I made some mistake when I was running and clicked the wrong thing and she ended up stabbing me way outside the village bounds. At that point I lost my temper and opened up the god interface and put a bear down and killed her. Which I shouldn't have done! (laughs) Anyway, that's the only time I've ever slipped up in that regard and abused my power.

Ani-Gamers: The great part about the game is that she has her own version of that story too.

Rohrer: I think if we look at that example story, it’s pretty interesting. Not that interesting to tell as a story, but as a thing to experience in a game it’s a pretty interesting story. It's also kind of unprecedented in the realm of video games.

Most people, when they think about video games and video game storytelling, they’re thinking about these single-player experiences that are crafted by the author and maybe have some kind of branching to them or something. This was rich and complex and nuanced, and I could have maybe convinced her or been a better diplomat than I was and I learned things from it too that I could apply in future situations. Like oh, build your property a little further from town so not everyone can see it every time they walk by so people don't feel like it’s such an affront to their village. But also in terms of the way I interacted with her or how I explained the situation. It’s like I had a bunch of different options there and it wasn’t just picking from a list. All the potential for nuance and the way things turned out and the way they spiraled out of control does feel more like something from real life or from a really well crafted movie that we could never pull off in a single-player video game just because of the fundamental nature of interactivity fighting with the non-interactive parts. In terms of potential and ways forward for video games to solve these kinds of problems in a satisfying way, I think that in a multiplayer context there's a lot of potential there.

For the full interview audio, check out the podcast episode on the Ani-Gamers Patreon!

Jason Rohrer on the Emergent Game Storytelling of One Hour One Life originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on March 27, 2020 at 5:34 PM.

By: Evan Minto

#Anime #News #Ani-Gamers

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latviaaaaaa · 6 years ago

Text

In the Valley Between the Mountains and the Lake

The boat is rocking.

Strange, how much more you notice when in that limbo between sleep and wakefulness. It’s much more than anywhere else. When awake, you are aware only of yourself, and the thoughts infused with emotion and energy knocking about in your head like maraca seeds are enough to keep your eyes turned inward, open. When asleep, either suspended in the darkness too terrifying (or wondrous?) to ever remember, or else a crash dummy batted around by fantastic and muscular hallucinations, your thoughts are entirely external.

Right now, eyes closed like an unfastened cargo hatch, limbs still but alert, I jump between the buzzing hum of in-here and the incessant white noise of out-there. The sails grumble and shift. The wood creaks uncomfortably, adjusts itself. The wind reaches out to caress the water, and the water turns over onto itself, embarrassed. The boat rocks.

As an infant, I could never sleep in a rocking cradle. It bewildered my poor parents for several nights; up crying, confused, afraid. It took several doctors and finally Grandmother looking at me in order to figure out that I was getting motion sickness, which she declared not as a funny surprise or even a diagnosis, but as a berating. I can picture the sharp-turned eyebrows and the quirked bottom lip and all. I can picture her face, the way she used to speak, the sound of her old voice: “well, that’s what you get for naming him after my father.” I can imagine the way Dad would smile, tiredly, nights worth of panic taking its toll on him, and turn to Mom and say: “Grandpa used to be so bad. Wouldn’t do anything on a boat but lean over the rail the whole time. It was hilarious.”

I do like remembering my old life, my parents and Grandmother, and the old street we used to live on, in the old town that still lies in the valley between the mountains and the lake. The early days, before anything ever went downhill. That’s how Grandmother used to put it, as though life were like riding a bicycle without training wheels, and you just had to learn how to move focus into your hands to stop yourself from crashing.

I was never good at that. As soon as I started going too fast downhill, it was like I became a part of the bike. A useless mechanism, all metal and rusted gears, no motion, no sound. Broken. Or else I was a wild animal, hanging on to the bars for dear life and hearing the vibrato of metal whirling against the ground and watching the cold grey plateau grow closer like I was running full speed at a cobblestone wall and loving every second of it.

But I would never make a sound. May the neighbor children scream and cry and panic all they like, I would have thought to myself, had I been so articulate then; I was refined. I was experienced. In control. Silent.

Until the first time I hit the pavement. Lifted my head up. Saw a crack in the stone and I wasn’t sure it had been there before.

