#and Essentially the whole ghost zone after the news spread

[five-rivers]

What Was Bound, What Was Loosed Chapter 3

Written for Dannymay Day 6: Core.

.

Ellie took to spending her days in the palace library.

Danny thought he was trapped. Believed he was trapped. So did everyone else. But Ellie didn’t believe it. All cages had keys. Danny had opened hers. It was only right that she return the favor.

(Of course, she wasn’t happy about being stuck herself. There were still things she wanted to see on Earth. She missed the stars.)

The books were old and new. Some were in English, others were in languages she couldn’t even begin to recognize. Most of them had nothing to do with what she was looking for. Like in any library, they were on a wide variety of subjects, all spread out.

Still, she searched. The stack of tomes that had to do with ghostly kingship and the laws of the Infinite Realms grew progressively larger. Occasionally, one of the shades would attempt to put the books back, but they were easily dissuaded, having no will of their own.

She was making progress. Not a lot, but some. Enough to keep her going.

.

Vlad knew when to quit.

Oh, maybe it didn’t seem like it, he was easily as obsessive as any ghost, but he did. Sometimes, a plan just wasn’t feasible, and he had to cut his losses.

Cutting his losses, in this case, meant getting incredibly drunk on ghost wine. Fright Knight didn’t approve, but who cared what he thought? Fright Knight was part of the reason he was in this situation in the first place!

If he had just been warned this would happen, he’d have been able to make arrangements, to find some way to keep his portal open, or to stay in the human world, where his life was.

But no. They were all trapped here. No way out.

When hundreds of ghosts all said the same thing, Vlad was inclined to believe them. Danielle, as motivated as she was, was simply experiencing denial. Or, perhaps, bargaining. He had to admit he was never exactly clear on the stages of grief.

Then, there was Daniel, who seemed to be firmly trapped in the ‘depression’ stage, more of a ghost than Vlad had ever seen him as. He lingered in corners, at the edge of Vlad’s vision, quiet, sad, always flanked by Fright Knight and that other ghost, the one with the clocks.

There were parts of him, his Obsession reasserting itself, that yearned to reach out to Danny, but… He didn’t even know how to begin.

.

Danny felt like a pale, wandering shadow of himself.

Most of the time, he slept, exhausted by the demands the Zone made on him and the continuing changes he was undergoing. The expanding circle of vitality, of rejuvenation, of reconstruction and growth, that so many ghosts were celebrating had to draw energy from somewhere, after all, and even though Danny was absorbing just as much as he was expending, that process made him drowsy in and of itself.

Pain, too, plagued him. His missing eye ached, and sometimes it seemed as if the crown was burrowing into his skull, not merely resting on it. His hand hurt from all his attempts to take off the ring.

He could hardly care for himself in even the most basic of ways. Clockwork often had to remind him, or help him, and he was always so excruciatingly gentle.

Then Vlad and Ellie came.

Their arrival was a relief. Ellie was a friend, was family, and hadn’t been complicit in his betrayal and binding. Vlad had been an enemy, and not even an honest one at that, but essentially everything they’d been at odds over was moot, but he was familiar.

Despite the relief, despite his desire to connect with people who hadn’t hurt him, at least not as badly as everyone else, he hung back. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to bridge the gap.

So, he lurked and lingered. When Ellie went to the library, when Vlad moped and bothered the shades that ordered the kitchen, he followed, he watched.

Clockwork and Fright Knight, of course, followed and watched him in turn.

At least, this is what happened when he was awake and aware enough to do anything. Danny was under the impression that being awake and independently mobile at all this soon after being… coronated… was unusual, perhaps even unnerving. Normally, he’d be curious, excited about new abilities and what they might mean. Maybe he’d even throw around a quip or two about how awesome he was but…

It wasn’t the time, and he didn’t have the willpower to reach for even that dubious coping mechanism.

In the too-numerous times when Danny was both awake and not well enough to follow Ellie and Vlad around, he liked to sit in the garden. It was almost peaceful there, by the fountain, although the plants had a distressing tendency to reflect his every change in mood.

Today was one of those days. He was too dizzy and lightheaded to drift after Vlad or Ellie, even if neither of them moved very much, but he didn’t want to stay in the bedroom, or, worse, the throne room. His core seemed to pulse, sluggish and painful in his chest. Or perhaps that was his heart. He couldn’t really tell with this mixed-up form. It could even be both.

Another slow wave of transformation swept out from him, making his extremities tingle. He watched, tiredly, as it briefly interacted with the walls of the palace and the scattered shades before moving on. The shades… another aspect of all this that Danny wasn’t comfortable with, but couldn’t bring himself to learn more about. They were sustained through his power, but what were they? Extensions of his will? Aspects of his personality? Constructs generated by the palace? By the Ghost Zone itself? He didn’t know.

As much as he should try to learn, he couldn’t help but think of them as yet another imposition, another burden he was being forced to bear.

This wasn’t a healthy mindset. Jazz would tell him as much. Jazz wasn’t here.

“Danny!”

He looked up, his one eye already searching for Ellie. Fright Knight stepped forward, as if to protect him, but Danny snarled at him, annoyed. He wasn’t going to let him get in between him and one of the few people he could currently stand. Clockwork stayed back, passive, but he looked… worried. Uneasy. As if anticipating a disaster.

“Danny!” exclaimed Ellie again, bursting from a bush, a thick book raised above her head. “I found it!”

“Found what?” asked Danny, leaning forward slightly as Ellie joined him sitting on the edge of the fountain.

“A way out!” She opened the book and started flipping through it, obviously looking for a specific entry.

Both Clockwork and Fright Knight looked extremely tense, now. They probably didn’t want him to find this, didn’t want him to leave. Would they try to stop him?

He hunched his shoulders. He might not be well, but he could fight and make it hurt.

“Here!” said Ellie, triumphantly. “Look at this.” She tapped a picture of a bright, spherical object.

“The core of the Infinite Realms?” asked Danny, reading the legend of the picture.

“Uh huh. Apparently, it’s what determines what the Ghost Zone is like as a whole and controls the rules and laws and stuff. Like, even when it comes to what ghosts act like, and what they can physically do, or how the Ghost Zone’s physics behave. But the important part is that you can go talk to it and petition it and stuff, and sometimes it’ll listen. I bet we can get it to listen to you and make it so that the Ghost Zone doesn’t need a king anymore.”

Danny felt a flutter of hope. The book was old from what he could see, and, ignoring Ellie’s paraphrasing, the language was fantastical and couched in metaphor, but still if there was a possibility…

Near their feet, small, bright flowers began to bloom, each no larger than the head of a pin.

“Daniel,” said Clockwork, in a careful, soft tone. It wasn’t pity, not quite, but it was the verbal equivalent of being handled with kid gloves. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Then what is it like?” asked Danny, hunching his shoulders and leaning protectively over Ellie.

“What do you think the King of the Infinite Realms is?” asked Clockwork.

Danny shrugged. Clockwork gave him a small, pained smile.

“The King of Ghosts and the core of the Ghost Zone,” said Clockwork, “they’re the same.”

Danny shook his head, unwilling to let this scrap of hope slip through his fingers so easily.

“Please, Daniel,” said Clockwork. “Why do you think it was so vital that you be crowned? The Realms cannot exist without their core.”

It made sense. A horrible, horrible sense.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Ellie. “The core’s supposed to be the basis the whole Zone is built on. That can’t just be one person.”

“The library has some books on the subject,” said Clockwork. “But you can see how Daniel is changing things.”

Danny felt his hope collapse and doubled over, hands on his head, face almost touching his legs. A scream bubbled up in his throat, but he swallowed it. All those people, everywhere, his responsibility, his… Not just the people, everything. Everywhere. Not just his responsibility, but relying on him, modeled on him, dependent on him, centered on him.

He wasn’t just the Ghost Zone’s ruler, nominal or not, he was its heart.

“Danny?” asked Ellie. He looked up.

There were blast lines in the ground, radiating away from him. The fountain was cracked and leaking water. Fright Knight had, evidently, grabbed Ellie and leaped away, into the air.

Clockwork hadn’t left, still leaning towards Danny. There was a jagged, dripping slice across his shoulder. Danny gasped, reaching towards him.

“It’s alright,” said Clockwork. “It’s alright.”

“I can’t be,” said Danny. “I can’t be. I’m—I can’t be part of the Ghost Zone. Not—Not like that. That’s not—I can’t be what the Ghost Zone is built on, it doesn’t make sense, I…”

“It’s alright,” repeated Clockwork. “Would you like to go inside? You may feel better if you eat something.”

“Don’t want to bother Vlad,” mumbled Danny. Didn’t want another person to see him crumbling like this.

“We can send something up to your room,” said Clockwork.

He did feel tired. The fountain was repairing itself behind and underneath him. He groaned as the ground beneath him pulled together as well.

“I don’t want to be the core of the Ghost Zone,” he said, knowing that what he wanted was not and never had been a consideration. “I don’t want to be king. I don’t want to be in charge of anything.” He grabbed the edges of Clockwork’s robe, ignoring the moisture despite the pang of guilt it brought him. “I want to go home. And I…” His words failed as he reached for Clockwork’s injury. “I don’t want to do this.”

“This is nothing, Daniel,” putting a gloved hand over the wound. “I have had far worse.”

It started to rain. Great, heavy droplets of water tainted with just enough ectoplasm to glow.

It was one way to hide tears, he supposed.

[exxar1]

Episode 5: Why Machiavelli Would Never Wear a Mask (And Why You Shouldn’t Either)

12/9/2020

Last week’s episode of the Young Heretics podcast was about The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince is one of those classics of western lit that I’ve never actually read – or even taken a college class where this was one of the texts. What little I remember about this text is from history class during my junior year in high school. Mrs. Jones (no relation) told us that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a treatise on political philosophy. He believed that the ends justified the means, and that the best way for a prince to retain power over the people was to rule by fear rather than love. The word “Machavellian” has always been used as a pejorative description in our modern society, often referring to those people who are cold, heartless, and unfeeling. Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with those characters in popular movies, books and TV shows that attempt to control other characters and events by using various means of deceit and guile.

Now, to be fair, Mrs. Jones’ interpretation and summary of The Prince is not entirely wrong. I did a brief Google search on Machiavelli and The Prince, and about half the links of my search results reaffirmed that view. The other half, however, offered a surprisingly different take on The Prince, one that is also shared by Spencer Klavan on Young Heretics. That podcast is now 29 episodes old, but this is the first one that has presented me with something entirely new – both the text itself and the interpretation of it.

In his advice to the titular prince, Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli instructs him on how to best maintain power and control of his subjects and his state. The best way to do this, Machiavelli believed, was for the prince to be feared rather than loved. Also, at times, it would be necessary to use what many would consider to be unjust or immoral means in order to sustain that power and control. Hence Machiavelli’s negative reputation in the history books and modern culture.

But Spencer makes the argument that Machiavelli’s reputation is ill-earned. There’s more to this Italian philosopher than what has been passed down in the history books. To put it simply, Machiavelli was a realist. He addressed human nature – and human behavior – in harsh, realistic terms. This was how Machiavelli viewed the world. To use our vernacular, he didn’t sugarcoat the bad stuff. He understood how people behaved – both the ones in power and the ones being ruled – and he framed his advice to his prince in these simple, realistic terms.

I’ve spent the last several days thinking about this episode, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Spencer chose this episode to air when it did. All over the country, many state governors have issued lockdown orders for their principalities in response to a renewed surge in positive cases of COVID-19. As any of you who know me – either in real life or via social media – can attest, I am a rabid believer in the battle against face masks and the lockdowns. I’m also a firm believer in the actual science – as opposed to the political nonsense spouted by Doctor Fauci and his panel of “experts” – that says over and over how useless and pointless the masks are in the efforts to stop the spread of the corona virus. And, as you also know, I have plenty of time on my hands to think while at my day job, and the other day I came to a rather startling conclusion:

We should all be more like Machiavelli.

When exactly did we, the American people, become a nation of whiny, spoiled, self-entitled sissies? A nation of people who are so terrified of the possibility of dying that we happily give up our most basic freedoms and cower inside our homes or behind masks? Because that's exactly what's happened. The basic liberties and routines of our daily lives and, for many, their very livelihoods, were suddenly halted and/or shut down by our state governors who were acting in response to so-called science and medical “experts” in the effort to save a small, vulnerable percentage of our population. I've lost count of the number of times I've read  on social media posts in the last 6 months about how pro-maskers wear a mask to protect their 85 year old grandmother or their 70 year old father. I've been called “heartless” and “pro-Nazi” from strangers in the comments section of news articles whenever I respond with the same argument that I'm going to put forth here.

We of the last couple generations have become so soft and spoiled and lazy that we've forgotten just how harsh and deadly real life can often be. And I'm including myself in that crowd. Those of us born in the last four decades of the 20th century have known nothing but prosperity and comfort, especially if – like me – you grew up in a typically middle class household. This is even more true of anyone born after 1995. I'm speaking of the generation that has never known life without Starbucks, Amazon, Google or a cell phone; the generation that grew up using laptop computers and watching TV by streaming it on the internet. In fact, we've become so complacent that we don't even have to leave our comfort zones to order a Big Mac from McDonald's or groceries from Walmart. When I was growing up in the 80s, I remember having to wait an eternity (4-6 weeks) for a toy to arrive that I had mail-ordered from a Sears catalog. Nowadays, I complain if my Amazon package isn't on my doorstep within 24 hours.

For pretty much all of us, 2020 was a massive wake-up call; a Mike-Tyson-punch-to-the-face or dive-into-Lake-Michigan-in-the-middle-of-December kind of wake-up call. None of us were prepared for a pandemic whose projected death toll was in the millions. Everyone from the top down – the president, our congressmen, our state governors, the national and local health experts – reacted instinctively. The medical experts, especially, were very quick to panic, based primarily on preliminary reports from European countries and China. Many state governors – most of them Democrats – were quick to declare a state of emergency and issue a lockdown order for their respective principalities. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were suddenly without work. Unemployment claims shot through the stratosphere. Congress approved an economic stimulus package. Everyone in the government – both national and local – assured us citizens that the lockdowns were temporary, two months at most.

But, of course, two months became three, then four, and by mid-July, many states were still in phase one or two of their “re-opening”. By this point, even the liberal-controlled mainstream media was reporting on the sudden spike of suicides in the lockdown states. Millions of unemployment claims were stuck in severe backlog, and more and more workers were being put on furlough by their employers – or just simply laid off. Here in Las Vegas, for example, the entire strip was a complete ghost town from mid-March to mid-June. This city's economy is utterly dependent on the tourism industry, and, with all casinos and hotels completely closed, the city as a whole suffered greatly. It's still suffering, in fact, even though most of the strip has been open since mid-July. Almost all the hotels and casinos can only afford to be open from Thursday to Sunday. Thousands here are still unemployed or working two part time jobs for barely minimum wage just to make basic ends meet.

And now, as I write this, our governor – along with those of California, New York, and many others – has declared a second round of lockdowns. In California, both Governor Newsom and the mayor of L.A. have banned indoor AND outdoor dining at all restaurants. And again, we the citizens have been told that this is for our own safety, and that these lockdowns will be temporary. One doesn’t have to look far on Twitter or Facebook to see cell phone videos of desperate, tearful, and/or furious restaurant and bar owners engaged in verbal rages about the injustice of all of this.

Here’s what should have happened clear back in February of this year:

Our leaders – our princes, if you will – both national and local, should have consulted not only the medical experts but also a team of economic and social advisors. The governors of every state should have taken a long, hard look at the long term cost of even a brief economic shutdown versus the projected death toll in the short term if COVID-19 was allowed to run its natural course through the U.S. population. You can already see where I’m headed with this. Our governors chose to shut down their states, to close all “non-essential” businesses, and ordered all citizens to self-quarantine. This was only supposed to be for a few weeks, at most. But we’ve all witnessed the long term effects of these shutdowns – skyrocketing unemployment rates, a rapid, severe spike in suicides and domestic abuse cases, and children who are falling so far behind in school due to “distance learning” that many will simply end up dropping out or repeating the same grade for another year.

Our princes should have been more like Machiavelli. They should have allowed life to continue as normal – no mask mandates, no social distancing orders, and most definitely no mandatory quarantines. Instead, the princes should have advised all citizens that the choice was theirs to self-quarantine or not, and that face masks would also be encouraged but completely optional. The result of this, of course, would mean a very high death toll in the short term. There would be no way to avoid this. As we already know now, face masks and social distancing are pointless and useless when it comes to preventing the spread of COVID. The highest numbers of fatalities would be among those older than 65. Hospitals and morgues would be overwhelmed. Emergency triage centers would have to be established in parking lots and empty football stadiums. For a month or two, the news headlines would be filled each day with the most recent death tolls.

But then, into the third month, the death count would start to go down. As herd immunity was finally achieved, life would, slowly but surely, get back to normal. And through it all, there would have been a slight drop in the regular business of many restaurants, movie theaters, and other recreational businesses that rely on tourism and seasonal traffic. But, ultimately, the country would have recovered from this much faster than they will in our present timeline. As it stands now, hundreds of thousands of small businesses across America have gone bankrupt and closed their doors for good. Even major restaurant chains like Ruby Tuesday and Sweet Tomatoe’s have permanently closed many – if not all – their locations. In the alternate timeline, where they had been allowed to remain open with no restrictions of any kind on the number of customers they were allowed to have inside at any time, these businesses would most likely still be up and running.

