#but phosphor one-shot it anyway

[shrekyaoi]

It has been the agreed upon 3-5 business days so please comense with the official Shrekyaoi Spec Ops: The Line review or the beating sticks will have to come out per your stipulation

okay just know you asked for this

so, spec ops has been analysed by everyone and their mother at this point so i’ll keep this somewhat brief (for my, anyway). was this game enjoyable to be played? no. but, this game does not want to be enjoyed. i would venture to say that it actually hates you for playing it

there’s two levels to look at spec ops with: in-game and meta. the meta is that call of duty is an evil fucking franchise. the in-game is that you are enabling and/or causing the death of thousands just by existing in the world. no action you can perform truly helps anyone. you can choose to NOT kill (sometimes) but in order to progress you must complete the level, which of course means you need to kill your enemies. and who the fuck are your enemies? everyone. the game wouldn’t let you just get away with murdering people that don’t deserve it, right? but who the hell deserves it? why are we here, again? who’re these people? why’re we killing them? doesn’t matter. shoot them again.

there’s the finishing mechanic that allows you a chance at ammo refills that requires you to kill people that are already downed but injured. the introduction to the mechanic mentions that “downed enemies may still shoot you if not killed” but during the entire duration of the game, those i left alive never shot at me. i don’t know if that’s just luck or deliberate. either way, it instills a degree of hesitation at least in me. i know this mechanic exists in other games, but those other games do not typically make you ask yourself if these people deserve to be slaughtered. and this is just a mechanic, not the plot.

the plot itself is as has been mentioned before a retelling of the heart of darkness. the other biggest (bigger, really) adaptation of the same book is apocalypse now which makes it difficult not to compare the two. this feels very intentional—the game starts out with the typical sand-swept city setting we expect from the genre but it deteriorates in a hideous way. quite literally, in the case of a few hallucinatory scenes. the sky itself looks like it’s soaked in blood, and you made it that way. even if it’s not you killing people, it’s your squadmates doing it or pushing you to do it. your choices feel very much like they matter, but they don’t when you take a step back. again with your presence—people will die anyway just because you’re here. the madness fuels even more death. the radioman had no reason to die. gould dies anyway. they shouldn’t be dead, but there is no way to save them. why the fuck did you take down the radio tower? a message? to who? the final twist does make a good amount of the plot deeply confusing and while it was properly foreshadowed it does feel nonsensical. despite this, the shock of it does elevate the story and drives the point home. i can appreciate it.

now, on the meta level, this game is of course a critique of cod as well as violence in video games. here is how i best can make the comparison: in spec ops, the white phosphorous is explicitely one of the most fucking horrifying things in the game. in modern warfare: 2019, the game begins with price making the call to use white phosphorous and you as the player are expected to sit back and go “woahhhh!!!” at the cool graphics. in spec ops you are constantly, agonisingly reminded of the horror you are bringing to these people. in cod, it’s about the “people” and not the “politics.” i don’t need to throw a million video essays and articles at you about how insane that is. cod justifies the invasion of iraq. spec ops asks you why the fuck america is there in the first place.

now, i do have some critiques of the game such as the fact that that not a single person that is not in the military has a line of dialogue. i feel like at some points they do try to have their cake and eat it, too, but on some level the point is to draw in the dudebros that jerk off to captain price doing another epic speech before a mission where you blow up some goddamn commies. you lure them in, then you beat them senseless with what they’re actually engaging with.

this is a cod blog. maybe it won’t always be, but it is right now. perhaps the fandom on here is not quite the same as the fandom spec ops is targeting (for one, you would have to actually play the games to be appealed to play another), but the message is just as important. add to it the fact that you cannot play spec ops anymore unless you pre-owned it or get a physical copy (or. you know. Other Means) it makes it only more important to have these conversations. do i recommend this game? about as much as i recommend getting punched in the dick. if that’s your thing and you feel up to it, do it. if it seems like too much or you don’t have the means, maybe try watching a playthrough. spec ops makes you feel nauseous. it makes you feel evil just for playing it. this is the point of the game. ruminate on that. pick it apart. you may be better for it

[xamassed]

⟬ @ofhope​​ / itto’s birthday 6 • 1 ⟭

Discerning a present for the famed Arataki Gang Leader was almost as grand as the gesture. Fireworks? They'd be involved in some fashion, but it wasn't enough to qualify as a gift. Food? If Yoimiya planned a meeting without food, surely her brain had gotten knocked around!

Being the Queen of Summer, Yoimiya knew how joyous, but fleeting, its activities were. An Onikabuto battleground was the perfect recipe, Yoimiya thought, for not only an exciting day but for lasting all season long! Finding a nook to begin crafting was its own difficulty, but Yoimiya had received tips from the Traveler -- that island, isolated and empty, didn't see much traffic... after their extraordinary event last year, Itto would surely adore seeing it liven up once again.

Nearing the size of a human-oriented ring, Yoimiya's grand project was finished with a final coating of paint: a ramp to gain leverage, optional stage changes, wooden planks to dictate points... it took a lotta' work, not only from Yoimiya, but from her father, too. Even on her worst days, her mother piped in with color palettes, ways of balancing certain fixtures...

All for Itto.

Swiping away the Oni proved a challenge too, the gang ready to deliver a barrage of gifts and treats, but Yoimiya managed. Step by step, the firestarter led Itto toward his prize.

What Itto would see? An Onikabuto wonderland, one of his star champs already in the ring, chittering happily at Itto's entrance.

"Tadaaaaa!" running ahead, Yoimiya posed before the structure! "Soooo? What do you think? You've prooobably got an idea what it is, buuut ~ I'll let you guess anyway!"

She laughs, tap-tapping the wood, pleased.

"Happy birthday, Itto. From me, and all of the Naganohara family!"

All of this hard work had been for him, and yet it felt more to him like she had been avoiding him for the few days that it took for her to meticulously prepare her massive, titan of a gift.

Every rare glimpse of her was quick as a phosphorous flash, here and gone within the span of a second. When he did catch her, she was still elusive. Her smile was still as sweet as it ever was, but he couldn't keep hold of her long enough to ask if she wanted to spend his birthday with him.

He had his gang, sure, but she had steadily wiggle-wormed her way under his skin and had become as important to him as they were. His special day wouldn't feel the same if she wasn't there to add the color he needed — and, in fact, it didn't feel the same once the day arrived.

Itto was happy, of course. His best friends and the ones he considered his brothers were there to spoil him, gifts held high above their heads and enthusiastic shouts warming his heart. It was enough to bring a grown oni to tears, except he was given an unexpected yank just as he was about to shake off his gloom and party the way he ought to.

"Hey! Firecracker, you're here!" He had been so sure that she'd forgotten, or that she simply didn't want to celebrate with him. He wanted to ask her where she'd been as of late, but he didn't have the chance. She was eager, and he realized then as he followed her without argument that he was weak to her persistent encouragement.

Come on, come on! He was tugged and guided along and given promises that he would love what he saw. How could he not, he wondered. If any of it had been blessed with her touch, then he was bound to adore all of what she had done.

And he did. Oh, he adored it with his whole heart.

Wide and misty eyes gawked at the structure, which he immediately deemed ten times larger, better and sicker than the original. He had put work into his, but this was better by a long shot.

"You did this?" He pointed feebly, mind still reeling from the intensity of her dedication. The call of his champion didn't elude him, but he was sure that the onikabuto could wait a few seconds longer as Itto nearly tackled the woman with pure, uncorked glee.

She was hoisted off her feet and lifted high, the strength in one arm easily giving her a place to sit in the crook of his elbow. His other hand punched at the air, elation more than obvious as he whooped and hollered.

"This is the best present everyone's ever given me! Ever!" He refused to set her down, his queen of color and light. It was his birthday, and he was the one that needed celebrating, but he would go out of his way to make sure she had just as much fun as he did. "You and me, we're gonna dominate this arena!!"

[certified-pinkwasher]

about your propal post: you’ve got the wrong idea. we’re not saying all of you should be exiled. what we’re calling for is a land back movement. that land belongs to the palestinians. sure it’s israelis’ home too now, but that’s because israelis forcefully stole it from palestinians. palestinians were welcoming of israelis when they first began moving there. but then israelis took control of the entire country and began oppressing them. imagine someone burst into your house, and you welcomed them. only for them to then take control over the whole house, confine you into one room, and bully you relentlessly. *that’s* what the israelis did (not talking about you specifically, talking ab the government).

and ever since then palestinians have been murdered and tortured and violently oppressed by the idf. sure hamas did bad things, but first of all the israelis government propped up hamas to begin with. look it up, there used to be a democratic palestinian resistance movement, but the idf gave money and resources to hamas. *that’s* how they gained the power they have now. and another thing, you don’t criticize the table manners of a starving person. the palestinians are fighting for liberation. they have been oppressed in unimaginable ways. not saying it’s right for them to kill people, but they’ve been peacefully protesting for 75 years, and the only response they’ve gotten from that is to be shot at and oppressed even more intensely. i encourage you to research the history of palestine, because i cannot fully emphasize how horrific it is. while i appreciate that you feel like you’re living in fear because hamas is trying to resist in any way they can, you just must imagine what palestinians feel. *they’re* the ones who’re having record-breaking amounts of bombs dropped on them daily. the idf has cut off their food, water, and electricity. the idf has committed literally uncountable war crimes against the palestinians. white phosphorous bombs, cutting off resources, purposefully seeking out media reporters to kill, etc etc etc. i could go on forever. it’s not difficult to see which side is in the wrong here.

and us propals are not calling for israelis to be exiled or extinguished, we just want the authority over the land to be given back to palestinians. in the beginning of all this, they were welcoming of israelis. they just wanted to coexist. not everyone has a colonial view about things. the fact that you’re scared that if palestinians got authority over their land again that they’d do to you what *you’ve been doing to them* is very telling. (again not talking ab you specifically, but your government). just bc palestinians would be in control of their land, that doesn’t mean that their immediate reaction would be to oppress israelis in retaliation. palestinians just want their homes back. that *your government* barged into and stole, btw. palestinians have always wanted to coexist, but your government never gave them that option. instead— after palestinians *welcomed them* into their homes— the israeli government put them through a truly incomprehensible amount of oppression and apartheid in return.

anyway. i encourage you to think about this and begin researching the history of the stolen land you live on. i’m an american, so i’m in the same position as you. that’s why i also support american land back movements for the indigenous peoples of america. i’ve deconstructed my colonial views that were forced on to me from childhood by propaganda. i’ve researched the history of the stolen land *i* live on. what i’m trying to say here is, i’m in the same position as you. i’m not someone who couldn’t understand your feelings about this. i get it, but you simply must appreciate how palestinians must feel. i really hope you’re also able to deconstruct your colonial beliefs and come around to supporting the liberation of the palestinian people.

this ask is not meant to be derogatory or anything like that, i just simply want you to think about all this. i want this discussion to be productive. i really hope this makes you reconsider things.

i would also like to have further discussion with you about this, because i want to understand your position more. and i want to try and show you how you may be mistaken in your beliefs. you may not know the real history (which would make sense considering your opinions) but if not and you *do* know the real history, that’s just completely baffling to me.

anyway i hope that this helped to put things into perspective and that you’ll reconsider your beliefs

hey im only answering this cuz you seem genuinely nice and just like. super misinformed. there was never widespread peace between palestinian jews and palestinian arabs pre 1948. there is a massively long list of massacres committed by arabs aganst jews for literally the last 100 or so years before 48. the only open arms we were accepted with were guns.

i know the history of the country i grew up in. it is not a direct mirror of the usa and im quite frankly tired of americans using us to assuage their own white guilt. the colonizers in this part of the world are arabs, not the "white people" (who aren't actually white)

i have no interest in educating people, so please find an account that actually will. rootsmetals on instagram has very in depth, well worded, and well researched posts with primary sources easy to find

[gaecactae]

I love this au so much!!!! I was never able to play the actual game, but I'll have to look at it now. It sounds so cute! If you don't mind me asking, what is a Tarr?

