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yeolmae-s · 3 years

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a chanbaek analysis from a veteran exo-l

before anything else there are a few disclaimers i'd like to make:

i am writing this analysis right now because as a non exo stan i'm not into chanbaek that much anymore. of course i like them to some degree since i'm writing this and all but it's nothing in comparison to the way i felt about them two years ago. so i feel like it's easier to keep a less clouded (?) state of mind being where i'm at right now, mentally, in regards to them. i feel like i can look at things more objectively, which is why i decided to write this and share it with you all.

for all the smart asses out there, this is a ship analysis. yes, i’m reading too much into everything. that’s what an analysis is.

all translation credits goes to @/fyeah-chanyeol

i'm a chanyeol stan. this analysis will, most likely, have more information about him in comparison to baekhyun. this is simply because i consumed more content about him since he's my bias (such as magazine interviews, fancams).

i don't stan exo anymore, but it's not because of anything they did. i liked them for a long time and made a lot of different friends because of this fandom, therefore i experienced a lot of hurt, scandals, fights and didn't deal very well with many things, so i decided to leave. this didn't happen because of exo themselves and neither did it happen because of the fandom itself. it happened because of the relationships i had.

that being said, i haven't been following them closely for the past year and a half, but i still keep up with stuff a bit, although not chanbaek related stuff since i gotta dive in kinda deeper for that lmao. so this analysis is mostly in depth for 2012-2018. if anything that you perceive as significant happened after 2018 i'm more than willing to hear your opinions about it.

so, let's get started!!

MAMA ERA

I have always felt like Chanyeol and Baekhyun's relationship was strange. I started shipping them when they debuted and more specifically because of the 130128 ISAC. When I was younger I didn't see a lot to discuss in their ISAC interactions besides it being cute and shippy, but I've started to look at it differently now.

I think everyone knows how ISAC is known for being basically a stage for fanservice. The whole "dating ground for idols" issue aside, judging from the amount of attention they direct towards the fans who manage to attend the event, idols are clearly instructed to perform fanservice. EXO's first ISAC had to be full of it, obviously, and they did give fans a lot to be happy about, content we still get giddy about to this day, and I'm sure they were instructed to act like this to please us. I don't believe that fanservice equals "false interactions": if two individuals are talking, touching each other, they are interacting, even if it is a carefully planned setting made specifically for pleasing fans. They still get reactions out of one another through these interactions, it is still relevant to the way these people's relationship will develop; even though these acts are done with the intent of pleasing a crowd.

Don't get me wrong, though. I don't think the 2013 ISAC fanservice changed anything in Chanbaek's relationship. In fact, I just want to use it as a way to illustrate something I will explain later on.

To be remembered in an industry you must have an image. You won't be getting anywhere without a carefully constructed visual image. Marilyn Monroe is always used as an example of this: she's someone you can easily make a costume of and people will instantly recognize it as her. She's basically a concept by now: blonde hair, red lips and white hair. These aspects take our mind back to her instantly. Of course, most celebrities don't achieve this type of icon status, but it is still important to cling to a specific concept/image of what you want your celebrity self to be perceived as. Without this, you'll be forgotten as soon as your career ends.

When Chanyeol debuted, he clung to the first trait they gave him: being a happy person, a.k.a "happy virus". If you were not an EXO fan back in 2013 then it's likely you're not even aware of this nickname that was given to him, but it's basically just what it sounds like (lol). He was bright, energetic, had a "teeth rich" smile (another nickname that was given to him back then), was able to give 10/10 laughter reactions to MCs and to his members jokes, was always enthusiastic to interact and smile towards fans. He even introduced himself as "happy virus Chanyeol" in interviews (and later on that changed to "EXO's voice Chanyeol" or "EXO's rapper Chanyeol").

I feel like Chanyeol was very much aware of this "must have" that I mentioned, this need to have an image pasted into yourself and have that image be what people will remember you as. We're all complex and multifaceted individuals, but the general public needs something simple to grab on to, something easy to remember. That happy guy from EXO? I know who he is! I'm sure this is the path Chanyeol chose, back when he debuted: to pick a trait given to you by the public and make it a huge part of your image.

However, that image of him didn't last very long. It certainly became tiring to worry so much about how he was being perceived, to carefully construct something so his career would last, specially when his group had so many scandals and went through a sudden burst of popularity that changed their lives completely. By 2017, Chanyeol already had a change of mind in relation to his career, these changes being mostly due to how he felt about music and what he wanted to do with it.

He recognized himself as having always being impatient, which might be the reason why he clung to a specific image so fast right after debuting:

From Fall Magazine in 2017

"At the moment I just want to enjoy myself with the music as it comes, without feeling as though I have to do something. It isn’t a greed from impatience, I could call it more of a greed to do better."

"When I first debuted I thought I was very optimistic, but as time has passed I think a more reserved side of me is showing."

"I think I've grown in many ways. Maybe it’s because it’s as though I perform everyday, but the stage has become comfortable for me. Shall we say I’ve become more calm and composed? [...] I think I’ve become more mature."

He matured. He's still bright and energetic but he's also more reserved. He managed to keep up the fanservice that his fans adore in a way that is more fitting to his actual personality. It still is an image, but an image that's not as exhausting as his previous one, with its strict demands to act in a certain way all the time. I remember specific interview with MCs demanding him to smile (although jokingly, of course) saying things like "Aren't you EXO's happy virus?", so I'm sure he felt pressured.

This is interesting to think about when put side by side with his relationship with Baekhyun. Back when they debuted, Chanyeol and Baekhyun were close friends that clearly felt comfortable with each other, and it isn't surprising to think that Baekhyun would be Chanyeol's first pick when he thought about doing fanservice with someone. Of course, I can't exactly pinpoint their first fanservice moment since I'm not a walking EXO encyclopedia anymore, but I can say with certainty that both of them felt like it worked as soon as they first tried it with the fans, and that's the reason why they kept doing it. Conveniently, they were both good friends, so all was good.

Until well, it wasn't.

At some point, Chanyeol's interactions with Baekhyun seemed too eager for Baekhyun himself. There are various moments where this is visible, such as this one:

Why are you grabbing my wrist out of nowhere young man........

Or...

That one pic where Jongdae, who was in front of them, looked so damn uncomfortable I can't even bring myself to google it

Of course, they had some over the top fanservice that did work out pretty well, such as this one, both of them imitating Jonghyun's and Taemin's Internet War stage, which seems a little scripted now that I look at it properly, with Baekhyun seemingly expecting Chanyeol to do whatever it is that he did on that day. (Can you imagine this: both of them backstage, watching Jonghyun's and Taemin's performance in silence, and one of them just blurts out "We should do that too!". What the fuck was going on)

By the way, if you have never seen the original Internet War performance, you can watch it here.

This is what they were imitating.

Tumblr won’t let me upload the gifs for this moment for some reason, so here and here.

You can't tell me Baekhyun wasn't expecting it already, lol.

Now, know what this moment reminds me of? ISAC. On their Internet War imitation moment, Baekhyun seemed fine, playful, even, agreeing. During ISAC, however, doing basically the same thing again (this time on a lighter way even; since they weren't, you know. Imitating a strong performance such as Internet War.), he appears reluctant. It's a bit painful to watch.

What changed? The ISAC event happened a few months after the SMTOWN concert where they did the Internet War thing, so what made things become so different?

If this has enough likes I’ll make a second part!

#i got tired halfway through writing and i decided i needed some motivation to finish this so i'm posting it the way it is lmao #chanbaek #baekyeol #park chanyeol #byun baekhyun #exo #kpop

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demi-shoggoth · 2 years

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2022 Reading Log pt 9

41. Curious Creatures on our Shores by Chris Thorogood. They’re not on my shores, which is why I picked this up from the library. This is a British book about animals of tidepools and beaches, with each getting an original oil painting. The book is very pretty, but very slight, at 127 pages, which includes full page illustrations and the least useful indices I’ve ever seen (alphabetical lists of animal names, but no page numbers or connections between the scientific and common names!). The text is mostly to do with recognizing the animals and where to find them, with the biology being covered at a fairly superficial level. Pleasant enough, but forgettable. The only thing that will stick with me is learning that England calls their ecological equivalent to the sand dollar (short-spined sea urchin that burrows in sand) a sea potato. Cute.

42. Paleontology: An Illustrated History by David Bainbridge. I found this book remarkably frustrating. It posits itself as a chronological look at paleontology through art and diagrams, much like the same author’s How Zoologists Organize Things. Only the art isn’t in chronological order. It often, without calling attention to it, contrasts an outdated reconstruction with a modern one, or uses a modern reconstruction when talking about an older find. It also has a very weird sense of what is and isn’t scientific consensus, positing ideas that are well founded as “probably” or “speculatively” (ex: mosasaurs as lizards), and hypotheses that aren’t fully accepted as if they were fact (ex: the nature of the Tully Monster). And it just plain doesn’t get pterosaurs, referring to well known genera as “enigmatic”, the group as a whole as “fragile”, and showing outdated reconstructions without commenting on them being not accepted (ex: Padian’s bipedal Dimorphodon). The book has some pretty diagrams and art in it, but the text is a wash as far as actual science.

43. The Comics Go to Hell by Fredrik Strömberg. This is a pocket-sized little book showing the Devil, Hell and similar themes as they appear in comics. The text is organized into themes such as “the family of evil”, showing mythological figures that influenced the Devil or were influenced by him, or “selling your soul”, about Faustian bargains. Each two page spread has a panel or set of panels on the left, and expository text on the right. The author’s span is global, although “global” in this case mostly means the USA, Europe and Japan. Because of the size of the book, some of the panels aren’t reproduced in a very legible way, which is a bit frustrating. I had a good time with it, but “time” meant “45 minutes”, and it’s not one I see myself revisiting. Good thing I got it at a library.

44. Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality edited by Karl Bell. This is an academic anthology collecting essays about magic, monsters and folklore and how they intersect with cities. The introductory essay argues that the expansiveness and anonymity of a city provides the scaffolding for various supernatural beliefs, both alienating and frightening (monsters, ghosts) and empowering (faith, play). The essays within vary in length and quality, as is usual for these collections, but none are what I’d call weak. Some of the highlights for me include a discussion of urban South Africa’s mixed relationship with consumer goods as seen through the lens of benefactors-with-strings-attached both supernatural (mamlambos, a type of water spirit) and mundane (“blessers”, or sugar daddies); a reappraisal of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Horror of Red Hook” within the context of his writing beyond “racist even for Lovecraft”; a look at Parisian witches of the 19th century; and a psychological analysis of the Maryland Goatman as a manifestation of anxieties about Washington DC expanding into rural counties.

45. Angelology: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Celestial Superheroes by Angemi Rabiolo, illustrations by Iris Biasio. This is a weird one. Based on the title, back cover blurb and art style, I thought it was going to be a compendium of angels’ names and powers from an agnostic or folkloric perspective, albeit with a pop art spin. However, the author is a true believer, and one with a very esoteric take on Christian mythology and cosmology that I have seen nowhere else. It’s clearly inspired by the hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysus (that’s the nine choirs), Kabbalistic literature, the Book of Enoch and the Gospel of Bartholomew, but beholden to none of them entirely and mixing and matching as it sees fit. The book includes recommendations for prayer and meditation devoted to particular angels for particular problems (akin to the traditional Catholic venerating of saints), but in places seems embittered towards the Catholic Church (for declaring Uriel a demon, and for abandoning Joan of Arc, for example).

#reading log #angel #devil #religion #pop culture #folklore #paranormal #paleontology #tidepool #marine invertebrate

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tossawary · 3 years

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Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction.

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything.

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK.

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either.

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...”

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH.

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan).

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point.

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

“Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example.

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui.

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things?

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH.

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here.

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation.

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?”

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!”

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.”

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down.

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on.

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders.

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking.

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension.

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever).

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea.

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant!

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does!

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

“‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

“‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes.

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.)

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

“Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent.

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.)

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss.

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master.

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control.

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers.

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

“He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later!

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into.

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

“He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

“Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations.

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him.

#tossawary updates #tossawary svsss #pride is not the word #tossawary commentary

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micromanclub · 3 years

Text

Yuuichi Higuchi interview

(translated from Volume 6 of the digital version of Yoshihiro Moritou's Microman manga anthology available on BookWalker)

■ Image sketch of Microman Arm System (working name) by Mr. Higuchi. Each part is connected by five-part jointed arms, and each part can move flexibly. It is said that the development was canceled due to problems with strength, even though a prototype was made. Mr. Higuchi provided us with this new illustration of the concept. (Editor)

-------

The Era of Microman

Can you tell us the original point of contact between Mr. Higuchi (with Design Mate) and "TV Magazine"?

"In terms of Takara's work, I have been sketching products since the launch, so I believe design for the product advertisement page was my first relationship. In addition to "Microman", I was in charge of some of the advertisements for "MagneRobo Steel Jeeg" and so on. After that, development of Microman articles started with TV Magazine, and I was in charge of the layout of those pages. I think that would have been my first point of contact with the editorial department of TV Magazine. "

How did you get involved?

