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theggning · 2 years ago

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Different anon than who spoke to sapphire-weapon but holy shit give me ALL of your metaltango thoughts from both OG and Remake please! That pairing is somethin' else.

ALL of them? Oh, anon, there's far too many for that... I do have plenty of thoughts though so if there's any specifics you might like do feel free to ask.

What I will do here is lay out some differences between Leon and Krauser's relationship (hypothetically romantic or otherwise) between OG and the remake and thus two different flavors of metaltango. Because Leon and Krauser are both pretty different characters between versions, *especially* Krauser, the differences make for some really interesting contrasts.

OG METALTANGO:

Leon and Krauser literally meet for the first time during Operation Javier (Darkside Chronicles version.) They are much more equal in standing and prestige, where Krauser is a career soldier with years of experience under his belt and Leon is the government's golden boy. There is kind of a gesture towards Krauser feeling jealous of Leon for this reason, but... well, there's kind of a lot of vague gestures made about Krauser's motivations that have always struck me as silly. (Poorly executed, to say the least.)

Because they meet for the first time on OJ and Krauser is immediately injured, any canon-compliant relationship between the two is going to have to happen in the aftermath/weeks and months after the mission. I've always kind of liked the idea that Leon befriends Krauser and they spend this time hanging out while Krauser is sidelined/in rehab to recover from his injuries. This has kind of been my go-to headcanon here, because otherwise there just really isn't any time for these two to even befriend one another apart from what's depicted in canon.

Once he decides to join up with Wesker to get his arm fixed/POWERRRR, Krauser fakes his death in a helicopter crash. This is presumably the source of the scars on his face in OG. Also, because he was discharged from the military, we are left to assume this helicopter crash happened while he was doing mercenary work (OG Krauser is said to work as a mercenary when he's not on duty with the military, because he feels unfit for normal society outside of the battlefield.)

OG Krauser works for Wesker, is genuinely loyal to him, and seems to genuinely enjoy his job. He joins up with the cult perhaps a few weeks before Ashley's kidnapping... and it is implied that the kidnapping was his idea to begin with to win Saddler's trust? Which it does not, incidentally. But I guess Saddler decides to opportunistically capitalize on the kidnapped head of state's daughter anyway. (OG Los Illuminados are a bunch of incompetent chucklefucks and their plans are completely doomed from the get go, ask me sometime.)

OG Krauser is sent by Saddler specifically to kill Leon, a task which he takes up with gusto due to... I don't know actually. If there's one constant with Krauser it's that his hatred for Leon is never really adequately explained, though at least the remake gives us a boatload of subtextual interpretations. I think OG metaltango is funniest if you interpret Krauser's grudge against Leon as the over-the-top actions of a jilted ex who left Leon on read when he got the breakup text (and also faked his death.) Anyway, one thing that really strikes me is how much fun Krauser seems to be having in OG. He's like, genuinely delighted to be attempting to murder Leon and with his plans to hand Leon's corpse over to Wesker once he's dead. (Put a pin in this one, it's a BIG change in remake.)

Leon is a lot more irritated with Krauser in OG and at least doesn't show an *unwillingness* to fight back. Only once Krauser has fallen does he lament that he "used to be a good guy..." He also seems really upset at Saddler boasting that he never trusted Krauser and the implication that Saddler was only using him.

Ada being the one to "really" kill Krauser in OG is dumb and has always been dumb, imo, and is more than likely an artifact of OG SW's clumsy development and what assets they had to work with.

REMAKE METALTANGO:

okay there is... a LOT more to work with here. Chiefest and most obviously, Krauser is now Major Krauser, and was Leon's commanding officer/mentor. This gives the two of them a much closer and more personal relationship, as well as 4+ whole years to work with, timeline-wise (Operation Javier happened in 2002.)

The mentor/student relationship provides another really delicious power dynamic to work with, shipping-wise. Yes, it's inappropriate for a military officer to have an affair with one of his subordinates, but we are also right in the middle of Don't Ask Don't Tell here so it's also literally forbidden for a soldier to be anything but heterosexual and still keep their job. Also consider, it's hot? Also like, bruh... if you're looking for Pure Wholesome Shipping Dynamics you are looking in the wroooooong ship.

Krauser is fulltime military this time around, no merc work to speak of (or at least no evidence of it.) He also never fakes his death in the remake. He has current contacts within the Secret Service AND is running around using his REAL NAME and ACTUAL military credentials to buy ordnance for Saddler (per SW,) there is absolutely no way we're meant to believe this man is legally dead.

There is evidence that Krauser showed special attention or favoritism to Leon, at least a little bit. Not only is Leon allowed to keep his hair while training (getting your head shaved/your hair cut short is like Basic Training Day One stuff,) but in the opening cutscene we see Leon and Krauser training in private in what appears to be a storage room- not a normal training space. Leon is the government golden boy here, but Krauser is also in charge of a whole unit of special forces guys. Somebody is getting private tutoring from the Major.

Leon respects and trusted Krauser. Krauser is said to have always been "an asshole" but also a man of honor. He is suggested to have been a difficult commanding officer, but also one who cared very deeply about his men and is traumatized by their avoidable deaths in OJ. (This one's my personal opinion, but I really can't stand the interpretation of Krauser having been an awful abusive piece of shit from the get go. Kind of wrecks the tragedy of his fall for me when he was always a cruel bastard. Why exactly would Leon trust, respect, want to emulate, or mourn such a person?)

So you could kind of intuit some trauma into OG Krauser, if you squinted. But there is absolutely no question that remake Krauser is suffering from some pretty massive PTSD. Along with his general unhingedness, all of his actions fit perfectly when viewed through a lens of a very, very traumatized man, used and abandoned by the government he trusted, desperate to gain the power that could have saved his men, and himself-- and the power to keep himself relevant so he can't be used and hurt again. I interpret that Krauser had his face scarred in OJ as well (he doesn't have the scars in the flashback scene with Leon.)

Remake Krauser joined Los Illuminados of his own free will, because they offered him the power to fix his crippled arm-- and the aforementioned power to unsuccessfully "fix" his trauma. But also, maybe it's just me, but I feel like remake Krauser does not give a fuck about the cult. He's loyal to Saddler, yes, but he openly disbelieves the cult religion ("Faith is for the weak, only power matters.") He commands the island mercs and helped set up the defenses, but he's also out here buying warheads under his own name. There is no way he doesn't think he's going to be caught by the U.S. sooner than later-- he just doesn't care. None of his notes read to me like somebody who genuinely thinks the cult has a chance to take over the world. Krauser joined these idiots so he could drink the juice, now the juice is all gone and he's still empty inside.

OG Krauser seemed to be having fun and set up his Leon deathmaze/training ground/mating display for a laugh. Remake Krauser, on the other hand, seems absolutely batshit out of his mind at this point-- alternating between the maze being a "final lesson" for Leon and a deathwish enactment mechanism for himself. Like... between Krauser's general demeanor and the "finish what happened two years ago" talk, this does not feel like a fight that Krauser wants to walk away from, whether or not he kills Leon. If OG Krauser killed Leon, he planned to bag him up and present him to Wesker like a trophy. If remake Krauser did... like, what's he going to do? Can you possibly picture him washing his hands of his blood and going back to work for Saddler? Because I sure can't. (I have a much longer meta piece in mind for this point... like I want to dissect the remake Krauser boss fight and his motivations therein at some point. Let me know if this sounds interesting.)

Remake Leon absolutely does not want to fight Krauser. Krauser forces every single encounter the two of them have. Even though Leon says "you won't get away with this" after Luis' death, he has absolutely no desire nor intention to hurt or kill Krauser back. He asks, over and over, if Krauser is "sure about this" and tries to talk sense into him. He is ready to straight up run away from the boss fight the first chance he gets.

I could probably write a whole other essay on Krauser's final moments and Leon stabbing him, which was one of the most shocking and powerful moments of the remake for me for several reasons. Like... god damn. Did anybody else think Leon was going to do the whole "I'm not like you and I won't do it" thing? (Though arguably it was more heroic/merciful/kind of Leon to put Krauser out of his misery here. Krauser clearly wanted it!!)

I was going to go to Capcom and chain myself to the doors in protest if they put the dumb stupid Krauser boss fight redux in Separate Ways after THAT absolutely poetic ending for him. Glad they didn't. Glad they actually showed Wesker picking up his corpse this time rather than handwaving it offscreen years after the fact.

If somebody has a heterosexual explanation for that picture of Leon in Krauser's tent, I'd certainly like to hear it. Because... bruh.

Well that felt extremely disjointed and pointless... But I hope it was useful or at least gave you some delicious food to feast on? (Or other ideas to interrogate me about, lmao.) Krauser is my favorite RE villain. For OG Krauser it was mostly for comedy reasons, but I am absolutely delighted that the remake gave him some real genuine pathos and a really compelling relationship with Leon.

Anyway, tl;dr metaltango, OG or remake: I ship it and I think it would be hot if they banged.

#resident evil #resident evil meta #metaltango #leon s kennedy #jack krauser #kreon #re4make #re4make spoilers #so not only is krauser my favorite re villain #but luis is my favorite re side character #so you can imagine the stress i felt at the blorbo on blorbo violence present in the remake #thanks for the referral sapphire-weapon #i have a lot of thoughts on resident evil it turns out #i am a multishipper to the core though so don't think i am exclusively here for metaltango ;)#gg answers

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grilde1chesse · 1 year ago

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ODDLY SPECiFiC RESiDENT EViL HEAD CANONS

characters i’ll include

jack krauser

leon kennedy

ada wong

albert wesker

luis sera

jill valentine

chris redfield

claire redfield

WARNING: childhood trauma/abuse, implied/referenced violence, mental health

JACK KRAUSER

she jack on my krauser till i major

transgender and mlm. no room for argument. it’s canon, i’m capcom

was the youngest of 3 brothers

grew up on the country side with traditional parents

his parents were physically abusive to both each other and the kids, meaning he grew up with out a healthy understanding of love. he doesn’t know how to express affection or love outside of violence because of this

ran away and joined the army at 18 and didn’t leave until operation javier. the army became a second home and he never learned how to function in society outside combat.

he hates that he’s gay and because of this he resents anyone he falls for (also partially because of how he communicates affection). liking boys not only insults his masculinity, but also makes him dysphoric, as he sees that aspect of himself as the remaining female side of him that he’ll never be able to get rid of

building off of the last bullet, this is why he’s so hard on leon. i’ll probably make another post diving deeper into their dynamic so i’ll leave it at that

he doesn’t listen to music often, but when he does it’s metal

LEON KENNEDY

he was the first protag i ever played as so i’m biased😞 ik i’m a basic fan i’m sorry gang

he’s more of a dog person and probably had one as a childhood pet, but has been scared of them ever since raccoon city

bisexual

was an amateur guitar player for some time but dropped it once becoming an agent

mamas boy

had a bit of chub before becoming an agent

older!leon has a dad bod & beer belly. i don’t make the rules it’s canon, trust

not even a ship really (maybe it is idk) but i feel like him and chris experimented with their sexuality together? idk take that how you will

i feel like he’s got facial or body dysmorphia and is extremely insecure about how he looks / talks, or at least used to be

bleaches his hair

building off the last bullet again, Leon was blonde when he was younger, but his hair gradually got darker as he grew up. eventually he started bleaching it because he didn’t want to have brown hair. his natural hair color from re2-re4 is dirty blonde. he stopped dying it as he got older

no matter how badly he wants a normal domestic life (to settle down, start a family, and give his kids the childhood he never had) he’s secretly terrified of the idea. he doesn’t know how to function outside of work, even when on vacation he can’t seem to relax

speaking of a domestic life, he’d name his kids some stupid shit like hunter or something

autistic. he has trouble decoding social cues (like when ashley jokes with him) and is fairly awkward. was definitely the “weird kid” in middle school

played hockey as a kid

i feel like he comes from somewhere cold, and because of that is fairly adapted to cooler temps but also can’t stand heat (like at all)

sleeps with a billion pillows

chronic gum chewer. it’s a comforting, absent minded movement that keeps him grounded on the job. i wanna say his favorite flavor is just regular bubble gum but maybe that’s just because i hate mint idk

has sensitive skin and eczema

ADA WONG

ada’s hard because she has no canon backstory or even personality really💔

has cherry blossom lip gloss and re-applies it religiously

has drop foot (i genuinely can’t think of any other reason she’d always been wearing high heels 😞)

mommy issues

was in and out of foster care her entire childhood only to end up back with her mom everytime

because she was so heavily neglected as a kid & basically raised herself, ada’s become extremely self sufficient and refuses to rely or depend on anyone

she has issues identifying her feelings and honestly doesn’t care enough to work through them. because of this she isn’t sure if she even likes leon at all. she can’t tell if she loves him or just finds him useful, ether way she wants him around/safe and she isn’t sure why

she smokes sometimes but hates it, so she only falls back on nicotine when doing horribly. she carries cigarettes around with her on missions

ALBERT WESKER

kitty meow meow

on the aro/ase spec

has autism, ASPD (psychopath), and a god complex (obviously)

sees himself as better than average people because he doesn’t experience sexual attraction (no hate to ppl who think otherwise, i just really can’t see him any sort of sexual context). he views sexuality as a weakness and looks down on it

mlm

i feel like him and chris have somewhat of a krauser/leon dynamic if that makes sense. he sees chris as an almost equal, but also as a threat because of it. he respects him to a degree. again, i’m probably going to make a post on them later so i’ll leave it at that

i haven’t finished 6 yet so correct me if this has been disproven in canon, but i like to think he had jake on purpose. while yes, he didn’t know about jake, i like to think he hooked up with ms muller with the goal of having a child. he probably deemed her as suitable, and had desirable traits that he wanted to carry on, but never knew she actually got pregnant

listens to classical music & maybe 80s as well?

not a head canon, but the band she wants revenge reminds me of him a lot

insane skincare routine

sensory issues & sensitive eyes because of uroboros (leads to overstimulation sometimes which makes him even more of a grumpy bitch)

loves flowers

doesn’t smoke often but when he does he prefers camels or marlboro blues (i don’t smoke (except for when i’m missing you) so idrk what i’m talking about)

LUiS SERA

inclusivity win! the scientist that helped make the tyrant actively chasing you down is gay!

mlm

grew up in a casually christian household & still holds onto some core ideologies, though in a more superstitious way than religious

holds onto a cross necklace from his childhood & prays when in tight situations

his parents smoked and that’s how he picked it up

speaking of, he’s extremely picky when it comes to what cigarettes he smokes. he prefers marlboro reds (again idfk what im talking about)

his jacket is custom tailored

he came from a poor household

probably wears eyeliner

has been to a gay bar

very physically affectionate & probably kisses people when drunk (platonically)

JiLL VALENTiNE

her name is jill sandwich!!!!!

lesbian. sorry i don’t make the rules. she’s gay. sorry chris & carlos

i mean just look at her she’s lesbian

has a little sister

can speak some french, though not too well due to lack of use

still has blonde hair from re6, but dyes it. (wesker absolutely killed the melanin in her skin and hair.) because she doesn’t have time to be constantly re-dying her hair so she has blonde streaks & roots.

has a cat

her favorite fruit is a pear. idk why she just seems the type

CHRiS REDFiELD

something about a boulder

bisexual

has been horribly down bad for jill for years (she sees him as a brother ;-( tough luck big guy)

was the stereotypical overprotective brother when him and claire were younger, always scaring the shit out of anyone she brought home

extremely good with dogs - actually considered being a dog trainer when he was younger

god knows that man RARELY does laundry - if at all. probably smells like a dog & uses 4 in 1 shampoo. stinky vermin

speaking of laundry, he probably wears swim trunks on the regular bc all his clothes are dirty

terrified of commitment

total adrenaline junkie with a savior complex (then again, doesn’t every resident evil protagonist?)

would be an amazing dad but is terrified of the idea of settling down. no matter how badly he wants to have a domestic life he doesn’t know how to adapt to it

has a german shepherd

can’t cook for the life of him; lives off microwaveable meals

literally the definition of “damn girl, you live like this???”

insanely high pain tolerance

CLAiRE REDFiELD

thinking about how she was 19 during raccoon city (making her you her than ashley was during re4)

dyes her hair auburn

bisexual

has probably punched at least one person for saying some stupid bigoted shit

she’s 100% messy, brash, and assertive, & i’m sick of pretending she’s not. she was raised by chris, the boulder punching fist for brains? no way is her room organized

has kissed jill before

her and chris used 2 do target practice in junk yards together & she once accidentally shot herself in the leg after shooting at metal

has always had crazy high pain tolerance, it runs in the family

because of her high pain tolerance she used to get hurt a lot on accident as a kid (doing stupid shit like messing around with fire or blades)

hates wearing her hair down

#resident evil #headcanon #jack krauser #major jack krauser #leon kennedy #leon scott kennedy #leon s kennedy #ada wong #albert wesker #luis sera #luis serra #jill valentine #chris redfield #claire redfield

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stealthkills · 1 year ago

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RP GET TO KNOW YOU QUESTIONNAIRE.

NAME?: vlad(imir)

PRONOUNS?: he/they

MOST ACTIVE MUSES?: here at vector and soon at luis / @donserra

RPG CLASS I'D BE: cleric.

FAVORITE COLOR: purple!

FAVORITE TYPE OF THREAD: horror, suspense, and action. i don't mind the quiet moments but i like the horror the best.

FAVORITE THING ABOUT MY MUSE: vector's a guy with no identity (a running theme with my muses) and a hyper specialized skillset that means he could never transition into civilian life. i like thinking about what happens when someone lives into their 50s in a profession most die in their twenties during. meanwhile with luis, i like him a lot and want to write a 'luis lives and is a thorn in ada's side forever (affectionate)' au

HOW YOU LIKE TO RP: ooc worldbuilding that spins into the most insane nonsense. i want it to get wild. resident evil thrives off the insanity and i want to thrive in it.

FAVORITE PLOTS: the plots with the characters in re that are 'you couldnt kill me in the depths of hell and im coming back to take you with me.' im a sucker for revenge narratives and also people who unapologetically know their worth in blood.

WHERE YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM: the influences i read / watch / play, and the worldbuilding between me and my friends. i wanna listen to my friends tell me about virology as i go to sleep.

FACT ABOUT YOU: i can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue. :9

#out of character.

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sapphire-weapon · 2 years ago

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Favorite ships in RE verse (Remake included)? Ik you like Ashley/Leon so feel free to scream about them. I'm also curious to know if you have any ships among the side characters.

oof. aight. so.

Leon/Ashley is the only "real" RE ship that I have, in the sense that it's the only one that I actively create and seek out content for. I'll go into the whys and hows of that a little later, but. In case anyone was curious why I go so hard for Leon/Ashley --

Actually. When I reblogged this post initially, I almost tagged it as #WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHY I SHIP LEON/ASHLEY #THIS IS WHY

I restrained myself because I don't like doing that to other ppl's posts, but. It's a pretty accurate representation of what drew me to the ship initially 18 years ago. Queen/Knight ships are my absolute favorite dynamic for a ship ever ever ever ever. Hands down. No contest. And what are these two -- especially in OG -- if not that?

My second favorite kind of ship? Doomed ones. Missed opportunity ones. "If only things were different" ones. "Our roles in each other's lives will never allow this to happen" ones.

And that's also them.

Real talk? I would actually like the ship way less if I thought for a second that there was a chance that Leon and Ashley could/would actually get together in canon. I'd still like it, but not nearly as much. (which is why it's really funny when people try to be like "it'll never be canon" YEAH NO SHIT I HOPE IT NEVER IS)

So I was cursed to fall super hard for this ship from day one. Like, there wasn't even a chance in hell I wasn't going to ship these two. No other two characters in this series have a dynamic that's even kind of similar to this.

And then the remake happened and it poured even more of the shit I already liked about it on top of what was already there and I was like "mmm yes it's delicious thank u capcom"

So that's my whole thing with those two.

And outside of those two? Well.

Back in the days of early RE fandom, we were so small and so starved for fan content that it was commonplace for people to read fics for ships that they didn't care about or even like lmao. I once read like 80,000 words of a Wesker/Leon fic because that was all I could fucking find that I hadn't read yet (and also wasn't weird monster dog porn -- late 90s/early 00s RE fandom was fucking weird ok).

Those early fandom days were also kind of magical, though, because so much of the canon was wide open to so many different ships and interpretations and scenarios. Like, as time has gone on and RE has grown larger and larger, the world of RE has started to feel smaller and smaller. It's way way WAY harder to write a canon-compliant fic these days, because there's so many moving parts to the story now, and a lot of details have been cemented in place that never used to be there.

Like, it's rad that the canon has so much to consume in it. But it sucks because it feels restrictive as a result.

So, like.

I have actually written fics for so many different, random ships over my 25 years in this fandom, because this fandom used to be more of like a... swap meet, sort of? Where we'd all just take requests from each other and write fics for each other and share them around -- because the fandom was so, so goddamn small back in the day.

I have actually written fics for:

Leon/Ashley (of course)

Leon/Claire

Leon/Luis

Chris/Jill

Chris/Rebecca (seriously)

Chris/Leon

Steve/Claire

Billy/Rebecca

Wesker/Ada (this one was fun, actually. I'd fuck with this one again)

Of course, there were people who were ride-or-die OTP folks (though this actually didn't get really bad or become any sort of real majority in the fandom until after RE4's release, and that's only because RE4 just dumped so much gasoline on the Aeon vs Cleon war holy fuck. RE fandom became a fuckin minefield after RE4), but a lot of us really just dabbled in a bit of everything. So I never really got like... super attached to any one ship, if that makes sense?

There is actually something very nostalgic about Leon/Claire for me, if you can believe it, because the ship was only viable until about the time of Degeneration, so we're going way back. That movie made it very clear that these two were not at all going to stay as active parts of each other's lives, so the ship basically died upon its release.

But prior to that? That was one of THE BIG SHIPS in the fandom. So, the vast majority of fics that I wrote back in the swap meet days were Leon/Claire, because the majority of my fandom friends fell more on the Cleon side of things.

Today, I don't like where their dynamic has gone in later canon. There's nothing there anymore, and I've lost all interest in it.

But... at the same time... when RE2make happened, it was something I thought about revisiting just for old time's sake. I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet, but I do still think about it from time to time. Maybe I'll actually go ahead and do the thing one of these days, now that I'm back in the habit of writing RE fic again.

But anyway.

The point is. Any side ships I have, I really just enjoy in passing. Like, if I see nice art of Chris/Jill or Billy/Rebecca I'll definitely reblog it because I do enjoy it, but I have never even one time gone out of my way to find it or any fics of them. Most of my contributions to side ships are thinkpieces and meta analysis.

Leon/Chris is one of the ships that I've done deep dive meta analysis for -- and half of that was just to piss off fanboys who were already mad about RE6 to begin with, because those fuckers made the fandom UNBEARABLE in the early 2010s -- but I still don't go super hard for them.

Same thing with Remake-verse Leon/Luis. I've done meta for them because people have asked me for it, and I do find their new dynamic absolutely fascinating from a literary/storytelling standpoint. They're another ship I do enjoy, but... again, mostly in passing.

So. idk if this actually answered your question. RE ships are just kind of a weird topic for me in general most of the time, because I went so, so, so long just looking at characters' individual arcs as opposed to engaging in actual ship content.

I've talked about this a little before, but I did go through that period (around 10 years) where I tried to pass it off that I had no ships in order to seem like an "objective" source for canon information (which, in hindsight, is so fucking stupid because I could've just done what I'm doing now and kept objective facts about the series/canon differentiated from my ship shit, but w/e), so in those 10 years, I didn't really engage with RE ships, like, at all.

So now I'm just kind of at the point of "dude whatever idc as long as we're all having fun."

#resident evil #THIS POST BECAME WAY LONGER THAN I EXPECTED OR INTENDED IT TO #i'm all nostalgic and shit though now man #those old times #right before RE fandom became a fuckin nightmare #there was somethin really special about those days

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onyx-roses · 2 years ago

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I finished re4r awhile ago and it was FANTASTIC.

I feel they really did the original justice. I enjoyed the QOL improvements that were made. Having your knife being able to parry is awesome and very satisfying. It's quite the game changer! The fact that you can use it even against one hit kill bosses like dr. salvador is so neat! While I don't like stealth typically, it's a welcome addition since the game doesn't force it on you. Having the option to pick off a few enemies silently is nice although I feel doing this made little difference in terms of making taking down the rest of the enemies easier tbh. Being able to simply kick and elbow barrels and crates instead of painstakingly having to shoot or knife them is probably an afterthought for others but i highly appreciated this. Crafting ammo and grenades is new feature that saved my ass a few times so needless to say love it lol. And next up the biggest change in the game, you can move and shoot now! Lol. Something I never quite got use to however was the 180 degree turn. In old RE, it was down + x (on ps at least). Now it's down + R1, which feels very unnatural to me. I dealt with it but eh, not very comfortable with this change. Leon overall controls pretty well despite this. I love that you can change weapons on the fly now instead of always having to go into the attache case. I do kinda miss seeing Leon on the side in the attache case menu lol. The merchant returns! With a nice little bonus, side quests! They are completely optional but doing them can net you extra rewards. The shooting range is back and I LOVE that they used 'The Drive' song and remixed it! Especially the way it amps up during bonus time, ugh so good. The fucking nostalgia man. Going on to story and characters now. I love that Ashley feels like an actual character and more realistic this time around. Her redesign is rly cute too. Luis being more present and fleshed out was great too. I have to say I think I actually prefer how his death was handled in the remake. It felt more emotional and impactful. Ok so with Leon. First off, I admittedly am always nervous with how characters are going to look because I'm not always crazy with how capcom handles redesigns and characters' faces. But holy crap, LEON THO. Every version of Leon can get it but Re4 Leon is my fave Leon so needless to say when I saw him for the first time in that reveal trailer, Me = deceased. He looks so goddamn good. I thought I had it bad for him back then, nah. Now, I'm fucking embarrassingly OBSESSED with this man. I want to devour him. It was hard to not stop every two seconds when playing to admire his....assets lmaooo. I think some ppl didn't like that he seems more grounded this time around but I actually don't mind it at all. They found a nice middle ground where Leon is def more serious than before but he still throws out one liners here and there. So his corny side is still very much present but he doesn't seem as cocky as before. Ada looks great and is as mysterious as ever lol. Story beats were mostly the same, a few things tweaked of course but I was satisfied with how the narrative was handled. And omg, was so nice to see certain costumes and weapons plus easter eggs make a comeback! The freaking gangster suit, armor for Ashely, the chicago typewriter and the reload animation, him sitting down on the chair and posing fabulously, etc. I'm just so over the moon for this game. It's one of my favorite games of all time and I couldn't be happier with the end result. I remember hearing when this was getting a remake and being like but why? Re4 doesn't need a remake. But now having played it, it's so well done and I'm so glad Capcom didn't screw it up lol. It was a blast reliving this masterpiece all over again 🥲.

#personal #text #stuff #me writing out pointless thoughts which no one will read

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ghoste-catte · 5 years ago

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N R T

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Gosh, yeah. I have a couple of fic ideas floating around in the proverbial hopper that I just don’t think I have the plot/action/adventure writing skills to handle. I’m much better with feelsy, character-driven stuff, so anything that has too much plot in it feels very intimidating to me. There’s one fic idea in particular that I wanted to write for GaaLee Fest last year that’s a “Lee Wins” AU where Gaara loses their chuunin exams match and is badly injured instead. The concept was sort of that jinchuuriki healing is imperfect at best, and so while whatever injuries Gaara sustained during the match would, like, not bleed out or kill him ... I’m not convinced that damaged internal organs would be restored to full function, especially with Gaara’s seal being fucked up and Shukaku being such a blunt instrument. So the idea is that Gaara is left permanently debilitated by the match. And the spin-out from that would be that Gaara isn’t able to participate in the match with Sasuke, and the Konoha Crush can’t move forward because their ultimate weapon is incapacitated. So Orochimaru-as-Rasa would ... probably try to kill him, and to take Shukaku and implant the tailed beast in someone else. Not to mention Gaara would have to grapple with losing for the first time in his life, and Lee also would have to contend with ending someone else’s dream (even though Gaara’s dream isn’t really to be a shinobi). Anyway, there’s a lot that changes if you change something that early in the plot, and I’d need to really comb back through canon and probably re-read a lot of the exams and the Konoha Crush Arc and I’m just ... not up for that at the moment, and I’m not convinced I would be able to make the logical A-to-B-to-C connections from a plot standpoint, even if I could make them from a character standpoint. So I’d love to just ... wave a magic wand and have written it (or have someone else who has the bona fide plot chops to have written it).

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

Hmm, this is hard. I often go back and re-read favorite stories or favorite handlings of similar tropes before I launch into writing my own take on a trope. I went back and read ‘you can get what you want or you can just get old’ by hyperlight (that’s a BNHA fic btw) before I wrote my own superhero AU, because I loved how they handled the ethics of superheroism. And especially if I’m writing a gift for someone who is also a writer, I’ll go back and read their stuff first to get a feel for their narrative voice and try to incorporate bits of that. So for example, when I was writing ‘A Snowball’s Chance in Hell’ last year for the GaaLee Holiday Exchange, I went back and re-read ‘The Bright Side’ by @gidget-goes to get a sense for their voice and style (because their style is so fun and so off-the-cuff snarky but still has such beautiful imagery). I guess my thought process is people write similar to the stuff they want to read, y’know? And there’s always someone who has done-the-thing better than I can hope to, so I might as well try to catch some of that shine.

If I’m trying to write an AU of a certain canon, too, I’ll go back and read some of that. So, like, I re-read parts of The Goblet of Fire when I was writing ‘Homespun, Heartfelt, and Handmade’ to try to get that feel. Before launching into writing ‘i think we’re haunted’, I re-read a bunch of favorite horror stories, so a couple vignettes from ‘Lullaby’ by Chuck Palahniuk, ‘Modern Coyote’ by Shane Jones, ‘Raphael’ by Stephen Graham Jones, parts of ‘House of Leaves’ by Mark Z. Danielewski, and ‘The Dionaea House’ by Eric Heisserer (which is not a book at all but a web-based text horror of sorts, like an interactive precursor to the modern creepypasta). The stories that are quoted at the header of each chapter actually made up a big part of the inspiration for that fic. Plus I’d never written horror before, so I wanted to get a sense of the pacing.

There are a lot of non-fanfic authors I like, but that I can’t say I’ve tried to crib styles off of them, necessarily. I do tend to read things that are similar in feel to what I like to write, so more character-driven than plot-driven. I love Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle, but I could never properly emulate anything she does. I really like anything that has that magical realism feel, so Helen Oyeyemi, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges are some favorites. And I prefer short stories over novels. My favorite short story ever is ‘Story of your Life’ by Ted Chiang, but I could never, ever, ever hope to replicate the genius of that concept, and it’s a plot reveal that’s only really effective once.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

(answered here)

fanfic ask game!

#answered #ask meme #nonbinarymerbabe

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popwasabi · 5 years ago

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“Rogue One” finds victory in hopeless rebellion

2020 has been…relentless to say the least.

You might not remember it at this point, given the how turbulent this latest period has been, but this year started with Australia catching on fire, and our jack-ass of a president nearly starting World War III. Then shit really began to hit the fan in March, COVID-19 came like a black light in a sleazy motel room and exposed the gigantic chasms we have in our country’s social and economic infrastructure. With 38.6 million people filing for unemployment since March, likely without healthcare, and with a growing number of COVID cases spiking around the country and deaths crossing the 120,000 mark things don’t look to be getting better anytime soon.

(You’re missing the point, Luis...)

To say there’s a grim outlook not just on the country but the world would be an understatement and it’s hard not feel a little hopeless right now.

But then George Floyd happened and the anger that had been boiling up in this country for decades, no doubt exacerbated by the effects of the virus and the lack of distractions such as live sports and movies, finally erupted like a volcano and perhaps the greatest challenge to the status quo since the 60s began.

I won’t spend too much time explaining my thoughts on the past month-plus of current events, you can read about that in my last two write-ups, but what this period has shown me is just how powerful people can be when they finally stop being apathetic and hopeless about the state of the world and together in unison fight back.

So, why do I want to talk about a Star Wars film that came out four years ago in the middle of all this? Well, this message is central to the theme of the movie and it’s why it remains my favorite of the franchise to date because it too reminds me, in moments like these, that there is victory in simply standing up when the world is telling you to stay down.

I trust that if you clicked on this article you’re already familiar with the plot and story of Disney’s second foray into the Star Wars universe and more than likely you have some strong opinion on it as the film was somewhat divisive among fans when it came out in 2016. There are plenty of reasons not to like this movie, and trust me I’ve heard and understand every grievance about the film, from it’s slow opening half, lack of a proactive hero, underdeveloped side characters, fan service-y bits, and muddled writing in parts no doubt affected by re-shoots. I’m not going to try to explain away all of them, but I’ll just say I hear you and this write up really isn’t about whether Rogue One is objectively a good movie or not.

(Though, objectively speaking, this bit of fan service was fun as hell.)

My resonance for a film like “Rogue One” began as early as my teenage years when I began getting introduced to stories about samurai. These movies from the Land of the Rising Sun are the equivalent of Westerns for Japan, typically following a lone swordsman or group of warriors coming to save a village from marauders or looking to become the best version of themselves possible.

A recurring theme through a lot of them though is how they often end in tragic ways. A film like “Seven Samurai” ends with most of the ronin killed in their desperate struggle against pillaging raiders, the “Tale of the 47 Ronin” (no, not that one) ends also with most of them committing hari-kiri after successfully avenging their former master, and NHK’s early 2000s drama on The Shinsengumi ends with the group disbanded, their leader executed, and the remainder fighting a war they know they’ll lose against the Meiji government.

(Simply iconic.)

I know this all sounds moribund and sad as hell to watch, and it is, but my main takeaway growing up wasn’t how sad it was that most of the characters I grew to love and connect with while watching and reading these stories died; it’s that there was victory even in simply fighting to the very end.

For the swordsmen and samurai in these stories it wasn’t about whether these characters would live to see their victory or even live to benefit from it but rather that their willingness to stand up and fight anyways because it’s what they believed in. They could’ve stayed down, they could’ve ignored their growing plight, they could’ve let the more domineering forces rule over them while they kept their heads down into their final days but they didn’t because real defeat was simply ignoring all of that and doing nothing even it meant survival.

“Rogue One” deals with this early on in its two leads, Jyn and Cassian. Jyn is jaded because the Empire took her family away from her and the only remaining father figure she had abandoned her not long after, leading her to accept a life of simply surviving. Though Cassian finds himself a part of the Rebellion, the work he does on their behalf has turned him away from being an idealist to one who deals in a “whatever means necessary” approach to achieve their needs as he has largely abandoned his morals in the process.

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(“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up...”)

As the story progresses from its first half Jyn begins to see the necessity of rebellion, that the alternative of simply living to see the next day is not enough and certainly not a real victory. Through Jyn, Cassian rediscovers his humanity and joins her in her own inhouse rebellion to attack Scarif with a band of other soldiers looking to do the right thing, not content to just simply outlast the Empire.

The supporting, albeit unpolished, characters show microcosms of this theme of apathy turning into defiance. Chirrut’s optimistic demeanor and relentless faith in The Force eventually snaps Baz out of his own cynicism even if it comes in their final moments. Bohdi’s own small but willing act of rebellion is the catalyst for the entire story and even K-2SO for all his cynical behavior through the story commits a selfless act of sacrifice to buy Jyn and Cassian time to retrieve the Death Star’s plans.

They all perish at the end, and though I understood that was probably coming before I saw the movie, I was deeply moved by it. Even if you pretend the original trilogy never happened, there was something quite beautiful about seeing this band of ronin, if you will, sacrificing themselves for a cause they knew they would never get to see finished.

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(Not afraid to admit this scene moved me to tears last time I watched this movie a couple months ago.)

I’ve been a sucker for stories about victory even in death since I was a kid. Besides Samurai films, movies and TV shows like “Glory,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Black Sails,” or “Spartacus” (STARZ) all tell similar stories of a willingness to stand up and fight for what’s right and sacrifice for the greater good.

It’s not just film that tells this story though; history does too. Whether it was black liberation and Selma beginning in 1965, interned Japanese Americans fighting until the 90s to earn redress from the government, or the Chicano movement headed by Cesar Chavez in the 60s and 70s still felt today, these fights for justice are often fought with blood and not everyone gets to see the fruit of their resistance. But it starts somewhere. The seeds of victory are planted and often fertilized by the bodies of people willing to lay down their own for others and this moment in time we are experiencing is not unlike those of the past.

(Their pain, their suffering made progress and our continued movement forward today possible.)

It is easy to want to give in. I don’t blame you, this whole year has been grim and brutal from the start, but whether you liked “Rogue One” or not, it’s biggest takeaway is an important one; fight even if you might not see the end. Jyn, Cassian, and the crew of Rogue One may not have lived to see their rebellion triumph over the Empire but they undeniably ignited a flame that made its revolution and victory possible.

There is a flame burning bright right now and no matter how exhausted you may feel by what’s going on I say keep going. There is a long road ahead to fixing this country’s many issues but it has to start somewhere and if we are willing to go the distance even if we don’t all get to see the finish line ourselves, together there is no limit to what we can achieve.

Rebellions are built on hope, so don’t give up. Not now, not ever.

Solidarity and may the Force be with you all, my friends.

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altissiavibritannia · 6 years ago

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Arabian Knights AU (Code Geass)

Right now I’m working on Lui and Suza’s outfit designs and personality and backgrounds for this au of mine. I’ll be making a Prison AU, Moolouch AU, Winging It (Maximum Ride) AU later on. I’m drawing all of this with just my mouse, since I don’t have a drawing tablet to use anymore. My 4 almost 5 year old tablet broke during the time I was making my first art contest on DeviantArt. I have glaucoma and astigmatism that likes to play around with my sight. I have other health problems too, but I don’t think y’all want to read a whole list of ‘em. So what if I can’t draw like everybody else? I try my best at least, but I don’t bully others that have health issues like myself. But yeah I wasn’t happy when I didn’t even get into the semi-finals of the Code Geass Re; fanart contest. But at least I poured my heart and soul into that drawing before my tablet broke. Plus I wanted to try a deadline for once at that tome too. So now I know the experience. So I’ll try again whenever I see another fanart contest of something I might like again someday. But anyways here’s the roles that everyone in this Arabian Knights AU will be taking.

Roles-

Lelouch - Prince to Sultan (so obvious)

Suzaku - Royal Guard (it’s Knight of Zero all over again lol XD)

C.C. - Slave (bleh)

Kallen - Street Rat (Ran out ideas for them both sadly)

Jeremiah - Vizier

Cornelia - Princess

Euphemia - Princess

Clovis - Prince

Charles - Sultan to Retired

Schniezel - Prince

Lloyd - Djinn

Cecile - Arabian Wolf (decided to add some animal folk)

Rakshata - Evil Djinn

V.V. - Slave

Rivalz - Royal Court Jester

Shirley - Thief (cuz whynot?)

Nunnally - Princess (didn’t care much for Viceroy version of her)

Milly - Royal Court Fool (lol Rivalz might be happy)

Nina - Slave

Villetta - Noble (Nina’s Master)

Kaname - General of the Britannian Army

Tohdoh - Royal Guard

Tamaki - Slave

Authur - Suzaku’s pet (decided to give him a human form)

Ayna - Noble

Diethard - Fat Noble (very funny name XD)

Sayoko - Nunnally’s Lady in Waiting

Rolo - Prince (for the hell of it)

Akito - Merchant/Sailor

Julius - Prince/Merchant/Sailor (I’ll be splitting Lui into multiple copies of himself and each one would have their own bodies and roles)

Zero - Prince/Thief/Street Rat

For those who want to see my contest entry that was months ago in the Code Geass Re; contest - https://www.deviantart.com/yukofudo/art/Code-Geass-Lelouch-of-ReSurrection-Contest-Entry-793891148

Don’t forget to support me on there, Furaffinity, Wattpad, and Twitter! If interested in supporting me, dm me of follow one of the usernames that’ll be in the description or in the drawings/paintings!

And for other side characters I have no idea. Maybe ideas will come later on. I may or mayn’t add other characters, since I have no idea what their names are or what they look like. I’m only sticking with season 1 and 2. There will be no Re; shit in it (sorry, not sorry). I’ll also be adding a few ocs that I’ve made for this fandom alone. I’ll be honest with everyone here and now. I hate C.C. the most! Kallen is second place on my hate/bash list. I kind of also hate Shirley for that kiss scene only. I don’t mind her bouncy personality, but it would’ve been nice if Suzaku and Lui ended up together instead. So if you start seeing less of your favorite characters, then too fucking bad. I either hate them or have troubles keeping their designs going or I don’t know them well enough to draw them. So please no bashing my stuff over my choices, everyone has their opinions (including myself). I might even genderbend them if I have to, depends on my mood. Also fuck your straight pairings that already exist in both the anime, manga, and movie! I’ll hate them until kingdom come!

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koryuusei-writing-portfolio · 5 years ago

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The Tell-Tale Heart: a 10 minute adaptation

Cast of Characters

NICOLAU TOSELL: 26, the murderer, smart and financially well off

LUIS ANDERSON: 30, Nicolau’s best friend and a homicide detective

Place

The study of Nicolau’s home in Baltimore, MD

Time

Early Fall

ACT I

scene 1

Setting: Two cushy armchairs are located in front of a lit fireplace with a rich coffee table between them sitting upon an ornate rug. There’s a bookcase or two off to the side in the background.

Before Rise: A scream sounds from off stage. A figure, NICOLAU, crosses from stage right in front of the curtain dragging a body. He drags the body through the curtain and the sounds of a hammer hitting a crowbar, wood being pried up, and then being hammered back into place can be heard.

At Rise: NICOLAU is sitting alone onstage in one of the armchairs with a snifter of brandy. A Yiruma song is playing softly in the background.

(A doorbell chimes. NICOLAU gets up from his chair to answer it, exits stage right. Re-enters stage right followed by LUIS.)

NICOLAU

This is a surprise, Luis. What brings you here at this hour?

(NICOLAU picks a remote off the coffee table and turns off the radio.)

LUIS

I just got off and needed to see a friend. It’s been a rough day.

NICOLAU

Of course. Sit. I’ll bring you a beer.

LUIS

A beer sounds nice, thanks

(LUIS crosses the stage to sit in one of the chairs while NICOLAU crosses the stage, exits stage left, and then returns with two beers. He hands one to LUIS.)

Thanks.

NICOLAU

No problem. Do you want to talk about it?

LUIS

I shouldn’t since it’s an open investigation. (sighs) I don’t know. It’s just kind of weird.

(NICOLAU sits back down in his chair.)

NICOLAU

Weird?

LUIS

A college girl has gone missing. No one has seen or heard from this girl for weeks and there’s no sign of foul play, but we suspect that she has been murdered.

NICOLAU

What makes you suspect that she’s been murdered?

LUIS

Just these little inconsistencies. Actually, I think I’m the only one who thinks that something bad has happened to this poor girl. Everyone else at the station just thinks she took off and will show up eventually. Maybe they’re right.

NICOLAU

Well, either way, I’m sure you’ll find her. I hope she’s alive and well, but if she has been murdered, I know you’ll catch the one responsible.

LUIS

Thanks, Nic. I hope so too. Anyway, um is Rosalie around?

(A heartbeat sounds when LUIS says Rosalie’s name. NICOLAU starts and looks around.)

NICOLAU

Did you hear something?

LUIS

Like what?

NICOLAU

Never mind. (Beat.) Nothing, I guess.

LUIS

Okay…. So...is she here?

NICOLAU

She? Oh, right. Well, actually she left today to go see her folks. She’ll be gone for a while.

LUIS

How long’s a while?

NICOLAU

Um, I’m not really sure. She didn’t say. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. I don’t even think she called them to tell them.

LUIS

Wait. Didn’t I see her car when I drove in?

NICOLAU

Um. Probably. I think she was planning to take the train. Something about needing some fresh air to clear her head.

(LUIS’s phone rings. LUIS digs it out of his pocket, looks at it, and put it back with a sigh.)

NICOLAU

Is something wrong?

LUIS

What? Oh, Uh no. (Beat) Well, (LUIS runs a hand through his hair.) kind of. I’m getting kicked out of my place.

NICOLAU

I thought you said things were going well? Last we talked about it, you even said you were starting to be able to save some money. What happened? You haven’t started gambling again, have you?

LUIS

Of course not! You know I’ve haven’t gambled in years. I’m straight, I swear.

NICOLAU

Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I just had to ask. So, what happened to your rent money?

LUIS (Uncomfortably)

I...um...well, I uh...

NICOLAU (Teasingly)

Oh? Is it a girl? Have you finally met someone? Who is she? Come on, tell me. Do I know her?

LUIS

N-no. There’s no- What makes you think there’s a- That’s- Ahem.

NICOLAU (Amused)

(Chuckling) Okay, okay. You don’t have to tell me. Why don’t you just move in with me.

LUIS

Uh, no. I couldn’t-

NICOLAU

At least until you can find another place. (Laughs) It’s not like I don’t have the extra room.

LUIS

A-Are you sure?

NICOLAU

Of course. And don’t even think about offering to pay some kind of rent. Besides, I still owe you.

LUIS

Are you sure, Rosalie won’t mind? I would hate to intrude…

(A heartbeat sounds.)

NICOLAU (Distracted.)

What? Oh, no. Rosalie won’t mind.

(Another heartbeat. NICOLAU starts pacing, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from.)

Are you sure you don’t hear anything?

LUIS (puzzled)

No. I don’t hear anything.

(NICOLAU looks at the rug, shakes his head with a sardonic smile. LUIS notices NICOLAU looking at the rug.)

Is...that a new rug?

NICOLAU

Hm? Oh, no. It’s one of Rosalie’s.

(Heartbeat sounds.)

LUIS

It seems she’s had a bit of an influence on you. Wasn’t that one of her favorite artists you were listening to when I came in? Some Asian pianist or something like that?

NICOLAU

Yeah. Yiruma. Rosalie-

(Heartbeat sounds. NICOLAU glances at LUIS’s, then looks around the room, looking for the source of the sound. LUIS notices and looks confused.)

(Distracted.) Rosalie-

(Heartbeat sounds-two beats. NICOLAU puts his hands to his ears.)

She, uh, has good taste.

LUIS

I’m surprised she left it behind.

NICOLAU

Huh? Oh, yeah. She was in a bit of a hurry and must have forgot it was still in the player. So, tell me more about this case of yours.

LUIS

Well, one of her roommates claims to be her boyfriend, but her friends say she didn’t have one. He also happens to be the last person to have seen her. According to him, she went back home to visit some old friends and family, but we contacted them and they said she never called to say she was coming and they haven’t seen her. She’s had a habit of just taking off without telling anyone, but her friends and family say that she usually leaves some clue as to where she’s going and that she’s usually reachable by phone. We haven’t found anything and her phone has either been turned off or the battery died.

(At the mention of a phone, NICOLAU notices that Rosalie’s is sitting on coffee table. LUIS gets up and puts a hand on NICOLAU’s shoulder, startling him.)

(Concerned.) Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting kind of strange and your face has gotten pale. Should I call an ambulance?

NICOLAU

No, no. I’m...fine. Really. Just a weird, uh ringing in my ears.

(Heartbeat sounds. NICOLAU shrugs off LUIS’s hand, walks over to the table, snatches up the phone, and glances at the rug again in horror.)

LUIS

Are you sure? You look like you’re going to fall over. You’re shaking even. Did something happen?

NICOLAU

Yes. I mean no! No, of course nothing happened. Why would you think something happened?

LUIS

‘Cause you’re acting strange.

(Rosalie’s phone rings in NICOLAU’s pocket. He jumps, bumping the coffee table and knocks over his beer.)

Are you just you’re okay? You’re kind of jumpy.

NICOLAU

Sorry. I’m fine, really.

LUIS

Wasn’t that Rosalie’s (A heartbeat) ringtone?

NICOLAU (Clearly agitated.)

N-no!

(NICOLAU visibly composes himself.)

I mean, sort of. She, um stole my phone last week and must’ve changed the ringtone.

LUIS

Okay… In any case, I just want you to know that I’m here for you. If there’s anything that you need to talk about-

NICOLAU

No. I- it’s just been kind of a stressful week.

LUIS

Stressful how? What’s happened?

NICOLAU

(We hear soft music (by Yiruma) start to play in the background. LUIS doesn’t appear to hear it. NICOLAU hears it and recognizes it as one of Rosalie’s favorite songs. Every once in a while we can hear a heartbeat over the music. NICOLAU is visibly shaken, but trying to hold himself together.)

I- Well, um. Nothing-nothing really big. Just-you know. So much noise.

LUIS

Noise? What noise? Has Rosalie been noisy? Has she been bothering you?

(Heartbeat sounds-three beats)

NICOLAU

What? R-rosalie? (Heartbeat sounds) N-no. She’s been-she’s been great.

LUIS

Then I don’t really understand. You don’t have any neighbors. What kind of noise are you talking about?

NICOLAU

(Confused) Noise?

(A heartbeat sounds-two beats. NICOLAU becomes excited)

Wait. You hear it too!?

LUIS (Confused)

Hear what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t hear anything.

NICOLAU

Don’t lie to me! I know you hear it. You have to hear it.

LUIS (Concerned)

Hear what, Nic? I promise, I don’t hear a thing.

NICOLAU

It’s there. That music, her music.

LUIS

What music. Whose music? Rosalie’s?

(A heartbeat sound-two beats)

NICOLAU (Having not heard LUIS)

And that beat. That hideous beat. Like a heart.

(A heartbeat sounds)

Thump-thump.

LUIS

You’re scaring me, Nic. What is wrong? What is going on with you? Is that why Rosalie (a heartbeat) went to her parents’ all of a sudden?

NICOLAU

(Looks at his friend, suspiciously)

Rosalie (A heartbeat)? Why do you keep asking about Rosalie (A heartbeat-two beats)?

(NICOLAU marches over to LUIS and grabs his shirt collar. LUIS puts up his hands defensively.)

What do you know?

LUIS

Nic, calm down. I only know what you told me. Is there something else that’s been going on between you two? What happened?

(A heartbeat sounds-three beats.)

NICOLAU

Shh. Shh. There it is again. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

LUIS

Nic, I think you need to talk to someone-a professional. Maybe I should call Rosalie (A heartbeat).

NICOLAU

It’s there. It’s hers. I don’t know how, but it’s hers-her heartbeat.

LUIS

Whose? Whose heartbeat, Nic? Rosalie’s? (A heartbeat-two beats)

(NICOLAU puts his hands over his ears again and kneels by the carpet)

NICOLAU (Sobbing)

I can’t stand the sound. Stop, just make it stop

LUIS

(Walks over to NICOLAU and places his hand on his shoulder)

Nic, I can’t make it stop unless you tell me what’s going on. Please, tell me what’s happening?

(The music has softened but the sound of a heart beat grows louder and louder.)

NICOLAU

Arg! Okay! Okay! I confess! I confess to the deed. I confess. Just make it stop.

LUIS

Confess? Confess to what? What did you do, Nic?

NICOLAU

I did it. I admit it, I killed her!

LUIS

Killed who? Nic, who did you kill? Is this one of your of sick jokes? Is Rosalie here somewhere, too?

(A heartbeat sounds. NICOLAU gets up and desperately grabs hold of LUIS’s shirt.)

NICOLAU

I did it, I killed her. Tear up the floorboards here beneath the rug. She is there with her hideously beating heart. (Sobs) I loved her, I did. But she was going to leave me, so I killed her and placed her beneath the floor so I could have her forever. Just please make it stop!

LUIS

(LUIS looks at NICOLAU in shock, brushes NICOLAU off him, walks over to the table, moves it to the side, and pulls back the rug. He staggers back a step and looks back at NICOLAU, who is quietly crying and muttering to himself on the floor, in horror. Shaking, he walks back to NICOLAU, pulls him to his feet, turns him around, pulls out his handcuffs, and cuff NICOLAU.)

Nicolau Tossell. You are under arrest for the murder of Rosalie Solis.

(LUIS reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring box.)

You know, I loved her too.

(LUIS setts the box on the table and walks NICOLAU toward stage right.)

(Curtain)

#play

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letterboxd · 5 years ago

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Loopy.

Andy Siara, writer of time-loop romcom Palm Springs, talks to Ella Kemp about having one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave, and the expansive magic of being a ‘desert person’.

If you could re-live a perfect day again and again, would you do it? Would you be alone, or would it be better if your favorite person in the world was with you? Would the endless company, repetitive and increasingly claustrophobic, make you snap?

There’s a reason that time-loop movies tend to favor loners: watch as the hapless hero has to figure out the meaning of life! Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy Groundhog Day is the gold standard for the device—Bill Murray trapped in a bizarre national holiday that’s become a universal adjective (which feels especially apt now). But Palm Springs, the new film from The Lonely Island comedy team, finds a way to dismantle the genre, play around with the ingredients, and cook up something entirely new.

There is still a time loop, we’re all still stuck, but here’s the thing: we’re stuck with two people now. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are wedding guests Nyles and Sarah—he, someone’s random boyfriend people pretend to know; she, the reluctant maid of honor and sister of the bride. Through one freak twist of fate involving a cave, they end up reliving the same wedding day, taking advantage of the daily ‘reset’ to throw as much life at the wall as they can, while probing every possible escape route.

It’s a first for the genre, and a first film for the writer-director team (Samberg produces the film alongside his Lonely Island brothers Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, who have years of glorious Saturday Night Live sketches and comedy specials under their belts). Director Max Barbakow cut his teeth making short films for the past decade—just like his closest collaborator, debut feature screenwriter Andy Siara.

Barbakow and Siara developed the story together over five years, and then Siara turned it into the fast-paced, razor-sharp, at once feather-light and often deeply moving script that became Palm Springs.

Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg in ‘Palm Springs’.

A quick scan of Letterboxd activity finds plenty of fans already. Jacob recognizes the paradoxical brilliance of the film, calling it a “high-concept romcom that wears its influences on its sleeve”, while still praising how it’s “so smart moment to moment that it absolutely feels like its own original story”. What makes this so special, so fresh—a movie about one day on repeat, released during, you know, a global pandemic, that neat event that makes so many homebound days blur into one—is just how much heart it has. “The little moments, the little cues, the timing,” Neema Sadeghi points out. “Everything felt so right and my heart was so so warmed.”

The following interview contains discussion of plot points and soundtrack choices, and has been edited for clarity.

Could you tell me about your relationship with Groundhog Day, before and after writing Palm Springs? Andy Siara: Before and after, I still consider it one of the greatest, if not the greatest comedy of all time. Doing a time-loop thing in this movie was never initially the idea, five years ago when Max and I first started talking about it. It organically evolved to that point. What was helpful to me was thinking about how at the end of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character figures out the meaning of life, to a point, and it ends with the time loop breaking. In our film, Nyles figures out whatever he thinks the meaning of life is, and at the end, nope, the time loop doesn’t break, you’re still stuck here for eternity. So then what do you do? That became the jumping off point. Palm Springs is potentially a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist, and that helped free myself of repeating too much of what the time-loop genre, and especially Groundhog Day, has done so well.

If the time loop wasn’t the starting point, what was? Nyles. Max and I knew we wanted to do a tiny-budget movie in Palm Springs. We didn’t know what that was, but the first idea was of this character of Nyles. We never outlined anything, so we let the character lead the way. In doing that, I got a full grasp of who he is on a deep level and everything else built from there. We never once were like, “This is a wedding time-loop romcom about two lost souls!” Max and I joked that the earlier version of this was our version of Leaving Las Vegas. The story grew from Nyles, thinking: ‘What is the best way to deeply challenge this flawed character?’ And that’s where we came up with Sarah, who became even more fully realized. And the best way to challenge her was Nyles. Putting those two characters together and seeing the friction it causes, the story grew around that.

Their dynamic, and the film more broadly, feels very philosophical. I’m thinking of a line like “Your best bet is to learn to suffer existence”. When you were writing, were there any conscious thinkers you wanted to incorporate? Max and I talked a lot about Albert Camus, and Jorge Luis Borges… but when I got to actually writing, Max gave me his copy of Be Here Now by Ram Dass. His copy, when he gave it to me, had over 100 Post-it notes. We’d talked in abstract ways in a philosophical sense, about individuation and what not. But every day before writing I’d take Be Here Now and open up at any page, read a page to kickstart the day. I think even that idea of suffering existence, that might actually be in Be Here Now…

Quyen Tran (operating camera) and director Max Barbakow (right) on the set of ‘Palm Springs’.

It felt so refreshing to see these characters delivering such epic lines seriously, but the film never becomes somber or dramatic. It stays light. Comedy is balanced with sincere emotion so well—especially when it comes to romance. In a scene outside the cave, when Nyles is giving his big speech, he says, “I’d rather die with you than live in this world without you.” Reading this out of context, it could be from an epic romance. How did you manage to marry the wit with such big feelings? That is one of the lines that, read out of context, could feel heavy-handed, so I appreciate that! From the get-go, it was important to set the tone of this movie, that we will never take ourselves too seriously. Max and I would joke about having one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave, being able to go from slapstick to serious was always an important tonal shift for us. There’s a silliness to the movie, and so therefore with those lines, my hope is that even in reading the script, by the time you get to a line like that, you as a reader would know what Nyles is like in your mind. Also, I credit Andy Samberg for knowing how to deliver lines like that without them feeling cheesy. When we first met Andy and the Lonely Island guys, he understood this character, by the end better than I did. The character was just words on a page, a figure that existed in my mind. He created this character.