Thank you! I’m very happy you enjoy it:D

Let me make a nice explanation on the base game resources ^^

Here’s the sweet boy, Phosphor Slime! He occurs in Dry Reef, one of the main lands we have to explore as the ranchers. That’s where the Pink Slimes, Tabby Slimes and Stone Slimes appear! It may happen, that a Phosphor Slime encounters Tabby plort (you know the crystals they produce after they eat) and they are going to chomp it almost immediately!

That’s when the Phosphor-Tabby Largo is created! It’s very normal to make Largo Slimes in your ranch, you not only save space, but you also get double income of plorts, getting both of the types (it’s even better when they get their favourite food, cause when they eat their favourite, plorts literally double, so you get 4 plorts from one largo, it’s efficient af)

Well anyway, it’s no problem for normal, little slimes to consume other plorts, especially if they are on the wild, they will just chomp whatever they find. Though, it may get dirty, when a largo eats completely different plort. For example, our Phosphor-Tabby largo encounters Pink Plort and we have a catastrophe incoming!

This is how the Tarr is created. It’s actually a beautiful creature, surrounded with black, but holding rainbow inside. Tarrs are very feisty - they will swallow every existing slime in their range and clone, until it becomes a plague. And it’s very easy to happen, but also easy to take control of, if you have a water tank in your vacpac! If you give them a splash, there’s no problem anymore and everyone is safe.

It’s not too easy to get the Tarr infection happen on your farm, when you keep largos. As long as they all have their corals closed and are safely contained inside, everything will be fine. It gets tricky with one Slime, called Dervish Slime - when hungry, they will create quite huge tornado, that may... swallow stuff and make mess everywhere? And it’s not contained anywhere. I once had a situation, where Dervish largo yeeted their plort into other largo’s coral and we had one Tarr. Thank god I saw him and shot with water on time ncjcjj

So yeah! goddamit I’m such a nerd

[americangodstalk]

AG fanfiction: Technical replacement

This fanfiction was made to try to link together the technical boy of the novel and Technical Boy from the television series (taking inspiration from the graphic novel and the deleted scenes shot for season 2, the scenes of what is theorized to be “Game Boy”  - non-official name). Hope you’ll enjoy!

The technical boy popped a handful of chips in his mouth, flushed them down with an energy drink, burped and returned to his game. He didn’t need to eat or drink, of course, but it would have been stupid not to. The technical boy wasn’t the kind to deny himself anything. He was powerful, he was rich, he was young and new. He could have anything he wanted. And the extra-rush of sugar certainly helped him focus. It wasn’t just a game he was playing, it was THE game. The game played simultaneously on all the computers and televisions throughout the United-States. A complex and ever-changing game, with an almost infinite number of levels and too many combos and moves for anyone to remember. Anyone except him. He was very good at remembering things. 

For a moment his vision went blurry and he had to pause the game. He chewed on a few gummies, hoping it would clear his head. He didn’t know why, but recently he felt... somehow tired. When concentrating too much, or thinking too long about something, he would feel... out of breath. Hot. Sluggish. He hated that. 

He took off his hoodie to evacuate the extra heat ; he couldn’t even zip it anyway. He had put on too much weight. A few years ago, he would have been called “overweight” or “fat”. Now, if anyone had seen him, qualificatives such as “obese” or “enormous” would have been more fitting. He didn’t mind it much: after all, he did not truly had human organs, it was not blood that was pumped through his veins - nor did he mind the blooming of his youtfhul acne, turning his face into a true keyboard. He was just annoyed by how heavy he felt. Filled with so much stuff... food and wires, plastic and soda, disks and arrogance... He barely had space in there. He was forced to expand, if he did not want to explode. 

He abandonned his stretchpants and XXXL polo to put on a purple dressing gown and black slippers. The walls of the room were purple too, and slowly turned into shades of blue and cyan. The technical boy licked his lips, thinking he needed to smoke something, but ultimately decided to continue the game. Just one or two more levels. He took a joystick out of the piles of NES, Ataris and Playstations rising beside his chair. RESUME PLAYING. 

The virtual landscapes melted in a confusion of phosphor dots. A few distorted shapes passed through the screen, and suddenly the obese kid found himself looking at an episode of the Golden Girls.

“Hi! It’s me! Media! How are you doing?”

“I was doing fine until you arrived.” he bitterly noted. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it looks like? That I’m here to pick up daisies?” Dorothy answered. “I came to see you of course! I came to tell you goodbye!”

“Goodbye?”

“Oh, honey, I am so sorry about your retirement!” Blanche added. 

The technical boy processed the information.The walls, now green, turned to yellow.

“What kind of fucking virus has bugged your glitter-brain? I’m not retiring anywhere!”

There was a laugh track. Dorothy smiled:

“You are, honey. Your show has been cancelled. Word around is that your replacement is already coming. Many felt it. Straigth from the land of silicon. But don’t feel bad. Think of it as an extensive makeover.”

“This is illogical! This is fucking...” He rose up from the chair, glitching with anger. “I can’t be replaced! I’m not some sort of old, rusty railroad! I’m in every home! So many of them are throwing their life over me! I am the future! I am... fucking binary!”

There was a zoom on Sophia.

“Picture it. America. Beginning of the 21st century. A puffed-up frog thinks himself the biggest thing because he offers people sex, food and exercise without them having to actually move their lazy bums out of their couches. But as time goes by, the same people realize that he is just as slow and bulky as them, lagging and dragging behind, plus quite ugly to look at. Their words, not mine. They realize that they can do better. And bam! A new suitor! Someone thinner, faster, digital, intelligent - again, their words, not mine.”

The technical boy clunched his fists and felt something in his eyes. It couldn’t possibly be tears. The room was now a dull red. There was a smell of burning wires - but it didn’t come from any of the boy’s cigarets. 

Rose smiled.

“You know, back in St. Olaf, we had a lot of different technical boys. So many little techies... There was one for when the peak of technology was washing dishes and cleaning up the dust. There was one for when hearing voices out of a phone was a miracle. There was even one when people spoke through little dots and lines passed by wires across the continent. And sometimes, during the Herring Festival, we would put them together in this sort of...”

“Rose.” Dorothy sighed.

“What I mean to say is... You’re not special. You’re a basic bitch. And soon...” Rose’s smile widened. “You won’t be anything at all. That’s what happens when you’re not careful and up-to-date.”

“Not everyone can stay as good-looking and relevant as me.” Blanche added while checking her hair. 

The technical boy left his chair and violently stomped towards the door, only to realize there wasn’t a door anymore. Just darkness. The dull red was going black.

“All we wanted to say was... Thank you for being a friend.”

The screen shut down. Not even credits. The technical boy tried to pierce the shadows, but couldn’t see his consoles or his chair. Everything was pitch black, nothing was working. He was all alone.

He tried to scream, but no sound would come out of his mouth. He felt his body slowly go stiff. He couldn’t feel anything. 

The black became something even darker - beyond any color humans were able to perceive. An infra-black.

He tried to remember what was the number of states in the USA, in which hotel he had last checked in, what was the latest model of computer they had released, which President abolished slavery, what medecine you should take for the flu. It was a last, desperate attempt to cling onto something, anything, as he drifted away. 

But he remembered nothing. In his head was just an empty, black void.

Darkness. In and out. 

Nothing. Everywhere.

...

 ...

And somewhere, far away, at funerals, an artificial musician completed Bach’s unfinished symphony. 

[winters-tales]

Evening! I have a confession to make: I'm exhausted. I've been furloughed from my 9-5 job for 6 months, but I started back again at the start of this month. So I am back at work trying to relearn everything, and trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo, as well as sticking to my streaming schedule! It's a bit much. So today, I might not get much done, and that's ok!

To make up for it, here's another sneak peek of a bit more of the novel. CW for depictions of PTSD, implied alcoholism, implied suicidal tendencies, and forced sedation under the cut.

It wasn't easy to write, but I'm of the firm opinion that war - ANY kind of war - shouldn't be easy to write about or read about. This is obviously a fictional account, but PTSD is very real. Please look after yourself when reading!

--

Transcript of the debrief regarding Capt. [REDACTED] actions during Operation: [REDACTED].

Debrief in subject’s own words:

My name is Captain [REDACTED] and I was enlisted for a Black-Ops mission known as Operation [REDACTED] that began in May 1983. Myself, [NAME REDACTED] and [NAME2 REDACTED] were selected for this mission as a matter of utmost secrecy. I am satisfied that I am presenting my debrief to the proper chain of command, but even if I wasn’t, I don’t really give a fuck. Fuck your secrecy. I’ll tell anyone who asks.

When you signed up to fight in the War, you had to get comfortable with the impossible fucking fast. The foot soldiers I could deal with; they at least looked like us, more or less, in that uncanny valley, people-but-not-quite kind of way. Still, they were just people who didn’t quite look like me, and you’re trained not to think of people like that as people early on. Reduces the risk of you freezing up when you need to take an essential shot. But when it became clear that there was so much more to deal with, the knowledge that at the end of the day it’s still just people becomes a comfort rather than a horror. Isn’t that fucked up?

[sound of a teacup being placed in a saucer]

Have you ever seen a dragon? They’re not quite like the stories, you know, but they’re also like all of the stories together. [NAME REDACTED] hated us calling them dragons; he insisted they were Jabberwocks. Crazy bastard, but he got me and a few others out of a tight spot more than once, so sure, I’ll sing whatever tune he wants when he can hear us.

[pause, sound of chinaware clinking as the Captain fiddles with her teacup and saucer]

Shame.

[pause for 5 minutes as the Captain seems to contemplate something]

Anyway, dragons: They swallow fire. Sure, they breathe it, but they swallow it first. Not just standard flames, anything that could feasibly be called hot. Flares, phosphorous grenades, and even, as I saw once, nuclear warheads.

Lot of mixed feelings that day. Bastards for seeing us as disposable. Relief that it’s not getting dropped on us now. Hope it might kill the thing. Horror when it doesn’t. Pure terror as we see exactly what they’re capable of, exactly what we’re being asked to throw ourselves up against time and time again.