Yes, that means that your 75 year old father or your 90 year old grandma would have probably died. But that’s life. Like Machiavelli, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Life is hard. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re in for a long and frustrating existence on this earth. And lest you think I’m speaking from some superior, unaffected, condescending platform where I have not experienced any loss or hardship this year, let me remind of you of my blog post about my close friend Aaron Walker from a month ago. No, his death was not the result of COVID, as far as I know, but it was sudden, and it was completely unexpected. I’m still feeling his loss. But you know what? Life goes on. We mourn the dead, we bury them, and then we move on. Death is a fact of life. Machiavelli would have understood that, and so should all of us in 2020. This year has seen a lot of death, more than anything in recent decades, in fact. But that’s life. That’s the way life goes sometimes, and trying to avoid that inevitability by forcing face masks and quarantine and shutting down businesses on a whim is not going to change that simple fact.

I know many of you reading this are probably screaming at your phone screen right now, calling me all kinds of names and cursing me. “How can you be so heartless????” you rave. “How can you allow so many elderly and innocents to die just so you can still go to the movies or sit down at McDonald’s to enjoy your iced coffee and Big Mac????” “You’re a murderer because you still refuse to wear a mask in public!!!!”

And you know what? You’re absolutely right. I am probably infecting others by not wearing a mask. I do still want to go to a movie on Friday night and pig out on overpriced popcorn and soda. I do enjoy going out to eat at least once a week with all my friends. And yep, I’m perfectly fine with accepting the reality that many people are going to die because our governors refused to sacrifice the whole society in the chance that it might save a few innocent lives.

In other words, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” That edict is as true today as when Spock said it to Captain Kirk in Star Trek 2 in 1982. Machiavelli would have completely understood that statement, and he also would have understood this: that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We humans have been spreading disease to one another ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Death, you see, is the natural consequence of sin. Death is unavoidable, and death comes for us all. For some of us, we are lucky enough to live rich, full lives. For others, death comes all too soon. My grandfather will be 90 years old this year on December 31st. If I were to ask him today if he were ready to shuffle off this mortal coil and be welcomed into the arms of our Heavenly Father, his answer would be an immediate and resounding, “Yes!”. Your 75 year old father or your 85 year old grandmother are most likely looking forward to death. That doesn’t mean you should just kill them now by your own hand to hasten the inevitable. But it does mean that they are ready to meet their maker if their number is up. (And, by the way, is not more cruel to force the elderly to slowly waste away alone, locked up in forced quarantine in nursing homes, not allowed to see or even speak to their loved ones until they eventually die of depression, loneliness or COVID???)

COVID-19 is an act of God. It’s a chance of nature, a random thing that has struck the human race, and none of us have the power to change it or ward it off or protect ourselves and our loved ones against its wrath. As we have been doing since the Tower of Babel, we humans have infected one another and survived many, many plagues worse than this one. So you need to stop your whining, stop your complaining, pick yourself up, and get on with your fucking life. And, while you’re at it, you might want to open your Bible and get acquainted with your Creator. Because, sooner or later, you’re gonna meet him, and if you have not accepted his son, Jesus Christ, as your lord and savior, you will spend eternity in a place that makes COVID look like a summer’s vacation in the Florida Keys.

So, in conclusion, be more like Machiavelli. Throw away your damn mask, rise up against the tyranny of our modern princes, and help me get our lives back to normal. If we do not stand up for our freedoms we will most assuredly lose every last one of them.

Mmmmm-kay???

(And, by the way, if you haven’t been listening to Young Heretics, I strongly advise you to drop everything and begin immediately. Look it up on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It will change your life. 

You’re welcome.)

[hyperionswrath--archived]

@onepartbrave

In hindsight, none of his plans thus far worked out the way he predicted. Therefore, why he expected his latest of chasing someone far more sober than himself to work, Squall wasn’t sure. A plethora of obstacles was in the way, the first being his own unbalanced state, but he figured he’d manage. He always managed. From being thrown in the deep end of his very first SeeD mission, to being promoted unorthodoxly to commander not even weeks later, to fearing he’d fight his only steadfast link to the death because of some horrendous events that went down—not now, not this—stop.

Ceasing everything, Squall took a second to regulate his breathing rate that had been creeping back up. Albeit, it was wasted effort when shock forced a startled gasp from him not two seconds later when he was unceremoniously jerked to the side. No, back and around, by the hips. At least it wasn’t a question of his lacklustre equilibrium this time—it was Seifer’s fault; he was the only one close enough to destabilise him. About to cause a fuss and demand release, any heat he sent forth into a withering glare was doused at a dawning realisation. He was perched unabashedly on Seifer’s lap and, with how he was being gripped, the blond had no intent on freeing him soon.  

Confusion floored him, smothering any outrage, both on Seifer’s behalf and at Seifer for interfering, and Squall blinked dumbly after the reason registered to his hectic mind. He… told him to go? Why? Thought the whole reason for being here was that guy and his friends… Simmering down, he wanted to adjust the uncomfortable way he had to twist his neck to view the Glaive properly but was at a loss with the warning he saw flashing in those green, green eyes. When he leaned forward, it took all his will to not lean back. Frowning for the countless time that night, he contemplated decking the insolent blond since he was in perfect range to and still feeling ‘feisty—whatever it was called—but all comparative thoughts froze at an almost tender brush of digits along his jawline. …W-wha?

Essentially flustered, Squall merely nodded in acknowledgment; he wouldn’t pursue the stranger. In fact, something closer to home grabbed his undivided attention. Natural heat rose to his cheeks again, he felt it over his increasing body temperature due to still wearing the overcoat, and he couldn’t… look away. Even when a new song was on, the performer’s enchanting vocals floating around in the background; he, allegedly, was transfixed on something else fascinating. This… this is bad.

Subconscious movement titled his head to lean more into the ghost-like touch and the desire to nudge the hand to continue frightened him. Because he was on Seifer’s lap in an establishment that bulldozed all of his comfort zones and out of his mind on alcohol. So many warning factors protested him staying, but the simple fact he felt fine, he felt right, kept him stationary. He didn’t understand any of it, except the fact he felt incomprehensibly safe. Despite their history and what he knew of the man’s volatile behaviour… the feeling refused to budge. He refused to budge.

Exhaling in a low, controlled manner, he felt the sporadic anxiety within calm slightly. Finally adjusting his position so his neck muscles stopped straining, he unintentionally wiggled until he was sitting sideways on the blond’s thighs, legs hanging off the side of him and the chair. He only broke his (possibly awkward) staring to ensure he didn’t fall during his manoeuvring and simultaneously dislodged the man’s touch. Not for long—his own hand shot out to claim the one that had been disrupted. Pulling it to rest on his thighs, his gaze lowered to inspect his motions as he examined a well-worn limb, callouses and all. One hand held it steady while his other explored the open palm, thumb brushing over every detail he could find.  

“…S’what d’you wanna do?” he asked pleasantly, all traces of the former jealousy gone and, in its place,, simple contentment. “Listen to the music more or…?” he trailed off, flicking an almost coy sidelong glimpse to the man. He waited with unrivalled patience for the reply, because truthfully, he almost didn’t want the night to end.

Amused chuckling rumbling in his broad chest when a startled gasp fled his newly declared prey's throat, hands readjusted their grip to ensure the enforced position on his lap would not cause any unfortunate shifting to the side and land the brunet on the floor. At this point, one had to assume the worst, with Squall having proven that he wriggled around way too much for his own good when under the influence. Thankfully, his act of brashness seemed to have frozen up the other enough to stop him from any flailing about, if only for now.

Would he have come here if it hadn't been for Squall's interference in the pub before? Maybe. Although, part of him had planned to see the stumbling brunet back to his hotel himself, convinced he'd otherwise end up in a ditch and just sleep his drunken state off there. But no matter, they were here and Seifer was far from complaining, having the reassuring, albeit light, weight back close to him. Closer than ever before even. Appeased by a nod, attention went back to his own fingers that had made their way all on their own up to the man's fair face, now again riddled with a most enticing tint of red. He had not expected the porcelain skin to feel so soft? Moreover, he thought he could feel just the slightest tilt of the other's head, leaning into the touch. He should stop this now.

Brow furrowing, he instead watched as fingers spread, partly gracing the side of a lily-white neck, thumb brushing briefly over the chin. There had been a time when his hand would have closed over the exposed throat, fingers tightening to disrupt any breathing if only to make a statement and not necessarily to kill. Right now, however, nothing was further from his mind. Nonetheless seemed the pulse underneath soft skin mesmerizing, though for entirely different reasons. And even though there was no small amount of alcohol rushing through his veins as well, he knew he was more or less in full control over his actions. At least enough to know he should end this now before it went too far.

It couldn't be good that the close proximity to Leonhart made him this soft, right? All his life he had pulled up walls not so different from the brunet's; fire instead of ice, rage instead of indifference, but walls all the same. Why didn't they matter any longer in the man's presence? They felt replaced by something else entirely, a careful daring he usually did not even think of displaying when courting someone. Was he courting the man?

Humming lowly when Squall started moving and expecting him to slip from his lap and back into his seat any moment now, he was once more surprised when he found that all the other did was adjust himself to sit more comfortably, breaking away from his exploring touches in the process. "You gonna behave now?", he murmured, hinting at the constant urge to dart off to wherever like a little child in the supermarket. His arm snaked around the brunet's hips to steady him now, holding him safely which brought another frown onto his face.

Most of his life he had wanted to keep his rival safe, although he would never admit to it. His harsh hand against the boy then only means to harden him for the world outside, for he knew how ugly it could be. Him teaching the younger one how to wield a gunblade for he wanted him to be able to defend himself, especially when faced with foes that did not care if they fought dirty. Him following the just promoted SeeD to when being sent to the abducting mission... The turnings of his mind had always been his own in this regard and the more he kept this part to himself, the better. It was the kind of vulnerability he'd always hated in himself, and which ultimately offered a gateway to a certain sorceresses power to slip in and get a hold on his mind.

Disrupted from dark thoughts worming their way in again, he looked down as he felt a demanding grasp on his hand, it being held by slender fingers doing the exploring now. Was this what he wanted to do? Content tonation to the once indifferent voice combined with careful touches made him shiver briefly, his head leaning down so his forehead could rest against the brunet's shoulder, a deep breath fleeing from his lips. What was he doing to him? Letting his former rival get so close, so under his skin was dangerous and he knew it. Yet he could not lie to himself, having felt this want inside of him for most of his life. Sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, often combined with a dark coiling inside of him that dared rear it's head right this moment as well. Eyes slowly closing, his hand turned, trying to entangle fingers with each other. He wasn't the type to hold hands. He didn't do guilt, or at least not well. He was no fucking softy who gently approached and courted someone. He saw what he wanted and he took it. And yet here he was, feeling helpless in a completely different way than he ever had before.

His head lifting again, tilting slightly so emerald eyes could find pale blues, he tried to read them. What exactly was the guy suggesting now? And why was his breath coming so short it made his chest ache? Swallowing hard, his other hand ghosted over the other's side, meandering up and finally finding silky brown strands of hair, fingers tangling. "...or?", he heard himself echo, eyes still searching, observing light blue depths. He wasn't hearing any damn music, the only thing he seemed able to pick up on was the rushing in his ears, almost like it did when anticipating a fight for life and death. "What do you want?", another thing he never really cared to ask in honest, only in his usual provoking manner. But all his arrogance and anger failed him in the presence of this man right now. And truly, as much as he might be able to read the micro-reactions Squall was sending out to the world, he would have given Hyperion to know what was going on in this stubborn head right this moment.

[xxx-cat-xxx]

Not Us

Inspired by the latest Endgame trailer.

I know that I can’t do justice to the whole Tony-Steve relationship mess with one 1.7k-word fic. I’m not even trying. Imagine this as part of a larger project that may or may not ever be written. Let’s pretend for this one that Pepper and Rhodey died in the snap or are otherwise indisposed. It contains illness and might be a bit sad (very very light suicidal TW for the last paragraph).

A million thanks to @whumphoarder for beta-reading.

Steve remembered the way his heart had been pounding in his throat when the spaceship first landed in front of the compound. How they’d all run outside and then stopped as if on command, torn between hope and dread at what awaited them.

What they’d seen when the ship finally opened its gates was somewhere in between the best and worst case scenarios. Tony was alive, albeit barely, dragging himself down the ramp with the help of a robot girl, his eyes looking through all of them as if they were just another group of ghosts that haunted him.

He’d spent a few days in the medical unit, just enough to get out of the danger zone that dehydration and malnutrition had brought on. He and Scott Lang had started to work on a plan the moment he was strong enough to hold a tablet. He’d gotten down to the workshop as soon as he could walk again, silently daring anyone to try and stop him. He still looked ill, desperately thin under the clothes that were so oversized they seemed to belong to someone else, and heavily favoured his left side while walking, aching from the remainders of an injury he wouldn’t allow anyone to tend to.

Some people move one. But not him.

Steve would never know the details of what had happened on Titan, having to make do with the bits and pieces Bruce and the others slipped him, although he was sure even they would never get to hear the full story. There had been a boy with Tony, they said, a child that Steve remembered blurrily from the battle in Leipzig as extraordinarily strong and a bit too talkative, a child that hadn’t returned to earth. But whatever had happened, it was clear that it had shaken Tony to his core, changed him to someone Steve hadn’t thought he possibly could become.

The early mornings at the compound had always been Steve’s alone to jog and quietly read the news upon return, to watch the sunrise without another soul around. But nobody could sleep nowadays.

Sometimes he’d meet Bruce in the kitchen, making tea with the calm, habitual movements of an old man, but the circles under his eyes would betray another sleepless night. Natasha was often found in the common room, silently staring out the window, as if looking out for someone who would never return. Sometimes Steve sat with her, the shared silence as comforting as anything could be these days. Sometimes it was too much to bear, and one of them would leave after minutes without speaking a word.

Some people move one. But not them.

One time at dawn he’d found Tony on the couch, thrashing and turning in the grip of a nightmare, an overturned scotch bottle on the ground speaking of how he’d tried to drown his thoughts the night before. Steve hadn’t dared to wake him, had stood silently, and, when the moans had become too frantic, had turned on his heels and called Bruce to intervene.

Tony was of course not the only one suffering from nightmares. Steve had never slept as badly as he did these days. Sometimes the dead came back to life. Then Bucky stood next to him, both of his arms made from flesh and blood, a smile that hadn’t been seen in decades hanging on his lips when he looked at Steve. Sometimes Sam was there too, circling high above them like the falcon that gave him his name. These were the nights when Steve would wake up with tears on his cheeks, when he would give anything to stay in that world the dreams opened up for him.

More often though, it was the living who’d step over into the world of the dead, the few souls that still meant something to him taken away at last. Natasha’s hair was always red when she died, nearly the same colour as the blood spreading rapidly beneath her body once it hit the ground. Sometimes Steve was the one who couldn’t save her. Sometimes he was the one who pulled the trigger.

They all were broken beyond repair, but the change was most obvious in Tony. The man’s unlimited energy was still there, but now it was of a dark, destructive nature that seemed to entail despair. The sparkling of creativity that had brought so many inventions to life had transformed into a mad, raging fire that everyone knew would leave him burned out and hollow at the end. He wouldn’t sleep, hardly ate a thing, and talked much less than he used to. His jokes, as rare as they were now, had gone from good-natured irony to stinging cynicism.

Even in the worst periods, Tony Stark had been a man who enjoyed life, who wanted to survive just for the sake of living. Now it was different - Steve felt that all that kept the man going was the determination to bring back the ones they’d lost, that the moment this would happen, he’d crumble to earth without anything left to force him into getting up again.

Two weeks after the landing, Tony started coughing - a cracking kind of noise that sounded painful and dry. Bruce tried to talk him into getting checked out by the only doctor left at the compound, fearing he might have caught pneumonia after the long period of isolation in space. But Tony refused with the same stubbornness he’d refuse to eat and rest, ignoring the way the cough slowly turned into a wet rattling deep in his chest.

The worry creased in Bruce’s face became permanent, nothing left of the gleaming hope that had sparked in all of them when the spaceship had first shown up on their radar. It was only reluctantly that he left with Nat when the first message of Clint’s whereabouts reached them. Tony, looking sweaty and flushed, essentially forced them out of the door. The moment they were gone, he vanished back into the workshop without another look at Steve.

Steve was in the gym the next night, trying to chase away depression with the pain that would only come from hours of working out, when Scott entered without knocking.

“You need to get downstairs,” he stated without a greeting, “I think Stark’s having a panic attack.”

“What?” Steve frowned, caught off-guard, “I don’t think I’m the right person to -”

“No one else is here, unless you count that robotic girl who’s currently taking apart her own leg in the swimming pool. Look, I don’t care what happened between the two of you. I’m here to bring back my family, not to deal with Tony Stark’s PTSD. You’ve got much more experience with this kind of stuff, and you’ve known him far longer.”

So Steve had gone.

The lab still smelled like it used to, but it seemed larger and darker without robots whirring around and with a distinct lack of rock music blaring from the speakers.