I had mixed feelings about getting on a bicycle after that. On the one hand, I had just learned that smashing one’s head into a solid block of pavement is even less comfortable than it sounds, and quite jarring besides. But on the other hand, I felt something, looking at that crack in the road. It felt new. It felt good. Invincibility, domination, I was indestructible.

After the second operation and countless X-rays of the side of my head, however, I gradually came to the more logical conclusion that I was, in fact, ridiculously and profoundly fragile. That cracked pavement, once a symbol of my immunity, my strength, came to look far too much like the thin white scar on my forehead, that crossed over the slight crater in my temple before disappearing into where my hair eventually grew back. A permanent reminder of how doomed I could’ve been.

Unfortunately for me and my newfound existential crisis, Grandmother didn’t see it that way. It was good I’d taken those hits at such a young age, she said. I’ve handled the worst, let’s see what life can throw at me now. Whaddya say, buddy?

I said I’d never get on a bike again. She wouldn’t have that, so I gave in, because I knew that had I been stupid enough to pick a fight with her I would’ve just died sooner, anyway. Might as well go out with a bang. On an actual bike again, however, I suddenly had different, yet stunningly brilliant ideas, and even the part of me that was the most childish and terrified of Grandmother would have readily consented to leap like Superman off the wretched contraption the moment we were in motion. Sadly, jumping off a moving bike, as it turned out, had inherent complications. Eventually I learned to just stop pedaling and slow down and safely untangle myself from the bike, and eventually Grandmother learned that I was not going to cooperate with her teaching methods as long as brain damage was a part of the curriculum.

So I grew up with a minor dent in my head, the skull barely fractured at my temple, from where they had to heal and then re-break it in order to remove the damaged brain cells beneath. And I grew up without many friends, because after that I found I just couldn’t relate to the kids my age. I couldn’t understand their antics. I couldn’t connect with them. It wasn’t something they had removed from my brain; rather, it was something life had put inside it.

Unlike the other kids, I knew acutely that I was not invincible. I didn’t want to climb trees or sled down tall hills in winter, I didn’t want to taunt the neighbor’s pit bull, I didn’t want to swim in the cold, bottomless lake in autumn. Unlike the other kids, I had the image of that cracked pavement engraved into my mind, as though I had been that cold stone street. Unlike the other kids, I knew what it felt like to wake up in a strange white room with part of your head missing.

Ironically, brain surgery really only made me smarter. Or maybe just more creative. It was so quiet around me, just how I liked it, so I started thinking to pass the time; I explored concepts and ideas and things and the people I knew in my mind. I examined metaphors and tragic realism the way other kids examined bear tracks and summer flowers. I taught myself to use pens and pencils before they could spell their own names. Helmi. Emma. Nadi. Akira. I wrote their names in cursive on paper; big and unsteady though the letters were, it was something, and it was something more than they could do. They would watch me write, they would get bored, they would leave. A few would whisper that it was all I ever did. I didn’t mind. Let them whisper, I would’ve thought to myself, had I been so self-assured then. Let them sneer and mimic and laugh haughtily, if they should wish to. It wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway.

I didn’t need them. I had Me, Myself, and I, and we were alive, and together we wrote stories and crafted worlds in my head, and I admired them so much I could’ve hung them up on walls the way adults do, a display for myself, making myself a pocket-sized home. What would it matter if no one else was there to read them with me, look at them with me? I found that, after a time, I really didn’t want to share them anyway. Even with Grandmother, old and anxious and more desperate for company than ever. As much as I loved her, and wondered about her, what she was seemed so scared of nowadays, I couldn’t share that with her.

But I should have. I should have done something, shown someone, made extra copies of my stories and worlds and the pictures I painted in my head, and I should have hidden them somewhere secret, somewhere safe, because then, a little later, when I was a teenager, I came home one day to find my father crying in the living room and he informed me, a child, who looked like an adult, that the house inside my mind had burned down, and it had taken someone with it.

It had been nine in the morning. I was away at school. I couldn’t comprehend. I thought he had gone crazy. But true to his word, Grandmother was gone.

And then it was just me. No more worlds left. Nothing of my stories remained, when I finally tried to dig through the ashes my teenage years left behind, a decade later. With no Grandmother and my mother on the edge between staying and flying, as she had planned to for years, and my father in hibernation, a cursed creature who turned into a broken mess every night, something cracked again. This time deeper within me, where no surgical tools could have reached.