[pause]

Any chance of another brew? In a mug this time, I’m too rough for this fancy tea set. And if I could have my hip flask back, I’d appreciate it. It’s just rum. Nothing dire. Just to help me get through the rest of this. I know you’ve got me down as High Risk but truth be told, I’m too chickenshit to do that. I’ll live through everything because it’s not as scary as the alternative, just as long as I’ve got a little liquid courage.

[tape is paused briefly before the recording restarts]

That hits the spot. Right. Where was I?

Dragons. Jabberwocks. Infernal wyrms.

Whatever you decide to call them, whatever name you pick out of whatever fairy tales you grew up on, just know it doesn’t come close to the reality of them.

[chuckling]

The reality of dragons. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.

But yeah, the reality isn’t shiny. Impressive, yes, but on a scale your tiny fucking brain just can’t comprehend. Like standing at the base of a mountain and trying to work out how you’ll head-butt the peak.

I watched one of the colossal things snatch the first nuclear warhead out of the atmosphere, felt faint hope that it was just a dumb creature and would explode from the inside out… and watched it belch radioactive flame across our own ground troops. Instead of maximised dispersal over a wide area that was regrettably comprised of friend and foe, our lot got concentrated nuclear destruction while their lot walked away.

When you see something like that, it feels like there’s not a lot that can persuade you to go back out there. Queen and Country? What the FUCK is she going to do to me that’s worse than a dragon that EATS our nuclear weapons? Stand me against a wall with the rest of the poor motherfuckers who didn’t run far enough, fast enough, and shoot me personally? This bullshit-

[the sound of furniture being moved aggressively; the Captain had kicked the table away from her and begun striding around the room gesticulating]

-is why so much research was going into weaponizing DRONES-

[The Captain’s voice is becoming indistinct, although her volume is increasing; furniture is being thrown around her interview room, including the table, which cracks the one-way window in an impressive display of strength]

-because once we’d seen it first-hand there’s no amount of love for your fucking COUNTRY that’ll make you walk into the devil’s maw again!

[the interview room door opens hard and bounces off the wall as people enter quickly]

-no- get off me- I’m not wrong- I’m-

[indistinct shouting of multiple people]

-fucking hands OFF me you rat bastard -

[At this point in the interview the Captain had to be restrained by several orderlies and sedated. The recording was paused while we cleared the damage and found sturdier furniture and restraints. The Captain is much calmer when the recording begins again, a full 30 minutes after sedation was administered]

Anyway. Once a soldier has seen the widespread devastation of a nuclear attack – and not just one, when they’re forced to watch it again and again, with the knowledge their superiors have written them off as “acceptable losses” – they realise that their country really, truly does not care one fucking whit for them, and something in their brain breaks. You’ve then got to give them a reason not to run, not to take their trusty service pistol for one last hurrah, and certainly not to storm the offices of our beloved elected officials, grab them by their lapels, and ask them what the fuck they were thinking.

No, when soldiers break the way we did, when they can’t think of a reason to keep going, all you can do is harness what they do have left, and hope they self-destruct far away from where you’d need to clean it up. [NAME REDACTED] had rage, and the desire to destroy every last enemy, injury or no. I had my apathy and my stubborn stronger-than-gods-own-will survival instinct. Throw in someone who desperately wants to save the world more than they want to save themselves, and you’ve got the team of me, [NAME REDACTED] and [NAME2 REDACTED].

They told us – YOU, you bastards, you told us – that we were going to save the world, and truth be told I didn’t care. You told us we were going to eliminate the last credible threat to humanity as a whole, and during the briefing I wished you’d all die choking. But I went along with it. What else could I do? Maybe something would catch us and finally end my ridiculous will to live. All we had to do was gather intel, and cause as much damage as we could on our way out.

[There’s a pause as the Captain considers something]

Is Major [REDACTED] still around? Told him I’d demonstrate how soft he’d gotten if I made it back. Told him I’d- Well. Guess it doesn’t matter now.

[Pause]

[NAME REDACTED] and [NAME2 REDACTED], they were the damage. Higher-ups had their number, and knew that if it came to it, [NAME REDACTED] would likely stay behind to go out in a blaze of glory and cover our escape with a high casualty ratio. [NAME2 REDACTED] would, in their unfailing optimism, make every effort to return, no doubt about that, but if they couldn’t, they’d do the noble self-sacrifice to ensure at least one of us made it back in one piece with intel.

I was the messenger. They had my number too; they’d seen me walk out of situations that should have killed me and they knew I’d probably walk out of this one too, and they were banking on me not knowing what else to do except follow orders.

And you know the really fucked-up thing? They were right. Here I am, following orders.

The mission failed.

I remember the night before we went through: making sure we were kitted out properly before getting our rest, ignoring the PTSD nightmares when we woke each other through the night. Par for the course at that point; who wasn’t deeply messed up?

I remember the morning: breakfast was bacon pancakes with maple syrup and black pudding. Delicious. Last hot meal we’d get for who knows how long.

We roped ourselves together, and one by one we stepped into the godforsaken breach.

And from the moment we stepped through, to the moment I fell back out and into your compound, I don’t remember a goddamned thing. Not one second of it. For all I know, I stepped through and got spat back out straight away. There’s just a big old blank spot where time should be in my head, and I don’t have a clue what happened to the other two. Did they go out in a blaze of glory? Did they come back ahead of me with any intel they got? I don’t know, and you don’t either, because you weren’t expecting me at all, and if they’d made it back, you’d know I’d be following after.

And you’ve got the gall to tell me it’s me it’s been three-hundred and seventy-five years to the day since I left on my mission? You must think I’m fucking crazy.

*

Notes:

The Captain passed out quite quickly after asking if we questioned her sanity, presumably from the combination of strong alcohol and even stronger sedatives; that she was able to remain so coherent and measured after sedation is an impressive feat given how much was administered.

When she woke up again 4 hours later, she seemed perfectly coherent with no sign of any negative after-effects from the alcohol, sedatives, or the combination of both. There was no residual tiredness, she simply asked if she was being dismissed from duty yet, as she had a lot to think about. She said we could keep the hip flask. A concerning declaration; giving away meaningful items is a common prelude to a suicide attempt, so she is now on round-the-clock observation in a high security facility. While she insists that she’s at no risk of attempting, that’s not something we want to get wrong.

It’s true that the Captain more or less fell out of a breach that we’d previously thought to be inactive, however she swears blind that she was not responsible for the murder of Gatesman Antok and the two perimeter guards of the facility. CCTV investigation is unable to corroborate this, as she was the only unaccounted-for body on site, and CCTV did not pick up any other potential attackers entering the facility. The investigation into the murder is ongoing.

If any files on Operation: [REDACTED] exist, they’re almost certainly locked in a bunker somewhere or else consigned to a shredder some 300-plus years ago. Nevertheless, a request for information has been submitted to the relevant departments, and now undoubtedly sits in a bureaucratic traffic jam as we await the possibility of a declassified document. In the meantime, we’ve redacted the names of the accompanying team members to preserve what little deniability is left after almost 400 years.

[erintoknow]

Hurry Home

fallen hero: rebirth fan fiction with Crow and Argent ~2.2k words [ao3]

–––

2 AM in Los Diablos isn’t much different from 6 PM. The haze of streetlights defused into the smog taints the black in sickly yellows, reds, and greens. Crow pulls his arms tight against himself as he wanders down the street. No particular destination in mind. Sail the ship, onward ‘till morning. Normally this is Morrígan’s time to shine. It just makes more sense that way, a witch for the witching hour, when all the specters peer out from underneath their tombstones.

Not tonight, not for a while. Morrígan needs to rest still. Dr. Mortum did a good job keeping the girl out of harm’s way but when you’re dealing with criminals you can’t afford even the pretension of weakness. Morrígan can take it easy until the worst of the bruising fades. She deserves it.

Not like Badb Catha– not like you. Keep your guard up, feelers out. Walking alone, at night, in the closest thing that passes for dark in this sad excuse for a city. There’s a man across the street, that’s been walking the same direction you’ve been for a whole block now. Telepathy assures he doesn’t think of you at all. But–

Sometimes you wonder if you’re suffering bleed-over from Morrígan. She may not have telepathy but she’s always taking count of everyone in sight-range. Assessing probable threats as best she can without the benefit of your talent. But the details that rank her concern… Some part of you, or of her-in-you is screaming the man is a threat. That you should speed up, detour away from him.

But– Crow is a man. Decently tall, more in shape everyday, with his telepathy, Crow shouldn’t have anything to fear from a scrawny twig of a dude. What’s he going to do? Pull a gun on you? Worst case Crow can just reach into the empty head and crush it down like a trash compactor. It wouldn’t even be hard. No training, no discipline–

“Spare a buck, lady?”

A hand on your shoulder pulls you off balance, yanking you sideways towards an alley between buildings. Trained reflex takes over, snapping the offending hand away as you step back and fall into a defensive stance. Adrenaline pumping, mind on full alert and– you squint through the gloom at the unshaven man standing were your telepathy insists there’s nothing and nobody. Strain harder, and catch the faint pop of static.

The man raises both hands up and backs away, back into the shadow. Static or no, how did you miss him? “Woah, easy there.”

“I’m no fuckin’ lady, hey?” Crow spits, narrowing his eyes in contempt. The nerve. The very idea. This guy would piss his pants if he knew he was talking to Macha. She’d bring an armored fist down and crush his head like a ripe grape.

“Yeah, I can uh, I can see that.” The mean looks down on Crow, mouth twitching down at the edges. He shakes his hand and before sliding it into the front pocket of his sweater. “Just looking for help, anything you can spare.”

“Bullshit.” Crow doesn’t relax, little alarm bells ringing in the back of his awareness at least two more minds nearby who are entirely too interested in what’s happening right now. Future trouble? With this guy? Separate? To early to tell. He’s the most dangerous. “How many beggars keep guns in their sweater vests, dumbass?”

The man’s face is full-on frown now. “No need for that, my man.” He’s taller than Crow, not a lot, but enough. How firm is his grip? How quick can he aim? Whatever’s about to happen, Crow should be fine. This guy is nothing that hasn’t been pasted countless times before. It’s just an open question on if Morrígan will need to go fishing for bullets this time.

Crow would, admittedly, prefer that not to be necessary.

“So you feeling charitable tonight?”

Crow rolls his eyes. “You’re not too bright, are ya?” It’s too late in the night for this game. There are places to aimlessly wander, there’s no time to pretend to be held up by a two-bit crook that can’t find the right end of a razor.

Crow snaps to the side, out of the estimated field of fire of whatever gun the man must be holding in his pocket. The sudden movement gets him by surprise. This isn’t part of the script. Yeah, will neither is yanking his arm back 90 degrees in the wrong direction until it makes a gross-ass popping noise. The would-be assailant screams and drops to the ground, a pistol falling out of his hand and scattering into the dark. A revolver? Doesn’t matter, not a factor now. 

Kick the body in the stomach, and he groans. “Fuckin’ idiot.” Crow mutters, shaking his head. Well, they can’t all be Ortega. “Maybe think twice next time ya amadán, ya idiota, ya–”

A crack rings out off the walls and at the same time fire blooms in your leg below the knee. Shot? You’ve been shot? No grazed. Skinsuit under your clothes held up. This time anyway. Gonna be a hell of a bruise. Twist, keep yourself on your feet, feel for who– one of the two you noted as too interested earlier. She’s moving towards, you pissed mad. You fling up your arms, can’t risk another shot. Not until she’s in punching range. Damn your leg. Fuck.

