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dekuinthelake · 5 years ago

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Happy Birthday Bloodborne

Seeing as it’s the 5th year Bloodborne has graced this mess of a planet with it’s omnipotent light I figured write a little thing about how much the game means to me. I’m going to get fairly personal so if you don’t like that kinda thing feel free to skip.

The first time I beat BB I didn’t think much of it, honestly. I’d had a rather basic playthrough where I didn’t see pretty much any of the optional bosses or do any of the story. I did as Gehrman suggested and just hunted some beasts. I took a break from it for a while and didn’t return to it until my life started getting... Difficult.

My parents a year prior had gone through a rather turbulent divorce. In the wake of this, my sister and her boyfriend moved in so we could all help my dad pay for his house if only just barely. At the time we all knew even with four of us we didn’t make the type of money to help make payments and the inevitability of him loosing the house was a constant and looming stress. Worse still, my sister only agreed to move in if she was added to the mortgage, meaning she could threaten to sell on a whim, a privilege which she started using to strong arm me and my dad in to behaving a certain way. Her boyfriend was verbally abusive towards everyone, but especially condescending to her. Tension grew between all four of us, but especially between me and the boyfriend. I could ask my sister if she wanted to go out to lunch and catch up and she’d respond, “Let me ask my BF”. His control over her became apparent and the wedges he was intentionally drawing between her and our family was impossible to ignore.

All the while I was working a 4AM shift at a Zoo in the winter and barely getting any daylight or human contact since I had to be in bed so early to wake up for the drive. I cleaned a mile of glass in the dark every day non stop, only to have it be dirtied the moment the park opened. No matter how hard I worked to keep the park as clean as I could, even to the point of putting on dust masks to knock down spider, the higher ups weren’t happy with our companies work. As our contract was rapidly coming to an end, rumors began to circulate that we might not have it renewed if things didn’t improve. Worse still, someone had been stealing from the supply closet. Supposedly only the managers knew the code, and this sparked massive distrust in the Zoo staff towards our department to the point keys were taken away and our lives were made harder by no longer having access to vital shortcuts around the park which made getting from place to place take even longer in the miles long local.

This futility and rage sparked the most obsessive play through of a game I’ve had to date. Undeniably, these situations were hopeless and lonely, and Bloodborne is a game that understood exactly how I was feeling. The Hunt is, after all, an eternal nightmare. No matter how many beasts, kin, or humans you kill, it’s an unending loop of uncertainty and oppressive danger. The tenuous state of things in Yharnam was uncomfortably familiar. Only in the game, it was far easier to focus on the things I could control.

The weapon I wielded. The stats I chose to upgrade. Which path I wanted to explore. The fluid combat enabled more split second choices every second, helped in large part by a generous stamina bar. More so than Dark Souls, Bloodborne expects you, the player, to take charge. You either commit to an aggressive plan and kill the beasts, or you die.

When I first started, I played extremely cautiously and likewise did not have a lot of success. On new game +1, however, I began to realize that vital element. Hesitate and you die. Commit entirely and live. The more I played, the more I meditated on the very nature of what this game was communicating to me.

In my actual life, I hadn’t come out as trans yet and it was something I was viciously debating internally. Earlier that year I tried to commit suicide. I half came out in the hospital, telling the ICU nurses my name was Mike. But even in the psych ward I was terrified to speak to social workers and groups about those feelings... Being that I had 6 hours completely alone and in the dark, it gave me time to listen to a lot of media by trans people. I distinctly remember one video where a trans woman was describing what dysphoria feels like and openly sobbing. I was starting to understand the core of why I hated myself, my body, and my current situation so much.

But I was afraid. Even after the epiphany that I wanted to come out, I had a lot of doubt on if I could afford HRT, if I could commit to it, and what people would think. I worried starting T and in turn second puberty would bring back my horrible temper that I had going through it the first time. When I say I had rage problem, that’s putting it mildly. I’ve punched people before just for touching me when I was younger, and with the situation between me and my sister’s boyfriend getting more tense by the day I was rightfully concerned it might erupt in to actual physical violence.

And so... I continued to come home from being alone all to spend most of my time alone playing Bloodborne. It was a great game to keep my mind off of things because of how much focus it demands to play. Funny enough, once you get good at it, the beasts are also a great punching bag.

A lot can be said about how Blood Vials aren’t the best method of healing. Having to stop boss attempts because you need to go farm some red Estus isn’t great design. However, running around that first part of Yharnam with the beast claws just shredding through citizens like a wild animal is possibly the most cathartic thing in my life at the time. It made me feel powerful, unstoppable, and like I was in complete control. I knew exactly how to handle the big pats one by one, and eventually I got skilled enough to just run into that big mob by the tree and stop people anyway because of how good the audio queues are at letting you know when you gotta dodge. I spent hours in both this location AND Chalice Dungeons farming for Echoes and consumables to the point that controlling my character in Bloodborne feels as natural as walking.

I started beating the game faster and faster. I was on +5 difficulty and working on the DLC by myself when things escalated...

At this point, I knew staying at my dad’s house wouldn’t be possible. The verbal fights between me and my sister were getting more and more prevalent. More than that, I knew it was time to come out and I didn’t feel secure doing that in an environment that was actively hostile. The plan was to save up, move out with two friends... But moving out came far faster than I had anticipated.

A few days after my birthday, we had a family meeting. I don’t remember what sparked it, but we all sat around and voiced our complaints with each other. When it was my turn to speak, I brought up the fact my sister’s boyfriend had been intentionally isolating her on top of in general just being a jackass to her. He’d make her get things for him, call her stupid when they played games... The works. I don’t remember what he said that sparked it, but I remember the feeling... A really familiar feeling I hadn’t had in years. My pulse thundered in my neck so hard I couldn’t hear anyone over it. I started yelling incoherent shit. My sister stood in front of him because I was aggressively stepping forward. It was that temper I thought I’d knocked coming back. If she hadn’t gotten in the way, I’m absolutely sure I would have pummeled that man. I hadn’t felt that way since I strangled a kid in school to the point he nearly passed out.

It was then I knew I had to leave. By nature, I’m violent. I hate it. But the decisiveness which I’d slowly been building helped me find the courage to admit this.

I took off in my car and just hauled ass to the highway. I had a bloodborne CD I’d been playing on my way to and from work. It sounds silly, but larping I was just a hunter during those crushing morning shifts was helping me keep going. Sure it was hopeless, but I felt bad ass to keep trying. I needed to have an unbreaking will to deal with this dilemma. Having so recently made a second attempt to kill myself, I had this powerful urge that no matter what I couldn’t end up there again. So, I decided not to beat myself up about it and just accept that I had to move on and away from what little family I had left. I remember not really thinking words. I listened to Gehrman’s music on repeat with the windows rolled down going 78 miles an hour and just... Screaming. Literally screaming as loud as I could in to the night. Over and over again until it hurt just to breathe.

Even though I felt betrayed by the people I thought were closest to me there wasn’t anything I could do but endure.

Eventually I arrived my current roommate’s parent’s place where they were living at the time. I told her and her husband what happened. We went to the store for something. I got a call from my dad saying my sister was threatening to move out and apparently had yelled at him for not keeping me in line despite the fact at one point he’d physically gotten up and started yelling in my face to calm down. That was it. I asked my friend’s parents if I could move in temporarily and... That was that.

The next day we gathered up all my things. I had to leave my dogs which was possibly the most agonizing part.

But that night? I beat the orphan of Kos by myself on +5 on my computer monitor plugged in the wall and set on a box. Doing that was this weird extreme elation. It’s like I’d defeated two massively difficult, seemingly impossible tasks in one day. I’m glad I had help with the moving, though. Unlike Kos, that would have been impossible alone haha.

That weekend passed and I went back to work at the Zoo as normal. After I finished my shift, however, every employee in my company was called to a meeting. This was it. We all knew what was coming. We were to be laid off in December, giving us 3 months to find new work or apply to the company that was taking over the contract.

In the wake of this news, moral plummeted. No one really tried that hard. I was coming in high to work every day and drinking with a coworker during our shift while we tired our best to continue work. That last month I worked there was a weird drug addled haze of extreme emotions mixed with ignoring them in favor of listening to VaatiVidya lore breakdowns of Bloodborne.

I was going home and spending hours on art inspired by the general vibe of the game and my impossible to digest feelings. I’d lost my job, home, and family. I don’t know if I would have survived without both Bloodborne and my art as an outlet.

In the following months, I had gotten to New Game +7 and started recording myself trying to kill bosses without healing. Even though to this day no one watches these attempts but me, making them was frankly vital to keeping me distracted and focused on something I could control.

There was a time where I didn’t think Ludwig +1 was beatable but... Here I am two years later happily having 100% Bloodborne and beaten every boss on +7, most of them without even needing to heal.

The biggest lesson I took away from this game was persistence and decisiveness. The Souls series in general made me realize something huge that to this day has helped me fight my depression back. I’m a stubborn fuck who will grind and grind and grind until I finally achieve victory.

Fight for the progress you want to make. Things seem hopeless a lot, but you have to keep going. With effort, you can change anything you want to in your life.

Two years later, I’ve been doing HRT for 1 year and 3 months. I just had top surgery done. I’m working a job I like that’s got normal daytime hours and pays more than any work I’ve ever had with benefits. I don’t think I would have had the tenacity to stick to these things without realizing a fundamental aspect about my personality thanks to the help of Bloodborne specifically.

I can endure, learn, grow, adapt.

Thank you, Fromsoft. I hope this conveys a shred of what this dumb little game means to me. I needed Bloodborne so much when I moved out. I’m so glad it exists.

#Bloodborne #long post #personal

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marypsue · 6 years ago

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bet u can’t guess which popular web show inspired this piece of totally original fiction

...

It starts with static.

“Zane,” Kevin says, shaking his head, interrupting the really good bit Zane was in the middle of doing. Well, okay, maybe it was less a ‘really good bit’ and more ‘dancing around like a Looney Toon’, but still. Bryan was laughing.

“Oh, dammit,” Zane sighs, reaching up to the collar of his shirt. “Mic out again?”

“Yeah. I’m getting nothing but crackling. And this awful growl I’m pretty sure is your jacket rubbing against the mic. Are you warm enough without it?”

Zane stands still through Kevin and DJ fiddling with his mic and his coat and his shirt, and when he starts recording again, Kevin gives him a big grin and a thumbs up. But they’ve barely gotten to the part of the intro where Bryan says “…as part of our ongoing investigation into the question: are ghosts real?” before it’s back to a thumbs down.

“Don’t you dare try to tell me this is a ghost,” Zane grumbles, as Kevin adjusts his mic for the third time since they arrived on location.

Bryan just does that thing with his eyebrows and smiles directly into the camera Clark’s still rolling like he’s Jim on the Office. Zane’s not sure why anyone’s still filming. This is going to be a lot of useless B-roll.

“It’s not a ghost, Bryan,” he repeats, just in case his co-host is getting cocky.

“Well, maybe not,” Bryan concedes. “But it could be.”

“Which is more likely, that it’s really windy and the equipment is malfunctioning, or that it’s a ghost?”

“Well, I think they’re equally -”

“Equally likely, yeah, I’ve never heard you say that before.”

...

The house is old, and drafty, and Zane’s mic goes out a grand total of twice more before somebody gets the bright idea to try swapping it out with Bryan’s. It takes nearly twenty minutes to get everything set up and recalibrated, but at the end of it, Zane’s recording is coming through crystal clear again.

They get five minutes into filming before Kevin cuts them off again.

“Seriously?” Zane asks, as Kevin fiddles with the cord leading to the battery pack hooked to his waistband.

“Yeah, I thought that mic was just broken, but – hang on, let me try and replace these batteries.”

“So it’s not the microphone,” Bryan says, with a smug smile that’s just starting to turn glassy with fear. “And it’s not the wind…”

“Still doesn’t mean it’s a ghost,” Zane says, because, well, it doesn’t. “I could have picked up a big static charge from that rug in the entryway, Kevin could’ve forgotten to plug in the charger…”

“Or it could be a ghost.” When Zane doesn’t dignify that with a response, Bryan’s smile gets smugger. “Can you definitively say it isn’t a ghost?”

Zane sighs, and goes to see if Kevin’s having any luck with the battery pack.

...

In the end, they get all of Bryan’s dialogue, about fifteen minutes of usable clips from Zane, two weird rumbling growls that spook Bryan very badly but mostly sound like heavy trucks passing by to Zane, and a whole lot of static. Even Bryan’s mic gets overtaken once or twice, drowned out in the crackle.

“Sounds like we’re talking through the spirit box,” Zane comments, his ears ringing in the sudden silence as he puts his headphones aside.

Bryan laughs at that, one huff of air that’s almost more of a sigh. “Guess that’d make us the ghosts.”

“Sounds like fun!” Zane says. “Hanging around historical sites, scaring the pants off of you and your little…freaky friends with spooky creaks and moans, not having to labour under capitalism…livin’ the dream, baby.”

“Well,” Bryan says, with that crooked grin that means he’s about to lay down a truly awful pun. “More like. Dying the dream.”

“I don’t know why I put up with you,” Zane says, putting his headphones back on.

...

At first, the stuff Zane records in the studio is fine, so they chalk it up to wind interference on location (Zane) or the spirits lingering in the old house (Bryan) and move on. And it’s fine.

But then an entire in-studio episode about alien abductions gets eaten by static, and Bryan loses his shit.