Tony was pressed into the small gap between a cupboard and a workbench, trembling and drawing in small, flat breaths in quick succession. He was staring into space with wide open eyes, their darkness in stark contrast to his otherwise ghostly white face. It was clear from a mile away that he was running a fever, the glassy eyes and beads of sweat above his brows betraying the illness even before Steve could feel the heat coming off him in waves.

“Tony?” he asked in a forcibly calm voice while kneeling down a few steps away, knowing better than to touch him.

There was no reply except a sucked-in breath that made Tony’s lungs rattle. The distressed look on his face morphed into outright panic when the air didn’t reach its intended destination. His frail hands clutched at his chest in a useless attempt to force oxygen inside.

“Tony. It’s okay, you’re safe. We’re at the compound, in New York, remember?”

Tony sucked in another mouthful of air, setting off a coughing fit that had him doubling over in pain. His head hit the workbench in the process, and maybe that was what made him snap out of it. When he looked up, there was a bit of recognition in his eyes.

“What-What the fuck are you doing here?” he croaked.

“You’re sick, Tony. You need to-”

“You’ve got no idea what I need, Rogers. And no right to tell me what to do.“

“You’re angry. Fine, I understand. But Tony, you haven’t talked to me-”

He was cut off by Tony descending into another coughing fit that had his whole body shaking. He wheezed and retched, hacking up strings of red-tinged phlegm that stained the collar of his shirt.

Steve put a hand on his back, reflexively trying to ease him.

“Get off me,” Tony gasped, his voice full of spite, but when Steve looked at him, his face conveyed pure terror. It was the same look he’d had in Siberia, when Steve had smashed the arc reactor instead of his head, ending the fight. Ending everything else that had ever been there in between them.

“Okay.” Steve backed off. Tony was taking rattling breaths, his eyes half-shut, looking like he was having a hard time staying conscious.

“I’m… I should leave, I think. I’ll ask Scott to help you to your room,” Steve said quietly.

But he didn’t move, the clouds of unspoken words hanging heavily in the air, paralyzing him.

In the end, it was Tony who broke the silence.

“Why us, Steve?” he slurred deliriously. “Why did we survive, while the ones who deserved to live had to go?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied, all the sadness of the world caught in his voice. “I always thought that there was justice in what was happening in the world, a deeper sense to why we’re here. But now I think it’s all just madness.”

“What will we do?” Tony asked, desperately. “What will we do if we can’t get them back?”

“We have to.” There was only one reply Steve could give, the only one he’d ever had.

Some people move one. But not us.

Steve leaned forward, laid a hand on the other man’s bony shoulder, feeling the heat pulsating through his shirt. Tony looked up at him, sick and defeated and lost, frantically searching for something that would be worth staying alive for. This time, he didn’t push Steve away.

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 305: Puma & The Dolphin

I came to the music of Puma & The Dolphin, real name Nikolay Todorov, via Elsewhere MCMXIII on ICI, that first DJ soFa curated compilation from his enigmatic series that has now spread across four volumes and four labels (Elsewhere MMDLXXVI on Kalahari Oyster Cult, Elsewhere CDXLIV on Crevette Records, and Elsewhere LVI on Emotional Response). Todorov has gone on to appear on all of these subsequent volumes, each time giving a small but essential taste of his evocative worlds of firedance mystery, krautrock playfulness, and futurist jungle exploration. Thus the Primitive EP lands with no small amount of anticipation, as the 12” allows full immersion into Puma & The Dolphin’s esoteric dreamspace…a fourth world amalgam of space age abstractions and shamanic body grooves seeing shadowy post-punk rhythms, primal drug-dub basslines, and ethnological hand-drums disco dancing and future funk trancing through alien deserts and exo-planetary rainforests. As well, the Primitive EP marks the first release of Chambre Noire, a radio show and mix/visual collage series run by Peter Bunzinelli, also of Cosmic Tones, that is now expanding its operations to include a record label. And pushing the whole package over the edge is a truly far-out remix from Michal Turtle, who strips Puma & The Dolphin’s “The Dress” down into its spiritual dub essence, letting immersive layers of world percussion and low slung basslines execute a ritualistic funk dance amidst universes of shifting sonic sorcery, with the organic and the virtual blending together as reality distorts into a blur of tropical psychedelia.

Puma & The Dolphin - Primitive EP (Chambre Noire, 2019) The “Jungle Futura” is alive with monkey screams and birdcalls, which splatter into feverish abstraction. A two-note bassline grooves through exotica motions over low slung disco magic…a four-four kick locking in, snares moving through uptempo militance, and the spectrum colored by tambourines, cabasas, guiros, and ethnological hand drum hooks. Burning drone clouds stoke hallucinations and insectoid squiggles arc across the sky as voices speak mysterious enchantments…all while synthetic heatwaves and whooshing bursts of static suffuse the background. Animalistic whistles transmute into solar feedback sorcery and sonar tones ping across the spectrum while virtual flutes scat through melodies of exo-planetary rainforest ritualism and later, squelching synthetics dance through Arabian mysticisms…as if multiple fusion leads are weaving neon tracers through a desert oasis. “Camel in Dub” starts with electrified marbles bouncing through hyperspace and a sweaty post-punk and doped-out disco funk rhythm cracking to life while chaotic clap patterns rocket into the third dimension and hissing hat hypnotics support smashed 80s snares. Looped basslines slide through ping ponging hypno-grooves with an otherworldly sexuality evoking Holger Czukay and as we settle into a stoner zoner delirium jam, the vibe is ultra propulsive...like highway cruising through machine breaths, glowing ghost hazes, and screeching tapestries sourced from birds of paradise. Masculine and feminine conversations spectrally morph as they flutter in from the outer edges of the cosmos while inter-dimensional computations are captured by malfunctioning satellites. Elsewhere, marimbas execute tropical dream dances and tribal chants enter the scene, pushing the inherent conga line atmospherics to the fore as an infectious “oh / ah” call and response lands right on the beat.

The layered rhythms of “The Dress” work themselves into a delirious dubfunk stomp, with electronic and acoustic drums hitting just out of phase and droning insect wings suffusing the humid jungle air. Infectious bass riffs drop in and out, electronic cymbals decay, and panoramic hand percussions jangle as mutant waveforms cycle across the spectrum…their LSD tracers flashing while abstracted voices repeat “satellite.” Steel drum tropicalisms waver through a mirage of ring modulation and robotic calculations are repurposed into sci-fi jazz scats, with the track eventually taking on an even more militant tribal energy. Drums pound maniacally and the bass guitar abandons its cloudform dub descents in favor of a downlow drug chug while tiger screams transmute into noise. And after strange melodies recalling the Twilight Zone fade like a daydream, we explode once more into future freak jam magic. The intro of “Cobra Dance” sees anthemic glam synthesizers riffing through stargate kingdoms before giving over to low slung bass funk and post-punk motorik militance. Crowd noises surround everything until sweeping oscillations wash the mix clean, leaving the basslines and hypno-drums to charge alone through the liquid night. The primitive dance incantations are helped along by polyrhythmic hand drum clusters awash in Latin jazz spirituality while elsewhere, dial-tone leads scat on sunbeams as those anthemic synth riffs from the intro return and saw across a neon sky. Monotone voices speak mysterious nothings, crazed clap patterns fire through the air, and bending waves of acidic light induce futuristic visions, with the mix giving over to crazed fourth world sequencing and minimalist panoramas of muted gold. Timbales rattle and alien approximations of Middle Eastern mysticisms entrance the mind as everything mutates through a white noise wormhole and eventually, as we snap back into the mutant glamfunk firedance, snake charmer oscillations howl over Afro-beat idiophonics.

A ringing triangle begins Michal Turtle’s remix of “The Dress” before the track gives way to a mutant dub groove, wherein bass riffs vibrate ecstatically as they move through hypnotic octave motions…like skanking on bulbous sunbeams. Feminine voices trip through the cosmic spectrum and a world percussion panorama locks into tribal riddim ritualism, with cricket chirps looping ear-to-ear. Ethnological string instruments decay through delirium webs, mutating steel drums splash through foaming puddles of starshine, and primitive electronics attempt to converse with songbirds as everything smears into a slapback fever dream. The hypnotic drum processional is content to vibe out in a psychedelic paradise…a mediative world of fourth world abstraction and evocative harmonic magic…and at times, snare rhythms drop as the beat takes on an even more pronounced dubfunk jungle swagger, with clap patterns firing in support. During key moments, Turtle washes the mix through with ethereal waves of synthesis…these jaw dropping pads infused by DMT vocal mutations and blasting across universal expanses while trailed by sea-spray color hazes. And later, the drums drop away, leaving the track to zone out in a beatless headspace of oceanic exotica, with sparkling crystal structures growing from nothingness, new age energy fields wavering through deep ocean mirages, and hand drums pulsing…as if generated by breath. As the kick returns, seabirds emit supersonic tracers and jaguars roar amidst forest whispers and rattling pellet drums while elsewhere, the snare drops yet again and morphs the track into an ecstatic ritual of stoner dub and spectral space funk, with equatorial idiophonics beaming in from some outer-dimensional tropical paradise and a background tapestry alive with hallucinogenic panning fx and enigmatic voice incantations.

(images from my personal copy)

[berserker-official]

Livestream 4/25

The reveal stream is here! A 3-hour stream with a bunch of new content coming out with the new season! Let’s dive in

The Hitokiri

The main reason to watch, really. The Hitokiri is the new hero coming out. To start off, we got to hear about the narrative design for the hero, Sakura and Yato.

The Hitokiri are former samurai executioners, The Manslayers With No Heart, that have lost faith in humanity and now roam the lands to execute criminals with no intention on stopping. Their massive axes, the masakari, spread fear wherever they may go.

Sakura, the female Hitokiri is a ghost. She travels from town to town dispatching criminals. Unlike normal Hitokiri, who slowly became psychologically and emotionally damaged from living as an executioner, This was Sakura’s calling. She is death, and death is her gift to the world. Eventually she arrives at her home town to execute a fisherman, but as she was about to behead the fisherman, she stops, and sees the head of an Orochi roll away. Sakura realizes that she killed her whole village, but she felt no remorse. Instead, she felt the power of the village’s spirits strengthening her, so she wears a belt of eerie masks, here she believes the souls of those she kills are stored to give her power. Eventually, she battled a master Kensei and loses, but instead of getting killed, Kensei recruited her, realizing her potential on the battlefield.

Yato, the male Hitokiri is part of a famous executioner clan. He used to believe he would do anything for his clan. He followed his duty without fail, and to others, his duty became art. His executions were so beautiful that people would travel near and far to watch him work. However, he had another job as a family assassin, who took out rival families to raise the fame of his own. One day, his father tasked him with killing the local Daimyo. The plan was flawless; the Daimyo would be in a specific place at a specific time, guards were paid off, this would be nothing more than a success. On the night of the planned execution, Yato brings his axe down on the sleeping Daimyo’s head, but there was no blood. The entire plan was a set-up by Yato’s father because even his family started to fear him. That was the moment Yato’s duty died. Without fear, he killed the Daimyo, the guards protecting him, his father, and every other Hitokiri in the village. With no remorse for his actions, he now follows his own code, and he stands with the Samurai to tear down any enemy in his way.

Character Design

As with all heroes, the design starts with the weapon. What kind of person could wield such a massive weapon? The overall design the team wanted to show off was a sense of fear when looking at these massive characters. Unlike the Shugoki, which is a very round character, the Hitokiri is meant to be broad but fit, being able to lift the axe and using it’s momentum to their advantage. They also wanted to have a more emotionless character, since being an executioner for a living is a very draining job. It looks like most of the costume design is cloth so colors can really shine. Players can also choose between masks and kabuki-style face paint. The ornaments are on the shoulder, similar to the Black Prior. This gives designers to make more unique helm designs, and the axes all have pretty unique designs as well, after taking some liberties designing the axe. (The Masakari is a single-headed axe originally, so the team added a second blade to make it look dangerous.)

Hitokiri Fight Demo

How does the Hitokiri play? The team says this hero is meant to be a very aggressive heavy. With the ability to activate an infinite heavy chain and super armor making it easy to trade blows and keep the pressure on, they focus heavily on pressure. The Hitokiri has a specific state called Mugen-Ryu, which grants special moves. My guess is the Mugen-Ryu is when the hero has super armor. This means you’ll want to come in with an attack that will get you into this state, apply pressure with heavies, and then either finish it with a kick, sweep or unblockable. You can also exit the state with a quick light that doesn’t stun you if blocked, returning you into neutral state. Like Shugoki, you can charge heavies to make them unblockable, but you can also feint out of them to keep enemies on their toes. While in the Mugen-Ryu state, Hitokiri has access to a kick attack. This kick can allow more combo opportunities or to open the enemies defenses. You can charge the kick as well, and if fully charged, the kick changes into a sweep. This sweep can also be feinted, giving players options, making things a guessing game. If you connect the kick, you get a free heavy, and if you connect the sweep you get a free light opener, allowing you back into a combo. The zone attack and the dodge forward heavy has a nice amount of forward movement to keep enemies close to you.

The feats all focus around executions. Hitokiri’s level 1 feat gives them super armor and a full shield, which means you won’t get interrupted by outside hits while executing. The level 2 feat marks an enemy. If the Hitokiri or any teammate executes the marked opponent, any teammate nearby will get a burst of health. Feat 3 gives the Hitokiri a defense buff that’s marked by the mask belt glowing. Feat 4 is a special attack that deals 200 damage to the locked enemy. If you connect this it’s essentially a one hit kill. (During the tournaments on this stream, the attacking team in a breach match uses this feat on the Lord, dealing a huge chunk of damage to win the match. It is possible to apply attack debuffs to the Hitokiri to lessen this damage, but generally try not to get hit by this.

Hitokiri Customization

What will we see as we level the Hitokiri up?

There are masks, face paints, and other hats that otherwise obscure the hero’s face. Body armor goes from just cloth to some leather armor. Each silhouette looks different from each other so you can mix and match to your liking.

Map Showcase: Canopy

A new Samurai map made for Tribute mode, this map takes place in the Samurai’s secret monastery in The Mire. To reach the Canopy, one must go through the forest of The Mire. It’s a large circular area with a temple in the middle.

Hero Improvements: Lawbringer and Raider

(this is all that is said during the stream, patch notes will have more info)

Lawbringer

Shove on Block has been removed, since it halts all offense, slowing down the game immensely.

New chains

Heavy, Heavy, Heavy

Heavy, Heavy Light

Light attacks are 500 across the board. Top light attacks for the first or second hit are 400. Side lights are not interrupted on block, so you can continue the combo to go to the unblockable, which is now all heavy finishers.

After a top heavy finisher, you can do a quick light to stun.

Dash impale attack and flip can now be interrupted by other players. This is similar to Shugoki’s Demon Hug.

Shove in a combo counts as part of a chain, so if you hit with an opener you can shove, then hit and hit with an unblockable, or you can dodge shove, hit, unblockable.

Make Way attack is now super armor and unblockable after a parry.

Shove has armor and 500 ms, gives confirmed light, and you can activate shove on hit, miss, or block. This gives LB more options to keep pressure without being forced to rely on blocking.

Damage numbers have been changed, most have gone up in numbers.

Raider

Similar to Lawbringer, Raider has some trouble initiating

New chains

L, L, H

L, H, H

H, L, L

All lights in the chain are 500 ms

Second heavy in chain gets armor, so now you can trade or feint

All heavies can be soft-feinted into Guardbreak.

Stun tap is 500 ms, and apparently it’s possible to change the timing of when the tap goes off, although it’s slight.

Zone will always be from the left, the other unblockable side attack will always be from the right.

Stampede Charge can now be interrupted, like Shugoki’s hug or Lawbringer’s impale (this is all relevant to group fights)

Damage numbers have been changed, most of them have gone up in numbers.

On all static guard heroes, stance change is now 100 ms.

Weapon Showcase

New weapons were revealed for the Hitokiri as well as the other heroes

Arcade Updates

This season, the team wanted to improve accessibility and address difficulty. How did they do this?

The recommended gear score for the weekly quest has been reduced to 108 (yellow-rarity gear) This also reduces overall difficulty, while rewarding you for playing with higher level gear.

With the addition of new objective quests, a quality of life update has been added to notify you what you’re doing before you start the chapter instead of guessing.

Rebalancing the impact of player’s gear score with respect to rarity levels when playing Arcade.

Under Recommended Gear Score = Penalties to damage dealt and received

On Par = No penalties

Above Recommended Gear Score = Bonuses to damage dealt and received

To compensate for this big of a change, bots will get a slight health and damage boost throughout arcade.

Decreased the success rate of Bot defensive moves (Block, Dodge, Parry and Deflect)

This season, there will be a selection of new quests every week, as well as previous ones, this gives the Arcade team some time to work on the mode, as well as gives players a chance to play any quests they might have missed, and this gives us a feedback loop. If players say something about a specific questline, the team can look at it and tweak it if need be.

Music Composition

To wrap things up, we got to hear from the game’s music composers and how they work on creating music for the factions and their crafting of Sakura’s theme.

[mysterioustransmissions]

My favorite comics of 2017

Keeping with my new tradition of posting this list super late, here, on the last day of 2018, is my best comics of 2017 list. I can offer excuses -- my wife and I remodeled our house and welcomed our first child into the world this year, and I’m also unfailingly lazy -- but 2017 was also a killer year for comics, making this a bit larger of an undertaking than usual. Both Koyama Press and co-publishers Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics had absolutely stacked lineups. You’ll see them listed as publisher for many entries below.

