#Dave the diver is just a fun little time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

seerofmike · 5 months

Text

mike 2023 year in review

whats up, this is something i started last year where i decided at the end of the year i would talk about 7 movies + 7 viddy games i enjoyed this year (the movies will be 2023 releases, the games will be all over the place). this is so i can look back on the future on the things i enjoyed this year but since im posting it publicly most of these will be written as recommendations i guess

also i did not have a lot of money to see movies this year so most of these will be IP movies :( sawi. also also 2023 was a mega good year for gaming. or so i've heard. most of the big 2023 games this year either came out on consoles i don't own (nintendo + sony releases), are next-gen only as far as xbox goes or unable to run on my dinky little laptop (AW2, the finals, re4, etc) or are just games in genres i dont really give a shit about (bg3, starfield, sea of stars). significant 2023 games i did play this year were dave the diver and dredge but not enough to be on the list. maybe next year hehe

anyways without further ado. my top 7 movies and top 7 games this year, in alternating (movie/game/move/game/etc) AND alphabetical order:

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

yeah you knew this shit was going on here. i saw this movie 8(eight) times in theaters. the first two times were because of the audio issues with the first cut but the rest was because the movie fucked babeeeeey. you don't need me to tell you how good this was

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (2023)

ok listen before i recommend this game i have to be mean to make a point first. if you know anything about me you know i think tarot is stupid as fuck and i think witchy nonsense is. well. just that. nonsense. it makes me roll my eyes especially the particular brand of like. r/WitchesVersusPatriarchy stuff. man i just dont like any sort of spiritualism or religious stuff. with that being said this game fucks tremendously and i cannot recommend it enough

you get to design your own tarot deck and each card will be unique and have meanings based on the templates you're given. you can then use these cards to tell your friends' fortunes. except it goes way deeper than that but i dont want to spoil the twist for you. also it kind of becomes a different game midway through but i like management games so its fine. anyways good game and very repayable with all the card designs you can make and fortunes you can read. art style is also very nice.

(more under da cut)

Barbie

man i know a lot of people dont like this movie after the hype wore off because its Baby's First Feminism. and that's fine. i don't really think it was trying to achieve some uber deep commentary. but the set design and costuming was great and you could tell the actors and crew were having so much fucking fun and as someone who wants to go into movies i will always like movies where the people making them are having fun.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (2023)

i like the visual novel where everyone dresses in a funny costume and sonic fucking dies ok. it was so cute and had very good characterization for people i didnt think would ever be in the focus of a game again like espio ........go play the murder of sonic thee hedge

Bottoms

this one is probably my 2nd favorite movie of the year tbh. i need more absurdist gay comedies. i wish i could go on about how hilarious this movie is but i dont wanna give away all jokes but anyways go watch the lesbian incel movie and have a good time

Potionomics (2022)

if i had a nickel for every gay witch game i played this year with significant card and management mechanics and appealing art i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

anyways potionomics is absolutely my favorite game that i've played this year. it's not all that similar to cosmic wheel sisterhood despite the basic concept and some gameplay elements. CWS is more like a visual novel. potionomics is a fucking nightmare and i love it SO much.

you brew potions and then sell them by haggling with customers using cards. customers can haggle back and it can get VERY difficult. everything you do takes up limited time slots such as gathering ingredients and brewing potions and visiting your friends and btw you can visit your friends and all of the characters are incredibly charming and i had trouble picking which one to romance. (roxanne my beloved <3) (also the white haired character in the screenshot above is a nonbinary goblin :) ) (this game has CAT PIRATES)

the game also rewards you with befriending the characters and gives you cards the deeper your relationships become and new gameplay mechanics open themselves up to you until the last couple stretches of the game. it's very fun, very stressful, but very rewarding once you figure out how to maximize your profits and use up your time slots effectively. i had a fucking blast.

also the animation is so good. literally the best animation on this sort of stylized 3d model in a game i've ever seen. PLEASE play potionomics.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

god man. i just love the guardians so much. tbh this is my least favorite movie of the trilogy but all three of them are easily better than nearly every other marvel movie regardless. i love nebula and rocket so much and seeing small moments between them like her choking up when she hears he's okay fucking Gets To Me. i loved me asshole mercenaries who become a found family and try to be good people.

Prey (2017)

prey is not my favorite game this year nor my favorite survival sim but the first five or so hours of this game were the most engrossed i was in a game this year. towards the middle and ending portions it starts to lose me a little bit (the game is still good!) but the beginning was absolutely the best part.

being trapped in space with aliens that can mimic items in your surroundings leaves you extremely paranoid, and combing through the station finding recordings and notes and evidence of the lives of the people who were once there, knowing that most of them are probably dead--while monsters lurk around the corner ready to fuck your shit up--was deeply engrossing. i wish i could erase my brain and experience those first hours again being terrified of everything that moved before i got a shotgun and figured out how to win fights pretty regularly lol

Killers of the Flower Moon

if you're gonna watch a 3 hour movie this year about atrocities committed in the past i'd recommend this one over The Other One tbh. i found it deeply engaging and thought lily gladstone gave a great performance that easily outshone leo. the events of the movie are deeply harrowing and i think there is definitely some discussion to be had about how the movie centers on the white men despite scorses's intentions but the technical work was great and i think it really does a good job of showing just how deep this shit went in the community as opposed to being 'just a couple of bad whites' or w/e other narrative people will try to spin.

Psycholonials (2021)

im gonna go ahead and say right now i don't really recommend this game unless you are familiar with andrew hussie and HS/their other work. i think the game was fine but tbh it probably would not have been on my list if it was made by anyone else. that's not to say it's bad, just like. nothing mind blowing.

that being said i did very much enjoy this game in the sense that, as someone who DOES know a thing or two about andrew hussie, the way they feel about their work (especially HS in the years afterward), it was interesting seeing them make a game about starting a cult by accident, with all the gender fuckery and feelings of paranoia about being cancelled and how out of control its become feeling like a little glimpse into them. watching how manic and obsessive the protag gets with several years of Hussie Context(tm) makes this way more interesting than the game itself if im being fully honest.

if the game truly sucked it wouldn't be on here but do take my word for it that you'd probably appreciate it way more if you were a HS fan LMAO

Skinamarink (2022)

ok so technically skinamarink came out in 2022 BUT it got a theatrical release in january 2023 which is when *i* saw it so i'm counting it as a 2023 movie. anyways skinamarink is simultaneously very scary and also boring as shit and i could never actually recommend this movie to anyone but the fact that it was made at all and made a PROFIT is outstanding to me and i'm obsessed with it as an aspiring filmmaker. an hour and fourty minutes of staring at a dark corner to build atmosphere. fuck yeah

Venba (2023)

this one's very short but i found it very compelling despite how short it was. it almost felt TOO short but i like it for what it is. as the son (and grandson) of mexican immigrants who often regretted migrating for cultural and language reasons this really connected with me and the cooking puzzles were fun but i really wisht here was more of them. it's less about the puzzles though and more about the narrative and i thought it was really smart to make the throughline food. very good game. buy it.

TMNT: Mutant Mayhem

look at my fucking sons. everyone say thank you spider verse for changing the animation industry. i love how the boys' VAs were just goofing off and having fun and bouncing off each other it was great

This War of Mine (2014)

this one is a survival management game where you have to scavenge for materials somewhere in war-torn eastern europe with some stealth mechanics. some of your characters die very easy and some characters have 'negative' traits like being unable to sneak out or fight or drink up all your alcohol and it's not like the best in its genre but i did spend a ton of time in it. i still need to finish like a single scenario and not a custom game LMAO

#mike 2023 in review

7 notes · View notes

carrionbeast · 5 months

Text

Carrion Top 10 Game of the Year list

10 -Star Ocean The Second Story R - Full Disclosure, I'm still in the first couple of hours of this but it's really, really good. Just beautiful to look at too. If I could spend more time with it, it would have been higher than 10. 9 - Dave the Diver - Fun and chill but gets a little rinse and repeat after a while. 8 - Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line - Nostalgia Generating Machine. I miss the touch controls of the 3DS versions though. Not enough FFXIV music. 7 - Fire Emblem: Engage - Stupendously fun combat, but I missed the social aspects of Three Houses. Still got Lesbian Married though. 6 - Disgaea 7 - Classic, refined Disgaea. Way better than 6 by miles but not as good as 5. Super cute story though. 5 - Baldur's Gate 3 - LOOK I REALLY LIKE IT BUT MY COMPUTER COULDN'T REALLY RUN IT AND THEN I GOT A NEW ONE BUT WORK WAS BUSY. I'll play it. I know it's good. 4 - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I started playing it and emerged from a fugue state about 200 hours later with no idea what happened. Wonderful. 3 - Slay the Princess - So weirdly comforting and distressing at once. 10/10 would be a big bird again. 2 - Dredge - Once they introduced the thing to turn off monster damage, it became way more chill for me and thus way more fun. I get to just sit back, fish and go mad from the revelation of what I've done. 1 - Octopath Traveller 2 - I put 100 hours into this game and I still wasn't ready for it to be over.

(Honorable mentions to FFXIV's Endwalker patch cycle, during which I openly wept a lot and Monster Hunter World which I was finally able to play thanks to a mod that let me have a Monster buddy to hang out with ala the Stories series)

#nobody cares but im posting anyway!#game of the year

6 notes · View notes

miharuhebinata · 6 months

Text

monthly game tag time!

september

1. Storyteller

very cute little game, had fun with this one 👍

2. Ori and the Blind Forest

ngl i thought i would like this game a lot more than i actually did. the graphics are gorgeous & the story is good, but the actual gameplay could be so goddamn frustrating at times. which i get is the point, seeing as it's a metroidvania, but idk. it was just kind of a meh experience. i don't regret playing it or anything, i just wish it had been a bit more forgiving.

3. The Case of the Golden Idol

a fun murder mystery type game with a very interesting overarching plot, though solving the cases could be very frustrating at times (through no fault of its own, of course, i'm just a bit of a dumbass). if you've played return of the obra dinn, you are VERY likely to enjoy this game 👍

4. Song of Horror

SUCH a good game! it was just exactly the kind of experience i was looking for. the way it built tension without relying too much on jumpscares, the creepy yet immersive atmosphere, the sound design- i could go on. i will say though, i don't think i would have ever finished the game if i didn't follow a guide, not because the game is extremely difficult, but because of the permadeath mechanic. it's interesting in theory, but in practice it did take me out of the story a bit. still, all in all it is a very good game. parts of it even reminded me of alice: madness returns, so that's an automatic plus 😊

5. Tomb Raider (2013)

this was a replay, but i've decided to start including replays, for my own convenience. 10/10 game, as always <3

october

1. Rise of the Tomb Raider

(replay.) it may not be as good as tomb raider 2013 in my eyes, but i still like it! 7/10

2. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

(replay.) sorry but this games sucks lmfao. 2/10, & that's only because the climax slays

3. A Plague Tale: Innocence

SUCHHHH A GOOD GAME WTF. i would die for hugo de rune fr <33333333

4. Frog Detective 1: The Haunted Island

cute little game. nice if you're looking for something short & silly

5. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

such a challenging experience, but so, so worth it. a wonderful story with memorable & interesting characters, and such frustratingly fun gameplay. please please please play this game if you're a fan of stealth tactics games!!!!!!

started but not finished yet:

GTA V - started in september.

Dave The Diver - started in september.

Baldur's Gate 3 - started in september.

#storyteller #ori and the blind forest #the case of the golden idol #song of horror #tomb raider #tr 2013 #rise of the tomb raider #rottr #shadow of the tomb raider #sottr #a plague tale #a plague tale: innocence #frog detective 1: the haunted island #shadow tactics: blades of the shogun #🎮 tag #monthly game tag #send tweet

0 notes

thatscrewyballyhooeyhollywood · 9 months

Text

Classic Film Festival Day 1

Picture it: it's Labor Day weekend 2023. The town is El Segundo, a charming postcard-esque community just south of Los Angeles International Airport. The venue is the Old Town Music Hall, a 188-seat movie palace originally built in 1921, and now home to a 1925 Wurlitzer Theater Pipe organ.

And the event is Cinecon 59: a five-day film festival where cinephiles gather to experience rare, sometimes newly restored, and often otherwise unavailable classics from the silent and studio eras.

I was excited to attend this year, and see an incredible line-up of rare gems over five days, starting with Opening Night.

A Language All My Own (1935)

Paramount Pictures

Director: David Fleischer

Among the many animators working during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the Fleischer brothers (Max and Dave) left their indelible mark on the field with iconic and beloved characters like Popeye, KoKo the Clown, and of course, Betty Boop.

Cinecon opened this year with a newly restored Betty Boop cartoon, in which our titular heroine - a very successful nightclub singer - travels to Japan to perform in front of her adoring fans overseas. At a brisk 6 minutes, much of the cartoon's humor comes from Betty's flight in an anthropomorphic airplane (the plane literally "runs" down the runway), but it does include a unique Betty Boop number - the eponymous "A Language All My Own" - and plenty of classic Betty dance moves onstage.

A very fun opening to what promised to be an exciting weekend.

The Gold Diggers (1923)

Warner Bros.

Director: Harry Beaumont

Betty Boop was immediately followed by this light and airy rom-com, a film long thought lost until four of its six reels were found in the back of an old van a few years ago. Newly restored, and very likely premiering for the first time since its original 1923 release, The Gold Diggers tells the story of Wally Saunders (John Harron) who has fallen madly in love with chorus girl Violet Dayne (Anne Cornwall) and wants to marry her. Unfortunately, Wally's rich uncle and guardian, Stephen Lee (Wyndham Standing) pulls the plug on that dream - all chorus girls are ruthless gold diggers, after all - and he forbids the union.

Heartbroken, Violet turns to her best friend and fellow chorus girl, Jerry La Mar (Hope Hampton) who decides to show Uncle Stephen what a real gold digger is. Maybe once he falls for one himself, the stubborn old codger will realize Violet is truly in love with Wally, and let the two live happily ever after.

Jerry's plan is brilliant, but one thing she doesn't count on? Falling in love with Stephen herself.