The scar I had feared, hated, for so long, I suddenly realized, was a part of me. As dear and as old as my eyes, my knees, my fingers. The pavement had become a memory, a legend, a myth, even lying still just outside the living room window. It was not I who broke his head against it; I was merely his descendent. I had learned from his mistakes. He had taught me. Grandmother, too, had taught me.

So what if I was not invincible? So what if I could be hurt, killed, by one wrong move? I had had enough of keeping everything to myself. If it wasn’t safe inside, I knew as well as anyone that it wasn’t any safer outside, but maybe I didn’t want to be safe anymore.

So I came back to my phase of adventuring late in life, but for what I had missed, I counted. I started climbing mountains, not trees, and when I reached a summit for the first time, Mount Akka, just beyond the primary school playground, I stood there and sang at the top of my lungs. I made my voice soar over the cliffs and snowbanks, glide through the trees, echo around the valley below. It was a new world, one I had never seen, one I could never, ever have imagined. I sang my name through the air, made it resonate, resonate. But I was respectful, as Grandmother had taught me to be; I would leave no mark of mine here but sound.

Then, after climbing all the mountains I could see, I started sailing. I borrowed boats without permission from the harbor in the early morning; not at evening, for that is when all teenagers go down to the lake and party, swim, laugh, look at or touch each other in that weird way they had started to, which looked so uncomfortable and invasive. Three, four, five in the morning, after they had left, I was down by the water. I thought nothing of the depths of the lake, the uncertainty that had haunted me before; I simply trusted that they were there, and had no more need to think.

I was exhilarated. I was out on the water, in a stolen boat, having woken up early and crept out the window and then hidden for half an hour for the last stragglers of my school-fellows to leave, and here I was, floating around in the night! What right had I to be here? What purpose? I knew not how to answer, and it made me laugh.

I hummed to myself as I let the gentle night breeze carry my boat out to the middle of the lake. It was early spring and the water was begrudgingly calm, but I took care not to drift too close to the mountains. The snow at their peaks, upon all of which I had stood a month ago, was glowing in the light of the moon. The stars glittered and shone brightly, comfortably, no longer hidden by the sun. They waved down at me and I imagined they were smiling, the way sirens and mermaids do as they sing and swim and splash each other, relaxing again in the wake of a passing ship, free to be bare and left alone once more. I waved back.

So in this way my childhood officially came to an end, and yet truly it began. I would spend the next years of my life wandering outdoors, hunting and climbing and swimming and nesting in the undergrowth of the great Northern forests. I was an adventurer, and my parents - now separated, and admittedly much happier - could hardly believe who their child had become. A quiet, shy, fluffy creature of the shadowy bush had revealed itself to be a lynx, strong and capable and solitary. I got lost in caves, I fell down cliffs, I saw more bears than I ever imagined could live so close together. I loved it all.

I wasn’t scared. I was going downhill all the way.

I like to think she would’ve been proud of me for what I’ve made of myself. Maybe even happy. It wasn’t like Grandmother to say what she was feeling, or to show it. It used to drive my parents mad, especially my mother, when my father had first introduced them and she was trying her best to make a good first impression and I’m so worried she doesn’t like me, does she like me, she could at least give me a hand here, she could at least smile. But she didn’t think like that. What Grandmother felt, she felt, and it was no one’s business but her own if she decided to show it.

Sometimes she did show it. She showed it after the first surgery I ever had, when I woke up and it was four in the morning and I knew my parents were asleep at home and I was dizzy and my head was so numb it was almost vibrating and I was so, so scared until I felt her take my hand and tell me to close my eyes again, that I would wake up again, it’s okay. She would pull me back if I started to drift away. And again, when she was lying in bed in her last year, and I’m sure she knew but didn’t say anything, and we were playing cards and the cat was lying there with us purring softly, and I looked up from my deck just in time to see her smiling, a wicked gleam in her eye right before she straightened up and dealt the combo that lost me the game and won her a pack of licorice. And again, a memory from my childhood that feels so vivid it doesn’t seem like it could be real; but in it, I’m still tiny, and she’s holding me on her lap, saying my name over and over again. As though I truly am the father she misses so terribly and almost never spoke of, a tear slides down her cheek and I watch it run, fall, come to rest at last in the fabric of her shirt.