“There’s even video distortion!” he complains to Zane, waving a hand at the offending frame. Zane peers at it, but can’t really tell what it is that’s got Bryan’s knickers in a knot. “Zane, I’m serious. I think you really did it this time. I think you pissed a spirit off enough that it latched onto you and followed us home.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right,” Zane says. “I’ve been meaning to find something to keep the cat entertained at the apartment all day while Tara and I are out.”

Bryan looks a strange mix of ‘exasperated’ and ‘trying not to laugh’. “I’m serious!” he repeats, in the face of all the evidence. “I told you not to lie down on that pentagram and dare the demon to rip out your heart. Or taunt that other demon and tell it you were taking its bridge! Or talk to demons at all! Maybe we should call that exorcist we consulted again, or -”

“Or clean the camera lens,” Zane says. “Honestly, Bryan, I think you need more sleep. I don’t see anything wrong with this picture.”

“You wouldn’t,” Bryan mutters, turning back to his monitor.

...

The satellite radio in Zane’s car keeps dropping out the whole way home from the office, and he’s not even anywhere near any high-voltage power lines or anything. He makes a mental note to call Sirius customer support, which he knows he’ll forget by the time he gets home, and switches to the CD player.

Every CD he’s got in his glove compartment skips.

...

“Maybe you got magnetized somehow,” DJ suggests, when all their footage starts turning wavy and glitchy as soon as the camera cuts to Zane. “Did you get a new phone? New computer? Tara decide that what the apartment really needs to pull it all together is a big ol’ cartoonish electromagnet?”

Zane snorts hot tea out of his nose.

...

“Even Scully took it seriously when the shadow government gave her cancer, man,” Bryan says, when he sees the glitchy footage.

“There – okay, there are two issues with that line of logic,” Zane says. “First, cancer. That’s detectable by current medical science. It’s not exactly a matter of belief. Second, Dana Scully is a fictional character.”

“So you won’t get an exorcism?” Bryan says, sounding defeated.

“Bryan, my dear, I think you already know the answer to that one.”

...

The cat follows Zane around the apartment all night that night, staring up at him with big round eyes and skittering backwards with its ears flat against its head whenever he tries to pet it. Zane feeds it three Dreamies, but the cat is not appeased. All night long, it paws and paws and paws at the bedroom door.

...

All the fluorescent lights in the office start flickering uneasily about once every half hour. Everyone keeps their eyes up and their fingers poised over Ctrl+S.

...

The overhead light in the apartment kitchen starts flickering, too, and keeps flickering even after Zane changes the bulb. Tara complains it’s giving her a migraine, and ends up going back to bed, looking pale and miserable. Zane calls in that he’ll be working from home, brings her tea and Advil before setting up on the couch with his laptop.

He’s barely got the video editing program loaded before Tara sticks her head out around the bedroom door, bathrobe wrapped around her, eyes squeezed almost shut. “What is that smell?”

“Smell?”

“You seriously don’t smell that? It’s like something rotten.” Tara sniffs, then sneezes. “Eggs,” she decides. “Rotten eggs.”

Zane spends the next three hours on and off the phone with the landlord, trying to get an electrician to come look at their kitchen light fixture and someone to come see if there’s a natural gas leak. According to the landlord, there’s no natural gas in the building, and there won’t be an electrician until Thursday at the earliest. The landlord advises cooking by flashlight and taking the garbage out.

...

Zane’s working on the script for the next episode of his history show when something that must be the pipes lets out a faint, metallic knock. Three times in a row, and then silence.

Zane listens, because that’s a new apartment sound, but it doesn’t happen again, so he turns back to his laptop.

...

When he goes in to check on Tara, the cat’s curled up on his pillow, beside Tara’s head. It looks up when Zane inches the door open, its eyes catching the ambient light from the hall and turning into two eerie discs of green.

“Shh,” Zane says, to the cat.

The cat looks at Zane, and slowly, slowly, rises to its tiptoes. Its back arches, ears flat against its head, all its little needle teeth on display as a hiss builds in the back of its throat.

“Toby, you ass, it’s me,” Zane whispers into the dark room, but the cat just hisses louder. Zane tries taking a cautious step into the room, and the cat spits at him, shuffling back and a little sideways so that it’s directly between him and Tara.

“Okay, you little…lunatic man,” Zane mutters, backing slowly out into the hall and easing the door shut behind him. “I’ll let her sleep.”

...

When Zane regales Bryan with the tale of his maybe-possibly-gas leak, Bryan gets that huge glassy-eyed smile and lets out the same nervous laugh that he gets when something noisy and potentially inexplicable happens while they’re filming on location.

“You know what that is, right?” he asks, through his teeth. If Clark were here filming, Zane’s sure Bryan would be looking over his shoulder every few seconds to mug horror into the camera.

“Natural gas,” Zane says. “Which is what I’m worried about, since that can actually hurt you. Or it could be a septic tank. Or a literal rotten egg. But I’m sure you’re going to say it’s sulfur, because you think it’s a demon.”

Bryan shakes his head.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, man,” he says, still smiling like someone’s holding a gun to his head and saying they’ll shoot if he looks anything but ecstatic.

“All right,” Zane says, shrugging one shoulder. “You warned me. I think we’ve got a bigger issue, though. How’re we going to get this week’s episode out of all this glitchy junk?”

Bryan, to his credit, manages to do a full ten minutes’ worth of actual work before breaking down and asking, “Are you sure you don’t want my bottle of holy water?”

...

“Hey guys, Bryan here. You may have noticed that my usual cohost isn’t, uh, isn’t here with me today. That’s because today’s episode of Unresolved is a very…special episode. You see, it concerns…the Unexplained Electromagnetism of Zane Mattey.”

...

By this time, Zane’s come to expect the admonishments in the comments that he shouldn’t be ignoring such obvious evidence of the paranormal (he isn’t, because it’s not), that he shouldn’t be antagonising the spirit world (he isn’t, because it doesn’t exist), that he should be praying for forgiveness and protection (he won’t, because he doesn’t need it). This episode, however, introduces a new and very funny subset of hardcore believer comments.

“They think I’m the demon,” he says, as Bryan scrolls through the comment section, a thankless job if ever there was one.

Bryan does not seem nearly as amused by this as Zane thought he would be. He looks up at Zane, like he’s never seen the guy before in his life, and asks, apparently in all seriousness, “Are you?”

“Wh- no? Demons aren’t real, Bryan. Besides, if I were a demon, wouldn’t we have had technical issues from the start?”

“Not if you got possessed at our last on-location.” Bryan’s staring a little too hard, and it’s making this less funny. “Zane, why won’t you take my bottle of holy water? I know, I know, you don’t believe in this stuff -”

“Because it’s not real -”

“But it’d be no skin off your nose, and it would make me, your friend, feel better.”

Zane shrugs one shoulder, like he doesn’t care, though he’s starting to get annoyed. He’s not a demon. He’s not possessed. Demons – like ghosts – don’t exist.

But…Bryan’s right. Bryan does believe, and this is seriously freaking him out. It’ll cost Zane nothing to give his best friend a little peace of mind. “Okay. Fine. I’ll take your holy water bottle. Got a…holy hand grenade or two you can toss in there with it?”

Bryan just gives him that hard stare, and shakes his head.

...

Tara’s looking a lot better when Zane gets home. The cat, curled up in her lap, takes one look at Zane and catapults itself under the couch.

“Ow,” Tara says, rubbing her thighs where the cat dug his claws in. “Oh, babe, I think the landlord must have been right, that egg smell’s gone since you took the trash out. I haven’t noticed it all day. Did you figure out what was going on with your recording gear?”

...

Zane puts the bottle of holy water on the nightstand. It doesn’t start spontaneously boiling or glowing or anything in the middle of the night, so he leaves it there and forgets about it.

...

Somebody does knock at the apartment door in the middle of the night, though, three times. Zane gets up, but by the time he gets to the door, they’re gone.

...

“Hey, uh, we’re always so happy and grateful to see stuff you guys’ve made for the show, but – um. Don’t vandalise stuff with our names. We’ve seen the pictures on uh – on the ‘gram where you’ve written ‘Bryan and Zane’s bridge’ on the Old Alton Bridge, and, uh…don’t do that. Not even for demon reasons – okay, not just for demon reasons, we don’t need the Goatman any more pissed at us than he already is – but – that’s just rude, folks. Don’t go and vandalise the bridge.

“You can, uh, totally keep changing the Wikipedia page, though. That’s hilarious.”

...

Thankfully, the A/V interference slacks off enough that Zane can get back to filming before he gets replaced as host of Unresolved and demoted to writing listicles about the 8 ways to tell if your houseplants are trying to unionise.

“Man, I wish people wouldn’t joke about you being a demon,” Bryan says, scrolling through the comments on their video on el Chupacabra. He’s looking for anything good they can follow up on for the Autopsy segment, but it’s all people pointing out the weird growling feedback under all of Zane’s dialogue. “That shit’s not funny.”

“Well,” Zane says, looking over Bryan’s shoulder as he scrolls. The ‘Zane is a demon’ thing seems to have taken off like a lit cigarette stubbed out in a box full of fireworks. Some of these fans have some incredibly…creative takes on the topography of Heaven and Hell, some of which have clearly had entirely too much thought put into them for how completely out to lunch they are, and others which he’s pretty sure have been lifted wholesale from the show Supernatural. Zane wonders, idly, where it’s all coming from. “It’s a little funny.”

Bryan tears his gaze away from the monitor to give Zane a disbelieving look, and Zane shrugs.

“Think about it. Me, the skeptic, secretly being the thing I claim doesn’t exist? You, the believer, never realising the thing you’ve been searching for evidence of has been right under your own nose the whole time? Comedy gold right there.”

Bryan’s eyes narrow, but he looks like he’s trying not to smile.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, turning back to the screen, only to immediately turn back around and fix Zane with a serious look that’s completely ruined by the big smile that overtakes it. “But you’re not a demon, right?”

“Is that even a serious question?” When Bryan just raises both eyebrows and grins wider, Zane shakes his head. “Of course I’m not a – Bryan, if demons existed, which is already a big if, and if I were one, which is an even bigger, more insurmountable if…I’d be pretty shit at my job, wouldn’t I? All I do is try to prove demons are real on camera in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. And if you ask all -” He gestures to the comment section. “These people, they’d say I’ve succeeded. Not to mention, I’m not sure encouraging your ridiculous conspiracy theories and enabling your…ghost habit counts as tempting anyone to sin.”

“You are always tricking me into talking to the demons,” Bryan says thoughtfully, still grinning. “Taking me to haunted, evil places…”

“You dragged me to that spider-infested hellhole in Mexico,” Zane points out. “And ninety percent of the other places we’ve gone.”

“Taunting them, riling them up, trying to convince our viewers that nothing bad will happen to them if they invite demons to come kill them -”

“Well, they haven’t yet, have they?”

“Inviting evil spirits to follow us home?”

“Again. They haven’t yet, have they?” When Bryan doesn’t answer, Zane crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “The most that’s ever happened at a location is a flashlight flickering on and off because its wiring makes the human back look well-designed. Because demons, like ghosts, do not exist. You’re safe.”

Bryan stares at Zane a moment longer, and Zane can’t resist the urge to add, “Besides, I didn’t want to be a ghost hunter. That was all your idea. If anything, you’re the foul tempter here.”

“Only because I wanted to prove to you -” Bryan breaks off, shaking his head and giggling under his breath, and Zane shrugs again.

“Either way, the idea of me being a demon is preposterous. It’s – it’s just silly.”

Bryan nods, like he agrees, and then has to ruin it by stopping and asking, “But you’re not one, right?”

“For the love of – No, Bryan. I am not a demon.”

“Okay,” Bryan says, spinning his office chair back to face the monitor. “Just checking.”

He scrolls in blissful silence for all of thirty seconds before spinning back to face Zane. “But if you were a demon, you’d tell me, right?”

“Bryan,” Zane sighs. “Yes. If it makes you feel better, I promise I will tell you if I ever happen to be a demon. Now can we please do our job?”

...

The alarm clock on the bedside table is casting a sinister red glow over the pillow when Zane blinks awake. The numbers on its face read 3:00. Zane tries to focus on what had woken him, but it’s gone. If he concentrates, he thinks he can remember knocking, like someone was at the front door, but he’s not sure if that was real or part of the dream.

For some reason, he finds himself thinking of the first batch of ghost-hunting trips he and Bryan had taken. It was something Bryan had said at their last stop, the so-called demon house where their flashlight had so spectacularly malfunctioned. 3 AM. The devil’s hour.

Unbelievable. All this demon crap is actually starting to worm its way into Zane’s brain. Next he’ll be consulting the damn spirit box to find out what colour shoes to wear with blue pants or some such hornswoggle. Zane sits up, careful not to disturb Tara or the covers she’s hoarding, and grabs the bottle of water off the bedside table, twisting off the cap. One quick sip to wash the sleep-stank out of his mouth, then back to –

Zane doesn’t get a chance to finish that thought.

He yelps out loud, and spits furiously back into the bottle, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. The inside of his mouth feels like he just took a big slurp of a sandpaper-ghost pepper smoothie. Maybe laced with vinegar. And broken glass.

His first, bizarre thought is that the water bottle must be full of acid, even though the flimsy plastic hasn’t corroded at all and there’s absolutely no logical reason why anyone, Zane himself included, would have put acid in a bottle of water and left it on his bedside table.

Still. Even if it isn’t acid, it burns and he needs to rinse it out of his mouth now. Zane stumbles out of bed, tripping over the covers and dropping the water bottle on the rug. He staggers into the bathroom, flicking on the light and beelining for the sink.

Zane splashes his face, takes a huge mouthful of tapwater and gargles it before spitting into the sink. He rinses and repeats until the burning fades to a mild sting, like he’s just eaten a good jalapeno.