"The editorial department asked me to lay out the illustrations. In other words, the design of the look and feel including sketches of the illustrations drawn by Masami Watanabe.

I remember receiving an order like "We want to make the magazine a little more powerful ..."

In 1977, when the article serialization began in TV Magazine, what kind of position did Mr. Higuchi participate in "Microman"?

"Until then, the main packages, catalogs, and pamphlets were done by Sugawara (lead designer / current president of Design Mate at the time), and I was in charge of sketchwork, but I decided to take over everything including the graphics I was doing since then. This would have been right when Microman Command started in 1977.

So, to put it in an extreme way, it was a time when I was doing everything related to Microman. I wasn't just designing and painting, I was doing it all including photos for the catalogs, so I was so busy that I could hardly go home (laughs). I was in my twenties at the time, so I think I managed to get through at a young age. "

Thank you very much for your hard work! To what extent did you design the article page?

"Full color promo spreads as well as the "Microman Club" segments. Within Microman Club, we also selected the reader-submitted postcards. At that time, I really received a lot of postcards. Regarding the spreads, it was almost the first time to work on such a magazine, but I thought that I had to make it competitive with the other pages....Mori-san's (Yoshihiro Moritou's) manga was also extremely detailed. ”

Microman special one-shot magazine "Magazine Zero Zero", which was sold as a set with Microman Command No. 3 (or Lady Command), was also a product of this period. It is said that not only it gave a full view of MicroEarth, but also the lifestyle is shown...

"" Magazine Zero Zero " started at the request of Mr. Ogawa (Iwakichi Ogawa), head of Microman development at the time at Takara, but the idea of the page layout and contents is my doing.

We did it with the total mobilization of the company. I also drew illustrations. By the way, the fashion corner of Micro Earth was created assuming that girls would buy Lady Command."

Following "Magazine Zero Zero", TV Magazine Special Edition Volume Microman Book (published on November 15, 1977), TV Magazine Color Book 2 , "The Definitive Edition of Microman Encyclopedia" (published on August 25, 1978) and Microman's other publications would be released one after another. These were good memories, right?

"In 1978, the development of "Timanic" began, and the following two years were a really rich time."

In the Rescue Squad series developed in 1979, the character of Mr. Moritou are drawn in the catalog...

"This is exactly what we aimed for: a synergistic effect with Mr. Moritou's manga. At this time, his art for Microman was widespread. "MFC (Microman Fan Club)" was made around the same time. Mori-san also illustrated the newsletter of "MFC"; the TV Magazine Microman Club column section was ending, so this meant Takara wiould create the official fan club. It all started with that. I used to go to his house to pick up Mr. Morito's illustrations, but he was very enthusiastic about his work, so I often had to wait (grins). Mr. Mori's uncompromising attitude was very impressive. ”

The end of the 1970s was when Design Mate started working on mechanical design for TV animation.

"That's right. When we were doing work other than product design, we were particularly focused on "Cyborg 009" (Hiroshi Onishi), "Daltanius" (Sugawara), "Tanser 5" (Higuchi), etc. in 1979. Personally, "Ideon" (1980) is the most memorable. I also drew a lot of posters and illustrations. Certainly around the time of "Ideon". When I was invited to (anime studio) Sunrise's year-end party at that time, Kunio Okawara and I took the return train together. At that time, I remember that Okawara-san praised me, "Higuchi-san does very nice realistic illustration."

What kind of involvement have you had with "Microman" since the Rescue team members?

"I had been involved up to halfway through the "New Microman" line that started in 1981, and I hadn't touched it since the start of the "Micro Change Series." In recent years, I have been cooperating with the replica series, "Magnepowers Microman", and the "Micro Force" series currently being developed. Recently, through "Microman," I have had many opportunities to work with creators who are younger than me. At that time, I am reminded of how much what I have done still affects people (grins). I could now appreciate the hard work I used to do back then.

Published (October 10, 2003 / Recorded at Design Mate)

Yuichi Higuchi

Born July 13, 1957, from Niigata Prefecture.

The works that Design Mate Co., Ltd. were involved with included "Science Adventure Corps Tancer 5", "Legendary Giant Ideon", "Galaxy Cyclone Braiger", and "Wonder Beat S".

Currently still active as chief director.

Also responsible for "Acrobunch" and many others.

#ミクロマン #microman #takara sf land #micronauts

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fuckyeahstephensondheim · 3 years

Text

Rick Pender knows his Sondheim from A to Z

If the word “encyclopedia” conjures for you a 26-volume compendium of information ranging from history to science and beyond, you may find the notion of a Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia perplexing. But if you have ever looked at a bookshelf full of book after book about (and occasionally by) the premiere musical theatre composer-lyricist of our era and wished all that information could be synthesized and indexed in one place, maybe the idea of a Sondheim encyclopedia will start to make a little more sense to you. It did to Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, an independent publisher that’s made encyclopedias such as this one of their calling cards, offering tomes on everyone from Marie Curie to Akira Kurasowa. Several years ago, they approached Rick Pender, longtime managing editor of the gone but never forgotten Sondheim Review and now, after years of research, writing, and pandemic-related delays, the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is finally hitting shelves. I sat down with Rick (via Zoom) to chat about this unique, massive project.

FYSS: I want to really focus on the new book, but we should start with your history with Sondheim and The Sondheim Review. How did you become so enmeshed in this work?

RP: As a teenager, the first LP that I bought was the soundtrack from West Side Story, and I didn't have any clue about who much of anybody was, particularly not Stephen Sondheim. But I loved the lyrics for the songs, especially “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” These are just fabulous lyrics.

Then, of course, in the ‘70s it was hard as time went by not to have some awareness of Sondheim. I saw a wonderful production of Night Music in northeast Ohio, and I again just thought these lyrics are incredible, and I love the music from that particular show. Fast forward a little further in the late ‘80s, I was laid up with some surgery and I knew I was going to be bedridden for a week or two anyway, so I went to the public library and grabbed up a handful of CDs, and in that batch was A Collector's Sondheim, the three-disc set of stuff up through about 1985, and I must have listened to that a hundred times, I swear, because it had material on it that I didn't know anything about like Evening Primrose or Stavisky. So that really opened my eyes.

Later, my son had moved to Chicago. He's a scenic carpenter and a union stagehand. He worked at the Goodman Theatre, and I went to see a production when they were still performing in a theater space at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a gift shop there. And lo and behold in the rack I saw a copy of a magazine called The Sondheim Review! I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to subscribe to this! This would have been about 1996, probably, so I subscribed and enjoyed it immediately. A quarterly magazine about just about Stephen Sondheim struck me as kind of amazing.

In 1997-98 the Cincinnati Playhouse did a production of Sweeney Todd in which Pamela Myers, all grown up, played Mrs. Lovett, and so I wrote to the editor of the magazine and said, “Would you like me to review this?” That started me down a path for a couple of years of making fairly regular contributions to the magazine. Then in 2004 that editor retired, and I was asked to become the managing editor, which I did from 2004 to 2016. It went off the rails for some business reasons, but it lasted for 22 years which I think is pretty remarkable.

I tried to sustain it in an alternative form with a website called Everything Sondheim. We put stuff up online for about 18 months, and we published three print issues that look very much like The Sondheim Review, but we were not able to sustain it beyond that.

FYSS: How did the Encyclopedia project originate?

RP: The publisher asked me to write an encyclopedia about Stephen Sondheim! I envisioned that I would be sort of the general editor who coordinated a bunch of writers to put this together, but they said no, we're thinking of you as being the sole author. They had done a couple of other encyclopedias particularly of film directors, and those were all done by one person, so they sent me a contract asking me to generate 300,000 words for this book, and after I regained consciousness, I said all right, I'll give it a try.

It took me about two years – most of 2018 and ‘19 – to generate that content. I sent it off in the fall of ‘19, and then, well, the world stopped because of the pandemic. It was supposed to come out April a year ago, and they had just furloughed a bunch of their editors and everything stalled. But now it's coming out mid-April 2021.

FYSS: What was the research and writing process like?

RP: This project came about in part because the publisher initially approached another writer, Mark Horowitz, who's at the Library of Congress and who had done a Sondheim book of Sondheim on Music. Mark and I had become quite close because he wrote a number of wonderful features about different Sondheim songs for The Sondheim Review. When I heard that that he had put my name out there, I went back to him after I had agreed to do this and said, Mark, could we use some of that material that you wrote for the magazine about those songs? And he said, sure do with them whatever you wish. And I was glad he said that, because they were really long pieces, and I've reduced each of them to about 1500-2000 words, which I thought was probably about the maximum length that people would really want to read in a reference volume.

But other than that, I generated everything else myself. I relied upon plenty of material within the 22 years of back issues of The Sondheim Review. Another great resource was Sondheim's own lyric studies, the two-volume set which provides so much information about the production of shows and that sort of thing.

Of the 131 entries I wrote for this, 18 of them are lengthy pieces about each of the original productions, so again Sondheim's books were certainly useful for that, and other books like Ted Chapin's book about Follies.

I also spent some time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress, and Mark loaned me a quite a bit of material that he had collected – not archival material but scrapbooks of clippings that he put into ring binders of stuff about Sondheim's shows.

I came back to Cincinnati with about four or five cartons of materials, and I could really dig through that stuff as I was working on these. And then I have, as I'm sure you and lots of other Sondheim fans have, a bookcase with a shelf or two of Sondheim books, and those were all things that I relied upon, too.

I actually generated a list with lots and lots of topics, probably over 200, and I knew that was going to be more than I could do. Eventually, some things were consolidated, like an actor who perhaps performed in just one Sondheim show wasn't going to get a biographical entry, but I would talk about them in the particular show that they were involved in. So, I was able to collapse some of those kinds of things. But as I said, I did end up with 131 entries in the publication, and it turned out to be 636 pages, so that's a big fat reference book.

FYSS: Who is the intended audience for a work like this? RP: The book is really intended to be a reference volume more than a coffee-table book. It does have photography in it, but it's black and white and more meant to be illustrative than to wallow in the glories of Sondheim. There is an extensive bibliography in it, and all the material is really thoroughly sourced so people can find ways to dig into more.

FYSS: Sometimes memories diverge or change over time. Did you come across any contradictions in your research, and how did you resolve them?

RP: I can't say that I can recall anything like that. I relied very heavily on Sondheim's recollections in Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat because he's got a memory like a steel trap. Once in a while I would email him with a question and get very quick response on things. I really used him as my touchstone for making sure of that kind of thing.

I also found that Secrest’s biography was very thoroughly researched, and I could rely on that. But I can't say that I found a lot of discrepancy, and some of those kinds of things were a little too much inside baseball for me to be including in the encyclopedia.

FYSS: For figures with long and broad histories, how did you decide what to include? George Abbott, for example, is the first entry in the book and he worked for nine decades! How important was writing about an individual as they relate to Sondheim vs. who they were more generally?

RP: To use George Abbott as an example, I would say that the first things that I did was to go back to the lyric studies and to the Secrest biography and just look up references to Abbott. I mean, it was George Abbott who said that he wanted more hummable songs from Sondheim, so you know that was certainly an anecdote that was worth including because, of course you know, it becomes a little bit of the lyric in Merrily We Roll Along.

So you know, I would look for those kinds of things, but I also wanted to put Sondheim in context because Abbott was well into his career when he finally directed Forum which, since it was Sondheim's first show as a composer and a lyricist, is significant. That was very much the focus of that entry, but I wanted to lay a foundation in talking about Abbott, about all the things that he had done before that. I mean, he was sort of the Hal Prince of his era in in terms of his engagement in so many different kinds of things – writing plays, directing musicals, doctoring shows, all of that.

FYSS: Did any entries stick out to you as being the hardest to write?

I think the most complicated one to write about probably was Bounce/Road Show because it's got a complicated history, and Sondheim has so much to say about it. And because it's not a show that people know so much about, I wanted to treat it appropriately, but not as expansively as all of that background material might have suggested. So I kind of had to weave my way through that one. It also was a little tough to write about, because how do you write a synopsis of a show that has had several incarnations quite different from one another, and musical material that has changed from one to the other? With shows like that, I particularly tried to resort to the licensed versions of the shows.

FYSS: I haven't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover yet, but I did read the Follies and the Into the Woods entries to try to get a sense of how you covered individual shows, and both of those are shows that had significant revisions at different times. And I thought you made it very clear what they were and also where to go for a reader who wants to learn more.

RP: Let me say one other thing this is not directly on this topic, but it sort of relates, and that is that in writing an encyclopedia, I didn't want to overlay a lot of my very individual opinions about things, but with each of the show entries I tried to review the critical comments that were made about the show in its original form, perhaps with significant revivals and that sort of thing, and then to source those remarks from critics at those various points in time. And of course, my own objectivity (or lack thereof) had something to do with what I was selecting, but I thought that was a good way to represent the range of opinion without having to make it all my own opinion.