I will admit this was a difficult one for me to follow because it was missing two reels, and even with the intertitles explaining the missing sequences, it felt a little discombobulating. But what did survive was beautifully restored, and it had some great laugh-out-loud moments.

Adventure's End (1937)

Universal Pictures

Director: Arthur Lubin

The last film I watched on opening night was this early, pre-Stagecoach (1939) John Wayne high seas adventure.

Funnily enough, Wayne plays "Duke" Slade, a pearl diver working in the South Pacific, who manages to piss off the locals and escapes their wrath by sneaking aboard a whaling ship docked nearby. Slade is immediately drawn into shipboard drama - the captain is dying and he doesn't want his beloved whaler to fall into the hands of his crafty first mate. He implores Slade to marry his daughter, Janet Drew (Diana Gibson), so he can name Slade his heir, and hand the ship over to the two of them.

Surprisingly (yeah, actually, not surprisingly since Diana Gibson is drop-dead gorgeous), Slade agrees to this mad plan, and he is named captain right before Captain Abner (Montagu Love) passes on.

Does first mate Rand Husk (Moroni Olsen) fall in line with this new arrangement? Of course not. He had his sights set on marrying Janet himself, and he sure as hell isn't reporting to some half-naked bum that clambered onto his ship.

So, Slade sure has his hands full. In addition to a new wife anxious to annul their marriage now that her beloved father has died, he now has to captain a whaler that hasn't caught anything in ages, deal with a mutinous crew, and somehow stop his meddlesome pearl diving partner, Kalo (Paul White), from making things worse.

This really was an adventure, even if a bit *cough* of a stretch when it came to the storyline... a dying captain marries his daughter off to some bedraggled stranger who just climbed aboard his ship? But eh, it is what it is. And the visual effects were spectacular for 1937. Some of the whale chasing sequences were clearly rear projection, but some others were done.... how???

0 notes

bonkusdonkus · 9 months

Text

Video Games are still GOOD! Just look a little closer!

I feel like everywhere I go I see people bemoaning how games aren't fun anymore, or getting stuck in a rage loop about how their favorite game series have been turned into cash farms by big AAAs who don't understand what video games are. And like, I get it. A lot of the big online Live service franchises have just turned to mush at this point, trying to squeeze every last penny out of you, and using psychological tricks to get you hooked so you keep coming back for more. And some of the big AAA single player games really feal like they're either recycling the same formula over and over, or chasing every trend they can find in a desperate bid for relevance. The games we love get drained of all the passion, artistry, and love that made us fall in love with them in the first place, replaced with monetization and mediocrity to squeeze our nostalgia for all it's worth. The devs make big promises, then fail to deliver over and over, and we get phoned in apology after phoned in apology.

It's exhausting, infuriating, downright unacceptable. I totally get why people get so bent out of shape about it. But, I also get really upset when people say things like "There are no good games anymore!"

Because... Listen. Listen, listen, listen.

There are still incredible, mind-blowing games coming out all the time. Games made with love, passion, and with creativity unrestrained by incompetent corporate leadership who don't know their butt from a hole in the ground. This year alone has been a MASSIVE year for videogames!

We got a Deadspace remake that was actually good, a 3D kirby game, TOTK, Pikmin 4, Like a Dragon Ishin, Final Fantasy 16, a remake of Metroid Prime of all things, Baldur's Gate 3 is tearing up the internet as we speak and breaking record after record, Street Fighter 6, the Resident Evil 4 remake, Hi-Fi Rush, the list goes on and on! And that's not even all of them! MORE are coming! Armored Core 6 is right around the corner and I CAN'T WAIT!

And that's not even mentioning the endless tide of incredible Indie games! There's so many! Indie devs have been goin NUTS this year. We got Dredge, a fishing horror game of all things, games like Psuedoreglia reminding everyone why 3D Platformers once ruled gaming, Warhammer Boltgun is just a solid boomer shooter especially if you're a 40k fan, Sons of the Forest, Wildfrost, Darkest Dungeon 2 finally came to steam, Dave the Diver somehow made being a fishing roguelike super engaging, Blasphemous 2 is almost here and it looks sick, and those are just the ones off the top of my head. So. Many. GAMES. just from this year!

If you're one of those people struggling with modern gaming, I understand. It's rough out there. But I'm begging you, please, please! Don't give up on video games! If you're sick of watching Activision Blizard spiral their beloved franchises into oblivion in a conflagration of short sighted greed, or seeing Ubisoft release the same handful of games over and over again with a different coat of paint, try expanding your horizons a bit.

Maybe experiment with some genres you've never tried, or try some old classics that you never got around to playing! Look into some Indie games, there's like a thousand videos on you tube shouting out tons of good ones, or just look at some reviews! There are so many games, of any genre you can imagine, and even some that defy genre altogether.

There are just too many good games out there to throw up your hands and say "Nope! I'm done!" After a bad experience.

#video games #indie games

0 notes

0thsense · 11 months

Text

7/11/2023

Wow it's been a while hasn't it? I guess I've been doing okay. Gym is going great honestly. I deadlifted 300 pounds and my shoulders are looking great. My trainer is away for a month which is annoying but oh well. I started running, I've gone two times so far and we will see how it continues. Dave the diver is fun. Started up stardew with Lily and Holly because Lily is/was going through a tough time, and Alex joined us. It's honestly not that fun but I feel sort of obligated to keep playing. In the past I think I would've found a solution or method for how to behave during our sessions to fulfill the goals of keeping Lily's mental up and also having fun. I learned that Alex had a bit of a crush on Lily and that definitely colors the experience a bit. Honestly over various points in my life I've thought about what it'd be like to be in a relationship with Lily. I don't think it would work out, and at this age in our lives I can't do that to her. Honestly I wouldn't feel good about Lily and Alex being together either, for Lily's sake.

I've been thinking a bit about how people in jolly have developed. In particular Ned who wanted to be a teacher and now has decided he just wants to retire early. He mentioned when he visited that it's okay to believe in what you want to if things are unclear, such as when it comes to nature vs nurture. He also alluded to not believing in christianity because then he would be obligated to give a lot of his money away basically. I used to think that people in jolly were less selfish than average, but it's probably not the case. If anything they are more selfish I think. It's left me a little disillusioned. I do think there's nothing wrong with being selfish, and it's the natural way most people live. But I wish more of my close friends were gripped with desire to do more beyond just secure the wellbeing of themselves and their loved ones. Of course by my actions I am a complete hypocrite here. I have done nothing for a world and for all I know I will just be a leech the rest of my life.

That last sentence was definitely my self hate coming up involuntarily. The latest theory in me-town for why I can't do work is that when I try, it triggers all of my self hate that I can suppress or distract myself from when I'm doing other things, even going to the gym. Confronting it is difficult. I don't remember if I've talked about this before but I'm also beset with feelings that I'm just not built well for our current society, which further makes me think that I will make nothing of myself, or that it's not even possible. Unlike Ned who believes strongly in free will, I believe strongly in determinism. I think that much of your personality lies in your genetics. I'd like to know what societal roles my ancestors filled during the hunter gatherer days, and find the analogue in current society if it still exists. You know how some successful people talk about finding what they were meant for? From a genetics perspective, because our society has changed so rapidly, many people have nothing they are built for today.

I'm thinking about trying to write a short story, but I'm not sure where to start writing. The initial setup for these things is always unbelievably annoying. I read on the chatgpt nsfw subreddit about erotica authors relying on spending enormous effort prompting chatgpt to write for them, and I can't help but wonder why they became authors in the first place. I wonder if they feel empty, or if they actually just feel perfectly fine. I think that the emptiness that bag-securing dispassionate people are accused of might actually just be projection from people who feel empty/would feel empty from not achieving "loftier" goals. But I wonder what's the source of the difference. I remember asking Martin about his goals a while ago, and he didn't really have any. I really wonder what's the difference.

0 notes

walker-journal · 3 years

Text

Bellyflop into the Abyss (Dave, Mina, Adam- POTW)

Characters: Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir), Wilhelmina Fitzroy (Nix-Virginia), David Herring (Selkie-Immo)

Summary: Seeking ways to combat the rifts opening across White Crest, Adam and Mina meet with Dave and dive into the sea of a Demon Dimension in search of answers

Content Warnings: Head Trauma, Parental Death mention, Gun Use

Adam’s shoes sloshed on the partially flooded floor of the empty convention center, beckoning for Mina to follow. Deluges of water expelled from the dimensional rift in the Common had begun to create pools of standing water around White Crest’s greenspace, gradually rising and spreading to the ground floors of nearby buildings.

“So I’ve set up a meeting with another hunter who's been fighting underwater monsters for a long tide,” Adam explained as he waded through the strangely colored waters from another world towards a staircase. “Before the portal opens we’ll probably want any advice we can get y’know?”

The water was high enough that Mina had simply taken off her shoes and left them in her car before she and Adam had made it to the common. It wasn’t like there was anything in the water that could hurt her before the water itself healed her. She couldn’t afford to ruin or lose another pair of shoes, seeing as how she… kept ruining and losing her shoes. She’d been sleeping (in the loosest sense of the word) in the woods more and more, and that was more detrimental to her footwear than she’d imagined.

“That works for me,” Mina said, nodding as she looked around in the water, watching out for creatures that might pop out. Mina agreed to this because she couldn’t not. She wanted to help people. She wanted to protect people. She wanted to feel useful. “What, exactly, are we looking for in the portal? Just a way to close it, right?”

Of course all hell had broken loose while Dave had been locked up in Rio’s scribary. If he hadn’t already been in a piss poor mood thanks to the lancing pain where his arm was healing, one of the hell dimensions looked like it might even be fun. But with a firm warning from the doctor that he could lose the rest of the functionality in his arm if he didn’t let it heal, Dave knew better than seeking out new hunts in new waters while under the weather. When Adam had approached him with ideas for a frogman mission, the best he could offer was the equipment to keep anyone else from drowning.

Dave had set up his gear on the roof, considering the rumours of how high the tide would come in, and it kept him out of sight of wandering eyes. His pelt was carefully folded to the side, constantly in sight. Just in case it was needed, considering how much faster. It was a sign of trust that might well go right over the young hunter’s head, but Dave didn’t mind that so much.

At the vibrations of footsteps heading up the water-soaked stairs, Dave turned to the emergency exit door he’d wedged open. He raised his less injured arm to greet Adam, but his features dropped into a frown as a second figure followed him through. Fuck. Mina. The last time he’d seen her, he’d nearly crushed the life out of her. Dave took a step away from the gear behind him, hoping that having one arm in a loose wrist sling would make him look less threatening. “Hey.” He said gruffly, his tone contrite. “Not gonna hurt you again. I was sick. I’m sorry.” Better to get that out of the way before she freaked out.

“Yeah some clue to what caused it to open, maybe what’ll close it,” Adam continued as they walked into the room, the Hunter’s shoe’s squelching from the trip through the sudden bottom floor.

“Yo! Professor Porpoise! This is Mina and she…”

Adam paused midsentence, brown eyes flicking between Mina and an apparently contrition-struck Dave.

Aw shit, bad blood with the Scuba Hunters. Adam swallowed and looked over his shoulder at Mina, wondering if he just walked her into a meeting with her mom’s sealy exboyfriend who ruined the Atlantis family through bad self-care or something.

“Alright, good,” Mina said, structuring everything into mission objectives in her head as she followed Adam up to the roof. “Find out what’s happening, make it stop, keep the Commons from becoming the next Dark Score Lake. Sounds--” She stopped in her tracks when she saw Dave, though.

Mina’s first thought was to make sure that Adam knew the danger and then get them both out of there, as against the idea as the other hunter might be. But Dave… wasn’t attempting to hurt either of them. She let her eyes scan over the selkie, taking in his posture, his facial expressions, his arm in a sling. And his words were confirmation of what she’d thought, that something had been wrong. (She still remembered his words, how he’d thought she was a monster, how he’d broken her like it was nothing.)

“Hi,” Mina said, her tone cautious, but there was relief there, too. She’d been right when she thought that something was wrong. And, besides, there was no one to stop her for forgiving him. He’d been sick. Something in him had seen her as a threat, as prey. Something had been wrong. She couldn’t fault him for that. He’d been kind to her, before, and she could see proof of that man standing before her. “I thought-- I thought something was wrong with you, then.” She cleared her throat. “So, ah, Professor Porpoise, was it?” She felt strange joking, still a little on edge, but she was trying. “I take it you’re our equipment expert, then?”

The air saturated with a pregnant pause as Mina weighed him up. Dave waited, quietly, for her reaction. He nodded in confirmation, gesturing to the slowly healing bite on his injured arm. Too slowly. Every bad incident was taking too long, and even with the infection cleaned out of his system and the rest he was careful to give it now, the joint of his elbow wouldn’t be the same. And then the moment passed as she repeated Walker’s newest nickname for him.

“Not sure if that’s better or worse than what I was being called before,” Dave eventually settled on gruffly, without a lick of heat to it, there was even a twitch of a smile. It was a good nickname, all things considered. He did love word play, even if he was considering finding some land mammal comparisons for the two of them.

“Something like that.” He looked over Adam and Mina’s gear with a critical eye. Mina wouldn’t need scuba gear, so her wet suit would have to do, and Adam’s scuba gear was recognisably combat oriented, with a rebreather, but limited. “Looks like you won’t be needing any knives between the pair of you. Take your pick of the rest of this. We’ll start with these,” Dave said, with small boards that could be clipped onto wetsuits, each featuring a clock, underwater compass, diver’s white board and small computer with depth sensors and tracking devices. “At the very least it should help the pair of you find each other if you get seperated, and if the portal plays nice with the comms, should help you get back here too. This,” Dave gestured to a streamlined black propellor with handles, “will let you,” Dave pointed to Adam, “keep up with you,” this to Mina, “and get away from some of the gnarly things in there. Pretty damn quiet, never had anyone have an issue with it that they wouldn’t have had without it.”