Zane takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. He gives his face one last splash before straightening up, breathing a sigh of relief.

It sticks in his throat at the sight of his reflection.

The angry red blisters on his lips and at the corners of his mouth are already starting to close before Zane’s eyes. Eyes which seem to be glowing.

Zane carefully does not freak out. He blinks a couple of times, in case he’s got – maybe sleep, or something, trapped in his eye. When the vision doesn’t go away, he leans in closer to the mirror, pulling down on the lower lid of his right eye with one finger, trying to see if the bright red colour goes all the way back. Oh, sure, it looks like it’s glowing red in the dim light from the bathroom light fixture behind him at three in the morning, but what’s more likely: that Bryan was somehow right about demons (or Zane’s been the victim of a B&E by a mad poisoner and special-effects artist), or that Zane’s burst a couple of important blood vessels in his eyes and the whole sclera is flooded? Technically, there aren’t any pain receptors in the eyeball itself, so theoretically it could happen without Zane noticing, probably –

His bared eyeball itches, drying out, and Zane blinks again without thinking. When he opens his eyes again, they’re back to their usual brown and white. He blinks another few times for good measure, but his eyes stay normal. And the blisters around his mouth are gone, too, the pain nothing but a memory.

“Oh,” Zane says, rather anticlimactically, to his reflection. “Dreaming. Okay.”

He gives a couple more blinks, to make sure the illusion doesn’t come back, then dries off his face and flicks the light off, heading back to bed.

...

“Oh, what the hell is that?”

Zane blinks awake. There’s sunlight hitting his face and Tara is standing by his side of the bed, scowling down at something on the carpet.

Zane rolls over to look at it. It takes him a moment to work out what he’s seeing. It looks like a blob of clear, melted plastic, streaked with blue and white through its bubbled, warped surface.

It almost looks like the remains of a water bottle, if whatever it was holding boiled inside it.

Zane looks up at the bedside table. The clock glows a red 7:28. The bottle of water he’d left sitting beside it is no longer there.

“No idea,” he says, finally. “Better chuck it before Toby gets into it, though.”

Tara nods, starting to bend down, but stops with her head about level with Zane’s, wrinkling up her nose. “Do you smell – there that rotten-egg smell is again!”

“I’ll call the landlord,” Zane says.

...

They’re shooting the raw footage for an episode on the Fresno Nightcrawler (Nightcrawlers? It sounds like there were at least two of them) at work. Bryan’s prepped his usual batch of malarkey – though, Zane will say, it’s always well-researched and thoroughly entertaining malarkey – and Zane tries to counter it with his usual witty barbs and intelligent retorts. But Bryan calls cut just as they’re starting to get to the good part – that is, the part where Bryan has to try to offer a rational explanation for disembodied walking pants.

“Nuh uh,” Bryan says, shaking his head. “This isn’t working. Dude, what’s gotten into you today? You didn’t even give me shit for that denim pun.”

“Denim pun?” Zane asks, blinking.

“See? That’s exactly what I mean,” Bryan says. “How – how did you not catch that? Even I knew that one was terrible!”

“Oh, yeah,” Zane says. “Sorry.”

Bryan gives him a squint. “Are you all right?”

“Hm? Oh, fine.”

Bryan squints harder.

“A little distracted,” Zane admits. “Didn’t sleep too well last night.”

Bryan squints even harder. “Still got my holy water?”

“Don’t start,” Zane says, rolling his eyes.

...

Zane’s just starting to prep dinner – something from a mail-order meal box that he’s never heard of but that sounds tasty and has chicken in it – when he hears the knocks. There’s one, a little hesitant, followed quickly by two more, sounding louder and more confident.

Zane pauses in the middle of chopping cabbage, but he can’t hear anything else. Even the cat isn’t tearing around causing havoc. Probably it’s under the couch, which is its new favourite place to hide, and to hiss and claw at unprotected ankles from whenever Zane gets too close.

Zane shrugs, and turns back to the meal prep, but he’s barely picked up the knife before the knocks come again. Three times. Loud and clear as a bell. Actually, a little like a bell – there’s a slight metallic quality to the noise that Zane can’t quite pin down.

He puts the knife down.

There’s nobody visible on the other side of the peephole in the apartment door. Zane undoes the deadbolt and swings the door open anyway, hoping he can just stick his head out and see if whoever thinks it’s funny to come knock on his shit at all hours is still visible as they book it away down the hall.

But that’s not quite what happens. Instead, Zane takes one step out of the apartment before realising the hall light must’ve gone out. It’s pitch-dark out here, like the light from the apartment isn’t even falling through the door, and cold as balls. A little chill breeze wafts across his face and skitters down the back of his neck, raising goosebumps up his arms. It smells of green and water, and that’s when Zane realises he isn’t in his apartment building anymore. The sheer sense of vast, open space around him, the sparkle of stars overhead, the soft rustle of the breeze through the leaves, the creak of the old wooden slats under his feet –

“Oh my god.”

Zane’s thoughts exactly, but he wasn’t the one who said it.

The girl who’d spoken is standing frozen, staring with wide eyes directly at the spot where Zane’s standing. Her friend starts to turn at the sound of the first girl’s voice, but then freezes in place as well, apparently at the sight of Zane. One of her hands is curled into a fist, the knuckles poised to rap on – Zane blinks – the paint-peeling girder of the truss supporting the short bridge they’re all standing on.

“Oh fuck,” the second girl says, seeming to read Zane’s mind. “Oh shit, oh fuck. Oh my god.”

“Hey, are we -” Zane starts to ask, taking a step forward, and the first girl lets out a shriek in operatic high C, a shriek that startles a few winged shadows out of the tops of the trees on the riverbank. The echoes haven’t even started to die away when she and her friend both turn and book it. Their flashlight beams bounce away down the bridge as they both run, the wild swinging lights illuminating snatches of truss, tree, boards, bats, flying red and gold hair. Almost before Zane knows it, the thunder of their footsteps on the wooden bridge turn into the slap of running feet against bare dirt. Somewhere in the dark on the other side of the bridge, there’s one, two slams of a car door, the grumble of an engine kicking to life, and headlights briefly throw the bridge into sharp, bright relief before veering wildly off into the night.

Zane is left standing at the end of the bridge, blinking away purple afterimages and trying to make sense of what the hell just happened.

...

Bryan’s voice sounds groggy when he picks up his phone, like he was asleep or more than halfway there when it rang. “H’lo?”

“Bryan, can you come get me?”

“Wh- yeah, sure.” The clunking and clattering in the background is probably Bryan fumbling for his glasses. “Where are you?”

Zane looks around him, at the quiet, dark trees. “Um, Texas.”

There’s a single loud thump from the other end of the line, and then quiet.

“Bryan?” Zane asks.

Bryan sounds completely awake now. “What the fuck are you doing in Texas?”

“Believe me,” Zane says, “I’m wondering the same thing.”

He’s standing in the middle of the bridge. It’s colder out here, out of the shelter of the trees, but he just feels more comfortable there. Safer. The Uber’s going to take half an hour to get out here, and the rustling in the bushes was really starting to get to him. He hasn’t forgotten what Bryan said about cults and sacrifices in this area, or the rustling they heard when they were out here for their on-location shoot. And ghosts and demons might not be real, but the people who believe in them sure are, and when those people also have big knives and very little compunction about what they use them on, it’s only common sense to steer clear.

“Oh my god,” Bryan sighs into the phone, and Zane has to admit that being able to hear his best friend’s voice is also very reassuring. “Only you. How did you get yourself out there, that you can’t get yourself back?”

“Bryan,” Zane says. “Please. I don’t have my wallet, I’m just lucky I had the Uber app to get me back to civilisation, there are no AirBNBs for miles -”

“What? Where are you?”

Zane bites his bottom lip. There’s no way to do this without Bryan freaking out and jumping to ridiculous conclusions, but Tara had assumed it was a joke and hung up on him, and Zane doesn’t know who else he can call about something like this in the middle of the night. “So. You remember that little – little road trip we took out to a nice hiking trail in Denton County?”

There’s a moment of ominous silence.

“You’re standing on the Goatman’s Bridge, aren’t you,” Bryan says.

“I’m standing on the Goatman’s Bridge,” Zane agrees, because what else is he going to say?

There’s a long, slightly muffled sigh from the other end of the phone, like Bryan is dragging a hand down his face.

“That’s a twenty hour drive, Zane,” he says, at last.

Zane shrugs, before remembering that Bryan can’t see him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

...

Bryan doesn’t say anything when he pulls up in front of the bus station, just flashes the headlights twice and pokes his head out the driver’s side window. Zane gratefully flops into the passenger seat and turns up the heat as far as it will go.

They manage to make it back to the highway before either of them says anything. Bryan keeps his eyes fixed on the road, not looking over at Zane, not acknowledging his presence. The radio hisses and pops static at them until Zane reaches over and turns it off.

“Thanks for coming all the way out here,” he says, mostly to fill the sucking silence. “I tried to get the bus, but they wouldn’t take ApplePay.”

Bryan does not ask what the fuck Zane was doing twenty hours from home, standing on a reputedly haunted bridge in a totally different state from his apartment, which is a small mercy. His knuckles do go white on the steering wheel as he says, “You never answered my question. How did you get out here without your wallet in the first place?”

“Not sure,” Zane says, because it’s the truth. And then, because he’s had several hours in the dark with only his thoughts and possibly a serial murder cult for company, and because he’d much rather think about what could have happened to him than what might still happen to him, “I probably wandered out here in a fugue state.”

Bryan slams on the brakes so hard that for a moment, Zane thinks they’ve hit something in the road. He grabs at the handle on the door for support as the SUV veers sharply right and comes to a rolling halt on the shoulder of a dirt road, half-in and half-out of the woods.

Bryan’s breathing hard, and he slaps Zane’s hand away when Zane reaches over to see if he’s okay. “What the fuck!” he yells, and slams the flats of both hands against the steering wheel.

The blare of the horn startles them both, and for a moment, the inside of the SUV is silent.

“Fugue state!?” Bryan finally shouts, at the windshield.

“It’s the only logical -”

“No! Fuck your logic! Your eyes were fucking glowing!”

“Mass hysteria,” Zane says, feeling a little more confident about this one. At least it’s a subject he’s a little more familiar with the mechanics of.

“Mass fucking hysteria?!?”

“All of those fans -” Zane starts, but Bryan holds up a hand with the palm facing Zane and shakes his head.

“No, goddamnit, you don’t get to fucking – Unresolved your way out of this one! I know what I saw, and it wasn’t mass fucking hysteria!”

“Well, we already talked about this, I don’t think you exactly get up in the morning thinking, uh, ‘hm, I have some empty space in my calendar, think I’ll schedule in a little mass hysteria for Tuesday’ -”

“Fuck you, Zane!” Bryan finally turns to face Zane, and – oh. Oh, he looks bad. He looks very upset. Zane may have miscalculated here. “This isn’t a – a stupid bit! This is our real, actual lives here!”

Zane lets all that sit in the air between them for a moment, lets that settle into the dust covering the dashboard. Bryan’s breathing hard, but he doesn’t say anything else, waiting to see what Zane’s got to say for himself.

“I know,” Zane says, finally, testing the response on his tongue and finding it to be true. “Do you think that just ‘cause I don’t think this is anything to do with – spirits, or demons, that I’m not scared too? I found myself in another state tonight.” There’s some kind of joke to be made here about fugue states and Texas state, but this isn’t really the time to go trying to tease it out. “With no idea how I got here and no way to get food or shelter or home. I’m not – being…flip, or sarcastic, or trying to dismiss you. I actually think I must have found my way out here in a fugue state, maybe I hitchhiked, I don’t know! I can’t remember anything between opening my apartment door and stepping onto the bridge! I don’t have any other way to explain that!”

He plunges forward, before Bryan can do that thing he does and grin like Zane not knowing the rational explanation means there isn’t one. “And I’ve had at least one hallucination, and that means – it all adds up to something wrong in my brain. Maybe mental, maybe physical. Do you think I’m not taking this seriously? I’m scared as hell! I’m fucking terrified! And I’m not going to accuse you of not taking it seriously because you think it’s demons, but right now, that commitment’s being seriously tested!”

Bryan’s silent for a moment, and Zane flinches, internally. So the 180 from ‘joke about it to make it smaller and less frightening’ to ‘you want serious, we can do serious’ might have been a bit too much mood whiplash.

He really hopes he hasn’t insulted Bryan. Bryan’s one of his best friends, and even their ongoing disagreement about what constitutes demonstrable scientific evidence of life after death hasn’t put a damper on that friendship. But Zane knows how the frustration of not being able to convince someone of your own convictions can add up and boil over, and he really doesn’t want this to be the final straw between them.

Also, he really needs Bryan to drive him home.

But when Bryan does open his mouth, what he says isn’t anything Zane’s expecting. “What hallucination?”

“What?”

“You said you’d had at least one hallucination. What was it.”

Zane shrugs one shoulder. “Knocking, all over my apartment. And something I thought was a very vivid dream after I accidentally drank your holy water.”

“You drank my -”

“Accidentally! Look, I’ll get you some more.”

But Bryan’s already moved on, if the way he’s frowning is any indication. “So what was that hallucination?”

Zane suddenly feels like he imagines people with stage fright must feel when they’re put on the spot to sing karaoke.

“That it burned my mouth,” he finally admits. “And my eyes glowed. But we can’t test that now, because you’ve heard about it and you’re obviously part of this mass -”

“If you say ‘mass hysteria’ one more time, I’m going to use your travel tea mug for black coffee,” Bryan threatens.