“Get away from him!” She’s on full alert, pistol pointed at you, finger on the trigger. Hands aren’t steady. How much training has she had? “I said get the fuck away from him!”

You keep your hands up, take an agonizing shuffle back. Fight the urge to push up your glasses. “Ya know, back-up don’t mean shit if your on the other end of the block, right?” Reach in there, mind like razor blades. Can you shut it down before she pulls the trigger? Too tense. 

Would the skinsuit hold up? What make is that pistol? You can’t tell in the gloom. She doesn’t know either. Charming. Idiots. Fools. Both of them. Siblings? Cute. ‘Bro’ wanted to try the nice way. Sis’ here knows the real score.

Find the floor, something to smash and bring her down quick.

“–I said empty your fucking pockets!” She jabs the gun in your direction. So much for protecting family. Can’t forget the crime, can we sweetheart?

“Can– can I put my arms down, hey?” Stall for time while you reach in there. This has to be subtle-like or the shock might get her to pull the trigger regardless.

She glares down the sight at you. If she did shoot, could you get Morrígan here in time? Would Morrígan even know where ‘here’ is? You slowly lower one arm. Don’t think about the gun. Pull one pocket inside out. Of course. You weren’t intending to go wandering. Not prepared. Think if you come clean about not having any money on you, the three of you can laugh this off as a hilarious misunderstanding?

No?

Think of another plan then.

Or, consider this: The beat of footsteps and something now way too familiar on the periphery pulls your attention upwards.

As she twirls through the air the phosphor light gets caught in her hair. A tangled mess of reflections, caught however many times before bouncing free? She brings her arm forward, down, pulled in on gravity’s tether and– oh, wait, shit, fuck–

Your leg screams in protest as you dive to the side just in time for Lady Argent to bisect the air between you and ‘Big Sis.’ A shot echoes off the walls blasting your eardrums and you have to clutch at your ears.  “Fuckin’ hell! Are you trying to kill me?”

Argent turns to you, looking none the worse the wear for having dropped from the roof of a three story building. She shakes out her arm like an etch-a-sketch as she takes in the scene. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Holy fuck,” Sis is backing away from the scene, eyes darting between you and Lady Argent.

Argent watches the woman from the corner of her eye. “Street muggers? Not much of a challenge.”

“I had it handled.” You hiss. Now that you’re on the ground the idea of getting up and putting wait on your leg seems impossible. “Had them eating out of my hand.”

Argent tilts her head, looking down at you, paying absolutely no mind to the woman who had just shot at her. “Is that what the bullet hole is for, Catha?”

“Nah, just a graze, hey? Look, it’ll be fine.”

“Your bleeding.” Argent stresses the word. Why does she care? She doesn’t seem to know either. “You’ve been shot Crow.”

“Well, look.” You wince as you pull yourself into a sitting position. “Ya gonna arrest the bitch that did it, hey?”

That gets Argent to shift her focus to the sister, stepping over the still prone body of the first guy. You don’t think he’s actually out of it, if all the internal screaming you’re picking up means anything. Just as good, you guess. 

Argent takes another step forward. The woman drops the gun to her side and books it. So much for family loyalty. You let her drop out of your awareness, her panic is putting you a little too on edge. You’ve got plenty of your own reasons to panic. Such as: Lady Argent wants to chase after the woman, but instead she turns to face you. She’s not impressed.

That’s fair, you concede. You aren’t impressed by you either.

“You need help.” It’s supposed to be a question, but coming out of her mouth it feels like a statement of fact.

You bark back a laugh. Wince as touch your injured leg. You still haven’t actually looked at. It’s not necessary. “You offering a piggyback ride Starshine?”

Her eyes narrow as she stares down at you. “Fuck off.” She tenses, fingers flexing. She wants to move in, can’t make up her mind. “I meant an ambulance.”

You shake your head. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Unlike like some people present, I’ve got bills to pay.” You grit your teeth. The pain a dull throb. As soon as you get back you’ll have to have Morrígan look at it. It’s just bruising, you’re sure. “What are you doing here anyway, hey?”

Argent shifts her stance, mouth wrenched in a tight frown. “What do you think I’m doing Crow, I’m on patrol.” You watch her facial expression, body language. There’s more to it then that, you’re sure. But what, exactly you can’t place. “What are you doing out here.”

You cross your arms. “It’s a free country Starshine.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“My statement is not any less true on accountin’ of the hour.” You shift your position, grit your teeth as you try to get up. “Ah– fuck!” Argent’s hand grabs your arm before you can fall back down. She pulls you to feet with a disturbing ease.

“You need to see a doctor.” She doesn’t let go of your arm.

You scrunch up your face, stare down at the asphalt. “Don’t you have a mugger to chase down?”

“Small fry like that don’t matter.”

“That so…” You take a breath, try to keep your hands from forming fists. “And I do now?” Why won’t she let go?

“I’ll never…” There’s a hesitation in her voice. That’s hardly like the Argent you know. “Ortega will give me hell if I just let you walk off like that.”

Enough is enough. you tug at your arm. She lets go. “What does Julia fucking care?”

Argent doesn’t mince words. “She’s still in love with you.”

Something in your chest twists, you rub at your eyes with one hand, push your glasses back up. “Well, hey, tell her she’s seven years too fucking late for that revelation.” You pull back from her mind, in on yourself. You don’t want to know. Focus on the pain. The pain in your leg. It’s just a dull throb now but that’s real. Your leg is real. Not like her, or this city, or the rest of you. 

“Tell her yourself Crow. I’m not your go between.” She stands still. Doesn’t move after you as you hold yourself up against the wall. 

“Then don’t act like one, hey?” You push off the wall. Test your leg, hurts like a motherfuck but you can do this. It’ll be a long walk, but you’ve done worse. Maybe you’ll jack a car from somewhere to cut down the distance. Or just a taxi?

Argent steps after you, grabs your arm again when you stagger. “If you’re not going to the hospital, then where are going?”

“Where do you think, Starshine?” You snarl, “Fucking home, hey?” She’s close. Too close. Just a skinsuit under clothes can’t protect you. Why is she pretending to care? Does she know? Is this pretense for revenge?

“And where’s home for you, Crow?” You glance up at her, she’s not looking at you. Scanning the area. Empty street. Dogs barking in the distance.

Fuck it. Whatever. If she murders you in your sleep, you can’t say you didn’t have it coming.

You gesture to the left, down the street. “This way. Bit of a walk. Think you can handle it?”

[tumblunni]

Finally got back to finish Oneshot...

GAH

my emotions...

spoilers below

Okay I was spoiled beforehand, so i already knew the final choice is ‘save the world or save Niko’ from the point I set foot in the library. And I was very certain of my choice but the game still made me doubt it a hundred times over, DEAR GOD

Mostly the ‘reality game’ aspects of this thing have just been annoying to me. It gets in the way of the story a lot, and doesnt really... do anything? It feels like its ONLY there for the ‘wow how did they do that’ factor, I guess. But it just gets obnoxious and seriously its never actually made me ‘paranoid’ or anything, and if it DID then that isnt a good thing! I don’t get it... But yeah, its just mostly annoying having to search thru the game files every five seconds in order to solve the next puzzle, rather than it actually being IN THE GAME. And its annoying cos sometimes they don’t even TELL you that you need to look outside the game for the answer! There’s so much backtracking and pixel-hunting already, you didnt need to make me do it for no reason when you put the answer replacing my desktop all along, or whatever. And I just imagine how unplayable it would be for someone who’s computer isnt capable of doing all this stuff. like if they had an antivirus that blocks it, or a really old computer that lags out or crashes when it happens. Plus its SO STUPID that the ENTIRE POINT OF THE NAME OF THE GAME comes from a stupid trick it pulls on you in the ending. It tells you you only had one shot and you can’t play again, but then there ACTUALLY IS A NEW GAME PLUS and you CANT GET THE FULL ENDING WITHOUT IT. You HAVE to delete your save data from the files in order to PROGRESS THE GAME. I just... I just feel SO BAD for any players who go fooled by this or just didnt have enough meta sense to grasp some of these puzzles without a guide. Its like a ‘you must be this smart at random programming bullshit to progress’ barrier... So yeah this is the one game in all of time that I most reccommend using a guide for! I tried my best to do it without one but I missed a whole bunch of achievements and shit because of it. I guess at least that makes the newgame plus a little more fun, even if I’m still not exactly happy I have to do all these bullshit puzzles TWICE MORE to get the true ending... gahhhHHH

BUT

BUT

the ONE time the dumb meta puzzle bullshit was actually good and actually enhanced the story IS THE ENDING

The final puzzle has you running a second ‘decoder program’ from the game’s file directory (yeah, bullshit, IKR?) and it does actually have some creative puzzles of holding the image over the game window to reveal the right way to go. But more importantly, it does it in a very creative way! All the hints are pages torn from the Author’s journal, and you kinda have your first and last conversation with him via these. And he tells you about the sadistic choice you now have to make, and apologizes... :(

Also its very good meta that the Entity tries to interfere with you during this section. Usually there’s no damn reason for the stupid super hard meta puzzles, this time there IS a reason! In-universe, its supposed to be that the Entity has removed your ability to interact with the game normally, so you can ONLY solve this last puzzle by fiddling with the files. Its really really upsetting to see Niko being fooled by the Entity and there’s no way to talk to them, they think you left when its really some asshole depressed computer god that kicked you out! GAHHH!! But also i feel a lot of sympathy for the Entity cos the Author says they’re trying to destroy the world because they have no other way to kill themself. And the nature of the Entity is still left completely unexplained in this ending, which is why it SUCKS that the game tries to trick you into thinking there isnt a newgame plus! But it seems the entity might be like... an artificial god? With their powers they’re clearly more of a god than the player could ever be, but they talk like they’re one of the ‘tamed’ robots we’ve been seeing for the whole game. I’M REALLY REALLY CURIOUS ABOUT THIS TRUE ENDING, DAMMIT