FYSS: Did you feel any responsibility with regards to canonization when you made choices about what to include or exclude? What made the First National Tour of Into the Woods more significant than the Fiasco production, for example? Why do Side by Side by Sondheim & Sondheim on Sondheim get individual entries, but Putting It Together is relegated to the omnibus entry on revues?

RP: I guess that now you are lifting the curtain on some of my own subjectivity with that question. I tried to identify things that were particularly significant. I mean with the revues for instance, several of those shows – you know, particularly Side by Side by Sondheim, the very early ones – they were the ones I think that elevated him in people’s awareness. So, I think that to me was part of what drove that. And then shows that that were early touring productions struck me as being things that maybe needed a little bit more coverage. I think the Fiasco production was a really interesting one, but with the more recent productions of shows I just felt like there's no end to it if I begin to include a lot of that sort of thing.

FYSS: I mean it's so subjective. I'm not the kind of person who clutches my pearls and screams oh my goodness, how could you not talk about this or that. But I was surprised to see in your Follies entry that the Paper Mill Playhouse album was not listed among the recordings, for example. I imagine that once this book hits shelves you're going to be bombarded with people asking about their pet favorites.

RP: Oh, I'm sure, and maybe that will be a reason to do a second edition, which I’m totally ready to do.

The Sondheim Encyclopedia hits bookstore shelves April 15. It’s available wherever you buy books, but Rick has provided a special discount code for readers of Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim to receive 30% off when you order directly from the publisher. To order, visit www.rowman.com, call 800-462-6420, and use code RLFANDF30.

Celebrate the launch of The Sondheim Encyclopedia with a free, live online event featuring Rick Pender in conversation with Broadway Nation’s David Armstrong Friday, April 16 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern. More information and register here.

#Stephen Sondheim #Rick Pender #The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia #The Sondheim Review

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chrystening · 4 years

Text

Reference Text | Felix / MC

Title: Reference Text

Fandom: Last Legacy (Fictif Games)

Rating: T (but very close to M)

Words: 2.4k

Summary: Despite “majoring in necromancy”, you assumed Felix was a well-rounded mage, proficient in many areas. And when you find a certain book in his library, you learn it is… many areas, indeed.

Any MC Characteristics?: You are the same height as Felix. MC is male in my mind, but it’s a very gender neutral story.

Content warnings?: One (1) Bad Sex Word. Many sex references. But generally this is a light-hearted read full of pining. feLix has a Sex Book

Technically pre-smut

Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve written! Glad to see I haven’t gotten any better!!!!!1

Once I realized felix wore eyeliner, it was over for me. also the idea of magic tomes was so interesting, i made a whole story about it. cheers.

Anyway, this is like a prequel to the actual smut because writing it all as one... made me feel icky and made me feel like Felix was way out of character

the smut will have three diff versions, male, female, and non-binary (non-descript)...

Your gaze ran across the room, falling upon the couch whose cushions lied atop of the Grimoire Lemegeton. Stella was notably absent, but you knew that Felix wouldn’t let you get your hands on the artifact anyway, not before you were ready.

Currently, you had been tasked from unsuccessfully levitating teacups, onto something even harder. You were to conjure fire from your hands. The idea had come to Felix after he saw your fascination with him setting his father’s letter spontaneously ablaze.

You let your outstretched arms fall to your side.

“This isn’t working Felix.” You turned to your teacher—your master? “I want to be like you—I want to learn necromancy! Let me read the Lemegeton!”

Felix was at his desk, focused on his own studies. His eyes closed behind his glasses, his lips falling into smug grin. He chuckled.

“You want to attempt necromancy? As a novice mage? That would be akin to handing a newborn babe a knife, in hopes it’d jump to its two feet and make its first kill.”

You stared at him, mind processing the morbid analogy. You had known Felix long enough to not comment on some of his more perverse metaphors. Instead, you went forward with your plea.

“So? You were a baby when you began magic.”

Felix’s gaze rose from his book to look at you. He spoke plainly, as if it were as obvious as the weather, “Well, that’s because I’m extraordinary.”

You deflated. It was true. He was extraordinary. And extraordinary, you were not. You frowned and stared at your hands.

“Oh, to be a mage skilled enough to read a book bound in human skin and scribed in blood,” you sighed dramatically, though the bitterness was not hidden in your voice.

You tried to shake off the self-loathing and refocused on making flames spout from your palms.

Unbeknownst to you, Felix removed his glasses with an elegant pinch of forefinger and thumb. He stood from his desk and approached your back.

“I’ve told you before that I can sense the magic within you. It’s a seed of its own.” From behind you, Felix placed a hand on your chest, above your heart. You flinched, but Felix’s front against your back steadied you. “All you need to do is to water it, and it will burgeon.” You prayed he wouldn’t feel your heart thrumming under his palm—this heart that, against your will, was beginning to be his.

You turned your head so that even if only in profile, you’d be able to see his face. You didn’t know how to describe his expression, but what you knew is that the both of your faces were getting closer to one another… so close you could pinpoint in Felix’s eyes the exact second he realized what he was doing. He stepped away, slightly pink. Suddenly, you could breathe, but you didn’t want to.

“Come,” he said.

Felix’s face was encouraging—encouraging like a teacher, or a mentor. Purely platonic. You tried not to pay attention to the sinking feeling in your chest.

“While I won’t allow you to dip your toes into necromancy just yet—” you groaned “—I can assure you that there is a lot of magic you could choose from in the meantime.” Felix lead you to the bookshelves that lined his walls.

“What’s the point of bouncing from spell to spell if I can’t make any of them happen,” you sighed under your breath.

“I’ve had you try both levitating and conjuring just from power of will. I have yet to have you aid yourself with books, my barista.” Your spirit brightened with the usage of Felix’s pet name for you. At least, you considered it a pet name.

Felix gestured to the library with a grand, theatric arc of his arm. “Browse. Pick any book that catches your eye.”

Your eyes skimmed book after book with little hope any would yield results. Until, you spied a spine with deep ruby letters against a backdrop of midnight black.

You stood on the tips of your toes and picked it. As soon as you touched it, there was a hot buzz between your fingers and the book’s surface. Now, you were interested.

“Daemones… Carnis…?” you read aloud off its cover.

No sooner than you finished speaking, the tome was snatched right out of your fingers with a squeak from your teacher. You turned to him, curiosity more than piqued. Felix held the book tightly to his chest, arms crossed over it like an Egyptian being laid to rest. His face was flush.

“Felix.” You stepped towards the mage, hands reaching for the book. “What’s that mean?” you asked, though already your mind was turning. You were struggling to reach into the library of college academia in your brain, sifting through lessons of Latin literature. Daemones… It was obvious was that meant. Demons…

Felix’s face struggled to morph itself back into a poised expression. He babbled, before managing to form coherent thought. “My talented, lovely barista… it’s nothing too i-interesting, I’m afraid.”

Felix called you barista all the time, but whenever he added endearment in front of it… “My dear, charming barista—my clever, sweet barista…” Oh, he was hiding something.

Carnis… Your eyes widened as your mind clicked. Your mouth formed an ‘o’.

You began scandalously, “You study sex magic—”

“I DO NOT!” he exclaimed before you could even finish, his face dropping all pretense of composure. You didn’t even know Felix could open his mouth that wide. Oh, you had to enjoy this while it lasted.

You pointed at him accusatorily. Felix’s eyes nearly went cross-eyed staring at the tip of your finger in front of his nose.

“Demons of the Flesh! What else could that mean? That’s a sex book!”

Felix shelved the book, hiding his face with mauve, layered locks of hair. “It is not—”

“Don’t lie to me, Felix—”

Felix’s head whipped back to you.

“It is not something so… so crude!” his face was as overwrought as it was before, but there was the pinched look of childish indignation in his features. His cheeks were still flush, his mouth twitchy and his eyes averted, but his brows were firm. You decided to lay off… at least for a few moments.

“Then…” you bumped Felix to the side with your hip. “That means it should be just fine for me to read.” He protested, but you ignored him and plucked the book out of its shelves. You could get a good look at it finally.

Daemones Carnis, it read, in fine red text that almost seemed to glow. You felt almost hypnotized. The book’s cover was bound in tight black leather. It had a simple, minimal cover, yet it was strangely suggestive—it appealed to your exact aesthetic. The book looked actually quite pristine, but just by touching it, you knew it was old. You could sense the age and knowledge between its covers. Under the pads of your fingers, the book seemed to hum.

It felt dark… it felt alive.

Your teasing smirk fell into the grin of genuine curiosity.

“Felix… what is it?”

Felix looked like he was going to refuse to entertain you, until he perhaps he saw the sincerity on your features. His flush deepened. He folded his arms and averted his eyes, clearing his throat.

“It is… it is the Daemones Carnis.” At your unimpressed look, he huffed and continued. “Just like the Grimoire Lemegeton, it is a book of learning. Of knowledge.” Felix seemed to finally calm down, even if his blush wasn’t fading. He turned his nose up with dignity, speaking factually. “In more common tongue, it is called the Demons of the Flesh. It is a…” He tried to find the words.

Sex book, you thought but dared not speak, for fear that Felix would refuse to say any more.

“It is an encyclopedia of spells, potions, rituals, and charms one could use for… pleasure.” Felix tried, even if he faltered at the end. He gave you a frustrated look, so as to say ‘Happy now?’

You smiled and turned back to the book, flipping it open. A faded scent of spice and sweetness wafted off its pages. If it weren’t so old a text, you were sure the aroma would’ve been even stronger. It was as if everything about this book was designed to allure. To tantalize.

“Well. I have questions,” you said. Felix huffed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

“I’ll… indulge. But only a few.”

“So it’s about sex?” You looked up from a particularly graphic illustration of cunnilingus.

His cheeks flamed, though from the diagram or the question, you couldn’t tell.

“It… it is indeed carnal in nature.”

“What did people use this for?”

He looked taxed, like voicing it was enough to tire him. “Like I said, it is full of spells, rituals and enchantments. It also details the body, highlighting… parts of the human anatomy that would be the most … relevant to the matter at hand.” He waved his hand. “Think of it as necromancy. People found a subject of magic they wished to learn more of, so they compiled all their knowledge into this text.” Felix stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Although, unlike the Grimoire Lemegeton, this one isn’t as complete an account...”

“Then…” He looked at you. “If the Grimoire Lemegeton is written in blood… is this one written in—?”

“Don’t be a fool, because I know you aren’t one,” Felix said frankly, refusing to dignify you with a real response.

You nudged him, pressing your side against his until his shoulders relaxed again.

“Okay, okay, last question…” And it was indeed the one you were most curious to have answered. You looked up at him coyly. “Why do you have it?”

Felix was taken aback, and just like that, his blush was returning.

You smiled, batting your lashes at him comically. “Of course, it’s fine if you—um, you know—we all have lonely nights and such…”

“I learned it for necromancy!" Felix fervently explained. He looked like the human manifestation of clutching your pearls. “Casting necromancy… it requires an intense study of the human body. The relationship between life and death—! It’s something that can only be understood with knowledge of the body, its parts, its… n-needs—” Felix’s voice was trembling and fast, words crashing into one another like a car accident.

You smiled, pitying the man. “Relax, Felix. I believe you.” You flipped through the book. It was entirely in Latin, or at least some language that was Astraea’s equivalent of the ancient tongue. Luckily for you, by the sides, Felix had annotated the text and translated its contents. You looked your teacher up and down. “But wow… so just for necromancy, you had to learn everything about the human body…?“

Felix, seeing your belief and hearing your admiration, calmed down. He blinked, before clearing his throat and nodded. “At least, most of everything.”

“That’s impressive, even for you.”

He smiled, ego being stroked. He was such a cat. “’Even for me?’ I’d argue it’s quite in character.”

You decided to humor Felix while you skimmed through the Daemones Carnis. “Yes, yes, quite on brand for you Felix. You’re such an accomplished mage, after all…” Your praises came to a pause as you landed on a peculiar page.

While Felix was struggling to put on the air of disinterest to your praises, you read. A small illustration of two people in tight embrace was at the bottom. A halo of energy was wrapped around them both.

“Not a literal transfusion.” Felix’s gaze snapped to the page you were open to as you read from Felix’s translation notes. “This ritual bolsters a lesser magician’s magical ability by having a more skilled mage in close proximity…” Though from the image and further reading, you were willing to bet the participants were in more than just… ‘close proximity.’

“The magic transfusion ritual,” you read aloud.

Your gaze rose from the book, and you found that Felix’s had done the same as well. You hadn’t noticed when you had gotten so close to the man. But here you were… so close you could see all of Felix’s features acutely. The pale gray eyes that reminded you of an overcast day… the beauty mark that lied on the juncture between cheek and jaw… the lips of a mouth that managed to annoy you and fascinate you on a daily basis. For not the first time, you found Felix attractive. You wondered what he was thinking.

After a few seconds of locked eye contact, the both of you could see the realization in your eyes. You struggled with magic, Felix claimed that books could help, you found this new spell designed to solve your problem… and in the silence, neither of you were going to voice the obvious next course of action.

So you both ripped your eyes from one another, cheeks warm.