“You wouldn’t. I’d never get the taste out!”

“Oh, don’t test me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.” Bryan wags a finger in the air between them. “And – hang on. I saw your eyes glowing before you told me about this. So that’s two independent sightings of the same phenomenon -”

“Don’t start,” Zane groans.

Bryan shrugs, with that too-innocent face he likes to wear when he doesn’t have anything concrete but he wants to make Zane look like the fool for not believing that the ghost of an alien possessed the family cat.

“I’m going to the doctor as soon as we get back,” Zane says, warningly. “You’re not going to talk me out of it.”

Bryan shrugs again, a normal shrug this time without any trace of smugness. “Wasn’t even gonna try. Believe me, if it turns out you have a brain tumour or a – cog out of alignment, I want them to catch it right away. But – would you please at least consider also consulting the exorcist?”

Zane bites his bottom lip. On the one hand, it should be harmless, but on the other – “I don’t want to encourage the delusion. I was there for that Exorcism of Anneliese Whatserpickle episode. I have the bee sting scars to prove it.”

Bryan snorts, but he doesn’t argue. “Just…think about it. Please?”

Zane looks out the window. Somewhere out in those woods, the Old Alton Bridge is sitting, waiting for carts and horses and feet that will no longer cross it. He thinks, briefly, about how stupid he’d thought a demon named Steve was. The mere idea of a demon named Zane is objectively even stupider.

But –

The memory of the girl’s raised fist, ready to knock on the bridge, comes sharply back to him. Three knocks, he’d been hearing, on the pipes and the apartment door.

Zane and Bryan had each knocked on the bridge three times, when they were shooting on location, because it was supposed to summon the Goatman. Steve. The demon who owned the bridge.

The bridge Zane himself had loudly declared he’d stolen by the end of the episode. The bridge that thousands – maybe even hundreds of thousands – of people had agreed that yes, he owned, and they’d alter both bridge and documentation to prove it.

He glances over at Bryan, sees him staring straight out into the dark woods with his jaw set, and feels a little cold zap of fear followed by something soft. The girl who’d been about to knock had looked like that, just before she’d turned and run. She’d seen something when she looked at Zane that had scared her badly enough to run like hell.

But so had Bryan. Bryan, who’s so easy to get worked up, who hates everything to do with demons, who for all that he would love to have evidence of ghosts on camera, would really rather be left alone by them completely. Bryan, who had willingly dropped everything and driven all the way to Texas, back to a bridge that he fully believes is haunted by something powerful and evil that he and Zane had personally pissed off, without even a camera crew for backup or an excuse. Bryan, who sincerely believes in all this demon stuff, had seen his best friend turned worst nightmare advance out of the darkness towards him, complete with glowing red eyes.

And he hadn’t run. He’d stayed, and waited, and worried. About Zane. For Zane.

Zane shakes his head. He still doesn’t really believe that what’s going on is demons, but – if Bryan does, and it’d make Bryan feel better –

“Okay,” he says, and Bryan’s jaw unclenches, just a little. “Yeah. Let’s give the Father a call, too.”

“Okay,” Bryan says. “Good. You know, I’m gonna hold you to that.”

He jerks the key in the ignition, and the SUV rumbles back to life. Bryan shifts into reverse, and glances back over his shoulder, but pauses, looking up to meet Zane’s eyes.

“So,” he starts, with the beginnings of a shit-eating grin stealing across his face, “does this mean we can say that the existence of demons has now been officially -”

“If you even think about saying ‘Resolved’, I will punt you like a football,” Zane warns.

Bryan just grins, and turns the SUV around.

#definitely not bfu rpf #mary writes #buzzfeed unsolved #this is mary's fic tag

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weshallneverrevolt · 6 years ago

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B&C Behind the Scenes: Retro Video Capture On a Budget

People who follow Bread and Circuses know that the blog is dedicated almost entirely to pop culture analysis. But people who are my friends also know that I’m a huge geek for computer hardware. So today, you’ll get you a man who can do both. This is my first behind the scenes feature, where I talk about crazy learning experiences in being a small-time YouTuber. This piece will be very technical, so I don’t blame you for skipping it.

The next project for Bread and Circuses is a full documentary and retrospective on Final Fantasy IX (2000, PlayStation), maybe the most important game in my life and one of the best RPGs ever made. Due to the scope of the video, I’m replaying all the original Final Fantasy games for the original PlayStation to jog my memory and give context for the less researchy parts. I am doing this on original hardware and a tube TV, without resorting to emulation or the re-releases. And I’ll be recording the entire game.

The choice for original hardware came for a few reasons. For one, the newer ports of Final Fantasy games are…mixed, at best. IX’s updated ports feature higher quality models and cutscenes, but the backgrounds are blurry, the new fonts and interface are hideous, and the overall “feel” of the original game is somewhat lost. As inspiration for writing the script, I also want the nostalgic experience of how I first experienced the game.

With that being said, I had a major hurdle to overcome: how do I record 50+ hours of gameplay from a 1995 console?

Step 1: Capture Setup

Most game capture these days is done in two ways: via the device playing the game, or via a capture card. The first method is quite easy on PC: you just fire up Open Broadcaster Suite, use a quick setup guide and you’re good to go. This is what I’ve done for all my videos thus far.

For modern consoles, you can use an HDMI capture card like the Elgato HD60. The cards aren’t exactly cheap, but they’re affordable enough for most streamers and let’s players.

But there’s one problem: both the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 do not have HDMI output. The early model PS3s can play PS1 games and have native HDMI, but they are rare, expensive, and often break.

While you can buy HDMI adapters for the OG PlayStation, they are spotty in quality and present yet another challenge: such adapters often introduce noticeable input lag. Though FFIX is not a fast-paced game, the lag is still bothersome. They also don’t work with my tube TV, which is critical for my desired creative process.

That leaves me with two capture options: composite or S-Video. Composite video is the little yellow guy you used to plug into your tube TV. It looks decent on those, but when captured digitally, the blurriness and drab colors are immediately apparent. It’s for this reason that I purchased S-video cables; without going into boring technical detail, S-Video delivers far richer colors. Because the adapter includes both, I can output to my TV and computer at the same time with no additional equipment!

Speaking of adapters, the PS2 also has the option to output component video, arguably the best analog video available. While capture solutions exist for component video, my tube TV does not accept it. So to use component, I would need a system of complicated adapters and converters to both record on my computer and play on my TV at the same time. It’s too much hassle for not enough results.

So instead, I did some research and bought this little guy: the Hauppauge USB Live-2. There are many adapters like it, but Hauppauge has brand recognition in this area. This adapter also uses 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, meaning that it sacrifices very little in color depth compared to some cheaper models. It plugs into any USB port.

My tube TV only supports mono sound, which means it only needs one audio cable. I hooked up the left channel (white cable) to my TV, and the right channel (red cable) to my capture card. When outputting FFIX in mono mode, both devices receive the same sounds, and the music doesn’t suffer from missing stereo effects. Perfection.

Step 2: PS1 or PS2?

So as most people know, the PlayStation 2 is backwards compatible with original PlayStation games. The method by which this is done, however, differs based on the model.

Early PS2s have an actual PS1 processor on their motherboard. For the PS2 it’s used for sound and input/output, but when playing a PS1 game this CPU is instead, providing nearly perfect PS1 support. Sony actually did the same thing with the first PS3, but soon realized it was very expensive and scrapped it.

For later models of the PS2 – the slimlines – Sony switched to software emulation to save costs and space. The software emulation works very well, but it is just that: emulation. It is very rare for emulators to be literally perfect replications of the original experience, and Sony’s for the PS2 – called POPS – is not 100% accurate. I also don’t have a slim, so there’s that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I first dug out my old PlayStation 1, purchased new in 1998. While the system itself still works shockingly well (despite some skipping during movies), I quickly ran into a problem: the PS1 outputs at 240p. For the uninitiated, video nomenclature like 240p refers to the number of lines in the image along with the scan type. So 240p means there are 240 lines of pixels in the image, and they are updated progressively, meaning all at once.

Older tube TVs can accept 240p input, but output it in interlaced form. This means that the TV quickly updates every other line of the image, rather than the entire image at once. It works pretty good for this type of TV, but on a modern monitor introduces some problems…which I’ll get to in a bit.

Image from dummies.com. Fitting.

However, this was a problem for me because my new capture card did not accept 240p input. I tried countless times to get it to accept PS1 video, and it just didn’t work. However, I noticed that my PS2 did. That’s because the PS2 outputs by default at 480i, an interlaced mode that my capture card accepted.

So I opted to use my “fat” PS2 instead, which is a SCPH-30001 model, purchased new in 2001. It includes the original PlayStation chip, and – to my enormous surprise – read my original Final Fantasy IX CDs perfectly. Because the PS2 accepts PS1 controllers and PS1 memory cards, it was an almost flawless version of the original PS1 experience. Awesome!

Step 3: Recording

With setup out of the way, I got to the final step of the project: actually recording digital video.

I use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for all my video and streaming projects. It’s free, powerful, and pretty fast. My capture device was immediately detected by OBS, but there was one immediate problem.

Remember the interlacing I mentioned earlier? When you display interlaced video on a progressive screen – AKA any modern flat-panel monitor – you get a horribly ugly effect where the video seems to be ripping itself apart. This is called combing, and it sucks. Thankfully, OBS supports native deinterlacing, so I was able to fix it right up.

That being said, let’s break down the different parts of recording with OBS:

Resolution: the PS2 outputs in 720x480 pixels, but my videos are at 1920x1080. However, recording at 1080p requires more hardware power, so I get more definition at the expense of less overall quality. I chose instead to record at 720p, which is closer to the PS2’s native resolution and allows me to capture better colors with less blur.

Framerate: this is where things got interesting. I master all of my videos at 60 frames per second. Very, very few PS1/2 games (FFIX included) hit 60fps, because the hardware of the time just wasn’t capable of rendering graphics that fast. However, they do output at a 60 hertz refresh rate, meaning that the image updates 60 times per second even if the console doesn’t actually produce new frames that fast. So if you record at under 60fps, you get noticeable judder in your footage. That being said, 60fps was a requirement.

Encoding: I wanted to get the highest possible quality picture. My computer has a Ryzen 5 1600 processor – a capable mid-range CPU – and is excellent at software video encoding. I used the OBS x264 encoder running at medium quality. Any higher than medium and I started experiencing skipping footage as my CPU went to 100% utilization. I gotta admit, it’s pretty cool hearing my computer fans kick into overdrive as the CPU is pushed to its limits.

Bitrate: I’m recording a lot of footage here, so while I needed high quality, I also have to keep storage limitations in mind. I did some experimenting and decided on a bitrate of 9000kbps, still above YouTube quality while also saving space. This also means that each hour of footage is about 4GB; given that FFIX is about 40 hours long, that means roughly 160GB of footage for the game. Not bad, considering.

Deinterlacing: OBS presents a slew of options for deinterlacing your footage, and the differences can be tough to spot. The only option that gave me zero trouble – no juddering or excessive blur – was Yasif 2x. I also increased the brightness and saturation to make up for some of the analog video deficiencies.

I’ve included sample footage below, along with pictures of my setup. If you’re an aspiring retro YouTuber or streamer, feel free to PM me with any questions. This stuff was kinda intimidating to figure out and I’m happy to help!

Until then, I’ll be in Gaia. Or Terra, once I hit Disc 3.

Jon

Full Setup

Cable Routing Detail

The TV inputs run through this old AV hub I dug up from my teenage bedroom. This lets me run the cables behind my desk to keep things a bit neater. I say a bit because you can still see the cables back there, but that’s showbiz, baby.

Sample Footage

youtube

#ff9 #ffix #final fantasy ix #retro #gaming #ps1 #ps2 #playstation #capture #hauppauge #video #editing #project #documentary #video essay #criticism #games #2000s

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labgrownsteaks · 4 years ago

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Chapter 20

I lit some candles, we still had power but it still seemed fitting given the fact that all the internet was down. I heard the front door close of my parents house. My mom and dad were both outside, and so was everyone else. Neighbors who hadn’t seen one another in months were giving each other waves and head nods. Making small talk about the cable companies and how everyone hates their cell phone service provider. My dad started walking back to the garage, he hadn’t been back here in ages and I suddenly got self conscious. He walked up to the door and I let him in. He was wearing a oversized teal t shirt and pastel pink plaid shorts. Pretty much the most dadlike outfit you could ever imagine.

“Haha! Looks like you kids found something to do during the outtage! “ he said in reference to the strong smell of marijuana in the air. Guy was the first to respond and he always had this habit of being overly formal.

“Hi sir, we’ve just been playing Pitfall until the power went out” he said.

“”I can imagine” my dad said dubiously in response. He then took a look at me as if he hadn’t seen me in years and said “So, what have you been up to lately?” A million things raced through my head, we had just been transformed into gophers to carry out some mission we weren’t even sure of and were saved by an owl that previously wanted to kill us, and were responsible for taking out service for an indiscernible portion of the country.

“Not much, just chillin” I responded

“Well, I hope you kids can find a way to keep yourselves busy without the internet. I know how much y’all depend on it. But get outside and live a little! See the world!” My father said, patting me on the back.

“That’s a good plan sir. We were about to go on a bike ride” Erin piped up.

“Go for a bike ride!” My father retorted with more excitement than made me feel comfortable. “I saw you got that old beast fired up the other day!” he said to me, referencing my bike which had been outfitted with a gas motor. “How’s it running?” he continued on.

“Umm, pretty good. Runs good I guess” I replied.

“Well if you ever want to take a break and work on it together just let me know!” he said with a bit of flair. “I’m always inside there, come say hi sometime!”

“Will do dad. “

Erin and Guy said their own goodbyes, as did I, and he wandered back up the driveway, and looked at the flowers which were planted around a tree in the front yard before waving at the neighbor across the street who was doing the same.

Guy was playing with the roach of the joint, and was lighting it up again, trying to get a couple more hits off of it. Erin looked over at me and I asked “So what now?”

“We wait. What else can we do?” Erin replied.

“You showed a lot of determination out there. With your gopher teeth and all!”

“You just sat on the fence and watched” “What else could I do?!” I retorted, laughing along with Erin.

“You could’ve chomped on some cables!”

Guy interrupted “Sorry to crash the Disney film y’all have going on… But do you want to go on a bike ride? It’s so quiet out!”

Erin and I agreed, and Guy drove my bike and I sat on the front handlebars as we whizzed through the streets of my neighborhood to his place. Everyone was outside, waving, and yelling their salutations as the wind blew in our hair.

We got to Guy’s place, which was in the lower level of an apartment complex. My butt took a beating on the ride over sitting on the handlebars but it was worth it. After dropping out bikes in the grass in front of his place we followed guy to his “storage unit” he had behind it. Guy opened the garage door and it was absolutely bursting at the seams with all sorts of outdated computer technology. Old drum machines that nobody cared about, a brokem synthesizer, balls and balls of cables and monitors piled on top of each other, piled on top of organs, jammed in between old couches, betamax players, overhead projectors, glass hippie lights that once hung from the ceiling, and piles and piles of old computer language books next to stacks of CD ROMs and VHS cassettes. Erin walked over to a box of 8 track cartridges. “What the hell are these? John Denver, Jimmy Buffet, you definitely got all the hits!” she said, holding one up in her hand. Guy responed with a look of disgust “You don’t know what 8 tracks are?”

“Can you even play these?” Erin continued

“Sure, I’ve got the player right there!” Guy exclaimed, as he bent over a tan torn up couch. He fished out a silver box, it was a Pioneer Stereo Receiver with a built in 8 track player, it had some inlaid fake wood in the front, and the silver was polished and glistened in the light. He pulled the cord free from the grip of the couch. He then pulled a couple small cabinet sized speakers free from an adjacent shelf. “Altec Lansing?” I said, speaking about the brand name plastered on the front. “Yeah, they’ve been around forever, since the 1920s” Guy said as he screwed the speakers wires to the back of the 8 track receiver unit. “Pick something out of the box” Guy instructed Erin as she rummaged through the box full of 8 tracks. “This looks badass” she said as she pulled out a white cartridge with what appeared to be an ink drawing of a large batwing shepherding a sea of skulls and other dark drawings. “Oh that’s Nazareth, Hair of the Dog, it’s a fantastic choice!” Guy piped up excitedly, grabbing the 8 track from Erin’s hand and jamming it into the front of the receiver, which was now glowing blue as he had plugged it into an outdoor outlet. The speakers began to cry out into the otherwise quiet atmostphere. A male rockstar voice screamed out into the void “now you’re messin with a… A sonofabitch! Now you’re messin with a sonofabitch!” Guy yelled over the speakers which were far too loud for pleasant company “They’re from fuckin Scotland!”

Erin and I both nodded our heads as the music continued to blare out. An older woman was walking by with her dog and took a hard look at us before walking up. “Oh Nazareth! I haven’t heard them in ages!” she exclaimed, and Guy and her both bobbed their heads with the music, looking at each other in the eye. They were from different generations but both shared the passion for kickass heavy metal music. Erin and I continued to sit there like we were in some sort of nature documentary, watching the madness unfold all around us. The woman, in her mid 40s was now playing air guitar as Guy continued to head bang and play air guitar. “A SONOFABITCH!” guy yelled out and the woman responded “NOW YOU”RE MESSIN WITH A SONOFABITCH!” the woman responded. Erin began to laugh, and her head fell onto my shoulder for a split second. I looked down at her and smiled back. She mouthed to me “What the fuck” and we both continued to watch the nature documentary unfold before us. The song ended, and the woman gave Guy a high five. He turned down the music as she began to peer into his storage unit. “Oh my ! This is all the best stuff! I didn’t know you kids cared about this stuff!” She picked an old atari controller in her hands. “Oh my what a treasure! “ she continued. Guy just kept on smiling. “Now that the internet is down, you’re the man!” she said in a jolly middle aged mom sort of way. The idea had never really hit me, but what if the internet never came back, or what if it were down for days? What would everyone do if they couldn’t play their games or stream their films? Guy had thousands of movies, and music, and projectors, and everything else we had all taken for granted. Everything in that garage could be stored on a single laptop computer, which could be folded and put in a backpack. It wasn’t even on the computer, but in a cloud somewhere, streaming. The music didn’t even exist as an MP3 on a computer anywhere. But what Guy had still resonated with them. Why? Music was still music. Why did it matter if it was played on an 8 track, or an LP, or streamed on Spotify? Guy was now finagling an old ten speed bike out from underneath a pile of records. The middle aged mom continued to sway back and forth with her eyes closed as “Love Hurts!” sang out through the speakers. Erin looked at me shaking her head and smiling.

Guy had got the bike out of the garage now, and the woman was now serenading Erin and I with her own off key rendition of “Love Hurts! Love Scars! Love Wounds! And marks!” We looked at her, and felt a bit of our own destiny in her goofy movements. The song came to an end, and she thanked Guy for showing her his collection, and made her way down the driveway back onto the sidewalk, still moving her hips and quietly singing to herself. Guy was pumping up the tires of his bike with an ancient bicycle pump. The rotten old tires sprung back into life, and within a few minutes we were all riding together into the cool evening breeze. But in the back of our heads, the incident, and all we had been through still lurked. Had we shut off all the power? What would happen when it came back on, and rebooted? We tried to push these thoughts back into our minds as we careened down a hill.

#lgs

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artdjgblog · 5 years ago

Photo

Innerview: Pete Dulin / Present Magazine

January 2007

Art & Photo: DJG

Note: Interview for a Kansas City, MO art and culture blog.

01) How long have you been designing posters and CD packaging/artwork?