“As for what weapons you’ll need,” Dave gestured at a few options of underwater pistols, rifles, bangsticks and explosives, “it’s really gonna depend on how much time you want to spend killing things while in there. Firearms and bangsticks are a good call for merms, grindys and dievalves, but a bootstrap worm washed up here this last night. If you catch a hint of those, the better call is to swim away.” Dave rubbed his jaw. “The deeper you go, the weirder shit gets. Don’t go too deep.”

Adam knelt besides the black propeller and squinted at it. “This’ll be interesting.” It really hadn’t occurred to him yet that down in the depths he’d be the slow one. It was a weird feeling being the liability here. “Aww sweet bangsticks,” the Hunter looked at the explosives with affectionate reassurance, as if being able to blow things up made the prospect of diving into a alien world less unsure.

“How deep are you comfortable with going Mina?”

Taking one of the small boards Dave offered, Mina clipped it to her suit, checking to make sure that all of the components were working. Everything appeared to be in working order, though it wasn’t like she knew how to work half of the devices on it. She probably wouldn’t need to. Before, she might have been interested, might have wanted to know how all of the different parts worked so that she could explain them to Bex in a way that made this seem less like a life or death situation and more interesting, like a learning experience. Now, she just wanted to do her duty and exhaust herself and try to sleep.

Grabbing a few bangsticks, Mina looked at the firearms and decided against them. She was a terrible shot. She could only imagine that it’d be worse underwater. She looked at Adam. She was so tired but determined. “However deep it takes. We’re looking for something, right? We stay down until we find it.” She looked at his equipment.” Or until you run out of air.”

“Just keep factoring in decompression time the deeper you go. Hunter healing only accounts for so much,” Dave replied grimly. “Tide washes in through the portal for three hours and thirteen minutes each day, try not to miss getting back.” He had no doubt Adam knew the limits of the equipment he used like the back of his hand, but he also knew how hunters could get around their own bodies. He’d learned that first hand. There were a dozen more likely ways either of them could die, but the bends was a shitty way to go.

“If you’re within three to four hundred feet of the portal, I might be able to help if something goes wrong.” Dave held out a small ziplock bag with a slime covered mother of Pearl, handing it to Adam. Best not to ask what the slime was. “Spellcaster magic. You swallow it and it’ll put a few minutes oxygen in your blood. Hurts like hell and I only have the one.” A payment for the kind of job that had left Dave feeling like it’d be better if he could peel off his human skin too. If they were deep enough, that Pearl wouldn’t matter if some monster punctured Adam’s gear. If they were far enough, his pelt wouldn’t either. He looked from one to the other, determined, young faces, and hated what had bitten him just a little more.

“Three hours huh,” Adam repeated. It wasn't exactly a big window considering how broad their objective was here. They’d both have to economize their time in the portal, but Adam doubted splitting up would be a good idea in a Hell Dimension. The Hunter frowned at the puzzle, trying process what Mina and Dave were saying while trying to get a firm vision of what needed to be done.

The sheer impossibility of his calling, of holding back entire universes from encroaching on Earth, was crushing in its weight. The inevitability of everything being swallowed up in the Hells, how frail and tiny we all were in the grand scheme of things, yawned in the back of Adam’s mind. Not for the first time, Adam Walker secretly wished he’d never been shown the truth, that he could just be playing ball, blissfully unaware of how precariously Earth teetered to a vast uncaring abyss.

So Adam did what he always did when the cosmic insignificance got a little too real: He grinned and played the fool. It felt good, comfortable. It was the only way he could stay sane sometimes.

“Aw sweet! Sea witch jizz!” Adam guffawed and poked the bag experimentally. The fraternity boy let his mind drift away from the fact that he was about to plunge into an alien universe full of hazards humanity had never evolved to face, away from the inevitability that he’d keep doing this again and again until one day he didn’t come back. No one would ever know how, or where he died, or that it’d been for their sakes. Just like Dad.

It felt good to be funny, everything was fine if he made it funny.

“We’re looking for like...something to close the rift,” Adam replied to Mina with a confident nod and smile. When others were struggling you needed to be strong for them. A lifetime of athletics, drills, and just generally being an extrovert had acquainted Adam with the self-fulfilling nature of confidence, that lie you wore outwardly until it became real inwardly. “Like I dunno ..an off switch?” He shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ll figure it out y’know? But yeah def’ no going till we run outta air, I want to make it to date night with Nell.”

It was a cheerful lie of course. Adam never scheduled anything after Hunts. Surviving was a privilege not an assumption.

Mina couldn’t help but snort a little bit at Adam’s comment before she turned back to the task at hand. It was good. It was funny. It was nice to laugh. But they had work to do. She just wanted to do something good. Maybe this was her proving herself to herself. She wanted to prove that she could protect people. She wanted to prove that so much that it ached like a bruise. And maybe no one else would know but the three of them, but she didn’t care. She needed this.

“Okay, then we go only long enough to where we can make it back before the portal closes from no matter where we are with… at least ten minutes to spare. In case something goes wrong.” Mina set a timer on her board that she’d start as soon as she went in. She shot Adam a warning look, one laced with fondness. “And you, don’t pull out any short of heroics if things start falling apart within the last minute, alright? Of the two of us, I can survive if I get stuck in there.” Probably. “So you’re getting out first.”

She almost made him promise, but she didn’t want him to get hurt worse if he did try and pull something.

Looking back at Dave, Mina added, “Please get him out first if something goes wrong.” She shot Adam a smile. It was almost genuine. “Nell would have my head if you missed date night, after all.” But she went over the objectives: go in, find an off switch, whatever that meant, and get out. Whatever destruction was caused along the way would be dealt with as it came.

Even Dave’s lips quirked as he rolled his eyes at Adam’s antics, good-naturedly grumpy at the way his gift was being treated. In the face of… extraordinarily fucked bullshit, what else was there other than to laugh in the face of it. Adam had done this on the catfish hunt too. Even if his confidence in finding a magical off switch was a little too much even for Dave. Learning anything from the portal would be a win, even if it was somewhere to rig explosive or steel guards to stop some of the monsters coming through. But Dave knew he was too cynical and too old, and dampening that hope was a dick move. Hell, it wasn’t even his mission. The more the two of them got ready to go, the more Dave itched to ditch the sling and the constricting human clothes, fit in his better skin and be more fucking useful than playing a discount Q in this Mission Impossible.

The information that Adam was dating the dimension breaking spellcaster barely had a second to set in before Mina was giving Dave instructions on who to save. Enhanced healing or not, Adam was the fragile one here. And the one Dave knew better. But it wasn’t a promise he could keep. In the dark, deep water, it wasn’t a question of choosing, it was a question of who he reached first. He couldn’t distinguish between two swimming human sized forms until he was too close to change his mind. He nodded curtly. “Let’s not let it get that close,” was all he said.

He looked out to the portal, a icy chill spilling down his spine. That was the creeping dread of being somewhere he’d been before. Dave always got older, but no hunter aged with him for long. It still felt wrong to send folks who had barely touched adulthood into those unknown depths. What he wouldn’t give right now to be diving with them rather than sending them off without him. The first splash of water bubbled over the edge, spilling a clump of algae onto the ground. “It’s time. Try not to get eaten this time around,” Dave teased wryly.

Adam hadn’t been raised with any notions of male disposability, where the loss of a woman was somehow more emotionally significant then that of a man, thus obligating him to assume Mina’s life had more gendered importance then his own. Like most Hunter families, the Walkers didn’t see the gender of their children as relevant when training humanity’s protectors, and Adam fought alongside his sisters, aunts, and fem-cousins without any assumptions that he’d need to do a square-jawed Hollywood leading man sacrifice for their sake.

Nevertheless Mina’s insistence that he go out first and not try any heroics still bit at Adam in a way that had nothing to do with chivalry. It gnawed at him even as he smiled and nodded noncommittally at her good-natured implorement.

Why? Did he feel inadequate being the weak one here? Maybe? How’d that make sense though? He’d asked Mina to accompany him for exactly this reason. This was her speciality and everything she’d just said made logical sense. The tactical part of Adam’s brain had accepted that and already moved on.

Then...why had it tilted him so much?

Dave’s gentle ribbing and announcement of the portal opening came as a relief of sorts from the unwelcome thoughts sneaking their way into Adam’s head. Adam drew in a deep breath and let out a long exhale, broad shoulders rising and falling as the athlete put himself in the zone. This was the good part, that high you got right before the game started where everything started to make a simple violent sense. Adrenaline began to transmute anxiety in a peaked awareness of his own body and surroundings, climbing in euphoric intensity as Adam looked out the window to see a churning whirlpool pour open into thin air above the Common greens.

Adrenaline and Adam were old friends. It was the only drug he’d ever needed.

“Fuck yeah!” The Hunter grinned. “Nah don’t worry Professor Porpoise being swallowed is actually like...way more horrible than it looks in the movies, easy one outta ten won’t repeat. C’mon Mina! Let’s get flushed by the universe!”

Adam had begun the boot camp hustle down the stairs, laden with equipment, when he turned back to look up at his pelagic benefactor.

“Hey Dave, thanks man, like seriously, I owe you man this wouldn't be possible with you.”

“Flushed by the universe,” Mina said quietly as she followed after Adam, webbing already forming itself between her fingers. Scales formed on her arms, on her legs where the wetsuit ended on her calves. Her gills opened on her neck, ready to take in water. “Might as well be flushed by the universe, I suppose.” At this point, why not?

She followed at a more controlled pace than Adam, but Mina was practically buzzing with adrenaline, with energy. She was ready. She was so tired, but she was ready. Her body may have not been made for hunting, but it had been trained for it, and there was nothing she was more prepared for than this. For once, she would be the one with the speed, the healing, the capabilities. She was ready.

Looking back at Dave, Mina gave him a wary smile and said, “Who knows? This could go quicker than we think. We could be in and out of this within fifteen minutes.” Nevermind that neither of them knew how to close the portal, nor did they know what would happen when it closed. She was just hoping they didn’t get stuck in there.

Don’t thank me, Dave wanted to say. The weight of their debts, in Dave’s mind, was stacked in Adam’s favour. His life had hinged on Adam’s decisions plenty of times already. But he knew it might be the last time Adam got to say. The last time Mina would stand on firm soil, maybe. His heart twinged, and Dave quieted it. “I expect anything that doesn’t get used up back at the end of this,” he said instead, his voice so hard it could have been mistaken for brittle.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Dave replied to Mina with a raised eyebrow, then shrugged. “I’ll be here, waiting for as long as it takes. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” The third wave spilled over the portal into the common, and a young, small karkinoid lay in the grass on its back, wriggling as it tried to right itself again. A few days of this had left everyone evacuated from outside the flood zone with cordons keeping people away, but denial was a powerful drug, and a couple people were straying a little close. Dave sat on the roof, peering into the portal. He started his timer. Don’t die, was what he’d wanted to say.

Adam looked up at the portal churning a few feet above the green, trying to hold his ground as strangely water burst out of thin air as if reality were a dike that’d busted a whole. Doubts snuck their way into the Hunter’s brain as another water nearly knocked him off his feet.

So Adam decided to spit in fear’s face and defdefiantlyinately turned his back on the portal and gave Mina a thumbs up.

“See you in Atlantis Fitzroy,” he assured before jumping into the spatial tear backwards like it was a water park slide.

Then Adam’s body was being torn apart, for hours and just moments he was shredded down to the molecules in a space between spaces. He was completely conscious yet also obliterated.

So it took Adam a bit too realize he was now screaming and flailing like a dumbass in the deep.

There was no up or down, no sky, shore, or trench bottom. Adam squinted through the beam of his diving lantern light at an ecosystem that was entirely marine, a universe of endless water where his own branch of evolution had never taken place. He was just thankful that whatever otherworldly rules of water pressure existed here hadn’t crushed him immediately.

Stars didn’t exist here, but there was no shortage of light. Immense islands of bioluminescent coral drifted in the deep. Rainbows of biological light permeated through water from three-dimensional reefs ranging from glowing boulders to entire archipelagos of riotously colored polyps and anemones on the aqueous horizon. Adam glimpsed drifting forests of alien kelp, their slimy shadows hiding arboreal ecosystems of flowering growth and predation the naturalists of Earth could scarcely imagine. Currents of cold rippled through the water occasionally from submerged icebergs that had been hollowed out with caverns by the locals. Warmer currents were thick with shining heavenly cloudscapes that turned out to be bizarre forms of jellyfish on closer inspection. Some of the extraterrestrial Medusozoa shimmered with their own electrical charge, lighting arching within the colossal jellyfish flows like tentacled storm-clouds.

At first Adam thought he was in some kind of underwater aurora from all the waves of color shimmering around him. But as the Hunter’s eyes adjusted he realized there were actually tiny plankton-like creatures all around him, their bodies fluctuating together through spectrums of bioluminescent color as if it were some kind of eusocial communication.

“Hey...Mina,” Adam tried the coms as he looked around. “Can you hear me?”

Unlike Adam, Mina wanted to see exactly what it was that they were flinging themselves into. Even after Adam jumped in, she stayed back and stared, her heart beating rapidly. But she steeled her resolve and gave a nod to Dave before she dove in, hoping to have some sort of control over her descent.

No such thing. The moment Mina hit the water, she was in a current that even she couldn’t fight off. She tumbled through the water, moving so fast that it took the oxygen from her lungs even when it was supposed to be filtered in. She was disoriented and confused, but she adjusted. She was back in the headspace she’d held for twenty-something years, and that meant to be prepared for less than ideal situations. That meant being able to adjust to a world that was only water, and light came in a multitude of colors that took even her eyes a bit to adjust too, and that meant an immediate catalogue of her surroundings and person.

She hadn’t lost any of her gear, though it wasn’t like she had much in the first place. Adam was nearby, looking disoriented as he adjusted himself to wherever it was that the portal spit them out. Looking around, Mina couldn’t help but be slightly in awe of how beautiful it was. A world of endless water, no sign of the surface. She wondered if this was what the bottom of the ocean looked like. She wondered if it was better. But those weren’t the kind of thoughts she needed to have. She needed to focus. They had a mission.