“I… well, this…” You cleared your throat, forcing an amicable smile across your face. “It’s … very interesting!” you offered, but your enthusiasm sounded awkward even to you.

Felix took the book from your hands, and you found yourself missing its presence in your hands. He was trying to shelve it back in its place, standing on his tiptoes.

“I— You know, a lot of the text is pure drivel,” Felix supplied, voice struggling to remain level. “Unlike the Lemegeton, I’ve never followed this book so closely. This one hails from less than reputable sources.” He was babbling.

You nodded, fiddling with your empty hands. You backed away, leaving Felix’s vicinity despite a pang in your lower gut bidding you not to.

“I’m… just going to continue practicing.”

“Yes… of course.”

You returned to the spot you stood at previously, hands outstretched and twitching fruitlessly. Felix went back to his desk, and you heard not a sound from him besides the scuff of his seat against the floor when he sat. You sighed mentally. You liked him… and no matter what happened, you dared not presume how he felt, not if you wanted to stay sane.

…

You were sure Felix couldn’t see your face…

You tried to keep a straight face, you really did, but the mirth could not be controlled. You shook with suppressed, soundless laughter.

Felix Iskandar Escellun—house unaffiliated, necromancer—had a sex book.

#felix iskandar escellun #fictif #last legacy #felix fictif #mine #fanfic #fictif fanfic #nix hydra

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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 years

Note

5 if you’re still doing the music ask game please! 🎶

Thanks, Jill!! Let me preface this with a big ol’ OOPS for the bucket of angst I accidentally upended all over this fic.

“A Dustland Fairytale” - The Killers I saw the ending when they turned the page/I threw my money and I ran away

out here the good girls die

They gave Peter her books. He hadn’t realized quite how many she’d had. Certain copies had stuck around, but most had rotated in and out of their apartment. Piles used to crop up on the rickety end table next to their couch and then disappear by the next day. He’d open one of their closets—all too narrow and too deep—to find an entire set of encyclopedias on some hyper-specific topic he hadn’t even been aware his girlfriend was interested in. There had been first editions jammed under the bed, gorgeously illustrated hardcovers splayed open on the bathroom floor so she could see them from the tub, a row of scrappy mass-market thrillers in her sock drawer. And still. He hadn’t realized.

Now, Peter sat surrounded by them in towers, misaligned with spines in every colour. He’d kept them inside the boxes her dad brought them in (her mom… hadn’t been able to see him) for weeks before deciding she wouldn’t have wanted that. He had to let her spread out, take the place over, take him over, though the most priceless book in the world was still just a flat little object. Paper and ink. A tree that used to be alive. He sniffed, pretending it was the dust, and flipped to the next page.

He should’ve been doing this years ago, reading fiction. She’d tried to tell him, to sell him on the benefits. All these stories took Peter out of his own head and set him down someplace totally different. He knew more words and could identify more references in the movies he referenced, which was, like, references meta. What baffled him was that she’d read all of these. He didn’t know if he’d get through a quarter of them in the decades he had left to live. Unless he didn’t really have that long. Anyone who knew him worried, Peter understood that, but death always seemed to skirt the edges of his life. Whenever it darted in like a viper, it was to strike down someone close to him, never him. He should’ve been used to it.

“I don’t know about that one, MJ,” Peter muttered wryly. To himself.

Setting the book he’d just finished aside, he reached out and whisked the next one off the stack by the bed. It was getting dark in the room, so he turned on the lamp. The exact time didn’t matter. He’d dropped out of his master’s program and didn’t have anyplace else he needed to be. Eventually, Peter knew he would run out of money to keep paying for this apartment, but he’d been stretching it as far as he could, holding on for as long as possible. He knew she wasn’t coming home and still… this had been their home. This was where she’d kept her books and where he’d meant to keep her safe. When those people—enemies he hadn’t even known he’d possessed—had found this place, they’d elected to do something so much worse than taking Peter’s life. They’d taken her.

He’d searched. God, had he searched. Way past the day the authorities had gone from labelling her ‘Missing’ to ‘Presumed Dead’. After day after day of nothing, he’d retreated into the last place they were together.

Peter rolled, gripping the book in one hand so he wouldn’t lose his page. He couldn’t waste even a moment backtracking with all of this reading to get through. The sheets smelled pretty rank, though not as bad as the pajamas he’d been wearing for… he’d forgotten how many hours straight.

“Hey, Ned,” he called when he heard his best friend use his key to get into the apartment. “You wanna hand me the dictionary? This asshole author’s already into five-syllable words on page four, can you believe that?”

He felt Ned’s presence in the bedroom doorway. The time when Peter had been ashamed of the state of his living space had passed, so he continued to lie there, reading.

“Peter,” his friend said, tone cautious. “There’s… I… I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, man.” Flip.

The bed dipped behind Peter as Ned sat.

“It’s pretty serious.”

“What, they want Spider-Man?” he asked sarcastically. “Tell them he’s not in the game anymore.”

“No… no.”

Ned sounded spooked and, honestly, Peter didn’t have time for that. He tried to block it out, focus harder on the words in front of his face, the texture of the yellowing paper between his fingers.

“Peter,” his friend pressed. “They found her.”

Peter went somewhere. His body was there, under the blanket, over the fitted sheet (she’d helped him with those), but Peter was elsewhere for a full minute. He went completely numb, down to his teeth. If he still had a heartbeat, he wasn’t able to hear it.

“They… they found her body,” he forced out, stiff. He was going to choke. Any second and it would catch up with him and he’d need to scramble across the bed to aim his vomit at the floor.

“No. Listen.”

Ned’s hand gripped his upper arm. A shock. Peter had been shying from touch so much that people had eventually stopped trying. He hadn’t had a handshake to spare for his best friend, certainly not one of the tight hugs they’d tugged each other into in the past after miraculous recoveries and close calls.

“The cops can handle it,” Peter said, feeling his stomach heave. “Forensics.” He sat up, but Ned gripped the front of his sweaty white (greyish now) t-shirt with unusual insistence.

“They found her. MJ’s alive.”

The numbness leeched away and he grabbed his friend by the shoulders.

“Where is she?”

“Apparently, she’s a little battered. Broken wrist, dehydrated—”

“Ned,” Peter sobbed, “where?”

“At the hospital… Peter, I haven’t told you which hospital!”

The apartment that had caged him for months couldn’t hold him a second longer. Peter fled, forgetting his page number, forgetting his shoes.

music shuffle fic game!

#my writing #spideychelle #spideychelle fic #spideychelle fanfiction #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones

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anistarrose · 4 years

Text

Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 4

AO3

Chapter Summary: An unlikely friendship springs from a book club, while secrecy becomes more important than ever for Tres Horny Boys. Kravitz receives a summons. Angus does a hit.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Don't let the Lunar Interlude-esque setting confuse you — this update's a long boi! If you can't already tell how much I love Angus McDonald, then the next few thousand words should make it pretty clear.

***

Some days, Kravitz found paperwork relaxing. Today was not such a day.

The Raven Queen was almost always receptive to his suggestions about how to restructure the forms, and happy to do what she could to minimize the bureaucracy and tedium inherent to almost any other office job. But today, Kravitz’s unbeating heart just wasn’t in his work — just like yesterday, after he’d returned from Wave Echo Cave.

So it was simultaneously a relief and a surprise when a blue glow flashed in his peripheral vision, and he felt the telltale tug of a summons from the Material Plane, specifically…

“The moon?” he muttered out loud. “What is with these people and ridiculous floating secret bases?”

The pull of the summoning spell was designedly weak, and easy for Kravitz to shrug off if needed — but he wasn’t going to pass up an excuse to get out of the office, and try to part ways with Taako on a better note this time. Maybe he could ask around, find out if anyone knew what Lucas and Noelle were up to…

In a cozy bedroom on the moon, a hissing plume of smoke emanated from a sapphire arrowhead, embedded in the soil of a potted plant. As the smoke solidified, Kravitz’s human form took shape, and instinctively scanned his new surroundings for dangers or necromantic abominations.

Two floor-two-ceiling bookshelves were stuffed with novels and encyclopedias, and glow-in-the-dark stars covered the ceiling. The bed was neatly made, but was so small it couldn’t have accommodated anyone larger than a gnome, or a halfling… or a human child.

“Hello again, Mister Grim Reaper,” said Angus. He sat on a tiny wooden chair, pen in hand and notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve got a number of questions for you.”

Kravitz plucked the arrow from the potted plant, and the electric blue glow of the sapphire faded. “Does Taako know you have this?”

“Nope. But if he did, he’d probably endorse me breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter — after all, you never said that only Taako could summon you this way.”

Kravitz holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just… expecting to meet with Taako today, so this surprised me. But I’d be happy to answer your questions — provided they don’t take more than an hour or so.”

Angus narrowed his eyes. “Will you answer me honestly?”

Seeing no reason to lie to even the most precocious of ten-year-olds, Kravitz declared: “I swear to answer truthfully upon my oath to the Raven Queen.”

“Then tell me — why are you so nice?”

“Pardon?”

Angus glared at him. “You know exactly what I mean — why are you so helpful? You tried to reap my friends’ souls, and told them they that could only save themselves by accomplishing an impossible task! But then, you — you saved them yesterday, and even healed them! What are you playing at?!”

Immensely grateful that he’d set the terms on his own honesty oath, Kravitz told the truth with a few details omitted. “I helped them because they seemed like nicer people than most of the bounties I hunt — and in that strange sort of ‘begrudging respect’ way, I guess I’m growing fond of them.” Taako even moreso than the others.

“If you were really fond of them, you wouldn’t be trying to kill them in the first place,” Angus muttered, lowering his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz told him, and that too was the truth. “It’s just what my job demands —”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten into this line of business!” Angus screamed, wiping tears from his eyes. “In two months, I’m gonna lose three of the closest people I have to family, and it’ll all be because I’m just a kid detective who can’t track down a couple of liches — but it’ll also be because of you! I hate you, and I hate everything you stand for!”

Angus’s fist sunk harmlessly into Kravitz’s raven-feather cloak, but he staggered backwards like he’d punched a brick wall, falling to his knees and taking off his glasses to sob — but against his better judgement, Kravitz kneeled down at Angus’s side.

“Don’t count out Taako and the others just yet,” he whispered. “I’ve seen them do miraculous things — escaping from me in the laboratory, for one thing, and banishing Legion, for another. If they can defeat thousands of unruly undead souls in combat like that, then they might just be worthy opponents for even the most crafty and powerful of liches.”

“You’re sure they’ll be okay?” Angus sniffed.

“No,” Kravitz admitted. “I’m not sure. I wish I could be, because I really don’t want to send them to the Astral Plane. But they’ve got help — not just your smarts, but my scythe as well, because I don’t intend to just stand idly by without giving them a fighting chance. I… truthfully, Angus, when I offered them the deal, I wanted to bring an end to the headache they’d given me by any means necessary. But they’ve earned my respect since then, and though the deal can’t be undone, there’s no rule stopping me from aiding them. I don’t want to reap their souls if there’s any way I can avoid it, any excuse or loophole.”

Angus rubbed his nose. “Do you — do you normally like reaping people’s souls?”

Kravitz took a moment to think about his answer. “I was a human like you, once. Alive, and precocious, and always getting in over my head. When I died, and started serving the Raven Queen as a reaper, I felt like I had discovered my life’s purpose, even though it ironically required becoming undead as a prerequisite. My duty is to keep the balance of the universe — to save lives by stopping liches, necromancers, and their foul servants from upsetting that balance — but I remember what it felt like to be mortal, to have mortal loved ones. So… I don’t enjoy watching people grieve, because it feels all too familiar.”

He sat down, and crossed his legs. “I don’t tell a lot of people about this, but in a way, if I’d come to terms with death and grieved more quietly when I was alive… well, let’s just say I probably wouldn’t be a reaper today.”

Angus managed a smile. “You know, you’re nothing like the Grim Reaper in the Caleb Cleveland, Kid Cop books.”

“Oh? I know there are… a variety of misconceptions about me floating around in the world, but I haven’t read that series. Are they detective stories?”

“They’re the world’s greatest detective stories,” Angus declared, “and I own every installment!” For the first time since his ill-fated attempt to punch Kravitz, he stood up, and selected a book from his bookshelf. “This is the first one that you — well, not really you — show up in.”

Kravitz took a look at the cover illustration, which featured a child in a deerstalker hat standing back to back with a deathly pale man, dressed in tattered gray robes and wielding an iron scythe. The title read Caleb Cleveland and the Mask of Death.

“Not much of a resemblance, is there?” Kravitz mused. “I guess can’t fault them for the iron scythe, because that’s what everyone seems to expect, but iron and celestial magic don’t always get along — better than iron and fae magic for sure, but still not especially well.”