In truth, for all the coldness in her eyes and the all-encompassing spirit of Yes, you can that drove us all insane, for all her blunt honesty and poor social skills, Grandmother was not a bottomless lake. She had a grounding to her, far beneath her surface as it was. She had an end. And, like the stones small children would skip at all times of year, even in the winter when the lake froze over, she did eventually reach it.

I don’t think she would have been sorry to hear that I now sail over her grave, and the sandy, soft spot next to it which will one day be mine. I imagine it’s nice and dark under there. Quiet. Nothing like the way the wind whistles against the sails. The way the planks of my boat creak contently, as they partner up for the night. The way the water dances, the movement of fish and wandering souls and wild mermaids below, as it carries me further out to sea.

- March 6th, 2019. Shortly before midnight.

Alright!! Welp, this is the first entry on this new writing blog thingy, which should technically have been posted like a week ago but apparently I don’t know the definition of the word “short”, and so here we are. Feels good to have finally done something, though. Further entries DEFINITELY won’t be as long as this, at least for the next month, because time and all that, but I’m hoping to post more than one a day in the following week, just to get myself caught up.

That’s about it from me. I’m going to bed now, goodnight ❤

#my writing #first entry #eeeee!!!

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thelastraigeki · 7 years ago

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Storyline Pitch: CoS vs SRI

I feel like rambling here. I have a lot of ideas but never really seem to go through with them or they just fall flat. One of those ideas being a crossover storyline between Philadelphia: City of Shadows and Silver Raven Inn, sort of in a Marvel vs Capcom or Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe scenario. Two different universes colliding but... the rules of each universe are completely, and radically different. So, to make this probably easier, a scenario similar to Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, or MvC Infinite would have to be implemented.. or possibly both. The idea was to have a crossover between a universe I created, and another which Catherine Rainwater had created.

An entirely new antagonist from neither universe, or possibly one from two characters representing both have been merged, and as an act of retribution, seeks to claim dominion over both worlds and causes both to more or less merge them. Both sides would eventually see one or the other as hostile invaders. There would also be an influx of energies, affecting the merged world and it's inhabitant in a beneficial or detrimental manner. However, both sides would agree on one thing, eventually the merging of both worlds would cause this new unified world to eventually tear apart.

Both sides, after having suffered from the conflicts, eventually realize that they have a common enemy and a common goal. Upon defeating this new adversary, the energies are separated and so are the worlds... but not without some changes. Some large and some small, but all of them affecting the two universes. So, how could this go? So... let's take a look at these two universes and compare their differences.

-Philadelphia: City of Shadows-

Designated Universe: Earth 1987-2209

-This universe was originally built upon the original and old Alien vs. Predator universe, taking into account the first two Predator movies, the AvP movies, and the four Alien movies. PREDATORS and Prometheus had not been taken into account as they were not made at the time, and likely never will be. However, this universe also incorporated Marvel, DC, Image, TMNT, Capcom, Namco, etc, etc... However, for this storyline, canonical characters from these franchises would be left out but not necessarily organizations such as Weyland-Yutani, SHIELD, STAR Labs, TCRI, OCP as they can be referenced. Characters from these franchises can be referenced as well.

- Magic at one point did exist in the world of Earth 1987-2209 but this was during the Thurian Age, Hyborian Age, Bronze Age, Dark Age, up until the Renaissance. With the rise of Christianity and Science, the belief in magic started to dwindle, and over time... it started getting weaker and weaker, until it was almost non-existent. Many creatures such as faeries and what not started living a hidden existence, which explains why they became stuff of fables and legends. However, Vampires, Werewolves and Highlander Immortals also exist but they aren't as effected by the dying magic as faeries are. Also, some magic doesn't exist here such as Void, Enigma, etc, etc...

- Magic, Qi and Psionics are not all the same thing in this universe. They all draw upon from different aspects. For example, Jean Grey's telekinesis and telepathy doesn't draw from the same pool as Ryu's Hadouken does. Magic draws upon from a flow which I call the Ether, which is what creatures like Faeries, Dragons, and such need to exist. Because of the Ether dying since the advent of the Sciences... magic users would find themselves under backlash from the cosmos, or experience strain. Qi or as many refer to it as Chi, is drawn upon from a person's own spiritual strength-- this is something which can be built and made stronger through practice in martial arts and meditation as seen in franchises like Street Fighter and Dragonball. Psionics, are purely dependent on the strength of mind and will, and often times is the result of genetic mutations in a person or artificial means. Qi and Psionics also have a scientific explanation, with Qi being Bio-Electricity, and Psionics having the brain access to more of it's potential than an ordinary human being's.