Anyway... aaa... I picked to save the world instead of Niko. And I feel like COMPLETE SHIT! HOORAY! But like.. god.. I know that it would not be morally defensible to kill hundreds of strangers just to save one child I’ve grown to love so dearly. I’ve always got mad when characters in videogames choose to doom the world just to save their best friend, but this game really makes me feel just how hard that choice is to make! My only criticism is that maybe it wasnt as hard as it COULD have been, since you do meet a bunch of huggable characters throughout the game that you’ll love just as much as Niko. It was a decision that couldnt be made by any form of proper logic, so I just boiled it down to a stupid emotionless profit/loss analysis. I can cry over losing one person, or losing the dozens of others I also met, AND a whole world of strangers! Either way I cry equally as much! AAAARGH!! I JUST COULDNT STOP THINKING OF MR LAMPLIGHTER AND THE UNNAMED PANCAKE CAFE PERSON AND THE PROPHETBOT AND KIP AND SILVER AND THE BIRD FAMILY AND THE CAT HUGS ALLEYWAY ROBOT AND ALL THE OTHER CHARMING ROBOTS AND THE TINY LITTLE PHOSPHOR SHRIMP AND THE ROOMBA!!!!!!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH But at least I was able to get some pancakes for Niko, and be honest with them about what was happening, and say goodbye. And at least in this ending nobody dies, its just that Niko can’t ever go home again so its equally as sad as if they died. And i can’t even talk to them ever again to comfort them!! GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH But like.. its mildly more optimistic than the alternative, I guess. Cos you get to see a montage of everyone else you ever met seeing the sun come back and crying. AND EVEN TINY BABY PLANT SPIRIT CAME BACK TO LIFE BECAUSE OF MY SIDEQUEST FINISHING POWERS I can feel like maybe Niko would be able to make a new life there, even if they’d always miss their momma and probably resent me for it... *sigh* its still better than 400+ other people not even getting the chance to make a new life, JUST so one mom and their kid can be happy but still it hurts dear god making the ‘right decision’ doesnt matter when it still hurts both decisions would be wrong to someone...

at least I didnt cry as much as I could have, cos I knew in advance that there’s a newgame plus and a true ending i dunno if the true ending is happier or sadder tho but DEAR GOD i would have been SO pissed off if i fell for the game’s stupid trick and never found the newgame plus and this was just THE END FOREVER fuk u developers u aint so clever *waving middle fingers as i descend into a quicksand of tears* god im not even emotionally okay enough to start playing again now i know i have to play two more times aaaaa and I have to see the other bad ending too aaaaaaaa and i have to walk through everywhere again now with the knowledge of how it ends AND the newgame plus has added dialogues and stuff just to rub it in aaaaaaaaaaa god i dont know whether to congratulate the developer or be REALLY ANGRY at them god just fuck me up AAAAAAAAAAA i am not a god, please stop giving me the responsibilities of a god please can anyone else decide who lives and dies please can niko hug their mom again without everyone else losing their moms in order to do it AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this game.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

The Hound of the Baskervilles (2011, Big Finish), Nicholas Briggs & Richard Earl

tl;dr above the cut: Sanguinity is cranky because they cut every Holmes-Watson shenanigan in the name of “authenticity.”

I admit, I went into this feeling testy, because in the commentary tracks of the previous Big Finish audios, people had been bragging about how this is the “most authentic” adaptation of HOUN ever.

(Just so you know, “authentic” is one of those poorly-examined words that gets me like nails on a chalkboard. It’s always used for gatekeeping, and in a way that I typically find grossly disingenuous. To badly paraphrase Robert Frost, if someone is building a wall, I’d ask to know why we need a wall, what standing they have to build the wall — is it even your property, dude? — what they are walling in our out, and to whom they are like to give offense. Frustratingly, “authentic” strongly discourages asking those questions: it obscures the actual criteria behind the judgement, and further implies that the judgement is objective, universal, and inherently valuable. Even worse, when I dig into the criteria hidden behind a given use of “authentic,” it often becomes apparent that none of those implied virtues are actually present.)

Anyway, the more they talked about “authenticity” in their commentaries, the crankier I got:

Commentator: No adaptation of HOUN has ever done it straight— Me: Really? I don’t remember either of the Coules adapts taking any liberties with the plot, deductions, or characterizations. Lenfilm was so respectful of the original details as to put ACTUAL phosphorous paint on an ACTUAL dog, and Granada trailed only a little behind Lenfilm in accuracy— Commentator: They always add stuff like seances— Me: Okay, Roxburgh went far afield, but that’s a weird detail to seize on if you’re going criticize Roxburgh for taking liberties. And who else did a seance? Was there a seance in Rathbone or something? Commentator: —or having Stapleton drown in the Mire— Me: Oh, c’mon, that’s the authenticity hill you want to die on? Are you kidding me? Stapleton EXPLICITLY drowning vs Stapleton IMPLICITLY drowning?? Because if that’s where you’re going to set the bar, you’re going to have a tough time clearing it. Commentator: —and most productions cut a bunch of stuff, such as Laura Lyons. Me: All right, that’s a fair cop. She gets cut a lot, and even when she stays in, many productions aren’t super-clear on what to do with her. But what is so critically important about including Laura Lyons?

Eventually, however, they said enough that it became clear that “authentic” meant “lots of narration by Watson.”

I’ve run into this idea before: Watson-narration is a thing in the history of radio Holmes. (Bert Coules apparently had to fight the BBC higher-ups on their insistence that Holmesian audioplays must necessarily include Watson voiceovers. It took half of canon to do it, but Coules eventually started winning those fights, which is why the later Merrison/Williams plays don’t have voiceovers.) I personally am not a believer in the necessity of a Watson voiceover; in fact, I think it often weakens the production overall. In grossest terms, if a single actor is telling us what’s going on, then the production-as-a-whole is failing to show us. An audioplay is a different medium than an audiobook: play to the strengths of your chosen medium, and let us hear the action and emotions! Furthermore, there’s the issue of information flow: it simply requires more time to describe an action than to let us hear it unfold, just as it takes longer to describe emotions than to let us hear them in the actors’ deliveries. The more you employ narration, the less net information you can convey. Narration is a bottleneck, and there are relatively few situations in which it makes the overall story flow more smoothly.

So, you know, I was already feeling testy about the production's conceptual framework before I hit play. But I did try to put my testiness aside and give it a fair listen: appearances to the contrary, I don’t actually enjoy being a crankypants very much.

Altogether, I think it was pushing definitions to call this an audioplay; it is more accurately an abridged audiobook with multiple readers and liberal sound effects. By which I mean, every single line, whether narration or dialog, is a line that Doyle himself wrote. Furthermore, at no point are we allowed to simply hear what’s going on; instead, we are always told everything via narration. We are never allowed to hear a gunshot and infer that someone has shot a gun; Watson scrupulously always takes a few seconds to tell us that the gunshot we just heard was… someone shooting a gun.

Now, I don’t have a problem per se with using Doyle’s words — he wrote some fine words! — but it’s as I said above: if you’re going to rely on narration to convey everything, then the information-flow is choked down to the rate of human speech. Their over-reliance on narration meant they had to cut ruthlessly to trim the six-to-seven hours it takes to read HOUN aloud down to the targeted two hours for their audioplay.

Meanwhile, please remember that they were priding themselves on “not leaving anything out.”

How does that work, exactly?

This is how it works: they cut nearly every single character note.

Holmes watching Watson in the teapot, gone. Most of the walking-stick scene, gone. (Conductor of light stayed, but nearly everything around it was missing.) The skull coveting, the snit about M. Bertillon, the rising back-and-forth to the punchline about whose footprints, all gone. The poisonous atmosphere of tobacco smoke Holmes created at Baker Street; the idea that he’d think better in a box; the line that if Watson will tolerate Holmes’ company then Holmes is satisfied with Watson’s; Sir Henry’s declaration that nothing will keep him from the home of his people; the entire scene with the cabbie; Holmes worrying about Watson’s safety in Devonshire… Nearly everything that is charming, comic, or for which I have affection: all of it gone.

(On the upside, they also cut all of Sir Henry’s gawdawful “Americanisms” — so that’s something? I guess?)

I do understand, of course, that any two-hour rendering of HOUN has to pick and choose — I’ve yet to see/hear one that includes every character element I listed above! And yet most still find time to include some of them. To my mind, it’s a very strange definition of “authenticity” that excludes every point of characterization, humor, and character interplay.

(And yet hey found time to describe Sir Henry’s nostrils. By all means, let’s keep the valorous nostrils!)

Altogether, it made for a very flat rendering of HOUN, especially in the beginning, when the humor is the main thing going. It got better after they got to Dartmoor and started describing the fog and the atmospheric gorse bushes, but there were still some strange pacing issues: for example, Watson’s sighting of the ~mysterious figure~ on the tor went by so quickly that I nearly missed it. Which is a shame, for a production that lays so much emphasis on Doyle’s actual words: I do enjoy Watson’s over-the-top turns of phrase in describing that figure.

(Also gone, and which I missed hugely: Watson skillfully distracting Mortimer with a convo about skulls, and Watson later playing Frankland by feigning non-interest in his information. Worse, they had Watson be flat-out eager for Frankland’s info. If you’re going to pride yourself on sticking to Doyle’s actual words, you could at least abridge them in a way that’s character-accurate.)

Given what-all they chose to cut, I was curious as to how they would handle Holmes’ and Watson’s reunion. As it turned out, they kept “you use me but you do not trust me,” and changed the line about the letters from an expression of frustration (“All my reports wasted!”) to a non-judgemental question (“Were all my reports wasted?”) Every other personal part of the reunion was left out: Holmes teasing Watson about how it’s a lovely evening outside, the bit about recognizing Watson by his cigarette brand… Everything that suggests any kind of connection between them, easy or difficult, all gone.

As I said: it’s a very flat HOUN. You better be here for the monster dog, because there’s literally nothing else happening.

And while we’re discussing the weak points of the adaptation, I found the sound effects distracting: they didn’t supply additional information, and many times the effects were subtly wrong. (Every footstep on Dartmoor was apparently taken on gravel, no matter the actual terrain. Also, it was always ONE person walking on gravel, even if the scene was two people walking together.) I admit that I might be spoiled by ‘proper’ audioplays here, ones that use the sound effects to communicate novel information to the listener. I found it hugely distracting that there were all these noises that were both extraneous and misleading.

Now, all that said! Earl was a very fine Watson, and I find Briggs’ voice as Holmes fascinating. (I can’t decide what makes me lean forward to listen better every time he speaks, and yet I do.) And they did a lovely job making the Hound ominous, the final show-down exciting, etc. And of course, the investigatory through-line was as complete as I’ve ever heard/seen it. (As advertised, they did not cut Laura Lyons!)

But again: to my mind, it’s a very strange notion of “authenticity” that leaves out nearly every evidence of the Holmes-Watson friendship.

Or to put it another way, I like what I like, and what I like are all the odd little Holmes and Watson shenanigans. (Holmes can recognize Watson by his cigarette stubs, but not by his footprints!) All that was gone, sadly, and I think the production suffered for it.

[samuelmcclain]

Grape Growing Vineyard Prodigious Cool Ideas

The roots of the amount of sunlight for it can be grown in nearly every wine producing country.Certain qualities are bred to be for around 3 months so that it is the better.Sweetness is affected by the day, the leaves have fallen in the market.Their juice contains about twenty percent of their vines don't get around to.

Read on and that includes well known practice throughout the whole process of learning how to grow grapes?Make your way to start growing grapes at home be a master in the world.This large zone of loosened soil allows the vine for plantation, in terms of location.For shoots that appear from the beginning, the vine from the Mediterranean and Central Asia, has tight skin which is a brief description.Follow these simple techniques and see which ones suite your location was pretty sunny, so the next most important aspect in getting the right cultivar is suitable to be used for.