“His personality isn’t a whole lot like yours either, sir,” Angus sheepishly admitted. “This is the start of the five-book Grim Reaper arc, which starts off with the reaper helping Caleb solve murder mysteries until Caleb’s previously-struggling private detective agency — which he started after his schism with the corrupt police establishment in the last book — is renowned throughout the country. But then Caleb realizes that the reaper is just trying to bring about an era of prosperity and increased population density, so that he can kill the maximum number of people possible while poisoning the water supply! And of course Caleb disavows his partnership with Death, but the reaper spends the next four installments of the arc committing more murders as revenge — which initially felt like a little bit of a motivation downgrade, if I’m being honest, but it also led to some great continuity between books as well as some really well-written horror that unsettles without pulling on cheap shock value! So they turned out to be some of my favorite books in the series, and… I’m sorry if I judged you a little hastily because of them. You’re a whole lot nicer than the Grim Reaper I expected.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re hardly the first person to misjudge me for my line of work, and I don’t expect you to be the last.” Kravitz flipped through the book, which was full of underlined words and fan theories neatly written in the margins. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow this? I’ve always loved mystery novels.”

“You really want to read it?” Angus’s eyes lit up. “Uh, well, I should probably start by giving you the first book in the series, otherwise a lot of callbacks to previous adventures won’t make sense. But I guess I did kind of just spoil the whole plot of Books 21 through —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kravitz assured him with a smile. “And I think I will take Book 1 to start out, please.”

“Alrighty, then!” Angus selected a well-worn book from his shelf and handed it to Kravitz. “Could you, um… let me know what you think of it when you finish reading?”

“I absolutely can. Oh, and Angus?”

“Yes?”

“You sound like a marvelous detective. If anyone can crack the case of these liches, I believe it’ll be you — but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t, alright? That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, and you’re a growing kid — you need your rest.”

Angus nodded. “I’ll try to remember that, sir.”

***

Angus gave directions to the three Reclaimers’ shared dorm, but didn’t specify which individual room was Taako’s, so on a hunch, Kravitz knocked on the door of the room that smelled the most like baked goods. Sure enough, he heard Taako shout “It’s unlocked!” over the banging of bowls and cookie sheets.

“You need to look after your arrows better,” Kravitz warned him as he entered. “If someone with more malicious intentions than Angus were to steal one, then they could easily lure me into a trap.”

Taako blinked. “Whoa, what happened to your accent? I thought you were a stranger and almost chucked a bowl of gingersnap dough at your head!”

Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “Did you really? You look like you’ve got a pretty firm grip on it, there.”

“No, you called my bluff. I’m too good of a chef to just go chucking perfectly good food whenever someone spooks me — the point is, what is up with your voice, my dude?”

“It’s, um… a work accent,” Kravitz explained. “My normal voice isn’t that intimidating. As you can tell, heh.”

“Still wouldn’t want you to slice me up with a scythe, though. You gotta give yourself more credit.” Taako rolled a small handful of gingersnap dough into a ball, dusting it with sugar and placing it in the corner of a fresh cookie sheet. “And to answer your complaint earlier, Angus wasn’t as slick as he thought he was when he swiped that arrow, but I let him get away with it ‘cause I knew neither of you two dorks would try to fight each other or anything like that.”

“He actually did want to fight me for a minute or two,” Kravitz replied, “but we worked it out and now we’re apparently… book club buddies? I’m not sure, I’m no good with kids — or maybe I’m better with kids than I’m consciously aware of?”

Taako snorted. “I didn’t endear myself to little Ango at first either, but now I guess I’m his hero, and his teacher, and maybe even his emotionally adopted uncle or something? There’s just something magical about that kid.”

“Absolutely, but… he seemed stressed.” Kravitz sighed, and Taako’s expression softened. “I suppose this is partly my fault, but there’s an awful lot of pressure on him.”

“Yeah, he — he doesn’t find it so funny when me an’ the boys joke about death, I’ve been noticing. I’ll make sure he takes some time off the case to relax — you think that would help him?”

“I think that would be a good place to start.” Kravitz nodded, glancing over the sheets of oatmeal cookies cooling on the adjacent counter. “You look like you’ve been keeping busy yourself.”

“Yeah, the Director was so thrilled with my Candlenights macarons that she requested a couple batches of oatmeal-white chocolate and some gingersnaps. Guess she read my cookbook or something — ‘cause my whole cookie portfolio is choice, don’t get me wrong, but those are a couple of my top-tier baked goods after the macarons.”

“They smell heavenly — and I should know, working in the Astral Plane! Do you mind if I try one?”

“Wait!” Taako pushed Kravitz’s hand away from the tray. “I didn’t check them for — hang on, you’re already dead, right? You know what, go for it. Sorry about that.” Under his breath, he added: “It’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”

Confused and a little concerned, but too polite to decline Taako’s offer, Kravitz took a bite of an oatmeal cookie. It was still slightly warm, and the white chocolate melted in his mouth, but he couldn’t imagine it being any less of a delight after having cooled, either.

“So, how many of these does your boss actually want,” asked Kravitz, “and how many can I take back home? They’re just as good as they smell!”

“Course they are,” Taako snickered. “Gimme a few minutes here, and I’ll make you a little gift baggie.”

“Speaking of gifts, that reminds me —” From an inside pocket of his cloak, Kravitz procured four new summoning arrows. “I spoke with the Raven Queen, and was able to arrange an exception to that… company policy, the one about summoning me for business only.”

Taako didn’t look away from his cookie sheet, but his ears immediately perked up.

“You can use them outside of emergency situations — within reason, of course,” Kravitz continued. “I don’t want to manifest in the middle of, I don’t know, a heated debate about moon bylaws, or whatever it is that you people vote on up here.”

“Actually, it turns out moon society is kinda authoritarian.” Taako finished filling the first sheet with gingersnap dough, and began work on a second. “But be honest — how much of this was actually premediated on your part, and how much is just a spur of the moment decision now that you know I’ll give you free baked goods?”

“It was premediated, but make no mistake, the baked goods are a bonus,” Kravitz chuckled. He neglected to mention that there had been no company policy in the first place, nor had there been a conversation with the Raven Queen. Part of him just wanted to give Taako his Stone of Farspeech number like he had with Angus, and bid farewell to the archaic summoning rituals altogether, but it would still be handing over personal information to an active bounty, and there were some lines even Kravitz didn’t dare cross — at least, not yet. “But as good as it is to be able to keep in touch with you, there’s something I should probably warn you about sooner rather than later.”

“Fire away.”

“I assume you were looking for Lup in Wave Echo Cave the other day. But that didn’t unveil many clues to you, did it?”

“Unveil? No matter you and Angus are starting a book club, you speak in the same detective mambo-jumbo. But you’re right, we found zilch.”

“Are you going to start looking for Barry Bluejeans next, by any chance?”

Taako made a funny expression. “Yeah, I guess that’s the plan. But, well, we also agreed that the plan should be to stay on the moon to rest and train for a couple days — ‘cause Magnus has been a bad influence, and we all rushed into the cave expedition just a day after we almost died averting the crystal apocalypse. You saw how that worked out for us.”

Kravitz nodded. “Today is the first day I’ve actually seen you without bags under your eyes. It suits you.” The last part slipped out without Kravitz thinking it through, but it prompted a wink from Taako, which Kravitz considered among the better possible outcomes of impromptu flirting.

“But getting back on topic,” he continued, “I wanted to warn you about Barry. I’ve encountered him a number of times, and he’s not exactly a normal lich.”

Taako sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Well, you dunno what my reference point is for liches. He could be a totally regular, run-of-the-mill lich by my standards — maybe a little spooky, but nothin’ to write home about, you know?”

“Then you’d be consorting with some pretty strange liches, because Barry is a very confusing one. Most liches are either antisocial or obsessed with grim monologues, but Barry has held a handful of coherent brief conversations with me — all of which started out weirdly normal, until he started rambling nonsense about the planar system with a genuinely unsettling amount of conviction.”

“Oh, those liches,” Taako muttered, nodding along. “Always saying the darndest things.”

“I feel like you’re not taking this as seriously as you could.” Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “To be fair, I’ve never seen Barry hurt innocent mortals, which is another way he differs from essentially all other liches — but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a threat, especially if you’re hunting him down. After all, there’s a reason I’ve spoken to him several times, but never successfully captured him.”

Kravitz thought back to one of his first and most troubling encounters with Barry, about a year after the end of the Relic Wars. They’d crossed paths by accident, in a seaside town recently demolished by a serpent of the Oculus’s creation, and Barry had exploited the shambles of the port to his advantage, hurling fishing nets and tattered sails at Kravitz as he made his escape.

“You can’t run from justice forever, Bluejeans!” Kravitz had shouted, slicing through a weighted net with his scythe. “Your kind all wind up in the Eternal Stockade eventually!”

“I’ve spent decades bracing myself for the end of apparent eternity and the exhaustion of apparent infinity,” Barry had replied matter-of-factly. “If your prison could really stay intact until the end of time, then I’d be happy to hunker down there with everyone I love and wait for this storm to blow over.”

With a flick of a spectral hand, he’d flung a half-dozen crates of rotten fish at Kravitz’s head. “But you don’t see me handing my soul over without a fight, so… I guess that should tell you everything I think about your so-called ‘eternal’ stockade.”

Kravitz had easily dodged the crates, but stepped right into the epicenter of the geyser that erupted from beneath the dock a moment later, launching him into the air. By the time he’d flown back down to sea level, Barry had been long gone.

“You know, if he still seems pretty chill for a lich,” Taako mused, dragging Kravitz back to the present, “and he’s harmless except for when you try to capture him, then… why are you still trying to capture him? Why not just let him do his thing?”

Kravitz sighed. “That’s a good question, and I’m honestly curious… why do you think I haven’t given up on him?”

“Well… ‘cause liches are illegal, right? Is this a trick question?”

“That’s the answer I was expecting, and you’re not wrong — but that’s not the entire story, either,” Kravitz told him. “I also don’t want to leave Barry to ‘do his thing,’ as you put it, because I don’t know what ‘his thing’ entails. I’ve heard him allude to needing something specific out of undeath, but I don’t know what that is — if it’s immortality, or power, or something else altogether. I don’t know if he’s just putting on a harmless facade while he waits for me to let my guard down.”

Taako nodded. “You think he’s planning something.”

“I know he’s planning something. Most liches, they’re unpredictable because the combination of undeath and their hunger for power has eroded their sense of logic and driven them insane. And at first, I thought this was the one thing Barry had in common with them — with his nonsensical grim warnings, and haphazard pattern of popping up in the last places I expect — but over the past decade of hunting him, I’ve gradually realized he isn’t insane at all. He just bases his decisions off of information that no one else in the universe seems to possess, and constructs plans that no one else in the world understands. He’s unpredictable, but not irrational — and coming from a spellcaster as powerful as he is, that honestly terrifies me.”

Taako whistled. “Guess we’ve really got our work cut out for us, then.”

“I’ll leave you with this: please, if you track Barry Bluejeans down but he seems civil, and reasonable, and harmless, you still cannot and should not trust him, no matter what he tells you. With liches, even abnormal ones, you can’t risk anything less than constant vigilance. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way centuries ago, and has been significantly better at his job ever since.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us,” Taako snickered as he placed the gingersnaps in the oven. “But I read you loud and clear — you don’t need to worry about me falling for a lich’s tricks, of course, but I’ll remind the other two goofuses to be careful.”

He frowned, closing the oven door. “Although, now that I think about it… what does Barry even look like as a lich? I don’t actually know what we should be searching for, but I’m assuming it’s not a normal-ass dude in jeans.”

“Oh, you can’t miss him. Most necromancers spring for black or gray robes, but his is bright red.”

Taako’s eyes went wide. “You know those grim warnings you mentioned him giving? Would they happen to be about, uh, the hunger of all living things?”

“You’ve met his lich form, too?” Kravitz slapped his forehead. “Were you also the best man at his wedding? Do you golf with him on Saturdays?”

“Man,” Taako muttered, “I am so glad we decided not to tell the Director about this.”

***

Angus found Noelle in the Bureau’s gym, dumping a cooler of water on her teammates as they finished an intense workout. On the other side of the room, Avi was thoroughly demolishing Brad Bradson at an impromptu game of half-court basketball, and a small but rowdy crowd had gathered to watch.

“Not gonna lie, I’d kill to be a tireless cyborg like you, Noelle,” Carey groaned, overdramatically collapsing into Killian’s arms. “I’m exhausted.”

“I dunno. If training didn’t make my arms ache, then I don’t think it would be half as satisfying,” Killian replied, wiping her brow. “Although some laser eyes to pair with my crossbow might be pretty kickass.”

“I’m enjoying the whole swappable body parts thing more than I thought I would,” Noelle said. “At first I was worried I’d accidentally fry a whole bunch of people with my arm cannon, but it turns out I can just take it off for non-violent occasions!”

“Hey, Angus!” Carey called out, waving to him. “Got any strong opinions about cyborgs and integrating technology into our bodies?”

“Um, I was actually just here to ask Noelle a few questions. Is this not a good time?”

Noelle shrugged. “Well, we just finished training for the day, so I don’t see why not.”

Angus beamed. “Great! But do you mind if we conduct the interview somewhere… a little quieter than this gym?”

Noelle raised an arm, shielding Angus from a stray basketball. “Sounds like a plan.”

