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chasseurdeloup-retired · 4 years

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What is This Feeling? || Deirdre and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The woods PARTIES: @deathduty and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: A banshee and a hunter end up stuck in a witch’s magic circle. It’s all fun times. CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of emotional abuse

The forest was always familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Kaden spent his life in various parts of the woods. They were all the same and they were all different. There were always trees and birds and branches. Always monsters and teeth and claws. But they all felt different in the end, just enough. White Crest’s woods felt dangerous and comforting all at once, like it could never pick what it was or who it was for. Some stupid part of it led Kaden back into the thick of it. His knife was still out there, the blade stuck straight into a werewolf’s skull. He could leave it there. That would be simple. He could get a new knife, it hardly mattered. Sure, silver knives were expensive but they’d be easy enough to acquire in this town. Not like he didn't have others, anyway.

It didn’t matter.

He wound his way through the woods anyway. Something pulled him there. Maybe he was looking for comfort, something to dull the aching loneliness that kept building and building every day since the incident in the morgue. Maybe. He wasn’t sure that was it. There was something else. Some sick desire to find the body of the werewolf, see just how very dead it was. Who knew. But he didn’t find his knife. And he didn’t find the body. What he did find was so much worse. “What are you doing out here?” he asked the fae across the way from him. Of all the banshees he wanted to see, she wasn’t the singular one. Her presence didn’t bring him any comfort. In fact, it might be the opposite. “Or can you not tell me?” he added, huffing out a sad laugh. The joke was mostly for his sake, anyway.

Hunting rabbits was a harder venture than Deirdre remembered it being. Of course, the creatures were experts at being hunted; always on alert, swift in the ways they darted around the forest floor, almost as if they loathed to be seen. The game of luring and trapping was only interesting to Deirdre if her prey were touch more advanced than rabbits--humans were interesting creatures when stripped of their comforts. She’d seen enough men try to become like the rabbits; wide eyed, clawing at the ground for speed that would never come to them. Even as survival was written into their bodies, they never were anything like the rabbits. But it didn’t matter. Her task was to catch a rabbit or two, the likelihood of there being any humans around for her to play her games on was too low to even bother getting excited at the idea. As she considered what method she might employ this week (throwing the wide net of a scream and seeing who she’d caught in it was getting boring, on account of her having done it last week), one of such humans she never thought she’d see emerged between the shadows and trees. She frowned as more and more of him came into light. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you.” Kaden Langley was a human that was never any fun, unless he was tumbling down stairs. She could feel the bitterness in his question like it was its own person standing between them. “What? No ‘hello’? No ‘how are you doing’? Where are your manners?” She scoffed in mock insult, grinning widely as she considered what she could do with him (if there just happened to be some moose poop there, and she just happened to push Kaden into it…) “You really want to know what I’m doing?” Her delight grew devilish across her face. “I’m hunting rabbits. I happen to quite like them dead.”

It had been a solid minute and Kaden was already ready for this interaction to be over. It was really unfortunate that Deirdre was integral to Regan and Morgan’s life. He supposed Blanche and Ariana cared for her, too. There was no way to remove Deirdre completely from his life. Or himself from hers. Cleary to both of their dismay. “Hello, Deirdre. Yes. It’s me. Funny enough,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Nope, no ‘how are you doing.’ Because I don’t really care. Noticed you didn’t ask me that, either,” he said with a shrug. Then again, he was sure he looked a little worse for wear. As much as he tried to look less disheveled than he felt, whe wasn’t entirely certain that he’d succeeded.

“Rabbits, huh? Why are--” Kaden paused and blinked a moment. Wait. Why was he even engaging? “You know what, never mind. I don’t care. Hunting rabbits isn’t illegal. I have questions. But you know, I really don’t give a shit what the answers are. Or about your well being. Or anything at all to do with you.” He felt the tinge of a lie staining his words. He did care about something to do with her. He wanted to know more about what sort of training she was pulling Regan through, why he couldn’t know or “didn’t really want to know.” He cared a lot about Regan’s well being and, unfortunately, Deirdre Dolan had a direct effect on it at the moment. He balled his hand into a fist, squeezing it at his side.

Not worth it, none of it. Kaden sighed and walked past her, storming through the leaves, happy to have her gone and out of his life for another however long it might pleasantly be. His day was only looking up and he was going to forget all about this and move-- “Putain!’ Kaden shouted, his hands jumped up to clutch his nose. What the fuck? It felt like he ran into a fucking wall. Kaden looked around for some source of the barrier but there was nothing there. He tentatively took a step forward, but his knee rammed into the hidden wall. “Shit, shit, what the--” Kaden grabbed his knee and rubbed it, trying to act like it didn’t hurt half as much as it did. He sighed and put his hand out to touch the barrier. “Hello, and welcome to the trust circle,” a woman's disembodied voice boomed into the forest surrounding them. “Let’s begin your healing together.” Kaden stood, blinking, hoping he was hallucinating. Was he stuck with-- No. No, no no. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Deirdre smiled, “no, I didn’t ask you either.” If there was one thing she could trust, Kaden must have been as annoyed with her as she was of him. Unfortunately, Kaden lacked flair. And while Deirdre was thinking of ways to torment him, she was sure his simple mind only thought of ways to leave. “Is that so?” She stepped aside as he walked past her, leaving her biting comments to herself. There was a lot she could have said to urk him, but maybe it was for the better that he left. She had her hunting to do and could do without an audience. She sighed and began her own trek away when his shouting snapped her attention back. She watched him collide with an invisible wall with amusement before pressing her own hand out and feeling that her end was blocked off as well. Less amusing. A woman’s voice took the air and Deirdre’s displeasure shifted to concern. She threw a knife, whizzing past Kaden, watching her weapon bounce off air and tumble down. “Oh no,” she hissed, walking along the curved edge of their cage. No holes. No gaps. No secret doors. “She wasn’t joking when she called this a circle.” But what was that other part? Trust? She glanced over at Kaden; as if she could trust him. She’d sooner starve to death in their circle than try. Deirdre pulled out her phone, hoping to shoot Morgan a text, finding instead that the cursed rectangle of foregin technology would not operate. “What is this!?” She snapped at Kaden. “I have things to do!” Deirdre turned her head up to the sky, yelling at the disembodied woman. “I have important things to do!”

Compelled by a great idea, Deirdre pulled another knife out. “Maybe I'll just end this quickly.” The woman’s voice chimed in again, “your healing starts with your words.” Deirdre groaned, petulant as she sensed her plan of murder was a losing battle. Huffing, she crossed her arms and slumped down. “Dig us a hole out of this nightmare prison, Kady. Chop chop.”

“Putain!” Kaden shouted as a knife flew past his head, at most an inch away from slicing into his ear. Or worse, his hair. “What the fuck? Are you trying to kill me?!” That was a stupid question. Even when she wasn’t trying, there was no doubt she wished him dead. For all their differences, they shared that in common. He stood, arms folded as he watched her make her way around the circle, confirming they were trapped. Together. The sigh he let out was so intense he was shocked it didn’t rustle the leaves. What a perfect cap to a truly shitty week. He should have seen it coming, really. He’d wondered if the ground could swallow him up whole when sitting on the curb across from Deirdre. He honestly hoped for it once again. Just to make sure, Kaden pulled out his own knife, poked at the barrier. It didn’t break through, pierce anything, not even a little bit. He bent down by the ground, couldn’t make any marks in the dirt to throw off the magic either. “Merde.”

Kaden glanced up to see Deirdre, her own knife in hand and a glint in her eye. “Hey!” He stumbled up and held out his own weapon in defense, ready to throw down if that’s what this was finally coming to. It wasn’t murder then, it was just killing in self defense, completely justifiable. He wasn’t sure if the words from above were a comfort or a disappointment. His shoulders drop and his stance relaxed. “I’m not digging you shit,” he said. “I tried poking at the ground, there’s not disturbing the earth around this bullshit barrier.” The voice came thundering back, “you are correct. In order to experience true growth and go your separate ways feeling better and more whole again, you have a few options.” Kaden reconsidered the need for witch hunters in that very moment. “You can either find a way to truly appreciate something true about each other. Or you can gain a real understanding about your partner in the circle--”

“Hey, no, not a partner!” Kaden shouted back at the sky. “Excuse me, pushy poutine, no interruptions please!” the voice continued. “You and your companion can only leave here once you use your words to build a better relationship between one another. I look forward to experiencing your new found light both in and out of the circle. Blessed be.” Kaden rubbed his temples. This was some next level new age garbage. It made Morgan’s rocks from way back when look grounded. “Fucking hell. Where do you want to start? You know, aside from trying to stab one another. Since it sounds like that just leaves one of us alive stuck here with a dead body until this witch comes back from whatever trip to la la land she’s taking.”

Admitting that she was trying to kill Kaden, or that she wanted to, or that she enjoyed making him think that she wanted to, would be like admitting that she breathed air. Deirdre simply shrugged instead, noting that Kaden’s vocabulary truly was just ‘merde’ and ‘putain’. Maybe she’d get him a nice thesaurus so he could get his feelings out more eloquently. She listened to the woman explain their torture to them, and considered that she really would be dying here. To appreciate Kaden would be to compliment a pile of shit, their value being limited to how great of a fertilizer they made. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t be made to do it. No witch was going to make her. “I appreciate how much of an idiot you are,” she said, raising her hand to knock against the barrier that was--unfortunately--still there. “Well,” Deirdre threw her hands up, “I tried.” She pulled her jacket off and bundled it together, placing it down on the ground as a make-shift pillow. She adjusted herself to get a better sleeping position, but the dirt was gross, her pillow was terrible, and her company was even worse. “I would love to be stuck here with a dead body, they’re far more interesting than you.” And though it wasn’t a compliment at all, Deirdre raised her hand and knocked it against the barrier again. “I don’t think this witch is coming for us. She sounds very dedicated to her healing…” Deirdre yawned and closed her eyes. Accepting her death here, even if she hadn’t screamed for it yet. Maybe that would come some weeks into starving?

After a moment, Deirdre tried again, “your face is slightly above average.” Her hand hit the barrier. She sighed, stirring herself from slumber that wouldn’t come to her anyway, not under these circumstances. “Look, why don’t you tell me something very embarrassing about you and then maybe I’ll--” She gestured quotations in the air. “‘Gain a real understanding of you’. And, well, I would share something embarrassing about myself but I just don’t have any flaws.” She leaned against the barrier, taking her jacket-pillow and stuffing it behind her neck. “Of all the rings to stumble in...it just had to be some witch’s counselling ring.”