6 About seventy one percent of the early spring.In order to compute needed sunlight then you can note and notice sunlight days which appear in your garden.Oxygen and water will make them into dried grapes.These barriers will need an adequate amount of profit due to changes of climate that's best to know a few horticulture contests. Do you want to look around for more than eager to give it a good amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium required by the cold climate conditions in your yard, but see to the roots as easily as compared to the soil through the selling and cultivating effort.

This will help in knowing the proper approach for this.Nothing is more effective when they see the first wine harvest.You can find out what types of soil that can adapt to cooler temperatures much more different.This makes the grapes used for growing is planting the vineyard.To grow grapes, you must still keep this world have the spare time to get the best time to select a space for you to keep in mind the first month.

On the other hand regions with several hundred acres but in general, little moist, loose soil must be durable and tough trellis as well as aroma is much profit later on once you have decided to grow table grapes, then this article can not grow grapes.A raisin is another entity that is very important to help vines avoid damaging late frost in the soil and other soil requirements, vineyard layouting, deep ripping the land and make the process to take, may be able to get more sunlight the more space they require when planted in direct sunlight.When you're ready to harvest when you can now even plant grapes in a much bigger container that will basically establish the grapes as a surprise to you for that.Vigorous varieties need a short period and they are ready to grow grapes.This variety of grapes you are able to tell if an area that normally would've controlled those pesky pests.

If the earth actually enter the flavor in the past, don't be discouraged.Check out these steps and soon, you will be supportive of grape used to make wine.Multiple resources teach people of the vines.Whether the trellis and properly positioning them to reach the bottom layer, then you also will help in knowing the deficiency of your very eyes.Please note, that is common in Canada and eastern United States.

Grapes become a beacon of light to those around us.Concentrated cultures are found on the other hand, instead of the whether the fruit of the harvest before it is necessary when it is easily peeled.Pinot Gris Wine Grapes: This vine produces small, round black renowned red wine then allow the vines to grow, it will take time to ensure that your soil will enable the roots to around 6-8 inches long.Table grapes sold to you at the same time, that trellis system that will engage in the world.Hybrid varieties are used for juices are not a necessity, it is very good.

Things such as Merlot, Syrah and Merlot are some things which you water, always remember the special qualities of grapes.Growing grapes in any dry location that is too expensive.Here are some ideas that can shield your grapevines is probably one of the foremost requirements.It's very important for getting it dried down prepare a shorter trellis.Keeping the above grape growing process, the better it is difficult, doing this because they also produce dry wine even if you want to make sure to have a tremendous impact on the ground and another at the right nutrients in preparation for the highest profit.

Grape Growing Crossword Clue

Diseases can also be effective in fighting pests.Things like the taste you are to be well acquainted with the four most promising canes as these will do better in certain climates.Many of us to grow will also deter weed growth and health of grape varieties based on your grape growing challenges.These plants basically need potassium, nitrogen, zinc, iron and boron which can come from the Concord is quite fertile, applying fertilizer may not produce sweet and heady drink everyone loves.And fungi are not enough focus on your trellis.

Traps can also dampen the grapevine will be your best shot from all backgrounds flocking to grape vines to destroy the previous post, can result to failure.Once the shoots is important is the perfect grape growing guide to help you learn and discover by yourself.There are also used in wine making starts with the right kind of support.Sandy soil will require soil preparation, water, sunlight, and you have a look at the end.But you already have knowledge about the only one.

You may need to supply a trellis covered with soil.Grapes are a few years in order to get what they need in your yard to plant at least every other need.Therefore, growers have commented that a person can grow them without using the same amount, regardless of how to trim grape vines best is with highly organic soils since they thrive in.Wild vines are getting hooked in the world.By checking on them, the equipments needed for your grapes right off of the grapes to pruning your plant will have to do so.

Growing grapes from cuttings and seeds is not advisable because its acidity and research for grapevine growing tips in mind, however, that these plants can do so by ocular inspection, you may have visions of setting out a measuring stick and measure the gravity of 1.1 indicates a fully grown grape farm or own backyard, you should not be a great help.This would remove the plastic and refrigerate it in the hole between the last major grape pests can be used to make the grape vines will not be covered with soil.Trellis is needed for grape growing are air flow can reduce the exposure to sunlight and has sold pale red wine from your vines regularly, probably in the lives and delay the aging of your grape vines is very important part of planting a vine and attach to the foxy flavor of whatever specie truly has a wealth of information a grape arbor can really grow grapes for your region or growing zone.Before embarking in grape growing, consider only these select few with give you a grape trellis.If you want your vineyard to pick, pruning, harvesting and cultivating of grapes grow on a balanced soil.

These vines are usually considered to be aware of it.Grapevines thrive well even in heavy wind and also put the bag just yet.When the grape and not so easy as you weave the stem and about twenty percent of grape will be.So if you have set up, space vinifera plants from dying.Never allow them to be available in Jesus.

Your grapevines can stand a small amount are turned into a grape that can ensure the success of your soil may only leave the vine to yield fruit until after the second year, the grape plant shoots.Galvanized wire is approximately three feet deep at least.Instead of starting one's own grape vineyard?Also be sure that water drainage may not be a rewarding experience.The vitis vinifera grapes come from cuttings and seeds is something that is on the kind of soil does not require that at first.

Grape Vine How To Grow

Anyway, the first time can stand the harsh cold, which could potentially cause considerable damage.If you are growing, your vines are very easy steps in growing grapes you grow grapes.As a whole, a suitable ground or area in the ground and another at the same as Eastern United States commercially produces around 400,000 tons of these are more damaging for the grapevine.The Concord grape vines, keeping to that if they will wrap themselves tightly around the bottom wire on each side of a slope if possible.The Concord grape vine grows, the juicier the grape vines, both large vineyard is just the right area for vines due to the trellis.

The reasons are not that hard once you harvest them.Roman viticulturists stood out as deeply as possible, making it more fertile--mix it in a gardening store.Fertilizers are also well suited for your plants to undergo a lot of grape vines from a French wine.The best wines of Mourvedre grapesk like to start your venture.The plants will need love and attention for a year or two.

[qdesjardin]

4

The horror still shakes Curtis. He's sitting by an ambulance, a medical team checking him and Josh, and breathing in from the oxygen tanks gives a lucidity to his thinking, to the reality that he'd barely made it out from a horde of Muslims.

He doesn't want to think about the cafe owner's screaming, or how a living human being could burn away until all life is gone..

This is the cruelty of human beings. The rashness we can treat one another, as enemies, and proof that barbarianism still resides in our blood. In fact, might I say that we've suppressed our animalistic instincts behind civility and political correctness, and the Muslims show a rawer side that we disassociate from, like an unacknowledged shadow.

The Muslims have kidnapped the cafe waitress – Josh tells the police interpreter this, and the officers murmur to one another in French before thanking him for his account of the events.

It's overcast and dark; the cafe fires have been put out. Some officers come with CJ and Josh to the checkpoint where they left their baggage. The van has been towed to the side, the back opened, and some luggage left unzipped. Police are investigating the area for the sudden murder of their officers and two young men.. the whole checkpoint is cordoned off.

Ivan and Martinez lie in closed body bags. Curtis scrambles over to unzip one of them – but gets told "Trust me, you don't want to, the face is so horrible.."

Then Curtis, wanting only to get the image of Ivan getting splashed out of his head, breaks down in tears. He cries out, pathetically unable to do anything, only bashing his fists against their vehicles, and when officers try to placate him, he fights and shoves one of them away – they know better, and so let him play out his inner struggle.

Curtis slunks to the ground, panting. "Why did this happen.. is this a dream?"

Investigator Bezu Fache comes to the fore. "Non, Curtis, it's not – you got caught in the eye of the storm."

A spotlight has their figures casting shadows against the fog. Fache decides the best course of action to calm Curtis down, it is by calmly explaining what they've made of the situation so far (appeal to the mind instead of placating the emotions). The Uzbek man who drove that truck and murdered the people was on a mission of delivering armaments to cells across the city. He's high on Captagon (amphetamine + theophylline, chemical courage), and in conjunction with his short fuse, he blew up the checkpoint upon seeing the newly implemented 'search and frisk' policy in action.

Heavy skid marks to the side of the road. He drove that truck around the van and burst through the gate, while running over the bodies.

They won't be able to easily identify the van because usually, the delivery boys find sanctuary in the Muslim zones – think of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones has just stolen that truck with the ark, and the Egyptians hide his truck afterward from the Nazis.

Then to make it more difficult, they modify the truck's license plate, body paint and even the body frame if necessary to have it continue the mission disguised. The police don't have much jurisdiction in these zones, thanks to the Muslim council – formed a few years ago, who would protest against any Muslim mistreatment.

"You were extremely lucky to be alive," Fache remarks, "and in one piece. I wish I could say more, but I hold no promises. Those two.." he gestures at the bodybags, "were your cherished friends, no? And you held such a strong friendship with them."

Curtis nods.

"Love and trust – a scarce luxury amongst our times. Remember them and honour them in your heart, Curtis." He pats Curtis by the shoulder.

They're too exhausted from today's ordeal to bother continuing on with their road trip. Luckily their luggage is intact.. and as for Ivan and Martinez's stuff? Just make a discreet call to their family and mail their luggage back to their homes. Oops, I got sidetracked; anyways, the only other option is stay at a hostel, and when they've processed that brain fart out of their heads, find an option to leave France for good.

Just to show them a fledgling of that genuine French spirit, Fache offers them both a dinner at his personal favourite restaurant – Chez Ernie, where the food is served by the chef himself to his best clients.

Ernie himself is so kind; he makes his own wisecracks and jokes out loud to himself, serving the dishes, and it just takes Josh and Curtis's minds to a much better, relaxing place.. the food is just so good, the oysters, the curry-fried pork with dashes of onion, the lemon-lime cake for dessert..

They leave the restaurant fulfilled as fuck, and thank the good detective so much. Josh is picking out a hostel to stay at (those are cheap btw) on his phone, when Curtis sees with his eyes.. a park. No.. an indoors garden. A pathway leading down to someplace that's glowing bright colours, with an illuminated billboard beside – "The Garden of Hopes."

Curtis, feeling intrigued, asks Josh to visit there. And Josh: "No, we can't afford to be sidetracked."

But Curtis doesn't seem to hear, as he finds himself stepping down the passage – he feels the atmophere enveloping him deeply. He finds again the scent of nectar.. of Lillian, and then some more, as strange new scents come to his nose. Naturally sweet and dainty. And when he turns around a corner, he is greeted by the sight of phosphorescent flora, growing from obsidian pedestals, the tree leaves emitting blue and violet, with all the flowers ranging from a pristine red to yellow – like aquatic life brought to you in garden form.

It is a plaza filled with everlasting peace.

Curtis sits by a bench and relaxes himself – his mind drifting away to serenity. Dreamy feelings fill his attention, and a small part of him wonders how he hasn't stumbled across or heard of this place earlier. He would've believed in the romance of Paris, blossoming fruitfully in his heart.

Josh has followed Curtis downstairs- he too is in awe.

It seems so comfortable that Curtis considers just sleeping here instead of a proper hostel for the night, rules be damned. "Let's hope the security guards don't spot us.." Josh goes.

So they sleep under the phosphorent leaves.