- Science and Tech are largely considered the status quo. Many advancements in technology have been made. Already cybernetics have been implemented in replacing body parts. Think Robocop or Deus Ex. Most weapons are scientifically enhanced-- i.e. Raiden's High Frequency Muramasa or Wolverine's Adamantium claws. Enchanted weapon do exist but they are far and few in between and considered myth and legend, such as King Arthur's Excalibur. However, some weapons are such a technological marvel, they can be considered as almost magic, i.e. Wonder Woman's sword, which can go through atoms due to how sharp it is.

-World of Spyradion: Silver Raven Inn-

Designated Universe: Spyradion.

-This is a universe created by Catherine Rainwater and is largely a Dungeons and Dragons inspired universe that is set somewhere in the 1500s. Seems to be largely inspired a Western European setting but world building seemingly has commenced in the last two decades or so from my understanding.

- Absolutely no canonical characters from any franchise unless they are hailing from something inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. This means no Marvel, DC, Image, AvP, TMNT, Capcom, Namco, etc... However, this has been made quite lax over the years in terms of fanon characters - i.e. Rakai'Thwei and Giger Van Gogh.

- Some characters are from different realms other than Spyadrion, and can traverse between this realm and others. I believe this is something similar to Forgotten Realms or something along those lines.

- As the universe is set in the 1500s, there is no outside advanced technology found there in this universe. Science isn't really the status quo and is largely ignored over there but it does exist and there are engineers and tinkerers there, most notable group of these are gnomes. However, some... unseen power seems to keep this world from outsiders attempting to bring in their technology. For example if the U.S.S. Enterprise found this world and beamed down a group of red-shirts, said red shirts would find their equipment rusting, falling apart, or simply straight up not working.

- Magic, Qi, and Psionics apparently do draw from the same source. According to Sin Nightfall these draw upon from the same flow of energy found in the cosmos, think something similar to the Force from Star Wars. These are all the same thing but the applications are extremely different. However when confronted with Anti-Magic, ALL of these abilities are affected and nullified. Also as magic is considered the norm, creatures found in myth and fable are free to roam as they exist.

- Enchanted weapons are almost common place in this universe. It is possible that some scientifically based weapons do exist but as far as these weapons are concerned, they are generally unused or considered mundane. So, we know that these worlds will eventually collide in this pitch for a storyline. We know that the playable characters will be eventually feuding with each other and eventually be coming to terms in working together to save their respective universe. As I had mentioned changes being made to both universes, both large and small, we should take into account as to how these changes will affect both universes.

-Changes: Philadelphia: City of Shadows-

- With the world merge crisis averted, numerous governments implement new divisions to deal with outer world crisis. Organizations such as SHIELD has further funding directed to their paranormal division, the BPRD has an influx of new recruits and even realizes that there has been a rising insurgence of paranormal activity. Other organizations once localized such as New York's Ghostbusters have been officially recognized and sanctioned as government task forces. A new foundation designated as the SCP Foundation has been de-classified and is now made public.

- As a result of the world merge crisis, the same energies which have allowed the inhabitants of the alien world called Spyradion has revitalized the Ether. As the public had witnessed the use of magic from some of these invaders, a rise in the belief of magic has occurred, and therefore, sightings of creatures labeled as cryptids has sky-rockted. Interestingly, some of the human populace has noticed an increase of their own magical powers. Witch and Warlock covens are experiencing no strain or little back lash, Cultists such as the Cthulhu cult have been able to summon Shoggoths with more efficiency. Magic has been strengthen to what it used to be centuries ago. This plays out similarly to the Netflix film, BRIGHT. Because of the rise of magic in the universe of Earth 1987-2209, conflicts between groups have become common place. It's practically Science vs Magic at this point.

- Certain characters from Earth 1987-2209 also have multiverse counterparts from Spyradion, though these are not considered to be the same individual as they have lead different lives, and possibly possess different abilities. I.E. Giger Van Gogh from Earth 1987-2209 is NOT the same individual as Giger Van Gogh from Spyradion, think something along the lines of how the Mirage Turtles met the 4Kids and Wolf-Murakami Turtles. Doppelgangers from these two universes are likely to have friendly outlooks on each other, and exchange information on abilities and possibly exchange weapons.