Of course. Insults from Deirdre. How original. Kaden rolled his eyes at her comments but they hardly bothered him. What did was watching her curl up on the forest floor. “You’re not really taking a nap are you? Come on.” He had a feeling he’d be rolling his eyes a lot for the next however long they’d be stuck there. If what the witch said was true, likely hours. Maybe days. Especially with how helpful his current key to getting out of here was being. Bordel de merde. He picked his way along the barrier, looking for any hole she might have missed. “Slightly above average?” Kaden was really wishing that hole in the ground scenario would become real. But only if he could push Deirdre down the pit and watch her fall. “I’m not telling you anything embarrassing, fuck off.” His eyes were going to get tired if they kept rolling around in his fucking head. The last thing he planned to do was be the first one to open up. Not with her.

But they had to do something. Kaden couldn’t find any other way out. And if he didn’t start talking, apparently she was about to doze off. Then again, if she did, throwing rocks at her to wake her up sounded more fun than this. “Fine. Whatever. I, uh,” he paused, searching his mind for something he didn’t hate about Deirdre. It was really a tall order. “I, uh, appreciate that you’re helping Regan. I guess.” He pressed his hand to the barrier. “No lies, please,” the voice whispered. “Come on! It is not a lie! And why didn’t you do that when she mentioned my face? But really, come on, I appreciate that she’s helping Regan, why wouldn’t I appreciate that? Why are you a pice of--” He grumbled and kicked at the stupid barrier. Which hurt his foot. Fucking bullshit circle. Couldn’t even tell the truth from a lie, how the hell were they getting out of there? Because he did appreciate her help with Regan. Didn’t he? He thought of the bandage on her hand, her hurting herself, how closed up she’d been, how much she was isolating and hiding from him. He hated it, all of it. And all he could wonder while glancing over at Deirdre was if Regan was going to have to become more like her, something farther from-- “Stupid fucking cirlce,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t even know how we’re supposed to do this. I mean. What sort of shit is this witch even looking for?” He kicked some more leaves on the ground.

Kaden’s hand reached up to rub the back of his neck, searching his mind for anything likeable about Deirdre. She made Morgan happy. But really if there was anyone else who could do that, he’d swap them out in a heartbeat. One of his, not hers. Anyway, that didn’t feel like what the witch wanted. “Well. You helped with that bies that one time.” A small sliver of the previously invisible circle, maybe an inch or two, started to glow and turned green. Huh. “You showed a lot of control. With your scream. Which I’m learning is hard. Or something.” Two more inches. “Alright, I moved the dial, it’s your turn.” One inch shrunk back. Fuck this fucking witch.

“I wasn’t lying about your face being slightly above average,” Deirdre laughed, though her amusement was short-lived. Kaden’s words echoed around her, and beyond them, the booming chiding of their witch captor. No lies, please. Of course he didn’t appreciate it, who would? Deirdre opened her eyes, pulling her jacket out from behind her and staring at the leather she just wrinkled. She tried to straighten it out with her fingers as Kaden continued his hysterics. She wanted to fix things, but ironing out leather with her fingers was as futile an effort as trying to teach a banshee kindly was. He said it was her turn, but her mind hadn’t stirred from his earlier lie. “I know you hate it,” she said, “for what it’s worth, I’m sorry Regan couldn’t tell you--at first, anyway. I’m sorry I did that to you.” The green ring grew and Deirdre turned her gaze back down to her jacket, the more she looked at the stupid green glow, the worse she felt about it. She wanted it to go back down, she wanted to spew as many terrible things as she could think of. Something about his hair, another thing about the idiotic way he spoke, something else about how annoying his grumbling was. Each green inch felt like a layer of her that had been peeled raw, and she hadn’t even said anything yet. “I knew you’d try to stop it...because you love her. I know you do. I trust that you do. And taking her away from the pain I have to deliver...that’s exactly the kind of thing someone who loved her would do.” No one ever tried to take her away from anything, and she closed her eyes tightly before they could water anymore than they already had. She swallowed, opening her eyes only when her breathing returned to its steady, ambivalent inhales and exhales. “I know you love how much she cares about people, but she can’t---” Deirdre swallowed again, going back to her attempt to sleep on the floor. Maybe this nightmare would be over when she woke up, maybe Kaden would grow some courage and just stab her already. She bundled the jacket up under her head and flipped over, staring at the forest instead of whatever expression Kaden must have been giving her.

“I don’t care about people,” she said after a moment, “maybe I did once, but I don’t anymore. Maybe the same thing happens to Regan, maybe she figures out control and kindness in a way generations of banshees couldn’t. I don’t know. I can’t give you whatever hope you’re looking for.” Deirdre closed her eyes, finding darkness suddenly far more comforting than the trees. “I feel sorry for you, Kaden.” She couldn’t tell how much she’d moved the green up with her dialogue, but she found quickly that she didn’t care. If her goal had been freeing them, she would have picked something much easier to compliment---she did appreciate how hard he tried, how much he cared, and okay, maybe she didn’t completely hate him. But she had bared her vulnerabilities enough for one lifetime, and couldn’t stomach the idea of doing anymore of it. She didn’t want to be Kaden’s friend, she didn’t want to ‘gain an understanding’ or appreciate him. She wanted to catch the damn rabbits she’d come here for and go home to the only place where being herself didn’t feel like a chore or a crime. “Just compliment my ass and get this over with.”

With each word Deirdre spoke, the circle glowed more and more and Kaden’s brows furrowed, creases in his forehead getting deeper and deeper. She was sorry Regan couldn’t tell him? But why? She was the one who-- But it was true. It had to be. The magic of the circle confirmed it. She said the same thing as Morgan and Regan. That they knew he’d try to stop it. He bit his lip, considering the words over again. They knew. But he wasn’t sure. No part of him wanted to see her in pain, of course not. But she was in pain not being in control. Hurting people. And he had an obligation, a duty to protect humanity. He’d ignored it for so long with Regan. At what point did he owe it to humanity, to all of them, to step back and let this happen? “I can’t tell anymore what’s crueler. Stopping it or letting it continue,” he said, voice small and tight. He didn’t want to betray too much emotion. “I hate that she has to-- I still haven’t asked for details so I don’t--” It was something he hadn’t tackled yet. And not something he was sure he wanted to, not yet. “But I do understand why it has to. So trust that much.” He knew hard training. If anyone understood having to go through hard and painful training to come out better for it, he did. And he was the first to say that it was lack of control that made werewolves dangerous. So how could he sit here, think that Regan didn’t need control. He understood.

Or Kaden thought he did. “What do you mean she can’t--” Her words gripped him like a chokehold and he went still. What they’d all said, how much he didn’t want to know about this, he assumed it was physical damage they were referring to. And sure, they were right, the thought of her body mangled and torn into, the thought of her suffering made him want to rip apart whoever was causing it. But physical damage healed. This, what Deirdre just suggested, it--- He couldn’t move. Who was Regan if she didn’t care about people? What was the point if she couldn’t give a shit about anyone? What about her family? Why was he even trying if the ‘after’ Morgan kept talking about would leave Regan unable to care about hi-- No. He clenched his jaw and fought against the tightness in his chest. Deirdre was the last person he was going to cry in front of. He took the tightness and balled it into a fist and punched the barrier. It didn’t give. It didn’t even show any wear. There was no evidence left to make him feel better other than the throbbing through his knuckles.

Kaden shook out his hand, welcome for the pain as a distraction, still unable to meet Deirdre’s eyes. “You found a way to care about Morgan. Even-- I mean, you let her in. Somehow. I--” The tightness was back, this time around his throat. Or maybe it never left. “You care about Regan. You care enough to-- I mean you don’t sound like you want to do this.” He inhaled deep. He refused to do the stupid breahting exercises that Regan had treid to show him. They all collectively knew it was crap. All of it. “I wouldn’t want to. I mean. Not that I’d-- I just mean. Hunter training. I swore I’d never. So I get if--” Even without finishing a sentence completely, small bits of green picked their way around the circle. It didn’t matter. “Morgan keeps trying to tell me there’s an ‘after’ to look forward to. I’m-- I’m terrified of what ‘after’ looks like. For both of us.” He caught a glimpse of Deirdre, shut down, turned away, closed off. He clenched his jaw and wished like hell there was no part of it that felt like looking in a mirror, though maybe a more distant one. “For all of us.”

The answer was clear to Deirdre; too obvious to be kept to herself. “Letting it continue is worse,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Ignorance is a gift.” There were no winners here, exactly, but she knew her truth. And her truth was rolled with anger--she loathed the trees that watched in silence, the dirt that erased her evidence, and her family that looked the other way. It was far worse to be that child, naive and desperate, eating the words of the adults around her, who spoke often of how normal her pain was to be. It was worse to have her trust twisted, her hope of something better crushed so deliberately. It was worse that they knew, and didn’t act. It would always be worse. “I don’t know what your parents did to you,” she whispered, “I thought you might know...how truly terrible it all is.” And if he knew, if he thought about it for a second longer, he might realize what terrible curse it was to have even the sliver of truth that he did. All she could remember now was the faint whispers of a girl that wanted to be saved, the one whose eyes were often lost in the horizon beyond her cramped, creaky bedroom. Somedays, it was as if that child had never existed at all, if it weren’t for the memory of comfort burning in her ears. They told her it would be okay, and that was worse. It would always be. The pain she could forget, if she allowed herself to, but their lies she could never.

Even if Regan wasn’t a child, she was still as vulnerable, as susceptible to the lies others would find themselves virtuous in giving. And what exactly did Deirdre tell the man that loved Regan? Did she lie too? Did she let him think about it, for just a second, looking at the cold woman in front of him, to piece together the truth on his own? There was no magical, kind, better way. There was no saving them, not anymore. She sat up, deliberate in the way her gaze stayed far away from him, and stuck on the muddy ground instead. Distantly, she heard a dull thud, and imagined a number of places that could have stirred it. She didn’t dare chase an explanation for the sound. “Regan and I are very different. She became a doctor, I chose to look at people like numbers--things. After roughly seventeen years, to much heart-ache, I learned how to love someone--and most of the time I feel like I’m doing it wrong anyway. Does that sound right to you? Do you really want to compare me to her? Do you really want to disappoint yourself like that?” She reached out and plucked a dead leaf from where it had been trapped, crushed and embedded, in the mud. She pulled at the dull green, tearing the leaf apart absently. “‘After’ is an endearingly Morgan-like answer. There is no after, Kaden. This is it. This is all it is. This is all it ever is.” When the leaf was nothing but shred, she allowed the pieces to slip between her fingers, fluttering back to the mud below. “No, I don’t want to be doing this. But what I want doesn’t matter, it never has. I do what must be done. And I can tell you, with certainty, that there is no after. This---” She laughed bitterly, gesturing around, “--isn’t even an ‘after’ for me. Control will always be a life-long quest, I can’t forget who I am, not for one second.” Finally, she turned to him, her face impassive, as she had willed it to be--as she had been trained to make it. “If you want to believe in happy endings Kaden, then don’t let me stop you. One of us should be a little hopeful, for Regan’s sake.”