If I were to say I’ve been designing this stuff since Mom gave birth, well you might think me to be pompus, new agey and bit queer. However, in the past few years I’ve come to the conclusion that everything I’ve experienced has brought me to this point. Information has been at a constant and consistently carried in the backpack(s). Though, it’s more the matter of channeling that. I’ve always been making things. To put things into a more professional, or “text book” answer, I’m in the sixth year developing a bad back of my own accord. And tack on another four and a half of formal training before that. In which two of those I was making things for people on the side. So, really about 7 or 8 years in a design sense, but only offically five under my DJG belt. So, I’m still a youngster. But, I feel design years add up like dog years. 02) How would you describe your approach or design aesthetic? With certain I have my influences and I’ve had formal training. However, the majority of the time is spent not thinking, rather just doing. And I’m not trying to push athletic shoes. Each day my head gets up different. I am always hungry and eat food the same way. I always put my pants on the same way. I lock the door the same way. I walk the same way. That stuff is all automatic. It’s my head that differs. As the mush upstairs is assembling for the day, my thinking and process(es) tends to come different, though it can all be intuitive to me at the same time. True, somedays I’m not in any shape to win the pennant, nor even give a care about art or design. Yes, I do crank out the work by just doing…and my portfolio is always eating. But, I still feel I’m the laziest guy in my woom, even on a good day. I don’t really consider myself an artist or a designer. I just enjoy the act of making those things but there are moments I just don’t feel like it. When design isn’t doing “it” for me, I read or write or watch things. If I’m not doing anything, I have to be doing something. And I’ve quit the whole notion of actually being something other than just myself. And my self is not always in the mood for me. And I don’t think about a design being good enough to measure-up or anything silly like that. It just has to feel right and true within me. I can tell when something feels forced and without life. For me, the work has to be breathing and has to say something. Now, whatever it conversates to the viewer/audience is all up in the air. It’s always a hoot to hear what others think. Back on the subject of others’ talk of an aesthetic. This is one of the few times I truely think about how I’m doing things. I then start overthinking and that can be a dangerous place. People come to me all the time and say things like, “Oh, you are really great at this and are such a skillfull artisan of the such ‘n’ such…(more nonsense fluff ensues).” This is a complement I suppose, but I tend to take it as a way of them saying that it’s all coming to easy for me. I am my only competition so this is when I start to push myself a bit harder. I’ve got to stay ahead of myself. I like the silly idea of someone doing their best work every day. I don’t know how long I’ll be around, but I hope I’m always doing my best work from my perspective. 03) Historically, society has shifted from the Age of Mechanical Reproduction since the advent of the printing press to the Age of Digital Reproduction. Why is it still important to make a man-made mark on something seemingly short-lived as a band flyer or poster? In taking foundation courses during my first year of formal education we did not use computers. Everything was very basic, hands-on cutting and pasting and drawing fundamentals of design. My friends were complaining about how they couldn’t wait to get on the computer. Personally, I was so naive and so in love with making things by hand (ever since I could remember working my fingertips as a child) that the idea of designing with a computer was not in my vocabulary. I stated to my friends how I was going to take the route of design that didn’t include the aid of computers. They simply laughed at my lunacy. Being that it was the late ‘90s, it was inevitable that we’d be using computers. What’s funny now is that for some odd reason I’ve been able to succeed a bit working with my hands and most of the people I went to school with tire of staring at their computer screen day jobs. I definately appreciate a computer and I use one. But, I think of it only as a tool. I use it as a way to ease production a bit and of course it can be a time saver for layout and print. The problem with computers, the internet and desktop publishing gear is that anybody can be a designer. It’s definately eased things I suppose, but we’ve got people cranking out the most obtrusive visual clutter. I don’t aim to sound arrogant. It’s just that everybody thinks they know what they are doing. Everybody wants the cliche in high-gloss makeup, filled to the brim and in suffocation galore. Why not? We over-consume everything else. It’s just sad to me. I even see trained designers doing it. And most everything just feels so fake and soulless. When I first saw those early cave paintings in grade school text books, something about those expressions just delighted me and it felt right and true. And now when I see graffiti on the wall or a shopping list or letter I just think about the heart and energy behind it all. One of the best things that ever happened to me (with design) is when my computer crashed about five years back and I lost the ability to use 2,000 some fonts. When I had them, I tried to use them appropriately and sparingly. But, they were nothing but a crutch to me. Rarely do I use computer fonts now. If I do there better be a reason or a restraint in my time. I just found it important to really speak honestly with my work. Each day is different and so is my voice and thought. Hand scrawls, handmade type and thumbprints bring forth the idea of a human identity and feels like thought and life was put into the expression. True, if we had the ability to actually see people’s verbal speaking expression there are some voices that would be just plain dull and in the same ol’ font and face over and over. And I suppose at times that would be appropriate. But, just think about the endless images bouncing from each other if everybody’s words, language, expression, feelings and breath stuck around in a clear visual form and of their own signature. That would be incredible. But, I’m sure it would do more harm than good. But, it would definately be something else for people to complain about so then there would be even more imagery because of it! The great artist Saul Steinberg communicated language as marks of visual expression in this way in much of his work. A poster to me is exciting because of the fact that it is short-lived, yet it can be very in-your-face and of the moment. A good poster to me is like a big zit. And a good one will pop and speak all over…let you know that it’s there. It boggles me when people don’t take advantage of this idea. It just seems like people push a duplicator button and paint with boringness and fluorescents over and over. It’s very zombie. (though, zombies could probably make more creative things). In this digital age of people getting information via the web and myspace and cell phones and music players and all that garbage, it’s even more important to get them to focus at things again. I’m all for the internet, but I feel hardly anybody under the age of 35 truely looks at anything in actual form anymore for more than 2 seconds. I am guilty of this too. And this possibly stems from perception of wanting everything bigger, better, faster and right now. These things that are supposed to make our lives easier, yet fill life to the brim and we’re still wondering where our time went. So, it does mean a lot to me when people actually stop and look and think…maybe come back to it again. It’s warming to me when something measley like a concert poster can get somebody to stop their busy life and take notice in a notice. Maybe even get a tickle out of it and a smile in their heart to make their day…maybe even take it home for their own wall. That just means the world. 04) Do you have particular influences in art/design? I used to think you had to have a little man with flash cards or answers written in undershorts for quick draws whenever approached with this question. Anymore I don’t care about impressing people. I touched before on my influence of just existing and growing. I don’t understand it when people find or ape a “style” and milk that into retirement (unless it’s a true and pure speciality like most folk artists, Edward Gorey or Jean-Michel Basquiat). Gosh, I would cut off my hands as opposed to making the same thing everyday until I die. But, I would also do the same to be able to draw or paint like some people. What it is that I do is not something I punch a time card for, nor pound a keyboard to compute my solutions. It is a way of life and life is always changing. Silly, but the only way to stop it from my body is to spill my skull. And then have the bums burn my thumb prints to keep warm at night. I’m blessed to have been raised in a rural environment with a bit of old-fashioned and hands-on approach to things. I wanted so badly to get out of that environment when I was coming of high school age. Now, I really appreciate this aspect of my life. Don’t begin to ask me how I reached into the design grab bag and pulled out this funny-lookin’ rabbit i’m wiggling on. It just kind of happened. Most of it belongs to my always active imagination and having many acres to romp. There wasn’t really a drain plug on what I could do or absorb. Every day my siblings and I were into something new and building our own altered universe from the inspiration of television, movies, tractor pulls, rodeos, demolition dirbies, state fairs…you name it. A great aspect of all of this is that I never really shed any of it. If you could devise a way for me to go back into my time as an eleven-year-old, you bet I would. I feel so many shear that skin as they reach puberty and young adulthood. Even in my late teens when everybody was out dating and all that nonsense, I made myself go to my room and draw and make things. Shoot, I was still building tree houses and playing war (I still do at times). I am constantly fumbling back for it all. I’ve still got most of my childhood things all around me here in my basement club house. I don’t throw anything away. Everytime I go home another bag or two is brought back. The older I get the more I believe my streak stems a lot from my Grandmother on my Dad’s side. I still have many of the things she’s made by hand: fridge magnets, cat head pillow, blankets, book bag. As well as carry the images of wearing bread bags on my feet to school, creating toys out of thread spools, baking and cooking all the time, building forts in the living room, making pretty ladies out of flowers and especially sporting my beloved dead animal backpack (denim with plastic lining for easy blood clean-up). These things sound strange to others, but my world is built from them. She was constantly making or doing (as most of her generation did). I’m a big fan. It’s sad to me as nobody really just makes things anymore for the heck of it. And it’s really sad as she sits and bides her time in the nursing home, limited in her making and doing. I hope my engine breaks from making and doing before I get put in that point. If not, take me to the back forty and shoot me rotten. If somebody were to ask me to place my work in some sort of design bracket…well, I suppose it lands somewhere in the land of Henryk Tomaszewski meets Saul Steinberg meets Lester Beall meets Saul Bass meets Push Pin meets Ray Johnson meets Art Chantry meets Jim Henson meets Folk Art meets garbage in the street…or something like that. It’s really hard to answer that question. Anyway, I get bored with the look of a lot of current design and fashions. Though, there are a few great designers my age coming out of the woods more and more…doing fresh things and in creative ways. I think it stems from growing up in a time of the media of television, film, video games, computers, animation, graphic novels and just the overall mass consumerism of culture and language. And all of these things shaking hands with the idea of pushing boudaries and smothered with a glaze of technology. But, then again every generation is a little bit more ahead of the last…I guess to some degree. I love and appreciate my upbringing and even my access to the culture now. Still, I do wish sometimes I could have lived and designed some fourty, fifty or sixty years back. Though, I’m sure I’d still be in some basement, garnering enjoyment making things the way I want to make them. 05) Does your work relate to the subject matter? For example, do you consciously try to create artwork that suits a band’s music or image? I think some people in the music industry don’t know how to take my work. For one, I feel most of the so-called scene takes itself way too seriously. It’s funny to me, all this playing dress-up and rock star…and especially when it extends into the late twenties and thirties. But, I do suppose some people were just born to be stars. My work isn’t for every person. But, there are a few out there who for some odd reason “get” it and it’s all very flattering of their attraction. It’s even spreading across the country and into other parts of the world. I don’t aim for cool points. I take it serious only to the point of being non-serious. However, when designing it’s important to be held accountable with your client, city, audience, environment, venue, peers and yourself. And I have morals with the world design community, art and design history and with myself. When it comes to marrying my work to a certain band’s music or image…well, what do I have to base on for an image? I have nothing but other designer’s interpretations of where to categorize the idea of what/how a sound or scene should register as. I have an appreciation for the past and present, but I really find it odd when somebody comes to a designer and says they want to play look-alike-dress-up to something already in existence. True, nothing is original anymore and I’m not saying that I’m anything special. Rather, I feel personality helps white wash things a bit and a lot of design these days lacks it (especially in the music industry). These days you can throw a rock and hit many kids making things (music and art). But a large chunk of it seems to be lacking proper development and form…and life. You can’t pick somebody else’s nose and expect to smear those boogers for yourself. You’ve got to earn them. You’ve got to get dirty along the way and find a way to bark, have fun, be yourself and just do things to do them…and then have Mom hose you off at the back door. 06) Pick one of your favorite creations. What do you like best about its elements? First of all, my designs to me are like multiple babies to a mother. Yes, some may look more handsome and pretty and say all the right things and in the right way. Some may pay their own bills and some may be a pain in the rear. Each one is a favorite to me at the time of their creation and birth and in memory to the place that I was at the time of conception. You can point at every 300 and some poster I’ve made and it has a name, place and means something to me. If you said for me to create something for you like one I did back in 2001, well I couldn’t. It was in and of it’s place in my time. It won the race for that given moment. Shoot, sometimes I can’t even work within the same manner fifteen minutes ago. One creation that comes to mind for this question is a package design and identity for The Elevator Division. It’s one that I can call a significant and critical moment in my design sensibility. It’s one that garnered lots of attention and even though I plan to always be making my best work, the “Whatever Makes You Happy” EP CD will always be in my all-time top ten. I came up with the insane idea of cutting, spray painting imagery and making elaborate inserts for 250 packages (I vowed I’d never do it again, but funny how I work…and how I nearly exhausted my tank a month ago repeating this ridiculous process for another CD project). Anyway, so here I am the night before making all of these things and I end up changing my concept at the last minute. Thankfully, it still fit the real estate of the cardboard package, though It required spraying each cover three times as opposed to once. So, production time was tripled and time was not on my side but the design I felt was…and it worked and said a thousand time more than the original. What I had was an attention grabbing image of a hand shooting one of it’s fingers guised as a missle. The idea of shooting off one’s options…or, whatever makes you happy. It worked. It popped. It spoke exactly what the title and the band were speaking of in the music with relationships and with the political climate of war and post-terrorism America . And it came to me the night before (Anyway, I’m boring you with all that designer yap). So, my excitement of the new imagery, fueled my creation of 250 packages in less than a 48 hour period (and let’s not forget to mention i was working a day job). I was really smart and thought it was an awesome idea to spray paint in a basement with no ventilation. At the end of my final hour I erupted from the fumes and haze, with red, white and black paint caked to my hands and coming from my mouth and nose. I flung open the front door of the house as lightning crackled to find a hard rain falling. I was Noah and my boat was taking off…or landed, based on perspective of the event. In revival I jumped and slid head first down the steep grassy embankment and into the dirty, flooded street. I was washed clean. Sadly the design was so effective that it sold-out within a couple of shows and I had to do it all over again. But, the next round was adapted to a standard jewel case. 07) What’s essential on a poster or flyer to grab a viewer’s attention in mere seconds? How does form and function come into play? I’ve touched upon this a wee bit in an earlier question. People tend to have short attention spans and walk with their heads down…and/or simply don’t look at things. Because of this a design has really got to pop, have immediacy and definately needs to say something. It’s funny because people have told me things like, “That is probably your worst poster.” It’s rare for people to be so honest in this way, but I love it when they are so passionate about it (and I love it when they say probably because that means they’ve really put some thought into it and have had discussions with themselves about it in comparable reason with my past efforts and wasted time wrestling with it). But, for some reason that poster really must have spoken to them to have so much feel for it. Normally these are the posters that end up being published and placed in traveling exhibitions. It’s really funny to me. At the time of creation I’m not trying to piss on anybody nor try to make something groundbreaking or award-winning. I just feel like doing things the way I do them in that moment and I feel I make them work. Form and function is an important application for design. Here is another thing I’ve already mentioned…I feel so many kids see something cool and just start cranking out these cool-lookin’ forms…hand-picking the way their things will look. There is a major lack of growth in most art-music these days…even outside of these areas…even just in someone’s persona. I’m not saying you can’t have influences, everybody’s got them and everything’s been done before and done better. I just long for things that speak of their own island. It’s like on “Jurassic Park”. You can’t go in and recreate the notion of copying dinosaurs for yourself. You can only get away with that for so long. Anyway, I also spoke about designs grabbing attention by way of having human elements and a definate soul behind them. I’ve come to compare a poster to a pop song. Sure they’ve been done a thousand times before…but, you can tell the ones that have a true sense of personality and heart to them. There is so much dead-beat fluff out there that can’t even be compared to something that’s alive…something that knows the rules but takes them and reassembles them to their own architecture. It’s very evident in music especially. For instance two bands can play on separate late night talk shows within minutes of each other. Both write pop songs. One speaks freshness and purity, even looks sincere, despite being just a pop band with another pop song. The other feels like actors assembled to play a song somebody else penned for an instant “fat wallet”. It just feels too perfect and calculated…and lifeless. Not everybody cares about this or sees this. It is subjective to a certain degree, but there is a true difference. 08) In your opinion, are flyers and posters a low-brow form of art? People have really started holding posters in higher regard the past five or more years. Poster making is hotter than ever and it really hit a certain peak a couple years ago. The work is spreading farther than just within its respected cities. The artists are becoming just as popular as their art.A poster these days is living beyond it’s short life on the street, on a corkboard or at the venue. People are excited about it. Exhibitions, magazines, websites, books and design annuals celebrate the scene. Collectors and fans of art and music are snatching them up. True, the art of the poster has been around for a long time (and I’ll just reflect on it from my vantage point at the moment). But, I feel that it’s now (band posters in particular) really being taking seriously in the art world. At one time (and in some cases and by some people, still are) posters and flyers were being seen as litter and visual clutter. We can’t help but owe a lot of the commotion to modern pioneers like Art Chantry. He basically single-handily changed the way of the poster back in the ‘70s and ‘80s with experiments, lavish production methods and design aesthetics. He is considered a master artist to the trade and even in the arts in general. Shoot, seeing him lecture in college six years ago helped me decide to take that leap onto the starving artist limb-limbo, doing my own thing as opposed to working for another man. I spoke briefly to him after that lecture and told about my interest in independent music design. He was honest and said, “Expect to starve…several times over.” And I have. I still need to tell him that…and tell him thank you. Though, many poster artists these days no longer have to starve. It’s being taken so seriously and the quality of art is held so high that some can do it for full-time income…and do it rather successfully. A lot of them have full-fledged design studios and cranking out more than just posters. And there are a lot of guys like me with day jobs and coming home to moonlight out of basements and back bedrooms. For myself, I kind of hit the scene at the right time when it was really starting to explode..even though I didn’t really know what I was doing, other than just “doing”. I feel it definitely takes a certain mindset and you’ve got to make some sacrifices. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but with poster art, anyone can do it…it’s easy to do and with limited resources. And then you’ve got the excitement of people bringing back almost deceased production techniques like the letter press. My only rant right now with poster art is that though the quality of work looks great, I feel there is a definite cohesive “look” and style to a lot of it right now. There are a few doing their own thing, but a lot of it is starting to look the same and almost becoming too easy and formulated for some. This is where I give my two cents of brain fart. What’s great about a poster is it’s actual short-lived life on the street. It makes all the more reason to try new things and really push the art form and most importantly gives reason to just be yourself. If it fails it will be gone or in the gutter within weeks and another will take its place. -djg