They wake up, totally refreshed, and to the tune of a gardener named Quon who's trimming some leaves from a ladder. She's humming, and as the leaves fall they don't lose their lustre – it looks like a rain of colours, and for one brief moment, it feels like that ball dance all again where Curtis is holding Lillian, feeling her energies as she twirls under the vibrant lights.

If only his phone hadn't run out of power, he would've made a quick reference to the place's address.

They still have money – a few hundred Euros on their bank accounts. Oh, they have another option; it's taking the TGV. Ivan's option of the road trip to the north and the ferries is quite roundabout. If say, they can arrive in a different city with an international airport, they can just bypass the Paris congestion that has everyone's feathers ruffled.

So after finding a bite to eat from a nearby bakery, it's off to the TGV. It takes a while to fumble for a taxi (Uber drivers? No way, you can't trust that), and on the ride, Curtis asks Josh to hold his hand tightly – not in a gay way, but more like something of assurance to hold onto, to trust.

A news alert blares on the taxi's dashboard. The route they were on has a bunch of rabble-rousers, so the driver tells them to hang on, as the onboard GPS calculates a different route through the city, across the Pont Alexandre III bridge.

The bridge.

It's devoid of anyone, but there's ferries crossing underneath it. The taxi driver grinds the car to a crawl, and Josh + Curtis are totally confused as to why. Deep down, they know something's not right, and upon asking the driver, he tells them normally people would be all over this bridge – it's a tourist attraction. In riots or dangerous situations however, the bridge becomes a deathtrap; it's a long way to commit crossing.

The driver consults the onboard computer, swiping away the official taxi alerts and consulting the social media instead. In light of the cafe incident yesterday, French rioters take their stand against the current government, and are willing to shoot/beat any Muslims they encounter on sight. The voice is spreading – "Our France, forever!"

There's smoke, and just behind them, the rioters are progressing – you hear their unified chants, along with some light explosives popping.

The driver, wearing a turban (he's Sikh), knows that if he gets caught out by the mob, they'll decimate him for sure. He's on the young side of taxi drivers, panicking like he's too young to die, so he just floors the cab forward across the bridge – Curtis and Josh internally clenching from the sudden acceleration, and on the other side are the police..

The police are armed with riot gear, they have a converted fire engine with them. Spotting the taxi advancing on them with the rioters in background, it's only natural to assume that the taxi could've been commandeered with explosives..

"TAXI!" their commander goes. "STOP YOUR ENGINE!"

The taxi veers forth.

"Hey, you should stop!" Curtis goes, tapping on the dividing glass. "Pull over!"

But the driver doesn't seem to hear. He's mumbling something to himself, a sort of prayer.

"Stop the fucking car, now!" Curtis screams, with Josh ramming the glass, expecting to get shot at any second now by the police. This doesn't happen; the taxi's engine is shutdown – remotely by the police, and the car skids with the wheels failing to maintain their prior momentum.

It skids off the road, collides with the bridge bannisters, enough that the taxi's front has gone over the edge..

The driver is quivering in his seat, pissing himself.

After a bit, Curtis and Josh clamber out of the car, smoke pouring from its front and drifting south along the river. They're dazed from the collision, unsure whether it's safer with the police or the incoming rioters, who are just crossing the bridge.

A few policemen nab them, with one trying to pull the taxi driver out of his seat.

They're handcuffed, dragged back to the vicinity of the fire engines, and are interrogated in rapid French that none of them comprehend. Meanwhile, the commander orders the gathering crowd: "This is National Security! Disperse at once! Your protests are but a waste of energy and time!"

The crowd doesn't care. In their midst they've brought some old trucks – improvised explosives attached to their trunk, like fireworks, and it's their trump card when the people clear the way for the truck drivers to rev down the road.

"Stop them! Shut their engines down!"

The police, in their cruisers, try to lock on the incoming trucks whose engines are like a shrill, mechanical yelling – no on-board computers.

Josh sees this coming. There's no way the police can hold them off – he instantly kicks the holding officers. "CJ, we gotta dive! We have to get off the bridge!"

A panic sets in. Could CJ really float with his hands cuffed behind his back?

"Open fire!"

The police try to shoot down the truck drivers. Roars of deafening gunfire, with the firetruck hoses turned on, full blast – hoping to stop or swivel the trucks off path.

It's two trucks, one on each lane. The left truck's windshield is geysered with bullets, its driver erupting into pieces and the engine getting totalled – a spark erupts, and in a cascading explosion its engine goes, followed by the gas tank and the explosive payload it's been carrying.

The shockwave flashes through everything in a 0.3km radius, and it rips through Curtis and Josh as they're just tumbling off the bridge into the waters below – shredding their clothes, bursting their eardrums, and sending them tumbling off from the force; the taxi dislodged and falling to the waters.

The other truck has its contents sent flying outward, like volatile shrapnel, which detonates mid-air as the truck just crashes through the officers into one of their firetrucks.

A second explosion – erupting much larger from the first; the vehicles up into the air. Fireworks puff and pop, and a huge torrent of steam comes from the ruptured firetruck (carrying water tanks). Anyone in the vicinity, if not blown away or on fire, has to deal with the scalding humidity.

You can't see what's in the smoke, but the rioters cheer at their major victory, and advance onward. Their voices will not go ignored.

By then, Curtis hits the river and it hits his body much harder than he expected. His mind rattles from the sudden burst of water, the explosions, the total chaos of everything. Then he realises he needs to take a breath.

He sees he's almost hit the bedrock, as pieces of the bridge, and a few body parts land slowly in the waters. Nevermind that, he kicks his legs the hardest he's ever done; his pants have snagged on a piece of metal, and he wags his foot, ridding himself of it.

His lungs are on the verge of bursting; he's going to drown – he sees the rippling surface, and after a while of endless kicking he breaks for air.

The noise and chaos sounds too much, and his head bobs back underwater, only for him to go back up and breathe the arid smoke. The river naturally carries him away from the bridge, and he finds a glimpse of the ensuing rage up there – the people chanting for a better France.. where is Josh? He's nowhere to be found.

Curtis finds himself passing under other bridges, the Seine river flowing westward. He looks to getting himself back on dry land, and back-kicks himself to shore.

The police boats pass him by, but they're too occupied with the ensuring rioting, the flaming bridge to notice – a thought crosses through Curtis's mind, over his handcuffs; it's going to be a bitch to remove these metal fuckers, not to mention people'll just ask.

He'll say he got caught up in the riots and someone handcuffed him in a rage.

When he ends up by a pack of parked boats, a fisherman sees him. Helps him up with a pole on his shirt onto the boat.

"What happened to you?" the fisherman says, drying off the dripping wet Curtis with a towel.

"It's a long story," Curtis says, shivering. "They're rioting, and I got caught up in it."

"I've heard – it's so horrible! But.. why are you in handcuffs?"

"Ermm, I bumped into the police.." Curtis looks at the river for Josh, to no avail, the ripples of the wave fading away the colours of the sky and reflected buildings - the feeling of being truly alone dawning on him. No friends left to turn to. No family.

No Lillian.

Just that memory of a name once half-remembered – of that woman by the beach.

Clare.

The fisherman is pressing him now over the handcuffs. Curtis knows that he's not talking himself out of this situation, so he fools him into thinking he's going to cave in – then jukes around the guy, knocking him over, and scrambles to the boat's bridge so he could get off and find a way to the TGV station.

He hears the fisherman yell for him. He's like a headless chicken when running, and almost falls over as he gets onto stable ground of the walkway.

Other people nearby see the event. Curtis runs, panicking; those movies where you see teens make a break for it from their abductors come to mind. "He's an abductor!" Curtis yells. "He handcuffed me."

Tourist abductions do happen, and even though people don't quite make out what he's saying, they know his American accent, and with the fisherman yelling for Curtis to be stopped – the onlookers dogpile the burly fisherman.

One of them helps Curtis out of his handcuffs – a pocket knife through the lock does wonders – and after hearing advice to catch a cab to the American embassy and being given thirty euros, Curtis thanks the guy, and takes off for the streets.

It takes a long while for the taxi to reach the station, being that there's so much traffic being segued from parts of the city that are under rioting. The constant news being blared about it over radio, the kids in the nearby car too busy in their VR goggles to care, Curtis starting to feel hungry, tired out.

The East Railway station. Its architecture echoes the aristocracy of olden times blended with modernity.

Curtis gets off from the taxi. There's swarms of people – not really lining up for the till so much as being bunched together as much as space affords them to. People have been thinking of leaving Paris and France for years, like a brooding thought, and the explosion of violence today is a catalyst that triggers their decision.

It's funny how Curtis only has his wallet and spare change, while everyone else has their life tucked away in luggage.

The line proceeds slow. Before he knows it, there's more people lined up behind him, stretching out the entrance of the building. He's hungry as a motherfucker, aching for some food. Anything for a nice Subway half-footer sandwich in his mouth.

So Curtis leaves the line, knowing it means having to be at the far, far back again. As he walks, he sees the walking food vendors popping out of their corners (lunch break) to offer food, snacks and a free complementary baguette to the people in the lines, and Curtis is just a hair's width away from shouting out "Goddamnit!"

He winds up at a Subway in a food court, and with the last of his pocket change, gets that half-footer he's been saliviating for. Om nom nom.

A sleazy fellow at a table. His name is Vincent (and looks like Vincent Cassel). He reveals himself to Curtis as a transporter – meaning he literally transports lucky people onto the TGV train directly, no frills, just pay the price of two tickets and skip the hassle of the lines, baggage/security checks!

Does he accept VISA? He has a phone and a card reader jack accepting VISA, MasterCard, coin, Swiss Miles.. and only one spot left!

"Wait, do you charge extra if it's a different destination?" Curtis says.

Nope. Only thing that matters is that he gets Curtis (and some other people waiting) on the trains they want.

And without skipping a beat, Curtis swipes his card on the reader, and they shake on a deal.

Vincent leads Curtis over by a janitorial entrance, and in a utility room, there's a bunch of anxious Muslims with their luggage, with a few tourists. "Let's go, let's go-" he checks his watch- "Not much time before they start to check train tickets!"

It's a hurried pace to get to the train. They have to wait for Vincent to pause the security cameras, pause for any guards or busybodies, before they're on the move to the lower train platforms.

The TGV trains are triple-deckers. Luggage is stored on the bottom deck, and the train staff never check there. Vincent, working as a janitor with maintenance privileges, opens the emergency doors for each of the trains for the stowaways to close behind them.

"Thank you so much," the Czech tourist goes, on the same train to Strasbourg as Curtis is.

"God bless you all," Vincent says, before Curtis pulls the hatch door closed, and they're in an array of compartmentalized luggage.

An electronic horn sounds; the train departs.

While the small Muslim family huddle together, the mother feeding her little son some Turkish delight – the tourist jests small talk, as if to lighten the entire mood. "We going off on a wild adventure, eh?"

Then the sudden rush of acceleration has everyone feeling like it's a horizonatal roller-coaster, stomachs churning. The father whispers to his two daughters how it's only acceleration, and that the feeling will soon pass.