Deirdre picked another leaf from the ground, twirling it around in her fingers. This one was older, and had begun its slow process of decomposition. “Don’t be scared of Fate, it isn’t kind enough to care what you think. You can run yourself to the ground worrying, best to just hope instead. It’d save your heart some trouble. Whatever is going to happen to us has already begun...we’re all just leaves, Kaden, might as well fall gracefully.”

The response he got was not the response Kaden expected. The only thing he had been told more often by now than “he didn’t want to know,” was that “he couldn’t interfere.” “But I tho--” The words couldn’t leave his lips. It wasn’t true. He didn’t think. He hadn’t thought. He was doing everything in his power not to, wasn’t he? For as much as he imagined and fretted, there were spaces in his mind too dark to touch, too deep and tucked away to see. Her words reached into them like a hand, yanking them out of their graves lest they consume him and swallow him whole. What his parents did to him. It hit him like a chill down his spine colder than any he felt near any monster. He didn’t dwell long on what it was they did to him for any longer than he had to. Because they did what they had to. And that was that. Even then, he knew. He felt what she said. He knew he never wanted a child. For the simple fact he never wanted to train a hunter.

Kaden missed the moment that he’d slumped to the forest floor, hands resting on his knees, back against the barrier, eyes glazed and staring straight ahead. She thought he might know how truly terrible it was. Which was exactly what had scared him from the beginning. If he did, that was too much. And if he didn’t, it was even worse. The trees moved side to side. No, that wasn’t right. He was shaking his head. “She needs control. For-- She needs it. She--” An early phrase rang in his ears. Ignorance. Was it a gift? Would Regan be suffering so much now if she hadn't been kept in the dark? Or had it been the only thing to allow her some happiness? The last she’d ever have before-- Something bubbled up to his chest. He wasn’t sure if it was bitterness or bile. He swallowed it back either way.

A puff of air huffed through his nose, something that could be a laugh in another context. “Of course I don’t want to compare her to you. I’d never date you in a million years.” Mostly because she was Deirdre but also because he heard too many mirrors of his own thoughts from her mouth, too many things that felt like eerie echoes of his own life. Still, his attempt at lightening the mood left him feeling just as weighed down and sunk into the ground as before. Maybe more. There was no after. He’d known it. Had he thought about it. He’d known all along. Kaden didn’t get to keep anything good, not for long. Regan was too good for him in every sense. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t get to hold onto that sense of normal she desperately craved, didn’t get to have her life be a little easier. “I should have known it was too good to be true. About as real as the charger rock she made me.” Morgan was truly amazing at building up hope. Sometimes he wondered at what cost. His eyes remained fixed on the blur of trees in front of him, unfocused. It didn’t matter what was there, not really. He could look closer, focus on the branches or the leaves, the patterns of the bark if he wanted. But it didn’t matter. What the fuck did? What was the point? At least when he was a hunter and nothing more, he had that much. He had a purpose, a direction, clear and lasered in. Who cared if he was really happy? “My mother always told me that happiness is silly and fleeting. Family and honor and duty is what’s left when the frivolousness of ‘joy’ fades.” Did he have any of that to even fall back on anymore? He had barely any family to speak of and his honor and duty were tarnished by now at best.

“There’s a reason I made a point not to care about anyone. Ever.” Kaden wasn’t sure why he was speaking, why the words spilled out. He didn’t need her to know or care or, god forbid, sympathize. “There was a fucking good reason.” Because it hurt. When things went wrong, when they went wrong like they always did, it just hurt. The highs? Fuck the highs, the lows were prolonged and sank deeper than the pit burring through his stomach. “I forgot how to stop. I used to know.” The few bursts of laughter that escaped his lips were hollow. If he really wanted to stop caring, he knew a way. Or rather Deirdre did. Make it joint fucking lessons. That’d really solve their problems, wouldn’t it? No one would care and nothing would matter and life could go back to being simple and clean. There was right and there was wrong, black and white, and the middle was all bulslhit. He tried to focus on the leaf twisting in her hand, but his vision wouldn’t let him. All he saw were blurs of the swirling brown and yellow, small tinges of red. “Yeah I don’t think graceful is a word that’s ever applied to me. Guess I’m shit out of luck.”

Silence filled their circular prison, interrupted with half-sentences that died against Kaden’s lips before he dared finish his thoughts. Deirdre could hear the tenseness in his voice, the confusion and anger that broiled beneath it. She imagined his face was going through quite the journey, but she wouldn’t look up to check. She had no fondness for the way his lips pursed or brows furrowed, and she was happy enough leaving her vision of him blank. She felt that she knew some strange corner of his mind too well, and wouldn’t risk knowing any more. It was his mention of Morgan—indirectly—that made her attention snap towards him. She bristled, unsure why it felt like an insult, but uninterested in challenging the feeling anyway. “Don’t say that,” she hissed, “about Morgan she—“ But what was she to say? Often her hope felt too good to be true, too good to be deserved. She had her own struggles with accepting it, but she loved it all the same. “I can be defeatist. I know that.” Morgan had said as much. “But she...Morgan is...she’s good. The things she says, sometimes they sound like a dream, but they’re worth believing in.” She swallowed, turning her attention back to the leaves and the mud. She’d lost her staring spot and was desperate to find a new one. It occurred to her briefly, between deciding which patches of dirt would be better to look at, that it was funny how quickly her tone changed where Morgan was concerned. But whatever that meant, she didn’t think about it too long. The equation was simple, she didn’t much enjoy anyone thinking Morgan’s ideas were pointless, even if she had dismissed them herself. “I know what I said. But I don’t see things like Morgan does. I don’t feel an ‘after’, I just feel like nothing. All the time. Except—“ she swallowed. “Except when I’m with her. I feel things then, I feel like a person. And it’s that feeling...that’s dangerous. To be a person, who loves and cares, is dangerous. It’s what the screams feed on.” It was what she was teaching Regan to ignore, and by providence, what she was remembering how to ignore for herself.

She tilted her head up, laughing into the cold sky. “Fates, my mother says the exact same thing about happiness.” Deirdre’s stomach churned, she snipped whatever invisible tether of connection might have been forming between them—one shared shitty childhood experience didn’t make them equals. But she understood as deeply as one could why he didn’t want to care for people, and why he couldn’t stop caring now. Finally, she turned to him. “Being happy is nice, isn’t it? Being loved. Loving someone...some people, even. Caring about them. Having that kind of life is nice, isn’t it? It feels wrong, like maybe you should be off doing the killing you were born to do instead of cuddling on a couch. Like maybe you’re betraying yourself, your family, everything you were born to do—Fates, betraying humanity, even.” She offered a small smile, as weak as it was fleeting. “I know what I said. I know what I’ve been saying. But this isn’t about me, or how I feel. That’s not your concern. The truth is, Morgan taught me how to love and care. And when Regan has learned control, if you’re still around, you can teach her again, just the same. And I promise you, lessons in love are far more valuable. You’re not graceful, no. You’re terribly clumsy. But so is life, so is love. And she needs clumsy; earnest. She needs you. You’re not out of luck, Kaden. As long as you’re in love, you’re the luckiest.”

Deirdre erupted in laughter, as if possessed by the spirit of madness. Hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, streaming down her face in much of the same clumsy way she described; stuck where she wiped them haphazardly, leaving salty traces against her lips, free to discredit all she claimed about coldness and unfeeling. “Fates,” she cursed, wiping at more tears, “I know what I was saying. I know how stupid this sounds coming from me now. But you mentioned Morgan’s charge rock and I remembered...I don’t know a thing….and also that Morgan has wonderful ideas, always. And especially about that rock.” Deirdre sighed, confident enough that she wasn’t an embarrassing mess of tears and snot. “We just sound so fucking depressing that I couldn’t take it anymore. I know you want to be happy, Kaden. And I know that you can’t go back to your old life of hunting and not caring because this new one is so much better. And I know now that you have to love Regan more than ever, better than ever, because she needs it. She’s hurting, exactly as bad as you think she is, probably exactly as bad as you did once, and you shouldn’t listen to whatever crap I tell you because that’s the only thing that matters—you love Regan, she loves you.”

Deirdre stood and brushed her hands clean against her pants. “You ought to believe in yourself a little more, Kaden. So what if she forgets how to care about you? When you met her, I don’t think she had a single friend. Now she’s got White Crest’s broodiest boyfriend and a gaggle of people she feels the need to distance from in the first place. You clearly seduced her from a lonely life of autopsies, you can seduce her from one of ritual pain. Don’t look to me for some magical charge-rock hope, I’ve got none to spare for you, but if you’d just take a second to think, you’d realize you already have it.” She sighed, itching to see where the green was now, though wholly afraid it hadn’t moved at all.

Kaden was startled by the sudden ire thrown his way. Had he even said anything disparaging about his friend? Nothing he said was untrue. Hell, he still had the stupid rock. Right. He remembered why he kept it. Because she-- Right. He used his palm to wipe away the stupid tear that broke through his defenses. “She is good. Hell he’s talked me off a few ledges. I know that.” Odd enough, though, Deirdre’s words had a smile creeping onto his face. It wasn’t the most lighthearted topic, sure, but he could feel how much Deirdre cared for his friend. It was good to see and know. She deserved it; someone who loved her back as much as she loved her. Even if he was sure Deirdre thought she deserved better. Hell, he thought that Regan did most of the time. “Maybe it is dangerous. But I think she’d say it’s worth the risk. I mean, all things considered.” He picked up a stick from the ground and started scratching small lines in the dirt, watched it break up, shift around and move away with each line he made. He knew he considered every second he was with Regan worth the risk. And she was far riskier to be around at the moment. There was no doubt in his mind Morgan would say the same. Only likely she’d say it more verbosely and poetically. That was certain something she and Deirdre had in common that he lacked.

Her laughter was almost off-putting, uncomfortable at first but Kaden couldn’t argue the need to relieve some tension and found his laughter following behind hers. “Funny, I don’t think either of our mothers would be thrilled to know they had anything in common.” Somehow that was easier to absorb than the rest of what she said. Kaden kept his focus on the lines he was drawing into the dirt. Deirdre talked a lot. A lot. And all of it was... She didn’t mean it, right? She was working so hard to chip away at Regan’s humanity, to bottle her up. Why would she push him to undo it? It definitely didn’t seem like lessons in love and compassion were more important at the moment, either. If they were then fuck all of them, they wouldn’t have to do any of this. And, really? He’d have to teach Regan to love and care? “Right. Who the fuck am I to teach anyone about love and caring.” The laughter was half hearted by then. Regan needed him. He was the luckiest. Neither of those felt true just then. He hadn’t missed the comment of “if you’re still around.” He fucking hated the sound of that. It felt like a balancing act of who would push away who first. Both because they stupidly cared too much and were afraid of hurting each other. Putain, all of this was too complicated. Maybe the real reason he avoided commitment was due to all the fucking complications. It was certainly part of it. “Come on, I’m only lucky if she loves me. Otherwise I’m just an idiot.”