#innerviews

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itshaejinju · 8 years ago

Text

Some Noctis Fluff

FF15 AU Noctis survives by the power of gray skull. lol So I asked @iinkpools to do a FF15 match up for me and I received the lovely Prince Noctis. And while I was driving home this came to mind and I wanted to share it with her! This is the first non smutthing I've written in a while....if you guys pick up the random mentions to music groups and anime character a epic virtual high five for you. ------ Noctis approached the door of the apartment of his girlfriend it was oddly quiet. . .was she not at home? Peering into the garage he saw her car so she was around it was summer so she wasn't going to be walking around out in this heat. Taking out his spare key smiling because he had just received it a few days ago from her she saying he spends so much time here might as well have a key. Walking into the front door it was really silent, normally that would be a nice thing for Noctis. But at his girlfriends apartment that was super rare and not natural. Her place was always filled with music all sorts of varieties of sound from classical to k-pop making the place constantly buzzing. You could hear a pin drop it was that quiet. "Jin?" Noctis called out her name feeling a bit nervous. Then he heard a frustrated shout that sound like a broken war cry. His heart leapt up into his throat was someone harming her? Summoning a short blade Noctis rushed to the sound of the shout. Boots slamming on the hardwood floor he made his way to the study were the door was partially open. A cat came rushing out the room yowling in fright the small black ball of fur whizzing past him looking terrified. "Uh okay Bassy..." Noctis muttered shaking his head as he pushed the door open all the way. The large computer desk that was filled with books, two computers and a coffee pot. The room held a large sofa that Noctis slept on when he was attempting to help Jinju write and work on helping Ignis publish his first cookbook. Though he wasn't sure why she wasn't working on her own cookbook is beyond him. "Jin?" He called out not seeing her around. "Huh?" He heard a muffled voice coming from under the desk. Going to the desk clearly there was no danger that a sword could fix returning the blade he noticed a shapely ass sticking out. Moaning slightly and turning a deep shade of red at the sight of his girlfriend bent over wearing a short skirt showing a lot of thigh right now. Why was she such a tease like this? Kneeling down beside her placing a hand on the left thigh rubbing fingers over the bare skin. "Hey!" She shouted shocked slamming her head on the top of the desk. Jolting out of spot and shoving Noctis a little as he started to laugh at her reaction. Her glasses were skewed on her face, violet hair covering her bright green eyes, she glared at him. "I am in a middle of a crisis right now Noct!" She exclaimed tossing her arms in the air breasts bouncing as she did. "Yeah what is going on it's silent in here." Noctis commented motioning around the room. The whole apartment was wired to speakers so if the computers or the phone was plugged in to play music the entire apartment would hear it. "That's my crisis! The CD player on the laptop is not working and that craptastic thing can't go online for some reason after Prompto borrowed it to edit some photos. The desktop well I don't know what is wrong with it the damn thing won't play any of my YouTube videos or anything like no sound at all. Then my phone died....I'm going crazy Noct, I swear I heard my own heartbeat earlier...." She said with a panicked tone she was getting flustered breathing raggedly and looking like she was going to have a panic attack. Noctis let out a small laugh she looked so cute like that he didn't quite understand her need for constant music reaching forward he pulled her into a hug. "Calm down okay?" He said soothingly kissing the side of her face not liking that she was panicking so much over this. "I can't Noct I need the music...the phone is charging but I can't plug it into the system and charge it at the same time." She sobbed wrapping arms around him tightly, taking a deep breath enjoying his scent. "I unplugged everything and reinstalled shit and it's still not working..." She continued sounding a bit muffled as she had her face buried in his chest. "Well I'm not really good with computers hun but let me have a look at it okay?" "Really? Please I'll make you those cookies you love so much." She said looking up at him pushing her glasses back up her nose eyes bright with hope. "Okay. Now let's see. . ." Moving over to the desk Noctis started to exam the machine. Jinju got to her feet standing behind him hands reaching to this thick black hair running slender fingers through the hair massaging his temples and scalp. She leaned forward pressing her breasts against his back and neck kissing the top of his head. Noctis squirmed in his seat a little then moved his free hand up to grab at her hand holding it giving it a reassuring squeeze. "So I've never asked and despite it does make it hard to sleep here sometimes, why do you have to have constant music going?" Noctis asked blue eyes meeting those dazzling green eyes of hers. She let out a sigh right next to his ear, it sounded a lot more erotic than it should have. It was getting a bit hard for him to concentrate on finding out how to fix the computer. "I just can't stand the sound of silence like it's just so boring...but also when it's too quiet the negative thoughts come in. I start feeling depressed and think about things I really shouldn't think about. I used to listen to music when I was little to drown out my parents fighting so I could hide away in my own little world and not think about them fighting. And well if it's silent for too long now I just get flashbacks." She admitted her small hands massaging his shoulders. "Really? I didn't know that babe, I'm sorry." Noctis said turning around to face her locking eyes with hers. "It's not like it's your fault. They aren't here anymore shouldn't let it bother me now but I just can't....ugh so stupid of me I know. I probably look more pathetic to you now." "No you don't, love you've never looked pathetic. Look at all you do you work at a successful bakery, write books and help Ignis out a lot. Your are beautiful and who can I swap sarcastic jokes with if not you?" "Thanks babe, I just feel so lame sometimes." "Well you aren't lame. Did you check the wires? Like the ones in the hallway remember Bassy was bouncing around the house like mad this morning." "He was? I don't remember I woke up kinda out of it..." "Well you did drink a lot last night." "Who wanted to try out drunken sex?" She smirked kissing the side of his head. "Oh the phone has enough charge..." She plugged the phone in playing the first song on the playlist, nothing happened. Pouting she unplugged it allowing it to play on the small speakers. 'I love you 1-4-3...🎶.' Came out of the speakers, as Noctis stood up he noticed the pleased and calmed smile that graced her face. "You are so cute." He mused pulling her into a kiss. "Lets check those wires." Taking her by the hand he went to the hallway that was in question. In the hallway stood the black cat, Bassy crouched in the middle looking like a stalking butler glaring at the wall. On the wall high up where the wires were that ran through the house was a small mouse chewing on the wires. One of the two wires were broken and the second was close. "Ah! The culprit is small and fluffy." Jinju exclaimed pointing at the mouse. "Hence the cat and his reaction." Noctis replied looking down at the small cat to the mouse. "What should we do about it?" "Well we're not killing it...let's just shoo it outside." She urged him to go catch it. "It's your music you catch it." He said not wanting to chase after a mouse. "I'll do that thing you like in bed.~" She teased giving him a sultry wink. Noctis blushed and let out a large nervous gulp she was willing to do thatfor catching this mouse? "You are such a sexy pervert." He admonshed as she changed music on her phone. 'I'll let you ride the disco stick.🎶' She smirked at him as he lunged for the mouse catching it first try. "See Noct you got it!" She shouted happily clapping her hands bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Yeah because your ass is the reward." He said with a smirk and headed to the back door. "Hehe, I'll get some electrical tape." She laughed that laugh music to his ears glad she was feeling better already. Ten minutes later the apartment was back to being the normal loud self. Peppy kpop music filled the apartment and the smell of freshly baked snickerdoodle cookies made the place pleasant. Noctis always stays in the kitchen when his girlfriend bakes as she is big on letting him taste test everything and she often breaks out in cute dance moves that he just can't help but love. "So here's a cookie...let's go to the bedroom for that other reward~." She cooed taking him by the collar of the shirt as she placed a cookie in his hands. -Fin-

#fluff #noctis lucis caelum #prince noctis #ff15 #final fantasy 15 fanfic #reader insert #final fantasy xv

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mandimormon-blog · 8 years ago

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5 To-Do Lists, You Can’t Live Without

Where have I been? Well, blogging world, I’ll tell you where I’ve been… not here. Not here because a few shorts week ago, I acquired an adorable little notebook. In my handy dandy notebook (yes, I’ve used this Blue’s Clues reference half a dozen times, *yawn*) I make to-do lists. Plural. I’m absolutely obsessed with to-do lists. I like the sense of accomplishment you get from placing a check-mark on the paper next to the job completed. If I’m having a good day, I’ll even put a circle around that check-mark. If my day isn’t as positive, I will scribble the words out on the line ferociously, while scrunching up my nose.

I had read once to avoid becoming overwhelmed or stressed, your to-do list should consist of three things. Then after accomplishing those three things, make a new list of just three things. Homie don’t play that game. Homie is an overachiever.

At the beginning of the week, I had roughly 32 items on my “priority to-do list” and if you’re wondering why I’ve coined this a thing it’s because those items have to be done, there’s not waiting until the last minute, I need to rock them out. Sometimes I’ll create an “Advanced Planning to-do List” and I’ll jump around and give myself a window of completion. Procrastination eats me alive. I’m not saying I never procrastinate, I do, A LOT. I’m just saying it’s unnatural for me to procrastinate without having that feeling you get that’s kind of like impending doom.

Oh, allow me to add, on my beautifully printed “priority to-do list” I added a small box in my right column and added the header, “ALLEN” to it. That’s my husband’s name. I created him a priority list, too, so he didn’t feel left out, of course. I will blame it on the fact he told me he wouldn’t buy me a saw. He doesn’t trust me with one. But I always have this puffed up, I-can-take-on-the-world-feeling when I leave Hobby Lobby, so I requested one. My request was denied.

Blogging has fallen off of my Sunday Priority List, even considering Sunday is my “day of rest” that I usually do a bare minimum if anything. My computer has changed the method in which it uploads my camera roll, now, too. So, the ease no longer exists. Instead it throws all of my photos onto the date they were captured and since I can’t remember was happened 24 minutes ago, I’m not having much luck remembering what happened almost three weeks ago.

I do, however, have one little note in my iPhone. It reads:

Before my oldest daughter, Reis, tells everyone (that would be her fifth grade class and “squad”…. A tennis instructor, piano teacher, grandmother, Sunday School Teacher, church friends, the mail lady, anyone who happens to be near her at the moment of remembrance) about me. Yes, me.. her mother, the idiot. I thought I would beat her to the punch. (But I didn’t.)

I still have my prepositions memorized. Yes, I can basically rap or auctioneer those darn words, at lightning speed. Over the week of the 15th, I had a great time helping my fifth grader out with memorizing those words, impressing myself mostly, due to my impeccable memorization skills.

One evening, immediately after studying, just before saying our family prayer together, I was still jotting things down in my handy-dandy notebook, and as I was doing this I reiterated the fact I still had these words memorized from 7th Grade, Mrs. Smith’s class. Then, I tried doing the math.

On the bottom of the page, I scribbled out to the side 2017 minus 1999 jotted my answer down and said to her, without the slightest hesitation, I blurted, “See! 28 years ago.”

Instantly, from across the hallway in my other daughter’s room I hear, “Wow. You really can’t do Math. Can you?” (That was my husband, obviously eavesdropping on my conversation with my oldest daughter.)

Reis began laughing uncontrollably (seriously), “Yeah, Mom! 28 years ago you were two. Did you memorize them then?” The laughter continued.

I’m pretty sure I stared at her like that emoji with the line straight across, eyes open. :- |

“I meant 18.” I said with a little bit of attitude because no one likes to be picked on. Am I right? Still, no one in my household cared and they cared even less that I still had in my memory bank from 18 years ago, every darn one of those prepositions. They only cared that I couldn’t subtract.

After the laughter began to die down, Reis asked me to remove my paper from my notebook. I ripped it out and handed it to her. She carefully folded the paper in half and put it into her messenger bag. “I’m taking this to school tomorrow to prove how horrible you are at Math.”

It may be 12:59 a.m. and I’m writing a blog in the first hour of Wednesday, but let’s face it, with my to-do lists, and our two-week Spring Break, I haven’t had a lot of extra free or me time. I hear from a lot of strangers, “Two weeks for Spring Break? Wow, that must be nice!”

Ummm…..

I love my children, I love them to the moon and back. I would do anything for my children. I like to support them in all of their endeavors and be there for them as their cheerleader. I love to have teaching moments with them and observe them. Each of them are so different and unique but I love them all with my whole heart.

However, a two-week Spring Break without any real travel plans and with Mother Nature’s temperament has been a challenge, to say the least. Sure, if you’re sitting on a beach somewhere south of here where it’s 20 degrees + warmer with your children, I’m sure that sunshine is adding a sparkle to your day. The sun did not even come out today, not once, and yesterday it came out for a millisecond.

Our schedule is just off. It’s off because if we begin getting something together, (which believe it or not with only 5 days left of the 13 day break, we are… finally) it will be back to school, again.

The first day or two, our youngest two did about 16 laps in 3 minute around the couch and bar. Did I mention Jude had his “ninja stick” in his hand? Yep. I didn’t know who’s eye was gonna get it that day. Remi? Jude? Mine? Who knew?

Productivity was what was needed to keep our house in order. I don’t mean watching six hours non-stop of Stampy Cat on YouTubeKids. If you have younger kids you may know exactly what I’m talking about. The obnoxious laugh? The Minecraft tutorial? This wasn’t an option for me in my childhood. The closest thing to that I had was when I was in upper elementary and it was called a Giga Pet I got from KB Toys, ironically on the Village Mall where the Humane Society sets up shop, now. My Giga Pet died all of the time, if it lived longer than a day, it was a miracle from above.

This past weekend, we did a little inventory magic. In Remi’s bedroom sits my 3 foot tall Barbie doll house from when I was younger. Inside of this house and a canvas hamper specifically for toys, were Barbies. Lots and lots of Barbies. I told both girls, they were to remove all of the dolls, and figure out which ones they didn’t play with or would like to donate. Then they were to count the dolls, and select 20 of their favorites to keep out. The rest would be stored inside a tote and they could change them out, during the year. Lo and beyond, the girls counted 62 Barbies (not even including the baby or Kelly-sized dolls). 62. We aren’t excessive buyers. You have to believe me when I tell you that.

They’ve acquired several as gifts and even more from my mother. She allowed the girls to take home dolls that were mine when I was a little girl. I loved my dolls and played with them for hours and hours, probably because Stampy Cat wasn’t an option, like I said. My sister and I each had our own doll house in our basement, and I remember plugging in my AM/FM Radio / Alarm / CD Player, and they would have dance competitions. I usually would have them perform to “Movie Luv”. I have a feeling anyone reading this will enjoy this playlist from Movie Luv:

1. (I've Had) The Time Of My Life (Dirty Dancing) - Bill Medley And Jennifer Warnes

2. A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme) (Aladdin) - Peabo Bryson And Regina Belle

3. Take My Breath Away (Top Gun) - Berlin

4. Colors Of The Wind (Pocahontas) - Vanessa Williams

5. I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) {Benny And Joon} - The Proclaimers

6. I'd Die Without You (Boomerang) - P.M. Dawn

7. Gangsta's Paradise (Dangerous Minds) - Coolio

8. Stay (I Missed You) (Reality Bites) - Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories

9. Unchained Melody (Ghost) - The Righteous Brothers

10. It Must Have Been Love (Pretty Woman) - Roxette

11. I Don't Wanna Fight (What's Love Got To Do With..) - Tina Turner

12. Can You Feel The Love Tonight (The Lion King) - Elton John

This was actually one of the first CD’s I ever owned. I remember going to a slumber party and listening to LeeAnn Rimes “Blue” and Spice Girls “Wannabe” and I begged my parents for a CD player. I needed this kind of music in my life. I even remember staring at the square compact disc case wrapped in plastic, after shopping at Hills. Life was grand. I was probably close to Reis’s age, at that time. The closest thing I had to an iPhone or iPod was Dream Phone, the board game, with the hot pink “Night at the Roxbury” style phone.

I will refrain from doing the math to tell you exactly how long ago that was. But, in 2017, my daughters, Reis and Remi decided to each select 10 dolls to equal the 20 keepers. They had no problems whatsoever with parting, temporarily with the other dolls. This made a world of difference in decluttering, too. I highly recommend it, girlmoms. Out of the organizational patterns in my brain, I kept receiving the same prompting over and over, again, to designate a specific number of hangers for their closets, too. X # of hangers for pants, and X # of hangers for tops, so then it would force minimalism upon them. But I decided, slowly… very slowly. Plus, their closets don’t even look bad, at the moment. I think it’s because they panicked when it was super warm once or twice in February and packed up their winter clothing and drug out all of their summer things. Summer apparel has much less material than winter.