Hearing Adam’s voice in her ear, Mina looked over to the other hunter. There wasn’t really anyway for her to talk back to him since she wasn’t wearing a mouthpiece, and it was likely that the sound of her voice would get lost underwater, but she gave him a thumbs up. Yes, she could hear them. Hopefully, they would have no trouble communicating back and forth with gestures.

Adam looked over the expanse of luminous plankton aurora, reef islands, and kelp forests. It was an entire universe of monster-infested haystack to search for a needle that might not even exist.

Adam felt the constriction of despairing panic at this impossible task grip his gut. But the Hunter took deep breaths that sounded thunderous in the diving mask.

Focus. The town is in danger. No second thoughts. Focus.

Ironically, the gift that made Adam valuable, the ability to sense any kind of supernatural creature was useless here. Every lifeform here was supernatural and the water was absolutely saturated with alien varieties of kelp and plankton. It was just dull static in the back of his head from so many Hunter vibes.

Kay, so the lead wouldn’t come from him. That meant…

“Hey Mina,” Adam began swimming down to her, leaving a small stream of bubbles in his wave. “We are looking for something that like...vibrates or gives off vibes similar to the portal.” Adam jerked a thumb back at the churning whirlpool in the distance that’d flung them into this universe. “Any chance you might feel a pull or like some vibrations in the water,” he asked, wishing they’d had time for Dave to give a course refresher on that particular bit of Aquaman wisdom. “It doesn’t matter how small it is,” he answered, “anything that tugs at your instincts.”

Mina’s eyes were designed to see in water, even without the aid of the luminous sea life around them. She could see the look on Adam’s face as he got closer, the look of being impossibly overwhelmed. She recognized it. She saw it in a mirror almost every time she looked. But they didn’t have time to be overwhelmed. Every minute that they were in the portal counted and had to be utilized to finding what it was that they were looking for.

She could feel vibrations, certainly, but Mina wondered if it was vibrations that she needed to be sensing at all. This was a supernatural artifact, something similar to the portal. A portal that opened up and let monsters loose. There had to be something about it that drew creatures to it, which meant, at least to her, that the key, whatever it might be, was something similar. It drew supernaturals to it. She would prefer if it was some sort of deterrent, but she couldn’t see that being the case. So she wasn’t trying to listen, to sense the key itself. She was headed towards something big. Something major.

There was a lot going on in one direction. She looked at the compass on her board. West. There was a lot of activity to the west. She pointed in that direction, hoping that she was right. If nothing else, they were in for an interesting time. There was something big down there.

Adam nodded and twisted the knob on the black water scooter that Dave had provided. The propeller churned to life and Adam felt a kinetic lurch as he surged forward through the water. Damn this thing had kick.

Silver light illuminated the deep growing brighter and brighter as they drew closer. Passing through another kelp forest, the Hunter pushed fronds out the way to see an incandescent sphere on the horizon. At first Adam had the crazy thought that it might be a submerged moon or even a star. Demon dimensions didn’t play by the same rules of physics as Earth after all.

But as they drew closer that ‘moon’ turned out to be an enormous pearl the width of a football stadium. It was nestled within an even larger clam, whose open ridged shell towered higher than most Earthen skyscrapers. The great pearl shone with its own inner light, casting the surrounding seas in a brilliant argent hues as if Mina and Adam were swimming through molten silver.

“Damn, got any vibes what we are looking for here,” Adam asked before seeing some scaffolding at the bottom of the pearl. Altars and tents made of seaweed formed a camp on the fleshy surface of the giant oyster’s interior. “Looks like the pearl has...uh ..worshippers?”

Keeping up with Adam’s water scooter was surprisingly easy; Mina never really knew how fast she swam. There was no one for her to race against, and she’d never utilized what she was for a hunt before. Being a nix and being a hunter had never correlated before. She was kind of glad to be useful for what she was, for this aspect of her life.

The Pearl was mesmerizing. Mina almost couldn’t look away from it. She looked at her hands, at the way the silver of her scales reflected in the silver of the pearl’s light, and she thought that she probably belonged in a place like this more than she did somewhere like White Crest. She could just… stay, make sure Adam got out with the key and closed the portal for good. Wouldn’t that be better for her? Wouldn’t she belong here?

Mina shook those thoughts away. Mission. They had a mission. And she still had a home and a life and people, even if she was distancing herself from people. More than that, she was there to do her job. That was what mattered. The job.

The pearl was definitely an epicenter of sorts for activity. Clearly, whatever intelligent life forms loved in this world had made the surrounding areas into some sort of temple. But there was no one around them, and that worried Mina they needed to be looking for a lot of life, and this place almost seemed abandoned.

Mina pointed again. Further. They needed to keep swimming.

“Careful,” murmured Adam as pressure suddenly began to build in the back of the Hunter’s head. “I’m getting like ...huge vibes here.”

The shape that first emerged from the murk appeared to be a tampa drill shell the size of an aircraft carrier, it’s ridged spire bearing spiraling designs that evoked a language Adam didn't understand. However its contours were a bit too smooth, with walkways and portholes grown into the structure of itself that no snail or oyster would ever need. It was then that Adam realized that this wasn’t the cast-off shell of a marine animal, but rather a submarine vessel that’d been grown by intelligent beings.

More of these massive organic submarines of calcium carbonate and chiten became visible as the divers pressed forward. Some types of shells were recognizable, while other ships were crafted from strange nautiloids and even submarines that appeared to be immense plants or a few titanic demonic fish that seemed perfectly alive despite the crew of lesser demons working inside their hollowed flesh. All the marvels of demonic biotechnology were connected together by enormous pyrosome colonies that formed long luminous tubes, perhaps to allow easy passage between ships.

“It’s like...a dockyard,” observed Adam, “for these demon shell ships.”

Mina was also picking up vibes, but they weren’t Fae vibes, hunter vibes. She felt ill at ease, like she had back when that creature had been loose in the lake. The two of them were small and insignificant in this vast, fathomless world with life that was possibly just as intelligent as life was in the place that they came from.

It felt like Mina’s stomach was trying to sink to the bottom of this bottomless place. Maybe Adam was onto something about Hellmouths ripping themselves open. She gave Adam a nod as he pointed out that this was some kind of dockyard. This was a horrifying place.

There was still a part of her that was aware that she could disappear here and stay.

They needed to steer clear of this area, but… the more Mina looked around, the more she felt like this was where they needed to go. Something was drawing her towards this area, something primal that she’d rather avoid. In a place like this, she believed, rather unfortunately, that places that she wanted to avoid were the very ones that they should head into. They needed to be quick about this. They needed to be careful about this.

Adam noticed a slight thinness in his breath as they passed under one of the behemoth shell vessels. His air supply was probably at the halfway point, but Adam felt like bringing that up would be counterproductive when they had a lead.

The each horned prong of the shell above them could’ve skewered earthly ships on its glossy spiral. Occasionally there were windows in the bio-vessel’s sides, not of glass, but made from translucent filmy slime stressed across the opening. Adam pressed a hand against one of the portholes and found the slime substance yielding and permeable.

“I think we can get in from here.”

Mina’s two main worries about this whole situation, as she looked at the strange ship, were knowing how much time they had left to do this and making sure she remembered the right direction to get back to the portal. That was what mattered. She needed to remember how to get them back to the portal. Or maybe Adam had some sort of gps machinery on his diving board. She wasn’t bothering with hers too much, trying instead to mesh hunter thoughts with nix thoughts in order to navigate this strange land. Find some sort of key. Get back. Insure they both survive. Close the portal. That was what mattered.

Wrinkling her nose a bit at the weird slimy material, Mina put her hand against it and pushed through. It wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d touched by far, but it still wasn’t pleasant. She was most worried about whatever sort of creatures they were going to run into. It’d been ominously quiet since they jumped in.

Adam wiped slime off his goggles as they drifted through the portal into the demon vessel. In some superficial ways the interior resembled that of an Earthly sea shell. A central columbell pillar ran through the shell from aft to its spiked stern. Whorls and sweeping structures expanded outward from the central columbella axis, forming great sloping charmpers with slickly smooth walls that were all linked by spiraling curvatures and twists rather than doors.

What furniture existed was grown out straight from the central coiling axis, though Adam couldn’t really guess what ergonomic purpose most of these chitin groves and indentations served.

Two creatures that appeared to be human sized moray eels covered in glowing pustules glided out from along a curving wall. Long sinuous strands extended eel demons’ pustules like seaweed wart hairs. These hairs caressed strange pearls and mussel clusters inset into the shell vessel’s walls, as if they were operating equipment of some kind.

Multiple sets of yellow eyes with large black pupils swiveled in their rows of sockets down the eel demons’ body to regard Adam and Mina. Both the head and apparent tails of the eel demons opened to reveal rows of glass-like teeth as they zipped through the water towards the intruders.

Mina would have been lying if she said that she wasn’t a little disappointed that the first creatures that they came into contact with weren’t mermaids. She really wanted to rip into a mermaid. It might be nice. It might get a lot of frustration out. But eels were fine, too.

Ducking out of the way as the creatures headed towards them, Mina considered the best course of action in dealing with them. She didn’t want to touch anything on them that glowed, fearing some sort of electrical backlash, and she didn’t want to touch those strange hairs, either. But she didn’t have any sort of ranged weapons, nothing that would help in a situation like this. As one of the creatures approached, she moved to the side and raked her claws against its smooth hide, causing the bulbous head with its mouthful of sharp teeth to turn back in her.

Mina jabbed the bangstick into the eel’s face and fired. Even creatures from whatever sort of Black Lagoon horror dimension this was didn’t enjoy a bullet to the face. There was the bang, and dark blood exited where the bullet went in, the creature’s body still floating even in death. Mina turned to Adam, hoping he was faring well. They needed to get moving. They had work to do.

Adam slid a still twitching demon off a long silver-tipped spear that had jutted out from what’d looked like a small baton. The human was less graceful in the water than his fey counterpart and red electrical burn marks stood out from long slices the demonic spine-hairs had seared through his diving suit. However Adam had apparently jutted the telescopic spear’s baton up against the thing grappling him and released a pressured seal that sent the silver spear straight through the demon’s innards.

Adam tried to keep focus as they swam through the smooth twisting gyres of the shell-ship. He would occasionally warn of presences beyond the next curve or loop, holding back as school of eel-demons, Vodnik, and even stranger creatures went about doing whatever inscrutable processes maintained a bio-tech vessel like this. It was tense business, ducking patrols and trying not to lose ones’ way in dizzying chambers of chitinous spirals that didn’t resemble any human norm of architecture or even up and down. The burning lashes across his chest throbbed and the air in his tank became ever thinner, but Adam kept his head on the mission. Surrendering to nervousness would likely be a death sentence here.

It was on reaching a porthole leading out into one of the Pyrosomes tubes that Adam discerned something resembling a central meeting point.

Pyrosomes were actually colony structures made from tiny organisms about a few millimeters in size. They often looked like cylindrical tubes of a gauzy texture that glowed with bioluminescence. But while Pyrosomes could get to about eighteen meters long on Earth, whatever extraterrestrial zooids these things were made of allowed the Water-Hell Pyrosomes to grow to far larger. Adam guessed they might even intentionally cultivated that way using whatever weird sciences the demons had at their disposal.

Glowing pyrosome tubes, some many hundreds of feet in length and wide enough to drive semi-trucks through, extended from each of the behemoth shell-submarines. Many of the pyrosomes linked the ships together in pulsating networks, perhaps to exchange crew and cargo. However, Adam saw a great many pyrosome tunnels extended towards a central point, a great helical axis of coral that this vast hell armada seemed tethered around.

“See that coral island that looks like a helix? I think whatever’s on there drew the demons here,” Adam theorized. “It might be what we’re looking for.”

They needed to hurry. That was all Mina could think about as they moved through these strange ships, this strange world. Adam was looking worse for wear, thick marks in his suit showing burned skin, and she knew they were running out of time. His tank wouldn’t last that long. Mina needed to get him out of there. She should have just come alone. She wouldn’t have had to worry about air supply or another person. Adam was one of the few hunters in the entire world that tolerated her, liked her, too. She didn’t want to lose that, especially not here in this underwater hell.

Eyes following where Adam pointed, Mina looked towards the helix. Even she could feel… something. A draw, a pull, a desire to head in that direction. She had no doubt that every creature near them felt that pull, too. That was the most dangerous area. That was, she was sure, where they needed to go. She hated that. She really, really hated that.

Mina nodded to Adam and pointed towards the glowing tube that would take them down to the helix. That’s what they needed to do, right? They needed to go down there, take whatever they found, and hoped that it helped the Common stop flooding with monsters every day. Taking a bit of initiative, she headed to the tube and, before she could think twice about it, got in it and hoped for the best.

It wasn’t like Mina meant to let out the slight scream as she was rocketed down the tube. She hadn’t. She was usually more composed. But she hadn’t been prepared for the speed, and she hadn’t been prepared for the tumble she took as she came out on the other end, and she hadn’t been prepared for the glowing sight that awaited them. This was where they were supposed to be.

And it was filled with monsters.

Adam caught his bearings and took in their surroundings. The stony spirals rotated parallel to one another. One was comprised of scarlet Precious coral and the other of aquamarine Octocoral. Though separate, these colony structures orbited each other in the pattern of a helix by some quirk of gravitation Adam couldn’t comprehend. But the source became clear as Adam perceived two glowing coral keys of the same respective coral types nestled on the spiraling ridges. They filled the water with conflicting hues of red and blue, blending into livid purples in some places at the helix's’ center. Light seemed to warp around them, twisting into strange flares and halos around the keys. Adam had a gut instinct that it was their power that was causing this helical gravity and had drawn the demonic armada here.

Unfortunately, the stares from an aquatic school of luminous eyes, antennas, and blind tentacle feelers extended their direction gave Adam the feeling that sheer surprise was the only reason and Mina weren’t already dead.

“Mine, grab the blue key!” Adam shot up towards the scarlet key, stabbing the silver spear through a giant brain covered in spines that’d tried to impale him against the reef.