I always struggle with how to order this list. I got serious about organizing my comics collection in 2018, and am running into the same problem. There, I’m thinking of dividing it into two -- a single-author section organized by author name (which ends up being mostly minicomics and graphic novels), and a multiple-author section organized by title (which ends up being mostly traditional-sized comics). Here, I’m essentially doing that same thing, but mixing them together; some entries are by title, and some author name.

Comics I especially enjoyed are marked with an *.

Allison, Matthew; Cankor: Calamity of Challenge #2 and #3 (self-published).

Berserker 1, edited by edited by Tom Oldham and Jamie Sutcliffe (Breakdown Press). There was a lot of anticipation and very specific expectations placed on this book ahead of its release, but no one seemed to walk away from the finished product satisfied. But it’s got a killer cover, great production design, and strips by some of the best cartoonists going. I hope Breakdown does another one.

* Booth, Tara; How to be Alive (Retrofit Comics & Big Planet Comics). One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Booth’s drawings are a riot to look at, that the gags are also great is pure gravy. About as big as crossover hits get in my house. (I.e., my wife also loved it.)

Cardini, William; Tales From the Hyperverse (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics). Cardini’s sci-fi world is made bigger and more engaging by the rapid-fire pace of this short story collection. His wild experimentation with color is always an inspiration.

Corben, Richard; Shadows on the Grave #1 - #8 (Dark Horse Comics). Not my favorite of Corben’s late-period Dark Horse horror books, but there’s plenty to enjoy. I was stunned by the sheer efficiency of the storytelling -- there are entire stories told with a single image and a few word balloons. A lot of these books sport great covers, issue #1 here, seen at the link for this entry, is one of the best.

Darrow, Geoff; The Shaolin Cowboy: Who’ll Stop the Reign? #1 - #4 with Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics). I was so bowled over by the experience of buying Shemp Buffet monthly that I initially scoffed at Cowboy’s return to more traditional narrative, but it turned out to be no less wild and no loss at all.

Davis, Eleanor; Libby’s Dad (Retrofit Comics & Big Planet Comics) and You & a Bike & a Road (Koyama Press). You & a Bike & a Road does something that’s often attempted and rarely successful -- it beats the audience down so it can then lift them up higher. Its success is due in no small part from its origin as a real-life journal. The visceral and emotional pain Davis feels on her journey is sincerely felt, and the lack of cynicism the storytelling choices are made with allow the reader to feel it whole cloth. And listen; it certainly doesn’t hurt that Davis is an amazing narrative storyteller besides -- Libby’s Dad is no less affecting.

DeForge, Michael; mini kuš! #43 'Meat Locker' (kuš!). I sleep on DeForge. I take him for granted. I feel like I’m not the only one? I see some excitement when his books come out, but no discussion. Blame it on the high volume and opaque nature of his work, the dearth of comics reviewers, and me, obviously. Also obviously, whenever something of his does find its way to my hands, I’m never sorry.

Estrada, Inés; Alienation #3 - #6 (self-published). The bundled version of this series, seen at the link for this entry, has the coolest book packaging I’ve ever seen in my life.

Expansion by Matt Sheean and Malachi Ward (AdHouse Books). I didn’t like this nearly as much as this same team’s previous Ancestor (due no doubt to its earlier and improvised creation), but damn, what a cover.

* Forsman, Chuck; Slasher #1 - #4 (Floating World Comics). I’d say the majority of my interest in Forsman’s work is in seeing how he presents his it and steers his career -- he’s among the best there is at that. Slasher is his first work I strongly connected with. It digs deep and gets wilder and wilder.

Ferrick, Margot; Yours (2dcloud). I’m a simpleton, so I was surprised at how deeply I was able to be moved by something this abstract. As always, grabbing 2dcloud’s whole line on Kickstarter expands my horizons and makes me a better reader.

Foster-Dimino, Sophia; Sex Fantasy (Koyama Press). I’ve actually only read the minis of this. This collection has the one I’m missing, plus some new material, but I love Sex Fantasy. It’s like a perpetual motion machine for thought -- you can just think about it forever.

Fricas, Katie; Art Fan (self-published). One of those things you dream of happening at a show -- picked this up at MICE not knowing anything about it, and was delighted by the artwork and knocked out by the “reviews of trippy art events”; particularly the first, about Duke Riley’s Fly by Night.

* Friebert, Noel; WEIRD6 (self-published), SPINE: I’ll Still Watch (Bred Press), Old Ground (Koyama Press). Sometimes when I have a fever, I can’t break loose of a single, circular thought -- I have the same thought over and over, only to realize once the fever’s broken that it was barely coherent. Friebert’s newer, decompressed work is like that. You turn page after page, and nothing happens. It’s the same characters still doing and saying the same things, again and again. You turn the pages faster and faster, almost in a panic, hoping to break the cycle and resolve the unease before you. But it’s no use.

* gg; I’m Not Here (Koyama Press), Valley (kuš!). I’m Not Here is one of a few books I recommended to people who were enjoying season 3 of Twin Peaks at the time. It doesn’t convey information so much as emotion, and rewards as much thought as you want to put into it.

* Hankiewicz, John; Education (Fantagraphics Books). I loved this so much I only read a few pages a night to make it last. Michael DeForge once called Noel Freibert an “astronaut” -- that applies to Hankiewicz also. No one’s ever done anything like this before, and if we didn’t have Hankiewicz I don’t think anyone ever would. Bringing poetry and modern dance (!!) into the language of comics, this was another book I recommended to watchers of season 3 of Twin Peaks -- you don’t understand the story by connecting facts, you understand it by connecting emotions.

* Hanselmann, Simon; Portrait, XMP-165 (self-published). XMP-165 was the first big payoff of the longform nature of Megg and Mogg, and it destroyed me. Also released this year was Doujinshi, Cold Cube Press’ gorgeous re-release of a Japanese Megg and Mogg fan comic.

Harkam, Sammy; Crickets #6 (The Commonwealth Comics Company). People talk about how good this book is, and I agree, but I’m not sure I could tell you why.

Haven, Eric; Vague Tales (Fantagraphics Books).

Hernandez, Gilbert and Jaime ; Love & Rockets Vol. IV #2, #3 (Fantagraphics). I made the terrible error after Love Bunglers to trade wait Locas, and for whatever reason they haven’t released one since. So I was way behind when this started coming out, but I bought and read it anyway. I initially found the story to be light, but I eventually realized I had a free ComiXology trial and caught up. It’s as great as ever.

Ito, Junji; Dissolving Classroom (Vertical, Inc.), Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories, and Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition (Viz Media). Tomie may have come out in 2016 actually? I describe it to people as being about a beautiful woman who stands around until some total lech of a man inevitably murders her, then she comes back and annihilates him in the most unpleasant manner possible. Repeat ad infinitum. I don’t think the text 100% supports my reading, but that’s what it means to me.

Landry, Tyler; Shit and Piss (Retrofit Comics). The ephemeral, disjointed nature the single issue format served this story better, but it’s still extremely rad.

Loup, Celine; The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs (self-published).

Marcus, Ben; Crisis Zone 3rd Edition (Bred Press).

Mignolaverse and John Arcudi; Dead Inside #3 by Arcudi, Toni Fejzula, and Andre May, Lobster Johnson: The Pirate’s Ghost #1 - #3 by Arcudi and Tonci Zonjic, Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea by Gary Gianni, Mike Mignola, and Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics). Ignoring a few years in college when I was a lapsed comics reader, I’ve bought every Mignolaverse comic since I was about 13. That loyalty has slowly eroded over the last half decade about. I’m not alone in thinking the Arcudi-Davis run is one of the greatest of all time, and that the books started to go downhill after Guy Davis left. Beyond the departure of Davis, there are a few reasons for that, in my view.

First was the decision soon after to expand the line’s offerings. Doubling the line’s output and bringing in (inevitably) inferior creative teams was a no-win proposition for readers. Who wants more of something not as good?

Second, I think that Arcudi, a great writer, has shifted his focus from tightly-plotted five issue arcs to series-spanning character arcs. While I’m guessing this reads great in big chunks, it doesn’t spread out month to month, some months out of the year. I’m looking forward to a big re-read of everything after B.P.R.D. wraps in a few months, to see if this theory holds. Lobster Johnson: The Pirate’s Ghost came close to standing on its own, but was still rife with moments that I can only assume were big character payoffs because I didn’t remember enough to know. (Especially cool covers by Zonjic on these issues.) However, the non-Mignolaverse title Dead Inside offered the type of visceral, plot-based payoff his B.P.R.D. run with Davis hooked me with. I hadn’t been this thrilled by an Arcudi book since Killing Ground.

But third, and worst of all, has been the addition of writer Chris Roberson, whose books read like updates to the Mignolaverse Wiki. (The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed was okay, but pretty much solely due to Paul Grist’s fun art and layouts.)

I’m staying aboard the main B.P.R.D. book as it races to the finish line, and will continue to buy anything Arcudi writes, which seems to be mostly these Lobster Johnson comics. (Although even that’s looking increasingly, and sadly, unlikely to continue: https://twitter.com/ArcudiJohn/status/1075086925436874753) And I’ll certainly buy any more of these very sporadically-released Hellboy OGNs, like Into the Silent Sea, they decide to release -- the only real non-Mignola drawn Hellboy books anymore.

* Milburn, Lane; CORRIDORS (self-published). Sits comfortably next to Inflated Head Zone by Zach Hazard Vaupen, one of my favorite comics. They both forsake straightforward narrative in favor of theme-driven emotional impressionism, and do it with horror. This is catnip to me, and something I aspire to (although I’m far too boring to achieve it).

* Mirror Mirror II, edited by Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrörer (2dcloud).

Now: The New Comics Anthology #1, edited by Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books).

* Providence #12 by Jacen Burrows, Juan Rodriguez, and Alan Moore (Avatar Press). It came out months after, but it’s a safe bet Moore wrote this before Trump got elected, right? A more accurate depiction of the shell-shock of being thrust into a post-facts world I haven’t seen.

Roberts, Keiler; Sunburning (Koyama Press). Another big crossover hit in my house.

* Shiga, Jason; Demon Volumes 2, 3, and 4 (First Second). Demon became a book I wouldn’t stop showing to anyone who would listen. Like Gina Wynbrandt’s Someone Please Have Sex With Me, its hook transcends the normal comics reading audience -- you can show it to anyone and they get it right away. Specifically I would show people this amazing video https://youtu.be/NRxCTeM5pyU, which would clue them into what Shiga does enough to get them to read Demon. Demon has a story, but it’s more about rules -- establishing them and playfully subverting them with a level of inventiveness that regularly leaves you in awe.

* Terrell, Jake; Extended Play (2dcloud). This delightful book took me completely by surprise, an experience made possible by 2dcloud’s subscription model.

Tomasso, Rich; She Wolf: Black Baptism #1 - #4, Spy Seal: The Corten-Steel Phoenix #1 - #4 (Image Comics). The end of this second series of She Wolf approached the same hostile disregard for what came before as the end of Tomasso’s previous series, Dark Corridor. But where Dark Corridor acted on that impulse by simply burning it all down, She Wolf has enough respect at least to replace what came before by pivoting into a completely different comic. The freedom this affords the plot to dart in unpredictable directions is exhilarating. And it’s fun and beautifully laid out and designed, as always with Tomasso.

Tran, Thu; Dust Pam (Peow). Gorgeous!

Vaupen, Zach Hazard; Combed Clap of Thunder (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics).

* Willumsen, Connor; Anti-Gone (Koyama Press). The part where the protagonists drive their boat past a window with a dog in it rewired my comics-making brain forever. This was another comic I only read a few pages of a night to make it last longer, and also recommended to friends of mine who were enjoying season three of Twin Peaks -- the plot is obfuscated in a similar way.

Yanow, Sophie; What is a Glacier? (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics).

Yokoyama, Yuichi; Iceland (Retrofit Comics). Another comic I recommended to Twin Peaks season three fans. Similar to the residents of the Red Room, the characters seem truly of another world, their motivations and actions incomprehensible to us.

[syzygyzip]

The Myth and Meaning of MissingNo

A few notes about this essay: first, I have removed the period from the name “MissingNo.” for ease of transcription. I also refer to MissingNo’s sibling as Bar ‘M Bar or [][][][] ‘M [][][][] because its real name is irreproducible in Unicode:

Also, for the purposes of this essay it is helpful to think of Pokémon less as animals and more as a gamut of spectral entities: yokai, devas, fairies, sprites, genies, elemental intelligences, ghosts, servitors, unincorporated astral matter, etc. All those strange and elusive beings who populate world mythology and the collective imagination. In contrast to our world, however, people in Kanto are universally aware of these entities and their relation to ourselves. Much more can be said on this subject, but allow the basic premise to inform your reading when it feels appropriate. The subject before us is liminal by its nature.

Myths, Stories, and Suspicions

When we encounter a glitch in a game the temptation is to say that it broke our immersion. Maybe it’s because children are more easily entranced, but as a child my experience with MissingNo did not feel particularly incongruous with the narrative. The encounter, though strange, didn’t contradict the world of the game -- it expanded it in a psychedelic direction. When I met MissingNo, the battle played out more or less as normal. It was only the image of the creature, the arcane initiation, and the haunting after-effects that were atypical.

As soon as Pokémon Red & Blue came out, one fact of life became very clear: Kids love to spread tall tales about Pokémon. It was quite common to hear about Mew hiding under a truck or Togepi skulking around in the inaccessible wilderness behind Bill’s house. But the purported apparition of something called “MissingNo” or “Bar ‘M Bar” held an especially uncanny sway, because everyone believed it to be true. The basic story was that you talk to an old man, and then fly to an island where you meet bizarre and game-glitching Pokémon – but the many accounts which peppered the playground and Internet each held idiosyncratic details. Some said Mewtwo would turn up on the island, others said they found Pokémon native to the Safari Zone, or rogue trainers, or that you could multiply your items by 100. When I finally initiated what came to be known as the “Old Man Glitch”, I performed it in the prescribed manner:

Talk to the Old Man in the North of Viridian City. He will show you how to catch a Weedle.

As soon as the Old Man is finished, fly to Cinnabar Island.

On the island, walk over to the eastern edge and use Surf.

Surf the very edge of the water, moving up and down.

And sure enough, there appeared a fuzzy Tetris-looking rando named [][][][] ‘M [][][][]. Armed with a little background research, I succeeded in slaying this entity, and came away with 128 rare candies, a glitched out Hall of Fame record, and a whole lot of questions. The experience was so simple and tidy, and the performance of the glitch was just dreamlike enough that my young mind felt the thin silver light of meaning shining dimly from behind the supposedly arbitrary method of contact.

MissingNo and its glitch siblings became well known in the Pokémon community as reliable and functional game exploits, and stuck in the imagination for the peculiarity of their presentation. The programming quirks behind MissingNo’s operations are well understood, and the character has wormed its way into a sizable number of fan theories and creepypastas. Something about this strange little block of static resonates with players, and it seems to have surrounded itself with cryptic clues as to its true nature.

The Method of Contact

The first step to understanding a mysterious aberration in a game is to consider the events that lead up to it. What must the player do in order to find MissingNo? The trip begins by talking to an old man in Viridian City who shows the player how to catch Pokémon by snagging a wild Weedle in a brief scripted encounter. This is an interesting motif right off the bat, because we are meeting a teacher figure who shows us how to catch the worm. In dreams and in myth, the worm is often a symbolic representation of the Kundalini serpent, the principal driving force of life itself which coils at the base of the spine. The Old Man is found near the beginning of the game, and he will show you this tutorial as many times as you like. After all, he is teaching an essential lesson: catch the Pokémon around you to expand your team; or more abstractly: integrate the aspects of nature which complete you.

Viridian city itself is a special place, in that we begin and end our Pokémon journey there. It is the first town we come to after leaving home, and it is also host to the final gym and provides a road to the Pokémon League – the culmination of a trainer’s journey. The next step to MissingNo is to fly to volcanic Cinnabar Island, which is incidentally the last town a trainer discovers. So we have leapt from the site of our first lesson to the final city. Here on Cinnabar we walk straight east to the beach, and use surf to ride a Pokemon up and down the edge of the water. If we venture further out to sea, the ritual is forfeit and we must restart. So we glide up and down and up. Here along the crashing waves, apparitions greet us according to our name. The letters in the player’s name are the values that determine which Pokémon appear – and what form MissingNo takes. With this, contact is made. So let’s take a look at this setting. The island is a classic symbol of self-conception: a crystallization of identity emergent from the undifferentiated ocean. There happens to be a volcano on this island, which is also a timeless symbol: that of the eruption of unconscious content; hidden energy and power which has formerly lain dormant and unknown. We encounter MissingNo in a rather narrow area: a single column of tiles representing the edge of an island. We move up and down this coast attempting to trigger the event, swimming/surfing/pacing along the seashore. This is an incredibly profound detail, because the shore of the ocean signifies the mediation between the mundane terrestrial (the land) and the vast realm of the unconscious (the ocean).  The fact that it is the Eastern coast is a bonus, as that is the place where the sun rises in its most prolonged glow, and gives birth to the new day. The island itself is named Cinnabar, home to a research facility that serves a major role in the game’s plot. As we discover through research notes littered about, Cinnabar Mansion was the site of a series of experiments to re-create Mew, which is thought to be a primordial Pokémon. Famously, this resulted in the creation of Mewtwo, an anthropomorphic “clone” of Mew who lacks the originator’s genetic purity (Mewtwo cannot learn any TM, as Mew can), but appears to have gained a humanlike awareness, a trait lengthily elaborated in the first Pokémon movie. Mew as Prima Materia

So what does Mew symbolize? It is known to resemble an embryo, and believed to be the ancestor of all other Pokémon. It is a light pink, which is interesting given that the alchemical prima materia – the formless substance that composes the primeval material of the universe – is said to be dually white and red. In the original games it is only attainable through the metatextual experience of an IRL promotional event, and was allegedly inserted into the game secretly. Mew is clearly meant to be a transcendent being, notoriously elusive and often depicted in space.