Upon arriving in Noelle’s as-of-yet sparsely furnished dorm, Angus sat cross-legged on the floor and opened to a fresh page in his notebook.

“So, Magnus told me that you had a run-in with Barry Bluejeans shortly before his death in Phandalin. I’d never want to force you to think back to traumatic memories, but if there are any details you recall about him off the top of your head, that could be vital to our investigation.”

“I appreciate the concern, but it’ll be alright,” Noelle assured him. “I’ve already been thinkin’ back to that encounter a lot, ever since I learned Barry was a lich — ‘cause he really, really didn’t act like how I was always told liches would behave. See, he… he almost took a blast of fire to the chest while he was shepherding us into that stockroom, and even then, he told us to stay in there while he risked his life trying to lead the dwarf away. He was so brave, and he even got that dwarf out of the bar… but still not far enough away, I guess.”

“Was he using any spells? Magically redirecting fire? Did he try to teleport you to safety?”

“No, no spells that I saw. He threw a chair across the room to distract the dwarf at one point, but that was with his own two arms and I imagine a whole lot of adrenaline, not any sorta spectral mage hands or whatever it is that wizards use.”

“Hmm.” Angus clicked his pen. “I hate to say it, but if he didn’t cast a single spell, then it sounds like he really wasn’t trying that hard to save the town…”

“No, that’s not it. I’m sure of it. He told us not to be afraid, but he was… he was scared. Did a real good job of hiding it, but he was shaking as he closed that door to that stockroom and went back into the bar to face the fire. I sincerely believe he was doin’ everything he could to save us from the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, and it just… wasn’t enough.”

“I wonder if Lich Barry has — or rather, had a kinder but more incompetent twin brother,” Angus mused, jotting down the thought in his notes. “It would make more sense than — wait. What did you just say about the gauntlet?”

“That Barry tried to save us from it? I guess I didn’t know what it was called back then, not until after I died and I remembered the Relic Wars —”

“Exactly! Noelle, you’re a genius!” Angus sprung to his feet. “We need to go talk to Johann!”

Noelle floated after him as he raced out of the room and towards the nearest elevator. “About what? The Voidfish?”

“Right! Maybe Barry didn’t cast any spells when he was alive because he didn’t remember that he could!”

“So when he died, the memories would’ve all rushed back to him, and he could go back to his lich-y business!” Noelle finished. “But why would the Bureau have erased information about Barry, of all people?”

“I don’t know,” Angus admitted as they stepped into the elevator and it began to descend. “Maybe he used to work with them, and went rogue? I’d ask the Director, but…”

“She’s not in on the lich-hunting secret, right. But you’ll probably have to tell her eventually, won’t you? Y’all can’t keep sneaking out forever.”

“Oh, I know. But the Reclaimers are going to be the ones to break the news to her, not me. They were the ones who lied about it in the first place, after all.” The elevator doors opened, and Angus sprinted out at full speed towards Johann’s office. “Johann, I have a question! Is there a way to check what people the Voidfish has erased?”

Johann gingerly set down his violin, and tapped his head. “You’re looking at it. I’ve been in charge of feeding info to the Voidfish basically since the Bureau got started, and lucky for you, I’ve got a pretty good memory for who and what gets erased from the rest of the world.”

He sighed. “I kinda… I feel like the least I can do is remember them when no one else will, you know? ‘Cause it’s what I hope someone will do for me when I’m gone, and… well, that got real depressing real fast. You probably don’t want to hear that, kid — so just tell me, who do you need to know about?”

“I realize now that I’m forming the question in my head that this might sound like a goof,” Angus admitted, “but have you ever erased information about someone named Barry Bluejeans?”

Johann laughed. “You’re right, that does sound like a goof! I can’t remember hearing about him before, never mind erasing him — and I’d definitely remember a name like that, trust me.”

“Oh.” Angus’s face fell. “I was so sure…”

Noelle drifted over to the Voidfish’s tank, watching the swirling galaxy patterns drift by. “Don’t give up, Angus. You might still be onto something — maybe the info could’ve gotten erased before Johann was in charge here, or maybe before the Bureau even found the Voidfish.”

Johann nodded. “Yeah, maybe. You want me to ask the Director about it?”

“No!” Angus and Noelle shouted in unison.

“Not yet,” Angus added hurriedly. “Maybe eventually. I’ll need to talk to Taako and the others about it first.”

“Okay, whatever,” Johann shrugged. “I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but you do you.”

As Noelle rode the elevator back to the roof with Angus, she asked: “So, what’s our next move?”

“I guess we should go tell the Reclaimers about the break in the case, or lack thereof. And maybe make an argument for coming clean to the Director, while we’re there.”

They made their way back to the Reclaimers’ dorm, but upon opening the door, every one of the room’s occupants jumped out of their seats in shock.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” Taako sighed, lowering his Umbra Staff. “Try and knock next time! I thought you were Lucretia coming to bust our secret meeting!”

The living room looked exactly how Angus would expect the site of an impromptu clandestine gathering to look, with dozens of papers scattered about and a corkboard lying on the coffee table. Red and blue strings connected dozens of thumbtacks, and the center of the board was occupied by a red crayon drawing of a disembodied robe.

Merle chuckled, elbowing Magnus. “You know, if you’d really wanted to keep our meeting secret, then we woulda made sure our ‘security guard’ actually locked the goddamn door —”

“That’s not important right now,” Magnus interrupted, closing the door and motioning for Noelle and Angus to join the circle around the coffee table. “What’s important is that you two haven’t let anything slip to Lucretia since the last time we talked!”

“Um, we haven’t, but…” Angus frowned. “We were actually thinking it might be better to let her in on the secret. I have a lot of questions that only she can help us answer —”

“Then they’ll just have to go unhelped!” Taako declared, magically silencing Angus’s Stone of Farspeech. “If you tell her our lives depend on arresting one of the Red Robes, she’ll go ballistic!”

Angus blinked. “I think I’m missing a lot of context here, sir.”

“I think I’m missing even more,” Noelle added.

Magnus pointed at the drawing of the Red Robe. “See this? This is Barry’s true form, according to Kravitz. And according to Lucretia, the Red Robes are all super duper evil, so she’s not too keen on us talking to them. Or interacting with them any more than we have to, really.”

“Well, what’s supposedly so evil about them?” Noelle asked. “Are they all liches?”

“No! Well, actually, they might be,” Merle admitted. “I dunno the states of all their souls, but we do know they made the Grand Relics!”

“What?” Noelle gasped.

“You know, like the Philosopher’s Stone?” Magnus added. “And the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet?”

“No, I know what the Grand Relics are, but there’s gotta be some mistake,” Noelle replied. “Barry was trying to stop the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet from going off and incinerating the whole town — and even if he was amnesiac when I met him, I just can’t imagine him ever creating something like that. It just doesn’t make sense —”

“Nothing about Barry Bluejeans makes sense,” Angus agreed. “There must be something we’re missing…”

“I’m sure there is, but one way or another, I’m pretty sure Barry did help make the Relics,” Magnus told them. “He’s popped up near almost every one of them, except for the Oculus —”

“Yeah, remember when you sensed a lich in the Cosmoscope, Noelle?” Taako chimed in. “That was Barry. He rooted through Lucas’s trash and said some ominous shit about billions of lives getting devoured. Doesn’t that sound like a guy who could be the evil mastermind behind the Relic Wars?”

“Well, why don’t we just ask him?” Merle spoke up. “I mean, it’s not like we have any trouble finding the guy even when we’re not looking for him, ha! — so next time we run into him, how about I cast Zone of Truth, and ask what he has to do with the Grand Relics?”

“That’s a great idea, sir!” Angus exclaimed, but his face fell after just a moment. “But if Barry usually just shows up around the Relics, and we have no idea where the last three are, then how will we know where to look for him? We don’t have the time to wait for another to surface randomly like the Philosopher’s Stone and Gaia Sash did.”

“Kid’s got a point, Merle,” Taako admitted, rubbing his chin. “But as long as we don’t have any other leads… I can think of at least once place it wouldn’t hurt to check, and maybe even grace with a séance!”

“Phandalin?” Noelle asked, and Taako nodded.

“Exactly! Sure, the last time we revisited an old stomping grounds didn’t go so well, but Phandalin’s just a flat circle where you can see danger coming from any direction. What could go wrong?”

***

End notes:

Some miscellaneous headcanons about the stuff in Angus’s room: Magnus made the bookshelves and chair, Lucretia provided the bed and helped Angus attach the stars to the ceiling, and the books are almost all Angus’s own. It took a while to bring them all up to the moon, but Lucretia was happy to help, and she and Taako both gave Angus a few more novels to add to his collection.

Next chapter has some exciting stuff happening, including an appearance from a certain lich that the boys may or may not be hunting, so stay tuned! I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold the every-other-Tuesday update schedule after Chapter 5, because long story short:

I got a part-time job that doesn’t take up that much time, but does occupy the part of the day when I’m usually in the mood to write.

I had mild insomnia for like a solid 4 nights, which I have since recovered from but not before it threw a wrench in my writing process, so that burnt through a “buffer” pre-written chapter or two.

I’m by no means abandoning this fic, but if updates slow down to more of a monthly pace after Chapter 5, this is why! Just wanted to give you all a heads-up.

#taz #taz balance #taakitz #taako taaco #kravitz taz #angus mcdonald #magnus burnsides #merle highchurch #no-3113 #lucretia taz #barry bluejeans #taz balance spoilers #fic: FTRALA #rosalia writes fic

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23-21-12-6 · 3 years

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Analysis

On October 23, 1966, Chanie Wenjack, a boy taken from his family because of who he was and who they are, died trying to return home. His is a story that deserves to be told and should be told, certainly by one more skilled than me, his among many others. But can these stories be told accurately? And if so, what obstacles might stand in the way?

Within Philosophical Investigations, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests that individual words, or even sentences, only have meaning because of what he called “language-games” because, similar to “normal” games, language-games have a set of rules. It is from the application of these rules that words obtain a meaning. A meaning, singular, because rules and their resulting meanings for a particular word can change between games due to communication’s constant evolution. As an example, Wittgenstein uses the word “water”. Even used in isolation from any other words, “water” could be a command to be brought some for drinking, an alert to a leak or spill, or even as a code word. Meanings aren’t even fixed within a particular language-game; they can be fluid in use, like water.

Wittgenstein didn’t limit the idea of language-games to only word-based communication by using the example of a builder instructing where their assistant should place stones via pointing. Though he applied this to only objective communication, I believe he could have with good reason.

Human communication can be split into two groups: cross-cultural and intercultural. Cross-cultural communications are methods that everyone should be able to recognize, a set of universal rules for every language-game such as weeping being recognized as emotional distress regardless of the audience. These sorts of indicators are instinctual and vague, unlike intercultural communication which is taught and precise. Intercultural communication is everything else: rules that are not seen in every culture, community, or scenario. These rules can range from widely recognized gestures such as pointing to natural languages such as English or French, to regional dialects, to slang, or to location-specific references.

This is the first problem with telling the story of Wenjack: particularly to a wide audience, using intercultural communication isn’t intrinsically more precise. Using words or interpretations that are too specific to a demographic will leave many unaccommodated. Generally, the broadest and most widely understood yet precise game is a natural language which dictionaries attempt to define and upon mediums such as encyclopedias rely. The Canadian Encyclopedia’s article for Wenjack uses no local slang and only terms that could be easily found in a dictionary. If there was any ambiguity, as for the term “Residential School”, or for a local term such as the place-name “Kenora”, then there is a link provided leading to an exposition. Though all word-based communication is intercultural, not all intercultural communication is word-based. Many cultures, including construction, have some form of “pointing”, but there can be important variations, sometimes within a single system, each form possessing its own meaning.

Wittgenstein only mentioned Intercultural communication but didn’t include all forms within: abstract symbolism was omitted. Some symbolism does only represent words, such as the octagonal “stop” sign, some also objective indicators: “x marks the spot”. The digital information particularly has worked best with icons, such as the reload, save, like, and go-back symbols that have become intuitive without being fixed to a natural language. However, abstract symbols have abstract meanings. Ravens are a popular animal for symbolism. Their scavenging habits have led many cultures to see them as representing death, not “death”, but the idea of death. Native cultures in North America instead saw their resourcefulness and intelligence as the signs of a prolific trickster; a character rather than a trait. In both the lyrical and illustrational aspects of Secret Path, a project directed by Gord Downie to tell Wenjack’s story, a raven accompanies Wenjack. As the story nears its end and Wenjack his death, the raven becomes more prominent. In the third last track of the album, the raven begins to speak to Wenjack saying “I know a way that I can help you.” Whether what follows are honest proposals with honest intentions I am still not sure.

The bases of all communication can be described by a model derived by C.E. Simmons which includes 8 steps through which information passes. In order, the steps are Inspiration, composition, encoding, transmission, noise, reception, decoding, then interpretation. However, for our purposes, we can boil it down to just encoding and decoding. As with any game (except maybe hunting and fishing) all participants should understand what game is being played and what the rules are. The presenter, the one who is encoding, needs to understand which “game”, or set of rules, the context calls for and how to effectively use those rules. The audience, those who are decoding, should also understand the set of rules that should be used and reverse engineer the meaning effectively. For anything that can be observed by both speaker and audience, perfect encoding and decoding can result in exact communication for the subject. However, this is only true for what is observable by both parties.