There were the mermaids. Mina had been wondering when she’d see them. While Adam was dealing with something that looked like a creature out of some sort of science fiction movie, Mina had something a little more understandable to deal with, and, as one of the mermaids came at her, she went straight for the lure before aiming low, ripping into the creature’s head with her knives. And another one. And another one. She could feel their teeth tearing at her wetsuit, tearing holes in it and her skin. She wasn’t safe there just because she was a water dweller as well. Food was food.

Mina wasn’t food. She was claws and blades and so much pent up aggression. She wanted to fight. She just wanted to fight. So she did, against mermaids and Vodniks and creatures that she didn’t even have names for. All the way to the blue key that Adam mentioned.

It was so bright. It’s glow filled the whole space, blending with the other key’s shades of red. It was so nice to look at, so pretty. Mina was drawn into the soft blue colors, wanting to bask in them for as long as possible. No. Focus. She needed to focus. She had to focus. She snatched up the key, washed in a blue glow. The key’s glow dimmed, and it was warm in hand. So warm. She wrapped her hand around it tighter and and started swimming to Adam. They needed to go. They needed to go soon. The creatures were turning to look at her, drawn to the glow in her hand. They needed to go.

Adam skewered an eel demon to the coral with the spear in one hand while reached towards the scarlet key with the other. He squinted past the ruby halos and flaring star-like lights in the water, hand straining towards the key resting on the opalescent curves of a hollow shell, like on idol on an altar.

Adam’s hand closed around the key, and the world exploded in pain and blood.

A spine projectile punched through Adam’s back and out the front of his chest like a surgical bullet. The brain urchin creature had drifted dying in the water from Adam’s spear, but had sent a departing gift after its slayer in the moment of victory.

Everything was agony as Adam’s vision was rimmed as darkness as he fumbled at the controls of the water scooter. “C’mon,” he gasped, rapidly losing blood and air as hungry demons closed in.

Adam flicked the water scooter up to its threshold speed and held on as they tore into the deep towards the whirlpool between worlds.

Mina screamed as she watched Adam get skewered by one of those creatures. No. No. He had to get out. He was supposed to get out. He couldn’t die here. She started swimming after him as fast as she could, easily keeping up with the water scooter as she guarded their backs.

With each creature that got too close, Mina slashed out at them, baring sharp teeth and wielding sharper knives. Go go go. They had to go. They had to get to the portal and get out. She finally looked up at it, watching with horror as it got smaller even though they were getting closer.

The journey to the keys had taken too long, but the journey back to the portal was an ascent. Mina knew they were going to get there before Adam ran out of air. At least, she hoped. She just didn’t know if they were going to make it before blood loss became a problem. The blood spilling into the water like an ink trail was attracting all the monsters, making them swarm.

The portal was close. In her head, Mina said, Fuck it, as she turned to Adam and grabbed him before swimming them both as fast as she could through the portal. The exit was as rough as the entry, spitting them back in White Crest. Mina was gasping as she breathed straight air instead of water, as she dragged Adam with her towards where they’d left Dave. “Still with me, Walker? Come on, come on, come on. You’ve got things to do, you know.”

Somewhere they tore past the sun-like radiance of the giant pearl temple, Adam had slipped into darkness. He drifted down into himself, everything was so peaceful and numb. Soon even the hiss of the air tank became muted in some inner distance. There was no duty. No pain. Nobody to save and suffer for. It was just Adam in the undemanding dark.

How long he drifted like that Adam couldn’t really say.

An exhausted part him wanted to stay, but Adam knew that other people were gave everything meaning, and they weren’t in here.

So Adam forced his eyes open, shuddering and coughing and he coughed up blood and hell water on the Commons grass. The agony and color came rushing back like a punch to the solar plexus. He just lay there for a bit, the Earth’s grass reassuringly familiar.

The rough coal edges of the key bit into the skin of Adam’s palm, reminded himself that it all hadn’t just been a nightmare.

“So Mina,” Adam rasped grinning blearily up at his hunting partner. “How’d ya like Atlantis?”

The longer Dave watched the portal, the longer he itched to jump in it. For them, and for the simple siren call of water he wasn’t acquainted with yet.Each tide brought the swirling vibrations of their bodies moving through the water until one wave he couldn’t feel them at all. Instead the waves brought monsters, some which could be deterred by firing backsticks into their heads and some that Dave couldn’t hunt so easily with one arm in a sling. He kept people away instead, all the while making sure he had skin in the water, as the minutes went by and threatened to become hours, until the tide began to ebb.

Dave’s heart stayed in his throat until he felt the vibrations of the pair returning, racing through the water and a little closer with each wave. He turned as the next wave rushed through the portal, and spat out the pair of them with it. Alive, gasping for air. Dave couldn’t help his relieved grin. They filled the air with the stench of quickly spilling blood, freshwater algae and eel slick. His smile slid off his face as he saw the injuries that were becoming a staple of hunts with Walker, and hurried over to meet them. The first aid kit in his bag wasn’t going to cut it.

#gun use tw #parental death tw #head trauma tw #potw #Portal Combat #seizethecarpe #drowningisinevitable #walkerjournal

12 notes · View notes

leglesstv · 3 years

Photo

THE DARK DAYS BACK– 2021

I have been struggling with how to start this piece. I guess I should tell you a little about myself.

What I do for a living is not who I am, yeah, I get to blow shit up and its super fun but it’s not what defines me.

I have been a water baby all my life from growing up on the beach to commercial diver.

The ocean or the ocean’s rhythm ebbs and flows within me.

Surfing has been the biggest part of my life for longer than I care to remember. For sure I have been out the water for extended periods before while working on projects overseas. Always with the knowledge that I will be getting wet again, sometime soon. I have never before been concerned that surfing will not be an option. I have always just figured I would surf till the day I die.

October 2019 we were still basking in the glory of a once in a lifetime trip to the Ments. 10 Kneelos on a boat sailing around the Mentawai’s. Absolutely what dreams are made of. Red, Giggs, Lester, Larry, Craig, Steve, Johan, Andrew and myself. Jason the skipper of Switchfoot made it 10 chargers in total.

We had also had a run of solid swell at the local, which for me was all time as my new Kneeon that Nick had shaped for me had arrived. Nick and I had chatted over the phone, had a few video calls and bam!! this magic carpet arrives. Oh my sack, I have never been happier with a stick. My surfing went up in leaps and bounds. Never been happier in my life.

Around this time, I started to get pains in my left hip which radiated down the leg. Initially it wasn’t too bad but it got progressively worse. It got to a stage where I literally couldn’t walk anymore. Thinking it’s got to be the hip, off I went to the hip specialist. Had some photos taken of the hip, back to the clever guy’s office and this is where things started to go south.

Mate, as hips go, yours look beautiful but I recommend you go see a neurosurgeon.

Your spine doesn’t look good at all.

You can imagine, I’m thinking “what the fuck, are you sure you’re looking at the right X-rays.”

So, at least by this time I was on crutches to help me get around and waddled off to see Dave. Dave is a neurosurgeon that had done some work on my spine before.

Same sort of story, pain in my shoulder, radiating down my right arm.

True as nuts, I had gone to the shoulder clever guy who had told me exactly what the hip guy had just told me. Anyway, a long story short, Dave did a decompression on the C7 and T1 vertebrae.

I was booked on a boat trip to the Maldives with my good mate Guy. He is a stand up but I love him anyway. I manage to get on the plane without really having tested the neck or having had time for rehab of any sorts. Probably not my brightest move. We had solid swell the whole trip, but truth be told, I was in constant pain.

Once back in SA, I was off to see Dave again. X-rays and CT scans followed, and Dave said unfortunately we going to have to fuse the C7 and T1 but we will go in through the front this time.

Absolutely no problems whatsoever and I was back in the water 3 months later.

Dave, howzit I’m back. More scans and X-rays (starting to know everyone by their first names by now) followed. Yip, pretty much the same story, crumbling, degeneration of the spine.

I was booked in for a decompression on the L4 and L5. The procedure was pretty standard and uneventful. Unfortunately, just as with the neck, the decompression was not successful. A week later, I was booked in for a multistage fusion, L4, L5 and S1.

So, they going to open me up again along the same incision line, not feeling great about that but hey, there are worse things in life. Waking up from this op was a rude awakening. Fuck me this shit hurts. Trying to move was pretty tender for sure. Anyhow the drugs did their thing and a few days later I was able to get out of bed and lose the dreaded catheter. Walking was fair interesting to say the least, I had to laugh at myself as I looked like a mummy.

Little shuffles with my hands out front but hey, I was mobile. The day they let me out rolled around. Crap balls I felt like shit and was fair tender. It felt like someone was taking a mallet to my head.

I remember battling to get into the wheelchair to get me to the car. The nausea was just incredible, I thought I was going to throw up all over the place. Between the porter and Jo (my wife) they managed to get me into the car.

The ride home is not too far but I was deteriorating at a rapid rate of knots. Got home, Jo managed to get me onto her “throne” where I just passed out.

Through the rest of the day and night I remember fleeting moments of being awake. Couldn’t move, didn’t know what was going on. Basically, a vegetable on the couch.

The next morning Jo realized that this wasn’t good. Somehow or other she managed to bundle me into the car. I have a memory of the gardener holding the car door open with a look of concern on his face. The next thing I was on a gurney at the hospital with Debbie staring at me. Debbie is Jo’s business partner and one of my best friends.

Tests and more tests.

Somehow or other I had picked up Bacterial Meningitis.

Jo had literally just saved my life. A few hours later and it wouldn’t have turned out well.

Some serious antibiotics and medication I can’t even pronounce later, my infection levels started coming down, but the headaches wouldn’t go away. Back into the noisy tube for some more scans. Was good to see all the guys and gals in radiology again.

Crap balls I had a rupture in the thecal sac. Basically, it’s a sac that runs up your spine and over the brain. The sac contains cerebrospinal fluid. When leaking the sac “collapses” on the brain causing insane headaches, headaches that are just next level. Think migraine on steroids.

Back into theatre to patch up the leak.

Once again, they opened me up on the same incision. Success at last, once again freedom day arrived and was bundled into the wheelchair again and back into the car.

Was great to be home with the animals for sure. Jo had made a bed for me in the lounge as walking at this point just really wasn’t an option. To say I was tender would be a bit of an understatement.

A day later, I got this incredible pain down my left leg. Kinda like being hit with a cattle prodder. I remember screaming as the first one hit. Absolute agony, pain like I had never felt. It would last for about 30 seconds but in that time, I couldn’t move a finger for fear of escalating the pain. I just screamed and screamed. Over the next two days, it got worse and more frequent.

This was an incredible low point. I remember crying like a baby. I was emotionally drained by this time. I remember thinking I just want to be normal again. Remember, I can hardly walk, can’t even get down on the toilet to take a dump. I hadn’t had a shit for as long as I can remember.

My wife was washing me and dressing me. It was taking its toll.

This carried on for two days until it got to a point where I just couldn’t move.

An ambulance and crew had to come and peel me off the couch eventually. They dosed me up, got a stretcher underneath me and carried me out to the ambulance.

Jesus, what the fuck!! But hey, could be worse…right?

Back to my favorite people with the noisy machine. Hi everyone, true as nuts I’m back. Another scan revealed that the crushed bone material that they place between your vertebrae was leaking out and catching the nerve going down my leg.

Another twirl in theatre to clean up the debris, by this time the clock on the wall and I were good friends. I used to watch the seconds tick by as the anesthetic started kicking in. I woke up from here being wheeled into high care. Now I have to tell you this was by far my worst experience.

The following morning two nurses came to wash me. I was in absolute agony and they kept moving me and turning me. I was screaming in absolute agony, but they wouldn’t stop and no-one came to help me. To this day I can’t understand it.

Couldn’t wait to get out of there and back on to a ward. Or so I thought…

From there they wheeled me into an isolation ward. Apparently, I had picked up the dreaded hospital Super bug. My infection count was in the 400’s (8 being normal) and to make matters worse, the headaches were back. I had sprung another fucking leak in my Thecal sack. FUCK!!!

Back to my old friend on the wall with the ticking second hand. Again, opening me up on the same line. This time I wasn’t friends with the clock on the wall.

Dave patched me up as best they could.

What the actual…

My new home turned out to be a glass box in the ICU. In isolation in intensive care. Jesus, this isn’t good.

Nurse and doctors were putting gear on to come into the glass box. “What’s going on???”

Machines were everywhere beeping and hissing. “Fuck me, this isn’t good.”

Waking up at 4am with people sticking needles into you to draw blood loses its shine after a while. I think all I ate for the two weeks was watermelon in the morning that Debbie used to bring me with a cup of coffee. When I say bring, I really mean bribe the porter.

Now you must remember I have basically been bedridden for 6 weeks and not had an appetite at all.

I could see the concern on peoples face when they came to visit, as much as they tried to hide it, it was there.

Nights were the worst and the tears used to flow. So as not to let the pressure in the Thecal sac become too great, they drained it every few hours. This as I’ve said to you before brings on insane headaches.

Morphine and I were no longer friends. It made me incredibly sad and depressed.

I came off the morphine by choice and gritted the teeth. Absolutely worth the pain.

Lester and Marco organized a live feed for me for the warmup session before the SA Kneeboarding Champs. What legends.

Once again, I cried like a baby, but these were tears of joy. It was so good to watch my mates surfing and everyone saying “hi” on the feed made me feel like a million bucks. The brotherhood is strong here in Cape Town. Love these boys.

At this point I was literally skin and bone, but my infection levels were coming down and I had managed to get out of bed and make the few steps to the toilet. The sun was definitely coming up for me. For the first time in a long time, I thought I was going to make it.

Fuck, the thought of dying in that glass box haunted me every night there.

Freedom day was like no other. Getting out of there into the sunshine and colors and breeze was a sensory overload, but hey, I was out and feeling good…ish.

My mates, Debbie and Sian had kept me going. Sian is my office manager and best friend.

She tried to feed me all the way through to no avail, true as nuts she used to arrive with bags of food.

God it was good to be home.

Reality starts to kick in pretty quickly. Fuck me am I ever going to be able to surf again, am I ever going to be able to sit on the toilet again (it’s the little things hahaha…)

Time to reset the mind from “fuck me, I don’t want to die in here to I need to get in the water again”.