Mew is the only pokemon that learns Transform, except of course for Ditto. This has spawned a highly popular fan theory that Dittos are failed clones of Mew. There are some supporting reasons for this idea: they share the same coloration (in both common and shiny iterations), the same weight, the same stats, and Ditto is present at locations relevant to Mew’s story (notably the Pokémon Mansion and the Cerulean Cave, where Mewtwo is found). Unlike Mew, which cannot breed in game, Ditto can successfully mate with any non-Legendary Pokémon. But Mew, critically, is a psychic type. Ditto is “normal.” It is as though the scientists succeeded in recreating the prima materia, but only in a purely physicalist sense. Ditto contains the genetic potential of all current life, but it does not generate new forms. It does not even learn new moves by itself, it must be taught. Science has apparently replicated the form and fertility of immemorial cosmic life, but not its potentiating vitality, its breath of life, its pneuma. I wonder where that pneuma went. Mewtwo, though not having begat novel lifeforms of its own, nevertheless expresses the pneuma in its thoughts and deeds. But maybe pneuma, as a formless concept, could only be expressed allegorically to the player as the enigmatic and varying being known as MissingNo. Revealingly, MissingNo is a Bird/Normal type Pokémon, birds being classical symbols of the spirit. Its cry upon encounter is the default “blank cry”: an unaffected cry of the male Nidoran (the only gendered Pokémon in the original release). But when MissingNo is viewed in the Pokédex, it makes the sound of a Rhydon, the first Pokémon ever designed; we could interpret this therefore as a reference to the voice of creative impulse. There is a caveat to discovering this: the player can only view the Pokedex entry if they have not seen a Cubone. This is another mythic peculiarity, as Cubone’s defining characteristic is its knowledge of loneliness, and its desire for reconciliation with its ancestors. If this sense of separation has never been known, only then can we “read” Missingno’s information, understand its primal utterance, and order it in our Pokédex-pantheon (as #000)

Curiously, Cubone is also host to a popular fan theory: that its missing mother is Kangaskhan. This is believed mainly because Cubone always pines for its perpetually absent mother, and Kangaskhans bear their young in their pouch, but the young are never seen independently. It is therefore supposed that when Kangaskhans die, their young don the skulls of their mothers and become Cubone. I have no strong opinion about this story, but MissingNo closes the circuit thematically. Just as MissingNo has ties to Cubone, its sibling Bar ‘M Bar mysteriously evolves into Kanghaskhan. Additionally, one of the appearances MissingNo can take is the “Ghost” sprite. In the main game, this sprite is only used for the ghost of Cubone’s mother in a unique encounter. Until a special item is used, this ghost isn’t affected by the player; with this guise MissingNo tells us it cannot be grasped.

4 Visions of MissingNo

In addition to the L-shaped white noise and the ghost, MissingNo can appear in two more ways. It can take the form of the fossils glimpsed in the Pewter Museum: a skeleton of Kabutops or a skeleton of Aerodactyl. These constellations of bones further suggest that MissingNo is an ancestral spirit. Kabutops is a water dwelling primordial life-form, whose development name meant “Atlantis,” and who symbolizes the origin of physical life from the first primal waters. Aerodactyl resembles a dragon or wyvern, an intermediary of heaven and earth. These two beasts, like the ghost, are no longer embodied. Though all 3 are potential symbols of the dead, they embody that sentiment differently. Kabutops comes from the water, Aerodactyl from the sky, and the ghost, as a veiled Marowak, would be terrestrial, but its image taken independently refers to the realm of the etheric.

To see these alternative forms, the player must have a certain letter in the 5th, 7th, or 9th slot of their character name: W for Kabutops, X for Aerodactyl, and Y for the ghost. The natural form of MissingNo gives us 4 forms, an apparently timeless property of visionary and mystic experience, from Ezekiel to mandala art and the platonic elements. In fact, there are over 150 such amplifications found in Carl Jung’s General Index, so it’s rather difficult to catch them all. Like many mythological quaternaries, 1 among the 4 is qualitatively exceptional. In this case, of course, that is the so-called “Normal” form, the fuzzy L-block which appears as a result of a much greater variety of player names. Though this natural form is less definite in criteria and appearance, it is actually more definite in its character. The other three forms take their base stats and moves from the last Pokémon in the party (a dittolike effect!); and their sprites, when viewed from the back, are taken from whichever Pokémon’s data was most recently accessed. So when these entities are in use by the player, they resemble something else entirely; they are phenomenologically reordered to resemble a known quantity. The natural form however, has a constant square-shaped sprite when viewed from the back. Though this form is exceptional among the 4, it is reductive to say that this is its “true” image: each of the 4 is a different capitulation of the same idea which itself is formless. Though there is one more peculiarity about the natural form! MissingNo. and Its Twin MissingNo’s natural form is identical with Bar ‘M Bar, as is its Pokédex number, leading many to believe that they were the same creature. However, there are many differences between them. Their height, weight, and stats are different, and they learn slightly different moves. Bar ‘M Bar does not cry like a male Nidoran, but instead sings a pitched-up version of the Zapdos call. This sound resembles birdsong with a background buzz indicating electricity. This pitch-shifted voice tells us that Bar M’ Bar resides even higher in the heavens than the sky-streaking legendary bird of thunder. Its “height” is also coincidentally tied in value with that of Rayquaza, a sacred serpent whose name means “firmament” and is the canonical lord of the skies. Another difference previously mentioned is Bar ‘M Bar’s unique ability to evolve into Kangaskhan. This happens at level 0, but if you glitch it to level 128, it can also evolve into Clefairy. Clefairy is a symbolically rich Pokémon as well; it was the main character of the original manga, and originally slated to be the main character of the anime. It is strongly indicated to be of extraterrestrial origin and is also plainly representative of the fairy kingdom, as indicated by its name and type. Additionally, it happens to be the Pokémon that Bill, a famous internet architect, accidentally transforms into as he is playing with time and space in order to construct a teleporter. We therefore can surmise that Clefairy relates to that which is alien: the alienation of the creature from the franchise, the alien origin of the species within the narrative, and the truly alien experience of inhabiting another body. This changing of bodies is perhaps what Bar ‘M Bar does when pushed past the realm of possibility, into level 128. There is of course a practical programming reason for the number 128, but it also happens to be double the number of possible codons in DNA. The “clef” in Clefairy means “musical key,” or in French simply “key.” Clefairy’s trademark move is metronome, which replicates most other Pokémon moves through the magic of synchronization. What would the world be like if this memetic sprite succeeded in its role as mascot of Pokémon? Would the world be all the more entranced?

When it comes to seeking an audience, Bar ‘M Bar is even wider in its accommodation than its sibling MissingNo. It can be encountered with any name at all – besides the preset options! Bar ‘M Bar’s own actual name, [][][][]M’[][][][] is certainly its most obvious difference. The bars on either side of the ‘M are determined by the actions of the player – Bulbapedia sums it up nicely:

It is most commonly known as 'M, since these are the only typographical characters in its name—its real name is impossible to produce with text, and some tiles in its name are not constant. It is also called 'M Block due to either the glitchy blocks next to its name or the Pokémon's boxy shape.

The first two tiles in [][][][] ‘M [][][][][]'s name depend on which sprite is occupying the spot where the player's Pokémon appears. In battle, the tiles on the left of its name will copy part of the sprite in the bottom-left corner of the screen (the player's Pokémon), while the block on the right will copy part of the sprite in the upper-right corner of the screen (the opponent's Pokémon). Out of battle, the blocks in its name will change depending on the player's location.

We know that MissingNo’s name is constant, and its form is undefined, a result of the player’s bestowed name. On the other hand, Bar ‘M Bar is a definite outcome for any bestowed name, but its own name is defined by the player! Yet it always retains the ‘M in the middle, which is tempting to interpret as the conjunction n’ (and). It looks as though Bar ‘M Bar’s name is something like “This n’ That.” And indeed, that’s what the sprites which comprise the bars draw from: the player’s Pokémon and the opponent’s Pokémon. The fact that these two glitchy blocks are separated by something close to “and” is a beautiful detail. It takes these two oppositional beings and phrases them both, but does so with the separation intact. If it lacked the ‘M between the two samples it would give a different impression. It is the difference between hendiadys (good and ready) and a modified adjective (well ready). It acknowledges that the two things are distinct and in concert, yet they are termed by Bar ‘M Bar in a single body. There is an endless mystery surrounding the mythological motif of 2-in-1, but it is often explored in alchemy and Jungian psychology through the image of the coniunctio, the holy marriage, the reconciliation of opposites.

Can we even say that Bar ‘M Bar is a single entity? It certainly has the strong dual aspect of its twin, MissingNo. Are these two glitch Pokémon the same or not? In the coding of the game, they are not. None of MissingNo’s forms share the constitution of Bar ‘M Bar. Yet they are defined in the Pokédex – the pantheon of the player’s understanding – in the same place, #000, and therein utter the same cry (Rhydon’s). They share an identical sprite and learn nearly identical moves. They cause the same glitch effects to occur in game. The strongest evidence for seeing them as representations of the same essence is in popular conception: Bar ‘M Bar is frequently referred to as MissingNo, and was the first of many other glitch Pokémon subsumed under the generic description of “MissingNo.” It is almost technical trivia to separate them. And most tellingly for the sake of this investigation, they complete each other’s symbolism. So, they are discrete entities AND they aren’t. The mystery of the coniunctio is thus further embodied in this dual being.   The Lingering Presence Now that we’ve outlined the taxonomy of MissingNo+, we can begin to look at the consequences. The two most well-known effects of meeting MissingNo are the Item Duplication Glitch and the Hall of Fame glitch. Item duplication occurs after any encounter with MissingNo or Bar ‘M Bar, regardless of whether the player has fled, caught the creature, or knocked it out. When examining the bag after the battle, the player will find that the 6th item in their inventory has been increased by 128 (although this does not occur if the value is already over 128). Given that a player can reorder their inventory at will, this was a famous exploit for getting hundreds of Rare Candies in order to quickly max out any Pokémon’s level, or generating 128 Master Balls ensuring the capture of any creature you meet from then on. Indeed, this is the most common reason for performing the old man glitch, and likely the critical factor in MissingNo’s renown. And what fuel for the legend: a bizarre seaside vision that grants a wish. Another popular exploit is duplicated fossils, normally given only once per game, so that you could resurrect 100 Kabuto, Omanyte, or Aerodactyl. But any item is fair game: you could effectively wish for infinite wealth, health, lives, moves, defense, speed, power, whatever. You hooked the magic fish, what you do with it is up to you.

The experience also corrupts your Hall of Fame data, replacing some of the images with blocks of static, and scrambling names and values of your champion Pokémon. This is a largely inconsequential effect, but it has symbolic weight. Each Pokémon that exists is a symbol of some kind, representing an attitude, or an attribute, and as you go along meeting them and incorporating them into yourself, they accumulate further personal meanings. So consciously or unconsciously, the Pokémon that accompany you to your final battle are in some sense a mirror of the player: they represent your priorities, values, and appreciations. These are the ones canonized by the game in the Hall of Fame. MissingNo then transforms this composite irreparably. This act can be seen a psychic realignment of the player-character.

Summary

Let’s imagine the story of meeting MissingNo as a fairly tale. The protagonist, Red, talks to an Old Man at the edge of town who shows him how to catch a worm. Next, Red flies through the skies to a volcanic island. There on the Eastern shore of the island, he swims the coast. Attracted by his name, some number of foreign beasts appear before him, culminating in the appearance of a totally unexpected entity which defies easy categorization (though there are partial physical descriptions in some versions of the story). He then defeats, captures, or flees from the apparition. Then looking in his bag, he finds some object or capacity of his has been magnified to a superhuman extent. Finally, we find that some of his major psychic precepts have been mysteriously and radically altered for evermore.

So what then what was the encounter? An alien? A deity or holy ghost? The pneuma which animates life? Is it an unconscious complex made manifest? A psychotic break? The disorienting eruption of the Real? Is it a highly coherent and synchronous glitch-experience, or a pareidoliac imprint in static? I don’t believe that any of these answers satisfy in themselves. Like the images of MissingNo, the interpretations are interdependent, forming points along the circumference of a subject whose middle cannot be approached by the intellect. What is easier to parse is the influence of MissingNo on the fanbase. MissingNo is so famous as a glitch that it has become the common shorthand for any glitch Pokémon throughout the series. MissingNo and Bar ‘M Bar have inspired not only countless tall tales, but tons of fiction, fanart, merch, and a featured article on Bulbapedia. Using our imagination, it is rather easy to place MissingNo into the narrative context of the game, conceptualizing it any of the above ways. As much as this being seems keen to disrupt our in-game immersion, it seems equally willing to stride across our imagination, as though it were walking a bridge leading into the world of Pokémon, or our own reality, or wherever its place of origin.

[nuzblog]

November 20th, 2017

I didn't recieve much feedback, but I got enough to make my decisions.

My first stop was the Power Plant. I activated my repels before entering, and started my way through. Thankfully, Mick is still holding onto Flash in my PC, so the Voltorbs and Electrodes encountered as false items in the Power Plant pose no threat to my Nuzlocke. This dungeon is short but has a few nice items in it, including the TM for Thunder, which would be useful if the electric type I'm about to acquire didn't learn it naturally and also if anyone on my team could learn it other than, strangely enough, Nessie. Although I actually haven't checked since the changes to the party that happen here... it might be more useful than anticipated, if my other new party member can learn it. I'll be checking that when I next play, I suppose.

Anyway. Zapdos, right? I don't typically use legendaries, and I'll go into a bit of detail on my feelings towards legendaries in a general sense towards the end of this same entry, so stay tuned. Suffice to say, I think there's something relatively unengaging about playing through a large chunk of the game with a party of creatures that you've raised from tiny small forms to become big awesome badasses and become close to emotionally and learned the subtle intricacies of their capabilities... only to suddenly have access to creatures that not only are just plain more powerful in terms of how strong they CAN get, but also typically more powerful than your Pokemon when you get them. However, Zapdos fills both the niche of my team's flying type, something pretty much necessary to be able to navigate the environment stress free, and of my team's electric type, something that will make battling the Elite Four a more plausible proposition, given the high number of flying types (that would otherwise be relying on Moschops's rock throw, and Moschops is WEAK to flying attacks) and also Lorelei's high ratio of Water Pokemon despite her supposed focus on the Ice type. Of course, Zapdos is also weak to ice moves, so it's a bit of a tradeoff, but nonetheless, I will gladly accept that tradeoff for the high stats. (Although the other thing about getting a Pokemon at such a high level is that its EVs will be lagging pretty far behind, but come to think of it, I'm not even sure EVs work the same in this gen and quite frankly, I'm not arsed to check too closely.)

Now, if I wanted to be more traditional about it, I could definitely use Penthes' Sleep Powder while risking him to a Drill Peck, lower Zapdos' HP and hope for the best when chucking an inventory full of Ultra Balls. Maybe it would be more in the spirit of a challenge run to do this, but using a legendary isn't as much in the spirit of a challenge run either. I'm too far in to recover from a setback like potentially failing to catch Zapdos or worse, losing a team member to it, and quite frankly, I'm way not enthused about the idea of starting over from the beginning at this point. So instead, since it's a tool the game gives me that I have no other purpose for (since there are only a tiny handful of places left in the game where I even could catch a Pokemon anyway), I just chucked my Master Ball at it turn one.

Zapdos' name is Wakinyan. I like to spread out XP to those that need it, and since Zapdos is level 50 and at this point, the rest of my team was a solid 7 levels below that, I'll only be using it when it is really needed. Speaking of really needing XP...

The coast of Cinnabar Island has a weird property. Actually, it has a few weird properties. Firstly, since both routes leading to Cinnabar Island (and actually, basically all the ocean routes at the south of Kanto) have identical encounter rates while surfing (with a handful of different levels at which Tentacool can be encountered), the developers essentially told the game to use the same encounter rate as the last visited route for Cinnabar Island. During typical gameplay, if you surf around Cinnabar Island, you should be able to encounter the same set of Tentacools. However, the route has a second, weirder property. You see, when checking to see whether or not it needs to roll up a random number to see if you're able to encounter something, the game looks at the tile you're standing on. Each tile you can stand on is actually quadranted into four subtiles. For whatever reason, when determining IF you encounter something, it checks the tile to the lower right, to see if it is grass, water, or cavefloor. However, when checking to see WHAT you encounter, it looks at the tile to the lower LEFT - if it is the same dark color as the water then it uses the surfing table, but if it isn't, it uses the grass/cave table. Surfing on the right coast of Cinnabar Island will have your left side overlapping the coast, and your right side in the water. What this essentially means is that, while surfing along Cinnabar Island's coast, the game will use the same rate of getting an encounter as you would have anywhere else in the ocean... but it will use the list of Pokemon that can be found in the grass or the cavefloor of the last visited location. Sea Routes 20 and 21 don't have grass encounter rates, so typically this would mean you don't encounter anything. However, you can get to Cinnabar Island other ways, such as using Fly, or healing at the Pokemon Center there and then using Dig inside a dungeon or Teleport basically anywhere.

What this means is essentially that you can turn the encounter rate of the tiles on the eastern coast of Cinnabar Island into whatever other location's encounter rate you want. If you want to catch a ghost at sea, simply heal on Cinnabar, enter the Pokemon Tower, and then use Dig to instantly return to Cinnabar. This is most famously used in one of two ways - if you use this method inside of the Safari Zone, you can encounter rare Pokemon such as Tauros, Pinsir/Scyther, Chansey, Exeggcute, and Kangaskhan in a place that lets you normally weaken and capture them rather than relying on the heavily RNG-based and incredibly finicky Safari Zone capture system. (Of course, you do still have to wade through what is now a literal rather than figurative ocean of Nidoran family members, but at least when you find the super rare thing you can actually capture it.)

The other way it is typically used is in conjunction with the Old Man in Viridian City who teaches you how to catch Pokemon. When you watch his tutorial, which can be repeated at will, your name is temporarily stored in the wild encounter rate data, allowing the game to display the name "Old Man". Normally it is returned where it belongs when you enter a new route with encounter data, but since Cinnabar Island functions as just described, flying right from Viridian to Cinnabar maintains your name's location in the encounter data. Since both the encounter rate and your name are represented using the same language, the game reads your name as if it was a list of different Pokemon's levels and ID numbers that can be seen, and it uses that for its random generation. Since there are 256 different options for character or encounter hex codes, and only 151 Pokemon and 100 levels Pokemon can normally be, this results in Pokemon that can be far higher level than could otherwise be attained, and a large number of erroneous attachments of hex codes to nonexistent, glitch Pokemon, the most famous of which is Missingno. I could write a lengthy expose on all of the different things Missingno does, but suffice to say, it looks like a Tetris block made of what computers throw up when they get sick, encountering it turns one item from your inventory into as close to infinite of that item as it can go, and catching it has a chance to corrupt your game data permanently. It's really a whole lot of oddly specific stuff that is a lot of fun, especially since none of it is at all intentional.

Now, given that my name is ARTHUR, I had the option of using the Old Man Glitch to summon a Missingno to multiply my items, an Abra whose level is in the 130s somewhere (and therefore can't actually learn moves if it evolves into Kadabra), or a Haunter at level 145. But none of that is particularly useful.

I could also have given the Safari Zone another go, but the most useful thing I could find there would be Exeggcute, and I already HAVE a good Grass type.

No, no. Instead, I'm doing something WAY more mundane. I'm flying to Vermillion City, and going East to Route 11, where the only Pokemon I might encounter are Spearow, which I already have the evolved form of; Sandshrew, which I already have the evolved form of; and a tapir wading through feces. I mean, Drowzee. I then fly to Cinnabar Island, surf along the coast, and sure enough, after a few of those duplicate claused Pokemon, I find my Drowzee. I put it to sleep, chuck a couple of Ultra Balls its way, and capture it. At Level 11. Huzzah!

I boxed Sciari, who was useful for Koga and will always be worth remembering for that, and start training up my Elite Four ready Psychic type in the Pokemon Mansion. Its name is Baku. At level 26 it evolves into Drowzee, and at level 37 it learns Psychic, so just to be extra safe I train it up to level 40...

And then I go to work. I do continue playing afterwards and into the next day, so the next update will be up sooner rather than later. It does mean the sidebar won't be updated until then. I also have to go to work literally right now as I'm publishing this so that's fine anyway.

[balshumetsbaragouin]

Beloved: Chapter Three

Summary:

A destabilizing episode, a new space, and a revelation delayed...

Artwork, Stories, and Mishaps

The day was shining up to be a good one. It was bright and clear, the air cool and crisp this late in autumn the first signs of winter were peaking through. Most of the trees were beginning to show bare branches through their changing colors, and there was a soft frost on the ground over night most nights now. Deep in Vlad’s underground lab though, between the depth underground and the equipment giving off heat, it was a toasty near 80. The clone was seated a few feet from his small bunk scribbling quick pictures of the rest of the house as it came to mind.

It was early, nearly 6am, but he couldn’t sleep. He had trouble sleeping for more than a few hours at once, and with nothing else to do, he found ways to keep himself occupied. His Daddy was likely up by now, but he wouldn’t be downstairs in the lab for a few more minutes, and with the ghost portal closed, Ghost Skulker wouldn’t be visiting either. So he did what he usually did when bored, drew. He was getting sorta good at it too, at least in his thoughts. The sketches were starting to actually look like what he’d been trying to draw. Maybe I could get Daddy to look at them later? D27 pondered while finishing off a simple drawing of the dining room from the night before. He set it aside and rubbed at his chest. It still hurt. He was thinking about telling Daddy when he got downstairs. It seemed kinda bad that his chest still hurt after yesterday, even if he did use a whole lot of power. Something told him it still shouldn’t hurt. D27 shrugged it off and walked back towards his bed. He had more art supplies there…

Vlad stretched coffee in hand, as he headed for his private study. The entrance to the lab was in there, and besides that, his secretary was in New York finishing up the merger, which was more like a willing take-over, with the smaller company gladly becoming a subsidiary of Dalvco. New York was a solid time zone ahead, and so despite the hour at his Wisconsin home, he was expecting a call from her. Stupid time zones; how can it already be 7am over there? He wondered blearily. He usually didn’t mind being up early, but the constant supervision the clone required was beginning to take it out of him. He couldn’t wait until this growth phase slowed and stopped completely in another two weeks max, because then he’d be able to get back on a normal sleep schedule. The weary billionaire reached for the phone on his study desk before settling into the plush leather chair behind it. He was about to punch in the few buttons needed to connect him to his secretary in New York, when a clarion alarm rang through the house, loud and urgent. Vlad had his hand on the left football player before his conscious mind had really caught up with him. That alarm only meant one thing, and time was precious for the next few minutes.

The pain was unbearable. In the few seconds it had taken to walk from his comfy spot made of repurposed bed sheets on the floor back towards his bed the pain in his chest had spread everywhere. Before he knew what hit him, D27 was curled up in a ball on the floor, a scream frozen on his still shocked lips. The pain came in waves originating in his chest and moving towards the tips of his fingers and toes, and just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, he felt his toes tingle and burn. Then it felt like someone poured boiling and icy water over them. He cracked a scared eye open and felt absolute fear grip his mind. Where he last saw his toes there was now a growing pool of green slime. Worse, it was traveling up his feet, like the slime was eating more of him as it went. His mind screamed out that he needed to get away from the growing pool of slimy glowing awful stuff eating him, but he was in too much pain to move. Just as the slime reached his ankles, he heard a door upstairs slam closed, and it frightened him out of his terrified stupor enough to scream, “Daddy!” He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he needed his Daddy now.

Vlad rushed down the last of the stairs, and was half way through the front part of the lab when he heard the clone scream for him. It sounded so pained and terrified, he nearly teleported the last few feet just to save time. He decided against it, knowing he needed to keep a level head to stave off any serious damage. “Maddie, I need a live vital feed on the clone now! And while you’re at it, splice in the information from the Nanites, get some of that stabilizer I made earlier out of the chiller and onto the console in the back room, and make sure you highlight which segments of DNA are going haywire for me, I don’t have the time to waste figuring it out at the moment.” He spoke hastily into the hologram quickly materializing air in front of him. Vlad strode purposefully into the back of the lab and zeroed in on the distraught clone’s position on the floor instantly. It looked like it was trying to crawl away from the growing pool of its own ectoplasm. “D27, stop moving right now! You’re making it worse, so stay still.” He commanded before rushing over to it to hold it still. He got its attention when his hand gripped its arm to root it firmly to the ground. The tear and fear filled gaze that met Vlad’s own made him rethink his position about the clone’s utter lack of personhood. “You have to stay still, it’s very important that you don’t stress yourself out more right now. Stay still for Daddy ok?” Vlad soothed while scanning through the floating work-up of the clone’s system in front of him.

“Clone’s stability at 72% and dropping, the culprit seems to be lack of energy honey bun. Nanites can’t correct, immediate fusion of energy necessary.” The Maddie hologram supplied from across the room near the large computer console on the opposite end of the room. “Genetic Stabilizer would be ineffective in this instance, lamb chops, my suggestion is to give it some of your energy to jump start the stabilization process. Clone’s stability 65% and dropping…”

Vlad’s frown deepened as he skimmed through the information in front of him. Looks like my guess about the melting wasn’t incorrect after all.

The clone’s ghostly core was flickering on and off, barely able to produce enough energy to hold it together at the moment. Unlike normal ghost hybrids, well if a sample size of two counted, the clones were basically balls of willed ectoplasm with human DNA mixed in. If Vlad or Danny ran out of ghost energy, they just couldn’t transform or use their powers for a few hours. They essentially became completely human for a while. Clones, however, were much more like ghosts. They needed a constant supply of spectral energy to remain stable, unlike normal ghosts though, they produced their own, like a regular half ghost.

The older halfa came to a decision as the melting portion of the clone reached mid-shin in height and its stability dropped below 55%. He took a deep breath and summoned a small amount of gentle blue spectral energy, holding it out for the clone in front of him. “Now D27, look at me…” he trailed off as he felt the clone pull against his hold. Vlad squeezed a little harder and said forcefully, “D27. Look. At. Me.” Slowly, much more slowly than he was comfortable with, the clone forced its eyes away from the growing pool of glowing green sludge and towards him.

The pain was getting worse by the second and he was so scared he could barely breathe. Even though he could hear his Daddy talking to him, it was so hard to think or listen through how bad he felt right then…but then it had to be really important, so he tried to focus. Daddy has to be trying to fix it. D27 reasoned before tearing his wide eyes and tear streaked face away from the green stuff currently eating his legs.

“Good boy. Now, I need you to give me one of your hands, it doesn’t matter which one. Reach for the glowing blue ball ok? You’re going to feel a cold tingle, and the blue ball is going to disappear slowly alright?” Vlad explained as simply and slowly as he could manage at the moment. Even he was surprised by the calm cool tone of his voice; inside he was a notch short of full blown panic. The clone was under 50% stable and falling quickly. The last thing he wanted to do was start all over when this one was so promising. He studiously ignored the niggling sense telling him it was something more than scientific pursuit and unwillingness to start over fueling his worry. He felt a wave of relief as the clone reached out for the softly pulsating ball of blue ecto-energy with its hand…

The burning icy boiling feeling was all the way to his knees now, and it took every bit of concentration he had to ignore it and listen to Daddy talk. He said something about a glowing blue ball, and he finally noticed it sitting in his Daddy’s free hand. He would have started if he had the energy, but instead of a gasp all that came out was an aborted cry. He gritted his teeth and reached out for the ball like he was told, and hoped this would make it better. He had just about reached the ball, when the tingling burn started up in his fingers as well. With a scream made of pain and surprise, he watched as his fingers turned into more of the awful green eating stuff as well. “Daddy make it stop please.”

Now more worried about the clone melting than overloading its system, Vlad placed his energy loaded hand onto the clone’s chest and pressed it into its failing core. For a couple breath stealing seconds, the melting process seemed to get faster, but just as he was about to truly panic; the melting stopped and began to reverse.

The pool of green beneath the clone grew thicker and reabsorbed into the creature’s system. The reclaimed ectoplasm quickly reformed limbs, right down to the missing digits on its hands and feet.

Vlad poured a few extra seconds of energy into its body before carefully removing his hand from its chest. He swiftly gave it a once over, checking for any visible damage or changes to its structure, and was relieved to find none. “Maddie, analysis, how’s its vitals look?” He questioned into empty space.

“Clone fully stabilized. Ghost core is producing sufficient energy to remain stable indefinitely pumpkin, and there are no deleterious or neutral changes to the clone’s DNA.” The blue spandex clad Maddie hologram pronounced.

The errant scientist’s shoulder sagged in visible relief. That had been a close one. I suppose it would have been easier if it had just cooperated. Vlad concluded with a small frown, before refocusing on the clone besides him on the floor. He finally noticed he was still fiercely gripping its arm. He let go, and noted with concern the dark purple bruise blossoming across its surface shaped like the palm of his hand.  Still more concerning was the lack of noising coming from the clone itself. Despite the fact it had just melted and reformed, something he was sure must be painful, it hadn’t made a peep since it began to solidify again. It hadn’t even reached over for a hug or comfort of some sort, and the continued silence was both unnerving and worrying. “D27?” Vlad ventured softly, reaching out to brush a few stray hairs off of its face.

The pain in his chest was mostly gone now, but even the fading echoes of the hurt didn’t distract him from what just happened. Suddenly, he could remember all the other bad times this had happened, and it was overwhelming. Sometimes his Daddy would inject him with something, something that hurt like crazy, but that made the… the like cheddar cheese wilting on his potatoes last night, stop. Others it would stop on its own after a few hurt filled minutes. All of it was bad and scary, and worse it all happened at different times. There was nothing he could remember that happened right before or that could warn him about it. It just happened, and then…then Daddy fixes it. He felt shivers work up his back and the cold bumps show up on his arms. I need a hug. D27 concluded before he heard his Daddy call out to him. He swiveled fear filled and tear brimmed eyes back towards the only constant in his life. Before he knew it, he was flinging himself into his Daddy’s open arms. There were a more questions than he had fingers and toes he wanted to ask, but they could wait until after he wasn’t so scared anymore.

Vlad relaxed into the now more responsive clone’s arms. He felt it wordlessly practically meld itself into his chest, a ball of fear and insecurity. “Shush, it’s alright D27, there’s nothing to be frightened of.” Now. Vlad added mentally before continuing, “You’re just fine. I’m here; nothing’s going to happen to you.” He reached over and gently patted its back, trying to calm the nearly hysterical combination of wailing and tears the little creature had turned into in an instant.

“Buh Daddy, the green stuff almost eated me, and it really hurt, and it happened before-”

“What did? And no nothing was eating you D27, the green liquid wasn’t eating you. It’s-”

“The green stuff tried to eat me before, and you stopped it.” The young boy insisted.

“D27, I’m telling you, nothing was trying to eat you.” What it is with small children and being terrified of being devoured? “You were destabilizing.” Vlad answered truthfully. It wasn’t as if the clone would understand what it meant, even if he was entirely honest with it.

“Destabilize, to upset the stability or equilibrium of; unbalance.” He quoted dictionary perfect. “Daddy why was I becoming unbalanced? I don’t remember feeling unbalanced, just hurting.”

Vlad was beginning to regret letting it read that dictionary in the first place. “Your ghost core wasn’t making enough energy to keep you stable.” He watched the clone’s already big doe eyes widen even further. “But,” he quickly interrupted the blubbering spilling forth from its trembling lips, “it’s not something you have to worry about.” Vlad started quickly trying to change the subject.

“Why would it? It has you to worry about it for him.” A metallic voice echoed from the fore of the lab.

“Ghost Skulker!” D27 said happily, wriggling out of his Daddy’s arms to go run over to the floating metal specter. With the distraction of the metal covered hunter ghost, he had completely forgotten about the green eating stuff from a few minutes ago.  

“Oh alright, just leave me here why don’t you.” Vlad teased before giving his house coat a once over. It was filthy, covered in the remnants of the clone’s green ectoplasm. He barely suppressed a grimace as he worked his way off of the floor. “Ok D27, why don’t you stay here with Skulker for a few minutes while I change?” He watched as the clone’s face dropped from a shy and excited smile to a scared wide eyed look. “Now, now, there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be just fine here for a few minutes, I promise you won’t do any more melting. Skulker will be right here with you, I just need some clean clothes alright?” Vlad didn’t wait for a real response; he was already walking towards the lab entrance. “Skulker keep the little thing entertained why don’t you?” He offered over his shoulder jogging up the entrance stairs, ready for a quick change of clothes.  

Skulker stared uncomfortably at the little ball of cloned ectoplasm in front of him. It was even bigger than the last time he’d seen it, and worse, it looked needy. If his guess was correct, the creature had just tried to melt, and was understandably very unhappy about the whole thing. Unfortunately, Skulker wasn’t the nurturing type. He much preferred to just kill small, and in other beings’ opinions cute, things about the clone’s size to watching over them. They were annoying and required a lot of care, two things that he hated. But Plasmius has charged me with caring for the little whelp, so I might as well distract it or something. At least if it isn’t thinking about how it nearly just died, it’ll stop looking like it wants some kind of affection. Skulker decided before looking down at the still watery eyed creature. “So…” He started only to stop short. He had no idea what the creature was liked or even what it understood, and so had no idea what to talk about. While he was fumbling for a quick idea, the reason for his visit came to mind. “Have you ever heard of the Ghost Dragon King pup?” He noted with triumph the way the creature’s eyes started to shine with interest instead of tears. He took its silence for the ‘no’ it was, before plunging forward with his tale. “Well, you’re in for a real treat, because I was there the day he died. You see your…father, Plasmius, got into a fight on behalf of this female…”

Vlad sighed and sagged into the top of his mattress. That had been the worse melting episode so far. Not because of the severity, but because of the clone’s reaction. Previously, the thing had either been asleep or too small to remember anything from the melting episodes. Now, it seemed like it remembered not only the instance that just occurred, but several from the past he was sure it hadn’t recorded. Looks like it just repressed it. Fantastic. It’s not even a week old and it has repressed memories. You should win ‘Father of the Year’ in no time like this Vlad. He sighed and banished the thought, not least of all for the implications of even being eligible to win an award for fatherhood. All of the stress from the constant attention the clone needed to make it through a single day had just about drained his reserves. Not only did the thing have a habit of destabilizing in the middle of the night and early morning, when he should be asleep instead of tending to it, it was also a rambunctious child, which made watching over it a trial to begin with.

The only good thing to come out of this day so far is the fact this is the final day of accelerated growth at this level. After that, it should be much more stable, and in fact, it should be able to sleep upstairs in its own room tonight. The thought brought some energy back into his system, not only for the relief from the level of vigilance it required of him, but because it marked a serious accomplishment for his cloning work. No other clone had ever stayed this humanoid and stable for this long before. Vlad once again ignored the illogical affectionate warmth spreading through his chest at the thought of the clone’s excitement and joy. It didn’t really matter yet if it was happy; maybe it would in another week or so. With a huff of semi-energized air, he pushed himself off of the bed and finally padded towards his closet. He needed to get back downstairs. Leaving Skulker with small defenseless creatures for any period of time isn’t the best of decisions…

“So then the Dragon King flew down at Plasmius at full speed. I tell you my very core nearly stopped in fear when I saw the malevolent gleam in his eyes. He drew his head back and took a breath so deep, you could feel the air around you moving 100 yards away. Finally, he let out a veritable wall of deep green flames, heading straight for your father. I watched with growing dread as Plasmius didn’t so much as budge from his spot on the arena floor!” Skulker paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the enraptured look on the little clone’s face.

“And then what happened?” He just had to hear the end of this story. It couldn’t stop there; his Daddy might be burnt to a crisp!

Skulker smiled widely before picking up the story where he left off, “the flames came crashing down all around him, engulfing him in their licking tendrils and burning grasp.” He paused once again when he heard the clone gasp and begin to bounce up and down nervously. The hunter spared it the wait, though, and immediately started the story back up. “For a full ten seconds, there was nothing but deep green flames surrounding the whole of the courtyard, and I thought for sure Plasmius was but a cinder of ectoplasm. Then, suddenly, the flames gave way, and inside you could see this swirling hot mass of red ectoplasm shaped like a dome. Your father had constructed a shield of solid red ecto-energy, er if you didn’t know; red energy is both rare and hard to control. I’ve only ever heard of beings wielding it before I saw Plasmius actually do so. In any case,” Skulker moved pasted the little tangent, “the fires were practically eaten away by the strength of the pulsing shield around him, and the Dragon King roared with frustration. He flew around for another pass, willing himself to go even faster, before Plasmius surprisingly dropped his shield.”

“Why?” He didn’t want to interrupt, but putting down the only thing keeping you from being set on fire didn’t seem like a good idea.

“Hold your horses, I’m getting to it!” Skulker bellowed at the impatient child. What is taking Plasmius so long? He wondered before heading towards the end of the battle. “Inside was a double of your father and he had a dark red sphere of energy in his palm. Then I felt a tingle travel through my suit, and the air around me charged with energy. I heard something crackle through the air, and it began to smell like a rain storm. That’s when I realized, Plasmius was charging an electrical attack! The static discharge from the blast grew as the attack grew in power, and quickly several of the female’s hair were practically floating straight up. He charged a second attack with the other version of himself, and the air took on a strong metallic taste and smell. The Dragon King had just flown into position to charge at him at full speed, and was already inhaling what felt like half of the air in the arena. Luckily ghosts don’t need to breathe! The two of them stared each other down for a hair’s breadth, before they threw their attacks at each other. And then-”

“Skulker what in the world are you talking about?” Vlad had just made it back into the lab, and had only caught the tail end of Skulker’s last sentence.

“Why your glorious defeat of the Ghost Dragon King of course! I was about to get to the good part too.”

“Really?” He practically screamed. He didn’t think it could get any better than this.

“Skulker…” Vlad trailed off as he took in the eager and antsy look on the clone’s face. “Don’t you think this is an inappropriate story for a child?” He wasn’t sure why he was even asking. As if Skulker knows what is appropriate behavior around children anyway. Vlad thought with a roll of his eyes.

“What do you mean Plasmius? Is not a tale of your victorious battle not the perfect story for your whelp to hear?”

“Perhaps if it wasn’t so violent and filled with so much gore and death. Couldn’t you have picked something else to talk about?”

“But I wanna hear the end of the story Daddy! Pretty please? You were just about to hit the mean evil Dragon King with a big electreecal attack.” D27 whined up at his Daddy with the biggest saddest looking eyes he could muster.

“Electrical,” Vlad corrected, “and no. The story is about to get very-”

“Aw come on Plasmius, it’s a great story!” Skulker interrupted. He had just about gotten to his favorite part.

“Maybe for a bar full of harden ghosts, or a something, but not for a barely 5 year old child.” Skulker looked about ready to argue the point when Vlad held up a hand. “No Skulker. He’ll be having nightmares for a week, and I’ll be the one dealing with them. I don’t want to be up all night when I don’t have to be.” Vlad said in a voice that brokered no arguments.

Skulker smirked widely before saying, “Why Plasmius, I didn’t know you cared. You’re even calling the clone ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ now. What were you telling me about it being an experiment two days back?” He gloated freely.

The older halfa frowned before retorting, “A slip of the tongue. Now, since you want to talk about the ancient ghosts, I assume you’ve found the location of Pariah’s Keep like I asked.”

“Oh certainly. In fact, it’s the entire reason I’m over here, but are you sure you need that crown?” Skulker wasn’t really comfortable with the thought of waking the ancient King up for any reason, but he trusted Plasmius to keep the situation under control. At least enough to keep him from getting killed, and the payment for the information, in the form of a brand new suit and new weapons, was too much to pass up for just handing over some Intel.

“Of course I am. I’m going to need that-”

Oh no. Not this time. He wasn’t being brushed off again for some stupid conversation with Ghost Skulker about stuff he didn’t care about. He’d waited a whole day to show Daddy his sketch, and he was doing it this time. Now more determined than ever, D27 walked over to his space in the back of the lab and snatched up the nearly finished picture before marching purposefully back into the front of the lab. He stood in between the talking adults with purpose and lifted and wiggled his art project in the air above him. When neither of them reacted, he lowered the paper and called, “Hey!”

“Hm what?” Vlad paused in his conversation with his ghostly associate and looked down at the frowning face of the clone between them. He noticed the piece of paper in its hands and immediately began to brush it off. “Now D27, Daddy is busy. He’ll look at…your picture later.”

“No,” he started emphatically, “now. You’re going to look at it right now. You promised Daddy.” He managed to not whine a bit while saying any of the sentences, settling for an angry tone of voice instead.

The billionaire frowned deeply. He was not about to be commanded by a small child for any reason. “No D27, I will not. I-”

“That’s not fair. You never keep your promises!” Now he was actually upset. Nothing he did seemed to get his Daddy to listen or pay attention to him, and he was sick of being…ignored, that was the word.

He was about to reprimand the little clone when Skulker interrupted.

“Oh come on Plasmius, the sooner you look at the thing’s doodle, the sooner we can get back to our conversation.”      

“It’s not a doodle, it’s a sketch, and you promised you’d look at it today. Remembeer? You promised after training last day.”

“Remember, and the word you are looking for is yesterday.” Vlad corrected while contemplating the wisdom of giving into the clone’s childish request. Seeing no reason to put it off any longer, he leaned over and picked up the page from the creature’s grasp. He had been prepared to just dismiss the drawing outright after a quick glance over to satisfy the clone. Instead, he found himself staring intently at the page. The level of skill…

Although the sketch had been made with crayons and colored pencils, not the most sophisticated of artistic instruments; the composition was fairly well made. It was a vivid representation of the Wisconsin sunset from the night before. The sky was a rich combination of bright reds and oranges with hints of purple at the top edge of the page. The sun was the center piece of the picture, and unlike most typical childish representations of the star, it didn’t have any lines coming off of the deep red sphere. It hung low on the horizon, disappearing behind the slowly rising fog common in the evenings of autumn in the area. The ground was an interesting mix of greens, browns and red from the light of the sun collecting in the low hanging fog.

If he had to guess the age of the person who’d the sketch in his hand, he’d have thought at least middle school aged. The attention to detail and specific pieces chosen to be showcased demonstrated a level of artistic talent and practice well beyond the barely five years of age, but literally three day old, clone waiting silently beneath him. “D27, you made this?” It was more a rhetorical question borne from a sensation of being impressed than anything else.

He smiled brightly and nodded his head. “It took me a really long time, but I think it came out pretty. I’m not done with it though.” He finished, his face melding into a small frown. “I still need to, um, sign it. Like all the painting in the house, but…I don’t know how.”

“What do you-” Vlad practically slammed his free hand into his forehead. Of course. I only taught it to read yesterday. “Oh well, writing is easy. Listen, I have to finish talking to Skulker, but right after that, I’ll show you how to write, and you can finish your sketch.” He offered while handing the picture back down to the enthused face of the young clone next to him.

“OK! I’ll go fix my bed so I’ll be ready when you come back.” He barely stopped to grab his sketch from his Daddy’s hand before running back towards his space in the lab.

The older hybrid chuckled as he watched the clone race out of the room. “Now,” he said turning back to the metal clad hunter, “where were we?” He asked before he noticed the odd stare Skulker was giving him. “What?” He snapped impatiently.

“Oh nothing Plasmius, you just seem awfully excited over the creature’s little doodle.”

Vlad had to stop himself from telling Skulker it was a sketch. Instead he just responded, “Did you get a good look at it? It was rather good for someone who’s only been drawing all of three days don’t you think?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but instead plunged right ahead. “Admittedly, the construction materials were childish, but the composition was interesting and displayed-oh shut up Skulker.” Vlad stopped himself from continuing to praise the clone’s picture when the grin on his ally’s face only widened.

“What? I haven’t said a word. In fact, you’ve said enough for the both of us about the pup’s little picture.” Skulker was enjoying rubbing his employer’s obvious affection back into his face. Especially after he’d made the point of being so detached the two days before. It looks like the ghostling is growing on him. He concluded with a few extra internal snickers.

“Nevermind.” Vlad snapped back waspishly. “So you’re sure you have every piece of available information? I don’t want to be surprised when I arrive.” He mentioned quickly changing the subject. I do not care more than necessary for that little ball of ecto-goo.

“I’m sure Plasmius. You’re lucky there’s even this much information around. Heck, he was imprisoned over a millennia ago. Anyway, if that’s all you need, I’ll be heading back home. I saw a golden spotted ecto-bob cat on the way here, and I don’t yet have a matching set of male and female for that species yet.” Skulker said eagerly.

Vlad gestured towards the open ghost portal. “Be my guest. I’ll call on you in another two weeks or so, before I head over to Pariah’s Keep.”

“What for?” Not that he minded Plasmius requesting his help, he was always well compensated for it, but he was frankly curious about what he wanted. He had better not tell me to go with him to that death trap. Skulker considered with worry.

“I don’t want to leave D27 alone for any large period of time, so you’ll be keeping an eye on him for me. Don’t worry; you’ll be compensated of course, but-”

“Plasmius I am not some kind of baby-sitting service. Leave a duplicate of yours here or something to watch it.” The hunter was not about to degrade himself by watching small children.

“It’ll be nearly Daniel’s age by then, so it’s not going to need serious watching over, I just need someone around who knows the technical of working my systems, just in case it tries to destabilize. Besides, I’ll need all my energy for going through Pariah��s Keep, unless you’d like to accompany me?”

“No! I can watch the whelp. You are sure it’ll no longer be so small in two weeks?” When faced with the option of either flying into certain near lethal level danger, or watching some pup for a few hours, the choice was clear.

“Of course. I’m glad we are in agreement.” As if there was ever any other option. Vlad concluded smugly. “I’ll see you in two weeks then. Don’t look so glum, I promise I’ll train the clone to have much better manners than anything Daniel can muster.” With that, he watched the frowning hunter float through the ghost portal, and disappear back into the zone. Now much more curious about what his quickly growing experiment was up to, Vlad turned away from the hypnotic swirling greens of the portal and back towards the back of the lab.

He’d waited as patiently as he could for nearly five minutes, before he’d found something else to do other than staring at the now completely clean floor of the lab. The little blue hologram that showed up sometimes when Daddy talked was floating in front of him now. Chatting happily with D27 about how pretty the sky had been last night, and the few messier scribbles he’d made earlier when he was bored. “I think I’m go to do this one again, but much better.” He said while holding up a picture of his Daddy in ghost form arms crossed, an imagined wind blowing back his white and red cape. He watched the hologram smile and nod, obviously paying attention. “But what I really want to draw is the really cool, um, battle between Daddy in that mean ghost dragon thingy, it’s just…I don’t know what a dragon looks like.” D27 concluded with a huff, a frown marring his previously bright features.

“Oh that’s simple! I have lots of pictures of dragons you can look at.” With that the hologram’s image was replaced with a large collage of various dragons from all over the world. There were East Asian dragons, classic European dragons, and even some pictures of South American dragonish figures.

“If you want to know,” Vlad started from behind the pair, “the Dragon King looks a lot more like this one.” He stated while pointing to an especially impressive black European dragon in the mass of pictures.

“Daddy!” He didn’t know what was better, that his Daddy was actually paying attention to him without him having to cry or scream or something bad, or that he’d actually kept his promise this time. “Mrs. Computer was showing me some dragon pictures, oh and she showed me how to sign my name.” D27 held up the newly completed sketch of the sunset, with a squiggly solitary letter and two numbers at the bottom right corner.

Vlad chuckled at the barely legible script at the bottom of the picture. “Yes that’s very nice. He blinked when the clone practically shoved the sketch back into his hands. “What-”

“It’s for you. I want you to keep it.” He said with a big smile. He hoped Daddy liked it. “I wanna make more, but um, I’m almost out of sketch making stuff.”

“Art supplies,” Vlad offered casually. “Of course I’ll get you some more. In fact, I’ll have someone pick some nice watercolor paints in the morning.” As messy as those are. “And you’re sure you want me to have it? You worked very hard on it, and I was thinking you could keep it in your room.” Vlad said carefully picking the clone up from the floor.

D27 glanced around the lab with an unhappy pout. “Of course I do! That’s why I worked so hard on it. I already have lots of pictures in here with me; I don’t need the good ones to stay here.”

“Ah, but D27, I didn’t mean here.” The older halfa watched as its eyes lit up with curiosity. “There’s a nice space upstairs with your name on it, oh not literally,” he added when the clone began to look confused, “but it is just for you. Would you like to see it?” He carefully balanced the clone on his hip and stalked towards the exit of the lab.

“You mean I don’t have to stay here tonight?” He watched as the space he’d made in the back of the lab disappeared farther from view. It made his tummy feel like there was something wiggling in it. He did want to sleep outside of the lab; it was cold and made lots of beeping noises. On the other hand, he’d never slept anywhere else, as far as he could remember, so the thought of doing so wasn’t as fun as he imagined it would be.

“Not unless you want to.” Vlad added when he noticed the nervous energy coming off of the clone. “But why don’t you take a look at the room before you decide?” Honestly why in the world does it want to sleep in a cold impersonal lab over a nice decorated room, I can’t fathom. He rounded the corner taking him away from the study and back towards the front part of the house. He’d had a room set up after the clone had fully solidified out of its growing pod about five days before. It was generic kid friendly, with enough personality and bright colors to entice most small children. I’m sure it’ll want to make changes as soon as it’s settled.

“Oh, ok I guess.” He decided. During the last part of the walk to the room, something he’d put off before came back to mind. Skulker and Mrs. Computer had called him something weird. And when he thought about it, Daddy did too sometimes. He knew what the word meant; he just didn’t know why they kept calling him that. “Daddy, why does Ghost Skulker and Mrs. Computer keep calling me ‘clone’?”

The elder hybrid nearly dropped the clone in surprise when he heard its question. He hadn’t expected the question for awhile yet, perhaps never if he was honest with himself. It wasn’t something he was keen on explaining. “Oh well, don’t worry about it, it’s not really that important.”

“But it is Daddy. Ghost Skulker keeps saying it, and you do too. If ‘clone’ means to make a copy of, or an individual produced by cloning, then who am I a copy of?” It had been bothering him for the last day or so, and he really wanted an answer.

I definitely hate that dictionary. What was I thinking? “I…” His first instinct was to blatantly lie. To say it wasn’t a clone at all. That it had misunderstood. But the way it was looking at him made it nearly impossible. “I promise, I will tell you later. Just not right now ok? I don’t want you worrying about it, but if it really bothers you, I’ll tell you in a few days.” At least by then it will be much older, so maybe it’ll understand better.