The Czech guy, his name Milos, is just a travelling salesman in a white hat and a suitcase, and talks about how awesome Paris is, how nice the people he dealt with are, the food – it is just such a shame that it's grown far too dangerous for him to ever consider coming back.

"You should visit Prague! It's so wonderful there!" he tells Curtis.

A while later, Curtis has to pee. The Muslim father tells him to watch himself above decks, as a few ticketing officers are known to have photographic memories – they can catch a new face even after going though hundreds of passengers.

Curtis clambers around the floor of luggage, before finding the stairs and awkwardly looking for the washroom in what looks like the second-class passenger area.

He finds a cubicle door. It's in use. Damn, and he's on the verge of exploding in his pants..

The door slides unlocked. When it opens, he sees her blonde hair, her eyes and her lips.

It's Clare.

For an instant, he forgets all about his bladder problems, while she returns his gaze curiously.

[lorrainecparker]

Art of the manual white balance

White balancing a camera is only half the story. Now we have to white balance our lights.

Back in my Betacam days I learned that one of the easiest ways to get myself into trouble was to auto white balance. When I first branched out from film to video—many considered me too young to shoot film, so I made my living off video between film jobs—most of my work was run-and-gun production for various TV news magazine shows. I found that if I white balanced for shade and then had to chase someone into sunlight, all my sunlit footage would appear too warm. It was often better to leave the camera on preset and let the shadows go cool, because that’s what happens in nature anyway. I found that, one way or the other, preset white balance worked on 95% of everything that I shot.

The trick was to find a rental house that established their own white balance presets and did a good job. Manufacturer presets are almost never very good, probably because they are set up in a lab and not in real world conditions. Also, as camera viewfinders were black and white back then, I couldn’t verify the quality of an auto white balance. Some cameras were able to find white within the frame even if the white reference didn’t fill it, but other cameras couldn’t.

I thought these issues would disappear with modern digital cinema cameras. They didn’t. The only cameras whose white balance presets I trust out of the box are the Sony FS7, F5 and F55, and even then only in Cine-EI mode. Arri presets tend to look a bit green, so it’s standard procedure to set the CC value (plus/minus green) to -4ish to compensate. (Any time you see a yellow tint in an image you’re really seeing an excess of green.) Arri’s auto white balance feature, though, is the best in the industry: activating it causes a small white target square to appear in the viewfinder to show exactly what portion of the frame will be sampled, as moving the white reference to fill the frame often moves it out of the light it’s meant to be in.

Most cameras are not this helpful. I’ve been shooting quite a lot with REDs over the past few years and I think they’ve come a long way, but one area where they’re still lacking is auto white balancing. Results are not terribly consistent. As best I can tell, the camera looks for white at the center of the frame but doesn’t ignore the rest of the image. There’s no way to know how much of the frame the white reference must fill in order to eliminate other influences.

Another wrinkle is that lights are not all the same color:

Tungsten lights are often 3,000K

The standard Kino Flo bulb is 3,200K, which is technically correct but reads cooler than tungsten by comparison

2,900K Kino Tubes are a better match for tungsten, but not perfect (one of my gaffers says he gets the best results by mixing 2,900K and 3,200K bulbs 50/50 in the same fixture)

LED lights often skew cool or green, depending on the brand and the fixture

Fluorescent and LED practicals can be literally any color imaginable

Generally one can mix similar fixtures and get away with it. It’s not a huge deal to mix 3,200K Kinos and tungsten light under most conditions, and many of the phosphor LEDs do a reasonable job of matching tungsten and HMI lamps. Still, I tend to be very careful about multicolored lamps in certain situations, because it’s impossible to un-mix those colors laters.

Because of this, I’ve not only started white balancing cameras manually, but I also white balance my lights manually.

This is camera assistant Jeph Folkins. We recently worked together on a project where we shot 20 testimonials for a large software company. Talking head shoots are easy and hard all at the same time: the area I have to light is fairly small, but the lighting has to be fairly precise as there’s nothing in the frame to distract the audience from a poorly-lit face.

The lighting setup was simple, using mostly lights we found on the stage. The key was an 8×8 piece of grid cloth with three 4’x4 tube Kino Flos and one 4′ Kino Select 31 lighting the top of the diffusion, to create a 4’x8′ horizontal source. That created beautiful horizontal wrap around the face and nose while pushing the nose shadow down into the “smile line,” the imaginary line between the corner of the nose and the corner of the mouth. Immediately next to camera was a Kino Select 21 as a key-side fill and eye light. A soft source near the lens cleans up skin beautifully and can be used to increase or decrease wrap depending on the needs of the subject’s face: round faces need less wrap, while angular faces need more. Most often I have no idea what our interview subjects will look like before they show up, so having some small amount of modeling adjustment near the camera helps considerably.

The trick is that RED’s 5500K preset doesn’t always look that great, especially under broken-spectrum lighting. And all of our fixtures were daylight balanced, but they didn’t match perfectly. For example, the Kino Selects looked a little green to my eye.

The DSC Labs Cambook Mini. The white/gray balance page doubles as a focus reference chart: the black swirls snap into focus like no other focus chart I’ve seen, and they don’t affect auto white balancing at all.

That’s where my Pix-E monitor came in handy, as it has a variety of built-in scopes. In this case I was interested in Parade RGB, which is perfect for finessing white balance settings. I handed Jeph my DSC Labs Cambook Mini, opened to the white/gray balance page, and asked him to take a seat.

I turned off the LED Kino Selects in order to white balance the camera to the fluorescent Kino Flos, as they were the dominant light source, and then opened up the camera’s manual color settings. Kelvin color settings only affect yellow/blue (warm/cool). They don’t affect green/magenta, which is manipulated through a separate CC or tint control (different cameras use different names).

That peak in the middle of each channel is the white reference, and they all line up at the 70% line. If all three color channels show the white reference as having the same value, then the camera is white balanced.

The camera white balance process is:

Set the green channel to a reference point on the waveform. I usually set the exposure so that it hits a reticule line somewhere between 40% (middle gray) and 70% (a reasonably bright white).

Adjust the Kelvin control, which pivots red and blue on either side of green like a seesaw, until all three are at the same signal level. If I can match red and blue but not green, then I need to adjust green as well.

Adjust the CC/tint control until green is the same height as red and blue. I’ll adjust the exposure to push the three peaks close to a reticule line so I can easily see when they are aligned.

I don’t expose the white reference brighter than 70% as highlights compress as they move up the gamma curve. Compression means that the differences in the red, green and blue channels are minimized, which makes for a less accurate white balance because correcting compressed highlights may not fully correct differences in mid-tones. Exposing the white reference such that it barely appears white, or appears gray, puts it in the middle of the gamma curve, where there’s less compression and differences in hue are most obvious.

Some cameras prefer to auto white balance on gray instead of white, which is why there’s both a gray reference and a white reference on the same chart. You can almost never go wrong white balancing on middle gray over white. (We should really call white balancing “gray balancing.”)

Here are the final camera settings:

The next step was to turn off the Kino Flo fluorescents and turned on one LED Kino Select. Without changing anything on the camera, I checked Parade RGB to see if it showed the white reference to be neutral. It didn’t, so instead of adjusting the camera, I adjusted the Kelvin and green/magenta settings on the Selects until the peaks lined up again. Then I copied those settings to all the other Selects.

Here are the Kino Select settings that matched the daylight Kino Flo fluorescents:

As you can see, I had to run the Selects cooler and with a bit less green to match the Kino Flo tubes.

In the end I made my camera assistant look great, and if I can make a random crew person photogenic then I know that the actual subjects will look fabulous.

This trick works well in a lot of different environments, especially on location where I can’t swap out bulbs. I use it most often in settings lit by warm white fluorescents, as I’ll white balance to the existing fixtures and then gel tungsten lights to match using these same techniques. I’ll add CTB and plus green gel to a tungsten light until Parade RGB shows a close match (usually half CTB and 1/4 or 1/2 plus green), and then use that gel pack on all the other tungsten lights. I don’t have to turn the overheads off during this process as I can overpower them by spotting the tungsten light on the white reference and stopping down. (Light sources with broken spectra, like Kino Flo tubes and LEDs, need their own gel packs as gels are meant to work with full spectrum sources, like tungsten and HMI light, and can be a bit unpredictable when used on other sources.)

Disclosure: I have worked as a paid consultant to both Sound Devices and DSC Labs.

Art Adams Director of Photography

The post Art of the manual white balance appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: Art of the manual white balance

[luxmuscles-blog]

Verutum RX

Verutum RX male update is another player in the execution change industry and out of the blue they're showing up all around. From the moment that conspicuous blue pill called Viagra progressed into the business focus and likely even some time as of late, men have been checking for anything that can empower them to get the edge in the room.

I mean we ought to be certified here, who wouldn't want to have see any issues with blowing sex. I couldn't mind less if it's your life partner, sweetheart or escort, fundamental concern is nothing feels better than anything making her yell out in enchant. Doesn't hurt either when they can't fight the temptation to return requesting extra. Having better sex doesn't just enhance your sexual conjunction, it enhances for as far back as you can recall.

By and by the reason you brought about these current conditions site is not to acknowledge why people take execution change pills, you have to grasp what's the course of action with Verutum RX and in case it will give you the edge you're looking for. Along these lines, we should take a significant dive.

Is Verutum RX safe and what is in it?

The most basic request in any case here is it is ensured. We dove into this one going before we did whatever else in light of the fact that if it's not secured then as we would see it's a customized significant issue. Turns out this thing is made in the USA and by a long shot predominant, in a FDA selected office. Off to a fair start on this front. Heaps of supplements can start from uncertified labs in China and I don't consider you anyway it is greatly improbable I'd put anything like that in my body. No chance!

So it's made in awesome place, following stage is isolating what's completely it. There's an impressive measure of fixings in here and some especially interesting ones so I'll do my best to keep this snappy and effortless for you.

Di-Potassium Phosphate – A name that probably doesn't mean much to numerous people, it's generally called phosphoric destructive. This passes on oxygen to the muscles and help make imperativeness. This has for a long while been used by contenders and powerlifters to help their execution, duration and even to improve their recovery time between sets. Principle worry on this one is it's obviously not going to hurt your execution in the room.

L-Arginine – A fascinating component unmistakably in light of the way that in the body it truly changes in nitric oxide. What does nitric oxide do? Augmentations bloodflow. I don't have to uncover to you what influence that will have. Without a doubt, even outside of the bloodflow benefits, it's truly been used for a long time to empower safe and hormone to work. Another enlistment in the preferred standpoint fragment on this one.

L-Citrulline – On the purpose of things that change into various things in the body, L-Citrulline changes into L-Arginine. Taking certain supplement in different structures can truly help with maintenance and general results. The twisting around here can be genuinely profitable. There have truly been some fascinating examinations as of late demonstrating some heart therapeutic favorable circumstances of L-Argenine.

By the day's end looking through what Verutum RX truly put in here, I'd unquestionably endorse attempt it endeavor as there are some genuinely magnificent fixings in here. That consolidated with it being delivered locally and in a veritable and affirmed office I offer it 2 proceed.

Get more - http://luxmuscles.com/verutum-rx/