Enter the amazing Lara, the physio that is a gift from the angels. I remember that late December day shuffling and shaking my way into her office. By this time, all my muscles had wasted away and just holding my frame up was as much as I could muster. I could do about 2 minutes before all my muscles started shaking from fatigue and I was still shuffling like a mummy.

The question Lara asked me off the bat was “what do you want to get out of this.”

“Just get me back in the water please,” was my response.

At this point it was a fantasy I had to believe in, physically I was a mess, but I think mentally I was scarred and the mental trauma was real. But fuck it, if I could survive that, I can achieve anything. The will to get back in the water was incredible and became all consuming.

Walking around the house became my exercise routine initially and braai tongs my best friend (in case I dropped stuff as bending was not an option). I had to hold on to everything at first as I walked along, eventually I could skip the kitchen counter on the way to the TV room and skip the chairs on the way to my room, and so it went on until I could just about walk the whole house without holding or resting.

Lara had given me gentle low impact stuff to do, just to tone the muscles and stretches to get some life back in the buggers. Everything hurt. This was a continuous process that I did all day every day for a few weeks. I was starting to feel more stable on my feet which did wonders for my mental wellbeing. Progress was gradual but I started noticing results which made me feel like a million dollars.

Getting behind the wheel again was a massive boost for me. My buddy Kante who is a running coach, walked with me from my local to St James, what a joy being next to the ocean again, mind surfing every bump that came through. I steadily built this up over time. Eventually I could make it to Muizenberg and back (5 kms). Everything ached at this point and the thought of shortening every walk was ever present. 4am wake ups every day can be a challenge and for sure there were mornings I couldn’t bear the thought of getting up. Sore back, sore hips, it’s dark and it’s cold, fuck this shit. On the odd occasion that I didn’t manage to get going, that feeling of worthlessness would set in. What the fuck is wrong with you, don’t you want to get back in the water? That’s not a cool feeling. I have probably missed 3 days in the six months I have been rehabbing. A 45-minute 5km walk followed by an hour of rehab back at home. I can’t begin to count the many lonely hours I have spent in the dark, walking and processing thoughts and priorities.

My weekly visits to Lara are always a highlight. My flexibility is measured as well as my strength. Some weeks just like some days are better than others. Lately there are a few moments of some days that I am totally pain free. These can quickly be followed by days and moments of crappy pain, but I will take the good ones for sure. Setbacks some and it’s natural to be bummed by them. Thinking “end goal” always helps. Watching Billy Kemper’s story after that crazy injury in Morocco has inspired me tremendously and there is a kinship that forms in adversity.

To keep the spirits up, I have ordered me a new board from Nick (Kneeon) which should arrive any day.

Jedd has also shaped me a 5’4 twinny that looks more like something that should be flying in space rather than the water. Can’t wait to get these beauties wet.

The daily grind continues relentlessly and it’s not always easy to appreciate the reasons for the dark hours one spends with oneself on the rehab trail. I want the prize now. Sheesh, it’s a constant battle upstairs. Here’s the weird thing, the closer I get to the end of April (paddle out day…hopefully), the more fearful I become. Will I be able to, and can I still?

All this and more just keeps swimming in the head and there’s the self-doubt.

Fuck it’s terrifying.

I have gone over it a million times in my head, do I just paddle out at a gentle beach break and see how it goes. Na, that scares me more. Soft waves are hard work and the amount of torque on the spine terrifies me. What if the nuts and bolts pop out?

There is no way in hell I am going back to that building with the big red cross on it. This drives me harder for sure back on the road, back to the floor and core exercises.

Lara assures me the hyperextension of the back I have obtained through this time will definitely be fine for paddling.

The torque and pressure on the lower back coming off the bottom and turning off the top, is what scares the crap out of me. The reef and I are intimate, god knows I have bounced and scraped along her so many times. I have certainly paid my dues.

Wiping out doesn’t scare me, it’s that word again “TORQUE”.

Perhaps I will just go straight on the first few. That in itself presents a bit of a problem at the local, but that’s where my head is.

I know you will all understand this, “what if a section just presents itself, just asking to be slapped”.

It is so ingrained in each and every one of us, that muscle memory just takes over. Going to have to be ever vigilant.

I have swum out to the peak just to be out there with the guys. The first time was not great. It took me so long just to get to the water. Jumping off the railway line so not an option. Doing the walk around and trying to get over the rocks was tricky to say the least.

Feeling the water over my feet was an absolute delight, but crap balls, had the water got colder since the last time? As soon as I laid in the water, it dawned on me that this is going to be quite the journey.

I couldn’t swim on my stomach as the pain was intense, but fuck it, I was going out. I swam on my side and back. Eventually I made it, the guys cheered and whooped, I felt like I had just won the lottery.

It was so good to be part of the conversation out there again, it was so good to hear how stoked the guys were for me, life was good.

I fed off this like I had been starved of life for ages.

Today being the Saturday before the Wednesday that I go back to Dave (the surgeon), brings turmoil to my emotions.

I’m not sure what I am scared of more, being told you aren’t ready or yeah, go get in the water. I am so scared of not surfing to my full potential again. Every day closer brings more panic. I just want it to be over now.

Wednesday morning dawned (but not really), up at 4am and back on the road. Usually, I am thinking about the workday ahead but this morning not so much.

My head is swimming with what ifs. What if there is still something wrong, what if I can’t anymore, what if, what if…

On the drive to see Dave, the surgeon, my heart is beating at a million beats/minute.

It’s good to see Dave again in a weird type of way, he really is a very cool guy.

Anyhow, he sends me off for some more pictures of the spine. Gotta say I was staring at the radiologist for some clues, but nothing.

The stress is killing me, and I feel like my heart is going to jump out of my chest.

So, back up to Dave with the thumping heart, I can hear it in my ears.

It all looks brilliant mate. What… I could not believe what I was hearing. He took me through the X-rays explaining what he was looking for and everything was just right.

There’s no use putting off the inevitable he says to me, go get in the water…but don’t be stupid. I wanted to scream it to the world!

Obviously, the doubts started kicking in hard right about now, but hey, I had gotten the green light.

Thursday morning I was off to Lara for physio. I couldn’t wait to tell her the good news. The muscles on the left side of my back had been in spasm for two weeks now, so as thrilled as she was, there was the don’t be stupid again.

I had coached myself in my mind for months now, high tide, small waves and just go straight…right.

Friday morning and the reports started coming in. There’s a bit of a wave at the local.

“It’s go time.” With my heart in my mouth, I started packing the car.

Sweet Lord, it had been a while, I had to keep double checking I had everything packed.

I don’t think I noticed any other cars on the way, I was mind surfing all the way through to the local.

I got there a few hours before the high just to get my head straight and check the lineup.

There were some chunky 4 footers coming through, but I wanted some more water on the rock. I watched my mate Dave paddle out and get some screamers.

Steve finally arrived, “I thought you would be in your suit already” he says.

This is it, heart in the throat again, off we went.

Sheesh it was so good to feel the waves crashing over my feet and legs again.

Jumped on my board and started paddling.

Woooohoooo absolutely no pain. Got out to the takeoff zone and everyone was cheering and welcoming me back. How humbling.

Mickey Duffus, a local big wave legend was out. Everybody back off he bellowed, this man hasn’t surfed for 6 months.

For some reason, this made me relax and just enjoy the moment.

Something started standing up out the back, Steve was sitting in the channel waiting for me to have my first ride.

“You going Mick?” I heard someone ask.

Yip I heard coming out my mouth, I spun and went.

Muscle memory and familiarity with the wave kicked in. I made the drop…Fuck I couldn’t believe it came around the section and just flopped off my board.

Steve and Dave had the biggest smile on their faces. The emotion of the occasion just swept over me like a wave, and the tears started flowing. All I kept thinking about was lying in ICU thinking fuck, I don’t want to die in here to taking off on the first wave.

Well, for the rest of the session, I absolutely sent it, trying to take off as deep as possible on the gnarliest set waves. All the coaching I had done in my head for the last few months went straight out the window.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Damn, I felt so alive, without a doubt, the happiest man on the planet. When I got back to the car park, all of the Kneelo crew were in the car park and boy were they happy for me.

Sean Thompson was there too, shooting my waves and recording the moment.

How blessed am I. Nothing was getting the smile off my face.

When I lay in bed that night, I kept thinking of the months of rehab and hard work I had gone through. The many lonely dark hours of the mornings, but I had done it.

The next morning, we were on it at first light with the Westside boys coming through as well. The Kneelo brotherhood in Cape Town is tight. I am so humbled by all the good wishes and thoughts from everyone.

Just want to mention Lester, who kept me sane in the last two months. We chatted every day for the last while, sometimes a few times in a day. He kept me motivated and hungry and for this I will be forever grateful.

There are so many people to thank for getting me through this period. I think you know who you are, and I will get to everyone individually.

It’s good to get wet again.

I started writing this piece to help anyone in similar circumstances.

Stick with your plan and give it everything no matter how hopeless your situation may seem.

At the end of the day this was such a therapeutic exercise for me. Something I didn’t expect.

The trauma was and is real and this has certainly helped me face it and deal with it.

If this helps even one person get over and through a rough period of hopelessness, its job done.

Mickey Kirsten

Legless Contributor

SA Kneelos

#leglesstv #kneeboard surfing #mickey kirsten #health #sakneelos #lester sweetman

5 notes · View notes

the-firebird69 · 3 years

Text

Watch "Drunk Divers: The effects of nitrogen narcosis" on YouTube

youtube

20 miles is equivalent to about 150 feet your chambers are not built rich so the pressurized upon entry.

He got it pretty fast. Immediately. Knew you were narced out as did Claudia added to it at gators. You talked laughed Dave knew the best it worked huge conversations on tape out tonight. Massive areas are under siege. They plan to kidnap me here he says we hear it. Across the street and adjacent houses. Bja is back roaming Macs attracted.

More Willie Wonka bars are up at the pit stop. More at the casino. They live it need it.

Thor Freya

We negotiated with Hard Rock they said one day only sale. Tonight...a headliner before ok..Gene Simmons agreed...they helped him out. Asia did. He sang did dirty stuff not that bad left a tip tell me what it's about he said ok huge...a huge real chocolate kiss was there our design Willie Wonka say and it's rich creamy offered Gene the first sample. He said this I want the first taste he took a chunk said good. His milk ready his girl too. He laughed so you know how it is. And proto. Tons say why I'm old. Nope steak sandwich on Texas toast. Ate felt good and left happy. Tons here had it heard it. A titan is saying good. Says tell your Father I'll be back for more. He said ok. Have a bill he thinks so. Saw him brought it he left. Too hot gotta go.

Signed one shirt. Saw who was a look alike. Or bja. We took it while he got a piece. Huge 5' tall 6' wide roughly in a mold. It fits in a warhead no. It's for giants no. We had it from the old days it's easier to move less break. Old old mould. Very old mold. Hugely old. About 12000 years old plus.

His piece touched the mold we had touched then.

He was astonished what happened. He says it I got it. Part if it works if you have the force.

See it too.

Then oh.

Our marshmallow pies are low sugar. It was fun he ate said thank you. Left laughing. Played Beth. Clover monster wheeled in he said oh ok after denying it. Heard why. Was in tears. He went back for her after getting hit several times by its brood. It was sent to him special. History. A father figure. Gene welled up. Well it was a nice night he lived for a while was his brother. Saved him in the tunnel. Radiation shielded by debris and dirt. Dug out were fine. His friends too but one...needed a torso. Ugh.

Anyways. Loaded up with Willie Wonka bars with possible tickets. His money buys one. Sometimes it's grab and that's the one at times we set one aside. All have a chance they are not pre separated. We have gear but use our Tel. Comm. Oh ok they say. Label wrinkles and things. Wow ok. So nobody can buy one...we talk Apollo and Goddess Wife say.

Tons are there huge huge sales. Same little sign. No pay no ticket and they say ok. Revolked. Oh alright. And try but do anyways not much money. Lots try switching it. Eat up return try again. Eat up ate full of chocolate. He smiles I just farted no. Whole bar I feel fine. That Texas toast steak was great. Huge epiteths no. He's grounded by what. Predators. Oh.

Ok.

Gene says have a great night everyone.

Apollo and Goddess Wife

#Youtube

0 notes

the-record-columns · 5 years

Text

Aug. 28, 2019: Columns

I’ve seen ‘nun’ other like it...

The nun doll

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Friends of the Wilkes County Library Antiques Roadshow which was held in the Friends of the Library Meeting Room.

This has been an annual event for several years and is always interesting to attend as an exhibitor or just to look at the cool stuff. With rare exception, the things brought by are worth spending time looking at and learning about, both of which are good.

When I have something to be looked over, my major interest is to get to tell the story to the folks attending the Roadshow of how I got the piece, or its history, what makes it special, or all the above. To quote my buddy Sonny Church, "...Kenny is always looking for a fresh set of ears."

In this case today, I suppose a fresh set of eyes.

As often noted here, most of my "finds" actually find me these days. The stuff out front of The Record attracts visitors and folks with things to sell alike, and one day a guy walked in with a Davy Crockett lunch box.

I had bought a couple of things from him before, notable a nearly perfect "Flipper" lunch box, but the Davy Crockett box was in rough shape. We talked a bit and I told him I wouldn't be interested and, as he left, I walked out with him. I felt a bit guilty not buying the thing and walked all the way to his car with him and he opened the trunk.

There, on her back in a box of miscellaneous things was Mary—the doll in the picture on this page. I don't collect dolls, too many, too easy to get a piece of junk, too expensive—you name it. However, I knew if I could stand it Mary was coming in with me. I had never seen a Catholic nun doll before that day, and haven't seen one since.

I have showed this doll to anybody that has visited for the past five months and no one else has seen one either. The box of items with the doll each had a handwritten note with it as though whoever packed it up didn't expect to be around to tell about the items on their own. This note, which I have, says "Edward named this doll his "Holy Mary Doll” - He had a little Catholic friend, Timmy Higgins, who used to tell him about the nuns, etc."