What did you learn from working with the Lonely Island guys, in terms of taking inspiration from their comedy experience while creating something brand new? By the time it got to them, the script was finished to a point that I was happy with. But Max and I didn’t know that much! So those three guys, and Becky Sloviter who was the producer for them, they know so much more than we did. We were able to not only on the practical side make people want to make this movie, but also on the other side, I’d say primarily in third-act stuff, they helped me dig deeper, and find a satisfying conclusion to the movie where the earlier version of the script just wasn’t as satisfying—you still got to the point, but we were able to mess with the mechanics a little bit more. And they got me to dig deeper on the science part too, where I let this journey into the subconscious via a Jungian, individuation approach maybe take hold a little too much!

I’m not very familiar with Palm Springs as a place. What was the appeal to build everything around this specific location? Both Max and I grew up in Southern California, and since the late 1980s I’ve been going to Palm Springs every year—my aunt had a condo out there. The place is a primarily LA retreat, with golf courses and retirement communities. Over the years, it’s just become a place for a lot of weddings to happen. So there’s that side, my own personal history of having seen the change and having gone there so many times over the past 34 years. I remember camping trips to Joshua Tree [National Park]—and I also got married in Palm Springs and went out to countless friends’ weddings there. But then also, I think there are mountain people, desert people, city people. I think I’m a desert person. There’s this mass openness that I find has a magical quality to it. Even if I don’t believe in magic, there’s somehow a magical solitude that comes in the desert. And there’s all sorts of literature, even going into pseudo-science, that is centered around the desert. Specifically the one surrounding Palm Springs.

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti in ‘Palm Springs’.

It feels like a blank canvas on which anything can happen—and if anything, having more space can make you more anxious about being trapped there. I agree. And I had written two Gram Parsons songs into the script, and he was also drawn to the desert in the 1970s, [the] Joshua Tree area. He wrote a lot there with Keith Richards. There’s some kind of draw to the desert that I don’t totally understand to be honest, it’s on a deeper subconscious level that it strikes that chord for me.

Speaking of the music, the film has so many satisfying needle drops. I’m thinking of Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Partisan’ and then Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’ in that amazing final scene. Were these written in from the start? A lot of songs were written in from the start that didn’t make it in for various reasons. ‘Cloudbusting’ came up in our first or second meeting with Andy—it was his idea and we were like, that’s perfect! Andy and Max [and I] all wanted to make sure Palm Springs didn’t use songs we had seen a million times in other movies. It was so important to us. And then we also wanted songs that spoke to a more magical quality too. I think the Leonard Cohen one was Cristin’s idea, so it was a very collaborative field, but we all knew what kind of stuff we wanted. It was about thinking, let’s try and find a sonic happy place.

What film first made you want to be a filmmaker? Jurassic Park is my number one. It made me want to do everything.

Most Popular Story of the year?:

Hits: You & Me (We Gotta Whole Lotta History)

Kudos: Justice is Blonde Comments: The Working Girl’s Guide to Taming Your Imaginary Boyfriend

Story most under appreciated by the universe?:

Hmmm. I guess it would be Take Me Home (Country Roads) which I really loved personally, and had loads of fun writing. It didn’t really fire the public consciousI guess!

Most Fun Story to Write?:

Dial 911 & State Your Emergency.

I unashamedly love Luis, and he was brilliant to write (even if I did watch Ant Man three times back to back to get his ‘voice’ right). Barton was awesome in this story, too.

Story with the single sexiest moment?:

Spellbound

This one just … worked. From start to finish. It was so easy to write, the sexual tension, the flirting, the costumes. It almost felt as though the whole thing was sexual, even though there’s probably quite a small amount of actual physicality in it.

Sweetest Story?:

In Vino Veritas

I think, probably, although Pennies & Dimes (For a Kiss) probably gives a good second for sweetness value. In Vino Veritas maybe in of itself isn’t as sweet as the other, but it’s the (somewhat) culmination of a helluva slow-burn through The Wider Pizza-Verse .

“Holy crap that’s wrong even for you” story?:

Eh, not sure I really do too much ‘wrongness’ (in fic); but I suppose This Ain’t a Battle (It’s a Goddamned War) probably fits the most. Bucky snaps on a mission and nearly kills Nat, hten begs her to shoot him and end it all.

Originally I conceived it as a lot darker, which you can see the touches within it - if I’d carried on into another chapter or two rather than leaving as a one-shot, it would have explored the deeper consequences of Nat keeping her secrets from the others; and the fact that Bucky was too close to slipping back into the Soldier. And also that, Nat keeping that to herself would have driven them closer together and with him still maintaining some semblance of a relationship with Darcy …

Hardest Story to write?:

Justice is Blonde

For the legal side of it, for sure. Espeically as I’m not American. But also because it had to be clever - Elle's not a joke, she is a great lawyer, she just has her own style. And that had to be reflected - it was never going to be a crack fic, yes there's humour but at the heart of was Elle's heart (as it is at the heart of Legally Blonde itself, and I fully believe the reason why the film resonates with people so much)..

Biggest disappointment?:

Baby Mama was an obsession, and I have 11k of the second part sat with me. It’s so close, and yet eaons away from being finished at the same time. Sigh.

Biggest Surprise?:

I’m still amazed by the reasction to Justice is Blonde. I really am. I liked it, of course, and it seemed to fit well, but it still knocks me over how many people have read it, how many commented and re-blogged and everything. It’s just crazy.

I’m useless at tagging people, so please - if you want in, have at it!

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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The 7 Resident Evil Side Characters Who Need Their Own Game

April 14, 2020 3:00 PM EST

After Carlos stole the show in Resident Evil 3, here are the other series’ characters that I think deserve their chance to shine.

While playing through Resident Evil 3 for review, I was constantly impressed by everything Capcom did with Carlos Oliveira. I never had the pleasure of playing the original RE3 release, but I’d always heard mixed reactions surrounding the U.B.C.S. soldier. In the remake, I was left wanting to know more about Carlos, wishing they’d added a few other segments that let you play as him.

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This got me thinking about how good the Resident Evil team is at creating intriguing side characters with stories that I want to explore even deeper. Obviously, below is my personal list of the Resident Evil characters that I hope will get their own game. If you have some of your own, feel free to sound off in the comments.

Billy Coen and Rebecca Chambers

Okay, hear me out. Yes, Billy and Rebecca had starring roles in Resident Evil 0, but if there are any two starring role characters that need more screentime, it’s these two. Rebecca is one of the more interesting characters in the entire Resident Evil series. She’s a child prodigy thrown into a biological warzone. Seeing her next to hunky super commandos like Chris Redfield makes her appear incredibly weak. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The younger B.S.A.A. operative is a hyper-intelligent chemist who has more than proven herself in several different zombie conflicts. The way she’s portrayed as a relatively innocent young girl makes her stand out in the sea of macho commando-types that make up most of the Resident Evil character list. She doesn’t necessarily need to be playable, but we need more Rebecca in future RE games.

Billy, on the other hand, needs another game. The former prisoner was last seen heading into the Raccoon City woods just before the Arklay Mansion incident. Did he survive? If so, what in the world is he doing? Surely, a former marine with experience fighting the undead would come in handy in a time of need. Honestly, I had a lot of hope that Billy would reappear during the events of Resident Evil 7. A derelict Louisana plantation seemed like the perfect place for a man like Billy to hunker down and restart his life. Maybe Resident Evil 8 will finally bring us some closure.

Luis Sera

Unlike Billy, Luis’ fate is much less ambiguous. The way Saddler’s scorpion tale bursts through his chest left no doubt. While we’re on the subject, where does that tail go? It’s like 15 feet long and while Saddler’s robes are relatively bulky, you’re not hiding an extra-long pointy appendage under there. Even if you assume it sucks up into his bum, it still doesn’t make any sense.

That aside, Luis is one of the more interesting characters in Resident Evil 4. He’s a renowned biologist who helped research Las Plagas. After seeing the effects of the virus, he turned against Saddler and his cult, helping Leon take them down. With him being dead in the series’ canon, his game would probably be what happens with him before RE4. Of course, this being Resident Evil, there’s nothing saying he can’t just pop back up in RE8 as a fun surprise. Either way, Sera is one of two characters from RE4 that I’d like to see make a comeback.

Barry and Moira Burton

Again, two characters who have been playable before in Resident Evil Revelations 2. However, their story ends with a super intriguing plot point that I really want Capcom to dig into more (spoilers for Revelations 2 ahead). At the end of Revelations 2, the Burtons have adopted Natalia Korda to their family. What they don’t know is that Natalia has had the digital consciousness of Alex Wesker implanted inside her. The game ends with a hint that Wesker might slowly be gaining complete control.

Plus, why not get more of Resident Evil’s best dad? Listen, dad jokes are in right now and there’s no one better than Barry at delivering cringeworthy quips. From famous lines like “Jill Sandwich” and “Master of Unlocking” to his ridiculous moveset from Resident Evil 5’s Mercenaries mode, Barry is a socks and sandals combo from being your weird uncle. Please Capcom, give us more of him. Moira is less fun, but if we can’t get a playable Barry, I would also accept seeing her embarrassment anytime she has to be around her dad. Like, give me a scene of Barry and Moira at a diner with Barry trying and failing to make jokes to the waitress. It would be the icing on the cake.

Josh Stone

The legend himself. Above I talked a little bit about Barry Burton’s moveset in RE5’s Mercenaries mode, but he has nothing on Josh Stone. Capcom basically took all of your favorite WWE stars’ signature moves and gave them to Josh. It’s amazing. He can take zombies to Suplex City, throw a Macho Man-like elbow drop, and even deliver a chokeslam that would make The Undertaker shed a tear. There just isn’t a more over-the-top character than Josh Stone.

Now, that introduces the concern that maybe he doesn’t fit into the more grounded direction the series is trending in. And maybe you’re right. However, I’d love to see what they could do with him in a modern RE game. He is so absolutely ridiculous, that it seems a shame to contain him to just one game.

Carlos Oliveira

The inspiration for this list, Carlos is such a joy in the Resident Evil 3 remake. His sections feature some great callbacks to RE2 and are a blast to play through. He comes equipped with an assault rifle and a mean right hook. After playing relatively stealthily as Jill Valentine, you just get to unload into zombies with Carlos. It’s one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve had in the RE games.

His story after RE3 is pretty much a complete mystery. He says goodbye to Jill and is never seen from again. That’s a shame. He was never going to be Leon levels of awesome, but the way Capcom just discards playable characters like Billy and Carlos needs to stop. Obviously, you can’t just reuse every character in every game, but the world needs more Carlos and less Chris. Maybe that’s controversial, but I want more variety in my Resident Evil.

April 14, 2020 3:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/the-7-resident-evil-side-characters-who-need-their-own-game/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-7-resident-evil-side-characters-who-need-their-own-game

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olivereliott · 5 years ago

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Traversing The Sangre de Cristo Range

[NOTE: 2020 is the tenth year of my blog at Semi-Rad.com, and since I started it, I’ve been fortunate to get to do some pretty wonderful adventures. Throughout this year, I’ll be writing about 12 favorite adventures I’ve had since I started writing about the outdoors, one per month. This is the second in the series. The other stories in the series are here.]

[All photos by Jim Harris/PerpetualWeekend.com]

It seems like the most obvious question when you look at Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Range from the west side: I wonder if anyone’s walked across that from end to end?