That wasn’t the answer he wanted, and his Daddy didn’t always keep his promises, but he’d kept his last one, so maybe he would this time too. “Ok…” He rested his head against his Daddy’s shoulder right as he stopped in front of a door. The door opened with a slight creak and on the other side was the coolest room he’d ever seen. There were cool colorful pictures on the walls of big bright green lizards, and the bed had red cars all over the sheets. The floor was a bright blue carpet that matched the walls, the ceiling was sky blue with little white clouds on it, and the background of the bed sheets too. D27 started to wiggle, wanting to see the room for himself.

“Oh alright, there.” Vlad set the clone down onto the floor and watched it bolt for the bed. He suppressed laughter as it practically bounced off the walls in excitement. He started when he felt his cell phone buzz, then the reason for it hit him. I was supposed to call Cynthia. In between the near melting episode, and talking with Skulker, he’d forgotten why he’d woken up extra early today in the first place. “Now D27, I have to take this call, but I’ll be back in a little bit so you can tell me what you think of the room.”

“But I already know what I think. Can’t I sleep here tonight?” He wriggled with energy, his whole body practically buzzed he was so happy.

“Certainly.” The occupied business man answered with a flick of his wrist to open the phone.

“Now stay right here until I get back, I don’t want you wandering the halls like yesterday.” Vlad turned from the room, and closed the door behind him, already going over the finalities of his newest acquisition. A few distracted minutes later found him settled behind his private study’s desk, signing off on the last of the faxed over documents, preparing to send them back to Cynthia in New York. He pulled back the second to last page and was about to sign the last page when he noticed that it wasn’t a document at all. Vlad had somehow dragged the clone’s picture back into his study with him, and it was staring back up at him innocuously.

“Mr. Masters?” a disembodied voice asked from the other end of the cell.

“Oh? Yes, I’ve finished signing the last of the documents, and I’m faxing them now. Yes this did go a lot smoother than I thought it would. I’m glad they agreed so readily, to the updated conditions, as well. I’ll talk to you when you get back to Wisconsin, Cynthia, have a great flight.” Vlad clicked the cell shut and stared down at the clone’s gift. He had contemplated pinning it on the fridge, but it didn’t seem right to put it up there. He wanted it somewhere they’d both see it regularly, and he rarely frequented the kitchen, and he doubted the clone would either. On the other hand, his study desk got plenty of use, and both him and the clone would be in here often enough to assuage any guilt about leaving it somewhere supposedly private. A small smile graced his lips as the picture balanced against a square shaped paper weight on the desk. He’d get it a real frame in a day or two. Once again, the squiggly unique, personal, touch on the bottom corner stuck out to him. It was significantly different seeing the clone mark something as his-its own. If it was difficult thinking of it only neutrally or as a scientific curiosity before, those three little symbols made it basically impossible. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I can’t thinking of D27 as an ‘it’ forever if I want to call…him my son one day. Maybe saying ‘he’ won’t cause as many problems as I think. Vlad pondered leaning back in his leather chair. The clone was still small and unstable, but he couldn’t pretend it was just a ball of ectoplasm anymore. If only it-he didn’t have such an endearing personality. Vlad pondered before concluding, but then if he wasn’t so endearing, I wouldn’t want to call D27 a ‘he’ right now, and I suppose that’s a small ‘sacrifice’ to make for finding a way to start thinking of him as Daniel.

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games:  Dark Souls 3 (From Software, 2016)

Oh, so that’s where the rest of Bloodborne went.

I love Dark Souls 1.  Lots of people love Dark Souls 1.  Dark Souls 2 hated Dark Souls 1.  Lots of people hated Dark Souls 2.  My own thoughts on Dark Souls 2 are still complicated.  I like Dark Souls 3.  It’s a good game that could have been very bad.  It’s supposed to be a last hurrah for the series, but it didn’t take the easy way out.  It tried to touch on some things from 1, made passing mentions to 2 that only bolstered my own personal theory (which I should really write a new essay for), and tried to do its own thing.  Some people strangely call it nothing but fanservicey callbacks, and I really have no idea where they’re coming from.  These games are connected, and referencing the first shouldn’t be looked down upon, especially when people’s complaints about 2 was that it wasn’t at all connected to 1.  

So I’ll lay my stance out clear right now:  I really appreciate what Dark Souls 3 did to cap off the franchise.  It approached the topic of “ending the world” (as in, the series) with care and respect while still delivering a new game with fresh mechanics and a unique world.  That, unfortunately, did not stop it from feeling like the team was running out of energy.

As much as Dark Souls 3 feels like a genuine effort to give fans something great to remember the series by after 2 disappointed almost everyone, it also feels like a game made out of obligation.  It came out only 13 months after Bloodborne, and I feel like it suffered greatly for that.  Remnants of abandoned systems are prominent in game, and screenshots from not even two months prior to the game’s release show wildly different environments and concepts.  But as with Bloodborne, the mechanics are solid enough to carry the game, just maybe not to the heights fans came to expect.

Dark Souls 3 is basically the mix of DS1 and Demon’s Souls that everyone hoped DS2 was going to be.  It presents a massive, sprawling world with areas that, while not crisscrossing over themselves as in DS1, are stuffed full of shortcuts and secrets in their own space.  There’s nothing like the Undead Burg or Central Yarnham, but fans of Boletaria or Stonefang Tunnel will recognize what’s been presented.

That said, areas don’t have as strong of a sense of identity as they did in DS1 or 2; they’re missing a couple certain somethings that even a million polygons stuffed in every corner can’t replace.  I’ll save the rant about aesthetics for later, but just remember the words “bleak” and “churches.”

Weapons take a step back from DS2’s penchant for absurdity and return to more reasonable medieval fantasy fair.  Big goofy weapons still exist of course - they always have - but nobody’s running around with a poison-infused broken sword hilt or shooting fire out of a javelin.  Weapon arts were introduced to give weapons a sort of “secondary moveset” to better differentiate individual entries in a single category.  DS2 had a ton of single-handed straight swords, and apart from a vertical slash here or a stab there, not much set them apart.  DS3’s weapon arts introduce an extra variety of offensive utility; an upward sweep to lever a shield away, a piercing stab for sudden extra reach, or even just a brutal combo that very clearly tells your opponent it was a bad idea to try and trade hits.  I originally applauded DS2 for much the same thing, but after sinking 299 hours into it, it turns out that having two movesets shared between seven shortswords isn’t actually that interesting, even if an extra stab or slash gets tossed in every so often.  

The weapon arts replace powerstancing from DS2, and personally I was 100% fine with that.  Powerstancing was pretty uninteresting overall and actually kind of useless, unless you were using dual blacksmith hammers to stunlock people in PVP.  Getting the required strength married you very quickly to one specific build, any any points not put towards powerstancing (if you planned your character around doing so) were pretty much wasted.  

Dark Souls 3 brings back a more freeform approach to leveling; no more having to shove a dozen levels into Adaptability just to be able to roll well, or ten into Dexterity so you can cast a spell fast enough to actually live to see it connect.  It does, unfortunately, cripple pyromancy by having your damage scale off both intelligence and faith, which led to me abandoning a pyro build because my Int was already 40 and I have all these sorceries lying around . . .

It's far from perfect.  In a noble but misguided attempt to pave over the couple of oppressively powerful low level builds that allowed a lot of unevenly-matched invasions in the first couple areas of Dark Souls 1, From added odd stat requirements to all the weapons that aren't starting options.  As a result, your beefy Strength dude might need to bewilderingly sink half a dozen levels into Dexterity to swing that giant club around.  Coupled with an all-around nerf to Dex scaling because everyone's Dex is so high to begin with, DS3 spends most of its early to middle game as a Strength or Quality build paradise, with the occasional Sorcerer running around trying to do damage before collecting all 4 rings mandatory for making the build work.

Oh, right, magic as a whole is back to Demon’s Souls’ mana bar.  You have a separate Estus flask for mana, and you can talk to a guy in the central hub to set how many of each type of flask you're carrying, pulled from a total of how many flask shards you've turned in.  It works fine.

And part of the reason it works fine is because there's always a bonfire not 10 minutes of first-time-playthrough time away from the last.  This is a common complaint, and very clearly an issue that arose as a result of the scrapped “create your own bonfire” system that was among one of the first features announced.  I don't actually know offhand if its intended mechanics were ever revealed, but its exclusion from the final game created an obvious shift in how the different areas of the game ended up.  A few areas, notably the expansions, manage to capture DS1’s feel of a desperate crawl from fire to fire your first time through, but most often I found myself a bit surprised at how quickly and easily I'd gotten from one to the next.

As for those levels themselves, let's finally revisit those two terms from earlier.  Dark Souls 3’s map is, like 1’s, a sprawling expanse of shortcuts and secret corners, each connected to the other in a very tangible, real sense.  Dark Souls 2’s magically overlapping zones and elevators to nowhere have been chased off for good.  But where 2 opted for a theme park style approach to areas and 1 guided you through a decaying city, 3 opts for a more homogeneous smear of bleak churches.

Dark Souls 1 was a carefully constructed world, and its map has been touted as one of the best, or at least one of the best constructed, since its release.  It's through not only the ability to orient yourself with landmarks that were places you'd already visited, but a skilled use of light and architecture to visually separate each area while making the transition seem natural, or in the case of various manmade areas, sensible.  The Undead Burg and the Depths both had relatively neutral lighting, with the latter dumping oppressive shadow on you the player; fitting for a grimy sewer.  But head down the cistern to Blighttown and suddenly your screen is flooded with sickly green shades, a result of a deliberate, aggressive color grading trick that lends each area that little extra bit of personality.  Darkroot Garden pairs its dark green foliage with a dusty blue, Sen’s Fortress feels almost sepia toned at times, waves of red heat roll off ancient stone in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith, dark water and pale ghosts in New Londo are brought together by an eerie cyan, and Anor Londo itself blazes with golden glory.

In Dark Souls 3, the sky is yellow, the ground is brown, and everything you walk next to is gray.

Dark Souls 3 tries to sell its “time of ash” schtick with a thin gray film over everything, but the result is a very boring, flat lighting scheme that sits comfortably in the middle values, never pushing itself to any real contrast between bright light and oppressive darkness.  Sure, you'll pull out your torch every now and then, but it's always a hazy sort of darkness that has you saying “it would be convenient if it were brighter right now” rather than “this small circle of light is now the only safe part of this world.”

Not helping the cause is DS3’s general lack of interesting or at least unique terrain.  Areas are massive, but their aesthetic is spread rather thinly across it all, getting a bit boring right around three quarters of the way through every time.  The first and last areas are essentially the same (which makes sense at least, the first part of the game is spent in the lower sections of the final part); a big fantastical European castle town that ended up being more castle than town.  You spend a very long time in the area each time, and it honestly drags a bit.  There's only so much to be done with the same stone wall and wooden roof before the scenery runs its course, and that happens with every area.  The Undead Settlement is full of crappy wooden huts, stone ruins, and not much else, but it's one of the largest areas in the game.  The Cathedral of the Deep is a giant church that you first spend too long crawling on top of, then too long crawling around inside of.  And on the inside, of course, is nothing but a maze of smaller churches, each one complete with the same altar, pews, and candles.  

The Cathedral kind of neatly exemplifies my overall issue with DS3’s world design.  It is always too much of the same thing for too long.  The game world didn't need to be this big, and I genuinely believe it suffered for it.  Areas stretch themselves out so much that a lot of the time you're just walking from enemy group to enemy group, going through the motions more than anything else.  

One of the major strengths of both Demon’s and Dark Souls 1 was that its enemy encounters were a crafted ordeal, meant to highlight the terrain you were on or in and make you think just a bit critically about how you were going to approach.  An example I really like is the small group right before the first bonfire in the Undead Burg.  Three hollows are hiding behind wooden barriers, another sits up a short flight of stairs with a crossbow, and two more are over across a short bridge, holding spears and shields.  Six enemies total.  Entering the main area with the first three has them burst through their cover and slowly advance, while the crossbowman takes a potshot every few seconds.  Far from overwhelming, even as a beginner.  But if you panic and try to run across the footbridge, the spearmen start paying attention to you, and their shields will easily stop you from coming into their territory. Then the crossbow dude and the other three show up behind you and whoops, maybe that was a bad idea.  

This encounter isn't all that far away from Firelink, and only a handful of other enemies get in your way.  But, at least following the intended progression, it's the first complex encounter a player sees.  It has a lot to teach, and it does it well.  Enemies can break through cover, some enemies aren't immediately reachable (and may be bad to rush up to), some enemies are only concerned about defending their turf, shields are difficult to break through, and generally, enemies will be quick to punish dumb mistakes.  

That's a pretty impressive little slice of DS1’s design philosophy.  Let's look at a comparable encounter from 3.

Very close to the area where you warp in from this game’s Firelink Shrine, there's a short section of battlement with a group of six or so enemies.  Most are basic dudes, one has a sword and some armor, and one has a bell of some kind.  The basic dudes are docile, the swordsman will try to kill you, and the guy with the bell will start screaming and ringing if you hang around too long, waking the docile dudes up and making them hostile.  This is all on a straight platform with a couple small statues off to either side, and no other terrain feature of note for this encounter.  

Let's ask the same question, then.  What does this teach us about the game?  A few things.  The biggest is that it's more important to identify targets who will have a big impact on the fight, rather than just going for the scariest looking one first.  Hooking into that is the lesson that some enemies can and will drastically change the landscape of a combat encounter.  Both are true throughout the game, but the second thing becomes less relevant as the game goes on.  

Other than that, there isn't much to learn from this encounter, really.  The terrain doesn't offer much, and the enemies don't do much beyond attacking as a group once the guy with the bell wakes them up.  

What I'll call “big groups in front of you filled with lots of dudes” (Big Groups for short) make up a considerable amount of what's found in Dark Souls 3, and it seems to be inherited from Bloodborne.  But in Bloodborne, Big Groups were what the game's entire philosophy revolved around, or at least for its first half.  Controlling those Big Groups is how the game functioned, it's what the faster dodge, faster heal, and Regain system were built to deal with.  In Dark Souls, those Big Groups just become weird roadblocks that you have to get past without the same tools.

Bringing us to my admittedly flippant opening remark, this is a single part of where I feel Bloodborne's rushed development merged with Dark Souls 3’s even more rushed development.  A lot of enemies seem better suited for the prior game than the latter; they’re smaller or faster (almost universally faster), they use more projectiles, they have more aggressive gap-closing attacks, more grapples, and they appear in larger groups.  They seem designed around a fundamentally different style of interaction than what's actually present in Dark Souls.

And that brings me back to how Dark Souls 3 felt like an obligation.  As a videogame, it's nothing short of excellent.  But as an entry in an overwhelmingly popular series, it feels more like a rushed apology for the lukewarm reception of DS2, and one that took much-needed attention away from another game while it was still being made.  It doesn't feel unfinished in the same sense that DS1 very obviously was, but there's a clear lack of focus present with the way all these trailing threads hang right in front of you.  Areas that are large for no reason or gain, enemies that seem dumped onto the map rather than placed, a progression through the world that never offers much choice, a muted sense of character progression, and a setting that us always comfortably close to where it was previously.  I don't want to say the game's direction feels entirely without creativity, but it's obvious that the grand ideas of Dark Souls 1, left unfinished, or the ambition behind Bloodborne that had to be rushed out the door half-baked just aren't here.  Dark Souls 3 doesn't feel like a game Miyazaki, the director, wanted to make, it feels like something he was obligated to make.  The game comes and goes with a solid presence that's still more impressive than a lot of AAA rpg fair, but it never attempts to reach the same heights that all of its predecessors never got to.  Dark Souls 1 is a deeply, deeply flawed game, but its ambition is obvious and admirable, and its lowest points are backed up by its highest managing to, if only for a moment, reach that grand goal.  Bloodborne was the same way; when it worked, it was magnificent, but it fell flat just as much.  

Dark Souls 3 doesn't try hard enough to be the games it wants to remind people of.  It settles to be a solid action rpg that still exists in the Dark Souls essence, but it feels like a shrug.  A shrug by From, given after the end of a marathon of hard work, aimed at Bandai Namco and the fans, just exhaustedly presenting something that has to be good enough.  And it is.  It's good enough.  I enjoyed Dark Souls 3, I enjoyed its expansions, I enjoyed my time working my pet theory into what it had to say, and I enjoyed where it left the series.  

As of the time of writing, we haven't seen anything from From except for a 10 second teaser for their next project and the announcement of Dark Souls Remastered, and that's fine.  Beyond the expansions for DS3, we didn't see anything huge from them for all of 2017, and that's perfectly fine.  Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 proved that they aren't comfortable releasing a game every year, and it seems that Bandai Namco realized that.  In the current norm of a new entry into a series being churned out every year or every other, I'm more than happy to let From take their time and make something we haven't seen before, or take a surprise revisit to an older series.  From is at their best when they have the time to build those grand ideas, even if the game only reaches them for a few brief moments.  That's when you can see the effort, see the intent peering through whatever didn't quite go right.  I personally would rather see their ambition fall a bit short than see half the ambition come to a slow trudge across the finish line.

In closing, dear From, please make Kings Field 5.