I showed the doll to my Rotarian friend Rob Hicks who was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school for 12 years. Rob says the outfit is period for the 40’s era, but he had never seen a doll like this one either.

On it goes.

I know there are more of those dolls out there, but it is fun to have something that at least appears to be very rare—and to get to show it off to such a wide variety of visitors--makes the doll like the MasterCard advertising says: "Priceless."

One final note.

The guy with "Mary" and the Davy Crockett lunch box knew he had me, and he made me buy them both.

And, it was well worth it.

“It’s called ACTING, try it!”

By HEATHER DEAN

Record Reporter

If you are of a certain age, you had the opportunity to take Drama Classes at Wilkes Community College, where you could even receive an Associate in Fine Arts Degree.

Alas, the classes are no more, and two generations are growing up without the pleasure of filling their semesters learning the craft and magic of the stage: set and light design; carpentry; costuming; stage make-up (a necessity for both men and women actors) and most importantly the history of the theatre, and how to become someone else completely, regardless of your comfort level in someone else’s skin.

I knew I wanted to be involved in this magic as a wee child, from very first introduction to the world of singing and dancing your way out of the direst of circumstances- the Wizard of Oz. I was going to “Theatre or Bust” including once when I packed my bags and was off to join the circus and become a trapeze artist, at the ripe old age of 9.

I loved Broadway musicals, the costumes, and I was fascinated by the silent films. I was amazed as a teenager when my paternal grandmother pulled out a picture of her as a teenager, and told me she had a job at a theatre as the “cigarette girl”- and met big stars like Lash LaRue at the premiers. (Alfred "Lash" LaRue was a popular western motion picture star of the 1940s and 1950s. He had exceptional skill with the bullwhip and taught Harrison Ford how to use it for the Indiana Jones movies.) I loved going to the John A. Walker Center and seeing classics like Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, The Sound of Music come to life in our little town, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I got my chance in 1993, when I had my first restaurant job at the age of 19, and Wes Martin was the bartender. He was taking said above classes to become a theatre teacher, and I was always agog when he spoke about production life. He invited me to see an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale of Beauty and the Lonely Beast. I was hooked, and the rest as they say is history- He’s the Wilkes County High School Theatre instructor, and I am in my 26th year of being involved in local and professional theatre.

Back to the beginning… If you are of a certain age, you most likely had Dave Reynolds as your theatre instructor. If you signed up for theatre as an elective and thought it would be an easy “A” you were mistaken. Reynolds made everyone work for it, including reading up on, and writing a term paper on what was going on in NYC on the Broadway stage; Saturday sweat sessions building/painting/lighting a set; the importance of finding the “perfect” prop; how to use modern clothing to look like period costumes, going out of town to see how other theatres interpreted shows through lights and sounds and acting…the list goes on.

I say all this to say, if you had Dave as an instructor, no one was immune from being told “What are we doing here? It’s called ACTING, try it!” when we were not living up to the characters potential. The truth of the modern theatre is that it has gone a full 180 degrees. In Shakespeare’s time, men played the women roles too as it was considered unlucky for a woman to be on stage.

Juliet? A man. Bianca and Katherina? Men. Cordelia? A man.

Beatrice? A man. Lady Macbeth? Yup….you guessed it. Which is why one of the funniest lines in Midsummer Nights Dream is when the bellows mender is told to play a girl, and he says “But..I have a beard coming in” then goes on to perform in a wig and dress, with a beard.

These days we are lucky to find enough males to fill male character roles. I cannot tell you how many countless times I have played a male character, whether it was the lead role, a lover, a tyrant, a father. It’s nothing to wince over, it’s called acting. And when acting, our only concern is to bring the audience into the story, into the moment, into the lights and glitter and stage magic, and make them forget that they know us in our real day to day lives.

Stella Adler, a theatre teacher herself told her students “The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.” Her students included Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Harvey Keitel, some of the most famous for acting across the spectrum.

Truly, what are we on stage for if not to make everyone realize that we have space for all, and to portray every dimension of life’s diverseness? Theatre is where we go to see the truth of our world reflected through another’s eyes. “No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world,” said Kenneth Tynan.

So, if you have ever been upset with what a stage theatre presents, or come out of a production feeling uncomfortable, GOOD. That means we have lived up to our potential and done our job as actors.

That does not mean we are “reprobates, perverts and going to hell,” that means we have done our duty to represent every aspect of life and those who live it. Having found something offensive does not warrant a boycott of your local community theatre, threats across social media, and intimidating handwritten notes left on individual’s personal property. If you don’t approve, don’t go. “It’s called ACTING!”

No one ever said theatre was where we go to hide from current events, hot button topics or celebrating diversity in our community, but it has been said: “The theatre is traditionally where people go to hear the truth.” -David Mamet

By right and by fight, the land belongs to Israel

By Ambassador EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

How can anyone think otherwise except they believe the fake news? Gone are the days of investigative journalists digging for facts and sharing them without interjecting their personal philosophies or political beliefs. A half-truth is a lie, and a lie told frequently eventually becomes the truth.

I have witnessed how the media can change history. Decades ago, an underwater archeologist who is my friend, discovered the remains of a now-famous Civil War submarine, but he never received recognition. He followed protocol and filed the necessary documents with federal, state and local governments however, he never contacted the media. Years later a well-known author and deep-sea diver used my friend’s research and coordinates on file with the government, and went about the business of “discovering” (RE-discovering), this same sunken sub. Upon reaching the site, the media were immediately contacted and thereby received all the glory and fame. Although my friend presented solid evidence as being the rightful founder, he could not afford the cost of a legal battle to set the record straight. Except for a few who remember and a government file full of documents, the truth has been buried and forgotten.

This is the same tactic the Palestinians are using in rewriting Israel’s historic connection to the land. Our job, as Christians and as people who value truth, is to learn to separate fact from fiction.

The Palestinians claim ownership of the land they currently occupy, in addition to the land of Israel, based on a mythical connection they claim dates back 5000 years. This is false. So, who are the Palestinians? The truth is, there are no Palestinians. They are all Arabs.

The term “Palestine” was first used by the Roman Emperor Hadrian during his reign of the region. Hadrian hated Jews. He massacred many living in Judea and sent the rest into exile. He then began to erase any Jewish connection to the land despite archeological anchors. Hadrian renamed the area Syria-Palaestina to humiliate the Jews. The term “Palaestina” comes from Israel’s most ancient enemies, the Philistines.

Over the centuries the area of Judea and Samaria was ruled by many foreign powers ending with the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of WWI. During Ottoman rule, the term “Palestine” was used to describe a general geographic area south of Syria between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River - not a specific place or people.

Following WWI, the Ottomans relinquished control of the region to the Allied Forces which decided to divide the area into countries. During this time, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people to their homeland and earmarked an area of land for the Jewish people equal to about a half of one percent of the entire Middle East and it included Judea and Samaria.

The League of Nations, predecessor to the United Nations, granted powers to the victors of WWI to control the Middle East mandating them to prepare the local people to live and govern themselves independently. These areas came under the British Mandate of Palestine. Jews and Arabs were under British Administration, “until such time as they are able to stand alone.”

How did Israel come to possess the area known today as the West Bank and why do so many call it “occupied” territory?

On the day Israel became a nation in 1948 she was attacked by her Arab neighbors. Jordan took advantage of the turmoil and moved in claiming the West Bank without any legal justification. In doing so, the area known as Judea and Samaria became known as the West Bank (the land on the “west bank” of the Jordan River). In 1967, Israel was again attacked by her Arab neighbors in what became known as the Six Day War. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. For Israel, this was a war of self-defense. Those who attacked Israel did so with the intention of destroying the newborn nation and, according to international law, destroying countries is illegal. Miraculously, those who attacked Israel found themselves on the losing side, so they ran for help to the United Nations. The U.N. refused to label Israel as the aggressor however they did call for a negotiated solution – one that would leave Israel with defensible borders.

So, are Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal? If you believe the “fake news” narrative of today, then you believe that “Israel attacked her Arab neighbors, captured the West Bank, threw out the Palestinians and began building illegal settlements.” It’s worth repeating - never was there an Arab nation or state named Palestine therefore there are no “Palestinian” people. They are Arabs, plain and simple. They speak Arabic. Their culture is Arabic. Their history is Arabic. They are descendants of Arabs. There is nothing that uniquely distinguishes them from the greater Arab world. By right and by fight, Israel owns the West Bank yet the media and others continually refer to the area as “occupied territory.” At best, the land should be referred to as “disputed” territory. In the 20th century, Israel’s claim to the land was recognized by the leaders of the International Court of Justice. Therefore, Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are not illegal.

While there is no easy solution, any peace deal must be based on legal and historical facts. Truth, based on facts, must prevail.

Ducks, Home Remedies and Powerful Music

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

August is an interesting month.

The weather in the south is warming to get us ready for summer. Sweet magnolias perfume the morning air and stimulate thoughts of days gone by when visits on the front porch and lingering conversations were how folks spent their causal time.

I chuckle just a bit as I recall a few of the more colorful conversations I have engaged in this August.

One conversation with barber Gary was most interesting. He was recalling a story about ducks and their ability to sleep with one eye open. He asks if I knew whether or not that was true. No, I said, I have never heard that. When I left I could not stop thinking about those poor ducks who were not able to get a good night’s rest.

I find that research has at least a 50/50 chance of bringing peace to an unknown situation. So I set out to discover the truth about duck sleep.

I give thanks to Indiana State University for a study that was done in 1999 and published in “Nature.” The study suggests that some ducks do indeed protect each other when sleeping. As it turns out aquatic birds normally sleep together in a row and the ducks on the end of the row will keep the eye open which is facing away from the group. The study also showed that the ducks that were in the middle of the row tended to sleep with both eyes closed. The ducks on the end were engaging in what scientist call single-hemisphere sleep. The eye controlled by the sleeping side of the brain is closed, while the active side of the brain keeps its eye open and on guard. The good news being, that even while on guard, ducks can get some much needed sleep.

An interesting pollen induced August conversation that I had with a friend was about the making of a passed down recipe from generation to generation for a homemade cough remedy. It consisted of a good amount of white liquor, honey and horehound candy. As the story goes, after days of dealing with a nasty lingering cough that refused to leave, his wife asks him to make some of the special family medicine.

He did so, and when it was ready, he told her it was to be taken a tablespoon at a time. She said okay, and he went out to do some yard work. When he came back inside he noticed that the glass was empty and he ask if she had poured out the rest of it. She said, no, I did what you said, I sipped it all, a tablespoon at a time.

He said in about 20 minutes the phone rang and she jumped up to answer with a spirited “Howdy Do.” I was told that this was not her normal way of answering the phone, and the word soon spread, and over the next few hours family members called just to hear her highly energetic, all be it temporary zeal for life. The good news is, she didn’t cough any more that night, and she slept well.

There are several music festivals in the Carolinas in August, so it’s a good time to think about Music. I was setting at my desk one day and I heard producer Jared exclaim, the right music makes all the difference. He was searching for the perfect music for a scene he was working on. This is a never ending task in telling stories on the screen.

I had been listing to some work by composer and Steinway Master, Chad Lawson. His music is among a selection I listen to when I am writing. It seems to stimulate creative thoughts. I’m not sure if the music brings creativity or it relaxes me so that creativity can show up. In either case, music is involved. Sometimes it’s a recording and sometimes it’s the sounds of nature.

I called Chad, to get his thoughts on the matter, and he said; “It’s somewhat mystifying to me as a composer, I learned to not rush it and let it take root. Don’t over analyze it…accept it for what it is.”

I love talking with Chad about music, he always makes it sound so amazing.

The eighth month is a good time to reflect on the mysteries of nature, family cures and the power of a musical encounter.

0 notes

thecruciblegavemeyou · 7 years

Note

I WOULD LOVE A LIST OF AMAZING SONGS asfghdgshsgek please

my babe… get ready. its gonna be LONG and also an ask has never made me so happy before

okay fyi some of these youve probably heard but they friggin belong on my list

also i suck with genres i sorted them by very generic genres and the groups i normally listen to them in bc i think the moods and styles fit

alternative… i think

parade | matchbox twenty

put your hands up | matchbox twenty

english town | matchbox twenty

how long? | matchbox twenty

radio | matchbox twenty

i believe in everything (bonus track) | matchbox twenty

unwell | matchbox twenty

real world | matchbox twenty

3 am | matchbox twenty

push | matchbox twenty

run-around | blues traveler

superman (its not easy) | five for fighting

100 years | five for fighting

iris | the goo goo dolls

dizzy | the goo goo dolls

californication | red hot chili peppers

dani california | red hot chili peppers

breaking the girl | red hot chili peppers

hump de bump | red hot chili peppers (if you havent heard this please do. for the laughs)

(for more laughs: the motorcycle song | arlo guthrie)

hard to concentrate | red hot chili peppers

animal bar | red hot chili peppers

storm in a teacup | red hot chili peppers

when im gone | 3 doors down

away from the sun | 3 doors down

here without you | 3 doors down

changes | 3 doors down

the road im on | 3 doors down

sunset in july | 311

weightless | 311

my classics, my loves

my life | billy joel

big shot | billy joel

you may be right | billy joel

its still rock and roll to me | billy joel

dont ask me why | billy joel

tell her about it | billy joel

uptown girl | billy joel

the longest time | billy joel

youre only human | billy joel

the whole an innocent man album | billy joel

we didnt start the fire | billy joel (fuck off i love this song)

downeaster “alexa” | billy joel

thats not her style | billy joel

the whole boston album by boston

come on eileen | dexy’s midnight runners

dont shoot shotgun | def leppard

new york minute (live) | the eagles

take it easy (live) | the eagles

desperado (live) | the eagles

tequilla sunrise (live) | the eagles

hotel california (LIVE OH MY GOD LIVE) | the eagles

think im in love | eddie money

lovin touchin squeezin | journey

ask the lonely | journey

only the young | journey

stone in love | journey

suzanne | journey

down under | men at work

your love | the outfield

every little thing she does is magic | the police

man on the moon | r.e.m.

the great beyond | r.e.m.

losing my religion | r.e.m.

daysleeper | r.e.m.

nightswimming | r.e.m.

fool for your love | triumph

fight the good fight | triumph

ordinary man | triumph

say goodbye | triumph

magic power | triumph

spellbound | triumph

with or without you | u2

bullet the blue sky | u2

ANYTHING BY REO SPEEDWAGON EVERY ESPECIALLY THAT AINT LOVE AND THE UNIDENTIFIED FLYING TUNA TROT

a little heavy rock/metal

holy diver | dio

rainbow in the dark | dio

shame on the night | dio

fyi (dio is an acquired taste id say, but i love these songs, and if you listen to them and like them, the whole album is pretty good and the same singer also sang in the band rainbow if you want more its a similar style)

the number of the beast | iron maiden

modernish.. i guess. im not sure tbh

like… anything by fun.

the fray

imagine dragons

kiss me slowly | parachute

bloodsport | raleigh ritchie

the script

stromae

train (mostly the save me, san francisco and my private nation albums)

troye sivan (obviously who doesnt but still; honorary mention)

1965 | zella day

hypontic | zella day

man on the moon | zella day

jazzzzzzzz (so good i swear)

just a few songs by dave koz but all worth the mention believe me:

together again

know you by heart

surrender

cuban hideaway

*mostly wordless, great album to do homework to

if you actually read all of this/even listen to it, im proud… :D hope you like

(i considered putting it all intpo a spotify playlist and i can if you want but believe me… some of these genres do not mix)

#thank you so much #really #i had so much fun with this #if you listen to even just one or two will you tell me what you think #especially some of the odder ones?#i really wanna know what you think

6 notes · View notes

flauntpage · 7 years

Text

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

Three stars of comedy

The third star: This Predators fan—We'll get to the whole P.K. Subban dancing controversy in a bit, but let's just say that Nashville fans get it.