- During the world merge crisis, some spiritual and martial artists sects have also been affected. In an effort to regain balance and control, many have underwent intense meditation. At the apex of their focusing meditation, some have visited a strange Ethereal world, finding themselves face to face with whatever had empowered these alien invaders... Now realizing that they can further enhance themselves through intense focus, these sects have new abilities which they are just only beginning to master. Think the Glow from the Last Dragon, or Iron Fist from Marvel.

- Some immigrants from Spyradion have been caught in the separation of the worlds, and are forced to adapt. However, they have made allies in the community of Cryptids, or some choose to assist the government branches which are investigating this rise of the supernatural. Some possibly might even seek to make allies in the criminal underworld.

-Changes: World of Spyradion: Silver Raven Inn-

- Following the post of the world merge crisis, the people of Spyradion experience a Renaissance. An interest in the world of science and technology has been pushed, and medicine has taken an advancement where it can achieve the same affect as healing spells. However, these advancements have come at some price, as it causes those who are high in power to experience unrest, facing the possibility that their philosophy on might being right could go contested if equal footing to those non-magical is established. Already... a few skirmishes have happened..

- During this experienced Renaissance and the interest in science, many have discovered that the unseen force which has been prohibiting the advancement of non-magical achievements seems to no longer be interfering with the development of scientific and mechanical advancements. Some of the characters from this universe might have even been experimenting with items brought back from Earth 1987-2209, performing basic scientific experiments such as the use of a potato empowering a light bulb. This potentially serves as the foundation for what could be Magitek...

- Some of the items brought back from Earth 1987-2209 have had drastic ecological effects on the world. It is very likely that a shipment of TCRI's Mutagen has been found in the hands of some mischievous people... and they have been experimenting on the local fauna and flora, with unpredictable results. A rise of Mutants has been established...

- During the world merge crisis, some cosmic entities have visited the world of Spyradion. Among them being the cosmic firebird, The Phoenix Force. With it's essence felt in the world of Spyradion, a new breed of denizen has arrived with abilities that are not at all magic, but rather... genetically gifted. Some possessed immense psychic abilities which rival that of mind witches, some possess bone claws and accelerated healing factors, others are born with enhanced strength and reflexes.. However, unlike over at Earth 1987-2209, they are not necessarily shunned and feared. But rather... embraced.

- Inversely, immigrants from Earth 1987-2209 have been found living on the world of Spyradion, with whatever they had brought with them seemingly functioning although quite limited. One established United States military base has found in one of the lands of Spyradion, and their arsenal while powerful.. is finite and without replenishment. Another base has been found but is so secretly guarded, that very few wish to venture in it's grounds... this base is known as Area 51. And these bases have been experimenting with their own arsenal along with whatever magical items they have stumbled upon...

And so... this is my pitch for Philadelphia: City of Shadows vs World of Spyradion storyline. Chances are that this will never happen, and probably will have a lot of kinks without it being so very refined, and we would need to account for the different rules which the two universes and chatrooms happen to have. This is just something fun, something creative I wanted to do.

#Philadelphia #City of Shadows #Spyradion #Silver Raven Inn #Roleplay #Roleplaying #Storyline #Pitch

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elizabethleslie7654 · 7 years ago

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In Pennsylvania, Trump’s Agenda is on the Lamb

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There’s a lot to like about Conor Lamb, on paper anyway. The Democratic challenger in Pennsylvania’s special election presents as a rare breed; a white male former Marine gang prosecuting attorney from Pittsburgh, Lamb is all but a specter of what once was in a no longer populist, working man’s Democratic Party that now caters to Wall Street, childless purple-haired freaks, angry POC, and dregs from the 3rd world – the so-called Coalition of the Ascendant.

Lamb is an uncommon candidate in an even more uncommon district. 96% white and 84% urban, Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district encompasses much of the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh, as well as the urban centers of Monroeville and Greensburg. PA-18 also cuts across largely rural Westmoreland and Washington counties, both of which are considered to be moderately populated Republican strongholds. Registered Democrats outweigh registered Republicans in PA-18 by roughly 70,000, however the district has been trending strongly Republican for the past few decades.

Trump won PA-18 by nearly 20 points in 2016.