I had first seen the mountains from the San Luis Valley in 2006, staring out the passenger-side window of my friend Nick’s pickup as we drove back to Denver from skiing at Wolf Creek. For an hour and fifteen minutes driving on CO-17 from Alamosa to Poncha Springs, you parallel the mountains, looking up at them from the valley floor at about 7600 feet, counting dozens of summits above 12,000 feet, all the way up to 14,345-foot Blanca Peak. And that’s what I thought: I wonder if there’s a way across those mountains?

So I went home to think about it for several years, every once in a while pulling out a map, the National Geographic Trails Illustrated Sangre De Cristo Mountains 1:75,000, running my finger along the spine and not seeing too many topo lines bunched up indicating steep ridges. Seemed like it might go on foot, maybe, without roped climbing. I spent some time poking around on the internet to see if there was any information about it, and couldn’t find anything. Maybe someday I’d give it a shot.

—

When Jim Harris and I walked out of a friend’s driveway in Salida, Colorado, in September 2013 to start trying to find a north-to-south route across the Sangre de Cristos, we had spent about eight hours together, total: One brief chat at a booth at the Outdoor Retailer trade show, two breakfasts at the Park Cafe in Salt Lake City, an hour and a half at a coffee shop near Park City planning this trip, and a couple hours assembling the gear and food the previous day. I didn’t know much about him, but I did know he had survived a 33-day backpacking trip in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, so he would probably not be too worried about a trip along the spine of a mountain range with multiple bailout points on either side to a highway less than 10 miles away.

We figured the trip would take somewhere from eight to 16 days: It looked to be about 100 miles, 50,000 feet of elevation gain (a ballpark guess based on a rough line I’d drawn on an online mapping program). We split the food in half, arranging with one of Jim’s friends to resupply us for our second half at the South Colony Lakes trailhead.

I had pitched the trip to a magazine, thinking it would make a good story, since we were making our own route across the Sangres. I think we could have argued that we were the “first” to do it, but I was pretty sure that somebody out there had to have done it already. I mean, it’s in Colorado, which is home to 5 million people, and the idea seemed so obvious and intriguing, it just had to have been done before. The fact that I’d been unable to find information on the internet was good for the adventure factor of our plan, but wasn’t irrefutable evidence that we were pioneers of any sort.

We hiked up a service road at the north end of the range, to the top of an unnamed 11,695-foot peak with communication towers on top, still below treeline. It was a mellow beginning to the traverse, which we knew from that point onward would be mostly trailless. For a minute, we discussed walking over to the summit of Methodist Mountain, the northernmost summit of the range, and then decided against it, as dark clouds started to build to the west. We headed south along the ridge and soon encountered an enormous maze of deadfall, requiring jungle-gym moves to get under, over, and around, with our packs at their heaviest. I joked, “I really thought it would take longer for this whole thing to feel like a bad idea,” as we crawled through the mess. Finally, the deadfall maze ended and we picked up a faint trail just below the ridge and walked it, stopping at about 6:30 p.m. at the two-inch deep water feature marked on the map as Salamander Lake. The rain picked up and thunder started to rumble.

We ate dinner, settled into our two-person tent, and I fell asleep with that not-quite-complete relief you have when the planning is over and you’ve finally started into the Big Thing, but you’ve only just started and don’t have any idea what the next days will bring, or how many of those days it will take you.

We had packed as light as possible: one sub-4-pound tent, ultralight sleeping pads, only one cell phone between us (to update our girlfriends every once in a while when we had cell service, and to text Max our ETA for the food resupply meet-up), one pair of pants each, bare minimum of everything else.

But for the magazine article, I was supposed to record a GPS track of the entire trip. I didn’t own a GPS, so the magazine sent me one, advising me that at the rate of recording every .01 mile, it would go through two AA batteries per day, so on top of all that ultralight strategy, I had 14 AA batteries in my pack, or about 12 ounces of batteries. Plus a battery pack, which weighed seven ounces, to keep our one cell phone charged but which also also could be recharged using a hand crank on the side of the battery. (Fully charged, it could re-up one iPhone to about 90 percent, and once I realized that five minutes of hand-cranking the battery produced approximately one percent of phone battery charge, I turned the phone off for the entire trip, only turning it on to text once a day on top of a peak where we had a signal.) Jim was carrying a Canon 5d Mark III with a couple lenses, so I didn’t complain.

—

We were up at 5:00 a.m. on the morning of Day 2, scarfing oatmeal and instant coffee by headlamp, and hiking again by 6:30. We tagged the summit of Simmons Peak (12,050 feet), then traced the ridge all day, alternately walking on alpine tundra and picking our way up and down talus, over the summits of an unnamed 12,401-foot peak, Hunts Peak (13,701 feet), and then Red Mountain (12,944 feet). I tried my best to keep up with Jim, who seemed to be neither sweating or out of breath as he chatted away, as if we were sitting across from each other in a coffee shop and not sucking wind at 13,000 feet.

By the time we hit the top of Red Mountain, clouds had been building for a couple hours, and by the time I signed the summit register, rain drops were pelting the page. I slipped into my rain shell, pulled my packback on and aimed toward Jim, who was already a few hundred feet down the east slope of the peak. Jim had a pair of legs built from long days of backcountry skiing, easily chugging up steep slopes and quickly bounding down them from the top. I did not. No matter what, I would be slower than him on whatever terrain we descended, spending a half-second more getting my footing on a piece of talus, a half-second more bending my knee to lunge down to plant my other foot on a different rock. A few dozen of those and Jim would be a hundred yards away and a couple inches tall in my view.

The low grumble of thunder, the first of the day, broke somewhere to the south, where all those clouds had been gathering. I scanned the clouds for a flash, then decided it might be better to use the precious seconds to drop down in elevation. It was 1,300 vertical feet down to West Creek Lake below. Jim would make his way down the steep slope in 15 minutes, and it took me at least 20.

Fifteen seconds after we had the tent set up, the rain got more ambitious and started to downpour, the kind of big drops that, even in the dry air of the Rocky Mountains, actually gets you wet and keeps you wet. We hustled to pop the rain fly on before the floor got soaked. We chucked packs inside and dove into the single door. I lay on the bare nylon floor with tundra underneath, content to be out of the rain and finally done moving after a seven-mile, 3,800-foot day. I devoured a Snickers bar at cartoon-character speed and listened as the rain got louder and louder, then turned to hail, piling up two inches deep on the only ground I could see just outside the tent fly.

Every day, we bit off a new chunk of terrain in the same routine: Wake up to watch alarm beeping at 5 a.m., find watch, turn off alarm. Unzip sleeping bag, pull puffy jacket from beneath head, put it on, deflate sleeping pad, become tiny bit sad at hiss of air signaling end of comfort, stuff sleeping bag in stuff sack. Slide feet into shoes, open tent door, light stove. Oatmeal. Coffee. Pack backpack. Repeat bad joke about going for a walk up on the ridge again today, heave backpack onto shoulders, start walking in the dark. Sunrise, tundra, talus, summit, talus, tundra, talus, summit, snacks. Look south, start to think about how far we’d get today. I look at the next peak thinking that would be a nice goal, say nothing, Jim looks two or three peaks beyond that, suggests we try to get there today. We do. Find an alpine lake on the map, navigate down to it, set up tent, eat dinner, sleep until 5 a.m., repeat.

It was monotonous, it was beautiful, it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and the simplicity of it was right in front of us every time we popped back onto the ridge: A mountain range, straight ahead, valleys on either side, just find a way across it and keep going.

Theoretically, the idea for a magazine feature was to find a cool, new thing to do and collect enough information to enable readers to do it themselves, if they wanted to. Quite early on, I wasn’t sure I’d recommend it to many people, unless they had a similar obsession with the range, always wondering what it’d be like to walk across it—and also had two weeks of vacation to find out, and also were masochists.

—

We agreed, at some point in our daily conversations, to make the goal a sort of “Haute Route,” or high route through the Sangres. Tagging every summit would be a great goal, but we’d skipped the very first peak on the ridge, Methodist Mountain, on the first day, and had skipped a couple other unnamed mountains before we started talking about it. We had to descend off the ridge every evening to a lake or creek to get water, and the idea of retracing our steps to get back on the ridge at the exact same point we’d left seemed contrived—the goal wasn’t to do a walking survey of the entire ridge, after all.

We got rained on every day but one, and could almost set our watches by the afternoon thunderstorms rolling in. We found faint trails sometimes, but mostly chose our own route across the tundra and talus. We made the occasional questionable decision to head up a gully full of sliding scree instead of a ridge that looked fifth-class from a half-mile away, or to bushwhack up a mountainside of neck-high willows because it looked shorter. We had glorious sunsets, wonderful and unexpected scrambles up peaks we might never have thought to climb if they weren’t in our way on this traverse, and had literally every campsite to ourselves, every single evening. Bighorn sheep sauntered through our campsite, rain hammered our tent, and we slowly built one of those friendships that survives for years after it’s been tested by being next to each other for 24 hours a day for a dozen straight days.

Several nights, I woke up from dreams and pre-sleep hypnic jerks from a lucid scene playing in my head: my foot, stepping on a two-foot-wide boulder, the boulder sliding away, and my leg flying out from underneath me. I’d jump out of my sleep, waking up from the fall, and realize I was still safe in my smelly sleeping bag.

On Day 8, we left the South Colony Lakes trailhead campground, having met Max for our resupply the previous afternoon and gratefully sent him down with some of our trash, spent batteries, and dirty socks. We climbed up talus on the north face of an unnamed 13,161-foot peak, then walked its east ridge to 13,266-foot Marble Mountain, and looked down Marble’s southeast ridge in the sunshine toward Music Pass—a bank of clouds had crept up the left-hand side of the ridge, obliterating the view of anything below the ridge proper. The clouds would morph throughout the day, rolling in and out of our path, finally closing in on us on our final summit of the day. We didn’t know it yet but we’d seen the sun for the last time for the rest of the trip.

The rain began that afternoon and would continue on and off every day for the rest of the traverse, as we walked through clouds that shrank our universe to a bubble, sometimes a quarter-mile, sometimes less than 100 feet ahead. About 150 miles north of us, torrential rain was flooding Boulder, Lyons, parts of Rocky Mountain National Park, and other areas. We slogged on through the rain, and on Day 9, as we navigated by GPS through visibility as low as 50 feet and mazes of deadfall in the lowest-altitude section of the ridge, it felt like our picturesque, ridgetop, views-in-every-direction, walking-across-the-skyline party had been dropped into a dark hole. Or at least a swamp.

On Day 10, we spent the entire day in undulating rain, buffeted from the east by a cold wind. We hiked up two unnamed 13ers, then to the summit of California Peak, 13,894 feet. The actual terminus of the Sangre de Cristo Range is Little Bear Peak, about 3.25 miles south as the crow flies, or arguably Hamilton Peak, a little south of that, and Jim and I had talked about where to properly end the trip. But after two and a half straight days of rain, and fourth-class and fifth-class terrain between us and Little Bear, we called it a day on California Peak, looking into a cloud, water squishing out of the toes of my trail running shoes.

We sent a text to arrange a rendezvous with Hilary, who would pick us up the next day after 10½ days of hiking, and bailed down wet scree into the drainage above North Zapata Creek. We set up our tent in one of the worst campsites of the trip, at 10,600 feet, hoping for a sunny morning the next day and a chance to possibly salvage a summit 14,042-foot Ellingwood Point and 14,345-foot Blanca Peak. But we awoke to a third straight day of steady rain and said fuck it, walking to the trailhead, where Zapata Creek was so swollen with rain we could hear boulders rolling underneath the water.

Our shoes, brand new at the start of the trip, were destroyed after 105 miles and 43,000 feet of elevation gain. We’d crossed 63 summits, and traversed 91 miles above 10,000 feet.