Anyway, along with this purging/de-cluttering effort, I went to the local hardware store and grabbed every paint sample I could see with colors I was drawn to. In that same afternoon, (this was the afternoon on their last day of school before Spring Break) I choose colors for my living room, dining room, bathroom, hall, and stairwell. I also picked up some prepping items and paint supplies.

My husband is incredibly particular about prep work. I am not. That may seem contradictory since I’m a list person, but wall painting is one thing I’ve never been a perfectionist about, at least until this day. My sweet, incredibly particular about prep work husband had pulled his back out on Sunday, the day before this day. Therefore, if I wanted the paint done in a lickity-split kind of way, I needed to help as much as I could. Naturally, when he gets injured I will give him the commission to do something hard to challenge his skills. That’s exactly how it went down. He pulled his back out and I said it looks like a great time to paint the entire house. It’s honestly strategic, believe me. He began to one-time (or spackle) the divots and holes in the drywall. One word, “countless”. Let’s see, we moved into this home in 2013, I believe. You know the drill, you do the math. In 2013 my children were even younger - sticks and stones and brooms and nails driven by mini-hammers, you name it, it’s been repelled or slammed against our drywall. After my husband and I had finished spackling, our son, Jude, said, “It looks like the walls have polka dots or the pox. Are we leaving them that way?”

I picked up some cheap sandpaper at Dollar General, but didn’t really work on it much until the next day. But as I did the first two spots and they were ehhh.. so-so, with that sandpaper. My husband came waltzing through the front door with a miracle. They call it, “a sander”. Maybe to you it’s ridiculous I didn’t know what one was or had never thought about using one, but to me this was one of those “Aha!” moments. My husband advised me to cease using the sandpaper sheets, and to use this tool. At first, I asked him if I could potentially chop my fingers off. He assured me I couldn’t but to keep it flat. He showed me and handed it over. I fell in love. He left, again, but when he returned, I showed him what a great job I did and even in the places we hadn’t spackled that felt mildly uneven or bumpy, I hit those, too. This tool was the most amazing thing and my walls were almost new (without the new paint). I told him I was so good at it that he could hire me. We’d be a local-brand of Fixer Upper. I added that I could only use this tool though, because that’s where my talent lies, and I don’t really feel like I’d enjoy working a full eight-hour day, but if he needed the image, I was in and could probably put in a solid 1-3 hours, depending on whether or not it was running season.

I did get a stellar half workout in with my roller. I’m short-ish or average, I think, for a female. Even with the extension on the roller, I had to calf raise to reach the top of the walls where it intersected with the line that my husband cut in along the ceiling. Even though he cut that in and all I did was roll everything, I still managed to get paint on the ceiling in three places.

While I painted and cleaned, I decided my oven needed dissected. Thank you, Pinterest, you are the best ever! I found a pin describing how to clean in between those glass panels – after taking the oven door apart (no joke) I was about to scrub that grease off, and my oven looks like new. I also allowed a baking soda, salt, vinegar mix to coat the inside overnight and voila! It looks like new!

I also made an executive decision to repaint my dining room chairs… oh and reupholster them. Owned it. Seriously, what a different a little fabric makes.

Anyway, the entire Operation Cottage Renovation was completed in just 2.5 short days. Just in time, because on Monday, we held an Ice Cream Social + Family Night in our little cottage, and forty people showed up. That’s a lot to cram under one tiny roof, but it was so great!

You know I love to plan parties. That’s just one of my favorite things to do in life. I’m serious. Unfortunately, Covington isn’t exactly the target market for that kind of expertise, so I just plan a lot of parties for my family and my children.

Pottery Barn Kids happens to have a free ice cream party printable set. I recycled my turquoise blue strawberry baskets, found 4 sets of ice cream bowls for $.88/set, which is incredible and not to mention the frugality of reusing those suckers, over and over, again. My husband and I went out on Saturday night, which wasn’t the norm and I’ll discuss why in like two seconds. During our date, we ate (we always eat, food is life) and we got party supplies, those being toppings for ice cream sundaes. Anything you could imagine, really, it was great. We also snatched up supplies for our “Family Night” portion of the event. Wooden sticks, rods, pipe cleaners, foam blocks, playdoh, duct tape, etc. Right now you may be wondering what on earth we were doing with those materials and why, and I’ll tell you.

Like a broken record, on Monday nights it’s Family Home Evening. Since many that aren’t of our faith don’t understand that terminology we called it, “Family Night”. My husband explained to our large group, we do this as a family to build unity, every week. He also described our evening as being a “Family Home Evening… on steroids”.

We left out the formality of it all and had our Elders (Young Boy Missionaries 19+) explain a little bit about the Book of Mormon. Many people don’t understand it’s a history, like history of any textbook or journals, ancient writings, in this case – those of the people in the Americas.

We briefly read in the Book of Alma (which is from the Book of Mormon) about what Captain Moroni did to prepare his cities for hard times. In this particular evening, we were focusing on one of the preparations which was “fortifying” or strengthening their cities. This included building a large fortress with trenches and defense mechanisms for that time period, even though they were not currently under attack. This prepared them for when they did fall under attack, the sight alone of these beefed up fortresses caused the enemy to retreat. You may be thinking, nice story, get on with the point.

That point is how it’s important to reflect on what we can do to build ourselves up and strengthen ourselves while things are smooth sailing, to endure the harder times. If we don’t prepare, we’ll fall apart.

My commission to the children and families in my home that evening was to build their own fortress to defend themselves. Object lessons are my favorite with small children. Seriously, they’re fantastic.

As soon as everything was cleaned up and the house resumed to normal, I began “listing” the next actions in my life. One of those being creating a Ninjago Birthday Invitation and to evaluate my shopping list for this upcoming party – can I just say, It’s gonna be great?!

Jude is highly involved in his party preparation. An example of this would be evidenced by the fact that when I asked him what he wanted to have as a party theme, he quickly answered, “Ninjago” and didn’t back down. No biggie. I honestly thought it would be Lego Batman since that’s been all of the hype this year, or even Minions or Minecraft, but nope. Ninjago and after extensive Pinterest research, I’m ready to execute this plan.

I showed him my board and ran ideas past him. He then took my cell phone from me and began pinning what he liked to his board labeled, “Jude Party”. I didn’t send his cake request to the cake decorator, it was a three dimensional gold Lego Ninjago Lloyd, but I did send another super cool one he liked that was still pretty extravagant.

I’ll be working on crafting my husband a kimono-type ensemble to he can be Sensai. This age group I’m guessing will be slightly squirmy so we will plan game after game and backup games. Jude has requested his buddies attend Ninja Training and unlock their potential to be Masters of Spinjitzu.

This is great because there’s only like 300 pins about Ninja training games for parties. I’m loving the “fire” jumping, hoop crossing, plank walking, brick wall breaking, shirikin tossing, balsa wood breaking obstacle course. Can you tell I’m stoked? This only downside to all of this is planning it on a dime. For real though, usually, I buy here and there and everywhere and then my husband will say, “Hey… you only have X more to spend.” This time, from the get-go I’ve had a budget. Budgeting is SO HARD for the compulsiveness inside of me.

How have I been surviving this long Spring Break? Can I just say it’s nothing like summer because in summer, we go to the pool, daily. As far as we’ve gone is Conner Prairie and that finally happened yesterday (Tuesday). Another Spring Break survival hacks for non-travelers would be seeing a movie, twice. I went to see Beauty and the Beast on Friday night with my mother and we met up with my sister. It was a great time and I loved this movie! It was my scout-out of the movie, of course, I had to make sure it was child appropriate (due to reviews I’d read which were completely off), and not scary. So, while I watched it with my sister and mother, my children watched the animated version for the first time, ever. I know… parenting fail. I grew up in love with animated Disney movie classics and my kids have watched maybe ¼ of them. We’re working on it, though.

Over the weekend my oldest daughter and her bestie had convinced us in order to keep the house looking nice and neat, before our ice cream social, we should go to see Beauty and the Beast. Actually, they brought this up in front of my mother and of course, grandma saves the day with the funds needed to attend this movie. I ran and cleaned up and set up what I could that day, then the girls and I left for Champaign to see it. The boys ran errands for us and did their own thing. Jude didn’t even like the half of the animated version he watched so he wasn’t all about seeing it, again.

We were so confused as to why the movie was so expensive, but realized when we arrived it was being it was being shown in the BIG D theater. Of course, we climbed to the tippy top of this ginormous theater. I honestly felt winded after coasting up the steps a couple of times. I may run but my body denies inclines at all costs. There were only about four other movie-goers in the theater with us, which was amazing, too. My favorite kind of movie, restaurant, amusement park, grocery store, is one with only a handful of people in it with me.

I mentioned Conner Prairie, oh yes. Today, we traveled to Fishers for an interactive historical tour. We learned about Indians, Pioneers, the Civil War, tested out the new Treehouse exhibit which is marvelous. I asked my husband to observe the structure and examine it closely, because I feel the Covington City Park would benefit from a version of that. Maybe not four stories, but I do love the height. It was the best part! Of course, Jude would tell you the best part had to be the rifle range, where he learned how to handle his “bayonet”, march, and fight in a battle.

All of the kids enjoyed that at least until we did the hot air balloon. Yep, we did it. We’ve seen it there time and time, again, but this time it was checked and circled off of the bucket list.

It was a toss-up between whether my husband would go up or I would go up. He voted me, and I voted him and somehow he convinced be that I should go, although two things were very big deal breakers for me. Those were 1.) This was opening day of the outdoor experience, meaning our hot air balloon pilot was out of practice for months. 2.) It was windy. I visualize that cord being severed and us flying away never to be seen or heard from again.

However, all three of my children were game to go up and excited to the moon, so was I going to risk not flying to the moon with them? Nope… I went. I went and when the middle disappeared and we continued to ascend up to the 377 feet, taller than even the statue of liberty’s torch, I began to feel like I shouldn’t make any sudden moves. Of course, my darling children had expressions of pure delight and excitement while I stood there reminding them every 4.5 seconds to hold on to the sides, while each of my feet held pressure against the walls to immobilize me, while I clinched my teeth down. I did look around and take a few photos and a video, but I felt like we were going to blow over sideways, so really what was going through my brain was how I was going to instruct my three children. Another family was up in the sky with us, and the pilot had told them to look around, we only would be at the maximum height for 3 minutes before descending. They all seemed to gravitate toward us, making the balloon off balance, I bit down on my tongue to fight off the urge to scold them to get back to their own side and quit attempting to tip us out of the basket. Finally, we were going back down but near the ground it was described to us that our balloon was doing a “pendulum” effect. It began rocking and not landing steady and I prepared my mind for evacuation, but worst case scenarios considered, they weren’t needed.

Thankfully… we made it and I needed a timeout from that moment forward. Actually, I really just needed some lunch. Hypoglycemia gets the best of me, from time to time, creating short-temperedness and attitude. Omission from any meal or delay isn’t good for any member of our party.

I feel pretty satisfied after updating the blog and this wasn’t on a list, because the list it exists on is a mental or unwritten list. Just like the Pineapple Upside down cake I made my husband, last night, wasn’t on the list. So, I guess I don’t have to use a ‘list’ for everything as it had seemed. #talented < I’m totally kidding.

I hope my readers enjoy the memes. I stumbled across a fantastic application and I had to test them out in a very non-serious way.

While my husband and I attended a Youth Temple Trip, the Saturday before embarking on additional busyness including my cousin’s bowling birthday party which was loads of fun for everyone, I received a couple of impressions.

I was flipping through Doctrine and Covenants and randomly reading a scripture verse or two, and I happened to stumble across this one:

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; D&C 109:8

This is in my top five scripture verses. It also commits me to making this list my new checklist. Am I working on these things? How is my evaluation of myself and my home? New month, new goals.

That’s what I love about life. We are constantly reinventing ourselves. A better version of who we are, continual growth, gaining wisdom from mistakes and failed experimentation. Failure gives us exactly what we need to brush ourselves off, jump up, and move forward.

In fact, busyness is not what it’s all about. I’ve asked my husband, on a few different occasions recently, how do I become less busy? Less commitments? Dropping tasks? More efficient delegation? Saying no? Busyness doesn’t allow time for the Spirit to prompt you, for inspiration to come, to be present with family or children, I know for sure we weren’t designed to live life in the fast lane 95% of the time, as evidenced by those mini-panic attacks or rapid speech that accompany semi-meltdown moments.

So sure, I may have elaborated on five different lists (maybe even more, I lost count), but I’m really not wanting to achieve some sort of level of mastery for being busy. Even looking at the word busy is annoying. It looks like “bus” with a “y” it seems to have letters missing. Probably because they were too busy, too.

The list I’m keeping, going into the month of April, is that of D&C 109:8 - the goal I’m creating is Peace, Meditation, and Prayer. How will I get out of the habit of being busy or having less commitments? One at a time, I’ll finish what obligations I’ve begun, without taking on additional commitments (that are of a part-time or full-time nature or require multiple tasks per week). I’ll make sure to evaluate my progress to see if it’s improving me, as an individual.

I am going to make a commitment to going to bed early. The past couple of days, I’ve had roughly 4 hours of sleep, per night. When I opened this blog draft up, I mentioned to my best friend I didn’t even know what it says because I was so tired while writing it. It may be like reading a foreign language.

One last commitment -- this should honestly go without saying, seeing the good or positive in every situation and every person, I encounter. I’m extremely grateful General Conference is this coming weekend so I can be inspired and my questions can be answered. Now, I think I may go sit out in the beautiful sunshine. Namaste!

#LDS #mormonmommy #mothering #parenting #busy #springbreak #life

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