The lines in the ground were no longer lines anymore but one big rut that he kept digging farther and farther into the ground. “Yeah well when we’re both surrounded by death so much, it’s hard to be a lively bunch.” It was a poor attempt at a joke but he laughed at it anyway. “You seem to know a lot about me, huh?” She wasn’t wrong, though. He did want to be happy and he wasn’t sure if he could ever go back to his old life. And he did feel like it was a betrayal to everything he was taught to do and be. He kind of hated how much she understood about him. And it sure sounded like it was coming from a place of real understanding, like she was talking about herself. He wasn’t sure if he hated knowing that would push that stupid green farther along the circle’s edge. “It’s a lot fucking harder to do when it hurts. I never jumped into any of this shit because. It hurts. When things go wrong.” And they always did. It was his life. Things always went wrong. “But I’ll keep that in mind. You know. While you’re torturing my girlfriend.” He wasn’t sure if it was funny or not. He wasn’t sure if he cared either way or if that was his intent. It likely didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.

It was truly impressive how much Deirdre could talk. And how she could still insult him all while trying to encourage him. “I am not the broodiest. Fuck off,” Kaden said, taking a small pebble and chucking it towards her, mostly in jest, a small attempt at a smile on his face. It didn’t linger long as he looked up at her, still sitting and leaning against the invisible wall of the circle. It was strange to have Deirdre of all people giving him a pep talk, telling him he could and even should hold onto Regan. “I don’t want to be the one to undo it all. To leave her a target for wardens and dangerous to everyone around her. And fuck I don’t want to prolong this shit either.” He shook his head and looked to the sky, hoping that this wasn’t the moment that the barrier gave way. “Maybe I’m just being selfish.” Everything Deirdre said seemed to suggest the opposite. But how much stock did he really put in her words? He was shirking his duty for love and “happiness,” something that his mother would tell him was pointless and completely selfish. It was certainly affecting his hunting, there was no doubt there. Worrying if he died absolutely made him worse at what he did and had to do. On top of that, the love and happiness he was chasing might be pointless and might damage the very thing Regan was trying to, undo the sacrifice she was making. It was probably true. He was being selfish. And he was so selfish that he wasn’t going to quit now. “Well one thing’s for sure. We have to get her out of that fucking shed.”

“You’re lucky still by virtue of her having loved you at all.” Deirdre breathed, done with her monologue of strange, discordant thoughts. She winced at his mention of torture, as true as it was, nodded at his admission of fearing pain, and laughed again, as he continued. She dodged his pebble narrowly, holding her tongue at chiding him for throwing it in the first place. If she could toss him down the stairs, he could get away with one pebble toss. She didn’t have the energy to argue it much, anyway. “Who would’ve thought that a man so accustomed to pain would be afraid of it?” She didn’t have any poetic observation to make about it, she just laughed, clutching her stomach and falling over. It wasn’t the funniest thing, him seemingly having only two outfits he wore on rotation was funnier, but she could stop laughing about it. She had begun the noisy process of expelling their self-pity out, and as her laughter hiccuped to a stop and her vision focused on the sky--she thought that maybe, just right now, Kaden wasn’t so bad.

“It’s not undoing it, by the way.” Deirdre sighed, standing up and brushing herself off. “I’m no more a target now than I was the months before I knew Morgan. It’s giving her a life, Kaden. You know how empty your own life was before finding friends and love here, I’m sure. Or even how empty her own life must have been. You don’t want that for her. You’re not being selfish. You love her, you should know better.” She smiled, picking her jacket off the floor and slipping it on after another bout of vigorous dusting. Beyond him, she could see finally that the green had crept up to its end. She didn’t like what that meant, emotionally, but she was pleased to think of what it would mean physically. “Or maybe you are being selfish. But a little selfishness is due; if wanting Regan is going to save her life, then be selfish. Ask for her. Love her. Brood in her arms--” She waved her hand in the air, “I don’t know, what ever it is that you two do.” The rules she set in place for Regan, all the unfeeling she had to do, all the hating herself, and then not caring about herself, she knew she was undermining it right then and there by telling her boyfriend of the value of teaching her the opposite, but she didn’t care. She wanted to be different from her mother in some way, help Regan well and truly, and this was it. She trusted Kaden; she trusted him to love Regan against all this pain, against the things he’d been taught. She trusted him to believe in her, believe that she would come back to herself one day. And she trusted him to wait. After all of it, if it was possible for Regan to still be in control of her screams, then they’d have proven centuries of banshee training wrong. Maybe there was, maybe there could be, a better way.

Deirdre smiled, “Kaden...I appreciate you.”

“Yeah but past tense still fucking sucks.” The stick he was scratching into the dirt with snapped. Kaden sighed. Stupid piece of shit. He was curious to know how much longer they’d be here, how far they’d come, but he was entirely afraid to look and opted instead to lean his head back against the barrier. “Physical pain is much easier than this emotion crap,” he retorted. He had a feeling some people would disagree, but physical pain he trained for. The body helped minimize it in a lot more ways than people always realized and it was a matter of tapping into that, making it work for you. Emotions? They were bullshit and complicated and stupid. And he hated how much more value he wanted to place on them recently. The physical pain would end. Emotional crap lingered. Death taught him that, ironically. The same way a harbinger of death taught him what the highs felt like, the rewards that strung him along long enough to put up with the pain.

Kaden wanted to argue with her. It took her years to get to that point. And he got the impression that she didn’t fall into Morgan’s arms overnight. He took the stupid stick and whipped it away, watched it bounce off the far end of the barrier. “You know, for someone just as new to this love shit as me, you sure do know a lot.” He didn't have to look to know a bit of the green receded. Fuck it, he needd to get one shot in. Just one. “You might have a point. I really figured you were the one of the two of us saving her, to be honest.” He shrugged. Sure it was destroying her in a way and-- fuck, that hurt to think about, but she couldn’t live her life in fear of what she was or what she could do. “I still don’t know the details, you know. Too much of a coward to ask. Considered getting you to bind me from fucking it up but here the fuck we are. I can’t figure you out, you know. Sometimes I think I get it and then you fucking throw me.” The laughter bubbled up inside him. “Sometimes literally down the goddamn stairs.” This whole thing was absurd. Mad to think that he was listening to Deirdre and that the things she said were something close to nice and maybe even encouraging. Then Kaden rolled his eyes at her suggestion of brooding in Regan’s arms and never felt more relief to do so. This, this was right. This was how he remembered Deirdre. Overbearing and frustrating. It truly warmed his heart to remember it. “Anyway, I’ll keep that in mind.”

It took everything in Kaden not to roll his eyes again. “I appreciate you, too. I gu--” The words turned into a shocked shout as he tumbled backwards, thwacking hard on the forest floor. “Putain de merde!” Stupid fucking witch circle had to screw him over one more time. He should have been watching the green but he had to admit, he didn’t like having visible evidence that he understood Deirdre. Or vice versa. It was awful. “Let’s never talk about this again,” he mumbled as he stood up and brushed himself off.

Deirdre wasn’t sure what Kaden thought would happen when the circle fell away and he was still leaning against it, but for everything that had happened, she watched him tumble backwards with unhinged delight. She scurried quickly out of the old circle, wanting to be completely sure she couldn’t be caught back inside before she opened her mouth. Laughter came first, sharp and bubbling, then it was the jeering. “Fates, I love watching you fall down.” And then, finally, the desire to undo all the work they had done and the resounding truth in her head that no, wait, she did actually hate Kaden. “Oh! And you stink! And your hair is stupid! And I hope you trip into a pile of shit!” Even to herself, her words and voice sounded childish, but she didn’t care. The delight from being freed, watching Kaden tumble down as she thought he would, and the ability to cover up her past kindness with petty insults was too great. She wasn’t his friend. She hadn’t just gained an ‘understanding’ of him. He sucked. And he was stinky. And he was human and she hated him and his dumb leather jackets. “Regan should find someone better.” She laughed, “maybe someone with more of a sense of balance, hm?” She pointed at him, “and I’m not saving Regan, I’m ruining her life!” That one wasn’t an insult but she felt like correcting Kaden on his point anyway. “Well, I’m going to leave now, Kady. I’ll hold the memory of you falling over fondly, human.” And though she felt far more like a pixie fluttering away after tying a human’s shoe laces together, she would have rather felt gleefully unlike herself than accept that some stupid witch’s stupid therapy circle of stupidness, had worked. It hadn’t. Kaden still sucked. She still wanted to stab him. And he was stinky.

“Fuck off!” Kaden shouted back at her as he pulled himself out of the circle. Why he ever thought for any span of time that she had anything at all in common with him, he didn’t know. The only thing they would ever share was how much they loathed each other and their unfortunate overlap in people they cared for. “Yeah, well Morgan deserves much better than you!” he shot back, straightening his jacket and dusting off the last of the leaves. If only he carried iron on him, he’d love to get a shot in, maybe remind her what he was capable of. The thought didn’t sit great for a moment, but fuck it, it wasn’t him that was fucked up. It was her. Clearly. He stormed off, not even sure why he was out there anymore. It didn’t matter. So long as he was far away from her.

#wickedswriting #writing #chatzy #what is this feeling #deathduty #deirdre #UNADOLTERATED LOATHING

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thesealfriend · 4 years

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*puts on Serious Game Dev Hat"

This one might get really rambly so it's going under a read more. Main topics are Games, Crunch and University.

(For folk seeing this who are curious but completely divorced from the games world, because even though it's in the news a lot lately it's hardly the universal topic people think it is, Crunch is the term for when creative studios, in this particular case games studios, overwork their employees by "incentivising" them to work longer hours or produce more content for little to no compensation, usually towards the end of a development cycle when deadlines are looming. I put "incentivising" in quotes because a lot of companies say they don't force workers to crunch, it's voluntary and workers are just so passionate! But actually, taking a stand and enforcing boundaries can often come with consequences within the workplace - workers who stand up to crunch might be first for layoffs or receive bad references from employers when trying to move jobs. It's hardly as "voluntary" as they make it seem.)

Anyway, rambling already! Let's begin...

So I studied game design at uni. This is no surprise to those who know me or note my "game dev hat" tag. I don't work in the industry right now for Reasons™ but I plan to one day.

My across my degree, grades were based on about 70% coursework, 30% exams/class tests. Funnily enough, the best way to learn games is to make games. So out of that coursework, I'd say the fair majority was, if not "make a game", then at least "produce a design document"/"prototype a game"/"create a level". There was a decent amount of essay-based coursework, writing about the psychology of games or theory of play etc, as well as reports on projects, but I'd say at least half of my grade came down to some aspect of actually creating games.

And that was a lot. It's understandable for the kind of course it is, but we often found ourselves working on 2-3 games or levels in 12 weeks. Which, when you vaguely run the numbers and compare the expected output to the time, was about doable. We weren't making AAA masterpieces of course, we were working in groups of 2-4 usually to make a vertical slice prototype (all functionality of a game across a small segment of the content) or a level or two to fit a brief. But!

We were expected to put in 40 hours a week for uni, as though it were a full time job. That explicit expectation means I can try and step around trying to calculate hours in the day and subtract for travel, leisure, eating etc. I'm using the numbers we were given. So that's 40hrs total, over 12 weeks, but that's including all the time we spend

Depending on the semester we had about 12-16hrs of teaching time, sometimes plus up to 4 hours unsupervised lab time to work on class exercises, so let's call that 16 hours overall in uni. That leaves 24 hours per week, to work on usually 3 classes at a time. That's 8 hours, per class, per week. Multiply that by 12 and you get 96 hours. 96 hours in which to complete each class, assuming we spend the exact amount of time we're meant to on uni work.

Now that sounds fine, right? That's two whole Global Game Jams* for each class, and that's not including time one would spend at a jam eating, sleeping or resting. People make pretty impressive stuff at jams, so why not be able to do that over the course of 2 jams comfortably?

(*for the uninitiated, GGJ is an annual event where game developers (including designers, programmers, artists and musicians etc) cram into a room for 48hrs straight, get given a surprise theme and make a game out of it. It's entirely for fun and I love them. Also some jam sites give you free pizza.)

Well, the thing is, I've led you all down a bit of a rabbit hole going purely by the numbers. I've not gotten into the nature of some of the work, and the overall system, which makes a difference. See, unis want to teach us good time management, and they want to actually steer us away from crunch. I've been verbally told many times that Crunch Is Bad And We Shouldn't Let It Happen. So they build in systems like interim reports, and enforced team meetings with minutes taken and then rating your team members' performance, appointments with tutors throughout the year for bigger stuff. These are all meant to ensure that you're working on projects at the "right rate" and keeping up with deadlines. And honestly? For some of the less game-specific coursework (psychology projects, essays on theory of design etc) this works fairly well. Universities have been structuring courses the same way for decades, why change it now?

But the thing is, game development is game development whether you're in the "controlled environment" of a university or the Real World™ of the games industry. Quite frankly put, shit happens. And this goes for all university courses, not just games. You get the usual tech issues ("my computer broke and I'm having to do this work at the library/elsewhere on campus", "my internet is down and I can't collaborate with my group" etc etc) as well as the personal life interruptions, both of which are highly tied to class and that's a whole other essay ramble. You also just get that one person who assigns themself task XYZ then never does it, which you could have managed to do yourself if you'd known they weren't going to do anything, but they assured you they would! These are the things we're warned about, told to give extra time to account for, and if it's really bad most unis have some kind of "oh shit something outside my control happened" form you can fill in for extra consideration, as well as individual tutors offering extensions.

But on top of that you also get the games-specific issues.

You get that one animation that, no matter how much skill and effort you put in, you're not happy with. You get that weird code that won't compile, and nobody on StackOverflow can recreate. You get the creative block. My god, the creative block. And then, you get the last minute changes to the brief or structure, or if you're unlucky enough to be working for a real world client, you get *weekly* changes to the brief or structure. You get the fact that the software you've been given doesn't fit what you've been told to do. You get the natural period of downtime because you've worked on your character model, and you're waiting for another group member to finish an animation and there's bugger all you can do in the lull. Most of these are just, things that happen, and we're expected to work around them because they happen in the real world too.

But in the Real World™, whenever "shit happens", that's when a studio, if it's a good one, can work around the issues. They hire the right people, and the right number of people for each role, knowing the kind of work that's expected, rather than just going "ok we have more programmers than artists this year so the teams will reflect that, good luck". They vet the software to ensure it meets the needs of the employees and their tasks. They have producers to keep on top of the brief, and liase with clients to make sure everyone knows what they're going to be doing ahead of time and throughout. And on top of all that, they remove the time pressure. They set goals, that "we'd like to have XYZ done in 6 weeks, and a beta released in the coming months" but they don't expect the workers to perform miracles.

But universities can't, or won't, do that. At the end of it all, the end of the semester is approaching and you've been putting your best work in all term, but there's 2 weeks to go and so much left to do if you want to submit something you're happy to be graded on. You could ask for an extension, but if everyone who was in that situation did so there just wouldn't be deadlines. You could just push ahead at normal pace, and submit what you have and hope for the best, but then you're risking failing the class and having it all be for nothing. And some people will do either of these things + they'll sacrifice a grade and do a resit in order to give themselves more time to finish another concurrent project, or they'll glean a few days' extension for a very specific issue, but for a lot of folk, you do what feels natural when deadlines loom and you're behind. You crunch.

And much like industry, uni society encourages crunch implicitly, even though it explicitly shames it. The tutor tells you, "last year's students managed this project in the same length of time!" but they don't mention how all of them probably crunched too. They blame your time management, not realising that if 75% of the class are having to work around this then the issue probably isn't with individuals' time management. The students talk among themselves about who got the least sleep over the last two weeks of term, and it's a badge of honour (again, not necessarily game dev-specific, but there's definitely an enhanced culture of it there) and who put in 8hr shifts after uni to crush the bugs.

And we're taught about passion. One of my tutors, who is the most Explicitly Anti-Crunch man I know, was also the first one who told me that "If you aren't working on other stuff in your personal time you can't expect to get a job easily". He didn't say it in a positive way, but he knew it was the case and didn't encourage us to fight it. And sure, if game dev is something you enjoy as a hobby that will stand you in good stead. But if every student or young dev is told they have to go "above and beyond" to succeed, then that shifts the bar for what "above and beyond" means. Exactly the same as companies "incentivising" 60 hour weeks, so that everyone works 60 hours to prove they're passionate, and then 80 hours is above and beyond.

And you know the worst part about all this? From a purely productive standpoint, it works. For every class I got a good grade in, I'd crunched. And sure, I'd have probably just about passed most of them if I hadn't, but crunch in my case (and other folk I've spoken to) isn't the difference between an A and a B in games courses, it's the difference between an A and a D. Because sure, I'd submit 80% of the work, but without that final 20% tying it together that 80% of the work might make up 40-50% of the grade requirements. It's a very all-or-nothing discipline, except you can't physically do "all" because if you satisfy all the grade requirements, you get 80-90% because "there's always something more you could add to make it better". Which is also a whole other rant.

Anyway, my point with all of this is that, despite how it seems, studying game design at uni sets prospective employees up for crunch. The magnitude is lower, but the attitude is there. They know that they've done it before, that if they can just pull through a couple of weeks doing double time, they'll get it out the way. And so far, that has worked for them, because deadlines rarely do move. But in industry, they work their two weeks double time only for the worst of the studios to say "actually we see you working hard but also we're not gonna make it, you've got another month". And then they have to pull that time for another month. And maybe again after that. As a student, that kind of extension happened to me once - my 3D coursework was meant to be due before the Christmas break, and with 2 weeks to go, the lecturer announced we had til the start of the exam period (mid-January). But because we had that extra time, he expected the quality to reflect it. We weren't getting extra time so we could do the same amount of work without crunching - we were getting it so we could do more work. Again, the exact same pattern we see in industry right now.

So what's the solution? Honestly, I don't have one. Reviewing workload for students in creative subjects is a sticking plaster, and removing time pressure from coursework would require an overhaul of the system that I can't see coming any time soon. Acknowledgement of the problem is the best we can do for now. If you or someone you know is in or studying for an industry prone to this kind of behaviour, talk about it. Push the idea that the institution is flawed, and that whatever kind of unhealthy habits people pick up while studying don't have to become their life.

Look after each other. Peace out!

#game dev hat #long post under cut #ramblings #mild rant #game dev #crunch #this got away from me once more

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understandingthevoices · 4 years

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~ wrote a thing about identifying narcissistic abuse in the brown girl group i’m a part of since so many brown boys are narcs lmao and it was so well-received that I thought i would share here too ~

Recently a few people asked me how I became aware of my ex's personality disorder and how I started my healing process w/o a therapist (though if I had seen someone, perhaps this would have been faster)...

It's a LONG one but hopefully informative!!

So we had been on and off for years since college - with me realizing flaws he had and him making it up to me until the next one hit and so on and so forth (and I thought, yay! change! this can work***) - but then it came to a point where I told him enough was enough and we deserved to find people who made us happy and maybe we could revisit "us" in the future. But he cried and told me he couldn't lose me and wanted to actually try the "love" thing out... So, I allowed myself to believe he was for real -- and (somewhat) let down my emotional guards that I had held for self-preservation. Things seemed to be going okay - we would send each other hearts, talk about our future house, kids, etc and everything was fine and dandy, and I thought I was "happy" or "happy enough" - after all, I had the guy right? What more could I want?

But then, let me take you to a Friday afternoon at Trader Joes's, where I was grabbing my groceries and suddenly noticed something: along with her groceries, every woman was walking out with flowers, which I imagined was because of a scheduled date night. it seems so silly now, but at that moment, I broke down into tears because I realized I wanted that too - and if I continued in my old patterns only because it (he) was familiar and all I had known, I would never get that.

He would tell me about our beautiful future life together but wouldn't even take a 4 hour train to visit me.

Basically, He could talk a big talk, he could weave stories about anything to make me believe in us (and he was a MASTER storyteller and had a vivid imagination), but he couldn't walk the walk. Or rather, he didn't care to walk the walk. And if I brought these things up, he would belittle me or say he was busy, essentially reframing my needs as unimportant and not worthy of consideration. But then he would cover it up by saying our kids would be beautiful and smart, he would leave NYC to be in Boston for me, etc - and it was so easy to get sucked in, so tempting to believe this was only temporary.....

But then I would have insomniac nights, where I was filled with anxiety/sadness because I knew I wasn't happy - and the breakdown in Trader Joe's confirmed that

And he had already conditioned me into understanding that if I talked to him about these feelings, he would invalidate, ignore, and eventually bring them up later as ammunition (a favorite of his was “did you forget, we’re not a couple”, which was so hurtful and confusing af lmao)

Up until that point, I had maintained he was just "emotionally unavailable" or "commitmentphobic" and if he saw I wasn't going to nag him or push him into marriage, etc - he would realize it wasn't so scary and we could finally build a life together! It felt like we were moving in that direction, finally. But then every so often, I would have moments where the reality became a little too clear and there was little I could do to stop myself from breaking down.

And it was at my wit's end during these nights that I googled things like "why is he so emotionally distant" and stumbled upon a trove of gold Quora questions/answers - and once I discovered Quora, I went HAM.

Questions like...

"why does he try to make me jealous"

"why does he get mad when he sees me with other guys"

"why won't he commit"

"why won't he let me meet his friends"

"why does he not let me go" / "why does he keep holding on to me"

"why does he say he cares but not visit"

... And throughout all of this searching, one of the answers inevitably mentioned emotional abuse (and often narcissistic abuse) - and while I didn't initially think my situation was abusive, because it seemed like such a strong term, I was so desperate for answers and it came up so often that I said fcuk it, let's see what this is about.

So I googled "emotional abuse" and "narcissistic abuse" and read the stories of survivors, many of which echoed mine. I was shocked that these people had dated what seemed to be clones of my own ex. Many of them mentioned kids/divorce/etc and how they wish they had realized the signs sooner instead of wasting so many years with an emotional vampire, who would initially seem like your soulmate, ingratiate himself to you, praise you and put you on a pedestal, only to suck the life out of you through devaluing mechanisms and never listening to your needs, and discard you later (or stay until you stop giving them chances) - and then play the same game with the next victim, leaving a trail of broken people. They posted about the fake personalities, the emotional highs and lows, how he would leave and come back months/years later as if nothing had changed, etc - and things finally started making sense.

I had noticed many of these things - but without the awareness of narcissism - didn't know what to make of it. For example, when we were on our off-periods and he was out chasing Muslim girls, he (someone I had known as a frat fcukboy who would crush 20 beers in a night) became the sober, praying virtue-driven man. When he was out chasing someone else, he pretended to love Rupi Kaur poetry - even though we made fun of it together (no offense). I often felt like he seemed so ~different~ during these periods - and would call him out on it, but he would always deny it. But, looking back, I realize it wasn't just in my head as he wanted me to believe.

Luckily for me, he had grown to like one of these girls and we decided to take a break (later, I would realize he was trying to 'triangulate' me with her, but even back then I wouldn't succumb to his dumb games) -- which gave me much needed time to continue my Quora obsessiveness... and I went down the rabbit hole. Quora led me to narcissistic abuse recovery youtube channels and instagram accounts - which further opened my eyes to the lies I had been fed. It was heartbreaking but I began to realize his version of "love" (if you can even call his self-serving love that) was so different from mine - for him, it was latching onto someone who would validate him, give him the emotional supply he needed, and be there at his beck and call -- which I was happy to do if it was reciprocal, but of course it wasn't lol. It was completely one-sided and I let it happen because for me, the love I felt was genuine - not fabricated - and I thought that's what you do when you're in love (and it's what I saw growing up in my parent's relationship). I didn't want to believe it but the answer was clear as day - I had been conned into a fake relationship by someone who didn't have the capacity to love someone, and could only use them.

At this point, I realized ~5 years of on-and-off narcissistic abuse (and more than 2 decades of observing my parents' toxic marriage) would take a long time for me to heal from, but if I wanted to have any chance at a truly happy, healthy relationship (which I so earnestly did), I had to let him go. So I dived headfirst - watched at least 1-2 hours worth of videos every day, cried about the disrespect I had put up with, wrote pages and pages of text, etc - and became entrenched in this mode of self-improvement and inner child-finding. And I put them on my tumblr, so he would see them (I knew he was still checking up on me).

So when he inevitably came back because the girl he was chasing "was not who I thought she was" and wanted to be with me because I was so "perfect, knew him better than he knew himself, and so smart", I had the emotional wherewithal to tell him I didn't want this anymore -- and the little bits of changes he would make to attempt to gratify me - I could see through them and they were no longer enough. I think it was a last ditch attempt on his side - my tumblr posts made it obvious I was leveling up and wanted nothing more to do with him.

He was upset and told me he was talking to this girl on a dating app - but she was boring and a downgrade from me - and I just said, "cool". He then told me if I didn't want to try again, he would have no choice but to date her and see where it goes. And at that point, I just wanted him to leave me alone, as I knew anything with him would be a dead end. And I was TIRED. So to his surprise, I said go for it - and blocked him from everything and everywhere. I felt an immediate sense of relief, as I knew the nightmare was finally over and he was someone else's problem now. Of course, just like anyone else, I have my ups and downs too - but I'm definitely much better off.

Now? I haven't heard from him in over 2 years. I don't think I will - I told our mutual friends all about his deceit, post about it on my twitter, and make sure everyone knows how phony he is - and I think he realizes the ruse is over. I have found him out, and he knows he should stay away unless he wants me to expose him even more. I can hit him where it hurts and he is terrified - exactly where I like boys to be ;)

Anyways, last I heard, he's engaged to that girl he said was a downgrade (which isn't that surprising - since I gave him a narcissistic injury by leaving he knew he had to lock down the next one or she would leave too) - which is quite sad. I pray she sees the light before he takes too much away from her.

Hope it clears up things -- as always, feel free to PM me. More than happy to help anyone, especially if it means saving one of you from a toxic monster <3

***This is one of the subtle points that makes narcissists so difficult to identify: usually, when someone changes for you, it's because they like you and don't want to hurt you - compromise! that's what you do when you're in love, right? However, for a narcissist, it's not "love" - it's him realizing that if he wants to keep you trapped in his web of deceit, he needs to change - and this is true for both the beginning of the relationships and the whole duration. They don't have any integrity so they will change into whoever you want them to be, if it means you'll be attracted to them -- they are so good at reading you, figuring you out, and identifying your deepest desires/wants that they can transform into your idea of a perfect partner -- and they DO, but it's only a set up to manipulate you later. It's addicting to meet who you easily consider your "soulmate"... but in the end, you realize it was too good to be true.

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crucifythenburn · 6 years

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People talk a lot of rightful shit about how Tommy treats women...

But I have yet to see anyone talk about how these women (who, again, I agree, he does treat horribly) actually do treat him terribly as well.

I honestly don't think any of the women Tommy finds himself with (with the arguable exception of Grace) ever truly care about who he is or what he's going through. The show repeatedly props him up to be some sort of prize for women to compete over and win. It's gross. He's still a person, and despite all his filth, he's still being objectified too. Just, hear me out... *lights cigarette*

In the beginning, Grace Burgess and Tammy Shelbe are honestly just a jumble of heterosexual nonsense. Their entire relationship is forced from the getgo, built on his nostalgia for Gretta, and the life he led before the war effectively changed him forever. What I find so odd about their relationship progression is that it isn't like Tommy hasn't killed people in front of others before. So, that night at the bar, when he snapped in front of her??? Ok, he was vulnerable and she saw it. Great. Good. But how exactly did he see her? 'You've seen me.' 'And you've seen me.' But what exactly did she do besides shoot a man that meant she'd been exposed in the same way as Tommy? It wasn't the first man she'd killed. So where was the vulnerability there? I must've missed it idk. Perhaps because she was willing to kill a man for Tommy? I'm very confused about it and I've watched it twice, please assist. Later on, when she confesses her love for Tommy and he doesn't accept it on account of her betrayal, she goes off to lead the life she wanted with Tommy with a man who could actually give it to her. But she couldn't stay away. Why? More on that in a moment.

Fast forward to May Carleton, whom I love, because she is the epitome of heterosexual female nonsense lol. May saw Tommy from across that balcony and she wanted him because of his big dick energy. Point blank periodT. Just like Arthur said, 'Rich women these days, all they want is working class cock.' Her motives were clear from the beginning with all that bidding against him for the horse; sizing him up. It was an entire powerplay and an exhilarating game for her, cemented when Grace asked her what she wanted from Tommy, and she answered, 'The same as you. I want to feel alive.'

So back to Grace, because I need to thank May for dragging Grace for filth. Because the only reason Grice brought her monkey ass back was because she went on ahead and tried to live her proper, boring life, with a man who was the complete opposite of Tommy, and she still wasn't happy. Why? Because Grace's pathology isn't as shallow as being the simple girl who wants the simple life. What she wanted was to change Tommy; to save him. To fix him. And a lot of us suffer from this particular affliction. The broken ones are always the prettiest. Don't even get me started on Trauma Bonds because this is already getting long and it's early and I haven't had my coffee yet hhhhh. But Grace's motives??? Huh. Well. Hmmm. She couldn't have a child with her husband either, so... Her return was awfully convenient, that's all I'm saying. I'll let you work that out for yourselves. *sips tea*

Now, to be fair, once Grace marries Tommy, I do see a shift for the better. She does make him talk to her about what he's going through and she does help him, just like he asked of her in season 1 when they first slept together: 'Will you help me? ... With everything. The whole fucking thing. Fucking life. Business. I found you. And you found me. We'll help each other.' So here comes season 3 and Finally. FINALLY we get a glimpse into a mutual exchange between Tommy and a female character. In season 1 she (unintentionally) breaks his heart. Because life is unfair. And yet again, his capacity for love is snatched away by the absurdity of life in season 3. And I weep for what could have been. I truly do. Because that's the healthiest we've ever seen Tommy. And we have Grace and Charlie to thank for that. I will never say that Grace treated him terribly, only that their relationship was built on an unhealthy foundation, and I don't know if they truly could have made it, because in the end, Tommy is who he is, and I don't think love, or family, or marriage has the power to change that. He needs professional help. And we all know he isn't going to get it. So how long, realistically, would he and Grace have lasted before her love turned to animosity toward the man that she always knew Tommy was? I wonder... Would Charlie have been used as a bargaining chip to get Tommy to fall in line? I don't put it past her. But let me move on because that rabbit hole gets deep...

So, back to May Carleton. She does try to help Tommy confront himself after Grace dies, but I never got the impression that she was doing it in order to help him. I thought she was doing it in order to dissect him. 'You're unlike any man I've ever met.' Yeah. We know, May. We all know. Tommy's special and she knew it from the moment she laid eyes on him, and just like she did horses, she bid on him. She wanted him just like any other possession, because that's what rich girls do. They possess. They collect. And like Tommy, who always gets what he wants, May does too. So what happens when two people who always get what they want get each other? May finally met her match with Tommy's particular brand of emotional unavailability, and she got hooked on the thrill of not being able to get what she wanted. That's honestly the extent of their relationship, and most of her interest in him. She has nothing to offer him, let's be real. Just try his damn Gin, May. jfc.

So, who's next? Right, let's talk about Lizzie Stark, who Tommy repeatedly uses and treats like a possession. Lizzie Stark, who, finally, after seasons of being treated like a piece of meat and wanting so badly to mean something to Tommy, winds up pregnant and lords that baby over Jessie as soon as she can, because, again, Tommy is a possession as well; a solidification of Lizzie's elevated status and a way out of her lot in life. She will forever be linked to him now, which is exactly what she's always wanted. Now, one could certainly argue that Tommy controlled her and manipulated her with the hope that maybe they could someday be more, but I mean, I'm not even gonna get into the whole John situation... Just do the fucking math here people. Lizzie has her motives, and they aren't as simple and innocent as her unrequited love for Tommy. I honestly think she'd sink her hooks into whoever she could in order to be relevant/legitimate. However, I do think Tommy actually connects with her on deeper levels than he does with any other women. That afternoon in that tunnel by The Cut, when he tells her about Gretta? He lied to her about his motives in that moment, but the thing is, Lizzie knew. She knew and she accepted being a substitute for Gretta, and allowing Tommy to use her as a means to recollect pieces of himself. He even goes on to say that she is the only one who kept his (already broken) heart from breaking. It's obvious he cares deeply for her. Perhaps as deeply as he is capable of. Unfortunately, that type of bond isn't enough for her. She wants the officiality. Because she deserves Tommy, yeah? She's earned him. Because, again, he is the prize to be won, right?

Who's next? Tatiana Petrovna. Do we even need to talk about Tatiana? I love her crazy ass but she only saw Tommy as a plaything. I'm glad she fucked with his head lol, but it wasn't because she cared. It was because it was fun to do. And like May and Grace, she wanted to feel alive. People like her can smell that trauma and those demons a mile away, because they've confronted their own darkness. Have I mentioned how much I love her? Because I love her. Also, I love her.

Anyway, that just leaves Jessie Eden. Now, this is actually the first relationship of Tommy's that I am down for, though I don't think it has the least bit of a chance at lasting. Mostly because I don't trust Tommy's motives at all. I don't think he gives a shit about Jessie. I think she is a pawn to him. But. BUT. I could be wrong. Since Tommy was actually on the same side as Jessie before the war, who knows where this could go? It certainly seems as if he's using her and she's using him, but we all know that all it takes is for Tommy to have an idea and make a decision and everything changes. Because Tommy only serves Thomas Shelby Unlimited™ and doesn't know how to stop or how to cope or who he even is without having a mission that needs accomplishing. Hhhh my poor troubled trash prince.... When will he rest? When will he let me rest? When will his heart and mind come back from the war? I am distraught.

Anyway, right, I'm actually rooting for Tommy and Jessie, but I know it's a long shot with a broken arrow at a moving target. In other words, it ain't gonna happen. If Grace taught me anything, it's that Tommy's relationships will always be volatile because he is a volatile person, and a woman, no matter how amazing, simply cannot change a man. That being said, I'm interested to see where he and Jessie go... And if Jessie will make the formidable adversary I know she has every capacity of being. Heh.

Who's excited for season 5?!

TL; DR: Tommy is trash and the way he treats women is trash but the way women treat him is just as trash. Change my mind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#peaky blinders #thomas shelby #tommy shelby #grace burgess #may carleton #tatiana petrovna #lizzie stark #jessie eden #peaky blinders spoilers #peaky fookin blinders #misogyny #my meta #i apologise for me #i just think everyone is trash except polly and ada and esme and curly and johnny dogs fight me #oh an finn #id protect finn with my life #long post #trinity watches peaky blinders

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imagine-loki · 6 years

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The Sound of Silence

TITLE: The Sound of Silence CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 42/47 AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine you are mute, and Loki comes to Avengers tower for the first time. Loki asks you a question and you answer through sign language. Loki looks at you crazy and thinks your making fun of him, he starts yelling saying that you should respect him since he’s a god and prince. RATING: T+ NOTES/WARNINGS: Also on AO3 Click here

It was morning before you finally woke again. And you felt like death. Yesterday had been too exciting and your throat ached from whatever they had done to remove your powers. You automatically groaned at how much it hurt, but only succeeded in silently irritating your sore throat. You hadn’t appreciated just how thorough Fury would be in removing your ability to make any noise. No groaning, whining, whimpering. Could you even laugh? You weren’t brave enough to find out yet.

Loki was still asleep and since he was actually asleep for once, you didn’t wake him. You got out of bed, stole a clean pair of pajamas, and showered in Loki’s bathroom. He would worry if you returned to your own, if you left the suite without waking him. He wouldn’t worry if you weren’t in the bed and he could hear the shower. You’d learned to work with his overprotective instincts and you knew that now that your powers were gone, his overprotective streak was just going to get worse.

But you desperately needed a shower. You were gross and still felt like hospital, which clung to your skin like a miasma. “Darling?” Loki asked an inordinate amount of hot water later. You stuck your head out of the shower to look at him in answer. “Are you alright? You’ve been in there quite awhile,” you nodded and ducked back into the shower to shut off the hot water. When you stepped out of the shower, Loki was there with a towel for you. You smiled and kissed him. “How are you feeling?” he asked after you were dressed again.

[Like hell] you admitted. Your hot shower had helped for a little bit, but you saw yourself in the mirror. You looked as bad as you felt. Loki frowned and reached up to touch your throat with a glowing green hand, intuitively knowing why you felt like hell. You tilted your head back to let him. His frown deepened.

“Do you even know what they did to you in that…procedures?” Loki asked, clearly unhappy. You shook your head. You didn’t know, had made sure not to know. It was safer not to, less chance of Odin figuring out a way to undo it. “It’s a mix of magic and surgery…” he finally told you. You pressed a finger against his lips to silence him before he got too far down this dangerous rabbit hole.

[It doesn’t matter how they did it. It’s not getting undone] you told him when you removed your finger from his lips and had his proper attention again. You were careful in your words, you had promised not to lie to him, but he was treading dangerous waters.

He raised an eyebrow. “You know something,” he accused. You flushed and wouldn’t look at him, but nodded. “And you wish for me not to investigate this too deeply,” he surmised. You nodded again, sheepishly. “Y/N, you know I dislike secrets…”

You sighed heavily and nodded. You took his hand and led him across the hall to your room. He didn’t protest, but did yank you back from entering the room first so he could make sure it was clear for intruders. Overprotective husband. You picked up your tablet from your desk, thanked your foresight that you had remembered to throw it on the charger before you ran off to Asgard and started looking for the file you needed.

[This secret is dangerous] you told Loki firmly before you would hand the tablet over. [Are you sure you want it? I can bear it alone] He silently held out his hand for the tablet. You handed it over and curled up on your bed while he read the documents. It took him awhile, but he finally made it through the whole thing and handed you the tablet back. You closed out of the document again and made sure it was hidden on the tablet and password protected. You didn’t want the others stumbling on it.

“That secret is dangerous indeed. Darling, are you sure-?” you glared at him. He sighed. “Of course you are. Very well, I will keep the secret as well. The real reason I interrupted your shower was to drag you to breakfast. Clint said it was done,” he offered you a hand to help you off your bed.

[Not hungry] you signed. He took your hand and hauled you to your feet anyway. Eating seemed like the least appealing thing to do at the moment. Your throat already hurt without trying to shove food down it.

“Darling, you have to eat,” Loki protested and steered you firmly from the room, wrapping his arm around your shoulders and tucking you against his side before you could protest too heavily. “You’re Asgardian now, my darling wife. You will heal quickly, but you need to eat like us now,” he reminded you as he had done on numerous occasions already when you tried to continue eating like a human and not like the bottomless pits that were the Asgardians. You huffed in reply and let him steer you downstairs. He smiled warmly and kissed the top of your head.

Nat handed you a giant milkshake when you entered the dining room and herded you to your chair. “Fury sent over the post-op instructions,” she explained to you and Loki. “And meds for that pain your failing at hiding.” Nat could be a mother hen when she felt like it and she liked you, so she sat you down with your giant super chocolate milkshake.

“That cannot be a nutritious meal,” Loki protested. You stuck your tongue out at him and dug a spoon into your milkshake. Clint handed him a stack of pancakes so he would stop bothering you over your breakfast.

Nat clapped her hands over your ears and spoke to Loki, pretending that you couldn’t hear her. “Don’t fret, mother hen,” she teased him. “It’s one of those nutrient shakes, we just doctored it up to make it taste better. They’re the best thing for throat surgery,” He inclined his head. You tilted your head back and stuck your tongue out at Nat. She laughed and let go of your ears. You happily devoured your milkshake. Loki still didn’t seem completely convinced that it was an appropriate breakfast, but you were eating, so he didn’t complain too much.

After breakfast, you curled on your usual couch with your Loki, enjoying a normal quiet morning. Not many people were up yet. Tony came into the room with some cardboard boxes. “Kid, pack your things,” he told you firmly. You shot up from where you’d been reading, curled against Loki, horrified by his words. They were kicking you out? Just because you lost your powers?

Loki was on his feet in an instant and on Tony an instant later, grabbing him by the throat. “Use your words, Reindeer Games,” Tony protested, fear in his voice at Loki’s rage. Nat and Clint stared.

“I have plenty of words for you Stark,” Loki growled and lifted Tony, holding him against a wall off of his feet so he could barely breathe. “You are not kicking Y/N out of her home just because she has lost her powers. She is my wife and-”

“I’m not!” Tony protested, trying to pry Loki’s hand off his throat. “Romanoff, Kid, a little help!” He yelled around Loki’s hand on his throat. You weren’t helping him, not if he was kicking you out of the tower. You may have gotten a little bloodthirsty over your two years of torture.

“Loki, kindly don’t kill the tinman,” Nat told him dryly. “He’s not kicking Y/N out of the tower. None of us are. This is her home,”

Loki let Tony slide to the floor, but kept his hand around Tony’s throat, though loosened his grip so Tony could breath. “Speak quickly,” Loki snarled at him.

“We’re turning Y/N’s room into an apartment for the two of you since you’re married, now,” Tony explained quickly, rattling off the words before Loki could strangle him again. “I need her to get the things out of there that she’ll need for a couple of days and bunk in your room so the sweaty workmen can do the work.” Loki let go of Tony and stepped back from him.

“My apologies. That is… a kindness,” Loki finally said. You got up off the couch then and went over to them.

[Thank you] you told Tony

“It’s from all of us,” Clint protested. You smirked and thanked him and Nat too.

Thor entered the room then and started to head straight for breakfast, but stopped at your group and grabbed Loki’s arm. “Hey, get off me witless oaf,” Loki growled at him. Thor slapped the piece of Stark-tech back on Loki’s wrist. He hadn’t had to wear that thing since you’d first moved into the tower. “What are you doing?”

“I have to return to Asgard and tell Father what you two did. You two are to stay in the tower until I return,” he told you both firmly. Loki protested again, but Thor insisted that he was staying in the tower. This was going nowhere. You touched Loki’s arm and leaned up to kiss him.

“Fine,” he huffed. “Though this is unnecessary,” he raised the wrist that now held the Stark-tech that limited his powers.

“You two cause trouble left to your own devices. Which is why I have to go smooth things over with Father. I’m want to make sure you two stayout of trouble without proper supervision,”

You gave him matching innocent looks. You weren’t going to cause trouble.

For some reason he didn’t believe you.

#Loki #Lover #Imagine #Submitted fic #submission #nekoamamori #chapter 42 #The Sound of Silence

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lostlegacyuniverse · 6 years

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NNK2 Thoughts

So with Ni No Kuni 2 having been out for a year now, as well as having the free adventure DLC that just went live, I can finally sit down and talk about the sequel to the amazing first game.

This is long and there will be spoilers ahead, you have been warned.

Combat! The combat of the second game is wonderful and fluid. Blocking, dodging, being able to even attack with ranged weapons like guns and wands at will. It’s really well done and easy to get into the rhythm of combat. I especially like the idea of recharging your mana by hitting enemies with melee attacks, and then using that mana on an empowered weapon for a massive hit in kind. Putting a pause on combat when using items was a nice feature to have as well. And the party AI! Oh, goodness it’s nice. Sure they do silly things on occasion, but they don’t come close the the AI teammates of Ni No Kuni 1. No Esther running into an enemy attack, no Oliver eating every ounce of mana he can as fast as he can. They’re smart! They build charge, they are cautious with spells, they run into healing zones, they back off when on low hp, THEY DODGE ATTACKS. It’s a wonderfully drastic improvement. However, having a limit on each helpful item type per battle was seriously annoying, especially against one of the Tainted dragon mini bosses which, -even with me being a full 10 levels ahead of him- made the battle draw out for far, far longer than it needed to. It wasn’t fun to get smacked for half my hp for the 40th time, and then realizing that I had no more ways to recover hp through items. This is an RPG, not Dark Souls. I have 99 4 Leafed Soreaways, let me use them, dammit. The only thing I really disliked about the combat was the inability to force the enemy AI to target a specific character on my team with a taunt or spotlight or what have you. Which led to awkward situations where- for example- a Tainted monster would suddenly turn on me -mid attack- after having focused an ally for the entire battle.

Aside from combat and story, I really disliked how damn tedious building my kingdom was. It felt like a glorified mobile game. There was even a point where I had to wait for a specific research to finish, so I could move on. This wasn’t one of those “Oh I want more xp before I keep going” kind of things, I had to actually put down my controller for 30 minutes, and WAIT for this research to finish to PROGRESS THE PLOT OF THE GAME, because the game would not allow me to continue until I had done so. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I probably won’t be replaying this game from scratch. And it’s not due to lazyness. I’ve replayed the first Ni No Kuni dozens of times, hell I’ve even replayed Persona 5 TWICE, which is a 100 hour run each. I’d have no problem replaying Ni No Kuni 2, it’s just the way you progress the story, and all of the shit it’s locked behind is a complete turn off for starting a new game run.

Story wise, the game was... okay. Nothing terrible, but nothing fantastic either. There were a lot of plot points that were either never really answered, or were done so in a way that felt just unsatisfying and copped out. For example how quickly Evan forgave Mausinger for what he had done not only to his father and him, but to the entire kingdom (who then equally forgave him just as quickly).

I was admittedly thrown for a loop and shocked when it was revealed that Roland and Doloran were “soul mates” (a term from the first game that was CRITICAL TO THE PLOT, that meant that two people from different worlds shared the same soul. What happens to one, happens to the other, death or brokenheartedness for example.) Doloran just monologues for a bit about how they “were the same” and “wanted the same thing” (to resurrect a loved one), and ends up asking Roland to join him, but again, as crucial as a point it was supposed to be, it felt very sudden and copped out. Long story short, Doloran had supposedly been trying to manipulate Roland to do things. What exactly? I don’t know, it’s not explained, let alone important in any way. Did he use him to try and sabotage Evan’s kingdom? No. Did he use him to help him steal the Kingsbonds of other kingdoms? No. Did he use Roland to accomplish his goals at all? No, he didn’t need him for any real reason. There was this sudden pressure of “THIS IS IMPORTANT” but it held no actual merit.

Soul Mates weren’t mentioned at all during the entirety of the story, and the developers themselves said you didn’t need to play the first one to understand the second. So to have this “VERY IMPORTANT PLOT POINT”- seriously I can't stress this enough- just suddenly pop up at literally the final boss in the final chapter, with no prior warning or discussion felt downright lazy. It certainly made no sense to anyone that had never played the first game. What significance was it supposed to hold for them? It’s not like this was a cute little easter egg like the Trial of Kings was, what with the Ni No Kuni 1 crew being there, this was supposed to be a BIG IMPORTANT REVEAL. But knowing about the bond changed absolutely nothing about the fight or the story that followed. There was no danger to Roland, no dramatic fight to the death followed by self sacrifice. Doloran just got thowmped, did his evil hocus pocus anyways, and we flew off into the 9th dimension to go fight Bahamut. The only reason the bond between them exists, is so that Roland had a way into Evan’s world, and later a way back, and that’s about it. Sadly there wasn’t even retribution for Doloran for how many lives he’d taken to fuel his Horned One monster (regardless of the fact they were returned after it was killed), nor the damage he’d caused by taking the Kingsbonds (which weren’t returned, by the way). His love blinded ass even created a death dimension dragon that BROKE THE LITERAL SKY, and all he got was a pat on the shoulder and a talk about how sad it was to lose a loved one, and that he would enjoy this new world if he tried.

I.. what? What? Course you could argue that Shadar and Cassiopia from the first game received similar treatment. However, Shadar and Cass fell into a deep despair (from their respective actions, defying orders and saving Alicia, and using the Manna) that consumed them to the point of wanting to inflict that despair on others. Shadar payed for his actions by separating his soul from Oliver’s so that the boy could keep living while he drifted into Limbo / The Afterlife. He didn’t even see himself as being forgiven for his actions. Cassiopia redeemed herself when she helped fight against the Zodiarchs, the abomination created from her despair, grief, and magic that had utterly consumed her for thousands of years. Doloran? Doloran killed thousands of people and threw the world out of balance to get his beloved back, when in fact she was WAY beyond saving, and then did nothing to help defeat the monster he had unleashed. But it’s okay guys, he was in love, he gets a free pass. I thought this game was supposed to be “more mature” and ‘more geared towards adults” than the first one. So how is it that the first game handles these messages and themes better than the one that was designed to does?

Don’t even get me started on the lame assed bonus ending of “Oh well Evan only united 4 of the kingdoms, you missed all the smaller ones, so your KID went ahead and took care of that in the future and offscreen, and he’s the one that ACTUALLY united the world. He’s the real hero, not you.” Don't invalidate the efforts of the player like that. Don’t.

Aside from the remarkably disappointing ending, there were a few other gripes I had.

So your Kingmaker is Lofty (who doesn’t compare on any level to Drippy’s character, don’t get me started on that rabbit hole) and he’s supposed to impose this weak and downright worthless appearance compared to Longfang, Oakenheart, Brineskimmer, and Bastion. He’s not supposed to be this majestic, powerful dragon like the other 4. Until of course it’s revealed that he IS, he just can’t transform because his bond isn’t strong enough. Cool idea right?

NOT WHEN THE TWIST IS SPELLED OUT ON THE VERY FIRST CUTSECENE WITH THE DECLARATION. HE’S LITERALLY AT THE TOP OF THE DOCUMENT. IN FULL EASTERN DRAGON FORM. BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TO THE FIRST KINGDOM.

Not to mention the fact that he’s even on the COVER OF THE GAME. Who did this? Who decided this was a good idea? Who ruins their own twist like that?*coughDisneyandTreasurePlanet,no,I’mnotstillsaltyaboutthat,shutup*

And the characters, ohhhh the characters.

Evan felt surprisingly out of place in his own story. I understand that he’s a young king and his character should reflect that, but his growth felt dry and fake. He didn’t really expand as a character, he didn’t overcome his flaws, or grow in any meaningful way. The people around him did that for him. By the end, I cared more about Leander, Bracken, hell, even the other Kingdom leaders than I did about Evan. Evan stayed this cringey child character that didn’t seem to understand very critical concepts about running a kingdom, and the rest of the supporting party was happy to stand back and let the world tick down to literal annihilation as he figured it out on his own. It definitely felt more like Roland should have been the main character of the game. He had more drive and interesting traits right from the start than Evan had all game to develop. Which is incredibly disappointing. I wanted to hear more about Roland’s backstory of being bullied, how he became President, how the literal atomic BOMB going off moments before he was yanked away to Evan’s world damaged his psyche. I will admit the traitor arc was very interesting and had a lot of promise. I only wish it had lasted longer, or had a larger impact on the other protagonists.

Batu and Tani lost a lot of value throughout the game, which is a damn shame considering they were these rough, authority defying Sky Pirates. About the time Goldpaw ran around (which is very early on, mind you) they started to fade into the background, and they were almost forgotten until Roland’s traitor arc, which is CHAPTER 8. OF 9. Let that sink in.

Leander and Braken had a similar problem of being shoved to the side in favor of Evan, but however stayed relevant throughout the remaining story. Although I would have loved to hear more about Hydropolis before the eruption and subsequent daily magic resets. Or more about Broadleaf as a whole, like for example the GIANT FLYING SUBMARINE THE SIZE OF A CONTINENT SITTING JUST 2 MILES NORTH STUCK IN THE ICE? OR THE GIANT CRACKS IN THE SEA THAT GO INTO THE VOID? NO? WE’RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT? Okay.

There was just all this amazing backstory and lore that could have been expanded on, like connections to the first game, places and ideas that changed over time. Where did the Higgledies come from? What happened to the familiars? To Wizards? To Nazcaa? To Cassiopia? The other kingdoms? Anything? At all?

Honestly, this game could have come out as completely unrelated to Ni No Kuni 1, and I would not have noticed a single difference. Not that Ni No Kuni 2 is a bad game, it’s far from it. But if you’re looking for an engaging story and have to choose between the 2, pick the first game. No amount of improved combat can redeem a story so desperate to jump the shark, that it falls in and gets eaten.

#ni no kuni 2 #ni no kuni #story time #my thoughts #personal

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