Some not-small part of me, I think, wanted at the beginning to map a route that other people might follow in the future. But at the end, I was sure we hadn’t done that. So I had to settle for what we had done, which was put to bed a years-long curiosity. Seeing that thing, wondering what was up there, and wandering around like a couple of idiots, in a long tradition of other idiots doing the same thing. Maybe I wanted the effort to be important, or at least more important than to just me. In the end, wonder is still a pretty good reason for a big adventure, I think.

Throughout our long days traversing the Sangres, I had the feeling that someone would come along and do a better traverse of the range, ticking all the summits, doing the whole trip faster, or both—if they hadn’t already. When the magazine posted our story online in 2015, one of the social media comments was from a guy who’d done the traverse with three friends back in 1977, finishing on Blanca Peak on Day 21, with four food drops and lots of stops to fish. Which a) proved someone had done it before and b) made me wonder how much fun it would be to take your time and do it over the span of three weeks.

More recent forays across the range included: In 2016, Cam Honan did a traverse of the Sangres, somehow going through Great Sand Dunes National Park before returning to the ridge and finishing on Blanca Peak. In 2018, Cam Cross and Nick Clark established the fastest known time of the traverse, going south to north in just under four and a half days (!), and in 2019, Justin Simoni did it solo in a little over six and a half days, south to north as well. And, in spring 2019, Josh Jespersen, Rick E. Schuler, and Isaiah Branch-Boyle spent 13 days doing the first ski traverse of the range. So it appears to have been done faster, and done with more summits, and even on skis and splitboards. But it still seems only to draw people who are curious enough to put in the effort to find their own way across, which may be the only sort of people who will ever take a whack at it. Seems like everyone hits the same two big sections of deadfall that are just heinous to navigate through, and is less than enthusiastic about those portions of the ridge. The route would be a little more accessible if a team of people armed with saws would go up there and cut a path through those sections, but you know, I think that would be a bit disingenuous. Just because it’s something you wouldn’t recommend to 99 out of 100 people, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile adventure.

—Brendan

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thejustinmarshall · 5 years ago

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Traversing The Sangre de Cristo Range

[All photos by Jim Harris/PerpetualWeekend.com]

It seems like the most obvious question when you look at Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Range from the west side: I wonder if anyone’s walked across that from end to end?

—

Our shoes, brand new at the start of the trip, were destroyed after 105 miles and 43,000 feet of elevation gain. We’d crossed 63 summits, and traversed 91 miles above 10,000 feet.

—Brendan

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networkingdefinition · 6 years ago

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Leo Quotes

Official Website: Leo Quotes

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Every drama requires a cast. The cast may be so huge, as in Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina,’ that the author or editor provides a list of characters to keep them straight. Or it may be an intimate cast of two. – Nancy Kress

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Give like the sun, and the whole world grows tall. – Atticus

Funny People is my favorite performance of myself to date. Even though it’s a comedy and there are serious moments, I really felt like Leo felt like a real person. It didn’t feel like I was playing myself. Whether it’s a comedy or drama, I just try to make it as realistic as possible. – Jonah Hill

Here comes the sun. – The Beatles, Here Comes The Sun

I am a Leo, and I love to be active and creative. – Howie Dorough

I carry around this little lion named Leo, which I’ve had for as long as I can remember. – Shawn Mendes

I did imitations of anyone who came to my parents’ house, and that was my identity at school – if there were ten minutes to lunch, and the teacher was done with the lesson, he’d say, ‘Okay, Leo, get up there and do something.’ – Leonardo DiCaprio

I do wish everyone would call me Leo. It’s not that I don’t like Melissa. But the more I hear it called out, the worse it sounds. – Melissa Leo

I don’t believe that my first name is Leo or that my last name is Tolstoy. I’m a storyteller. – Robert Ludlum

I had a bulletin board in my bedroom with every picture of Leo ever taken – keep in mind, this was pre-‘Titanic’ and pre-Us Weekly, practically pre-Internet. I had to buy ‘The Leonardo DiCaprio Album’ and cut out my favorite pics. – Jenny Han

I have such an ego ’cause I’m a double Leo. I can’t let go of me, you know, so it’s very difficult for me to be somebody else and not me. I’m so into me. – Paul Mooney

I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. He’s very original, very accurate and acute. – Helen Vendler

I listened to the veteran wrestlers that had tons of experience, like Leo Burke. I was never really alone. – Robert Maillet

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me. – Dick Dale

I read a book called ‘Transatlantic’, which is a history of the great shipping lines. Also, of course, I had read about the Titanic and saw Leo drowning at the end of the ‘Titanic’ movie and all that stuff. – Erik Larson

I really do not care that Messi isn’t scoring every match. Leo always produces match-changing moments. – Gerardo Martino

I thought back to my middle-school experience of having slumber parties and watching Romeo + Juliet and staring at Leo and thinking about my first kiss and what I wanted it to be like. And when you have your first real love, it’s an epiphany, you know? It’s like a whole new world. – Bonnie McKee

I would like to have an assortment of words, but what can I say about Leo? He is breaking all the records, and those he will still beat. He makes the public always expect something special from him, and he delivers it. – Ernesto Valverde

If Leo is at his level, it’s going to be very difficult to find a solution to stop him. – Luis Enrique

I’m a huge fan of Don Leo Jonathan. I love that era of wrestling. – Cesaro

I’m a leo, and damn proud of it. – Unknown

I’m a middle child, so I have middle-child syndrome. With a middle child, you always have to take in everything and adjust and maybe compromise a little bit so you’re able to see both sides of an issue. I’m also a Leo – I love astrology – so that affected me, just being a lion. – Jessica Williams

I’m Pisces with Leo rising. The Pisces part is the dreamer. The Leo says, ‘Let’s execute.’ – Quincy Jones

In the summer of 1866, as Leo Tolstoy prepared for his serialized novel ‘War and Peace’ to be published as a single volume, he wrote to illustrator Mikhail Bashilov, hoping to commission drawings for the new edition of the novel, which he referred to by its original title,1805.- Alexander Chee

It is a pleasure to see Leo, an Argentine, as the top scorer in the Champions League. – Gerardo Martino

It is an honour and a pleasure to be able to play with Leo Messi. I want to learn. He is the best player in the world and in history. I am delighted to be able to share costumes. I want to learn a lot from him on and off the field. – Ousmane Dembele

It is best to be born in April or August when the life-giving Sun is in its exaltation sign Aries or Leo, its home, for then we enter the sea of life on the crest-wave and are backed in the battle of existence by an abundant fund of vim and energy. – Max Heindel

It would not be honest if I did a review, because I’ve worked with Leo Messi, whom I consider the best player I’ve seen. I cannot comment or compare with Cristiano Ronaldo because I have not worked with him. That is not to say that I do not have as much respect for Cristiano as a footballer. – Frank Rijkaard

It’s an incredible feeling when you look across the dressing room and see Andres, Leo, Luis and Sergio Busquets, and everyone else. They are players I used to watch on TV or play with on PlayStation, and now I am sharing the same dressing room. It’s incredible for me. – Philippe Coutinho

I’ve always heard Leo saying he is happy at Barcelona. I’ll take the message that he is very comfortable here. – Luis Enrique

I’ve never met a player like Leo Messi. Julen Lopetegui

Lauv comes from the Latvian word for lion, and my mom’s side of the family is from Latvia – it’s a place I’ve been probably 15 times or more. I’m also a Leo, and my real name, Ari, means lion. – Lauv

Leo admires and is admired, loves and is loved. – Linda Goodman

Leo Burke was an unbelievable trainer. Him and Tom Prichard. Tom Prichard was not a big guy. And I learned a lot from him. – Mark Henry

Leo couldn’t deliver Mr. Martin Scorsese his Oscar with ‘The Aviator’, but I will go on record to say I will do so in ‘The Departed’. – Anthony Anderson

Leo Durocher was our manager and he brought Willie up to me and said, ‘This is Willie Mays and he’s your new roommate.’ You could see right away that this young man was a natural. He had those real big hands, great power and speed and would catch everything hit in his direction. He’s the best center fielder that ever lived, no question. – Monte Irvin

Leo Hurwicz is the father of mechanism design theory and has inspired much of my work, and Roger Myerson is an old friend and collaborator and a tremendous economist. – Eric Maskin

Leo is the best player in the world; that is very clear. – Thiago Alcantara

Leo Messi is a little football God. I love playing alongside him. We understand each other without needing to talk. – Dani Alves

Leo would also be unstoppable if I played him at full-back. Messi is simply the best there is. – Luis Enrique

Leo, sadly, has Parkinson’s, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things. – Jilly Cooper

My father, Leo Henry Brown, really was talented – he could write. He had a gift, and he had a great, sly humor. – Angie Dickinson

My kids and I make pasta three days a week now. It’s not even so much about the eating of it; they just like the process. Benno is the stuffer, and Leo is the catcher. They’ve got their jobs down. – Mario Batali

My life as Mrs. Leo Durocher and baseball come first. – Laraine Day

My sign is Leo. A Leo has to walk with pride. When he takes a step, he has to put his foot down. You walk into a room and you want people to know your presence, without you doing anything. – Wesley Snipes

Norbert Leo Butz is a master class in energy. – Lauren Ambrose

Of course there is ‘Messidependence.’ It would exist in any team in the world, but when he is not there, we also have to play and try to win. Leo is fundamental for us and marks the style; it is well known that he is the best in the world for something. – Ernesto Valverde

One might say Leos possess a kind of instant passion. – Linda Goodman

Ronaldo leaving would seem to have ended the competition between Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo because people rarely mention one without mentioning the other. A lot of people are interested – me, too – to see how it will affect Real Madrid’s football and what they might do in the transfer market. – Ernesto Valverde

So I think it was a good thing It was a little surreal watching Leo scream ‘I’m not going to die today!’ with our music playing – that was the last thing on my mind when I wrote the song. – Jon Crosby

The first time I met Leo Messi, I didn’t know who he was, only that I couldn’t believe the boots he was wearing. But he is like a brother to me. It was at the start of 2005, when I was with the Argentine under-17 squad and I saw him chatting with Ezequiel Garay and some other players about the boots he’d brought back from the U.S.A. – Sergio Aguero

The Kate Winslet thing has been a shocker. I was like, that is the most ridiculous claim. Amazing, obviously. She’s been my idol since I re-enacted ‘Titanic’ and fell in love with Leo. And it’s a privilege to be called the next anything. But I suppose to be the next you is all you can do. – Florence Pugh

The Leo contains the essence of royalty. – Linda Goodman

The vibration of Leo, ruled by the Sun itself, is almost tangible, a thing you can actually feel throughout your whole being in the presence of a Lion or Lioness. — Linda Goodman

There are no words to describe Leo. He continues to break records every time one is put in front of him. – Gerardo Martino

There is something fundamental about Leo in terms of what he transmits to the supporters and what he transmits to the opposition when he starts to run at you. And I speak from experience. – Ernesto Valverde

There’s no really signature Leo DiCaprio role, like Jack Nicholson is Jack Nicholson no matter what movie he’s in. – Dennis Christopher

What I’d most highlight about Leo Messi is his huge sense of responsibility for the team. It shows in every game in every competition. – Ernesto Valverde

When I played Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother, they liked that Leo had very hooded eyes and a rounded nose with a ball. They said, They look like they could be mother and son. – Ellen Barkin

When Leo takes the record from me, it will hurt a little. But it’s not just anyone taking it away. It’s not a normal person. A Martian is taking it from me. That makes me feel a little better. – Gabriel Batistuta

You know, I am a Leo. Lion is a giant part of me. – Patrick Swayze

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equitiesstocks · 6 years ago