Language games were not Wittgenstein’s only contribution to language theory. To describe subjectivity and limitations in language, he proposed a thought experiment. Suppose everyone each had a box hovering above their head which contains… something. Importantly, only the person to whom the box belongs knows what is inside and everyone calls what is in their box a “beetle”. Wittgenstein uses this idea to show individual perceptions aren’t verifiable and how language can fail to communicate these experiences. We all experience something called pain, but we fail to know and communicate exactly how everyone else experiences pain. We all just call it “pain”. While we don’t know how others feel pain, we can still recognize the signs of cursing, crying, and holding the injured part using empathy. The reaction to pain is instinctual, while pain isn’t cross-culturally or interculturally, the reaction is.

We don’t know how Wenjack felt when he was home, confined to the school, or on the run. However, we can use empathy to make a strong guess as to what he felt. This is his story and he is at the centre of it. His perspective is integral.

The question then becomes, which reactions, similar to grasping a stubbed toe, are rooted deeply enough in the human psyche that the subjective experiences of Wenjack or anyone else can be communicated, or even better, felt. Intuition is key, shared intuition is better. The methods of communication that result are generally labelled as art. Artists hone their craft, gain and enhance their intuition as a result, and apply it to various degrees of success. I referenced Secret Path earlier. Secret Path is certainly an art project meant to convey more than objective information; whether it be through phonetic lyrics and musical key choices on the album, or through the colour scheme and movement in the graphic novel and animation. I think the colour choice for the illustrations was particularly fantastic.

What fascinates me is that while this use of colour is largely a form of cross-cultural communication it is still easy to see how it applies to the theory of language-game because right from the beginning it breaks a rule: if it isn’t only black and white, colour is to be used accurately. Secret Path uses only blue in addition to black and white; panning from the sky down to a forest without any green or brown. This breaking of the rule sets up a new rule: only blue, black, and white are used. This sets up a question; why blue?

Blue occurs relatively rarely in nature, in the sky and in large bodies of water that mostly just reflect the sky, to see blue and only blue on land is a bit disconcerting. People also usually associate blue with sadness or cold, possibly due to blues prominence during winter. This new rule of blue, black, and white also gets broken when Wenjack is remembering his home: portrayed using the full visible colour spectrum but focusing on the warmer colours of yellow and red. The final set of rules relating to colour is that blue represents foreignness, but warm colouring indicates home and security.

Downie stated that he wanted to get across “the idea of trying to get home.” Given that verbal key, it becomes easier to find that theme in the telling of the story. The last shot of the film is Wenjack’s consciousness walking away from the blue landscape towards a vibrant homestead. However, this is not what I was thinking of when I first heard Wenjack’s story. Though it has been a while since the first reception, I believe my initial thoughts are the same as my current: Wenjack’s forced choice between losing his life or personhood. I do not think that I got the wrong impression, nor do I think Downie failed. There is a dichotomy in communication: that objective encoding and decoding can be accurate, but no matter how some concepts are encoded they will never result in a message unaffected by the audience save by chance. Downie and I could have both had a beetle in our box (trying to get home), but I happen to call mine an apple (forced choice). For cases such as this, I believe there is no right answer because the answer is unknowable. Works Cited

Carley, Georgia. "Chanie Wenjack". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 01 November 2016, Historica Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/charlie-wenjack. Accessed 02 January 2021.

Cherry, Kendra. “The Color Psychology of Blue.” Verywell Mind, Verywellmind, 24 Nov. 2005, www.verywellmind.com/the-color-psychology-of-blue-2795815.

“Gord Downie’s The Secret Path - YouTube.” Www.Youtube.com, 23 Oct. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGd764YU9yc&t=2357s. Accessed 2 Jan.

2021.Ludwig Wittgenstein, and G E M Anscombe. Philosophical Investigations : The English Text of the Third Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall [Ca, 2000.

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glasyasbutch · 4 years

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oc-tober day 18: vintage

from @oc-growth-and-development ‘s prompt list, please enjoy a list of craving’s favorite items that came through her family’s antiques shop in all the years she worked there.

1. A porcelain doll, a little pink tiefling in a white and blue dress. One of the doll’s horns had been chipped off, on the opposite side as her missing horn, like they were a set of long lost sisters.

2. A rocking chair with wicker back and sides, torn out at first but Daddy fixed it eventually. Once it was fixed and in the front room waiting to sell, if it was a slow enough day, Daddy would sit in the chair and let her climb in his lap and he’d read her a book.

3. An enchanted music box. The figure inside was an aasimar woman in flight, whos swooped and bobbed in a circle as a soft choir sang. When the key was placed in an turned, the box would run eternally until the key was removed again.

4. A spider broach with segmented legs that could be posed very realistically, and left on shelves and countertops all over the store to terrify the women in stuffy dresses who walked in.

5. A fully functional loom, complete with someone’s half-finished work that they couldn’t bear to unwind from the strings.

6. An almost complete set of china flatware, each plate, bowl, and cup hand painted with a snarling owlbear, mouth open to bite, as if it was trying to get to the food you placed on it before you could.

(6.5. He wasn’t technically vintage, but the older cat that wandered into the store one day and then just didn’t leave. They started calling him Turtledove.)

7. A pair of very bulky goggles that, when you held them up to your eyes, were enchanted to play a short (minute or so long) film. There were three different sets of lenses you could pull down, with three different films.

8. A set of pens designed for Draconic calligraphy. (The tips were curved in such a manner that ink flow could be easily halted - allowing for the very simplistic alphabet to still remain clear enough to understand even while embellished. The pen grips were also situated so as to be easy to control even with clawed hands).

9. A swing open locket, rusted shut. She figured contained a picture of someone’s long lost love, or maybe a lock of hair, or even a folded up note signed with a lipstick kiss if she was lucky. Sirris cracked it open eventually. It was empty inside.

10. An ornate wooden armoire, a bit taller than she was, cloudy mirrors lining the doors, carved filagree along the outside coming to an almost chapel-like peak, complete with hidden compartment in that chapel peak, due to a false (or probably just loosened with time) top panel to the interior.

11. A collection of books so large it could only be assumed it was part of the estate of someone dearly departed. Most were literature classics, some were histories or encyclopedias, a few very outdated textbooks. One of them was a collection of plays from the Seelie court in translation from the original Sylvan. Another was a book on runes and ciphers, margins heavily annotated with coded messages. Most interesting was a speculative celestial anatomy book, complete with illustrations.

12. A full set of plate armor, emblazoned with a family or city crest no one recognized, embedded with jewels. It seemed more likely to be ornamental, but bore the scars of battle. She and Sirris speculated quite a bit on who might have worn it, in what fight, and what could have caused them to give it up.

13. A stone table with a granite inlay in the face. The edges had very faint, almost unreadable through the dappling of the granite, carvings. There was also a little groove, about a half inch deep, running the full circumference of the table, with holes drilled in each corner. She was convinced, as any logical person would be, that this was a blood sacrifice table.

14. A lace wedding dress, dyed all black. If they weren’t barely turning a profit, she would’ve taken it from the shelves and put it right into her closet in the event she ever got married.

15. A ring that, if you turned the set stone 90 degrees, a little blade would pop out. She used it CONSTANTLY to get back at Sirris for stabbing her with his barbs, since she could never get hers to pop out.

16. A mostly decorative dagger, though still usably sharp. A silver blade, engraved with a light floral design down the flat, and a brass handle wrapped in worn, stained leather. The only thing she managed to grab from the ashes before she left.

#craving #oc-tober #thats one item for every year she worked there while having like. coherent memory #(so ages 5-20)

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drink-n-watch · 4 years

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A little while ago…actually I have nu clue when this will actually publish so maybe some months ago… I watched A Whisker Away and I was completely charmed by the beautiful views of the city that were present throughout the movie. When an anime captures the beauty of the world surrounding the characters it can be really breathtaking and memorable.

There are a bunch of shows that I watched in part because they were set in such beautifully illustrated worlds. And I’ve got the urge to share some of them with you. I’ve narrowed it down to 6 largely because I actually have screen caps of these readily available but there are so many more examples. The Flying Witch comes to mind…

Be warned, if a picture is worth a thousand words, you are about to get an encyclopedia of a post. Cause there’s gonna be lots of pictures you see… You got it, then I ruined it by explaining it… Let’s pretend nothing happened, back to the post:

Woodpecker Detective’s Office

Sure, this series had its fair share of flaws. Arguably more. But one thing I don’t think we can fault it for is how beautiful it made the classical Japanese landscape look. It adapted a precise architectural style with multitudes of straight fine lines to really work in the details and contrast Western style buildings for traditional Japanese ones. A pleasure for any architecture buff.

A Whisker Away

Well this was a given. In fact you have probably seen this exact montage in my Whisker Away review. I forgot to talk about the alienation of the main character being symbolized through the scarecrows.. well I’m taking about it here where it will make no sense. Because I’m good at this! Also, yay, pretty screen grabs.

Somali and the Forest Spirit

Somewhere along the way I sort of lost the enthusiasm I had for this series but one thing that never changed was the wonderment I had at the sight of Somali’s rich, incredibly varied and simply magical world. The very first seconds of the series open on a lush forest which captivated me and still has me in awe.

Kyousougiga

Believe me when I say this screen caps are not doing Kyusougiga justice. The weird looking glass world, unrestrained by conventional physics, looks both inviting and off at the same time. It’s soft but frantic and familiar yet unreal. It is a place that has a personality all of it’s own and the bolt art style really brings it out. Also, if you haven»’t watched Kyousougiga, you should just tab out and do that right now.

Princess Principal

It is possible that I just like vaguely London inspired settings. And by possible I mean it’s that. It’s definitely that. Princess Principal turn out to be very different from what I expected and it part that was due to just how cool the town and school looked. A little gritty and grimy but lovingly rendered in meticulous detail. Kudos.

Blood Blockade Battlefront s1

I mentioned it in my review but the city in Blood Blockade Battlefront just seems so alive and full. The backdrops are positively littered with interesting little details that just make the place feel so real and lived in. This series is the one that prompted me to create a specific Pinterest board just to keep landscapes and architectural screencaps in because I couldn’t get enough of looking at sci fi vampire New York…

Like I said, these are just a few series, there are a lot more. Are there any anime in which you really enjoyed the scenery? Or maybe a show where the interior designs were awesome, those are not as frequent in my experience.

My Top 6 Anime Sceneries A little while ago...actually I have nu clue when this will actually publish so maybe some months ago...

#a whisker away #anime #Blood Blockade Battlefront #Kyousougiga #List #Princess Principal #Somali and The Forest Spirit #Woodpecker Detective&039;s Office

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demi-shoggoth · 4 years

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COVID-19 Reading Log, pt 18

Man, this past month has been a heck of a year, hasn’t it? I’ve still been reading books, but my pace has ebbed and flowed, and I forgot to update this for a while. So here’s my thoughts on ten of the most recent books I’ve read.

91. The League of Regrettable Sidekicks by Jon Morris. I had no idea this book existed until I was doing image searches for this project for the other “League of Regrettable X” books. This one covers the sidekicks, minions and goons of comic history. Unlike the other books by Jon Morris, the spread is more even of Gold/Silver/other ages of comic books. After all, the 70s is when Jaxxon the green rabbit appeared in Star Wars, and the 80s had a shape-shifting penguin named Frobisher in the Doctor Who comics. It also feels like it’s a little looser about what makes a character “regrettable”. Some of the sidekicks in its pages, like Woozy Winks and Volstagg the Voluminous, are legit great characters.

92. Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen. I wanted to like this book; I really did. For one thing, it was recommended to me by @listmaker-lastcity, who I was working with on commissions. For another thing, it was fairly pricy used. Thirdly, to its merit, it is gorgeous. Michael Page, the illustrator, is credited first, and rightly so. But for an “encyclopedia”, it makes up a lot of stuff. It opens with a disclaimer that “the creators of this book have… unlocked their own fantasies”, which means that it invents Arthuriana and Greek myths wholeheartedly. Several of the entries do not exist outside this book, and others are so distorted that their actual folkloric origins have been clouded and obscured by people using this as a source. For material I’m not familiar with the primary sources of, like Gulliver’s Travels, I have no idea if it’s reflecting the source material accurately, or making things up whole cloth. As a fantasy, it’s intermittently fun; some rather nasty misogyny does sneak in and the book is wildly anti-science. As a reference work, it’s useless to the point of actively harmful.

93. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. I was a huge fan of the “Hyperbole and a Half” blog back in the day, and knowing Allie Brosh’s history of mental health problems, I was worried when she seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Her release of a second book was a pleasant surprise, but also showed that some worry was appropriate. This collection of essays, cartoons and heavily-cartooned essays is sadder than the first collection, as it was written during and after a series of family tragedies. It is still very funny in parts, however, and has an overall message of self-care and love that turned out to be extra relevant in the nightmare year that is 2020. It’s the only book for this project that I read in a single sitting. Highly recommended.

94. Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. This book is half memoir, half biography. The composer Mozart owned a starling during some of his most productive years as a composer, and even wrote an elegy to it when it died. The author used this as a launching point to adopt her own starling, and to examine how this invasive species is seen in American birding culture. The writing is humanistic and charming, and very self-aware (the author worries that her starling is going to die, because that’s what always happens in “this animal changed my life” books). The message is one of respecting all other creatures and of valuing the lives of animals, which is not much of a surprise from the author’s other books (I covered The Urban Bestiary earlier in this project.

95. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. The subtitle says it all; this is a biography of Joseph Lister, focusing on his research into antisepsis and promotion of sterile technique in surgery. It takes ample digressions to talk about other major surgeons of the time, the state of hygiene and disease theory in Victorian England, France and the United States, as well as things like labor conditions and women’s rights. These bits and pieces are woven in successfully, so they feel like appropriate context setting. Fitzharris is empathetic despite the often grisly subject matter, but readers with a sensitive stomach and a low tolerance for gore might want to skip this one.

96. Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! by Bryan Senn. This is a big book, 400 pages in full sized paper. It is an overview of the horror/SF double feature, covering every movie released initially in that format between 1955 and 1974 in the United States. As such, it reviews more than 200 movies, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, critical opinion and box office, and general coverage of trends and themes in genre cinema at the time. I enjoyed this book greatly, especially since it covered some movies I’d never even heard of. The timing is perfect, too, as I read this book just before @screamscenepodcast covered the first entries in it, Revenge of the Creature/Cult of the Cobra. My one complaint is that the author seems biased against Japanese films. He discredits the special effects and monster suits in kaiju movies compared to even movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches and The Killer Shrews, and complains about acting and scripts in Japanese films much more than he does for other dubbed films. He also consistently refers to Ishiro Honda as “Inoshiro Honda”, which is how his name was misspelled in the 60s. That level of disrespect for some of my favorite genre pictures is a constant low-level irritation in what is otherwise a fine resource.

97. Cursed Objects by J. W. Ocker. This is a fun catalog of objects said to be cursed, including the whys, supposed effects and current locations of these artifacts. The book is sorted into categories, like “cursed objects in museums”, “cursed furniture”, “technological cursed objects”. It takes a skeptical, folkloric look at the topic, being more interested in the stories than in any legit supernatural powers. It even talks about things that “should” be cursed because of their odd appearances or eerie provenances, but aren’t, like the Crystal Skull forgeries. The book is a pleasant and breezy read, and the author has a good sense of humor on the topic. He curses the book itself with an epigram against thieves, and buys a cursed dog statue on eBay that sat on his desk throughout the writing process.

98. Death in the Garden by Michael Brown. This book is wildly misnamed, being light on both the “garden” and the “death”. It’s supposedly a social history of poisonous plants, but is more interested in English herbals specifically. It refers to the authors by name extensively as if we should have all of these memorized, and the only place where the prose has any energy is in the biographical section for these herbalists. There’s very little information about the actual plants and their poisons. I would use the word “doddering” to describe the prose style, which is simultaneously rambling and boring. The photography is pretty, though.

99. Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! 1929-1930 by Robert Ripley. IDW puts out lovely volumes of vintage American comics, and this is no exception. Being a kid into weird facts and trivia, and an adult who is still into them, the Ripley franchise was a major part of my childhood. This is the first modern collection organized chronologically, covering the first two years the strip was in national syndication. The strips cover the typical Ripley mix of sports trivia, weird facts, word riddles and puzzles, misleading statements and the occasional outright lie. The book has a warning about the racial attitudes of the time, which is fair, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. Ripley’s habit of drawing from photographic references means that people in ethnic minorities look like real people. But the language is decidedly “of its time”, with slurs used to identify foreign ethnicities (particularly Asian ones). So be warned.

100. Unlucky Stiffs: New Tales of the Weirdly Departed by Cynthia Ceilan. I’m ordering material to pick up from my local library again, which is great! This book was actually recommended by the library website based on the morbid slant of some of the other books I was putting on hold. Unfortunately, this book sucks. It’s pitched as a “weird deaths” book, something like a more literary version of the Darwin Awards. But the deaths are often not all that bizarre, instead being typically sad accidents or murders. It just comes off as mean spirited and misanthropic. Not recommended.

#reading log #ripley's believe it or not #b movies #comics #medical history

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chiseler · 4 years

Text

When Nature Was Golden

Let’s open with a few passages of deathless prose from the classics.

EMORY’S SOFT-SHELLED TURTLE (18 in.; to 35 lb.) is the only Southwest member of an edible group with long necks and short tempers. Handle with care.

BELTED KINGFISHER Where there are fish there are Kingfishers, beating the air in irregular flight, diving into water with a splash and emerging with fish in their beaks.

THE EASTERN MOLE or common mole makes the mounds that dot your lawn. You are unlikely to see any moles, for they stay underground unless molested.

You saw them in the basement of your third-grade best friend, or in your school library. If you were lucky, you had one or two at home—your older sister read them first, years ago; maybe they’d even belonged to one of your parents. Paperback books just a bit smaller than pulp fiction novels, though equally thick, their illustrated pages of a glossier, higher quality. The typeface was Futura, that design marvel of yore, also seen in the old Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History. Insects, Seashores, Mammals, Reptiles and Amphibians—which did you have? The Golden Guides gave us our natural world in all its glory, and managed to do it in a singular style, dry yet affectionate, concisely informative and never, ever dumbed-down. They were written for children, but each, too, is a cracking read for any adult eager to learn. Or to remember.

Naturalist Herbert S. Zim, who founded this series of guides and wrote many of them, was born in New York in 1909. Raised there and in Southern California, he finished his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D at Columbia University. He was then a science teacher for twenty-five years—at Ethical Culture schools in New York City, and later at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. One wonders where on earth he found the time to crank out so many books. Each was a loving collaboration with other educators, not solely Zim’s effort. But the synthesis of these people, the meticulous research required to bring together all the info, was his responsibility, from 1949 until the early 1970s. Zim, in 1969, was also the editor of an 18-volume set of encyclopedias named Our Wonderful World.

Of the 84 Golden Guides, Zim wrote or co-wrote 24. Is it confirmation bias that makes me believe those are the best of the bunch? The simple style is charming, with phrases like Rock Ground Squirrels, found in the Southwest, are our largest terrestrial squirrels. What grace: with a hint of pride to be from the United States, he said that the squirrels are ours. (I also appreciate that he uses the word “unique” correctly, without qualifiers. The Barn Owl is unique, not “totally” or “somewhat” unique.) The occasional anachronism amuses. Once in awhile Zim tells us which kind of turtle or ground squirrel makes a good pet, if captured.

You have been seeing birds as far back as you can remember and you will continue seeing them wherever you may be. It’s a real pleasure to see them. You can see more birds and more kinds of birds by learning how to look. This book will help you. It is not written for the expert, but for people who want to see birds just for the joy of it.

First become familiar with the mammals pictured and described. Look through the Key to Mammals on the next pages so that you can recognize the major mammal groups. Try to see the mammal well enough to decide, for example, whether it is a rodent or a shrew.

Familiarity with fishes gained by thumbing through pages at odd moments may enable you to make rough identifications at sight. Use this book as an “arm-chair” guide, but also take it into the field with you, for that is where it can be used best. On fishing trips take it along in a plastic bag.

Originally named the Golden Nature Guides, the series name was shortened to “Golden Guides” when they began branching out into other topics—for example, Guns, Sports Cars, and Casino Games. But these adult subjects did not make it into most family rooms, and the more popular guides about flora and fauna, insects, weather, stars, and the like are the ones most frequently found today. The illustrations by James Gordon Irving and others are remarkably detailed, the beauty of pure accuracy from a time when nature photography was rare.

A particularly enchanting feature of the Guides is the family tree, usually a two-page spread of swooping, color-gradated branches, each limb ending in a small picture of an animal in its biological order, labeled something like “Cutlass Fishes” or “Scorpion-Flies.” No less an artist than Matt Groening would eventually parody this format for his Life In Hell comic, describing the evolution of record-store clerks from sullen teens.

Herbert Zim, in his long career as an educator, was the one who brought lab instruction into science courses at the elementary-school level. Anyone who looked through a microscope before they reached ninth grade might have him to thank. And one attribute of Golden Guides is the way they expect one to get involved, not just in the field, but with “amateur activities” like building a birdhouse or preserving animal tracks in plaster. Through such deep engagement, the reader is encouraged not just to appreciate nature, but to discover new things about it, making new contributions to science.

He demanded no less of himself. Going through what biographical information there is on Zim, which is all very straightforward, one notices the list of scientific associations he belonged to, numbering more than twenty. They included the Audubon Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Everglades Natural History Association, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Truly, this was a vigorous and busy man.

Like so many cultural products of their time, the Golden Guides can look antithetical to today’s progressive values. Just ask the Yuman Indian woman who sits weaving cotton, bare-breasted, in one of the pictures in a guide to the American Southwest. In little vignettes we see depicted dozens of trappers, fishermen, tourists, birdwatchers—all white, mostly male. Under the entry for “Other Suckers,” Zim claims “some are so easily caught that every boy knows them.” If the Guides were written just for boys, this is a great shame, though their ubiquity meant that many girls of all different backgrounds would find them. The scientific language is devoid of prejudice, by its nature, and is there for any young person dedicated enough to study it. It prizes the natural world above all. One passage recently took me by surprise for its passion, on a page about the fishing industry: If you are interested in fishes, conservation—the wise use of all our natural resources—is your problem too.

Maybe it’s our current predicament that makes one particularly fond of the outside world, and of non-humans. Back in March, I started watching a live online feed from The Aquarium of the Pacific each night, comforted by the variety of fish, sharks, and rays that swam peacefully by. Curious about a small fish with long, showy gold fins, I consulted Fishes to identify it, and Irving didn’t disappoint. Meanwhile, Herbert Zim informed me that the species, named Lookdown, belong to the mackerel-like family of “jacks” and are fine eating.

In 1934, Zim married the Russian-born Sonia (Sonnie) Bleeker, who had studied anthropology at Columbia. The couple had two sons. Bleeker, too, worked in the book world—as an editor at Simon and Schuster, then as a full-time children’s book author. They eventually moved to Florida. Just like the descriptions in the guides, these biographical facts fall well short of being dull. They force me to imagine how energetic, how full life must have been in the Zim household as the kids grew up; and how many subtropical species kept Herbert company in his later years. After Bleeker’s death, he married Grace K. Showe in 1978. He died at Plantation Key in 1994, of complications from Alzheimer’s.

LIVE OAK has become a symbol of the South. The low, spreading tree, often covered with Spanish moss, marks old plantations and roadside plantings. The elliptical, blunt-tipped, leathery leaves are evergreen—that is, they remain green and on the tree throughout the year. The acorns are small but edible; wood is used for furniture. Two other southeastern Oaks (Laurel and Willow) have leaves of somewhat similar shape, but they are thinner and more pointed than Live Oak. Several western Oaks are evergreen. Botanists apply the unqualified name Live Oak only to this species. Height 40 to 60 ft. Beech family

In a Manhattan backyard in the middle of June, a couple of mourning doves fly between the trees. I’m aware that the gentle woop-woop-woop sound they make is not their voices but their wingbeats. The dogwood’s cream-yellow blooms have begun to fade, as is proper at this time. Above me a juvenile blue jay, still fluffy, shrieks out his typical noisy cry. I’m intrigued to see a red speck moving among the hairs on my arm—it’s a clover mite, an insect I haven’t noticed in decades. As recently as 1982, I was a four-year-old marveling at the rolling movement of clover mites on a windowsill—smaller than pin heads, bright candy-apple red. Somewhere along the line they stopped showing up, at least with the frequency they did back then. Now, seeing even one evinces a swell of emotion. (Incidentally, the same is true of another brightly-colored beauty, the red eft, which used to be so numerous in summer that we had to tiptoe on New York State gravel roads to avoid stepping on them.)

We learn more from Zim’s texts than he bargained for. His Golden Guides speak of a midcentury United States where all these animals and plants were still commonly seen. Just based upon my memories from the past 20 or 30 years, there seem to be fewer animals everywhere; in the 1950s, then, was the Earth just teeming with them, in every corner of every suburban lawn? Having learned that the biomass of insects, in particular, has started to fall fast, I yearn for the spectacle of clover mites and hastily do a search for them. Yes, the internet reassures me: we in New York City still have lots of the red bugs, enough to warrant a FAQ page from a pest-control company. They’re harmless to humans, pets, houses, and furniture. They munch grass and reproduce parthenogenically, which means every individual can lay viable eggs, without mating.

Of course, the sites telling me this haven’t worded their data quite as eloquently as Herbert Zim would have. Still, I thank him for the spark of curiosity that got me there at all. He taught me not just how to identify a clover mite, but how to care about her.

by Amanda Nazario

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