For these reasons, Conor Lamb is the quintessential anachronistic Democratic candidate. Among his chief issues are the opioid crisis, infrastructure, working class jobs, reforming student loans, and affordable healthcare. Lamb is vocally anti-Pelosi and barely mentions President Trump by name. This is a noticeable departure from the single-threaded just-attack-Trump electoral strategy of the national party and a feat made even more impressive by the fact that special elections tend to be a referendum on the sitting president.

By contrast, his Republican opponent is an aging boomer social conservative and former interrogation consultant at Abu Ghraib, who doesn’t even mention the opioid crisis anywhere on his campaign website. A constituent, the mother of an addict, recently asked Saccone what he would do to help her son. His tonedeaf reply was to ask her what other government programs she would cut to fund a drug addiction program. How conservative. Strong on all the issues of yesteryear’s GOP that nobody cares about and weak or simply MIA on the issues people do, Rick Saccone is just the sort of underwhelming candidate the Very Official and Super Serious GOP Candidate Recruitment Taskforce should be sprinting away from at 100 mph.

The utterly ridiculous juxtaposition of these two candidates – on one hand a white Democrat who embodies many of the central tenets of Trump’s decidedly populist working class agenda that propelled him to victory in Pennsylvania in 2016, and on the other, an unremarkable milquetoast Republican whose neoconservative bonafides are second only to that of Bill Kristol or Erick Erickson – explains both the close polling and disparity in dollars in a soon-to-be-decided contest on March 13th.

In an R+11 district that Trump, Romney, and McCain all won by ~20 points, the latest polling shows the race within single digits, with Saccone only slightly ahead. In terms of dollars, Saccone’s campaign has been out-raised by Lamb 4:1 (and by 20:1 in terms of small dollar donors), while 3rd party groups for Saccone have outspent similar groups for Lamb by 9:1. Unable or unwilling to field a decent contender, the GOP is literally pissing in the wind by subsidizing a lackluster candidate with outside money, trying to eek out a win.

While the dichotomy outlined above is enough to flip even a deep red district such as PA-18, perhaps the most important reason Saccone isn’t miles ahead of Lamb (or vice versa) in the polls is the one issue we know is paramount to all others. Lamb doesn’t talk about immigration at all – for good reason, which you’ll see here in a minute – saying he wants to keep the issues local, not wanting to be distracted by national (and tribal) politics. It took a little digging (which is of course shrewdly by design), but I finally found a glaring reason for the average white working class voter in southwestern Pennsylvania not to like Conor Lamb. Buried in a Politico article from a few weeks ago:

Lamb’s option 3 is just a high verbal IQ way of saying AllElevenMillion, a false choice in which he believes 90% of Americans are in agreement. Of course we know this is patently absurd – and Conor does too – which is why he never mentions immigration in any of his stump speeches. It’s not even on his website. There’s no way Lamb would ever buck the party on this issue, but if he did, he’d probably win by 20 points.

Ironically, so could Saccone. Frustratingly, not talking about immigration seems to be the play being made by him as well. For a man who refers to himself as “Trump before Trump was Trump”, immigration talk has been noticeably absent from his rhetoric on the trail. Quite the canary in the coal mine. Unlike his opponent, Saccone does list immigration reform as one of his issues, however in the most feeble-minded and vapid way humanly possible:

Intense. In a race that’s running 15 points in the wrong direction, it’s all going to come down to voter sentiment and turnout. A win for the GOP will be significant only in that it will deny the left a much-needed propaganda victory. Neither Lamb nor Saccone will be around long, as PA-18 is going up in smoke as a result of the PA Supreme Court’s newly redrawn district map that will take effect after this election.

For a Republican Party that demands it must “run candidates who can win” in the face of rising nationalism, they are doing anything but. Also by design. A GOP loss in Pennsylvania would be nothing new for a party that, when left to its own devices, has a strong penchant for losing. The winning playbook has already been written: voters, especially in the Rust Belt, want fewer immigrants (illegal and legal), less foreign intervention, less “free trade”, more middle class jobs, and drug and crime free neighborhoods and schools. Saccone hardly touches on any of those things. Lamb makes inroads with some of them, albeit only superficially. Voters deserve more than just a false dichotomy erected by the establishment. Or do we? If these things are desired, then they must be demanded, and we must play an active role in making those demands. We’re simply running out of time.

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