— Preds Warmup Signs (@PredsSigns) April 30, 2017

In related news, the Rangers can do stuff like this in the warmup and apparently nobody cares.

The second star: Chris Pratt—OK, technically, this is from three years ago. But Pratt just reposted it on Twitter recently, and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, so we're grandfathering it in.

Sudden Death really is just about the greatest movie ever made. We broke down the mascot fight in the YouTube section four years back, but that's not really enough. We should probably do another scene from that movie some time soon. Hmmm...

The first star: Taylor Hall—Apparently he listens to the podcast.

Officially adding

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 30, 2017

My favorite part of that joke is that it's still only the second funniest lottery-related tweet of Hall's career, trailing this one from two years ago.

Outrage of the week

We're three weeks into the playoffs, and you know what that means. We've reached outrage overflow mode, that inevitable point in the postseason where everyone is on edge and there's so much happening that our capacity to rationally discuss anything just disappears completely. We're going to have to break out the lightning round this week.

The issue: Sidney Crosby has another concussion after an ugly collision with Matt Niskanen, one that was helped along by a nasty Alexander Ovechkin slash.

The outrage: The play was dirty!

Is it justified: Seeing Crosby down and out like that was awful, just about the worst-case scenario for any hockey fan. It doesn't matter who you cheer for—hell, even if you're a Capitals fan—you don't want to see the league's most important player out with another head injury.

That said, the play itself was anything but black-and-white. I'm pretty sure I've watched it hundreds of times so far, and I'm still not sure if it was dirty. I didn't like the Ovechkin slash, which should have been at least two minutes. But Penguins fans just finished spending the last few weeks telling us that a hard slash on a puck-carrier is a hockey play, so that outrage only goes so far. The Niskanen half was the tough one, and I still see a player realizing that a falling opponent is about to crash into him and putting his hands up to protect himself.

Not everyone agrees. Maybe Niskanen really did sense an opportunity to target Crosby's head. But I'm still not sure, and I lean towards it ultimately being careless and maybe even reckless, but not dirty.

The issue: The Department of Player Safety didn't suspend Niskanen, or even hold a hearing.

The outrage: The DoPS never suspends anyone during the playoffs!

Is it justified: We've been over this before. If you want tougher sentences during the playoffs, have the GMs and owner instruct the DoPS to call it that way. But based on the standards that have been established over the years, it's no surprise that Niskanen didn't get anything beyond the game he'd already missed as a result of being ejected. It would have been unusual if he had.

The issue: Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi challenged Washington coach Barry Trotz about the play, wrote a column accusing the Capitals of intentionally targeting Crosby, and then made the media rounds to push the theory.

The outrage: That take is nuts. Let's spend the next two days talking about it!

Is it justified: The accusation about Capitals players planning Crosby's demise was out of bounds, especially in a post-Todd Bertuzzi league. He was widely criticized and mocked, and rightly so. Rossi's done some good work over the years, but there's no defending that take.

That said, as Elliotte Friedman pointed out this week, this seems to be the direction that a lot of sports journalism is headed. Lots of people wrote measured, thoughtful takes on the Crosby injury. If you ended up talking about Rossi instead, well, that tells you all you need to know. Attention is the currency of today's media, and now more than ever, you get what you pay for.

The issue: Nick Bonino drew a crucial penalty on Wednesday by embellishing a high-stick from T.J. Oshie.

The outrage: Hockey fans hate this stuff.

Is it justified: Sure, but the problem is that this is how the game works now, diving and embellishment works. There's a good chance you get the call. Every now and then, you'll get called for faking, but most of the time the ref will still take the other guy too. Unless you're completely obvious, they'll almost never take just the diver. Lots of players do this stuff, Oshie included.

Could the league fix it? Not totally, although encouraging refs to just take one guy more often would help. So suggest cranking up the post-game fines—drop five figures on someone who pulls a Bonino and at least a few guys might think twice. But you can never get rid of this stuff entirely, short of making everything open to review. And it's hard to think anyone wants even more reviews.

The issue: There aren't enough bathrooms in the new Edmonton arena and now their media want everyone to start peeing in the sinks.

The outrage: That's... wait, what?

Is it justified: Yeah, I don't get this one either. Let's just keep moving.

The issue: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs says he doesn't think the NHL will go to the Olympics because it's not worth the effort for "the four people that watch it".

The outrage: The NHL really does hate its fans.

Is it justified: I'm sure the league's key television partner was thrilled to hear Jacobs trash-talking the viewership potential of an event it pays billions to broadcast. Just a thought, but the NHL might want to ease up on side-eying anyone else's ratings. But it was certainly interesting to see an owner as influential as Jacobs say "I don't think it's going to happen" about something we've already been told definitely won't happen. Gosh, it's almost as if the league is still posturing here.

The issue: P.K. Subban danced during a warmup and Mike Milbury called him a clown.

The outrage: Nobody likes Mike Milbury.

Is it justified: The clown take was terrible and pretty much everyone knows it, including Milbury, who backed off the comments fairly quickly. The NHL needs a lot of things, but more lectures from the fun police isn't on the list. Here's hoping Subban dances all the way to the Stanley Cup final.

The issue: This is too much outrage.

The outrage: Seriously, we're all exhausted.

Is it justified: Pace yourself, we still have five weeks of this stuff to go.

Obscure former player of the week

Earlier this week, Ottawa's Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored four goals in a game, becoming only the 12th player to do so in the last 30 years. So who's the most obscure player in that group? Well... it's probably Pageau, to be honest. But it seems a little early to hand him those honors, so let's go with Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac was taken in the second round of the 1984 entry draft when the Blues decided to show up for a change. He made his NHL debut in 1987, and played part of three seasons with St. Louis before being traded to the Nordiques. That would be the first of many moves over the course of his career; he'd go on to be traded six times, sign five free agent deals, get claimed on waivers once and be picked in the 1998 expansion draft.

All in all, he played for nine NHL teams over his career, despite spending several years in the IHL in the mid-90s. He appeared in his last NHL game for the Thrashers in 2003, although he continued playing off and on in the minors until 2010.

There are two things most fans of the era remember about Tony Hrkac. First, his last name was pronounced "hur-kuss", so everyone called him "the Hrkac Circus". And more importantly, he had one of the best playoff games ever as a rookie in 1988. That night, in game five of their first-round series, Hrkac lit up Chicago's Darren Pang for four goals including a short-handed winner in a 6-5 Blues win.

Hrkac's four-goal playoff game was the first that the NHL had seen in almost 24... hours. Buffalo's John Tucker had done it the night before against Boston. But the feat wouldn't be matched again for 12 whole days, when Mark Johnson pulled it off against the Capitals. What can I tell you, the late-80s were fun.

Be It Resolved

Saturday's draft lottery resulted in three longshots moving into the top three picks, including the Flyers, who had the 13th worst record but will pick second. Meanwhile, terrible teams like the Avalanche and Canucks and the expansion Golden Knights all dropped way down.

Is that fair? Not really. The lottery is kind of a mess. But if that's news to you, then you haven't been paying attention over the years. And you can't start complaining now just because your team was the one that got screwed.

First things first: We shouldn't even have a lottery. There's a far better system for determining draft order while still weighting everything in favor of the worst teams. It's called the Gold Plan, I've written about it a ton, and you're probably sick of me mentioning it. But it's roughly a million times fairer than random ping pong ball drawings, and a lot more exciting to boot. If you're not already on board, now's a good time to join us.

But let's assume that the league wants to keep a lottery system. After all, this is the NHL, the league where everything is fine and nothing should ever change. If you want to keep the ping pong balls and the weighted odds, then sometimes, the longshots will win. That's a feature, not a bug.

This whole thing is classic NHL. Design a system that we all know could result in a specific scenario; appear to be totally fine with that possibility; wait until that scenario inevitably plays out; then demand the system be changed because the thing you always knew might happen finally did.

We already did it with the Connor McDavid lottery a few years ago, when the Oilers won for a third time and everyone complained even though we knew Edmonton had decent odds going in. We did it with the skate-in-the-crease rule that everyone insisted was just fine right up until it showed up on a Cup-winning goal, at which point it was immediately scrapped. We're doing it right now with the offside review and puck-over-glass, badly implemented rules that won't be changed until they cost some team a playoff series. Which they absolutely will. We just need to wait long enough.

Should teams like the Avalanche have better odds? Maybe. Should teams like the Flyers have any odds at all? Maybe not. But these were all questions to be asking before Saturday's drawing. If you didn't have a problem with the system then but do now, you're either being disingenuous or you don't understand how probabilities work.

Either way, it would be nice for this league and its fans to want to solve a problem in advance for once, instead of slipping into knee-jerk reaction mode whenever the inevitable happens.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

So the Washington Capitals are peppering the Penguins with shots, but can't score because Marc-Andre Fleury is playing like some sort of mid-90s action hero. You know what other Penguins' goalie played like a mid-90s action hero?

Oh hell yeah.

If you're not familiar with Sudden Death, you should a.) acknowledge that you have fundamentally failed as a person somewhere along the line and b.) head over to this excellent SB Nation tribute. But if you need the short version: The Blackhawks and Penguins are facing each other in game seven of the Stanley Cup final, terrorists are trying to blow up the arena, and Jean Claude Van Damme is here to karate fight everyone in the building.

At this point, we're well into the move. We've already seen Luc Robitaille swear and Van Damme use a supersoaker full of lighter fluid to end a dude, but have not yet seen a helicopter crash at center ice.

Also, Van Damme has already killed the Penguins' mascot with a dishwasher. Have I mentioned this is the greatest movie ever made? It totally is.

So at this point, we're late in the game and the Blackhawks are leading. Even worse, Penguins' starting goalie Brad Tolliver has left the game with the flu. Fun fact: Tolliver was played by former Penguin Jay Caufield, even though Caufield wasn't a goalie. I'm starting to think this movie might not be very realistic, you guys.

Van Damme has stolen Tolliver's uniform because of reasons, and he returns to the game. Well, he returns to the bench, where he sits in the middle of all the players, the way goalies do. His coach comes over and orders his unhealthy player back onto the ice, because this was 1995.

By the way, the two announcers are the Penguins' real life duo of Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald. I love that Mike "Scratch My Back With a Hacksaw" Lange has his own IMDB page.

Brad Tolliver wasn't a real player. But as we hear from the arena announcer, the guy he's replacing is: It's Ken Wregget, playing himself. This game is going to end with the arena getting blown up by a helicopter, making it the second biggest hockey-related disaster Wregget has ever been a part of, behind the 1984-85 Maple Leafs.

"I don't know what he did back in the locker room." Uh, he has the flu, guys. I'm pretty sure we can narrow it down to a couple of options.

We get an extended sequence of Van Damme trying to figure out where to look and how to stand while praying the puck won't come near him, aka "the Brian Elliott". He eventually responds to a breakaway by charging out and flipping his opponent into the air, which is completely ridiculous because only a psychopath would ever do that.

"He hit his head on the ice... he hit it so hard his kids will be born dizzy." In the modern remake, this is the point where the concussion spotters will call down and the movie will end.

Tony Amonte gets his second breakaway of the shift because apparently the Penguins are being coached by Jared Bednar. Still woozy from his brain injury, Van Damme drops down and makes a highlight reel glove save. In what stands as easily the worst part of the movie, his Penguins teammates celebrate by raising their sticks in the air like they just scored. This is so stupid that I'm amazed The Love Guru didn't think of it.

This is the point where our clip ends, but it's not the end of Van Damme's goaltending adventures. He realizes that he can't save the world if he's stuck on the ice, so he does the only reasonable thing: Grabs a random Blackhawks player and sucker punches him to start a line brawl. Because the script writers have never actually seen playoff hockey, this results in the referees actually giving him a penalty, getting him out of the game and back into the terrorist-murdering business.

Sudden Death came out in December 1995, because the world had been good and deserved a Christmas present. It made several billion of dollars and won every Academy Award, but ushered in the Dead Puck Era of the NHL because the league's goalies now had access to Jean Claude Van Damme game film while coaches started focusing on defending the neutral zone in case a helicopter crashed there.

There have been 20 Stanley Cup finals since this movie came out, and the Blackhawks and Penguins have combined to win 25% of them. You do the math.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected].

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes